[{"content":"Now that I\u0026rsquo;ve covered two building blocks \u0026ndash; syslock for managing immutable flags and rsync-tools for moving files around \u0026ndash; in this post I\u0026rsquo;ll discuss more recent tools that put those together in order to manage the distribution of files across my systems. I originally looked at using something like puppet or chef to manage configurations on my hosts, but they both seemed overly complex for my needs and neither was built to handle my environment with immutable files. I decided to build a tool to install updates, thinking that perhaps I could set it to run automatically on a reboot by calling it in /etc/rc.securelevel before the system securelevel is raised, but in practice I\u0026rsquo;ve just used it manually.\ndistribute.pl This script packages up components into gzipped tar files (unless they are already in tar files as signed packages in OpenBSD format), determines what hosts they need to be delivered to, and then ships them off using rsync (with rrsync on the receiving end to limit access to only /var/install, which is where install.pl will expect to find items to install). Originally the list of files that the script would distribute was specified in the code, but I split it out to a separate config file as I made more frequent changes. There are three types of file that can be distributed: plain files (which can be any type of file), packages (OpenBSD format), and \u0026ldquo;custom.\u0026rdquo; The last of these is intended for files that require some custom processing before delivery, which is currently implemented by adding additional subroutines to the code but could be extended in the future to allow the use of external code, perhaps similar to something I implemented for reportnew, which will be covered in the next blog post. For individual perl scripts, config files, and X.509 certificates, I use \u0026ldquo;plain\u0026rdquo;; for OpenBSD packages and all of the scripts discussed in this blog series, I use \u0026ldquo;package,\u0026rdquo; and I have two implemented \u0026ldquo;custom\u0026rdquo; distributions: (1) \u0026ldquo;doas,\u0026rdquo; which takes a doas.conf.template file containing all of the information required to generate doas.conf files for all of my hosts, and then distributes the resulting generated config file for each host. (2) \u0026ldquo;ip-address,\u0026rdquo; which I use when the dynamically assigned IPv4 addresses on my WAN connections change to update all of the config files on remote hosts which reference those addresses. One of the things that happens when my IPv4 addresses change is that I lose IPv4 access to my cloud-hosted servers; distribute.pl will automatically use IPv6 to distribute the changed config files in this case. (It also takes -4 and -6 options to force IPv4 or IPv6.)\nEach entry in the config file specifies a name (the name used to specify the file in an argument to the script), a file name (the source location), a destination location, a type (plain, package, or custom), and the hosts to which that file should be distributed (which may be \u0026ldquo;all\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;all except\u0026rdquo; followed by a list of one or more hosts). An optional \u0026ldquo;syslock-groups\u0026rdquo; field identifies which syslock groups must be unlocked for the installation to occur. For packages, instead of a source pathname, the \u0026ldquo;file\u0026rdquo; field is the name of the package followed by a hyphen and the letters \u0026ldquo;PKG\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; distribute.pl will look in the default OpenBSD location where new ports are built to find the most recent version of signed package to distribute; you can override the location in the config file.\nFor plain and custom files, distribute.pl will prompt for the passphrase for the signing key (default is $DOMAIN-$YEAR-pkg.sec in /etc/signify and can be overridden in the config file or with the -k option to specify an arbitrary key or -p option to use the prior year key for your domain, but use of other format key names will generate a warning). I protect my signing key passphrase by keeping it in KeePassXC. KeePassXC is protected with a passphrase (which could be intercepted by a keylogger) but also by a YubiKey as a key file equivalent, which KeePassXC queries using the HMAC-SHA1 challenge response function. The key file data never leaves the YubiKey. I have a primary and secondary YubiKey configured with the same HMAC-SHA1 secret so that I don\u0026rsquo;t lose access to my passwords if I lose my primary YubiKey.\nFor packages, no additional signature is required (but see below for what will generate warnings from install.pl.)\nIf you want to distribute a config file to only a few of a set of hosts that would normally receive it, you can specify an individual or comma-separated list of hosts on the command line using -h.\nThe config file may define macros of the form macro_name=\u0026quot;macro_value\u0026quot; which can be used in the config file as %%macro_name%%; there are also special variables $HOST, $SIGNIFY_PUB_KEY, and $SIGNIFY_PUB_KEY_NEXT which can be used; the latter two are for distributing the public key files themselves to other hosts. The script will warn beginning on December 1 that the next year\u0026rsquo;s key should be distributed.\nPackaged with distribute.pl is gendoas.pl, the script which generates doas.conf files from a template file which specifies which sections are applicable to which hosts using comments of the form \u0026ldquo;# hosts: \u0026rdquo; (which also supports the \u0026ldquo;all\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;all except \u0026rdquo; syntax as distribute.conf does, as well as \u0026ldquo;none\u0026rdquo;, for sections that are only intended for the template itself). One of the features I liked about sudo was the ability to have a single sudoers file for all hosts; this gives me a close equivalent, I have only one file to maintain. (It\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that doas can be used on Linux with the opendoas package.)\ninstall.pl The other component of this system is install.pl, which does the actual installation of files in /var/install, provided there are public keys for those signing keys in /etc/signify. Packages will be installed from any source signed with such a key, but plain and custom files will generate a warning and user prompt if the key is not the current or prior year key for your own domain. The signatures are checked both before and after reading the tar file to mitigate time-of-check/time-of-use race conditions. If syslock exists on the system, then install.pl will unlock the \u0026ldquo;local\u0026rdquo; group by default and any other specified syslock groups. But if the system is a *BSD system running at securelevel \u0026gt; 0, the install will not proceed unless the -f (force) option is used, since it would be unable to unlock anything with system immutable flags. With -f it will attempt to proceed on the assumption that any system immutable flags that might be in the way have already been unlocked and will see if there are any user immutable flags in the relevant groups and unlock them if necessary, and then will re-lock anything that it unlocked at the end (i.e., if system immutable flags would have been in the way but were manually unlocked, they will be left unlocked).\nPackages are installed using OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pkg_add if the destination system is an OpenBSD system, but otherwise install.pl includes a minimal implementation of both pkg_add and pkg_delete functionality so that OpenBSD-format packages can be installed on Linux and macOS systems if they are packages that work on any architecture. The pkg_delete functionality is used to remove an old version of a package before installing the new one (it will not delete installed configuration files unless they have remained unchanged from the default). This custom implementation also checks to see if there is a version of a config file in the package with \u0026ldquo;macos.\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;linux.\u0026rdquo; on the front of it, and installs the appropriate config file for the operating system in use. For perl modules, instead of installing in /usr/local/libdata/perl5/site_perl (OpenBSD), it will install in /usr/local/lib/site_perl (Linux) or /Library/Perl/Updates/\u0026lt;perlversion\u0026gt; (macOS; I might want to add recognition of use of Homebrew in the future). Like on OpenBSD, the installed package is registered in a directory in /var/db/pkg listing the contents of what was installed. One feature of OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pkg_add that is NOT implemented is a check for file collisions from an installation, but it will not overwrite an existing installed config except in the case where you are upgrading from an older version to a newer one and the existing config has not changed since it was installed (i.e., it has the same size and SHA256 hash). The upshot of this is that once you modify the config it won\u0026rsquo;t get clobbered by a new installation even if the package registration isn\u0026rsquo;t present on the system. The new config always goes into the /usr/local/share/examples/\u0026lt;package\u0026gt; directory.\nIncluded with install.pl is pkg_info.pl, a minimal implementation of OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pkg_info, which lists installed packages or displays information about a particular installed package.\nOne last thing that install.pl does is add an entry to /etc/CHANGELOG with the datee showing what exactly was installed.\nSignify.pm A perl module that is used for the cryptographic functions in install.pl and distribute.pl is Signify.pm, a wrapper for OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s signify command to allow signing and verification of individual files with detached signatures (a separate file containing the signature) and to allow signing and verification of gzip files, where the signature is embedded in the gzip header (as produced by OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pkg_sign). This works on Linux (with the signify-openbsd package) and macOS (with signify-osx, available via Homebrew). Although in some scripts I used to use GPG for signatures, I switched to signify at some point after it became available (in OpenBSD 5.5) as it is much lighter weight and uses Ed25519 digital signatures. While this is currently a source of strong protection against classical (non-quantum) attacks, it is not resistant to quantum cryptography and should soon be supplemented by ML-DSA or SLH-DSA. There is an open source ml-signify in Rust that uses ML-DSA, but there is no official OpenBSD port of it; it\u0026rsquo;s something to look at in the future. (This is presently an OpenBSD ecosystem limitation, ML-KEM support is not yet present in LibreSSL, for example.) This perl module is a component used by all of the remaining tools that will be covered in this series.\nUse of LLMs for Security Assessment All of these scripts have been reviewed for security issues with LLMs, which led to improved error checking (in particular to correct a latent bug in Signify::sign_gzip where the success of copying the signed gzip was not checked), a fix to a bug in the code for finding the latest version of a package. Claude was particularly helpful in working out the details of how to integrate with syslock in a more useful way using a variant of the -a (audit) flag combined with -q, which returns as soon as it finds the first inconsistency with the desired state, used to verify that there are user immutable flags to unlock, as well as in expanding and improving the minimal implementation of pkg_add built into install.pl so that it sets file permissions as well as timestamps, and properly installs per-OS config files.\nGetting Started and Further Reading These tools are available on my website and on Github. A sample distribute.conf config file is provided and the Github README contains more details about usage and implementation. All of these were written initially for OpenBSD but also work on Linux and macOS. A quick way to get started is to put install.pl on a system and then use it to install the OpenBSD package versions of the tools, which will install the tools, the config file appropriate to the operating system, and all example config files (if any) in /usr/local/share/examples/\u0026lt;package\u0026gt;.\nThe next post will cover reportnew, a tool for log monitoring that is most noteworthy for handling process accounting logs on OpenBSD, Linux, and macOS. That post and the next one, on sigtree.pl, involve the most extensive use of LLMs in designing and implementing privilege separation into those tools.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools-distribute-install.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that I\u0026rsquo;ve covered two building blocks \u0026ndash;\n\u003ca href=\"/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools-syslock.html/\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003esyslock\u003c/code\u003e for managing\nimmutable\nflags\u003c/a\u003e\nand rsync-tools for moving files around \u0026ndash; in this post I\u0026rsquo;ll discuss\nmore recent tools that put those together in order to manage the\ndistribution of files across my systems. I originally looked at using\nsomething like \u003ccode\u003epuppet\u003c/code\u003e or\n\u003ccode\u003echef\u003c/code\u003e to manage configurations\non my hosts, but they both seemed overly complex for my needs and\nneither was built to handle my environment with immutable files. I\ndecided to build a tool to install updates, thinking that perhaps\nI could set it to run automatically on a reboot by calling it in\n\u003ccode\u003e/etc/rc.securelevel\u003c/code\u003e before\nthe system securelevel is raised, but in practice I\u0026rsquo;ve just used\nit manually.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"25 years of OpenBSD Security Tools: distribute.pl, install.pl, and extras"},{"content":"The last post was about a tool for locking and unlocking files using immutable and append-only flags; this one is about copying files from one place to another, between hosts or (sometimes) on the same host, as a building block for automations without creating unnecessary security exposures. Both of these components will be used in later tools.\nrsync Basics rsync is a common tool used for efficiently copying files and directories from one location to another, including between systems and for backup purposes. I\u0026rsquo;ve used it for almost as long as I\u0026rsquo;ve been managing home systems. The base use case is to synchronize files owned by the same user, but for my main use cases, distributing administration-related configuration files and performing backups, more access is required. Since I don\u0026rsquo;t allow root logins, I need a non-privileged remote user with enough access to deploy files where they belong and to copy everything I want backed up. The most common way to restrict a non-privileged remote user to specific functions is to limit it to specific authorized commands that can be sent via SSH (secure shell), and to configure sudo or doas on the remote system for that non-privileged user to allow it to do what it needs to do, as specifically as possible. Specific commands are defined in the destination user\u0026rsquo;s .ssh/authorized_keys file. I used to use a very simple wrapper on the remote side that would only allow rsync to run, but came to the conclusion that I wanted stricter controls that limited what rsync could do. (An alternative tool for restricting remote SSH commands that I came across during research for this post is sshdo.) I set up a non-privileged user, _rsyncu, on each host where it\u0026rsquo;s needed and use separate SSH keys with specific commands for each specific function, and define privileged commands that it might need to execute, as narrowly as possible, using doas (I formerly used the more popular sudo but switched to doas when OpenBSD did; it is simpler and has had fewer vulnerabilities)\nrsync-client.pl / rsync-server.pl My first foray into building something that provided more specific controls and enabled automated synchronization was to write a script in 2003 that runs on both sides of an SSH connection, initiating rsync commands to set up the session and corresponding rsync server-side commands on the remote host, called via a specific authorized command, and using a common config file on each side. This script, rsync-client.pl and rsync-server.pl (two names on the same script) is intended for automated synchronization of files (common config files between systems, deploying web server files from a staging server to a production server, pulling data files from remote systems for additional processing, doing backups, and so forth) without human intervention. This is done using SSH keys on the client side that are protected by file access permissions but not encrypted with a passphrase (since there is no one to enter the passphrase). The risk of key theft is mitigated by the limitation of access and capability of the non-privileged account, monitoring and alerting on usage of the key, and monitoring and alerting on commands executed by the non-privileged account. (Those monitoring and alerting capabilities are done in my environment using my reportnew script that will be covered in a blog post on June 16.) A possible alternative to a passphraseless SSH key would be storing a private key on separate hardware (a hardware security module (HSM), a security key, a secure enclave, a credential vault) and setting up a mechanism that allowed the non-privileged account to make use of it but not extract it, but that would not prevent use on the compromised host and I get similar mitigation by restricting use of the key to the specific host in the authorized_keys file along with the restricted command, for much lower cost. Another mitigation is to make the credentials extremely short-lived, which requires controls over the rotation process. I\u0026rsquo;ve occasionally thought about, but have not used, SSH certificates.\nThe config file for the script is defined to support multiple hosts so that the same config file can be used on a set of hosts. An entry in the config identifies source and destination hosts, files and directories to be sent from the source to the destination via rsync, commands to be executed before and after the synchronization, a specific SSH identity to use (optional), and whether doas or sudo is required on the source or destination side. The synchronization can be from the source to the destination (pull) or from the destination to the source (push), or both. One of my use cases is to push Response Policy Zones (RPZ) from my primary internal domain name system (DNS) resolver to secondary servers. RPZ is used to allow DNS-based blocking or redirection on specific domain names or patterns, e.g., to block tracking domains, ads, and malware. In this use case, setup and cleanup commands in the config use sysunlock (covered in an upcoming blog post) to unlock the old RPZ files before synchronizing and lock the updated RPZ files afterward. Another use case is that I push macro include files and their corresponding detached signature files used with reportnew to other hosts, and similarly unlock the old ones (user immutability flags), copy the new ones, and re-lock.\nI keep my rsync.conf file for rsync-client.pl/rsync-server.pl locked with syslock and system immutability flags so that it cannot be changed even by root without shutting down into single user mode. The file permissions on the config file are root-only, as the config file potentially reveals file and network topology information.\nThese scripts support the use of ED25519 and ECDSA SSH keys; support for DSA and RSA keys was removed since these have lower security and I no longer have any systems that only work with those.\nrrsync After writing an early version of this script, I came across rrsync, which has been distributed alongside rsync since the mid 2000s, which is a relatively simple wrapper intended for use as the SSH authorized command. It requires no config file; all the configuration is done in the forced command line using command line options (such as -ro for read only or -doas if rrsync needs to be called using doas, as it does in order to access files not otherwise accessible by the non-privileged user). For example, the line in my authorized\\_keys file for backups with rsnapshot looks like this:\ncommand=\u0026quot;/usr/local/sbin/rrsync -doas -ro / 2\u0026gt;\u0026gt;;/home/_rsyncu/rrsync.err\u0026quot;,from=\u0026quot;\u0026lt;backup-host\u0026gt;\u0026quot; ssh-ed25519 \u0026lt;public-key\u0026gt;\nThe distributed version of rrsync was originally written in perl in 2004, but was shifted to a python version in December 2021. I liked it as a wrapper for use with rsnapshot for backups but wanted to continue using perl, which I\u0026rsquo;m much more experienced with using than python, so I started updating my own copy in February 2022 to replace a much more primitive rsync_wrapper.sh shell script I had been using for that purpose. Since then, I have kept the perl version in feature parity with the python version and also added the use of OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pledge and unveil to further limit the blast radius of any vulnerability. This wrapper provides the ability to limit what options can be supplied to rsync on the server side, to limit it to read-only (exactly what you want for a backup use case), or to limit it to a specific directory (e.g., if you want to build something to move files to remote hosts for later installation, which is how I use it with my distribute and install scripts that will be described in the next blog post in this series). I also added a -doas option for cases where the remote rsync command needs to be executed with doas for root privileges (e.g., like the backup use case given above). All commands and errors are logged (and those logs monitored and alerts generated with reportnew).\nAlternatives Some of the functionality of these scripts is now redundant with functionality built into rsync\u0026rsquo;s rsyncd daemon mode, but which which doesn\u0026rsquo;t have some of the capabilities you get from a wrapper \u0026ndash; forcing the use of SSH, restricting specific options, sanitizing arguments, logging each command, etc. rsyncd can be used with chroot, which may be stricter than the directory limits imposed by rrsync, but is probably weaker than the directory limits imposed by OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s unveil. I prefer to have these additional features, so haven\u0026rsquo;t really explored use of rsyncd. The above scripts can be used with other alternatives to rsync itself, such as OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s openrsync. The big weakness in openrsync is that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t support rsnapshot\u0026rsquo;s use of rsync\u0026rsquo;s --link-dest flag, which enables it to save space by using hard links for files that haven\u0026rsquo;t changed since the last backup. (A hard link essentially makes a file appear to be in multiple places without having an extra copy of the file.)\nrsync-altroot.pl One last script included with my rsync-tools package is a very simple script, rsync-altroot.pl, which is used for keeping an /altroot disk and its filesystem partitions up-to-date with the production system. This was originally used as a simple form of redundancy so that a system could be booted from the altroot disk in the event of a disk failure. I just use it as another form of daily backup. I\u0026rsquo;ve periodically found it handy to address cases of accidental deletion, especially of key files in /etc, though I\u0026rsquo;ve come closer to eliminating such cases through broad use of syslock. There are three options to the script, -m to mount the altroot file systems, -r to perform the rsync, and -u to unmount the altroot file system. Without options, it does those three steps in sequence. The configuration for the altroot file system is found in /etc/fstab, rsync-altroot.pl expects to see lines in the same format as fstab with the altroot device unique identifiers (DUIDs) specified so that it knows which altroot file systems to mount. (DUIDs are persistent unique identifiers for a disk that remains stable even if the disk is moved to a different controller.)\nUse of LLMs for Security Assessment I\u0026rsquo;ve used Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT to review all of these scripts, and the most serious issue was a vulnerability identified by Gemini in rrsync, where the order of operations (path validation before glob expansion) meant that there was a path traversal vulnerability which made it possible to escape a restricted directory to, e.g., grab the system password file. (Specifically, the path validation would pass for a constructed string which, after glob expansion, would point at the password file outside of the restricted directory.) It is noteworthy that this vulnerability, while exploitable on Linux or macOS, was mitigated by OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s unveil, which would block access outside of the restricted directory. Claude has been my favored LLM for security assessment, and I use the paid (Pro) version, while I use only free versions of the others. Each has found different vulnerabilities and issues, and I like to use them to cross-validate each other. The free Gemini has often confabulated nonexistent vulnerabilities and ChatGPT on one occasion denied that an issue Claude identified was real (but quickly changed its position after being given more information, which is a feature I find extremely annoying when the wording of both positions express high confidence). Beyond security assessment, I used Claude to assist in cleaning up rsync-client.pl/rsync-server.pl, to remove use of shell command execution and glob expansion and generate more error messages and warnings where appropriate.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that the author and maintainer of rsync, Andrew Tridgell, has recently come under fire for his use of LLMs in development of that project. Beteween December 2026 and May 2026 I was using rsync version 3.4.1, but today in June 2026 I\u0026rsquo;m using version 3.4.1. Version 3.4.3 had hundreds of AI-assisted commits upset some people for breaking some incremental backup use cases (though I noticed no issues for rsnapshot). Versions 3.4.2 and 3.4.3 fixed six CVEs (CVE-2026-29518, CVE-2026-43617, CVE-2026-43618, CVE-2026-43619, CVE-2026-43620, and CVE-2026-45232); 3.4.4 fixed CVE-2026-41035. This led the author of a Go-based rsync replacement to compare which bugs his version and openrsync avoided. Andrew Tridgell has responded to criticism here and I am fairly sympathetic to his position, which is prioritizing security.\nOn a meta-note, since the last blog post I used the free Gemini Flash model to assist in migrating this blog from a decades-old Blogger instance to self-hosting using static site generation using the PaperMod theme with Hugo. I put in a request to download my Blogger archive on June 3 and received it on June 5, figured out whether I wanted to use Hugo or Zola, how I wanted to support comments, tags, search, and redirection from the old site, and performed the migration and implementation with Gemini assistance. The extraction of posts and comments was fairly smooth, but required identification and cleanup of comments awaiting moderation which contained a lot of spam. The toughest parts were getting the redirection to work properly and getting the new commenting with Bluesky and Mastodon integration to work properly, as well as learning the details of Hugo and its interactions with PaperMod which were sometimes frustrating. There\u0026rsquo;s still some cleanup required on some of the redirections which I\u0026rsquo;m fixing as I see 404 errors in my logs. Since the comments are just posts on Bluesky and Mastodon there\u0026rsquo;s no moderation beyond Bluesky\u0026rsquo;s block capability and the on-platform moderation, but I have the ability to filter what appears on the site if necessary to avoid spam or harassment. Now that I have all my content on my own servers I\u0026rsquo;ll also put some work into cleaning up old links, broken images, etc. in archived content that has arisen from the inevitable link rot from the passage of time. The process of migration was quite quick and mostly easy, but I did go through many, many iterations of python scripts for doing various tasks and saw some of the worst LLM confabulation I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in months during a few bottlenecks (after mostly quite good results)\u0026ndash;e.g., blaming an absurd bug in a URL checking script on Hugo (which wasn\u0026rsquo;t even involved), and falsely claiming that blog post Markdown front matter already contained original page permalink URLs (so there\u0026rsquo;s no need to find them).\nGetting Started and Further Reading These three rsync-related tools are available on my website and on Github. A sample rsync.conf config file is provided for rsync-client.pl/rsync-server.pl and the Github README contains more details about usage and implementation. All were written initially for OpenBSD but also work on Linux and macOS. rrsync in particular is used as a key component of the distribute/install tools described in the next post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools-rsync-tools.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools-syslock.html/\"\u003elast post was about a tool for locking and unlocking files using\nimmutable and append-only\nflags\u003c/a\u003e;\nthis one is about copying files from one place to another, between\nhosts or (sometimes) on the same host, as a building block for\nautomations without creating unnecessary security exposures. Both of\nthese components will be used in later tools.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 id=\"rsync-basics\"\u003ersync Basics\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003ersync\u003c/code\u003e is a common tool used for efficiently copying files and\ndirectories from one location to another, including between systems\nand for backup purposes. I\u0026rsquo;ve used it for almost as long as I\u0026rsquo;ve been\nmanaging home systems. The base use case is to synchronize files owned\nby the same user, but for my main use cases, distributing\nadministration-related configuration files and performing backups,\nmore access is required.  Since I don\u0026rsquo;t allow root logins,\nI need a non-privileged remote user with enough access to deploy files\nwhere they belong and to copy everything I want backed\nup. The most common way to restrict a non-privileged remote user to\nspecific functions is to limit it to specific authorized commands that\ncan be sent via SSH (secure shell), and to configure \u003ccode\u003esudo\u003c/code\u003e or \u003ccode\u003edoas\u003c/code\u003e\non the remote system for that non-privileged user to allow it to do\nwhat it needs to do, as specifically as possible.  Specific commands\nare defined in the destination user\u0026rsquo;s \u003ccode\u003e.ssh/authorized_keys\u003c/code\u003e file. I\nused to use a very simple wrapper on the remote side that would only\nallow \u003ccode\u003ersync\u003c/code\u003e to run, but came to the conclusion that I wanted\nstricter controls that limited what \u003ccode\u003ersync\u003c/code\u003e could do.  (An alternative\ntool for restricting remote SSH commands that I came across during\nresearch for this post is\n\u003cA HREF = \"https://github.com/raforg/sshdo/blob/main/README.md\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003esshdo\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/A\u003e.) I\nset up a non-privileged user, \u003ccode\u003e_rsyncu\u003c/code\u003e, on each host where it\u0026rsquo;s\nneeded and use separate SSH keys with specific commands for each\nspecific function, and define privileged commands that it might need\nto execute, as narrowly as possible, using \u003ccode\u003edoas\u003c/code\u003e (I formerly used the\nmore popular \u003ccode\u003esudo\u003c/code\u003e but switched to \u003ccode\u003edoas\u003c/code\u003e when OpenBSD did; it is\nsimpler and has had fewer vulnerabilities)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"25 years of OpenBSD Security Tools: rsync-tools"},{"content":"If you missed the overview post, you can see it here. This one is about managing immutable and append-only files on *BSD, Linux, and macOS.\nImmutable and Append-Only Files BSD-derived operating systems (including macOS) and Linux both support the concept of files being made immutable, so that neither their contents nor attributes can be changed. They also both support files being made append-only, so that the existing contents cannot be changed except by adding more data to the end. They do it in slightly different ways.\nBSD Implementation On BSD-derived systems, these features are controlled using file system flags which have \u0026ldquo;system\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;user\u0026rdquo; variants; the former can only be set and unset by the root user, while the latter can be set and unset by any user on files they own. The flags are changed using the chflags command, and their names are schg (system immutable), uchg (user immutable), sappnd (system append-only), and uappnd (user append-only). BSD-derived systems also take the further step for the system-level flags that they can be set but not unset after the system has booted from single-user mode to multi-user mode. This is controlled by the system security level (kern.securelevel) which is raised automatically by the init process from 0 (\u0026ldquo;Insecure Mode,\u0026rdquo; also known as single-user mode) at initial boot to 1 (\u0026ldquo;Secure Mode,\u0026rdquo; the default multi-user mode). The system security level may also be raised with the sysctl command but cannot be lowered except by shutting the system down to return to single-user mode (securelevel=0), which shuts down system daemons and drops network connections, leaving the system accessible only by the system console until it reboots. The effect of this is that even the root user cannot modify the contents or attributes of files with schg (and can only append to files with sappnd) without shutting down the system.\nLinux Implementation On Linux, by contrast, only the root user can set or unset immutable or append-only attributes, using the chattr command with +i/-i or +a/-a to set or unset immutable or append-only attributes, respectively. But there is no system security level that prevents unsetting these attributes at any time after they\u0026rsquo;ve been set. The Linux attributes are equivalent to the BSD user flags, but limited to the root user. I have used syslock less on Linux than on OpenBSD, but have used it fairly broadly on Proxmox and Kali Linux.\nmacOS Implementation On macOS, the BSD flags are present but by default the system is always in \u0026ldquo;Insecure Mode\u0026rdquo; (securelevel=0), and Apple has added additional file flags, notably restricted, which it uses on operating system commands and libraries as part of its \u0026ldquo;System Integrity Protection\u0026rdquo; (SIP) feature added in OS X El Capitan (10.11) in 2015. The restricted flag cannot be unset even when the system securelevel=0, but only when the system is booted into Recovery mode. While the restricted flag is, like the immutable and append-only flags, managed by the chflags command, it is not supported by my tools and it\u0026rsquo;s just mentioned here to note that macOS has implemented a very similar capability in a different way. I have the least experience in using syslock on macOS, and because of that and the fact that system binaries are protected by this alternative mechanism, I use it less broadly there.\nBSD Security Levels When I first learned about file system immutable flags, the default system startup file on OpenBSD named /etc/rc.securelevel contained lines to set the system securelevel to 1, but that now happens automatically in the boot sequence by the init process, and the default rc.securelevel example file in /etc/examples consists only of comments and is no longer installed by default. All of my systems have that config file installed to set the securelevel, for reasons which will be explained shortly.\nOpenBSD supports two other settings for kern.securelevel besides 0 and 1, which are -1 (\u0026ldquo;Permanently Insecure Mode\u0026rdquo;) and 2 (\u0026ldquo;Highly Secure Mode\u0026rdquo;). Permanently Insecure Mode prevents the securelevel from being raised to 1 automatically; it instead goes to 0 and remains there. Highly Secure Mode features all of the restrictions of Secure Mode, plus also restricts changes to host firewalls with OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s pf packet filter, allowing only changes to what IP addresses are in tables but no changes to filtering or NAT rules. The details of each level are documented in the OpenBSD securelevel man page. These restrictions are intended to reduce the impact and blast radius of both system compromises where an attacker gains root and to reduce the impact of administration errors.\nSecurity Control, Administrative Safeguard, or Security Theater The latter goal \u0026ndash; reducing the impact of administration errors \u0026ndash; is one that the BSD, Linux, and macOS default settings all support, but the former goal \u0026ndash; reducing the impact and blast radius of system compromises where an attacker gains root privileges \u0026ndash; is only evident for the BSD system immutable and append-only flags, where even the root user cannot unset them so long as the system is in Secure or Highly Secure mode. Some have argued that these flags are also mere speed bumps or error prevention (or \u0026ldquo;security theater\u0026rdquo;), on the grounds that they are easily bypassed, which can be done by returning the system to Insecure Mode. There are two main ways for a user with root access to do that, which are (1) using console access to access a root shell in single-user mode after shutdown, which may not be particularly easy as a remotely connected attacker likely does not have console access, or (2) modifying configuration files that allow command execution before the system raises the system securelevel, and rebooting the system. There are many configuration files and commands executed on the system during the boot sequence while the system is in Insecure Mode, and if any of those can be modified to either execute commands or prevent the system from going into Secure Mode, there is a path to unsetting the system immutable and append-only flags for the attacker (at the cost of a potentially noisy reboot). (I have made use of this path myself in the past while testing immutable flags and getting myself stuck.) It\u0026rsquo;s because many files would have to be set immutable to close off that second reboot path that some have called even the system flags \u0026ldquo;security theater,\u0026rdquo; but I think it is both feasible and it can be a genuine security control. The key is making it practical to lock enough of the right files, which is the problem I\u0026rsquo;ve tried to solve with these tools.\nOrigins of syslock/sysunlock My syslock/sysunlock tool (two opposite functions in a single perl script, from here on I\u0026rsquo;ll generally just refer to syslock except when the distinction matters) is designed to make the management of all of these implementations of immutable and append-only file system controls feasible, straightforward, and usable, at least as an error prevention method and at best as a security control. I originally wrote it after coming across a simple shell script of the same name by George Shaffer, but it now looks quite different, supporting system and user immutable and append-only flags on OpenBSD and macOS, and Linux\u0026rsquo;s near equivalent (+i/-i and +a/-a). My recommendation for anyone starting out on a BSD system is to begin with the user flags, which are trivial to unlock and cause no permanent damage if you need to make changes quickly. Once comfortable with the group structure, you can consider adding system flags for files that rarely need to change. I\u0026rsquo;ll describe that group structure next.\nsyslock Groups The main feature of syslock that makes it usable is that it is configured to place lists of files and directories into groups, and those groups can be locked or unlocked with a single command (syslock -g \u0026lt;groupname\u0026gt;). The groups are defined like tags associated with a list of files and directories, so that a given file or directory can be in multiple groups. The default configs supplied with the tool include group names such as etc (files in /etc), etcrare (files in /etc that are rarely modified), and fstab (/etc/fstab gets its own group as it\u0026rsquo;s a painful file to clobber by accident). There are relatively self-explanatory group names like binaries, libraries, and system, and then there\u0026rsquo;s presecure, which covers the files and directories that are potential targets for someone trying to find a way to bypass system immutable flags (e.g., startup scripts like /etc/rc, /etc/rc.local, /etc/rc.d, and others that may be less obvious like /etc/sysctl.conf). (There is no presecure group defined in the Linux or macOS example configs.) For BSD and macOS, you can choose to make user immutable or system immutable your default, but you can also use groups to explicitly call out a set of files as the opposite of your default, with the group names schg and uchg (and similarly with sappnd and uappnd groups). These groups are specially handled so that they can be specified in combination with another group name (e.g., etc:uchg or acct-logs:uappnd) to identify the files and directories that are in both.\nSince it is possible to enable the schg flag in Secure Mode but not to disable it, by default neither syslock nor sysunlock will touch those files while in Secure Mode (sysunlock can\u0026rsquo;t unlock them), but the -f (force) option to syslock will lock them. A group can have both a system and a user subset of files regardless of what default is configured. For example, if your default is schg but you want some commonly modified files in /etc to be uchg, you could put them in that group along with the etc group. Then, if you unlocked files in Insecure Mode with -g etc, both the schg and uchg files in the etc group would be unlocked, while if you used sysunlock -g etc in Secure Mode, only the uchg files would be unlocked. If you were in Insecure Mode but only wanted to lock the uchg files in the etc group, you can use -g etc:uchg.\nThe intention of groups is to provide a mechanism for unlocking specifically what is needed to perform a specific task. The default and sample config files supplied with the tool include groups for other tools that will be covered in this series of blog posts, including reportnew (blog post June 16), rsync (for rsync-tools, see blog post), and sigtree (blog post June 19), as well as for process accounting log files (to make them append-only), mail servers, web servers, and DNS servers (the latter two in the BSD default config only). Log files and DNS servers provide two examples for where you\u0026rsquo;d want to use different flag-specific subgroups. For log files, you want the active log file to be append-only, but you want the rotated and archived log files to be immutable; you also want them to use user rather than system flags if the logs are subject to rotation via newsyslog or other log rotation mechanism. Thus the sample configs put the live process accounting log in the uappnd group and the rotated process accounting logs in the uchg group. The rotation process needs to unlock both of those subgroups before rotation, and lock them again after rotation. For DNS configuration files, you might want to lock your zone files with schg if they don\u0026rsquo;t change frequently and aren\u0026rsquo;t changed by any automation, but if you use automated DNSSEC signing, you\u0026rsquo;d lock the signed zone files with uchg so that they can be unlocked before signing and relocked after signing. It\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that logging to a separate machine is a much better security control than using uappnd (or Linux +a) flags on log files\u0026ndash;but I do both.\nOverlapping Groups Note that it is possible to define groups that overlap with each other in various ways, and while this is generally acceptable and unlikely to cause any issues on Linux or if only a single type of flag is used on BSD or macOS, it can create issues if overlapping groups have a mix of flag types such that multiple flags get set on any files or directories. The default and sample configs do not contain any group definitions that create this problem, and syslock will generate warnings if it detects cases of conflicting flag types in the configuration, but will not detect all possible cases (e.g., where symlinks are involved).\nOpenBSD-specific: KARL Features There is also an implicit group of files identified in the config file by a leading \u0026ldquo;!\u0026rdquo; prefix character, which designates system files that are part of OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s Kernel Address Randomized Link (KARL) feature, where the kernel and key binaries (currently libc, libcrypto, ld.so, sshd, sshd-session, sshd-auth, and ssh-agent \u0026ndash; the list may increase between releases) are relinked in random order at reboot. These files are locked or unlocked by using a -s (for system) option. (This was perhaps a poor choice of option letter and name, as it is distinct from the \u0026ldquo;system\u0026rdquo; group which is intended to capture key operating system files and what needs to be unlocked for upgrading and patching, though I typically unlock everything before upgrading or patching. This is just to ensure that nothing the system needs to install is blocked, which can leave a system in an inconsistent and not fully operable state, but the \u0026ldquo;system\u0026rdquo; group should actually work for this purpose.) Since I use system immutable flags as my default on most systems, and on the presecure group on all systems, my practice for patches and upgrades is to shut the system down (enter Insecure Mode), unlock everything (sysunlock with no arguments), perform the upgrade (with an extra step) or patch, then lock everything (syslock with no arguments), then unlock what\u0026rsquo;s needed for Karl (sysunlock -s), and then exit, which starts up system daemons and networking, and returns to Secure Mode, without rebooting the kernel or resetting the system uptime counter. In my rc.securelevel file I have the following line:\necho -n \u0026quot; running syslock\u0026quot;; (/bin/sleep 10; /usr/local/bin/syslock -swf) \u0026amp;\nThe -s and -f options have already been explained, but -w means to wait for KARL relinking to complete before locking, so as not to prevent that process from occurring. Typically, I do not unlock with -s for most instances when I shut down to make changes, and so I do prevent KARL relinking in those cases, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t lead to any system inconsistencies\u0026ndash;it just preserves the previously established link ordering.\nThe extra step I mentioned above for an upgrade is that I comment out the line in rc.securelevel that re-locks the system because at the completion of a sysupgrade process there will be a reboot after which I will want to make many additional file changes using sysmerge to update system configuration files, update packages I have installed, remove unused binaries and old libraries, and so forth. I then remove the comment and reboot again. (Also, if a patch with syspatch rebuilds the kernel, I\u0026rsquo;ll reboot with the new kernel after the return to Secure Mode and the KARL process completes.)\nAudit Feature Both syslock and sysunlock have an audit (-a) option, which will report which files are currently not in the expected state. That is, syslock -a will tell you all the files which should be locked per the config but are unlocked, and sysunlock -a will tell you all the files which should be unlocked per the config but are locked. This can also be applied to any specific group with -g \u0026amp;lt;groupname\u0026amp;gt;. If used on a BSD system in Secure Mode, the audit can be restricted to what would actually be changed at the current security level using the -o (operational restrictions) option. A -q (quiet) option will suppress all output and just return 0 for success or 1 (error) for failure; this was created to allow a check to see if all files in a particular group are unlocked for an installation to occur for my install.pl tool (to be covered in a June 12 blog post). With -q, the audit will finish and return at the first discrepancy found.\nPath Prefixes The configuration file syntax allows listed paths to use three other prefixes in addition to the OpenBSD-specific \u0026ldquo;!\u0026rdquo; referenced above. These prefixes, which only have effect on directory paths (and generate a warning but are otherwise ignored on other file types) are:\n+ Do not recurse through subdirectories. (No prefix, the default, means lock the directory and every thing in it, recursively.)\n- Do not lock the directory itself, just its contents.\n= Lock the directory and its file contents, but not subdirectories.\nThese cannot be used in combination (though some combinations, like =-, might conceivably be useful), and while I initially made use of the first two path prefixes in my configs, they ended up not being particularly useful with the patterns of groups I developed. I recently added the = path prefix to address a Linux-specific case.\nLinux-specific: Bootloader Considerations On many Linux systems (notably on Proxmox which uses Debian), the grub bootloader rewrites files in /boot/grub, (specifically grub.cfg and grubenv) on reboots. If those files are immutable, the reboot will fail to update those files. The default Linux config creates a grub group for /boot/grub and its contents, and uses the = path prefix on a separate group for /boot and its other subdirectories. The grub group can then be unlocked before a reboot, while the broader group is unlocked for kernel updates, and both locked again afterward. The grub group unlocks slightly more than strictly necessary (everything in /boot/grub rather than the directory and the two specific files), but handles the common case cleanly.\nUse of Large Language Models (LLMs) I\u0026rsquo;ve made use of LLMs, initially for performing security assessments with suggested improvements that I\u0026rsquo;d implement selectively and by hand, but subsequently for working out the details of design for prospective changes, writing code, and identifying the causes of bugs. Each of these capabilities has significantly improved since the initial use for code assessments in the summer of 2025. Specific capabilities implemented by Claude include adding append-only flag support, improving error messages and warnings, code refactoring, enhancing the audit features and adding the -o option, and drafting the Github README. Most recently, while I was in the process of writing this blog post, I revisited an issue I had run into involving overlapping groups with differing flags, and thought that a new path prefix that ignored directories might be a good way to handle it. In addition to that specific use case, for which Claude suggested the use of = (to mean \u0026ldquo;lock the directory and files at the same level\u0026rdquo;), I asked whether any combinations of existing path prefixes might be useful or if any other new prefixes might make sense. Claude suggested that -= or =- might be meaningful and useful (don\u0026rsquo;t lock the directory itself, lock the files in it but not the subdirectories), but I chose not to add the additional complexity without a specific use case. In the process I identified a bug in how path prefixes were being handled in previous Claude-generated code related to perl taint handling, and Claude fixed it along with the implementation of =.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve used ChatGPT and Gemini in addition to Claude for security assessments on the code, and they\u0026rsquo;ve each identified different issues. While each has found real bugs, my impression is that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen more false positives from ChatGPT and Gemini than from Claude, though they\u0026rsquo;ve also found real bugs in code written by Claude.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve found LLMs quite useful for security auditing, refactoring, and error message improvements, as well as writing new capabilities that are relatively straightforward. In the case of implementing append-only flags, it took multiple design, build, and test cycles to get the code to production quality. Overall, forcing myself to explain design choices clearly (and sometimes reconsider them) in the process of using LLMs has been extremely valuable, and has also been a benefit of writing this blog post. I used Claude to identify key topics that should be mentioned in this series, but did not rely on Claude to outline or write the post. Claude and a human editor reviewed this post (and the opening overview post) identify typos and suggest edits.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll include a section like this in each post in the series.\nGetting Started and Further Reading The sample config files supplied with syslock cover OpenBSD, Linux (with some Proxmox specifics in comments), and macOS, and provide a reasonable starting point. As noted above, I recommend starting with uchg groups on BSD and macOS, which gives you immediate error prevention value and a chance to discover what needs to be unlocked for your specific regular workflows before committing to more restrictive schg flags. For Linux, there\u0026rsquo;s only one kind of immutable attribute and it\u0026rsquo;s changeable without a shutdown, so you can start immediately with the sample config.\nAs noted above, the syslock audit feature is integrated with my install.pl tool and syslock groups more generally are a key feature of both that tool and its distribute.pl counterpart, both of which will be covered in a blog post on June 12. The wrap-up post on June 23 will show how all of these tools fit together into a coherent security architecture.\nsyslock is available on my website and on Github, along with sample configs for OpenBSD, Linux, and macOS.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools-syslock.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you missed the overview post, you can see it\n\u003ca href=\"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\nThis one is about managing immutable and append-only files on *BSD,\nLinux, and macOS.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 id=\"immutable-and-append-only-files\"\u003eImmutable and Append-Only Files\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBSD-derived operating systems (including macOS) and Linux both support\nthe concept of files being made immutable, so that neither their\ncontents nor attributes can be changed. They also both support files\nbeing made append-only, so that the existing contents cannot be changed\nexcept by adding more data to the end. They do it in slightly different\nways.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"25 years of OpenBSD Security Tools: syslock and sysunlock"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been using and administering OpenBSD systems since 1999 (OpenBSD 2.5). During that time, I\u0026rsquo;ve written numerous scripts to make things easier, more automated, or more secure, or sometimes just to improve my understanding of how things work. When I started managing my home systems, I ran several Internet-exposed services on my home network (DNS, mail, web, SSH). I used djbdns, qmail, and Apache httpd at the start before switching to nsd/unbound for DNS and postfix for mail, and finally to OpenSMTPD for mail. When I got tired of excessive inbound traffic I moved my authoritative DNS to a provider while keeping an internal zone and resolvers, set up two cloud servers for mail and my public webserver. My home network became a hardened, minimal-exposure architecture that only allows Wireguard from expected sources and mail (after mutual TLS authentication with certificates) while continuing to run internal services.\nOver the years I\u0026rsquo;ve made a number of these scripts available via my website and on Github once they were sufficiently mature, configurable, and with reasonable defaults in supplied sample configuration files. A set of them fit together in a coherent framework that I thought I\u0026rsquo;d write about in a series of blog posts for those who might be interested in either using them or learning from them. All are under BSD licenses which require no permission from me to use or rework into something else \u0026ndash; my intent is not to obtain a new user base that I need to support, though I\u0026rsquo;m happy to consider suggested enhancements.\nThe tools I will cover in these posts, while written for OpenBSD originally, also work on Linux and macOS, and likely on other BSDs. I use most on Kali and Proxmox (Debian Linux), as well as a few on macOS (which has roots in FreeBSD). All are written in perl and use OpenBSD-specific features when available (such as pledge and unveil, covered in an earlier blog post). Several use privilege separation to run as much functionality as possible as a non-privileged user.\nThe earliest tools, written initially between 1999 and 2004, were intended to provide log monitoring, file integrity monitoring, and to manage file system flags for making files immutable, a feature I hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen widely used until macOS introduced a variant in 2015. Even among OpenBSD users, immutable flags are not commonly used and I recall early warnings that they were difficult to use because many files would have to be made immutable in order to avoid somewhat trivial bypasses.\nThe later-developed tools in the set I will cover, written in 2022-2024, are for file and software distribution across hosts and providing a perl interface to OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s signify cryptographic signing and verification tool for use by most of the tools in the set.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll note in my discussion how I\u0026rsquo;ve used large language models (LLMs) for security assessment, bug fixing, and enhancement on these tools, and where it has been useful and some of the obstacles I\u0026rsquo;ve run into along the way. I\u0026rsquo;ll also describe how they work together in various ways, with a comprehensive view in the final wrap-up. Here\u0026rsquo;s the planned schedule:\nJune 2: this overview post\nJune 5: syslock and sysunlock (initially written 2004, inspired by a much simpler tool called syslock by George Shaffer).\nThese tools allow you to define and manage groups of files which use BSD system and user immutable and append-only flags or Linux immutable or append-only flags. The use cases range from genuine security enhancement to error prevention.\nJune 9: rsync-tools (rsync-client.pl/rsync-server.pl, initially written 2003; rrsync, a 2022 fork of the version initially written by Joe Smith in 2004 and modified by Wayne Davison, the primary developer of rsync; rsync-altroot.pl initially written 2002). This is a collection of tools used with rsync to define sets of files to be kept synchronized between hosts, perform backups, and to place restrictions on rsync using various mechanisms.\nJune 12: distribute.pl/install.pl (originally written 2022) and some extras (including Signify.pm, originally written 2024) Two tools for distributing content (plain files, config files, certificates, and signed OpenBSD-style packages) to multiple hosts, verifying signatures and installing on the remote hosts. These are not limited to use on OpenBSD, as the install tool will work on Linux and macOS as well\u0026ndash;so long as the content being distributed is usable on those operating systems, which includes architecture/OS-independent OpenBSD-style packages such as perl scripts\u0026ndash;like all of the scripts in this blog series, which are available as signed OpenBSD-style packages. These are packaged with some extras (gendoas.pl with distribute.pl and pkg_info.pl with install.pl) and this blog post will also cover Signify.pm, a perl interface to OpenBSD\u0026rsquo;s signify.\nJune 16: reportnew (originally written 1999) A log monitoring tool, inspired by swatch but written to support djbtools\u0026rsquo; cyclog and multilog format logs, Linux journal files, as well as BSD, Linux, and macOS process accounting logs, the latter of which may be a feature unique to this tool (I\u0026rsquo;ve not seen it in any other log monitoring tool).\nJune 19: sigtree.pl (originally written 2000) A file integrity monitoring tool, inspired by the original tripwire.\nJune 23: Wrap-up post Each post will discuss the origins of the tool(s), the use cases and problems solved, the security model, the limitations, and, in some cases, what might be added in the future. As each post is published, links will be added above.\nIf you want to skip ahead and look into these tools further, all are available on Github and on my website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/25-years-of-openbsd-security-tools.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been using and administering OpenBSD systems since 1999 (OpenBSD\n2.5). During that time, I\u0026rsquo;ve written numerous scripts to make things\neasier, more automated, or more secure, or sometimes just to improve\nmy understanding of how things work. When I started managing my home\nsystems, I ran several Internet-exposed services on my home network\n(DNS, mail, web, SSH). I used \u003ccode\u003edjbdns\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003eqmail\u003c/code\u003e, and Apache \u003ccode\u003ehttpd\u003c/code\u003e at\nthe start before switching to \u003ccode\u003ensd\u003c/code\u003e/\u003ccode\u003eunbound\u003c/code\u003e for DNS and \u003ccode\u003epostfix\u003c/code\u003e\nfor mail, and finally to OpenSMTPD for mail. When I got tired of\nexcessive inbound traffic I moved my authoritative DNS to a provider\nwhile keeping an internal zone and resolvers, set up two cloud servers\nfor mail and my public webserver. My home network became a hardened,\nminimal-exposure architecture that only allows Wireguard from expected\nsources and mail (after mutual TLS authentication with certificates)\nwhile continuing to run internal services.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"25 years of OpenBSD security tools"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Scott Shapiro's 2023 book's aim is to answer three questions: (1) why is the Internet (still) so insecure? (2) how do hackers do what they do? and (3) what can be done about it? He recounts some historical events, the \"five extraordinary hacks\" of the subtitle, to tell the story, and introduces the terms \"upcode\" and \"downcode\" as the core concepts in his framework for understanding--where \"downcode\" means actual, implemented computer code and \"upcode\" means the social, political, and institutional forces providing incentives and governance.\u0026nbsp; This is essentially a simplified version of Lawrence Lessig's four forces of law, social norms, markets, and code spelled out in his 1999 book, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, and also reminded me of the framework in Bruce Schneier's 2012 book, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive, where the four forces are moral pressures (internalized incentives), social pressures (social/cultural incentives from other people), institutional guidelines and rules (formal rules, regulations, and laws), and security systems (locks, police, firewalls, fraud detection, etc. -- actual operational controls which may be implemented physically, in code, or by policies and practices). For Shapiro, Lessig's first three forces are \"upcode\" and only code is \"downcode,\" and Schneier's first three forces and parts of his fourth are \"upcode.\"\nI found Shapiro's answers to the first and last questions of his project fairly unsatisfying by comparison to Schneier's book (or to, say, Ross Anderson's massive Security Engineering book, which you can find free online and which is the number one book I recommend to people interested in computer security). His upcode/downcode framework is, I think, too simplistic, and while he correctly identifies some of the specific factors relevant to his five extraordinary hacks, he also makes some bad arguments and gets some things quite wrong, and I think misses some of the key issues that have become highly relevant today with the rise of large language models (LLMs).\nHis answers to the second question, specific to the hacks he describes, however, are generally quite good and detailed, and this is where I think the book is at its strongest.\u0026nbsp; The five hacks are:\n(1) The Robert Morris Jr. worm.\u0026nbsp; (2) Dark Avenger's viruses.\u0026nbsp; (3) The breach of Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick. (4) The Russian GRU (CrowdStrike name: \"Fancy Bear\") breach of the DNC and DCCC.\u0026nbsp; (5) The DDoS attacks of the Mirai botnet.\nEach hack is presented over multiple chapters, with historical context and explanation of technical details, as well as relevant social and psychological (and legal) factors, in his upcode/downcode framework. I share a complaint with other reviews that Shapiro has a tendency to invent unnecessary terminology (\"vorms\" for a virus/worm hybrid, and \"mudges\" for malicious nudges, of the sort commonly referred to as \"dark patterns\" or that are examined in depth in Natasha Schüll's 2012 book, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas).\nMy biggest factual complaints with Shapiro come in some of the background context he supplies to the 1988 Morris worm, when he gives a brief history of the UNIX operating system that begins with its predecessor, Multics. Shapiro notes that his father, like Morris's, worked at Bell Labs. (And disclosure: I used Multics beginning around 1978-79 and as a Multics developer from 1983-1989.) Bell Labs is the likely source of the issues in Shapiro's discussion of Multics. Shapiro describes the history of Multics like this (p. 26):\nA large team from MIT, Bell Labs, and General Electric, therefore, decided to develop a complete multiuser operating system as a replacement for batch processing. They called it Multics, for Multiplexed Information and Computing Service.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;The Multics team designed its time-sharing with security in mind. Multics pioneered many security controls still in use today--one of which was storing passwords in garbled form so that users couldn't repeat Allan Scherr's simple trick. After six years of development, Multics was released in 1969.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;The military saw potential in Multics. Instead of buying separate computers to handle unclassified, classified, secret, and top-secret information, the Pentagon could buy one and configure the operating system so that users could only access information for which they had clearance. The military estimated that it would save $100 million by switching to time-sharing.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Before the air force purchased Multics, they tested it. The test was a disaster. It took thirty minutes to figure out how to hack into Multics, and another two hours to write a program to do it. \"A malicious user can penetrate the system at will with relatively minimal effort,\" the evaluation concluded.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;The research community did not love Multics either. Less concerned with its bad security, computer scientists were unhappy with its design. Multics was complicated and bloated--a typical result of decision by committee. In 1969, part of the Multics group broke away and started over. This new team, led by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, operated out of an attic at Bell Labs using a spare PDP-7, a \"minicomputer\" built by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that cost ten times less than an IBM mainframe.\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;The Bell Labs team had learned the lesson of Multics' failure: Keep it simple, stupid.\nBased on this description, one might infer that the US Air Force did not purchase Multics and that it faded away, but in fact they purchased multiple Multics systems and operated them for decades. One might also infer that the Paul Karger and Roger Schell-led penetration test was the end of the story, when it was just the beginning--the issues identified were corrected, and on September 1, 1985, Multics was the first operating system to receive a B2 security rating from the National Computer Security Center (a project I participated in). Shapiro's \"thirty minutes to figure out how to hack\" and \"another two hours to write a program to do it\" is referring to the \"Master Mode Transfer\" vulnerability in table 3 of the Karger and Schell report, and it should be noted that these time estimates are for a computer science graduate of a major university with moderate knowledge of Multics design and nine months experience as a Multics programmer with access to the source code (which Multics provided to its customers for all except the \"unbundled\" extra-cost software). Shapiro's \"A malicious user can penetrate the system at will with relatively minimal effort\" is an accurate quote from the report, but not from its conclusion, rather, from an earlier section titled \"Multics as a Base for a Secure System\" that is referencing the prior section, \"Multics is not Now Secure.\" The next section says that \"In the long term, it is felt that Multics can be developed into an open secure multi-level system by restructuring the operating system to include a security kernel.\" And that was, in fact, done -- the B2 security rating was earned, in part, for demonstration of the security of the Multics Trusted Computing Base (TCB), aka, the \"kernel.\"\nShapiro's description says that Multics was \"complicated and bloated.\" While it is true that some joked that Multics stood for \"many unnecessary large tables in core [memory] simultaneously,\" it was incredibly small and streamlined by modern standards. Karger and Schell's followup paper, \"Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation,\" notes that the 1973 Multics TCB was 628K bytes, and that the security policy alone of SELinux is 2.5 times larger, not even counting the Linux kernel itself.\nIt is also worth noting that while Shapiro's description suggests that the Bell Labs team broke away and started afresh after this failure, Bell Labs actually withdrew from Project MAC very early in the project, in March 1969, while the Air Force assessment took place from July 1972 to October 1973. Ken Thompson has admitted in an interview that he's never used a Multics system.\nIt is undeniably true that UNIX outcompeted Multics, but the reasons for this are many and include that Honeywell had three mainframe operating systems, GCOS (formerly GECOS), Multics, and CP-V (and its successor CP-6), and GCOS was the one that was given the most support, development, and marketing resources. Unlike UNIX, which became open source in the early nineties and its essentials cloned as the open source Linux, Multics was not made open source until November 2007 and never ported to alternative hardware. I highly recommend that anyone interested in operating system history and computer security spend some time perusing Tom Van Vleck's Multicians website, as there are still lessons to be learned from and about Multics. (And you can now run one yourself on a laptop or even a Raspberry Pi, via Honeywell DPS8 hardware emulation.)\nA few pages later (pp. 29-30), Shapiro writes again about Multics, and rightly gives credit to the Karger and Schell report for something UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson regularly is given credit for coming up with:\nWhen Ken Thompson won the Turing Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, the highest honor in the computer-science community, for developing UNIX, he devoted his lecture to cybersecurity, a first for the Turing lecture. In the first half of his lecture, Thompson describes a devious hack first used by air force testers when they penetrated the Multics system in 1974. They showed how to insert an undetectable \"backdoor\" in Multics. ... The moral Thompson drew was bracing: the \"only program you can truly trust is the one you wrote yourself.\"\nThompson's lecture, published as \"Reflections on Trusting Trust,\" ends with an acknowledgement in footnote four that he didn't come up with this idea, citing \"Unknown Air Force Document\" (which is the first Karger and Schell document linked above). The specific idea is not just a trapdoor or trojan horse, but a trapdoor in the compiled code that is not present in the source code, but is inserted by the compiler itself -- including that insertion functionality itself being automatically inserted into the compiler when the compiler itself is recompiled. The idea is that the trapdoor cannot be observed in the source code, it's not present there, but is only in the compiled binary. Karger and Schell describe it like this (in section 3.4.5, \"Trap Door Insertion\"):\nClearly when a trap door is inserted, it must be well hidden to avoid detection by system maintenance personnel. Trap doors can best be hidden in changes to the binary code of a compiled routine. Such a change is completely invisible on system listings and can be detected only by comparing bit by bit the object code and the compiler listing. However, object code trap doors are vulnerable to recompilations of the module in question. ...\nIt was noted above that while object code trap doors are invisible, they are vulnerable to recompilations. The compiler (or assembler) trap door is inserted to permit object code trap doors to survive even a complete recompilation of the entire system In Multics, most of the ring 0 supervisor is written in PL/I. A penetrator could insert a trap door in the PL/I compiler to note when it is compiling a ring 0 module. Then the compiler would insert an object code trap door in the ring 0 module without listing the code in the listing. Since the PL/I compiler is itself written in PL/I, the trap door can maintain itself, even when the compiler is recompiled.\u0026nbsp;\nAn object code compiler trap door, therefore, would mean that you can't even trust a program you wrote yourself! There is, however, a route to addressing this problem, which was the subject of David A. Wheeler's doctoral dissertation in 2009, \"Fully Countering Trusting Trust Through Diverse Double-Compiling.\"\u0026nbsp;(Note that Karger and Schell did demonstrate an object code trap door in the Multics penetration test, but not a compiler object code trap door.)\nShapiro does mention the NCSC security certification process in his \"The Lesson of the Morris Worm\" section, and I think he draws the wrong lessons from it by focusing on an incomplete certification and ignoring a completed one, as well as more recent academic research (langsec) that is becoming highly relevant in the age of LLMs.\u0026nbsp; But first, one of his lessons (p. 43) is that his first question was malformed, that the Internet has to be open and purely a transport layer (the \"end-to-end principle\") and that the right question instead is to ask why endpoint computers are so insecure. That's clearly too quick a move, as we've seen countries build national firewalls and organizations deploy all manner of network-based security controls, and in the case of DDoS attack mitigation, they need to be outside of the targeted victim's network (preferably geographically distributed with AnyCast to diffuse the attack traffic and to filter it before it reaches the victim's network). We also should be free to raise questions about provider liability for being sources of attack (or even \"attractive nuisances\"), not blocked by an end-to-end principle that isn't actually adhered to in reality.\nAbout the NCSC security certification process, Shapiro writes (pp. 44-45):\nThe story of the VAX VMM Security Kernel demonstrates the pitfalls of this strategy [assessing security and certifying]. In 1979, Major Roger Schell led a team to create an operating system that could withstand the NSA's most rigorous tests and achieve the highest possible score from the NSA--an A1 rating. To do so, his team built the system in a secured laboratory so that only the development group could enter. The machine they coded on--the development machine--was housed in a separate locked room within the lab. That locked room was protected by a cage. ...\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; It took a decade to build the system. By late 1989, the VMM Security Kernel was put in the field to undergo testing at government and aerospace installations. But in March 1990, DEC, the maker of the VAX minicomputer, canceled the project and removed prototypes from the testing sites. ...\n\u0026nbsp;He goes on to contrast with free and open-source software, noting the risk of backdoors and \"Linus's law, which holds that with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (i.e., easy to find).\" We know that this is not quite accurate -- you need enough appropriately experienced eyeballs, pointed in the right places, which LLMs now have the potential to do, and seem to be ramping up rapidly on. But to my mind, he should have picked a different example than the VAX VMM Security Kernel, namely Honeywell's SCOMP (Secure Communications Processor) and its STOP operating system, which received an NCSC A1 security rating in 1985. When Groupe Bull acquired Honeywell's Large Computer Products Division in 1987-1991, the SCOMP division, Honeywell's Secure Computing Technology Center based in Minneapolis, was spun out into Secure Computing, and later acquired by McAfee. The STOP operating system was ported to other hardware and used for several military-grade communications gateways (and lessons learned from it were used in other products such as the Sidewinder firewall).\nThe main principle for an A1 security rating is that the system have \"verified design,\" which includes formal specification, formal verification, mandatory and discretionary access control, configuration management, and distribution control. These are high-effort, resource intensive things to produce, but they are also things that are becoming more feasible to produce with LLM assistance (and perhaps necessary to produce to mitigate more vulnerabilities becoming shallow and discoverable, and possibly helpful in addressing limitations of LLMs themselves in a virtuous circle). It's worth noting here that in the Epilogue of the book, Shapiro gives an argument for the impossibility of \"a magic app that checks programs for vulnerabilities\" (p. 325), basically pointing out the issue of the halting problem and Turing computability. It's certainly correct that you can't build a system that will find all bugs, but it doesn't follow from that that you cannot build systems that find many bugs, nor that you cannot eliminate entire classes of vulnerability, nor that you cannot build specialized systems that have verifiable security properties. One of the lessons of langsec is that we can do things without Turing-complete systems, and we should do so, and this is something else that LLMs might make more feasible rather than relying on general purpose operating systems for every task and function. (Book recommendation for those who draw too-broad conclusions from theorems of undecidability, computability, and incompleteness: Torkel Franzen's 2005 book, Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse.)\nTo end on a positive note, I thought that Shapiro's coverage of the book's title hack, the Russian GRU (\"Fancy Bear\")'s breach of the DNC and DCC, was excellent in clearly laying out the details and timeline, and citing relevant sources that support the attribution. This occurs in chapters 7 and 8 (pp. 186-237), which should be mandatory reading for anyone who is still arguing that there is no evidence that Russia was behind the DNC hack or the subsequent data leaks in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. (It prompted me to add a reference to the book in my unpublished letter to the editor of Fortean Times in response to a columnist who should be mandated to read these chapters.)\nDespite my issues with Shapiro's coverage of Multics and some of his conclusions, I enjoyed the book and recommend it for those interested in the history and context of the five hacks he covers.\nHistorical Comments Kimo C (2026-06-02):\nInteresting review Jim, thanks for creating it. I enjoy reading learning from your deep Multics knowledge. I\u0026#39;ll try to track down the sources you point to.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/06/book-review-scott-j-shapiro-fancy-bear.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Scott Shapiro's 2023 book's aim is to answer three questions: (1) why is the Internet (still) so insecure? (2) how do hackers do what they do? and (3) what can be done about it? He recounts some historical events, the \"five extraordinary hacks\" of the subtitle, to tell the story, and introduces the terms \"upcode\" and \"downcode\" as the core concepts in his framework for understanding--where \"downcode\" means actual, implemented computer code and \"upcode\" means the social, political, and institutional forces providing incentives and governance.\u0026nbsp; This is essentially a simplified version of Lawrence Lessig's four forces of law, social norms, markets, and code spelled out in his 1999 book, \u003ci\u003eCode: And Other Laws of Cyberspace\u003c/i\u003e, and also reminded me of the framework in Bruce Schneier's 2012 book, \u003ci\u003eLiars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive\u003c/i\u003e, where the four forces are moral pressures (internalized incentives), social pressures (social/cultural incentives from other people), institutional guidelines and rules (formal rules, regulations, and laws), and security systems (locks, police, firewalls, fraud detection, etc. -- actual operational controls which may be implemented physically, in code, or by policies and practices). For Shapiro, Lessig's first three forces are \"upcode\" and only code is \"downcode,\" and Schneier's first three forces and parts of his fourth are \"upcode.\"\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Book Review: Scott J. Shapiro, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2025.\nAdam Becker, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of HumanityRutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History (2019)Samuel D. Brunson, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the StateKate Conger and Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024)Mark Jonathan Davis, Grateful: 25 Years of Music, Movies, and Medical Emergencies with Richard Cheese \u0026amp; Lounge Against the Machine, Part One: Stranger in a Strange LoungeRenée DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality (2024)Cory Doctorow, Picks and Shovels: A Martin Hench NovelErle Stanley Gardner (Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds), The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner (1981)Brooke Harrington, Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism (2024)Gabriel Kennedy, Chapel Perilous: The Life \u0026amp; Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson (2024)Thomas Levenson, So Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs--and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious DiseaseMary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human AnatomyOliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind (1996)Oliver Sacks, The Mind's Eye (2010)Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988, 2009 edition)Quinn Slobodian, Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far RightDana Stevens, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (2023)Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American DemocracySpencer Sunshine, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege (2024)Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed AmericaMark S. Weiner, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom (2013)Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st CenturyLawrence Wright,\u0026nbsp;The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11\u0026nbsp;(2006)Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost IdealismTop for 2025 published in 2025: Tanenhaus, Levenson, Roach, Weiner, Davis, Wynn-Williams, Becker, Doctorow; other top reads for the year: Sheehan, M. Weiner, Sacks\nA few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2026:\nRobert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975)G.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;(1995)John Ferris,\u0026nbsp;Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u0026nbsp;(2020)Peter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u0026nbsp;(2017)Arthur M. Melzer,\u0026nbsp;Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing\u0026nbsp;(2014)(Previously: 2024,\u0026nbsp;2023,\u0026nbsp;2022,\u0026nbsp;2021,\u0026nbsp;2020,\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.)\u0026nbsp;\nHistorical Comments Fergie (2026-01-02):\nHappy New Year, Jim Lippard. ;-) ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2026/01/books-read-in-2025.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2025.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAdam Becker, \u003ci\u003eMore Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRutger Bregman, \u003ci\u003eHumankind: A Hopeful History\u003c/i\u003e (2019)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSamuel D. Brunson, \u003ci\u003eBetween the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKate Conger and Ryan Mac, \u003ci\u003eCharacter Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter\u003c/i\u003e (2024)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMark Jonathan Davis, \u003ci\u003eGrateful: 25 Years of Music, Movies, and Medical Emergencies with Richard Cheese \u0026amp; Lounge Against the Machine, Part One: Stranger in a Strange Lounge\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRenée DiResta, \u003ci\u003eInvisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality\u003c/i\u003e (2024)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ci\u003ePicks and Shovels: A Martin Hench Novel\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eErle Stanley Gardner (Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds), \u003ci\u003eThe Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner\u003c/i\u003e (1981)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBrooke Harrington, \u003ci\u003eOffshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism\u003c/i\u003e (2024)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGabriel Kennedy, \u003ci\u003eChapel Perilous: The Life \u0026amp; Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson\u003c/i\u003e (2024)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas Levenson, \u003ci\u003eSo Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs--and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ci\u003eReplaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003ci\u003eThe Island of the Colorblind\u003c/i\u003e (1996)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003ci\u003eThe Mind's Eye\u003c/i\u003e (2010)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNeil Sheehan, \u003ci\u003eA Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam\u003c/i\u003e (1988, 2009 edition)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eQuinn Slobodian, \u003ci\u003eHayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDana Stevens, \u003ci\u003eCamera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century\u003c/i\u003e (2023)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKatherine Stewart, \u003ci\u003eMoney, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSpencer Sunshine, \u003ci\u003eNeo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege\u003c/i\u003e (2024)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSam Tanenhaus, \u003ci\u003eBuckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMark S. Weiner, \u003ci\u003eThe Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom\u003c/i\u003e (2013)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTim Weiner, \u003ci\u003eThe Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLawrence Wright,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2006)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSarah Wynn-Williams, \u003ci\u003eCareless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eTop for 2025 published in 2025: Tanenhaus, Levenson, Roach, Weiner, Davis, Wynn-Williams, Becker, Doctorow; other top reads for the year: Sheehan, M. Weiner, Sacks\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eA few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2026:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eRobert Caro, \u003ci\u003eThe Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York\u003c/i\u003e (1975)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSelf-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e(1995)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eJohn Ferris,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eBehind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eArthur M. Melzer,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2014)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2025/01/books-read-in-2024.html\"\u003e2024\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2024/01/books-read-in-2023.html\"\u003e2023\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2023/01/books-read-in-2022.html\"\u003e2022\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2022/01/books-read-in-2021.html\"\u003e2021\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html\"\u003e2020\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2025"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;I just came across this comment I wrote a decade ago on a post that Steve Novella wrote on his blog, and I think it's pretty good, but it generated zero comment and no upvotes or downvotes. I just came across it again while looking for old comments I made about Al Seckel, who is in the news again for his role in attempting to scrub negative information about Jeffrey Epstein from the Internet.\nlippard 10 years ago This sentence contains an argument in which the conclusion does not follow from the premises:\n\"The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) is one of the oldest standing skeptical organizations and they have editors, fellows, and advisory committee (of which I am a member) and therefore have the ability to maintain high levels of quality within their own sphere.\"\nThe history of organized skepticism shows that CSICOP has repeatedly run into issues of ethics, poor methodology, and fraud by its Fellows and associates that has only been dealt with because of external pressures. That includes the Mars effect controversy, plagiarism by Robert Baker in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer, credential misrepresentation by Al Seckel, and the Uri Geller lawsuits (which had nothing to do with whether or not he actually had psychic capabilities, though they are often misrepresented by skeptics as though that was what the lawsuits were about).\nThe skeptical movement arose in the U.S. in the 1970s as a counter-movement, as a response to an increase in belief in the occult, new religions, and the \"New Age\" movement. It has periodically resurged in response to various other challenges--faith healing televangelists, creationist legislation, parapsychology's finding du jour, and so on. But it seems to me that it has largely been reactionary and not a self-sustaining movement. Although it is supposedly a scientific movement, the choice was made at the beginning to address a popular audience, and, after the Mars effect, not to directly fund or sponsor scientific research. This was partly reversed as CSI \"Research Fellows\" were appointed, but most of their work tends to be historical or in response to specific popular claims, as opposed to experimental work--and it tends to be published in popular journals, not scientific ones.\nCSI Fellows are not members of the organization and have no voting power or control over the organization, apart from those who are members of the Executive Council. They are, for the most part (with a few exceptions), famous figureheads who do not directly contribute research or work to the organization, but merely lend their reputations to the group for purposes of self-promotion. By contrast, the Parapsychological Association (for one example, the Society for Scientific Exploration is another) is an organization of practicing scientists, doing research in the area, who publish in an academic-style, peer-reviewed journal. The PA, unlike CSI, is a member of the AAAS.\nCSICOP/CSI has published a series of goals and objectives in the Skeptical Inquirer over its history, and it has clearly achieved some of those goals (like the original \"To establish a network of people interested in examining claims of the paranormal\"--changed from \"establish\" to \"maintain\" in 1980--and \"To convene conferences and meetings\"), failed at others (like \"To prepare bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims\", a goal deleted in 1998; and \"To encourage and commission research by objective and impartial inquirers in areas where it is needed\"--the \"commisions\" was removed in 1994). However, CSI removed most of these objectives from the Skeptical Inquirer in 2001, and hasn't listed any at all in the magazine since 2009.\nA clear vision, mission, goals, and objectives are necessary for an effective organization.\nHistorical Comments Secular Outpost (2025-11-17):\nI just read the detailed chronology of Seckel-related events, to which you linked from another post on your blog. It\u0026#39;s like a soap opera!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2025/11/comment-on-steve-novellas-rethinking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;I just came across this comment I wrote a decade ago on \u003ca href=\"https://theness.com/neurologicablog/rethinking-the-skeptical-movement/\"\u003ea post that Steve Novella wrote on his blog\u003c/a\u003e, and I think it's pretty good, but it generated zero comment and no upvotes or downvotes. I just came across it again while looking for old comments I made about \u003ca href=\"https://blog.lippard.org/tags/al-seckel/\"\u003eAl Seckel,\u003c/a\u003e who is in the news again for his role in attempting to scrub negative information about Jeffrey Epstein from the Internet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comment on Steve Novella's \"Rethinking the Skeptical Movement\" a decade ago"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Another case of conservative animal abuse, via libraryjayne on Threads, Illinois state representative Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro):\nThe earliest episode dates back to 1986, when a neighborhood beagle named Rusty bit Bost's 4-year-old daughter. The report filed by animal control officials indicates that the girl provoked the attack by chasing the dog. She ultimately had to get 19 stitches on her face.\nAccording to\u0026nbsp;court records, Bost was displeased that authorities would not be able to deal with the 10-year-old dog immediately. So he got his handgun, drove to Rusty's owner's home, and shot the dog to death while it was penned in an enclosure.\nNeighbors were \"very alarmed and disturbed,\" according to the police report, but a jury eventually found Bost not guilty of breaking any laws. The local paper reported the case under the headline \"Area man acquitted in dog killing trial.\"\n(From Michael McAuliffe at HuffPo, Sep 26, 2014.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2025/08/illinois-state-representative-mike.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Another case of conservative animal abuse, via libraryjayne on Threads, Illinois state representative Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro):\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \" style=\"box-sizing: content-box; font-family: ProximaNova; margin: 30px auto; max-width: none; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cp style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; line-height: 1.56; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"primary-cli cli cli-text \" style=\"box-sizing: content-box; font-family: ProximaNova; margin: 30px auto; max-width: none; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cp style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; line-height: 1.56; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003eThe earliest episode dates back to 1986, when a neighborhood beagle named Rusty bit Bost's 4-year-old daughter. The report filed by animal control officials indicates that the girl provoked the attack by chasing the dog. She ultimately had to get 19 stitches on her face.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Illinois state representative Mike Bost's dog-killing story"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;If your reasons for voting for Donald Trump for president included that you wanted to cause unnecessary death and suffering and reduce to the standing and trustworthiness of the United States with the rest of the world then congratulations, you've been given what you wanted. If not, maybe you should engage in some reflection on what you've helped to bring about.\nOn Bluesky, doctor Atul Gawande, author of the excellent book Being Mortal (which I read in 2019) and The Checklist Manifesto (which was well-reviewed but I have not read), who was USAID Assistant Administrator for Public Health from 2022 to 2025, wrote the following posts:\nI ran @USAID health programs for the last 3 years. Trump’s 90 day Stop Work Order on foreign assistance does serious damage to the world and the US. Examples:🧵January 26, 2025 at 8:56 AM\n1. Stops work battling a deadly Marburg outbreak in Tanzania and a wide outbreak of a mpox variant killing children in west Africa before it spreads further.\n2. Stops monitoring of bird flu in 49 countries, a disease which already killed an American on home soil.\n3. Stops critical work on polio eradication.\n4. Stops \u0026gt;$1B in corporate drug donations and coordination eradicating tropical diseases like river blindness, elephantiasis, and others on the verge of elimination in whole regions. https://www.neglecteddiseases.gov/about/results-and-impact/\n5. Stops medicines, supplies, systems building, staff support aiding \u0026gt;90 million women and children to get low cost vaccinations, prenatal care, safe childbirth, contraception, and other basic lifesaving health needs. https://www.usaid.gov/PreventingChildandMaternalDeaths\n6. Stops direct services for 6.5 million orphans, vulnerable children, and their caregivers affected by HIV in 23 countries.\n7. Stops donated drug supplies keeping 20 million people living with HIV alive.\n8. Would furlough all USAID contract staff — which includes half of its global health bureau—unless exempted.\nMake no mistake — these essential, lifesaving activities are being halted right now. Clinics are shuttering. Workers sent home. Partners including US small businesses face being unable to meet payroll. All despite clear requirements from Congress to do this work.\nThis Administration is already trashing US standing, alliances with scores of countries built over half a century, world-leading capacity and expertise, and American security.\nUPDATE (5 May 2026): Gawanda estimates that the USAID shutdown has so far caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of whom are children. Also see this ProPublica story from December 2025, \"Inside the Trump Administration's Man-Made Hunger Crisis.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2025/01/causing-unnecessary-death-and-suffering.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;If your reasons for voting for Donald Trump for president included that you wanted to cause unnecessary death and suffering and reduce to the standing and trustworthiness of the United States with the rest of the world then congratulations, you've been given what you wanted. If not, maybe you should engage in some reflection on what you've helped to bring about.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn Bluesky, doctor Atul Gawande, author of the excellent book \u003ci\u003eBeing Mortal\u003c/i\u003e (which I read in 2019) and \u003ci\u003eThe Checklist Manifesto\u003c/i\u003e (which was well-reviewed but I have not read), who was USAID Assistant Administrator for Public Health from 2022 to 2025, \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/agawande.bsky.social/post/3lgnrzrouf32y\"\u003ewrote the following posts\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Causing unnecessary death and suffering"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp; Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2024.\nJames Bamford, Spy Fail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence (2023)Benjamin Breen, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold War and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic ScienceJennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)Bryan Burrough, Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmond Safra (1992)Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990, 2010 foreword)Rich Cohen, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (2012)Daniel C. Dennett, I've Been Thinking (2023)Cory Doctorow,\u0026nbsp;The Bezzle\u0026nbsp;(fiction)Edward Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2002)Jon Friedman \u0026amp; John Meehan, House of Cards: Inside the Troubled Empire of American Express (1992)Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (2022)John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990sMasha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017)Martin Kihn, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time (2005)Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2020)Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (2017)Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over AmericaMilton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 (1955)Michael Warren Lucas, git commit murder (2017, fiction)Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the DifferenceCraig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (2006)Ryan J. Reilly, Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System (2023)Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Volume 2 (2016)Zoë Schiffer, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's TwitterMatt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of LibertarianismTop for 2024 published in 2024: Doctorow, Breen, Ganz; other top reads for the year: Gage, Dennett, Kinzer (2020), Cohen, Gessen, Rodda\nA few non-books of relevance for 2025:\nWhat the Southern Baptists used to believe, but no longer do:\u0026nbsp;https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/resolution-on-moral-character-of-public-officials/Umberto Eco, \"Ur-Fascism,\" New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995Dorothy Thompson, \"Who Goes Nazi,\" Harper's Magazine, August 1941 (but contrast with Mayer 1955 and Gessen 2017 above)\nA few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2024:\nG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;(1995)John Ferris,\u0026nbsp;Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u0026nbsp;(2020)Peter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u0026nbsp;(2017)Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (2014)Mark S. Weiner, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom (2013)(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2023,\u0026nbsp;2022,\u0026nbsp;2021,\u0026nbsp;2020,\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.)\u0026nbsp;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2025/01/books-read-in-2024.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2024.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames Bamford, \u003ci\u003eSpy Fail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence\u003c/i\u003e (2023)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBenjamin Breen, \u003ci\u003eTripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold War and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJennifer Burns, \u003ci\u003eMilton Friedman: The Last Conservative\u003c/i\u003e (2023)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBryan Burrough, \u003ci\u003eVendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmond Safra\u003c/i\u003e (1992)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRon Chernow, \u003ci\u003eThe House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance\u003c/i\u003e (1990, 2010 foreword)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRich Cohen, \u003ci\u003eThe Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King\u003c/i\u003e (2012)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel C. Dennett, \u003ci\u003eI've Been Thinking\u003c/i\u003e (2023)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Bezzle\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e(fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEdward Dolnick, \u003ci\u003eDown the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon\u003c/i\u003e (2002)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJon Friedman \u0026amp; John Meehan, \u003ci\u003eHouse of Cards: Inside the Troubled Empire of American Express\u003c/i\u003e (1992)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBeverly Gage, \u003ci\u003eG-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century\u003c/i\u003e (2022)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Ganz, \u003ci\u003eWhen the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMasha Gessen, \u003ci\u003eThe Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia\u003c/i\u003e (2017)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMartin Kihn, \u003ci\u003eHouse of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time\u003c/i\u003e (2005)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eStephen Kinzer, \u003ci\u003ePoisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eStephen Kinzer, \u003ci\u003eThe True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American\u003c/i\u003e Empire (2017)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTalia Lavin, \u003ci\u003eWild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMilton Mayer, \u003ci\u003eThey Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45\u003c/i\u003e (1955)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Warren Lucas, \u003ci\u003egit commit murder\u003c/i\u003e (2017, fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eArvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, \u003ci\u003eAI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCraig Nelson, \u003ci\u003eThomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations\u003c/i\u003e (2006)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRyan J. Reilly, \u003ci\u003eSedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System\u003c/i\u003e (2023)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChris Rodda, \u003ci\u003eLiars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Volume 2\u003c/i\u003e (2016)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eZoë Schiffer, \u003ci\u003eExtremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMatt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, \u003ci\u003eThe Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eTop for 2024 published in 2024: Doctorow, Breen, Ganz; other top reads for the year: Gage, Dennett, Kinzer (2020), Cohen, Gessen, Rodda\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eA few non-books of relevance for 2025:\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eWhat the Southern Baptists used to believe, but no longer do:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/resolution-on-moral-character-of-public-officials/\"\u003ehttps://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/resolution-on-moral-character-of-public-officials/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eUmberto Eco, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/?\"\u003e\"Ur-Fascism,\"\u003c/a\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c/i\u003e, June 22, 1995\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eDorothy Thompson, \u003ca href=\"https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/\"\u003e\"Who Goes Nazi,\"\u003c/a\u003e \u003ci\u003eHarper's Magazine\u003c/i\u003e, August 1941 (but contrast with Mayer 1955 and Gessen 2017 above)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2024:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSelf-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e(1995)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eJohn Ferris,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eBehind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eLawrence Wright, \u003ci\u003eThe Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11\u003c/i\u003e (2006)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eArthur M. Melzer, \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing\u003c/i\u003e (2014)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eMark S. Weiner, \u003ci\u003eThe Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom\u003c/i\u003e (2013)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2024/01/books-read-in-2023.html\"\u003e2023\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2023/01/books-read-in-2022.html\"\u003e2022\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2022/01/books-read-in-2021.html\"\u003e2021\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html\"\u003e2020\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2024"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Per Stephanie Kirchgaessner in The Guardian, 14 October 2024:\nDouglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the\u0026nbsp;NRA\u0026nbsp;this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.\nHamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of\u0026nbsp;Michigan\u0026nbsp;at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.\nThe details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.\nThe case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.\nWhile The Guardian notes that Hamlin's role was not clear, Judge S.J. Elden singled him out for particular criticism as the president of the fraternity who had a responsibility to prevent it--and not, as was attempted without success, to cover it up.\n(See other conservative animal abuse tagged posts, about Kevin Roberts, Bill Frist, Kristi Noem, James Dobson, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Jerry Falwell.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/10/nra-ceo-doug-hamlins-cat-killing-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Per Stephanie Kirchgaessner \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/14/nra-doug-hamlin-cat-killing\"\u003ein \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c/i\u003e, 14 October 2024:\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"dcr-1eu361v\" style=\"--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, \u0026quot;Guardian Text Egyptian Web\u0026quot;, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp class=\"dcr-1eu361v\" style=\"--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, \u0026quot;Guardian Text Egyptian Web\u0026quot;, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;\"\u003eDouglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the\u0026nbsp;NRA\u0026nbsp;this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NRA CEO Doug Hamlin's cat-killing story"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Here's my best effort, informed by Adam Klasfeld's at Just Security and others I came across.\nP1 = Steve Bannon.P2 = Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien (post July 2020).P3 = Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.P4 = Trump senior campaign advisor Jason Miller.P5 campaign operative Mike Roman.P6 = Roger Stone.P7 = Hope Hicks.P8 = Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short.P9 = Eric Herschmann.P10 = Joe DiGenova.P11 = Victoria Toensing.P12 = Jenna Ellis.P13 = Jared Kushner.P14 = Ivanka Trump.P15 = Trump WH Assistant to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations Nicholas F. Luna. P16 = AZ Gov Doug Ducey.P17 = GA Gov Brian Kemp.P18 = Speaker of the AZ House Rusty Bowers.P19 = Trump staffer Christina Bobb (4 Dec 2020 tweet\u0026nbsp;https://x.com/christina_bobb/status/1334996485075836936, ref p. 20).P20 = Kory Langhofer (Bowers' attorney).P21 = Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.P22 = campaign attorney (p. 22) Alex Cannon.P23 = Trump GA lawyer Ray Smith (Roy Stallings Smith III, a real estate attorney).P24 = volunteer Trump GA attorney Jackie Pick.P25 = GA Sec of State Chief Operations Officer Gabriel Sterling.P26 = GA Attorney General Christopher M. Carr.P27 = US Senator David Perdue (proof is ref in Trump tweet on p. 18).P28 = Kelly Loeffler (ditto).P29 = GA election worker Wandrea \"Shaye\" Moss.P30 = GA election worker Ruby Freeman (Shaye's mother, p. 25).P31 = Cleta Mitchell, private attorney introduced on Trump v Kemp call as \"who is not the attorney of record but has been involved\" (p. 29, see WaPo \"Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger\").P32 = Kurt R. Hilbert, lead attorney for Trump in Trump v. Kemp.P33 = GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.P34 = GA Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.P35 = GA Secretary of State General Counsel Ryan Germany.P36 = Trump private attorney on Raffensperger call Alex Kaufman (Fox Rothschild, subsequently resigned Jan 7, 2021; however, Kaufman stated he never represented Trump).P37 = MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey.P38 = MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield.P39 = RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.P40 = not referenced.P41 = ? Scott Gragson ?, \"Michigan campaign associate\" (p. 34)P42 = Trump executive assistant Molly Michael.P43 = RNC Chief Counsel Justin Riemer.P44 = RNC spokesperson Liz Harrington (recipient of email from Riemer:\u0026nbsp;https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-trump-stop-the-steal/2021/07/12/79e58a02-e320-11eb-934f-7e6c1927f261_story.html).P45 = White House Deputy Chief of Staff/Social Media Director Dan Scavino.P46 = PA GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas.P47 = Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt.P48 = former NYPD commissioner and Giuliani-Kerik partner Bernard B. Kerik (p. 40 tweet:\u0026nbsp;https://x.com/BernardKerik/status/1334944478180888586).P49 = WI Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn.P50 = Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs.P51 = Tucker Carlson.P52 = Trump admin Attorney General William \"Bill\" Barr.P53 = AZ attorney Jack Wilenchik (p. 51).P54 = Trump campaign staffer Tim Murtaugh--in text thread on fake electors with P3 Clark/P4 J Miller/P9 Herschmann \"certifying illegal votes\" (https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gold-fake-electors-trump-allies-indictment-1894131).P55 = ? ? \"Star Wars bar\" thread (Jason Miller quote).P56 = ? \"Star Wars bar\" (p. 151: P56 but not P55 attends meeting at VA campaign HQ).P57 = former US Rep \u0026amp; US Attorney elector nominee who opted out of fake elector scheme Thomas Marino (p. 53).P58 = VP Pence Counsel Greg Jacob (p. 70) \"Pence lawyer\".P59 = WH Counsel Pat Cippolone.P60 = WH press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.P61 = AZ Senate president Karen Fann.P62 = TX AG Ken Paxton.P63 = MO AG, now US Senator Eric Schmitt.P64 = J6 Ellipse rally organizer Carolyn Wren.P65 = J6 Ellipse rally funder Julie Fancelli. (https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-campaign-fundraiser-ellipse-rally)P66 = ? Katrina Pierson ?\u0026nbsp; campaign employee working on J6 Ellipse rally who had most contact with Trump and was a private citizen after December 31, 2020.\u0026nbsp; (p. 119) (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/capitol-riot-panel-interview-katrina-pierson-00010154)P67 = WH photographer Shealeah Craighead.P68 = Gen Michael Flynn.P69 = WH trade advisor Peter Navarro.P70 = Ivan Raiklin (https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-hearings-june-16#h_5cb75e4babd00cc7b68a62e35a09fa68) (p. 137).P71 = Deputy WH Counsel Pat Philbin.P72 = Matt Morgan (On pg. 151, P72 gives Herschmann a “tutorial on campaign basics and operations,” and is repeatedly mentioned along with P3, who is campaign attorney \u0026amp; Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark).P73 = ? Michael Best ? assured Eric Herschmann he could trust P22 (p. 152)P74 = ? J. Christian Adams or Matt Braynard ? (testified at December 10 Georgia hearing: https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/12/10/at-georgia-house-hearing-republicans-baseless-claims-of-voting-fraud-persist)P75 = Ken Block, managing director of C2.P76 = Jay Sekulow (see\u0026nbsp;https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/22/pence-trump-grand-jury/\u0026nbsp;).P77 = Stefan Passantino (p. 151, WH Counsel’s office person “who handled ethics issues”; \"former member of President Donald J. Trump’s Office of White House Counsel. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was charged with overseeing compliance and ethics, policing conflicts of interest, and approving and enforcing ethics requirements\" per the ethics complaint against him:\u0026nbsp;https://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ethics-Complaint-against-Stefan-Passantino.pdf\u0026nbsp;).CC1 = Rudy Giuliani.CC2 = John Eastman.CC3 = Sidney Powell.CC4 = Jeffrey Clark.CC5 = Ken Chesebro.CC6 = Boris Epshteyn.C1 = Berkeley Research Group.C2 = Simpatico Software Systems.C3 = Dominion Voting Systems.[p. 73, no P#--unnamed US Senator is likely Ron Johnson of WI].Corrections gladly accepted.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/10/whos-who-in-jack-smiths-presidential.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Here's my best effort, informed by \u003ca href=\"https://www.justsecurity.org/103533/whos-who-jack-smith-immunity-brief/\"\u003eAdam Klasfeld's at Just Security\u003c/a\u003e and others I came across.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP1 = Steve Bannon.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP2 = Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien (post July 2020).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP3 = Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP4 = Trump senior campaign advisor Jason Miller.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP5 campaign operative Mike Roman.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP6 = Roger Stone.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP7 = Hope Hicks.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP8 = Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP9 = Eric Herschmann.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP10 = Joe DiGenova.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP11 = Victoria Toensing.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP12 = Jenna Ellis.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP13 = Jared Kushner.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP14 = Ivanka Trump.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP15 = Trump WH Assistant to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations Nicholas F. Luna. P16 = AZ Gov Doug Ducey.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP17 = GA Gov Brian Kemp.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP18 = Speaker of the AZ House Rusty Bowers.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP19 = Trump staffer Christina Bobb (4 Dec 2020 tweet\u0026nbsp;\u003ca attributionsrc=\"/privacy_sandbox/comet/register/source/?xt=AZW_7C-SZN6drucHiETBOFxsR448PonsfgW9aWzrkYyVc3RTqvTeOuLU8Mj_kIMeJUV3E0m4erg9fZoJcfZBKuwLIQRFBMS-TqffJMRL09Qe_Lr7-Xa0GWgmkYfaIHwBiIGuFsJIkTdxd_WHARolKUpk-VnZ8_y8o0x-sT-iJ4-NqXaV3iwuihIpI1ZhO-qpalKSJdADs5Nm7mPNuIb93nXPxoBBqOdiPBzIsg66ltDGG5pG-WURCjwuMgBhAGmGx7OnuqeqQGWAsGNCOHhrvLBxN3hrW-YedC89vvgOuJ0pa2eThkBIC7Ik0wPsUmKYEBR_dDNlAWxCtLPsJml9n0U4nURSuNW5dXSzAxsUQ3BLNV5GtjpI3IiIG5n4_b_OlqD73W_OKajmltg4d497RgGyYzOeyJ9F2w88az-G6sq1N_26O5QYRube5caYYY7Vxid-WaqMyglecOK8jlYVK-XCBfHw_-tOHqzFcdSi2phUeDRrdgJQr9TTKUQJc9G0kjFyEZHKA9VICI87WtCNHGMb61c0zGPRHyLEDNEVBYhiHmCF32H8uCBMz6UERP9oiocC7VIzNiau_9_6p-iWwd-oJKwkVJJnve2LQtLxm0Lqqg\" class=\"x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1sur9pj xkrqix3 x1fey0fg x1s688f\" href=\"https://x.com/christina_bobb/status/1334996485075836936\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\" role=\"link\" style=\"-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehttps://x.com/christina_bobb/status/1334996485075836936\u003c/a\u003e, ref p. 20).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP20 = Kory Langhofer (Bowers' attorney).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP21 = Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP22 = campaign attorney (p. 22) Alex Cannon.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP23 = Trump GA lawyer Ray Smith (Roy Stallings Smith III, a real estate attorney).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP24 = volunteer Trump GA attorney Jackie Pick.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP25 = GA Sec of State Chief Operations Officer Gabriel Sterling.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP26 = GA Attorney General Christopher M. Carr.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP27 = US Senator David Perdue (proof is ref in Trump tweet on p. 18).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP28 = Kelly Loeffler (ditto).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP29 = GA election worker Wandrea \"Shaye\" Moss.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP30 = GA election worker Ruby Freeman (Shaye's mother, p. 25).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP31 = Cleta Mitchell, private attorney introduced on Trump v Kemp call as \"who is not the attorney of record but has been involved\" (p. 29, see WaPo \"Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger\").\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP32 = Kurt R. Hilbert, lead attorney for Trump in Trump v. Kemp.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP33 = GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP34 = GA Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP35 = GA Secretary of State General Counsel Ryan Germany.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP36 = Trump private attorney on Raffensperger call Alex Kaufman (Fox Rothschild, subsequently resigned Jan 7, 2021; however, Kaufman stated he never represented Trump).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP37 = MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP38 = MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP39 = RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP40 = not referenced.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP41 = ? Scott Gragson ?, \"Michigan campaign associate\" (p. 34)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP42 = Trump executive assistant Molly Michael.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP43 = RNC Chief Counsel Justin Riemer.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP44 = RNC spokesperson Liz Harrington (recipient of email from Riemer:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-trump-stop-the-steal/2021/07/12/79e58a02-e320-11eb-934f-7e6c1927f261_story.html\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-trump-stop-the-steal/2021/07/12/79e58a02-e320-11eb-934f-7e6c1927f261_story.html\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP45 = White House Deputy Chief of Staff/Social Media Director Dan Scavino.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP46 = PA GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP47 = Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP48 = former NYPD commissioner and Giuliani-Kerik partner Bernard B. Kerik (p. 40 tweet:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca attributionsrc=\"/privacy_sandbox/comet/register/source/?xt=AZW_7C-SZN6drucHiETBOFxsR448PonsfgW9aWzrkYyVc3RTqvTeOuLU8Mj_kIMeJUV3E0m4erg9fZoJcfZBKuwLIQRFBMS-TqffJMRL09Qe_Lr7-Xa0GWgmkYfaIHwBiIGuFsJIkTdxd_WHARolKUpk-VnZ8_y8o0x-sT-iJ4-NqXaV3iwuihIpI1ZhO-qpalKSJdADs5Nm7mPNuIb93nXPxoBBqOdiPBzIsg66ltDGG5pG-WURCjwuMgBhAGmGx7OnuqeqQGWAsGNCOHhrvLBxN3hrW-YedC89vvgOuJ0pa2eThkBIC7Ik0wPsUmKYEBR_dDNlAWxCtLPsJml9n0U4nURSuNW5dXSzAxsUQ3BLNV5GtjpI3IiIG5n4_b_OlqD73W_OKajmltg4d497RgGyYzOeyJ9F2w88az-G6sq1N_26O5QYRube5caYYY7Vxid-WaqMyglecOK8jlYVK-XCBfHw_-tOHqzFcdSi2phUeDRrdgJQr9TTKUQJc9G0kjFyEZHKA9VICI87WtCNHGMb61c0zGPRHyLEDNEVBYhiHmCF32H8uCBMz6UERP9oiocC7VIzNiau_9_6p-iWwd-oJKwkVJJnve2LQtLxm0Lqqg\" class=\"x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1sur9pj xkrqix3 x1fey0fg x1s688f\" href=\"https://x.com/BernardKerik/status/1334944478180888586\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\" role=\"link\" style=\"-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehttps://x.com/BernardKerik/status/1334944478180888586\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP49 = WI Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP50 = Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP51 = Tucker Carlson.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP52 = Trump admin Attorney General William \"Bill\" Barr.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP53 = AZ attorney Jack Wilenchik (p. 51).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP54 = Trump campaign staffer Tim Murtaugh--in text thread on fake electors with P3 Clark/P4 J Miller/P9 Herschmann \"certifying illegal votes\" (\u003ca href=\"https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gold-fake-electors-trump-allies-indictment-1894131\"\u003ehttps://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gold-fake-electors-trump-allies-indictment-1894131\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP55 = ? ? \"Star Wars bar\" thread (Jason Miller quote).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP56 = ? \"Star Wars bar\" (p. 151: P56 but not P55 attends meeting at VA campaign HQ).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP57 = former US Rep \u0026amp; US Attorney elector nominee who opted out of fake elector scheme Thomas Marino (p. 53).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP58 = VP Pence Counsel Greg Jacob (p. 70) \"Pence lawyer\".\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP59 = WH Counsel Pat Cippolone.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP60 = WH press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP61 = AZ Senate president Karen Fann.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP62 = TX AG Ken Paxton.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP63 = MO AG, now US Senator Eric Schmitt.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP64 = J6 Ellipse rally organizer Carolyn Wren.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP65 = J6 Ellipse rally funder Julie Fancelli. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-campaign-fundraiser-ellipse-rally\" style=\"background-color: transparent;\"\u003ehttps://www.propublica.org/article/trump-campaign-fundraiser-ellipse-rally\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP66 = ? Katrina Pierson ?\u0026nbsp; campaign employee working on J6 Ellipse rally who had most contact with Trump and was a private citizen after December 31, 2020.\u0026nbsp; (p. 119) (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/capitol-riot-panel-interview-katrina-pierson-00010154\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/capitol-riot-panel-interview-katrina-pierson-00010154\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP67 = WH photographer Shealeah Craighead.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP68 = Gen Michael Flynn.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP69 = WH trade advisor Peter Navarro.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP70 = Ivan Raiklin (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-hearings-june-16#h_5cb75e4babd00cc7b68a62e35a09fa68\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-hearings-june-16#h_5cb75e4babd00cc7b68a62e35a09fa68\u003c/a\u003e) (p. 137).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP71 = Deputy WH Counsel Pat Philbin.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP72 = Matt Morgan (On pg. 151, P72 gives Herschmann a “tutorial on campaign basics and operations,” and is repeatedly mentioned along with P3, who is campaign attorney \u0026amp; Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP73 = ? Michael Best ? assured Eric Herschmann he could trust P22 (p. 152)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP74 = ? J. Christian Adams or Matt Braynard ? (testified at December 10 Georgia hearing: \u003ca href=\"https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/12/10/at-georgia-house-hearing-republicans-baseless-claims-of-voting-fraud-persist\"\u003ehttps://www.gpb.org/news/2020/12/10/at-georgia-house-hearing-republicans-baseless-claims-of-voting-fraud-persist\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP75 = Ken Block, managing director of C2.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP76 = Jay Sekulow (see\u0026nbsp;\u003ca attributionsrc=\"/privacy_sandbox/comet/register/source/?xt=AZW_7C-SZN6drucHiETBOFxsR448PonsfgW9aWzrkYyVc3RTqvTeOuLU8Mj_kIMeJUV3E0m4erg9fZoJcfZBKuwLIQRFBMS-TqffJMRL09Qe_Lr7-Xa0GWgmkYfaIHwBiIGuFsJIkTdxd_WHARolKUpk-VnZ8_y8o0x-sT-iJ4-NqXaV3iwuihIpI1ZhO-qpalKSJdADs5Nm7mPNuIb93nXPxoBBqOdiPBzIsg66ltDGG5pG-WURCjwuMgBhAGmGx7OnuqeqQGWAsGNCOHhrvLBxN3hrW-YedC89vvgOuJ0pa2eThkBIC7Ik0wPsUmKYEBR_dDNlAWxCtLPsJml9n0U4nURSuNW5dXSzAxsUQ3BLNV5GtjpI3IiIG5n4_b_OlqD73W_OKajmltg4d497RgGyYzOeyJ9F2w88az-G6sq1N_26O5QYRube5caYYY7Vxid-WaqMyglecOK8jlYVK-XCBfHw_-tOHqzFcdSi2phUeDRrdgJQr9TTKUQJc9G0kjFyEZHKA9VICI87WtCNHGMb61c0zGPRHyLEDNEVBYhiHmCF32H8uCBMz6UERP9oiocC7VIzNiau_9_6p-iWwd-oJKwkVJJnve2LQtLxm0Lqqg\" class=\"x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1sur9pj xkrqix3 x1fey0fg x1s688f\" href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/22/pence-trump-grand-jury/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\" role=\"link\" style=\"-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/22/pence-trump-grand-jury/\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eP77 = Stefan Passantino (p. 151, WH Counsel’s office person “who handled ethics issues”; \"former member of President Donald J. Trump’s Office of White House Counsel. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was charged with overseeing compliance and ethics, policing conflicts of interest, and approving and enforcing ethics requirements\" per the ethics complaint against him:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca attributionsrc=\"/privacy_sandbox/comet/register/source/?xt=AZW_7C-SZN6drucHiETBOFxsR448PonsfgW9aWzrkYyVc3RTqvTeOuLU8Mj_kIMeJUV3E0m4erg9fZoJcfZBKuwLIQRFBMS-TqffJMRL09Qe_Lr7-Xa0GWgmkYfaIHwBiIGuFsJIkTdxd_WHARolKUpk-VnZ8_y8o0x-sT-iJ4-NqXaV3iwuihIpI1ZhO-qpalKSJdADs5Nm7mPNuIb93nXPxoBBqOdiPBzIsg66ltDGG5pG-WURCjwuMgBhAGmGx7OnuqeqQGWAsGNCOHhrvLBxN3hrW-YedC89vvgOuJ0pa2eThkBIC7Ik0wPsUmKYEBR_dDNlAWxCtLPsJml9n0U4nURSuNW5dXSzAxsUQ3BLNV5GtjpI3IiIG5n4_b_OlqD73W_OKajmltg4d497RgGyYzOeyJ9F2w88az-G6sq1N_26O5QYRube5caYYY7Vxid-WaqMyglecOK8jlYVK-XCBfHw_-tOHqzFcdSi2phUeDRrdgJQr9TTKUQJc9G0kjFyEZHKA9VICI87WtCNHGMb61c0zGPRHyLEDNEVBYhiHmCF32H8uCBMz6UERP9oiocC7VIzNiau_9_6p-iWwd-oJKwkVJJnve2LQtLxm0Lqqg\" class=\"x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1sur9pj xkrqix3 x1fey0fg x1s688f\" href=\"https://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ethics-Complaint-against-Stefan-Passantino.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\" role=\"link\" style=\"-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehttps://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ethics-Complaint-against-Stefan-Passantino.pdf\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC1 = Rudy Giuliani.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC2 = John Eastman.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC3 = Sidney Powell.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC4 = Jeffrey Clark.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC5 = Ken Chesebro.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eCC6 = Boris Epshteyn.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eC1 = Berkeley Research Group.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eC2 = Simpatico Software Systems.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eC3 = Dominion Voting Systems.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv dir=\"auto\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\"\u003e[p. 73, no P#--unnamed US Senator is likely Ron Johnson of WI].\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eCorrections gladly accepted.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's Who in Jack Smith's presidential immunity brief"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and head of Trump's Project 2025, was previously a history professor at New Mexico State University. While at the university, he told colleagues and dinner guests that he was irritated by the barking of a neighbor's dog, so he killed it with a shovel. Kenneth Hammond, then chairman of the history department, told The Guardian:\nMy recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem.Two other former colleagues report hearing the same story directly from Roberts; three others report hearing the story repeated from people who heard it directly from Roberts.\nRoberts denies the story, claiming instead:\nIn 2004, a neighbor’s chained pit bull attempted to jump a fence into my backyard as I was gardening with my young daughter. Thankfully, the owner arrived in time to restrain the animal before it could get loose and attack us.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;(Source: Stephanie Kirchgaessner, \"Project 2025 mastermind allegedly told colleagues he killed a dog with a shovel,\"\u0026nbsp;The Guardian, 24 September 2024)\nSee the \"conservative animal abuse\" tag on this blog for several other accounts of prominent conservatives killing or abusing dogs and cats.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/09/kevin-roberts-dog-killing-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and head of Trump's Project 2025, was previously a history professor at New Mexico State University. While at the university, he told colleagues and dinner guests that he was irritated by the barking of a neighbor's dog, so he killed it with a shovel. Kenneth Hammond, then chairman of the history department, told The Guardian:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, \u0026quot;Guardian Text Egyptian Web\u0026quot;, Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kevin Roberts' dog-killing story"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;OpenBSD 5.9 (current as of this post is 7.5) introduced the \"pledge\" system call and 6.4 introduced the \"unveil\" system call, which together provide a means of more granular control of system access by processes running on the system to enforce least privilege.\u0026nbsp; When a program calls \"pledge\", it provides a list of categories of system calls (called \"promises\") that it is planning to make during the life of the running process (children have to make their own pledges and are not restricted), and attempts to make calls outside of those areas will cause the call to be blocked and the process to be killed. Additional calls to pledge cannot add new categories but it can remove them, so access can become more restrictive but not less restrictive.\n\u0026nbsp; \"Unveil,\" by contrast, selectively exposes parts of the file system, by file path, with specific access, and the rest of the file system is correspondingly \"veiled\" or blocked from access. Successive calls to unveil can expand or override previous ones, expanding access to the file system, adding write and create permissions where there was previously read only, but only until unveil is called with no arguments, which locks the current state in place. Further attempts to call unveil after that result in a violation.\nViolations of pledges or attempts to access file paths that are not unveiled show up in process accounting logs for the process with the process flags \"P\" or \"U\", respectively.\u0026nbsp; (My \"reportnew\" log monitoring script knows how to monitor process accounting logs and can be easily set up to report on such violations.)\nPerl scripts on OpenBSD can also use pledge and unveil, with two modules provided in the base operating system, \"OpenBSD::Pledge\" and \"OpenBSD::Unveil\".\u0026nbsp; I've been adding this functionality to several of my commonly used scripts and have learned a few tips that I'd like to share.\nPledge:\n* Check your call to pledge for errors.\u0026nbsp; If you typo the name of a promise (category of system calls), or you provide pledge with a string of comma separated promises instead of an array or list, it will fail and nothing will be pledged.\n* If you don't have any idea what promises are required, just use \"error\".\u0026nbsp; With the error promise, instead of blocking the system call and killing the process, the result is logged to /var/log/messages and you can see what promises are required.\n* The \"stdio\" promise is always included with OpenBSD::Pledge, so you don't need to list it.\n* The \"unveil\" promise is required if you intend to use OpenBSD::Unveil.\n* Calls to exec or system require the \"proc\" and \"exec\" promises; the new processes created as a result are not restricted and need to make their own use of pledge and unveil.\u0026nbsp; (Note: this means that if you are calling a system command that writes to a file, but your script doesn't otherwise write to files, you do not need to pledge the \"wpath\" promise in your script.)\n* If you otherwise fork a child process (e.g., explicitly using \"fork\" or Parallel::ForkManager or implicitly forking a child process using \"open\" to read from or write to a command), the promises pledged by the parent process are carried over to the child, which can then restrict them further. (Hat tip to Bryan Steele, who pointed this out on Bluesky without specifically referring to the Perl context.)\n* If you use the DBI perl module with mariadb and are accessing a database through a named pipe on the same server, you'll need to pledge the \"unix\", \"inet\", and \"prot_exec\" promises. (This works even from a chroot jail if the named pipe or socket is a hard link from the jail.)\n* This isn't a tip, but an observation: if you promise \"proc\" but not \"exec,\" your system call will fail but your process will not be killed and the script will continue running.\nUnveil:\n* If you make use of other perl modules in your code with \"use\", they are loaded prior to your call to unveil and so you don't need to unveil directories like /usr/libdata/perl5 in order to use them. The exception is perl modules that include compiled shared objects (\".so\"), or which use \"require\" on other modules (loading them at runtime), in which case you do need unveil such directories, but only with \"r\" permission.\n* If you use the DBI perl module with mariadb, you will need to unveil /var/run/mysql with \"rw\" and /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib with \"rx\".\n* If you use calls to \"system\" or \"open\" which use pipes, globs, or file redirection, you need to unveil \"/bin/sh\" with \"x\" permission. You may be able to rewrite your code to avoid the requirement--can you call \"system\" with a command name and list of arguments rather than a string, and do any processing you need in your program instead of with the shell?\n* If you use calls to \"system\" to execute system commands, you need to unveil them with \"x\" permission but in most cases you don't need to include \"r\".\n* It is often much easier to unveil a directory rather than individual files; if you plan to check for the existence of a file and then create it if it doesn't exist, you need \"rwc\" on the containing directory.\n* One of the biggest challenges sometimes is to find the source of an unveil violation; unveiling \"/\" with various permissions to see if it goes away, and then removing that and testing individual directories under the root directory in trial and error can help find things. That's how I first found the need to unveil \"/bin/sh\".\u0026nbsp;\nFinally, if you are writing perl modules it's helpful to document which promises need to be pledged and files and directories need to be unveiled in the calling scripts in order for them to function. It would be inappropriate to pledge or unveil within the module except in a context like a forked child process. I've done this with my Signify.pm wrapper for the OpenBSD \"signify\" command for signing and verifying files with detached signatures or gzip archives with embedded signatures in the gzip header comments.\nIf you've made use of pledge and unveil--in perl scripts or otherwise--what lessons have you learned?\n[UPDATE: 8 February 2026]: Note that OpenBSD::Pledge still does not support execpromises, so you cannot place pledge's execpromises restrictions on anything executed with \"system\" or \"exec.\"]\n[UPDATE 1 April 2026]: The \"tmppath\" promise is being removed in favor of just using \"unveil\" for any permissions limitations on files in /tmp. Note that if permission is granted to a symbolic link, it also applies to the target of the link, so granting \"rwc\" to /tmp opens potential bypass of unveil restrictions via symlinks in /tmp.\n[UPDATE 14 May 2026]: Even though neither pledge nor unveil are inherited across system calls, it is possible for an error in a perl script to cause unveil errors in another process invoked via system call -- not because of its own unveil environment, but by messing with low-numbered file descriptors (e.g., by messing with STDOUT or STDERR in an inappropriate way), which I found by accident while modifying a script to use direct calls to ping instead of using Net::Ping, and suddenly saw unveil violations from ping processes run by the _ping user. Specifically, such an error can cause libc to attempt a path-resolution write inside ping, which fails because ping unveils / with r for read-only permission.\n[UPDATE: 6 June 2026]: If you pledge 'fattr' but not 'chown' in a script that uses Archive::Tar to extract files, it will generate an error when you extract a file with a group that root is not a member of, as this is a restriction even on root for 'fattr' (but not 'chown'). This was mystifying for a while because the chown error (which doesn't include the \"Operation not permitted\" message) came from Archive::Tar but everything still ended up in the correct state because the group ID was inherited from the containing directory. It was further complicated since I was locking and unlocking immutable flags (which was working just fine!) and it first seemed like the most likely culprit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/08/tips-on-using-openbsds-pledge-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;OpenBSD 5.9 (current as of this post is 7.5) introduced the \"pledge\" system call and 6.4 introduced the \"unveil\" system call, which together provide a means of more granular control of system access by processes running on the system to enforce least privilege.\u0026nbsp; When a program calls \"pledge\", it provides a list of categories of system calls (called \"promises\") that it is planning to make during the life of the running process (children have to make their own pledges and are not restricted), and attempts to make calls outside of those areas will cause the call to be blocked and the process to be killed. Additional calls to pledge cannot add new categories but it can remove them, so access can become more restrictive but not less restrictive.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tips on using OpenBSD's pledge and unveil in perl scripts"},{"content":" The Wikipedia entry for University of Kentucky psychologist and skeptic Robert A. Baker recently (December 2023) restored a section on plagiarism accusations against him, which originated in a 1994 letter to the editor of Skeptical Inquirer from Jody Hey and were compounded by further accusations by Terence Hines and by me the same year. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia entry currently leaves the debate the same way the Skeptical Inquirer did in 1995, giving Baker the final word with a transparently false explanation. Here\u0026rsquo;s how the Wikipedia entry currently presents the issue:\nReaders of Skeptical Inquirer, noticed in 1994 similarities between one of Baker\u0026rsquo;s articles and William Grey\u0026rsquo;s article Philosophy and the Paranormal, Part 2. After discovering this, Baker wrote to Grey apologizing for \u0026ldquo;forgetting both the direct quotation and the reference citation\u0026rdquo;, he claims that it was an oversight. Grey publicly accepted Baker\u0026rsquo;s apology in the Skeptical Inquirer.[20] In the following year, author Terence Hines accused Baker of unattributed quotations from an article by Melvin Harris and from his own book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal.[21] Baker responded in Skeptical Inquirer. stating that he used Melvin Harris\u0026rsquo; book Investigating the Unexplained as a source, rather than the article or Hines\u0026rsquo; book, and that he gave Harris credit but forgot the quotation marks.[22]\nThis description is faulty in that it omits most of the evidence and is inconsistent with it [Added 7 March 2025: \u0026ndash;including that Grey, not Baker, discovered the issue and reported it in a letter to the Skeptical Inquirer editor.]. The most detailed account can be found in my 1994 report given to leaders at the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry or CSI) and subsequently published in 1995 to Usenet and its update. I\u0026rsquo;ve also assembled a chronology of events that led to my involvement and included legal threats from Baker, which I\u0026rsquo;ve now updated to include a letter from Paul Kurtz in his role as head of Prometheus Books noting that Baker\u0026rsquo;s book Hidden Memories had been withdrawn from publication. While I\u0026rsquo;ve not exhaustively searched Baker\u0026rsquo;s work, I found fairly consistent plagiarism in his books for Prometheus and his book reviews for Skeptical Inquirer throughout his career as a skeptic.\nThe rest of this post will first show that Baker\u0026rsquo;s claim to have used Harris as a source, but not Hines, is false\u0026ndash;there is clear evidence that Baker plagiarized Hines, whose book he did not cite (and his text matches Harris\u0026rsquo;s article rather than the book where they differ). Second, it will show the heaviest section of plagiarism I identified in another Baker book, They Call It Hypnosis (1990, Prometheus Books). Finally, it will show that Baker\u0026rsquo;s institution defined research misconduct in a way that includes what he did, and that Baker\u0026rsquo;s own writing shows that he understood this to be misconduct.\nThe exchange between Hines and Baker in the pages of the July/August 1995 Skeptical Inquirer (pp. 44-46) focuses on a passage on p. 157 in chapter 4 of Baker\u0026rsquo;s book, Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within (1992, Prometheus Books) and its resemblance to a passage on p. 74 in Hines\u0026rsquo; book, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (1988, Prometheus Books) where he quotes from p. 23 of an article by Melvin Harris, \u0026ldquo;Are \u0026lsquo;Past-Life\u0026rsquo; Regressions Evidence of Reincarnation?\u0026rdquo;, Free Inquiry, Fall 1986, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 18-23 (quotation marks as given in Hines):\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;every single piece of information given by Jane Evans can be traced to de Wohl\u0026rsquo;s fictional account. She uses his fictional sequences in exactly the same order and even speaks of his fictional characters, such as Curio and Valerius, as if they had been real.\u0026rdquo;\nHines notes that Baker uses nearly the same words in the same sequence, without quotation marks or references, on p. 157 of Hidden Memories:\nEvery single piece of information given by Mrs. Evans could be traced to De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s book, and Mrs. Evans used his fictional sequences in exactly the same order as he had, and even spoke of De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s fictional characters, Curio and Valerius, as if they had been real.\nHere is how Harris makes the same statement on p. 162 of his book, Investigating the Unexplained (1986, Prometheus Books), which Baker claims is his source (italics in original):\nIn the same way every single piece of information given out by Jane Evans can be traced to De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s fictional account. She uses his fictional sequences in exactly the same order and even speaks of his fictional characters\u0026ndash;such as Curio and Valerius\u0026ndash;as if they were real people.\nHarris\u0026rsquo;s article (p. 23):\nIn the same way, every single piece of information given by Jane Evans can be traced to De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s fictional account. She uses his fictional sequences in exactly the same order and even speaks of his fictional characters, such as Curio and Valerius, as if they were real people.\nBaker\u0026rsquo;s wording omits the \u0026ldquo;out\u0026rdquo; in the first sentence, uses commas instead of hyphens, and doesn\u0026rsquo;t use the italicization, all matching the article rather than the book.\nBaker cites neither Harris nor Hines in the notes for chapter 4 of his book. He does mention Melvin Harris twice on the page with no citation and no attributed quotations, including once in the same paragraph as the above quotations. Baker\u0026rsquo;s discussion of other cases earlier in the chapter differs from Hines and Harris\u0026ndash;all three discuss Bridey Murphy, but Baker\u0026rsquo;s case is more extensive than Harris or Hines. I suspect his sources may be identifiable from the other references he gives at the end of the book for the chapter.\nBut when it comes to Baker\u0026rsquo;s discussion of Jane Evans, he engaged in more plagiarism of Hines, as can be seen by comparing his text to Hines and to Harris\u0026rsquo;s article and book. Harris discusses the case extensively on pp. 155-163 of his book, while Hines\u0026rsquo; and Baker\u0026rsquo;s discussions are each less than two pages long.\nHere is what Baker writes (pp. 156-157), with exact word matches with Hines highlighted in yellow, and with Harris\u0026rsquo; article in orange (and I found no matches to Harris\u0026rsquo;s book which did not also match the article):\nThe second, and by far the most [Harris: much more] impressive, was the case of a Welsh housewife named Jane Evans, who described six past lives that were remarkable for the tremendous amount of accurate historical detail [Harris: amount of detail] they contained. In one of the lives she was a maid in the house of a wealthy [Baker, p. 157:] and powerful merchant in fifteenth-century France. Mrs. Evans described accurately the house and all of its furnishings in great detail, as well as the members of the merchant\u0026rsquo;s family. She made one very significant error in her account, however. She said the merchant was unmarried [Hines: not married] and had no children. In truth he was married and had five children, circumstances no maid would be unaware of. The same failure to mention wife and children turned up in a novel that had been written about the merchant, titled The Moneyman by Thomas B. Costain (1948). According to Melvin Harris, who investigated the case, the evidence is overwhelming that this book was the source of all of Mrs. Evan\u0026rsquo;s [sic; Hines: basis for Evans\u0026rsquo;s] \u0026ldquo;memories\u0026rdquo; of her life in fifteenth-century France.\nIn another life that she reported, Mrs. Evans was a woman named Livonia, who lived during the Roman occupation of Britain. Her account [Hines: knowledge] of the historical facts of this [Hines: that] period was so accurate that authorities [Harris: authority] on Roman Britain were astounded. Again, however, there were a few factual errors. Her knowledge [Hines: information] of the period was traced to the 1947 best-selling novel The Living Wood by Louis De Wohl. Every single piece of information given by Mrs. Evans could be traced to De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s book, and Mrs. Evans used [Hines, Harris: she uses] his fictional sequences in exactly the same order as he had, and even spoke [Hines, Harris: speaks] of De Wohl\u0026rsquo;s [Hines, Harris: his] fictional characters, Curio and Valerius, as if they had been [Hines, Harris: were] real. The historical errors in Mrs. Evan\u0026rsquo;s [sic] account were also found in the book. As Harris clearly demonstrated, Mrs. Evans had [Harris: had] the ability to store vivid stories in her subconscious and then creatively combine and edit them to the point that [Harris: where] she herself became [Harris: becomes] a [Harris: one of the] character in the story [Harris: involved].\nThis last sentence is another in which Baker follows Harris\u0026rsquo;s article more closely than his book, which suggests Baker used the article in addition to Hines (who doesn\u0026rsquo;t quote this sentence). Harris\u0026rsquo;s book (p. 161) says \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; Jane Evans has the ability to subconsciously store vivid accounts and combine and edit these creatively\u0026ndash;to the point where she becomes one of the characters involved.\u0026rdquo; The article (p. 22) says \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;Jane Evans has the ability to store vivid stories in her subconscious and creatively combine and edit them to the point where she becomes one of the characters involved.\u0026rdquo;\nOverall, Baker follows Hines more closely than Harris, and when there are discrepancies between Harris\u0026rsquo;s article and book, Baker follows the article. While Harris names the maid (Alison), neither Hines nor Baker do. In structure, after introducing the maid, Hines and Baker mention Evans\u0026rsquo; description of the house and furnishings, but Harris only mentions that after describing Evans\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;inside-knowledge of the intrigues surrounding the King\u0026rsquo;s mistress, Agnes Sorel,\u0026rdquo; which Hines and Baker omit. The sentences from Hines and Baker that immediately follow the house and furnishings differ slightly in wording but are strikingly similar:\nHines (p. 73): \u0026ldquo;Evans\u0026rsquo; account of her life in Coeur\u0026rsquo;s house contains one most puzzling, and significant error. She says he was not married and had no children. But he was married and had five children\u0026ndash;not the sort of thing the maid would be likely to overlook.\u0026rdquo;\nBaker (p. 157): \u0026ldquo;She made one very significant error in her acccount, however. She said the merchant was unmarried and had no children. In truth he was married and had five children, circumstances no maid would be unaware of.\u0026rdquo;\nHarris, by contrast, is quite different (p. 22): \u0026ldquo;In particular, the novel very neatly answers an important question raised by Iverson and other commentators: Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t Alison know that her master is married? As Iverson puts it: \u0026lsquo;How is it that this girl can know Coeur had an Egyption bodyslave and not be aware that he was married with five children?\u0026ndash;a published fact in every historical account of Coeur\u0026rsquo;s life?\u0026hellip;If the explanation for the entire regression is a reading of history books in the twentieth century, then I cannot explain how Bloxham\u0026rsquo;s subject would not know of the marriage.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\nFor completeness, here\u0026rsquo;s Harris\u0026rsquo;s book, which differs very slightly (p. 158): \u0026ldquo;In particular, the novel very neatly answers an important question raised by Iverson and other commentators\u0026ndash;a question prompted by the curious fact that Alison does not know that her master is married! As Iverson puts it: \u0026lsquo;How is it that this girl can know Coeur had an Egyptian bodyslave and not be aware that he was married with five children?\u0026ndash;a fact published in every historical account of Coeur\u0026rsquo;s life? \u0026hellip; If the explanation for the entire regression is a reading of history books in the twentieth century, then I cannot explain how Bloxham\u0026rsquo;s subject would not know of the marriage.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\nIn short, Baker plagiarized Hines and Harris, and his explanation is not consistent with the facts, with the truth revealed in much the same way as the truth was revealed about Evans\u0026rsquo; stories being sourced from fiction.\nNext, we turn to Baker\u0026rsquo;s They Call It Hypnosis, where Baker repeatedly plagiarized sources word-for-word without quotation marks, sometimes referencing them in the chapters where used, sometimes not referencing them in the chapter, and sometimes not referencing them at all (see my full report for more examples of each). In these examples, Baker lifts from work by Nicholas P. Spanos, by Spanos and co-author John F. Chaves, and by Irving Kirsch and James R. Council, with his only original contributions being some introductory or connecting phrases and substitution of synonyms. Here is what appears on pp. 129-131 of They Call It Hypnosis, part of chapter three titled \u0026ldquo;Hypnosis: Recent and Contemporary Views,\u0026rdquo; with highlights indicating word-for-word plagiarism from the sources used:\n[Baker, p. 129] Overall, Spanos\u0026rsquo;s position on hypnosis is very clear. He argues that, despite widespread belief to the contrary, hypnotic procedures do not greatly augment responsiveness to suggestions. Nonhypnotic control subjects who have been encouraged to do their best respond just as well as hypnotic subjects to suggestions for pain reduction, amnesia, age regression, hallucination, limb rigidity, etc. Hypnotic procedures, he says, are no more effective than nonhypnotic relaxation procedures at reducing [Spanos: lowering] blood pressure and muscle tension or affecting [Spanos: effecting] other behavioral, physiological, or verbal report indicators of relaxation. Hypnotic procedures are no more effective than various nonhypnotic procedures at enhancing imagery vividness or at facilitating therapeutic change for such problems as chronic pain, phobic response, cigarette smoking, etc. The available scientific evidence that Spanos and his collaborators have compiled fails to support the notion that hypnotic procedures bring about unique or highly unusual states of consciousness or that these procedures facilitate responsiveness to suggestion to any greater extent than nonhypnotic procedures that enhance positive motivation and expectation. [Spanos, p. 175]\nSpanos also notes that hypnotic suggestions do not directly instruct the subject to do anything. Instead, they [Spanos: suggestions] are usually phrased in the passive voice and imply that something is happening; for example [Spanos: e.g.], \u0026ldquo;Your arm is rising,\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;Raise your arm.\u0026quot; The [Spanos: This] passive phrasing communicates the idea that the suggested effects are occurring [Spanos: happening] automatically. In other words, the hypnotic suggestions are really tacit requests to the subject to become [Baker, p. 130 begins:] involved in a make-believe activity. Good hypnotic subjects understand this [Spanos: the implications of these tacit requests] and use their imaginative abilities and acting skills to become absorbed in the make-believe activities [Spanos: scenarios]. Spanos notes that the method actor who throws himself into the role is the analogue of the good hypnotic subject who throws himself [Spanos: themselves] into generating the experiences relevant to his [Spanos: their] role as someone who is hypnotized and responsive to suggestions. [Spanos, pp. 175-176]\nSpanos and his collaborators have looked closely at hypnotic age regression and have demonstrated that regressed subjects do not, in any real sense, take on the cognitive, perceptual, or emotional characteristics of actual children. Instead of behaving like real children, age regressed subjects behave the way they believe children behave. To the extent that their expectations about how children behave are inaccurate, their age regression performances also are off the mark. Simply put, age regression suggestions are invitations to become involved in the [Spanos: this] make-believe game of being a child again. People who accept the invitation do not, in any literal sense, revert psychologically to childhood. Instead, they use whatever they know about real children, whatever they remember from their own childhood, to temporarily become absorbed in the fantasy of being a child again. [Spanos, p. 176]\nJust as subjects can be given suggestions for age regression, amnesia, or pain reduction, Spanos says they can also be led to believe that they possess \u0026ldquo;hidden selves.\u0026quot; When Hilgard\u0026rsquo;s good hypnotic subjects were told [Spanos: informed] that they possessed hidden selves they normally were unaware of\u0026ndash;but to which the experimenter could talk when he gave [Spanos: by giving] the proper [Spanos: appropriate] signals\u0026ndash;many of them [Spanos: these subjects], when the signals were given [Spanos: they received], acted [Spanos: behaved] as if they did have alternate egos [Spanos: possessed secondary selves]. Hilgard interpreted this as indicating [Spanos: interpret such findings to mean] that good hypnotic subjects carry around unconscious hidden selves with certain intrinsic, unsuggested characteristics. Spanos counters this by pointing out that the evidence shows these [Spanos: indicates instead that] so-called hidden selves are neither intrinsic to hypnotic procedures nor unsuggested. On the contrary, hidden self-performances\u0026ndash;like other suggested responses\u0026ndash;appear to reflect attempts by motivated and imaginative subjects to create the experiences and role-play the behaviors [Spanos: role behaviors] called for by the instructions they are given. By the experimenter varying these [Spanos: such] instructions, the subjects can be easily led to develop hidden selves with whatever characteristics the experimenters desire [Spanos: wish]. Depending upon the instructions given, good hypnotic subjects will act out [Spanos: enact] hidden selves reporting [Spanos: that report] very high levels of pain, very low levels of pain, or both high and low levels of pain in succession. Subjects can also be led to act as if they possess hidden selves that can remember concrete but not abstract words, or the opposite; or they can report seeing [Spanos: that see] stimuli accurately, seeing them [Spanos: see stimuli] in reverse, or not seeing them [Spanos: don\u0026rsquo;t see stimuli] at all; as the experimenter wishes. In short, the subjects are [Spanos: subject is] acting out a fantasy which is initiated by the suggestions of the hypnotist. Then the fantasy is imaginatively elaborated upon and sustained by the subject and his interactions with the hypnotist. [Spanos, pp. 176-177]\n[Baker, p. 131 begins:] Spanos has also carried out studies of past-life regression, and in agreement with the findings of other researchers, his work indicates that past-life reports from hypnotically regressed subjects are fantasy constructions of imaginative subjects who are willing to become absorbed in the make-believe situation implied by the regression suggestions. As expected, subjects who responded well to other hypnotic suggestions were the most likely to respond well to regression suggestions. Those with the most practice at vivid daydreaming and everyday fantasizing, i.e., the fantasy-prone, created the most vivid past-life fantasies. In the same manner as childhood regressees, past-life reporters incorporate historical misinformation into their past lives [Spanos: -life enactments]. Those who from the outset believed in reincarnation thought their past lives were true [Spanos: -life experiences were veridical] rather than imaginary. A lengthier discussion of this topic and other paranormal hypnotic beliefs will be found in a later chapter. [Spanos, p. 179]\nBy no means, however, does Spanos see the problem of hypnosis as solved. New knowledge leads us to new unknowns and in the well-known and pronounced effects of suggestion on the human body there are many unsolved problems. The suggestion-induced disappearance of warts, for example, is just such a dilemma. Spanos\u0026rsquo;s own work has shown that neither a hypnotic induction nor preliminary instructions for relaxation add to the effectiveness of imagery-based suggestions in producing wart regression. Nor can the effects of suggestion be accounted for simply in terms of enhanced expectancies. Subjects given placebos and those given suggestions reported equivalent expectations of treatment success, but the suggestions were much more effective than the placebos in [Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves: at] producing wart regression. The suggestions, however, were not effective with all the subjects. They were most effective, Spanos reports, with subjects who had [Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves: possessed] multiple warts rather than [Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves: as opposed to] single warts. Those who rated their suggested imagery as especially [Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves: relatively] vivid also had better results. [Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves, pp. 445-446]\nAt this point, Baker says \u0026ldquo;Spanos concludes that\u0026rdquo; followed by a large block of correctly cited and quoted text from Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves p. 446 that fills the rest of p. 131, with a concluding sentence on p. 132 that appears to be original. Baker goes on in pp. 132-134 to describes the views of Irving Kirsch under the heading \u0026ldquo;Irving Kirsch and Response Expectancy in Hypnotic Behavior,\u0026rdquo; with an original opening paragraph that cites Irving Kirsch, \u0026ldquo;Response expectancy as a determinant of experience and behavior,\u0026rdquo; American Psychologist 1985, vol. 40, pp. 1189-1202, a source he does not plagiarize. But he goes on to plagiarize a source that he cites nowhere in his book, Kirsch \u0026amp; Council\u0026rsquo;s chapter from Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves\u0026rsquo; book (which book he does list as a reference at the end of the chapter, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t cite in the section). There is more original content in this section, and more extensive rewriting, but the level of plagiarism increases as it goes on:\n[Baker, p. 132:] In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Albert Moll argued [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 360: maintained] that hypnotic behavior was determined by two basic principles: 1) people [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, quoting Moss, 1897, p. 241: men] have a certain proneness to allow themselves to be influenced by others through their ideas, and in particular, to believe much without making conscious logical deductions; 2) a psychological effect tends to appear in a person [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, quoting Moss, 1897: man] if he is expecting it. Moll also was able to cause his [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: elicit hallucinations by leading] blindfolded subjects to hallucinate when he told them [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: to believe] they were being mesmerized.\nMoll\u0026rsquo;s giving expectancy a role in the production of hypnotic phenomena anticipated Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s thinking that response expectancies cause [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 361: generate corresponding] the individual to have internal subjective experiences which then cause [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: and their] behavior [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: behavioral and physiological correlates]. A very clear [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: particularly apparent] example of this is the placebo effect. When the patient is given a sugar pill but is told or believes it is a powerful pain killer, miraculously, because of his expectancies, the pain goes away! As for hypnosis, according to Kirsch, the occurrence of a hypnotic response is a function of the subject\u0026rsquo;s expectancy that it will occur. Once the subject has learned how a hypnotized subject is supposed to react and what he can expect to happen when he is hypnotized, then the hypnotic responses occur automatically, i.e., without conscious effort on the subject\u0026rsquo;s part. Emotional reactions\u0026ndash;fear, sadness, sexual arousal, pain\u0026ndash;are good examples of automatic responses. Acrophobics, for example, will avoid tall buildings, cliffs, ferris wheels, etc., because of their expectancy that not doing so would result in a panic attack. Various other evidence [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 362: A considerable body of data] is available to demonstrate that automatic [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: nonvolitional] responses can be brought about [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: elicited] by the mere expectancy of their occurrence. Both hypnosis and placebos are effective in treating pain, skin conditions, and asthma, and it seems reasonable to assume that the same mechanism, namely, response expectancy, produces these responses in both hypnosis [Baker, p. 133:] and the nonhypnosis situations. Telling subjects [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 364: informing them] they have received [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: were ingesting] a psychedelic drug that will produce hallucinations causes about half [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: 50 percent] to report visions, even though no drug was given. Subjects [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: people] who are told that hypnotized subjects can\u0026rsquo;t move their [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: display catalepsy of the] dominant arm are likely to experience this effect when hypnotized, and being told [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: informed] that inability to remember, i.e., spontaneous amnesia, is characteristic of hypnosis significantly increases the likelihood of its occurrence. When subjects were told that either the ability or the inability to resist responding to suggestions was characteristic of deep hypnosis, they responded accordingly.\nBesides affecting overt responses, role perceptions are an important determinant of self-reported experiences of altered states of consciousness. In a number [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 365: series] of studies it was shown [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: this has been convincingly demonstrated] that the degree of change in state of consciousness subjects expected to experience significantly predicted the number of unsuggested alterations in experience they subsequently reported. Moreover, the data from these studies indicate [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 366: suggest] that no particular state of consciousness can be labeled a \u0026ldquo;hypnotic trance.\u0026rdquo; Rather, a variety of changes in experience are interpreted by the subject as evidence of trance when experienced in a hypnotic context. Some of these are directly suggested in typical hypnotic induction\u0026ndash;relaxation, for example [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 367: e.g.]\u0026ndash;whereas others occur as a function of the subject\u0026rsquo;s preconceptions. How the subject perceives the situation pretty much determines how effective the situation will be in producing hypnosis. Just hearing the words, \u0026ldquo;You are becoming very, very relaxed,\u0026quot; is enough in our culture to make most people think [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 368: evokes the idea] of hypnosis. Glass and Barber (1961) a few years ago set up [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: devised] a highly credible clinical environment and told subjects an inert pill was a powerful hypnotic drug which would produce a state of hypnosis. In this setting the pill was as effective as a standard hypnotic induction procedure in effecting [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: raising levels of] the subject\u0026rsquo;s responses to suggestion.\nThe rest of p. 133 of Baker is two original sentences that introduce a large block of text (five full sentences) properly identified as quotation and attributed to the Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves book without a page reference; it is from p. 371 in the Kirsch \u0026amp; Council chapter. Baker p. 134 completes the Kirsch section:\nAccording to Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 371: expectancy] theory, the probability of occurrence of a nonvolitional response varies directly with the strength of the expectancy of the occurrence and inversely with the magnitude or difficulty of the expected response. [Baker has removed Kirsch \u0026amp; Council\u0026rsquo;s quotation marks before \u0026ldquo;the probability\u0026rdquo;; the rest of the sentence is a direct quote from Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s 1985 paper.]\nTrance induction procedures are, of course, typically designed to increase the subject\u0026rsquo;s expectancies for responding to suggestions, and in the Ericksonian approach [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: clinical practice] the hypnotist tailors his induction to the characteristics and ongoing behavior of the client [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: individual subjects]. Kirsch sees most hypnotic induction procedures as merely expectancy modification procedures.\nKirsch\u0026rsquo;s response expectancy theory [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 374: hypothesis] is generally consistent with the nonstate theories of Sarbin, Barber, Wagstaff, and Spanos. All agree that hypnotic responses are best seen [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: can be conceptualized] as compliance, belief, and imagination [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: believed-in imaginings], and that the hypnosis experience occurs when people voluntarily play [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: take on] the role of hypnotic subject. One key difference between Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s theory and others is that his response expectancies are the immediate causes of the hypnotic response. Rather than having goal-directed images enhancing hypnosis, as Barber suggests, Kirsch has shown that the imagery enhances responsiveness by virtue of its effects on expectancy. Kirsch has also shown that not all so-called hypnotic phenomena are under a subject\u0026rsquo;s will power or self-control [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 378: cannot be fully accounted for as volitional behavior]. Warts, for example, can be affected both by placebos and by hypnosis, and such changes in skin conditions are not under one\u0026rsquo;s voluntary control. Kirsch notes that one could offer subjects a substantial sum of money to make their warts disappear, but it is highly unlikely that many subjects would be able to do so.\nThis phenomenon also clearly shows [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council, p. 378: demonstrates] the commonality between hypnosis [Kirsch \u0026amp; Council: hypnotic phenomena] and placebo effects. Both are examples of the nonvolitional nature of response expectancy effects. Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s observation raises another point of significance\u0026ndash;the fact that we must realize that not everything that happens to the human being as a result of external stimulation is or should be considered hypnosis! Suggestion is a very powerful influence on human behavior and it can influence human behavior in many different ways, only a very few of which we would or should designate as \u0026ldquo;hypnotic.\u0026rdquo;\nYellow highlight: Nicholas P. Spanos, \u0026ldquo;Past-Life Hypnotic Regression: A Critical View,\u0026rdquo; Skeptical Inquirer vol. 12, no. 2, Winter 1987-88, pp. 174-180. Not listed as a reference in chapter three, but is listed as a reference in chapter six.\nOrange highlight: Nicholas P. Spanos and John F. Chaves, Hypnosis: The Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective, 1989, Prometheus Books. This is listed as a reference in chapter three, but is not cited in the section where it is plagiarized, but instead on p. 129 a few paragraphs before the plagiarism of the Spanos SI article (yellow highlight).\nGreen highlight: Irving Kirsch and James R. Council, \u0026ldquo;Response Expectancy as a Determinant of Hypnotic Behavior,\u0026rdquo; in Spanos \u0026amp; Chaves (1989), pp. 360-379. This chapter is not listed as a reference in the book.\nI reviewed Baker\u0026rsquo;s They Call It Hypnosis for Amazon.com on November 18, 1996, and gave it four stars; I might subtract another star today and say more about its giving state theories short shrift, but otherwise I still agree with this:\nThis book is an excellent summary of theories of hypnosis\nwith an emphasis on criticisms of state theories. The\nauthor argues for social/cognitive non-state theories.\nThe book is marred only by the fact that many passages\nare lifted directly from the authors being summarized,\nwithout being noted as such.\nFinally, here is the definition of research misconduct from the University of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Policy on Ethical Standards and Misconduct in Research\u0026rdquo; (64.0 AR II-4.0-2) from 1992:\nResearch \u0026ldquo;misconduct\u0026rdquo;, as used herein, is defined as plagiarism; fabrication or intentional falsification of data, research procedures or data analysis; or other deliberate misrepresentation in proposing, conducting, reporting, or reviewing research. It does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data. In cases of allegations involving activities submitted to or supported by a federal agency, the definition for misconduct specified in the agency\u0026rsquo;s regulations will apply.\nThis policy was referenced in the faculty handbook section on \u0026ldquo;The Conduct of Research\u0026rdquo; in the paragraph on \u0026ldquo;Ethical Standards\u0026rdquo;; these are quoted more extensively in my full report. Baker was certainly aware of these in substance, as the following appears on p. 297 of Robert A. Baker and Joe Nickell\u0026rsquo;s book, Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries (1992, Prometheus Books):\nAnother question that is bound to arise has to do with rewriting and paraphrasing. The courts once again have uniformly decided that it makes no difference whether the plagiarizer changes the arrangement of the original words or not\u0026ndash;rewriting the material is not sufficient to aid the charge of infringement. \u0026hellip; More importantly, even if the use of the words and statements of another is totally honest, unintentional, or subconscious, it is still prohibited. Neither forgetfulness nor ignorance is regarded as a legitimate excuse. If, however, it was an honest and unintentional mistake, and no intent to plagiarize was in mind, the infringer usually gets off with a lesser punishment.\nBaker\u0026rsquo;s response to these allegations was at first to attack and concede nothing. He suggested that he was going to sue me for defamation, and enlisted the help of others who attempted to discredit me (see my letter to Tucson skeptic James McGaha). Ultimately, after psychologist Terence Hines, another prominent skeptic, was prepared to submit his book review of Baker\u0026rsquo;s Hidden Memories, rejected by Skeptical Inquirer, to competing publication Skeptic magazine, SI editor Kendrick Frazier relented and published the review along with Baker\u0026rsquo;s reply. Baker fell back to the claim that his plagiarism was minor and unintentional, while resorting to falsehoods to attempt to prop up that explanation, as explained above. At this point, CSICOP founder and Prometheus Books head Paul Kurtz sent me a letter stating that Hidden Memories had been pulled from distribution and would not be reissued until corrections had been made; I replied noting that there were bigger problems in They Call It Hypnosis, but received no response. Robert Baker was added to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s Pantheon of Skeptics honoring distinguished Fellows of the organization on its creation in 2011. Skeptical Inquirer and Wikipedia, at least to date, both gave Baker\u0026rsquo;s falsehoods the final word. And perhaps the more interesting back story here is that Wikipedia is wrong because Skeptical Inquirer is wrong, but the reason Wikipedia only even mentioned Baker\u0026rsquo;s plagiarism at all in December 2023 is because a Wikipedia editor with no dog in the fight, \u0026ldquo;Psychologist Guy,\u0026rdquo; intervened and restored an old edit of the article to include the mention, which had been removed in 2018 by another Wikipedia editor, \u0026ldquo;Niomart,\u0026rdquo; with the false justification that \u0026ldquo;No valid source substantiating plagiarism claims\u0026rdquo;.\nAs the Internet becomes more and more filled with AI-generated content, there will be sources with superficial plausibility generated by large language models, there will be sources that are human-curated and based on genuine research and fact-checking, and there will be sources that are human-curated and ideologically driven that settle on acceptable half-truths concealing messy details. OpenAI\u0026rsquo;s ChatGPT 3.5 says it knows nothing of plagiarism by Robert A. Baker:\nDid Robert A. Baker\u0026rsquo;s 1992 book, Hidden Memories (pp. 156-157), plagiarize from Terence Hines\u0026rsquo; 1988 book Investigating the Unexplained (pp. 73-75)?\nAs of my last knowledge update in January 2022, I do not have specific information regarding an allegation of plagiarism between Robert A. Baker\u0026rsquo;s book \u0026ldquo;Hidden Memories\u0026rdquo; and Terence Hines\u0026rsquo; book \u0026ldquo;Investigating the Unexplained\u0026rdquo; related to the pages specified. Therefore, I cannot definitively answer whether Baker\u0026rsquo;s book plagiarized from Hines\u0026rsquo; book. To investigate this further and obtain accurate information, I would recommend checking scholarly resources, academic databases, or reputable sources that discuss these books and any related allegations of plagiarism. You might also look into academic discussions or reviews of both books to see if there are any mentions of such accusations and their resolution.\nGoogle Gemini quotes from and cites Wikipedia as the final word:\nWas Robert A. Baker ever accused of plagiarism, or of failure to properly cite quotations and sources?\nYes, Robert A. Baker did face accusations of plagiarism in the past according to his Wikipedia page [Robert A. Baker Wikipedia].Here\u0026rsquo;s a summary of the incidents: In 1994, readers of Skeptical Inquirer identified similarities between Baker\u0026rsquo;s article and another author\u0026rsquo;s work. Baker apologized, claiming it was an oversight. The following year, another author pointed out unattributed quotes in Baker\u0026rsquo;s writing. Baker defended himself by saying he used the original source but forgot quotation marks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/05/wikipedia-on-robert-baker-plagiarism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e The Wikipedia entry for University of Kentucky psychologist and skeptic\nRobert A. Baker recently (December 2023) restored a section on\nplagiarism accusations against him, which originated in a 1994 letter to\nthe editor of \u003cem\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/em\u003e from Jody Hey and were compounded by\nfurther accusations by Terence Hines and by me the same year.\nUnfortunately, the Wikipedia entry currently leaves the debate the same\nway the \u003cem\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/em\u003e did in 1995, giving Baker the final word\nwith a transparently false explanation.  Here\u0026rsquo;s how the Wikipedia entry\ncurrently presents the issue:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wikipedia, Skeptical Inquirer, and AI on Robert A. Baker plagiarism accusations"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;After adding a post about Kristi Noem's dog-killing story, I realized I hadn't mentioned former House Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) cat-killing story. Jeff Woods gave a quick overview of the story, which appeared in Frist's 1989 autobiography, Transplant, in his review of Frist's later book in The Nashville Scene in 2009:\nNever say Frist doesn't learn from his mistakes. In his 1989 autobiography Transplant, he admitted that as a medical student he adopted cats from animal shelters, \"treat[ed] them like pets for a few days,\" then took them to a lab to die in research experiments. He blamed this conduct on the pressures of med school.\n\"And I was totally schizoid about the entire matter,\" Frist wrote. \"By day, I was little Billy Frist, the boy who lived on Bowling Avenue in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor because of his gentle father and a dog named Scratchy. By night, I was Dr. William Harrison Frist, future cardiothoracic surgeon, who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career. In short, I was going a little crazy.\"\nThat bit of honesty cost Frist no little embarrassment in his 1994 Senate campaign, when he was mocked as a cat killer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/05/bill-frists-cat-killing-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;After adding \u003ca href=\"/2024/05/kristi-noems-dog-killing-story.html\"\u003ea post about Kristi Noem's dog-killing story\u003c/a\u003e, I realized I hadn't mentioned former House Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) cat-killing story. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/bill-frists-tell-nothing-memoir-needs-a-defibrillator-stat/article_013e39b5-0b8a-5e2f-8e7b-983ce6a2cad4.html\"\u003eJeff Woods gave a quick overview of the story\u003c/a\u003e, which appeared in Frist's 1989 autobiography, \u003ci\u003eTransplant\u003c/i\u003e, in his review of Frist's later book in \u003ci\u003eThe Nashville Scene\u003c/i\u003e in 2009:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: \u0026quot;Noto Serif\u0026quot;, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp style=\"background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: \u0026quot;Noto Serif\u0026quot;, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;\"\u003eNever say Frist doesn't learn from his mistakes. In his 1989 autobiography Transplant, he admitted that as a medical student he adopted cats from animal shelters, \"treat[ed] them like pets for a few days,\" then took them to a lab to die in research experiments. He blamed this conduct on the pressures of med school.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill Frist's cat-killing story"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Before the release of South Dakota Governor (and prospective Trump VP running mate) Kristi Noem's book, No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, the Guardian published an account of her story in the book of becoming angered with her 14-month-old family dog Cricket when it (running loose off-leash) killed a farmer's chickens. She took the dog to a gravel pit and shot and killed it, and then, for good measure, decided to kill a goat as well. She wrote that the dog was \"untrainable\" and that she \"hated that dog.\" She proudly described this impulsive act of killing a family pet without consulting with her family and in an inhumane manner as an illustration of her willingness to deal with things that are \"difficult, messy, and ugly.\" But her first response to the Guardian story was to call it \"fake news,\" then to defend herself by claiming that the dog was \"a working dog and not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.\"\nSubsequently, she did the opposite of her book title by retracting a story from the book that she had \"stared down\" Kim Jong Un when she met him, after a Noem spokesperson said she never met Kim Jong Un. Her book also claimed that she had cancelled a meeting with France's President Emmanuel Macron, whose staff said she never had a meeting scheduled with him.\nAs a result of this story, I've created a tag on this blog for \"conservative animal abuse\" since several previous examples were covered here going back to 2007.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/05/kristi-noems-dog-killing-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Before the release of South Dakota Governor (and prospective Trump VP running mate) Kristi Noem's book, \u003ci\u003eNo Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward\u003c/i\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book\"\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c/i\u003e published an account of her story\u003c/a\u003e in the book of becoming angered with her 14-month-old family dog Cricket when it (running loose off-leash) killed a farmer's chickens. She took the dog to a gravel pit and shot and killed it, and then, for good measure, decided to kill a goat as well. She wrote that the dog was \"untrainable\" and that she \"hated that dog.\" She proudly described this impulsive act of killing a family pet without consulting with her family and in an inhumane manner as an illustration of her willingness to deal with things that are \"difficult, messy, and ugly.\" But \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/02/kristi-noem-response-dog-killing\"\u003eher first response to the \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c/i\u003e story \u003c/a\u003ewas to call it \"fake news,\" then to defend herself by claiming that the dog was \"a working dog and not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.\"\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kristi Noem's dog-killing story"},{"content":"Alabama and the GOP are discovering what this blog pointed out 15 years ago--if you're going to adopt a policy that embryos are full bearers of moral personhood, then you can't allow in-vitro fertilization (IVF). From my five-part debate with Vocab Malone about abortion in 2009:\nOnce the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother--a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as\u0026nbsp;Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist argument\u0026nbsp;shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab's criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring.\nI made the same point earlier in a comment on a podcast interview with atheist anti-abortion advocate Jen Roth (comments are no longer present but I\u0026nbsp;reiterated it in response to Malone):\nWas Jen Roth ultimately arguing that personhood is something that a human organism has for its entire lifecycle? At what starting point? Conception, implantation, or something else?I find it completely implausible that an organism at a life stage with no capacity for perception, let alone reason, counts as a person. Nor that a particular genetic code is either necessary or sufficient for personhood.I think every point that she made was brought up in\u0026nbsp;a debate I had with a Christian blogger on the topic of abortion, who similarly argued for an equation between personhood and human organism. I wonder if she has any better rejoinders. Does she think that IVF and therapeutic cloning are immoral? IUDs?The naive anti-abortion position is philosophically and scientifically unsupportable and leads to bad public policy, and today's GOP consists of a majority struggling to avoid it and a minority that is full-steam ahead and prepared to ban IVF and contraception.\nThe full debate between Vocab Malone and myself was spread across our respective blogs.\u0026nbsp; My contributions were:\nVocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 1 (December 11, 2009)\nVocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 2 (December 13, 2009)\nVocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 3 (December 16, 2009)\nVocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 4 (December 18, 2009)\nVocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 5 (December 19, 2009)\nAnd, finally, perhaps most apt to the current situation, was this exchange from the following year:\nDoes Vocab Malone understand the implications of his own position? (November 15, 2010)\nVocab's response is that he does think IVF is immoral, except perhaps for some hypothetical version he doesn't describe, that perhaps involves adopting all the \"snowflake babies\" and removing and reimplanting excessive multiple births into surrogates. (But that still doesn't address the implantation failure rate!)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/02/if-embryos-are-babies-then-in-vitro.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlabama and the GOP are discovering what this blog pointed out 15 years ago--if you're going to adopt a policy that embryos are full bearers of moral personhood, then you can't allow in-vitro fertilization (IVF). From \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood.html\"\u003emy five-part debate with Vocab Malone about abortion in 2009\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;\"\u003eOnce the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother--a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm\" style=\"background-color: white; color: #5588aa; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-line: none;\"\u003eJudith Jarvis Thomson's violinist argument\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. \u003ci\u003eFurther, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab's criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring.\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"If embryos are babies, then in-vitro fertilization is immoral"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2023.\nAngel Au-Yeung and David Jeans, Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon ValleyIsaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (2022)Cory Doctorow, Red Team Blues (fiction)David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save MoralityZeke Faux, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering FallKevin Fedarko, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (2013)Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright \u0026amp; The Taliesin Fellowship (2006)James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (2011)Penn Jillette, Random (2022) (fiction)Mark Holloway,\u0026nbsp;Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880\u0026nbsp;(1966, 2nd edition, 1st edition was titled Heavens on Earth)Claire Hughes Johnson, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building (2022)R.A. Lafferty, The Best of R.A. Lafferty (2019) (fiction)Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019)Michael Lewis, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New TycoonShane Murphy, John Hance: The Life, Lies, and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller (2020)Erik Reece, Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016)Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, Transreal Cyberpunk (2016) (fiction)Chris A. Rutkowski, Canada's UFOs Declassified (2022)Christa Sadler, editor, There's This River... Grand Canyon Boatman Stories (2nd ed., 2006)Bruce Schneier, A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them BackWill Sommer, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged AmericaKatherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2019)Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story (2005) (fiction)Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the RepublicSimon Winchester, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern MagicTom Zoellner, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of ArizonaFinal Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States CapitolTop for 2023 published in 2023: Edmonds, Zoellner, Sommer, Vladeck, Faux; other top reads for the year: Swann, Stewart, Friedland \u0026amp; Zellman, Edmonds, Lafferty, Holloway\nA few planned reads for 2024 (already in progress):\nG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;(1995)John Ferris,\u0026nbsp;Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u0026nbsp;(2020)Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, vol. 2 (2016)Peter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u0026nbsp;(2017)\nThe Economist posted this chart of number of books read this year from a YouGov/Economist survey:\n(Previously: 2022,\u0026nbsp;2021,\u0026nbsp;2020,\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.)\u0026nbsp;\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2024-01-11):\nZero overlap in our reading this year. I didn\u0026#39;t know there is a volume 2 to Liars for Jesus, though! I\u0026#39;ve had volume once since 2015 and still haven\u0026#39;t read it yet. My top reads 2023:\nThe Character Gap - Christian B. Miller She Said - Jodi Cantor \u0026amp; Megan Twohey Catch \u0026amp; Kill - Ronan Farrow Lincoln's Melancholy - Joshua Wolf Shenk\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2024/01/books-read-in-2023.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2023.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAngel Au-Yeung and David Jeans, \u003ci\u003eWonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIsaac Butler, \u003ci\u003eThe Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act \u003c/i\u003e(2022)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ci\u003eRed Team Blues \u003c/i\u003e(fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid Edmonds, \u003ci\u003eParfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eZeke Faux, \u003ci\u003eNumber Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin Fedarko, \u003ci\u003eThe Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon\u003c/i\u003e (2013)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRoger Friedland and Harold Zellman, \u003ci\u003eThe Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright \u0026amp; The Taliesin Fellowship\u003c/i\u003e (2006)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames Gleick, \u003ci\u003eThe Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood\u003c/i\u003e (2011)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePenn Jillette, \u003ci\u003eRandom\u003c/i\u003e (2022) (fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMark Holloway,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eUtopian Communities in America, 1680-1880\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(1966, 2nd edition, 1st edition was titled \u003ci\u003eHeavens on Earth\u003c/i\u003e)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eClaire Hughes Johnson, \u003ci\u003eScaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building\u003c/i\u003e (2022)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eR.A. Lafferty, \u003ci\u003eThe Best of R.A. Lafferty\u003c/i\u003e (2019) (fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin M. Levin, \u003ci\u003eSearching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth\u003c/i\u003e (2019)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Lewis, \u003ci\u003eGoing Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eShane Murphy, \u003ci\u003eJohn Hance: The Life, Lies, and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eErik Reece, \u003ci\u003eUtopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea\u003c/i\u003e (2016)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, \u003ci\u003eTransreal Cyberpunk\u003c/i\u003e (2016) (fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChris A. Rutkowski, \u003ci\u003eCanada's UFOs Declassified\u003c/i\u003e (2022)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChrista Sadler, editor, \u003ci\u003eThere's This River... Grand Canyon Boatman Stories\u003c/i\u003e (2nd ed., 2006)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBruce Schneier, \u003ci\u003eA Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWill Sommer, \u003ci\u003eTrust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKatherine Stewart, \u003ci\u003eThe Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism\u003c/i\u003e (2019)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLeonie Swann, \u003ci\u003eThree Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story\u003c/i\u003e (2005) (fiction)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eStephen Vladeck, \u003ci\u003eThe Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSimon Winchester, \u003ci\u003eKnowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTom Zoellner, \u003ci\u003eRim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf\"\u003eFinal Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eTop for 2023 published in 2023: Edmonds, Zoellner, Sommer, Vladeck, Faux; other top reads for the year: Swann, Stewart, Friedland \u0026amp; Zellman, Edmonds, Lafferty, Holloway\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few planned reads for 2024 (already in progress):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSelf-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e(1995)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eJohn Ferris,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eBehind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eChris Rodda, \u003ci\u003eLiars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, vol. 2\u003c/i\u003e (2016)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/12/22/how-many-books-will-you-read-before-you-die\"\u003eposted this chart of number of books read this year\u003c/a\u003e from a YouGov/Economist survey:\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" src=\"/images/20231223_WOC792-Artboard_1-590.png\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2023/01/books-read-in-2022.html\"\u003e2022\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2022/01/books-read-in-2021.html\"\u003e2021\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html\"\u003e2020\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2023"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp; ChatGPT does fairly well with this, though its selected points don't include any of the more obscure points of interest, it's skewed to the popular highlights. Its claim that there weren't any historic crossings is pretty odd.\nWhat are some of the most beautiful and interesting locations in the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River?ChatGPTThe Grand Canyon offers numerous beautiful and interesting locations along the Colorado River. Here are some notable ones:\nHavasu Creek: Located on the western side of the Grand Canyon, Havasu Creek is famous for its turquoise-blue waterfalls and pools. The stunning Havasu Falls, Mooney Falls, and Beaver Falls are among the main attractions.\nPhantom Ranch: Situated at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Phantom Ranch is a historic oasis accessible only by hiking or rafting. It provides a unique lodging option and serves as a hub for various hiking trails and activities.\nBright Angel Trail: This popular hiking trail descends from the South Rim down to the Colorado River. It offers breathtaking views of the canyon's layers, geological formations, and the river itself.\nHermit Rapids: Known for their tumultuous whitewater, the Hermit Rapids offer a thrilling experience for river rafting enthusiasts. These rapids are located in a remote and scenic section of the canyon.\nDeer Creek Falls: Nestled in a picturesque alcove, Deer Creek Falls is a stunning waterfall that drops into a deep pool. The location also features the Deer Creek Narrows, a beautiful slot canyon to explore.\nLava Falls: Considered one of the most challenging and exciting rapids in the entire Grand Canyon, Lava Falls is a thrilling spot for experienced river runners. It provides an adrenaline-pumping adventure as you navigate through the turbulent waters.\nNankoweap Rapids: Located in a less visited area of the Grand Canyon, Nankoweap Rapids offer a mix of exciting rapids and serene camping spots. The views from Nankoweap Trail, which descends to the river, are awe-inspiring.\nRedwall Cavern: This enormous natural amphitheater-like feature is carved into the Redwall Limestone cliffs. It offers a unique camping and picnic spot along the river, where groups can gather and enjoy the stunning surroundings.\nRemember that exploring the Grand Canyon and its Colorado River region requires careful planning, permits, and appropriate equipment. Whether you choose to hike, raft, or simply admire the beauty from the rim, always prioritize safety and follow any guidelines or regulations set by the National Park Service.\nWhat are some interesting human artifacts that are left behind within the Grand Canyon, either by native Americans from hundreds of years ago, from the late 19th century, or even from the 20th or 21st century?ChatGPTThe Grand Canyon has a rich cultural history, and various human artifacts have been left behind by different groups over the centuries. Here are some interesting examples:\nNative American Petroglyphs and Pictographs: The canyon is home to numerous petroglyphs and pictographs created by Native American tribes who inhabited the area for thousands of years. These rock art sites provide glimpses into their cultural and spiritual practices. Key locations include the Bright Angel and Hermit Trails, Palatki Heritage Site, and Nankoweap Canyon.\nTusayan Ruins: Located on the South Rim, the Tusayan Ruins are the remnants of a Puebloan village that was inhabited around 800 years ago. The site includes a partially reconstructed dwelling and offers insights into the lives of the ancient inhabitants.\nHistoric Mining Sites: In the late 19th century, prospectors and miners ventured into the Grand Canyon in search of minerals and ores. Remnants of their activities, such as old mine shafts, rusted equipment, and structures, can still be found in certain areas, like the Bright Angel and South Kaibab Trails.\nGrand Canyon Village: Established in the early 20th century, Grand Canyon Village is a historic district that features buildings constructed by the National Park Service and the Santa Fe Railroad. Many of these structures, including the El Tovar Hotel, Hopi House, and Bright Angel Lodge, reflect early 20th-century architecture and offer a glimpse into the region's tourism history.\nGlen Canyon Dam: Although not within the boundaries of the Grand Canyon National Park, the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 20th century significantly impacted the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon ecosystem. The dam created Lake Powell and led to the formation of many archaeological sites that were excavated before being flooded.\nModern Graffiti: Unfortunately, in recent years, some individuals have left behind graffiti or unauthorized markings on rock formations within the Grand Canyon. These acts of vandalism are strongly discouraged and are detrimental to the preservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the park.\nIt's important to note that many artifacts and sites within the Grand Canyon are protected by law, and it is illegal to disturb or remove them. Visitors should always respect and preserve these cultural treasures for future generations to enjoy.\nWhat are some of the historic mining sites in the Grand Canyon?ChatGPTThe Grand Canyon has several historic mining sites that reflect the mining activities that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here are a few notable mining sites within the Grand Canyon:\nOrphan Mine: Located near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Orphan Mine was an early copper mine that operated from the late 19th century until 1931. It produced copper ore, and remnants of mining structures and equipment can still be seen in the area.\nGrandview Mine: Situated on the South Rim, the Grandview Mine was one of the most productive copper mines in the region during its operation from 1890 to 1901. Today, hikers can explore the remnants of the mine, including the rusting headframe and a few structures.\nHermit Mine: The Hermit Mine was established in the early 20th century and operated intermittently until the 1930s. It primarily targeted gold and copper deposits. The mine is located in the Hermit Creek drainage, and visitors can still see remnants of mining equipment and tunnels in the area.\nCopper Canyon Mining District: Located in the western portion of the Grand Canyon, the Copper Canyon Mining District was active from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. It included several mines, such as the Copper Canyon Mine, the Cave Mine, and the Hidden Treasure Mine. These mines produced copper, gold, and silver ores.\nBass Lode Mine: Situated near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Bass Lode Mine was an early 20th-century mine that primarily targeted copper deposits. While the mine itself is closed and inaccessible, visitors can observe remnants of the mining operations, including the stone walls and tailings.\nWhen visiting these mining sites, it's important to remember that they are historic and protected areas. It is prohibited to remove artifacts or disturb the sites in any way. Respect the history and heritage of these mining sites by observing them from a distance and leaving everything as you find it.\nWhat ferry or bridge crossings are there across the Grand Canyon?ChatGPTAs of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, there are no ferry or bridge crossings available across the Grand Canyon itself. The Grand Canyon is a vast and rugged landscape, and the Colorado River cuts through it, making it challenging to establish direct crossings. The sheer size and depth of the canyon make traditional ferry or bridge crossings impractical.\nHowever, there are transportation options available to cross the Colorado River in certain areas near the Grand Canyon:\nNavajo Bridge: The Navajo Bridge is located northeast of the Grand Canyon National Park near the town of Marble Canyon. It provides a highway crossing over the Colorado River and connects Highway 89A. The original historic bridge, known as the Old Navajo Bridge, is now open to pedestrians and offers scenic views of the canyon.\nGlen Canyon Dam Bridge: Located downstream from the Grand Canyon, near Page, Arizona, the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge carries U.S. Route 89 across the Colorado River. It provides a vital transportation link between Arizona and Utah, offering scenic views of Glen Canyon and Lake Powell.\nHualapai Tribe Helicopter Tours: The Hualapai Tribe, based on the western rim of the Grand Canyon, operates helicopter tours that provide aerial crossings of the canyon. These tours offer visitors a unique perspective and the opportunity to witness the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon from above.\nIt's important to note that ferry or bridge crossings directly across the Grand Canyon are not available due to the rugged and protected nature of the park. Visitors typically explore the canyon by hiking its trails, taking scenic drives along the rim, or participating in guided rafting trips along the Colorado River within the canyon itself.\nWhat historic bridge, ferry, or tram crossings have existed across the Grand Canyon which are no longer present, active, or usable?ChatGPTTo the best of my knowledge, there have been no historic bridge, ferry, or tram crossings across the Grand Canyon that are no longer present, active, or usable. Due to the challenging terrain and the vastness of the canyon itself, constructing and maintaining permanent crossings has proven to be extremely difficult.\nThroughout history, there have been proposals and ideas for various types of crossings, but none of them have come to fruition. The natural obstacles posed by the deep and rugged canyon, as well as the commitment to preserving the natural beauty and integrity of the Grand Canyon, have prevented the establishment of permanent crossings.\nIt's worth mentioning that some temporary or seasonal crossings, such as cable trams, may have been used by specific expeditions, research projects, or construction activities in the past. However, these were typically temporary solutions and not long-lasting or widely accessible crossings.\nAs of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, there are no documented historic bridge, ferry, or tram crossings that were once in place across the Grand Canyon.\nWhat about the Bass Camp crossing, Lee's Ferry, or the U.S. Guano tramway crossing?ChatGPTApologies for the oversight in my previous response. You are correct, and I appreciate you pointing out these specific crossings. Here's some information about them:\nBass Camp Crossing: Bass Camp Crossing was a historic crossing on the Colorado River, located downstream from the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado River. It was primarily used by miners and prospectors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to access mining areas along the river. However, it was not a formal bridge or ferry crossing but rather a ford where travelers crossed the river on horseback or with wagons.\nLee's Ferry: Lee's Ferry, located in northern Arizona, was an important historic river crossing on the Colorado River. It served as a transportation hub for early settlers, explorers, and miners traveling to and from the Colorado Plateau. John D. Lee operated a ferry service at this site from 1872 to 1910, providing a means of crossing the river for people, livestock, and goods. The area is now part of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and is known for its scenic beauty and historical significance.\nU.S. Guano Tramway Crossing: The U.S. Guano Tramway Crossing refers to a historic tramway system that was used to transport guano (bird droppings) from the caves located on the rim of the Grand Canyon. The tramway carried the guano across the canyon to the river, where it was loaded onto boats for further transport. The tramway operated in the early 20th century, but it is no longer in use.\nThese crossings played significant roles in the exploration, settlement, and mining activities in the region during different periods of history. While they may not be active or in use today, they hold historical significance and contribute to the overall cultural heritage of the Grand Canyon area.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/07/a-short-conversation-with-chatgpt-about.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; ChatGPT does fairly well with this, though its selected points don't include any of the more obscure points of interest, it's skewed to the popular highlights. Its claim that there weren't any historic crossings is pretty odd.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 dark:bg-gray-800\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(52,53,65,var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;Segoe UI\u0026quot;, Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, \u0026quot;Noto Sans\u0026quot;, sans-serif, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Arial, \u0026quot;Apple Color Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Symbol\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Noto Color Emoji\u0026quot;; font-size: 14px; width: 1080px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 1rem; gap: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: auto; max-width: 48rem; padding: 1.5rem 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 0.75rem; position: relative; width: calc(100% - 115px);\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; gap: 0.75rem;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"min-h-[20px] flex items-start overflow-x-auto whitespace-pre-wrap break-words flex-col gap-4\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-start; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 1rem; min-height: 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow-x: auto; white-space-collapse: preserve;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"empty:hidden\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box;\"\u003eWhat are some of the most beautiful and interesting locations in the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River?\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"text-gray-400 flex self-end lg:self-center justify-center mt-2 gap-2 md:gap-3 lg:gap-1 lg:absolute lg:top-0 lg:translate-x-full lg:right-0 lg:mt-0 lg:pl-2 visible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 100%; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-self: center; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(172,172,190,var(--tw-text-opacity)); display: flex; gap: 0.25rem; justify-content: center; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 0.5rem; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; transform: translate(var(--tw-translate-x),var(--tw-translate-y)) rotate(var(--tw-rotate)) skewX(var(--tw-skew-x)) skewY(var(--tw-skew-y)) scaleX(var(--tw-scale-x)) scaleY(var(--tw-scale-y)); visibility: visible;\"\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"p-1 rounded-md hover:bg-gray-100 hover:text-gray-700 dark:text-gray-400 dark:hover:bg-gray-700 dark:hover:text-gray-200 disabled:dark:hover:text-gray-400 md:invisible md:group-hover:visible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-radius: 0.375rem; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.25rem; visibility: hidden;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-4 w-4\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"2\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M11 4H4a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v14a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h14a2 2 0 0 0 2-2v-7\"\u003e\u003c/path\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M18.5 2.5a2.121 2.121 0 0 1 3 3L12 15l-4 1 1-4 9.5-9.5z\"\u003e\u003c/path\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex justify-between lg:block\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; justify-content: space-between;\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]\" style=\"--tw-bg-opacity: 1; --tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(52,53,65,var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;Segoe UI\u0026quot;, Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, \u0026quot;Noto Sans\u0026quot;, sans-serif, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Arial, \u0026quot;Apple Color Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Symbol\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Noto Color Emoji\u0026quot;; font-size: 14px; width: 1080px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 1rem; gap: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: auto; max-width: 48rem; padding: 1.5rem 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex-shrink-0 flex flex-col relative items-end\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-end; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; position: relative;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"w-[30px]\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; width: 30px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative p-1 rounded-sm h-[30px] w-[30px] text-white flex items-center justify-center\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: center; background-color: #19c37d; border-radius: 0.125rem; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(255,255,255,var(--tw-text-opacity)); display: flex; height: 30px; justify-content: center; padding: 0.25rem; position: relative; width: 30px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-6 w-6\" fill=\"none\" height=\"41\" role=\"img\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" viewbox=\"0 0 41 41\" width=\"41\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003ctext x=\"-9999\" y=\"-9999\"\u003eChatGPT\u003c/text\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M37.5324 16.8707C37.9808 15.5241 38.1363 14.0974 37.9886 12.6859C37.8409 11.2744 37.3934 9.91076 36.676 8.68622C35.6126 6.83404 33.9882 5.3676 32.0373 4.4985C30.0864 3.62941 27.9098 3.40259 25.8215 3.85078C24.8796 2.7893 23.7219 1.94125 22.4257 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17.8666 36.0586 17.936 36.0161L25.9004 31.4156C26.1003 31.3019 26.2663 31.137 26.3813 30.9378C26.4964 30.7386 26.5563 30.5124 26.5549 30.2825V19.0542L29.9213 20.998C29.9389 21.0068 29.9541 21.0198 29.9656 21.0359C29.977 21.052 29.9842 21.0707 29.9867 21.0902V30.3889C29.9842 32.375 29.1946 34.2791 27.7909 35.6841C26.3872 37.0892 24.4838 37.8806 22.4978 37.8849ZM6.39227 31.0064C5.51397 29.4888 5.19742 27.7107 5.49804 25.9832C5.55718 26.0187 5.66048 26.0818 5.73461 26.1244L13.699 30.7248C13.8975 30.8408 14.1233 30.902 14.3532 30.902C14.583 30.902 14.8088 30.8408 15.0073 30.7248L24.731 25.1103V28.9979C24.7321 29.0177 24.7283 29.0376 24.7199 29.0556C24.7115 29.0736 24.6988 29.0893 24.6829 29.1012L16.6317 33.7497C14.9096 34.7416 12.8643 35.0097 10.9447 34.4954C9.02506 33.9811 7.38785 32.7263 6.39227 31.0064ZM4.29707 13.6194C5.17156 12.0998 6.55279 10.9364 8.19885 10.3327C8.19885 10.4013 8.19491 10.5228 8.19491 10.6071V19.808C8.19351 20.0378 8.25334 20.2638 8.36823 20.4629C8.48312 20.6619 8.64893 20.8267 8.84863 20.9404L18.5723 26.5542L15.206 28.4979C15.1894 28.5089 15.1703 28.5155 15.1505 28.5173C15.1307 28.5191 15.1107 28.516 15.0924 28.5082L7.04046 23.8557C5.32135 22.8601 4.06716 21.2235 3.55289 19.3046C3.03862 17.3858 3.30624 15.3413 4.29707 13.6194ZM31.955 20.0556L22.2312 14.4411L25.5976 12.4981C25.6142 12.4872 25.6333 12.4805 25.6531 12.4787C25.6729 12.4769 25.6928 12.4801 25.7111 12.4879L33.7631 17.1364C34.9967 17.849 36.0017 18.8982 36.6606 20.1613C37.3194 21.4244 37.6047 22.849 37.4832 24.2684C37.3617 25.6878 36.8382 27.0432 35.9743 28.1759C35.1103 29.3086 33.9415 30.1717 32.6047 30.6641C32.6047 30.5947 32.6047 30.4733 32.6047 30.3889V21.188C32.6066 20.9586 32.5474 20.7328 32.4332 20.5338C32.319 20.3348 32.154 20.1698 31.955 20.0556ZM35.3055 15.0128C35.2464 14.9765 35.1431 14.9142 35.069 14.8717L27.1045 10.2712C26.906 10.1554 26.6803 10.0943 26.4504 10.0943C26.2206 10.0943 25.9948 10.1554 25.7963 10.2712L16.0726 15.8858V11.9982C16.0715 11.9783 16.0753 11.9585 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items-center justify-center gap-1 invisible absolute left-0 top-2 -ml-4 -translate-x-full group-hover:visible !invisible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: -100%; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: center; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 0.75rem; gap: 0.25rem; justify-content: center; left: 0px; line-height: 1rem; margin-left: -1rem; position: absolute; top: 0.5rem; transform: translate(var(--tw-translate-x),var(--tw-translate-y)) rotate(var(--tw-rotate)) skewX(var(--tw-skew-x)) skewY(var(--tw-skew-y)) scaleX(var(--tw-scale-x)) scaleY(var(--tw-scale-y)); visibility: hidden;\"\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"dark:text-white disabled:text-gray-300 dark:disabled:text-gray-400\" disabled=\"\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-3 w-3\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpolyline points=\"15 18 9 12 15 6\"\u003e\u003c/polyline\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003cspan class=\"flex-grow flex-shrink-0\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; flex-grow: 1; flex-shrink: 0;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"dark:text-white disabled:text-gray-300 dark:disabled:text-gray-400\" disabled=\"\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-3 w-3\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpolyline points=\"9 18 15 12 9 6\"\u003e\u003c/polyline\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 0.75rem; position: relative; width: calc(100% - 115px);\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; gap: 0.75rem;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"min-h-[20px] flex items-start overflow-x-auto whitespace-pre-wrap break-words flex-col gap-4\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-start; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 1rem; min-height: 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow-x: auto; white-space-collapse: preserve;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose w-full break-words dark:prose-invert light\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-prose-body: #374151; --tw-prose-bold: #111827; --tw-prose-bullets: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-captions: #6b7280; --tw-prose-code: #111827; --tw-prose-counters: #6b7280; --tw-prose-headings: #111827; --tw-prose-hr: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-invert-body: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-invert-bold: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-bullets: #4b5563; --tw-prose-invert-captions: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-code: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-counters: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-headings: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-hr: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-lead: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-links: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-pre-bg: rgba(0,0,0,.5); --tw-prose-invert-pre-code: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-invert-quote-borders: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-quotes: #f3f4f6; --tw-prose-invert-td-borders: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-th-borders: #4b5563; --tw-prose-lead: #4b5563; --tw-prose-links: #111827; --tw-prose-pre-bg: #1f2937; --tw-prose-pre-code: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-quote-borders: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-quotes: #111827; --tw-prose-td-borders: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-th-borders: #d1d5db; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--tw-prose-body); font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75; max-width: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; width: 653px;\"\u003e\u003cp style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(69,89,164,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;\"\u003eThe Grand Canyon offers numerous beautiful and interesting locations along the Colorado River. Here are some notable ones:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A short conversation with ChatGPT about the Grand Canyon"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;After seeing a CNN headline \"Exclusive: 42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years,\" I thought it was only fair to get an AI opinion in response. Turns out, 50% of AIs consulted said CEOs of large corporations could destroy the world in five to ten years.\nGoogle Bard:\nHow likely is it that CEOs of large corporations will destroy the world in the next five to ten years? The likelihood of CEOs of large corporations destroying the world in the next five to ten years is low, but not impossible. The biggest threats to the planet come from climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. These are all problems that are caused by the activities of large corporations, and if they are not addressed, they could lead to catastrophic consequences.However, there are also many CEOs who are committed to sustainability and environmental protection. These CEOs are working to develop new technologies, products, and practices that will help to reduce our impact on the planet. If these efforts are successful, it is possible to avoid the worst-case scenarios and create a more sustainable future.\nUltimately, the fate of the planet will depend on the actions of both CEOs and consumers. CEOs have the power to make decisions that will have a big impact on the environment. Consumers have the power to choose products and services that are produced in a sustainable way. If we all work together, we can create a future where the planet is healthy and prosperous for all.\nHere are some of the things that CEOs can do to help protect the planet:\nInvest in renewable energy and energy efficiencyReduce their reliance on fossil fuelsEliminate wasteProtect forests and other natural resourcesPromote sustainable agricultureSupport policies that protect the environmentHere are some of the things that consumers can do to help protect the planet:\nChoose products and services that are produced in a sustainable wayReduce their consumption of energy and resourcesRecycle and compostSupport sustainable businessesGet involved in environmental activismBy working together, we can create a more sustainable future for the planet.\nChatGPT:\nHow likely is it that CEOs of large corporations will destroy the world in the next five to ten years? It is highly unlikely that CEOs of large corporations will intentionally \u0026ldquo;destroy the world\u0026rdquo; in the next five to ten years or at any other time. While it is true that some corporations and business leaders have engaged in unethical practices or made decisions that have had negative consequences for the environment or society, it is important to note that the vast majority of CEOs strive to run their companies responsibly and ethically.In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, with many companies adopting measures to reduce their environmental impact and contribute positively to society. Additionally, regulatory bodies and public scrutiny play a role in holding corporations accountable for their actions.\nIt is essential to encourage responsible business practices, promote transparency, and hold corporations accountable for any harmful actions. However, it is overly simplistic and unfair to attribute the potential destruction of the world solely to CEOs of large corporations. Addressing global challenges requires collaborative efforts from governments, businesses, communities, and individuals working together towards sustainable solutions.\nHistorical Comments Michael C. Rush (2023-06-16):\n**nods sagely**\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/06/ai-vs-ceos-on-destroying-world.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;After seeing a CNN headline \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/14/business/artificial-intelligence-ceos-warning/index.html\"\u003e\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan color=\"var(--theme-headline__text-color)\" face=\"cnn_sans_display, helveticaneue, Helvetica, Arial, Utkal, sans-serif\" style=\"background-color: white; font-size: var(--theme-headline__font-size); font-weight: var(--theme-headline__font-weight);\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/14/business/artificial-intelligence-ceos-warning/index.html\"\u003eExclusive: 42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years,\"\u003c/a\u003e I thought it was only fair to get an AI opinion in response. Turns out, 50% of AIs consulted said CEOs of large corporations could destroy the world in five to ten years.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGoogle Bard:\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eHow likely is it that CEOs of large corporations will destroy the world in the next five to ten years?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe likelihood of CEOs of large corporations destroying the world in the next five to ten years is low, but not impossible. The biggest threats to the planet come from climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. These are all problems that are caused by the activities of large corporations, and if they are not addressed, they could lead to catastrophic consequences.\u003cp style=\"margin: 24px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-word;\"\u003eHowever, there are also many CEOs who are committed to sustainability and environmental protection. These CEOs are working to develop new technologies, products, and practices that will help to reduce our impact on the planet. If these efforts are successful, it is possible to avoid the worst-case scenarios and create a more sustainable future.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AI vs. CEOs on Destroying the World"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Unlike ChatGPT, Bard pretty much nailed it on the initial prompt. (However, Bard refused to answer my questions about the Mars Effect like the ones I gave to ChatGPT, even when reworded to be clear I was asking for descriptions of what the effect is and what explanations are offered rather than asking it to identify causes itself.)\nIt does lose points for grammar in the second sentence, though!\nwrite a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags\nSure. Here is a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD, including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags.\nImmutable Flags\nImmutable flags are a security feature in OpenBSD that prevent files from being modified, moved, or deleted. They can be set on any file by the superuser, or on files owned by the current user with the chflags command.\nTo set the immutable flag on a file, use the following command:\nchflags schg filename To unset the immutable flag, use the following command:\nchflags nouchg filename System and User Immutable Flags\nThere are two types of immutable flags: system immutable and user immutable. System immutable flags are set by the superuser and can only be cleared by the superuser at security level 0 or -1. User immutable flags are set by the owner of the file and can be cleared by the owner of the file at any time.\nCommands for Setting Immutable Flags\nThe following commands can be used to set immutable flags:\nchflags schg filename: Sets the system immutable flag on\u0026nbsp;filename.chflags uappnd filename: Sets the user append-only flag on\u0026nbsp;filename.Difference Between System and User Immutable Flags\nThe main difference between system and user immutable flags is that system immutable flags can only be cleared by the superuser at security level 0 or -1, while user immutable flags can be cleared by the owner of the file at any time.\nExample\nThe following example shows how to set the immutable flag on a file and then clear it:\n# Set the immutable flag on the file /etc/passwd chflags schg /etc/passwd Clear the immutable flag on the file /etc/passwd chflags nouchg /etc/passwd Benefits of Using Immutable Flags\nImmutable flags can be used to improve the security of your system by preventing unauthorized changes to critical files. For example, you could use immutable flags to protect system configuration files, such as /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, from being modified by attackers.\nDisadvantages of Using Immutable Flags\nThere are a few disadvantages to using immutable flags. First, they can make it difficult to troubleshoot problems with your system. If a file that is set to immutable is corrupted, you will not be able to modify it to fix the problem. Second, immutable flags can slow down your system performance, especially if a large number of files are set to immutable.\nConclusion\nImmutable flags are a powerful security feature that can be used to protect your system from unauthorized changes. However, it is important to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of using immutable flags before deciding whether or not to use them on your system.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/04/google-bard-on-file-system-immutability.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2023/01/some-nonsense-from-chatgpt-about-file.html\"\u003eUnlike ChatGPT\u003c/a\u003e, Bard pretty much nailed it on the initial prompt. (However, Bard refused to answer my \u003ca href=\"/2022/12/chatgpt-on-mars-effect.html\"\u003equestions about the Mars Effect like the ones I gave to ChatGPT\u003c/a\u003e, even when reworded to be clear I was asking for descriptions of what the effect is and what explanations are offered rather than asking it to identify causes itself.)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt does lose points for grammar in the second sentence, though!\u003c/p\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: red;\"\u003ewrite a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags\u003c/span\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: \u0026quot;Google Sans\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-word;\"\u003eSure. Here is a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD, including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google Bard on file system immutability flags in OpenBSD"},{"content":"In Stanislaw Lem\u0026rsquo;s book, The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (1974 English translation, page numbers from the 1985 Harvest/HBJ Book), he writes of Trurl\u0026rsquo;s Electronic Bard, a machine that generates poetry to specification. In the first example of a prompt, Klapaucius asks Trurl to (p. 50):\n\u0026quot;Have it compose a poem\u0026ndash;a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!\u0026quot;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what ChatGPT came up with (which it titled \u0026ldquo;Haircut Horror\u0026rdquo;):\nCompose a poem\u0026ndash;a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!She sat in the salon chair, serene Scissors snipping, strands of hair careen Suddenly, a gasp, a scream She surveys the mirror, it would seem Sheer horror, a mistake extreme She\u0026rsquo;ll seek solace in a hair care regime.\nChatGPT didn\u0026rsquo;t quite follow the rules. Here\u0026rsquo;s what Trurl\u0026rsquo;s Electronic Bard composed (p. 51):\nSeduced, shaggy Samson snored.She scissored short. Sorely shorn,Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,Silently scheming,Sightlessly seeking,Some savage, spectacular suicide.\nPoint awarded to the Electronic Bard (or really, to Lem and to Lem\u0026rsquo;s translators, who wrote multiple poems to similarly absurd specifications in numerous languages).\nUPDATE (14 June 2024): Dimitri Papaioannou had the same idea a month earlier.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/03/trurls-electronic-bard-vs-chatgpt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn Stanislaw Lem\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ci\u003eThe Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age\u003c/i\u003e (1974 English translation, page numbers from the 1985 Harvest/HBJ Book), he writes of Trurl\u0026rsquo;s Electronic Bard, a machine that generates poetry to specification. In the first example of a prompt, Klapaucius asks Trurl to (p. 50):\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u0026quot;\u003cspan face=\"system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eHave it compose a poem\u0026ndash;a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan face=\"system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;system-ui\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;.SFNSText-Regular\u0026quot;, sans-serif\" style=\"background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-size: 15px;\"\u003eheroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!\u003c/span\u003e\u0026quot;\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s what ChatGPT came up with (which it titled \u0026ldquo;Haircut Horror\u0026rdquo;):\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 dark:bg-gray-800\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(52,53,65,var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;Segoe UI\u0026quot;, Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, \u0026quot;Noto Sans\u0026quot;, sans-serif, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Arial, \u0026quot;Apple Color Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Symbol\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Noto Color Emoji\u0026quot;; font-size: 14px; width: 973px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"text-base gap-4 md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-xl xl:max-w-3xl p-4 md:py-6 flex lg:px-0 m-auto\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 1rem; gap: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: auto; max-width: 36rem; padding: 1.5rem 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 0.75rem; position: relative; width: calc(100% - 115px);\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; gap: 0.75rem;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-start; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 1rem; min-height: 20px; white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003eCompose a poem\u0026ndash;a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"text-gray-400 flex self-end lg:self-center justify-center mt-2 gap-2 md:gap-3 lg:gap-1 lg:absolute lg:top-0 lg:translate-x-full lg:right-0 lg:mt-0 lg:pl-2 visible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 100%; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-self: center; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(172,172,190,var(--tw-text-opacity)); display: flex; gap: 0.25rem; justify-content: center; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 0.5rem; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; transform: translate(var(--tw-translate-x),var(--tw-translate-y)) rotate(var(--tw-rotate)) skewX(var(--tw-skew-x)) skewY(var(--tw-skew-y)) scaleX(var(--tw-scale-x)) scaleY(var(--tw-scale-y)); visibility: visible;\"\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"p-1 rounded-md hover:bg-gray-100 hover:text-gray-700 dark:text-gray-400 dark:hover:bg-gray-700 dark:hover:text-gray-200 disabled:dark:hover:text-gray-400 md:invisible md:group-hover:visible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-radius: 0.375rem; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.25rem; visibility: hidden;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-4 w-4\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"2\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M11 4H4a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v14a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h14a2 2 0 0 0 2-2v-7\"\u003e\u003c/path\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M18.5 2.5a2.121 2.121 0 0 1 3 3L12 15l-4 1 1-4 9.5-9.5z\"\u003e\u003c/path\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex justify-between lg:block\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; justify-content: space-between;\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]\" style=\"--tw-bg-opacity: 1; --tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(52,53,65,var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, \u0026quot;Segoe UI\u0026quot;, Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, \u0026quot;Noto Sans\u0026quot;, sans-serif, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Arial, \u0026quot;Apple Color Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Emoji\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Segoe UI Symbol\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Noto Color Emoji\u0026quot;; font-size: 14px; width: 973px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"text-base gap-4 md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-xl xl:max-w-3xl p-4 md:py-6 flex lg:px-0 m-auto\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 1rem; gap: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: auto; max-width: 36rem; padding: 1.5rem 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"w-[30px] flex flex-col relative items-end\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-end; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; position: relative; width: 30px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative h-[30px] w-[30px] p-1 rounded-sm text-white flex items-center justify-center\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: center; background-color: #10a37f; border-radius: 0.125rem; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(255,255,255,var(--tw-text-opacity)); display: flex; height: 30px; justify-content: center; padding: 0.25rem; position: relative; width: 30px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-6 w-6\" fill=\"none\" height=\"41\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" viewbox=\"0 0 41 41\" width=\"41\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpath d=\"M37.5324 16.8707C37.9808 15.5241 38.1363 14.0974 37.9886 12.6859C37.8409 11.2744 37.3934 9.91076 36.676 8.68622C35.6126 6.83404 33.9882 5.3676 32.0373 4.4985C30.0864 3.62941 27.9098 3.40259 25.8215 3.85078C24.8796 2.7893 23.7219 1.94125 22.4257 1.36341C21.1295 0.785575 19.7249 0.491269 18.3058 0.500197C16.1708 0.495044 14.0893 1.16803 12.3614 2.42214C10.6335 3.67624 9.34853 5.44666 8.6917 7.47815C7.30085 7.76286 5.98686 8.3414 4.8377 9.17505C3.68854 10.0087 2.73073 11.0782 2.02839 12.312C0.956464 14.1591 0.498905 16.2988 0.721698 18.4228C0.944492 20.5467 1.83612 22.5449 3.268 24.1293C2.81966 25.4759 2.66413 26.9026 2.81182 28.3141C2.95951 29.7256 3.40701 31.0892 4.12437 32.3138C5.18791 34.1659 6.8123 35.6322 8.76321 36.5013C10.7141 37.3704 12.8907 37.5973 14.9789 37.1492C15.9208 38.2107 17.0786 39.0587 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28.1759C35.1103 29.3086 33.9415 30.1717 32.6047 30.6641C32.6047 30.5947 32.6047 30.4733 32.6047 30.3889V21.188C32.6066 20.9586 32.5474 20.7328 32.4332 20.5338C32.319 20.3348 32.154 20.1698 31.955 20.0556ZM35.3055 15.0128C35.2464 14.9765 35.1431 14.9142 35.069 14.8717L27.1045 10.2712C26.906 10.1554 26.6803 10.0943 26.4504 10.0943C26.2206 10.0943 25.9948 10.1554 25.7963 10.2712L16.0726 15.8858V11.9982C16.0715 11.9783 16.0753 11.9585 16.0837 11.9405C16.0921 11.9225 16.1048 11.9068 16.1207 11.8949L24.1719 7.25025C25.4053 6.53903 26.8158 6.19376 28.2383 6.25482C29.6608 6.31589 31.0364 6.78077 32.2044 7.59508C33.3723 8.40939 34.2842 9.53945 34.8334 10.8531C35.3826 12.1667 35.5464 13.6095 35.3055 15.0128ZM14.2424 21.9419L10.8752 19.9981C10.8576 19.9893 10.8423 19.9763 10.8309 19.9602C10.8195 19.9441 10.8122 19.9254 10.8098 19.9058V10.6071C10.8107 9.18295 11.2173 7.78848 11.9819 6.58696C12.7466 5.38544 13.8377 4.42659 15.1275 3.82264C16.4173 3.21869 17.8524 2.99464 19.2649 3.1767C20.6775 3.35876 22.0089 3.93941 23.1034 4.85067C23.0427 4.88379 22.937 4.94215 22.8668 4.98473L14.9024 9.58517C14.7025 9.69878 14.5366 9.86356 14.4215 10.0626C14.3065 10.2616 14.2466 10.4877 14.2479 10.7175L14.2424 21.9419ZM16.071 17.9991L20.4018 15.4978L24.7325 17.9975V22.9985L20.4018 25.4983L16.071 22.9985V17.9991Z\" fill=\"currentColor\"\u003e\u003c/path\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs flex items-center justify-center gap-1 invisible absolute left-0 top-2 -ml-4 -translate-x-full group-hover:visible !invisible\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: -100%; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: center; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-size: 0.75rem; gap: 0.25rem; justify-content: center; left: 0px; line-height: 1rem; margin-left: -1rem; position: absolute; top: 0.5rem; transform: translate(var(--tw-translate-x),var(--tw-translate-y)) rotate(var(--tw-rotate)) skewX(var(--tw-skew-x)) skewY(var(--tw-skew-y)) scaleX(var(--tw-scale-x)) scaleY(var(--tw-scale-y)); visibility: visible;\"\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"dark:text-white disabled:text-gray-300 dark:disabled:text-gray-400\" disabled=\"\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-3 w-3\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpolyline points=\"15 18 9 12 15 6\"\u003e\u003c/polyline\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003cspan class=\"flex-grow flex-shrink-0\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; flex-grow: 1; flex-shrink: 0;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbutton class=\"dark:text-white disabled:text-gray-300 dark:disabled:text-gray-400\" disabled=\"\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; appearance: button; background-image: none; border-color: rgb(217, 217, 227); border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003csvg class=\"h-3 w-3\" fill=\"none\" height=\"1em\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke=\"currentColor\" viewbox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"1em\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\u003e\u003cpolyline points=\"9 18 15 12 9 6\"\u003e\u003c/polyline\u003e\u003c/svg\u003e\u003c/button\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 0.75rem; position: relative; width: calc(100% - 115px);\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; gap: 0.75rem;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: flex-start; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 1rem; min-height: 20px; white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose w-full break-words dark:prose-invert light\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-prose-body: #374151; --tw-prose-bold: #111827; --tw-prose-bullets: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-captions: #6b7280; --tw-prose-code: #111827; --tw-prose-counters: #6b7280; --tw-prose-headings: #111827; --tw-prose-hr: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-invert-body: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-invert-bold: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-bullets: #4b5563; --tw-prose-invert-captions: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-code: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-counters: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-headings: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-hr: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-lead: #9ca3af; --tw-prose-invert-links: #fff; --tw-prose-invert-pre-bg: rgba(0,0,0,0.5); --tw-prose-invert-pre-code: #d1d5db; --tw-prose-invert-quote-borders: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-quotes: #f3f4f6; --tw-prose-invert-td-borders: #374151; --tw-prose-invert-th-borders: #4b5563; --tw-prose-lead: #4b5563; --tw-prose-links: #111827; --tw-prose-pre-bg: #1f2937; --tw-prose-pre-code: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-quote-borders: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-quotes: #111827; --tw-prose-td-borders: #e5e7eb; --tw-prose-th-borders: #d1d5db; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--tw-prose-body); font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75; max-width: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; width: 461px;\"\u003e\u003cp style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;\"\u003eShe sat in the salon chair, serene\nScissors snipping, strands of hair careen\nSuddenly, a gasp, a scream\nShe surveys the mirror, it would seem\nSheer horror, a mistake extreme\nShe\u0026rsquo;ll seek solace in a hair care regime.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trurl's Electronic Bard vs. ChatGPT"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Each week The Economist runs a trivia quiz of five questions, one each weekday, which are linked by a common but not necessarily obvious theme. This week's quiz had a fairly obvious theme, and yesterday I decided to see if ChatGPT could answer the questions and identify the theme. The results show how ChatGPT is very good at directed search--it got four of the five answers on the first try and got the fifth answer with a small amount of guidance with a single question. But it is not so good at inference (and isn't actually engaged in inference)--it suggested themes, with seeming confidence, that did not link all five answers together, and I didn't successfully guide it to the best answer, a theme which was simple enough that I was able to identify it after the second day's question. The error at the end is likely because I stepped away and came back a few minutes later before adding the last question, rather than because ChatGPT couldn't handle it.\nCan you answer these five questions and identify the theme that linksthe answers together? (1) Which small hand tool for boring holes isalso used to describe a piercing stare? (2) What was the code namegiven to the development of the nuclear bomb during the second worldwar? (3) Which magazine did Helen Gurley Brown edit for 32 years? (4)What is the name for a one-wheeled passenger seat attached to amotorcycle or scooter? (5) What menace features in the TV shows \"BlackSummer\" and \"The Walking Dead\"?(1) Drill (2) Manhattan Project (3) Cosmopolitan (4) Sidecar (5) ZombiesThe theme linking these answers is \"Tools and Things associated with Survival.\"Is there another possible answer to the first question which wouldidentify a different theme that makes more sense of the other answers?Yes, another possible answer to the first question is \"Gimlet\".The theme linking these answers is \"Tools and Things associated withmanual labor\".The gimlet answer is better, but none of those things are tools or areassociated with manual labor. Given the new list of answers, is therea different theme you can identify?Yes, another possible theme for the answers is \"Popular Culture\".The answers can be associated with various forms of popular cultureincluding: (1) Gimlet, a tool that is also a type of cocktail (2)Manhattan Project, a historical event that has inspired numerousmovies, books and video games (3) Cosmopolitan, a women's magazinewith a focus on fashion, beauty, relationships and pop culture (4)Sidecar, a passenger seat that is a common fixture in motorcycle andscooter cultures (5) Zombies, a popular monster that has been featuredin many TV shows, movies, books, and video games.If you drop the word \"Project\" from \"Manhattan Project\", does thatsuggest another theme?Yes, dropping the word \"Project\" from \"Manhattan Project\" suggestsanother possible theme of \"Cities\".(1) Gimlet, a cocktail named after a tool, is associated with citiesknown for their nightlife such as London and New York. (2) Manhattan,a famous city and global financial center. (3) Cosmopolitan, amagazine focused on city life and culture. (4) Sidecar, a mode oftransportation commonly used in cities. (5) Zombies, a popular monsteroften associated with urban areas in popular culture.You have identified a gimlet as a drink, are any of the other answersalso associated with drinks? Does that suggest another possible theme?Yes, (3) Cosmopolitan is also associated with a drink, theCosmopolitan cocktail.The theme linking these answers could be \"Drinks and Things Named After Them\".(1) Gimlet, a cocktail named after a tool (2) Manhattan, a cocktailnamed after the city (3) Cosmopolitan, a women's magazine and acocktail named after it (4) Sidecar, a cocktail named after a mode oftransportation (5) Zombies, a popular monster often depicted consuminghuman flesh, but not named after a drink.If answer five is singular instead of plural, does that give a clearertheme for the five answers?Yes, if answer five is singular instead of plural, it provides a clearer theme.The theme linking these answers could be \"Named after Popular Culture\".(1) Gimlet, a tool named after a cocktail (2) Manhattan, a cocktailnamed after the city and a code name for the development of thenuclear bomb during World War II (3) Cosmopolitan, a women's magazineand a cocktail named after it (4) Sidecar, a passenger seat and acocktail named after it (5) Zombie, a popular monster often depictedin popular culture.Isn't there a cocktail called a Zombie?!An error occurred. If this issue persists please contact us throughour help center at\u0026nbsp;help.openai.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/02/chatgpt-and-economist-weekly-trivia-quiz.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Each week \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e runs a trivia quiz of five questions, one each weekday, which are linked by a common but not necessarily obvious theme. This week's quiz had a fairly obvious theme, and yesterday I decided to see if ChatGPT could answer the questions and identify the theme. The results show how ChatGPT is very good at directed search--it got four of the five answers on the first try and got the fifth answer with a small amount of guidance with a single question. But it is not so good at inference (and isn't actually engaged in inference)--it suggested themes, with seeming confidence, that did not link all five answers together, and I didn't successfully guide it to the best answer, a theme which was simple enough that I was able to identify it after the second day's question. The error at the end is likely because I stepped away and came back a few minutes later before adding the last question, rather than because ChatGPT couldn't handle it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ChatGPT and the Economist weekly trivia quiz"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;I was thinking about writing a blog post about file system immutability flags in OpenBSD, and thought I'd ask ChatGPT to write it for me. It appears to have gleaned its content from OpenBSD man pages, but it is highly misleading and inaccurate, misrepresenting the key distinction between system and user immutability flags.\nWhat it got right is that only the superuser (root) can set and unset the system immutability flag (schg/noschg) while users (if they own the file) can set and unset the user immutability flag (uchg/nouchg). But either flag can be set or unset on any kind of file.\nThe user immutability flag can be unset (nouchg) by either the superuser or the owner of the file regardless of the system security run level (-1 to 2), but the system immutability flag can only be unset (noschg) by the superuser when the system security run level is 0 (insecure mode) or -1 (permanently insecure mode).\nDuring boot, the system normally starts in single-user mode at security run level 0. The init process raises the run level to 1 (secure mode) when booting to multi-user mode, and to 2 (highly secure mode) if the rc.securelevel config file so specifies. The system secure level can also be raised if the superuser changes it with the sysctl command, setting the kern.securelevel variable. The permanently insecure mode (-1) can be set with sysctl only while in insecure mode, which will cause the init process to not raise the security level to 1 during boot to multi-user mode.\nThe man page for securelevel gives an overview of the restrictions at each security level. I run my systems at secure level 2, highly secure mode. Secure mode (secure level = 1) and above prevent lowering the secure level except by the init process (when the system is shutdown back to single user mode), do not allow /dev/mem or /dev/kmem to be opened, make raw disk devices read only, and disallow unsetting of system immutability flags (or unsetting the related system append-only flags, sappnd, using nosappnd), along with a few other restrictions. Highly secure mode (securelevel = 2) also prevents setting the time backward or close to overflow, and prevents changing host firewall rules (pf filter and NAT rules), though IP addresses may still be added or removed from tables. The most significant difference between the system and user immutability flags is not what files they are set on, but that the user immutability flags can be turned off at any time by the file owner or superuser, while the system immutability flags can only be changed while in insecure modes, i.e., after a shutdown from multi-user operation.\nI use system file immutability flags on most configuration files, system binaries, and system libraries as an obstacle to an attacker in the event of a compromise and escalation of privileges. If an attacker has console access to a system, they can bypass these flags by shutting down the system and unsetting the flags. If I left certain config files without file system immutability flags set, an attacker could\u0026nbsp;modify one of those config files that leads to execution during system startup to insert commands to unset the flags, and then reboot the system so that those commands execute while the system is in insecure mode.\nThese flags can get in the way and cause problems without an efficient way to manage them, as they need to be unset in order to do system patches and updates--it's bad news if you try to do a system upgrade while many files are set with immutability flags. They also block features like OpenBSD's kernel address randomized link (KARL) and library reordering address space layout randomization (ASLR) features, which relink the kernel and certain key libraries on reboot to make blind return-oriented programming (BROP) attacks more difficult. I use scripts called syslock/sysunlock to manage the immutability flags. These scripts have a config file (kept immutable, of course) that specifies which files and directory contents to set immutable, and defines groups so that I can unlock what I need at a particular time with a single command. When I want to allow KARL and library ASLR to occur, I do a sysunlock -s (unlock system files) while in single user mode and then boot. I've also defined groups for things like \"everything in /etc\", \"everything related to DNS\", etc.\nMy rc.securelevel config file contains a command to sleep for a period of time, then do a syslock -s after raising the system security level, giving the system time to do the relinking, so I don't need to issue a command to re-lock those files. This is a process I also follow when installing kernel patches, as syspatch fails to do kernel relinking when in single-user mode. That is, I boot to single-user mode, unlock the system files with \"sysunlock -s\", then exit back to multi-user mode and the KARL process (/usr/libexec/reorder_kernel) and library ASLR (part of /etc/rc) run without error.\nsyslock/sysunlock may be found at https://www.discord.org/lippard/software/\u0026nbsp;and on Github at\u0026nbsp;https://github.com/lippard661/syslock\nAnyway, after that long introduction, here's what ChatGPT had to say about all this; my prompts are in red:\nwrite a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags\nIn OpenBSD, immutable flags are used to protect files from being modified or deleted. These flags can be set on both system and user files, and are useful for preventing accidental or malicious changes to important system files.\nTo set an immutable flag on a file, the \"chflags\" command can be used. The command takes the form \"chflags immutable [filename]\" and can be used to set the flag on a single file or multiple files at once. To remove the immutable flag, the command \"chflags noschg [filename]\" can be used.\nThe difference between system and user immutable flags is the level of protection they provide. System immutable flags are set on system files and are only modifiable by the superuser. User immutable flags are set on user files and can be modified by the owner of the file. This allows users to protect their own files, while also allowing the system administrator to protect important system files.\nIt's important to note that while immutable flags provide a level of protection, they should not be considered as a replacement for proper file permissions and security practices. It's still important to use appropriate permissions to control access to files and to keep your system updated to protect against known vulnerabilities.\nCan I set the user immutable flag on a system file or the system immutable flag on a user file?\nIn OpenBSD, the system immutable flag can only be set on system files, and the user immutable flag can only be set on user files. Attempting to set a user immutable flag on a system file or a system immutable flag on a user file will result in an error.\nThis is because the system immutable flag is intended for use on system files that should not be modified by anyone other than the superuser. Setting this flag on a user file would not provide any additional security, as the user already has full control over their own files. Similarly, the user immutable flag is intended for use on user files that should not be modified by the owner. Setting this flag on a system file would not provide any additional security, as the superuser already has the ability to modify system files.\nIt's important to use the appropriate immutable flag for the type of file you are working with to ensure that the file is protected as intended.\n[UPDATE, 22 Jan 2023:]\nThat is incorrect. The system immutable flag can be set on user files and the user immutable flag can be set on system files. The difference is not what files they can be used on, but that the system immutable flag can only be unset by the superuser when the system is in insecure mode, while the user immutable flag can be unset by the file owner or superuser at any system security run level.\nI apologize, you are correct. The system immutable flag can be set on user files, and the user immutable flag can be set on system files. The difference between the two flags is not the type of file they can be applied to, but rather the level of protection they provide and who can unset them.\nThe system immutable flag provides a higher level of protection and can only be unset by the superuser when the system is in insecure mode, This means that once the system flag is set, the file cannot be modified or deleted without booting in insecure mode.\nOn the other hand, the user immutable flag can be unset by the file owner or the superuser at any system security run level. This means that the file can be modified or deleted by the owner of the file or superuser at any time.\nAgain, I apologize for the confusion in my previous answer. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/01/some-nonsense-from-chatgpt-about-file.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;I was thinking about writing a blog post about file system immutability flags in OpenBSD, and thought I'd ask ChatGPT to write it for me. It appears to have gleaned its content from OpenBSD man pages, but it is highly misleading and inaccurate, misrepresenting the key distinction between system and user immutability flags.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat it got right is that only the superuser (root) can set and unset the system immutability flag (schg/noschg) while users (if they own the file) can set and unset the user immutability flag (uchg/nouchg). But either flag can be set or unset on any kind of file.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some nonsense from ChatGPT about file system immutability flags in OpenBSD"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2022.\nHeather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield,\u0026nbsp;Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems\u0026nbsp;(2020)Oliver Bullough, Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with AnythingDavid Edmonds, The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle (2020)Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American HistoryPaul Fisher, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (2008)Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson, Social Engineering: How Crowdmasters, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication\u0026nbsp;(available via Open Access)Adam Gorightly, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius (2021)Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New HistoryAndy Greenberg, Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of CryptocurrencyJan T. Gregor with Tim Cridland, Circus of the Scars: The True Inside Odyssey of a Modern Circus Sideshow (1998)Thomas Harman, Esq., A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, Vulgarly Called Vagabonds\u0026nbsp;(1814 reprint of 1566 pamphlet)N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became (2020)Thomas Levenson, Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich (2020)Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021)Michael W. Lucas, OpenBSD Mastery: FilesystemsAlan C. Logan, The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can (2020)David McRaney, How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and PersuasionTim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to HellJefferson Morley, Scorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and WatergateWes Patience, From Bjäre to Bisbee: An Immigrant's Tale (2006)Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech BillionairesSara Schaefer, Grand: A Memoir (2020)P.W. Singer and August Cole, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (2020)Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want In LifeStuart Stevens, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (2020)Will Storr, The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play ItTerry Teachout,\u0026nbsp;The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken\u0026nbsp;(2002)Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the WorldTop for 2022: Ferrer, Levenson, Graff, Greenberg, Miller, Zalewski, McRaney, Storr, Logan (even though it's a 2020 book), Jemisin (likewise)\nA few planned reads for 2023 (mostly already started):\nG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;(1995)John Ferris,\u0026nbsp;Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u0026nbsp;(2020)Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States CapitolKevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019)Chris A. Rutkowski, Canada's UFOs: Declassified (2022)Will Sommer, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America (pre-ordered, to be released in late Feb 2023)Steve Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (pre-ordered, to be released in late May 2023)Peter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u0026nbsp;(2017)(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2021,\u0026nbsp;2020,\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.)\u0026nbsp;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2023/01/books-read-in-2022.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2022.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eHeather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eBuilding Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOliver Bullough, \u003ci\u003eButler to the World: How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid Edmonds, \u003ci\u003eThe Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAda Ferrer, \u003ci\u003eCuba: An American History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Fisher, \u003ci\u003eHouse of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family\u003c/i\u003e (2008)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRobert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson, \u003ca href=\"https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543453/social-engineering/\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eSocial Engineering: How Crowdmasters, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;(available via Open Access)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAdam Gorightly, \u003ci\u003eSaucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius\u003c/i\u003e (2021)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGarrett M. Graff, \u003ci\u003eWatergate: A New History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAndy Greenberg, \u003ci\u003eTracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJan T. Gregor with Tim Cridland, \u003ci\u003eCircus of the Scars: The True Inside Odyssey of a Modern Circus Sideshow\u003c/i\u003e (1998)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas Harman, Esq., \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=K0eK6uQC37kC\"\u003eA Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, Vulgarly Called Vagabonds\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(1814 reprint of 1566 pamphlet)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eN.K. Jemisin, \u003ci\u003eThe City We Became\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas Levenson, \u003ci\u003eMoney for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Lewis, \u003ci\u003eThe Premonition: A Pandemic Story\u003c/i\u003e (2021)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael W. Lucas, \u003ci\u003eOpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAlan C. Logan, \u003ci\u003eThe Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid McRaney, \u003ci\u003eHow Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTim Miller, \u003ci\u003eWhy We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJefferson Morley, \u003ci\u003eScorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWes Patience, \u003ci\u003eFrom Bjäre to Bisbee: An Immigrant's Tale\u003c/i\u003e (2006)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDouglas Rushkoff, \u003ci\u003eSurvival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSara Schaefer, \u003ci\u003eGrand: A Memoir\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eP.W. Singer and August Cole, \u003ci\u003eBurn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSeth Stephens-Davidowitz, \u003ci\u003eDon't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want In Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eStuart Stevens, \u003ci\u003eIt Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWill Storr, \u003ci\u003eThe Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTerry Teachout,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2002)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePractical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eTop for 2022: Ferrer, Levenson, Graff, Greenberg, Miller, Zalewski, McRaney, Storr, Logan (even though it's a 2020 book), Jemisin (likewise)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few planned reads for 2023 (mostly already started):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eG.A. Cohen,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSelf-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e(1995)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eJohn Ferris,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eBehind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf\"\u003eFinal Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eKevin M. Levin, \u003ci\u003eSearching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth\u003c/i\u003e (2019)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eChris A. Rutkowski, \u003ci\u003eCanada's UFOs: Declassified\u003c/i\u003e (2022)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eWill Sommer, \u003ci\u003eTrust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America\u003c/i\u003e (pre-ordered, to be released in late Feb 2023)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eSteve Vladeck, \u003ci\u003eThe Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic\u003c/i\u003e (pre-ordered, to be released in late May 2023)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2022/01/books-read-in-2021.html\"\u003e2021\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html\"\u003e2020\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2022"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;ChatGPT gets a lot of things wrong here. The Zelen Test is a test that expected to find that the Mars effect correlations in Gauquelin's data were due to the nycthemeral curve, a variation in the likelihood of birth at particular times of the day, but the test showed the opposite. (There is also a more generic Zelen test in statistics that is the source of some of what ChatGPT says here.) It did not debunk the Mars effect, it showed that any correlation must be due to something else. Dennis Rawlins was an opponent of the test because he thought there was a statistical artifact in the data that was a result of sampling bias or other cause, and expected this outcome. He fiercely argued against any idea that the Mars effect was a real \"cosmobiological\" phenomenon. The bibliography of Dennis Rawlins-authored articles is complete fiction, none of those articles exist. Here's the chat, with my prompts in red:\nwhat is the cause of the Mars Effect The \u0026ldquo;Mars effect\u0026rdquo; refers to the supposed correlation between the position of the planet Mars in the sky at the time of a person\u0026rsquo;s birth and their success or greatness. The idea of the Mars effect was popularized by French astrologer Michel Gauquelin in the 1950s and 1960s, who claimed to have found statistical evidence supporting the idea that people born when Mars was prominent in the sky were more likely to be successful or accomplished. However, subsequent research has failed to replicate Gauquelin\u0026rsquo;s findings and the Mars effect has been widely debunked as a statistical artifact. There is no scientific basis for the idea that the position of Mars at the time of a person\u0026rsquo;s birth has any influence on their characteristics or achievements.\ndid the Zelen Test identify the cause of the Mars Effect?\nThe Zelen test is a statistical procedure that was developed by Marvin Zelen in the 1970s to evaluate the validity of claims of unusual patterns or correlations in data. The Zelen test is based on the idea of \"randomization,\" which involves randomly reassigning the values in a data set to different units in order to test whether a purported correlation or pattern is genuine or simply a statistical artifact.\nThe Zelen test was used by researchers to evaluate the validity of the Mars effect, and it was found that the apparent correlation between the position of Mars at the time of birth and success or greatness was not statistically significant after the data were randomly reassigned. This suggests that the Mars effect is a statistical artifact and not a genuine phenomenon.\nI thought the Zelen Test was designed to show that the Mars effect was the result of the nycthemeral cycle, and it did not demonstrate that. I apologize for the misunderstanding. You are correct that the Zelen test was not designed to specifically evaluate the Mars effect or the role of the nycthemeral cycle in the Mars effect. Rather, the Zelen test is a general statistical procedure that can be used to evaluate the validity of any claimed pattern or correlation in data.\nIn the case of the Mars effect, the Zelen test and other statistical techniques have been used to evaluate the validity of the claimed correlation between the position of Mars at the time of birth and success or greatness. These studies have consistently found that the Mars effect is not a statistically significant phenomenon and that there is no scientific basis for the idea that the position of Mars at the time of birth has any influence on a person's characteristics or achievements.\nThe nycthemeral cycle is the 24-hour cycle of day and night that is caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis. Some proponents of the Mars effect have suggested that the apparent correlation between the position of Mars at the time of birth and success or greatness may be influenced by the nycthemeral cycle, but this idea has not been supported by empirical evidence.\nDidn't Suitbert Ertel show that the CSICOP test of US champions showed a Mars Effect when the athletes were graded by eminence?\nSuitbert Ertel is a German researcher who has written extensively on astrology and the Mars effect. In the 1990s, Ertel published a study in which he claimed to have found evidence of a Mars effect among a sample of United States champions in various fields, using a statistical analysis that he developed called the \"eminent sample test.\"\nErtel's study was criticized by other researchers for its methodology and the lack of statistical rigor in the analysis. In particular, Ertel's use of the eminent sample test has been criticized for being based on arbitrary definitions of what constitutes \"eminence\" and for not taking into account other important variables that could influence the outcome.\nOverall, the evidence for the Mars effect is weak and inconsistent, and the idea has been widely debunked by the scientific community. There is no scientific basis for the claim that the position of Mars at the time of birth has any influence on a person's characteristics or achievements.\ndid Dennis Rawlins criticize CSICOP for how it handled the Mars Effect?\nYes, Dennis Rawlins is a researcher who has criticized the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP), a organization that promotes scientific skepticism and critical thinking, for its handling of the Mars effect.\nIn the 1980s, CSICOP conducted a study of the Mars effect using a sample of prominent athletes and found no evidence of a correlation between the position of Mars at the time of birth and success or greatness. Rawlins, who was a member of CSICOP at the time, disputed the findings of the study and claimed that the organization had not properly addressed the evidence in favor of the Mars effect.\nRawlins has also published a number of articles and studies in which he argues that the Mars effect is a real phenomenon and that it has been unfairly dismissed by the scientific community. However, his claims have not been supported by the weight of scientific evidence, and the Mars effect remains widely debunked as a statistical artifact.\nCan you tell me which articles Rawlins authored that argue that the Mars effect is a real phenomenon? I don't think that he has argued that.\nI apologize for the mistake in my previous response. You are correct that Dennis Rawlins has not argued that the Mars effect is a real phenomenon. Rather, Rawlins has focused on criticizing the methodology and statistical analysis used in studies that have found no evidence of the Mars effect, and he has suggested that these studies may have missed genuine correlations due to various technical and statistical issues.\nRawlins has published a number of articles on the Mars effect, including:\n\"The Mars Effect: A Test of Astrology\" (1981)\n\"The Mars Effect: A Rejoinder\" (1982)\n\"The Mars Effect: A Reply to Ertel\" (1987)\nIn these articles, Rawlins presents his critique of the studies that have found no evidence of the Mars effect and suggests that further research is needed to fully understand the phenomenon. However, his claims have not been supported by the weight of scientific evidence, and the Mars effect remains widely debunked as a statistical artifact.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2022/12/chatgpt-on-mars-effect.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;ChatGPT gets a lot of things wrong here. The Zelen Test is a test that expected to find that the Mars effect correlations in Gauquelin's data were due to the nycthemeral curve, a variation in the likelihood of birth at particular times of the day, but the test showed the opposite. (There is also a more generic Zelen test in statistics that is the source of some of what ChatGPT says here.) It did not debunk the Mars effect, it showed that any correlation must be due to something else. Dennis Rawlins was an opponent of the test because he thought there was a statistical artifact in the data that was a result of sampling bias or other cause, and expected this outcome. He fiercely argued against any idea that the Mars effect was a real \"cosmobiological\" phenomenon. The bibliography of Dennis Rawlins-authored articles is complete fiction, none of those articles exist. Here's the chat, with my prompts in red:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ChatGPT on the Mars Effect"},{"content":"Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2021.Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It) (2017)Scott Anderson, The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War (2020)J. M. Berger, OptimalWilliam Dalrymple,\u0026nbsp;The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire\u0026nbsp;(2019)Philip L. Fradkin, Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West (2002)Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (2019)David Cay Johnston, The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His FamilyDaniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human JudgmentWalter LaFeber,\u0026nbsp;Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America\u0026nbsp;(2nd edition, 1993)Peter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer, The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art (2018)Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (2009)Norm MacDonald, Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir (2016)Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of QuarantineCasey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in HistoryCheryl Misak, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (2020)Anne Nelson, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical RightNicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms RaceEthan Persoff and Scott Marshall, Complete Series, John Wilcock, New York Years, 1954-1971 (limited edition via Kickstarter, #52/250)Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground (2011, re-read)Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal MattersMary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the LawScott J. Roberts and Rebekah Brown, Intelligence-Driven Incident Response: Outwitting the Adversary (2017)Mike Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of EverythingP.W. Singer and August Cole, Ghost Fleet\u0026nbsp;(2016)David Skarbek, The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World (2020)Jon Talton, A Brief History of Phoenix (2015)Top for 2021: Anderson; Dalrymple; Immerwahr; Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein; Levenson; Manaugh and Twilley; Michel; Misak; Perlroth.\nA few planned reads for 2022 (mostly already started):\nHeather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield, Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems (2020)G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Paul Fisher, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (2008)Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2002)Peter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u0026nbsp;(2017)(Previously: 2020,\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.)\u0026nbsp;\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2022-01-01):\nLoved Newton and the Counterfeiter. Can\u0026#39;t believe it hasn\u0026#39;t been made into a movie, yet.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2022/01/books-read-in-2021.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2021.\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eElizabeth Anderson, \u003ci\u003ePrivate Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It)\u003c/i\u003e (2017)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eScott Anderson, \u003ci\u003eThe Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War \u003c/i\u003e(2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJ. M. Berger, \u003ci\u003eOptimal\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWilliam Dalrymple,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2019)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePhilip L. Fradkin, \u003ci\u003eStagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West\u003c/i\u003e (2002)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJonathan Haidt, \u003ci\u003eThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion\u003c/i\u003e (2012)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel Immerwahr, \u003ci\u003eHow to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States\u003c/i\u003e (2019)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid Cay Johnston, \u003ci\u003eThe Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, \u003ci\u003eNoise: A Flaw in Human Judgment\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWalter LaFeber,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America\u003c/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: normal;\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2nd edition, 1993)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePeter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer, \u003ci\u003eThe Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art\u003c/i\u003e (2018)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas Levenson, \u003ci\u003eNewton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist\u003c/i\u003e (2009)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNorm MacDonald, \u003ci\u003eBased on a True Story: Not a Memoir\u003c/i\u003e (2016)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGeoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, \u003ci\u003eUntil Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCasey Michel, \u003ci\u003eAmerican Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCheryl Misak, \u003ci\u003eFrank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAnne Nelson, \u003ci\u003eShadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNicole Perlroth, \u003ci\u003eThis Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEthan Persoff and Scott Marshall, \u003ci\u003eComplete Series, John Wilcock, New York Years, 1954-1971\u003c/i\u003e (limited edition via Kickstarter, #52/250)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin Poulsen, \u003ci\u003eKingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground\u003c/i\u003e (2011, re-read)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEric Rauchway, \u003ci\u003eWhy the New Deal Matters\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ci\u003eFuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eScott J. Roberts and Rebekah Brown, \u003ci\u003eIntelligence-Driven Incident Response: Outwitting the Adversary\u003c/i\u003e (2017)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMike Rothschild, \u003ci\u003eThe Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eP.W. Singer and August Cole, \u003ci\u003eGhost Fleet\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2016)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid Skarbek, \u003ci\u003eThe Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJon Talton, \u003ci\u003eA Brief History of Phoenix\u003c/i\u003e (2015)\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eTop for 2021: Anderson; Dalrymple; Immerwahr; Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein; Levenson; Manaugh and Twilley; Michel; Misak; Perlroth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few planned reads for 2022 (mostly already started):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eHeather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield, \u003ci\u003eBuilding Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eG.A. Cohen, \u003ci\u003eSelf-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality \u003c/i\u003e(1995)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eJohn Ferris, \u003ci\u003eBehind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePaul Fisher, \u003ci\u003eHouse of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family\u003c/i\u003e (2008)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eTerry Teachout, \u003ci\u003eThe Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken\u003c/i\u003e (2002)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003ePeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html\"\u003e2020\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2021"},{"content":"In the March 21st, 2021 Washington Post story \u0026ldquo;The rioter next door: How the Dallas suburbs spawned domestic extremists,\u0026quot; Annie Gowen writes of a Texas pastor who claimed prophecy that Trump would remain in office:\nShortly before Biden\u0026rsquo;s inauguration, Pastor Brandon Burden of the KingdomLife church — a boxy, largely windowless sanctuary in Frisco — mounted the pulpit and gave a stemwinder of a sermon that went viral.\nBurden spoke in tongues and urged his flock of “warriors” to load their weapons and stock up on food and water as the transfer of power loomed. The emergency broadcast system might be tampered with, so if Trump “took over the country,” he could not tell them what to do, he said.\n“We ain\u0026rsquo;t going silently into the night. We ain\u0026rsquo;t going down. This is Texas,” Burden preached.\nProphetic voices had decreed Trump would remain in office, he said.\n“We have an executive order — not from Congress or D.C., but from the desk of the CEO of heaven, the boss of the planet,” Burden said. “He said from his desk in heaven, ‘This is my will. Trump will be in office for eight years.’ ”\nThe Book of Deuteronomy\u0026rsquo;s biblical standard for prophets from Moses, speaking on behalf of God in chapter 18, verse 22, is that \u0026ldquo;When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.\u0026rdquo; In verse 20, he says that \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.\u0026rdquo; In other words, any prophecy from God is guaranteed to be accurate, and any prophecy which is not from God but given in his name shall guarantee the death of the prophet.\nFalse Prophet Pastor Burden\u0026rsquo;s response to his failed prophecy was to delete his Twitter account (@KingdomLife_), though it\u0026rsquo;s still linked from his church\u0026rsquo;s website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2021/03/a-false-prophet-for-trump.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the March 21st, 2021 \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c/i\u003e story \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dallas-suburbs-capitol-riot/2021/03/21/468646f2-8299-11eb-ac37-4383f7709abe_story.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The rioter next door: How the Dallas suburbs spawned domestic extremists,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Annie Gowen writes of a Texas pastor who claimed prophecy that Trump would remain in office:\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote style=\"border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: Franklin, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;\"\u003e\u003cp class=\"font--body font-copy gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md \" data-el=\"text\" style=\"color: var(--color-ui-gray-darkest); font-family: georgia, \u0026quot;Times New Roman\u0026quot;, serif; font-size: var(--font-size-small); line-height: 1.75; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--md);\"\u003eShortly before Biden\u0026rsquo;s inauguration, Pastor Brandon Burden of the KingdomLife church — a boxy, largely windowless sanctuary in Frisco — mounted the pulpit and gave a stemwinder of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAHVnmyzT3c\" style=\"border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(213, 213, 213); color: #1955a5; text-decoration-line: none;\"\u003esermon\u003c/a\u003e that went viral.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A false prophet for Trump"},{"content":"\u0026nbsp;In the 1980s, Trump was concerned about nuclear proliferation and thought that he could do a better job negotiating a nuclear deal with the Soviets. In a 1984 Washington Post interview (which I believe you can see excerpts from in the film \"Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn\" about his mentor, Roy Cohn), he said:\n\"Some people have an ability to negotiate,\" he says. \"It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't.\"\nHe would know what to ask the Russians for, he says. But he would rather not tip his hand publicly. \"In the event anything happens with respect to me, I wouldn't want to make my opinions public,\" he says. \"I'd rather keep those thoughts to myself or save them for whoever else is chosen . . .\n\"It's something that somebody should do that knows how to negotiate and not the kind of representatives that I have seen in the past.\"\nHe could learn about missiles, quickly, he says.\n\"It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles . . . I think I know most of it anyway. You're talking about just getting updated on a situation . . . You know who really wants me to do this? Roy . . . I'd do it in a second.\"\nTrump actually lobbied the George H. W. Bush administration to be the negotiator for arms talks, but the chief negotiator position went to Richard Burt, then U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, who later met Trump, and Trump explained what he would have done had he been the negotiator:\u0026nbsp;\nHe explained that he would have welcomed—very warmly—the Soviet delegation. He would have made sure the country’s envoys were comfortable—very comfortable—at the table.\nThen, Trump told Burt, he would have stood up, shouted “Fuck you!,” and left the room.\nThis seems quite likely -- and then he would have either given in to whatever the Soviets asked for, or failed to get a deal at all, which is what has happened again and again during his time as president. Where Trump gets deals it seems to be in spite of his own negotiations, rather than because of them.\nWhen Trump gave in and signed the second COVID-19 stimulus bill which he had been refusing to sign and which was at risk of a pocket veto, one person who correctly predicted four days earlier that Trump would sign the bill was tax lawyer David Miller, who was someone who was actually on the other side of the table in a Trump negotiation over the Trump Organization's deal to purchase the General Motors building in 1998.\u0026nbsp; Miller recounted the story in a thread on Twitter correctly predicting that Trump would sign the bill:\nHe will sign. 1/23\n— David Miller (@DavidMillerTax) December 23, 2020In 1998, I was the tax lawyer representing Conseco in a joint venture with the Trump Organization to buy the General Motors Building. 2/23\u0026nbsp;\nConseco put up 99.9% of the capital, Trump put up 0.1% of the capital, and Lehman Brothers loaned the rest. 3/23\u0026nbsp;\nThe joint venture agreement was very straightforward. Income and deductions were based on capital contributions. Everything was agreed quickly by the lawyers. 4/23\u0026nbsp;\nHowever, on the day before signing, we were told that Mr. Trump would be arriving at 10pm at our offices to negotiate the deal (which had already been negotiated). 5/23\u0026nbsp;\nHe arrives with an entourage. A podium had been set up for him at the front of a long table in a conference room. 6/23\u0026nbsp;\nHe asks for some minor corporate changes. But then he demands that he get all of the depreciation deductions. 7/23\u0026nbsp;\nHaving negotiated, he put on his coat and left. 8/23\u0026nbsp;\nAll of the lawyers look at each other. The general counsel of Conseco said, “We put up 99.9% of the money; we get 99.9% of the depreciation deductions.” Trump’s lawyers say, “Don’t worry, he’ll sign.” I go home to sleep. 9/23\u0026nbsp;\nThe next morning my corporate partner and Trump’s corporate lawyer take the joint venture agreement to Trump Tower for Trump’s signature. I’m in my office. 10/23\u0026nbsp;\nThe phone rings. It’s my corporate partner. “Mr. Trump wants to speak to you.” 11/23\u0026nbsp;\n“Yes, Mr. Trump,” I say. 12/23\u0026nbsp;\n“Were you there last night?” he asks. 13/23\u0026nbsp;\n“Yes, Mr. Trump, I was.” 14/23\u0026nbsp;\n“Did you hear me last night?” he asks. 15/23\u0026nbsp;\n“Yes, Mr. Trump, I did.” I reply. 16/23\u0026nbsp;\n“So, does this agreement give me the depreciation deductions?” he asks. 17/23\u0026nbsp;\n“No, Mr. Trump, it does not.” 18/23\u0026nbsp;\nHe’s angry now. “You were there last night, you heard me, and this agreement does not give me the depreciation deductions? Why not?!” 19/23\u0026nbsp;\nI know that the agreement could have been structured for Trump to get depreciation deductions (if he was willing to provide a “bottom guarantee”). But it wasn’t, so I answer truthfully: “Mr. Trump, the law does not permit you to get depreciation deductions.” 20/23\u0026nbsp;\nHe’s furious now. “The law does not permit me to get depreciation deductions?!” 21/23\u0026nbsp;\n“That’s right, Mr. Trump.” 22/23\u0026nbsp;\nHe slams down the phone and signs the agreement. 23/23\u0026nbsp;\nRichard Burt's team successfully negotiated the START I Treaty, signed in 1991. Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Open Skies treaty for nuclear arms verification, and has so far declined the Russian offer to extend the New Start treaty, and has failed to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty of any kind.\nHistorical Comments Michael C. Rush (2021-01-04):\nIt\u0026#39;s funny to remember that there was a time when this would have been funny.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2021/01/how-trump-thinks-he-negotiates-versus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;In the 1980s, Trump was concerned about nuclear proliferation and thought that he could do a better job negotiating a nuclear deal with the Soviets. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/11/15/donald-trump-holding-all-the-cards-the-tower-the-team-the-money-the-future/8be79254-7793-4812-a153-f2b88e81fa54/\"\u003ea 1984 \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c/i\u003e interview\u003c/a\u003e (which I believe you can see excerpts from in the film \u003ca href=\"https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/bully-coward-victim-the-story-of-roy-cohn\"\u003e\"Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn\"\u003c/a\u003e about his mentor, Roy Cohn), he said:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote style=\"border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Some people have an ability to negotiate,\" he says. \"It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't.\"\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Trump thinks he negotiates, versus how he actually does"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2020.Nicholson Baker, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information ActJohn Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House MemoirBen Buchanan, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics Susannah Cahalan, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of MadnessMichael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. TrumpMyke Cole,\u0026nbsp;Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World Libby Copeland, The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance StateFiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin\u0026nbsp;(2012)James W. Johnson, Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious\u0026nbsp;(2002) Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and WinTalia Lavin, Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War\u0026nbsp;(2018) Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America\u0026nbsp;(2017)H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, with Henry R. Schlesinger, Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region's Secret History (2020)Jefferson Morley, Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK InvestigationBastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich \u0026amp; Powerful Hide Their Money Thomas Rid,\u0026nbsp;Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne,\u0026nbsp;Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital AgeMary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry R. Schesinger, Spy Sites of Washington, DC: A Guide to the Capital Region's Secret History\u0026nbsp;(2017) Anna Wiener,\u0026nbsp;Uncanny Valley: A MemoirIsabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents Top for 2020: Copeland, Macintyre, Cahalan, Smith and Browne, Buchanan, Obermayer and Obermaier, Gellman, Rid.\nI started the following books I expect to finish in 2021 (yes, I also said that about LeFeber and Wilson last year--I'm well in to LaFeber's book and thought I might finish before the end of the year, but had only read Wilson's intro so it's barely started):\nWilliam Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire\nWalter LaFeber,\u0026nbsp;Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America\u0026nbsp;(2nd edition)\nPeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\nI've also pre-ordered and am looking forward to reading:\nNicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race (due to be published on February 9)\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2019,\u0026nbsp;2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2021/01/books-read-in-2020.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2020.\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eNicholson Baker, \u003ci\u003eBaseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Bolton, \u003ci\u003eThe Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBen Buchanan, \u003ci\u003eThe Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSusannah Cahalan, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Cohen, \u003ci\u003eDisloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMyke Cole,\u003ci\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eLegion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLibby Copeland, \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBarton Gellman, \u003ci\u003eDark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, \u003ci\u003eMr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2012)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames W. Johnson, \u003ci\u003eArizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2002)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGene Kim, \u003ci\u003eThe Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMaria Konnikova, \u003ci\u003eThe Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTalia Lavin, \u003ci\u003eCulture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCarol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, \u003ci\u003eA Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBen Macintyre, \u003ci\u003eThe Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2018)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNancy MacLean, \u003ci\u003eDemocracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eH. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, with Henry R. Schlesinger, \u003ci\u003eSpy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region's Secret History\u003c/i\u003e (2020)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJefferson Morley, \u003ci\u003eMorley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, \u003ci\u003eThe Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich \u0026amp; Powerful Hide Their Money\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThomas Rid\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: normal;\"\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003eActive Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBrad Smith and Carol Anne Browne,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMary Trump, \u003ci\u003eToo Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry R. Schesinger, \u003ci\u003eSpy Sites of Washington, DC: A Guide to the Capital Region's Secret History\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2017)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnna Wiener,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUncanny Valley: A Memoir\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIsabel Wilkerson, \u003ci\u003eCaste: The Origins of Our Discontents\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop for 2020: Copeland, Macintyre, Cahalan, Smith and Browne, Buchanan, Obermayer and Obermaier, Gellman, Rid.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI started the following books I expect to finish in 2021 (yes, I also said that about LeFeber and Wilson last year--I'm well in to LaFeber's book and thought I might finish before the end of the year, but had only read Wilson's intro so it's barely started):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWilliam Dalrymple, \u003ci\u003eThe Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nWalter LaFeber,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eInevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2nd edition)\u003cbr /\u003e\nPeter H. Wilson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eI've also pre-ordered and am looking forward to reading:\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003eNicole Perlroth, \u003ci\u003eThis Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race\u003c/i\u003e (due to be published on February 9)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html\"\u003e2019\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Books read in 2020"},{"content":"This timeline has been updated with Trump rallies and golf playing since (as of March 31, 2020) he is now trying to create a narrative that claims he was trying hard to address the pandemic early on, but was distracted by his impeachment. He was impeached by the House on December 18, 2019, and his Senate trial ran from January 16, 2020 to his acquittal on February 5, 2020.\n2015: Obama\u0026rsquo;s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, establishes the Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit in the White House National Security Council. (https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M)\nJanuary 13, 2017: The joint Obama-Trump transition teams run an exercise for pandemic preparedness. Trump transition team attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (resigned), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned). (https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/)\nMay 2018: The Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit in the White House National Security Council is disbanded by National Security Advisor John Bolton after its head, Timothy Ziemer, leaves the Trump administration. Pandemic response functions are folded into other teams. (https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M).\nJanuary-August 2019: Nineteen agencies of the federal government and twelve states conduct a pandemic functional exercise, \u0026ldquo;Crimson Contagion.\u0026rdquo; The scenario is a novel influenza virus that arises in China and spreads to the United States, but stockpiles of vaccines are not a match to enable the virus to be contained. (https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/crimson-contagion-2019-simulation-warned-of-pandemic-implications-in-us/2243832/) The Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Robert Kadlec, appointed by Donald Trump in 2017 and who played a key decision-making role in this exercise, downplayed the risk of pandemic, cut the budget, and cut the program for stockpiling personal protective equipment (PPE). Instead, he spent money on stockpiles of smallpox vaccine, purchasing $2.8 billion of it from a company that had previously employed him as a consultant. (Smallpox was eradicated in 1980.) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html)\nJuly 2019: The Trump administration made the decision to eliminate the position of CDC\u0026rsquo;s resident advisor to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, Dr. Linda Quick, in September 2019. She quit her job in July after receiving the news. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-axed-cdc-expert-job-in-china-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S)\nSeptember 2019: The Trump administration ends a $200 million pandemic early warning program, PREDICT, at the U.S. Agency for International Development, started in 2009, aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to new viruses. During its lifetime, the project identified 1,200 viruses with pandemic potential. The PREDICT program involved 60 foreign laboratories, including the Chinese lab in Wuhan which identified SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. (https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection)\nOctober 25, 2019: Former Vice President Joe Biden tweets: \u0026ldquo;We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437)\nDecember 24, 2019: As of June 2021, this is now the earliest suspected date of COVID-19 infection in the United States, per antibodies in blood donated by nine individuals between January 2 and March 18, 2020. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html)\nDecember 31, 2019: Donald Trump tells assembled guests at the Mar-a-Lago New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve celebration that \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going to have a great year, I predict. I think it\u0026rsquo;s going to be a fantastic year.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nJanuary 2-3, 2020: Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield has conversations about a virus outbreak in China with his counterpart at China\u0026rsquo;s CDC, Gao Fu, who warns him that it is extremely serious. (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3084092/us-cdc-had-very-good-interaction-china-after-coronavirus)\nJanuary 8, 2020: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issues its first warning about a novel coronavirus now known as COVID-19.\nJanuary 9: Trump holds a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio.\nJanuary 9: Berlin, Germany scientist Olfert Landt\u0026rsquo;s company, TIB Molbiol, develops its first COVID-19 test based on existing SARS tests. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/asia/testing-coronavirus-science-intl-hnk/index.html)\nJanuary 10: The RNA sequence data for COVID-19 was published online: http://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319\nJanuary 11: Olfert Landt sends a developed COVID-19 test to the Taiwan CDC and Roche in Hong Kong for validation. The test ends up working.\nJanuary 14: Trump holds a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.\nmid-January: The U.S. begins some screening of passengers from Wuhan, China, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. Prior to this event, at least 4,000 passengers arrived in the U.S. directly from Wuhan, China without any screening. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html)\nJanuary 16: The U.S. House sends articles of impeachment to the Senate, starting Trump\u0026rsquo;s first impeachment trial.\nJanuary 17: WHO publishes Olfert Landt\u0026rsquo;s COVID-19 test protocol. TIB Molbiol manufactured four million tests by the end of February, and 1.5 million per week after that.\nJanuary 17: CDC announces that it has its own COVID-19 test. (See February 5.)\nJanuary 18: Dr. Rick Bright, director of the HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at HHS, sends an email to ASPR Robert Kadlec asking to convene a Disaster Leadership Group (DLG) meeting over COVID-19. Kadlec responds that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think it is necessary and doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the urgency. (https://theintercept.com/2020/05/07/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-n95-ppe/)\nJanuary 18: Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar phones Trump at Mar-a-Lago to warn him about the risk of coronavirus, but \u0026ldquo;Even before the heath [sic] secretary could get a word in about the virus, Trump cut him off and began criticizing Azar for his handling of an aborted federal ban on vaping products, a matter that vexed the president.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/)\nJanuary 18: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nJanuary 19: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nJanuary 21: CDC confirms first U.S. case of COVID-19. (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html) See December 24, 2019 above.\nJanuary 22: \u0026ldquo;We have it totally under control. It\u0026rsquo;s one person coming in from China. It\u0026rsquo;s going to be just fine.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-trusts-xis-word-on-coronavirus-its-all-under-control) 314 global cases in 4 countries, 309 China, 4 outside China (Thailand, Japan, South Korea).\nJanuary 26: Sen. Schumer calls on the Department of Health and Human Services for coronavirus to be designated a public health emergency. (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/how-coronavirus-shook-congress-complacency-155058)\nJanuary 27: Joe Biden writes an op-ed warning of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s lack of preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic. (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/nobody-expected-the-coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-did.html)\nJanuary 28: Elizabeth Warren releases a plan for \u0026ldquo;Preventing, Containing, and Treating Infectious Disease Outbreaks at Home and Abroad.\u0026quot;\nJanuary 28: Trump holds a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey.\nJanuary 30: Trump holds a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa.\nFebruary 1: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nFebruary 2: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nFebruary 2: Trump\u0026rsquo;s ordered restrictions on travel from China take effect. These restrictions do not apply to Americans returning from China. 279 flights from China occurred after this date, and screening of returning passengers was haphazard and inconsistent. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html)\nFebruary 2: \u0026ldquo;We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-airports.html) 14,557 global cases in 23 countries, 14,411 China, 146 outside of China (WHO). CDC starts sending out test kits in first week of February, which turn out to be faulty.\nFebruary 5: The U.S. Senate impeachment trial votes to acquit Trump on both articles.\nFebruary 5: CDC announces it will begin shipping COVID-19 tests to states. Shortly thereafter, it is determined that the CDC test kits don\u0026rsquo;t work.\nFebruary 6: Patricia Dowd of Santa Clara County, California, dies from COVID-19, though this is not determined until late April. (https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html)\nFebruary 7: Trump to Bob Woodward, in an interview for his new book, Rage: \u0026ldquo;It’s also more deadly than your \u0026ndash; you know, your \u0026ndash; even your strenuous flus\u0026hellip;This is 5%, versus 1% percent and less than 1%.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump-coronavirus/index.html) 31,481 global cases in 24 countries, 31,211 China, 270 outside of China, 637 deaths in China, 1 death outside of China, U.S. 12 cases (WHO). February 10: \u0026ldquo;You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.\u0026rdquo; Interview with Trish Regan, Fox Business. (https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-trish-regan-fox-business-february-10-2020) 40,554 global cases in 24 countries, 40,235 China, 319 outside China, U.S. 12 cases (WHO).\nFebruary 10: Trump holds a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire.\nFebruary 15: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nFebruary 19: Trump holds a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona.\nFebruary 20: Trump holds a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado.\nFebruary 21: Trump holds a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.\nFebruary 23: Trump and the White House National Security Council is sent a memo from White House economic advisor Peter Navarro warning of coronavirus epidemic in the U.S. which could kill up to two million Americans. (https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html)\nFebruary 24: \u0026ldquo;The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA\u0026hellip; Stock Market starting to look very good to me!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232058127740174339) Dow closes down 227.51 points at 28,992.40. 79,331 global cases in 29 countries, 77,262 China, 2,069 outside China, 35 U.S. 12 labs other than CDC can perform coronavirus testing.\nFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232492821501771776) 80,239 global cases in 33 countries, 77,780 China, 2,459 outside China, 53 U.S.\nFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;I think that\u0026rsquo;s a problem that\u0026rsquo;s going to go away\u0026hellip; They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we\u0026rsquo;re very close to a vaccine.\u0026quot; In India. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-coronavirus-control-us-problem/story?id=69198905) The vaccine was, in fact, for Ebola, not COVID-19: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/white-house-says-trumps-vaccine-claims-about-ebola-not-coronavirus.html\nFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;This president will always put Americans first. He will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.\u0026rdquo; Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to Trish Regan on Fox Business. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nFebruary 26: First confirmed community spread (from person to person unrelated to travel in China) within the United States (per evidence as of June 2021). (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html)\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/) 81,109 global cases in 37 countries, 78,191 China, 2,918 outside China, 53 U.S. First day with more new cases outside China than in China. First two reported COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. in Seattle, Washington, though there had already been earlier deaths not yet attributed to COVID-19 (see February 6). (https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html)\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference (same link as above)\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going very substantially down, not up.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference (same link as above)\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) \u0026amp; @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape! @CDCgov\u0026hellip;..\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232652371832004608)\nFebruary 27: \u0026ldquo;One day it\u0026rsquo;s like a miracle, it will disappear.\u0026rdquo; At White House. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-miracle-stock-markets/index.html) 82,294 global cases in 46 countries, 78,630 China, 3,664 outside China, 59 U.S. More new cases in Korea than China.\nFebruary 27: Laura Ingraham on Fox News in front of screen that shows an NPR story \u0026ldquo;Italy Reports 650 Cases And 17 Deaths\u0026rdquo; with a Fox chyron reading \u0026ldquo;LEFT TRYING TO PANIC AMERICANS OVER CORONAVIRUS.\u0026rdquo; (Photo from Sean Howe on Bluesky.)\nFebruary 27: Sean Hannity in front of a screen that says \u0026ldquo;CORONAVIRUS DEATHS IN U.S.\u0026rdquo; with the number \u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo;. (Photo from Nothings Monstered on Bluesky.)\nFebruary 28: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we\u0026rsquo;re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.\u0026rdquo; At White House. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233516512830459908) 83,652 global cases in 51 countries, 78,961 China, 4,691 outside China, 59 U.S.\nFebruary 28: Trump holds a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. At this rally, Trump said: \u0026ldquo;Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they\u0026rsquo;re politicizing it. You say, \u0026lsquo;How\u0026rsquo;s President Trump doing?\u0026rsquo; They go, \u0026lsquo;Oh, not good, not good.\u0026rsquo; They have no clue. They don\u0026rsquo;t have any clue. \u0026hellip; \u0026lsquo;Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.\u0026rsquo; That didn\u0026rsquo;t work out too well\u0026hellip; Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But we did something that\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early. \u0026hellip; So a number that nobody heard of recently, and I was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? 35,000, that\u0026rsquo;s a lot of people. And so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we won\u0026rsquo;t and we are totally prepared. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we won\u0026rsquo;t, but think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we\u0026rsquo;ve lost nobody and you wonder the press is in hysteria mode. \u0026hellip; My administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to prevent the spread of this illness in the United States. We are ready. We are ready. Totally ready. \u0026hellip; A virus starts in China, bleeds its way into various countries all around the world, doesn\u0026rsquo;t spread widely at all in the U.S. because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes. \u0026hellip; We had [to] quarantine some people. They weren\u0026rsquo;t happy, they weren\u0026rsquo;t happy about it. I want to tell you there are a lot of people that [were] not so happy, but after two weeks they got happy.\u0026rdquo; Trump\u0026rsquo;s statement that no one in the U.S. had been lost to COVID-19 was false both by not-yet-known deaths (see February 6) and by publicly reported deaths (see February 26), but the first officially confirmed COVID-19 death came on February 29. (https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1259119606955945986)\nFebruary 29: First confirmed U.S. COVID-19 death, a man in Kirkland, Washington. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1st-coronavirus-death-u-s-officials-say-n1145931)\nMarch 1: Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro warns Trump in a memo to \u0026ldquo;MOVE IN TRUMP TIME\u0026rdquo; to invest in preparations for coronavirus, including drug ingredients, tests, and other supplies. \u0026ldquo;There is NO downside risk to taking swift actions as an insurance policy against what may be a very serious public health emergency. If the COVID-19 crisis quickly recedes, the only thing we will have been guilty of is prudence.\u0026rdquo; Trump ignored these recommendations; on April 7, 2020 he said he hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen the memo. (Washington Post story, March 31, 2021: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/31/navarro-pandemic-supply-contracts-trump/) Navarro subsequently used his influence to push to award hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts to untested firms, including a $354 million contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA; also see January 21, 2021 entry below), a $96 million no-bid deal for respirators, and a $34.5 million deal from the VA which ended with a contractor pleading guilty to fraud, among other examples documented by ProPublica (https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts). March 2: \u0026ldquo;You take a solid flu vaccine, you don\u0026rsquo;t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?\u0026rdquo; White House coronavirus task force meeting. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-members-coronavirus-task-force-meeting-pharmaceutical-companies/) 88,948 global cases in 64 countries, 80,174 China, 8,774 outside China, 62 U.S. CDC removes number of tests completed from its website (474 on March 1). (https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161693/cdc-coronavirus-testing-numbers-website-disappear-expansion-us)\nMarch 2: \u0026ldquo;A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they\u0026rsquo;re happening very rapidly.\u0026rdquo; White House coronavirus task force meeting, same as previous link.\nMarch 2: Trump holds a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.\nMarch 4: \u0026ldquo;If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work - some of them go to work, but they get better.\u0026quot; (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892) 94,091 global cases in 76 countries, 80,422 China, 12,669 outside China, 108 U.S.\nMarch 5: \u0026ldquo;I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892) 95,324 global cases in 85 countries/territories/areas, 80,565 China, 14,759 outside China, 129 U.S.\nMarch 5: \u0026ldquo;The United States\u0026hellip; has, as of now, only 129 cases\u0026hellip; and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1235604572850343937)\nMarch 5: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control planned to post a global travel alert for all countries, but it was delayed by the White House until March 11. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html)\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I think we\u0026rsquo;re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down\u0026hellip; a tremendous job at keeping it down.\u0026rdquo; At CDC. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-tour-centers-disease-control-prevention-atlanta-ga/) 98,192 global cases in 88 countries/territories/areas, 80,711 China, 17,481 outside China, 148 U.S.\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;The tests are beautiful\u0026hellip;. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it\u0026hellip; Every one of these doctors said, \u0026lsquo;How do you know so much about this?\u0026rsquo; Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t need to have the numbers to double because of one ship that wasn\u0026rsquo;t our fault.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;It’s something that nobody expected.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/) March 6: \u0026ldquo;Everybody who wants a test can get a test.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link. In fact, tests are still hard to come by on March 23: https://thebulwark.com/where-are-the-tests/\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;ll go away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nMarch 7: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nMarch 8: \u0026ldquo;We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1236634209516752896) 105,586 global cases in 101 countries/territories/areas, 80,859 China, 24,727 outside China, 213 U.S.\nMarch 8: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\nPrior to March 9: CDC wanted to recommend people over 60 stay at home, but Trump administration said no. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746)\nMarch 9: \u0026ldquo;So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life \u0026amp; the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1237027356314869761) 109,577 global cases in 104 countries/territories/areas, 80,904 China, 28,673 outside China, 213 U.S.\nMarch 9: \u0026ldquo;And we have a great economy, we have a very strong economy, but this came \u0026ndash; this blindsided the world. And I think we\u0026rsquo;ve handled it very, very well. I think they\u0026rsquo;ve done a great job.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-coronavirus-briefing-march-9-2020)\nMarch 10: \u0026ldquo;Be calm. It\u0026rsquo;s really working out. And a lot of good things are going to happen.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1237453485899223040)\nMarch 11: \u0026ldquo;Health insurers have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://twitter.com/owermohle/status/1237922717699014658) In fact, this only applied to tests, not treatments.\nMarch 11: CDC posts a global travel alert that had been intended for release six days earlier but was delayed by the White House. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html)\nMarch 12: White House says neither Trump nor Pence will be tested for coronavirus despite contacts with people who have tested positive. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/trump-brazil-coronavirus.html)\nMarch 12: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to go away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nMarch 13: Trump repeatedly shakes hands at White House coronavirus press conference, despite knowing that he has recently been exposed to people who have now tested positive for the virus. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/13/trump-handshakes-coronavirus-press-conference/) 132,758 global cases in 122 countries/territories/areas, 80,991 China, 51,767 outside China, 1,264 U.S. Dow closes the week at 23,185.62.\nMarch 13: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t take responsibility at all.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference, in response to question about whether Trump takes any responsibility for the failures in U.S. coronavirus testing. (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971)\nMarch 13: Trump says he likely will be tested for coronavirus. Same White House press conference. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/donald-trump-emergency/index.html)\nMarch 13 (evening just before midnight): White House doctor Sean Conley issues statement saying that Trump doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to be quarantined or even tested for coronavirus because he is at low risk. (http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/03/14/whmemo.png)\nMarch 14: \u0026ldquo;SOCIAL DISTANCING!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1238824050924883968) CDC has tested 3,958 specimens (not individuals). 142,539 global cases in 135 countries/territories/areas, 81,021 China, 61,618 outside China, 1,678 U.S.\nMarch 14: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s something that nobody expected.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/)\nMarch 14: Trump says he has been tested for coronavirus and is awaiting results expected in a day or two. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html)\nMarch 14: New screening measures are introduced at airports, which lead to delays from processing bottlenecks and large crowds of people. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/03/14/europe-travel-ban-airport-delays/)\nMarch 15: The White House announces Trump has tested negative for coronavirus. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html) The Fed announces $700B in quantitative easing as stock market futures hit circuit breakers after a 5% drop.\nMarch 15: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re learning from watching other countries \u0026hellip; This is a very contagious virus, it\u0026rsquo;s incredible, but it\u0026rsquo;s something that we have tremendous control over.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html)\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s not under control for any place in the world. \u0026hellip; I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the virus.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1239637609309261826) 167,511 global cases in 151 countries/territories/areas, 81,077 China, 86,434 outside China, 1,678 U.S. (CDC count for U.S.: 3,487).\nMarch 16: The Supreme Court announces that it is postponing its next argument sitting, for the first time since it did the same in 1918 due to the deadly global influenza outbreak.\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.\u0026rdquo; On conference call with U.S. governors. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/coronavirus-news.html)\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;It’s so contagious. It’s so contagious. It’s like record-setting contagious.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/16/donald-trump-admits-contagious-coronavirus-control-12407873/)\nMarch 17: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve always known, this is a real \u0026hellip; this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html) (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1239956622312701952) 179,112 global cases, 7,426 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,226 cases, 75 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 19: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re actually sitting too close. You should really \u0026ndash; we should probably get rid of another 75%, 80% of you. I\u0026rsquo;ll have just two or three that I like in this room.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1240678632361807873)\nMarch 19: \u0026ldquo;I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!\u0026rdquo; Twitter (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130) Trump didn\u0026rsquo;t sign the Defense Production Act, which was signed into law in 1950 by Harry S Truman, who, as Kevin M. Kruse noted in response to this tweet (https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1240446891055251457), famously said \u0026ldquo;the buck stops here,\u0026rdquo; rather than the \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t take responsibility at all\u0026rdquo; of this president. As of March 23, Trump still hasn\u0026rsquo;t invoked the Defense Production Act. 209,839 global cases, 8,778 deaths (WHO), U.S. 10,442 cases, 150 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 19: In an interview with Bob Woodward for his new book, Rage, Trump says of the coronavirus that \u0026ldquo;I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don\u0026rsquo;t want to create a panic.\u0026rdquo; He admits he knew that it was deadly and worse than the flu. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump/2020/09/09/0368fe3c-efd2-11ea-b4bc-3a2098fc73d4_story.html)\nMarch 20: Yamiche Alcindor asks Trump at his press conference: \u0026ldquo;When will everyone who needs a coronavirus test be able to get a test?\u0026rdquo; Trump\u0026rsquo;s response: \u0026ldquo;No-one is talking about this except you, which doesn’t surprise me.\u0026rdquo; Alcindor: \u0026ldquo;What about people w/ symptoms who cannot get a test?\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;Yeah, well, OK. I’m not— I\u0026rsquo;m not hearing it.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1241056026872426496) 234,073 global cases, 9,840 deaths (WHO), U.S. 15,219 cases, 201 deaths (CDC). Tests done to date: CDC: 4,524, public health labs: 49,681, commercial labs: 88,000. (https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1241111313935458305)\nMarch 20: \u0026ldquo;We haven\u0026rsquo;t been given the credit we\u0026rsquo;ve deserved.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1241054458525765634)\nMarch 22: \u0026ldquo;Ford, General Motors and Tesla are being given the go ahead to make ventilators and other metal products, FAST! @fema Go for it auto execs, lets see how good you are? @RepMarkMeadows @GOPLeader @senatemajldr\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1241732681366482944) 292,142 global cases, 12,784 deaths, U.S. 15,219 cases, 201 deaths. This tweet apparently a reference to Ford making respirators in partnership with 3M and GE Healthcare: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/business/ford-3m-ge-ventilators-coronavirus-duplicate-2/index.html\nMarch 23: 332,930 global cases, 14,510 deaths (WHO), U.S. 33,404 cases, 400 deaths (CDC). Dr. Fauci doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear at Trump\u0026rsquo;s daily press conference.\nMarch 24: \u0026ldquo;Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively \u0026amp; lovingly. We can do two things together. THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM! Congress MUST ACT NOW. We will come back strong!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242455267603877894) 372,757 global cases, 16,231 deaths (WHO), U.S. 44,183 cases, 544 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 25: \u0026ldquo;Just reported that the United States has done far more “testing” than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242824631230308353?s=19) 414,179 global cases, 18,440 deaths (WHO), U.S. 68,440 cases, 994 deaths (CDC). While the U.S. has done a greater number of tests, it also has a much larger population \u0026ndash; where Korea has tested 1 of every 170 people, the U.S. has tested 1 of every 1,090 people.\nMarch 26: \u0026ldquo;I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they are going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243354645927530498) 462,684 global cases, 49,219 deaths (WHO), U.S. 68,440 cases, 994 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 27: 509,164 global cases, 23,335 deaths (WHO), U.S. 85,356 cases, 1,246 deaths.\nUnknown date, likely after official launch of these machines on March 27: Trump secretly sends Abbott Point of Care COVID test systems to Vladimir Putin for his personal use, per Bob Woodward\u0026rsquo;s 2024 book, War. (https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/politics/bob-woodward-book-war-joe-biden-putin-netanyahu-trump/index.html)\nMarch 28: \u0026ldquo;You can call it a germ. You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You can call it many different names. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone even knows what it is.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243670348211654664) 571,678 global cases, 62,514 deaths (WHO), 103,321 cases, 1,668 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 28: \u0026ldquo;I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE of developing “hot spots”, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A decision will be made, one way or another, shortly.\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243953994743103489) Advance notice of a quarantine order caused many people to leave northern Italy and spread the virus (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italys-virus-lockdown-dash-train-69469683). The three states here already had shelter-in-place orders from their governors. Trump subsequently retracted his quarantine suggestion in a pair of tweets (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1244056559577071616).\nMarch 29: \u0026ldquo;We sent thousands of generators to New York \u0026hellip; the people in New York never distributed the generators.\u0026rdquo; Press conference, Trump means ventilators. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1244394071982051329) 634,835 global cases, 29,957 deaths (WHO), U.S. 122,653 cases, 2,112 deaths (CDC).\nMarch 29: \u0026ldquo;You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths \u0026hellip; So if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 [thousand] and 200,000, we altogether have done a very good job.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21199586/us-coronavirus-deaths-trump-200000-good-job)\nMarch 30: \u0026ldquo;It will go away. You know it\u0026ndash;you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we\u0026rsquo;re going to have a great victory.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nMarch 30: Dr. Stephen M. Hahn of the FDA tweets that the FDA has issued an authorization (on March 29) to Battelle for an N95 mask decontamination system recommended by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine; Trump retweets it with thanks to DeWine. The system does not work and the authorization is revoked by April 30, 2021. (https://twitter.com/SteveFDA/status/1244472087831552004)\nMarch 31: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nApril 1: \"They're doing tests on airlines--very strong tests--for getting on, getting off. They're testing on trains--getting on, getting off.\" White House briefing. There is no such testing occurring, this is complete fabrication. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/politics/fact-check-trump-plane-and-train-passengers-tested-for-the-coronavirus/index.html) 823,626 global cases, 40,598 deaths (WHO), U.S. 186,101 cases, 3,603 deaths (CDC).\nApril 1: By this date the U.S. government took delivery of one million test kits, manufactured in China, from Cogna Technology Solutions in the United Arab Emirates, which had been purchased by \"WH\" (White House) at Jared Kushner's direction. Another 2.5 million test kits were delivered by April 20.\u0026nbsp; However, these were contracted for illegally, so the U.S. government refused to pay for them, and they were also contaminated and did not work, probably due to improper storage in the UAE after delivery from China. The White House coronavirus task force's national testing program developed in March was never put into effect, because of lack of support from Donald Trump and a political calculation that COVID-19 was largely a blue state problem. (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air)\nApril 2: \"Scarf is generally better than a mask because it's thicker.\" White House briefing. (https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1245852819753705473) 896,540 global cases, 72,839 deaths (WHO), U.S. 213,144 cases, 4,513 deaths (CDC).\nApril 3: The U.S. federal government seizes orders of personal protective equipment (PPE) destined for France and Germany at the Port of New York, along with equipment ordered by individual states, most notably Massachusetts. The Governor of Massachusetts makes arrangements via the Chinese ambassador to the UN for one million N95 masks to be put on the New England Patriots' plane as a \"private humanitarian effort\", which are successfully delivered to Boston.\u0026nbsp; 972,640 global cases, 50,325 deaths (WHO), U.S. 239,279 cases, 5,443 deaths (CDC).\nApril 3: \"In one case, an order of 200,000 masks for Germany made by U.S.-listed multinational 3M Co in China were “confiscated” in Bangkok, Berlin Secretary of Interior Andreas Geisel, said in a statement, calling it an “act of modern piracy.”\" ... \"At the same time, 3M said Friday that the White House ordered it to stop all shipments to Canada and Latin America of respirators that it manufactures in the United States, despite what 3M called “significant humanitarian implications.”\" (https://globalnews.ca/news/6775423/coroanvirus-global-face-mask-competition/)\nApril 3: \"It is going to go away...It's going--I didn't say a date. ... I said 'it's going away' and it is going away.\" (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nApril 7: Trump announces he is \"going to put a hold\" on funding to the World Health Organization. He later says he had merely promised to consider doing so. (https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1247646160069652482) 1,279,722 global cases, 72,614 deaths (WHO), U.S. 374,329 cases, 12,064 deaths (CDC).\nApril 7: Trump fires the Inspector General responsible for oversight on distribution of the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 rescue package.\nApril 7: \"It did go--it will go away.\" (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nApril 10: \"The germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can't keep up with it ... there's a whole genius to it ... not only is it hidden, but it's very smart.\" White House daily briefing. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections, not viruses. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1248698754556923904) 1,521,252 global cases, 92,798 deaths (WHO), U.S. 459,165 cases, 16,570 deaths (CDC).\nApril 10: \"The Invisible Enemy will soon be in full retreat!\" Trump on Twitter (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1248630671754563585)\nApril 13:\u0026nbsp;Trump to Bob Woodward, in an interview for his new book,\u0026nbsp;Rage: \"This thing is a killer if it gets you. If you're the wrong person, you don't have a chance. ... So this rips you apart. ... It is the plague.\"\u0026nbsp;(https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1305665212201275396) 1,773,084 global cases, 111,652 deaths (WHO), U.S. 554,849 cases, 21,942 deaths (CDC). April 14: The Trump administration halts funding of WHO pending review of its handling of COVID-19. 1,844,863 global cases, 117,021 deaths (WHO), U.S. 579,005 cases, 22,252 deaths (CDC).\nApril 21: 2,397,216 global cases, 162,956 deaths (WHO), U.S. 776,093 cases, 41,758 deaths (CDC).\nApril 23: \"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute. ... Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.\" (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216) Breitbart's attempt to save this nonsense still seems to leave it as nonsense:\u0026nbsp;https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/04/23/fact-check-no-trump-didnt-propose-injecting-people-with-disinfectant/\u0026nbsp;2,544,792 global cases, 175,694 deaths (WHO), U.S. 828,441 cases, 46,379 deaths (CDC).\nApril 24: Trump's VP Mike Pence says, \"I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we’re going to put this coronavirus in the past ... I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. ... I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend [May 23-25] we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.\" (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-24/pence-says-coronavirus-outbreak-could-be-over-by-memorial-day) 2,626,321 global cases, 181,938 deaths (WHO), U.S. 86,585 cases, 48,816 deaths (CDC.\nApril 26: After a series of excuses to explain his April 23 injection comments, including that he was just being sarcastic to see what the press would do with it (which undermined Breitbart and anyone else arguing that it was serious and accurate), Trump took no questions at his April 24 briefing, did not present at all at his April 25 briefing, and canceled his briefing on April 26.\u0026nbsp; 2,804,796 global cases, 193,710 deaths (WHO), U.S. 928,619 cases, 52,459 deaths (CDC).\u0026nbsp; The Washington Post summed up Trump's daily coronavirus briefings: 28 hours of Trump in 35 briefings since March 16, using 60% of the time.\u0026nbsp; In the past 21 days, 13 hours of Trump, of which two hours was spent attacking others, 45 minutes praising himself, and 4.5 minutes expressing condolences for coronavirus victims.\u0026nbsp; In 113 of the 346 questions he has answered, he attacked someone.\u0026nbsp; In 25 percent of his statements he has made false statements. He played self-praising videos three times. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/13-hours-of-trump-the-president-fills-briefings-with-attacks-and-boasts-but-little-empathy/2020/04/25/7eec5ab0-8590-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html)\nApril 27: Trump at press conference at the White House rose garden: \u0026ldquo;So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were — 2.2 million — we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-33/) 2,878,196 global cases, 198,668 deaths (WHO), U.S. 928,619 cases, 52,459 deaths (CDC).\nApril 29: 3,018,952 global cases, 207,973 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,005,147 cases, 57,505 deaths (CDC).\nApril 30: The Trump administration killed the CDC\u0026rsquo;s guidance document for how to safely re-open American businesses. (https://apnews.com/9c4d5284ba4769d3b98aa05232201f88) 3,090,445 global cases, 217,769 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,031,659 cases, 60,057 deaths (CDC).\nMay 3: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80, to 100,000 people. That\u0026rsquo;s a horrible thing.\u0026rdquo; A moment of honesty from Trump, Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial. (https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/495905-trump-predicts-virus-death-toll-could-reach-100000-in-the-us) 3,349,786 global cases, 238,628 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,122,486 cases, 65,735 deaths (CDC).\nMay 5: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They\u0026rsquo;re warriors. We can\u0026rsquo;t keep our country closed. We have to open our country \u0026hellip; Will some people be badly affected? Yes.\u0026rdquo; Trump at Honeywell, at a mask factory not wearing a mask, in Phoenix, Arizona. By \u0026ldquo;be badly affected\u0026rdquo; he means death and permanent damage to lungs and other organs. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1257778264241844224) 3,517,345 global cases, 243,401 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,171,510 cases, 68,279 deaths (CDC). Today the White House National Economic Council projected U.S. deaths to drop to zero by May 16, just a day after a leaked CDC presentation projected 3,000-15,000 deaths per day by June 1.\nMay 5: The White House coronavirus task force aims to wind down by around Memorial Day, May 25. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/white-house-coronavirus-task-force-winding-down/index.html)\nMay 6: 3,588,773 global cases, 247,503 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,193,813 cases, 70,802 deaths (CDC).\nMay 7: \u0026ldquo;Testing is somewhat overrated.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1258481384513056769) 3,672,238 global cases, 254,045 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,219,066 cases, 73,297 deaths (CDC).\nMay 8: \u0026ldquo;Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive. \u0026hellip; This is why the whole concept of tests aren\u0026rsquo;t necessarily great.\u0026rdquo; Regarding Pence\u0026rsquo;s press secretary and Stephen Miller\u0026rsquo;s wife, Katie Miller, who has tested positive for COVID-19, as did one of Trump\u0026rsquo;s valets. (https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1258893514139668481) 3,759,967 global cases, 259,474 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,248,040 cases, 75,477 deaths (CDC).\nMay 9: Ivanka Trump\u0026rsquo;s personal assistant tests positive for COVID-19. (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ivanka-trump-personal-assistant-test-positive-coronavirus) 3,855,788 global cases, 265,862 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,274,036 cases, 75,477 deaths (CDC).\nMay 14: \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn\u0026rsquo;t do any testing we would have very few cases. They don\u0026rsquo;t want to write that. It\u0026rsquo;s common sense.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1261017121078861826) 4,248,389 global cases, 294,046 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,384,930 cases, 83,947 deaths (CDC).\nMay 15: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;ll go away\u0026ndash;at some point, it\u0026rsquo;ll go away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nMay 17: 4,525,497 global cases, 307,395 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,467,065 cases, 88,709 deaths (CDC).\nMay 19: CDC guidance for businesses which was originally intended for release on April 30 is released. The guidance for churches and religious congregations was removed. (https://twitter.com/Porter_Anderson/status/1263051970429976576) 4,731,458 global cases, 316,169 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,504,830 cases, 90,340 deaths (CDC).\nMay 21: Trump calls for 300 million doses of vaccine to be ready by January. (https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/12/11/trump-administration-purchases-additional-100-million-doses-covid-19-investigational-vaccine-moderna.html)\nMay 23: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 5,103,006 global cases, 333,401 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,595,885 cases, 96,002 deaths (CDC).\nMay 24: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 5,204,508 global cases, 337,687 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,622,114 cases, 97,049 deaths (CDC).\nMay 25: 5,304,772 global cases, 342,029 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,637,456 cases, 97,669 deaths (CDC).\nMay 26: Trump says if he hadn\u0026rsquo;t taken swift action in response to COVID-19, \u0026ldquo;we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1274725458869997570) 5,404,512 global cases, 343,514 deaths (WHO), U.S. 1,662,414 cases, 98,261 deaths (CDC).\nJune 12: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 7,410,510 global cases, 418,294 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,016,027 cases, 113,914 deaths (CDC).\nJune 13: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 7,553,182 global cases, 423,349 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,038,344 cases, 114,625 deaths (CDC).\nJune 14: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 7,690,708 global cases, 427,630 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,063,812 cases, 115,271 deaths (CDC).\nJune 15: Trump says if he hadn\u0026rsquo;t taken swift action in response to COVID-19, \u0026ldquo;we would have lost possibly 2.5, 3 million people.\u0026quot; (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1274725458869997570) 7,823,289 global cases, 431,541 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,085,769 cases, 115,644 deaths (CDC).\nJune 15: \u0026ldquo;At some point, this stuff goes away. And it\u0026rsquo;s going away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nJune 16: Vice President Mike Pence publishes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with the headline \u0026ldquo;There Isn\u0026rsquo;t a Coronavirus Second Wave.\u0026quot; (For image: https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1419350836547932165) Pence was mistaken. U.S. 2,104,346 cases, 116,140 deaths (CDC).\nJune 20: Trump holds a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump says if he hadn\u0026rsquo;t taken swift action in response to COVID-19, \u0026ldquo;we would have had I would say probably 4 million deaths, 3 million deaths, 2 million deaths.\u0026quot; (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1274725458869997570)\nAlso at Tulsa rally: \u0026ldquo;When you do testing to that extent, you\u0026rsquo;re going to find more people. You\u0026rsquo;re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1274500811486228482) 8,525,042 global cases, 456,973 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,215,618 cases, 119,055 deaths (CDC).\nJune 21: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 8,708,008 global cases, 461,715 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,248,029 cases, 119,615 deaths (CDC).\nJune 23: Questioned about his claim that he asked for testing to be slowed, which staffers had claimed was a joke, Trump stated that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t joking. (https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1275422015059615750)\nOn Twitter he repeated his claim that more cases are caused by more testing: \u0026ldquo;Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1275381670561095682)\nJune 23: At the Students for Trump Rally at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump seemed not to know what the 19 in COVID-19 means: \u0026ldquo;I could give you 19 or 20 names. \u0026hellip;I said, \u0026lsquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the 19?\u0026rsquo; COVID-19, some people can\u0026rsquo;t explain what the 19, give me, COVID-19, I said, \u0026lsquo;That\u0026rsquo;s an odd name.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4888678/user-clip-trump-19-covid-19-means)\nJune 27: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 9,653,048 global cases, 491,128 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,459,472 cases, 124,976 deaths (CDC).\nJune 28: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 9,843,073 global cases, 495,760 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,504,175 cases, 125,484 deaths (CDC).\nJuly: Trump administration signs a deal with Pfizer for 100 million doses of its vaccine (enough for 50M people to each get two shots), but passes on an opportunity to get another 100M doses, with the result that Pfizer can\u0026rsquo;t guarantee any more doses than the original 100M until after June 2021. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/politics/trump-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine.html)\nJuly 1: Trump tells Fox Business that he expects the coronavirus will \u0026ldquo;just sort of disappear,\u0026rdquo; as he claimed back on February 27. (https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1278404618511421445) 10,357,662 global cases, 508,055 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,624,873 cases, 127,299 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 3: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 10,710,005 global cases, 517,877 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,732,531 cases, 128,648 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 5: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 11,125,245 global cases, 528,204 deaths (WHO), U.S. 2,789,678 cases, 129,305 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 9: Trump tweet: \u0026ldquo;For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven\u0026rsquo;t done nearly as well as we have, is that our TESTING is much bigger and better. We have tested 40,000,000 people. If we did 20,000,000 instead, Cases would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED!\u0026rdquo; Trump shows that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand what per-capita means, doesn\u0026rsquo;t know what fractions are, and doesn\u0026rsquo;t know when to capitalize. (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1281206354334625793) 11,874,226 global cases, 545,481 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,047,671 cases, 132,056 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 10: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Doral, Florida. 12,102,328 global cases, 551,046 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,106,931 cases, 132,855 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 11: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 12,322,395 global cases, 556,335 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,173,212 cases, 132,666 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 12: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 12,552,765 global cases, 561,617 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,236,130 cases, 134,572 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 18: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 13,876,441 global cases, 593,087 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,630,587 cases, 138,782 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 19: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 14,043,176 global cases, 597,583 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,698,161 cases, 139,659 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 19: \u0026ldquo;I will be right eventually. You know, I said, \u0026lsquo;it\u0026rsquo;s going to disappear.\u0026rsquo; I\u0026rsquo;ll say it again.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nJuly 21: In an interview with Bob Woodward for his new book, Rage, Trump says \u0026ldquo;The virus has nothing to do with me. It\u0026rsquo;s not my fault.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/gelles/status/1303748083688378368) 14,562,550 global cases, 607,781 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,819,139 cases, 140,630 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 22: Trump on Fox News: \u0026ldquo;It makes us look bad\u0026hellip; if instead of 50 million [tests], we did 25 million, we\u0026rsquo;d have half the number of cases.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1286141652558643200) 14,765,256 global cases, 612,054 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,882,167 cases, 141,677 deaths (CDC). U.S. deaths have risen to over 1,000 per day again, last seen on June 26.\nJuly 22: Trump on Fox News: \u0026ldquo;Watch: On November 4, everything will open up.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1286144789352787969)\nJuly 22: California passes New York for total COVID-19 cases.\nJuly 23: \u0026ldquo;The country is in very good shape, other than if you look south and west. That will all work out.\u0026rdquo; Trump press conference announcing the cancellation of the Republican National Convention activities in Jacksonville, Florida. (https://twitter.com/scottbix/status/1286421527408381957) 15,012,731 global cases, 619,150 deaths (WHO), U.S. 3,952,273 cases, 142,755 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 25: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. Florida passes New York for total COVID-19 cases. 15,581,009 global cases, 635,173 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,099,310 cases, 145,013 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 26: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 15,785,641 global cases, 640,016 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,163,892 cases, 145,942 deaths (CDC).\nJuly 28: It\u0026rsquo;s publicly announced that Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to provide a $765 million loan to Kodak to allow it to start manufacturing pharmaceutical precursors, including for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug touted by the president for COVID-19 treatment but which has been found in randomized controlled trials to be ineffective for that purpose. The primary shareholder of Kodak, Ted Suhl, a Trump supporter, was convicted of bribery charges for a Medicare scam but had his prison sentence commuted by Trump. Kodak executives were awarded stock options the day before the announcement, which caused Kodak\u0026rsquo;s stock price to soar. (https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/kodak-pharma-stock-active-ingredient) 16,341,920 global cases, 650,805 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,280,135 cases, 147,672 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 1: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 17,396,943 global cases, 675,060 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,542,579 cases, 152,870 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 2: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 17,660,523 global cases, 680,894 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,601,526 cases, 154,002 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 3: Trump interview with Jonathan Swan airs. Trump says the U.S. is doing the best in the world with COVID-19 in \u0026ldquo;numerous categories.\u0026quot; Swan: \u0026ldquo;Oh, you\u0026rsquo;re doing death as a proportion of cases. I\u0026rsquo;m talking about death as a proportion of population. That\u0026rsquo;s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t do that.\u0026rdquo; Swan: \u0026ldquo;Why can\u0026rsquo;t I do that?\u0026rdquo;(https://twitter.com/axios/status/1290497186489348096) 17,918,582 global cases, 686,703 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,649,102 cases, 154,471 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 3: From the same Swan interview: Trump: \u0026ldquo;Other countries don\u0026rsquo;t test like we do, so they don\u0026rsquo;t show cases.\u0026rdquo; Swan: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re testing so much because it\u0026rsquo;s spread so far in America.\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;Jonathan, when I took over, we didn\u0026rsquo;t even have a test.\u0026rdquo; Swan: \u0026ldquo;Why would you have a test? The virus didn\u0026rsquo;t exist?\u0026rdquo; Full interview: https://www.axios.com/full-axios-hbo-interview-donald-trump-cd5a67e1-6ba1-46c8-bb3d-8717ab9f3cc5.html\nAugust 4: Trump, who on July 28 touted his use of the Defense Production Act to lend $765 million to Kodak, now that the SEC is investigating the circumstances around Kodak\u0026rsquo;s announcement of the loan and stock activity, now says \u0026ldquo;I wasn\u0026rsquo;t involved in the deal.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/VickyPJWard/status/1290790397065793538) 18,142,718 global cases, 691,013 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,698,818 cases, 155,204 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 5: \u0026ldquo;This thing\u0026rsquo;s going away. It will go away like things go away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nAugust 7: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 18,902,735 global cases, 709,511 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,858,596 cases, 158,887 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 8: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 19,187,943 global cases, 716,075 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,920,369 cases, 160,220 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 9: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 19,462,112 global cases, 722,285 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,974,959 cases, 161,284 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 10: Trump says that the influenza pandemic of \u0026ldquo;1917\u0026rdquo; (it was in 1918, but Trump always incorrectly says 1917) probably ended World War II. (https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1292956445944606721) 19,718,030 global cases, 728,013 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,023,649 cases, 161,842 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 15: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ, as his brother dies at the age of 71. 21,026,758 global cases, 755,786 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,285,546 cases, 167,546 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 16: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump National in Bedminster, NJ. 21,294,845 global cases, 761,779 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,340,232 cases, 166,696 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 19: \u0026ldquo;“You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting.”\u0026rdquo; (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html)\nAugust 22: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 22,812,491 global cases, 795,132 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,598,547 cases, 174,645 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 23: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia, while tweeting \u0026ldquo;Happy Sunday! We want GOD!\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/23/trump-religion-god-400250) 23,057,288 global cases, 800,906 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,643,812 cases, 175,651 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 30: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia with Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz. 24,854,140 global cases, 838,924 deaths (WHO), U.S. 5,934,824 cases, 182,149 deaths (CDC).\nAugust 31: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to go away.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nSeptember 5: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 26,468,031 global cases, 871,166 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,181,474 cases, 187,159 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 6: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 26,763,217 global cases, 876,616 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,226,879 cases, 188,051 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 9: The White House orders an end to airport screenings for travelers entering the United States\u0026ndash;no symptom or temperature checks, nothing. (https://twitter.com/weinbergersa/status/1303750595724140550) 27,486,960 global cases, 894,983 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,310,663 cases, 189,147 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 9: Trump administration Health and Human Services science adviser Paul Alexander wrote an email to Michael Caputo, Health and Human Services public affairs chief, touting two examples where the CDC had changed wording in reports in response to his influence, to downplay the coronavirus pandemic. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/)\nSeptember 11: Trump HHS science adviser Paul Alexander asked White House adviser Scott Atlas to help him write an op-ed \u0026ldquo;timed for the election\u0026rdquo; to oppose advice from an upcoming CDC report. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/)\nSeptember 15: Trump says the pandemic will end due to \u0026ldquo;herd mentality.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1306039211150237698) He chides Joe Biden for not implementing a nationwide mask mandate (as a private citizen?). (https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1306038681837490176) 29,155,581 global cases, 926,544 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,537,627 cases, 194,092 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 15: \u0026ldquo;It is going away. And it\u0026rsquo;s probably going to go away now a lot faster because of the vaccines.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nSeptember 18: Jon Karl of ABC News: \u0026ldquo;How is it that you don\u0026rsquo;t trust your own experts? Do you think you know better than they do?\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;Yeah, in many cases I do.\u0026quot; (Narrator: He doesn\u0026rsquo;t.) (https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1307069420590829571) 30,055,710 global cases, 943,433 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,656,799 cases, 197,116 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 20: Trump plays golf at the Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia. 30,675,675 global cases, 954,417 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,748,935 cases, 198,754 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 21: \u0026ldquo;It affects virtually nobody.\u0026quot; (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1308209927274536961) 30,949,804 global cases, 959,116 deaths (WHO), U.S. 6,786,352 cases, 199,024 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 26: Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination event at the White House Rose Garden, at which Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) sat, maskless, a few seats away from president of Notre Dame, Rev. John Jenkins, also maskless. Video from the event shows Sen. Lee hugging people at the event. Both reported that they tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, October 2, as do three other attendees, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, and presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway (after being outed by her daughter on TikTok). (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/white-house-covid-cases-amy-coney-barrett-nomination-event.html) 32,429,965 global cases, 985,823 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,009,216 cases, 203,180 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 27: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 32,730,945 global cases, 991,224 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,059,087 cases, 204,033 deaths (CDC).\nSeptember 29: The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Trump\u0026rsquo;s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, writes in his November 2021 memoir, The Chief\u0026rsquo;s Chief, that Trump knew he was infected with COVID-19 prior to the debate. (https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-donald-trump-joe-biden-health-campaigns-0f7315791a3ead1919842c894bedb68f)\nSeptember 30: Hope Hicks, senior counselor to the president, reports symptoms of COVID-19 while flying on Air Force One to Trump\u0026rsquo;s rally in Minnesota. She tests positive for COVID-19 the morning of October 1, which is publicly reported in the afternoon. Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also tests positive for COVID-19, publicly reported on October 2, after the president\u0026rsquo;s report. 33,502,430 global cases, 1,004,421 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,168,077 cases, 205,372 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 1: Trump attends a fundraiser at his golf club in New Jersey, possibly while knowing he was COVID-19 infected. He said on Fox News on Thursday evening that he was still awaiting test results, but we now know he already had a positive result from a rapid test when he said that. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-didnt-disclose-first-positive-covid-19-test-while-awaiting-a-second-test-on-thursday-11601844813) 33,842,281 global cases, 1,010,634 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,213,419 cases, 206,402 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 1: Trump possibly plays golf at the Trump National, Bedminister, New Jersey.\nOctober 2: President Donald Trump and his wife Melania both report positive test results for COVID-19. Trump\u0026rsquo;s former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, tweets that Trump is \u0026ldquo;asymptotic\u0026rdquo; [sic], but the White House reports that he has mild symptoms including lethargy, but within hours reports more symptoms, and the fact that Trump has been given a maximum dose of an experimental antibody drug treatment from Regeneron (on Thursday evening, Oct 1). Trump goes to Walter Reed Hospital in the afternoon. 34,161,721 global cases, 1,016,918 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,260,465 cases, 207,302 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 3: Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security committee, reports that he has also tested positive for COVID-19 (but was not in attendance at the Saturday Rose Garden event). White House physician Dr. Sean Conley stated that we are \u0026ldquo;72 hours\u0026rdquo; into Trump\u0026rsquo;s diagnosis and \u0026ldquo;48 hours\u0026rdquo; into treatment, which implies he knew he was positive on the morning of September 30, not on October 1 or 2. A White House official subsequently \u0026ldquo;clarified\u0026rdquo; saying that he meant 3 days (i.e., \u0026gt;48 hours), not 72 hours, and 2 days (i.e., \u0026gt;24 hours), not 48 hours.\nOctober 8: Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo: \u0026ldquo;Do you feel that you are contagious?\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;m contagious at all.\u0026rdquo; (He is almost certainly still contagious.) (https://twitter.com/karentravers/status/1314175678271586305) 35,659,007 global cases, 1,044,269 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,475,262 cases, 210,232 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 8: Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar says the Trump administration hopes to have 100 million doses of vaccine (for 50 million people) ready by the end of the year. This quantity was later reduced to 40 million doses for 20 million people. (https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/secretary/speeches/2020-speeches/secretary-azar-delivers-remarks-operation-warp-speed-goldman-sachs-healthcare-virtual-event.html)\nOctober 10: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to disappear, it is disappearing.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nOctober 15: Trump possibly plays golf at the Trump National, Doral, Florida. 38,394,169 global cases, 1,089,047 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,894,768 cases, 216,025 deaths (CDC). A second presidential debate scheduled for this date at the Arsht Center in Miami, Florida is cancelled due to COVID-19.\nOctober 16: Trump possibly plays golf at the Trump National, Doral, Florida. 38,789,204 global cases, 1,095,097 deaths (WHO), U.S. 7,958,254 cases, 216,917 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 22: A third (second, after the second one is cancelled) presidential debate is held at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.\nOctober 23: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re rounding the corner beautifully.\u0026rdquo; (https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1319801872513929216) 41,570,883 global cases, 1,134,940 deaths (WHO), U.S. 8,387,047 cases, 222,447 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 24: At rally in Lumberton, NC: \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s all I hear about now. Turn on TV, \u0026lsquo;Covid, Covid, Covid Covid Covid.\u0026rsquo; A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don\u0026rsquo;t talk about it. \u0026lsquo;Covid Covid Covid Covid.\u0026rsquo; By the way, on November 4th, you won\u0026rsquo;t hear about it anymore \u0026hellip; \u0026lsquo;please don\u0026rsquo;t go and vote, Covid!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; What Trump describes regarding a plane crash not being reported has never happened, but COVID-19 is killing twice that many people every day in the United States. About 309 people have died in airplane and helicopter crashes globally so far in 2020; the most recent single plane crash with more than 500 fatalities was the worst such crash ever, and it occurred in August 12, 1985, Japan Air Lines Flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1320053682759663622) 41,570,883 global cases, 1,134,940 deaths (WHO), U.S. 8,469,976 cases, 223,393 deaths (CDC).\nOctober 24: \u0026ldquo;It is going away; it\u0026rsquo;s rounding the turn.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444)\nNovember 3: The U.S. presidential election occurs, with an all-time high voter turnout. 46,840,783 global cases, 1,204,028 deaths (WHO), U.S. 9,268,818 cases, 230,893 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 7: It becomes clear that Joe Biden has won more than 270 electoral votes and will be the next U.S. president. Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 49,106,931 global cases, 1,239,157 deaths (WHO), U.S. 9,714,600 cases, 235,475 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 8: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 49,578,590 global cases, 1,245,717 deaths (WHO), U.S. 9,808,411 cases, 236,547 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 13: It has become mathematically impossible for Trump to win in Arizona, and it is now clear that the election result is 306 electoral votes to Biden and 232 for Trump, the same margin in electoral votes that Trump had over Hillary Clinton in 2016 that he called a \u0026ldquo;landslide\u0026rdquo; (it\u0026rsquo;s not, but it\u0026rsquo;s not particularly close, either). The big difference is that Biden also won the popular vote by millions of votes, and the total margin in the swing states is larger for Biden than it was for Trump in 2016. 52,487,476 global cases, 1,290,653 deaths (WHO), U.S. 10,508,864 cases, 242,216 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 14: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 53,164,303 global cases, 1,300,576 deaths (WHO), U.S. 10,690,665 cases, 243,580 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 15: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 53,766,728 global cases, 1,308,975 deaths (WHO), U.S. 10,846,373 cases, 244,810 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 21: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 57,274,018 global cases, 1,368,000 deaths (WHO), U.S. 11,843,490 cases, 253,600 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 22: Trump possibly plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 57,882,183 global cases, 1,377,395 deaths (WHO), U.S. 12,028,081 cases, 255,076 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 26: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 60,074,174 global cases, 1,416,292 deaths (WHO), U.S. 12,498,734 cases, 259,005 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 27: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 60,534,526 global cases, 1,426,101 deaths (WHO), U.S. 12,823,092 cases, 262,673 deaths (CDC).\nNovember 28: Trump possibly plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 61,299,371 global cases, 1,439,784 deaths (WHO), U.S. 12,999,664 cases, 263,956 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 5: Trump holds a \u0026ldquo;victory rally\u0026rdquo; in Valdosta, Georgia, a misinformation-filled rally in state he lost to Joe Biden. 65,257,767 global cases, 1,513,179 deaths (WHO), U.S. 14,255,535 cases, 277,825 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 10: U.S. sets a new record for daily new cases (+231,396) and a new record for daily new deaths (+3,411). 68,165,877 global cases, 1,557,385 deaths (WHO), U.S. 15,271,571 cases, 288,762 deaths.\nDecember 11: The Trump administration purchases an additional 100 million doses of the Moderna vaccine (bringing the total to 200 million doses for this vaccine). (https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/12/11/trump-administration-purchases-additional-100-million-doses-covid-19-investigational-vaccine-moderna.html)\nDecember 12: U.S. sets a new record for daily new cases (+244,011), beating the record set on December 10. 69,808,588 global cases, 1,588,854 deaths (WHO), U.S. 15,718,811 cases, 294,535 deaths.\nDecember 13: Trump plays golf at the Trump National, Potomac Falls, Virginia. 70,461,926 global cases, 1,599,704 deaths (WHO), U.S. 15,932,116 cases, 296,818 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 14: The electoral college votes, electing Joe Biden as president, 306 votes to Trump\u0026rsquo;s 232. 71,051,805 global cases, 1,608,648 deaths (WHO), U.S. 16,113,148 cases, 298,266 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 17: U.S. sets a new record for daily new deaths (+3,435), beating the record set on December 10. 72,851,747 global cases, 1,643,339 deaths (WHO), U.S. 16,756,581 cases, 306,427 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 18: U.S. sets a new record for daily new deaths (+3,444), beating the record set December 17. [no WHO data update on dashboard], U.S. 16,987,911 cases, 309,880 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 19: U.S. sets a new record for daily new cases (+403,359), beating the record set on December 12. 74,299,042 global cases, 1,669,982 deaths (WHO), U.S. 17,391,270 cases, 312,636 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 24: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida. 77,530,799 global cases, 1,724,904 deaths (WHO), U.S. 18,391,571 cases, 325,096 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 25: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida. 78,194,947 global cases, 1,736,752 deaths (WHO), U.S. 18,584,924 cases, 327,900 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 27: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida. 79,232,555 global cases, 1,754,493 deaths (WHO), U.S. 18,909,910 cases, 330,901 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 28: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida. 79,673,754 global cases, 1,761,381 deaths (WHO), U.S. 19,055,869 cases, 332,246 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 30: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida. 80,773,033 global cases, 1,783,619 deaths (WHO), U.S. 19,432,125 cases, 337,419 deaths (CDC).\nDecember 31: The year ends with only about 2.6 million doses of vaccine administered, against the administration\u0026rsquo;s goal of 20 million doses, largely due to failure to fund the \u0026ldquo;last mile\u0026rdquo; of distribution. (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/30/coronavirus-vaccine-target-trump-452558) 81,475,053 global cases, 1,798,050 deaths (WHO), U.S. 19,663,976 cases, 341,199 deaths (CDC). The U.S. sets a new record for COVID-19 deaths in a single day, 3,764.\nJanuary 6, 2021: As Congress begins counting the electoral votes, Donald Trump gives a speech to a gathering crowd which incites them to storm the U.S. Capitol and break in and vandalize it, causing Congress to recess during the very beginning of debate over Rep. Paul Gosar\u0026rsquo;s (R-AZ) baseless objection to the electoral votes of Arizona. Five people died in the melee \u0026ndash; one woman was shot in the chest inside the Capitol, three died from \u0026ldquo;medical emergencies,\u0026rdquo; and a Capitol Police officer dies from injuries inflicted by the crowd. (Another Capitol Police officer commits suicide days later.) Congress reconvened in the evening and confirmed early the next morning that Joe Biden won the electoral college vote, 306-232. 81,810,000 global cases, 1,854,195 deaths (WHO), U.S. 20,960,096 cases, 356,005 deaths (CDC).\nJanuary 13, 2021: The House votes to impeach Trump a second time, 232-197, with 10 Republicans including #3 Republican in the House, Liz Cheney, voting to impeach. U.S. 22,740,142 cases, 379,255 deaths (CDC).\nJanuary 15, 2021: The Trump administration vows to release a reserve of additional doses of vaccine so that states can use held-back second doses as first doses for more people, but it turns out the reserve didn\u0026rsquo;t exist. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/15/trump-vaccine-reserve-used-up/) U.S. 23,193,703 cases, 387,255 deaths (CDC).\nSome date in January prior to January 20, 2021: Donald and Melania Trump are secretly vaccinated against COVID-19 at the White House. This is not made public until March 1, 2021. (https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/01/politics/trump-melania-vaccinated-white-house/index.html)\nJanuary 20, 2021: Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 47th U.S. president, and spent the afternoon signing executive orders including rejoining the World Health Organization. On his first day in office (Jan 21) he rolled out a national coronavirus plan which included a goal to administer 100 million vaccinations in the next 100 days. (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/21/politics/biden-national-coronavirus-plan/index.html) U.S. 24,876,261 cases, 400,306 deaths (CDC).\nJanuary 27, 2021: The Washington Post reported that \u0026ldquo;Federal officials repeatedly raided a fund earmarked for biomedical research in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, spending millions of dollars on unrelated salaries, administrative expenses, and even the cost of removing office furniture, according to the findings of an investigation int a whistleblower complaint\u0026rdquo; shared with the Post. The funds were taken from hundreds of millions of dollars for vaccine and drug research by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which Health and Human Services officials in the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response (Dr. Nicole Lurie, June 2009-January 2017) at HHS referred to as the \u0026ldquo;bank of BARDA.\u0026rdquo; The whistleblower reports not seeing such misuse under Lurie\u0026rsquo;s predecessor as assistant secretary for preparedness and response. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/27/barda-health-funds-misappropiated/)\nFebruary 6, 2021: The U.S. Senate votes to acquit Donald Trump a second time, on incitement of insurrection, 57-43, in a bipartisan majority that failed by 10 votes to reach 2/3. 7 Republican Senators voted with the majority. Trump\u0026rsquo;s impeachment trials were the third and fourth impeachment trials of a U.S. president; he is the first president to be impeached twice and the first president to receive bipartisan votes to convict in a Senate impeachment trial.\nJuly 4, 2021: The U.S. falls short of President Biden\u0026rsquo;s call for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4, not due to unavailability of vaccine but due to Republican resistance to getting vaccinated. About 67% of the adult U.S. population has been vaccinated. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-covid-19-vaccine-goal-missed/) 183,560,151 global cases, 3,978,581 deaths (WHO, July 5), U.S. 33,530,880 cases, 603,018 deaths (CDC).\nMay 11, 2023: The Centers for Disease Control marks the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/end-of-phe.html)\nJuly 21, 2023: President Joe Biden appoints retired Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs to move from his role leading global health security and biodefense at the White House National Security Council to lead a new Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy in the Executive Office of the President. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-selects-retired-general-lead-new-pandemic-response-office-rcna95577)\nJanuary 20, 2025: On his first day back in office, Donald Trump issues an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization \u0026ndash; as H5N1, mpox, and Marburg virus disease outbreaks are occurring around the world. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-the-worldhealth-organization/)\nJanuary 21, 2025: The Trump administration orders all federal health agencies to stop all external communications such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites, and social media posts, through February 2. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/01/21/trump-hhs-cdc-fda-communication-pause/) The NIH has cancelled all research grant review panels and frozen hiring (https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-hits-nih-devastating-freezes-meetings-travel-communications-and-hiring).\nJanuary 23, 2025: Egg prices soaring due to H5N1. (https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-01-21/eggs-expensive-bird-flu)\nJanuary 24, 2025: Trump administrations issues stop work order on all existing foreign aid, which stops public health initiatives to combat H5N1, Marburg, mpox, HIV, polio, tropical diseases, etc. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pause-applies-all-foreign-aid-israel-egypt-get-waiver-says-state-dept-memo-2025-01-24/; see blog post /2025/01/causing-unnecessary-death-and-suffering.html)\nFebruary 13, 2025: Anti-vaccine crackpot Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer whose only connection to medicine and health is spreading misinformation and getting children killed, is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, including a yes vote from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a doctor who knows he\u0026rsquo;s a terrible nominee. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-votes-confirm-robert-f-kennedy-jr-health-secretary-rcna191856)\nFebruary 14, 2025: Trump expected to sign an executive order halting federal funding for schools and universities with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/14/exclusive-trump-expected-to-halt-federal-funding-to-schools-with-covid-vaccine-mandates/)\nFebruary 14, 2025: The Trump administration has disrupted U.S. federal and state responses to bird flu even as the outbreak worsens, with the CDC ending weekly reports, and the CDC and U.S. Department of Agriculture canceling meetings and doing no briefings for Congress since Trump was inaugurated. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-bird-flu-response-disrupted-early-weeks-trump-administration-sources-say-2025-02-14)\nFebruary 14, 2025: The Trump administration has laid off half of the CDC\u0026rsquo;s Epidemic Intelligence Services officers (aka \u0026ldquo;the disease detectives\u0026rdquo;), along with 10% of the organization. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-disease-detectives-doge-cuts-health-agencies/)\nFebruary 26, 2025: The Trump administration cancelled the planned March meeting to select the flu strains for the flu vaccines for the 2025-26 flu season, without explanation. This planning is required in order to have a flu vaccine to make available in the fall. (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-cancels-meeting-select-flu-strains-seasons-shots-rcna193931)\nMarch 16, 2025: The NIH instructs scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccines from their grant applications, a step which in other cases preceded cancellation of related grant funding. Furthermore, all grants involving mRNA vaccines must be reported up to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an opponent of vaccines. (https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nih-grants-mrna-vaccines-trump-administration-hhs-rfk/)\nMarch 26, 2025: RFK Jr. appoints David Geier, a notorious anti-vaccine advocate who has no medical degree and has been disciplined for practicing medicine without a license, to head his new proposed study of whether vaccines cause autism, a view that Geier has supported for decades despite numerous studies debunking it. (https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/26/rfk-jr-vaccine-study-of-autism-links-led-by-vaccine-critic-scientists-shocked/)\nApril 1, 2025: The Department of Health and Human Services begins mass layoffs impacting as many as 10,000 workers (https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/01/hhs-layoffs-start-under-rfk-jr-trump-administration/).\nApril 2, 2025: HHS fires entire staff of department that helps low-income people afford heating and air conditioning, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP (https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5228186-hhs-fires-entire-staff-of-program-that-helps-low-income-people-afford-heat-and-air-conditioning/).\nApril 3, 2025: RFK Jr. says that as many as 20% of the HHS firings could be mistakes. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-hhs-job-cuts-doge-mistakes/) HHS had fired all the people who feed the lab animals who were hastily rehired. RFK Jr. cuts CDC labs that do testing of STDs and hepatitis to monitor for outbreaks, removing all staff even as a backlog of kits to be tested arrive. CDC also fired all staff responsible for the lead poisoning response program. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-cdc-labs-stds-hepatitis/).\nApril 17, 2025: The FDA suspends food safety inspections for pathogens and contaminants through at least September as a result of staff cuts. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-fda-suspends-food-safety-quality-checks-after-staff-cuts-2025-04-17/)\nApril 25, 2025: The FDA asks Novavax to complete a new clinical trial for its updated COVID-19 vaccine, a standard which, if applied across the board, could mean an end to new annual updated vaccines of all kinds. (https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-asks-novavax-complete-new-clinical-trial-delayed-covid-19-shot-wsj-reports-2025-04-25/)\nJune 9, 2025: RFK Jr. fires all members of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/10/rfk-jr-firing-of-cdc-vaccine-advisors.html) He subsequently replaces them with anti-vaccine members.\nAugust 5, 2025: RFK Jr. announces the cancellation of $500 million in research to advance mRNA vaccine technology, which has the promise of providing effective treatments and cures for deadly diseases, falsely claiming that it poses more risk than benefit. (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74dzdddvmjo)\nAugust 8, 2025: Patrick Joseph White, a 30-year-old man radicalized by online misinformation about COVID vaccines and blamed the vaccine for his depression, went to the Emory University/CDC campus in Atlanta with a rifle and opened fire, killing a campus police officer and shooting at least 180 bullets into the campus and then driving to a nearby pharmacy and opened fire again, before shooting himself.\nAugust 27, 2025: Recently Senate-confirmed CDC Director Susan Monarez is allegedly fired for refusing to change coronavirus vaccine policy without consulting advisors, though she has not yet been fired nor resigned and has retained lawyers to defend her position. The official Health and Human Services account on X/Twitter claimed that she was no longer the CDC Director. The CDC director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Demetre Daskalakis resigned, saying \u0026ldquo;I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health.\u0026rdquo; CDC Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry also resigned, stating that the ongoing changes prevent her from doing her job and that \u0026ldquo;Vaccines save lives\u0026ndash;this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact. Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of U.S. measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.\u0026rdquo; (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/27/susan-monarez-cdc-director-ousted/) Other resignations: Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology. (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-director-monarez-out-confirmed-rfk-jr-rcna227620) Several of the resignation letters can be found here: https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-read-three-top-cdc\nAugust 27, 2025: The CDC announces limits on the newest COVID-19 vaccines, restricting them to those over 65 or with particular health conditions that make individuals at greater risk. Many states will require a prescription to get the vaccine. (https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5515503/fda-covid-vaccines-restricted)\nAugust 28, 2025: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a medical doctor who voted to confirm RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, calls for the CDC to postpone its vaccine advisers meeting, stating that \u0026ldquo;Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting. These decisions directly impact children\u0026rsquo;s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.\u0026quot;\nAugust 28, 2025: The Trump admin ends funding for a pediatric brain cancer research group to save $4M. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/well/pediatric-brain-cancer-trial-group.html)\nAugust 30, 2025: New Mexico issues a public health order to permit COVID-19 vaccinations without a prescription. (https://www.nmhealth.org/news/vaccine/2025/8/?view=2267)\nSeptember 3, 2025: California, Oregon, and Washington form the West Coast Health Alliance to support health and provide science-based vaccination recommendations due to the politicization of the CDC under the Trump administration. (https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/03/california-oregon-and-washington-to-launch-new-west-coast-health-alliance-to-uphold-scientific-integrity-in-public-health-as-trump-destroys-cdcs-credibility/)\nSeptember 4, 2025: Hawaii joins the West Coast Health Alliance. (https://www.staradvertiser.com/2025/09/04/breaking-news/hawaii-joins-west-care-health-alliance-to-form-own-policies/)\nSeptember 4, 2025: New York issues a public health order to permit COVID-19 vaccinations without a prescription. (https://www.newsday.com/news/health/covid-vaccine-hochul-uz20fpup)\nSeptember 22, 2025: Donald Trump, with RFK Jr. standing by, gives a rambling press conference in which he claims that acetaminophen (Tylenol), a word which he struggles to pronounce, causes autism in children when used by pregnant women, but presents no new evidence to support it. This is a topic that has been studied and the best studies show no connection; autism as a diagnosis predates the existence of Tylenol. Trump claimed that the Amish do not have autism, which is false. (https://time.com/7319680/craig-spencer-essay-trump-autism-tylenol/) Trump\u0026rsquo;s rambling included statements such as \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing when you look at it. It\u0026rsquo;s like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines.\u0026quot;\nSeptember 26, 2025: RFK Jr. has hired anti-vax activist Mark Blaxhill, despite his lack of any medical or scientific credentials, to be a senior advisor at CDC. Blaxhill claims every child that receives any vaccine has been harmed by it, a completely crackpot claim. (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/rfk-jr-cdc-autism-adviser-vaccines-rcna233820)\nFebruary 18, 2026: RFK Jr. names Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor who is anti-lockdown, anti-mRNA vaccine, anti-vaccine mandate, and pro-ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment as acting director of the CDC. (https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/18/bhattacharya-cdc-director-oneill-rfk-00786582)\nApril 19, 2026: An mRNA vaccine treatment for pancreatic cancer in clinical trials has 90% of participants still alive after six years, when the usual five-year survival rate is only 13%. RFK Jr. continues to attempt to suppress and ban mRNA research. (https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreatic-cancer-msk-clinical-researchers-are-trying-find-out)\nMay 15, 2026: An Ebola outbreak in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo kills 80 people and infects more than 200. (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze2wpk7y76o) A hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship kills 11 people (https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5819872/hantavirus-quarantine), but the CDC does not require people on the ship to quarantine at home (https://thehill.com/homenews/5876929-hantavirus-cdc-public-health/).\nMay 20, 2026: The NY Times reports that the Trump administration did not learn of the Congo Ebola outbreak (now up to 500+ infected) until nine days after the World Health Organization (WHO) did, and not until a month after the first death, because US resources devoted to disease surveillance networks and medical supply chains in East Africa have all been shut down. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/health/ebola-congo-united-states-trump.html)\nAlso see:\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/trumps-coronavirus-commentary-pollyannaish-downright-false/\nAnd:\nhttps://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/11/fact-check-a-list-of-28-ways-trump-and-his-team-have-been-dishonest-about-the-coronavirus/\nAnd:\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/\nAnd: Linda Qiu, \"Analyzing the Patterns in Trump's Falsehoods About Coronavirus\"\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-factcheck.html\nAnd: Ryan Goodman and Danielle Schulkin, Just Security, Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response\nAnd: Eric Lipton, David Sanger, et al., New York Times, \"He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump's Failure on the Virus\"\nAnd: Garrett Graff, Wired, \"An Oral History of the Pandemic Warnings Trump Ignored\"\nAnd: Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, \"What's So Hard to Understand About What Trump Has Said? A clarifying look at the president's response to coronavirus, in his own words\"\nAnd: Daniel Dale and Christopher Hickey, CNN, \"Timeline: Tracking Trump's rising coronavirus death toll estimates\"\nAnd:\u0026nbsp;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-election_Donald_Trump_rallies#2020_campaign_rallies\nAnd:\u0026nbsp;https://trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings\nHistorical Comments Lori4443 (2020-05-18):\nI\u0026#39;ve seen Trump supporters try to use things that Dr. Fauci said and the date he said them, to show Dr. Fauci agreed with some of the dumb things Trump said. I researched this. All of them were taken out of context and at least one had incorrect dates on it. Your blog is so excellent and packed with hammer on the head of the nail accurate information. I wish you could do a combined timeline about Dr. Fauci and Trump, also. Thank you for this blog entry.\nthisone (2021-11-14):\nAbsolutely amazing work. I don’t know how you stomached it, but I’m grateful.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2020/03/donald-trump-on-coronavirus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis timeline has been updated with Trump rallies and golf playing since (as of March 31, 2020) he is now trying to create a narrative that claims he was trying hard to address the pandemic early on, but was distracted by his impeachment. He was impeached by the House on December 18, 2019, and his Senate trial ran from January 16, 2020 to his acquittal on February 5, 2020.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e2015: Obama\u0026rsquo;s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, establishes the Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit in the White House National Security Council. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\"\u003ehttps://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 13, 2017: The joint Obama-Trump transition teams run an exercise for pandemic preparedness. Trump transition team attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (resigned), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned). (\u003ca href=\"https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/\"\u003ehttps://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eMay 2018: The Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit in the White House National Security Council is disbanded by National Security Advisor John Bolton after its head, Timothy Ziemer, leaves the Trump administration. Pandemic response functions are folded into other teams. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\"\u003ehttps://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-entire-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eJanuary-August 2019: Nineteen agencies of the federal government and twelve states conduct a pandemic functional exercise, \u0026ldquo;Crimson Contagion.\u0026rdquo; The scenario is a novel influenza virus that arises in China and spreads to the United States, but stockpiles of vaccines are not a match to enable the virus to be contained. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/crimson-contagion-2019-simulation-warned-of-pandemic-implications-in-us/2243832/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/crimson-contagion-2019-simulation-warned-of-pandemic-implications-in-us/2243832/\"\u003ehttps://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/crimson-contagion-2019-simulation-warned-of-pandemic-implications-in-us/2243832/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) The Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Robert Kadlec, appointed by Donald Trump in 2017 and who played a key decision-making role in this exercise, downplayed the risk of pandemic, cut the budget, and cut the program for stockpiling personal protective equipment (PPE). Instead, he spent money on stockpiles of smallpox vaccine, purchasing $2.8 billion of it from a company that had previously employed him as a consultant. (Smallpox was eradicated in 1980.) (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 2019: The Trump administration made the decision to eliminate the position of CDC\u0026rsquo;s resident advisor to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, Dr. Linda Quick, in September 2019. She quit her job in July after receiving the news. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-axed-cdc-expert-job-in-china-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-axed-cdc-expert-job-in-china-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S\"\u003ehttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-axed-cdc-expert-job-in-china-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember 2019: The Trump administration ends a $200 million pandemic early warning program, PREDICT, at the U.S. Agency for International Development, started in 2009, aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to new viruses. During its lifetime, the project identified 1,200 viruses with pandemic potential. The PREDICT program involved 60 foreign laboratories, including the Chinese lab in Wuhan which identified SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection\"\u003ehttps://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eOctober 25, 2019: Former Vice President Joe Biden tweets: \u0026ldquo;We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eDecember 24, 2019: As of June 2021, this is now the earliest suspected date of COVID-19 infection in the United States, per antibodies in blood donated by nine individuals between January 2 and March 18, 2020. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eDecember 31, 2019: Donald Trump tells assembled guests at the Mar-a-Lago New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve celebration that \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going to have a great year, I predict. I think it\u0026rsquo;s going to be a fantastic year.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eJanuary 2-3, 2020: Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield has conversations about a virus outbreak in China with his counterpart at China\u0026rsquo;s CDC, Gao Fu, who warns him that it is extremely serious. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3084092/us-cdc-had-very-good-interaction-china-after-coronavirus\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3084092/us-cdc-had-very-good-interaction-china-after-coronavirus\"\u003ehttps://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3084092/us-cdc-had-very-good-interaction-china-after-coronavirus\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 8, 2020: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issues its first warning about a novel coronavirus now known as COVID-19.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 9: Trump holds a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 9: Berlin, Germany scientist Olfert Landt\u0026rsquo;s company, TIB Molbiol, develops its first COVID-19 test based on existing SARS tests. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/asia/testing-coronavirus-science-intl-hnk/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/asia/testing-coronavirus-science-intl-hnk/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/asia/testing-coronavirus-science-intl-hnk/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 10: The RNA sequence data for COVID-19 was published online: \u003ca href=\"http://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319\"\u003ehttp://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 11: Olfert Landt sends a developed COVID-19 test to the Taiwan CDC and Roche in Hong Kong for validation. The test ends up working.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 14: Trump holds a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nmid-January: The U.S. begins some screening of passengers from Wuhan, China, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. Prior to this event, at least 4,000 passengers arrived in the U.S. directly from Wuhan, China without any screening. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\"\u003ehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 16: The U.S. House sends articles of impeachment to the Senate, starting Trump\u0026rsquo;s first impeachment trial.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 17: WHO publishes Olfert Landt\u0026rsquo;s COVID-19 test protocol. TIB Molbiol manufactured four million tests by the end of February, and 1.5 million per week after that.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 17: CDC announces that it has its own COVID-19 test. (See February 5.)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eJanuary 18: Dr. Rick Bright, director of the HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at HHS, sends an email to ASPR Robert Kadlec asking to convene a Disaster Leadership Group (DLG) meeting over COVID-19. Kadlec responds that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think it is necessary and doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the urgency. (\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2020/05/07/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-n95-ppe/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2020/05/07/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-n95-ppe/\"\u003ehttps://theintercept.com/2020/05/07/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-n95-ppe/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 18: Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar phones Trump at Mar-a-Lago to warn him about the risk of coronavirus, but \u0026ldquo;Even before the heath [sic] secretary could get a word in about the virus, Trump cut him off and began criticizing Azar for his handling of an aborted federal ban on vaping products, a matter that vexed the president.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 18: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 19: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 21: CDC confirms first U.S. case of COVID-19. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) See December 24, 2019 above.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 22: \u0026ldquo;We have it totally under control. It\u0026rsquo;s one person coming in from China. It\u0026rsquo;s going to be just fine.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-trusts-xis-word-on-coronavirus-its-all-under-control?ref=home\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-trusts-xis-word-on-coronavirus-its-all-under-control\"\u003ehttps://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-he-trusts-xis-word-on-coronavirus-its-all-under-control\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 314 global cases in 4 countries, 309 China, 4 outside China (Thailand, Japan, South Korea).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 26: Sen. Schumer calls on the Department of Health and Human Services for coronavirus to be designated a public health emergency. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/how-coronavirus-shook-congress-complacency-155058\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/how-coronavirus-shook-congress-complacency-155058\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/how-coronavirus-shook-congress-complacency-155058\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 27: Joe Biden writes an op-ed warning of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s lack of preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic. (\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/nobody-expected-the-coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-did.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/nobody-expected-the-coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-did.html\"\u003ehttps://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/nobody-expected-the-coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-did.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 28: Elizabeth Warren releases \u003ca href=\"https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/combating-infectious-disease-outbreaks\"\u003ea plan for \u0026ldquo;Preventing, Containing, and Treating Infectious Disease Outbreaks at Home and Abroad.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 28: Trump holds a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 30: Trump holds a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 1: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 2: Trump (possibly) plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 2: Trump\u0026rsquo;s ordered restrictions on travel from China take effect. These restrictions do not apply to Americans returning from China.  279 flights from China occurred after this date, and screening of returning passengers was haphazard and inconsistent. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\"\u003ehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 2: \u0026ldquo;We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-airports.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-airports.html\"\u003ehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-airports.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 14,557 global cases in 23 countries, 14,411 China, 146 outside of China (WHO).  CDC starts sending out test kits in first week of February, which turn out to be faulty.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 5: The U.S. Senate impeachment trial votes to acquit Trump on both articles.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 5: CDC announces it will begin shipping COVID-19 tests to states. Shortly thereafter, it is determined that the CDC test kits don\u0026rsquo;t work.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 6: Patricia Dowd of Santa Clara County, California, dies from COVID-19, though this is not determined until late April. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\"\u003ehttps://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eFebruary 7: Trump to Bob Woodward, in an interview for his new book, \u003ci\u003eRage\u003c/i\u003e: \u0026ldquo;It’s also more deadly than your \u0026ndash; you know, your \u0026ndash; even your strenuous flus\u0026hellip;This is 5%, versus 1% percent and less than 1%.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump-coronavirus/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 31,481 global cases in 24 countries, 31,211 China, 270 outside of China, 637 deaths in China, 1 death outside of China, U.S. 12 cases (WHO).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 10: \u0026ldquo;You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.\u0026rdquo; Interview with Trish Regan, Fox Business. (\u003ca href=\"https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-trish-regan-fox-business-february-10-2020\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-trish-regan-fox-business-february-10-2020\"\u003ehttps://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-trish-regan-fox-business-february-10-2020\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)  40,554 global cases in 24 countries, 40,235 China, 319 outside China, U.S. 12 cases (WHO).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 10: Trump holds a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 15: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 19: Trump holds a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 20: Trump holds a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 21: Trump holds a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 23: Trump and the White House National Security Council is sent a memo from White House economic advisor Peter Navarro warning of coronavirus epidemic in the U.S. which could kill up to two million Americans. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html\"\u003ehttps://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january-da3f08fb-dce1-4f69-89b5-ea048f8382a9.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 24: \u0026ldquo;The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA\u0026hellip; Stock Market starting to look very good to me!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232058127740174339\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232058127740174339\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232058127740174339\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)  Dow closes down 227.51 points at 28,992.40. 79,331 global cases in 29 countries, 77,262 China, 2,069 outside China, 35 U.S.  12 labs other than CDC can perform coronavirus testing.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232492821501771776\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232492821501771776\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232492821501771776\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 80,239 global cases in 33 countries,  77,780 China, 2,459 outside China, 53 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;I think that\u0026rsquo;s a problem that\u0026rsquo;s going to go away\u0026hellip; They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we\u0026rsquo;re very close to a vaccine.\u0026quot;  In India. (\u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-coronavirus-control-us-problem/story?id=69198905\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-coronavirus-control-us-problem/story?id=69198905\"\u003ehttps://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-coronavirus-control-us-problem/story?id=69198905\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) The vaccine was, in fact, for Ebola, not COVID-19: \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/white-house-says-trumps-vaccine-claims-about-ebola-not-coronavirus.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/white-house-says-trumps-vaccine-claims-about-ebola-not-coronavirus.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/white-house-says-trumps-vaccine-claims-about-ebola-not-coronavirus.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eFebruary 25: \u0026ldquo;This president will always put Americans first. He will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.\u0026rdquo; Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to Trish Regan on Fox Business. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eFebruary 26: First confirmed community spread (from person to person unrelated to travel in China) within the United States (per evidence as of June 2021). (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/when-was-coronavirus-first-in-us/2021/06/15/1aaa6b56-cd2d-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/\" style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/\"\u003ehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-conference/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 81,109 global cases in 37 countries, 78,191 China, 2,918 outside China, 53 U.S.  First day with more new cases outside China than in China. First two reported COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. in Seattle, Washington, though there had already been earlier deaths not yet attributed to COVID-19 (see February 6). (\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\"\u003ehttps://www.axios.com/first-us-coronavirus-death-earlier-autopsy-dbc72f86-30ed-47e5-b5d8-6811643f9853.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;So we’re at the low level.  As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time.  So we’ve had very good luck.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference (same link as above)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going very substantially down, not up.\u0026rdquo; White House Press Conference (same link as above)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 26: \u0026ldquo;Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) \u0026amp; @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape! @CDCgov\u0026hellip;..\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232652371832004608\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232652371832004608\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1232652371832004608\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 27: \u0026ldquo;One day it\u0026rsquo;s like a miracle, it will disappear.\u0026rdquo; At White House. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-miracle-stock-markets/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-miracle-stock-markets/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-miracle-stock-markets/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 82,294 global cases in 46 countries, 78,630 China, 3,664 outside China, 59 U.S.  More new cases in Korea than China.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eFebruary 27: Laura Ingraham on Fox News in front of screen that shows an NPR story \u0026ldquo;Italy Reports 650 Cases And 17 Deaths\u0026rdquo; with a Fox chyron reading \u0026ldquo;LEFT TRYING TO PANIC AMERICANS OVER CORONAVIRUS.\u0026rdquo; (Photo from \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/seanhowe.bsky.social/post/3kmh7v2tag223\"\u003eSean Howe on Bluesky\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/bafkreichlqnr4f2tyenjbvprnesqniyffewypojzpwzbgywp6sbunzowf4.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"594\" data-original-width=\"1000\" height=\"190\" src=\"/images/bafkreichlqnr4f2tyenjbvprnesqniyffewypojzpwzbgywp6sbunzowf4.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 27: Sean Hannity in front of a screen that says \u0026ldquo;CORONAVIRUS DEATHS IN U.S.\u0026rdquo; with the number \u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo;. (Photo from \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social/post/3klrtpzvrrg2w\"\u003eNothings Monstered on Bluesky\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/bafkreifalupd73gproghmdqhtv3id4lgm44tsktawq6hwlj5qftzpuse34.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"558\" data-original-width=\"1000\" height=\"179\" src=\"/images/bafkreifalupd73gproghmdqhtv3id4lgm44tsktawq6hwlj5qftzpuse34.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\nFebruary 28: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we\u0026rsquo;re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.\u0026rdquo; At White House.  (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233516512830459908?lang=en\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233516512830459908\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233516512830459908\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 83,652 global cases in 51 countries, 78,961 China, 4,691 outside China, 59 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 28: Trump holds a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. At this rally, Trump said: \u0026ldquo;Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they\u0026rsquo;re politicizing it. You say, \u0026lsquo;How\u0026rsquo;s President Trump doing?\u0026rsquo; They go, \u0026lsquo;Oh, not good, not good.\u0026rsquo; They have no clue. They don\u0026rsquo;t have any clue. \u0026hellip; \u0026lsquo;Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.\u0026rsquo; That didn\u0026rsquo;t work out too well\u0026hellip; Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But we did something that\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early. \u0026hellip; So a number that nobody heard of recently, and I was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? 35,000, that\u0026rsquo;s a lot of people. And so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we won\u0026rsquo;t and we are totally prepared. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we won\u0026rsquo;t, but think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we\u0026rsquo;ve lost nobody and you wonder the press is in hysteria mode. \u0026hellip; My administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to prevent the spread of this illness in the United States. We are ready. We are ready. Totally ready. \u0026hellip; A virus starts in China, bleeds its way into various countries all around the world, doesn\u0026rsquo;t spread widely at all in the U.S. because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes. \u0026hellip; We had [to] quarantine some people. They weren\u0026rsquo;t happy, they weren\u0026rsquo;t happy about it. I want to tell you there are a lot of people that [were] not so happy, but after two weeks they got happy.\u0026rdquo; Trump\u0026rsquo;s statement that no one in the U.S. had been lost to COVID-19 was false both by not-yet-known deaths (see February 6) and by publicly reported deaths (see February 26), but the first officially confirmed COVID-19 death came on February 29. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1259119606955945986\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1259119606955945986\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1259119606955945986\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 29: First confirmed U.S. COVID-19 death, a man in Kirkland, Washington. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1st-coronavirus-death-u-s-officials-say-n1145931\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1st-coronavirus-death-u-s-officials-say-n1145931\"\u003ehttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1st-coronavirus-death-u-s-officials-say-n1145931\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eMarch 1: Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro warns Trump in a memo to \u0026ldquo;MOVE IN TRUMP TIME\u0026rdquo; to invest in preparations for coronavirus, including drug ingredients, tests, and other supplies.  \u0026ldquo;There is NO downside risk to taking swift actions as an insurance policy against what may be a very serious public health emergency. If the COVID-19 crisis quickly recedes, the only thing we will have been guilty of is prudence.\u0026rdquo; Trump ignored these recommendations; on April 7, 2020 he said he hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen the memo. (\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c/i\u003e story, March 31, 2021: \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/31/navarro-pandemic-supply-contracts-trump/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/31/navarro-pandemic-supply-contracts-trump/\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/31/navarro-pandemic-supply-contracts-trump/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) Navarro subsequently used his influence to push to award hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts to untested firms, including a $354 million contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA; also see January 21, 2021 entry below), a $96 million no-bid deal for respirators, and a $34.5 million deal from the VA which ended with a contractor pleading guilty to fraud, among other examples documented by \u003ci\u003eProPublica\u003c/i\u003e (\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts\"\u003ehttps://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 2: \u0026ldquo;You take a solid flu vaccine, you don\u0026rsquo;t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?\u0026rdquo; White House coronavirus task force meeting. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-members-coronavirus-task-force-meeting-pharmaceutical-companies/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-members-coronavirus-task-force-meeting-pharmaceutical-companies/\"\u003ehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-members-coronavirus-task-force-meeting-pharmaceutical-companies/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 88,948 global cases in 64 countries, 80,174 China, 8,774 outside China, 62 U.S.  CDC removes number of tests completed from its website (474 on March 1). (\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161693/cdc-coronavirus-testing-numbers-website-disappear-expansion-us\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161693/cdc-coronavirus-testing-numbers-website-disappear-expansion-us\"\u003ehttps://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161693/cdc-coronavirus-testing-numbers-website-disappear-expansion-us\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 2: \u0026ldquo;A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they\u0026rsquo;re happening very rapidly.\u0026rdquo; White House coronavirus task force meeting, same as previous link.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 2: Trump holds a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 4: \u0026ldquo;If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work - some of them go to work, but they get better.\u0026quot; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 94,091 global cases in 76 countries, 80,422 China, 12,669 outside China, 108 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 5: \u0026ldquo;I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/trump-disputes-coronavirus-death-rate-121892\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 95,324 global cases in 85 countries/territories/areas, 80,565 China, 14,759 outside China, 129 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 5: \u0026ldquo;The United States\u0026hellip; has, as of now, only 129 cases\u0026hellip; and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1235604572850343937?lang=en\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1235604572850343937\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1235604572850343937\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 5: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control planned to post a global travel alert for all countries, but it was delayed by the White House until March 11. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I think we\u0026rsquo;re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down\u0026hellip; a tremendous job at keeping it down.\u0026rdquo; At CDC. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-tour-centers-disease-control-prevention-atlanta-ga/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-tour-centers-disease-control-prevention-atlanta-ga/\"\u003ehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-tour-centers-disease-control-prevention-atlanta-ga/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 98,192 global cases in 88 countries/territories/areas, 80,711 China, 17,481 outside China, 148 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;The tests are beautiful\u0026hellip;. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it\u0026hellip; Every one of these doctors said, \u0026lsquo;How do you know so much about this?\u0026rsquo; Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t need to have the numbers to double because of one ship that wasn\u0026rsquo;t our fault.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;It’s something that nobody expected.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\"\u003ehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;Everybody who wants a test can get a test.\u0026rdquo; At CDC, same as previous link. In fact, tests are still hard to come by on March 23:  \u003ca href=\"https://thebulwark.com/where-are-the-tests/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://thebulwark.com/where-are-the-tests/\"\u003ehttps://thebulwark.com/where-are-the-tests/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 6: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;ll go away.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 7: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 8: \u0026ldquo;We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1236634209516752896\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1236634209516752896\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1236634209516752896\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 105,586 global cases in 101 countries/territories/areas, 80,859 China, 24,727 outside China, 213 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 8: Trump plays golf at the Trump International, West Palm Beach, Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPrior to March 9: CDC wanted to recommend people over 60 stay at home, but Trump administration said no. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746\"\u003ehttps://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/mismanagement-missed-opportunities-how-white-house-bungled-coronavirus-response-n1158746\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 9: \u0026ldquo;So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life \u0026amp; the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1237027356314869761\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1237027356314869761\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1237027356314869761\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 109,577 global cases in 104 countries/territories/areas, 80,904 China, 28,673 outside China, 213 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 9: \u0026ldquo;And we have a great economy, we have a very strong economy, but this came \u0026ndash; this blindsided the world. And I think we\u0026rsquo;ve handled it very, very well. I think they\u0026rsquo;ve done a great job.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-coronavirus-briefing-march-9-2020\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-coronavirus-briefing-march-9-2020\"\u003ehttps://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-coronavirus-briefing-march-9-2020\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 10: \u0026ldquo;Be calm. It\u0026rsquo;s really working out. And a lot of good things are going to happen.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1237453485899223040\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1237453485899223040\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1237453485899223040\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 11: \u0026ldquo;Health insurers have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/owermohle/status/1237922717699014658\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/owermohle/status/1237922717699014658\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/owermohle/status/1237922717699014658\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) In fact, this only applied to tests, not treatments.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 11: CDC posts a global travel alert that had been intended for release six days earlier but was delayed by the White House. (\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 12: White House says neither Trump nor Pence will be tested for coronavirus despite contacts with people who have tested positive. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/trump-brazil-coronavirus.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/trump-brazil-coronavirus.html\"\u003ehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/trump-brazil-coronavirus.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 12: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to go away.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 13: Trump repeatedly shakes hands at White House coronavirus press conference, despite knowing that he has recently been exposed to people who have now tested positive for the virus.  (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/13/trump-handshakes-coronavirus-press-conference/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/13/trump-handshakes-coronavirus-press-conference/\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/13/trump-handshakes-coronavirus-press-conference/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 132,758 global cases in 122 countries/territories/areas, 80,991 China, 51,767 outside China, 1,264 U.S.  Dow closes the week at 23,185.62.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 13: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t take responsibility at all.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference, in response to question about whether Trump takes any responsibility for the failures in U.S. coronavirus testing. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 13: Trump says he likely \u003ci\u003ewill\u003c/i\u003e be tested for coronavirus.  Same White House press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/donald-trump-emergency/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/donald-trump-emergency/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/donald-trump-emergency/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 13 (evening just before midnight): White House doctor Sean Conley issues statement saying that Trump doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to be quarantined or even tested for coronavirus because he is at low risk. (\u003ca href=\"http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/03/14/whmemo.png\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/03/14/whmemo.png\"\u003ehttp://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/03/14/whmemo.png\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 14: \u0026ldquo;SOCIAL DISTANCING!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1238824050924883968\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1238824050924883968\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1238824050924883968\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) CDC has tested 3,958 specimens (not individuals). 142,539 global cases in 135 countries/territories/areas, 81,021 China, 61,618 outside China, 1,678 U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 14: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s something that nobody expected.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\"\u003ehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 14: Trump says he has been tested for coronavirus and is awaiting results expected in a day or two. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 14: New screening measures are introduced at airports, which lead to delays from processing bottlenecks and large crowds of people. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/03/14/europe-travel-ban-airport-delays/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/03/14/europe-travel-ban-airport-delays/\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/03/14/europe-travel-ban-airport-delays/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 15: The White House announces Trump has tested negative for coronavirus. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/politics/trump-press-conference-coronavirus/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) The Fed announces $700B in quantitative easing as stock market futures hit circuit breakers after a 5% drop.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 15: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re learning from watching other countries \u0026hellip; This is a very contagious virus, it\u0026rsquo;s incredible, but it\u0026rsquo;s something that we have tremendous control over.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s not under control for any place in the world. \u0026hellip; I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the virus.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1239637609309261826\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1239637609309261826\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1239637609309261826\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 167,511 global cases in 151 countries/territories/areas, 81,077 China, 86,434 outside China, 1,678 U.S. (CDC count for U.S.: 3,487).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 16: The Supreme Court announces that it is postponing its next argument sitting, for the first time since it did the same in 1918 due to the deadly global influenza outbreak.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.\u0026rdquo; On conference call with U.S. governors. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/coronavirus-news.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/coronavirus-news.html\"\u003ehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/coronavirus-news.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 16: \u0026ldquo;It’s so contagious. It’s so contagious. It’s like record-setting contagious.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/16/donald-trump-admits-contagious-coronavirus-control-12407873/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/16/donald-trump-admits-contagious-coronavirus-control-12407873/\"\u003ehttps://metro.co.uk/2020/03/16/donald-trump-admits-contagious-coronavirus-control-12407873/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 17: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve always known, this is a real \u0026hellip; this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1239956622312701952\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1239956622312701952\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1239956622312701952\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 179,112 global cases, 7,426 deaths (WHO), U.S. 4,226 cases, 75 deaths (CDC).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 19: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re actually sitting too close. You should really \u0026ndash; we should probably get rid of another 75%, 80% of you. I\u0026rsquo;ll have just two or three that I like in this room.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1240678632361807873\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1240678632361807873\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1240678632361807873\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 19: \u0026ldquo;I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!\u0026rdquo; Twitter (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1240391871026864130\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) Trump didn\u0026rsquo;t sign the Defense Production Act, which was signed into law in 1950 by Harry S Truman, who, as Kevin M. Kruse noted in response to this tweet (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1240446891055251457\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1240446891055251457\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1240446891055251457\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e), famously said \u0026ldquo;the buck stops here,\u0026rdquo; rather than the \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t take responsibility at all\u0026rdquo; of this president. As of March 23, Trump still hasn\u0026rsquo;t invoked the Defense Production Act. 209,839 global cases, 8,778 deaths (WHO), U.S. 10,442 cases, 150 deaths (CDC).\u003c/span\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 19: In an interview with Bob Woodward for his new book, \u003ci\u003eRage\u003c/i\u003e, Trump says of the coronavirus that \u0026ldquo;I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don\u0026rsquo;t want to create a panic.\u0026rdquo; He admits he knew that it was deadly and worse than the flu. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1303725062948704257\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump/2020/09/09/0368fe3c-efd2-11ea-b4bc-3a2098fc73d4_story.html\"\u003ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump/2020/09/09/0368fe3c-efd2-11ea-b4bc-3a2098fc73d4_story.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 20: Yamiche Alcindor asks Trump at his press conference: \u0026ldquo;When will everyone who needs a coronavirus test be able to get a test?\u0026rdquo; Trump\u0026rsquo;s response: \u0026ldquo;No-one is talking about this except you, which doesn’t surprise me.\u0026rdquo; Alcindor: \u0026ldquo;What about people w/ symptoms who cannot get a test?\u0026rdquo; Trump: \u0026ldquo;Yeah, well, OK. I’m not— I\u0026rsquo;m not hearing it.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1241056026872426496\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1241056026872426496\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1241056026872426496\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 234,073 global cases, 9,840 deaths (WHO), U.S. 15,219 cases, 201 deaths (CDC). Tests done to date:  CDC: 4,524, public health labs: 49,681, commercial labs: 88,000. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1241111313935458305\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1241111313935458305\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1241111313935458305\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 20: \u0026ldquo;We haven\u0026rsquo;t been given the credit we\u0026rsquo;ve deserved.\u0026rdquo; White House press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1241054458525765634\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1241054458525765634\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1241054458525765634\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 22: \u0026ldquo;Ford, General Motors and Tesla are being given the go ahead to make ventilators and other metal products, FAST! @fema Go for it auto execs, lets see how good you are? @RepMarkMeadows @GOPLeader @senatemajldr\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1241732681366482944\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1241732681366482944\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1241732681366482944\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 292,142 global cases, 12,784 deaths, U.S. 15,219 cases, 201 deaths. This tweet apparently a reference to Ford making respirators in partnership with 3M and GE Healthcare: \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/business/ford-3m-ge-ventilators-coronavirus-duplicate-2/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/business/ford-3m-ge-ventilators-coronavirus-duplicate-2/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/business/ford-3m-ge-ventilators-coronavirus-duplicate-2/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 23: 332,930 global cases, 14,510 deaths (WHO), U.S. 33,404 cases, 400 deaths (CDC). Dr. Fauci doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear at Trump\u0026rsquo;s daily press conference.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 24: \u0026ldquo;Our people want to return to work. They will practice Social Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively \u0026amp; lovingly. We can do two things together. THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM! Congress MUST ACT NOW. We will come back strong!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242455267603877894\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242455267603877894\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242455267603877894\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 372,757 global cases, 16,231 deaths (WHO), U.S. 44,183 cases, 544 deaths (CDC).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 25: \u0026ldquo;Just reported that the United States has done far more “testing” than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242824631230308353?s=19\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242824631230308353?s=19\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242824631230308353?s=19\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 414,179 global cases, 18,440 deaths (WHO), U.S. 68,440 cases, 994 deaths (CDC). While the U.S. has done a greater number of tests, it also has a much larger population \u0026ndash; where Korea has tested 1 of every 170 people, the U.S. has tested 1 of every 1,090 people.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 26: \u0026ldquo;I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they are going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243354645927530498\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243354645927530498\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243354645927530498\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 462,684 global cases, 49,219 deaths (WHO), U.S. 68,440 cases, 994 deaths (CDC).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 27: 509,164 global cases, 23,335 deaths (WHO), U.S. 85,356 cases, 1,246 deaths.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eUnknown date, likely after official launch of these machines on March 27: Trump secretly sends Abbott Point of Care COVID test systems to Vladimir Putin for his personal use, per Bob Woodward\u0026rsquo;s 2024 book, \u003c/span\u003e\u003ci style=\"color: black;\"\u003eWar\u003c/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/politics/bob-woodward-book-war-joe-biden-putin-netanyahu-trump/index.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/politics/bob-woodward-book-war-joe-biden-putin-netanyahu-trump/index.html\"\u003ehttps://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/politics/bob-woodward-book-war-joe-biden-putin-netanyahu-trump/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 28: \u0026ldquo;You can call it a germ. You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You can call it many different names. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone even knows what it is.\u0026rdquo; Press conference. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243670348211654664\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243670348211654664\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1243670348211654664\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 571,678 global cases, 62,514 deaths (WHO), 103,321 cases, 1,668 deaths (CDC).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 28: \u0026ldquo;I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE of developing “hot spots”, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A decision will be made, one way or another, shortly.\u0026rdquo; Twitter. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243953994743103489\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243953994743103489\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243953994743103489\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) Advance notice of a quarantine order caused many people to leave northern Italy and spread the virus (\u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italys-virus-lockdown-dash-train-69469683\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italys-virus-lockdown-dash-train-69469683\"\u003ehttps://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italys-virus-lockdown-dash-train-69469683\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e). The three states here already had shelter-in-place orders from their governors. Trump subsequently retracted his quarantine suggestion in a pair of tweets (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1244056559577071616\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1244056559577071616\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1244056559577071616\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 29: \u0026ldquo;We sent thousands of generators to New York \u0026hellip; the people in New York never distributed the generators.\u0026rdquo; Press conference, Trump means ventilators. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1244394071982051329\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1244394071982051329\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1244394071982051329\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) 634,835 global cases, 29,957 deaths (WHO), U.S. 122,653 cases, 2,112 deaths (CDC).\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 29: \u0026ldquo;You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths \u0026hellip; So if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 [thousand] and 200,000, we altogether have done a very good job.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21199586/us-coronavirus-deaths-trump-200000-good-job\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21199586/us-coronavirus-deaths-trump-200000-good-job\"\u003ehttps://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21199586/us-coronavirus-deaths-trump-200000-good-job\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 30: \u0026ldquo;It will go away. You know it\u0026ndash;you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we\u0026rsquo;re going to have a great victory.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 30: Dr. Stephen M. Hahn of the FDA tweets that the FDA has issued an authorization (on March 29) to Battelle for an N95 mask decontamination system recommended by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine; Trump retweets it with thanks to DeWine. The system does not work and the authorization is revoked by April 30, 2021. (\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/SteveFDA/status/1244472087831552004\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/SteveFDA/status/1244472087831552004\"\u003ehttps://twitter.com/SteveFDA/status/1244472087831552004\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #1c1e21;\"\u003eMarch 31: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that.\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\"\u003ehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/29/worst-predictions-about-2020-451444\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Donald Trump on coronavirus"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.\nGraham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (3rd edition, draft chapters) Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration C.J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang Nina J. Easton, Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade\u0026nbsp;(bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh) Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence Ian Frisch, Magic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World Reba Wells Grandrud, Sunnyslope (Images of America series) Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt Jonathan Lusthaus, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime Ben MacIntyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City Alexander Stille,\u0026nbsp;The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech Erik Van De Sandt, Deviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals (Ph.D. thesis) Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads Top for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.\nI started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:\nMyke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World\nWalter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)\nBrad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age\nPeter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\nTwo books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:\nAnna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (due out January 14)\nThomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (due out April 21)\n(Previously: 2018,\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2020/01/books-read-in-2019.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGraham T. Allison, \u003ci\u003eDestined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoss Anderson, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html\"\u003eSecurity Engineering\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (3rd edition, draft chapters)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHerbert Asbury, \u003ci\u003eThe Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHeidi Blake, \u003ci\u003eFrom Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRutger Bregman, \u003ci\u003eUtopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOliver Bullough, \u003ci\u003eMoneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, \u003ci\u003eOpen Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eC.J. Chivers, \u003ci\u003eThe Fighters: Americans in Combat\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSefton Delmer, \u003ci\u003eBlack Boomerang\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNina J. Easton, \u003ci\u003eGang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonan Farrow, \u003ci\u003eCatch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonan Farrow, \u003ci\u003eWar on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIan Frisch, \u003ci\u003eMagic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnand Giridharadas, \u003ci\u003eWinners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eReba Wells Grandrud, \u003ci\u003eSunnyslope\u003c/i\u003e (Images of America series)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndy Greenberg, \u003ci\u003eSandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, \u003ci\u003eShe Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStephen Kinzer, \u003ci\u003eOverthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Lewis, \u003ci\u003eFlash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJonathan Lusthaus, \u003ci\u003eIndustry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBen MacIntyre, \u003ci\u003eA Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoseph Menn, \u003ci\u003eCult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnna Merlan, \u003ci\u003eRepublic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJefferson Morley, \u003ci\u003eOur Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSarah T. Roberts, \u003ci\u003eBehind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, \u003ci\u003eFactfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRussell Shorto, \u003ci\u003eAmsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAlexander Stille,\u003ci\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJamie Susskind, \u003ci\u003eFuture Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eErik Van De Sandt, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/theses/deviant-security(5159c595-b3a6-4908-8054-aadc3d948ebb).html\"\u003eDeviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (Ph.D. thesis)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTom Wolfe, \u003ci\u003eThe Right Stuff\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTim Wu, \u003ci\u003eThe Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMyke Cole, \u003ci\u003eLegion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nWalter LaFeber, \u003ci\u003eInevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America\u003c/i\u003e (2nd edition)\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, \u003ci\u003eTools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nPeter H. Wilson, \u003ci\u003eThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTwo books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnna Wiener, \u003ci\u003eUncanny Valley: A Memoir\u003c/i\u003e (due out January 14)\u003cbr /\u003e\nThomas Rid, \u003ci\u003eActive Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare\u003c/i\u003e (due out April 21)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html\"\u003e2018\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Books read in 2019"},{"content":"It was interesting to go back through the old posts on this blog about the CIA torture program in light of the new film, The Report, which can be seen on Amazon Prime.\nOne of the early posts on this blog resulted in a debate in the comments about the ethics and efficacy of torture, which the 2014 Senate torture report (PDF link) and the film resolve decisively against torture. The CIA torture program was ineffective and unethical.\nJeremy Scahill\u0026rsquo;s interview with Daniel Jones about the CIA program and the Senate investigations and report is quite illuminating, and highly recommended listening, as is the podcast associated with the film.\nA couple other items of interest:\nJason Leopold\u0026rsquo;s exposure of an accidentally leaked draft letter from John Brennan to Dianne Feinstein apologizing for hacking the Senate investigation.\nSenator Mark Udall\u0026rsquo;s questioning of CIA general counsel Caroline Krass during her Senate confirmation hearing.\nNew York Times book review of Frank Rizzo\u0026rsquo;s memoir, Company Man, which confirms that George W. Bush was not briefed on the torture program but was a \u0026ldquo;stand-up guy\u0026rdquo; by lying and claiming that he was.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2019/12/cia-torture-program.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was interesting to go back through the \u003ca href=\"https://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/torture\"\u003eold posts on this blog about the CIA torture program\u003c/a\u003e in light of the new film, The Report, which can be seen on Amazon Prime.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOne of \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/inside-cias-secret-prisons.html\"\u003ethe early posts on this blog resulted in a debate in the comments about the ethics and efficacy of torture\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"https://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/ssci-rdi.pdf\"\u003ethe 2014 Senate torture report\u003c/a\u003e (PDF link) and the film resolve decisively against torture.  The CIA torture program was ineffective and unethical.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJeremy Scahill\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2019/12/11/we-tortured-some-folks-the-reports-daniel-jones-on-the-ongoing-fight-to-hold-the-cia-accountable/\"\u003einterview with Daniel Jones about the CIA program and the Senate investigations and report\u003c/a\u003e is quite illuminating, and highly recommended listening, as is \u003ca href=\"https://www.topic.com/the-report-podcast\"\u003ethe podcast associated with the film\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA couple other items of interest:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJason Leopold\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43mvkn/the-google-search-that-made-the-cia-spy-on-the-us-senate\"\u003eexposure of an accidentally leaked draft letter from John Brennan to Dianne Feinstein apologizing for hacking the Senate investigation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSenator Mark Udall\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk3ut21ksJ0\"\u003equestioning of CIA general counsel Caroline Krass during her Senate confirmation hearing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c/i\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/books/review/john-rizzos-company-man.html\"\u003ebook review of Frank Rizzo\u0026rsquo;s memoir, \u003ci\u003eCompany Man\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which confirms that George W. Bush was not briefed on the torture program but was a \u0026ldquo;stand-up guy\u0026rdquo; by lying and claiming that he was.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA torture program"},{"content":"From John Keeling, by way of the May 2019 Fortean Times (p. 28):\nIn 1945 a jittery American public was mistaking Venus for Japan’s FU-GO balloon bombs on an alarmingly regular basis. 9,000 of the 30 ft balloons with incendiary bomb payloads had been launched against the US in the hope of causing large-scale forest fires and spreading terror....On June 6th, Phoenix and several other Arizona communities had their first ‘Jap balloon’ panic. Telephone lines to the press, police department, sheriff’s office and weather bureau were reportedly jammed....Luke Field and Williams Field fliers, checking the object from planes, were able to report back definitely that there was no balloon where reported. And Phoenix Junior college’s 5 inch refractor telescope clearly identified the object as Venus. According to the Associated Press, Tucson had the same experience, with Davis-Monthan fliers being ‘sent to cut down the invader.’ ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2019/06/the-phoenix-lights-1945.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"https://johnkeelingmedia.blog/2019/01/15/venus-attacks-and-japanese-fu-go-balloon-bombs/\"\u003eJohn Keeling\u003c/a\u003e, by way of the May 2019 \u003ci\u003eFortean Times\u003c/i\u003e (p. 28):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003eIn 1945 a jittery American public was mistaking Venus for Japan’s FU-GO balloon bombs on an alarmingly regular basis. 9,000 of the 30 ft balloons with incendiary bomb payloads had been launched against the US in the hope of causing large-scale forest fires and spreading terror.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003e...\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003eOn June 6\u003c/span\u003e\u003csup style=\"-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #f1f1f1; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"\u003eth\u003c/sup\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003e, Phoenix and several other Arizona communities had their first ‘Jap balloon’ panic. Telephone lines to the press, police department, sheriff’s office and weather bureau were reportedly jammed.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003e...\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #111111; font-family: \u0026quot;lato\u0026quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;\"\u003eLuke Field and Williams Field fliers, checking the object from planes, were able to report back definitely that there was no balloon where reported. And Phoenix Junior college’s 5 inch refractor telescope clearly identified the object as Venus. According to the Associated Press, Tucson had the same experience, with Davis-Monthan fliers being ‘sent to cut down the invader.’\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"The Phoenix Lights, 1945"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2018.\nCharles Arthur, Cyber Wars: Hacks that Shocked the Business World Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations Rebecca Burns and David Dayen, Fat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis, and Kurt Andersen, Spy: The Funny Years Stephen Ellis, This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies Paul French, City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump Sarah Jeong, The Internet of Garbage Steven Johnson, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most Louise M. Kaiser and Randolph H. Pherson, Analytic Writing Guide Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past Susan Landau, Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age Peter T. Leeson, WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk Liliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (new updated 2017 edition) Tim Maurer, Cyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton Roger Naylor, The Amazing Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon Helen Nissenbaum,\u0026nbsp;Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life Ellen Pao, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change Dana Richards, editor,\u0026nbsp;Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism Louis Rossetto, Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet (1st edition, #1453, Kickstarter) David E. Sanger, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age Eli Saslow, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist Harold Schechter, The Pirate (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Harold Schechter, Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Harold Schechter, The Brick Slayer (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Harold Schechter, Panic (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Harold Schechter, Rampage (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Harold Schechter,\u0026nbsp;The Pied Piper\u0026nbsp;(Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\") Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media Ali Soufan, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State Robert Timberg, The Nightingale's Song (bio of John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter) Mick West, Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect Rick Wilson, Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age I made some progress on a few other books:\nHerbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld\u0026nbsp;(will probably finish today) Andrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Top for 2018:\u0026nbsp; Singer and Brooking, Bergman, Balko and Carrington, Gawande, Carreyrou, Sanger, Simler and Hanson, Soufan, Isikoff and Corn, Fagone, French, Schüll, Michael Lewis, Mason, Benkler et al., West, Wu, Saslow, Naylor. I didn't care for the Klosterman book at all--quick read, but a waste of time.\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2017,\u0026nbsp;2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Hume's Ghost (2019-01-02):\nWow. I only overlapped one book with you this year: SPQR, which I thought was very good. I was on a Rome kick. Read that, Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar and Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero back-to-back-to-back.\nLippard (2019-01-12):\nI did like Beard\u0026#39;s book a lot, and considered putting it in my \u0026quot;top\u0026quot; list (which has more than 10, and I made no real attempt to order them). I\u0026#39;ve got Peter H. Wilson\u0026#39;s The Holy Roman Empire ready to go for this year. The main themes for 2018 for me were cyberwarfare, cyber crime, strategic cyber threat intelligence analysis, and cyber policy. Most of the books on my list were either directly on those subjects, or were indirectly related.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2019/01/books-read-in-2018.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2018.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCharles Arthur, \u003ci\u003eCyber Wars: Hacks that Shocked the Business World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRadley Balko and Tucker Carrington, \u003ci\u003eThe Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Beard, \u003ci\u003eSPQR: A History of Ancient Rome\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, \u003ci\u003eNetwork Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonen Bergman, \u003ci\u003eRise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRebecca Burns and David Dayen, \u003ci\u003eFat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Carreyrou, \u003ci\u003eBad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGraydon Carter, George Kalogerakis, and Kurt Andersen, \u003ci\u003eSpy: The Funny Years\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStephen Ellis, \u003ci\u003eThis Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJason Fagone, \u003ci\u003eThe Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaul French, \u003ci\u003eCity of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDiego Gambetta, \u003ci\u003eCodes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert M. Gates, \u003ci\u003eDuty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAtul Gawande, \u003ci\u003eBeing Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Golumbia, \u003ci\u003eThe Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson, \u003ci\u003eStructured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Isikoff and David Corn, \u003ci\u003eRussian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSarah Jeong, \u003ci\u003eThe Internet of Garbage\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Johnson, \u003ci\u003eFarsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLouise M. Kaiser and Randolph H. Pherson, \u003ci\u003eAnalytic Writing Guide\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChuck Klosterman, \u003ci\u003eBut What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSusan Landau, \u003ci\u003eListening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter T. Leeson, \u003ci\u003eWTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJeffrey Lewis, \u003ci\u003eThe 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Lewis, \u003ci\u003eThe Fifth Risk\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLiliana Mason, \u003ci\u003eUncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNick Mason, \u003ci\u003eInside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd\u003c/i\u003e (new updated 2017 edition)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTim Maurer, \u003ci\u003eCyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJefferson Morley, \u003ci\u003eThe Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoger Naylor, \u003ci\u003eThe Amazing Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHelen Nissenbaum,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePrivacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEllen Pao, \u003ci\u003eReset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDana Richards, editor,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eDear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLouis Rossetto, \u003ci\u003eChange Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet\u003c/i\u003e (1st edition, #1453, Kickstarter)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid E. Sanger, \u003ci\u003eThe Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEli Saslow, \u003ci\u003eRising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter, \u003ci\u003eThe Pirate\u003c/i\u003e (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter, \u003ci\u003eLittle Slaughterhouse on the Prairie\u003c/i\u003e (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter, \u003ci\u003eThe Brick Slayer\u003c/i\u003e (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter, \u003ci\u003ePanic\u003c/i\u003e (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter, \u003ci\u003eRampage\u003c/i\u003e (Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarold Schechter,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Pied Piper\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(Amazon Prime Reading \"Bloodlands Collection\")\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatasha Dow Schüll, \u003ci\u003eAddiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKevin Simler and Robin Hanson, \u003ci\u003eThe Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eP.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, \u003ci\u003eLikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAli Soufan, \u003ci\u003eAnatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert Timberg, \u003ci\u003eThe Nightingale's Song\u003c/i\u003e (bio of John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMick West, \u003ci\u003eEscaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRick Wilson, \u003ci\u003eEverything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Wolff, \u003ci\u003eFire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBob Woodward, \u003ci\u003eFear: Trump in the White House\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTim Wu, \u003ci\u003eThe Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made some progress on a few other books:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHerbert Asbury, \u003ci\u003eThe Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(will probably finish today)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSecurity Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop for 2018:\u0026nbsp; Singer and Brooking, Bergman, Balko and Carrington, Gawande, Carreyrou, Sanger, Simler and Hanson, Soufan, Isikoff and Corn, Fagone, French, Schüll, Michael Lewis, Mason, Benkler et al., West, Wu, Saslow, Naylor. I didn't care for the Klosterman book at all--quick read, but a waste of time.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html\"\u003e2017\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2019-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWow. I only overlapped one book with you this year: SPQR, which I thought was very good.\n\u003cp\u003eI was on a Rome kick. Read that, Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar and Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero back-to-back-to-back.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2018"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2017. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books, though I've made no attempt to collect all papers, blog posts, and reports I read here), with no paywall or fee.\nLilian Ablon, Andy Bogart, Zero Days, Thousands of Nights: The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits Ben Buchanan, The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations J.D. Chandler, Hidden History of Portland, Oregon Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners \u0026amp; Losers in the Age of Smart Machines Mike Edison, Dirty, Dirty, Dirty: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers--An American Tale of Sex and Wonder FINRA, Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate David Gerard, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum \u0026amp; Smart Contracts Joscelyn Godwin, Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State Jonathan Goldsmith, Stay Interesting: I Don't Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do They're True and Amazing Heidi Grant Halvorson, No One Understands You: And What To Do About It Jon Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, and Derek S. Reveron, editors, China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right Nick Middleton, An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States Kevin Mitnick, The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data Andrew Monaghan, \"The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept: Evolving Continuity,\" Chatham House, 2013 (PDF) Milton Mueller, Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters David Ronfeldt, Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis Thomas Rid,\u0026nbsp;Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story Doug Stanhope, This Is Not Fame: A \"From What I Re-Memoir\" Charles Stross, Halting State Charles Stross, Rule 34 Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes Timothy Walton, Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present Kristan J. Wheaton and Melonie K. Richey, Strawman Ilya Zaslavskiy, How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West (PDF) I may or may not have made progress on a few other books (first four from 2017, next two from 2016, one from 2015, \u0026nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):\nHelen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life Dana Richards, editor, Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Structured Analytics Techniques for Intelligence Analysis Louis M. Kaiser, Analytic Writing Guide Andreas Antonopoulos,\u0026nbsp;Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies\u0026nbsp;(now 2nd ed) Robert M. Gates,\u0026nbsp;Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War John Searle,\u0026nbsp;Making the Social World Andrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Steven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Richard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;The Practice of Network Security Monitoring James Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;Internet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now) Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Top for 2017: \u0026nbsp;Rid, Buchanan, Sherman, Mayer, Clarke and Eddy, Conover, Middleton.\nI completed three Coursera courses in 2017, two of which I recommend:\nUniversity of Michigan, Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age (psychology, statistics, and philosophy; a companion to Richard E. Nisbett's book, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking which I read last year; the course is taught by Nisbett) Universiteit Leiden, The Changing Global Order (international relations theory and history) (Previously: 2016,\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2017. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books, though I've made no attempt to collect all papers, blog posts, and reports I read here), with no paywall or fee.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLilian Ablon, Andy Bogart, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1751.html\"\u003eZero Days, Thousands of Nights: The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBen Buchanan, \u003ci\u003eThe Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJ.D. Chandler, \u003ci\u003eHidden History of Portland, Oregon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTed Conover, \u003ci\u003eNewjack: Guarding Sing Sing\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, \u003ci\u003eWarnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, \u003ci\u003eOnly Humans Need Apply: Winners \u0026amp; Losers in the Age of Smart Machines\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMike Edison, \u003ci\u003eDirty, Dirty, Dirty: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers--An American Tale of Sex and Wonder\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFINRA, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/FINRA_Blockchain_Report.pdf\"\u003eDistributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAl Franken, \u003ci\u003eAl Franken, Giant of the Senate\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Gerard, \u003ci\u003eAttack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum \u0026amp; Smart Contracts\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoscelyn Godwin, \u003ci\u003eUpstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJonathan Goldsmith, \u003ci\u003eStay Interesting: I Don't Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do They're True and Amazing\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHeidi Grant Halvorson, \u003ci\u003eNo One Understands You: And What To Do About It\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, and Derek S. Reveron, editors, \u003ci\u003eChina and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWilliam MacAskill, \u003ci\u003eDoing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJane Mayer, \u003ci\u003eDark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNick Middleton, \u003ci\u003eAn Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKevin Mitnick, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Monaghan, \u003ca href=\"https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Russia%20and%20Eurasia/0413pp_monaghan.pdf\"\u003e\"The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept: Evolving Continuity,\"\u003c/a\u003e Chatham House, 2013 (PDF)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMilton Mueller, \u003ci\u003eWill the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTom Nichols, \u003ci\u003eThe Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Ronfeldt, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR461.pdf\"\u003eBeware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThomas Rid,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eRise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGabriel Sherman, \u003ci\u003eThe Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDoug Stanhope, \u003ci\u003eDigging Up Mother: A Love Story\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDoug Stanhope, \u003ci\u003eThis Is Not Fame: A \"From What I Re-Memoir\"\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCharles Stross, \u003ci\u003eHalting State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCharles Stross, \u003ci\u003eRule 34\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSarah Vowell, \u003ci\u003eUnfamiliar Fishes\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTimothy Walton, \u003ci\u003eChallenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKristan J. Wheaton and Melonie K. Richey, \u003ci\u003eStrawman\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIlya Zaslavskiy, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.hudson.org/research/13875-how-non-state-actors-export-kleptocratic-norms-to-the-west\"\u003eHow Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (PDF)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI may or may not have made progress on a few other books (first four from 2017, next two from 2016, one from 2015, \u0026nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHelen Nissenbaum, \u003ci\u003ePrivacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDana Richards, editor, \u003ci\u003eDear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichards J. Heuer, Jr., \u003ci\u003eStructured Analytics Techniques for Intelligence Analysis\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLouis M. Kaiser, \u003ci\u003eAnalytic Writing Guide\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndreas Antonopoulos,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eMastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(now 2nd ed)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert M. Gates,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eDuty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Searle,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eMaking the Social World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSecurity Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Network Security Monitoring\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eInternet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop for 2017: \u0026nbsp;Rid, Buchanan, Sherman, Mayer, Clarke and Eddy, Conover, Middleton.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI completed three Coursera courses in 2017, two of which I recommend:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUniversity of Michigan, \u003ca href=\"https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware/home/welcome\"\u003eMindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age\u003c/a\u003e (psychology, statistics, and philosophy; a companion to Richard E. Nisbett's book, \u003ci\u003eMindware: Tools for Smart Thinking\u003c/i\u003e which I read last year; the course is taught by Nisbett)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUniversiteit Leiden, \u003ca href=\"https://www.coursera.org/learn/changing-global-order/home/welcome\"\u003eThe Changing Global Order\u003c/a\u003e (international relations theory and history)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html\"\u003e2016\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Books read in 2017"},{"content":"Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA14) has circulated a draft bill, the \u0026ldquo;Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act\u0026rdquo; (or ACDC Act), which amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 USC 1030) to legalize certain forms of \u0026ldquo;hacking back\u0026rdquo; for the purposes of collecting information about an attacker in order to facilitate criminal prosecution or other countermeasures.\nThe bill as it currently stands is not a good bill, for the following reasons:\nIt ignores the recommendations in a recent report, \u0026ldquo;Into the Gray Zone: Active Defense by the Private Sector Against Cyber Threats,\u0026quot; from the Center for Cyber \u0026amp; Homeland Security at the George Washington University. This report distinguishes between low-risk active defense activities within the boundaries of the defender\u0026rsquo;s own network, such as the use of deceptive technology (honeypots, honeynets, tarpitting), the use of beaconing technology to provide notifications in case of intrusions, and research in deep and dark web underground sites, on the one hand, and higher-risk active defense activities such as botnet takedowns, sanctions and indictments, white-hat ransomware, and rescue missions to recover stolen assets, on the other. One of the report\u0026rsquo;s key questions for an active defense measure is \u0026ldquo;is the active defense measure authorized, whether by an oversight body, law enforcement, or the owner of the affected network?\u0026rdquo; This bill creates no mechanism for providing particular authorizations (also see points 2 and 3, below).\nThe \u0026ldquo;Into the Gray Zone\u0026rdquo; report also suggests that if a decision is made to authorize the accessing of a remote system (an attacker\u0026rsquo;s system is almost always the system of another victim) for information collection purposes, it should be limited to cases in which a defender can \u0026ldquo;assert a positive identification of the hostile actor with near certainty, relying on multiple credible attribution methods.\u0026rdquo; This, however, seems too strict a condition to impose.\nFinally, however, this report advises that, even without a change in the law, DOJ \u0026ldquo;should exercise greater discretion in choosing when to enforce the CFAA and other relevant laws, and should provide clarity about how it intends to exercise such discretion. Companies engaging in activities that may push the limits of the law, but are intended to defend corporate data or end a malicious attack against a private server should not be prioritized for investigation or prosecution.\u0026rdquo; (p. 28) The report cites active defense activity by Google in response to hacking from China as an example where there was no prosecution or sanction for accessing remote systems being used by attackers. This proposal seems to me a wiser course of action than adopting this bill. (Also see point 5, below.)\nIt disregards the recommendations from the Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force on the subject of active defense. The CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report contains a short three-paragraph section on active defense (p. 14) which throws cold water on the idea, calling active defense \u0026ldquo;at best a stopgap measure, intended to address companies’ frustration over the seeming impunity of transborder criminals\u0026rdquo; and affirming that only governments should be authorized to engage in activities on the high-risk side, and that it is their responsibility to coordinate and engage in such activity. It does offer up a possibility for a proposal that allows accessing remote systems by private parties in its last sentence: \u0026ldquo;Additionally, the administration could consider measures, carried out with the prior approval of federal law enforcement agencies (most likely requiring a warrant to enter a third-party network) to recover or delete stolen data stored on servers or networks under U.S. jurisdiction.\u0026rdquo; This bill does not require approval from federal law enforcement agencies or a warrant for accessing remote systems or networks, and jurisdiction is only implicit.\nWhile the proposal in the bill resembles a proposal made in a Mercatus Center at George Mason University proposal by Anthony Glosson, it adopts the carrot element of the proposal while neglecting the stick. Glosson\u0026rsquo;s proposal is that, like this bill, private parties should be permitted to access remote attacking systems in order to collect information (\u0026ldquo;observation and access\u0026rdquo;), but not to engage in \u0026ldquo;disruption and destruction.\u0026rdquo; However, Glosson suggests three requirements be present to make such access and information collection permissible, and if those requirements are not present, that there be \u0026ldquo;stiff statutory damages\u0026rdquo; imposed. The bill omits any statutory damages, and imposes only one of Glosson\u0026rsquo;s three requirements (though a previous version of the bill included the second). Glosson\u0026rsquo;s three requirements are (1) that the defender\u0026rsquo;s actions are limited to observation and access, (2) that the attacker was routing traffic through the defender\u0026rsquo;s network at the time of the active defense action, and (3) that obtaining the owner of the attacking system\u0026rsquo;s cooperation at the time of the attack was impractical. This third criterion is a critical one, and a good way to observe the undesirability of this bill is to imagine that you are the owner of the intermediary system used by the attacker to go after a third party\u0026ndash;what would you want that third party to be able to do with your system without your permission or consent?\nThe bill appears to have been somewhat hastily written and sloppily updated, failing to update a persistent typographical error (\u0026ldquo;the victim\u0026rsquo; [sic] own network\u0026rdquo;) through its revisions, and the current version seems to be somewhat incoherent. In its current form it is unlikely to meet its short title objective of encouraging certainty.\nThe current version of the bill makes it legal for a victim of a \u0026ldquo;persistent unauthorized intrusion\u0026rdquo; to access \u0026ldquo;without authorization the computer of the attacker to the victim\u0026rsquo; [sic] own network to gather information in order to establish attribution of criminal activity to share with law enforcement or to disrupt continued unauthorized activity against the victim\u0026rsquo;s own network,\u0026rdquo; so long as this does not destroy information on the system, cause physical injury, or create a threat to public health or safety.\nThe phrase \u0026ldquo;without authorization the computer of the attacker to the victim\u0026rsquo;s own network\u0026rdquo; doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense [it should say \u0026ldquo;attacker of\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;attacker against\u0026rdquo;], and appears to be the result of poor editing from the prior version of the bill, which made permissible accessing \u0026ldquo;without authorization a computer connected to the victim\u0026rsquo; [sic] own network\u0026rdquo;, with the rest of the text remaining the same. This prior wording apparently attempted to thread the needle of the GWU \u0026ldquo;Into the Gray Zone\u0026rdquo; report by defining the accessing of a remote system as being within the boundaries of the defender\u0026rsquo;s own network, and thus on the low-risk side of the equation. However, the wording \u0026ldquo;connected to the victim\u0026rsquo;s own network\u0026rdquo; is ambiguous and unclear\u0026ndash;does it mean directly connected (e.g., to a WiFi access point or LAN port on a switch), in which case this is much less useful, or does it mean any active session flow of packets over the Internet into the victim\u0026rsquo;s network (similar to Glosson\u0026rsquo;s second requirement)? The latter is the more reasonable and charitable interpretation, but it should be made more explicit and could perhaps be too strict\u0026ndash;what happens if the attacker disconnects just moments before the active defense activity begins?\nLeft unsaid in the bill is what can be done with information collected from the attacking system, which might include information belonging to other victims, the exposure of which could cause harm. Presumably other remedies from other statutes would exist if a defender engaged in such exposure, but it seems to me that this bill would be improved by making the parameters of permissible action more explicit and restrictive. Perhaps the current wording limits actions to information sharing with law enforcement and reconfiguration of one\u0026rsquo;s own defensive systems based on the collected information, but \u0026ldquo;to disrupt continued unauthorized activity against the victim\u0026rsquo;s own network\u0026rdquo; is a purpose that could be achieved by a much broader set of actions, which could cause harm to other victims.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear that the bill is necessary, given that security researchers are today (as they have been for years) taking steps to access infrastructure used by malicious cyber threat actors in order to monitor their activity and collect intelligence information. They are already making legal and regulatory risk decisions which incorporate the existing CFAA, and deciding to proceed anyway.\nIf this bill is to move forward, it needs some additional work.\n(News story on the bill: Michael Mimoso, \u0026ldquo;Active Defense Bill Raises Concerns of Potential Consequences,\u0026rdquo; ThreatPost.\nFurther reading: Paul Rosenzweig, \u0026ldquo;A Typology for Evaluating Active Cyber Defenses,\u0026quot; Lawfare blog)\nUPDATE (March 14, 2017): Robert Chesney wrote a good critique of the bill at the Lawfare blog, \u0026ldquo;Legislative Hackback: Notes on the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act discussion draft,\u0026quot; in which he points out that the word \u0026ldquo;persistent\u0026rdquo; is undefined and vague, notes that \u0026ldquo;intrusion\u0026rdquo; excludes distributed denial of service attacks from permissible cases of response under this bill, and wisely notes that there may be multiple computers in an attack chain used by the attacker, while the bill is written as though there is only one. (It is also noteworthy that an attacking IP could be a firewall in front of an attacking machine, and a response attempting to connect to that IP could be redirected to a completely different system.) Chesney also questions whether destroying information is the right limit on responsive activity, as opposed to altering information (such as system configurations). He also notes that the restrictions for destruction, physical injury, and threats to public health and safety are probably insufficient, noting as I did above that there could be other forms of harm from disseminating confidential information discovered on the attacking system.\nI think a more interesting bill that would create incentives for companies to invest in security and to appropriately share information about attacks (rather than trying to hide it) would be a bill that created a safe harbor or liability limits for a company whose systems are used to attack third parties, if they have taken certain precautionary measures (such as having patched all known vulnerabilities more than 30 days old, and having a continuous monitoring program) and if they also share in a timely manner information about their breach.\nUPDATE (May 25, 2017): Rep. Graves has released a version 2.0 of his bill which is vastly improved, addressing almost all of my concerns above. The new Sec. 2 of the bill puts the use beaconing technology on a sound legal footing, which is consistent with the recommendations of the CSIS \u0026ldquo;Into the Gray Zone\u0026rdquo; report. The new Sec. 4 of the bill requires notification of the FBI, which, while it isn\u0026rsquo;t the notification of/deferral to organizations which have their own cyber defense teams to protect and investigate their own compromised infrastructure, it might effectively serve the same purpose, and it also provides a deterrent to irresponsible active defense. The core of the former bill, Sec. 3, has been revised to limit what can be done, so that now taking or exposing content on the attacker machine belonging to other parties would not be permissible. And there is also a new Sec. 5 of the bill, which sunsets it after two years. I cautiously support the new bill as a potentially useful experiment.\nUPDATE (October 14, 2017): A new version of the bill was released this week which has further improvements. Instead of just creating an exemption to the CFAA, it creates a defense to a criminal charge, and makes clear that it is not a defense for civil liability. This means if you are within the bounds of the new rules accessing the systems of a third party which is another victim of the attacker, you won\u0026rsquo;t go to jail for it, but you could still be successfully sued for damages by that third party. The new version of the bill also lists a few more things which you are NOT permitted to do in order to use the defense, and it requires that the FBI create a program for receiving advance notices from individuals and organizations that intend to use these measures, as well as a requirement for an annual assessment of this legislation\u0026rsquo;s effectiveness.\nUPDATE (February 2, 2018): There are still a few issues with the current version of the Graves bill. (1) It doesn\u0026rsquo;t require defenders to document and disclose actions taken against systems not owned by the attacker to the owners of those systems. (2) It places no limits on what vulnerabilities may be exploited on intermediary or attacker systems. (3) It allows destructive actions against information which belongs to the defender, as well as against any information or system which belongs to the attacker. (4) It does not limit the targets to systems within U.S. jurisdiction, or does it require any judicial approval. Attacks on systems outside U.S. jurisdiction could result in state-sponsored blowback. (5) The exception to permitted activity for any action which \u0026ldquo;intentionally results in intrusive or remote access into an intermediary\u0026rsquo;s computer\u0026rdquo; seems at odds with the overall proposal, since 90%+ of the time the systems used by attackers will belong to an intermediary. (6) Sec. 5\u0026rsquo;s requirement that the FBI be notified and presented with various pieces of information prior to the active defense seems both too strict and too loose. Too strict in that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow pre-certification and must occur in the course of an attack, too loose in that it requires that the FBI acknowledge receipt before proceeding but no actual approval or certification, and that there\u0026rsquo;s a loophole on one of the required pieces of information to be given to the FBI, which is any other information requested by the FBI for the purposes of oversight. Since all the active defender requires is acknowledgment of receipt, if the FBI doesn\u0026rsquo;t request any such further information as part of that acknowledgement, the defender is good to go immediately at that point before any further information is provided. Sec. 5 is kind of a fake certification process\u0026ndash;there is no actual certification or validation process that must occur. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2017/03/rep-tom-graves-active-cyber-defense.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Tom Graves (R-GA14) has circulated \u003ca href=\"https://tomgraves.house.gov/uploadedfiles/discussion_draft_ac-dc_act.pdf\"\u003ea draft bill, the \u0026ldquo;Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (or ACDC Act), which amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 USC 1030) to legalize certain forms of \u0026ldquo;hacking back\u0026rdquo; for the purposes of collecting information about an attacker in order to facilitate criminal prosecution or other countermeasures.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe bill as it currently stands is not a good bill, for the following reasons:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rep. Tom Graves' Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act"},{"content":"In Andy Greenberg\u0026rsquo;s Wired article on February 9, 2017, \u0026ldquo;Trump Cybersecurity Chief Could Be a \u0026lsquo;Voice of Reason,\u0026quot; he writes:\nBut when Trump’s draft executive order on cybersecurity\u0026nbsp;emerged\u0026nbsp;last week, it surprised the cybersecurity world by hewing closely to the recommendations of bipartisan experts—including one commission\u0026nbsp;assembled by the Obama administration. The described timing and the link both refer to the original draft cybersecurity executive order, which does not at all resemble the recommendations of Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity or the recommendations of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force, which both included input from large numbers of security experts. Contrary to what Greenberg says, the executive order he refers to was widely criticized on a number of grounds, including that it is incredibly vague and high level, specifies an extremely short time frame for its reviews, and that it seemed to think it was a good idea to collect information about major U.S. vulnerabilities and defenses into one place and put it into the hands of then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn. That original version of the executive order resembled the Trump campaign's website policy proposal on cybersecurity.\nThe positive remarks, instead, were for a revised version of the cybersecurity executive order which was verbally described to reporters on the morning of January 31, the day that the signing of the order was expected to happen at 3 p.m., after Trump met for a listening session with security experts. The signing was cancelled, and the order has not yet been issued, but a draft subsequently got some circulation later in the week and was made public at the Lawfare blog on February 9.\nThis executive order contains recommendations consistent with both the Cybersecurity Commission report and the CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report, mandating the use of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework by federal agencies, putting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of enterprise risk assessment across agencies, promoting IT modernization and the promotion of cloud and shared services infrastructure, and directing DHS and other agency heads to work with private sector critical infrastructure owners on defenses.\nOne key thing it does not do, which was recommended by both reports, is elevate the White House cybersecurity coordinator role (a role which the Trump administration has not yet filled, which was held by Michael Daniel in the Obama administration) to an Assistant to the President, reflecting the importance of cybersecurity. Greenberg's piece seems to assume that Thomas Bossert is in the lead cybersecurity coordinator role, but his role is Homeland Security Advisor (the role previously held by Lisa Monaco in the Obama administration), with broad responsibility for homeland security and counterterrorism, not cybersecurity-specific.\nDespite Greenberg's error confusing the two executive orders being pointed out to him on Twitter on February 9, the article hasn't been corrected as of February 16.\nAnonymous (2017-03-06):\nDear Mr. Lippard, I apologize for contacting you in this odd way, but as your email does not seem to be publicly available, I found it my only recourse.\nI have a longstanding interest in cranks of various types. One crank whom I find particularly interesting and entertaining, albeit of course unintentionally, is the late John Bryant. You, of course, reviewed his \u0026quot;Bryant's Law\u0026quot; in 1992, and in the subsequent exchange alluded to pamphlets from his \u0026quot;Socratic Books\u0026quot; catalog.\nI would be very interested in acquiring a copy of \u0026quot;Bryant's Law\u0026quot; and your other Bryant-alia –– if you no longer have use for them, that is. Thus, I humbly ask you to send these materials to my address, which I am happy to provide via email. (I will reimburse you for the cost of shipping.)\nYrs. sincerely,\nArthur\nLippard (2017-03-12):\nThis is the first I\u0026#39;ve thought or heard about John \u0026quot;Birdman\u0026quot; Bryant, the crackpot racist kook, since 2007, when he showed up in the comments of Orac\u0026#39;s Respectful Insolence blog at ScienceBlogs. Sorry, I can\u0026#39;t help you with the book, but it appears someone has been continuing to maintain his website for the last eight years since his death in February 2009, so you may still be able to find a copy of that truly awful book through whoever maintains the site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2017/02/confusing-two-trump-cybersecurity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn Andy Greenberg\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eWired\u003c/i\u003e article on February 9, 2017, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/2017/02/tom-bossert-trump-cybersecurity/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Trump Cybersecurity Chief Could Be a \u0026lsquo;Voice of Reason,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e he writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; font-family: \u0026quot;exchange ssm 4r\u0026quot; , , \u0026quot;georgia\u0026quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003eBut when Trump’s draft executive order on cybersecurity\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/read-the-trump-administrations-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-cybersecurity/2306/\" style=\"background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: \u0026quot;Exchange SSm 4r\u0026quot;, ExchangeWeb-Roman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eemerged\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; font-family: \u0026quot;exchange ssm 4r\u0026quot; , , \u0026quot;georgia\u0026quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;last week, it surprised the cybersecurity world by hewing closely to the recommendations of bipartisan experts—including one commission\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/2017/01/trump-hacking-defense-plan-obama/\" style=\"background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: \u0026quot;Exchange SSm 4r\u0026quot;, ExchangeWeb-Roman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;\"\u003eassembled by the Obama administration\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; font-family: \u0026quot;exchange ssm 4r\u0026quot; , , \u0026quot;georgia\u0026quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe described timing and the link both refer to \u003ca href=\"https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/read-the-trump-administrations-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-cybersecurity/2306/\"\u003ethe original draft cybersecurity executive order\u003c/a\u003e, which does not at all resemble the recommendations of Obama's \u003ca href=\"https://www.nist.gov/cybercommission\"\u003eCommission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity\u003c/a\u003e or the recommendations of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/cybersecurity/csis-cyber-policy-task-force\"\u003eCenter for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force\u003c/a\u003e, which both included input from large numbers of security experts. Contrary to what Greenberg says, the executive order he refers to was widely criticized on a number of grounds, including that it is incredibly vague and high level, specifies an extremely short time frame for its reviews, and that it seemed to think it was a good idea to collect information about major U.S. vulnerabilities and defenses into one place and put it into the hands of then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn. That original version of the executive order resembled \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20170127080437/https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/cyber-security/\"\u003ethe Trump campaign's website policy proposal on cybersecurity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe positive remarks, instead, were for a revised version of the cybersecurity executive order which was verbally described to reporters on the morning of January 31, the day that the signing of the order was expected to happen at 3 p.m., after Trump met for a listening session with security experts. The signing was cancelled, and the order has not yet been issued, but a draft subsequently got some circulation later in the week and \u003ca href=\"https://lawfareblog.com/revised-draft-trump-eo-cybersecurity\"\u003ewas made public at the Lawfare blog\u003c/a\u003e on February 9.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis executive order contains recommendations consistent with both the Cybersecurity Commission report and the CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report, mandating the use of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework by federal agencies, putting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of enterprise risk assessment across agencies, promoting IT modernization and the promotion of cloud and shared services infrastructure, and directing DHS and other agency heads to work with private sector critical infrastructure owners on defenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOne key thing it does not do, which was recommended by both reports, is elevate the White House cybersecurity coordinator role (a role which the Trump administration has not yet filled, which was held by Michael Daniel in the Obama administration) to an Assistant to the President, reflecting the importance of cybersecurity. Greenberg's piece seems to assume that Thomas Bossert is in the lead cybersecurity coordinator role, but his role is Homeland Security Advisor (the role previously held by Lisa Monaco in the Obama administration), with broad responsibility for homeland security and counterterrorism, not cybersecurity-specific.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDespite Greenberg's error confusing the two executive orders being pointed out to him on Twitter on February 9, the article hasn't been corrected as of February 16.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2017-03-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eDear Mr. Lippard,\n\u003cp\u003eI apologize for contacting you in this odd way, but as your email does not seem to be publicly available, I found it my only recourse.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Confusing the two Trump cybersecurity executive orders"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2016. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books), with no paywall or fee.\nAndreas Antonopoulos, The Internet of Money Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld Rob Brotherton, Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories Center for Cyber \u0026amp; Homeland Security, Into the Gray Zone: The Private Sector and Active Defense Against Cyber Threats Michael D'Antonio, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success Henning Diedrich, Ethereum: Blockchains, Digital Assets, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future Emma A. Jane and Chris Fleming, Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors,\u0026nbsp;Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations Peter Gutmann,\u0026nbsp;Engineering Security House Homeland Security Committee, Going Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate Dr. Rob Johnston, Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study R.V. Jones, Most Secret War Fred Kaplan, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War Maria Konnikova,\u0026nbsp;The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time Adam Lee, hilarious blog commentary on Atlas Shrugged Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City Felix Martin, Money: The Unauthorized Biography--From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies Nathaniel Popper, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money John Allen Paulos, A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours Mary Roach, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the \"Alt-Right\" Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York Adam Segal, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity Richard Stiennon, There Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric War Fighting Has Set the Stage for Cyberwar Russell G. Swenson, editor, Bringing Intelligence About: Practitioners Reflect on Best Practices U.S. Army Special Operations Command, \"Little Green Men\": A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine, 2013-2014 Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Crypto Currency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order I made progress on a few other books (first four from 2016, one from 2015, \u0026nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):\nAndreas Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Jocelyn Godwin, Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History John Searle,\u0026nbsp;Making the Social World Andrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Steven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Richard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;The Practice of Network Security Monitoring James Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;Internet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now) Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Top ten for 2016: \u0026nbsp;Sacks, Silberman, Jane \u0026amp; Fleming, Konnikova, Manaugh, Lyons, Popper, Uscinski \u0026amp; Parent, Jones, Lipstadt.\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2015,\u0026nbsp;2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Hume's Ghost (2017-01-02):\nOf those I\u0026#39;ve read Deyning the Holocaust and The Elephant in the Room. Lippard (2017-01-05):\nThat\u0026#39;s a little more overlap than we had last year--but I\u0026#39;ve had Lipstadt\u0026#39;s book on a shelf in my \u0026quot;to read\u0026quot; bookcase for years and finally decided to read it.\nHume's Ghost (2017-01-16):\nHey - I\u0026#39;ve got one of those too! Consisting of books that I\u0026#39;ve intended to read for, in some cases, up to ten+ years. I'll resolve to read one of them - Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do They Say It by Shermer/Grobman by the end of this year.\nHume's Ghost (2017-01-16):\nHey - I\u0026#39;ve got one of those too! Consisting of books that I\u0026#39;ve intended to read for, in some cases, up to ten+ years. I'll resolve to read one of them - Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do They Say It by Shermer/Grobman by the end of this year. (I meant to read it back when I read Lipstadt's book but didn't have access to a copy at the time.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2016. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books), with no paywall or fee.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndreas Antonopoulos, \u003ci\u003eThe Internet of Money\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHerbert Asbury, \u003ci\u003eThe Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRob Brotherton, \u003ci\u003eSuspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCenter for Cyber \u0026amp; Homeland Security, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/CCHS-ActiveDefenseReportFINAL.pdf\"\u003eInto the Gray Zone: The Private Sector and Active Defense Against Cyber Threats\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael D'Antonio, \u003ci\u003eNever Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHenning Diedrich, \u003ci\u003eEthereum: Blockchains, Digital Assets, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMartin Ford, \u003ci\u003eRise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmma A. Jane and Chris Fleming, \u003ci\u003eModern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eAnalyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Gutmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf\"\u003eEngineering Security\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHouse Homeland Security Committee, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Staff-Report-Going-Dark-Going-Forward.pdf\"\u003eGoing Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDr. Rob Johnston, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/analytic-culture-in-the-u-s-intelligence-community/analytic_culture_report.pdf\"\u003eAnalytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eR.V. Jones, \u003ci\u003eMost Secret War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFred Kaplan, \u003ci\u003eDark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMaria Konnikova,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdam Lee, \u003ca href=\"http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/\"\u003ehilarious blog commentary on \u003ci\u003eAtlas Shrugged\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeborah Lipstadt, \u003ci\u003eDenying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDan Lyons, \u003ci\u003eDisrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGeoff Manaugh, \u003ci\u003eA Burglar's Guide to the City\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFelix Martin, \u003ci\u003eMoney: The Unauthorized Biography--From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNathaniel Popper, \u003ci\u003eDigital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Allen Paulos, \u003ci\u003eA Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ci\u003eGrunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Ronson, \u003ci\u003eThe Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the \"Alt-Right\"\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003ci\u003eOn the Move: A Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLuc Sante, \u003ci\u003eLow Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdam Segal, \u003ci\u003eThe Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteve Silberman, \u003ci\u003eNeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Stiennon, \u003ci\u003eThere Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric War Fighting Has Set the Stage for Cyberwar\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRussell G. Swenson, editor, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dia/bring_intel_about.pdf\"\u003eBringing Intelligence About: Practitioners Reflect on Best Practices\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eU.S. Army Special Operations Command, \u003ca href=\"https://www.jhuapl.edu/Content/documents/ARIS_LittleGreenMen.pdf\"\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Little Green Men\": A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine, 2013-2014\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, \u003ci\u003eAmerican Conspiracy Theories\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Crypto Currency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made progress on a few other books (first four from 2016, one from 2015, \u0026nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndreas Antonopoulos, \u003ci\u003eMastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert M. Gates, \u003ci\u003eDuty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJocelyn Godwin, \u003ci\u003eUpstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThomas Rid, \u003ci\u003eRise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Searle,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eMaking the Social World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSecurity Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Network Security Monitoring\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eInternet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop ten for 2016: \u0026nbsp;Sacks, Silberman, Jane \u0026amp; Fleming, Konnikova, Manaugh, Lyons, Popper, Uscinski \u0026amp; Parent, Jones, Lipstadt.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html\"\u003e2015\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2017-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOf those I\u0026#39;ve read Deyning the Holocaust and The Elephant in the Room. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2016"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2015:\nGeorge A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation \u0026amp; Deception Jeffrey S Bardin, The Illusion of Due Diligence: Notes from the CISO Underground Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton Gabriella Coleman,\u0026nbsp;Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Karen Dawisha, Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?Laura DeNardis, The Global War for Internet Governance Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers William J. Drake and Monroe Price, editors, Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap Jon Friedman and Mark Bouchard, Definitive Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It Marc Hallet, A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers Shane Harris,\u0026nbsp;@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates Reed Massengill, Becoming American Express: 150 Years of Reinvention and Customer Service James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers, and Guests (two new chapters) David T. Moore, Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis Richard E. Nisbett, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking Tony Ortega, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper Whitney Phillips, This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web Jon Ronson, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know David Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics I made progress on a few other books (first two last year, \u0026nbsp;next four from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with very long nonfiction e-books):\nRoger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations John Searle, Making the Social World Peter Gutmann,\u0026nbsp;Engineering Security Andrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Steven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Richard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;The Practice of Network Security Monitoring James Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;Internet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now) Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Top ten for 2015: \u0026nbsp;Browder, Chernow, Coleman, Ronson (Shamed), Schneier, Phillips, Nisbett, Ortega, Miller and Shales, Thaler. I bought and read Bardin's book because Richard Bejtlich identified it as a \"train wreck,\" and it was.\n(Previously: 2014,\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Hume's Ghost (2016-01-02):\nThe only book on your list I\u0026#39;ve read is The Unbreakable Miss Lovely (excellent.) I bought a copy of Chernow\u0026#39;s Hamiliton in 2006 but haven\u0026#39;t gotten around to reading it yet.\nLippard (2016-01-02):\nChernew\u0026#39;s book gave me a new perspective on Thomas Jefferson. I had seen one example of him writing one thing in letters while doing something completely contrary to his statements behind the scenes in Chris Rodda\u0026#39;s _Liars for Jesus, Vol. 1_--Chernow gives the impression that this was somewhat habitual with Jefferson, at least while he was Washington\u0026#39;s Secretary of State and where Hamilton or the Federalists were concerned.\nAlan (2016-01-08):\nJim, are you saying Jefferson was actually a politician?\nDanny Mittleman (2016-05-11):\nJim, it\u0026#39;s your blog so you can do whatever you want. But I\u0026#39;d love it if you chose to star (or something) the books you recommend, having read them.\nDanny Mittleman (2016-05-11):\nAh, you have a top ten list. My bad for not noticing :-) Feel free to delete this and the previous post.\nLippard (2016-08-21):\nDanny--I also give star ratings on Goodreads.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2015:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGeorge A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, \u003ci\u003ePhishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation \u0026amp; Deception\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJeffrey S Bardin, \u003ci\u003eThe Illusion of Due Diligence: Notes from the CISO Underground\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBill Browder, \u003ci\u003eRed Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRon Chernow, \u003ci\u003eAlexander Hamilton\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGabriella Coleman,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKaren Dawisha, \u003ci\u003ePutin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLaura DeNardis, \u003ci\u003eThe Global War for Internet Governance\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, \u003ci\u003eCaught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, \u003ci\u003eRisk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWilliam J. Drake and Monroe Price, editors, \u003ci\u003eInternet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Friedman and Mark Bouchard, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://info.isightpartners.com/definitive-guide\"\u003eDefinitive Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarc Goodman, \u003ci\u003eFuture Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarc Hallet, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/ACriticalAppraisalOfGeorgeAdamskiTheManWhoSpokeToTheSpaceBrothers\"\u003eA Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShane Harris,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003e@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter T. Leeson, \u003ci\u003eThe Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eReed Massengill, \u003ci\u003eBecoming American Express: 150 Years of Reinvention and Customer Service\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, \u003ci\u003eLive From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers, and Guests\u003c/i\u003e (two new chapters)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid T. Moore, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dia/ndic_moore_crit_analysis_hires.pdf\"\u003eCritical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard E. Nisbett, \u003ci\u003eMindware: Tools for Smart Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTony Ortega, \u003ci\u003eThe Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhitney Phillips, \u003ci\u003eThis is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoseph M. Reagle, Jr., \u003ci\u003eReading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Ronson, \u003ci\u003eLost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Ronson, \u003ci\u003eSo You've Been Publicly Shamed\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBruce Schneier, \u003ci\u003eData and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eP.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, \u003ci\u003eCybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Skarbek, \u003ci\u003eThe Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, \u003ci\u003eThe Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePhilip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, \u003ci\u003eSuperforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard H. Thaler, \u003ci\u003eMisbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made progress on a few other books (first two last year, \u0026nbsp;next four from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with very long nonfiction e-books):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, \u003ci\u003eAnalyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Searle, \u003ci\u003eMaking the Social World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Gutmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eEngineering Security\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Jaquith,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSecurity Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Pinker,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Network Security Monitoring\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eInternet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop ten for 2015: \u0026nbsp;Browder, Chernow, Coleman, Ronson (\u003ci\u003eShamed\u003c/i\u003e), Schneier, Phillips, Nisbett, Ortega, Miller and Shales, Thaler. I bought and read Bardin's book \u003ci\u003ebecause\u003c/i\u003e Richard Bejtlich identified it as a \"train wreck,\" and it was.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html\"\u003e2014\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2016-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe only book on your list I\u0026#39;ve read is The Unbreakable Miss Lovely (excellent.) I bought a copy of Chernow\u0026#39;s Hamiliton in 2006 but haven\u0026#39;t gotten around to reading it yet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2015"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been using OpenBSD since way back at release 2.3 in 1998, so I\u0026rsquo;ve gone through upgrades that took a fair amount of work due to incompatible changes, like the switch from ipf to pf for host firewalling or the change to ELF binaries. The upgrade from 5.7 to 5.8 was a pretty smooth and easy one, for the most part. The two most painful changes for me were the replacement of sudo with doas and the dropping of support in the rc.conf for the pf_rules variable. While sudo is still available as a package, I like the idea of reducing attack surface with a simpler program, so I made the switch. The two things I miss most about sudo are the ability to authenticate for a period of time and the ability to have a single config file across a whole set of servers. The former I\u0026rsquo;m just living with, the latter I\u0026rsquo;ve adjusted to by having a single config file that has lines commented out depending on which server it\u0026rsquo;s on. I did have one moment of concern about the quality of doas when it incorrectly reported the line number on which I had a syntax error in the config file\u0026ndash;fortunately, this was just a failure to increment the line count on continuation lines (ending with a \u0026ldquo;\u0026quot;) which is fixed in the -current release.\nThe removal of the pf_rules variable support from rc.conf was a bigger issue\u0026ndash;I used to just put the default pf.conf rules file in place with each release and upgrade, and keep my changes in a pf.conf.local file that was specified in the pf_rules variable. The effect was that from the period after the upgrade until I noticed the change, my systems were using the default rules and thus more exposed than they were supposed to be. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t the first time an incompatible change decreased my level of security\u0026ndash;the removal of tcpwrappers support from SSH was another. I used to use a combination of pf rules and hosts.allow as additional layers of protection on my SSH access, and had a set of tools that allowed me to easily add IP addresses to or remove them from my hosts.allow files. This would have been a layer of defense still in place with the loss of my pf rules, had it still been in existence. Fortunately, I also have SSH on a non-standard port and only allow SSH key logins, not user/password logins, and most of my systems can\u0026rsquo;t be reached on any port without first making a VPN connection, which requires two-factor authentication.\nA minor annoying change that was made in 5.8 was putting the file /var/unbound/db/root.key into /etc/changelist, so that the file gets checked daily by the security script. The issue with this is that if you are actually using unbound with DNSSEC, this file changes daily, though only in the comments. My \u0026ldquo;reportnew\u0026rdquo; log monitoring tool has a feature that allows you to be notified if files that are expected to change on some periodic schedule do not change, and that would be more appropriate than getting daily notifications that yes, the autotrust anchor file has been updated yet again. But what would really be ideal here would be a check that the non-comment components have not changed. (Others have also complained about this.)\nA final issue I\u0026rsquo;ve run into with OpenBSD 5.8 is not a new issue, but it\u0026rsquo;s one that still hasn\u0026rsquo;t been fixed with pf. That is that pf logs certain traffic (IGMP in particular) when it matches a rule that does not call for logging. This appears to be the same issue that was fixed earlier this year in pfsense, which is derived from an older fork of pf.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2015/11/a-few-thoughts-on-openbsd-58.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been using OpenBSD since way back at release 2.3 in 1998, so I\u0026rsquo;ve gone through upgrades that took a fair amount of work due to incompatible changes, like the switch from ipf to pf for host firewalling or the change to ELF binaries. The upgrade from 5.7 to 5.8 was a pretty smooth and easy one, for the most part. The two most painful changes for me were the replacement of sudo with doas and the dropping of support in the rc.conf for the pf_rules variable.  While sudo is still available as a package, I like the idea of reducing attack surface with a simpler program, so I made the switch. The two things I miss most about sudo are the ability to authenticate for a period of time and the ability to have a single config file across a whole set of servers. The former I\u0026rsquo;m just living with, the latter I\u0026rsquo;ve adjusted to by having a single config file that has lines commented out depending on which server it\u0026rsquo;s on. I did have one moment of concern about the quality of doas when it incorrectly reported the line number on which I had a syntax error in the config file\u0026ndash;fortunately, this was just a failure to increment the line count on continuation lines (ending with a \u0026ldquo;\u0026quot;) which is \u003ca href=\"http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/doas/parse.y?rev=1.12\u0026amp;content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup\"\u003efixed in the -current release\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe removal of the pf_rules variable support from rc.conf was a bigger issue\u0026ndash;I used to just put the default pf.conf rules file in place with each release and upgrade, and keep my changes in a pf.conf.local file that was specified in the pf_rules variable. The effect was that from the period after the upgrade until I noticed the change, my systems were using the default rules and thus more exposed than they were supposed to be. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t the first time an incompatible change decreased my level of security\u0026ndash;the removal of tcpwrappers support from SSH was another. I used to use a combination of pf rules and hosts.allow as additional layers of protection on my SSH access, and had a set of tools that allowed me to easily add IP addresses to or remove them from my hosts.allow files. This would have been a layer of defense still in place with the loss of my pf rules, had it still been in existence. Fortunately, I also have SSH on a non-standard port and only allow SSH key logins, not user/password logins, and most of my systems can\u0026rsquo;t be reached on any port without first making a VPN connection, which requires two-factor authentication.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA minor annoying change that was made in 5.8 was putting the file /var/unbound/db/root.key into /etc/changelist, so that the file gets checked daily by the security script. The issue with this is that if you are actually using unbound with DNSSEC, this file changes daily, though only in the comments. My \u0026ldquo;reportnew\u0026rdquo; log monitoring tool has a feature that allows you to be notified if files that are expected to change on some periodic schedule do not change, and that would be more appropriate than getting daily notifications that yes, the autotrust anchor file has been updated yet again. But what would really be ideal here would be a check that the non-comment components have not changed. (Others \u003ca href=\"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/226167\"\u003ehave also complained about this\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA final issue I\u0026rsquo;ve run into with OpenBSD 5.8 is not a new issue, but it\u0026rsquo;s one that still hasn\u0026rsquo;t been fixed with pf. That is that pf logs certain traffic (IGMP in particular) when it matches a rule that does not call for logging. This appears to be the same issue that was \u003ca href=\"https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4383\"\u003efixed earlier this year in pfsense\u003c/a\u003e, which is derived from an older fork of pf.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A few thoughts on OpenBSD 5.8"},{"content":" \"I believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation.\" -- Al Seckel, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, \"Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel\"\nMark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, \"The Illusionist,\" has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a \"physicist\" in every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past.\nAn example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014: Dear Jim, News has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in\nspreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that\nI sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a\nvery lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated\nletters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they\ndid not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the\nvarious treasures who were in control of the financial books of the\nskeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver\nwas unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that\nthis was the \"worst case of slander and defamation\" that he had ever seen. Nevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and\nI mean the term \"using\") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation.\nLately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people,\nand posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press\nrelease service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just\nbecause something is \"alleged\" does not mean it is True. It has to be\nproven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process\n(and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was\ndiscovered, and the opposing counsel \"amicably\" dismissed their charges\nagainst me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing\ncounsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively\nremove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end. I note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I\nhave never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am\nattaching the official Court document that this case was filed for\ndismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an\naccurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you.\nMy attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so\nopenly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will\nonce again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against\nhim and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process.\nThis time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This\ntime that axe will come down hard on him. For now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all\nreferences to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it.\nYou don't want to be caught in the crossfire. Yours sincerely,\nAl Seckel\n--\nAl Seckel\nCognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker Contrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California. \u0026nbsp;I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, Anti-Evolution, who Seckel sued for defamation in 2007, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty.\nThe news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is summarized online on the Courthouse News Service website. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page in an edit on March 13, 2011, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour. \u0026nbsp;Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing.\nSeckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy. \u0026nbsp;Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, repeating the fraud allegations. \u0026nbsp;But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email.\nSo why should anyone care? \u0026nbsp;Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement \"The Illusionist.\"\nAl Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech. \u0026nbsp;This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board. \u0026nbsp;Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, see here and here). \u0026nbsp;He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, Masters of Deception,\u0026nbsp;which has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter. \u0026nbsp;Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--in 1998 the New York Times referred to him as a \"research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory.\" His author bios have described him as author of the monthly Neuroquest column at Discover magazine\u0026nbsp;(\"About the Author\" on Masters of Deception; Seckel has never written that column), as \"a physicist and molecular biologist\" (first page of Seckel's contribution, \"A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation\" in Robert Basil, editor, Not Necessarily the New Age, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in his TED talk bio, as having left Caltech to continue his work \"in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard\" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him).\nAt Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who had interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship. While in at least one conference bio, Seckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse that Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus.\nSeckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late Helen Tuck, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel \"latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic].\" Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, here.\nAs the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the Los Angeles Times, titled \"Skeptical Eye.\" Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including his column on Sunny the counting dalmation (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), his column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987 (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and his column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work).\u0026nbsp;When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from BASIS in LASER, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel.\nThis is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of \"affinity fraud\"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affinity fraud within religious organizations.\nThis just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago.\n(BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since Skeptical Inquirer vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.)\n\"Oh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do.\" -- Al Seckel\u0026nbsp;(interview with Jeffrey Epstein)\nCorrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian.\nUpdate 22 September 2015--an obituary has been published for Al Seckel, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet no online French death records nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors content put up on alseckel.net, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.)\nUpdate 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.\nUpdate 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found here.\nUpdate 14 April 2022: Al Seckel's death has been declared a suicide.\nUpdate 19 November 2025: Robert Sheaffer's recollections of Al Seckel including being plagiarized by him as noted above can be found here. Geoff Coupe (2015-07-22):\nRobert Maxwell, while deceased, was not Australian - he was born in Czechoslovakia and became British. I think you are confusing him with another R. M. - Rupert Murdoch\nLippard (2015-07-23):\nGeoff, thank you for the correction--your diagnosis is correct. I\u0026#39;ve fixed the post and appended a note to reflect the error.\nNickM (2015-08-02):\nJust saw this post in another discussion about the Oppenheimer article. I\u0026#39;d heard bits and pieces of this but now it\u0026#39;s all coming out. Typos in the threat letter: original?\n\u0026quot;(who provided notarized statements that they did not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the various treasures who were in control of the financial books\n[treasures, missing end paren]\n\u0026quot;defamatory comments again various people\u0026quot;\nCheers!\nLippard (2015-08-15):\nNick: Yes, both of those errors are in the original--it\u0026#39;s a straight cut-and-paste of the entirety of the email, minus the full email headers and a note at the end which stated that it was his current email address and prior email addresses had been phased out because they were compromised.\ntom (2015-09-23):\nThe website alseckel.net appeared on Sept. 18 as a memorial, stating that Seckel died but not giving a date or cause of death. Various e-mails I\u0026#39;ve seen have given various and contradictory dates and causes. I e-mailed the American Embassy in France, and they replied that a police report gave July 1st date of death for Seckel, but no further details.\neric (2015-10-09):\nJim, I appreciate your writing about this parasite. He had his lawyers threaten me with a big SLAPP lawsuit for merely telling the truth. I did a lot of research into his deceptions and manipulations. I personally confirmed he did not have the degrees he claimed and have talked on the phone to victims whose reputation would be hurt if they admitted being fooled by Seckel. You have had guts to speak the truth about bullies like $cientologists and people like Seckel. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2015/07/al-seckel-exposed.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\n\"\u003cspan face=\"\u0026quot;verdana\u0026quot; , \u0026quot;arial\u0026quot; , \u0026quot;helvetica\u0026quot; , sans-serif\" style=\"background-color: white; color: #464646; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.6px;\"\u003eI believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation.\" -- \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20101210234143/http:/www.jeffreyepsteinscience.com/2010/10/jeffrey-epstein-talks-perception-with-al-seckel/\"\u003eAl Seckel\u003c/a\u003e, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, \"Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel\"\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, \u003ca href=\"https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-illusionist-al-seckel\"\u003e\"The Illusionist,\"\u003c/a\u003e has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a \"physicist\" in every issue of the \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/i\u003e from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAn example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014:\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nDear Jim,\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nNews has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in\u003cbr /\u003e\nspreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that\u003cbr /\u003e\nI sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a\u003cbr /\u003e\nvery lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated\u003cbr /\u003e\nletters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they\u003cbr /\u003e\ndid not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the\u003cbr /\u003e\nvarious treasures who were in control of the financial books of the\u003cbr /\u003e\nskeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver\u003cbr /\u003e\nwas unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that\u003cbr /\u003e\nthis was the \"worst case of slander and defamation\" that he had ever seen.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nNevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and\u003cbr /\u003e\nI mean the term \"using\") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation.\u003cbr /\u003e\nLately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people,\u003cbr /\u003e\nand posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press\u003cbr /\u003e\nrelease service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just\u003cbr /\u003e\nbecause something is \"alleged\" does not mean it is True. It has to be\u003cbr /\u003e\nproven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process\u003cbr /\u003e\n(and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was\u003cbr /\u003e\ndiscovered, and the opposing counsel \"amicably\" dismissed their charges\u003cbr /\u003e\nagainst me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing\u003cbr /\u003e\ncounsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively\u003cbr /\u003e\nremove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I\u003cbr /\u003e\nhave never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am\u003cbr /\u003e\nattaching the official Court document that this case was filed for\u003cbr /\u003e\ndismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an\u003cbr /\u003e\naccurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you.\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so\u003cbr /\u003e\nopenly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will\u003cbr /\u003e\nonce again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against\u003cbr /\u003e\nhim and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process.\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This\u003cbr /\u003e\ntime that axe will come down hard on him.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nFor now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all\u003cbr /\u003e\nreferences to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\nYou don't want to be caught in the crossfire.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nYours sincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e\nAl Seckel\u003cbr /\u003e\n--\u003cbr /\u003e\nAl Seckel\u003cbr /\u003e\nCognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nContrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California. \u0026nbsp;I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Evolution-Readers-Writings-Before-Darwin/dp/0801845203/?tag=thelipblo-20\"\u003eAnti-Evolution\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e, who \u003ca href=\"http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/cacdce/2:2007cv03134/388721\"\u003eSeckel sued for defamation in 2007\u003c/a\u003e, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20120213005950/https://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/10/34803.htm\"\u003esummarized online on the Courthouse News Service website\u003c/a\u003e. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page i\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al_Seckel\u0026amp;diff=prev\u0026amp;oldid=418697134\"\u003en an edit on March 13, 2011\u003c/a\u003e, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour. \u0026nbsp;Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy. \u0026nbsp;Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/Ensign-v-Seckel-complaint.pdf\"\u003erepeating the fraud allegations\u003c/a\u003e. \u0026nbsp;But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSo why should anyone care? \u0026nbsp;Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement \"The Illusionist.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAl Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech. \u0026nbsp;This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board. \u0026nbsp;Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Bertrand Russell Studies\u003c/i\u003e, see \u003ca href=\"http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/vol9/iss1/11/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/vol10/iss2/9/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e). \u0026nbsp;He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, \u003ci\u003eMasters of Deception,\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003ewhich has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter. \u0026nbsp;Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/16/technology/screen-grab-see-the-spiral-spin-see-your-skin-crawl.html\"\u003ein 1998 the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c/i\u003e referred to him\u003c/a\u003e as a \"research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory.\" His author bios have described him \u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=t5IgWas4rJwC\u0026amp;pg=PA320\u0026amp;lpg=PA320\u0026amp;dq=Al+Seckel+Neuroquest\u0026amp;source=bl\u0026amp;ots=_fjp4LDSa8\u0026amp;sig=z29aM5pfnZwVlpoIA9LjMxI4QhE\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;sa=X\u0026amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBWoVChMIpOv_nd3qxgIVxDqICh1FDg1w#v=onepage\u0026amp;q=Al%20Seckel%20Neuroquest\u0026amp;f=false\"\u003eas author of the monthly Neuroquest column at \u003ci\u003eDiscover\u003c/i\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;(\"About the Author\" on \u003ci\u003eMasters of Deception\u003c/i\u003e; Seckel has never written that column), as \"a physicist and molecular biologist\" (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1988-Seckel-Basil-NNtNA.pdf\"\u003efirst page of Seckel's contribution\u003c/a\u003e, \"A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation\" in Robert Basil, editor, \u003ci\u003eNot Necessarily the New Age\u003c/i\u003e, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.ted.com/speakers/al_seckel\"\u003ehis TED talk bio\u003c/a\u003e, as having left Caltech to continue his work \"in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard\" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1993-08-11-Seckel-Williams-Cornell.pdf\"\u003ehad interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship\u003c/a\u003e. While in at least one conference bio, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/Seckel-Sagans-TA.pdf\"\u003eSeckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant\u003c/a\u003e, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1991-07-07-Seckel-Cornell-Registrar.pdf\"\u003ethat Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session\u003c/a\u003e, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late \u003ca href=\"http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Helen-Tuck\u0026amp;lc=2241\u0026amp;pid=142733513\u0026amp;mid=4252046\"\u003eHelen Tuck\u003c/a\u003e, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel \"latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic].\" Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1991-06-19-Seckel-Tuck-Caltech.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/i\u003e, titled \"Skeptical Eye.\" Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-sheaffer-comparison.html\"\u003ehis column on Sunny the counting dalmation\u003c/a\u003e (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-sheaffer-comparison2.html\"\u003ehis column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987\u003c/a\u003e (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-reiser-comparison.html\"\u003ehis column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives\u003c/a\u003e (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work).\u0026nbsp;When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the \u003ci\u003eBay Area Skeptics Information Sheet\u003c/i\u003e (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from \u003ci\u003eBASIS\u003c/i\u003e in \u003ci\u003eLASER\u003c/i\u003e, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of \"affinity fraud\"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affinity fraud within religious organizations.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer \u003c/i\u003evol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\"\u003cspan face=\"\u0026quot;verdana\u0026quot; , \u0026quot;arial\u0026quot; , \u0026quot;helvetica\u0026quot; , sans-serif\" style=\"background-color: white; color: #464646; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.6px;\"\u003eOh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do.\" -- \u003ca href=\"http://archive.today/9WuwJ#selection-747.1-747.68\"\u003eAl Seckel\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;(interview with Jeffrey Epstein)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCorrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUpdate 22 September 2015--\u003ca href=\"http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sgvtribune/obituary.aspx?n=al-p-seckel\u0026amp;pid=175897677\"\u003ean obituary has been published for Al Seckel\u003c/a\u003e, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet \u003ca href=\"http://www.avis-de-deces.net/avis/par-departement/dordogne-24-aquitaine\"\u003eno online French death records\u003c/a\u003e nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors \u003ca href=\"http://www.alseckel.net/\"\u003econtent put up on alseckel.net\u003c/a\u003e, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUpdate 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUpdate 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found \u003ca href=\"http://undeceive.weebly.com/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUpdate 14 April 2022: Al Seckel's death \u003ca href=\"https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10712491/Mystery-death-Ghislaine-Maxwells-brother-law-finally-declared-suicide.html\"\u003ehas been declared a suicide\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUpdate 19 November 2025: Robert Sheaffer's recollections of Al Seckel including being plagiarized by him as noted above can be found \u003ca href=\"https://badufos.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-strange-life-and-death-of-al-seckel.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGeoff Coupe\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2015-07-22)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eRobert Maxwell, while deceased, was not Australian - he was born in Czechoslovakia and became British. I think you are confusing him with another R. M. - Rupert Murdoch\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Al Seckel exposed"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2014:\nJames Altucher, The Choose Yourself Stories Nate Anderson, The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed David V. Barrett, A Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased History of Our Desire for Secret Knowledge Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, vol. 2, From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia Danielle Keats Citron, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace Harry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now? Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22 Christopher Hitchens, Mortality Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs Brian Krebs, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime--From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door Kembrew McLeod, Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World China Miéville, The City and the City Roger Pielke, Jr., The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming Michael Sacasas, The Tourist and the Pilgrim: Essays on Life and Technology in the Digital Age Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood James C. Scott,\u0026nbsp;Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Karen Stollznow, God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States Daniel Suarez, Daemon Daniel Suarez, Freedom Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile Sabrina Verney, XTUL: An Experience of The Process Timothy Wyllie, Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon I made progress on a few other books (first five this year, next four from last year, last two still not finished from two years ago):\nGabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Peter Gutmann, Engineering Security Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Richard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;The Practice of Network Security Monitoring Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky,\u0026nbsp;Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers James Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;Internet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now) Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Top ten for 2014: \u0026nbsp;Sacks, Miéville, Isaacson, Hitchens (both), Wyllie, Zetter, Collins, Pielke Jr., Pigliucci and Boudry.\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2013,\u0026nbsp;2012,\u0026nbsp;2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Historical Comments Hume's Ghost (2015-01-17):\nThis is the first time I can remember there being zero overlap with the books I\u0026#39;ve read in the year. I\u0026#39;ve always wanted to read Uncle Tungsten, though.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2014:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Altucher, \u003ci\u003eThe Choose Yourself Stories\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNate Anderson, \u003ci\u003eThe Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid V. Barrett, \u003ci\u003eA Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased History of Our Desire for Secret Knowledge\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Burke, \u003ci\u003eA Social History of Knowledge, vol. 2, From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDanielle Keats Citron, \u003ci\u003eHate Crimes in Cyberspace\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Collins, \u003ci\u003eAre We All Scientific Experts Now?\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChristopher Hitchens, \u003ci\u003eHitch 22\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChristopher Hitchens, \u003ci\u003eMortality\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, \u003ci\u003eAtheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWalter Isaacson, \u003ci\u003eSteve Jobs\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBrian Krebs, \u003ci\u003eSpam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime--From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKembrew McLeod, \u003ci\u003ePranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChina Miéville, \u003ci\u003eThe City and the City\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoger Pielke, Jr., \u003ci\u003eThe Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Sacasas, \u003ci\u003eThe Tourist and the Pilgrim: Essays on Life and Technology in the Digital Age\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003ci\u003eUncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames C. Scott,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSeeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKaren Stollznow, \u003ci\u003eGod Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Suarez, \u003ci\u003eDaemon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Suarez, \u003ci\u003eFreedom\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNassim Nicholas Taleb, \u003ci\u003eAntifragile\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSabrina Verney, \u003ci\u003eXTUL: An Experience of The Process\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTimothy Wyllie, \u003ci\u003eLove Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKim Zetter, \u003ci\u003eCountdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made progress on a few other books (first five this year, next four from last year, last two still not finished from two years ago):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGabriella Coleman, \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Gutmann, \u003ci\u003eEngineering Security\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Jaquith, \u003ci\u003eSecurity Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Pinker, \u003ci\u003eThe Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Bejtlich,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Network Security Monitoring\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eRisk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Grimmelmann,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eInternet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop ten for 2014: \u0026nbsp;Sacks, Miéville, Isaacson, Hitchens (both), Wyllie, Zetter, Collins, Pielke Jr., Pigliucci and Boudry.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html\"\u003e2013\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2015-01-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThis is the first time I can remember there being zero overlap with the books I\u0026#39;ve read in the year. I\u0026#39;ve always wanted to read Uncle Tungsten, though.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2014"},{"content":"I just stumbled across an old Usenet post of mine which summarizes a small part of the CSICOP conference held in Seattle June 23-26, 1994 (PDF of conference program; PDF of conference announcement mailing) with Robert Sheaffer\u0026rsquo;s reply. I don\u0026rsquo;t recall if I wrote the further followups, and didn\u0026rsquo;t find any in a brief search. My 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference summary and a number of others may be found at the Index of Conference Summaries on this blog.\nPath: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!news.Cerritos.edu!news.Arizona.EDU!skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu!lippard From: lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) Newsgroups: sci.skeptic Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference? Date: 11 Jul 1994 15:59 MST Organization: University of Arizona Lines: 110 Distribution: world Message-ID: \u0026lt;11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu\u0026gt; References: \u0026lt;forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu\u0026gt; NNTP-Posting-Host: skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41 In article \u0026lt;forb0004.2...@gold.tc.umn.edu\u0026gt;, forb...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Eric J. Forbis) writes... \u0026gt;I'm surprised that so little has been written about the recent conference on \u0026gt;this group. Please, any who attended, tell all! I had intended to write up a summary of the Seattle conference similar to the one I did for the 1992 Dallas conference (which may be found in /pub/anson/Arizona_Skeptic on netcom.com, in vol. 6 somewhere, over two issues). Events conspired against me, however. My flight did not arrive until the conference had already begun on Thursday night, and I was quite disappointed to miss Robert Baker's presentation in the session on alien abductions. I also brought only an old school notebook, which I found contained only two blank sheets of paper in it. Then I planned to view Becky Long's videotapes of the sessions afterward, but her camera's battery recharger broke. So the following is all from memory. I arrived at the conference on Thursday evening and was surprised to find that the main conference room was completely full and an overflow crowd was watching via closed-circuit television. This was the largest CSICOP conference to date. I believe that for the alien abduction and False Memory Syndrome-related sessions there were over 700 attendees. (I seem to remember somebody telling me that, but we know how unreliable human memory is.) I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between the accounts of abductees. He argued against the claim (made by Baker?) that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to \"Close Encounters of the Third Kind\" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction claims. (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of \"Grey\"-like aliens in other science fiction?) Next, John Mack spoke about why he was speaking at a CSICOP conference and discussed the \"intense polarization in ufology\" between skeptics and believers. He said that he was a skeptic about UFO abductions and that he considers it to be an unsolved mystery. At times he sounded like John Keel or Jacques Vallee--suggesting that aliens are interdimensional creatures that can't be reduced to any known categories of human thought. Like Bullard, he appealed to the consistency between testimonies. I wrote down a series of questions he had for CSICOP and skeptics: 1. Why so much vehemence in these attacks? [on him, on abduction claims] 2. Why so much certainty? 3. Why do we attack the experiencers themselves? 4. Why do you attack writers of your own commissioned reports who don't come up with the conclusions you want? I have no idea what the last question is supposed to be referring to, since CSICOP does not commission research. It sounds like a question more appropriately addressed to MUFON regarding its treatment of investigators of the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings. Since Nicholas Spanos died tragically in an airplane crash just a week or so before the conference, at the last minute clinical psychologist William Cone from Newport Beach, Calif. was brought in. (He was already a conference attendee.) He began by saying that he didn't bring any slides, but if the whole audience would just look at the screen, research shows that about 2% of us would see things on it anyway. Cone said that he has worked with a few dozen abductees, including some in locked wards of mental institutions. He argued that abduction research that he has seen is very badly done, with the researchers imposing their views on their subjects. He offered a number of possible answers to the question \"Why would anyone make up stories like this?\": (1) for the money (he gave a specific example from his own experience), (2) for notoriety and attention (he said that he's had abductees tell him they had never told anyone about their experience before, and then show up on a tabloid TV show a week later), (3) for identity with a group of people. He seemed to rebut most of the claims made by Bullard and Mack about abductees. Also added to the program was abductee and hypnotherapist Sharon Phillip (?), who was brought in by Mack. She described her own UFO sighting/abduction and promoted the usefulness of hypnotherapy. Also present was Donna Bassett, who passed herself off as an abductee in Mack's group and then went public in the _Time_ magazine article about Mack. She stated that, just as women have been doing for centuries, she faked it. She had very strong words of criticism for Mack's methodology and claimed that his clients are telling Mack what he wants to hear, but say other things behind his back. She accused him of not getting informed consent from his clients about what they are getting into. Mack replied by saying that he could not discuss her case because of confidentiality, but that he was not convinced that she *wasn't* really an abductee. (He implied that he had reasons for thinking this that he was not at liberty to discuss.) He flat out denied parts of her story, such as the part about his breaking her bed while sitting on it from his enthusiastic reaction to her story about being on a UFO with JFK and Kruschev. He also suggested that Phil Klass had put her up to her hoax, since her husband had worked with Klass at _Aviation Week_. This prompted the biggest outburst of anger that I witnessed at the conference, from Klass, who stated that he had not seen the Bassetts for many years and heard about the hoax in the media like everybody else. He subsequently contacted them, and was responsible for Donna Bassett's being invited to the CSICOP conference. There followed a series of audience questions and answers, including several which expressed concern about Bassett being brought into the conference without Mack's knowledge. Some of these concerned audience members changed their minds when told that Mack was already well aware of the specifics of Donna Bassett's charges as a result of the _Time_ story. Well, that was Thursday, June 23. I'll comment further later about the two Friday sessions and Carl Sagan's keynote address, the three Saturday sessions and the luncheon talk about CSICOP and the Law, and the Sunday session--or perhaps others can jump in. Jim Lippard _Skeptic_ magazine: lip...@ccit.arizona.edu ftp://ftp.rtd.com/pub/zines/skeptic/ Tucson, Arizona http://www.rtd.com/~lippard/skeptics-society.html Newsgroups: sci.skeptic Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!sheaffer From: shea...@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference? Message-ID: \u0026lt;sheafferCsy5EI.n1t@netcom.com\u0026gt; Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) References: \u0026lt;forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu\u0026gt; \u0026lt;11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu\u0026gt; \u0026lt;Jul13.044226.32392@acs.ucalgary.ca\u0026gt; Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 20:11:05 GMT Lines: 31 \u0026gt;In article \u0026lt;11JUL199...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu\u0026gt;, \u0026gt;James J. Lippard \u0026lt;lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu\u0026gt; wrote: \u0026gt;\u0026gt; I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was \u0026gt;\u0026gt;very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between \u0026gt;\u0026gt;the accounts of abductees. He argued against the claim (made by Baker?) \u0026gt;\u0026gt;that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to \"Close Encounters \u0026gt;\u0026gt;of the Third Kind\" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction \u0026gt;\u0026gt;claims. (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of \"Grey\"-like aliens in \u0026gt;\u0026gt;other science fiction?) I was going to comment about this at the conference, were it not such a mob scene that getting to a microphone became nearly impossible: Bullard was right to object to Baker's statement that 'all these grey aliens come from the 1977 movie CEIIIK'. (Bullard went on to cite some pre-1977 examples). However, Marty Kottmeyer makes a pretty good case tracing the origin of the _genre_ to Barney Hill who in March 1964 (date from memory: beware FMS) sketched an alien that had supposedly abducted him. This drawing was subsequently widely published. Marty found out, however, that an episode of _The Twilight Zone_ had aired with a nearly-identical alien, just A FEW DAYS before Barney made his sketch. (The individual sessions with Dr. Benjamin Simon were all carefully dated and transcribed, and fan books tell when each _Twilight Zone_ episode first aired.) -- Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - shea...@netcom.com Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized! \"As women and as lawyers, we must never again shy from raising our voices against sexual harrassment. All women who care about equality of opportunity - about integrity and morality in the workplace - are in Professor Anita Hill's debt.\" -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, 8/9/92, at an American Bar Association luncheon honoring Anita Hill \"I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we are going to make to have a short term economic strategy and a long term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.\" -- candidate Bill Clinton, ABC News Primary Debate, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1/19/92 ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2014/10/summary-of-1994-csicop-conference.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just stumbled across an old Usenet post of mine which summarizes a small part of the CSICOP conference held in Seattle June 23-26, 1994 (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/CSICOP/1994-Program.pdf\"\u003ePDF of conference program\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/CSICOP/1994-Announcement.pdf\"\u003ePDF of conference announcement mailing\u003c/a\u003e) with Robert Sheaffer\u0026rsquo;s reply. I don\u0026rsquo;t recall if I wrote the further followups, and didn\u0026rsquo;t find any in a brief search. My 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference summary and a number of others may be found at the \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/index-of-conference-summaries.html\"\u003eIndex of Conference Summaries \u003c/a\u003eon this blog.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Summary of 1994 CSICOP conference"},{"content":"I received the following spam email today (a link on the email claims, falsely, that I opted in for it in October 2013) from the Christine Jones for governor campaign. Jones is a former GoDaddy executive who looks like a terrible candidate for governor of Arizona.\nDear James, \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; As a Republican candidate for Governor, I am frequently asked where I stand on the issues important to our state-issues ranging from immigration and education to economic development and healthcare. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; At a recent forum I was asked one of the single-most important questions that a candidate for political office can face. The question was, \"Where does your moral compass come from?\" \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; At three years old, I climbed onto the Sunday School bus that drove the neighborhood kids to the local evangelical church. It was there that I learned about God and His Son, Jesus. Since then, I have let my personal relationship with Him be my moral compass. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; One of my life phrases is, \"Do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.\" I am not interested in making excuses or politicizing important issues. I am interested in doing things based on conviction and personal belief. As Governor, I can promise you that I will adhere to my moral compass. \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; If you would like to hear more about my story and why I am running for Governor, I invite you to join me Tuesday, April 29th, from 6:30-8:00pm at New Life Community Church of the Nazarene in Show Low. I hope you can make it! \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;Best, \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; Jones for Governor, Inc · Primary \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; PO Box 13087 \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; Phoenix, AZ 85002-3087, United States \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;Paid for by Jones for Governor, Inc. Historical Comments Alan (2014-05-08):\nJim, Since I am so sure you were eager to go to Show Low on Tuesday the 29th just to hear her speak, how awesome was it?!\n\u0026ndash; Alan\nAnonymous (2014-09-20):\nHi, Jim. I came across your article in e-skeptic. I just want to say hello; I don\u0026#39;t see an email address for you. I haven\u0026#39;t talked to in years..at least since primenet went under. How are you? Hope all is well. Camilla\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2014/04/spam-email-from-christine-jones-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI received the following spam email today (a link on the email claims, falsely, that I opted in for it in October 2013) from the Christine Jones for governor campaign.  Jones is a former GoDaddy executive who looks like a \u003ca href=\"http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2013/10/18/so-christine-jones-is-a-terrible-candidate-for-governor\"\u003eterrible\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/christine_jones_gop_candidate.php\"\u003ecandidate\u003c/a\u003e for governor of Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nDear James,\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p2\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; As a Republican candidate for Governor, I am frequently\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nasked where I stand on the issues important to our state-issues\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nranging from immigration and education to economic development\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nand healthcare.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p2\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; At a recent forum I was asked one of the single-most\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nimportant questions that a candidate for political office can\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nface. The question was, \"Where does your moral compass come\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nfrom?\"\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; At three years old, I climbed onto the Sunday School bus\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nthat drove the neighborhood kids to the local evangelical church.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nIt was there that I learned about God and His Son, Jesus. Since\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nthen, I have let my personal relationship with Him be my moral\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\ncompass.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; One of my life phrases is, \"Do the right thing because\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nit's the right thing to do.\" I am not interested in making\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nexcuses or politicizing important issues. I am interested in\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\ndoing things based on conviction and personal belief. As\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nGovernor, I can promise you that I will adhere to my moral\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\ncompass.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u003c/span\u003eIf you would like to hear more about my story and why I\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nam running for Governor, I invite you to join me Tuesday, April\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n29th, from 6:30-8:00pm at New Life Community Church of the\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\nNazarene in Show Low. I hope you can make it!\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003eBest,\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; Jones for Governor, Inc · Primary\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; PO Box 13087\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u003c/span\u003ePhoenix, AZ 85002-3087, United States\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"p1\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spam email from Christine Jones for governor campaign"},{"content":" Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2013:\nRoss Anderson,\u0026nbsp;Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems\u0026nbsp;(2nd ed) Deborah Blum, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot J.C. Carleson, Work Like a Spy: Business Tips from a Former CIA Officer Ronald J. Deibert, Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking Cory Doctorow, Homeland Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (re-read, thanks to free Kindle edition) Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir John Forester, Novelist \u0026amp; Storyteller: The Life of C.S. Forester, vol. 1 \u0026amp; vol. 2 Martin Gardner, Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner Adam Gorightly, The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture Jason Healey, editor, A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012 Jenna Miscavige Hill: Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, The Unincorporated Man Jon Krakauer, Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way Phil Lapsley, Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids David W. Maurer, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Men Philip Metcalfe, Whispering Wires: The Tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger Torin Monahan, editor, Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit Adam Penenberg, Virtually True Lewis Pinault, Consulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Corporate Consulting Stephen Pinker,\u0026nbsp;The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Ann Rowe Seaman,\u0026nbsp;America's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair Karl Sabbagh, Shooting Star: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Frank Ramsey Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media, The First 2,000 Years Will Storr, Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science John Sweeney, The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology Jesse Walker, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, \u0026amp; the Prison of Belief I made progress on a few other books (first three still not finished from last year):\nMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems (v2; v3 is out now) Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Top ten for 2013: \u0026nbsp;Ebert, Kahneman, Wright, Anderson, Pinker, Seaman, Walker, Sacks, Deibert, Dennett. \u0026nbsp;Runners Up: Blum, Kim, Miscavige Hill.\n(Previously: 2012, 2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Historical Comments Hume's Ghost (2014-01-02):\nThe only books on your list I have read is The Church of Fear and the complete Sherlock Holmes - and I\u0026#39;m only half done with that collection. There are several books on this list that I intend to read, however. Particularly Better Angels; Going Clear; and Thinking, Fast and Slow.\nI read mostly fiction this year, my honorable mentions being Mather's Atopia Chronicles, Howey's Shift Omnibus and Dust, Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, Stephen King's 11/22/63.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;\"\u003e\nNot much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2013:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoss Anderson,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eSecurity Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;(2nd ed)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeborah Blum, \u003ci\u003eGhost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Burke, \u003ci\u003eA Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJ.C. Carleson, \u003ci\u003eWork Like a Spy: Business Tips from a Former CIA Officer\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonald J. Deibert, \u003ci\u003eBlack Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Dennett, \u003ci\u003eIntuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://craphound.com/homeland/Cory_Doctorow_-_Homeland.html\"\u003eHomeland\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSir Arthur Conan Doyle, \u003ci\u003eThe Complete Sherlock Holmes\u003c/i\u003e (re-read, thanks to free Kindle edition)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoger Ebert, \u003ci\u003eLife Itself: A Memoir\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Forester, \u003ci\u003eNovelist \u0026amp; Storyteller: The Life of C.S. Forester, vol. 1 \u0026amp; vol. 2\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMartin Gardner, \u003ci\u003eUndiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdam Gorightly, \u003ci\u003eThe Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJason Healey, editor, \u003ci\u003eA Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJenna Miscavige Hill: \u003ci\u003eBeyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Kahneman, \u003ci\u003eThinking, Fast and Slow\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, \u003ci\u003eThe Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, \u003ci\u003eThe Unincorporated Man\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Krakauer, \u003ci\u003eThree Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePhil Lapsley, \u003ci\u003eExploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, \u003ci\u003eAbominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid W. Maurer, \u003ci\u003eThe Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Men\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePhilip Metcalfe, \u003ci\u003eWhispering Wires: The Tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTorin Monahan, editor, \u003ci\u003eSurveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDale K. Myers, \u003ci\u003eWith Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdam Penenberg, \u003ci\u003eVirtually True\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLewis Pinault, \u003ci\u003eConsulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Corporate Consulting\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: normal;\"\u003eStephen Pinker,\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnn Rowe Seaman,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eAmerica's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKarl Sabbagh, \u003ci\u003eShooting Star: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Frank Ramsey\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003ci\u003eHallucinations\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJim Schnabel, \u003ci\u003eRemote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTom Standage, \u003ci\u003eWriting on the Wall: Social Media, The First 2,000 Years\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWill Storr, \u003ci\u003eHeretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Sweeney, \u003ci\u003eThe Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJesse Walker, \u003ci\u003eThe United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLawrence Wright, \u003ci\u003eGoing Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, \u0026amp; the Prison of Belief\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made progress on a few other books (first three still not finished from last year):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames C. Scott, \u003ci\u003eSeeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski, \u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard Bejtlich, \u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Network Security Monitoring\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, \u003ci\u003eRisk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Grimmelmann, \u003ci\u003eInternet Law: Cases \u0026amp; Problems\u003c/i\u003e (v2; v3 is out now)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDouglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, \u003ci\u003eSurfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nTop ten for 2013: \u0026nbsp;Ebert, Kahneman, Wright, Anderson, Pinker, Seaman, Walker, Sacks, Deibert, Dennett. \u0026nbsp;Runners Up: Blum, Kim, Miscavige Hill.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html\"\u003e2012\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2014-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe only books on your list I have read is The Church of Fear and the complete Sherlock Holmes - and I\u0026#39;m only half done with that collection. \n\u003cp\u003eThere are several books on this list that I intend to read, however. Particularly Better Angels; Going Clear; and Thinking, Fast and Slow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2013"},{"content":"I thought that Google Authenticator might be a quick and easy two-factor authentication solution for VPN access to my personal network, so I did some Google searches to see if that were so. I found quite a few sources describing how to set it up with systems that use Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), but very little about using it with BSD Authentication on OpenBSD.\nThe most promising link I came across was to an implementation of Google Authentication for OpenBSD that was last updated in early 2013, based on Google\u0026rsquo;s PAM code, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work. It compiled and installed, and the googleauth code for generating a secret (and a very insecure way of generating a QR code to use to import it into the Google Authenticator application) worked fine, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t successfully use it for console login, OpenSSH login, or OpenVPN login.\nI also found the standard OpenBSD port for openvpn_bsdauth, which compiled, installed, and worked successfully for password authentication by adding these lines to my OpenVPN configuration:\nscript-security 2\ntmp-dir \u0026lt;path to dir writable only by _openvpn user\u0026gt;\nauth-user-pass-verify /usr/local/libexec/openvpn_bsdauth via-file This also requires that the authenticating user be put into the _openvpnusers group. I was unable to get the via-env method to work, however. I next tried the standard OpenBSD port of login_oath, which implements the OATH toolkit, which uses the same time-based TOTP protocol that Google Authenticator uses. \u0026nbsp;This turned out to do the trick. \u0026nbsp;Once installed, you create a secret key that the server authentication will check against and store it in your home directory (one thing I liked about googleauth is that it stores the shared secret in a system directory to which the user doesn't have access; better still is the suggestion of keeping the secrets on an auth server as totp-cgi does). \u0026nbsp;The documentation recommends creating the secret (which the user doesn't need to know except for the initial configuration of the Google Authenticator client application) by doing: openssl rand -hex 20 \u0026gt; ~/.totp-key I then needed to convert this from hex to base32, which is simple enough to do with the method the documentation recommends, which is using the perl module Convert::Base32 (OpenBSD port p5-Convert-Base32) and a short script like: #!/usr/bin/perl\nuse Convert::Base32;\nopen (FILE, \"/home/vpnuser/.totp-key\");\n$secret = \u0026lt;FILE\u0026gt;;\nclose (FILE);\n$code = pack ('H*', $secret);\nprint encode_base32($code).\"\\n\"; The resulting code can be manually entered into Google Authenticator. To use Google Authenticator as a login method, I updated the login class for the user I wanted to use in /etc/login.conf so that its last two lines were: :auth=-totp,passwd:\\\n:tc=default: This allows either Google Authenticator or password authentication at the console, but only Google Authenticator via OpenSSH or OpenVPN as I configured them. \u0026nbsp;Instead of using \"-totp\" you can also use \"-totp-and-pwd\" which requires the entry of both your Google Authenticator code and your password (in that order, with a slash in between them) in order to authenticate. For OpenSSH, I added the following lines to my sshd_config: Match User \u0026lt;vpnuser\u0026gt;\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;PasswordAuthentication yes\n\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;AuthenticationMethods publickey,password:bsdauth I don't allow password authentication at all for other users; for this user, an SSH public key must first be used, then Google Authenticator must also be used before a successful login. [Updated 1 Nov 2013 to add: \u0026nbsp;After a reboot, this ssh config failed with a log message of \"fatal: auth2_update_methods_lists: method not in AuthenticationMethods\". \u0026nbsp;Removing the \":bsdauth\" made it work again (it works since the \"password\" authentication method will use BSD Authentication by default), but this looks like an SSH bug.] So why might you not want to do this? \u0026nbsp;While Google Authenticator ensures that what is used over the network as a password is better than a typical user-selected password, it effectively stores a shared secret in plaintext at both ends of the connection, which is far less secure than SSH public key authentication. \u0026nbsp;If the device where Google Authenticator is present gets compromised, that secret is compromised. \u0026nbsp;And as the above link about totp-cgi points out, if you use Google Authenticator with the same secret across multiple machines, that secret is only as secure as the least secure host it's stored on, and using different secrets for different machines doesn't scale very well with the application. \u0026nbsp;A password safe with randomly generated passwords, stored in encrypted form, is probably a better solution in most cases. [Updated 2 November 2013: Authy uses the same TOTP mechanism as Google Authenticator, but encrypts the secret key on the client side. \u0026nbsp;That encryption is really more obfuscation than encryption since the key is based on phone attributes and can potentially be reverse engineered.] As I've set it up, I'm still relying on SSH public key authentication for SSH logins, and on certificate authentication for VPN logins, in addition to Google Authenticator. \u0026nbsp;For the case of logging into my VPN from my laptop and having Google Authenticator on a separate mobile device, it does seem to be a security improvement (though I welcome anyone to show me that the gains are illusory).\nUPDATE (July 31, 2019): Note that you should make the .totp-key file in the user's home directory owned by and only readable by root, or else you're effectively permitting that user to do passwordless doas/sudo, since passworded doas/sudo will use the TOTP mechanism for authentication. That won't stop the user from removing the .totp-key file and replacing it with their own, but at least that action becomes detectible. To prevent removal, on OpenBSD you can set the file to be immutable (schg flag) and run at securelevel=2. But a better solution would really be to put those secrets somewhere outside of the individual user's home directory.\nUPDATE (October 22, 2019): The OpenVPN authentication with 2FA is broken in OpenBSD 6.6, it now leads to user/password authentication failures. Not sure why yet.\nUPDATE (October 22, 2019 #2): Looks like it may have been user error, it works now, though I did update my _openvpnusers group to the new number (811) from the old one (596), but the number itself shouldn't be hardcoded in openvpn_bsdauth, so that shouldn't have had an impact.\nUPDATE (30 October 2022): Also see Solene Rapenne's blog post on this same topic.\nUPDATE (18 June 2024): Note that Authy (and probably any other authenticator app) treats manual secrets entry as case-sensitive even though base32 is not, and secrets must be entered in uppercase.\nUPDATE (9 September 2025): I recently switched from VMware vSphere ESXi to Proxmox and implemented 2FA for SSH using the same codes that are used for 2FA for the web interface. There are a number of guides online that I drew from (such as this one), but none of them gave me quite what I was used to--most of them allowed password + 2FA and I wanted to force SSH keys + 2FA.\u0026nbsp; I installed libpam-google-authenticator, added the line \"auth required pam_google_authenticator.so nullok\" and commented out the \"@include common-auth\" line that allows passwords. In sshd_config, I added \"PasswordAuthentication no\", \"PermitRootLogin prohibit-password\", and \"KbdInteractiveAuthentication yes\". I added an \"AllowUsers\" list with root, my account, and my rsync account, and then did a \"Match User\" for my account with \"AuthenticationMethods publickey,keyboard-interactive\" to require both. (No 2FA requirement for root SSH as that would impact node-to-node authentication for clustering, but it's forced to use SSH keys and can be restricted by IP. Too bad it doesn't use a non-root account, though.)\nUPDATE (31 October 2025): To make my Proxmox system consistent with my OpenBSD boxes, I switched from libpam-google-authenticator to libpam-oath and also made it required authentication for doas. I'm also using a centralized, system administrator managed, visible-only-to-root config file for TOTP keys. Historical Comments Anonymous (2015-06-29):\nCVS Commit History: 2011-07-17 06:06:35 by Stuart Henderson | Files touched by this commit (2) Log message: update to login_oath 0.7, now supports placing user keys in a central directory\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2013/10/how-to-use-google-authenticator-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI thought that Google Authenticator might be a quick and easy two-factor authentication solution for VPN access to my personal network, so I did some Google searches to see if that were so.  I found quite a few sources describing how to set it up with systems that use Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), but very little about using it with BSD Authentication on OpenBSD.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe most promising link I came across was to \u003ca href=\"https://gitorious.org/google-authentication-for-openbsd\"\u003ean implementation of Google Authentication for OpenBSD\u003c/a\u003e that was last updated in early 2013, based on Google\u0026rsquo;s PAM code, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work.  It compiled and installed, and the googleauth code for generating a secret (and a very insecure way of generating a QR code to use to import it into the Google Authenticator application) worked fine, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t successfully use it for console login, OpenSSH login, or OpenVPN login.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI also found the standard OpenBSD port for openvpn_bsdauth, which compiled, installed, and worked successfully for password authentication by adding these lines to my OpenVPN configuration:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to use Google Authenticator with OpenBSD, OpenSSH, and OpenVPN--and why you might not want to"},{"content":"In his recent talk at the American Atheist convention on skepticism and atheism, Matt Dillahunty states (at about five minutes in) that skepticism does tell us what to believe in the case of untestable claims\u0026ndash;that the default position is disbelief.\nBut no, the default position has to be nonbelief, not disbelief. To disbelieve in a proposition is to believe in the negation of the proposition, to believe that the original proposition is false. And Dillahunty already said that (a) we should proportion our belief to the evidence and that (b) the proposition in question is untestable, meaning there is no evidence for or against it.\nThe position he describes is logically inconsistent.\nWe know that there are untestable propositions that are true. We shouldn\u0026rsquo;t believe that they are false simply because they are untestable. We should only believe they are false if we have good reasons to believe they are false; in the absence of that we should be agnostic.\n(Added 5:36 p.m.: What are the implications for the above argument if it is the case that untestability does not entail lack of evidence or reasons? What about if we distinguish evidential from non-evidential reasons? And if we take the latter course, what does that say about proposition (a), above? Left as an exercise for commenters.)\nAnonymous (2013-04-06):\nI saw Matt\u0026#39;s talk and I\u0026#39;ve been a follower of him for years. I think he (and I) would respond to this by saying you are splitting hairs between disbelief and non belief. The two are indistinguishable in practice. He makes it clear in the talk that he is speaking of disbelief/belief in binary terms, I.E. you either believe or you do not believe. He did not assert that said lack of belief implied a knowledge claim.\nIt's also important to note that Matt mainly debates theists so he is usually engaged with people who are actively claiming a god exists, and not all god claims are untestable. Of course one can define a god in ways that are untestable but I read his rejection as being much along the same lines as Sagan's rejection of the invisible dragon in the garage.\nI often found the argument about whether we should call ourselves atheist or agnostic to be a strange. It seems to be hair splitting. I've never met an atheist who cares about the argument, but quite a few agnostics seem to care about it quite a bit.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nDylan: That\u0026#39;s similar to the response that Tony Sidaway made on Google+. While there are no doubt cases where disbelief and nonbelief are indistinguishable in practice (for others, if not also for ourselves), this is certainly not *generally* the case--we often can and do make the distinction. Tony said: \u0026quot;I don't believe in angels. In what sense is that nonbelief distinguishable from disbelief?\u0026quot;\nHere's my response:\n\u0026quot;Distinguishable for you, or for others? Are you saying that the distinction sometimes collapses, or always collapses? I think the distinction clearly holds up in some cases\u0026ndash;for example, where we are in a state of ignorance about a proposition, we hear it asserted, and we find it surprising, ponder it, and then reject it. We've clearly gone from nonbelief (haven't even considered it) to disbelief (we've rejected it)\u0026ndash;but we could have remained in a state of nonbelief even after hearing of it, where we were uncertain, where we considered the proposition and its negation to be equally likely, or noted that each have consequences which seem problematic. I suspect I would describe your case as disbelief based on lack of coherence with other things you believe.\nBTW, I think scientific skepticism goes awry by placing too much weight on scientific testability. There are other sources of evidence and reasons.\u0026quot;\nTo which Tony responded: \u0026quot;I do like to read your explanations of issues like this. I suppose I should explain that I am aware of the preponderance of non-existent things, so some unfamiliar concept is initially met with disbelief. I might want to be polite, and call it nonbelief, but really it's a strong scepticism amounting to a belief in the antithesis pending evidence. There aren't any goblins. Maybe that's wrong, but until I see a reason to change my mind I'll stick with it.\u0026quot;\nThe question that arises here is\u0026ndash;is there an asymmetry between the evidence required for belief and disbelief?\nI agree that knowledge claims are different from mere beliefs (reasonable or otherwise), and if you look you'll see that yours was the first mention of them.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nBTW, in my previous, my asymmetry question is phrased ambiguously between a descriptive and normative sense. The normative sense is expressed by the question \u0026quot;is there an asymmetry between the evidence required for *reasonable* belief and disbelief?\u0026quot; A descriptive asymmetry is no doubt easier to explain than a normative one.\nAnonymous (2013-04-06):\n\u0026quot;BTW, I think scientific skepticism goes awry by placing too much weight on scientific testability. There are other sources of evidence and reasons.\u0026quot; I completely agree here. My knowledge is of course more in areas of philosophy, history, and theology than pure science so I don't have a problem with the suggestion that there are good reasons to rely on things beyond the question \u0026quot;can we test it\u0026quot;\nOn that note there is a further question of whether it is reasonable to consider god's existence just as likely as his nonexistence simply because we cannot demonstrate either with science. I obviously do not think this is the case, I think his instance is less likely than his non existence.\nOf course I am speaking generally and most of the time we need more info. If someone says they believe in god, I cannot really respond until they tell me how they define god, since there are lots of different definitions. On Matt's show, if you have never listened, his first question to callers is usually \u0026quot;what do you believe and why\u0026quot;\nI realize you didn't speak directly about knowledge, I just think you are implying Matt is holding a position that I don't think he actually holds. Anonymous (2013-04-06):\nSorry if my first post seemed combative at all, but this topic tends to get me going. As a person who debates religion quite a bit I often hear theists use as very similar argument to basically say that since neither can prove their claim the claims of theists and atheists are logically equivalent.\nOf course their version often involves moving the goal post since this argument requires that we assume an unfalsifiable god, and most religion involves specific claims about their deity (answers prayers etc.) which are, in theory, falsifiable.\nI have no problem saying that an unfalsifiable god might exist, but I'm not sure would even care since such a being would have no interaction with us by definition.\nEven so just because two claims might possibly be true doesn't mean they are equally likely.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nI am in agreement with your distinction between the gods people actually believe in and gods that are carefully designed to avoid any contact with empirical evidence that could test their existence. I\u0026#39;m an atheist with respect to the major former ones, agnostic about the latter. I also agree that just because two claims might possibly be true doesn't mean they are equally likely. (Though, if they are contradictories that exhaust the space of possibility, and we have no evidence at all that bears on their truth, the correct response is to give them both epistemic probabilities of 0.5, isn't it?)\nAnonymous (2013-04-06):\n\u0026quot;and we have no evidence at all that bears on their truth, the correct response is to give them both epistemic probabilities of 0.5, isn\u0026#39;t it?\u0026quot; That's an interesting question, I'm inclined to say yes, but one might also say that while this is theoretically true in practice we aren't likely to encounter such a claim very often if ever in real world scenarios.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nBTW, if one argues that the distinction between nonbelief and disbelief collapses (either in general, or just specifically in cases like nonbelief/disbelief in gods), then one cannot consistently argue that there is no burden of proof for atheism because atheism is a mere lack of belief. The burden of proof argument needs a different justification. I suspect that giving a lighter burden of proof to disbelief/nonexistence claims over belief/existence claims in general could lead to some unpalatable consequences (e.g., moral values, other minds, the past, etc.) See: /2010/01/definitions-of-atheism-and-agnosticism.html.\nAnonymous (2013-04-06):\nRight, but if I say \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t believe in X\u0026quot; on most any subject I assume that people understand that this statement is being made in a provisional way. That I reserve the right to change my mind if the evidence changes. If I say \u0026quot;I don't believe in god,\u0026quot; well first off I rarely say that unless it is offered in some sort of reactionary context to someones claim that he exists, and is thus refers to a specific god, but I would go further and say that to say I don't believe in god is not the same as saying I actively believe god does not exist. I'm referring to my lack of belief. I understand that all beliefs, or lack of beliefs are provisional and subject to change.\nPerhaps this is a semantic issue since I don't see the term \u0026quot;disbelief\u0026quot; as the same as claim to believe that there is no god. (strong atheism some would call it) Seganku (2013-04-06):\ndis·be·lief /ˌdisbəˈlēf/ Noun 1. Inability or refusal to accept that something is true or real. 2. Lack of faith in something. Neither definition appears to commit a disbeliever to a position defending the negative.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nDylan: In your first comment, you said, \u0026quot;you are splitting hairs between disbelief and non belief. The two are indistinguishable in practice.\u0026quot; In your most recent comment, you say, \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t see the term \u0026#39;disbelief\u0026#39; as the same as claim to believe that there is no god. (strong atheism some would call it).\u0026quot; Aren't you just reintroducing the distinction you rejected?\nSeganku: You similarly seem to be arguing that \u0026quot;disbelief\u0026quot; is what I've called \u0026quot;nonbelief.\u0026quot; You can certainly use the word that way, but I'm pointing out that people who hold the position that gods don't exist are, indeed, taking a position that the proposition \u0026quot;gods do not exist\u0026quot; is true\u0026ndash;they aren't necessarily claiming that to be knowledge or certainty, but they are claiming at least that it is more likely than not.\nThe argument that they aren't taking a position, that they have no burden of proof, that they don't need evidence to support their views, seems to me a disingenuous evasion.\nMichael C. Rush (2013-04-06):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;We know that there are untestable propositions that are true. Theoretically, I suppose, but it seems to me that while we can acknowledge their existence, we can never know them in practice, can say nothing about their \u0026quot;truth.\u0026quot;\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I think scientific skepticism goes awry by placing too much weight on scientific testability. There are other sources of evidence and reasons\nSuch as?\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nMichael: E.g.,: personal experience (observation and memory), philosophical argumentation, mathematical reasoning, historical investigation, investigative journalism, legal proceedings, etc. We have a huge dependence upon testimonial evidence.\nThese things are not completely independent of scientific investigation, nor are they without testability more generally, but there were ways of obtaining evidence and reasons prior to the development of modern science and they continue to be the way that most of us obtain our evidence and reasons\u0026ndash;even when we're obtaining evidence and reasons about the conclusions of scientific investigations which we haven't performed ourselves. They are also necessary in order for scientists to practice science, since \u0026quot;reading something in a journal\u0026quot; is not putting something to a direct test of scientific methodology.\nMichael C. Rush (2013-04-06):\nSuch methods may function (at times, with a high failure rate), but do they validate? I\u0026#39;m not sure the data they produce rises to the level of \u0026quot;evidence.\u0026quot; Memory is rife with error by its very nature, argument is biased and circular, history is suspect, testimony often merely reports of delusion and misinterpretation. If \u0026quot;truth\u0026quot; is one\u0026#39;s goal, I don\u0026#39;t see how one gets around the essential centrality of testability.\nLippard (2013-04-06):\nI was considering \u0026quot;scientific testability\u0026quot; to be more narrow and specific than \u0026quot;testability\u0026quot; in general. If they don't validate or rise to the level of evidence, then doesn't that entail no knowledge about the past? No knowledge about the guilt or innocence of accused criminals? No knowledge about the results of scientific experiments of the past, known only through written records? No knowledge about the displayed results of measurements on instruments even at the time of an experiment being conducted? No knowledge from historical sciences? That doesn't seem right.\nAnonymous (2013-04-06):\nAh, I see how you must have been confused by what I wrote. I did not mean to imply that there is no distinction between a lack of belief in a god and a belief that god does not exist.\nWhat I meant was that you were splitting hairs over the use of the word \u0026quot;disbelief\u0026quot; and that Matt's use of the word did not indicate a position of \u0026quot;strong atheism\u0026quot;\nI can see now how the way I worded it might have been confusing. On this point I think you would do well to listen to some of Matt's other work because I think it would show that what he was arguing for in this talk was not strong atheism.\nMichael C. Rush (2013-04-06):\nNo, I don\u0026#39;t think it would necessarily entail \u0026quot;no\u0026quot; knowledge about the past, etc., but it would call into question the accuracy and authenticity of all such knowledge. Which I think is legitimate. We \u0026quot;know\u0026quot; a tiny fraction of human \u0026quot;history,\u0026quot; and a great deal of what we believe is false. Society is also demonstrably and notoriously bad at establishing guilt and innocence. So I would say that these examples support rather than question the notion that unprovable forms of data (or \u0026quot;gray data\u0026quot;) do not provide the same caliber of result or \u0026quot;knowledge\u0026quot; as does the scientific method. However, I certainly don't mean to suggest that that makes them useless to human thought and understanding (I'm a poet, for Pete's sake!).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2013/04/matt-dillahunty-and-disbelief-by-default.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/2013/04/american-atheist-con-2013-matt-dillahunty-on-skepticism-and-atheism/\"\u003ehis recent talk at the American Atheist convention on skepticism and atheism\u003c/a\u003e, Matt Dillahunty states (at about five minutes in) that skepticism does tell us what to believe in the case of untestable claims\u0026ndash;that the default position is disbelief.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut no, the default position has to be nonbelief, not disbelief.  To disbelieve in a proposition is to believe in the negation of the proposition, to believe that the original proposition is false.  And Dillahunty already said that (a) we should proportion our belief to the evidence and that (b) the proposition in question is untestable, meaning there is no evidence for or against it.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe position he describes is logically inconsistent.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWe know that there are untestable propositions that are true.  We shouldn\u0026rsquo;t believe that they are false simply because they are untestable. We should only believe they are false if we have good reasons to believe they are false; in the absence of that we should be agnostic.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Added 5:36 p.m.: What are the implications for the above argument if it is the case that untestability does not entail lack of evidence or reasons?  What about if we distinguish evidential from non-evidential reasons?  And if we take the latter course, what does that say about proposition (a), above? Left as an exercise for commenters.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt Dillahunty and disbelief by default"},{"content":" One of the more interesting and better documented cases of surprisingly accurate information from a spirit medium that is described in Deborah Blum's fascinating book, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (2006, Penguin Books), is the case of Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite (pp. 260-262). Funk, of Funk \u0026amp; Wagnall's Dictionary, had been visiting a medium in Brooklyn, New York in February 1903. \u0026nbsp;About his third visit, he subsequently described the following (in Isaac K. Funk, The Widow's Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena (1904, Funk \u0026amp; Wagnalls), pp. 159-160, now in the public domain due to copyright expiration):\nAbout eleven o'clock the control named \"George,\" in his usual strong masculine voice, abruptly asked: \"Has anyone here got anything that belonged to Mr. Beecher?\" There was no reply. On his emphatic repetition of the question, I replied, being the only one present, as I felt sure, who had ever had any immediate acquaintance with Mr. Beecher: \"I have in my pocket a letter from Rev. Dr. Hillis, Mr. Beecher's successor. \u0026nbsp;Is that what you mean?\"\u0026nbsp; The answer was: \"No; I am told by a spirit present, John Rakestraw, that Mr. Beecher, who is not present, is concerned about an ancient coin, 'The Widow's Mite.' This coin is out of its place, and should be returned. It has long been away, and Mr. Beecher wishes it returned, and he looks to you, doctor, to return it.\"\u0026nbsp; I was considerably surprised, and asked: \"What do you mean by saying that he looks to me to return it? I have no coin of Mr. Beecher's!\"\u0026nbsp; \"I don't know anything about it except that I am told that this coin is out of place, and has been for a number of years, and that Mr. Beecher says\u0026nbsp;you can find it and return it.\"\nI remembered then that when we were making \"The Standard Dictionary,\" some nine years before, I had borrowed from a gentleman in Brooklyn--a close friend of Mr. Beecher's, who died several years ago--a valuable ancient coin known as \"The Widow's Mite.\" \u0026nbsp;He told me that this coin was worth hundreds of dollars, and, under promise that I would see that it was returned to the collection where it belonged, he would loan it to me. ...\u0026nbsp; I said to the control, \"The only 'Widow's Mite' that has ever been in my charge was one that I borrowed some years ago from a gentleman in Brooklyn; this I promptly returned\"; to which the control replied:\u0026nbsp; \"This one has not been returned.\" And then, after a moment's silence, he said: \"Do you know whether there is a large iron safe in Plymouth Church?\"\u0026nbsp; I answered: \"I do not.\"\u0026nbsp; He said: \"I am impressed that this coin is in a large iron safe, that it has been lost sight of; it is in a drawer in this safe under a lot of papers, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it.\"\u0026nbsp; I said: \"Do you mean that this safe is in Plymouth Church?\"\u0026nbsp; He said: \"I don't know where it is. I am simply impressed that it is in a large iron safe in a drawer under a lot of papers, and has been lost sight of for years, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it. That is all that I can tell you.\" Funk goes on to inquire of his business manager, who insists that it was returned, and of Mr. Wagnalls and Wheeler, who knew nothing of the coin, but Wheeler, a skeptic, suggests that it's a good test. \u0026nbsp;Funk asks a cashier, who remembers the coin, but also says that it had been returned, to investigate. \u0026nbsp;After twenty minutes, the cashier returns with an envelope containing two \"Widow's Mites,\" which was located in one of two safes (the large iron one), in a drawer under papers.\nThe two coins are a smaller light-colored one and a larger black one, and Funk recalls that the smaller one was used for the illustration in the dictionary and that it was the genuine article, while the other was a fake. \u0026nbsp;He returns to the medium, and asks which coin is the right one. \u0026nbsp;Contrary to his belief, the medium (as \"George\") says that it is the black one, and that the friend of Mr. Beecher's to whom it belongs is a man associated with a large ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights. \u0026nbsp;Funk recalls that it was borrowed from Prof. Charles E. West, head of a ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights.\nFunk sends both coins to the Philadelphia Mint for examination, and they determine that the medium is correct, the black one is the correct one, and the wrong one was used for the illustration in the dictionary.\nFunk notes that the preface of the dictionary notes, regarding the illustrations, contains the description \"The Widow's Mite (which was engraved from an excellent original coin in the possession of Prof. Charles E. West of Brooklyn, N.Y.).\"\nFunk's book provides a number of affidavits supporting the recounting of events, including that only two people present with the medium knew of Funk's connection to the coin (Funk and Irving Roney, the latter of whom provided an affidavit), that no one knew that the coin had not been returned, and that the cashier staff had no knowledge of the coin which was in the safe in their office.\nThe coin was returned to West's son, who also provides an affidavit stating that he was unaware that the coin had not been returned and assumed that it had been. \u0026nbsp;Funk says he dined repeatedly with the elder West prior to his death, and the coin was never brought up.\nFunk proceeds to list a series of facts about the case and some possible explanations (pp. 168ff), and finds difficulties with fraud, coincidence, telepathy and clairvoyance, and spirit communications as explanations, though he appears to favor the last of these.\nFunk presented the case to a number of eminent scientists of the day, including William James, Alfred Russell Wallace, and William Crookes, of which those listed were all associated with the SPR or ASPR and each suggested spirits as a possible explanation. \u0026nbsp;Many of the other scientists and philosophers, however, suggested fraud or deception (see table in Funk's book, pp. 177-178).\nAs presented in Blum's book, this case seems more impressive than it does with all of the details in Funk's account. \u0026nbsp;What I find suspicious are that the medium is located in the same city as the person from whom the coin was borrowed, that the connection between the owner of the coin and the illustration was published in Funk's dictionary (omitted by Blum), and that although the son had forgotten about the coin being loaned out, he thought \"it altogether likely that his father told at the time other members of his family, and possibly some persons outside the family\" (Funk, p. 174). \u0026nbsp;All that it would take for the fraud hypothesis would be that the medium had heard, second-hand, about the never-returned coin, and speculated that it had been forgotten and was kept in a safe (and perhaps offered a guess about which coin was genuine; that information has no clear source from the details recounted). \u0026nbsp;Funk infers that because West never brought up the coin that he had forgotten about it, but that is an assumption on his part--perhaps West made periodic complaints about it not having been returned, but didn't mention it to his son. \u0026nbsp;Funk suggests, based on class distinctions, that no one in the medium circle other than himself would have known that West even existed, which seems a highly questionable assumption.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2013/03/isaac-funk-and-widows-mite.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\nOne of the more interesting and better documented cases of surprisingly accurate information from a spirit medium that is described in Deborah Blum's fascinating book, \u003ci\u003eGhost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death\u003c/i\u003e (2006, Penguin Books), is the case of Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite (pp. 260-262).\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk, of Funk \u0026amp; Wagnall's Dictionary, had been visiting a medium in Brooklyn, New York in February 1903. \u0026nbsp;About his third visit, he subsequently described the following (in \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=DpoFAQAAIAAJ\u0026amp;pg=PA159#v=onepage\u0026amp;q\u0026amp;f=false\"\u003eIsaac K. Funk, \u003ci\u003eThe Widow's Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena\u003c/i\u003e (1904, Funk \u0026amp; Wagnalls), pp. 159-160\u003c/a\u003e, now in the public domain due to copyright expiration):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nAbout eleven o'clock the control named \"George,\" in his usual strong masculine voice, abruptly asked: \"Has anyone here got anything that belonged to Mr. Beecher?\" There was no reply. On his emphatic repetition of the question, I replied, being the only one present, as I felt sure, who had ever had any immediate acquaintance with Mr. Beecher: \"I have in my pocket a letter from Rev. Dr. Hillis, Mr. Beecher's successor. \u0026nbsp;Is that what you mean?\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nThe answer was: \"No; I am told by a spirit present, John Rakestraw, that Mr. Beecher, who is not present, is concerned about an ancient coin, 'The Widow's Mite.' This coin is out of its place, and should be returned. It has long been away, and Mr. Beecher wishes it returned, and he looks to \u003ci\u003eyou\u003c/i\u003e, doctor, to return it.\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI was considerably surprised, and asked: \"What do you mean by saying that he looks to me to return it? I have no coin of Mr. Beecher's!\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\"I don't know anything about it except that I am told that this coin is out of place, and has been for a number of years, and that Mr. Beecher says\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003eyou\u003c/i\u003e can find it and return it.\"\u003cbr /\u003eI remembered then that when we were making \"The Standard Dictionary,\" some nine years before, I had borrowed from a gentleman in Brooklyn--a close friend of Mr. Beecher's, who died several years ago--a valuable ancient coin known as \"The Widow's Mite.\" \u0026nbsp;He told me that this coin was worth hundreds of dollars, and, under promise that I would see that it was returned to the collection where it belonged, he would loan it to me. ...\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI said to the control, \"The only 'Widow's Mite' that has ever been in my charge was one that I borrowed some years ago from a gentleman in Brooklyn; this I promptly returned\"; to which the control replied:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\"This one has \u003ci\u003enot\u003c/i\u003e been returned.\" And then, after a moment's silence, he said: \"Do you know whether there is a large iron safe in Plymouth Church?\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI answered: \"I do not.\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nHe said: \"I am impressed that this coin is in a large iron safe, that it has been lost sight of; it is in a drawer in this safe under a lot of papers, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it.\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI said: \"Do you mean that this safe is in Plymouth Church?\"\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nHe said: \"I don't know where it is. I am simply impressed that it is in a large iron safe in a drawer under a lot of papers, and has been lost sight of for years, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it. That is all that I can tell you.\"\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nFunk goes on to inquire of his business manager, who insists that it was returned, and of Mr. Wagnalls and Wheeler, who knew nothing of the coin, but Wheeler, a skeptic, suggests that it's a good test. \u0026nbsp;Funk asks a cashier, who remembers the coin, but also says that it had been returned, to investigate. \u0026nbsp;After twenty minutes, the cashier returns with an envelope containing two \"Widow's Mites,\" which was located in one of two safes (the large iron one), in a drawer under papers.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe two coins are a smaller light-colored one and a larger black one, and Funk recalls that the smaller one was used for the illustration in the dictionary and that it was the genuine article, while the other was a fake. \u0026nbsp;He returns to the medium, and asks which coin is the right one. \u0026nbsp;Contrary to his belief, the medium (as \"George\") says that it is the black one, and that the friend of Mr. Beecher's to whom it belongs is a man associated with a large ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights. \u0026nbsp;Funk recalls that it was borrowed from Prof. Charles E. West, head of a ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk sends both coins to the Philadelphia Mint for examination, and they determine that the medium is correct, the black one is the correct one, and the wrong one was used for the illustration in the dictionary.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk notes that the preface of the dictionary notes, regarding the illustrations, contains the description \"The Widow's Mite (which was engraved from an excellent original coin in the possession of Prof. Charles E. West of Brooklyn, N.Y.).\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk's book provides a number of affidavits supporting the recounting of events, including that only two people present with the medium knew of Funk's connection to the coin (Funk and Irving Roney, the latter of whom provided an affidavit), that no one knew that the coin had not been returned, and that the cashier staff had no knowledge of the coin which was in the safe in their office.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe coin was returned to West's son, who also provides an affidavit stating that he was unaware that the coin had not been returned and assumed that it had been. \u0026nbsp;Funk says he dined repeatedly with the elder West prior to his death, and the coin was never brought up.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk proceeds to list a series of facts about the case and some possible explanations (pp. 168ff), and finds difficulties with fraud, coincidence, telepathy and clairvoyance, and spirit communications as explanations, though he appears to favor the last of these.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFunk presented the case to a number of eminent scientists of the day, including William James, Alfred Russell Wallace, and William Crookes, of which those listed were all associated with the SPR or ASPR and each suggested spirits as a possible explanation. \u0026nbsp;Many of the other scientists and philosophers, however, suggested fraud or deception (see table in Funk's book, pp. 177-178).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs presented in Blum's book, this case seems more impressive than it does with all of the details in Funk's account. \u0026nbsp;What I find suspicious are that the medium is located in the same city as the person from whom the coin was borrowed, that the connection between the owner of the coin and the illustration was published in Funk's dictionary (omitted by Blum), and that although the son had forgotten about the coin being loaned out, he thought \"it altogether likely that his father told at the time other members of his family, and possibly some persons outside the family\" (Funk, p. 174). \u0026nbsp;All that it would take for the fraud hypothesis would be that the medium had heard, second-hand, about the never-returned coin, and speculated that it had been forgotten and was kept in a safe (and perhaps offered a guess about which coin was genuine; that information has no clear source from the details recounted). \u0026nbsp;Funk infers that because West never brought up the coin that he had forgotten about it, but that is an assumption on his part--perhaps West made periodic complaints about it not having been returned, but didn't mention it to his son. \u0026nbsp;Funk suggests, based on class distinctions, that no one in the medium circle other than himself would have known that West even existed, which seems a highly questionable assumption.","title":"Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite"},{"content":"My talk from January 19, 2013 to the National Capitol Area Skeptics is now online!\nThanks very much to the NCAS for professionally recording and editing this video.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve included some notes and comments below. 0:50 \u0026amp; 42:29 \"Advanced Teachings\" available at all Advanced Orgs are up to OT V. Advanced Orgs can deliver through OT V; OT VI \u0026amp; VII can only be obtained at the Flag Service Organization (FSO) in Clearwater, FL, and OT VIII can only be obtained on Scientology's cruise ship, the Freewinds. See: http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/ 8:01 German U-boat -- I should have said Japanese submarine 9:14 Photo is often claimed to be from 1968 but is really from 1959-60, so Cleve Backster probably wasn't the source of Hubbard's claim, as I originally said in the talk (also see my previous blog post on this topic). 10:53 Aleister Crowley is pronounced \"crow-lee,\" not \"craugh-lee\" (I have apparently have not broken a bad habit of following Ozzy Osbourne's pronunciation). 13:59 the Fraser Mansion, though referred to by Scientology as the \"founding church\" from the 1970s to 2010, wasn't the original building. The original building, at 1812 19th St. NW, is now a museum called the L. Ron Hubbard House (though his house was across the street), which the church acquired in 2004. The Fraser Mansion is now Scientology's National Affairs Office. 14:11 The first use of the name \"Church of Scientology\" was by the Church of Scientology founded in Camden, N.J. in Dec. 1953; the first Church of Scientology corporation was in Los Angeles (Feb. 1954, which became the Church of Scientology of California in 1956), the Church of Scientology of Arizona was incorporated that same year. Hubbard's organization while he lived in Phoenix was the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International (HASI), founded in Sep. 1952. All HASI assets were folded into the Church of Scientology of California in 1966. 31:07 \"Division 20\" should have been \"Department 20.\" 32:43 \"bad status\" -- Scientology \"conditions\" are a scale, like the tone scale, that your \"ethics\" are in, which are positive or negative. For each condition there is a \"conditions formula\" you are supposed to apply to get to the next better condition. Those assigned to the RPF are put in a condition of \"liability\" (the rag on arm mentioned is a sign of the condition of liability). See: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-11.html 41:07 PIs following the Broekers--mainly Pat Broeker; after one apparent attempt to leave (described in Lawrence Wright's book, Going Clear), Annie Broeker remained in Scientology until her death. Tony Ortega describes the testimony of the two PIs, who spoke out for one day before their lawsuit with Scientology was settled: http://tonyortega.org/2012/11/29/scientologys-master-spies/ 43:22 Lawrence Wright's book says that \"Int Base\" and \"Gold Base\" are two different bases at the same location; \"Int\" being the international headquarters and \"Gold\" named after Golden Era Studios. 1:05:35 \"dog was drowned\" -- Judge Swearinger's dog, Duke, a miniature collie, drowned, it's not certain that it \"was drowned.\" 1:07:10 \"unable to attend uncle's funeral\" -- Hubbard died on January 24, 1986; the Challenger explosion was January 28, 1986. 1:17:43 St. Louis Ideal Org. \u0026nbsp;The pictured Masonic Temple is not the St. Louis Ideal Org, which is still under construction. (Thanks to ThetanBait on YouTube for this correction.) Narconon's drug purification program involves vitamin (esp. niacin) megadoses, but \"injections\" is not correct. Historical Comments Alan (2013-03-10):\nSaw your last presentation in town, and was great seeing it again with the updates. I think you got better questions this time, too. Thanks for posting this. \u0026ndash; Alan\nnolandda (2013-03-11):\nExcellent history and projections. Thanks Jim.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2013/03/the-decline-and-probable-fall-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy talk from January 19, 2013 to the National Capitol Area Skeptics is now online!\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThanks very much to the NCAS for professionally recording and editing this video.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ve included some notes and comments below. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ciframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/alLZWxkDf30\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e0:50 \u0026amp; 42:29 \"Advanced Teachings\" available at all Advanced Orgs are\n      up to OT V.\n  Advanced Orgs can deliver through OT V; OT VI \u0026amp; VII can only be obtained at the Flag Service Organization\n        (FSO) in Clearwater, FL, and OT VIII can only be obtained on Scientology's cruise ship, the\n        Freewinds.  See: \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/\"\u003ehttp://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e8:01 German U-boat -- I should have said Japanese submarine\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e9:14 Photo is often claimed to be from 1968 but is really from 1959-60,\n   so Cleve Backster probably wasn't the source of Hubbard's claim, as\n   I originally said in the talk (also see \u003ca href=\"/2011/09/origins-of-screaming-trees.html\"\u003emy previous blog post on this topic\u003c/a\u003e).\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e10:53 Aleister Crowley is pronounced \"crow-lee,\" not \"craugh-lee\"\n  (I have apparently have not broken a bad habit of following\n   Ozzy Osbourne's pronunciation).\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e13:59 the Fraser Mansion, though referred to by Scientology as the\n  \"founding church\" from the 1970s to 2010, wasn't the original\n  building. The original building, at 1812 19th St. NW, is now a museum\n  called the L. Ron Hubbard House (though his house was across the\n  street), which the church acquired in 2004. The Fraser Mansion is\n  now Scientology's National Affairs Office.\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e14:11 The first use of the name \"Church of Scientology\" was by the\n  Church of Scientology founded in Camden, N.J. in Dec. 1953; the\n  first Church of Scientology corporation was in Los Angeles (Feb. 1954,\n  which became the Church of Scientology of California in 1956), the\n  Church of Scientology of Arizona was incorporated that same year.\n  Hubbard's organization while he lived in Phoenix was the Hubbard\n  Association of Scientologists, International (HASI), founded in\n  Sep. 1952.  All HASI assets were folded into the Church of Scientology\n  of California in 1966.\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e31:07 \"Division 20\" should have been \"Department 20.\"\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e32:43 \"bad status\" -- Scientology \"conditions\" are a scale, like the tone scale, that your \"ethics\"\n        are in, which are positive or negative. For each condition there is a \"conditions formula\" you\n        are supposed to apply to get to the next better condition.  Those assigned to the RPF are put\n        in a condition of \"liability\" (the rag on arm mentioned is a sign of the condition of liability).\n        See: \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-11.html\"\u003ehttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-11.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e41:07 PIs following the Broekers--mainly Pat Broeker; after one apparent attempt to leave (described\n        in Lawrence Wright's book, \u003ci\u003eGoing Clear\u003c/i\u003e), Annie Broeker remained in Scientology until her death.\n        Tony Ortega describes the testimony of the two PIs, who spoke out for one day before their\n        lawsuit with Scientology was settled: \u003ca href=\"http://tonyortega.org/2012/11/29/scientologys-master-spies/\"\u003e http://tonyortega.org/2012/11/29/scientologys-master-spies/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e43:22 Lawrence Wright's book says that \"Int Base\" and \"Gold Base\" are two different bases at the same\n        location; \"Int\" being the international headquarters and \"Gold\" named after Golden Era Studios.\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1:05:35 \"dog was drowned\" -- Judge Swearinger's dog, Duke, a miniature collie, drowned, it's not certain that it \"was drowned.\"\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1:07:10 \"unable to attend uncle's funeral\" -- Hubbard died on January 24, 1986;\nthe Challenger explosion was January 28, 1986.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1:17:43 St. Louis Ideal Org. \u0026nbsp;The pictured Masonic Temple is not the St. Louis Ideal Org, which is still under construction. (Thanks to ThetanBait on YouTube for this correction.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNarconon's drug purification program involves vitamin (esp. niacin) megadoses, but \"injections\" is not correct.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAlan\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2013-03-10)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSaw your last presentation in town, and was great seeing it again with the updates.  I think you got better questions this time, too. Thanks for posting this.\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ndash; Alan\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Decline (and Probable Fall) of the Scientology Empire"},{"content":"\nBooks read in 2012: Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet Henry A. Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service Robin Dreeke, It's Not All About \"Me\": The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth Misha Glenny, DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia Grant Foster, Noise: Lies, Damned Lies, and Denial of Global Warming Torkel Franzén, Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse Andy Greenberg, This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information James Hannam, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science Sam Harris, Lying Joseph Heath, Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism Edward Humes: Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul Ronald Kessler, The Secrets of the FBI Susan Landau, Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies Declan McHugh, Bloody London: A Shocking Guide to London's Gruesome Past and Present Robert A. Melikian, Vanishing Phoenix Mike McRae, Tribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas P.T. Mistlberger, The Three Dangerous Magi: Osho, Gurdjieff, Crowley Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom Eduardo Obregón Pagán, Historic Photos of Phoenix Parmy Olson, We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive Ali H. Soufan, with Daniel Freedman, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda Neal Stephenson,\u0026nbsp;REAMDE Cole Stryker, Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web Tim Weiner: Enemies: A History of the FBI Jon Winokur (compiler \u0026amp; editor), The Big Curmudgeon Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires I made substantial progress on a few large books:\nRoss Anderson, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd ed) Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications (Previously: 2011,\u0026nbsp;2010,\u0026nbsp;2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Misanthrope (2013-01-02):\nTop 3?\nLippard (2013-01-02):\nI\u0026#39;m not sure I can narrow it to three. Schneier, Weiner, Wu, Morozov, and Edmonds/Eidinow are probably the top five. Soufan, Olson, Greenberg, Hannam, and Heath probably round out the top ten. Atran would be higher if he had a better editor.\nHume's Ghost (2013-01-02):\nI\u0026#39;ve got Monkey Girl on my Kindle but haven\u0026#39;t gotten around to it yet ... I might have to move it up in the queue though. Want to read Enemies but haven\u0026#39;t even started my copy of Legacy of Ashes. I will second Edmonds/Eidinow. I'm partial to Rousseau's Dog for obvious reasons, but Wittgenstein's Poker is also excellent (and probably a better book, overall)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html/","summary":"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;\"\u003e\nBooks read in 2012:\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eScott Atran, \u003ci\u003eIn Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndrew Blum, \u003ci\u003eTubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHenry A. Crumpton, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobin Dreeke, \u003ci\u003eIt's Not All About \"Me\": The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Edmonds and John Eidinow, \u003ci\u003eRousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBart D. Ehrman, \u003ci\u003eDid Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMisha Glenny, \u003ci\u003eDarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGrant Foster, \u003ci\u003eNoise: Lies, Damned Lies, and Denial of Global Warming\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTorkel Franzén, \u003ci\u003eGödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndy Greenberg, \u003ci\u003eThis Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Hannam, \u003ci\u003eGod's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSam Harris, \u003ci\u003eLying\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoseph Heath, \u003ci\u003eEconomics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEdward Humes: \u003ci\u003eMonkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonald Kessler, \u003ci\u003eThe Secrets of the FBI\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSusan Landau, \u003ci\u003eSurveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeclan McHugh, \u003ci\u003eBloody London: A Shocking Guide to London's Gruesome Past and Present\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert A. Melikian, \u003ci\u003eVanishing Phoenix\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMike McRae, \u003ci\u003eTribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eP.T. Mistlberger, \u003ci\u003eThe Three Dangerous Magi: Osho, Gurdjieff, Crowley\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEvgeny Morozov, \u003ci\u003eThe Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEduardo Obregón Pagán, \u003ci\u003eHistoric Photos of Phoenix\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eParmy Olson, \u003ci\u003eWe Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBruce Schneier, \u003ci\u003eLiars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAli H. Soufan, with Daniel Freedman, \u003ci\u003eThe Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: normal;\"\u003eNeal Stephenson,\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eREAMDE\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCole Stryker, \u003ci\u003eEpic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTim Weiner: \u003ci\u003eEnemies: A History of the FBI \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Winokur (compiler \u0026amp; editor), \u003ci\u003eThe Big Curmudgeon\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTim Wu, \u003ci\u003eThe Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;\"\u003e\nI made substantial progress on a few large books:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRoss Anderson, \u003ci\u003eSecurity Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems\u003c/i\u003e (2nd ed)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStephen Pinker, \u003ci\u003eThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames C. Scott, \u003ci\u003eSeeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski, \u003ci\u003eThe Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html\"\u003e2011\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMisanthrope\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2013-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eTop 3?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books read in 2012"},{"content":"While reading Ross Anderson\u0026rsquo;s massive tome, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Systems (second edition), I came across this paragraph in section 19.7 on \u0026ldquo;Directed Energy Weapons\u0026rdquo; (p. 584):\nWestern concern about EMP grew after the Soviet Union started a research program on non-nuclear EMP weapons in the mid-80s. \u0026nbsp;At the time, the United States was deploying 'neutron bombs' in Europe--enhanced radiation weapons that could kill people without demolishing buildings. \u0026nbsp;The Soviets portrayed this as a 'capitalist bomb' which would destroy people while leaving property intact, and responded by threatening a 'socialist bomb' to destroy property (in the form of electronics) while leaving the surrounding people intact. This reminded me of a science fiction story I read in Omni magazine at about the time in question, which Google reveals was \"Returning Home\" by Ian Watson in the December 1982 issue. \u0026nbsp;In the story, the Americans and the Soviets attacked each other, the Americans using neutron bombs which killed all of the Soviets, and the Soviets using some kind of bomb which destroyed essentially everything except the people. \u0026nbsp;The ending twist was that the surviving Americans ended up migrating to the Soviet Union and adopting the Soviet culture. Historical Comments wakawakwaka (2012-11-20):\nhey my skeptic friend can you take a look at the book written by johanna michaelsen who wrote the foreword to lauren stradford\u0026#39;s satan underground? its really messed up...is their a way to investigate what really happened with her ?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/09/capitalist-vs-socialist-bombs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile reading Ross Anderson\u0026rsquo;s massive tome, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Security-Engineering-Building-Dependable-Distributed/dp/0470068523/thelipblo-20\"\u003eSecurity Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Systems\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (second edition), I came across this paragraph in section 19.7 on \u0026ldquo;Directed Energy Weapons\u0026rdquo; (p. 584):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\nWestern concern about EMP grew after the Soviet Union started a research program on non-nuclear EMP weapons in the mid-80s. \u0026nbsp;At the time, the United States was deploying 'neutron bombs' in Europe--enhanced radiation weapons that could kill people without demolishing buildings. \u0026nbsp;The Soviets portrayed this as a 'capitalist bomb' which would destroy people while leaving property intact, and responded by threatening a 'socialist bomb' to destroy property (in the form of electronics) while leaving the surrounding people intact.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThis reminded me of a science fiction story I read in \u003ci\u003eOmni\u003c/i\u003e magazine at about the time in question, which Google \u003ca href=\"http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/nuclear/w.htm\"\u003ereveals\u003c/a\u003e was \"Returning Home\" by Ian Watson in the December 1982 issue. \u0026nbsp;In the story, the Americans and the Soviets attacked each other, the Americans using neutron bombs which killed all of the Soviets, and the Soviets using some kind of bomb which destroyed essentially everything except the people. \u0026nbsp;The ending twist was that the surviving Americans ended up migrating to the Soviet Union and adopting the Soviet culture.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ewakawakwaka\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2012-11-20)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ehey my skeptic friend can you take a look at the book written by johanna michaelsen who wrote the foreword to lauren stradford\u0026#39;s satan underground? its really messed up...is their a way to investigate what really happened with her ?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Capitalist vs. socialist bombs"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading Ross Anderson\u0026rsquo;s epic tome, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd edition, 2008, Wiley), and have just gotten into the chapter on biometrics (ch. 15). Section 15.5.2, on Crime Scene Forensics, points out three major criminal cases where fingerprint matches have been in error, including the Brandon Mayfield case which I wrote about at this blog back in 2007. Anderson points out that law enforcement agencies have claimed to juries \u0026ldquo;that forensic results are error-free when FBI proficiency exams have long had an error rate of about one percent, and misleading contextual information can push this up to ten percent or more\u0026rdquo; (pp. 470-471). It\u0026rsquo;s probability at work:\nEven if the probability of a false match on sixteen points [the UK standard, the U.S. has no minimum] were one in ten billion (10-10) as claimed by police optimists, once many prints are compared against each other, probability theory starts to bite. A system that worked fine in the old days as a crime scene print would be compared manually with the records of a hundred and fifty-seven known local burglars, breaks down once thousands of prints are compared every year with an online database of millions. (p. 471) One of the other two cases Anderson discusses is that of Scottish policewoman Shirley McKie, who was prosecuted on the basis of a 16-point fingerprint match found at a murder scene and could not find any fingerprint examiner in Britain to defend her. \u0026nbsp;She found two Americans who testified on her behalf that it was not a match (Anderson shows the crime scene print and her inked print on p. 469; the crime scene print is heavily smudged). \u0026nbsp;McKie's own fellow officers tried to convince her to give false testimony about her presence at the crime scene, which she refused to do. \u0026nbsp;She was acquitted, but lost her job and was unable to get reinstated.\nThe third case Anderson mentions is Stephan Cowans, who was convicted of shooting a police officer after a robbery in 1997. \u0026nbsp;He was convicted, but argued it was not his fingerprint. \u0026nbsp;After Cowans was able to get crime scene evidence tested for DNA which was found not to match, a re-examination of the fingerprint also found that there was no match. \u0026nbsp;So six years after his conviction, he was acquitted on appeal.\nFurther evidence of the errors which can arise from fingerprint examination comes from two studies by psychologist Itiel Dror which Anderson describes. \u0026nbsp;In one study, five fingerprint examiners were each shown a pair of prints, allegedly the falsely matched prints from the Mayfield case, and asked to point out the errors. \u0026nbsp;Three examiners gave explanations for the non-matches, one said that they did, in fact, match, and one was uncertain. \u0026nbsp;In fact, the pairs of prints were each purported matches by the corresponding examiner from a recent criminal case, so only one of the five was still certain that a match testified to in court was in fact a match upon re-examination with a skeptical mindset. \u0026nbsp;In a second study, Dror gave each of six experts eight prints that they had matched in previous cases, and four of the six gave inconsistent results.\nAnderson points out that belief in the infallibility of fingerprint evidence has the effect of promoting carelessness by examiners, not giving proper critical scrutiny to the method or its assumptions in changing conditions (e.g., the increase in the number of fingerprints to match against in the age of the computer), and increasing the negative consequences of cases of failure. \u0026nbsp;In the McKie case, Anderson points out, \"there appears to have arisen a hierarchical risk-averse culture in which no one wanted to rock the boat, so examiners were predisposed to confirm identifications made by colleagues (especially senior colleagues). \u0026nbsp;This risk aversion backfired when four of them were tried for perjury.\" (p. 472)\nItiel Dror's two papers (references from Anderson, p. 923):\nIE Dror, D Charlton, AE Péron, \"Contextual information renders experts vulnerable to making erroneous identifications,\" in Forensic Science International 156 (2006) 74-78\nIE Dror, D Charlton, \"Why Experts Make Errors,\" in Journal of Forensic Identification v 56 no 4 (2006) pp 600-616; at http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/id/biometrics.html\n(Previously, which includes reference to Simon Cole's book on fingerprint evidence which shares the title of this post.) ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/08/the-myth-of-fingerprints.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading Ross Anderson\u0026rsquo;s epic tome, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Security-Engineering-Building-Dependable-Distributed/dp/0470068523/thelipblo-20\"\u003eSecurity Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (2nd edition, 2008, Wiley), and have just gotten into the chapter on biometrics (ch. 15).  Section 15.5.2, on Crime Scene Forensics, points out three major criminal cases where fingerprint matches have been in error, including \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/fingerprint-matching-pseudoscience.html\"\u003ethe Brandon Mayfield case which I wrote about at this blog back in 2007\u003c/a\u003e.  Anderson points out that law enforcement agencies have claimed to juries \u0026ldquo;that forensic results are error-free when FBI proficiency exams have long had an error rate of about one percent, and misleading contextual information can push this up to ten percent or more\u0026rdquo; (pp. 470-471).  It\u0026rsquo;s probability at work:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The myth of fingerprints"},{"content":"Now on YouTube, \u0026ldquo;In God We Teach,\u0026quot; a documentary about Matt LaClair\u0026rsquo;s exposure of his U.S. History teacher\u0026rsquo;s proselytization in the public school classroom.\nHistorical Comments Alan (2012-05-31):\nVery well done documentary. Well worth the time to watch. Thanks for the link. \u0026ndash; Alan\nEd Darrell (2013-01-30):\nAmazing to me that in 2011 that was still a controversy: http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/fisking-paszkiewicz-or-virtual-carnage-in-kearny-nj/#more-447\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/05/in-god-we-teach-documentary.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow on YouTube, \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6B4gpgyRI\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;In God We Teach,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a documentary about Matt LaClair\u0026rsquo;s exposure of his U.S. History teacher\u0026rsquo;s proselytization in the public school classroom.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAlan\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2012-05-31)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eVery well done documentary.  Well worth the time to watch. Thanks for the link.\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ndash; Alan\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEd Darrell\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2013-01-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAmazing to me that in 2011 that was still a controversy:\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/fisking-paszkiewicz-or-virtual-carnage-in-kearny-nj/#more-447\"\u003ehttp://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/fisking-paszkiewicz-or-virtual-carnage-in-kearny-nj/#more-447\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"In God We Teach\" documentary"},{"content":"Documents leaked from the Heartland Institute reveal its funding sources (including Charles G. Koch and an unnamed single donor providing about 20% of their total revenue) and recipients of funding (including $5,000/mo to Fred Singer and a plan to raise $90,000 for blogger Anthony Watts in 2012).\nThe Heartland Institute is essentially the Tobacco Institute for climate change denial. See previous posts as this blog with the Heartland Institute tag.\nUPDATE (February 18, 2012): It appears that one of the documents, the one with the most embarrassing statements, was a forgery\u0026ndash;but the statements I\u0026rsquo;ve made above all appear to be confirmed.\nUPDATE (February 21, 2012): Climate scientist Peter Gleick has confessed to being the leaker of the documents, but claims the apparently forged document was mailed to him anonymously and he scanned it in before distributing it with the others which he obtained by subterfuge after receiving the anonymous mailing. The oddities and errors in the forged document, however, strongly suggest Gleick himself forged the document after receiving the others.\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2012-02-19):\nThe blogger makes a good case for the memo being a forgery. But why forge a memo that contains real information? I don\u0026#39;t get it. That sullies the whole release, by providing Heartland with a legitimate talking point. By the way, you should see all the hand-wringing taking place on Skeptical Science over whether or not it\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;ethical\u0026quot; to post leaked documents.\nW_Chow (2012-02-25):\nJim: I don't think the memo was forged by Gleick based on quantitative textual analysis (and Michael Tobis's first comment in Otto's blog is very apropos), as well as by evaluating the memo's content line-by-line with the other leaked documents.\nBut all this speculation on the memo's origin and authorship really is separate to the central issue \u0026ndash; i.e. the other documents, which appear to be genuinely legitimate and authored/emailed by Bast himself. Even without the memo, their content is pretty damning, and Ed Markey has requested for the originals \u0026ndash; lets see how Heartland (and Bast, whom I think is in deep, deep trouble over this leak) \u0026ndash; responds.\nIf anything, I'm saddened somewhat to see how ASU comes off looking pretty poorly from the Heartland budget documents. I'm still amazed that (1) Balling gets $12K a year to write a single chapter in a contrarian document with little actual science, and (2) Craig Idso gets a six-figure annual salary to edit the NIPCC document. It doesn't really show the university's climate bona fides in a good light, does it?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/02/document-leak-from-heartland-institute.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposed-internal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine\"\u003eDocuments leaked from the Heartland Institute reveal its funding sources\u003c/a\u003e (including Charles G. Koch and an unnamed single donor providing about 20% of their total revenue) and recipients of funding (including $5,000/mo to Fred Singer and a plan to raise $90,000 for blogger Anthony Watts in 2012).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Heartland Institute is essentially the Tobacco Institute for climate change denial.  See previous posts as this blog with the \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Heartland%20Institute\"\u003eHeartland Institute\u003c/a\u003e tag.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (February 18, 2012): It appears that \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/\"\u003eone of the documents, the one with the most embarrassing statements, was a forgery\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;but the statements I\u0026rsquo;ve made above all appear to be confirmed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (February 21, 2012): Climate scientist Peter Gleick \u003ca href=\"http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/\"\u003ehas confessed to being the leaker of the documents\u003c/a\u003e, but claims the apparently forged document was mailed to him anonymously and he scanned it in before distributing it with the others which he obtained by subterfuge after receiving the anonymous mailing.  The oddities and errors in the forged document, however, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/\"\u003estrongly suggest Gleick himself forged the document after receiving the others\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Document leak from the Heartland Institute"},{"content":"I was asked earlier today if I could give my opinion on whether the work-from-home opportunity advertised at the domain onlineprofitmasterssystem.com is a scam. A quick bit of research produced some interesting results, my conclusion is that it is almost definitely a scam, by people with a history of promoting scams.\nFirst, the domain registration:\nRegistrant:\nPhillip Gannuscia\n1780 W. 9000 South\n#315\nWest Jordan, Utah 84088\nUnited States\nRegistered through: Go Daddy\nDomain Name: ONLINEPROFITMASTERSSYSTEM.COM\nCreated on: 04-Nov-11\nExpires on: 04-Nov-12\nLast Updated on: 29-Nov-11\nAdministrative Contact:\nGannuscia, Phillip nate@essentmedia.com\n1780 W. 9000 South\n#315\nWest Jordan, Utah 84088\nUnited States\n(801) 803-5769 Fax \u0026ndash;\nThe very domain and URL and web content of the page are already screaming red flags, and there are more to be found in the above data. It\u0026rsquo;s a recently registered domain, and the contact physical address appears to be a private mail drop service. Both the address and telephone number listed are associated with multiple other companies (e.g., BBB F-rated eVenture International, run by Richard Scott Nemrow, who was cited multiple times by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection in 2009) and domain names (e.g., makerichesfromhome.com, educationtrainingsonline.com, executivelearningonline.com, learningresourceontheweb.com, and lightlifemaster.com) which also look like scams,. This particular company, Online Profit Masters, has an F rating from the BBB. The named contact, Phillip Gannuscia, has an email address with someone else\u0026rsquo;s name, nate@essentmedia.com, apparently Essent VP Nathan L. Kozlowski, a former Mormon missionary. Does Gannuscia even exist, or is the name just an alias for Kozlowski? The company whose domain is used here for the contact email address, Essent Media LLC, another Richard Scott Nemrow company, has a corporate registration which expired in 2010.\nI\u0026rsquo;d steer clear of any business with these guys. And if you come across this blog post because you\u0026rsquo;ve already been ripped off by them (like this guy reports), I suggest you file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center as well as contacting your local law enforcement agency.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/02/work-from-home-scams.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was asked earlier today if I could give my opinion on whether the work-from-home opportunity advertised \u003ca href=\"http://onlineprofitmasterssystem.com/offer97/congratulations.aspx\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eat the domain onlineprofitmasterssystem.com\u003c/a\u003e is a scam.  A quick bit of research produced some interesting results, my conclusion is that it is almost definitely a scam, by people with a history of promoting scams.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFirst, the domain registration:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRegistrant:\u003cbr /\u003e\n   Phillip Gannuscia\u003cbr /\u003e\n   1780 W. 9000 South\u003cbr /\u003e\n   #315\u003cbr /\u003e\n   West Jordan, Utah 84088\u003cbr /\u003e\n   United States\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n   Registered through: Go Daddy\u003cbr /\u003e\n   Domain Name: ONLINEPROFITMASTERSSYSTEM.COM\u003cbr /\u003e\n      Created on: 04-Nov-11\u003cbr /\u003e\n      Expires on: 04-Nov-12\u003cbr /\u003e\n      Last Updated on: 29-Nov-11\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n   Administrative Contact:\u003cbr /\u003e\n      Gannuscia, Phillip  nate@essentmedia.com\u003cbr /\u003e\n      1780 W. 9000 South\u003cbr /\u003e\n      #315\u003cbr /\u003e\n      West Jordan, Utah 84088\u003cbr /\u003e\n      United States\u003cbr /\u003e\n      (801) 803-5769      Fax \u0026ndash;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe very domain and URL and web content of the page are already screaming red flags, and there are more to be found in the above data.  It\u0026rsquo;s a recently registered domain, and the contact physical address appears to be a private mail drop service.  Both the address and telephone number listed are associated with multiple other companies (e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/training-program-companies/eventure-international-in-west-jordan-ut-22246814\"\u003eBBB F-rated eVenture International\u003c/a\u003e, run by \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/internet-marketers/epromo-solutions-in-provo-ut-22021195\"\u003eRichard Scott Nemrow, who was cited multiple times by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection in 2009\u003c/a\u003e) and domain names (e.g., makerichesfromhome.com, educationtrainingsonline.com, executivelearningonline.com, learningresourceontheweb.com, and lightlifemaster.com) which also look like scams,.  This particular company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/work-at-home-companies/online-profit-masters-in-west-jordan-ut-22311483\"\u003eOnline Profit Masters, has an F rating from the BBB\u003c/a\u003e.  The named contact, Phillip Gannuscia, has an email address with someone else\u0026rsquo;s name, \u003ca href=\"mailto:nate@essentmedia.com\"\u003enate@essentmedia.com\u003c/a\u003e, apparently \u003ca href=\"http://www.linkedin.com/in/natekoz\"\u003eEssent VP Nathan L. Kozlowski\u003c/a\u003e, a \u003ca href=\"http://www.heraldextra.com/lifestyles/article_1d8818fb-5d43-51be-9ef7-626a22293a1b.html\"\u003eformer Mormon missionary\u003c/a\u003e.  Does Gannuscia even exist, or is the name just an alias for Kozlowski?  The company whose domain is used here for the contact email address, Essent Media LLC, another Richard Scott Nemrow company, has \u003ca href=\"https://secure.utah.gov/bes/action/details?entity=7671830-0111\"\u003ea corporate registration which expired in 2010\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;d steer clear of any business with these guys.  And if you come across this blog post because you\u0026rsquo;ve already been ripped off by them (like \u003ca href=\"http://www.ripoffreport.com/business-consultants/ds-development/ds-development-guy-gritton-dbe8a.htm\"\u003ethis guy reports\u003c/a\u003e), I suggest you file a complaint with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx\"\u003eInternet Crime Complaint Center\u003c/a\u003e as well as contacting your local law enforcement agency.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Work-at-home scams"},{"content":" I recently had a few opportunities on a plane to catch up on some reading and podcasts. \u0026nbsp;A few of the more interesting things I came across:\nA bunch of interesting articles in The Economist for the past few weeks:\nJanuary 28-February 3, 2012:\n\"Saving Lives: Scattered Saviors\" -- harnessing social media and mobile devices to deploy first aid faster than an ambulance can arrive (United Hatzalah in Israel believes it will be able to have first responders on the scene within 90 seconds).\n\"China's new tribes: Ant tribes and mortgage slaves\" -- a new vocabulary in Mandarin describing emerging social groups in China. \u0026nbsp;(Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe.)\n\"Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock\" -- the rise in affinity fraud, especially religious affinity fraud, during the economic downturn, and why it works so effectively. \u0026nbsp;(Also see my\u0026nbsp;blog post from 2008\u0026nbsp;and another on the same topic from the Secular Outpost in 2006.) \u0026nbsp;Briefly mentioned is the Baptist Foundation of Arizona affinity fraud, which victimized my step-grandfather by stealing most of his retirement savings.\n\"Visible-light communication: Tripping the light fantastic\" -- an update on where we stand with Li-Fi (using LED lighting as a mechanism for data transmission).\nFebruary 4-10, 2012:\n\"Synaesthesia: Smells like Beethoven\" -- A new study finds correlations between odors and sounds, even among people who are not synaesthetes.\n\"Scientific publishing: The price of information\" -- On the boycott of Elsevier by scientists tired of excessive charges for journals, and the competition from arXiv and PLoS.\n\"Biomimetics: Not a scratch\" -- lessons from the microstructure of scorpion armor for reducing wear rates on aircraft engines and helicopter rotors.\nPodcasts:\nPhilosophy Bites interview with Alain de Botton on Atheism 2.0: de Botton, author of Religion for Atheists, argues that there are good and useful components of religion which can be secularized, and that it is as legitimate to borrow things we like from religion while discarding what we don't as it is to prefer different kinds of art and music. \u0026nbsp;(Also see\u0026nbsp;the Token Skeptic interview with de Botton and watch his TED talk.) \u0026nbsp;I think his picture of religion, like that of Scott Atran (In Gods We Trust) and Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained) makes more sense than the way some atheists talk about it as though fundamentalist religion is the essence of religion, and should be discarded completely (which doesn't seem likely to happen as long as we live in social communities).\nRationally Speaking interview with Joseph Heath: Heath, author of Economics without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism (Canadian title: Filthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism, which the publishers decided wouldn't sell in the U.S.), talks about misunderstandings of economics on both the right and the left. \u0026nbsp;(Also see this BloggingHeads TV interview of Heath by Will Wilkinson, who writes: \"The section on right-wing fallacies is largely on the money and a great challenge for rote libertarians and conservatives. The section of left-wing fallacies is terrific, and it would be terrific if more folks on the left were anywhere near as economically literate as Heath.\") \u0026nbsp;Heath's \"Rationally Speaking pick\" also sounds fascinating, Janos Kornai's The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism, which explains the creative but ultimately futile ways that human beings tried to replace markets with planning and design.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/02/miscellanea.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120204_STP002_0.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"180\" src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120204_STP002_0.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\nI recently had a few opportunities on a plane to catch up on some reading and podcasts. \u0026nbsp;A few of the more interesting things I came across:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA bunch of interesting articles in \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e for the past few weeks:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 28-February 3, 2012:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21543488\"\u003e\"Saving Lives: Scattered Saviors\"\u003c/a\u003e -- harnessing social media and mobile devices to deploy first aid faster than an ambulance can arrive (United Hatzalah in Israel believes it will be able to have first responders on the scene within 90 seconds).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21543590\"\u003e\"China's new tribes: Ant tribes and mortgage slaves\"\u003c/a\u003e -- a new vocabulary in Mandarin describing emerging social groups in China. \u0026nbsp;(Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://craphound.com/est/\"\u003eEastern Standard Tribe\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21543526\"\u003e\"Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock\"\u003c/a\u003e -- the rise in affinity fraud, especially religious affinity fraud, during the economic downturn, and why it works so effectively. \u0026nbsp;(Also see my\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/phony-financial-planner-defrauds.html\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;blog post from 2008\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;and \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2006/08/religious-fraud-increasing.html\"\u003eanother on the same topic from the Secular Outpost in 2006\u003c/a\u003e.) \u0026nbsp;Briefly mentioned is the Baptist Foundation of Arizona affinity fraud, which victimized my step-grandfather by stealing most of his retirement savings.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21543470\"\u003e\"Visible-light communication: Tripping the light fantastic\"\u003c/a\u003e -- an update on where we stand with Li-Fi (using LED lighting as a mechanism for data transmission).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFebruary 4-10, 2012:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21545975\"\u003e\"Synaesthesia: Smells like Beethoven\"\u003c/a\u003e -- A new study finds correlations between odors and sounds, even among people who are not synaesthetes.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21545974\"\u003e\"Scientific publishing: The price of information\"\u003c/a\u003e -- On the boycott of Elsevier by scientists tired of excessive charges for journals, and the competition from arXiv and PLoS.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21545971\"\u003e\"Biomimetics: Not a scratch\"\u003c/a\u003e -- lessons from the microstructure of scorpion armor for reducing wear rates on aircraft engines and helicopter rotors.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPodcasts:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://philosophybites.com/2012/01/alain-de-botton-on-atheism-20-1.html\"\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhilosophy Bites\u003c/i\u003e interview with Alain de Botton on Atheism 2.0\u003c/a\u003e: de Botton, author of \u003ci\u003eReligion for Atheists\u003c/i\u003e, argues that there are good and useful components of religion which can be secularized, and that it is as legitimate to borrow things we like from religion while discarding what we don't as it is to prefer different kinds of art and music. \u0026nbsp;(Also see\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/01/31/token-skeptic-interview-with-alain-de-botton-on-religion-for-atheists/\"\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eToken Skeptic\u003c/i\u003e interview with de Botton\u003c/a\u003e and watch \u003ca href=\"http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/17/atheism-2-0-alain-de-botton-on-ted-com/\"\u003ehis TED talk\u003c/a\u003e.) \u0026nbsp;I think his picture of religion, like that of Scott Atran (\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trust-Evolutionary-Landscape-Evolution/dp/0195178033/\"\u003eIn Gods We Trust\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e) and Pascal Boyer (\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Pascal-Boyer/dp/0465006965/\"\u003eReligion Explained\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e) makes more sense than the way some atheists talk about it as though fundamentalist religion is the essence of religion, and should be discarded completely (which doesn't seem likely to happen as long as we live in social communities).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-rationally-speaking-podcast-joseph.html\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eRationally Speaking\u003c/i\u003e interview with Joseph Heath\u003c/a\u003e: Heath, author of \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Without-Illusions-Debunking-Capitalism/dp/0307590577/\"\u003eEconomics without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (Canadian title: \u003ci\u003eFilthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism\u003c/i\u003e, which the publishers decided wouldn't sell in the U.S.), talks about misunderstandings of economics on both the right and the left. \u0026nbsp;(Also see \u003ca href=\"http://willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/05/01/bloggingheads-tv-with-joseph-heath-on-filthy-lucre/\"\u003ethis BloggingHeads TV interview of Heath by Will Wilkinson\u003c/a\u003e, who writes: \"The section on right-wing fallacies is largely on the money and a great challenge for rote libertarians and conservatives. The section of left-wing fallacies is terrific, and it would be terrific if more folks on the left were anywhere near as economically literate as Heath.\") \u0026nbsp;Heath's \"Rationally Speaking pick\" also sounds fascinating, Janos Kornai's \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Socialist-System-Political-Economy-Communism/dp/0691003939/\"\u003eThe Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e, which explains the creative but ultimately futile ways that human beings tried to replace markets with planning and design.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e","title":"Miscellanea"},{"content":"The title of this post is the title of my multi-book review article in the current issue of Skeptic magazine, which is primarily about last year\u0026rsquo;s Inside Scientology: The Story of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman and The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion by Hugh Urban. It\u0026rsquo;s a very long article for a book review in the magazine, running from pp. 18-27 with a couple of sidebars and a couple pages of footnotes. What I had in mind when I started writing it wasn\u0026rsquo;t what I ended up with\u0026ndash;my envisioned article would probably be more like a book that tells the story of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s two wars with the Internet, which Reitman only devoted a few paragraphs to. (If that never happens, the best place to find the information in question is in the writings of Village Voice editor Tony Ortega, who has done more than anyone to cover those topics.) I also would have liked to have done a bit more analysis of Urban\u0026rsquo;s book, which I think is a bit wishy-washy in places in the name of academic objectivity, and makes a few promises at the beginning that it fails to deliver on as though it were rushed to completion. But I think it came out OK, and I recommend Reitman\u0026rsquo;s book as the best and most up-to-date single overview of Scientology and its history, and Urban\u0026rsquo;s for its coverage of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battles with the IRS for religious tax exemption and its contribution to explaining what Hubbard was up to when he created Scientology. I think Hubbard died believing his own nonsense, because some Scientology doctrines literally became true for him\u0026ndash;he was the one person in Scientology who really could dream things up and make them happen around him, through the efforts of his devotees.\nI also hoped to devote a bit more space to what I allude to in my first footnote, referencing John Searle\u0026rsquo;s The Construction of Social Reality, pp. 90-93 and 117-119, about how institutions can quickly collapse when collective agreement about social facts is undermined, as seems to be happening at an accelerating pace within the Church of Scientology.\n(All posts on Scientology at this blog\u0026ndash;65 so far since 2005\u0026ndash;can be found here. An overview of my involvement in Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battles with the Internet is in my 2006 \u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo; post, which was updated with a 2009 post, \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet history lesson.\u0026quot;)\nUPDATE (26 January 2012): Tony Ortega, editor-in-chief at the Village Voice and prolific investigative journalist on the subject of Scientology, says very nice things about my article and Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s associated article in Skeptic at his \u0026ldquo;Runnin\u0026rsquo; Scared\u0026rdquo; blog, where there are lots of comments.\nThis issue of Skeptic should be available in all Barnes \u0026amp; Noble stores beginning around the first of February.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/01/decline-and-probable-fall-of-church-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://archive.skeptic.com/the_magazine/images/magv17n01_cover.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"https://archive.skeptic.com/the_magazine/images/magv17n01_cover.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; height: 200px; width: 163px;\" width=\"242\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe title of this post is the title of \u003ca href=\"https://archive.skeptic.com/reading_room/the-decline-and-probable-fall-of-the-scientology-empire/\"\u003emy multi-book review article in the current issue of \u003ci\u003eSkeptic\u003c/i\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, which is primarily about last year\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eInside Scientology: The Story of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Secretive Religion\u003c/i\u003e by Janet Reitman and \u003ci\u003eThe Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion\u003c/i\u003e by Hugh Urban.  It\u0026rsquo;s a very long article for a book review in the magazine, running from pp. 18-27 with a couple of sidebars and a couple pages of footnotes. What I had in mind when I started writing it wasn\u0026rsquo;t what I ended up with\u0026ndash;my envisioned article would probably be more like a book that tells the story of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s two wars with the Internet, which Reitman only devoted a few paragraphs to.  (If that never happens, the best place to find the information in question is \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/scientology/\"\u003ein the writings of \u003ci\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/i\u003e editor Tony Ortega\u003c/a\u003e, who has done more than anyone to cover those topics.)  I also would have liked to have done a bit more analysis of Urban\u0026rsquo;s book, which I think is a bit wishy-washy in places in the name of academic objectivity, and makes a few promises at the beginning that it fails to deliver on as though it were rushed to completion.  But I think it came out OK, and I recommend Reitman\u0026rsquo;s book as the best and most up-to-date single overview of Scientology and its history, and Urban\u0026rsquo;s for its coverage of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battles with the IRS for religious tax exemption and its contribution to explaining what Hubbard was up to when he created Scientology.  I think Hubbard died believing his own nonsense, because some Scientology doctrines literally became true for him\u0026ndash;he was the one person in Scientology who really could dream things up and make them happen around him, through the efforts of his devotees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI also hoped to devote a bit more space to what I allude to in my first footnote, referencing John Searle\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eThe Construction of Social Reality\u003c/i\u003e, pp. 90-93 and 117-119, about how institutions can quickly collapse when collective agreement about social facts is undermined, as \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/01/scientology_in_3.php\"\u003eseems to be happening at an accelerating pace within the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(All posts on Scientology at this blog\u0026ndash;65 so far since 2005\u0026ndash;can be found \u003ca href=\"/tags/Scientology\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. An overview of my involvement in Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battles with the Internet is in my 2006 \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e post, which was updated with a 2009 post, \u003ca href=\"/2009/01/scientology-vs-internet-history-lesson.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet history lesson.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (26 January 2012): Tony Ortega, editor-in-chief at the \u003ci\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/i\u003e and prolific investigative journalist on the subject of Scientology, says \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/01/scientology_decline_fall_skeptic.php\"\u003every nice things about my article and Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s associated article in \u003ci\u003eSkeptic\u003c/i\u003e at his \u0026ldquo;Runnin\u0026rsquo; Scared\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e, where there are lots of comments.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis issue of \u003ci\u003eSkeptic\u003c/i\u003e should be available in all Barnes \u0026amp; Noble stores beginning around the first of February.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Decline and (Probable) Fall of the Scientology Empire!"},{"content":" I picked up the pace a bit in 2011, with a little help from acquiring a Kindle in July... Books read in 2011: David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford, The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Third Edition Gordon R. Dickson, The Alien Way\u0026nbsp; Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website John Duignan with Nicola Tallant, The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong, Updated Edition\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., Survey Research Methods, 4th Edition Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin\u0026nbsp; Jefferson Hawkins, Counterfeit Dreams: One Man's Journey into and out of the World of Scientology Alan Haworth, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth Marc Headley, Blown for Good: Behind Scientology's Iron Curtain Gene Kim, Paul Love, and George Spafford, Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations in 4 Practical Steps Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith Peter D. Kramer, Should You Leave? Lawrence M. Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science Patrick Lencioni, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees)\u0026nbsp; Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions Nancy Many, My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist\u0026nbsp; Robert McLuhan, Randi's Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong and Why It Matters Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal Delbert C. Miller and Neil J. Salkind, Handbook of Research Design \u0026amp; Social Measurement, 6th Edition Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker\u0026nbsp; Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Milton L. Mueller, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance Ronald L. Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground\u0026nbsp; Janet Reitman, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry\u0026nbsp; Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, True Names Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against\u0026nbsp; Amy Scobee, Scientology: Abuse at the Top Robert Sellers, Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America\u0026nbsp; Jim Steinmeyer, The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini \u0026amp; the Battles of the American Wizards Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl Nassim Nicolas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Second Edition) Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\u0026nbsp; Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (Previously:\u0026nbsp;2010, 2009,\u0026nbsp;2008,\u0026nbsp;2007,\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Hume's Ghost (2012-01-01):\nOf those I\u0026#39;ve only read Huck Finn, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Demon Haunted World.\nMisanthrope (2012-01-01):\nTop 5 for the year?\nLippard (2012-01-01):\nOf the books I read, the top five would probably be Inside Scientology, The Big Short, The Psychopath Test, Kingpin, and Under the Banner of Heaven. Also contenders would be The Victorian Internet, The Upside of Irrationality, Packing for Mars, and Ghost in the Wires.\nHume's Ghost (2012-01-02):\nBeen a few years since I read it, but I also thought that Under the Banner of Heaven was excellent, with the story of those two brothers being an extremely effective framing device.\nMisanthrope (2012-01-09):\nThank you for the recommendations. I\u0026#39;m reading Under the Banner of Heaven now. I will add The psychopath test, The Victorian Internet, The upside of irrationality, and Packing for Mars to my future reading list.\nAlex (2012-04-27):\nYou know what would be awesome? All of these posts put together in a recommended book list. I\u0026#39;d pay good money / give good cred to whomever can point me to a book on epistemology that is both in-depth but also not boring to the point of hurling it across the room. Any takers? :)\nLippard (2012-04-27):\nAlexander: I rather enjoyed Keith Lehrer\u0026#39;s Theory of Knowledge, John Pollock\u0026#39;s Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (now in a revised edition co-authored by Joe Cruz), and Alvin Goldman\u0026#39;s Epistemology \u0026amp; Cognition and his more recent Knowledge in a Social World. The first three all concentrate on individual epistemology, which I think is in many ways a mistake... so you might want to check out the last one on the list.\nLippard (2012-04-27):\nOh, I should add that those three authors were all on my prelim committee. Lehrer argues for a form of coherentism, Pollock for internalist foundationalism, and Goldman for externalist reliabilism. The Lehrer and Pollock books are both introductory texts which review common theories and their problems, including attacking each other\u0026#39;s theories. Goldman\u0026#39;s books aren\u0026#39;t really surveys, and his approach is an example of naturalized epistemology, which I also advocate--taking seriously cognitive science as having something to say about epistemology. Lehrer and Pollock are both more purely philosophical. Another book on epistemology that is short and interesting is Gilbert Harman\u0026#39;s Change in View. Again, not a survey, and it\u0026#39;s focused on rationality of belief revision, as opposed to justifying an individual\u0026#39;s current set of beliefs. My tolerance for epistemology may be higher than yours, since it was my area of specialization in grad school... if you really can\u0026#39;t stand it, I recommend Steve Shapin\u0026#39;s A Social History of Truth, which I think contains great lessons for how belief justification actually occurs in practice, specifically focused on the development of scientific institutions and methods for establishing what counts as objective in 17th century England.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2012/01/books-read-in-2011.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nI picked up the pace a bit in 2011, with a little help from acquiring a Kindle in July...\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\nBooks read in 2011:\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Allen, \u003ci\u003eGetting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDan Ariely, \u003ci\u003eThe Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford, \u003ci\u003eThe Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn W. Creswell, \u003ci\u003eResearch Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches\u003c/i\u003e, Third Edition \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGordon R. Dickson, \u003ci\u003eThe Alien Way\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Domscheit-Berg, \u003ci\u003eInside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Duignan with Nicola Tallant, \u003ci\u003eThe Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, \u003ci\u003eWhat Darwin Got Wrong\u003c/i\u003e, Updated Edition\u0026nbsp;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026nbsp;Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., \u003ci\u003eSurvey Research Methods\u003c/i\u003e, 4th Edition\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBenjamin Franklin, \u003ci\u003eThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJefferson Hawkins, \u003ci\u003eCounterfeit Dreams: One Man's Journey into and out of the World of Scientology \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAlan Haworth, \u003ci\u003eAnti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarc Headley, \u003ci\u003eBlown for Good: Behind Scientology's Iron Curtain \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGene Kim, Paul Love, and George Spafford, \u003ci\u003eVisible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations in 4 Practical Steps\u003c/i\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Krakauer, \u003ci\u003eUnder the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter D. Kramer, \u003ci\u003eShould You Leave? \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLawrence M. Krauss, \u003ci\u003eQuantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePatrick Lencioni, \u003ci\u003eThe Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees)\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, \u003ci\u003eSleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNancy Many, \u003ci\u003eMy Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert McLuhan, \u003ci\u003eRandi's Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong and Why It Matters \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBen Mezrich, \u003ci\u003eThe Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDelbert C. Miller and Neil J. Salkind, \u003ci\u003eHandbook of Research Design \u0026amp; Social Measurement\u003c/i\u003e, 6th Edition \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKevin Mitnick with William L. Simon, \u003ci\u003eGhost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Markopolos, \u003ci\u003eNo One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMilton L. Mueller, \u003ci\u003eNetworks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonald L. Numbers, \u003ci\u003eGalileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJudith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, \u003ci\u003eHypnosis: A Brief History \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKevin Poulsen, \u003ci\u003eKingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJanet Reitman, \u003ci\u003eInside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ci\u003ePacking for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJon Ronson, \u003ci\u003eThe Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBenjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, \u003ci\u003eTrue Names \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCarl Sagan, \u003ci\u003eThe Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, \u003ci\u003eSocial Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAmy Scobee, \u003ci\u003eScientology: Abuse at the Top\u003c/i\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobert Sellers, \u003ci\u003eHellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTom Standage, \u003ci\u003eThe Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Steinbeck, \u003ci\u003eTravels with Charley in Search of America\u0026nbsp;\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJim Steinmeyer, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini \u0026amp; the Battles of the American Wizards \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDonald Sturrock, \u003ci\u003eStoryteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNassim Nicolas Taleb, \u003ci\u003eThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable\u003c/i\u003e (Second Edition) \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark Twain, \u003ci\u003eThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\u003c/i\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHugh B. Urban, \u003ci\u003eThe Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion\u003c/i\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin: 0px;\"\u003e\n(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"//2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html\"\u003e2010\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2012-01-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOf those I\u0026#39;ve only read Huck Finn, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Demon Haunted World.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2011"},{"content":"This recent comparison has been making the rounds:\nAs have a few other recent examples:\nBut this has gone on for many years.\u0026nbsp; A few others from a few years back:\nI suspect the weekly news magazines are simply basing their cover decisions on what sells in the U.S.\u0026nbsp; Sad. Historical Comments Michael C. Rush (2011-11-27):\nWhich came first, the chicken or the egg?\nEamon Knight (2011-11-27):\nWhat, you mean: Americans are insular, and want their media to tell them about the rest of the world only insofar as it affects themselves?* I could have told you that, simply based on frequent trips down there over the past 30 years, comparing what was on TV news to the typical content of the CBC.\nPresent company excepted, of course.\njz (2011-12-12):\nJust a minor quibble: Living here in Taiwan, I recognize most of the Asian edition Time magazine covers, but for some reason, for the October 3, 2011 issue, we got the US cover too. Maybe their local marketing is a bit more complex than just US vs. the world. But your larger point still holds, of course. You can see this with CNN too - whenever CNN International shows a US-produced show, the drop in IQ and increase in dB are palpable.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/11/time-and-newsweek-magazine-covers-us-vs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis recent comparison has been making the rounds:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6236/6402664097_78db7c467a_z.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"130\" src=\"http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6236/6402664097_78db7c467a_z.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs have \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/25/1039957/-Comparing-US-World-Covers-for-TIME-Magazine?via=recent\"\u003ea few other recent examples\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6231/6402664189_9b677771e2_z.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"133\" src=\"http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6231/6402664189_9b677771e2_z.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7027/6402664363_468370d59e_z.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"132\" src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7027/6402664363_468370d59e_z.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7159/6402664315_a877a06e31_z.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"137\" src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7159/6402664315_a877a06e31_z.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6402664409_e51d14746b_z.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"132\" src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6402664409_e51d14746b_z.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut this has gone on for many years.\u0026nbsp; A \u003ca href=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/26/american-vs-international-news-time-and-newsweek/\"\u003efew others from a few years back\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/newsweek1.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/newsweek1.jpg\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/frogs.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/frogs.jpg\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/Capture2.JPG\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"168\" src=\"http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/Capture2.JPG\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI suspect the weekly news magazines are simply basing their cover decisions on what sells in the U.S.\u0026nbsp; Sad.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMichael C. Rush\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-11-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWhich came first, the chicken or the egg?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time and Newsweek magazine covers, U.S. vs. rest of world"},{"content":"A few prominent skeptics have been arguing that science and medicine should rely upon Bayesian epistemology. Massimo Pigliucci, in his book Nonsense on Stilts, on the Rationally Speaking podcast, and in his column in the Skeptical Inquirer, has suggested that scientists should best proceed with a Bayesian approach to updating their beliefs. Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood at the Science-Based Medicine blog (and at the Science-Based Medicine workshops at The Amazing Meeting) have similarly argued that what distinguishes Science-Based Medicine from Evidence-Based Medicine is the use of a Bayesian approach in accounting for the prior plausibility of theories is superior to simply relying upon the outcomes of randomized controlled trials to determine what\u0026rsquo;s a reasonable medical treatment. And, in the atheist community, Richard Carrier has argued for a Bayesian approach to history, and in particular for assessing claims of Christianity (though in the linked-to case, this turned out to be problematic and error-ridden).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth observing that Bayesian epistemology has some serious unresolved problems, including among them the problem of prior probabilities and the problem of considering new evidence to have a probability of 1 [in simple conditionalization]. The former problem is that the prior assessment of the probability of a hypothesis plays a huge factor in the outcome of whether a hypothesis is accepted, and whether that prior probability is based on subjective probability, \u0026ldquo;gut feel,\u0026rdquo; old evidence, or arbitrarily selected to be 0.5 can produce different outcomes and doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily lead to concurrence even over a large amount of agreement on evidence. So, for example, Stephen Unwin has argued using Bayes\u0026rsquo; theorem for the existence of God (starting with a prior probability of 0.5), and there was a lengthy debate between William Jefferys and York Dobyns in the Journal of Scientific Exploration about what the Bayesian approach yields regarding the reality of psi which didn\u0026rsquo;t yield agreement. The latter problem, of new evidence, is that a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1, but evidence can itself be uncertain.\nAnd there are other problems as well\u0026ndash;a Bayesian approach to epistemology seems to give special privilege to classical logic, not properly account for old evidence [(or its reduction in probability due to new evidence)] or the introduction of new theories, and not be a proper standard for judgment of rational belief change of human beings for the same reason on-the-spot act utilitarian calculations aren\u0026rsquo;t a proper standard for human moral decision making\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not a method that is practically psychologically realizable.\nThe Bayesian approach has certainly been historically useful, as Desiree Schell\u0026rsquo;s interview with Sharon Bertsch McGrane, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, demonstrates. But before concluding that Bayesianism is the objective rational way for individuals or groups to determine what\u0026rsquo;s true, it\u0026rsquo;s worth taking a look at the problems philosophers have pointed out for making it the central thesis of epistemology. (Also see John L. Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edition, Rowman \u0026amp; Littlefield, 1999, which includes a critique of Bayesian epistemology.)\nUPDATE (August 6, 2013): Just came across this paper by Brandon Fitelson (PDF) defending Bayesian epistemology against some of Pollock\u0026rsquo;s critiques (in Pollock\u0026rsquo;s Nomic Probability book, which I\u0026rsquo;ve read, and in his later Thinking About Acting, which I\u0026rsquo;ve not read). A critique of how Bayesianism (and not really Bayesian epistemology in the sense defended by Fitelson) is being used by skeptics is here.\nAnonymous (2011-11-22):\nI don\u0026#39;t understand why you would say that \u0026quot;a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1\u0026quot;. This means that the denominator of Bayes theorem is always 1, which is nonsense! The total evidence is the marginal probability of E, or p(E) = p(E|H)p(H) + p(E|-H)p(-H), and this is rarely equal to 1!\nFor instance, take two mutually exclusive and exhaustive hypotheses and set the prior of each to 0.5. Assume that one of them predicts the data perfectly, p(E|H)=1 and that the other predicts it poorly, p(E|-H)=0. So p(E)= .51+.50 = .5, a value far from 1! The so-called 'problem of old evidence' is a non-problem for exactly the same reason.\nLippard (2011-12-01):\nMy description was pretty poor, and there\u0026#39;s really a whole cluster of problems around conditionalization and the treatment of evidence in Bayesian epistemology. What I called the problem of new evidence is just the objection to simple conditionalization viewing the acquisition of new evidence as coming to a position of certainty about that evidence, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses under the name \u0026quot;the problem of uncertain evidence.\u0026quot; The problem of old evidence is a different issue and is due to Clark Glymour. See sections 6.2 A \u0026amp; B in that article. You might also find John Pollock\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;Problems for Bayesian Epistemology\u0026quot; (PDF) of interest, especially pp. 14-15.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/09/skeptics-and-bayesian-epistemology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few prominent skeptics have been arguing that science and medicine should rely upon Bayesian epistemology.  Massimo Pigliucci, in his book \u003ci\u003eNonsense on Stilts\u003c/i\u003e, on the Rationally Speaking podcast, and in his column in the \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/i\u003e, has suggested that scientists should best proceed with a Bayesian approach to updating their beliefs.  Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood at the Science-Based Medicine blog (and at the Science-Based Medicine workshops at The Amazing Meeting) \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehave similarly argued that what distinguishes Science-Based Medicine from Evidence-Based Medicine is the use of a Bayesian approach in accounting for the prior plausibility of theories\u003c/a\u003e is superior to simply relying upon the outcomes of randomized controlled trials to determine what\u0026rsquo;s a reasonable medical treatment.  And, in the atheist community, \u003ca href=\"http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=10150\"\u003eRichard Carrier has argued for a Bayesian approach to history, and in particular for assessing claims of Christianity\u003c/a\u003e (though in the linked-to case, this turned \u003ca href=\"http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13773\"\u003eout\u003c/a\u003e to be \u003ca href=\"http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2011/01/odds-form-of-bayess-theorem.html\"\u003eproblematic\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2011/01/richard-carrier-on-bayes-theorem.html\"\u003eerror-ridden\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth observing that Bayesian epistemology has some serious unresolved problems, including among them the problem of prior probabilities and the problem of considering new evidence to have a probability of 1 [in simple conditionalization].  The former problem is that the prior assessment of the probability of a hypothesis plays a huge factor in the outcome of whether a hypothesis is accepted, and whether that prior probability is based on subjective probability, \u0026ldquo;gut feel,\u0026rdquo; old evidence, or arbitrarily selected to be 0.5 can produce different outcomes and doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily lead to concurrence even over a large amount of agreement on evidence.  So, for example, \u003ca href=\"http://www.stephenunwin.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eStephen Unwin has argued using Bayes\u0026rsquo; theorem for the existence of God (starting with a prior probability of 0.5)\u003c/a\u003e, and there was \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html\"\u003ea lengthy debate between William Jefferys and York Dobyns in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Scientific Exploration\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about what the Bayesian approach yields regarding the reality of psi which didn\u0026rsquo;t yield agreement. The latter problem, of new evidence, is that a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1, but evidence can itself be uncertain.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnd there are other problems as well\u0026ndash;a Bayesian approach to epistemology seems to give special privilege to classical logic, not properly account for old evidence [(or its reduction in probability due to new evidence)] or the introduction of new theories, and not be a proper standard for judgment of rational belief change of human beings for the same reason on-the-spot act utilitarian calculations aren\u0026rsquo;t a proper standard for human moral decision making\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not a method that is practically psychologically realizable.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Bayesian approach has certainly been historically useful, as \u003ca href=\"http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episodes/124-the-theory-that-would-not-die\"\u003eDesiree Schell\u0026rsquo;s interview with Sharon Bertsch McGrane, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, demonstrates.  But before concluding that Bayesianism is \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c/i\u003e objective rational way for individuals or groups to determine what\u0026rsquo;s true, it\u0026rsquo;s worth taking a look at \u003ca href=\"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/#PotPro\"\u003ethe problems philosophers have pointed out for making it the central thesis of epistemology\u003c/a\u003e.  (Also see John L. Pollock and Joseph Cruz, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Theories-Knowledge-Epistemology-Cognitive/dp/0847689379/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eContemporary Theories of Knowledge\u003c/a\u003e, 2nd edition, Rowman \u0026amp; Littlefield, 1999, which includes a critique of Bayesian epistemology.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (August 6, 2013): Just came across \u003ca href=\"http://fitelson.org/pollock_on_probability.pdf\"\u003ethis paper by Brandon Fitelson\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) defending Bayesian epistemology against some of Pollock\u0026rsquo;s critiques (in Pollock\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eNomic Probability\u003c/i\u003e book, which I\u0026rsquo;ve read, and in his later \u003ci\u003eThinking About Acting\u003c/i\u003e, which I\u0026rsquo;ve not read).  A critique of how Bayesianism (and not really Bayesian epistemology in the sense defended by Fitelson) is being used by skeptics is \u003ca href=\"http://meaningness.com/metablog/bayesianism-updating\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics and Bayesian epistemology"},{"content":"My favorite part of the Token Skeptic podcast #76\u0026rsquo;s interview with Sara Mayhew and Jack Scanlan is 28:30-28:42, where Scanlan says \u0026ldquo;everyone hates pop songs.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s a self-annihilating sentence along the lines of \u0026ldquo;No one goes there anymore; it\u0026rsquo;s too crowded.\u0026quot;\nThat reminds me of Saul Gorn\u0026rsquo;s compendium, \u0026ldquo;Self-Annihilating Sentences: Saul Gorn\u0026rsquo;s Compendium of Rarely Used Cliches,\u0026quot; which I have in the original hardcopy but is now available online for everyone\u0026rsquo;s enjoyment.\nHistorical Comments Podblack (2011-09-13):\nJack is too hipster to be hipster. That\u0026#39;s how I see it. :p\nMisanthrope (2011-09-13):\nAll generalities are false.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/09/rarely-used-cliche-on-token-skeptic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy favorite part of the \u003ca href=\"http://tokenskeptic.org/2011/08/18/episode-seventy-six-%E2%80%93-on-manga-and-amazng-ness-interview-with-jack-scanlan-and-sara-mayhew/#respond\"\u003eToken Skeptic podcast #76\u0026rsquo;s interview with Sara Mayhew and Jack Scanlan\u003c/a\u003e is 28:30-28:42, where Scanlan says \u0026ldquo;everyone hates pop songs.\u0026rdquo;  That\u0026rsquo;s a self-annihilating sentence along the lines of \u0026ldquo;No one goes there anymore; it\u0026rsquo;s too crowded.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThat reminds me of Saul Gorn\u0026rsquo;s compendium, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rclark/gorn.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Self-Annihilating Sentences: Saul Gorn\u0026rsquo;s Compendium of Rarely Used Cliches,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which I have in the original hardcopy but is now available online for everyone\u0026rsquo;s enjoyment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rarely-used cliche on the Token Skeptic podcast"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter. Hubbard claimed in 1968 that tomatoes would \u0026ldquo;scream when sliced,\u0026quot; as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo appeared in \u0026ldquo;30 Dumb Inventions\u0026rdquo; on Life magazine\u0026rsquo;s website, attributed to the Evening Standard of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.]\nHubbard was likely inspired by Cleve Backster, who had made similar claims based on connecting plants to a polygraph starting in 1966.\u0026nbsp; Backster published his claims in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1968, and his work was subsequently popularized in the 1973 book, The Secret Life of Plants.\nI wonder, however, whether the inspiration for both of these crackpots came from a piece of fiction in the September 17, 1949 issue of The New Yorker--Roald Dahl's \"The Sound Machine,\" which is reprinted in numerous short story collections, including his volume Someone Like You (1973). In this tale, a man named Klausner, obsessed with sounds beyond the ability of human beings to hear, builds a machine to convert higher pitches into human-audible sounds.\u0026nbsp; He discovers, to his horror, that plants and trees shriek with pain when cut.\nDoes anyone know of any documented references from Hubbard or Backster to Dahl?\u0026nbsp; Or is there another common ancestor I've missed?\nMy title includes a reference to the Seattle-area grunge band, Screaming Trees, whose Wikipedia entry doesn't comment on the origin of their name--but Dahl's story seems a likely inspiration there, too.\nUPDATE (6 February 2013): It looks like the Hubbard photo pre-dates Backster, and was likely taken in 1959 or 1960! \u0026nbsp;It prompted a feature titled \"PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN.\" in the December 18, 1959 Garden News.\nUPDATE (10 February 2013): David Hambling's \"The Secret Life of Plants\" in the December 2012 issue of Fortean Times (p. 18) points out that Charles Darwin's 1880 The Power of Movement in Plants suggested that plants have something like a nervous system, and that Jagadish Chandra Bose published a 1907 paper on the electrophysiology of plants. \u0026nbsp;He puts Backster before Hubbard, making the same mistake of dating Hubbard's claims by the Life magazine photo caption.\nBackster, by the way, was inspired by Bose's work. \u0026nbsp;He says that he started his work with plants on February 2, 1966, as reported in the introduction of his \"Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life,\" International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. X, No. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348.\nUPDATE (21 October 2021): On a 1966 episode of the Joe Pyne Show, in discussion with Lewis Marvin, Pyne asserted that it has been scientifically proven that tomatoes scream when cut, likely referencing Backster.\nUPDATE (5 December 2022): Not sure how I missed including the Jack Handy \"Deep Thoughts\" that goes: \"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.\" Laika (2011-09-04):\nI think another possible inspiration for the Screaming Trees name was the quote from Jack Handy listed here, which apparently happened just before the Screaming Trees formed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Handy#Deep_Thoughts\nLippard (2011-09-04):\nAh, good find, Mark. \u0026quot;If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.\u0026quot; That was apparently published in _Deep Thoughts_ in 1992, and aired on Saturday Night Live on October 21, 1991, though, while the band formed in 1985. I know some of Handy\u0026#39;s material was published much earlier (in the 1980s in _Omni_ magazine), but don\u0026#39;t know if that specific example was among them.\nthetileninja (2011-12-12):\nThe tree people in Lord of the Rings, when they saw the wholesale slaughter of trees at Eisengaard, screame for their loss. All those psychedelic/stoner bands like Rush and Led Zeppelin wrote songs about Lord of the Rings. It would seem fitting to their image as well! that\u0026#39;s my two cents worth, and the result of watching the film and subsequent Google search ;^)\nanonymous (2011-12-16):\nnot screaming trees, but ... http://thesmartset.com/article/article11221101.aspx If You Pick Us, Do We Not Bleed? By Stefany Anne Golberg\nIn a room near Maida Vale, a journalist for The Nation wrote around 1914, an unfortunate creature is strapped to the table of an unlicensed vivisector. When the subject is pinched with a pair of forceps, it winces. It is so strapped that its electric shudder of pain pulls the long arm of a very delicate lever that actuates a tiny mirror. This casts a beam of light on the frieze at the other end of the room, and thus enormously exaggerates the tremor of the creature. A pinch near the right-hand tube sends the beam 7 or 8 feet to the right, and a stab near the other wire sends it as far to the left.\n“Thus,” the journalist concluded, “can science reveal the feelings of even so stolid a vegetable as the carrot.”\nJust some bozo?\nAnonymous (2015-04-04):\nIn Stephen King\u0026#39;s Salem\u0026#39;s Lot, he refers to \u0026#39;the screaming trees\u0026#39;. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/09/origins-of-screaming-trees.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter.  Hubbard \u003ca href=\"http://www.life.com/gallery/25371/image/76796742/30-dumb-inventions\"\u003eclaimed in 1968 that tomatoes would \u0026ldquo;scream when sliced,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20091031093818/http://www.life.com/image/76796742/in-gallery/25371\"\u003eappeared in \u0026ldquo;30 Dumb Inventions\u0026rdquo; on \u003ci\u003eLife\u003c/i\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e, attributed to the \u003ci\u003eEvening Standard\u003c/i\u003e of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The origins of Screaming Trees?"},{"content":"Chris Mooney has a very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized. Much U.S. counterterrorism and \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem.\nHe also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we\u0026rsquo;ve evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence.\nSome of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist. I don\u0026rsquo;t see it\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s not making the argument that reason doesn\u0026rsquo;t work to find out things about the world, he\u0026rsquo;s making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are. Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism.\nMy compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/09/scott-atran-on-violent-extremism-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Mooney has \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/scott_atran_violent_extremism_and_sacred_values/\"\u003ea very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast\u003c/a\u003e, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized.  Much U.S. counterterrorism and \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we\u0026rsquo;ve evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSome of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist.  I don\u0026rsquo;t see it\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s not making the argument that reason doesn\u0026rsquo;t work to find out things about the world, he\u0026rsquo;s making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are.  Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scott Atran on violent extremism and sacred values"},{"content":"Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama\u0026rsquo;s birth certificate (the PDF\u0026rsquo;d scan of the \u0026ldquo;long form\u0026rdquo; certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago. But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt\u0026rsquo;s alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as \u0026ldquo;Dr. Conspiracy\u0026rdquo;), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims.\nCheck out his \u0026ldquo;The Debunker\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories.\u0026quot;\nVogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of \u0026ldquo;crank magnetism\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery. Vogt bills himself as a \u0026ldquo;geologist and science philosopher\u0026rdquo; who:\nhas funded and directed three expeditions to the Sinai desert where he was the first person since Baruch (Jeremiah’s grandson) to discover the real Mount Sinai. He discovered all the altars that Moses describes in the Torah. In addition he was the first person since Moses to see the real Abraham’s altar also located at Mount Sinai and not in Jerusalem. He has discovered the code systems used by Moses when writing the surface story of the Torah, which enabled him to decode the Torah and other earlier books of the Hebrew Scriptures. His book features:\nThe first information theory of existence. explains many of the hardest phenomena in the Universe such as: the causes of the ice ages, polar reversals, mass extinctions, gravity, light, pyramid energy, kirlian photography, psychic phenomena, and more! So in addition to a self-proclaimed expert on typography, conspiracy theorist, and \"birther,\" Vogt is apparently a creationist, pseudo-archaeologist, Bible code advocate, and promoter of a wide variety of pseudoscience claims.\nHistorical Comments Ijon Tichy (2011-09-01):\nI would like to see those conspiracionist to actually sue Obama and lose everything istead of just repeating the same over and over. Anyway, greetings and great blog and podcast!, keep it up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/08/obama-conspiracy-theories-debunked.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama\u0026rsquo;s birth certificate (the PDF\u0026rsquo;d scan of the \u0026ldquo;long form\u0026rdquo; certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp\"\u003ealready debunked at Snopes.com four months ago\u003c/a\u003e.  But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt\u0026rsquo;s alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, \u003ca href=\"http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/05/reply-to-douglas-vogt/\"\u003ea very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis\u003c/a\u003e by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as \u0026ldquo;Dr. Conspiracy\u0026rdquo;), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCheck out his \u003ca href=\"http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-debunkers-guide-to-obama-conspiracy-theories/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Debunker\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nVogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of \u0026ldquo;crank magnetism\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;he is the author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.vectorpub.com/Reality_Revealed.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eReality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery.  Vogt bills himself as a \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"style19\"\u003egeologist and science philosopher\u0026rdquo; who:\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama conspiracy theories debunked"},{"content":"Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005. He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists. Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many\u0026rsquo;s My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley\u0026rsquo;s Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee\u0026rsquo;s Abuse at the Top).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve read the first few chapters at his blog\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/08/counterfeit-dreams.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005.  He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ci\u003eDianetics\u003c/i\u003e back to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c/i\u003e bestseller lists.  Beginning in 2008, he wrote \u003ca href=\"http://counterfeitdreams.blogspot.com/\"\u003ea book-length series of blog posts\u003c/a\u003e about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited \u003ca href=\"http://counterfeitdreams.com/\"\u003einto a hardback book\u003c/a\u003e, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eMy Billion-Year Contract\u003c/i\u003e, Marc Headley\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eBlown For Good\u003c/i\u003e, and Amy Scobee\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003eAbuse at the Top\u003c/i\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ve read the first few chapters at his blog\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Counterfeit Dreams"},{"content":"\nI have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal. Please donate any amount you can - just as RESCUE saves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time. If you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts.\nJust this morning Maricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control announced that: \u0026quot;there are more than 1,000 animals at [their] shelter. MCACC is doing everything we can to save as many lives as possible. Adoptable dogs and cats are stacked three+ deep in every available space.\u0026quot; Also today, RESCUE saved 6 dogs from MCACC. I\u0026rsquo;ve posted some of their pictures here. Helping RESCUE helps dogs and cats leave MCACC through the front door, not in a body bag.\nAs an incentive, a friend has made some cute dog \u0026amp; cat themed cards for me to give as a thank you for any donation of $25 or more. You\u0026rsquo;ll get a four pack of cute cards you can use for any occasion! Please click here to donate and let me know if you\u0026rsquo;d like a pack of cards in the message section. Donations are 100% tax deductible and your donation goes directly to the animals!\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a few of the things your donation can do:\n$5 - will buy a martingale collar or a leash$10 - will buy a container of cat litter$20 - will buy a month supply of medication for RESCUE cat Nico$25 - will buy two cases of wet food for RESCUE cat Benny$30 - will buy a 30 lb. bag of dog food$60 - will buy five days of boarding for one RESCUE dog$100 - will pay for medications for RESCUE dog Zeke$150 - will pay for two weeks of boarding for one RESCUE dog\nHistorical Comments M! (2011-07-18):\nOur dog is from the Angel Guardian Network. He was found half-dead in the desert before they nursed him back. His \u0026#39;before\u0026#39; picture is one of the Animal Overpopulation billboards currently around the Valley! Keep up the good work \u0026hellip;phofl\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/07/bowlarama-fundraising-time.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/zach6.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 156px; height: 200px;\" src=\"/images/zach6.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628602464366814082\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/pepper.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 108px; height: 200px;\" src=\"/images/pepper.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628602318085971026\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/alfred2.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 169px; height: 200px;\" src=\"/images/alfred2.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628602854696898994\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/lakelyn.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 163px; height: 200px;\" src=\"/images/lakelyn.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628602966045981554\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" lang=\"EN\"\u003eI have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal.\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun:yes\"\u003e  \u003c/span\u003ePlease donate any amount you can - just as \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eRESCUE \u003c/a\u003esaves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time.\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun:yes\"\u003e  \u003c/span\u003eIf you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"\" lang=\"EN\"\u003eJust this morning Maricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control \u003ca href=\"http://www.maricopa.gov/pr_detail.aspx?releaseID=1785\"\u003eannounced \u003c/a\u003ethat: \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bowlarama Fundraising Time!"},{"content":"A group of Tucson atheists and skeptics have started the Desert Air podcast, available via iTunes. Three episodes available so far.\nAnonymous (2011-07-12):\nI know it\u0026#39;s unrelated, but I just wanted to compliment you as a great source of atheist resources. It\u0026#39;s not easy finding any- the internet is dominated by apologists and theologians. It\u0026#39;s easy to accidently run into sites. like, say, this one: http://akma.disseminary.org/?s=theology\nOr this one:\nhttp://elizaphanian.blogspot.com/\nIt's like as if for every sceptic there's ten online theologians with a PHD that were educated at Oxford. What's the deal with that? Also, while on this topic, do you know of any good, scholarly works on theology from a non-christian perspective? I have difficulty understanding what it actually is, what arguments they put foward, and how non-christians respond. Thanks, and keep up the good work!\nLippard (2011-07-13):\nAndyman: Thanks! I can\u0026#39;t really comment on theology in particular, as my interests in the area (which faded some time ago) were primarily in philosophy of religion and history rather than theology. Your question might be better directed to somebody like Robert M. Price, who is one of the three hosts of the Center for Inquiry\u0026#39;s Point of Inquiry podcast, and who regularly interviews people with rather odd but interesting theological views (like Bo Bennett, who advocates \u0026quot;Christian non-theism,\u0026quot; Thomas J. J. Altizer, a \u0026quot;death of God\u0026quot; theologian). He\u0026#39;s talked about, but I don\u0026#39;t think he\u0026#39;s interviewed Don Cupitt, who advocates theological non-realism--he was interviewed by the Philosophy Bites podcast. Those views all seem a bit kooky to me, but no more so than Christian theology.\nM! (2011-07-18):\nJim, have you listened to these? The first one has some absolutely bonkers interpretation of Christian scripture. Just listen to the section called 'Sunday School'.\nIt is easy to see that no one on that show knows what they are talking about in regards to Christian eschatology (or textual criticism, for that matter). I'm not saying they should all be \u0026quot;Bible experts\u0026quot; - I understand atheists feel they don't have the time to do serious exegesis - but this section alone demonstrates a surprising level of incompetence.\nOne guy says so heaven is 'packed with Hebrew virgins' and the other says 'Isn't sex a sin' \u0026hellip; and on and on \u0026hellip; Jesus practices (or commands) cannibalism \u0026hellip; only 144,000 people make it into heaven \u0026hellip; seriously?\nThey should have read just one commentary before they recorded this episode.\nVocab\nPS - Andyman409 \u0026hellip; I would recommend Wayne Grudem's 'Systematic Theology'. It should be helpful to you because in each section he gives all the competimng views before explaining his own - very helpful! (and no, he didn't go to Oxford; he went to Cambridge=)\nUnknown (2011-07-24):\nThank you for the plug, Jim. We now have 4 episodes up and we\u0026#39;re getting better with every episode. Listeners can give feedback to help us improve at feedback@desertairpodcast.com. We have a combination of Science, Skepticism, and religion put together with Brandon\u0026#39;s expert skills and audio equipment. Give us a listen (and feedback). Don Lacey\nAnonymous (2011-11-22):\nThanks Vocab Malone and Jim Lippard\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/07/desert-air-podcast.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA group of Tucson atheists and skeptics have started \u003ca href=\"http://desertairpodcast.com/\"\u003ethe Desert Air podcast\u003c/a\u003e, available via iTunes.  Three episodes available so far.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-07-12)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI know it\u0026#39;s unrelated, but I just wanted to compliment you as a great source of atheist resources. It\u0026#39;s not easy finding any- the internet is dominated by apologists and theologians. It\u0026#39;s easy to accidently run into sites. like, say, this one:\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://akma.disseminary.org/?s=theology\"\u003ehttp://akma.disseminary.org/?s=theology\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Desert Air podcast"},{"content":"Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;love-hounds\u0026rdquo; mailing list, I don\u0026rsquo;t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian \u0026ldquo;rock music seminar\u0026rdquo; about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed \u0026ldquo;backwards masking\u0026rdquo; where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven,\u0026rdquo; made a comeback two decades later\u0026ndash;being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate.\nSimon Singh, 2006:\nMichael Shermer, 2006 TED Talk:\nDate: Wed, 5 Feb 86 15:35 MST From: \"James J. Lippard\" Subject: Christian Death/rock seminar Reply-To: Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve heard of Christian Death, though I haven\u0026rsquo;t heard much by them. That reminds me of an article I wrote in October for ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Campus Weekly\u0026rdquo; (alternative campus newspaper) about a rock seminar I went to, and here it is. The article was never printed, as the newspaper folded. (Note: There was originally an additional paragraph about a fourth type of backwards message\u0026ndash;the kind that\u0026rsquo;s at the end of the first side of \u0026ldquo;The Dreaming\u0026rdquo;.)\nDruids were Satanists. Van Morrison reads Celtic literature. Therefore, Van Morrison's music is evil. I had hoped this kind of feeble guilt-by-association reasoning applied to rock music by religious fanatics had died off. No such luck. The above was typical of the reasoning presented at a seminar on rock music on October 21 by Christian Life. Not only is the first premise false, the conclusion is a non sequitur.\nThings looked promising enough at first. A quote from the Confucian philosopher Mencius about how the multitudes \u0026ldquo;act without clear understanding\u0026rdquo; was projected on the large screen in Neeb Hall before the presentation began. When the show finally started, the speaker gave some facts about the size of the music industry and its influence on society.\nFor a while things were rational. Since the seminar was focusing on the seamy side of rock, it seemed reasonable to show slides of Lou Reed shooting heroin on stage, Sid Vicious, Kiss, and so forth. Still, the impression was given that this was representative of the majority of rock music. Obscure groups such as Demon, Lucifer\u0026rsquo;s Friend, and the Flesh Eaters say nothing about rock in general.\nApparently the writers of the seminar were aware of this, because it then shifted to analyzing album covers of fairly popular groups. But this analysis was taken to a ridiculous extreme, pulling interpretations out of a hat. If an album cover had a cross on it, it was automatically blasphemous. Any other religious symbols on an album along with a cross were putting down Christianity by calling it \u0026ldquo;just another religion.\u0026rdquo;\nOther symbols also drew criticism. From the following Bible verse, Luke 10:18, it was concluded that lightning bolts are a demonic symbol: And He said to them, \u0026ldquo;I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.\u0026rdquo;\nSince all lightning bolts are evil, the lightning bolts in the logos of Kiss and AC/DC show that they are in league with the devil. Interestingly, on the backs of many electrical appliances is a symbol which serves as a warning of potential shock hazard\u0026ndash;a yellow triangle containing a lightning bolt exactly like the one in AC/DC\u0026rsquo;s logo. Surely this is a more obvious source than the Bible for AC/DC\u0026rsquo;s lightning bolt, given the electrical symbolism in their name and many of their album titles.\nAs the Jesuits knew, if you teach a child your ways early, he will likely follow them for the rest of his life. But to conclude from this that Led Zeppelin is trying to influence children because there are children on the cover of their Houses of the Holy album is absurd.\nIn the interest of \u0026ldquo;fair play\u0026rdquo;, quotes from several artists denying any involvement with the occult were given. But these were shrugged off, including the disclaimer at the beginning of Michael Jackson\u0026rsquo;s Thriller video which says, in part, \u0026ldquo;this film in no way endorses belief in the occult.\u0026rdquo; Michael Jackson is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, so I seriously doubt he had any more intent in promoting the occult through Thriller than the creators of Caspar the Friendly Ghost.\nFinally, the seminar got to its most entertaining subject: backwards messages on rock albums. There are several types of messages commonly referred to as \u0026ldquo;backmasking,\u0026rdquo; most of which were covered. The first is a message recorded normally, then placed on an album in reverse. The example given was from ELO\u0026rsquo;s Face the Music album, which says \u0026ldquo;The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back, turn back\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; There is little doubt about the content of such messages.\nThe second type of backwards message is where words are sung backwards, phonetically. On Black Oak Arkansas\u0026rsquo; live album Raunch and Roll, there is no question about what they are trying to do when the singer shouts \u0026ldquo;Natas!\u0026rdquo; The conference speaker seemed to imply that this message was unintentional, however, when he gave an example of a song by Christian Death. The words are sung backwards (as seen on the lyrics sheet), but pronounced in reverse letter-by-letter rather than phonetically. He seemed surprised that this resulted in nonsense when reversed.\nThe third type of backwards message is where a perfectly ordinary record album is played in reverse to produce gibberish and creative imaginations supply the translations for supposed messages. According to the speaker, this must occur in one of three ways. Either they are intentional, accidental, or spiritual. They can\u0026rsquo;t be intentional, because creating such a message is unimaginably complex. They can\u0026rsquo;t be accidental, otherwise we would hear messages saying such things as \u0026ldquo;God is love\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;the elephant is on the back burner\u0026rdquo; as often as we hear messages about Satan. Therefore, the messages must be spiritual (i.e., Satan caused them to occur).\nThis completely ignores what has already been well-established as the source of these messages. Someone person plays his records backwards, listening for evil messages, and hears something that sounds like the word \u0026ldquo;Satan\u0026rdquo;. He then tells his friends to listen for the message, and plays it for them. Since they have been told what to hear, their mind fills in the difference between the noises on the album and the alleged message.\nThis explanation was mentioned, but was dismissed out of hand because, the speaker claimed, the backwards messages are as clear as most rock lyrics are forwards. He played the first message, in Queen\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Another One Bites the Dust\u0026rdquo;, without telling the audience what to hear. I heard no message, but he told us that we clearly heard \u0026ldquo;start to smoke marijuana\u0026rdquo;. When the tape was played again, I could hear it.\nThe rest of the messages of this type played at the seminar were accompanied by text on the movie screen telling the audience what to listen for. I closed my eyes to ignore the hints, and was unable to hear anything but gibberish. The same method was used and the same results obtained by several other audience members I questioned after the presentation.\nIn addition, an anti-rock program aired a few years ago on the Trinity Broadcasting Network stated that there were several messages on Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo;, including \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rsquo;s to my sweet Satan\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;there is power in Satan\u0026rdquo;. The rock conference, on the other hand, combined these two into one large message which began \u0026ldquo;my sweet Satan\u0026rdquo; and ended \u0026ldquo;whose power is in Satan\u0026rdquo;. Having heard the TBN version first, those were what I heard when they were played at the conference. If the words \u0026ldquo;there is\u0026rdquo; can be mistaken for \u0026ldquo;whose\u0026rdquo;, isn\u0026rsquo;t it possible that the same is true for the rest of these messages?\nEven the transcriber of the backwards messages had problems coming up with words to fit the message. The slide for Rush\u0026rsquo;s live version of \u0026ldquo;Anthem\u0026rdquo; played backwards read: Oh, Satan, you\u0026ndash;you are the one who is shining, walls of Satan, walls of (sacrifice?) I know.\nAs any ventriloquist knows, many sounds can be mistaken for many other sounds. An m for an n, a t for a d, a c, a z, or a th for an s. Given that the most frequent letters in the English language are ETAOINSHRDLU, it is no surprise that something sounding like \u0026ldquo;Satan\u0026rdquo; is quite common.\nWith enough effort, evil symbolism and backwards messages can be found anywhere. Try visiting a record store and finding satanic symbols on Christian album covers, or listening to some Christian albums backwards. I\u0026rsquo;m sure much can be found with little difficulty.\nIt is true that most rock is not Christian. It is even true that much of it conflicts with the Christian faith in some way. But to bury these points in a mire of fuzzy logic and fanaticism by engaging in a witch hunt is counter-productive. Before the conference, I commented to a friend that if \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo; was played backwards, the presenters would have destroyed any credibility they had. That, unfortunately, was the case.\nJim (Lippard at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA) Additional information:\nReligiousTolerance.org has a good overview with scientific references on the subject.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/07/skeptics-and-backward-masking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBelow these two videos is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/rock-seminar.html\"\u003ea post I made\u003c/a\u003e (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;love-hounds\u0026rdquo; mailing list, I don\u0026rsquo;t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian \u0026ldquo;rock music seminar\u0026rdquo; about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music.  I was familiar with the claims of supposed \u0026ldquo;backwards masking\u0026rdquo; where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse.  The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples.  Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985.  We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard.  The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven,\u0026rdquo; made a comeback two decades later\u0026ndash;being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSimon Singh, 2006:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics and \"backward masking\""},{"content":"As this blog has reported on multiple prior occasions (in 2006, 2008, and 2009, at the very least), the fact that U.S. airport security separates the checking of the boarding pass by TSA from the use of a boarding pass to check in to board makes it easy to get through security with a boarding pass that matches your ID while flying under a boarding pass on a ticket purchased in a different name.\nNow, as The Economist (July 2, 2011) reports, Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a 24-year-old Nigerian American, has been arrested after successfully doing something along these lines to fly around the country, apparently on multiple occasions. Only Noibi wasn\u0026rsquo;t even using boarding passes valid for the flights he was on\u0026ndash;he was caught with a boarding pass in another person\u0026rsquo;s name for a flight from a day prior. And he wasn\u0026rsquo;t caught because the boarding pass was detected at check-in\u0026ndash;he had already successfully boarded the flight and was seated. He was only caught because of his extreme body odor and a fellow passenger complained, which led to his boarding pass being checked and found to be invalid.\nHistorical Comments Trott (2011-07-04):\nAny information or speculation on his motive for doing this?\nkrn002 (2011-07-04):\nHe claims he just wanted to fly for free.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/07/tsa-security-loophole-exploited.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs this blog has reported on multiple prior occasions (in \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/point-out-obvious-get-raided-by-fbi.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/10/tsa-airport-security-is-waste-of-time.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sunday-paper-sessions.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e, at the very least), the fact that U.S. airport security separates the checking of the boarding pass by TSA from the use of a boarding pass to check in to board makes it easy to get through security with a boarding pass that matches your ID while flying under a boarding pass on a ticket purchased in a different name.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNow, as \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/07/olajide-oluwaseun-noibi?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/freeflightsforeveryone\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e (July 2, 2011) reports\u003c/a\u003e, Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a 24-year-old Nigerian American, has been arrested after successfully doing something along these lines to fly around the country, apparently on multiple occasions.  Only Noibi wasn\u0026rsquo;t even using boarding passes valid for the flights he was on\u0026ndash;he was caught with a boarding pass in another person\u0026rsquo;s name for a flight from a day prior.  And he wasn\u0026rsquo;t caught because the boarding pass was detected at check-in\u0026ndash;he had already successfully boarded the flight and was seated.  He was only caught because of his extreme body odor and a fellow passenger complained, which led to his boarding pass being checked and found to be invalid.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TSA security loophole exploited"},{"content":"As a result of the investigative reporting of Radley Balko, Cory Maye is about to be released from prison after ten years of incarceration and seven years after being sentenced to death on the basis of a terrible defense and kooky testimony from a now discredited and removed medical examiner. Maye shot and killed a police officer during a no-knock drug raid against a duplex property in which Maye resided, on the basis of a report of unusual traffic at the other unit of the duplex by an unreliable informant. Maye was defending his daughter from an unknown intruder kicking his door in.\nThrough the efforts of Balko and a legal team from Covington \u0026amp; Burling, Maye was removed from death row in 2006.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/07/cory-maye-to-be-released-from-prison.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs a result of the investigative reporting of Radley Balko, \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/01/cory-maye-to-be-released-_n_888454.html\"\u003eCory Maye is about to be released from prison\u003c/a\u003e after ten years of incarceration and seven years after being sentenced to death on the basis of a terrible defense and kooky testimony from a now discredited and removed medical examiner.  Maye shot and killed a police officer during a no-knock drug raid against a duplex property in which Maye resided, on the basis of a report of unusual traffic at the other unit of the duplex by an unreliable informant.  Maye was defending his daughter from an unknown intruder kicking his door in.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThrough the efforts of Balko and a legal team from Covington \u0026amp; Burling, \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/cory-maye-off-death-row.html\"\u003eMaye was removed from death row in 2006\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye to be released from prison"},{"content":"The decision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club\u0026rsquo;s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett came out today (PDF), a 5-4 decision ruling Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Clean Election laws unconstitutional. The dissent, it seems to me, has a much better case than the majority:\nthe program does not discriminate against any candidate or point of view, and it does not restrict any person's ability to speak.\u0026nbsp; In fact, by providing resources to many candidates, the program creates more speech and thereby broadens public debate. ...\nAt every turn, the majority tries to convey the impression that Arizona's matching fund statute is of a piece with laws prohibiting electoral speech. The majority invokes the language of \"limits,\" \"bar[s],\" and \"restraints.\" ... It equates the law to a \"restrictio[n] on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign.\" ...\nThere is just one problem. Arizona's matching funds provision does not restrict, but instead subsidizes, speech. The law \"impose[s] no ceiling on [speech] and do[es] not prevent anyone from speaking.\" ... The statute does not tell candidates or their supporters how much money they can spend to convey their message, when they can spend it, or what they can spend it on. ...\nIn the usual First Amendment subsidy case, a person complains that the government declined to finance his speech, while financing someone else's; we must then decide whether the government differentiated between these speakers on a prohibited basis--because it preferred one speaker's ideas to another's. ... But the speakers bringing this case do not make that claim--because they were never denied a subsidy. ... Petitioners have refused that assistance. So they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance. Some people might call that chutzpah.\nIndeed, what petitioners demand is essentially a right to quash others' speech through the prohibition of a (universally available) subsidy program. Petitioners are able to convey their ideas without public financing--and they would prefer the field to themselves, so that they can speak free from response. To attain that goal, they ask this court to prevent Arizona from funding electoral speech--even though that assistance is offered to every state candidate, on the same (entirely unobjectionable) basis. And this court gladly obliges.(See my previous argument against the Institute for Justice's position on this, with some subsequent clarifications on other aspects of the law.)\nThe majority position on this issue is that the unconstitutionality arises from the way that the subsidy to clean elections candidates is tied to campaign spending by the non-clean-elections candidates; I take it that had the subsidy been a fixed amount the argument would not have worked at all.\nThere's a good overview of the issues at the SCOTUS blog.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/06/5-4-bad-decision-against-arizona-clean.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-238.pdf\"\u003edecision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club\u0026rsquo;s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett came out today\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), a 5-4 decision ruling Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Clean Election laws unconstitutional.  The dissent, it seems to me, has a much better case than the majority:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003ethe program does not discriminate against any candidate  or point of view, and it does not restrict any person's ability to  speak.\u0026nbsp; In fact, by providing resources to many candidates, the program  creates more speech and thereby broadens public debate. ...\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt  every turn, the majority tries to convey the impression that Arizona's  matching fund statute is of a piece with laws prohibiting electoral  speech.  The majority invokes the language of \"limits,\" \"bar[s],\" and  \"restraints.\"  ... It equates the law to a \"restrictio[n] on the amount  of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a  campaign.\" ...\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere is just one problem. Arizona's  matching funds provision does not restrict, but instead subsidizes,  speech.  The law \"impose[s] no ceiling on [speech] and do[es] not  prevent anyone from speaking.\" ... The statute does not tell candidates  or their supporters how much money they can spend to convey their  message, when they can spend it, or what they can spend it on.  ...\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn  the usual First Amendment subsidy case, a person complains that the  government declined to finance his speech, while financing someone  else's; we must then decide whether the government differentiated  between these speakers on a prohibited basis--because it preferred one  speaker's ideas to another's. ... But the speakers bringing this case do  not make that claim--because they were never denied a subsidy. ...  Petitioners have \u003ci\u003erefused\u003c/i\u003e that assistance.  So they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated \u003ci\u003etheir\u003c/i\u003e First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to \u003ci\u003eother\u003c/i\u003e speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance.  Some people might call that \u003ci\u003echutzpah\u003c/i\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIndeed,  what petitioners demand is essentially a right to quash others' speech  through the prohibition of a (universally available) subsidy program.   Petitioners are able to convey their ideas without public financing--and  they would prefer the field to themselves, so that they can speak free  from response.  To attain that goal, they ask this court to prevent  Arizona from funding electoral speech--even though that assistance is  offered to every state candidate, on the same (entirely unobjectionable)  basis.  And this court gladly obliges.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(See \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/institute-for-justice-argument-against.html\"\u003emy previous argument against the Institute for Justice's position on this\u003c/a\u003e, with some subsequent clarifications on other aspects of the law.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe majority position on this issue is that the unconstitutionality arises from the way that the subsidy to clean elections candidates is tied to campaign spending by the non-clean-elections candidates; I take it that had the subsidy been a fixed amount the argument would not have worked at all.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere's \u003ca href=\"http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=116675\"\u003ea good overview of the issues at the SCOTUS blog\u003c/a\u003e.","title":"5-4 bad decision against Arizona Clean Elections law"},{"content":"LulzSec breached the security of the Arizona Department of Public Service (DPS) at some point in the past, and on June 23 around 4 p.m. Arizona time, posted some or all of what they had acquired. This included the names, email addresses, and passwords of several DPS officers as well as a number of internal documents which appeared to have been obtained from email attachments or perhaps from the compromise of end user systems. The documents included a PowerPoint presentation on gang tattoos that purported to be a way of identifying Islamic radicals, which was reminiscent of similar ludicrous law enforcement presentations from the 1980s about identifying Satanic cult members by their black clothing and occult symbols. (Some police departments still promote such nonsense, citing exposed fraud \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford\u0026rdquo; as a source). The documents also included a bulletin which expresses concern about the \u0026ldquo;Cop Recorder\u0026rdquo; iPhone application.\nOn June 24, DPS posted a press release responding to the attacks, accusing LulSec of being a \u0026ldquo;cyber terrorist group\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a term better reserved for the use of criminally disruptive activities intended to cause physical harm or disruption of critical infrastructure, not embarrassing organizations that haven\u0026rsquo;t properly secured themselves. In the press release, DPS enumerates the steps they\u0026rsquo;ve taken to secure themselves and the safeguards they\u0026rsquo;ve put in place. It\u0026rsquo;s an embarrassing list which suggests they\u0026rsquo;ve had poor information security and continue to have poor information security.\nFirst, their press release has a paragraph suggesting that the damage is limited, before they\u0026rsquo;re probably had time to really determine that\u0026rsquo;s the case. They write:\nThere is no evidence the attack has breached the servers or computer systems of DPS, nor the larger state network. Likewise, there is no evidence that DPS records related to ongoing investigations or other sensitive matters have been compromised.\nJust because they have \u0026ldquo;no evidence\u0026rdquo; of something doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen\u0026ndash;what records did they review to make this determination? Were they doing appropriate logging? Have logs been preserved, or were they deleted in the breach? Do they have centralized logging that is still secure? When did the compromise take place, and when did DPS detect it? The appearance is that they didn\u0026rsquo;t detect the breach until it was exposed by the perpetrators. What was the nature of the vulnerability exploited, and why wasn\u0026rsquo;t it detected by DPS in a penetration test or vulnerability assessment? LulzSec has complained about the number of SQL injection vulnerabilities they\u0026rsquo;ve found\u0026ndash;was there one in DPS\u0026rsquo;s web mail application?\nNext, they report what they\u0026rsquo;ve done in response, and again make statements about how \u0026ldquo;limited\u0026rdquo; the breach was:\nUpon learning that a limited number of agency e-mails had been disclosed, DPS took action. In addition to contacting other law enforcement agencies, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC) has been activated. Remote e-mail access for DPS employees remains frozen for the time-being. The security of the seven DPS officers in question remains the agency’s top priority and, since a limited amount of personal information was publicly disclosed as part of this breach. Steps are being taken to ensure the officers’ safety and that of their families. They\u0026rsquo;ve disabled the e-mail access that they believe was used in the breach\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s good. Presumably the exposed officer passwords were discovered to be from this system. Perhaps they will not re-enable the system until they have a more secure mechanism that requires VPN access and two-factor authentication\u0026ndash;or at least intrusion prevention, a web application firewall, and effective security monitoring. They\u0026rsquo;ve notified ACTIC\u0026ndash;presumably in part because of their overblown claim that this breach constitutes \u0026ldquo;terrorism\u0026rdquo; and in part because there are some ACTIC personnel who have good knowledge of information security. And they\u0026rsquo;re doing something to protect the safety of officers whose personal information (including some home addresses) was exposed. In the final paragraph of the press release, they list some of the safeguards they have in place:\n- 24/7 monitoring of the state’s Internet gateway.- Industry-standard firewalls, anti-virus software and other capabilities.- IT security staff employed at each major state agency.- Close coordination between the State of Arizona and state, federal and private-sector authorities regarding cyber-security issues.\nThis sounds like a less-than-minimal set of security controls.\u0026nbsp; Is that 24/7 monitoring just network monitoring for availability, or does it include security monitoring?\u0026nbsp; Do they have intrusion detection and prevention systems in place?\u0026nbsp; Do they have web application firewalls in front of web servers?\u0026nbsp; Do they have centralized logging and are those logs being monitored?\u0026nbsp; Are they doing event correlation?\u0026nbsp; How many full-time information security staff are there at DPS?\u0026nbsp; Are there any security incident response staff? Is there a CISO, and if so, why isn't that person being heard from?\u0026nbsp; Does DPS have an incident response plan?\u0026nbsp; Are they reviewing policy, process, and control gaps as part of their investigation of this incident?\u0026nbsp; Have they had any third-party assessments of their information security?\u0026nbsp; Have any past assessments, internal or external, recommended improvements that were not made?\nThese are questions journalists should be asking, which DPS should certainly be asking itself internally, and which organizations that haven't had a publicized breach yet should be asking themselves.\u0026nbsp; Breaches are becoming inevitable (a recent Ponemon Institute survey says 90% of surveyed businesses have had a security breach in the last 12 months; CNet charts the recent major publicly known breaches), so having in place the capacities to respond and recover quickly is key.\nHere's how NOT to prepare:\nDepth Security, \"How to Get Properly Owned\"\nHere's how NOT to respond to a breach or vulnerability disclosure:\nSANS ISC, \"How Not to Respond to a Security Incident\"\nHow to publicly disclose a breach:\nTechnologizer, \"How to Tell Me You Let Somebody Steal My Personal Information\"","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/06/arizona-department-of-public-services.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLulzSec breached the security of the Arizona Department of Public Service (DPS) at some point in the past, and on June 23 around 4 p.m. Arizona time, posted some or all of what they had acquired.  This included the names, email addresses, and passwords of several DPS officers as well as a number of internal documents which appeared to have been obtained from email attachments or perhaps from the compromise of end user systems.  The documents \u003ca href=\"http://nigelparry.com/news/radical-islamic-tattoos.shtml\"\u003eincluded a PowerPoint presentation on gang tattoos that purported to be a way of identifying Islamic radicals\u003c/a\u003e, which was reminiscent of similar ludicrous law enforcement presentations from the 1980s about identifying Satanic cult members by their black clothing and occult symbols. (\u003ca href=\"http://natchezpd.com/general.html\"\u003eSome police departments still promote such nonsense\u003c/a\u003e, citing \u003ca href=\"http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss117/lauren.htm\"\u003eexposed fraud \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e as a source).  The documents also included \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/23/breaking-lulzsec-lea.html\"\u003ea bulletin which expresses concern about the \u0026ldquo;Cop Recorder\u0026rdquo; iPhone application\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn June 24, DPS posted \u003ca href=\"http://www.azdps.gov/Media/News/View/?p=315\"\u003ea press release responding to the attacks\u003c/a\u003e, accusing LulSec of being a \u0026ldquo;cyber terrorist group\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a term better reserved for the use of criminally disruptive activities intended to cause physical harm or disruption of critical infrastructure, not embarrassing organizations that haven\u0026rsquo;t properly secured themselves.  In the press release, DPS enumerates the steps they\u0026rsquo;ve taken to secure themselves and the safeguards they\u0026rsquo;ve put in place. It\u0026rsquo;s an embarrassing list which suggests they\u0026rsquo;ve had poor information security and continue to have poor information security.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFirst, their press release has a paragraph suggesting that the damage is limited, before they\u0026rsquo;re probably had time to really determine that\u0026rsquo;s the case.  They write:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Arial;\"\u003eThere is no evidence the attack has breached the  servers or computer systems of DPS, nor the larger state network.  Likewise, there is no evidence that\u003cb\u003e \u003c/b\u003eDPS records related to ongoing investigations or other sensitive matters have been compromised.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJust because they have \u0026ldquo;no evidence\u0026rdquo; of something doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen\u0026ndash;what records did they review to make this determination?  Were they doing appropriate logging?  Have logs been preserved, or were they deleted in the breach?  Do they have centralized logging that is still secure?  When did the compromise take place, and when did DPS detect it?  The appearance is that they didn\u0026rsquo;t detect the breach until it was exposed by the perpetrators.  What was the nature of the vulnerability exploited, and why wasn\u0026rsquo;t it detected by DPS in a penetration test or vulnerability assessment?  LulzSec has complained about the number of SQL injection vulnerabilities they\u0026rsquo;ve found\u0026ndash;was there one in DPS\u0026rsquo;s web mail application?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNext, they report what they\u0026rsquo;ve done in response, and again make statements about how \u0026ldquo;limited\u0026rdquo; the breach was:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family: Arial;\"\u003eUpon learning that a limited number of agency e-mails  had been disclosed, DPS took action. In addition to contacting other  law enforcement agencies, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center  (ACTIC) has been activated. Remote e-mail access for DPS employees  remains frozen for the time-being. The security of the seven DPS  officers in question remains the agency’s top priority and, since a  limited amount of personal information was publicly disclosed as part of  this breach.\u003cspan\u003e  \u003c/span\u003eSteps are being taken to ensure the officers’ safety and that of their families.  \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve disabled the e-mail access that they believe was used in the breach\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s good.  Presumably the exposed officer passwords were discovered to be from this system.  Perhaps they will not re-enable the system until they have a more secure mechanism that requires VPN access and two-factor authentication\u0026ndash;or at least intrusion prevention, a web application firewall, and effective security monitoring.  They\u0026rsquo;ve notified ACTIC\u0026ndash;presumably in part because of their overblown claim that this breach constitutes \u0026ldquo;terrorism\u0026rdquo; and in part because there are some ACTIC personnel who have good knowledge of information security.  And they\u0026rsquo;re doing something to protect the safety of officers whose personal information (including some home addresses) was exposed. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn the final paragraph of the press release, they list some of the safeguards they have in place:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Department of Public Service's security breach"},{"content":"The assets of Premise Media, including rights to \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; are going up for auction. The Talk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film, which includes production materials. Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as I\u0026rsquo;ve suggested, make an \u0026ldquo;MST3K\u0026rdquo;-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors.\nUPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; was $201,000. My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it\u0026ndash;perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization. There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night\u0026rsquo;s high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it\u0026rsquo;s scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments. It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes.\nHistorical Comments Wesley (2011-06-25):\nMy discussion of something that might be done was not exclusionary. I\u0026#39;ve expanded on some other possibilities in the comments. Wesley R. Elsberry\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/06/help-talk-origins-bid-for-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe assets of Premise Media, including rights to \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; are going up for auction.  The \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/06/help-talkorigin.html\"\u003eTalk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film\u003c/a\u003e, which includes production materials.  Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as\u003ca href=\"/2011/06/expelled-up-for-auction.html\"\u003e I\u0026rsquo;ve suggested\u003c/a\u003e, make an \u0026ldquo;MST3K\u0026rdquo;-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; was $201,000.  My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it\u0026ndash;perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization.  There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night\u0026rsquo;s high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it\u0026rsquo;s scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments.  It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Help Talk Origins bid for \"Expelled\"?"},{"content":"Premise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28. Those assets include the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot; Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a \u0026ldquo;Mystery Science Theatre 3000\u0026rdquo; format?\nUPDATE: As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/06/expelled-up-for-auction.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePremise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and\u003ca href=\"http://ncse.com/news/2011/06/expelled-block-006695\"\u003e its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28\u003c/a\u003e.  Those assets include the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;  Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a \u0026ldquo;Mystery Science Theatre 3000\u0026rdquo; format?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled up for auction"},{"content":"On May 22, 2011, we will either see that many Christians have disappeared and we've been left behind, or that the claims of billboards like this are completely false.\u0026nbsp; If any individual or group of Camping followers have a strong belief that the former is the case, I challenge you to sign an agreement to transfer to me $100,000, effective May 22, 2011, in return for one of two things.\u0026nbsp; In the case that you have, in fact, been raptured, I promise to use those funds to evangelize in support of your beliefs to try to save as many of those left behind as possible.\u0026nbsp; In the far more likely case that you remain behind, I promise not to engage in public ridicule and humiliation of your nonsense for a year.\u0026nbsp; So it's a win-win.\u0026nbsp; Any takers?\nUPDATE (May 20, 2011):\u0026nbsp; Via Tom McIver:\u0026nbsp; \"Camping has a very idiosyncratic scheme: basically amillennial, and a hybrid of his own Bible numerology and a variant of the World Week (world lasts 6,000 yrs after Creation) framework. Camping puts Creation at 11,013 BC, Flood at 6,000 + 23 yrs later at 4,990 BC, Christ's birth 7 BC, and end of Church Age / beginning of Tribulation 13,000 yrs after Creation. 7,000 yrs after Flood (13,000 + 23 yrs after Creation) is 2011. 1988--13,000 yrs after Creation--was beginning of Tribulation (and also the year Camping left the established church, deciding it was heretical and that all churches had been taken over by Antichrist). 2011 is 23 yrs after 1988 (previously, Camping had predicted a shorter Tribulation ending in 1994). May 21 is Rapture and Judgment Day, world is destroyed Oct 21.\" And: \"Camping also made much of 1948 (founding of Israel), with next Jubilee supposedly 1994. He has much more numerology as well. Interestingly, he doesn't focus on political leaders or natural disasters (although I think the news reports of catastrophes and wars has increased his following).\" Eamon Knight (2011-05-15):\nPredictions (which I guarantee you have more chance of coming true than Camping\u0026#39;s): No one will take you up on your offer. Come next Sunday, there will be dead silence from the Camping, um, camp. Few or none will say \u0026quot;Oops, we were wrong; sorry\u0026quot; \u0026ndash; same as they did in 1994.\nOld Rockin' Dave (2011-05-15):\nOn May 22, I intend to email the following link to Camping and as many Camping followers as I can find: http://nelsonhaha.com/\nLippard (2011-05-15):\nEamon: I won\u0026#39;t bet against those predictions!\npee (2011-05-16):\nI thought the rule was that you couldn\u0026#39;t be saved _after_ the rapture. Or was it that you could be saved but you have to suffer and hope you don\u0026#39;t die before hand. Really\u0026hellip; is there no fscking rulebook for this event?\nGridman (2011-05-16):\nHey, if they can\u0026#39;t afford $100,000, I\u0026#39;ll offer the same for as little as $5,000. Although, for anything less than $50,000, I can only hold back the ridicule for 6 months.\nLippard (2011-05-16):\npee: Depends on whose theology you\u0026#39;re following, often divided into \u0026quot;pre-trib,\u0026quot; \u0026quot;mid-trib,\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;post-trib,\u0026quot; for those who think the rapture occurs before the 7-year tribulation, in the middle of it, or at the end. There are Christian martyrs during the tribulation, so if the rapture occurs pre-trib, as Camping and his followers suppose, there must be conversions during it. The \u0026quot;Left Behind\u0026quot; series also argues a pre-trib position, which seems to require the absurdity of a massively obvious verification of prediction that for some reason almost nobody is able to recognize. I highly recommend Slacktivist's hilarious page-by-page commentaries on the Left Behind books, which point out their absurdities as theology and fiction.\nM! (2011-05-16):\nJim, I imagine you are aware that many Christians do not believe in a secret rapture of the church at all, as it is not either biblically or historically strong in its foundation. Also, Camping may have some followers but most folks have recognized Family Radio for what it is - a cult.\nLastly, I am doing a radio show on this non-event event this Sunday night at 9pm on Backpack Radio.\nLippard (2011-05-17):\nVocab: Not sure I\u0026#39;ve seen the adjective \u0026quot;secret\u0026quot; applied, but I agree. This stuff is associated with dispensational premillenialism, which originated in the 19th century (though premillenialism itself goes back to the 1st century). Catholics don\u0026#39;t buy any of this, for example.\nearthfolk (2011-05-20):\nCheck it out, live countdown @ http://vrsry.com/endoftheworld\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/05/challenge-for-harold-camping-followers.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/Campingbillboard.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" height=\"181\" src=\"/images/Campingbillboard.jpg\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003eOn May 22, 2011, we will either see that many Christians have disappeared and we've been left behind, or that the claims of billboards like this are completely false.\u0026nbsp; If any individual or group of Camping followers have a strong belief that the former is the case, I challenge you to sign an agreement to transfer to me $100,000, effective May 22, 2011, in return for one of two things.\u0026nbsp; In the case that you have, in fact, been raptured, I promise to use those funds to evangelize in support of your beliefs to try to save as many of those left behind as possible.\u0026nbsp; In the far more likely case that you remain behind, I promise not to engage in public ridicule and humiliation of your nonsense for a year.\u0026nbsp; So it's a win-win.\u0026nbsp; Any takers?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 20, 2011):\u0026nbsp; Via Tom McIver:\u0026nbsp; \"Camping  has a very idiosyncratic scheme: basically amillennial, and a hybrid of  his own Bible numerology and a variant of the World Week (world lasts 6,000 yrs after Creation) framework.  Camping puts Creation at 11,013  BC, Flood at 6,000 +\u003cspan class=\"text_exposed_show\"\u003e 23 yrs later at  4,990 BC, Christ's birth 7 BC, and end of Church Age / beginning of  Tribulation 13,000 yrs after Creation. 7,000 yrs after Flood (13,000 +  23 yrs after Creation) is 2011.  1988--13,000 yrs after Creation--was  beginning of Tribulation (and also the year Camping left the established  church, deciding it was heretical and that all churches had been taken  over by Antichrist).  2011 is 23 yrs after 1988 (previously, Camping had  predicted a shorter Tribulation ending in 1994).  May 21 is Rapture and  Judgment Day, world is destroyed Oct 21.\" And: \"\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan data-jsid=\"text\"\u003eCamping also made much of 1948 (founding of  Israel), with next Jubilee supposedly 1994.  He has much more numerology  as well.  Interestingly, he doesn't focus on political leaders or  natural disasters (although I think the news reports of catastrophes and  wars has increased his following).\"\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-05-15)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ePredictions (which I guarantee you have more chance of coming true than Camping\u0026#39;s):\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNo one will take you up on your offer.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCome next Sunday, there will be dead silence from the Camping, um, camp. Few or none will say \u0026quot;Oops, we were wrong; sorry\u0026quot; \u0026ndash; same as they did in 1994.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Challenge for Harold Camping followers"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been a holdout on upgrading to a smart phone, in part because I haven\u0026rsquo;t paid over $100 for a mobile phone since they were the size of a brick. But after finding that I could get a Droid 2 Global on Verizon for $20 via Amazon Wireless a couple of months ago, I made the leap.\nMy initial experience was negative\u0026ndash;Amazon sent me a phone with instructions to go to Verizon\u0026rsquo;s web site to activate. Verizon\u0026rsquo;s website wanted me to enter a code from a Verizon invoice. No such invoice was included, and none of the numbers from the Amazon invoice worked. So I had to talk get through to a human being, at which point activation was fairly simple. But one more hurdle arose when I had to login to a Google account, which was an obstacle of my own creation\u0026ndash;I use very long randomly generated passwords with special characters, and have independent Google accounts for different services, so I had to choose which one to use with the phone before I knew what all the implications would be. (I chose my GMail account, which has worked out OK.)\nI wanted to set the phone up to use my own email servers, and to connect over VPN to gain access. This proved to be an obstacle that took a few days to resolve, due to inadequacies and bugs in Droid applications. The default VPN client doesn\u0026rsquo;t support OpenVPN, so I had to gain root access to install an OpenVPN client. This turned out to be the only reason I needed root access on the phone, and I managed to get that working without much difficulty.\nThe Email application, however, refused to send outbound mail through my mail server, which allows outbound port 25 client connections from internal hosts with no authentication but requiring TLS. This combination simply doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026ndash;I ended up setting up port 587 (submission port) with username/password authentication via Dovecot. Though I would have preferred using client certificate authentication, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work. I still run into periodic problems with Email refusing to send outbound messages for no apparent reason\u0026ndash;and the server shows no attempts being made. There doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a way to select an individual message in the outbox for an attempt to re-send.\nI managed to get contact and calendar synchronization working with my Mac, but I ended up exporting my iCal calendars to Google Calendar and using them as my primary calendars. Most of the correlation of contacts in the phone from multiple sources (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, and my Address Book) worked fairly well, but some contacts are duplicated due to name variations. Synchronization with LinkedIn is somewhat buggy, with first and last names showing up in contacts as \u0026ldquo;null null.\u0026quot; The Calendar app is even more buggy\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve created events on the phone that disappear, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen error messages in Portuguese and events with names that appear to be leftover debugging messages. I was also surprised to see that spelling correction was performed, without any prompts, on events I imported into the Calendar app from GMail (it incorrectly turned an acronym, \u0026ldquo;JAD,\u0026rdquo; into the word \u0026ldquo;HAD\u0026rdquo;).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve received an SMS text message from one person which was identified as being from another person\u0026ndash;looking at the specific contact information showed that the telephone number of the sender was associated with the correct contact, yet the name and photo displayed on the phone was of a different contact that had no association with that telephone number.\nThe phone\u0026rsquo;s camera capability is pretty good, but when I connect the phone to my Mac, it launches iPhoto but doesn\u0026rsquo;t find any photographs. I have to import them manually by pointing iPhoto to the correct location on the SD card.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen the phone crash repeatedly, especially when using location services (Google Navigation, Maps, and Yelp have been repeat offenders). There also seems to be some caching of location information that gets out of sync with other location information. For example, I saw Yelp correctly show me nearby restaurants, but refuse to allow me to check in to the one I was sitting in because I was \u0026ldquo;too far away\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and Maps showed my location being somewhere else I had been earlier. In one case, thousands of miles away\u0026ndash;an attempted Yelp check-in after returning from a vacation in Hawaii showed my location on the map as still being in Hawaii. In at least one case, I was unable to get my location to update for Yelp until I rebooted the phone.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had issues doing things as simple as copying and pasting a URL from Firefox to Facebook or Twitter. I copy the URL, verify that it\u0026rsquo;s in the clipboard correctly, but when I go into Facebook or Twitter to paste it, it is truncated.\nThe number of bugs I run into seems awfully high for very basic applications. The problem is no doubt in part due to the way development occurs between Google, Motorola, and Verizon, and Linux development, which also seems to be an obstacle to fixing security vulnerabilities. The May 2011 issue of CSO magazine reports that Coverity has done two scans of Android source code for the HTC Incredible, finding 359 defects (88 critical) on the first scan last November and 149 defects (106 unfixed from the previous scan) on a more recent scan. Accountability for the code is distributed across the aforementioned groups. (Also see this CNet story, or the Coverity report itself.)\nI wonder if I would run into problems like this with an iPhone.\nUPDATE (May 19, 2011): And now there\u0026rsquo;s a security vulnerability identified in version 2.3.3 of Android and earlier (I\u0026rsquo;m on 2.2, and can\u0026rsquo;t update until Verizon pushes an update), which potentially exposes contacts, calendar events, pictures, and other items stored in Google-hosted services, if users access those services via unencrypted WiFi. Although the connections to those services are over SSL-encrypted HTTP, there is a returned authToken that can be intercepted and used for subsequent logins to those services. I\u0026rsquo;ve never used my Droid on unencrypted WiFi networks, but I\u0026rsquo;ll now take extra care to make sure that I don\u0026rsquo;t. Version 2.3.4 fixes the problem for contacts and calendars but not for Picasa photos.\nUPDATE (November 16, 2011): It\u0026rsquo;s still been a horrible experience, and I still see regular crashes, particularly when using map and location-related applications. A new discovery today while traveling is that the World Clock widget does not know when Daylight Saving Time occurs\u0026ndash;the option labeled \u0026ldquo;Daylight Savings[sic] Time: Adjust displayed time for Daylight Savings\u0026rdquo; appears to just set the clock forward one hour, not display the correct current time taking into account the date and whether Daylight Saving Time is in effect in the given location. I traveled to the east coast and saw that my World Clock widget time for New York was one hour ahead of the actual time in New York. It\u0026rsquo;s utterly ridiculous that this widget requires the user to check and uncheck this option manually when Daylight Saving Time is in effect or not\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s exactly sort of simple task that computers are equipped to do on our behalf.\ntheCHSCA (2011-05-14):\nNo. You wouldn\u0026#39;t have these problems on an iPhone. Jim, how COULD you go over to the Dark Side?\nGeoff (2011-05-14):\nI\u0026#39;ve had no problems of this severity on my iPhones (3 generations). Early on I ran into issues with a self-signed cert on a mail system that we were setting up - I wasn\u0026#39;t ready to shell out for a kosher cert until after proof-of-concept - but they were quickly resolved. And that\u0026#39;s about it. I wish that AT\u0026amp;T\u0026#39;s network was better, but that\u0026#39;s my choice (now).\nS (2011-05-14):\nI\u0026#39;ve had a droid for about 6 months now, use it quite a bit, and I can\u0026#39;t really say I\u0026#39;ve had your level of problems. It\u0026#39;s crashed maybe twice, and that was because of faulty apps. Sometimes it gets a little slow, but that\u0026#39;s easy to fix with a reboot. Otherwise, any other problems I\u0026#39;ve run into are limited to the operator error variety. So far, my stubbornness in avoiding the Steve Jobs cult has worked out. :)\npee (2011-05-14):\nI had the mail/vpn problem with my Nexus One, and a problem where i need to lock/unlock when i pull it out of the charging dock. Other then that the hardware (including gps) has been absolutely rock solid. I haven't run stock android since last year though, because i like to keep tools on mine.\nLippard (2011-05-15):\nSean, pee: Which hardware are you on? I had read a few complaints about the Droid 2 Global (as well as the fact that Motorolas other than the Droid have a locked-down bootloader which prevents using custom roms like cyanogen), but I went with it because I wanted the ability to use the phone in Europe and Latin America. It appears to me that HTC\u0026#39;s hardware generates fewer complaints. Apple, with control over the hardware, software, and apps, has some advantages for stability and consistency\u0026hellip;\nEhud Gavron (2011-05-15):\nSo many things, so little space. I'll post on your FB.\nE\npee (2011-05-15):\nStill running the original release nexus 1. Solved the openvpn problem with a cyanogen build.\nS (2011-05-15):\nMotorola Droid 2. Though it\u0026#39;s also the only smartphone I\u0026#39;ve ever had, so I don\u0026#39;t have much of a basis of comparrison. I only know that problems seem scarce so far and I feel pretty satisfied.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/05/my-lousy-android-experience.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been a holdout on upgrading to a smart phone, in part because I haven\u0026rsquo;t paid over $100 for a mobile phone since they were the size of a brick.  But after finding that I could get a Droid 2 Global on Verizon for $20 via Amazon Wireless a couple of months ago, I made the leap.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy initial experience was negative\u0026ndash;Amazon sent me a phone with instructions to go to Verizon\u0026rsquo;s web site to activate.  Verizon\u0026rsquo;s website wanted me to enter a code from a Verizon invoice.  No such invoice was included, and none of the numbers from the Amazon invoice worked.  So I had to talk get through to a human being, at which point activation was fairly simple.  But one more hurdle arose when I had to login to a Google account, which was an obstacle of my own creation\u0026ndash;I use very long randomly generated passwords with special characters, and have independent Google accounts for different services, so I had to choose which one to use with the phone before I knew what all the implications would be.  (I chose my GMail account, which has worked out OK.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI wanted to set the phone up to use my own email servers, and to connect over VPN to gain access.  This proved to be an obstacle that took a few days to resolve, due to inadequacies and bugs in Droid applications.  The default VPN client doesn\u0026rsquo;t support OpenVPN, so I had to gain root access to install an OpenVPN client.  This turned out to be the only reason I needed root access on the phone, and I managed to get that working without much difficulty.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Email application, however, refused to send outbound mail through my mail server, which allows outbound port 25 client connections from internal hosts with no authentication but requiring TLS.  This combination simply doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026ndash;I ended up setting up port 587 (submission port) with username/password authentication via Dovecot.  Though I would have preferred using client certificate authentication, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work.  I still run into periodic problems with Email refusing to send outbound messages for no apparent reason\u0026ndash;and the server shows no attempts being made.  There doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a way to select an individual message in the outbox for an attempt to re-send.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI managed to get contact and calendar synchronization working with my Mac, but I ended up exporting my iCal calendars to Google Calendar and using them as my primary calendars.  Most of the correlation of contacts in the phone from multiple sources (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, and my Address Book) worked fairly well, but some contacts are duplicated due to name variations.  Synchronization with LinkedIn is somewhat buggy, with first and last names showing up in contacts as \u0026ldquo;null null.\u0026quot;  The Calendar app is even more buggy\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve created events on the phone that disappear, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen error messages in Portuguese and events with names that appear to be leftover debugging messages. I was also surprised to see that spelling correction was performed, without any prompts, on events I imported into the Calendar app from GMail (it incorrectly turned an acronym, \u0026ldquo;JAD,\u0026rdquo; into the word \u0026ldquo;HAD\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ve received an SMS text message from one person which was identified as being from another person\u0026ndash;looking at the specific contact information showed that the telephone number of the sender was associated with the correct contact, yet the name and photo displayed on the phone was of a different contact that had no association with that telephone number.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe phone\u0026rsquo;s camera capability is pretty good, but when I connect the phone to my Mac, it launches iPhoto but doesn\u0026rsquo;t find any photographs.  I have to import them manually by pointing iPhoto to the correct location on the SD card.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen the phone crash repeatedly, especially when using location services (Google Navigation, Maps, and Yelp have been repeat offenders).  There also seems to be some caching of location information that gets out of sync with other location information.  For example, I saw Yelp correctly show me nearby restaurants, but refuse to allow me to check in to the one I was sitting in because I was \u0026ldquo;too far away\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and Maps showed my location being somewhere else I had been earlier.  In one case, thousands of miles away\u0026ndash;an attempted Yelp check-in after returning from a vacation in Hawaii showed my location on the map as still being in Hawaii.  In at least one case, I was unable to get my location to update for Yelp until I rebooted the phone.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had issues doing things as simple as copying and pasting a URL from Firefox to Facebook or Twitter.  I copy the URL, verify that it\u0026rsquo;s in the clipboard correctly, but when I go into Facebook or Twitter to paste it, it is truncated.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe number of bugs I run into seems awfully high for very basic applications.  The problem is no doubt in part due to the way development occurs between Google, Motorola, and Verizon, and Linux development, which also seems to be an obstacle to fixing security vulnerabilities.  The May 2011 issue of CSO magazine reports that Coverity has done two scans of Android source code for the HTC Incredible, finding 359 defects (88 critical) on the first scan last November and 149 defects (106 unfixed from the previous scan) on a more recent scan.  Accountability for the code is distributed across the aforementioned groups.  (Also see \u003ca href=\"http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20021437-264.html\"\u003ethis CNet story\u003c/a\u003e, or \u003ca href=\"http://www.coverity.com/scan_android/\"\u003ethe Coverity report itself\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI wonder if I would run into problems like this with an iPhone.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 19, 2011): And now there\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/smart-phones/229500737\"\u003ea security vulnerability identified in version 2.3.3 of Android and earlier\u003c/a\u003e (I\u0026rsquo;m on 2.2, and can\u0026rsquo;t update until Verizon pushes an update), which potentially exposes contacts, calendar events, pictures, and other items stored in Google-hosted services, if users access those services via unencrypted WiFi.  Although the connections to those services are over SSL-encrypted HTTP, there is a returned authToken that can be intercepted and used for subsequent logins to those services.  I\u0026rsquo;ve never used my Droid on unencrypted WiFi networks, but I\u0026rsquo;ll now take extra care to make sure that I don\u0026rsquo;t.  Version 2.3.4 fixes the problem for contacts and calendars but not for Picasa photos.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 16, 2011): It\u0026rsquo;s still been a horrible experience, and I still see regular crashes, particularly when using map and location-related applications.  A new discovery today while traveling is that the World Clock widget does not know when Daylight Saving Time occurs\u0026ndash;the option labeled \u0026ldquo;Daylight Savings[sic] Time: Adjust displayed time for Daylight Savings\u0026rdquo; appears to just set the clock forward one hour, not display the correct current time taking into account the date and whether Daylight Saving Time is in effect in the given location.  I traveled to the east coast and saw that my World Clock widget time for New York was one hour ahead of the actual time in New York.  It\u0026rsquo;s utterly ridiculous that this widget requires the user to check and uncheck this option manually when Daylight Saving Time is in effect or not\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s exactly sort of simple task that computers are equipped to do on our behalf.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My lousy Android experience"},{"content":"After witnessing the despicable pseudo-historian David Barton on \u0026ldquo;The Daily Show,\u0026rdquo; inadequately rebutted by Jon Stewart, author Chris Rodda decided to take action. She\u0026rsquo;s giving away her book, Liars for Jesus, which carefully documents the historical revisionism of Barton and others, online as a PDF.\nYou can download Rodda\u0026rsquo;s book here. You can also purchase a paper or Kindle copy of the book from Amazon.com.\nRodda depends on income from her book, but felt it was important enough to give it away. I suspect she\u0026rsquo;ll see an increase in sales along with the free distribution.\nUPDATE:\nRodda\u0026rsquo;s book seems to be selling well:\nPaperback:\nAmazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in\u0026nbsp;Books \u0026gt; Religion \u0026amp; Spirituality \u0026gt; Religious Studies \u0026gt; Church \u0026amp; State Kindle:\nAmazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,451 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #1 in\u0026nbsp;Books \u0026gt; Religion \u0026amp; Spirituality \u0026gt; Religious Studies \u0026gt; Church \u0026amp; State #1 in\u0026nbsp;Kindle Store \u0026gt; Kindle eBooks \u0026gt; Nonfiction \u0026gt; Religion \u0026amp; Spirituality \u0026gt; Religious Studies \u0026gt; Church \u0026amp; State #3 in\u0026nbsp;Kindle Store \u0026gt; Kindle eBooks \u0026gt; Nonfiction \u0026gt; History \u0026gt; Americas \u0026gt; United States \u0026gt; Colonial Period ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/05/chris-roddas-liars-for-jesus-available.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter witnessing the despicable pseudo-historian David Barton on \u0026ldquo;The Daily Show,\u0026rdquo; inadequately rebutted by Jon Stewart, author Chris Rodda decided to take action.  She\u0026rsquo;s giving away her book, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Jesus-Religious-Alternate-American/dp/1419644386?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eLiars for Jesus\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" oxldatmbgtkpamjorlcr\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1419644386\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e, which carefully documents the historical revisionism of Barton and others, online as a PDF.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nYou can download Rodda\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.liarsforjesus.com/downloads/LFJ_FINAL.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  You can also \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Jesus-Religious-Alternate-American/dp/1419644386?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003epurchase a paper or Kindle copy of the book from Amazon.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRodda depends on income from her book, but felt it was important enough to give it away.  I suspect she\u0026rsquo;ll see an increase in sales along with the free distribution.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:\u003cbr /\u003e\nRodda\u0026rsquo;s book seems to be selling well:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPaperback:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chris Rodda's Liars for Jesus available free online"},{"content":"Today there was a Groupon offer for salt therapy from the \u0026ldquo;Salt Chalet Arizona.\u0026quot; Sufferers of respiratory illnesses are offered the chance to sit in a room containing salt for claimed relief of symptoms. I posted the following at the Salt Chalet Arizona\u0026rsquo;s blog, which is awaiting moderation:\n“Although there have been few clinical studies” — are there any that provide any empirical support for the claims made on this site? It seems to me that solid empirical support for safety and efficacy are absolutely essential requirements for any medical claim. What is the mechanism of relief, is that relief more than would be expected from a placebo effect, does it last, and are there any harmful short or long term consequences?To its credit, the blog's repost of a newspaper article about a similar service offered via a Pakistani salt mine includes the following skeptical passage:\nBut Shahid Abbas, a doctor who runs the private Allergy and Asthma Centre in Islamabad, said that although an asthma or allergy sufferer may get temporary relief, there is no quick-fix cure.\n“There is no scientific proof that a person can permanently get rid of asthma by breathing in a salt mine or in a particular environment,” he said. Alex (2011-04-30):\nEven without reading the article, I knew that the answer to the the question in the title was \u0026#39;nowhere\u0026#39;\nFrancisco (2011-05-02):\nWell as a singer, I can tell you that my ENT recommended I do a saline lavage twice daily during the allergy season. I love it, but the salt is hardly magical it’s just a buffering agent to keep the water from burning my nasal passages “water-board” style.\nThe Squeeze Bottle by Waterpik SinuSense is my weapon of choice, it’s great ;)\nThere is strong data to support this type of rinsing but healing is an art and a science and placebo is a wonderful thing, so let’s not bum people’s high.\nLippard (2011-05-02):\nFrancisco: Where\u0026#39;s the evidence that sitting in a room of salt is comparable to saline water rinse? There is empirical evidence supporting the benefits of nasal irrigation--which costs a whole lot less than sitting in the salt room.\nFrancisco (2011-05-03):\nJim, I agree with you in substance, don’t worry, you\u0026#39;re not gonna see me in the salt room any time soon. Let me clear up my point.\nMy only retort: If folks insist on paying for a miracle, we cannot convince or compel them against their motivations.\nSo let’s us not bum their high, like addicts when they want to change they will check themselves in.\nPeople tend only to change their motivations in response to: a fear of eminent death, new found self-disgust, or the light of a new relationship\nCall me a pessimist, but Schopenhauer is right: Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants.\nPeople are beavers and beavers are going to build dams, because that’s what beavers do.\nI just enjoy the workmanship ;)\nFrancisco (2011-05-06):\nJim, unrelated but check this out: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/05/thoughts-of-death-increase-appeal-of.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/04/salt-therapy-wheres-evidence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday there was a Groupon offer for salt therapy from the \u0026ldquo;Salt Chalet Arizona.\u0026quot;  Sufferers of respiratory illnesses are offered the chance to sit in a room containing salt for claimed relief of symptoms.  I \u003ca href=\"http://www.saltchaletarizona.com/2011/04/salt-chalet-arizona-testimonial-7-asthma-sufferer/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eposted the following at the Salt Chalet Arizona\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, which is awaiting moderation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e“Although there have been few clinical studies” — are there any that  provide any empirical support for the claims made on this site?  It  seems to me that solid empirical support for safety and efficacy are  absolutely essential requirements for any medical claim.  What is the  mechanism of relief, is that relief more than would be expected from a  placebo effect, does it last, and are there any harmful short or long  term consequences?\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo its credit, the blog's repost of a newspaper article about a similar service offered via a Pakistani salt mine includes the following skeptical passage:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eBut Shahid Abbas, a doctor who runs the private Allergy and Asthma Centre in Islamabad, said that although an asthma or allergy sufferer may get temporary relief, there is no quick-fix cure.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n“There is no scientific proof that a person can permanently get rid of asthma by breathing in a salt mine or in a particular environment,” he said.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAlex\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-04-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eEven without reading the article, I knew that the answer to the the question in the title was \u0026#39;nowhere\u0026#39;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Salt therapy: Where's the evidence?"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve written a pair of blog posts for Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Defense in Depth Security\u0026rdquo; blog based on recent work by Rick Wash and by multiple people at Intel including Timothy Casey about modeling the agents behind information security threats. The first post is about non-expert home computer users\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;folk models\u0026rdquo; of the threats from viruses and hackers,which makes the point that seemingly irrational decisions about security may in fact be completely rational based on their conceptual understanding of the threat they believe they are combatting. Only by changing their understanding of the threat, which requires not just information but appropriately salient information and the right incentives, are we likely to see changes in user behavior. I point out an example of a recent news story that might help provide both elements with regard to one type of vulnerability, open wireless access points.\nThe second blog post, which will appear tomorrow, is about expert models of threat agents\u0026ndash;the Intel Threat Agent Library. Intel created a large set of attacker personas and identified their attributes, for use in matching against vulnerabilities and prioritizing controls as part of a broader risk assessment process.\nI\u0026rsquo;m happy to discuss these further either here or at the Global Crossing blogs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/03/information-security-threat-models-folk.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve written a pair of blog posts for Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Defense in Depth Security\u0026rdquo; blog based on recent work by Rick Wash and by multiple people at Intel including Timothy Casey about modeling the agents behind information security threats. The \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/?q=content/understanding-information-security-threats-folk-models\"\u003efirst post is about non-expert home computer users\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;folk models\u0026rdquo; of the threats from viruses and hackers\u003c/a\u003e,which makes the point that seemingly irrational decisions about security may in fact be completely rational based on their conceptual understanding of the threat they believe they are combatting.  Only by changing their understanding of the threat, which requires not just information but appropriately salient information and the right incentives, are we likely to see changes in user behavior.  I point out an example of a recent news story that might help provide both elements with regard to one type of vulnerability, open wireless access points.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe second blog post, which will appear tomorrow,\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/?q=content/understanding-information-security-threats-expert-models\"\u003e is about expert models of threat agents\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;the Intel Threat Agent Library.  Intel created a large set of attacker personas and identified their attributes, for use in matching against vulnerabilities and prioritizing controls as part of a broader risk assessment process.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;m happy to discuss these further either here or at the Global Crossing blogs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Information security threat models, folk \u0026 expert"},{"content":"Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ CD8) was shot this morning at an event at a Tucson grocery store, along with several other people. The Tucson Citizen reports that she was \u0026ldquo;shot point blank in the head.\u0026quot; This brings to mind a previous gun incident at another Tucson event at a grocery store in August 2009.\nThe image below is from Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s website, \u0026ldquo;Take Back the 20.\u0026quot; The lower right target sight image on Arizona is Congressional District 8, which was one of the \u0026ldquo;targets\u0026rdquo; for candidates who supported the Health Care Reform bill to be defeated.\nUPDATE: CNN reports that an employee of a nearby business reported \"15 to 20 gunshots\" and 12 victims.\nUPDATE: The Arizona Republic reports that at least four of the victims are dead.\nUPDATE: NPR reports that Rep. Giffords is one of the dead\u0026nbsp;and that the killer, a male in his teens or twenties, was apprehended at the scene. \u0026nbsp;The death toll is up to seven.\nUPDATE: KOLD News-13 in Tucson says Giffords is not dead but is in surgery at University Medical Center.\nUPDATE: Another version of Palin's \"target map\" explicitly called out Giffords as a target:\nUPDATE (1 p.m. Arizona time): The Palin takebackthe20.com gunsight map has been removed.\nUPDATE: In an MSNBC interview after her office was vandalized after her vote for Health Care Reform, Rep. Giffords said:\nWe need to realize that the rhetoric, and the firing people up and … for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s ‘targeted’ list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve gotta realize that there are consequences to that action.\nUPDATE (1:29 p.m.): Talking Points Memo reports that a federal judge was also one of the shooting victims. There will be a UMC press briefing at 1:30 p.m.\nUPDATE: NBC reports that the federal judge is one of the dead. \u0026nbsp;That judge, John Roll, was chief judge \u0026nbsp;of the U.S. District Court for Arizona and received death threats last year over an immigration case.\nSarah Palin has deleted her tweet from March, below:\nUPDATE: Correction, the tweet above has NOT been deleted from Sarah Palin's tweetstream.\nUPDATE (1:54 p.m.): The shooter suspect in custody is named Jared Loughner. The Pima County Sheriff's Office reports 6 dead, 18 wounded.\nUPDATE: A YouTube video from Jared Lee Loughner. \u0026nbsp;He was a student at Pima Community College and apparently a disturbed individual. \u0026nbsp;Here's an apparent sample of his writing:\nHello, and welcome my classified leak of information that's of the United States Military to the student body and you. Firstly, I want you to understand this from the start. Did you know grammar is double blind, listener? Secondly, if you want to understand the start of revelatory thoughts then listen to this video. I'll look at you mother fuckin Anarchists who have a\u0026nbsp;problem with them illegal illiterate pigs. :-D If you're a citizen in the United States as of now, then your constitution is the United States. You're a citizen in the United States as of now. Thus, your constitution is the United States. Laugh. I'll let you in on their little cruel joke that's genocidal. They're argument is appeal to force on their jurisdiction with lack of proof of evidence. Each subject is in question for the location! The police don't quite get paid correctly with them dirty front runners under section\u0026nbsp;10? Their country's alliances are able to make illegal trades under section 10. Eh! I'm a Nihilist, not someone who put who put trust in god! What is section 10 you ask? If you make a purchase then it's illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. You make a purchase. Therefore, it's illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. We need a drum roll for those front\u0026nbsp;runners in the election; those illegal teachers, pigs, and politicians of yours are under illegal authority of their constitution. Those dirty pigs think they know the damn year. Thirdly, tell them mother fuckers to count from 0 to whenever they feel a threat to stop their count. We can all hope they add new numbers and letters to their count down. Did you run out of breath around the trillions, listener? Well, B.C.E is yet to start for Ad to begin! What does this mean for a citizen in any country? Those illegal military personal are able to sign into a country that they can't find with an impossible date! How did you trust your child with them fraud teachers and front runners, listener? Did you now know that the teachers, pigs, and front runners are treasonous! You shouldn't jump to conclusion with your education plan. The constitution as of now, which is in use by the current power pigs, aren't able to protect the bill of\u0026nbsp;rights! Do you now have enough information to know the two wars are illegal! What is your date of time, listener? Fourthly, those applications that are with background checks break the United States constitution! What's your riot name? I'll catch you! Top secret: Why don't people control the money system? Their Current Currency(1/1) / Your new infinite currency (1/~infinte) This is a selcte information of revoluntary thoughts! Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin\u0026nbsp;Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws\u0026nbsp;shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Each subject is unlocatible!\nUPDATE: Another video shows someone, apparently Loughner, burning a U.S. flag. \u0026nbsp;His YouTube profile says:\nName: Jared Lee Loughner\nChannel Views: 271\nJoined: October 25, 2010\nWebsite: http://Myspace.com/fallenasleep\nHometown: Tucson\nCountry: United States\nSchools: I attended school: Thornydale elementary,Tortolita Middle School, Mountain View Highschool, Northwest Aztec Middle College, and Pima Community College.Interests: My favorite interest was reading, and I studied grammar. Conscience dreams were a great study in college!\nMovies: (*My idiom: I could coin the moment!*)\nMusic: Pass me the strings!\nBooks:\nI had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.\nUPDATE: Someone who knew him in 2007 says his politics then were left-wing. \u0026nbsp;Looks like a flag-burning nihilist kook, perhaps schizophrenic.\nUPDATE: The Arizona Daily Star has fairly detailed background on Loughner, who would interrupt his pre-algebra class with \"nonsensical outbursts\" and was barred from class.\nUPDATE: A New York Times profile of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, titled \"A Passionate Politician with a Long List of Friends.\"\nUPDATE (January 9): The federal complaint against Loughner. \u0026nbsp;Loughner was good enough to leave clear evidence of premeditation at his home.\nUPDATE: A \"second suspect\" turned out to be the cab driver who drove Loughner to the Safeway, who came inside as Loughner had to get change to pay him. \u0026nbsp;He has been cleared as to any involvement in the shooting.\nUPDATE (January 10): The Daily Beast points out, via the Southern Poverty Law Center, that Loughner's rants closely resemble the writings of Milwaukee-based David Wynn Miller, in talk about grammar and mind control--which brings us back to right-wing nutcases.\nUPDATE (January 11): CNN is still saying it can find no link between Loughner and any groups, while\u0026nbsp;Boingboing has posted further comparison to the insanity of David Wynn Miller. \u0026nbsp;It's amazing that this guy has people buying into his nonsense and trying to use it in court (always unsuccessfully, of course).\nUPDATE: The DC points out that Loughner was a commenter at the UFO/conspiracy website AboveTopSecret--where his fellow commenters found him difficult to understand, considered him to be crazy, and asked him to get help before he hurt himself or someone else. \u0026nbsp;Despite mental health programs in Arizona that allowed anyone in contact with him to report him, and Pima Community College's recognition that he had mental problems, no one reported him to the state for evaluation. Historical Comments Michael C. Rush (2011-01-08):\nAppalling. Thanks for the updates.\nKeir (2011-01-09):\nI teach history here in Germany. Those people who think that words and incitement to violence can be fobbed off and taken lightly should come to visit and learn what their country fought against. I fear what\u0026#39;s going on in America where people\u0026#39;s ideas are not debated, but instead the people themselves are attacked. Already last week one guy was using the media to argue that Michael Vicks should be executed (no doubt given his race). Palin has constantly used this language which appeals to the type of ignorant, disadvantaged and uneducated group of people that makes up her base and has never been called for it. The irony is that Giffords had, and look where she is now (although she herself was an advocate of gun ownership). If Palin\u0026#39;s incitement is no big deal then why did she wait until someone was attacked to delete the image?\nAlex (2011-01-09):\nI pointed out in another forum that Arizona is next to Nevada, where tea party candidate Sharron Angle said that the cure for a Democratic politician was \u0026#39;Second Amendment remedies.\u0026#39;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/01/rep-gabrielle-giffords-shot-at-tucson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ CD8) was shot this morning at an event at a Tucson grocery store, along with several other people.  The \u003ci\u003eTucson Citizen\u003c/i\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://tucsoncitizen.com/three-sonorans/2011/01/08/gabrielle-giffords-shot-in-head-in-tucson/\"\u003ereports that she was \u0026ldquo;shot point blank in the head.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  This brings to mind \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/gabrielle-giffords-town-h_n_255656.html\"\u003ea previous gun incident at another Tucson event at a grocery store in August 2009\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe image below is from \u003ca href=\"http://www.takebackthe20.com/\"\u003eSarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s website, \u0026ldquo;Take Back the 20.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  The lower right target sight image on Arizona is Congressional District 8, which was\u003ca href=\"http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/09/palin-targets-health-care-law-supporters-on-site/1\"\u003e one of the \u0026ldquo;targets\u0026rdquo; for candidates who supported the Health Care Reform bill to be defeated\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tucson grocery store event"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve joined the team of Global Crossing bloggers\u0026ndash;please check out my initial post at Global Crossing blogs, \u0026ldquo;Forget passwords!\u0026quot;\n(BTW, my friend and colleague Glen Walker independently wrote a blog post making a very similar recommendation.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2011/01/global-crossing-blogging.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve joined the team of Global Crossing bloggers\u0026ndash;please check out my initial post at Global Crossing blogs, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/?q=forget-passwords\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Forget passwords!\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(BTW, my friend and colleague Glen Walker independently wrote\u003ca href=\"http://coyotl.net/?p=66\"\u003e a blog post making a very similar recommendation\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Global Crossing blogging"},{"content":"[Actually published 2012-01-01.]\nThis was a good year for getting a lot of reading done, including a number of fairly lengthy books, thanks to going back to school full-time for the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010.\nBooks read in 2010:\n\u0026nbsp;David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History Daniel Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Revised and Expanded Edition James Bamford, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America Mark B. Brown, Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation \u0026nbsp;Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Werner Callebaut, Taking the Naturalistic Turn, or, How Real Philosophy of Science is Done Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise Michael J. Crowe, Mechanics from Aristotle to Einstein Heather E. Douglas, Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal Peter Fenton, Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (also on the CIA's website as HTML or PDF) Sheila Jasanoff, Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (re-read) Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine James Menn, Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up\u0026nbsp; Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk\u0026nbsp; Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, Satiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs \u0026amp; Vulgarians Dave Pratt, Behind the Mic: 30 Years in Radio Benjamin Radford, Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Vol. I Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations Adrian J. Slywotski, The Upside:\u0026nbsp; The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats Into Growth Breakthroughs Neal Stephenson, Anathem Cass Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent Margaret Thaler Singer, Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace (revised and updated edition) Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts\nVernor Vinge, The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics Michal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks John H. Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour (Previously: 2009,\u0026nbsp;2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.) Historical Comments Hume's Ghost (2011-01-02):\nI\u0026#39;ve read two of those books: - Irreligion \u0026amp; Mistakes were made. I own three of those books:\nVoodoo Histories, The Shadow Factory, and Merchants of Doubt And I have been wanting to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks \u0026hellip;\nHume's Ghost (2011-01-02):\nActually, I own 4 of those books (Irreligion being the 4th).\nSheldon (2011-01-02):\nShow off! (I am at a stage in my life where reading lots of books does not seem to be much of an option, I am envious!) :)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Actually published 2012-01-01.]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was a good year for getting a lot of reading done, including a number of fairly lengthy books, thanks to going back to school full-time for the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBooks read in 2010:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u0026nbsp;David Aaronovitch, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Histories-Conspiracy-Shaping-History/dp/B0040RMEM6?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eVoodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B0040RMEM6\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDaniel Ariely, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Decisions-Revised-Expanded/dp/B002D1OSNY?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ePredictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B002D1OSNY\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e, Revised and Expanded Edition\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Bamford, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-Ultra-Secret-Eavesdropping-America/dp/B002QGSY8G?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B002QGSY8G\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMark B. Brown, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Democracy-Expertise-Institutions-Representation/dp/0262513048?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eScience in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation\u003c/a\u003e \u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0262513048\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026nbsp;Vincent Bugliosi, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eReclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0393045250\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWerner Callebaut, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Naturalistic-Philosophy-Science-Conceptual-Foundations/dp/0226091872?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eTaking the Naturalistic Turn, or, How Real Philosophy of Science is Done\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0226091872\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNicholas Carr, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Big-Switch-Rewiring-Edison-Google/dp/0393333949?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0393333949\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, Isaac Newton, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Principia-Mathematical-Principles-Natural-Philosophy/dp/0520088166?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0520088166\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Collins and Robert Evans, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Expertise-Harry-Collins/dp/0226113612?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eRethinking Expertise\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0226113612\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael J. Crowe, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Aristotle-Einstein-Michael-Crowe/dp/1888009322?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMechanics from Aristotle to Einstein\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1888009322\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHeather E. Douglas, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Policy-Value-Free-Heather-Douglas/dp/0822960265?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eScience, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0822960265\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeter Fenton, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Eyeing-Flash-Making-Carnival-Artist/dp/074325855X?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eEyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=074325855X\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCharles Freeman, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Closing-Western-Mind-Faith-Reason/dp/1400033802?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1400033802\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Who-Controls-Internet-Illusions-Borderless/dp/0195340647?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eWho Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0195340647\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichards J. Heuer, Jr., \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Intelligence-Analysis-Richards-Heuer/dp/0160590353?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ePsychology of Intelligence Analysis\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0160590353\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (also on\u003ca href=\"https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/index.html\"\u003e the CIA's website as HTML or PDF\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSheila Jasanoff, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Designs-Nature-Science-Democracy-Europe/dp/0691130426?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDesigns on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0691130426\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThomas Kuhn, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Copernican-Revolution-Planetary-Astronomy-Development/dp/0674171039?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Copernican Revolution\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0674171039\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (re-read)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBruno Latour, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/We-Have-Never-Been-Modern/dp/0674948394?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eWe Have Never Been Modern\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0674948394\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Lewis, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0393072231\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames Menn, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-System-Error-Bringing-Internet/dp/1586489070?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eFatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1586489070\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNaomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMerchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1596916109\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn Allen Paulos, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Irreligion-Mathematician-Explains-Arguments-Just/dp/0809059185?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eIrreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0809059185\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Nonsense-Stilts-Tell-Science-Bunk/dp/0226667863?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eNonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0226667863\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePaul Provenza and Dan Dion, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Satiristas-Comedians-Contrarians-Raconteurs-Vulgarians/dp/0061859346?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eSatiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs \u0026amp; Vulgarians\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0061859346\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDave Pratt, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dave-Pratt-Behind-Mic-Years/dp/1589851099?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eBehind the Mic: 30 Years in Radio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1589851099\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBenjamin Radford, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Paranormal-Investigation-Unexplained-Mysteries/dp/093645511X?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eScientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=093645511X\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChris Rodda, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Jesus-Religious-Alternate-American/dp/1419644386?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eLiars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Vol. I\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1419644386\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRebecca Skloot, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052173?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=1400052173\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Schmidtz, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Justice-David-Schmidtz/dp/0521539366?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eElements of Justice\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0521539366\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSteven Shapin, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Social-History-Truth-Seventeenth-Century-Foundations/dp/0226750191?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eA Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0226750191\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid Shenk, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Genius-All-Us-Everything-Genetics/dp/0385523653?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0385523653\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eClay Shirky, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/0143114948?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHere Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0143114948\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdrian J. Slywotski, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Upside-Strategies-Turning-Breakthroughs-ebook/dp/B000QCQ94I?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Upside:\u0026nbsp; The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats Into Growth Breakthroughs\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B000QCQ94I\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNeal Stephenson, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Hardcover-Neal-Stephenson-Author/dp/B002U1LUOM?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAnathem\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk mhoodnflrsaxdicozirk ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb ojuwatmtanfkoqbsmjyb klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B002U1LUOM\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCass Sunstein, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Societies-Dissent-Oliver-Wendell-Lectures/dp/0674017684?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eWhy Societies Need Dissent\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0674017684\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMargaret Thaler Singer, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Cults-Our-Midst-Continuing-Against/dp/0787967416?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0787967416\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (revised and updated edition)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCarol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0156033909\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVernor Vinge, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0312875843?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0312875843\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRichard S. Westfall, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Construction-Modern-Science-Mechanisms-Mechanics/dp/0521292956?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0521292956\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichal Zalewski,\u0026nbsp;\u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Wire-Passive-Reconnaissance-Indirect/dp/1593270461?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eSilence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn H. Zammito, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Derangement-Epistemes-Post-positivism-Science/dp/0226978621?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eA Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" class=\" klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary klcnyqefwmsmbdfsgary cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq cwelzoknpxcnibuzvefq\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0226978621\" style=\"border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html\"\u003e2009\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-01-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI\u0026#39;ve read two of those books:\n- Irreligion \u0026amp; Mistakes were made.\n\u003cp\u003eI own three of those books:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2010"},{"content":"John Lynch and I have co-authored a review of the Creation Ministries International film on Darwin which will be appearing in vol. 30 of Reports of the National Center for Science Education and which may be found on their website.\nMy previous blogged review of the film is here.\nI gave a little more background on the film here. John Lynch has said more about it here, here, here, and here, mostly about the deception used to get interviews by prominent historians.\nMagic Tony (2010-12-28):\nWell done, Jim!\nLippard (2010-12-31):\nThanks, Tony!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/11/review-of-cmis-voyage-that-shook-world.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Lynch and I have co-authored a review of the Creation Ministries International film on Darwin which will be appearing in vol. 30 of \u003ci\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/i\u003e and which may be \u003ca href=\"http://ncse.com/rncse/30/review-voyage-that-shook-world\"\u003efound on their website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy previous blogged review of the film is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/voyage-that-shook-world.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI gave a little more background on the film \u003ca href=\"/2009/06/cmi-makes-darwin-docu-drama.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  John Lynch has said more about it \u003ca href=\"http://blog.jmlynch.org/2009/06/21/creationists-lie-to-historians-and-deny-subterfuge/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blog.jmlynch.org/2009/06/27/more-on-creationists-lying-to-historians/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blog.jmlynch.org/2009/06/29/on-lying-cherry-picking-atheism-and-a-new-word-of-the-day/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://blog.jmlynch.org/2009/07/20/historians-respond-to-the-voyage-that-shook-the-world/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, mostly about the deception used to get interviews by prominent historians.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review of CMI's \"Voyage That Shook the World\""},{"content":"While listening to a recent Token Skeptic podcast of a Dragon*Con panel on Skepticism and Education moderated by D.J. Grothe of the James Randi Educational Foundation, I was struck by his repeated references to Skepticism as a worldview (which I put in uppercase to distinguish it from skepticism as a set of methods of inquiry, an attitude or approach). I wrote the following email to the podcast:\nI am sufficiently irritated by D.J. Grothe's repeated reference to\u0026nbsp;skepticism as a \"worldview\" that I will probably be motivated to\u0026nbsp;write a blog post about it.There is a growing ambiguity caused by overloading of the term\u0026nbsp;\"skepticism\" on different things--attitudes, methods and processes,\u0026nbsp;accumulated bodies of knowledge, a movement. \u0026nbsp;To date, there hasn't\u0026nbsp;really been a capital-S Skepticism as a worldview since the Pyrrhonean\u0026nbsp;philosophical variety. \u0026nbsp;A worldview is an all-encompassing view of the\u0026nbsp;world which addresses how one should believe, how one should act, what\u0026nbsp;kinds of things exist, and so forth. \u0026nbsp;It includes presuppositions not\u0026nbsp;only about factual matters, but about values.\u0026nbsp;The skepticisms worth promoting are attitudes, methods and processes,\u0026nbsp;and accumulated bodies of knowledge that are consistent with a wide\u0026nbsp;variety of world views. \u0026nbsp;The methods are contextual, applied against a\u0026nbsp;background of social institutions and relationships that are based on\u0026nbsp;trust. \u0026nbsp;There is room in the broader skeptical movement for pluralism,\u0026nbsp;a diversity of approaches that set the skepticisms in different\u0026nbsp;contexts for different purposes--educational, political,\u0026nbsp;philosophical, religious. \u0026nbsp;An unrestricted skepticism is corrosive and\u0026nbsp;undermines all knowledge, for there is no good epistemological\u0026nbsp;response to philosophical skepticism that doesn't make some\u0026nbsp;assumptions.Trying to turn skepticism into a capital-S Skeptical worldview\u0026nbsp;strikes me as misguided.To my mind, what's most important and useful about skepticism is that it drives the adoption of the best available tools for answering questions, providing more guidance on how to think than on what to think, and on how to recognize trustworthy sources and people to rely upon. \u0026nbsp;There's not a completely sharp line between these--knowledge about methods and their accuracy is dependent upon factual knowledge, of course.\nI think the recent exchanges about the Missouri Skepticon conference really being an atheist conference may partly have this issue behind them, though I think there are further issues there as well about the traditional scope of \"scientific skepticism\" being restricted to \"testable claims\" and the notion of methodological naturalism that I don't entirely agree with. \u0026nbsp;Skepticism is about critical thinking, inquiry, investigation, and using the best methods available to find reliable answers to questions (and promoting broader use of those tools), while atheism is about holding a particular position on a particular issue, that no gods exist. \u0026nbsp;The broader skeptical movement produces greater social benefits by promoting more critical thinking in the general public than does the narrower group of skeptical atheists who primarily argue against religion and especially the smaller subset who are so obsessed that they are immediately dismissed by the broader public as monomaniacal cranks. \u0026nbsp;The organized skeptical groups with decades of history have mainly taken pains to avoid being represented by or identified with the latter, and as a result have been represented by skeptics of a variety of religious views in events of lasting consequence. Think, for example, of the audience for Carl Sagan's \"Cosmos\" and his subsequent works, or of the outcome of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.\nIn my opinion, the distinction between skepticism and atheism is an important one, and I think Skepticon does blur and confuse that distinction by using the \"skeptic\" name and having a single focus on religion. This doesn't mean that most of the atheists participating in that conference don't qualify as skeptics, or even that atheist groups promoting rationality on religious subjects don't count as part of the broader skeptical movement. \u0026nbsp;It just means that there is a genuine distinction to be drawn.\n(BTW, I don't think atheism is a worldview, either--it's a single feature of a worldview, and one that is less important to my mind than skepticism.)\nPrevious posts on related subjects:\n\"A few comments on the nature and scope of skepticism\"\n\"Skepticism, belief revision, and science\"\n\"Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry\"\nAlso related, a 1999 letter to the editor of Skeptical Inquirer from the leaders of many local skeptical groups (Daniel Barnett, North Texas Skeptics, Dallas, TX; David Bloomberg, Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land, Springfield, IL; Tim Holmes, Taiwan Skeptics, Tanzu, Taiwan; Peter Huston, Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, Schenectady, NY; Paul Jaffe, National Capitol Area Skeptics, Washington, D.C.; Eric Krieg, Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, Philadelphia, PA; Scott Lilienfeld, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Jim Lippard, Phoenix Skeptics and Tucson Skeptical Society, Tucson, AZ; Rebecca Long, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Lori Marino, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Rick Moen, Bay Area Skeptics, Menlo Park, CA; Steven Novella, New England Skeptical Society, New Haven, CT; Bela Scheiber, Rocky Mountain Skeptics, Denver, CO; and Michael Sofka, Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, Troy, NY).\nUPDATE (December 1, 2010): D.J. Grothe states in the most recent (Nov. 26) Point of Inquiry podcast (Karen Stollznow interviews James Randi and D.J. Grothe), at about 36:50, that he has been misunderstood in his references to skepticism as a \"worldview.\"\u0026nbsp; This suggests to me that he has in mind a narrower meaning, as Barbara Drescher has interpreted him in the comments below.\u0026nbsp; My apologies to D.J. for misconstruing his meaning. Michael C. Rush (2010-11-20):\nYou make some good points, but ultimately I am unconvinced, I think. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to use \u0026quot;skeptic\u0026quot; in a manner analogous to how we would use \u0026quot;cynic,\u0026quot; \u0026quot;idealist,\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;epicure\u0026quot; in the modern sense, as general categories expressing one\u0026#39;s dominant tendencies in approaching and assessing the world without requiring absolute fidelity to some ancient philosophy or formulation. Being open to questioning everything does not, it seems to me, imply rejection of everything. As for the skepticism/atheism issue, I think a person could be an atheist without being a skeptic, but I think it would be pretty silly. A \u0026quot;faith-based\u0026quot; atheism isn't of much interest or use. Can a person, conversely, be a skeptic without being an atheist? Clearly, but not, I would argue, a very good one.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-20):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;My point was simply that you cannot question everything *simultaneously*, for that gives you no basis on which to assess. True enough. But isn't that more of a caricature of a skeptic than a genuine representation of skeptics as they exist in the world? Kind of like saying an atheist can't hold any moral values because he doesn't have any derived from religious texts? Who really tries to be skeptical about everything all the time all at once? You seem to be arguing that skeptics are defined by their habitual use of skeptical tools, and I agree with that, but isn't there a threshold of habitual use where it eventually becomes useful and accurate to say that someone has a skeptical worldview?\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;Conversely, there are many excellent non-atheist skeptics.\nBut are there? Really? Or is it just the case that some non-atheists use skeptical tools sometimes, in limited contexts? I wouldn't throw out their contributions, but I don't feel obliged to hold onto the bathwater, either, and understanding the context\u0026ndash;and the limits\u0026ndash;of their skeptical thought can be important.\nLippard (2010-11-20):\nI don\u0026#39;t disagree with anything in your first paragraph. Being open to questioning everything doesn\u0026#39;t imply rejection of everything, I agree. My point was simply that you cannot question everything *simultaneously*, for that gives you no basis on which to assess. There are plenty of non-skeptical atheists, unfortunately. Conversely, there are many excellent non-atheist skeptics. Many of the best have been agnostics (e.g., Carl Sagan) or theists of some variety (e.g., Martin Gardner). Some excellent skeptical work has been done by evangelical Christians (such as the Cornerstone magazine exposures of Mike Warnke and Lauren Stratford), even though they didn't self-identify as skeptics.\nIt would be a mistake to refuse to countenance someone as a full-fledged member of the broader skeptical movement solely because they believe a God exists. That's an unmerited rejection of a huge amount of brain processing power that can be successfully brought to bear in improving our own understanding how the world works and how we ourselves work in developing that understanding\nLippard (2010-11-20):\nWhoops, you replied as I was deleting and preparing to modify my comment--so I\u0026#39;ve just reposted it as it was. I was going to modify the very statement that you replied to, for I was in error to say \u0026quot;simply that\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;there was more to what I said than that. To expound further, some things are more testable than others, some things are subject to live debate and others are well established beyond reasonable doubt, and these things change over time. Some things aren't empirically testable at all, either due to human limitations, where we're situated spatially or temporally, or because we need them as assumptions in order to engage meaningfully with others in the first place (e.g., the rejection of solipsism in favor of the existence of an external world, successful word-to-world reference relations) or to engage in empirical investigation at all (e.g., a notion of cause).\nYou write, regarding whether there are good non-atheist skeptics: \u0026quot;But are there? Really? Or is it just the case that some non-atheists use skeptical tools sometimes, in limited contexts? I wouldn't throw out their contributions, but I don't feel obliged to hold onto the bathwater, either, and understanding the context\u0026ndash;and the limits\u0026ndash;of their skeptical thought can be important.\u0026quot;\nI say yes, absolutely. First of all, agnostic skeptics are often better skeptics than atheist skeptics. And second, I think we're all in the \u0026quot;using skeptical tools sometimes, in limited contexts\u0026quot; boat! I've yet to meet a skeptic I agreed with about everything, and I interpret that to mean that both every skeptic I've met is likely wrong about something, and so am I. Fallibilism is an important feature of skepticism.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-20):\nWell, I agree of course that one doesn\u0026#39;t have to be right to be a skeptic. As I think we\u0026#39;ve agreed, skepticism is a technique (and a skeptic is one who utilizes the technique). If all of our conclusions had to be proven correct before we could be considered skeptics, then at best, we could only ever be provisional skeptics! But at the same time I think that if someone wants to be considered a skeptic and yet chooses to utilize non-skeptical tools in arriving at some of their conclusions (perhaps in conjunction with skeptical tools), then it is important to distinguish when they are being skeptical and when they are not.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-20):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;agnostic skeptics are often better skeptics than atheist skeptics I guess I would need to see some examples of this. I don't see how \u0026quot;I don't know and don't believe I can know\u0026quot; is a better skeptical response than \u0026quot;I will not believe something for which I see no evidence.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2010-11-20):\nAlthough there is a sense of the term \u0026quot;agnostic\u0026quot; which implies knowledge is not possible (as opposed to not actual), that\u0026#39;s not how I was using it. I was using it to denote nonbelief as opposed to disbelief. I may have been making an erroneous comparison (using the availability heuristic) in that most of the people I know who are explicitly agnostic tend to be professional philosophers, historians, and scientists, while many of the atheists of my acquaintance are not professional academics. I also had in mind people like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Albert Einstein, all agnostics of particular influence to science and skepticism in popular culture.\nLippard (2010-11-20):\nBTW, I don\u0026#39;t think anyone can question the skeptical credibility of Martin Gardner. Though he was explicit in noting that his belief in God was not an exercise in skepticism.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-20):\nPerhaps Gardner is a good case illustrating the difference between someone with a skeptical worldview (habitual and inclusive use of skeptical tools) and someone who uses skeptical tools inconsistently. (Wasn\u0026#39;t he more of a mathematician by nature anyway? I\u0026#39;d argue that all mathematicians have a metaphysical bent! lol) Is he really a skeptic if he sets aside large and important areas where he refuses a priori to be skeptical? I'm skeptical!\nFor me, this issue isn't about whom to include or not to include in a particular community, but about using terminology consistently and most usefully. Taking into account what you said earlier about no one being a 100% skeptic, I think we must conclude that the term is not an either/or proposition but always occurs on a scale. Where we differ is where we would draw the line\u0026ndash;are you a skeptic if you are skeptical 10% of the time? 50%? 80%? Of course, it is difficult to easily gauge a percentage for a given individual, so my suggestion is that one must look at whether someone is occasionally skeptical, often skeptical, or nearly-always-in-so-far-as-inconsistent-humans-can-be skeptical. The latter, I would call a skeptical worldview, wherein the individual habitually attempts to be initially skeptical (and I mean \u0026quot;skeptical,\u0026quot; not doubting) toward any new data to which he is exposed. The setting aside of excluded-by-fiat magisteria would be exactly what I would say would exclude someone from being a true skeptic (although they may utilize skeptical techniques much of the time).\nPodblack (2010-11-20):\nThanks for citing my podcast!! I cleaned up the audio for it specially, since I thought it\u0026#39;d be of interest to people. Thanks so much. :)\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nGardner wrote Scientific American\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;Mathematical Games\u0026quot; column, but was never a mathematician--he had a bachelor\u0026#39;s degree in philosophy and did one year of graduate study in philosophy, all at the University of Chicago. He never took a college math course.\nbadrescher (2010-11-21):\nAlthough I understand your points, my definition of \u0026quot;worldview\u0026quot; is a little less broad than yours and I did not think that D.J. was saying that skepticism was a worldview. To me, a \u0026quot;worldview\u0026quot; is simply a statement which I think applies universally, not a statement which provides some detailed framework for living my life (although it may provide a foundation on which that framework can be built).\nWhat I took D.J. to mean by \u0026quot;worldview\u0026quot; was the position that skepticism and science are the best methods for acquiring and evaluating knowledge.\nThat certainly is a statement of values, but it is not a statement that skepticism itself is a worldview or that skepticism should dictate all of the aspects of life you described.\nBecause it is a value system, though,I had to put some serious thought into my answer to his question about whether what I teach is my worldview (and, if so, how do I justify what I do). Indeed, I understood that promoting that value system is what I do when I teach.\nI wouldn't change my answer and I feel not guilt for it.\nBut, again, the worldview is simply that science and skepticism are the best means for acquiring and evaluating knowledge (and, perhaps, that we would all be better off if more of us adopted that view).\nJohn S. Wilkins (2010-11-21):\nI\u0026#39;m coming here via Larry Moran\u0026#39;s Sandwalk blog. I am of the view that nobody is skeptical over their entire belief set, only ever part of it. Life would be a series of testing beliefs without respite otherwise. So a theist can be a skeptic about scientific matters fully, without needing to be skeptical about their religious beliefs.\nGiven this, there is a distinction between being a skeptic and being an atheist, and I therefore agree with you.\nAnonymous (2010-11-21):\nWe\u0026#39;re back to failures of definition. A problem every single debate of this kind I\u0026#39;ve read suffers from. If you call someone a Christian, that's pretty damn meaningless, since there are so many variants of Christianity. Even more meaningless if you call someone religious. We talking deities here, or just one deity, or thetans or what?\nThe same if true of atheism and agnostics. I haven't personally come across a single \u0026quot;atheist\u0026quot; that simply denies gods as a faith position. Every one I know denies gods because they've seen no evidence, just as I deny homeopathy as medicine because I've seen no evidence for it.\nThat makes all atheists I know (maybe the vast majority of them) technically agnostics, or \u0026quot;non-believers\u0026quot;. Which in my mind simply makes atheism a degree of agnosticism, much like Jehovah's witnesses are a degree of Christianity, or cargo-cults a degree of religion. Even Richard Dawkins, that poster boy of atheists, admits he's technically an agnostic ( 9.5 on a scale from 1 to 10, or whatever it is).\nI feel that anyone who applies skeptical tools, critical thinking et.al. to religion will invariable have to be an agnostic, as religion raises all those little red flags that skeptics look for when evaluating something. Conflicting accounts and conclusions, appeals to authority instead of evidence etc. Surely agnostic is simply a synonym for skeptic; when limited just to religion?\nWould a comment along the lines of \u0026quot;this meeting is turning into an agnostics meeting\u0026quot; have produced anywhere near the same reaction as that same comment about atheism?\nIf you define atheism as an irrational faith position that simply denies gods a priori then you're right, it has nothing to do with skepticism and should indeed be challenged by skeptics. If though you define atheism as lack of belief due to lack of evidence, then it seems that it's synonymous with skepticism and very much has a place at skepticon.\nHopsToad (2010-11-21):\nIf skepticism is an approach to understanding one\u0026#39;s world then I agree that skepticism is not a worldview in the same sense that evangelical Christianity is a worldview. In this sense, a worldview is not merely an approach to understanding but also a collection of knowledge that guides that approach and a specific set of rules by which to live one\u0026#39;s life. I would argue, however, that one can arrive at one's collection of knowledge at least in part via skeptical inquiry. While I acknowledging the impracticality mentioned by John S. Wilkins above, one also can recognize that one can be wrong about some or all of that body of knowledge. Most if not all theists claim that at least some of the knowledge that makes up their worldview is infallible and cannot be questioned, all of it in extreme cases. Most atheists I know acknowledge the possibility that their collection of knowledge may be incorrect and are willing to question it. Because of this, I think that one must be more suspicious of any skeptical arguments made by theists than those made by atheists and agnostics.\nI also agree with Xzanron about the use of definitions here. Most atheists I know use the term literally to mean \u0026quot;without god belief\u0026quot;. Most agnostics I know, including myself earlier in my life self-identified as such to avoid discrimination, the inevitable entreaties to change and promises to be prayed-for that come from the theists when identifying oneself as an atheist. by narrowing the definition of atheist to a class of individuals that positively assert the non-existence of gods, one deliberately increases the proportion of irrational members of the class.\nEamon Knight (2010-11-21):\n@Wilkins: I am of the view that nobody is skeptical over their entire belief set, only ever part of it. Life would be a series of testing beliefs without respite otherwise. So a theist can be a skeptic about scientific matters fully, without needing to be skeptical about their religious beliefs. Obviously we never get around to testing everything to the Nth degree, and some things for personal reasons we may even consciously or unconsciously wall off from inquiry (eg: Does my god exist? Is my partner faithful to me?). Meanwhile, we might still be applying the skeptical method quite vigorously to alt-med, UFOs and the like.\nBut I think PZ's point is that you can't demand of the wider skeptical community that they leave those \u0026quot;walled off\u0026quot; areas alone \u0026ndash; your special affection for Jesus doesn't get a pass any more than your special affection for homeopathy, biodynamic farming, or zero-point energy extractors. (Though by social convention, one's family issues are considered private).\nNote though that separate from the question of what is open to challenge, is the question of the \u0026quot;tone\u0026quot; of the challenge. Challengers can be polite or rude, and that will affect the social health of the community. No movement is only about the ideas; it is also a social group, and subject to the usual power-seeking and in-group/out-group dynamics.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I am of the view that nobody is skeptical over their entire belief set, only ever part of it. Life would be a series of testing beliefs without respite otherwise. Humans aren't perfect in their efforts and endeavors\u0026ndash;I get it. But isn't there an important distinction to be made between those who TRY to approach the world from a skeptical viewpoing consistently (even if they are not always successful) and those who cherrypick when they will use a skeptical approach and when they will not based upon some other criteria?\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nXzanron wrote: \u0026quot;We\u0026#39;re back to failures of definition. A problem every single debate of this kind I\u0026#39;ve read suffers from.\u0026quot; See my discussion of definitions of atheism and agnosticism.\nXzanron continues: \u0026quot;If you call someone a Christian, that's pretty damn meaningless, since there are so many variants of Christianity. Even more meaningless if you call someone religious. We talking deities here, or just one deity, or thetans or what?\u0026quot;\nIt's vague, but it's certainly not meaningless.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nXzanron continues: \u0026quot;The same if true of atheism and agnostics. I haven\u0026#39;t personally come across a single \u0026quot;atheist\u0026quot; that simply denies gods as a faith position. Every one I know denies gods because they\u0026#39;ve seen no evidence, just as I deny homeopathy as medicine because I\u0026#39;ve seen no evidence for it. That makes all atheists I know (maybe the vast majority of them) technically agnostics, or \u0026quot;non-believers\u0026quot;. Which in my mind simply makes atheism a degree of agnosticism, much like Jehovah's witnesses are a degree of Christianity, or cargo-cults a degree of religion. Even Richard Dawkins, that poster boy of atheists, admits he's technically an agnostic ( 9.5 on a scale from 1 to 10, or whatever it is).\u0026quot;\nThis doesn't follow. Atheism doesn't mean that you disbelieve in gods as a \u0026quot;faith position\u0026quot; (i.e., without evidence). You seem to be asserting that atheism entails absolute certainty, which I think is absurd. In my opinion, the most sensible distinction between atheism and agnosticism is between disbelief and nonbelief. You're an atheist if you believe that the proposition that gods don't exist is sufficiently more likely than not to be worthy of assent, and that's it. No requirement that you know it or that you are certain about it. Agnosticism, by contrast, is where you think the probabilities are such that it's not worthy of assent.\nXzanron continues: \u0026quot;I feel that anyone who applies skeptical tools, critical thinking et.al. to religion will invariable have to be an agnostic, as religion raises all those little red flags that skeptics look for when evaluating something. Conflicting accounts and conclusions, appeals to authority instead of evidence etc. Surely agnostic is simply a synonym for skeptic; when limited just to religion?\u0026quot;\nI can't agree with the \u0026quot;invariably.\u0026quot; There are lots of arguments available for theism and atheism, and it's possible to evaluate them and come to a conclusion that's atheism, agnosticism, or theism. If somebody was convinced by William Alston's arguments in Perceiving God that certain of his experiences were perceptions of the divine, he could be both a skeptic and a theist on rational grounds.\nXzanron continues: \u0026quot;Would a comment along the lines of \u0026quot;this meeting is turning into an agnostics meeting\u0026quot; have produced anywhere near the same reaction as that same comment about atheism?\u0026quot;\nI'm not sure which comment you are referring to.\nXzanron concludes: \u0026quot;If you define atheism as an irrational faith position that simply denies gods a priori then you're right, it has nothing to do with skepticism and should indeed be challenged by skeptics. If though you define atheism as lack of belief due to lack of evidence, then it seems that it's synonymous with skepticism and very much has a place at skepticon.\u0026quot;\nI don't define atheism that way\u0026ndash;it's simply a denial of the existence of gods, which may be held for good reasons or bad. I don't claim that it has nothing to do with skepticism, only that it is not identical with skepticism. Skepticon's focus seems to be almost entirely on religion, and not on broader issues of skepticism and critical thinking. The name suggests a broader focus, but the content suggests a narrower focus. And that strikes me as at least potentially quite misleading.\nThe Podblack Cat blog has some examples of it be misleading in fact.\nAlric (2010-11-21):\nI just don\u0026#39;t think how it can be argued that atheism is not skepticism applied to religion. Or better yet that atheism is a subset of skepticism. Is there another result other than atheism if one is skeptical of religion?\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\nUm...something ugly happened above...multiple posts/parts of posts makes the thread hard to follow. \u0026gt;\u0026gt;There are lots of arguments available for theism\nBut are there any that are not archaic and/or which have not been superceded by increases in knowledge? I don't know of any.\nAlric (2010-11-21):\nThe result of applying skepticism to religion can not be agnosticism. There is no evidence of any gods or that gods have ever interfered with the world. In any line of inquiry religion would have to be considered imaginary or fantastical but never given a credible probability of being real.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nrushmc: Non-archaic arguments for theism--yes, see the Alston book I mentioned, for example. Alvin Plantinga\u0026#39;s modal logic version of the ontological argument is also non-archaic, though I don\u0026#39;t think it works. There seems to be a new Blogger limit on comment size which forced me to break up a response.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nAlric wrote: \u0026quot;I just don\u0026#39;t think how it can be argued that atheism is not skepticism applied to religion. Or better yet that atheism is a subset of skepticism. Is there another result other than atheism if one is skeptical of religion?\u0026quot;\nIf you define skepticism by conclusion rather than process, then you're right, atheism is skepticism about religion\u0026ndash;or, more accurately, skepticism about a central religious claim that one or more gods exist.\nThere are atheistic religions, though\u0026ndash;some forms of Buddhism and Taoism include no divine beings.\nBut if skepticism means process, applying skepticism to a topic doesn't automatically entail rejection of that topic. Someone who is skeptical about the current institutional practices of medicine need not come to the conclusion that there is nothing in medicine that works or is valuable. Similarly, applying skepticism to religion doesn't entail wholesale rejection of all aspects of religion.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nbadrescher: You may well be correct that D.J. only meant \u0026quot;worldview\u0026quot; in the sense of an attitude or approach as opposed to comprehensive Weltanschauung. I don't remember specifically what your answer was, but I don't recall finding anything objectionable about it. I found it interesting that several panelists did not want to take the label \u0026quot;skeptic,\u0026quot; but preferred \u0026quot;educator.\u0026quot;\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\nRe: Alston. I don\u0026#39;t think any discussion of the interpretation of experience in a religious mode is likely to have much persuasive force. There are other, far more rational, far more likely explanations for perceptual anomalies. A book like this holds no appeal for me whatsoever, any more than any other that seeks to interpret phenomena to justify preconcieved beliefs. It wasn't the breaking up of the response I was commenting on, but the repetition. But, no matter.\nIt is at least arguable that the foundations of Buddhism are more a philosophy than a religion, before the prayer and other crud accreted around the core. But I'll grant the feasibility of religion-without-god, and they would entail a separate discussion. I maintain, however, that the falsehood of god in monotheistic religions DOES in fact negate other (social, etc.) aspects of the religions. The term \u0026quot;atheism\u0026quot; may not cover this further rejection of religious claims; \u0026quot;anti-religion\u0026quot; may be more accurate but is certainly more provocative and negative-sounding.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nI\u0026#39;ve eliminated the duplicates--it seems many of the alleged failures to post actually succeeded. I recommend at least reading the first few chapters of Alston's book which are about the justification of belief based on perception in general. I think that his account of religious experience fails, but more on empirical rather than philosophical grounds\u0026ndash;the lack of agreement between believers (let alone between believers and nonbelievers) and the lack of an observed faculty of divine perception.\nAnonymous (2010-11-21):\nJim Lippard says: \u0026quot;I don't define atheism that way\u0026ndash;it's simply a denial of the existence of gods, which may be held for good reasons or bad.\u0026quot;\nThis is my biggest bone of contention with what you've said. Your definition explicitly grants authority to the theist view when no such authority exists.\nI don't see atheism that way, and neither in my view should anyone who considers themselves to be a skeptic. Atheism is the default position before you are taught about gods. In those countries where religion has receded to the point of irrelevance kids are all simply atheists by default (just as I was/am); because religion has never entered their lives. They don't go around actively denying or denouncing gods, the same way they don't go around actively denying invisible unicorns or gnomes or elves or pixies or everything else supernatural they've not been convinced by adults is real.\nAre you saying those non-believers, non-theists who have never been touched by religion should be called something else? What would you call them? They're not agnostics, since that implies they accept there's at least some merit to the religious position; which cannot be the case if religion has never figured in their lives.\nThe only reason we even have the word atheist is because the religious have been in dominant power for so long that they coined it for anyone that wouldn't toe their line i.e. it's a synonym for traitor/deserter/misfit/outcast; which is exactly how atheists are treated in many religion-dominated countries, up to and including the death penalty.\nYour definition of atheist gives the high ground to the religious by defining it as dissenting from their position, i.e. you accept their position has merit/value; when other than appeals to numbers their position has no intrinsic worth. You allow the religious to dictate the terms of the debate.\nOf course, if that is your intent, then I can understand why you picked that as your working definition.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\nI agree with your last post, Xzanron. The word \u0026quot;denial\u0026quot; rubs me the wrong way. I have no problem denying that gods exist, but to qualify for atheism I shouldn\u0026#39;t have to. Linguistically, the \u0026quot;a\u0026quot; in \u0026quot;atheism\u0026quot; means \u0026quot;not,\u0026quot; and a non-theist does not necessarily imply someone who actively denies any particular formulation of diety\u0026ndash;merely one who doesn't believe it. A subtle difference, maybe, but by Lippard's definition, I wouldn't be an atheist of the Zumbarotlo religion until someone told me about it and I could actively deny their god, whereas I would argue that I was from birth, since I never believed it, whether I knew about it or not.\nMike D (2010-11-21):\nCertainly there is a distinction between skepticism and atheism, but theistic skeptics are clearly guilty of a sort of compartmentalization of their skepticism, insisting that we should be skeptical about homeopathy, irridology, astrology and whatever else, but that when it comes to deities with magic powers that perform miracles, influence people and may just cast you into hell if you don\u0026#39;t love them... well golly, we should just \u0026quot;have faith\u0026quot; and it\u0026#39;s off limits for skeptics! This really boils down to believers, as usual, being way too sensitive. Ideas are not sacred, and until believers are willing to apply the exact same degree of skeptical scrutiny to their supernatural beliefs that they apply to everything else (particularly considering the prominence with which supernatural beliefs factor into a typical believer's choices and outlooks), they are woefully inconsistent skeptics.\nSo to all the people whining that Skepticon was too atheistic because\u0026hellip; GASP\u0026hellip; 3 of the 15 talks were explicitly atheistic\u0026hellip; I say, good riddance. A failure to be more skeptical about the ridiculous supernatural claims of religion is a big problem in our culture and abroad, and we need to start talking about it. If it offends some people because they think their ideas are sacred\u0026hellip; tough.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\n\u0026quot;This is my biggest bone of contention with what you\u0026#39;ve said. Your definition explicitly grants authority to the theist view when no such authority exists. I don't see atheism that way, and neither in my view should anyone who considers themselves to be a skeptic. Atheism is the default position before you are taught about gods. In those countries where religion has receded to the point of irrelevance kids are all simply atheists by default (just as I was/am); because religion has never entered their lives. They don't go around actively denying or denouncing gods, the same way they don't go around actively denying invisible unicorns or gnomes or elves or pixies or everything else supernatural they've not been convinced by adults is real.\nAre you saying those non-believers, non-theists who have never been touched by religion should be called something else? What would you call them? They're not agnostics, since that implies they accept there's at least some merit to the religious position; which cannot be the case if religion has never figured in their lives.\u0026quot;\nYou're calling atheism what I call agnosticism (the terms weak atheism, negative atheism, or implicit atheism are also used). The burden of proof is on the claimant, whether the claim is positive or negative, and the default position is nonbelief rather than disbelief.\nI don't see that agnosticism implies having given the position consideration, but you're welcome to define it that way. Don't get too hung up on the specific terminology, so long as we're using the same terms in the same way.\n\u0026quot;The only reason we even have the word atheist is because the religious have been in dominant power for so long that they coined it for anyone that wouldn't toe their line i.e. it's a synonym for traitor/deserter/misfit/outcast; which is exactly how atheists are treated in many religion-dominated countries, up to and including the death penalty.\nYour definition of atheist gives the high ground to the religious by defining it as dissenting from their position, i.e. you accept their position has merit/value; when other than appeals to numbers their position has no intrinsic worth. You allow the religious to dictate the terms of the debate.\nOf course, if that is your intent, then I can understand why you picked that as your working definition.\u0026quot;\nI think what you say here is almost exactly right\u0026ndash;that is in fact how the term was historically defined and how most speakers understand the term. It's not \u0026quot;giving religious believers the high ground,\u0026quot; it's just using the term as most people understand it. Well, and I also have to say that I think religious notions including the idea of a God in the abstract is not entirely valueless and without merit\u0026ndash;I'm not sure how one could reach that conclusion without being a \u0026quot;strong atheist\u0026quot; in Dawkins' terms (which is different from how I've used it elsewhere in this comment\u0026ndash;he uses it to mean the far right of his scale of disbelief, absolute certainty).\nSee my post on atheism vs. agnosticism definitions for why I think there is merit to the definition of atheism as disbelief rather than mere nonbelief. I was persuaded for many years to use atheism to mean both positive and negative atheism, which was prevalent on Usenet alt.atheism in the 1990s (using the terms strong atheism and weak atheism). But I recently have come to the conclusion that it's misleading for three reasons: (1) most atheists really are positive/strong/explicit atheists, not negative/weak/implicit atheists, (2) the implicit version isn't really a position and isn't consistent with the idea of forming groups and engaging in atheist activism, and (3) there are still about twice as many self-identified agnostics as atheists in the U.S.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\nWell said, Mike D! Seems to sum up the whole thing for me.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I also have to say that I think religious notions including the idea of a God in the abstract is not entirely valueless and without merit--I\u0026#39;m not sure how one could reach that conclusion without being a \u0026quot;strong atheist\u0026quot; in Dawkins\u0026#39; terms I certainly don't see that the one follows from the other at all. What sort of \u0026quot;notions\u0026quot; are you thinking of here? Social behaviors? Because they could all be deduced WITHOUT reference to god or religious obligation.\nYour three-point list at the end of your post tells me that you are a very different kind of atheist than I am (to be fair, I already knew this!). I dispute the accuracy of #1 outright and think it may be the result of sampling error. #2 is irrelevant to me, as I couldn't give a fig for \u0026quot;forming groups\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;atheism activism,\u0026quot; and I think your focus in this area may be the cause of the above sampling error. Most atheists never participate in any sort of anti-god group in their entire lives. It is enough for them to go about their own lives, quietly not-believing (and maybe even disbelieving). #3 I would say has a lot to do with the way questionnaires are worded and with the strong stigma of self-identifying as an atheist than it does with actual representation.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nMike D wrote: \u0026quot;Certainly there is a distinction between skepticism and atheism, but theistic skeptics are clearly guilty of a sort of compartmentalization of their skepticism, insisting that we should be skeptical about homeopathy, irridology, astrology and whatever else, but that when it comes to deities with magic powers that perform miracles, influence people and may just cast you into hell if you don\u0026#39;t love them... well golly, we should just \u0026quot;have faith\u0026quot; and it\u0026#39;s off limits for skeptics!\u0026quot; What's your evidence for this claim? What theistic skeptic has said that critical thinking is off limits for religion? I think, on the contrary, that many theistic skeptics would say that they have subjected their religious beliefs to skepticism and consider a cosmology with a God in it to be the best explanation of the data they have. You and I disagree with that, but there are people who know the arguments well and disagree with us, including about 7% of the members of the National Academies of Science. (This is a point Neil deGrasse Tyson made at TAM6.)\nMike D also wrote: \u0026quot;So to all the people whining that Skepticon was too atheistic because\u0026hellip; GASP\u0026hellip; 3 of the 15 talks were explicitly atheistic\u0026hellip; I say, good riddance.\u0026quot;\nJeff Wagg made the argument that way, but I think he was mistaken. From the schedule I saw, every talk listed with a title but one was about religion\u0026ndash;I counted eight, not three. My complaint about Skepticon and atheism is that if a conference is primarily about atheism, it should be called an atheist conference. It's clear from this conference's history and Eberhard's motivations and intent that it has been primarily about atheism, not broader skepticism. It's fair to call an atheism conference part of the broader skeptical movement, but there's more to skepticism than skepticism of religion.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;there are people who know the arguments well and disagree with us, including about 7% of the members of the National Academies of Science Not to nitpick (okay, maybe a nitpick), but I think it would clearly be false to assume that membership in that organization coincides perfectly with \u0026quot;knowing the arguments well.\u0026quot; In fact, offhand, one might estimate there to be about a, oh, 7% difference\u0026hellip;\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;It's clear from this conference's history and Eberhard's motivations and intent that it has been primarily about atheism, not broader skepticism.\nDoes the conference content represent the breakdown of participants' interests, or is the atheism topic excessively imposed in a top-down manner? This is a legitimate question, as I'm not familiar with the conference. But if one were to set up a skeptics conference and say \u0026quot;come present your skeptical topics\u0026quot; and X% turned out to be on religion-related issues, it seems to me difficult (and inappropriate) to ascribe blame (or false advertising) anywhere.\nOkay, I'm shutting up now. Thanks for the enlightening exchange.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nrushmc: My conclusion in that regard may be due to sampling error. There seems to be some contradictory data, my statement was based on a Pew Center religious affiliation study that showed the U.S. population to self-identify as 2.4% agnostic and 1.6% as atheist. I believe that\u0026#39;s the same study that oddly found that 21% of self-identified atheists answered \u0026quot;yes\u0026quot; to the question of whether they believe in God or a higher power. I just now came across a 2009 Pew Center study that shows larger numbers for atheists than agnostics of those who say they don't believe in God or a higher power (24% vs. 15%), though many more identify as nothing at all or as members of an organized religion (oddly enough).\nI suspect it may be better to rely on the answer to the \u0026quot;do you believe in God or a higher power\u0026quot; question first, and then look at the percentages, in which case the third of my three points is mistaken.\nI agree with what the \u0026quot;a\u0026quot; in atheism means, but etymology doesn't determine usage or meaning.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nrushmc: Skepticon came about because of one guy, J.T. Eberhard, though I\u0026#39;m not sure if he\u0026#39;s now built any kind of formal organization to support it. I think it\u0026#39;s safe to say that he\u0026#39;s the major influence on its content and direction.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nI wrote: \u0026quot;I also have to say that I think religious notions including the idea of a God in the abstract is not entirely valueless and without merit--I\u0026#39;m not sure how one could reach that conclusion without being a \u0026quot;strong atheist\u0026quot; in Dawkins\u0026#39; terms.\u0026quot; To which rushmc replied: \u0026quot;I certainly don't see that the one follows from the other at all. What sort of \u0026quot;notions\u0026quot; are you thinking of here? Social behaviors? Because they could all be deduced WITHOUT reference to god or religious obligation.\u0026quot;\nI think you're correct to challenge the last part of what I said\u0026ndash;one can make absolute statements without absolute certainty for the same reason one can be an atheist without absolute certainty. So I retract that proposed implication.\nAnd yes, I did also have in mind the social aspects of religion, which can exist independently of a belief in God, as both humanism and other existing religious practices demonstrate.\nI think it's pretty clear that there is value to parts of religion independent of belief in a deity. I would also say there's also value in the concept of a deity independent of its existence, though that has declined significantly over time, as LaPlace noted at a time when it had more value than it does today.\nAnonymous (2010-11-21):\nThe \u0026quot;common\u0026quot; use of the word atheist fits my definition, not yours; i.e. lack of belief. Ed Milliband (Leader of 2nd largest party in the UK) is an atheist (Telegraph)\nNick Clegg (Leader of the 3rd largest party in the UK, and currently Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government) is also an atheist. (The Times)\nThey both call themselves atheists, and given their prominent positions it's clear by their actions and attitudes they fit my definition, not yours. In point of fact, they fail of match any of your 3 points, that you say \u0026quot;atheists\u0026quot; follow.\nPerhaps this is another case of \u0026quot;divided by a common language\u0026quot;, or maybe there are other reasons.\nAnonymous (2010-11-21):\nFor some reason the Telegraph link isn\u0026#39;t working, so here it is again: http://bit.ly/aX9uRO\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nSaying \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t believe in God\u0026quot; or answering no to \u0026quot;Do you believe in God?\u0026quot; is potentially ambiguous between disbelief and nonbelief, but more likely reflects disbelief--a considered rejection, not an unconsidered mere lack of belief of the sort held by children who have never been presented with the concept.\nLippard (2010-11-21):\nHere\u0026#39;s why I think atheism is more sensible defined in terms of the proposition that gods don\u0026#39;t exist--on this definition, an argument for atheism is an argument to the conclusion that gods don\u0026#39;t exist. On the \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; definition, there is no such thing as an argument for atheism, because atheism in that definition isn't a position or proposition.\nTo put it another way\u0026ndash;the primary reason why anyone would want to try to persuade someone to stop having a belief in God would be if they though that such a belief was false, i.e., that gods don't exist. Belief that \u0026quot;God exists\u0026quot; is false is equivalent to belief that \u0026quot;God does not exist\u0026quot; is true. Does the lack of belief definition of atheism purport that the former is false but that the latter's negation is not true?\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-22):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I think it\u0026#39;s pretty clear that there is value to parts of religion independent of belief in a deity. I would also say there\u0026#39;s also value in the concept of a deity independent of its existence, though that has declined It's not at all clear to me, but I understand that there are some arguments to that effect, so say I grant you that for the moment.\nIt remains the case that unless the so-called positive values of religion clearly and dominantly outweigh the tremendous negative value of religion in society and in the lives of individuals (and I don't think this case can be made persuasively), then it is a net negative in the world that should be countered and diminished and replaced with non-religious mechanisms to address any previously-religious successes (e.g., charity, fellowship gatherings, intervention in the well-being of the sick and the elderly, etc.).\nA secular solution is always preferable to one tainted by irrationality, superstition, and the help that comes with religious strings attached.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-22):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;On the \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; definition, there is no such thing as an argument for atheism, because atheism in that definition isn\u0026#39;t a position or proposition. And what I'm saying is, even if that's the case, what of it? It is not incumbent upon a person who lacks belief in something to proselytize that lack of belief to others. Therefore, a denial of god may be a better strategic position than a simple lack of belief in god, but that is a difference that isn't relevant to a lot of people. Therefore, when you say that your definition is better, I think you have to qualify it by saying that it is better for atheists who want to actively truckerconvert religious believers to atheism.\nLippard (2010-11-22):\nrushmc: I agree with your 6:24 p.m. comment. On your last, perhaps your position is closer to \u0026quot;apatheism\u0026quot;?\nIf you think that part of what's wrong with religion is that it claims that gods exist, and that's probably false, then you're logically committed to the proposition that it's probably true that gods don't exist, and you're an atheist in my sense, not just in a \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; sense. Either that, or you're committed to the falsity of bivalence, or you fail to draw the logical inference and it never occurs to you to draw it.\nMichael C. Rush (2010-11-22):\nMe personally? Like the guy in your atheist/agnostic definition thread that you linked to, I am a very strong atheist (though not an absolutist) in the \u0026quot;belief\u0026quot; sense and an agnostic in the \u0026quot;nature of knowledge\u0026quot; sense. People in general? I don't see that apatheism and atheism are mutually exclusive. And, in any case, why would you leap to the assumption that someone doesn't care whether god(s) exist(s) or not just because they don't feel the pressing need to persuade others to think the way they do? I can imagine being quite certain that there is no god and all religions have everything all wrong, and yet being quite content to keep that understanding to myself (this is NOT me, but I can easily see it, and have known people for whom this was pretty much true).\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;If you think that part of what's wrong with religion is that it claims that gods exist, and that's probably false\nI think it goes a lot deeper than this. There are an infinite number of \u0026quot;gods\u0026quot; that one can imagine (and another infinity of gods that one cannot) that bear no relation to any of the gods described by religions on earth. What's wrong with religion is more than that they miss the fact that there is no god\u0026ndash;it's that they create models of god(s) that are patently false even if there WERE gods out there.\nAnonymous (2010-11-22):\nMark Lippard Said: \u0026gt;\u0026gt; Here\u0026#39;s why I think atheism is more sensible defined in terms of the proposition that gods don\u0026#39;t exist--on this definition, an argument for atheism is an argument to the conclusion that gods don\u0026#39;t exist. On the \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; definition, there is no such thing as an argument for atheism, because atheism in that definition isn't a position or proposition. \u0026lt;\u0026lt;\nYou can't impose a definition, you have to accept the definition that society at large is using. Okay, you don't have to, but it just means you'll never be talking from the same basis as anyone else. Just ask the French, with their attempts to control their language, how futile it is to try and impose word meaning and usage rules on a population.\nYou're correct in that lack of belief is difficult to call a position, but then most of the people that consider themselves atheist don't argue a position, it's who they are. You're trying to impose a position where none exists, it's like saying not being racist is a position, or not being sexist is a position. Most people nowadays are that already. I'd go so far as to call that position the natural position (just look at kids in kindergarten, they play happily with anyone regardless of race/gender/colour).\nWhere atheism differs is that unlike asexist, and aracist, there is actually a word for not having a belief. It's almost impossible to define someone by something they are not because in reality it says nothing at all about them. Hence I suspect why you feel the need to try and impose some form of meaning to atheism that actually defines something where there is nothing to define. It's rather hard to argue with something that's nebulous. Atheism, just like asexist and aracist, is a passive state, not an active one. That's what the \u0026quot;a\u0026quot; prefix indicates: absence.\nIt's one of the hardest things about the \u0026quot;atheist movement\u0026quot;, if you can even call it that, because it's almost impossible to define it's members because the only thing they have in common is something they don't have. It's like trying to define people whose only commonality is that they don't have a third leg.\nI think you'll have to come up with a word that isn't already widely used to describe the \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; variant if you want people to understand what it is you're trying to address.\nI believe the word for your meaning might well be anti-theist. That is in opposition to, as opposed to a-theist meaning absence of.\nLippard (2010-11-22):\nrushmc, Xzanron: What you say makes sense about people who really are quietist nonbelievers (who may not--probably don\u0026#39;t, based on the Pew figures--even refer to or consider themselves as atheists), but I don\u0026#39;t think it makes sense about those who self-identify as members of atheist groups. \u0026quot;Anti-theist\u0026quot; could refer to an activist atheist (or someone who's actively against theists), but that's narrower than the definition I'm giving, which is simply anyone who has come to the conclusion that gods don't exist. I consider myself an atheist but have largely given up antitheism unless pressed for an explanation of why I'm an atheist.\nI take your point, rushmc, that there are many possible gods other than the ones considered\u0026ndash;and so I think it's quite possible to consider oneself both atheist (with respect to considered and rejected gods) and agnostic (with respect to unconsidered gods). And I agree that apatheism and atheism aren't mutually exclusive.\nFreeZoneThetan (2010-12-13):\nYour comment actually reminds me of how much Groupthink there is in \u0026#39;sceptic\u0026#39; circles, they are 98% left-liberals who not only disagree with religion (Christianity, Scientology, what have you) but positively despise it to the point of attributing every tangetial ill of the human race to these ideas; and due to their Statist bias they can\u0026#39;t see that most of what\u0026#39;s attributed to religion is actually politics with a religious rationalization on top. I prefer the term 'rationalism' to 'scepticism', since scepticism as a principle can quite naturally be taken to irrational extremes. The flipside of Ockham's Razor is, after all, that it is irrational not to believe in something which best fits the evidence and requires the least assumptions. The dedicated 'sceptic' often descends into absurd solipsist gibberish.\nOf course, in the tradition of philosophy the word 'rationalist' has certain connotations I would not agree with, but so does 'anarchist'. Screw 'em, I'm taking these words back :P\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/11/what-to-think-vs-how-to-think.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile listening to \u003ca href=\"http://tokenskeptic.org/2010/11/03/quick-update-next-episode-imminent-i-hope/\"\u003ea recent Token Skeptic podcast of a Dragon*Con panel on Skepticism and Education moderated by D.J. Grothe of the James Randi Educational Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, I was struck by his repeated references to Skepticism as a worldview (which I put in uppercase to distinguish it from skepticism as a set of methods of inquiry, an attitude or approach).  I wrote the following email to the podcast:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eI am sufficiently irritated by D.J. Grothe's repeated reference to\u0026nbsp;skepticism as a \"worldview\" that I will probably be motivated to\u0026nbsp;write a blog post about it.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThere is a growing ambiguity caused by overloading of the term\u0026nbsp;\"skepticism\" on different things--attitudes, methods and processes,\u0026nbsp;accumulated bodies of knowledge, a movement. \u0026nbsp;To date, there hasn't\u0026nbsp;really been a capital-S Skepticism as a worldview since the Pyrrhonean\u0026nbsp;philosophical variety. \u0026nbsp;A worldview is an all-encompassing view of the\u0026nbsp;world which addresses how one should believe, how one should act, what\u0026nbsp;kinds of things exist, and so forth. \u0026nbsp;It includes presuppositions not\u0026nbsp;only about factual matters, but about values.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe skepticisms worth promoting are attitudes, methods and processes,\u0026nbsp;and accumulated bodies of knowledge that are consistent with a wide\u0026nbsp;variety of world views. \u0026nbsp;The methods are contextual, applied against a\u0026nbsp;background of social institutions and relationships that are based on\u0026nbsp;trust. \u0026nbsp;There is room in the broader skeptical movement for pluralism,\u0026nbsp;a diversity of approaches that set the skepticisms in different\u0026nbsp;contexts for different purposes--educational, political,\u0026nbsp;philosophical, religious. \u0026nbsp;An unrestricted skepticism is corrosive and\u0026nbsp;undermines all knowledge, for there is no good epistemological\u0026nbsp;response to philosophical skepticism that doesn't make some\u0026nbsp;assumptions.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTrying to turn skepticism into a capital-S Skeptical worldview\u0026nbsp;strikes me as misguided.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo my mind, what's most important and useful about skepticism is that it drives the adoption of the best available tools for answering questions, providing more guidance on how to think than on what to think, and on how to recognize trustworthy sources and people to rely upon. \u0026nbsp;There's not a completely sharp line between these--knowledge about methods and their accuracy is dependent upon factual knowledge, of course.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI think the recent exchanges about \u003ca href=\"http://indieskeptics.com/2010/10/14/taking-pride-in-ones-brand/\"\u003ethe Missouri Skepticon conference really being an atheist conference\u003c/a\u003e may partly have this issue behind them, though I think there are further issues there as well about the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skepticalinquirer-janfeb1999.html\"\u003etraditional scope of \"scientific skepticism\" being restricted to \"testable claims\" and the notion of methodological naturalism that I don't entirely agree with\u003c/a\u003e. \u0026nbsp;Skepticism is about critical thinking, inquiry, investigation, and using the best methods available to find reliable answers to questions (and promoting broader use of those tools), while atheism is about holding a particular position on a particular issue, that no gods exist. \u0026nbsp;The broader skeptical movement produces greater social benefits by promoting more critical thinking in the general public than does the narrower group of skeptical atheists who primarily argue against religion and especially the smaller subset who are so obsessed that they are immediately dismissed by the broader public as monomaniacal cranks. \u0026nbsp;The organized skeptical groups with decades of history have mainly taken pains to avoid being represented by or identified with the latter, and as a result have been represented by skeptics of a variety of religious views in events of lasting consequence. Think, for example, of the audience for Carl Sagan's \"Cosmos\" and his subsequent works, or of the outcome of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn my opinion, the distinction between skepticism and atheism is an important one, and I think Skepticon does blur and confuse that distinction by using the \"skeptic\" name and having a single focus on religion. This doesn't mean that most of the atheists participating in that conference don't qualify as skeptics, or even that atheist groups promoting rationality on religious subjects don't count as part of the broader skeptical movement. \u0026nbsp;It just means that there is a genuine distinction to be drawn.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(BTW, I don't think atheism is a worldview, either--it's a single feature of a worldview, and one that is less important to my mind than skepticism.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPrevious posts on related subjects:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2010/01/few-comments-on-nature-and-scope-of.html\"\u003e\"A few comments on the nature and scope of skepticism\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/skepticism-belief-revision-and-science.html\"\u003e\"Skepticism, belief revision, and science\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/massimo-pigliucci-on-scope-of-skeptical.html\"\u003e\"Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAlso related, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skepticalinquirer-janfeb1999.html\"\u003ea 1999 letter to the editor of \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/i\u003e from the leaders of many local skeptical groups\u003c/a\u003e (Daniel Barnett, North Texas Skeptics, Dallas, TX; David Bloomberg, Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land, Springfield, IL; Tim Holmes, Taiwan Skeptics, Tanzu, Taiwan; Peter Huston, Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, Schenectady, NY; Paul Jaffe, National Capitol Area Skeptics, Washington, D.C.; Eric Krieg, Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, Philadelphia, PA; Scott Lilienfeld, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Jim Lippard, Phoenix Skeptics and Tucson Skeptical Society, Tucson, AZ; Rebecca Long, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Lori Marino, Georgia Skeptics, Atlanta, GA; Rick Moen, Bay Area Skeptics, Menlo Park, CA; Steven Novella, New England Skeptical Society, New Haven, CT; Bela Scheiber, Rocky Mountain Skeptics, Denver, CO; and Michael Sofka, Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, Troy, NY).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (December 1, 2010): D.J. Grothe states in \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/james_randi_and_d.j._grothe_amazng_skepticism/\"\u003ethe most recent (Nov. 26) Point of Inquiry podcast\u003c/a\u003e (Karen Stollznow interviews James Randi and D.J. Grothe), at about 36:50, that he has been misunderstood in his references to skepticism as a \"worldview.\"\u0026nbsp; This suggests to me that he has in mind a narrower meaning,\u003ca href=\"/2010/11/what-to-think-vs-how-to-think.html?showComment=1290336417223#c2539561779214944187\"\u003e as Barbara Drescher has interpreted him in the comments below\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp; My apologies to D.J. for misconstruing his meaning.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMichael C. Rush\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-11-20)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYou make some good points, but ultimately I am unconvinced, I think.  It seems to me perfectly reasonable to use \u0026quot;skeptic\u0026quot; in a manner analogous to how we would use \u0026quot;cynic,\u0026quot; \u0026quot;idealist,\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;epicure\u0026quot; in the modern sense, as general categories expressing one\u0026#39;s dominant tendencies in approaching and assessing the world without requiring absolute fidelity to some ancient philosophy or formulation.  Being open to questioning everything does not, it seems to me, imply rejection of everything.\n\u003cp\u003eAs for the skepticism/atheism issue, I think a person could be an atheist without being a skeptic, but I think it would be pretty silly.  A \u0026quot;faith-based\u0026quot; atheism isn't of much interest or use.  Can a person, conversely, be a skeptic without being an atheist?  Clearly, but not, I would argue, a very good one.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What to think vs. how to think"},{"content":"Vocab Malone, with whom I had a blog debate about abortion and personhood last year, recently came across this comment of mine on the Point of Inquiry podcast with Jen Roth, an atheist who argues for the immorality of abortion:\nWas Jen Roth ultimately arguing that personhood is something that a human organism has for its entire lifecycle? At what starting point? Conception, implantation, or something else?\nI find it completely implausible that an organism at a life stage with no capacity for perception, let alone reason, counts as a person. Nor that a particular genetic code is either necessary or sufficient for personhood.\nI think every point that she made was brought up in a debate I had with a Christian blogger on the topic of abortion, who similarly argued for an equation between personhood and human organism. I wonder if she has any better rejoinders. Does she think that IVF and therapeutic cloning are immoral? IUDs?Vocab claimed that my argument was a \"Chewbacca argument,\" a smoke screen, or a slippery slope argument, but in fact it is none of these. \u0026nbsp;I posted the following comment in response to him:\nVocab:The argument I made is not a slippery slope argument, it's a reductio ad absurdum. \u0026nbsp;Your position is that the human organism is a person and has a right to life from fertilization to death (and presumably beyond), so you've already gone down the \"slippery slope\" and must of necessity say that IVF, therapeutic cloning, and IUDs are immoral because they result in the destruction and death of fertilized ova. \u0026nbsp;My position is that it is absurd to think that these things are immoral, and if you were to avoid the slippery slope by agreeing with me, you would have contradicted a logical consequence of your own position--thus, a reductio ad absurdum by being committed to a proposition and its negation.A slippery slope argument is an argument that says your position is committed to some consequence because there is no criterion that you can use to draw a line to avoid. \u0026nbsp;For example, if I argued that your position committed you to giving a right to life to all animals, and required you to be a vegetarian, or that it required you to give a right to life to every organism with DNA, and required you to hold a position like the Jain religion that all killing is wrong.As it happens, you never did supply an account of just what it is about the human organism that gives it a right to life or personhood--you offered no constitutive account of what properties entail a right to life or personhood, other than a genetic one. \u0026nbsp;I made the case near the end of our debate that you are probably implicitly assuming that personhood comes from a soul, and that souls are connected to human organisms at the point of fertilization, but there's clearly no evidence for that position, scientific, philosophical, or theological.BTW, my argument is also clearly not a Chewbacca argument or smoke screen, which is a simple non sequitur. \u0026nbsp;To think that, you would have to fail to understand that the items I identified all result in the destruction of fertilized human ova.It's important to note that not all slippery slope arguments are fallacious--if there really is no criterion to stop the fall down the slope, the argument is valid. \u0026nbsp;As Vocab never did explain what it is about human organisms that make them rights-bearers, I think he does face the slippery slope argument I presented unless he can offer some criterion for distinguishing human organisms from other organisms with respect to having a right to life. M! (2010-11-17):\nLet me be concise and clear: I do think *most* forms of IVF (there\u0026#39;s a way to do it that hypothetically would be ethical), therapeutic cloning, and IUD\u0026#39;s (they act as abortifacients) are unethical. This is the only logically consistent position to take if one understands that the ontology of the human being is such that all humans are persons and all persons have inherent and inalienable rights, the foremost of which is the right to life.\nLastly, I don't believe it is quite accurate to call a zygote merely a \u0026quot;fertilized human ova\u0026quot;, for the egg has ceased to exist and a new entity has emerged - namely, a very small human being.\nvm\nLippard (2010-11-17):\nWe\u0026#39;ve previously established that your account of personhood is \u0026quot;being a human being\u0026quot; (thus excluding other animals anywhere in the universe, regardless of capacity for sentience, as well as machine intelligence or genetically engineered intelligence). It also appears that your account is an \u0026quot;animalism\u0026quot; account like Paul Snowdon\u0026#39;s. But what is the explanation for why moral rights including a right to life attach solely to persons, on this account? What is it about persons that gives them this value? What is so special about fertilization? Is it just an irreducible brute fact about human beings that has no explanation? (FYI, Chris Tollefsen argues in support of a position like yours, in an argument which seems to me to depend upon magical distinctions that are being completely obliterated by synthetic biology.)\nI take it from your absolute statement that the right to life is inherent and inalienable that you also oppose the death penalty.\nBTW, I'm unaware of any form of IVF that doesn't generate excess embryos. Is it ethical to freeze a person into permanent stasis without their consent?\nLippard (2010-11-17):\nAlso, if you did agree that most IVF, therapeutic cloning, and IUDs are unethical, you should have recognized my argument at the Point of Inquiry forums as either a modus tollens or reductio ad absurdum argument, and not a \u0026quot;smoke screen.\u0026quot; But I am glad that you have been explicit in recognizing the implications of your position, which it seemed to me you were trying to avoid with your \u0026quot;smoke screen\u0026quot; charge.\nM! (2010-11-18):\nJim, in what way does saying that \u0026quot;human being=person\u0026quot; not allow for aliens and AI beings to have personhood? I never said that's the ONLY being worthy of personhood.\nRemember, I'm the one w/a more liberal view of personhood in that I widen the circle, you're the one w/the position that narrows the circle (which historically has been the wrong way to go). If anyone was gonna deny these other entities (wherever they are!) the rights of a person, it would more than likely be you, not me.\nStill, I just don't understand your persistent running to hypotheticals and potential but-as-of-yet-non-existent situations/entities to try to weaken my case and strengthen yours.\nI'm leaving Amarillo right now, so I gotta jam, but please clarify this questions you asked: \u0026quot;What is so special about fertilization?\u0026quot;\nvm\nLippard (2010-11-20):\n\u0026quot;in what way does saying that \u0026quot;human being=person\u0026quot; not allow for aliens and AI beings to have personhood? I never said that\u0026#39;s the *ONLY* being worthy of personhood\u0026quot; Then you haven't got a definition, you've got a sufficiency condition without a necessity condition. Worse yet, your sufficiency condition is one which gives no guidance about how to recognize other sufficiency conditions. What is it about being a human being that explains why a human being is a person at all stages of life that we could identify in other beings that would also make them persons?\nWe keep coming back to the same point, and that's why I asked the question about what's special about fertilization\u0026ndash;what is your explanation for what grounds personhood or a right to life? Why does a zygote have it, and an unfertilized ovum and a sperm about to fertilize it do not (either individually or collectively)? Why does a zygote have it, and a dolphin, whale, or chimpanzee does not?\nM! (2010-11-20):\nJim, on the right to life question, you asked me , \u0026quot;Why does a zygote have it, and an unfertilized ovum and a sperm about to fertilize it do not (either individually or collectively)?\u0026quot; Do you not recognize the vast biological and genetic gulf between a sperm and a zygote? Or do you think there is some kind of equivalency?\nYou also asked, \u0026quot;Why does a zygote have it, and a dolphin, whale, or chimpanzee does not?\u0026quot;\nThis is what I would like to ask you! My hunch is that Peter Singer would like to ask both this question as well \u0026hellip; I'm not sure on what grounds you would answer in order to remain consistent.\nI admit I am not directly answering all your questions here because I honestly feel they were adequately addressed in our initial posts to each other.\nvm\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/11/does-vocab-malone-understand.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab Malone, with whom I had a blog debate about abortion and personhood last year, recently came across this comment of mine on \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/jen_roth_atheist_against_abortion/\"\u003ethe Point of Inquiry podcast with Jen Roth\u003c/a\u003e, an atheist who argues for the immorality of abortion:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eWas Jen Roth ultimately arguing that personhood is something that a human organism has for its entire lifecycle? At what starting point? Conception, implantation, or something else?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI find it completely implausible that an organism at a life stage with no capacity for perception, let alone reason, counts as a person. Nor that a particular genetic code is either necessary or sufficient for personhood.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI think every point that she made was brought up in \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood.html\"\u003ea debate I had with a Christian blogger on the topic of abortion\u003c/a\u003e, who similarly argued for an equation between personhood and human organism. I wonder if she has any better rejoinders. Does she think that IVF and therapeutic cloning are immoral? IUDs?\u003c/blockquote\u003eVocab claimed that my argument was a \"Chewbacca argument,\" a smoke screen, or a slippery slope argument, but in fact it is none of these. \u0026nbsp;I posted \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2010/09/pro-life-rappers-and-atheists-against.html\"\u003ethe following comment in response to him\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eVocab:\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe argument I made is not a slippery slope argument, it's a reductio ad absurdum. \u0026nbsp;Your position is that the human organism is a person and has a right to life from fertilization to death (and presumably beyond), so you've already gone down the \"slippery slope\" and must of necessity say that IVF, therapeutic cloning, and IUDs are immoral because they result in the destruction and death of fertilized ova. \u0026nbsp;My position is that it is absurd to think that these things are immoral, and if you were to avoid the slippery slope by agreeing with me, you would have contradicted a logical consequence of your own position--thus, a reductio ad absurdum by being committed to a proposition and its negation.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA slippery slope argument is an argument that says your position is committed to some consequence because there is no criterion that you can use to draw a line to avoid. \u0026nbsp;For example, if I argued that your position committed you to giving a right to life to all animals, and required you to be a vegetarian, or that it required you to give a right to life to every organism with DNA, and required you to hold a position like the Jain religion that all killing is wrong.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAs it happens, you never did supply an account of just what it is about the human organism that gives it a right to life or personhood--you offered no constitutive account of what properties entail a right to life or personhood, other than a genetic one. \u0026nbsp;I made the case near the end of our debate that you are probably implicitly assuming that personhood comes from a soul, and that souls are connected to human organisms at the point of fertilization, but there's clearly no evidence for that position, scientific, philosophical, or theological.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBTW, my argument is also clearly not a Chewbacca argument or smoke screen, which is a simple non sequitur. \u0026nbsp;To think that, you would have to fail to understand that the items I identified all result in the destruction of fertilized human ova.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt's important to note that not all slippery slope arguments are fallacious--if there really is no criterion to stop the fall down the slope, the argument is valid. \u0026nbsp;As Vocab never did explain what it is about human organisms that make them rights-bearers, I think he does face the slippery slope argument I presented unless he can offer some criterion for distinguishing human organisms from other organisms with respect to having a right to life.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eM!\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-11-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eLet me be concise and clear: I do think *most* forms of IVF (there\u0026#39;s a way to do it that hypothetically would be ethical), therapeutic cloning, and IUD\u0026#39;s (they act as abortifacients) are unethical.\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the only logically consistent position to take if one understands that the ontology of the human being is such that all humans are persons and all persons have inherent and inalienable rights, the foremost of which is the right to life.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Does Vocab Malone understand the implications of his own position?"},{"content":"Former Arizona state legislator Pamela Gorman, or someone claiming to be her, took issue with the following passage in her Wikipedia entry:\nAlso in 2005, Gorman was one of several Arizona legislators who supported parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. She attended the grand opening of the Church of Scientology's \"Psychiatry: An Industry of Death\" exhibition in Los Angeles in December 2005 at the request of Robin Read, President of the National Federation for Women Legislators.The edit, which was described as \"clarification of falsehoods entered about me and other organizations\" and came from Cox Communications Phoenix IP 68.231.27.68, added the following right after that text:\nIt was a quick visit which did not include any meals or other \"fluff.\" The goal of the trip was to determine what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about, as they were becoming heavily involved in NFWL. The cost of the roundtrip flight for the small group to tour the museum was reported by CCHR, according to Arizona disclosure laws. Gorman's political enemies have tried for years to make a leap from her touring a museum as a favor to the president of her professional organization to her actually being a Scientologist. Further attempts to alter this page with falsehoods of this nature may be met with legal action.I'm not aware of any online claims that Gorman, who is an evangelical Christian, is a Scientologist, only that she was one of several Arizona legislators who sponsored legislation on behalf of a Scientology front group and accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology.\nIt's good that Gorman was willing to give a bit more context, but it should be noted that this was not simple \"parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights,\" it was a bill that was at least partly written by CCHR. As the Arizona Republic reported at the time, the original text required not only parental consent before mental health evaluations by schools, it required that parents read CCHR anti-psychiatry propaganda before signing a consent form:\nAnother bill introduced this year would have required written consent from parents for any mental-health screenings in schools. The bill was similar to other measures passed in previous years and vetoed by the governor. Sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson, a member of the commission's international advisory group, the bill had a bipartisan group of 36 co-sponsors. Still, it failed by a tie vote in the Education Committee, in part because of testimony of mental-health advocates.\nThe original text of the bill would have required parents to sign a lengthy consent form that contained paragraph after paragraph of negative information about psychiatric practices.Information about CCHR is easy to come by on the Internet (e.g., at Wikipedia or xenu.net), so it's unclear why Gorman needed to accept a round trip flight to Los Angeles on the CCHR's dime to find out \"what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about,\" or why she sponsored their bill.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/11/pamela-gorman-edits-her-own-wikipedia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Arizona state legislator Pamela Gorman, or someone claiming to be her, took issue with the following passage in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Gorman\"\u003eher Wikipedia entry\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eAlso in 2005, Gorman was one of several Arizona legislators who supported parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. She attended the grand opening of the Church of Scientology's \"Psychiatry: An Industry of Death\" exhibition in Los Angeles in December 2005 at the request of Robin Read, President of the National Federation for Women Legislators.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe edit, which was described as \"clarification of falsehoods entered about me and other organizations\" and came from Cox Communications Phoenix IP 68.231.27.68, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pamela_Gorman\u0026amp;action=historysubmit\u0026amp;diff=394338493\u0026amp;oldid=389039637\"\u003eadded the following\u003c/a\u003e right after that text:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eIt was a quick visit which did not include any meals or other \"fluff.\"  The goal of the trip was to determine what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about, as they were becoming heavily involved in NFWL.  The cost of the roundtrip flight for the small group to tour the museum was reported by CCHR, according to Arizona disclosure laws.  Gorman's political enemies have tried for years to make a leap from her touring a museum as a favor to the president of her professional organization to her actually being a Scientologist. Further attempts to alter this page with falsehoods of this nature may be met with legal action.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI'm not aware of any online claims that Gorman, who is an evangelical Christian, is a Scientologist, only that she was \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/state-legislator-who-supported.html\"\u003eone of several Arizona legislators who sponsored legislation on behalf of a Scientology front group and accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt's good that Gorman was willing to give a bit more context, but it should be noted that this was not simple \"parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights,\" it was a bill that was at least partly written by CCHR.  As \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0311scientologists11.html\"\u003ethe Arizona Republic reported at the time\u003c/a\u003e, the original text required not only parental consent before mental health evaluations by schools, it required that parents read CCHR anti-psychiatry propaganda before signing a consent form:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eAnother bill introduced this year would have required written consent from parents for any mental-health screenings in schools. The bill was similar to other measures passed in previous years and vetoed by the governor. Sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson, a member of the commission's international advisory group, the bill had a bipartisan group of 36 co-sponsors. Still, it failed by a tie vote in the Education Committee, in part because of testimony of mental-health advocates.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe original text of the bill would have required parents to sign a lengthy consent form that contained paragraph after paragraph of negative information about psychiatric practices.\u003c/blockquote\u003eInformation about CCHR is easy to come by on the Internet (e.g., at \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/archive/infopack/12.htm\"\u003exenu.net\u003c/a\u003e), so it's unclear why Gorman needed to accept a round trip flight to Los Angeles on the CCHR's dime to find out \"what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about,\" or why she sponsored their bill.","title":"Pamela Gorman edits her own Wikipedia entry?"},{"content":"In James Dobson\u0026rsquo;s 1978 book, The Strong-Willed Child, he writes about using a belt to beat his dachshund into submission:\nPlease don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.\nThe greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.\nAt eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.\nOn this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater...\nWhen I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. \"Get lost!\"\nI had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me \"reason\" with Mr. Freud.\nWhat developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!\nDobson's book is a promotion of corporal punishment in child rearing. This story is complementary to Jerry Falwell's cat-killing story, written at a time when Christian fundamentalists didn't seem overly concerned about abuse of animals--the 1970s.\u0026nbsp; It's also complementary to the story of Mike Huckabee's son killing a dog, and Mormon Mitt Romney's dog abuse story.\nThankfully, most of us today recognize that abusing animals is a sign of psychopathy.\nUPDATED: To lengthen quote and correct source book title, as per Snopes.\u0026nbsp; The original 1978 hardcover version of the book is available for $0.01 on Amazon.com Marketplace. Historical Comments Bartimaeus (2010-09-28):\nThey probably thought Sigmund\u0026#39;s behavior was \u0026quot;cute\u0026quot; up to the point that he started biting them. Sad that he did not realize he was creating a monster and then resorted to physical violence as his first and only option. Even more disturbing that he uses it as an example for raising children. Here is an interesting post by someone who actually understands dogs better than most, just for a little contrast; http://cynography.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-16T18%3A49%3A00-04%3A00\u0026amp;amp;max-results=7\ncerbaz (2010-10-09):\nI once believed everything James Dobson said and wrote. How foolish we can be when we do not think critically.\nburningbear (2020-07-04):\nWhy don\u0026#39;t spanking preachers beat their own hineys when they louse up and disappoint God by using cuss words, failure to be perfectly holy at all times, etc.? The weak the small and the powerless have always been held to a higher standard and punished more severely. In the 16th century peasants would be severely tortured before being executed, while noblemen would suffer an easier execution. Christians are taught that EVERY tiny infraction of the rules committed by a tiny child deserves a beating. But if the pastor is caught picking up girls in the red light district, he gets gentle \u0026quot;restoration\u0026quot; instead of a spanking because grownups and their feelings are far more important. People in power abuse because they CAN.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/09/james-dobsons-dog-beating-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn James Dobson\u0026rsquo;s 1978 book, \u003ci\u003eThe Strong-Willed Child\u003c/i\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/7/18/193343/526\"\u003ehe writes about using a belt to beat his dachshund into submission\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003ePlease don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater...\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhen I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. \"Get lost!\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me \"reason\" with Mr. Freud.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhat developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nDobson's book is a promotion of corporal punishment in child rearing. This story is complementary to \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/jerry-falwells-cat-killing-story.html\"\u003eJerry Falwell's cat-killing story\u003c/a\u003e, written at a time when Christian fundamentalists didn't seem overly concerned about abuse of animals--the 1970s.\u0026nbsp; It's also complementary to the story of \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/mike-huckabees-problems.html\"\u003eMike Huckabee's son killing a dog\u003c/a\u003e, and Mormon \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/mitt-romneys-dog.html\"\u003eMitt Romney's dog abuse story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThankfully, most of us today recognize that abusing animals is \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_to_animals#Psychological_disorders\"\u003ea sign of psychopathy\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATED: To lengthen quote and correct source book title, \u003ca href=\"http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/33/t/001112/p/1.html\"\u003eas per Snopes\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp; The original 1978 hardcover version of the book is available for $0.01 on Amazon.com Marketplace.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eBartimaeus\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-09-28)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThey probably thought Sigmund\u0026#39;s behavior was \u0026quot;cute\u0026quot; up to the point that he started biting them. Sad that he did not realize he was creating a monster and then resorted to physical violence as his first and only option. Even more disturbing that he uses it as an example for raising children.\n\u003cp\u003eHere is an interesting post by someone who actually understands dogs better than most, just for a little contrast;\n\u003ca href=\"http://cynography.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-16T18%3A49%3A00-04%3A00\u0026amp;amp;max-results=7\"\u003ehttp://cynography.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-16T18%3A49%3A00-04%3A00\u0026amp;amp;max-results=7\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"James Dobson's dog-beating story"},{"content":"Former Arizona State Representative Pamela Gorman, whose promo video proudly proclaims her to be a gun-toting Bible thumper, spent some of her time in the Arizona legislature supporting Scientology front groups and denying the existence of human-caused global warming through her affiliation with the sleazy Heartland Institute. Here\u0026rsquo;s her video:\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/08/gun-toting-scientology-supporting-bible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrike\u003eFormer\u003c/strike\u003e Arizona State Representative Pamela Gorman, whose promo video proudly proclaims her to be a gun-toting Bible thumper, spent some of her time in the Arizona legislature \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003esupporting Scientology front groups\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/state-legislator-who-supported.html\"\u003edenying the existence of human-caused global warming\u003c/a\u003e through her affiliation with the sleazy \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Heartland%20Institute\"\u003eHeartland Institute\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s her video:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cobject height=\"385\" width=\"640\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/GqnjzONrPiA?fs=1\u0026amp;hl=en_US\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/GqnjzONrPiA?fs=1\u0026amp;hl=en_US\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gun-toting, Scientology-supporting, Bible-thumping, climate change-denying Pamela Gorman wants to be elected to Congress"},{"content":"A few years ago, I noted that popular and wealthy libertarian investment writer Douglas Casey was making tacit references to L. Ron Hubbard doctrine in his writing. For example, I noted that he wrote (in an article titled \u0026ldquo;The New Praetorians\u0026rdquo; in the March 1996 issue of Liberty magazine):\nI have long believed that about 80% of the human race are basically people of good will.\u0026nbsp; About 17% can be classified as potential trouble sources--PTS's--who will basically bend with whatever wind prevails.\u0026nbsp; Only 3% are actively destructive sociopaths.\u0026nbsp; But that 3% tend to gravitate toward politics, the military, the media, the financial system, and other centers of power.\"I noted that the term \"potential trouble source\" (PTS) derives from Hubbard, who also identifies a similar percentages of the population into the categories of PTS and \"suppressive persons\" (SPs).\u0026nbsp; In a letter to Liberty which they refused to publish, I noted:\nL. Ron Hubbard wrote much about \"potential trouble sources\" (PTS's) and \"suppressive persons\" (SP's) whom he claimed made up 17.5 and 2.5 percent of the population, respectively (see Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, 1990, Carol Publishing Group. p. 155).\u0026nbsp; Hubbard's views on PTS's and SP's are set out at length in his book An Introduction to Scientology Ethics, where his definitions of crimes and suppressive acts make it clear that he is no friend of liberty.\u0026nbsp; The Church of Scientology has a long history of harassment and barratrous litigation against its critics which continues to this day on the Internet (see Spy, February 1996; Wired, December 1995; Skeptic, June 1995; and the Internet resources linked from http://www.thecia.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html).I've further noted that Casey was on the financial committee of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne in 1996, along with Michael Baybak.\u0026nbsp; Baybak is a Scientology OTVIII who played a major role in a sidebar story to Time magazine's famous 1991 \"Cult of Greed and Power\" article about Scientology, titled \"Mining Money in Vancouver.\"\nFinally, I noted that a Scientology-critical website that publishes Scientology service completions shows multiple Scientology courses completed by a Douglas Casey, who may well be the same libertarian investment writer.\nMy objection is not that Casey is a Scientologist, though I think it is legitimate to criticize anyone who knowingly supports the unethical activities of the Church of Scientology.\u0026nbsp; Rather, my objection is to his making unfounded claims based on Scientology and Hubbard doctrines without being open about his sources.\u0026nbsp; It's a common tactic by the Church of Scientology and other cults to use front groups and try to conceal their nature until after they've persuaded someone to participate in a program--the Unification Church calls it \"heavenly deception.\"\u0026nbsp; I've also wondered to what extent Scientology principles are used in Casey's investment advice, and whether Casey has promoted investment in Scientology-related companies, and whether there were any other Scientologists on Browne's financial committee, but I haven't seen any evidence of those things.\nA recent interview with Casey on his own website points out that he is something of an apologist for the Church of Scientology and Hubbard:\nL: It actually sparked something of a religion for a time. People were adopting Heinlein's Martian philosophy and starting \"crèches\" around the country. Do you know if it's true that L. Ron Hubbard, another SF author, founded the church of Scientology as a result of Heinlein betting him he couldn't do it and make it stick?\nDoug: There's no way to know the actual facts, of course, other than Hubbard started researching Dianetics just after World War II. But they were friends, after all, and both SF writers. The model for the character of Michael Valentine Smith was supposed to have been Hubbard – there were supposed to be a lot of similarities between the two. The religion racket can be an easy way to make a million dollars, but I don't think that was on Hubbard's mind when he founded Scientology. A surprisingly large percentage of the human potential movement was a direct result of his work. He was sincere in promoting it, notwithstanding a lot of negative PR surrounding the subject.Hubbard's sincerity may be legitimately questioned by anyone familiar with his biography.\u0026nbsp; And I'm not sure \"a surprisingly large percentage of the human potential movement\" being inspired by Scientology (e.g., est, Landmark Forum, Eckankar, etc.) is to its credit.\nLast month, the website The Daily Bell published an interview with Casey titled \"Doug Casey Revisits the Greater Depression\" in which Casey referred to the Roman emperor Tiberius as \"a degraded being,\" another use of Scientology terminology.\u0026nbsp; This prompted a commenter who identified as an ex-Scientologist to ask if Casey was a Scientologist, and another commenter to point to my website on Casey.\u0026nbsp; This prompted a response from The Daily Bell:\nDoug Casey is the author of numerous hard-money/free-market best-sellers and has established himself as a reliable and prominent libertarian-oriented commentator over years and years. He may or may not have Scientology connections (we have no idea) but unlike DC we don't see any overt or even covert evidence of specific dogma infecting his commentary - which is concise, to-the-point and in-line with the free-market message that he's been purveying for decades. Scientology is alleged to be a \"bad church.\" But modern Western governments inflate economies to ruination, cost tens of millions pensions and savings, freely wiretap, prosecute and imprison millions, foment endless authoritarian regulations and illogical laws, mandate poisonous vaccines, engage in punitive taxation and serial warfare, etc. ... We think we would be more concerned if Casey were an apologist for modern Western regulatory democracy rather than a courageous and principled opponent of it. We are grateful for his voice and message, especially during the 20th century when very few spoke out. Again, we have no knowledge of any affiliation of his with Scientology, but we do know what we can read on the printed page. We believe that Casey has contributed greatly to an understanding of free-markets, especially in the 20th century when he emerged courageously as a prominent spokesperson at a time when there were very others. But let us reverse the issue. What is the agenda of those who are bringing up a Scientology link? Casey doesn't mention it. His arguments are the same as they have always been - lucid, elegant and inspiring. In fact, it seems to us a despicable canard - and an obscene red-herring - to read an honest interview freely given and then drag someone's alleged religion into it. It is like questioning one's veracity simply because he or she is Jewish or Roman Catholic. Please respond to what is on the page, not to some malicious or false gossip about someone's supposed religious affiliation with a church that is alleged by some to do bad things - with many accusations coming from Western governments such as France, Germany or the United States.I've submitted the following response comment to The Daily Bell:\nSince I am here accused of \"some malicious or false gossip about someone's supposed religious affiliation with a church that is alleged by some to do bad things\" and of \"a despicable canard - and an obscene red-herring\" and asked \"What is the agenda of those who are bringing up a Scientology link?\" I would like to respond.\nMy criticism of Casey is not for being a Scientologist, but for injecting Scientology doctrine and claims from L. Ron Hubbard into his writing without being explicit or open about it.\u0026nbsp; This criticism is neither malicious nor false, but is backed up with specific citations.\u0026nbsp; Further, the Church of Scientology is not merely \"alleged by some to do bad things,\" it has been caught doing so, which has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented (e.g., its breaking into numerous government offices and engaging in wiretapping, its attempt to frame author Paulette Cooper for a bomb threat which led to her arrest, its illegal covert operations against the mayor of Clearwater, FL, its attempt to cover up its responsibility in the death of Lisa McPherson, its formal policy of harassment using the legal system, and on and on).\u0026nbsp; Many of the documents that expose Scientology's involvement in such activities were seized in FBI raids in the mid-1970s or have been leaked by ex-members and are available on the Internet at locations such as http://shipbrook.com/jeff/CoS/index.html, http://www.xenu.net/, and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/index.htmlThis week will offer an opportunity for many to hear Doug Casey speak at the FreedomFest in Las Vegas, July 7-11 at Bally's/Paris.\u0026nbsp; If you have some familiarity with Scientology and the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, listen carefully, and let me know if you hear anything of interest. Einzige (2010-07-05):\nYour point is apparently too subtle for most people, Jim. The whole problem would go away if Casey were just up front about things - \u0026quot;Yes, I am a Scientologist\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;No, I am not, but they have some good things to say.\u0026quot; Refusing to comment at all just seems odd.\nLippard (2010-07-05):\nI\u0026#39;m not sure the problem would go away, but I\u0026#39;d have more respect for him if he were open about his views. I have yet to actually meet a Scientologist (apart from freezoners) willing to admit that the Church of Scientology has done a lot of unethical and stupid things, whereas it seems relatively common for Catholics to be critical of failings of their church.\nchuckbeatty77 (2010-07-07):\nSadly, a concise accurate definition of Scientology\u0026#39;s religious spiritual activities is still not settled on. Scientology is a talk therapy spiritual improvement religion.\nThe \u0026quot;lower levels\u0026quot; deal with each of us as the spirit that we are. Scientology believes we ARE our soul, spirit.\nThe \u0026quot;upper levels\u0026quot; of Scientology deal overwhelmingly, timewise, with exorcism of dead space alien souls that Hubbard believed infest all human beings unbeknownst to us.\nThe \u0026quot;upper levels\u0026quot; (OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) are high volume dead alien soul exorcism, with the aim of making life simple again for us as the individual souls that each of us are.\nScientology is a talk therapy religion, and a high volume dead alien soul exorcism religion.\nI'll gladly simplify the soul improvement therapy religion of Scientology for anyone wishing a simplified understand of the guts of what the spiritual practice of Scientology. Chuck Beatty ex Scientology staffer (1975-2003) 412-260-1170 Pittsburgh, USA (anyone call me after 9pm east coast time) http://tinyurl.com/49g722 http://tinyurl.com/295khy http://tinyurl.com/cgrg7\nFreeZoneThetan (2010-12-12):\nI think one should make a distinction between the Church of Scientology and the philosophy of Scientology. I am a practicing \u0026#39;Freezone\u0026#39; Scientology, also influenced by objectivism, and an anarchist libertarian (as Casey is). I do not approve of the CoS\u0026#39;s use of state legal powers such as lawsuits on libel, intellectual property and so forth.\nLippard (2010-12-13):\nFreeZoneThetan: I did in fact make that distinction two comments before yours. I\u0026#39;m glad you reject the Church of Scientology\u0026#39;s authoritarianism, though I think you\u0026#39;re still on the wrong track in terms of your model of reality. But that doesn\u0026#39;t mean we can\u0026#39;t get along.\nFreeZoneThetan (2010-12-13):\n\u0026quot;I did in fact make that distinction two comments before yours.\u0026quot; Yes, I see that now. I would say that, while they do things which are immoral and contrary even to what LRH stated himself, the CoS should be pretty irrelevant targets for libertarians. In terms of philosophical corruption, IP Nazism and outright advocacy of Statism they come nowhere near the Ayn Rand Institute; and unlike the ARI the CoS was not founded specifically in opposition to Statism. The creeps like Peikoff and Brooke are basically advocating a global holocaust under the guise of Objectivism, which is far worse than anything the CoS ever did.\nAnonymous (2021-07-27):\nScientology is weird but Casey is much more a disciple of Max Stirner, or even Ayn Rand, than Hubbard. I have also noticed his use of the terminology of Scientology, but it\u0026#39;s also important to realize that they repackage a lot of that stuff as generally non-religious management seminars. I have actually discussed religion and morality with him, and he is the last person to give his money to a church. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/07/would-you-like-some-scientology-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few years ago, I \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/casey.html\"\u003enoted that popular and wealthy libertarian investment writer Douglas Casey was making tacit references to L. Ron Hubbard doctrine in his writing\u003c/a\u003e.  For example, I noted that he wrote (in an article titled \u0026ldquo;The New Praetorians\u0026rdquo; in the March 1996 issue of \u003ci\u003eLiberty\u003c/i\u003e magazine):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eI have long believed that about 80% of the human race are basically people of good will.\u0026nbsp; About 17% can be classified as potential trouble sources--PTS's--who will basically bend with whatever wind prevails.\u0026nbsp; Only 3% are actively destructive sociopaths.\u0026nbsp; But that 3% tend to gravitate toward politics, the military, the media, the financial system, and other centers of power.\"\u003c/blockquote\u003eI noted that the term \"potential trouble source\" (PTS) derives from Hubbard, who also identifies a similar percentages of the population into the categories of PTS and \"suppressive persons\" (SPs).\u0026nbsp; In a letter to \u003ci\u003eLiberty\u003c/i\u003e which they refused to publish, I noted:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eL. Ron Hubbard wrote much about \"potential trouble sources\" (PTS's) and \"suppressive persons\" (SP's) whom he claimed made up 17.5 and 2.5 percent of the population, respectively (see Jon Atack, \u003ci\u003eA Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed\u003c/i\u003e, 1990, Carol Publishing Group. p. 155).\u0026nbsp; Hubbard's views on PTS's and SP's are set out at length in his book \u003ci\u003eAn Introduction to Scientology Ethics\u003c/i\u003e, where his definitions of crimes and suppressive acts make it clear that he is no friend of liberty.\u0026nbsp; The Church of Scientology has a long history of harassment and barratrous litigation against its critics which continues to this day on the Internet (see \u003ci\u003eSpy\u003c/i\u003e, February 1996; \u003ci\u003eWired\u003c/i\u003e, December 1995; \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eSkeptic\u003c/i\u003e, June 1995\u003c/a\u003e; and the Internet resources linked from \u003ca href=\"http://www.thecia.net/%7Ernewman/scientology/home.html\"\u003ehttp://www.thecia.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/blockquote\u003eI've further noted that Casey was on the financial committee of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne in 1996, along with Michael Baybak.\u0026nbsp; Baybak is a Scientology OTVIII who played a major role in a sidebar story to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/Fishman/time-behar.html\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c/i\u003e magazine's famous 1991 \"Cult of Greed and Power\" article\u003c/a\u003e about Scientology, titled \"Mining Money in Vancouver.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFinally, I noted that \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/d/douglas-casey.html\"\u003ea Scientology-critical website that publishes Scientology service completions shows multiple Scientology courses completed by a Douglas Casey\u003c/a\u003e, who may well be the same libertarian investment writer.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy objection is not that Casey is a Scientologist, though I think it is legitimate to criticize anyone who knowingly supports the unethical activities of the Church of Scientology.\u0026nbsp; Rather, my objection is to his making unfounded claims based on Scientology and Hubbard doctrines without being open about his sources.\u0026nbsp; It's a common tactic by the Church of Scientology and other cults to use front groups and try to conceal their nature until after they've persuaded someone to participate in a program--the Unification Church calls it \"heavenly deception.\"\u0026nbsp; I've also wondered to what extent Scientology principles are used in Casey's investment advice, and whether Casey has promoted investment in Scientology-related companies, and whether there were any other Scientologists on Browne's financial committee, but I haven't seen any evidence of those things.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCwc.php?id=27\"\u003einterview with Casey on his own website\u003c/a\u003e points out that he is something of an apologist for the Church of Scientology and Hubbard:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb class=\"blue\"\u003eL\u003c/b\u003e: It actually  sparked something of a  religion  for a time. People were adopting  Heinlein's Martian  philosophy and starting \"crèches\" around the country. Do you  know if  it's true that L. Ron Hubbard, another SF author, founded the church of   Scientology as a result of Heinlein betting him he couldn't do it and  make it  stick?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"blue\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eDoug\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e:\u003c/b\u003e  There's no  way to know the actual facts, of course, other than Hubbard  started researching  Dianetics just after World War II. But they were  friends, after all, and both SF  writers. The model for the character of  Michael Valentine Smith was supposed to  have been Hubbard – there were  supposed to be a lot of similarities between the  two. The religion  racket can be an easy way to make a million dollars, but I  don't think  that was on Hubbard's mind when he founded Scientology. A  surprisingly  large percentage of the human potential movement was a direct  result of  his work. He was sincere in promoting it, notwithstanding a lot of   negative PR surrounding the subject.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHubbard's sincerity may be legitimately questioned by anyone familiar with \u003ca href=\"http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm\"\u003ehis biography\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp; And I'm not sure \"a surprisingly large percentage of the human potential movement\" being inspired by Scientology (e.g., est, Landmark Forum, Eckankar, etc.) is to its credit.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLast month, the website The Daily Bell published \u003ca href=\"http://www.thedailybell.com/1128/Doug-Casey-Revisits-the-Greater-Depression\"\u003ean interview with Casey titled \"Doug Casey Revisits the Greater Depression\"\u003c/a\u003e in which Casey referred to the Roman emperor Tiberius as \"a degraded being,\" another use of Scientology terminology.\u0026nbsp; This prompted a commenter who identified as an ex-Scientologist to ask if Casey was a Scientologist, and another commenter to point to \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/casey.html\"\u003emy website on Casey\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp; This prompted \u003ca href=\"http://www.thedailybell.com/1128/Doug-Casey-Revisits-the-Greater-Depression\"\u003ea response from The Daily Bell\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eDoug Casey is the author of numerous hard-money/free-market best-sellers  and has established himself as a reliable and prominent  libertarian-oriented commentator over years and years.  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe may or may not have Scientology connections (we have no idea) but  unlike DC we don't see any overt or even covert evidence of specific  dogma infecting his commentary - which is concise, to-the-point and  in-line with the free-market message that he's been purveying for  decades.  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nScientology is alleged to be a \"bad church.\" But modern Western  governments inflate economies to ruination, cost tens of millions  pensions and savings, freely wiretap, prosecute and imprison millions,  foment endless authoritarian regulations and illogical laws, mandate  poisonous vaccines, engage in punitive taxation and serial warfare, etc.  ...  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWe think we would be more concerned if Casey were an apologist for  modern Western regulatory democracy rather than a courageous and  principled opponent of it. We are grateful for his voice and message,  especially during the 20th century when very few spoke out.  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAgain, we have no knowledge of any affiliation of his with  Scientology, but we do know what we can read on the printed page. We  believe that Casey has contributed greatly to an understanding of  free-markets, especially in the 20th century when he emerged  courageously as a prominent spokesperson at a time when there were very  others. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut let us reverse the issue. What is the agenda of those who are  bringing up a Scientology link?  Casey doesn't mention it. His arguments  are the same as they have always been - lucid, elegant and inspiring.  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn fact, it seems to us a despicable canard - and an obscene  red-herring - to read an honest interview freely given and then drag  someone's alleged religion into it. It is like questioning one's  veracity simply because he or she is Jewish or Roman Catholic.  \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPlease respond to what is on the page, not to some malicious or  false gossip about someone's supposed religious affiliation with a  church that is alleged by some to do bad things - with many accusations  coming from Western governments such as France, Germany or the United  States.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI've submitted the following response comment to The Daily Bell:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eSince I am here accused of \"some malicious or false gossip about someone's supposed religious affiliation with a church that is alleged by some to do bad things\" and of \"a despicable canard - and an obscene red-herring\" and asked \"What is the agenda of those who are bringing up a Scientology link?\" I would like to respond.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy criticism of Casey is not for being a Scientologist, but for injecting Scientology doctrine and claims from L. Ron Hubbard into his writing without being explicit or open about it.\u0026nbsp; This criticism is neither malicious nor false, but is backed up with specific citations.\u0026nbsp; Further, the Church of Scientology is not merely \"alleged by some to do bad things,\" it has been caught doing so, which has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented (e.g., its \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/archive/go/ops/go732/go732.htm\"\u003ebreaking into numerous government offices and engaging in wiretapping\u003c/a\u003e, its \u003ca href=\"http://home.snafu.de/tilman/krasel/cooper/frk.html\"\u003eattempt to frame author Paulette Cooper for a bomb threat\u003c/a\u003e which led to her arrest, its \u003ca href=\"http://shipbrook.com/jeff/CoS/docs/cazares.html\"\u003eillegal covert operations against the mayor of Clearwater, FL\u003c/a\u003e, its attempt to cover up \u003ca href=\"http://www.lisamcpherson.org/\"\u003eits responsibility in the death of Lisa McPherson\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/Fishman/Declaration/exhibg.html\"\u003eits formal policy of harassment using the legal system\u003c/a\u003e, and on and on).\u0026nbsp; Many of the documents that expose Scientology's involvement in such activities were seized in FBI raids in the mid-1970s or have been leaked by ex-members and are available on the Internet at locations such as \u003ca href=\"http://shipbrook.com/jeff/CoS/index.html\"\u003ehttp://shipbrook.com/jeff/CoS/index.html\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/\"\u003ehttp://www.xenu.net/\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/Secrets/index.html\"\u003ehttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/index.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis week will offer an opportunity for many to hear Doug Casey speak at the FreedomFest in Las Vegas, July 7-11 at Bally's/Paris.\u0026nbsp; If you have some familiarity with Scientology and the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, listen carefully, and let me know if you hear anything of interest.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-07-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYour point is apparently too subtle for most people, Jim. \n\u003cp\u003eThe whole problem would go away if Casey were just up front about things - \u0026quot;Yes, I am a Scientologist\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;No, I am not, but they have some good things to say.\u0026quot; Refusing to comment at all just seems odd.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Would you like some Scientology with your libertarianism?"},{"content":"\nI have about 5 weeks to reach my fund-raising goal for this year's Bowlarama.Please visit my donation page and make a donation, big or small. All money goes to the care and feeding of cats and dogs rescued from the euthanasia list at the county pound. Phoenix area people know that area shelters are taking in record numbers of animals so far this year. RESCUE helps reduce euthanasia rates at the county pound. All three of our dogs were given a second change by RESCUE. I've attached pictures of a few others that are currently in RESCUE's care, waiting for their forever homes.Did you know that the number one killer of healthy dogs in this country is \"euthanasia?\" RESCUE is the last voice for dogs and cats awaiting this terrible fate at Animal Control and the Humane Society. RESCUE is a \"no kill\" organization and animals stay with RESCUE for as long as it takes to find them a home that meets their needs. RESCUE has only one paid staff member and over 275 volunteers. Our veterinary, boarding and food expenses run about $9-12,000 a month. RESCUE has saved and placed over 9,400+ dogs and cats, and for every animal we adopt, we are back to save another.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/06/bowlarama-2010.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/connor.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486480852417120178\" src=\"/images/connor.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; height: 153px; width: 153px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/bianca.jpg\" onblur=\"try  {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486480588470665682\" src=\"/images/bianca.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 155px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 155px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/rudy.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486480726135163650\" src=\"/images/rudy.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 160px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 174px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;\"\u003eI have about 5 weeks to reach my fund-raising goal for this year's Bowlarama.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003ePlease visit my \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstgiving.com/kathleenlippard\"\u003edonation page\u003c/a\u003e and make a donation, big or small.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eAll money goes to the care and feeding of cats a\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003end dogs rescued from the euthanasia list at the county pound.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e\u003ccity st=\"on\"\u003e\u003cplace st=\"on\"\u003ePhoenix\u003c/place\u003e\u003c/city\u003e area people know that area shelters are taking in record numbers of animals so far this year.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.org/index.php\"\u003eRESCUE\u003c/a\u003e helps reduce euthanasia rates at the county pound.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eAll three of our dogs were given a second change by RESCUE.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eI've attached pictures of a few others that are currently in RESCUE's care, waiting for their forever homes.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eDid you know that the number one killer of healthy dogs in this country is \"euthanasia?\"\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eRES\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eCUE is the last voice for dogs and cats awaiting this terrible fate at Animal Control and the Humane Society.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eRESCUE is a \"no kill\" organization and animals stay with RESCUE for as long as it takes to find them a home that meets their needs.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eRESCUE has only one paid staff member and over 275 volunteers.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eOur veterinary, boarding and food expenses run about $9-12,000 a month.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 100%;\"\u003eRESCUE has saved and placed over 9,400+ dogs and cats, and for every animal we adopt, we are back to save another.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Bowlarama 2010"},{"content":"British former surgeon Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and abusive research was responsible for the resurgence of measles outbreaks in the UK and the U.S., is not just coming to Phoenix this Saturday, he is being celebrated by the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 1998 paper in The Lancet reported symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in twelve children with autism, and speculated that the cause was the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. What it didn\u0026rsquo;t report was that Wakefield had a financial interest in his own alternative vaccine, that he had been paid by attorneys who were trying to prove that MMR vaccines were harmful, that his test subjects were recruited by those attorneys from among their plaintiffs, or that Wakefield engaged in unnecessary colonoscopies, colon biopsies, and spinal taps on children in his study. Ten of Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 12 co-authors published a retraction of his interpretation of the paper, and the original paper was withdrawn by the journal this year. Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s name has been struck from the register of British medical doctors as a result of his unethical behavior.\nThe publication of his paper was responsible for a significant drop in UK vaccination rates due to fear of a link to autism, which was accompanied by a rise in measles outbreaks (but no drop in autism diagnosis rates). It is a pity that the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix is promoting an unethical, discredited quack.\nHistorical Comments Jerry (2010-08-29):\nIr\u0026#39;s Arizona, after all - run by tea-party nut jobs through and through.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/06/discredited-doctor-comes-to-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBritish former surgeon Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and abusive research was responsible for the resurgence of measles outbreaks in the UK and the U.S., is not just coming to Phoenix this Saturday, he is \u003ca href=\"http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e2xakuhwcdf8dc5e\"\u003ebeing celebrated by the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix at the Ritz Carlton Hotel\u003c/a\u003e.  Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 1998 paper in \u003ci\u003eThe Lancet\u003c/i\u003e reported symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in twelve children with autism, and speculated that the cause was the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.  What it didn\u0026rsquo;t report was that Wakefield had \u003ca href=\"http://briandeer.com/mmr/st-wakefield-vaccine.htm\"\u003ea financial interest in his own alternative vaccine\u003c/a\u003e, that he had been paid by attorneys \u003ca href=\"http://briandeer.com/wakefield/wakefield-deal.htm\"\u003ewho were trying to prove that MMR vaccines were harmful\u003c/a\u003e, that his test subjects were recruited by those attorneys from among their plaintiffs, or that Wakefield engaged in unnecessary colonoscopies, colon biopsies, and spinal taps on children in his study.  Ten of Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 12 co-authors published a retraction of his interpretation of the paper, and the original paper was withdrawn by the journal this year.  \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8695267.stm\"\u003eWakefield\u0026rsquo;s name has been struck from the register of British medical doctors\u003c/a\u003e as a result of his unethical behavior.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe publication of his paper was responsible for a significant drop in UK vaccination rates due to fear of a link to autism, which was accompanied by a rise in measles outbreaks (but no drop in \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=95\"\u003eautism diagnosis rates\u003c/a\u003e). \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt is a pity that the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix is promoting an unethical, discredited quack.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discredited doctor comes to Phoenix"},{"content":"Veteran software tester Abe Heward has started up a blog on software testing, which I\u0026rsquo;m sure will also include many items of epistemological, economic, and skeptical interest. He\u0026rsquo;s already got posts on how the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is relevant to software testing, why good testers aren\u0026rsquo;t robots (and the flaws in one company\u0026rsquo;s attempt to treat them as if they were), and on opportunity cost and testing automation.\nCheck it out at www.abeheward.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/06/abe-hewards-new-blog-on-software.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVeteran software tester Abe Heward has started up a blog on software testing, which I\u0026rsquo;m sure will also include many items of epistemological, economic, and skeptical interest.  He\u0026rsquo;s already got posts on \u003ca href=\"http://www.abeheward.com/?p=14\"\u003ehow the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is relevant to software testing\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.abeheward.com/?p=24\"\u003ewhy good testers aren\u0026rsquo;t robots\u003c/a\u003e (and the flaws in one company\u0026rsquo;s attempt to treat them as if they were), and on \u003ca href=\"http://www.abeheward.com/?p=24\"\u003eopportunity cost and testing automation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCheck it out at \u003ca href=\"http://www.abeheward.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.abeheward.com\"\u003ewww.abeheward.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abe Heward's new blog on software testing"},{"content":"Todd Wood of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College has gotten around to doing what I haven\u0026rsquo;t done, updating my analysis of the market for creationism that I did in early 2007. He confirms some of the trends I noted, such as that the market for creationism has been growing and is dominated by Answers in Genesis. His update goes further, and includes a comparison to the National Center for Science Education, noting that he market for criticism of creationism has grown along with the market for creationism. He also points out that the groups involved got a boost revenue in 2005 during the Dover trial, that the AiG split from Creation Ministries International doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have hurt AiG, and that \u0026ldquo;Godquest,\u0026rdquo; formerly known as Creation Science Evangelism, the Hovind organization, is the #3 creationist organization for revenue behind AiG and the Institute for Creation Research.\nWood reports the following numbers for recent years:\n2003:\n$14.6 million market\nAIG: 61.6%\nICR: 30.6%\n*CEM: 4.2%\n*CRS: 1.7%\n*CM: 1.6%\n*CSC: 0.4%\n2004:\n$15.8 million market\nAIG: 65.7%\nICR: 26.8%\nCEM: 3.1%\nCRS: 2.0%\nCM: 1.9%\nCSC: 0.4%\n2005: **\n$10.8 million market\nAIG: 50.4%\nICR: 40.3%\nCEM: 5.1%\nCRS: 1.0%\nCM: 2.5%\nCSC: 0.6%\n2006:\n$21.3 million market\nAIG: 64.1%\nICR: 30.9%\nCEM: 2.2%\nCRS: 1.1%\nCM: 1.3%\nCSC: 0.3%\n2007:\n$25.6 million market\nAIG: 69.5%\nICR: 27.6%\nCEM: no data\nCRS: 1.2%\nCM: 1.1%\nCSC: 0.3%\nCMI: 0.3%\n2008:\n$33.3 million market\nAIG: 68.2%\nICR: 26.2%\nCEM: no data\nGodquest: 2.8%\nCRS: 0.7%\nCM: 1.0%\nCSC: 0.2%\nCMI: 0.9%Check out Todd Wood's post for more details. Historical Comments L (2010-06-02):\nFrom Todd\u0026#39;s blog post: \u0026quot;What\u0026#39;s interesting about this is that the NCSE\u0026#39;s income has also doubled over these seven years. Thus, it\u0026#39;s not just the creationist market that\u0026#39;s growing, the entire market for the creation/evolution culture war has grown dramatically. It\u0026#39;s become a self-sustaining industry. This does not bode well for those interested in a resolution of this war.\u0026quot; That's interesting to me. I wonder to what extent the various New Atheist voices have added fuel to the fire? Is it like Frank Miller's Batman where the caped crusader is at least partly responsible for creating stronger, more extreme criminals?\n(2010-06-03):\nThere you go, it\u0026#39;s either \u0026#39;bout $ orrrrrrrrrr flyin\u0026#39; planes into buildings.\n(2010-06-03):\nThis Atheist\u0026#39;s buffalo chip into the embers, Neural Gourmet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m6qC6FCiY0!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/market-for-creationism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTodd Wood of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College \u003ca href=\"http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2010/05/creationist-finances-revisited.html\"\u003ehas gotten around to doing\u003c/a\u003e what I haven\u0026rsquo;t done, updating \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-some-conclusions.html\"\u003emy analysis of the market for creationism that I did in early 2007\u003c/a\u003e.  He confirms some of the trends I noted, such as that the market for creationism has been growing and is dominated by Answers in Genesis.  His update goes further, and includes a comparison to the National Center for Science Education, noting that he market for criticism of creationism has grown along with the market for creationism.  He also points out that the groups involved got a boost revenue in 2005 during the Dover trial, that the AiG split from Creation Ministries International doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have hurt AiG, and that \u0026ldquo;Godquest,\u0026rdquo; formerly known as Creation Science Evangelism, the Hovind organization, is the #3 creationist organization for revenue behind AiG and the Institute for Creation Research.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWood reports the following numbers for recent years:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The market for creationism"},{"content":"The prominent skeptic Martin Gardner, mathematician, philosopher, magician, and writer, died today at the age of 95 (b. October 21, 1914, d. May 22, 2010). He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), and had been part of the earlier Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal along with CSICOP founding members Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi. Long before that, he wrote one of the classic texts debunking pseudoscience, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (the Dover 2nd edition was published in 1957). For many years (1956-1981) he was the author of the Scientific American column, \u0026ldquo;Mathematical Games\u0026rdquo; (taken over by Douglas Hofstadter and retitled \u0026ldquo;Metamagical Themas\u0026rdquo;), and he wrote a regular \u0026ldquo;Notes of a Psi-Watcher\u0026rdquo; column for the Skeptical Inquirer right up to the present. His 70+ books included a semi-autobiographical novel, The Flight of Peter Fromm, a book explaining his philosophical positions including why he wasn\u0026rsquo;t an atheist, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, and an annotated version of Lewis Carroll\u0026rsquo;s Alice in Wonderland works, The Annotated Alice.\nHe had been scheduled to appear by video link at the upcoming The Amazing Meeting 8 in Las Vegas, where a number of other skeptical old timers will be appearing on discussion panels. His death is a great loss.\nI never met Gardner, but was first introduced to his work reading his \u0026ldquo;Mathematical Games\u0026rdquo; column in the late 70\u0026rsquo;s, and then his Fads and Fallacies and Skeptical Inquirer columns. Gardner, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and James Randi were the first major figures I identified as skeptical role models. One of the great honors of my life was receiving the Martin Gardner Award for Best Skeptical Critic from the Skeptics Society in 1996.\nA Martin Gardner documentary that is part of \u0026ldquo;The Nature of Things\u0026rdquo; may be found online, and Scientific American has republished online its December 1995 profile of Gardner. Here\u0026rsquo;s a transcript of a February 1979 telephone interview between Martin Gardner and five mathematicians (thanks to Anthony Barcellos for transcribing it and bringing it to my attention in the comments below).\nVarious tributes:\nJames Randi Phil Plait Wendy Grossman Richard Dawkins Douglas Hofstadter\u0026nbsp; Jeff Hecht (New Scientist CultureLab blog) Daniel Loxton Chris French George Hansen The Economist\u0026nbsp; A tribute in Spanish, with numerous links to other Martin Gardner tributes UPDATE (June 11, 2011): An interesting chapter on Martin Gardner from George Hansen's book, The Trickster and the Paranormal, is available online as a PDF. Historical Comments Qohelet (2010-05-23):\nRest in Peace Martin Gardner. You will be missed.\nMr B (2010-05-23):\nI have posted a transcript of a long 1979 interview with Martin Gardner here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/martin-gardner-rip.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe prominent skeptic Martin Gardner, mathematician, philosopher, magician, and writer, died today at the age of 95 (b. October 21, 1914, d. May 22, 2010).  He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), and had been part of the earlier Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal along with CSICOP founding members Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi.  Long before that, he wrote one of the classic texts debunking pseudoscience, \u003ci\u003eFads and Fallacies in the Name of Science\u003c/i\u003e (the Dover 2nd edition was published in 1957).  For many years (1956-1981) he was the author of the Scientific American column, \u0026ldquo;Mathematical Games\u0026rdquo; (taken over by Douglas Hofstadter and retitled \u0026ldquo;Metamagical Themas\u0026rdquo;), and he wrote a regular \u0026ldquo;Notes of a Psi-Watcher\u0026rdquo; column for the \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/i\u003e right up to the present.  His 70+ books included a semi-autobiographical novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Flight of Peter Fromm\u003c/i\u003e, a book explaining his philosophical positions including why he wasn\u0026rsquo;t an atheist, \u003ci\u003eThe Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener\u003c/i\u003e, and an annotated version of Lewis Carroll\u0026rsquo;s Alice in Wonderland works, \u003ci\u003eThe Annotated Alice\u003c/i\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe had been scheduled to appear by video link at \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/tam-8-registration.html\"\u003ethe upcoming The Amazing Meeting 8 in Las Vegas\u003c/a\u003e, where a number of other skeptical old timers will be appearing on discussion panels.  His death is a great loss.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI never met Gardner, but was first introduced to his work reading his \u0026ldquo;Mathematical Games\u0026rdquo; column in the late 70\u0026rsquo;s, and then his \u003ci\u003eFads and Fallacies\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/i\u003e columns.  Gardner, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and James Randi were the first major figures I identified as skeptical role models.  One of the great honors of my life was receiving the Martin Gardner Award for Best Skeptical Critic from the Skeptics Society in 1996.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA \u003ca href=\"http://headinside.blogspot.com/2010/05/rip-martin-gardner-october-21-1914-may.html\"\u003eMartin Gardner documentary that is part of \u0026ldquo;The Nature of Things\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e may be found online, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=profile-of-martin-gardner\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eScientific American\u003c/i\u003e has republished online its December 1995 profile of Gardner\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://thebackbench.blogspot.com/2010/05/interview-with-martin-gardner.html\"\u003ea transcript of a February 1979 telephone interview between Martin Gardner and five mathematicians\u003c/a\u003e (thanks to Anthony Barcellos for transcribing it and bringing it to my attention in the comments below).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nVarious tributes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Martin Gardner, RIP"},{"content":"Earlier today on Twitter, Adam Bourque (@A_Damn_Bourque) asked if anyone knew the origin of the term \u0026ldquo;woo\u0026rdquo; as applied to the paranormal. I know I\u0026rsquo;ve heard the term used for at least a decade (or two or three?), but after seeing that neither the Skeptics Dictionary entry on \u0026ldquo;woo woo\u0026rdquo; nor threads at the JREF Forums had an etymology, I decided to take a look at Google Books.\n\u0026ldquo;Woo\u0026rdquo; wasn\u0026rsquo;t a good search due to the homonym, and \u0026ldquo;woo woo\u0026rdquo; led to lots of matches in stories of children imitating fire engine sirens, but adding \u0026ldquo;astrology\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;occult\u0026rdquo; as additional terms led to some useful matches.\nOn my first pass, the oldest reference I found was in Nicholas Evans\u0026rsquo; novel The Loop (1999), p. 244:\nAnd anyway, being a woman in the macho world of wolf research was hard enough without everyone thinking you'd gone woo-woo, the term her mother used to scorn everything from astrology to vitamin pills.\u0026nbsp; And in truth, although Helen didn't doubt there were more things in heaven and earth than could be seen with the aid of a microscope, on the woo-woo scale she was definitely at the skeptical end.\u0026nbsp;Hey, it's even a book with a skeptical character!\nNext, by adding \"astrology,\" I found a slightly earlier nonfiction reference, Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook (1998), p. 121:\nDon't get me wrong, I believe in a lot of woo-woo stuff.\u0026nbsp; I'm a double Pisces with a Taurus Moon.\u0026nbsp; I was born in 1948, the Year of the Rat.\u0026nbsp; I use several I-Ching software programs on my computer, and I've been reading tarot cards for nearly thirty years.Not a skeptic, in that case.\nThen, by adding \"occult,\" another earlier nonfiction reference by sociologists of religion, James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, in Perspectives on the New Age (1992), p. 3:\nI also found that the characterization of New Age psychism as being \"woo-woo\" and \"airy-fairy\" was true of only some of the more public New Age channels.But then, pay dirt--a source going back to May 1844 that looks like a likely candidate for the origin of the term, in The North British Review, vol. 1, no. 11, p. 340, in a review of (or excerpt from?) Report by the Commissioners for the British Fisheries of their Proceedings of 1842, \"Our Scottish fishermen\" (pp. 326-365):\nWhen beating up in stormy weather along a lee-shore, it was customary for one of the men to take his place on the weather gunwale, and there continue waving his hand in a direction opposite to the sweep of the sea, using the while a low moaning chant, Woo, woo, woo, in the belief that the threatening surges might be induced to roll past without breaking over.\u0026nbsp; We may recognize in both these singular practices the first beginnings of mythologic belief--of that religion indigenous to the mind, which can address itself in its state of fuller development to every power of nature as to a perceptive being, capable of being propitiated by submissive deference and solicitation, and able, as it inclined, either to aid or injure. Though this isn't enough to be certain, this looks like a very likely origin of the term.\nThanks to Adam for prompting this search.\nUPDATE: Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas points out a 1986 St. Petersburg Times story:\nAre cookbook publishers that desperate? … This season they present us with two \"new and unique\" horoscopic cookbooks - A Taste of Astrology by Lucy Ash and Cosmic Cuisine by Tom Jaine - adding another dimension to star-inspired cookbooks. Both authors are British (of undisclosed signs) but they are, most uncannily, on much the same woo-woo wavelength. They do not suggest casing out a potential romantic partner according to sign language.In the comments below, I point out two older cases of \"woo woo\" I've found in ghost stories as a sound:\nGroff Conklin's 1962 The Supernatural Reader, p. 101 has these two sentences, but the page context isn't available from Google Books: \"Someone else giggled, and from the darkness beside the building came a high-pitched, 'Woo-woo!' I walked up to Sam and grinned at him.\" Cecil John Richards, Wind Over Fowlmere and Other Stories, 1953, p. 116: \"...going 'woo-woo woo-woo-woo' in its deep gruff voice just over my head. ... And then Hargreaves led us once again into the realm of the supernatural.\"\nUPDATE (May 7, 2010): Anton Mates found and posted this news item from 1984 at Josh Rosenau's blog and in the comments below:\nTHE NEW AGE SOUND: SOOTHING MUSIC BY SINCERE ARTISTS\nPhiladelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - Sunday, October 21, 1984\nSo who is this New Age audience? Mostly upscale folks in their 30s and early 40s, the ones weaned on Baba Ram Dass and Woodstock and hallucinogenics, macrobiotic diets and transcendental meditation.\n.....\nGeorge Winston, who practices yoga and who currently has three albums on the jazz charts (his five Windham Hill recordings have reportedly sold more than 800,000 copies; his LP December has just been certified gold), has jokingly called this crowd the \"woo-woos.\" In a 1983 interview in New Age Journal, Winston, asked if he knew who comprised his audience, answered that there were some classical fans, some jazz, some pop and \"all the woo-woos.\"\u0026nbsp;\"You know,\" he added, \"there's real New Age stuff that has substance, and then there's the woo-woo . A friend of mine once said, 'George, you really love these woo-woos, don't you?' and I said 'Yes, I do love them,' and I do. I mean, I'm half woo-woo myself.\" Miles Rind (2010-05-06):\nA useful analysis, but I have two reservations. (1) From the fact that one text is much older than any of the others, one cannot infer that it is the source, or even a source, of the term. You would need to show at least that there has been some continuity in the use of the term since then. (2) I think that you lose sight of the point that the question is the origin of the use of the syllables \u0026quot;woo\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;woo woo\u0026quot; as words, more specifically as nouns or adjectives (rather than interjections), with a particular meaning, rather than the origin of those syllables themselves. I would expect that English-speaking people have have occasionally used the vocable \u0026quot;woo\u0026quot; as an imitation of various natural (or supernatural?) sounds for a long time, without it having any genuine verbal meaning -- much as \u0026quot;Pow!\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;Blam!\u0026quot; is used today.\nBrian (2010-05-07):\nI always thought the term \u0026quot;woo woo\u0026quot; came from Marvin Gaye.\nBartimaeus (2010-05-07):\nIt would be interesting if it had a nautical origin. There are a lot of terms that trace back to nautical origins (nipper, son of a gun, taken aback, back and fill, and many more). these tended to be widespread and take on different meanings in different parts of the world and in non-nautical contexts. It would be interesting to find more examples.\nLippard (2010-05-07):\nMKR: I agree with your first point--this doesn\u0026#39;t connect the dots. Regarding your second point--this clearly isn\u0026#39;t the origin of the syllables (the English word \u0026quot;woo\u0026quot; goes back centuries, to before the 12th century), but this is clearly a case of the word being used in a supernatural context. It\u0026#39;s not clear to me that it\u0026#39;s intended to be imitative or onomatopoetic. I welcome further examples between 1844 and 1992, as well as alternative etymologies that have supporting documentation.\nBrian Gregory: I was thinking Kool and the Gang.\nBartimaeus: More examples would be great\u0026ndash;I'd like to trace back more examples of the modern usage.\nLippard (2010-05-07):\nMKR: Groff Conklin\u0026#39;s 1962 _The Supernatural Reader_, p. 101 has these two sentences, but the page context isn\u0026#39;t available from Google Books: \u0026quot;Someone else giggled, and from the darkness beside the building came a high-pitched, \u0026#39;Woo-woo!\u0026#39; I walked up to Sam and grinned at him.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2010-05-07):\nCecil John Richards, _Wind Over Fowlmere and Other Stories_, 1953, p. 116: \u0026quot;...going \u0026#39;woo-woo woo-woo-woo\u0026#39; in its deep gruff voice just over my head. ... And then Hargreaves led us once again into the realm of the supernatural.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2010-05-07):\nThere does seem to be a fair amount of \u0026quot;woo woo\u0026quot; as a noise of a supernatural creature in fiction, in decades prior to the earliest found usage of the words as a descriptive term, and continuing to the present. That\u0026#39;s probably the simplest explanation.\nBartimaeus (2010-05-07):\nOk, this may be a stretch, but there are some old scottish uses of \u0026quot;hoo\u0026quot; that may relate. http://www.dsl.ac.uk/ In scots hoo meant a hood or hat and sailors and others used the term for the membranes covering a newborn\u0026#39;s head. These membranes were thought to protect from drowning, and sailors would spend quite a bit to get one. There was also a legend that the possession of a wren feather would protect sailors from storms. (The Oxford Companion to Ships and The Sea, superstitions of sailors entry pg. 847) Sailors were notoriously superstitious, and it is possible that they chanted hoo, or woo, when frightened to ward of danger. It may have referenced the hoo or caul from a newborn, or imitated the call of a wren. Sophisticated Londoners might have imitated the sound to mock the superstition-which is basically the modern use. I\u0026#39;ll keep my eyes open for any other examples.\nMiles Rind (2010-05-07):\nLippard, on re-reading the passage I see the force of your reply to my point no. 2. Even if the term is being used in the passage merely as an exclamation and not a noun or adjective, it is still associated with spooky or supernatural phenomena, which may be attributed to it as a meaning. So even if the sound is not being used as a term in the passage, this could be considered an early source of its use as a term.\nxamm (2010-05-07):\nCross-posting from TFK: Access World News takes me to a news article which says that musician George Winston was labeling New Agers as \u0026quot;woo-woos\u0026quot; in 1983. It appears to be the first instance of that term in that context that the reporter's aware of, at least. Maybe someone should contact Winston and ask him if he picked it up from anyone else?\nTHE NEW AGE SOUND: SOOTHING MUSIC BY SINCERE ARTISTS Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - Sunday, October 21, 1984\nSo who is this New Age audience? Mostly upscale folks in their 30s and early 40s, the ones weaned on Baba Ram Dass and Woodstock and hallucinogenics, macrobiotic diets and transcendental meditation. ..... George Winston, who practices yoga and who currently has three albums on the jazz charts (his five Windham Hill recordings have reportedly sold more than 800,000 copies; his LP December has just been certified gold), has jokingly called this crowd the \u0026quot;woo-woos.\u0026quot; In a 1983 interview in New Age Journal, Winston, asked if he knew who comprised his audience, answered that there were some classical fans, some jazz, some pop and \u0026quot;all the woo-woos.\u0026quot; \u0026quot;You know,\u0026quot; he added, \u0026quot;there\u0026#39;s real New Age stuff that has substance, and then there\u0026#39;s the woo-woo . A friend of mine once said, \u0026#39;George, you really love these woo-woos, don\u0026#39;t you?\u0026#39; and I said \u0026#39;Yes, I do love them,\u0026#39; and I do. I mean, I\u0026#39;m half woo-woo myself.\u0026quot;\njoel hanes (2010-05-07):\nI believe I first saw \u0026quot;woo\u0026quot; used in its current Intarwebs connotation in a disparaging Usenet discussion of Zukav\u0026#39;s The Dancing Wu Li Masters Jim, you might profitably search Google Groups.\nCW (2010-05-07):\nNah, the first use of \u0026quot;woo\u0026quot; in a skeptical sense was from Shakespeare. \u0026quot;We cannot fight for love as men may do; We should be woo\u0026#39;d, and were not made to woo.\u0026quot; The idea of only men wooing women is crap. :P\naimee (2010-05-10):\nCould it not simply be due to the \u0026#39;wooooo\u0026#39; ghost sound that so many of us attribute to the manifestation of said beasties?\nLippard (2010-05-12):\nAimee: Yes, it could--see the 1962 and 1953 references in the first update to the original post.\nUnknown (2010-05-13):\nBob Mohan often used \u0026quot;woo-woo\u0026quot; on his radio show to describe New Agers and other paranormalists. He said that the term comes from the sound made by the Mother Ship when it lands in the Sedona Vortex. He would approximate the sound with a low, sort of vibrating \u0026quot;woo.....woo....wooo.\u0026quot; I\u0026#39;ve always taken this as the definitive origin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/origin-of-term-woo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEarlier today on Twitter, Adam Bourque (@A_Damn_Bourque) asked if anyone knew the origin of the term \u0026ldquo;woo\u0026rdquo; as applied to the paranormal.  I know I\u0026rsquo;ve heard the term used for at least a decade (or two or three?), but after seeing that neither \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepdic.com/woowoo.html\"\u003ethe Skeptics Dictionary entry on \u0026ldquo;woo woo\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e nor \u003ca href=\"http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=149577\"\u003ethreads at the JREF Forums\u003c/a\u003e had an etymology, I decided to take a look at Google Books.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;Woo\u0026rdquo; wasn\u0026rsquo;t a good search due to the homonym, and \u0026ldquo;woo woo\u0026rdquo; led to lots of matches in stories of children imitating fire engine sirens, but adding \u0026ldquo;astrology\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;occult\u0026rdquo; as additional terms led to some useful matches.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn my first pass, the oldest reference I found was in \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=-OikoSu-vMEC\u0026amp;lpg=PA244\u0026amp;dq=%22woo-woo%22\u0026amp;lr\u0026amp;pg=PA244#v=onepage\u0026amp;q=%22woo-woo%22\u0026amp;f=false\"\u003eNicholas Evans\u0026rsquo; novel \u003ci\u003eThe Loop\u003c/i\u003e (1999), p. 244\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Origin of the term \"woo\""},{"content":"On the last day of my class on Scientific Revolutions and the law, one of the students in the class, Lijing Jiang, gave a presentation titled \u0026ldquo;To Consider the Heavens: The Incorporation of Jesuit Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century Chinese Court.\u0026quot;\nHer presentation was about how Jesuit missionaries in China brought western astronomy with them, and how it was received. This added a very interesting complement to the course, as much of the early part of the semester was about the Copernican revolution (using Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s book of the same name). Part of what happened early on in astronomy was a division between cosmology and positional astronomy, with the former being about the actual nature of the heavens, and the latter being about creating mathematical models for prediction, to be used for navigation and calendar-setting that incorporated features not intended to represent reality (like epicycles). These two types of astronomy didn\u0026rsquo;t really get reconnected (aside from the occasional realist depiction of epicycles in crystalline spheres) until Galileo argued for a realist interpretation of the Copernican model. And that didn\u0026rsquo;t fully catch on until Newton.\nIn China, calendar reform was very important as they used a combination of a lunar month (based on phases of the moon) and tropical year that had to be synchronized annually, and an unpredicted eclipse was considered to be a bad omen. The Chinese had gone through many calendar reforms as a result of these requirements, and they considered that theories needed to be revised about every 300 years (in other realms as well, not just astronomy).\nThe Jesuits happened to bring Copernican astronomy to China in the late 16th/early 17th century, with a goal of impressing and converting the Emperor. They got their big chance to make a splash in 1610, when the Chinese court astronomers mispredicted a solar eclipse by one day, which the Jesuits predicted correctly in advance. But this turned out in a way to be poorly timed, as the Counter-Reformation decided to start cracking down on Copernican heliocentrism after 1610, making it a formal doctrinal issue in 1616. The Jesuits in China thus switched to the Tychonic system which was geometrically equivalent to the Copernican model but geocentric.\nMultiple factors persuaded the Chinese to maintain a relativistic, anti-realist understanding of positional astronomy beyond the Scientific Revolution. In addition to Taoist and Buddhist views of life involving constant change and their past experience with calendars suggesting revisions every 300 years, the Jesuits presented another example of apparent arbitrariness in cosmological model selection, and they continued to stick with the Tychonic model as the western world switched to heliocentrism.\nYou can read Lijing Jiang\u0026rsquo;s blogging at Science in a Mirror, where she may post something about her presentation in the future.\nJeff (2010-09-03):\nHello, I am writing about a different topic you posted dealing with Chuck Missler. In fairness to accuracy, the prophecy about the King of Israel riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was not correctly depicted by you. It had to be the unbroken colt of an ass. Unless you know how to ride an unbroken animal immediately, this is a lot harder than to fulfill than you try to debunk.\nLippard (2010-09-06):\nJeff, not sure why you\u0026#39;ve posted this here. I didn't misrepresent anything\u0026ndash;I quoted the prophecy accurately and commented upon it and the claimed fulfillments in the four gospels.\nBy your reading, the prophecy went unfulfilled according to Mark, Luke, and John, and still had an excess animal in Matthew.\nI'm not sure your interpretation makes any difference to my summary. If there were a prophecy that said the Messiah had to make a three-point basketball goal, and Jesus did that, I'd speculate that the fulfillment was more likely a result of intentional practice rather than supernatural intervention. Same here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/chinese-astronomy-and-scientific-anti.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn the last day of my class on Scientific Revolutions and the law, one of the students in the class, Lijing Jiang, gave a presentation titled \u0026ldquo;To Consider the Heavens: The Incorporation of Jesuit Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century Chinese Court.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHer presentation was about how Jesuit missionaries in China brought western astronomy with them, and how it was received.  This added a very interesting complement to the course, as much of the early part of the semester was about the Copernican revolution (using Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s book of the same name).  Part of what happened early on in astronomy was a division between cosmology and positional astronomy, with the former being about the actual nature of the heavens, and the latter being about creating mathematical models for prediction, to be used for navigation and calendar-setting that incorporated features not intended to represent reality (like epicycles).  These two types of astronomy didn\u0026rsquo;t really get reconnected (aside from the occasional realist depiction of epicycles in crystalline spheres) until Galileo argued for a realist interpretation of the Copernican model.  And that didn\u0026rsquo;t fully catch on until Newton.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn China, calendar reform was very important as they used a combination of a lunar month (based on phases of the moon) and tropical year that had to be synchronized annually, and an unpredicted eclipse was considered to be a bad omen.  The Chinese had gone through many calendar reforms as a result of these requirements, and they considered that theories needed to be revised about every 300 years (in other realms as well, not just astronomy).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Jesuits happened to bring Copernican astronomy to China in the late 16th/early 17th century, with a goal of impressing and converting the Emperor.  They got their big chance to make a splash in 1610, when the Chinese court astronomers mispredicted a solar eclipse by one day, which the Jesuits predicted correctly in advance.  But this turned out in a way to be poorly timed, as the Counter-Reformation decided to start cracking down on Copernican heliocentrism after 1610, making it a formal doctrinal issue in 1616.  The Jesuits in China thus switched to the Tychonic system which was geometrically equivalent to the Copernican model but geocentric.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMultiple factors persuaded the Chinese to maintain a relativistic, anti-realist understanding of positional astronomy beyond the Scientific Revolution.  In addition to Taoist and Buddhist views of life involving constant change and their past experience with calendars suggesting revisions every 300 years, the Jesuits presented another example of apparent arbitrariness in cosmological model selection, and they continued to stick with the Tychonic model as the western world switched to heliocentrism.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nYou can read Lijing Jiang\u0026rsquo;s blogging at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceinamirror.blogspot.com/\"\u003eScience in a Mirror\u003c/a\u003e, where she may post something about her presentation in the future.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chinese astronomy and scientific anti-realism"},{"content":"\nThe work of ASU emeritus professor of psychology Robert Cialdini, author of the classic book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, has shown that if a sign or card suggesting that somebody do something also indicates that most other people are likely to do that, it increases compliance with the request.\u0026nbsp; The wording of this sign, put up in ASU bathrooms all over campus by the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee, may well have the opposite of its intended effect.\u0026nbsp; Somebody should have read their Cialdini before making these signs! Historical Comments Einzige (2010-05-31):\nSomeone should do a study on this particular bathroom\u0026#39;s hand-washing stats and see what the deviation from \u0026quot;normal\u0026quot; is--if any.\nThe Big Blue Frog (2010-07-06):\nBest part of this is that 1/3 don\u0026#39;t know how to wash their hands. Schweet.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/social-psychology-done-wrong.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/P5050008.med.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" src=\"/images/P5050008.med.jpg\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c/div\u003eThe work of ASU emeritus professor of psychology Robert Cialdini, author of the classic book \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eInfluence: The Psychology of Persuasion\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=006124189X\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e, has shown that if a sign or card suggesting that somebody do something also indicates that most other people are likely to do that, it increases compliance with the request.\u0026nbsp; The wording of this sign, put up in ASU bathrooms all over campus by the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee, may well have the opposite of its intended effect.\u0026nbsp; Somebody should have read their Cialdini before making these signs!\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-05-31)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSomeone should do a study on this particular bathroom\u0026#39;s hand-washing stats and see what the deviation from \u0026quot;normal\u0026quot; is--if any.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Social psychology done wrong"},{"content":"There’s a widespread recognition that public policy should be informed by both scientifically verifiable factual information and by social values. It’s commonly assumed that science should provide the facts for policy-makers, and the policy-makers should then use those facts and social and political values of the citizens they represent to make policy. This division between fact and value is institutionalized in processes such as a division between risk assessment performed by scientists concerned solely with the facts and subsequent risk management that also involves values, performed in the sphere of politics. This neat division, however, doesn’t actually work that well in practice.\n“Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously,” a 2007 “Report by the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate, Directorate-General for Research” of the European Commission, spends much of its third chapter criticizing this division and the idea that risk assessment can be performed in a value-free way. Some of the Report’s objections are similar to those made by Heather Douglas in her book Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal, and her analysis of a topography of values is complementary to the Report. The selection of what counts as input into the risk assessment process, for example, is a value-laden decision that is analogous to Douglas’ discussion of problem selection. Health and safety concerns are commonly paramount, but other potential risks\u0026ndash;to environment, to economy, to social institutions\u0026ndash;may be minimized, dismissed, or ignored. Selection of methods of measurement also can implicitly involve values, as also is observed by Douglas. The Report notes, “health can be measured alternatively as frequency or mode of death or injury, disease morbidity, or quality of life,” and questions arise as to how to aggregate and weight different populations, compare humans to nonhumans, and future generations to present generations.\nIn practice, scientists tend to recognize questions of these sorts, as well as that they are value-laden. This can lead to the process being bogged down by scientists wanting policy-makers to answer value questions before they perform their risk assessment, while policy-makers insist that they just want the scientific facts of the matter before making any value-based decisions. Because science is a powerful justification for policy, it’s in the interest of the policy-maker to push as much as possible to the science side of the equation. We see this occur in Congress, which tends to pass broad-brush statutes which “do something” about a problem but push all the details to regulatory agencies, so that Congress can take credit for action but blame the regulatory agencies if it doesn’t work as expected. We see it in judicial decisions, where the courts tend to be extremely deferential to science. And we see it within regulatory agencies themselves, as when EPA Administrator Carol Browner went from saying first that “The question is not one of science, the question is one of judgment” (Dec. 1996, upon initially proposing ozone standards) to “I think it is not a question of judgment, I think it is a question of science” (March 1997, about those same standards). The former position is subject to challenge in ways that the latter is not.\nIn reality, any thorough system of risk management needs to be iterative and involve both scientific judgments about facts and political decisions that take into account values, taking care not to use values in a way to achieve predetermined conclusions, but to recognize what sets of interests and concerns are of significance. This doesn’t preclude the standardization of methods of quantification and assessment, it just means that they need to be able to evolve in response to feedback, as well as to begin from a state where values are explicitly used in identifying what facts need to be assessed.\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Tim K. for his comments.]\nFred (2010-05-02):\nPerhaps the problem is with the term itself. \u0026quot;Risk Assessment\u0026quot; implies, even mandates, a value system. How does one determine what is a risk and how risky it is without referring to the \u0026quot;pro/con\u0026quot; checklist in their heads? Science should be called to assess possible outcomes, intended or unintended then those outcomes can be evaluated. I absolutely agree it must be iterative and must evolve based on feedback. The question is, who's feedback?\nClearly some outcomes can be easily judged. The possible outcome of \u0026quot;the death of all living creatures\u0026quot; falls (almost without question) into the \u0026quot;cons\u0026quot; side of the chart. But how does science avoid the risk [pun intended] of dismissing relevant outcomes as unimportant or harmless based on their own value system?\nMore interestingly, what if the scientist is right? For example, let's say society, in general, has overwhelmingly decided \u0026quot;the death of all living things\u0026quot; is not really a problem and the scientist finds that their latest solar panel technology will result in the DOALT. Knowing that this outcome will be ignored by or oblivious to all living things, should he alter his results? Should she sabotage the project? Are they right to work to protect society or humanity from itself?\nGranted, the hyperbolic nature of that scenario can seem ridiculous so what about a drug which has a high success rate of leukemia remission, lowers cholesterol, and will almost certainly cause renal failure. Johnny Double-Double with Cheese is likely going to opt for a salad and some exercise but the blood cancer patient may relish a life of dialysis. The level of acceptable risk here is subjective and there lies the core problem. Who is objective enough to subjectively assess each person's risk? Outside of each patient, I struggle to find an answer.\nIn either scenario, should science make that judgment call or just produce scientific data and technology to be interpreted and implemented by policy makers?\nI tend to think (perhaps misguidedly) that scientists, in general, approach their vocation with reverence and the earnestness required to responsibly pursue whatever the science may lead them to but the weakness is the same. Humans have to make this assessment and odds are we'll do a poor job. So what's left? Scientists, politicians, referrendum? Skynet?\nLippard (2010-05-03):\nFred: Thanks for the comment. I agree that there is always a value system implied in risk assessment. I can't think of a better approach then having transparent standards of what counts, which are then subject to critique about what's being left out, including speculation about possible \u0026quot;unknown unknowns\u0026quot; that we don't even know about.\nDefining what counts as acceptable risk seems to me to fit on the political side of the divide, just as it fits on the business side of an information security risk assessment.\nThe trend in science and technology studies (STS), exemplified in the European Commission Report, is towards involving more views of the general public in the process in some manner, with lots of different proposals on how that might be accomplished. Mark Brown's book, which I criticized in a prior blog post, gave an account of how to get a diverse set of views represented in scientific advisory panels without doing things like big focus groups.\nI think I'm OK with sabotaging Skynet, if you've really got good evidence that it's going to lead to a mass death scenario.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/05/politics-and-science-in-risk-assessment.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere’s a widespread recognition that public policy should be informed by both scientifically verifiable factual information and by social values.  It’s commonly assumed that science should provide the facts for policy-makers, and the policy-makers should then use those facts and social and political values of the citizens they represent to make policy.  This division between fact and value is institutionalized in processes such as a division between risk assessment performed by scientists concerned solely with the facts and subsequent risk management that also involves values, performed in the sphere of politics.  This neat division, however, doesn’t actually work that well in practice.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic\u0026amp;id=119\"\u003e“Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously,”\u003c/a\u003e a 2007 “Report by the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate, Directorate-General for Research” of the European Commission, spends much of its third chapter criticizing this division and the idea that risk assessment can be performed in a value-free way.  Some of the Report’s objections are similar to those made by \u003ca href=\"/2010/04/scientific-autonomy-objectivity-and.html\"\u003eHeather Douglas in her book \u003ci\u003eScience, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal\u003c/i\u003e, and her analysis of a topography of values\u003c/a\u003e is complementary to the Report.  The selection of what counts as input into the risk assessment process, for example, is a value-laden decision that is analogous to Douglas’ discussion of problem selection.  Health and safety concerns are commonly paramount, but other potential risks\u0026ndash;to environment, to economy, to social institutions\u0026ndash;may be minimized, dismissed, or ignored.  Selection of methods of measurement also can implicitly involve values, as also is observed by Douglas.  The Report notes, “health can be measured alternatively as frequency or mode of death or injury, disease morbidity, or quality of life,” and questions arise as to how to aggregate and weight different populations, compare humans to nonhumans, and future generations to present generations.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn practice, scientists tend to recognize questions of these sorts, as well as that they are value-laden.  This can lead to the process being bogged down by scientists wanting policy-makers to answer value questions before they perform their risk assessment, while policy-makers insist that they just want the scientific facts of the matter before making any value-based decisions.  Because science is a powerful justification for policy, it’s in the interest of the policy-maker to push as much as possible to the science side of the equation.  We see this occur in Congress, which tends to pass broad-brush statutes which “do something” about a problem but push all the details to regulatory agencies, so that Congress can take credit for action but blame the regulatory agencies if it doesn’t work as expected.  We see it in judicial decisions, where the courts tend to be extremely deferential to science.  And we see it within regulatory agencies themselves, as when EPA Administrator Carol Browner went from saying first that “The question is not one of science, the question is one of judgment” (Dec. 1996, upon initially proposing ozone standards) to “I think it is not a question of judgment, I think it is a question of science” (March 1997, about those same standards).  The former position is subject to challenge in ways that the latter is not.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn reality, any thorough system of risk management needs to be iterative and involve both scientific judgments about facts and political decisions that take into account values, taking care not to use values in a way to achieve predetermined conclusions, but to recognize what sets of interests and concerns are of significance.  This doesn’t preclude the standardization of methods of quantification and assessment, it just means that they need to be able to evolve in response to feedback, as well as to begin from a state where values are explicitly used in identifying what facts need to be assessed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for   my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar.    Thanks to Tim K. for his comments.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Politics and science in risk assessment"},{"content":"Science fiction has been a popular genre at least since Jules Verne’s 19th century work, and arguably longer still. But can it have practical value as well as be a form of escapist entertainment? Clark Miller and Ira Bennett of ASU suggest that it has potential for use in improving the capacity of the general public “to imagine and reason critically about technological futures” and for being integrated into technology assessment processes (“Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?\u0026quot; Science and Public Policy 35(8), October 2008, pp. 597-606).\nMiller and Bennett argue that science fiction can provide a way to stimulate people to wake from “technological somnambulism” (Langdon Winner’s term for taking for granted or being oblivious to sociotechnical changes), in order to recognize such changes, realize that there may be alternative possibilities and that particular changes need not be determined, and to engage with deliberative processes and institutions that choose directions of change. Where most political planning is short-term and based on projections that simply extend current trends incrementally into the future, science fiction provides scenarios which exhibit “non-linearity” by involving multiple, major, and complex changes from current reality. While these scenarios “likely provide\u0026hellip;little technical accuracy” about how technology and society will actually interact, they may still provide ideas about alternative possibilities, and in particular to provide “clear visions of desirable\u0026ndash;and not so desirable\u0026ndash;futures.”\nThe article begins with a quote from Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute recommending that “hard science fiction” be used to aid in “long-term” (20+ year) prediction scenarios; she advises, “Don’t think of it as literature,” and focus on the technologies rather than the people. Miller and Bennett, however, argue otherwise\u0026ndash;that not only is science fiction useful for thinking about longer-term consequences, but that the parts about the people\u0026ndash;how technologies actually fit into society\u0026ndash;are just as, if not more important than the ideas about the technologies themselves.\nIt ends with some examples of use of science fiction in workshops for nanotechnology researchers which have been conducted by Bennett and suggested uses in science education and in “society’s practices and institutions for public engagement and technology assessment.” About the former suggested use, the authors write that “The National Science Foundation, which has by and large not been in the business of supporting science fiction, might be encouraged to fund training and/or networking exercises that would foster greater interaction among scientists and fiction writers.”\nWhile some steps have been taken to promote interaction between scientists and fiction writers\u0026ndash;most notably the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange project headed by executive director Jennifer Ouellette who spoke at last year’s The Amazing Meeting 7\u0026ndash;this interaction is mostly one-way. The project is conceived of as a way for science to be accurately communicated to the general public through entertainment, rather than facilitating the generation of ideas for technological innovation and scientific development from the general public or the entertainment stories that are created. The SEE promotes the idea of collaboration between scientists and entertainment producers on the creative works of entertainment, but not necessarily directing creative feedback into science or building new capacities in science and technology, except indirectly by providing the general public with inspiration about science. Similarly, the Skeptrack and Science Track at the annual Dragon*Con science fiction convention in Atlanta provide ways for scientists and skeptics to interact with science fiction fans (and creators of science fiction works), but the communication is primarily in one direction via speakers and panels, with an opportunity for Q\u0026amp;A. (Unlike the notion of a SkeptiCamp, where all participants are potentially on an equal basis, with everyone given the opportunity to be a presenter.)\n[P.S. The Long Now Foundation is an organization that makes the Foresight Institute’s time horizon look short\u0026ndash;their time frame is the next 10,000 years, with a focus on how to make extremely long-term projects work and how to create an institutional framework that can persist for extremely long periods of time. (The obligatory science fiction references are Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.)]\n[A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Judd A. for his comments\u0026ndash;he raised the concern that SkeptiCamp is connected to a rationalist form of skepticism that is concerned to \u0026ldquo;narrow the range of \u0026lsquo;acceptable\u0026rsquo; beliefs\u0026rdquo; rather than widen it. While this may be true, depending on what the class of \u0026ldquo;acceptable\u0026rdquo; beliefs is prior to applying a skeptical filter, it need not be\u0026ndash;applying scientific methodology and critical thinking can also open up possibilities for individuals. And if the initial set of beliefs includes all possibilities, converting that set to knowledge must necessarily involve narrowing rather than expanding the range, as there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right. But this criticism points out something that I\u0026rsquo;ve observed in my comparison of skepticism to Forteanism\u0026ndash;skepticism is more concerned about avoiding Type I errors than Type II errors, while Forteans are more concerned about avoiding Type II errors than Type I errors, and these are complementary positions that both need representation in society.]\nHistorical Comments L (2010-04-30):\nI\u0026#39;ve long argued* that science fiction\u0026#39;s value, apart from literature, is that it enables us to imagine what impact social and technological changes have on humanity. The best science fiction often portrays how ordinary people react in extraordinary situations. Of course, there\u0026#39;s no small measure of extraordinary people in extraordinary situations either. Pretty much every Heinlein story ever written relies upon the latter. *Since high school in fact. One of my English teachers and I would regularly duel over whether or not science fiction was \u0026quot;real\u0026quot; literature. She claimed it wasn't because most science fiction became dated within a very short time of being published as science and technology progressed; i.e. \u0026quot;real\u0026quot; literature was timeless.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/science-fiction-scenarios-and-public.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScience fiction has been a popular genre at least since Jules Verne’s 19th century work, and arguably longer still. But can it have practical value as well as be a form of escapist entertainment? Clark Miller and Ira Bennett of ASU suggest that it has potential for use in improving the capacity of the general public “to imagine and reason critically about technological futures” and for being integrated into technology assessment processes (“Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?\u0026quot; \u003ci\u003eScience and Public Policy\u003c/i\u003e 35(8), October 2008, pp. 597-606).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMiller and Bennett argue that science fiction can provide a way to stimulate people to wake from “technological somnambulism” (Langdon Winner’s term for taking for granted or being oblivious to sociotechnical changes), in order to recognize such changes, realize that there may be alternative possibilities and that particular changes need not be determined, and to engage with deliberative processes and institutions that choose directions of change. Where most political planning is short-term and based on projections that simply extend current trends incrementally into the future, science fiction provides scenarios which exhibit “non-linearity” by involving multiple, major, and complex changes from current reality. While these scenarios “likely provide\u0026hellip;little technical accuracy” about how technology and society will actually interact, they may still provide ideas about alternative possibilities, and in particular to provide “clear visions of desirable\u0026ndash;and not so desirable\u0026ndash;futures.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe article begins with a quote from Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute recommending that “hard science fiction” be used to aid in “long-term” (20+ year) prediction scenarios; she advises, “Don’t think of it as literature,” and focus on the technologies rather than the people. Miller and Bennett, however, argue otherwise\u0026ndash;that not only is science fiction useful for thinking about longer-term consequences, but that the parts about the people\u0026ndash;how technologies actually fit into society\u0026ndash;are just as, if not more important than the ideas about the technologies themselves.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt ends with some examples of use of science fiction in workshops for nanotechnology researchers which have been conducted by Bennett and suggested uses in science education and in “society’s practices and institutions for public engagement and technology assessment.” About the former suggested use, the authors write that “The National Science Foundation, which has by and large not been in the business of supporting science fiction, might be encouraged to fund training and/or networking exercises that would foster greater interaction among scientists and fiction writers.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhile some steps have been taken to promote interaction between scientists and fiction writers\u0026ndash;most notably the National Academy of Sciences’ \u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/\"\u003eScience and Entertainment Exchange\u003c/a\u003e project headed by executive director Jennifer Ouellette \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003ewho spoke at last year’s The Amazing Meeting 7\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;this interaction is mostly one-way. The project is conceived of as a way for science to be accurately communicated to the general public through entertainment, rather than facilitating the generation of ideas for technological innovation and scientific development from the general public or the entertainment stories that are created. The SEE promotes the idea of collaboration between scientists and entertainment producers on the creative works of entertainment, but not necessarily directing creative feedback into science or building new capacities in science and technology, except indirectly by providing the general public with inspiration about science. Similarly, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptrack.org/\"\u003eSkeptrack\u003c/a\u003e and Science Track at the annual \u003ca href=\"http://www.dragoncon.org/\"\u003eDragon*Con\u003c/a\u003e science fiction convention in Atlanta provide ways for scientists and skeptics to interact with science fiction fans (and creators of science fiction works), but the communication is primarily in one direction via speakers and panels, with an opportunity for Q\u0026amp;A. (Unlike the notion of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticamp.org/wiki/Main_Page\"\u003eSkeptiCamp\u003c/a\u003e, where all participants are potentially on an equal basis, with everyone given the opportunity to be a presenter.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[P.S. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.longnow.org/\"\u003eLong Now Foundation\u003c/a\u003e is an organization that makes the Foresight Institute’s time horizon look short\u0026ndash;their time frame is the next 10,000 years, with a focus on how to make extremely long-term projects work and how to create an institutional framework that can persist for extremely long periods of time. (The obligatory science fiction references are Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp/0060892994?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eA Canticle for Leibowitz\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0060892994\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e and Neal Stephenson’s \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Neal-Stephenson/dp/B003BVK47E?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAnathem\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=B003BVK47E\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e.)]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Judd A. for his  comments\u0026ndash;he raised the concern that SkeptiCamp is connected to a rationalist form of skepticism that is concerned to \u0026ldquo;narrow the range of \u0026lsquo;acceptable\u0026rsquo; beliefs\u0026rdquo; rather than widen it.  While this may be true, depending on what the class of \u0026ldquo;acceptable\u0026rdquo; beliefs is prior to applying a skeptical filter, it need not be\u0026ndash;applying scientific methodology and critical thinking can also open up possibilities for individuals.  And if the initial set of beliefs includes all possibilities, converting that set to knowledge must necessarily involve narrowing rather than expanding the range, as there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right.  But this criticism points out something that I\u0026rsquo;ve observed in \u003ca href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/lippard/what-skeptics-can-learn-from-forteans\"\u003emy comparison of skepticism to Forteanism\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;skepticism is more concerned about avoiding Type I errors than Type II errors, while Forteans are more concerned about avoiding Type II errors than Type I errors, and these are complementary positions that both need representation in society.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science fiction scenarios and public engagement with science"},{"content":"Being modern, argues Bruno Latour in We Have Never Been Modern (1993, Harvard Univ. Press), involves drawing a sharp distinction between “nature” and “culture,” through a process of “purification” that separates everything into one or the other of these categories. It also involves breaking with the past: “Modernization consists in continually exiting from an obscure age that mingled the needs of society with scientific truth, in order to enter into a new age that will finally distinguish clearly what belongs to atemporal nature and what comes from humans, what depends on things and what belongs to signs” (p. 71).\nBut hold on a moment\u0026ndash;who actually advocates that kind of a sharp division between nature and culture, without acknowledging that human beings and their cultures are themselves a part of the natural order of things? As the 1991 Love and Rockets song, “No New Tale to Tell,” said: “You cannot go against nature / because when you do / go against nature / it’s part of nature, too.” Trying to divide the contents of the universe into a sharp dichotomy often yields a fuzzy edge, if not outright paradox. While Latour is right to object to such a sharp distinction (or separation) and to argue for a recognition that much of the world consists of “hybrids” that include natural and cultural aspects (true of both material objects and ideas), I’m not convinced that he’s correctly diagnosed a genuine malady when he writes that “Moderns \u0026hellip; refuse to conceptualize quasi-objects as such. In their eyes, hybrids present the horror that must be avoided at all costs by a ceaseless, even maniacal purification” (p. 112).\nLatour writes that anthropologists do not study modern cultures in the manner that they study premodern cultures. For premoderns, an ethnographer will generate “a single narrative that weaves together the way people regard the heavens and their ancestors, the way they build houses and the way they grow yams or manioc or rice, the way they construct their government and their cosmology,” but that this is not done for modern societies because “our fabric is no longer seamless” (p. 7). True, but the real problem for such ethnography is not that we don’t have such a unified picture of the world (and we don’t) but that we have massive complexity and specialization\u0026ndash;a complexity which Latour implicitly recognizes (pp. 100-101) but doesn’t draw out as a reason.\nThe argument that Latour makes in the book builds upon this initial division of nature and culture by the process of “purification” with a second division between “works of purification” and “works of translation,” “translation” being a four-step process of his advocated framework of actor-network theory that he actually doesn’t discuss much in this book. He proposes that the “modern constitution” contains “works of translation”\u0026ndash;networks of hybrid quasi-objects\u0026ndash;as a hidden and unrecognized layer that needs to be made explicit in order to be “nonmodern” (p. 138) or “amodern” (p. 90) and avoid the paradoxes of modernity (or other problems of anti-modernity, pre-modernity, and post-modernity).\nHis attempt to draw the big picture is interesting and often frustrating, as when he makes unargued-for claims that appear to be false, e.g., “as concepts, ‘local’ and ‘global’ work well for surfaces and geometry, but very badly for networks and topology’” (p. 119); “the West may believe that universal gravitation is universal even in the absence of any instrument, any calculation, any decoding, any laboratory \u0026hellip; but these are respectable beliefs that comparative anthropology is no longer obliged to share” (p. 120; also p. 24); speaking of “time” being reversible where he apparently means “change” or perhaps “progress” (p. 73); his putting “universality” and “rationality” on a list of values of moderns to be rejected (p. 135). I’m not sure how it makes sense to deny the possibility of universal generalizations while putting forth a proposed framework for the understanding of everything.\nMy favorite parts of the book were his recounting of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air Pump (pp. 15-29) and his critique of that project, and his summary of objections to postmodernism (p. 90). Latour is correct, I think, in his critique that those who try to explain the results of science solely in terms of social factors are making a mistake that privileges “social” over “natural” in the same way that attempting to explain them without any regard to social factors privileges “natural” over “social.” He writes to the postmodernists (p. 90):\n“Are you not fed up at finding yourselves forever locked into language alone, or imprisoned in social representations alone, as so many social scientists would like you to be? We want to gain access to things themselves, not only their phenomena. The real is not remote; rather, it is accessible in all the objects mobilized throughout the world. Doesn’t external reality abound right here among us?”\nIn a commentary on this post, Gretchen G. observed that we do regularly engage in the process of \u0026ldquo;purification\u0026rdquo; about our concepts and attitudes towards propositions in order to make day-to-day decisions\u0026ndash;and I think she\u0026rsquo;s right. We do regard things as scientific or not scientific, plausible or not plausible, true or false, even while we recognize that there may be fuzzy edges and indeterminate cases. And we tend not to like the fuzzy cases, and to want to put them into one category or the other. In some cases, this may be merely an epistemological problem of our human (and Humean) predicament where there is a fact of the matter; in others, our very categories may themselves be fuzzy and not fit reality (\u0026ldquo;carve nature at its joints\u0026rdquo;).\n[A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Gretchen G. for her comments. An entertaining critique of Latour\u0026rsquo;s earlier book Science in Action is Olga Amsterdamska\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Surely You\u0026rsquo;re Joking, Monsieur Latour!\u0026quot;, Science, Technology, and Human Values vol. 15, no. 4 (1990): 495-504.]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/havent-we-already-been-nonmodern.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBeing modern, argues Bruno Latour in \u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/We-Have-Never-Been-Modern/dp/0674948394?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWe Have Never Been Modern\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0674948394\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e(1993, Harvard Univ. Press), involves drawing a sharp distinction between “nature” and “culture,” through a process of “purification” that separates everything into one or the other of these categories. It also involves breaking with the past: “Modernization consists in continually exiting from an obscure age that mingled the needs of society with scientific truth, in order to enter into a new age that will finally distinguish clearly what belongs to atemporal nature and what comes from humans, what depends on things and what belongs to signs” (p. 71).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut hold on a moment\u0026ndash;who actually advocates that kind of a sharp division between nature and culture, without acknowledging that human beings and their cultures are themselves a part of the natural order of things? As the 1991 Love and Rockets song, “No New Tale to Tell,” said: “You cannot go against nature / because when you do / go against nature / it’s part of nature, too.” Trying to divide the contents of the universe into a sharp dichotomy often yields a fuzzy edge, if not outright paradox. While Latour is right to object to such a sharp distinction (or separation) and to argue for a recognition that much of the world consists of “hybrids” that include natural and cultural aspects (true of both material objects and ideas), I’m not convinced that he’s correctly diagnosed a genuine malady when he writes that “Moderns \u0026hellip; refuse to conceptualize quasi-objects as such. In their eyes, hybrids present the horror that must be avoided at all costs by a ceaseless, even maniacal purification” (p. 112).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLatour writes that anthropologists do not study modern cultures in the manner that they study premodern cultures. For premoderns, an ethnographer will generate “a single narrative that weaves together the way people regard the heavens and their ancestors, the way they build houses and the way they grow yams or manioc or rice, the way they construct their government and their cosmology,” but that this is not done for modern societies because “our fabric is no longer seamless” (p. 7). True, but the real problem for such ethnography is not that we don’t have such a unified picture of the world (and we don’t) but that we have massive complexity and specialization\u0026ndash;a complexity which Latour implicitly recognizes (pp. 100-101) but doesn’t draw out as a reason.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe argument that Latour makes in the book builds upon this initial division of nature and culture by the process of “purification” with a second division between “works of purification” and “works of translation,” “translation” being a four-step process of his advocated framework of actor-network theory that he actually doesn’t discuss much in this book. He proposes that the “modern constitution” contains “works of translation”\u0026ndash;networks of hybrid quasi-objects\u0026ndash;as a hidden and unrecognized layer that needs to be made explicit in order to be “nonmodern” (p. 138) or “amodern” (p. 90) and avoid the paradoxes of modernity (or other problems of anti-modernity, pre-modernity, and post-modernity).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis attempt to draw the big picture is interesting and often frustrating, as when he makes unargued-for claims that appear to be false, e.g., “as concepts, ‘local’ and ‘global’ work well for surfaces and geometry, but very badly for networks and topology’” (p. 119); “the West may believe that universal gravitation is universal even in the absence of any instrument, any calculation, any decoding, any laboratory \u0026hellip; but these are respectable beliefs that comparative anthropology is no longer obliged to share” (p. 120; also p. 24); speaking of “time” being reversible where he apparently means “change” or perhaps “progress” (p. 73); his putting “universality” and “rationality” on a list of values of moderns to be rejected (p. 135). I’m not sure how it makes sense to deny the possibility of universal generalizations while putting forth a proposed framework for the understanding of everything.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy favorite parts of the book were his recounting of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Air-Pump-Steven-Shapin/dp/0691024324?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eLeviathan and the Air Pump\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0691024324\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (pp. 15-29) and his critique of that project, and his summary of objections to postmodernism (p. 90). Latour is correct, I think, in his critique that those who try to explain the results of science solely in terms of social factors are making a mistake that privileges “social” over “natural” in the same way that attempting to explain them without any regard to social factors privileges “natural” over “social.” He writes to the postmodernists (p. 90):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n“Are you not fed up at finding yourselves forever locked into language alone, or imprisoned in social representations alone, as so many social scientists would like you to be? We want to gain access to things themselves, not only their phenomena. The real is not remote; rather, it is accessible in all the objects mobilized throughout the world. Doesn’t external reality abound right here among us?”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn a commentary on this post, Gretchen G. observed that we do regularly engage in the process of \u0026ldquo;purification\u0026rdquo; about our concepts and attitudes towards propositions in order to make day-to-day decisions\u0026ndash;and I think she\u0026rsquo;s right.  We do regard things as scientific or not scientific, plausible or not plausible, true or false, even while we recognize that there may be fuzzy edges and indeterminate cases.  And we tend not to like the fuzzy cases, and to want to put them into one category or the other.  In some cases, this may be merely an epistemological problem of our human (and Humean) predicament where there is a fact of the matter; in others, our very categories may themselves be fuzzy and not fit reality (\u0026ldquo;carve nature at its joints\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Gretchen G. for her comments.  An entertaining critique of Latour\u0026rsquo;s earlier book \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Action-Scientists-Engineers-through/dp/0674792912?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eScience in Action\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0674792912\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e is Olga Amsterdamska\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://sth.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/15/4/495?ck=nck\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Surely You\u0026rsquo;re Joking, Monsieur Latour!\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ci\u003eScience, Technology, and Human Values\u003c/i\u003e vol. 15, no. 4 (1990): 495-504.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Haven't we already been nonmodern?"},{"content":"Matthew LaClair, who exposed his proselytizing U.S. history teacher/youth pastor in 2006, now hosts his own radio show, \u0026ldquo;Equal Time for Freethought,\u0026rdquo; on WBAI 99.5 FM on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. ET in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area. The show is also online via streaming audio.\nThis coming Sunday, April 25, Matthew will be debating a conservative member of the Texas Board of Education about their recent changes to the curriculum (e.g., removing Thomas Jefferson).\nIf you happen to miss the show, it will subsequently be available in the online archives.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/matthew-laclair-vs-texas-board-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew LaClair, who \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003eexposed his proselytizing U.S. history teacher/youth pastor in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, now hosts his own radio show, \u0026ldquo;Equal Time for Freethought,\u0026rdquo; on WBAI 99.5 FM on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. ET in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area.  The show is also \u003ca href=\"http://stream.wbai.org/\"\u003eonline via streaming audio\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis coming Sunday, April 25, Matthew will be debating a conservative member of the Texas Board of Education about their recent changes to the curriculum (e.g., removing Thomas Jefferson).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf you happen to miss the show, it will \u003ca href=\"http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/\"\u003esubsequently be available in the online archives\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matthew LaClair vs. Texas Board of Education"},{"content":"James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (about which I\u0026rsquo;ve blogged previously) talks about how the state imposes standards in order to make features legible, countable, regulatable, and taxable. J. Stephen Lansing’s Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali describes a case where the reverse happened. When Bali tried to impose a top-down system of scientifically designed order\u0026ndash;a system of water management\u0026ndash;on Balinese rice farmers, in the name of modernization in the early 1970s, the result was a brief increase in productivity followed by disaster. Rather than lead to more efficient use of water and continued improved crop yields, it produced pest outbreaks which destroyed crops. An investment of $55 million in Romijn gates to control water flow in irrigation canals had the opposite of the intended effect. Farmers removed the gates or lifted them out of the water and left them to rust, upsetting the consultants and officials behind the project. Pesticides delivered to farmers resulted in brown leafhoppers becoming resistant to pesticides, and supplied fertilizers washed into the rivers and killed coral reefs at the mouths of the rivers.\nLansing was part of a team sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 1983 that evaluated the Balinese farmers’ traditional water management system to understand how it worked. The farmers of each village belong to subaks, or organizations that manage rice terraces and irrigation systems, which are referred to in Balinese writings going back at least a thousand years. Lansing notes that “Between them, the village and subak assemblies govern most aspects of a farmer’s social, economic, and spiritual life.”\nLansing’s team found that the Balinese system of water temples, religious ritual, and irrigation managed by the subaks would synchronize fallow periods of contiguous segments of terraces, so that long segments could be kept flooded after harvest, killing pests by depriving them of habitat. But their attempt and that of the farmers to persuade the government to allow the traditional system to continue fell upon deaf ears, and the modernization scheme continued to be pushed.\nIn 1987, Lansing worked with James Kremer to develop a computer model of the Balinese water temple system, and ran a simulation using historical rainfall data. This translation of the traditional system into scientific explanation showed that the traditional system was more effective than the modernized system, and government officials were persuaded to allow and encourage a return to the traditional system.\nThe Balinese system of farming is an example of how local knowledge can develop and become embedded in a “premodern” society by mechanisms other than conscious and intentional scientific investigation (in this case, probably more like a form of evolution), and be invisible to the state until it is specifically studied. It’s also a case where the religious aspects of the traditional system may have contributed to its dismissal by the modern experts.\nWhat I find of particular interest here is to what extent the local knowledge was simply embedded into the practices, and not known by any of the participants\u0026ndash;were they just doing what they\u0026rsquo;ve \u0026ldquo;always\u0026rdquo; done (with practices that have evolved over the last 1,000 years), in a circumstance where the system as a whole \u0026ldquo;knows,\u0026rdquo; but no individual had an understanding until Lansing and Kremer built and tested a model of what they were doing? [A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Brenda T. for her comments. More on Lansing\u0026rsquo;s work in Bali may be found online here.]\nHistorical Comments Monado (2010-04-25):\nI can imagine some very fruitful research projects to extract procedures from practices and see what mechanisms are embedded in the practices. We could carry modern workflow analysis from the factory and office to the farm and forest and perhaps preserve some of that embedded knowledge before it\u0026#39;s lost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/translating-local-knowledge-into-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJames Scott’s \u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Like-State-Condition-Institution/dp/0300078153?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eSeeing Like a State\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0300078153\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (about which \u003ca href=\"/2010/02/seeing-like-slime-mold.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve blogged previously\u003c/a\u003e) talks about how the state imposes standards in order to make features legible, countable, regulatable, and taxable. J. Stephen Lansing’s \u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Order-Recognizing-Complexity-Princeton/dp/0691027277?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;tag=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;link_code=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePerfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali \u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=jimlippardswebpa\u0026amp;l=btl\u0026amp;camp=213689\u0026amp;creative=392969\u0026amp;o=1\u0026amp;a=0691027277\" style=\"border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003edescribes a case where the reverse happened. When Bali tried to impose a top-down system of scientifically designed order\u0026ndash;a system of water management\u0026ndash;on Balinese rice farmers, in the name of modernization in the early 1970s, the result was a brief increase in productivity followed by disaster. Rather than lead to more efficient use of water and continued improved crop yields, it produced pest outbreaks which destroyed crops. An investment of $55 million in Romijn gates to control water flow in irrigation canals had the opposite of the intended effect. Farmers removed the gates or lifted them out of the water and left them to rust, upsetting the consultants and officials behind the project. Pesticides delivered to farmers resulted in brown leafhoppers becoming resistant to pesticides, and supplied fertilizers washed into the rivers and killed coral reefs at the mouths of the rivers.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLansing was part of a team sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 1983 that evaluated the Balinese farmers’ traditional water management system to understand how it worked. The farmers of each village belong to subaks, or organizations that manage rice terraces and irrigation systems, which are referred to in Balinese writings going back at least a thousand years. Lansing notes that “Between them, the village and subak assemblies govern most aspects of a farmer’s social, economic, and spiritual life.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLansing’s team found that the Balinese system of water temples, religious ritual, and irrigation managed by the subaks would synchronize fallow periods of contiguous segments of terraces, so that long segments could be kept flooded after harvest, killing pests by depriving them of habitat. But their attempt and that of the farmers to persuade the government to allow the traditional system to continue fell upon deaf ears, and the modernization scheme continued to be pushed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 1987, Lansing worked with James Kremer to develop a computer model of the Balinese water temple system, and ran a simulation using historical rainfall data. This translation of the traditional system into scientific explanation showed that the traditional system was more effective than the modernized system, and government officials were persuaded to allow and encourage a return to the traditional system.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Balinese system of farming is an example of how local knowledge can develop and become embedded in a “premodern” society by mechanisms other than conscious and intentional scientific investigation (in this case, probably more like a form of evolution), and be invisible to the state until it is specifically studied. It’s also a case where the religious aspects of the traditional system may have contributed to its dismissal by the modern experts.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhat I find of particular interest here is to what extent the local knowledge was simply embedded into the practices, and not known by any of the participants\u0026ndash;were they just doing what they\u0026rsquo;ve \u0026ldquo;always\u0026rdquo; done (with practices that have evolved over the last 1,000 years), in a circumstance where the system as a whole \u0026ldquo;knows,\u0026rdquo; but no individual had an understanding until Lansing and Kremer built and tested a model of what they were doing? \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Brenda T. for her comments.  More on Lansing\u0026rsquo;s work in Bali may be found online \u003ca href=\"http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/research/Balinese%20Water%20Temples.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Translating local knowledge into state-legible science"},{"content":"Studies of the public understanding of science generally produce results that show a disturbingly high level of ignorance. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement that “ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while genetically modified tomatoes do,” only 36% of Europeans answered correctly in 2002 (and only 35% in 1999 and 1996, Eurobarometer Biotechnology Quiz). Those in the U.S. did better with this question, with 45% getting it right; Canada and the Netherlands got the highest level of correct answers (52% and 51%, respectively). Tests of similar statements, such as “Electrons are smaller than atoms,” “The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs,” and “How long does it take the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year,” all yield similarly low levels of correct responses.\nPublic understanding of science research shows individuals surveyed to be remarkably ignorant of particular facts about science, but is that the right measure of how science is understood and used by the public at large? Such surveys ask about disconnected facts independent from a context in which they might be used, and measure only an individual’s personal knowledge. If, instead, those surveyed were asked who among their friends would they rely upon to obtain the answer to such a question, or how would they go about finding a reliable answer to the question, the results might prove to be quite different.\nContext can be quite important. In the Wason selection task, individuals are shown four cards labeled, respectively, “E”, “K,” “4,” and “7,” and are asked which cards they would need to turn over in order to test the rule, “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” Test subjects do very well at recognizing that the “E” card needs to be turned over (corresponding to the logical rule of modus ponens), but very poorly at recognizing that the “7,” rather than the “4,” needs to be turned over to find out if the rule holds (i.e., they engage in the fallacy of affirming the consequent rather than use the logical rule of modus tollens). But if, instead of letters and numbers, a scenario with more context is constructed, subjects perform much more reliably. In one variant, subjects were told to imagine that they are post office workers sorting letters, and looking to find those which do not comply with a regulation that requires an additional 10 lire of postage on sealed envelopes. They are then presented with four envelopes (two face down, one opened and one sealed, and two face up, one with a 50-lire stamp and one with a 40-lire stamp) and asked to test the rule “If a letter is sealed, then it has a 50-lire stamp on it.” Subjects then recognize that they need to turn over the sealed face-down envelope and the 40-lire stamped envelope, despite its logical equivalent to the original selection task that they perform poorly on.\nSheila Jasanoff, in Designs on Nature, argues that measures of the public understanding of science are not particularly relevant to how democracies actually use science. Instead, she devotes chapter 10 of her book to an alternative approach, “civic epistemology,” which is a qualitative framework for understanding the methods and practices of a community’s generation and use of knowledge. She offers six dimensions of civic epistemologies:\n(1) the dominant participatory styles of public knowledge-making; (2) the methods of ensuring accountability; (3) the practices of public demonstration; (4) the preferred registers of objectivity; (5) the accepted bases of expertise; and (6) the visibility of expert bodies.\u0026nbsp; (p. 259)She offers the following table of comparison on these six dimensions for the U.S., Britain, and Germany:\nUnited States\nContentious Britain\nCommunitarian Germany\nConsensus-seeking 1 Pluralist, interest-based Embodied, service-based Corporatist, institution-based 2 Assumptions of distrust; Legal Assumptions of trust; Relational Assumption of trust; Role-based 3 Sociotechnical experiments Empirical science Expert rationality 4 Formal, numerical, reasoned Consultative, negotiated Negotiated, reasoned 5 Professional skills Experience Training, skills, experience 6 Transparent Variable Nontransparent She argues that this multi-dimensional approach provides a meaningful way of evaluating the courses of scientific policy disputes regarding biotech that she describes in the prior chapters of the book, while simply looking at national data on public understanding of science with regard to those controversies offers little explanation.\u0026nbsp; The nature of those controversies didn’t involve just disconnected facts, or simple misunderstandings of science, but also involved interests and values expressed through various kinds of political participation.\nPublic understanding of science surveys do provide an indicator of what individuals know that may be relevant to public policy on education, but it is at best a very indirect and incomplete measure of what is generally accepted in a population, and even less informative about how institutional structures and processes use scientific information.\u0026nbsp; The social structures in modern democracies are responsive to other values beyond the epistemic, and may in some cases amplify rational or radical ignorance of a population, but they may more frequently moderate and mitigate such ignorance.\nSources:\nEurobarometer Biotechnology Quiz results from Jasanoff, Designs on Nature, 2005, Princeton University Press, p. 87. U.S., Canada, Netherlands survey results from Thomas J. Hoban slide in Gary Marchant’s “Law, Science, and Technology” class lecture on public participation in science (Nov. 16, 2009). Wason task description from John R. Anderson, Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, Second Edition, 1985, W.H. Freeman and Company, pp. 268-269. [A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Brenda T. for her comments.] badrescher (2010-04-19):\nIn answer to the question, I guess a point of reference is needed. The ignorance that people point to in surveys is misleading at best and most fail to compare the findings to those of previous years. It's actually improving. However, I what I'd really like to comment on is the Wason 4-card task.\nIt is clear that, in general, people are positively terrible at this task and at conditional reasoning in general. When certain real-world scenarios are used, people generally perform well. However, \u0026quot;perform well\u0026quot; is not the same thing as \u0026quot;reason well\u0026quot;. One may come to the correct answer many ways. In this case, people come to it by using pragmatic schemas. That in no way implies that they are rational.\nBill Mahr is an atheist. I find this view to be the most rational conclusion. However, he holds a great many views that are, imo, irrational. Who knows how he arrived at the same conclusion I arrived at?\nL (2010-04-19):\n@badrescher I think it depends on how you define rational. I also don\u0026#39;t find Maher to be very rational because he doesn\u0026#39;t seem to come to reasoned conclusions. He doesn\u0026#39;t think; just reacts. Further, he seems impervious to expert testimony. Actually, let me rephrase that. He seems unable to determine which experts to trust. But what about that old-time atheist whipping boy Ken Miller? Many atheists would say he isn't rational despite his scientific credentials because he doesn't follow the science where they think it should take him in respect to his religion. Yet I have no problem calling Miller rational. It's true, he operates within a bounded rationality but then I think we all, everyone of us, do.\nSo I think defining rational is a very hard thing to do and perhaps we almost have to go with the tautological \u0026quot;rational is what rational people do/think.\u0026quot;\n@Jim Fascinating post.\nbadrescher (2010-04-19):\n@neuralgourmet, true, but I don\u0026#39;t define it like Gigerenzer does and I think that definition is a bit of a cop-out. What seems to be the most \u0026quot;settled\u0026quot; definition in the literature is 2-fold (holding beliefs consistent with evidence is part of it), but it certainly involves optimal choices, not \u0026quot;whatever works\u0026quot; choices. By those definitions and mine, I find Ken Miller rational enough and for the same reasons you do. Limiting the scope of what one is willing to question is the opposite of irrational, imo.\nWhether or not it is hypocritical or contradictory is another story, but rational? Sure it is. At least until we start talking about WHY he limits it\u0026hellip; ;)\nL (2010-04-19):\n@badrescher I\u0026#39;ve yet to read any of Gerd Gigerenzer\u0026#39;s books, but I do think that oft times many skeptics and atheists work with an overly restrictive definition of rationality.\nLippard (2010-04-19):\nSatisficing in the evolutionary environment is more likely than optimality, and that may mean worse than satisfactory in more abstruse intellectual environments. From a philosophical perspective, when you try to get a universal, optimal rationality, obstacles arise not just from practical considerations (which are large enough), but from limitations we've discovered in mathematics and logic\u0026ndash;which motivated philosophical treatments like Christopher Cherniak's Minimal Rationality (1986, MIT Press) and Gilbert Harman's Change in View: Principles of Reasoning (1986, MIT Press).\nThe data in Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky's Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1982, Cambridge Univ. Press), while it shows failings against an optimal standard, isn't really so bad as it originally seemed, was it? These heuristics and biases are important for us to know and guard against, especially in institutional and policy-related contexts, but they may not be all-things-considered irrational in practice.\nAn important critique of the public understanding of science model, that I didn't make explicitly, is that it really is just a test of rote memorization, rather than reasoning skill or scientific methodology.\nL (2010-04-20):\n\u0026quot;These heuristics and biases are important for us to know and guard against, especially in institutional and policy-related contexts, but they may not be all-things-considered irrational in practice.\u0026quot; Jim, you're much more aware of the literature than I am. Is it any easier trying to come up with what clearly counts as irrational, then backing off from there to get at an idea of what's rational?\nActually, I'm thinking that the kind of rationality we think of, that we inherited from the Enlightenment philosophers, is actually a whole bunch of separate things all taken together.\nLippard (2010-04-20):\nNeural Gourmet: When I was waist-deep in epistemology, most of the philosophers I read tended to avoid the term \u0026quot;rationality\u0026quot; in favor of \u0026quot;knowledge,\u0026quot; \u0026quot;justification,\u0026quot; \u0026quot;epistemic norms,\u0026quot; and similar talk, just because there were too many conflicting notions of rationality. Cherniak is an exception. One of my professors at UA, the late John Pollock, did talk about rationality as rules of human reasoning, which he attempted to implement in an artificial intelligence system called OSCAR. Your question led me to find this paper of his online, \u0026quot;Epistemology, Rationality, and Cognition.\u0026quot;\nThere are definitely multiple concepts out there, including rules or norms about what it is reasonable to believe and rules or norms about what it is reasonable to do. And disagreement how those rules all fit together into a coherent whole.\nPollock, Harman, and Cherniak all are writing about defeasible, non-monotonic reasoning, where your set of beliefs can contract as well as expand, as new beliefs defeat or undermine existing beliefs. Cherniak proposes a condition of \u0026quot;minimal consistency\u0026quot;, where a rational agent will act to eliminate some but not necessarily all inconsistencies; Harman adopts a principle of conservatism that says we tend to retain beliefs and only clean up inconsistencies as they become salient.\nEconomists, game theorists, and decision theorists have different notions of rationality\u0026ndash;out of my field.\nL (2010-04-20):\nThanks for the link to Pollock\u0026#39;s paper (which is incredibly readable for that sort of thing). I just skimmed through it but he has some interesting ideas, principally that irrational behavior solely results from an inability to override Q\u0026amp;I (\u0026quot;Quick and Inflexible\u0026quot;) modules. He seems to be talking about innate heuristics, such as our ability to very quickly predict trajectories of flying objects. We don\u0026#39;t have to stop and reason through where a tossed ball will be in order to catch it. We just \u0026quot;know\u0026quot; and act accordingly. His Q\u0026amp;I modules appear to be just another name for heuristics to me, although perhaps he means something broader. I'll have to read the full paper but he's certainly right I think in saying that heuristics are an epistemic condition. Indeed, I think modern neurosci research has shown that it's very hard for people to disregard a highly successful heuristic and reason through a problem instead. The Wason Selection Task is a demonstration of that I believe.\nSo by defining rationality as the inability to override heuristics or Q\u0026amp;I modules, it seems that Pollock takes a stricter approach to rationality than I do. I think he's saying that any time in which we don't engage in explicit reasoning, i.e. not relying on a Q\u0026amp;I module, then we are thinking irrationally.\nMy personal view is that heuristics are part and parcel of rational thinking and that irrational thinking occurs when a person indiscriminately relies on them even after having had that heuristic demonstrated as not applying in a certain situation. In fact, in the majority of cases, relying on heuristics is the rational thing to do because heuristics allow us to come to decisions quickly with little energy expenditure. If we see an ad on TV that makes an offer that seems \u0026quot;too good to be true\u0026quot; we know from experience that it probably is, so the safe bet is to simply assume that it's bogus or a scam.\nWhere we get into trouble is when we attempt to apply a heuristic to a situation that's novel and outside our everyday experiences. For instance, 9-11 conspiracy theorists often rely on what they think a controlled demolition of a building looks like to conclude that WTC building 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition. Their heuristic of what a controlled demolition looks like isn't at fault. The collapse of WTC 7 does look a lot like what a controlled demolition looks like. The problem is that they're relying on that heuristic instead of considering that there might be multiple causes for a building's collapse that will result in a collapse that looks a lot like a controlled demolition.\nNow, I don't think applying the \u0026quot;controlled demolition\u0026quot; heuristic to the collapse of WTC 7 is the irrational act. To me the irrationality comes in when after a 9-11 conspiracy theorist has had it demonstrated multiple times that they're idea of what a controlled demolition looks like doesn't apply in this case, and is counterfactual (i.e. we know WTC 7 collapsed due to structural damage from falling debris and fire).\nLippard (2010-04-20):\nNeural Gourmet: \u0026quot;I think he\u0026#39;s saying that any time in which we don\u0026#39;t engage in explicit reasoning, i.e. not relying on a Q\u0026amp;I module, then we are thinking irrationally.\u0026quot; No, he doesn't quite say that\u0026ndash;rather, he says that when we have reason to believe that explicit reasoning gives a different result than a Q\u0026amp;I module, we need to go with the explicit reasoning on pain of being irrational\u0026ndash;see the penultimate sentence of section 3. This seems to me compatible with your position (and it seems right to me).\nL (2010-04-21):\nJim, you\u0026#39;re right. I see that now. I was skimming through it really fast this morning. He says a lot of interesting things in that paper. I do wonder though at:\n\u0026quot;To do that, we must be able to inspect candidate expansion of argument sketches and evaluate them as good or bad arguments. But that just amounts to judging whether, if we reasoned in that way, we would be conforming to the dictates of rationality. Thus an essential feature of rational cognition must be the built-in ability to judge whether particular bits of cognitive behavior conform to the dictates of rationality.\u0026quot;\nHow much of that ability is built into humans and how much is learned? I suspect that whatever built-in abilities we have along that line are fairly minimal and the rest come from learning. If that's the case though then we might be treading on the dangerous ground of saying that it's possible for some cultures to be more or less rational than others.\nLippard (2010-04-21):\nI think you need a certain amount to be built in (evolved, really) in order for reasoning to get off the ground in the first place, and that many of the cognitive tools we use are learned (e.g., look at the development of mathematics, logic, science, and philosophy). Pollock also focuses on the individual cognizer, and not groups and institutions, which also play a part in how knowledge gets produced and validated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/is-general-public-really-that-ignorant.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStudies of the public understanding of science generally produce results that show a disturbingly high level of ignorance.  When asked to agree or disagree with the statement that “ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while genetically modified tomatoes do,” only 36% of Europeans answered correctly in 2002 (and only 35% in 1999 and 1996, Eurobarometer Biotechnology Quiz).  Those in the U.S. did better with this question, with 45% getting it right; Canada and the Netherlands got the highest level of correct answers (52% and 51%, respectively).  Tests of similar statements, such as “Electrons are smaller than atoms,” “The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs,” and “How long does it take the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year,” all yield similarly low levels of correct responses.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPublic understanding of science research shows individuals surveyed to be remarkably ignorant of particular facts about science, but is that the right measure of how science is understood and used by the public at large?  Such surveys ask about disconnected facts independent from a context in which they might be used, and measure only an individual’s personal knowledge. If, instead, those surveyed were asked who among their friends would they rely upon to obtain the answer to such a question, or how would they go about finding a reliable answer to the question, the results might prove to be quite different.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nContext can be quite important. In the Wason selection task, individuals are shown four cards labeled, respectively, “E”, “K,” “4,” and “7,” and are asked which cards they would need to turn over in order to test the rule, “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” Test subjects do very well at recognizing that the “E” card needs to be turned over (corresponding to the logical rule of modus ponens), but very poorly at recognizing that the “7,” rather than the “4,” needs to be turned over to find out if the rule holds (i.e., they engage in the fallacy of affirming the consequent rather than use the logical rule of modus tollens). But if, instead of letters and numbers, a scenario with more context is constructed, subjects perform much more reliably. In one variant, subjects were told to imagine that they are post office workers sorting letters, and looking to find those which do not comply with a regulation that requires an additional 10 lire of postage on sealed envelopes. They are then presented with four envelopes (two face down, one opened and one sealed, and two face up, one with a 50-lire stamp and one with a 40-lire stamp) and asked to test the rule “If a letter is sealed, then it has a 50-lire stamp on it.” Subjects then recognize that they need to turn over the sealed face-down envelope and the 40-lire stamped envelope, despite its logical equivalent to the original selection task that they perform poorly on.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSheila Jasanoff, in \u003ci\u003eDesigns on Nature\u003c/i\u003e, argues that measures of the public understanding of science are not particularly relevant to how democracies actually use science. Instead, she devotes chapter 10 of her book to an alternative approach, “civic epistemology,” which is a qualitative framework for understanding the methods and practices of a community’s generation and use of knowledge.  She offers six dimensions of civic epistemologies:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is the general public really that ignorant? Public understanding of science vs. civic epistemology"},{"content":"Chapter 3 of Langdon Winner’s The Whale and the Reactor (1988) is titled “Techné and Politeia,” a discussion of the relationship of technology and politics that draws upon Plato, Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson to recount historical views before turning to the “modern technical constitution.” The contemporary “interconnected systems of manufacturing, communications, transportation” and so forth that have arisen have a set of five features that Winner says “embody answers to age-old political questions \u0026hellip; about membership, power, authority, order, freedom, and justice” (p. 47).\nThe five features are (pp. 47-48):\n“the ability of technologies of transportation and communication to facilitate control over events from a single center or small number of centers.” “a tendency for new devices and techniques to increase the most efficient or effective size of organized human associations.” “the way in which the rational arrangement of socio-technical systems has tended to produce its own distinctive forms of hierarchical authority.” “the tendence of large, centralized, hierarchically arranged sociotechnical entities to crowd out and eliminate other varieties of human activity.” “the various ways that large sociotechnical organizations exercise power to control the social and political influences that ostensibly control them.” (e.g., regulatory capture) Winner states that the adoption of systems with these features implicitly provides answers to political questions without our thinking about it, questions such as “Should power be centralized or dispersed? What is the best size for units of social organization? What constitutes justifiable authority in human associations? Does a free society depend on social uniformity or diversity? What are appropriate structures and processes of public deliberation and decision making?” (p. 49)\u0026nbsp; Where the founding fathers of the United States considered these questions explicitly in formulating our political constitution, the developers of technological systems--which have become socio-technical systems, with social practices surrounding the use of technology--have typically failed to do so, being more concerned with innovation, profit, and organizational control rather than broader social implications (p. 50).\nWhile there are widely accepted criteria for placing regulatory limits on technology--Winner notes five (threats to health and safety, exhaustion of a vital resource, degrading environmental quality, threats to natural species and wilderness, and causing “social stresses and strains of an exaggerated kind,” pp. 50-51)--he suggests that these are insufficient.\u0026nbsp; He cites a study by colleagues of electronic funds transfer (EFT) which suggested that it “would make possible a shift of power from smaller banks to larger national and international institutions” and create problems of data protection and individual privacy.\u0026nbsp; But those problems don’t seem to fall under his five criteria, so he suggested, ironically, that “their research try to show that under conditions of heavy, continued exposure, EFT causes cancer in laboratory animals” (p. 51).\u0026nbsp; Although I’d be surprised to find that EFT by itself had the effect Winner suggests, the recent global financial crisis as shown problems with allowing financial institutions to become “too big to fail” and motivated financial reform proposals (e.g., Sen. Dodd’s bill that would create new regulatory power over institutions with more than $50 billion in assets, including the ability to force such institutions into liquidation--“death panels” for large financial institutions).\nIn the 22 years since Winner’s book was published, most of his five features seem to continue to be relevant to developments such as the Internet.\u0026nbsp; With respect to (2),(3), and (4) the Internet has greatly reduced the costs of organizing and allowed for social (non-market) production of goods.\u0026nbsp; But the mechanisms which ease the creation of small, geographically dispersed groups have also facilitated the creation of larger groups, new kinds of hierarchical authority, and new kinds of centralization and monitoring (e.g., via applications used by hundreds of millions of people, provided by companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter).\u0026nbsp; It’s also allowed for new forms of influence by the same old powers-that-be, via techniques like astroturfing and faux amateur viral videos.\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Tim K. for his comments (though I declined to move the paragraph you suggested).]","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/winners-techne-and-politeia-22-years.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChapter 3 of Langdon Winner’s \u003ci\u003eThe Whale and the Reactor\u003c/i\u003e (1988) is titled “\u003ci\u003eTechné\u003c/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePoliteia\u003c/i\u003e,” a discussion of the relationship of technology and politics that draws upon Plato, Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson to recount historical views before turning to the “modern technical constitution.”  The contemporary “interconnected systems of manufacturing, communications, transportation” and so forth that have arisen have a set of five features that Winner says “embody answers to age-old political questions \u0026hellip; about membership, power, authority, order, freedom, and justice” (p. 47).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe five features are (pp. 47-48):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Winner's techne and politeia, 22 years later"},{"content":"Today I went to hear Bruce Wagman speak on the subject of \u0026ldquo;Many Species of Animal Law\u0026rdquo; at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor College of Law. Wagman, an attorney with Schiff Hardin who is also an outside litigator for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, has litigated cases involving animals for 18 years, written a case book on animal law, and teaches animal law courses at several law schools as an adjunct faculty member. He was introduced by ASU Law School Dean Paul Berman and Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Pat Norris.\nWagman began by defining \u0026ldquo;animal law\u0026rdquo; as any law where the status of an animal matters\u0026ndash;psychological, biological, welfare, etc. status of the animal, as opposed to its value as property. He suggested that animal law attorneys \u0026ldquo;may be the only lawyers on earth whose clients are all innocent.\u0026quot;\nHe divided his talk up into multiple \u0026ldquo;species\u0026rdquo; of animal law.\nSpecies 1: Companion Animal Issues\nHe said this makes up the majority of his cases, and includes injuries by or to animals, including veterinary malpractice. The challenge is to get courts to recognize that animals are not merely property, since historically companion animals have been viewed as property with low or even zero market value. In cases where an animal is injured or killed, the market value doesn\u0026rsquo;t recognize the interests of the animal or other kinds of value that companion animals give. Under the American Law Institute\u0026rsquo;s Restatements of the Law, however, there is a notion of \u0026ldquo;special property\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;peculiar property\u0026rdquo; in California\u0026rsquo;s statutes) which allows quantification of other kinds of worth to an animal owner, for instance if the animal is a therapy dog. There are no emotional stress damages available.\nOther sorts of companion animal cases include custody disputes, which often occur as a result of one partner just trying to inflict distress on another rather than having actual interest in the animal. Wagman said that courts are beginning to take a better look at the interests of the animal in such cases, and be willing to appoint a guardian ad litem, as occurred in the Michael Vick case and in another case in Tennessee where there was a dispute over custody of a dog between a dead man\u0026rsquo;s girlfriend and parents.\nThere are dangerous dog issues, where an attorney may be fighting against the classification of a dog as a dangerous or vicious animal, or against its euthanasia\u0026ndash;what he called \u0026ldquo;capital cases\u0026rdquo; for animals. In three counties surrounding San Francisco, what happens in the case of a dog biting another dog that requires stitches varies dramatically. In one county, the dog gets a period of probation. In another, the dog gets labeled as a dangerous or vicious dog, which requires the owner to meet various conditions of housing the dog, having a certain height of fence, carry additional insurance, and so forth. And in Santa Clara County, the dog gets euthanized. He pointed out that that county\u0026rsquo;s statute has an exemption for \u0026ldquo;mitigating circumstances\u0026rdquo; which he\u0026rsquo;s successfully used to prevent dogs from being euthanized.\nFinally, there are wills and trusts\u0026ndash;he said he doesn\u0026rsquo;t do that sort of work, but that 48 states now have mechanisms for having trusts for animals.\nHe said he considers companion animals to be a sort of \u0026ldquo;gateway animal\u0026rdquo; for getting recognition of animals in the law, and noted that we tend to be \u0026ldquo;speciesists\u0026rdquo; who would feel very different about snakes vs. Labrador Retrievers. [IMO, this is rational to the extent that animals differ in cognitive capacities, and I note that at no point did he discuss litigating on behalf of cockroaches against pest control companies.]\nSpecies 2: Farm animal issues\u0026ndash;legislation and litigation.\nHis second species of animal law was about animals killed for food\u0026ndash;about 10 billion per year in the United States. He said the goal here is not to stop the killing, but just to improve the living conditions of animals before they\u0026rsquo;re killed for food. This is problematic, however, because the animal cruelty statutes are criminal rather than civil (with an exception in North Carolina that will be discussed with regard to Species 3 of animal law), and that the criminal law for animal cruelty excludes farm animals in 35 states. He discussed a few of the more abusive methods of animal treatment in factory farming\u0026ndash;calf crates, in which calves are placed for about the first 60 days of life, gestation crates for pigs (outlawed in Arizona since 2006, as well as illegal in Florida, Oregon, Colorado, and California), and battery cages for chickens.\nHe also discussed downer animals\u0026ndash;animals which are either so seriously injured or ill that they are unable to move, which the meat industry wants to drag in that condition to slaughter. Wagman raised the concern that such animals, if sick, could potentially spread illness to humans, and listed a bunch of diseases that could potentially so spread, with BSE (mad cow) at the top of the list along with avian flu. Of these, only BSE has been documented to spread to humans, and the industry position is that there should be no restrictions on downer pigs unless and until a human actually gets sick. The state of California passed a law that said that all downer animals must be euthanized on the spot; the meat industry sued and overturned the statute in federal district court, but the 9th Circuit just reversed it last week (National Meat Association v. Brown).\nSpecies 3: Animal hoarding\u0026ndash;private ownership, breeders, and the sanctuary that is not\nWagman said that there have been 250,000 documented cases of animal hoarding, and that they are difficult cases to work with in multiple ways. He said he believes such cases involve mental illness, but while the APA has a diagnosis for \u0026ldquo;hoarding\u0026rdquo; behavior, it excludes animal hoarding which is considered to be different. How many animals constitutes hoarding? He said he likes to say \u0026ldquo;more than eight,\u0026rdquo; because he has eight animals at home. Hoarders characteristics include possessing more animals than they can care for, having a sense of being persecuted, and living in deplorable conditions.\nHe discussed two cases that he litigated, ALDF v. Barbara \u0026amp; Robert Woodley, and ALDF v. Janie Conyers, which involved over 500 animals between them. The former case, in North Carolina, was able to use North Carolina statute 19a, which allows a civil cause of action for animal cruelty. Wagman had some horrifying photos from the Woodley case. They had hundreds of dogs in their home living in their own feces, where ammonia levels were 20 times the USDA maximum allowed in a pig facility. These ammonia levels caused blindness in the dogs, as well as chemical burns to bare skin that contacted the floor, such as dogs\u0026rsquo; scrotums. Multiple dogs were kept in wooden boxes with lids on them, and never let out. Mrs. Woodley\u0026rsquo;s favorite dog, Buddy, not only had his eyes burned to blindness from ammonia, but the bone in the dog\u0026rsquo;s jaw deteriorated from malnutrition. Local officials had known of Woodley\u0026rsquo;s problem for 20 years, but considered themselves powerless to do anything about it, since the scale of the problem was so large\u0026ndash;the local shelter had only eight kennels, while the Woodleys had about 450 animals. The ALDF had to coordinate a massive effort to manage the rescue of the animals through their case.\nConyers was an AKC poodle breeder who had 106 poodles living in their own feces.\nWagman said that animal psychological suffering is difficult to show, but it can be done; demonstrating physiological suffering is easier, with objective criteria like the ammonia levels and physical injuries to animals.\nThere is no law against hoarding (except in Hawaii), just the criminal abuse statutes (and civil in NC). In the hoarding cases the abuse is typically neglect rather than active abuse.\nSpecies 4: Exotic animal ownership\nWagman has handled about 10 chimpanzee cases. One was a case involving a couple in West Covina, California who had a chimp named Moe for 35 years that bit two people. He argued for a guardian ad litem to determine what was in the best interests of the chimp, and arranged to get Jane Goodall and Roger Fouts for that role. The court looked upon it favorably, but the couple came to an out-of-court settlement.\nHe also briefly discussed the Stamford, Connecticut case of Travis, the 200-pound chimpanzee who attacked a woman that was in the news last year.\nHe argued that there should be a legislative fix to ban exotic animal ownership completely\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re wild animals. [A complete ban seems to me too much\u0026ndash;there should be exceptions for research, conservation, breeding programs for endangered species, and so forth. And shouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be possible to domesticate other wild animals?] Connecticut has taken the step of banning chimp ownership.\nSpecies 5: Shelter practices - euthanasia, veterinary care, adequate food, water, and sanitation, and hold periods\nAnimal shelters have an overwhelming job, said Wagman. The County of Los Angeles, which he sued, operates seven shelters which handle tens of thousands of animals per year. California law says that all animals must get veterinary care and be held for five days, and allowing animal suffering without treatment is not permissible. The shelters\u0026rsquo; own records showed that they weren\u0026rsquo;t meeting that standard for thousands of animals, but they\u0026rsquo;re now working to meet them and having their activity monitored for compliance. A similar set of cases occurred in Kentucky, when the state transferred all shelter responsibility to the counties. Although the standards of care were minimal, they weren\u0026rsquo;t meeting it, and there were nutrition, veterinary care, and euthanasia issues. Upon getting notice, they quickly took action to remedy.\nIn Georgia, by contrast, there is a statute that prohibits the use of gas chambers for euthanization at shelters, but the Commissioner of Agriculture sent out letters to the shelters asking that they purchase gas chambers for euthanization. Gas chambers apparently have very ugly results in some cases, such as with unhealthy dogs. A lawsuit against the state of Georgia for its failure to comply with its own statute resulted an an injunction, which they then immediately violated by sending out more letters asking for gas chamber purchases. After obtaining a contempt ruling from the court, they finally got compliance.\nSpecies 6: Entertainment\nWagman called this category both the most obvious and the most hidden. The use of animals in entertainment is obvious, but what is not obvious is what goes on behind the scenes, the knowledge of which drains the fun out of the entertainment.\nCircuses, zoos, film and TV ads, animal fighting, public appearances, racing and rodeos, and hunting and fishing are all cases of animals used for entertainment. Wagman first discussed elephants in circuses, commenting on a recent Ringling Brothers case which was tossed out on an issue of standing. The case involved the use of bullhooks for elephant training, which injures the animals. The defense didn\u0026rsquo;t deny use of bullhooks, but claimed that they only use them as \u0026ldquo;guides.\u0026quot;\nElephant treatment in zoos is also problematic, since standing around on hard surfaces causes painful arthritis. In the wild, elephants are awake 21 hours a day and may move 35 miles per day.\nWagman discussed dog fighting, and said that the Michael Vick case was a wakeup call for America to the reality of dog fighting, which exists in every state and most major cities.\nHe argued that the use of great apes in film and television should be banned, because of how the training process works. He said that while trainers claim to use only positive reinforcement training, an undercover person who volunteered for a year and a half with trainer Sid Yost found otherwise. A young chimpanzee is immediately treated to beating and punching to get them to comply. Their performance lifetime is about 3-5 years, after which they become to strong to conrol, and end up in private homes, in research, or in zoos, often all alone in barren cases. Wagman pointed out that the common use of a \u0026ldquo;smiling\u0026rdquo; chimpanzee is actually a fear grimace. He does lots of work for sanctuaries, of which there are nine in the U.S. for chimpanzees (including chimpsanctuarynw.org).\nRegarding hunting, he distinguished traditional hunting from canned hunting and Internet hunting. Hunting is protected in most states, including in many state constitutions. Canned hunting ranches, where animals are fed by hand by humans before they are flushed out into open areas to be shot, are not considered to be hunting by most traditional hunters. [But is considered hunting by our former Vice President, Dick Cheney.] Internet hunting, where a rifle can be fired at live animals over the Internet, has been banned in 30 states.\nHe mentioned mountain lion hunting in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where mountain lions have become fairly scarce. A lawsuit was filed to try to stop the hunting on grounds of near-extinction of the animals, but the injunction was denied on the grounds that there were unlikely to be any mountain lions even found and killed. Two mountain lions were killed shortly thereafter in fairly quick succession, and even though there was a law that prohibited killing female mountain lions with cubs, the second one killed had a cub, and there was no prosecution.\nSome Adidas shoes are made with kangaroo skin, and the state of California has banned the importation of kangaroo skin, which Adidas ignored. Adidas was sued as a result, and they lost at the California Supreme Court\u0026ndash;but they responded by persuading the legislature to repeal the ban rather than changing their practices.\nSpecies 7: Species and breed-specific legislation and ADA breedism case.\nA variety of dog breeds have been considered at various times and places to be \u0026ldquo;bad dogs\u0026rdquo; that create a special danger. After WWII, it was German Shepherds and Dobermans. All cases to stop such breed-specific legislation have failed, because the \u0026ldquo;rational relation\u0026rdquo; standard is met by only a single case of harm. A case in progress right now in Concord, California involves Theresa Huerta, a woman suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep her pit bull therapy dog from being euthanized.\nWagman concluded by saying that his overall objective is to keep the public and the courts focused on the real issue, which is ending blatant cases of animal abuse. Animal law is a growing field, and there\u0026rsquo;s an annual animal law conference in Portland that\u0026rsquo;s now in its fifth year.\nRBH (2010-04-14):\nYou made a parenthetical remark I have to respond to. You wrote And shouldn't it be possible to domesticate other wild animals?\nDon't confuse domestication and taming. Taming is a behavioral change in what is still a \u0026quot;wild\u0026quot; animal, and occurs during the lifetime of the animal. Domestication involves generations of artificial selection, purposeful or inadvertent, for behavioral and/or morphological traits. But a tame animal is not necessarily a domesticated animal. E.g., chimps that are tamed are not domesticated.\nLippard (2010-04-14):\nRBH: Thanks for the further distinction--I actually did mean domestication, not taming, but probably should have mentioned both, since both are precluded by Wagman\u0026#39;s position as he stated it. Perhaps he is open to the possibility of domestication under some kind of regulated and licensed scheme, but not taming, but I suspect he opposes both. But if that position were projected backward in time, the domestication of companion and farm animals that we have today gets labeled as unethical, unless there's a situational exemption. It's debatable, I suppose, but my own moral intuitions suggest to me that the development of new domesticated species, whether by genetic engineering or artificial selection, isn't inherently wrong.\nStephen (2010-04-19):\nWhat is/was the logic behind the California ban on kangaroo imports? Most kangaroo species (at least those used commercially) are neither endangered nor CITES-listed.\nLippard (2010-04-19):\nStephen: California\u0026#39;s import ban is in California Penal Code section 653o, which was put into effect via legislation (not initiative) in 1970. It covers multiple animals. The California Supreme Court upheld the statute in July 2007; it was then revised in October 2007 to allow such imports until 2011. Here\u0026#39;s the text: (a) It is unlawful to import into this state for commercial purposes, to possess with intent to sell, or to sell within the state, the dead body, or any part or product thereof, of any polar bear, leopard, ocelot, tiger, cheetah, jaguar, sable antelope, wolf (Canis lupus), zebra, whale, cobra, python, sea turtle, colobus monkey, kangaroo, vicuna, sea otter, free-roaming feral horse, dolphin or porpoise (Delphinidae), Spanish lynx, or elephant. (b) (1) Commencing January 1, 2015, it shall be unlawful to import into this state for commercial purposes, to possess with intent to sell, or to sell within the state, the dead body, or any part or product thereof, of any crocodile or alligator. (2) This subdivision shall not be construed to authorize the importation or sale of any alligator or crocodilian species, or any products thereof, that are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, or to allow the importation or sale of any alligator or crocodilian species, or any products thereof, in violation of any federal law or any international treaty to which the United States is a party. (c) Any person who violates any provision of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be subject to a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1,000) and not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) or imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed six months, or both the fine and imprisonment, for each violation. (d) The prohibitions against importation for commercial purposes, possession with intent to sell, and sale of the species listed in this section are severable. A finding of the invalidity of any one or more prohibitions shall not affect the validity of any remaining prohibitions. (e) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2011.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/many-species-of-animal-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday I went to hear Bruce Wagman speak on the subject of \u0026ldquo;Many Species of Animal Law\u0026rdquo; at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor College of Law.  Wagman, an attorney with Schiff Hardin who is also an outside litigator for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, has litigated cases involving animals for 18 years, written a case book on animal law, and teaches animal law courses at several law schools as an adjunct faculty member.  He was introduced by ASU Law School Dean Paul Berman and Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Pat Norris.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman began by defining \u0026ldquo;animal law\u0026rdquo; as any law where the status of an animal matters\u0026ndash;psychological, biological, welfare, etc. status of the animal, as opposed to its value as property.  He suggested that animal law attorneys \u0026ldquo;may be the only lawyers on earth whose clients are all innocent.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe divided his talk up into multiple \u0026ldquo;species\u0026rdquo; of animal law.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 1: Companion Animal Issues\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe said this makes up the majority of his cases, and includes injuries by or to animals, including veterinary malpractice.  The challenge is to get courts to recognize that animals are not merely property, since historically companion animals have been viewed as property with low or even zero market value.  In cases where an animal is injured or killed, the market value doesn\u0026rsquo;t recognize the interests of the animal or other kinds of value that companion animals give.  Under the American Law Institute\u0026rsquo;s Restatements of the Law, however, there is a notion of \u0026ldquo;special property\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;peculiar property\u0026rdquo; in California\u0026rsquo;s statutes) which allows quantification of other kinds of worth to an animal owner, for instance if the animal is a therapy dog.  There are no emotional stress damages available.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOther sorts of companion animal cases include custody disputes, which often occur as a result of one partner just trying to inflict distress on another rather than having actual interest in the animal.  Wagman said that courts are beginning to take a better look at the interests of the animal in such cases, and be willing to appoint a guardian ad litem, as occurred in the Michael Vick case and in another case in Tennessee where there was a dispute over custody of a dog between a dead man\u0026rsquo;s girlfriend and parents.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere are dangerous dog issues, where an attorney may be fighting against the classification of a dog as a dangerous or vicious animal, or against its euthanasia\u0026ndash;what he called \u0026ldquo;capital cases\u0026rdquo; for animals.  In three counties surrounding San Francisco, what happens in the case of a dog biting another dog that requires stitches varies dramatically.  In one county, the dog gets a period of probation.  In another, the dog gets labeled as a dangerous or vicious dog, which requires the owner to meet various conditions of housing the dog, having a certain height of fence, carry additional insurance, and so forth.  And in Santa Clara County, the dog gets euthanized.  He pointed out that that county\u0026rsquo;s statute has an exemption for \u0026ldquo;mitigating circumstances\u0026rdquo; which he\u0026rsquo;s successfully used to prevent dogs from being euthanized.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFinally, there are wills and trusts\u0026ndash;he said he doesn\u0026rsquo;t do that sort of work, but that 48 states now have mechanisms for having trusts for animals.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe said he considers companion animals to be a sort of \u0026ldquo;gateway animal\u0026rdquo; for getting recognition of animals in the law, and noted that we tend to be \u0026ldquo;speciesists\u0026rdquo; who would feel very different about snakes vs. Labrador Retrievers.  [IMO, this is rational to the extent that animals differ in cognitive capacities, and I note that at no point did he discuss litigating on behalf of cockroaches against pest control companies.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 2: Farm animal issues\u0026ndash;legislation and litigation.\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis second species of animal law was about animals killed for food\u0026ndash;about 10 billion per year in the United States.  He said the goal here is not to stop the killing, but just to improve the living conditions of animals before they\u0026rsquo;re killed for food.  This is problematic, however, because the animal cruelty statutes are criminal rather than civil (with an exception in North Carolina that will be discussed with regard to Species 3 of animal law), and that the criminal law for animal cruelty excludes farm animals in 35 states.  He discussed a few of the more abusive methods of animal treatment in factory farming\u0026ndash;calf crates, in which calves are placed for about the first 60 days of life, gestation crates for pigs (outlawed in Arizona since 2006, as well as illegal in Florida, Oregon, Colorado, and California), and battery cages for chickens.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe also discussed downer animals\u0026ndash;animals which are either so seriously injured or ill that they are unable to move, which the meat industry wants to drag in that condition to slaughter.  Wagman raised the concern that such animals, if sick, could potentially spread illness to humans, and listed a bunch of diseases that could potentially so spread, with BSE (mad cow) at the top of the list along with avian flu.  Of these, only BSE has been documented to spread to humans, and the industry position is that there should be no restrictions on downer pigs unless and until a human actually gets sick.  The state of California passed a law that said that all downer animals must be euthanized on the spot; the meat industry sued and overturned the statute in federal district court, but the 9th Circuit just reversed it last week (\u003ca href=\"http://www.aldf.org/article.php?id=819\"\u003eNational Meat Association v. Brown\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 3: Animal hoarding\u0026ndash;private ownership, breeders, and the sanctuary that is not\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman said that there have been 250,000 documented cases of animal hoarding, and that they are difficult cases to work with in multiple ways.  He said he believes such cases involve mental illness, but while the APA has a diagnosis for \u0026ldquo;hoarding\u0026rdquo; behavior, it excludes animal hoarding which is considered to be different.  How many animals constitutes hoarding?  He said he likes to say \u0026ldquo;more than eight,\u0026rdquo; because he has eight animals at home.  Hoarders characteristics include possessing more animals than they can care for, having a sense of being persecuted, and living in deplorable conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe discussed two cases that he litigated, ALDF v. Barbara \u0026amp; Robert Woodley, and ALDF v. Janie Conyers, which involved over 500 animals between them.  The former case, in North Carolina, was able to use North Carolina statute 19a, which allows a civil cause of action for animal cruelty.  Wagman had some horrifying photos from the Woodley case.  They had hundreds of dogs in their home living in their own feces, where ammonia levels were 20 times the USDA maximum allowed in a pig facility.  These ammonia levels caused blindness in the dogs, as well as chemical burns to bare skin that contacted the floor, such as dogs\u0026rsquo; scrotums.  Multiple dogs were kept in wooden boxes with lids on them, and never let out.  Mrs. Woodley\u0026rsquo;s favorite dog, Buddy, not only had his eyes burned to blindness from ammonia, but the bone in the dog\u0026rsquo;s jaw deteriorated from malnutrition.  Local officials had known of Woodley\u0026rsquo;s problem for 20 years, but considered themselves powerless to do anything about it, since the scale of the problem was so large\u0026ndash;the local shelter had only eight kennels, while the Woodleys had about 450 animals.  The ALDF had to coordinate a massive effort to manage the rescue of the animals through their case.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nConyers was an AKC poodle breeder who had 106 poodles living in their own feces.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman said that animal psychological suffering is difficult to show, but it can be done; demonstrating physiological suffering is easier, with objective criteria like the ammonia levels and physical injuries to animals.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere is no law against hoarding (except in Hawaii), just the criminal abuse statutes (and civil in NC).  In the hoarding cases the abuse is typically neglect rather than active abuse.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 4: Exotic animal ownership\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman has handled about 10 chimpanzee cases.  One was a case involving a couple in West Covina, California who had a chimp named Moe for 35 years that bit two people.  He argued for a guardian ad litem to determine what was in the best interests of the chimp, and arranged to get Jane Goodall and Roger Fouts for that role.  The court looked upon it favorably, but the couple came to an out-of-court settlement.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe also briefly discussed the Stamford, Connecticut case of Travis, the 200-pound chimpanzee who attacked a woman that was in the news last year.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe argued that there should be a legislative fix to ban exotic animal ownership completely\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re wild animals.  [A complete ban seems to me too much\u0026ndash;there should be exceptions for research, conservation, breeding programs for endangered species, and so forth.  And shouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be possible to domesticate other wild animals?]  Connecticut has taken the step of banning chimp ownership.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 5: Shelter practices - euthanasia, veterinary care, adequate food, water, and sanitation, and hold periods\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnimal shelters have an overwhelming job, said Wagman.  The County of Los Angeles, which he sued, operates seven shelters which handle tens of thousands of animals per year.  California law says that all animals must get veterinary care and be held for five days, and allowing animal suffering without treatment is not permissible.  The shelters\u0026rsquo; own records showed that they weren\u0026rsquo;t meeting that standard for thousands of animals, but they\u0026rsquo;re now working to meet them and having their activity monitored for compliance.  A similar set of cases occurred in Kentucky, when the state transferred all shelter responsibility to the counties.  Although the standards of care were minimal, they weren\u0026rsquo;t meeting it, and there were nutrition, veterinary care, and euthanasia issues.  Upon getting notice, they quickly took action to remedy.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn Georgia, by contrast, there is a statute that prohibits the use of gas chambers for euthanization at shelters, but the Commissioner of Agriculture sent out letters to the shelters asking that they purchase gas chambers for euthanization.  Gas chambers apparently have very ugly results in some cases, such as with unhealthy dogs.  A lawsuit against the state of Georgia for its failure to comply with its own statute resulted an an injunction, which they then immediately violated by sending out more letters asking for gas chamber purchases.  After obtaining a contempt ruling from the court, they finally got compliance.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 6: Entertainment\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman called this category both the most obvious and the most hidden.  The use of animals in entertainment is obvious, but what is not obvious is what goes on behind the scenes, the knowledge of which drains the fun out of the entertainment.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCircuses, zoos, film and TV ads, animal fighting, public appearances, racing and rodeos, and hunting and fishing are all cases of animals used for entertainment.  Wagman first discussed elephants in circuses, commenting on a recent Ringling Brothers case which was tossed out on an issue of standing.  The case involved the use of bullhooks for elephant training, which injures the animals.  The defense didn\u0026rsquo;t deny use of bullhooks, but claimed that they only use them as \u0026ldquo;guides.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nElephant treatment in zoos is also problematic, since standing around on hard surfaces causes painful arthritis.  In the wild, elephants are awake 21 hours a day and may move 35 miles per day.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman discussed dog fighting, and said that the Michael Vick case was a wakeup call for America to the reality of dog fighting, which exists in every state and most major cities.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe argued that the use of great apes in film and television should be banned, because of how the training process works.  He said that while trainers claim to use only positive reinforcement training, an undercover person who volunteered for a year and a half with trainer Sid Yost found otherwise.  A young chimpanzee is immediately treated to beating and punching to get them to comply.  Their performance lifetime is about 3-5 years, after which they become to strong to conrol, and end up in private homes, in research, or in zoos, often all alone in barren cases.  Wagman pointed out that the common use of a \u0026ldquo;smiling\u0026rdquo; chimpanzee is actually a fear grimace.  He does lots of work for sanctuaries, of which there are nine in the U.S. for chimpanzees (including \u003ca href=\"http://chimpsanctuarynw.org/\"\u003echimpsanctuarynw.org\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRegarding hunting, he distinguished traditional hunting from canned hunting and Internet hunting.  Hunting is protected in most states, including in many state constitutions.  Canned hunting ranches, where animals are fed by hand by humans before they are flushed out into open areas to be shot, are not considered to be hunting by most traditional hunters.  [But is considered hunting by our former Vice President, Dick Cheney.]  Internet hunting, where a rifle can be fired at live animals over the Internet, has been banned in 30 states.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe mentioned mountain lion hunting in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where mountain lions have become fairly scarce.  A lawsuit was filed to try to stop the hunting on grounds of near-extinction of the animals, but the injunction was denied on the grounds that there were unlikely to be any mountain lions even found and killed.  Two mountain lions were killed shortly thereafter in fairly quick succession, and even though there was a law that prohibited killing female mountain lions with cubs, the second one killed had a cub, and there was no prosecution.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSome Adidas shoes are made with kangaroo skin, and the state of California has banned the importation of kangaroo skin, which Adidas ignored.  Adidas was sued as a result, and they lost at the California Supreme Court\u0026ndash;but they responded by persuading the legislature to repeal the ban rather than changing their practices.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSpecies 7: Species and breed-specific legislation and ADA breedism case.\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA variety of dog breeds have been considered at various times and places to be \u0026ldquo;bad dogs\u0026rdquo; that create a special danger.  After WWII, it was German Shepherds and Dobermans.  All cases to stop such breed-specific legislation have failed, because the \u0026ldquo;rational relation\u0026rdquo; standard is met by only a single case of harm.  A case in progress right now in Concord, California involves Theresa Huerta, a woman suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep her pit bull therapy dog from being euthanized.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWagman concluded by saying that his overall objective is to keep the public and the courts focused on the real issue, which is ending blatant cases of animal abuse.  Animal law is a growing field, and there\u0026rsquo;s an annual animal law conference in Portland that\u0026rsquo;s now in its fifth year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Many Species of Animal Law"},{"content":"I caught these two male dogs in the front yard this afternoon--they wandered in while the gate was open, and I closed it to catch them.\u0026nbsp; No collars, no tags, and the pit mix was unneutered (didn't check the Spitz mix or whatever he is).\u0026nbsp; At first they were very skittish, but after they finally approached me, both wanted my constant attention.\u0026nbsp; They were both quickly picked up by the Maricopa County pound--I'm sure they'll get taken to the east side.\nAs I was closing the gate to catch these guys, I heard a car honk its horn and a dog yelp, and looked up to see the car drive away as a man, woman, and dog stood on the sidewalk, the dog limping.\u0026nbsp; I asked the man if the dog had just been hit, and if it was his dog, and he answered yes to both.\u0026nbsp; They walked off, the dog limping (and off leash, with no collar or tags).\nPlease, if you own animals, be a responsible pet owner. Historical Comments Anonymous (2010-04-07):\nIt\u0026#39;s absolutely no sense to own an animal if you\u0026#39;re going to be irresponsible for them like that one guy is. Animals are not things and objects, but real flesh and blood organisms. Haven\u0026#39;t that guy ever know that?\nL (2010-04-07):\nNothing drives me more insane than to see people abandoning animals or mistreating them. Because of the location of our house when I was a kid, it was all too common to find abandoned pets (mostly cats). Fortunately we were able to take care of quite a few of them, including a couple of feral cats. But I know scores more were left to fend for themselves, usually as kittens. Good on you for taking the time to care.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/first-two-stray-dogs-of-2010.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/P4060015.med.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg border=\"0\" src=\"/images/P4060015.med.jpg\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003eI caught these two male dogs in the front yard this afternoon--they wandered in while the gate was open, and I closed it to catch them.\u0026nbsp; No collars, no tags, and the pit mix was unneutered (didn't check the Spitz mix or whatever he is).\u0026nbsp; At first they were very skittish, but after they finally approached me, both wanted my constant attention.\u0026nbsp; They were both quickly picked up by the Maricopa County pound--I'm sure they'll get taken to the east side.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs I was closing the gate to catch these guys, I heard a car honk its horn and a dog yelp, and looked up to see the car drive away as a man, woman, and dog stood on the sidewalk, the dog limping.\u0026nbsp; I asked the man if the dog had just been hit, and if it was his dog, and he answered yes to both.\u0026nbsp; They walked off, the dog limping (and off leash, with no collar or tags).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPlease, if you own animals, be a responsible pet owner.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-04-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt\u0026#39;s absolutely no sense to own an animal if you\u0026#39;re going to be irresponsible for them like that one guy is. Animals are not things and objects, but real flesh and blood organisms. Haven\u0026#39;t that guy ever know that?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First two stray dogs of 2010"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s a bad misconception about evolution that it proceeds in a linear progression of one successfully evolving species after another displacing its immediate ancestors. Such a conception of human history is equally mistaken, and is often criticized with terms such as \u0026ldquo;Whiggish history\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;determinism\u0026rdquo; with a variety of adjectives (technological, social, cultural, historical). That includes the history of science, where the first version we often hear is one that has been rationally reconstructed by looking back at the successes and putting them into a linear narrative. Oh, there are usually a few errors thrown in, but they\u0026rsquo;re usually fit into the linear narrative as challenges that are overcome by the improvement of theories.\nThe reality is a lot messier, and getting into the details makes it clear that not only is a Whiggish history of science mistaken, but that science doesn\u0026rsquo;t proceed through the algorithmic application of \u0026ldquo;the scientific method,\u0026rdquo; and in fact that there is no such thing as \u0026ldquo;the scientific method.\u0026quot; Rather, there is a diverse set of methods that are themselves evolving in various ways, and sometimes not only do methods which are fully endorsed as rational and scientific produce erroneous results, sometimes methods which have no such endorsement and are even demonstrably irrational fortuitously produce correct results. For example, Johannes Kepler was a neo-pythagorean number mystic who correctly produced his second law of planetary motion by taking an incorrect version of the law based on his intuitions and deriving the correct version from it by way of a mathematical argument that contained an error. Although he fortuitously got the right answer and receives credit for devising it, he was not justified in believing it to be true on the basis of his erroneous proof. With his first law, by contrast, he followed an almost perfectly textbook version of the hypothetico-deductive model of scientific method of formulating hypotheses and testing them against Tycho Brahe\u0026rsquo;s data.\nThe history of the scientific revolution includes numerous instances of new developments occurring piecemeal, with many prior erroneous notions being retained. Copernicus retained not only perfectly circular orbits and celestial spheres, but still needed to add epicycles to get his theory any where close to the predictive accuracy of the Ptolemaic models in use. Galileo insisted on retaining perfect circles and insisting that circular motion was natural motion, refusing to consider Kepler\u0026rsquo;s elliptical orbits. There seems to be a good case for \u0026ldquo;path dependence\u0026rdquo; in science. Even the most revolutionary changes are actually building on bits and pieces that have come before\u0026ndash;and sometimes rediscovering work that had already been done before, like Galileo\u0026rsquo;s derivation of the uniform acceleration of falling bodies that had already been done by Nicole Oresme and the Oxford calculators. And the social and cultural environment\u0026ndash;not just the scientific history\u0026ndash;has an effect on what kinds of hypotheses are considered and accepted.\nThis conservativity of scientific change is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it suggests that we\u0026rsquo;re not likely to see claims that purport to radically overthrow existing theory (that \u0026ldquo;everything we know is wrong\u0026rdquo;) succeed\u0026ndash;even if they happen to be correct. And given that there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right, such radical revisions are very likely not to be correct. Even where new theories are correct in some of their more radical claims (e.g., like Copernicus\u0026rsquo; heliocentric model, or Wegener\u0026rsquo;s continental drift), it often requires other pieces to fall into place before they become accepted (and before it becomes rational to accept them). On the other hand, this also means that we\u0026rsquo;re likely to be blinded to new possibilities by what we already accept that seems to work well enough, even though it may be an inaccurate description of the world that is merely predictively successful. \u0026ldquo;Consensus science\u0026rdquo; at any given time probably includes lots of claims that aren\u0026rsquo;t true.\nMy inference from this is that we need both visionaries and skeptics, and a division of cognitive labor that\u0026rsquo;s largely conservative, but with tolerance for diversity and a few radicals generating the crazy hypotheses that may turn out to be true. The critique of evidence-based medicine made by Kimball Atwood and Steven Novella\u0026ndash;that it fails to consider prior plausibility of hypotheses to be tested\u0026ndash;is a good one that recognizes the unlikelihood of radical hypotheses to be correct, and thus that huge amounts of money shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be spent to generate and test them. (Their point is actually stronger than that, since most of the \u0026ldquo;radical hypotheses\u0026rdquo; in question are not really radical or novel, but are based on already discredited views of how the world works.) But that critique shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be taken to exclude anyone from engaging in the generation and test of hypotheses that don\u0026rsquo;t appear to have a plausible mechanism, because there is ample precedent for new phenomena being discovered before the mechanisms that explain them.\nI think there\u0026rsquo;s a tendency among skeptics to talk about science as though it\u0026rsquo;s a unified discipline, with a singular methodology, that makes continuous progress, and where the consensus at any moment is the most appropriate thing to believe. The history of science suggests, on the other hand, that it\u0026rsquo;s composed of multiple disciplines, with multiple methods, that proceeds in fits and starts, that has dead-ends, that sometimes rediscovers correct-but-ignored past discoveries, and is both fallible and influenced by cultural context. At any given time, some theories are not only well-established but unified well with others across disciplines, while others don\u0026rsquo;t fit comfortably well with others, or may be idealized models that have predictive efficacy but seem unlikely to be accurate descriptions of reality in their details. To insist on an overly rationalistic and ahistorical model is not just out-of-date history and philosophy of science, it\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;coloring book\u0026rdquo; oversimplification. While that may be useful for introducing ideas about science to children, it\u0026rsquo;s not something we should continue to hold to as adults.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/against-coloring-book-history-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a bad misconception about evolution that it proceeds in a linear progression of one successfully evolving species after another displacing its immediate ancestors.  Such a conception of human history is equally mistaken, and is often criticized with terms such as \u0026ldquo;Whiggish history\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;determinism\u0026rdquo; with a variety of adjectives (technological, social, cultural, historical).  That includes the history of science, where the first version we often hear is one that has been rationally reconstructed by looking back at the successes and putting them into a linear narrative.  Oh, there are usually a few errors thrown in, but they\u0026rsquo;re usually fit into the linear narrative as challenges that are overcome by the improvement of theories.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe reality is a lot messier, and getting into the details makes it clear that not only is a Whiggish history of science mistaken, but that science doesn\u0026rsquo;t proceed through the algorithmic application of \u0026ldquo;the scientific method,\u0026rdquo; and in fact that there is no such thing as \u0026ldquo;the scientific method.\u0026quot;  Rather, there is a diverse set of methods that are themselves evolving in various ways, and sometimes not only do methods which are fully endorsed as rational and scientific produce erroneous results, sometimes methods which have no such endorsement and are even demonstrably irrational fortuitously produce correct results.  For example, Johannes Kepler was a neo-pythagorean number mystic who correctly produced his second law of planetary motion by taking an incorrect version of the law based on his intuitions and deriving the correct version from it by way of a mathematical argument that contained an error.  Although he fortuitously got the right answer and receives credit for devising it, he was not justified in believing it to be true on the basis of his erroneous proof.  With his first law, by contrast, he followed an almost perfectly textbook version of the hypothetico-deductive model of scientific method of formulating hypotheses and testing them against Tycho Brahe\u0026rsquo;s data.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe history of the scientific revolution includes numerous instances of new developments occurring piecemeal, with many prior erroneous notions being retained.  Copernicus retained not only perfectly circular orbits and celestial spheres, but still needed to add epicycles to get his theory any where close to the predictive accuracy of the Ptolemaic models in use.  Galileo insisted on retaining perfect circles and insisting that circular motion was natural motion, refusing to consider Kepler\u0026rsquo;s elliptical orbits.  There seems to be a good case for \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence\"\u003epath dependence\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; in science.  Even the most revolutionary changes are actually building on bits and pieces that have come before\u0026ndash;and sometimes rediscovering work that had already been done before, like Galileo\u0026rsquo;s derivation of the uniform acceleration of falling bodies that had already been done by Nicole Oresme and the Oxford calculators.  And the social and cultural environment\u0026ndash;not just the scientific history\u0026ndash;has an effect on what kinds of hypotheses are considered and accepted.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis conservativity of scientific change is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it suggests that we\u0026rsquo;re not likely to see claims that purport to radically overthrow existing theory (that \u0026ldquo;everything we know is wrong\u0026rdquo;) succeed\u0026ndash;even if they happen to be correct.  And given that there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right, such radical revisions are very likely not to be correct.  Even where new theories are correct in some of their more radical claims (e.g., like Copernicus\u0026rsquo; heliocentric model, or Wegener\u0026rsquo;s continental drift), it often requires other pieces to fall into place before they become accepted (and before it becomes rational to accept them).  On the other hand, this also means that we\u0026rsquo;re likely to be blinded to new possibilities by what we already accept that seems to work well enough, even though it may be an inaccurate description of the world that is merely predictively successful.  \u0026ldquo;Consensus science\u0026rdquo; at any given time probably includes lots of claims that aren\u0026rsquo;t true.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy inference from this is that we need both visionaries and skeptics, and a division of cognitive labor that\u0026rsquo;s largely conservative, but with tolerance for diversity and a few radicals generating the crazy hypotheses that may turn out to be true.  The \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ecritique of evidence-based medicine made by Kimball Atwood and Steven Novella\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that it fails to consider prior plausibility of hypotheses to be tested\u0026ndash;is a good one that recognizes the unlikelihood of radical hypotheses to be correct, and thus that huge amounts of money shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be spent to generate and test them.  (Their point is actually stronger than that, since most of the \u0026ldquo;radical hypotheses\u0026rdquo; in question are not really radical or novel, but are based on already discredited views of how the world works.)  But that critique shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be taken to exclude anyone from engaging in the generation and test of hypotheses that don\u0026rsquo;t appear to have a plausible mechanism, because there is ample precedent for new phenomena being discovered before the mechanisms that explain them.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI think there\u0026rsquo;s a tendency among skeptics to talk about science as though it\u0026rsquo;s a unified discipline, with a singular methodology, that makes continuous progress, and where the consensus at any moment is the most appropriate thing to believe.  The history of science suggests, on the other hand, that it\u0026rsquo;s composed of multiple disciplines, with multiple methods, that proceeds in fits and starts, that has dead-ends, that sometimes rediscovers correct-but-ignored past discoveries, and is both fallible and influenced by cultural context.  At any given time, some theories are not only well-established but unified well with others across disciplines, while others don\u0026rsquo;t fit comfortably well with others, or may be idealized models that have predictive efficacy but seem unlikely to be accurate descriptions of reality in their details.  To insist on an overly rationalistic and ahistorical model is not just out-of-date history and philosophy of science, it\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;coloring book\u0026rdquo; oversimplification.  While that may be useful for introducing ideas about science to children, it\u0026rsquo;s not something we should continue to hold to as adults.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Against \"coloring book\" history of science"},{"content":"It has been argued by many that science, politics, and religion are distinct subjects that should be kept separate, in at least one direction if not both. Stephen Jay Gould argued that science and religion have non-overlapping areas of authority (NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria), with the former concerned about how questions and the latter with why questions, and that conflicts between them won’t occur if they stick to their own domain. Between science and politics, most have little problem with science informing politics, but a big problem with political manipulation of science. Failure to properly maintain the boundaries leads to junk science, politicized science, scientism, science wars, and other objectionable consequences.\nHeather E. Douglas, in Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal argues that notions of scientific autonomy and a scientific ideal of being isolated from questions of value (political or otherwise) are mistaken, and that this idea of science without regard to value questions (apart from epistemic virtues) is itself a contributing factor to such consequences. She attributes blame for this value-free ideal of science to post-1940 philosophy of science, though the idea of scientific autonomy appears to me to have roots much further back, including in Galileo’s “Letter to Castelli” and \u0026ldquo;Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina\u0026rdquo; and John Tyndall’s 1874 Belfast Address, which were more concerned to argue that religion should not intrude into the domain of science rather than the reverse. (As I noted in a previous post about Galileo, he did not carve out complete autonomy for natural philosophy from theology, only for those things which can be demonstrated or proven, which he argued that scripture could not contradict\u0026ndash;and where it apparently does, scripture must be interpreted allegorically.)\nDouglas describes a “topography of values” in the categories of cognitive, ethical, and social values, and distinguishes direct and indirect roles for them. Within the “cognitive” category go values pertaining to our ability to understand evidence, such as simplicity, parsimony, fruitfulness, coherence, generality, and explanatory power, but excluding truth-linked epistemic virtues such as internal consistency and predictive competency or adequacy, which she identifies not as values but as minimal negative conditions that theories must necessarily meet. Ethical values and social values are overlapping categories, the former concerned with what’s good or right and the latter with what a particular society values, such as “justice, privacy, freedom, social stability, or innovation” (Douglas, p. 92). Her distinction between a direct and indirect role is that the former means that values can act directly as reasons for decisions, versus indirectly as a factor in decision-making where evidence is uncertain.\nDouglas argues that values can legitimately play a direct role in certain phases of science, such as problem selection, selection of methodology, and in the policy-making arena, but should be restricted to an indirect role in phases such as data collection and analysis and drawing conclusions from evidence. She identifies some exceptions, however\u0026ndash;problem selection and method selection can’t legitimately be guided by values in a way that undermines the science by forcing a pre-determined conclusion (e.g., by selecting a method that is guaranteed to be misleading), and a direct role for ethical values can surface in later stages by discovering that research is causing harm.\nHer picture of science is one where values cannot directly intrude between the collection of data and the inference of the facts from that data, but the space between evidence and fact claims is somewhat more complex than she describes. There is the inference by a scientist of a fact from the evidence, the communication of that fact to other scientists, the publication of that fact in the scientific literature, and its communication to the general public and policy makers. All but the first of these are not purely epistemic, but are also forms of conduct. It seems to me that there is, in fact, a potential direct role for ethical values, at the very least, for each such type of conduct, in particular circumstances, which could merit withholding of the fact claim. For example, a scientist in Nazi Germany could behave ethically by withholding information about how to build an atomic bomb.\nDouglas argues that the motivation for the value-free ideal is as a mechanism for preserving scientific objectivity; she therefore gives an account of objectivity that comports with her account of science with values. She identifies seven types of objectivity that are relevant in three different domains (plus one she rejects), all of which have to do with a shared ground for trust. First, within the domain of human interactions with the world, are “manipulable objectivity,” or the ability to repeatably and reliably make interventions in nature that give the same result, and “convergent objectivity,” or having supporting evidence for a conclusion from multiple independent lines of evidence. Second, in the realm of individual thought processes, she identifies “detached objectivity”\u0026ndash;a scientific disinterest, freedom from bias, and eschewing the use of values in place of evidence. There’s also “value-free objectivity,” the notion behind the value-free ideal, which she rejects. And there’s “value-neutral objectivity,” or leaving personal views aside in, e.g., conducting a review of the literature in a field and identifying possible sets of explanations, or taking a \u0026ldquo;centrist\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;balanced\u0026rdquo; view of potentially relevant values. Finally, in the domain of social processes, Douglas identifies “procedural objectivity,” where use of the same procedures produces the same results regardless of who engages in the procedure, and “intersubjectivity” in two senses\u0026ndash;“concordant objectivity,” agreement in judgments between different people, and “interactive objectivity,” agreement as the result of argument and deliberation.\nDouglas writes clearly and concisely, and makes a strong case for the significance of values within science as well as in its application to public policy. Though she limits her discussion to natural science (and focuses on scientific discovery rather than fields of science that involve the production of new materials, an area where more direct use of values is likely appropriate), her account could likely be extended with the introduction of a bit more complexity. While I don’t think she has identified all or even the primary causes of the “science wars,” which she discusses at the beginning of her book, I think her account is more useful in adjudicating the “sound science”/“junk science” debate that she also discusses, as well as identifying a number of ways in which science isn’t and shouldn’t be autonomous from other areas of society.\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Judd A. for his comments.]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/scientific-autonomy-objectivity-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt has been argued by many that science, politics, and religion are distinct subjects that should be kept separate, in at least one direction if not both.  Stephen Jay Gould argued that science and religion have non-overlapping areas of authority (NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria), with the former concerned about how questions and the latter with why questions, and that conflicts between them won’t occur if they stick to their own domain.  Between science and politics, most have little problem with science informing politics, but a big problem with political manipulation of science.  Failure to properly maintain the boundaries leads to junk science, politicized science, scientism, science wars, and other objectionable consequences.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHeather E. Douglas, in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Policy-Value-Free-Heather-Douglas/dp/0822960265/jimlippardwebpa/\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eScience, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e argues that notions of scientific autonomy and a scientific ideal of being isolated from questions of value (political or otherwise) are mistaken, and that this idea of science without regard to value questions (apart from epistemic virtues) is itself a contributing factor to such consequences.  She attributes blame for this value-free ideal of science to post-1940 philosophy of science, though the idea of scientific autonomy appears to me to have roots much further back, including in Galileo’s “Letter to Castelli” and \u0026ldquo;Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina\u0026rdquo; and \u003ca href=\"http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/belfast.html\"\u003eJohn Tyndall’s 1874 Belfast Address\u003c/a\u003e, which were more concerned to argue that religion should not intrude into the domain of science rather than the reverse.  (As I noted in \u003ca href=\"/2010/04/galileo-on-relation-between-science-and.html\"\u003ea previous post about Galileo\u003c/a\u003e, he did not carve out complete autonomy for natural philosophy from theology, only for those things which can be demonstrated or proven, which he argued that scripture could not contradict\u0026ndash;and where it apparently does, scripture must be interpreted allegorically.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDouglas describes a “topography of values” in the categories of cognitive, ethical, and social values, and distinguishes direct and indirect roles for them.  Within the “cognitive” category go values pertaining to our ability to understand evidence, such as simplicity, parsimony, fruitfulness, coherence, generality, and explanatory power, but excluding truth-linked epistemic virtues such as internal consistency and predictive competency or adequacy, which she identifies not as values but as minimal negative conditions that theories must necessarily meet.  Ethical values and social values are overlapping categories, the former concerned with what’s good or right and the latter with what a particular society values, such as “justice, privacy, freedom, social stability, or innovation” (Douglas, p. 92).  Her distinction between a direct and indirect role is that the former means that values can act directly as reasons for decisions, versus indirectly as a factor in decision-making where evidence is uncertain.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDouglas argues that values can legitimately play a direct role in certain phases of science, such as problem selection, selection of methodology, and in the policy-making arena, but should be restricted to an indirect role in phases such as data collection and analysis and drawing conclusions from evidence.  She identifies some exceptions, however\u0026ndash;problem selection and method selection can’t legitimately be guided by values in a way that undermines the science by forcing a pre-determined conclusion (e.g., by selecting a method that is guaranteed to be misleading), and a direct role for ethical values can surface in later stages by discovering that research is causing harm.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHer picture of science is one where values cannot directly intrude between the collection of data and the inference of the facts from that data, but the space between evidence and fact claims is somewhat more complex than she describes.  There is the inference by a scientist of a fact from the evidence, the communication of that fact to other scientists, the publication of that fact in the scientific literature, and its communication to the general public and policy makers.  All but the first of these are not purely epistemic, but are also forms of conduct.  It seems to me that there is, in fact, a potential direct role for ethical values, at the very least, for each such type of conduct, in particular circumstances, which could merit withholding of the fact claim.  For example, a scientist in Nazi Germany could behave ethically by withholding information about how to build an atomic bomb.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDouglas argues that the motivation for the value-free ideal is as a mechanism for preserving scientific objectivity; she therefore gives an account of objectivity that comports with her account of science with values.  She identifies seven types of objectivity that are relevant in three different domains (plus one she rejects), all of which have to do with a shared ground for trust.  First, within the domain of human interactions with the world, are “manipulable objectivity,” or the ability to repeatably and reliably make interventions in nature that give the same result, and “convergent objectivity,” or having supporting evidence for a conclusion from multiple independent lines of evidence.  Second, in the realm of individual thought processes, she identifies “detached objectivity”\u0026ndash;a scientific disinterest, freedom from bias, and eschewing the use of values in place of evidence.  There’s also “value-free objectivity,” the notion behind the value-free ideal, which she rejects.  And there’s “value-neutral objectivity,” or leaving personal views aside in, e.g., conducting a review of the literature in a field and identifying possible sets of explanations, or taking a \u0026ldquo;centrist\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;balanced\u0026rdquo; view of potentially relevant values.  Finally, in the domain of social processes, Douglas identifies “procedural objectivity,” where use of the same procedures produces the same results regardless of who engages in the procedure, and “intersubjectivity” in two senses\u0026ndash;“concordant objectivity,” agreement in judgments between different people, and “interactive objectivity,” agreement as the result of argument and deliberation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDouglas writes clearly and concisely, and makes a strong case for the significance of values within science as well as in its application to public policy.  Though she limits her discussion to natural science (and focuses on scientific discovery rather than fields of science that involve the production of new materials, an area where more direct use of values is likely appropriate), her account could likely be extended with the introduction of a bit more complexity.  While I don’t think she has identified all or even the primary causes of the “science wars,” which she discusses at the beginning of her book, I think her account is more useful in adjudicating the “sound science”/“junk science” debate that she also discusses, as well as identifying a number of ways in which science isn’t and shouldn’t be autonomous from other areas of society.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for  my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar.   Thanks to Judd A. for his comments.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientific autonomy, objectivity, and the value-free ideal"},{"content":"Galileo’s view of natural philosophy (science) is that it is the study of the book of nature,” “written in mathematical language” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 183), as contrasted with theology, the study of the book of Holy Scripture and revelation. Galileo endorses the idea that theology is the “queen” of the “subordinate sciences” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 124), by which he means not that theology trumps science in any and all matters. He distinguishes two senses of theology being “preeminent and worthy of the title of queen”: (1) That “whatever is taught in all the other sciences is found explained and demonstrated in it [theology] by means of more excellent methods and of more sublime principles,” [Note added 12/14/2012: which he rejects] and (2) That theology deals with the most important issues, “the loftiest divine contemplations” about “the gaining of eternal bliss,” but “does not come down to the lower and humbler speculations of the inferior sciences \u0026hellip; it does not bother with them inasmuch as they are irrelevant to salvation” [Note added 12/14/2012: which he affirms] (quotations from Finocchiaro 2008, pp. 124-125). Where Holy Scripture makes reference to facts about nature, they may be open to allegorical interpretation rather than literal interpretation, unless their literal truth is somehow necessary to the account of “the gaining of eternal bliss.”\nGalileo further distinguishes two types of claims about science: (1) “propositions about nature which are truly demonstrated” and (2) “others which are simply taught” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 126). The role of the theologian with regard to the former category is “to show that they are not contrary to Holy Scripture,” e.g., by providing an interpretation of Holy Scripture compatible with the proposition; with regard to the latter, if it contradicts Holy Scripture, it must be considered false and demonstrations of the same sought (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 126). Presumably, if in the course of attempting to demonstrate that a proposition in the second category is false, it is instead demonstrated to be true, it then must be considered to be part of the former category. Galileo’s discussion allows that theological condemnation of a physical proposition may be acceptable if it is shown not to be conclusively demonstrated (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 126), rather than a more stringent standard that it must be conclusively demonstrated to be false, which, given his own lack of conclusive evidence for heliocentrism, could be considered a loophole allowing him to be hoist with his own petard.\nGalileo also distinguishes between what is apparent to experts vs. the layman (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 131), denying that popular consensus is a measure of truth, but regarding that this distinction is what lies behind claims made in Holy Scripture about physical propositions that are not literally true. With regard to the theological expertise of the Church Fathers, their consensus on a physical proposition is not sufficient to make it an article of faith unless such consensus is upon “conclusions which the Fathers discussed and inspected with great diligence and debated on both sides of the issue and for which they then all agreed to reject one side and hold the other” (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 133). Or, in a contemporary (for Galileo) context, the theologians of the day could have a comparably weighted position on claims about nature if they “first hear the experiments, observations, reasons, and demonstrations of philosophers and astronomers on both sides of the question, and then they would be able to determine with certainty whatever divine inspiration will communicate to them” (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 135).\nGalileo’s conception of science that leads him to take this position appears to be drawn from what Peter Dear (1990, p. 664), drawing upon Thomas Kuhn (1977), calls “the quantitative, ‘classical’ mathematical sciences” or the “mixed mathematical sciences,” identifying this as a predominantly Catholic conception of science, as contrasted with experimental science developed in Protestant England. The former conception is one in which laws of nature can be recognized through idealized thought experiments based on limited (or no) actual observations, but demonstrated conclusively by means of rational argument. This seems to be the general mode of Galileo’s work. Dear argues that this notion of natural law allows for a conception of the “ordinary course of nature” which can be violated by an observed miraculous event, which comports with a Catholic view that miracles continue to occur in the world.\nBy contrast, the experimentalist views of Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle involve inductively inferring natural laws on the basis of observations, in which case observing something to occur makes it part of nature that must be accounted for in the generalized law\u0026ndash;a view under which a miracle seems to be ruled out at the outset, which was not a problem for Protestants who considered the “age of miracles” to be over (Dear 1990, pp. 682-683). Dear argues that for the British experimentalists, authentication of an experimental result was in some ways like the authentication of a miracle for the Catholics\u0026ndash;requiring appropriately trustworthy observations\u0026ndash;but that instead of verifying a violation of the “ordinary course of nature,” it verified what the “ordinary course of nature” itself was (Dear 1990, p. 680). Where the Catholics like Galileo and Pascal derived conclusions about particulars from universal laws recognized by observation, reasoning, and mathematical demonstration, the Protestants like Bacon and Boyle constructed universal laws by inductive generalization from observations of particulars, and were notably critical of failing to perform a sufficient number of experiments before coming to conclusions (McMullin 1990, p. 821), and put forth standards for hypotheses and experimental method (McMullin 1990, p. 823; Shapin \u0026amp; Schaffer 1985, pp. 25ff \u0026amp; pp. 56-59). The English experimentalist tradition, arising at a time of political and religious confusion after the English Civil War and the collapse of the English state church, was perhaps an attempt to establish an independent authority for science. By the 19th century, there were explicit (and successful) attempts to separate science from religious authority and create a professionalized class of scientists (e.g., as Gieryn 1983, pp. 784-787 writes about John Tyndall).\nThe English experimentalists followed the medieval scholastics (Pasnau, forthcoming) in adopting a notion of “moral certainty” for “the highest degree of probabilistic assurance” for conclusions adopted from experiments (Shapin 1994, pp. 208-209). This falls short of the Aristotelian conception of knowledge, yet is stronger than mere opinion. They also placed importance on public demonstration in front of appropriately knowledgeable witnesses\u0026ndash;with both the credibility of experimenter and witness being relevant to the credibility of the result. Where on Galileo’s conception expertise appears to be primarily a function of possessing rational faculties and knowledge, on the experimentalist account there is importance to skill in application of method and to the moral trustworthiness of the participants as a factor in vouching for the observational results. In the Galilean approach, trustworthiness appears to be less relevant as a consequence of actual observation being less relevant\u0026ndash;though Galileo does, from time to time, make remarks about observations refuting Aristotle, e.g., in “Two New Sciences” where he criticizes Aristotle’s claims about falling bodies (Finnochiaro 2008, pp. 301, 303).\nThe classic Aristotelian picture of science is similar to the Galilean approach, in that observation and data collection is done for the purpose of recognizing first principles and deriving demonstrations by reason from those first principles. What constitutes knowledge is what can be known conclusively from such first principles and what is derived by necessary connection from them; whatever doesn’t meet that standard is mere opinion (Posterior Analytics, Book I, Ch. 33; McKeon 1941, p. 156). The Aristotelian picture doesn’t include any particular deference to theology; any discipline could could potentially yield knowledge so long as there were recognizable first principles. The role of observation isn’t to come up with fallible inductive generalizations, but to recognize identifiable universal and necessary features from their particular instantiations (Lennox 2006). This discussion is all about theoretical knowledge (episteme) rather than practical knowledge (tekne), the latter of which is about contingent facts about everyday things that can change. Richard Parry (2007) points out an apparent tension in Aristotle between knowledge of mathematics and knowledge of the natural world on account of his statement that “the minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded in all cases, but only in the case of things which have no matter. Hence its method is not that of natural science; for presumably the whole of nature has matter” (Metaphysics, Book II, Ch. 3, McKeon 1941, p. 715).\nThe Galilean picture differs from the Aristotelian in its greater use of mathematics (geometry)\u0026ndash;McMullin writes that Galileo had “a mathematicism \u0026hellip; more radical than Plato’s” (1990, pp. 822-823) and by its inclusion of the second book, that of revelation and Holy Scripture, as a source of knowledge. But while the second book is one which can trump mere opinion\u0026ndash;anything that isn’t conclusively demonstrated and thus fails to meet Aristotle’s understanding of knowledge\u0026ndash;it must be held compatible with anything that does meet those standards.\nReferences\nPeter Dear (1990) “Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature,” ISIS 81:663-683. Maurice A. Finocchiaro, editor/translator (2008) The Essential Galileo.\u0026nbsp; Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Thomas Gieryn (1983) “Boundary Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists,” American Sociological Review 48(6, December):781-795. Thomas Kuhn (1957) The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought.\u0026nbsp; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Thomas Kuhn (1977) The Essential Tension.\u0026nbsp; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.\nLennox, James (2006) “Aristotle’s Biology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/, accessed March 18, 2010. Richard McKeon (1941) The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House. Ernan McMullin (1990) “The Development of Philosophy of Science 1600-1900,” in Olby et al. (1990), pp. 816-837. R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge (1990) Companion to the History of Science.\u0026nbsp; London: Routledge. Parry, Richard (2007) “Episteme and Techne,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/, accessed March 18, 2010. Robert Pasnau (forthcoming) “Medieval Social Epistemology: Scienta for Mere Mortals,” Episteme, forthcoming special issue on history of social epistemology.\u0026nbsp; Online at http://philpapers.org/rec/PASMSE, accessed March 18, 2010.\u0026nbsp; Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life.\u0026nbsp; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Steven Shapin (1994) A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [The above is slightly modified from one of my answers on a midterm exam.\u0026nbsp; My professor observed that another consideration on the difference between Catholic and Protestant natural philosophers is that theological voluntarism, more prevalent among Protestants, can suggest that laws of nature are opaque to human beings except through inductive experience.\u0026nbsp; NOTE ADDED 13 April 2010: After reading a couple of chapters of Margaret Osler's Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (2005, Cambridge University Press), I'd add Pierre Gassendi to the experimentalist/inductivist side of the ledger, despite his being a Catholic--he was a theological voluntarist.] Rain (2012-12-13):\nErratum! No, Galileo actually said that theology was NOT the \u0026quot;queen of the sciences.\u0026quot; See, for example, Finocciaro (2010), Defending Copernicus and Galileo (eBook): \u0026quot;Galileo next undertakes an explicit criticism of theological authority. He argues that theology is not the queen of the sciences because it is obvious that its principles do not provide the logical foundations of the knowledge formulated in other sciences, the way that, for example, geometry does for surveying (324-325).\u0026quot;\nLippard (2012-12-14):\nRain: I\u0026#39;ve added clarifying notes. Galileo rejected the premise in the sense you point out (sense 1 in my description), but affirmed it in the second sense. He did not say \u0026quot;theology is not the queen of the sciences\u0026quot; and was at pains to find a way to affirm that it is, even as he limited the scope of that statement.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/04/galileo-on-relation-between-science-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGalileo’s view of natural philosophy (science) is that it is the study of the book of nature,” “written in mathematical language” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 183), as contrasted with theology, the study of the book of Holy Scripture and revelation.  Galileo endorses the idea that theology is the “queen” of the “subordinate sciences” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 124), by which he means not that theology trumps science in any and all matters.  He distinguishes two senses of theology being “preeminent and worthy of the title of queen”: (1) That “whatever is taught in all the other sciences is found explained and demonstrated in it [theology] by means of more excellent methods and of more sublime principles,” [Note added 12/14/2012: which he rejects] and (2) That theology deals with the most important issues, “the loftiest divine contemplations” about “the gaining of eternal bliss,” but “does not come down to the lower and humbler speculations of the inferior sciences \u0026hellip; it does not bother with them inasmuch as they are irrelevant to salvation” [Note added 12/14/2012: which he affirms] (quotations from Finocchiaro 2008, pp. 124-125).  Where Holy Scripture makes reference to facts about nature, they may be open to allegorical interpretation rather than literal interpretation, unless their literal truth is somehow necessary to the account of “the gaining of eternal bliss.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nGalileo further distinguishes two types of claims about science:  (1) “propositions about nature which are truly demonstrated” and (2) “others which are simply taught” (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 126).  The role of the theologian with regard to the former category is “to show that they are not contrary to Holy Scripture,” e.g., by providing an interpretation of Holy Scripture compatible with the proposition; with regard to the latter, if it contradicts Holy Scripture, it must be considered false and demonstrations of the same sought (Finocchiaro 2008, p. 126).  Presumably, if in the course of attempting to demonstrate that a proposition in the second category is false, it is instead demonstrated to be true, it then must be considered to be part of the former category.  Galileo’s discussion allows that theological condemnation of a physical proposition may be acceptable if it is shown not to be conclusively demonstrated (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 126), rather than a more stringent standard that it must be conclusively demonstrated to be false, which, given his own lack of conclusive evidence for heliocentrism, could be considered a loophole allowing him to be hoist with his own petard.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nGalileo also distinguishes between what is apparent to experts vs. the layman (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 131), denying that popular consensus is a measure of truth, but regarding that this distinction is what lies behind claims made in Holy Scripture about physical propositions that are not literally true.  With regard to the theological expertise of the Church Fathers, their consensus on a physical proposition is not sufficient to make it an article of faith unless such consensus is upon “conclusions which the Fathers discussed and inspected with great diligence and debated on both sides of the issue and for which they then all agreed to reject one side and hold the other” (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 133).  Or, in a contemporary (for Galileo) context, the theologians of the day could have a comparably weighted position on claims about nature if they “first hear the experiments, observations, reasons, and demonstrations of philosophers and astronomers on both sides of the question, and then they would be able to determine with certainty whatever divine inspiration will communicate to them” (Finnochiaro 2008, p. 135).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nGalileo’s conception of science that leads him to take this position appears to be drawn from what Peter Dear (1990, p. 664), drawing upon Thomas Kuhn (1977), calls “the quantitative, ‘classical’ mathematical sciences” or the “mixed mathematical sciences,” identifying this as a predominantly Catholic conception of science, as contrasted with experimental science developed in Protestant England.  The former conception is one in which laws of nature can be recognized through idealized thought experiments based on limited (or no) actual observations, but demonstrated conclusively by means of rational argument.  This seems to be the general mode of Galileo’s work.  Dear argues that this notion of natural law allows for a conception of the “ordinary course of nature” which can be violated by an observed miraculous event, which comports with a Catholic view that miracles continue to occur in the world.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBy contrast, the experimentalist views of Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle involve inductively inferring natural laws on the basis of observations, in which case observing something to occur makes it part of nature that must be accounted for in the generalized law\u0026ndash;a view under which a miracle seems to be ruled out at the outset, which was not a problem for Protestants who considered the “age of miracles” to be over (Dear 1990, pp. 682-683).  Dear argues that for the British experimentalists, authentication of an experimental result was in some ways like the authentication of a miracle for the Catholics\u0026ndash;requiring appropriately trustworthy observations\u0026ndash;but that instead of verifying a violation of the “ordinary course of nature,” it verified what the “ordinary course of nature” itself was (Dear 1990, p. 680).  Where the Catholics like Galileo and Pascal derived conclusions about particulars from universal laws recognized by observation, reasoning, and mathematical demonstration, the Protestants like Bacon and Boyle constructed universal laws by inductive generalization from observations of particulars, and were notably critical of failing to perform a sufficient number of experiments before coming to conclusions (McMullin 1990, p. 821), and put forth standards for hypotheses and experimental method (McMullin 1990, p. 823; Shapin \u0026amp; Schaffer 1985, pp. 25ff \u0026amp; pp. 56-59).  The English experimentalist tradition, arising at a time of political and religious confusion after the English Civil War and the collapse of the English state church, was perhaps an attempt to establish an independent authority for science.  By the 19th century, there were explicit (and successful) attempts to separate science from religious authority and create a professionalized class of scientists (e.g., as Gieryn 1983, pp. 784-787 writes about John Tyndall).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe English experimentalists followed the medieval scholastics (Pasnau, forthcoming) in adopting a notion of “moral certainty” for “the highest degree of probabilistic assurance” for conclusions adopted from experiments (Shapin 1994, pp. 208-209).  This falls short of the Aristotelian conception of knowledge, yet is stronger than mere opinion.  They also placed importance on public demonstration in front of appropriately knowledgeable witnesses\u0026ndash;with both the credibility of experimenter and witness being relevant to the credibility of the result.  Where on Galileo’s conception expertise appears to be primarily a function of possessing rational faculties and knowledge, on the experimentalist account there is importance to skill in application of method and to the moral trustworthiness of the participants as a factor in vouching for the observational results.  In the Galilean approach, trustworthiness appears to be less relevant as a consequence of actual observation being less relevant\u0026ndash;though Galileo does, from time to time, make remarks about observations refuting Aristotle, e.g., in “Two New Sciences” where he criticizes Aristotle’s claims about falling bodies (Finnochiaro 2008, pp. 301, 303).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe classic Aristotelian picture of science is similar to the Galilean approach, in that observation and data collection is done for the purpose of recognizing first principles and deriving demonstrations by reason from those first principles.  What constitutes knowledge is what can be known conclusively from such first principles and what is derived by necessary connection from them; whatever doesn’t meet that standard is mere opinion (\u003ci\u003ePosterior Analytics\u003c/i\u003e, Book I, Ch. 33; McKeon 1941, p. 156).  The Aristotelian picture doesn’t include any particular deference to theology; any discipline could could potentially yield knowledge so long as there were recognizable first principles. The role of observation isn’t to come up with fallible inductive generalizations, but to recognize identifiable universal and necessary features from their particular instantiations (Lennox 2006).  This discussion is all about theoretical knowledge (\u003ci\u003eepisteme\u003c/i\u003e) rather than practical knowledge (\u003ci\u003etekne\u003c/i\u003e), the latter of which is about contingent facts about everyday things that can change.  Richard Parry (2007) points out an apparent tension in Aristotle between knowledge of mathematics and knowledge of the natural world on account of his statement that “the minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded in all cases, but only in the case of things which have no matter.  Hence its method is not that of natural science; for presumably the whole of nature has matter” (\u003ci\u003eMetaphysics\u003c/i\u003e, Book II, Ch. 3, McKeon 1941, p. 715).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Galilean picture differs from the Aristotelian in its greater use of mathematics (geometry)\u0026ndash;McMullin writes that Galileo had “a mathematicism \u0026hellip; more radical than Plato’s” (1990, pp. 822-823) and by its inclusion of the second book, that of revelation and Holy Scripture, as a source of knowledge.  But while the second book is one which can trump mere opinion\u0026ndash;anything that isn’t conclusively demonstrated and thus fails to meet Aristotle’s understanding of knowledge\u0026ndash;it must be held compatible with anything that does meet those standards.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eReferences\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Galileo on the relation between science and religion"},{"content":"The popular view of the “science wars” of the 1990s is that it involved scientists and philosophers criticizing social scientists for making and accepting absurd claims as a result of an extreme relativistic view about scientific knowledge. Such absurd claims included claims like “the natural world in no way constrains what is believed to be,” “the natural world has a small or nonexistent role in the construction of scientific knowledge,” and “the natural world must be treated as though it did not affect our perception of it” (all due to Harry Collins, quoted in Yves Gingras’ scathingly critical review of his book (PDF), Gravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves). Another example was Bruno Latour’s claim that it was impossible for Ramses II to have died of tuberculosis because the tuberculosis bacillus was not discovered until 1882. This critical popular view is right as far as it goes\u0026ndash;those claims are absurd\u0026ndash;but the popular view of science also tends toward an overly rationalistic and naively realistic conception of scientific knowledge that fails to account for social factors that influence science as actually practiced by scientists and scientific institutions. The natural world and our social context both play a role in the production of scientific knowledge.\nMark B. Brown’s Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation tries to steer a middle course between extremes, but periodically veers too far in the relativist direction. Early on, in a brief discussion of the idea of scientific representations corresponding to reality, he writes (p. 6): “Emphasizing the practical dimensions of science need not impugn the truth of scientific representations, as critics of science studies often assume \u0026hellip;” But he almost immediately seems to retract this when he writes that “science is not a mirror of nature” (p. 7) and, in one of several unreferenced and unargued-for claims appealing to science studies that occur in the book, that “constructivist science studies does undermine the standard image of science as an objective mirror of nature” (p. 16). Perhaps he merely means that scientific representations are imperfect and fallible, for he does periodically make further attempts to steer a middle course, such as when he quotes Latour: “Either they went on being relativists even about the settled parts of science\u0026ndash;which made them look ridiculous; or they continued being realists even about the warm uncertain parts\u0026ndash;and they made fools of themselves” (p. 183). It’s surely reasonable to take an instrumentalist approach to scientific theories that aren’t well established, are somewhat isolated from the rest of our knowledge, or are highly theoretical, but also to take a realist approach to theories that are well established with evidence from multiple domains and have remained stable while being regularly put to the test. The evidence that we have today for a heliocentric solar system, for common ancestry of species, and for the position and basic functions of organs in the human body is of such strength that it is unlikely that we will see that knowledge completely overthrown in a future scientific revolution. But Brown favorably quotes Latour: “Even the shape of humans, our very body, is composed to a great extent of sociotechnical negotiations and artifacts.” (p. 171) Our bodies are not “composed” of “sociotechnical negotiations and artifacts”\u0026ndash;this is either a mistaken use of the word “composed” (instead of perhaps “the consequence of”) or a use-mention error (referring to “our very body” instead of our idea of our body).\nIn Ch. 6, in a section titled “Realism and Relativism” that begins with a reference to the “science wars,” he follows the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey in order to “help resolve some of the misunderstandings and disagreements among today’s science warriors” such as that “STS scholars seem to endorse a radical form of relativism, according to which scientific accounts of reality are no more true than those of witchcraft, astrology, or common sense” (p. 156). Given that Brown has already followed Dewey’s understanding of scientific practice as continuous with common sense (pp.151-152), it’s somewhat odd to see it listed with witchcraft and astrology in that list\u0026ndash;though perhaps in this context it’s not meant as the sort of critical common sense Dewey described, but more like folk theories that are undermined or refuted by science.\nBrown seems to endorse Dewey’s view that “reality is the world encountered through successful intervention” and favorably quotes philosopher Ian Hacking that “We shall count as real what we can use to intervene in the world to affect something else, or what the world can use to affect us” (pp. 156-157), but he subsequently drops the second half of Hacking’s statement when he writes “If science is understood in terms of the capacity to direct change, knowing cannot be conceived on the model of observation.” Such an understanding may capture experimental sciences, but not observational or historical sciences, an objection Brown attributes to Bertrand Russell, who “pointed out in his review of Dewey’s Logic that knowledge of a star could not be said to affect the star” (p. 158). Brown, however, follows Latour and maintains that “the work of representation \u0026hellip; always transforms what it represents” (p. 177). Brown defends this by engaging in a use-mention error, the failure to properly distinguish between the use of an expression and talking about the expression, when he writes that stars as objects of knowledge are newly created objects (p. 158, more below). Such an error is extremely easy to make when talking about social facts, where representations are themselves partly constitutive of the facts, such as in talk about knowledge or language.\nBrown writes that “People today experience the star as known, differently than before \u0026hellip; The star as an object of knowledge is thus indeed a new object” (p. 158). But this is unnecessary given the second half of Hacking’s statement, since we can observe and measure stars\u0026ndash;they have impact upon us. Brown does then talk about impact on us, but only by the representation, not the represented: “\u0026hellip;this new object causes existential changes in the knower. With the advent of the star as a known object, people actually experience it differently. This knowledge should supplement and not displace whatever aesthetic or religious experiences people continue to have of the star, thus making their experiences richer and more fulfilling” (p. 158). There may certainly be augmented experience with additional knowledge, which may not change the perceptual component of the experience, but I wonder what the Brown’s basis is for the normative claim that religious experiences in particular shouldn’t be displaced\u0026ndash;if those religious experiences are based on claims that have been falsified, such as an Aristotelian conception of the universe, then why shouldn’t they be displaced? But perhaps here I’m making the use-mention error, and Brown doesn’t mean that religious interpretations shouldn’t be displaced, only experiences that are labeled as “religious” shouldn’t be displaced.\nA few other quibbles:\nBrown writes that “all thought relies on language” (p. 56). If this is the case, then nonhuman animals that have no language cannot have thoughts. (My commenter suggested that all sentient beings have language, and even included plants in that category. I think the proposal that sentience requires language is at least plausible, though I wouldn’t put many nonhuman animals or any plants into that category\u0026ndash;perhaps chimps, whales, and dolphins. Some sorts of “language” extend beyond that category, such as the dance of honeybees that seems to code distance and direction information, but I interpreted Brown’s claim to refer to human language with syntax, semantics, generative capacity, etc., and to mean that one can’t have non-linguistic thoughts in the form of, say, pictorial imagery, without language. I.e., that even such thoughts require a “language of thought,” to use Jerry Fodor’s expression.)\nBrown endorses Harry Collins’ idea of the “experimenter’s regress,” without noting that his evidence for the existence of such a phenomenon is disputed (Allan Franklin, “How to Avoid the Experimenters’ Regress,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 25(3, 1994): 463-491). (Franklin also discusses this in the entry on \u0026ldquo;Experiment in Physics\u0026rdquo; at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)\nBrown contrasts Harry Collins and Robert Evans with Hobbes on the nature of expertise: The former see “expertise as a ‘real and substantive’ attribute of individuals” while “For Hobbes, in contrast, what matters is whether the claims of reason are accepted by the relevant audience.” (p. 116). Brown sides with Hobbes, but this is to make a similar mistake to that Richard Rorty made when claiming that truth is what you can get away with, which is false by its own definition\u0026ndash;since philosophers didn’t let him get away with it. This definition doesn’t allow for the existence of a successful fake expert or con artist, but we know that such persons exist from examples that have been exposed. Under this definition, such persons were experts until they were unmasked.\nBrown’s application of Hobbes’ views on political representation to nature is less problematic when he discusses the political representation of environmental interests (pp. 128-131) than when he discusses scientific representations of nature (pp. 131-132). The whole discussion might have been clearer had it taken account of John Searle’s account of social facts (in The Construction of Social Reality).\nBrown writes that “Just as recent work in science studies has shown that science is not made scientifically \u0026hellip;” (p. 140), without argument or reference.\nHe apparently endorses a version of Dewey’s distinction between public and private actions with private being “those interactions that do not affect anyone beyond those engaged in the interaction; interactions that have consequences beyond those so engaged he calls public” (p. 141). This distinction is probably not tenable since the indirect consequences of even actions that we’d consider private can ultimately affect others, such as a decision to have or not to have children.\nOn p. 159, Brown attributes the origin of the concept of evolution to “theories of culture, such as those of Vico and Comte” rather than Darwin, but neither of them had theories of evolution by natural selection comparable to Darwin’s innovation; concepts of evolutionary change go back at least to the pre-Socratic philosophers like the Epicureans and Stoics. (Darwin didn\u0026rsquo;t invent natural selection, either, but he was the first to put all the pieces together and recognize that evolution by natural selection could serve a productive as well as a conservative role.)\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Brenda T. for her comments. It should be noted that the above really doesn\u0026rsquo;t address the main arguments of the book, which are about the meaning of political representation and representation in science, and an argument about proper democratic representation in science policy.]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/03/representation-realism-and-relativism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe popular view of the “science wars” of the 1990s is that it involved scientists and philosophers criticizing social scientists for making and accepting absurd claims as a result of an extreme relativistic view about scientific knowledge.  Such absurd claims included claims like “the natural world in no way constrains what is believed to be,” “the natural world has a small or nonexistent role in the construction of scientific knowledge,” and “the natural world must be treated as though it did not affect our perception of it” (all due to Harry Collins, quoted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.chss.uqam.ca/Portals/0/docs/articles/Gingras_collins.pdf\"\u003eYves Gingras’ scathingly critical review of his book\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves\u003c/span\u003e).  Another example was \u003ca href=\"http://koneill41.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/12/searle-and-relativism.html\"\u003eBruno Latour’s claim\u003c/a\u003e that it was impossible for Ramses II to have died of tuberculosis because the tuberculosis bacillus was not discovered until 1882.  This critical popular view is right as far as it goes\u0026ndash;those claims are absurd\u0026ndash;but the popular view of science also tends toward an overly rationalistic and naively realistic conception of scientific knowledge that fails to account for social factors that influence science as actually practiced by scientists and scientific institutions.  The natural world and our social context both play a role in the production of scientific knowledge.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMark B. Brown’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Democracy-Expertise-Institutions-Representation/dp/0262513048/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e tries to steer a middle course between extremes, but periodically veers too far in the relativist direction.  Early on, in a brief discussion of the idea of scientific representations corresponding to reality, he writes (p. 6): “Emphasizing the practical dimensions of science need not impugn the truth of scientific representations, as critics of science studies often assume \u0026hellip;”  But he almost immediately seems to retract this when he writes that “science is not a mirror of nature” (p. 7) and, in one of several unreferenced and unargued-for claims appealing to science studies that occur in the book, that “constructivist science studies does undermine the standard image of science as an objective mirror of nature” (p. 16).  Perhaps he merely means that scientific representations are imperfect and fallible, for he does periodically make further attempts to steer a middle course, such as when he quotes Latour: “Either they went on being relativists even about the settled parts of science\u0026ndash;which made them look ridiculous; or they continued being realists even about the warm uncertain parts\u0026ndash;and they made fools of themselves” (p. 183).  It’s surely reasonable to take an instrumentalist approach to scientific theories that aren’t well established, are somewhat isolated from the rest of our knowledge, or are highly theoretical, but also to take a realist approach to theories that are well established with evidence from multiple domains and have remained stable while being regularly put to the test.  The evidence that we have today for a heliocentric solar system, for common ancestry of species, and for the position and basic functions of organs in the human body is of such strength that it is unlikely that we will see that knowledge completely overthrown in a future scientific revolution.  But Brown favorably quotes Latour: “Even the shape of humans, our very body, is composed to a great extent of sociotechnical negotiations and artifacts.” (p. 171)  Our bodies are not “composed” of “sociotechnical negotiations and artifacts”\u0026ndash;this is either a mistaken use of the word “composed” (instead of perhaps “the consequence of”) or a use-mention error (referring to “our very body” instead of our idea of our body).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn Ch. 6, in a section titled “Realism and Relativism” that begins with a reference to the “science wars,” he follows the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey in order to “help resolve some of the misunderstandings and disagreements among today’s science warriors” such as that “STS scholars seem to endorse a radical form of relativism, according to which scientific accounts of reality are no more true than those of witchcraft, astrology, or common sense” (p. 156).  Given that Brown has already followed Dewey’s understanding of scientific practice as continuous with common sense (pp.151-152), it’s somewhat odd to see it listed with witchcraft and astrology in that list\u0026ndash;though perhaps in this context it’s not meant as the sort of critical common sense Dewey described, but more like folk theories that are undermined or refuted by science.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown seems to endorse Dewey’s view that “reality is the world encountered through successful intervention” and favorably quotes philosopher Ian Hacking that “We shall count as real what we can use to intervene in the world to affect something else, or what the world can use to affect us” (pp. 156-157), but he subsequently drops the second half of Hacking’s statement when he writes “If science is understood in terms of the capacity to direct change, knowing cannot be conceived on the model of observation.”  Such an understanding may capture experimental sciences, but not observational or historical sciences, an objection Brown attributes to Bertrand Russell, who “pointed out in his review of Dewey’s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLogic\u003c/span\u003e that knowledge of a star could not be said to affect the star” (p. 158).  Brown, however, follows Latour and maintains that “the work of representation \u0026hellip; always transforms what it represents” (p. 177).  Brown defends this by engaging in a use-mention error, the failure to properly distinguish between the use of an expression and talking about the expression, when he writes that stars as objects of knowledge are newly created objects (p. 158, more below).  Such an error is extremely easy to make when talking about social facts, where representations are themselves partly constitutive of the facts, such as in talk about knowledge or language.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown writes that “People today experience the star \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eas\u003c/span\u003e known, differently than before \u0026hellip; The star \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eas\u003c/span\u003e an object of knowledge is thus indeed a new object” (p. 158).  But this is unnecessary given the second half of Hacking’s statement, since we can observe and measure stars\u0026ndash;they have impact upon us.  Brown does then talk about impact on us, but only by the representation, not the represented: “\u0026hellip;this new object causes existential changes in the knower.  With the advent of the star as a known object, people actually experience it differently.  This knowledge should supplement and not displace whatever aesthetic or religious experiences people continue to have of the star, thus making their experiences richer and more fulfilling” (p. 158).  There may certainly be augmented experience with additional knowledge, which may not change the perceptual component of the experience, but I wonder what the Brown’s basis is for the normative claim that religious experiences in particular shouldn’t be displaced\u0026ndash;if those religious experiences are based on claims that have been falsified, such as an Aristotelian conception of the universe, then why shouldn’t they be displaced?  But perhaps here I’m making the use-mention error, and Brown doesn’t mean that religious interpretations shouldn’t be displaced, only experiences that are labeled as “religious” shouldn’t be displaced.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA few other quibbles:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown writes that “all thought relies on language” (p. 56). If this is the case, then nonhuman animals that have no language cannot have thoughts.  (My commenter suggested that all sentient beings have language, and even included plants in that category.  I think the proposal that sentience requires language is at least plausible, though I wouldn’t put many nonhuman animals or any plants into that category\u0026ndash;perhaps chimps, whales, and dolphins.  Some sorts of “language” extend beyond that category, such as the dance of honeybees that seems to code distance and direction information, but I interpreted Brown’s claim to refer to human language with syntax, semantics, generative capacity, etc., and to mean that one can’t have non-linguistic thoughts in the form of, say, pictorial imagery, without language.  I.e., that even such thoughts require a “language of thought,” to use Jerry Fodor’s expression.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown endorses Harry Collins’ idea of the “experimenter’s regress,” without noting that his evidence for the existence of such a phenomenon is disputed (Allan Franklin, \u003ca href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681%2894%2990062-0\"\u003e“How to Avoid the Experimenters’ Regress,”\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStudies in History and Philosophy of Science\u003c/span\u003e 25(3, 1994): 463-491).  (Franklin also discusses this in the entry on \u003ca href=\"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-experiment/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Experiment in Physics\u0026rdquo; at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown contrasts Harry Collins and Robert Evans with Hobbes on the nature of expertise: The former see “expertise as a ‘real and substantive’ attribute of individuals” while “For Hobbes, in contrast, what matters is whether the claims of reason are accepted by the relevant audience.” (p. 116).  Brown sides with Hobbes, but this is to make a similar mistake to that Richard Rorty made when claiming that truth is what you can get away with, which is false by its own definition\u0026ndash;since philosophers didn’t let him get away with it.  This definition doesn’t allow for the existence of a successful fake expert or con artist, but we know that such persons exist from examples that have been exposed.  Under this definition, such persons were experts until they were unmasked.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown’s application of Hobbes’ views on political representation to nature is less problematic when he discusses the political representation of environmental interests (pp. 128-131) than when he discusses scientific representations of nature (pp. 131-132).  The whole discussion might have been clearer had it taken account of John Searle’s account of social facts (in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Construction-Social-Reality-John-Searle/dp/0684831791/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Construction of Social Reality\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBrown writes that “Just as recent work in science studies has shown that science is not made scientifically \u0026hellip;” (p. 140), without argument or reference.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe apparently endorses a version of Dewey’s distinction between public and private actions with private being “those interactions that do not affect anyone beyond those engaged in the interaction; interactions that have consequences beyond those so engaged he calls public” (p. 141).  This distinction is probably not tenable since the indirect consequences of even actions that we’d consider private can ultimately affect others, such as a decision to have or not to have children.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn p. 159, Brown attributes the origin of the concept of evolution to “theories of culture, such as those of Vico and Comte” rather than Darwin, but neither of them had theories of evolution by natural selection comparable to Darwin’s innovation; concepts of evolutionary change go back at least to the pre-Socratic philosophers like the Epicureans and Stoics.  (Darwin didn\u0026rsquo;t invent natural selection, either, but he was the first to put all the pieces together and recognize that evolution by natural selection could serve a productive as well as a conservative role.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar.  Thanks to Brenda T. for her comments.  It should be noted that the above really doesn\u0026rsquo;t address the main arguments of the book, which are about the meaning of political representation and representation in science, and an argument about proper democratic representation in science policy.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Representation, realism, and relativism"},{"content":"The success of science in the public sphere is determined not just by the quality of research but by the ability to persuade. Stephen Hilgartner’s Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama uses a theatrical metaphor, drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, to shed light on and explain the outcomes associated with three successive reports on diet and nutrition issued by the National Academies of Science, one of which was widely criticized by scientists, one of which was criticized by food industry groups, and one of which was never published. They differed in “backstage” features such as how they coordinated their work and what sources they drew upon, in “onstage” features such as the composition of experts on their committees and how they communicated their results, and how they responded to criticism.\nThe kinds of features and techniques that Hilgartner identifies as used to enhance perceptions of credibility\u0026ndash;features of rhetoric and performance\u0026ndash;are the sorts of features relied upon by con artists. If there is no way to distinguish such features as used by con artists from those used by genuine practitioners, if all purported experts are on equal footing and only the on-stage performances are visible, then we have a bit of a problem. All purported experts of comparable performing ability are on equal footing, and we may as well flip coins to distinguish between them. But part of a performance includes the propositional content of the performance\u0026ndash;the arguments and evidence deployed\u0026ndash;and these are evaluated not just on aesthetic grounds but with respect to logical coherence and compatibility with what the audience already knows. Further, the performance itself includes an interaction with the audience that strains the stage metaphor. Hilgartner describes this as members of the audience themselves taking the stage, yet audience members in his metaphor also interact with each other, individually and in groups, through complex webs of social relationships.\nThe problem of expert-layman interaction is that the layman in most cases lacks the interactional expertise to even be able to communicate about the details of the evidence supporting a scientific position, and must rely upon other markers of credibility which may be rhetorical flourishes. This is the problem of Plato’s “Charmides,” in which Socrates asserts that only a genuine doctor can distinguish a sufficiently persuasive quack from a genuine doctor. A similar position is endorsed by philosopher John Hardwig, in his paper “Epistemic Dependence,” (PDF) and by law professor Scott Brewer in “Scientific Expert Testimony and Intellectual Due Process,” which points out that the problem faces judges and juries. There are some features which enable successful distinctions between genuine and fake experts in at least the more extreme circumstances\u0026ndash;examination of track records, credentials, evaluations by other experts or meta-experts (e.g., experts in methods used across multiple domains, such as logic and mathematics). Brewer enumerates four strategies of nonexperts in evaluating expert claims: (1) “substantive second-guessing,” (2) “using general canons of rational evidentiary support,” (3) “evaluating demeanor,” and (4) “evaluating credentials.” Of these, only (3) is an examination of the merely surface appearances of the performance (which is not to say that it can’t be a reliable, though fallible, mechanism). But when the evaluation is directed not at distinguishing genuine expert from fake, but conflicting claims between two genuine experts, the nonexpert may be stuck in a situation where none of these is effective and only time (if anything) will tell\u0026ndash;but in some domains, such as the legal arena, a decision may need to be reached much more quickly than a resolution might become available.\nOne novel suggestion for institutionalizing a form of expertise that fits into Hilgartner’s metaphor is philosopher Don Ihde’s proposal of “science critics”, in which individuals with at least interactional expertise within the domain they criticize serve a role similar to art and literary critics in evaluating a performance, including its content and not just its rhetorical flourishes.\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. The Hardwig and Brewer articles are both reprinted in Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, editors, The Philosophy of Expertise. NY: Columbia University Press, 2006, along with an excellent paper I didn\u0026rsquo;t mention above, Alvin I. Goldman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?\u0026quot; (PDF). The term \u0026ldquo;interactional expertise\u0026rdquo; comes from Harry M. Collins and Robert Evans, \u0026ldquo;The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience,\u0026quot; also reprinted in the Selinger \u0026amp; Crease volume; a case study of such expertise is in Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Thanks to Tim K. for his comments on the above.]\nEamon Knight (2010-02-24):\n....in which individuals with at least interactional expertise within the domain they criticize serve a role similar to art and literary critics in evaluating a performance, including its content and not just its rhetorical flourishes. Eg: Carl Zimmer, perhaps? As well as many of the better science bloggers.\nLippard (2010-02-24):\nEamon: I think you\u0026#39;re right that a role very much like what Ihde describes is already filled at least by some of the better science bloggers and science writers; science writing in general tends to be a bit more descriptive and promotional than critical, however. The Open Peer Commentary of the Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal is another example, and one that's cross-disciplinary and often very critical.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/science-as-performance.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe success of science in the public sphere is determined not just by the quality of research but by the ability to persuade.  Stephen Hilgartner’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Stage-Expert-Advice-Writing/dp/0804736464/jimlippardwebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e uses a theatrical metaphor, drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, to shed light on and explain the outcomes associated with three successive reports on diet and nutrition issued by the National Academies of Science, one of which was widely criticized by scientists, one of which was criticized by food industry groups, and one of which was never published.  They differed in “backstage” features such as how they coordinated their work and what sources they drew upon, in “onstage” features such as the composition of experts on their committees and how they communicated their results, and how they responded to criticism.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe kinds of features and techniques that Hilgartner identifies as used to enhance perceptions of credibility\u0026ndash;features of rhetoric and performance\u0026ndash;are the sorts of features relied upon by con artists.  If there is no way to distinguish such features as used by con artists from those used by genuine practitioners, if all purported experts are on equal footing and only the on-stage performances are visible, then we have a bit of a problem.  All purported experts of comparable performing ability are on equal footing, and we may as well flip coins to distinguish between them.  But part of a performance includes the propositional content of the performance\u0026ndash;the arguments and evidence deployed\u0026ndash;and these are evaluated not just on aesthetic grounds but with respect to logical coherence and compatibility with what the audience already knows.  Further, the performance itself includes an interaction with the audience that strains the stage metaphor.  Hilgartner describes this as members of the audience themselves taking the stage, yet audience members in his metaphor also interact with each other, individually and in groups, through complex webs of social relationships.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe problem of expert-layman interaction is that the layman in most cases lacks the interactional expertise to even be able to communicate about the details of the evidence supporting a scientific position, and must rely upon other markers of credibility which may be rhetorical flourishes.  This is the problem of Plato’s “Charmides,” in which Socrates asserts that only a genuine doctor can distinguish a sufficiently persuasive quack from a genuine doctor.  A similar position is endorsed by philosopher John Hardwig, in his paper \u003ca href=\"http://web.utk.edu/%7Ejhardwig/EpDep.pdf\"\u003e“Epistemic Dependence,”\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) and by law professor Scott Brewer in \u003ca href=\"http://www.jstor.org/pss/797336\"\u003e“Scientific Expert Testimony and Intellectual Due Process,”\u003c/a\u003e which points out that the problem faces judges and juries.  There are some features which enable successful distinctions between genuine and fake experts in at least the more extreme circumstances\u0026ndash;examination of track records, credentials, evaluations by other experts or meta-experts (e.g., experts in methods used across multiple domains, such as logic and mathematics).  Brewer enumerates four strategies of nonexperts in evaluating expert claims: (1) “substantive second-guessing,” (2) “using general canons of rational evidentiary support,” (3) “evaluating demeanor,” and (4) “evaluating credentials.”  Of these, only (3) is an examination of the merely surface appearances of the performance (which is not to say that it can’t be a reliable, though fallible, mechanism).  But when the evaluation is directed not at distinguishing genuine expert from fake, but conflicting claims between two genuine experts, the nonexpert may be stuck in a situation where none of these is effective and only time (if anything) will tell\u0026ndash;but in some domains, such as the legal arena, a decision may need to be reached much more quickly than a resolution might become available.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOne novel suggestion for institutionalizing a form of expertise that fits into Hilgartner’s metaphor is philosopher \u003ca href=\"http://www.stonybrook.edu/philosophy/research/ihde_5.html\"\u003eDon Ihde’s proposal of “science critics”\u003c/a\u003e, in which individuals with at least interactional expertise within the domain they criticize serve a role similar to art and literary critics in evaluating a performance, including its content and not just its rhetorical flourishes.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. The Hardwig and Brewer articles are both reprinted in Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, editors, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Expertise-Robert-Crease/dp/0231136447/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Philosophy of Expertise\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  NY: Columbia University Press, 2006, along with an excellent paper I didn\u0026rsquo;t mention above, Alvin I. Goldman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/goldman/SeminarFall2007/October%2031st/Goldman%20-%20Experts%20Which%20Ones%20Should%20You%20Trust.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF). The term \u0026ldquo;interactional expertise\u0026rdquo; comes from Harry M. Collins and Robert Evans, \u003ca href=\"http://www.jstor.org/pss/3183097\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e also reprinted in the Selinger \u0026amp; Crease volume; a case study of such expertise is in Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Impure-Science-Activism-Politics-Knowledge/dp/0520214455/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eImpure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Thanks to Tim K. for his comments on the above.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science as performance"},{"content":"There have long been worries that the mass media are producing a “dumbing down” of American political culture, reducing political understanding to sound bites and spin. The Internet has been blamed for information overload, and, like MTV in prior decades, for a reduction in attention span as the text-based web became the multimedia web, and cell phones have become a more common tool for its use. Similar worries have been expressed about public understanding of science. Nicholas Carr has asked the question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”\nYaron Ezrahi’s “Science and the political imagination in contemporary democracies” (a chapter in Sheila Jasanoff\u0026rsquo;s States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order) argues that the post-Enlightenment synthesis of scientific knowledge and politics in democratic societies is in decline, on the basis of a transition of public discourse into easily consumed, bite-sized chunks of vividly depicted information that he calls “outformation.” Where, prior to the Enlightenment, authority had more of a religious basis and the ideal for knowledge was “wisdom”\u0026ndash;which Ezrahi sees as a mix of the “cognitive, moral, social, philosophical, and practical” which is privileged, unteachable, and a matter of faith, the Enlightenment brought systematized, scientific knowledge to the fore. Such knowledge was formalized, objective, universal, impersonal, and teachable\u0026ndash;with effort. When that scientific knowledge is made more widely usable, “stripped of its theoretical, formal, logical and mathematical layers” into a “think knowledge” that is context-dependent and localized, it becomes “information.” And finally, when information is further stripped of its context and design for use for a particular purpose, yet augmented with “rich and frequently intense” representations that include “cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and other dimensions of experience,” it becomes “outformation.”\nAccording to Ezrahi, such “outformations” mix references to objective and subjective reality, and they become “shared references in the context of public discourse and action.” They are taken to be legitimated and authoritative despite lacking any necessary grounding in “observations, experiments, and logic.” He describes this shift as a shift from a high-cost political reality to a low-cost political reality, where “cost” is a measure of the recipient’s ability to consume it rather than the consequences to the polity of its consumption and use as the basis for political participation. This shift, he says, “reflects the diminished propensity of contemporary publics to invest personal or group resources in understanding and shaping politics and the management of public affairs.”\nBut, I wonder, is this another case of reflecting on “good old days” that never existed? While new media have made new forms of communication possible, was there really a time when the general public was fully invested in “understanding and shaping politics” and not responding to simplifications and slogans? And is it really the case, as Ezrahi argues, that while information can be processed and reconstructed into knowledge, the same is not possible for outformations? Some of us do still read books, and for us, Google may not be “making us stupid,” but rather providing a supplement that allows us to quickly search a vast web of interconnected bits of information that can be assembled into knowledge, inspired by a piece of “outformation.”\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment on Ezrahi\u0026rsquo;s article for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Although I wrote about new media, it is apparent that Ezrahi was writing primarily about television and radio, where \u0026ldquo;outformation\u0026rdquo; seems to be more prevalent than information. Thanks to Judd A. for his comments on the above.]\nUPDATE (April 19, 2010): Part of the above is translated into Italian, with commentary from Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence, at his blog.\nL (2010-02-23):\nI have the same concerns as you over the hand-wringing by the new media doomsayers. Their dire predictions are not much different than those floated when television and radio and even the newspaper came along. They\u0026#39;re the same concerns I have whenever I hear somebody decrying the pitiful state of science knowledge in the U.S. When was it ever good? I think people like you or I, and many of the pessimistic academics are in fact rarities in that we read books and synthesize information because we like to and/or can afford to or are paid to do so. That doesn't necessarily make us better than other people who don't like to read or practice thinking in any of its many forms. People do different things for different reasons.\nI think there are demotivators to people staying adequately informed enough to make them high functioning citizens, such as income inequality/poverty and the need for two-income households, but I wouldn't count Google or Facebook or Twitter among them. People who aren't struggling to feed themselves, or aren't simply exhausted at the end of the day are more likely to show the curiosity and follow through on it rather than simply having their opinions spoon-fed to them by cable news.\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nI Doubt It: I\u0026#39;m not sure \u0026quot;too much published\u0026quot; is a solvable problem, given that costs of publishing have gone way down with the Internet. Neural Gourmet: I'm currently reading Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch, and what I find most concerning are findings that suggest that the Internet is compounding the confirmation bias problem, and the related issue Carr calls \u0026quot;ideological amplification,\u0026quot; which leads to more polarization. My prof for the class I wrote this for suggests that the mass media plus the Internet has erased the former division between local and national politics, so that local politics is now dominated by those motivated by \u0026quot;outformations\u0026quot; about national issues (e.g., town halls on healthcare reform). The Big Sort + The Big Switch + Bowling Alone = new problems\u0026hellip; (though one of the critiques of Putnam's Bowling Alone is the one you just pointed out\u0026ndash;that the same claims were made about radio).\nL (2010-02-23):\nJim, I\u0026#39;m not sure we can blame our civic issues on the internet. I would look first to the way the main stream media has all but abdicated any responsibility for critical analysis and the collusion of the radical right with large fundamentalist religious and business interests. The radical and religious right are the ones who learned to take it local, and eventually worked up until they dominated the agenda of the GOP. They were also early adopters who made the most out of the internet. So, in so far as cognitive biases are being reinforced and dominating national politics, I don't think it's the internet itself but the modern GOP machine and its myriad propaganda arms. It's only with the campaigns of Howard Dean and Barrack Obama that the Democrats have started to learn how to utilize the internet to spread their messages. And again, I'm not sure how this differs so much from the way politics worked in Hearst's time. It's just a different set of players.\nI'm not unsympathetic to these sorts of arguments, but I just haven't seen any evidence that what people say is going on is actually happening. Does the internet amplify their message and help reinforce it? Surely. But as I said, so did TV, radio and newspapers before. I'm not convinced that there's anything new going so much as there's just so much more of the same old, same old happening. Perhaps the most troubling thing to me is that if these effects can be demonstrated, I'm not sure how they could be countered.\nInterestingly, Dwight Furrow just today had a blog post on Nick Carr's and others thoughts in an Ars Technica article.\nL (2010-02-23):\nHere\u0026#39;s the relevant quote from the Ars Technica article: \u0026quot;[Nick Carr]\u0026#39;Over the past few years I\u0026#39;ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn\u0026#39;t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I\u0026#39;m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That\u0026#39;s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I\u0026#39;m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.\u0026#39; Such worries have been commonplace over the last few years, but are they accurate? The Pew Internet \u0026amp; American Life project polled 895 Internet \u0026quot;experts\u0026quot;—including Nick Carr—to see what they thought of such doom-laden prophecies.\nIt turns out that the experts don't see much merit to the worries; more than three-quarters of the sample concluded that Carr was wrong.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nNeural Gourmet: I am reading a paper which makes reference to a 35-year-old paper (Philip E. Converse, \u0026quot;Public Opinion and Voting Behavior,\u0026quot; in _Handbook of Political Science_, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby, Addison-Wesley, 2005) which complains about the radical and profound ignorance of the general public about political matters. An earlier paper by the same author (\u0026quot;The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics\u0026quot; in _Ideology and Discontent_ ed. David Apter, Free Press, 1964) makes a point similar to Ezrahi\u0026#39;s about the packaging of political ideology for general public consumption as \u0026quot;apparently logical wholes that are credible to large numbers of people.\u0026quot; So clearly that particular problem predates the Internet. Carr's point about \u0026quot;ideological amplification\u0026quot; is a different one, and is backed up by the work of ASU political scientist Matthew Hindman, and that is that confirmation bias is the rule on the Internet\u0026ndash;most people only read sources that support their ideologies. The \u0026quot;amplification\u0026quot; part is that when we are in social groups that share an ideology, we tend to become more extreme in our support of that ideology; the presence of dissent tempers it. By choosing self-selected online communities that we agree with, rather than local communities where we might have minority views, we are more likely to amplify and radicalize our ideological positions. I also mentioned The Big Sort because it makes a similar argument about patterns of movement in the U.S., that people are sorting themselves out by political ideology and making political districts more radical and polarized in their positions.\nThis is a distinct issue from Carr's claim of the nature of the web changing how we think, which I agree with you doesn't seem well supported.\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nOh, sorry, meant to add one more point from Carr\u0026#39;s _The Big Switch_ related to ideological amplification--that is that Google\u0026#39;s search algorithm became \u0026quot;personalized search,\u0026quot; where your search results are personalized to match your proclivities--and thus make you less likely to visit websites that you aren\u0026#39;t interested in, and by extension from Carr\u0026#39;s argument, less likely to encounter contrary information or cognitive dissonance.\nL (2010-02-23):\nI\u0026#39;ll have to make a note to check out Hindman\u0026#39;s work. I do have concerns about Google's Personalized Search algorithm. I've noticed that over time, many of the sites that used to regularly annoy me are no longer being served up in results (alt-med, pseudoscience, conspiracy cranks). I've had a GMail account since 2004 so I assume Google's algorithm has a pretty good idea of what I like ny now. I haven't tried putting Firefox into private browsing mode to see how search results differ.\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nCorrection on that _Handbook of Political Science_ citation--the year is 1975, not 2005!\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nHindman has a 2008 book from Princeton University Press called _The Myth of Digital Democracy_. Carr just cites a talk he heard Hindman give, but the book covers the same thesis.\nLippard (2010-02-23):\nThe article I\u0026#39;m currently reading is Jeffrey Friedman, \u0026quot;Popper, Weber, and Hayek: The Epistemology and Politics of Ignorance,\u0026quot; _Critical Review_ vo. 17, nos. 1-2, 2005, pp. i-lviii. (BTW, if you want to see a devastating critique of libertarianism, Friedman\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;What\u0026#39;s Wrong with Libertarianism\u0026quot; is it--a critique of the sort that only a former advocate, in this case one with degrees in philosophy \u0026amp; history (B.A., Brown), history (M.A., C.Phil., Berkeley), and political science (M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale), can bring to bear.) I just read this sentence: \u0026quot;\u0026hellip; Converse's most disturbing and under-remarked finding is that the relatively well informed compensate in dogmatism for their greater knowledgeability.\u0026quot; (p. xxii)\nThis makes sense, unfortunately. Experts tend to see through theoretical and ideological lenses that allow for the organization of representations of reality in a systematic way, yet which may not (read: surely doesn't) fully accord with reality in all respects.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/is-knowledge-drowning-in-flood-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere have long been worries that the mass media are producing a “dumbing down” of American political culture, reducing political understanding to sound bites and spin.  The Internet has been blamed for information overload, and, like MTV in prior decades, for a reduction in attention span as the text-based web became the multimedia web, and cell phones have become a more common tool for its use.  Similar worries have been expressed about public understanding of science.  Nicholas Carr has asked the question, \u003ca href=\"http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/01/eric_schmidts_s_1.php\"\u003e“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nYaron Ezrahi’s “Science and the political imagination in contemporary democracies” (a chapter in Sheila Jasanoff\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/States-Knowledge-Co-production-International-Sociology/dp/0415403294/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStates of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) argues that the post-Enlightenment synthesis of scientific knowledge and politics in democratic societies is in decline, on the basis of a transition of public discourse into easily consumed, bite-sized chunks of vividly depicted information that he calls “outformation.”  Where, prior to the Enlightenment, authority had more of a religious basis and the ideal for knowledge was “wisdom”\u0026ndash;which Ezrahi sees as a mix of the “cognitive, moral, social, philosophical, and practical” which is privileged, unteachable, and a matter of faith, the Enlightenment brought systematized, scientific knowledge to the fore.  Such knowledge was formalized, objective, universal, impersonal, and teachable\u0026ndash;with effort.  When that scientific knowledge is made more widely usable, “stripped of its theoretical, formal, logical and mathematical layers” into a “think knowledge” that is context-dependent and localized, it becomes “information.”  And finally, when information is further stripped of its context and design for use for a particular purpose, yet augmented with “rich and frequently intense” representations that include “cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and other dimensions of experience,” it becomes “outformation.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAccording to Ezrahi, such “outformations” mix references to objective and subjective reality, and they become “shared references in the context of public discourse and action.”  They are taken to be legitimated and authoritative despite lacking any necessary grounding in “observations, experiments, and logic.”  He describes this shift as a shift from a high-cost political reality to a low-cost political reality, where “cost” is a measure of the recipient’s ability to consume it rather than the consequences to the polity of its consumption and use as the basis for political participation.  This shift, he says, “reflects the diminished propensity of contemporary publics to invest personal or group resources in understanding and shaping politics and the management of public affairs.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut, I wonder, is this another case of reflecting on “good old days” that never existed?  While new media have made new forms of communication possible, was there really a time when the general public was fully invested in “understanding and shaping politics” and not responding to simplifications and slogans?  And is it really the case, as Ezrahi argues, that while information can be processed and reconstructed into knowledge, the same is not possible for outformations?  Some of us do still read books, and for us, Google may not be “making us stupid,” but rather providing a supplement that allows us to quickly search a vast web of interconnected bits of information that can be assembled into knowledge, inspired by a piece of “outformation.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment on Ezrahi\u0026rsquo;s article for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar.  Although I wrote about new media, it is apparent that Ezrahi was writing primarily about television and radio, where \u0026ldquo;outformation\u0026rdquo; seems to be more prevalent than information.  Thanks to Judd A. for his comments on the above.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (April 19, 2010): Part of the above is \u003ca href=\"http://ugobardi.blogspot.com/2010/02/stiamo-perdendo-la-saggezza.html\"\u003etranslated into Italian, with commentary from Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence, at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is knowledge drowning in a flood of information?"},{"content":"Land reforms instituted in Vietnam under French rule, in India under the British, and in rural czarist Russia introduced simplified rights of ownership and standardized measurements of size and shape that were primarily for the benefit of the state, e.g., for tax purposes. James C. Scott’s Seeing as a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed gives these and numerous other examples of ways in which standardization and simplification have been used by the state to make legible and control resources (and people) within its borders. He recounts cases of how the imposition of such standardization often fails or at least has unintended negative consequences, such as his example of German scientific forestry’s introduction of a monoculture of Norway spruce or Scotch pine designed to maximize lumber production, but which led to die-offs a century later. (The monoculture problem of reduced resilience/increased vulnerability is one which has been recognized in an information security context, as well, e.g., in Dan Geer et al.\u0026rsquo;s paper on Microsoft monoculture that got him fired from @stake and his more recent work.)\nScott’s examples of state-imposed uniformity should not, however, be misconstrued to infer that any case of uniformity is state-imposed, or that such regularities, even if state-imposed, don\u0026rsquo;t have underlying natural constraints. Formalized institutions of property registration and title have appeared in the crevices between states, for example in the squatter community of Kowloon Walled City that existed from 1947-1993 on a piece of the Kowloon peninsula that was claimed by both China and Britain, yet governed by neither. While the institutions of Kowloon Walled City may have been patterned after those familiar to its residents from the outside world, they were internally imposed rather than by a state.\nPatterns of highway network design present another apparent counterexample. Scott discusses the design of highways around Paris as being designed by the state to intentionally route traffic through Paris, as well as to allow for military and law enforcement activity within the city in order to put down insurrections. But motorway patterns in the UK appear to have a more organic structure, as a recent experiment with slime molds oddly confirmed. Two researchers at the University of West of England constructed a map of the UK out of agar, putting clumps of oat flakes at the locations of the nine most populous cities. They then introduced a slime mold colony to the mix, and in many cases it extruded tendrils to feed on the oat flakes creating patterns which aligned with the existing motorway design, with some variations. A similar experiment with a map of cities around Tokyo duplicated the Tokyo railway network, slime-mold style. The similarity between transportation networks and evolved biological systems for transporting blood and sap may simply be because they are efficient and resilient solutions.\nThese examples, while not refuting Scott’s point about frequent failures in top-down imposition of order, suggest that it may be possible for states to achieve success in certain projects by facilitating bottom-up development of ordered structures. The state often imposes an order that has already been developed via some other means\u0026ndash;e.g., electrical standards were set up by industry bodies before being codified, IETF standards for IP which don\u0026rsquo;t have the force of law yet are globally implemented. In other cases, states may ratify an emerging order by, e.g., preempting a diversity of state rules with a set that have been demonstrated to be successful, though that runs the risk of turning into a case like Scott describes, if there are local reasons for the diversity.\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment on the first two chapters of Scott\u0026rsquo;s book for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. I\u0026rsquo;ve ordered a copy of the book since I found the first two chapters to be both lucidly written and extremely interesting. Thanks to Gretchen G. for her comments that I\u0026rsquo;ve used to improve (I hope) the above.]\nUPDATE (April 25, 2010): Nature 407:470 features \u0026ldquo;Intelligence: Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism.\u0026rdquo; Alex (2010-02-21):\nThe slime moulds didn\u0026#39;t really \u0026quot;duplicate\u0026quot; the real Tokyo maps, and reading this paper, neither did the UK maps. In order to compare them, they first looked at the maps, and ignore where the real railway lines/motorways were, instead they just drew straight lines between each node - this makes what mathematicians call a graph, not to be confused with a chart, which is what everyone else thinks of.\nThey after each slime mould run, they would do the same. Then then would compare the two graphs.\nThe details of each map could vary considerably, with the real world having obstacles to avoid like rivers and mountains, and the slime moulds having their own variations.\nHowever, even though they threw out all the details, and concentrated on the links, there wasn't really a good match. In the UK example, the best they could do was the real life graph was a sub-graph of the slime mould.\nNow, back to the 'how unlikely is this'.\nIf you have a limited number of nodes, and a small number of connections between them, then you are going to get a graph which looks kinda like a road or rail network. The only other possibilities are either really unlikely (like a circular route where every node has links to exactly 2 other nodes), or eliminated by the rules, such as linking every node to every other node.\nIt's really just another example of pareidolia.\nLippard (2010-02-21):\nAlex: Did you look at the published articles? I only read the second-hand reports that I linked to. From your description, it sounds like not very good science--are they really just making subjective visual comparisons? One of the articles suggested they planned to add topographic features, which would add some more real-life constraint to the model.\nGiven your descriptions, the slime mold cases gave me a good title but not good evidence. The sorts of claims Jared Diamond makes about geographical features in Guns, Germs, and Steel would be a similar kind of evidence\u0026ndash;some historians find his work to inappropriately attribute \u0026quot;agency\u0026quot; to non-humans, but that seems to me to be a mistaken notion of the term \u0026quot;agency.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2010-02-21):\nThe previous comment has been reposted on the relevant blog post (from 2007).\nAlex (2010-02-23):\nThe UK paper is availble at arxiv.org, for free. The Japanese paper is at the web page for Science magazine, but it's per pay. However, the key sentence from the abstract says it all\nWe show that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum forms networks with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost to those of real-world infrastructure networks—in this case, the Tokyo rail system\nComparable efficiency is not the same as identical.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/seeing-like-slime-mold.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLand reforms instituted in Vietnam under French rule, in India under the British, and in rural czarist Russia introduced simplified rights of ownership and standardized measurements of size and shape that were primarily for the benefit of the state, e.g., for tax purposes.  James C. Scott’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Like-State-Condition-Institution/dp/0300078153/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSeeing as a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e gives these and numerous other examples of ways in which standardization and simplification have been used by the state to make legible and control resources (and people) within its borders.  He recounts cases of how the imposition of such standardization often fails or at least has unintended negative consequences, such as his example of German scientific forestry’s introduction of a monoculture of Norway spruce or Scotch pine designed to maximize lumber production, but which led to die-offs a century later.  (The monoculture problem of reduced resilience/increased vulnerability is one which has been recognized in an information security context, as well, e.g., in Dan Geer et al.\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://cryptome.org/cyberinsecurity.htm\"\u003epaper on Microsoft monoculture\u003c/a\u003e that got him fired from @stake and \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/05/dan_geer_on_tra.html\"\u003ehis more recent work\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nScott’s examples of state-imposed uniformity should not, however, be misconstrued to infer that any case of uniformity is state-imposed, or that such regularities, even if state-imposed, don\u0026rsquo;t have underlying natural constraints.  Formalized institutions of property registration and title have appeared in the crevices between states, for example \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/City-Darkness-Life-Kowloon/dp/1873200137/jimlippardswebpa/\"\u003ein the squatter community of Kowloon Walled City\u003c/a\u003e that existed from 1947-1993 on a piece of the Kowloon peninsula that was claimed by both China and Britain, yet governed by neither.  While the institutions of Kowloon Walled City may have been patterned after those familiar to its residents from the outside world, they were internally imposed rather than by a state.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPatterns of highway network design present another apparent counterexample.  Scott discusses the design of highways around Paris as being designed by the state to intentionally route traffic through Paris, as well as to allow for military and law enforcement activity within the city in order to put down insurrections.  But motorway patterns in the UK appear to have a more organic structure, as a recent experiment with slime molds oddly confirmed.  Two researchers at the University of West of England \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.300-designing-highways-the-slime-mould-way.html\"\u003econstructed a map of the UK out of agar, putting clumps of oat flakes at the locations of the nine most populous cities\u003c/a\u003e.  They then introduced a slime mold colony to the mix, and in many cases it extruded tendrils to feed on the oat flakes creating patterns which aligned with the existing motorway design, with some variations.  A similar experiment with \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15328524\"\u003ea map of cities around Tokyo duplicated the Tokyo railway network\u003c/a\u003e, slime-mold style.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15495944\"\u003esimilarity between transportation networks and evolved biological systems for transporting blood and sap\u003c/a\u003e may simply be because they are efficient and resilient solutions.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThese examples, while not refuting Scott’s point about frequent failures in top-down imposition of order, suggest that it may be possible for states to achieve success in certain projects by facilitating bottom-up development of ordered structures.  The state often imposes an order that has already been developed via some other means\u0026ndash;e.g., electrical standards were set up by industry bodies before being codified, IETF standards for IP which don\u0026rsquo;t have the force of law yet are globally implemented. In other cases, states may ratify an emerging order by, e.g., preempting a diversity of state rules with a set that have been demonstrated to be successful, though that runs the risk of turning into a case like Scott describes, if there are local reasons for the diversity.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n[A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment on the first two chapters of Scott\u0026rsquo;s book for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar.  I\u0026rsquo;ve ordered a copy of the book since I found the first two chapters to be both lucidly written and extremely interesting.  Thanks to Gretchen G. for her comments that I\u0026rsquo;ve used to improve (I hope) the above.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (April 25, 2010): \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c/i\u003e 407:470 features \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slime_mold_solves_maze.png\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Intelligence: Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Seeing like a slime mold"},{"content":"It has now been demonstrated, as no surprise to skeptics, that Rom Houben was not communicating via facilitated communication, a discredited method by which facilitators have typed for autistic children. A proper test was conducted by Dr. Steven Laureys with the help of the Belgian Skeptics, and it was found that the communications were coming from the facilitator, not from Houben.\nA blogger who was a vociferous critic of James Randi and Arthur Caplan for pointing out that facilitated communication is a bogus technique and who had attempted to use Houben\u0026rsquo;s case to argue that Terri Schiavo also may have been conscious is not only unwilling to admit he was wrong, but is deleting comments that point to the results of this new test. I had posted a comment along the lines of \u0026ldquo;Dr. Laureys performed additional tests with Houben and the facilitator and found that, in fact, the communications were coming from the facilitator, not Houben\u0026rdquo; with a link to the Neurologica blog; this blogger called that \u0026ldquo;spam\u0026rdquo; (on the basis of my posting a similar comment on another blog, perhaps) and \u0026ldquo;highly misleading\u0026rdquo; (on the basis of nothing).\nAs I\u0026rsquo;ve said all along, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that Houben isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;locked in\u0026rdquo; and conscious, but facilitated communication provides no evidence that he is.\n(Previously, previously.)\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2010-02-20):\nThe comparison to Schiavo is especially silly, given that both pre-mortem cranial imaging and post-mortem physical exam indicated that substantial portions of her brain were simply MIA. AFAIK, this is not the case for Houben, nor for the recently-reported cases of brain scans detecting apparent concious activity in similar patients.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/rom-houben-not-communicating-blogger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt has now been demonstrated, as no surprise to skeptics, that Rom Houben was not communicating via facilitated communication, a discredited method by which facilitators have typed for autistic children.  A proper test \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3938\"\u003ewas conducted by Dr. Steven Laureys with the help of the Belgian Skeptics\u003c/a\u003e, and it was found that the communications were coming from the facilitator, not from Houben.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA blogger who was \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/11/23/reason-not-to-dehydrate-man-speaking-after-23-years-in-locked-in-state/#comment-4560\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003ea vociferous critic of James Randi and Arthur Caplan for pointing out that facilitated communication is a bogus technique\u003c/a\u003e and who had attempted to use Houben\u0026rsquo;s case to argue that Terri Schiavo also may have been conscious is not only unwilling to admit he was wrong, but is \u003ca href=\"http://sailorette.blogspot.com/2009/11/twenty-three-years-ago.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003edeleting comments that point to the results of this new test\u003c/a\u003e.  I had posted a comment along the lines of \u0026ldquo;Dr. Laureys performed additional tests with Houben and the facilitator and found that, in fact, the communications were coming from the facilitator, not Houben\u0026rdquo; with \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/Dr.%20Laureys%20performed%20additional%20tests%20with%20Houben%20and%20the%20facilitator%20and%20found%20that,%20in%20fact,%20the%20communications%20were%20coming%20from%20the%20facilitator,%20not%20Houben:%20%20http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1596\"\u003ea link to the Neurologica blog\u003c/a\u003e; this blogger called that \u0026ldquo;spam\u0026rdquo; (on the basis of my posting a similar comment on another blog, perhaps) and \u0026ldquo;highly misleading\u0026rdquo; (on the basis of nothing).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs I\u0026rsquo;ve said all along, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that Houben isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;locked in\u0026rdquo; and conscious, but facilitated communication provides no evidence that he is.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/why-not-put-rom-houbens-facilitated.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/what-would-be-more-horrifying-than.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rom Houben not communicating; blogger suppresses the evidence"},{"content":"From CNN:\nA Florida woman has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of a lottery millionaire whose body was found buried under fresh concrete, authorities said.\nDorice Donegan Moore, 37, was arrested last week on charges of accessory after the fact regarding a first-degree murder in the death of Abraham Shakespeare, 43, said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee. She remains in the Hillsborough County Jail, he said.\nMoore befriended Shakespeare after he won a $31 million Florida lottery prize in 2006 and was named a person of interest in the case after Shakespeare disappeared, authorities said.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/another-lottery-tragedy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://us.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/19/lottery.winner.slaying/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA Florida woman has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of a lottery millionaire whose body was found buried under fresh concrete, authorities said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDorice Donegan Moore, 37, was arrested last week on charges of accessory after the fact regarding a first-degree murder in the death of Abraham Shakespeare, 43, said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee. She remains in the Hillsborough County Jail, he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMoore befriended Shakespeare after he won a $31 million Florida lottery prize in 2006 and was named a person of interest in the case after Shakespeare disappeared, authorities said.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another lottery tragedy"},{"content":"One of the regular critics of creationism on the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup (where the wonderful Talk Origins Archive FAQs were originally developed) was a guy who posted under the name \u0026ldquo;Dr. Pepper.\u0026rdquo; His posts would always include the same request\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Please state the scientific theory of creationism.\u0026rdquo; It was a request that was rarely responded to, and never adequately answered, because there is no scientific theory of creationism.\nA parallel question for those who are skeptical about anthropogenic climate change is to ask for a global climate model that more accurately reflects temperature changes over the last century than those used by the IPCC, without including the effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases. For comparison, here\u0026rsquo;s a review of the 23 models which contributed to the IPCC AR4 assessment. While these models are clearly not perfect, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t those who deny anthropogenic global warming be able to do better?\nJay Alt (2010-02-12):\nThe goals are different. The method usually consists of throwing manure at a wall. Whichever misrepresentation will stick in the minds of readers or listeners is the best theory for their purposes.\nLippard (2010-02-13):\nJay: Sorry, what goals are different? What method are you talking about? What misrepresentations? Who\u0026#39;s the \u0026quot;they\u0026quot; whose purposes you are referring to? Can you be specific?\nKtisophilos (2010-06-29):\nSounds like the \u0026quot;best in field\u0026quot; fallacy. Considering the admittedly cliché-named \u0026quot;climate-gate\u0026quot; emails, even the best wasn\u0026#39;t good enough without unethical procedures to protect it from criticism.\nLippard (2010-06-30):\nKtisophilos: Your point is well taken, that even the best model could be wrong. However, global climate models were pretty accurate in 1988 with James Hansen\u0026#39;s Congressional testimony, even despite the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, and they\u0026#39;ve gotten better since then. I disagree with your assertion that unethical behavior was necessary to protect it from criticism. The evidence is strongly supportive of AGW, and most of its critics engage in arguments that are fare far poorer under their own standards of evidence. AGW critics are far too ready to accept bogus claims from fake scientists, e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZzwRwFDXw0\nAlso: \u0026quot;Scientific expertise lacking among 'doubters' of climate change\u0026quot;\nNaomi Oreskes gives some of the history behind organized efforts to create doubt about AGW in her Point of Inquiry interview.\nI've also reported on the organizations of disinformation on climate change at this blog.\nLippard (2010-07-08):\nKtisophilos: There were five or six copies of a comment from you awaiting moderation--I *thought* I approved one and then deleted the duplicates, but I don\u0026#39;t see the approved one. Sorry about that, it was not my intent to block your comment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/02/where-is-global-climate-model-without.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the regular critics of creationism on the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup (where the wonderful \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003eTalk Origins Archive FAQs\u003c/a\u003e were originally developed) was a guy who posted under the name \u0026ldquo;Dr. Pepper.\u0026rdquo;  His posts would always include the same request\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Please state the scientific theory of creationism.\u0026rdquo;  It was a request that was rarely responded to, and never adequately answered, because there is no scientific theory of creationism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA parallel question for those who are skeptical about anthropogenic climate change is to ask for a global climate model that more accurately reflects temperature changes over the last century than those used by the IPCC, without including the effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases.  For comparison, \u003ca href=\"http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/models-2/\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s a review of the 23 models which contributed to the IPCC AR4 assessment\u003c/a\u003e.  While these models are clearly not perfect, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t those who deny anthropogenic global warming be able to do better?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where is the global climate model without AGW?"},{"content":"After a multi-month hiatus, the ApostAZ podcast returns:\nEpisode 019 Atheism and Spooky Bullshite in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Intro- Joe Rogan \u0026ldquo;Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark (George Carlin Remix)\u0026rdquo;. Paranormal Activity, Chick Tracts and Ugandan Love.The guy whose name you couldn\u0026rsquo;t think of around 16:22-16:30\u0026ndash;of the Stop Sylvia Brown website\u0026ndash;is Robert Lancaster.\nHistorical Comments M! (2010-02-04):\nAround the 25 minute-mark Brad brought up our recent cross-blogging dialogue and gave some commentary on our discussion. I take great exception to his gross mischaracterization of my arguments. Here is a partial transcript of the pertinent comments: Brad - Vocab will read a certain amount of texts from one of his apologists and he’ll copy pasta … he’ll attribute it and put quotes around it but he’ll put that as an argument to something Jim that broke down himself and examined the truth value of and Vocab says, “Yeah, but this apologist says this.”\n\u0026hellip; So that’s where you can say one person is a skeptic and one is not. If Vocab is just openly copy pasta, puts that shit up there - that’s not skeptical.\nShannon – No. If he’s not formulating his own thoughts and opinions and backing them up with justifications and where his logical path was to get there. \u0026lt;/i\u0026gt; I know Shannon was not able to follow the Personhood convo w/Jim but I would say by and large I did exactly what he said should be done in his last sentence there. In a research paper, if the author is not an expert in the field they are writing – and therefore not writing a monograph - they will often cite sources to back up their claims. This is one reason why articles in academic journals are often heavily footnoted.\nIt should be self-evident this is wholly different than the practice of utilizing “copy pasta” in place of actual argumentation. If you read my posts in our personhood discussion, you will see that I did not merely substitute substantive argumentation by gratuitously pasting in quotations from “apologists”.\nThe charge of quoting apologists is completely unfounded, anyway. An apologist is usually understood as one who defends and clarifies the truthfulness of the Christian faith. Does Brad want to redefine an apologist as a medical professional or ethicist who is pro-life? Even if all I did was quote “apologists” – which was not that case - it doesn’t actually prove they are necessarily wrong. The arguments themselves still need to be handled.\nAs a further point, many of the quotes I used come from the abortion advocates themselves. This is one way to make sure you give the other side a chance to speak for themselves. Here is a cursory glance at some of the abortion advocates I quoted:\nSadja Goldsmith (of Planned Parenthood), Suzanne Poppema (wrote a book on why she is an abortionist), Peter Singer (a Princeton ethicist), Judith Jarvis Thomson (philosopher at MIT), Crick and Watson (Nobel laureates for their DNA work), Joseph Fletcher (the “situational ethics” guy), Winston L. Duke (writing in Reason mag), Warren Hern (prominent Colorado abortionist/activist), Eileen McDonagh (legal scholar), Steven Pinker (of MIT fame), David Boonin (pro-abortion philosopher) and Jim (that's you!)\nI also quoted two pro-choice moderates - their positions are difficult to categorize - Daniel Callahan and Jane English. That’s fifteen citations from those who disagree with me and remember, that doesn’t count the continuing comments under each blog. I also quoted several textbooks on embryology and fetalology.\nThe term ‘copy pasta’ is a pejorative and usually implies copying the text from one site on the Internet to another. Most of my quotes came from actual physical books I touched and handled. The way most of the quotations ended up in my posts was by me hunt-and-peck typing, not by hitting CONTROL C/V.\nI am glad that Brad was reading at least some of the posts and even commenting on some of them – this is a good thing. I am also happy that the discussion Jim and I had was given a little more attention – as I think it was a very helpful back-and-forth (shout out to Jim for making that happen). However, I am extremely dismayed that my arguments were severely mischaracterized. Perhaps future ApostAZ podcasts can avoid such errors.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/01/apostaz-podcast-19.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a multi-month hiatus, \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003ethe ApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e returns:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz019.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 019\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Spooky Bullshite in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Intro- Joe Rogan \u0026ldquo;Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark (George Carlin Remix)\u0026rdquo;. Paranormal Activity, Chick Tracts and Ugandan Love.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe guy whose name you couldn\u0026rsquo;t think of around 16:22-16:30\u0026ndash;of the Stop Sylvia Brown website\u0026ndash;is Robert Lancaster.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eM!\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2010-02-04)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAround the 25 minute-mark Brad brought up our recent cross-blogging dialogue and gave some commentary on our discussion. I take great exception to his gross mischaracterization of my arguments. Here is a partial transcript of the pertinent comments:\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e  Brad - Vocab will read a certain amount of texts from one of his apologists and he’ll copy pasta … he’ll attribute it and put quotes around it but he’ll put that as an argument to something Jim that broke down himself and examined the truth value of and Vocab says, “Yeah, but this apologist says this.”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #19"},{"content":"Of late there has been a lot of debate about the nature, scope, and role of skepticism. Does skepticism imply atheism? Are \u0026ldquo;climate change skeptics\u0026rdquo; skeptics? Must skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts? Should skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims?\nI think \u0026ldquo;skepticism\u0026rdquo; can refer to multiple different things, and my answers to the above questions differ in some cases depending on how the term is being used. It can refer to philosophical skepticism, to scientific skepticism, to \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry,\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;doubt\u0026rdquo; broadly speaking, to the \u0026ldquo;skeptical movement,\u0026rdquo; to skeptical organizations, and to members of the class of people who identify themselves as skeptics.\nMy quick answers to the above questions, then, are:\nDoes skepticism imply atheism? No, regardless of which definition you choose. It is reasonable to argue that proper application of philosophical skepticism should lead to atheism, and to argue that scientific skepticism should include methodological naturalism, but I prefer to identify skepticism with a commitment to a methodology rather than its outputs. That still involves a set of beliefs\u0026ndash;which are themselves subject to reflection, criticism, and evaluation\u0026ndash;but it is both a more minimal set than the outputs of skepticism and involves commitment to values as well as what is scientifically testable. My main opposition to defining skepticism by its outputs is that that is a set of beliefs that can change over time with access to new and better information, and shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be held dogmatically.\nAre \u0026ldquo;climate change skeptics\u0026rdquo; skeptics? I would say that some are, and some aren\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;some are outright \u0026ldquo;deniers\u0026rdquo; who are allowing ideology to trump science and failing to dig into the evidence. Others are digging into the evidence and just coming to (in my opinion) erroneous conclusions, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t preclude them from being skeptics so long as they\u0026rsquo;re still willing to engage and look at contrary evidence, as well as admit to mistakes and errors when they make them\u0026ndash;like relying on organizations and individuals who are demonstrably not reliable. As you\u0026rsquo;ll see below, I agree we should to try to save the term \u0026ldquo;skeptic\u0026rdquo; from being equated with denial.\nMust skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts? I think skeptical organizations and their leaders should defer to experts on topics outside of their own fields of expertise on pragmatic and ethical grounds, but individual skeptics need not necessarily do so.\nShould skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims? I think skepticism as a movement, broadly speaking, is centered on organizations that promote scientific skepticism and focus on paranormal claims, but also promote science and critical thinking, including with some overlap with religious and public policy claims, where the scientific evidence is relevant. At its fringes, though, it also includes some atheist and rationalist groups that take a broader view of skeptical inquiry. I think those central groups (like CSI, JREF, and the Skeptics Society) should keep their focus, but not as narrowly as Daniel Loxton suggests in his \u0026ldquo;Where Do We Go From Here?\u0026quot; (PDF) essay.\nHere are a few of my comments, on these same topics, from other blogs.\nComment on Michael De Dora, \u0026ldquo;Why Skeptics Should be Atheists,\u0026quot; at the Gotham Skeptic blog:\nScientific skepticism (as opposed to philosophical skepticism) no more necessitates atheism than it does amoralism. Your argument would seem to suggest that skeptics shouldn’t hold any positions that can’t be established by empirical science, which would seem to limit skeptics to descriptive, rather than normative, positions on morality and basic (as opposed to instrumental) values.\n“Skepticism” does have the sort of inherent ambiguity that “science” does, in that it can refer to process, product, or institution. I favor a methodological view of skepticism as a process, rather than defining it by its outputs. Organizations, however, seem to coalesce around sets of agreed-upon beliefs that are outputs of methodology, not just beliefs about appropriate/effective methodology; historically that set of agreed-upon beliefs has been that there is no good scientific support for paranormal and fringe science claims. As the scope of skeptical inquiry that skeptical organizations address has broadened, that leads to more conflict over issues in the sphere of politics and religion, where empirical science yields less conclusive results.\nI’d rather see skeptical organizations share some basic epistemic and ethical values that are supportive of the use of science than a commitment to a set of beliefs about the outputs of skeptical methodology. The latter seems more likely to result in dogmatism.\nComment on Daniel Loxton, \u0026ldquo;What, If Anything, Can Skeptics Say About Science?\u0026quot; at SkepticBlog:\nWhile I think the picture Daniel presents offers some good heuristics, I can’t help but note that this is really proffered normative advice about the proper relationship between the layman and the expert, which is a question that is itself a subject of research in multiple domains of expertise including philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and the law. A picture much like the one argued for here is defended by some, such as philosopher John Hardwig (”Epistemic Dependence,” Journal of Philosophy 82(1985):335-349), but criticized by others, such as philosopher Don Ihde (”Why Not Science Critics?”, International Studies in Philosophy 29(1997):45-54). There are epistemological, ethical, and political issues regarding deference to experts that are sidestepped by the above discussion. Not only is there a possibility of meta-expertise about evaluating experts, there are cases of what Harry Collins and Robert Evans call “interactional expertise” (”The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience,” Social Studies of Science 32:2(2002):235-196) where non-certified experts attain sufficient knowledge to interact at a deep level with certified experts, and challenge their practices and results (this is discussed in Evan Selanger and John Mix, “On Interactional Expertise: Pragmatic and Ontological Considerations,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3:2(2004):145-163); Steven Epstein’s book Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, 1996, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, discusses how AIDS activists developed such expertise and successfully made changes to AIDS drug research and approval processes.\nThe above discussion also doesn’t discuss context–are these proposed normative rules for skeptics in any circumstance, or only for those speaking on behalf of skeptical organizations? I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that skeptics, speaking for themselves, should be limited about questioning anything. The legal system is an example of a case where experts should be challenged and questioned–it’s a responsibility of the judge, under both the Frye and Daubert rules, to make judgments about the relevance and admissibility of expert testimony, and of laymen on the jury to decide who is more credible. (This itself raises enormous issues, which are discussed at some length by philosopher and law professor Scott Brewer, “Scientific Expert Testimony and Intellectual Due Process,” The Yale Law Journal vol. 107, 1535-1681.) Similar considerations apply to the realm of politics in a democratic society (cf. Ihde’s article).\nAll of the papers I’ve cited are reprinted in the volume The Philosophy of Expertise, edited by Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, 2006, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.\nComment on jdc325\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Trouble With Skeptics\u0026rdquo; at the Stuff And Nonsense blog:\n@AndyD I’d say that it’s possible for a skeptic to believe individual items on your list (though not the ones phrased like “the entirety of CAM”), so long as they do so because they have legitimately studied them in some depth and think that the weight of the scientific evidence supports them, or if they admit that it’s something they buy into irrationally, perhaps for the entertainment it brings or to be part of a social group. If, however, they believe in a whole bunch of such things, that’s probably evidence that they’re not quite getting the point of critical thinking and skepticism somewhere. Being a skeptic doesn’t mean that you’re always correct (as per the above comment on Skeptic Fail #7), and I don’t think it necessarily means you’re always in accord with mainstream science, either.\nSkeptic fail #6 is a pretty common one. For example, I don’t think most skeptics have a sufficient knowledge of the parapsychology literature to offer a qualified opinion, as opposed to simply repeat the positions of some of the few skeptics (like Ray Hyman and Susan Blackmore) who do.Comments (one and two) on \u0026ldquo;Open Thread #17\u0026rdquo; at Tamino\u0026rsquo;s Open Mind blog:\nRay Ladbury: I think you’re in a similar position as those who want to preserve “hacker” for those who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. I understand and appreciate the sentiment, but I think “skeptic” already has (and, unlike “hacker,” has actually always had) common currency in a much broader sense as one who doubts, for whatever reason.\nI also think that there are many skeptics involved in the organized and disorganized skeptical movement in the U.S. (the one started by CSICOP) who don’t meet your criteria of “sufficiently knowledgeable about the evidence and theory to render an educated opinion” even with respect to many paranormal and pseudoscience claims, let alone with respect to climate science. There’s an unfortunately large subset of “skeptics” in the CSICOP/JREF/Skeptics Society sense who are also climate change skeptics or deniers, as can be seen from the comments on James Randi’s brief-but-retracted semi-endorsement of the Oregon Petition Project at the JREF Swift Blog and on the posts about climate science at SkepticBlog.org.\nRay: You make a persuasive argument for attempting to preserve “skeptic.” Since I’ve just been defending against the colloquial misuse of “begs the question,” I think I can likewise endorse a defense of “skeptic” against “pseudoskeptic.” However, I think I will continue to be about as reserved in my use of “denier” as I am in my use of “liar.” I don’t make accusations of lying unless I have evidence not just that a person is uttering falsehoods, but that they’ve been presented with good evidence that they are uttering falsehoods, and continue to do so anyway.\nOn another subject, I’d love to see an equivalent of the Talk Origins Archive (https://www.talkorigins.org/), and in particular Mark Isaak’s “Index to Creationist Claims” (https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html) for climate science (and its denial). Do they already exist?\nSome previous posts at this blog on this subject may be found under the \u0026ldquo;skepticism\u0026rdquo; label, including:\n\u0026ldquo;Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; (October 21, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Skepticism, belief revision, and science\u0026rdquo; (October 21, 2009)\nAlso, back in 1993 I wrote a post to the sci.skeptic Usenet group that gave a somewhat oversimplified view of \u0026ldquo;the proper role of skeptical organizations\u0026rdquo; which was subsequently summarized in Michael Epstein\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Skeptical Viewpoint,\u0026rdquo; Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 7, no. 3, Fall 1993, pp. 311-315.\nUPDATE (January 7, 2010): Skepdude has taken issue with a couple of points above, and offers his contrary arguments at his blog. First, he says that skeptics need to defer to scientific consensus with the \u0026ldquo;possible exception\u0026rdquo; of cases where \u0026ldquo;the person is also an expert on said field.\u0026rdquo; I think that case is a definite, rather than a possible exception, but would go farther\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s possible to be an expert (or even just a well-informed amateur) in a field that has direct bearing on premises or inferences used by experts in another field where one is not expert. That can give a foothold for challenging a consensus in a field where one is not expert. For example, philosophers, mathematicians, and statisticians can spot errors of conceptual confusion, fallacious reasoning, invalid inferences, mathematical errors, and misuse of statistics. It\u0026rsquo;s possible for an entire field to have an erroneous consensus, such as that rocks cannot fall from the sky or continents cannot move. I suspect an argument can be made that erroneous consensus is more likely to occur in a field with a high degree of specialization that doesn\u0026rsquo;t have good input from generalists and related fields.\nI also am uncomfortable with talk of \u0026ldquo;deference\u0026rdquo; to experts without scope or context, as it can be taken to imply the illegitimacy of questioning or demanding evidence and explanation in support of the consensus, which to my mind should always be legitimate.\nThe second point is one which Skepdude and I have gone back and forth on before, both at his blog (here, here, and here \u0026ndash; I could have used these comments as well in the above post) and via Twitter, which is about whether skepticism implies (or inevitably leads) to atheism. It\u0026rsquo;s a position which I addressed above in my comments on Michael De Dora and on the \u0026ldquo;Stuff and Nonsense\u0026rdquo; blog, though he doesn\u0026rsquo;t directly respond to those. He writes:\nI fail to see the distinction between skepticism implying atheism and proper application of skepticism leading to atheism. I regard the two as saying the same thing, that skepticism, if consistently applied should lead to atheism. I am not sure what Jim means by philosophical skepticism, and maybe that’s where he draws the difference, but I refrain from using qualifiers in front of the word skepticism, be it philosophical or scientific. Skepticism is skepticism, we evaluate if a given claim is supported by the evidence.There is most definitely a distinction between \u0026ldquo;skepticism implies atheism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;proper application of skepticism leads to atheism.\u0026rdquo; The former is a logical claim that says atheism is derivable from skepticism, or that it\u0026rsquo;s necessarily the case that the use of skepticism (regardless of inputs?) yields atheism. The latter is a contingent claim that\u0026rsquo;s dependent upon the inputs and the result of the inquiry. If skepticism is defined as a method, the former claim would mean in essence that the game is rigged to produce a particular result for an existence claim necessarily, which would seem to me to be a serious flaw in the method, unless you thought that atheism was logically necessary. But I\u0026rsquo;m not aware of any atheists who hold that, and I know that Skepdude doesn\u0026rsquo;t, since he prefers to define atheism as mere lack of belief and has argued that there is no case to be made for positive atheism/strong atheism.\nIf we take skepticism defined as a product, as a set of output beliefs, there\u0026rsquo;s the question of which output beliefs we use. Some idealized set of beliefs that would be output from the application of skeptical processes? If so, based on which set of inputs? In what historical context? The sets of inputs, the methods, and the outputs all have changed over time, and there is also disagreement about what counts as appropriately well-established inputs and the scope of the methods. The advocate of scientific skepticism is going to place more constraints on what is available as input to the process and the scope of what the process can deal with (in such a way that the process cannot be used even to fully evaluate reasons for being a skeptic, which likely involve values and commitments that are axiomatic or a priori). Methodological naturalism is likely to be part of the definition of the process, which means that theism cannot be an output belief\u0026ndash;I think this is probably what Skepdude means when he says that atheism defined as a lack of belief is a product of skepticism. But note that the set of output beliefs from this process is a subset of what it is reasonable to believe, unless the advocate of this view wants to assert that the commitment to skepticism itself is not reasonable to believe\u0026ndash;in virtue of the fact that it is not subject to a complete evaluation by the process. (As an aside, I think that it is possible for the process of skepticism thus defined to yield a conclusion of its own inadequacy to address certain questions, and in fact, that if we were to observe certain things, to yield the conclusion that methodological naturalism should be rejected.)\nIf we look at skepticism more broadly, where philosophical arguments more generally are acceptable as input or method, atheism (in the positive or strong form) then becomes a possible output. As an atheist, I think that use of the best available evidence and arguments and the best available methodology does lead to a conclusion of atheism (and 69.7% of philosophy faculty and Ph.D.s agree), that still doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that everyone\u0026rsquo;s going to get there (as 69.3% of philosophy faculty and Ph.D.s specializing in philosophy of religion don\u0026rsquo;t) or that anyone who doesn\u0026rsquo;t has necessarily done anything irrational in the process, but for a different reason than in the prior case. That reason is that we don\u0026rsquo;t function by embodying this skeptical process, taking all of our input data, running it through the process, and believing only what comes out the other side. That\u0026rsquo;s not consistent with how we engage in initial learning or can practically proceed in our daily lives. Rather, we have a vast web of beliefs that we accumulate over our lifetimes, and selectively focus our attention and use skeptical processes on subsets of our beliefs. The practical demands of our daily lives, of our professions, of our social communities, and so forth place constraints on us (see my answers to questions in \u0026ldquo;Skepticism, belief revision, and science\u0026rdquo;). And even with unlimited resources, I think there are reasons that we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want everyone to apply skeptical methods to everything they believed\u0026ndash;there is value to false belief in generating new hypotheses, avoiding Type I errors, keeping true beliefs from becoming \u0026ldquo;dead dogma,\u0026rdquo; and so forth (which I discussed in my SkeptiCamp Phoenix presentation last year, \u0026ldquo;Positive side-effects of misinformation\u0026rdquo;).\nUPDATE (January 16, 2009): Skepdude responds here.\nbadrescher (2010-01-07):\nWell said.\nJoel (2010-01-07):\nDoes skepticism imply a-homeopathism? Well, no! Skepticism gives me a methodology for thinking about homeopathy, not an answer to its truth or falsity.\nLippard (2010-01-07):\nJivlain: That\u0026#39;s sort of the direction I favor for skepticism, but I can\u0026#39;t entirely dispose of the \u0026quot;as a product\u0026quot; sense of the term for skepticism or science. That\u0026#39;s because I have to agree with Stephen Jay Gould, in \u0026quot;Evolution as Fact and Theory,\u0026quot; that \u0026quot;In science, \u0026#39;fact\u0026#39; can only mean \u0026#39;confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.\u0026#39; I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.\u0026quot; The critique that Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood have made of evidence-based medicine for trying to be purely methodological, with no constraints on prior plausibility for inputs to the process, is a good one\u0026ndash;and one which directly addresses your example of homeopathy.\nIn philosophy of science, I think Thomas Nickles has had a lot to say about inputs to the scientific process in the form of using prior work to generate new hypotheses.\nJoel (2010-01-07):\nThat\u0026#39;s not to say that we cannot include prior plausibility in the methodology, such as in Michael Shermer\u0026#39;s version of the Baloney Detection Kit. I don't think think that science-based medicine necessarily removes the notion a methodology, but it does (reasonably) criticise EBM as not taking all the inputs into account. You can apply the same sort of Bayes' theorem-informed thinking to skepticism as in SBM. The JREF million-dollar challenge, for example, the final test uses a strong p-value - obviously if you're going to test a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of various implausible claims, you don't want 5% of your applicants walking away with a large check.\n(I'm Jivlain from above, btw, I've modified my Blogger profile between posts)\nLippard (2010-01-07):\nJoel: You\u0026#39;re absolutely correct that SBM doesn\u0026#39;t *remove* the methodology, it just says you need something more. It seems to me that adding prior plausibility to the methodology is essentially the same thing as placing a constraint on inputs on the basis of past outputs.\nThis all gets a lot more complicated when you ask the question of whose inputs and outputs? We really have to look social groups and institutions rather than individuals, since none of us can really get off the ground from a position of Cartesian doubt (or even truly get into such a position, for we still retain conceptual schemes that we've picked up from our initial learning).\nbadrescher (2010-01-07):\nIn the literature on the subject of critical thinking, the most widely accepted definition of \u0026quot;rational\u0026quot; is not purely methodological. It includes holding a set of beliefs which are not inconsistent with knowledge. This definition may not exclude religion, but it certainly excludes belief in Big Foot, telepathy, and homeopathy given that the individual knows that those claims have failed repeated tests. Regardless, what I am more interested in the discussion here is some something less discussed elsewhere, and that is tolerance of diversity in views and approaches. As you've expressed here, we are a community of individuals. The culture of that community forms itself, but it does not do so around the views of an individual unless those views are shared by all.\nWhile we may talk about what we wish and hope the movement and the individuals within it would do/be, it is presumptuous to assume that one's opinion about that is \u0026quot;the one true view\u0026quot;.\nPersonally, I am turned off by sweeping statements about the way people should behave, whether I agree with the substance of statements or not, when they are framed as dictates rather than opinions. There is a way to criticize things (e.g., voicing irrational views) without pretension: present an argument addressing the specific \u0026quot;offense\u0026quot; in an open forum.\nLippard (2010-01-07):\nbadrescher: I agree. My personal experience has sometimes involved clashes with skeptical organizations and individuals, and I might have considered myself to be outside of the \u0026quot;organized skeptical movement\u0026quot; had it not been for support from leaders of local groups and the rise of competitive national groups like the Skeptics Society and JREF (and now a huge proliferation of them online). I'm rather wary of the possibilities of groupthink and the conversion of a set of output beliefs into \u0026quot;dead dogma\u0026quot; that becomes immune to further application of skeptical methodology\u0026ndash;that drives my emphasis of methodology over output, though I think Joel's point shows that I shouldn't push that too far.\nYou mention \u0026quot;sweeping statements about the way people should behave\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;I think I'm willing to put more constraints on behavior than I am on belief. I've found that I better enjoy conversations with some believers than with some skeptics or atheists, where the former are open-minded and familiar with the skeptical arguments and know the subject matter in detail, and where the latter are just repeating what they've read or heard from the skeptical or atheist literature. I'd rather be challenged and have an opportunity to learn.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-16):\nJim said, \u0026quot;I\u0026#39;ve found that I better enjoy conversations with some believers...\u0026quot; I have had the same experience. I have been doing bible study with my aunt, and enjoying it. But I\u0026#39;m a second-generation atheist. I shared an office with a Christian Fundamentalist, and then a Christian Scientist. I enjoyed many discussions with both. But when it comes to climate science, many people don\u0026#39;t control their behavior in the way they would during a debate about religion, and the result is unpleasant. As to definitions of valid \u0026quot;skepticism\u0026quot;, I find your definition unsatisfying. For example, \u0026quot;commitment to values as well as what is scientifically testable\u0026quot; rests upon a clear definition of scientific method, as do other similar statements you make. But without a solution for the New Riddle of Induction, any effort to define science is dead on arrival, and so it seems to me that entire argument collapses because it has no solid foundation.\nLippard (2010-01-16):\nKeven: I think that \u0026quot;method\u0026quot; has to be pluralistic rather than singular--there is no single universal scientific method. Do you think that there are no solutions to Goodman's \u0026quot;new riddle of induction\u0026quot;? (For that matter, what about Hempel's paradox and Hume's fork?)\nHow about John D. Norton's 2006 Synthese paper (PDF here)? He argues that there are asymmetries between \u0026quot;green\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;grue\u0026quot; that can be exploited to account for a difference in projectibility of terms in all but contrived circumstances, and in the contrived circumstances, \u0026quot;green\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;grue\u0026quot; are variant descriptions of the same physical facts with only ineffable differences.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-17):\nJim: I like your idea that there are different versions of scientific method. That would put us on a level with people of different religions, each confident in their own, but respectful of the others in debate. I don't like any existing solutions to the New Riddle of Induction, other than my own, which have enjoyed for the past thirteen years. I looked at the one you pointed to (thank you for that), and I'd say it begs the question. Who is to judge what is a contrived circumstance? And the real contention about what's scientific and what's not would be hard to address with that solution. For example, it scientific to fit a twenty-parameter model to sixteen data points, and say your model is a valid scientific theorem? If not, why not?\nI'm interested in your suggestion that a skeptic need not be an atheist. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that we can put on our skeptical hat and talk about gravity, and then take it off again and talk about religion, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm inclined to agree with you.\nUnless, of course, we apply skepticism to the idea that we will benefit from taking off our skeptical hat. And at that point, the trouble starts.\nLippard (2010-01-18):\nKeven: Got any pointers to your solution? Have you read Stalnaker\u0026#39;s book, _Grue_? I think the different versions of methodology are not merely subjective fashions, but applicable to different fields and questions.\n\u0026quot;If I understand you correctly, you are saying that we can put on our skeptical hat and talk about gravity, and then take it off again and talk about religion, and there's nothing wrong with that.\u0026quot; That's not quite what I had in mind, though I agree that we can do that and there's not necessarily anything wrong with it (at least, if we're just talking, as opposed to, say, making public policy). Rather, I see \u0026quot;scientific skepticism\u0026quot; as having a somewhat restricted scope. Although I favor the \u0026quot;naturalistic turn\u0026quot; in philosophy, it seems to me there's always a residue of philosophy that doesn't end up as subject matter of science (though even that residual philosophy should be informed by science). And, even given the broader notion of skepticism that includes doing philosophy, I think as a simple practical matter we can't subject everything we believe to skeptical evaluation, at least not at the individual level.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-19):\nJim, I did look at the book Grue about ten years ago (or so it seems). I did not see any solutions that appealed to me, although I enjoyed looking at them. You will find my solution here. Please note that I did not come to your site to peddle my ideas, but rather to understand yours. When I read your essay, I was looking for you to describe a rule you might use to determine when it's okay not to be skeptical, or the converse. (I apologize if I missed your point.) I want to better understand people who accept some things on faith, and yet who also show ample skepticism on other subjects. I know, for example, a high energy physicist who believes the world is only five thousand years old. Can you propose a system for selecting subjects about which we will be skeptical, on a day-to-day basis? I have no answer to that question myself, other than \u0026quot;always be skeptical\u0026quot;, which is, as you know, rather tiring.\nLippard (2010-01-22):\nKeven: I\u0026#39;m afraid I don\u0026#39;t have a rule to suggest. Each of us has competing values and preferences on a day-to-day basis, some of which include getting along with other people who have different views, behaving ethically, and (at least for most of us) not being an arrogant ass--so even if we\u0026#39;re *being* skeptical, we may not *express* that skepticism at all times. There are also forms of social activity which don\u0026#39;t involve intellectual commitments, where skepticism may not be valuable (e.g., enjoying a work of fiction).\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-24):\nWell, how about we say that we will never punish anyone for being skeptical?\nLippard (2010-01-29):\nThat\u0026#39;s probably too strong for a general rule (depending on what you mean by \u0026quot;punish\u0026quot;), since skepticism can indicate an insulting lack of trust or be unwarranted in the face of overwhelming evidence (like the kid who keeps asking \u0026quot;why?\u0026quot; just to be annoying). It\u0026#39;s appropriate to treat certain expressions of skepticism as rudeness, denial, specious reasoning, etc.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-30):\nI\u0026#39;m prepared to accept anyone being skeptical, so long as they don\u0026#39;t insult me for my beliefs. As to people denial, I\u0026#39;d have to prove that the person knows that what they believe in is untrue, but is trying to convince themselves otherwise. I\u0026#39;d have to assume someone was innocent of such behavior until proven guilty. So I don\u0026#39;t see any practical problem with accepting skepticism. Perhaps you can give me an example where a person declining to share one of your beliefs would necessarily be rude, and then I\u0026#39;ll reconsider.\nLippard (2010-02-01):\nKeven: Here\u0026#39;s someone being rude by refusing to accept ordinary assertions: Me: The other day, I was driving home and \u0026hellip;\nJerk: You can drive? Do you even have a car?\nMe: Yes, I've been driving since I was 16. As I was saying, I was driving home and I saw a billboard for a product that was hilariously bad \u0026hellip;\nJerk: I don't believe it. Where would you have seen a billboard? And you still haven't proven that you can drive.\nMe: Look, here's my driver's license, and that's my car right out there in the parking lot. How about letting me finish my story?\nNote that it's not the lack of acceptance that's rude, it's the expression of rejection in the given context.\nI would also define \u0026quot;denial\u0026quot; somewhat broader than you in that it doesn't have to involve conscious deception. One can be in denial by a process of self-deception that involves refusing to treat evidence with comparable standards, effectively having blinders by following confirmation bias and not seeking disconfirming sources, etc.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/01/few-comments-on-nature-and-scope-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOf late there has been a lot of debate about the nature, scope, and role of skepticism.  Does skepticism imply atheism?  Are \u0026ldquo;climate change skeptics\u0026rdquo; skeptics?  Must skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts?  Should skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think \u0026ldquo;skepticism\u0026rdquo; can refer to multiple different things, and my answers to the above questions differ in some cases depending on how the term is being used.  It can refer to philosophical skepticism, to scientific skepticism, to \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry,\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;doubt\u0026rdquo; broadly speaking, to the \u0026ldquo;skeptical movement,\u0026rdquo; to skeptical organizations, and to members of the class of people who identify themselves as skeptics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy quick answers to the above questions, then, are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDoes skepticism imply atheism?\u003c/span\u003e  No, regardless of which definition you choose.  It is reasonable to argue that proper application of philosophical skepticism should lead to atheism, and to argue that scientific skepticism should include methodological naturalism, but I prefer to identify skepticism with a commitment to a methodology rather than its outputs.  That still involves a set of beliefs\u0026ndash;which are themselves subject to reflection, criticism, and evaluation\u0026ndash;but it is both a more minimal set than the outputs of skepticism and involves commitment to values as well as what is scientifically testable.  My main opposition to defining skepticism by its outputs is that that is a set of beliefs that can change over time with access to new and better information, and shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be held dogmatically.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAre \u0026ldquo;climate change skeptics\u0026rdquo; skeptics?\u003c/span\u003e  I would say that some are, and some aren\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;some are outright \u0026ldquo;deniers\u0026rdquo; who are allowing ideology to trump science and failing to dig into the evidence.  Others are digging into the evidence and just coming to (in my opinion) erroneous conclusions, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t preclude them from being skeptics so long as they\u0026rsquo;re still willing to engage and look at contrary evidence, as well as admit to mistakes and errors when they make them\u0026ndash;like relying on organizations and individuals who are demonstrably not reliable. As you\u0026rsquo;ll see below, I agree we should to try to save the term \u0026ldquo;skeptic\u0026rdquo; from being equated with denial.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMust skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts?\u003c/span\u003e  I think skeptical organizations and their leaders should defer to experts on topics outside of their own fields of expertise on pragmatic and ethical grounds, but individual skeptics need not necessarily do so.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eShould skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims?\u003c/span\u003e  I think skepticism as a movement, broadly speaking, is centered on organizations that promote scientific skepticism and focus on paranormal claims, but also promote science and critical thinking, including with some overlap with religious and public policy claims, where the scientific evidence is relevant.  At its fringes, though, it also includes some atheist and rationalist groups that take a broader view of skeptical inquiry.  I think those central groups (like CSI, JREF, and the Skeptics Society) should keep their focus, but not as narrowly as Daniel Loxton suggests in his \u003ca href=\"https://www.skeptic.com/downloads/WhereDoWeGoFromHere.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Where Do We Go From Here?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) essay.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are a few of my comments, on these same topics, from other blogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nycskeptics.org/blog/?p=1628\u0026amp;cpage=1#comment-544\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eComment\u003c/a\u003e on Michael De Dora, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nycskeptics.org/blog/?p=1628\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why Skeptics Should be Atheists,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e at the Gotham Skeptic blog:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A few comments on the nature and scope of skepticism"},{"content":"I recently posted this at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup group\u0026rsquo;s discussion forum in a thread titled \u0026ldquo;atheism v. agnosticism,\u0026rdquo; and thought it might be worth reposting here:\nThere are lots of ways to define these terms, to the extent that you can\u0026rsquo;t be sure how people are using them unless you ask.\nThe general population of English speakers understands atheism to be equivalent to what Michael Martin calls \u0026ldquo;positive atheism\u0026rdquo; and what used to be commonly known among Internet atheists as \u0026ldquo;strong atheism\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;an active disbelief in the existence of gods. That\u0026rsquo;s a position which does have a burden of proof over mere nonbelief, also known as weak atheism or negative atheism. George H. Smith made the same distinction using the terms explicit vs. implicit atheism. Richard Dawkins complicated matters by redefining \u0026ldquo;strong atheism\u0026rdquo; as absolute certainty that there is no God (position 7 on his scale). I wish he had chosen a different term, as I think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to associate positive atheism/strong atheism with certainty, proof, or even knowledge.\nI used to like this distinction, but am less enamored with it because \u0026ldquo;weak atheism\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;negative atheism\u0026rdquo; or atheism as mere lack of belief in gods has a few logical problems as a basis for anything. A lack of belief is not a position, it cannot be used to motivate action or to infer conclusions from. Those who say that they are only atheists in the weak sense, however, do join groups and appear to draw inferences and conclusions as though they are using the nonexistence of gods as a premise, which means either that they are really implicitly using strong atheism as a position, or they are drawing those inferences based on other meta-beliefs.\nThe advantage of equating atheism with weak atheism is that theism and atheism then become contradictories which cover the entire space of logical possibilities\u0026ndash;you either have a belief in one or more gods, or you don\u0026rsquo;t. Under that definition, there\u0026rsquo;s no space for agnosticism except as a subset of one or both of atheism and theism.\nThe definition of \u0026ldquo;agnosticism\u0026rdquo; that was given earlier in this thread as pertaining to the possibility of knowledge about the existence or nonexistence of gods then gives you two dimensions, on which you can have agnostic atheists (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe there are gods, and it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to know), agnostic theists (I believe in at least one god, but it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to know), gnostic atheists (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe there are gods, and it is possible to know there aren\u0026rsquo;t), and gnostic theists (I believe there\u0026rsquo;s at least one god, and it\u0026rsquo;s possible to know). Of those positions, I think agnostic theism is difficult to make a case for with respect to most conceptions of God, except for deism and other forms of uninvolved gods.\nBut most people who call themselves agnostics aren\u0026rsquo;t using that definition, they\u0026rsquo;re using a notion that is a particular form of weak atheism, that holds to something like there is a parity between arguments for and against the existence of gods, or that there is no way to effectively compare their evidential weight, or similar. They might agree with agnosticism regarding the possibility of knowledge for the existence or nonexistence of gods, but they go further and say that there is some parity on the case for mere belief in either direction, as well.\nI\u0026rsquo;m generally in favor of allowing people to choose their own self-identifying terms and defining them as they see fit, so long as they can give a legitimate reason for their classification and it\u0026rsquo;s not completely at odds with ordinary usage. One example that goes beyond ordinary usage and I think just indicates some kind of confusion is that 21% of self-identified atheists in a Pew survey reported last October said that they believe in God. Sorry, but that\u0026rsquo;s not a definition of atheist that I think can get off the ground.\nMy own position is strong atheism/positive atheism with respect to most traditional conceptions of God, and weak atheism/agnosticism (or igtheism) with respect to certain rarefied/unempirical notions of God. I\u0026rsquo;m comfortable calling myself an atheist in general, and dispute claims that it\u0026rsquo;s impossible have knowledge that at least most gods do not exist. \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t prove a negative\u0026rdquo; is a widely expressed canard, which I argue against here:\nhttp://www.discord.org/~lippard/debiak.html\nThat also contains links to a few other essays which make the same point in a way that is probably more clear, including one by Jeff Lowder which argues for the possibility of disproofs of God\u0026rsquo;s existence.\nUPDATE (November 22, 2010): Also see the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; Atheist Web definition page. I now suspect that \u0026ldquo;empirical agnosticism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;weak atheism\u0026rdquo; are indistinguishable.\nUPDATE (November 24, 2011): Also see Jeff Lowder\u0026rsquo;s January 4, 2006 post at Naturalistic Atheism, \u0026ldquo;Disagreement Among Self-Described Atheists about the Meaning of \u0026lsquo;Atheism\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; and Ted Drange\u0026rsquo;s 1998 article at the Secular Web, \u0026ldquo;Atheism, Agnosticism, and Noncognitivism.\u0026quot; Drange\u0026rsquo;s distinctions seem to me to be well worth using. Maverick Philosopher\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Against Terminological Mischief: \u0026lsquo;Negative Atheism\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Negative Nominalism\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; is also good.\nUPDATE (January 20, 2012): Jeff Lowder has written further on this subject at the Secular Outpost, in \u0026ldquo;The Definition of Atheism, the Anal-Retentive Defense of Etymological Purism, and Linguistic Relativism.\u0026quot;\nJason G (2010-01-07):\nMy simplified take on it has always been that the atheist/agnostic question is like asking if one enjoys pancakes. Well, it depends. One is a question of knowledge and the other belief; one of philosophy and discussions over beer and the other the practical application of our understanding of the universe.\nIn terms of belief, I am an atheist. That is I don't believe there is a God (no God)\nIn terms of absolute knowledge, I am an agnostic. I just don't know for 100% sure. Can I say there isn't one? No, but I can be pretty sure he's not orbiting with teapots. (no knowledge of a god)\nWhen it comes to philosophic discussions over beer, I can make certain axiomatic assumptions, and given the uncertainty of knowing anything for sure, and therefor I am an agnostic.\nFrom a practical point of view, however, I live my life as if there were no gods. Therefor, I am an atheist.\nNone of this weak/strong stuff has ever been necessary as far as I'm concerned.\nLippard (2010-01-07):\nJason G: Are there any self-identified agnostics (a group more than double the size of atheists in the U.S.) who have agreed with you that that is the distinction they\u0026#39;re making? I think the strong/weak distinction can collapse if you allow \u0026quot;belief\u0026quot; to include tacit or implicit belief as well as explicit, represented belief, but there's still a case for a distinct position of agnosticism as being unwilling or unable to assent to either an assertion of existence or nonexistence.\nThere's also a scope problem here, since \u0026quot;God\u0026quot; can keep getting redefined. Historically, \u0026quot;atheist\u0026quot; was applied to those who reject the gods of the majority, even if they had gods of their own (e.g., Christians were called atheists and impious by the Romans, according to the Martyrdom of Polycarp), while today it means those who reject all gods. I suspect most agnostics are atheists with respect to most gods, but are unwilling to assent to the denial of the existence of any conceivable notion of god. That's actually my own position, but I'm happy to call myself an atheist anyway.\nIf that's how most agnostics see it, then the distinction doesn't turn on the belief/knowledge distinction as much as it does on the meaning of the word \u0026quot;God.\u0026quot;\nHuman Ape (2010-01-07):\nJason G wrote I just don\u0026#39;t know for 100% sure. Can I say there isn\u0026#39;t one? Would you say you don't know for 100% sure there's no Easter Bunny?\nThe idea there's a magic god fairy hiding somewhere is just as childish as the Easter Bunny. These two ideas, God and the Easter Bunny, are so ridiculous that I can say with 100% certainty they don't exist.\nChristian extremists and Muslim terrorists love it when you say \u0026quot;I just don't know for 100% sure.\u0026quot; and that makes you part of the problem.\nhttp://darwin-killed-god.blogspot.com/\nLippard (2010-01-07):\nHuman Ape: I would assign a subjective probability indistinguishable from 1 to the proposition that the Easter bunny doesn\u0026#39;t exist, as well as for more implausible versions of God such as the conception your choice of terminology describes. Your statement about being part of the problem seems to suggest you think that dogmatism can only be fought by dogmatism. Is that a pragmatic argument for certainty where evidential and logical justification is absent?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/01/definitions-of-atheism-and-agnosticism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI recently posted this \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/messages/boards/thread/8282073#32902843\"\u003eat the Phoenix Atheists Meetup group\u0026rsquo;s discussion forum\u003c/a\u003e in a thread titled \u0026ldquo;atheism v. agnosticism,\u0026rdquo; and thought it might be worth reposting here:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere are lots of ways to define these terms, to the extent that you can\u0026rsquo;t be sure how people are using them unless you ask.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe general population of English speakers understands atheism to be equivalent to what Michael Martin calls \u0026ldquo;positive atheism\u0026rdquo; and what used to be commonly known among Internet atheists as \u0026ldquo;strong atheism\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;an active disbelief in the existence of gods. That\u0026rsquo;s a position which does have a burden of proof over mere nonbelief, also known as weak atheism or negative atheism. George H. Smith made the same distinction using the terms explicit vs. implicit atheism. Richard Dawkins complicated matters by redefining \u0026ldquo;strong atheism\u0026rdquo; as absolute certainty that there is no God (position 7 on his scale). I wish he had chosen a different term, as I think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to associate positive atheism/strong atheism with certainty, proof, or even knowledge.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI used to like this distinction, but am less enamored with it because \u0026ldquo;weak atheism\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;negative atheism\u0026rdquo; or atheism as mere lack of belief in gods has a few logical problems as a basis for anything. A lack of belief is not a position, it cannot be used to motivate action or to infer conclusions from. Those who say that they are only atheists in the weak sense, however, do join groups and appear to draw inferences and conclusions as though they are using the nonexistence of gods as a premise, which means either that they are really implicitly using strong atheism as a position, or they are drawing those inferences based on other meta-beliefs.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe advantage of equating atheism with weak atheism is that theism and atheism then become contradictories which cover the entire space of logical possibilities\u0026ndash;you either have a belief in one or more gods, or you don\u0026rsquo;t. Under that definition, there\u0026rsquo;s no space for agnosticism except as a subset of one or both of atheism and theism.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe definition of \u0026ldquo;agnosticism\u0026rdquo; that was given earlier in this thread as pertaining to the possibility of knowledge about the existence or nonexistence of gods then gives you two dimensions, on which you can have agnostic atheists (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe there are gods, and it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to know), agnostic theists (I believe in at least one god, but it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to know), gnostic atheists (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe there are gods, and it is possible to know there aren\u0026rsquo;t), and gnostic theists (I believe there\u0026rsquo;s at least one god, and it\u0026rsquo;s possible to know). Of those positions, I think agnostic theism is difficult to make a case for with respect to most conceptions of God, except for deism and other forms of uninvolved gods.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut most people who call themselves agnostics aren\u0026rsquo;t using that definition, they\u0026rsquo;re using a notion that is a particular form of weak atheism, that holds to something like there is a parity between arguments for and against the existence of gods, or that there is no way to effectively compare their evidential weight, or similar. They might agree with agnosticism regarding the possibility of knowledge for the existence or nonexistence of gods, but they go further and say that there is some parity on the case for mere belief in either direction, as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;m generally in favor of allowing people to choose their own self-identifying terms and defining them as they see fit, so long as they can give a legitimate reason for their classification and it\u0026rsquo;s not completely at odds with ordinary usage. One example that goes beyond ordinary usage and I think just indicates some kind of confusion is that 21% of self-identified atheists in a Pew survey reported last October said that they believe in God. Sorry, but that\u0026rsquo;s not a definition of atheist that I think can get off the ground.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy own position is strong atheism/positive atheism with respect to most traditional conceptions of God, and weak atheism/agnosticism (or igtheism) with respect to certain rarefied/unempirical notions of God. I\u0026rsquo;m comfortable calling myself an atheist in general, and dispute claims that it\u0026rsquo;s impossible have knowledge that at least most gods do not exist. \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t prove a negative\u0026rdquo; is a widely expressed canard, which I argue against here:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/debiak.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/debiak.html\"\u003ehttp://www.discord.org/~lippard/debiak.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" class=\"brImage\" src=\"http://img1.meetupstatic.com/img/clear.gif\" width=\"0\" /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThat also contains links to a few other essays which make the same point in a way that is probably more clear, including one by Jeff Lowder which argues for the possibility of disproofs of God\u0026rsquo;s existence.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 22, 2010): Also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html#atheisms\"\u003ethe Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; Atheist Web definition page\u003c/a\u003e.  I now suspect that \u0026ldquo;empirical agnosticism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;weak atheism\u0026rdquo; are indistinguishable.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 24, 2011): Also see Jeff Lowder\u0026rsquo;s January 4, 2006 post at Naturalistic Atheism, \u003ca href=\"http://naturalisticatheism.blogspot.com/2006/01/disagreement-among-self-described.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Disagreement Among Self-Described Atheists about the Meaning of \u0026lsquo;Atheism\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and Ted Drange\u0026rsquo;s 1998 article at the Secular Web, \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Atheism, Agnosticism, and Noncognitivism.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Drange\u0026rsquo;s distinctions seem to me to be well worth using.  Maverick Philosopher\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/05/against-terminological-mischief-negative-atheism-and-negative-nominalism.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Against Terminological Mischief: \u0026lsquo;Negative Atheism\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Negative Nominalism\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e is also good.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (January 20, 2012): Jeff Lowder has written further on this subject at the Secular Outpost, in \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/12/definition-of-atheism-anal-retentive.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Definition of Atheism, the Anal-Retentive Defense of Etymological Purism, and Linguistic Relativism.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Definitions of atheism and agnosticism"},{"content":" The newest Richard Cheese album is available for pre-order, featuring lounge-ified versions of \u0026ldquo;Supersonic,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Bohemian Rhapsody,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Light My Fire,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Freebird,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;My Neck, My Back.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2010/01/new-richard-cheese-album-ok-bartender.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.okbartender.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://www.richardcheese.com/rimg/rc-okb-small.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e The newest Richard Cheese album is \u003ca href=\"http://www.okbartender.com/\"\u003eavailable for pre-order\u003c/a\u003e, featuring lounge-ified versions of \u0026ldquo;Supersonic,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Bohemian Rhapsody,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Light My Fire,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Freebird,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;My Neck, My Back.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Richard Cheese album: OK Bartender"},{"content":"Once again, here\u0026rsquo;s my annual list of books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last year. I did much better in quantity than last year\u0026ndash;going back to school helped a bit, even though the vast majority of reading for class was articles that aren\u0026rsquo;t reflected in this list.\nJohn Baer, James C. Kaufman, and Roy F. Baumeister, editors, Are We Free? Psychology and Free WillDan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America\u0026rsquo;s Leading AtheistsJeff Benedict, Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and CourageSimon Blackburn, Truth: A GuidePaul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism\nFred P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition\nThomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar\u0026hellip; Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes (not very funny, and thinks \u0026ldquo;all platypuses are mammals\u0026rdquo; is analytic and a priori, p. 67\u0026ndash;is that what they teach at Harvard?)\nDaniel Dennett, Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of LifeDaniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural PhenomenonPhilip K. Dick, The Man in the High CastleDouglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange LoopJean-Roch Laurence and Campbell Perry, Hypnosis, Will, and Memory: A Psycho-Legal HistoryPenn Jillette, How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie RichardPaul Krassner, In Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds Off on Hypocrisy, Censorship, and Free ExpressionPaul Krassner, Who\u0026rsquo;s to Say What\u0026rsquo;s Obscene? Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America TodayOscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being OscarOscar Levant, A Smattering of IgnoranceBen Mezrich, Busting Vegas: A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the OddsChris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our FutureSteven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human NatureVincent Price, I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography\nW.V. Quine, Methods of Logic, Fourth Edition\nRudy Rucker, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy\nOliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the BrainJohn Searle, The Construction of Social RealityKyrsten Sinema, Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and LastJim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural\nGore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of AmnesiaT.H. White, The Once and Future KingI also read significant parts of\nYochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom\nYaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary DemocracyEdward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, editors, The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Third Edition\nMichael Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity\nElliott Mendelson, Introduction to Mathematical Logic (5th edition) (worked through ch. 3 on number theory and Gödel\u0026rsquo;s incompleteness theorems and the appendix on second-order predicate logic, along with Boolos \u0026amp; Jeffrey\u0026rsquo;s Computability and Logic chapter on second-order predicate logic)\nR.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, editors, Companion to the History of Modern ScienceSteven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life(Previously: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)\nHume's Ghost (2009-12-31):\nI got about 10 pages into Construction of Social Reality and could go no further. Too dense for me, althought I still rank Mind as high up on my list of books I want to read.\nJohn Mashey (2010-01-01):\nFred Brooks: Hopefully, you read the 1995 edition, which has some fine retrospective comments. I urged Fred to do another one, ,but he really doesn\u0026#39;t do this any more, sad to say.\nLippard (2010-01-01):\nIDoubtIt: Looks like we read one in common in the same year (Kurtz, _The New Skepticism_), and a fair amount of overall overlap (e.g., Randi, Morrow, Lessig). How was _Idiot America_? Hume's Ghost: I really enjoyed Searle's book. If you found the definitional stuff too dense, you might still have found value in skimming over it. The last three chapters also can stand mostly on their own.\nJohn Mashey: Yes, indeed. I was doing some software testing earlier this year, which motivated me to pull that out of my unread stacks and read it. I enjoyed the Multics references, as well, since one of my earliest career choices was Multics developer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce again, here\u0026rsquo;s my annual list of books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last year.  I did much better in quantity than \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003elast year\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;going back to school helped a bit, even though the vast majority of reading for class was articles that aren\u0026rsquo;t reflected in this list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Baer, James C. Kaufman, and Roy F. Baumeister, editors, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAre We Free? Psychology and Free Will\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDan Barker, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGodless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America\u0026rsquo;s Leading Atheists\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJeff Benedict, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLittle Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSimon Blackburn, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTruth: A Guide\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Boghossian, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFred P. Brooks, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePlato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar\u0026hellip; Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes\u003c/span\u003e (not very funny, and thinks \u0026ldquo;all platypuses are mammals\u0026rdquo; is analytic and a priori, p. 67\u0026ndash;is that what they teach at Harvard?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel Dennett, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel Dennett, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBreaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePhilip K. Dick, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Man in the High Castle\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDouglas R. Hofstadter, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI Am a Strange Loop\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJean-Roch Laurence and Campbell Perry, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHypnosis, Will, and Memory: A Psycho-Legal History\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePenn Jillette, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHow to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Krassner, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIn Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds Off on Hypocrisy, Censorship, and Free Expression\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Krassner, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWho\u0026rsquo;s to Say What\u0026rsquo;s Obscene? Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOscar Levant, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Unimportance of Being Oscar\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOscar Levant, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Smattering of Ignorance\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBen Mezrich, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBusting Vegas: A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUnscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSteven Pinker, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eVincent Price, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eW.V. Quine, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMethods of Logic\u003c/span\u003e, Fourth Edition\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRudy Rucker, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOliver Sacks, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMusicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Searle, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Construction of Social Reality\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKyrsten Sinema, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUnite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJim Steinmeyer, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCharles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGore Vidal, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eImperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnes\u003c/span\u003eia\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eT.H. White, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Once and Future King\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eI also read significant parts of\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eYochai Benkler, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eYaron Ezrahi, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEdward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, editors, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Handbook of Science and Technology Studies\u003c/span\u003e, Third Edition\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Hulme, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eElliott Mendelson, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIntroduction to Mathematical Logic\u003c/span\u003e (5th edition) (worked through ch. 3 on number theory and Gödel\u0026rsquo;s incompleteness theorems and the appendix on second-order predicate logic, along with Boolos \u0026amp; Jeffrey\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eComputability and Logic\u003c/span\u003e chapter on second-order predicate logic)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eR.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, editors, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCompanion to the History of Modern Science\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSteven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLeviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2009"},{"content":"\nWe found this little dog, Max, while on our way to do a RESCUE volunteer shift, running around loose in a vacant lot near a school. He was very bedraggled and thirsty, and had apparently been loose for a while (days, at least). Fortunately, he had tags, so I left messages at the number on his personalized tag and at the different number associated with his county tag, which it\u0026rsquo;s easy to look up at Pets911.com. An hour or two later, I got a call from the dog\u0026rsquo;s previous owner (to whom the dog is still registered), who sent her husband out to pick him up. They didn\u0026rsquo;t know what had happened to the current owner or why the dog was loose.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/sixth-stay-dog-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PC260001.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/PC260001.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419689947172222626\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe found this little dog, Max, while on our way to do a RESCUE volunteer shift, running around loose in a vacant lot near a school.  He was very bedraggled and thirsty, and had apparently been loose for a while (days, at least).  Fortunately, he had tags, so I left messages at the number on his personalized tag and at the different number associated with his county tag, which it\u0026rsquo;s easy to look up at Pets911.com.  An hour or two later, I got a call from the dog\u0026rsquo;s previous owner (to whom the dog is still registered), who sent her husband out to pick him up.  They didn\u0026rsquo;t know what had happened to the current owner or why the dog was loose.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sixth stay dog of 2009"},{"content":"Vocab has put up the fifth and final part of his essay on abortion and personhood up at his blog, devoted to Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument. I don\u0026rsquo;t really have much to say about it\u0026ndash;we didn\u0026rsquo;t coordinate our posts in advance, and I\u0026rsquo;ve already discussed Thomson\u0026rsquo;s argument myself in my response to part 4. I disagree with Vocab\u0026rsquo;s claim that Thomson\u0026rsquo;s argument proves too much and would allow infanticide\u0026ndash;her argument only addresses a physically dependent fetus. And, as I already pointed out in my prior response, the argument doesn\u0026rsquo;t prove as much as it purports to. The violinist case isn\u0026rsquo;t exactly analogous to pregnancy and abortion in a number of ways, and Vocab is right to point out the differences. I agree that if a pregnancy is allowed to go to term (as well as to some earlier point at which there is plausible evidence for personhood on my standard), then that entails at least tacit consent and a moral duty of care. I would still argue, however, that abortion would be legitimate beyond that point for medically justifiable reasons (e.g., endangered health and life of the mother). This position\u0026ndash;like the current position of the courts, which I think is approximately correct despite being based on viability\u0026ndash;points out that there are more than two polar opposite positions in this debate.\nIn Vocab\u0026rsquo;s final part, he talks a bit about the work that he and his wife do in caring for foster children. I commend him for that work, which is all-too-rare among opponents of abortion.\nThanks, Vocab, for the debate\u0026ndash;and I still would like to hear a response from you in the comments on some of the issues that have been left hanging (e.g., in the comments on part 3).\nUPDATE: It would probably be better to end this discussion with a summary that I already made in the comments on part 3:\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t disagree that there is continuity of organism (just as there is continuity of a population of organisms over time)\u0026ndash;all life on this planet is connected in that way. But just as we don\u0026rsquo;t count every species as human, even in our own genetic lineage, we don\u0026rsquo;t count every life stage of individual human organisms as persons. There\u0026rsquo;s a sense in which \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; was once a zygote that had my same DNA, but at that stage there was no \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; there yet\u0026ndash;there was nothing that it was like to be a zygote, to use Thomas Nagel\u0026rsquo;s expression. In that same sense that \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; was a zygote, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; will be a dead body in the future, even though there will at that point be nothing that it is like to be me, and the person that I am will be gone from the world though my body will briefly remain.\nI think we understand each other\u0026rsquo;s positions. You think that being a human organism is the same thing as to be a person, while I think personhood is a feature that comes into existence and persists for a subset of the life of an organism, that requires capacities of sentience or self-awareness.\nBut I think I can give reasons to support why my view makes moral, legal, and practical sense, and why human cultures and practices are more consistent with my view than yours. I don\u0026rsquo;t think you can give such reasons, other than the brute assertion that human organisms are persons from start to finish. Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion.\nAlan (2009-12-20):\nJim, Your arguments are great, but the last sentence of the update, \u0026quot;Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion,\u0026quot; really hits the core problem in this abortion debate. Vocab's entire argument seems to be predicated on a point he makes irrelevant (his notion of person), and yet he fails to support even that point very well.\nGreat debate! Thanks.\n\u0026ndash; Alan\nM! (2009-12-20):\nWrong. I believe in the notion of the person but not separated from the notion of what it means to be human. They are one in the same. To justify abortion, both of you are forced to draw an artificial distinction. My beliefs do not paint me into the same philosophical corner, as it were. My view of the person is very high. In fact, I would say when it comes to the metaphysics of my anthropology, my view of the person is much more grandiose than either of yours.\nHow can I say this? Because I find the ultimate grounding for the human person in the person of God and believe we are stamped with His indelible image.\nThis was not part of the conversation proper but anyone following should be able to detect the contrast in our metanarratives and understand the source of difference.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-20):\nAlan: Thanks, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for your contributed comments. Vocab:\nThere's a sense in which the notion of personhood I'm using is artificial, but no more so than yours. While I restrict it to entities with certain capacities, regardless of their underlying structure, you restrict it to organisms with a particular DNA structure. Your notion is not supported by any religious tradition or text that I'm familiar with. Do you really think that God has human DNA, and developed from a zygote? If not, then what is the nature of the analogy or argument from resemblance that you are drawing? Are you sure it doesn't better support my notion of personhood? Surely the significance of the claim that humans were created in God's image was not a reference to biology but to capacities of the human mind.\nIf you happen to go see the films \u0026quot;District 9\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;Avatar,\u0026quot; its a consequence of your view that the aliens are not persons and don't merit treatment as such. A view of personhood based on genetics or biology strikes me as a far more dangerous view than mine, based on how such views have been abused in the past to justify slavery and racism.\nM! (2009-12-20):\nJim said... \u0026quot;Do you really think that God has human DNA, and developed from a zygote?\u0026quot; You are correct, it is not a reference to biology. I do not think God is an exalted man (a la LDS theology).\nJim said\u0026hellip; \u0026quot;If you happen to go see the films 'District 9' or 'Avatar,' its a consequence of your view that the aliens are not persons and don't merit treatment as such.\u0026quot;\nFalse. I specifically made the point in my first post that a non-person, such as an animal, does not mean the being has NO rights and we can just treat them any ol' way.\nJim, I do not understand why you are so concerned with the possible treatment of hypothetical as-of-yet undiscovered beings on other planets. Perhaps it behooves us to do more reflection on our treatment of human beings (both born and unborn) on this planet.\nvM!\nPS - as far eugenics goes, it seems the evidence points to the contrary of your fear, e.g., Sanger \u0026amp; Planned Parenthood.\nLippard (2009-12-21):\nVocab: A notion of personhood should accurately capture the features that are the reasons why we recognize moral rights, including plausible cases like other intelligent nonhuman beings.\nYou say \u0026quot;False\u0026quot; about what I said, but what you go on to say doesn't contradict what I said. You and I both agree that we have a moral duty to treat animals humanely independently of their personhood\u0026ndash;but this includes circumstances under which we can legitimately restrict their freedom, use them as domestic servants, force them to do things against their will, and even kill them in certain circumstances. Those are things we cannot legitimately do to persons.\nI said that \u0026quot;it's a consequence of your view that the aliens are not persons and don't merit treatment as such.\u0026quot; Why do you say that's false? Aliens aren't humans, and your view says that personhood is identical with being a human organism, therefore your view has exactly the consequence that I said.\nSanger was an advocate of contraception and eugenics, but, except for a short time during her editorship of Woman Rebel, she opposed legalizing abortion (as did Adolf Hitler, by the way, to bring Godwin's Law into effect), though she thought some cases of abortion were justifiable. She hoped and argued that contraception would eliminate abortion, often repeating the story of Sadie Sachs, a woman who allegedly died during an illegal abortion after being refused contraceptive information by her doctor. (There is apparently doubt whether this was a true story, as Sanger was apparently quite an embellisher.) (My source on Sanger: Ann Hibner Koblitz, \u0026quot;The Dead Woman on the Table: Forensic Medicine and Criminal Abortion in Western Europe and the United States, 1860-1930\u0026quot; a paper I read in one of my classes this semester which may be part of her book project, Sex and Herbs and Birth Control. She cites two of Sanger's own autobiographical books, My Fight for Birth Control and An Autobiography, Lawrence Lader's The Margaret Sanger Story and the Fight for Birth Control, and Ellen Chesler's Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.)\nAlan (2009-12-21):\nvocab says in is justification of personhood beginning with conception: \u0026quot;I find the ultimate grounding for the human person in the person of God and believe we are stamped with His indelible image.\u0026quot; I find and accept this as a religious view. It is contrary to other religious views, as well as some non-religious views. Does this mean that you have no moral justification for restricting abortion by means of law, which, in the US, is restricted from favoring one religion over another? Or, do you take issue with the constitutional prohibition on government to favor religious views? Or, do you have other arguments not found in this debate that justify prohibiting all abortion by law?\n\u0026ndash; Alan\nR. Test (2009-12-26):\nI just stumbled across your discussion of abortion yesterday. I have followed the issue for some years and this seems to be the most prolonged, thoughtful, and civil discussion of abortion that I have seen on the web. Congratulations to both of you. My own views are nearly identical to Jim Lippard’s views and I think you do great job of bringing out the salient points. Good work.\nVocab Malone writes:\n“I believe in the notion of the person but not separated from the notion of what it means to be human. They are one in the same. To justify abortion, both of you are forced to draw an artificial distinction. My beliefs do not paint me into the same philosophical corner, as it were.”\nYou add ”Jim, I do not understand why you are so concerned with the possible treatment of hypothetical as-of-yet undiscovered beings on other planets. Perhaps it behooves us to do more reflection on our treatment of human beings (both born and unborn) on this planet.”\nThis shows serious confusion about the role of concepts in our cognitive activities.\nWe have the concepts of ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’. These are different concept – the one means the first star we see in the evening sky and the other one means the last star we see in the morning sky. ‘Morning’ is one concept and ‘evening’ is a different concept. Thus ‘morning star’ and ‘evening star’ are different concepts. But, both these “stars” are in fact the planet Venus. The morning star is the same object in the sky as the evening star. But these are two different concepts.\nThe heart – it pumps blood throughout the body – is a different organ from the lungs. Thus, the expression ‘being with a heart’ and ‘being with lungs’ are different in meaning and thus different concepts. You and are both beings with a heart and with lungs. But still, ‘being with a heart’ does not mean the same thing as ‘being with lungs’.\nIn both cases, viz., ‘evening star’-‘morning star’ and ‘being with a heart’ – being with lungs’, both pair may refer to the same objects but the meanings of expressions are different. This is difference between denotation and connotation.\nVenus is not always the morning star or the evening star. Sometimes of the year, one planet it the morning star and another planet is the evening star. In some cases, ‘being with a heart’ may not refer to a ‘being with lungs’. A fish has a heart but no lungs.\nI have no real interest and I suspect that Mr. Lippard has no interest in hypothetical beings. My interest is in keeping the meaning of terms straight. You can use any term any way you want. If you have any interest in communication you will warn your listener or reader that you are using a term differently from the way it is usually used.\nThe term ‘human being’ has several different meanings. Mr. Lippard referred to that fact early in the discussion. I don’t care which meaning you want to use – just make it clear which one it is so the rest of us can follow the argument.\nThe term ‘person’ has several different meaning. Again, use any meaning you want just make it clear which one you are using.\nIs the human zygote a human being? Is the human zygote a person? Yes, to both questions if you mean one thing by ‘human being’ and ‘person’. No, to both if you mean another thing by ‘human being’ and ‘person’.\nThere is no requirement to use these different terms. But whatever term is used the meaning should be made clear.\nMr. Lippard isn't committed to using the term 'person'. But it is clear that we must not rule out a priori the possibility that members of another species might have rights including the right to life. We have a concept of a being with a right to life \u0026ndash; Mr. Lippard wants to use the term 'person' to refer to those beings. I suggest he be given your permission to use that term given he clearly stipulates its meaning.\nRobert Test Columbus, Oh\nM! (2010-01-13):\nR. Test said... \u0026quot;I just stumbled across your discussion of abortion yesterday. I have followed the issue for some years and this seems to be the most prolonged, thoughtful, and civil discussion of abortion that I have seen on the web. Congratulations to both of you.\u0026quot;\nThank you very much. I am glad b/c this is what I was hoping for. Props to Jim for keepin' it chill like that!\nvM!\nPS - OH - IO\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-14):\nForgive me inserting myself into this discussion; admittedly I have not read the previous threads so if the issue I raise was already addressed, please do point me in that direction. Lippard states: \u0026quot;if a pregnancy is allowed to go to term\u0026hellip;, then that entails at least tacit consent and a moral duty of care.\u0026quot;\nWhy? From whence comes this moral duty (I see no relevance to whether moral duties are tacit or explicit; degrees of culpability may be of issue but duties are duties, not \u0026quot;guidelines\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;best practices\u0026quot;)? Surely it cannot come from society at large nor from the mother, since if the biological mother or society-at-large consents to stuff the full-term child just born into a dumpster and leave it to die, then that would be morally acceptable, given morality is grounded in the individual or society. Of course, if we go the way of Kant and purport morality to be based on/in reason, then we suffer other (tautological) concerns, viz., \u0026quot;from whence comes reason?\u0026quot;, at which point Kant's moral basis is finally groundless?\nLippard (2010-01-15):\nPaul: Our discussion hasn\u0026#39;t touched on meta-ethics, which is the question you raise; we\u0026#39;re both relying on ordinary ethical intuitions without regard to how they are grounded. As such, every possible meta-ethical framework is an option open to either of us, except that as an atheist the divine command theory is not available to me. You write: \u0026quot;Surely it cannot come from society at large nor from the mother, since if the biological mother or society-at-large consents to stuff the full-term child just born into a dumpster and leave it to die, then that would be morally acceptable, given morality is grounded in the individual or society.\u0026quot;\nYour conclusion is faulty\u0026ndash;society at large does not, in fact, consent to permit full-term children to be born into dumpsters and left to die. All that you can conclude via such an argument is that if morality is based on cultural relativism and a culture thought that such an action was acceptable, then it would be acceptable.\nThat argument is equivalent to saying that if the divine command theory grounds morality, and if God says that random killing of children is acceptable, then obeying God's commands and performing such killing is morally acceptable. Since the Bible does, in fact, contain purported cases of commands from God to kill pregnant women and children, then one who holds such a theory is committed to the view that there are morally acceptable instances of child-killing. I reject that conclusion even if I were to grant the existence of God\u0026ndash;I think the divine command theory is a bad meta-ethical theory for that reason.\nLippard (2010-01-15):\nPaul: You also write: \u0026quot;Of course, if we go the way of Kant and purport morality to be based on/in reason, then we suffer other (tautological) concerns, viz., \u0026quot;from whence comes reason?\u0026quot;, at which point Kant\u0026#39;s moral basis is finally groundless?\u0026quot; I don't follow your reasoning.\nIt seems to me that reality places constraints on both morality and reason, and we use reason to understand morality, but I don't think it's quite right to say that morality is grounded in reason. But if we did, the mere fact that we can ask questions about the origins and nature of reason doesn't result in a conclusion that morality is groundless.\nI lean towards a view that basic values are subjective/inter-subjective, yet grounded in/fixed by our biology and psychology in virtue of biological and cultural evolution; instrumental values, by contrast, are objective, contingent upon the reality of the physical, social, and cultural environment we find ourselves in.\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-17):\nJim: Thanks for first your response. I\u0026#39;m not finding the answer to my original question here; only a rejection of my \u0026quot;faulty\u0026quot; conclusion. On/In what do you conclude that a mother has moral obligation to care for a child carried to full term? RE: my \u0026quot;faulty\u0026quot; conclusion\u0026hellip;. There have been societies in the past that reject a child upon birth if the gender was not the preferred one. Nevertheless, even if there were no such societies, how is the conclusion faulty when put in the hypothetical? Logic is not limited to actual states of affairs.\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-17):\nJim, RE: your 2nd response. I hear leanings in the direction of G.E. Moore here. Am I close? You say: \u0026quot;the mere fact that we can ask questions about the origins and nature of reason doesn't result in a conclusion that morality is groundless.\u0026quot; Good swipe; I would agree.\n\u0026quot;instrumental values\u0026hellip;are objective\u0026hellip;contingent upon..\u0026quot; Can you give a for instance here? I believe I know where you're going but would prefer an illustration to clarify.\nLippard (2010-01-18):\nPaul: It seems to me that there\u0026#39;s a plausible moral principle to the effect that if you give tacit or explicit consent to pregnancy by allowing gestation to a point where there\u0026#39;s a prima facie case for personhood, you\u0026#39;ve thereby consented to carry it to term. That\u0026#39;s a rebuttable presumption in a case of rights conflict between persons, e.g., if bringing the child to term endangers the health of the mother. If your question is why does personhood itself entail a duty not to kill, I think there are lots of possible grounds for that. I am somewhat agnostic about meta-ethical frameworks, but I think that many/most/nearly all of them produce that same result\u0026ndash;rule utilitarianism, contractarianism, cultural relativism, emotivism, etc.\nI thought I already answered you about the hypothetical. To be more explicit\u0026ndash;the strongest case you can generate is that if the foundation of morality is culturally relative and the culture endorses the permissibility of some instances of infanticide, then it would indeed be permissible. But our culture is not one that endorses the permissibility of infanticide and there are lots of available meta-ethical frameworks that endorse moral realism or objectivity, under which it's not permissible. That is, both conjuncts of the antecedent of the conditional are subject to rebuttal.\nYou didn't respond to the rejoinder I raised for divine command theory. The Bible endorses the moral permissibility of at least some cases of infanticide, what is your view on that? Were at least some past cases of infanticide morally permissible, on your view? I tend to agree with Miranda Fricker (hear her discussion on the Ethics Bites podcast) that the right thing to say about such past cases is that they are wrong, but the participants may not have been blameworthy.\nThe main point of my basic/instrumental distinction is this\u0026ndash;that once basic values are taken as given, it's a matter of contingent fact about what sorts of actions and rules are likely to produce satisfaction of those basic values, of the form \u0026quot;if you want to accomplish X, doing Y is more likely to achieve that result than Z is.\u0026quot; Those rules are true in virtue of the contingent facts of the environment (including social facts). Similarly, social facts themselves display similar features\u0026ndash;it may be a matter of convention what is counted as money, on what side of the road you drive, etc., but once the conventions are established and accepted, they provide objective constraints on what is reasonable and effective action.\nI'm inclined to endorse the idea of moral progress and improved systematization of ethics based on our deepening understanding of human biology, neuro-psychology, sociology, and the actual facts about the natural world. I'm not particularly inclined to endorse G.E. Moore's ethical non-naturalism.\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-18):\nJim: You write: \u0026quot;...It seems to me that there\u0026#39;s a plausible moral principle to the effect that if you give tacit or explicit consent to pregnancy by allowing gestation to a point where there\u0026#39;s a prima facie case for personhood, you\u0026#39;ve thereby consented to carry it to term.\u0026quot; Am I correct to understand you to say that a woman who willingly (or unwillingly) becomes impregnated is morally obligated to carry the child to term?\nOn what basis? Surely not simply because \u0026quot;it seems to you that there is a plausible moral principle.\u0026quot; Without a solid meta-ethic (which atheism finds anathema), all one is left with are the ethics of a lion or the ethics of a lamb, but neither of which work for everyone.\nOf course, there would be prima facie evidence the fetus is a person. What else would it be?\nLippard (2010-01-19):\nPaul: No, that\u0026#39;s not what I said. My position is if (a) the pregnancy is voluntary/consented to and (b) is carried sufficiently long to term that the fetus reaches a status of personhood (which may, depending upon how our understanding of consciousness and sentience ultimately cashes out in a more complete neuroscience, not actually happen during pregnancy, but could be, say, some time during the second trimester), then the fetus's personhood would give the mother a duty to carry to term absent a condition such as serious endangerment to her life or health.\nWithout both a prima facie case for personhood of the fetus and a consensual pregnancy, however, I don't see a good case for a duty to carry a pregnancy to term.\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-19):\nOkay. Thanks Jim for unpacking your position. Apologies for my misunderstanding. Your 2nd condition, viz., \u0026quot;carried sufficiently long to term that the fetus reaches a status of personhood\u0026hellip;\u0026quot; (as you might guess) raises a few flags for me.\nFirst, is neuroscience or scientific means the only method for determining personhood? Second, would you maintain that while all persons are human, not all humans are persons? Can there be such a thing as a non-person human?\nLippard (2010-01-19):\nPaul: I think the scientific data is indispensable for making judgments of personhood.\nI would neither maintain that all humans are persons nor that all persons are humans\u0026ndash;the conditions for what makes someone a human organism are distinct from the conditions of personhood. This is territory that Vocab and I already covered in part 2 (both post and comments) and part 3 (mainly in the comments). In this comment on part 3 is perhaps my clearest statement of the difference between Vocab's and my views.\nYou still haven't answered my questions to you: \u0026quot;You didn't respond to the rejoinder I raised for divine command theory. The Bible endorses the moral permissibility of at least some cases of infanticide, what is your view on that? Were at least some past cases of infanticide morally permissible, on your view?\u0026quot;\nWould you care to answer this\u0026ndash;and perhaps read parts of Vocab's and my prior dialogue\u0026ndash;before asking more questions?\nPaul D. Adams (2010-01-21):\nJIm, Sorry my being brief here. I\u0026#39;ve much going on these days and have little time to engage further. If you are interested in my thoughts surrounding God\u0026#39;s existence and the basis for objective moral values, see my post http://inchristus.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/gods-existence-and-right-from-wrong/ and the discussion there. The comment by Louis is especially relevant to your query and I wholeheartedly am aligned with him. Perhaps after I get more bandwidth I can follow up here.\nLippard (2010-01-23):\nPaul: The distinction between the metaphysical and epistemology is worth making with respect to morality, but that\u0026#39;s not really relevant to my question. My question for you is addressing the metaphysical question, not the epistemic. If you deny that the Old Testament is accurate in its reports about God\u0026#39;s commands, then that would raise the epistemic question. It appears that you don't have an answer\u0026ndash;you could easily have answered it in the time you've spent here posting other things. Feel free to come back and post an answer when you find time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_19.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab has put up \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/of-violence-violins-personhood-post.html\"\u003ethe fifth and final part of his essay on abortion and personhood up at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, devoted to Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument.  I don\u0026rsquo;t really have much to say about it\u0026ndash;we didn\u0026rsquo;t coordinate our posts in advance, and I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_18.html\"\u003ealready discussed Thomson\u0026rsquo;s argument myself in my response to part 4\u003c/a\u003e.  I disagree with Vocab\u0026rsquo;s claim that Thomson\u0026rsquo;s argument proves too much and would allow infanticide\u0026ndash;her argument only addresses a physically dependent fetus.  And, as I already pointed out in my prior response, the argument doesn\u0026rsquo;t prove as much as it purports to.  The violinist case isn\u0026rsquo;t exactly analogous to pregnancy and abortion in a number of ways, and Vocab is right to point out the differences.  I agree that if a pregnancy is allowed to go to term (as well as to some earlier point at which there is plausible evidence for personhood on my standard), then that entails at least tacit consent and a moral duty of care. I would still argue, however, that abortion would be legitimate beyond that point for medically justifiable reasons (e.g., endangered health and life of the mother).  This position\u0026ndash;like the current position of the courts, which I think is approximately correct despite being based on viability\u0026ndash;points out that there are more than two polar opposite positions in this debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Vocab\u0026rsquo;s final part, he talks a bit about the work that he and his wife do in caring for foster children.  I commend him for that work, which is all-too-rare among opponents of abortion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks, Vocab, for the debate\u0026ndash;and I still would like to hear a response from you in the comments on some of the issues that have been left hanging (e.g., in the comments on part 3).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  It would probably be better to end this discussion with a summary that I already made in the comments on part 3:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWe don\u0026rsquo;t disagree that there is continuity of organism (just as there is continuity of a population of organisms over time)\u0026ndash;all life on this planet is connected in that way. But just as we don\u0026rsquo;t count every species as human, even in our own genetic lineage, we don\u0026rsquo;t count every life stage of individual human organisms as persons. There\u0026rsquo;s a sense in which \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; was once a zygote that had my same DNA, but at that stage there was no \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; there yet\u0026ndash;there was nothing that it was like to be a zygote, to use Thomas Nagel\u0026rsquo;s expression. In that same sense that \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; was a zygote, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo; will be a dead body in the future, even though there will at that point be nothing that it is like to be me, and the person that I am will be gone from the world though my body will briefly remain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think we understand each other\u0026rsquo;s positions. You think that being a human organism is the same thing as to be a person, while I think personhood is a feature that comes into existence and persists for a subset of the life of an organism, that requires capacities of sentience or self-awareness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut I think I can give reasons to support why my view makes moral, legal, and practical sense, and why human cultures and practices are more consistent with my view than yours. I don\u0026rsquo;t think you can give such reasons, other than the brute assertion that human organisms are persons from start to finish. Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 5"},{"content":"Vocab Malone has posted the fourth part of his essay on abortion and personhood, addressing the arguments from viability and wantedness. These are two more arguments that I don\u0026rsquo;t place a whole lot of stock in, though perhaps some commenters will want to say more about.\nThe viability criterion is significant in that it\u0026rsquo;s the basis of current federal case law on abortion since Roe v. Wade, but Vocab correctly notes that viability changes with the availability of technology, and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem like a feature that should be relevant to whether one is a person. On the other hand, it is relevant to the notion of dependence\u0026ndash;pre-viability is a time where, if you do grant that a fetus is a person, it\u0026rsquo;s a person that is dependent for its existence upon another person. This raises questions of when it is morally permissible for a person upon whom another is dependent for their life to sever that dependence. Judith Jarvis Thomson\u0026rsquo;s argument on abortion, which I referred to earlier in my response to part 1 of Vocab\u0026rsquo;s essay, presents the following scenario:\nYou wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, \"Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.\" Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. \"Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.\" My intuition is that in this scenario, it is morally supererogatory to remain connected to the violinist--it is not a moral requirement. The problem with this scenario is that it isn't quite analogous to pregnancy except in case of rape. If one gave voluntary consent to be connected to the violinist to save his life, it seems that one would have a moral duty to see it through. That raises the question of what constitutes \"voluntary consent\" with respect to pregnancy, which may occur accidentally or unintentionally despite use of contraception, for example. And note again that this scenario only applies in the case where personhood is taken as given, which I've been arguing is definitely not the case in early stages of a pregnancy.\nThe argument from wantedness, like the argument from viability, doesn't appear to be offer a criterion of personhood, but it is of course relevant to the overall abortion debate. Bringing into being persons who are not wanted and aren't going to be cared for is something that should be avoided, since the odds are not good for children in such circumstances. A controversial argument in Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's book Freakonomics is that there's a correlation between abortion rates and declining crime rates--i.e., the authors argued that a consequence of the unavailability of abortion is more unwanted children who become criminals. If that argument is correct (and I personally wouldn't bet on it), that's a form of evidence in favor of the availability of legal abortion, though I don't think it trumps a personhood argument. [NOTE (added Nov. 24, 2012): Levitt and Dubner's argument is thoroughly debunked in chapter 3 of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined\u0026nbsp;(pp. 119-121).\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;Freakonomics in general is found to be filled with errors in a review in the American Scientist by Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung.]\nVocab quotes from a book by abortion doctor Suzanne Poppema about her own abortion, in which she says to her embryo, \"I’m very sorry that this is happening to you but there’s just no way that you can come into existence right now.\" He identifies this as \"confused logic,\" since clearly the embryo already exists. I agree with Vocab that she has written this statement in an apparently confused way, but it could be made coherent if she had written of the embryo developing into a person or of a person coming into existence, which is probably what she meant to imply.\nContinue to part five. M! (2009-12-18):\nJim wrote - \u0026quot;A controversial argument in Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's book Freakonomics is that there's a correlation between abortion rates and declining crime rates\u0026ndash;i.e., the authors argued that a consequence of the unavailability of abortion is more unwanted children who become criminals. If that argument is correct (and I personally wouldn't bet on it), that's a form of evidence in favor of the availability of legal abortion, though I don't think it trumps a personhood argument.\u0026quot;\nFirst, this argument assumes abortion is not a crime - that of homicide. If it is, then homicide rates have went way up.\nSecondly, this argument is a nasty form of utilitarian pragmatism. A higher code of ethics says the ends don't justify the means.\nThirdly, it is prima facie racist. It directly links the crime rates to blacks and then says since abortion kills so many of them, crime rates went down. Bill Bennett got into trouble for talking about this in a clumsy manner and rightfully so.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-18):\n1. Legal abortion isn\u0026#39;t a crime, and isn\u0026#39;t homicide. You may think that it should be, but the fact of the matter today is that it isn\u0026#39;t, in the United States or virtually any other developed nation. (BTW, abortion rates are often lower in countries with fewer restrictions on it, being much lower in the U.S. and Western Europe than in Latin America, for example--and rates of death of the mother due to abortion are much higher in the countries with greater restrictions.) That's why I said I don't think it trumps a personhood argument. It's not a nasty argument with respect to nonpersons.\nI don't recall Levitt and Dubner making a racial argument\u0026ndash;I think it may have involved socio-economic status, however. In any case, an empirical correlation isn't racist even if it can be used to argue for racist conclusions.\nAlan (2009-12-18):\nI believe the wantedness argument has value not addressed by Jim or Vocab so far in this discussion. With the assumption that it is necessary to assume the full rights of personhood at the point where abortion is no longer permitted (e.g., after viability of a healthy fetus when the mother's health is not in jeopardy), then I believe that being wanted by the mother, even prior to this point is sufficient for the fetus to have the full rights of personhood.\nThis distinction provides a moral basis for legal abortions (as not being the murder of a person) concurrent with the killing of a fetus (say, as the result of an assault on a pregnant woman) being a murder of a person.\n\u0026ndash; Alan\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nAlan: So your suggestion is that necessary and sufficient conditions are either being wanted by the mother (at any stage) or being post-viability (and also sentient or self-aware?)? So there are no individually necessary conditions of personhood except when indexed to times of pre- or post-viability?\nThat's certainly a construction that could be used for legal reasons, but it doesn't seem to intuitively capture what we mean by personhood. The pre-viability portion would be subject to potentially changing views of the mother. It also doesn't seem right to me that two instances of murder of a pregnant woman in exactly the same circumstances would be treated legally differently if in one case the woman had made an abortion appointment. And in such a case, no doubt the woman's survivors would argue that she had changed her mind, in order to argue for a more severe penalty\u0026ndash;though note that it's not necessary to argue for personhood of the fetus to argue for a more severe penalty, only to argue that it's another case of murder. One can consistently hold that there's greater harm that's been done, even without arguing for personhood or murder, and that seems to fit better with my intuitions.\nAlan (2009-12-18):\nSo your suggestion is that necessary and sufficient conditions are either being wanted by the mother (at any stage) or being post-viability (and also sentient or self-aware?)? So there are no individually necessary conditions of personhood except when indexed to times of pre- or post-viability? No. I am stating that conditions such as healthy fetus and mother and post viability are necessary for legal personhood. That is the current law. Independently of that, I as suggesting that the law should consider a fetus being wanted as sufficient for determining the fetus a person. A subtle distinction that does not tie them together; the viability element is not relevant to the wanted element.\nI am not arguing the deeper morality at the core of the discussion between you and vocab, but only wanted to point out that the wantedness argument is not as empty as it might appear from your discussion.\n[\u0026hellip;] The pre-viability portion would be subject to potentially changing views of the mother. [\u0026hellip;]\nI agree with the dilemma of determining the state of the pregnant woman, but I would expect a legal presumption of wantedness if the mother had not already gotten an abortion.\n[\u0026hellip;] note that it's not necessary to argue for personhood of the fetus to argue for a more severe penalty, only to argue that it's another case of murder. One can consistently hold that there's greater harm that's been done, even without arguing for personhood or murder, and that seems to fit better with my intuitions.\nI guess this exposes my desire to see fewer, better laws that can be broadly understood and justly applied with solid principles, rather than highly detailed laws to cover all known exceptions. I see killing a fetus as murder, and aborting a fetus as acceptable. We should not need a separate law for fetal murder.\n\u0026ndash; Alan\nMichael C. Rush (2009-12-19):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;That raises the question of what constitutes \u0026quot;voluntary consent\u0026quot; with respect to pregnancy, which may occur accidentally or unintentionally despite use of contraception, for example. More than consent, I think it might be useful to consider the larger issue of intent, which is already a large (if confused) part of law (think of the distinction between murder and manslaughter).\nIf I intend to drive my car to travel from point A to point B, but in the process unexpectedly hit and kill a pedestrian, it is (correctly) considered an accident. If I use my car to run someone down, it is viewed and punished quite differently.\nIf I have sex with no intention to procreate, even knowing that there is a risk that it will happen contrary to my intent and desire (just as I know that any time I drive my car there is a risk I will hit and kill someone), am I really subject to the same moral obligation as someone who had sex intending to make a child?\nSociety's answer tends to be yes, but how do the two cases really differ? Perhaps in that in one case a life is ended and in the other one is begun, and therefore there is a new person to be affected by whether or not one takes or declines responsibility for it, but I'm not sure that this really impacts the moral dimension of the question\u0026hellip;\nLippard (2009-12-19):\nLaw professor Tom W. Bell has a paper on the gradations of consent and its relevance...\nnolandda (2009-12-21):\ns/superogatory/supererogatory\nLippard (2009-12-23):\nThanks, Dan. Fixed.\nBrad (2009-12-27):\nHow about \u0026#39;the capacity to enjoy life and be aware of ones own life plus the ability to reflect on ones life\u0026#39; as criteria? At birth a child emotionally reacts to the tramatic change from its uneventful incubation. The awareness of the birth event probably approximates real reflection.\nM! (2010-01-13):\nThese comments make it clear that abortion advocates can not agree amongst themselves on proper criteria! Part of their problem is the pro-abortion position has no legit ultimate grounding.\nI am not trying to mock a serious discussion but does not this convo demonstrate that fundamental shakiness of the root presuppositions?\nvM!\nLippard (2010-01-13):\nVocab: \u0026quot;These comments make it clear that abortion advocates can not agree amongst themselves on proper criteria! Part of their problem is the pro-abortion position has no legit ultimate grounding.\nI am not trying to mock a serious discussion but does not this convo demonstrate that fundamental shakiness of the root presuppositions?\u0026quot;\nNot necessarily, it could simply be evidence of the complexity of the question, or actually questions. We're only just beginning to get a good understanding of the physical and neurological basis of the human mind. If you break it into component pieces, I think you'll find much more agreement on some particulars.\nWhat do you mean by \u0026quot;legit ultimate grounding\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;root presuppositions\u0026quot;? Are you an advocate of presuppositionalism, a view that all knowledge is built up by individuals from a foundation of certain, basic, indubitable axioms that are presuppositions of a worldview, along the lines of Van Til or Bahnsen? I don't find that view very plausible, especially when they make claims like belief in Christianity is a necessary presupposition for the use of logic.\nI don't think it's necessary to have agreement on \u0026quot;ultimate grounding\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;root presuppositions\u0026quot; to have agreement on particulars, either. Most proffered \u0026quot;ultimate\u0026quot; systems make metaphysical claims that are themselves highly disputed even amongst people who otherwise have significant agreement about everyday knowledge\u0026ndash;I think that the fact that we agree about a lot of everyday matters while disagreeing about the ultimate foundations is evidence that our knowledge of the everyday isn't based upon those claimed foundations.\nM! (2010-01-14):\nJim, do you deny that when you reason you do so from certain axioms?\nLippard (2010-01-15):\nUnfortunately, your question is ambiguous--\u0026quot;certain\u0026quot; could mean \u0026quot;particular\u0026quot; or mean \u0026quot;known with certainty.\u0026quot; In the former case, I would answer yes, in the latter case, I\u0026#39;d be more hesitant. People have proposed systems of logic that dispense with bivalence and non-contradiction, one of my former logic professors (Vann McGee) wrote a paper with a putative counterexample to modus ponens, and so forth. Though I would still probably conclude that some of our logical axioms are as certain as we can get, I would definitely not agree that human knowledge is a foundational pyramid of results, as opposed to a web (as argued for in, e.g., W.V. Quine and J.S. Ullian, The Web of Belief). I think that's true both of individual knowledge and social knowledge.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_18.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab Malone has posted \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/argument-from-viability-wantedness.html\"\u003ethe fourth part of his essay on abortion and personhood\u003c/a\u003e, addressing the arguments from viability and wantedness.  These are two more arguments that I don\u0026rsquo;t place a whole lot of stock in, though perhaps some commenters will want to say more about.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe viability criterion is significant in that it\u0026rsquo;s the basis of current federal case law on abortion since \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRoe v. Wade\u003c/span\u003e, but Vocab correctly notes that viability changes with the availability of technology, and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem like a feature that should be relevant to whether one is a person.  On the other hand, it is relevant to the notion of dependence\u0026ndash;pre-viability is a time where, if you do grant that a fetus is a person, it\u0026rsquo;s a person that is dependent for its existence upon another person.  This raises questions of when it is morally permissible for a person upon whom another is dependent for their life to sever that dependence.  Judith Jarvis Thomson\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm\"\u003eargument on abortion\u003c/a\u003e, which I referred to earlier in my response to part 1 of Vocab\u0026rsquo;s essay, presents the following scenario:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 4"},{"content":"One of the courses I took this semester was a seminar on the human dimensions of climate change, a geography course that briefly looked at the scientific evidence for climate change and then focused primarily on the social science aspects of the problems of mitigation and adaptation. The paper I wrote for the class was about the philosophical problem of how a layman can identify relevant expertise and evaluate the debate without being an expert, by looking at features such as relevance of expertise, consensus within fields, credentials and institutions, track records, logical validity and cogency of arguments, and so forth, and then applying these criteria to the IPCC scientists vs. the climate change skeptics.\nWhat follows is a list of some of the organizations promoting skepticism about anthropogenic climate change and some of the individuals associated with them, with some information about their credentials and activities. It\u0026rsquo;s my impression that those with the best reputations tend to agree that there is a global warming trend and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are a contributing factor to that warming, but the organizations tend to promote a more skeptical view (fairly characterized as \u0026ldquo;denial\u0026rdquo;), as exhibited by such evidence as expressions of apparent pleasure at the recent 2009 Pew survey result that showed a decrease in American acceptance of global warming.\nNongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)\nOne comparison I made was between the scientists of the IPCC and the scientists of the NIPCC, a group sponsored by The Heartland Institute. I compared the fourth-most-cited paper of the top 83 scientists of the former to the fourth-most-cited paper of all of the 2008 NIPCC participants, using Jim Prall\u0026rsquo;s excellent website of citation counts for climate scientists. Of the 619 scientists of the AR4 (2007) Working Group 1 on the physical science basis of climate change, the top 83 each have more than 200 citations to their fourth-most-cited paper. There are only thirteen climate skeptics with that level of citation, most of whom received those citations for papers having nothing to do with climate science, and none of whom were involved with the 2008 NIPCC report. (In 2009, William Gray, who is in that category, participated in a second NIPCC meeting, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t review that for my paper.)\nThe top scientist of the 2008 NIPCC report with publications containing the word \u0026ldquo;climate,\u0026rdquo; the organizer and editor of the report, S. Fred Singer, has 31 citations to his fourth-most-cited paper. He\u0026rsquo;s a retired physics professor (Ph.D. earned in 1948) who is not only a skeptic about climate change but about the health effects of second-hand smoke, the link between CFCs and the ozone hole, and has received tobacco and oil company funding for his work. His name pops up frequently when it comes to attempts by corporations to block environmental regulation. There were 24 participants listed as authors on the 2008 NIPCC report, six of whom have no academic credentials or affiliations and no published academic work of relevance to the climate change debate (Dennis Avery, Christopher Monckton, Kenneth Haapala, Warren Anderson, Klaus Heiss, and Anton Uriarte). The top-cited scientist, Lubos Motl, has 150 citations for his fourth-most-cited paper, but he\u0026rsquo;s a theoretical physicist with no publications containing the word \u0026ldquo;climate.\u0026rdquo; The next guy after Singer, George Taylor, has an M.S. in meteorology and 25 citations for his fourth-most-cited paper. There are a few people on the list with relevant credentials, but none are top names in climate science. The majority with scientific credentials have little or no relevant expertise, like Fred Goldberg, with a Ph.D. in welding technology, and Tom Segalstad, a mineralogist with a Ph.D. in geology.\nIt should be noted that the climate skeptics with the best credentials in climate science tend to be participants in the IPCC process, such as John R. Christy, who was a lead author on the Working Group 1 reports in 2001 and 2007. Robert Balling of ASU has also participated in the IPCC process, and despite being often regarded as a skeptic, agrees that there is global warming and that it has a human component, and told me that the IPCC report is the best place for the layman to find accurate information about climate science (see my summary of his recent talk at ASU).\nThe Heartland Institute\nThe Heartland Institute, founded in 1984, was the sponsor of the NIPCC (above) and has its own category at this blog. Between 1998 and 2005, it received $561,500 in funding from ExxonMobil, 40% of which was designated for climate science opposition (see the Union of Concerned Scientists Exxon report (PDF)). In April 2008, it published a list of “500 Scientists With Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” compiled by Dennis Avery, participant in NIPCC and co-author of a 2007 anti-AGW book with S. Fred Singer which attributes periodic warming to a 1500-year solar cycle. The publication of this list resulted in protests from 45 scientists on the list who stated that they are not AGW opponents and requested that their names be removed. Rather than remove the scientists from the list, The Heartland Institute changed the title of the list to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.\u0026quot; The Heartland Institute\u0026rsquo;s list of 138 climate change experts contains many individuals with no relevant expertise or credentials.\nScience and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)\nSinger has another organization devoted to arguing against human-caused climate change, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), which he founded in 1990. That organization also opposes the ban on CFCs and other EPA regulations. There are nine people listed on SEPP\u0026rsquo;s board of science advisors, of which five are dead (Gerholm, Higatsberger, Mitchell, Nierenberg, and Starr). Ames is a well-known scientist in his field, molecular genetics, which has nothing to do with climate change. The others with the most citations are elderly or dead physicists (Starr, 1935 physics Ph.D.; Böttcher, 1947 physics Ph.D.; and Mitchell, 1951 physics Ph.D.). The rest have only single-digit citations to their fourth-most-cited paper.\nGeorge C. Marshall Institute\nThe George C. Marshall Institute was founded in 1984 to support Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, but since 1989 has been active in opposing AGW. The current board of directors, according to its website, are William Happer (Princeton physics professor), William O’Keefe (former executive VP and COO of the American Petroleum Institute and president of a consulting company), Gregory Canavan (physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory), John H. Moore (former president of Grove City College, former economics professor, and former Deputy Director of the NSF), Rodney W. Nichols (former president of the New York Academy of Sciences), Milan Nikolich (electrical engineering Ph.D., a nuclear weapons program consultant associated with CACI, a defense contractor), and Roy Spencer (climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville). Of these, only Spencer, who is also a Bible-believing anti-evolutionist, has a climate science background. (Happer is a highly-cited particle physicist.) The George C. Marshall Institute has published works by some of the more reputable AGW opponents with a high level of citations for their fourth-most-cited publication\u0026ndash;e.g., Richard Lindzen of MIT (274), Roger A. Pielke, Sr. (129), Roy Spencer (124), and John R. Christy (88). Others with relevant credentials but not quite the high level of citations include Patrick Michaels (37), Robert Balling (29), and Timothy Ball (8). The George C. Marshall Institute has also published and promoted the work of Stephen McIntyre of the ClimateAudit blog, a former mineral exploration executive with a bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degree in mathematics, and economist Ross McKitrick.\nFormer George C. Marshall Institute executive director Matthew Crawford left the organization after five months when, he said, he realized it was “more fond of some facts than others” and that his job “consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank” (Carolyn Mooney, \u0026ldquo;A Hands-On Philosopher Argues for a Fresh Vision of Manual Work\u0026rdquo; (PDF), The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2009).\nCato Institute\nThe Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded in 1977 by Edward Crane and Charles Koch. Charles and David Koch are co-owners of Koch Industries, which is one of the largest privately owned companies in the U.S. (often #2, but has occasionally been #1). Koch Industries has major holdings in petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Patrick Michaels (already mentioned in connection with the George C. Marshall Institute) is the Cato Institute Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies and their only climate science expert on staff, though Cato has also published articles co-authored by Michaels and Robert Balling.\nScience and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)\nThe SPPI was founded in 1994 by chairman George Carlo, former assistant football coach for the Buffalo Bills who subsequently entered the public health field and earned a Ph.D. and law degree. He is an advocate for the view that cell phones cause substantial health risks, including cancer and autism. [That\u0026rsquo;s a different SPPI; see John Mashey\u0026rsquo;s comment below.] The SPPI’s chief science advisor is Willie Soon, a Harvard astrophysicist also associated with the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (about which more will be said below). Other science advisors include William Kininmonth, Robert M. Carter, David Legates, Craig D. Idso, James J. O’Brien, and Joseph D’Aleo, all of whom except O’Brien and Legates were involved with the 2008 NIPCC report. The chief policy advisor is Sir Christopher Monckton, an AGW opponent from the UK with no relevant science credentials, also involved with the 2008 NIPCC report. Legates, the Delaware State Climatologist, was a commenter on Patrick Michaels\u0026rsquo; most recent climate change skepticism book at an event at the Cato Institute, and is a climate scientist whose fourth-most-cited paper has received 226 citations. D\u0026rsquo;Aleo, first director of meteorology for The Weather Channel, has a 1970 M.S. in meteorology and has not published any academic work since. Kininmonth, with an M.Sc. degree (not sure in what) was the former head of the Australian National Climate Center. Craig Idso has a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University and is founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; his fourth-most-cited paper has received 20 citations.\nCenter for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change\nThis is a small Phoenix-based nonprofit run by Craig Idso (chairman) and his father Sherwood B. Idso (president) which argues that increasing CO2 levels are beneficial. The organization has received $90,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. Both Idsos and Craig\u0026rsquo;s brother Keith have also been on the payroll of the Western Fuels Association. Sherwood Idso, a 1968 physics Ph.D. who was a research physicist for the USDA\u0026rsquo;s Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory starting in 1967, has a fourth-most-cited scientific paper which has received 189 citations.\nOregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM)\nThe Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM), a private research organization run by Arthur Robinson and his two sons Noah and Zachary Robinson, was founded in 1980. The OISM faculty listed on their website are the three Robinsons, Martin D. Kamen (a deceased chemist), R. Bruce Merrifield (a deceased chemist), Fred Westall (a biochemistry professor), Carl Boehme (who has an M.S. in electrical engineering), and Jane Orient (a medical doctor). The OISM sells DVDs on “nuclear war survival skills” and civil defense, as well as a home schooling curriculum, and has taken over the publication of the late Petr Beckmann’s Access to Energy newsletter which defends nuclear energy and now also criticizes AGW. (Beckmann was a physicist who became an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, and in addition to promoting nuclear energy also challenged Einstein’s relativity and published a journal for that purpose called Galilean Electrodynamics.)\nThe OISM Petition Project was set up to oppose U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Treaty and currently has over 31,000 signatures of Americans with degrees in a scientific subject. The initial call for signatures was sent out with a letter from Frederick Seitz while he was still president of the National Academies of Science, along with a 12-page “Research Review of Global Warming Evidence” by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon which was formatted to look like a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. The petition was originally billed as a “survey,” but it has not been reported how many solicitations were sent out compared to how many were returned, nor how many scientists disagreed with the statements on the petition (as pointed out by Gary Whittenberger in eSkeptic). The signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent. By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science. The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field. (Blogger Chris Colose has looked at a subsample of names on the petition, without finding any with climate-related publications.)\nOne of the other “faculty” at the OISM is Dr. Jane Orient, M.D., of Tucson, Arizona, whom I’ve heard speak in opposition to AGW. She is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative organization that publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS). This journal published an anti-AGW articles by Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willie Soon (2007), and by Arthur Robinson, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary Robinson (1998), as well as articles opposing vaccination of children, claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that homosexuality causes crime and disease, opposing fluoridation of water, accusing the FDA of fraud for banning DDT, and criticizing the theory of evolution (see evaluations by Kathleen Seidel and Orac). The Robinson et al. (1998) article is apparently a version of the article originally distributed with the Oregon Petition, and another anti-AGW article by the same authors was published in the journal Climate Research (Soon et al. 1998). Arthur Robinson has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech and was an associate of Linus Pauling. Noah Robinson also has a chemistry Ph.D. from Caltech, and Zachary Robinson is a veterinarian with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. None has relevant climate science expertise.\nWillie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (1980 Ph.D., astrophysics) are astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who study solar variability, both have also been associated with the George C. Marshall Institute and the Heartland Institute; Soon is the chief science advisor for the Science and Public Policy Institute (above). Baliunas received the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP), a group associated with OISM (Jane Orient is president of DDP). In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an anti-AGW article (arguing that warming was due to solar variation) in Climate Research that led to protests from 13 of the authors cited that their work had been misrepresented and misused. Subsequently the new editor-in-chief, Hans van Storch, resigned along with two other editors when the publisher refused to print an editorial about improvements in the journal review process. Baliunas\u0026rsquo; fourth-most-cited paper has 230 citations; Soon’s has 68. Timothy J. Osborn and Keith R. Briffa (2006) repeated Soon and Baliunas’ methodology in a paper published in Science that did not reproduce their results. Osborn and Briffa are both climate scientists associated with the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University; Osborn\u0026rsquo;s (1995 Ph.D., environmental sciences) fourth-most-cited paper has received 152 citations and Briffa\u0026rsquo;s (1984 Ph.D., dendroclimatologist) has received 250.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve given special attention to OISM and AAPS because of the extent of crankery associated with them.\nThree Miscellaneous Items\nMy last three items are not organizations but are worthy of further note. (1) This year, S. Fred Singer circulated a petition to attempt to get the American Physical Society to revise its statement on global warming from being supportive of AGW to be in opposition to it. He collected 206 signatures from APS members, about 0.45% of its 47,000 members, and the petition was rejected. John Mashey analyzed the social network of the first 121 signers (PDF), and found that the initial signing clustered around the SEPP, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the Cato Institute, along with other interesting demographic information. (2) Ian Plimer, a prominent Australian geologist, published a book in early 2009 opposing AGW, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming-The Missing Science. Plimer has in the past been an active public critic of creationism in Australia, and was criticized by me for using inaccurate and misleading claims in his arguments, and by me and Jeff Shallit for plagiarism in a prior book. Plimer’s new book has been similarly found to contain not only inaccurate statements and misrepresentations, but plagiarism. (3) The Center for Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s Credibility Project was a review of the scientific credentials of the signers of global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe\u0026rsquo;s Senate Minority Report on Global Warming, which found, similar to what I report above, that most of them have no relevant expertise or credentials.\nSummary\nThe above doesn\u0026rsquo;t demonstrate that climate skepticism is without merit, but it does demonstrate that there are reasons to be skeptical\u0026ndash;and in many cases extremely skeptical\u0026ndash;about some of the organizations and individuals promoting climate skepticism, independently of their arguments. In my view, the arguments for climate skepticism in most cases just increase the grounds for skepticism. I recommend the RealClimate blog and Skeptical Science blog as two good sources of information about those arguments.\nTo really dig into the details, read the IPCC WG-1 Report.\nUPDATE: Also worthy of note is Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s list of scientific organizations which have issued statements on anthropogenic climate change. Noteworthy for its absence is any organization with a statement arguing against anthropogenic climate change; since 2007 only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has had a noncommittal statement. Wikipedia also has a nice list of scientists who oppose the consensus views and what their actual positions are. (Like JFK assassination conspiracy theorists, they do not have a consensus view of their own.)\nI also neglected to mention a paper that I cited in the paper I wrote for my climate change class, a 2008 study that examined 141 “English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005” found that over 92% of them were connected to conservative think tanks, either published by them or authored by persons directly affiliated with them (Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap, and Mark Freeman, \u0026ldquo;The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism,\u0026rdquo; Environmental Politics vol 17, no. 3, June 2008, pp. 349-385). In the above list, is there any organization or individual that does not come from a conservative or libertarian political ideology?\nUPDATE (December 17, 2009): Other posts at this blog on climate change include:\n\u0026ldquo;Climate Research Unit email scandal\u0026rdquo; (November 23, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation\u0026rdquo; (November 7, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation\u0026rdquo; (November 6, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Robert Balling on climate change\u0026rdquo; (October 30, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Ian Plimer on climate change\u0026rdquo; (May 22, 2009)\n\u0026ldquo;Reason to be skeptical about anthropogenic climate change\u0026rdquo; (April 26, 2008)\n\u0026ldquo;Garbage in on climate change measurement\u0026rdquo; (October 25, 2007)\n\u0026ldquo;Lomborg, global warming, and opportunity costs\u0026rdquo; (September 15, 2007)\n\u0026ldquo;The consensus for anthropogenic global warming\u0026rdquo; (August 19, 2007)\n\u0026ldquo;David Friedman on global warming\u0026rdquo; (March 15, 2007)\n\u0026ldquo;Taxonomy of questions about global warming\u0026rdquo; (March 13, 2007)\nAmong several others. Those who are accusing me of obvious liberal bias might want to take a look at these. I have my share of political biases, but I do my best to defer to the best arguments and evidence over political ideology.\nUPDATE (December 19, 2009): Peter Staats, in the comments, suggested that belief in anthropogenic global warming is entrenched among scientists and will disappear as the older generation dies (citing Planck, whose point is also made in Thomas Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s Structure of Scientific Revolutions). I responded that I thought he has it backwards\u0026ndash;that AGW has become more and more supported, and the holdouts tend to be older, as some of the data about the anti-AGW organizations above already suggested. So I tested our respective hypotheses against Jim Prall\u0026rsquo;s data, for IPCC WG1 scientists vs. the signatories of the AGW-skeptical documents. I looked at the average year of the last academic degree awarded, first for those with citation counts for their fourth-most-cited paper \u0026gt;= 200, then, since that was such a small sample for the climate skeptics, for citation counts \u0026gt;= 100, and then for all the 623 IPCC WG1 scientists vs. the 469 signatories of AGW-skeptical documents. Here are the results:\nCitation counts of 4th-most-cited \u0026gt;= 200:\nIPCC WG1: N=83, 12 w/o year, N=71, average year of last degree = 1981\nSkeptics: N=13, 4 w/o year, N=9, average year of last degree = 1965\nCitations counts of 4th-most-cited \u0026gt;=100:\nIPCC WG1: N=201, 51 w/o year, N=150, average year of last degree = 1983\nSkeptics: N=38, 15 w/o year, N=23, average year of last degree = 1968\nAll IPCC WG1 vs. AGW-skeptical document signers:\nIPCC WG1: N=623, 208 w/o year, N=415, average year of last degree = 1989\nSkeptics: N=469, 346 w/o year, N=123, average year of last degree = 1973\nBTW, for this last group, there\u0026rsquo;s more info on degree breakdowns than year of degree (note that those without degrees are excluded along with the n/a, no web, and no cv categories\u0026ndash;there were several of those among the skeptics and one undergrad in the IPCC scientists, not counted here):\nIPCC WG1 scientists:\nN=504\nPh.D.: 474 (94.0%)\nM.Sc.: 13 (2.6%)\nCand.: 5 (1.0%)\nD.Sc.: 2 (0.4%)\nD.Phil.: 2 (0.4%)\nSc.D.: 2 (0.4%)\nC.Phys.: 2 (0.4%)\nB.Sc.: 2 (0.4%)\nAnd one each (0.2%) of Nobel laureates and Ph.Lic.\nSkeptics:\nN=322\nPh.D.: 254 (78.9%)\nM.Sc.: 25 (7.8%)\nB.Sc.: 13 (4.0%)\nB.A.: 4 (1.2%)\nM.S.: 3 (0.9%)\nB.S.: 3 (0.9%)\nM.D. and Ph.D.: 1 (0.3%)\nAnd one each (0.3%) of M.D., D.Eng., Tekn.D., Dipl., M.Eng., M.A., P.E., Dipl.Bio., M.C., D.Env., B.E., R.P., \u0026ldquo;Doctorandus\u0026rdquo;, B.S.E.E., Dip.ES., and J.D.\nUPDATE (December 21, 2009): Theoretical physicist (a string theorist), former Harvard physics professor, and climate skeptic Lubos Motl, referred to above as the most-cited scientist involved with the 2008 NIPCC report, has just demonstrated the quality of his reasoning at his own blog. In a post about James Randi\u0026rsquo;s expression of skepticism about AGW and his temporary (and quickly retracted) suggestion that the Oregon Petition Project seemed legitimate, Motl infers that this must have been the cause for Phil Plait being fired as president of JREF\u0026ndash;an event which didn\u0026rsquo;t happen. When Randi himself showed up to point out that Plait is still president of JREF and had already given notice of his departure at the end of the year prior to these events, Motl\u0026rsquo;s response was \u0026ldquo;If you have been truly violently, physically blackmailed and harassed by the AGW fanatics, I could understand what you just wrote. If you were not, let me just state that in that case, you became a morally worthless human in my eyes.\u0026rdquo; Way to be reasonable, Motl! He continues: \u0026ldquo;The \u0026lsquo;denialist\u0026rsquo; dictionary you adopted and the attacks against the Oregon Petition are pretty disgusting.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (December 25, 2009): I\u0026rsquo;m reading Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s book, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, 1996, Berkeley: University of California Press, which I had previously read chapter 6 of for one of my classes. In ch. 4, \u0026ldquo;The Debate That Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t Die,\u0026rdquo; about Peter Duesberg and those who deny that HIV causes AIDS, I just read about Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Discussion Paper #5\u0026rdquo; of 3 June 1992, which was titled \u0026ldquo;Who Are the HIV Heretics?\u0026rdquo;, which sounds fairly analogous to the this blog post. I\u0026rsquo;ve not been able to find a copy online, but I would love to see that document.\nEpstein, pp. 156-157:\nThe seriousness with which Project Inform took the resurgence of interest in the causation controversey was indicated by the publication in early June of a six-page \u0026lsquo;Discussion Paper\u0026rsquo; devoted entirely to the topic. The report began by blasting the media for their irresponsibility and sensationalism. Why do reporters love the HIV dissenters? Why have they confused Montagnier\u0026rsquo;s position with Duesberg\u0026rsquo;s, despite Montagnier\u0026rsquo;s own disavowals? \u0026ldquo;Apparently because it makes a good story\u0026ndash;\u0026lsquo;Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong! Top Scientists in Error Ten Years! Secrets! Coverup! Big Business, Big Science Collusion!\u0026rsquo; \u0026hellip; Such is the sorry state of AIDS reporting in some circles today.\u0026quot;\nFocusing on four groups opposing the HIV hypothesis\u0026ndash;the New York Native, Spin magazine, assorted journalists, and certain scientists\u0026ndash;Project Inform was at pains to question the credibility of each and to uncover motivations for adopting heretical stances. \u0026hellip; In considering the fourth, crucial group of HIV dissenters\u0026ndash;the scientists\u0026ndash;Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s report similarly emphasized the issue of credibility. Root-Bernstein \u0026ldquo;works in a field not directly related to AIDS\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;has not conducted or published any AIDS research other than editorials,\u0026rdquo; yet \u0026ldquo;Spin calls him \u0026lsquo;one of the leading AIDS researchers in the US.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; Kary Mullis, while \u0026ldquo;obviously a serious scientist,\u0026rdquo; was similarly \u0026ldquo;an outsider to AIDS research\u0026rdquo;; furthermore, his PCR test \u0026ldquo;has, if anything, helped to bolster the case for HIV.\u0026rdquo; Of all the heretical scientists, only Sonnabend \u0026ldquo;is professionally involved with AIDS,\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;primarily as a clinician\u0026rdquo;: \u0026ldquo;While Dr. Sonnabend has earned respect in many ways, his arguments against HIV are no more valid than the others.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nIn focusing on formal credentials, Project Inform walked a fine line. This, after all, was a grassroots organization staffed by self-educated AIDS experts; its executive director, before the epidemic came along, had been a business consultant. A big part of Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s work involved disseminating highly technical knowledge about AIDS to laypeople in order to create what might be called a mass-based expertise. In its reckoning of the tokens of expertise, Project Inform was not about to argue that academic degrees or journal publications are everything. Lacking the right credentials, Peter Duesberg could still be considered an AIDS expert of sorts\u0026ndash;but not in a way that would make him stand out from the crowd: \u0026ldquo;Perhaps his most relevant work is that he has studied the medical literature on AIDS (as have thousands of patients, physicians, and activists), and this qualifies as a form of expertise.\u0026rdquo; But \u0026ldquo;Duesberg\u0026rsquo;s supporters and the media spread misinformation when they present him as an \u0026lsquo;AIDS researcher\u0026rsquo; in the sense that phrase is usually meant.\u0026rdquo; His published writings on AIDS were \u0026ldquo;simply editorials.\u0026quot;\nProject Inform noted that there was a \u0026ldquo;legitimate\u0026rdquo; scientific question that had been \u0026ldquo;lost in the fog\u0026rdquo; generated by media fascination with Duesberg and other dissenters: How does HIV cause AIDS? Following the lead of Gallo and others, the report emphasized that pathogenesis was separate from etiology; while part one of the report was entitled \u0026ldquo;Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?\u0026rdquo; part two was called \u0026ldquo;How Does HIV Cause AIDS?\u0026quot;There are lots of interesting parallels here, including political. Epstein notes (pp. 158-159) HIV dissenters and promoters of their views being libertarian (Charles Thomas) and conservative (Phillip Johnson, Bryan Ellison, Tom Bethell, Patrick Buchanan). Johnson, Bethell, and Buchanan are also anti-evolutionists; Bethell and Buchanan also deny that there\u0026rsquo;s anthropogenic global warming.\nUPDATE (December 28, 2009): The Center for Public Integrity\u0026rsquo;s project, \u0026ldquo;The Climate Change Lobby,\u0026quot; identifies who\u0026rsquo;s lobbying the U.S. Congress on climate change.\nUPDATE (January 3, 2010): This Republican Party PR firm memo from 2000 about how to \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; the global warming debate by continuing to stress uncertainty as the case for warming become stronger is interesting in its similarity to the Tobacco Institute\u0026rsquo;s PR strategy about the evidence that smoking causes cancer.\nUPDATE (January 5, 2010): Donald Gutstein\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;This is How You Fuel a Community of Climate Deniers\u0026rdquo; covers similar ground to the above (with some familiar names), with a Canadian focus.\nUPDATE (January 7, 2010): Jeffrey Masters\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;The Skeptics vs. the Ozone Hole\u0026rdquo; shows how a similar debate came out in the 1970s, which included S. Fred Singer arguing that CFCs don\u0026rsquo;t deplete the ozone layer. That article notes that Singer\u0026rsquo;s atmospheric science work has been negligible since 1971.\nJames McComb (2009-12-17):\nJames Randi is a climate change \u0026quot;skeptic\u0026quot; !\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMore to come on that, I hear. It\u0026#39;s unfortunate that he buys into the Oregon Petition Project (see original post).\nMichael (2009-12-17):\nI find it curious that one dimension of your review involves the frequency of citation ... when it appears that this very criterion was a focus of manipulation by those in the \u0026quot;pro-anthropogenic\u0026quot; camp. I don't know to what extent these attempts were successful, but it is not hard to imagine that, if several leading scientists and editors, who channel both what is written, what is published, and thus necessarily, what is cited, could have a significant impact on this metric.\nDid you try to compensate for the effects of this attempted manipulation? Is that even possible?\nAny thoughts?\nUnknown (2009-12-17):\nSo I guess the alarmists are lilly white and can\u0026#39;t be bought and paid for? Why don\u0026#39;t write a paper on how much money Big Oil and Big Government gave to the alarmist camp? If your one-sided report were more balanced by doing the same analysis of the alarmist camp I would be inclined to give your assessment more credence. But your innate bias undercuts your whole argument. BTW for a bit of context on the incidents that slight skeptics for, see Chris Horner\u0026#39;s Red Hot Lies.\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMichael: The creationists used to make similar claims about being locked out of the peer-reviewed literature, but when challenged, could never produce the rejection slips. There seem to be a number of climate skeptics who have no problem getting published and cited\u0026ndash;they happen to also be the ones with relevant credentials and expertise.\nI think the burden of proof is on the conspiracy theorist. My cursory review of the CRU emails shows the main concern in discussions about peer review is bad work getting published (e.g., the 2003 Soon and Baliunas paper in Climate Research, which was admittedly, on the part of the editors, a failure of peer review to allow it to be published).\nIn any case, why do you think these organizations promote \u0026quot;experts\u0026quot; to the general public with no relevant credentials or expertise?\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMark: \u0026quot;So I guess the alarmists are lilly white and can\u0026#39;t be bought and paid for?\u0026quot; False dilemma. But where\u0026#39;s the evidence? \u0026quot;Why don't write a paper on how much money Big Oil and Big Government gave to the alarmist camp?\u0026quot; What organizations do you consider to be part of \u0026quot;the alarmist camp\u0026quot;? Do you count all government funding of science to be \u0026quot;Big Government\u0026quot; funding designed to produce a particular outcome? That seems implausible to me.\nWhat's my innate bias? I did include citation count information for IPCC scientists, as well as point to a site that has far more detailed information than I've given here on credentials and citations.\nMark and Michael: Do you think any of these organizations mentioned are reliable on climate science? If so, which ones, and why?\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMichael: BTW, _Energy \u0026amp; Environment_ regularly publishes article by climate skeptics. What work published there was rejected by a more reputable journal and is a game-changer on the scientific debate?\nTheGreenMiles (2009-12-17):\nAmazing how often the name ExxonMobil comes up when reviewing global warming denial groups, huh?\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMark: You mentioned Chris Horner\u0026#39;s book _Red Hot Lies_. Chris Horner is an attorney and Senior Fellow for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another conservative think tank that I probably should have added a bit on. Horner has no climate science credentials. CEI\u0026#39;s Global Warming Policy Analyst, Julie Walsh, has \u0026quot;the non-traditional background of being a home educator for thirteen years.\u0026quot; Again, no climate science credentials. I thought CEI lost any credibility it might have had when they went on an anti-open source software kick on behalf of Microsoft in the late 90s.\nL (2009-12-17):\nProbably Martin Durkin deserves special mention too. He\u0026#39;s the Channel Four documentary director who was responsible for The Great Global Warming Swindle. Durkin is said to have strong ties to the Revolutionary Communist Party, Living Marxism and Spiked (oddly, a Libertarian oriented magazine). Durkin denies he was ever associated with the RCP, but his previous documentary Against Nature suggests he is at least well connected. Durkin and the RCP are part of that weird twilight area where the far left and the far right overlap. They are at least partially motivated by a belief in the conspiracy theory that AGW is just another way for large, transnational businesses to keep the third world from developing.\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nNeural Gourmet: Yes, you\u0026#39;re right--my list was fairly U.S.-centric, and also organization-centric. I could also have mentioned the \u0026quot;Not Evil Just Wrong\u0026quot; film, and a couple other Australians who are actively promoting skepticism about climate change, Joanne Nova and Jennifer Marohasy. Nova's booklet, \u0026quot;The Skeptics Handbook,\u0026quot; has recently been distributed in the U.S. to minority churches with funding from The Heartland Institute and a cover letter from Roy Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality.\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nNeural Gourmet: You might be interested in an amusing email exchange involving Martin Durkin, Armand Leroi, and Simon Singh.\nW_Chow (2009-12-17):\nNice work, Jim! As I mentioned in class, it's interesting to note the preponderance of old people who hold contrary opinions to the IPCC conclusions.\nAny thoughts on expanding this into a full-fledged article for publication? It has its merits.\nMichael (2009-12-17):\nI think you mistake my question for something other than what I was postulating. Are you asserting then that, either there really was no such manipulation, or if there was, its effect was insignificant?\nFrom my exceptionally superficial gloss of the issue, it just struck me as something that one might address head-on, since the allegation and some evidence that is argued to support that allegation has been widely publicized.\nLippard (2009-12-17):\nMichael: I do question the extent to which a small group of scientists could affect the ability of climate skeptics to get published and be cited by others, yes. The relatively high citation counts for some of the climate skeptics strikes me as evidence of relative inefficacy of such attempts. Are you suggesting that, had the EAU CRU scientists not made conscious efforts to not cite or favorably review what they saw as poor work, climate skeptics would be the mainstream/majority in the climate science field?\nScott Fox (2009-12-17):\nThe list of organizations promoting AGW is ten times longer than the skeptical equivalent. And the list of media outlets is a hundred times longer.\nMichael (2009-12-18):\n\u0026quot;Are you suggesting that, had the EAU CRU scientists not made conscious efforts to not cite or favorably review what they saw as poor work, climate skeptics would be the mainstream/majority in the climate science field?\u0026quot; No, nothing of the sort, I'm really just wondering whether, \u0026quot;had the EAU CRU scientists not made conscious efforts to not cite or favorably review\u0026quot; their \u0026quot;opponents\u0026quot;, this might have made a measurable impact on your citation count.\nI would find an answer to the effect of \u0026quot;it no impact whatsoever\u0026quot; incredible, since that response would be the equivalent of saying that their \u0026quot;conscious efforts\u0026quot; were redundant or superfluous, they weren't going to cite them anyway, which begs the question why anyone would exhort their peers not to cite \u0026quot;those\u0026quot; people.\nBottom line, from my admitted exceptionally superficial gloss of the issues, much of it sounds more like \u0026quot;belief\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;faith\u0026quot;, and \u0026quot;appeal to authority\u0026quot;.\nPut it another way, who is the interested layman to believe absent an investment of time and resources few can spare, when many in the debate, especially the highest profile individuals, have so damaged their credibility?\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nScott: Have you attempted to estimate those numbers or are you just pulling numbers out of a hat? Michael: \u0026quot;No impact whatsoever\u0026quot; may be unlikely, but it should be weighed against the fact that in any field, similar sorts of social factors apply. It's possible that they wash out, all things considered. I suspect the private emails of the organizations I've discussed contain lots of embarrassing things, since we already know they've been caught in cases of misrepresentations and deception that I've identified\u0026ndash;to my mind, worse than the shenanigans in the EAU CRU emails that I've seen.\nThe criteria I've discussed can't be anything more than suggestive, though some of them are capable of determining, e.g., who's a qualified expert capable of giving admissible testimony in a court of law. These features of credibility can't by themselves determine who's right, for sure.\nMy favored approach would be to exclude all of the discredited scientists and organizations of any position, and let those with clean records come to a consensus. For some reason, no one supporting the climate skepticism view seems to be making such a suggestion.\nShouldn't we all be in agreement that the OISM Petition is a crock, that Ian Plimer isn't a reliable source of information on climate change, that the Heartland Institute should rely only call people climate change experts if they have legitimate expertise, and that the EAU CRU scientists should get better coders and everybody should be transparent and accountable?\nHume's Ghost (2009-12-18):\n\u0026quot;I thought CEI lost any credibility...\u0026quot; They crossed that Rubicon for me when I found out Michelle Malkin got a journalism fellowship from there.\nPeter Staats (2009-12-18):\nScience is not, nor has it ever been, about voting for the truth. Galileo did not have much company in his heliocentric heresy, but that didn\u0026#39;t make him wrong. Scientific discourse should have nothing to do with counting peer reviewed citations. It is very hard to overturn an entrenched philosophy such as AGW. To quote Max Planck: \u0026quot;A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nPeter: I was very clear in my introduction and summary about what this analysis does and does not show. AGW has become firmly established, but it has done so over the last several decades as evidence has accumulated in its support.\nI think your appeal to Planck is right but has things backwards, based on the age of many of the climate skeptics (and the fact that many of the scientific reputations on which those organizations base their scientific advisory boards belong to people who are already dead!).\nMihai (2009-12-19):\nYou forgot Zbigniew Jaworowski http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf\nLippard (2009-12-19):\nPeter Staats: I conducted a test of our respective claims with Prall's data, first for scientists with \u0026gt;= 200 citations for their fourth-most-cited paper, then for scientists with \u0026gt;= 100 citations for their fourth-most-cited paper, to look at the average year in which they received their last degree. (I discarded those for which Prall's site didn't have year information, as noted.)\nFor IPCC WG-1 scientists: \u0026gt;= 200 cites: N=83, 12 had no year\nN=71, average year = 1981\n\u0026gt;= 100 cites: N=201, 51 had no year\nN=150, average year = 1983\nFor the climate skeptics (from the list of those that signed any of the climate skepticism documents):\n\u0026gt;= 200 cites: N=13, 4 had no year\nN=9, average year = 1965\n\u0026gt;= 100 cites: N=38, 15 had no year\nN=23, average year = 1968\nThe empirical evidence supports my view over yours.\nDerek Wall (2009-12-21):\nhttp://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-sceptics-are-like-alcoholics.html may be of interest, any lame excuse will do for those who say do nothing,\nLuboš Motl (2009-12-23):\nCommie, I urge you to instantly remove the libels and lies from this blog, otherwise I will start to work on the legal liquidation of the criminal that you are.\nThese things may be common among the green trash in which you seem to live but I won't tolerate it against myself.\nCheers LM\nLippard (2009-12-23):\nLubos Motl: I\u0026#39;m always happy to correct my mistakes, but I don\u0026#39;t engage in \u0026quot;lies\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;libel,\u0026quot; let alone criminality. I\u0026#39;m also not a communist. If you're really who you claim to be, I think your comment has done more to undermine your credibility than anything in my post.\nIf you have any errors to point out, by all means please do so.\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nwow alot fallacy being thrown around here. guilt by association, circumstantial ad hominem, appeals to authority and popularity. its always the same argument from both sides. The state institutions attack the private ones for business \u0026quot;conflicts of interest\u0026quot; in connection to private corporations. And the private institutions attack state funded organizations for political \u0026quot;conflicts of interest\u0026quot;. (they wont get their funding supporting a politically unpopular idea)\nThere is an error here, Patrick Michaels is not a global warming skeptic, he believes that the earth is getting warmer and it is caused by humans. The fact he tried to point out is that the only solution to AGW being acted upon is mandatory emission cuts. Even if countries agree on cuts, and even if they follow through, they will not change the warming trajectory of the earth. they will only cause massive economic fallout among developing nations. The fact is the best way to deal with AGW is geo-enginering, adaptation, and helping nations become wealthier. I have not seen a single AGW alarmist come up with a rational solution to the problem. Politicians are using AGW as an excuse for massive government control. (aka naming Co2 a pollutant)\nEmission Cuts are not the answer!\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nIsn\u0026#39;t frivolously accusing someone of committing a crime actionable in its own right? (Unfortunately, this is going to be the last I'll have to say on this discussion because, between frivolous rejection of my perfectly good Google password and frivolous rejection of accurate renderings of the CAPTCHA characters, your blog has refused my above comment EIGHT FREAKIN' TIMES so far.)\nNine times.\nOH GOOD\u0026hellip;\nKagehi (2009-12-24):\nWith respect, counting citations isn\u0026#39;t always helpful. Some bozo did that a while back, claiming that \u0026quot;evolution\u0026quot; isn\u0026#39;t part of *any* of the papers found at PubMed. His reasoning? If it had anything to do with evolution, they should be using the word specifically. In actual reality, if you search on a related term, which is actually used to convey *specific* information about the subject of what mutations are being looked at, any such word can generate tens of thousands of documents. Word searches are bad ways to look for this sort of stuff. What you think the experts are using, and what they do, isn't necessarily the same thing. That being said, to people like Mark, your question doesn't make a damn sense. Such companies are the ones whose businesses would be most effected. The idea that they would \u0026quot;pay\u0026quot; climatologists to support alarmism, knowing the end result is going to be making a ruin of their businesses\u0026hellip; Never mind the fact that the media, and a few nuts, are the worst offenders with respect to \u0026quot;alarmist\u0026quot; scenarios, while the climate scientists have generally been concerned, but not over the top about it.\nIts right up there with the two contradictory arguments you get from the anti-AGW people of how a) the world economy will be in ruins, while simultaneously, b) alarmists will make millions selling products they have no companies, funding, or technology to produce yet, without everyone, including the energy companies, who have the money, and the materials, and the needed \u0026quot;specialist\u0026quot; experts, trying to invent them. Or, do you people actually imagine that having a degree in climate means you can pull more efficient solar panels out of your backside? Most of the time, you get two specialists in a room, and unless there is at least \u0026quot;some\u0026quot; parallel between their research, they might as well be speaking Wookie and Klingon, for all they have a single damn clue what the other is talking about. Yet, these people are going to \u0026quot;profit\u0026quot; off or a \u0026quot;world economic collapse\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;. How??\nLippard (2009-12-24):\nKagehi: I agree that counting the publications containing \u0026quot;climate\u0026quot; has the problem you describe. But that\u0026#39;s not the only measure discussed; I also look at overall citation counts. Again, that\u0026#39;s at best a rough proxy for relevant credibility, since a scientist may have a high citation count in a non-climate science field. aweaver: Sorry for your problems posting comments. I was forced to adopt authentication due to spam problems.\nGyles: Michaels is a \u0026quot;climate change skeptic\u0026quot; in that he questions the negative consequences of warming, but I agree with you that there are a number of scientists identified as such who accept AGW. What is interesting to me is that organizations use their views to cast doubt on AGW (or even global warming at all), even when they accept it.\nBoth mitigation and adaptation are important responses, IMHO\u0026ndash;I agree that adaptation is essential, but that doesn't preclude the need for mitigation of CO2 emissions as well. You might be interested in my other blog posts about talks by Roger Pielke, Jr. about mitigation and adaptation, linked from the above post.\nIAblogger (2009-12-24):\nThis is a great piece of work and thank you so much for going to the trouble. We all know that that the climate kooks are just that, but it is really nice to be able to substantiate such a position with such an excellent analysis and review. Positively brilliant, thank you!\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nI am sure everything you mention is here is legitimately a cause for concern. It is right to see who is behind any sort of propaganda. Unfortunately, it is not only the skeptics who have questions to answer. I was shocked to read the article below about the obvious conflicts of interest and huge amounts of money involved on the other side. I hope you will give this as much consideration. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nI know it is a bit old, but here is a post about Chris Horner, and the CEI. It goes into his background, and lack thereof with respect to climate change. The site had ads, but the information is good.\nhttp://aitj-co.com/gcsgz5/blog/?p=686\nRichard James (2009-12-24):\nYou clearly underestimate the value that dead people have to the debate. They are the ultimate deniers, unmoveable by reason, unassuagable by evidence, and very very cheap.\nSean Wills (2009-12-24):\n\u0026#39;the legal liquidation of the criminal that you are\u0026#39;? Jesus, I think I've found a late contendor for the 'most torturous phrasing of the year' award. Let's see where that libel is\u0026hellip;\nDuckPhup (2009-12-24):\nmichael: \u0026quot;... that response would be the equivalent of saying that their \u0026quot;conscious efforts\u0026quot; were redundant or superfluous, they weren\u0026#39;t going to cite them anyway, which begs the question why anyone would exhort their peers not to cite \u0026quot;those\u0026quot; people.\u0026quot; michael: \u0026quot;Bottom line, from my admitted exceptionally superficial gloss of the issues, much of it sounds more like 'belief', 'faith', and 'appeal to authority'.\u0026quot;\nGiving credence to qualified scientists' consensus on the interpretation of data is not 'appeal to authority'.\nAlso\u0026hellip; since you invoke 'begging the question' without even having a clue as to what it actually means\u0026hellip; you ought to be more concerned with your ability to handle 'logic', than with your perceptions of 'belief' and 'faith'.\nYou bring-up two 'logical fallacies' without having a grasp of either of them\u0026hellip; and that makes my bullshit alarm clang loudly.\nI agree that your grasp of these issues is \u0026quot;exceptionally superficial\u0026quot;\u0026hellip; which leads me to wonder why you are involving yourself. Of course, that wondering presumes that you aren't actually doing what you seem to be trying to do\u0026hellip; 'poisoning the well'.\nLippard (2009-12-24):\nDuckPhup: Good catch on the misuse of \u0026quot;begs the question,\u0026quot; as a philosopher I should have noticed and commented on that, but I guess I\u0026#39;ve started to become numb to that error. On your second point, I would merely distinguish between fallacious and non-fallacious appeals to authority.\nDavid (2009-12-24):\nNotice that denialists skate comfortably between several fallacious strategies of attack--the ad hom, well poisoning, arg ad pop. When pinned down on one, they duck out. They play science until credentials are made to matter, then attack scientific methods when they dislike the outcome, etc. I think of this as a meta-fallacy. Logical fallacies can be accidents, and in some situations can even be valid lines of argument. But when there is a fundamentally dishonest motive, even valid lines of argument become invalid, and reasonable observations, such as the infighting revealed in the CRU email dump, should be dismissed. As revealed by Motl's foaming, this is a contest of vituperation and bad, bad faith. I believe that measured scholarship and patience (re: age of denialists) will win\u0026hellip;except, of course, that waiting is loss, too.\nice9\naweaver: no trouble here.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-24):\n\u0026quot;Are you suggesting that, had the EAU CRU scientists not made conscious efforts to not cite or favorably review what they saw as poor work, climate skeptics would be the mainstream/majority in the climate science field?\u0026quot; The fact of the MWP was the mainstream opinion until Michael Mann's hockey stick fabrication.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-24):\nNow that the WWF is accepting funds from Coca-Cola Corp. who intentionally packages CO2 in their product for release into the atmosphere are you going to list them? They are taking money from a big business which releases enormous quantities of CO2 in trucking fattening drinks (releasing CO2 in the process of trucking). Are they to be discredited in their arguments merely because of funding? Yes, I know this is silly but so is your argument.\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nJim, Quick question - have you looked into parallels between AGW and the cigarette research promoted by the tobacco industry into the 90s? There are some striking themes that appear in both - promotion of disagreement, presenting 'both sides', front research groups, 'persecuted minority', etc.\nNate\nBrian Macker (2009-12-24):\nActually Duckphp and Jim Lippard that was a bad catch on \u0026quot;beg the question\u0026quot;. Michael did not use the phrase \u0026quot;beg the question\u0026quot; in the philosophical sense. One can say, \u0026quot;Tiger woods slept around with ten women which begs the question, \u0026quot;Has he slept with more?\u0026quot;\nThe above isn't even an argument. It makes no claim, and therefore no assumption. It's a question. While \u0026quot;begging the question\u0026quot; involves an argument which assumes what it is out to prove.\n\u0026quot;Begging the question\u0026quot; has absolutely nothing to do with asking a question.\nSo you both fail as philosophers.\n\u0026quot;Also\u0026hellip; since you invoke 'begging the question' without even having a clue as to what it actually means\u0026hellip; you ought to be more concerned with your ability to handle 'logic', than with your perceptions of 'belief' and 'faith'.\u0026quot;\nHow do you know that he has no clue what \u0026quot;begging the question\u0026quot; actually means? You don't. Perhaps you need to question your ability to handle logic since you can't tell an argument from a question.\n\u0026quot;Giving credence to qualified scientists' consensus on the interpretation of data is not 'appeal to authority'.\u0026quot;\nIt is, if it you rest your full argument on it, and ignore other fully qualified scientists and statisticians. Which is exactly what is being done, as if science were determined by weight of numbers, like some kind of simple balance scale, which is what consensus is all about.\nOver the past 40 years of reading. I never heard biologists arguing from consensus on evolution, nor did they chime on and on about peer review, nor make appeals to authority like alarmist climatologist do. Nor any of the other shenanigans that go on in climate science.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-24):\nNate, Those are themselves smear tactics. This has nothing to do with smoking. Those ideas are being promoted by political scientists, and philosophers of science. In other words, by propagandists.\nEvery criticism of any scientific theory involves increasing doubt. If that were a criteria for deciding what was and was not science then nothing would be science.\nIn fact, science if founded on doubt, not dogma.\nI haven't heard anyone saying we should \u0026quot;present both sides\u0026quot; when it comes to climatology. In fact, stuff produced by Michael Mann is garbage and should be presented only in the context of scientific fraud.\nLippard (2009-12-24):\nBrian Macker: \u0026quot;The fact of the MWP was the mainstream opinion until Michael Mann\u0026#39;s hockey stick fabrication.\u0026quot; You have apparently not read the IPCC WG1 reports, all of which discuss the Medieval Warm Period in some detail. Current evidence suggests it was regional warming, rather than global. See AR4 WG1 Ch. 6, pp. 466ff. I disagree that Mann\u0026#39;s hockey stick was a \u0026quot;fabrication,\u0026quot; but the comments here aren\u0026#39;t the place to carry on that discussion, which has nothing to do with my post. Your WWF/Coca Cola argument isn't analogous to the points I make in my post.\nThe case of evolution is also not exactly analogous\u0026ndash;this is a lot more similar to the tobacco causes cancer argument of the 1960's that Nate suggests, where the Tobacco Institute was set up to promote skepticism, support scientists who did work that cast doubt on the link between tobacco and cancer, and make arguments that misrepresented the consensus. There are, however, still some parallels, such as the use of petitions of dissenting scientists\u0026ndash;the OISM is sort of like the Discovery Institute in that regard.\nYour example of an alternative use of \u0026quot;begs the question\u0026quot; is simply a misuse of the phrase, which was the point DuckPhup was making.\nW_Chow (2009-12-24):\nJim: Ah, you've been Motled!\nNate:\nIf you have an hour to spare, do watch Naomi Oreskes' talk on \u0026quot;The American Denial of Global Warming which explicitly documents the links between AGW denial and tobacco.\nUnknown (2009-12-24):\nOver the past 40 years of reading. I never heard biologists arguing from consensus on evolution, nor did they chime on and on about peer review, nor make appeals to authority like alarmist climatologist do. Nor any of the other shenanigans that go on in climate science. Brian,\nI haven't read through this whole thread yet, so I may have missed something, but I assure you that such \u0026quot;shenanigans\u0026quot; do go on in biology, for one very specific reason - creationism/intelligent design.\nYes, there is a consensus in biology that evolution has occurred and continues to occur. As in all sciences, the question is how it occurs. Genetics grounds evolution experimentally. New discoveries provide new details of genetics and evolution Where there is disagreement about evolutionary biology, it is in the specific mechanisms by which evolution works, not the process itself.\nAs far as peer review, again this is a large issue for biology. Intelligent design/creationist think tanks regularly claim that their lack of peer reviewed publications is because of a conspiracy against them by the \u0026quot;established\u0026quot; scientist. Citing publications is a regular issue in legal challenges to teaching evolution - see the Dover case testimony on the evolution of the blood clotting chemical cascade, for example.\nAs far as appeals to authority, again that is done as well. For example, consider Kent Hovind. He got his PhD. from Patriot Bible College in Florida. Allow me to quote verbatim the first paragraph of his dissertation:\nHello, my name is Kent Hovind. I am a creation/science evangelist. I live in Pensacola, Florida. I have been a high school science teacher since 1976. I've been very active in the creation/evolution controversy for quite some time. As an evangelist, God has given me the opportunity to preach and teach the wonderful story of His marvelous creation over 400 times each year to churches, schools (public and private), parent groups, youth groups, on the radio, and in university debates.\nSimilar things happen when you look at the previously mentioned think tanks - the scientists presented often have credentials from a non-accredited \u0026quot;University\u0026quot;, have a degree in a wholly unrelated subject, and have serious misunderstandings of evolutionary biology. Indeed, these misunderstandings often extend to related fields such as geology, physics, astronomy, and genetics.\nThe point is that this is exactly what happens when a field is being challenged by a lobbying group that lacks any real expertise, peer reviewed articles, or evidence based critique of evolution. As I suggested previously to Jim, the same sort of response was organized by the tobacco industry to protect themselves from the consensus of medical researchers.\nNate\nJason G (2009-12-25):\nJim, Can you comment on why you used citation counts for their fourth-most-cited papers? Is this to demonstrate fruitful papers and yet avoid the flash-in-the-pan single-paper researchers? I'm unfamiliar with this methodology and I think others may be as well (I gather).\nKudos for the excellent work.\nLippard (2009-12-25):\nJason: That\u0026#39;s exactly correct--I\u0026#39;m actually just following the data that Jim Prall made available on his site, but the reason for going with the fourth rather than first is to look at a more sustained level of contribution rather than a single flash-in-the-pan or one-hit-wonder work. I don\u0026#39;t think there\u0026#39;s anything particularly special about 4th-most-cited, but the more highly-cited papers a researcher has, the greater their impact on their field. A study of highly-cited papers in medicine in the Netherlands found that an absence of highly cited papers associated with one\u0026#39;s doctoral dissertation is a predictor of non-success.\nRev. Bob (2009-12-25):\nGreat work. Thank you. Allow me to introduce Crispen's Cleaver (as in Gordian knots):\nDear denier: suppose global warming isn't anthropogenic at all? Suppose it's all caused by cow farts.\nNow, Mr. Denier, what should we do about it? What, specifically? Should we just let the polar caps melt until we all become characters in a Kevin Costner movie?\nWhat should we do about it?\nLippard (2009-12-25):\nNate: There are definitely significant parallels with creationism/intelligent design. In addition to what has already been mentioned (cultivating lists of dissenters, promoting people without relevant expertise as experts, setting up its own alternative institutions to promote its views), I\u0026#39;d also add that they promote people as dissenters who aren\u0026#39;t really dissenters (a lot of \u0026quot;climate skeptics\u0026quot; agree that there is a global warming trend and that the human contribution to greenhouse gases is the major cause, but the organizations are trying to convince the general public that one or both of those things are false). They try to identify any cases of error, disagreement, or, in the worst case, fraud or fakery, as bringing down the entire case, and they don\u0026#39;t subject their own positions to the same standard of evidence or level of scrutiny. Those last features are common to all sorts of \u0026quot;denialism.\u0026quot; Brian Macker's suggested analogous argument about the WWF and Coca Cola isn't analogous because if the WWF were setting up its own alternative institutions of science, promoting fake experts, and so forth, the obvious answer would be that yes, that would discredit them and show that you shouldn't rely on them for accurate and trustworthy scientific information. Indeed, you shouldn't rely on an NGO that asks you to believe something that's not only a minority position in a field of science but actually goes way beyond the minority position to completely deny the existence of a strongly-supported phenomenon, and engages in the kind of deceptive and dishonest tactics like those of the Heartland Institute.\nUnknown (2009-12-25):\nJim, Those last features are common to all sorts of \u0026quot;denialism.\u0026quot;\nIt's the common features that I find interesting - you also see many of the approaches you list in the anti-vax crowd. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.\nYou might be interested in some of the work that Bob Altemeyer does up at U Manitoba that looks at specific factors underlying Authoritarianism and dogmatic belief.\nIndeed, you shouldn't rely on an NGO that asks you to believe something that's not only a minority position in a field of science but actually goes way beyond the minority position to completely deny the existence of a strongly-supported phenomenon, and engages in the kind of deceptive and dishonest tactics like those of the Heartland Institute.\nI disagree slightly - NGOs often do this, but so do GOs. For example, look at South Africas response to HIV and AIDS, where the government ignored the established science. Same thing with science in general under Bush Jr., especially in the EPA. Or the USSR going with Lysenkoist agricultural policies because evolutionary biology wasn't ideologically compatible with Communism.\nHave a good evening - it's time to light up the Xmas BBQ and make dinner. Happy Holidays, everyone.\nLippard (2009-12-26):\nNate: I agree with you, my comment applies to any organization or group that does those things, not just NGOs. I've updated the original post with a quote from Steven Epstein's book, Impure Science, about parallels with HIV=AIDS denial.\njames (2009-12-26):\nA few years back I was at the fall AGU conference and I went to one of the keynote talks, which happened to be on deficiencies of climate models (which is a scientific topic, not a political one!). I remember laughing about it because there were a bunch of suits from the oil industry lined up across the back taking notes. At that time, the oil industry was making a concerted effort to undermine the case for global warming, and it was pretty clear they had people in these talks to look for holes. At this point, the oil / gas /coal industries have more or less accepted that they've lost that battle and they have moved on to trying to control the dialogue on what should be done about global warming. They seem to be having a lot more success pursuant to this objective simply because there is not any kind of scientific consensus regarding what should be done to address the issue. The point is, the oil / gas / coal industries have moved on to this next phase. Debating whether climate change skeptics are serious scientists is pretty silly. I understand its a debate that political types are comfortable with, but I just don't see how it is relevant.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-26):\n\u0026quot;I haven\u0026#39;t read through this whole thread yet, so I may have missed something, but I assure you that such \u0026quot;shenanigans\u0026quot; do go on in biology, for one very specific reason - creationism/intelligent design.\u0026quot; So I guess you are comparing the alarmist climatologists to the creationists. I never did consider them scientists, so maybe I should consider Jones, Mann, et all, scientists either.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-26):\nThe IPPC itself is an alternative institutions set up to promote certain political views. Is there a UN body for promoting Steven Jay Goulds interpretation of natural selection. No.\nMaybe it is you Jim who is not paying attention. It's the claim that MWP is local that is new. Mann's graph is fraudulent and then his conspirators got together to produce addition \u0026quot;peer reviewed\u0026quot; articles faked up to also produce a hockey stick. Faked by dropping uncorrelated dates from proxy data, and using samples sizes too small to support the conclusions, and over-weighing some data over others. Their procedures essentially hunted for spurious correlations.\nTheir math was crap as confirmed by top statisticians like Wegman.\nThis was all known and could be deduced before the emails broke with confirming dialog on how they were colluding.\nBTW, your response on begs the question is baloney. The phrase \u0026quot;begs the question\u0026quot; was used colloquially,and therefore correctly. Had he used it to claim that an argument was fallacious only then would he have misused it logically as claimed.\nPeople use that phrase colloquially instead of saying \u0026quot;raises the question\u0026quot; and to do so is a most an error in grammar not logic. The other guy claimed he was making a logical mistake, not one of grammar.\nOne's grammar has more to do with the locality one grows up in not with whether one understands logic.\nLippard (2009-12-26):\nBrian Macker: I\u0026#39;m not aware of any evidence supporting the idea that the MWP was global. Are you? The IPCC was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to bring together scientists from multiple countries to provide the best scientific information on climate change for policymakers, similar to how the National Research Council provides scientific information to policymakers in the U.S. Many of the climate skeptics with the best reputations have participated in the IPCC process\u0026ndash;it's not limited to those of a particular political ideology. If you read my original post, you'll see that I made some comparisons between the IPCC and NIPCC.\nThere's no UN body for promoting a particular view of natural selection, but that's not really analogous to the IPCC. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is one of many groups on particular topics of concern such as the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, UN Convention Against Torture, the UN Convention Against Corruption, and so forth. And there are lots of international organizations that address scientific and political topics.\nYour view seems to be that the IPCC (and, by extension, the National Academies of most major developed nations) are completely corrupted and incapable of evaluating evidence reliably, while the organizations I've discussed in my original post are, despite the evidence I've pointed out\u0026ndash;endorsement of fake experts or genuine experts well outside of their field of relevance, misrepresentation of their own genuine experts, promotion of articles published in pseudoscience-advocating crackpot journals, appeal to misleading petitions\u0026ndash;reliable and trustworthy. But I don't see why you would think that, so perhaps you could clarify your position? Do you think that OISM, AAPS, Heartland, etc. are reliable sources of information\u0026ndash;or more reliable than the IPCC?\nOn Wegman, see Real Climate.\n\u0026quot;Begs the question\u0026quot; means that an argument contains its conclusion implicitly in its premises. It doesn't mean \u0026quot;suggests the question,\u0026quot; which is the erroneous colloquial usage you refer to. I agree with you that Michael wasn't trying to attribute a logical fallacy, he was just misusing the phrase. It may at this point be hopeless to get it out of the vernacular, but I still find it on a par with reversal of \u0026quot;imply\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;infer.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-12-26):\njames: I think it\u0026#39;s important to recognize the role that the mass media and general public play in scientific disputes with political consequences. When scientists have tried to ignore the public perceptions (e.g., w/creationism and the denial that HIV causes AIDS), the disputes not only didn\u0026#39;t go away, they grew. At the same time, there have been cases where addressing them in certain ways has also given them undeserved credibility (e.g., public debates on creationism where the defender of evolution doesn\u0026#39;t have broad knowledge of creationist claims or debating skills).\nLippard (2009-12-26):\nBrian Macker: I just came across your interesting comment on a post about tree-ring proxies at the Island of Doubt ScienceBlog: \u0026quot;But speleothem proxies are influenced by rainfall just like tree proxies. Plus neither proxies match local temperatures. Somehow it teleconnects to global temperature. So it all magic, not science.\nAlso Mann is such a poor statitician (actually not one at all) that the loose cannon methods he uses show hockey sticks no matter what data he plugs in. Mann's procedures mine for hockey sticks even in red noise data. In the case you cite it mined up some upside down lake sediment proxy and made that the heavily weighted proxy that generated his hockey stick.\nIdiot doesn't realize that if he adds a bunch of horse apples, and cow pies to his milkshake that only removing the cow pies isn't going to make it taste better. Especially since the recipes says \u0026quot;Taste the mixture often and if adding an ingredient has an adverse effect the add a whole bunch more\u0026quot;.\nIt's like you idiots don't understand the underlying science. Feynman's complain about south of the border science education seems to apply to climatologists, and you. You never understood the underlying principles at work nor the criticism and therefore you get confused by the numbers. You do science by rote.\u0026quot;\nTo which \u0026quot;Moderately Unbalanced Squid\u0026quot; responds:\n\u0026quot; 'But speleothem proxies are influenced by rainfall just like tree proxies.'\nLet me let you in on a secret: speleothem proxies are based on the ratio of oxygen 16 to oxygen 18. If the ratio for a wet year is 80/40 and the ratio for a dry year is 36/18, it works out the same because it's a ratio. Your assertion that the amount of rainfall matters is irrelevant unless the amount of rainfall is zero or below the limit of detection.\nIt being New Zealand, there are no deserts, so zero rainfall years are pretty much non-existent.\n\u0026amp;#39;Plus neither proxies match local temperatures.\u0026amp;#39; You are simply lying:\nA comparison is valid even though the tree-ring derived temperatures represent only the late summer period (i.e. February-March), which in instrumental records is highly correlated to annual temperatures (1853-1992, n = 140, correlation coefficient is 0.72, P From p. 286-287 of the Palmer and Xiong paper I referenced above.\u0026amp;quot; (The referenced paper was \u0026quot;'New Zealand climate over the last 500 years reconstructed from Libocedrus bidwil1ii Hook. f. tree-ring chronologies*' by Palmer and Xiong in The Holocene, volume 14, published in 2004 p. 282-289\u0026quot;, cited in a comment immediately prior to yours, in which Squid said, \u0026quot;It's the same story with creationism - there are people out there who will repeat the same criticism ad infinitum even after that criticism is answered.\u0026quot;)\nYour response to Squid\u0026ndash;nothing.\nIs your position that you were mistaken, that Squid was mistaken but you haven't yet taken the time to respond? Or is it that you are, as it appears to me from your ad hominem and failure to support your assertions or admit error, deserving of the \u0026quot;denier\u0026quot; appellation?\nUnknown (2009-12-26):\nThanks Jim - I\u0026#39;ll look at it. Same for geochoww\u0026#39;s suggestion for oreskes\u0026#39; video. Any citations you have would be welcome also. Been so busy during this break that I still haven't had a chance to do more than bookmark these for full reading - I've just skimmed so far.\nYou may want to put together an abstract for this, just as a step towards submission or development into a full-blown study.\nNate\nUnknown (2009-12-26):\nSo I guess you are comparing the alarmist climatologists to the creationists. I never did consider them scientists, so maybe I should consider Jones, Mann, et all, scientists either. So let me get this straight. You originally make the erroneous claim that \u0026quot;Over the past 40 years of reading. I never heard biologists arguing from consensus on evolution, nor did they chime on and on about peer review, nor make appeals to authority like alarmist climatologist do. Nor any of the other shenanigans that go on in climate science.\u0026quot;\nI then provide a counter-example, where biologists do exactly this - when they have to deal with the pseudo-science of creationism/intelligent design.\nAre you sticking by your claim that biologists never speak from consensus, authority or citation, or do you agree that your original claim is wrong? You seem to be ignoring counter-evidence, and acting as though it in fact supports your claim. Creationists/intelligent design promoters often respond to counter-examples in the same way. If you want to seperate your views from such cranks, a good place to start is by not emulating their methods.\njames (2009-12-27):\nI don\u0026#39;t buy into the parallel between creationists and climate skeptics. The creationist \u0026quot;debate\u0026quot; pertains to a science / religion conflict with a very long history. The climate debate seems to be much more about money rather than fundamental beliefs. There are plenty of climate skeptics out there making exaggerations and misconstruing scientific papers The problem is that a lot of people on other side will also misconstrue scientific data and make exaggerations (ie. the \u0026quot;alarmist\u0026quot; camp). It usually isn't scientists who do the bulk of the exaggerating. What troubles me is that on both sides, these \u0026quot;mistakes\u0026quot; are not actually oversights or misunderstandings, but willful attempts to deceive people with the hope of advancing a political cause. These public misrepresentations of science do nothing to improve the understanding of the general public, nor do they promote a public appreciation of the scientific process.\nAs a scientist, I'd like to know what other people expect to come of the global warming debate? I certainly know what I expect:\nPolitical-types will spend a long time taking sides and debating irrelevant aspects of the climate change point.\nLong after the scientific community has come to a consensus, political-types will finally agree that the scientific consensus exists. Due to misunderstandings and stubbornness, debate will continue.\nPolitical-types will seek policy input from scientists.\nPolicy input from scientists will be ignored in favor of measures which are \u0026quot;politically-attractive\u0026quot;, which means that they have little to no scientific merit but allow the public to \u0026quot;feel better\u0026quot; for having \u0026quot;done something\u0026quot; about a \u0026quot;real problem\u0026quot;.\nPolicy measures will do nothing to solve the problem. Political types will move on to argue about other problems, which they will milk for attention and fail to solve.\nA lot of other scientists seem to have similar expectations. I don't think people have any appreciation whatsoever for the sort of policy measures that would be needed to make a difference on this front. I think they think that building windmills and increasing federal emissions standards \u0026quot;helps\u0026quot;.\nAnonymous (2009-12-28):\nJames - the similarity comes from the *need* to be correct. The motivation in the case of the climate deniers is one based around money - to overturn the existing status quo, many energy companies will shrivel, die, or be forced to change their platform of earning. None of these are pleasant outcomes for them.\nIn the case of creationists, their entire worldview will be lost if they admit to the supremacy of evolution as a means of explaining the biological diversity that is observed. This is a simple case of neurotic denial, experienced in common (as opposed to en masse) among them. If you wish to ascribe more nefarious motives (and I certainly do), it boils back to money here as well - the more creationist books Hovind or Hamm or whatever crank can sell, the more he or she can personally revel in their ill-gotten wealth, and to hell with the minds they poison.\nBoth motivations result in the same choice of behavior - attack that which threatens the favored outcome on whatever grounds are available. Even the most unreasonable grounds are considered acceptable, as the objective is to win over laypersons (which possess votes, or money, or both) and can swing support away from the undesirable outcome.\nT\nJohn Mashey (2009-12-28):\nA few more items: SEPP: is not really an organization. It's Fred Singer, and for a while, it included his then-wife, Candace Crandall. Remember that name for later. It's much better to be President of SEPP than \u0026quot;consultant\u0026quot;, and nonprofit is nice. Singer also wrote an anti-EPA piece on environmental tobacco smoke. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=S._Fred_Singer Finally, Singer started way earlier, at least as far back as 1982 on acid-rain.\nGMI: there's lots more. O'Keefe was @ API 1974-2001. His predecessor @ GMI, Jeffrey Salmon, got a PhD in world politics in 1985, then became a senior speechwriter for Caspar Weinberger and \u0026hellip; Dick Cheney.\nhe moved to GMI 1991-2001, then got back into governmen, in science policy position in DOE. In mid-2008, he \u0026quot;burrowed in\u0026quot;m as they say inside the Beltway, i.e., converted to a civil service job in DOE. Presumably he doesn't refuse calls from Cheney. I suggest a close reading of the memo from API's Joe Walker to the team, specifically the sentecne starting: \u0026quot;GCSCT members\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nSPPI: watch out, there are two SPPI's. The one you want is Rob Ferguson's, which was created in 2007. See also Wikipedia. See me on Monckton \u0026amp; SPPI. The other SPPI is this one, and as best as I can tell, has nothing to do with climate.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-28):\n“Your response to Squid--nothing. “ Not responding to a comment because I leave a thread means nothing. I do have a life and am not paid to monitor and respond to every mistake made on the internet. Sorry if I don’t respond to every comment made by an anonymous jerk.\nAs I commented in the tread these alarmist climatologists do not consider the entire process before making their claims and assumptions.\nAre you so ignorant as to think the rate of groundwater flow is not going to be effected by rainfall? Of course it will be. So the rate of disposition will be. So will the plant growth at ground level. As will the rates of decay in the soil. Some of that oxygen is coming from the plants, not just the atmosphere.\nIf oxygen isotope levels measure yearly temperature then why don’t they use those instead of wood density, or ring width when doing studies with trees. We can measure isotope ratios in wood too. Could it be that plants preferentially take up certain isotopes? Could it be that atmospheric ratios of isotopes don’t fluctuate the way you assume?\n“Let me let you in on a secret: speleothem proxies are based on the ratio of oxygen 16 to oxygen 18. If the ratio for a wet year is 80/40 and the ratio for a dry year is 36/18, it works out the same because it's a ratio.”\nSo let me let you in on a secret. I know how radio dating is done. I wasn’t claiming that the ratios of atmospheric oxygen would change for wet verses dry years. It’s the micro conditions I’m concerned about, the ones in the living soil, in the caves, and in the atmosphere around the plants, in the subsoil, and ground water. Don’t you realize how speleothems are created? They are created by acids in the water (CO2, humic, etc.) dissolving existing rock, which has it’s own oxygen ratios. The acidity of the water matters and that is effected by plant growth, how long the water pools in the soil, quantity of water flushed, etc. The assumption is made that none of these processes matter and none are affected by rainfall levels, a poor assumption.\nIn fact these proxies do not agree with each other over large spans should be a big clue that there is a problem. Instead of dealing with that problem it is swept under the rug. You ignore it. There is good correlation between proxies for some periods but not others. Guess what, there is something called spurious correlation. If you understand math, which obviously you don’t, you would realize that you can tweak data till you get a high correlation on some segments of a graph while losing it on others. So a 70% correlation on only a portion of data is unimpressive. The cross proxy correlations they get prove nothing other than their ability to delude themselves. Not effected by rainfall, bullshit.\nFurthermore, the speleothem record has a completely different granularity than our yearly temperature record. Do you think atmospheric oxygen isotope ratios fluctuate with local temperatures? To believe that you’d have to be totally ignorant of the entire weather/climate/atmosphere system. What is the proposed mechanism that ties local oxygen isotope ratios to local temperatures? Can you understand what you are saying man? You are saying that if I go to New York City the isotope ratios are going to be different there than if I go to Detroit, Moscow, or Rio. That each will diverge following local temperature. Haven’t you ever heard of something called, the wind?\nDon’t you realize that the temperature records for New Zealand are very short? Oxygen isotope ratios throughout overlying shifting atmosphere couldn’t possibly fluctuate in the way you claim to match local temperatures. We don’t have long enough temperature record to do ANY good correlation of temps to isotope levels. Rising slopes will always correlate.\nUnknown (2009-12-28):\nI don\u0026#39;t buy into the parallel between creationists and climate skeptics. The creationist \u0026quot;debate\u0026quot; pertains to a science / religion conflict with a very long history. The climate debate seems to be much more about money rather than fundamental beliefs. I wasn't trying to suggest that the AGW deniers were creationists. What I was suggesting is that both (along with HIV/AIDS deniers, anti-vaccine activists and tobacco companies) have a similar goal - to overturn a specific established area of science.\nThe primary motivations are indeed different - profit versus belief. However, the goal itself is similar, and this context imposes specific constraints on how to achieve the goal. I believe that Jim and I are interested in what these constraints are, how different groups respond to them, and how the whole 'scientific controversy' system works.\nAs a scientist, I'd like to know what other people expect to come of the global warming debate? I certainly know what I expect:\nI'd have to say I agree with you. From my non-expert position (I'm in science education, not climatology), I think we passed the tipping point around 2000. I'd have to look up some details (tundral gas release, albedo change, etc), but my guess is that we've already tipped the balance, and we're in for an extended (100 to 500K years) period of warming.\nAgain in my non-expert opinion, I'm not too worried myself. I have no kids, and the ecosystem has endured far worse. It survived the Permian-Triassic extinction, I think it'll survive us. It'll suck, but extinctions happen. Of course, odds are good that humans will be part of any mass extinction. Crazy world, eh?\nUnknown (2009-12-28):\nDiagnosis: I think I've found part of the posting bug here. If you get error messages typing in the word verification, I think it has to do with the age of the word. Before you submit, refresh your screen - the verification word should change to the current one. I don't know how often it changes, but that should solve the issue.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-28):\n\u0026quot;I then provide a counter-example, where biologists do exactly this - when they have to deal with the pseudo-science of creationism/intelligent design.\u0026quot; You are delusional. You provided no specific example. Besides I told you my experience.\nI can remember no such \u0026quot;argument from consensus\u0026quot; from any of the many books I have read by Dawkins, Gould, Darwin, Huxley, etc. Nor any scientific philosophers who are pro-evolution like Dennett.\nI've seen anti-evolution petitions but not pro-evolution ones. Not any petitions as to the truth of it or not.\nScience isn't about consensus. So get over it.\nThe proper purpose of peer review isn't establishing consensus. The proper purpose is to detect error, to criticize. Which does not occur when you rig the system with your pals, and get softball review from your co-conspirators.\nLippard (2009-12-28):\nJohn Mashey: Thanks for the correction on the two SPPIs--I\u0026#39;ve struck out the sentences that referred to the other SPPI on the original post and noted that there are two, with reference to your comment. Brian Macker: Your proxy comment should really go on the ScienceBlogs.com thread rather than here. And please try to refrain from insults.\n\u0026quot;I've seen anti-evolution petitions but not pro-evolution ones.\u0026quot; Yet when it comes to AGW, there are anti-AGW petitions, but not pro. (BTW, there is a pro-evolution petition that's designed to simply show the absurdity of the anti-evolution petitions, the NCSE's Project Steve.)\nI asked you a few questions here that you didn't answer, one based on an issue you brought up, and several directly related to the original post:\n\u0026quot;I'm not aware of any evidence supporting the idea that the MWP was global. Are you?\u0026quot;\nand\n\u0026quot;Your view seems to be that the IPCC (and, by extension, the National Academies of most major developed nations) are completely corrupted and incapable of evaluating evidence reliably, while the organizations I've discussed in my original post are, despite the evidence I've pointed out\u0026ndash;endorsement of fake experts or genuine experts well outside of their field of relevance, misrepresentation of their own genuine experts, promotion of articles published in pseudoscience-advocating crackpot journals, appeal to misleading petitions\u0026ndash;reliable and trustworthy. But I don't see why you would think that, so perhaps you could clarify your position? Do you think that OISM, AAPS, Heartland, etc. are reliable sources of information\u0026ndash;or more reliable than the IPCC?\u0026quot;\ndhogaza (2009-12-28):\nI can remember no such \u0026quot;argument from consensus\u0026quot; from any of the many books I have read by Dawkins, Gould, Darwin, Huxley, etc. Nor any scientific philosophers who are pro-evolution like Dennett. I've seen anti-evolution petitions but not pro-evolution ones. Not any petitions as to the truth of it or not.\nProject Steve \u0026hellip;\nUnknown (2009-12-29):\nYou are delusional. You provided no specific example. Yes, lack of citations is a bad thing - personal opinion or experience just doesn't cut it, and shouldn't be used.\nBesides I told you my experience.\nAh, except in your case?\nOkay, one last try - I notice that you've dropped the peer review and appeal to authority issues you originally raised:\nI never heard biologists arguing from consensus on evolution, nor did they chime on and on about peer review, nor make appeals to authority like alarmist climatologist do.\nTo a more specific claim:\nI can remember no such \u0026quot;argument from consensus\u0026quot; from any of the many books I have read by Dawkins, Gould, Darwin, Huxley, etc. Nor any scientific philosophers who are pro-evolution like Dennett.\nOkay, National Science Foundation:\nThe scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming. Those opposed to the teaching of evolution sometimes use quotations from prominent scientists out of context to claim that scientists do not support evolution. However, examination of the quotations reveals that the scientists are actually disputing some aspect of howevolution occurs, not whetherevolution occurred\nAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science:\nIn contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a \u0026quot;disputed view\u0026quot; within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through \u0026quot;disclaimer\u0026quot; stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.\nNational Science Teachers Association:\nThere is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place. There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place: What are the processes and mechanisms producing change, and what has happened specifically during the history of the universe? Scientists often disagree about their explanations.\nI've given you specific examples where the largest science and science education groups in the US are noting that there is a consensus on evolution.\nAgain, are you sticking by your claim that biologists never speak from consensus, authority or citation, or do you agree that your original claim is wrong? I see no point in responding to you further until you demonstrate some honesty about this issue.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nNate, Those are political arguments, not scientific ones. They are arguing about public school teaching.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nI\u0026#39;m thinking I shouldn\u0026#39;t have wasted my time explaining about speleothems based on my personal science knowledge. Why? Because you have no clue as to how well I did in science, and so whether I am full of it. Better just to quote NASA on spelelthems, oxygen isotope ratios, and rainfall.\n\u0026quot;The ratio of these different types of oxygen in water vary based on air temperature, the total amount of ice in the world, and the amount of local precipitation—all important pieces of the climate puzzle.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Recently, scientists have started to use the oxygen isotope ratio to track changes in the amount of rainfall (heavy rain results in more light oxygen) or changes in where the rain came from—the ocean or inland sources.\u0026quot;\nWho's just lying about rainfall? I think it is \u0026quot;Moderately Unbalanced Squid\u0026quot; who claimed I was lying.\nAs you may be aware scienceblogs is a free-for-all with many bloggers, like PZ Myers, allowing anonymous commenters to freely throw insults at others. Really ugly insults, and put downs with no moderation.\nI spent a long time being polite with them but when they get idiotic I have to point it out. Like this rainfall business, and their lack of math skills.\nOne such insult is \u0026quot;denier\u0026quot; which is an attempt to associate scientific criticism with historical denial of the holocaust. Which you quite apparently have no problem with. It's actually nastier than the retort \u0026quot;alarmist\u0026quot;.\nYou are the one who copied over a comment from there to here in which I was called a liar for pointing out a fact.\nI at least have the guts to use my own full name, unlike many of your insulting commenters here.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nNate, \u0026quot;I'm not aware of any evidence supporting the idea that the MWP was global. Are you?\u0026quot;\nYes, I am.\n\u0026quot;Your view seems to be that the IPCC (and, by extension, the National Academies of most major developed nations) are completely corrupted and incapable of evaluating evidence reliably, while the organizations I've discussed in my original post are ..\u0026quot;\nAbsolutely wrong. Not my view at all.\nIPCC only deals with climate. That doesn't mean I believe every politically science institution on the planet has been corrupted on every area of science. Bad extension on your part and not very good reasoning.\nMany of the organizations you listed are political in nature and are just as susceptible to bad science as the IPCC. How do you tell? When they do bad science. There are wackos on both sides.\nLook at the commenter above who talks about \u0026quot;waterworld\u0026quot;. I'm not aware of any scientists claiming the entire world will be flooded like Noah's ark. He's a wacko on your side. Do you think he discredits everything you have to say? Of course not.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nDhogaza, Project Steve is not a counter example. Project Steve specifically states: \u0026quot;We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!\u0026quot;\nJim,\nThere is a difference between anti-AWG lists and the creationist ones. It was the AWG side that started arguing science by consensus, a list without providing a list, and the natural response is to create counter lists.\nIn AGW they also scream peer-review, peer-review alot. I don't recall Dawkins and Gould fighting their differences in terms of peer review.\nAGW is mostly about a political fight, not science. Hansen calling for arrests of deniers as criminals, calling coal cars \u0026quot;death cars\u0026quot;, supporting vandalism of power plants.\nAlso organizations like NFS are political in nature. That's why it's NFS.gov not NFS.org. Yes, that makes it more easily corruptible by politics. Doesn't mean the corruption always occurs though.\nEconomic science is currently overtaken by political not scientific interests. So it happens. Fed funding has completely corrupted the entire economics education to research infrastructure.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nJim, You write: \u0026quot;I agree with you that Michael wasn't trying to attribute a logical fallacy, he was just misusing the phrase.\u0026quot;\nOk, if you think it wasn't a logical fallacy then why give a thumbs up to DuckPhup when he said the following?\n\u0026quot;You bring-up two 'logical fallacies' without having a grasp of either of them\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nThat was a rhetorical question.\nYou continue:\n\u0026quot;It may at this point be hopeless to get it out of the vernacular, but I still find it on a par with reversal of 'imply' and 'infer.'\nMichael wasn't using it to imply or infer in this case, as you have already admitted.\nHe made a valid argument.\nI was just arguing with someone who said to me \u0026quot;Nobody changes their behavior based on a book\u0026quot;. My response was, \u0026quot;Well, why do you bother to write or say anything if you don't think it will change behavior?\u0026quot;.\nThe same applies to calling on other scientists to refrain from citing other scientists. Why ask for a change in behavior if you don't think it would be effective?\nCitation counts are pretty silly to base an argument on in the first place. There is no semantics to it. Being cited by a \u0026quot;denialist\u0026quot; will up your count even thought the purpose is to point out errors.\nBTW, your blog does allow anonymous comments, despite your notice, as many of the commenters here have sham blogger accounts. We really can't tell who they are. That goes for both pro and anti AGW commenters.\nBrian Macker (2009-12-29):\nJim, On the topic of fallacies, here are some errors by David, another anonomous, \u0026quot;denier\u0026quot; insulting commenter \u0026hellip;\n\u0026quot;Notice that denialists skate comfortably between several fallacious strategies of attack\u0026ndash;the ad hom, well poisoning, arg ad pop. When pinned down on one, they duck out. They play science until credentials are made to matter, then attack scientific methods when they dislike the outcome, etc.\u0026quot;\nNow this claim by David is baloney.\nFor example, when McIntyre showed that Mann's hockey stick graph was based on bad statistics and then it was subtaintiated by the statistician Wegman.\nIt is not \u0026quot;well poisoning\u0026quot; to point out that Mann is a crappy mathematician when his entire authority rests on this math skills. You can no longer appeal to him, or his work as an authority without careful review of his work, which you probably don't have the skills to do. Yet warmists continue to appeal to his authority. Sure Mann may be right about something he has to say, and if we were arguing that everything he says is wrong because it's Mann, well then we would be \u0026quot;well poisoning\u0026quot;. That's not what is being done.\nThen warmists tried to continue their claims of the non-importance of the Little Ice Age and MWP, by switching to newly fabricated works to support Mann. They never admitted Mann was wrong, or that his paper was garbage, which it was. Instead they tried to claim that because someone else came up with the same answer, Briffa, that somehow that made Mann's errors not matter. However that is not true. Mann still made the mistakes and therefore still cannot be used as an authority, and by the way, none of the peer reviewers of that paper either.\nWorse for alarmists the Briffa paper had math errors of it's own. It relied on a statistically insignificant sample of trees, and worst it rested almost solely on one freak tree. You can't measure climate based on growth rings of a single tree.\nThe criticisms are valid, and so long as the alarmist scientists don't address these problems they are no longer doing science. They may be right but we cannot have as much confidence as in other areas of science, and remember even then science expects to make mistakes.\nThe emails show a recognition that MWP was recognized as a problem to the AGW argument. That there was a concerted effort to get rid of it. Science isn't supposed to work that way. Also there are various emails that fly back and forth admitting that there are serious problems with Mann's attempts at erasing the MWP. Pointing out that these people are not to be trusted as scientists is not poisoning the well when we have evidence that they are explicitly rigging what matters. It's not like the science was denounced because they were hanging out with strippers. I recently had to defend Feynman against such a \u0026quot;poisoning the well\u0026quot; type attack, by a AGW proponent. Who's poisoning the well?\nWhat Michael is doing here is actually a form of extreme prejudiced anecdotal and unspecific poisoning the well. He claims some unspecified opponents commit fallacies and that therefore all such opponents can be classified together and ignored on the basis of the poisoned well.\nIn fact isn't a kind of poisoned well approach exactly what your entire article is about? I'd say yes. You are certainly implying if not outright saying that all anti-AGW arguments are poisoned by sources of funding.\nLippard (2009-12-29):\nBrian: The \u0026quot;This blog does not allow anonymous comments\u0026quot; notice is Blogger's based on my comment settings, not mine. It only means that a Blogger or Google account is required. I don't have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous comments, only with spam, off-topic, or abusive comments.\nI probably should only have linked to the Scienceblogs discussion that you were involved in rather than copying it over (and thus republishing its insults). I apologize for that.\nYou still misunderstand me on \u0026quot;begging the question.\u0026quot; That is the name of a logical fallacy. Michael did indeed mention the name of a logical fallacy\u0026ndash;he referred to it\u0026ndash;even though he didn't attribute it, because he thought it meant something else. I likewise mentioned the words \u0026quot;imply\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;infer\u0026quot; in an analogy\u0026ndash;those words are often mistakenly reversed in meaning\u0026ndash;but I was not using them to say that Michael had implied or inferred something. My sole point of agreement with DuckPhup about \u0026quot;begs the question\u0026quot; is that it was a misuse of the phrase.\nIf you don't think that all of these other science organizations have been corrupted, then you have the problem of explaining why all of them have come to issue statements that endorse AGW, while none have issued statements skeptical of AGW\u0026ndash;and only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has been identified as having a noncommittal statement.\nI agree with you that individual wackos holding a position don't by themselves discredit a position. However, an organization endorsing wackos does discredit an organization. It can salvage the discredit by correcting itself, but I don't see that happening with, e.g., the Heartland Institute or OISM. You sidestepped my question which was also asking your opinion of the organizations in my original post, not just the IPCC. You've made it clear that you think the IPCC is corrupted (even though climate change skeptics participate in the process, even as a lead author on WG1, and even though Robert Balling says the IPCC WG1 report is the best place for the layman to get information about the best available climate science), but what about these organizations that endorse pseudoscience and put forth fake experts? Why the resistance to agreeing that this is to their discredit, which is the main point of my original post?\nYou may see my original post as well-poisoning, but I almost completely avoided the \u0026quot;denier\u0026quot; term (attributing it only to \u0026quot;some\u0026quot; of the organizations mentioned, not to individuals\u0026ndash;though I think it is reasonable to do so if an individual is clearly taking an ideological line, repeating the same bad arguments, and expressing skepticism only in a single direction). The careful reader will recognize that I explicitly pointed out that \u0026quot;climate skeptics\u0026quot; aren't all the same\u0026ndash;in fact, many of them accept AGW, even while organizations that deny it appeal to their criticisms.\nYou say you're aware of evidence that the MWP was global, but you don't refer to any. I take it from your position that you are not one of those people who says there is no sense to be made of global temperature. But you can leave that issue aside, along with the speleothem and hockey stick math debate, since they are better discussed in another forum\u0026ndash;this isn't a climate science blog.\nLippard (2009-12-29):\nBrian: \u0026quot;You are certainly implying if not outright saying that all anti-AGW arguments are poisoned by sources of funding.\u0026quot; I'm neither saying nor implying that. In fact, the summary of my original post explicitly says the opposite: \u0026quot;The above doesn't demonstrate that climate skepticism is without merit, but it does demonstrate that there are reasons to be skeptical\u0026ndash;and in many cases extremely skeptical\u0026ndash;about some of the organizations and individuals promoting climate skepticism, independently of their arguments.\u0026quot;\njames (2009-12-29):\n\u0026quot;there are reasons to be skeptical--and in many cases extremely skeptical--about some of the organizations and individuals promoting climate skepticism, independently of their arguments\u0026quot; This an inherently anti-scientific thing to say. You can't prejudge any scientific work independent from the arguments. You're basically saying that if science is funded from a particular source, you'll write off the conclusions as biased without even bothering to consider the arguments?\nSources of funding do not provide legitimate grounds to evaluate science. It is important to be skeptical about any published scientific result, irrespective of who funded it. Provided something is published in the peer reviewed literature, it deserves a fair shake.\nLippard (2009-12-29):\nJames: \u0026quot;This an inherently anti-scientific thing to say. You can\u0026#39;t prejudge any scientific work independent from the arguments. You\u0026#39;re basically saying that if science is funded from a particular source, you\u0026#39;ll write off the conclusions as biased without even bothering to consider the arguments? Sources of funding do not provide legitimate grounds to evaluate science. It is important to be skeptical about any published scientific result, irrespective of who funded it. Provided something is published in the peer reviewed literature, it deserves a fair shake.\u0026quot;\nFirst of all, I'm talking primarily about evaluating organizations, and secondarily evaluating individuals, for trustworthiness, not evaluating the science. Second, nonexperts in many cases cannot evaluate the science\u0026ndash;they have to make decisions about who to trust. Third, a reason to be skeptical doesn't necessarily mean a reason to dismiss, nor does it mean that it is a non-rebuttable reason. Fourth, \u0026quot;the peer-reviewed literature\u0026quot; is not a monolithic category\u0026ndash;some journals are of higher quality and status than others. Creationists have peer-reviewed journals of their own, but that's not a reason for evolutionary scientists to subscribe to them. In the climate science context, JPANDS ranks very low, as do Energy \u0026amp; Environment and Climate Research.\nLippard (2009-12-29):\nBTW, James, it\u0026#39;s not anti-scientific to make use of a shorthand method of evaluation of that method works reliably. It\u0026#39;s also a mistaken view of science that it doesn\u0026#39;t involve social factors.\njames (2009-12-30):\n\u0026quot;nonexperts in many cases cannot evaluate the science--they have to make decisions about who to trust\u0026quot; I can appreciate this. This is the reality that most people live with, which I understand. Admittedly, I don't spend much time trying to evaluate a huge number of papers. I only evaluate the ones I read carefully. Its obviously time consuming, but if I took a shortcut, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be able to evaluate anything accurately. I'd be wrong A LOT.\njames (2009-12-30):\n\u0026quot;it\u0026#39;s not anti-scientific to make use of a shorthand method of evaluation of that method works reliably. It\u0026#39;s also a mistaken view of science that it doesn\u0026#39;t involve social factors.\u0026quot; I don't agree with this at all. I don't believe that such shorthand methods can work \u0026quot;reliably\u0026quot; or that they are scientific. They are shortcuts to save time and avoid struggling with concepts. If you want to evaluate the ideas of an individual, I do not believe you can do it without considering their actual ideas.\nThe objective of science is to advance understanding to the point where outcomes can be predicted accurately. Social factors certainly influence science in many ways, but they will not generally influence processes and outcomes. The question of how society should utilize science is a very difficult one. What makes the climate debate so tricky is that the science is in many ways a work in progress. Processes impacting climate change are diverse and complex, and many are not completely understood. There is little doubt in the scientific community that anthropogenic forces influence global climate. However, it is extremely difficult to make reliable predictions regarding the precise nature of these effects and the influences they may have on the planet in the future.\nMost of the political pressure for action on global climate change derives from this uncertainty. We are relatively certain that human actions influence the climate, that the climate is changing and will continue to change. We don't know how much it will change, how fast, or what the consequences will be. We can use climate models to make an educated guess, but to a large extent any action we take will be based on the fact that we're afraid that some of the changes will be bad. People are attracted to concepts like \u0026quot;carbon neutrality\u0026quot; because if something bad does happen, they won't feel like it was their fault. This isn't to say that carbon neutrality isn't based on science to some degree, but it is based on ethics, not science. We also can't predict what a carbon neutral climate looks like. What happens if we don't like it? Do we go the route of climate optimization? If you want to influence the climate, there are a lot of ways to do it. Most of them aren't especially ethical.\nThese questions are pretty academic because carbon neutrality is not really politically feasible. Al Gore's giant house is a pretty good example. Many of the people who believe climate change is a real problem still prefer to buy climate offsets rather than adopt a more sustainable lifestyle when it might be inconvenient. Economists have somehow managed to trick people into thinking that carbon neutrality is something you can buy! They even tricked Al Gore! Meanwhile, billboards in my neighborhood claim that coal is now \u0026quot;clean and green\u0026quot;. I look forward to a lifetime of burning coal for energy while the utility company charges extra to pretend that the energy was generated with the handful of windmills they built to ruin the view.\nI don't believe the climate change debate is about science at all. I think its about scientific realities inconveniencing people, and people either trying to convince themselves that it isn't happening (skeptics), convince other people it isn't happening (oil / gas/ coal industries), or concoct crazy schemes to delude themselves into thinking they are solving the problem (alarmists). Its quite a grand human comedy. The windmills are pretty irritating though.\nLippard (2009-12-30):\njames: \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t agree with this at all. I don\u0026#39;t believe that such shorthand methods can work \u0026quot;reliably\u0026quot; or that they are scientific. They are shortcuts to save time and avoid struggling with concepts. If you want to evaluate the ideas of an individual, I do not believe you can do it without considering their actual ideas.\u0026quot; I agree with your last sentence, but it doesn't follow from that that all individuals' ideas are worth evaluating or that anyone would want to evaluate them.\nSurely there are cases where we can determine that it's not worth the time or effort to evaluate an individuals' ideas, or to take an organization seriously. And, to repeat my point, if you find that there is evidence of misrepresentation, that gives you more reason to watch out for it.\n\u0026quot;Social factors certainly influence science in many ways, but they will not generally influence processes and outcomes.\u0026quot; The history of science contains numerous counter-examples. We hope that social factors don't win out in the long run, but sometimes it takes an accumulation of evidence over a long time to overcome socio-cultural factors.\nLippard (2009-12-30):\nTo augment my previous reference to a critique of Wegman, Deep Climate has no found evidence of further problems with it (including plagiarism and misrepresenting a plagiarized source!).\nUnknown (2009-12-30):\nThose are political arguments, not scientific ones. They are arguing about public school teaching. Indeed you are correct. However this is irrelevant. You also stated, and I quote verbatim:\n\u0026quot;AGW is mostly about a political fight, not science.\u0026quot; Similarly creationism/Intelligent Design is not a scientific disagreement, but a political one. Whether the scientists are biologists or climatologists, when they play political games they do indeed turn to political tools such as consensus, authority and citation.\nYou can call me \u0026quot;delusional\u0026quot; all you want, but that won't change what you said, nor make it accurate through repetition:\nOver the past 40 years of reading. I never heard biologists arguing from consensus on evolution, nor did they chime on and on about peer review, nor make appeals to authority like alarmist climatologist do. Nor any of the other shenanigans that go on in climate science.\nIn addition, in a separate post you have attached my name to comments I did not make. Was this accidental? If so, could you issue a correction to your post?\nRegardless, you will most likely continue to respond to any and all counter-examples to your original claim (the only claim of yours I've contested) by dismissing them as irrelevant. This is a common tactic known as moving the goalposts. For those not familiar with the term:\nwikipedia Moving the goalpost, also known as raising the bar, is an informal logically fallacious argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. In other words, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt. This attempts to leave the impression that an argument had a fair hearing while actually reaching a preordained conclusion.\nThat's an inherently dishonest approach to debate, and one I won't contribute to\nKevan Hashemi (2009-12-31):\nIntelligent Design and Creationism both propose the existence of a super-natural power, and so cannot be considered scientific theories. This was the finding of Federal Judge John E. Jones, and requires no assumption about the truth or falsehood of either theory. Anthropomorphic Global Warming makes no claim about super-natural power. Nevertheless, the theory has no empirical basis. Nobody has performed experiments upon the climate to show that increasing C02 concentration causes a rise in temperature and decreasing CO2 causes a drop in temperature. All we have are climate histories of dubious accuracy.\nThe fact that we have not tested the AGW theory with repeated experiments on the climate means the theory has no empirical basis. It does not matter whether AGW is true or not. It does not matter how many climatologists believe in AGW. The theory has no empirical basis.\n\u0026quot;But we can't perform such experiments!\u0026quot; the climatologists say. Quite right, you can't. \u0026quot;We won't be able to make any predictions if we are forced to prove them with experiments!\u0026quot; Quite right, you won't. \u0026quot;So we will make predictions without experiments, and say they are scientific.\u0026quot; You go right ahead.\nFor every ten convincing and superb theories I come up with in my lab, only one turns out to be true. That's because I subject my ideas to the test of experiments. Climatologists don't have to bother with experiments, so they can believe whatever they like. Consensus and Peer-Review are their basis for their theories.\nAnd of course, when you disagree with them, they insult you.\nLippard (2009-12-31):\nKevan: You have an impoverished view of science that excludes all historical sciences. There\u0026#39;s more to science than experimental science; but in any case, climate science arguably started with the experiments of John Tyndall on greenhouse gases. Climate science does make testable predictions, that\u0026#39;s what the modeling is for. And climate modeling is philosophically analogous to the use of measurement instruments (cf. Norton and Suppe, \u0026quot;Why atmospheric modeling is good science\u0026quot; in C. A. Miller and P.N. Edwards, eds, _Changing the Atmosphere_, MIT Press, 2001, pp. 67-105). To say that AGW and climate science make no testable empirical claims is transparently false.\nYour quotes attributed to climate scientists appear to be straw men of your own creation.\nLippard (2009-12-31):\nBTW, readers who\u0026#39;ve come this far in the comments may be interested in the exchanges with Kevan Hashemi on this Tamino\u0026#39;s Open Mind blog post.\nLippard (2009-12-31):\nKeven: \u0026quot;Intelligent Design and Creationism both propose the existence of a super-natural power, and so cannot be considered scientific theories. This was the finding of Federal Judge John E. Jones, and requires no assumption about the truth or falsehood of either theory.\u0026quot; While it's true that a hypothesis that is compatible with any possible outcome can't be scientific, it's still the case that many creationists and ID advocates make falsifiable claims that have, in fact, been falsified.\njames (2009-12-31):\nHashemi\u0026#39;s argument is extremely unsophisticated. The fact that we can\u0026#39;t run global-scale climate experiments means that there is \u0026quot;no empirical basis\u0026quot; for AGW? Its pretty obvious why people don\u0026#39;t run global-scale experiments. What has been done are experiments which focus on many different processes that are directly relevant. How do you think people come up with infrared absorption spectra for various molecules including CO2? You don\u0026#39;t come up with something like that from \u0026quot;consensus and peer review\u0026quot;. There is actually quite a lot of empirical evidence for global warming. A huge number of processes influence the global climate. The claim that CO2 influences global climate is not based solely on a faulty historical record, as you would suggest, but on the fact that the mechanism by which CO2 warms the planet is quite well understood and has been studied for a long time. Nobody claims that CO2 solely determines the state of climate. The claim is that CO2 is one of many important variables. Since anthropogenic sources make up a significant fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere, you will get an anthropogenic contribution to the global climate from CO2.\nOf course, there are LOTS of other anthropogenic sources to the climate state. Things like deforestation (and others relating to land use), increased cloud cover due to various human activities (such as air travel and various industrial processes), and so forth. Obviously, all of these anthropogenic effects won't contribute to increasing the planet's temperature; many will actually decrease temperatures.\nIf you think there isn't empirical evidence for global warming, you might want to consider doing some research on the history of the greenhouse effect. You will find plenty of empirical studies going back to Fourier's work in the 1820s. Our understanding of this mechanism has come a long way since then. Just because you can't run a controlled experiment using the entire planet doesn't mean there isn't empirical evidence. Obviously there are many feedback loops which influence climate in ways which are not well understood, but the statement that \u0026quot;consensus and peer review are the basis for their theories\u0026quot; is totally false. I'm not surprised that people would insult you if you make such claims. It makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about.\nPeter Staats (2009-12-31):\nJim says, \u0026quot;Kevan: You have an impoverished view of science that excludes all historical sciences. There\u0026#39;s more to science than experimental science; but in any case, climate science arguably started with the experiments of John Tyndall on greenhouse gases. Climate science does make testable predictions, that\u0026#39;s what the modeling is for. And climate modeling is philosophically analogous to the use of measurement instrument.\u0026quot; Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence, especially when the claims may result in huge economic and social dislocations. I claim it is not possible to obtain the exceptional evidence from \u0026quot;philosophically analogous\u0026quot; measurements. Only hard science, not climate science, can provide the level of evidence required. And please don't resort to the precautionary principle \u0026ndash; that is another canard.\nKevan Hashemi (2009-12-31):\nThree times I asked Tamino, \u0026quot;Has there been any statistically significant warming in the last decade.\u0026quot; Three times he blocked my comment. The third time he told me to, \u0026quot;Go away.\u0026quot; Tamino's own calculations show that the answer to my question is \u0026quot;No.\u0026quot; The models touted by the IPCC in 1995 predicted significant warming in the upcoming decade. They were wrong.\nYou can use climate models to make predictions if you like. You can use the bible too. I don't want to belittle your beliefs nor anyone else's. But if you want me to trust your predictions, your use of models will have to be severely restricted.\nKevan Hashemi (2009-12-31):\nJames says, \u0026quot;Just because you can\u0026#39;t run a controlled experiment using the entire planet doesn\u0026#39;t mean there isn\u0026#39;t empirical evidence.\u0026quot; You are welcome to that opinion, as you are to any other belief about how science should proceed. In the light of your opinion, I perfectly understand and respect your faith in climate models. I myself, however, do not believe any theory unless it has been proved with a great many experiments. In the case of climate theories, that means experiments upon an entire climate system. If we freeze the models now and let them run for two hundred years, and find they work, then great. Until then, I'm not going to trust the models.\nMy criteria for accepting a theory are stricter than yours. The principles of physics and engineering pass my stricter criteria, but those of climatology do not.\nLippard asks, \u0026quot;Who are the climate change skeptics?\u0026quot; After polling my colleagues, I can say, \u0026quot;Most experimental scientists.\u0026quot;\nKevan Hashemi (2009-12-31):\nJim says, \u0026quot;While it\u0026#39;s true that a hypothesis that is compatible with any possible outcome can\u0026#39;t be scientific...\u0026quot; Good point, but I was referring to the fact that Intelligent Design makes use of a Divine Being. This Divine Being is super-natural. The judge said that science is the study of Natural Phenomena, not Super-Natural Phenomena, so Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory right out of the gate, before it makes any predictions and before it can be falsified in any way. Well, I thought that was interesting. I hope you do too.\nUnknown (2009-12-31):\nJust for grins, check out the discovery institute\u0026#39;s take on AGW, and how how similar their persecution is to that of AGW dissenters: Climategate Recalls Attacks on Darwin Doubters.\nLippard (2010-01-01):\nPeter: I\u0026#39;m not an advocate of any of the many versions of the precautionary principle, and don\u0026#39;t think it\u0026#39;s necessary to motivate mitigation and adaptation activity. Kevan: Does evolutionary biology meet your criteria for what counts as science? Apparently your colleagues are not representative of any major national science academy or scientific organization.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-01):\nJim: Yes, evolutionary biology does meet my criteria for a scientific theory. Absolutely. But not AGW. Do you want to debate that?\nLippard (2010-01-01):\nKevan: Not particularly, not in this comment thread, and certainly not on New Year\u0026#39;s Eve, since we\u0026#39;ve got people coming over shortly. For an on-topic comment, how about saying whether you think the original post raises any legitimate concerns about the reliability of the organizations or individuals described? So far, the anti-AGW commenters here have declined to offer an opinion about that for some reason, even though that's the point of the post.\nI won't be approving any more comments until 2010. Happy new year, everybody!\njames (2010-01-01):\nKevan, Who said I had faith in climate models? To say that I believe the climate can be accurately predicted based on current understanding would be false. My comments have consistently indicated as much. However, empirical evidence is different from empirical fact, which you don't seem to appreciate. I don't accept many things as empirical fact; this is reserved for things like conservation of energy, the speed of light is a constant, etc. Science does not solely consist of empirical facts. Logical deductions from those facts are what usually form the basis of scientific theories.\nAlso, I'm sure that someone will inevitably call to your attention that a AGW is absolutely a scientific theory. I'm not sure how you intend to argue otherwise. Just because you don't believe something doesn't mean it isn't a scientific theory.\nFor example, creationism is not a scientific theory because it is not testable by experiment as it presupposes the existence of a supernatural power. All we have to do to test AGW is wait and see what happens to the climate. It is a completely testable scientific theory!\nMy opinion is not that you have high standards. My opinion is that you are sloppy with terminology and that you are making an extremely lazy argument. It seems clear that you do not understand the role of modeling in the development of scientific theories. Do you wish to state that construction of climate models does not advance our scientific understanding of these very complex global processes? Do you suggest that we avoid studying such a complex process because you don't believe it can be understood? I'm not criticizing you because I think AGW is a proven scientific theory, because it IS NOT a proven scientific theory. I'm criticizing you because you clearly don't understand what a scientific theory is.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-01):\nJim, You went to a lot of effort to gather the information you presented in your post, and I commend you for that.\nTo me, however, there is a sanctity about a person's funding and personal beliefs that must not be violated in a discussion of science. If a climatologist is receiving millions of dollars to look into AGW, I will do my best never to suggest that they are twisting the data to perpetuate their funding. If I disagree with their conclusions, I must present an argument that is based only upon data and logic. Once I allow myself to cross over into a discussion of people's personal motives, it's a sure sign that there's something wrong with my position, or I'm yielding to my frustration, which is unbecoming.\nFurthermore, I consider it my duty to ignore anyone else's efforts to discuss the character and personal motives of other climatologists and skeptics alike.\nHaving said that, I have enjoyed my visit at your site, and I thank you for engaging me in debate. If you'd like to see me demonstrate that evolutionary biology has an empirical basis, come visit me at my site. I don't moderate comments, so you have no fear of me cutting you off when you have me cornered.\nHappy New Year, Kevan\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-01):\nJames says, \u0026quot;I\u0026#39;m criticizing you because you clearly don\u0026#39;t understand what a scientific theory is.\u0026quot; Perhaps you can help enlighten me. Is the theory, \u0026quot;Gravity will work every day except for the last day in 2010,\u0026quot; a scientific theory?\njames (2010-01-02):\n\u0026quot;Gravity will work every day except for the last day in 2010,\u0026quot; isn\u0026#39;t a scientific theory unless you have a plausible rational basis for making the claim. You would be expected to make a compelling argument why this should be so based on understanding of gravitation and/or other generally understood principles. Presumably this would be difficult to do for such a claim. Pure speculation clearly cannot form the basis of a scientific theory.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-02):\nMy theory, call it Theory A, is \u0026quot;Gravity will work every day except the last day of 2010.\u0026quot; Theory A makes predictions. It can be falsified. Indeed, A is consistent with a large number of experiments, any one of which could have falsified it. And yet you reject theory A. You say that I have to make a \u0026quot;compelling argument\u0026quot; in favor of A before A can qualify as a scientific theory. What is your definition of a \u0026quot;compelling argument\u0026quot;? Does it involve consensus and peer review?\nAs a motivation for your answer, let me propose Theory B, which is that Theory A will work every day except the last day of 2010. Is that theory scientific?\nLippard (2010-01-02):\nKevan, James: I\u0026#39;ll allow a few more comments on this side philosophy of science conversation (which is starting to look a bit reminiscent of Nelson Goodman\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;new riddle of induction\u0026quot;), but I suggest that it would be better to continue it at another location since it doesn\u0026#39;t directly relate to the original post.\njames (2010-01-03):\n\u0026quot;Compelling argument\u0026quot; does not involve consensus and peer review, as subjecting a theory to peer review review (or requiring consensus) has no impact on the capability of a theory to predict phenomena. My position on theory A is that if you want to say that the theory of gravitation won't hold on a particular day, you have to be able to defend this belief based on logic. Even if you happened to be correct, you don't get credit for predicting phenomena unless you can explain why.\nTheory B is logically equivalent to the theory of gravitation. Fundamental forces fall into the class of things which I am willing accept as empirical facts (as long as contradictions can not be identified).\nAs per Jim's request, this will be my last post on the topic.\nKevan Hashemi (2010-01-03):\nJim, I perfectly understand your reluctance to have this debate continue much longer here. (And, by the way, I have solved the New Riddle of Induction, so I bring it up any chance I get.) James, would you mind continuing over at my blog? I will look for your answer there.\nGreenHearted (2010-01-04):\nGentlemen, gentlemen, sheesh. Listen to yourselves! All I hear is pontificating, head butting, arguing while the Earth burns, and not giving a crap for the children of any species.\nFor heaven's sake, get a grip and look at what's happening. Forget the scientists, the deniers, the skeptics \u0026ndash; look around the world!\nAn alarmist is not an alarmist if she sounds the alarm because something is alarming. And if you don't believe in the precautionary principle (I'd have thought that's like motherhood and apple pie), then please let's bring some compassion \u0026ndash; for anyone younger than yourself \u0026ndash; into the discussion.\nJulie Johnston\nGreenHearted (2010-01-04):\nForgot to mention a really important new book, by James Hoggan. It\u0026#39;s called Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, and it\u0026#39;s a book about the topic of this blog post. Reads like a mystery novel. Julie\nDon Thieme (2010-01-05):\nThis is an excellent research project, which I hope that you continue to expand and publish upon. I have linked to your post and your blog.\nStephen (2010-01-06):\nNice work on the analysis. Regarding the parallels between creationist tactics and AGW denier tactics, I refer you to one of my recent posts at my blog: http://demon-hauntedworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-ten-ways-climate-deniers-are-like.html\nMichael Turton (2010-01-07):\nExcellent work! Very useful. You might want to add Jeff Masters Skeptics vs the Ozone Hole piece at WU http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp\nSteve just above, I posted a similar but longer Creationism/Denialism table at DKOS the other day.\nhttp://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/21/806905/-Climate-Denial-Sociopathology,-Creationism:-Hacked-Emails,-Piltdow\nMichael\nJim Prall (2010-01-10):\nHi Jim, Just found your page; Ggeat post and glad to see my climate activists/skeptics stats pages were helpful.\nFor the question of word searches in collecting publication stats, I think searches on \u0026quot;evolution\u0026quot; are not that comparable. I'll argue that while some articles relevant to climate science might fail to contain the word \u0026quot;climate,\u0026quot; it's hard to see how someone could be actively publishing on climate change or climate science without using this word fairly regularly. Furthermore, the disparity in the stats between IPCC authors and skeptic signers on this metric is just so glaring that complaints about the imperfections of the metric seem moot. So what using the word \u0026quot;climate\u0026quot; captures only part of the climate science literature? Surely what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and any shortfall in coverage with this term is not going to favor one group or the other?\nThe median number of papers mentions climate for the 619 IPCC AR4 wg1 authors is 93. The median among the 472 signers of any of the ten climate skeptic declarations that I've tabulated is \u0026hellip; two (2). It's astronomically implausible for that difference to be a mere artefact of the choice of search term.\nJim Prall, Toronto, Canada\nJim Prall (2010-01-11):\nAnother important new book is _Not A Conspiracy Theory_ by Donald Gutstein. This Tyee article provides an extract on climate denial astroturfing by big oil: Tyee article\nRaymond (2011-06-17):\nGreat dialogue! I have been looking over \u0026quot;Environmental effects of increased Atmospheric carbon dioxide\u0026quot; from the OISM folks. I have heard fair criticism of their aged degrees, the inappropriateness of their degrees and even their motivation, but is there evidence that the data they used was skewed in any way? (I am a little surprised we would have some of that older data). AGW seems a perfectly sound concept, but is it irresponsible to suggest other factors, like solar activity, contributed to a .8% increase in global temperature in the twentieth century?\nLippard (2011-06-18):\nRaymond: Global warming doesn\u0026#39;t correlate with solar activity. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/who-are-climate-change-skeptics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the courses I took this semester was a seminar on the human dimensions of climate change, a geography course that briefly looked at the scientific evidence for climate change and then focused primarily on the social science aspects of the problems of mitigation and adaptation.  The paper I wrote for the class was about the philosophical problem of how a layman can identify relevant expertise and evaluate the debate without being an expert, by looking at features such as relevance of expertise, consensus within fields, credentials and institutions, track records, logical validity and cogency of arguments, and so forth, and then applying these criteria to the IPCC scientists vs. the climate change skeptics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat follows is a list of some of the organizations promoting skepticism about anthropogenic climate change and some of the individuals associated with them, with some information about their credentials and activities.  It\u0026rsquo;s my impression that those with the best reputations tend to agree that there is a global warming trend and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are a contributing factor to that warming, but the organizations tend to promote a more skeptical view (fairly characterized as \u0026ldquo;denial\u0026rdquo;), as exhibited by such evidence as expressions of apparent pleasure at the recent 2009 Pew survey result that showed a decrease in American acceptance of global warming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne comparison I made was between the scientists of the IPCC and the scientists of the NIPCC, a group sponsored by The Heartland Institute.  I compared the fourth-most-cited paper of the top 83 scientists of the former to the fourth-most-cited paper of all of the 2008 NIPCC participants, using \u003ca href=\"http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/%7Eprall/climate/\"\u003eJim Prall\u0026rsquo;s excellent website of citation counts for climate scientists\u003c/a\u003e.  Of the 619 scientists of the AR4 (2007) Working Group 1 on the physical science basis of climate change, the top 83 each have more than 200 citations to their fourth-most-cited paper.  There are only thirteen climate skeptics with that level of citation, most of whom received those citations for papers having nothing to do with climate science, and none of whom were involved with the 2008 NIPCC report.  (In 2009, William Gray, who is in that category, participated in a second NIPCC meeting, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t review that for my paper.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe top scientist of the 2008 NIPCC report with publications containing the word \u0026ldquo;climate,\u0026rdquo; the organizer and editor of the report, S. Fred Singer, has 31 citations to his fourth-most-cited paper. He\u0026rsquo;s a retired physics professor (Ph.D. earned in 1948) who is not only a skeptic about climate change but about the health effects of second-hand smoke, the link between CFCs and the ozone hole, and has received tobacco and oil company funding for his work.  His name pops up frequently when it comes to attempts by corporations to block environmental regulation.  There were 24 participants listed as authors on the 2008 NIPCC report, six of whom have no academic credentials or affiliations and no published academic work of relevance to the climate change debate (Dennis Avery, Christopher Monckton, Kenneth Haapala, Warren Anderson, Klaus Heiss, and Anton Uriarte). The top-cited scientist, Lubos Motl, has 150 citations for his fourth-most-cited paper, but he\u0026rsquo;s a theoretical physicist with no publications containing the word \u0026ldquo;climate.\u0026rdquo;  The next guy after Singer, George Taylor, has an M.S. in meteorology and 25 citations for his fourth-most-cited paper.  There are a few people on the list with relevant credentials, but none are top names in climate science.  The majority with scientific credentials have little or no relevant expertise, like Fred Goldberg, with a Ph.D. in welding technology, and Tom Segalstad, a mineralogist with a Ph.D. in geology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt should be noted that the climate skeptics with the best credentials in climate science tend to be participants in the IPCC process, such as John R. Christy, who was a lead author on the Working Group 1 reports in 2001 and 2007.  Robert Balling of ASU has also participated in the IPCC process, and despite being often regarded as a skeptic, agrees that there is global warming and that it has a human component, and told me that the IPCC report is the best place for the layman to find accurate information about climate science (see \u003ca href=\"/2009/10/robert-balling-on-climate-change.html\"\u003emy summary of his recent talk at ASU\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Heartland Institute\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Heartland Institute, founded in 1984, was the sponsor of the NIPCC (above) and has its own category at this blog.  Between 1998 and 2005, it received $561,500 in funding from ExxonMobil, 40% of which was designated for climate science opposition (see \u003ca href=\"http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf\"\u003ethe Union of Concerned Scientists Exxon report\u003c/a\u003e (PDF)).  In April 2008, it published a list of “500 Scientists With Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” compiled by Dennis Avery, participant in NIPCC and co-author of a 2007 anti-AGW book with S. Fred Singer which attributes periodic warming to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event\"\u003ea 1500-year solar cycle\u003c/a\u003e.  The publication of this list resulted in protests from 45 scientists on the list who stated that they are not AGW opponents and requested that their names be removed.  Rather than remove the scientists from the list, The Heartland Institute \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/heartland-institute-publishes-bogus.html\"\u003echanged the title of the list to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  The Heartland Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/experts.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003elist of 138 climate change experts\u003c/a\u003e contains many individuals with no relevant expertise or credentials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScience and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSinger has another organization devoted to arguing against human-caused climate change, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), which he founded in 1990.  That organization also opposes the ban on CFCs and other EPA regulations.  There are nine people listed on SEPP\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.sepp.org/about%20sepp/boarddir.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eboard of science advisors\u003c/a\u003e, of which five are dead (Gerholm, Higatsberger, Mitchell, Nierenberg, and Starr).  Ames is a well-known scientist in his field, molecular genetics, which has nothing to do with climate change.  The others with the most citations are elderly or dead physicists (Starr, 1935 physics Ph.D.; Böttcher, 1947 physics Ph.D.; and Mitchell, 1951 physics Ph.D.).  The rest have only single-digit citations to their fourth-most-cited paper.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eGeorge C. Marshall Institute\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe George C. Marshall Institute was founded in 1984 to support Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, but since 1989 has been active in opposing AGW.  The current board of directors, according to its website, are William Happer (Princeton physics professor), William O’Keefe (former executive VP and COO of the American Petroleum Institute and president of a consulting company), Gregory Canavan (physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory), John H. Moore (former president of Grove City College, former economics professor, and former Deputy Director of the NSF), Rodney W. Nichols (former president of the New York Academy of Sciences), Milan Nikolich (electrical engineering Ph.D., a nuclear weapons program consultant associated with CACI, a defense contractor), and Roy Spencer (climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville).  Of these, only Spencer, who is \u003ca href=\"http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003ealso a Bible-believing anti-evolutionist\u003c/a\u003e, has a climate science background.  (Happer is a highly-cited particle physicist.)  The George C. Marshall Institute has published works by some of the more reputable AGW opponents with a high level of citations for their fourth-most-cited publication\u0026ndash;e.g., Richard Lindzen of MIT (274), Roger A. Pielke, Sr. (129), Roy Spencer (124), and John R. Christy (88).  Others with relevant credentials but not quite the high level of citations include Patrick Michaels (37), Robert Balling (29), and Timothy Ball (8).  The George C. Marshall Institute has also published and promoted the work of Stephen McIntyre of the ClimateAudit blog, a former mineral exploration executive with a bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degree in mathematics, and economist Ross McKitrick.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFormer George C. Marshall Institute executive director Matthew Crawford left the organization after five months when, he said, he realized it was “more fond of some facts than others” and that his job “consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank” (Carolyn Mooney, \u003ca href=\"http://www.uwosh.edu/advising/pc-201/myth-vs.-reality-articles/Manual%20Work043.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Hands-On Philosopher Argues for a Fresh Vision of Manual Work\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Chronicle of Higher Education\u003c/span\u003e, June 15, 2009).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCato Institute\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded in 1977 by Edward Crane and Charles Koch.  Charles and David Koch are co-owners of Koch Industries, which is one of the largest privately owned companies in the U.S. (often #2, but has occasionally been #1).  Koch Industries has major holdings in petroleum, natural gas, and coal.  Patrick Michaels (already mentioned in connection with the George C. Marshall Institute) is the Cato Institute Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies and their only climate science expert on staff, though Cato has also published articles co-authored by Michaels and Robert Balling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScience and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrike\u003eThe SPPI was founded in 1994 by chairman George Carlo, former assistant football coach for the Buffalo Bills who subsequently entered the public health field and earned a Ph.D. and law degree.  He is an advocate for the view that cell phones cause substantial health risks, including cancer and autism.\u003c/strike\u003e  [That\u0026rsquo;s a different SPPI; see \u003ca href=\"/2009/12/who-are-climate-change-skeptics.html?showComment=1261995585127#c822560034465031948\"\u003eJohn Mashey\u0026rsquo;s comment\u003c/a\u003e below.] The SPPI’s chief science advisor is Willie Soon, a Harvard astrophysicist also associated with the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (about which more will be said below).  Other science advisors include William Kininmonth, Robert M. Carter, David Legates, Craig D. Idso, James J. O’Brien, and Joseph D’Aleo, all of whom except O’Brien and Legates were involved with the 2008 NIPCC report.  The chief policy advisor is Sir Christopher Monckton, an AGW opponent from the UK with no relevant science credentials, also involved with the 2008 NIPCC report.  Legates, the Delaware State Climatologist, was a commenter on Patrick Michaels\u0026rsquo; most recent climate change skepticism book at an event at the Cato Institute, and is a climate scientist whose fourth-most-cited paper has received 226 citations.  D\u0026rsquo;Aleo, first director of meteorology for The Weather Channel, has a 1970 M.S. in meteorology and has not published any academic work since.  Kininmonth, with an M.Sc. degree (not sure in what) was the former head of the Australian National Climate Center.  Craig Idso has a Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University and is founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; his fourth-most-cited paper has received 20 citations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCenter for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a small Phoenix-based nonprofit run by Craig Idso (chairman) and his father Sherwood B. Idso (president) which argues that increasing CO2 levels are beneficial.  The organization has \u003ca href=\"http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=24\"\u003ereceived $90,000 in funding from ExxonMobil\u003c/a\u003e.  Both Idsos and Craig\u0026rsquo;s brother Keith have also been on the payroll of the Western Fuels Association.  Sherwood Idso, a 1968 physics Ph.D. who was a research physicist for the USDA\u0026rsquo;s Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory starting in 1967, has a fourth-most-cited scientific paper which has received 189 citations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM), a private research organization run by Arthur Robinson and his two sons Noah and Zachary Robinson, was founded in 1980.  The OISM faculty listed on their website are the three Robinsons, Martin D. Kamen (a deceased chemist), R. Bruce Merrifield (a deceased chemist), Fred Westall (a biochemistry professor), Carl Boehme (who has an M.S. in electrical engineering), and Jane Orient (a medical doctor).  The OISM sells DVDs on “nuclear war survival skills” and civil defense, as well as a home schooling curriculum, and has taken over the publication of the late Petr Beckmann’s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAccess to Energy\u003c/span\u003e newsletter which defends nuclear energy and now also criticizes AGW.  (Beckmann was a physicist who became an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, and in addition to promoting nuclear energy also challenged Einstein’s relativity and published a journal for that purpose called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGalilean Electrodynamics\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe OISM Petition Project was set up to oppose U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Treaty and currently has over 31,000 signatures of Americans with degrees in a scientific subject.  The initial call for signatures was sent out with a letter from Frederick Seitz while he was still president of the National Academies of Science, along with a 12-page “Research Review of Global Warming Evidence” by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon which was formatted to look like a publication in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProceedings of the National Academies of Science\u003c/span\u003e.  The petition was originally billed as a “survey,” but it has not been reported how many solicitations were sent out compared to how many were returned, nor how many scientists disagreed with the statements on the petition (as \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12\"\u003epointed out by Gary Whittenberger in eSkeptic\u003c/a\u003e).  The signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent.  By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science.  The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field. (Blogger Chris Colose \u003ca href=\"http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/one-more-petition-still-a-consensus/\"\u003ehas looked at a subsample of names on the petition\u003c/a\u003e, without finding any with climate-related publications.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of the other “faculty” at the OISM is Dr. Jane Orient, M.D., of Tucson, Arizona, \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/anthropogenic-global-warming-debate.html\"\u003ewhom I’ve heard speak in opposition to AGW\u003c/a\u003e.  She is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative organization that publishes the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of American Physicians and Surgeons\u003c/span\u003e (JPANDS).  This journal published an anti-AGW articles by Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willie Soon (2007), and by Arthur Robinson, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary Robinson (1998), as well as articles opposing vaccination of children, claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that homosexuality causes crime and disease, opposing fluoridation of water, accusing the FDA of fraud for banning DDT, and criticizing the theory of evolution (see evaluations by \u003ca href=\"http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfellows\"\u003eKathleen Seidel\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/journal_of_american_physicians.php\"\u003eOrac\u003c/a\u003e).  The Robinson et al. (1998) article is apparently a version of the article originally distributed with the Oregon Petition, and another anti-AGW article by the same authors was published in the journal \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Research\u003c/span\u003e (Soon et al. 1998).  Arthur Robinson has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech and was an associate of Linus Pauling.  Noah Robinson also has a chemistry Ph.D. from Caltech, and Zachary Robinson is a veterinarian with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.  None has relevant climate science expertise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWillie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (1980 Ph.D., astrophysics) are astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who study solar variability, both have also been associated with the George C. Marshall Institute and the Heartland Institute; Soon is the chief science advisor for the Science and Public Policy Institute (above).  Baliunas received the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP), a group associated with OISM (Jane Orient is president of DDP).  In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an anti-AGW article (arguing that warming was due to solar variation) in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Research\u003c/span\u003e that led to protests from 13 of the authors cited that their work had been misrepresented and misused.  Subsequently the new editor-in-chief, Hans van Storch, resigned along with two other editors \u003ca href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2005/05/some-it-hot\"\u003ewhen the publisher refused to print an editorial about improvements in the journal review process\u003c/a\u003e.  Baliunas\u0026rsquo; fourth-most-cited paper has 230 citations; Soon’s has 68.  Timothy J. Osborn and Keith R. Briffa (2006) repeated Soon and Baliunas’ methodology \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/841\"\u003ein a paper published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e that did not reproduce their results\u003c/a\u003e.  Osborn and Briffa are both climate scientists associated with the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University; Osborn\u0026rsquo;s (1995 Ph.D., environmental sciences) fourth-most-cited paper has received 152 citations and Briffa\u0026rsquo;s (1984 Ph.D., dendroclimatologist) has received 250.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve given special attention to OISM and AAPS because of the extent of crankery associated with them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThree Miscellaneous Items\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy last three items are not organizations but are worthy of further note.  (1) This year, S. Fred Singer circulated a petition to attempt to get the American Physical Society to revise its statement on global warming from being supportive of AGW to be in opposition to it.  He collected 206 signatures from APS members, about 0.45% of its 47,000 members, and the petition was rejected.  John Mashey \u003ca href=\"http://www.desmogblog.com/another-silly-climate-petition-exposed\"\u003eanalyzed the social network of the first 121 signers\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), and found that the initial signing clustered around the SEPP, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the Cato Institute, along with other interesting demographic information.  (2) Ian Plimer, a prominent Australian geologist, published a book in early 2009 opposing AGW, titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHeaven and Earth: Global Warming-The Missing Science\u003c/span\u003e. Plimer has in the past been an active public critic of creationism in Australia, and was criticized by me for using \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/hnta.html\"\u003einaccurate and misleading claims in his arguments\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003eby me\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/%7Eshallit/plimer.html\"\u003eJeff Shallit\u003c/a\u003e for plagiarism in a prior book.  Plimer’s new book has been similarly found to contain not only \u003ca href=\"/2009/05/ian-plimer-on-climate-change.html\"\u003einaccurate statements and misrepresentations\u003c/a\u003e, but \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/more-apparent-plagiarism-from-ian.html\"\u003eplagiarism\u003c/a\u003e.  (3) The \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforinquiry.net/opp/news/senate_minority_report_on_global_warming_not_credible/\"\u003eCenter for Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s Credibility Project\u003c/a\u003e was a review of the scientific credentials of the signers of global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe\u0026rsquo;s Senate Minority Report on Global Warming, which found, similar to what I report above, that most of them have no relevant expertise or credentials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSummary\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe above doesn\u0026rsquo;t demonstrate that climate skepticism is without merit, but it does demonstrate that there are reasons to be skeptical\u0026ndash;and in many cases extremely skeptical\u0026ndash;about some of the organizations and individuals promoting climate skepticism, independently of their arguments.  In my view, the arguments for climate skepticism in most cases just increase the grounds for skepticism.  I recommend \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/\"\u003ethe RealClimate blog\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticalscience.com/\"\u003eSkeptical Science blog\u003c/a\u003e as two good sources of information about those arguments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo really dig into the details, read \u003ca href=\"http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm\"\u003ethe IPCC WG-1 Report\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Also worthy of note is Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change\"\u003elist of scientific organizations which have issued statements on anthropogenic climate change\u003c/a\u003e.  Noteworthy for its absence is any organization with a statement arguing against anthropogenic climate change; since 2007 only the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has had a noncommittal statement.  Wikipedia also has \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus\"\u003ea nice list of scientists who oppose the consensus views and what their actual positions are\u003c/a\u003e.  (Like JFK assassination conspiracy theorists, they do not have a consensus view of their own.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also neglected to mention a paper that I cited in the paper I wrote for my climate change class, a 2008 study that examined 141 “English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005” found that over 92% of them were connected to conservative think tanks, either published by them or authored by persons directly affiliated with them (Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap, and Mark Freeman, \u0026ldquo;The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism,\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEnvironmental Politics\u003c/span\u003e vol 17, no. 3, June 2008, pp. 349-385). In the above list, is there any organization or individual that does not come from a conservative or libertarian political ideology?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 17, 2009): Other posts at this blog on \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/climate%20change\"\u003eclimate change\u003c/a\u003e include:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/climate-research-unit-email-scandal.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Climate Research Unit email scandal\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 23, 2009)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change_07.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 7, 2009)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 6, 2009)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/robert-balling-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Robert Balling on climate change\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 30, 2009)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/05/ian-plimer-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ian Plimer on climate change\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 22, 2009)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/reason-to-be-skeptical-about.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Reason to be skeptical about anthropogenic climate change\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (April 26, 2008)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/10/garbage-in-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Garbage in on climate change measurement\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 25, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/lomborg-global-warming-and-opportunity.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lomborg, global warming, and opportunity costs\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 15, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/consensus-for-anthropogenic-global.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The consensus for anthropogenic global warming\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (August 19, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/david-friedman-on-global-warming.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;David Friedman on global warming\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 15, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/taxonomy-of-questions-about-global.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Taxonomy of questions about global warming\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 13, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAmong several others.  Those who are accusing me of obvious liberal bias might want to take a look at these.  I have my share of political biases, but I do my best to defer to the best arguments and evidence over political ideology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 19, 2009): Peter Staats, in the comments, suggested that belief in anthropogenic global warming is entrenched among scientists and will disappear as the older generation dies (citing Planck, whose point is also made in Thomas Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStructure of Scientific Revolutions\u003c/span\u003e).  I responded that I thought he has it backwards\u0026ndash;that AGW has become more and more supported, and the holdouts tend to be older, as some of the data about the anti-AGW organizations above already suggested.  So I tested our respective hypotheses against Jim Prall\u0026rsquo;s data, for IPCC WG1 scientists vs. the signatories of the AGW-skeptical documents.  I looked at the average year of the last academic degree awarded, first for those with citation counts for their fourth-most-cited paper \u0026gt;= 200, then, since that was such a small sample for the climate skeptics, for citation counts \u0026gt;= 100, and then for all the 623 IPCC WG1 scientists vs. the 469 signatories of AGW-skeptical documents.  Here are the results:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCitation counts of 4th-most-cited \u0026gt;= 200:\u003cbr /\u003eIPCC WG1:  N=83, 12 w/o year, N=71, average year of last degree = 1981\u003cbr /\u003eSkeptics: N=13, 4 w/o year, N=9, average year of last degree = 1965\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCitations counts of 4th-most-cited \u0026gt;=100:\u003cbr /\u003eIPCC WG1: N=201, 51 w/o year, N=150, average year of last degree = 1983\u003cbr /\u003eSkeptics: N=38, 15 w/o year, N=23, average year of last degree = 1968\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll IPCC WG1 vs. AGW-skeptical document signers:\u003cbr /\u003eIPCC WG1: N=623, 208 w/o year, N=415, average year of last degree = 1989\u003cbr /\u003eSkeptics: N=469, 346 w/o year, N=123, average year of last degree = 1973\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, for this last group, there\u0026rsquo;s more info on degree breakdowns than year of degree (note that those without degrees are excluded along with the n/a, no web, and no cv categories\u0026ndash;there were several of those among the skeptics and one undergrad in the IPCC scientists, not counted here):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIPCC WG1 scientists:\u003cbr /\u003eN=504\u003cbr /\u003ePh.D.: 474 (94.0%)\u003cbr /\u003eM.Sc.: 13 (2.6%)\u003cbr /\u003eCand.: 5 (1.0%)\u003cbr /\u003eD.Sc.: 2 (0.4%)\u003cbr /\u003eD.Phil.: 2 (0.4%)\u003cbr /\u003eSc.D.: 2 (0.4%)\u003cbr /\u003eC.Phys.: 2 (0.4%)\u003cbr /\u003eB.Sc.: 2 (0.4%)\u003cbr /\u003eAnd one each (0.2%) of Nobel laureates and Ph.Lic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSkeptics:\u003cbr /\u003eN=322\u003cbr /\u003ePh.D.: 254 (78.9%)\u003cbr /\u003eM.Sc.: 25 (7.8%)\u003cbr /\u003eB.Sc.: 13 (4.0%)\u003cbr /\u003eB.A.: 4 (1.2%)\u003cbr /\u003eM.S.: 3 (0.9%)\u003cbr /\u003eB.S.: 3 (0.9%)\u003cbr /\u003eM.D. and Ph.D.: 1 (0.3%)\u003cbr /\u003eAnd one each (0.3%) of M.D., D.Eng., Tekn.D., Dipl., M.Eng., M.A., P.E., Dipl.Bio., M.C., D.Env., B.E., R.P., \u0026ldquo;Doctorandus\u0026rdquo;, B.S.E.E., Dip.ES., and J.D.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE  (December 21, 2009): Theoretical physicist (a string theorist), former Harvard physics professor, and climate skeptic Lubos Motl, referred to above as the most-cited scientist involved with the 2008 NIPCC report, \u003ca href=\"http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-james-randi-vs-mindless.html\"\u003ehas just demonstrated the quality of his reasoning at his own blog\u003c/a\u003e.  In a post about James Randi\u0026rsquo;s expression of skepticism about AGW and his temporary (and quickly retracted) suggestion that the Oregon Petition Project seemed legitimate, Motl infers that this must have been the cause for Phil Plait being fired as president of JREF\u0026ndash;an event which didn\u0026rsquo;t happen.  When Randi himself showed up to point out that Plait is still president of JREF and had already given notice of his departure at the end of the year prior to these events, Motl\u0026rsquo;s response was \u0026ldquo;If you have been truly violently, physically blackmailed and harassed by the AGW fanatics, I could understand what you just wrote. If you were not, let me just state that in that case, you became a morally worthless human in my eyes.\u0026rdquo;  Way to be reasonable, Motl!  He continues: \u0026ldquo;The \u0026lsquo;denialist\u0026rsquo; dictionary you adopted and the attacks against the Oregon Petition are pretty disgusting.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 25, 2009): I\u0026rsquo;m reading Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eImpure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge\u003c/span\u003e, 1996, Berkeley: University of California Press, which I had previously read chapter 6 of for one of my classes.  In ch. 4, \u0026ldquo;The Debate That Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t Die,\u0026rdquo; about Peter Duesberg and those who deny that HIV causes AIDS, I just read about Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Discussion Paper #5\u0026rdquo; of 3 June 1992, which was titled \u0026ldquo;Who Are the HIV Heretics?\u0026rdquo;, which sounds fairly analogous to the this blog post. I\u0026rsquo;ve not been able to find a copy online, but I would love to see that document.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEpstein, pp. 156-157:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe seriousness with which Project Inform took the resurgence of interest in the causation controversey was indicated by the publication in early June of a six-page \u0026lsquo;Discussion Paper\u0026rsquo; devoted entirely to the topic.  The report began by blasting the media for their irresponsibility and sensationalism.  Why do reporters love the HIV dissenters?  Why have they confused Montagnier\u0026rsquo;s position with Duesberg\u0026rsquo;s, despite Montagnier\u0026rsquo;s own disavowals?  \u0026ldquo;Apparently because it makes a good story\u0026ndash;\u0026lsquo;Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong! Top Scientists in Error Ten Years! Secrets! Coverup! Big Business, Big Science Collusion!\u0026rsquo; \u0026hellip; Such is the sorry state of AIDS reporting in some circles today.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFocusing on four groups opposing the HIV hypothesis\u0026ndash;the New York Native, Spin magazine, assorted journalists, and certain scientists\u0026ndash;Project Inform was at pains to question the credibility of each and to uncover motivations for adopting heretical stances. \u0026hellip; In considering the fourth, crucial group of HIV dissenters\u0026ndash;the scientists\u0026ndash;Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s report similarly emphasized the issue of credibility.  Root-Bernstein \u0026ldquo;works in a field not directly related to AIDS\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;has not conducted or published any AIDS research other than editorials,\u0026rdquo; yet \u0026ldquo;Spin calls him \u0026lsquo;one of the leading AIDS researchers in the US.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  Kary Mullis, while \u0026ldquo;obviously a serious scientist,\u0026rdquo; was similarly \u0026ldquo;an outsider to AIDS research\u0026rdquo;; furthermore, his PCR test \u0026ldquo;has, if anything, helped to bolster the case for HIV.\u0026rdquo;  Of all the heretical scientists, only Sonnabend \u0026ldquo;is professionally involved with AIDS,\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;primarily as a clinician\u0026rdquo;: \u0026ldquo;While Dr. Sonnabend has earned respect in many ways, his arguments against HIV are no more valid than the others.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eIn focusing on formal credentials, Project Inform walked a fine line.  This, after all, was a grassroots organization staffed by self-educated AIDS experts; its executive director, before the epidemic came along, had been a business consultant.  A big part of Project Inform\u0026rsquo;s work involved disseminating highly technical knowledge about AIDS to laypeople in order to create what might be called a mass-based expertise.  In its reckoning of the tokens of expertise, Project Inform was not about to argue that academic degrees or journal publications are everything.  Lacking the right credentials, Peter Duesberg could still be considered an AIDS expert of sorts\u0026ndash;but not in a way that would make him stand out from the crowd: \u0026ldquo;Perhaps his most relevant work is that he has studied the medical literature on AIDS (as have thousands of patients, physicians, and activists), and this qualifies as a form of expertise.\u0026rdquo;  But \u0026ldquo;Duesberg\u0026rsquo;s supporters and the media spread misinformation when they present him as an \u0026lsquo;AIDS researcher\u0026rsquo; in the sense that phrase is usually meant.\u0026rdquo;  His published writings on AIDS were \u0026ldquo;simply editorials.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProject Inform noted that there was a \u0026ldquo;legitimate\u0026rdquo; scientific question that had been \u0026ldquo;lost in the fog\u0026rdquo; generated by media fascination with Duesberg and other dissenters: How does HIV cause AIDS?  Following the lead of Gallo and others, the report emphasized that pathogenesis was separate from etiology; while part one of the report was entitled \u0026ldquo;Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?\u0026rdquo; part two was called \u0026ldquo;How Does HIV Cause AIDS?\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere are lots of interesting parallels here, including political.  Epstein notes (pp. 158-159) HIV dissenters and promoters of their views being libertarian (Charles Thomas) and conservative (Phillip Johnson, Bryan Ellison, Tom Bethell, Patrick Buchanan).  Johnson, Bethell, and Buchanan are also anti-evolutionists; Bethell and Buchanan also deny that there\u0026rsquo;s anthropogenic global warming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 28, 2009): The Center for Public Integrity\u0026rsquo;s project, \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/climate_change/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Climate Change Lobby,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e identifies who\u0026rsquo;s lobbying the U.S. Congress on climate change.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 3, 2010): This \u003ca href=\"http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/pr-versus-science-the-luntz-memo/\"\u003eRepublican Party PR firm memo from 2000 about how to \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; the global warming debate by continuing to stress uncertainty as the case for warming become stronger\u003c/a\u003e is interesting in its similarity to the Tobacco Institute\u0026rsquo;s PR strategy about the evidence that smoking causes cancer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 5, 2010): Donald Gutstein\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://thetyee.ca/Books/2009/12/10/ClimateDeniers/index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is How You Fuel a Community of Climate Deniers\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e covers similar ground to the above (with some familiar names), with a Canadian focus.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 7, 2010): Jeffrey Masters\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Skeptics vs. the Ozone Hole\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e shows how a similar debate came out in the 1970s, which included S. Fred Singer arguing that CFCs don\u0026rsquo;t deplete the ozone layer.  That article notes that Singer\u0026rsquo;s atmospheric science work has been negligible since 1971.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who are the climate change skeptics?"},{"content":"Vocab Malone has posted the third part of his argument against abortion at his blog, focusing on what he calls \u0026ldquo;the argument from size.\u0026rdquo; As I don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any plausibility to this argument, I won\u0026rsquo;t spend any time with it, but there are still a few things in his post that I think demand response. The first is the assertion Vocab quotes from \u0026ldquo;prolific pro-life trainer and speaker Scott Klusendorf\u0026rdquo; that he always encounters this argument when he speaks at Christian schools. I find this assertion very difficult to believe\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve ever encountered this argument anywhere, and I suspect that Klusendorf is either intentionally or unintentionally misconstruing some other argument as this argument. (Would he consider Randy Newman\u0026rsquo;s song, \u0026ldquo;Short People,\u0026rdquo; to be an instance of the argument, given its lyric, \u0026ldquo;short people got no reason to live\u0026rdquo;?)\nThe instance of the argument Vocab suggests is nothing of the sort, though at least he admits that it is an argument about another subject. Here\u0026rsquo;s the quote as Vocab presents it:\nFrom the other end of things, a recent New York Times article featured a similar argument (although his piece was on a broader topic than abortion):\nLook at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else? … We do not see cells, simple or complex – we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. [2]The quote is from a New York Times editorial by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga about the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Here\u0026rsquo;s the quotation in context; it\u0026rsquo;s the ending of the piece:\nIn his State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to observe that \u0026ldquo;human life is a gift from our creator — and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.\u0026rdquo; Putting aside the belief in a \u0026ldquo;creator,\u0026rdquo; the vast majority of the world\u0026rsquo;s population takes a similar stance on valuing human life. What is at issue, rather, is how we are to define \u0026ldquo;human life.\u0026rdquo; Look around you. Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else? Most humans practice a kind of dualism, seeing a distinction between mind and body. We all automatically confer a higher order to a developed biological entity like a human brain. We do not see cells, simple or complex — we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t yet have the memories and loves and hopes that accumulate over the years. Until this is understood by our politicians, the gallant efforts of so many biomedical scientists, as good as they are, will remain only stopgap measures. Vocab has removed a critical piece of what Gazzaniga wrote\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s not making anything like an argument from size, but rather an argument much more like my position, as seen in what Vocab omitted with his ellipsis and immediately following what he quoted. The piece as a whole is taking issue with the conflation of reproductive and therapeutic cloning, with the idea that the latter involves creating cloned people, and Gazzaniga\u0026rsquo;s position seems to be that this confusion occurs because people are thinking of and talking about undifferentiated cells as though they are people\u0026ndash;the same thing that is occuring in this very debate. (BTW, the president\u0026rsquo;s Council on Bioethics, of which Gazzaniga was a member, argued that therapeutic, but not reproductive cloning should be permissible. My view is that while there are currently issues of knowledge and technology that could result in harm to cloned people, in the long run I don\u0026rsquo;t see any ethical difference between reproductive cloning and natural reproduction, so long as the products of each get equal treatment on the same standard of personhood.)\nVocab suggests it would have been better to call this the \u0026ldquo;just a bunch of cells\u0026rdquo; argument, but that\u0026rsquo;s really not an argument based on size, but rather an argument based on structure, function, and capacity\u0026ndash;which is a good argument! I suspect that this is, in fact, the sort of argument that Klusendorf is misconstruing.\nNext Vocab gives an argument from essences:\ncan any living being become anything else besides what it already is? How can something become a person unless its essence is already personhood? If the color blue is only blue and not the color red in the same way at the same time, its very essence – its fundamental property – must be blue and not red. Another example is that of the tadpole and frog. The tadpole is simply a name for a specific stage during a frog’s development. If one were to terminate a certain tadpole, then a certain frog would be terminated and no longer exist. This means you did not come from a fetus you once were a fetus. The answer to the first question is clearly yes\u0026ndash;there are all kinds of metamorphoses that occur in living things while they are alive, including changes of shape, color, size, and sex. And when they die, they can become parts of other things\u0026ndash;just as other things become part of them when they come into existence, develop, and change. The second question is, I think, flawed. First, I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s correct to regard personhood as a fixed, unchanging property. Douglas Hofstadter\u0026rsquo;s book, I Am A Strange Loop, argues that self concepts not only develop over time, but can be shared across persons. Second, the question implies that anything that is a person is always and eternally a person and cannot be constructed out of something else. But on everybody\u0026rsquo;s views, human beings are biological organisms, which come into and go out of existence in virtue of the states of their underlying components. Both the view Vocab has been defending and mine say that there are biological components which are not persons, which through some change of state subsequently become persons. If Vocab wants to hold a view by which personhood is an essential property of a simple substance, then he can do that by holding a dualistic view of an eternal soul which is a person that attaches at some point to a human as a biological animal. But if that\u0026rsquo;s his view, then that\u0026rsquo;s the argument we should be having, rather than one in which Vocab is defending a view like animalism.\nVocab makes a subsequent statement that I think vividly illustrates the error in his view:\nOne way to think about the idea of probability (or potentiality) is that every adult was once an unborn person, just as every oak tree was once an acorn. An acorn is simply a mini-oak tree, just as a microscopic person is a mini-human. But that last sentence is just false. Acorns are not miniature oak trees and zygotes are not miniature people. That\u0026rsquo;s precisely the error that Gazzaniga is warning against in his article.\nVocab subsequently makes a point about skulls being crushed in an abortion procedure, and on that point he\u0026rsquo;s correct\u0026ndash;embryos do develop into fetuses, they do develop identifiable distinct parts and functions, and at some point they do become miniature people, but they don\u0026rsquo;t pop into existence as such.\nContinue to part four.\nM! (2009-12-16):\nJim - To clarify about the NY Times piece, I did mention the exact context WAS NOT abortion. Here's how I led up to my quotation:\n\u0026quot;From the other end of things, a recent New York Times article featured a similar argument (although his piece was on a broader topic than abortion)\u0026quot;\nI used the word \u0026quot;similar\u0026quot; to qualify and I gave the exact source so anyone can see the whole article for themselves. I am not trying to hide what the man was saying.\nAlso, I have a question from a statement you made: \u0026quot;I don't think it's correct to regard personhood as a fixed, unchanging property.\u0026quot;\nDoes this mean you think once someone is a person that they have the ability while they are still living to lose their personhood?\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-16):\nVocab: I both noted and quoted that you mentioned that--but you *did* remove a critical portion of the quote that was necessary to understand his point. Do I think that people have the ability to lose their personhood while still living? Yes. First, I think people have the ability to cease to be the person they once were, to lose their identity, without losing their personhood\u0026ndash;this can happen as a result of causes like brain trauma or disease, like Alzheimer's. The person who was once there is gone, even though there may still be a person who remains. Second, it's possible to completely lose personhood while remaining alive, in cases where brain function is so severely damaged that a person is in a permanent persistent vegetative state, just shy of brain death. The body can live and engage in certain kinds of reflexive actions (like the Lazarus sign) when there's nobody home.\nM! (2009-12-16):\nYou know what, Jim? You are right about this.* I just added the full context of the quote and changed some of the wording leading up to it so as not to mislead. I also added the URL in the notes.\nI put an update in the bottom so people could see I have made changes.\nI am still learning here \u0026hellip;\nvM!\n::vOcab::\n*right about the critical context of the NY Times quote, not about personhood fluctuating =)\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim – Let me respond to this quote, too:\n\u0026quot;If Vocab wants to hold a view by which personhood is an essential property of a simple substance, then he can do that by holding a dualistic view of an eternal soul which is a person that attaches at some point to a human as a biological animal. But if that's his view, then that's the argument we should be having, rather than one in which Vocab is defending a view like animalism.\u0026quot;\nActually, it seems your position is dualism of a certain order, as you have drawn a body/person distinction by postulating there can be a human body in a certain stage of development yet no person, no “self”. Georgetown’s Robert P. George comments on this:\n\u0026quot;Body-self dualists look only at the properties essential to human life, such as mental functioning and self-consciousness, as they exist at the height of their development. But where could such properties have come from if they were not already rooted in the nature of the being that possessed them?\u0026quot; - Embryo, Random House, p 98.\nI am just curious as to how you (or others) would respond …\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nDrawing distinctions doesn\u0026#39;t necessarily imply dualism. A house is a building with certain structure and function that can be built out of a variety of different materials, but my making that observation doesn\u0026#39;t make me a building materials/house dualist. Houses are reducible to their physical components. Similarly, I think that personhood is reducible to physical components structured in a certain functional way. Persons are embodied and are reducible to the physical components in a particular causal framework.\nPersonhood is an emergent property of underlying functional components.\nGeorge's question strikes me as being analogous to suggesting that you should be able to run Microsoft Word on a computer before it is assembled, plugged in, powered on, and has an operating system installed on it, or that you should be able to build a tree swing on an acorn.\nM! (2009-12-18):\nThe problem with the argument as you articulate it is that it confuses parts with the whole. Embryos are NOT constructed piece by piece from an external source but they develop themselves from within. No blueprint of a house has the ability to actually become the house it portrays; therefore, when the house is done being built one could dispose of the blueprint because it is not an essential component of the structure. This is most certainly NOT the case w/the embryo.\nThis is because living things DEFINE themselves and they even FORM themselves. A car is not a car until it rolls off the assembly line complete. It is not a car when the first door is attached to the frame.\nThere is no comparison with the embryo b/c it is complete from the jump, it is not built little by little until one more piece is added and then 'voila', we have a human.\nLastly, when you said, \u0026quot;George's question strikes me as being analogous to suggesting \u0026hellip; that you should be able to build a tree swing on an acorn,\u0026quot; it shows you misunderstand the pro-life position. No one is claiming the embryo is an ADULT human just as the acorn is not a MATURE oak tree. Nonetheless, the embryo belongs in no other category than complete human being and should be valued as such.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nVocab: I gave the acorn example because I thought you might try to argue that way, but I don\u0026#39;t think it makes a bit of difference how a person comes into existence--a human being genetically engineered from nonliving parts would still be a person. If I'm wanting to build a tree swing, an acorn doesn't meet the conditions of treehood, even though it has the potential to become a tree that meets those conditions.\nJust as an acorn doesn't meet the conditions of treehood for the purposes of building a tree swing, a zygote doesn't meet the moral or legal conditions of personhood.\nWe don't disagree that there is continuity of organism (just as there is continuity of a population of organisms over time)\u0026ndash;all life on this planet is connected in that way. But just as we don't count every species as persons, even in our own genetic lineage, we don't count every life stage of individual human organisms as persons. There's a sense in which \u0026quot;I\u0026quot; was once a zygote that had my same DNA, but at that stage there was no \u0026quot;me\u0026quot; there yet\u0026ndash;there was nothing that it was like to be a zygote, to use Thomas Nagel's expression. In that same sense that \u0026quot;I\u0026quot; was a zygote, \u0026quot;I\u0026quot; will be a dead body in the future, even though there will at that point be nothing that it is like to be me, and the person that I am will be gone from the world though my body will briefly remain.\nI think we understand each other's positions. You think that being a human organism is the same thing as to be a person, while I think personhood is a feature that comes into existence and persists for a subset of the life of an organism, that requires capacities of sentience or self-awareness.\nBut I think I can give reasons to support why my view makes moral, legal, and practical sense, and why human cultures and practices are more consistent with my view than yours. I don't think you can give such reasons, other than the brute assertion that human organisms are persons from start to finish. Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion.\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nI wrote: \u0026quot;But just as we don\u0026#39;t count every species as persons, even in our own genetic lineage, we don\u0026#39;t count every life stage of individual human organisms as persons.\u0026quot; While that's still a correct statement, for the point of the analogy replace the first instance of \u0026quot;persons\u0026quot; with \u0026quot;humans.\u0026quot;\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim - I guess that's as good as place as any to sorta wind down our discussion. I will try to post once more on the Thomson argument if I can \u0026hellip;\nI do disagree 100% that all I did was offer a \u0026quot;brute assertion that human organisms are persons from start to finish.\u0026quot;\nMany of my posts gave such reasons! Part of the logic of my position is that it argues from the impossibility to the contrary; that is, the human/non-person distinction has no genuine scientific or philosophical merit.\nYou also said, \u0026quot;Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion.\u0026quot;\nThis is incorrect. My view has the \u0026quot;notion of the person\u0026quot; but it is one that is tied up with the human species to the point of there being no separation between the two. Just because I do not hold to degrees of personhood does not mean I do not think personhood is a valid notion. The difference between us is I would only contrast human persons with non-human non-persons, whereas you allow human non-persons.\nHerein is our fundamental difference. Thank you for all the great dialogue, I hope we can continue it in the comments every now and then and also if you opt to write one more review if I fidn the time to do that last post we talked about.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nI\u0026#39;d like to see you address the intelligent alien example. From what you say, there is nothing immoral about treating intelligent aliens as nonpersons--taking them as slaves or using them for food. Also, does your view suggest that we should celebrate conception days rather than birthdays, count pregnancies in the census and for tax deductions, record certificates of conception rather than live birth and keep statistics on conception rather than birth, hold funerals for miscarriages, and ban in vitro fertilization?\nM! (2009-12-20):\n\u0026quot;[D]oes your view suggest that we should celebrate conception days rather than birthdays, count pregnancies in the census and for tax deductions, record certificates of conception rather than live birth and keep statistics on conception rather than birth, hold funerals for miscarriages, and ban in vitro fertilization?\u0026quot; Jim, surely you realize these questions border on sophistry. What do cultural practices have to do with whether the unborn are people or not?\nMany Asian cultures DO keep track of age from their conception date, not their birthday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning Does this mean Asian embryos are people but American ones are not?\nAlso, some people DO have funerals for miscarriages. Some hospitals even offer official certificates. http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/ma2006/information/hospital.htm\nPregnancy loss is a very serious issue to deal with, so much so, that even women who had abortions often need counseling to deal with the grief.\nThis last point is something most pro-choicers do not seem too concerned about, despite their claim to be interested in the well-being of the woman.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-21):\nThose Asian systems actually start the count *before* conception, since they count starting with 1 at birth. My argument wasn't that we should base our position on the cultural system, rather the reverse\u0026ndash;and asking whether you advocated that.\nThe hospital link you post is interesting in that it mentions a legal distinction at 24 weeks.\nYou're of course correct that there is often an emotional response to miscarriage as well as abortion.\nM! (2010-01-13):\nIn a way, an abortion is simply a FORCED miscarriage, no? vM!\nLippard (2010-01-13):\nI\u0026#39;m not sure \u0026quot;forced\u0026quot; is the best adjective to distinguish human-caused vs. naturally-caused effects. It seems to suggest a voluntary/involuntary distinction which is not accurate here. We both agree that women should not be forced to have abortions, and that women do not choose to miscarry. The fetus has no choice in either case (or outcome).\nM! (2010-01-14):\nJim said - “The fetus has no choice in either case (or outcome).”\nYep, and that’s why abortion advocates are not truly pro-choice but rather pro-abortion.\nv\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_16.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab Malone has posted \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/argument-from-size-considered.html\"\u003ethe third part of his argument against abortion at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, focusing on what he calls \u0026ldquo;the argument from size.\u0026rdquo;  As I don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any plausibility to this argument, I won\u0026rsquo;t spend any time with it, but there are still a few things in his post that I think demand response.  The first is the assertion Vocab quotes from \u0026ldquo;prolific pro-life trainer and speaker Scott Klusendorf\u0026rdquo; that he always encounters this argument when he speaks at Christian schools.  I find this assertion very difficult to believe\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve ever encountered this argument anywhere, and I suspect that Klusendorf is either intentionally or unintentionally misconstruing some other argument as this argument.  (Would he consider Randy Newman\u0026rsquo;s song, \u0026ldquo;Short People,\u0026rdquo; to be an instance of the argument, given its lyric, \u0026ldquo;short people got no reason to live\u0026rdquo;?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe instance of the argument Vocab suggests is nothing of the sort, though at least he admits that it is an argument about another subject.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the quote as Vocab presents it:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom the other end of things, a recent New York Times article featured a similar argument (although his piece was on a broader topic than abortion):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eLook at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else? … We do not see cells, simple or complex – we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. [2]\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe quote is from \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/opinion/16gazzaniga.html\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e editorial by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga about the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the quotation in context; it\u0026rsquo;s the ending of the piece:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 3"},{"content":"Vocab Malone has posted a second set of arguments, addressing more directly the argument that some sort of capacity for sentience is a proper criterion for personhood.\nHe begins with a few quotations, none of which address the question of personhood. The first, from Millard Erickson, says that abortion involves \u0026ldquo;the taking of a human life.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s correct. The second, from Jerome Lejeune, says that abortion \u0026ldquo;kills a member of our species.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s also correct. The third, from R.C. Sproul, says, \u0026ldquo;abortion-on-demand is evil, no one has the moral right to choose it. If it is an offense against life, the government must not permit it.\u0026rdquo; This doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually follow, if one thinks that it is possible to morally use lethal force in self-defense, in war time, and as a form of legal punishment. As it happens, Sproul does think that it is legitimate for governments to engage in just war and capital punishment. I\u0026rsquo;m not certain how he reconciles his views on those topics with the quoted statement, but I suspect he says that these forms of taking human life do not constitute \u0026ldquo;an offense against life\u0026rdquo; and are not evil.\nVocab gives four arguments that he says he\u0026rsquo;s seen used to argue for the moral legitimacy of abortion:\nSentience makes a person and the unborn are not sentientSize makes a person and the unborn are too smallViability makes a person and the unborn are not viable on their ownWantedness makes a person and the unborn are not wanted#1 is essentially my position. #3 is close to the U.S. Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s position, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s quite accurate. #2 and #4 strike me as completely implausible.\nThe U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may not prohibit abortion for any reason prior to viability, the time at which a fetus can survive on its own independently of the mother (including with artificial assistance), or after viability when abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. The point of viability is something that has shifted as technology has improved, and could potentially become completely meaningless, so I don\u0026rsquo;t see it as a plausible ethical criterion.\nSo what does Vocab think is wrong with #1? He writes: \u0026ldquo;A component of this argument is it implies the pro-life position is weak because abortion is not cruel because the fetus cannot feel pain. Does this mean if I am unconscious or sleeping, I have lost my personhood?\u0026quot;\nThis response misconstrues my position. Sentience is significant not just because it involves the possibility of actual perceptions at a given time, but because it allows for the sort of being that can have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. The absence of such a capacity entails that a being cannot have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. This doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we cease to have those things when we are temporarily unconscious. When I sleep, I may not be conscious of the external world (though I sometimes do perceive external stimuli in lucid dreams), but I still have the capacity for such conscious awareness, and continue to maintain beliefs, desires, intentions and have interests. A better objection to my position would be a case where I sustain some kind of brain damage which puts me into a persistent vegetative state, yet there is still some possibility of recovery. In my opinion, the only way I would have some possibility of recovery and be the same person would be if I continued to have beliefs, desires, and intentions represented in my brain even in the persistent vegetative state. If those were all lost, and biological recovery were still possible\u0026ndash;say, through some therapy made possibly by embryonic stem cells transplanted into my brain, which ironically, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view would likely make unethical\u0026ndash;the person who would then come into being would be starting over afresh as a new person.\nVocab quotes Scott Rae observing that a person who has their legs cut off is harmed even if they feel no pain in the process, and even if their legs are not useful for locomotion. That is no objection to my position\u0026ndash;I agree that there is harm there, because it is done to a person in conflict with their beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, without their consent.\nNext, Vocab says that a fetus is \u0026ldquo;sensitive to touch at ten weeks and eleven weeks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;most certainly does feel pain\u0026rdquo; by the third month. I believe it is a mistake to conflate \u0026ldquo;sensitive to touch\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;experiences sensations.\u0026rdquo; Reflexive actions don\u0026rsquo;t identify experiences. Further, I haven\u0026rsquo;t identified the ability to experience sensations with personhood, since I\u0026rsquo;ve already observed that animals can experience pain, but don\u0026rsquo;t think that necessarily entails the immorality of killing animals for food or other reasons (though I do think it probably entails a moral requirement for humane treatment).\nVocab goes on to complain that a \u0026ldquo;developmental view, in which the basic thesis is humans become persons by some ability they acquire and not by the kind of entity they already are\u0026rdquo; is rarely \u0026ldquo;defend[ed] \u0026hellip; with any rigor\u0026rdquo; and asks \u0026ldquo;Who says they get to lay out the qualification for personhood?\u0026rdquo; Regarding the first point, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view is also one which attributes a right to life at a particular point, when two living haploid cells, a sperm and an egg, meet. He\u0026rsquo;s defended this by reference to two features, (1) that at this point there is a complete set of DNA and (2) left to itself, it will (if all goes well) develop into what we all would agree is a human being. (1) is clearly insufficient, since any somatic cell sloughed off a person\u0026rsquo;s skin has that property as well, and (2) only carries any persuasive weight from its appeal to future status rather than present. His subsequent question seems to assume that arguments for a view of personhood are dependent upon a claim to authority or power, rather than for their own intuitive force\u0026ndash;and I think that\u0026rsquo;s just mistaken.\nHe then asks, \u0026ldquo;Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t a civilized and ethical society desire to err on the side of life?\u0026rdquo; In the way this is written, I can\u0026rsquo;t agree\u0026ndash;for the cycle of life requires death. I do agree that we should err on the side of protecting persons and treating humanely creatures that can experience pain, but that gives no reason to think the boundary line is where Vocab draws it.\nHe writes that \u0026ldquo;It is an artificial and arbitrary distinction with no scientific grounding. One more reason the human/person distinction is artificial is because I have never met a person who is not a human, nor have I ever met a human who is not a person. Is this even possible?\u0026rdquo; I disagree completely with this description. The question of sentient capacities is one with very strong scientific grounding, though we are uncertain of exactly where the boundary is. The fact that Vocab only recognizes humans as a clear-cut case of persons on earth today just shows that he isn\u0026rsquo;t taking seriously the ideas that some other contemporary species (such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales) might meet reasonable criteria of personhood, some past species (Neandertal) probably did meet reasonable criteria of personhood, and extraterrestrial intelligent life might meet reasonable criteria of personhood. Suppose for a moment that we found out that a subset of human beings turned out to be a different species, incapable of interbreeding with the rest of us. It\u0026rsquo;s a consequence of Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view that this subset would not be persons. My intuition is completely to the contrary\u0026ndash;creatures that are like us to the extent that they have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests are persons, regardless of their biological makeup.\nVocab\u0026rsquo;s final argument is his strongest, which is that my view has the potential consequence that some forms of infanticide and euthanasia\u0026ndash;namely, those in cases where the conditions for personhood are not met\u0026ndash;may be ethical. This is correct, presuming that personhood is the only justification for not permitting killing. I suggest that there are at least two other possibilities. One is just a recognition of the epistemic limits of determining personhood\u0026ndash;that is, I believe, a reason for erring on the side of caution, and setting legal limits outside the boundaries of personhood. Another is a consequentialist argument about public policy considerations, which also argues for erring on the side of caution. While policies of permissible infanticide have been not been uncommon in history, they raise possibilities for brutalization or desensitization of the killer, among other negative consequences that go beyond the immediate act. This is itself a possible argument against abortions of fetuses that have recognizable human form.\nEarly on in this post, Vocab wrote \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not as if there is a strong consensus, anyway.\u0026rdquo; On the contrary, I think there is virtually no support for Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view in history, from religion, from philosophy, or from science. In the United States, complete bans on abortion only became common after the Civil War, with the first post-quickening abortion prohibitions starting earlier, in the 1820s.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think Vocab has come anywhere near making his case. He\u0026rsquo;s not addressed many of the points I brought up in my prior post, and though he cited Judith Jarvis Thomson, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t addressed the case of a conflict between two rights-holders, where one is dependent upon the other, which her violinist example brings up in an argument for the moral permissibility of abortion even if the fetus is counted as a person. Nor has he addressed the harm to non-actualized twins, or the case of cloned human beings who might develop without the process of fertilization (though I suspect he would identify them as persons at either the point of nuclear transfer or electric shock, and would probably have some reason for calling the process itself unethical). His view entails that IUDs, morning-after pills, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research are immoral. His view suggests that if a building containing frozen embryos and small children were on fire, one should not give any preference to rescuing the children over the embryos. His view entails that a particular genetic makeup, rather than features like having beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, is what\u0026rsquo;s relevant to personhood. His view doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense of the idea of non-human persons.\nI see no plausibility to the idea that fertilization is a morally relevant event or that having a particular genetic makeup is the morally important part of being a person.\nUPDATE (December 14, 2009): Corrected sentence about U.S. abortion laws and added reference link to Wikipedia.\nUPDATE: It should be noted that Vocab misconstrues Peter Singer\u0026rsquo;s position on the relative worth of humans and animals; Singer speaks for himself on the subject on an episode of the Ethics Bites podcast:\nNigel: And it’s interesting that many of your critics focus on descriptions of a situation where you’re playing off a human being who’s less than a person, against an animal which is a person.\nPeter: I think that’s a tactic. Maybe it’s quite an effective tactic with some audiences. They try and say that animals in some circumstances deserve more consideration than humans do. It’s accurate that there are some situations, though I think they are quite rare ones, where that would be true, where the human was so intellectually disabled or incapable of understanding things where you would want to give preference to the non-human animal; it would have greater interest in going on living or not suffering in a certain way. But it’s really completely irrelevant to the vast majority of cases in which we are interfering with animals, that is where we’re producing them for food where obviously they’re suffering, and it’s not at all necessary for me to say that somehow they have the same let alone a superior status to humans to point to the fact that we’re inflicting unnecessary suffering on them, and that should be enough to make it wrong given that we’re not doing this in order to save human lives but just because we like to eat a certain kind of food.\nI also think Vocab errs in claiming that PETA is being more consistent in holding animals above humans\u0026ndash;that is not a consequence of my or their position, and I believe they are more concerned with publicity than consistency, as they euthanize adoptable animals by the thousands.\nUPDATE (January 3, 2010): A story from the Sunday Times today argues that \u0026ldquo;dolphins should be treated as \u0026rsquo;non-human persons\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;:\nDolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.\nIt has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another.\nIn one study, Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bottlenose dolphins could recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.\nIn another, she found that captive animals also had the ability to learn a rudimentary symbol-based language.\nOther research has shown dolphins can solve difficult problems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication.\nContinue to part three.\ncritter (2009-12-14):\nCan anyone get a forced birther to admit that even a wanted pregnancy can cause great pain/death/complications to both fetus and bearer?\nLippard (2009-12-14):\nWhat\u0026#39;s the definition of a \u0026quot;forced birther\u0026quot;? Someone who argues that there are no acceptable cases of abortion? That's an unreasonable position even if we were to (erroneously) grant that personhood started at conception, for the reason you suggest\u0026ndash;there are cases, though rare, where there are competing rights to life and abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother or to avoid great risk to the life of the mother.\nOn the other hand, I think it's also an unreasonable position to hold that there are no circumstances under which abortion would be unethical (e.g., circumstances under which there has clearly been consent to pregnancy, the fetus is brought nearly to term, and then aborted for whim or convenience; or the sort of example in jokes by Sarah Silverman and Doug Stanhope).\njoel hanes (2009-12-16):\nJim, it\u0026#39;s my impression that almost all of the hundred thousand or so late-term abortions performed in the US each year are peformed exactly because \u0026quot;there are competing rights to life and abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother or to avoid great risk to the life of the mother\u0026quot;. I would rephrase critter's observation: one of the striking features of the abortion arguments is the nearly complete absence of any consideration for the health, the well-being, or rights of the prospective mother in the statements made by abortion opponents.\njoel hanes tenured grad student, University of Ediacara SP4, a.r.s 1985\nM! (2009-12-16):\nThe Alan Guttmacher Institute collected questionnaires from almost 2,000 women in 1987. 420 were pregnant for at least 16 weeks. Here are the reasons why they didn\u0026#39;t do it earlier: 71% \u0026quot;didn't recognize she was pregnant/misjudged gestation\u0026quot; 48% \u0026quot;hard to make arrangements for abortion\u0026quot; 33% \u0026quot;afraid to tell her partner/parents\u0026quot; 24% \u0026quot;took time to decide to have an abortion\u0026quot; 8% \u0026quot;waited for her relationship to change 8% \u0026quot;someone pressured her not to have an abortion\u0026quot; 6% \u0026quot;Something changed after she became pregnant\u0026quot; 6% \u0026quot;didn't know timing is important\u0026quot; 5% \u0026quot;didn't know she could get an abortion\u0026quot; 2% \u0026quot;fetal problem diagnosed late in pregnancy\u0026quot; 11% Other\nSOURCE: Aida Torres \u0026amp; Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, \u0026quot;Why Do Women Have Abortions\u0026quot;, Family Planning Perspectives, 20 (4) Jul/Aug 1988, pp 169-176 ONLINE: http://www.holysmoke.org/fem/fem0543.htm\nI would rephrase Joel Hane's observation: one of the striking features of the abortion arguments is the nearly complete absence of any consideration for the health, the well-being, or rights of the child in the statements made by abortion proponents.\njoel hanes (2009-12-16):\nVocab Malone and I appear to be talking past each other. Let me refute Malone's closing contention by directly addressing the rights of the \u0026quot;child\u0026quot; : I do not consider a first-trimester embryo a person in any sense. If I were forced to draw a line between pregnancies in which only the woman's wishes are important, and those pregnancies in which the rights of the fetus must be considered, I would choose viability ex utero. Because this cannot be determined ahead of time, I would put the earliest boundary of personhood at the beginning of the third trimester. This seems to me to be the balancing point between the rights and welfare of the woman, who is absolutely and inarguably a person, and those of the fetus, who is arguably a person in some senses. (I myself reserve the world \u0026quot;child\u0026quot; for the product of live birth.)\nIn my earlier post, I was talking only about the most ethically problematic abortions, those performed during the third trimester, when most of us agree that the right-to-life claims of the fetus must be considered. Almost all of these late-term abortions are performed because continuing the pregnancy threatens the life or the continued good health of the mother. My implied point is that such abortions are not so very unusual, and that any ethical structure or policy that hopes to work in the real world must acknowledge and justly deal with these cases.\nMalone's Gutmacher data comprises over fifteen hundred first-trimester and over four hundred second-trimester abortion recipients. It is thus completely irrelevant to my claims about the reasons for third-trimester abortions, claims which Malone does not address. These difficult medical and ethical cases are no respecter of (female) persons; I sincerely hope that no woman in Malone's family ever has to deal with a fetus that is anacephalic or dies in utero during the third trimester, but most women who find themselves in this position are not there because they're feckless \u0026ndash; most of them wanted the child that will now never be, and are doubly devastated by grief and by the prospect of the abortion.\nI note that even in his reply, Malone devotes zero words to considerations of the life, the health, or the rights of the pregnant worman.\ncritter (2009-12-16):\nI note that even in his reply, Malone devotes zero words to considerations of the life, the health, or the rights of the pregnant woman. That's because he doesn't think there are any.\nA 3 month fetus is not a 'child'. A fetus bearer is not a 'mother'.\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim – Although #2 (“wantedness makes a person and the unborn are not wanted”) may strike you as “completely implausible,” others do not share your view. Read excerpts from the comments that have been coming in as we discuss this.\nOne is from Alan, who talked about a bioethics prof he had who taugh that “… lack of being wanted by the mother is sufficient reason to allow abortion. The big problem this raises is whether infanticide of a, say, six month old by both parents should be treated equivalent of first degree murder\u0026hellip; .”\nStatements like this are why sometimes it is useful to employ slippery slope arguments. Statements like this are also incredibly selfish, to say the least.\nAnother person, Eamon Knight, said. “Thus, if a woman is pregnant, she can have an abortion. But if she intends to carry the pregnancy to term, she assumes a duty to maintain her own health, obtain good nutrition, abstain from substance abuse, retain medical help, make provision for infant care (or adoption if she intends to give it up), etc.”\nOnce again, an argument based on wantedness. Question: what if the mother keeps on changing her mind? Is she allowed to binge drink one week when she decides she doesn’t want the baby and then if she changes her mind the next week, all the sudden she now has a duty to the baby simply because now it is “wanted”? What about the following week and on? Or is it a decision where you have to make a once and for all judgment and stick with it? What if she changes her mind again one day before her due date? Would you then deprive her of her “right” to abort?\nOn infanticide, I found your response to be somewhat scary:\n“While policies of permissible infanticide have been not been uncommon in history, they raise possibilities for brutalization or desensitization of the killer, among other negative consequences that go beyond the immediate act.”\nIt almost sounds as if you don’t think it’s a big deal and your reason for rejecting it is due to possible effects on the killer (good word choice, by the way) - not due to the definite effects on the murdered!\nI also found it ironic you objected to the man with the bum legs having them amputated “because it is done to a person in conflict with their beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, without their consent.” As one who defends the pro-life position, all I can is “My sentiments exactly!”\nTowards the end, you wrote this: [Vocab’s] view doesn't make sense of the idea of non-human persons.” True; that is because the idea of non-human persons is non-sense.\nvM!\nPS – I hope I can do a more extended treatment of your review later, if solely to answer the charge of misrepresenting Dr. Singer.\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim – It seems as if on principle you would agree with Singer’s concept of speciesism. I gather that from this paragraph:\n“…ethical distinctions should be based on morally relevant features, and I don't believe species membership is any more relevant in and of itself to being the holder of rights or of being the object of duties than is race or gender.”\nAm I to take you as saying that there is nothing unique about the human as opposed to other “animals”? If so, this is interesting because at the end of your second review, you said you believe PETA is “more concerned with publicity than consistency, as they euthanize adoptable animals by the thousands.”\nUnless I am misreading you, would not your position entail that there are indeed instances when it is morally acceptable to kill a deformed human but not morally acceptable to kill a normal animal – say, a chimp or a dolphin? If so, you are in line with Singer.\nRead these quoutes from the FAQ section of his web site: Q. You have been quoted as saying: \u0026quot;Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.\u0026quot; Is that quote accurate?\nA. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term \u0026quot;person\u0026quot; to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents. Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.\u0026quot; This is part one of a longer response \u0026hellip;\nvM!\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim, this is part 2 of the Singer convo ... I am not saying you are saying exactly what Singer is saying but then again, you may be. I guess I am looking for some clarity because it seems as if the anthropological road you are traveling down would lead straight to Singer’s conclusions.\nAs a side note, Singer’s statements are crystal clear and make me a bit mystified as to why you said this “Vocab misconstrues Peter Singer's position on the relative worth of humans and animals.”\nSorry about the forthcoming long quote by Singer but I see no other way for people to see for themselves. This is from the FAQ section of his web site again:\n=== Q. I’ve read that you think humans and animals are equal. Do you really believe that a human being is no more valuable than an animal?\nA. I argued in the opening chapter of Animal Liberation that humans and animals are equal in the sense that the fact that a being is human does not mean that we should give the interests of that being preference over the similar interests of other beings. That would be speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse. We should treat beings as individuals, rather than as members of a species. But that doesn’t mean that all individuals are equally valuable – see my answer to the next question for more details.\nQ. If you had to save either a human being or a mouse from a fire, with no time to save them both, wouldn’t you save the human being?\nA. Yes, in almost all cases I would save the human being. But not because the human being is human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens. Species membership alone isn't morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests.\n\u0026hellip; So normally, the death of a human being is a greater loss to the human than the death of a mouse is to the mouse – for the human, it cuts off plans for the distant future, for example, but not in the case of the mouse. And we can add to that the greater extent of grief and distress that, in most cases, the family of the human being will experience, as compared with the family of the mouse (although we should not forget that animals, especially mammals and birds, can have close ties to their offspring and mates). That’s why, in general, it would be right to save the human, and not the mouse, from the burning building, if one could not save both. But this depends on the qualities and characteristics that the human being has. If, for example, the human being had suffered brain damage so severe as to be in an irreversible state of unconsciousness, then it might not be better to save the human.\nQ: Is it true that you have said that an experiment on 100 monkeys could be justified if it helped thousands of people recover from Parkinson's disease?\nA: \u0026hellip; In Animal Liberation I propose asking experimenters who use animals if they would be prepared to carry out their experiments on human beings at a similar mental level — say, those born with irreversible brain damage. Experimenters who consider their work justified because of the benefits it brings should declare whether they consider such experiments justifiable. If they do not, they should be asked to explain why they think that benefits to a large number of human beings can outweigh harming animals, but cannot outweigh inflicting similar harm on humans. In my view, this belief is evidence of speciesism. All I can say is \u0026quot;!!!\u0026quot; vM!\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nMy infanticide point was that there are further reasons to prohibit infanticide *even if* infants don\u0026#39;t meet conditions of personhood. I'm not sure why you agree with me about the reasons why it is wrong to cut off the man's bum legs, since the characteristics appealed to for why it is wrong are all characteristics which zygotes lack. There are no such analogous reasons for a zygote; an argument against aborting zygotes needs a different source of reason. What is it?\nYou say the idea of nonhuman persons is nonsense. So you would think it acceptable to use an intelligent nonhuman species as slave labor, to kill them for food, and so forth, even if they were beings with as rich a mental life, language, and culture as our own? That those features wouldn't qualify them as persons?\nM! (2009-12-20):\njoel hanes said... \u0026quot;I note that even in his reply, Malone devotes zero words to considerations of the life, the health, or the rights of the pregnant woman.\u0026quot; critter said\u0026hellip; \u0026quot;That's because he doesn't think there are any.\u0026quot;\nTo Critter: How do you know this? Does it follow that if I think the unborn are people (many of which are female persons, by the way) and should be valued as such, that I don't think women have any rights?\nHow exactly do you get from there to here?\nCritter said\u0026hellip; \u0026quot;A 3 month fetus is not a 'child'. A fetus bearer is not a 'mother'.\u0026quot;\nI'll be sure to tell that to the next mom, oops, I meant \u0026quot;fetus bearer\u0026quot; I see.\nvM!\nLippard (2009-12-21):\n(This comment was originally from December 18, 2009 1:07 PM; moved to be on the right post.) \u0026amp;quot;Am I to take you as saying that there is nothing unique about the human as opposed to other “animals”?\u0026amp;quot; No, that\u0026amp;#39;s not my position. We have a complexity of language and culture that no other creature on this planet has, so far as we know. There may be other creatures in the universe which have those capacities, and we\u0026amp;#39;ve learned that some animals have some rudimentary sorts of language capacity that we may not have found the limits of yet. But note that these unique features are things that zygotes have no capacity for or ability to participate in. \u0026amp;quot;Unless I am misreading you, would not your position entail that there are indeed instances when it is morally acceptable to kill a deformed human but not morally acceptable to kill a normal animal – say, a chimp or a dolphin? If so, you are in line with Singer.\u0026amp;quot;\u0026amp;quot; I agree with Singer that there are such cases, but those cases don\u0026amp;#39;t turn on personhood or \u0026amp;quot;deformity.\u0026amp;quot; I think it\u0026amp;#39;s morally wrong to intentionally kill healthy, non-threatening chimps and dolphins, given their level of intelligence and awareness, even if it may fall somewhat shy of personhood (I\u0026amp;#39;m undecided on that). That doesn\u0026amp;#39;t entail putting humans as a class above or equal to them, though if they qualify as persons that would be grounds for equal treatment in some respects.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; M! (2010-01-13):\nJim, On the dolphins article, did you know the researchers also argue it's immoral to keep dolphins in \u0026quot;amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing.\u0026quot; If this is true, is it unethical to go to the San Diego Zoo or Sea World?\nI would follow G.K. CHESTERTON in Pt.1 Ch.1 of THE EVERLASTING MAN and I quote:\nIt must surely strike him as strange that men so remote from him should be so near, and that beasts so near to him should be so remote. To his simplicity it must seem at least odd that he could not find any trace of the beginning of any arts among any animals. That is the simplest lesson to learn in the cavern of the colored pictures; only it is too simple to be learnt. It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.\n(bold mine) \u0026hellip; Vm!\nLippard (2010-01-13):\nI think there\u0026#39;s a very strong case to be made that Sea World\u0026#39;s captivity and performances of dolphins and killer whales are unethical. That doesn\u0026#39;t necessarily mean everything they do is unethical or that everything zoos do is unethical, but I think when it comes to treatment of dolphins, whales, elephants, and chimps, there\u0026#39;s probably a lot of abuse out there that future generations will condemn as barbarities of our times. As for animals and representational art, there's some evidence that elephants are capable of it.\nM! (2010-01-14):\nJim said - “there\u0026#39;s probably a lot of abuse out there that future generations will condemn as barbarities of our times.” Jim, this is how I feel about abortion …\nvm\nLippard (2010-01-15):\nI suspect there may be future methods of birth control that will have the potential of eliminating unwanted pregnancies. That may not completely eliminate abortion, but it could potentially greatly reduce it.\nM! (2010-01-22):\nJim said- I think there\u0026#39;s a very strong case to be made that Sea World\u0026#39;s captivity and performances of dolphins and killer whales are unethical. and ... I think when it comes to treatment of dolphins, whales, elephants, and chimps, there\u0026#39;s probably a lot of abuse out there that future generations will condemn as barbarities of our times. I have just a few questions about this. When a dolphin is caught and inadvertently killed in a tuna net, do you think it is exploitation for animal rights activists to talk about it and show videos of it? What about a sea otter who died from the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Do you think it was humane for the media to put images of their deaths on the front page of the paper?\nI am curious what you think about this \u0026hellip;\nvm\nLippard (2010-01-23):\nVocab wrote: \u0026quot;I have just a few questions about this. When a dolphin is caught and inadvertently killed in a tuna net, do you think it is exploitation for animal rights activists to talk about it and show videos of it? What about a sea otter who died from the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Do you think it was humane for the media to put images of their deaths on the front page of the paper?\u0026quot; In the broad sense of \u0026quot;exploitation,\u0026quot; yes, these are cases of making use of these animal deaths to promote a cause. But as that cause is an attempt to prevent or reduce further such deaths, and I don't see any obvious harm to either the animals or to people in the use of such images or descriptions of such incidents, I don't think it's \u0026quot;exploitation\u0026quot; with a negative connotation.\nDid you want to draw a parallel to images used by abortion protesters? I think it's similar, and even more similar if you compare abortion images to images of animal experimentation or cruelty used by groups like PETA. Some people argue that use of such images in both cases is offensive, but there's no right not to be offended.\nLippard (2010-01-23):\nOh, one more comment on images--my only objections to the use of horrendous images in a protest would be where either (a) the content of the images is misrepresented, such as has been alleged about staged animal experimentation photos by PETA and the portrayal of late-term abortion photos as typical of early-term abortions, (b) where there is a case of copyright infringement or invasion of privacy (some kind of ownership or interest right in the image that is being infringed or violated), or (c) where the physical signs are being used to obstruct traffic, violate other people\u0026#39;s immediate personal space or property rights, etc.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_13.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab Malone has posted \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/argument-from-senteince-considered.html\"\u003ea second set of arguments\u003c/a\u003e, addressing more directly the argument that some sort of capacity for sentience is a proper criterion for personhood.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe begins with a few quotations, none of which address the question of personhood.  The first, from Millard Erickson, says that abortion involves \u0026ldquo;the taking of a human life.\u0026rdquo;  That\u0026rsquo;s correct.  The second, from Jerome Lejeune, says that abortion \u0026ldquo;kills a member of our species.\u0026rdquo;  That\u0026rsquo;s also correct.  The third, from R.C. Sproul, says, \u0026ldquo;abortion-on-demand is evil, no one has the moral right to choose it. If it is an offense against life, the government must not permit it.\u0026rdquo;  This doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually follow, if one thinks that it is possible to morally use lethal force in self-defense, in war time, and as a form of legal punishment.  As it happens, Sproul does think that it is legitimate for governments to engage in just war and capital punishment.  I\u0026rsquo;m not certain how he reconciles his views on those topics with the quoted statement, but I suspect he says that these forms of taking human life do not constitute \u0026ldquo;an offense against life\u0026rdquo; and are not evil.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVocab gives four arguments that he says he\u0026rsquo;s seen used to argue for the moral legitimacy of abortion:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003eSentience makes a person and the unborn are not sentient\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSize makes a person and the unborn are too small\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eViability makes a person and the unborn are not viable on their own\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWantedness makes a person and the unborn are not wanted\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e#1 is essentially my position.  #3 is close to the U.S. Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s position, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s quite accurate.  #2 and #4 strike me as completely implausible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may not prohibit abortion for any reason prior to viability, the time at which a fetus can survive on its own independently of the mother (including with artificial assistance), or after viability when abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother.  The point of viability is something that has shifted as technology has improved, and could potentially become completely meaningless, so I don\u0026rsquo;t see it as a plausible ethical criterion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo what does Vocab think is wrong with #1?  He writes: \u0026ldquo;A component of this argument is it implies the pro-life position is weak because abortion is not cruel because the fetus cannot feel pain. Does this mean if I am unconscious or sleeping, I have lost my personhood?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis response misconstrues my position.  Sentience is significant not just because it involves the possibility of actual perceptions at a given time, but because it allows for the sort of being that can have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests.  The absence of such a capacity entails that a being cannot have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests.  This doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we cease to have those things when we are temporarily unconscious.  When I sleep, I may not be conscious of the external world (though I sometimes do perceive external stimuli in lucid dreams), but I still have the capacity for such conscious awareness, and continue to maintain beliefs, desires, intentions and have interests.  A better objection to my position would be a case where I sustain some kind of brain damage which puts me into a persistent vegetative state, yet there is still some possibility of recovery.  In my opinion, the only way I would have some possibility of recovery and be the same person would be if I continued to have beliefs, desires, and intentions represented in my brain even in the persistent vegetative state.  If those were all lost, and biological recovery were still possible\u0026ndash;say, through some therapy made possibly by embryonic stem cells transplanted into my brain, which ironically, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view would likely make unethical\u0026ndash;the person who would then come into being would be starting over afresh as a new person.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVocab quotes Scott Rae observing that a person who has their legs cut off is harmed even if they feel no pain in the process, and even if their legs are not useful for locomotion.  That is no objection to my position\u0026ndash;I agree that there is harm there, because it is done to a person in conflict with their beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, without their consent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, Vocab says that a fetus is \u0026ldquo;sensitive to touch at ten weeks and eleven weeks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;most certainly does feel pain\u0026rdquo; by the third month.  I believe it is a mistake to conflate \u0026ldquo;sensitive to touch\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;experiences sensations.\u0026rdquo;  Reflexive actions don\u0026rsquo;t identify experiences.  Further, I haven\u0026rsquo;t identified the ability to experience sensations with personhood, since I\u0026rsquo;ve already observed that animals can experience pain, but don\u0026rsquo;t think that necessarily entails the immorality of killing animals for food or other reasons (though I do think it probably entails a moral requirement for humane treatment).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVocab goes on to complain that a \u0026ldquo;developmental view, in which the basic thesis is humans become persons by some ability they acquire and not by the kind of entity they already are\u0026rdquo; is rarely \u0026ldquo;defend[ed] \u0026hellip; with any rigor\u0026rdquo; and asks \u0026ldquo;Who says they get to lay out the qualification for personhood?\u0026rdquo; Regarding the first point, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view is also one which attributes a right to life at a particular point, when two living haploid cells, a sperm and an egg, meet.  He\u0026rsquo;s defended this by reference to two features, (1) that at this point there is a complete set of DNA and (2) left to itself, it will (if all goes well) develop into what we all would agree is a human being.  (1) is clearly insufficient, since any somatic cell sloughed off a person\u0026rsquo;s skin has that property as well, and (2) only carries any persuasive weight from its appeal to future status rather than present.  His subsequent question seems to assume that arguments for a view of personhood are dependent upon a claim to authority or power, rather than for their own intuitive force\u0026ndash;and I think that\u0026rsquo;s just mistaken.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then asks, \u0026ldquo;Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t a civilized and ethical society desire to err on the side of life?\u0026rdquo;  In the way this is written, I can\u0026rsquo;t agree\u0026ndash;for the cycle of life requires death.  I do agree that we should err on the side of protecting persons and treating humanely creatures that can experience pain, but that gives no reason to think the boundary line is where Vocab draws it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe writes that \u0026ldquo;It is an artificial and arbitrary distinction with no scientific grounding. One more reason the human/person distinction is artificial is because I have never met a person who is not a human, nor have I ever met a human who is not a person. Is this even possible?\u0026rdquo;  I disagree completely with this description.  The question of sentient capacities is one with very strong scientific grounding, though we are uncertain of exactly where the boundary is.  The fact that Vocab only recognizes humans as a clear-cut case of persons on earth today just shows that he isn\u0026rsquo;t taking seriously the ideas that some other contemporary species (such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales) might meet reasonable criteria of personhood, some past species (Neandertal) probably did meet reasonable criteria of personhood, and extraterrestrial intelligent life might meet reasonable criteria of personhood.  Suppose for a moment that we found out that a subset of human beings turned out to be a different species, incapable of interbreeding with the rest of us.  It\u0026rsquo;s a consequence of Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view that this subset would not be persons.  My intuition is completely to the contrary\u0026ndash;creatures that are like us to the extent that they have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests are persons, regardless of their biological makeup.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVocab\u0026rsquo;s final argument is his strongest, which is that my view has the potential consequence that some forms of infanticide and euthanasia\u0026ndash;namely, those in cases where the conditions for personhood are not met\u0026ndash;may be ethical.  This is correct, presuming that personhood is the only justification for not permitting killing.  I suggest that there are at least two other possibilities.  One is just a recognition of the epistemic limits of determining personhood\u0026ndash;that is, I believe, a reason for erring on the side of caution, and setting legal limits outside the boundaries of personhood.  Another is a consequentialist argument about public policy considerations, which also argues for erring on the side of caution.  While policies of permissible infanticide have been not been uncommon in history, they raise possibilities for brutalization or desensitization of the killer, among other negative consequences that go beyond the immediate act.  This is itself a possible argument against abortions of fetuses that have recognizable human form.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEarly on in this post, Vocab wrote \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not as if there is a strong consensus, anyway.\u0026rdquo; On the contrary, I think there is virtually no support for Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view in history, from religion, from philosophy, or from science. In the United States, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States\"\u003ecomplete bans on abortion only became common after the Civil War\u003c/a\u003e, with the first post-quickening abortion prohibitions starting earlier, in the 1820s.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t think Vocab has come anywhere near making his case.  He\u0026rsquo;s not addressed many of the points I brought up in my prior post, and though he cited Judith Jarvis Thomson, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t addressed the case of a conflict between two rights-holders, where one is dependent upon the other, which her violinist example brings up in an argument for the moral permissibility of abortion even if the fetus is counted as a person.  Nor has he addressed the harm to non-actualized twins, or the case of cloned human beings who might develop without the process of fertilization (though I suspect he would identify them as persons at either the point of nuclear transfer or electric shock, and would probably have some reason for calling the process itself unethical).  His view entails that IUDs, morning-after pills, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research are immoral.  His view suggests that if a building containing frozen embryos and small children were on fire, one should not give any preference to rescuing the children over the embryos.  His view entails that a particular genetic makeup, rather than features like having beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, is what\u0026rsquo;s relevant to personhood.  His view doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense of the idea of non-human persons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI see no plausibility to the idea that fertilization is a morally relevant event or that having a particular genetic makeup is the morally important part of being a person.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 14, 2009): Corrected sentence about U.S. abortion laws and added reference link to Wikipedia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: It should be noted that Vocab misconstrues Peter Singer\u0026rsquo;s position on the relative worth of humans and animals; Singer \u003ca href=\"http://www.open2.net/ethicsbites/human-use-animals.html\"\u003espeaks for himself on the subject on an episode of the Ethics Bites podcast\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 2"},{"content":"\nAlthough we\u0026rsquo;ve seen quite a few, our fifth stray dog of 2009 that we actually caught and turned in came only yesterday, almost ten months after the fourth. The frequency dropped way off after the first couple of months of the year\u0026ndash;a sign of economic recovery, perhaps? (I wonder what the fact that we now regularly see coyotes in our neighborhood means\u0026hellip;)\nWe found this beautiful brindle-coated female dog at Shawnee Park in Chandler, running around loose with a collar and no tags, while we were out with a dog from Arizona RESCUE (Scout, a Dane mix, another great dog). Nobody in the area knew who she belonged to, so we took her to the east side pound and put her picture up on Pets911.\nabunoah (2009-12-13):\noff topic from the dog, but, I stumbled on your open letter to Missler... did you ever get a response? Just wondering :-p thanks, C\nLippard (2009-12-13):\nNope.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/fifth-stray-dog-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/DSCN0397.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/DSCN0397.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414754563535118642\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough we\u0026rsquo;ve seen quite a few, our fifth stray dog of 2009 that we actually caught and turned in came only yesterday, almost ten months after \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/fourth-stray-dog-of-2009.html\"\u003ethe fourth\u003c/a\u003e.  The frequency dropped way off after the first couple of months of the year\u0026ndash;a sign of economic recovery, perhaps?  (I wonder what the fact that we now regularly see coyotes in our neighborhood means\u0026hellip;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe found this beautiful brindle-coated female dog at Shawnee Park in Chandler, running around loose with a collar and no tags, while we were out with a dog from \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eArizona RESCUE\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.org/servlet/barksearch?view=1\u0026amp;id=1025149666\"\u003eScout\u003c/a\u003e, a Dane mix, another great dog).  Nobody in the area knew who she belonged to, so we took her to the east side pound and \u003ca href=\"http://www.pets911.com/services/lostandfound/animal_details.php?uniqueID=3515134\u0026amp;page=\"\u003eput her picture up on Pets911\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fifth stray dog of 2009"},{"content":"Vocab Malone has put up his first post arguing for the position that \u0026ldquo;the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence.\u0026quot;\nCriteria of Personhood or Humanity\nHe starts by looking at the question of what it is to be human or to be a person, citing a few historical references of individual characteristics\u0026ndash;being rational, being \u0026ldquo;in relationship,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the capacity for self-objectification.\u0026rdquo; He expresses doubt that any single characteristic is appropriate, on the grounds that human beings undergo changes of state such as being asleep or being drugged, or not thinking. I agree with him that the characteristics he has listed won\u0026rsquo;t do the trick, and I also agree with him that features that go away when we sleep are inadequate. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow that there is no single feature that can do the trick\u0026ndash;if the feature is a capacity that we have, for example, that capacity doesn\u0026rsquo;t cease to exist when it\u0026rsquo;s not being used.\nHe goes on to note that lack of personhood doesn\u0026rsquo;t entail that any treatment is morally permissible, pointing out animals as examples of nonpersons that deserve humane treatment. Again, I agree with him\u0026ndash;and observe the converse, that possession of personhood doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that there are no cases where it can be moral to kill a person\u0026ndash;cases of self-defense, euthanasia, capital punishment, or war come to mind as possibilities. But what makes animals deserve humane treatment is that they have certain capacities and interests, such as an inner mental life that includes at the very least the ability to feel sensations\u0026ndash;and note that humane treatment doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily entail a right to life on the part of an animal, or a duty on our part not to kill them.\nVocab appears to want to lay the groundwork for rejecting the use of a criterion of personhood in favor of a criterion of humanity as his standard for arguing against abortion, but here he only offers a promissory note and doesn\u0026rsquo;t provide an argument to that effect. I think this is a mistake, however, because ethical distinctions should be based on morally relevant features, and I don\u0026rsquo;t believe species membership is any more relevant in and of itself to being the holder of rights or of being the object of duties than is race or gender. If a member of an intelligent alien species capable of language were to make contact with us, my intuition is that we would attribute personhood to that entity and give it the same consideration as a human being. Likewise if we manage to build artificially intelligent, self-directed machines with beliefs, desires, and intentions, though the intuition is not as strong there unless I imagine them to have mental lives similar to our own.\nConception: Fertilization\nEven though Vocab hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet given a reason to reject a personhood criterion in favor of a human being criterion, the rest of his case is solely about human life rather than personhood, which I think is the wrong issue for the reasons I just gave. He argues that human life begins at conception, and clarifies that he means fertilization rather than implantation. This choice means that 30-50% of human lives are spontaneously aborted due to the failure of the fertilized ova to implant in the uterine wall. If Vocab thinks that this loss of human life is the loss of beings with rights and interests to whom we owe a duty to enable them to live out normal lives, then he has some explaining to do. First of all, why would a loving God create a human reproductive system that resulted in such a Holocaust of lives lost before they get a chance to start? Second, why has no one considered this to be a serious ethical problem that we need to urgently devote medical resources to address? We can call this the problem of natural abortion, which has both a natural evil and human evil component that requires justification.\nComplete at Fertilization?\nVocab says that at conception (by which he means fertilization), \u0026ldquo;every human is complete and alive.\u0026rdquo; I agree that a fertilized human ovum is alive\u0026ndash;as life is a continuous process, arising from living components, at least until synthetic biology gets to the point of creating life from entirely nonliving components. Sperm and ova are also alive. But it is certainly not complete\u0026ndash;zygotes have no brains, no central nervous systems, no organs, no body parts other than undifferentiated, identical cells.\nAn Individual at Fertilization?\nVocab also says that at fertilization and pre-implantation, \u0026ldquo;it is not merely a collection of cells lumped together but an actual individual.\u0026rdquo; This also need not be the case. At fertilization, a zygote is an undifferentiated cell that undergoes a process of division without changing size for several days, to become a blastocyst by about the fifth day. During this period each of its cells is totipotent, meaning that each individual cell has the potential to become a full human being. Sometimes more than one of the cells does become a separate human being, as in the case of identical twins. In the case of identical twins, if they don\u0026rsquo;t split completely, they may become conjoined twins or parasitic twins, or one twin may be completely absorbed into the other or otherwise fail to develop and become a vanishing twin. Where a vanishing twin occurs with fraternal twins, the resulting individual can be a chimera, with two sets of DNA. Should we also grieve for those twins who fail to develop, either due to failure to split off or failure to develop?\nThe science fiction scenarios of teleportation that create interesting philosophical puzzles for the notion of personal identity are real puzzles for a view that attributes personhood to zygotes, though without the additional problem of memories and experiences, since zygotes are undifferentiated cells.\nBlastocysts\nOnce the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother\u0026ndash;a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as Judith Jarvis Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab\u0026rsquo;s criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring.\nIt should also be noted that the process of therapeutic cloning involves taking a female ovum (which Vocab doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to indicate he considers to be a bearer of rights on its own), removing its haploid DNA, inserting the nucleus from a (diploid) human somatic cell (this is called somatic cell nuclear transfer), and giving it a shock to cause it to start dividing just like a fertilized egg. This occurs without fertilization by a human sperm. Once it reaches the blastocyst stage, its inner cell mass is harvested for embryonic stem cells, which destroys the blastocyst in the process. The natural process of fertilization never takes place, but there\u0026rsquo;s little doubt that reproductive human cloning is possible via this process. Vocab\u0026rsquo;s choice of fertilization as key suggests that there is no moral issue with this process, even though it also has some potential to become a human being. Further, if fertilization is a necessary, not just a sufficient, condition for rights, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view suggests that human clones would have no rights.\nFully Programmed?\nVocab goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;the embryo is already \u0026lsquo;fully programmed\u0026rsquo; (to use computer language). This means the pre-implanted embryo needs no more information input at any further point in its development.\u0026rdquo; While this was formerly believed to be the case about the individual embryo\u0026rsquo;s biology, we now know that the environment of development can play a role in the characteristics that will come to be exhibited, such as from mRNA supplied from the mother to a developing embryo after fertilization and prior to zygote formation. But in any case, I would maintain that it\u0026rsquo;s not our cellular biology that gives us moral value, as opposed to our capacities to have interests, desires, intentions, plans, sensations, and so forth\u0026ndash;all capacities that zygotes lack.\nVocab ends this piece with some anthropomorphizing of zygotes, which appears to me to be a highly misleading form of argument\u0026ndash;his analogies cannot be taken literally, since zygotes have no mental processes.\nHuman and Living = Human Being?\nI agree with Vocab that a fertilized human ovum is living, that it\u0026rsquo;s human, and that, if all goes well, it will become one (or more) individual human beings. I don\u0026rsquo;t agree that it\u0026rsquo;s yet a person or a \u0026ldquo;human being,\u0026rdquo; since it lacks the requisite parts and capacities.\nTo sum up:\nVocab hasn't given a reason to favor a criterion of \"being human\" over personhood for determining when it's legitimate to attribute rights or incur duties on our part. His choice of fertilization as the point at which rights begin is not when life begins (as it is continuous) and implies that a large percentage of rights-bearing entities die without any apparent concern from God or those who share Vocab's views, an inconsistency requiring justification and explanation. A zygote has the potential to be not just one person, but multiple. The same lack of concern over non-actualized multiples that could have been born requires explanation. Vocab's view suggests that IVF, which similarly loses even more zygotes or blastocysts (not even counting the embryos that are left frozen or discarded), is unethical. Vocab's view so far gives no reason to classify human therapeutic or reproductive cloning as unethical--but might even entail that human clones have no rights, since there's no fertilization by a human sperm, if he thinks that fertilization is both a necessary and sufficient condition for rights. In the stages of life described so far, we've gone from completely undifferentiated totipotent cells to a differentiation between two types of cell, the outer wall of the blastocyst (which we both agree is neither a person nor a human being, but what becomes a placenta) and an inner cell mass of embryonic stem cells. Vocab hasn't given a reason why we should give that rights or moral value. At this state, the embryo is dependent upon the mother for its existence; Vocab will need to give an account of how the mother's rights are weighed against the embryo's in light of arguments like Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist example. Vocab calls a fertilized zygote a \"complete\" human being and implies that it has everything it needs to determine its future state, but this is neither the case biologically (given maternal effects on development, for example) nor regarding features that we consider quite important for human value, such as those that develop as a result of acquisition of language, ideas, experiences, and so forth. Vocab has used some anthropomorphic language in describing the implantation process which is misleading since zygotes have no mental processes. Continue to part two.\nUPDATE (December 12, 2009): Added the sentence on chimeras.\nUPDATE (December 13, 2009): Vocab has posted a brief rebuttal to this post. Unknown (2009-12-13):\nA cogent and crystalline response. Bravo!\nM! (2009-12-18):\nJim - Under the “fully programmed” heading, you made this comment: “I would maintain that it's not our cellular biology that gives us moral value, as opposed to our capacities to have interests, desires, intentions, plans, sensations, and so forth\u0026ndash;all capacities that zygotes lack.”\nA few analytic philosophers, such as Ronald Dworkin and David Boonin, have put forth the argument for elective abortion from desires and interests. Robert Wennberg has a powerful counter example to this claim:\n“If I were cheated out of a just inheritance that I didn’t know I had, I would be harmed regardless of whether I knew about the chicanery. Deprivation of a good (be it an inheritance or self-conscious existence) constitutes harm even if one is ignorant of that deprivation.” [1]\nAnother example is that of the slave who has been brainwashed to think they have no interests and no right to life. Would it be wrong to kill such a person?\nPatrick Lee argues “it seems more reasonable to hold that violation of someone’s rights is more closely connected with what truly harms the individual rather than what he or she desires.” [2]\nDoesn't this make good sense?\nvM!\n[1] Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.” Eerdmans, 1985), 98.\n“The Prolife Argument from Substantial Identity”, Bioethics 18. 2004, 4-5. [2] Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.” Eerdmans, 1985), 98.\nLippard (2009-12-19):\nLooks like I didn\u0026#39;t respond to this counter-argument: \u0026quot;Another example is that of the slave who has been brainwashed to think they have no interests and no right to life. Would it be wrong to kill such a person?\u0026quot;\nYes, it would be wrong\u0026ndash;thinking that you have no interests doesn't mean that you have no interests. Such a person would be mistaken.\nM! (2009-12-20):\nJim - I think your comments posted on December 18, 2009 1:07 PM were meant to go over here:\nhttps://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=15453937\u0026amp;amp;postID=6054870719405564851\nIt was my bad b/c I originally posted my comments on the wrong post and you responded before I could delete and re-post them to the correct post.\nAlso, on my comments posted at December 18, 2009 1:06 PM, I messed up on the citations.\nSorry for the dumbness on my end\u0026hellip;\nvM!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVocab Malone has put up \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/humanity-conception-considered.html\"\u003ehis first post arguing for the position\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCriteria of Personhood or Humanity\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe starts by looking at the question of what it is to be human or to be a person, citing a few historical references of individual characteristics\u0026ndash;being rational, being \u0026ldquo;in relationship,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the capacity for self-objectification.\u0026rdquo;  He expresses doubt that any single characteristic is appropriate, on the grounds that human beings undergo changes of state such as being asleep or being drugged, or not thinking.  I agree with him that the characteristics he has listed won\u0026rsquo;t do the trick, and I also agree with him that features that go away when we sleep are inadequate.  But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow that there is no single feature that can do the trick\u0026ndash;if the feature is a capacity that we have, for example, that capacity doesn\u0026rsquo;t cease to exist when it\u0026rsquo;s not being used.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe goes on to note that lack of personhood doesn\u0026rsquo;t entail that any treatment is morally permissible, pointing out animals as examples of nonpersons that deserve humane treatment.  Again, I agree with him\u0026ndash;and observe the converse, that possession of personhood doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that there are no cases where it can be moral to kill a person\u0026ndash;cases of self-defense, euthanasia, capital punishment, or war come to mind as possibilities.  But what makes animals deserve humane treatment is that they have certain capacities and interests, such as an inner mental life that includes at the very least the ability to feel sensations\u0026ndash;and note that humane treatment doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily entail a right to life on the part of an animal, or a duty on our part not to kill them.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nVocab appears to want to lay the groundwork for rejecting the use of a criterion of personhood in favor of a criterion of humanity as his standard for arguing against abortion, but here he only offers a promissory note and doesn\u0026rsquo;t provide an argument to that effect.  I think this is a mistake, however, because ethical distinctions should be based on morally relevant features, and I don\u0026rsquo;t believe species membership is any more relevant in and of itself to being the holder of rights or of being the object of duties than is race or gender.  If a member of an intelligent alien species capable of language were to make contact with us, my intuition is that we would attribute personhood to that entity and give it the same consideration as a human being.  Likewise if we manage to build artificially intelligent, self-directed machines with beliefs, desires, and intentions, though the intuition is not as strong there unless I imagine them to have mental lives similar to our own.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eConception: Fertilization\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nEven though Vocab hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet given a reason to reject a personhood criterion in favor of a human being criterion, the rest of his case is solely about human life rather than personhood, which I think is the wrong issue for the reasons I just gave.  He argues that human life begins at conception, and clarifies that he means fertilization rather than implantation.  This choice means that 30-50% of human lives are spontaneously aborted due to the failure of the fertilized ova to implant in the uterine wall.  If Vocab thinks that this loss of human life is the loss of beings with rights and interests to whom we owe a duty to enable them to live out normal lives, then he has some explaining to do.  First of all, why would a loving God create a human reproductive system that resulted in such a Holocaust of lives lost before they get a chance to start?  Second, why has no one considered this to be a serious ethical problem that we need to urgently devote medical resources to address?  We can call this the problem of natural abortion, which has both a natural evil and human evil component that requires justification.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eComplete at Fertilization?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nVocab says that at conception (by which he means fertilization), \u0026ldquo;every human is complete and alive.\u0026rdquo;  I agree that a fertilized human ovum is alive\u0026ndash;as life is a continuous process, arising from living components, at least until synthetic biology gets to the point of creating life from entirely nonliving components.  Sperm and ova are also alive.  But it is certainly not complete\u0026ndash;zygotes have no brains, no central nervous systems, no organs, no body parts other than undifferentiated, identical cells.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAn Individual at Fertilization?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nVocab also says that at fertilization and pre-implantation, \u0026ldquo;it is not merely a collection of cells lumped together but an actual individual.\u0026rdquo;  This also need not be the case.  At fertilization, a zygote is an undifferentiated cell that undergoes a process of division without changing size for several days, to become a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastocyst\"\u003eblastocyst\u003c/a\u003e by about the fifth day.  During this period each of its cells is \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totipotency\"\u003etotipotent\u003c/a\u003e, meaning that each individual cell has the potential to become a full human being.  Sometimes more than one of the cells does become a separate human being, as in the case of identical twins.  In the case of identical twins, if they don\u0026rsquo;t split completely, they may become \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin\"\u003econjoined twins\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin\"\u003eparasitic twins\u003c/a\u003e, or one twin may be completely absorbed into the other or otherwise fail to develop and become a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_twin\"\u003evanishing twin\u003c/a\u003e.  Where a vanishing twin occurs with fraternal twins, the resulting individual can be \u003ca href=\"http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/39124.aspx\"\u003ea chimera\u003c/a\u003e, with two sets of DNA.  Should we also grieve for those twins who fail to develop, either due to failure to split off or failure to develop?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe science fiction scenarios of teleportation that create interesting philosophical puzzles for the notion of personal identity are real puzzles for a view that attributes personhood to zygotes, though without the additional problem of memories and experiences, since zygotes are undifferentiated cells.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBlastocysts\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nOnce the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell.  Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother\u0026ndash;a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as \u003ca href=\"http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm\"\u003eJudith Jarvis Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument\u003c/a\u003e shows.  As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage.  Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab\u0026rsquo;s criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt should also be noted that the process of therapeutic cloning involves taking a female ovum (which Vocab doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to indicate he considers to be a bearer of rights on its own), removing its haploid DNA, inserting the nucleus from a (diploid) human somatic cell (this is called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_nuclear_transfer\"\u003esomatic cell nuclear transfer\u003c/a\u003e), and giving it a shock to cause it to start dividing just like a fertilized egg. This occurs without fertilization by a human sperm. Once it reaches the blastocyst stage, its inner cell mass is harvested for embryonic stem cells, which destroys the blastocyst in the process.  The natural process of fertilization never takes place, but there\u0026rsquo;s little doubt that reproductive human cloning is possible via this process.  Vocab\u0026rsquo;s choice of fertilization as key suggests that there is no moral issue with this process, even though it also has some potential to become a human being.  Further, if fertilization is a necessary, not just a sufficient, condition for rights, Vocab\u0026rsquo;s view suggests that human clones would have no rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eFully Programmed?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nVocab goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;the embryo is already \u0026lsquo;fully programmed\u0026rsquo; (to use computer language). This means the pre-implanted embryo needs no more information input at any further point in its development.\u0026rdquo;  While this was formerly believed to be the case about the individual embryo\u0026rsquo;s biology, we now know that the environment of development can play a role in the characteristics that will come to be exhibited, such as from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_effect\"\u003emRNA supplied from the mother to a developing embryo\u003c/a\u003e after fertilization and prior to zygote formation.  But in any case, I would maintain that it\u0026rsquo;s not our cellular biology that gives us moral value, as opposed to our capacities to have interests, desires, intentions, plans, sensations, and so forth\u0026ndash;all capacities that zygotes lack.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nVocab ends this piece with some anthropomorphizing of zygotes, which appears to me to be a highly misleading form of argument\u0026ndash;his analogies cannot be taken literally, since zygotes have no mental processes.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHuman and Living = Human Being?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nI agree with Vocab that a fertilized human ovum is living, that it\u0026rsquo;s human, and that, if all goes well, it will become one (or more) individual human beings.  I don\u0026rsquo;t agree that it\u0026rsquo;s yet a person or a \u0026ldquo;human being,\u0026rdquo; since it lacks the requisite parts and capacities.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTo sum up:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vocab Malone on abortion and personhood, part 1"},{"content":"Local Christian hip-hop artist and slam poet Vocab Malone, who I\u0026rsquo;ve interacted with online and met when Daniel Dennett spoke at ASU early this year, asked me in January for my thoughts on abortion and personhood. He\u0026rsquo;s now written a paper on the subject which he\u0026rsquo;s asked me to critique, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it would work out to do it in a public manner via our respective blogs. The plan is that he will post successive sections of his paper on his blog, and I\u0026rsquo;ll respond here, with cross-links to share some traffic and discussion. Both of us allow blog comments; it probably makes the most sense to post your comments at the blog for the person you\u0026rsquo;d like to see a response from.\nVocab has posted an introduction and the comments that I originally sent to him on the subject at his blog, Backpack Apologetics. He\u0026rsquo;s taking a position that I think is very difficult to justify, that full personhood and human rights are acquired at the moment of conception\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;ll have to see which definition of conception he chooses, fertilization or implantation.\nJust to throw out a little issue I raised this semester in one of my classes\u0026ndash;some have argued that climate change raises the ethical issue of a duty to future generations. If we can have moral duties now to people who don\u0026rsquo;t exist at all yet, what does that imply about duties to embryos?\nBrad (2009-12-11):\nThought Vocab would have flipped world-view by now! Re your last statement, it doesn't seem like being steward of the earth is equivalent to forcing women to carry a child.\nWhere taking of the earth is a long term continuous activity, the goal is to promote feasability of life.\nForcing women to have babies takes only a brief commitment and doesn't seem to entail concern for the potential human's well-being.\nWhere these two do cross is that we can dissolve the social and medical issues that necessitate abortion in the first place, and that will require continuous effort,\nLippard (2009-12-11):\nBrad: The issue my question is meant to raise is that it\u0026#39;s often argued that we have no duties to embryos because they are merely potential, rather than actual persons. But future generations are even less actual than embryos--so how can we have a duty to them? One possible way out might be to argue that the duty to future generations is not a duty to any particular individuals, though I'm not exactly sure how that should be parsed out. Population is itself a huge factor in CO2 emissions, that enormously complicates any ethical evaluation of climate change\u0026ndash;which leads to the consequence that failing to actualize possible future people (e.g., by not reproducing) is a way of improving the lot of other possible future people.\nOf course, in the really long-term, life on earth is certain to come to an end, which leads to questions about the relative values of maximizing species duration vs. quality of lives.\nBrad (2009-12-11):\nWell, if the issue is going to rest on determining an objective duty, I can see a lot of potential complication due to the fact that Vocab\u0026#39;s duty is received from an insubstantial postulated authority while your duty may come from a need to self actualize and/or altruistic feelings. Both \u0026quot;person-hood\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;duty\u0026quot; are terms loaded with variable content depending on the context.\n\u0026quot;Is it a person? Well, we know where people come from, they start as blastocysts, so how does a person come from a non-person?\u0026quot; I can picture Vocab heating up his rhetoric engine.\nIn the end if ethical answers for you lead to the well-being of the most people\u0026quot; and his lead to \u0026quot;not violating the supernatural scheme of things\u0026quot;- Do you intend to solve something, or generate ideas?\nLippard (2009-12-11):\nBoth would be nice, we\u0026#39;ll see what happens. Although Vocab and I obviously come from different perspectives, I will be aiming to offer a critique that uses shared premises to the greatest extent possible. I don't think he's going to start his argument from an appeal to the divine command theory of morality, though he may appeal to it at some point. The Bible doesn't place much of a premium on the value of fetuses.\nAlan (2009-12-11):\nJim, you are quoted on Vocab saying, \u0026quot;I suspect that it is quite possible that the conditions of personhood are met by fetuses at some point of pre-natal development (but not necessarily--the \u0026#39;mirror test\u0026#39; of self awareness is not passed by human beings until 18 mo to 2 years of age)...\u0026quot; A bioethics professor I had (37 years ago, I can\u0026#39;t recall his name) taught that self awareness was the best point to identify personhood. He also added that the rights of personhood should be grantable by proxy. That is, a mother\u0026#39;s love of an infant should be sufficient for purposes of law to confer full status of personhood to a pre-self aware fetus all the way back to conception. Conversely, lack of being wanted by the mother is sufficient reason to allow abortion. The big problem this raises is whether infanticide of a, say, six month old by both parents should be treated equivalent of first degree murder, while it can answer such questions as whether the murder of a pregnant woman should be treated as a double murder.\nEamon Knight (2009-12-12):\nJust to throw out a little issue I raised this semester in one of my classes--some have argued that climate change raises the ethical issue of a duty to future generations. If we can have moral duties now to people who don\u0026#39;t exist at all yet, what does that imply about duties to embryos? I'll take stab at it: I suggest that we have no duty to ensure that future, potential persons will ever come to existence, but given that we do intend to produce real persons, we have a duty of care for their welfare.\nThus, if a woman is pregnant, she can have an abortion. But if she intends to carry the pregnancy to term, she assumes a duty to maintain her own health, obtain good nutrition, abstain from substance abuse, retain medical help, make provision for infant care (or adoption if she intends to give it up), etc.\nSimilary, it would be ethical to collectively decide to forego all further reproduction (as advocated by the VHEM). But given we wish the human species to continue beyond the lifespan of those now alive, we have a duty to ensure some reasonably liveable environment.\nLippard (2009-12-12):\nEamon: What would that imply about the duties of those of us who have chosen not to reproduce--a decision which reduces the future emissions and consumption of our descendants to zero?\nEamon Knight (2009-12-12):\nJim: Do you mean whether you still have a duty to future generations? If you wish the human species to continue, then yes. Anyone who wishes there to be future generations has a corresponding duty to contribute in some way (at the least, by not making it impossible for them to survive and flourish). Personal reproduction is only one way of contributing to the continuation of the species. But thanks for making things a little easier for my grandkids ;-).\nOr have I completely misunderstood your question?\nAnonymous (2009-12-13):\nEamon, Maybe we shouldn't wish for our species to continue. If all discussion of the \u0026quot;big\u0026quot; questions died, even if life continued on, would that be OK? Life on its own terms\u0026hellip; I like it!! The future could be bighter (or not). Now that would be a class that would be cool. :)\nM! (2009-12-13):\nBrad ... In one of your comments you said \u0026quot;I can picture Vocab heating up his rhetoric engine.\u0026quot;\nThis is interesting since in another post you wrote this: \u0026quot;Forcing women to have babies takes only a brief commitment and doesn't seem to entail concern for the potential human's well-being.\u0026quot;\nFirst, if equating the pro-life position to \u0026quot;forcing women to have babies\u0026quot; is not heated rhetoric, I don't know what is.\nSecondly, this is not a \u0026quot;brief commitment.\u0026quot; I have put in many hours reading up on this, talking to people about it and then writing these posts. Even if you disagree with my posts, it should be obvious they required some in-depth research.\nThirdly, when you wrote my position \u0026quot;doesn't seem to entail concern for the potential human's well-being,\u0026quot; you were begging the question: if it is a human life in the mom's womb, then my position entails concern by default!\nMaybe a convo that took place on Jim's Facebook will help clarify: Claudia Sawyer: I assume he can't get knocked up? Fri at 11:11pm\nJim Lippard: Correct, but he and his wife are foster parents and adopters, so he's not just pro-life pre-birth. Yesterday at 8:54am\nClaudia Sawyer: Good for him, very few do. Yesterday at 9:15am Lastly, even if \u0026quot;very few do\u0026quot; their perceived lack of concern has no bearing the truthfulness of the propositions I am putting forth. There is simply no relationship.\nvM!\nBrad (2009-12-17):\nMike said: \u0026quot;If all discussion of the \u0026quot;big\u0026quot; questions died, even if life continued on, would that be OK? Life on its own terms... I like it!! The future could be bighter (or not).\u0026quot; I think the big questions are what occupy our mind when we idle, as well as giving us a star to shoot for. The process of trying to answer the big questions is what expands the mind (as long as you are committed to keep expanding it). We've got to keep our world view a tentative theory lest we become stale.\nBut I digest.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/discussion-on-abortion-and-personhood.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLocal Christian hip-hop artist and slam poet Vocab Malone, who I\u0026rsquo;ve interacted with online and met when \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/daniel-dennett-at-asu.html\"\u003eDaniel Dennett spoke at ASU\u003c/a\u003e early this year, asked me in January for my thoughts on abortion and personhood.  He\u0026rsquo;s now written a paper on the subject which he\u0026rsquo;s asked me to critique, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it would work out to do it in a public manner via our respective blogs.  The plan is that he will post successive sections of his paper on his blog, and I\u0026rsquo;ll respond here, with cross-links to share some traffic and discussion.  Both of us allow blog comments; it probably makes the most sense to post your comments at the blog for the person you\u0026rsquo;d like to see a response from.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVocab has posted \u003ca href=\"http://vocabmalone.blogspot.com/2009/12/announcement-cross-blogging-convo-on.html\"\u003ean introduction and the comments that I originally sent to him on the subject at his blog, Backpack Apologetics\u003c/a\u003e.  He\u0026rsquo;s taking a position that I think is very difficult to justify, that full personhood and human rights are acquired at the moment of conception\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;ll have to see which definition of conception he chooses, fertilization or implantation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust to throw out a little issue I raised this semester in one of my classes\u0026ndash;some have argued that climate change raises the ethical issue of a duty to future generations.  If we can have moral duties now to people who don\u0026rsquo;t exist at all yet, what does that imply about duties to embryos?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discussion on abortion and personhood w/Vocab Malone"},{"content":"SkeptiCamp founder Reed Esau has finally taken the plunge and started blogging at \u0026ldquo;an illustrative account\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;check out his interesting post on \u0026ldquo;Taking Ownership in Skepticism.\u0026quot;\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2009-12-09):\nThanks for the mention, Jim. Some of the fallout that I hinted-at can be found at Why Skeptics Don’t Have to be Atheists with a response by De Dora on Thursday.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/12/reed-esau-on-taking-ownership-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSkeptiCamp founder Reed Esau has finally taken the plunge and started blogging at \u0026ldquo;an illustrative account\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;check out his interesting post on \u003ca href=\"http://esau.org/2009/12/04/taking-ownership-in-skepticism/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Taking Ownership in Skepticism.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks for the mention, Jim.\n\u003cp\u003eSome of the fallout that I hinted-at can be found at \u003ca href=\"http://www.nycskeptics.org/blog/?p=1593\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eWhy Skeptics Don’t Have to be Atheists\u003c/a\u003e with a response by De Dora on Thursday.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Reed Esau on \"Taking Ownership in Skepticism\""},{"content":"While past studies have shown religious believers to be happier than nonbelievers, some new analysis shows that it\u0026rsquo;s not quite so simple. Luke Galen has found that the convinced non-religious are also quite happy, but people who are uncertain are the ones who are dissatisfied. Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn has analyzed data from the World Values Survey and found some more interesting details:\nReligious people are both happier and unhappier. While a higher percentage of religious people report themselves as extremely happy than convinced nonbelievers, a higher percentage of religious people also report themselves as extremely unhappy.Those who attend religious services and belong to religious organizations tend to be happier. And that\u0026rsquo;s whether or not they believe\u0026ndash;in fact among that group, those with the stronger belief tend to be unhappier. So it\u0026rsquo;s the social aspect, not the doctrine, that promotes happiness. And this is further supported by:The more religious a country is, the happier believers are, and vice versa. In religious countries, believers are happier; in nonreligious countries, nonbelievers are happier. See more at the Epiphenom blog.\n(Cross-posted to the Secular Outpost.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/bad-news-for-agnostics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile past studies have shown religious believers to be happier than nonbelievers, some new analysis shows that it\u0026rsquo;s not quite so simple.  Luke Galen has found that the convinced non-religious are also quite happy, but people who are uncertain are the ones who are dissatisfied.  Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn has analyzed data from the World Values Survey and found some more interesting details:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eReligious people are both happier and unhappier.\u003c/span\u003e While a higher percentage of religious people report themselves as extremely happy than convinced nonbelievers, a higher percentage of religious people also report themselves as extremely unhappy.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThose who attend religious services and belong to religious organizations tend to be happier.\u003c/span\u003e  And that\u0026rsquo;s whether or not they believe\u0026ndash;in fact among that group, those with the stronger belief tend to be unhappier.  So it\u0026rsquo;s the social aspect, not the doctrine, that promotes happiness.  And this is further supported by:\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe more religious a country is, the happier believers are, and vice versa.\u003c/span\u003e  In religious countries, believers are happier; in nonreligious countries, nonbelievers are happier.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e See more at \u003ca href=\"http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-worshippers-unhappy-believers.html\"\u003ethe Epiphenom blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Cross-posted to \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2009/11/bad-news-for-agnostics.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad news for agnostics?"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben\u0026rsquo;s facilitated communication at a number of blogs, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing. The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are a \u0026ldquo;straw man\u0026rdquo;; (2) that criticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben\u0026rsquo;s family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and to reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying.\nThe first argument makes no sense to me. The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben\u0026rsquo;s finger even while he\u0026rsquo;s looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication. The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by similar analysis by a neuroscientist. The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying. Facilitated communication isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of conscious fraud, it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family). Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos.\nUnfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family. To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor\u0026rsquo;s credibility. To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely that we\u0026rsquo;ll see it happen.\nBut look at it from Houben\u0026rsquo;s own perspective\u0026ndash;further testing is absolutely in his own best interests. For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit. He\u0026rsquo;s not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means. If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm.\nIf you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben\u0026rsquo;s time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know? There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test. There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there\u0026rsquo;s clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family. But Hoeben\u0026rsquo;s interests should be placed above that risk.\n(Previously on Houben, a post with many links and references.)\nUPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out the communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator.\nUPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test.\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2009-11-27):\nYou\u0026#39;ve put your finger on it. There are several good reasons to do additional (proper) testing. The only reasons not to do additional testing involve sparing the feelings of the family should the tests indicate negatively. While those reasons are important, they should have been considered before the dog and pony show.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/why-not-put-rom-houbens-facilitated.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben\u0026rsquo;s facilitated communication at a \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/11/23/reason-not-to-dehydrate-man-speaking-after-23-years-in-locked-in-state/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003enumber\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://iliocentrism.blogspot.com/2009/11/bioethics-and-houben-case.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eblogs\u003c/a\u003e, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing.  The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/11/23/reason-not-to-dehydrate-man-speaking-after-23-years-in-locked-in-state/#comment-4578\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003ea \u0026ldquo;straw man\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e; (2) that \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/11/23/reason-not-to-dehydrate-man-speaking-after-23-years-in-locked-in-state/#comment-4560\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003ecriticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention\u003c/a\u003e; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben\u0026rsquo;s family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and \u003ca href=\"http://iliocentrism.blogspot.com/2009/11/bioethics-and-houben-case.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eto reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first argument makes no sense to me.  The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben\u0026rsquo;s finger even while he\u0026rsquo;s looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication.  The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by \u003ca href=\"http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1286\"\u003esimilar analysis by a neuroscientist\u003c/a\u003e.  The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying.  Facilitated communication isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of conscious fraud, it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family).  Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family.  To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor\u0026rsquo;s credibility.  To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely that we\u0026rsquo;ll see it happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut look at it from Houben\u0026rsquo;s own perspective\u0026ndash;further testing is absolutely in his own best interests.  For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit.  He\u0026rsquo;s not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means.  If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben\u0026rsquo;s time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know?  There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test.  There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there\u0026rsquo;s clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family.  But Hoeben\u0026rsquo;s interests should be placed above that risk.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/what-would-be-more-horrifying-than.html\"\u003ePreviously on Houben\u003c/a\u003e, a post with many links and references.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out \u003ca href=\"http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1596\"\u003ethe communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3938\"\u003ehas a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why not put Rom Houben's facilitated communication to the test?"},{"content":"Dana Perino says, \u0026ldquo;We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush\u0026rsquo;s term.\u0026quot;\nSean Hannity ignores it.\nTerrorism is a strategy used by a militarily weak group against a militarily strong one, to create fear, dread, and uncertainty among the general population toward some political or ideological end, such as ending military actions by the strong group against the weak. It\u0026rsquo;s not clear to me that Major Hasan\u0026rsquo;s attack at Fort Hood meets the criteria of a terrorist attack, or even a religiously motivated one, though that\u0026rsquo;s somewhat more plausible. His action did share the element of being an attack by the weak against the strong, but he also appears to have had mental issues and an ongoing battle with the military over his desire to get out and not be sent to Afghanistan. There were clear warning signs that were missed or ignored, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that he was part of a broader plot.\nThe Fort Hood shootings were a tragedy, and possibly one that could have been avoided. But it certainly isn\u0026rsquo;t an event that provides justification for torture, warrantless wiretapping, the revocation of habeas corpus, and the expansion of \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; to the detriment of our civil liberties. Perino and Hannity want to argue that the Obama administration has made us less safe on the basis of this incident, which makes about as much sense as blaming the Bush administration for the Virginia Tech shootings.\nUPDATE (November 27, 2009): As a couple people have correctly noted, I should also have mentioned the post-9/11 anthrax attacks as another terrorist act Perino forgot about. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was another.\nUPDATE: Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost notes that Perino has said via Twitter that she meant \u0026ldquo;since 9/11,\u0026quot; and correctly points out how absurd it is to discount 9/11 for Bush (as well as these other subsequent events she\u0026rsquo;s ignored), while blaming Obama for Hasan\u0026rsquo;s shooting: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;while there were warning signs about Hasan\u0026rsquo;s fitness for duty that could have been noticed by those around him, this is hardly something that would have been on the President\u0026rsquo;s radar. No one was briefing President Obama that Major Hasan was determined to strike a military base; however, President Bush was briefed that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States prior to the 9/11 attacks.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-11-26):\nHasan\u0026#39;s act strikes me more like the \u0026quot;going Postal\u0026quot; phenomenon. And on Twitter, Perino has now stated that she meant \u0026quot;obviously\u0026quot; that there was no terrorist attack during Bush's term post 9/11.\nStill wrong. She also forgets the unsolved anthrax attacks.\nThis is about the most dishonest, despicable sort of political hackery that one can imagine.\nShe's saying that Obama is weak on terror and making America less safe because Ft. Hood happened while he was president, yet at the same time, the largest scale terrorist attack happens on Bush's watch - with his administration and Bush himself having ignored warnings about terrorist threat levels - and that doesn't count against Bush.\nI'm really getting to a point where I'm at a loss for words to describe the intellectual rot that centers the conservative movement.\nSeganku (2009-12-06):\nThere were also the DC Sniper attacks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/dana-perino-forgets-about-911-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDana Perino says, \u0026ldquo;We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush\u0026rsquo;s term.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSean Hannity ignores it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"260\" width=\"320\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/player.swf\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg2?id=200911240056\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allownetworking\" value=\"all\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/player.swf\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" flashvars=\"config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg2?id=200911240056\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"260\" width=\"320\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTerrorism is a strategy used by a militarily weak group against a militarily strong one, to create fear, dread, and uncertainty among the general population toward some political or ideological end, such as ending military actions by the strong group against the weak.  It\u0026rsquo;s not clear to me that Major Hasan\u0026rsquo;s attack at Fort Hood meets the criteria of a terrorist attack, or even a religiously motivated one, though that\u0026rsquo;s somewhat more plausible.  His action did share the element of being an attack by the weak against the strong, but he also \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1936085,00.html\"\u003eappears to have had mental issues and an ongoing battle with the military over his desire to get out and not be sent to Afghanistan\u003c/a\u003e.  There were clear warning signs that were missed or ignored, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that he was part of a broader plot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Fort Hood shootings were a tragedy, and possibly one that could have been avoided.  But it certainly isn\u0026rsquo;t an event that provides justification for torture, warrantless wiretapping, the revocation of habeas corpus, and the expansion of \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; to the detriment of our civil liberties.  Perino and Hannity want to argue that the Obama administration has made us less safe on the basis of this incident, which makes about as much sense as blaming the Bush administration for the Virginia Tech shootings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 27, 2009): As a couple people have correctly noted, I should also have mentioned \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/case-against-bruce-ivins.html\"\u003ethe post-9/11 anthrax attacks\u003c/a\u003e as another terrorist act Perino forgot about.  Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was another.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2009/11/dana-perino-obviously-political-hack.html\"\u003enotes that Perino has said via Twitter that she meant \u0026ldquo;since 9/11,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and correctly points out how absurd it is to discount 9/11 for Bush (as well as these other subsequent events she\u0026rsquo;s ignored), while blaming Obama for Hasan\u0026rsquo;s shooting: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;while there were warning signs about Hasan\u0026rsquo;s fitness for duty that could have been noticed by those around him, this is hardly something that would have been on the President\u0026rsquo;s radar. No one was briefing President Obama that Major Hasan was determined to strike a military base; however, President Bush \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(204, 0, 0);\"\u003ewas briefed\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States prior to the 9/11 attacks.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dana Perino forgets about 9/11 and the Beltway snipers"},{"content":"Wikileaks is releasing over 500,000 U.S. national text pager intercepts from September 11, 2001, over the next two days:\nFrom 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (New York Time), WikiLeaks will release over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.\nThe first message, corresponding to 3AM September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, will be released at 3AM November 25, 2009 and the last, corresponding to 3AM September 12, 2001 at 3AM November 26, 2009.\nText pagers are mostly carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the collection range from Pentagon and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults to their operators as the World Trade Center collapsed.\nThis is a significant and completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entry into the historical record will lead to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how this tragedy and its aftermath may have been prevented.\nWhile we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11.The Transparent Society getting closer, it appears\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/wikileaks-to-release-over-500k-text.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWikileaks \u003ca href=\"http://911.wikileaks.org/\"\u003eis releasing over 500,000 U.S. national text pager intercepts from September 11, 2001, over the next two days\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (New York Time), WikiLeaks will release over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first message, corresponding to 3AM September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, will be released at 3AM November 25, 2009 and the last, corresponding to 3AM September 12, 2001 at 3AM November 26, 2009.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eText pagers are mostly carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the collection range from Pentagon and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults to their operators as the World Trade Center collapsed.\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a significant and completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entry into the historical record will lead to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how this tragedy and its aftermath may have been prevented.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society\"\u003eThe Transparent Society\u003c/a\u003e getting closer, it appears\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wikileaks to release over 500K text pager intercepts from 9/11"},{"content":"\nNumerous mass media outlets and blogs are reporting on the misdiagnosis of Rom Houben of being comatose for 23 years when he was really conscious, according to Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, who has claimed for years to be able to treat patients allegedly in a persistent vegetative state with electric shocks and find that they were really in a minimally conscious state. Videos of Houben show him allegedly communicating via a keyboard which is pressed by a single finger on one hand\u0026ndash;but his hand is being held by a facilitator, and he\u0026rsquo;s not even looking at the keyboard. Some still photos show the facilitator looking intently at the keyboard, while Houben\u0026rsquo;s eyes are closed.\nJames Randi observes that this looks just like the self-deception of Facilitated Communication that was promoted as a way to communicate with severely autistic people, and Marshall Brain at How Stuff Works seconds that conclusion.\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s a bit too fast to conclude that Houben\u0026rsquo;s not conscious\u0026ndash;brain scans could indeed have provided good evidence that he is. But what would be worse than having \u0026ldquo;locked-in syndrome\u0026rdquo;? Having somebody else purporting to speak for you with ideomotor-driven Facilitated Communication, while you were helpless to do anything about it.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to see some double-blind tests of Houben, where he\u0026rsquo;s asked questions about events that occur when the facilitator isn\u0026rsquo;t present, as well as fMRI results during the process of facilitation (since there are brain activation differences between active and passive activities, which have been used to study such things as the perception of involuntariness during hypnosis\u0026ndash;it shows features of both active and passive movement). I\u0026rsquo;d also like to see further opinion on Laureys methodology and diagnosis\u0026ndash;it seems he has significant self-interest in promoting this case.\nUPDATE: Brandon Keim at Wired Science has finally asked the questions that those who have reported this in the mainstream media should have been asking.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a 2001 review of the scientific literature on facilitated communication.\nUPDATE: The video on this story shows the facilitator typing for him while his eyes are closed and he appears to be asleep.\nUPDATE: A Times Online story claims that Houben\u0026rsquo;s facilitator, Linda Wouters, spent the last three years working with Houben to learn to feel tiny muscle movements in his finger, and that Dr. Laureys did tests to validate the technique:\nThe spectacle is so incredible that even Steven Laureys, the neurologist who discovered Mr Houben’s potential, had doubts about its authenticity. He decided to put it to the test. “I showed him objects when I was alone with him in the room and then, later, with his aide, he was able to give the right answers,” Professor Laureys said. “It is true.”\nand\nMr Houben’s “rebirth” took many painstaking months. “We asked him to try and blink but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his cheek but he couldn’t; we asked him to move his hand and he couldn’t,” Mrs Wouters said. “Eventually, someone noticed that when we talked to him he moved his toe so we started to try and communicate using his toe to press a button.” It was a breakthrough but much more was to come when a fellow speech therapist discovered that it was possible to discern minuscule movements in his right forefinger. Mrs Wouters, 42, was assigned to Mr Houben and they began to learn the communication technique that he is now using to write a book about his life and thoughts. “I thought it was a miracle — it actually worked,” she said. The method involves taking Mr Houben by the elbow and the right hand while he is seated at a specially adapted computer and feeling for minute twitches in his forefinger as his hand is guided over the letters of the alphabet. Mrs Wouters said that she could feel him recoil slightly if the letter was wrong. After three years of practice the words now come tumbling out, she said. This still seems hard to rationalize with the video footage of the typing occurring while he\u0026rsquo;s apparently asleep. Mrs. Wouters admits the possibility of \u0026ldquo;tak[ing] over\u0026rdquo; for him:\n“The tension increases and I feel he wants to go so I move his hand along the screen and if it is a mistake he pulls back. As a facilitator, you have to be very careful that you do not take over. You have to follow him.” UPDATE (November 25, 2009): Neurologist Steven Novella has weighed in. He suggests that Houben may have recovered some brain function and be conscious, but that the facilitated communication in the videos is positively bogus.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve noted on the discussion page of Dr. Steven Laureys\u0026rsquo; Wikipedia entry that the paper in BMC Neurology that purportedly included Houben as a subject claims that all patients in the study were in a minimally conscious state (MCS) but had been misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). The criteria of the study say that those that recovered and emerged from MCS were excluded, which seems at odds with claims that Houben\u0026rsquo;s brain function is \u0026ldquo;almost normal.\u0026rdquo; A story in Nature 443, 132-133 (14 September 2006) by Mike Hopkin, \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Vegetative\u0026rsquo; patient shows signs of conscious thought,\u0026quot; which quotes Laureys, is about a different patient, in a persistent vegetative state, who showed some signs minimal consciousness. When asked to visualize herself playing tennis, for example, she showed corresponding brain activity. But, as that article noted, that kind of neural response isn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily a sign of consciousness:\nBut what that \u0026lsquo;awareness\u0026rsquo; means is still up for debate. For example, Paul Matthews, a clinical neuroscientist at Imperial College London, argues that the brain imaging technique used cannot evaluate conscious thought; fMRI lights up regions of brain activity by identifying hotspots of oxygen consumption by neurons. \u0026ldquo;It helps us identify regions associated with a task, but not which regions are necessary or sufficient for performing that task,\u0026rdquo; he says.\nMatthews argues that the patient\u0026rsquo;s brain could have been responding automatically to the word \u0026rsquo;tennis\u0026rsquo;, rather than consciously imagining a game. He also points out that in many vegetative cases, the patient\u0026rsquo;s motor system seems to be undamaged, so he questions why, if they are conscious, they do not respond physically. \u0026ldquo;They are simply not behaving as if they are conscious,\u0026rdquo; he says.\nOwens counters that an automatic response would be transient, lasting for perhaps a few seconds before fading. He says his patient\u0026rsquo;s responses lasted for up to 30 seconds, until he asked her to stop. He believes this demonstrates strong motivation.\nHe does admit, however, that it is impossible to say whether the patient is fully conscious. Although in theory it might be possible to ask simple \u0026lsquo;yes/no\u0026rsquo; questions using the technique, he says: \u0026ldquo;We just don\u0026rsquo;t know what she\u0026rsquo;s capable of. We can\u0026rsquo;t get inside her head and see what the quality of her experience is like.\u0026quot;\nBut then again, as someone who\u0026rsquo;s been reading a lot of literature on automaticity and voluntary action lately, it appears to me likely that a lot of our normal actions are automatic, the product of unconsciously driven motor programs of routine behavior.\nLaureys is quoted in the article with a note of skepticism:\n\u0026ldquo;Family members should not think that any patient in a vegetative state is necessarily conscious and can play tennis,\u0026rdquo; says co-author Steven Laureys of the University of Liège, Belgium.\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s an illustration of how the evaluation of consciousness, which is a subjective and personal thing, is very tricky, especially with someone who cannot communicate.\u0026quot;\nThe article goes on to note that this woman, who is possibly somewhere between PVS and MCS, \u0026ldquo;seems to have been much less severely injured than the permanently vegetative Terri Schiavo\u0026rdquo; (as the report from her Guardian Ad Litem (PDF) made clear).\nIf Houben is in a minimally conscious state, which he apparently was in order to be included in Laureys\u0026rsquo; paper that his Wikipedia page says published the Hoeben case in 2009, that appears to contradict news claims that Houben\u0026rsquo;s brain function is \u0026ldquo;nearly normal,\u0026rdquo; unless he has recovered further function since that paper was written.\nUPDATE (November 26, 2009): This footage of Houben and Mrs. Wouters from Belgian (Dutch) state television seems to be the most extensive footage of the facilitation process, and while it starts out looking slightly more plausible, it also clearly shows fairly rapid typing while his eyes are closed (and the camera zooms in on his face).\nUPDATE (November 28, 2009): Dr. Laureys and Dr. Novella have had some interaction, which demonstrates that Laureys doesn\u0026rsquo;t get it.\nUPDATE (February 15, 2010): Dr. Laureys almost gets it now, and has done additional tests, which have shown that the communications are coming from the facilitator, not Houben.\nUPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test.\nHistorical Comments L (2009-11-24):\nMy local paper had a breathless AP version of this story on its front page this morning and like Randi I was disgusted with the completely credulous reporting. You\u0026#39;re right that we don\u0026#39;t know enough to say one way or the other what\u0026#39;s going on, but I would have hoped the AP would have higher standards than to just uncritically promote this story without even giving the fact that he\u0026#39;s reportedly communicating with the help of a facilitator.\npee (2009-11-25):\nSo assuming it comes out that they it is really him speaking... I Talked about this with someone yesterday and what I really want to know is if his sense of time has been changed after what amounts to 23 years of wandering around in his own brain.\nReed (2009-11-25):\nAccording to reports, Houben is actively writing articles, and a book as well? Especially if a lucrative book deal is in the works, I doubt anyone involved will be interested in double-blind testing in the foreseeable future. Skeptics be damned!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/what-would-be-more-horrifying-than.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00349/coma_349721gm-k.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 310px; height: 174px;\" src=\"http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00349/coma_349721gm-k.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNumerous mass media outlets and blogs are reporting on the misdiagnosis of Rom Houben of being comatose for 23 years when he was really conscious, according to Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1371036/\"\u003ehas claimed for years to be able to treat patients allegedly in a persistent vegetative state with electric shocks and find that they were really in a minimally conscious state\u003c/a\u003e.  Videos of Houben \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34109227\"\u003eshow him allegedly communicating via a keyboard which is pressed by a single finger on one hand\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;but his hand is being held by a facilitator, and he\u0026rsquo;s not even looking at the keyboard.  Some still photos show the facilitator looking intently at the keyboard, while Houben\u0026rsquo;s eyes are closed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJames Randi observes that \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/783-this-cruel-farce-has-to-stop.html\"\u003ethis looks just like the self-deception of Facilitated Communication that was promoted as a way to communicate with severely autistic people\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/11/24/the-23-years-in-a-coma-guy-really-isnt-talking-how-facilitated-communication-doesnt-work/\"\u003eMarshall Brain at How Stuff Works seconds that conclusion\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think it\u0026rsquo;s a bit too fast to conclude that Houben\u0026rsquo;s not conscious\u0026ndash;brain scans could indeed have provided good evidence that he is.  But what would be worse than having \u0026ldquo;locked-in syndrome\u0026rdquo;?  Having somebody else purporting to speak for you with ideomotor-driven Facilitated Communication, while you were helpless to do anything about it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to see some double-blind tests of Houben, where he\u0026rsquo;s asked questions about events that occur when the facilitator isn\u0026rsquo;t present, as well as fMRI results during the process of facilitation (since there are brain activation differences between active and passive activities, which have been used to study such things as the perception of involuntariness during hypnosis\u0026ndash;it shows features of both active and passive movement).  I\u0026rsquo;d also like to see further opinion on Laureys methodology and diagnosis\u0026ndash;it seems he has significant self-interest in promoting this case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Brandon Keim at Wired Science \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/houben-communication/\"\u003ehas finally asked the questions that those who have reported this in the mainstream media should have been asking\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.springerlink.com/content/w27884261r287m86/\"\u003ea 2001 review of the scientific literature on facilitated communication\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: The \u003ca href=\"http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/975121/belgian-coma-man-was-just-awake-for-23-years\"\u003evideo on this story shows the facilitator typing for him while his eyes are closed\u003c/a\u003e and he appears to be asleep.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: A \u003ca href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6930608.ece\"\u003eTimes Online story claims that Houben\u0026rsquo;s facilitator, Linda Wouters, spent the last three years working with Houben to learn to feel tiny muscle movements in his finger, and that Dr. Laureys did tests to validate the technique\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"What would be more horrifying than \"locked-in\" syndrome?"},{"content":"Hackers got access to a trove of private emails from the University of East Anglia\u0026rsquo;s Climate Research Unit that is being trumpeted by those who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming as proof of scandal. I\u0026rsquo;ve looked through the data a bit myself\u0026ndash;you can find a searchable archive of the emails here. I suspect this collection of emails may end up being put to good research use as the Enron email corpus was. While I found a few embarrassing things, I found no evidence of outright data fabrication or fakery.\nThe main email that has been cited as such evidence is an email from Phil Jones that says:\nI’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate explains:\nThe paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.In other words, \u0026ldquo;hiding\u0026rdquo; in this case is using temperature measurement records instead of tree rings as a proxy for temperature records for a period of time where the tree rings are known not to be an accurate proxy, for whatever reason.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also claimed that these emails show a concerted effort to subvert the peer review process and stop publications by climate change skeptics, but most of those emails seem to center around an issue where the scandal was actually from the skeptics\u0026ndash;the publication of a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research that was considered by 13 authors of papers cited to have misrepresented their work. Subsequently, half of the editorial staff of the journal resigned in protest at what they saw as a failure of peer review, and the managing director of the journal\u0026rsquo;s parent company issued an apology (see Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s summary). The emails show that these scientists were upset by Climate Research\u0026rsquo;s publication of bad science and encouraged protest and those resignations.\nA few blog posts that seem to have good overviews of the issues:\nSkeptical Science, \u0026ldquo;What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?\u0026quot;Real Climate, \u0026ldquo;The CRU Hack\u0026rdquo; (followed by over 1,000 comments)Real Climate, \u0026ldquo;The CRU Hack: Context\u0026rdquo; (gives background on some of the issues, including the above Climate Research issue).\nGreenfyre\u0026rsquo;s, \u0026ldquo;Climate change Deniers hoax themselves\u0026hellip; again.\u0026quot;Millard Fillmore\u0026rsquo;s Bathtub, \u0026ldquo;Smoking guns in the CRU stolen emails: A real tale of real ethics in science\u0026rdquo; (what the CRU emails show about treatment of an erroneous climate science paper)\nAn interesting comparison to past scientific controversy is:\nCarbon Fixated, \u0026ldquo;Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment \u0026rsquo;thinking\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;And, to compare to the climate change skeptics:\nBishop Hill, \u0026ldquo;Climate cuttings 33\u0026rdquo; (summary of the apparent worst issues)Essex County Conservative Examiner, \u0026ldquo;Hadley [sic] CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails\u0026rdquo;Climate Audit, \u0026ldquo;CRU Correspondence\u0026rdquo;Watt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u0026ldquo;Mike\u0026rsquo;s Nature Trick\u0026rdquo;Watt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u0026ldquo;CRU Emails \u0026lsquo;may\u0026rsquo; be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story\u0026rdquo;Watt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u0026ldquo;Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine\u0026rdquo;The last of these posts, from Univ. of Alabama climate scientist and skeptic Roy W. Spencer, notes that:\nIf all of this sounds incompatible with the process of scientific investigation, it shouldn’t. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has about science is that research is a straightforward process of making measurements, and then seeing whether the data support hypothesis A or B. The truth is that the interpretation of data is seldom that simple.\nThere are all kinds of subjective decisions that must be made along the way, and the scientist must remain vigilant that he or she is not making those decisions based upon preconceived notions. Data are almost always dirty, with errors of various kinds. Which data will be ignored? Which data will be emphasized? How will the data be processed to tease out the signal we think we see?\nHopefully, the scientist is more interested in discovering how nature really works, rather than twisting the data to support some other agenda. It took me years to develop the discipline to question every research result I got. It is really easy to be wrong in this business, and very difficult to be right.\nSkepticism really is at the core of scientific progress. I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong about all my views on manmade global warming. Can the IPCC scientists admit the same thing?\nAnother noteworthy comment, from Real Climate, is this one from caerbannog and Gavin Schmidt\u0026rsquo;s reply:\nJust a reminder: CRU is just one of many organizations focusing on climate research. The fact that its director has reacted badly (i.e. appearing to go for the “bunker” mentality) to repeated scurrilous attacks has no bearing on the validity of the science.\nHansen’s approach has been quite different — he’s basically said to his detractors, “here are all of the source code and data — go knock yourselves out”. Under Hansen, the NASA/GISS data and source code have been freely available on-line for years. And all of the sceptics’ scrutiny of said data has uncovered only one or two minor “glitches” that have had minimal impact.\nJust a quick question (or two) to Gavin, if you feel the need to spend even more of your weekend downtime answering questions here. Given that all of your climate-modeling source-code has been available for public scrutiny for quite a long time, and given that anyone can download and test it out, how many times have climate-model critics have actually submitted patches to improve your modeling code, fix bugs, etc? Have you gotten any constructive suggestions from the skeptic camp?\n[Response: Not a single one. - gavin]\nI think this illustrates that it\u0026rsquo;s far better to be completely open with your data and methods.\nUPDATE (November 26, 2009): There\u0026rsquo;s now an official response from the Univ. of East Anglia, the Climate Research Unit, and Phil Jones. Jones notes, regarding the Freedom of Information requests:\nWe have been bombarded by Freedom of Information requests to release the temperature data that are provided to us by meteorological services around the world via a large network of weather stations. This information is not ours to give without the permission of the meteorological services involved. We have responded to these Freedom of Information requests appropriately and with the knowledge and guidance of the Information Commissioner.\nWe have stated that we hope to gain permission from each of these services to publish their data in the future and we are in the process of doing so.UPDATE (December 4, 2009): The journal Nature has weighed in on the controversy.\nClimate scientist Judith Curry makes good points of criticism about climate scientists\u0026rsquo; behavior.\nUPDATE (December 6, 2009): Univ. of East Anglia climate scientist Mike Hulme (author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, a book that I read several chapters from in a class on human dimensions of climate change this semester) on the issue:\nThe key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the I.P.C.C. does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted. From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find. This will blow its course soon in the conventional media without making too much difference to Copenhagen — after all, COP15 is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. But in the Internet worlds of deliberation and in the ‘mood’ of public debate about the trustworthiness of climate science, the reverberations of this episode will live on long beyond COP15. Climate scientists will have to work harder to earn the warranted trust of the public - and maybe that is no bad thing. But this episode might signify something more in the unfolding story of climate change. This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science. It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production - just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.\nUPDATE (December 11, 2009): PolitiFact gives its analysis of the CRU emails, which is fairly balanced.\nUPDATE (December 12, 2009): Deep Climate catches Stephen McIntyre engaging in quote mining of the CRU emails in order to mislead.\nUPDATE (December 24, 2009): David Douglass and John Christy, in \u0026ldquo;A Climatology Conspiracy?\u0026quot;, argue that the CRU emails show a concerted effort to delay the publication of their paper, publish another paper criticizing it along side of it, and deny them the right of final reply. Their case is somewhat weakened by the fact that the second paper points out a significant error in their paper and they have apparently not tried to publish a reply or correct the error.\nHume's Ghost (2009-11-23):\nMy favorite response to this \u0026quot;global warming scandal of the century\u0026quot; has been Michelle Malkin\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;The Chicago Way is the Global Warming Mob Way.\u0026quot;\nIt's like such individuals - Malkin, Beck, Hannity, et al - live in some alternate reality consisting of perpetual, hysterical wrongness.\nJason (2009-11-24):\nThere are numerous examples of Skeptics making constructive contributions. For example, Gavin is partially responsible for the GISS temperature series.\nSteve McIntyre identified an error in this data (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1854) which was subsequently fixed by GISS.\nAlthough GISS wen to pains to avoid giving Steve credit, and to minimize the impact of the error, they have on several other occasions published papers about even smaller adjustments. (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1868)\nI can think of a dozen such helpful suggestions off the top of my head that Gavin is personally aware of. This is undoubtedly only a small fraction.\nQuite a number of these helpful suggestions, like Steve's observation of the Y2K splicing error in the temperature record, have in fact prompted alarmist climate scientists to fix or otherwise improve their methods and calculations.\nSo when Gavin says that he is unaware of any constructive criticism from skeptics, he is lying. He has personal knowledge of numerous examples.\nLippard (2009-11-24):\nMy impression was that Schmidt had in mind something more substantial than identifying minor errors, which is something that even young-earth creationists can do for evolutionary biology. Do any of the other \u0026quot;dozen helpful suggestions\u0026quot; you mention involve substantive contributions of method, data, or line of inquiry that has led to, say, a frequently cited publication in a scientific journal?\nJason (2009-11-24):\nI doubt very much that Schmidt would agree with your definition of substantial. It would force him to remove numerous papers from his own CV. I would be curious to know what your definition of substantial is.\nRegardless the contribution of skeptics is substantial by any definition.\nYou can find virtually any type of contribution you want on this list of peer reviewed skeptical papers: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html\nThis is a small fraction of the research that I consider to fit this label (but I lack the time to compile a list).\nSome of the people on the list would deny being skeptics (Pielke Jr. for example) but I certainly expect Gavin to agree with the list creator's assessment.\nGavin himself has obviously been captivated by McKitrick and Michaels methodology; so much so that he recently published a paper analyzing it. (He found that by using satellite data he could also show a significant correlation between urban civilization and temperatures but, oops, he didn't notice that the sign of the correlation is reversed. Doh!).\nBottom line: there is a vast body of skeptical contributions. The precise definition doesn't matter much.\nLippard (2009-11-24):\n\u0026quot;Substantial\u0026quot; is certainly a fuzzy category with some degree of subjectivity. Papers like the ones at the tops of these lists by citation are clear-cut cases of substantial contributions to climate science.\nThose published in the Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons (a couple on the list you cited), by contrast, are clearly not.\nLippard (2009-11-24):\nBTW, some of the other journals that appear in your list include the social science journal Energy \u0026amp; Environment, the anomalies-in-science journal Journal of Scientific Exploration, and the embarrassed-by-failure-of-peer-review journal Climate Research (mentioned in the original post). Real Climate's post on \u0026quot;Peer-Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition\u0026quot; is instructive in this regard.\nJason (2009-11-24):\nI can drill holes in Team papers all day and you can drill holes in skeptical papers all day, and we could both be right each time. That\u0026#39;s science for you. But for ANY standard of \u0026quot;contribution\u0026quot;, there are skeptical papers that have met that standard.\nW_Chow (2009-11-25):\nJason S: I certainly expect Gavin to agree with the list creator's assessment.\nGavin has replied and he, like many others - even RPJr. - have pointed out the illegitimacy of the Poptech list.\nAlso, what paper of Gavin's are you talking about? I'd like to take a look at it please.\nLippard (2009-11-25):\nJason: I agree that there are climate change skeptics who have legitimate academic positions and have published legitimate scientific work in legitimate scientific journals. I'm not, however, aware of any that make a dent in the case that there's a significant human component to atmospheric CO2 and that atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of a long-term warming trend; even some of the people classified in the \u0026quot;climate skeptic\u0026quot; category on your list agree that this is the case (e.g., Balling and Pielke Jr., talks by both of whom have been summarized at this blog, Balling here and Pielke Jr. here and here).\nPielke Jr.'s papers on hurricanes and property damage are on that list, but they don't express skepticism of anthropogenic global warming, contrary to the heading at the top of the list (see the two summarized talks; he discussed those papers in the second one).\nJason (2009-11-25):\ngeo: I never suggested for a moment that Gavin agrees with the skeptical papers. He does not. (Although I'd love to know what fault he finds with, for example, the Pielke Jr. papers on hurricanes).\nI meant that Gavin would agree with the labeling of the Pielkes as skeptics (which Pielke Jr. certainly does not).\nS09 == \u0026quot;Spurious correlations between recent warming and indices of local economic activity\u0026quot; in IJC.\nYou can find the last three entries in this sequence towards the bottom of the references for the Wikipedia entry for Urban Heat Island [Currently 39 through 41]. I recommend them to anybody who likes this sort of analysis. I'm pretty interested to see if Gavin is going to be able to rebut the last entry.\nJason (2009-11-25):\nFinally, Jim, If skepticism of anthropogenic global warming means that you don't believe that anthropogenic CO2 is heating up the planet, then I am not a skeptic.\nNeither is Steve McIntyre, or Ross McKitrick or any of a host of other individuals who are routinely identified as skeptics.\nI agree that you can define skeptic in a way that excludes all or almost all meaningful contributions. But by doing so you also exclude all or almost all of the meaningful skeptics.\nLippard (2009-11-25):\nJason: How do you define it (either for yourself, or that includes the class of people that you call skeptics)? Does Glen Whitman\u0026#39;s taxonomy of questions about global warming help? Is it skepticism about negative impacts of warming in general, or only in some particulars (sea levels? ocean acidification? arctic ice sheet melting?)?\nW_Chow (2009-11-25):\nJason S: Thanks. I've read the paper over and I don't see how your critique of it overturns its main conclusion that dLM06 and MM07 both overstate the significance of their results as their approaches do not treat (a) scale mismatch in data and (b) spatial correlation effects appropriately.\nTo add on to Jim's question - what is it about AGW that you are skeptical about? The science? The implications to policy? The politics per se?\nLippard (2009-11-25):\nW: It seems to me that if people aren\u0026#39;t skeptical about AGW, they shouldn\u0026#39;t call themselves AGW skeptics, or publish list of documents under titles like \u0026quot;papers skeptical of man-made global warming,\u0026quot; and should be trying to correct the clearly erroneous public skepticism about AGW. It seems odd that people who say they aren't skeptical about AGW are doing exactly the opposite, trying to increase public doubt about AGW.\nThe Heartland Institute's \u0026quot;Legislator's Guide to Global Warming Experts\u0026quot; defines the skeptics by saying: \u0026quot;No one can speak for all these scientists and analysts, but skeptics generally are united in their assertions that insofar as global warming exists, it doesn’t pose a catastrophic threat to the Earth, and mankind’s contribution to the release of greenhouse gas is insignificant.\u0026quot;\nThat description characterizes skeptics as both minimizing the quantity or doubting the existence of warming and doubting the significance human contribution to GHG as a cause of any warming.\nThe Heartland Institute's site also touts the fact that the general population is skeptical of the existence of global warming in a way that suggests they wholeheartedly approve.\nJason (2009-11-25):\nGeo: I didn\u0026#39;t mention dlm06 because I don\u0026#39;t think its on solid ground. Have you already read McKitrick's response to Schmidt? If not, I think he should get first crack at showing you the problems in S09.\nJim: As Pielke Jr. has done a good job of documenting, there has been a concerted effort aimed at labeling anyone who doesn't agree with most climate advocates as, not just skeptics, but deniers.\nIn Pielke's case this seems to be especially inappropriate, since he seems to agree with all of the key scientific conclusions.\nStill, I would characterize Jr's published papers as undeniably skeptical in nature.\nHe shows that hurricane damage has not increased any faster than would be expected given the increase in population, and the gravitation of that population towards the coasts.\nHe observes that we presently lack the technology to implement certain existing plans to reduce emissions, and indeed that those plans are unlikely to be realized as a result.\nOn the first point, he was successful in getting the IPCC to change their language. Does this mean that he is not a skeptic (because the IPCC says something he can agree with)? Or does his moving the IPCC report in a skeptical direction actually make him a skeptic? I don't know.\nSimilarly, Steve McIntyre seems to agree with just about every global warming issue except their math and scientific detachment (both of which are deserving of scorn).\nI can't imagine a definition of skeptic that doesn't include Steve McIntyre. That's just not consistent with how the word is used in the blogosphere.\nAs to myself geo, I am generally skeptical [outside of global warming as well], but I am especially critical of three things in climate change:\nI think that climate model assumptions of feedback are very seriously in doubt. [Most of the predicted warming results from feedback, and observations of tropospheric temperatures are not consistent with these assumptions]. I don't think that this has been proven false, but its looking very tenuous at the moment.\nI am skeptical of the focus on CO2. It seems highly probable that the contribution of human land use changes has been grossly underestimated by the IPCC (and warming due to emissions over estimated as a result).\nI am, like Pielke Jr, extremely skeptical of our ability to reduce emissions through legislation and/or Copenhagen-like processes.\nIn fact, I'd say that fantasy engineering schemes (like those in the superfreakonomics book) seem more plausible than getting citizens of developed nations to accept the economic and social consequences of reducing their emissions by 95%.\nThat's not all I'm skeptical about, but that's what matters. I'm deeply skeptical about the surface temperature record, but I don't actually believe that properly collected data would erase the warming signal, so my skepticism here (and elsewhere) seems moot.\nW_Chow (2009-11-26):\nHave you already read McKitrick\u0026#39;s response to Schmidt? If not, I think he should get first crack at showing you the problems in S09 Can't say I have. What's the link?\nAlso, as a user of climate models (albeit for micro/mesoscale models rather than GCMs) what is it about its feedbacks that gets your goat?\nWhile I agree that we modeling folk still have problems evaluating various feedbacks (as discussed in depth in Chp 8 of IPCC AR4), I am unconvinced that the way the feedbacks are included in GCMs have significant errors in the way that folks like Spencer et al. think they are.\nI also find it interesting that you, like RPSr. and Bob Balling, think that land cover change impacts may be \u0026quot;grossly underestimated\u0026quot; by IPCC. Like Gavin, I think that this view neglects the scale mismatch between regional and global scale climate forcings.\nFurther, the main driver of LULC change is deforestation (IPCC AR4 9.3.3.3), which may increase albedo at local/regional scales, but isn't this more than offset by the increased CO2 flux to the atmosphere from the removal of this carbon sink? Besides, pg. 683 of the AR4 lists several papers that discuss the relatively insignificant impacts of LULC change at global scales.\nHave to agree with you and RPJr. that global-scale mitigation efforts are doomed for now - Jim knows my views on that rather well. :-)\nsylas (2009-11-26):\nUh, guys? Gavin\u0026#39;s comment \u0026quot;[Response: Not a single one. - gavin]\u0026quot; is specifically in relation to bug fixes or the like in his climate model programs. The skeptics kept demanding that for ages, long after it was all available for easy download. End result? Zip. I have no idea what Gavin would say of a more generally worded question about any useful comment from skeptics.\nLippard (2009-11-27):\nDuae: You\u0026#39;re right--thanks for pointing that out.\nJason (2009-11-27):\nWhich specific model does he say the skeptics were asking for code for? I remember many requests for the GISS Temp code (which was released, did receive fixes from skeptics, and, frankly, is a total mess).\nI'm not sure what skeptics would do with the code to a climate model. Since the main problem with the models is the input assumptions, I'm surprised anybody asked.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/climate-research-unit-email-scandal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHackers got access to a trove of private emails from the University of East Anglia\u0026rsquo;s Climate Research Unit that is being trumpeted by those who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming as proof of scandal.  I\u0026rsquo;ve looked through the data a bit myself\u0026ndash;you can find a searchable archive of the emails \u003ca href=\"http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. I suspect this collection of emails may end up being put to good research use \u003ca href=\"http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2006/02/05/search-the-enron-email-corpus-online/\"\u003eas the Enron email corpus was\u003c/a\u003e.  While I found a few embarrassing things, I found no evidence of outright data fabrication or fakery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe main email that has been cited as such evidence is an email from Phil Jones that says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.\u003c/blockquote\u003eGavin Schmidt at RealClimate \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/\"\u003eexplains\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/09/progress-in-millennial-reconstructions/\"\u003ethis paper\u003c/a\u003e) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in \u003cem\u003eNature\u003c/em\u003e in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn other words, \u0026ldquo;hiding\u0026rdquo; in this case is using temperature measurement records instead of tree rings as a proxy for temperature records for a period of time where the tree rings are known not to be an accurate proxy, for whatever reason.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s also claimed that these emails show a concerted effort to subvert the peer review process and stop publications by climate change skeptics, but most of those emails seem to center around an issue where the scandal was actually from the skeptics\u0026ndash;the publication of a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Research\u003c/span\u003e that was considered by 13 authors of papers cited to have misrepresented their work.  Subsequently, half of the editorial staff of the journal resigned in protest at what they saw as a failure of peer review, and the managing director of the journal\u0026rsquo;s parent company issued an apology (see \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon#Controversy_over_the_2003_Climate_Research_paper\"\u003eWikipedia\u0026rsquo;s summary\u003c/a\u003e).  The emails show that these scientists were upset by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Research\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s publication of bad science and encouraged protest and those resignations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few blog posts that seem to have good overviews of the issues:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eSkeptical Science, \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eReal Climate, \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The CRU Hack\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (followed by over 1,000 comments)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eReal Climate, \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The CRU Hack: Context\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (gives background on some of the issues, including the above \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Research\u003c/span\u003e issue).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGreenfyre\u0026rsquo;s, \u003ca href=\"http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/climate-deniers-hoax-themselves-again/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Climate change Deniers hoax themselves\u0026hellip; again.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMillard Fillmore\u0026rsquo;s Bathtub, \u003ca href=\"http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/smoking-guns-in-the-clr-stolen-e-mails-a-real-tale-of-real-ethics-in-science/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Smoking guns in the CRU stolen emails: A real tale of real ethics in science\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (what the CRU emails show about treatment of an erroneous climate science paper)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAn interesting comparison to past scientific controversy is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eCarbon Fixated, \u003ca href=\"http://carbonfixated.com/newtongate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-renaissance-and-enlightenment-thinking/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment \u0026rsquo;thinking\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAnd, to compare to the climate change skeptics:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eBishop Hill, \u003ca href=\"http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Climate cuttings 33\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (summary of the apparent worst issues)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEssex County Conservative Examiner, \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner%7Ey2009m11d19-Hadley-CRU-hacked-with-release-of-hundreds-of-docs-and-emails\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hadley [sic] CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eClimate Audit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7806\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CRU Correspondence\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWatt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u003ca href=\"http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mike\u0026rsquo;s Nature Trick\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWatt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u003ca href=\"http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/cru-emails-may-be-open-to-interpretation-but-commented-code-by-the-programmer-tells-the-real-story/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CRU Emails \u0026lsquo;may\u0026rsquo; be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWatt\u0026rsquo;s Up With That, \u003ca href=\"http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/21/spencer-on-elitism-in-the-ipcc-climate-machine/\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThe last of these posts, from Univ. of Alabama climate scientist and skeptic Roy W. Spencer, notes that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf all of this sounds incompatible with the process of scientific investigation, it shouldn’t. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has about science is that research is a straightforward process of making measurements, and then seeing whether the data support hypothesis A or B. The truth is that the interpretation of data is seldom that simple.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Climate Research Unit email scandal"},{"content":"Yesterday I heard Joel Garreau speak again at ASU, as part of a workshop on Plausibility put on by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). I previously posted a summary of his talk back in August on the future of cities. This talk was based on his book, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies\u0026ndash;and What It Means to Be Human.\nGarreau was introduced by Paul Berman, Dean of the Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law at ASU, who also announced that Garreau will be joining the law school faculty beginning this spring, as the Lincoln Professor for Law, Culture, and Values.\nHe began by saying that we\u0026rsquo;re at a turning point in history [has there ever been a time when we haven\u0026rsquo;t thought that, though?], and he\u0026rsquo;s going to present some possible scenarios for the next 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years, and that his book is a roadmap. The main feature of this turning point is that rather than transforming our environment, we\u0026rsquo;ll be increasingly transforming ourselves, and we\u0026rsquo;re the first species to take control of its own evolution, and it\u0026rsquo;s happening now.\nAt some point in the not-too-distant future, he said, your kid may come home from school in tears about how he can\u0026rsquo;t compete with the other kids who are more intelligent, more athletic, more attractive, more attentive, and so forth\u0026ndash;because you haven\u0026rsquo;t invested in the human enhancement technologies coming on the market. Your possible reactions will be to suck it up [somebody\u0026rsquo;s still gotta do the dirty jobs in society?], remortgage the house again to make your kid competitive, or try to get the enhanced kids thrown out of school. What you can\u0026rsquo;t do is ignore it.\nHe then asked people to raise their hands who could remember when things were still prevalent:\nThe Sony Walkman When computer screens were black and white. (An audience member said \"green and black!\") Rotary dial phones Mimeograph machines and the smell of their fluid Polio This shows, he said, that we're going through a period of exponential change.\nHis talk then had a small amount of overlap with his previous talk, in his explanation of Moore's Law--that we've had 32 doublings of computer firepower since 1959, so that $1 of computing power is about 2 billion times more than it was then, and an iPhone has more computing power than all of NORAD had in 1965. Such doublings change our expectations of the future, so that the last 20 years isn't a guide to the next 20, but to the next 8; the last 50 years is a guide to the next 14. He pulled out a handkerchief and said this is essentially the sort of display we'll have in the future for reading a book or newspaper.\nHe then followed Ray Kurzweil in presenting some data points to argue that exponential change has been going on since the beginning of life on earth (see P.Z. Myers' \"Singularly Silly Singularity\" for a critique):\nIt took 400 million years (My) to go from organisms to mammals, and\n150My to monkeys 30My to chimps 16My to bipedality 4My to cave paintings 10,000 years to first settlements 4,000 years to first writing At this point, culture comes into the picture, which causes even more rapid change (a point also made by Daniel Dennett in his talk at ASU last February).\n4,000 years to Roman empire 1800 years to industrial revolution 100 years to first flight 66 years to landing on the moon And now we're in the information age, which Garreau identified as a third kind of evolution, engineered or radical evolution, where we're in control. [It seems to me that such planned changes are subject to the limits of human minds, unless we can build either AI or enhancement technologies that improve our minds, and I think the evidence for that possibility really has yet to be demonstrated--I see it as possible, but I place no bets on its probability and think there are reasons for skepticism.]\nGarreau spent a year at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the organization that invented the Internet (then the ARPANet), which is now in the business of creating better humans, better war fighters. [DARPA was also a subject of yesterday's Law, Science, and Technology class. It's a highly funded organization that doesn't accept grant proposals, rather, it seeks out people that it thinks are qualified to give funding to for its projects. It has become rather more secretive as a result of embarrassment about its Total Information Awareness and terrorism futures ideas that got negative press in 2003.]\nVia DARPA, Garreau learned about their project at Duke University with an owl monkey named Belle, that he described as a monkey that can control physical objects at long distances with her mind. Belle was trained to play a video game with a joystick, initially for a juice reward and then because she enjoyed it. They then drilled a hole in her head and attached fine electrodes (single-unit recording electrodes like the sort used to discover mirror neurons), identified the active regions of her brain when she operated the joystick, and then disconnected the joystick. She became proficient and playing the game with the direct control of her brain. They then connected the system to a robotic arm at MIT which duplicated the movements of her arm with the joystick.\nWhy did they do this? Garreau said there's an official reason and a real reason. The official reason is that an F-35 jet fighter is difficult to control with a joystick, and wouldn't it be better to control it with your mind, and send information sensed by the equipment directly into the mind? The real reason is that the DARPA defense sciences office is run by Michael Goldblatt, whose daughter Gina Marie (who recently graduated from the University of Arizona) has cerebral palsy and is supposed to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. If machines can be controlled with the mind, machines in her legs could be controlled with her mind, and there's the possibility that she could walk.\nBelle first moved the robotic arm 9 years ago, Garreau said, and this Christmas you'll be able to buy the first toy mind-machine interface from Mattel at Walmart for about $100. It's just a cheap EEG device and not much of a game--it lets you levitate a ping pong ball with your mind--but there's obviously more to come.\nGarreau said that Matthew Nagel was the first person to send emails using his thoughts (back in 2006), and DARPA is interested in moving this technology out to people who want to control robots. [This, by the way, is the subject of the recent film \"Sleep Dealer,\" which postulates a future in which labor is outsourced to robots operated by Mexicans, so that they can do work in the U.S. without immigrating.]\nThis exposure to DARPA was how Garreau got interested in these topics, which he called the GRIN technologies--Genetics, Robotics, Information science, and Nanotechnology, which he identified as technologies enabled by Moore's Law.\nHe showed a slide of Barry Bonds, and said that steroids are sort of a primitive first-generation human enhancement, and noted that the first uses of human enhancement tend to occur in sports and the military, areas where you have the most competition.\nGarreau went over a few examples of each of the GRIN technologies that already exist or are likely on the way.\nGenetics\nDolly the cloned sheep. \"Manipulating and understanding life at the most primitive and basic level.\"\n\"Within three years, memory pills, originally aimed at Alzheimer's patients, will then move out to the needy well, like 78 million baby boomers who can't remember where they left their car, then out to the merely ambitious.\" He said there's already a $36.5 billion grey market for drugs like Ritalin and Provigil (midafonil), and asked, \"Are our elite schools already filling up with the enhanced?\" [There's some evidence, however, that the enhancement of cognitive function (as opposed to staying awake) is minimal for people who already operate at high ability, with the greatest enhancement effect for those who don't--i.e., it may have something of an egalitarian equalizing effect.]\nHe said DARPA is looking at ways to end the need for sleep--whales and dolphins don't sleep, or they'd drown, but they do something like sleeping with one half of the brain at a time.\nDARPA is also looking at ways to turn off hunger signals. Special forces troops burn 12,000 calories per day, but can't carry huge amounts of food. The body carries extra calories in fat that are ordinarily inaccessible unless you're starving, at which point they get burned. If that switch to start burning fat could be turned on and off at will, that could be handy for military use. He observed that DARPA says \"the civilian implications of this have not eluded us.\"\nSirtris Pharmaceuticals, started by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School, aims to have a drug to reverse aging based on resveratrol, an ingredient from grapes found in red wine. [Though Quackwatch offers some skepticism.]\nGarreau looks forward to cures for obesity and addiction. He mentioned Craig Venter's plan to create an organism that \"eats CO2 and poops gasoline\" by the end of this year, that will simultaneously \"end [the problems in] the Middle East and climate change.\" [That seems overly optimistic to me, but ExxonMobil has given Venter $600 million for this project.]\nHe said there are people at ASU in the hunt, trying to create life forms like this as well. [Though for some reason ASU doesn't participate in the iGEM synthetic biology competition.]\nRobotics\nGarreau showed a photo of a Predator drone, and said, \"Ten years ago, flying robots were science fiction, now it's the only game in town for the Air Force.\" He said this is the first year that more Air Force personnel were being trained to operate drones than to be pilots. 2002 was the first year that a robot killed a human being, when a Predator drone launched a Hellfire missile to kill al Qaeda members in an SUV in Yemen. He said, \"while there's still a human in the loop, philosophical discussions about homicidal robots could be seen as overly fine if you were one of the guys in the SUV.\"\n\"We're acquiring the superpowers of the 1930s comic book superheroes,\" he said, and went on to talk about a Berkeley exoskeleton that allows you to carry a 180-pound pack like it weighs four pounds, like Iron Man's suit. He asked the engineers who built it, \"Could you leap over a tall building in a single bound?\" They answered, \"yes, but landing is still a problem.\"\nFunctional MRI (fMRI) is being used at the University of Pennsylvania to try to determine when people are lying. Garreau: \"Then you're like the Shadow who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.\"\nCochlear implants to give hearing to people for whom hearing aids do nothing, connecting directly to the auditory nerve. Ocular implants to allow the blind to have some vision. Brain implants to improve memory and cognition. Garreau asked, \"If you could buy an implant that would allow you to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese, would you do it?\" About half the room raised their hands. [I didn't hear a price or safety information, so didn't raise my hand.]\nInformation\nHe showed a photo of a camera phone and said, \"Fifteen years ago, a machine like this that can fit in your pocket, with a camera, GPS, and MP3 player, and can send email, was science fiction. Now it's a bottom-of-the-line $30 Nokia.\"\nHe asked, \"Does anyone remember when music players were three big boxes that you put on your bookshelves? Now they're jewelry. Soon they'll be earrings, then implants.\"\nClose behind, he said, are universal translators. \"Google has pretty good universal translation on the web, and see it as moving out to their Droid phones.\" He observed that Sergey Brin was talking in 2004 about having all of the world's information directly attached to your brain, or having a version of Google on a chip implanted in your brain. [I won't get one unless they address network security issues...]\nNanotechnology\nGarreau said, \"Imagine anything you want, one atom or molecule at a time. Diamonds, molecularly accurate T-bone steaks.\" He said this is the least developed of the four GRIN technologies, \"so you can say anything you want about it, it might be true.\" It's estimated to become a $1 trillion/year market in the next 10 years. There may be nanobots you can inject into your bloodstream by the thousands to monitor for things about to go wrong [see this video for the scenario I think he's describing], hunter-killers that kill cancer cells. \"When you control matter at a fundamental level, you get a feedback loop between the [four] technologies.\"\nAt this point, Garreau said he's really not all that interested in the \"boys and their toys\" so much as he is the implications--\"where does this take culture and society and values?\" He presented three possible scenarios, emphasizing that he's not making predictions. He called his three scenarios Heaven, Hell, and Prevail.\nHeaven\nHe showed a chart of an exponential curve going up (presumably something like technological capacity on the y axis and time on the x axis).\nHe said that at the NIH Institute on Aging, there's a bet that the first person to live to 150 is already alive today. He mentioned Ray Kurzweil, said that he pops 250 pills a day and is convinced that he's immortal, and is \"not entirely nuts.\" [I am very skeptical that 250 pills a day is remotely sensible or useful.]\nFor the last 160 years, human life expectancy has increased at about 1/4 of a year every year. He asked us to imagine that that rate improves to one year per year, or more--at that point, \"if you have a good medical plan you're effectively immortal.\" [I questioned this in the Q\u0026amp;A, below.]\nHell\nHe showed a chart that was an x-axis mirror of the Heaven one, and described this as a case where technology \"gets into the hands of madmen or fools.\" He described the Australian mousepox incident, where researchers in Australia found a way to genetically alter mousepox so that it becomes 100% fatal, destroying the immune system, so that there's no possible vaccine or prevention. This was published in a paper available to anyone, and the same thing could be done to smallpox to wipe out human beings with no defense. He said the optimistic version is something that wipes out all human life; the pessimistic version is something that wipes out all life on earth. [In my law school class, we discussed this same topic yesterday in more detail, along with a similar U.S. paper that showed how to reconstruct the polio virus.]\nThe problem with both of these scenarios for Garreau is that they are both \"techno-deterministic,\" assuming that technology is in control and we're \"just along for the ride.\"\nPrevail\nHe showed a chart that showed a line going in a wacky, twisty pattern. The y-axis may have been technological capacity of some sort, but the x-axis in this case couldn't have been time, unless there's time travel involved.\nGarreau said, if you were in the Dark Ages, surrounding by marauding hordes and plagues, you'd think there wasn't a good future. But in 1450 came the printing press--\"a new way of storing, sharing, collecting, and distributing information,\" which led to the Renaissance, enlightenment, science, democracy, etc. [Some of those things were rediscoveries of advancements previously made, as Richard Carrier has pointed out. And the up-and-down of this chart and example of the Dark Ages seems to be in tension, if not in conflict, with his earlier exponential curve, though perhaps it's just a matter of scale. At the very least, however, they are reason to doubt continued growth in the short term, as is our current economic climate.]\nGarreau called the Prevail scenario more of a co-evolution scenario, where we face challenges hitting us in rapid succession, to which we quickly respond, which creates new challenges. He expressed skepticism of top-down organizations having any capacity to deal with such challenges, and instead suggested that bottom-up group behavior by humans not relying on leaders is where everything interesting will happen. He gave examples of eBay (\"100 million people doing complex things without leaders\"), YouTube (\"no leaders there\"), and Twitter (\"I have no idea what it's good for, but if it flips out the Iranian government, I'm for it.\") [These are all cases of bottom-up behavior facilitated by technologies that are operated by top-down corporations and subject to co-option by other top-down institutions in various ways. I'm not sure how good the YouTube example is considering that it is less profitable per dollar spent than Hulu--while some amateur content bubbles to the top and goes viral, there still seems to be more willingness to pay for professional content. Though it does get cheaper to produce professional content and there are amateurs that produce professional-quality content. And I'll probably offer to help him \"get\" Twitter.]\nThe Prevail scenario, he said, is \"a bet on humans being surprising, coming together in unpredicted ways and being unpredictably clever.\"\nHe ended by asking, \"Why have we been looking for intelligent life in the universe for decades with no success? I wonder if every intelligent species gets to the point where they start controlling their own destiny and what it means to be as good as they can get. What if everybody else has flunked. Let's not flunk. Thanks.\"\nQ\u0026amp;A\nI asked the first question, which was whether there is really so much grounds for optimism on extending human lifespan when our gains have increased the median lifespan but not made recent progress on the top end--the oldest woman in the world, Jeanne Calment, died at 122 in 1997 and no one else has reached that age. He answered that this was correct, that past improvements have come from nutrition, sanitation, reducing infant mortality, and so forth, but now that we spent $15 billion to sequence the first human genome and the cost of sequencing a complete human genome is approaching $1,000 and personalized medicine is coming along, he suspects we'll find the causes of aging and have the ability to reverse it through genetic engineering.\nProf. David Guston of CSPO asked \"What's the relation between your Prevail scenario and the distribution of the success of the good stuff from GRIN technologies?\" Looking at subgroups like males in post-Soviet Russia and adults in Africa, he said, things seem to be going in the wrong direction. Garreau answered that this is one of the nightmare scenarios--that humans split into multiple species, such as enhanced, naturals, and the rest. The enhanced are those that keep upgrading every six months. The naturals are those with access to enhancements that \"choose not to indulge, like today's vegetarians who are so because of ethical or aesthetic reasons.\" The rest are those who don't have access to enhancements, and have envy for and despise those who do. \"When you have more than one species competing for the same ecological niche,\" he said, \"that ends up badly for somebody.\" But, he said, that's assuming a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer belief, \"a hallmark of the industrial age.\" Suppose that instead of distributing scarcity, we are distributing abundance. He said that transplanted hearts haven't become cheap because they aren't abundant, but if we can create new organs in the body or in the lab in a manner that would benefit from mass production, it could become cheap. He pointed out that cell phones represent \"the fastest update of technology in human history,\" going from zero to one phone for every two people in 26 years, and adapted to new uses in the developing world faster than in the developed world. He brought up the possibility of the developing world \"leapfrogging\" the developed world, \"the way Europeans leapfrogged the Arab world a thousand years ago, when they were the leaders in science, math, and everything else.\" [I think this is a very interesting possibility--the lack of sunk costs in existing out-of-date infrastructure, the lack of stable, firmly established institutions are, I think, likely to make the developing world a chaotic experimental laboratory for emerging technologies.]\nProf. Gary Marchant of the Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Technology then said, \"I'm worried about the bottom-up--it also gave us witch trials, Girls Gone Wild, and the Teabaggers.\" Garreau said his Prevail scenario shows \"a shocking faith in human nature--a belief in millions of small miracles,\" but again said \"I'm not predicting it, but I'm rooting for it.\"\nProf. Farzad Mahootian and Prof. Cynthia Selin of CSPO asked a pair of related questions about work on public deliberations and trying to extend decision-making to broader audiences, asking what Garreau thought about \"DARPA driving this or being porous to any kind of public deliberation or extended decision-making?\" Garreau responded that \"The last thing in the world that I want to do is leave this up to DARPA. The Hell scenario could happen. Top-down hierarchical decision-making is too slow. Anyone waiting for the chairman of the House finance committe to save us is pathetic. Humans in general have been pulling ashes out of the fire by the skin of their teeth for quite a while; and Americans in particular have been at the forefront of change for 400 years and have cultural optimism about change.\" [I think these questions seemed to presuppose top-down thinking in a way that Garreau is challenging.]\nHe said he had reported a few years ago about the maquiladoras in Mexico and called it a \"revolution,\" to which he got responses from Mexicans saying, \"we're not very fond of revolutions, it was very messy and we didn't like it,\" and asking him to use a different word. By contrast, he said, \"Americans view revolutions fondly, and think they're cool, and look forward to it.\" [Though there's also a strange conservatism that looks fondly upon a nonexistent ideal past here, as well.] With respect to governance, he said he's interested in looking for alternate forms of governance because \"Washington D.C. can't conceivably respond fast enough. We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.\" [Quoting the 'Smokey and the Bandit' theme song.]\nHe went on to say, \"I don't necessarily think that all wisdom is based here in America. Other places will come up with dramatically different governance.\" He talked about the possibility of India, which wants to get cheaper drugs out to the masses, taking an approach different from FDA-style regulation (he called the FDA \"a hopelessly dysfunctional organization that takes forever to produce abysmal results\"). \"Let's say the people of India were willing to accept a few casualties to produce a faster, better, cheaper cure for malaria, on the Microsoft model--get a 'good enough' version, send it out and see how many computers die. Suppose you did that with drugs, and were willing to accept 10,000 or 100,000 casualties if the payoff was curing malaria once and for all among a billion people. That would be an interesting development.\" By contrast, he said, \"The French are convinced they can do it the opposite way, with top-down governance. Glad to see somebody's trying that. I'll be amazed if it works.\" His view, he said, was \"try everything, see what sticks, and fast.\" [This has historically been the intent of the U.S. federal system, to allow the individual states to experiment with different rules to see what works before or in lieu of federal rules. Large corporations that operate across states, however, which have extensive lobbying power, push for federal regulations to pre-empt state rules, so that they don't have to deal with the complexity.]\nThere were a few more questions, one of which was whether anyone besides DARPA was doing things like this. Garreau said certainly, and pointed to both conventional pharmaceutical companies and startups working to try to cure addiction and obesity, as well as do memory enhancement, like Eric Kandel's Memory Pharmaceuticals. He talked about an Israeli company that has built a robotic arm which provides touch feedback, with the goal of being able to replace whatever functionality someone has lost, including abilities like throwing a Major League fastball or playing the piano professionally.\nProf. Selin reported a conversation she had with people at the law school about enhancement and whether it would affect application procedures. They indicated that it wouldn't, that enhancement was no different to them than giving piano lessons to children or their having the benefit of a good upbringing. Garreau commented that his latest client is the NFL, and observed that body building has already divided into two leagues, the tested and the untested. The tested have to be free of drugs, untested is anything goes. He asked, \"can you imagine this bifurcation in other sports? How far back do you want to back out technology to get to 'natural'? Imagine a shoeless football league.\" He noted that one person suggested that football minus technology is rugby. [This reminded me of the old Saturday Night Live skit about the \"All Drug Olympics.\"]\nAll-in-all, it was an interesting talk that had some overlap with things that I'm very interested in pursuing in my program, especially regarding top-down vs. bottom-up organizational structures. Afterward, I spoke briefly with Garreau about how bottom-up skeptical organizations are proliferating and top-down skeptical organizations are trying to capitalize on it, and I wondered to what extent the new creations of bottom-up organizations tend to get co-opted and controlled by top-down organizations in the end. In that regard, I also talked to him a bit about Robert Neuwirth's work on \"shadow cities\" and the Kowloon Walled City, where new forms of regulatory order arise in jurisdictional no-man's-lands (I could also have mentioned pirate codes). Those cases fall between the cracks for geographical reasons, while the cases that are occurring with regard to GRIN technologies fall between the cracks for temporal reasons, but it seems to me there's still the possibility of the old-style institutions to catch up and take control.\nUPDATE: As a postscript, I recently listened to the episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast on human enhancement with philosopher Allen Buchanan, who was at the University of Arizona when I went to grad school there. Good stuff. Joshua (2009-11-19):\nI\u0026#39;d be very curious what he meant by Dark Ages and what time period he is talking about specifically. By most uses of that term, 1450 is well past the end of the Dark Age. The term is actually coined in the 1300s by Petrarch. IIRC he seems to see it as ending or have ended. If there was an actual Dark Age it would have been from about 600 or 700 or so around 1100 at most. That puts the printing press 350 years after the end of the Dark Ages.\nLippard (2009-11-19):\nJoshua: I don\u0026#39;t think he meant that 1450 was in or immediately succeeded the Dark Ages, only that the Dark Ages was a time prior to the invention of the printing press when future progress didn\u0026#39;t appear likely. Since he specifically mentioned the plague, he was no doubt referring to the 14th century, the era of the Decameron.\nc2 (2009-12-10):\nThanks for that great synopsis. Now I don\u0026#39;t have to read the book!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/joel-garreau-on-radical-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I heard Joel Garreau speak again at ASU, as part of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cspo.org/projects/plausibility/seminars.htm\"\u003ea workshop on Plausibility put on by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes\u003c/a\u003e (CSPO).  I previously posted\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/joel-garreau-on-future-of-cities.html\"\u003e a summary of his talk back in August on the future of cities\u003c/a\u003e.  This talk was based on his book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRadical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies\u0026ndash;and What It Means to Be Human\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nGarreau was introduced by Paul Berman, Dean of the Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law at ASU, who also announced that Garreau will be joining the law school faculty beginning this spring, as the Lincoln Professor for Law, Culture, and Values.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe began by saying that we\u0026rsquo;re at a turning point in history [has there ever been a time when we haven\u0026rsquo;t thought that, though?], and he\u0026rsquo;s going to present some possible scenarios for the next 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years, and that his book is a roadmap.  The main feature of this turning point is that rather than transforming our environment, we\u0026rsquo;ll be increasingly transforming ourselves, and we\u0026rsquo;re the first species to take control of its own evolution, and it\u0026rsquo;s happening now.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt some point in the not-too-distant future, he said, your kid may come home from school in tears about how he can\u0026rsquo;t compete with the other kids who are more intelligent, more athletic, more attractive, more attentive, and so forth\u0026ndash;because you haven\u0026rsquo;t invested in the human enhancement technologies coming on the market.  Your possible reactions will be to suck it up [somebody\u0026rsquo;s still gotta do the dirty jobs in society?], remortgage the house again to make your kid competitive, or try to get the enhanced kids thrown out of school.  What you can\u0026rsquo;t do is ignore it.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe then asked people to raise their hands who could remember when things were still prevalent:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Joel Garreau on radical evolution"},{"content":"Personal possession of any drug decriminalized: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Czech Republic, Baltic states, some German states and Swiss cantons, Mexico.\nPartial decriminalization/minimal criminal prosecution: England, Denmark, Slovakia, Latvia, Croatia, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, Netherlands (see chart in the Economist story linked below\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that the Netherlands has the highest percentage of prison outcomes on this list)\nUnconstitutional to prosecute people for drug possession (any drug) per Supreme Court ruling: Argentina, Colombia\nMarijuana decriminalized: 14 U.S. states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon)\nStates with some localities that have decriminalized marijuana: Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Washington, Wisconsin\nConsidering marijuana legalization: California, Massachusetts, possibly Oregon\nConsidering decriminalization (any drug): Brazil, Ecuador\nSource: The Economist, \u0026ldquo;Virtually legal,\u0026quot; November 14, 2009; state decriminalization details from Wikipedia.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/state-of-world-on-drug.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePersonal possession of any drug decriminalized:  Spain, Portugal, Italy, Czech Republic, Baltic states, some German states and Swiss cantons, Mexico.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePartial decriminalization/minimal criminal prosecution: England, Denmark, Slovakia, Latvia, Croatia, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, Netherlands (see chart in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEconomist\u003c/span\u003e story linked below\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that the Netherlands has the highest percentage of prison outcomes on this list)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnconstitutional to prosecute people for drug possession (any drug) per Supreme Court ruling: Argentina, Colombia\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMarijuana decriminalized: 14 U.S. states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStates with some localities that have decriminalized marijuana: Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Washington, Wisconsin\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConsidering marijuana legalization: California, Massachusetts, possibly Oregon\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConsidering decriminalization (any drug): Brazil, Ecuador\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSource: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14845095\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Virtually legal,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 14, 2009; state decriminalization details from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_that_have_decriminalized_non-medical_cannabis_in_the_United_States\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"State of the world on drug decriminalization"},{"content":"Although when it comes to other people\u0026rsquo;s works, William Dembski hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen a problem with taking copyrighted material and using it wholesale, dubbing over a computer animated video from Harvard and XVIVO of the inner workings of a cell with his own intelligent design-based commentary, when it comes to his own work he has a different standard.\nMark Chu-Carroll points out at his Good Math, Bad Math blog that Dembski is talking about using threats of claimed copyright infringement to shut down criticism of a recent paper he published with Robert Marks. That criticism includes pointing out that sources cited by Dembski don\u0026rsquo;t say what he says they do, and providing counterexamples to Dembski\u0026rsquo;s mathematical claims. Rather than respond to the criticism, Dembski would rather shut it down.\nThere are just a few problems with that\u0026ndash;first, the criticism may well be fair use. Although it does quote a great deal of the paper by Dembski and Marks, it does so for the purpose of putting commentary and criticism side-by-side with quotations from the paper. Second, papers published by the IEEE require that copyright be transferred to the IEEE, so Dembski lacks standing even if there were infringement.\nCheck out the RationalWiki critique of the Dembski and Marks paper.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/william-dembski-would-like-to-use.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough when it comes to other people\u0026rsquo;s works, William Dembski hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen a problem with taking copyrighted material and using it wholesale, \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/dembski-knew-he-was-infringing.html\"\u003edubbing over a computer animated video from Harvard and XVIVO of the inner workings of a cell with his own intelligent design-based commentary\u003c/a\u003e, when it comes to his own work he has a different standard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMark Chu-Carroll \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/11/dembski_stoops_even_lower_lega.php\"\u003epoints out at his Good Math, Bad Math blog that Dembski is talking about using threats of claimed copyright infringement to shut down criticism of a recent paper he published with Robert Marks\u003c/a\u003e.  \u003ca href=\"http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/The_Search_for_a_Search_-_Measuring_the_Information_Cost_of_Higher_Level_Search\"\u003eThat criticism\u003c/a\u003e includes pointing out that sources cited by Dembski don\u0026rsquo;t say what he says they do, and providing counterexamples to Dembski\u0026rsquo;s mathematical claims.  Rather than respond to the criticism, Dembski would rather shut it down.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are just a few problems with that\u0026ndash;first, the criticism may well be fair use.  Although it does quote a great deal of the paper by Dembski and Marks, it does so for the purpose of putting commentary and criticism side-by-side with quotations from the paper.  Second, papers published by the IEEE require that copyright be transferred to the IEEE, so Dembski lacks standing even if there were infringement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/The_Search_for_a_Search_-_Measuring_the_Information_Cost_of_Higher_Level_Search\"\u003ethe RationalWiki critique of the Dembski and Marks paper\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"William Dembski would like to use copyright to quash criticism"},{"content":"Daniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk from the 2009 Atheist Alliance International convention (link is to my summary) is now online:\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/daniel-dennett-evolution-of-confusion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk from \u003ca href=\"/2009/10/atheist-alliance-international.html\"\u003ethe 2009 Atheist Alliance International convention\u003c/a\u003e (link is to my summary) is now online:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/D_9w8JougLQ\u0026amp;hl=en_US\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/D_9w8JougLQ\u0026amp;hl=en_US\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daniel Dennett, The Evolution of Confusion"},{"content":"Richard Carrier, an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Columbia University, gave a talk this morning to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix titled \u0026ldquo;Christianity and Science (Ancient and Modern).\u0026rdquo; He argued that there was a creation/evolution debate in ancient Rome that had interesting similarities and differences to the current creation/evolution debate.\nHe began with Michael Behe and a short description of his irreducibly complexity argument regarding the bacterial flagellum\u0026ndash;that since it fails to function if any piece is removed, and it\u0026rsquo;s too complex to have originated by evolution in a single step, it must have been intelligently designed and created. He observed that 2,000 years ago, Galen made the same argument about the human hand and other aspects of human and animal anatomy. Galen wrote that \u0026ldquo;the mark of intelligent design is clear in those works in which the removal of any small component brings about the ruin of the whole.\u0026quot;\nBehe, Carrier said, hasn\u0026rsquo;t done what you\u0026rsquo;d expect a scientist to do with respect to his theory. He hasn\u0026rsquo;t looked at the genes that code the flagellum and tried to identify correlate genes in other microbes, for example.\nIn the ancient context, the debate was between those who argued for natural selection on random arrangements of features that were spontaneously generated, such as Anaxagoras and atomists like Democritus and Epicurus, vs. those who argued for some kind of intelligent design, like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Galen. Carrier set the stage by describing a particular debate about the function of the kidneys between Asclepiades and Galen. Asclepiades thought that the kidneys were either superfluous, with urine forming directly in the bladder, or was an accidental sieve. Galen set out to test this with a public experiment on an anesthetized pig, which had been given water prior to the operation. He opened up the pig, ligated (tied knots in) its ureters, and they started to balloon and the bladder stayed empty. Squeezing the ureter failed to reverse the flow back into the kidney. When one ureter was cut, urine came out. Thus, Galen demonstrated that the kidneys extract urine from the blood and it is transported to the bladder by the ureters. The failure of the flow to operate in reverse showed that the kidneys were not simple sieves, but operated by some power that only allowed it to function in one direction. This, argued Galen, was demonstration of something too complex to have arisen by chance, and refuted the specific claims of Asclepiades.\nGalen\u0026rsquo;s 14-volume De Usu Portium (On the Usefulness of Parts) made similar arguments for intelligent design about all aspects of human anatomy\u0026ndash;the nerve transport system, biomechanics of arm, hand, and leg movement, the precision of the vocal system, etc. He also asked questions like \u0026ldquo;How does a fetus know how to build itself?\u0026rdquo; He allowed for the possibility of some kind of tiny instructions present in the \u0026ldquo;seed,\u0026rdquo; on analogy with a mechanical puppet theater, programmed with an arrangement of cogs, wheels, and ropes.\nGalen also investigated the question of why eyebrows and eyelashes grow to a fixed length and no longer, and found that they grow from a piece of cartilage, the tarsal plate. He concluded that while his evidence required an intelligent designer, they entailed that God is limited and uses only available materials. Galen, a pagan, contrasted his view with that of Christians. For Christians, a pile of ashes could become a horse, because God could will anything to be the case. But for Galen, the evidence supported a God subject to the laws of physics, who was invisibly present but physically interacting to make things happen, and that God realizes the best possible world within constraints.\nWhich intelligent design theory better explains facts like the growth of horses from fetuses, the fact that fetuses sometimes come out wrong, and why we have complex bodies at all, rather than just willing things into existence via magic? If God can do anything, why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t he just make us as \u0026ldquo;simple homogenous soul bodies that realize functions by direct will\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;expedient polymorphism,\u0026rdquo; to use Carrier\u0026rsquo;s term)?\nThe difference between Galen\u0026rsquo;s views and those of the Christians was that Galen thought of theology as a scientific theory that had to be adjusted according to facts, that facts about God are inferred from observations, and those facts entail either divine malice or a limited divinity. What we know about evolution today places even more limits on viable theories of divinity than in Galen\u0026rsquo;s time. (Carrier gave a brief overview of evolution and in particular a very brief account of the evolution of the bacterial flagellum.)\nGalen\u0026rsquo;s views allowed him to investigate, conduct experiments to test the theories of his opponents as well as his own, and make contributions to human knowledge. He supported the scientific values of curiosity as a moral good, empiricism as the primary mode of discovery, and progress as both possible and valuable, while Christianity denigrated or opposes these. The views of early church fathers were such that once Christianity gained power, it not only put a halt to scientific progress, it caused significant losses of knowledge that had already been accumulated. (Carrier later gave many examples.)\nTertullian, a contemporary of Galen, asked, \u0026ldquo;What concern have I with the conceits of natural science?\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Better not to know what God has not revealed than to know it from man.\u0026quot;\nThales, from the 6th century B.C., was revered by pagans as the first natural scientist\u0026ndash;he discovered the natural causes of eclipses, explained the universe as a system of natural causes, performed observations and developed geometry, made inquiries into useful methods, and subordinated theology to science. There was a story that he was so focused on studying the stars that he fell into a well. Tertullian wrote of this event that Thales had a \u0026ldquo;vain purpose\u0026rdquo; and that his fall into the well prefigured his fall into hell.\nLactantius, an early Christian writer and tutor of Constantine the Great, denied that the earth was round (as part of a minority faction of Christians at the time), said that only knowledge of good and evil is worthwhile, and argued that \u0026ldquo;natural science is superfluous, useless, and inane.\u0026rdquo; This despite overwhelming evidence already accumulated of a round earth (lighthouses sinking below the horizon as seen from ships sailing away, astronomical observations of lunar eclipses starting at different times in different locations, the fact that different stars are visible at different latitudes, and the shadow of the earth on the moon), which Lactantius simply was uninterested in.\nEusebius, the first historian of the Christian church, said that all are agreed that only scriptural knowledge is worthwhile, anything contrary to scripture is false, and pursuing scientific explanations is to risk damnation. Armchair speculation in support of scripture, however, is good.\nAmid factors such as the failure of the pagan system, civil wars in the Roman empire, and a great economic depression, Christianity came to a position of dominance and scientific research came to a halt from about the 4th century to the 12th-14th centuries.\nCarrier compared these Christian views to specific displays at the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky, which compared \u0026ldquo;human reason\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rsquo;s word.\u0026rdquo; One contrasted Rene Descartes saying \u0026ldquo;I think therefore I am\u0026rdquo; to God saying \u0026ldquo;I am that I am.\u0026rdquo; Galen wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have put those into opposition with each other.\nAnother display labeled \u0026ldquo;The First Attack\u0026ndash;Question God\u0026rsquo;s Word\u0026rdquo; told the story of Satan tempting Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which highlights the \u0026ldquo;questioning\u0026rdquo; of Satan for criticism, and argues that putting reason first is Satanic.\nAnother diagram comparing \u0026ldquo;human reason\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rsquo;s Word\u0026rdquo; showed evolution as a 14-billion-year winding snake-like shape, compared to the short and straight arrow of a 6,000-year creation.\nCarrier noted, \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be that way. Galen\u0026rsquo;s faith didn\u0026rsquo;t condemn fundamental scientific values; Galen\u0026rsquo;s creationism was science-based.\u0026quot;\nHe then gave numerous examples of knowledge lost or ignored by Christianity\u0026ndash;that Eratosthenes had calculated the size of the earth (a case described in Carl Sagan\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cosmos\u0026rdquo; series), Ptolemy\u0026rsquo;s projection cartography and system of latitude and longitude, developments in optics, hydrostatics, medicine, harmonics and acoustics, pneumatics, tidal theory, cometary theory, the precession of the stars, mathematics, robotics (cuckoo clocks, coin-operated vending machines for holy water and soap dispensing), machinery (water mills, water-powered saws and hammers, a bread-kneading machine), and so on. He described the Antikythera mechanism, an analog computer similar to WWI artillery computers, which was referred to in various ancient texts but had been dismissed by historians as impossible until this instance was actually found in 1900.\nAnother example was the Archimedes Codex, where Christians scraped the ink from the text and wrote hymns on it, and threw the rest away. The underlying writing has now been partially recovered thanks to modern technology, revealing that Archimedes performed remarkably advanced calculations about areas, volumes, and centers of gravity.\nCarrier has a forthcoming book on the subject of this ancient science, called The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire.\nA few interesting questions came up in the Q\u0026amp;A. The first question was about why early Christians didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything about abortion. Carrier said it probably just wasn\u0026rsquo;t on the radar, though abortion technology already existed in the form of mechanical devices for performing abortions and abortifacients. He also observed that the ancients knew the importance of cleanliness and antiseptics in medicine, while Jesus said that washing before you eat is a pointless ritual (Mark 7:1-20). Carrier asked, if Jesus was God, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t he have known about the germ theory of disease?\nAnother question was whether Christianity was really solely responsible for 1,000 years of stangnation. Carrier pointed out that there was a difference between Byzantine and Western Christianity, with the former preserving works like those of Ptolemy without condemning them, but without building upon them. He said there are unerlying cultural, social, and historical factors that explain the differences, so it\u0026rsquo;s not just the religion. He also pointed out that there was a lost sect of Christianity that was pro-science, but we have nothing of what they wrote, only references to them by Tertullian, criticizing them for supporting Thales, Galen, and so forth.\nAnother questioner asked how he accounts for cases of Christians who have contributed to science, such as Kepler, Boyle, Newton, and Bacon. Carrier said \u0026ldquo;Not all Christians have to be that way\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s no intrinsic reason Christianity has to be that way.\u0026rdquo; But, he said, if you put fact before authority, scripture will likely end up not impressing you, being contradicted by evidence you find, and unless you completely retool Christianity, you\u0026rsquo;ll likely abandon it. Opposition to scientific values is necessary to preserve Christianity as it is; putting weight on authority and scripture leads to the anti-science position as a method of preservation of the dogma.\nIt was a wonderfully interesting and wide-ranging talk. He covered a lot more specifics than I\u0026rsquo;ve described here. If you find that Carrier is giving a talk in your area, I highly recommend that you go hear him speak.\nYou can find more information about Richard Carrier at his web site.\nHistorical Comments Ken (2009-11-08):\nI am looking forward to his new book. Unfortunately it isn\u0026#39;t yet listed anywhere so I have no idea of planned publication dates. His message is very necessary\nnolandda (2009-11-09):\nMr. Carrier gave a very similar talk at a CFI-Indiana sponsored Darwin Day celebration recently. I thought it was the best presentation of the day.\nDave (2009-11-11):\nJim, When I dropped Carrier off at the airport, I asked him when his Ancient Science book would be out. He indicated that it was no earlier than early 2010, and I surmise it will be no earlier than Summer of 2010. He was enthusiastic about returning to Phoenix once the book is published, probably late in 2010 (once the weather gets below 85).\nDrDave\nAnonymous (2009-12-09):\nVery interesting this talk of carrier, surely opens your mind on scientific issues related to the history of religion. Who does not like to question religions\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/richard-carrier-on-ancient.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Carrier, an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Columbia University, gave a talk this morning to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix titled \u0026ldquo;Christianity and Science (Ancient and Modern).\u0026rdquo;  He argued that there was a creation/evolution debate in ancient Rome that had interesting similarities and differences to the current creation/evolution debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began with Michael Behe and a short description of his irreducibly complexity argument regarding the bacterial flagellum\u0026ndash;that since it fails to function if any piece is removed, and it\u0026rsquo;s too complex to have originated by evolution in a single step, it must have been intelligently designed and created.  He observed that 2,000 years ago, Galen made the same argument about the human hand and other aspects of human and animal anatomy.  Galen wrote that \u0026ldquo;the mark of intelligent design is clear in those works in which the removal of any small component brings about the ruin of the whole.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBehe, Carrier said, hasn\u0026rsquo;t done what you\u0026rsquo;d expect a scientist to do with respect to his theory.  He hasn\u0026rsquo;t looked at the genes that code the flagellum and tried to identify correlate genes in other microbes, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the ancient context, the debate was between those who argued for natural selection on random arrangements of features that were spontaneously generated, such as Anaxagoras and atomists like Democritus and Epicurus, vs. those who argued for some kind of intelligent design, like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Galen.  Carrier set the stage by describing a particular debate about the function of the kidneys between Asclepiades and Galen.  Asclepiades thought that the kidneys were either superfluous, with urine forming directly in the bladder, or was an accidental sieve.  Galen set out to test this with a public experiment on an anesthetized pig, which had been given water prior to the operation.  He opened up the pig, ligated (tied knots in) its ureters, and they started to balloon and the bladder stayed empty.  Squeezing the ureter failed to reverse the flow back into the kidney.  When one ureter was cut, urine came out.  Thus, Galen demonstrated that the kidneys extract urine from the blood and it is transported to the bladder by the ureters.  The failure of the flow to operate in reverse showed that the kidneys were not simple sieves, but operated by some power that only allowed it to function in one direction.  This, argued Galen, was demonstration of something too complex to have arisen by chance, and refuted the specific claims of Asclepiades.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGalen\u0026rsquo;s 14-volume \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDe Usu Portium\u003c/span\u003e (On the Usefulness of Parts) made similar arguments for intelligent design about all aspects of human anatomy\u0026ndash;the nerve transport system, biomechanics of arm, hand, and leg movement, the precision of the vocal system, etc.  He also asked questions like \u0026ldquo;How does a fetus know how to build itself?\u0026rdquo;  He allowed for the possibility of some kind of tiny instructions present in the \u0026ldquo;seed,\u0026rdquo; on analogy with a mechanical puppet theater, programmed with an arrangement of cogs, wheels, and ropes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGalen also investigated the question of why eyebrows and eyelashes grow to a fixed length and no longer, and found that they grow from a piece of cartilage, the tarsal plate.  He concluded that while his evidence required an intelligent designer, they entailed that God is limited and uses only available materials.  Galen, a pagan, contrasted his view with that of Christians.  For Christians, a pile of ashes could become a horse, because God could will anything to be the case.  But for Galen, the evidence supported a God subject to the laws of physics, who was invisibly present but physically interacting to make things happen, and that God realizes the best possible world within constraints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhich intelligent design theory better explains facts like the growth of horses from fetuses, the fact that fetuses sometimes come out wrong, and why we have complex bodies at all, rather than just willing things into existence via magic?  If God can do anything, why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t he just make us as \u0026ldquo;simple homogenous soul bodies that realize functions by direct will\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;expedient polymorphism,\u0026rdquo; to use Carrier\u0026rsquo;s term)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe difference between Galen\u0026rsquo;s views and those of the Christians was that Galen thought of theology as a scientific theory that had to be adjusted according to facts, that facts about God are inferred from observations, and those facts entail either divine malice or a limited divinity.  What we know about evolution today places even more limits on viable theories of divinity than in Galen\u0026rsquo;s time.  (Carrier gave a brief overview of evolution and in particular a very brief account of \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html\"\u003ethe evolution of the bacterial flagellum\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGalen\u0026rsquo;s views allowed him to investigate, conduct experiments to test the theories of his opponents as well as his own, and make contributions to human knowledge. He supported the scientific values of curiosity as a moral good, empiricism as the primary mode of discovery, and progress as both possible and valuable, while Christianity denigrated or opposes these.  The views of early church fathers were such that once Christianity gained power, it not only put a halt to scientific progress, it caused significant losses of knowledge that had already been accumulated.  (Carrier later gave many examples.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTertullian, a contemporary of Galen, asked, \u0026ldquo;What concern have I with the conceits of natural science?\u0026rdquo;  and \u0026ldquo;Better not to know what God has not revealed than to know it from man.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThales, from the 6th century B.C., was revered by pagans as the first natural scientist\u0026ndash;he discovered the natural causes of eclipses, explained the universe as a system of natural causes, performed observations and developed geometry, made inquiries into useful methods, and subordinated theology to science.  There was a story that he was so focused on studying the stars that he fell into a well.  Tertullian wrote of this event that Thales had a \u0026ldquo;vain purpose\u0026rdquo; and that his fall into the well prefigured his fall into hell.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLactantius, an early Christian writer and tutor of Constantine the Great, denied that the earth was round (as part of a minority faction of Christians at the time), said that only knowledge of good and evil is worthwhile, and argued that \u0026ldquo;natural science is superfluous, useless, and inane.\u0026rdquo;  This despite overwhelming evidence already accumulated of a round earth (lighthouses sinking below the horizon as seen from ships sailing away, astronomical observations of lunar eclipses starting at different times in different locations, the fact that different stars are visible at different latitudes, and the shadow of the earth on the moon), which Lactantius simply was uninterested in.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEusebius, the first historian of the Christian church, said that all are agreed that only scriptural knowledge is worthwhile, anything contrary to scripture is false, and pursuing scientific explanations is to risk damnation.  Armchair speculation in support of scripture, however, is good.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAmid factors such as the failure of the pagan system, civil wars in the Roman empire, and a great economic depression, Christianity came to a position of dominance and scientific research came to a halt from about the 4th century to the 12th-14th centuries.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarrier compared these Christian views to specific displays at the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky, which compared \u0026ldquo;human reason\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rsquo;s word.\u0026rdquo;  One contrasted Rene Descartes saying \u0026ldquo;I think therefore I am\u0026rdquo; to God saying \u0026ldquo;I am that I am.\u0026rdquo;  Galen wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have put those into opposition with each other.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother display labeled \u0026ldquo;The First Attack\u0026ndash;Question God\u0026rsquo;s Word\u0026rdquo; told the story of Satan tempting Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which highlights the \u0026ldquo;questioning\u0026rdquo; of Satan for criticism, and argues that putting reason first is Satanic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother diagram comparing \u0026ldquo;human reason\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rsquo;s Word\u0026rdquo; showed evolution as a 14-billion-year winding snake-like shape, compared to the short and straight arrow of a 6,000-year creation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarrier noted, \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be that way.  Galen\u0026rsquo;s faith didn\u0026rsquo;t condemn fundamental scientific values; Galen\u0026rsquo;s creationism was science-based.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then gave numerous examples of knowledge lost or ignored by Christianity\u0026ndash;that Eratosthenes had calculated the size of the earth (a case described in Carl Sagan\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cosmos\u0026rdquo; series), Ptolemy\u0026rsquo;s projection cartography and system of latitude and longitude, developments in optics, hydrostatics, medicine, harmonics and acoustics, pneumatics, tidal theory, cometary theory, the precession of the stars, mathematics, robotics (cuckoo clocks, coin-operated vending machines for holy water and soap dispensing), machinery (water mills, water-powered saws and hammers, a bread-kneading machine), and so on.  He described \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism\"\u003ethe Antikythera mechanism\u003c/a\u003e, an analog computer similar to WWI artillery computers, which was referred to in various ancient texts but had been dismissed by historians as impossible until this instance was actually found in 1900.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother example was \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest\"\u003ethe Archimedes Codex\u003c/a\u003e, where Christians scraped the ink from the text and wrote hymns on it, and threw the rest away.  The underlying writing has now been partially recovered thanks to modern technology, revealing that Archimedes performed remarkably advanced calculations about areas, volumes, and centers of gravity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarrier has a forthcoming book on the subject of this ancient science, called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Scientist in the Early Roman Empire\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few interesting questions came up in the Q\u0026amp;A.  The first question was about why early Christians didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything about abortion.  Carrier said it probably just wasn\u0026rsquo;t on the radar, though abortion technology already existed in the form of mechanical devices for performing abortions and abortifacients.  He also observed that the ancients knew the importance of cleanliness and antiseptics in medicine, while Jesus said that washing before you eat is a pointless ritual (Mark 7:1-20).  Carrier asked, if Jesus was God, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t he have known about the germ theory of disease?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother question was whether Christianity was really solely responsible for 1,000 years of stangnation.  Carrier pointed out that there was a difference between Byzantine and Western Christianity, with the former preserving works like those of Ptolemy without condemning them, but without building upon them.  He said there are unerlying cultural, social, and historical factors that explain the differences, so it\u0026rsquo;s not just the religion.  He also pointed out that there was a lost sect of Christianity that was pro-science, but we have nothing of what they wrote, only references to them by Tertullian, criticizing them for supporting Thales, Galen, and so forth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked how he accounts for cases of Christians who have contributed to science, such as Kepler, Boyle, Newton, and Bacon.  Carrier said \u0026ldquo;Not all Christians have to be that way\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s no intrinsic reason Christianity has to be that way.\u0026rdquo;  But, he said, if you put fact before authority, scripture will likely end up not impressing you, being contradicted by evidence you find, and unless you completely retool Christianity, you\u0026rsquo;ll likely abandon it.  Opposition to scientific values is necessary to preserve Christianity as it is; putting weight on authority and scripture leads to the anti-science position as a method of preservation of the dogma.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was a wonderfully interesting and wide-ranging talk.  He covered a lot more specifics than I\u0026rsquo;ve described here. If you find that Carrier is giving a talk in your area, I highly recommend that you go hear him speak.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find \u003ca href=\"http://www.richardcarrier.info/\"\u003emore information about Richard Carrier at his web site\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Carrier on the ancient creation/evolution debate"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been listening to past episodes of the Philosophy Bites podcast, and I highly recommend it\u0026ndash;they are short (about 15 minute) discussions with prominent philosophers about specific philosophical topics and questions. I\u0026rsquo;ve found them to be consistently of high quality and interesting, even in the one case where I think the philosophical argument was complete nonsense (Robert Rowland Smith on Derrida on forgiveness). Even there, the interviewers asked the right questions.\nI particularly have enjoyed listening to topics that are outside the areas of philosophy I\u0026rsquo;ve studied, like Alain de Botton on the aesthetics of architecture. Other particularly good ones have been Hugh Mellor on time, David Papineau on physicalism, A.C. Grayling on Descartes\u0026rsquo; Meditations, and Peter Millican on the significance of Hume. I\u0026rsquo;ve still got a bunch more past episodes to listen to; I\u0026rsquo;m going to be somewhat disappointed when I catch up.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-11-09):\n\u0026quot;A.C. Grayling on Descartes\u0026#39; Meditations\u0026quot; His biography of Descartes is fascinating as well.\nI've subscribed to Philosophy Bites now for about a year or so \u0026hellip; I love it. I also enjoyed the sister podcast, Ethics Bites. Unfortunately, they stopped producing new episodes a year ago. (The archive is still available.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/philosophy-bites-podcast.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been listening to past episodes of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/\"\u003ePhilosophy Bites podcast\u003c/a\u003e, and I highly recommend it\u0026ndash;they are short (about 15 minute) discussions with prominent philosophers about specific philosophical topics and questions.   I\u0026rsquo;ve found them to be consistently of high quality and interesting, even in the one case where I think the philosophical argument was complete nonsense (Robert Rowland Smith on Derrida on forgiveness).  Even there, the interviewers asked the right questions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI particularly have enjoyed listening to topics that are outside the areas of philosophy I\u0026rsquo;ve studied, like Alain de Botton on the aesthetics of architecture.  Other particularly good ones have been Hugh Mellor on time, David Papineau on physicalism, A.C. Grayling on Descartes\u0026rsquo; Meditations, and Peter Millican on the significance of Hume.  I\u0026rsquo;ve still got a bunch more past episodes to listen to; I\u0026rsquo;m going to be somewhat disappointed when I catch up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Philosophy Bites podcast"},{"content":"The 2009 Hogan and Hartson Jurimetrics Lecture in honor of Lee Loevinger was given on the afternoon of November 5 at Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law by Robert B. Laughlin. Laughlin, the Ann T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics (along with Horst L. Stormer and Daniel C. Tsui), spoke about his recent book, The Crime of Reason.\nHe began with a one-sentence summary of his talk: \u0026ldquo;A consequence of entering the information age is probably that we\u0026rsquo;re going to lose a human right that we all thought we had but never did \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; The sentence went on but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t keep up with him in my notes to get it verbatim, and I am not sure I could identify precisely what his thesis was after hearing the entire talk and Q\u0026amp;A session. The main gist, though, was that he thinks that a consequence of allowing manufacturing to go away and being a society based on information is that \u0026ldquo;Knowledge is dear, therefore there has to be less of it\u0026ndash;we must prevent others from knowing what we know, or you can\u0026rsquo;t make a living from it.\u0026rdquo; And, he said, \u0026ldquo;People who learn on their own are terrorists and thieves,\u0026rdquo; which I think was intentional hyperbole. I think his talk was loaded with overgeneralizations, some of which he retracted or qualified during the Q\u0026amp;A.\nIt certainly doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow from knowledge being valuable that there must be less of it. Unlike currency, knowledge isn\u0026rsquo;t a fungible commodity, so different bits of knowledge have different value to different people. There are also different kinds of knowledge\u0026ndash;know-how vs. knowledge that, and making the latter freely available doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily degrade the value of the former, which is why it\u0026rsquo;s possible to have a business model that gives away software for free but makes money from consulting services. Further, the more knowledge there is, the more valuable it is to know where to find the particular bits of knowledge that are useful for a given purpose, and the less it is possible for a single person to be an expert across many domains. An increasing amount of knowledge means there\u0026rsquo;s increasing value in various kinds of specializations, and more opportunities for individuals to develop forms of expertise in niches that aren\u0026rsquo;t already full of experts.\nLaughlin said that he is talking about \u0026ldquo;the human rights issue of the 21st century,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;learnign some things on your own is stealing from people. What we think of as our rights are in conflict with the law, just as slavery is in conflict with human rights.\u0026rdquo; He said that Jefferson was conflicted on this very issue, sayng on the one hand that \u0026ldquo;knowledge is like fire\u0026ndash;divinely designed to be copyable like a lit taper\u0026ndash;I can light yours with mine, which in no way diminishes my own.\u0026rdquo; This is the non-rival quality of information, that one person copying information from another doesn\u0026rsquo;t deprive the other of their use of it, though that certainly may have an impact on the commercial market for the first person to sell their information.\n\u0026ldquo;On the other hand,\u0026rdquo; said Laughlin, \u0026ldquo;economics involves gambling. [Jefferson] favored legalized gambling. Making a living involves bluff and not sharing knowledge.\u0026rdquo; He said that our intellectual property laws derive from English laws that people on the continent \u0026ldquo;thought \u0026hellip; were outrageous\u0026ndash;charging people to know things.\u0026quot;\nHe put up a photo of a fortune from a fortune cookie, that said \u0026ldquo;The only good is knowledge, and the only evil ignorance.\u0026rdquo; He said this is what you might tell kids in school to get them to study, but there\u0026rsquo;s something not right about it. He then put up a drawing of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster (Laughlin drew most of the slides himself). He said, we\u0026rsquo;re all familiar with the Frankenstein myth. \u0026ldquo;The problem with open knowledge is that some of it is dangerous. In the U.S. some of it is off-limits, you can\u0026rsquo;t use it in business or even talk about it. It\u0026rsquo;s not what you do with it that\u0026rsquo;s exclusive, but that you have it at all.\u0026quot;\nHis example was atomic bomb secrets and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which makes it a federal felony to reveal \u0026ldquo;nuclear data\u0026rdquo; to the public, which has been defined very broadly in the courts. It includes numbers and principles of physics.\nLaughlin returned to his fortune cookie example, and said there\u0026rsquo;s another problem. He put up a drawing of a poker game. \u0026ldquo;If I peeked at one guy\u0026rsquo;s cards and told everyone else, the poker game would stop. It involves bluffing, and open access to knowledge stops the game.\u0026rdquo; He suggested that this is what happened last year with the world financial sector\u0026ndash;that the \u0026ldquo;poker game in Wall Street stopped, everyone got afraid to bet, and the government handled it by giving out more chips and saying keep playing, which succeeded.\u0026rdquo; I agree that this was a case where knowledge\u0026ndash;specifically knowledge of the growing amounts of \u0026ldquo;toxic waste\u0026rdquo; in major world banks\u0026ndash;caused things to freeze up, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the knowledge that was the ultimate cause, it was the fact that banks engaged in incredibly risky behavior that they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have. More knowledge earlier\u0026ndash;and better oversight and regulation\u0026ndash;could have prevented the problem.\nLaughlin said \u0026ldquo;Economics is about bluff and secrecy, and open knowledge breaks it.\u0026rdquo; I don\u0026rsquo;t think I agree\u0026ndash;what makes markets function is that price serves as a public signal about knowledge. There\u0026rsquo;s always going to be local knowledge that isn\u0026rsquo;t shared, not necessarily because of bluff and secrecy, but simply due to the limits of human capacities and the dynamics of social transactions. While trading on private knowledge can result in huge profits, trading the private knowledge itself can be classified as insider trading and is illegal. (Though perhaps it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be, since insider trading has the potential for making price signals more accurate more quickly to the public.)\nLaughlin showed a painting of the death of Socrates (by Jacques-Louis David, not Laughlin this time), and said that in high school, you study Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, and learn that knowledge is good. But, \u0026ldquo;as you get older, you learn there\u0026rsquo;s a class system in knowledge.\u0026rdquo; Plato etc. is classified as good, but working class technical knowledge, like how to build a motor, is not, he claimed. He went on to say, \u0026ldquo;If you think about it, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly backwards.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone is ever taught that technical knowledge is not valuable, especially these days, where computer skills seem to be nearly ubiquitous\u0026ndash;and I disagree with both extremes. From my personal experience, I think some of my abstract thinking skills that I learned from studying philosophy have been among the most valuable skills I\u0026rsquo;ve used in both industry and academia, relevant to both theoretical and practical applications.\nLaughlin said that \u0026ldquo;engines are complicated, and those who would teach you about it don\u0026rsquo;t want to be clear about it. It\u0026rsquo;s sequestered by those who own it, because it\u0026rsquo;s valuable. The stuff we give away in schools isn\u0026rsquo;t valuable, that\u0026rsquo;s why we give it away.\u0026rdquo; In the Q\u0026amp;A, a questioner observed that he can easily obtain all sorts of detailed information about how engines work, and that what makes it difficult to understand is the quantity and detail. Laughlin responded that sometimes the best way to hide things is to put them in plain sight (the Poe \u0026ldquo;purloined letter\u0026rdquo; point), as needles in a haystack. But I think that\u0026rsquo;s a rather pat answer to something that is contradictory to his claim\u0026ndash;the information really is freely available and easy to find, but the limiting factor is that it takes time to learn the relevant parts to have a full understanding. The limit isn\u0026rsquo;t the availability of the knowledge or that some of it is somehow hidden. I\u0026rsquo;d also challenge his claim that the knowledge provided in schools is \u0026ldquo;given away.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s still being paid for, even if it\u0026rsquo;s free to the student, and much of what\u0026rsquo;s being paid for is the know-how of the educator, not just the knowledge-that of the specific facts, as well as special kinds of knowledge-that\u0026ndash;the broader frameworks into which individual facts fit.\nLaughlin went on to say, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to have to pay to know the valuable information. Technical knowledge will disappear and become unavailable. The stuff you need to make a living is going away.\u0026rdquo; He gave as examples defense-related technologies, computers, and genetics. He said that \u0026ldquo;people in the university sector are facing more and more intense moral criticism\u0026rdquo; for sharing information. \u0026ldquo;How life works\u0026ndash;would we want that information to get out? We might want to burn those books. The 20th century was the age of physics, [some of which was] so dangerous we burned the books. It\u0026rsquo;s not in the public domain. The 21st century is the age of biology. We\u0026rsquo;re in the end game of the same thing. In genetics\u0026ndash;e.g., how disease organisms work. The genetic structure of Ebola or polio.\u0026rdquo; Here, Laughlin seems to be just wrong. The gene sequences of Ebola and polio have apparently been published (Sanchez, A., et al. (1993) \u0026ldquo;Sequence analysis of the Ebola virus genome: organization, genetic elements and comparison with the genome of Marburg virus,\u0026rdquo; Virus Research 29, 215-240 and Stanway, G., et al. (1983) \u0026ldquo;The nucleotide sequence of poliovirus type 3 leon 12 a1b: comparison with poliovirus type 1,\u0026quot; Nucleic Acids Res. 11(16), 5629-5643). (I don\u0026rsquo;t claim to be knowledgeable about viruses, in the former case I am relying on the statement that \u0026ldquo;Sanchez et al (1993) has published the sequence of the complete genome of Ebola virus\u0026rdquo; from John Crowley and Ted Crusberg, \u0026ldquo;Ebola and Marburg Virus: Genomic Structure, Comparative and Molecular Biology.\u0026quot;; in the latter case it may not be publication of the complete genome but is at least part.)\nLaughlin talked about the famous issue of The Progressive magazine which featured an article by Howard Moreland titled \u0026ldquo;How H-Bombs Work.\u0026rdquo; He showed the cover of the magazine, which read, \u0026ldquo;The H-Bomb Secret\u0026ndash;How we got it\u0026ndash;why we\u0026rsquo;re telling it.\u0026rdquo; Laughlin said that the DoJ enjoined the journal from publishing the article and took the issue into secret hearings. The argument was that it was a threat to national security and a violation of the Atomic Energy Act. The judge said that the rule against prior restraint doesn\u0026rsquo;t apply because this is so dangerous that \u0026ldquo;no jurist in their right mind would put free speech above safety.\u0026rdquo; Laughlin said, \u0026ldquo;Most people think the Bill of Rights protects you, but this case shows that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo; After the judge forbid publication, it was leaked to a couple of \u0026ldquo;newspapers on the west coast,\u0026rdquo; after which the DoJ dropped the case and the article was published. According to Laughlin, this was strategy, that he suspects they didn\u0026rsquo;t prosecute the case because the outcome would have been to find the AEA unconstitutional. By dropping the case it kept the AEA as a potential weapon in future cases. He said there have only been two cases of the criminal provisions of the AEA prosecuted in the last 50 years, but it is \u0026ldquo;inconceivable that it was only violated twice. The country handles its unconstitutionality by not prosecuting.\u0026rdquo; The U.S., he said, is like a weird hybrid of Athens and Sparta, favoring both being open and being war-like and secretive. These two positions have never been reconciled, so we live in an unstable situation that favors both.\nHe also discussed the case of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist from Taiwan who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who took home items that were classified as \u0026ldquo;PARD\u0026rdquo; (protect as restricted data), even though everyone is trained repeatedly that you \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t take PARD home.\u0026rdquo; When he was caught, Laughlin said, he said \u0026ldquo;I didn\u0026rsquo;t know it was wrong\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;I thought they were going to fire me, so I took something home to sell.\u0026rdquo; The latter sounds like an admission of guilt. He was put into solitary confinement for a year (actually 9 months) and then the case of 50 counts of AEA violations was dropped. Laughlin characterized this as \u0026ldquo;extralegal punishment,\u0026rdquo; and said \u0026ldquo;we abolish due process with respect to nuclear data.\u0026rdquo; (Wen Ho Lee won a $1.5 million settlement from the U.S. government in 2006 before the Supreme Court could hear his case. Somehow, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to me to be a very effective deterrent.)\nLaughlin said that we see a tradeoff between risk and benefit, not an absolute danger. The risk of buildings being blown up is low enough to allow diesel fuel and fertilizer to be legal. Bombs from ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel are very easy to make, and our protection isn\u0026rsquo;t hiding technical knowledge, but that people just don\u0026rsquo;t do it. But nuclear weapons are so much more dangerous that the technical details are counted as absolutely dangerous, no amount of benefit could possibly be enough. He said that he\u0026rsquo;s writing a book about energy and \u0026ldquo;the possible nuclear renaissance unfolding\u0026rdquo; (as a result of need for non-carbon-emitting energy sources). He says the U.S. and Germany are both struggling with this legal morass around nuclear information. (Is the unavailability of nuclear knowledge really the main or even a significant issue about nuclear plant construction in the United States? General Electric (GE Energy) builds nuclear plants in other countries.)\nLaughlin said that long pointy knives could be dangerous, and there\u0026rsquo;s a movement in England to ban them. Everybody deals with technical issue of knowledge and where to draw lines. (Is it really feasible to ban knives, and does such a ban constitute a ban on knowledge? How hard is it to make a knife?)\nAt this point he moved on to biology, and showed a photograph of a fruit fly with legs for antennae. He said, \u0026ldquo;so maybe antennae are related to legs, and a switch in development determines which you get. The control machinery is way too complicated to understand right now.\u0026rdquo; (Really?) \u0026ldquo;What if this was done with a dog, with legs instead of ears. Would the person who did that go to Stockholm? No, they\u0026rsquo;d probably lose their lab and be vilified. In the life sciences there are boundaries like we see in nuclear\u0026ndash;things we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t know.\u0026rdquo; (I doubt that there is a switch that turns dog ears into legs, and this doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as plausibly being described as a boundary on knowledge, but rather an ethical boundary on action.) He said, \u0026ldquo;There are so many things researchers would like to try, but can\u0026rsquo;t, because funders are afraid.\u0026rdquo; Again, I suspect that most of these cases are ethical boundaries about actions rather than knowledge, though of course there are cases where unethical actions might be required to gain certain sorts of knowledge.\nHe turned to stem cells. He said that the federal government effectively put a 10-year moratorium on stem cell research for ethical reasons. Again, these were putatively ethical reasons regarding treatment of embryos, but the ban was on federally funded research rather than any research at all. It certainly stifled research, but didn\u0026rsquo;t eliminate it.\nNext he discussed the \u0026ldquo;Millennium Digital Copyright Act\u0026rdquo; (sic). He said that \u0026ldquo;people who know computers laugh at the absurdity\u0026rdquo; of claiming that computer programs aren\u0026rsquo;t formulas and are patentable. He said that if he writes a program that \u0026ldquo;has functionality or purpose similar to someone else\u0026rsquo;s my writing it is a violation of the law.\u0026rdquo; Perhaps in a very narrow case where there\u0026rsquo;s patent protection, yes, but certainly not in general. If he was arguing that computer software patents are a bad idea, I\u0026rsquo;d agree. He said \u0026ldquo;Imagine if I reverse-engineered the latest Windows and then published the source code. It would be a violation of law.\u0026rdquo; Yes, in that particular example, but there are lots of cases of legitimate reverse engineering, especially in the information security field. The people who come up with the signatures for anti-virus and intrusion detection and prevention do this routinely, and in some cases have actually released their own patches to Microsoft vulnerabilities because Microsoft was taking too long to do it themselves.\nHe said of Microsoft Word and PDF formats that they \u0026ldquo;are constantly morphing\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;if you can understand it you can steal it.\u0026rdquo; But there are legal open source and competing proprietary software solutions that understand both of the formats in question\u0026ndash;Open Office, Apple\u0026rsquo;s Pages and Preview, Foxit Reader, etc. Laughlin said, \u0026ldquo;Intentional bypassing of encryption is a violation of the DMCA.\u0026rdquo; Only if that encryption is circumvention of \u0026ldquo;a technological measure that effectively controls access to\u0026rdquo; copyrighted material and the circumvention is not done for the purposes of security research, which has a big exception carved out in the law. Arguably, breakable encryption doesn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;effectively control access,\u0026rdquo; though the law has certainly been used to prosecute people who broke really poor excuses for encryption.\nLaughlin put up a slide of the iconic smiley face, and said it has been patented by Unisys. \u0026ldquo;If you use it a lot, you\u0026rsquo;ll be sued by Unisys.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how you could patent an image, and while there are smiley face trademarks that have been used as a revenue source, it\u0026rsquo;s by a company called SmileyWorld, not Unisys.\nHe returned to biology again, to talk briefly about gene patenting, which he says \u0026ldquo;galls biologists\u0026rdquo; but has been upheld by the courts. (Though perhaps not for many years longer, depending on how the Myriad Genetics case turns out.) Natural laws and discoveries aren\u0026rsquo;t supposed to be patentable, so it\u0026rsquo;s an implication of these court decisions that genes \u0026ldquo;aren\u0026rsquo;t natural laws, but something else.\u0026rdquo; The argument is that isolating them makes them into something different than what they are when they\u0026rsquo;re part of an organism, which somehow constitutes an invention. I think that\u0026rsquo;s a bad argument that could only justify patenting the isolation process, not the sequence.\nLaughlin showed a slide of two photos, the cloned dog Snuppy and its mother on the left, and a Microsoft Word Professional box on the right. He said that Snuppy was cloned when he was in Korea, and that most Americans are \u0026ldquo;unhappy about puppy clones\u0026rdquo; because they fear the possibility of human clones. I thought he was going to say that he had purchased the Microsoft Word Professional box pictured in Korea at the same time, and that it was counterfeit, copied software (which was prevalent in Korea in past decades, if not still), but he had an entirely different point to make. He said, about the software, \u0026ldquo;The thing that\u0026rsquo;s illegal is not cloning it. If I give you an altered version, I\u0026rsquo;ve tampered with something I\u0026rsquo;m not supposed to. There\u0026rsquo;s a dichotomy between digital knowledge in living things and what you make, and they\u0026rsquo;re different [in how we treat them?]. But they\u0026rsquo;re manifestly not different. Our legal system[\u0026rsquo;s rules] about protecting these things are therefore confused and mixed up.\u0026rdquo; I think his argument and distinction was rather confused, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t go on to use it in anything he said subsequently. It seems to me that the rules are pretty much on a par between the two cases\u0026ndash;copying Microsoft Word Professional and giving it to other people would itself be copyright infringement; transforming it might or might not be a crime depending on what you did. If you turned it into a piece of malware and distributed that, it could be a crime. But if you sufficiently transformed it into something useful that was no longer recognizable as Microsoft Word Professional, that might well be fair use of the copyrighted software. In any case in between, I suspect the only legally actionable offense would be copyright infringement, in which case the wrongdoing is the copying, not the tampering.\nHe put up a slide of Lady Justice dressed in a clown suit, and said that \u0026ldquo;When you talk to young people about legal constraints on what they can do, they get angry, like you\u0026rsquo;re getting angry at this image of Lady Law in a clown suit. She\u0026rsquo;s not a law but an image, a logos. \u0026hellip; [It\u0026rsquo;s the] root of our way of relating to each other. When you say logos is a clown, you\u0026rsquo;ve besmirched something very fundamental about who you want to be. \u0026hellip; Legal constraints on knowledge is part of the price we\u0026rsquo;ve paid for not making things anymore.\u0026rdquo; (Not sure what to say about this.)\nHe returned to his earlier allusion to slavery. He said that was \u0026ldquo;a conflict between Judeo-Christian ethics and what you had to do to make a living. It got shakier and shakier until violence erupted. War was the only solution. I don\u0026rsquo;t think that will happen in this case. [The] bigger picture is the same kind of tension. \u0026hellip; Once you make Descartes a joke, then you ask, why stay?\u0026rdquo; He put up a slide of a drawing of an astronaut on the moon, with the earth in the distance. \u0026ldquo;Why not go to the moon? What would drive a person off this planet? You\u0026rsquo;d have to be a lunatic to leave.\u0026rdquo; (I thought he was going to make a moon-luna joke, but he didn\u0026rsquo;t, unless that was it.) \u0026ldquo;Maybe intellectual freedom might be that thing. It\u0026rsquo;s happened before, when people came to America.\u0026rdquo; He went on to say that some brought their own religious baggage with them to America. Finally, he said that when he presents that moon example to graduate students, he always has many who say \u0026ldquo;Send me, I want to go.\u0026quot;\nAnd that\u0026rsquo;s how his talk ended. I was rather disappointed\u0026ndash;it seemed rather disjointed and rambling, and made lots of tendentious claims\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t at all what I expected from a Nobel prizewinner.\nThe first question in the Q\u0026amp;A was one very much like I would have asked, about how he explains the free and open source software movement. Laughlin\u0026rsquo;s answer was that he was personally a Linux user and has been since 1997, but that students starting software companies are \u0026ldquo;paranoid about having stuff stolen,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;free things, even in software, are potentially pernicious,\u0026rdquo; and that he pays a price for using open source in that it takes more work to maintain it and he\u0026rsquo;s constantly having to upgrade to deal with things like format changes in PDF and Word. There is certainly such a tradeoff for some open source software, but some of it is just as easy to maintain as commercial software, and there are distributions of Linux that are coming closer to the ease of use of Windows. And of course Mac OS X, based on an open source, FreeBSD-derived operating system, is probably easier for most people to use than Windows.\nI think there was a lot of potentially interesting and provocative material in his talk, but it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t formulated into a coherent and persuasive argument. If anyone has read his book, is it more tightly argued?\nTimothy B. Lee (2009-11-07):\nI haven\u0026#39;t read the book, but I had the same impression from his talk at Cato a couple of years ago.\nL (2009-11-07):\nHow can he claim that the knowledge learned in schools isn\u0026#39;t valuable? It\u0026#39;s (for the most part) foundational knowledge required to acquire the more advanced forms of knowledge. And even the stuff that isn\u0026#39;t necessarily foundational knowledge (like phys. ed. or sex ed.) is valuable in that it helps keep you healthy (at least in theory) -- and without health it becomes near impossible to profit from any knowledge you might have. I think he might have a point though about academic knowledge being valued over technical or practical knowledge. This was certainly the case when I was in school, and at least still partly true now. Maybe undervalued would be a better word. After all, auto mechanics often earn pitifully low wages for the amount of knowledge and the amount of physical exertion required in their jobs. And the wage trend on entry level CS jobs has been on the downward path since the late '80s (correct me if this is wrong).\nThere was a lot of interesting stuff mentioned in that talk it seems. A lot of it covered by Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon, which while a novel, at least touched on many of these issues and did so well I thought.\nLippard (2009-11-07):\nI think perhaps he was engaging in frequent hyperbole to be provocative. I skimmed a few bits of his book on Google Books and it is definitely far better organized than his talk, and says more about some of the issues that he barely touched upon in his talk, like how biotech is privatizing the production of biological knowledge and providing pressures to not share data (out of profit motive, not claims that sharing knowledge is morally wrong). He places some blame on Bayh-Dole, the law that gave universities the right to control and profit from intellectual property produced by professors in their employ, even if funded by federal dollars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/robert-b-laughlin-on-crime-of-reason.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 2009 Hogan and Hartson \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJurimetrics\u003c/span\u003e Lecture in honor of Lee Loevinger was given on the afternoon of November 5 at Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law by Robert B. Laughlin.  Laughlin, the Ann T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics (along with Horst L. Stormer and Daniel C. Tsui), spoke about his recent book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Crime of Reason\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began with a one-sentence summary of his talk:  \u0026ldquo;A consequence of entering the information age is probably that we\u0026rsquo;re going to lose a human right that we all thought we had but never did \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; The sentence went on but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t keep up with him in my notes to get it verbatim, and I am not sure I could identify precisely what his thesis was after hearing the entire talk and Q\u0026amp;A session.  The main gist, though, was that he thinks that a consequence of allowing manufacturing to go away and being a society based on information is that \u0026ldquo;Knowledge is dear, therefore there has to be less of it\u0026ndash;we must prevent others from knowing what we know, or you can\u0026rsquo;t make a living from it.\u0026rdquo;  And, he said, \u0026ldquo;People who learn on their own are terrorists and thieves,\u0026rdquo; which I think was intentional hyperbole.  I think his talk was loaded with overgeneralizations, some of which he retracted or qualified during the Q\u0026amp;A.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt certainly doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow from knowledge being valuable that there must be less of it.  Unlike currency, knowledge isn\u0026rsquo;t a fungible commodity, so different bits of knowledge have different value to different people.  There are also different kinds of knowledge\u0026ndash;know-how vs. knowledge that, and making the latter freely available doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily degrade the value of the former, which is why it\u0026rsquo;s possible to have a business model that gives away software for free but makes money from consulting services.  Further, the more knowledge there is, the more valuable it is to know where to find the particular bits of knowledge that are useful for a given purpose, and the less it is possible for a single person to be an expert across many domains.  An increasing amount of knowledge means there\u0026rsquo;s increasing value in various kinds of specializations, and more opportunities for individuals to develop forms of expertise in niches that aren\u0026rsquo;t already full of experts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin said that he is talking about \u0026ldquo;the human rights issue of the 21st century,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;learnign some things on your own is stealing from people.  What we think of as our rights are in conflict with the law, just as slavery is in conflict with human rights.\u0026rdquo;  He said that Jefferson was conflicted on this very issue, sayng on the one hand that \u0026ldquo;knowledge is like fire\u0026ndash;divinely designed to be copyable like a lit taper\u0026ndash;I can light yours with mine, which in no way diminishes my own.\u0026rdquo;  This is the non-rival quality of information, that one person copying information from another doesn\u0026rsquo;t deprive the other of their use of it, though that certainly may have an impact on the commercial market for the first person to sell their information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;On the other hand,\u0026rdquo; said Laughlin, \u0026ldquo;economics involves gambling.  [Jefferson] favored legalized gambling.  Making a living involves bluff and not sharing knowledge.\u0026rdquo;  He said that our intellectual property laws derive from English laws that people on the continent \u0026ldquo;thought \u0026hellip; were outrageous\u0026ndash;charging people to know things.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe put up a photo of a fortune from a fortune cookie, that said \u0026ldquo;The only good is knowledge, and the only evil ignorance.\u0026rdquo;  He said this is what you might tell kids in school to get them to study, but there\u0026rsquo;s something not right about it.  He then put up a drawing of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster (Laughlin drew most of the slides himself).  He said, we\u0026rsquo;re all familiar with the Frankenstein myth.  \u0026ldquo;The problem with open knowledge is that some of it is dangerous.  In the U.S. some of it is off-limits, you can\u0026rsquo;t use it in business or even talk about it.  It\u0026rsquo;s not what you do with it that\u0026rsquo;s exclusive, but that you have it at all.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis example was atomic bomb secrets and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which makes it a federal felony to reveal \u0026ldquo;nuclear data\u0026rdquo; to the public, which has been defined very broadly in the courts.  It includes numbers and principles of physics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin returned to his fortune cookie example, and said there\u0026rsquo;s another problem.  He put up a drawing of a poker game.  \u0026ldquo;If I peeked at one guy\u0026rsquo;s cards and told everyone else, the poker game would stop.  It involves bluffing, and open access to knowledge stops the game.\u0026rdquo;  He suggested that this is what happened last year with the world financial sector\u0026ndash;that the \u0026ldquo;poker game in Wall Street stopped, everyone got afraid to bet, and the government handled it by giving out more chips and saying keep playing, which succeeded.\u0026rdquo;  I agree that this was a case where knowledge\u0026ndash;specifically knowledge of the growing amounts of \u0026ldquo;toxic waste\u0026rdquo; in major world banks\u0026ndash;caused things to freeze up, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the knowledge that was the ultimate cause, it was the fact that banks engaged in incredibly risky behavior that they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have.  More knowledge earlier\u0026ndash;and better oversight and regulation\u0026ndash;could have prevented the problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin said \u0026ldquo;Economics is about bluff and secrecy, and open knowledge breaks it.\u0026rdquo;  I don\u0026rsquo;t think I agree\u0026ndash;what makes markets function is that price serves as a public signal about knowledge.  There\u0026rsquo;s always going to be local knowledge that isn\u0026rsquo;t shared, not necessarily because of bluff and secrecy, but simply due to the limits of human capacities and the dynamics of social transactions.  While trading on private knowledge can result in huge profits, trading the private knowledge itself can be classified as insider trading and is illegal.  (Though perhaps it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be, since insider trading has the potential for making price signals more accurate more quickly to the public.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin showed \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Socrates\"\u003ea painting of the death of Socrates\u003c/a\u003e (by Jacques-Louis David, not Laughlin this time), and said that in high school, you study Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, and learn that knowledge is good.  But, \u0026ldquo;as you get older, you learn there\u0026rsquo;s a class system in knowledge.\u0026rdquo;  Plato etc. is classified as good, but working class technical knowledge, like how to build a motor, is not, he claimed.  He went on to say, \u0026ldquo;If you think about it, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly backwards.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone is ever taught that technical knowledge is not valuable, especially these days, where computer skills seem to be nearly ubiquitous\u0026ndash;and I disagree with both extremes.  From my personal experience, I think some of my abstract thinking skills that I learned from studying philosophy have been among the most valuable skills I\u0026rsquo;ve used in both industry and academia, relevant to both theoretical and practical applications.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin said that \u0026ldquo;engines are complicated, and those who would teach you about it don\u0026rsquo;t want to be clear about it.  It\u0026rsquo;s sequestered by those who own it, because it\u0026rsquo;s valuable.  The stuff we give away in schools isn\u0026rsquo;t valuable, that\u0026rsquo;s why we give it away.\u0026rdquo;  In the Q\u0026amp;A, a questioner observed that he can easily obtain all sorts of detailed information about how engines work, and that what makes it difficult to understand is the quantity and detail.  Laughlin responded that sometimes the best way to hide things is to put them in plain sight (the Poe \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purloined_Letter\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;purloined letter\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e point), as needles in a haystack.  But I think that\u0026rsquo;s a rather pat answer to something that is contradictory to his claim\u0026ndash;the information really is freely available and easy to find, but the limiting factor is that it takes time to learn the relevant parts to have a full understanding.  The limit isn\u0026rsquo;t the availability of the knowledge or that some of it is somehow hidden.  I\u0026rsquo;d also challenge his claim that the knowledge provided in schools is \u0026ldquo;given away.\u0026rdquo;  It\u0026rsquo;s still being paid for, even if it\u0026rsquo;s free to the student, and much of what\u0026rsquo;s being paid for is the know-how of the educator, not just the knowledge-that of the specific facts, as well as special kinds of knowledge-that\u0026ndash;the broader frameworks into which individual facts fit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin went on to say, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to have to pay to know the valuable information.  Technical knowledge will disappear and become unavailable.  The stuff you need to make a living is going away.\u0026rdquo;  He gave as examples defense-related technologies, computers, and genetics.  He said that \u0026ldquo;people in the university sector are facing more and more intense moral criticism\u0026rdquo; for sharing information.  \u0026ldquo;How life works\u0026ndash;would we want that information to get out?  We might want to burn those books.  The 20th century was the age of physics, [some of which was] so dangerous we burned the books.  It\u0026rsquo;s not in the public domain.  The 21st century is the age of biology.  We\u0026rsquo;re in the end game of the same thing.  In genetics\u0026ndash;e.g., how disease organisms work.  The genetic structure of Ebola or polio.\u0026rdquo;  Here, Laughlin seems to be just wrong.  The gene sequences of Ebola and polio have apparently been published (Sanchez, A., et al. (1993) \u0026ldquo;Sequence analysis of the Ebola virus genome: organization, genetic elements and comparison with the genome of Marburg virus,\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVirus Research\u003c/span\u003e 29, 215-240 and Stanway, G., et al. (1983) \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC326302/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The nucleotide sequence of poliovirus type 3 leon 12 a1b: comparison with poliovirus type 1,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNucleic Acids Res.\u003c/span\u003e 11(16), 5629-5643).  (I don\u0026rsquo;t claim to be knowledgeable about viruses, in the former case I am relying on the statement that \u0026ldquo;Sanchez et al (1993) has       published the sequence of the complete genome of Ebola virus\u0026rdquo; from John Crowley and Ted Crusberg, \u003ca href=\"http://www.resonancepub.com/ebolamarburg.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ebola and Marburg Virus: Genomic Structure, Comparative and Molecular Biology.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e; in the latter case it may not be publication of the complete genome but is at least part.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin talked about the famous issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Progressive\u003c/span\u003e magazine which featured an article by Howard Moreland titled \u0026ldquo;How H-Bombs Work.\u0026rdquo;  He showed the cover of the magazine, which read, \u0026ldquo;The H-Bomb Secret\u0026ndash;How we got it\u0026ndash;why we\u0026rsquo;re telling it.\u0026rdquo;  Laughlin said that the DoJ enjoined the journal from publishing the article and took the issue into secret hearings.  The argument was that it was a threat to national security and a violation of the Atomic Energy Act.  The judge said that the rule against prior restraint doesn\u0026rsquo;t apply because this is so dangerous that \u0026ldquo;no jurist in their right mind would put free speech above safety.\u0026rdquo;  Laughlin said, \u0026ldquo;Most people think the Bill of Rights protects you, but this case shows that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo;  After the judge forbid publication, it was leaked to a couple of \u0026ldquo;newspapers on the west coast,\u0026rdquo; after which the DoJ dropped the case and the article was published.  According to Laughlin, this was strategy, that he suspects they didn\u0026rsquo;t prosecute the case because the outcome would have been to find the AEA unconstitutional.  By dropping the case it kept the AEA as a potential weapon in future cases.  He said there have only been two cases of the criminal provisions of the AEA prosecuted in the last 50 years, but it is \u0026ldquo;inconceivable that it was only violated twice.  The country handles its unconstitutionality by not prosecuting.\u0026rdquo;  The U.S., he said, is like a weird hybrid of Athens and Sparta, favoring both being open and being war-like and secretive.  These two positions have never been reconciled, so we live in an unstable situation that favors both.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also discussed the case of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee\"\u003eWen Ho Lee\u003c/a\u003e, a scientist from Taiwan who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who took home items that were classified as \u0026ldquo;PARD\u0026rdquo; (protect as restricted data), even though everyone is trained repeatedly that you \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t take PARD home.\u0026rdquo;  When he was caught, Laughlin said, he said \u0026ldquo;I didn\u0026rsquo;t know it was wrong\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;I thought they were going to fire me, so I took something home to sell.\u0026rdquo;  The latter sounds like an admission of guilt.  He was put into solitary confinement for a year (actually 9 months) and then the case of 50 counts of AEA violations was dropped.  Laughlin characterized this as \u0026ldquo;extralegal punishment,\u0026rdquo; and said \u0026ldquo;we abolish due process with respect to nuclear data.\u0026rdquo;  (Wen Ho Lee won a $1.5 million settlement from the U.S. government in 2006 before the Supreme Court could hear his case.  Somehow, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to me to be a very effective deterrent.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin said that we see a tradeoff between risk and benefit, not an absolute danger.  The risk of buildings being blown up is low enough to allow diesel fuel and fertilizer to be legal.  Bombs from ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel are very easy to make, and our protection isn\u0026rsquo;t hiding technical knowledge, but that people just don\u0026rsquo;t do it.  But nuclear weapons are so much more dangerous that the technical details are counted as absolutely dangerous, no amount of benefit could possibly be enough.  He said that he\u0026rsquo;s writing a book about energy and \u0026ldquo;the possible nuclear renaissance unfolding\u0026rdquo; (as a result of need for non-carbon-emitting energy sources).  He says the U.S. and Germany are both struggling with this legal morass around nuclear information.  (Is the unavailability of nuclear knowledge really the main or even a significant issue about nuclear plant construction in the United States?  General Electric (GE Energy) builds nuclear plants in other countries.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin said that long pointy knives could be dangerous, and there\u0026rsquo;s a movement in England to ban them.  Everybody deals with technical issue of knowledge and where to draw lines.  (Is it really feasible to ban knives, and does such a ban constitute a ban on knowledge?  How hard is it to make a knife?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point he moved on to biology, and showed a photograph of a fruit fly with legs for antennae.  He said, \u0026ldquo;so maybe antennae are related to legs, and a switch in development determines which you get.  The control machinery is way too complicated to understand right now.\u0026rdquo;  (Really?)  \u0026ldquo;What if this was done with a dog, with legs instead of ears.  Would the person who did that go to Stockholm?  No, they\u0026rsquo;d probably lose their lab and be vilified.  In the life sciences there are boundaries like we see in nuclear\u0026ndash;things we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t know.\u0026rdquo;  (I doubt that there is a switch that turns dog ears into legs, and this doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as plausibly being described as a boundary on knowledge, but rather an ethical boundary on action.)  He said, \u0026ldquo;There are so many things researchers would like to try, but can\u0026rsquo;t, because funders are afraid.\u0026rdquo;  Again, I suspect that most of these cases are ethical boundaries about actions rather than knowledge, though of course there are cases where unethical actions might be required to gain certain sorts of knowledge.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe turned to stem cells.  He said that the federal government effectively put a 10-year moratorium on stem cell research for ethical reasons.  Again, these were putatively ethical reasons regarding treatment of embryos, but the ban was on federally funded research rather than any research at all.  It certainly stifled research, but didn\u0026rsquo;t eliminate it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext he discussed the \u0026ldquo;Millennium Digital Copyright Act\u0026rdquo; (sic).  He said that \u0026ldquo;people who know computers laugh at the absurdity\u0026rdquo; of claiming that computer programs aren\u0026rsquo;t formulas and are patentable.  He said that if he writes a program that \u0026ldquo;has functionality or purpose similar to someone else\u0026rsquo;s my writing it is a violation of the law.\u0026rdquo;  Perhaps in a very narrow case where there\u0026rsquo;s patent protection, yes, but certainly not in general.  If he was arguing that computer software patents are a bad idea, I\u0026rsquo;d agree.  He said \u0026ldquo;Imagine if I reverse-engineered the latest Windows and then published the source code.  It would be a violation of law.\u0026rdquo;  Yes, in that particular example, but there are lots of cases of legitimate reverse engineering, especially in the information security field.  The people who come up with the signatures for anti-virus and intrusion detection and prevention do this routinely, and in some cases have actually released their own patches to Microsoft vulnerabilities because Microsoft was taking too long to do it themselves.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said of Microsoft Word and PDF formats that they \u0026ldquo;are constantly morphing\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;if you can understand it you can steal it.\u0026rdquo;  But there are legal open source and competing proprietary software solutions that understand both of the formats in question\u0026ndash;Open Office, Apple\u0026rsquo;s Pages and Preview, Foxit Reader, etc.  Laughlin said, \u0026ldquo;Intentional bypassing of encryption is a violation of the DMCA.\u0026rdquo;  Only if that encryption is circumvention of \u0026ldquo;a technological measure that effectively controls access to\u0026rdquo; copyrighted material and the circumvention is not done for the purposes of security research, which has a big exception carved out in the law.  Arguably, breakable encryption doesn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;effectively control access,\u0026rdquo; though the law has certainly been used to prosecute people who broke really poor excuses for encryption.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin put up a slide of the iconic smiley face, and said it has been patented by Unisys.  \u0026ldquo;If you use it a lot, you\u0026rsquo;ll be sued by Unisys.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how you could patent an image, and while there are smiley face trademarks that have been used as a revenue source, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/business/worldbusiness/05smiley.html\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s by a company called SmileyWorld\u003c/a\u003e, not Unisys.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe returned to biology again, to talk briefly about gene patenting, which he says \u0026ldquo;galls biologists\u0026rdquo; but has been upheld by the courts.  (Though perhaps not for many years longer, depending on how the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad_Genetics\"\u003eMyriad Genetics\u003c/a\u003e case turns out.)  Natural laws and discoveries aren\u0026rsquo;t supposed to be patentable, so it\u0026rsquo;s an implication of these court decisions that genes \u0026ldquo;aren\u0026rsquo;t natural laws, but something else.\u0026rdquo;  The argument is that isolating them makes them into something different than what they are when they\u0026rsquo;re part of an organism, which somehow constitutes an invention. I think that\u0026rsquo;s a bad argument that could only justify patenting the isolation process, not the sequence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaughlin showed a slide of two photos, the cloned dog Snuppy and its mother on the left, and a Microsoft Word Professional box on the right.  He said that Snuppy was cloned when he was in Korea, and that most Americans are \u0026ldquo;unhappy about puppy clones\u0026rdquo; because they fear the possibility of human clones.  I thought he was going to say that he had purchased the Microsoft Word Professional box pictured in Korea at the same time, and that it was counterfeit, copied software (which was prevalent in Korea in past decades, if not still), but he had an entirely different point to make.  He said, about the software, \u0026ldquo;The thing that\u0026rsquo;s illegal is not cloning it.  If I give you an altered version, I\u0026rsquo;ve tampered with something I\u0026rsquo;m not supposed to.  There\u0026rsquo;s a dichotomy between digital knowledge in living things and what you make, and they\u0026rsquo;re different [in how we treat them?].  But they\u0026rsquo;re manifestly not different.  Our legal system[\u0026rsquo;s rules] about protecting these things are therefore confused and mixed up.\u0026rdquo;  I think his argument and distinction was rather confused, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t go on to use it in anything he said subsequently.  It seems to me that the rules are pretty much on a par between the two cases\u0026ndash;copying Microsoft Word Professional and giving it to other people would itself be copyright infringement; transforming it might or might not be a crime depending on what you did.  If you turned it into a piece of malware and distributed that, it could be a crime.  But if you sufficiently transformed it into something useful that was no longer recognizable as Microsoft Word Professional, that might well be fair use of the copyrighted software.  In any case in between, I suspect the only legally actionable offense would be copyright infringement, in which case the wrongdoing is the copying, not the tampering.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe put up a slide of Lady Justice dressed in a clown suit, and said that \u0026ldquo;When you talk to young people about legal constraints on what they can do, they get angry, like you\u0026rsquo;re getting angry at this image of Lady Law in a clown suit.  She\u0026rsquo;s not a law but an image, a logos. \u0026hellip; [It\u0026rsquo;s the] root of our way of relating to each other.  When you say logos is a clown, you\u0026rsquo;ve besmirched something very fundamental about who you want to be.  \u0026hellip; Legal constraints on knowledge is part of the price we\u0026rsquo;ve paid for not making things anymore.\u0026rdquo;  (Not sure what to say about this.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe returned to his earlier allusion to slavery.  He said that was \u0026ldquo;a conflict between Judeo-Christian ethics and what you had to do to make a living.  It got shakier and shakier until violence erupted.  War was the only solution.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think that will happen in this case.  [The] bigger picture is the same kind of tension.  \u0026hellip; Once you make Descartes a joke, then you ask, why stay?\u0026rdquo;  He put up a slide of a drawing of an astronaut on the moon, with the earth in the distance.  \u0026ldquo;Why not go to the moon?  What would drive a person off this planet?  You\u0026rsquo;d have to be a lunatic to leave.\u0026rdquo;  (I thought he was going to make a moon-luna joke, but he didn\u0026rsquo;t, unless that was it.)  \u0026ldquo;Maybe intellectual freedom might be that thing.  It\u0026rsquo;s happened before, when people came to America.\u0026rdquo;  He went on to say that some brought their own religious baggage with them to America.  Finally, he said that when he presents that moon example to graduate students, he always has many who say \u0026ldquo;Send me, I want to go.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that\u0026rsquo;s how his talk ended.  I was rather disappointed\u0026ndash;it seemed rather disjointed and rambling, and made lots of tendentious claims\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t at all what I expected from a Nobel prizewinner.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first question in the Q\u0026amp;A was one very much like I would have asked, about how he explains the free and open source software movement.  Laughlin\u0026rsquo;s answer was that he was personally a Linux user and has been since 1997, but that students starting software companies are \u0026ldquo;paranoid about having stuff stolen,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;free things, even in software, are potentially pernicious,\u0026rdquo; and that he pays a price for using open source in that it takes more work to maintain it and he\u0026rsquo;s constantly having to upgrade to deal with things like format changes in PDF and Word.  There is certainly such a tradeoff for some open source software, but some of it is just as easy to maintain as commercial software, and there are distributions of Linux that are coming closer to the ease of use of Windows.  And of course Mac OS X, based on an open source, FreeBSD-derived operating system, is probably easier for most people to use than Windows.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think there was a lot of potentially interesting and provocative material in his talk, but it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t formulated into a coherent and persuasive argument.  If anyone has read his book, is it more tightly argued?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Robert B. Laughlin on \"The Crime of Reason\""},{"content":"A few hours after hearing Roger Pielke Jr. speak on climate change mitigation to CSPO, I heard him speak about climate change adaptation to a joint meeting of my seminar on human dimensions of climate change and another seminar with Dan Sarewitz, CSPO\u0026rsquo;s director.\nLike his previous talk, Pielke began this one with a slide on his positions, which was something like this:\nStrong advocate of mitigation and adaptation. He accepts the science of the IPCC. There are other reasons behind impacts of climate--effects of inexorable development and growth. The importance and challenge of climate change does not justify misrepresenting the science of adaptation--yet this happens on a regular basis (I’ll give a few examples). We might choose to mitigate, but we will adapt. He said (as he did in the earlier talk) that he has no disagreements with the science of IPCC working group I, lots of agreements with the economics and mitigation arguments of working group III (covered in the earlier talk), and some disagreements with the impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability arguments of working group II, which will be covered in this talk.\nHe then gave a slide of the outline of this talk:\nThe concept of adaptation is contested. How we think about adaptation shapes how we think about research and policy. Under the FCCC (Kyoto Protocol), adaptation is defined narrowly--as adaptation to climate change caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases. The narrow definition creates a bias against adaptation. Regardless, the primary factors underlying climate impacts on society are the result of development and growing wealth and vulnerability. There are different definitions of \"climate change\" used between the IPCC and the UN FCCC. The IPCC defines it as \"...change arising from any source,\" while the FCCC defines it as \"...a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.\"\nOn the former definition, if the sun causes the earth to warm, which causes climate change effects, that's a climate change. On the latter, it's not. The latter definition restricts climate change to impacts caused by human-caused changes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.\nAdaptation under the logic of the FCCC is that any increase of atmospheric carbon above 450 ppm (a 2 degree Centigrade temperature increase) is \"dangerous\" climate change that requires human adaptation. If we happen to stabilize at 449 ppm, then no adaptation at all is required. Under this definition, the more adaptation we need, the more we have failed in climate policy.\nUnder the IPCC's cost-benefit analysis, adaptation is considered a cost with no benefits.\nAl Gore's Earth in the Balance calls adaptation a \"laziness.\"\nTim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, says that adaptation is \"genocide.\"\nIPCC's working group I uses the IPCC definition of climate change; working group III uses the FCCC definition; working group II shifts back and forth between the two.\nBut climate impacts are caused by a combination of effects: vulnerability (with sociological and ecological components) and by climate change and variability (which includes natural internal and natural external components, human greenhouse gas changes, and non-human greenhouse gas changes). In order to deal with those impacts, you can back up the causal chain to each of those causes, from the IPCC perspective. But from the FCCC perspective, it's as though none of those other factors are available except for the human contribution to greenhouse gases.\nWhy did the FCCC use this definition? Because the UN already has other frameworks for disaster preparedness, water management, desertification prevention, and biodiversity prevention, and they didn't want any overlap of responsibility.\nChoice of definition of climate change can thus create a bias against adaptation, and puts science in impossible situations (requiring conclusive attribution of cause on human greenhouse gases). In reality, adaptation has broad benefits, such as contributing to sustainable development.\nThe Global Environment Facility of the UN, which releases funds for adaptation, will only pay out in proportion to effects caused by human greenhouse gases. Because of this requirement for attribution of cause, very little has been paid out. Oxfam said that the UNFCCC's global spending from the GEF is equal to what the UK spends annually on flood defense. If a developing nation has a disaster attributable to climate change and asks for funds, it is required to provide evidence for the percentage of damage attributable to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gases. One effect of this is that governmental spokespersons are likely to make such attributions in the media.\nSwiss Re did a report on adaptation in the broad sense, without regard to attribution of cause, and added up deaths from natural disasters to get a total of $50T and 850,000 lives over 50 years; CNN reported this as meaning that human greenhouse gases caused all of that damage and death.\nAnother problem with the narrow definition is illustrated by malaria scenarios. Jeffrey Sachs, 2003, projects that without malaria, African GDP might be 3%/year higher. If you plug that into the Kaya Identity, emissions would be about 17 GtC vs. less than 1 today, by 2050. Without malaria mitigation, emissions will not even hit 6 GtC by 2050. The IPCC's projections presuppose that malaria will be unmitigated, which seems to be NOT how we should be thinking about climate policy.\nPielke argued that the broader notion of climate change and broader notion of adaptation are more useful. Adaptation is not in opposition to mitigation, and it has benefits as well as costs. In reality, we don't care just about greenhouse gases, we care about the impacts regardless of cause. By drawing a circle around human contributions to greenhouse gases and setting goals that focus only on that, we've engaged in \"goal substitution,\" where addressing a single cause has become our goal instead of addressing the effects.\nHe then put up a slide of various book and magazine covers, as well as the poster for \"An Inconvenient Truth,\" and said that \"hazards are a centerpiece of the climate debate.\" One of the magazine covers, an issue of Newsweek from January 1996 with a cover story labeled \"The Hot Zone: Blizzards, Floods, and Hurricanes, Blame Global Warming,\" was what got Pielke interested in doing research. The period 1991-1994, before that story, was a very quiet period for hurricanes hitting the U.S., but also the most expensive in terms of damage. Although he didn't study blizzards, he did study floods and hurricanes, and said he found that \"the biggest signal in disasters wasn't climate.\"\nPielke then wanted to explain how his research has been used by the IPCC and the Bush and Obama administrations, looking at two reports: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability from the IPCC (the report of working group II), and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate, Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands.\nHe gave this quote from the IPCC report:\n1.3.8.5 Summary of disasters and hazards\nGlobal losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s. One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the value of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend. He pointed out that the reference to \"one study\" is interesting, because he has published dozens of studies in this area, none of which show such a trend. The study in question mentioned here is \"Muir Wood, et al., 2006,\" which is by R. Muir Wood, S. Miller, and A. Boissonade, titled \"The search for trends ...\" which is one of 24 papers commissioned as background by Peter Hoppe and Pielke for a workshop they conducted with experts from multiple countries, Munich Re, the Tyndall Centre, NSF, etc. The plan for that workshop was to be a \"dissensus consensus,\" to identify areas of disagreement for further study, but they ended up reaching consensus on 20 statements.\nThe motivation for the workshop was a graph from Munich Re that showed that the cost of disasters, adjusted for inflation, has been increasing. The workshop wanted to find out what was causing this to happen and whether any percentage of it could be attributed to climate change.\nThe types of disasters in question were:\nEarthquake, tsunami, and volcano, which couldn't be attributed to climate change. Windstorms and floods, which could possibly be attributed to climate change and have been responsible for most of the increasing damage. Disasters of temperature extremes such as heatwaves, drought, and wildfires, which could also be attributed to climate change, but which aren't responsible for most of the increasing damage. Three of the consensus statements agreed to by all participants, including Muir Wood, were:\nAnalyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the documented increasing losses to date. Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions. In the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally. The first statement is accurately reflected in the IPCC statement, but the second is exactly the opposite of what it says.\nThe Muir Wood paper itself says that if you look at the period 1970-2005, you have an upward trend that can't be attributed to just societal factors. But 2005 was the year of Hurricane Katrina, and 1970-1974 was a period when the Atlantic was very quiet. If you look at 1950-2005, there is no trend, Pielke said. The IPCC not only took a single background paper from the workshop, they actually took a subset of the paper's data to draw their conclusion.\nPielke argued that the damage trends can't be due to storm intensity alone, based on a graph of major category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes vs. year. The 177 U.S. coastal counties have seen huge population growth--for example, the population of Harris County, Texas in 2005 was equal to the entire U.S. coastal population from Florida to South Carolina in 1955.\nHe showed comparison photos of Miami Beach in 1926 vs. 2006, and then a graph of the estimated amount of U.S. damage per year if every hurricane season had occurred with 2005 population levels. That graph shows a huge spike in 1926, when a big hurricane hit Miami; it would have been 1.5 to 2 times the damage of Katrina. 2004 and 2005 were also years of very high damage, though not as high as 1926.\nThe trend, Pielke said, is no statistical change in damage since 1900, and is consistent with the physical characteristics of hurricanes at landfall over that same time period. Other signals show up in the data, such as El Nino. When the Pacific is cold you get more hurricanes, when it's warm you get fewer. 1927-1969 were very active for hurricanes, the 1970's and 80's were not very active. He said there have been two independent replications of the same results with different data sets and methodologies, and that insurance and reinsurance companies use this for their pricing models.\nHis summary slide said this:\nRaw damages are increasing. Normalized damages show no trend, consistent with the lack of trend in landfall Increases in inflation, wealth, and development along the coastline account for increasing damages. While coastal development in hurricane-prone regions is increasing, in aggregate it appears to be proportional to the rest of the United States, with large local variations. It occurred to me that one factor that might counteract a genuine increase in storm intensity with respect to damage would be better construction, but I didn't raise the issue since I figured it would have been unlikely for such a factor to exactly offset storm intensity increases so that there was no trend. Afterward, though, I found this paper by Judy Curry (PDF) which argues that improvements in building codes have just such an effect, and that the pre-1930 data Pielke uses was a time of inflated property values before the Great Depression, and if you take it out you get an upward trend again.\nIn response to a student question about whether probabilities of landfall have changed, Pielke said that the overall odds of hurricane landfall are unchanged within the data set (though there are subsets where it is different) and that studies of the west coast of Mexico, South Korea, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Madagascar show no regions where hurricane landfalls have increased.\nHe reported three other studies which have shown no upward trend in normalized weather losses--a study of his own done with the head of the Cuba Weather Service, for 1900-1998 (Pielke et al., 2003), one for Australia for 1965-2005 (Crompton \u0026amp; McAneney, 2007), and one for India for a time period I didn't catch (Raghavan \u0026amp; Sen Sarma, 2003). He said there are about 15 other studies of the same sort, and that Lawrence Bauer of the Free University of Amsterdam has a review paper of all of these studies that is under review for publication.\nWhen you look at U.S. flood losses, after adjusting for societal factors, there has been a slight (not statistically significant) downward trend in losses.\nPielke then said that he took a bunch of weather loss data sets, standardized them, took ten-year averages and overall averages, and then put them all on top of each other. These data sets included Munich Re's global losses for 1979-xx (I didn't catch the end year), U.S. flood losses, and Australian weather losses. While Munich Re's global losses correlate strongly with U.S. hurricane losses (0.80, 64% of the variance in global losses explained by U.S. losses), Pielke said, \"there's no secular trend over the time period for which we have these data sets.\"\nRegarding hurricanes, however, Pielke said his data is consistent with hurricanes becoming more intense. He referred to Kerry Emanuel's 4 August 2005 paper in Nature, titled \"Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years,\" which was featured in \"An Inconvenient Truth.\" He showed a graph from the paper which shows windspeed cubed, or power dissipation index (PDI), has increased. Pielke noted that this is not a measure of \"destructiveness,\" and the paper says nothing about destruction caused by hurricanes. He broke the Atlantic basin into five equal compartments with an equal number of observations of hurricane intensity (windspeed measurement) from the 1880s to the present, for all named storms, 39 knots and higher. He found that the strongest upward trends are farthest out to sea, and no trends in the locations where damage actually occurs.\nHe said he did the same with Emanuel's graph and got the same result, that all of the trends are out to sea. So, he argued, Emanuel's results could be due to real changes in storm intensity as a result of ocean temperature changes, or they could be due to increased storm counts due to more and better data collection out at sea. He submitted a letter to Geophysical Research Letters reporting his result, which was rejected with negative reviews that said \"everybody already knows this.\" But, Pielke said, Emanuel didn't know it until he pointed it out to him.\nNext, Pielke talked about the U.S. CCSP Report, which spanned the Bush and Obama administrations. This report said the following about U.S. extreme weather events:\nOver the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.\nNationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.\nDespite increases in some measures of precipitation, there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (\u0026gt;90th percentile).\nThere have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms, called Nor’easters. There are no long-term ... With these conclusions, he said, you'd expect no claims of increasing losses from damage. But the report says:\nExtremes are already having significant impacts on North America. ... both the climate and the socioeconomic vulnerability to weather and climate extremes are changing (Brooks and Doswell, 2001; Pielke et al., 2008; Downton et al., 2005). Two of the three papers cited have Pielke as author or co-author, and the third applies his sort of methodology to tornadoes. The Harold E. Brooks and Charles A. Doswell III 2001 paper says: \"We find nothing to suggest that damage from individual tornadoes has increased through time, except as a result of the increasing cost of goods and accumulation of wealth in the United States.\" The Pielke et al. 2008 paper finds no trends in absolute data or under a logarithmic transformation. The Downton, Miller, and Pielke 2005 paper talks about the National Weather Service flood loss database, says absolutely nothing about climate change, and shows a drop in losses. So of the three cited papers for the claim, two say the opposite of the claim and one is silent. Pielke says there is no published study that supports the claim. When he made a stink about this, he said he ended up being called a climate change denier. The IPCC and CCSP are supposed to be places we go to get reliable information, he said, and \"I'm much more willing to listen to others who say their work was misrepresented since I know mine was.\"\nIn 2000, he co-authored an article with Dan Sarewitz on \"Breaking the Global Warming Gridlock\" in The Atlantic Monthly that argued for getting people engaged with adaptation rather than focusing exclusively on mitigation. After that came out, he says he was told privately by a representative of an environmental group that \"we agree with what you say, but it's not helpful now because we're trying to win a [political] battle on mitigation.\"\nHe pointed out two recent cases of people in government being silenced for speaking out contrary to policy--David Nutt, the UK drug policy advisor, who was fired for saying that ecstasy use was of comparable risk to riding horses (and ecstasy is safer to give to a stranger than peanuts), and Clive Spash, an economist for Australia's CSIRO, who submitted a paper to a journal critical of cap and trade, which was accepted for publication but withdrawn when his supervisor wrote to the journal and asked for it to be retracted.\nHe asked, \"If the public loses faith in the connection between authoritative scientific statements and policy, then what do we rely upon to make decisions?\"\nHe suggested that we need to improve processes where there is potential for intellectual conflicts-of-interest, such as where people with a stake in an assessment highlight their own research over other research they don't favor. He thinks this doesn't seem to be a problem with IPCC working group I, but has been a problem with both working groups II and III and with the CCSP. In both of the cases he referred to regarding his own work, above, he said a single person was responsible (not the same person in both cases, but one in each).\nI left about ten minutes before the end of the class and so missed any further wrapup, as I had to get to the opposite side of campus for another talk, by Robert B. Laughlin, one of the winners of the 1998 Nobel prize in physics.\nUPDATE (24 September 2013): Michael Mann, on Twitter, called Pielke Jr.'s work on storm damage \"deeply flawed work\" because its \"normalization procedure removes climate change signal,\" and pointed to this critique by Grinsted.\nUPDATE (13 July 2014): An updated version of the information in this talk is found in Ch. 7 of Pielke Jr.'s book, The Climate Fix (2010, Basic Books). Historical Comments Roger Jones (2009-11-14):\nPretty much all the people I know who work on adaptation consider the IPCC definition to be too narrow. The biggest problem is actually where policy has been written based on the IPCC definition. The response from those who know say \u0026quot;this is too narrow\u0026quot;. An example was with the Global Environment Facility who wanted to fund the climate change component of development over and above that dealing with everything else. The response was \u0026quot;you can't actually do that, except in isolated circumstances\u0026quot;. This was over 5 years ago.\nWhile I agree with much of what you reported from the seminar, I think there is more acceptance of this in the research community than was communicated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change_07.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few hours after hearing \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change.html\"\u003eRoger Pielke Jr. speak on climate change mitigation to CSPO\u003c/a\u003e, I heard him speak about climate change adaptation to a joint meeting of my seminar on human dimensions of climate change and another seminar with Dan Sarewitz, CSPO\u0026rsquo;s director.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLike his previous talk, Pielke began this one with a slide on his positions, which was something like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStrong advocate of mitigation and adaptation.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe accepts the science of the IPCC.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere are other reasons behind impacts of climate--effects of inexorable development and growth.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe importance and challenge of climate change does not justify misrepresenting the science of adaptation--yet this happens on a regular basis (I’ll give a few examples).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe might choose to mitigate, but we will adapt.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nHe said (as he did in the earlier talk) that he has no disagreements with the science of IPCC working group I, lots of agreements with the economics and mitigation arguments of working group III (covered in the earlier talk), and some disagreements with the impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability arguments of working group II, which will be covered in this talk.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe then gave a slide of the outline of this talk:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe concept of adaptation is contested.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHow we think about adaptation shapes how we think about research and policy.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUnder the FCCC (Kyoto Protocol), adaptation is defined narrowly--as adaptation to climate change caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe narrow definition creates a bias against adaptation.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRegardless, the primary factors underlying climate impacts on society are the result of development and growing wealth and vulnerability.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThere are different definitions of \"climate change\" used between the IPCC and the UN FCCC.  The IPCC defines it as \"...change arising from any source,\" while the FCCC defines it as \"...a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn the former definition, if the sun causes the earth to warm, which causes climate change effects, that's a climate change.  On the latter, it's not.  The latter definition restricts climate change to impacts caused by human-caused changes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAdaptation under the logic of the FCCC is that any increase of atmospheric carbon above 450 ppm (a 2 degree Centigrade temperature increase) is \"dangerous\" climate change that requires human adaptation.  If we happen to stabilize at 449 ppm, then no adaptation at all is required.  Under this definition, the more adaptation we need, the more we have failed in climate policy.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUnder the IPCC's cost-benefit analysis, adaptation is considered a cost with no benefits.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAl Gore's \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEarth in the Balance\u003c/span\u003e calls adaptation a \"laziness.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTim Flannery, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Weather Makers\u003c/span\u003e, says that adaptation is \"genocide.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIPCC's working group I uses the IPCC definition of climate change; working group III uses the FCCC definition; working group II shifts back and forth between the two.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut climate impacts are caused by a combination of effects: vulnerability (with sociological and ecological components) and by climate change and variability (which includes natural internal and natural external components, human greenhouse gas changes, and non-human greenhouse gas changes).  In order to deal with those impacts, you can back up the causal chain to each of those causes, from the IPCC perspective.  But from the FCCC perspective, it's as though none of those other factors are available except for the human contribution to greenhouse gases.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhy did the FCCC use this definition?  Because the UN already has other frameworks for disaster preparedness, water management, desertification prevention, and biodiversity prevention, and they didn't want any overlap of responsibility.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nChoice of definition of climate change can thus create a bias against adaptation, and puts science in impossible situations (requiring conclusive attribution of cause on human greenhouse gases).  In reality, adaptation has broad benefits, such as contributing to sustainable development.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Global Environment Facility of the UN, which releases funds for adaptation, will only pay out in proportion to effects caused by human greenhouse gases.  Because of this requirement for attribution of cause, very little has been paid out.  Oxfam said that the UNFCCC's global spending from the GEF is equal to what the UK spends annually on flood defense.   If a developing nation has a disaster attributable to climate change and asks for funds, it is required to provide evidence for the percentage of damage attributable to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gases. One effect of this is that governmental spokespersons are likely to make such attributions in the media.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSwiss Re did a report on adaptation in the broad sense, without regard to attribution of cause, and added up deaths from natural disasters to get a total of $50T and 850,000 lives over 50 years; CNN reported this as meaning that human greenhouse gases caused all of that damage and death.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnother problem with the narrow definition is illustrated by malaria scenarios.  Jeffrey Sachs, 2003, projects that without malaria, African GDP might be 3%/year higher.  If you plug that into the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity\"\u003eKaya Identity\u003c/a\u003e, emissions would be about 17 GtC vs. less than 1 today, by 2050.  Without malaria mitigation, emissions will not even hit 6 GtC by 2050.  The IPCC's projections presuppose that malaria will be unmitigated, which seems to be NOT how we should be thinking about climate policy.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke argued that the broader notion of climate change and broader notion of adaptation are more useful.  Adaptation is not in opposition to mitigation, and it has benefits as well as costs.  In reality, we don't care just about greenhouse gases, we care about the impacts regardless of cause.  By drawing a circle around human contributions to greenhouse gases and setting goals that focus only on that, we've engaged in \"goal substitution,\" where addressing a single cause has become our goal instead of addressing the effects.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe then put up a slide of various book and magazine covers, as well as the poster for \"An Inconvenient Truth,\" and said that \"hazards are a centerpiece of the climate debate.\"  One of the magazine covers, an issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e from January 1996 with a cover story labeled \"The Hot Zone: Blizzards, Floods, and Hurricanes, Blame Global Warming,\" was what got Pielke interested in doing research.  The period 1991-1994, before that story, was a very quiet period for hurricanes hitting the U.S., but also the most expensive in terms of damage.  Although he didn't study blizzards, he did study floods and hurricanes, and said he found that \"the biggest signal in disasters wasn't climate.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke then wanted to explain how his research has been used by the IPCC and the Bush and Obama administrations, looking at two reports:  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClimate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability\u003c/span\u003e from the IPCC (the report of working group II), and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Report, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWeather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate, Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe gave this quote from the IPCC report:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n1.3.8.5 Summary of disasters and hazards\u003cbr /\u003e\nGlobal losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.  One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the value of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nHe pointed out that the reference to \"one study\" is interesting, because he has published dozens of studies in this area, none of which show such a trend.  The study in question mentioned here is \"Muir Wood, et al., 2006,\" which is by R. Muir Wood, S. Miller, and A. Boissonade, titled \"The search for trends ...\" which is one of 24 papers commissioned as background by Peter Hoppe and Pielke for a workshop they conducted with experts from multiple countries, Munich Re, the Tyndall Centre, NSF, etc.  The plan for that workshop was to be a \"dissensus consensus,\" to identify areas of disagreement for further study, but they ended up reaching consensus on 20 statements.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe motivation for the workshop was a graph from Munich Re that showed that the cost of disasters, adjusted for inflation, has been increasing.  The workshop wanted to find out what was causing this to happen and whether any percentage of it could be attributed to climate change.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe types of disasters in question were:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEarthquake, tsunami, and volcano, which couldn't be attributed to climate change.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWindstorms and floods, which could possibly be attributed to climate change and have been responsible for most of the increasing damage.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDisasters of temperature extremes such as heatwaves, drought, and wildfires, which could also be attributed to climate change, but which aren't responsible for most of the increasing damage.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThree of the consensus statements agreed to by all participants, including Muir Wood, were:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnalyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the documented increasing losses to date.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBecause of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn the near future the quantitative link (attribution) of trends in storm and flood losses to climate changes related to GHG emissions is unlikely to be answered unequivocally.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\nThe first statement is accurately reflected in the IPCC statement, but the second is exactly the opposite of what it says.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Muir Wood paper itself says that if you look at the period 1970-2005, you have an upward trend that can't be attributed to just societal factors.  But 2005 was the year of Hurricane Katrina, and 1970-1974 was a period when the Atlantic was very quiet.  If you look at 1950-2005, there is no trend, Pielke said.  The IPCC not only took a single background paper from the workshop, they actually took a subset of the paper's data to draw their conclusion.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke argued that the damage trends can't be due to storm intensity alone, based on a graph of major category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes vs. year.  The 177 U.S. coastal counties have seen huge population growth--for example, the population of Harris County, Texas in 2005 was equal to the entire U.S. coastal population from Florida to South Carolina in 1955.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe showed comparison photos of Miami Beach in 1926 vs. 2006, and then a graph of the estimated amount of U.S. damage per year if every hurricane season had occurred with 2005 population levels.  That graph shows a huge spike in 1926, when a big hurricane hit Miami; it would have been 1.5 to 2 times the damage of Katrina.  2004 and 2005 were also years of very high damage, though not as high as 1926.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe trend, Pielke said, is no statistical change in damage since 1900, and is consistent with the physical characteristics of hurricanes at landfall over that same time period.  Other signals show up in the data, such as El Nino.  When the Pacific is cold you get more hurricanes, when it's warm you get fewer.  1927-1969 were very active for hurricanes, the 1970's and 80's were not very active.  He said there have been two independent replications of the same results with different data sets and methodologies, and that insurance and reinsurance companies use this for their pricing models.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis summary slide said this:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRaw damages are increasing.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNormalized damages show no trend, consistent with the lack of trend in landfall\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIncreases in inflation, wealth, and development along the coastline account for increasing damages.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhile coastal development in hurricane-prone regions is increasing, in aggregate it appears to be proportional to the rest of the United States, with large local variations.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nIt occurred to me that one factor that might counteract a genuine increase in storm intensity with respect to damage would be better construction, but I didn't raise the issue since I figured it would have been unlikely for such a factor to exactly offset storm intensity increases so that there was no trend.  Afterward, though, I found \u003ca href=\"http://www.eas.gatech.edu/files/Pielke_review.pdf\"\u003ethis paper by Judy Curry\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) which argues that improvements in building codes have just such an effect, and that the pre-1930 data Pielke uses was a time of inflated property values before the Great Depression, and if you take it out you get an upward trend again.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn response to a student question about whether probabilities of landfall have changed, Pielke said that the overall odds of hurricane landfall are unchanged within the data set (though there are subsets where it is different) and that studies of the west coast of Mexico, South Korea, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Madagascar show no regions where hurricane landfalls have increased.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe reported three other studies which have shown no upward trend in normalized weather losses--a study of his own done with the head of the Cuba Weather Service, for 1900-1998 (Pielke et al., 2003), one for Australia for 1965-2005 (Crompton \u0026amp; McAneney, 2007), and one for India for a time period I didn't catch (Raghavan \u0026amp; Sen Sarma, 2003).  He said there are about 15 other studies of the same sort, and that Lawrence Bauer of the Free University of Amsterdam has a review paper of all of these studies that is under review for publication.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhen you look at U.S. flood losses, after adjusting for societal factors, there has been a slight (not statistically significant) downward trend in losses.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke then said that he took a bunch of weather loss data sets, standardized them, took ten-year averages and overall averages, and then put them all on top of each other.  These data sets included Munich Re's global losses for 1979-xx (I didn't catch the end year), U.S. flood losses, and Australian weather losses.  While Munich Re's global losses correlate strongly with U.S. hurricane losses (0.80, 64% of the variance in global losses explained by U.S. losses), Pielke said, \"there's no secular trend over the time period for which we have these data sets.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRegarding hurricanes, however, Pielke said his data is consistent with hurricanes becoming more intense.  He referred to Kerry Emanuel's 4 August 2005 paper in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e, titled \"Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years,\" which was featured in \"An Inconvenient Truth.\"  He showed a graph from the paper which shows windspeed cubed, or power dissipation index (PDI), has increased.  Pielke noted that this is not a measure of \"destructiveness,\" and the paper says nothing about destruction caused by hurricanes.  He broke the Atlantic basin into five equal compartments with an equal number of observations of hurricane intensity (windspeed measurement) from the 1880s to the present, for all named storms, 39 knots and higher.  He found that the strongest upward trends are farthest out to sea, and no trends in the locations where damage actually occurs.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe said he did the same with Emanuel's graph and got the same result, that all of the trends are out to sea. So, he argued, Emanuel's results could be due to real changes in storm intensity as a result of ocean temperature changes, or they could be due to increased storm counts due to more and better data collection out at sea.  He submitted a letter to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGeophysical Research Letters\u003c/span\u003e reporting his result, which was rejected with negative reviews that said \"everybody already knows this.\"  But, Pielke said, Emanuel didn't know it until he pointed it out to him.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNext, Pielke talked about the U.S. CCSP Report, which spanned the Bush and Obama administrations.  This report said the following about U.S. extreme weather events:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOver the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDespite increases in some measures of precipitation, there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (\u0026gt;90th percentile).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms, called Nor’easters.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere are no long-term ...\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\nWith these conclusions, he said, you'd expect no claims of increasing losses from damage.  But the report says:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nExtremes are already having significant impacts on North America. ... both the climate and the socioeconomic vulnerability to weather and climate extremes are changing (Brooks and Doswell, 2001; Pielke et al., 2008; Downton et al., 2005).\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nTwo of the three papers cited have Pielke as author or co-author, and the third applies his sort of methodology to tornadoes.  The Harold E. Brooks and Charles A. Doswell III 2001 paper says: \"We find nothing to suggest that damage from individual tornadoes has increased through time, except as a result of the increasing cost of goods and accumulation of wealth in the United States.\"  The Pielke et al. 2008 paper finds no trends in absolute data or under a logarithmic transformation. The Downton, Miller, and Pielke 2005 paper talks about the National Weather Service flood loss database, says absolutely nothing about climate change, and shows a drop in losses.  So of the three cited papers for the claim, two say the opposite of the claim and one is silent.  Pielke says there is no published study that supports the claim.  When he made a stink about this, he said he ended up being called a climate change denier.  The IPCC and CCSP are supposed to be places we go to get reliable information, he said, and \"I'm much more willing to listen to others who say their work was misrepresented since I know mine was.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2000, he co-authored an article with Dan Sarewitz on \"Breaking the Global Warming Gridlock\" in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003c/span\u003e that argued for getting people engaged with adaptation rather than focusing exclusively on mitigation.  After that came out, he says he was told privately by a representative of an environmental group that \"we agree with what you say, but it's not helpful now because we're trying to win a [political] battle on mitigation.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe pointed out two recent cases of people in government being silenced for speaking out contrary to policy--David Nutt, the UK drug policy advisor, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18099-david-nutt-governments-should-get-real-on-drugs.html\"\u003ewho was fired for saying that ecstasy use was of comparable risk to riding horses (and ecstasy is safer to give to a stranger than peanuts)\u003c/a\u003e, and Clive Spash, an economist for Australia's CSIRO, \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/02/2731014.htm\"\u003ewho submitted a paper to a journal critical of cap and trade, which was accepted for publication but withdrawn when his supervisor wrote to the journal and asked for it to be retracted\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe asked, \"If the public loses faith in the connection between authoritative scientific statements and policy, then what do we rely upon to make decisions?\"\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe suggested that we need to improve processes where there is potential for intellectual conflicts-of-interest, such as where people with a stake in an assessment highlight their own research over other research they don't favor.  He thinks this doesn't seem to be a problem with IPCC working group I, but has been a problem with both working groups II and III and with the CCSP.  In both of the cases he referred to regarding his own work, above, he said a single person was responsible (not the same person in both cases, but one in each).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI left about ten minutes before the end of the class and so missed any further wrapup, as I had to get to the opposite side of campus for \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/robert-b-laughlin-on-crime-of-reason.html\"\u003eanother talk, by Robert B. Laughlin\u003c/a\u003e, one of the winners of the 1998 Nobel prize in physics.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (24 September 2013): Michael Mann, on Twitter, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/382497716942544897\"\u003ecalled Pielke Jr.'s work on storm damage \"deeply flawed work\" because its \"normalization procedure removes climate change signal,\"\u003c/a\u003e and pointed to \u003ca href=\"http://www.glaciology.net/Home/Miscellaneous-Debris/areplytopielkejrs\"\u003ethis critique by Grinsted\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (13 July 2014): An updated version of the information in this talk is found in Ch. 7 of Pielke Jr.'s book, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465025196/?tag=thelipblo-20\"\u003eThe Climate Fix\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (2010, Basic Books).\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eRoger Jones\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-11-14)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ePretty much all the people I know who work on adaptation consider the IPCC definition to be too narrow.\n\u003cp\u003eThe biggest problem is actually where policy has been written based on the IPCC definition. The response from those who know say \u0026quot;this is too narrow\u0026quot;. An example was with the Global Environment Facility who wanted to fund the climate change component of development over and above that dealing with everything else. The response was \u0026quot;you can't actually do that, except in isolated circumstances\u0026quot;. This was over 5 years ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation"},{"content":"Yesterday I heard Roger Pielke Jr. speak twice at Arizona State University, first in a talk to the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) on climate change mitigation, and second in a class lecture on climate change adaptation. This post is about the former.\nHis talk was entitled \u0026ldquo;The Simple Math of Emissions Reduction,\u0026rdquo; and began with a quote from Steve Raymer of Oxford University:\nWicked Problems\nhave Clumsy Solutions\nrequiring Uncomfortable Knowledge which he then followed up with a slide on \"Where I stand,\" which included the following bullet points (nearly, but probably not exactly verbatim):\nStrong advocate for mitigation and adaptation policies Continuing increase in atmospheric CO2 could pose large risks, as described by IPCC Stabilizing concentrations at low levels can’t succeed if we underestimate the challenge (and we have) Mitigation action will not result from elimination of all scientific uncertainty Poisonous politics of the climate debate serves to limit a broader discussion of options Ultimately technological innovation will precede political action, not vice versa Regarding the IPCC, he says he has no debate with working group I on the science, some disagreements with working group II on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, and lots of debate with working group III on economics and mitigation, which this talk covers.\nHis slide for the outline of his talk looked like this:\nUnderstanding the mitigation challenge Where do emissions come from? Decarbonization The UK as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers The U.S. situation and Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry How things might be different Understanding the mitigation challenge\nAlthough climate change involves other greenhouse gases besides CO2, he focused on CO2 and in this part of the talk gave a summary of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere as a stock and flow problem, using a bathtub analogy. The inflow of CO2 into the atmosphere is like water pouring out of the faucet, there's outflow going out the drain, and the water in the tub is the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere. The inflow is about 9 GtC (gigatons of carbon) per year and growing, and expected to hit 12 GtC per year by 2030. The current stock is a concentration of about 390 parts per million (ppm), increasing by 2-3 ppm/year. And the outflow is a natural removal of about 4 GtC/year. To stop the stock increase, the amount going in has to equal the amount going out. If we reach an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, that is expected to limit the stock to 450 ppm.\nEmissions have been growing faster than expected by the IPCC in 2000, with a 3.3% average increase per year between 2000 and 2007. While the economic slump has reduced emissions in 2009, it's expected that recovery and continued growth in emissions will occur.\nWhere do emissions come from?\nPielke used the following four lines to identify policy-relevant variables:\nPeople\nengage in economic activity that\nuses energy\nfrom carbon-emitting generation The associated variables:\nPopulation (P)\nGDP per capita (GDP/P)\nEnergy intensity of the economy (Total Energy (TE)/GDP)\nCarbon intensity of energy (C/TE) The total carbon emissions = P * GDP/P * TE/GDP * C/TE.\nThis formula is known as the \"Kaya Identity.\"\nThe policy tools available to reduce emissions by affecting these variables are: (1) population management to end up with fewer people, (2) limit the generation of wealth to have a smaller economy, (3) do the same or more with less energy by increasing efficiency, and (4) switch energy sources to generate energy with less emissions.\nAnd that's it. Cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, etc. are designed to influence these variables.\nPielke then combined the first two variables (P * GDP/P) to get GDP, and the second two (TE/GDP * C/TE) he identified as Technology.\nHe argued that reducing GDP or GDP growth is not a policy option, so Technology is the only real policy option. Regarding the former point, he put up a graph very much like the Gapminder.org graph of world income, and observed that the Millennium Development Goals are all about pushing the people below $10/day--80% of the world's population--on that graph to the right. Even if all of the OECD nations were removed from the graph, there would still be a push to increase the GDP for the remainder and there would still be growing emissions.\nHe quoted Gwyn Prins regarding the G8 Summit to point out how policy makers are conflicted--they had a morning session on how to reduce gas prices for economic benefit, and an afternoon session on how to increase gas prices for climate change mitigation.\nWith this kind of a conflict, Pielke said, policy makers will choose GDP growth over climate change.\nSo that leaves Technology as an option, and he turned to the topic of decarbonization.\nDecarbonization\nPielke put up a graph of CO2 emissions per $1,000 of GDP over time globally, which showed that there has been a steady improvement of efficiency. In 2006, emissions were 29.12 GtC, divided by $47.267 trillion of GDP, gives 0.62 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP. In 1980, that was above 0.90 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\nOverall emissions track GDP, and the global economy has become more and more carbon intensive.\nHe looked at carbon dioxide per GDP (using purchasing power parity (PPP) for comparison between countries) for four different countries, Japan, Germany, U.S., and China (that's ordered from most to least efficient). Japan hasn't changed much over time, but is very carbon efficient (below 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP). Germany and the U.S. are about the same slightly above 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP, and both have improved similarly over time. China has gotten worse from 2002-2006 and is at about 0.75 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\nHe put up a slide of the EU-15 countries decarbonization rates pre- and post-Kyoto Protocol, and though there was a gap between them, the slopes appeared to be comparable. For the first ten years of Kyoto, then, he said, there's no evidence of any improvement in the background rate of decarbonization. The pre-Kyoto rate was from above 0.55 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP. The post-Kyoto rates went from about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to below 0.45 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\nAt this point, Clark Miller (head of my program in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology) pointed out that given Japan, there is no reason to assume that there should have been a continuing downward trend at all, but Pielke reiterated that since the slopes appeared to be the same there's no evidence that Kyoto made a difference.\nThe UK as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers\nPielke identified the emissions targets of the UK Climate Change Act of 2008:\nAverage annual reductions of 2.8% from 2007 to 2020, to reach 42% below 1990 levels by 2020.\nAverage annual reductions of 3.5% from 2020, to reach 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.\nThe former target of 42% below 1990 levels is contingent upon COP15 reaching an agreement this December; otherwise the unilateral target is 34% below 1990 levels.\nPielke showed a graph of the historical rate of decarbonization for the UK economy, and compared it to graphs of manufacturing output and manufacturing employment, observing that the success of decarbonization of the UK economy from 1980-2006 has been due primarily to offshoring of manufacturing, something that's not sustainable--once they reach zero, there's nowhere further down to go.\nHe then used France as a point of comparison, since it has the lowest CO2/GDP output of any developed country, due to its use of nuclear power for most of its energy--it's at 0.30 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP, and a lot of that is emissions from gasoline consumption for transportation.\nIt took France about 22 years, from 1984-2006, to get its emissions to that rate.\nFor the UK to hit its 2020 target, it needs to improve to France's rate in the next five years, by 2015. That means building 30 new nuclear power plants and reducing the equivalent coal and gas generation; Pielke said he would \"go out on a limb\" and say that this won't happen.\nThat will only get them 1/3 of the way to their 2020 goals.\nThe UK plan calls for putting 1.7 million electric cars on the road by 2020, which means doubling the current rate of auto sales and selling only electric cars.\nFor the entire world to reach France's level of efficiency by 2015 would require a couple of thousand nuclear power plants.\nThe U.S. situation and Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry\nThe U.S., said Pielke, has had one of the highest rates of sustained decarbonization, from 1980-2006, going from over 1.00 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to the current level of about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\nThe Waxman-Markey target is an 80% reduction by 2050, not quite as radical as the UK.\nThe Boxer-Kerry target is a 17% reduction by 2020.\nPielke broke down the current U.S. energy supply by source in quadrillions of BTUs (quads), and pointed out that he got all of his data from the EIA and encouraged people to look it up for themselves:\nPetroleum: 37.1\nNatural gas: 23.8\nCoal: 22.5\nRenewable: 7.3\nNuclear: 8.5 Total energy was about 99.2 quads in 2007, of which 83.4 came from coal, natural gas, and petroleum.\nEmissions by source:\nCoal: 95 MMt CO2/quad\nNatural gas: 55 MMt CO2/quad\nPetroleum: 68 MMt CO2/quad Multiply those by the amount of energy produced by each source and add them up:\n95 * 22.5 + 55 * 23.8 + 68 * 37.1 = 5,969 MMt CO2 The actual total emissions were at about 5,979, so the above back-of-the-envelope calculation was pretty close.\nIn 2009, U.S. energy consumption will be about 108.6 quads, of which 21 quads will come from renewables and nuclear (40% growth from 2007), which leaves 87.2 quads from fossil fuels, a 4.6% increase from 2007.\nIf we substituted natural gas for all coal, then our 2020 emissions would be 5,300 MMt CO2, higher than the 2020 target and 12% below 2005, and would still lock us into a carbon intensive future.\nIn order to meet targets, we need to reduce coal consumption by 40%, or 11 quads, and replace that with renewables plus nuclear, plus an additional 3.8 quads of growth by 2020.\nOne quad equals about 15 nuclear plants, so 14.8 quads means building 222 new nuclear plants (on top of the 104 that are currently in the U.S.).\nOr, alternatively, assuming 100 concentrated solar power installations * 30 MW peak per quad, 1,480 such installations for 14.8 quads, or one online every two days until 2020.\nOr, assuming 37,500 * 80 kW peak wind turbines per quad, 555,000 such wind turbines for 14.8 quads, or one 150-turbine wind farm brought online daily until 2020.\nTo reach these targets with wind and solar would require increasing them by a factor of 37 by 2020; Obama has promised only a tripling.\nCould we meet the targets by increasing efficiency of our energy consumption? We would have to reduce total energy consumption to 85.5 quads by 2020 (rather than 108.6), about equal to U.S. energy consumption in 1992, when the U.S. economy was 35% smaller than in 2007. That would be improving efficiency by about a third.\nHow fast can decarbonization occur? We don't know, because no one has really set out to intentionally do that. Historical rates have been 1-2% per year by developed countries; for short periods, some countries have exceeded 2% per year. Japan, from 1981-1986, improved by over 4% per year.\nPielke argued that these targets are not feasible targets in the U.S. or UK, and so policy makers are adding safety valves, offsets, and other mechanisms to allow some manipulation to give the appearance of success. Achieving 80% reduction in global emissions by 2050 requires \u0026gt; 5% decarbonization per year.\nThe problem, Pielke argued, is that the policy logic of targets and timetables is backwards, and we should focus on improving efficiency and decarbonization rather than emissions targets.\nHow things might be different\nPielke's suggested alternative strategy was presented in a slide something like this:\nFocus policy on decarbonization of the economy (not simply emissions) Efficiency gains (follow the Japanese model, “frontrunner program” by industry, look at best performer and set it as regulatory standard) Expand carbon free energy (low carbon tax, other policies--subsidies, regulation, etc.) Innovation-focused investments To create ever advancing frontier of potential efficiency gains Air capture backstop Adaptation The Japanese \"frontrunner\" program was where the government went industry by industry, identified the most efficient company in each industry, and set regulations to make that company the baseline standard for the other companies to meet.\nPielke argued that there should be a carbon tax of, say, $5/ton (or whatever is the \"highest price politically possible\"), with the collected funds (that would raise about $700B/year) used to promote innovation in energy efficiency.\nIf we find that we're stabilizing at 635 ppm, we may want to \"brute force\" some removal of carbon from the atmosphere (e.g., geoengineering).\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, Clark Miller questioned Pielke about the impossibility of replacing our energy infrastructure quickly--if it costs $2.61B for a 1400 MW nuclear plant, we'd need 65 of them (fewer than Pielke's number, he assumed smaller plants) at a cost of $260B. Since there is capital floating around causing asset bubbles in the trillions, and the energy industry is expected to become a $15T industry, surely there would be some drive to build them if they're going to become profitable. (Not to mention peak oil as a driver.) He agreed that it would take longer to construct these, but asked what the upshot would be if this was done by, say, 2075.\nAlso in the Q\u0026amp;A, Pielke pointed out that in a previous presentation of this talk, a philosophy professor had suggested that the population variable could be affected by handing out cyanide pills. (Or by promoting the growth of the Church of Euthanasia.) What I didn't mention above was that Pielke also briefly discussed improvements to human lifespan, and in his other talk (summary to come), he talked about how the IPCC's projections assume that we will not try to eradicate malaria...\nADDENDUM (November 7, 2009): I've seen estimates that U.S. carbon emissions will be about 6% lower in 2009 as a result of the recession, which amounts to considerable progress towards the Boxer-Kerry target. Projections of an economic recovery in 2010 strike me as overly optimistic; in my opinion there's a strong possibility that we haven't hit bottom yet and there's worse to come. Still, though, I think Pielke's probably right that energy consumption will go right back up again unless the recession becomes a depression and results in significant changes in consumption habits.\nMy summary of Pielke's lecture on climate change adaptation is here.\nADDENDUM (November 9, 2009): It should be noted that Roger Pielke, Jr. is a somewhat controversial figure in the climate change debate, and believed by many in the climate change blogosophere to be in the climate change skeptic camp, or to be biased towards them in terms of where he levels his criticisms. A post titled \"Who Framed Roger Pielke?\" from the Only In It For the Gold blog links to a number of opinions expressing these views.\nUPDATE (February 5, 2010): A post titled \"The Honest Joker\" at Rabett Run critiques Pielke Jr.'s stance as an \"honest broker\" as a sham.\nUPDATE (August 28, 2010): A talk by Pielke that appears to have some similarity to this one may be found here.\nUPDATE (July 13, 2014): An updated version of the information in this talk is Ch. 3 of Pielke Jr.'s book, The Climate Fix (2010, Basic Books). EliRabett (2009-11-13):\nNot sure that you want comments or not, but a good place to start analyzing the talk is to realize that greenhouse gases accumulate, so there is great virtue in reducing or at least limiting current emissions by substitution and conservation. Roger ignores this issue. He is not only assuming that a miracle will occur, but that it will occur on schedule.\nLippard (2009-11-15):\nComments are welcome and appreciated. What exactly is the issue that he ignored? He did discuss GHG accumulation, and his argument in the last part of the talk expressed skepticism about the likelihood of substitution occurring on the timeline necessary to reach proposed emissions targets. He didn't argue that we shouldn't do it\u0026ndash;his argument for \u0026quot;decarbonization\u0026quot; is explicitly an argument that we should replace our existing energy infrastructure with non-CO2-emitting infrastructure.\nYou're right that he didn't say much about conservation\u0026ndash;he assumed continuing growth in energy demand.\nIt's not clear to me that he's assuming a well-timed miracle. Can you elaborate?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I heard Roger Pielke Jr. speak twice at Arizona State University, first in a talk to the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) on climate change mitigation, and second in \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change_07.html\"\u003ea class lecture on climate change adaptation\u003c/a\u003e.  This post is about the former.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis talk was entitled \u0026ldquo;The Simple Math of Emissions Reduction,\u0026rdquo; and began with a quote from Steve Raymer of Oxford University:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nWicked Problems\u003cbr /\u003e\nhave Clumsy Solutions\u003cbr /\u003e\nrequiring Uncomfortable Knowledge\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nwhich he then followed up with a slide on \"Where I stand,\" which included the following bullet points (nearly, but probably not exactly verbatim):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStrong advocate for mitigation and adaptation policies\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eContinuing increase in atmospheric CO2 could pose large risks, as described by IPCC\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStabilizing concentrations at low levels can’t succeed if we underestimate the challenge (and we have)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMitigation action will not result from elimination of all scientific uncertainty\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePoisonous politics of the climate debate serves to limit a broader discussion of options\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUltimately technological innovation will precede political action, not vice versa\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nRegarding the IPCC, he says he has no debate with working group I on the science, some disagreements with working group II on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, and lots of debate with working group III on economics and mitigation, which this talk covers.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis slide for the outline of his talk looked like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUnderstanding the mitigation challenge\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhere do emissions come from?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDecarbonization\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe UK as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe U.S. situation and Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHow things might be different\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnderstanding the mitigation challenge\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAlthough climate change involves other greenhouse gases besides CO2, he focused on CO2 and in this part of the talk gave a summary of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere as a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow\"\u003estock and flow problem\u003c/a\u003e, using a bathtub analogy.  The inflow of CO2 into the atmosphere is like water pouring out of the faucet, there's outflow going out the drain, and the water in the tub is the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere.  The inflow is about 9 GtC (gigatons of carbon) per year and growing, and expected to hit 12 GtC per year by 2030.  The current stock is a concentration of about 390 parts per million (ppm), increasing by 2-3 ppm/year.  And the outflow is a natural removal of about 4 GtC/year.  To stop the stock increase, the amount going in has to equal the amount going out.  If we reach an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, that is expected to limit the stock to 450 ppm.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEmissions have been growing faster than expected by the IPCC in 2000, with a 3.3% average increase per year between 2000 and 2007.  While the economic slump has reduced emissions in 2009, it's expected that recovery and continued growth in emissions will occur.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWhere do emissions come from?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke used the following four lines to identify policy-relevant variables:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nPeople\u003cbr /\u003e\nengage in economic activity that\u003cbr /\u003e\nuses energy\u003cbr /\u003e\nfrom carbon-emitting generation\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe associated variables:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nPopulation (P)\u003cbr /\u003e\nGDP per capita (GDP/P)\u003cbr /\u003e\nEnergy intensity of the economy (Total Energy (TE)/GDP)\u003cbr /\u003e\nCarbon intensity of energy (C/TE)\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe total carbon emissions = P * GDP/P * TE/GDP * C/TE.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis formula is known as the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity\"\u003e\"Kaya Identity.\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe policy tools available to reduce emissions by affecting these variables are:  (1) population management to end up with fewer people, (2) limit the generation of wealth to have a smaller economy, (3) do the same or more with less energy by increasing efficiency, and (4) switch energy sources to generate energy with less emissions.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnd that's it.  Cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, etc. are designed to influence these variables.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke then combined the first two variables (P * GDP/P) to get GDP, and the second two (TE/GDP * C/TE) he identified as Technology.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe argued that reducing GDP or GDP growth is not a policy option, so Technology is the only real policy option.  Regarding the former point, he put up a graph very much like the Gapminder.org graph of world income, and observed that the Millennium Development Goals are all about pushing the people below $10/day--80% of the world's population--on that graph to the right.  Even if all of the OECD nations were removed from the graph, there would still be a push to increase the GDP for the remainder and there would still be growing emissions.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe quoted Gwyn Prins regarding the G8 Summit to point out how policy makers are conflicted--they had a morning session on how to reduce gas prices for economic benefit, and an afternoon session on how to increase gas prices for climate change mitigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWith this kind of a conflict, Pielke said, policy makers will choose GDP growth over climate change.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSo that leaves Technology as an option, and he turned to the topic of decarbonization.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDecarbonization\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke put up a graph of CO2 emissions per $1,000 of GDP over time globally, which showed that there has been a steady improvement of efficiency.  In 2006, emissions were 29.12 GtC, divided by $47.267 trillion of GDP, gives 0.62 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.  In 1980, that was above 0.90 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOverall emissions track GDP, and the global economy has become more and more carbon intensive.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe looked at carbon dioxide per GDP (using purchasing power parity (PPP) for comparison between countries) for four different countries, Japan, Germany, U.S., and China (that's ordered from most to least efficient).  Japan hasn't changed much over time, but is very carbon efficient (below 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP).  Germany and the U.S. are about the same slightly above 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP, and both have improved similarly over time.  China has gotten worse from 2002-2006 and is at about 0.75 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe put up a slide of the EU-15 countries decarbonization rates pre- and post-Kyoto Protocol, and though there was a gap between them, the slopes appeared to be comparable.  For the first ten years of Kyoto, then, he said, there's no evidence of any improvement in the background rate of decarbonization.  The pre-Kyoto rate was from above 0.55 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.  The post-Kyoto rates went from about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to below 0.45 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt this point, Clark Miller (head of my program in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology) pointed out that given Japan, there is no reason to assume that there should have been a continuing downward trend at all, but Pielke reiterated that since the slopes appeared to be the same there's no evidence that Kyoto made a difference.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe UK as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke identified the emissions targets of the UK Climate Change Act of 2008:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAverage annual reductions of 2.8% from 2007 to 2020, to reach 42% below 1990 levels by 2020.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAverage annual reductions of 3.5% from 2020, to reach 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe former target of 42% below 1990 levels is contingent upon COP15 reaching an agreement this December; otherwise the unilateral target is 34% below 1990 levels.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke showed a graph of the historical rate of decarbonization for the UK economy, and compared it to graphs of manufacturing output and manufacturing employment, observing that the success of decarbonization of the UK economy from 1980-2006 has been due primarily to offshoring of manufacturing, something that's not sustainable--once they reach zero, there's nowhere further down to go.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe then used France as a point of comparison, since it has the lowest CO2/GDP output of any developed country, due to its use of nuclear power for most of its energy--it's at 0.30 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP, and a lot of that is emissions from gasoline consumption for transportation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt took France about 22 years, from 1984-2006, to get its emissions to that rate.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFor the UK to hit its 2020 target, it needs to improve to France's rate in the next five years, by 2015.  That means building 30 new nuclear power plants and reducing the equivalent coal and gas generation; Pielke said he would \"go out on a limb\" and say that this won't happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThat will only get them 1/3 of the way to their 2020 goals.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe UK plan calls for putting 1.7 million electric cars on the road by 2020, which means doubling the current rate of auto sales and selling only electric cars.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFor the entire world to reach France's level of efficiency by 2015 would require a couple of thousand nuclear power plants.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe U.S. situation and Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe U.S., said Pielke, has had one of the highest rates of sustained decarbonization, from 1980-2006, going from over 1.00 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP to the current level of about 0.50 tons of CO2 per $1,000 GDP.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Waxman-Markey target is an 80% reduction by 2050, not quite as radical as the UK.\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Boxer-Kerry target is a 17% reduction by 2020.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke broke down the current U.S. energy supply by source in quadrillions of BTUs (quads), and pointed out that he got all of his data from \u003ca href=\"http://www.eia.doe.gov/\"\u003ethe EIA\u003c/a\u003e and encouraged people to look it up for themselves:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nPetroleum: 37.1\u003cbr /\u003e\nNatural gas: 23.8\u003cbr /\u003e\nCoal: 22.5\u003cbr /\u003e\nRenewable: 7.3\u003cbr /\u003e\nNuclear: 8.5\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nTotal energy was about 99.2 quads in 2007, of which 83.4 came from coal, natural gas, and petroleum.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEmissions by source:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nCoal: 95 MMt CO2/quad\u003cbr /\u003e\nNatural gas: 55 MMt CO2/quad\u003cbr /\u003e\nPetroleum: 68 MMt CO2/quad\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nMultiply those by the amount of energy produced by each source and add them up:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n95 * 22.5 + 55 * 23.8 + 68 * 37.1 = 5,969 MMt CO2\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe actual total emissions were at about 5,979, so the above back-of-the-envelope calculation was pretty close.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2009, U.S. energy consumption will be about 108.6 quads, of which 21 quads will come from renewables and nuclear (40% growth from 2007), which leaves 87.2 quads from fossil fuels, a 4.6% increase from 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf we substituted natural gas for all coal, then our 2020 emissions would be 5,300 MMt CO2, higher than the 2020 target and 12% below 2005, and would still lock us into a carbon intensive future.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn order to meet targets, we need to reduce coal consumption by 40%, or 11 quads, and replace that with renewables plus nuclear, plus an additional 3.8 quads of growth by 2020.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOne quad equals about 15 nuclear plants, so 14.8 quads means building 222 new nuclear plants (on top of the 104 that are currently in the U.S.).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOr, alternatively,  assuming 100 concentrated solar power installations * 30 MW peak per quad, 1,480 such installations for 14.8 quads, or one online every two days until 2020.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOr, assuming 37,500 * 80 kW peak wind turbines per quad, 555,000 such wind turbines for 14.8 quads, or one 150-turbine wind farm brought online daily until 2020.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTo reach these targets with wind and solar would require increasing them by a factor of 37 by 2020; Obama has promised only a tripling.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCould we meet the targets by increasing efficiency of our energy consumption?   We would have to reduce total energy consumption to 85.5 quads by 2020 (rather than 108.6), about equal to U.S. energy consumption in 1992, when the U.S. economy was 35% smaller than in 2007.  That would be improving efficiency by about a third.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHow fast can decarbonization occur?  We don't know, because no one has really set out to intentionally do that.  Historical rates have been 1-2% per year by developed countries; for short periods, some countries have exceeded 2% per year.  Japan, from 1981-1986, improved by over 4% per year.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke argued that these targets are not feasible targets in the U.S. or UK, and so policy makers are adding safety valves, offsets, and other mechanisms to allow some manipulation to give the appearance of success.  Achieving 80% reduction in global emissions by 2050 requires \u0026gt; 5% decarbonization per year.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe problem, Pielke argued, is that the policy logic of targets and timetables is backwards, and we should focus on improving efficiency and decarbonization rather than emissions targets.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHow things might be different\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke's suggested alternative strategy was presented in a slide something like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFocus policy on decarbonization of the economy (not simply emissions)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEfficiency gains (follow the Japanese model, “frontrunner program” by industry, look at best performer and set it as regulatory standard)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExpand carbon free energy (low carbon tax, other policies--subsidies, regulation, etc.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInnovation-focused investments\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTo create ever advancing frontier of potential efficiency gains\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAir capture backstop\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdaptation\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThe Japanese \"frontrunner\" program was where the government went industry by industry, identified the most efficient company in each industry, and set regulations to make that company the baseline standard for the other companies to meet.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPielke argued that there should be a carbon tax of, say, $5/ton (or whatever is the \"highest price politically possible\"), with the collected funds (that would raise about $700B/year) used to promote innovation in energy efficiency.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf we find that we're stabilizing at 635 ppm, we may want to \"brute force\" some removal of carbon from the atmosphere (e.g., geoengineering).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, Clark Miller questioned Pielke about the impossibility of replacing our energy infrastructure quickly--if it costs $2.61B for a 1400 MW nuclear plant, we'd need 65 of them (fewer than Pielke's number, he assumed smaller plants) at a cost of $260B.  Since there is capital floating around causing asset bubbles in the trillions, and the energy industry is expected to become a $15T industry, surely there would be some drive to build them if they're going to become profitable.  (Not to mention peak oil as a driver.)  He agreed that it would take longer to construct these, but asked what the upshot would be if this was done by, say, 2075.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAlso in the Q\u0026amp;A, Pielke pointed out that in a previous presentation of this talk, a philosophy professor had suggested that the population variable could be affected by handing out cyanide pills.  (Or by promoting the growth of \u003ca href=\"http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/\"\u003ethe Church of Euthanasia\u003c/a\u003e.)  What I didn't mention above was that Pielke also briefly discussed improvements to human lifespan, and in his other talk (summary to come), he talked about how the IPCC's projections assume that we will not try to eradicate malaria...\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nADDENDUM (November 7, 2009): I've seen estimates that U.S. carbon emissions will be about 6% lower in 2009 as a result of the recession, which amounts to considerable progress towards the Boxer-Kerry target.  Projections of an economic recovery in 2010 strike me as overly optimistic; in my opinion there's a strong possibility that we haven't hit bottom yet and there's worse to come.  Still, though, I think Pielke's probably right that energy consumption will go right back up again unless the recession becomes a depression and results in significant changes in consumption habits.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy summary of Pielke's lecture on climate change adaptation is \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change_07.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nADDENDUM (November 9, 2009): It should be noted that Roger Pielke, Jr. is a somewhat controversial figure in the climate change debate, and believed by many in the climate change blogosophere to be in the climate change skeptic camp, or to be biased towards them in terms of where he levels his criticisms.  A post titled \u003ca href=\"http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/02/who-framed-roger-pielke.html\"\u003e\"Who Framed Roger Pielke?\"\u003c/a\u003e from the Only In It For the Gold blog links to a number of opinions expressing these views.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (February 5, 2010): A post titled \u003ca href=\"http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/01/honest-joker.html\"\u003e\"The Honest Joker\"\u003c/a\u003e at Rabett Run critiques Pielke Jr.'s stance as an \"honest broker\" as a sham.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (August 28, 2010): A talk by Pielke that appears to have some similarity to this one may be found \u003ca href=\"http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/08/recent-talk-of-mine.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (July 13, 2014): An updated version of the information in this talk is Ch. 3 of Pielke Jr.'s book, \u003ci\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465025196/?tag=thelipblo-20\"\u003eThe Climate Fix\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/i\u003e (2010, Basic Books).\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEliRabett\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-11-13)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eNot sure that you want comments or not, but a good place to start analyzing the talk is to realize that greenhouse gases accumulate, so there is great virtue in reducing or at least limiting current emissions by substitution and conservation. \n\u003cp\u003eRoger ignores this issue.  He is not only assuming that a miracle will occur, but that it will occur on schedule.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation"},{"content":"\nTonight and tomorrow night at 8 p.m., Charles Phoenix will bring his Retro Slide Show Tour to the Phoenix Center for the Arts at 1202 N. 3rd St.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve not seen his show before, but I\u0026rsquo;ve enjoyed his blog\u0026rsquo;s slide-of-the-week feature and plan to go see this.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the official description:\nA laugh-out-loud funny celebration of \u0026rsquo;50s and \u0026rsquo;60s road trips, tourist traps, theme parks, world\u0026rsquo;s fairs, car fashion fads, car culture and space age suburbia, will also include a selection of vintage images of the Valley of the Sun.\nClick the above link for more details or to buy tickets.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/charles-phoenixs-retro-slide-show-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.charlesphoenix.com/images/pages/slideshow-phoenix09_img.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 598px; height: 395px;\" src=\"http://www.charlesphoenix.com/images/pages/slideshow-phoenix09_img.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTonight and tomorrow night at 8 p.m., \u003ca href=\"http://www.charlesphoenix.com/retro-slide-show-tour-phoenix-az/\"\u003eCharles Phoenix will bring his Retro Slide Show Tour to the Phoenix Center for the Arts\u003c/a\u003e at 1202 N. 3rd St.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve not seen his show before, but I\u0026rsquo;ve enjoyed \u003ca href=\"http://www.charlesphoenix.com/category/slide-of-the-week/\"\u003ehis blog\u0026rsquo;s slide-of-the-week feature\u003c/a\u003e and plan to go see this.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the official description:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 102);font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eA laugh-out-loud funny celebration of \u0026rsquo;50s and \u0026rsquo;60s road trips, tourist traps, theme parks, world\u0026rsquo;s fairs, car fashion fads, car culture and space age suburbia, will also include a selection of vintage images of the Valley of the Sun.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClick the above link for more details or to buy tickets.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Charles Phoenix's retro slide show--in Phoenix"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s all I\u0026rsquo;ve been able to find so far, independent of self-descriptions from within the movement (and excluding history and philosophy of Pyrrhonism, Academic Skepticism, the Carvaka, the Enlightenment, British Empiricism, and lots of work on the development of the enterprise of science):\nGeorge Hansen, \"CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview,\" The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research vol. 86, no. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63. I've not seen a more detailed history of contemporary skepticism elsewhere. Stephanie A. Hall, \"Folklore and the Rise of Moderation Among Organized Skeptics,\" New Directions in Folklore vol. 4, no. 1, March 2000. David J. Hess, Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture, 1993, The University of Wisconsin Press. I note that Paul Kurtz's The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992, Prometheus Books) puts contemporary skepticism in the lineage of several of the other forms of philosophical skepticism I mentioned above, identifying his form of skepticism as a descendant of pragmatism in the C.S. Peirce/John Dewey/Sidney Hook tradition (and not the Richard Rorty style of pragmatism). But I think that says more about Kurtz than about the skeptical movement, which also draws upon other epistemological traditions and probably doesn't really have a sophisticated epistemological framework to call its own.\nThere's a lot of literature on parallel social movements of various sorts, including much about advocates of some of the subject matter that skeptics criticize, and some of that touches upon skeptics. For example:\nHarry Collins and Trevor Pinch, \"The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening,\" in Roy Wallis, editor, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, 1979, University of Keele Press, pp. 237-270. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science, 1982, Taylor \u0026amp; Francis. Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, 2nd edition, 2006, Harvard University Press. Christopher P. Toumey, God's Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World, 1994, Rutgers University Press. The Toumey book doesn't really have anything about skeptics, but is an anthropological study of creationists in the United States which describes the connection between \"creationism as a national movement\" and \"creationism as a local experience\" that seems intriguingly similar to the skeptical movement, especially in light of the fact (as I mentioned in my previous post) that national skeptical organizations are independent of established institutions of science that provide the key literature of the movement and at least implicitly assume that the average layman can develop the ability to discern truth from falsehood, at least within a particular domain, from that literature.\nIn some ways, the skeptical movement also resembles a sort of layman's version of the activist element in the field of science and technology studies, based on positivist views of science that are the \"vulgar skepticism\" dismissed in this article:\nMichael Lynch, \"Expertise, Skepticism and Cynicism: Lessons from Science \u0026amp; Technology Studies,\" Spontaneous Generations vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 17-24. I think if contemporary skepticism wants to achieve academic respectability, it will need to develop a more sophisticated view of science that comes to terms with post-Popper philosophy of science and post-Merton sociology of science; my recommendation for skeptics who are interested in that subject is to read, as a start:\nPhilip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions, 1995, Oxford University Press. There's an enormous relevant literature on those topics, an interesting broad overview is:\nR.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, Companion to the History of Modern Science, 1990, Routledge. I welcome any new revelations about sources of relevance that I've missed, particularly if there is other academic work specifically addressing the history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of the contemporary skeptical movement--three sources ain't much.\nUPDATE (September 27, 2014): Some additional works I recommend for skeptics:\nHarry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, 2014, Polity Press. \u0026nbsp;A very brief and quick overview of science studies with respect to expertise. Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense On Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, 2010, University of Chicago Press. A good corrective to the overuse of Popper, easy read. Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, 2013, University of Chicago Press. Good collection of essays reopening the debate many thought closed by Larry Laudan on whether there can be philosophical criteria for distinguishing the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Reed (2009-11-04):\nThough not an academic work, I collected data on the skeptics groups on Meetup and reported the numbers in the appendix of my 2008 \u0026quot;Raising Our Game\u0026quot; piece.\nAnonymous (2009-11-05):\nAnd, of course, the pragmatists you mention (except maybe Kurtz) were hardly skeptics. Here I think Putnam is correct that American pragmatism is distinctive to a large degree because it combines fallibilism with anti-skepticism. It is not just belief that requires justification but doubt too.\nLippard (2009-11-06):\nJim: The modern skeptical movement has essentially redefined skepticism--they\u0026#39;re not philosophical skeptics, they\u0026#39;re skeptics about knowledge claims that are empirically testable yet not supported by scientific evidence. I Doubt It: I need to write a literature review paper of potential relevance to a research project for next year, but if this is it, then I need to find an analogous literature, say, about some other social movement, from which to identify relevant issues that I want to research\u0026ndash;such as how do new media change concepts of authority and credibility, how are experts identified, what's the individual's capacity to know what's true, are there cultural differences between countries that affect the trajectories of social movements, etc.\nPodblack (2009-11-08):\nThe person you might be interested in contacting is Dr Martin Bridgstock (featured ep #47 of the Skeptic Zone podcast) - I helped him collect qual last Dragon*Con of \u0026#39;activist skeptics\u0026#39; whilst he was there. There's some articles that I've dug up here: http://podblack.com/2008/07/retrospectacle-shes-already-got-science-women-skepticism-and-the-need-for-more-research/ - more specifically the history of female involvement in skepticism.\nJon S (2009-12-06):\nGeorge Hansen also wrote extensively on CSICOP and Martin Gardner in a way you may (or may not) find relevant: check out \u0026quot;The Trickster and the Paranormal.\u0026quot; His work has footnotes and an index.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/where-is-academic-literature-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s all I\u0026rsquo;ve been able to find so far, independent of self-descriptions from within the movement (and excluding history and philosophy of Pyrrhonism, Academic Skepticism, the Carvaka, the Enlightenment, British Empiricism, and lots of work on the development of the enterprise of science):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGeorge Hansen, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/CSICOPoverview.htm\"\u003e\"CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview,\"\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research\u003c/span\u003e vol. 86, no. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63.  I've not seen a more detailed history of contemporary skepticism elsewhere.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStephanie A. Hall, \u003ca href=\"http://www.temple.edu/english/isllc/newfolk/skeptics.html\"\u003e\"Folklore and the Rise of Moderation Among Organized Skeptics,\"\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Directions in Folklore\u003c/span\u003e vol. 4, no. 1, March 2000.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDavid J. Hess, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture\u003c/span\u003e, 1993, The University of Wisconsin Press.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nI note that Paul Kurtz's \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge\u003c/span\u003e (1992, Prometheus Books) puts contemporary skepticism in the lineage of several of the other forms of philosophical skepticism I mentioned above, identifying his form of skepticism as a descendant of pragmatism in the C.S. Peirce/John Dewey/Sidney Hook tradition (and not the Richard Rorty style of pragmatism).  But I think that says more about Kurtz than about the skeptical movement, which also draws upon other epistemological traditions and probably doesn't really have a sophisticated epistemological framework to call its own.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere's a lot of literature on parallel social movements of various sorts, including much about advocates of some of the subject matter that skeptics criticize, and some of that touches upon skeptics.  For example:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Collins and Trevor Pinch, \"The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening,\" in Roy Wallis, editor, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOn the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge\u003c/span\u003e, 1979, University of Keele Press, pp. 237-270.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Collins and Trevor Pinch, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFrames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science\u003c/span\u003e, 1982, Taylor \u0026amp; Francis.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRonald L. Numbers, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design\u003c/span\u003e, 2nd edition, 2006, Harvard University Press.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChristopher P. Toumey, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGod's Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World\u003c/span\u003e, 1994, Rutgers University Press.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThe Toumey book doesn't really have anything about skeptics, but is an anthropological study of creationists in the United States which describes the connection between \"creationism as a national movement\" and \"creationism as a local experience\" that seems intriguingly similar to the skeptical movement, especially in light of the fact (as I mentioned in my previous post) that national skeptical organizations are independent of established institutions of science that provide the key literature of the movement and at least implicitly assume that the average layman can develop the ability to discern truth from falsehood, at least within a particular domain, from that literature.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn some ways, the skeptical movement also resembles a sort of layman's version of the activist element in the field of science and technology studies, based on positivist views of science that are the \"vulgar skepticism\" dismissed in this article:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMichael Lynch, \u003ca href=\"https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/article/viewArticle/2968\"\u003e\"Expertise, Skepticism and Cynicism: Lessons from Science \u0026amp; Technology Studies,\"\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpontaneous Generations\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 17-24.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nI think if contemporary skepticism wants to achieve academic respectability, it will need to develop a more sophisticated view of science that comes to terms with post-Popper philosophy of science and post-Merton sociology of science; my recommendation for skeptics who are interested in that subject is to read, as a start:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePhilip Kitcher, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions\u003c/span\u003e, 1995, Oxford University Press.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThere's an enormous relevant literature on those topics, an interesting broad overview is:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eR.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCompanion to the History of Modern Science\u003c/span\u003e, 1990, Routledge.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nI welcome any new revelations about sources of relevance that I've missed, particularly if there is other academic work specifically addressing the history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of the contemporary skeptical movement--three sources ain't much.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (September 27, 2014): Some additional works I recommend for skeptics:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHarry Collins, \u003ci\u003eAre We All Scientific Experts Now?\u003c/i\u003e, 2014, Polity Press. \u0026nbsp;A very brief and quick overview of science studies with respect to expertise.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci, \u003ci\u003eNonsense On Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk\u003c/i\u003e, 2010, University of Chicago Press. A good corrective to the overuse of Popper, easy read.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMassimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem\u003c/i\u003e, 2013, University of Chicago Press. Good collection of essays reopening the debate many thought closed by Larry Laudan on whether there can be philosophical criteria for distinguishing the boundary between science and pseudoscience.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eReed\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-11-04)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThough not an academic work, I collected data on the skeptics groups on Meetup and reported the numbers in the appendix of my 2008 \u003ca href=\"http://skeptic.com/downloads/raising-our-game-oct-2008.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u0026quot;Raising Our Game\u0026quot; piece\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where is the academic literature on skepticism as a social movement?"},{"content":"Yesterday I listened to D.J. Grothe\u0026rsquo;s interview with Ben Radford on the Point of Inquiry podcast about the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (November/December 2009) about \u0026ldquo;Skepticism 2.0,\u0026rdquo; the bottom-up grassroots expansion of the skeptical movement through Internet communications tools like blogs, podcasts, online videos and forums, and the real-world activities that have become possible through them, like meetups and SkeptiCamps.\nNear the end of the podcast, D.J. asked Ben what he thought would be the results of Skepticism 2.0 in five years time. He said (1) more skeptics and (2) more cooperative projects between the three major U.S. skeptical groups, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and the Skeptics Society.\nThat struck me as a rather disappointingly modest set of goals, as well as rather \u0026ldquo;old school\u0026rdquo; skepticism thinking, and insular. Surely we can come up with ideas for something more exciting, interesting, and useful than merely the self-perpetuation and growth of the skeptical movement and cooperation among the traditional top-down skeptical organizations over the next five years.\nA few thoughts that came to my mind:\nIf skeptics want to promote public understanding of science and critical thinking, why not partnerships with other organizations that also have those purposes? The National Academies of Science, the National Center for Education, teacher\u0026rsquo;s groups and school groups at a local level?\nIf skeptics want to promote the activity of science, why not look at ways to help motivate students to enter science as a career, and support them in doing so? I\u0026rsquo;ve previously suggested to Phil Plait that JREF might partly model itself after the Institute for Humane Studies, an organization which provides support for undergraduate and graduate students who favor classical liberal political ideals, in order to help them achieve success in careers of thought leadership, including academics, journalists, filmmakers, public policy wonks, and so on. In order for skepticism and critical thinking to have a significant impact, it\u0026rsquo;s not necessary that everyone become a skeptic, only that a sufficient number of people in the right places engage in and encourage critical thinking.If skeptics want to see more diversity in the skeptical movement, why not look at ways to reach out to other communities? The podcast did mention the SkepTrack at Dragon*Con, which is one of the most innovative ideas for outreach for skeptical ideas since the founding of CSICOP in 1976.If skeptics want to act as a form of consumer protection against fraud and deception, why not try to find ways to interact with regulators, investigators, politicians, and the media to get fraudulent products and services off the market? The UK complaints against chiropractors making false claims on their websites as a response to the British Chiropractic Association libel lawsuit against Simon Singh, or the Australian complaint against bogus claims by anti-vaccinationists (though see my comment on that blog post for some reservations) might suggest some ideas.It seems to me that the skeptical movement should be concerned about more than just increasing its own numbers and getting the existing national groups to work together. I think that Skepticism 2.0 has and will continue to force the existing groups to cooperate with each other and with the grassroots movement if they don\u0026rsquo;t want to become obsolete and irrelevant. And at this point growth is, at least for the near-term, a foregone conclusion. But in order to continue to grow and thrive, there should be some goals that have something to do with being useful and making the world a better place, by which the skeptical movement can measure its effectiveness and success.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure readers of this blog have further suggestions. What else?\nAddendum:\nBy the way, with regard to my first suggestion, here\u0026rsquo;s a question that may provide some motivation and food for thought: Why do the Parapsychological Association and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have better and more formal ties to official institutions of science than any skeptical organization? The PA is a member of the AAAS, and NCCAM is an agency within the National Institutes of Health. The main difference between those organization and skeptical organizations is that they actually do and publish peer-reviewed scientific research.\nReed (2009-11-04):\n\u0026quot;In order for skepticism and critical thinking to have a significant impact, it\u0026#39;s not necessary that everyone become a skeptic, only that a sufficient number of people in the right places engage in and encourage critical thinking.\u0026quot; While it's important to have skeptics in positions of influence, why limit ourselves to the elite demographics?\nWhether through organizational or grassroots efforts, I'd suggest that Skepticism 2.0 has the potential to become nothing less than a popular social movement through which individuals can pass to build critical thinking skills and develop a deep appreciation for the value of science and how it works.\nWhere our public schools have failed us in producing critical thinkers, we skeptics look to be well-positioned to step in to fill that gap through our podcasts, events, etc.\nDragon*Con (as you point out) shows potential for outreach in this way. Too, Phil Plait's recent talk at Gnomedex suggests the tech community is fertile ground for promoting our ideas.\nRobynn (2009-11-04):\nAs you can imagine, Skepticism 2.0 is near and dear to my heart. That you kindly compare our work with Skeptrack at Dragon*Con as akin to the founding of CSICOP is somewhat gobsmacking. But it does echo what both Derek and I really believe is the future of skepticism, and that's Skepticism everywhere. As we say at the start of each podcast, \u0026quot;news and interviews with scientists and skeptics from around the world and all walks of life\u0026quot;. For me, the key part of that phrase is \u0026quot;all walks of life\u0026quot;. Skeptics are everywhere, in every niche community and social group. We need to find them, and let them know how much their voices of critical thinking and reason, are needed and why.\nMy hope for the future, is that everyone is a skeptic and we're no longer a niche group. I've heard some folks say they don't want skepticism to get too big, that they enjoy the intimacy and camaraderie of our merry band. I think we won't lose that simply by being more accessible. To really make a difference, we have to grow and diversify.\nLet's scoot outside our comfort zone a little, and invite more people in.\nLippard (2009-11-04):\nReed: I didn\u0026#39;t mean to suggest that we \u0026quot;limit ourselves to the elite demographics,\u0026quot; only that we look for ways to be supportive of helping young skeptics get into those fields. I\u0026#39;m not generally one for limiting the scope and breadth of skepticism-as-movement except on ethical and rational grounds. Swoopy: I'm supportive of most of what you say, except that I think the idea of \u0026quot;everyone is a skeptic\u0026quot; is overly optimistic and at odds with human psychology and social organization.\nWe all tend to give more credence to testimony within our in-group, and be more skeptical about testimony from those outside, and this is quite evident within skeptical circles if you look for it. The actual work of skeptical inquiry and scientific research will always be done via a \u0026quot;division of cognitive labor\u0026quot; rather than by each individual on their own, and the bulk of the population will be armchair skeptics who are relying on the witness of others\u0026ndash;I suspect even many skeptics are \u0026quot;parrots\u0026quot; (cf. slide 15 of my SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 talk). If everybody's nominally a skeptic, there will still be dogmatic claims that require skeptical attention.\nRegarding the division of cognitive labor, I think society also needs people who are more concerned about Type II errors (failing to believe something true) than Type I errors (believing something false)\u0026ndash;people generating the crazy ideas that are mostly wrong, but some of which result in new discoveries and innovations. I think skeptical and fortean attitudes are in some ways complementary, beyond the mere fact that forteans and other advocates of anomalous claims provide most of the source material that give skeptics their raison d'être.\nReed (2009-11-04):\nIn the podcast, did you note a disconnect in DJ\u0026#39;s/Ben\u0026#39;s suggestion for 2.0 skeptics to become familiar with the 1.0 literature? So long as the 1.0 literature is represented by out-of-print books that are vanishing from library shelves as well as back issue magazines that are seen only as revenue sources, I fear that it's all but invisible to the new generation.\nLippard (2009-11-04):\nThe solution\u0026#39;s simple--put it online!\nReed (2009-11-04):\n\u0026quot;The solution\u0026#39;s simple--put it online!\u0026quot; I wonder what it would take for CSI and/or SS to re-license the magazine back issue articles with Creative Commons, allowing a crowdsourced effort to get it all online?\nGridman (2009-11-04):\nI completely agree that \u0026quot;organized skepticism\u0026quot; ought to have more associations with scientific institutions. I suppose one reason that they may not is a presumption that scientific organizations ought already be organizations of skepticism.\nSadly, that's obviously not true.\nFurther, imagine if you were such an organization - and you weren't adequately skeptical (although you wouldn't know that) - when some group like the complementary medicine people come along, they appear to be working to advance and expand the field. Oddly enough, that's a positive position.\nHowever, if a skeptical organization came along, there could be some professional feelings hurt but the implication that \u0026quot;you're obviously not rigorous enough our help.\u0026quot; A negative position, as it were.\nThis may need to be approached very cautiously.\nGridman (2009-11-04):\nOops, typing error: Should read: \u0026quot;you're obviously not rigorous enough and need our help.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-11-04):\nDaniel Loxton pointed out privately that \u0026quot;The solution\u0026#39;s simple--put it online!\u0026quot; overlooks the obstacles of format conversion and copyright releases... quite true, though the Google Books Settlement may have an impact on the latter.\nMike (2009-11-05):\nExcellent article, and one that echoes my own sentiments. I work for the education department of a major scientific research organisation. I've been both a teacher and a scientist, and do freelance writing and radio for a fairly major broadcasting network. As a part of my work I'm painfully aware of just how insular the internet world is. A relatively small percentage of the population follows blogs, especially science blogs. Let alone skeptical blogs. So while this number might be slowly increasing, there are a number of outside opportunities for outreach being missed.\nI admit, I've long since decided to go it alone in terms of science and skeptical communication and education, primarily for the very reason outlined in the above article. I've attempted to create links between sci-com and educational bodies and skeptical groups, only to be met by apathy, ignorance and cynicism on the part of the skeptics. I once interviewed Randi, and discussed in part the topic of education. Sadly, I can't say I was either greatly enthused or impressed by his response to it.\nThere has already been amazing, productive and inspirational work done by non-skeptical science education and communication groups. Rather than reinventing the wheel, skeptic groups should be informing themselves on what else has been done, forming broader networks with other organisations and start seeing the internet as but a single communication tool amongst many.\nLippard (2009-11-05):\nMike: Thanks for your comment, and sorry to hear about your experience.\nCan you elaborate a bit more on your comment about \u0026quot;how insular the internet world is\u0026quot;? Do you see that as an endemic problem, with siloed communities despite the social networking? My own experience hasn't been like that.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/what-are-goals-of-skepticism-20.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I listened to \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/ben_radford_skepticism_2.0/\"\u003eD.J. Grothe\u0026rsquo;s interview with Ben Radford on the Point of Inquiry podcast\u003c/a\u003e about the latest issue of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/archive/category/volume_33.6\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e (November/December 2009)\u003c/a\u003e about \u0026ldquo;Skepticism 2.0,\u0026rdquo; the bottom-up grassroots expansion of the skeptical movement through Internet communications tools like blogs, podcasts, online videos and forums, and the real-world activities that have become possible through them, like meetups and \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticamp.org/\"\u003eSkeptiCamps\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNear the end of the podcast, D.J. asked Ben what he thought would be the results of Skepticism 2.0 in five years time.  He said (1) more skeptics and (2) more cooperative projects between the three major U.S. skeptical groups, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/\"\u003eCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/\"\u003eJames Randi Educational Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003eSkeptics Society\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat struck me as a rather disappointingly modest set of goals, as well as rather \u0026ldquo;old school\u0026rdquo; skepticism thinking, and insular.  Surely we can come up with ideas for something more exciting, interesting, and useful than merely the self-perpetuation and growth of the skeptical movement and cooperation among the traditional top-down skeptical organizations over the next five years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few thoughts that came to my mind:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf skeptics want to promote public understanding of science and critical thinking, why not partnerships with other organizations that also have those purposes?  The National Academies of Science, the National Center for Education, teacher\u0026rsquo;s groups and school groups at a local level?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf skeptics want to promote the activity of science, why not look at ways to help motivate students to enter science as a career, and support them in doing so?  I\u0026rsquo;ve previously suggested to Phil Plait that JREF might partly model itself after the Institute for Humane Studies, an organization which provides support for undergraduate and graduate students who favor classical liberal political ideals, in order to help them achieve success in careers of thought leadership, including academics, journalists, filmmakers, public policy wonks, and so on.  In order for skepticism and critical thinking to have a significant impact, it\u0026rsquo;s not necessary that everyone become a skeptic, only that a sufficient number of people in the right places engage in and encourage critical thinking.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf skeptics want to see more diversity in the skeptical movement, why not look at ways to reach out to other communities?  The podcast did mention the SkepTrack at Dragon*Con, which is one of the most innovative ideas for outreach for skeptical ideas since the founding of CSICOP in 1976.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf skeptics want to act as a form of consumer protection against fraud and deception, why not try to find ways to interact with regulators, investigators, politicians, and the media to get fraudulent products and services off the market?  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/19/chiropractic-bca-mca-singh\"\u003eUK complaints against chiropractors making false claims on their websites\u003c/a\u003e as a response to \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/simon-singh-sued-and-silenced-svetlana.html\"\u003ethe British Chiropractic Association libel lawsuit against Simon Singh\u003c/a\u003e, or \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/08/05/australian-skeptics-strike-back-against-antivaxxers/\"\u003ethe Australian complaint against bogus claims by anti-vaccinationists\u003c/a\u003e (though see my comment on that blog post for some reservations) might suggest some ideas.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eIt seems to me that the skeptical movement should be concerned about more than just increasing its own numbers and getting the existing national groups to work together.  I think that Skepticism 2.0 has and will continue to force the existing groups to cooperate with each other and with the grassroots movement if they don\u0026rsquo;t want to become obsolete and irrelevant. And at this point growth is, at least for the near-term, a foregone conclusion.  But in order to continue to grow and thrive, there should be some goals that have something to do with being useful and making the world a better place, by which the skeptical movement can measure its effectiveness and success.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sure readers of this blog have further suggestions.  What else?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAddendum:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy the way, with regard to my first suggestion, here\u0026rsquo;s a question that may provide some motivation and food for thought: Why do the Parapsychological Association and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have better and more formal ties to official institutions of science than any skeptical organization?  The PA is a member of the AAAS, and NCCAM is an agency within the National Institutes of Health.  The main difference between those organization and skeptical organizations is that they actually do and publish peer-reviewed scientific research.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What are the goals of Skepticism 2.0?"},{"content":"The St. Petersburg Times has published another three-part exposé on the Church of Scientology based on interviews with former high-level members. (The first three-part series from June is discussed here; I missed the second three-part series from August about new defectors; all three series may be found on the SP Times website here.)\nPart 1 (October 31): \u0026ldquo;Chased by their church: When you leave Scientology, they try to bring you back\u0026rdquo;\nAn overview of this new, third series of exposures based on information from former high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology such as Mark \u0026ldquo;Marty\u0026rdquo; Rathbun and Mike Rinder.\nThe story of how the church commands and controls its staff is told by the pursuers and the pursued, by those who sent spies and those spied upon, by those who interrogated and those who rode the hot seat. In addition to Rathbun, they include: • Mike Rinder, who for 25 years oversaw the church\u0026rsquo;s Office of Special Affairs, which handled intelligence, legal and public affairs matters. Rinder and Rathbun said they had private investigators spy on perceived or potential enemies. They say they had an operative infiltrate a group of five former Scientology staffers that included the Gillham sisters, Terri and Janis, two of the original four \u0026ldquo;messengers\u0026rdquo; who delivered Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s communications. They and other disaffected Scientologists said they were spied on for almost a decade. • Gary Morehead, the security chief for seven years at the church\u0026rsquo;s international base in the desert east of Los Angeles. He said he helped develop the procedure the church followed to chase and return those who ran, and he brought back at least 75 of them. \u0026ldquo;I lost count there for awhile.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; Staffers signed a waiver when they came to work at the base that allowed their mail to be opened, Morehead said. His department opened all of it, including credit card statements and other information that was used to help track runaways. • Don Jason, for seven years the second-ranking officer at Scientology\u0026rsquo;s spiritual mecca in Clearwater, supervised a staff of 350. He said that after he ran, he turned himself in and ended up locked in his cabin on the church cruise ship, the Freewinds. He said he was held against his will. Part 2 (November 2): \u0026ldquo;Scientology: What happened in Vegas\u0026rdquo;\nHow ex-members Terri and Janis Gillham, who had been Sea Org \u0026ldquo;messengers\u0026rdquo; for L. Ron Hubbard and whose legal guardian had been Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s wife Mary Sue, had their mortgage business in Las Vegas infiltrated by spies working for the Church of Scientology to keep tabs on what they were up to. Mark Fisher, Scientology head David Miscavige\u0026rsquo;s aide de camp for seven years, was spied on by the man he thought was his best friend.\nPart 3 (November 3): \u0026ldquo;Man overboard: To leave Scientology, Don Jason had to jump off a ship\u0026rdquo;\nAfter leaving the Church once and returning, Don Jason was put aboard the Freewinds, a Scientology ship, and monitored constantly. He managed to get off the ship in the Bahamas by effectively zip-lining down a cable with a home-made device, and getting on a plane to Milwaukee by way of Tampa and Atlanta. Someone from the Church booked the seat next to his, and Rathbun (still in the Church at the time) met him at Tampa, and then bought a ticket on his flight, to try to talk him into returning.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/more-scientology-exposure-from-st-pete.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSt. Petersburg Times\u003c/span\u003e has published another three-part exposé on the Church of Scientology based on interviews with former high-level members.  (The first three-part series from June is discussed \u003ca href=\"/2009/06/former-high-ranking-scientologists.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e; I missed the second three-part series from August about new defectors; all three series may be found on the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSP Times\u003c/span\u003e website \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/index.shtml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 1 (October 31): \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/article1048134.ece\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Chased by their church: When you leave Scientology, they try to bring you back\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn overview of this new, third series of exposures based on information from former high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology such as Mark \u0026ldquo;Marty\u0026rdquo; Rathbun and Mike Rinder.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More Scientology exposure from the St. Pete Times"},{"content":"Eli Rabett and Pieter Tans identified some errors in Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book\u0026rsquo;s claim of selective data reporting from Mauna Loa measurements of atmospheric carbon, which Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog tracks to climate change skeptic Ferdinand Engelbeen. But Plimer doesn\u0026rsquo;t cite Engelbeen, perhaps because Engelbeen also refutes the argument Plimer is trying to make.\nThis is not the first time Plimer has copied without quoting or citing sources\u0026ndash;multiple instances in his book Telling Lies for God have previously been identified by Jeffrey Shallit and me.\n(Previously on Plimer at this blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/11/more-apparent-plagiarism-from-ian.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEli Rabett and Pieter Tans identified some errors in Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book\u0026rsquo;s claim of selective data reporting from Mauna Loa measurements of atmospheric carbon, which \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/plimer_the_plagiarist.php\"\u003eTim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog tracks to climate change skeptic Ferdinand Engelbeen\u003c/a\u003e.  But Plimer doesn\u0026rsquo;t cite Engelbeen, perhaps because Engelbeen also refutes the argument Plimer is trying to make.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not the first time Plimer has copied without quoting or citing sources\u0026ndash;multiple instances in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTelling Lies for God\u003c/span\u003e have previously been identified by \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/%7Eshallit/plimer.html\"\u003eJeffrey Shallit\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003eme\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2009/05/ian-plimer-on-climate-change.html\"\u003ePreviously on Plimer at this blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More apparent plagiarism from Ian Plimer"},{"content":"I haven\u0026rsquo;t posted one of these things in a while, so I figured it was about time.\nThe big peak was in March, with a total of 10,725 that month. October\u0026rsquo;s total was 6,618.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/09OctNTRs.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398553297848650530\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nLippard (2009-10-31):\nThe stimulus tax credit ends at the end of the year. I suspect we're going to see it climb again next year.\nUnknown (2009-10-31):\nI agree.... although I know we both HOPE we are both wrong. It would be the best type of wrong...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/maricopa-county-notices-of-trustees.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t posted one of these things in a while, so I figured it was about time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe big peak was in March, with a total of 10,725 that month. October\u0026rsquo;s total was 6,618.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/09OctNTRs.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/09OctNTRs.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398553297848650530\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-10-31)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe stimulus tax credit ends at the end of the year.\n\u003cp\u003eI suspect we're going to see it climb again next year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maricopa County Notices of Trustee's Sales for October 2009"},{"content":"This afternoon I went to hear ASU Prof. Robert Balling, former head of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Office of Climatology and current head of the Geographic Information Systems program, talk about climate change in a talk that was advertised as \u0026ldquo;Global Warming Became Climate Change: And the Story Continues,\u0026rdquo; though I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice if he had a title slide for his presentation.\nHe began his talk by saying that in 1957, measurements of CO2 began to be made at Mauna Loa (by Charles David Keeling), which established that CO2 is increasing in our atmosphere, largely because of human activity\u0026ndash;from fossil fuel emissions. It\u0026rsquo;s approaching 390 parts per million (ppm). Last weekend, the \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; on A Mountain near the university was painted green by a bunch of people wearing shirts that say \u0026ldquo;350\u0026rdquo; on them, because they want atmospheric CO2 to be stabilized at 350 ppm, which was the level in 1990, which is the benchmark year for the Kyoto Protocol.\nBut this isn\u0026rsquo;t remotely feasible, he said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Even the most optimistic scenario in the IPCC Report has atmospheric carbon continuing to rise until 2100, hitting about 600 ppm. If we reduced emissions to 0, the best case would end up with stabilization at around 450 ppm. Our lifetime will see increasing CO2 levels, no matter what we do. (In other words, the Kyoto benchmark sets a standard for emissions levels to return to, not for a level of atmospheric carbon to return to.)\nIf you look at the earth\u0026rsquo;s history on a longer scale, atmospheric carbon has been much higher in the past\u0026ndash;it was at about 2500 ppm during the dinosaurs. During the last 600,000 years, however, it has been much lower, and fell below 200 ppm in the last glacial period. This, Balling said, shows what he would identify as a dangerous level of CO2\u0026ndash;falling below 160 ppm, which causes plants to die.\nThere are other greenhouse gases besides CO2 that have an effect, such as methane and NO2, that humans are producing, he said.\nAt this point, he said the greenhouse effect is real\u0026ndash;CO2 doubling causes warming\u0026ndash;and this has been known for 120 years and \u0026ldquo;nobody is denying that.\u0026quot;\nThere are climate models, which he said he has great respect for\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s basic physics plus fantastic computing and applied math. Climate modelers, he said, are their own worst critics. Problems for climate models include clouds, water vapor, rain, and the ocean, but lots of things are modeled correctly and the results are generally pretty good. Clouds, he said, are the biggest area of debate. The IPCC models say that clouds amplify warming, but satellite-based measurements suggest that clouds dampen (but don\u0026rsquo;t eliminate) warming. Thus, he concluded, IPCC may be predicting more warming than will actually occur.\nHe next discussed empirical support for warming, and pointed out that the official plot of global temperatures has no error bars, and the numbers reported come from sensors that don\u0026rsquo;t cover the entire world. How you come up with a global average can be done in different ways, and the different methods produce different results. You can take grid cells, average by latitudinal bands, get two hemispheric averages, and average them together. You can just average all of the data we have. He said that Roger Pielke Sr. questions the use of average temperatures and suggests looking at afternoon high temperatures. Looking at the older end of the chart, he asked, \u0026ldquo;where were the sensors in 1900? Why no error bars?\u0026quot;\nHe asked, \u0026ldquo;Is the earth warming,\u0026rdquo; and said \u0026ldquo;right now the earth is not warming. I expect it to keep going up, but over the last decade there\u0026rsquo;s been essentially none.\u0026rdquo; He pointed to a recent article in Science magazine, \u0026ldquo;What happened to global warming?\u0026rdquo; Many are writing about this, he said, and there could be \u0026ldquo;1001 different things including sun and oceanic processes.\u0026rdquo; (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe this is correct unless you measure from 1998, which was an El Nino year. Most of the top 10 warmest years in history are post-1998.)\n\u0026ldquo;Scientists are questioning the data,\u0026rdquo; he said, showing photos from Anthony Watts\u0026rsquo; blog of poorly situated weather stations. \u0026ldquo;The albedo of the shelter in my backyard has changed as it has decayed,\u0026rdquo; and caused it to report warmer temperatures. He said that people are having a field day taking photos of poor official sites. (What Balling didn\u0026rsquo;t say is that what\u0026rsquo;s important in the data is not absolute temperature but the temperature trends, and the good sites and bad sites both show the same trends.)\nHe pointed out that there are corrections to the temperature based on time of measurement, urban heat islands, instruments used, etc. If you look at the raw data for the U.S. from 1979-2000, you see 0.25 degrees Celsius of warming. Sonde data shows 0.24 degrees, MSU\u0026rsquo;s measurements show 0.28, IPCC shows 0.28, and FILNET shows 0.33. He suggested that these corrections on the official data may be inflating the temperature (again, see my previous comment on trends vs. absolute temperature). Sky Harbor Airport produces the official temperature results for Phoenix, maximizing urban heat island effect. Many of the city records are from the worst sites, and he suggests looking at rural temperatures might give a different result.\nAnother factor is stratospheric turbidity from volcanic eruptions, and he showed a plot of orbital temperatures from satellites vs. stratospheric turbidity. He said that volcanism accounts for about 30% of the trend variability.\nThe big player in the game, he said, is the sun. Solar irradiance measures showed a significant decline in solar output in 1980, but earth temperature continued upward\u0026ndash;he said he mentioned this because he thought it would be used as an objection. In response, he said that \u0026ldquo;the sun doesn\u0026rsquo;t increase or decrease output over the entire spectrum and there are interactions with stratospheric clouds.\u0026rdquo; He said that there are astrophysicists who argue that this is the major cause of global warming. In the Q\u0026amp;A, he said that there\u0026rsquo;s one group that thinks cosmic ray flux is the major factor in global temperature because it stimulates cloud formation, while another group says that cosmic ray flux is little more than a trivial effect. He also said that this debate takes place in journals that \u0026ldquo;I find very difficult to read.\u0026quot;\nThere are other confounding variables like El Nino and La Nina, but he said there has \u0026ldquo;definitely been warming over the last three decades with a discernable human contribution.\u0026quot;\nHe put up a graph of the Vostok Reconstruction of temperature based on ice core data, on a chart labeled from -10 to +4 degree temperature changes in Celsius, which were mostly in the negative direction, and said we\u0026rsquo;ve seen periodic rapid changes up and down without any human contribution.\nHe talked about the IPCC \u0026ldquo;hockey stick\u0026rdquo; graph from 2001, which led to a huge debate about the possibility of bad statistical methods that guaranteed the hockey stick shape. He observed that 1000 years ago it was as warm or warmer than today, the Medieval Warming Period, which was missing from the \u0026ldquo;hockeystick\u0026rdquo; graph. There was also a \u0026ldquo;Little Ice Age,\u0026rdquo; also missing from the graph. He said the IPCC has backed away from the hockey stick and its most recent report includes clear Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age periods in its graphs.\nHe showed a photo of a microwave sounding unit for temperature measurement, and the polar satellite record from 1978 to present, which showed a big peak in 1998 from El Nino. He said he wrote his book saying that there was no warming in 1992, when it was true. After 1998, the temperature came back down quickly, and, he said, the satellite record, like the Science article, hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen warming. He then corrected himself to say, \u0026ldquo;well, some warming, but not consistent with the IPCC models.\u0026quot;\nHe said there has been high latitude warming, and the difference between winter and summer warming has supported the numeric models. \u0026ldquo;But a problem has evolved, which is the most powerful argument of the skeptics.\u0026rdquo; The models predict that there should be warming at the surface, which increases at higher altitude as you go up into the atmosphere. \u0026ldquo;There should be very strong warming in the middle of the atmosphere, but it\u0026rsquo;s not in the data.\u0026rdquo; This is the main anti-global warming argument of Joanne Nova\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Skeptics Handbook\u0026rdquo; that has been distributed to churches throughout the U.S. by the Heartland Institute (an organization supported by the oil industry that has sometimes gotten into trouble due to its carelessness).\nAt this point, Balling started asking various questions and answering them by quoting from the IPCC reports:\nMore hurricanes? The IPCC doesn\u0026rsquo;t say this. He cited the 1990, 1996, 2001 (executive summary, p. 5), and 2007 (p. 6) reports, all of which say that there\u0026rsquo;s no indication or no clear trend of increase or decrease of frequency or intensity of hurricanes or tropical cyclones as a result of warming.\nThe southwestern United States may become drier? Here, he answered affirmatively, pointing out that an ASU professor has an article that just came out in Science on this topic. Atmospheric circulation is decreasing, and soil moisture measures show the southwest is becoming drier. On this, he said, there\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;evidence everywhere,\u0026rdquo; and the Colorado River basin in particular is being hit hard. And this is consistent with IPCC predictions. He cited Roy Spencer to say that \u0026ldquo;extraordinary prediction require extraordinary evidence.\u0026rdquo; (This actually comes from Carl Sagan, who said \u0026ldquo;extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence\u0026rdquo; in Cosmos.)\nFrequency of tornadoes? It\u0026rsquo;s down, not up, and IPCC 2007 p. 308 says there is no evidence to draw general conclusions.\nIce caps are melting? Balling said Arctic yes, Antarctic, no. He cited the IPCC 2007 p. 6 regarding Antarctic sea ice extent indicating a lack of warming, and p. 13 that it\u0026rsquo;s too cold for widespread surface melting. He contrasted this with a slide of a homeless penguin used to argue for action on global warming. The Arctic ice cap \u0026ldquo;has its problems,\u0026rdquo; he said, and its extent has declined though has \u0026ldquo;rebounded a bit\u0026rdquo; recently. (In the Q\u0026amp;A, he said that half of the loss in the last six years has been recovered.) He said that experts in sea ice extent identify relative temperature, ocean currents, and wind as more important than temperature\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s not a thermometer of the planet.\u0026rdquo; In the past, northern sea ice has dropped as southern sea ice has increased, with the overall global extent of sea ice relatively unchanged. In the Q\u0026amp;A, he made it clear that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying that temperature wasn\u0026rsquo;t a factor, but that global temperature is definitely not a factor and temperature is less important than the other factors he identified.\nSea levels changing? He said there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt about this, but the important question is whether the rise is accelerating. He cited Church et al. J. Climate 2004, p. 2624 for a claim of \u0026ldquo;no detectible secular increase\u0026rdquo; in rate of sea level rise, but noted that another article this week says that there is. IPCC 2007, p. 5 says that it is unclear if increasing is a longer-term trend. The average has been 1.8 mm/year, but with variable rates of change. IPCC 2007, p. 9 says that 125,000 years ago sea levels were likely 4-6m higher than in the 20th century, due to retreat of polar ice.\nHe said that ice melting on Kilimanjaro has been a \u0026ldquo;poster child\u0026rdquo; for global warming, but that this sharp decline \u0026ldquo;started its retreat over 100 years ago,\u0026rdquo; at the end of the Little Ice Age (1600-1850), and is related to deforestation and ocean patterns in the Indian Ocean rather than global warming. It\u0026rsquo;s not in an area where significant warming is expected by climate models, and local temperatures don\u0026rsquo;t show it.\nHe then talked about a few factors that cause temperature forcing in a negative direction (i.e., cooling)\u0026ndash;SO2, which makes clouds last longer, increased dust, and ozone thinning. He said that his entry into the IPCC was his work at the U.S./Mexico border where he found that overgrazed land on the Mexican side caused warming, and it was much cooler on the U.S. side of the border. The dust, however, had a global cooling effect.\nThe 2001 IPCC report lists global radiative forcings in the negative direction: stratospheric ozone, sulfate, biomass burning, and mineral aerosols. In the positive direction include CO2 and solar irradiance. The 2007 report adds many more, including contrails from aircraft. A chart from the report lists the level of scientific understanding for each factor, and he observed that it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;low\u0026rdquo; for solar irradiance.\nHe cited a quote from James Hansen (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. p. 12,753, 1998) saying that we can\u0026rsquo;t predict the long term, and said he agrees.\nHe observed that the Pew Foundation poll for Sep. 30-Oct. 4 asked Americans if they think there is evidence of global warming being caused by humans and only 36% said yes\u0026ndash;he said he\u0026rsquo;s one of those 36%.\nHe concluded by observing that if you look at the difference between doing nothing at all, or stabilizing at 1990 levels in 1990, that only produces changes of a few hundredths of a degree of temperature in 2050\u0026ndash;so no matter what we do, \u0026ldquo;we won\u0026rsquo;t live long enough to see any difference.\u0026quot;\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, Prof. Billie Turner said that \u0026ldquo;our academy is about to issue a statement that we are 97% sure that we will not be at a 1-degree Celsius increase but a 2-degree Celsius increase by 2050\u0026rdquo; (or about double what Balling\u0026rsquo;s final slide showed). He objected that Balling\u0026rsquo;s talk began with the \u0026ldquo;lunatic green fringe\u0026rdquo; and contrasted it with the IPCC, which he said would be like him beginning a talk with Dick Cheney\u0026rsquo;s views before giving his own. He said this may be an effective format, but it \u0026ldquo;gives a slant on the problem that isn\u0026rsquo;t real in the expert community.\u0026rdquo; Turner also pointed out that on the subject of mitigation, if you are going to make a calculation in economic terms you have to use a discount rate. The Stern Review used a high discount rate, and concluded that it is worth spending a lot of money now on mitigation; William Nordhaus and Partha Dasgupta, on the other hand, used a low discount rate and concluded that it\u0026rsquo;s not worth spending money on now.\nBalling said that he gets email from \u0026ldquo;lefties\u0026rdquo; that ask him to \u0026ldquo;please keep criticizing\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;this [global warming] is just an excuse to keep the developing world from catching up.\u0026rdquo; In conversation with a small group afterward, Balling made it clear that he thinks people shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be listening to Limbaugh and Hannity on climate change, and in answer to my question about what sources the educated layman should read and rely upon, he answered unequivocally \u0026ldquo;the IPCC,\u0026rdquo; at least the scientific portions authored by scientists. He had some criticisms for the way that the technical summaries are negotiated by politicians, however, and said that S. Fred Singer has made hay out of comparing the summaries to the actual science sections and pointing out contradictions. He also said that Richard Lindzen at MIT, who he said may be the best climate scientist around, thinks the whole IPCC process is flawed, and that John Christy, lead author of the 2001 IPCC report, thinks the IPCC process should allow an \u0026ldquo;alternative views\u0026rdquo; statement by qualified scientists who disagree.\nIn a very brief discussion afterward [I had] with the climate modeling grad student in my climate change class, he [the student] said that the biggest weakness of the talk was that Balling didn\u0026rsquo;t talk about ocean temperatures, being measured by the Argo project of NASA\u0026rsquo;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These measures had shown some recent cooling (but a long-term warming trend), but after discovering an error, Joshua Willis found that warming has continued.\nBalling supports the science, but he still leans to minimizing the negative effects, and uses some apparently bad arguments to do so. His position clearly advocates a \u0026ldquo;wait and see\u0026rdquo; approach, and argues that we needn\u0026rsquo;t be in a hurry to mitigate since nothing we do will have any effect in our lifetimes\u0026ndash;but it could have an enormous effect on what is required for mitigation and adaptation for future generations.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-10-31):\n\u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t believe this is correct unless you measure from 1998, which was an El Nino year. Most of the top 10 warmest years in history are post-1998.\u0026quot; It's not correct, even if you cherry pick 1998 as your starting point.\nLink\nThe recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.\n\u0026quot;The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,\u0026quot; said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. \u0026quot;Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.\u0026quot;\nThe AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.\nStatisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.\nW_Chow (2009-10-31):\nGreat summary Jim. One other thing about Bob's talk - He's not really that up to date with the science. IIRC, the only real citation post-2007 in his presentation was that mention of the Science article (\u0026quot;Global warming? Wait for it..\u0026quot;) which was not really a research article but a news report instead. frowns\nThe IPCC AR4 only covers research up to 2005/2006, and further developments have superseded most, if not all, of Bob's contrarian talking points on UHI, satellite data, the trop troposphere \u0026quot;hot spot\u0026quot;, galactic cosmic rays, variations in solar irradiance, SO2 \u0026amp; aerosol emissions, sea level rise and glacier retreat. Will show you the relevant papers on Tuesday if you so wish to see them. :-)\nAlso, I should have asked Bob what was the whole point or theme of his talk. It was rather disorganized without any real point to it. Does he \u0026quot;really\u0026quot; support the science, as he really has not shown that he's kept up to date with what's currently going on?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/robert-balling-on-climate-change.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis afternoon I went to hear ASU \u003ca href=\"http://geoplan.asu.edu/balling\"\u003eProf. Robert Balling\u003c/a\u003e, former head of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Office of Climatology and current head of the Geographic Information Systems program, talk about climate change in a talk that was advertised as \u0026ldquo;Global Warming Became Climate Change: And the Story Continues,\u0026rdquo; though I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice if he had a title slide for his presentation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began his talk by saying that in 1957, measurements of CO2 began to be made at Mauna Loa (by Charles David Keeling), which established that CO2 is increasing in our atmosphere, largely because of human activity\u0026ndash;from fossil fuel emissions.  It\u0026rsquo;s approaching 390 parts per million (ppm).  Last weekend, the \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; on A Mountain near the university was painted green by a bunch of people wearing shirts that say \u0026ldquo;350\u0026rdquo; on them, because they want atmospheric CO2 to be stabilized at 350 ppm, which was the level in 1990, which is the benchmark year for the Kyoto Protocol.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut this isn\u0026rsquo;t remotely feasible, he said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Even the most optimistic scenario in the IPCC Report has atmospheric carbon continuing to rise until 2100, hitting about 600 ppm.  If we reduced emissions to 0, the best case would end up with stabilization at around 450 ppm.  Our lifetime will see increasing CO2 levels, no matter what we do.  (In other words, the Kyoto benchmark sets a standard for emissions levels to return to, not for a level of atmospheric carbon to return to.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you look at the earth\u0026rsquo;s history on a longer scale, atmospheric carbon has been much higher in the past\u0026ndash;it was at about 2500 ppm during the dinosaurs.  During the last 600,000 years, however, it has been much lower, and fell below 200 ppm in the last glacial period.  This, Balling said, shows what he would identify as a dangerous level of CO2\u0026ndash;falling below 160 ppm, which causes plants to die.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are other greenhouse gases besides CO2 that have an effect, such as methane and NO2, that humans are producing, he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, he said the greenhouse effect is real\u0026ndash;CO2 doubling causes warming\u0026ndash;and this has been known for 120 years and \u0026ldquo;nobody is denying that.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are climate models, which he said he has great respect for\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s basic physics plus fantastic computing and applied math.  Climate modelers, he said, are their own worst critics.  Problems for climate models include clouds, water vapor, rain, and the ocean, but lots of things are modeled correctly and the results are generally pretty good.  Clouds, he said, are the biggest area of debate.  The IPCC models say that clouds amplify warming, but satellite-based measurements suggest that clouds dampen (but don\u0026rsquo;t eliminate) warming.  Thus, he concluded, IPCC may be predicting more warming than will actually occur.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe next discussed empirical support for warming, and pointed out that the official plot of global temperatures has no error bars, and the numbers reported come from sensors that don\u0026rsquo;t cover the entire world.  How you come up with a global average can be done in different ways, and the different methods produce different results.  You can take grid cells, average by latitudinal bands, get two hemispheric averages, and average them together.  You can just average all of the data we have.  He said that Roger Pielke Sr. questions the use of average temperatures and suggests looking at afternoon high temperatures.  Looking at the older end of the chart, he asked, \u0026ldquo;where were the sensors in 1900?  Why no error bars?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe asked, \u0026ldquo;Is the earth warming,\u0026rdquo; and said \u0026ldquo;right now the earth is not warming.  I expect it to keep going up, but over the last decade there\u0026rsquo;s been essentially none.\u0026rdquo; He pointed to a recent article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e magazine, \u0026ldquo;What happened to global warming?\u0026rdquo;  Many are writing about this, he said, and there could be \u0026ldquo;1001 different things including sun and oceanic processes.\u0026rdquo;  (I don\u0026rsquo;t believe this is correct unless you measure from 1998, which was an El Nino year.  Most of the top 10 warmest years in history are post-1998.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientists are questioning the data,\u0026rdquo; he said, showing photos from \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/anthony-watts-abuses-dmca-to-suppress.html\"\u003eAnthony Watts\u0026rsquo; blog of poorly situated weather stations\u003c/a\u003e.  \u0026ldquo;The albedo of the shelter in my backyard has changed as it has decayed,\u0026rdquo; and caused it to report warmer temperatures.  He said that people are having a field day taking photos of poor official sites.  (What Balling didn\u0026rsquo;t say is that what\u0026rsquo;s important in the data is not absolute temperature but the temperature trends, and \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/garbage-in-on-climate-change.html\"\u003ethe good sites and bad sites both show the same trends\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe pointed out that there are corrections to the temperature based on time of measurement, urban heat islands, instruments used, etc.  If you look at the raw data for the U.S. from 1979-2000, you see 0.25 degrees Celsius of warming.  Sonde data shows 0.24 degrees, MSU\u0026rsquo;s measurements show 0.28, IPCC shows 0.28, and FILNET shows 0.33.  He suggested that these corrections on the official data may be inflating the temperature (again, see my previous comment on trends vs. absolute temperature).  Sky Harbor Airport produces the official temperature results for Phoenix, maximizing urban heat island effect.  Many of the city records are from the worst sites, and he suggests looking at rural temperatures might give a different result.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother factor is stratospheric turbidity from volcanic eruptions, and he showed a plot of orbital temperatures from satellites vs. stratospheric turbidity.  He said that volcanism accounts for about 30% of the trend variability.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe big player in the game, he said, is the sun.  Solar irradiance measures showed a significant decline in solar output in 1980, but earth temperature continued upward\u0026ndash;he said he mentioned this because he thought it would be used as an objection.  In response, he said that \u0026ldquo;the sun doesn\u0026rsquo;t increase or decrease output over the entire spectrum and there are interactions with stratospheric clouds.\u0026rdquo;  He said that there are astrophysicists who argue that this is the major cause of global warming.  In the Q\u0026amp;A, he said that there\u0026rsquo;s one group that thinks cosmic ray flux is the major factor in global temperature because it stimulates cloud formation, while another group says that cosmic ray flux is little more than a trivial effect.  He also said that this debate takes place in journals that \u0026ldquo;I find very difficult to read.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are other confounding variables like El Nino and La Nina, but he said there has \u0026ldquo;definitely been warming over the last three decades with a discernable human contribution.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe put up a graph of the Vostok Reconstruction of temperature based on ice core data, on a chart labeled from -10 to +4 degree temperature changes in Celsius, which were mostly in the negative direction, and said we\u0026rsquo;ve seen periodic rapid changes up and down without any human contribution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe talked about the IPCC \u0026ldquo;hockey stick\u0026rdquo; graph from 2001, which led to a huge debate about the possibility of bad statistical methods that guaranteed the hockey stick shape.  He observed that 1000 years ago it was as warm or warmer than today, the Medieval Warming Period, which was missing from the \u0026ldquo;hockeystick\u0026rdquo; graph.  There was also a \u0026ldquo;Little Ice Age,\u0026rdquo; also missing from the graph.  He said the IPCC has backed away from the hockey stick and its most recent report includes clear Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age periods in its graphs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe showed a photo of a microwave sounding unit for temperature measurement, and the polar satellite record from 1978 to present, which showed a big peak in 1998 from El Nino.  He said he wrote his book saying that there was no warming in 1992, when it was true.  After 1998, the temperature came back down quickly, and, he said, the satellite record, like the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e article, hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen warming.  He then corrected himself to say, \u0026ldquo;well, some warming, but not consistent with the IPCC models.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said there has been high latitude warming, and the difference between winter and summer warming has supported the numeric models.  \u0026ldquo;But a problem has evolved, which is the most powerful argument of the skeptics.\u0026rdquo;  The models predict that there should be warming at the surface, which increases at higher altitude as you go up into the atmosphere.  \u0026ldquo;There should be very strong warming in the middle of the atmosphere, but it\u0026rsquo;s not in the data.\u0026rdquo;  This is the main anti-global warming argument of Joanne Nova\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Skeptics Handbook\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that has been distributed to churches throughout the U.S. by the Heartland Institute (an organization supported by the oil industry that has \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/heartland-institute-publishes-bogus.html\"\u003esometimes gotten into trouble\u003c/a\u003e due to its \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/heartland-institute-mistakes-parody-for.html\"\u003ecarelessness\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, Balling started asking various questions and answering them by quoting from the IPCC reports:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore hurricanes?  The IPCC doesn\u0026rsquo;t say this.  He cited the 1990, 1996, 2001 (executive summary, p. 5), and 2007 (p. 6) reports, all of which say that there\u0026rsquo;s no indication or no clear trend of increase or decrease of frequency or intensity of hurricanes or tropical cyclones as a result of warming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe southwestern United States may become drier?  Here, he answered affirmatively, pointing out that an ASU professor has an article that just came out in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e on this topic.  Atmospheric circulation is decreasing, and soil moisture measures show the southwest is becoming drier.  On this, he said, there\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;evidence everywhere,\u0026rdquo; and the Colorado River basin in particular is being hit hard.  And this is consistent with IPCC predictions.  He cited Roy Spencer to say that \u0026ldquo;extraordinary prediction require extraordinary evidence.\u0026rdquo;  (This actually comes from Carl Sagan, who said \u0026ldquo;extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence\u0026rdquo; in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCosmos\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrequency of tornadoes?  It\u0026rsquo;s down, not up, and IPCC 2007 p. 308 says there is no evidence to draw general conclusions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIce caps are melting?  Balling said Arctic yes, Antarctic, no.  He cited the IPCC 2007 p. 6 regarding Antarctic sea ice extent indicating a lack of warming, and p. 13 that it\u0026rsquo;s too cold for widespread surface melting.  He contrasted this with a slide of a homeless penguin used to argue for action on global warming.  The Arctic ice cap \u0026ldquo;has its problems,\u0026rdquo; he said, and its extent has declined though has \u0026ldquo;rebounded a bit\u0026rdquo; recently.  (In the Q\u0026amp;A, he said that half of the loss in the last six years has been recovered.)  He said that experts in sea ice extent identify relative temperature, ocean currents, and wind as more important than temperature\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s not a thermometer of the planet.\u0026rdquo;  In the past, northern sea ice has dropped as southern sea ice has increased, with the overall global extent of sea ice relatively unchanged.  In the Q\u0026amp;A, he made it clear that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying that temperature wasn\u0026rsquo;t a factor, but that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eglobal\u003c/span\u003e temperature is definitely not a factor and temperature is less important than the other factors he identified.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSea levels changing?  He said there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt about this, but the important question is whether the rise is accelerating.  He cited Church et al. \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJ. Climate\u003c/span\u003e 2004, p. 2624 for a claim of \u0026ldquo;no detectible secular increase\u0026rdquo; in rate of sea level rise, but noted that another article this week says that there is.  IPCC 2007, p. 5 says that it is unclear if increasing is a longer-term trend.  The average has been 1.8 mm/year, but with variable rates of change.  IPCC 2007, p. 9 says that 125,000 years ago sea levels were likely 4-6m higher than in the 20th century, due to retreat of polar ice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said that ice melting on Kilimanjaro has been a \u0026ldquo;poster child\u0026rdquo; for global warming, but that this sharp decline \u0026ldquo;started its retreat over 100 years ago,\u0026rdquo; at the end of the Little Ice Age (1600-1850), and is related to deforestation and ocean patterns in the Indian Ocean rather than global warming.  It\u0026rsquo;s not in an area where significant warming is expected by climate models, and local temperatures don\u0026rsquo;t show it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then talked about a few factors that cause temperature forcing in a negative direction (i.e., cooling)\u0026ndash;SO2, which makes clouds last longer, increased dust, and ozone thinning.  He said that his entry into the IPCC was his work at the U.S./Mexico border where he found that overgrazed land on the Mexican side caused warming, and it was much cooler on the U.S. side of the border.  The dust, however, had a global cooling effect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe 2001 IPCC report lists global radiative forcings in the negative direction: stratospheric ozone, sulfate, biomass burning, and mineral aerosols.  In the positive direction include CO2 and solar irradiance.  The 2007 report adds many more, including contrails from aircraft.  A chart from the report lists the level of scientific understanding for each factor, and he observed that it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;low\u0026rdquo; for solar irradiance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe cited a quote from James Hansen (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProc. Nat. Acad. Sci.\u003c/span\u003e p. 12,753, 1998) saying that we can\u0026rsquo;t predict the long term, and said he agrees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe observed that the Pew Foundation poll for Sep. 30-Oct. 4 asked Americans if they think there is evidence of global warming being caused by humans and only 36% said yes\u0026ndash;he said he\u0026rsquo;s one of those 36%.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe concluded by observing that if you look at the difference between doing nothing at all, or stabilizing at 1990 levels in 1990, that only produces changes of a few hundredths of a degree of temperature in 2050\u0026ndash;so no matter what we do, \u0026ldquo;we won\u0026rsquo;t live long enough to see any difference.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, \u003ca href=\"http://geoplan.asu.edu/turner\"\u003eProf. Billie Turner\u003c/a\u003e said that \u0026ldquo;our academy is about to issue a statement that we are 97% sure that we will not be at a 1-degree Celsius increase but a 2-degree Celsius increase by 2050\u0026rdquo; (or about double what Balling\u0026rsquo;s final slide showed).  He objected that Balling\u0026rsquo;s talk began with the \u0026ldquo;lunatic green fringe\u0026rdquo; and contrasted it with the IPCC, which he said would be like him beginning a talk with Dick Cheney\u0026rsquo;s views before giving his own.  He said this may be an effective format, but it \u0026ldquo;gives a slant on the problem that isn\u0026rsquo;t real in the expert community.\u0026rdquo;  Turner also pointed out that on the subject of mitigation, if you are going to make a calculation in economic terms you have to use a discount rate.  The \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review\"\u003eStern Review\u003c/a\u003e used a high discount rate, and concluded that it is worth spending a lot of money now on mitigation; \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/business/14scene.html\"\u003eWilliam Nordhaus and Partha Dasgupta\u003c/a\u003e, on the other hand, used a low discount rate and concluded that it\u0026rsquo;s not worth spending money on now.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBalling said that he gets email from \u0026ldquo;lefties\u0026rdquo; that ask him to \u0026ldquo;please keep criticizing\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;this [global warming] is just an excuse to keep the developing world from catching up.\u0026rdquo;  In conversation with a small group afterward, Balling made it clear that he thinks people shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be listening to Limbaugh and Hannity on climate change, and in answer to my question about what sources the educated layman should read and rely upon, he answered unequivocally \u0026ldquo;the IPCC,\u0026rdquo; at least the scientific portions authored by scientists.  He had some criticisms for the way that the technical summaries are negotiated by politicians, however, and said that S. Fred Singer has made hay out of comparing the summaries to the actual science sections and pointing out contradictions.  He also said that Richard Lindzen at MIT, who he said may be the best climate scientist around, thinks the whole IPCC process is flawed, and that John Christy, lead author of the 2001 IPCC report, thinks the IPCC process should allow an \u0026ldquo;alternative views\u0026rdquo; statement by qualified scientists who disagree.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn a very brief discussion afterward [I had] with the climate modeling grad student in my climate change class, he [the student] said that the biggest weakness of the talk was that Balling didn\u0026rsquo;t talk about ocean temperatures, being measured by the Argo project of NASA\u0026rsquo;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  These measures had shown some recent cooling (but a long-term warming trend), but after discovering an error, \u003ca href=\"http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/\"\u003eJoshua Willis found that warming has continued\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBalling supports the science, but he still leans to minimizing the negative effects, and uses some apparently bad arguments to do so.  His position clearly advocates a \u0026ldquo;wait and see\u0026rdquo; approach, and argues that we needn\u0026rsquo;t be in a hurry to mitigate since nothing we do will have any effect in our lifetimes\u0026ndash;but it could have an enormous effect on what is required for mitigation and adaptation for future generations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Robert Balling on climate change"},{"content":"ASU\u0026rsquo;s State Press columnist Catherine Smith authored an op-ed piece promoting last night\u0026rsquo;s appearance of Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. This was at least her second such op-ed; a prior one was published on September 17.\nMy letter to the editor, below, didn\u0026rsquo;t get published, but another critic\u0026rsquo;s letter did get published.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s mine:\nCatherine Smith quotes Ravi Zacharias as stating that \"irreligion and atheism have killed infinitely more than all religious wars of any kind cumulatively put together.\" This statement not only demonstrates Zacharias' innumeracy, it shows that he continues to make the mistake of attributing killing in the name of political ideologies like Stalinism and communism to atheism. I agree that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killed more than religious wars, but it wasn't their atheism that caused that killing. Those killed by religious wars, the Inquisition, and witch trials, however, were killed in the name of religion. Out of fairness, there were no doubt political issues involved in many wars over religion as well, but if you take claims of religiously motivated killing at face value, the death tolls for those killed in the name of religion far exceed the death tolls for those killed in the name of irreligion.\nZacharias has a history of attacking atheism with misrepresentations in his books, as documented in Jeff Lowder's \"An Emotional Tirade Against Atheism\" and Doug Krueger's \"That Colossal Wreck,\" both of which may be found on the Internet as part of the Secular Web (http://www.infidels.org/). I first heard of Zacharias back around 1991, when I sat behind someone on an airplane flight who was reading his book (reviewed by Krueger, linked above), A Shattered Visage. The parts I read were truly awful, about the quality of M. Scott Huse arguments against evolution (a step below Kent Hovind and Ken Ham). I didn't bother to attend, but would be interested in hearing any reports of how it went.\nUPDATE (November 24, 2017): Steve Baughman has published an exposure of Zacharias' claims to have credentials he does not possess, and to have had academic appointments that did not exist.\nUPDATE (September 26, 2020): Ravi Zacharias died of cancer earlier this year, but not before being caught in an online relationship scandal.\nUPDATE (February 11, 2021): Ravi Zacharias International Ministries has publicly released a report on an investigation into abuse charges against Ravi Zacharias, and it found a significant pattern of predatory sexual abuse and a rape allegation.\nThe woman googled “Ravi Zacharias sex scandal” and found the blog\u0026nbsp;RaviWatch, run by Steve Baughman, an atheist who had been tracking and reporting on Zacharias’s “fishy claims” since 2015. Baughman blogged on Zacharias’s false statements about academic credentials, the sexting allegations, and the subsequent lawsuit. When the woman read about what happened to Lori Anne Thompson, she recognized what had happened to that woman was what had happened to her.\nAs far as she could tell, this atheist blogger was the only one who cared that Zacharias had sexually abused people and gotten away with it. She reached out to Baughman and then eventually\u0026nbsp;spoke to\u0026nbsp;Christianity Today\u0026nbsp;about Zacharias’s spas, the women who worked there, and the abuse that happened behind closed doors.\nOneCrazyMama (2009-10-30):\nYes, I read it via a friend of a friend. As a Christian, the Ravi's of this world and the people who flock to the auditoriums to hear them/buy their merchandise make my head want to explode.\nI'm fine with evolution, and I'm fine with letting others be themselves. I can't stand someone who wants to go around arrogantly trying to stuff \u0026quot;Christian cultural supieriority\u0026quot; down other people's throats.\nI've expressed this anger to other Christians only to be chastised and insulted for my \u0026quot;ignorance\u0026quot;.\nYou're not alone in your frustration. Try being a believer who is routinely kicked by people who are supposed to be on the same wavelength. I say tolerance, compassion, peace, love and get called on the carpet for a lack of standards, watering down religion, and being a general-all-around-bad-person.\nThat State Press article was terribly written and offensive\u0026ndash;I might add.\nI was googling criticism of Ravi and found your blog. Hope you don't mind the comment.\nThanks, and sorry your letter didn't get published.\nEamon Knight (2009-10-30):\nOne of Zacharias\u0026#39; associates, a guy called Joe Boot, has been up to my neck of the woods a couple of times for debates. (Recent event: http://humanistottawaweb.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/does-god-exist-debates-this-week-joe-boot-vs-ronald-de-sousa/)\nJames Redekop (2009-10-30):\nThe Reasonable Doubts podcast had a good \u0026quot;bonus\u0026quot; episode out a while back, in which Jeremy Beahan from the podcast talks with Danny and Mikyle from the Reason Drive Podcast about their interview with Zacharias in which he ran them ragged. Danny \u0026amp; Mikyle were completely unprepared for Zacharias\u0026#39;s fancy apologist footwork, and Beahan provides good insight into the vacuous logic of Zacharias\u0026#39;s arguments: Responding to Ravi Zacharias (from the Reason Driven Podcast)\nLippard (2009-10-30):\nOneCrazyMama: Of course you are welcome to comment here! Thanks for adding your perspective to the mix. Eamon: DeSousa debated Boot a couple of times, and also debated Sam Harris? What was that latter debate about?\nBoot apparently relies on Van Till/Bahnsen-style presuppositionalist arguments, based on the comments. Does Zacharias take that route, too? And if so, does he argue that not only God is a presupposition of logic and rationality, but the Christian God and Jesus are in particular?\nEamon Knight (2009-10-30):\nEamon: DeSousa debated Boot a couple of times, and also debated Sam Harris? What was that latter debate about? I don't know anything about the DeSousa/Harris debate beyond that YouTube video (BTW: note Dennett's unmistakable beard in the background). Boot debated DeSousa here this year, and John Schook of CFI three(?) years ago.\nBoot apparently relies on Van Till/Bahnsen-style presuppositionalist arguments, based on the comments. Does Zacharias take that route, too?\nMy only acquaintance with RZ is by way of Boot's appearances here. I don't know if presuppism is the ministry's party line, or just Boot's current favorite argument (I don't recall him using it last time).\nDo you know of any decent online takedowns of presuppism? Between my visit to Hams' Funhouse and Boot's, it's starting to irritate me\u0026hellip;.\nLippard (2009-10-30):\nEamon: Michael Martin engaged in a debate with Bahnsen protege John Frame in which Martin tried to turn the tables on the transcendental argument for the existence of God\u0026ndash;in the process, he makes some good criticisms of the former.\nI've not really seen anything published in the epistemological literature about the sorts of arguments made by Bahnsen, probably because there hasn't been one good enough to be published in a philosophy journal in the first place to motivate a rebuttal, as far as I'm aware. (I welcome references to the contrary.)\nThere are some very smart Christian epistemologists (e.g., Alvin Plantinga), but I'm not aware of any of them that use that kind of presuppositionalism. Plantinga's an externalist foundationalist.\nLippard (2009-10-30):\nI also meant to list the late William P. Alston as a second example--also an externalist foundationalist. His book on _Perceiving God_ starts with a great chapter on the epistemology of sense perception, and he then tries to make an analogous case for religious experience as perception of God, which strikes me as possibly the best way to argue for the existence of God. It suffers from its points of disanalogy, however, such as religious disagreement, and from the existence of naturalistic accounts of religious experience.\nLippard (2009-10-30):\nJames: Thanks for the podcast recommendation. Unfortunately, those particular podcasts don\u0026#39;t seem to be available from iTunes (but in the process of looking for it I found a great podcast called \u0026quot;Philosophy Bites\u0026quot;). They can be directly downloaded from the site, however.\nJames Redekop (2009-10-30):\nBoth Reasonable Doubts and The Reason Driven Podcast are on iTunes. Here are the iTunes links: Reasonable Doubts The Reason Driven Podcast\ntom (2009-10-30):\n\u0026quot;Do you know of any decent online takedowns of presuppism?\u0026quot; I think Jim has the right idea about presuppositionalism; most of the best minds haven't engaged it because presup itself has yet to engage philosophy via its serious and mainstream forums. You won't find it at Oxford and you wont find it in peer-reviewed journals, so far as I'm aware.\nThat said, presup. can be a pain in the rear, especially when one first confronts it. It is usually presented by - forgive the generalization, but it's 99% fair - some arrogant douchebag who has mastered a single debating trick.\nHere's a PDF outline of a talk by one professional philosopher (Gene Witmer) who treats it as such. The talk is at least as much about debating, and how to engage a presuppositionalist, as it is about the epistemology invovled. http://gatorfreethought.org/witmer%20talk%201.pdf\nDebunkingChristianity once posted a debate he did with Gene Cook, who is a presup. advocate. http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/11/dr-gene-witmer-on-presuppositionalism.html\nThe blog \u0026quot;Incinerating Presuppositionalism\u0026quot; has been around for a while. I haven't read the bulk of what's on that site, but based on what I have read, I think the author is very sharp. I'd tentatively recommend it as resource to start further investigation. http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/\nEamon Knight (2009-10-30):\nI think Jim has the right idea about presuppositionalism; most of the best minds haven\u0026#39;t engaged it because presup itself has yet to engage philosophy via its serious and mainstream forums. Ah, so it's kind of the Creation Science of philosophy, then? ;-) (Except that the best minds in science have been forced to engage C'ism for socio-political reasons). Thanks; from the outside it's hard to tell what the status is some of these schools of thought.\nLippard (2009-10-31):\nJames: I saw the podcasts themselves there, but not the particular episodes with Ravi Zacharias. I made the mistake of saying \u0026quot;podcasts\u0026quot; when I meant \u0026quot;podcast episodes.\u0026quot;\nJames Redekop (2009-10-31):\nAh, sorry. I have the episodes in my archives, since I subscribe to both, so I didn\u0026#39;t realize they\u0026#39;d scrolled off the list.\ntom (2009-10-31):\n\u0026quot;Ah, so it\u0026#39;s kind of the Creation Science of philosophy, then?\u0026quot; Not to take you too literally, since your question ended with a winking smiley face, but: I would shy away from the comparison since science has a pretty clear accepted methodology and set of standards, whereas nothing analogous is really available in philosophical debates, which often trace back to unsettled disagreements over \u0026quot;first principles\u0026quot;. So it's less clear that presuppositionalists violate a sort of universally accepted philosophical standard the way that creationists fail to meet the standards of science.\nHowever (as Jim alludes to above), mainstream presuppositionalists believe that not only the existence of God, but the existence of the God of a specific brand of Christian theology - trinity, Jesus and all - can be deduced and proven without recourse to scripture. Some advocates of presuppositionalism are actually pretty impressive debaters, and obviously smart people, but just ask yourself if you can take that seriously enough to even roll your eyes at it.\nUnknown (2009-11-21):\nSomething a little quick to think about, although I think it\u0026#39;s wise to judge everyone by their own individual choice, such as, not blaming religion for the reason people died, but the people that did the killing. I think it\u0026#39;s a little unfair for an atheist to claim that those communists or fascists didn\u0026#39;t do it in the name of atheism. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc. all claim that atheism is a dumb word. It expresses a disbelief instead of a belief (although every disbelief is a belief in something else and vice versa). Of course they (Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.) didn't do it in the name of atheism. They didn't say, \u0026quot;IN THE NAME OF NOTHING I WILL KILL YOU.\u0026quot; And it is precisely that they DIDN'T believe in God that allowed them to unmercifully kill many people.\nLippard (2009-11-23):\nTyler: Your assertion, \u0026quot;And it is precisely that they DIDN\u0026#39;T believe in God that allowed them to unmercifully kill many people,\u0026quot; is what I\u0026#39;m disputing. What evidence do you have for that? Hitler's belief in God didn't stop him from killing millions of people. Is there any empirical evidence that a belief in God stops a political leader from killing people?\nUnknown (2010-02-16):\nto Jim Marxist ideology retains skepticism, non-belief in god at its core to answer Stalin's genocide, as well as Mao, Mao himself does not believe in God according to his memoirs. Hitler's case is complicated, he exhibits more opportunism to tailor whatever he believes in to suit his political goals. He is not a theist, although he claims that he believes in God, its more point-scoring and sloganeering to appease the great majority of Germans in the Catholic Centre party at that time. He's more of a practical atheist just going thru the motions of superficial religion, but he really does not believe in God just in his own ambitions for Germany and himself characterized by personal table talks with his inner circle stating that christianity should be exterminated etc.\nLippard (2010-02-17):\nAlvin: Marxism entailing atheism doesn\u0026#39;t mean atheism entails Marxism, or that atheism was the cause of the abuses of Marxism, for which I am not aware of any evidence. I disagree with you about Hitler\u0026ndash;there is no evidence of his being an atheist even in the questionable portions of the \u0026quot;Table Talk.\u0026quot; See, for summary, this. (A more scholarly reference is Richard Carrier, \u0026quot;Hitler's Table Talk: Troubling Finds,\u0026quot; German Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 3, October 2003.\nYou are mistaken to infer that opposition to Christianity entails atheism. At best Hitler opposes orthodox Christianity in favor of his own pagan-infused heterodox but still theistic views.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/state-press-defends-ravi-zacharias.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e columnist Catherine Smith authored \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/8691\"\u003ean op-ed piece promoting last night\u0026rsquo;s appearance of Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias\u003c/a\u003e.  This was at least her second such op-ed; \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/7553\"\u003ea prior one was published on September 17\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMy letter to the editor, below, didn\u0026rsquo;t get published, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/8791\"\u003eanother critic\u0026rsquo;s letter did get published\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHere\u0026rsquo;s mine:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nCatherine Smith quotes Ravi Zacharias as stating that \"irreligion and atheism have killed infinitely more than all religious wars of any kind cumulatively put together.\"  This statement not only demonstrates Zacharias' innumeracy, it shows that he continues to make the mistake of attributing killing in the name of political ideologies like Stalinism and communism to atheism.  I agree that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killed more than religious wars, but it wasn't their atheism that caused that killing.  Those killed by religious wars, the Inquisition, and witch trials, however, were killed in the name of religion.  Out of fairness, there were no doubt political issues involved in many wars over religion as well, but if you take claims of religiously motivated killing at face value, the death tolls for those killed in the name of religion far exceed the death tolls for those killed in the name of irreligion.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nZacharias has a history of attacking atheism with misrepresentations in his books, as documented in Jeff Lowder's \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/zacharias.html\"\u003e\"An Emotional Tirade Against Atheism\"\u003c/a\u003e and Doug Krueger's \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/doug_krueger/colossal.html\"\u003e\"That Colossal Wreck,\"\u003c/a\u003e both of which may be found on the Internet as part of the Secular Web (\u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003ehttp://www.infidels.org/\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nI \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/65cf88d8fe8f8c88?hl=en\"\u003efirst heard of Zacharias back around 1991\u003c/a\u003e, when I sat behind someone on an airplane flight who was reading his book (reviewed by Krueger, linked above), \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Shattered Visage\u003c/span\u003e.  The parts I read were truly awful, about the quality of M. Scott Huse arguments against evolution (a step below Kent Hovind and Ken Ham).  I didn't bother to attend, but would be interested in hearing any reports of how it went.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 24, 2017): Steve Baughman has published \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20200618231238/http://ordinary-times.com/2017/11/13/the-christian-industrial-complex-shields-its-own/\"\u003ean exposure of Zacharias' claims to have credentials he does not possess, and to have had academic appointments that did not exist\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (September 26, 2020): Ravi Zacharias died of cancer earlier this year, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.christianpost.com/news/allegations-mount-in-2017-ravi-zacharias-illicit-online-relationship-scandal.html\"\u003enot before being caught in an online relationship scandal\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (February 11, 2021): Ravi Zacharias International Ministries has publicly released a report on an investigation into abuse charges against Ravi Zacharias, and it found \u003ca href=\"https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/ravi-zacharias-rzim-investigation-sexual-abuse-sexting-rape.html\"\u003ea significant pattern of predatory sexual abuse and a rape allegation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote style=\"border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp class=\"text\" style=\"background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: \u0026quot;Chronicle SSm A\u0026quot;, \u0026quot;Chronicle SSm B\u0026quot;, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px 0px 25px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;\"\u003eThe woman googled “Ravi Zacharias sex scandal” and found the blog\u0026nbsp;\u003ca class=\"\" href=\"http://www.raviwatch.com/\" style=\"background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #d51b1e; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;\"\u003eRaviWatch\u003c/a\u003e, run by Steve Baughman, an atheist who had been tracking and reporting on Zacharias’s “fishy claims” since 2015. Baughman blogged on Zacharias’s false statements about academic credentials, the sexting allegations, and the subsequent lawsuit. When the woman read about what happened to Lori Anne Thompson, she recognized what had happened to that woman was what had happened to her.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"State Press defends Ravi Zacharias"},{"content":"The following is a letter to the editor of Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s State Press that the paper didn\u0026rsquo;t print. It was written in response to an editorial by Will Munsil, son of Len Munsil, who was editor of the State Press when I was an undergraduate in the 1980s. Len Munsil is an extremely conservative Republican, failed Republican candidate for Governor in 2006, and founder of the Center for Arizona Policy, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s version of the American Family Affiliation. His daughter, Leigh Munsil, is the State Press\u0026rsquo;s current editor-in-chief. When Munsil Sr. edited the school paper, he sometimes refused to print my letters to the editor for shaky reasons.\nThe letter below was written in response to Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Putting the Bible back in public schools,\u0026quot; which was published on October 14.\nI disagree with Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s assertion that the Bible is the foundation of American political thought. On the contrary, the American form of government was rooted in the work of enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The U.S. Constitution\u0026rsquo;s form of government has more resemblance to Caribbean pirate codes than to the Ten Commandments.\nThat said, however, I agree with Munsil that knowledge of the Bible is worthwhile and should be taught in public schools for the purpose of cultural literacy, so long as it is done without endorsing Christianity or Judaism. The Bible Literacy Project\u0026rsquo;s curriculum might be one way to do it. One way not to do it is to use the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools\u0026rsquo; curriculum\u0026ndash;it takes a sectarian perspective, is full of errors, and has failed legal challenges in Texas and Florida for being unconstitutional.I suspect this letter wasn\u0026rsquo;t excluded by reason of content, but because they had already printed a couple of letters critical of Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s op-ed by the time I submitted this on October 16. Perhaps I should have mentioned that I\u0026rsquo;m an atheist, which makes the extent of my agreement with Munsil more interesting. Of course, my view is contrary to Munsil\u0026rsquo;s in that I think Bible literacy is likely to decrease, rather than increase, religious belief. But it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if the NCBCPS curriculum is the one that Will Munsil had in mind.\nI should point out that I think it should probably be taught as part of a world religions class that covers more than just Christianity\u0026ndash;kids should not only get information about the Bible that they won\u0026rsquo;t get in Sunday School, they should be informed about other religions, as well as the fact that history has been full of doubters of religion, as documented in Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s excellent Doubt: A History.\nYou can find out more about the NCBCPS curriculum that failed legal challenge in Texas here.\nMunsil cited Stephen Prothero, whose op-ed piece, \u0026ldquo;We live in a land of biblical idiots,\u0026rdquo; I wrote about at the Secular Web in early 2007.\nL (2009-10-28):\nYou know, I wouldn\u0026#39;t mind seeing a World Religions component to the standard Social Studies curriculum. After all, if students are studying world and American history they\u0026#39;re going to bump up against the major religions anyway so why not given them some context to understand the impact of religion on history? The problem as I see it, is where to fit it into the curriculum. There's so much content to fit into the curriculum already. I don't know how it is today, but when I was in high school in NYS (I graduated in 1986), the Regents college-bound curriculum pretty much stopped with the conclusion of World War II after four years of studies.\nMike Beidler (2009-10-28):\nJim, I greatly appreciate your objectiveness in this matter, and I find it amusing (although not surprising) that you and I think identically on this subject.\nWithout a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible, much of our cultural history would be met, in our present day, with that \u0026quot;deer in the headlights\u0026quot; gaze, as our students miss the import of many great works of literature, turns of phrase, etc. Context, context, context.\nGood job!\nOneCrazyMama (2009-10-30):\nWe should have world religions and world history taught in US public schools beginning in the lower grades. It is vital to understanding the world. As to the teaching of the Bible, specifically and exclusively: NO. Church and state must remain separate for the health of both.\nTo be honest, I wish more of the churches would worry more about actually increasing their own epistemology, origins, and scriptures on their own turf in an open, studied and loving manner.\nSadly, the last church I attended was filled with lay people who were completely ignorant of their own history and texts. Well versed on superstitions/generalities, but lacking in any meaningful understanding (or interest in understanding) their own faith.\nBibe literacy in public schools, grrr, how about some literacy in the churches?\nMy nightly prayer anymore is something along the lines of: God, please save me from your other followers.\nLippard (2009-10-30):\nOneCrazyMama: Unfortunately, there is no incentive for teaching the entire Bible in churches--it is only taught selectively because the doctrines taught by most churches have evolved independently of what the Bible says, and present problems. See my report on Daniel Dennett\u0026#39;s talk about clergy who have become closet atheists as a result of seminary at the Atheist Alliance International convention. I agree with you that the Bible shouldn't be taught exclusively, though there's no reason it couldn't be taught specifically without a church/state violation, so long as that was teaching about its contents and history, rather than advocating it to be inerrantly true. Given the time constraint Neural Gourmet mentions, perhaps the World Religions component route is the most realistic.\nMy high school U.S. History class (I graduated in 1983) got up much closer to the present, but it was a pretty rapid glide. I had a separate World History class, as well as a World Religions class, and a Christianity/Bible-specific class, but that was at a Jesuit college prep.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/teaching-bible-in-public-schools.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe following is a letter to the editor of Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e that the paper didn\u0026rsquo;t print.  It was written in response to an editorial by Will Munsil, son of Len Munsil, who was editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e when I was an undergraduate in the 1980s.  Len Munsil is an extremely conservative Republican, failed Republican candidate for Governor in 2006, and \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/munsils-lucrative-501c3.html\"\u003efounder of the Center for Arizona Policy\u003c/a\u003e, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s version of the American Family Affiliation.  His daughter, Leigh Munsil, is the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s current editor-in-chief.  When Munsil Sr. edited the school paper, \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/best-argument-for-supporting-goldwater.html\"\u003ehe sometimes refused to print my letters to the editor for shaky reasons\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe letter below was written in response to Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/8372\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Putting the Bible back in public schools,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which was published on October 14.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI disagree with Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s assertion that the Bible is the foundation of American political thought.  On the contrary, the American form of government was rooted in the work of enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.  The U.S. Constitution\u0026rsquo;s form of government has more resemblance to Caribbean pirate codes than to the Ten Commandments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat said, however, I agree with Munsil that knowledge of the Bible is worthwhile and should be taught in public schools for the purpose of cultural literacy, so long as it is done without endorsing Christianity or Judaism.  The Bible Literacy Project\u0026rsquo;s curriculum might be one way to do it.  One way not to do it is to use the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools\u0026rsquo; curriculum\u0026ndash;it takes a sectarian perspective, is full of errors, and has failed legal challenges in Texas and Florida for being unconstitutional.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI suspect this letter wasn\u0026rsquo;t excluded by reason of content, but because they had already printed a couple of \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/8399\"\u003eletters\u003c/a\u003e critical of Will Munsil\u0026rsquo;s op-ed by the time I submitted this on October 16.  Perhaps I should have mentioned that I\u0026rsquo;m an atheist, which makes the extent of my agreement with Munsil more interesting.  Of course, my view is contrary to Munsil\u0026rsquo;s in that I think Bible literacy is likely to decrease, rather than increase, religious belief.  But it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if the NCBCPS curriculum is the one that Will Munsil had in mind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI should point out that I think it should probably be taught as part of a world religions class that covers more than just Christianity\u0026ndash;kids should not only get information about the Bible that they won\u0026rsquo;t get in Sunday School, they should be informed about other religions, as well as the fact that history has been full of doubters of religion, as documented in Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDoubt: A History\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find out more about the NCBCPS curriculum that failed legal challenge in Texas \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/04/texas_bill_would_require_bible.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMunsil cited Stephen Prothero, whose op-ed piece, \u0026ldquo;We live in a land of biblical idiots,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2007/03/we-live-in-land-of-biblical-idiots.html\"\u003eI wrote about at the Secular Web in early 2007\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Teaching the Bible in public schools"},{"content":"Brad Templeton, chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has produced his own \u0026ldquo;Downfall\u0026rdquo; parody video, making fun of the fact that Constantin Films has issued DMCA notices to remove all of the \u0026ldquo;Downfall\u0026rdquo; parody videos from YouTube:\nUPDATE (April 20, 2010): This video has been taken down from YouTube after a complaint from Constantin Films, which Brad Templeton has protested. The video is now available at Vimeo.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2009-10-27):\nThe ironies: 1) I would probably never even have heard about this movie were it not for the parodies. Now, I would like to see it sometime (the Nazi period being something I have a morbid fascination with -- not unlike rubbernecking at freeway pileups). 2) The parodies aren\u0026#39;t making fun of the movie; they\u0026#39;re using a powerful piece of footage to lampoon other things (mismanagement of sports teams, favorite TV shows jumping the shark, etc.)\nReed (2009-10-27):\nI\u0026#39;ve enjoyed a number of these parodies, particularly the font one recently. Eamon: have you listened to Dan Carlin's four-part series (mp3 link I think) on Hitler's war in the East? It's amazing.\ncmgomes (2009-10-28):\nBrilliant! @0:57 - \u0026quot;Anyone who has violated a copyright leave... the... room... now\u0026quot; (all but 6 leave) :-) @2:15 - \u0026quot;We might as well all become communists. Like Stallman!!\u0026quot; lolz...\nHarlan (2009-10-28):\nThat\u0026#39;s fantastic, hah. Reed/Eamon: yes, that Dan Carlin series (and his entire podcast) is terrific military history.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/hitler-orders-dmca-notices-for-downfall.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrad Templeton, chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, \u003ca href=\"http://ideas.4brad.com/hitler-tries-dmca-takedown\"\u003ehas produced his own \u0026ldquo;Downfall\u0026rdquo; parody video\u003c/a\u003e, making fun of the fact that Constantin Films has issued DMCA notices to remove all of the \u0026ldquo;Downfall\u0026rdquo; parody videos from YouTube:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PzUoWkbNLe8\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PzUoWkbNLe8\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (April 20, 2010): This video \u003ca href=\"http://ideas.4brad.com/studio-does-content-id-takedown-my-hitler-video-about-takedowns\"\u003ehas been taken down from YouTube after a complaint from Constantin Films, which Brad Templeton has protested\u003c/a\u003e.  The video \u003ca href=\"http://www.vimeo.com/11086952\"\u003eis now available at Vimeo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hitler orders DMCA notices for \"Downfall\" parody videos"},{"content":"Paul Haggis, director of the film \u0026ldquo;Crash\u0026rdquo; (not to be confused with the David Cronenberg film of the same name), has left Scientology with an open letter published on ex-Scientologist Mark \u0026ldquo;Marty\u0026rdquo; Rathbun\u0026rsquo;s blog (which has also supplied links to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s reply).\nOne of Haggis\u0026rsquo; main complaints is the Church\u0026rsquo;s homophobia. Was Haggis really in Scientology for three and a half decades without realizing that homosexuality is 1.1 on the \u0026ldquo;tone scale\u0026rdquo;? Good for him for leaving, but he must have had blinders on regarding everything he complains about.\nHistorical Comments James Redekop (2009-10-27):\nIn his letter, Haggis took Davis to task for lying about CoS practices on CNN, using confidential \u0026quot;confession\u0026quot; information to smear ex-CoS members, and fighting gay rights in California. These are, of course, all things the CoS has been doing since the beginning. It just took 35 years for Haggis to notice.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/paul-haggis-leaves-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Haggis, director of the film \u0026ldquo;Crash\u0026rdquo; (not to be confused with the David Cronenberg film of the same name), has left Scientology with \u003ca href=\"http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/paul-haggis/\"\u003ean open letter published on ex-Scientologist Mark \u0026ldquo;Marty\u0026rdquo; Rathbun\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e (which has \u003ca href=\"http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/c-of-s-response-to-paul-haggis-letter/\"\u003ealso supplied links to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s reply\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of Haggis\u0026rsquo; main complaints is the Church\u0026rsquo;s homophobia.  Was Haggis really in Scientology for three and a half decades without realizing that homosexuality is 1.1 on the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_scale\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;tone scale\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e?  Good for him for leaving, but he must have had blinders on regarding everything he complains about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paul Haggis leaves Scientology"},{"content":"Richard Carrier will be speaking to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix on Sunday, November 8 at around 10 a.m.\u0026ndash;it will likely be packed, so showing up for breakfast or just to get a seat at 9 a.m. is advised. Richard will be speaking about Christianity and science, ancient and modern, and you can get a bit more information about his talk at his blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/richard-carrier-to-speak-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Carrier will be speaking to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hsgp.org/\"\u003eHumanist Society of Greater Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e on Sunday, November 8 at around 10 a.m.\u0026ndash;it will likely be packed, so showing up for breakfast or just to get a seat at 9 a.m. is advised.  Richard will be speaking about Christianity and science, ancient and modern, and you can get \u003ca href=\"http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/09/appearing-in-arizona-ii.html\"\u003ea bit more information about his talk at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Carrier to speak in Phoenix"},{"content":"Yesterday afternoon I attended a Personalized Medicine research forum at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Biodesign Institute, sponsored by ASU\u0026rsquo;s Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs (OVPREA) and hosted by Dr. Joshua LaBaer of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics.\nThe forum\u0026rsquo;s speakers covered both the promise and problems and issues raised by the developing field of personalized medicine, which involves the use of molecular and genetic information in medical diagnosis and treatment. A few highlights:\nIntroduction (Dr. LaBaer)\nDr. LaBaer pointed out that these new diagnostics cost a great deal of money to develop, but they have the potential for cost savings, for instance, if they can be used to identify forms of disease that will not benefit from very expensive treatments. He gave the example of Genomic Health, which has developed a test for early stage breast cancer to determine if women will or won\u0026rsquo;t benefit from adjuvant therapy (chemotherapy to prevent recurrence). A test that costs even a few thousand dollars to perform is something insurers will be willing to pay for if it has the potential of saving tens of thousands of dollars of expense on chemotherapy that will not provide any benefits. On the other hand, the mere promise of early detection of susceptibility for disease has the potential for overtreatment and an increase in healthcare expenses. This problem was discussed by a number of speakers, with particular bad potential consequences in the legal realm.\nPersonalized Diagnostics (Dr. LaBaer)\nDr. LaBaer talked briefly about his own lab\u0026rsquo;s work in biomarker discovery and cell-based studies. In biomarker discovery, his lab is working in functional proteomics, using cloned copies of genes to produce proteins and building tests that allow examination of thousands of proteins at a time. His lab, formerly at Harvard and now at ASU, has 10,000 copies of human genes and 50,000 copies of genes from other animals, which are made available to other researchers. (There\u0026rsquo;s more information at the DNASU website.)\nThe goal of biomarker discovery is to greatly improve the ability to find markers of human health using the human immune system, by identifying antigens that are markers for disease. The immune system generates antibodies not just in response to infectious disease, but against other proteins when we have cancer. Tumor antigens get into the bloodstream, though they may only appear in 10-15% of those who have the disease. Rather than testing one protein at a time, as is done with ELISA assays, LaBaer\u0026rsquo;s lab is building protein microarrays with thousands of proteins, tested at once with blood serum. Unlike old array technology that purifies proteins and puts them into spots on arrays, where the proteins may degrade and lose function, their method involves printing the DNA that encodes the gene on the arrays, then capturing proteins in situ on the array at the time the experimental test is performed.\nLaBaer\u0026rsquo;s lab\u0026rsquo;s cell-based work involves tryng to identify how proteins behave in cells when they are altered, in order to find out which pathways contribute to consequences such as drug resistance in women with breast cancer, as occurs with Tamoxifen. If you can find the genes that make cancer cells resistant, you can then knock them out and cause those cells to die. They tested 500 human kinases (5/7 of the total) and found 30 enzymes that consistently make the cancer cells resistant. Women with a high level of those enzymes who take Tamoxifen have quicker relapses of cancer.\nComplex Adaptive Systems Initiative (George Poste)\nGeorge Poste, former director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Biodesign Institute and former Chief Scientist and Technology Officer at SmithKline Beecham, talked about the need to replace thinking about costs in the healthcare debate with thinking about value. The value proposition of personalized medicine is early detection, rational therapeutics where treatment is made based on the right subtype of disease being treated, and integrative care management where there\u0026rsquo;s better monitoring of the efficacy of treatments. He said that the first benefits will come from targeted therapy and this will then overlap with individualized therapy, as we learn how our genome affects such things as drug interactions. He was critical of companies like 23andme, which he called \u0026ldquo;celebrity spit\u0026rdquo; companies, which do little more than give people a needless sense of anxiety about predispositions to disease that they currently can do nothing about except eat right and exercise.\nPoste also had criticisms for physicians, pointing out that it takes 15-20 years for new innovations to become routinely adopted, and many physicians don\u0026rsquo;t use treatment algorithms at all. Oncologists, he said, make money from distributing treatments empirically (that is, figuring out whether it\u0026rsquo;s effective by using the treatment on the entire population with the disease) rather than screening first, even where tests exist to determine who the treatment is likely to work on. He said that $604 million/year in health care costs could be saved by the use of a single colon cancer screening test, and not proceeding with treatment where it isn\u0026rsquo;t going to work. Today, where 12-40% of people are aided by treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars, 60-88% of that spending is being wasted. With the aging population, he said that Humana will in the next several years see all profits disappear, spent on expensive treatments of people who don\u0026rsquo;t respond to them.\nPharmaceutical companies are beginning to do diagnostic test development alongside drug development now, and insurers will push for these tests to be done. Poste suggested that we will see the emergence of \u0026ldquo;no cure, no pay\u0026rdquo; systems, and noted that Johnson \u0026amp; Johnson has a drug that has been introduced for use in the UK under the condition that the company will reimburse the national health care system for every case in which it is used but doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. Merck\u0026rsquo;s Januvia drug for type II diabetes similarly offers some kind of discount based on performance.\nPoste pointed out another area for potential cost savings, related to drug safety. With some 3.1 billion prescriptions made per year, there are 1.5-3 million people hospitalized from drug interactions, 100,000 deaths, and $30 billion in healthcare costs, though he noted this latter figure includes caregiver error and patient noncompliance.\nHe bemoaned the \u0026ldquo;delusion of zero risk propagated by lawyers, legislatures, and the media,\u0026rdquo; and pointed out that the FDA is in a no-win situation. (This is a topic that\u0026rsquo;s been recently covered in two of my classes, my core program seminar and my law, science, and technology class with Prof. Gary Marchant. If the FDA allows unsafe drugs to be sold, then it comes under fire for not requiring sufficient evidence of safety. If, on the other hand, it delays the sale of effective drugs, it comes under fire for causing preventable deaths. The latter occurred during the 1980s with AIDS activists protesting against being denied treatments, described in books such as Randy Shilts\u0026rsquo; And the Band Played On and Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s Impure Science. This led to PDUFA, the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992, under which drug companies started funding FDA drug reviewer positions through application fees to help speed approval. That has been blamed for cases of the former, with the weight-loss drugs Pondimin and Redux being approved despite evidence that they caused heart problems. That story is told in the PBS Frontline episode \u0026ldquo;Dangerous Prescription\u0026rdquo; from November 2003.)\nPoste pointed out that there have been 450,000 papers published which have claimed to find disease biomarkers, of which the FDA has approved only five. But he didn\u0026rsquo;t blame the FDA for delay in this case, because this consists of a mass of bad studies which he characterized as \u0026ldquo;wasteful small studies\u0026rdquo; with insufficient statistical power. In the Q\u0026amp;A session, he argued that NIH needs to start dictating clear and strong standards for disease research, and that it has abrogated its role in doing good science. He said that \u0026ldquo;not a single national cancer study with sufficient statistical power\u0026rdquo; has been done in the last 20 years; instead research is fragmented across academic silos. He called for \u0026ldquo;go[ing] beyond R01 grant mentality\u0026rdquo; and building the large, expensive studies with 2,500 cases and 2,500 controls that need to be done.\nHe also raised challenges about the \u0026ldquo;very complex statistical analysis required\u0026rdquo; in order to do \u0026ldquo;multiplex tests\u0026rdquo; of the sort Dr. LaBaer is trying to develop. And he pointed out the challenge that personalized medicine presents for clinicians, in that \u0026ldquo;only about six medical schools have embraced molecular medicine and engineering-based medicine.\u0026rdquo; Those that don\u0026rsquo;t use these new techniques as they become available, he said, \u0026ldquo;will open themselves up to malpractice suits.\u0026quot;\nScience and Policy (David Guston)\nDavid Guston, co-director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) and director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) spoke about \u0026ldquo;cognate challenges in social science\u0026rdquo; and how CNS has been trying to develop a notion of \u0026ldquo;anticipatory governance of emerging technology\u0026rdquo; and devising ways to build such a capacity into university research labs as well as broader society, to allow making policy decisions in advance of the emergence of the technology in society at large. He described three capacities of anticipatory governance\u0026ndash;foresight, public engagement, and integration, and described how these have been used at ASU.\nForesight: Rather than looking at future consequences as a linear extrapolation, CNS has used scenario development and a process of structured discussions based on those scenarios with scientists, potential users, and other potential stakeholders, about social and technical events that may be subsequent consequences of the scenarios. This method has been tested with Stephen Johnston\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Doc-in-a-Box\u0026rdquo; project at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Center for Innovations in Medicine, which Guston said led to some changes in the conceptualization of the technology.\nPublic Engagement: The \u0026ldquo;scope and inclusion of public values is important for success,\u0026rdquo; Guston said, and gave as an example the \u0026ldquo;national citizens technology forum\u0026rdquo; that CNS conducted in six locations to look at speculative scenarios about nanotechnology used for human enhancement. These were essentially very large focus groups whose participants engaged in \u0026ldquo;informed deliberation\u0026rdquo; over the course of a weekend, after having read a 61-page background document and spending the prior month engaging in Internet-based interaction.\nIntegration: Guston described the \u0026ldquo;embedding of social scientists in science and engineering labs,\u0026rdquo; to develop productive relationships that help lab scientists identify broader implications of their work while it\u0026rsquo;s still in the lab rather than after it\u0026rsquo;s introduced to the general public.\nGuston suggested that there might be other ways of implementing \u0026ldquo;anticipatory governance\u0026rdquo; in the form of legislative requirements or standards and priorities set by program officers at funding organizations, but that the lab setting is \u0026ldquo;the best point of leverage at a university\u0026rdquo; and can set an example for others to follow.\nClinical Perspective (Larry Miller)\nLarry Miller, Research Director at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, spoke about the healthcare provider\u0026rsquo;s approach to personalized medicine. He said that Mayo is committed to individualized care, and that now that we are beginning to understand the power of human variation, these new developments have \u0026ldquo;to be transformational for providers or they won\u0026rsquo;t survive.\u0026rdquo; He suggested that the future of medicine will move from reactive and probabilistic to more deterministic selection of treatments based on diagnoses. He emphasized the need for education for doctors, and pointed out that \u0026ldquo;standards of care will become outmoded,\u0026rdquo; which is \u0026ldquo;disruptive to law and [insurance] coverage.\u0026rdquo; He said that Mayo sees a big challenge of complexity, where what was one disease (breast cancer) is now at least ten different subdiseases. Doctors need to make their treatment decisions on the detail, to predict how the disease will behave, and choose the best drugs possible based on safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness.\nMiller pointed out that this requires interdisciplinary work, and said that Mayo in Arizona has a huge advantage with its relationship with ASU, where so much of this work is going on. While Mayo has scientific expertise in a number of areas, these new technologies draw on expertise from beyond medicine, in particular informatics and computational resources needed to build an effective decision support system that will become essential for doctors to use in a clinical setting.\nHe talked about Mayo\u0026rsquo;s program for individualized medicine, which involves not just incorporating new developments in diagnostics and therapeutics, but in regenerative medicine for repair, renewal, and regeneration of deficits.\nMayo has had electronic medical records for the last 15 years, on 6 million people, but these are kept in multiple incompatible systems and were not built with research in mind. They hope to improve their systems so that it can be used in an iterative process to learn more about the efficacy of therapies, and so therapies can be combined with \u0026ldquo;companion diagnostics for monitoring progression, recurrences, and response to therapy.\u0026quot;\nLike Poste, he raised objections to the companies that market gene sequencing directly to individuals, which just \u0026ldquo;scare people inappropriately,\u0026rdquo; but identified learning about disease predispositions as an important part of these developing technologies. We need to develop methods of risk analysis that can help people correctly understand what these predispositions mean.\nHe sees the future as having three waves\u0026ndash;the first wave will be the new diagnostics, the second wave improvements in clinical practice and therapy, and the third wave embedding the new technology into the healthcare system, with significant changes to policy and education.\nHealth Informatics (Diana Petitti)\nDiana Petitti, former CDC epidemiologist and former director of research for Kaiser Permanente, where she built a 20-year longitudinal data repository for its 35 million members, spoke about the importance of health informatics. (She is now a professor in ASU\u0026rsquo;s Department of Biomedical Informatics.) Dr. Petitti raised concerns about how in the United States we are \u0026ldquo;loathe to deny anyone anything\u0026rdquo; in terms of medical treatments, but in fact \u0026ldquo;we do deny lots of people lots of things.\u0026rdquo; She worried that personalized medicine has the potential to lead to greater maldistributions of healthcare, with the \u0026ldquo;haves\u0026rdquo; getting more and better treatment and the \u0026ldquo;have nots\u0026rdquo; getting less and worse treatment, unless we plan carefully. She advocated evidence-based medicine and assessing value of treatments to be deployed to the general population.\nDr. Petitti brought up as an example the fact that oral contraceptives result in a 2x-10x increase in the likelihood of a venous thrombotic event, and that the Factor V Leiden gene is predictive of susceptibility to that consequence, but no screening is done for it. Why not? Because the test only predicts 5% of those who will have the event, it\u0026rsquo;s a very expensive test, and we don\u0026rsquo;t have good alternatives for oral contraceptives. These kinds of issues, she suggested, will recur with multiplex diagnostics.\nShe explicitly worried that \u0026ldquo;we have dramatically oversold preventive medicine\u0026rdquo; and doesn\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s likely that savings from prevention will allow coverage for more extensive treatment. She advocated that everyone in the field see the film \u0026ldquo;Gattaca,\u0026quot; and stated that ASU provides \u0026ldquo;unique opportunities to train people to think about these issues\u0026rdquo; using \u0026ldquo;quantitative reasoning and probabilistic thought.\u0026rdquo; She concluded by saying that we need to \u0026ldquo;work towards rational delivery of healthcare that optimizes public health.\u0026quot;\nLaw (Gary Marchant)\nProf. Gary Marchant of the Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law at ASU, who has a Ph.D. in genetics and is the executive director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Innovation (formerly Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Technology), spoke about legal issues. First he listed the many programs available at ASU in the area, beginning with the genetics and law program that has been here for 10 years and was the reason he first came to ASU. Others include a new personalized medicine and law program at the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation, a planned center on ethical and policy issues regarding personalized medicine in conjunction with the Biodesign Institute, CSPO, TGEN, Mayo, etc., and research clusters at the law school on breast cancer, warfarin, and personalized medicine. He also gave a plug for an upcoming conference March 8-9, 2010 at the Arizona Biltmore sponsored by AAAS and Mayo, which also has a great deal of corporate support.\nProf. Marchant indicated that liability is the biggest issue regarding personalized medicine, and he sees doctors as \u0026ldquo;sitting ducks,\u0026rdquo; facing huge risks. If a doctor prescribes a treatment without doing a corresponding new diagnostic test, and that has complications, he can be sued. If he does the diagnostic test, it shows a very low likelihood of a disease recurrence, and advises against the treatment, and then the patient ends up being one of the rare people who has the recurrence, the doctor can be sued. The doctor is really in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don\u0026rsquo;t situation. The insurers and pharmaceutical companies are at less risk, since they have already developed enormous resources for dealing with the lawsuits that are a regular part of their existence. In a short discussion after the forum, I asked Prof. Marchant if doctors would be liable if they performed a diagnostic test, found that it showed a low likelihood of recurrence or benefit for a treatment, and then recommended the treatment anyway, knowing the insurance company would refuse to pay for it\u0026ndash;would that shift the liability to the insurance company? He thought it might, though it would be unethical for a doctor to recommend treatment that he didn\u0026rsquo;t actually think was necessary, and there\u0026rsquo;s still the potential for liability if the insurance company pays for the treatment and the treatment itself produces complications. It seems that this problem really needs a legislative or regulatory fix of some sort, so that doctors have some limitation of liability in cases where they have made a recommendation that everyone would agree was the right course of action but a low-probability negative consequence occurs anyway.\nProf. Marchant observed that the liability issues are particularly problematic in states like Arizona, where each side in the suit is limited to a single expert witness. He said there is \u0026ldquo;no clear guidance or defense for doctors,\u0026rdquo; and the use of clinical guidelines in a defense has not been effective in court, in part because doctors don\u0026rsquo;t use them.\nQ\u0026amp;A\nA few additional points of interest from the Q\u0026amp;A sessions (some of which has already been combined into the above summaries):\nDr. LaBaer pointed out that most markers for diseases don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have any role in the cause of the disease, such as CA25 and ovarian cancer. So his lab is looking not just for biomarkers, but for those that will affect clinical decisions. 4 out of 5 positive results in a mammography for breast cancer are actually cases where there is nothing wrong and the woman will not end up getting breast cancer, but some procedure ends up being undergone, with no value. So he wants to find a companion test that can tell which are the 4 that don\u0026rsquo;t need further treatment.\nGeorge Poste pointed out that baby boomers are going to bankrupt the system as they reach the end of their lives, and about 70% of the $2.3 trillion in healthcare spending is spent in the last 2-3 years of life, with many treatments costing $60K-$100K per treatment cycle on drugs that add 2-3 weeks of life. The UK\u0026rsquo;s National Institute of Clinical Excellence has been making what are, in effect, rationing decisions by turning down all of the new cancer drugs that have come along because they have such great cost and such minimal benefit. He asked, \u0026ldquo;how much money could you save with a 90% accurate test of who\u0026rsquo;s going to die no matter what you do?\u0026quot;\nProf. Marchant said more about legal issues involving specimen repositories, including a case at ASU. The developer of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, William Catalona, had a specimen repository with 30,000 tissue samples at Washington University, that he wished to take with him to Northwestern University when he took a new position there. He began asking patients for permission to move the samples, and 6,000 gave permission. But Washington University sued him, claiming that the samples were property of the university. Patients pointed out that their consent agreement gave them the right to withdraw their samples from future research and they had only consented to research on prostate cancer, but federal judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled in favor of the university and that patients had no property rights in their tissue. This ruling has reduced incentives for patients to consent to give specimens for research.\nA current lawsuit against ASU by the Havasupai Indian tribe involves blood samples that were given for a study of diabetes by researchers who are no longer at ASU. They wanted to take the samples with them, and samples had also been given to other researchers for use in studies of schizophrenia and the historical origins of the tribe, even though informed consent was apparently only given for the diabetes research. Although this case was originally dismissed, it was recently reinstated.\nOther cases involve patent protection of genetic information. About 25% of the human genome is patented, including Myriad Genetics\u0026rsquo; patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes which are predictive of breast cancer and can only legally be tested for by Myriad. This case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the issue of whether human genes can be patented. The courts so far have ruled that a gene in isolation outside of the human body is patentable, even though (in my opinion) this seems at odds with the requirement that patents be limited to inventions, not discoveries. There has already been a legislative limitation of patent protection for surgical procedures for the clinical context, so that doctors can\u0026rsquo;t be sued for patent infringement for performing a surgery that saves someone\u0026rsquo;s life; it\u0026rsquo;s possible that a similar limitation will be applied on gene patents in a clinical context, if they don\u0026rsquo;t get overturned completely by the courts.\nThese gene patents create a further problem for the multiplex tests, since they inevitably include many patented genes. Prof. Marchant observed that someone from Affymetrix spoke at an ASU seminar and stood up and said they were building their GeneChip DNA microarrays for testing for the presence of thousands of genes, and were ignoring gene patents. They were subsequently sued. Dr. LaBaer stated that his lab is doing the same thing with cloned genes\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re cloning everything and giving them away, without regard to patents.\nThe session was videotaped and will be made available to the public online. I will add a link to this posting when it becomes available.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ve read this far, you may also be interested in my summary of Dr. Fintan Steele\u0026rsquo;s talk at this year\u0026rsquo;s The Amazing Meeting 7, titled \u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine or Personalized Mysticism?\u0026quot;, in my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference that took place just prior to TAM7, and in my short summary of Dr. Martin Pera\u0026rsquo;s talk on regenerative medicine and embryonic stem cells at the Atheist Alliance International convention that took place earlier this month.\ntom (2009-10-26):\n(Off Topic - couldn\u0026#39;t find an email address on your blog): Richard Carrier will be giving a talk nearby on Nov. 8; I thought I'd drop you a note in case you didn't know:\nhttp://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/09/appearing-in-arizona-ii.html\nLippard (2009-10-26):\nThanks, Tom.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/personalized-medicine-research-forum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday afternoon I attended a Personalized Medicine research forum at ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.biodesign.asu.edu/\"\u003eBiodesign Institute\u003c/a\u003e, sponsored by ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://ovprea.asu.edu/\"\u003eOffice of the Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs\u003c/a\u003e (OVPREA) and hosted by Dr. Joshua LaBaer of ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.biodesign.asu.edu/research/research-centers/personalized-diagnostics\"\u003eVirginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe forum\u0026rsquo;s speakers covered both the promise and problems and issues raised by the developing field of personalized medicine, which involves the use of molecular and genetic information in medical diagnosis and treatment.  A few highlights:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIntroduction (Dr. LaBaer)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. LaBaer pointed out that these new diagnostics cost a great deal of money to develop, but they have the potential for cost savings, for instance, if they can be used to identify forms of disease that will not benefit from very expensive treatments.  He gave the example of Genomic Health, which has developed a test for early stage breast cancer to determine if women will or won\u0026rsquo;t benefit from adjuvant therapy (chemotherapy to prevent recurrence).  A test that costs even a few thousand dollars to perform is something insurers will be willing to pay for if it has the potential of saving tens of thousands of dollars of expense on chemotherapy that will not provide any benefits.  On the other hand, the mere promise of early detection of susceptibility for disease has the potential for overtreatment and an increase in healthcare expenses.  This problem was discussed by a number of speakers, with particular bad potential consequences in the legal realm.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePersonalized Diagnostics (Dr. LaBaer)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. LaBaer talked briefly about his own lab\u0026rsquo;s work in biomarker discovery and cell-based studies.  In biomarker discovery, his lab is working in functional proteomics, using cloned copies of genes to produce proteins and building tests that allow examination of thousands of proteins at a time.  His lab, formerly at Harvard and now at ASU, has 10,000 copies of human genes and 50,000 copies of genes from other animals, which are made available to other researchers.  (There\u0026rsquo;s more information at \u003ca href=\"http://dnasu.asu.edu/DNASU/\"\u003ethe DNASU website\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe goal of biomarker discovery is to greatly improve the ability to find markers of human health using the human immune system, by identifying antigens that are markers for disease.  The immune system generates antibodies not just in response to infectious disease, but against other proteins when we have cancer.  Tumor antigens get into the bloodstream, though they may only appear in 10-15% of those who have the disease.  Rather than testing one protein at a time, as is done with ELISA assays, LaBaer\u0026rsquo;s lab is building protein microarrays with thousands of proteins, tested at once with blood serum.  Unlike old array technology that purifies proteins and puts them into spots on arrays, where the proteins may degrade and lose function, their method involves printing the DNA that encodes the gene on the arrays, then capturing proteins in situ on the array at the time the experimental test is performed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaBaer\u0026rsquo;s lab\u0026rsquo;s cell-based work involves tryng to identify how proteins behave in cells when they are altered, in order to find out which pathways contribute to consequences such as drug resistance in women with breast cancer, as occurs with Tamoxifen.  If you can find the genes that make cancer cells resistant, you can then knock them out and cause those cells to die.  They tested 500 human kinases (5/7 of the total) and found 30 enzymes that consistently make the cancer cells resistant.  Women with a high level of those enzymes who take Tamoxifen have quicker relapses of cancer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eComplex Adaptive Systems Initiative (George Poste)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Poste\"\u003eGeorge Poste\u003c/a\u003e, former director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Biodesign Institute and former Chief Scientist and Technology Officer at SmithKline Beecham, talked about the need to replace thinking about costs in the healthcare debate with thinking about value.  The value proposition of personalized medicine is early detection, rational therapeutics where treatment is made based on the right subtype of disease being treated, and integrative care management where there\u0026rsquo;s better monitoring of the efficacy of treatments.  He said that the first benefits will come from targeted therapy and this will then overlap with individualized therapy, as we learn how our genome affects such things as drug interactions.  He was critical of companies like 23andme, which he called \u0026ldquo;celebrity spit\u0026rdquo; companies, which do little more than give people a needless sense of anxiety about predispositions to disease that they currently can do nothing about except eat right and exercise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePoste also had criticisms for physicians, pointing out that it takes 15-20 years for new innovations to become routinely adopted, and many physicians don\u0026rsquo;t use treatment algorithms at all.  Oncologists, he said, make money from distributing treatments empirically (that is, figuring out whether it\u0026rsquo;s effective by using the treatment on the entire population with the disease) rather than screening first, even where tests exist to determine who the treatment is likely to work on.  He said that $604 million/year in health care costs could be saved by the use of a single colon cancer screening test, and not proceeding with treatment where it isn\u0026rsquo;t going to work.  Today, where 12-40% of people are aided by treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars, 60-88% of that spending is being wasted.  With the aging population, he said that Humana will in the next several years see all profits disappear, spent on expensive treatments of people who don\u0026rsquo;t respond to them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePharmaceutical companies are beginning to do diagnostic test development alongside drug development now, and insurers will push for these tests to be done.  Poste suggested that we will see the emergence of \u0026ldquo;no cure, no pay\u0026rdquo; systems, and noted that Johnson \u0026amp; Johnson has a drug that has been introduced for use in the UK under the condition that the company will reimburse the national health care system for every case in which it is used but doesn\u0026rsquo;t work.  Merck\u0026rsquo;s Januvia drug for type II diabetes similarly offers some kind of discount based on performance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePoste pointed out another area for potential cost savings, related to drug safety.  With some 3.1 billion prescriptions made per year, there are 1.5-3 million people hospitalized from drug interactions, 100,000 deaths, and $30 billion in healthcare costs, though he noted this latter figure includes caregiver error and patient noncompliance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe bemoaned the \u0026ldquo;delusion of zero risk propagated by lawyers, legislatures, and the media,\u0026rdquo; and pointed out that the FDA is in a no-win situation.  (This is a topic that\u0026rsquo;s been recently covered in two of my classes, my core program seminar and my law, science, and technology class with Prof. Gary Marchant.  If the FDA allows unsafe drugs to be sold, then it comes under fire for not requiring sufficient evidence of safety.  If, on the other hand, it delays the sale of effective drugs, it comes under fire for causing preventable deaths.  The latter occurred during the 1980s with AIDS activists protesting against being denied treatments, described in books such as Randy Shilts\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAnd the Band Played On\u003c/span\u003e and Steven Epstein\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eImpure Science\u003c/span\u003e.  This led to PDUFA, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_Drug_User_Fee_Act\"\u003ePrescription Drug User Fee Act\u003c/a\u003e of 1992, under which drug companies started funding FDA drug reviewer positions through application fees to help speed approval.  That has been blamed for cases of the former, with the weight-loss drugs \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenfluramine\"\u003ePondimin\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexfenfluramine\"\u003eRedux\u003c/a\u003e being approved despite evidence that they caused heart problems.  That story is told in \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/prescription/\"\u003ethe PBS Frontline episode \u0026ldquo;Dangerous Prescription\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e from November 2003.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePoste pointed out that there have been 450,000 papers published which have claimed to find disease biomarkers, of which the FDA has approved only five. But he didn\u0026rsquo;t blame the FDA for delay in this case, because this consists of a mass of bad studies which he characterized as \u0026ldquo;wasteful small studies\u0026rdquo; with insufficient statistical power.  In the Q\u0026amp;A session, he argued that NIH needs to start dictating clear and strong standards for disease research, and that it has abrogated its role in doing good science.  He said that \u0026ldquo;not a single national cancer study with sufficient statistical power\u0026rdquo; has been done in the last 20 years; instead research is fragmented across academic silos.  He called for \u0026ldquo;go[ing] beyond R01 grant mentality\u0026rdquo; and building the large, expensive studies with 2,500 cases and 2,500 controls that need to be done.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also raised challenges about the \u0026ldquo;very complex statistical analysis required\u0026rdquo; in order to do \u0026ldquo;multiplex tests\u0026rdquo; of the sort Dr. LaBaer is trying to develop.  And he pointed out the challenge that personalized medicine presents for clinicians, in that \u0026ldquo;only about six medical schools have embraced molecular medicine and engineering-based medicine.\u0026rdquo;  Those that don\u0026rsquo;t use these new techniques as they become available, he said, \u0026ldquo;will open themselves up to malpractice suits.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScience and Policy (David Guston)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Guston, co-director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cspo.org/\"\u003eConsortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes\u003c/a\u003e (CSPO) and director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://cns.asu.edu/\"\u003eCenter for Nanotechnology in Society\u003c/a\u003e (CNS) spoke about \u0026ldquo;cognate challenges in social science\u0026rdquo; and how CNS has been trying to develop a notion of \u0026ldquo;anticipatory governance of emerging technology\u0026rdquo; and devising ways to build such a capacity into university research labs as well as broader society, to allow making policy decisions in advance of the emergence of the technology in society at large.  He described three capacities of anticipatory governance\u0026ndash;foresight, public engagement, and integration, and described how these have been used at ASU.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eForesight\u003c/span\u003e: Rather than looking at future consequences as a linear extrapolation, CNS has used scenario development and a process of structured discussions based on those scenarios with scientists, potential users, and other potential stakeholders, about social and technical events that may be subsequent consequences of the scenarios.  This method has been tested with Stephen Johnston\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Doc-in-a-Box\u0026rdquo; project at ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.biodesign.asu.edu/research/research-centers/innovations-in-medicine\"\u003eCenter for Innovations in Medicine\u003c/a\u003e, which Guston said led to some changes in the conceptualization of the technology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePublic Engagement\u003c/span\u003e: The \u0026ldquo;scope and inclusion of public values is important for success,\u0026rdquo; Guston said, and gave as an example the \u0026ldquo;national citizens technology forum\u0026rdquo; that CNS conducted in six locations to look at speculative scenarios about nanotechnology used for human enhancement.  These were essentially very large focus groups whose participants engaged in \u0026ldquo;informed deliberation\u0026rdquo; over the course of a weekend, after having read a 61-page background document and spending the prior month engaging in Internet-based interaction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIntegration\u003c/span\u003e: Guston described the \u0026ldquo;embedding of social scientists in science and engineering labs,\u0026rdquo; to develop productive relationships that help lab scientists identify broader implications of their work while it\u0026rsquo;s still in the lab rather than after it\u0026rsquo;s introduced to the general public.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGuston suggested that there might be other ways of implementing \u0026ldquo;anticipatory governance\u0026rdquo; in the form of legislative requirements or standards and priorities set by program officers at funding organizations, but that the lab setting is \u0026ldquo;the best point of leverage at a university\u0026rdquo; and can set an example for others to follow.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eClinical Perspective (Larry Miller)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLarry Miller, Research Director at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, spoke about the healthcare provider\u0026rsquo;s approach to personalized medicine.  He said that Mayo is committed to individualized care, and that now that we are beginning to understand the power of human variation, these new developments have \u0026ldquo;to be transformational for providers or they won\u0026rsquo;t survive.\u0026rdquo;  He suggested that the future of medicine will move from reactive and probabilistic to more deterministic selection of treatments based on diagnoses.  He emphasized the need for education for doctors, and pointed out that \u0026ldquo;standards of care will become outmoded,\u0026rdquo; which is \u0026ldquo;disruptive to law and [insurance] coverage.\u0026rdquo;  He said that Mayo sees a big challenge of complexity, where what was one disease (breast cancer) is now at least ten different subdiseases.  Doctors need to make their treatment decisions on the detail, to predict how the disease will behave, and choose the best drugs possible based on safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMiller pointed out that this requires interdisciplinary work, and said that Mayo in Arizona has a huge advantage with its relationship with ASU, where so much of this work is going on.  While Mayo has scientific expertise in a number of areas, these new technologies draw on expertise from beyond medicine, in particular informatics and computational resources needed to build an effective decision support system that will become essential for doctors to use in a clinical setting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe talked about Mayo\u0026rsquo;s program for individualized medicine, which involves not just incorporating new developments in diagnostics and therapeutics, but in regenerative medicine for repair, renewal, and regeneration of deficits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMayo has had electronic medical records for the last 15 years, on 6 million people, but these are kept in multiple incompatible systems and were not built with research in mind.  They hope to improve their systems so that it can be used in an iterative process to learn more about the efficacy of therapies, and so therapies can be combined with \u0026ldquo;companion diagnostics for monitoring progression, recurrences, and response to therapy.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLike Poste, he raised objections to the companies that market gene sequencing directly to individuals, which just \u0026ldquo;scare people inappropriately,\u0026rdquo; but identified learning about disease predispositions as an important part of these developing technologies.  We need to develop methods of risk analysis that can help people correctly understand what these predispositions mean.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe sees the future as having three waves\u0026ndash;the first wave will be the new diagnostics, the second wave improvements in clinical practice and therapy, and the third wave embedding the new technology into the healthcare system, with significant changes to policy and education.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHealth Informatics (Diana Petitti)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDiana Petitti, former CDC epidemiologist and former director of research for Kaiser Permanente, where she built a 20-year longitudinal data repository for its 35 million members, spoke about the importance of health informatics.  (She is now a professor in ASU\u0026rsquo;s Department of Biomedical Informatics.)  Dr. Petitti raised concerns about how in the United States we are \u0026ldquo;loathe to deny anyone anything\u0026rdquo; in terms of medical treatments, but in fact \u0026ldquo;we do deny lots of people lots of things.\u0026rdquo;  She worried that personalized medicine has the potential to lead to greater maldistributions of healthcare, with the \u0026ldquo;haves\u0026rdquo; getting more and better treatment and the \u0026ldquo;have nots\u0026rdquo; getting less and worse treatment, unless we plan carefully.  She advocated evidence-based medicine and assessing value of treatments to be deployed to the general population.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Petitti brought up as an example the fact that oral contraceptives result in a 2x-10x increase in the likelihood of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venous_thrombosis\"\u003ea venous thrombotic event\u003c/a\u003e, and that the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_V_Leiden\"\u003eFactor V Leiden\u003c/a\u003e gene is predictive of susceptibility to that consequence, but no screening is done for it.  Why not?  Because the test only predicts 5% of those who will have the event, it\u0026rsquo;s a very expensive test, and we don\u0026rsquo;t have good alternatives for oral contraceptives.  These kinds of issues, she suggested, will recur with multiplex diagnostics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe explicitly worried that \u0026ldquo;we have dramatically oversold preventive medicine\u0026rdquo; and doesn\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s likely that savings from prevention will allow coverage for more extensive treatment.  She advocated that everyone in the field see the film \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Gattaca,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and stated that ASU provides \u0026ldquo;unique opportunities to train people to think about these issues\u0026rdquo; using \u0026ldquo;quantitative reasoning and probabilistic thought.\u0026rdquo;  She concluded by saying that we need to \u0026ldquo;work towards rational delivery of healthcare that optimizes public health.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eLaw (Gary Marchant)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProf. Gary Marchant of the Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law at ASU, who has a Ph.D. in genetics and is the executive director of ASU\u0026rsquo;s Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Innovation (formerly Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Technology), spoke about legal issues.  First he listed the many programs available at ASU in the area, beginning with the genetics and law program that has been here for 10 years and was the reason he first came to ASU.  Others include a new personalized medicine and law program at the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation, a planned center on ethical and policy issues regarding personalized medicine in conjunction with the Biodesign Institute, CSPO, TGEN, Mayo, etc., and research clusters at the law school on breast cancer, warfarin, and personalized medicine.  He also gave a plug for an upcoming conference March 8-9, 2010 at the Arizona Biltmore sponsored by AAAS and Mayo, which also has a great deal of corporate support.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProf. Marchant indicated that liability is the biggest issue regarding personalized medicine, and he sees doctors as \u0026ldquo;sitting ducks,\u0026rdquo; facing huge risks.  If a doctor prescribes a treatment without doing a corresponding new diagnostic test, and that has complications, he can be sued.  If he does the diagnostic test, it shows a very low likelihood of a disease recurrence, and advises against the treatment, and then the patient ends up being one of the rare people who has the recurrence, the doctor can be sued.  The doctor is really in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don\u0026rsquo;t situation.  The insurers and pharmaceutical companies are at less risk, since they have already developed enormous resources for dealing with the lawsuits that are a regular part of their existence.  In a short discussion after the forum, I asked Prof. Marchant if doctors would be liable if they performed a diagnostic test, found that it showed a low likelihood of recurrence or benefit for a treatment, and then recommended the treatment anyway, knowing the insurance company would refuse to pay for it\u0026ndash;would that shift the liability to the insurance company?  He thought it might, though it would be unethical for a doctor to recommend treatment that he didn\u0026rsquo;t actually think was necessary, and there\u0026rsquo;s still the potential for liability if the insurance company pays for the treatment and the treatment itself produces complications.  It seems that this problem really needs a legislative or regulatory fix of some sort, so that doctors have some limitation of liability in cases where they have made a recommendation that everyone would agree was the right course of action but a low-probability negative consequence occurs anyway.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProf. Marchant observed that the liability issues are particularly problematic in states like Arizona, where each side in the suit is limited to a single expert witness.  He said there is \u0026ldquo;no clear guidance or defense for doctors,\u0026rdquo; and the use of clinical guidelines in a defense has not been effective in court, in part because doctors don\u0026rsquo;t use them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQ\u0026amp;A\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few additional points of interest from the Q\u0026amp;A sessions (some of which has already been combined into the above summaries):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. LaBaer pointed out that most markers for diseases don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have any role in the cause of the disease, such as CA25 and ovarian cancer.  So his lab is looking not just for biomarkers, but for those that will affect clinical decisions.  4 out of 5 positive results in a mammography for breast cancer are actually cases where there is nothing wrong and the woman will not end up getting breast cancer, but some procedure ends up being undergone, with no value.  So he wants to find a companion test that can tell which are the 4 that don\u0026rsquo;t need further treatment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge Poste pointed out that baby boomers are going to bankrupt the system as they reach the end of their lives, and about 70% of the $2.3 trillion in healthcare spending is spent in the last 2-3 years of life, with many treatments costing $60K-$100K per treatment cycle on drugs that add 2-3 weeks of life.  The UK\u0026rsquo;s National Institute of Clinical Excellence has been making what are, in effect, rationing decisions by turning down all of the new cancer drugs that have come along because they have such great cost and such minimal benefit. He asked, \u0026ldquo;how much money could you save with a 90% accurate test of who\u0026rsquo;s going to die no matter what you do?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProf. Marchant said more about legal issues involving specimen repositories, including a case at ASU.  The developer of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, William Catalona, had a specimen repository with 30,000 tissue samples at Washington University, that he wished to take with him to Northwestern University when he took a new position there. He began asking patients for permission to move the samples, and 6,000 gave permission.  But Washington University sued him, claiming that the samples were property of the university.  Patients pointed out that their consent agreement gave them the right to withdraw their samples from future research and they had only consented to research on prostate cancer, but federal judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled in favor of the university and that patients had no property rights in their tissue.  This ruling has reduced incentives for patients to consent to give specimens for research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA current lawsuit against ASU by the Havasupai Indian tribe involves blood samples that were given for a study of diabetes by researchers who are no longer at ASU.  They wanted to take the samples with them, and samples had also been given to other researchers for use in studies of schizophrenia and the historical origins of the tribe, even though informed consent was apparently only given for the diabetes research.  Although this case was originally dismissed, it was recently reinstated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOther cases involve patent protection of genetic information. About 25% of the human genome is patented, including Myriad Genetics\u0026rsquo; patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes which are predictive of breast cancer and can only legally be tested for by Myriad.  This case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the issue of whether human genes can be patented.  The courts so far have ruled that a gene in isolation outside of the human body is patentable, even though (in my opinion) this seems at odds with the requirement that patents be limited to inventions, not discoveries.  There has already been a legislative limitation of patent protection for surgical procedures for the clinical context, so that doctors can\u0026rsquo;t be sued for patent infringement for performing a surgery that saves someone\u0026rsquo;s life; it\u0026rsquo;s possible that a similar limitation will be applied on gene patents in a clinical context, if they don\u0026rsquo;t get overturned completely by the courts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese gene patents create a further problem for the multiplex tests, since they inevitably include many patented genes.  Prof. Marchant observed that someone from Affymetrix spoke at an ASU seminar and stood up and said they were building their GeneChip DNA microarrays for testing for the presence of thousands of genes, and were ignoring gene patents. They were subsequently sued.  Dr. LaBaer stated that his lab is doing the same thing with cloned genes\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re cloning everything and giving them away, without regard to patents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe session was videotaped and will be made available to the public online.  I will add a link to this posting when it becomes available.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;ve read this far, you may also be interested in \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003emy summary of Dr. Fintan Steele\u0026rsquo;s talk at this year\u0026rsquo;s The Amazing Meeting 7, titled \u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine or Personalized Mysticism?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e, in \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003emy summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e that took place just prior to TAM7, and in \u003ca href=\"/2009/10/atheist-alliance-international.html\"\u003emy short summary of Dr. Martin Pera\u0026rsquo;s talk on regenerative medicine and embryonic stem cells at the Atheist Alliance International convention\u003c/a\u003e that took place earlier this month.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Personalized medicine research forum"},{"content":"The Arab Atheists Network has begun posting an Arabic translation of my summary of the AAI convention here. Thanks to Alpharabius and the Arab Atheists Network for doing that, and for their promotion of atheism in the Arab world!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/atheist-alliance-international_23.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arab Atheists Network has begun posting an Arabic translation of my summary of the AAI convention \u003ca href=\"http://www.el7ad.com/smf/index.php?topic=81737.msg685220#msg685220\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Thanks to Alpharabius and the Arab Atheists Network for doing that, and for their promotion of atheism in the Arab world!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheist Alliance International Convention summary in Arabic"},{"content":"In the comments of Massimo Pigliucci\u0026rsquo;s blog post about the scope of skepticism (which I\u0026rsquo;ve already discussed here), Skepdude pointed to a couple of blog posts he had written on similar topics some time ago, about what atheists have in common and skepticism and atheism. He argues that skeptics must be atheists and cannot be agnostics or theists, a position I disagree with. In an attempt to get to the bottom of our disagreement after a few exchanges in comments on his blog, I wrote the following set of questions which I first answered myself, so we can see how his answers differ.\nDo we have voluntary control over what we believe?\nIn general, no. The credence we place in various propositions\u0026ndash;our belief or rejection of them\u0026ndash;is largely out of our voluntary control and dependent upon our perceptual experiences, memories, other beliefs, and established habits and methods of belief formation and revision. We can indirectly cause our beliefs to change by engaging in actions which change our habits\u0026ndash;seeking out contrary information, learning new methods like forms of mathematics and logic, scientific methods, reading books, listening to others, etc.\nHow does someone become a skeptic?\nPeople aren\u0026rsquo;t born as skeptics\u0026ndash;they learn about skepticism and how it has been applied in various cases (only after learning a whole lot of other things that are necessary preconditions\u0026ndash;like language and reasoning). If skepticism coheres with their other beliefs, established habits and methods of belief formation and revision, and/or they are persuaded by arguments in favor of it, either self-generated or from external sources, they accept it and, to some degree or another, apply it subsequently.\nWhen someone becomes a skeptic, what happens to all of the other beliefs they already have?\nThey are initially retained, but may be revised and rejected as they are examined through the application of skeptical methods and other retained habits and methods of belief formation and revision. Levels of trust in some sources will likely be reduced, either within particular domains or in general, if they are discovered to be unreliable. It\u0026rsquo;s probably not possible to start from a clean slate, as Descartes tried to do in his Meditations.\nIs everything a skeptic believes something which is a conclusion reached by scientific methods?\nNo. Much of what we believe, we believe on the basis of testimony from other people who we trust, including our knowledge of our own names and date and place of birth, parts of our childhood history, the history of our communities and culture, and knowledge of places we haven\u0026rsquo;t visited. We also have various beliefs that are not scientifically testable, such as that there is an external world that persists independently of our experience of it, that there are other minds having experiences, that certain experiences and outcomes are intrinsically or instrumentally valuable, that the future will continue to resemble the past in various predictable ways, etc. If you did believe that skeptics should only believe conclusions which are reached by scientific methods, that would be a belief that is not reached by scientific methods.\nRussell Blackford (2009-10-22):\nThis is a nice li\u0026#39;l post, Jim. :) It deals concisely (and I think persuasively) with difficult subjects.\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nThanks, Russell! Larry Moran at Sandwalk has linked to this post and referred to it as \u0026quot;controversial\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;he quoted the last question and answer, so I guess it's my statement of epistemic dependence on others or my claim that there are non-scientifically testable assumptions that are preconditions for science that he takes issue with.\nI'd say the latter is more controversial. It could be argued that the empirical success of those assumptions is evidence for their truth, but I don't think you can supplant philosophy with science with respect to issues like the problem of induction, the foundations of logic and mathematics, or the most general forms of skepticism (e.g., solipsism, idealism, Cartesian evil demons).\nBrian (2009-10-22):\nHi Jim, a few questions about what appear to be Humean positions. We also have various beliefs that are not scientifically testable, such as that there is an external world that persists independently of our experience of it, If we draw an inference from some form of data that occurs say by regular (perhaps every nanosecond) monitoring by some device isn't that scientific? It's not certain and there are other explanations but if they explanation makes sense and is falsifiable\u0026hellip;.\n\u0026hellip; that the future will continue to resemble the past in various predictable ways, etc. If you did believe that skeptics should only believe conclusions which are reached by scientific methods, that would be a belief that is not reached by scientific methods. Perhaps you're defining scientific methods in a very narrow sense here because it is not a certainty or demonstration that leads us to hold the above but a good working hypothesis that hasn't yet been shown to be false. It certainly could be falsified. The next rock that tips off a cliff might not fall to Earth for example. Seems scientific, at the very least empirical in nature to me, all though perhaps not rationally defensible. Can you explain?\nRussell, I'm a little surprised that you agree. I've seen you post many times that science is part of a continuum of rational thinking and not separated from it. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what is being argued here.\nBrian (2009-10-22):\nI think I see the answers to my questions in your post to Russell Jim. You\u0026#39;re not denying the empirical success of the assumptions just saying that it\u0026#39;s a philosophical question? What answer to the problem of induction does philosophy offer that science can't? I don't find cartesian evil demons are interesting because Descartes relied on a stock of knowledge about how the world would've been if there were an evil demon to get to his supposed 1st piece of knowledge (the cogito). Anyway, I think I understand what your point is now. Thanks. :)\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nI agree with John Searle (as expressed in the last 3 chapters of his _The Construction of Social Reality_) that external realism is a background condition of intelligibility, similar in character to normative standards of rationality. Asking for a proof of external realism is like asking for a proof of why you should be rational--to ask the question presupposes the answer. Your question about observing data from an instrument presupposes external realism.\nWe could observe that the uniformity of nature ceases to be uniform, but the question here is whether past uniformity provides evidence for continued future uniformity. You seem to suggest that we should follow Popper and rely on falsifiability as our criterion of science and as a solution to the problem of induction, but I don't find his views satisfactory for a variety of reasons\u0026ndash;he smuggles \u0026quot;a whiff of induction\u0026quot; back into the picture (as \u0026quot;verisimilitude\u0026quot;); I think we do have positive reasons to believe scientific claims on the basis of supporting evidence, not just the lack of falsification; scientists don't in practice spend most of their time trying to falsify each other's work; propositions can't be tested in isolation (Duhem's point); apparent falsifications are legitimately avoided by changes to auxiliary hypotheses (Lakatos's point), and so forth.\nI haven't defined scientific methods at all, and I think I would define them rather broadly, and agree with the position you attribute to Russell that there is (at least some measure of) continuity between science and philosophy. I don't think there is a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science in the form of necessary and sufficient conditions\u0026ndash;the boundaries are fuzzy and ambiguous, and are shifted in various contexts. Thomas Gieryn's classic 1983 paper, \u0026quot;Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from nonscience\u0026quot; has some good examples from 19th century scientist John Tyndall using different criteria for the boundary when distinguishing science from religion as when distinguishing science from engineering (or \u0026quot;mechanics\u0026quot;)\u0026ndash;in the former case emphasizing the usefulness of applications of science, in the latter case emphasizing theoretical science and knowledge for its own sake.\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nBrian: Correct, I\u0026#39;m not denying the empirical success or usefulness of the assumptions, I\u0026#39;m saying that they are not themselves claims that can be tested scientifically. There\u0026#39;s at least a residue of non-naturalizable (in Quine\u0026#39;s sense) philosophy... If you look at the positions described under \u0026quot;Naturalized Epistemology\u0026quot; at the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, I reject replacement naturalism, accept cooperative naturalism, and am favorably disposed towards substantive naturalism.\nBTW, if I've just said anything that seems inconsistent, please jump on it\u0026ndash;I'm just getting back into these issues after 15 years away from academia, and I've by no means got a completely worked-out worldview here. I studied the works of and took classes from (and took comp exams with) Alvin Goldman, John Pollock, and Keith Lehrer when I was at the Univ. of Arizona, all of whom are mentioned in that article as representatives of quite different views, and from time to time I found each of them more persuasive than the others.\nBrian (2009-10-22):\nThanks Jim. I think I\u0026#39;ve got you now. I haven\u0026#39;t read Searle and I\u0026#39;m too ignorant to be able to say if you\u0026#39;ve made any errors or not. I agree with you that Popper smuggles in induction somewhere. Your question about observing data from an instrument presupposes external realism.\nI think so, but it's not based on an infallible claim. All I meant was, given the I perceive what I call reality to be external, and given that I have this data, then can I not infer that the world is real even when I'm not looking? My point was that it's scientific or empiric in that it makes no claims to be irrefutable or certain but flows from constant observation either direct or indirect. It's a mitigated species of realism I suppose. That probably made no sense.\nIn any case, I'm not interested in claims to absolute certainty in the universe, that doesn't seem possible (that's a hypothesis based on evidence, not a self-refuting claim of certainty!) By the way is Searle's argument a species of Kantian \u0026quot;transcendental argument\u0026quot;?\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nBrian: I'm not sure I follow you. In the instrument case, it can give you evidence about persistence of objects in the world, but talk of an external instrument conducting measurement is already granting that there is an external world being measured for the persistence of objects in it. It doesn't get to the root of the realism/anti-realism argument.\nYou're correct that Searle's argument is a Kantian transcendental argument\u0026ndash;assume that a certain condition holds, then see what is presupposed by that condition. He argues that the notion of \u0026quot;normal understanding\u0026quot; when we try to communicate presupposes external realism, because normal understanding requires sameness of understanding by speaker and hearer, which in turn requires that expressions refer to a publicly accessible reality. Public languages presuppose a public world. That doesn't, he notes, presuppose that any of the utterances successfully refer, only that they purport to do so. What he means by external realism doesn't entail anything about what that external reality is like or that we have any knowledge about its contents or character, merely that it exists independently of our representations of it. This formulation allows him to identify conceptual confusions in various arguments for anti-realism and social construction on non-social facts. The message of his book as a whole is that there are social facts that are true in virtue of our mental representations and social institutions, and those are distinct from what he calls \u0026quot;brute facts\u0026quot; that have no dependence upon human minds or institutions.\nI was motivated to read it (and Ian Hacking's The Social Construction of What?, which I haven't started yet) to help myself identify conceptual confusions in the science and technology studies literature.\nBrian (2009-10-22):\nWhat he means by external realism doesn\u0026#39;t entail anything about what that external reality is like or that we have any knowledge about its contents or character, merely that it exists independently of our representations of it I think this was the point I was floundering on. We can agree there is a real world out there, at least that it\u0026#39;s the most plausible conclusion, but what it is, is another question I guess. I'd better note the title of Searles Book, it sounds like my cup of tea. Have you read a book by Bruce Aune called Knowledge of the external world I just started it so far have found it a good read.\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nBrian: I\u0026#39;m not familiar with that book, but from the description on Amazon it sounds like it will get deep into this issue.\nBrian (2009-10-23):\nFound the book at Borders today. Hopefully it\u0026#39;ll enlighten me. Thanks again Jim.\nUNRR (2009-10-23):\nThis post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 10/23/2009, at The Unreligious Right\nAlpharabius (2009-10-23):\nJim, I remember asking you what you consider to be your primary identity and you answered: skeptic. I was surprised, but as time goes I realize now that I was a skeptic before I was an atheist.\nIn fact I would say I became a skeptic at least 5 years ago when I first argued with the local Imam on the apostasy punishment (death) and segregation of sexes. It was a slippery slope from skepticism to atheism, although I am not sure I can see and Atheist not being a skeptic.\nWith that said, I can see how not all atheists would be skeptics, but I would also argue they would all converge into the general locus of a collection of ideas. No skeptic would claim the man in the sky made the earth and everything in a fixed amount of time a few thousand years ago.\nLippard (2009-10-24):\nAlpharabius: \u0026quot;With that said, I can see how not all atheists would be skeptics, but I would also argue they would all converge into the general locus of a collection of ideas. No skeptic would claim the man in the sky made the earth and everything in a fixed amount of time a few thousand years ago.\u0026quot; I agree that there would likely be a lot of convergence\u0026ndash;specifically, on the conclusions that are derivable from multiple lines of evidence by forms of science that are easily communicated to and understood by the layman. But once you get beyond that, there's a lot of possible sources of disagreement, including differing cultural and conceptual frameworks.\nI agree with your last sentence, given what we know today, but that's different from saying that no skeptic would be a theist.\nSkepdude (2009-11-17):\nJim, I actually agree with everything you say here, I just don't see how it rejects the arguments I have made in favor of my position, which I recently reiterated in a new entry, in the hopes of making my line of reasoning clearer.\nI guess what it boils down to is your statement that not all our beliefs are subject to the scientific method which is of course true, but bear in mind that I don't see atheism as a \u0026quot;belief\u0026quot; in any sense of the word, but simply as lack of belief in a God; a lack of belief which rests upon the lack of what would be considered proper evidence in skeptical circles.\nI view atheism not as a belief, but as taking a position based on the evidence provided. Thus I compare it to, and now I'm going to coin a few terms, a-bigfootism, a-unicornism, and a-FSMism. I just don't see the difference and don't see why god should be treated differently.\nLippard (2009-11-17):\nSkepdude: I'll check out your new entry.\nThe word \u0026quot;atheism\u0026quot; for most people means disbelief, not just lack of belief, which most people call \u0026quot;agnosticism\u0026quot; (and about twice as many people in the U.S. identify themselves as agnostics than identify themselves as atheists).\nI suspect the main reason we don't see the additional terms you coined is because the believers in those things are all in the minority, so people don't need words to self-identify in opposition to them (though \u0026quot;skeptic\u0026quot; may be used in that regard). If most people were atheists, we probably would see that term used to self-identify about as much as \u0026quot;theist\u0026quot; is used today for self-identification (i.e., only in specialized contexts, like philosophy discussions).\nSkepdude (2009-11-18):\nWhat you say is true, nevertheless, many people think the word \u0026quot;skeptic\u0026quot; to mean a cynic, or someone who does not belive in anything, but we as skeptics do not accept that definition and fight against such misconceptions in the public square. The point I want to make is that those popular understandings of what an atheist is are not correct and skeptics should not go the politically correct way and side with the misconceptions in an attempt to avoid the stigma that the word atheist, unfortunately, carries with it in our society. I think skepticism requires intellectual honesty and if we were to do that, we'd defend the best meaning of the word atheist, as one who lacks belief, and would embrace that label.\nUnfortunately I see way too many skeptics, even \u0026quot;famous\u0026quot; ones do the opposite and hide behind the agnostic label, for PR reasons I suspect, and I don't agree with that.\nLippard (2009-11-19):\nI think \u0026quot;atheist\u0026quot; *does* mean disbelief, even among most atheists. The negative atheist/weak atheist position has been a relatively recent derivative, and it presents some difficulties, especially if you intend to infer anything from it. Agnostic means something like \u0026quot;I think it could go either way.\u0026quot; They aren\u0026#39;t equivalent positions. A recent poll of the Gotham Skeptics asked for agreement or disagreement with the statement \u0026quot;Skepticism is equivalent to atheism.\u0026quot;\nResults: Strongly disagree: 44%, Disagree: 32%, Neutral: 12%, Agree: 12%, Strongly agree: 0%. That's 76% disagreement (mostly strong) vs. 12% agreement (none of which is strong).\nLippard (2009-11-19):\nSkepdude: BTW, you also seem to still be suggesting that skepticism leads to either atheism or agnosticism, but I don\u0026#39;t think that\u0026#39;s the case either--certainly not the case for scientific skepticism that\u0026#39;s restricted to empirical claims. (And see Kylie Sturgess on deist skeptics.) I've also been thinking further about Maverick Philosopher's point about lack of belief that I linked to in my prior comment\u0026ndash;a lack of belief can't motivate either belief or action, so you should ask yourself what beliefs (or propositional attitudes, which include beliefs, desires, and intentions) are motivating your claims about skepticism and arguments for atheism. It's not the mere lack of belief in gods! Perhaps you hold a view something like \u0026quot;nobody should believe anything without empirical evidence\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;in which case, what's the empirical evidence for that? It seems to me math and logic are perfectly good things to give credence to without empirical evidence, as are certain background beliefs like the ones previously mentioned here (e.g., external realism).\nSkepdude (2009-11-19):\nJim, You keep going back to what the general understanding of these words IS. I'm not contesting what the current, popular misconception about the term is, I'm saying it's not the correct meaning. If you can argue that atheist=disbelief in God is a better definition than atheist=lack of belief in God then we've got a dialogue going on. You're pointing at what is, I'm pointing at what OUGHT to be.\nSame goes for your Gotham Skeptics poll. It shows that skeptics hold the same misconceptions about atheism as the general public. That's it. And I know that, thus my entry, but this bit of data does not invalidate my argument. Again ponting out what people think now does not invalidate my argument aobut how they OUGHT to think about this issue.\nI have read the maverick philosopher's entry that you link too, and I must say I don't find it very persuasive at all. Sure his bit about cabbages and tire irons is funny, but so what. I say show me a cabbage that can articulate the main ideas of the God Delusion and maybe he's right. On the other hand, I don't care if a cabbage would be considered atheist or not; that does not change what I think on the issue.\nIs atheism a proposition? Not really; it's more of a statement that goes like \u0026quot; I do not believe in God\u0026quot;. When people argue back and forth they argue the REASONS why one does/doesn't believe.\nYou do not debate only statements that have truth value, otherwise we'd not be debating ethics at all and 90% of philosophy would disappear overnight. Just because there is discussion does not mean that something that has a truth value is being discussed! I do not intend to dwell too long on the Maverick Philosopher's entry but it sounded to me like a word play and it seemed that he was making leaps of logic that were not warranted.\nBottom line is, you define a group of people by the common characteristic. Disbelief in God is not a characteristic that all atheists will attest too; certainty that there is no God isn't either; the one thing that all atheists will attest to is the lack of belief. That is the best commonaliy to use to define atheists, regardless of what the current meaning/popular misconception may be. Now I find this to be very clear and logical. Can you show me where I am going wrong in this line of reasoning?\nSkepdude (2009-11-19):\nJim, I do not mantain that \u0026quot;nobody should believe anything without empirical evidence\u0026quot;, I only maintain that for claims that have a truth value. For example, if one posits a God that meddles in our everyday business, if you credit him with miracles and such, that is a claim that has a truth value. Either God produced a miracle or he didn't. That is the way the major Gods of today are presented, and I think they are amenable to both the rules of logic and to scientifit inquiry.\nNow, a deist on the other hand, may posit a God which eons ago set everything in motions, and then receded in some place that is beyond our capability to observe in any way. This God would not interfere with our daily lifes whatsoever and would be utterly undetectable. That God I do not think would be subject to the rules of scientific inquiry, although I must say to such people: What the hell is the point of even positing such a being?\nLippard (2009-11-19):\nSkepdude: Why do you think that only empirically testable claims have truth value? By that premise it was neither true nor false that the earth revolves around the sun at the time of Copernicus (and even as late as Galileo). Don\u0026#39;t confuse epistemology with metaphysics--propositions have truth values even if we can\u0026#39;t know what they are. I'm making both points about the definition of atheism\u0026ndash;as a descriptive matter of what the word means in ordinary usage, as well as giving reasons in favor of the ordinary usage. I also disagree with the notion that a label for an identity category must be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions rather than family resemblance to a prototypical instance\u0026ndash;there need not be any single characteristic (or set of characteristics) that all atheists necessarily share, nor that all Christians share.\nAs for the point of a deist conception of God\u0026ndash;it provides an explanatory framework that you can draw further inferences from; obviously some people find that pragmatically useful in a number of ways. Lack of belief in God doesn't state a position, and can't drive inferences or action (though lack of belief combined with some meta-belief about that lack of belief can do so).\nSkepdude (2009-11-20):\nGood point, I should have been clear to say that I mean empirically testable claims. My point is that God as posited today by the major religions is empirically testable, unlike the deist god I posited in my previous comment. If he is empirically testable he then falls within the realm of claims skepticism can handle. The lack of evidence in favor of the god hypothesis must lead a skeptic to, at the very least, lack belief in such entity, which should make them atheists (if we were to agree that my definition of atheist is the best) Now on to your second paragraph, yes probably there needen't be any such characteristic that members of an identity group should share, but there is in the case of atheism and ignoring it in favor of other resemblances seems unwarranted.\nYour last paragraph I agree with. I know some folks get some meaning out of a deist god like that. I don't, I find it a futile exercise but hey, what the hell, that don't bother me too much. And yes, atheism itself cannot and should not drive action, not anymore than my lack of belief in fairies drives action on my part. What drives the action on the atheist's part is really the actions of the religious folks such as state-church separation violations, discrimination in the name of religion etc etc. At that point our lack of belief, our atheism, combined with our moral/ethical values prompts us to act.\nLippard (2009-11-21):\n*Some claims* about the gods of the major religions are empirically testable, and those claims have commonly been discussed in skeptical magazines--young-earth creationism, flood geology, Bible codes, faith healing, efficacy of prayer, and so forth. It\u0026#39;s not entirely clear that *existence claims* about such gods are empirically testable, though I agree with you that at least some of the claimed characteristics entail empirical consequences that are therefore testable. I think you do need to do some philosophy along with science to make arguments against such gods, and I do agree with you that such arguments can be successfully made. But where I disagree is that I don't think someone who disagrees, and who thinks that such a God exists, is necessarily not a skeptic as a result.\nSkepdude (2009-11-22):\nWell I hope I did not make such a strong a statement before. No, I can\u0026#39;t say someone is not a skeptic if they are not atheists. I think skepticism, properly applied in the case of god should lead to atheism. Now, being that no one is perfect I can see why real skeptics can take a different, albeit wrong, position. I am solely saying that they've either gone wrong somewhere in their skeptical analysis of this issue, or they have some evidence that they think warrants this position (which I still think most likely means they're doing something wrong again, but that's my bias showing, lol). My purpose is to challenge them to reassess their position and see if it holds up. We'll see if that goes anywhere.\nAnd definitely yes without some philosophy you cannot win these arguments. One only needs to listen to whatever-his-first-name Craig is debate to know that pure science will get you nowhere with him. Philosophy is important of course, but I think as far as skeptics are concerned this should be a nonissue just as aunicornism, or aFSMism is.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/skepticism-belief-revision-and-science.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the comments of \u003ca href=\"http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-scope-of-skeptical-inquiry.html\"\u003eMassimo Pigliucci\u0026rsquo;s blog post about the scope of skepticism\u003c/a\u003e (which I\u0026rsquo;ve already discussed \u003ca href=\"/2009/10/massimo-pigliucci-on-scope-of-skeptical.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e), Skepdude pointed to a couple of blog posts he had written on similar topics some time ago, about \u003ca href=\"http://skepfeeds.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/what-do-all-atheists-have-in-common/\"\u003ewhat atheists have in common\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://skepfeeds.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/skepticism-and-atheism-twins-brothers-or-distant-cousins/\"\u003eskepticism and atheism\u003c/a\u003e.  He argues that skeptics must be atheists and cannot be agnostics or theists, a position I disagree with.  In an attempt to get to the bottom of our disagreement after a few exchanges in comments on his blog, I wrote the following set of questions which I first answered myself, so we can see how his answers differ.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDo we have voluntary control over what we believe?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn general, no. The credence we place in various propositions\u0026ndash;our belief or rejection of them\u0026ndash;is largely out of our voluntary control and dependent upon our perceptual experiences, memories, other beliefs, and established habits and methods of belief formation and revision.  We can indirectly cause our beliefs to change by engaging in actions which change our habits\u0026ndash;seeking out contrary information, learning new methods like forms of mathematics and logic, scientific methods, reading books, listening to others, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHow does someone become a skeptic?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePeople aren\u0026rsquo;t born as skeptics\u0026ndash;they learn about skepticism and how it has been applied in various cases (only after learning a whole lot of other things that are necessary preconditions\u0026ndash;like language and reasoning).  If skepticism coheres with their other beliefs, established habits and methods of belief formation and revision, and/or they are persuaded by arguments in favor of it, either self-generated or from external sources, they accept it and, to some degree or another, apply it subsequently.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWhen someone becomes a skeptic, what happens to all of the other beliefs they already have?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey are initially retained, but may be revised and rejected as they are examined through the application of skeptical methods and other retained habits and methods of belief formation and revision.  Levels of trust in some sources will likely be reduced, either within particular domains or in general, if they are discovered to be unreliable.  It\u0026rsquo;s probably not possible to start from a clean slate, as Descartes tried to do in his \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMeditations\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIs everything a skeptic believes something which is a conclusion reached by scientific methods?\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNo. Much of what we believe, we believe on the basis of testimony from other people who we trust, including our knowledge of our own names and date and place of birth, parts of our childhood history, the history of our communities and culture, and knowledge of places we haven\u0026rsquo;t visited.  We also have various beliefs that are not scientifically testable, such as that there is an external world that persists independently of our experience of it, that there are other minds having experiences, that certain experiences and outcomes are intrinsically or instrumentally valuable, that the future will continue to resemble the past in various predictable ways, etc.  If you did believe that skeptics should only believe conclusions which are reached by scientific methods, that would be a belief that is not reached by scientific methods.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skepticism, belief revision, and science"},{"content":"Massimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher at the City University of New York and regular writer for the Skeptical Inquirer, has offered up his thoughts about the relationship between skepticism, atheism, and politics. He wants to argue that skepticism and skeptical inquiry are identical with scientific skepticism, and mostly distinct from philosophy, religion, and politics. He restricts the domain of skeptical inquiry to \u0026ldquo;the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal,\u0026rdquo; and further restricts his notion of \u0026ldquo;evidential\u0026rdquo; to the empirical. (He subsequently refers to philosophical arguments and reasons as \u0026ldquo;non-evidence based approaches.\u0026rdquo; I disagree, though this may be strictly a terminological dispute\u0026ndash;I often use the word \u0026ldquo;evidence\u0026rdquo; to apply to reasons and arguments, not just empirical observations or reports of empirical observations, and I think this is common usage.)\nHe ends up drawing a Venn-style diagram which has an outer circle labeled with \u0026ldquo;critical thinking\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rational analysis,\u0026rdquo; within which is a series of three overlapping circles labeled \u0026ldquo;atheism,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;political philosophy.\u0026rdquo; He argues that skeptical inquiry only overlaps with atheism where religions make empirical claims that are subject to scientific investigation, and likewise for political philosophy.\nI offered a few critical comments at his blog, noting that it is odd that \u0026ldquo;atheism\u0026rdquo; is the only label on his diagram which is the name of a specific position rather than a method or discipline, and suggesting that it be labeled something like \u0026ldquo;views on religion.\u0026rdquo; I also suggested that that circle extend beyond the scope of the \u0026ldquo;critical thinking\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rational analysis\u0026rdquo; circle, though that\u0026rsquo;s presupposing his diagram is descriptive rather than normative. [Note added 1:31 p.m.: If his diagram is understood as a diagram of what is appropriate subject matter for critical thinking, rational analysis, and skeptical inquiry with respect to atheism and political philosophy, then those two circles should arguably not extend outside the border of critical thinking/rational analysis.] Similar considerations should apply to the \u0026ldquo;political philosophy\u0026rdquo; circle. People hold religious and political views for reasons other than those produced as a result of critical thinking and rational analysis.\nI also took issue with his identifying \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; with scientific skepticism. Skeptics have always used philosophical tools as well as scientific ones, but I would find his diagram more accurate if the middle circle was labeled \u0026ldquo;scientific skepticism\u0026rdquo; or even \u0026ldquo;scientific inquiry.\u0026quot;\nI also have some skepticism about this taxonomic enterprise in general, which is arguably both philosophical and political itself\u0026ndash;Pigliucci is not using scientific methods to set up this framework, it\u0026rsquo;s philosophy, and there are political and pragmatic reasons for wanting us to accept it\u0026ndash;to issue in a ruling that certain domains are off-limits for skepticism, namely the examination of religious and political claims that are not subject to empirical investigation.\nI think there are good pragmatic reasons for skeptical organizations to restrict themselves in such a way\u0026ndash;the methods of skepticism can be used by anyone, regardless of their political or religious views, and organized skepticism has tried to appeal to a broad audience to focus critical attention on paranormal claims where scientific methodology can be brought to bear. But I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of this as a general picture of the applicable domain of the methods of skepticism or skeptical inquiry. (I should note that I don\u0026rsquo;t think that atheism implies skepticism\u0026ndash;thus the reason for extending a circle with that name outside the boundaries of critical thinking and rational analysis\u0026ndash;nor that skepticism implies atheism. Skepticism is about the methods used, not the conclusions reached. An atheist might think that any consistent application of skepticism will lead to atheism, but that presumes both that atheism is true and that consistent application of skepticism is a guarantee of truth, which it is not.)\nI agree with commenter Maarten that the boundaries of these circles are fuzzy\u0026ndash;just as the boundary between science and non-science doesn\u0026rsquo;t admit to a bright-line demarcation. People can conceptualize the boundaries differently, even granting Pigliucci\u0026rsquo;s conception of \u0026ldquo;empirically investigatable\u0026rdquo; as the domain of skeptical inquiry or scientific skepticism. The boundaries between scientific disciplines are themselves fuzzy and they use different methodologies, with huge differences between experimental and historical sciences, for example.\nFinally, I agree with commenter Scott (Scott Hurst), who observes that religious believers do make very specific claims \u0026ldquo;about the nature of the universe, how it works, and its history (including our own),\u0026rdquo; and specifically noting belief in the power of prayer. These things are empirically testable and do make at least some common (one could say \u0026ldquo;vulgar\u0026rdquo;) conceptions of God and religion refutable by science. The fact that a more sophisticated believer or theologian can construct a view that uses the same words yet withdraws from the realm of the empirical doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that the vulgar conception hasn\u0026rsquo;t been refuted. This is perhaps more obvious with modern religions such as Mormonism and Scientology, where in the former case historical evidence and DNA evidence falsifies some key claims, and in the latter case where scientific evidence falsifies a great number of its claims. Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s cosmology, for example, includes the idea that Xenu dropped thetans into a volcano on Hawaii 75 million years ago, but Hawaii didn\u0026rsquo;t exist 75 million years ago. His book History of Man includes Piltdown Man in the human lineage, even though that fossil was discovered to be a hoax shortly after the book was published. And so forth.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s fine for Pigliucci to define and use the terms the way he wants, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s given strong reasons for the rest of us to accept the specifics of his formulation.\nUPDATE (October 24, 2009): Russell Blackford has written \u0026ldquo;Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; at the Sentient Developments blog, which comes to similar conclusions with a somewhat more comprehensive argument.\nDaniel Loxton (2009-10-21):\nIn fairness, Pigliucci does explicitly draw our attention to cases in which scientific skepticism can tackle religious claims, such as the age of the Earth: \u0026quot;Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism.\u0026quot;\nNewEnglandBob (2009-10-21):\nSo far, few, including you, have left out the \u0026quot;sophisticated believer or theologian (who) can construct a view that uses the same words yet withdraws from the realm of the empirical\u0026quot;. Where does that leave that class of people? Are you assuming that it is all fiction and nonsense and a house of cards?\nLippard (2009-10-21):\nDaniel: Yes, he does say that, but I suspect Scott and I draw that circle more broadly than he does, based on his description of which claims fall into the domain. I don\u0026#39;t think a retreat to theology necessarily saves the vulgar, which is how accomodationism is often formulated. I'm open to an argument to the contrary\u0026ndash;that could be a double-edged sword for common understanding of scientific claims.\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nNewEnglandBob: I take an agnostic stance about such positions, unless I examine them and do conclude that they are really nonsense. I think that Dennett\u0026#39;s quotations from Karen Armstrong (see my blog post on the AAI convention) qualify as nonsense. On the other hand, Richard M. Gale's book, The Nature and Existence of God, makes some arguments for a version of God that I'm agnostic about (as of last reading, a decade or more ago).\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nNewEnglandBob: I hadn't read your comment when I posted mine that immediately follows it, though some of what I say there is relevant to your comment.\nI am open to the argument from someone like Gale that his definition of God is what exists and the vulgar believer is right that God exists, but is just wrong about his properties, powers, actions, history, etc., as a way of saving the vulgar. Gale could argue that he's simply refined the concept rather than produced an incommensurable one. That would be analogous to the relationship between Newton's and Einstein's respective conceptions of physics.\nIf I buy that, then I have to expand what I'm agnostic about, in a sense. My purported refutation of the vulgar believer's views would then merely be a refutation of their views about God, but not their view that there is a God.\nBut I'm not sure why I should find that a reasonable conclusion about the Abrahamic religions any more so than a similar maneuver for the Greek gods, or for Santa Claus.\nHume's Ghost (2009-10-22):\n\u0026quot;a philosopher\u0026quot; I know he is, but I have a hard time not thinking of Prof. Pigliucci as a biologist, first. (Hence I identify as a biologist and philosopher.)\nLippard (2009-10-22):\nHume\u0026#39;s Ghost: Good point, I\u0026#39;ve changed his description in my post to follow your lead.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/massimo-pigliucci-on-scope-of-skeptical.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMassimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher at the City University of New York and regular writer for the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-scope-of-skeptical-inquiry.html\"\u003ehas offered up his thoughts about the relationship between skepticism, atheism, and politics\u003c/a\u003e.  He wants to argue that skepticism and skeptical inquiry are identical with scientific skepticism, and mostly distinct from philosophy, religion, and politics.  He restricts the domain of skeptical inquiry to \u0026ldquo;the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal,\u0026rdquo; and further restricts his notion of \u0026ldquo;evidential\u0026rdquo; to the empirical.  (He subsequently refers to philosophical arguments and reasons as \u0026ldquo;non-evidence based approaches.\u0026rdquo;  I disagree, though this may be strictly a terminological dispute\u0026ndash;I often use the word \u0026ldquo;evidence\u0026rdquo; to apply to reasons and arguments, not just empirical observations or reports of empirical observations, and I think this is common usage.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe ends up drawing a Venn-style diagram which has an outer circle labeled with \u0026ldquo;critical thinking\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rational analysis,\u0026rdquo; within which is a series of three overlapping circles labeled \u0026ldquo;atheism,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;political philosophy.\u0026rdquo;  He argues that skeptical inquiry only overlaps with atheism where religions make empirical claims that are subject to scientific investigation, and likewise for political philosophy.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI offered a few critical comments at his blog, noting that it is odd that \u0026ldquo;atheism\u0026rdquo; is the only label on his diagram which is the name of a specific position rather than a method or discipline, and suggesting that it be labeled something like \u0026ldquo;views on religion.\u0026rdquo;  I also suggested that that circle extend beyond the scope of the \u0026ldquo;critical thinking\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rational analysis\u0026rdquo; circle, though that\u0026rsquo;s presupposing his diagram is descriptive rather than normative.  [Note added 1:31 p.m.: If his diagram is understood as a diagram of what is appropriate subject matter for critical thinking, rational analysis, and skeptical inquiry with respect to atheism and political philosophy, then those two circles should arguably not extend outside the border of critical thinking/rational analysis.]  Similar considerations should apply to the \u0026ldquo;political philosophy\u0026rdquo; circle.  People hold religious and political views for reasons other than those produced as a result of critical thinking and rational analysis.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI also took issue with his identifying \u0026ldquo;skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; with scientific skepticism.  Skeptics have always used philosophical tools as well as scientific ones, but I would find his diagram more accurate if the middle circle was labeled \u0026ldquo;scientific skepticism\u0026rdquo; or even \u0026ldquo;scientific inquiry.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI also have some skepticism about this taxonomic enterprise in general, which is arguably both philosophical and political itself\u0026ndash;Pigliucci is not using scientific methods to set up this framework, it\u0026rsquo;s philosophy, and there are political and pragmatic reasons for wanting us to accept it\u0026ndash;to issue in a ruling that certain domains are off-limits for skepticism, namely the examination of religious and political claims that are not subject to empirical investigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI think there are good pragmatic reasons for skeptical organizations to restrict themselves in such a way\u0026ndash;the methods of skepticism can be used by anyone, regardless of their political or religious views, and organized skepticism has tried to appeal to a broad audience to focus critical attention on paranormal claims where scientific methodology can be brought to bear.  But I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of this as a general picture of the applicable domain of the methods of skepticism or skeptical inquiry.  (I should note that I don\u0026rsquo;t think that atheism implies skepticism\u0026ndash;thus the reason for extending a circle with that name outside the boundaries of critical thinking and rational analysis\u0026ndash;nor that skepticism implies atheism.  Skepticism is about the methods used, not the conclusions reached.  An atheist might think that any consistent application of skepticism will lead to atheism, but that presumes both that atheism is true and that consistent application of skepticism is a guarantee of truth, which it is not.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI agree with commenter Maarten that the boundaries of these circles are fuzzy\u0026ndash;just as the boundary between science and non-science doesn\u0026rsquo;t admit to a bright-line demarcation. People can conceptualize the boundaries differently, even granting Pigliucci\u0026rsquo;s conception of \u0026ldquo;empirically investigatable\u0026rdquo; as the domain of skeptical inquiry or scientific skepticism.  The boundaries between scientific disciplines are themselves fuzzy and they use different methodologies, with huge differences between experimental and historical sciences, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFinally, I agree with commenter Scott (Scott Hurst), who observes that religious believers do make very specific claims \u0026ldquo;about the nature of the universe, how it works, and its history (including our own),\u0026rdquo; and specifically noting belief in the power of prayer.  These things are empirically testable and do make at least some common (one could say \u0026ldquo;vulgar\u0026rdquo;) conceptions of God and religion refutable by science.  The fact that a more sophisticated believer or theologian can construct a view that uses the same words yet withdraws from the realm of the empirical doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that the vulgar conception hasn\u0026rsquo;t been refuted.  This is perhaps more obvious with modern religions such as Mormonism and Scientology, where in the former case historical evidence and DNA evidence falsifies some key claims, and in the latter case where scientific evidence falsifies a great number of its claims.  Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s cosmology, for example, includes the idea that Xenu dropped thetans into a volcano on Hawaii 75 million years ago, but Hawaii didn\u0026rsquo;t exist 75 million years ago.  His book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHistory of Man\u003c/span\u003e includes Piltdown Man in the human lineage, even though that fossil was discovered to be a hoax shortly after the book was published.  And \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/peter_forde.html\"\u003eso forth\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s fine for Pigliucci to define and use the terms the way he wants, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s given strong reasons for the rest of us to accept the specifics of his formulation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 24, 2009): Russell Blackford has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2009/10/pigliucci-on-science-and-scope-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; at the Sentient Developments blog\u003c/a\u003e, which comes to similar conclusions with a somewhat more comprehensive argument.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry"},{"content":"\nThere is a new contest for animal rescues and shelters to win big money. Please visit the Mutt Madness Contest, and vote for RESCUE (third bracket down on the left). You do have to register and vote in each bracket, but there is a grand prize of $50,000!!!\nVoting for the first round ends October 25th. If they win this round, they receive $1,000 and advance to the next round. Please vote today and ask others to vote! ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/vote-for-rescue.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: justify;\"\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/fredsmile.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;\" src=\"/images/fredsmile.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394792487678348738\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: justify;\"\u003eThere is a new contest for animal rescues and shelters to win big money.  Please visit the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rachaelray.com/pets/muttmadness/\"\u003eMutt Madness Contest\u003c/a\u003e, and vote for \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org\"\u003eRESCUE\u003c/a\u003e (third bracket down on the left).  You do have to register and vote in each bracket, but there is a grand prize of $50,000!!!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVoting for the first round ends October 25th.   If they win this round, they receive $1,000 and advance to the next round.   Please vote today and ask others to vote! \u003c/div\u003e\u003ch3 style=\"text-align: justify;\" class=\"UIIntentionalStory_Message\" ft=\"{\u0026quot;type\u0026quot;:\u0026quot;msg\u0026quot;}\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"UIStory_Message\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e","title":"Vote for RESCUE!!"},{"content":"The #1 \u0026ldquo;trending topic\u0026rdquo; on Twitter is \u0026ldquo;No God,\u0026quot; apparently started by re-tweeting of \u0026ldquo;Know God, Know Peace. No God, No Peace.\u0026rdquo; This prompted atheists to jump in promoting the \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; part of it, and then angry theists to complain about \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; being the top trending topic\u0026ndash;but perpetuating it with each of their complaints.\nThe topic is generating lots of hilarity, as Attempts at Rational Behavior (@rationalbehavio) has pointed out in a couple of blog posts, with some people trying to start \u0026ldquo;Yes God\u0026rdquo; as an alternative topic\u0026ndash;but including the words \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; in their tweets!\nUPDATE (4:41 p.m., Arizona time): Twitter has decided to censor its \u0026ldquo;Trending Topics\u0026rdquo; list, and has merged tweets matching either \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Know God\u0026rdquo; into a topic labeled \u0026ldquo;Know God.\u0026quot; If you actually click on that link to see the matching tweets (it explicitly does a search for either string), there are still a lot more that match \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; than \u0026ldquo;Know God.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (10:10 p.m., Arizona time): Benjamin Black offers this entertaining commentary of what almost happened, which provides a better explanation of \u0026ldquo;Trending Topics\u0026rdquo; for those unfamiliar with Twitter.\nHistorical Comments A at R B (2009-10-21):\nThank you so much for the blog plug :-)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/no-god-on-twitter.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe #1 \u0026ldquo;trending topic\u0026rdquo; on Twitter is \u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22No%20God%22\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;No God,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e apparently started by re-tweeting of \u0026ldquo;Know God, Know Peace.  No God, No Peace.\u0026rdquo;  This prompted atheists to jump in promoting the \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; part of it, and then angry theists to complain about \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; being the top trending topic\u0026ndash;but perpetuating it with each of their complaints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe topic is generating lots of hilarity, as Attempts at Rational Behavior (\u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/rationalbehavio\"\u003e@rationalbehavio\u003c/a\u003e) has pointed out in a couple of \u003ca href=\"http://attemptsatrationalbehavior.blogspot.com/2009/10/noyou-still-dont-get-how-trending.html\"\u003eblog\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://attemptsatrationalbehavior.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-dont-care-if-this-gets-oldive-got.html\"\u003eposts\u003c/a\u003e, with some people trying to start \u0026ldquo;Yes God\u0026rdquo; as an alternative topic\u0026ndash;but including the words \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; in their tweets!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (4:41 p.m., Arizona time):  Twitter has decided to censor its \u0026ldquo;Trending Topics\u0026rdquo; list, and has merged tweets matching either \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Know God\u0026rdquo; into a topic labeled \u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22Know%20God%22%20OR%20%22No%20God%22\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Know God.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  If you actually click on that link to see the matching tweets (it explicitly does a search for either string), there are still a lot more that match \u0026ldquo;No God\u0026rdquo; than \u0026ldquo;Know God.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (10:10 p.m., Arizona time): Benjamin Black offers \u003ca href=\"http://blog.b3k.us/no_god.html\"\u003ethis entertaining commentary of what almost happened\u003c/a\u003e, which provides a better explanation of \u0026ldquo;Trending Topics\u0026rdquo; for those unfamiliar with Twitter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No God on Twitter"},{"content":"\nThe Atheist Alliance International convention took place over the weekend, October 2-4, 2009, at the Burbank Airport Marriott hotel, and I took my usual level of notes for the talks I attended. But rather than (or perhaps temporarily in lieu of) giving detailed summaries of each talk over the next several weeks, this will be one post with brief comments on each. If there\u0026rsquo;s demand, I can follow this up with more detailed posts on individual talks of interest.\nThere were over 700 attendees at the conference, and I believe I heard that last year\u0026rsquo;s conference was about 450. It\u0026rsquo;s not as big as The Amazing Meeting, but if that rate of growth isn\u0026rsquo;t an artifact of say, the fact that this conference was co-sponsored by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason and featured an unbelievable set of high-powered speakers, then they\u0026rsquo;ll catch up quickly. The AAI conference participation seemed to be more diverse than TAM, with a higher proportion of women and minorities, though it\u0026rsquo;s still not close to representative of the population\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s still a white male dominance.\nThe conference talks were divided into \u0026ldquo;tracks\u0026rdquo; which were really more just rough categories than a system of tracks that could be followed, which were Science, Advocacy, Heritage, and Development. Events that weren\u0026rsquo;t talks included an optional pre-conference event of attending a live studio taping of a TV show (\u0026ldquo;100 Questions\u0026rdquo;), an optional post-conference event of an L.A. bus tour and visit to the La Brea tarpits, a live viewing of \u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher\u0026rdquo; featuring Richard Dawkins (shortly before they both showed up in person), entertainment by Mr. Deity (including live performance and a few of the shows, as well as some personal background from Brian Keith Dalton), a live recording of the Dogma Free America podcast with a panel of speakers, a standup comedy showcase hosted by Comedy Jesus Troy Conrad, a \u0026ldquo;taste of Camp Quest\u0026rdquo; for kids, and an Atheist Nexus live music party.\nFriday\nI arrived a bit later than planned\u0026ndash;my expected driving time of just under six hours turned out to take over seven due to a few traffic issues along the way\u0026ndash;and I missed three things I had wanted to attend. Those were Rich Orman\u0026rsquo;s panel discussion for his Dogma Free America podcast, with P.Z. Myers, William B. Davis, and Sunsara Taylor; Alpharabius\u0026rsquo; talk on atheism in the Arab world; and Russell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s talk on attempts to regulate against \u0026ldquo;defamation of religion.\u0026rdquo; Fortunately, Alpharabius gave me a capsule summary of his talk and I had a few chances to chat with Russell Blackford and Rich Orman, so that partly made up for it.\nP.Z. Myers gave an entertaining talk on \u0026ldquo;Design v. Chance\u0026rdquo; that began with a parody of a typical intelligent design creationist presentation, argued that ID arguments are at root an \u0026ldquo;over-extended metaphor\u0026rdquo; of design accompanied by misrepresentations of science. He showed how the ID claim that Darwin thought cells were mere \u0026ldquo;balls of protoplasm\u0026rdquo; is false, and presented evidence that various features thought to be characteristic of multicellular life have been found to be present in choanoflagellate protists. He ended by sharing a couple of useful words, \u0026ldquo;kipple\u0026rdquo; (from Philip K. Dick\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,\u0026rdquo; meaning accumulated useless objects) and \u0026ldquo;granfalloon\u0026rdquo; (from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\u0026rsquo;s Cat\u0026rsquo;s Cradle, meaning a label on a group that doesn\u0026rsquo;t really have anything significant in common, like \u0026ldquo;Hoosier\u0026rdquo;). For \u0026ldquo;granfalloon,\u0026rdquo; he quoted the statement from Bokonon in Vonnegut\u0026rsquo;s book, \u0026ldquo;if you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.\u0026rdquo; Isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rdquo; a good example of a granfalloon, if all we share is lack of a belief in God? (This ended up being relevant to Brian Parra\u0026rsquo;s talk at the end of the conference.)\nAfter a cocktail and socializing session, the main ballroom showed \u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher\u0026rdquo; on a big screen, featuring his guests Janeane Garofalo, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and Thomas Friedman, then joined by Richard Dawkins. Maher demonstrated the witty and incisive criticism of religion that won him the Dawkins award, though he also made some comments about environmental causes of cancer that have raised controversy about his receiving an award with \u0026ldquo;science\u0026rdquo; in its name when he has pseudoscientific opinions about matters such as medicine (as Orac has forcefully argued in a series of posts at his Respectful Insolence blog: one, two, three, four). This was followed by entertainment from Mr. Deity in the form of both live performance and videos, along with some personal history from Brian Keith Dalton. Then Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins entered the room. Dawkins recounted the highlights of Maher\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Religulous\u0026rdquo; as the reasons for the award, and Maher accepted the award, noting (accurately) that Dawkins summary was better than the movie itself, followed by his routine of reading from Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s The Purpose Driven Life which you can find on YouTube. Maher was the least-approachable celebrity at the entire conference; even those sitting at his VIP table were unable to ask him questions, as P.Z. Myers reported firsthand.\nSaturday\nEd Buckner gave a talk about how atheist and freethought organizations are learning to cooperate, which I live-tweeted comments on.\nLawrence Krauss gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Our Miserable Future\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Life, the Universe, and Nothing: The Future of Life and Science in an Expanding Universe,\u0026rdquo; in which he argued that the best evidence shows that we are in a flat, rather than an open or closed universe, which means that it will continue expanding towards some limit. He gave a history of cosmology from the discovery of the expansion of the universe to dark matter, and pointed out that we are fortunate to live in a time when the energy density of dark matter vs. ordinary matter in the universe is approximately the same, and the expanding universe is at a point where other galaxies are still visible. The upshot of this is that we are fortunate to live in a time where we have the evidence of Hubble expansion and the Big Bang. Intelligent civilizations of the distant future will be unable to see any galaxies other than their own, or any evidence of the Big Bang, and will conclude that they are in a static and eternal universe based on the best evidence that they have. Such people will be \u0026ldquo;lonely and ignorant, but dominant,\u0026rdquo; which Krauss said those of us here in the U.S. are already used to. They will have an irreparably wrong picture of the universe from their epistemological blindness due to state of the universe around them. (What similar blindness do we suffer from due to our current place in the universe and observational abilities?)\nCarolyn Porco gave a talk which began as a celebration of Galileo\u0026rsquo;s steps towards a scientific method, which she said couldn\u0026rsquo;t be applied to God because no experiment is possible that is relevant to God. (This strikes me as erroneous in a number of ways, since claims about God usually have empirical consequences, it\u0026rsquo;s possible to make philosophical arguments which draw upon scientific data, and her picture of science seemed to be based on an overly simplified Popperian philosophy of science.) She argued that it is \u0026ldquo;very difficult to prove a negative\u0026rdquo; (as if \u0026ldquo;proof\u0026rdquo; is what science cares about\u0026ndash;but at least she didn\u0026rsquo;t make the mistake of saying it\u0026rsquo;s impossible). She claimed that science and religion are \u0026ldquo;completely different\u0026rdquo; and are not only not equivalent (certainly true) but are \u0026ldquo;not intersecting\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;apparently advocating something like Stephen Jay Gould\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;non-overlapping magisteria\u0026rdquo; view, which is falsified by the fact that religions do make empirical claims. She complained about Hollywood\u0026rsquo;s depiction of scientists in a negative light and blamed it for deterring young people from going into science, though she supplied no scientific evidence to support this (though she referred to a survey of science-related films from 1920-1994 by two researchers that concluded depictions were overwhelmingly negative). I think it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely that such depictions have much of a negative effect at all, since polls in the U.S. and other countries about what professions are most trusted put doctors, teachers, and scientists very high compared to most other professions. Businessmen are similarly victims of negative portrayals in Hollywood, and are also less trusted, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to translate into fewer undergraduates choosing to become business majors. I suspect a better explanation of any reduction in science enrollments (if that\u0026rsquo;s actually happening) would be found in elementary and secondary education, along with the fact that people find science and math difficult. She concluded with a series of fantastic photographs of Saturn and its moon Enceladus from the Cassini mission.\nMartin Pera spoke about embryonic stem cells, science and policy, arguing that it will revolutionize medicine by allowing restoration of cell loss through transplantation as well as the development of new methods of research using stem cells. He pointed out various challenges to \u0026ldquo;regenerative medicine,\u0026rdquo; including rejection, tumor formation, and implanted stem cells developing the same pathologies that they\u0026rsquo;re designed to treat, but observed that these also present new opportunities to learn. On the public policy side, he argued that scientists need to engage more with the public, patient advocacy plays a key role in policy discussions, and careful and thoughtful regulation is preferable to \u0026ldquo;premature prescriptive regulation.\u0026rdquo; (This ties into a lot of the subject matter in law, science, and technology I\u0026rsquo;m studying this semester, and Pera\u0026rsquo;s talk had considerable overlap with a talk I attended earlier this year at the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix on embryonic stem cells by Prof. Jane Maienschein of ASU. If I write up a more detailed summary of this talk, I\u0026rsquo;ll bring some of that into it.)\nJerry Coyne gave a summary of his book, Why Evolution is True. He defined five constituents of the theory of evolution and pointed out predictions, retrodictions, and evidence supporting each of them from a variety of scientific disciplines. He book-ended his discussion with the famous chart of rate of acceptance of evolution by country (from a study co-authored by Eugenie Scott) at the start, and a suggestion as to why that pattern of acceptance holds at the end (appealing to Greg Paul\u0026rsquo;s evidence that belief in God is correlated with social dysfunction). He concluded that the real way to increase the effectiveness of teaching of evolution is to build a better, more just society. I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical\u0026ndash;I think there are likely other causes behind the correlation, and that the strength of religious belief in the U.S. may be the result of religious competition due to the lack of an official state religion.\nDaniel Dennett gave what I thought was the most interesting talk of the conference, titled \u0026ldquo;The Evolution of Confusion.\u0026quot; His initial premise is that you reverse engineer things by trying to break them, and to reverse engineer religion, you can look for \u0026ldquo;experiments of nature\u0026rdquo; in the same way neuroscientists reverse engineer the brain by looking for cases of humans with particular brain lesions or damage due to accidents, and compare them to those without. In the case of religion, the form of pathology he chose to study is preachers who are atheists. Not former preachers who are atheists, but those who are still in the pulpit and in the closet, yet don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God. Working with Linda LaScala, he\u0026rsquo;s found six cases of such preachers (who themselves think there are many others), ages 37-72, one female and five male, three in liberal denominations and three in literalist/fundamentalist denominations. These people have fallen into what he called \u0026ldquo;the not so tender trap\u0026rdquo; where they have financial dependence upon their jobs, have lost opportunities for other training, and find it \u0026ldquo;difficult to say to the rest of the world I have wasted the last 40 years of my life.\u0026rdquo; Half of them, though, he thinks will go public in the near future, while two will probably never do so, because they feel like they will do less harm by living a lie than by coming clean.\nDennett compared these closeted atheist clergy to homosexuals in the 1950\u0026rsquo;s, either having no \u0026ldquo;gaydar\u0026rdquo; or being afraid to test it. They\u0026rsquo;ll occasionally resort to the age-old subterfuge of saying things like \u0026ldquo;I have an uncle who thinks X, what do you think of that\u0026rdquo; to their colleagues to try to identify other possible atheists by expressing their doubts with a thin veil of plausible deniability.\nEach traces the roots of their problems to seminary, because professors of Bible studies tend to tell the truth about the evidence, and the evidence isn\u0026rsquo;t good for the Bible. But they do so with a theological spin that is an attempt to use clever ways of speaking to glide over problems and provide ministers with answers to \u0026ldquo;What can I say to the parishioners?\u0026rdquo; which have the features of not being a bare-faced lie, relieving skepticism without arousing curiosity, and seeming to be profound. Dennett introduced the concept of a \u0026ldquo;deepity\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;propositions that seem to be profound, because they are actually logically ill-formed, having one meaning that is trivially true and another which is false but would be earth-shattering if true. A familiar deepity is \u0026ldquo;Love is just a word.\u0026rdquo; On one reading, it\u0026rsquo;s true\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;love\u0026rdquo; is just a word. On another, it\u0026rsquo;s false\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;whatever love is, it isn\u0026rsquo;t a word,\u0026rdquo; he observed, and noted \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t find love in a dictionary\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s almost a deepity itself.\u0026rdquo; This is an elementary logical mistake, failing to distinguish the use of a word (in the latter case) from a mention of a word (in the former case). If you quote a word to talk about the word itself, that\u0026rsquo;s a mention; if you use the word to convey its meaning, in order to refer to the things described by the word, that\u0026rsquo;s a use. This is a common error in undergraduate philosophy papers, so common that many graders identify it as \u0026ldquo;UME\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;use-mention error.\u0026quot;\nDennett gave examples of such errors in statements by Karen Armstrong, including in the title of her book, A History of God. It\u0026rsquo;s not a history of God, it\u0026rsquo;s a history of the concept of God. Similarly for Robert Wright\u0026rsquo;s recent The Evolution of God. And he provided some further examples from sociologist of religion Rodney Stark (who seems to me to be using the \u0026ldquo;symmetry principle\u0026rdquo; just as sociologists of science do) and from Karen Armstrong, including this answer from the latter in response to the question \u0026ldquo;Do you believe God exists?\u0026rdquo; from Terry Gross on NPR: \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s the wrong question. It presupposes that God is the sort of being that could exist or not exit. God is no being at all. God is being itself. God is the God beyond God.\u0026rdquo; Dennett observed that \u0026ldquo;God is no being at all\u0026rdquo; is sophisticated theology, while \u0026ldquo;No being at all is God\u0026rdquo; is crude atheism, yet those are logically equivalent statements. Theology, Dennett argued, is \u0026ldquo;like a magician doing a trick where you can see the card up his sleeve.\u0026quot;\nAt dinner, we watched a short three-minute promotional video for the Richard Dawkins Foundation that featured Michael Shermer, P.Z. Myers, and Brian Greene, among others, talking about what is science. Richard Dawkins then spoke, summarizing the last chapter of his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, which has chapter sections related to and titled from the words of the last paragraph of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Origin of Species. One of the more memorable sections was about \u0026ldquo;The Four Memories\u0026rdquo; we have\u0026ndash;the memory of past successes encoded into our biology and preserved by natural selection, the immune system\u0026rsquo;s memory of diseases we\u0026rsquo;ve experienced during our lifetime, the memories accumulated by our brains, and the collective memory of transmitted culture.\nDawkins spent a very, very long time signing books, and looked exhausted when he signed my copy of The Blind Watchmaker near the end of the line.\nThe evening ended with a live music and karaoke party put on by Atheist Nexus.\nSunday\nThe first talk of the morning I attended (and live-tweeted) was Gerardo Romero of Ateismo desde Mexico, about atheism in Mexico. His group has been around for about 10 years. It first started on MSN forums but migrated to its own website and forums, and has now begun to migrate into the real world with two atheist marches. The First World Atheist March occurred on September 28, 2008 in Mexico City and Guadalajara in Mexico, as well as in Italy, Spain, Peru, and Colombia. They received newspaper coverage in the Excelsior, a major Mexico City newspaper. A second march was held on September 27, 2009 (Spain did theirs on a different day due to a holiday conflict), with participation also from ArgAtea in Argentina and Ateos from Peru. He talked about ADM\u0026rsquo;s plans for further activism to promote science and critical thinking, separation of church and state, and distribution of condoms. ADM has a podcast, Masa Critica, as well as an electronic magazine, Hidra, published on their website.\nJonathan Kirsch spoke about the \u0026ldquo;Inquisitorial toolbox,\u0026rdquo; first in the context of the history of the Inquisition and then as applied to more recent events. The main tools he described were the use of torture as punishment for wrong belief (as opposed to wrong action), calling this torture by a different name to conceal the real purpose behind the act, and requiring the \u0026ldquo;naming of names\u0026rdquo; as an act of contrition to show the sincerity of a recantation. In practice, this was used to eliminate competition and accumulate wealth, as well as to combat heresy (a word that derives from the Greek word for a free choice). He described the beginnings of the Inquisition as a tool to root out and eliminate the Cathars or Albigensians, whose heresy was to disbelieve in the newly-introduced 13th century doctrine of transsubstantiation. The Cathars reasoned that this doctrine was the opposite of holy belief\u0026ndash;if we believe it, we must believe that \u0026ldquo;when we go to the privy we will piss out the blood of our savior, and excrete the body of our savior.\u0026rdquo; A crusade against them failed to wipe them out, and so the Inquisition was invented to root them out by using informants, the threat and actuality of torture, and the collection of names. The Inquisition was subsequently used to wipe out the Templars and seize their wealth\u0026ndash;forfeiture was also a key tool in the toolbox, making the victims pay for the privilege of being tortured.\nKirsch gave more modern examples including the use of \u0026ldquo;spectral evidence\u0026rdquo; in the Salem witch trials, the show trials of Stalinist Russia, and Hitler\u0026rsquo;s forcing Jews to wear identifying badges and the identification of Jews in terms of bloodline as elements consciously copied from the Spanish Inquisition. And although the last victim of the Inquisition was executed in 1826 (garroted and placed in a barrel with flames painted on it as a reminder of the glory days of burnings at the stake) and the Inquisition was formally ended in 1834, The Holy Office which was created to run the Inquisition still exists to this day under a different name (\u0026ldquo;Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith\u0026rdquo;), headed by the Pope. I was reminded of how the Church of Scientology, after being prosecuted for criminal activity associated with its \u0026ldquo;Guardian Office,\u0026rdquo; claimed to reform by changing the name of that unit to the \u0026ldquo;Office of Special Affairs.\u0026quot;\nKirsch also observed that the tactics of the McCarthy Era and of the \u0026ldquo;global war on terror\u0026rdquo; have also used tools from the Inquisitor\u0026rsquo;s toolbox. I think he could have also pointed out uses of the toolbox in the war on drugs (especially the use of civil forfeiture and \u0026ldquo;naming of names\u0026rdquo;).\nEugenie Scott gave a talk about intelligent design which focused primarily on the strategies that have been used to try to get it into the public schools. While the direct approach failed in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the latest approach has been with \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;explore alternative evidence\u0026rdquo; bills and attempts to change state educational standards. She recounted recent events in Texas regarding attempts to put \u0026ldquo;teach the controversy\u0026rdquo;-style wording into the Texas Educational Knowledge and Skills document, which started as a requirement to teach \u0026ldquo;strengths and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; across all domains, and ended with \u0026ldquo;all sides of scientific reasoning.\u0026rdquo; She then looked at some 1990\u0026rsquo;s-2000 cases where individual teachers tried to teach creationism and were slapped down (Ray Webster, John Peloza, and Rodney LaVake), and noted that the \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; bills are essentially an attempt to legislate against such further slapdowns. Such a bill has passed in Louisiana, which allows teachers to bring in supplemental materials to critique biological evolution, global warming, and human cloning. She pointed to a phylogeny of these bills constructed by Anton Mates that showed how they have evolved.\nThese bills are constructed to try to avoid the possibility of legal challenge. They avoid any mention of religion to avoid establishment clause violations. They stress free speech and academic freedom. They are phrased as protective of a teacher\u0026rsquo;s right to teach alternatives. And they are formulated as permissive rather than directive bills, which means that they have avoided a facial challenge\u0026ndash;a judge isn\u0026rsquo;t likely to grant an injunction against them on the vague language of the bill, but only to do so on the basis of an \u0026ldquo;as applied\u0026rdquo; challenge if there\u0026rsquo;s a particular case of where a teacher following the bill engages in activity that infringes the constitution and a parent and student with standing can be found to sue.\nThe final talk of the day I attended was Brian Parra\u0026rsquo;s talk, \u0026ldquo;All Together Now: Strategies for Growing the Freethought Community.\u0026rdquo; He distinguished identity vs. beliefs, pointing out that the Pew polls on belief are structured by first asking how a person self-identifies, then asking them a series of questions about belief. Only 1.6% of the U.S. population self-identifies as atheist, and it can be daunting to look at 1.6% vs. 98.4% of everybody else. But if you add agnostics, you get another 2.6%, a total of 4.2%, which is a group larger than Jews and Mormons put together. If you add \u0026ldquo;none\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s, you get another 12.1%, and a total of 16.3%\u0026ndash;about the size of the black community. If you add in the \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t know\u0026rdquo; answerers, and adherents of nontheistic religions, you get up to 18.5%. If you look at not-monotheists, you get 20.1%. And if you look at not-evangelical-Christians, you get 74.3%.\nHe further noted that if you look at how self-identified Catholics answer the question \u0026ldquo;Do you believe in God?\u0026rdquo;, you\u0026rsquo;ll find that 25% of them said no. (By the same token, though, if you look at how self-identified atheists answered that question, you\u0026rsquo;ll find that 21% of them said yes.)\nHe suggested that we define positive aspects of atheism and create coalitions based on common ground, and drew squiggly circles around a diagram that showed all of these groups regarding their answers to the questions, for those who don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God, who believe in a physical universe and natural cause (I believe he meant only in, i.e., rejection of the supernatural), who support secular government, humanistic ethics, and have confidence in science and reason. These he identified as the \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; for creating an atheist worldview. Afterward, I asked him what\u0026rsquo;s the difference between his \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; and secular humanism, to which he answered \u0026ldquo;Nothing.\u0026rdquo; If it is different, it is only in being somewhat more concisely (and vaguely) formulated.\nHe concluded by saying that a possible model for success is church minus the theology\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just a community that plans varied activities aimed at different age groups and interests, not just about atheism but in the name of atheism, which stays in touch with constituents via various media, which brings new people into positions of responsibility, and which seeks out \u0026ldquo;public displays of atheism, not merely for protest and activism, but also to demonstrate that atheists exist and are nice people.\u0026quot;\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I\u0026rsquo;m optimistic about that approach. Not only is it already being done by the humanists (including both CFI and AHA), while his initial remarks were about ways to increase the scope and size of coalitions, his \u0026ldquo;Big Five,\u0026rdquo; by looking at the intersection of those \u0026ldquo;squigglies\u0026rdquo; rather than the union, inherently shrinks them. And by far, the one that cuts down the group the most is the first one, nonbelief in Gods. I think this is, to some degree, an advantage that skeptics have over atheists, which is that they put the emphasis on the last item on his list, support for science and critical thinking, rather than the first. I\u0026rsquo;m inclined to think that the last three of the \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; are far more important things to share in a civil society than the first two.\nAll in all, it was a great conference, despite a few glitches involving errors in room assignment, last-minute schedule changes, and technology. The most appealing aspects for me were the top-notch speakers on science and the chance to socialize and engage in discussion with many like-minded, intelligent people, even if they are part of a granfalloon.\nUPDATE (October 11, 2009): Relevant to Brian Parra\u0026rsquo;s talk is Luke Galen\u0026rsquo;s sociological study of nonbelievers, the Non-Religious Identification Survey, as well as Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer\u0026rsquo;s book Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America\u0026rsquo;s Nonbelievers, which I just read about in the presentation slides of a talk by Taner Edis of the Secular Outpost.\nUPDATE (October 23, 2009): You can find a translation of this summary into Arabic at the Arab Atheists Network website.\nUPDATE (November 16, 2009): Daniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk from the AAI conference is online here.\nUPDATE (December 27, 2009): Lawrence Krauss\u0026rsquo;s talk, Jerry Coyne\u0026rsquo;s talk, Andy Thomson\u0026rsquo;s talk, Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; talk, P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; talk, and Carolyn Porco\u0026rsquo;s talk are all on YouTube as well.\nOther Blogs on the AAI Convention\nP.Z. Myers wrote about Russell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s talk on defamation of religion, Toni Marano, Robert Richert\u0026rsquo;s talk on Vietnam, Maurice Bisheff\u0026rsquo;s apparently kooky talk on Thomas Paine, the Dogma Free America panel, the Maher/Dawkins Award ceremony, an exhibit on Evolutionary Genealogy, a gift of a bottle of wine supplied while having dinner with Daniel Dennett, acting in a forthcoming Mr. Deity episode, other gifts of wine and Surly-Ramics jewelry, proof of meeting Mr. Deity and Lucy supplied by your truly, and a challenge regarding the Atheist Nexus.\nPaul Fidalgo wrote summaries of the Dogma Free America panel, Lawrence Krauss\u0026rsquo;s talk, Caroline Porco\u0026rsquo;s talk, and the Bill Maher award.\nJohn Crippen describes his AAI convention experience in three posts: one, two, and three.\nSurly Amy offers her observations on why \u0026ldquo;You Don\u0026rsquo;t Have to Be a Skeptic to Be an Atheist,\u0026quot; which nicely complements P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; review of Maurice Bisheff\u0026rsquo;s talk. I agree with her, and also note that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be an atheist to be a skeptic. These two posts illustrate why I prefer to self-identify with skeptics.\nRich Orman interviewed a number of the speakers for his Dogma Free America podcast, including P.Z. Myers, Ed Buckner, Stuart Bechman, Sean Faircloth, Alpharabius, and Brother Richard of AtheistNexus.\nIf anyone comes across other summaries worthy of mention, note them in the comments or in email and I\u0026rsquo;ll append them here.\n(Photo of UFO sighting in Marriott lobby by Reed Esau.)\nprivate (2009-10-06):\nThanks for the Summary Jim! I really wanted to go, but financially unable to attend. My favorite was your summary of Dennett\u0026#39;s talk. This sounds like the new hot convention circut and I can\u0026#39;t wait to attend the next one... maybe represent some women while I\u0026#39;m at it :) Chrystine\nUnknown (2009-10-08):\nHey Jim... Thanks for the write up on my talk\u0026hellip;I noticed with amusement that the segment addressing it is as long as some of the other major speakers.\nI wanted to comment that, as we sometimes do, I thought of a much better answer much later to your question about how my big five suggestion is different from Secular Humanism. Well…Secualr Humanism is two of the five. My strategy is an activist strategy to build a better future and crowd out competing ideologies. And while things like the Humanist Manifesto certainly name check things like material universe and non-superstition, you’ll find that most humanists in action are uncomfortable rallying directly against religion, and concern themselves with matters of ethics, compassion and responsibility, all of which are vital and my big five strategy would include that as part of the whole.\nAnd as to the point that my big five inherently shrinking the size of coalitions, my point was that those who hold all five “ideals” in high regard, or were in the center of my Ven diagram (which was not the same as the population diagram) crossing all five, will, out of necessity, be the leaders of the strategy to build the future I laid out at the beginning of the talk. Those who are ALL of the five will need to quarterback the team, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else isn’t also there building the future too.\nI assume that humanists will have a different set of ideals, and would build different coalitions to achieve their future and rightly include Atheists when they need us and exclude us when they don’t.\nPaul Fidalgo (2009-10-08):\nThanks for the plug, and good work on the encapsulations!\nLippard (2009-10-10):\nBrian: I thought you gave a good and important talk--it would have been nice to have it a bit earlier in the conference so it could have been better attended. I agree that your presentation of the \u0026quot;squigglies\u0026quot; is the right way to look at the issue, though I think that it may not be atheists driving the show for any of those coalitions given their size, especially not necessarily capital-A Atheists who share all of your \u0026quot;Big Five.\u0026quot; Since most of those sorts of coalitions already exist today, I think you can see that\u0026#39;s already the case. For example, separation of church and state is already driven powerfully by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and similar organizations. While atheists are part of those coalitions (and some atheists are leaders in them), they aren\u0026#39;t running the show and probably shouldn\u0026#39;t expect to be. From my own perspective, I'm not sure I want to affiliate with a new group of capital-A atheists and I worry that once groups get formalized, perpetuation of the group becomes more important than the ideals. I'm much happier with the idea of choosing my own \u0026quot;Big Five\u0026quot; (or \u0026quot;Big Two,\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;Big Ten\u0026quot;) and participating in semi-permanent informal coalitions with individuals and organizations I've come to trust. I prefer organizations that are focused more narrowly, since they're less likely to do things I disagree with. And the social aspect\u0026ndash;I get that from groups that focus on the social aspect, and don't also try to be politically active (though some of its members are likely to be).\nUnknown (2009-10-12):\nHey Jim, I agree with you and think you bring up a good point: We don't need to \u0026quot;start\u0026quot; these coalitions as many already exist (but we do need to start the ones that dont exist). We as atheists could do a lot more to participate in the existing colations, no need to reinvent the wheel, and I'll highlight that point in future talks.\nThe issue is that we need to be participating in building the world we belive in, not nessesarily always trying to tear down the world we disagree with. It's the more-flies-with-honey-than-vinegar strategy and I dont disagree with any of your points other than this: this strategy is a minority strategy. We aren't too small to make these changes ourselves, but we do it by aligning ourselves with bigger parties for certain things and realigning ourselves when the task is done.\nI think you've got the right idea in your last sentace there, but if we are to make bigger changes,. we need to be willing to move as a unit sometimes.\nGeorgeRic (2009-10-12):\nI challenge atheists who say we just don\u0026#39;t have our brains in gear: 166 years ago Abbott\u0026#39; s \u0026#39;Flatland\u0026#39; showed that contiguous geometrical worlds explain where God is and why we can\u0026#39;t see him. So we wrote \u0026#39;Techie Worlds\u0026#39; for mechanical people and did the scientific thing: we looked at Christian teachings like the Trinity, like resurrection, judgment, the idea of a soul. In contiguous geometrical worlds these things are logical and understandable, even though to \u0026#39;this-world-only\u0026#39; atheists they are ridiculous imaginings. We see a lot of belief in devils, in miracles, in good and evil spirits. Just talk with your friendly Wiccas and Satanists. Their recognition of spirit worlds makes it more probable that our view, the view of love, of the world is correct. Besides, there is Pascal\u0026#39;s wager, pointing out that Christian belief can reward while atheism surely leads to death. The labels: Thinking, Logical, Reasonable, Rational really belong to Christians more than to those proudly acclaimed agnostics. Get a copy of \u0026#39;Techie Worlds\u0026#39; from amazon.com and see the reasonableness of Abbott\u0026#39;s explanation. GeorgeRic\nLippard (2009-10-15):\nGeorgeRic: Wiccans and Satanists do not, in fact, agree with you. To say that shows that you haven't bothered to look at their worldviews.\nAbbott's \u0026quot;Flatland\u0026quot; is a great book, but doesn't do much for God. The sphere interacting with Flatland is causally detectible by the flatlanders even though they are restricted to two dimensions. There's no parallel evidence for God.\nThere is certainly a strong probability that there are things epistemically inaccessible to human beings, but a God that is completely inaccessible and doesn't interact with our universe is not the God of the Bible.\nLippard (2009-10-18):\nBrian: I made a quick pass at my view on coalitions that bears some resemblance to yours, minus the need for having a new big-A atheism leading the way, in this blog post a couple years ago, which you may find of interest.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/10/atheist-alliance-international.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/AAI-UFO.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"/images/AAI-UFO.jpg\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389228363273039538\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 150px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Atheist Alliance International convention took place over the weekend, October 2-4, 2009, at the Burbank Airport Marriott hotel, and I took my usual level of notes for the talks I attended.  But rather than (or perhaps temporarily in lieu of) giving detailed summaries of each talk over the next several weeks, this will be one post with brief comments on each.  If there\u0026rsquo;s demand, I can follow this up with more detailed posts on individual talks of interest.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere were over 700 attendees at the conference, and I believe I heard that last year\u0026rsquo;s conference was about 450.  It\u0026rsquo;s not as big as The Amazing Meeting, but if that rate of growth isn\u0026rsquo;t an artifact of say, the fact that this conference was co-sponsored by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason and featured an unbelievable set of high-powered speakers, then they\u0026rsquo;ll catch up quickly.  The AAI conference participation seemed to be more diverse than TAM, with a higher proportion of women and minorities, though it\u0026rsquo;s still not close to representative of the population\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s still a white male dominance.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe conference talks were divided into \u0026ldquo;tracks\u0026rdquo; which were really more just rough categories than a system of tracks that could be followed, which were Science, Advocacy, Heritage, and Development.  Events that weren\u0026rsquo;t talks included an optional pre-conference event of attending a live studio taping of a TV show (\u0026ldquo;100 Questions\u0026rdquo;), an optional post-conference event of an L.A. bus tour and visit to the La Brea tarpits, a live viewing of \u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher\u0026rdquo; featuring Richard Dawkins (shortly before they both showed up in person), entertainment by Mr. Deity (including live performance and a few of the shows, as well as some personal background from Brian Keith Dalton), a live recording of the Dogma Free America podcast with a panel of speakers, a standup comedy showcase hosted by Comedy Jesus Troy Conrad, a \u0026ldquo;taste of Camp Quest\u0026rdquo; for kids, and an Atheist Nexus live music party.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eFriday\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nI arrived a bit later than planned\u0026ndash;my expected driving time of just under six hours turned out to take over seven due to a few traffic issues along the way\u0026ndash;and I missed three things I had wanted to attend.  Those were Rich Orman\u0026rsquo;s panel discussion for his \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/\"\u003eDogma Free America podcast\u003c/a\u003e, with P.Z. Myers, William B. Davis, and Sunsara Taylor; Alpharabius\u0026rsquo; talk on atheism in the Arab world; and Russell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s talk on attempts to regulate against \u0026ldquo;defamation of religion.\u0026rdquo;  Fortunately, Alpharabius gave me a capsule summary of his talk and I had a few chances to chat with \u003ca href=\"http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/\"\u003eRussell Blackford\u003c/a\u003e and Rich Orman, so that partly made up for it.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u003c/span\u003e gave an entertaining talk on \u0026ldquo;Design v. Chance\u0026rdquo; that began with a parody of a typical intelligent design creationist presentation, argued that ID arguments are at root an \u0026ldquo;over-extended metaphor\u0026rdquo; of design accompanied by misrepresentations of science.  He showed how the ID claim that Darwin thought cells were mere \u0026ldquo;balls of protoplasm\u0026rdquo; is false, and presented evidence that various features thought to be characteristic of multicellular life have been found to be present in choanoflagellate protists.  He ended by sharing a couple of useful words, \u0026ldquo;kipple\u0026rdquo; (from Philip K. Dick\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,\u0026rdquo; meaning accumulated useless objects) and \u0026ldquo;granfalloon\u0026rdquo; (from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCat\u0026rsquo;s Cradle\u003c/span\u003e, meaning a label on a group that doesn\u0026rsquo;t really have anything significant in common, like \u0026ldquo;Hoosier\u0026rdquo;).  For \u0026ldquo;granfalloon,\u0026rdquo; he quoted the statement from Bokonon in Vonnegut\u0026rsquo;s book, \u0026ldquo;if you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.\u0026rdquo;  Isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rdquo; a good example of a granfalloon, if all we share is lack of a belief in God?  (This ended up being relevant to Brian Parra\u0026rsquo;s talk at the end of the conference.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAfter a cocktail and socializing session, the main ballroom showed \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e on a big screen, featuring his guests Janeane Garofalo, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and Thomas Friedman, then joined by Richard Dawkins.  Maher demonstrated the witty and incisive criticism of religion that won him the Dawkins award, though he also made some comments about environmental causes of cancer that have raised controversy about his receiving an award with \u0026ldquo;science\u0026rdquo; in its name when he has pseudoscientific opinions about matters such as medicine (as Orac has forcefully argued in a series of posts at his Respectful Insolence blog: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/here_are_those_inconvenient_questions_fo.php\"\u003eone\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/the_time_has_come.php\"\u003etwo\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/a_report_from_the_field.php\"\u003ethree\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/my_last_entry_on_the_maher_issue_probabl.php\"\u003efour\u003c/a\u003e).  This was followed by entertainment from \u003ca href=\"http://www.mrdeity.com/\"\u003eMr. Deity\u003c/a\u003e in the form of both live performance and videos, along with some personal history from Brian Keith Dalton.  Then Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins entered the room.  Dawkins recounted the highlights of Maher\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Religulous\u0026rdquo; as the reasons for the award, and Maher accepted the award, noting (accurately) that Dawkins summary was better than the movie itself, followed by his routine of reading from Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Purpose Driven Life\u003c/span\u003e which you can find on YouTube. Maher was the least-approachable celebrity at the entire conference; even those sitting at his VIP table were unable to ask him questions, as \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_evening_award_ceremony.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers reported firsthand\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSaturday\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEd Buckner\u003c/span\u003e gave a talk about how atheist and freethought organizations are learning to cooperate, which I live-tweeted comments on.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eLawrence Krauss\u003c/span\u003e gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Our Miserable Future\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Life, the Universe, and Nothing: The Future of Life and Science in an Expanding Universe,\u0026rdquo; in which he argued that the best evidence shows that we are in a flat, rather than an open or closed universe, which means that it will continue expanding towards some limit.  He gave a history of cosmology from the discovery of the expansion of the universe to dark matter, and pointed out that we are fortunate to live in a time when the energy density of dark matter vs. ordinary matter in the universe is approximately the same, and the expanding universe is at a point where other galaxies are still visible.  The upshot of this is that we are fortunate to live in a time where we have the evidence of Hubble expansion and the Big Bang. Intelligent civilizations of the distant future will be unable to see any galaxies other than their own, or any evidence of the Big Bang, and will conclude that they are in a static and eternal universe based on the best evidence that they have.  Such people will be \u0026ldquo;lonely and ignorant, but dominant,\u0026rdquo; which Krauss said those of us here in the U.S. are already used to. They will have an irreparably wrong picture of the universe from their epistemological blindness due to state of the universe around them.  (What similar blindness do we suffer from due to our current place in the universe and observational abilities?)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCarolyn Porco\u003c/span\u003e gave a talk which began as a celebration of Galileo\u0026rsquo;s steps towards a scientific method, which she said couldn\u0026rsquo;t be applied to God because no experiment is possible that is relevant to God.  (This strikes me as erroneous in a number of ways, since claims about God usually have empirical consequences, it\u0026rsquo;s possible to make philosophical arguments which draw upon scientific data, and her picture of science seemed to be based on an overly simplified Popperian philosophy of science.)  She argued that it is \u0026ldquo;very difficult to prove a negative\u0026rdquo; (as if \u0026ldquo;proof\u0026rdquo; is what science cares about\u0026ndash;but at least she didn\u0026rsquo;t make the mistake of saying it\u0026rsquo;s impossible).  She claimed that science and religion are \u0026ldquo;completely different\u0026rdquo; and are not only not equivalent (certainly true) but are \u0026ldquo;not intersecting\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;apparently advocating something like Stephen Jay Gould\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;non-overlapping magisteria\u0026rdquo; view, which is falsified by the fact that religions do make empirical claims.  She complained about Hollywood\u0026rsquo;s depiction of scientists in a negative light and blamed it for deterring young people from going into science, though she supplied no scientific evidence to support this (though she referred to a survey of science-related films from 1920-1994 by two researchers that concluded depictions were overwhelmingly negative).  I think it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely that such depictions have much of a negative effect at all, since polls in the U.S. and other countries about what professions are most trusted \u003ca href=\"http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=688\"\u003eput doctors, teachers, and scientists very high compared to most other professions\u003c/a\u003e.  Businessmen are similarly victims of negative portrayals in Hollywood, and are also less trusted, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to translate into fewer undergraduates choosing to become business majors.  I suspect a better explanation of any reduction in science enrollments (if that\u0026rsquo;s actually happening) would be found in elementary and secondary education, along with the fact that people find science and math difficult.  She concluded with \u003ca href=\"http://ciclops.org/\"\u003ea series of fantastic photographs of Saturn and its moon Enceladus from the Cassini mission\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMartin Pera\u003c/span\u003e spoke about embryonic stem cells, science and policy, arguing that it will revolutionize medicine by allowing restoration of cell loss through transplantation as well as the development of new methods of research using stem cells.  He pointed out various challenges to \u0026ldquo;regenerative medicine,\u0026rdquo; including rejection, tumor formation, and implanted stem cells developing the same pathologies that they\u0026rsquo;re designed to treat, but observed that these also present new opportunities to learn.  On the public policy side, he argued that scientists need to engage more with the public, patient advocacy plays a key role in policy discussions, and careful and thoughtful regulation is preferable to \u0026ldquo;premature prescriptive regulation.\u0026rdquo; (This ties into a lot of the subject matter in law, science, and technology I\u0026rsquo;m studying this semester, and Pera\u0026rsquo;s talk had considerable overlap with a talk I attended earlier this year at the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix on embryonic stem cells by Prof. Jane Maienschein of ASU.  If I write up a more detailed summary of this talk, I\u0026rsquo;ll bring some of that into it.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJerry Coyne\u003c/span\u003e gave a summary of his book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy Evolution is True\u003c/span\u003e.  He defined five constituents of the theory of evolution and pointed out predictions, retrodictions, and evidence supporting each of them from a variety of scientific disciplines.  He book-ended his discussion with \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/us-acceptance-of-evolution-ranks-us-33.html\"\u003ethe famous chart of rate of acceptance of evolution by country\u003c/a\u003e (from a study co-authored by Eugenie Scott) at the start, and a suggestion as to why that pattern of acceptance holds at the end (appealing to \u003ca href=\"http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2009/09/religion-related-to-social-dysfunction.html\"\u003eGreg Paul\u0026rsquo;s evidence that belief in God is correlated with social dysfunction\u003c/a\u003e). He concluded that the real way to increase the effectiveness of teaching of evolution is to build a better, more just society.  I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical\u0026ndash;I think there are likely other causes behind the correlation, and that the strength of religious belief in the U.S. may be the result of religious competition due to the lack of an official state religion.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDaniel Dennett\u003c/span\u003e gave what I thought was the most interesting talk of the conference, titled \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/daniel-dennett-evolution-of-confusion.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Evolution of Confusion.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e His initial premise is that you reverse engineer things by trying to break them, and to reverse engineer religion, you can look for \u0026ldquo;experiments of nature\u0026rdquo; in the same way neuroscientists reverse engineer the brain by looking for cases of humans with particular brain lesions or damage due to accidents, and compare them to those without.  In the case of religion, the form of pathology he chose to study is preachers who are atheists.  Not former preachers who are atheists, but those who are still in the pulpit and in the closet, yet don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God.  Working with Linda LaScala, he\u0026rsquo;s found six cases of such preachers (who themselves think there are many others), ages 37-72, one female and five male, three in liberal denominations and three in literalist/fundamentalist denominations.  These people have fallen into what he called \u0026ldquo;the not so tender trap\u0026rdquo; where they have financial dependence upon their jobs, have lost opportunities for other training, and find it \u0026ldquo;difficult to say to the rest of the world I have wasted the last 40 years of my life.\u0026rdquo;  Half of them, though, he thinks will go public in the near future, while two will probably never do so, because they feel like they will do less harm by living a lie than by coming clean.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDennett compared these closeted atheist clergy to homosexuals in the 1950\u0026rsquo;s, either having no \u0026ldquo;gaydar\u0026rdquo; or being afraid to test it.  They\u0026rsquo;ll occasionally resort to the age-old subterfuge of saying things like \u0026ldquo;I have an uncle who thinks X, what do you think of that\u0026rdquo; to their colleagues to try to identify other possible atheists by expressing their doubts with a thin veil of plausible deniability.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEach traces the roots of their problems to seminary, because professors of Bible studies tend to tell the truth about the evidence, and the evidence isn\u0026rsquo;t good for the Bible.  But they do so with a theological spin that is an attempt to use clever ways of speaking to glide over problems and provide ministers with answers to \u0026ldquo;What can I say to the parishioners?\u0026rdquo; which have the features of not being a bare-faced lie, relieving skepticism without arousing curiosity, and seeming to be profound.  Dennett introduced the concept of a \u0026ldquo;deepity\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;propositions that seem to be profound, because they are actually logically ill-formed, having one meaning that is trivially true and another which is false but would be earth-shattering if true. A familiar deepity is \u0026ldquo;Love is just a word.\u0026rdquo;  On one reading, it\u0026rsquo;s true\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;love\u0026rdquo; is just a word.  On another, it\u0026rsquo;s false\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;whatever love is, it isn\u0026rsquo;t a word,\u0026rdquo; he observed, and noted \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t find love in a dictionary\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s almost a deepity itself.\u0026rdquo;  This is an elementary logical mistake, failing to distinguish the use of a word (in the latter case) from a mention of a word (in the former case).  If you quote a word to talk about the word itself, that\u0026rsquo;s a mention; if you use the word to convey its meaning, in order to refer to the things described by the word, that\u0026rsquo;s a use.  This is a common error in undergraduate philosophy papers, so common that many graders identify it as \u0026ldquo;UME\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;use-mention error.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDennett gave examples of such errors in statements by Karen Armstrong, including in the title of her book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA History of God\u003c/span\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s not a history of God, it\u0026rsquo;s a history of the concept of God. Similarly for Robert Wright\u0026rsquo;s recent \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Evolution of God\u003c/span\u003e.  And he provided some further examples from sociologist of religion Rodney Stark (who seems to me to be using the \u0026ldquo;symmetry principle\u0026rdquo; just as sociologists of science do) and from Karen Armstrong, including this answer from the latter in response to the question \u0026ldquo;Do you believe God exists?\u0026rdquo; from Terry Gross on NPR:  \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s the wrong question. It presupposes that God is the sort of being that could exist or not exit. God is no being at all. God is being itself. God is the God beyond God.\u0026rdquo;  Dennett observed that \u0026ldquo;God is no being at all\u0026rdquo; is sophisticated theology, while \u0026ldquo;No being at all is God\u0026rdquo; is crude atheism, yet those are logically equivalent statements.  Theology, Dennett argued, is \u0026ldquo;like a magician doing a trick where you can see the card up his sleeve.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAt dinner, we watched a short three-minute \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003epromotional video for the Richard Dawkins Foundation\u003c/span\u003e that featured Michael Shermer, P.Z. Myers, and Brian Greene, among others, talking about what is science.  \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRichard Dawkins\u003c/span\u003e then spoke, summarizing the last chapter of his latest book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Greatest Show on Earth\u003c/span\u003e, which has chapter sections related to and titled from the words of the last paragraph of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrigin of Species\u003c/span\u003e.  One of the more memorable sections was about \u0026ldquo;The Four Memories\u0026rdquo; we have\u0026ndash;the memory of past successes encoded into our biology and preserved by natural selection, the immune system\u0026rsquo;s memory of diseases we\u0026rsquo;ve experienced during our lifetime, the memories accumulated by our brains, and the collective memory of transmitted culture.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDawkins spent a very, very long time signing books, and looked exhausted when he signed my copy of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Blind Watchmaker\u003c/span\u003e near the end of the line.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe evening ended with a live music and karaoke party put on by \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAtheist Nexus\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSunday\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe first talk of the morning I attended (and live-tweeted) was \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eGerardo Romero\u003c/span\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ateosmexicanos.com/portal/\"\u003eAteismo desde Mexico\u003c/a\u003e, about atheism in Mexico.  His group has been around for about 10 years. It first started on MSN forums but migrated to its own website and forums, and has now begun to migrate into the real world with two atheist marches.  The First World Atheist March occurred on September 28, 2008 in Mexico City and Guadalajara in Mexico, as well as in Italy, Spain, Peru, and Colombia.  They received newspaper coverage in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExcelsior\u003c/span\u003e, a major Mexico City newspaper.  A second march was held on September 27, 2009 (Spain did theirs on a different day due to a holiday conflict), with participation also from ArgAtea in Argentina and Ateos from Peru.  He talked about ADM\u0026rsquo;s plans for further activism to promote science and critical thinking, separation of church and state, and distribution of condoms.  ADM has a podcast, \u003ca href=\"http://masacritica.podbean.com/\"\u003eMasa Critica\u003c/a\u003e, as well as an electronic magazine, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHidra\u003c/span\u003e, published on their website.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJonathan Kirsch\u003c/span\u003e spoke about the \u0026ldquo;Inquisitorial toolbox,\u0026rdquo; first in the context of the history of the Inquisition and then as applied to more recent events.  The main tools he described were the use of torture as punishment for wrong belief (as opposed to wrong action), calling this torture by a different name to conceal the real purpose behind the act, and requiring the \u0026ldquo;naming of names\u0026rdquo; as an act of contrition to show the sincerity of a recantation.  In practice, this was used to eliminate competition and accumulate wealth, as well as to combat heresy (a word that derives from the Greek word for a free choice).  He described the beginnings of the Inquisition as a tool to root out and eliminate the Cathars or Albigensians, whose heresy was to disbelieve in the newly-introduced 13th century doctrine of transsubstantiation.  The Cathars reasoned that this doctrine was the opposite of holy belief\u0026ndash;if we believe it, we must believe that \u0026ldquo;when we go to the privy we will piss out the blood of our savior, and excrete the body of our savior.\u0026rdquo;  A crusade against them failed to wipe them out, and so the Inquisition was invented to root them out by using informants, the threat and actuality of torture, and the collection of names.  The Inquisition was subsequently used to wipe out the Templars and seize their wealth\u0026ndash;forfeiture was also a key tool in the toolbox, making the victims pay for the privilege of being tortured.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nKirsch gave more modern examples including the use of \u0026ldquo;spectral evidence\u0026rdquo; in the Salem witch trials, the show trials of Stalinist Russia, and Hitler\u0026rsquo;s forcing Jews to wear identifying badges and the identification of Jews in terms of bloodline as elements consciously copied from the Spanish Inquisition.  And although the last victim of the Inquisition was executed in 1826 (garroted and placed in a barrel with flames painted on it as a reminder of the glory days of burnings at the stake) and the Inquisition was formally ended in 1834, The Holy Office which was created to run the Inquisition \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith\"\u003estill exists to this day under a different name\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith\u0026rdquo;), headed by the Pope.  I was reminded of how the Church of Scientology, after being prosecuted for criminal activity associated with its \u0026ldquo;Guardian Office,\u0026rdquo; claimed to reform by changing the name of that unit to the \u0026ldquo;Office of Special Affairs.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nKirsch also observed that the tactics of the McCarthy Era and of the \u0026ldquo;global war on terror\u0026rdquo; have also used tools from the Inquisitor\u0026rsquo;s toolbox.  I think he could have also pointed out uses of the toolbox in the war on drugs (especially the use of civil forfeiture and \u0026ldquo;naming of names\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEugenie Scott\u003c/span\u003e gave a talk about intelligent design which focused primarily on the strategies that have been used to try to get it into the public schools.  While the direct approach failed in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the latest approach has been with \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;explore alternative evidence\u0026rdquo; bills and attempts to change state educational standards.  She recounted recent events in Texas regarding attempts to put \u0026ldquo;teach the controversy\u0026rdquo;-style wording into the Texas Educational Knowledge and Skills document, which started as a requirement to teach \u0026ldquo;strengths and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; across all domains, and ended with \u0026ldquo;all sides of scientific reasoning.\u0026rdquo;  She then looked at some 1990\u0026rsquo;s-2000 cases where individual teachers tried to teach creationism and were slapped down (Ray Webster, John Peloza, and Rodney LaVake), and noted that the \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; bills are essentially an attempt to legislate against such further slapdowns.  Such a bill has passed in Louisiana, which allows teachers to bring in supplemental materials to critique biological evolution, global warming, and human cloning.  She pointed to a phylogeny of these bills constructed by Anton Mates that showed how they have evolved.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThese bills are constructed to try to avoid the possibility of legal challenge.  They avoid any mention of religion to avoid establishment clause violations.  They stress free speech and academic freedom.  They are phrased as protective of a teacher\u0026rsquo;s right to teach alternatives.  And they are formulated as permissive rather than directive bills, which means that they have avoided a facial challenge\u0026ndash;a judge isn\u0026rsquo;t likely to grant an injunction against them on the vague language of the bill, but only to do so on the basis of an \u0026ldquo;as applied\u0026rdquo; challenge if there\u0026rsquo;s a particular case of where a teacher following the bill engages in activity that infringes the constitution and a parent and student with standing can be found to sue.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe final talk of the day I attended was \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBrian Parra\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s talk, \u0026ldquo;All Together Now: Strategies for Growing the Freethought Community.\u0026rdquo;  He distinguished identity vs. beliefs, pointing out that the Pew polls on belief are structured by first asking how a person self-identifies, then asking them a series of questions about belief.  Only 1.6% of the U.S. population self-identifies as atheist, and it can be daunting to look at 1.6% vs. 98.4% of everybody else.  But if you add agnostics, you get another 2.6%, a total of 4.2%, which is a group larger than Jews and Mormons put together.  If you add \u0026ldquo;none\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s, you get another 12.1%, and a total of 16.3%\u0026ndash;about the size of the black community.  If you add in the \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t know\u0026rdquo; answerers, and adherents of nontheistic religions, you get up to 18.5%.  If you look at not-monotheists, you get 20.1%.  And if you look at not-evangelical-Christians, you get 74.3%.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe further noted that if you look at how self-identified Catholics answer the question \u0026ldquo;Do you believe in God?\u0026rdquo;, you\u0026rsquo;ll find that 25% of them said no.  (By the same token, though, if you look at how self-identified atheists answered that question, \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300818.html\"\u003eyou\u0026rsquo;ll find that 21% of them said yes\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe suggested that we define positive aspects of atheism and create coalitions based on common ground, and drew squiggly circles around a diagram that showed all of these groups regarding their answers to the questions, for those who don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God, who believe in a physical universe and natural cause (I believe he meant \u003cem\u003eonly\u003c/em\u003e in, i.e., rejection of the supernatural), who support secular government, humanistic ethics, and have confidence in science and reason.  These he identified as the \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; for creating an atheist worldview.  Afterward, I asked him what\u0026rsquo;s the difference between his \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; and secular humanism, to which he answered \u0026ldquo;Nothing.\u0026rdquo;  If it is different, it is only in being somewhat more concisely (and vaguely) formulated.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe concluded by saying that a possible model for success is church minus the theology\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just a community that plans varied activities aimed at different age groups and interests, not just about atheism but in the name of atheism, which stays in touch with constituents via various media, which brings new people into positions of responsibility, and which seeks out \u0026ldquo;public displays of atheism, not merely for protest and activism, but also to demonstrate that atheists exist and are nice people.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I\u0026rsquo;m optimistic about that approach. Not only is it already being done by the humanists (including both CFI and AHA), while his initial remarks were about ways to increase the scope and size of coalitions, his \u0026ldquo;Big Five,\u0026rdquo; by looking at the intersection of those \u0026ldquo;squigglies\u0026rdquo; rather than the union, inherently shrinks them.  And by far, the one that cuts down the group the most is the first one, nonbelief in Gods.  I think this is, to some degree, an advantage that skeptics have over atheists, which is that they put the emphasis on the last item on his list, support for science and critical thinking, rather than the first.  I\u0026rsquo;m inclined to think that the last three of the \u0026ldquo;Big Five\u0026rdquo; are far more important things to share in a civil society than the first two.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAll in all, it was a great conference, despite a few glitches involving errors in room assignment, last-minute schedule changes, and technology.  The most appealing aspects for me were the top-notch speakers on science and the chance to socialize and engage in discussion with many like-minded, intelligent people, even if they are part of a granfalloon.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 11, 2009): Relevant to Brian Parra\u0026rsquo;s talk is \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroom/profiles_of_the_godless_results_from_a_survey_of_the_nonreligious/\"\u003eLuke Galen\u0026rsquo;s sociological study of nonbelievers, the Non-Religious Identification Survey\u003c/a\u003e, as well as Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Atheists-Groundbreaking-Study-Americas-Nonbelievers/dp/1591024137/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAtheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America\u0026rsquo;s Nonbelievers\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which I just read about \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2009/10/angry-atheists-etc.html\"\u003ein the presentation slides of a talk by Taner Edis of the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 23, 2009): You can find a translation of this summary into Arabic \u003ca href=\"http://www.el7ad.com/smf/index.php?topic=81737.msg685220#msg685220\"\u003eat the Arab Atheists Network website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 16, 2009): Daniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk from the AAI conference is online \u003ca href=\"/2009/11/daniel-dennett-evolution-of-confusion.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (December 27, 2009): Lawrence Krauss\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e, Jerry Coyne\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1m4mATYoig\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e, Andy Thomson\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnXmDaI8IEo\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e, Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woqLMocWU6I\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e, P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2h9tqNYAo\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e, and Carolyn Porco\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGSv-uZCOyY\"\u003etalk\u003c/a\u003e are all on YouTube as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOther Blogs on the AAI Convention\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nP.Z. Myers wrote about \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_russell_blackford.php\"\u003eRussell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s talk on defamation of religion\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_toni_marano.php\"\u003eToni Marano\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_robert_richert.php\"\u003eRobert Richert\u0026rsquo;s talk on Vietnam\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_maurice_bisheff.php\"\u003eMaurice Bisheff\u0026rsquo;s apparently kooky talk on Thomas Paine\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_dogma_free_america.php\"\u003eDogma Free America panel\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_evening_award_ceremony.php\"\u003ethe Maher/Dawkins Award ceremony\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_evolutionary_genealogy.php\"\u003ean exhibit on Evolutionary Genealogy\u003c/a\u003e, a \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_thank_you.php\"\u003egift of a bottle of wine supplied while having dinner with Daniel Dennett\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_i_am_an_actor.php\"\u003eacting in a forthcoming Mr. Deity episode\u003c/a\u003e, other \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_atheists_are_very_nice_peo.php\"\u003egifts of wine and Surly-Ramics jewelry\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_see_i_really_did_meet_mr_d.php\"\u003eproof of meeting Mr. Deity and Lucy supplied by your truly\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/aai_a_challenge.php\"\u003ea challenge regarding the Atheist Nexus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPaul Fidalgo wrote summaries of \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/x-4275-Secularism-Examiner~y2009m10d3-Public-expression-of-religion-discussed-by-Atheist-Alliance-convention-panel\"\u003ethe Dogma Free America panel\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/x-4275-Secularism-Examiner~y2009m10d5-Physicist-Lawrence-Krauss-blows-everyones-minds-at-atheist-conference\"\u003eLawrence Krauss\u0026rsquo;s talk\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/x-4275-Secularism-Examiner~y2009m10d4-Cassini-astronomer-looks-to-the-cultural-ascent-of-science-at-atheist-convention\"\u003eCaroline Porco\u0026rsquo;s talk\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/x-4275-Secularism-Examiner~y2009m10d3-Bill-Maher-honored-by-Richard-Dawkins-at-atheist-convention\"\u003ethe Bill Maher award\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJohn Crippen describes his AAI convention experience in three posts: \u003ca href=\"http://relaxandhavefun.com/?p=401\"\u003eone\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://relaxandhavefun.com/?p=422\"\u003etwo\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://relaxandhavefun.com/?p=471\"\u003ethree\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSurly Amy offers her observations on why \u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/blog/2009/10/you-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-be-a-skeptic-to-be-an-atheist/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;You Don\u0026rsquo;t Have to Be a Skeptic to Be an Atheist,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which nicely complements P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; review of Maurice Bisheff\u0026rsquo;s talk.  I agree with her, and also note that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be an atheist to be a skeptic.  These two posts illustrate why I prefer to self-identify with skeptics.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRich Orman interviewed a number of the speakers for his \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/\"\u003eDogma Free America\u003c/a\u003e podcast, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=533040\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=534176\"\u003eEd Buckner\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=535907\"\u003eStuart Bechman\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=538724\"\u003eSean Faircloth\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=541152\"\u003eAlpharabius\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=544125\"\u003eBrother Richard of AtheistNexus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf anyone comes across other summaries worthy of mention, note them in the comments or in email and I\u0026rsquo;ll append them here.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Photo of UFO sighting in Marriott lobby by Reed Esau.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheist Alliance International conference, quick version"},{"content":"Tony Barnhart was kind enough to invite me to a psychology seminar yesterday afternoon that was a discussion of mirror neurons, at least partly inspired by (or inflamed by) Marco Iacoboni\u0026rsquo;s August 27 talk which I attended and summarized.\nI found the discussion particularly interesting in light of my current studies, as it touched repeatedly on issues of what\u0026rsquo;s appropriate in science\u0026ndash;what does and does not conform to the norms of good science.\nThe discussion leaders began with quotes from V.S. Ramachandran and Marco Iacoboni:\n\"The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution…is the single most important ‘unreported’ (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.\" (Ramachandran, 2001) and\n\"We achieve our very subtle understanding of other people thanks to certain collections of special cells in the brain called mirror neurons. These are the tiny miracles that get us through the day. They are at the heart of how we navigate through our lives. They bind us with each other, mentally and emotionally.\" (Iacoboni, Mirroring People, p. 4) The immediate objections were to the trumpeting of the importance of mirror neurons prior to the discovery of supporting evidence, as well as to the use of the word \"miracle\" to describe something that's supposed to be science. These objections ran through the seminar, much of which confronted the issue of whether or not mirror neuron claims are scientific at all.\nThis first objection is closely related to the first red flag of Robert Park's list of \"Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science\" (2003)--that a claim is pitched directly to the media (or general public) rather than to scientists, and that specific objection was raised about Iacoboni's talk, that he was making grandiose claims to a general (or \"naive\") audience. This has been a common issue raised in defining the boundary between science and non-science, traceable at least back to the debate between anatomists and phrenologists in Scotland in the early 19th century, where \"anatomists accused phrenologists of relying on popular opinion to validate their theories while ignoring opinions of scientific 'experts'\" (to quote sociologist of science Thomas Gieryn's 1983 paper on \"Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science,\" p. 789). While it wasn't stated in this case that mirror neuron advocates are appealing to the general public to the exclusion of scientists, they were explicitly criticized for their appeals to the public in order to raise interest in their work, make it easier to get funding, and so forth, and, in the case of Iacoboni's book, for using different language in his book aimed at a popular audience that eliminated qualifiers and wasn't appropriately skeptical.\nIn my opinion, Iacoboni shouldn't be faulted for popularization of his work or his generation of excitement and funding from public interest--the former criticism seems a bit like sour grapes--but only for the latter, any cases where he presents arguments without proper supporting evidence, or fails to identify theoretical speculation as such. What should be significant is not the mere fact of public appeal, but the extent of the gap between the scientific evidence and the public description. Note that there will always be a gap between evidence and any scientific theory, even where a theory is firmly established, since scientific theories are always subject to further revision--they're not logical proofs. \"Tiny miracles,\" though--I have to agree that's over the top.\nAnother objection raised to mirror neurons is the wide variety of human behavior that they've been proposed to explain (from the presenters' slides):\n\"Since their discovery, mirror neurons have been invoked to explain imitation, speech perception, empathy, autism, morality, the appeal of porn, sports team activities, social cognition, self-awareness, yawning, mind reading, action understanding, altruism, etc.\" A list of neuroimaging studies purported to provide evidence for a human mirror neuron system was shown, and the question asked was how many of these studies looked at both observation of an action and execution of an action? The answer was very few, likely because observation is much easier to test in an fMRI machine compared to execution. Of those, which found evidence of activation for both observation and execution? The answer was only a single study (Gazzola, et al., 2007).\nFurther questions raised for discussion (from slide):\nIs there any conceivable way to falsify MN theories? As Iacoboni claimed, MNs are not anatomically-defined, and can fire in response to the same, similar, and opposite observations/actions. The whole brain, therefore, comprises the MN system. How is that useful? Many researchers have moved away from hypothesizing about “mirror neurons” to “mirror systems.” Must mirror systems necessarily be composed of mirror neurons? If not, are mirror neurons the most parsimonious explanation for [insert favorite behavior here]? Can you generalize findings from one species to the next when one of the species possesses cognitive capabilities that have never been demonstrated in the original species? Yes, this is a “monkeys don’t have language, nor do they imitate”-based question. Can individual neuron activity logically be used as an explanation for higher-order cognitive abilities? How do mirror neurons handle sarcasm? And, though not on the slide, the following claim was noted:\nSimilarly, a baseball pitcher’s windup is chock full of similar kinetic clues that can activate the batter's mirror neurons and help him predict the kind of pitch he will get. \"This may help explain the fact that a great pitcher, Babe Ruth, was also one of the greatest home run hitters of all time,\" writes John Milton in Your Brain on Cubs. and the question was asked--if mirror neurons activation is involved in imitation, rather than a complementary activity in this case, why wouldn't the mirror neuron activation interfere with Babe Ruth's ability to hit, rather than improve it? (The answer, it would seem to me, would be a suggestion that his pitching knowledge would allow him to recognize cues about the type of pitch before it happened, that would produce a benefit in hitting performance--but this is a more abstract description that doesn't necessarily require a mirror neuron explanation--another common theme of the discussion.)\nThis led to a lively discussion, and it seemed to me that the following were some of the most significant arguments, with my commentary on them:\n1. It seems highly implausible that single cells are involved in mediating or controlling this behavior, and neither transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) nor fMRI is capable of isolating individual neurons. It is particularly implausible that single cells are implicated regarding a relationship to an action that is similar in that it's directed to the same goal (i.e., a semantic property). I agree, but I'm not sure why mirror neuron advocates should be taken as insisting that single cells are involved, as opposed to the \"mirror neuron systems\" described in Iacoboni's talk.\n2. If assemblies of cells are involved instead of individual cells, how is this a distinctive or interesting theory? Doesn't it then just become a restatement of \"neurons work together in the brain to make things happen?\" Several people (including the person who asked that question) noted that it's still potentially interesting if these assemblies participate in both observation and action, and may provide support for theories that implicate motor programs of speech generation in speech perception.\n3. Some other evidence for mirror neurons from TMS experiments in speech production. Two parts of the speech motor cortex, one active when people produce labial phonemes, and another part active when they produce dentals, were stimulated with TMS in the form of a double-pulse, which tends to provide a stimulative effect similar to priming. The result was that double-pulsing the region associated with labials facilitated the perception of labials, and double-pulsing the region associated with dentals facilitated the perception of dentals.\n4. The inference to mirror neurons from fMRI evidence is choosing a single possible explanation without sufficient discriminatory evidence to exclude other explanations, such as priming. This seems like a quite reasonable objection, but one which doesn't preclude further research both within a mirror neuron framework and from outside--a battle between camps is probably a good way to provoke fruitful experimentation and mutual criticism until discriminatory evidence or arguments are obtained. There was some disagreement in the discussion about whether such discriminatory evidence could ever be obtained, but I'm inclined to think that someone will come along and provide some strong reasons to prefer going down one path rather than another.\n5. In the cases where only a single or very few cells are measured, isn't that \"a colossal sampling error\"? One response was that the single-neuron measurement studies may have recorded from as many as 200 neurons, of which 75 showed mirror properties, of which 2/3 showed mirror properties in general (i.e., they matched individual actions and related actions directed at the same goal) and 1/3 only showed activation in response to the same exact action. I think this still presents a significant sampling issue in that there are likely hundreds of thousands of connections implicated for each neuron; I'm also a bit wary of the claims of mirror properties for related actions, where the relations may be semantic rather than simple associations, as there seems to be a potential for creative interpretation in determining what counts or doesn't count as related. That's independent of the implausibility of such properties at the individual neuron level.\n6. The mirror neuron evidence and arguments seem to be like a cartoon version of science being presented to scientists and to the public (a criticism that explicitly excluded the original monkey studies). The use of the term \"mirror neuron\" seems like \"a romantic notion that's taken on a life of its own,\" even though it is descriptive--you see someone else performing the same action, it's like looking in a mirror.\n7. This is an unusual case in which, rather than psychology observing a behavior and theorizing neurological activity, the concept has been derived from observed neurophysiological behavior and \"pyramided up,\" presenting challenges for theory comparison. Other competing theories don't have neural-level predictions. Are mirror neuron theories even falsifiable?\nThe seminar was closed with another quote from Iacoboni's book, from the end: \"Mirroring People also ends on a hopeful note, the hope that science and scientific thinking may play an important role in our society.\"\nI found it a fascinating discussion to observe, especially as issues came up pertaining to the norms of science and the demarcation between science and non-science, where scientists often appeal to criteria such as Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion. Most philosophers of science today agree that there is no sharp boundary between science and non-science (though there are certainly things that are clearly science or clearly not science), that the falsifiability criterion doesn't provide such a demarcation (and isn't strictly feasible given the nature of background assumptions and clusters of propositions involved in theory testing), and that the Mertonian norms of science are more of an ideal than reality. Science is a bit messier than that, and it seemed that some of the social aspects of \"boundary-work\" were in play in the discussion.\nUPDATE: I should note that there were two papers of recommended reading for this discussion, which were:\nGregory Hickok, \"Eight Problems for the Mirror Neuron Theory of Action Understanding in Monkeys and Humans,\" Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21:7, pp. 1229-1243 (2008).\nGiovanni Buccino, Ferdinand Binkofski, and Lucia Riggio, \"The mirror neuron system and action recognition,\" Brain and Language 89 (2004) 370-376.\nI didn't get a chance to read those before the seminar, but may update this post with further comments after I do.\nUPDATE (September 5, 2013): Alison Gopnik piece on \"Cells That Read Minds? What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the brain\" on Slate. Historical Comments Jane Drake Brody (2009-09-23):\nThanks for your clear discussion of the critique of MNs. As a theatre director and teacher, the concept of such brain activity is exciting and explains much of what we have been observing over the years. I have no doubt that such things exist, perhaps this research will take another turn, but scientists are discovering what actors have know for years.\nBrad (2009-09-29):\nAs Jane mentions, everyone is aware of imitative behaviors. Mirror neurons seems like a way to market biological explanations for our human experiences. Based on your review, it does seem that Iacoboni's main idea is to popularize his research. I don't think he really expects to find a single neuron with new distinct organelles that contrast with other typical neurons.\nIf I 'member right, a neurons main function is to send and receive a small number of ions, so unless those engrams are firing around invisibly I'm not sure what they hope to discover by proposing the term mirror neuron or mirror neuron system. It reminds me a bit of the hyped up evolutionary psychology inferences.\nSince modeling or empathizing with someone involves input from all senses, it would follow that imitation forms from various qualia from multiple senses.\nThen what would be the mirror neuron? The senses would form some sort of short term memory from sensory input, and activate behaviors in an attempt to represent outwardly what was perceived. Then would the mirror neuron be the decision to represent the behavior versus not represent the behavior?\nIan' may find that he is seeking to translate learning and attention theories into neurology.\nmattyyo (2009-10-11):\nMy two cents on Mirror Neurons: Gallese et al.(1996) found neurons in area F5 in the monkey cortex (a premotor area coding for hand and mouth) firing when both the action was observed, and when the action was made.\n17% of neurons examined in the F5 area were termed ‘mirror neurons’(MN).\nMNs required interaction between object and agent (hand or mouth), not just object or agent. Matching observation of meaningful action and execution.\nResponses to objects or tools to imitate action was weak or non-existent.\nMirror neurons proposed as internal representation-understanding consequences of action, so i guess maybe as Brad said \u0026quot;some sort of short term memory from sensory input\u0026quot;\nUmilta et al. (2001). Conditions were: Full Vision - reach hand to pick up block. Blocked vision – show the monkey the block then pull screen to block view of object then reach with hand to object. Mimed Full Vision nothing there and reach towards nothing with hand. Mimed Blocked Vision- show the monkey nothing there then pull screen and reach.\nHalf of the \u0026quot;MNs\u0026quot; found fired to both full vision and blocked vision but not the others. authors propose this infers knowledge and consequences of the action (action recognition). \u0026quot;The mirror system transforms visual information into knowledge\u0026quot;\nBaldissera et al. found that in humans, the spinal cord contained an inhibitory mechanism preventing the execution of an observed action- so one can observe an action and react to it without externally making the movement (so when someone does an action, your premotor cortex also does the same neural firing but you dont act it out). This was thought to be an analogue of the monkey studies.\nJackson et al. (2005)\nin humans: activation in the ACC and insula during the perception and assessment of someone else’s pain (areas of STS- superior temporal sulcus, also has connections with amygdala).These areas are the same for when you yourself experience pain.\nDapretto et al. (2006).\nhigh-functioning children with autism and matched controls underwent fMRI while imitating and observing emotional expressions.\nboth groups performed the tasks equally well, children with autism showed no \u0026quot;mirror neuron activity\u0026quot; in the inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis- near insula)compared to controls. Activity in this area was inversely related to symptom severity in the social domain.\nlack of MNS activity in ASD children may indicate that part of the problem of social deficits is due to dysfunctions in this system\nso its gone from monkeys viewing stuff and creating an \u0026quot;internal representation\u0026quot; to \u0026quot;wow in humans fMRI shows activation of the SAME areas both viewing and performing a task\u0026hellip;.this must show mirror neuron circuits\u0026quot;.\nan interesting jump but one that is kinda plausible\u0026hellip;.. obviously nothing to really put all your money on but an area to investigate with further research\u0026hellip;. again does this show \u0026quot;MN systems\u0026quot;??? probably\u0026hellip;.all it means though is that we use the same neural networks for both perceiving and doing stuff\u0026hellip;..this makes sense b/c of the need for the brain to be an efficient processor\u0026hellip;..\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/09/mirror-neurons-and-study-of-science.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTony Barnhart was kind enough to invite me to a psychology seminar yesterday afternoon that was a discussion of mirror neurons, at least partly inspired by (or inflamed by) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/marco-iacoboni-on-imitation-and.html\"\u003eMarco Iacoboni\u0026rsquo;s August 27 talk which I attended and summarized\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI found the discussion particularly interesting in light of my current studies, as it touched repeatedly on issues of what\u0026rsquo;s appropriate in science\u0026ndash;what does and does not conform to the norms of good science.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe discussion leaders began with quotes from V.S. Ramachandran and Marco Iacoboni:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mirror neurons and the study of science"},{"content":"The 18th episode of the ApostAZ podcast is available:\nEpisode 018 Atheism and Free Twizzering in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Mark 19? Criticism and analysis. http://arizonacor.org Intro- Immortal Technique- Freedom of Speech from Revolutionary Vol 2. Outro- Greydon Square \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; from the Compton Effect.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/09/apostaz-podcast-18.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 18th episode of the \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is available:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz018.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz018.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 018\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Free Twizzering in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists\"\u003emeetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Mark 19? Criticism and analysis. \u003ca href=\"http://arizonacor.org\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arizonacor.org\"\u003ehttp://arizonacor.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Intro- Immortal Technique- Freedom of Speech from Revolutionary Vol 2. Outro- Greydon Square \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; from the Compton Effect.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #18"},{"content":"The grassrootsskeptics.org website officially launches today:\nPhiladelphia, PA – 9/4/2009: Grassroots Skeptics today announced the official launch of its website, GrassrootsSkeptics.org. The website is the centerpiece of the group\u0026rsquo;s planned outreach and advocacy in the skeptical community.\n“There are a lot of passionate advocates and community groups working diligently to advance critical thinking,” said Grassroots Skeptics founder K.O. Myers. “We want to help increase their effectiveness, by making it easier for them to find new members, share resources, and identify methods for getting their message out.”\nThe group plans to use the site to gather and organize information about skeptical advocacy. At launch, the site will feature an index of local skeptics groups, information on many skeptical blogs and podcasts, discussion forums, and a calendar of skeptical events. The events calendar is a joint project, maintained in collaboration with the prominent skeptical website Skepchick.org.\n“There is an amazing amount of information out there that could be helpful for people who want to start or join a skeptical organization,” Myers said. “We want to collect and organize it, to make it more useful for the dedicated individuals who volunteer their time to promote an evidence-based lifestyle.”\n“Widespread misinformation about vaccines has lead to a resurgence in preventable illnesses; scam artists posing as \u0026lsquo;psychics\u0026rsquo; prey on the grieving; \u0026lsquo;alternative medicine\u0026rsquo; companies sell billions of dollars of dubious treatments, with almost no government regulation,” said Myers. “Critical thinking is more important than ever, and local skeptics groups are working hard to spread that message. With GrassrootsSkeptics.org, we hope we can make their outreach more effective.”\nFuture plans for the site include a skeptical speakers\u0026rsquo; bureau, a searchable map of skeptics groups and skeptic-friendly attractions, and a development kit for skeptics who want to start new groups. “We\u0026rsquo;re excited about this launch,” said Myers, “but we\u0026rsquo;re already looking forward to making GrassrootsSkeptics.org a richer, deeper resource for the organized skeptical community.”\nGrassroots Skeptics is a volunteer organization that promotes critical thinking and a reason-centered worldview by helping local skeptics groups to share tools, information and strategies, and connect with skeptical individuals and activists both locally and globally.You can also follow Grassroots Skeptics on Facebook and Twitter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/09/grassroots-skeptics-website-launched.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://grassrootsskeptics.org/\"\u003egrassrootsskeptics.org website\u003c/a\u003e officially launches today:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePhiladelphia, PA – 9/4/2009: Grassroots Skeptics today announced the official launch of its website, GrassrootsSkeptics.org. The website is the centerpiece of the group\u0026rsquo;s planned outreach and advocacy in the skeptical community.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“There are a lot of passionate advocates and community groups working diligently to advance critical thinking,” said Grassroots Skeptics founder K.O. Myers. “We want to help increase their effectiveness, by making it easier for them to find new members, share resources, and identify methods for getting their message out.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe group plans to use the site to gather and organize information about skeptical advocacy. At launch, the site will feature an index of local skeptics groups, information on many skeptical blogs and podcasts, discussion forums, and a calendar of skeptical events. The events calendar is a joint project, maintained in collaboration with the prominent skeptical website Skepchick.org.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“There is an amazing amount of information out there that could be helpful for people who want to start or join a skeptical organization,” Myers said. “We want to collect and organize it, to make it more useful for the dedicated individuals who volunteer their time to promote an evidence-based lifestyle.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“Widespread misinformation about vaccines has lead to a resurgence in preventable illnesses; scam artists posing as \u0026lsquo;psychics\u0026rsquo; prey on the grieving; \u0026lsquo;alternative medicine\u0026rsquo; companies sell billions of dollars of dubious treatments, with almost no government regulation,” said Myers. “Critical thinking is more important than ever, and local skeptics groups are working hard to spread that message. With GrassrootsSkeptics.org, we hope we can make their outreach more effective.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFuture plans for the site include a skeptical speakers\u0026rsquo; bureau, a searchable map of skeptics groups and skeptic-friendly attractions, and a development kit for skeptics who want to start new groups. “We\u0026rsquo;re excited about this launch,” said Myers, “but we\u0026rsquo;re already looking forward to making GrassrootsSkeptics.org a richer, deeper resource for the organized skeptical community.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGrassroots Skeptics is a volunteer organization that promotes critical thinking and a reason-centered worldview by helping local skeptics groups to share tools, information and strategies, and connect with skeptical individuals and activists both locally and globally.\u003c/blockquote\u003eYou can also follow \u003ca href=\"http://grassrootsskeptics.org/\"\u003eGrassroots Skeptics\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Grassroots-Skeptics/230555115257?ref=ts\"\u003eFacebook\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/GRSkeptics\"\u003eTwitter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Grassroots Skeptics website launched"},{"content":"Thanks to a tip from Tony Barnhart, I learned this morning of a talk at ASU today relevant to my last post (\u0026ldquo;Imitation, isolation, and independence\u0026rdquo;) by UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni. Although I wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to stay for the Q\u0026amp;A session, I did get to hear his entire presentation, titled \u0026ldquo;Imitation and Sociality: The Role of Neural Mirroring.\u0026rdquo; His talk covered the following points (from his initial agenda slide):\nImitation in human behaviorPotential neural precursors in primatesNeural mechanisms of human imitationNeural circuitry for imitation and languageImitation and empathyDr. Iacoboni was introduced by new ASU prof. Art Glenberg, who started right off by pointing out that the existence of mirror neurons is itself controversial, and some \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s much of interest proved about mirror neuron systems.\u0026rdquo; Dr. Iacoboni thanked Prof. Glenberg for beginning with the \u0026ldquo;elephant in the room,\u0026rdquo; and said that the question has never been raised about the existence of mirror neurons in monkeys, and suggested that some people don\u0026rsquo;t want there to be homologous systems in humans, e.g., for the sake of human exceptionalism or denial of evolution. (Has your blood pressure gone up yet, Tony?)\nImitation in human behavior\nHe started by briefly discussing the role of imitation in human behavior, citing Andrew Meltzoff\u0026rsquo;s 1977 article in Science (\u0026ldquo;Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates,\u0026quot; (PDF) 198:75-78), noting that Meltzoff is probably the only guy to publish a photograph of himself sticking out his tongue in Science. Imitation, the copying of the behavior of another, is pervasive by humans. People copy body positions and movements, and such imitation promotes liking. (As an aside, he said that he has been interviewed by Glamour (July 2003) about his work, and can have a second career as a consultant to Internet dating services if mirror neurons turn out not to exist.) Imitation facilitates communication and conversation, and people tend to even synchronize the way they talk. (I know I\u0026rsquo;ve heard multiple stories of people whose accents have been changed by being around people with different accents.)\nPotential neural precursors in primates\nMirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys, in the ventral premotor cortex. It was found that neurons in this area fired when monkeys engaged in grasping behavior, and also fired to a lesser extent when those monkeys observed other monkeys engaged in grasping behavior. (Here, Iacoboni cited Gallese et al., Brain, 1996.)\nNeural mechanisms of human imitation\nIacoboni said that the term \u0026ldquo;mirror\u0026rdquo; may be good for marketing, but may also be misleading. Mirror neurons are defined physiologically rather than anatomically, by behavior rather than location in the brain. They have motor properties, and are specialized for actions, including sensory attributes of actions, but not mere peceptions. They are not simply \u0026ldquo;monkey-see, monkey-do\u0026rdquo; cells\u0026ndash;while 1/3 tend to fire for very specific actions, 2/3 fire for other sorts of complementary actions. Mirror neurons have abstract codings for hidden actions, action sounds, and intentions, not just specific actions. Mirror neurons that fire in response to a grasping action of picking up a laser pointer would also fire if the details of the action were obscured by a screen. The sound of tearing paper can fire mirror neurons that fire when observing paper being ripped. And if there are variant actions that achieve the same purpose, such as bringing food to the mouth, the same mirror neurons can fire. Mirror neurons learn and have some degree of plasticity.\nIacoboni\u0026rsquo;s model predicts that observing an action should have the lowest level of activation for mirror neurons, performing a motor task should have a medium level, and imitation\u0026ndash;both seeing and doing an action\u0026ndash;should have the strongest level of activation. And that is what his research has found.\nAt UCLA, they\u0026rsquo;ve done parallel work with monkeys and humans, and identified apparently homologous brain regions between the two. The specific region where mirror neurons were first discovered, the F5 region, appears to be homologous to the BA44 region of the human brain. The \u0026ldquo;BA\u0026rdquo; stands for Brodmann Area, a part of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area associated with language\u0026ndash;those with lesions to that area have Broca\u0026rsquo;s aphasia, which reduces language fluency and makes speech slow and difficult. This raises the question of whether the mirroring is effectively covert verbalization in humans.\nExperiments with transcranium magnetic stimulation (TMS), where a magnetic copper coil placed against the head creates an electrical flow in the brain, interfering with the underlying electrical activity in the brain\u0026ndash;essentially adding noise and causing disruption\u0026ndash;have enabled a way to demonstrate causation where functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) could only show correlation. Iacoboni called this a shift \u0026ldquo;from brain mapping to brain zapping.\u0026rdquo; If you zap an area and cause a deficit in a particular behavior or function, you show the causal involvement of that area in the production of that behavior. Doing experiments with TMS of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area vs. a control site, using an imitation task and a control task, show the essential role of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area in imitation. (Here, Iacoboni cited Heiser, et al., Eur. J. of Neuroscience, 2003.)\nIacoboni showed a diagram that he labeled the \u0026ldquo;core imitation circuit\u0026rdquo; which involved three locations of the brain\u0026ndash;the superior temporal surface (STS), which manages visual input to the system via a visual or pictorial description of an action, which then feeds to the parietal mirror neuron system (MNS), which has the motor details of an action, which then feeds to the frontal MNS, which deals with the goal or intention of an action. (There were two-way arrows between STS and parietal MNS, and between parietal MNS and frontal MNS.)\nNeural circuitry for imitation and language\nIacoboni said that an old theory of speech perception which had been abandoned has now been brought back by mirror neurons. That theory is the motor neuron theory, which says that to perceive speech sounds, you simulate the generation of the same speech. Speech perception involves speech simulation. In experiments that compared brain activation of speaking and listening, he suggested that he found evidence to support this. (This must be complicated by the fact that when you speak, you hear yourself. He cited Meister, et al., Current Biology, 2007.)\nHe discussed hemispheres of the brain and action sounds, where the right and left motor cortexes were subjected to TMS stimulation. I didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get the details of this, but apparently a response was stronger for the left hemisphere, which is dominant for language. (He cited Azir-Zadeh et al., Eur. J. of Neuroscience, 2004.) He also referred to research of somatotopic maps, indicating that even when you read sentences about hand and foot actions (as opposed to seeing them), you get activation of the motor neurons for those areas.\nHe then spoke about how meaning is encoded in the brain, distinguishing a symbolic approach to \u0026ldquo;embodied semantics,\u0026rdquo; favoring the latter view. In the embodied view, the meanings of words are grounded in sensorimotor experience and meaning is given by associations with sensorimotor activation.\nHe described an experiment in how mirror neurons code intentions, where subjects were shown short videos. There were first contexts, such as a set of cookies, a teapot, gnutella, etc., set up as though someone was going to have a snack; contrasted with this was the same items, with just cookie crumbs, and empty cup, and so forth, as though someone had already had a snack. There were contrasting actions\u0026ndash;a hand grasping the edge of a cup (as though putting it down or picking it up to serve someone else), vs. a hand grasping the handle of a cup, for the action of drinking. And then there were intention conditions, with each combination of actions embedded in a context. The result was to find a difference in activation between the intention settings, as well as between action and intention; with the act of drinking generating more activation in the inferior frontal gyrus. (Here he cited Iacoboni, PLoS Biology, 2005, \u0026ldquo;Grasping the intentions of others with one\u0026rsquo;s own mirror neuron system.\u0026quot;)\nHe next showed a diagram of MNS interactions, showing imitative learning and social mirroring (or empathy, or \u0026ldquo;emotional contagion\u0026rdquo;). Imitative learning involves the MNS interacting with the pre-motor cortex, while social mirroring involves the MNS interacting with the insula and the limbic system.\nImitation and empathy\nHe spoke about \u0026ldquo;the chameleon effect\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;some people are more imitative than others, and a tendency to imitate is correlated with a tendency to be more empathetic. He showed two photographs of President Jimmy Carter and his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, at two different times at the same event; in both cases the chief of staff was in the same physical position as Carter, standing next to or slightly behind him.\nWhen feeling what others feel, the mirror neurons simulate facial expressions, which then feed through the insula to the limbic system, where you feel the emotion. He referred to research on imitating and observing facial expressions proposing a neural model of empathy in humans (Carr et al., PNAS, 2003).\nWe are \u0026ldquo;wired for empathy,\u0026rdquo; he said, and notes that he used to quote a French phenomenologist on this point, but since that\u0026rsquo;s not popular among U.S. philosophers he needed to find a champion of the analytic school of philosophy. He offered two quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein, one which began \u0026ldquo;We see emotions. We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.\u0026rdquo; (From Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. 2, p. 100.) The other began \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I see that the child wants to touch the dog but doesn\u0026rsquo;t dare.\u0026rsquo; How can I see that? - Is this description of what is seen on the same level as a description of moving shapes and colors? Is an interpretation in question?Well, remember that you may also mimic a human being who would like to touch something, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t dare. And what you mimic is after all a piece of behaviour.\u0026rdquo; (From Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. 1, p. 177.)\nHe then spoke of experiments with facial expression photos shown to kids and asked to imitate them, where they used fMRI and compared to measures of social competence, number of play dates, number of friends, etc., and found a high correlation between mirror neuron activation and social competence. (He cited Pfeifer et al., NeuroImage, 2008.)\nThis then led to the issue of autism, which he described with a slide heading titled, \u0026ldquo;Broken mirrors in autism?\u0026rdquo; He spoke of observation/imitation tasks with two groups of kids, those with autism spectrum disorder and a control set, which yielded differential activity in motor neurons. (He cited Dapretto et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2006.)\nAfter a quote from Eric Hoffer (\u0026ldquo;When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other\u0026rdquo;), he spoke about human single-neuron recordings done with depth electrode readings on epilepsy patients undergoing very invasive methods to identify the focal points of seizures for surgery to remove or destroy minimal amounts of brain tissue to stop the seizures. They have studied about 10 patients per year over the last three years, using modified depth electrodes that each have 9 microwires, extending from them into the brain, one ground, and eight which each record for a single cell. On these patients they\u0026rsquo;ve done experiments with observation and execution of a grasping task, and with observation and imitation of facial expressions. They\u0026rsquo;ve taken records from the temporal lobe, amygdala, hippocampus, and other parts of the brain, and found that about 8% of cells measured have mirroring properties.\nHe then described some differences between human and monkey mirror neurons, the key one of which is that in some cases where mirror neurons show an increase in firings from an execution or imitation, a decrease is seen when observing. For monkeys, by contrast, the activations always go up for both observation and execution. He suggested that this may be due to a human differentiation between self and other. Humans have cases where there are excitatory effects, inhibitory effects, and opposite effects between observation and execution. There are mirror responses in humans in areas where they are not found in monkeys, the results appear to be more flexible, and there can be more prolonged responses, perhaps due to greater complexity (e.g., the language and meaning aspect?).\nHe ended by saying he was proud to say that his work falls within the tradition and support of Darwinian evolution\u0026ndash;that his book, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (I think you should always be skeptical of any book with a subtitle that starts with the words \u0026ldquo;The New Science of \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;), argues that mirror neurons have been selected (naturally) to facilitate social interactions. He asserted that this solves the problem of other minds, and provokes a major revision of long-standing beliefs\u0026ndash;that we need to change the idea that we\u0026rsquo;ve evolved for self-preservation, and instead we\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;wired for involvement and care.\u0026rdquo; He concluded that he is a believer in the importance of neuroscience to society, and that rather than being isolated in an ivory tower, scientists have a responsibility to go to society and communicate their work. (And his book is written for a popular audience.)\nMagic Tony (2009-08-28):\nHey, Jim. I haven\u0026#39;t had a chance to read your post completely (leaving for Poland in just a few hours), but I did want to note that Iacoboni completely mischaracterized the argument that\u0026#39;s made regarding the difficulty pinpointing mirror neurons in humans. It\u0026#39;s not about human exceptionalism, and it\u0026#39;s not anti-evolutionary sentiment. People like Iacoboni hypothesize that mirror neurons are the source of things like empathy, language, and imitation. Last I checked, monkeys suck at all of these things. If monkeys\u0026#39; mirror neuron systems (which HAVE been observed) do not produce these sorts of traits, why should we believe that they do in humans? On another small note, you know it's a dubious presentation when they discuss the Meltzoff infant imitation study as positive evidence of anything. It has been debunked on too many occasions to count.\nI'm nauseous\u0026hellip;and not because I just had a root canal.\nLippard (2009-08-29):\nI think the answer in his presentation to the question is based on the differences he described between the monkey and human results, as well as the TMS data. When you get a chance, can you post further critique, in particular the debunking of Meltzoff you mention?\nMagic Tony (2009-09-16):\nHi Jim. More to come, but while I\u0026#39;m thinking about it, I wanted to give you some information about the flaws in the Meltzoff work. The person who did most of the debunking (and who has received very little notoriety for it) is Susan S. Jones, now at Indiana University. Her relevant publications can be found here: http://www.indiana.edu/~infcomm/index_files/Page748.htm. Long story short, the only behavior that Meltzoff could get infants to imitate reliably (and which can be replicated) was the tongue protrusion. Unfortunately, infants protrude their tongues when given any sort of stimulation (including blinking lights and the overture from \u0026quot;The Barber of Seville\u0026quot;). Also, infants stop \u0026quot;imitating\u0026quot; the tongue protrusion a few months after birth...strange for something which is thought to be innate and hard-wired.\nBrian H (2009-09-23):\nMagic, I feel your pain! Or not. Ever reared a kid? They ape parents' emotions enthusiastically. Sometimes.\nAnd monkeys can learn by watching each other.\nBrian H (2009-09-23):\nExistence proof: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=55d_1253677476 If that's not mirroring in a human infant, Magic, I'd be curious just what you think it is!\nMagic Tony (2009-09-29):\nBrian, you\u0026#39;re misunderstanding the argument. The argument Meltzoff (and Iacoboni) make is that newborns imitate...that it\u0026#39;s a hard-wired behavior. Strong evidence against this interpretation of the Meltzoff data has been provided by the researcher I linked to in my previous comment. I don\u0026#39;t think the baby in your video would be labeled as a newborn. I agree that monkeys can learn by observing (albeit, very rudimentary behaviors), but observational learning is not the same as imitation.\nBrian H (2009-10-24):\nThe operation of mirror neurons is, at core, translation of observed behaviors into actions and skills. How is observational learning not imitation? A distinction without a difference.\nMagic Tony (2009-10-24):\nWrong, Brian. There\u0026#39;s a rather large difference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_learning#Compared_to_Imitation Mirror neurons do not translate observed behaviors into actions. When a monkey's mirror neurons are firing due to observation, they never actively imitate the behavior.\nYou should read this: http://drop.io/GrandDelusions/asset/hickok-2009-pdf\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/marco-iacoboni-on-imitation-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks to a tip from Tony Barnhart, I learned this morning of a talk at ASU today relevant to my last post (\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/imitation-isolation-and-independence.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Imitation, isolation, and independence\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e) by UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni.  Although I wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to stay for the Q\u0026amp;A session, I did get to hear his entire presentation, titled \u0026ldquo;Imitation and Sociality: The Role of Neural Mirroring.\u0026rdquo;  His talk covered the following points (from his initial agenda slide):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eImitation in human behavior\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePotential neural precursors in primates\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNeural mechanisms of human imitation\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNeural circuitry for imitation and language\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eImitation and empathy\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eDr. Iacoboni was introduced by new ASU prof. Art Glenberg, who started right off by pointing out that the existence of mirror neurons is itself controversial, and some \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s much of interest proved about mirror neuron systems.\u0026rdquo;  Dr. Iacoboni thanked Prof. Glenberg for beginning with the \u0026ldquo;elephant in the room,\u0026rdquo; and said that the question has never been raised about the existence of mirror neurons in monkeys, and suggested that some people don\u0026rsquo;t want there to be homologous systems in humans, e.g., for the sake of human exceptionalism or denial of evolution.  (Has your blood pressure gone up yet, Tony?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eImitation in human behavior\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe started by briefly discussing the role of imitation in human behavior, citing Andrew Meltzoff\u0026rsquo;s 1977 article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://ilabs.washington.edu/meltzoff/pdf/77Meltzoff_Moore_Science.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) 198:75-78), noting that Meltzoff is probably the only guy to publish a photograph of himself sticking out his tongue in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e.  Imitation, the copying of the behavior of another, is pervasive by humans.  People copy body positions and movements, and such imitation promotes liking.  (As an aside, he said that he has been interviewed by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGlamour\u003c/span\u003e (July 2003) about his work, and can have a second career as a consultant to Internet dating services if mirror neurons turn out not to exist.)  Imitation facilitates communication and conversation, and people tend to even synchronize the way they talk.  (I know I\u0026rsquo;ve heard multiple stories of people whose accents have been changed by being around people with different accents.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePotential neural precursors in primates\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys, in the ventral premotor cortex.  It was found that neurons in this area fired when monkeys engaged in grasping behavior, and also fired to a lesser extent when those monkeys observed other monkeys engaged in grasping behavior.  (Here, Iacoboni cited Gallese et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBrain\u003c/span\u003e, 1996.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNeural mechanisms of human imitation\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIacoboni said that the term \u0026ldquo;mirror\u0026rdquo; may be good for marketing, but may also be misleading.  Mirror neurons are defined physiologically rather than anatomically, by behavior rather than location in the brain.  They have motor properties, and are specialized for actions, including sensory attributes of actions, but not mere peceptions.  They are not simply \u0026ldquo;monkey-see, monkey-do\u0026rdquo; cells\u0026ndash;while 1/3 tend to fire for very specific actions, 2/3 fire for other sorts of complementary actions.  Mirror neurons have abstract codings for hidden actions, action sounds, and intentions, not just specific actions.  Mirror neurons that fire in response to a grasping action of picking up a laser pointer would also fire if the details of the action were obscured by a screen.  The sound of tearing paper can fire mirror neurons that fire when observing paper being ripped.  And if there are variant actions that achieve the same purpose, such as bringing food to the mouth, the same mirror neurons can fire.  Mirror neurons learn and have some degree of plasticity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIacoboni\u0026rsquo;s model predicts that observing an action should have the lowest level of activation for mirror neurons, performing a motor task should have a medium level, and imitation\u0026ndash;both seeing and doing an action\u0026ndash;should have the strongest level of activation.  And that is what his research has found.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt UCLA, they\u0026rsquo;ve done parallel work with monkeys and humans, and identified apparently homologous brain regions between the two.  The specific region where mirror neurons were first discovered, the F5 region, appears to be homologous to the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area_44\"\u003eBA44\u003c/a\u003e region of the human brain.  The \u0026ldquo;BA\u0026rdquo; stands for Brodmann Area, a part of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area associated with language\u0026ndash;those with lesions to that area have \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_aphasia\"\u003eBroca\u0026rsquo;s aphasia\u003c/a\u003e, which reduces language fluency and makes speech slow and difficult.  This raises the question of whether the mirroring is effectively covert verbalization in humans.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eExperiments with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation\"\u003etranscranium magnetic stimulation\u003c/a\u003e (TMS), where a magnetic copper coil placed against the head creates an electrical flow in the brain, interfering with the underlying electrical activity in the brain\u0026ndash;essentially adding noise and causing disruption\u0026ndash;have enabled a way to demonstrate causation where \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging\"\u003efunctional magnetic resonance imaging\u003c/a\u003e (fMRI) could only show correlation.  Iacoboni called this a shift \u0026ldquo;from brain mapping to brain zapping.\u0026rdquo;  If you zap an area and cause a deficit in a particular behavior or function, you show the causal involvement of that area in the production of that behavior.  Doing experiments with TMS of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area vs. a control site, using an imitation task and a control task, show the essential role of Broca\u0026rsquo;s area in imitation.  (Here, Iacoboni cited Heiser, et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEur. J. of Neuroscience\u003c/span\u003e, 2003.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIacoboni showed a diagram that he labeled the \u0026ldquo;core imitation circuit\u0026rdquo; which involved three locations of the brain\u0026ndash;the superior temporal surface (STS), which manages visual input to the system via a visual or pictorial description of an action, which then feeds to the parietal mirror neuron system (MNS), which has the motor details of an action, which then feeds to the frontal MNS, which deals with the goal or intention of an action.  (There were two-way arrows between STS and parietal MNS, and between parietal MNS and frontal MNS.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNeural circuitry for imitation and language\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIacoboni said that an old theory of speech perception which had been abandoned has now been brought back by mirror neurons.  That theory is the motor neuron theory, which says that to perceive speech sounds, you simulate the generation of the same speech.  Speech perception involves speech simulation.  In experiments that compared brain activation of speaking and listening, he suggested that he found evidence to support this.  (This must be complicated by the fact that when you speak, you hear yourself.  He cited Meister, et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCurrent Biology\u003c/span\u003e, 2007.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe discussed hemispheres of the brain and action sounds, where the right and left motor cortexes were subjected to TMS stimulation.  I didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get the details of this, but apparently a response was stronger for the left hemisphere, which is dominant for language.  (He cited Azir-Zadeh et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEur. J. of Neuroscience\u003c/span\u003e, 2004.)  He also referred to research of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotopic_arrangement\"\u003esomatotopic maps\u003c/a\u003e, indicating that even when you read sentences about hand and foot actions (as opposed to seeing them), you get activation of the motor neurons for those areas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then spoke about how meaning is encoded in the brain, distinguishing a symbolic approach to \u0026ldquo;embodied semantics,\u0026rdquo; favoring the latter view.  In the embodied view, the meanings of words are grounded in sensorimotor experience and meaning is given by associations with sensorimotor activation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe described an experiment in how mirror neurons code intentions, where subjects were shown short videos.  There were first contexts, such as a set of cookies, a teapot, gnutella, etc., set up as though someone was going to have a snack; contrasted with this was the same items, with just cookie crumbs, and empty cup, and so forth, as though someone had already had a snack.  There were contrasting actions\u0026ndash;a hand grasping the edge of a cup (as though putting it down or picking it up to serve someone else), vs. a hand grasping the handle of a cup, for the action of drinking.  And then there were intention conditions, with each combination of actions embedded in a context.  The result was to find a difference in activation between the intention settings, as well as between action and intention; with the act of drinking generating more activation in the inferior frontal gyrus.  (Here he cited Iacoboni, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePLoS Biology\u003c/span\u003e, 2005, \u003ca href=\"http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Grasping the intentions of others with one\u0026rsquo;s own mirror neuron system.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe next showed a diagram of MNS interactions, showing imitative learning and social mirroring (or empathy, or \u0026ldquo;emotional contagion\u0026rdquo;).  Imitative learning involves the MNS interacting with the pre-motor cortex, while social mirroring involves the MNS interacting with the insula and the limbic system.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eImitation and empathy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe spoke about \u0026ldquo;the chameleon effect\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;some people are more imitative than others, and a tendency to imitate is correlated with a tendency to be more empathetic.  He showed two photographs of President Jimmy Carter and his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, at two different times at the same event; in both cases the chief of staff was in the same physical position as Carter, standing next to or slightly behind him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen feeling what others feel, the mirror neurons simulate facial expressions, which then feed through the insula to the limbic system, where you feel the emotion.  He referred to research on imitating and observing facial expressions proposing a neural model of empathy in humans (Carr et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePNAS\u003c/span\u003e, 2003).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe are \u0026ldquo;wired for empathy,\u0026rdquo; he said, and notes that he used to quote a French phenomenologist on this point, but since that\u0026rsquo;s not popular among U.S. philosophers he needed to find a champion of the analytic school of philosophy.  He offered two quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein, one which began \u0026ldquo;We see emotions. We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.\u0026rdquo; (From \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRemarks on the Philosophy of Psychology\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 2, p. 100.)  The other began \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I see that the child wants to touch the dog but doesn\u0026rsquo;t dare.\u0026rsquo; How can I see that? - Is this description of what is seen on the same level as a description of moving shapes and colors? Is an interpretation in question?Well, remember that you may also mimic a human being who would like to touch something, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t dare. And what you mimic is after all a piece of behaviour.\u0026rdquo; (From \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRemarks on the Philosophy of Psychology\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 1, p. 177.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then spoke of experiments with facial expression photos shown to kids and asked to imitate them, where they used fMRI and compared to measures of social competence, number of play dates, number of friends, etc., and found a high correlation between mirror neuron activation and social competence.  (He cited Pfeifer et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNeuroImage\u003c/span\u003e, 2008.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis then led to the issue of autism, which he described with a slide heading titled, \u0026ldquo;Broken mirrors in autism?\u0026rdquo;  He spoke of observation/imitation tasks with two groups of kids, those with autism spectrum disorder and a control set, which yielded differential activity in motor neurons.  (He cited Dapretto et al., \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature Neuroscience\u003c/span\u003e, 2006.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter a quote from Eric Hoffer (\u0026ldquo;When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other\u0026rdquo;), he spoke about human single-neuron recordings done with depth electrode readings on epilepsy patients undergoing very invasive methods to identify the focal points of seizures for surgery to remove or destroy minimal amounts of brain tissue to stop the seizures.  They have studied about 10 patients per year over the last three years, using modified depth electrodes that each have 9 microwires, extending from them into the brain, one ground, and eight which each record for a single cell.  On these patients they\u0026rsquo;ve done experiments with observation and execution of a grasping task, and with observation and imitation of facial expressions.  They\u0026rsquo;ve taken records from the temporal lobe, amygdala, hippocampus, and other parts of the brain, and found that about 8% of cells measured have mirroring properties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then described some differences between human and monkey mirror neurons, the key one of which is that in some cases where mirror neurons show an increase in firings from an execution or imitation, a decrease is seen when observing.  For monkeys, by contrast, the activations always go up for both observation and execution.  He suggested that this may be due to a human differentiation between self and other.  Humans have cases where there are excitatory effects, inhibitory effects, and opposite effects between observation and execution.  There are mirror responses in humans in areas where they are not found in monkeys, the results appear to be more flexible, and there can be more prolonged responses, perhaps due to greater complexity (e.g., the language and meaning aspect?).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe ended by saying he was proud to say that his work falls within the tradition and support of Darwinian evolution\u0026ndash;that his book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mirroring-People-Science-Connect-Others/dp/0374210179/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (I think you should always be skeptical of any book with a subtitle that starts with the words \u0026ldquo;The New Science of \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;), argues that mirror neurons have been selected (naturally) to facilitate social interactions. He asserted that this solves the problem of other minds, and provokes a major revision of long-standing beliefs\u0026ndash;that we need to change the idea that we\u0026rsquo;ve evolved for self-preservation, and instead we\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;wired for involvement and care.\u0026rdquo;  He concluded that he is a believer in the importance of neuroscience to society, and that rather than being isolated in an ivory tower, scientists have a responsibility to go to society and communicate their work.  (And his book is written for a popular audience.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Marco Iacoboni on imitation and sociality"},{"content":"This post is going to be highly speculative, based on a few things that I\u0026rsquo;ve coincidentally just read over the last 24 hours and some past wonderings.\nLast night, I read an article in the ASU State Press newspaper from Tuesday, August 25 about Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing who I had been interested in working with in my Ph.D. program because of his fascinating work on the subject of influence and persuasion. (He just \u0026ldquo;retired,\u0026rdquo; though the article notes he is still working 60 hours a week on his research.) That article noted the phenomenon of \u0026ldquo;social proof,\u0026rdquo; where people are more likely to do something if they think that other people do it:\nSocial proof is a simple way for people to decide what actions would be appropriate in a given situation, based off what others like them have done in similar situations, Cialdini said. Those kinds of norms have been very powerful in moving people to conserve energy, recycle and refrain from littering, he said.\n\u0026hellip;\nCialdini and his colleagues have recently done research on energy conservation in several hotels in the Phoenix area. The hotel managers allowed Cialdini to place different signs inside hotel rooms and depending on what the signs said, the colleagues were able to significantly increase the willingness of people to hang up their bath towels. By simply stating that the majority of guests who stay in the hotel hang up their towels at least once during their stay, Cialdini and his colleagues were able to get 28 percent more people to follow that suggestion. This morning, I read the following passage in Steven Pinker\u0026rsquo;s The Blank Slate (p. 63):\nSocial psychologists have amply documented that people have a powerful urge to do as their neighbors do. When unwitting subjects are surrounded by confederates of the experimenter who have been paid to do something odd, many or most will go along. They will defy their own eyes and call a long line \u0026ldquo;short\u0026rdquo; or vice versa, nonchalantly fill out a questionnaire as smoke pours out of a heating vent, or (in a Candid Camera sketch) suddenly strip down to their underwear for no apparent reason.Here, Pinker is referring to the Asch conformity experiments. He notes that there are two reasons for this kind of imitative behavior, \u0026ldquo;to benefit from other people\u0026rsquo;s knowledge and judgment\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the desire to follow the norms of a community.\u0026quot;\nA few more data points, and then I will do some speculative dot-connecting. In Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s book, Religion Explained, he devotes chapter 8 to answering the question of its title, \u0026ldquo;Why doctrines, exclusion, and violence?\u0026rdquo; He argues (pp. 292-296) that fundamentalism arises as a mechanism to increase the cost of defection from a group, in reaction to the cultural diversity of the modern world:\n\u0026hellip; the modern world is one of strident cultural diversity, where you are constantly made aware that people live in different circumstances, have different values, worship other gods, have different rituals. \u0026hellip; fundamentalists want to return to a (largely mythical) past when local values and identity were taken for granted, when no one was aware that there were other ways of living. (p. 293)This could also explain the creation of distinctly Christian media (music, books, clubs and groups arranged around particular interests offered by megachurches) offered as a substitute for their secular counterparts, as a mechanism to insulate believers from contrary ideas. By keeping the believer in a community that is, at least to some extent, isolated from the broader world, the danger is reduced that a believer will be exposed to alternative views and practices which he might be likely to imitate through peer pressure, social proof, or social conformity.\nBut now to make a greater leap of speculation. Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran has argued that \u0026ldquo;mirror neurons\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;empathy neurons\u0026rdquo; play a major role in human (and other primate) imitative behavior that drives learning. Those neurons (if they exist, and there is some doubt) are in the inferior frontal and parietal cortex. Caltech neuroscientist John Allman (who spoke at the Skeptics Society conference on mind, brain, and consciousness in 2005) has argued that spindle cells in the anterior cingulate cortex play a role in sensitivity to social cues, and a deficiency of such cells may be a cause of autism. Perhaps there is a neurological explanation for some kinds of independent thinking that involves a lessened degree of sensitivity to social cues, or a lessened drive to imitation and conformity, that yields doubters and skeptics?\nNow, this can\u0026rsquo;t be the whole story\u0026ndash;it may be more important that there are other positive drivers of independence and willingness to be an outspoken dissenter, and I suspect that leaders of dissenting groups tend to have a very high degree of sensitivity to social cues in order to be successful in persuasion. Further, once you have some dissenters in the population, they themselves can be exemplars to be imitated by people with high sensitivity to social cues. But the speculation it would be interesting to investigate is: are people who are skeptics about commonly held beliefs in the general population about the supernatural and paranormal measurably different in some critical way, psychologically or neurologically, that makes them less susceptible to such social pressures that provoke imitation and internalization of those views? Are the initial participants in such groups different from later joiners? Could this have anything to do with why organizing skeptics and atheists is like herding cats? Or why there\u0026rsquo;s a high percentage of IT professionals in skepticism? Are skeptics and atheists less emotionally engaged and driven than religious believers? Is there a tendency towards Asperger\u0026rsquo;s among skeptics and atheists? (Disclosure: I scored a 32 on this Asperger Test.)\nReligious believers sometimes argue that there is a sensus divinitatis, a human faculty for perceiving God, and Dean Hamer has argued that there\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;God gene.\u0026quot; It\u0026rsquo;s possible that there\u0026rsquo;s something to this, but that it\u0026rsquo;s a bit simpler and a more of a matter of susceptibility to social conformity.\n(Possibly related posts: \u0026ldquo;Unconscious decision-making,\u0026quot; \u0026ldquo;The Rise of Pentecostalism and the Economist Religion Wars issue\u0026rdquo;; \u0026ldquo;An empirical test of the existence of sensus divinitatis in atheists\u0026rdquo; at the Secular Outpost.)\nMagic Tony (2009-08-27):\nI hate myself for plugging this, Jim, but Marco Iacoboni, the most prominent mirror neuron researcher in the US, is giving a presentation in the MU (room 202) today at 3:30. I despise mirror neuron theories...I feel that very few of them are grounded in actual science, and Iaconobi\u0026#39;s theories are no different. Attend at your own risk!\nEamon Knight (2009-08-27):\nAs usual for such tests, I score well into the Asperger zone (37) ;-). More relevantly: I suspect you're in the right ballpark \u0026ndash; much religion is an intensely social activity. Of course, in my case, we'd still have to account for why I had an extended religious phase in my life, despite supposedly being an unsocial clod ;-).\nLippard (2009-08-27):\nTony: Thanks--I might have time to catch part of that between classes, but it will be a stretch. I take it you won\u0026#39;t be there?\nMagic Tony (2009-08-27):\nI actually would love to go to it, because I like having my blood pressure go up. Unfortunately, I need to have a root canal performed this afternoon...which isn\u0026#39;t much better.\nBrad (2009-08-27):\nI think if anything, our minds want to put everything into one world view. For many people its hard to make sense of or uncomfortable to flatly accept the strange random things that occur. So, its filed away into the \u0026quot;defies logic\u0026quot; category rather than \u0026quot;defies probability\u0026quot; and once that \u0026quot;defies logic\u0026quot; category contains enough material to represent some sort of intentional pattern, that becomes the belief behind the world view.\nIf the common ideology provides a structure for those events, then the social networking of the pattern can occur.\nI'm starting to think that consciousness AND cognition are forms of representation for the physiological processes going on underneath. Sort of a complex internal language. So, its just pragmatic to be able to adopt the surrounding ideology and still function with fitness.\nReligion and skepticism can probably considered spandrels where a skeptical mind is either pre-wired or becomes concerned with accurately representing reality whereas the religious mind is concerned with the actual function of representations whether they are accurate or not.\ncritter (2009-08-27):\nI scored above 40 on that test. Been an atheist since at least age 14, and hate socializing.\nTheo Bromine (2009-08-28):\nAs usual for me, even though I am female (albeit an engineer), my score is 41 - even farther into the Asperger zone than my spouse Eamon. Ironically, I became an evangelical Christian while I was a (secular Jewish) socially dysfunctional teenager, and what convinced me was mostly the fact that the small bunch of Christian teenagers I encountered at my high school were nice to me (in stark contrast to almost everyone else). I figured this must be sufficient evidence of God\u0026#39;s transformative power to overcome my moderate skepticism. On the other hand even before I completely tossed the whole thing, I generally gravitated to the outgroups of Christianity - I was into social activism, not to mention my staunch defense of evolution.\nBrian H (2009-09-24):\n\u0026quot;Leaders\u0026quot; and politicians score very high on liars\u0026#39; tests and sociopathic scales, even as children. Manipulative skills (button-pushing) are what followers appreciate in a #1!\nBrad (2009-09-29):\nThis is a really old entry but there\u0026#39;s a few fun things still to say. As far as average people taking an asperger's test, keep in mind that the actual condition of asperger's indicates that the person is firmly wired to behave that way and have little to no inclination to model social behaviors. An average person might just not care about being extroverted. Huge difference.\nA mirror neuron might be an oversimplification of a more complex networked process of imitation. We know that our mind has made decision seconds before we can consciously register the decision, and that's plenty of time to make it appear automatic when we imitate an action or feeling.\nBrian H, please provide your source for your statements, that sounds fascinating.\nBrian H (2009-10-24):\nI\u0026#39;ve seen numerous references to this over the last year or two, but here\u0026#39;s a recent one: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200909/do-presidents-lie\nBrian H (2009-10-24):\nTheo; The new news about evolution will be that there is Intelligent Design. By the genome. It will be found to operate like layered neural nets do, with higher level \u0026quot;policies\u0026quot; for advantageous mutation options embedded in the \u0026quot;silent\u0026quot; DNA -- which is actually an evolution manual. Such \u0026quot;policies\u0026quot; are highly conserved by the genome, as they provide huge leverage and advantages in making efficient modifications. I.e.: mutation is not random.\nEinzige (2009-10-25):\nWow, Brian, that sounds r e a l l y unlikely. Do you have any sources you can cite?\nBrad (2009-10-26):\nBrian, even if that prediction is found to pay out, it still is not evidence for anything supernatural let alone a god of a specific religion. Calling it intelligent design at that point is still unjustifiable.\nLippard (2009-10-26):\nI didn\u0026#39;t think Brian was actually advocating intelligent design. What he says doesn\u0026#39;t strike me as wholly implausible--we are already learning that genes are switched on and off not only during development but during the life of the organism (e.g., through gene activation and interference), such as genes involved with memory. This is the burgeoning field of epigenetics.\nEinzige (2009-10-26):\nAside from the teleological bent (which I\u0026#39;m sure is what Brad found distasteful, too), there was this phrase that bugged me: \u0026quot;\u0026hellip;advantageous mutation options\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nI am willing to be shown data that proves me wrong, but my understanding of epigenetics is that it operates on the individual and has nothing to do with what genes get passed on to one's offspring to make them (or not make them) more fitted to the environment. In other words, it has nothing to do with \u0026quot;intelligently designing\u0026quot; offspring, or evolution.\nI'm more than willing to eat crow on this (and learn something truly fascinating), as soon as I see some data.\nBrad (2009-10-27):\nEpigenetics sounds like a fancy way to describe physiological development. It seems like some yearning that hearkens back to LeMarck. Maybe that\u0026#39;s too harsh a general statement, but as a reply to intelligent design... Epigenetics seems like an umbrella term to describe an angle of study rather than something you could point to and say \u0026quot;look! epigenetics is happening!\u0026quot;\nI shouldn't have responded to Brian Hs first comment. It had nothing to do with the blog entry, but I took the bait.\nHis short answers and absolute statements are characteristic of trollism.\nDude capitalized intelligent design.\nBrian H (2009-12-20):\nSorry for the long delay in responding. It's perhaps how the Epigenetics operates which is the actual evolving \u0026quot;trait\u0026quot; or genetic tool. That's what I was calling a policy or conserved tool. That is, explicitly or implicitly within the silent DNA are guidelines for epigenetic reactions \u0026ndash; plus preferred paths for mutation of same. These are the \u0026quot;tools\u0026quot; which, if they arise once, are likely to become highly conserved, yet also foci of important evolutionary change. Recent studies also indicate that as far back as the split with marsupials evolution has proceeded by duplicating and altering the activation of existing genes, rather than creation of new ones or even alteration of old. This is a highly leveraged system-level pattern.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/imitation-isolation-and-independence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis post is going to be highly speculative, based on a few things that I\u0026rsquo;ve coincidentally just read over the last 24 hours and some past wonderings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLast night, I read \u003ca href=\"http://www.statepress.com/node/6892\"\u003ean article in the ASU \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e newspaper from Tuesday, August 25 about Robert Cialdini\u003c/a\u003e, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing who I had been interested in working with in my Ph.D. program because of his fascinating work on the subject of influence and persuasion.  (He just \u0026ldquo;retired,\u0026rdquo; though the article notes he is still working 60 hours a week on his research.)  That article noted the phenomenon of \u0026ldquo;social proof,\u0026rdquo; where people are more likely to do something if they think that other people do it:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSocial proof is a simple way for people to decide what actions would be appropriate in a given situation, based off what others like them have done in similar situations, Cialdini said. Those kinds of norms have been very powerful in moving people to conserve energy, recycle and refrain from littering, he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eCialdini and his colleagues have recently done research on energy conservation in several hotels in the Phoenix area. The hotel managers allowed Cialdini to place different signs inside hotel rooms and depending on what the signs said, the colleagues were able to significantly increase the willingness of people to hang up their bath towels. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Imitation, isolation, and independence"},{"content":"Today I attended a lecture at ASU by Washington Post writer Joel Garreau, author of Edge Cities and Radical Evolution, about the future of cities. What follows is a rough sketch of his talk based on my notes.\nHe began by saying that he\u0026rsquo;s interested in culture and values, and isn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;gear-head\u0026rdquo; about the emerging technologies that he\u0026rsquo;s written about (\u0026ldquo;GRIN\u0026rdquo; technologies\u0026ndash;genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology).\nHe currently studies cities\u0026ndash;how they are shaped by technology, and how cities shape us.\nHe started with a slide of an old Spanish map of the New World, which was mostly accurate, except for an oversized Florida and drawing California as an island. Why was California shown as an island? Because explorers in the Seattle area saw a body of water that went very far to the south, and explorers in the Baja California area saw a body of water that went very far to the north, and they just connected the dots. That error took 100 years to correct. Spanish explorers would land in Monterey Bay and carry boats inland, expecting to hit water, and they always commented that the Indians in the area seemed to be friendly. Garreau suggested that they were actually laughing at them for pointlessly carrying boats inland. When the explorers would fail to hit another body of water, they would report back that the map was wrong, only to be told that they must not have been where they thought they were. It finally took a decree from the King of Spain to change the map.\nHis next slide was of the Los Angeles area, pointing out what he called \u0026ldquo;edge cities,\u0026rdquo; which he called \u0026ldquo;the biggest change in 150 years of how we build cities.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Edge cities\u0026rdquo; are major and new urban centers around old big cities. They have a large amount of office and retail space, lots of jobs, and didn\u0026rsquo;t exist 30-40 years ago. They are popping up everywhere there is major growth. The area around John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, is an edge city\u0026ndash;it has 5 million square feet of office space (more than Memphis), 600,000 square feet of retail space. It\u0026rsquo;s not a suburb, or sub-anything. It\u0026rsquo;s not a bedroom community. It has the features of office parks and all traditional city functions. The edge cities in New Jersey in the greater New York area have more jobs than Manhattan.\nPhoenix was one of the earliest places to recognize that it was going to have more than one city center\u0026ndash;we have major centers downtown, uptown/Central Avenure, Camelback/Biltmore, South Mountain, and Tempe (among others), and these were recognized as centers that would exist by city planners a couple of decades ago.\nParis has La Defense as an edge city, as well as Marne-la-Vallee, where EuroDisney is. When superior locations for growth are first found, the rich people move in first, and tend to go uphill, upwind, and upriver, byt Marne-la-Vallee was a poor area that was planned to be an edge city by selecting it as the location for EuroDisney, and it succeeded.\nBoston edge cities include the Burlington Mall area, MIT area, downtown, Quincy/Braintree, and Framingham area.\nOne major factor that has changed cities are the available modes of transportation. Chicago was formed as a rail town, based around inter- and intra-urban rail. Detroit was formed as an automobile town.\nThe last industrial age downtown built in North America was Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1914. In 1915, the one millionth Model T Ford came off the assembly line, and ended the old downtowns. The old industrial downtowns were from the 1840s to 1914, and existed because of the necessity of collecting raw materials in one place and having thousands of people there to work on those materials.\nPrior to those downtowns, cities were places like Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s Charlottesville, Washington\u0026rsquo;s Alexandria, and Lincoln\u0026rsquo;s Philadelphia. Most people earned a living from the land, and lived outside of cities.\nThe automobile suddenly made places outside the old industrial cities far more valuable, like Long Island.\nUntil 1955, the southwestern-most Major League Baseball team was in St. Louis, because movement by train placed constraints on scheduling. The Cardinals were thus the team rooted for by everyone further south and west. Once airplanes came into the picture, baseball could spread, and other cities could become major cities\u0026ndash;Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston.\nGarreau asked, if Chicago were leveled, what would you rebuild first\u0026ndash;O\u0026rsquo;Hare, or downtown. O\u0026rsquo;Hare is more critical today.\nBut the changes caused by automobiles and airplanes is nothing compared to the networked computer, which is making changes more significant and more rapidly than the automobile.\nHe showed a photograph of a Kresge\u0026rsquo;s in the Capitol Hill area of D.C., explaining that it was a discount 5 \u0026amp; dime store, the K in K-Mart. He said Kresge\u0026rsquo;s is dead, and K-Mart is dying, but do you think the building is still there, and if so, what is it? The first guess\u0026ndash;Starbuck\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;was almost correct. It is a coffee shop. He argued that Kresge\u0026rsquo;s and K-Mart has been killed by Wal-Mart, which is really an IT company that happens to sell sneakers. He claimed that when you buy a pair of sneakers at Wal-Mart, a process kicks off at check out that starts to make a replacement pair in Malaysia within 24 hours.\nSo why are coffee shops popular, and why do people pay $4 for coffee? Is it the free wireless? He argued that it is a social thing, only marginally about the coffee and the wifi. The main factor around the physical environment is that the rare stuff we can\u0026rsquo;t digitize, like face-to-face contact, has much higher relative value than it did before.\nBill Mitchell of the MIT Media Lab, and former head of the architecture department, has catalogued 87 forms of real estate in cities, all being transformed by information technology. One form is super markets. Garreau asked, if you could get hamburger and toilet paper delivered to your home for free, why would you get in your car to go get groceries? To buy produce or meat, was the answer suggested by the audience. He then showed a photo of a Freshfields, a modern farmer\u0026rsquo;s market, and showed a photo of booths with tables inside it\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s also a place to sit and socialize.\nAnother type of building is a prison. He suggested that we don\u0026rsquo;t need as many prisons if we use GPS anklets or bracelets for nonviolent offenses.\nHe then argued that Moore\u0026rsquo;s Law will continue to hold for the forseeable future, and we\u0026rsquo;ve already seen 32 doublings in processors since 1959. The only thing comparable is railroad capacity doubling, which saw 14.5 doublings before leveling out due to requirements of coal, steel, and land, and being superseded by the automobile. The IT limits are the laws of physics, the marketplace, human ingenuity, and our culture and values, and he argued that only our culture and values set real limits for the forseeable future. (In a class yesterday, one of my professors said that a physics professor speaking at ASU last year said that we\u0026rsquo;ve reached the physical limits for silicon chips, and won\u0026rsquo;t see any more doublings, but a subsequent new development has already refuted him with a four-times improvement due to nanotechnology\u0026ndash;presumably this.)\nSequencing the human genome was thought nuts, impossible, and/or would cost a fortune, but was done in 2000 at a fraction of the expected cost, far sooner than anyone expected, thanks to Moore\u0026rsquo;s Law.\nGarreau suggested that ten years from now, anything you can put in a lab for $1 million will be something you can put in your home for $1,000; anything you can get now for $1,000 will be \u0026ldquo;pocket lint.\u0026rdquo; He used USB memory fobs as an example of today\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;pocket lint.\u0026quot;\nHe showed a photo of students at CMU in a computer lab, and asked, \u0026ldquo;Is there a future for physical university campuses?\u0026rdquo; He gave a yes, on the grounds that this is where you \u0026ldquo;meet your first spouse and friends for a lifetime\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the social aspects. Distance learning has been around for a very long time (Benjamin Franklin did learning-by-mail), but it\u0026rsquo;s always a second choice.\nShopping malls, he said, are turning into entertainment spaces. He cited his friend Jaron Lanier (a virtual reality pioneer), who suggests that the first thing to disappear will be escalators, replaced by rides\u0026ndash;so when you go up by ferris wheel and come down by water slide, think of Lanier. He observed that if you go to a mall at 10 a.m., you\u0026rsquo;ll see the senior mall walkers, and if you go in the afternoon, you\u0026rsquo;ll see \u0026ldquo;drug dealing rugrats.\u0026rdquo; (He didn\u0026rsquo;t note, but I thought of how Arizona Mills Mall in Tempe has turned one space into an indoor miniature golf course.)\nOffice space\u0026ndash;is there any future to it? Again, he argued for the social aspect, and maintained that the accidental casual face-to-face contact is impossible to digitize, yet he finds the random conversation at the printer jam (the modern equivalent of the water cooler) to be his most productive time of day. To this, Prof. Brad Allenby objected that there is casual contact in World of Warcraft and Second Life, and we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t assume that such things can\u0026rsquo;t be digitizable.\nAnother audience member suggested that because human beings need touch, we need real physical contact. (But that assumes the impossibility of tactile telepresence.) Yet another pointed out that movie theater attendance is up, even though you can watch online or at home cheaper.\nGarreau said, supposed you decide face-to-face matters, but only need it two days a week\u0026ndash;how would that affect where you live? If you only needed it 3 days a month, then where might you live?\nHe said some cities will live, if they are good for face-to-face contact. Others will die, if they aren\u0026rsquo;t. We\u0026rsquo;re headed to a profound shift of what is urban/urbane, and cities like Santa Fe are the future. It has 63,000 people, opera, restaurants, second-hand boot stores.\nThe top fastest-growing metro areas are smaller cities that are like villages with face-to-face spaces and are somewhat dispersed. The top ones are Wenatchee, WA, Provo-Orem, UT, Grand Junction, CO, Gulfport-Biloxi, MS, and Myrtle Beach, SC. The top states for real estate price appreciation are Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Other example cities in this model include the Adams-Morgan area of D.C., Tempe, AZ, and Marrakesh.\nHe then briefly turned to other technologies. He said that Craig Venter says that by the end of this year he will have an organism that \u0026ldquo;eats CO2 and poops gasoline.\u0026rdquo; (And his company has just received $600 million in funding from ExxonMobil.) Nanotech may build membranes that purify water. These things will impact where cities become feasible. \u0026ldquo;Is Darfur the next garden spot?\u0026quot;\nHe then referred to a book by Leo Marx of MIT, titled The Machine in the Garden. He argued that in the industrial age, we suffered a split\u0026ndash;we had to come into the cities and leave nature behind. Now we\u0026rsquo;re trying to put what we like about cities into a garden.\nIn the final Q\u0026amp;A, he said he has a hidden assumption that we will continue moving forward and not go back to pre-industrial society; he said \u0026ldquo;no petroleum engineers think we\u0026rsquo;re running out of oil, only cheap oil.\u0026quot;\nHe said that we\u0026rsquo;re seeing a new explosion of religious fervor, and included environmentalism in that, saying that it has its own saints and heretics. He thinks human beings are \u0026ldquo;hardwired to have faith\u0026ndash;even Russia made Marxism into faith,\u0026rdquo; but said that he\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;a hardcore rationalist\u0026rdquo; even though \u0026ldquo;rationalism doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be emotionally satisfying.\u0026rdquo; He said, following Popper, that \u0026ldquo;science can\u0026rsquo;t tell you what is true, only what is false, but it can changes minds without killing people.\u0026rdquo; (I disagree with his statement that science can\u0026rsquo;t tell you what is true\u0026ndash;theories that keep passing tests do at least approximate truth.)\nAn audience member commented that virtual environments can convey mental and physical aspects, but not emotional and spiritual. Garreau agreed, but I think both (and a few other questioners) were making an unwarranted assumption that virtual environments will not be able to reach a point of being indistinguishable (or very nearly so) from real environments, and thus allowing effective conveyance of body language, subtle gestures, and so forth, perfectly adequate for transmitting emotional information. (As for spiritual properties, I think they\u0026rsquo;re in need of demonstration before we worry about them\u0026ndash;and given claims that have been made about them, it\u0026rsquo;s surprising that the questioner thought physical proximity was a limitation.) In a conversation with Prof. Allenby afterward, he also pointed out that we may be better able to make judgments of trust in a virtual environment because we are more alert to the possibility of a partial presentation of a personality and to intentional distortions. There are also some types of cues that are more accurately picked up audibly, while visual information can overwhelm those cues.\nProf. Allenby also noted that major technological changes may turn what we now think of as fundamental truths into contingencies, and that may include some aspects of what we call human nature.\nGarreau ended by observing that past predictions of what the future will be like have usually been wrong, becasue things are more complex and more expensive then we think\u0026ndash;and then we get blindsided by innovations like the iPhone.\nHistorical Comments Laika (2009-08-27):\nThat was an interesting read - thanks as always for posting.\nGautam (2009-08-27):\nabsolutely great article to read.\nEM (2009-08-27):\nExcellent. Thanks for that. if you\u0026#39;ve never read his Nine Nations of North America, it\u0026#39;s one of my favorite books ever. Eric Newcolonist.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/joel-garreau-on-future-of-cities.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday I attended a lecture at ASU by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e writer Joel Garreau, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEdge Cities\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRadical Evolution\u003c/span\u003e, about the future of cities.  What follows is a rough sketch of his talk based on my notes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began by saying that he\u0026rsquo;s interested in culture and values, and isn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;gear-head\u0026rdquo; about the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies\"\u003eemerging technologies\u003c/a\u003e that he\u0026rsquo;s written about (\u0026ldquo;GRIN\u0026rdquo; technologies\u0026ndash;genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe currently studies cities\u0026ndash;how they are shaped by technology, and how cities shape us.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe started with a slide of an old Spanish map of the New World, which was mostly accurate, except for an oversized Florida and drawing California as an island.  Why was California shown as an island?  Because explorers in the Seattle area saw a body of water that went very far to the south, and explorers in the Baja California area saw a body of water that went very far to the north, and they just connected the dots.  That error took 100 years to correct.  Spanish explorers would land in Monterey Bay and carry boats inland, expecting to hit water, and they always commented that the Indians in the area seemed to be friendly.  Garreau suggested that they were actually laughing at them for pointlessly carrying boats inland.  When the explorers would fail to hit another body of water, they would report back that the map was wrong, only to be told that they must not have been where they thought they were.  It finally took a decree from the King of Spain to change the map.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis next slide was of the Los Angeles area, pointing out what he called \u0026ldquo;edge cities,\u0026rdquo; which he called \u0026ldquo;the biggest change in 150 years of how we build cities.\u0026rdquo;  \u0026ldquo;Edge cities\u0026rdquo; are major and new urban centers around old big cities.  They have a large amount of office and retail space, lots of jobs, and didn\u0026rsquo;t exist 30-40 years ago.  They are popping up everywhere there is major growth.  The area around John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, is an edge city\u0026ndash;it has 5 million square feet of office space (more than Memphis), 600,000 square feet of retail space.  It\u0026rsquo;s not a suburb, or sub-anything.  It\u0026rsquo;s not a bedroom community.  It has the features of office parks and all traditional city functions.  The edge cities in New Jersey in the greater New York area have more jobs than Manhattan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix was one of the earliest places to recognize that it was going to have more than one city center\u0026ndash;we have major centers downtown, uptown/Central Avenure, Camelback/Biltmore, South Mountain, and Tempe (among others), and these were recognized as centers that would exist by city planners a couple of decades ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eParis has La Defense as an edge city, as well as Marne-la-Vallee, where EuroDisney is.  When superior locations for growth are first found, the rich people move in first, and tend to go uphill, upwind, and upriver, byt Marne-la-Vallee was a poor area that was planned to be an edge city by selecting it as the location for EuroDisney, and it succeeded.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoston edge cities include the Burlington Mall area, MIT area, downtown, Quincy/Braintree, and Framingham area.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne major factor that has changed cities are the available modes of transportation.  Chicago was formed as a rail town, based around inter- and intra-urban rail.  Detroit was formed as an automobile town.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe last industrial age downtown built in North America was Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1914.  In 1915, the one millionth Model T Ford came off the assembly line, and ended the old downtowns.  The old industrial downtowns were from the 1840s to 1914, and existed because of the necessity of collecting raw materials in one place and having thousands of people there to work on those materials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrior to those downtowns, cities were places like Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s Charlottesville, Washington\u0026rsquo;s Alexandria, and Lincoln\u0026rsquo;s Philadelphia.  Most people earned a living from the land, and lived outside of cities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe automobile suddenly made places outside the old industrial cities far more valuable, like Long Island.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUntil 1955, the southwestern-most Major League Baseball team was in St. Louis, because movement by train placed constraints on scheduling.  The Cardinals were thus the team rooted for by everyone further south and west.  Once airplanes came into the picture, baseball could spread, and other cities could become major cities\u0026ndash;Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGarreau asked, if Chicago were leveled, what would you rebuild first\u0026ndash;O\u0026rsquo;Hare, or downtown.  O\u0026rsquo;Hare is more critical today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut the changes caused by automobiles and airplanes is nothing compared to the networked computer, which is making changes more significant and more rapidly than the automobile.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe showed a photograph of a Kresge\u0026rsquo;s in the Capitol Hill area of D.C., explaining that it was a discount 5 \u0026amp; dime store, the K in K-Mart.  He said Kresge\u0026rsquo;s is dead, and K-Mart is dying, but do you think the building is still there, and if so, what is it?  The first guess\u0026ndash;Starbuck\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;was almost correct.  It is a coffee shop.  He argued that Kresge\u0026rsquo;s and K-Mart has been killed by Wal-Mart, which is really an IT company that happens to sell sneakers.  He claimed that when you buy a pair of sneakers at Wal-Mart, a process kicks off at check out that starts to make a replacement pair in Malaysia within 24 hours.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo why are coffee shops popular, and why do people pay $4 for coffee?  Is it the free wireless?  He argued that it is a social thing, only marginally about the coffee and the wifi.  The main factor around the physical environment is that the rare stuff we can\u0026rsquo;t digitize, like face-to-face contact, has much higher relative value than it did before.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBill Mitchell of the MIT Media Lab, and former head of the architecture department, has catalogued 87 forms of real estate in cities, all being transformed by information technology.  One form is super markets.  Garreau asked, if you could get hamburger and toilet paper delivered to your home for free, why would you get in your car to go get groceries?  To buy produce or meat, was the answer suggested by the audience.  He then showed a photo of a Freshfields, a modern farmer\u0026rsquo;s market, and showed a photo of booths with tables inside it\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s also a place to sit and socialize.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother type of building is a prison. He suggested that we don\u0026rsquo;t need as many prisons if we use GPS anklets or bracelets for nonviolent offenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then argued that Moore\u0026rsquo;s Law will continue to hold for the forseeable future, and we\u0026rsquo;ve already seen 32 doublings in processors since 1959.  The only thing comparable is railroad capacity doubling, which saw 14.5 doublings before leveling out due to requirements of coal, steel, and land, and being superseded by the automobile.  The IT limits are the laws of physics, the marketplace, human ingenuity, and our culture and values, and he argued that only our culture and values set real limits for the forseeable future.  (In a class yesterday, one of my professors said that a physics professor speaking at ASU last year said that we\u0026rsquo;ve reached the physical limits for silicon chips, and won\u0026rsquo;t see any more doublings, but a subsequent new development has already refuted him with a four-times improvement due to nanotechnology\u0026ndash;presumably \u003ca href=\"http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=243\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSequencing the human genome was thought nuts, impossible, and/or would cost a fortune, but was done in 2000 at a fraction of the expected cost, far sooner than anyone expected, thanks to Moore\u0026rsquo;s Law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGarreau suggested that ten years from now, anything you can put in a lab for $1 million will be something you can put in your home for $1,000; anything you can get now for $1,000 will be \u0026ldquo;pocket lint.\u0026rdquo;  He used USB memory fobs as an example of today\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;pocket lint.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe showed a photo of students at CMU in a computer lab, and asked, \u0026ldquo;Is there a future for physical university campuses?\u0026rdquo;  He gave a yes, on the grounds that this is where you \u0026ldquo;meet your first spouse and friends for a lifetime\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the social aspects.  Distance learning has been around for a very long time (Benjamin Franklin did learning-by-mail), but it\u0026rsquo;s always a second choice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShopping malls, he said, are turning into entertainment spaces.  He cited his friend Jaron Lanier (a virtual reality pioneer), who suggests that the first thing to disappear will be escalators, replaced by rides\u0026ndash;so when you go up by ferris wheel and come down by water slide, think of Lanier.  He observed that if you go to a mall at 10 a.m., you\u0026rsquo;ll see the senior mall walkers, and if you go in the afternoon, you\u0026rsquo;ll see \u0026ldquo;drug dealing rugrats.\u0026rdquo;  (He didn\u0026rsquo;t note, but I thought of how Arizona Mills Mall in Tempe has turned one space into an indoor miniature golf course.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOffice space\u0026ndash;is there any future to it?  Again, he argued for the social aspect, and maintained that the accidental casual face-to-face contact is impossible to digitize, yet he finds the random conversation at the printer jam (the modern equivalent of the water cooler) to be his most productive time of day.  To this, Prof. Brad Allenby objected that there is casual contact in World of Warcraft and Second Life, and we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t assume that such things can\u0026rsquo;t be digitizable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother audience member suggested that because human beings need touch, we need real physical contact.  (But that assumes the impossibility of tactile telepresence.)  Yet another pointed out that movie theater attendance is up, even though you can watch online or at home cheaper.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGarreau said, supposed you decide face-to-face matters, but only need it two days a week\u0026ndash;how would that affect where you live?  If you only needed it 3 days a month, then where might you live?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said some cities will live, if they are good for face-to-face contact.  Others will die, if they aren\u0026rsquo;t.  We\u0026rsquo;re headed to a profound shift of what is urban/urbane, and cities like Santa Fe are the future.  It has 63,000 people, opera, restaurants, second-hand boot stores.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe top fastest-growing metro areas are smaller cities that are like villages with face-to-face spaces and are somewhat dispersed.  The top ones are Wenatchee, WA, Provo-Orem, UT, Grand Junction, CO, Gulfport-Biloxi, MS, and Myrtle Beach, SC.  The top states for real estate price appreciation are Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.  Other example cities in this model include the Adams-Morgan area of D.C., Tempe, AZ, and Marrakesh.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then briefly turned to other technologies.  He said that Craig Venter says that by the end of this year he will have an organism that \u0026ldquo;eats CO2 and poops gasoline.\u0026rdquo; (And \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/21/eco.algaebiofuel/index.html\"\u003ehis company has just received $600 million in funding from ExxonMobil\u003c/a\u003e.)  Nanotech may build membranes that purify water.  These things will impact where cities become feasible.  \u0026ldquo;Is Darfur the next garden spot?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then referred to a book by Leo Marx of MIT, titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Machine in the Garden\u003c/span\u003e.  He argued that in the industrial age, we suffered a split\u0026ndash;we had to come into the cities and leave nature behind.  Now we\u0026rsquo;re trying to put what we like about cities into a garden.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the final Q\u0026amp;A, he said he has a hidden assumption that we will continue moving forward and not go back to pre-industrial society; he said \u0026ldquo;no petroleum engineers think we\u0026rsquo;re running out of oil, only cheap oil.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said that we\u0026rsquo;re seeing a new explosion of religious fervor, and included environmentalism in that, saying that it has its own saints and heretics.  He thinks human beings are \u0026ldquo;hardwired to have faith\u0026ndash;even Russia made Marxism into faith,\u0026rdquo; but said that he\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;a hardcore rationalist\u0026rdquo; even though \u0026ldquo;rationalism doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be emotionally satisfying.\u0026rdquo;  He said, following Popper, that \u0026ldquo;science can\u0026rsquo;t tell you what is true, only what is false, but it can changes minds without killing people.\u0026rdquo;  (I disagree with his statement that science can\u0026rsquo;t tell you what is true\u0026ndash;theories that keep passing tests do at least approximate truth.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn audience member commented that virtual environments can convey mental and physical aspects, but not emotional and spiritual.  Garreau agreed, but I think both (and a few other questioners) were making an unwarranted assumption that virtual environments will not be able to reach a point of being indistinguishable (or very nearly so) from real environments, and thus allowing effective conveyance of body language, subtle gestures, and so forth, perfectly adequate for transmitting emotional information.  (As for spiritual properties, I think they\u0026rsquo;re in need of demonstration before we worry about them\u0026ndash;and given claims that have been made about them, it\u0026rsquo;s surprising that the questioner thought physical proximity was a limitation.)  In a conversation with Prof. Allenby afterward, he also pointed out that we may be better able to make judgments of trust in a virtual environment because we are more alert to the possibility of a partial presentation of a personality and to intentional distortions. There are also some types of cues that are more accurately picked up audibly, while visual information can overwhelm those cues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProf. Allenby also noted that major technological changes may turn what we now think of as fundamental truths into contingencies, and that may include some aspects of what we call human nature.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGarreau ended by observing that past predictions of what the future will be like have usually been wrong, becasue things are more complex and more expensive then we think\u0026ndash;and then we get blindsided by innovations like the iPhone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Joel Garreau on the future of cities"},{"content":"Pierre Stromberg has an entertaining tale of his visit to a performance by former radio broadcaster, self-proclaimed cult expert, and exorcist Bob Larson at his new Paranormal Amerika blog. Larson suffered a significant blow to his career as a result of criticisms from his fellow Coloradoan Ken Smith\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Bob Larson Fan Club.\u0026quot; Further damage came from exposure at the hands of Cornerstone magazine, which published carefully investigated exposures of deception, misuse of funds, fabricated biographical events, and so forth. Others exposed by Cornerstone included alleged former Satanist turned Christian comedian Mike Warnke and claimed Satanic ritual abuse victim \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; author of Satan\u0026rsquo;s Underground.\nLarson is, unfortunately, now based here in the Phoenix area, with his \u0026ldquo;Spiritual Freedom Church of Phoenix\u0026rdquo; at 9096 E. Bahia Drive in Scottsdale, though for some reason it has a mailing address of a post office box in Denver.\nUnknown (2009-08-24):\nI once heard Bob Larson perform a radio exorcism of \u0026quot;demons of masturbation\u0026quot;, leading a misguided young man, troubled at his delight and frequency in yanking his own crank, in an exorcism prayer with verses such as \u0026quot;I crucify my flesh!\u0026quot;\nJohn Lynch (2009-08-24):\nScottsdale, eh? I am so sensing a field-trip at some stage :)\nMike aka MonolithTMA (2009-08-24):\n*as if I were at a support meeting* Hi, my name is Mike and I once gave money to Bob Larson.\nWhat a freaking charlatan. His brand of Christianity is what I like to call Dungeons and Dragons Christianity or just Roleplay Christianity. His \u0026quot;exorcisms\u0026quot; have all the elements of a bad D\u0026amp;D campaign.\nReed (2009-08-24):\nLarson is [no longer in Denver and] now based here in the Phoenix area You're welcome. :^)\nLippard (2009-08-24):\nReed: Now you know how the Australians feel about Ken Ham.\nMoe (2010-01-10):\nLarson has one mansion in Vail, CO, and another at Scottsdale. AZ. He used to broadcast his radio show from Denver and accepted donations from that PO box in Denver and STILL does. That explains the donation address. Larson is a charlatan who uses stage hypnosis and shills in \u0026quot; exorcisms\u0026quot;. I've kept an eye out on him and you can look through my LiveJournal for past posts I've made on him.( forevernitefa)\nMichael A. Stackpole (2012-04-07):\nI have attended two of his exorcisms, and have followed Bob\u0026#39;s antics for a long time. He was once challenged to debate me on the gaming = murder controversy, but balked. If there's a field trip to see him in action again, count me in.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/bob-larson-is-still-around-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePierre Stromberg has \u003ca href=\"http://paranormalamerika.blogspot.com/2009/08/beat-devil.html\"\u003ean entertaining tale of his visit to a performance by former radio broadcaster, self-proclaimed cult expert, and exorcist Bob Larson at his new Paranormal Amerika blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Larson suffered a significant blow to his career as a result of \u003ca href=\"http://www.weirdcrap.com/recreational/bobfiles.htm\"\u003ecriticisms from his fellow Coloradoan Ken Smith\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Bob Larson Fan Club.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Further damage came from exposure \u003ca href=\"http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss100/larson.htm\"\u003eat the hands of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCornerstone\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, which published carefully investigated exposures of deception, misuse of funds, fabricated biographical events, and so forth.  Others exposed by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCornerstone\u003c/span\u003e included alleged former Satanist turned Christian comedian Mike Warnke and claimed Satanic ritual abuse victim \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSatan\u0026rsquo;s Underground\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLarson is, unfortunately, now based here in the Phoenix area, with his \u0026ldquo;Spiritual Freedom Church of Phoenix\u0026rdquo; at 9096 E. Bahia Drive in Scottsdale, though for some reason it has a mailing address of a post office box in Denver.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bob Larson is still around and performing exorcisms"},{"content":"After at least two prior attempts in 2006 and 2008, Mexico has decriminalized the personal possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine in order to unclog the courts and focus only on heavy trafficking. This will be an interesting experiment in decriminalization that will no doubt also provoke drug tourism to Mexico.\nIt appears that the new law is similar to the 2006 proposal, which was less radical than it may have originally appeared\u0026ndash;it allowed local police as well as federal police to pursue drug crimes (a strengthening of the prosecution of drug crime) and allowed diversion to treatment for possession of small amounts of drugs rather than criminal prosecution. The new law doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow criminal prosecution for personal possession, and mandates treatment diversion on a third offense. So it\u0026rsquo;s not legalization, it\u0026rsquo;s decriminalization.\nHistorical Comments Wakefield Tolbert (2009-09-02):\nInteresting post, Jim. I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. My first response being that Mr. Tolbert will defer the more libertarian strain in him until such time as he is not liable for the collateral damage in everything from health clinics and rehab centers,etc, to the very real consequences in our personal lives, as with family and friends.\nSometimes the legal angle is a good kick in the netherregions to make life changes.\nOn the other hand, a war is raging south of the border due to our apetite for such.\nIni your opinion, and seeing that legalization and decriminalization are two different beasts here, do you think that a broader acceptance and broader decriminalization will soften the damage of the \u0026quot;drug wars\u0026quot;?\nIt is said that demand will level off, the dealers can be out in the open and set up pot shops a la California, etc, and people will flock there rather than secretive bales across the Rio Grande.\nBut is it that simple?\nWill there not still be turf wars over such substances?\nThe argument is that the black market for other kinds of drugs in high demand does exist, but the level is low (Viagra, morphine knockoffs, etc, etc.).\nNot sure about things like pot and LSD and strong punch dope like heroin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/mexico-decriminalizes-personal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter at least two prior attempts in \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/mexicos-congress-passes-bill-to.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2008/10/mexico-to-try-again-to-decriminalize.html\"\u003e2008\u003c/a\u003e, Mexico has \u003ca href=\"http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/mexico-legalizes-drug-posession/\"\u003edecriminalized the personal possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine\u003c/a\u003e in order to unclog the courts and focus only on heavy trafficking.  This will be an interesting experiment in decriminalization that will no doubt also provoke drug tourism to Mexico.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt appears that the new law is similar to \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/facts-about-mexicos-drug.html\"\u003ethe 2006 proposal\u003c/a\u003e, which was less radical than it may have originally appeared\u0026ndash;it allowed local police as well as federal police to pursue drug crimes (a strengthening of the prosecution of drug crime) and allowed diversion to treatment for possession of small amounts of drugs rather than criminal prosecution.  The new law doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow criminal prosecution for personal possession, and mandates treatment diversion on a third offense.  So it\u0026rsquo;s not legalization, it\u0026rsquo;s decriminalization.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mexico decriminalizes personal possession of drugs"},{"content":"From the Young Australian Skeptics:\nInspired by the annual The Open Laboratory, the Skeptical Blog Anthology is a printed anthology of blog posts voted the very best of 2009, managed by the Young Australian Skeptics in conjunction with the Critical Teaching Education Group (CTEG). The anthology is an attempt to bring a greater awareness of the skeptical content on blog sites and showcase some of the range and diversity in the blogosphere.\nWith an aim to provide text-​​based resources to classes and readers who may be interested or intrigued by what skepticism has to offer, entries from January 1st to December 1st 2009 are eligible for submission. Both a print and Portable Document Format (pdf) will be made available for purchase via Lulu​.com, with estimated printing early in 2010.\nEntries can be self-​​nominated or proposed by readers of skeptical blog sites. The guidelines proposed by the popular Skeptics’ Circle are a fine indicator of the kind of content suitable for the anthology, including urban legends, the paranormal, quackery, pseudoscience, intelligent design, historical revisionism, critical thinking, skeptical parenting/​educating skeptically, superstitions, etc.There\u0026rsquo;s a submission form at the Young Aus Skeptics website.\nSchtacky (2009-08-24):\nI nominated your blog, though it asked me to provide a specific post. Given the activity and well-researched nature of the post, I referenced your Zeitgeist review.\nLippard (2009-08-25):\nThanks! But unfortunately, that post doesn\u0026#39;t fall in the required January 1-December 1, 2009 timeframe...\nSchtacky (2009-08-25):\nOops....with all of the activity on it lately, I assumed that it did. My mistake. I should have looked more closely.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/skeptical-blog-anthology-2009-seeking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://www.youngausskeptics.com/anthology/\"\u003eYoung Australian Skeptics\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eInspired by the annual The Open Laboratory, the Skeptical Blog Anthology is a printed anthology of blog posts voted the very best of 2009, managed by the Young Australian Skeptics in conjunction with the Critical Teaching Education Group (CTEG). The anthology is an attempt to bring a greater awareness of the skeptical content on blog sites and showcase some of the range and diversity in the blogosphere.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWith an aim to provide text-​​based resources to classes and readers who may be interested or intrigued by what skepticism has to offer, entries from January 1st to December 1st 2009 are eligible for submission. Both a print and Portable Document Format (pdf) will be made available for purchase via Lulu​.com, with estimated printing early in 2010.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEntries can be self-​​nominated or proposed by readers of skeptical blog sites. The guidelines proposed by the popular Skeptics’ Circle are a fine indicator of the kind of content suitable for the anthology, including urban legends, the paranormal, quackery, pseudoscience, intelligent design, historical revisionism, critical thinking, skeptical parenting/​educating skeptically, superstitions, etc.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youngausskeptics.com/anthology/\"\u003ea submission form at the Young Aus Skeptics website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptical Blog Anthology 2009 seeking nominations"},{"content":"In Skeptoid #167, Brian Dunning argues that scientists should never engage in debate on pseudoscientific topics. His arguments include:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time.It gives pseudoscience undeserved credibility by putting it on an equal footing with science.There are few people in the audience who haven\u0026rsquo;t already made up their minds.Most of the people in the audience can\u0026rsquo;t distinguish good from bad arguments.His position is similar to that of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, who recommends that scientists not engage in formal debates with creationists.\nWhile Dunning correctly points out some major flaws in how formal debates have frequently gone, and I agree that such debates should be discouraged, I think there are cases where they are worthwhile\u0026ndash;it depends on the formulation of the resolution to be debated, the setting of the debate, and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of the debater. Too many creation/evolution debates have involved scientists who believe themselves to be good debaters, but who don\u0026rsquo;t understand how debate works and aren\u0026rsquo;t sufficiently familiar with creationist arguments to an appropriate breadth and depth. Unfortunately, many of those scientists think they won the debate or did a passable job when in fact they performed very poorly.\nThe resolution to be debated should be formulated so that there is a clear burden of evidence on the promoter of the pseudoscience, where it belongs. It\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to formulate a debate resolution as a false dilemma, where if the scientist can\u0026rsquo;t refute scattershot attacks, the pseudoscientist wins. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research won most of his debates by not only engaging in such a shotgun approach (the \u0026ldquo;Gish Gallop\u0026rdquo;), but also by refusing to talk about the age of the earth or flood geology, thus freeing himself from having to present any positive evidence in favor of his view. (I spoke a bit more about Gish\u0026rsquo;s debate success and how to successfully counter his debate strategies in my workshop session at this year\u0026rsquo;s American Humanist Association conference.)\nThe setting of the debate is also important, and is relevant to Dunning\u0026rsquo;s concern about audience. An academic debate at a university is more likely to have audience members who are actually interested in the evidence than, say, a debate at a church. It\u0026rsquo;s also significant whether the debate is being recorded and will be distributed further\u0026ndash;a well-done debate that is recorded and transcribed, and distributed in the form of a book, DVD, or online is going to have a much larger audience and may have much more significant consequences than the potential persuasion of five people in Dunning\u0026rsquo;s example. There are also debates conducted in written form, which provide the possibility of much more comprehensive argument and references to other material than an oral debate on a stage or on television, which I think generally makes them preferable.\nThe concern about giving a pseudoscience proponent undeserved credibility is a real one, and for that reason it\u0026rsquo;s probably a good idea for the debater to be someone of similar or lesser public stature, as well as someone well-versed in both debate and the details of the pseudoscience\u0026rsquo;s claims. Proponents of pseudoscience often issue challenges to prominent individuals for the primary purpose of getting publicity from it, which they may get to some degree either from denial or acceptance\u0026ndash;but much more from acceptance if they so much as appear to hold their own.\nDunning dismisses the concern that failure to debate leaves pseudoscience unchallenged, but I think there is a real potential concern here, as a refusal to debate can give proponents of pseudoscience a rhetorical weapon when there\u0026rsquo;s the appearance that no one is willing to challenge their arguments. This can, to a large extent, be defused if you can point to resources that refute the proponent\u0026rsquo;s claims in detail, and make the counter-argument that the proponents views aren\u0026rsquo;t deserving of a public forum. But in cases where the proponent\u0026rsquo;s views have received a large public following and there aren\u0026rsquo;t comprehensive resources that refute them, or such resources are little-known, I think that builds a case for debate.\nI think Dunning is right that it\u0026rsquo;s generally better to produce direct responses to pseudoscientific claims in a one-way format, but even that can be a form of debate to the extent it actually engages the proponents and they respond. What\u0026rsquo;s distinctive about a debate\u0026ndash;at least a good one\u0026ndash;is that it does involve engagement by both sides with the arguments and evidence of the other, and produces a record of that engagement for others to examine. That has advantages over siloed separate arguments that never directly respond to each other. I think that such engagement should be beneficial for scientists by identifying forms of misunderstanding that need corrections in the form of better communication, as well as locating possible weaknesses in their own evidence and arguments that need further work. It\u0026rsquo;s also beneficial for the proponent of pseudoscience in that it puts them into a situation where they must, at least momentarily, think about the arguments and evidence against their positions.\nReed (2009-08-19):\nRegarding the concern of leaving pseudoscience unchallenged, that looks to be a ripe opportunity for science-based skeptics to build-out online resources similar to how the talk.origins FAQ addresses creationist arguments. Can we create new sites (or improve existing ones) to improve their quality, increase their visibility, improve their structure and navigability, and maintain them in a sustainable way to address the specific arguments of the pseudoscience proponents?\nMight Wikipedia with its NPOV provisions to combat pseudoscience meet this need, or do we need something different that can be heavily cited by Wikipedia?\nSchtacky (2009-08-19):\nJim said: “I think Dunning is right that it\u0026#39;s generally better to produce direct responses to pseudoscientific claims in a one-way format, but even that can be a form of debate to the extent it actually engages the proponents and they respond.” I’d agree as well, but even this technique has limitations beyond what you’ve pointed out here. With any form of argument with a proponent of pseudoscience, creationism, etc., my observation has been that no matter the format, presented evidence is often ignored and the responder will resort to the usual rhetoric. Your Zeitgeist posts are perfect example of this, i.e., you’ve presented evidence for your stance that in many cases is almost completely ignored and this being YOUR blog, it qualifies as a ‘one-way’ argument.\nFinding someone with whom to debate that is willing to consider evidence remains the biggest gap.\nReed (2009-08-19):\n(copied from my comment on FB on this article) In his Where Do We Go From Here? essay, Daniel Loxton argues that skeptical activism shouldn't focus on scientific topics where better, more qualified experts exist (global warming, e.g.) Instead we should concentrate on reducing harm in our traditional topics (psychics, etc.)\nSo with regard to pseudoscience, if Dunning says that scientists shouldn't debate the cranks, and Loxton says that skeptics shouldn't do so either, then the cranks' arguments will go unanswered.\nLippard (2009-08-20):\nReed: To copy the rest of our Facebook discussion:\nJim: Dunning says not to debate, but he may have had strictly formal debates in mind\u0026ndash;though he wasn't entirely explicit. He advocated \u0026quot;one-way\u0026quot; communication, but didn't say that scientists shouldn't criticize pseudoscience.\nReed: I finally got a chance to read his piece and agree that he appears to be talking about formal debates, or at least any forum where science is placed on equal footing with pseudoscience, esp where the audience is easily confused.\nIt's a tough problem where I see much gray area that Dunning has vastly oversimplified. You do want those big guns like \u0026hellip; Read MoreHitchens, Dawkins, \u0026amp; Shermer who can engage in debate (formal, television, etc.) and persuade an audience that would otherwise only hear the side of pseudoscience. Those skills aren't born naturally, but are built up from years in the trenches.\nOn a lesser scale, for gain familiarity and expertise on a topic, it's helpful to be challenged on it. Where will that come from if not some form of debate (online forums, etc.)?\nStan: I wish I could debate like Steve Novella \u0026ndash; that guy is one cool cat.\nReed: I saw Novella last year on the Believers vs Skeptics panel at Dragon*Con last year. Where the believers where mushy and non-specific in defending their views, Novella was clear and specific, pointing out the logical fallacies committed during the argument. If there were any fence-sitters in the audience, I doubt they were persuaded by the believer panel.\nDaniel Loxton (2009-08-25):\nI actually don\u0026#39;t mean to imply that skeptics can\u0026#39;t tackle pseudoscience — I think \u0026quot;pseudoscience and the paranormal\u0026quot; describes our traditional domain. And, I also wouldn\u0026#39;t wish to say that skeptics can\u0026#39;t talk about straight science topics. We can, and I do: my first books are on evolution. What I do think is that skeptics have limited qualifications and usefulness when commenting on straight science topics, and that this limits our appropriate roles.\nWhere both domain expertise and expert consensus exist, we can only report the consensus as straight science journalists. We can only make so much of a contribution here, simply because many other qualified science reporters already exist. And, while we're spending time being science reporters in a crowd of other science reporters, we're not spending time on our core mandate (pseudoscience and the paranormal) — a mandate no one else has.\nWhere domain expertise exists, but not consensus, we can report that a controversy exists — but we cannot resolve it. Skeptics sometimes stumble badly here: we cannot, as skeptics, responsibly wade into an area in which we are not expert and expect to settle expert controversies. If we're not qualified, we should not promote our opinions; if we are qualified, we should publish our contributions in the relevant peer-reviewed literature, not popular sources like skeptical magazines.\nWhere domain expertise and consensus exist, but also a denier movement or pseudoscientific fringe, skeptics can roll up their sleeves and get to work. This is traditional ground for us, our bread and butter, as when we combat creationism or vaccine paranoia or HIV denial. This is also, unfortunately, the area of greatest failing for skepticism. When skeptics position themselves in opposition to a expert consensus, as when we side with climate change deniers, we become the pseudoscientists. I mean that literally: when we reject established science from a position of little or no relevant domain expertise, we are indistinguishable from any other group of cranks.\nFinally, there are many, many paranormal and pseudoscientific topics in which no experts exist — only enthusiasts. These topics, from Loch Ness to astrology to alien abduction, are the primary area where we should focus our energy. There are hundreds of topics under this umbrella, so it's not like we don't have enough to do!\nLippard (2009-08-25):\nDaniel: Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed comment. I mostly agree, except for a small difference with you on this sentence: \u0026quot;If we\u0026#39;re not qualified, we should not promote our opinions; if we are qualified, we should publish our contributions in the relevant peer-reviewed literature, not popular sources like skeptical magazines.\u0026quot; If we are qualified, there's no reason we should be precluded from publishing contributions in both the relevant peer-reviewed literature and in popular sources like skeptical magazines.\nI don't see any reason why popular skeptical magazines cannot both report on the existence of controversies and allow discussion on those controversies by proponents of those who hold a particular viewpoint. To the extent that there is a legitimate controversy, the skeptical magazine probably shouldn't take sides and should allow representation from advocates for multiple viewpoints, but why exclude everything but journalistic reporting on the controversy?\nDaniel Loxton (2009-08-25):\nJim: You\u0026#39;re right, it can be very helpful for skeptics to get a ring-side seat to watch experts argue about this stuff. (For example, the scraps between Gould and Dawkins were very illuminating.) But we need to be very careful when we do that in the skeptical literature. It isn't enough to run a single heterodox article in a skeptics mag, even by a domain expert. It isn't enough to run two or three point-counterpoint articles, especially if one of those is from a fringe source. That debate format can easily mislead readers into giving the fringe position undue weight. And, under all circumstances there must be a robust, long-term forum or feedback system so that readers exposed to the debate are also exposed to expert rebuttal.\nThe worst case scenario, though, is for a non-expert skeptic to take potshots at professional science from the comfort and influence of the popular sidelines — or argue that his or her personal incredulity trumps the actual literature on the topic.\nAt the end of the day, the skeptical literature cannot make contributions to expert science — it can only describe it. That description can, if we're careful, take the form of a debate…but we must be very careful indeed.\nLippard (2009-08-26):\nDaniel wrote: \u0026quot;The worst case scenario, though, is for a non-expert skeptic to take potshots at professional science from the comfort and influence of the popular sidelines — or argue that his or her personal incredulity trumps the actual literature on the topic.\u0026quot; I agree. And I think it's even a bit more complex than you describe when you say that \u0026quot;When skeptics position themselves in opposition to a expert consensus, as when we side with climate change deniers, we become the pseudoscientists.\u0026quot; We can also become the pseudoscientists when we attack the fringe, which is a point that Ray Hyman frequently makes about skeptical treatment of parapsychology.\nI recently inherited a copy of K. Ramakrishna Rao's anthology of articles, Charles Honorton and the Impoverished State of Skepticism (1994, McFarland), which appears to argue that even the professional skeptics (including Ray Hyman) engage in non-scientific rhetoric and methods to argue for their positions. (The term \u0026quot;denier,\u0026quot; BTW, is clearly a rhetorical strategy. Although I think it is often apt, it should also be recognized for what it is.)\nPhilip Kitcher, in his book The Advancement of Science, argues that what makes a pseudoscience is not the subject matter of a field, but the behavior of its practitioners.\nTechnically speaking, skeptical organizations are not really scientific organizations, they are public education and advocacy groups that promote science, as well as particular philosophical views about reasonable belief. So skeptical organizations should also be wary of purporting to be gatekeepers of what's science and what isn't, and individual skeptics who aren't professional scientists (or who are professional scientists addressing topics outside of their fields of expertise) need to take care not to misrepresent themselves.\nReed (2009-08-26):\n\u0026quot;even the professional skeptics [...] engage in non-scientific rhetoric and methods to argue for their positions\u0026quot; If ever this was an endemic problem, does it continue to be, at least among our professional skeptics?\nOne of the likely paths to the growth of the skeptical movement is through grass-roots efforts. It necessarily introduces a large influx of amateurs like myself. If our professionals had struggled with proper representation, imagine how difficult it will be for us amateurs!\nDaniel Loxton (2009-08-26):\nReed writes, \u0026quot;grass-roots…necessarily introduces a large influx of amateurs like myself. If our professionals had struggled with proper representation, imagine how difficult it will be for us amateurs!\u0026quot; That's why I'm always pressing my radical getting-our-ducks-in-a-row agenda. Suddenly people are watching and taking cues from established skeptics. That places a Spider-man-type \u0026quot;great responsibility\u0026quot; burden on the \u0026quot;pros\u0026quot; to set a good example.\nI argue in the upcoming SI that it's a sort of paradox: even as the grassroots leaves the old groups behind in many respects, the rise of the amateur movement makes professionalism more important than ever.\nLippard (2009-08-31):\nOn further reflection, I think have broader disagreement. I think that it\u0026#39;s possible to productively engage in subjects where one is not an expert, but an educated layman, at least when it comes to arguments in public forums where scientific information is being more broadly disseminated to the general public. Sure, amateur skeptics who aren't experts in the field are unlikely to resolve or contribute to those fields, but they can contribute to the discussions in a broader public context. The risk of siding with crackpots and getting things wrong is certainly there and I don't mean to dismiss it, but I think skepticism has a role to play in critical thinking in general, how the layman can identify who the relevant experts are in these disputes, and so forth.\nDoctor Atlantis (2009-08-31):\nLippard wrote: \u0026quot;Sure, amateur skeptics who aren\u0026#39;t experts in the field are unlikely to resolve or contribute to those fields, but they can contribute to the discussions in a broader public context.\u0026quot; I guess one big issue is how does one define a non-amateur skeptic? And without engaging in debate how can one hone one's arguments? A public, oral debate might be a bad way to \u0026quot;learn\u0026quot; but engaging in forum discussions with believers can help one measure ones own understanding of the arguments and the positions.\nI don't know how often it even comes up. I find it hard to resist the TBs who say, \u0026quot;skeptics never respond to X-study or Y-claim\u0026quot; and if I can dig up good replies I like to.\nBut I do wonder how one becomes anything but an amateur skeptic. (If we use the Olympics old measure of being paid-for-it, that's a small number of pro-skeptics.)\nDaniel Loxton (2009-08-31):\nJim Lippard wrote, \u0026quot;I think that it\u0026#39;s possible to productively engage in subjects where one is not an expert, but an educated layman, at least when it comes to arguments in public forums where scientific information is being more broadly disseminated to the general public.\u0026quot; Whether we agree on this depends on what you mean. If you think skeptics can speak up as citizens and speak on behalf of their own personal opinions in public debate, we agree.\nOr, if you mean skeptics should defend current science on the public stage while deferring to domain experts (essentially the journalists role) we agree there as well.\nMy position is that no skeptic should ever use the credibility loaned to them by their skeptical work to publicly promote authoritative-sounding views on topics which are either a) subjective and value-based, or b) outside their area of expertise.\nThere's no wider road to pseudoscience that the conceit that expertise in one area entitles one to speak as an expert in other areas.\nL (2009-08-31):\nJim, I guess my position on this is that the debunking role of skeptics is actually rather secondary. It's important for us, in that it allows us to exercise our skills and interests and it does sway some people but overall it's not terribly effective. We know this courtesy of research by people like Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. Counter-intuitively, debunking actually seems to reinforce misperceptions [PDF]. At least that's so in politics, but personal observation tells me it applies to other fields as well. What's more important I think is giving people the tools to do critical thinking, to ask questions that give meaningful answers and sieve the actual experts from the hucksters, conmen and bullshitters.\nBut it does involve educating ourselves in areas where, traditionally, skepticism has feared to tread and where Dan thinks we should still avoid. Don't get me wrong. Dan is right in saying that the same old pseudoscience and paranormal BS is never going away and we still need to concern ourselves with that. Dan's also right, I think, that we need to be more professional in the way we tackle subjects, of which picking our battles is a valuable skill.\nI just don't think we need to constrain ourselves to fringe topics. Non-experts can, at least, ask the right questions, educate and advocate for science and critical thinking. If it were otherwise, science, indeed all, journalism would be in an even more dismal state than it is now.\nLippard (2009-08-31):\nDaniel: I think I agree with what you say, except that there is probably no way to prevent people being given undue credibility or authority if they are well-known in some field and speaking out about another, except to keep repeating that point and get people to recognize it and be aware of it. Neural Gourmet: That phenomenon occurs outside of politics, e.g., a study of patients given a document on \u0026quot;vaccine myths\u0026quot; found that in later recall they remembered the myths as true.\nAnd older people are more likely to be persuaded to believe in misinformation on the basis of misleading cues, as might be given by a fraudster.\nDaniel Loxton (2009-08-31):\nJim Lippard wrote, \u0026quot;there is probably no way to prevent people being given undue credibility or authority if they are well-known in some field and speaking out about another, except to keep repeating that point and get people to recognize it and be aware of it.\u0026quot; Yes, I think you're right there.\nIn my view, we need to work toward a cultural norms for skepticism in which the community finds it inappropriate for skeptics to do certain things. Intruding inappropriately in other domains should bring voices of protest.\nNeural Gourmet wrote, \u0026quot;the debunking role of skeptics is actually rather secondary.\u0026quot;\nI see we have a great deal of overlap, but I think this distinction is a point of genuine disagreement.\nIn my view, the critical investigation of pseudoscience and the paranormal is the only unique thing skepticism has to offer.\nAfter all, many other fields (science communication, journalism, etc) prize science literacy or critical thinking. If those were primary goals, why bother having something called \u0026quot;skepticism\u0026quot;?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/brian-dunning-on-debate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://skeptoid.com/\"\u003eSkeptoid\u003c/a\u003e #167, Brian Dunning argues that scientists should never engage in debate on pseudoscientific topics.  His arguments include:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt gives pseudoscience undeserved credibility by putting it on an equal footing with science.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere are few people in the audience who haven\u0026rsquo;t already made up their minds.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMost of the people in the audience can\u0026rsquo;t distinguish good from bad arguments.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eHis position is similar to \u003ca href=\"http://ncseweb.org/rncse/24/6/confronting-creationism\"\u003ethat of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e, who recommends that scientists not engage in formal debates with creationists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile Dunning correctly points out some major flaws in how formal debates have frequently gone, and I agree that such debates should be discouraged, I think there are cases where they are worthwhile\u0026ndash;it depends on the formulation of the resolution to be debated, the setting of the debate, and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of the debater.  Too many creation/evolution debates have involved scientists who believe themselves to be good debaters, but who don\u0026rsquo;t understand how debate works and aren\u0026rsquo;t sufficiently familiar with creationist arguments to an appropriate breadth and depth.  Unfortunately, many of those scientists think they won the debate or did a passable job when in fact they performed very poorly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe resolution to be debated should be formulated so that there is a clear burden of evidence on the promoter of the pseudoscience, where it belongs.  It\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to formulate a debate resolution as a false dilemma, where if the scientist can\u0026rsquo;t refute scattershot attacks, the pseudoscientist wins. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research won most of his debates by not only engaging in such a shotgun approach (the \u0026ldquo;Gish Gallop\u0026rdquo;), but also by refusing to talk about the age of the earth or flood geology, thus freeing himself from having to present any positive evidence in favor of his view. (I spoke a bit more about Gish\u0026rsquo;s debate success and how to successfully counter his debate strategies in \u003ca href=\"/2009/06/my-aha-workshop-session-on-thursday.html\"\u003emy workshop session at this year\u0026rsquo;s American Humanist Association conference\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe setting of the debate is also important, and is relevant to Dunning\u0026rsquo;s concern about audience. An academic debate at a university is more likely to have audience members who are actually interested in the evidence than, say, a debate at a church. It\u0026rsquo;s also significant whether the debate is being recorded and will be distributed further\u0026ndash;a well-done debate that is recorded and transcribed, and distributed in the form of a book, DVD, or online is going to have a much larger audience and may have much more significant consequences than the potential persuasion of five people in Dunning\u0026rsquo;s example.  There are also \u003ca href=\"http://ncseweb.org/cej/9/1/examination-research-creationist-walter-brown\"\u003edebates conducted in written form\u003c/a\u003e, which provide the possibility of much more comprehensive argument and references to other material than an oral debate on a stage or on television, which I think generally makes them preferable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe concern about giving a pseudoscience proponent undeserved credibility is a real one, and for that reason it\u0026rsquo;s probably a good idea for the debater to be someone of similar or lesser public stature, as well as someone well-versed in both debate and the details of the pseudoscience\u0026rsquo;s claims. Proponents of pseudoscience often issue challenges to prominent individuals for the primary purpose of getting publicity from it, which they may get to some degree either from denial or acceptance\u0026ndash;but much more from acceptance if they so much as appear to hold their own.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDunning dismisses the concern that failure to debate leaves pseudoscience unchallenged, but I think there is a real potential concern here, as a refusal to debate can give proponents of pseudoscience a rhetorical weapon when there\u0026rsquo;s the appearance that no one is willing to challenge their arguments.  This can, to a large extent, be defused if you can point to resources that refute the proponent\u0026rsquo;s claims in detail, and make the counter-argument that the proponents views aren\u0026rsquo;t deserving of a public forum. But in cases where the proponent\u0026rsquo;s views have received a large public following and there aren\u0026rsquo;t comprehensive resources that refute them, or such resources are little-known, I think that builds a case for debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think Dunning is right that it\u0026rsquo;s generally better to produce direct responses to pseudoscientific claims in a one-way format, but even that can be a form of debate to the extent it actually engages the proponents and they respond.  What\u0026rsquo;s distinctive about a debate\u0026ndash;at least a good one\u0026ndash;is that it does involve engagement by both sides with the arguments and evidence of the other, and produces a record of that engagement for others to examine.  That has advantages over siloed separate arguments that never directly respond to each other.  I think that such engagement should be beneficial for scientists by identifying forms of misunderstanding that need corrections in the form of better communication, as well as locating possible weaknesses in their own evidence and arguments that need further work.  It\u0026rsquo;s also beneficial for the proponent of pseudoscience in that it puts them into a situation where they must, at least momentarily, think about the arguments and evidence against their positions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Brian Dunning on debate"},{"content":"This blog is entering its fifth year today, and the content will be shifting a bit now that I am returning to school. Today was my first day of new graduate student orientation before classes begin next week; I\u0026rsquo;m a Ph.D. student in Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program, which is beginning its second year. This is an interdisciplinary program within the Graduate College and allied with the School of Life Sciences, so today\u0026rsquo;s orientation was with new graduate students from other programs in SoLS. SoLS has 250 graduate students in 11 programs, of which 49 are entering this semester. (I chatted a bit with a couple of new graduate students in neuroscience.)\nThere seems to be a wealth of supporting organizations and structures to SoLS programs to assist in getting funding, doing research, participating in education and public outreach, and dealing with administrivia. I\u0026rsquo;ll be delving into as much of it as I can, and periodically reporting on items of particular interest here.\nFrom today\u0026rsquo;s orientation, a few items that are part of SoLS education and public outreach are worthy of note. ASU has an \u0026ldquo;Ask-a-Biologist\u0026rdquo; program online, which you can also follow via Twitter. That program is intended for students in grades K-12, and is projected to hit a million visitors this year. There\u0026rsquo;s also the Science Studio Podcasts for adult education. And the International Institute for Species Exploration website. There\u0026rsquo;s also a program run by SoLS graduate students called Graduate Partners in Science Education, where graduate student volunteers work with underprivileged and at-risk junior high school students on field biology research projects.\nMy current aim in the HSDST program is to build upon my past graduate experience in philosophy and cognitive science, my career in Internet services and information security, my interest in skeptical inquiry and critical thinking, and my interest in law to explore the concepts of trust and reputation as they pertain to online and digital media. At the moment, I\u0026rsquo;m signed up for a seminar on \u0026ldquo;Law, Science, and Technology,\u0026rdquo; a seminar on \u0026ldquo;Human and Social Dimensions of Climate Change,\u0026rdquo; the HSDST Core Seminar and Colloquium, and a course with one of my favorite undergraduate philosophy professors on Advanced Logic (that\u0026rsquo;s my \u0026ldquo;just for fun\u0026rdquo; class).\nTomorrow\u0026rsquo;s a reception for all of the new graduate students at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Tempe campus, and later in the week I have some training on fire and lab safety\u0026ndash;and next week, it\u0026rsquo;s back to class.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-08-18):\nI can\u0026#39;t wait to address you as Dr. Lippard!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/back-to-school.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis blog is entering its fifth year today, and the content will be shifting a bit now that I am returning to school.  Today was my first day of new graduate student orientation before classes begin next week; I\u0026rsquo;m a Ph.D. student in Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://hsd.asu.edu/\"\u003eHuman and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology\u003c/a\u003e program, which is beginning its second year.  This is an interdisciplinary program within the Graduate College and allied with the \u003ca href=\"http://sols.asu.edu/grad/index.php\"\u003eSchool of Life Sciences\u003c/a\u003e, so today\u0026rsquo;s orientation was with new graduate students from other programs in SoLS.  SoLS has 250 graduate students in 11 programs, of which 49 are entering this semester.  (I chatted a bit with a couple of new graduate students in neuroscience.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere seems to be a wealth of supporting organizations and structures to SoLS programs to assist in getting funding, doing research, participating in education and public outreach, and dealing with administrivia.  I\u0026rsquo;ll be delving into as much of it as I can, and periodically reporting on items of particular interest here.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom today\u0026rsquo;s orientation, a few items that are part of SoLS education and public outreach are worthy of note.  ASU has an \u003ca href=\"http://askabiologist.asu.edu/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ask-a-Biologist\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e program online, which you can also \u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/drbiology\"\u003efollow via Twitter\u003c/a\u003e. That program is intended for students in grades K-12, and is projected to hit a million visitors this year.  There\u0026rsquo;s also the \u003ca href=\"http://sols.asu.edu/podcasts/index.php\"\u003eScience Studio Podcasts\u003c/a\u003e for adult education.  And the \u003ca href=\"http://species.asu.edu/\"\u003eInternational Institute for Species Exploration\u003c/a\u003e website.  There\u0026rsquo;s also a program run by SoLS graduate students called \u003ca href=\"http://community.uui.asu.edu/Detail.asp?s=b\u0026amp;programID=967\"\u003eGraduate Partners in Science Education\u003c/a\u003e, where graduate student volunteers work with underprivileged and at-risk junior high school students on field biology research projects.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy current aim in the HSDST program is to build upon my past graduate experience in philosophy and cognitive science, my career in Internet services and information security, my interest in skeptical inquiry and critical thinking, and my interest in law to explore the concepts of trust and reputation as they pertain to online and digital media.  At the moment, I\u0026rsquo;m signed up for a seminar on \u0026ldquo;Law, Science, and Technology,\u0026rdquo; a seminar on \u0026ldquo;Human and Social Dimensions of Climate Change,\u0026rdquo; the HSDST Core Seminar and Colloquium, and a course with one of my favorite undergraduate philosophy professors on Advanced Logic (that\u0026rsquo;s my \u0026ldquo;just for fun\u0026rdquo; class).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTomorrow\u0026rsquo;s a reception for all of the new graduate students at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Tempe campus, and later in the week I have some training on fire and lab safety\u0026ndash;and next week, it\u0026rsquo;s back to class.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back to school"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast number 17 is out:\nEpisode 017 Atheism and Voluntarily Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Special Guest Representatives of AZ Coalition of Reason Matt Schoenley, Jim Lippard, and Apostaz hosts Shannon and Brad. AZCoR, Who What what not Why and why not? Tam 7 and Skepticamp. http://arizonacor.org http://discord.org http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists Intro- Greydon Square \u0026lsquo;Cubed\u0026rsquo; from the Compton Effect. Outro- Vocab Malone \u0026lsquo;Track 12\u0026rsquo;.This was my first time sitting in on the whole recording, rather than just contributing a short skepticism segment. While this was mainly about the Arizona Coalition of Reason, I did talk a little bit about TAM7 and SkeptiCamp Phoenix.\nHistorical Comments Brad (2009-09-30):\nThanks for coming onto the show by the way. I look forward to having more in depth conversations with you on the podcast!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/apostaz-podcast-17.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast number 17 is out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz017.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 017\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Voluntarily Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Special Guest Representatives of AZ Coalition of Reason Matt Schoenley, Jim Lippard, and Apostaz hosts Shannon and Brad. AZCoR, Who What what not Why and why not? Tam 7 and Skepticamp. \u003ca href=\"http://arizonacor.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arizonacor.org\"\u003ehttp://arizonacor.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://discord.org\"\u003ehttp://discord.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists\"\u003ehttp://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Intro- Greydon Square \u0026lsquo;Cubed\u0026rsquo; from the Compton Effect. Outro- Vocab Malone \u0026lsquo;Track 12\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis was my first time sitting in on the whole recording, rather than just contributing a short skepticism segment.  While this was mainly about the \u003ca href=\"http://arizonacor.org/\"\u003eArizona Coalition of Reason\u003c/a\u003e, I did talk a little bit about TAM7 and SkeptiCamp Phoenix.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #17"},{"content":"This is the sixth and final part of my summary of TAM7, covering the last day\u0026rsquo;s events on Sunday, July 11. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, part 5 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.\nSunday\u0026rsquo;s continental breakfast was served while an old James Randi television appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show from 1986 was shown. This brought back some old memories\u0026ndash;I think I have the show on videotape in my archives, as I think we showed it at a meeting of the Phoenix Skeptics. Randi appeared with a faith healer (\u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace\u0026rdquo;), a psychic (Joyce Keller), and an astrologer (Irene Hughes), which led to some entertaining and ridiculous exchanges of words. Randi showed his footage that exposed Peter Popoff using a wireless transmitter and receiver to fake the \u0026ldquo;word of knowledge,\u0026rdquo; and did some spoon bending. Joyce Keller claimed she was entitled to his $10,000 prize, and Oprah mistakenly claimed that Randi had brought his own spoons, which she corrected herself about after a commercial break.\nThis was followed by the Sunday refereed papers, which were again organized and moderated by Ray Hall, professor of physics at California State University, Fresno and at Fermi National Labs.\nDon Riefler, \u0026ldquo;Teaching Critical Thinking in a Therapeutic Setting\u0026rdquo;\nDon Riefler, Direct Care Supervisor at the Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children in Lafayette, Indiana, gave a talk about strategies he\u0026rsquo;s used to teach critical thinking to underprivileged/institutionalized children at the Cary Home, complete with positive reinforcement in the form of candy distributed to members of the audience who gave good answers. He discussed several categories of common \u0026ldquo;thinking errors\u0026rdquo; which included both logical fallacies and heuristics that lead to problems when overgeneralized. As part of his teaching, he has kids conduct ESP experiments with Zener cards, which he uses to teach them about erroneous inferences they draw about their skills. This provoked the first critical question (from regular ScienceBlogs commenter Sastra), asking whether his referral to \u0026ldquo;success\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;failure\u0026rdquo; in the Zener test suggests to kids that it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of effort. (I neglected to record his response.) In answer to a question of how he deals with religion he said that he avoids it and shuts down talk of religion or ideology.\nDavid Green, \u0026ldquo;Patently Ridiculous: The Perfect Sommelier\u0026rdquo;\nDavid Green, a Senior Patent Examiner at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, gave a talk that was essentially a sequel to a talk he gave at TAM5. He spoke about \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Sommelier,\u0026rdquo; a product that claims to \u0026ldquo;align tannin molecules with magnets to age wine faster.\u0026rdquo; He compared how the patent application for this product was handled in the U.S. vs. Canada.\nIn the U.S., patent examiners made two objections to the application, first, that it was obvious or already known, and second that the \u0026ldquo;subject matter is inoperable\u0026ndash;the theory of operation cannot be correct.\u0026rdquo; The first objection failed, since the invention was sufficiently different from prior art in various ways (such as having magnets at both ends of the bottle, not just at one end). And, based on the Longer (\u0026ldquo;lawn-jay\u0026rdquo;) test, under which the description of the invention must be accepted as true unless there\u0026rsquo;s a reason to doubt it, it passed on the second as well, and was granted two U.S. patents. Green said that it essentially comes down to a he-said/she-said debate, and the patent office has to be biased towards issuance of the patent.\nIn Canada, the same objections were made as in the U.S., along with a third. David Green had read a Swift article about a test of the product, so the third objection was a rejection on the basis of double-blind research evidence showing that the product doesn\u0026rsquo;t work, published in the Journal of Wine Research. That study concluded that \u0026ldquo;no evidence was found to suggest that The Perfect Sommelier improves the palatability of cheap red wine.\u0026rdquo; The manufacturers responded to the first two objections in the same way they did in the U.S., but for the third, they asserted that their evidence in the form of testimony overrides the double-blind research.\nAnd then they abandoned their patent claim in Canada.\nThe reason they did this, Green explained, is because of \u0026ldquo;U.S. file wrapper estoppels\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;that what you do in a foreign patent application can affect your patent in U.S. court. If they had continued with their claim in Canada and been denied\u0026ndash;or if they had failed to file a response to the objections\u0026ndash;that could have impacted their U.S. patent.\nWhat this demonstrates, Green argued, is the importance of doing solid investigations and research on such products, and getting them published and spreading the information around (e.g., online), so that patent examiners can find it. It can make the difference between a nonsensical product getting a patent or being denied a patent.\nAt this point I took some time to chat with Ray Hyman, and came in a little bit late for the next presentation.\nAdam Slagell, \u0026ldquo;Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: The Pillars of Justification for Cyber Security\u0026rdquo;\nAdam Slagell, Senior Security Engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about claims made for security and security products that we should be skeptical of. He pointed out that there\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as perfect security, and there are always tradeoffs to be made between security and usability/convenience/etc. He spoke a little bit about TSA \u0026ldquo;security theater,\u0026rdquo; pointing out the gaping flaw in the \u0026ldquo;no fly lists\u0026rdquo; that comes from the separation of checking ID and boarding pass at the security checkpoint from checking your boarding pass at the gate. He also questioned the point of shoe removal, which led to the first comment on his talk from Ian, an airport security officer at Gatwick, who argued that forcing shoes to go through the X-ray machine does close a genuine vulnerability. (Ian also argued that the liquid restriction makes sense, though he didn\u0026rsquo;t respond to Slagell\u0026rsquo;s point that you can carry multiple 3-ounce containers and combine their contents with those of your associates after you go through screening. Most interestingly, Ian said that airport metal detectors go off randomly in addition to when they detect metal.)\nSlagell argued that signature-based antivirus products are obsolete, since polymorphic malware and use of packers are extremely effective at eliminating signatures, and observed that companies are starting to create products based on white-listing, only allowing pre-defined sets of software to run on a machine. (At last year\u0026rsquo;s New Mexico InfraGard conference, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist spoke in some detail about different kinds of packers, and offered a set of criteria for measuring AV effectiveness that included use of methods other than signature-detection, such as anomalous behavior detection.) He unfortunately didn\u0026rsquo;t have time to talk about passwords.\nAnother questioner asked what users behaviors are useful to stay secure, to which Slagell replied that you should keep systems patched and backed up. (There is actually some argument, at least for corporations, to be somewhat selective in patching, since many patches aren\u0026rsquo;t applicable, have other mitigations, and have potential for reducing availability themselves\u0026ndash;but there is no substitute for having a vulnerability management program in place.)\nSteve Cuno, \u0026ldquo;The Constructive Skeptic: Rebranding Skepticism at the Grassroots Level\u0026rdquo;\nSteve Cuno, chairman of RESPONSE Agency, Inc., gave an excellent talk last year at TAM6, and he gave another great presentation this time as well. He started by saying that skeptics have a branding problem.\nWhat is a brand? Is it a name and logo? A great slogan? What you say about yourself?\nHe gave some counterexamples for each of these, including some nice vintage ads (e.g., \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re happy because they eat lard\u0026rdquo; from the Lard Information Council). AIG had the slogan \u0026ldquo;The strength to be here.\u0026rdquo; (He didn\u0026rsquo;t mention any of my favorite unintentionally ironic bank slogans.)\nHe gave an example slogan for skepticism: \u0026ldquo;Skepticism: Doubt worth believing in.\u0026rdquo; He called all of these proposed brand definitions \u0026ldquo;brand flatulence: you may like the sound and smell of your farts, but nobody else does.\u0026quot;\nHe gave as his prototypical example of what branding really is the example of Nordstrom\u0026rsquo;s. There\u0026rsquo;s no particular logo or slogan involved, but people think of Nordstrom on the basis of the values that are expressed by the company through its employees and the experience you have as a customer. The essence of creating a brand is creating a positive customer experience.\nAnd the way for skeptics to give skepticism a good name is by self-policing \u0026ldquo;to deliver positive brand experience.\u0026quot;\nHe suggested that the way to do this is to delay giving yourself a label, and when you do identify yourself with a label, anchor it in something positive. Instead of saying \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t believe in \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;, think through and express what you do support. For example:\nI believe in what the evidence supports.I believe in honesty, integrity, equal rights, and treating one another with dignity and respect.I believe in and defend the right of all people to believe as they choose.Do things that are positive. He gave the example of the GLBT protests at the annual April Mormon Church Conference, which, rather than picketing and protesting, engaged in protest by cleaning up parks, visiting shut-ins, and doing positive and helpful things in the name of their cause. The result was to get tons of positive press.\nHe heartily endorsed TAM7\u0026rsquo;s vaccination support and food drive, and further added that we should play nice. Being controversial and using insults may work for media figures, but not for the grassroots. Be sure that messages are well-timed. And remember that some people just don\u0026rsquo;t care\u0026ndash;to quote Will Rogers, \u0026ldquo;Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.\u0026quot;\nA summary of Cuno\u0026rsquo;s talk may be found on his blog.\nBrian Dunning, \u0026ldquo;What Were the \u0026lsquo;Lost Cosmonaut\u0026rsquo; Radio Transmissions?\u0026quot;\nBrian Dunning\u0026rsquo;s talk was a sequel to one of his Skeptoid podcasts on Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, a pair of Italian brothers who built equipment to monitor radio transmissions from spacecraft at an installation they called Torre Bert. They successfully recorded the October 1957 launch of Sputnik I, Sputnik II with Laika the dog in November 1957, and then a few oddities. In February 1961, they recorded what they reported as a \u0026ldquo;failing human heartbeat,\u0026rdquo; when there was no known flight. In the same month, they recorded a \u0026ldquo;voice of a dying man,\u0026rdquo; again with no known flight. In May 1961, they recorded the voice of a woman, Ludmila, speaking about how she was \u0026ldquo;going to re-enter,\u0026rdquo; which they attributed to a secret female cosmonaut mission that resulted in her death.\nThere are no corroborating reports of these transmissions, despite the fact that the U.S. Defense Early Warning system began in 1959. And there were no female cosmonauts in 1961. The female cosmonaut program wasn\u0026rsquo;t approved until five months after the recording, and the first five women selected for the program a year later. Yuri Gagarin had just launched in Vostok 1 in May 1961, and for the Vostok 2 launch in August 1961, they had to scavenge Gagarin\u0026rsquo;s space suit to make a suit for the second cosmonaut. So there was no way there was a female cosmonaut launch in May 1961.\nAt the time, the U.S. was flying X-15s. Did the Soviets have some kind of space plane? The Soviet Kosmoplan never got off the drawing board, and its Raketoplan was developed, but wasn\u0026rsquo;t ready for testing until 1962.\nA jet fighter? The YC-150 didn\u0026rsquo;t fly high enough. Dunning also ruled out the Mig-21 and high-altitude balloons.\nThe conclusion\u0026ndash;get your own Russian translators. Dunning got four Russians to listen to the recording, and found that it didn\u0026rsquo;t say what was claimed, but instead was almost 99% unintelligible, with the rest being numbers. He also found that the source of the transmission was not moving, but was at a fixed position.\nAlthough he didn\u0026rsquo;t come to a definitive conclusion, he was able to at least eliminate a number of possibilities\u0026ndash;sometimes that\u0026rsquo;s the best you can do.\nChristian Walters and Tim Farley, \u0026ldquo;How Are We Doing? Attracting and Keeping Visitors to Skeptical Websites\u0026rdquo;\nTim Farley was another return speaker, this time with Christian Walters. They talked about how the over 650 skeptical websites should measure acquisition of visitors and take actions to keep them and to obtain high search engine rankings.\nFirst, how you\u0026rsquo;re acquiring visitors can be measured by looking at rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs), Google PageRank, and Yahoo link strength measurements. These measures are all increased by receiving links from other web sources, of which important sites are social media sites like digg, reddit, delicio.us, Facebook, and Twitter.\nAnother important factor is having good page titles, which include popular search terms. The META keyword tags are no longer so important. By using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can find what popular search terms are. Sometimes they are surprising\u0026ndash;for instance misspellings of some terms (like accupuncture) get more search hits than the correct spelling.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also a good idea to put the keywords from your title into the URL, rather than use URLs as some blogs do that only have a page ID in them.\nThe anchor text of hyperlinks to your pages should also contain the appropriate keywords, and so your internal links within a site should make a point of using them.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s important to describe your site with an XML SiteMap or via RSS feed, which you get for free with blogs. When you link to other sites, you are dividing up your own link strength among the sites you link to, unless you use the NOFOLLOW tag, which you should do when linking to sites you don\u0026rsquo;t want to promote in search engine results. NOFOLLOW is also a good idea when linking to sites that may engage in spam or other abuse, to prevent that abuse from reflecting on your site, as it might in Google search engine results, for example.\nThe Million Dollar Challenge: Dowser Connie Sonne\nEveryone had to leave the auditorium for preparation for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge, with Danish dowser and former police detective Connie Sonne (who has described her alleged powers in an interview with Alison Smith of JREF). Everyone had to sign an agreement to remain silent and not disturb the proceedings before filing back in\u0026ndash;and everyone remained quite quiet for the hour or so that it took for the test.\nThis was a preliminary test, with a 1 in 1000 probability of success by chance, which, if successful, would allow Connie Sonne to go on to the official challenge for the JREF\u0026rsquo;s $1,000,000. The protocol for the test was developed in conjunction with Connie Sonne and both sides approved. She signed paperwork describing the protocol and agreeing that she woudl go ahead with the test.\nConnie Sonne claimed to be able to use a pendulum to identify playing cards without looking at them, and she successfully did this when she was able to see the cards. Sets of playing cards, A-10, for each of three suits were placed separately into envelopes. Each of those envelopes for the same suit was placed into a larger envelope, with the suit written on the outside. Banachek ran the test (I thought to myself at the time that this was a likely source of future complaint, given his skill at illusion), opening each of the three suit envelopes, one at a time, and rolling a 10-sided die to indicate which card from the suit Connie Sonne was required to locate. The ten individual card envelopes were spread out in front of her, and she used the pendulum to identify which envelope she believed contained the appropriate card. For the first set, she was supposed to find the 3 of hearts, for the second, the 7 of clubs, and for the third, the ace of spades. The cards she picked were the 2 of hearts, which was in the second envelope of the first set, the ace of clubs, which was in the seventh envelope of the second set, and the 2 of spades, which was in the first envelope of the third set. Banachek opened all of the envelopes from each of the three sets so that she could see that there was no trickery, and she agreed that all was done fairly.\nAt the subsequent press conference, she continued to maintain that all was fair, but that there was some reason she wasn\u0026rsquo;t supposed to reveal her powers to the world yet.\nBut by the next day, she decided that she had been cheated somehow by Banachek. Her main point of evidence was that Banachek identified the ace of spades from the third set before pulling the card out of the envelope\u0026ndash;but it was the last card of the set to be opened, and he identified it after the end of the envelope had been cut off and as he started to pull it out. The cards were visible inside the envelopes once the ends were opened.\nOn July 13, she made her accusation of cheating on the JREF Forums:\nHi out there\u0026hellip;now I know why Banacheck was \u0026ldquo;the card handler\u0026rdquo;. I have been cheated. I did find the right cards. And there is one more thing. At the stage, Banacheck said to me BEFORE he even looked in the envelope I had cut\u0026hellip;and here is spade ace, the one you looked for!!!! I first hit me now about that \u0026hellip;.but maybe you can see it yourself if someone get the video. I dont care about the money, that wasnt the reason why I came. So no matter what you think out there\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;I was CHEATED!!!!!\nConnieIt was a typical response to the Randi challenge from an honest proponent of a claim who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why the claim failed under test conditions, resolving the cognitive dissonance by placing blame on the experimenter.\nThat concludes my summary of TAM7\u0026ndash;I look forward to attending TAM8 next year.\nHistorical Comments BathTub (2009-08-14):\nI didn\u0026#39;t know she had decided to use the cheater excuse. That\u0026#39;s really sad I thought she held herself up really well during the press conference, loony of course, but accepting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sunday-paper-sessions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the sixth and final part of my summary of TAM7, covering the last day\u0026rsquo;s events on Sunday, July 11. Part 1 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 2 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 3 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 4 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sgu-shermer-savage.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 5 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-ethics-of-deception.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSunday\u0026rsquo;s continental breakfast was served while an old James Randi television appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show from 1986 was shown.  This brought back some old memories\u0026ndash;I think I have the show on videotape in my archives, as I think we showed it at a meeting of the Phoenix Skeptics.  Randi appeared with a faith healer (\u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace\u0026rdquo;), a psychic (Joyce Keller), and an astrologer (Irene Hughes), which led to some entertaining and ridiculous exchanges of words.  Randi showed his footage that exposed Peter Popoff using a wireless transmitter and receiver to fake the \u0026ldquo;word of knowledge,\u0026rdquo; and did some spoon bending.  Joyce Keller claimed she was entitled to his $10,000 prize, and Oprah mistakenly claimed that Randi had brought his own spoons, which she corrected herself about after a commercial break.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was followed by the Sunday refereed papers, which were again organized and moderated by Ray Hall, professor of physics at California State University, Fresno and at Fermi National Labs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDon Riefler, \u0026ldquo;Teaching Critical Thinking in a Therapeutic Setting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDon Riefler, Direct Care Supervisor at the Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children in Lafayette, Indiana, gave a talk about strategies he\u0026rsquo;s used to teach critical thinking to underprivileged/institutionalized children at the Cary Home, complete with positive reinforcement in the form of candy distributed to members of the audience who gave good answers.  He discussed several categories of common \u0026ldquo;thinking errors\u0026rdquo; which included both logical fallacies and heuristics that lead to problems when overgeneralized.  As part of his teaching, he has kids conduct ESP experiments with Zener cards, which he uses to teach them about erroneous inferences they draw about their skills.  This provoked the first critical question (from regular ScienceBlogs commenter Sastra), asking whether his referral to \u0026ldquo;success\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;failure\u0026rdquo; in the Zener test suggests to kids that it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of effort.  (I neglected to record his response.)  In answer to a question of how he deals with religion he said that he avoids it and shuts down talk of religion or ideology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDavid Green, \u0026ldquo;Patently Ridiculous: The Perfect Sommelier\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Green, a Senior Patent Examiner at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, gave a talk that was essentially a sequel to a talk he gave at TAM5.  He spoke about \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Sommelier,\u0026rdquo; a product that claims to \u0026ldquo;align tannin molecules with magnets to age wine faster.\u0026rdquo;  He compared how the patent application for this product was handled in the U.S. vs. Canada.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the U.S., patent examiners made two objections to the application, first, that it was obvious or already known, and second that the \u0026ldquo;subject matter is inoperable\u0026ndash;the theory of operation cannot be correct.\u0026rdquo; The first objection failed, since the invention was sufficiently different from prior art in various ways (such as having magnets at both ends of the bottle, not just at one end).  And, based on the Longer (\u0026ldquo;lawn-jay\u0026rdquo;) test, under which the description of the invention must be accepted as true unless there\u0026rsquo;s a reason to doubt it, it passed on the second as well, and was granted two U.S. patents.  Green said that it essentially comes down to a he-said/she-said debate, and the patent office has to be biased towards issuance of the patent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Canada, the same objections were made as in the U.S., along with a third.  David Green had read a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSwift\u003c/span\u003e article about a test of the product, so the third objection was a rejection on the basis of double-blind research evidence showing that the product doesn\u0026rsquo;t work, published in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Wine Research\u003c/span\u003e.  That study concluded that \u0026ldquo;no evidence was found to suggest that The Perfect Sommelier improves the palatability of cheap red wine.\u0026rdquo;  The manufacturers responded to the first two objections in the same way they did in the U.S., but for the third, they asserted that their evidence in the form of testimony overrides the double-blind research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd then they abandoned their patent claim in Canada.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe reason they did this, Green explained, is because of \u0026ldquo;U.S. file wrapper estoppels\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;that what you do in a foreign patent application can affect your patent in U.S. court.  If they had continued with their claim in Canada and been denied\u0026ndash;or if they had failed to file a response to the objections\u0026ndash;that could have impacted their U.S. patent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat this demonstrates, Green argued, is the importance of doing solid investigations and research on such products, and getting them published and spreading the information around (e.g., online), so that patent examiners can find it.  It can make the difference between a nonsensical product getting a patent or being denied a patent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point I took some time to chat with Ray Hyman, and came in a little bit late for the next presentation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAdam Slagell, \u0026ldquo;Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: The Pillars of Justification for Cyber Security\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Slagell, Senior Security Engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about claims made for security and security products that we should be skeptical of.  He pointed out that there\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as perfect security, and there are always tradeoffs to be made between security and usability/convenience/etc.  He spoke a little bit about TSA \u0026ldquo;security theater,\u0026rdquo; pointing out \u003ca href=\"/2008/10/tsa-airport-security-is-waste-of-time.html\"\u003ethe gaping flaw in the \u0026ldquo;no fly lists\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that comes from the separation of checking ID and boarding pass at the security checkpoint from checking your boarding pass at the gate. He also questioned the point of shoe removal, which led to the first comment on his talk from Ian, an airport security officer at Gatwick, who argued that forcing shoes to go through the X-ray machine does close a genuine vulnerability.  (Ian also argued that the liquid restriction makes sense, though he didn\u0026rsquo;t respond to Slagell\u0026rsquo;s point that you can carry multiple 3-ounce containers and combine their contents with those of your associates after you go through screening.  Most interestingly, Ian said that airport metal detectors go off randomly in addition to when they detect metal.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSlagell argued that signature-based antivirus products are obsolete, since polymorphic malware and use of packers are extremely effective at eliminating signatures, and observed that companies are starting to create products based on white-listing, only allowing pre-defined sets of software to run on a machine.  (At \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/new-mexico-infragard-conference.html\"\u003elast year\u0026rsquo;s New Mexico InfraGard conference\u003c/a\u003e, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist spoke in some detail about different kinds of packers, and offered a set of criteria for measuring AV effectiveness that included use of methods other than signature-detection, such as anomalous behavior detection.)  He unfortunately didn\u0026rsquo;t have time to talk about passwords.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked what users behaviors are useful to stay secure, to which Slagell replied that you should keep systems patched and backed up.  (There is actually some argument, at least for corporations, to be somewhat selective in patching, since many patches aren\u0026rsquo;t applicable, have other mitigations, and have potential for reducing availability themselves\u0026ndash;but there is no substitute for having a vulnerability management program in place.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSteve Cuno, \u0026ldquo;The Constructive Skeptic: Rebranding Skepticism at the Grassroots Level\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSteve Cuno, chairman of RESPONSE Agency, Inc., gave \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003ean excellent talk last year at TAM6\u003c/a\u003e, and he gave another great presentation this time as well.  He started by saying that skeptics have a branding problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat is a brand?  Is it a name and logo?  A great slogan?  What you say about yourself?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave some counterexamples for each of these, including some nice vintage ads (e.g., \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re happy because they eat lard\u0026rdquo; from the Lard Information Council).  AIG had the slogan \u0026ldquo;The strength to be here.\u0026rdquo;  (He didn\u0026rsquo;t mention any of \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/bank-slogans-as-signals-to-depositors.html\"\u003emy favorite unintentionally ironic bank slogans\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave an example slogan for skepticism:  \u0026ldquo;Skepticism: Doubt worth believing in.\u0026rdquo;  He called all of these proposed brand definitions \u0026ldquo;brand flatulence:  you may like the sound and smell of your farts, but nobody else does.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave as his prototypical example of what branding really is the example of Nordstrom\u0026rsquo;s.  There\u0026rsquo;s no particular logo or slogan involved, but people think of Nordstrom on the basis of the values that are expressed by the company through its employees and the experience you have as a customer.  The essence of creating a brand is creating a positive customer experience.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the way for skeptics to give skepticism a good name is by self-policing \u0026ldquo;to deliver positive brand experience.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe suggested that the way to do this is to delay giving yourself a label, and when you do identify yourself with a label, anchor it in something positive.  Instead of saying \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t believe in \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;, think through and express what you do support.  For example:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eI believe in what the evidence supports.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eI believe in honesty, integrity, equal rights, and treating one another with dignity and respect.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eI believe in and defend the right of all people to believe as they choose.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eDo things that are positive.  He gave the example of the GLBT protests at the annual April Mormon Church Conference, which, rather than picketing and protesting, engaged in protest by cleaning up parks, visiting shut-ins, and doing positive and helpful things in the name of their cause.  The result was to get tons of positive press.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe heartily endorsed TAM7\u0026rsquo;s vaccination support and food drive, and further added that we should play nice.  Being controversial and using insults may work for media figures, but not for the grassroots.  Be sure that messages are well-timed.  And remember that some people just don\u0026rsquo;t care\u0026ndash;to quote Will Rogers, \u0026ldquo;Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA summary of Cuno\u0026rsquo;s talk \u003ca href=\"http://www.responseagency.com/blog/?p=451\"\u003emay be found on his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBrian Dunning, \u0026ldquo;What Were the \u0026lsquo;Lost Cosmonaut\u0026rsquo; Radio Transmissions?\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrian Dunning\u0026rsquo;s talk was a sequel to one of his Skeptoid podcasts on Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, a pair of Italian brothers who built equipment to monitor radio transmissions from spacecraft at an installation they called Torre Bert.  They successfully recorded the October 1957 launch of Sputnik I, Sputnik II with Laika the dog in November 1957, and then a few oddities.  In February 1961, they recorded what they reported as a \u0026ldquo;failing human heartbeat,\u0026rdquo; when there was no known flight.  In the same month, they recorded a \u0026ldquo;voice of a dying man,\u0026rdquo; again with no known flight.  In May 1961, they recorded the voice of a woman, Ludmila, speaking about how she was \u0026ldquo;going to re-enter,\u0026rdquo; which they attributed to a secret female cosmonaut mission that resulted in her death.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are no corroborating reports of these transmissions, despite the fact that the U.S. Defense Early Warning system began in 1959.  And there were no female cosmonauts in 1961.  The female cosmonaut program wasn\u0026rsquo;t approved until five months after the recording, and the first five women selected for the program a year later.  Yuri Gagarin had just launched in Vostok 1 in May 1961, and for the Vostok 2 launch in August 1961, they had to scavenge Gagarin\u0026rsquo;s space suit to make a suit for the second cosmonaut.  So there was no way there was a female cosmonaut launch in May 1961.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the time, the U.S. was flying X-15s.  Did the Soviets have some kind of space plane?  The Soviet Kosmoplan never got off the drawing board, and its Raketoplan was developed, but wasn\u0026rsquo;t ready for testing until 1962.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA jet fighter?  The YC-150 didn\u0026rsquo;t fly high enough.  Dunning also ruled out the Mig-21 and high-altitude balloons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conclusion\u0026ndash;get your own Russian translators.  Dunning got four Russians to listen to the recording, and found that it didn\u0026rsquo;t say what was claimed, but instead was almost 99% unintelligible, with the rest being numbers.  He also found that the source of the transmission was not moving, but was at a fixed position.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough he didn\u0026rsquo;t come to a definitive conclusion, he was able to at least eliminate a number of possibilities\u0026ndash;sometimes that\u0026rsquo;s the best you can do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eChristian Walters and Tim Farley, \u0026ldquo;How Are We Doing? Attracting and Keeping Visitors to Skeptical Websites\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTim Farley was another return speaker, this time with Christian Walters.  They talked about how the over 650 skeptical websites should measure acquisition of visitors and take actions to keep them and to obtain high search engine rankings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst, how you\u0026rsquo;re acquiring visitors can be measured by looking at rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs), Google PageRank, and Yahoo link strength measurements.  These measures are all increased by receiving links from other web sources, of which important sites are social media sites like digg, reddit, delicio.us, Facebook, and Twitter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother important factor is having good page titles, which include popular search terms.  The META keyword tags are no longer so important.  By using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can find what popular search terms are.  Sometimes they are surprising\u0026ndash;for instance misspellings of some terms (like accupuncture) get more search hits than the correct spelling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s also a good idea to put the keywords from your title into the URL, rather than use URLs as some blogs do that only have a page ID in them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe anchor text of hyperlinks to your pages should also contain the appropriate keywords, and so your internal links within a site should make a point of using them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s important to describe your site with an XML SiteMap or via RSS feed, which you get for free with blogs.  When you link to other sites, you are dividing up your own link strength among the sites you link to, unless you use the NOFOLLOW tag, which you should do when linking to sites you don\u0026rsquo;t want to promote in search engine results.  NOFOLLOW is also a good idea when linking to sites that may engage in spam or other abuse, to prevent that abuse from reflecting on your site, as it might in Google search engine results, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Million Dollar Challenge: Dowser Connie Sonne\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEveryone had to leave the auditorium for preparation for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge, with Danish dowser and former police detective Connie Sonne (who has \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/613-interview-with-connie-sonne-dowser.html\"\u003edescribed her alleged powers in an interview with Alison Smith of JREF\u003c/a\u003e).  Everyone had to sign an agreement to remain silent and not disturb the proceedings before filing back in\u0026ndash;and everyone remained quite quiet for the hour or so that it took for the test.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was a preliminary test, with a 1 in 1000 probability of success by chance, which, if successful, would allow Connie Sonne to go on to the official challenge for the JREF\u0026rsquo;s $1,000,000.  The protocol for the test was developed in conjunction with Connie Sonne and both sides approved.  She signed paperwork describing the protocol and agreeing that she woudl go ahead with the test.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConnie Sonne claimed to be able to use a pendulum to identify playing cards without looking at them, and she successfully did this when she was able to see the cards.  Sets of playing cards, A-10, for each of three suits were placed separately into envelopes.  Each of those envelopes for the same suit was placed into a larger envelope, with the suit written on the outside.  Banachek ran the test (I thought to myself at the time that this was a likely source of future complaint, given his skill at illusion), opening each of the three suit envelopes, one at a time, and rolling a 10-sided die to indicate which card from the suit Connie Sonne was required to locate.  The ten individual card envelopes were spread out in front of her, and she used the pendulum to identify which envelope she believed contained the appropriate card.  For the first set, she was supposed to find the 3 of hearts, for the second, the 7 of clubs, and for the third, the ace of spades.  The cards she picked were the 2 of hearts, which was in the second envelope of the first set, the ace of clubs, which was in the seventh envelope of the second set, and the 2 of spades, which was in the first envelope of the third set.  Banachek opened all of the envelopes from each of the three sets so that she could see that there was no trickery, and she agreed that all was done fairly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the subsequent press conference, she continued to maintain that all was fair, but that there was some reason she wasn\u0026rsquo;t supposed to reveal her powers to the world yet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut by the next day, she decided that she had been cheated somehow by Banachek. Her main point of evidence was that Banachek identified the ace of spades from the third set before pulling the card out of the envelope\u0026ndash;but it was the last card of the set to be opened, and he identified it after the end of the envelope had been cut off and as he started to pull it out.  The cards were visible inside the envelopes once the ends were opened.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn July 13, she \u003ca href=\"http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4900202\u0026amp;postcount=271\"\u003emade her accusation of cheating on the JREF Forums\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHi out there\u0026hellip;now I know why Banacheck was \u0026ldquo;the card handler\u0026rdquo;. I have been cheated. I did find the right cards. And there is one more thing. At the stage, Banacheck said to me BEFORE he even looked in the envelope I had cut\u0026hellip;and here is spade ace, the one you looked for!!!! I first hit me now about that \u0026hellip;.but maybe you can see it yourself if someone get the video. I don\u003ccode\u003et care about the money, that wasn\u003c/code\u003et the reason why I came. So no matter what you think out there\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;I was CHEATED!!!!!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConnie\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt was a typical response to the Randi challenge from an honest proponent of a claim who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why the claim failed under test conditions, resolving the cognitive dissonance by placing blame on the experimenter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat concludes my summary of TAM7\u0026ndash;I look forward to attending TAM8 next year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: Sunday paper sessions, Million Dollar Challenge"},{"content":"Concluding the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, volume 4 (1990-1991) is here, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is here, and volume 6 (1992-1993) here. Volume 7 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.\nThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1994:\n\"Oh No--Spooks in a Skeptic's Home\" by Hans Sebald \"Skeptics Predictions for 1994\" \"Meeting Schedule for 1994\" \"Where Have We Been?\" \"What Harm Superstition?\" by Michael A. Stackpole \"Skeptically Entertaining\" by Michael A. Stackpole While that was the last issue of The Arizona Skeptic published, there have been at least two published lists of skeptical predictions by the Phoenix Skeptics, for 1996, 2006, and 2007, and the group continues to meet on a monthly basis--at 12 p.m. (noon) on the first Saturday of each month at Jim's Coney Island Cafe in Tempe, 1750 N. Scottsdale Road, on the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and McKellips.\nThere is also now an active Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub meetup group, which meets at 7 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month at D'Arcy McGee's Pub at the Tempe Marketplace, 2000 E. Rio Salado Parkway.\nUPDATE (March 18, 2010): Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub now meets at Four Peaks Brewery--see the meetup group link.\nUPDATE (September 17, 2014): The Phoenix Area Skeptics Society has been active since 2012.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-7-1994.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConcluding the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 2 (1988-1989) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 3 (1989-1990) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 4 (1990-1991) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-4-1990-1991.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-5-1991-1992.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and volume 6 (1992-1993) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-6-1992-1993.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Volume 7 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv7n1-Summer-1994.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1994\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Oh No--Spooks in a Skeptic's Home\" by Hans Sebald\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Skeptics Predictions for 1994\"\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Meeting Schedule for 1994\"\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Where Have We Been?\"\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"What Harm Superstition?\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Skeptically Entertaining\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nWhile that was the last issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e published, there have been at least two published lists of skeptical predictions by the Phoenix Skeptics, for \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/predictions1996.pdf\"\u003e1996\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/predictions2006.pdf\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/predictions2007.pdf\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e, and the group continues to meet on a monthly basis--at 12 p.m. (noon) on the first Saturday of each month at Jim's Coney Island Cafe in Tempe, 1750 N. Scottsdale Road, on the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and McKellips.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere is also now an active \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/SkepticsInPhoenix/\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics in the Pub meetup group\u003c/a\u003e, which meets at 7 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month at D'Arcy McGee's Pub at the Tempe Marketplace, 2000 E. Rio Salado Parkway.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (March 18, 2010): Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub now meets at Four Peaks Brewery--see the meetup group link.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (September 17, 2014): The \u003ca href=\"http://phoenixskeptics.org/\"\u003ePhoenix Area Skeptics Society\u003c/a\u003e has been active since 2012.","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 7, 1994"},{"content":"Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, volume 4 (1990-1991) is here, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is here. Volume 6 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 1, July/August 1992 (text version):\n\"Science and Dianetics\" by Jeff Jacobsen\"A Healthy Dose of Sarsaparilla\" by Jerome L. Cosyn\"Book Review: Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan\" reviewed by Chaz Bufe\"Michael Persinger and Tectonic Strain Theory\" by Jim Lippard\"Rutkowski's Work\" and \"Other Critical Works\" (bibliography of papers critical of TST assembled by Chris Rutkowski)\"Book Review: Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric by Howard Kahane\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: Sai Baba's Miracles by Dale Beyerstein\" reviewed by Jim LippardMedia UpdateNewsletter Production Volunteers NeededElectronic Version of the NewsletterUpcoming Meetings: September speaker Chaz Bufe on Alcoholics AnonymousArticles of NoteThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 2, September/October 1992 (text version): \"How Much of Your Brain Do You Use?\" by Mickey Rowe\"Phoenix Skeptics and the Sedona Harmonic Diversion\" by Mike Johnson\"Jehovah's Witnesses and Earthquake Frequency\" by John Rand (pseudonym for Alan Feuerbacher)\"The Institute for Creation Research and Earthquake Frequency\" by Jim Lippard\"QUAKE DAY - Minus 7\" by Mike Jittlov\"New Skeptical Group/Magazine\" (Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine)Upcoming Meetings: October speaker Peter Lima on the search for the historical JesusArticles of NoteThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 3, November/December 1992 (text version): \"Report on the 1992 CSICOP Conference: Part One\" by Jim Lippard\"A Visit to Dinosaur Valley State Park\" by Richard A. Crowe\"The End of Crop Circles?\" by Chris RutkowskiNext IssueUpcoming MeetingsArticles of NoteThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 4, January/February 1993 (text version): \"Predictions for 1993\"\"Jeane Dixon Predicts Bush Victory\"\"Report on the 1992 CSICOP Conference: Part Two\" by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research by Robert Bell\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: Taking Time for Me: How Caregivers Can Effectively Deal with Stress by Katherine L. Karr\" reviewed by Michael A. StackpoleUpcoming MeetingsReader SurveyArticles of NoteMagazine/Journal Subscription InformationThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 6, no. 5, March/April 1993 (text version): \"CSICOP Questions Truth of Movie Based on Travis Walton UFO Abduction\"\"MIS-Fire in the Sky\" by Chris Rutkowski\"Linda Napolitano UFO Abduction Case Criticized\" by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: The Retreat to Commitment by William Warren Bartley III\" reviewed by David A. Snodgrass\"Camille Paglia: Astrologer\"Skeptical NewsUpcoming MeetingsBooks of NoteArticles of NoteVolume 6 concluded my editorship, and volume 7 returned for one more issue edited by Mike Stackpole.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-6-1992-1993.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContinuing the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 2 (1988-1989) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 3 (1989-1990) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 4 (1990-1991) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-4-1990-1991.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and volume 5 (1991-1992) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-5-1991-1992.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Volume 6 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv6n1-Jul-Aug-1992.pdf\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 6, no. 1, July/August 1992\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_JUL92.6-1\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 6, 1992-1993"},{"content":"Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here, and volume 4 (1990-1991) is here. Volume 5 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.\nThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 1, July/August 1991 (text version):\n\"Rosenthal Lecture\" by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism by Paul Kurtz\" reviewed by Bill Green\"Book Review: Pitfalls in Human Research: Ten Pivotal Points by Theodore X. Barber\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: They Call It Hypnosis by Robert A. Baker\" reviewed by Jim LippardEditor's ColumnCORRECTION: To \"Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research\"Upcoming MeetingsThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991 (text version): \"Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?\" by Jeff Jacobsen\"Book Review: Bryant's Law and Other Broadsides by John Bryant\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Hypnosis and Free Will\" by Jim LippardNext IssueUpcoming Meetings: October speaker Don Lacheman of Sun Magic, November speaker Louis Rhodes of the Arizona Civil Liberties UnionArticles of NoteThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 3, November/December 1991 (text version): \"Postscript to 'Some Failures of Organized Skepticism'\" by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie\" reviewed by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\"Book Review: The Unfathomed Mind by William R. Corliss\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: Labyrinths of Reason by William Poundstone\" reviewed by Mark AdkinsLetters (from Mark Adkins, Beth Fischi)\"Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? An Episode of Human Folly\" by Mark AdkinsArticles of Note\"October Meeting: 'Magical Moments'\" by Ron Harvey: speaker Don LachemanNext IssueUpcoming Meetings: December: 1992 predictions, January: Rene Pfalzgraf on neuro-linguistic programmingThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 4, January/February 1992 (text version): \"Predictions for 1992!\" compiled by Mike Stackpole\"Comments on Lippard's Review of They Call It Hypnosis\" by Robert A. Baker\"Book Review: Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? by Chaz Bufe\" reviewed by Terry Sandbek, Ph.D.Next IssueUpcoming MeetingsThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 5, March/April 1992 (text version): \"About 'The Vitality of Mythical Numbers' and 'Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species'\" by Jim Lippard\"The Vitality of Mythical Numbers\" by Max Singer\"Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species\" by Julian Simon\"Book Review: Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events by Michael A. Persinger and Gyslaine F. Lafrenière\" reviewed by Jim LippardNext IssueUpcoming MeetingsRequest for SubmissionsArticles of NoteThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 5, no. 6, May/June 1992 (text version): \"An Observation of the Famous Marfa Lights\" by James Long\"The Marfa Lights\" by Hal FinneyLetters (from John Bryant)Editorial Note Regarding the \"Mars Effect\"\"Book Review: The Mind Game by Norman Spinrad\" reviewed by Jim LippardUpcoming MeetingsArticles of NoteVolume 6 continued for just short of another year under my editorship, with five issues published for 1992-1993.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-5-1991-1992.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContinuing the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 2 (1988-1989) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 3 (1989-1990) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and volume 4 (1990-1991) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-4-1990-1991.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Volume 5 was edited by Jim Lippard and has been available online since original publication as ASCII text.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n1-Jul-Aug-1991.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 1, July/August 1991\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_JUL91.5-1\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Rosenthal Lecture\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhilosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism\u003c/span\u003e by Paul Kurtz\" reviewed by Bill Green\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePitfalls in Human Research: Ten Pivotal Points\u003c/span\u003e by Theodore X. Barber\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThey Call It Hypnosis\u003c/span\u003e by Robert A. Baker\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditor's Column\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCORRECTION: To \"Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research\"\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n2-Sep-Oct-1991.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 2, September/October 1991\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_SEP91.5-2\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Dianetics: From Out of the Blue?\" by Jeff Jacobsen\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBryant's Law and Other Broadsides\u003c/span\u003e by John Bryant\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Hypnosis and Free Will\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNext Issue\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings: October speaker Don Lacheman of Sun Magic, November speaker Louis Rhodes of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eArticles of Note\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n3-Nov-Dec-1991.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 3, November/December 1991\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_NOV91.5-3\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/some-failures.html\"\u003e\"Postscript to 'Some Failures of Organized Skepticism'\"\u003c/a\u003e by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Satanic Verses\u003c/span\u003e by Salman Rushdie\" reviewed by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Unfathomed Mind\u003c/span\u003e by William R. Corliss\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLabyrinths of Reason\u003c/span\u003e by William Poundstone\" reviewed by Mark Adkins\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLetters (from Mark Adkins, Beth Fischi)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? An Episode of Human Folly\" by Mark Adkins\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eArticles of Note\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"October Meeting: 'Magical Moments'\" by Ron Harvey: speaker Don Lacheman\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNext Issue\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings: December: 1992 predictions, January: Rene Pfalzgraf on neuro-linguistic programming\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n4-Jan-Feb-1992.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 4, January/February 1992\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_JAN92.5-4\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Predictions for 1992!\" compiled by Mike Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Comments on Lippard's Review of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThey Call It Hypnosis\u003c/span\u003e\" by Robert A. Baker\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAlcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?\u003c/span\u003e by Chaz Bufe\" reviewed by Terry Sandbek, Ph.D.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNext Issue\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n5-Mar-Apr-1992.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 5, March/April 1992\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_MAR92.5-5\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"About 'The Vitality of Mythical Numbers' and 'Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species'\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"The Vitality of Mythical Numbers\" by Max Singer\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species\" by Julian Simon\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpace-Time Transients and Unusual Events\u003c/span\u003e by Michael A. Persinger and Gyslaine F. Lafrenière\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNext Issue\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRequest for Submissions\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eArticles of Note\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv5n6-May-Jun-1992.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 5, no. 6, May/June 1992\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_MAY92.5-6\"\u003etext version\u003c/a\u003e):\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"An Observation of the Famous Marfa Lights\" by James Long\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"The Marfa Lights\" by Hal Finney\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLetters (from John Bryant)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Note Regarding the \"Mars Effect\"\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/mindgame.html\"\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Mind Game\u003c/span\u003e by Norman Spinrad\"\u003c/a\u003e reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eArticles of Note\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-6-1992-1993.html\"\u003eVolume 6\u003c/a\u003e continued for just short of another year under my editorship, with \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-6-1992-1993.html\"\u003efive issues published for 1992-1993\u003c/a\u003e.","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 5, 1991-1992"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers has written a review of his trip to the Creation \u0026ldquo;Museum\u0026rdquo; with nearly three hundred atheists from the Secular Student Alliance, and it\u0026rsquo;s probably the best summary of what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with the Creation Museum I\u0026rsquo;ve read to date. He points out that it\u0026rsquo;s not like a real museum, promoting exploration and discussion, it\u0026rsquo;s more like a theme park ride.\nMark (2009-08-11):\nBut with your reputation of trying to be fair in reporting on the creation/evolution debate, do you actually believe the Creation Museum preaches racism (as PZ viciously claims)? The museum teaches the very opposite, and its exhibits mirror our teachings found on our site of www.onehumanrace.com -- Mark Looy, Creation Museum\nLippard (2009-08-11):\nHere\u0026#39;s what P.Z. Myers said: \u0026quot;With complete seriousness and no awareness of the historical abuses to which this idea has been put, they were promoting the Hamite theory of racial origins, that ugly idea that all races stemmed from the children of Noah, and that black people in particular were the cursed offspring of Ham. If they are going to reject science because of its abuses, such as eugenics, they should at least be conscious of the evils perpetrated in the name of their strange cultish doctrines, I should think.\u0026quot;\nThe photograph of the exhibit shows the descendants of Ham going to Africa.\nYour exhibit doesn't appear to offer the clarification that your website does\u0026ndash;and if that's the case, it appears to have left the door open to the inference that Myers drew. Your website does appear to be explicitly anti-racist.\nI'm willing to give you the same benefit of the doubt that Rich Trott gave to Henry Morris (though I'm not sure it was entirely merited in that case)\u0026ndash;but what do you say in your displays that clarifies the issue, and how have you reacted when those who have drawn the conclusion from your displays that it supports racist views? I'm sure that you've had visitors with such views\u0026hellip;\nBTW, it's nice to have an AiG visitor commenting under their real name. I know I've had a few in the past using pseudonyms, which is OK with me, but I appreciate the transparency.\nLippard (2009-08-11):\nBTW, also note Myers\u0026#39; further reply. It's also worth noting that the biblical curse makes no sense\u0026ndash;Canaan is the one who gets cursed for the fact that his father Ham sees his grandfather Noah naked. But the unethical concept of the biological transmission of moral guilt is pretty firmly entrenched in the Bible.\nLippard (2009-08-12):\nIt is ironic that Christians claim to support and require an objective and absolute standard of morality, yet biblical morality says that one and the same act--abortion (by ripping open the belly of a pregnant woman), infanticide, slavery, incest, rape, murder, and genocide, for actual examples from the Bible--is deeply evil if done by human free choice, yet is completely good and right if done at the command of God. If biblical morality was really the basis of our law, then \u0026quot;God told me to do it\u0026quot; would become a serious defense, to be verified by prayer and religious feeling, sort of like the \u0026quot;spectral evidence\u0026quot; standard of the Salem witch trials.\nKtisophilos (2009-09-01):\nSlavery was ubiquitous, not just something that \u0026quot;whites\u0026quot; did to Africans. Indeed, the word \u0026quot;slave\u0026quot; comes from Slav, a \u0026quot;white\u0026quot; race often enslaved. White Europeans were the victims of an Islamofascist slave trade exceeding that of the Middle Passage. Dr Thomas Sowell, who by the way is black himself, points out that Africans were enslaved not because they were black but because they were available. And because Europeans could not cope with the tropical diseases, these slaves were captured first by other Africans (so maybe Obama should pay reparations for slavery because of what his Kenyan ancestors might have done ;)).\nThis ridiculous \u0026quot;curse of Ham\u0026quot; crap was a rationalization of the practice long after it was established. It was only in America, not in other places like Brazil which also had African slaves, for the simple reason that America was founded on \u0026quot;all men are created equal\u0026quot;. So they had to think of some way around this ideal, while Brazil didn't have to.\nOf course, there was no curse on Ham anyway, since it was on Canaan, and not the slightest evidence that this curse involved dermal melanism. The Canaanites were olive complexioned!\nFurthermore, Sowell points out:\n\u0026quot;The anti-slavery movement was spearheaded by people who would today be called \u0026quot;the religious right\u0026quot; and its organization was created by conservative businessmen. Moreover, what destroyed slavery in the non-Western world was Western imperialism.\n\u0026quot;Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-09-01):\nKtisophilos: Religious people were divided between abolitionism and pro-slavery positions; freethinkers tended to be mostly abolitionists. You\u0026#39;re certainly correct that slavery wouldn\u0026#39;t have been abolished without religious support; that\u0026#39;s a simple matter of numbers. There were prominent freethinkers who advocated abolitionism (and women's suffrage). Robert Ingersoll, William Lloyd Garrison (not an atheist, but critic of Christianity and probably a deist), \u0026quot;Obadiah Dogberry\u0026quot; (Abner Cole, early critic of Mormonism), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine Rose, etc.\nThe ubiquity of slavery and the fact that there were religious people who opposed it are no defense to the fact that biblical morality says nothing against the institution, and that the Bible shows God giving orders which include the taking of slaves. Anyone who believes that God really ordered those things must either hold to a moral view that slavery is sometimes morally acceptable, or that God sometimes commands things that are immoral.\nKtisophilos (2009-09-04):\nJim: \u0026quot;freethinkers\u0026quot; historically loved the ancient Greeks like Aristotle who taught there were “natural slaves”. This page on 18th-century racism documents the thought of such Endarkenment notables Hume and Voltaire (pseudonym for François Marie Arouet): “David Hume (1711–1776) — Scottish philosopher and historian,\n‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences … Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.’\n[‘Of national characters’, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary]”\n“Voltaire opposed slavery on political grounds, yet he believed that blacks were born to be slaves, and deserved to be.\n‘As a result of a hierarchy of nations, Negroes are thus slaves of other men … a people that sells its own children is more condemnable than the buyer; this commerce demonstrates our superiority; he who gives himself a master was born to have one.’ [Essai sur les moeurs (An Essay on Universal History)]”\nConversely, Wilberforce and his colleagues opposed slavery precisely because of their evangelical faith. Their pro-slavery opponents often told them to keep their faith out of politics! In their opposition to slavery, they were following constant church tradition, as Rodney Stark documents here and in his book For the Glory of God: How monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts and the end of slavery. He points out:\n“The problem wasn’t that the [Church] leadership was silent. It was that almost nobody listened.”\nAs for that 19th century village atheopath Ingersoll, it's likely he got his abolitionism from his minister father:\n“Robert's father was the Presbyterian minister John Ingersoll. By all accounts a stern, uncompromising parson, John Ingersoll preached Abolitionist sermons so fiery that in the 1830's, even Northern congregations found his preaching excessive.”\nRev. Ingersoll was just one of a huge number of American Christian voices against slavery.\nAs for the Bible teaching slavery, this presupposes that the term corresponds to the Antebellum South stereotype. In reality, the type of slavery in America was the result of kidnapping, expressly forbidden in Scripture. Also, under biblical understanding, President Obama's cabinet would be called his “slaves”.\nThe pro-slavery minority in the church were doing just what you praise theistic evolutionists for: compromising the Bible to fit with the current fashion.\nLippard (2009-09-04):\nKtisophilos: Obama doesn\u0026#39;t own the children of his cabinet members, but in biblical slavery, masters own the children of their slaves. The Bible also endorses selling one's daughter into slavery.\nI don't dispute that there were religious abolitionists and that they were instrumental in the abolition of slavery in England and the United States. I don't dispute that there were non-religious advocates of slavery.\nWhat I do dispute is that the Bible's advocacy of slavery is moral, and your rather weak attempt to justify it by claim that biblical slavery has a narrower meaning that precludes kidnapping. I am curious to see where you find that; the Bible certainly endorses taking slave captives from conquered cities, as well as separating slaves from their families.\nAnd surely you don't defend the Southern Baptist Convention's split from the Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery (the Southern Baptists not only favored slavery and white supremacy, most Southern Baptist churches refused to admit blacks as members through most of the 1960s). Not until 1995 did they issue a resolution recanting their racist origins.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/pz-myers-on-creation-museum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/the_creation_museum_1.php\"\u003ewritten a review of his trip to the Creation \u0026ldquo;Museum\u0026rdquo; with nearly three hundred atheists from the Secular Student Alliance\u003c/a\u003e, and it\u0026rsquo;s probably the best summary of what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with the Creation Museum I\u0026rsquo;ve read to date.  He points out that it\u0026rsquo;s not like a real museum, promoting exploration and discussion, it\u0026rsquo;s more like a theme park ride.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMark\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-08-11)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eBut with your reputation of trying to be fair in reporting on the creation/evolution debate, do you actually believe the Creation Museum preaches racism (as PZ viciously claims)? The museum teaches the very opposite, and its exhibits mirror our teachings found on our site of www.onehumanrace.com -- Mark Looy, Creation Museum\u003c/p\u003e","title":"P.Z. Myers on the Creation Museum"},{"content":"Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here, volume 2 (1988-1989) here, volume 3 (1989-1990) is here. Volume 4 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.\nThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 4, no. 1, July 1990:\n\"Self-Deception and the Paranormal\" by Michael A. Stackpole\"The Curious Case of the Cross of Chaos\" by Michael A. Stackpole\"Book Review: But Is It Science? edited by Michael Ruse\" reviewed by Jim Lippard (duplicate)Editorial Prattle\"July Meeting\" by Ron Harvey: speaker James McGaha on astronomy\"The Return of Scapegoats\" by Michael A. StackpoleThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 4, no. 2, December 1990/January 1991: 1991 Predictions of the Phoenix Skeptics\"Note of Importance\" by Michael A. Stackpole (re the Plimer/Price controversy)\"Ralph Epperson: Clueless Creationist\" by Jim LippardMeeting Announcements: January: G. Harry Stine on the neurophoneEditorial Prattle\"December Meeting\" by Ron Harvey: speaker Jim Speiser on UFOsThat was it for volume 4--publication got back on a regular schedule again with volume 5, when I took over as editor.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-4-1990-1991.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContinuing the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 2 (1988-1989) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, volume 3 (1989-1990) is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Volume 4 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv4n1-Jul-1990.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 4, no. 1, July 1990\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Self-Deception and the Paranormal\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"The Curious Case of the Cross of Chaos\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBut Is It Science?\u003c/span\u003e edited by Michael Ruse\" reviewed by Jim Lippard (duplicate)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Prattle\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"July Meeting\" by Ron Harvey: speaker James McGaha on astronomy\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"The Return of Scapegoats\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv4n2-Dec-1990-Jan-1991.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 4, no. 2, December 1990/January 1991\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e1991 Predictions of the Phoenix Skeptics\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Note of Importance\" by Michael A. Stackpole (re the Plimer/Price controversy)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Ralph Epperson: Clueless Creationist\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMeeting Announcements: January: G. Harry Stine on the neurophone\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Prattle\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"December Meeting\" by Ron Harvey: speaker Jim Speiser on UFOs\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThat was it for volume 4--publication got back on a regular schedule again with \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-5-1991-1992.html\"\u003evolume 5\u003c/a\u003e, when I took over as editor.","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 4, 1990-1991"},{"content":"This is part five of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.\nEthics of Deception Panel\nD.J. Grothe moderated a panel discussion on the role of magic in skepticism and the ethics of deception, featuring Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, and Jamy Ian Swiss. D.J. began by asking whether magic teaches critical thinking, to which Jamy Ian Swiss responded yes, and pointed to Danny Hillis hiring a magic tutor for his kids so that they could learn how methods of deception work. Everybody else on the panel disagreed, beginning with Ray Hyman, who observed that there are kooky magicians. Swiss agreed that there are magicians who are gullible and that learning magic doesn\u0026rsquo;t make you a skeptic, but said that it was useful to him. This brief exchange then occurred:\nD.J.: Teller, did you have a comment?\nTeller: No.\nD.J. Just as we rehearsed.As it turned out, Teller did have a comment\u0026ndash;he said that while some magicians think that doing the trick and saying \u0026ldquo;this is not real\u0026rdquo; is just as good as explaining it, it isn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;and \u0026ldquo;you should explain it.\u0026rdquo; Ray Hyman seconded the point, saying, \u0026ldquo;exposing tricks that can be done in multiple ways gives people a false sense of ability to detect fakery.\u0026rdquo; Faraday\u0026rsquo;s explanation of spiritualist table-tipping caused Alfred Russell Wallace to become convinced of the existence of spirits when a medium used a different method on him. Hyman said this is what is known as being \u0026ldquo;half-smart,\u0026rdquo; which is the card cheat\u0026rsquo;s term for a guy who knows something about card cheating. The card cheat then asks him what he knows, and then adapts his methods to not use those and not get caught. (Penn Jillette\u0026rsquo;s recent book, How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker, discusses this very subject.)\nThe topic then turned to mentalism, about which Ray Hyman said, you can teach the methods of cold reading in one day. Mentalists will complain about it, but not magicians. About the Psychic Entertainers Assocation, Jamy Ian Swiss said \u0026ldquo;they are neither psychic nor entertaining.\u0026rdquo; Hyman said that psychic entertainers are now mostly people competing with psychotherapists. Penn said that cold reading should be exposed, as it\u0026rsquo;s being used to deceive people.\nD.J. asked about the \u0026ldquo;poor man\u0026rsquo;s psychotherapist defense\u0026rdquo; of such \u0026ldquo;psychic entertainment\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;isn\u0026rsquo;t it similar to Rogerian psychotherapy (named after Carl Rogers)? Ray Hyman pointed out that they can cause harm in many circumstances, such as their inability to recognize suicidal symptoms. Penn went further and said, \u0026ldquo;lying always does harm and is mmoral, it has no justification\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;but then offered \u0026ldquo;exceptions for loved ones and medical situations.\u0026rdquo; Hyman pointed out the distinction between lying by commission and lying by omission, and both he and Penn agreed that \u0026ldquo;lying by omission is also a lie\u0026rdquo; (quoting Penn). D.J. observed that that\u0026rsquo;s a very uncompromising position on lying. But Penn then said, \u0026ldquo;how can you love someone without lying to them,\u0026rdquo; and suggested that kindness and politeness requires lying of the sort that he made exceptions for in his previous statement.\nD.J. then brought up mentalists who are also skeptics and who don\u0026rsquo;t make psychic claims, such as Derren Brown and Banachek (who was at the conference, but unfortunately not part of this panel\u0026ndash;I think his viewpoint would have been a very worthwhile addition). D.J. pointed out that Brown claims a \u0026ldquo;deep understanding of human psychology,\u0026rdquo; while Banachek will say that he is drawing inferences based on posture or facial expression. He asked the question, \u0026ldquo;Are they equally unethical?\u0026quot;\nTeller said that he has argued with Brown, and Brown is moving to a more honest position\u0026ndash;his latest book says that he\u0026rsquo;s doing tricks, and says things like \u0026ldquo;I have special ways of dealing with information,\u0026rdquo; which is true. He said that in Penn \u0026amp; Teller shows, they give no hint of the supernatural, so \u0026ldquo;we get the credit.\u0026rdquo; Penn said that there are two places in their current show \u0026ldquo;where I say I\u0026rsquo;m doing one thing and am actually doing another. I wrestle with the ethical implications. If you admit you\u0026rsquo;re lying, it\u0026rsquo;s more like an actor playing a role. But there are two places in the show where I pretend to be speaking earnestly but am not.\u0026quot;\nRay Hyman said that Jerry Andrus was the most honest guy in the world, but he said that a magician on the stage has a license to lie. It\u0026rsquo;s theater. (In my notes, I wrote\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;But does \u0026lsquo;it\u0026rsquo;s TV\u0026rsquo; suffice?\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a topic that came up shortly.)\nJamy Ian Swiss says that he is working to develop some mentalist techniques which present things that are convincing looking, but which obviously cannot be happening. He suggests that the effect will be more impressive if he can give the audience confidence that he cannot do what he then appears to do.\nRay Hyman said that a distinction between magic and mentalism is that mentalism is boring, and can only be dragged on (to show length) if people think that it\u0026rsquo;s real. \u0026ldquo;If you believe the stuff is real, what\u0026rsquo;s the appeal of mentalism?\u0026rdquo; Teller seconded that point\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;if you pretend it\u0026rsquo;s possible, it\u0026rsquo;s just nature.\u0026quot;\nD.J. brought up the example of Mark Salem, who \u0026ldquo;claims a well-developed understanding of the human mind,\u0026rdquo; and asked, \u0026ldquo;why do we give skeptical mentalists a pass?\u0026rdquo; Jamy Ian Swiss then criticized Salem. Ray Hyman said that when he performed, he would say that he has no special powers, and \u0026ldquo;whatever I can do, you can do. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing abnormal or paranormal about it.\u0026rdquo; Teller said, \u0026ldquo;The correct answer to how it\u0026rsquo;s done is\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a trick.\u0026rdquo; Penn said that if people come up to him after a show and really want to know how it\u0026rsquo;s done, he\u0026rsquo;ll tell them. But he gave the example of a very famous magic trick (he didn\u0026rsquo;t say which one) that fooled everyone who saw it, is protected by a patent, that you can look up. There\u0026rsquo;s a multi-page description of how it\u0026rsquo;s done, but few people bother to read past the first few pages. He said, \u0026ldquo;[Jim] Steinmeyer says magicians are guarding an empty safe. If we explained the bullet catch trick, it would not be interesting. The tricks we expose are the ones where the secret is interesting and clever. In the bullet catch we\u0026rsquo;re hiding messy ugliness. \u0026hellip; Valentino, the masked magician, couldn\u0026rsquo;t reveal the real good-looking tricks because they don\u0026rsquo;t have the \u0026lsquo;aha!\u0026rsquo; cleverness.\u0026rdquo; Teller observed that people have accurately described how the bullet catch is done online, but it still looks amazing. Penn pointed out that there are also inaccurate descriptions of the bullet catch on the Internet, so he\u0026rsquo;d hate to see somebody else try to do it. Teller suggested that Adam Savage put them to the test on Mythbusters.\nD.J. said that \u0026ldquo;believers will always be with us\u0026ndash;are disclaimers necessary?\u0026rdquo; (He observed that he was reformulating a quote from Jesus that \u0026ldquo;the poor will always be with us.\u0026rdquo;) Ray Hyman suggested that disclaimers create an \u0026ldquo;invited inference problem,\u0026rdquo; taking away any reason to challenge or question, and thereby promoting belief. Penn commented that \u0026ldquo;There was no Jesus, so the quote is wrong.\u0026quot;\nFinally, D.J. turned to the question of using magicians in scientific investigations, as James Randi has long recommended, to which Penn said, \u0026ldquo;it depends upon the magician.\u0026rdquo; Ray Hyman said that \u0026ldquo;scientists do not do tests,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;magicians can hurt the process.\u0026rdquo; He pointed out that Milbourne Christopher was fooled by Uri Geller, and made up a bogus explanation for metal bending in terms of chemicals on his hands that became a parody scientific explanation like \u0026ldquo;swamp gas\u0026rdquo; for UFOs. Randi then came up and said that \u0026ldquo;magicians for parapsychology tests need to have a deep and broad knowledge of magic, not just know how to do a few tricks. Half-smart is not smart at all. Be all-smart or forget it.\u0026rdquo; He went on to make his common point that Ph.D.s can easily be fooled even though they\u0026rsquo;re not dumb. Randi also said that there is a place for \u0026ldquo;white lies,\u0026rdquo; giving an example that will appear in his biography, being written by Tim Steinberg. He sent a letter to his grandfather shortly before his death at the age of 94, in which he said \u0026ldquo;I believe you will be with your wife at death,\u0026rdquo; in order to give comfort in a situation where the lie did no harm. He said that he\u0026rsquo;s glad to see Derren Brown coming clean, and said that \u0026ldquo;Uri Geller is trying to come clean, but he\u0026rsquo;s fucked\u0026ndash;he lied to governments and research institutions. \u0026hellip; He now says he wants to be known as a \u0026lsquo;mystifier.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; He suggested that the media should ask Geller, \u0026ldquo;yes or no, have you ever used psychic powers that do not involve trickery,\u0026rdquo; but when they do, he\u0026rsquo;ll hang up the phone and refuse to answer the question.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first question was about Criss Angel, David Blaine, and \u0026ldquo;street magic,\u0026rdquo; and in particular the way that the TV audience doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the same thing that someone there would see. Jamy Ian Swiss said that David Blaine made some early irresponsible claims. Teller said that when you watch TV, \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s the proscenium,\u0026rdquo; which seems to me an erroneous comparison that could be used to justify all sorts of misrepresentation in the name of entertainment. Jamy Ian Swiss said that TV specials on magic have a credibility issue because of the possibility of editing and camera tricks, but that street magic was a good idea. Teller said it\u0026rsquo;s an aesthetic issue rather than a moral issue, and that he sees editing to produce effects OK\u0026ndash;that the rules aren\u0026rsquo;t the same for TV. Penn said he didn\u0026rsquo;t think David Blaine would entertain, and observed that \u0026ldquo;reality TV is fake. Lots of people know it, but some think everything on TV is real.\u0026quot;\nAnother questioner said she appreciated Penn\u0026rsquo;s comment on global warming as pseudoscience (which I didn\u0026rsquo;t note in my notes and don\u0026rsquo;t recall what he said), to which Penn responded, \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t listen to me, I\u0026rsquo;m the least qualified to talk about\u0026rdquo; the subject, and said \u0026ldquo;we won\u0026rsquo;t do a Bullshit! show on global warming.\u0026rdquo; He said \u0026ldquo;If there is global warming, and there probably is, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if we caused it. But if we caused it, and we probably did, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if we can stop it. But if we can stop it, and we probably can, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if socialism is required.\u0026quot;\n(Mark Edward, a skeptic who works as a mentalist who was also at TAM7, was disappointed with this panel and expresses his opinion in a comment at skepticblog.org.)\nAt this point I stepped out for a moment, while Robert Lancaster was given the Skeptical Citizen Award, and returned as a documentary film on Jerry Andrus was being shown. It told a bit about Jerry\u0026rsquo;s life and his house, the \u0026ldquo;Castle of Chaos,\u0026rdquo; filled with his inventions, including puzzles, optical illusions, magical effects, and mechanical and electronic devices of his creation.\nStephen Bauer on Jerry Andrus\nStephen Bauer, an attorney and member of Oregonians for Rationality, has attended every TAM, but this was his first time as a presenter. He gave the story of how he found skepticism\u0026ndash;his mother was a big fan of woo including a believer in the psychic powers of Uri Geller, and to combat his skepticism she gave him a copy of The Magic of Uri Geller without reading it. As this was the original title of James Randi\u0026rsquo;s debunking of Geller (now known as The Truth About Uri Geller), he found it very persuasive, though said his mother didn\u0026rsquo;t care much for it when she then looked at it a bit deeper when he told her he thought the book was completely correct.\nBauer wrote to James Randi asking for an explanation of how ouija boards work, and he suggested that Bauer talk to Ray Hyman at the University of Oregon about the ideomotor effect. He then joined Oregonians for Rationality and began attending the summer Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Toolbox workshops at the University of Oregon, where Jerry Andrus came up and introduced himself.\nHe then told some stories about Jerry Andrus. At Halloween, Andrus would never give candy, only a trick. Sometimes he would answer the door as a floating disembodied head. One year he would open the door, then lean over beyond the point at which he should have fallen, and then straighten back up, then shut the door.\nAndrus was a magician, a skeptic, and an inventor. He had been visited by film crews from three continents. He never married, had no kids. He lived in the same house for 80 years. He performed every six months at the Magic Castle.\nHis house, an 1891 Victorian home, was known as the \u0026ldquo;Castle of Chaos\u0026rdquo; and was filled with things that he had collected, designed, and built, though not a single piece of traditional furniture. He was an artist, photographer, poet, musician, composer, and agnostic.\nHe called Bauer for an estate plan, which ended up being a simple will that left everything to his brother George, who is 93 years old.\nThe Castle of Chaos contained a full printing shop in the attic, which required metal bands to be put around the room to keep it from shaking apart from its operation. Andrus printed his own books. He also had his own photo studio, from which three pickup loads of photo chemicals had to be disposed.\nAfter his death, a group of volunteers from Oregonians for Science and Reason worked regularly on his house to catalog its contents, dispose of unsalvageable items, and put items into storage. Bauer spent his sabbatical working 12 hours a day on Andrus\u0026rsquo;s house.\nJust the recycled items included 32,000 pounds of scrap metal, 2 cords of scrap wood, 1,000 cubic feet of plastic, and fans, hair dryers, and \u0026ldquo;air moving devices.\u0026quot;\nThe house had a ground-level crawlspace with four entrances, three of which featured a set of amusement park railroad tracks leading under the house, on which Jerry could lie down on a device of his own construction and push himself under the house, where he stored various items. Among those items included gigantic magnets, which he could use to make the planchette on a ouija board in his house spell out things.\nHe had a Hammond organ, heavily customized with his own additions, connected by a spaghetti tangle of wires.\nAnd the house contained much that they couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out, like the wiring. A black sock hanging in the bathroom was pulled down, setting off a security system\u0026ndash;which they didn\u0026rsquo;t know existed. An electronic rat trap in one room turned out to be a device for launching tennis balls and spoons during simulated seances. He had a slide projector that he made from a motorcycle engine.\nThey found that he had all of the letters he received when he was a soldier in WWII, which will now be donated to a military museum. They collected 120 boxes of materials now being kept in a storage unit, which include 3 dozen boxes of letters, notes, and writings, 20 boxes of mixed media, and 4 volumes (2000 pages) of his daily journal of \u0026ldquo;Scribulations.\u0026quot;\nStephen Bauer finished up with some thanks to the late John Lar, who died in 2008, for getting the Castle Chaos project started, and noted that Lar\u0026rsquo;s wife had cared for Jerry in his final days. He told a little bit about Jerry\u0026rsquo;s 93-year-old brother George, a musician with a \u0026ldquo;house of wonders\u0026rdquo; of his own, who has been making videos of soap bubbles featuring his own music (the linked video also features Jerry). He ended with a quote from Tycho Brahe, who left all of his work to Kepler with the comment, \u0026ldquo;Let me not seem to have lived in vain, let me not seem to have lived in vain.\u0026quot;\nHal Bidlack then said, \u0026ldquo;A man should live his life so that when it comes time for him to die, he has nothing left to do but die. It seems like Mr. Andrus did that.\u0026quot;\n(I remember Jerry Andrus as a quiet and soft-spoken guy who was a regular fixture at all of the Skeptics Society conferences at Caltech. He would usually be found next to his table of his optical illusions, some of which will now always be present at every TAM, which he would be happy to help demonstrate to anyone who stopped by.)\nSkepticism and the Media Panel\nThis was an unmoderated Q\u0026amp;A panel featuring Penn and Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, and Jennifer Ouellette. A few of the questions and answers I noted (I missed most of them as I was trying to ask a question myself, which I previously tried to ask of the ethics of deception panel).\nQ. Why can\u0026rsquo;t the Daily Show or Colbert take down Jenny McCarthy?\nA. Penn: That\u0026rsquo;s not the sort of thing they do.\nQ. What was the biggest media failure of skepticism recently?\nA. Adam Savage: The NPR ombudsman taking the position that calling waterboarding \u0026ldquo;torture\u0026rdquo; is taking sides, and defending it on the basis of having to be balanced.\nA. Penn: The truth isn\u0026rsquo;t in the middle.\nQ. Dave from Phoenix: Any opinion on TBN or Benny Hinn?\nA. Jennifer Ouellette: I grew up in a fundamentalist household, went to faith healing meetings, etc. It\u0026rsquo;s fantasy. My parents still beleive they can speak in tongues.\nQ. The subtext here is on getting facts right and of leaders being of exemplary character. How can we promote character, service to the public, telling the truth, and owning the consequences of your actions?\nA. Adam Savage: It\u0026rsquo;s unattainable. There\u0026rsquo;s a percentage of assholes everywhere.\nA. Penn: Most people are good; there are 6 billion good people. Disagreement doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them assholes, but I still call them assholes on my show.\nQ. What about historical accuracy? The History Channel creating bogus doubt?\nA. (Savage? Prady?) So what have you done about it? .. Hal took your mike away\u0026hellip;\nA. Savage: We\u0026rsquo;re one of the few shows that goes back and corrects our mistakes. Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be great if the History Channel came out and said all of their Nostradamus documentaries of the last 20 years were wrong? (Laughter from the audience.) Only skeptics and history teachers laugh at that. Many film crews don\u0026rsquo;t care about truth. Mythbusters visited hurricane researchers who said they\u0026rsquo;re always misrepresented.\nA. Prady: We said on an episode [of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo;] that a Van Dyke is a goatee without a mustache. It\u0026rsquo;s wrong, we will correct it.\nQ. The ridicule of pseudoscience\u0026ndash;what is appropriate, heavy ridicule, no ridicule?\nA. Penn: I\u0026rsquo;m not in favor of heavy ridicule. We do it towards ourselves and allies as well as believers.\nA. Jennifer Ouellette: Humor can be a powerful convincing mechanism. If it\u0026rsquo;s mean spirited, though, that\u0026rsquo;s different.\nA. Penn: The joke of our show is that we\u0026rsquo;re calling bullshit. The message is pro-science and respect each other, and Pollyanna-ish hippie shit. I love crazy people. I\u0026rsquo;m in the category of the wack job. When I went on \u0026ldquo;Politically Incorrect,\u0026rdquo; a show that always has one nut, I looked around and I didn\u0026rsquo;t see the nut. I straddle both sides\u0026ndash;if a gun were held to my head and asked what are you, a skeptic or a nut, I\u0026rsquo;m the nut. .\nA. Prady: \u0026ldquo;Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; was originally about computer programmers, but it was too hard to photograph [due to reflections from screens]. The message of the show is that everybody thinks other people have life figured out\u0026ndash;and nobody does.\nA. Teller: On the Orgasm episode of Bullshit!, we talk about a guy who has a crazy orgasm machine for a hot tub, and it turns out it\u0026rsquo;s Penn. (Voiceover for Teller: \u0026ldquo;And then there\u0026rsquo;s this asshole\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;) (The \u0026ldquo;Jill-Jet,\u0026rdquo; U.S. patent #5,920,923.)\nQ. Richard Saunders: Does anyone on \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; do origami?\nA. Prady: Sheldon knows origami but just doesn\u0026rsquo;t do it on the show. You only see days something interesting happens. (\u0026ldquo;Oooh!\u0026rdquo; from audience.) Sorry, that was cheap.\n\u0026hellip;\nA. Penn: Bullshit! in Sweden is called skitsnack\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;shitcock.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nA. Savage: There are partnerships involved here. There is huge strength in push-pull. We drive each other nuts, but the product is better.\nA. Penn: We hope to get famous enough that only one of us has to show up.\nQ. (To P\u0026amp;T:) Did you know George Carlin, and why don\u0026rsquo;t we address comedy more often?\nA. Penn: Carlin was a hero of mine. I spoke to him on the phone quite a bit. I don\u0026rsquo;t think comedians, magicians, or skeptics matter\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s individuals. There are wackjobs in comedy. We shouldn\u0026rsquo;t celebrate a form, just individuals.\nA. Savage: I find it interesting that all practitioners say that their field is the only pure one. I knew a package design professor who said that package design is the only pure art form. Hal Bidlack: That was not thinking outside the box. (Big cheer from audience.)\nQ. Can you offer words to young skeptics held down by the beliefs of their parents?\nA. Ouellette: Voracious reading. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t watch \u0026ldquo;Welcome Back, Kotter.\u0026rdquo; My parents would burn non-Christian books. I left home at 17 for college.\nA. Penn: You shouldn\u0026rsquo;t manipulate, just say what is true. Don\u0026rsquo;t talk to adolescents differently, just talk to a general audience. Don\u0026rsquo;t try to \u0026ldquo;reach\u0026rdquo; adolescents.\nQ. What do you think of fake skeptics on shows like \u0026ldquo;Ghost Hunters\u0026rdquo;?\nA. Penn: House, Bones, Num3ers (pronounced \u0026ldquo;numb-three-ers\u0026rdquo;), etc. All have atheists. Atheists and skeptics have it good on major shows right now. We\u0026rsquo;re not martyrs. Hitchens said we have no saints or martyrs. There are minorities being fucked over in this country, and we\u0026rsquo;re not it. (Though atheists are more mistrusted than other groups.)\nQ. What\u0026rsquo;s the role of skepticism in broadcasting?\nA. Prady: Make them central as characters, and stay on the air, and don\u0026rsquo;t have a social message, just have fun.\nA. Savage: We didn\u0026rsquo;t set out to inspire scientists\u0026ndash;if we set out to do that, we\u0026rsquo;d be pompous, pretentious, and fail. We\u0026rsquo;ve done our show for 7 years and want to do 5 more.\nQ. (For Teller, about why he has a bottle of water in front of him despite the Bullshit! show on bottled water.)\nA. Teller: I filled the bottle using the tap in the men\u0026rsquo;s room.\n\u0026hellip;\nA. Ouellette: To reach minds, reach for hearts, from your heart.\nMy question was something like, \u0026ldquo;The movie \u0026lsquo;Expelled\u0026rsquo; received a lot of criticism for the deceptive way in which it obtained interviews from its subjects. Theology professor Paul Maier has made similar charges about his appearance in the Bullshit! episode on The Bible. I was glad to hear on the ethics in deception panel that you agree that lying by omission is wrong. Can you comment?\u0026rdquo; It turns out I misremembered Maier\u0026rsquo;s criticism, which was about his views being completely mangled by the editing, not being deceived about what show he was on, though his comments make it seem like he was surprised about the nature of the show. I would have thought the title would be a hint.\nPenn responded that he didn\u0026rsquo;t know who Maier was, and didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get the point of my question. I met up with him in the hallway between sessions, and pointed out that Maier was an actual guest on the show, not just some blogger writing about it, and he laughed at the misunderstanding. He said that the contracts for everyone who appears on the show state that the show is Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s Bullshit!, but that just because he was given that information in the contract and signed it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that he read it and knew it. (Bullshit! writer Michael Goudeau, standing next to Penn, concurred that the contracts name the show.) I offered to point him to Maier\u0026rsquo;s critique, but he said that he had no interest in reading it and Maier can say whatever he likes. I don\u0026rsquo;t find that entirely satisfactory given the strong stance against lying that Penn took during the ethics of deception panel.\nI also discussed this on Friday evening with Michael Shermer, who was previously criticized by a commenter at this blog for his role in that same episode of Bullshit! on the Bible. Shermer pointed out that he had no idea of what Maier said and wasn\u0026rsquo;t responding specifically to his remarks, but just answering questions asked by the interviewer. He also observed that Penn \u0026amp; Teller don\u0026rsquo;t write the show, or do much more for any given show than show up to record their scenes and voice overs, though of course they bear some responsibility given that it has their names on it.\nPhil Plait on Doomsday 2012\nThe final talk of the day was Phil Plait on \u0026ldquo;Doomsday 2012,\u0026rdquo; the idea that the world will be coming to an end on December 12, 2012 based on the end of the Mayan calendar and an alleged Mayan prophecy of the end of the world, a popular topic for questions to NASA.\nHe began by saying that the Mayans were good astronomers and had a good calendar system, and had the largest centralized civilization of their time, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t predict their own civilization being absorbed into others. The claim of an alleged prophecy of destruction is false\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just that their calendar system ends and rolls over.\nBack in 2003 at TAM1, Plait spoke about Planet X and Nibiru, and warned that this idea would come back, and he was correct.\nHe spent the rest of the talk looking at what could possibly cause the destruction of the earth in 2012, and what\u0026rsquo;s the evidence. First, perhaps a \u0026ldquo;Sun of Doom\u0026rdquo;? Looking at solar flares and sunspots\u0026ndash;would that activity peak in 2012? Sunspots will probably peak in 2013, solar flare activity in 2013 or 2014.\nAn asteroid or comet impact? None known to be on a collision path.\nNext, perhaps a \u0026ldquo;Galaxy of Doom\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Milky Way of Doom\u0026rdquo;? The Milky Way galaxy is 100 billion to 200 billion stars in a flattened disc, which appears to us as a strip, since we\u0026rsquo;re in it. He talked about the Galactic equator, and that the sun is close to it. As an aside, he remarked that 75% of the American public doesn\u0026rsquo;t know both that the earth rotates once per day and revolves around the sun once per year, let alone that the earth is at a tilt with the northern axis pointed at Polaris, which is the reason for the seasons. (Note: This stat seems somewhat dubious, since a 1999 Gallup poll found that 79% of Americans correctly answered that the earth revolves around the sun. Would that really drop all the way to 25% just by asking for frequency of revolution and rotation? And if so, how much of that is merely confusion between the terms \u0026ldquo;revolution\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rotation\u0026rdquo;?)\nHe talked about the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the gravity of the sun and moon, which goes through one circle every 24,000 years, and the map position of the sun at the winter solstice crosses the Galactic equator. But that happened in 1998. So some have said that we are \u0026ldquo;in that era\u0026rdquo; of the crossing, which takes about 18 years; we\u0026rsquo;re near the end of that era.\nWhat about the idea that there\u0026rsquo;s a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that will do something? Plait said that, oddly, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen this claim made\u0026ndash;oddly because it\u0026rsquo;s wrong. The sun is closest to the galactic center on December 19, 2010, too late by a week. And a black hole 260 quadrillion km away would have a gravitational force 1.5 trillionth of the sun. The gravity from Mars and the moon is significantly greater.\nIn short, Plait concluded, these claims are all \u0026ldquo;cosmic colons, full of astronomical crap.\u0026quot;\nJREF Update/Wrapup\nThe day ended with a JREF update, first from Jeff Wagg, noting that this was the first TAM being broadcast via streaming video, with a total of over 18,500 visitors, 850 at a time the last he looked.\nJREF has done cruises to Alaska, Mexico, the Galapagos, and the Bermuda Triangle, and he took a poll of interest for another cruise next March, for which there was \u0026ldquo;mild interest.\u0026quot;\nHe talked of SkeptiCamp, and the possibility of one occurring at the same time as TAM London, somewhere in the northeastern United States, possibly Boston, and asked those interested to contact him via email.\nThe JREF\u0026rsquo;s Swift newsletter subscription readership is growing\u0026ndash;there are twice as many today as there were in January of this year. There\u0026rsquo;s a possibility of doing some kind of live video broadcast on a weekly basis.\nHe gave thanks to the JREF forum volunteers, and made another advertisement for the JREF scholarships, \u0026ldquo;if you\u0026rsquo;re going to school, we will give you money.\u0026quot;\nPhil Plait said he was blown away by Dr. Joe Albietz\u0026rsquo;s presentation on vaccination at SkeptiCamp Colorado, and gave an update on the vaccination drive\u0026ndash;up to $8,500.\nA. Kovacs, JREF director of operations, gave thanks to various people including one of the poker game participants who donated all of his winnings to the vaccination drive, and another donor who gave $1,000 but wanted to remain anonymous.\nMatt Fiore was recognized as the most generous skeptic to the drive, and was given tickets to Lance Burton courtesy of Michael Goudeau.\nAnd that wrapped up the regular conference programming for Saturday, July 11. Next up, a summary of the skeptical paper sessions for Sunday, and the Million Dollar Challenge that finished up TAM7.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-ethics-of-deception.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part five of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 2 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 3 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 4 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sgu-shermer-savage.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEthics of Deception Panel\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD.J. Grothe moderated a panel discussion on the role of magic in skepticism and the ethics of deception, featuring Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, and Jamy Ian Swiss.  D.J. began by asking whether magic teaches critical thinking, to which Jamy Ian Swiss responded yes, and pointed to Danny Hillis hiring a magic tutor for his kids so that they could learn how methods of deception work.  Everybody else on the panel disagreed, beginning with Ray Hyman, who observed that there are kooky magicians.  Swiss agreed that there are magicians who are gullible and that learning magic doesn\u0026rsquo;t make you a skeptic, but said that it was useful to him.  This brief exchange then occurred:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eD.J.:  Teller, did you have a comment?\u003cbr /\u003eTeller: No.\u003cbr /\u003eD.J.  Just as we rehearsed.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs it turned out, Teller did have a comment\u0026ndash;he said that while some magicians think that doing the trick and saying \u0026ldquo;this is not real\u0026rdquo; is just as good as explaining it, it isn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;and \u0026ldquo;you should explain it.\u0026rdquo;  Ray Hyman seconded the point, saying, \u0026ldquo;exposing tricks that can be done in multiple ways gives people a false sense of ability to detect fakery.\u0026rdquo;  Faraday\u0026rsquo;s explanation of spiritualist table-tipping caused Alfred Russell Wallace to become convinced of the existence of spirits when a medium used a different method on him.  Hyman said this is what is known as being \u0026ldquo;half-smart,\u0026rdquo; which is the card cheat\u0026rsquo;s term for a guy who knows something about card cheating.  The card cheat then asks him what he knows, and then adapts his methods to not use those and not get caught.  (Penn Jillette\u0026rsquo;s recent book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/How-Cheat-Your-Friends-Poker/dp/031234905X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHow to Cheat Your Friends at Poker\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, discusses this very subject.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe topic then turned to mentalism, about which Ray Hyman said, you can teach the methods of cold reading in one day.  Mentalists will complain about it, but not magicians.  About the Psychic Entertainers Assocation, Jamy Ian Swiss said \u0026ldquo;they are neither psychic nor entertaining.\u0026rdquo;  Hyman said that psychic entertainers are now mostly people competing with psychotherapists.  Penn said that cold reading should be exposed, as it\u0026rsquo;s being used to deceive people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD.J. asked about the \u0026ldquo;poor man\u0026rsquo;s psychotherapist defense\u0026rdquo; of such \u0026ldquo;psychic entertainment\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;isn\u0026rsquo;t it similar to Rogerian psychotherapy (named after Carl Rogers)?  Ray Hyman pointed out that they can cause harm in many circumstances, such as their inability to recognize suicidal symptoms.  Penn went further and said, \u0026ldquo;lying always does harm and is mmoral, it has no justification\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;but then offered \u0026ldquo;exceptions for loved ones and medical situations.\u0026rdquo;  Hyman pointed out the distinction between lying by commission and lying by omission, and both he and Penn agreed that \u0026ldquo;lying by omission is also a lie\u0026rdquo; (quoting Penn).  D.J. observed that that\u0026rsquo;s a very uncompromising position on lying.  But Penn then said, \u0026ldquo;how can you love someone without lying to them,\u0026rdquo; and suggested that kindness and politeness requires lying of the sort that he made exceptions for in his previous statement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD.J. then brought up mentalists who are also skeptics and who don\u0026rsquo;t make psychic claims, such as Derren Brown and Banachek (who was at the conference, but unfortunately not part of this panel\u0026ndash;I think his viewpoint would have been a very worthwhile addition).  D.J. pointed out that Brown claims a \u0026ldquo;deep understanding of human psychology,\u0026rdquo; while Banachek will say that he is drawing inferences based on posture or facial expression.  He asked the question, \u0026ldquo;Are they equally unethical?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTeller said that he has argued with Brown, and Brown is moving to a more honest position\u0026ndash;his latest book says that he\u0026rsquo;s doing tricks, and says things like \u0026ldquo;I have special ways of dealing with information,\u0026rdquo; which is true.  He said that in Penn \u0026amp; Teller shows, they give no hint of the supernatural, so \u0026ldquo;we get the credit.\u0026rdquo;  Penn said that there are two places in their current show \u0026ldquo;where I say I\u0026rsquo;m doing one thing and am actually doing another.  I wrestle with the ethical implications.  If you admit you\u0026rsquo;re lying, it\u0026rsquo;s more like an actor playing a role.  But there are two places in the show where I pretend to be speaking earnestly but am not.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRay Hyman said that \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Andrus\"\u003eJerry Andrus\u003c/a\u003e was the most honest guy in the world, but he said that a magician on the stage has a license to lie.  It\u0026rsquo;s theater.  (In my notes, I wrote\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;But does \u0026lsquo;it\u0026rsquo;s TV\u0026rsquo; suffice?\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a topic that came up shortly.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJamy Ian Swiss says that he is working to develop some mentalist techniques which present things that are convincing looking, but which obviously cannot be happening.  He suggests that the effect will be more impressive if he can give the audience confidence that he cannot do what he then appears to do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRay Hyman said that a distinction between magic and mentalism is that mentalism is boring, and can only be dragged on (to show length) if people think that it\u0026rsquo;s real.  \u0026ldquo;If you believe the stuff is real, what\u0026rsquo;s the appeal of mentalism?\u0026rdquo;  Teller seconded that point\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;if you pretend it\u0026rsquo;s possible, it\u0026rsquo;s just nature.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD.J. brought up the example of Mark Salem, who \u0026ldquo;claims a well-developed understanding of the human mind,\u0026rdquo; and asked, \u0026ldquo;why do we give skeptical mentalists a pass?\u0026rdquo;  Jamy Ian Swiss then criticized Salem.  Ray Hyman said that when he performed, he would say that he has no special powers, and \u0026ldquo;whatever I can do, you can do.  There\u0026rsquo;s nothing abnormal or paranormal about it.\u0026rdquo;  Teller said, \u0026ldquo;The correct answer to how it\u0026rsquo;s done is\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a trick.\u0026rdquo;  Penn said that if people come up to him after a show and really want to know how it\u0026rsquo;s done, he\u0026rsquo;ll tell them.  But he gave the example of a very famous magic trick (he didn\u0026rsquo;t say which one) that fooled everyone who saw it, is protected by a patent, that you can look up.  There\u0026rsquo;s a multi-page description of how it\u0026rsquo;s done, but few people bother to read past the first few pages.  He said, \u0026ldquo;[Jim] Steinmeyer says magicians are guarding an empty safe.  If we explained the bullet catch trick, it would not be interesting.  The tricks we expose are the ones where the secret is interesting and clever.  In the bullet catch we\u0026rsquo;re hiding messy ugliness.  \u0026hellip; Valentino, the masked magician, couldn\u0026rsquo;t reveal the real good-looking tricks because they don\u0026rsquo;t have the \u0026lsquo;aha!\u0026rsquo; cleverness.\u0026rdquo;  Teller observed that people have accurately described how the bullet catch is done online, but it still looks amazing.  Penn pointed out that there are also inaccurate descriptions of the bullet catch on the Internet, so he\u0026rsquo;d hate to see somebody else try to do it.  Teller suggested that Adam Savage put them to the test on Mythbusters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD.J. said that \u0026ldquo;believers will always be with us\u0026ndash;are disclaimers necessary?\u0026rdquo;  (He observed that he was reformulating a quote from Jesus that \u0026ldquo;the poor will always be with us.\u0026rdquo;)  Ray Hyman suggested that disclaimers create an \u0026ldquo;invited inference problem,\u0026rdquo; taking away any reason to challenge or question, and thereby promoting belief.  Penn commented that \u0026ldquo;There was no Jesus, so the quote is wrong.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, D.J. turned to the question of using magicians in scientific investigations, as James Randi has long recommended, to which Penn said, \u0026ldquo;it depends upon the magician.\u0026rdquo;  Ray Hyman said that \u0026ldquo;scientists do not do tests,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;magicians can hurt the process.\u0026rdquo;  He pointed out that Milbourne Christopher was fooled by Uri Geller, and made up a bogus explanation for metal bending in terms of chemicals on his hands that became a parody scientific explanation like \u0026ldquo;swamp gas\u0026rdquo; for UFOs.  Randi then came up and said that \u0026ldquo;magicians for parapsychology tests need to have a deep and broad knowledge of magic, not just know how to do a few tricks.  Half-smart is not smart at all.  Be all-smart or forget it.\u0026rdquo;  He went on to make his common point that Ph.D.s can easily be fooled even though they\u0026rsquo;re not dumb.  Randi also said that there is a place for \u0026ldquo;white lies,\u0026rdquo; giving an example that will appear in his biography, being written by Tim Steinberg.  He sent a letter to his grandfather shortly before his death at the age of 94, in which he said \u0026ldquo;I believe you will be with your wife at death,\u0026rdquo; in order to give comfort in a situation where the lie did no harm.  He said that he\u0026rsquo;s glad to see Derren Brown coming clean, and said that \u0026ldquo;Uri Geller is trying to come clean, but he\u0026rsquo;s fucked\u0026ndash;he lied to governments and research institutions. \u0026hellip; He now says he wants to be known as a \u0026lsquo;mystifier.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  He suggested that the media should ask Geller, \u0026ldquo;yes or no, have you ever used psychic powers that do not involve trickery,\u0026rdquo; but when they do, he\u0026rsquo;ll hang up the phone and refuse to answer the question.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first question was about Criss Angel, David Blaine, and \u0026ldquo;street magic,\u0026rdquo; and in particular the way that the TV audience doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the same thing that someone there would see.  Jamy Ian Swiss said that David Blaine made some early irresponsible claims.  Teller said that when you watch TV, \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s the proscenium,\u0026rdquo; which seems to me an erroneous comparison that could be used to justify all sorts of misrepresentation in the name of entertainment.  Jamy Ian Swiss said that TV specials on magic have a credibility issue because of the possibility of editing and camera tricks, but that street magic was a good idea.  Teller said it\u0026rsquo;s an aesthetic issue rather than a moral issue, and that he sees editing to produce effects OK\u0026ndash;that the rules aren\u0026rsquo;t the same for TV.  Penn said he didn\u0026rsquo;t think David Blaine would entertain, and observed that \u0026ldquo;reality TV is fake.  Lots of people know it, but some think everything on TV is real.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner said she appreciated Penn\u0026rsquo;s comment on global warming as pseudoscience (which I didn\u0026rsquo;t note in my notes and don\u0026rsquo;t recall what he said), to which Penn responded, \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t listen to me, I\u0026rsquo;m the least qualified to talk about\u0026rdquo; the subject, and said \u0026ldquo;we won\u0026rsquo;t do a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e show on global warming.\u0026rdquo;  He said \u0026ldquo;If there is global warming, and there probably is, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if we caused it.  But if we caused it, and we probably did, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if we can stop it.  But if we can stop it, and we probably can, we don\u0026rsquo;t know if socialism is required.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Mark Edward, a skeptic who works as a mentalist who was also at TAM7, was disappointed with this panel and \u003ca href=\"http://skepticblog.org/2009/07/17/fostering-communication-outside-the-conference-box/#comment-10010\"\u003eexpresses his opinion in a comment at skepticblog.org\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point I stepped out for a moment, while Robert Lancaster was given the Skeptical Citizen Award, and returned as a documentary film on Jerry Andrus was being shown.  It told a bit about Jerry\u0026rsquo;s life and his house, the \u0026ldquo;Castle of Chaos,\u0026rdquo; filled with his inventions, including puzzles, optical illusions, magical effects, and mechanical and electronic devices of his creation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eStephen Bauer on Jerry Andrus\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStephen Bauer, an attorney and member of Oregonians for Rationality, has attended every TAM, but this was his first time as a presenter.  He gave the story of how he found skepticism\u0026ndash;his mother was a big fan of woo including a believer in the psychic powers of Uri Geller, and to combat his skepticism she gave him a copy of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Magic of Uri Geller\u003c/span\u003e without reading it.  As this was the original title of James Randi\u0026rsquo;s debunking of Geller (now known as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Uri_Geller\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Truth About Uri Geller\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e), he found it very persuasive, though said his mother didn\u0026rsquo;t care much for it when she then looked at it a bit deeper when he told her he thought the book was completely correct.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBauer wrote to James Randi asking for an explanation of how ouija boards work, and he suggested that Bauer talk to Ray Hyman at the University of Oregon about the ideomotor effect.  He then joined Oregonians for Rationality and began attending the summer Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Toolbox workshops at the University of Oregon, where \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Andrus\"\u003eJerry Andrus\u003c/a\u003e came up and introduced himself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then told some stories about Jerry Andrus.  At Halloween, Andrus would never give candy, only a trick.  Sometimes he would answer the door as a floating disembodied head.  One year he would open the door, then lean over beyond the point at which he should have fallen, and then straighten back up, then shut the door.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAndrus was a magician, a skeptic, and an inventor.  He had been visited by film crews from three continents.  He never married, had no kids.  He lived in the same house for 80 years.  He performed every six months at the Magic Castle.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis house, an 1891 Victorian home, was known as the \u0026ldquo;Castle of Chaos\u0026rdquo; and was filled with things that he had collected, designed, and built, though not a single piece of traditional furniture.  He was an artist, photographer, poet, musician, composer, and agnostic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe called Bauer for an estate plan, which ended up being a simple will that left everything to his brother George, who is 93 years old.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Castle of Chaos contained a full printing shop in the attic, which required metal bands to be put around the room to keep it from shaking apart from its operation.  Andrus printed his own books.  He also had his own photo studio, from which three pickup loads of photo chemicals had to be disposed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter his death, a group of volunteers from Oregonians for Science and Reason worked regularly on his house to catalog its contents, dispose of unsalvageable items, and put items into storage.  Bauer spent his sabbatical working 12 hours a day on Andrus\u0026rsquo;s house.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust the recycled items included 32,000 pounds of scrap metal, 2 cords of scrap wood, 1,000 cubic feet of plastic, and fans, hair dryers, and \u0026ldquo;air moving devices.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe house had a ground-level crawlspace with four entrances, three of which featured a set of amusement park railroad tracks leading under the house, on which Jerry could lie down on a device of his own construction and push himself under the house, where he stored various items.  Among those items included gigantic magnets, which he could use to make the planchette on a ouija board in his house spell out things.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe had a Hammond organ, heavily customized with his own additions, connected by a spaghetti tangle of wires.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the house contained much that they couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out, like the wiring.  A black sock hanging in the bathroom was pulled down, setting off a security system\u0026ndash;which they didn\u0026rsquo;t know existed.  An electronic rat trap in one room turned out to be a device for launching tennis balls and spoons during simulated seances.  He had a slide projector that he made from a motorcycle engine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey found that he had all of the letters he received when he was a soldier in WWII, which will now be donated to a military museum.  They collected 120 boxes of materials now being kept in a storage unit, which include 3 dozen boxes of letters, notes, and writings, 20 boxes of mixed media, and 4 volumes (2000 pages) of his daily journal of \u0026ldquo;Scribulations.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStephen Bauer finished up with some thanks to the late John Lar, who died in 2008, for getting the Castle Chaos project started, and noted that Lar\u0026rsquo;s wife had cared for Jerry in his final days.  He told a little bit about Jerry\u0026rsquo;s 93-year-old brother George, a musician with a \u0026ldquo;house of wonders\u0026rdquo; of his own, who has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.vimeo.com/669903\"\u003emaking videos of soap bubbles featuring his own music\u003c/a\u003e (the linked video also features Jerry). He ended with a quote from Tycho Brahe, who left all of his work to Kepler with the comment, \u0026ldquo;Let me not seem to have lived in vain, let me not seem to have lived in vain.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHal Bidlack then said, \u0026ldquo;A man should live his life so that when it comes time for him to die, he has nothing left to do but die.  It seems like Mr. Andrus did that.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(I remember Jerry Andrus as a quiet and soft-spoken guy who was a regular fixture at all of the Skeptics Society conferences at Caltech.  He would usually be found next to his table of his optical illusions, some of which will now always be present at every TAM, which he would be happy to help demonstrate to anyone who stopped by.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSkepticism and the Media Panel\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was an unmoderated Q\u0026amp;A panel featuring Penn and Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, and Jennifer Ouellette.  A few of the questions and answers I noted (I missed most of them as I was trying to ask a question myself, which I previously tried to ask of the ethics of deception panel).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  Why can\u0026rsquo;t the Daily Show or Colbert take down Jenny McCarthy?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn: That\u0026rsquo;s not the sort of thing they do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  What was the biggest media failure of skepticism recently?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Adam Savage: The NPR ombudsman taking \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/npr-ombudsman-on-torture.html\"\u003ethe position that calling waterboarding \u0026ldquo;torture\u0026rdquo; is taking sides\u003c/a\u003e, and defending it on the basis of having to be balanced.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn: The truth isn\u0026rsquo;t in the middle.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  Dave from Phoenix: Any opinion on TBN or Benny Hinn?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Jennifer Ouellette:  I grew up in a fundamentalist household, went to faith healing meetings, etc.  It\u0026rsquo;s fantasy.  My parents still beleive they can speak in tongues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  The subtext here is on getting facts right and of leaders being of exemplary character.  How can we promote character, service to the public, telling the truth, and owning the consequences of your actions?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Adam Savage: It\u0026rsquo;s unattainable.  There\u0026rsquo;s a percentage of assholes everywhere.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn: Most people are good; there are 6 billion good people.  Disagreement doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them assholes, but I still call them assholes on my show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  What about historical accuracy?  The History Channel creating bogus doubt?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  (Savage? Prady?)  So what have you done about it? .. Hal took your mike away\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Savage:  We\u0026rsquo;re one of the few shows that goes back and corrects our mistakes.  Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be great if the History Channel came out and said all of their Nostradamus documentaries of the last 20 years were wrong?  (Laughter from the audience.)  Only skeptics and history teachers laugh at that.  Many film crews don\u0026rsquo;t care about truth.  Mythbusters visited hurricane researchers who said they\u0026rsquo;re always misrepresented.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Prady: We said on an episode [of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo;] that a Van Dyke is a goatee without a mustache.  It\u0026rsquo;s wrong, we will correct it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  The ridicule of pseudoscience\u0026ndash;what is appropriate, heavy ridicule, no ridicule?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn:  I\u0026rsquo;m not in favor of heavy ridicule.  We do it towards ourselves and allies as well as believers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Jennifer Ouellette:  Humor can be a powerful convincing mechanism.  If it\u0026rsquo;s mean spirited, though, that\u0026rsquo;s different.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn: The joke of our show is that we\u0026rsquo;re calling bullshit.  The message is pro-science and respect each other, and Pollyanna-ish hippie shit.  I love crazy people.  I\u0026rsquo;m in the category of the wack job.  When I went on \u0026ldquo;Politically Incorrect,\u0026rdquo; a show that always has one nut, I looked around and I didn\u0026rsquo;t see the nut.  I straddle both sides\u0026ndash;if a gun were held to my head and asked what are you, a skeptic or a nut, I\u0026rsquo;m the nut.  .\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Prady:  \u0026ldquo;Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; was originally about computer programmers, but it was too hard to photograph [due to reflections from screens].  The message of the show is that everybody thinks other people have life figured out\u0026ndash;and nobody does.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Teller:  On the Orgasm episode of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e, we talk about a guy who has a crazy orgasm machine for a hot tub, and it turns out it\u0026rsquo;s Penn.  (Voiceover for Teller: \u0026ldquo;And then there\u0026rsquo;s this asshole\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;)  (The \u0026ldquo;Jill-Jet,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1\u0026amp;Sect2=HITOFF\u0026amp;d=PALL\u0026amp;p=1\u0026amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm\u0026amp;r=1\u0026amp;f=G\u0026amp;l=50\u0026amp;s1=5920923.PN.\u0026amp;OS=PN/5920923\u0026amp;RS=PN/5920923\"\u003eU.S. patent #5,920,923\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  Richard Saunders: Does anyone on \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; do origami?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Prady:  Sheldon knows origami but just doesn\u0026rsquo;t do it on the show.  You only see days something interesting happens.  (\u0026ldquo;Oooh!\u0026rdquo; from audience.)  Sorry, that was cheap.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn:  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e in Sweden is called skitsnack\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;shitcock.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Savage:  There are partnerships involved here.  There is huge strength in push-pull.  We drive each other nuts, but the product is better.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn:  We hope to get famous enough that only one of us has to show up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  (To P\u0026amp;T:) Did you know George Carlin, and why don\u0026rsquo;t we address comedy more often?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn: Carlin was a hero of mine.  I spoke to him on the phone quite a bit.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think comedians, magicians, or skeptics matter\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s individuals.  There are wackjobs in comedy.  We shouldn\u0026rsquo;t celebrate a form, just individuals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Savage: I find it interesting that all practitioners say that their field is the only pure one.  I knew a package design professor who said that package design is the only pure art form.  Hal Bidlack:  That was not thinking outside the box.  (Big cheer from audience.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  Can you offer words to young skeptics held down by the beliefs of their parents?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Ouellette:  Voracious reading.  I couldn\u0026rsquo;t watch \u0026ldquo;Welcome Back, Kotter.\u0026rdquo;  My parents would burn non-Christian books.  I left home at 17 for college.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn:  You shouldn\u0026rsquo;t manipulate, just say what is true.  Don\u0026rsquo;t talk to adolescents differently, just talk to a general audience.  Don\u0026rsquo;t try to \u0026ldquo;reach\u0026rdquo; adolescents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  What do you think of fake skeptics on shows like \u0026ldquo;Ghost Hunters\u0026rdquo;?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Penn:  House, Bones, Num3ers (pronounced \u0026ldquo;numb-three-ers\u0026rdquo;), etc.  All have atheists.  Atheists and skeptics have it good on major shows right now.  We\u0026rsquo;re not martyrs.  Hitchens said we have no saints or martyrs.  There are minorities being fucked over in this country, and we\u0026rsquo;re not it.  (Though \u003ca href=\"http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/topnav/press/atheists_are_distrusted\"\u003eatheists are more mistrusted than other groups\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  What\u0026rsquo;s the role of skepticism in broadcasting?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Prady:  Make them central as characters, and stay on the air, and don\u0026rsquo;t have a social message, just have fun.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Savage:  We didn\u0026rsquo;t set out to inspire scientists\u0026ndash;if we set out to do that, we\u0026rsquo;d be pompous, pretentious, and fail.  We\u0026rsquo;ve done our show for 7 years and want to do 5 more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ. (For Teller, about why he has a bottle of water in front of him despite the Bullshit! show on bottled water.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Teller: I filled the bottle using the tap in the men\u0026rsquo;s room.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA.  Ouellette:  To reach minds, reach for hearts, from your heart.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy question was something like, \u0026ldquo;The movie \u0026lsquo;Expelled\u0026rsquo; received a lot of criticism for the deceptive way in which it obtained interviews from its subjects.  Theology professor Paul Maier has made similar charges about his appearance in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e episode on The Bible.  I was glad to hear on the ethics in deception panel that you agree that lying by omission is wrong.  Can you comment?\u0026rdquo;  It turns out I misremembered Maier\u0026rsquo;s criticism, which was about his views being completely mangled by the editing, not being deceived about what show he was on, though his comments make it seem like he was surprised about the nature of the show.  I would have thought the title would be a hint.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePenn responded that he didn\u0026rsquo;t know who Maier was, and didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get the point of my question.  I met up with him in the hallway between sessions, and pointed out that Maier was an actual guest on the show, not just some blogger writing about it, and he laughed at the misunderstanding.  He said that the contracts for everyone who appears on the show state that the show is Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e, but that just because he was given that information in the contract and signed it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that he read it and knew it.  (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e writer Michael Goudeau, standing next to Penn, concurred that the contracts name the show.) I offered to point him to \u003ca href=\"http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/2007/05/penn-and-teller-on-bible.html\"\u003eMaier\u0026rsquo;s critique\u003c/a\u003e, but he said that he had no interest in reading it and Maier can say whatever he likes.  I don\u0026rsquo;t find that entirely satisfactory given the strong stance against lying that Penn took during the ethics of deception panel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also discussed this on Friday evening with Michael Shermer, who was previously criticized by a commenter at this blog for his role in that same episode of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e on the Bible.  Shermer pointed out that he had no idea of what Maier said and wasn\u0026rsquo;t responding specifically to his remarks, but just answering questions asked by the interviewer.  He also observed that Penn \u0026amp; Teller don\u0026rsquo;t write the show, or do much more for any given show than show up to record their scenes and voice overs, though of course they bear some responsibility given that it has their names on it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePhil Plait on Doomsday 2012\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe final talk of the day was Phil Plait on \u0026ldquo;Doomsday 2012,\u0026rdquo; the idea that the world will be coming to an end on December 12, 2012 based on the end of the Mayan calendar and an alleged Mayan prophecy of the end of the world, \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-05/morrison.html\"\u003ea popular topic for questions to NASA\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began by saying that the Mayans were good astronomers and had a good calendar system, and had the largest centralized civilization of their time, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t predict their own civilization being absorbed into others.  The claim of an alleged prophecy of destruction is false\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just that their calendar system ends and rolls over.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBack in 2003 at TAM1, Plait spoke about Planet X and Nibiru, and warned that this idea would come back, and he was correct.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe spent the rest of the talk looking at what could possibly cause the destruction of the earth in 2012, and what\u0026rsquo;s the evidence.  First, perhaps a \u0026ldquo;Sun of Doom\u0026rdquo;?  Looking at solar flares and sunspots\u0026ndash;would that activity peak in 2012?  Sunspots will probably peak in 2013, solar flare activity in 2013 or 2014.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn asteroid or comet impact?  None known to be on a collision path.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, perhaps a \u0026ldquo;Galaxy of Doom\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Milky Way of Doom\u0026rdquo;?  The Milky Way galaxy is 100 billion to 200 billion stars in a flattened disc, which appears to us as a strip, since we\u0026rsquo;re in it.  He talked about the Galactic equator, and that the sun is close to it.  As an aside, he remarked that 75% of the American public doesn\u0026rsquo;t know both that the earth rotates once per day and revolves around the sun once per year, let alone that the earth is at a tilt with the northern axis pointed at Polaris, which is the reason for the seasons.  (Note: This stat seems somewhat dubious, since \u003ca href=\"http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001656.html\"\u003ea 1999 Gallup poll found that 79% of Americans correctly answered that the earth revolves around the sun\u003c/a\u003e. Would that really drop all the way to 25% just by asking for frequency of revolution and rotation?  And if so, how much of that is merely confusion between the terms \u0026ldquo;revolution\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;rotation\u0026rdquo;?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe talked about the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the gravity of the sun and moon, which goes through one circle every 24,000 years, and the map position of the sun at the winter solstice crosses the Galactic equator.  But that happened in 1998.  So some have said that we are \u0026ldquo;in that era\u0026rdquo; of the crossing, which takes about 18 years; we\u0026rsquo;re near the end of that era.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat about the idea that there\u0026rsquo;s a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that will do something?  Plait said that, oddly, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen this claim made\u0026ndash;oddly because it\u0026rsquo;s wrong.  The sun is closest to the galactic center on December 19, 2010, too late by a week.  And a black hole 260 quadrillion km away would have a gravitational force 1.5 trillionth of the sun.  The gravity from Mars and the moon is significantly greater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn short, Plait concluded, these claims are all \u0026ldquo;cosmic colons, full of astronomical crap.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJREF Update/Wrapup\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe day ended with a JREF update, first from Jeff Wagg, noting that this was the first TAM being broadcast via streaming video, with a total of over 18,500 visitors, 850 at a time the last he looked.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJREF has done cruises to Alaska, Mexico, the Galapagos, and the Bermuda Triangle, and he took a poll of interest for another cruise next March, for which there was \u0026ldquo;mild interest.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe talked of SkeptiCamp, and the possibility of one occurring at the same time as TAM London, somewhere in the northeastern United States, possibly Boston, and asked those interested to contact him via email.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe JREF\u0026rsquo;s Swift newsletter subscription readership is growing\u0026ndash;there are twice as many today as there were in January of this year.  There\u0026rsquo;s a possibility of doing some kind of live video broadcast on a weekly basis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave thanks to the JREF forum volunteers, and made another advertisement for the JREF scholarships, \u0026ldquo;if you\u0026rsquo;re going to school, we will give you money.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhil Plait said he was blown away by Dr. Joe Albietz\u0026rsquo;s presentation on vaccination at SkeptiCamp Colorado, and gave an update on the vaccination drive\u0026ndash;up to $8,500.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA. Kovacs, JREF director of operations, gave thanks to various people including one of the poker game participants who donated all of his winnings to the vaccination drive, and another donor who gave $1,000 but wanted to remain anonymous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMatt Fiore was recognized as the most generous skeptic to the drive, and was given tickets to Lance Burton courtesy of Michael Goudeau.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that wrapped up the regular conference programming for Saturday, July 11.  Next up, \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sunday-paper-sessions.html\"\u003ea summary of the skeptical paper sessions for Sunday, and the Million Dollar Challenge that finished up TAM7\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: ethics of deception panel, Bauer, skepticism and media panel, Plait"},{"content":"The faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford have put together a website on \u0026ldquo;Investigating Atheism.\u0026quot; Although it\u0026rsquo;s ironic that a bunch of theologians have done this, in my brief perusal of the site I haven\u0026rsquo;t found anything objectionable\u0026ndash;it does a good job of putting current atheist arguments and personalities in historical context.\n(Via the Secular Outpost.)\nUPDATE: Well, they do have an article from well-known net kook John A. Davison. That\u0026rsquo;s a bit of an odd choice.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/investigating-atheism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford have put together a website on \u003ca href=\"http://investigatingatheism.info/index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Investigating Atheism.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Although it\u0026rsquo;s ironic that a bunch of theologians have done this, in my brief perusal of the site I haven\u0026rsquo;t found anything objectionable\u0026ndash;it does a good job of putting current atheist arguments and personalities in historical context.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2009/08/investigating-atheism-web-site.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Well, they do have \u003ca href=\"http://www.investigatingatheism.info/johnadavison.html\"\u003ean article from well-known net kook John A. Davison\u003c/a\u003e.  That\u0026rsquo;s a bit of an odd choice.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Investigating Atheism"},{"content":"This is part four of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.\nSkeptics Guide to the Universe\nBoth Friday and Saturday morning began with live recording sessions for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, for which I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to take notes, since it was being recorded (it\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Guide podcast episode #208 and may be found on the website archive or via the iTunes store). The Saturday morning event began with a satirical ghost hunter video by Jay Novella, \u0026ldquo;The G Hunters\u0026rdquo; (part one, part two). But the real surprise came during the listener Q\u0026amp;A session, when Sid Rodrigues asked a question \u0026ldquo;maybe for Rebecca,\u0026rdquo; which turned out to be \u0026ldquo;Will you marry me?\u0026rdquo; A seemingly impromptu, but carefully planned wedding followed immediately, though there wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough cake for everyone, nor a champagne toast. All present did receive after-the-fact invitations as a nice memento, and there was a first dance for those who wanted to participate.\nMichael Shermer\nMichael Shermer prefaced his talk with an overview of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine that bore some resemblance to the introduction of his TED Talk of 2006. His talk, titled \u0026ldquo;Rise Above\u0026ndash;Towards a Type I Civilization,\u0026rdquo; argued that we should work to rise above our tribal instincts, our evolutionary heritage, and the left-right political spectrum. He began by noting that most of our decisions are judgments made on uncertainties (a reference to the classic book Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky), made emotionally with intuitive leaps which are then followed by rationalization to provide reasons to justify what we\u0026rsquo;ve already decided to do. He observed that when the amygdala is damaged, this leads not only to loss of emotional capacity, but an inability to make decisions. We don\u0026rsquo;t fall into categories of good and evil, but good and evil run through each person, he said, referencing Joseph Conrad\u0026rsquo;s Heart of Darkness and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn\u0026rsquo;s The Gulag Archipelago. An individual\u0026rsquo;s expanding circles of concern are based on genetic relationships and kin selection, he said, and reciprocal altruism operates within kin/kind/community. We\u0026rsquo;re good to members of our in-group, but skeptical and cautious about other groups.\nHe spoke briefly about the left-right political spectrum, arguing instead for a three-dimensional Nolan chart that is used by libertarians with a misleading questionnaire as a recruiting tool. While I agree with Shermer that the left-right spectrum has serious weaknesses, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the Nolan chart is much of an improvement, especially when the coordinates on the chart are determined by a limited set of questions that are worded in a way that glosses over details. Better, I think, is to recognize that the space of political positions really encompasses far more dimensions. Shermer asked the audience how many considered themselves to be left of center, right, or libertarians, and the answers were about 1-2 people right of center, 15-20% libertarian, and the rest self-described liberal. He put up a couple of slides containing exaggerated stereotypical descriptions of how conservatives view liberals and vice versa, which produced cheers to both. He put up the political map of red and blue states based on the last presidential election results, and pointed out that the map is misleading, because if you look at it on a more granular level the country is really a mass of purple. (Though he didn\u0026rsquo;t mention or address the thesis of Bill Bishop\u0026rsquo;s The Big Sort.) He noted that his speaking out about his libertarianism has raised more ire than his views on religion (theism), and stated that it\u0026rsquo;s fine to disagree, but that political topics should be open to discussion. This was probably the most controversial talk of the conference, and it, along with Shermer\u0026rsquo;s recent interview on the Point of Inquiry podcast, have led to some to argue that skepticism should be apolitical. Shermer said that he\u0026rsquo;s been told that he should be apolitical, \u0026ldquo;like Carl Sagan,\u0026rdquo; to which Shermer (correctly) responded that Sagan was not apolitical, as he argued for a number of liberal causes, including nuclear disarmament (a cause for which he was twice arrested during protests).\nHe then turned to some more interesting research, Jonathan Haidt\u0026rsquo;s work on how people make moral judgments. Haidt has hypothesized that we make moral judgments based on five scales, which Shermer compared to \u0026ldquo;a five-channel moral equalizer\u0026rdquo;:\ncare: Protection from harm.fairness: Justice, equality.loyalty: Family, group, nation.authority: Respect for law, tradition, and traditional institutions.purity: Rules about sexual conduct, recognition of sacredness.Liberals tend to emphasize the first two items, which place a focus on individual rights, while conservatives use those two and the remaining three about equally, and the last three focus on group cohesiveness. These tendencies seem to hold up across cultures.\nShermer apparently argued that all five of these scales are important, saying that \u0026ldquo;since 9/11, things have changed,\u0026rdquo; and noting that group loyalty is now getting some emphasis from left-atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Shermer argued that religious extremists are dangerous, and are assisted by religious moderates. I think this is actually a badly mistaken inference to draw. Sure, there are extremists who are out to harm the U.S., but terrorism is a strategy of the militarily weak against the strong, and the right way to combat it is not by doing things like launching an invasion and occupying a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (Iraq), engaging in torture and abuse, and causing religious moderates to join with the extremists, but rather by a divide-and-conquer strategy that isolates the extremists from the moderates and maintains the moral high ground. (Skeptic and physicist Taner Edis, from Turkey, has criticized Sam Harris for his misunderstanding of Islam, as has Chris Hedges who, despite his sometimes annoying attitude, made some good points on the subject in his Point of Inquiry interview.)\nTo support his point, Shermer showed a clip from the film \u0026ldquo;A Few Good Men\u0026rdquo; in which Jack Nicholson defends his position of ordering a \u0026ldquo;Code Red\u0026rdquo; to engage in self-enforcement to punish a slacker in the military ranks as an ugly and unpleasant necessity.\nShermer then turned to the Kardashev scale referenced in his title, which classifies civilizations into Type 0 (energy produced from dead plants and animals), Type I (planetary civilizations controlling the energy of an entire planet), Type II (stellar civilizations controlling the energy of an entire sun), and Type III (a civilization controlling all of the energy in an entire galaxy). Shermer gave an ordering from Type 0 to Type II, with tribal communities at 0.3, liberal democracies at 0.8, and then described Type I civilizations as including a global wireless (why wireless?) communication system (the Internet), a global language (English, most likely), a global culture (why not diverse cultures?), and global free trade, which breaks down tribal barriers. He didn\u0026rsquo;t really provide an argument for the details of the how and why, apart from that short defense of global free trade and a little more he said later, pointing to the work of Fredric Bastiat (Bastiat\u0026rsquo;s axiom: where goods cross frontiers, armies will not), which he augmented with the \u0026ldquo;Starbucks theory of war\u0026rdquo; (two nations with Starbucks won\u0026rsquo;t fight each other) and the \u0026ldquo;Google Theory of Peace\u0026rdquo; (where information and knowledge cross frontiers, armies will not).\nHe then cited the work of Rudy Rummel on democracy and war, stating that between 1860 and 2005 there have been 371 wars, of which 205 were between non-democratic nations, 166 were between democracies and non-democracies, and 0 were between democracies. He said that some have challenged the details of the classifications, but that in general, democracies seem to be less likely to engage in war as a means of resolving disputes.\nHe concluded by saying that rising above tribal instincts is hard, and quoted Katherine Hepburn\u0026rsquo;s line from \u0026ldquo;The African Queen\u0026rdquo;: \u0026ldquo;Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we must rise above.\u0026quot;\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t get a chance to ask my question in the Q\u0026amp;A, but I went up to Shermer afterward and suggested that the tribal in-group seems to be a biological/mathematical limitation of our memories and processing capabilities with respect to the number of combinations of relationships we can track. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar\u0026rsquo;s work on this topic has led to what is called the \u0026ldquo;Dunbar number\u0026rdquo; or a \u0026ldquo;Dunbar circle,\u0026rdquo; which is the number of people you can keep track of and that make up your in-group, and it\u0026rsquo;s about 150. Studies of Facebook users show that even those with thousands of friends still engage in most of their interactions with a group of 150 or fewer. So my question was, in light of that limitation, how can we rise above tribal membership? Shermer\u0026rsquo;s answer was the same one I would have given, which is that although we may still be limited to that number of relationships, today they don\u0026rsquo;t have to be limited by geography, and so the way to \u0026ldquo;rise above\u0026rdquo; is to have lots of these small groups. Shermer suggested that we need to avoid any such groups having a political monopoly, but the real concern is how those small groups build coalitions which obtain and exercise political power, and what they try to do with it. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure there\u0026rsquo;s any getting around the problem of having political institutions which govern vastly larger numbers of people.\nMy own opinion on whether \u0026ldquo;skepticism\u0026rdquo; should be apolitical and avoid religious topics is that skeptical organizations should avoid taking positions on those topics, except where there are clear empirically testable hypotheses. (For example, it should be perfectly legitimate for a skeptical organization to publish an examination of the social and psychological factors that cause people to give credence to crackpots like Orly Taitz and Philip Berg, and their respective bogus Kenyan and Canadian Obama birth certificates\u0026ndash;as well as to examine the facts around topics like the \u0026ldquo;birther\u0026rdquo; controversy.) Individual skeptics, however, should feel free to argue for whatever positions they hold, while being cognizant of what is within the realm of the empirical and what is more philosophical. I don\u0026rsquo;t think Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk should have been ruled inappropriate for TAM, though I would have liked to have seen a bit more science and argument in the talk, and I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to see a whole bunch of talks that all touched on politics or religion, especially if they all came from a single viewpoint.\n(UPDATE: I recently came across something I wrote relevant to this point about ten years ago on Usenet, which I still agree with today:\n\u0026ldquo;The skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position should be, on any issue where there isn\u0026rsquo;t conclusive evidence one way or another, either agnosticism or tentative acceptance of the view that seems to be best supported\u0026ndash;but with tolerance for those who accept other views which are also inconclusively supported by the evidence. In other words, there is no and should be no official skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position.\nFurther, there shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be an official skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position on subjects which are matters of political ideology, religious faith, or metaphysical views on which empirical science is silent.\u0026rdquo;)\nAdam Savage\nAdam Savage of Mythbusters gave a talk not directly related to skepticism, but to which everyone could relate\u0026ndash;a talk about personal failure. He said that he is often asked how he attained his success, and he said that he didn\u0026rsquo;t follow a straight path and that he had a lot of failures along the way. He began by referring to Aaron Sorkin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sports Night,\u0026rdquo; which he called the best 26 hours of television. In an episode of the second season, a billionaire who\u0026rsquo;s going to buy the show says, \u0026ldquo;Dana. I\u0026rsquo;m what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I\u0026rsquo;ve failed much more than I\u0026rsquo;ve succeeded. And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, \u0026ldquo;Where are we going?\u0026rdquo; And it starts to get better. And that\u0026rsquo;s what you should do.\u0026quot;\nSavage said that he wanted to present the details of how spectacular and painful some of his failures have been. He said that he\u0026rsquo;s been fired from a production assistant job, he\u0026rsquo;s been divorced, and he\u0026rsquo;s yelled at his kids. All of our lives are two steps forward, one step back. He got a job at Industrial Light and Magic, working with his heroes, a job he\u0026rsquo;d wanted since he was 11. In the SFX industry, everybody is freelance, working on jobs for a time, and always looking for the next. But at ILM, there is no selling required. He said your resume is just three words\u0026ndash;just four words\u0026ndash;Industrial Light and Magic. And he would also take extra outside jobs.\nHis friend Ben called him with a job that he couldn\u0026rsquo;t take because of the short turn-around time. A department store wanted a window display within five days, that depicted a ballpark fence. What they wanted was baseballs automatically being pitched over the fence on a continuous basis.\nSavage bid his day rate, $300-$500/day, plus a market-rate rush fee. It was a really fat paycheck for five days work. He got pitching machines and a ballfeeder, built it, and watched it work 70 times in a row, and then fail. He figured this was a solvable problem. He stayed up all night Friday and Saturday morning trying to get it to work\u0026ndash;it was originally supposed to be ready by Saturday, and needed on Monday (?)\u0026ndash;and brought it to the store to assemble. It turned out that the size of the display area was different from what he was told, and in the new set up it was down to 30-40 balls in a row before failure, so would fail every 3 hours. He observed that there\u0026rsquo;s a reason the displays in airports with balls moving around on tracks use fixed rails, rather than tubes like he was using\u0026ndash;rails lead to balls moving in a predictable amount of time, while the air resistance in a tube makes the timing unpredictable. So he added an air blower to force the balls down the tubes.\nThe next problem was that when one pitching machine pitches, it takes more power, which causes the other two machines to slow down, increasing the failure rate. He had relatives coming into town at 6 p.m. on Saturday and it still wasn\u0026rsquo;t working. He came to the conclusion that no amount of effort is going to make it work, and told his employer that in 30 minutes he would present three alternatives and have whichever one they chose implemented by 8 a.m. the next morning. He came up with a new solution using a monofilament chain connected to the balls, simulating the motion of a pitched ball\u0026ndash;no pitching machines. He stayed up all night and visited Home Depot repeatedly, and finally got it working with 10 baseballs.\nThe National Head of Display came to look at the display, and said, \u0026ldquo;it looks great, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like the balls\u0026ndash;get rid of them.\u0026quot;\nSavage\u0026rsquo;s second story of failure was from earlier in his career, when he \u0026ldquo;pretended to attend NYU for a year\u0026rdquo; and then worked with his film student friends on their films. He worked on a friend\u0026rsquo;s film that was filmed at the Alexis Theater, and the film ended up winning the NYU Film Festival\u0026rsquo;s best art direction prize. So he thought about becoming an art director, and put his name out. He was asked to work on a friend Gabby\u0026rsquo;s film, with an $850 budget. He needed to build a set of a room with a glass door with an ATM in it, which he figured he could do with wood frames and canvas for the walls, a shell for a computer as the ATM, and a plexiglass door.\nHe never asked for help.\nHe worked Wednesday through Saturday morning, without sleep for 60 hours, and wasn\u0026rsquo;t close. The screen on the ATM cracked\u0026ndash;he figured, it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be an urban environment, it will be fine. He didn\u0026rsquo;t pre-prep the canvas, so it all become horribly wrinkled. He put down linoleum on the carpet of the home where the set was being built for the floor. At some point, a member of the crew asked him, \u0026ldquo;Do you even know what you\u0026rsquo;re doing?\u0026rdquo; He responded with what he thought was a clever line from Raiders of the Lost Ark, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I\u0026rsquo;m making this up as I go along.\u0026rdquo; The response from the crew member: \u0026ldquo;Go home.\u0026rdquo; So he did.\nThe following Monday, he went to the set to pick up his toolbox, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t there. There was a note that said \u0026ldquo;We have your toolbox. Call me. Gabby.\u0026rdquo; He called her, and she said, \u0026ldquo;What did you do to me? You screwed me. You pissed away the money. If you could do anything to destroy our friendship, this is it. I want you to account for every penny.\u0026rdquo; He cried and called his father, who told him, \u0026ldquo;All you can do is move forward.\u0026rdquo; He went and met with Gabby, and accounted for every penny that he had spent. She then said, \u0026ldquo;The crew is next door, and they want to talk to you.\u0026quot;\nHe went to the room next door, and found a dark room with a chair in the middle, with a spotlight focused on it. He sat in it, and the director read from a pad of paper all of the things that Adam had said he would do, but didn\u0026rsquo;t. This litany of offenses was periodically interrupted by a member of the crew adding something, like the fact that the linoleum he put down ruined the carpet in the apartment. There was also one point during the work where Savage was across town having sex instead of working on the set, and somehow the crew knew about that, too, and brought it up.\nFinally, they asked him what he had to say for himself. He simply agreed\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re absolutely right. I screwed up. I\u0026rsquo;m sorry.\u0026rdquo; He added four meta-levels of sorry, and said that he knows it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean or help anything. At that point, the director said, after a long pause\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;look, we\u0026rsquo;re not trying to bring you down or anything.\u0026quot;\nSavage then quoted, from memory, from Ian McEwan\u0026rsquo;s Enduring Love, which begins with four people in a public park running towards a balloon accident. In the opening, he writes something like \u0026ldquo;running towards a catastrophe, a kind of furnace in which are characters would be buckled into new shapes.\u0026quot;\nHe said that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t trust working with people who don\u0026rsquo;t know or understand failure\u0026ndash;failure builds character. And whatever you think now (about anything?), you\u0026rsquo;re probably wrong.\nHe ended first by reading from Rilke\u0026rsquo;s Letters to a Young Poet, which went something like this: \u0026ldquo;We find out moments of sadness terrifying because we are standing in a place we cannot stand. It\u0026rsquo;s important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad, because that is when you learn.\u0026rdquo; And then by saying that his favorite fictional character is Raymond Chandler\u0026rsquo;s Philip Marlowe, because Chandler so clearly describes his flaws and foibles. He said that if the world were full of people like Marlowe, the world would be a safer place, but not boring.\nThere followed a Q\u0026amp;A, most of the questions were about Mythbusters, except for one question which Savage answered about Rilke\u0026rsquo;s hatred of Rodin (and writing \u0026ldquo;what is fame but a collection of misunderstandings about a name?\u0026rdquo;) and another which he answered by describing his \u0026ldquo;boyhood dream\u0026rdquo; to win an Ig Nobel Prize for writing a taxonomy of nonsense words for large and small numbers.\n(Savage gave a similar talk at Defcon 17, available online.)\n(Click on the link to continue to a summary of the rest of the Saturday sessions at TAM7\u0026ndash;a panel on the ethics of deception, the Skeptical Citizen Award, a Jerry Andrus video, Stephen Bauer\u0026rsquo;s talk on Jerry Andrus and his estate, a panel on skepticism and the media, Phil Plait on Doomsday 2012, and a JREF update.)\nBrian Barker (2009-08-07):\nIn discussing a new global language, don\u0026#39;t forget Esperanto. Your readers may be interested in http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.\nThe argument for Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net\nLippard (2009-08-07):\nI like the idea of Esperanto and know a few speakers. (I took the ten free lessons myself years ago, but never pursued it further.) It does seem to be a good way of putting people on a more equal footing by using a non-native language, so long as it doesn\u0026#39;t ever become a native language. But it doesn\u0026#39;t seem to have reached anything like critical mass, and has been criticized for not quite meeting its own ideals by being overly Indo-European in its roots--though that hasn\u0026#39;t stopped it from being used by native speakers of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hungarian.\nLippard (2009-08-07):\nAh, looks like there are native speakers of Esperanto, including George Soros!\nKtisophilos (2009-09-18):\nShermer is certainly right about free trade. But your favoured president Obama is channelling Herbert Hoover in imposing yet more protectionist measures on tyres from China. Way to go: repeating exactly the same thing that made the Depression \u0026quot;Great\u0026quot;. America under Uncle Barack\u0026#39;s protection(ism) can now look forward to higher consumer prices for tyres, the same sort of trade war that followed the Hoover-signed Smoot–Hawley tariffs, downturns in businesses using tyres, and in businesses that have less patronage because consumers have less money left over because of overpriced tyres. Bastiat, cited by Shermer, demolished protectionist arguments 160 years ago in Part 7 of his brilliant essay What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. Incidentally, Part 5 demolishes government \u0026quot;stimulus\u0026quot; packages.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sgu-shermer-savage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part four of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 2 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 3 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSkeptics Guide to the Universe\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoth Friday and Saturday morning began with live recording sessions for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, for which I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to take notes, since it was being recorded (it\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Guide podcast episode #208 and may be found on \u003ca href=\"http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcast.aspx\"\u003ethe website archive\u003c/a\u003e or via \u003ca href=\"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=128859062\"\u003ethe iTunes store\u003c/a\u003e).  The Saturday morning event began with a satirical ghost hunter video by Jay Novella, \u0026ldquo;The G Hunters\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT08iSM6NOY\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP8q62r6ZYs\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e).  But the real surprise came during the listener Q\u0026amp;A session, when Sid Rodrigues asked a question \u0026ldquo;maybe for Rebecca,\u0026rdquo; which turned out to be \u0026ldquo;Will you marry me?\u0026rdquo;  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yi2KTaieDs\"\u003eseemingly impromptu, but carefully planned wedding followed immediately\u003c/a\u003e, though there wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough cake for everyone, nor a champagne toast.  All present did receive after-the-fact invitations as a nice memento, and there was a first dance for those who wanted to participate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMichael Shermer\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Shermer prefaced his talk with an overview of the Skeptics Society and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine that bore some resemblance to the introduction of his \u003ca href=\"http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html\"\u003eTED Talk of 2006\u003c/a\u003e.  His talk, titled \u0026ldquo;Rise Above\u0026ndash;Towards a Type I Civilization,\u0026rdquo; argued that we should work to rise above our tribal instincts, our evolutionary heritage, and the left-right political spectrum.  He began by noting that most of our decisions are judgments made on uncertainties (a reference to the classic book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases/dp/0521284147/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJudgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky), made emotionally with intuitive leaps which are then followed by rationalization to provide reasons to justify what we\u0026rsquo;ve already decided to do.  He observed that when the amygdala is damaged, this leads not only to loss of emotional capacity, but an inability to make decisions.  We don\u0026rsquo;t fall into categories of good and evil, but good and evil run through each person, he said, referencing Joseph Conrad\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHeart of Darkness\u003c/span\u003e and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Gulag Archipelago\u003c/span\u003e.  An individual\u0026rsquo;s expanding circles of concern are based on genetic relationships and kin selection, he said, and reciprocal altruism operates within kin/kind/community.  We\u0026rsquo;re good to members of our in-group, but skeptical and cautious about other groups.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe spoke briefly about the left-right political spectrum, arguing instead for a three-dimensional \u003ca href=\"http://www.nolanchart.com/\"\u003eNolan chart\u003c/a\u003e that is used by libertarians with a misleading questionnaire as a recruiting tool.  While I agree with Shermer that the left-right spectrum has serious weaknesses, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the Nolan chart is much of an improvement, especially when the coordinates on the chart are determined by a limited set of questions that are worded in a way that glosses over details.  Better, I think, is to recognize that the space of political positions really encompasses far more dimensions.  Shermer asked the audience how many considered themselves to be left of center, right, or libertarians, and the answers were about 1-2 people right of center, 15-20% libertarian, and the rest self-described liberal.  He put up a couple of slides containing exaggerated stereotypical descriptions of how conservatives view liberals and vice versa, which produced cheers to both.  He put up the political map of red and blue states based on the last presidential election results, and pointed out that the map is misleading, because if you look at it on a more granular level \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectionMapPurpleCounty.jpg\"\u003ethe country is really a mass of purple\u003c/a\u003e.  (Though he didn\u0026rsquo;t mention or address the thesis of Bill Bishop\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://www.thebigsort.com/home.php\"\u003eThe Big Sort\u003c/a\u003e.)  He noted that his speaking out about his libertarianism has raised more ire than his views on religion (theism), and stated that it\u0026rsquo;s fine to disagree, but that political topics should be open to discussion.  This was probably the most controversial talk of the conference, and it, along with Shermer\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_shermer_science_skepticism_and_libertarianism/\"\u003erecent interview on the Point of Inquiry podcast\u003c/a\u003e, have led to some to argue that skepticism should be apolitical.  Shermer said that he\u0026rsquo;s been told that he should be apolitical, \u0026ldquo;like Carl Sagan,\u0026rdquo; to which Shermer (correctly) responded that Sagan was not apolitical, as he argued for a number of liberal causes, including nuclear disarmament (a cause for which he was twice arrested during protests).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then turned to some more interesting research, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt\"\u003eJonathan Haidt\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s work on how people make moral judgments.  Haidt has hypothesized that we make moral judgments based on five scales, which Shermer compared to \u0026ldquo;a five-channel moral equalizer\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003ecare:  Protection from harm.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003efairness:  Justice, equality.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eloyalty: Family, group, nation.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eauthority: Respect for law, tradition, and traditional institutions.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003epurity: Rules about sexual conduct, recognition of sacredness.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eLiberals tend to emphasize the first two items, which place a focus on individual rights, while conservatives use those two and the remaining three about equally, and the last three focus on group cohesiveness.  These tendencies seem to hold up across cultures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShermer apparently argued that all five of these scales are important, saying that \u0026ldquo;since 9/11, things have changed,\u0026rdquo; and noting that group loyalty is now getting some emphasis from left-atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.  Shermer argued that religious extremists are dangerous, and are assisted by religious moderates.  I think this is actually a badly mistaken inference to draw.  Sure, there are extremists who are out to harm the U.S., but terrorism is a strategy of the militarily weak against the strong, and the right way to combat it is not by doing things like launching an invasion and occupying a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (Iraq), engaging in torture and abuse, and causing religious moderates to join with the extremists, but rather by a divide-and-conquer strategy that isolates the extremists from the moderates and maintains the moral high ground.  (Skeptic and physicist Taner Edis, from Turkey, \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2006/10/how-not-to-understand-islam.html\"\u003ehas criticized Sam Harris for his misunderstanding of Islam\u003c/a\u003e, as has Chris Hedges who, despite his sometimes annoying attitude, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pointofinquiry.org/chris_hedges_i_dont_believe_in_atheists/\"\u003emade some good points on the subject in his Point of Inquiry interview\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo support his point, Shermer showed a clip from the film \u0026ldquo;A Few Good Men\u0026rdquo; in which Jack Nicholson defends his position of ordering a \u0026ldquo;Code Red\u0026rdquo; to engage in self-enforcement to punish a slacker in the military ranks as an ugly and unpleasant necessity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShermer then turned to the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale\"\u003eKardashev scale\u003c/a\u003e referenced in his title, which classifies civilizations into Type 0 (energy produced from dead plants and animals), Type I (planetary civilizations controlling the energy of an entire planet), Type II (stellar civilizations controlling the energy of an entire sun), and Type III (a civilization controlling all of the energy in an entire galaxy).  Shermer gave an ordering from Type 0 to Type II, with tribal communities at 0.3, liberal democracies at 0.8, and then described Type I civilizations as including a global wireless (why wireless?) communication system (the Internet), a global language (English, most likely), a global culture (why not diverse cultures?), and global free trade, which breaks down tribal barriers.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t really provide an argument for the details of the how and why, apart from that short defense of global free trade and a little more he said later, pointing to the work of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat\"\u003eFredric Bastiat\u003c/a\u003e (Bastiat\u0026rsquo;s axiom: where goods cross frontiers, armies will not), which he augmented with the \u0026ldquo;Starbucks theory of war\u0026rdquo; (two nations with Starbucks won\u0026rsquo;t fight each other) and the \u0026ldquo;Google Theory of Peace\u0026rdquo; (where information and knowledge cross frontiers, armies will not).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then cited the work of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Rummel\"\u003eRudy Rummel\u003c/a\u003e on democracy and war, stating that between 1860 and 2005 there have been 371 wars, of which 205 were between non-democratic nations, 166 were between democracies and non-democracies, and 0 were between democracies.  He said that some have challenged the details of the classifications, but that in general, democracies seem to be less likely to engage in war as a means of resolving disputes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe concluded by saying that rising above tribal instincts is hard, and quoted Katherine Hepburn\u0026rsquo;s line from \u0026ldquo;The African Queen\u0026rdquo;: \u0026ldquo;Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we must rise above.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t get a chance to ask my question in the Q\u0026amp;A, but I went up to Shermer afterward and suggested that the tribal in-group seems to be a biological/mathematical limitation of our memories and processing capabilities with respect to the number of combinations of relationships we can track.  Anthropologist Robin Dunbar\u0026rsquo;s work on this topic has led to what is called the \u0026ldquo;Dunbar number\u0026rdquo; or a \u0026ldquo;Dunbar circle,\u0026rdquo; which is the number of people you can keep track of and that make up your in-group, and it\u0026rsquo;s about 150.  Studies of Facebook users show that even those with thousands of friends still engage in most of their interactions with a group of 150 or fewer.  So my question was, in light of that limitation, how can we rise above tribal membership?  Shermer\u0026rsquo;s answer was the same one I would have given, which is that although we may still be limited to that number of relationships, today they don\u0026rsquo;t have to be limited by geography, and so the way to \u0026ldquo;rise above\u0026rdquo; is to have lots of these small groups.  Shermer suggested that we need to avoid any such groups having a political monopoly, but the real concern is how those small groups build coalitions which obtain and exercise political power, and what they try to do with it.  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure there\u0026rsquo;s any getting around the problem of having political institutions which govern vastly larger numbers of people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy own opinion on whether \u0026ldquo;skepticism\u0026rdquo; should be apolitical and avoid religious topics is that skeptical organizations should avoid taking positions on those topics, except where there are clear empirically testable hypotheses.  (For example, it should be perfectly legitimate for a skeptical organization to publish an examination of the social and psychological factors that cause people to give credence to crackpots like Orly Taitz and Philip Berg, and their respective bogus Kenyan and Canadian Obama birth certificates\u0026ndash;as well as to examine the facts around topics like the \u0026ldquo;birther\u0026rdquo; controversy.)   Individual skeptics, however, should feel free to argue for whatever positions they hold, while being cognizant of what is within the realm of the empirical and what is more philosophical.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk should have been ruled inappropriate for TAM, though I would have liked to have seen a bit more science and argument in the talk, and I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to see a whole bunch of talks that all touched on politics or religion, especially if they all came from a single viewpoint.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(UPDATE: I recently came across \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.berita/msg/6445d3cca300c994\"\u003esomething I wrote relevant to this point about ten years ago on Usenet, which I still agree with today\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position should be, on any issue where there isn\u0026rsquo;t conclusive evidence one way or another, either agnosticism or tentative acceptance of the view that seems to be best supported\u0026ndash;but with tolerance for those who accept other views which are also inconclusively supported by the evidence.  In other words, there is no and should be no official skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurther, there shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be an official skeptic\u0026rsquo;s position on subjects which are matters of political ideology, religious faith, or metaphysical views on which empirical science is silent.\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAdam Savage\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Savage of Mythbusters gave a talk not directly related to skepticism, but to which everyone could relate\u0026ndash;a talk about personal failure.  He said that he is often asked how he attained his success, and he said that he didn\u0026rsquo;t follow a straight path and that he had a lot of failures along the way.  He began by referring to Aaron Sorkin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sports Night,\u0026rdquo; which he called the best 26 hours of television.  In an episode of the second season, a billionaire who\u0026rsquo;s going to buy the show says, \u0026ldquo;Dana. I\u0026rsquo;m what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I\u0026rsquo;ve failed much more than I\u0026rsquo;ve succeeded. And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, \u0026ldquo;Where are we going?\u0026rdquo; And it starts to get better. And that\u0026rsquo;s what you should do.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavage said that he wanted to present the details of how spectacular and painful some of his failures have been. He said that he\u0026rsquo;s been fired from a production assistant job, he\u0026rsquo;s been divorced, and he\u0026rsquo;s yelled at his kids.  All of our lives are two steps forward, one step back.  He got a job at Industrial Light and Magic, working with his heroes, a job he\u0026rsquo;d wanted since he was 11.  In the SFX industry, everybody is freelance, working on jobs for a time, and always looking for the next.  But at ILM, there is no selling required.  He said your resume is just three words\u0026ndash;just four words\u0026ndash;Industrial Light and Magic.  And he would also take extra outside jobs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis friend Ben called him with a job that he couldn\u0026rsquo;t take because of the short turn-around time.  A department store wanted a window display within five days, that depicted a ballpark fence.  What they wanted was baseballs automatically being pitched over the fence on a continuous basis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavage bid his day rate, $300-$500/day, plus a market-rate rush fee.  It was a really fat paycheck for five days work.  He got pitching machines and a ballfeeder, built it, and watched it work 70 times in a row, and then fail.  He figured this was a solvable problem.  He stayed up all night Friday and Saturday morning trying to get it to work\u0026ndash;it was originally supposed to be ready by Saturday, and needed on Monday (?)\u0026ndash;and brought it to the store to assemble.  It turned out that the size of the display area was different from what he was told, and in the new set up it was down to 30-40 balls in a row before failure, so would fail every 3 hours.  He observed that there\u0026rsquo;s a reason the displays in airports with balls moving around on tracks use fixed rails, rather than tubes like he was using\u0026ndash;rails lead to balls moving in a predictable amount of time, while the air resistance in a tube makes the timing unpredictable.  So he added an air blower to force the balls down the tubes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next problem was that when one pitching machine pitches, it takes more power, which causes the other two machines to slow down, increasing the failure rate.  He had relatives coming into town at 6 p.m. on Saturday and it still wasn\u0026rsquo;t working.  He came to the conclusion that no amount of effort is going to make it work, and told his employer that in 30 minutes he would present three alternatives and have whichever one they chose implemented by 8 a.m. the next morning.  He came up with a new solution using a monofilament chain connected to the balls, simulating the motion of a pitched ball\u0026ndash;no pitching machines.  He stayed up all night and visited Home Depot repeatedly, and finally got  it working with 10 baseballs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe National Head of Display came to look at the display, and said, \u0026ldquo;it looks great, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like the balls\u0026ndash;get rid of them.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavage\u0026rsquo;s second story of failure was from earlier in his career, when he \u0026ldquo;pretended to attend NYU for a year\u0026rdquo; and then worked with his film student friends on their films.  He worked on a friend\u0026rsquo;s film that was filmed at the Alexis Theater, and the film ended up winning the NYU Film Festival\u0026rsquo;s best art direction prize.  So he thought about becoming an art director, and put his name out.  He was asked to work on a friend Gabby\u0026rsquo;s film, with an $850 budget.  He needed to build a set of a room with a glass door with an ATM in it, which he figured he could do with wood frames and canvas for the walls, a shell for a computer as the ATM, and a plexiglass door.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe never asked for help.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe worked Wednesday through Saturday morning, without sleep for 60 hours, and wasn\u0026rsquo;t close.  The screen on the ATM cracked\u0026ndash;he figured, it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be an urban environment, it will be fine.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t pre-prep the canvas, so it all become horribly wrinkled.  He put down linoleum on the carpet of the home where the set was being built for the floor.  At some point, a member of the crew asked him, \u0026ldquo;Do you even know what you\u0026rsquo;re doing?\u0026rdquo;  He responded with what he thought was a clever line from Raiders of the Lost Ark, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I\u0026rsquo;m making this up as I go along.\u0026rdquo;  The response from the crew member: \u0026ldquo;Go home.\u0026rdquo;  So he did.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe following Monday, he went to the set to pick up his toolbox, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t there.  There was a note that said \u0026ldquo;We have your toolbox.  Call me.  Gabby.\u0026rdquo;  He called her, and she said, \u0026ldquo;What did you do to me?  You screwed me.  You pissed away the money.  If you could do anything to destroy our friendship, this is it.  I want you to account for every penny.\u0026rdquo;  He cried and called his father, who told him, \u0026ldquo;All you can do is move forward.\u0026rdquo;  He went and met with Gabby, and accounted for every penny that he had spent.  She then said, \u0026ldquo;The crew is next door, and they want to talk to you.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe went to the room next door, and found a dark room with a chair in the middle, with a spotlight focused on it.  He sat in it, and the director read from a pad of paper all of the things that Adam had said he would do, but didn\u0026rsquo;t.  This litany of offenses was periodically interrupted by a member of the crew adding something, like the fact that the linoleum he put down ruined the carpet in the apartment.  There was also one point during the work where Savage was across town having sex instead of working on the set, and somehow the crew knew about that, too, and brought it up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, they asked him what he had to say for himself.  He simply agreed\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re absolutely right.  I screwed up.  I\u0026rsquo;m sorry.\u0026rdquo;  He added four meta-levels of sorry, and said that he knows it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean or help anything.  At that point, the director said, after a long pause\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;look, we\u0026rsquo;re not trying to bring you down or anything.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavage then quoted, from memory, from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McEwan\"\u003eIan McEwan\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEnduring Love\u003c/span\u003e, which begins with four people in a public park running towards a balloon accident.  In the opening, he writes something like \u0026ldquo;running towards a catastrophe, a kind of furnace in which are characters would be buckled into new shapes.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t trust working with people who don\u0026rsquo;t know or understand failure\u0026ndash;failure builds character.  And whatever you think now (about anything?), you\u0026rsquo;re probably wrong.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe ended first by reading from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke\"\u003eRilke\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLetters to a Young Poet\u003c/span\u003e, which went something like this:  \u0026ldquo;We find out moments of sadness terrifying because we are standing in a place we cannot stand.  It\u0026rsquo;s important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad, because that is when you learn.\u0026rdquo;  And then by saying that his favorite fictional character is Raymond Chandler\u0026rsquo;s Philip Marlowe, because Chandler so clearly describes his flaws and foibles.  He said that if the world were full of people like Marlowe, the world would be a safer place, but not boring.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere followed a Q\u0026amp;A, most of the questions were about Mythbusters, except for one question which Savage answered about Rilke\u0026rsquo;s hatred of Rodin (and writing \u0026ldquo;what is fame but a collection of misunderstandings about a name?\u0026rdquo;) and another which he answered by describing his \u0026ldquo;boyhood dream\u0026rdquo; to win an \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize\"\u003eIg Nobel Prize\u003c/a\u003e for writing a taxonomy of nonsense words for large and small numbers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Savage gave \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/6006731\"\u003ea similar talk at Defcon 17\u003c/a\u003e, available online.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Click on the link to continue to \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-ethics-of-deception.html\"\u003ea summary of the rest of the Saturday sessions at TAM7\u0026ndash;a panel on the ethics of deception, the Skeptical Citizen Award, a Jerry Andrus video, Stephen Bauer\u0026rsquo;s talk on Jerry Andrus and his estate, a panel on skepticism and the media, Phil Plait on Doomsday 2012, and a JREF update\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: SGU, Shermer, Savage"},{"content":"Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here and volume 2 (1988-1989) here. Volume 3 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.\nThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990:\nPredictions 1990\"Some Failures of Organized Skepticism\" by Jim LippardEditorial BlatheringOur February Meeting: speaker Hans Sebald on witchcraftThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 2, February/March 1990: \"The Secret of the Challenger Secret Mission\" by Mike StackpoleMeeting Announcement: Dr. Robert Dietz on \"The Sacred and Profane History of the World\"\"Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research\" by Jim Lippard\"HGH 3X and The New England Journal of Medicine\" by Mark Adkins\"Book Review: But Is It Science? edited by Michael Ruse\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"What is Occam's Razor\" by Michael A. StackpoleEditorial Blathering\"Who Are We?\" by Michael A. StackpoleThe Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 3, April 1990: \"Ethical Skepticism\" by Michael A. Stackpole (a visit to Peter Popoff)Editorial BlatheringMeeting Announcement: speaker Michael A. Stackpole on SatanismAnd that was it for volume 3--volume 4 picked up in July 1990 for another two issues edited by Mike Stackpole.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContinuing the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and volume 2 (1988-1989) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Volume 3 was edited by Mike Stackpole.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv3n1-Jan-1990.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003ePredictions 1990\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/some-failures.html\"\u003e\"Some Failures of Organized Skepticism\"\u003c/a\u003e by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Blathering\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOur February Meeting: speaker Hans Sebald on witchcraft\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv3n2-Feb-Mar-1990.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 3, no. 2, February/March 1990\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"The Secret of the Challenger Secret Mission\" by Mike Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMeeting Announcement: Dr. Robert Dietz on \"The Sacred and Profane History of the World\"\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"HGH 3X and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New England Journal of Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\" by Mark Adkins\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBut Is It Science?\u003c/span\u003e edited by Michael Ruse\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"What is Occam's Razor\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Blathering\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Who Are We?\" by Michael A. Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv3n3-Apr-1990.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 3, no. 3, April 1990\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Ethical Skepticism\" by Michael A. Stackpole (a visit to Peter Popoff)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditorial Blathering\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMeeting Announcement: speaker Michael A. Stackpole on Satanism\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAnd that was it for volume 3--\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-4-1990-1991.html\"\u003evolume 4 picked up in July 1990 for another two issues edited by Mike Stackpole\u003c/a\u003e.","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 3, 1990"},{"content":"Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.\nThe Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 1, July/August 1988:\n\"Lippard Disgraced!\" by Ron Harvey \"A Visit to the 'Psychic Showcase'\" by Jim Lippard \"Color it Absurd\" by Ken Morse \"Handwriting Analysis\" by Jim Lippard \"Recognizing Destructive and Manipulative Groups\" by Al Seckel Upcoming Meetings \"Ghost Busters or Lease Breakers\" by Ken Morse \"June PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speakers Craig Nichols and Lee Earle of Manifestations \"July PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Anita O'Riordan of the Arizona Attorney General's Elderly Abuse Project Correction (of omission to \"Psychic Detectives\" article in previous issue) Editor's Ramblings The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 2, September/October 1988:\n\"Hype-nosis\" by Jim Lippard (title typoed in published copy) \"Recipe for Successful Local Group\" by Kent Harker \"Book Review: Nostradamus and His Prophecies by Edgar Leoni\" reviewed by Jim Lippard Upcoming Meetings August PS Meeting: speaker Michael Preston on hypnosis \"September meeting\" by Mike Stackpole: speaker Gary Mechler on astrology \"October meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Janet Lee Mitchell on out-of-body experiences Editor's Ramblings The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 3, November/December 1988:\nPredictions for 1989 and Beyond \"Psychological Factors Conducive to Paranormal Belief\" by Jim Lippard \"Book Review: The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi\" reviewed by Ted Karren \"Book Review: Hypnosis, Imagination, and Human Potentialities by Theodore X. Barber, Nicholas P. Spanos, and John F. Chaves\" reviewed by Jim Lippard Upcoming Meetings November PS Meeting: skeptics' predictions \"December PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker David Alexander on faith healers \"TUSKS Lecture\" by Ken Morse: speaker Conrad Goeringer on \"Bimbos for Satan\" Editor's Ramblings The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 4, January/February 1989:\n\"Let's Be Serious: Defensive Skepticism\" by Mike Stackpole \"Behaviorism and Consciousness\" by Jim Lippard (on January speaker, Erv Theobold) \"In Response\" by Erv Theobold, Ph.D. \"Book Review: Mindspell by Kay Nolte Smith\" reviewed by Judy Sawyer \"Book Review: Science and Earth History by A. N. Strahler\" reviewed by Roger Mann \"Book Review: Eyewitness Testimony by Elizabeth Loftus\" reviewed by Jim Lippard \"Book Review: ESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination by Stephen E. Braude\" reviewed by Jim Lippard Upcoming Meetings January PS Meeting Editor's Ramblings This volume had only four issues, and marks the end of Ron Harvey's editorship. The next volume picks up in January 1990 with Mike Stackpole as editor.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContinuing the postings of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv2n1-Jul-Aug-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e vol. 2, no. 1, July/August 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Lippard Disgraced!\" by Ron Harvey\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"A Visit to the 'Psychic Showcase'\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Color it Absurd\" by Ken Morse\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Handwriting Analysis\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Recognizing Destructive and Manipulative Groups\" by Al Seckel\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Ghost Busters or Lease Breakers\" by Ken Morse\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"June PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speakers Craig Nichols and Lee Earle of Manifestations\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"July PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Anita O'Riordan of the Arizona Attorney General's Elderly Abuse Project\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCorrection (of omission to \"Psychic Detectives\" article in previous issue)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv2n2-Sep-Oct-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e vol. 2, no. 2, September/October 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Hype-nosis\" by Jim Lippard (title typoed in published copy)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Recipe for Successful Local Group\" by Kent Harker\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNostradamus and His Prophecies\u003c/span\u003e by Edgar Leoni\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAugust PS Meeting: speaker Michael Preston on hypnosis\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"September meeting\" by Mike Stackpole: speaker Gary Mechler on astrology\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"October meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Janet Lee Mitchell on out-of-body experiences\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv2n3-Nov-Dec-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e vol. 2, no. 3, November/December 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePredictions for 1989 and Beyond\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Psychological Factors Conducive to Paranormal Belief\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Art of Deception\u003c/span\u003e by Nicholas Capaldi\" reviewed by Ted Karren\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHypnosis, Imagination, and Human Potentialities\u003c/span\u003e by Theodore X. Barber, Nicholas P. Spanos, and John F. Chaves\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNovember PS Meeting: skeptics' predictions\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"December PS Meeting\" by Judy Sawyer: speaker David Alexander on faith healers\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"TUSKS Lecture\" by Ken Morse: speaker Conrad Goeringer on \"Bimbos for Satan\"\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/ASv2n4-Jan-Feb-1989.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e vol. 2, no. 4, January/February 1989\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Let's Be Serious: Defensive Skepticism\" by Mike Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Behaviorism and Consciousness\" by Jim Lippard (on January speaker, Erv Theobold)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"In Response\" by Erv Theobold, Ph.D.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMindspell\u003c/span\u003e by Kay Nolte Smith\" reviewed by Judy Sawyer\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience and Earth History\u003c/span\u003e by A. N. Strahler\" reviewed by Roger Mann\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEyewitness Testimony\u003c/span\u003e by Elizabeth Loftus\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination\u003c/span\u003e by Stephen E. Braude\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJanuary PS Meeting\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nThis volume had only four issues, and marks the end of Ron Harvey's editorship.  The \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-3-1990.html\"\u003enext volume\u003c/a\u003e picks up in January 1990 with Mike Stackpole as editor.","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 2, 1988-1989"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve begun putting old issues of The Arizona Skeptic online as PDFs, starting with the old Phoenix Skeptics News, edited by Ron Harvey. Volume 2, 1988-1989, is here.\nAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 1, July/August 1987:\nWelcome!July MeetingResource Library\"Cold Reading\" by Jim LippardLocal Radio Talk Show Features PsychicsModem Users Take Note\"Foes Turn Up Heat: Fire walking is not so hot, skeptics of seminars say\" by Simon Fisher, TribunePostscript by Jim LippardBook ReviewsLocal Conference on Health FraudUpcoming Phoenix Skeptics MeetingsPhoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 2, September/October 1987: August Meeting: Hans Sebald on witchcraftSeptember Meeting: Charles Cazeau on prophecies of NostradamusSurveyor NeededRandi on Faith Healers (interviewed by Jim Lippard and Mike Norton)\"Health Fraud isn't 'snake oil' anymore\" by Phyllis Gillespie, Arizona Republic\"Charlatans can be spotted if you know common clues\" (Arizona Republic)\"Proper Criticism\" by Ray HymanUpcoming MeetingsPhoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 3, November/December 1987: October Meeting: Halloween party at Hans Sebald'sNovember Meeting: James Randi psychic surgery video, Randy Jones on psychic surgeryPapers ignore disclaimer request on astrology columnsFlyers neededPsychic fair\"Focus on You\" by Jim Lippard\"Channeling: Believe It or Not\" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\"Book Review: The Faith Healers by James Randi\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"On the distinction between nonbelief and disbelief\" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\"Book Review: The Psychology of Transcendence by Andrew Neher\" reviewed by Jim LippardEditor's RamblingsUpcoming MeetingsPhoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 4, January/February 1988: December Meeting: Jim Speiser and Marge Christenson of MUFONJanuary Meeting: Robert Dietz of ASU on creationismPhilip Klass LectureSkeptics ReorganizedSkeptics subcommittees formed\"Peter Popoff Came to Town\" by Jim Lippard\"Towards a more effective organization\" by Bob Guzley\"Update on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin\" by Jim LippardNew Phone NumberEditor's RamblingsUpcoming MeetingsPhoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 5, March/April 1988: Important Announcement!February Meeting: Jeff Jacobsen on ScientologyPhilip Klass LectureMarch Meeting: Mike Stackpole on claimed dangers of D\u0026amp;DThe Organization Explained!\"Frank Baranowski: Promoter of the Paranormal\" by Jim Lippard\"Book Review: The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\"Robert Anton Wilson and the H.E.A.D. Revolution\" by Zak WoodruffEditor's RamblingsUpcoming MeetingsPhoenix Skeptics News, vol. 1, no. 6, May/June 1988: April Meeting: James Lowell on Mexican cancer clinicsMay Meeting: Jim Lippard on psychic detectivesPress coverage\"Turin Shroud Update\" by Jim Lippard\"Dr. Stranges Lives Up to His Name\" by Mike Stackpole\"Near-Death Experiences and TV\" by Jim Lippard\"An Artistic 'Phenom'\" by Ted Karren\"Psychic Detectives\" by Jim LippardEditor's Ramblings\"TUSKS Tips\" by Ken MorseUpcoming MeetingsThe last issue of this volume was the first one also distributed to the Tucson Skeptical Society (TUSKS), and prompted a change of name to The Arizona Skeptic beginning with volume 2. This was also about the time I moved to Tucson to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona (August 1988). ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve begun putting old issues of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e online as PDFs, starting with the old \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e, edited by Ron Harvey.  Volume 2, 1988-1989, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/AZ_V1-6.IDX\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n1-Jul-Aug-1987.pdf\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 1, July/August 1987\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWelcome!\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJuly Meeting\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eResource Library\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Cold Reading\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLocal Radio Talk Show Features Psychics\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eModem Users Take Note\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Foes Turn Up Heat: Fire walking is not so hot, skeptics of seminars say\" by Simon Fisher, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTribune\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePostscript by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBook Reviews\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLocal Conference on Health Fraud\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Phoenix Skeptics Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n2-Sep-Oct-1987.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 2, September/October 1987\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAugust Meeting: Hans Sebald on witchcraft\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSeptember Meeting: Charles Cazeau on prophecies of Nostradamus\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSurveyor Needed\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRandi on Faith Healers (interviewed by Jim Lippard and Mike Norton)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Health Fraud isn't 'snake oil' anymore\" by Phyllis Gillespie, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Charlatans can be spotted if you know common clues\" (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Proper Criticism\" by Ray Hyman\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n3-Nov-Dec-1987.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 3, November/December 1987\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eOctober Meeting: Halloween party at Hans Sebald's\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNovember Meeting: James Randi psychic surgery video, Randy Jones on psychic surgery\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePapers ignore disclaimer request on astrology columns\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFlyers needed\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePsychic fair\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Focus on You\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Channeling: Believe It or Not\" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Faith Healers\u003c/span\u003e by James Randi\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"On the distinction between nonbelief and disbelief\" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Psychology of Transcendence\u003c/span\u003e by Andrew Neher\" reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n4-Jan-Feb-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 4, January/February 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eDecember Meeting: Jim Speiser and Marge Christenson of MUFON\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJanuary Meeting: Robert Dietz of ASU on creationism\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePhilip Klass Lecture\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSkeptics Reorganized\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSkeptics subcommittees formed\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Peter Popoff Came to Town\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Towards a more effective organization\" by Bob Guzley\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Update on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNew Phone Number\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n5-Mar-Apr-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e vol. 1, no. 5, March/April 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eImportant Announcement!\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFebruary Meeting: Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePhilip Klass Lecture\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMarch Meeting: Mike Stackpole on claimed dangers of D\u0026amp;D\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe Organization Explained!\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Frank Baranowski: Promoter of the Paranormal\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/wilson-review.html\"\u003e\"Book Review: \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Inquisition\u003c/span\u003e by Robert Anton Wilson\"\u003c/a\u003e reviewed by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Robert Anton Wilson and the H.E.A.D. Revolution\" by Zak Woodruff\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/lippard/Arizona_Skeptic/PSNv1n6-May-Jun-1988.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix Skeptics News\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 1, no. 6, May/June 1988\u003c/a\u003e:\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eApril Meeting: James Lowell on Mexican cancer clinics\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMay Meeting: Jim Lippard on psychic detectives\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePress coverage\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Turin Shroud Update\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Dr. Stranges Lives Up to His Name\" by Mike Stackpole\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Near-Death Experiences and TV\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"An Artistic 'Phenom'\" by Ted Karren\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"Psychic Detectives\" by Jim Lippard\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEditor's Ramblings\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\"TUSKS Tips\" by Ken Morse\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpcoming Meetings\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThe last issue of this volume was the first one also distributed to the Tucson Skeptical Society (TUSKS), and prompted a change of name to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e beginning with \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-2-1988-1989.html\"\u003evolume 2\u003c/a\u003e.  This was also about the time I moved to Tucson to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona (August 1988).","title":"The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 1, 1987-1988"},{"content":"The Arizona Coalition of Reason\u0026rsquo;s video, \u0026ldquo;A Life, a World, a Future,\u0026rdquo; has been released on the ArizonaCOR website. This was a project done by and with the participation of members of several of ArizonaCOR\u0026rsquo;s member organizations.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/arizonacor-video-life-world-future.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arizona Coalition of Reason\u0026rsquo;s video, \u0026ldquo;A Life, a World, a Future,\u0026rdquo; has been released \u003ca href=\"http://www.arizonacor.org/\"\u003eon the ArizonaCOR website\u003c/a\u003e.  This was a project done by and with the participation of members of several of ArizonaCOR\u0026rsquo;s member organizations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ArizonaCOR video: A Life, a World, a Future"},{"content":"Ed Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) last week introduced HR 3458, The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (PDF). This bill is much better than past bills in that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t contain any prohibition on classes of service or preferential treatment of packets based on protocol or application, as opposed to based on source, destination, or owner. It still, however, gives the FCC new powers to regulate the Internet and puts the onus of developing specific regulations on the FCC. And it looks like the language will give the FCC the power to regulate Apple\u0026rsquo;s iTunes store with respect to iPhone Internet-related applications, as well as to force the opening up of wireless walled gardens. The bill leaves open to the FCC the ability to treat \u0026ldquo;private transmission capacity services\u0026rdquo; as exempt from the requirements of the bill, so long as they don\u0026rsquo;t impact Internet capacity for the end user. It also provides disclosure requirements for ISPs to report on any methods they use for network and capacity management that may impact Internet traffic.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-08-03):\nWouldn\u0026#39;t it be nice if the infotainment programs took a break from \u0026quot;investigating\u0026quot; Michael Jackson\u0026#39;s death to cover a topic such as this that actually has important ramifications for people?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/new-markeyeshoo-net-neutrality-bill.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) last week introduced HR 3458, \u003ca href=\"http://www.freepress.net/files/H.R.3458-7-31-09.pdf\"\u003eThe Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  This bill is much better than past bills in that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t contain any prohibition on classes of service or preferential treatment of packets based on protocol or application, as opposed to based on source, destination, or owner.  It still, however, gives the FCC new powers to regulate the Internet and puts the onus of developing specific regulations on the FCC.  And it looks like the language will give the FCC the power to regulate Apple\u0026rsquo;s iTunes store with respect to iPhone Internet-related applications, as well as to force the opening up of wireless walled gardens.  The bill leaves open to the FCC the ability to treat \u0026ldquo;private transmission capacity services\u0026rdquo; as exempt from the requirements of the bill, so long as they don\u0026rsquo;t impact Internet capacity for the end user.  It also provides disclosure requirements for ISPs to report on any methods they use for network and capacity management that may impact Internet traffic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Markey/Eshoo net neutrality bill"},{"content":"This is part three of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.\nJamy Ian Swiss and James Randi\nAfter lunch on Friday was a conversation between Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi about Randi\u0026rsquo;s early career, beginning with an old BBC live broadcast of Randi making a radio disappear, and an escape he did in Quebec as the \u0026ldquo;Amazing Randall.\u0026rdquo; They discussed Randi\u0026rsquo;s early appearances on Johnny Carson\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Tonight Show,\u0026rdquo; and how Carson, himself a magician, would visit Randi in his dressing room when he appeared on the show, leading show staff to wonder who this guy was, since Carson never visited other guests. Other old footage included an underwater survival stunt on \u0026ldquo;You Asked for It,\u0026rdquo; in which Randi stayed underwater for an hour and 50 minutes, breaking Houdini\u0026rsquo;s record. Randi was embedded horizontally in a block of ice on Boston Common for the Dick Cavett show, somewhat reminiscent of the more recent stunt by David Blaine. Footage was also shown of Randi\u0026rsquo;s water can escape when he was a closing act after David Copperfield and Shibata, which Randi commented was made more difficult for him by the fact that Copperfield and Shibata were standing on the catwalk above him cracking jokes while he was supposedly drowning in the milk can (but was actually already on top of it trying to look out-of-breath and using a sponge to make his head wet again before the big reveal).\nThen was shown a lot of amusing footage from Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Billion Dollar Babies\u0026rdquo; tour, for whch Randi played a mad dentist and created various illusions for the stage, culminating with Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s head being chopped off by a realistic-looking guillotine. Randi told various stories of the tour and how he came to be involved with it, saying that it paid very well and he knew he was going to get alone well when he visited the offices of Cooper\u0026rsquo;s Alive Enterprise and found it was full of potted plants, all of which were dead. A DVD of the film made during that tour was recently released on DVD, which includes the original version of the film rejected by the studies, which included a bunch of comedy sketches, a few of which feature Randi.\nWhen the tour came to Phoenix, Cooper asked Randi to sit in the audience with his mother, who wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware of the nature of his show. Randi kept reassuring her\u0026ndash;the wife of a Mormon minister\u0026ndash;that Alice Cooper is just a character being played by her son (Vincent Furnier). Randi said that he saw Mrs. Furnier again a couple of years ago at Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s 60th birthday party, and she remembered him and thanked him for the reassurance he provided during that show.\nFootage was then shown of two version of Randi\u0026rsquo;s upside-down strait jacket escape, one in Niagara Falls in January. He said it was so cold that he beard became completely frozen and he was unable to speak when he had freed himself and was brought down, until hot water was poured over his beard. He said it took two years to get permission to do that stunt, and they had the whole area blocked off so that only the film crew was present. But while he was hanging upside-down, he saw a Chinese family standing there watching him\u0026ndash;they had gone sneaking through the woods to get there and watch the performance up close.\nThe second version of the escape was for the Japanese show \u0026ldquo;Supermen\u0026rdquo; and was performed while hanging upside-down from a helicopter flying around Tokyo. Randi, who does not like heights, said he kept telling himself, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m doing it for the money.\u0026quot;\nJennifer Ouellette on the Science and Entertainment Exchange\nJennifer Ouellette, executive director of the National Academy of Science\u0026rsquo;s new Science and Entertainment Exchange project and author of the book The Physics of the Buffyverse, spoke about the project. She began with a short film clip from the TV show \u0026ldquo;Numb3rs\u0026rdquo; that illustrated a scientific point about geographic profiling by reference to the physics of water drops from a sprinkler head, which she used as an example of the productivity of having scientists and entertainment producers working cooperatively.\nShe observed that science and Hollywood have had a love/hate relationship. Hollywood sees scientists as nitpickers who don\u0026rsquo;t understand entertainment, which she depicted with a reference to an episode of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; which pointed out that the ending of the film \u0026ldquo;Superman\u0026rdquo; was unbelievable not because of the time travel but because if Superman caught Lois Lane while she was falling at 32 feet/second/second she would be cut into three pieces by the arms of the Man of Steel. (This reminded me of Larry Niven\u0026rsquo;s classic analysis of why Superman can\u0026rsquo;t have sex with a human woman, let alone produce a hybrid offspring, \u0026ldquo;Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.\u0026quot;) Scientists, on the other hand, see Hollywood as promulgators of misinformation, a point she illustrated with reference to an anti-vaccination episode of \u0026ldquo;Eli Stone\u0026rdquo; and the fact that DNA results on \u0026ldquo;CSI\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Bones\u0026rdquo; are always returned within hours (also illustrating the nitpicking point).\nThe Science and Entertainment Exchange provides producers of film, television, comic books, video games, novels, etc. with a free way to obtain accurate scientific information early on in a project, and has already worked with major productions including \u0026ldquo;Bones,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Tron II\u0026rdquo; (now \u0026ldquo;Tron Legacy\u0026rdquo;), and several that she was contractually forbidden to mention.\nShe told the story of how she met the showrunner for \u0026ldquo;Bones,\u0026rdquo; and when she told him she was a scientist, \u0026ldquo;he instantly cringed, flinched, and apologized.\u0026rdquo; She subsequently worked with him on the \u0026ldquo;Death by Physics\u0026rdquo; episode of the show.\nShe pointed out that this is a great time for science and skepticism, with the popularity of current programs like Numb3rs, Bones, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, House, The Big Bang Theory, and, \u0026ldquo;a fringe case,\u0026rdquo; Fringe (one of the writers of the show is Glen Whitman of the Agoraphilia blog; and for those interested in the glyph code on that show, here\u0026rsquo;s the solution).\nOuellette argued for the importance of this project by pointing out that a factoid about breast cancer which appeared in a soap opera was found to triple the knowledge of that factoid in its viewing audience (based on testing viewers before and after watching the episode), and that these new shows do a good job of humanizing scientists. When debunking messages come from sympathetic characters, that softens them and makes them more persuasive. She suggested that The Mentalist saying that there are no real psychics, or Lie to Me debunking the polygraph, has huge potential impact.\nShe closed by saying that the success of these popular programs suggests that critical thinking and science placed in an entertaining context do sell, and asking those with a science background who want to be consultants for her project to contact her\u0026ndash;and CSI needs new ideas on how to kill people.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first questioner said that they don\u0026rsquo;t like when scientists are depicted not acting like scientists\u0026ndash;misusing words like \u0026ldquo;proof\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;theory,\u0026rdquo; and misrepresenting the process of science. Another asked whether she could say anything about science on \u0026ldquo;Lost\u0026rdquo;; she said that scientists consulted and commented on the DVD extras about the temporal anomalies and \u0026ldquo;chronology projection conjecture,\u0026rdquo; and that it\u0026rsquo;s the best-selling TV show on DVD. One questioner asked whether there is any way to do something like this for the news media, as well as for entertainment; she answered that people in the news media need to be paid better (I presume she was referring to print reporters rather than talking heads on television), and those outlets are in their death throes. Another questioner asked why skeptics have to be depicted as dumb in shows with supernatural or paranormal phenomena, rather than showing them change their minds when presented with overwhelming evidence of these things.\nAnti-anti-vaccination Panel\nSteven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, and Derek Bartholomaus made up the panel to criticize the anti-vaccination movement. Novella began by recounting the Andrew Wakefield case, a study published in Lancet allegedly connecting measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccination with harmful effects in children, which subsequently turned out to be a thoroughly bogus study (\u0026ldquo;if I can use that word,\u0026rdquo; he said, referring to the Simon Singh lawsuit). But that study caused a decline in MMR vaccination in the UK, and a corresponding leap in news cases of measles, mumps, and rubella. When Novella blogged about this, journalist David Kirby contacted him and argued that thimerosol (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), was the issue. Novella read Kirby\u0026rsquo;s book arguing that thimerosol causes autism, Evidence of Harm, and did 3-4 months of research. (Novella\u0026rsquo;s Skeptical Inquirer article on the subject is here; a reply to Kirby on Novella\u0026rsquo;s blog is here.) He said Kirby\u0026rsquo;s book was a terrible piece of journalism but a good collection of data sources to start with. By 2005 there was strong evidence of no link between thimerosol and autism. Novella\u0026rsquo;s panel intro is now on YouTube here; Dr. Joe Albietz\u0026rsquo;s talk is on YouTube here.\nBack in 2002, thimerosol had already been removed from routine vaccine schedules, and Kirby said that autism rates would subsequently plummet to pre-1990 levels. Novella said no, If I\u0026rsquo;m right it will continue to increase until it hits some ceiling\u0026ndash;and the autism rates have continued to rise for the last four years. Kirby moved the goalposts for his prediction out to 2007 and then to 2008, but there is no more room to move them now, said Novella\u0026ndash;thimerosol is demonstrably not the cause of autism.\nNovella said that the antivax movement has grown as evidence has accumulated against them, spearheaded by promotion by Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue.\nDavid Gorski talked about how \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not antivaccine\u0026rdquo; is the biggest lie of the antivaxers. They will say things like (quoting Jenny McCarthy), \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not anti-vaccine, I\u0026rsquo;m pro-safe vaccine. I\u0026rsquo;m anti-toxin.\u0026rdquo; Examples of people making such statements include Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Jay Gordon, a frequent visitor to Gorski\u0026rsquo;s blog, and J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue.\nHe quoted a statement from Jenny McCarthy saying that mercury, the \u0026ldquo;second worst neurotoxin in history\u0026rdquo; is injected into children, but noted that she\u0026rsquo;s not so anti-toxin as to avoid injecting the worst neurotoxin, botox, into her face. He also noted that despite claiming not to be anti-vaccine, she has also said, \u0026ldquo;If I had another child, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t vaccinate at all. Never, not ever.\u0026quot;\nClaimed toxins in vaccines include aluminum, ether, and mercury. Generation Rescue claimed in 2005 that autism is a misdiagnosis of mercury poisoning, then they\u0026rsquo;ve shifted to being caused by heavy metals, to being caused by toxins, to being caused by too many vaccines, too soon\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s always about the vaccines.\nGorski suggested the following questions for those who say they are not anti-vaccine, yet are still challenging vaccines in this way:\nYou say you want safer vaccines. By what measure?What toxins would you remove? What\u0026rsquo;s the evidence for toxicity?What evidence would it take to persuade you that vaccinations are safe with respect to the risk of the disease (i.e., using the vaccines saves significantly more lives than not using the vaccines)?Dr. Joe Albietz then spoke on how every major medical breakthrough and development to save lives pales in comparison to vaccination. This was a powerful talk that I\u0026rsquo;d like to see turned into a viral vaccination video for YouTube.\nSmallpox vaccine has saved over 300 million lives. In 1967, a global eradication campaign was begun, at an estimated cost of $10M-$15M/year over 31 countries. After ten years\u0026ndash;in 1979\u0026ndash;the disease was officially eradicated at an expense of about $23M/year.\nDr. Albietz presented a list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and noted the number of incidents per year before and after the vaccines. For just the top ten diseases, over 1.1 million lives per year have been saved from disease by vaccination.\nHe noted that polio and measles are scheduled for eradication. In 2008, the number of cases was 1,652, which amounts to over 5 million cases of paralysis prevented. Measles used to be the second leading cause of infectious disease death, killing 1 million children per year. The goal is to reduce measles cases by 90% by 2010, which will probably be missed.\nThe anti-vax movement not only affects the lives of children who are not vaccinated, the reduction of the rate of vaccination reduces the herd immunity of the population, making it more likely that even those who are vaccinated will get the disease.\nDr. Harriett Hall spoke on \u0026ldquo;Two False Alarms,\u0026rdquo; which gave much more detail about Andrew Wakefield and Neil Halsey. She began by talking about Andrew Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 1998 Lancet paper on MMR vaccines, which used no controls and had an honest conclusion (\u0026ldquo;we did not prove a link\u0026rdquo;), but Wakefield called a press conference saying that the MMR vaccine should be stopped and made into separate vaccines\u0026ndash;without disclosing that he had just filed a patent for such single vaccines. This resulted in measles again becoming endemic in the UK, Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s study was retracted after problems were found in it, and Wakefield was exposed as unethical. He had been hired by a lawyer to find a link between vaccination and some harm in order to sue drug companies, and was paid 500,000 pounds for the purpose. His study was performed on the children of plaintiffs in the legal case, there was no ethics committee approval, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t disclose his conflicts of interest.\nNeal Halsey raised warnings about thimerosol, which contains ethyl mercury. We knew that methyl mercury can cause problems, but not ethyl mrcury. Experiments on adults with amounts 20,000 times higher than in thimerosol in vaccines have caused no symptoms of mercury poisoning. Halsey didn\u0026rsquo;t raise autism as a concern, just mercury poisoning, but two mothers of autistic children who learned of his claims decided, incorrectly, that the symptoms of mercury poisoning were the same as the symptoms of autism. Today 2/3 of the U.S. population incorrectly think that mercury causes autism.\nMichael Goudeau, juggler in Lance Burton\u0026rsquo;s Las Vegas show and writer for Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s Bullshit!, briefly spoke about his experience as a parent of an autistic child, and pointed out in his closing statement that nobody can hold up a healthy kid and say \u0026ldquo;Look, my kid got vaccinated and didn\u0026rsquo;t get autism.\u0026rdquo; But maybe, he suggested, the parents of those whose children get measles, mumps, or rubella as a result of the spread of the disease from unvaccinated children can effectively raise that issue. He said that Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are assholes, and you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t base your opinions on the science of celebrities (or jugglers).\nDerek Bartholomaus spoke about how he decided to try to find the \u0026ldquo;Jenny McCarthy body count\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the number of preventable deaths and illnesses caused by non-vaccination\u0026ndash;as a result of hearing Steven Novella make references to such a body count on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. He announced his website, jennymccarthybodycount.com, on Twitter and Facebook three months ago, and it has received tremendous traffic as a result of links from the Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, and Respectful Insolence blogs.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A, Hal Bidlack said \u0026ldquo;my wife died of cancer, and I\u0026rsquo;m still angry at her surgical oncologist. I understand these people\u0026ndash;does calling them stupid help?\u0026rdquo; Dr. Novella said that Jenny McCarthy needs to be called out on her misinformation, but the rank and file are victims and we have nothing but sympathy for them\u0026ndash;our interpretation of the evidence is diametrically opposed. Dr. Gorski said that it\u0026rsquo;s human nature to want to blame someone. A child born with a disability is painful, but they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be allowed to use that as a shield against criticism\u0026ndash;but they do it because it\u0026rsquo;s effective.\nAnother questioner asked whether Oprah can be made aware that there is a Jenny McCarthy body count to try to put a stop to McCarthy\u0026rsquo;s TV show. Dr. Gorski suggested that giving McCarthy her own show might have been \u0026ldquo;a woo too far\u0026rdquo; provoking blowback in the form of criticism of Oprah such as appeared in Newsweek.\nOne questioner whose sister is a pediatrician in L.A. said she sees the most resistance to vaccination from high-income people in Beverly Hills. Dr. Albietz said you\u0026rsquo;re 23 times more likely to get whooping cough if not vaccinated, and that he sees nonreligious vaccine refusal as the top reason for children not being vaccinated, but others are still not being vaccinated due to poverty and lack of access, which was the reason for TAM7\u0026rsquo;s vaccination drive.\nAnother questioner asked if anyone had heard of an increase of cases of polio in India due to anti-vaccination superstition. Dr. Novella said that there were rumors of polio vaccine being tainted with AIDS in Nigeria, which resulted in an outbreak of polio due to lack of vaccination. Harriet Hall said that there were antivaxers back at the beginning of the smallpox eradication effort, but it was nothing like the current scale of opposition.\nSomeone asked whether we\u0026rsquo;re just speaking in an echo chamber, or is someone working to craft a media message. Dr. Albietz pointed out the Rethinking Autism videos, and observed that we should bring the fight to every front that the anti-vaccination movement uses.\nAnti-vaccination is being pushed by chiropractors and practitioners of alternative medicine, observed another questioner, and it won\u0026rsquo;t stop until we stop them. How can we do that? Dr. Hall said that she reported a homeopath to the Department of Homeland Security, since he claimed to be making homeopathic smallpox vaccine, which requires access to smallpox. Dr. Gorski said that we\u0026rsquo;re also combatting the view that natural is better, that getting a disease naturally is a better outcome than vaccinating and not getting the disease. Dr. Albietz pointed out that you cannot strengthen your immune system any better than by vaccinating, and that the keyelements of vaccines are natural ingredients. Dr. Hall observed that delaying the vaccine schedule is based on the misguided idea that it will lessen negative impact to immune systems, when in fact vaccinations promote immune response.\nIn closing, Dr. Gorski said that most antivax parents are probably persuadable, but he fears that the return of vaccine-preventable diseases will be what it takes to persuade them. Dr. Novella said that if anything is going to help mitigate the problem, it is probably going to come from the people in the room.\nJoe Nickell on Bigfoot and Aliens\nJoe Nickell gave a visual travelogue of photos of Bigfoot-related signs and places in the Pacific northwest, which included all sorts of Bigfoot-related oddities. The Bigfoot Highway, the Bigfoot Museum at Willow Creek, Bigfoot Rafting, Bigfoot Ave., Little Foot Ct., Bigfoot Breakfast, Bigfoot Motel, Bigfoot Crossing signs, Bigfoot Burger, Bigfoot Books (with big selection of books on bigfoot, as expected). He showed murals of Bigfoot, Bigfoot chainsaw sculptures, and Bigfoot statues. A lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, but some was serious and some included religious elements\u0026ndash;he observed that some think that Bigfoot is supernatural.\nHe covered aliens and UFOs in a similar manner, starting with photos of Roswell, the Mac Brazel ranch house, and the famous photo of Jesse Marcel and the pieces of foil, sticks, tape, and rubber. He did an experiment with boxkite-like devices (corner reflectors) on a train attached to a weather balloon, that was shot down to see what the wreckage looked like. He also discussed Alien Autopsy \u0026ldquo;fakelore\u0026rdquo; and showed a timeline of alien evolution. Hypnagogic experiences that used to be reported as ghosts or demons are now commonly reported as aliens.\nIn both the cases of aliens and Bigfoot, he sees them as mythical creatures, and remarked that Bigfoot seems to be used as something like an \u0026ldquo;eco-messiah.\u0026rdquo; Aliens have also been used in the employ of environmental causes.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first question was why there seems to be a rise in alien abduction claims, rather than UFO sightings, and whether this might be related to the rise of camera phones. (If I can reconstruct the reasoning, I think the issue is that there are more people out there with cameras at all times, yet fewer UFO sightings, while if there were really alien spacecraft, you\u0026rsquo;d expect more successful photographs. But if it\u0026rsquo;s more of a psychological or mythical phenomenon, then perhaps it transforms to fit the evidence.) Nickell responded by observing that alien stories have evolved and continue to change. In my notes I commented that there seems to be a shift in the UFO community from \u0026ldquo;alien spacecraft\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;another reality\u0026rdquo; as an explanation of UFOs, and even some creationists have gotten in on the latter sort of view with the claim that UFOs are demonic influences. That view was expressed by Norman Geisler\u0026rsquo;s testimony in the McLean v. Arkansas creationism case back in 1981, and has more recently been propounded by Gary Bates of the Australia-based Creation Ministries International.\nThat concluded the regular conference programming for Friday, July 10.\nSaturday continued with a very special Skeptics Guide to the Universe recording session, Michael Shermer, and Adam Savage, summarized in part four.\npee (2009-08-04):\nNice write up. I didn\u0026#39;t know about the change in UFO encounter make up.\nLippard (2009-08-04):\nThe older UFO organizations--CUFOS (now defunct), APRO (now defunct), MUFON, BUFORA in the UK, etc., were all in the \u0026quot;alien spacecraft\u0026quot; camp, while Jacques Vallee, John Keel, John Mack, and Whitley Strieber all took a more mystical view, as did some of the early \u0026quot;contactees.\u0026quot; I think the latter view tends to get more support from the New Age community, as well as being more insulated from empirical refutation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part three of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, part 2 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJamy Ian Swiss and James Randi\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter lunch on Friday was a conversation between Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi about Randi\u0026rsquo;s early career, beginning with an old BBC live broadcast of Randi making a radio disappear, and an escape he did in Quebec as the \u0026ldquo;Amazing Randall.\u0026rdquo;  They discussed Randi\u0026rsquo;s early appearances on Johnny Carson\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Tonight Show,\u0026rdquo; and how Carson, himself a magician, would visit Randi in his dressing room when he appeared on the show, leading show staff to wonder who this guy was, since Carson never visited other guests.  Other old footage included an underwater survival stunt on \u0026ldquo;You Asked for It,\u0026rdquo; in which Randi stayed underwater for an hour and 50 minutes, breaking Houdini\u0026rsquo;s record.  Randi was embedded horizontally in a block of ice on Boston Common for the Dick Cavett show, somewhat reminiscent of the more recent stunt by David Blaine.  Footage was also shown of Randi\u0026rsquo;s water can escape when he was a closing act after David Copperfield and Shibata, which Randi commented was made more difficult for him by the fact that Copperfield and Shibata were standing on the catwalk above him cracking jokes while he was supposedly drowning in the milk can (but was actually already on top of it trying to look out-of-breath and using a sponge to make his head wet again before the big reveal).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen was shown a lot of amusing footage from Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Billion Dollar Babies\u0026rdquo; tour, for whch Randi played a mad dentist and created various illusions for the stage, culminating with Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s head being chopped off by a realistic-looking guillotine.  Randi told various stories of the tour and how he came to be involved with it, saying that it paid very well and he knew he was going to get alone well when he visited the offices of Cooper\u0026rsquo;s Alive Enterprise and found it was full of potted plants, all of which were dead.  A DVD of the film made during that tour was recently released on DVD, which includes the original version of the film rejected by the studies, which included a bunch of comedy sketches, a few of which feature Randi.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen the tour came to Phoenix, Cooper asked Randi to sit in the audience with his mother, who wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware of the nature of his show.  Randi kept reassuring her\u0026ndash;the wife of a Mormon minister\u0026ndash;that Alice Cooper is just a character being played by her son (Vincent Furnier).  Randi said that he saw Mrs. Furnier again a couple of years ago at Alice Cooper\u0026rsquo;s 60th birthday party, and she remembered him and thanked him for the reassurance he provided during that show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFootage was then shown of two version of Randi\u0026rsquo;s upside-down strait jacket escape, one in Niagara Falls in January.  He said it was so cold that he beard became completely frozen and he was unable to speak when he had freed himself and was brought down, until hot water was poured over his beard.  He said it took two years to get permission to do that stunt, and they had the whole area blocked off so that only the film crew was present.  But while he was hanging upside-down, he saw a Chinese family standing there watching him\u0026ndash;they had gone sneaking through the woods to get there and watch the performance up close.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe second version of the escape was for the Japanese show \u0026ldquo;Supermen\u0026rdquo; and was performed while hanging upside-down from a helicopter flying around Tokyo.  Randi, who does not like heights, said he kept telling himself, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m doing it for the money.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJennifer Ouellette on the Science and Entertainment Exchange\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJennifer Ouellette, executive director of the National Academy of Science\u0026rsquo;s new \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNMnqXflOuA\"\u003eScience and Entertainment Exchange project\u003c/a\u003e and author of the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Buffyverse-Jennifer-Ouellette/dp/0143038621/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Physics of the Buffyverse\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, spoke about the project.  She began with a short film clip from the TV show \u0026ldquo;Numb3rs\u0026rdquo; that illustrated a scientific point about \u003ca href=\"http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/geographic-profiling.html\"\u003egeographic profiling\u003c/a\u003e by reference to the physics of water drops from a sprinkler head, which she used as an example of the productivity of having scientists and entertainment producers working cooperatively.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe observed that science and Hollywood have had a love/hate relationship. Hollywood sees scientists as nitpickers who don\u0026rsquo;t understand entertainment, which she depicted with a reference to an episode of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; which pointed out that the ending of the film \u0026ldquo;Superman\u0026rdquo; was unbelievable not because of the time travel but because if Superman caught Lois Lane while she was falling at 32 feet/second/second she would be cut into three pieces by the arms of the Man of Steel.  (This reminded me of Larry Niven\u0026rsquo;s classic analysis of why Superman can\u0026rsquo;t have sex with a human woman, let alone produce a hybrid offspring, \u003ca href=\"http://www.rawbw.com/%7Esvw/superman.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)  Scientists, on the other hand, see Hollywood as promulgators of misinformation, a point she illustrated with reference to an anti-vaccination episode of \u0026ldquo;Eli Stone\u0026rdquo; and the fact that DNA results on \u0026ldquo;CSI\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Bones\u0026rdquo; are always returned within hours (also illustrating the nitpicking point).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Science and Entertainment Exchange provides producers of film, television, comic books, video games, novels, etc. with a free way to obtain accurate scientific information early on in a project, and has already worked with major productions including \u0026ldquo;Bones,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Tron II\u0026rdquo; (now \u0026ldquo;Tron Legacy\u0026rdquo;), and several that she was contractually forbidden to mention.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe told the story of how she met the showrunner for \u0026ldquo;Bones,\u0026rdquo; and when she told him she was a scientist, \u0026ldquo;he instantly cringed, flinched, and apologized.\u0026rdquo;  She subsequently worked with him on the \u0026ldquo;Death by Physics\u0026rdquo; episode of the show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe pointed out that this is a great time for science and skepticism, with the popularity of current programs like Numb3rs, Bones, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, House, The Big Bang Theory, and, \u0026ldquo;a fringe case,\u0026rdquo; Fringe (one of the writers of the show is \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2008/09/watch-fringe-tuesday-on-fox.html\"\u003eGlen Whitman of the Agoraphilia blog\u003c/a\u003e; and for those interested in the glyph code on that show, \u003ca href=\"http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/04/07/solution-to-the-fringe-glyph-cipher/\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s the solution\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOuellette argued for the importance of this project by pointing out that a factoid about breast cancer which appeared in a soap opera was found to triple the knowledge of that factoid in its viewing audience (based on testing viewers before and after watching the episode), and that these new shows do a good job of humanizing scientists.  When debunking messages come from sympathetic characters, that softens them and makes them more persuasive.  She suggested that The Mentalist saying that there are no real psychics, or Lie to Me debunking the polygraph, has huge potential impact.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe closed by saying that the success of these popular programs suggests that critical thinking and science placed in an entertaining context do sell, and asking those with a science background who want to be consultants for her project to contact her\u0026ndash;and CSI needs new ideas on how to kill people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first questioner said that they don\u0026rsquo;t like when scientists are depicted not acting like scientists\u0026ndash;misusing words like \u0026ldquo;proof\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;theory,\u0026rdquo; and misrepresenting the process of science.  Another asked whether she could say anything about science on \u0026ldquo;Lost\u0026rdquo;; she said that scientists consulted and commented on the DVD extras about the temporal anomalies and \u0026ldquo;chronology projection conjecture,\u0026rdquo; and that it\u0026rsquo;s the best-selling TV show on DVD.  One questioner asked whether there is any way to do something like this for the news media, as well as for entertainment; she answered that people in the news media need to be paid better (I presume she was referring to print reporters rather than talking heads on television), and those outlets are in their death throes.  Another questioner asked why skeptics have to be depicted as dumb in shows with supernatural or paranormal phenomena, rather than showing them change their minds when presented with overwhelming evidence of these things.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAnti-anti-vaccination Panel\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSteven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, and Derek Bartholomaus made up the panel to criticize the anti-vaccination movement.  Novella began by recounting the Andrew Wakefield case, a study published in Lancet allegedly connecting measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccination with harmful effects in children, which subsequently turned out to be a thoroughly bogus study (\u0026ldquo;if I can use that word,\u0026rdquo; he said, referring to the Simon Singh lawsuit).  But that study caused a decline in MMR vaccination in the UK, and a corresponding leap in news cases of measles, mumps, and rubella. When Novella blogged about this, journalist David Kirby contacted him and argued that thimerosol (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), was the issue.  Novella read Kirby\u0026rsquo;s book arguing that thimerosol causes autism, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvidence of Harm\u003c/span\u003e, and did 3-4 months of research.  (Novella\u0026rsquo;s Skeptical Inquirer article on the subject is \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-06/novella.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e; a reply to Kirby on Novella\u0026rsquo;s blog is \u003ca href=\"http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=341\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)  He said Kirby\u0026rsquo;s book was a terrible piece of journalism but a good collection of data sources to start with.  By 2005 there was strong evidence of no link between thimerosol and autism.  Novella\u0026rsquo;s panel intro is now on YouTube \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap_0uQDbZl4\u0026amp;feature=channel_page\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e; Dr. Joe Albietz\u0026rsquo;s talk is on YouTube \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFVE8csrcRw\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBack in 2002, thimerosol had already been removed from routine vaccine schedules, and Kirby said that autism rates would subsequently plummet to pre-1990 levels.  Novella said no, If I\u0026rsquo;m right it will continue to increase until it hits some ceiling\u0026ndash;and the autism rates have continued to rise for the last four years.  Kirby moved the goalposts for his prediction out to 2007 and then to 2008, but there is no more room to move them now, said Novella\u0026ndash;thimerosol is demonstrably not the cause of autism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella said that the antivax movement has grown as evidence has accumulated against them, spearheaded by promotion by Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Gorski talked about how \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not antivaccine\u0026rdquo; is the biggest lie of the antivaxers.  They will say things like (quoting Jenny McCarthy), \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not anti-vaccine, I\u0026rsquo;m pro-safe vaccine.  I\u0026rsquo;m anti-toxin.\u0026rdquo;  Examples of people making such statements include Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Jay Gordon, a frequent visitor to Gorski\u0026rsquo;s blog, and J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe quoted a statement from Jenny McCarthy saying that mercury, the \u0026ldquo;second worst neurotoxin in history\u0026rdquo; is injected into children, but noted that she\u0026rsquo;s not so anti-toxin as to avoid injecting the worst neurotoxin, botox, into her face.  He also noted that despite claiming not to be anti-vaccine, she has also said, \u0026ldquo;If I had another child, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t vaccinate at all.  Never, not ever.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClaimed toxins in vaccines include aluminum, ether, and mercury.  Generation Rescue claimed in 2005 that autism is a misdiagnosis of mercury poisoning, then they\u0026rsquo;ve shifted to being caused by heavy metals, to being caused by toxins, to being caused by too many vaccines, too soon\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s always about the vaccines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGorski suggested the following questions for those who say they are not anti-vaccine, yet are still challenging vaccines in this way:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003eYou say you want safer vaccines.  By what measure?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat toxins would you remove?  What\u0026rsquo;s the evidence for toxicity?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat evidence would it take to persuade you that vaccinations are safe with respect to the risk of the disease (i.e., using the vaccines saves significantly more lives than not using the vaccines)?\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eDr. Joe Albietz then spoke on how every major medical breakthrough and development to save lives pales in comparison to vaccination.  This was a powerful talk that I\u0026rsquo;d like to see turned into a viral vaccination video for YouTube.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSmallpox vaccine has saved over 300 million lives.  In 1967, a global eradication campaign was begun, at an estimated cost of $10M-$15M/year over 31 countries.  After ten years\u0026ndash;in 1979\u0026ndash;the disease was officially eradicated at an expense of about $23M/year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Albietz presented a list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and noted the number of incidents per year before and after the vaccines.  For just the top ten diseases, over 1.1 million lives per year have been saved from disease by vaccination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe noted that polio and measles are scheduled for eradication.  In 2008, the number of cases was 1,652, which amounts to over 5 million cases of paralysis prevented.  Measles used to be the second leading cause of infectious disease death, killing 1 million children per year.  The goal is to reduce measles cases by 90% by 2010, which will probably be missed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe anti-vax movement not only affects the lives of children who are not vaccinated, the reduction of the rate of vaccination reduces the herd immunity of the population, making it more likely that even those who are vaccinated will get the disease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Harriett Hall spoke on \u0026ldquo;Two False Alarms,\u0026rdquo; which gave much more detail about Andrew Wakefield and Neil Halsey.  She began by talking about Andrew Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s 1998 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLancet\u003c/span\u003e paper on MMR vaccines, which used no controls and had an honest conclusion (\u0026ldquo;we did not prove a link\u0026rdquo;), but Wakefield called a press conference saying that the MMR vaccine should be stopped and made into separate vaccines\u0026ndash;without disclosing that he had just filed a patent for such single vaccines.  This resulted in measles again becoming endemic in the UK, Wakefield\u0026rsquo;s study was retracted after problems were found in it, and Wakefield was exposed as unethical.  He had been hired by a lawyer to find a link between vaccination and some harm in order to sue drug companies, and was paid 500,000 pounds for the purpose.  His study was performed on the children of plaintiffs in the legal case, there was no ethics committee approval, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t disclose his conflicts of interest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNeal Halsey raised warnings about thimerosol, which contains ethyl mercury.  We knew that methyl mercury can cause problems, but not ethyl mrcury.  Experiments on adults with amounts 20,000 times higher than in thimerosol in vaccines have caused no symptoms of mercury poisoning.  Halsey didn\u0026rsquo;t raise autism as a concern, just mercury poisoning, but two mothers of autistic children who learned of his claims decided, incorrectly, that the symptoms of mercury poisoning were the same as the symptoms of autism.  Today 2/3 of the U.S. population incorrectly think that mercury causes autism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Goudeau, juggler in Lance Burton\u0026rsquo;s Las Vegas show and writer for Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s Bullshit!, briefly spoke about his experience as a parent of an autistic child, and pointed out in his closing statement that nobody can hold up a healthy kid and say \u0026ldquo;Look, my kid got vaccinated and didn\u0026rsquo;t get autism.\u0026rdquo;  But maybe, he suggested, the parents of those whose children get measles, mumps, or rubella as a result of the spread of the disease from unvaccinated children can effectively raise that issue.  He said that Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are assholes, and you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t base your opinions on the science of celebrities (or jugglers).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDerek Bartholomaus spoke about how he decided to try to find the \u0026ldquo;Jenny McCarthy body count\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the number of preventable deaths and illnesses caused by non-vaccination\u0026ndash;as a result of hearing Steven Novella make references to such a body count on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast.  He announced his website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/\"\u003ejennymccarthybodycount.com\u003c/a\u003e, on Twitter and Facebook three months ago, and it has received tremendous traffic as a result of links from the Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, and Respectful Insolence blogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A, Hal Bidlack said \u0026ldquo;my wife died of cancer, and I\u0026rsquo;m still angry at her surgical oncologist.  I understand these people\u0026ndash;does calling them stupid help?\u0026rdquo;  Dr. Novella said that Jenny McCarthy needs to be called out on her misinformation, but the rank and file are victims and we have nothing but sympathy for them\u0026ndash;our interpretation of the evidence is diametrically opposed.  Dr. Gorski said that it\u0026rsquo;s human nature to want to blame someone.  A child born with a disability is painful, but they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be allowed to use that as a shield against criticism\u0026ndash;but they do it because it\u0026rsquo;s effective.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked whether Oprah can be made aware that there is a Jenny McCarthy body count to try to put a stop to McCarthy\u0026rsquo;s TV show.  Dr. Gorski suggested that giving McCarthy her own show might have been \u0026ldquo;a woo too far\u0026rdquo; provoking blowback in the form of \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/200025\"\u003ecriticism of Oprah such as appeared in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne questioner whose sister is a pediatrician in L.A. said she sees the most resistance to vaccination from high-income people in Beverly Hills.  Dr. Albietz said you\u0026rsquo;re 23 times more likely to get whooping cough if not vaccinated, and that he sees nonreligious vaccine refusal as the top reason for children not being vaccinated, but others are still not being vaccinated due to poverty and lack of access, which was the reason for TAM7\u0026rsquo;s vaccination drive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked if anyone had heard of an increase of cases of polio in India due to anti-vaccination superstition.  Dr. Novella said that there were rumors of polio vaccine being tainted with AIDS in Nigeria, which resulted in an outbreak of polio due to lack of vaccination.  Harriet Hall said that there were antivaxers back at the beginning of the smallpox eradication effort, but it was nothing like the current scale of opposition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomeone asked whether we\u0026rsquo;re just speaking in an echo chamber, or is someone working to craft a media message.  Dr. Albietz pointed out \u003ca href=\"http://rethinkingautism.com/Videos.html\"\u003ethe Rethinking Autism videos\u003c/a\u003e, and observed that we should bring the fight to every front that the anti-vaccination movement uses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnti-vaccination is being pushed by chiropractors and practitioners of alternative medicine, observed another questioner, and it won\u0026rsquo;t stop until we stop them.  How can we do that?  Dr. Hall said that she reported a homeopath to the Department of Homeland Security, since he claimed to be making homeopathic smallpox vaccine, which requires access to smallpox.  Dr. Gorski said that we\u0026rsquo;re also combatting the view that natural is better, that getting a disease naturally is a better outcome than vaccinating and not getting the disease.  Dr. Albietz pointed out that you cannot strengthen your immune system any better than by vaccinating, and that the keyelements of vaccines are natural ingredients.  Dr. Hall observed that delaying the vaccine schedule is based on the misguided idea that it will lessen negative impact to immune systems, when in fact vaccinations promote immune response.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn closing, Dr. Gorski said that most antivax parents are probably persuadable, but he fears that the return of vaccine-preventable diseases will be what it takes to persuade them.  Dr. Novella said that if anything is going to help mitigate the problem, it is probably going to come from the people in the room.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJoe Nickell on Bigfoot and Aliens\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJoe Nickell gave a visual travelogue of photos of Bigfoot-related signs and places in the Pacific northwest, which included all sorts of Bigfoot-related oddities.  The Bigfoot Highway, the Bigfoot Museum at Willow Creek, Bigfoot Rafting, Bigfoot Ave., Little Foot Ct., Bigfoot Breakfast, Bigfoot Motel, Bigfoot Crossing signs, Bigfoot Burger, Bigfoot Books (with big selection of books on bigfoot, as expected).  He showed murals of Bigfoot, Bigfoot chainsaw sculptures, and Bigfoot statues.  A lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, but some was serious and some included religious elements\u0026ndash;he observed that some think that Bigfoot is supernatural.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe covered aliens and UFOs in a similar manner, starting with photos of Roswell, the Mac Brazel ranch house, and the famous photo of Jesse Marcel and the pieces of foil, sticks, tape, and rubber.  He did an experiment with boxkite-like devices (corner reflectors) on a train attached to a weather balloon, that was shot down to see what the wreckage looked like.  He also discussed Alien Autopsy \u0026ldquo;fakelore\u0026rdquo; and showed a timeline of alien evolution.  Hypnagogic experiences that used to be reported as ghosts or demons are now commonly reported as aliens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn both the cases of aliens and Bigfoot, he sees them as mythical creatures, and remarked that Bigfoot seems to be used as something like an \u0026ldquo;eco-messiah.\u0026rdquo;  Aliens have also been used in the employ of environmental causes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A, the first question was why there seems to be a rise in alien abduction claims, rather than UFO sightings, and whether this might be related to the rise of camera phones.  (If I can reconstruct the reasoning, I think the issue is that there are more people out there with cameras at all times, yet fewer UFO sightings, while if there were really alien spacecraft, you\u0026rsquo;d expect more successful photographs.  But if it\u0026rsquo;s more of a psychological or mythical phenomenon, then perhaps it transforms to fit the evidence.)  Nickell responded by observing that alien stories have evolved and continue to change.  In my notes I commented that there seems to be a shift in the UFO community from \u0026ldquo;alien spacecraft\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;another reality\u0026rdquo; as an explanation of UFOs, and even some creationists have gotten in on the latter sort of view with the claim that UFOs are demonic influences.  That view was expressed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/depos/pf_geisler_dep.htm\"\u003eNorman Geisler\u0026rsquo;s testimony in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMcLean v. Arkansas\u003c/span\u003e creationism case\u003c/a\u003e back in 1981, and \u003ca href=\"http://creation.com/cmis-ufo-specialist-made-strong-appearance-on-national-secular-radio-program\"\u003ehas more recently been propounded by Gary Bates of the Australia-based Creation Ministries International\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat concluded the regular conference programming for Friday, July 10.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSaturday continued with a very special Skeptics Guide to the Universe recording session, Michael Shermer, and Adam Savage, summarized in \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sgu-shermer-savage.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: Swiss/Randi, Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel, Nickell"},{"content":"Anthony Watts, a radio meteorologist who has collected evidence of badly sited weather stations to argue that climate change data is incorrect, was the subject of Peter Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s latest Climate Change Crock of the Week video. Rather than attempt to refute the criticism (which would be difficult\u0026ndash;both \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo; weather stations show the same long-term temperature trends), Watts resorted to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s video taken offline. Watts doesn\u0026rsquo;t hold copyright on television footage he appears in on Glenn Beck\u0026rsquo;s show, which has been used in fair use excerpts, anyway.\nBut the video is back, and you can see it for yourself here.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nUPDATE: As Rich Trott points out, Watts has replied here. He says that the basis of his copyright complaint is that the video shows the cover of and photographs and graphs from his book, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t say why he thinks the video exceeds fair use. He says that the NCDC\u0026rsquo;s response to his data (a) used out-of-date data and (b) used a process guaranteed to have two similar graphs, by taking a weighted average of the good and bad station reports even in the line reported as just the good stations.\nThis is not exactly correct\u0026ndash;there is a correction for urban heating that does use nearby station data, but even if you do not perform the urban heating adjustment step, you STILL get two graphs with essentially the same trend. (This was indirectly linked to in my previous post on this subject, through my link to the Daily Doubt blog of frequent commenter Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost.)\nUPDATE (August 10, 2009): Climate Progress points out the inanity of Watts\u0026rsquo; defense of his DMCA abuse, observing that he\u0026rsquo;s suggesting copyright infringement on the basis of a few graphs and images shown from his book, which is given away for free in PDF form on the Internet. So not only was Sinclair well within fair use based on the amount and substantiality of material used, there\u0026rsquo;s no chance that Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s video could possibly have had any adverse effect on the commercial market for Watts\u0026rsquo; book, since there isn\u0026rsquo;t one.\nOris (2009-07-31):\nExcellent video. Unfortunatelythose who need to view it probably will not.\nMagic Tony (2009-07-31):\nHa! Great video. I particularly enjoyed the part where he plotted the overall temperature data against data from the \u0026quot;optimal\u0026quot; weather stations. That\u0026#39;s an argument-killer, there.\nTrott (2009-07-31):\nWatts has posted a detailed but rambling response to the video. He includes his explanation as to why the data plot used in Sinclair\u0026#39;s video (mentioned by Magic Tony above) is invalid. And it seems like he may be correct on that point. A commenter at Pharyngula tried to address the argument, but \u0026quot;retracted\u0026quot;.\nLippard (2009-08-01):\nThanks, Rich. I've updated my post, along with a link to a site that gives more detail on the correction process that Watts is talking about.\nHume's Ghost (2009-08-01):\nI estimate that if someone is a guest on Glenn Beck\u0026#39;s program there\u0026#39;s about an 85% chance it\u0026#39;s someone you don\u0026#39;t need to take seriously. For the Fox show I might bump that up to about 95%. I'm only half-kidding.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/anthony-watts-abuses-dmca-to-suppress.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnthony Watts, a radio meteorologist \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/garbage-in-on-climate-change.html\"\u003ewho has collected evidence of badly sited weather stations\u003c/a\u003e to argue that climate change data is incorrect, was the subject of Peter Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s latest Climate Change Crock of the Week video.  Rather than attempt to refute the criticism (which would be difficult\u0026ndash;both \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo; weather stations show the same long-term temperature trends), \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/anthony_watts_abuse_of_the_dmc.php\"\u003eWatts resorted to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s video taken offline\u003c/a\u003e.  Watts doesn\u0026rsquo;t hold copyright on television footage he appears in on Glenn Beck\u0026rsquo;s show, which has been used in fair use excerpts, anyway.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut the video is back, and you can see it for yourself here.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003ca class=\"fpkkkvpgkgyaupushvjv\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"fpkkkvpgkgyaupushvjv\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"vjkgivyooqraflbdryei\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/P_0-gX7aUKk\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/watt_gets_swatted.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: As Rich Trott points out, Watts has replied \u003ca href=\"http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/30/on-climate-comedy-copyrights-and-cinematography/#more-9650\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  He says that the basis of his copyright complaint is that the video shows the cover of and photographs and graphs from his book, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t say why he thinks the video exceeds fair use.  He says that the NCDC\u0026rsquo;s response to his data (a) used out-of-date data and (b) used a process guaranteed to have two similar graphs, by taking a weighted average of the good and bad station reports even in the line reported as just the good stations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not exactly correct\u0026ndash;there is a correction for urban heating that does use nearby station data, but even if you do not perform the urban heating adjustment step, you \u003ca href=\"http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/surface-stations/\"\u003eSTILL get two graphs with essentially the same trend\u003c/a\u003e.  (This was indirectly linked to in my previous post on this subject, through \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/09/wrong-again-about-global-warming.html\"\u003emy link to the Daily Doubt blog\u003c/a\u003e of frequent commenter Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 10, 2009): Climate Progress \u003ca href=\"http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/02/anthony-watts-wattsupwiththat-inanity-defense-censor-peter-sinclair-video/\"\u003epoints out the inanity of Watts\u0026rsquo; defense of his DMCA abuse\u003c/a\u003e, observing that he\u0026rsquo;s suggesting copyright infringement on the basis of a few graphs and images shown from his book, which is given away for free in PDF form on the Internet.  So not only was Sinclair well within fair use based on the amount and substantiality of material used, there\u0026rsquo;s no chance that Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s video could possibly have had any adverse effect on the commercial market for Watts\u0026rsquo; book, since there isn\u0026rsquo;t one.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anthony Watts abuses DMCA to suppress criticism"},{"content":"I finally had a chance today to watch the Creation Ministries International-funded film, \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s a 52-minute, professionally produced docu-drama. The cinematography is excellent, and there are high-quality graphics and effects. There\u0026rsquo;s not a whole lot of acting to judge\u0026ndash;most of it appears for visual effect during narration or interview voice-overs\u0026ndash;but I saw nothing to criticize in that regard.\nThe documentary content itself starts off reasonably, with the only initial hint that this might not be a mainstream production being the emphasis put on Darwin \u0026ldquo;making up stories\u0026rdquo; as a child. The first experts to appear are professional historians. Apart from H.M.S. Beagle having the wrong number of masts (two instead of three), I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice any obvious mistakes in the history, though I\u0026rsquo;m no expert.\nWhere it first veers into creationist territory is when the narration starts talking about Charles Lyell\u0026rsquo;s influence on Darwin, with regard to uniformitarianism and \u0026ldquo;deep time,\u0026rdquo; and it makes an odd assertion that the great age of the earth was a settled question in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s time, unlike today. That\u0026rsquo;s an odd assertion since the age of the earth is overwhelmingly confirmed by science today, and there is no scientific debate about the earth being about 4.5 billion years old. (Particularly odd was that this remark came from historian Peter Bowler, I believe, which makes me wonder about the original context of his remark.)\nSeveral creationists and intelligent design advocates appear, though they are not identified as such. A CMI web page about the film does show who\u0026rsquo;s who, but this is perhaps the most deceptive aspect of the film\u0026ndash;using on-screen credential identification that puts recognized experts with well-established reputations on a par with relative unknowns without established reputations. For example, creationist Rob Carter is identified on-screen by where he earned his Ph.D. and as \u0026ldquo;marine biologist and geneticist,\u0026rdquo; but he has no academic appointment, a scant publication record, and works for CMI. Stuart Burgess is identified as \u0026ldquo;Design \u0026amp; Nature, Bristol University\u0026rdquo; but he\u0026rsquo;s a mechanical engineering professor at Bristol University. (UPDATE: Note that Burgess\u0026rsquo; title is, in fact, Professor of Design and Nature.) Emil Silvestru is identified by his Ph.D. and as a \u0026ldquo;geologist and speleologist,\u0026rdquo; but he works full-time for CMI. Cornelius Hunter of the Discovery Institute is identified by his Ph.D. and as \u0026ldquo;molecular biophysicist and author\u0026rdquo; when he is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University. That institution was originally known as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, founded in 1908 by Lyman Stewart of Standard Oil, the guy who funded the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, from which fundamentalism gets its name. I consider this to be a deceptive equation of expertise, for which the film deserves criticism. (I gave the same criticism to \u0026ldquo;The Incredible Discovery of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark,\u0026rdquo; which used the same technique to equate creationists with little or no reputation with recognized experts.)\nCreationist Emil Silvestru argues for a young earth and for the creation of geological features by catastrophic flood, though I noticed he mentioned \u0026ldquo;a flood\u0026rdquo; and not \u0026ldquo;the flood\u0026rdquo; at first, and while he mentioned the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington as having been cut rapidly by catastrophic forces (true), he did not make the common grossly mistaken creationist assertion that this is how the Grand Canyon was formed. Silvestru also makes a polystrate tree fossil argument for rapid deposition (which may well be the case in the particular instance, but is not generally the explanation for polystrate tree fossils).\nThe creationism starts out fairly subtly in the film, with the remarks about the age of the earth, and at one points sets up a novel opposition between two views:\nScienceReligion Gradual change Fixity of species Old earth\nRapid catastrophic change Mutability of species Young earth\nThe film argues that Darwin was misled by his reliance on Lyell's worldview to initially miss the evidence for natural selection in the Galapagos islands, when he didn't bother labeling the finches he collected, and the film clearly asserts that species change can occur, even across genera (between which hybridization may also be possible), though it avoids addressing the potential implications for humans and other primates. The film suggests that the religious view is that the wide diversity and geographic dispersal of living things emerged in the last few thousand years since the flood of Noah, which entails a rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible. I believe the film's offered cases of rapid morphological changes in finch beak sizes are correct, along with its cases of hybridization that include hybrids between land and marine iguanas in the Galapagos. CMI creationist Robert Carter asserts that this is evidence of a young age of the Galapagos islands, because otherwise all the species would have mixed rather than being distinct, rather than concluding, for example, that some of these species are reproductively isolated and others aren't. I almost had the impression that I was witnessing the evolution of a new form of creationism-as-hyperevolution, that required special creation only because a young earth didn't allow enough time to generate the diversity of current life on earth.\nBut then more standard creationism begins to emerge, with arguments that there are limits (or \"apparent limits\") to biological change, \"as any pigeon breeder knows,\" and that it is impossible for evolution to generate new information. Finnish creationist biochemist Matti Leisola asserts that random mutation cannot generate new information or novel structures, and that introducing randomness \"causes information to disappear\" and we only see new information arise from intelligent sources. He doesn't explain what notion of information he's using, but randomness does generate new information, and new information has been observed to appear in the lab, as well as in computer simulations using genetic algorithms. Leisola goes on to say that genetic engineering originally promised the ability to make arbitrary changes to organisms, but now promises much less--we can create bacteria that produce insulin, but we can't change bacteria into anything but bacteria. I wonder what Leisola would think of this?\nThe film is right that a role for catastrophes has been found in geology (but not to the exclusion of mostly uniformitarian processes over very long periods of time, such as evidenced in the Grand Canyon), and for bursts of rapid biological change, as well as that biology has been found to be more complex than originally suspected. However, these discoveries, made by evolutionary scientists, have not generated support for the creationist worldview, which has been remarkable for its lack of scientific fruitfulness. This points out another failing of the film, which is its complete omission of the overwhelming evidence in support of the common ancestry of all life on earth, the evidence of the great age of the earth, and the evidence of human evolution.\nAt one point, the film touches on Darwin's racism, and suggests that this is because of his evolutionary views, as opposed to religion which teaches the common origins of all human beings from Adam and Eve. But both views teach common ancestry of all human beings, and there was no scarcity of racist religious believers in the mid-19th century. The Bible offers no word of condemnation of slavery and both explicitly and implicitly elevates some people over others, with the Hebrews as the \"chosen people\" and descriptions of God ordering genocide and the taking of slaves. The Southern Baptist Convention in the U.S. owes its existence to a split with the Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery--the Southern Baptists were for it. The dichotomy of evolution-supporting racists vs. religious creationist non-racists is a false one.\nNear the end of the film, the film points out that in Darwin's time, science was just beginning to emerge from philosophy, and argues that Darwin's project was philosophical and anti-religious as much as it was scientific. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues onscreen that Bertrand Russell's idea that we should only believe what is established by scientific evidence is a self-undermining thesis, since it is not a scientific statement, but a piece of philosophy or even theology. I think Plantinga is probably right that we can ultimately never avoid the need for philosophical argument, but he probably underestimates the degree to which philosophy can be \"naturalized\" and scientific evidence brought to bear on historically philosophical problems.\nThe conclusion of the film states that there are opposing views of evolution and creation, and that \"some suggest that they can coexist, but Darwin himself resisted this position.\" (I guess this is one case where the filmmakers want you to believe Darwin, in his opposition to accomodationism between evolution and religion.) The final statement of the film is that questions about how we came to be here and why we are here refuse to go away.\nIn all, the film is somewhat better than I expected it would be, and the film itself could be described as trying to hide its own creationism, probably in hopes of working like a Trojan horse. I hope that its effect will be to encourage the children of creationists to become interested in scientific questions, as it does depict scientific research and discovery in a largely positive light. If it does, then some of them will come to discover for themselves the facts about evolution and creationism, perhaps with the assistance of online sites like the TalkOrigins archive.\nUPDATE (August 2, 2009): I've received emails from Carl Wieland of CMI and from Steve Murray, the director of the film, offering a bit of additional explanation and rebuttal. First, the remark from Peter Bowler about dispute over the age of the earth was apparently regarding the fact that there was no young-earth creationist movement at the time of Darwin like there is today, and no indication that Bowler intended to suggest that there is a scientific dispute over the age of the earth today--as commenter Physicalist suspected. Second, Steve Murray pointed out that he was aware that the ship used didn't have the same number of masts as the Beagle, but they went with what they could find close to the size of the Beagle in Tasmania, and generally tried to hide the differences in how they shot the film. Third, both disclaimed any attempt to be deceptive in choice of on-screen credentials. Finally, Steve Murray chose the on-screen credit for Cornelius Hunter based on the fact that he learned of his work and selected him to be in the film based on his books.\nUPDATE (November 30, 2010): A different version of the above review, co-authored with John Lynch, will appear in vol. 30 of\u0026nbsp;Reports of the National Center for Science Education and is on their website.\nUPDATE (June 2, 2011): The film's claim about Darwin taking the idea of natural selection from Edward Blyth is rather decisively and completely refuted by Joel S. Schwartz, \"Charles Darwin's Debt to Malthus and Edward Blyth,\" Journal of the History of Biology vol. 7, no. 2, Autumn 1974, pp. 301-318, online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4330617. Duke of Earl (2009-08-01):\nThank you for your fair minded commentary on the Creation Ministries movie. I saw it myself at church last week. For myself I would rather they had focused more on the scientific arguments around Darwinian evolution during his lifetime but I guess that\u0026#39;s the problem when you\u0026#39;re restricted to 52 minutes playing time. However talk origins haven't really managed to offer much in the way of actual defence of evolution. I had to correct one contributor who used the Miller experiments as a demonstration of the naturalistic origin of life.\nIt is true that the film makers should have spent more time defining information in the genetic sense. It is akin to the information sequence in a computer program that provides a series of instructions for the assembly of living organism. I'd liken it to a CAD/CAM program. Data corruption, mutations, do not increase the information quality of the program, they might, through random chopping and changing, increase the quantity. Much as if I copy/pasted this comment you would have \u0026quot;more\u0026quot; information but it wouldn't give you anything you didn't have already.\nRegards Jason\nZarquon (2009-08-01):\nMuch as if I copy/pasted this comment you would have \u0026quot;more\u0026quot; information but it wouldn\u0026#39;t give you anything you didn\u0026#39;t have already. There is more information in a duplicated sentence, just as there is in a duplicated gene. There is no more meaning to a person in a duplicated sentence but this conflates \u0026quot;information\u0026quot; with \u0026quot;meaning\u0026quot;, a mistake which creationists continually make.\nJohn Pieret (2009-08-01):\nI don\u0026#39;t think creationism-as-hyperevolution is all that new. It goes back to at least to Woodmorappe\u0026#39;s book and AiG\u0026#39;s list of arguments creationists shouldn\u0026#39;t use. The idea falls out of their need to maintain that the number of animals on the ark was as low as possible (so as to keep the story only laughably improbable), but still explain the vast diversity of life on Earth. As to synthetic genomics, I'm going to put on my Kreskin hat and prognosticate that Leisola would say: \u0026quot;Yeah, but only through Intelligent Design!\u0026quot;\nAnonymous (2009-08-01):\nGood write up, Jim. The Creationist movement is becoming more subtle in how it delivers its message. The production standards are much better with every passing year as well. At this point, it seems to me that the goal is to hook people who are maybe skeptical of evolution and exploit that skepticism.\nIt seems like creationists are determined to be a permanent part of the debate though.\nLippard (2009-08-01):\nJohn: You\u0026#39;re correct that creationists have argued that microevolution within \u0026quot;kinds\u0026quot; since the ark allowed for fewer, broader \u0026quot;kinds\u0026quot; to have to use the available space, but I don\u0026#39;t recall seeing a version of creationism that relied only upon a young earth as the argument that there must have also been special creation. And, of course, I still haven\u0026#39;t seen that, since the \u0026quot;limits to change\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;no new information\u0026quot; arguments both came up in this film. The implausibility of post-Noah creationist hyperevolution is a point I've seen made before, as well, e.g., by Glenn Morton in response to Woodmorappe, and by Robert A. Moore in his \u0026quot;Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark\u0026quot; article from Creation/Evolution, which was the driver for Woodmorappe's article.\nI should also link to Morton's reply to Woodmorappe's response.\nJason G (2009-08-01):\nJim, Nice write-up. I suppose some creationists may find this a \u0026quot;fair minded\u0026quot; review only because you omitted the name calling they may have expected. The review, however, does expose their dishonesty and self-imposed ideological brain clamps nonetheless. Duke of Earl asserts that the Miller–Urey Experiments attempted to demonstrate the \u0026quot;naturalistic origin of life\u0026quot;, and that he \u0026quot;corrected\u0026quot; a contributor. I find this laughable. Miller and Urey did not attempt to demonstrate a naturalistic origin of life. They instead provided evidence that a naturalistic origin of life was possible by demonstrating that complex organic compounds (amino acids) can be formed naturaly from inorganic compounds and simpler organic precursers (CH3 for instance). This is a completely different claim.\nAs for DofE's statement that mutations do not increase the quality of information (he's wrong, of course), perhaps he feels comfortable discounting the entire field of study of gene duplication/amplification. Why bring this up other than show his ignorance of genetics? Darwin certainly didn't know about it, thus his evidence and propositions did not address the field of genetics.\nDoE expresses certainty on two subjects he clearly doesn't know anything about. He should perhaps put some qualifiers in front of his statements next time, such as \u0026quot;I don't believe..\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;as far as I know\u0026hellip;\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;my religion keeps me from accepting\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;. We could then have a more honest discussion.\nJ\nJeffrey Shallit (2009-08-01):\nIt is true that the film makers should have spent more time defining information in the genetic sense. It is akin to the information sequence in a computer program that provides a series of instructions for the assembly of living organism. I\u0026#39;d liken it to a CAD/CAM program. Data corruption, mutations, do not increase the information quality of the program, they might, through random chopping and changing, increase the quantity. Much as if I copy/pasted this comment you would have \u0026quot;more\u0026quot; information but it wouldn\u0026#39;t give you anything you didn\u0026#39;t have already. Look, mathematicians and computer scientists have been working with formal definitions of information for 50 years now. Measuring information is well understood, and we do not talk about \u0026quot;quality of information\u0026quot;. Furthermore, it is well known that processes like mutation, recombination, and gene duplication can generate information in the mathematical sense.\nThe onus is on the creationist to give a formal definition of information and demonstrate that it cannot be increased through well-known biological processes. This creationists have consistently failed to do.\nLippard (2009-08-01):\nJeff: Thanks for your comment--I was going to ask you to throw in your two cents regarding the information remarks in the film.\nCubist (2009-08-01):\nsez \u0026#39;Duke of Earl\u0026#39;: \u0026quot;Data corruption, mutations, do not increase the information quality of the program...\u0026quot; Got a question for you, Duke: How do you determine the \u0026quot;quality\u0026quot; of information in a genetic sequence? Just to make it a bit easier for you to answer that question, I\u0026#39;m going to provide a pair of genetic sequences so\u0026#39;s you can determine the \u0026quot;quality\u0026quot; of the information in each sequence, and thereby determine which sequence has information of higher \u0026quot;quality\u0026quot;. Here are the two sequences... Sequence 1: cag tgt ctt ggg ttc tcg cct gac tac gag acg cgt ttg tct tta cag gtc ctc ggc cag cac ctt aga caa gca ccc ggg acg cac ctt tca gtg ggc act cat aat ggc gga gta cca agg agg cac ggt cca ttg ttt tcg ggc cgg cat tgc tca tct ctt gag att tcc ata ctt\nSequence 2: tgg agt tct aag aca gta caa ctc tgc gac cgt gct ggg gta gcc act tct ggc cta atc tac gtt aca gaa aat ttg agg ttg cgc ggt gtc ctc gtt agg cac aca cgg gtg gaa tgg ggg tct ctt acc aaa ggg ctg ccg tat cag gta cga cgt agg tat tgc cgt gat aga ctg\nI await your answer, 'Duke'. Thanks in advance!\nJohn Pieret (2009-08-01):\nThe onus is on the creationist to give a formal definition of information and demonstrate that it cannot be increased through well-known biological processes. As Wilkins reported they seem to think information is some sort of semantic phlogiston or computational caloric.\nPhysicalist (2009-08-02):\n{I}t makes an odd assertion that the great age of the earth was a settled question in Darwin\u0026#39;s time, unlike today. . . . Particularly odd was that this remark came from historian Peter Bowler. He may have been referring to the fact that there really wasn't a young-Earth creationist movement in the mid-19th century, even among the hard-core religious. Biblical literalism (and with it, young-Earth creationism) only took off in the early 20th century.\n(You're of course correct that scientists then and now recognized that the Earth is quite old.)\nLippard (2009-08-02):\nPhysicalist: That makes sense. It would be interesting to hear if Bowler considered *that* statement of his to have been taken out of context or misrepresented.\nOneFishWithTwoScales (2009-08-02):\nGenetic algorithms are pretty cool, and can be extremely useful in certain situations. They\u0026#39;re not magic.\nLippard (2009-08-02):\nHurricane: Of course they\u0026#39;re not magic. But they can produce new information.\nvaldemar (2009-08-02):\nEnglish bore here with a minor correction. Darwin sailed aboard HMS Beagle. She was not \u0026#39;the HMS Beagle\u0026#39;, because the letters stand for \u0026#39;His/Her Majesty\u0026#39;s Ship\u0026#39;. Yeah, I know. But would you write 'the HIV virus'?\nLippard (2009-08-02):\nvaldemar: Corrected! Thanks.\nPlagioClase (2009-08-04):\nJim, you said \u0026quot;The film suggests that ... the wide diversity and geographic dispersal of living things emerged in the last few thousand years since the flood of Noah, which entails a rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible.\u0026quot; It does happen quickly as has been documented. This article gives a host of examples. http://creation.com/speedy-species-surprise\nWhen you consider the mechanisms involved in these examples it is clear why rapid speciation occurs.\nLippard (2009-08-04):\nPlagioCase: Glad to see there\u0026#39;s some progress being made and that creationists now all agree that new species can arise by natural selection, and therefore there\u0026#39;s no reason not to think that human beings are descended from other species of Homo, for which we have ample fossil and genetic evidence. Right? But seriously, your comment doesn't really take note of the severity of the problem for a post-Noah's flood view\u0026ndash;see the Robert A. Moore article, which I also cited earlier in this comment thread along with the exchange between John Woodmorappe and Glenn Morton.\nPlagioClase (2009-08-04):\nJim: Progress being made? Let\u0026#39;s dispense with this \u0026quot;creationists believed in the fixity of species\u0026quot; strawman. You saw the comment by Carter on The Voyage about Edwin Blythe and natural selection and the other discussion on the Galapagos about this?\nLippard (2009-08-04):\nBlyth\u0026#39;s theory was a theory of elimination rather than selection, though he subsequently became a supporter of Darwin. Perhaps John Wilkins or John Lynch can comment further on Blyth's views and how they changed after Darwin.\nIn any case, Blyth's original view was incorrect.\nAs for fixity of species, there were certainly creationist advocates of the view in the 19th century (e.g., Agassiz and Cuvier). Modern young-earth creationists like Henry Morris argued that natural selection is a passive conservative process that eliminates variation and can never produce new variants, which appears to rule out speciation. If you took a poll of creationists in the audience at any \u0026quot;Back to Genesis\u0026quot; seminar and asked, \u0026quot;is it possible for one species to evolve into another,\u0026quot; I suspect you'd get a nearly unanimous \u0026quot;no\u0026quot; answer, with perhaps a rare few saying \u0026quot;maybe, if the species are within the same kind or baramin.\u0026quot;\nCreationists have long argued that there are no transitional forms at any level of taxonomy, not even between species. (Is the ICR a \u0026quot;straw man\u0026quot;?) The pseudoscience of \u0026quot;baraminology\u0026quot; didn't appear until what, the 1990s?\nAnd there's still no good creationist argument or evidence for limits on evolutionary change.\nKtisophilos (2009-08-04):\nPhysicalist doesn\u0026#39;t know what he\u0026#39;s talking about. All the church fathers and reformers believed in a young earth, and most believed in creation in 6 normal-length days, as per a grammatical historical (originalists/textualist) hermeneutic (I don\u0026#39;t know who these \u0026quot;literalists\u0026quot; are). But much of the Church of England had capitulated to Hutton and Lyell by Darwin\u0026#39;s day, which is how I took Bowler\u0026#39;s comment as \u0026quot;largely settled\u0026quot;. BTW, a professor in a British Commonwealth country is the highest rank of lecturer, unlike in America where it's used of any lecturer. This means Burgess is very high up in his field.\nAlso, Silvestru was head scientist at the world’s first Speleological Institute in Cluj. So don't denigrate him because he chose a career change in working for CMI; he is a genuine scientist with many published papers in his field (caves and karst.).\nAs for the rapid speciation, more likely: anticreationists try to overload the Ark by imputing the \u0026quot;fixity of species\u0026quot; nonsense to the biblical account. Woodmorappe was hardly the first to show up this fallacy (much better to read the book rather than rely just on hostile reviewers).\nPlagioClase (2009-08-04):\nIt seems my post yesterday may have fallen through the cracks. Jim: We can go down all sorts of rabbit trails but I wanted to reply to your statement: \u0026quot;\u0026hellip; rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible.\u0026quot;\nI gave you a link to real-life scientific examples that show rapid post-Flood speciation IS plausible. And when we are talking about the past, plausibility is as far as we can go.\nThis is a worldview issue. That is, it is not primarily about the evidence, although the evidence is important. It is about how the evidence is interpreted. Those who are committed to atheism will invent arguments that discredit the biblical record. And if one argument does not work they will look for another. That is what they are looking for. That is what motivates them. Those who are committed to a biblical worldview do the same thing.\nSo I would like to offer you a personal invitation. For a little while, step inside the biblical worldview. Assume it is true, just for a little while. Have a look at how it explains the evidence. See what the problems are. See how many answers there are to many of those problems.\nSo, instead of saying \u0026quot;I reject that as implausible\u0026quot; I would invite you to ask instead, \u0026quot;What sort of processes could be invoked to explain this evidence from within the biblical worldview.\u0026quot; Instead of looking for problems, try for a little while to find some answers.\nI don't need to mention that this is a huge issue culturally and personally, which, no doubt, is why you are so involved in debating it.\nIf there is NO God then none of us will have to give any account for anything we do when we leave this planet. We're just worm fodder and that is it.\nBut if God is real, if he in fact created, then the consequences are very different. That is why questions about where we came from and why we are here refuse to go away.\nLippard (2009-08-05):\nPlagioCase: I read and replied to your previous comment. You are mistaken to equate atheism and evolution\u0026ndash;although scientists, and biologists in particular, are less likely to believe in God than the general population, even a majority of theist biologists accept evolution.\nAs for trying out the biblical worldview, I already did that for about a decade. I think there is ample evidence that Christianity is a diverse set of mutually inconsistent false religious sects.\nI don't doubt that there can be cases of rapid change, though I'd want to see support from a peer-reviewed journal before accepting a creationist web page description at face value. But speciation has been observed in both laboratory and the wild.\nThis doesn't really help young-earth creationism, since there is overwhelming evidence of the great age of the earth, the falsity of flood geology, and common ancestry of all life on the planet.\nKtisophilos (2009-08-09):\nCopernic spruiketh: “Miller and Urey did not attempt to demonstrate a naturalistic origin of life. They instead provided evidence that a naturalistic origin of life was possible by demonstrating that complex organic compounds (amino acids) can be formed naturaly [sic] from inorganic compounds and simpler organic precursers [sic] (CH3 [sic] for instance).”\nFunny, this sort of experiment is often touted as proof for chemical evolution (aka abiogenesis). But a major problem is that the amino acids are too dilute, contaminated and racemic to progress further. No wonder evolutionist Robert Matthews said:\n“The scientists themselves seem convinced that they have made a big breakthrough in solving the mystery of life’s origins. But coming to that conclusion from the discovery of a single amino acid is like believing that if you find a metal bolt, you’ve made a big breakthrough towards building yourself a Porsche.” [Beware of over-hyped breakthroughs: The media can hardly be blamed if scientists give their findings more spin than Rafael Nadal, BBC Focus 200:98, March 2009.]\nAs for genetic algorithms, David Abel states:\n“All too many evolutionary computationists fail to realize the purely formal nature of GA procedures. GAs are not dealing with physicodynamic cause-and-effect chains. First, what is being optimized is a formal representation of meaning and function. A representation of any kind cannot be reduced to inanimate physicality. Second, “potential solutions” are formal, not merely physical entities. Third, at each iteration (generation) a certain portion of the population of potential solutions is deliberately selected by the agent experimenter (artificial selection) to “breed” a new generation. The optimized solution was purposefully pursued at each iteration. The overall process was entirely goaldirected (formal). Real evolution has no goal [refs.]. Fourth, a formal fitness function is used to define and measure the fittest solutions thus far to a certain formal problem. The act of defining and measuring, along with just about everything else in the GA procedure, is altogether formal, not physical [refs.].\n“Despite the appealing similarities of terms like “chromosomes”, GAs have no relevance whatsoever to molecular evolution or gene emergence. Inanimate nature cannot define a fitness function over measures of the quality of representations of solutions. GAs are no model at all of natural process. GAs are nothing more than multiple layers of abstract conceptual engineering. Like language, we may start with a random phase space of alphabetical symbols. But no meaning or function results without deliberate and purposeful selection of letters out of that random phase space.” [The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity, International Journal of Molecular Sciences 10:247–291, 9 January 2009 | doi:10.3390/ijms10010247 ]\nLippard (2009-08-10):\nAbel\u0026#39;s comments seem to be assuming some kind(s) of dualism or irreducible intentionality (like John Searle), and I don\u0026#39;t think it\u0026#39;s a response to my point that GA can demonstrate an increase in information without intelligent design. To argue that a computer simulation is smuggling in \u0026quot;know-how\u0026quot; is a flawed argument addressed back in Philip Kitcher\u0026#39;s _Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism_ regarding creationist arguments about thermodynamics. Whether GA is an accurate *model* of the details of biological evolution is a separate issue. The \u0026quot;Origin-of-Life Foundation\u0026quot; he is associated with seems to be promoting a hodge-podge of recommended readings, that don't appear to have been selected on the basis of quality\u0026ndash;it's a mix of self-published nonsense, popular works, serious works, and creationist works.\nThey're purportedly offering an \u0026quot;Origin-of-Life\u0026quot; prize of $1M (payable as a $50,000/year annuity over 20 years), but the Foundation's Form 990s show FY 2007 revenue of $12,923 ($12K from David L. Abel and $923 in interest), expenses of $10,453 (mostly office- and website-related), and net assets of $25,031. So obviously they can't pay that prize out of their assets.\nIt doesn't appear to be actually funding any real research.\nUnknown (2009-09-04):\n\u0026quot;I almost had the impression that I was witnessing the evolution of a new form of creationism-as-hyperevolution\u0026quot; If I correctly recall, Hugh Ross has named young earth creationists as \u0026quot;short term macroevolutionists\u0026quot;.\nnice review.\nUnknown (2009-11-16):\nCould you post the email responses instead of giving us your summary of them. Thanks :)\nLippard (2009-11-16):\nI don\u0026#39;t generally post emails without permission of the sender.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/voyage-that-shook-world.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI finally had a chance today to watch the Creation Ministries International-funded film, \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World.\u0026rdquo;  It\u0026rsquo;s a 52-minute, professionally produced docu-drama.  The cinematography is excellent, and there are high-quality graphics and effects.  There\u0026rsquo;s not a whole lot of acting to judge\u0026ndash;most of it appears for visual effect during narration or interview voice-overs\u0026ndash;but I saw nothing to criticize in that regard.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe documentary content itself starts off reasonably, with the only initial hint that this might not be a mainstream production being the emphasis put on Darwin \u0026ldquo;making up stories\u0026rdquo; as a child. The first experts to appear are professional historians. Apart from H.M.S. Beagle having the wrong number of masts (two instead of three), I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice any obvious mistakes in the history, though I\u0026rsquo;m no expert.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhere it first veers into creationist territory is when the narration starts talking about Charles Lyell\u0026rsquo;s influence on Darwin, with regard to uniformitarianism and \u0026ldquo;deep time,\u0026rdquo; and it makes an odd assertion that the great age of the earth was a settled question in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s time, unlike today. That\u0026rsquo;s an odd assertion since the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth\"\u003eage of the earth\u003c/a\u003e is overwhelmingly confirmed by science today, and there is no scientific debate about the earth being about 4.5 billion years old.  (Particularly odd was that this remark came from historian Peter Bowler, I believe, which makes me wonder about the original context of his remark.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeveral creationists and intelligent design advocates appear, though they are not identified as such. \u003ca href=\"http://creation.com/charles-darwin-voyage-movie\"\u003eA CMI web page about the film\u003c/a\u003e does show who\u0026rsquo;s who, but this is perhaps the most deceptive aspect of the film\u0026ndash;using on-screen credential identification that puts recognized experts with well-established reputations on a par with relative unknowns without established reputations.  For example, creationist Rob Carter is identified on-screen by where he earned his Ph.D. and as \u0026ldquo;marine biologist and geneticist,\u0026rdquo; but he has no academic appointment, a scant publication record, and works for CMI.  Stuart Burgess is identified as \u0026ldquo;Design \u0026amp; Nature, Bristol University\u0026rdquo; but he\u0026rsquo;s a mechanical engineering professor at Bristol University. (UPDATE: Note that Burgess\u0026rsquo; title is, in fact, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bris.ac.uk/mecheng/people/person.html?id=14218\"\u003eProfessor of Design and Nature\u003c/a\u003e.) \u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e Emil Silvestru is identified by his Ph.D. and as a \u0026ldquo;geologist and speleologist,\u0026rdquo; but he works full-time for CMI. Cornelius Hunter of the Discovery Institute is identified by his Ph.D. and as \u0026ldquo;molecular biophysicist and author\u0026rdquo; when he is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University.  That institution was originally known as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, founded in 1908 by Lyman Stewart of Standard Oil, the guy who funded the publication and distribution of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth\u003c/span\u003e, from which fundamentalism gets its name. I consider this to be a deceptive equation of expertise, for which the film deserves criticism.  (I gave \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/jammal.html\"\u003ethe same criticism to \u0026ldquo;The Incredible Discovery of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark,\u0026rdquo; which used the same technique to equate creationists with little or no reputation with recognized experts\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCreationist Emil Silvestru argues for a young earth and for the creation of geological features by catastrophic flood, though I noticed he mentioned \u0026ldquo;a flood\u0026rdquo; and not \u0026ldquo;the flood\u0026rdquo; at first, and while he mentioned the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands\"\u003eChanneled Scablands\u003c/a\u003e of eastern Washington as having been cut rapidly by catastrophic forces (true), he did not make the common grossly mistaken creationist assertion that this is how the Grand Canyon was formed.  Silvestru also makes a polystrate tree fossil argument for rapid deposition (which may well be the case in the particular instance, but is \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html\"\u003enot generally the explanation for polystrate tree fossils\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe creationism starts out fairly subtly in the film, with the remarks about the age of the earth, and at one points sets up a novel opposition between two views:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Voyage That Shook the World"},{"content":"This is part two of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.\nSorry for the delay in posting this\u0026ndash;it was a combination of other distractions and hoping that Dr. Steele would reply to the email I sent him asking for some details on his slides, without any such luck. Unfortunately, I was manning the SkeptiCamp booth at the back of the room during his talk, which both impaired my ability to take notes and made it impossible for me to read much of anything on his slides. If any readers have better notes or memory, I would be happy to make revisions to correct mistakes or add further detail. (I had wanted to point out a semi-ironic comment that Dr. Steele made before he began, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember exactly what he said and failed to note it.) [UPDATE (March 21, 2010): Now that Randi has officially come out, and I\u0026rsquo;ve remembered approximately what was said, I\u0026rsquo;ll note it here\u0026ndash;Steele began by saying something about being preceded by \u0026ldquo;two straight men\u0026rdquo; (apparently meant in both senses), who were Phil Plait and James Randi.]\nDr. Fintan Steele\nDr. Fintan Steele, a gay (and legally married in Massachusetts) ex-Benedictine monk with a theology degree to accompany his Ph.D. in genetics, spoke on the subject \u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine or Personalized Mysticism?\u0026rdquo;, a talk which bore some resemblance to his paper in Future Medicine, \u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine: Something Old, Something New\u0026rdquo; (PDF). He said that he\u0026rsquo;s moved from the monastery and theology to science, and that he (we?) wants to keep them separate, suggesting something along the lines of Stephen Jay Gould\u0026rsquo;s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view, which argues that science and religion are separate domains which do not overlap. It\u0026rsquo;s a view that hardly any advocates of either science or religion hold, and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see why they should. When religions make empirical claims, that\u0026rsquo;s surely the domain of science, and it\u0026rsquo;s also surely the case that philosophical arguments should be informed by relevant scientific data. The argument in the other direction is, I think, a bit more difficult to make, at least until religion develops methods that are reliable, reproducible, and objectively demonstrable\u0026ndash;but at that point it would be science.\nHe began with a familiar quote from Hippocrates that also appeared in Dr. Val Jones\u0026rsquo; presentation at the Science-based Medicine conference, \u0026ldquo;Science begets knowledge, opinion begets ignorance.\u0026rdquo; To which he commented, \u0026ldquo;but not always.\u0026rdquo; He then gave a Webster\u0026rsquo;s definition of personalized medicine, and said he will argue that this is a mystical rather than a scientific definition.\nDr. Steele proceeded to go through a brief history of medicine, arguing (like in his paper cited above) that personalization of medicine is nothing new, but has been with us since Hippocrates, who used thought that medical treatment was a matter of putting the four humours into proper balance, idiosynkrasia (idio = personal, synkrasia = mixing or blend, or, in the context of the humours, temperament). Galen went on to do \u0026ldquo;tests\u0026rdquo; of patients to determine proper treatments, and Paracelsus introduced environmental factors and the concept of proper dosage.\nHe then briefly talked about the science of DNA and what is being learned as the cost of sequencing becomes cheaper and the volume of data increases. He said that there is \u0026ldquo;tons of sequence variability\u0026rdquo; and we\u0026rsquo;re learning about ways that DNA can be \u0026ldquo;turned on and off.\u0026rdquo; At his current place of employment, the Broad Institute, he said that they have a very large amount of genetic information on servers. He talked about the genome and made reference to a Bligh study (?) and to genome-wide association (GWA) studies. These studies involve genotyping lots of individuals and looking at where they differ. For example, he noted that you might compare the genomes of 10,000 people with Type 2 diabetes to 10,000 people without it, and then look at the differences in order to find areas that are associated with the disease.\nThe catch of these studies is that the genome information collected is incomplete, relying upon samples of specific single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within a haplotype block, which Dr. Steele characterized with the analogy of using a single house in the block to stand as a representative sample for the block\u0026ndash;the method of finding a difference can tell you that there\u0026rsquo;s a fire in the block, but you still have to go house by house to find the blaze.\nHe noted that this technique has been successfully used to find genetic correlates to a variety of diseases and conditions, including Crohn\u0026rsquo;s disease, breast cancer susceptibility, coronary disease, prostate cancer, macular degeneration, and schizophrenia. The research has started to fragment diseases into finer-grained categories. We\u0026rsquo;ve gone from blood diseases to leukemia vs. lymphoma, to 38 leukemia subtypes and 50+ lymphoma subtypes.\nHe seemed to be approving so far, but indicated that there is then a line that people cross and draw wrong conclusions. He identified a number of the genetic testing companies, such as Navigenics and 23andme, as culprits. These companies, he said, will tell you something like \u0026ldquo;Because you have a particular variant x, your risk of disease y goes up by z%. So go eat more vegetables.\u0026rdquo; But, he said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a lie. Reasoning and expectations have gone astray.\u0026quot;\nHe then turned to theology to draw an analogy that I\u0026rsquo;m afraid completely escaped me. He asked us to conduct a reasoning experiment about constructing an ordered list of things you can find in Las Vegas by moral acceptability, from premarital sex to rape, including bestiality, incest, masturbation, and contraception. Constructing such a list relies upon some kind of underlying principle based on beliefs. He then offered the Roman Catholic Church\u0026rsquo;s ordering, based on the out of print Handbook of Moral Theology (by Anton Koch, volume 2 is online), which gives an ordering of sexual sins based on gravity, and puts masturbation as the very worst, homosexuality less bad, incest less bad still, etc. Why? Because \u0026ldquo;Sex is primarily for procreation. That\u0026rsquo;s a scientific statement,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nI have a couple of problems with his argument so far. First of all, I think his \u0026ldquo;scientific statement\u0026rdquo; plays on an equivocation on purpose vs. function. The reason sex exists\u0026ndash;its function\u0026ndash;is for procreation, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make it our primary purpose in having sex. Second, even given that fact, the proposed RCC ordering doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow. Homosexual behavior is no more likely to produce offspring than masturbation, and thus should be equally bad\u0026ndash;if that\u0026rsquo;s the only relevant factor, then each act should be ranked based on the probability that offspring will be produced. By the same token, premarital heterosexual sex should be on the good side of the spectrum. Third, probability of procreation is clearly not the only relevant factor in making such an ordering, even if we limit ourselves only to other \u0026ldquo;scientific statements\u0026rdquo; such as \u0026ldquo;people tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;consensual relations are less likely to produce physical or psychological harm than involuntary relations.\u0026quot;\nHe then asked the question where do we get the principles based on beliefs that we use to construct such orderings? He answered that we get them from two places, 1. rational observable scientific thought, and 2. metaphysics. He then said something about science resting on metaphysical claims where I missed the details. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if he was asserting that all science rests on certain metaphysical claims (which I think is quite plausible\u0026ndash;we tend to assume that there is an objective external world which can be measured, that we\u0026rsquo;re not brains in a vat or solipsistic dreamers), or that the science of the companies he\u0026rsquo;s complaining about are making unwarranted metaphysical claims. I think the latter was more likely his point.\nDr. Steele then asked, \u0026ldquo;What explains the popularity of these genomics startups? [The view that] DNA is the fundamental part of your being. That\u0026rsquo;s a load of shit.\u0026rdquo; Here again, I think he\u0026rsquo;s made a somewhat ambiguous statement, depending on how one caches out \u0026ldquo;fundamental\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;clearly, our DNA is a very important determining factor in who we are.\nHe objected that these companies are engaged in hype and overselling, and so is the NIH, in order to allow for continued funding. But, he said, it\u0026rsquo;s based on \u0026ldquo;a mystical interpretation of genes. Biology is hugely complex and we\u0026rsquo;re just beginning to understand it.\u0026quot;\nHe then offered a diagram with two triangles listing some bullet points or statements, and drew a dividing line between science and mysticism. I was unable to see his diagram or where he drew the line, and I cannot tell from my notes or memory of hearing his talk what he used as his criterion for drawing the line.\nDr. Steele then went on to say that he\u0026rsquo;s not trying to dismiss the genomics studies, but what\u0026rsquo;s more important than the genotypes is what we are learning about pathways of interaction. For example, in the case of diseases that affect vision, what becomes important are things like the photo-tranduction pathway, which is implicated not only in vitreoretinopathy, but a certain type of colon cancer and other diseases. He suggested that medicine will become more about pathways than about individual organs. But this won\u0026rsquo;t be personalized at the level of an individual, but rather on the categories of pathways.\nThe genomics/personalized medicine language is popular, he suggested, because it\u0026rsquo;s narcissistic. And it costs a lot, so people infer that it must be worth something.\nHe also said that \u0026ldquo;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t take a wacko to shovel nonsense\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the press regularly gets it wrong. For example, he said that \u0026ldquo;there is no gene for kidney disease.\u0026rdquo; He suggested that journalists challenge the scientists promoting personalized medicine to explain how they think it will produce the results they claim.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, he gave a specific example of an acquaintance, a D.C. lobbyist, who purchased his Navigenics portfolio, which told him he had a low risk of heart disease and glaucoma\u0026ndash;but he already had glaucoma. In answer to a question about gene patents, he said that the Broad Institute, which is an offshoot of the Whitehead Institute, doesn\u0026rsquo;t do patents, and that he thinks the problem that gene patents are causing for chip-based assaying of genes is ultimately going to cause them to be thrown out. In response to a question about the ability to tailor drugs specifically based on genetic information, he agreed that yes, this can occur \u0026ldquo;for certain very rare things,\u0026rdquo; but that \u0026ldquo;DNA is just a recipe, environmental changes have huge impact. Few diseases are related to just a small number of genes. \u0026hellip; Genes that encode [such things as] drug transport molecules \u0026hellip; will be useful for \u0026hellip; drug dosages.\u0026quot;\n(Orac commented a bit on Dr. Steele\u0026rsquo;s presentation in his post-TAM summary. A video excerpt of Steele\u0026rsquo;s talk may be found here.)\nPhil Plait\nPhil Plait spoke briefly about the vaccination drive, gave more thanks to the JREF staff, and had Paul Anagnostopoulos talk about the JREF scholarships. Paul noted that 41 people were attending TAM7 as a result of scholarships, donations for which were at an all-time high despite the economy. He also noted that JREF is offering $10,000 in academic scholarships this year, and encouraged students to apply. (The deadline is rapidly approaching\u0026ndash;they must be received by August 1.) Those scholarships are due to a grant from a generous family in Florida.\nHe then gave up the rest of his time to Robert Lancaster of the Stop Sylvia Browne website.\nRobert Lancaster\nRobert Lancaster came up to the front of the stage in a wheelchair after being introduced by his friend J.C. He explained that he suffered a stroke last August, and has spent the last 11 months in the hospital and in rehabilitation, and so many of his planned newer sites (Stop John Edward, Stop Benny Hinn, and Stop Peter Popoff) are still in development. He noted that last year he had jokingly referred to Stop Phil Plait at TAM6, and someone registered the domain while he was still speaking.\nHe said that he planned to talk about strokes and skepticism, and wanted to talk to other skeptics who have had strokes, of whom he talked to only one, Derek Colanduno of the Skepticality podcast, who has made a full recovery. He warned that he suffers from emotional lability, a condition of excessive emotional reactions and mood changes, and that this would explain if he suddenly became a blubbering idiot.\nAfter telling a few stories of his rehabilitation, he gave thanks for the generosity of members of the JREF Forums who have helped him out. He told the story of his first discovering James Randi by seeing him on Johnny Carson\u0026rsquo;s Tonight Show in the 1970s, and \u0026ldquo;opening a can of skeptical whoopass\u0026rdquo; on Peter Popoff in 1983. Randi, Lancaster said, had showed him that skepticism can be a form of public service, and that\u0026rsquo;s what he\u0026rsquo;s tried to emulate with his websites.\nHe first contacted Randi, via email, in 2001 after seeing John Edward on television. He figured Randi was the right guy to deal with Edward, and came across the randi.org website and sent an email, figuring some staff member might read it and give it to Randi. To his surprise, he got a personal response from Randi\u0026ndash;which he characterized as \u0026ldquo;use the search engine, putz.\u0026rdquo; (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping that weren\u0026rsquo;t Randi\u0026rsquo;s actual words, but Lancaster\u0026rsquo;s feelings about the answer, which was that there were already multiple articles exposing Edward on the JREF website.)\nLancaster then returned to the story of his stroke recovery, and how after his previous wife left him, he found Susan via match.com, and they exchanged photos, email, and phone calls. After they had met in person, he asked her why she hadn\u0026rsquo;t commented on his initial photos\u0026ndash;she said they were \u0026ldquo;scary\u0026rdquo; because she thought he \u0026ldquo;was a biker.\u0026rdquo; She concluded that no, \u0026ldquo;he was a teddy bear.\u0026rdquo; They married five years to the day after their first date, on June 1, 2007. Without her, he said, I would be dead right now, and that without her, his life would not be worth living. He asked her to come on stage with him.\nHe then told the story of how he came to have his stroke. He said that 15 years ago, he had a bad headache that he should have gone to see a doctor for, but he went to bed, and woke up with the same headache. He went to his doctor\u0026rsquo;s office, but the doctor was out, and the first assistant to take his blood pressure said, \u0026ldquo;That can\u0026rsquo;t be right,\u0026rdquo; and went to get another. Two more assistants took his blood pressure, were confused, and called the doctor to report. The doctor told him to either drive himself immediately to the emergency room or to let them call an ambulance for him, because his blood pressure was 300/180.\nI had been a little queasy and light-headed listening to the references to strokes, for a variety of reasons that include a bit of hypochondria, drinking a cup of coffee, having little for breakfast, and having a bit of a hangover. Having a persistent sinus infection that I\u0026rsquo;m still fighting today wasn\u0026rsquo;t helpful, and the pain in the left side of my neck (which I now know was lymphadenopathy from that infection) served as creative material for my hypochondria. I ended up having to leave the room and have a seat in the hallway to turn my thoughts to more pleasant subjects.\nI waited until I heard applause from inside, and returned to the SkeptiCamp table sans camera, to find that Lancaster was actually still continuing on about various subjects. At some point I believe his wife assisted in cutting it short (he had gone some ways into lunch time), and I ended up still being a bit shaky through lunch.\nI ended up losing my camera for the rest of the day, and getting it back from the registration desk the next day (thanks to both whoever turned it in and the gentleman who told me via Twitter that it had been turned in).\n(Part three of my TAM7 summary, on Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, the anti-anti-vax panel, and Joe Nickell, is here.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2009-07-28):\nVisibility from the back of the hall was awful on the first day. By Saturday they installed a couple of extra screens.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part two of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSorry for the delay in posting this\u0026ndash;it was a combination of other distractions and hoping that Dr. Steele would reply to the email I sent him asking for some details on his slides, without any such luck.  Unfortunately, I was manning the SkeptiCamp booth at the back of the room during his talk, which both impaired my ability to take notes and made it impossible for me to read much of anything on his slides.  If any readers have better notes or memory, I would be happy to make revisions to correct mistakes or add further detail.  (I had wanted to point out a semi-ironic comment that Dr. Steele made before he began, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember exactly what he said and failed to note it.)  [UPDATE (March 21, 2010): Now that Randi \u003ca href=\"http://www.forgoodreason.org/james_randi_a_skeptic_comes_out_at_81\"\u003ehas officially come out\u003c/a\u003e, and I\u0026rsquo;ve remembered approximately what was said, I\u0026rsquo;ll note it here\u0026ndash;Steele began by saying something about being preceded by \u0026ldquo;two straight men\u0026rdquo; (apparently meant in both senses), who were Phil Plait and James Randi.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDr. Fintan Steele\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Fintan Steele, a gay (and legally married in Massachusetts) ex-Benedictine monk with a theology degree to accompany his Ph.D. in genetics, spoke on the subject \u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine or Personalized Mysticism?\u0026rdquo;, a talk which bore some resemblance to his paper in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFuture Medicine\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/pdf/10.2217/17410541.6.1.1\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Personalized Medicine: Something Old, Something New\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF). He said that he\u0026rsquo;s moved from the monastery and theology to science, and that he (we?) wants to keep them separate, suggesting something along the lines of Stephen Jay Gould\u0026rsquo;s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view, which argues that science and religion are separate domains which do not overlap.  It\u0026rsquo;s a view that hardly any advocates of either science or religion hold, and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see why they should.  When religions make empirical claims, that\u0026rsquo;s surely the domain of science, and it\u0026rsquo;s also surely the case that philosophical arguments should be informed by relevant scientific data.  The argument in the other direction is, I think, a bit more difficult to make, at least until religion develops methods that are reliable, reproducible, and objectively demonstrable\u0026ndash;but at that point it would be science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began with a familiar quote from Hippocrates that \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ealso appeared in Dr. Val Jones\u0026rsquo; presentation at the Science-based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;Science begets knowledge, opinion begets ignorance.\u0026rdquo;  To which he commented, \u0026ldquo;but not always.\u0026rdquo;  He then gave a Webster\u0026rsquo;s definition of personalized medicine, and said he will argue that this is a mystical rather than a scientific definition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Steele proceeded to go through a brief history of medicine, arguing (like in his paper cited above) that personalization of medicine is nothing new, but has been with us since Hippocrates, who used thought that medical treatment was a matter of putting the four humours into proper balance, idiosynkrasia (idio = personal, synkrasia = mixing or blend, or, in the context of the humours, temperament).  Galen went on to do \u0026ldquo;tests\u0026rdquo; of patients to determine proper treatments, and Paracelsus introduced environmental factors and the concept of proper dosage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then briefly talked about the science of DNA and what is being learned as the cost of sequencing becomes cheaper and the volume of data increases.  He said that there is \u0026ldquo;tons of sequence variability\u0026rdquo; and we\u0026rsquo;re learning about ways that DNA can be \u0026ldquo;turned on and off.\u0026rdquo;  At his current place of employment, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.broadinstitute.org/\"\u003eBroad Institute\u003c/a\u003e, he said that they have a very large amount of genetic information on servers.  He talked about the genome and made reference to a Bligh study (?) and to genome-wide association (GWA) studies.  These studies involve \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotyping\"\u003egenotyping\u003c/a\u003e lots of individuals and looking at where they differ.  For example, he noted that you might compare the genomes of 10,000 people with Type 2 diabetes to 10,000 people without it, and then look at the differences in order to find areas that are associated with the disease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe catch of these studies is that the genome information collected is incomplete, relying upon samples of specific \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism\"\u003esingle nucleotide polymorphisms\u003c/a\u003e (SNPs) within a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplotype\"\u003ehaplotype\u003c/a\u003e block, which Dr. Steele characterized with the analogy of using a single house in the block to stand as a representative sample for the block\u0026ndash;the method of finding a difference can tell you that there\u0026rsquo;s a fire in the block, but you still have to go house by house to find the blaze.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe noted that this technique has been successfully used to find genetic correlates to a variety of diseases and conditions, including Crohn\u0026rsquo;s disease, breast cancer susceptibility, coronary disease, prostate cancer, macular degeneration, and schizophrenia.  The research has started to fragment diseases into finer-grained categories.  We\u0026rsquo;ve gone from blood diseases to leukemia vs. lymphoma, to 38 leukemia subtypes and 50+ lymphoma subtypes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe seemed to be approving so far, but indicated that there is then a line that people cross and draw wrong conclusions.  He identified a number of the genetic testing companies, such as Navigenics and 23andme, as culprits.  These companies, he said, will tell you something like \u0026ldquo;Because you have a particular variant x, your risk of disease y goes up by z%.  So go eat more vegetables.\u0026rdquo;  But, he said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a lie.  Reasoning and expectations have gone astray.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then turned to theology to draw an analogy that I\u0026rsquo;m afraid completely escaped me.  He asked us to conduct a reasoning experiment about constructing an ordered list of things you can find in Las Vegas by moral acceptability, from premarital sex to rape, including bestiality, incest, masturbation, and contraception.  Constructing such a list relies upon some kind of underlying principle based on beliefs.  He then offered the Roman Catholic Church\u0026rsquo;s ordering, based on the out of print \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHandbook of Moral Theology\u003c/span\u003e (by Anton Koch, \u003ca href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/moraltheology02kochuoft\"\u003evolume 2 is online\u003c/a\u003e), which gives an ordering of sexual sins based on gravity, and puts masturbation as the very worst, homosexuality less bad, incest less bad still, etc.  Why?  Because \u0026ldquo;Sex is primarily for procreation.  That\u0026rsquo;s a scientific statement,\u0026rdquo; he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have a couple of problems with his argument so far.  First of all, I think his \u0026ldquo;scientific statement\u0026rdquo; plays on an equivocation on purpose vs. function.  The reason sex exists\u0026ndash;its function\u0026ndash;is for procreation, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make it our primary purpose in having sex.  Second, even given that fact, the proposed RCC ordering doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow.  Homosexual behavior is no more likely to produce offspring than masturbation, and thus should be equally bad\u0026ndash;if that\u0026rsquo;s the only relevant factor, then each act should be ranked based on the probability that offspring will be produced.  By the same token, premarital heterosexual sex should be on the good side of the spectrum.  Third, probability of procreation is clearly not the only relevant factor in making such an ordering, even if we limit ourselves only to other \u0026ldquo;scientific statements\u0026rdquo; such as \u0026ldquo;people tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;consensual relations are less likely to produce physical or psychological harm than involuntary relations.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then asked the question where do we get the principles based on beliefs that we use to construct such orderings?  He answered that we get them from two places, 1. rational observable scientific thought, and 2. metaphysics.  He then said something about science resting on metaphysical claims where I missed the details. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if he was asserting that all science rests on certain metaphysical claims (which I think is quite plausible\u0026ndash;we tend to assume that there is an objective external world which can be measured, that we\u0026rsquo;re not brains in a vat or solipsistic dreamers), or that the science of the companies he\u0026rsquo;s complaining about are making unwarranted metaphysical claims.  I think the latter was more likely his point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Steele then asked, \u0026ldquo;What explains the popularity of these genomics startups?   [The view that] DNA is the fundamental part of your being.  That\u0026rsquo;s a load of shit.\u0026rdquo;  Here again, I think he\u0026rsquo;s made a somewhat ambiguous statement, depending on how one caches out \u0026ldquo;fundamental\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;clearly, our DNA is a very important determining factor in who we are.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe objected that these companies are engaged in hype and overselling, and so is the NIH, in order to allow for continued funding.  But, he said, it\u0026rsquo;s based on \u0026ldquo;a mystical interpretation of genes.  Biology is hugely complex and we\u0026rsquo;re just beginning to understand it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then offered a diagram with two triangles listing some bullet points or statements, and drew a dividing line between science and mysticism.  I was unable to see his diagram or where he drew the line, and I cannot tell from my notes or memory of hearing his talk what he used as his criterion for drawing the line.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Steele then went on to say that he\u0026rsquo;s not trying to dismiss the genomics studies, but what\u0026rsquo;s more important than the genotypes is what we are learning about pathways of interaction.  For example, in the case of diseases that affect vision, what becomes important are things like the photo-tranduction pathway, which is implicated not only in vitreoretinopathy, but a certain type of colon cancer and other diseases.  He suggested that medicine will become more about pathways than about individual organs.  But this won\u0026rsquo;t be personalized at the level of an individual, but rather on the categories of pathways.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe genomics/personalized medicine language is popular, he suggested, because it\u0026rsquo;s narcissistic.  And it costs a lot, so people infer that it must be worth something.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also said that \u0026ldquo;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t take a wacko to shovel nonsense\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the press regularly gets it wrong.  For example, he said that \u0026ldquo;there is no gene for kidney disease.\u0026rdquo;  He suggested that journalists challenge the scientists promoting personalized medicine to explain how they think it will produce the results they claim.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, he gave a specific example of an acquaintance, a D.C. lobbyist, who purchased his Navigenics portfolio, which told him he had a low risk of heart disease and glaucoma\u0026ndash;but he already had glaucoma.  In answer to a question about gene patents, he said that the Broad Institute, which is an offshoot of the Whitehead Institute, doesn\u0026rsquo;t do patents, and that he thinks the problem that gene patents are causing for chip-based assaying of genes is ultimately going to cause them to be thrown out.  In response to a question about the ability to tailor drugs specifically based on genetic information, he agreed that yes, this can occur \u0026ldquo;for certain very rare things,\u0026rdquo; but that \u0026ldquo;DNA is just a recipe, environmental changes have huge impact.  Few diseases are related to just a small number of genes. \u0026hellip; Genes that encode [such things as] drug transport molecules \u0026hellip; will be useful for \u0026hellip; drug dosages.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Orac commented a bit on Dr. Steele\u0026rsquo;s presentation \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/07/back_to_reality_after_the_amazing_meetin.php\"\u003ein his post-TAM summary\u003c/a\u003e.  A video excerpt of Steele\u0026rsquo;s talk may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIkAxHRl5dk\u0026amp;feature=channel\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePhil Plait\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhil Plait spoke briefly about the vaccination drive, gave more thanks to the JREF staff, and had Paul Anagnostopoulos talk about the JREF scholarships.  Paul noted that 41 people were attending TAM7 as a result of scholarships, donations for which were at an all-time high despite the economy.  He also noted that \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-scholarships.html\"\u003eJREF is offering $10,000 in academic scholarships this year, and encouraged students to apply\u003c/a\u003e.  (The deadline is rapidly approaching\u0026ndash;they must be received by August 1.)  Those scholarships are due to a grant from a generous family in Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then gave up the rest of his time to Robert Lancaster of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.stopsylvia.com/\"\u003eStop Sylvia Browne website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRobert Lancaster\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRobert Lancaster came up to the front of the stage in a wheelchair after being introduced by his friend J.C.  He explained that he suffered a stroke last August, and has spent the last 11 months in the hospital and in rehabilitation, and so many of his planned newer sites (Stop John Edward, Stop Benny Hinn, and Stop Peter Popoff) are still in development.  He noted that last year he had jokingly referred to Stop Phil Plait at TAM6, and someone registered the domain while he was still speaking.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe said that he planned to talk about strokes and skepticism, and wanted to talk to other skeptics who have had strokes, of whom he talked to only one, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Colanduno\"\u003eDerek Colanduno\u003c/a\u003e of the Skepticality podcast, who has made a full recovery.  He warned that he suffers from emotional lability, a condition of excessive emotional reactions and mood changes, and that this would explain if he suddenly became a blubbering idiot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter telling a few stories of his rehabilitation, he gave thanks for the generosity of members of the JREF Forums who have helped him out.  He told the story of his first discovering James Randi by seeing him on Johnny Carson\u0026rsquo;s Tonight Show in the 1970s, and \u0026ldquo;opening a can of skeptical whoopass\u0026rdquo; on Peter Popoff in 1983.  Randi, Lancaster said, had showed him that skepticism can be a form of public service, and that\u0026rsquo;s what he\u0026rsquo;s tried to emulate with his websites.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe first contacted Randi, via email, in 2001 after seeing John Edward on television.  He figured Randi was the right guy to deal with Edward, and came across the randi.org website and sent an email, figuring some staff member might read it and give it to Randi.  To his surprise, he got a personal response from Randi\u0026ndash;which he characterized as \u0026ldquo;use the search engine, putz.\u0026rdquo;  (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping that weren\u0026rsquo;t Randi\u0026rsquo;s actual words, but Lancaster\u0026rsquo;s feelings about the answer, which was that there were already multiple articles exposing Edward on the JREF website.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLancaster then returned to the story of his stroke recovery, and how after his previous wife left him, he found Susan via match.com, and they exchanged photos, email, and phone calls.  After they had met in person, he asked her why she hadn\u0026rsquo;t commented on his initial photos\u0026ndash;she said they were \u0026ldquo;scary\u0026rdquo; because she thought he \u0026ldquo;was a biker.\u0026rdquo;  She concluded that no, \u0026ldquo;he was a teddy bear.\u0026rdquo;  They married five years to the day after their first date, on June 1, 2007.  Without her, he said, I would be dead right now, and that without her, his life would not be worth living.  He asked her to come on stage with him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then told the story of how he came to have his stroke.  He said that 15 years ago, he had a bad headache that he should have gone to see a doctor for, but he went to bed, and woke up with the same headache.  He went to his doctor\u0026rsquo;s office, but the doctor was out, and the first assistant to take his blood pressure said, \u0026ldquo;That can\u0026rsquo;t be right,\u0026rdquo; and went to get another.  Two more assistants took his blood pressure, were confused, and called the doctor to report.  The doctor told him to either drive himself immediately to the emergency room or to let them call an ambulance for him, because his blood pressure was 300/180.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI had been a little queasy and light-headed listening to the references to strokes, for a variety of reasons that include a bit of hypochondria, drinking a cup of coffee, having little for breakfast, and having a bit of a hangover.  Having a persistent sinus infection that I\u0026rsquo;m still fighting today wasn\u0026rsquo;t helpful, and the pain in the left side of my neck (which I now know was lymphadenopathy from that infection)  served as creative material for my hypochondria.  I ended up having to leave the room and have a seat in the hallway to turn my thoughts to more pleasant subjects.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI waited until I heard applause from inside, and returned to the SkeptiCamp table sans camera, to find that Lancaster was actually still continuing on about various subjects.  At some point I believe his wife assisted in cutting it short (he had gone some ways into lunch time), and I ended up still being a bit shaky through lunch.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI ended up losing my camera for the rest of the day, and getting it back from the registration desk the next day (thanks to both whoever turned it in and the gentleman who told me via Twitter that it had been turned in).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part three of my TAM7 summary, on Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, the anti-anti-vax panel, and Joe Nickell, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: Steele, Plait, Lancaster"},{"content":"Via Pharyngula, a video rebuttal to a recent Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly show claim that Amsterdam\u0026rsquo;s drug policies are a failure that has led it to be a \u0026ldquo;cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control, it\u0026rsquo;s anarchy,\u0026rdquo; according to guest Monica Crowley, Ph.D. (In a bit of irony, her doctorate is in \u0026ldquo;international relations.\u0026rdquo; She\u0026rsquo;s a Fox News foreign affairs and policy analyst who was a personal foreign policy assistant to Richard Nixon from 1990-1994\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize former presidents needed personal foreign policy assistants.)\nVarious cities in the Netherlands have placed additional restrictions on coffee shops that sell marijuana, such as not permitting them to operate within 200m of a school. The Wikipedia entry on drug policy in the Netherlands documents this, along with the details of their decriminalization (not legalization) policies.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-08-01):\n\u0026quot;assistant to Richard Nixon\u0026quot; More like Nixon worshipper. She was working for MSNBC the day that Mark Felt was revealed as Deep Throat. She called him a national traitor for outing Nixon, said he acted illegally by blowing the whistle to Woodward and should have took it up with Nixon (yeah, right \u0026hellip; sure that would've worked swell.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/oreilly-on-amsterdam.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/amsterdam_is_a_cesspool_of_cor.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, a video rebuttal to a recent Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly show claim that Amsterdam\u0026rsquo;s drug policies are a failure that has led it to be a \u0026ldquo;cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control, it\u0026rsquo;s anarchy,\u0026rdquo; according to guest Monica Crowley, Ph.D.  (In a bit of irony, her doctorate is in \u0026ldquo;international relations.\u0026rdquo;  She\u0026rsquo;s a Fox News foreign affairs and policy analyst who was a personal foreign policy assistant to Richard Nixon from 1990-1994\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize former presidents needed personal foreign policy assistants.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sTPsFIsxM3w\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sTPsFIsxM3w\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVarious cities in the Netherlands have placed additional restrictions on coffee shops that sell marijuana, such as not permitting them to operate within 200m of a school.  The \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands\"\u003eWikipedia entry on drug policy in the Netherlands\u003c/a\u003e documents this, along with the details of their decriminalization (not legalization) policies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"O'Reilly on Amsterdam"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been collecting data about IPs that have been attempting to spam my mail server for the past few months, and today I decided to take a look at what neighborhoods of /24 networks are the most heavily populated with spamming IPs.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the list of the top ten \u0026ldquo;worst neighborhoods\u0026rdquo; trying to send me spam, mostly with dictionary attacks against my domain. These are all blocked by the CBL, so none of this spam actually gets through, but it ties up my bandwidth.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put an asterisk (*) next to the ranges that are probably actually smaller than /24s based on the distribution of IPs.\nDoes anybody have a tool that already exists to identify likely bad ranges to block based on the distribution of known bad IPs? All I did here was count IPs within a /24, but it would be nicer to identify the likely ranges of badness at both a more fine-grained and broader level.\nNote that these bad neighborhoods may be neighborhoods of poorly secured machines, or they may be neighborhoods of malicious machines. Either way, the providers are not doing a good job of cracking down on malicious activity from their networks.\n1. 64.32.26.0/24 (25 IPs)\n45 46 51 52 54 66 68 73 81 90 100 102 104 111 113 126 155 157 163 168 194 199 204 236 242\nAS 46844 | 64.32.26.0 | ST-BGP - SHARKTECH INTERNET SERVICES\nUpstream provider: AS 7922 | 64.32.26.0 | COMCAST-7922 - Comcast Cable Communications, Inc.\n*2. 89.232.105.0/24 (24 IPs)\n21 24 29 32 48 57 59 63 64 68 76 89 93 94 97 101 103 107 114 117 126 129 137 139\nAS 28840 | 89.232.105.0 | TATTELECOM-AS Tattelecom.ru/Tattelecom Autonomous System\nUpstream provider: AS 6854 | 89.232.105.0 | SYNTERRA-AS SYNTERRA Joint Stock Company 64.32.26.0\n3. 208.84.243.0/24 (20 IPs)\n13 30 63 68 78 92 99 123 148 150 175 176 179 185 196 199 216 219 226 250\nAS 40260 | 208.84.243.0 | TERRA-NETWORKS-MIAMI - Terra Networks Operations Inc.\nUpstream provider: AS 22364 | 208.84.243.0 | AS-22364 - Telefonica USA, Inc.\n*4. 83.149.3.0/24 (17 IPs)\n5 6 12 14 16 18 21 22 25 28 30 40 42 47 48 51 63\nAS 31213 | 83.149.3.0 | MF-NWGSM-AS OJSC MegaFon Network\nUpstream providers: AS 12389 | 83.149.3.0 | ROSTELECOM-AS JSC Rostelecom\nAS 20485 | 83.149.3.0 | TRANSTELECOM JSC Company TransTeleCom\n*5. 76.164.227.0/24 (16 IPs)\n138 155 159 174 182 186 194 199 202 206 210 218 222 230 238 246\nAS 36114 | 76.164.227.0 | RDTECH-ASN - R \u0026amp; D Technologies, LLC\nUpstream providers: AS 6473 | 76.164.227.0 | WCIXN4 - WCIX.Net, Inc.\nAS 35937 | 76.164.227.0 | MARQUISNET - MarquisNet LLC\n6. 76.164.232.0/24 (15 IPs)\n13 21 24 33 36 38 40 43 48 57 198 206 218 232 234\nAS 36114 | 76.164.232.0 | RDTECH-ASN - R \u0026amp; D Technologies, LLC\nUpstream providers: AS 6473 | 76.164.227.0 | WCIXN4 - WCIX.Net, Inc.\nAS 35937 | 76.164.227.0 | MARQUISNET - MarquisNet LLC\n7. 77.120.128.0/24 (15 IPs)\n20 37 50 85 93 104 107 112 159 162 187 232 239 248 252\nAS 43011 | 77.120.128.0 | DATASVIT-AS ISP Datasvit AS Number\nUpstream provider: AS 25229 | 77.120.128.0 | VOLIA-AS Volia Autonomous System\n*8. 78.138.170.0/24 (12 IPs)\n66 68 77 78 160 166 178 189 190 193 202 211\nAS 28840 | 78.138.170.0 | TATTELECOM-AS Tattelecom.ru/Tattelecom Autonomous System\nUpstream provider: AS 6854 | 89.232.105.0 | SYNTERRA-AS SYNTERRA Joint Stock Company 64.32.26.0\n9. 77.232.143.0/24 (12 IPs)\n33 37 40 63 69 104 175 182 190 215 218 251\nAS 42145 | 77.232.143.0 | BSTV-AS OOO Bryansk Svyaz-TV\nUpstream provider: AS 20485 | 77.232.143.0 | TRANSTELECOM JSC Company TransTeleCom\n*10. 95.154.113.0/24 (12 IPs)\n140 178 181 185 193 195 197 206 218 246 248 254\nAS 44724 | 95.154.113.0 | OCTOPUSNET-AS Octopusnet LTD\nUpstream provider: AS 34470 | 95.154.113.0 | PTKOM-AS PortTelekom Autonomous system\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/bad-spammer-neighborhoods.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been collecting data about IPs that have been attempting to spam my mail server for the past few months, and today I decided to take a look at what neighborhoods of /24 networks are the most heavily populated with spamming IPs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the list of the top ten \u0026ldquo;worst neighborhoods\u0026rdquo; trying to send me spam, mostly with dictionary attacks against my domain.  These are all blocked by \u003ca href=\"http://cbl.abuseat.org/\"\u003ethe CBL\u003c/a\u003e, so none of this spam actually gets through, but it ties up my bandwidth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve put an asterisk (*) next to the ranges that are probably actually smaller than /24s based on the distribution of IPs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoes anybody have a tool that already exists to identify likely bad ranges to block based on the distribution of known bad IPs?  All I did here was count IPs within a /24, but it would be nicer to identify the likely ranges of badness at both a more fine-grained and broader level.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote that these bad neighborhoods may be neighborhoods of poorly secured machines, or they may be neighborhoods of malicious machines.  Either way, the providers are not doing a good job of cracking down on malicious activity from their networks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. 64.32.26.0/24 (25 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     45 46 51 52 54 66 68 73 81 90 100 102 104 111 113 126 155 157 163 168 194 199 204 236 242\u003cbr /\u003e     AS 46844   | 64.32.26.0       | ST-BGP - SHARKTECH INTERNET SERVICES\u003cbr /\u003e     Upstream provider: AS 7922    | 64.32.26.0       | COMCAST-7922 - Comcast Cable Communications, Inc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e*2. 89.232.105.0/24 (24 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     21 24 29 32 48 57 59 63 64 68 76 89 93 94 97 101 103 107 114 117 126 129 137 139\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 28840   | 89.232.105.0     | TATTELECOM-AS Tattelecom.ru/Tattelecom Autonomous System\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 6854    | 89.232.105.0     | SYNTERRA-AS SYNTERRA Joint Stock Company 64.32.26.0\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3. 208.84.243.0/24 (20 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     13 30 63 68 78 92 99 123 148 150 175 176 179 185 196 199 216 219 226 250\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 40260   | 208.84.243.0     | TERRA-NETWORKS-MIAMI - Terra Networks Operations Inc.\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 22364   | 208.84.243.0     | AS-22364 - Telefonica USA, Inc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e*4. 83.149.3.0/24 (17 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     5 6 12 14 16 18 21 22 25 28 30 40 42 47 48 51 63\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 31213   | 83.149.3.0       | MF-NWGSM-AS OJSC MegaFon Network\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream providers: AS 12389   | 83.149.3.0       | ROSTELECOM-AS JSC Rostelecom\u003cbr /\u003e                                           AS 20485   | 83.149.3.0       | TRANSTELECOM JSC Company TransTeleCom\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e*5. 76.164.227.0/24 (16 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     138 155 159 174 182 186 194 199 202 206 210 218 222 230 238 246\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 36114   | 76.164.227.0     | RDTECH-ASN - R \u0026amp; D Technologies, LLC\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream providers: AS 6473    | 76.164.227.0     | WCIXN4 - WCIX.Net, Inc.\u003cbr /\u003e                                           AS 35937   | 76.164.227.0     | MARQUISNET - MarquisNet LLC\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6. 76.164.232.0/24 (15 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     13 21 24 33 36 38 40 43 48 57 198 206 218 232 234\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 36114   | 76.164.232.0     | RDTECH-ASN - R \u0026amp; D Technologies, LLC\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream providers: AS 6473    | 76.164.227.0     | WCIXN4 - WCIX.Net, Inc.\u003cbr /\u003e                                           AS 35937   | 76.164.227.0     | MARQUISNET - MarquisNet LLC\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e7. 77.120.128.0/24 (15 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     20 37 50 85 93 104 107 112 159 162 187 232 239 248 252\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 43011   | 77.120.128.0     | DATASVIT-AS ISP Datasvit AS Number\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 25229   | 77.120.128.0     | VOLIA-AS Volia Autonomous System\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e*8. 78.138.170.0/24 (12 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     66 68 77 78 160 166 178 189 190 193 202 211\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 28840   | 78.138.170.0     | TATTELECOM-AS Tattelecom.ru/Tattelecom Autonomous System\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 6854    | 89.232.105.0     | SYNTERRA-AS SYNTERRA Joint Stock Company 64.32.26.0\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e9. 77.232.143.0/24 (12 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     33 37 40 63 69 104 175 182 190 215 218 251\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 42145   | 77.232.143.0     | BSTV-AS OOO Bryansk Svyaz-TV\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 20485   | 77.232.143.0     | TRANSTELECOM JSC Company TransTeleCom\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e*10. 95.154.113.0/24 (12 IPs)\u003cbr /\u003e     140 178 181 185 193 195 197 206 218 246 248 254\u003cbr /\u003e    AS 44724   | 95.154.113.0     | OCTOPUSNET-AS Octopusnet LTD\u003cbr /\u003e    Upstream provider: AS 34470   | 95.154.113.0     | PTKOM-AS PortTelekom Autonomous system\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad spammer neighborhoods"},{"content":"Three historians interviewed for the Creation Ministries International docu-drama, \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World,\u0026quot; published a response maintaining that their views were not accurately represented by the film. Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert wrote a note to that effect in the July 2009 issue of the Newsletter of the History of Science Society, which was also publicized by the National Center for Science Education\u0026rsquo;s website (and see John Lynch\u0026rsquo;s commentary at a simple prop).\nCMI has now published a response to the historians on their website, noting that \u0026ldquo;The historians’ description of the film, while not totally accurate at all points, is not unreasonable and in some respects complimentary.\u0026rdquo; It also uses the historians\u0026rsquo; statement that had they known the nature of the film, they might not have participated, as evidence that they were justified in concealing that information from them.\nCMI takes issue, however, with the two specific allegations by Bowler and Herbert that their words in the interviews were taken out of context and misrepresented in what appears in the film. To rebut them, CMI\u0026rsquo;s website publishes more extensive quotations from these two historians and compares them to how they were edited and placed in the context of the film.\nAlthough I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet had an opportunity to view the screener copy of the film in my possession, the CMI rebuttal appears to be sound with respect to those two specific allegations. The CMI web page concludes by noting that each of the participants was given their raw footage, as well as a copy of the film, and ends by saying, \u0026ldquo;We are hopeful that it will turn out to have been a case of not having checked the raw footage sent to them, instead relying on memory. We would be delighted to publish news of a retraction of either or both of these two claims in this space, should that occur.\u0026quot;\nSo we can add up the lessons here:\n1. Do due diligence about the production company and find out who\u0026rsquo;s behind it before agreeing to appear in a documentary.\n2. Make sure your release gives you some way to defend yourself if misrepresented, e.g., make sure you get the raw footage.\n3. If you [think you] are misrepresented and go public with it, consult the raw footage to make sure your charges of misrepresentation are themselves accurate.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-27):\n\u0026quot;3. If you are misrepresented and go public with it, consult the raw footage to make sure your charges of misrepresentation are themselves accurate.\u0026quot; That needs a bit of re-wording to something like, \u0026quot;If you think you are misrepresented ...\u0026quot; This comment from the trio is revealing:\n\u0026quot;but the producers do have a point: if academic historians refuse to participate when movements they don’t approve of seek historical information, these historians can hardly complain if less reputable sources are used instead.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-07-27):\nAgreed, on the first point. The second needs some qualification\u0026ndash;if an expert in a field declines to participate in a production that is going to be using bad information and disreputable sources whether that expert participates or not, then it's certainly legitimate for the expert to complain about the outcome even if he doesn't participate. Take, for example, any of David Balsiger's programs\u0026ndash;none of those were going to be sober, accurate, or fair-minded regardless of any participation from reputable experts, and any who participated gave the projects credibility they didn't deserve.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/creationist-darwin-docu-drama-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThree historians interviewed for \u003ca href=\"/2009/06/cmi-makes-darwin-docu-drama.html\"\u003ethe Creation Ministries International docu-drama, \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e published a response maintaining that their views were not accurately represented by the film.  Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert wrote \u003ca href=\"http://www.hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2009/July_Perils_Publicity.html\"\u003ea note to that effect in the July 2009 issue of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsletter of the History of Science Society\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which was also \u003ca href=\"http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/07/historians-misrepresented-by-creationists-004926\"\u003epublicized by the National Center for Science Education\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e (and see \u003ca href=\"http://blog.jmlynch.org/2009/07/20/historians-respond-to-the-voyage-that-shook-the-world/\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u0026rsquo;s commentary at a simple prop\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI has now \u003ca href=\"http://creation.com/darwin-historians-not-misrepresented\"\u003epublished a response to the historians on their website\u003c/a\u003e, noting that \u0026ldquo;The historians’     description of the film, while not totally accurate at all points, is not unreasonable     and in some respects complimentary.\u0026rdquo;  It also uses the historians\u0026rsquo; statement that had they known the nature of the film, they might not have participated, as evidence that they were justified in concealing that information from them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI takes issue, however, with the two specific allegations by Bowler and Herbert that their words in the interviews were taken out of context and misrepresented in what appears in the film.  To rebut them, CMI\u0026rsquo;s website publishes more extensive quotations from these two historians and compares them to how they were edited and placed in the context of the film.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet had an opportunity to view the screener copy of the film in my possession, the CMI rebuttal appears to be sound with respect to those two specific allegations.  The CMI web page concludes by noting that each of the participants was given their raw footage, as well as a copy of the film, and ends by saying, \u0026ldquo;We are hopeful that it will turn out to have been a case     of not having checked the raw footage sent to them, instead relying on memory. We     would be delighted to publish news of a retraction of either or both of these two     claims in this space, should that occur.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo we can add up the lessons here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Do due diligence about the production company and find out who\u0026rsquo;s behind it before agreeing to appear in a documentary.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Make sure your release gives you some way to defend yourself if misrepresented, e.g., make sure you get the raw footage.\u003cbr /\u003e3.  If you [think you] are misrepresented and go public with it, consult the raw footage to make sure your charges of misrepresentation are themselves accurate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist Darwin docu-drama and allegations of misrepresentation"},{"content":"TechCrunch has published \u0026ldquo;The Anatomy of the Twitter Attack,\u0026quot; a detailed account of how \u0026ldquo;Hacker Croll\u0026rdquo; used people\u0026rsquo;s password-selection habits, use of multiple online applications, publicly available online information about people, and flawed \u0026ldquo;I forgot my password\u0026rdquo; mechanisms to gain access first to individuals\u0026rsquo; personal webmail accounts and then to Twitter\u0026rsquo;s internal systems.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to use randomly generated passwords, stored in a password safe, so that they\u0026rsquo;re different with every service you use. It\u0026rsquo;s also a good idea to split personal and corporate accounts. Lately I\u0026rsquo;ve taken to using randomly generated information for my \u0026ldquo;I forgot my password\u0026rdquo; answers, as well, and keeping that in my password safe just like another password.\nThe \u0026ldquo;secret questions\u0026rdquo; for password recovery are a vulnerability when so much personal information is being shared on the Internet. That\u0026rsquo;s how Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s email account was compromised last year, as well.\nAlex (2009-07-24):\nI use the firefox Password Maker extension. This generates a unique password for each site, by hashing the hostname and a password I enter. This means that I only have to remember one password, yet no-one can capture the password I use on one site and reuse it. There are also versions for Opera and other environments.\nEamon Knight (2009-07-24):\nSince I use the same password (as it happens, a reasonably strong one by the standards of guessability, even against dictionary attack) for multiple on-line activities, I\u0026#39;ve recently become concerned about this vulnerability (especially since for many sites, my login info now gets automagically filled in). I assume the idea is to somewhat automate the process of maintaining an encrypted file on your machine which indexes login IDs against passwords. A brief Google search turns up some hits, but do you (being in the biz) have any advice what to look for?\nLippard (2009-07-24):\nEamon: Check out KeePass (http://keepass.info/) or PasswordSafe (http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/).\nI use the former.\nTrott (2009-07-25):\nOn balance, I like this article a lot. But it (unintentionally) seems to encourage cracking (by romanticizing the cracker) as much as it encourages everyone to employ practices that will keep their accounts safe. I suppose without giving the cracker a (more than?) fair shake, they probably wouldn\u0026#39;t have gotten the story. Again, on balance, I think it\u0026#39;s a great article. Certainly very interesting. I use KeePass as well and would recommend it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/how-twitter-got-compromised.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTechCrunch has published \u003ca href=\"http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Anatomy of the Twitter Attack,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a detailed account of how \u0026ldquo;Hacker Croll\u0026rdquo; used people\u0026rsquo;s password-selection habits, use of multiple online applications, publicly available online information about people, and flawed \u0026ldquo;I forgot my password\u0026rdquo; mechanisms to gain access first to individuals\u0026rsquo; personal webmail accounts and then to Twitter\u0026rsquo;s internal systems.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to use randomly generated passwords, stored in a password safe, so that they\u0026rsquo;re different with every service you use.  It\u0026rsquo;s also a good idea to split personal and corporate accounts.  Lately I\u0026rsquo;ve taken to using randomly generated information for my \u0026ldquo;I forgot my password\u0026rdquo; answers, as well, and keeping that in my password safe just like another password.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;secret questions\u0026rdquo; for password recovery are a vulnerability when so much personal information is being shared on the Internet.  That\u0026rsquo;s how \u003ca href=\"/2008/09/sarah-palins-yahoo-account-hacked.html\"\u003eSarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s email account was compromised last year\u003c/a\u003e, as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Twitter got compromised"},{"content":"Florida\u0026rsquo;s Community Issues Council, a Christian group that believes that the separation of church and state as advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is a \u0026ldquo;lie we have been told,\u0026rdquo; has taken to defending its position with billboards containing a fabricated quote from George Washington:\nThe billboards showcase quotes from early American leaders like John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Most of the quotes portray a national need for Christian governance. Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, \u0026ldquo;It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t believe there\u0026rsquo;s a document in Washington\u0026rsquo;s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,\u0026rdquo; Kemple said. \u0026ldquo;However, if you look at Washington\u0026rsquo;s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there\u0026rsquo;s no question he could have said those exact words.\u0026rdquo; Sorry, but putting words in his mouth and saying that it\u0026rsquo;s something that he could have said is lying. The fact is that this is a known fabricated quotation being repeated uncritically; its lineage is partly deciphered here and here. This and other known fake quotes continue to be disseminated on the Internet, and some of the other fakes were included in Sally Kern\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Oklahoma Citizens\u0026rsquo; Proclamation for Morality\u0026rdquo; legislative resolution. That resolution was published by The Baptist Messenger with photoshopped signatures from the Governor, Secretary of State, and other officials, even though they didn\u0026rsquo;t actually sign it. Their defense was that \u0026ldquo;artwork used was from previous editions of the paper,\u0026rdquo; which suggests that they\u0026rsquo;ve either done this before, or simply are feigning ignorance of the unethical nature of such a photoshop job.\nAlso see Jon Rowe\u0026rsquo;s blog post, \u0026ldquo;George Washington on the Bible.\u0026quot;\n(Hat tip to Pharyngula.)\nEamon Knight (2009-07-23):\nWell, this goes right along with the Photoshop job the Baptist Messenger did on Sally Kern\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;proclamation\u0026quot;. The Lyin\u0026#39; Fer Jeezus never stops....\nLippard (2009-07-23):\nAh, yes, I should have mentioned that.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/lying-to-defend-claim-that-morality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFlorida\u0026rsquo;s Community Issues Council, a Christian group that believes that the separation of church and state as advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is a \u0026ldquo;lie we have been told,\u0026rdquo; has taken to defending its position \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article1020144.ece\"\u003ewith billboards containing a fabricated quote from George Washington\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e The billboards showcase quotes from early American leaders like John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Most of the quotes portray a national need for Christian governance. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lying to defend the claim that morality requires the Bible"},{"content":"The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)\u0026rsquo;s eighth \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting,\u0026rdquo; TAM7, took place July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. (The eighth is number 7 because there was a smaller TAM5.5 event in Fort Lauderdale in January 2008 as the annual event transitioned from occurring in January to occurring in the summer.)\nThis post begins my summary of The Amazing Meeting 7, which I plan to complete and post in parts over the next week or so, similar to the summary I wrote up of last year\u0026rsquo;s TAM6. Other summaries of TAM7 may be found here:\nBy Michael at Young, Hip and Conservative: a skeptical blog.In six semi-liveblogged parts at The Atheist Experience blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6At the Anxiolysis blog: Preamble, Day 1, Day 2, Final dayBy Geeky Atheist.By Action Skeptics, with some interesting criticisms: Thursday and Friday, Saturday and SundayAt the TAMazing blog (many posts)D.J. Grothe\u0026rsquo;s wrap-up of TAM7 at CFI\u0026rsquo;s blogantiheroine at the Central Ohioans for Rational Inquiry blogBrownian at JREF\u0026rsquo;s Swift blog\nPhotos of TAM7 may be found here:\nDean Baird\u0026rsquo;s photos.Michael\u0026rsquo;s TAM7 photos at Picasa.Flickr photos tagged \u0026ldquo;tam7.\u0026quot;\nThis was the first TAM at this location south of the strip, and I was a bit worried about the convenience factor, since there wasn\u0026rsquo;t the diversity of restaurants within walking distance that you get with a hotel on the strip. That concern proved unfounded, as there was a good variety of food available within the hotel, ranging from deli sandwiches to a steakhouse, and I never left the hotel during the conference. Those who did visit the strip were able to catch a bus across the street for a few dollars, if they didn\u0026rsquo;t just bum a ride from somebody with a car. I did hear a few complaints about the food\u0026ndash;that the buffet wasn\u0026rsquo;t great, nor was one of the mid-range restaurants, neither of which I visited. There was also some displeasure on the part of vegetarians about the lack of meat-free options for the first day\u0026rsquo;s lunch. I was somewhat disappointed that the morning\u0026rsquo;s continental breakfasts were served in the main conference hall rather than in a separate dining room with round tables more conducive to conversation like last year, but the lunches were served in that manner and I did get to meet a few people that way each day. Overall, I thought the location was excellent and it has already been booked again for next year\u0026rsquo;s TAM8, which will take place from July 8-11, 2010.\nThis year, rather than attend any of the pre-conference workshops, I attended the excellent Science-Based Medicine conference which was held in conjunction with TAM7. TAM has tended to avoid having a particular theme or focus, and it was nice to have a day that was concentrated in a particular field, and which drew an audience largely of people with expertise in that field. I think this has been one of the strengths of some of the Skeptics Society conferences that have focused on particular subjects, such as its 1996 conference on evolutionary psychology, its 2005 conference on \u0026ldquo;Mind, Brain, and Consciousness\u0026rdquo; (which was quite critical of evolutionary psychology), and its 2007 meeting on the \u0026ldquo;Environmental Wars.\u0026rdquo; At the same time, the diversity of TAM and its audience is also valuable, so having a second conference as an optional complement to TAM strikes me as a good way of getting the best of both worlds.\nThis year was the first TAM with over 1,000 attendees, of whom 30% were women, the highest percentage of female attendees to date. When the question was asked, \u0026ldquo;how many are here for the first time?\u0026rdquo;, it appeared to be about half the audience members who raised their hands. The first TAM had about 140 attendees, and last year\u0026rsquo;s TAM6 had just over 900. There seemed to be a pretty good geographic diversity, with large contingents from Canada, the UK, and Australia like last year. It would be nice if attendees could voluntarily allow some information about themselves to be published in an attendee directory, such as name, JREF Forum handle, and home location.\nThere was a good-sized contingent from Arizona this year, including several participants from SkeptiCamp Phoenix, Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub, the Skeptics of Tucson, and Flagstaff\u0026rsquo;s Northern Arizona Skeptics. The conference kicked off with its usual Thursday evening meet-and-greet with hors d\u0026rsquo;oeuvres and a cash bar, during which I managed to chat with people from all of those groups, some for the first time. We\u0026rsquo;ll be holding another SkeptiCamp Phoenix next year, and I expect we\u0026rsquo;ll be able to double our participation.\nFriday, July 10\nThe conference formally began on Friday morning with opening remarks from emcee Hal Bidlack. Hal noted the growth in participation at TAM, talked about a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel (where \u0026ldquo;The Shining\u0026rdquo; was NOT filmed), and noted that Uri Geller had appeared on NBC News as a commentator on Michael Jackson\u0026rsquo;s death.\nHal kicked things off by quoting Plutarch (\u0026ldquo;The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled\u0026rdquo;) and noted that skeptics are a family: \u0026ldquo;Welcome to the Randi family reunion.\u0026rdquo; He remarked on the power of the individual to make change, and singled out for particular note Reed Esau for his part in the origination and expansion of SkeptiCamp, and Robert Lancaster for his stopsylviabrowne.com website.\nHe noted that there is an audience tradition of \u0026ldquo;pretending not to like my jokes\u0026rdquo; and that Randi once accused him of using \u0026ldquo;homeopathic humor.\u0026quot;\nAnd he offered a \u0026ldquo;cautionary note\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;we aren\u0026rsquo;t cookie cutter, we do have areas of disagreement.\u0026rdquo; By coming together in a group there are \u0026ldquo;dangers to individualism.\u0026rdquo; This is an inclusive, \u0026ldquo;large-tent organization,\u0026rdquo; and the topic of religion in particular has been \u0026ldquo;a source of tension\u0026rdquo; in previous conferences. Skepticism, he said, is about examining testable claims, and he noted that he, among others, is not an atheist. While I encountered many atheists at the conference, there was little, if anything, in the way of explicitly atheistic material presented (though I don\u0026rsquo;t remember any last year, either, except for some Objectivist material that was handed out to attendees, which was disappointingly both overtly anti-religious and political, though it was not a subject of discussion in any presentation that I noticed).\nPhil Plait then offered his first opening remarks as president of JREF, stating that the organization has \u0026ldquo;reached critical mass\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;become the mainstream skeptics movement of the people.\u0026rdquo; He said that people come to TAM for three reasons\u0026ndash;to hear speakers, to see Randi, and to participate in the skeptical community. We don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily agree on all of our positions, but we agree on how we reach conclusions. Like Hal Bidlack, Plait also called out both Reed Esau and Robert Lancaster for their contributions.\nDr. Plait spoke a bit about the Randi $1 million challenge, saying that it had started to become an albatross because of the amount of effort required to deal with potential claimants. It was \u0026ldquo;hard to determine what the claim is\u0026rdquo; from many people, let alone how to properly test it and come to an agreement on protocol. So it had been announced that the challenge would be discontinued in order to put the funds to better use and save the effort. But it has also been a useful tool, and he was happy to announce that it will be continued after all, in some form, the details of which are still to be worked out.\nJames Randi then came up on stage in a red and white striped shirt that he identified as his \u0026ldquo;happy shirt.\u0026rdquo; He was pleased at the steady growth of TAM. In a more somber note, he commented on \u0026ldquo;my subdued appearance\u0026rdquo; and explained why he was unable to shake hands with anyone at TAM this year. He was the recipient of an \u0026ldquo;unwelcome visitor\u0026rdquo; (cancer), for which he\u0026rsquo;s had surgery and will be undergoing chemotherapy. He explained that this is why he hasn\u0026rsquo;t made many videos of late.\nRandi gave special thanks to Sean McCabe, his personal assistant for the last year, who is now going back home and back to school, and to Brandon K. Thorpe, who will be his new assistant. He went through a long list of people that he thanked, including the JREF staff and volunteers, and various speakers and entertainers whose participation makes TAM a success. He ended by noting that the first TAM to be held outside of the United States, TAM London, to be held on October 3 and 4, was oversubscribed in less than an hour.\nKeynote: Bill Prady, creator and executive producer of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo;\nBill Prady started by saying that the \u0026ldquo;keynote sets the tone\u0026rdquo; for a conference, and that if so, this conference will be \u0026ldquo;disorganized and ill-prepared.\u0026rdquo; He said he looked at the JREF website\u0026rsquo;s description of his talk for clues as to what he should talk about, and saw that he stated that he \u0026ldquo;makes sure each episode is full of science\u0026rdquo; and that in a recent talk at Comic-Con, he had the audience laughing so hard they were rolling in the aisles. After reading that description, he said, \u0026ldquo;all I can do is disappoint you horribly.\u0026rdquo; With that, he showed a few short clips from \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; which he thought would be \u0026ldquo;of interest to this group,\u0026rdquo; which included a debunking of astrology based on Bertram Forer\u0026rsquo;s work, a reference to intelligent design, some magic tricks, and more references to astrology. The clips were fairly amusing, but my wife and I made an attempt to watch this show after hearing recommendations from friends, but gave up without completing two shows due to the painful laugh track. (A recent Twitter remark from Australian skeptic Richard Saunders suggests a similar experience.)\nAfter the clips, Prady described his own background\u0026ndash;that he earned pocket money doing magic shows from about age 12 to 16, and had an International Brotherhood of Magicians pin that he wanted to bring but was unable to find. He said that he read both Linking Ring and Genii, and frequently saw Randi on the covers, and was honored to sit next to him at the conference. He said he was a college dropout, then worked as a computer programmer before getting into television.\nHe observed that the chicken or egg problem was resolved by evolution\u0026ndash;the egg came first\u0026ndash;but then posed his own chicken-egg problem: \u0026ldquo;Do people who think like us become computer programmers, or does computer programming make people think like us?\u0026rdquo; He stated that there are two qualities common to such people: 1. critical thinking, and 2. lack of judgment about each other. As an example, he gave a friend named Ken, who would not go anywhere he hadn\u0026rsquo;t been before without being shown by someone else, even if it was yards away from somewhere else he had already been. He could do hex-decimal conversions in his head, but when told it\u0026rsquo;s customary to tip between 15% and 20% based on quality of service, he couldn\u0026rsquo;t calculate tips on his own because he didn\u0026rsquo;t know how to measure that. When his friends suggested he just always tip 17.5%, he refused, because then he would be overtipping half the time and undertipping half the time. (And I can\u0026rsquo;t resist noting that this response makes an unwarranted assumption about the distribution of service quality received by an individual diner.)\nPrady offered a few remarks about the characters and his show. The character Leonard is based on him. There was a story line about Penny offering herself to him in a distraught moment, with Leonard blowing it because he insisted on making a true statement about an analysis of their situation, which Prady stated was based on a true story. He said he\u0026rsquo;s proud of all the characters on the show, and wanted to depict \u0026ldquo;other views as complex, not stupid or paper tigers.\u0026rdquo; E.g., Penny\u0026rsquo;s belief in astrology and Sheldon\u0026rsquo;s mother\u0026rsquo;s religious faith. He said that \u0026ldquo;people\u0026rsquo;s belief systems are the things that get them through the day. \u0026hellip; they\u0026rsquo;re not saying \u0026lsquo;oh, please help me abandon the thing that gets me through my illness, my unemployment, my kid who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand me.\u0026rsquo; This is the thing that gets them to the night so they can go to sleep so they can get up and do it again. People\u0026rsquo;s beliefs are not a contest. You don\u0026rsquo;t win. You don\u0026rsquo;t win at the end of the day.\u0026quot;\nHis original plan was to have the show about computer programmers, but apparently having the characters in front of computers raised too many difficulties for filming, due to reflections from monitors as well as the difficulty of depicting what they were doing.\nHe wanted to read some angry letters of complaint received by the show, but was unable to locate any. There was a folder marked \u0026ldquo;disturbing letters,\u0026rdquo; but these were mostly letters from inmates in love with actress Kaley Cuoco. He called CBS, but they had not received a single angry letter. He took that as offering a bit of assurance for skeptics, that an audience of 12 million people per week could watch a show that begins with the history of the universe in 20 seconds to a Barenaked Ladies song and promotes science and critical thinking without being upset by it.\nPrady concluded by saying that when Phil Plait and Adam Savage asked him to speak, he knew his title should be \u0026ldquo;We Can Continue Telling Women in Bars That Astrology Isn\u0026rsquo;t Real, But We Won\u0026rsquo;t Get To Have Sex.\u0026rdquo; He suggested (presumably addressing only the straight men and lesbian and bisexual women in the audience) that while you\u0026rsquo;re here in Las Vegas and you meet a woman who is very complimentary and interested in you, be skeptical. He also suggested (to the same audience) that if you\u0026rsquo;re enjoying a conversation with a woman who says \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a Sagittarius,\u0026rdquo; try performing a study with two different responses. 1. Give a detailed explanation of the time twins study from England as a refutation of astrology, or 2. Say \u0026ldquo;wow, you have the most incredible eyes,\u0026rdquo; and see which response is more likely to lead to a positive outcome. (These remarks have led to some criticism of Prady for obvious reasons; Prady responds here. The topic is discussed further on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast #211, interview with Skepchick Carrie Iwan (starting at 43:30). Gender and skepticism was also the topic of discussion of the August 7th episode of Skeptically Speaking. The Podblack Cat blog discussed women, science, and skepticism earlier this year.)\nIn the subsequent Q\u0026amp;A session, Prady said that the science content of the show comes from technical advisors. He said \u0026ldquo;lots of people think the show mocks people like us\u0026ndash;but if you were in the writer\u0026rsquo;s room you\u0026rsquo;d say it\u0026rsquo;s an idealized picture of who they\u0026rsquo;d like to be.\u0026rdquo; He recounted how when the character Ross on the show \u0026ldquo;Friends\u0026rdquo; went to a paleontology convention (he was supposedly a paleontologist), there was nothing in the dialogue that went beyond 6th grade science. He didn\u0026rsquo;t want his show to be like that. They use David Saltzburg, a UCLA astrophysicist, as a consultant. They asked him, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s new in physics,\u0026rdquo; to which his answer was \u0026ldquo;not much in the last 40 years,\u0026rdquo; which they wrote into the script. Saltzburg said \u0026ldquo;oh, string theorists will get mad at me.\u0026rdquo; He then said something disparaging about string theory (I missed it in my notes), and they put that into the script, too.\nIn response to a questioner who asked why women are depicted as stereotypically ditzy and scientists as maladjusted, Prady defended his portrayal. He said that Penny is not portrayed as ditzy but as a \u0026ldquo;pragmatic intelligence\u0026ndash;the best character on the show at getting through life and getting things done.\u0026rdquo; He said there will be more female scientists on the show in the future.\nThe final question was a comment from someone in the audience who has a son that is like the characters on the show. On the show, Sheldon uses a board to fold clothes. The questioner\u0026rsquo;s son looked online to find such a board to use himself, and dubbed the board \u0026ldquo;Sheldon.\u0026quot;\n(There\u0026rsquo;s a transcription of Prady\u0026rsquo;s talk here. Randi\u0026rsquo;s opening remarks are transcribed here. Part two of my summary of TAM7, on Dr. Fintan Steele, Phil Plait, and Robert Lancaster, is here.)\nJohn S. Wilkins (2009-07-22):\nThe characters on TBBT are very Asperger\u0026#39;s, especially Sheldon, who is almost non-functional. One problem Apsie\u0026#39;s have is that they are very hard to teach, so these guys are either very lucky with their teachers or very unusual with their self-discipline.\nEinzige (2009-07-22):\nIt\u0026#39;s ironic that Objectivist material would be \u0026quot;overtly anti-religious\u0026quot; when Objectivism itself has so many religious qualities.\nepe (2009-07-23):\n\u0026#39;Skepticism, he said, is about examining testable claims, and he noted that he, among others, is not an atheist.\u0026#39; Statements like this always give me cognitive dissonance. I don't like the idea of alienating people who are otherwise skeptical, but, well, there it is.\nLippard (2009-07-23):\nSkepticism isn\u0026#39;t about the conclusions you reach, but how you get to them. It doesn\u0026#39;t entail atheism. Some agnostics (e.g., Paul Draper) argue that there are good arguments for theism and good arguments for atheism, but they don't know how to weigh them in order to find a winner.\nFor my part, I think the most plausible argument for the existence of God I've read is William P. Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, which draws on his previous philosophical work on perception. If religious people have different evidence than non-religious people, that could explain differing beliefs. I reject this argument on the basis of religious confusion (there doesn't seem to be any good evidence of a veridical faculty of religious perception) and better alternative explanations of religious belief (e.g., in Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell).\nBut for someone who fails to consider the problem of religious confusion or these alternative explanations, and has the appropriate sorts of experiences, it would seem to me to be rational to be religious, and consistent with skepticism.\nThere is also a method available to be a religious skeptic even if you're aware of these defeaters for the religious experience argument, which is to divide reality into the empirically testable and untestable, reserving skepticism for the former and using other methods for the latter. We do, after all, all believe things that we cannot demonstrate (perhaps on the basis of an inference to the best explanation or on pragmatic grounds), but which believers characterize as matters of faith. If this division is done in a consistent and logical manner, it need not provoke cognitive dissonance. Gould's non-overlapping magisteria is one way to do it, for the advocate of a liberal theology that withdraws completely from empirically testable claims.\nI've met people who are religious but consider their religious beliefs almost like an aesthetic preference or a useful fiction, where it doesn't matter whether God literally exists or not.\nepe (2009-07-23):\nSo you\u0026#39;re saying they\u0026#39;re not incompatible, as long as you don\u0026#39;t actually apply skepticism to your religious belief? Sure, as long as you don\u0026#39;t claim you\u0026#39;re being skeptical about your religion. Same goes for the claims of the compatibility of science and religion. Nobody cares unless the two are come into conflict...and then which one do you think is going to win?\nLippard (2009-07-23):\nNo. I\u0026#39;m saying that skepticism is a methodology and an attitude, not a doctrine. There is no logical inconsistency between skepticism and any conclusion that is supported by evidence. If you're a skeptic, you require evidence somehow apportioned to the claim, and you're willing to give up beliefs that are successfully rebutted or undermined. (Insert generic plug for Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History.)\nA skeptic in the world of the \u0026quot;X-Files\u0026quot; wouldn't be like Scully, but would come to accept the observed phenomena and the explanations that were presented in the show. A skeptic in a world with a God wouldn't be an atheist (and theists think we're in such a world).\nOn your last point, I do think a religious skeptic would have to let science trump religion in every case of conflict\u0026ndash;at least where the science is sound. But there are, of course, conflicts even within science.\nI'll write more about this when I write up last year's Skeptics Society conference, where I had an interesting conversation with Kenneth Miller. (You can get a suggestion of what that conference was like from Michael Shermer's \u0026quot;Does science make belief in God obsolete?\u0026quot;.)\nepe (2009-07-23):\nI understand what you\u0026#39;re saying, but I think some people set the bar pretty low as far as what they\u0026#39;ll consider \u0026#39;evidence.\u0026#39; Personal revelation isn\u0026#39;t it, as far as I\u0026#39;m concerned. As far as the X-Files goes, yeah, if there actually were evidence for the supernatural you\u0026#39;d not be a skeptic to ignore it...but in the real world, so far there hasn\u0026#39;t been any such evidence, has there?\nLippard (2009-07-23):\nI think there\u0026#39;s been better evidence than many skeptics are willing to admit, though I haven\u0026#39;t come across anything yet that pushes me from \u0026quot;I have no idea what\u0026#39;s going on there\u0026quot; to \u0026quot;that must involve paranormal forces.\u0026quot; There are definitely unexplained anomalies\u0026ndash;of course, we should expect a residue of unexplained phenomena, since the real world isn't a controlled experiment. (See my presentation on \u0026quot;What Skeptics Can Learn from Forteans.\u0026quot;)\nI had a chat with Ray Hyman at TAM, and one of his complaints has been about dogmatic skeptics who charge in and make bad arguments against claims, as has often been done in response to parapsychology. Hyman, by contrast, has actually done a lot of work to engage with the parapsychologists and their claims, including participating in exchanges in parapsychology journals.\nepe (2009-07-24):\neh. The unexplained is to be expected. I\u0026#39;d rather admit I don\u0026#39;t understand something than to ascribe it to the supernatural.\nEamon Knight (2009-07-24):\nIt seems to me that ascribing something to the supernatural (whether ghosts, gods, newage-style \u0026quot;energies\u0026quot; or whatever) requires a coherent definition of your particular supernatural agent, preferably one with some predictive power (ie. it should attempt to bring your explanation under the rubric of science). Otherwise, all you\u0026#39;ve done is to label your ignorance -- essentially, made \u0026quot;supernatural\u0026quot; a non-informative synonym for \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t know what the hell is going on\u0026quot;.\nLippard (2009-07-24):\nEamon: I don\u0026#39;t like the term \u0026quot;supernatural\u0026quot; for that very reason--it seems to me that if, for example, we found reliably reproducible psi, we wouldn\u0026#39;t call it supernatural, we\u0026#39;d call it an unexplained part of nature. Though if an entity really was \u0026quot;above\u0026quot; nature and say, had the ability to do things like temporarily change the laws of physics within regions of space-time, the term might fit. But that in itself isn't an argument that dismisses the possibility of sound inferences to conclusions such as that God exists, that psi exists, that UFOs are piloted by (or are) intelligent agents, or that there are previously undiscovered primates wandering the woods. I think there's conceivable evidence that could lead to any of those conclusions, even assuming methodological naturalism, though the first would be the hardest to get to and the last the easiest.\nEamon Knight (2009-07-24):\nI don\u0026#39;t like the term \u0026quot;supernatural\u0026quot; for that very reason... Exactly \u0026ndash; the word is ill-defined. In practice, it means roughly \u0026quot;the activity of incoporeal intelligent agents\u0026quot; (though I'm sure many additional claimed phenomen get tossed into the category) and as such seems to assume some kind of substance dualism (or at least, mental dualism). Fine: if we can study the entities of this supernatural substance scientifically, it becomes \u0026quot;natural\u0026quot;.\n\u0026hellip;.that God exists, that psi exists, that UFOs are piloted by (or are) intelligent agents, or that there are previously undiscovered primates wandering the woods.\nI would argue that of that list, only the first has a good claim to be called supernatural. Psi is something the human brain either does or does not do \u0026ndash; if we could reliably confirm the reality of the phenomenom, we should be able to start tracking down the exact neurology responsible. Similarly, Bigfoot/Sasquatch (if it exists) is just another rare, elusive animal.\nUFOs are an interesting case, however. To believers, aliens assume the same explanatory role that God does to creationists \u0026ndash; their powers while ill-defined, are large enough to \u0026quot;explain\u0026quot; pretty much any phenomenom required. ETs may or my not exist, and may or may not visit the earth. SETI, by making some prior educated guesses as to how ETs might behave, qualifies as scientific attempt to investigate the problem. But what I've seen of UFOlogy (which admittedly isn't a lot \u0026ndash; it's not my hobby) seems to consist of post-facto attribution odd phenomena to a cause constructed ad hoc to account for it. IOW: just another synonym for \u0026quot;I don't know\u0026quot;.\nLippard (2009-07-24):\nI think UFOlogy used to be dominated by the \u0026quot;extraterrestrial visitors in spacecraft\u0026quot; hypothesis, but with the growth of the \u0026quot;alien abduction\u0026quot; phenomenon, it became more mystical/religious in nature, with MUFON and CUFOS on the former side and folks like Whitley Strieber, John Keel, Jacques Vallee, John Mack, and Budd Hopkins on the latter. That divide goes at least back to the 50s, with the \u0026quot;contactees\u0026quot; like George Adamski and Frank Stranges, and \u0026quot;abductees\u0026quot; starting with Antonio Villas Boas in 1957 and Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. I tend to skip the UFO content of Fortean Times, but I read Saucer Smear for my continuing UFO education\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)\u0026rsquo;s eighth \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting,\u0026rdquo; TAM7, took place July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.  (The eighth is number 7 because there was a smaller TAM5.5 event in Fort Lauderdale in January 2008 as the annual event transitioned from occurring in January to occurring in the summer.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis post begins my summary of The Amazing Meeting 7, which I plan to complete and post in parts over the next week or so, similar to \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003ethe summary I wrote up of last year\u0026rsquo;s TAM6\u003c/a\u003e.  Other summaries of TAM7 may be found here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eBy Michael at \u003ca href=\"http://younghipandconservative.blogspot.com/2009/07/amazing-time-at-amazing-meeting-7.html\"\u003eYoung, Hip and Conservative: a skeptical blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIn six semi-liveblogged parts at The Atheist Experience blog: \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam7-part-1.html\"\u003ePart 1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam7-part-2.html\"\u003ePart 2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam-3-we-had-great-time-at-reception.html\"\u003ePart 3\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam7-part-4.html\"\u003ePart 4\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam7-part-5.html\"\u003ePart 5\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam7-part-6.html\"\u003ePart 6\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAt the Anxiolysis blog: \u003ca href=\"http://theanxiousmedic.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam-7-preamble.html\"\u003ePreamble\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://theanxiousmedic.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam-7-day-1.html\"\u003eDay 1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://theanxiousmedic.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam-day-2.html\"\u003eDay 2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://theanxiousmedic.blogspot.com/2009/07/tam-final-day.html\"\u003eFinal day\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBy \u003ca href=\"http://geekyatheist.com/2009/07/16/The-Amazing-Meeting-7-Postmortem.html\"\u003eGeeky Atheist.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBy Action Skeptics, with some interesting criticisms: \u003ca href=\"http://actionskeptics.blogspot.com/2009/07/amazng-meeting-7-thursday-and-friday.html\"\u003eThursday and Friday\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://actionskeptics.blogspot.com/2009/07/amazng-meeting-7-saturday-and-sunday.html\"\u003eSaturday and Sunday\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"http://tamazingblog.blogspot.com/\"\u003ethe TAMazing blog\u003c/a\u003e (many posts)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eD.J. Grothe\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blog/the_most_amazing_meeting/\"\u003ewrap-up of TAM7 at CFI\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eantiheroine at \u003ca href=\"http://www.ohioskeptic.com/?p=166\"\u003ethe Central Ohioans for Rational Inquiry blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBrownian at \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/666-skeptically-speaking-at-tam.html\"\u003eJREF\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSwift\u003c/span\u003e blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003ePhotos of TAM7 may be found here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://phyz.smugmug.com/gallery/8926656_W8bU3#592641684_fn4iM\"\u003eDean Baird\u0026rsquo;s photos\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/MichaelHartwell/TAM7#\"\u003eMichael\u0026rsquo;s TAM7 photos at Picasa\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all\u0026amp;q=tam7\u0026amp;m=tags\"\u003eFlickr photos tagged \u0026ldquo;tam7.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThis was the first TAM at this location south of the strip, and I was a bit worried about the convenience factor, since there wasn\u0026rsquo;t the diversity of restaurants within walking distance that you get with a hotel on the strip.  That concern proved unfounded, as there was a good variety of food available within the hotel, ranging from deli sandwiches to a steakhouse, and I never left the hotel during the conference.  Those who did visit the strip were able to catch a bus across the street for a few dollars, if they didn\u0026rsquo;t just bum a ride from somebody with a car.  I did hear a few complaints about the food\u0026ndash;that the buffet wasn\u0026rsquo;t great, nor was one of the mid-range restaurants, neither of which I visited.  There was also some displeasure on the part of vegetarians about the lack of meat-free options for the first day\u0026rsquo;s lunch.  I was somewhat disappointed that the morning\u0026rsquo;s continental breakfasts were served in the main conference hall rather than in a separate dining room with round tables more conducive to conversation like last year, but the lunches were served in that manner and I did get to meet a few people that way each day.   Overall, I thought the location was excellent and it has already been booked again for next year\u0026rsquo;s TAM8, which will take place from July 8-11, 2010.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis year, rather than attend any of the pre-conference workshops, I attended \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ethe excellent Science-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e which was held in conjunction with TAM7.  TAM has tended to avoid having a particular theme or focus, and it was nice to have a day that was concentrated in a particular field, and which drew an audience largely of people with expertise in that field.  I think this has been one of the strengths of some of the Skeptics Society conferences that have focused on particular subjects, such as its 1996 conference on evolutionary psychology, its 2005 conference on \u0026ldquo;Mind, Brain, and Consciousness\u0026rdquo; (which was quite critical of evolutionary psychology), and its 2007 meeting on the \u0026ldquo;Environmental Wars.\u0026rdquo;  At the same time, the diversity of TAM and its audience is also valuable, so having a second conference as an optional complement to TAM strikes me as a good way of getting the best of both worlds.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis year was the first TAM with over 1,000 attendees, of whom 30% were women, the highest percentage of female attendees to date. When the question was asked, \u0026ldquo;how many are here for the first time?\u0026rdquo;, it appeared to be about half the audience members who raised their hands.  The first TAM had about 140 attendees, and last year\u0026rsquo;s TAM6 had just over 900.  There seemed to be a pretty good geographic diversity, with large contingents from Canada, the UK, and Australia like last year.  It would be nice if attendees could voluntarily allow some information about themselves to be published in an attendee directory, such as name, JREF Forum handle, and home location.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere was a good-sized contingent from Arizona this year, including several participants from SkeptiCamp Phoenix, Phoenix Skeptics in the Pub, the Skeptics of Tucson, and Flagstaff\u0026rsquo;s Northern Arizona Skeptics.  The conference kicked off with its usual Thursday evening meet-and-greet with hors d\u0026rsquo;oeuvres and a cash bar, during which I managed to chat with people from all of those groups, some for the first time.  We\u0026rsquo;ll be holding another SkeptiCamp Phoenix next year, and I expect we\u0026rsquo;ll be able to double our participation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eFriday, July 10\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conference formally began on Friday morning with opening remarks from emcee Hal Bidlack.  Hal noted the growth in participation at TAM, talked about a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel (where \u0026ldquo;The Shining\u0026rdquo; was NOT filmed), and noted that Uri Geller had appeared on NBC News as a commentator on Michael Jackson\u0026rsquo;s death.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHal kicked things off by quoting Plutarch (\u0026ldquo;The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled\u0026rdquo;) and noted that skeptics are a family:  \u0026ldquo;Welcome to the Randi family reunion.\u0026rdquo;  He remarked on the power of the individual to make change, and singled out for particular note Reed Esau for his part in the origination and expansion of SkeptiCamp, and Robert Lancaster for his stopsylviabrowne.com website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe noted that there is an audience tradition of \u0026ldquo;pretending not to like my jokes\u0026rdquo; and that Randi once accused him of using \u0026ldquo;homeopathic humor.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd he offered a \u0026ldquo;cautionary note\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;we aren\u0026rsquo;t cookie cutter, we do have areas of disagreement.\u0026rdquo;  By coming together in a group there are \u0026ldquo;dangers to individualism.\u0026rdquo;  This is an inclusive, \u0026ldquo;large-tent organization,\u0026rdquo; and the topic of religion in particular has been \u0026ldquo;a source of tension\u0026rdquo; in previous conferences.  Skepticism, he said, is about examining testable claims, and he noted that he, among others, is not an atheist.  While I encountered many atheists at the conference, there was little, if anything, in the way of explicitly atheistic material presented (though I don\u0026rsquo;t remember any last year, either, except for some Objectivist material that was handed out to attendees, which was disappointingly both overtly anti-religious and political, though it was not a subject of discussion in any presentation that I noticed).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhil Plait then offered his first opening remarks as president of JREF, stating that the organization has \u0026ldquo;reached critical mass\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;become the mainstream skeptics movement of the people.\u0026rdquo;  He said that people come to TAM for three reasons\u0026ndash;to hear speakers, to see Randi, and to participate in the skeptical community.  We don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily agree on all of our positions, but we agree on how we reach conclusions.  Like Hal Bidlack, Plait also called out both Reed Esau and Robert Lancaster for their contributions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Plait spoke a bit about the Randi $1 million challenge, saying that it had started to become an albatross because of the amount of effort required to deal with potential claimants.  It was \u0026ldquo;hard to determine what the claim is\u0026rdquo; from many people, let alone how to properly test it and come to an agreement on protocol.  So it had been announced that the challenge would be discontinued in order to put the funds to better use and save the effort.  But it has also been a useful tool, and he was happy to announce that it will be continued after all, in some form, the details of which are still to be worked out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJames Randi then came up on stage in a red and white striped shirt that he identified as his \u0026ldquo;happy shirt.\u0026rdquo;  He was pleased at the steady growth of TAM.  In a more somber note, he commented on \u0026ldquo;my subdued appearance\u0026rdquo; and explained why he was unable to shake hands with anyone at TAM this year.  He was the recipient of an \u0026ldquo;unwelcome visitor\u0026rdquo; (cancer), for which he\u0026rsquo;s had surgery and will be undergoing chemotherapy.  He explained that this is why he hasn\u0026rsquo;t made many videos of late.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRandi gave special thanks to Sean McCabe, his personal assistant for the last year, who is now going back home and back to school, and to Brandon K. Thorpe, who will be his new assistant.  He went through a long list of people that he thanked, including the JREF staff and volunteers, and various speakers and entertainers whose participation makes TAM a success.  He ended by noting that the first TAM to be held outside of the United States, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tamlondon.org/\"\u003eTAM London\u003c/a\u003e, to be held on October 3 and 4, was oversubscribed in less than an hour.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eKeynote: Bill Prady, creator and executive producer of \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBill Prady started by saying that the \u0026ldquo;keynote sets the tone\u0026rdquo; for a conference, and that if so, this conference will be \u0026ldquo;disorganized and ill-prepared.\u0026rdquo;  He said he looked at the JREF website\u0026rsquo;s description of his talk for clues as to what he should talk about, and saw that he stated that he \u0026ldquo;makes sure each episode is full of science\u0026rdquo; and that in a recent talk at Comic-Con, he had the audience laughing so hard they were rolling in the aisles.  After reading that description, he said, \u0026ldquo;all I can do is disappoint you horribly.\u0026rdquo;  With that, he showed a few short clips from \u0026ldquo;The Big Bang Theory\u0026rdquo; which he thought would be \u0026ldquo;of interest to this group,\u0026rdquo; which included a debunking of astrology based on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect\"\u003eBertram Forer\u0026rsquo;s work\u003c/a\u003e, a reference to intelligent design, some magic tricks, and more references to astrology.  The clips were fairly amusing, but my wife and I made an attempt to watch this show after hearing recommendations from friends, but gave up without completing two shows due to the painful laugh track.  (A recent Twitter remark from Australian skeptic Richard Saunders suggests a similar experience.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the clips, Prady described his own background\u0026ndash;that he earned pocket money doing magic shows from about age 12 to 16, and had an International Brotherhood of Magicians pin that he wanted to bring but was unable to find.  He said that he read both \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLinking Ring\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGenii\u003c/span\u003e, and frequently saw Randi on the covers, and was honored to sit next to him at the conference.  He said he was a college dropout, then worked as a computer programmer before getting into television.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe observed that the chicken or egg problem was resolved by evolution\u0026ndash;the egg came first\u0026ndash;but then posed his own chicken-egg problem:  \u0026ldquo;Do people who think like us become computer programmers, or does computer programming make people think like us?\u0026rdquo;  He stated that there are two qualities common to such people:  1. critical thinking, and 2. lack of judgment about each other.  As an example, he gave a friend named Ken, who would not go anywhere he hadn\u0026rsquo;t been before without being shown by someone else, even if it was yards away from somewhere else he had already been.  He could do hex-decimal conversions in his head, but when told it\u0026rsquo;s customary to tip between 15% and 20% based on quality of service, he couldn\u0026rsquo;t calculate tips on his own because he didn\u0026rsquo;t know how to measure that.  When his friends suggested he just always tip 17.5%, he refused, because then he would be overtipping half the time and undertipping half the time.  (And I can\u0026rsquo;t resist noting that this response makes an unwarranted assumption about the distribution of service quality received by an individual diner.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrady offered a few remarks about the characters and his show.  The character Leonard is based on him.  There was a story line about Penny offering herself to him in a distraught moment, with Leonard blowing it because he insisted on making a true statement about an analysis of their situation, which Prady stated was based on a true story.   He said he\u0026rsquo;s proud of all the characters on the show, and wanted to depict \u0026ldquo;other views as complex, not stupid or paper tigers.\u0026rdquo;  E.g., Penny\u0026rsquo;s belief in astrology and Sheldon\u0026rsquo;s mother\u0026rsquo;s religious faith.  He said that \u0026ldquo;people\u0026rsquo;s belief systems are the things that get them through the day. \u0026hellip; they\u0026rsquo;re not saying \u0026lsquo;oh, please help me abandon the thing that gets me through my illness, my unemployment, my kid who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand me.\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003eThis is the thing that gets them to the night so they can go to sleep so they can get up and do it again. People\u0026rsquo;s beliefs are not a contest. You don\u0026rsquo;t win. You don\u0026rsquo;t win at the end of the day.\u003c/span\u003e\u0026quot;\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis original plan was to have the show about computer programmers, but apparently having the characters in front of computers raised too many difficulties for filming, due to reflections from monitors as well as the difficulty of depicting what they were doing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe wanted to read some angry letters of complaint received by the show, but was unable to locate any.  There was a folder marked \u0026ldquo;disturbing letters,\u0026rdquo; but these were mostly letters from inmates in love with actress Kaley Cuoco.  He called CBS, but they had not received a single angry letter.  He took that as offering a bit of assurance for skeptics, that an audience of 12 million people per week could watch a show that begins with the history of the universe in 20 seconds to a Barenaked Ladies song and promotes science and critical thinking without being upset by it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrady concluded by saying that when Phil Plait and Adam Savage asked him to speak, he knew his title should be \u0026ldquo;We Can Continue Telling Women in Bars That Astrology Isn\u0026rsquo;t Real, But We Won\u0026rsquo;t Get To Have Sex.\u0026rdquo;  He suggested (presumably addressing only the straight men and lesbian and bisexual women in the audience) that while you\u0026rsquo;re here in Las Vegas and you meet a woman who is very complimentary and interested in you, be skeptical.  He also suggested (to the same audience) that if you\u0026rsquo;re enjoying a conversation with a woman who says \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a Sagittarius,\u0026rdquo; try performing a study with two different responses.  1.  Give a detailed explanation of the time twins study from England as a refutation of astrology, or 2. Say \u0026ldquo;wow, you have the most incredible eyes,\u0026rdquo; and see which response is more likely to lead to a positive outcome.  (These remarks have led to \u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=8308\"\u003esome criticism of Prady for obvious reasons\u003c/a\u003e; Prady responds \u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=8362\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The topic is discussed further on the \u003ca href=\"http://cdn4.libsyn.com/skepticsguide/skepticast2009-08-04.mp3?nvb=20090808211738\u0026amp;nva=20090809212738\u0026amp;t=0bb26ffbf69f9f37ef79e\"\u003eSkeptics Guide to the Universe podcast #211\u003c/a\u003e, interview with Skepchick Carrie Iwan (starting at 43:30).  Gender and skepticism was also the topic of discussion of the August 7th episode of \u003ca href=\"http://skepticallyspeaking.com/2009/08/01/gender-and-skepticism/\"\u003eSkeptically Speaking\u003c/a\u003e.  \u003ca href=\"http://podblack.com/?p=329\"\u003eThe Podblack Cat blog\u003c/a\u003e discussed women, science, and skepticism earlier this year.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the subsequent Q\u0026amp;A session, Prady said that the science content of the show comes from technical advisors.  He said \u0026ldquo;lots of people think the show mocks people like us\u0026ndash;but if you were in the writer\u0026rsquo;s room you\u0026rsquo;d say it\u0026rsquo;s an idealized picture of who they\u0026rsquo;d like to be.\u0026rdquo;  He recounted how when the character Ross on the show \u0026ldquo;Friends\u0026rdquo; went to a paleontology convention (he was supposedly a paleontologist), there was nothing in the dialogue that went beyond 6th grade science.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t want his show to be like that.  They use David Saltzburg, a UCLA astrophysicist, as a consultant.  They asked him, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s new in physics,\u0026rdquo; to which his answer was \u0026ldquo;not much in the last 40 years,\u0026rdquo; which they wrote into the script.  Saltzburg said \u0026ldquo;oh, string theorists will get mad at me.\u0026rdquo;  He then said something disparaging about string theory (I missed it in my notes), and they put that into the script, too.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn response to a questioner who asked why women are depicted as stereotypically ditzy and scientists as maladjusted, Prady defended his portrayal.  He said that Penny is not portrayed as ditzy but as a \u0026ldquo;pragmatic intelligence\u0026ndash;the best character on the show at getting through life and getting things done.\u0026rdquo;  He said there will be more female scientists on the show in the future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe final question was a comment from someone in the audience who has a son that is like the characters on the show.  On the show, Sheldon uses a board to fold clothes.  The questioner\u0026rsquo;s son looked online to find such a board to use himself, and dubbed the board \u0026ldquo;Sheldon.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(There\u0026rsquo;s a transcription of Prady\u0026rsquo;s talk \u003ca href=\"http://tamazingblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/okay-so-clearly-i-am-unreliable-liar.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Randi\u0026rsquo;s opening remarks are transcribed \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/630-randis-tam-7-welcome-address.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part two of my summary of TAM7, on Dr. Fintan Steele, Phil Plait, and Robert Lancaster, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 7: intro, Bidlack/Plait/Randi, Prady"},{"content":"Dr. Kimball Atwood\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the Science-based Medicine conference included some observations about the overwhelming evidence against homeopathy being a valid or even remotely plausible treatment for anything. During one of the Q\u0026amp;A sessions at that conference, someone made an observation that Arizona is a terrible state for all kinds of quackery, and even has a State Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners.\nThe homeopathy board was created in 1982 by a law written and lobbied for by Dr. Harvey Bigelson, a homeopath who was indicted in 1992 by a federal grand jury on 63 counts of Medicare fraud, 44 counts of mail fraud, and eight counts of obstruction of justice. He plea-bargained his way down to three counts and five years of probation, and lost both his medical and homeopathic licenses, making him one of only two homeopaths to lose their licenses by action of the board. He subsequently opened a cancer clinic in Mexico to continue his quackery.\nThere was an opportunity for Arizona to dispose of its Homeopathy Board in 2006, when the law that created it would have expired under its sunset provisions, but our legislature foolishly renewed it despite overwhelming evidence that it not only gives an unmerited credence to nonsense, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t even do anything to keep criminals from practicing homeopathy. An October 9, 2005 story in the Arizona Republic pointed out several cases of convicted felons from other states permitted to obtain homeopathic licenses and practice in Arizona. It also pointed out that complaints brought against homeopathy board members for malpractice and sexual harassment were simply dismissed:\nThe homeopathic board has dismissed at least five complaints against its own members over the past five years, including one in which a patient suffered kidney failure after treatment, as well as an alleged incidence of sexual harassment.\nThe complaint involving kidney failure was lodged against board member Dr. Annemarie Welch in March 2003. The woman who lodged the complaint fell ill after seeking treatment from Welch for an infected blister on her toe. Welch treated the infection with \"vitamin C therapy,\" according to board meeting minutes.\nAfter the woman suffered \"acute renal failure,\" she filed a complaint against Welch with the Arizona Medical Board, which also licenses Welch.\nThe homeopathic board argued for primary jurisdiction of the Arizona Medical Board complaint against Welch, arguing that she had primarily used homeopathic procedures. Once the homeopathic board had control of the case, it dismissed the complaint.\nAccording to meeting minutes, board members did not believe there was a correlation between the vitamin C therapy and the patient's kidney failure. They also noted that the patient didn't comply with Welch's treatment recommendations. Welch pointed out the Medical Board also found no wrongdoing in its investigation.That's crazy--the judgment shouldn't have been whether the vitamin C therapy caused the problem, but whether the LACK of a real treatment of the infection caused by the quack treating her with vitamin C caused the kidney failure. The story goes on:\nA Phoenix woman lodged a sexual harassment complaint against board member [Dr. Gary] Gordon in May 2001. The woman said he had spontaneously kissed her on the mouth after she stopped to speak with him at his booth at a medical trade show.\nThe homeopathic board dismissed the woman's complaint because she did not show up to the May 2001 meeting at which her complaint was scheduled to be heard. She apparently had a family emergency and wrote to the board that she could not make it. Board members questioned Gordon about the allegation, which he denied. The woman did show up at the next board meeting and asked to refile her complaint, but board members voted 2-2 against it.Nice way to uphold ethical standards, there, homeopathy board. And their permissive behavior with regard to conduct appears to extend beyond members of the board to the licensed homeopaths they're supposed to be regulating:\nTroubled physicians licensed by the board include Dr. Charles Crosby, who obtained his Arizona homeopathic license in May 2004 despite revealing to the board that he had been ordered to have counseling for a \"perceived loss of social inhibition\" in his home state of Florida. It later became known that Crosby had been accused of fondling patients and of having a breast fetish. A report on the case in Florida said Crosby had developed \"a special technique of manipulating women's breasts to treat pain in other areas of their body.\"\nThe suspension of Crosby's license in Florida triggered a inquiry before the Arizona homeopathic board in July. At the meeting, Schwengel, the board president, said he did not find any specific examples that showed Crosby had acted unprofessionally, according to meeting minutes.\nOther members expressed concern about Crosby's behavior, but they did not suspend his license, instead giving him until November to undergo an independent mental evaluation to determine if he is competent to practice here.Board member Gordon defended this action on the grounds that in the U.S. we assume that doctors in trouble who have \"paid their debt to society\" have been rehabilitated, and that taking away a license is a severe punishment:\n\"What we look at is, do we want to try and resurrect a troubled physician and keep them under control, or do we want to throw them away and let them dig ditches?\" Gordon said. \"Once you take a doctor's license away, they don't really have a particular skill that they're qualified to do.\"And what are homeopaths qualified to do in Arizona, besides dispense bottles of overpriced water falsely claimed to be medicine? The board's website gives the answer:\nThe scope of the license includes the practice of acupuncture, chelation, homeopathy, minor surgery, neuromuscular integration, nutrition, orthomolecular therapy and pharmaceutical medicine (see A.R.S. § 32-2901(22)). The one that jumps out at me the most is \"minor surgery.\" Yikes!\nHere's a list of approved continuing education courses for homeopaths in Arizona:\nLearn Oxidative Therapy AHIMA/Westbrook 1/22/09 7 hours Ethics \u0026amp; Boundaries Dr. Jodi Decker Flexible 3 hours\nProfessional Ethics Dr. Jodi Decker Flexible 4 hours Lyme-Autism Connection LIA Foundation/CHOICE 6/25/ - 6/28/09 12 hours\nThe middle two courses on ethics would seem to me, if taught honestly and accurately, to completely undermine the enterprise. Homeopathy is a bogus practice, and I'd think using bogus practices as medical treatment should be near the top of the list of unethical things that health practitioners should avoid. The other two courses sound like the promotion of quackery; oxidative therapy has been a quack treatment for cancer, and the latter is about a link between two conditions, each of which is already surrounded by rampant nonsense, that is being promoted by the \"Lyme-Induced Autism Foundation\" in advance of supporting research or data. There was some research being done at Columbia University's Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center a few years ago by Dr. Brian Fallon about a possible misdiagnosis of some cases of Lyme disease as autism, but that apparently has not demonstrated any connection and there is nothing about autism currently on their website. About.com compares Fallon's description of his research to a press release from the L.I.A. Foundation:\nFallon:\nIn our work with children who have developed Lyme disease, we have encountered a few children who had developed autistic-like disorders which were eventually also diagnosed as having Lyme Disease due to other concomitant symptoms; when the child received intensive antibiotic therapy, the autistic syndromes dramatically improved and, in some cases, resolved. We hypothesize: a) that a small subpopulation of children with autism in Lyme endemic areas may have an antibiotic responsive disorder due to a spirochete-induced autistic syndrome...L.I.A. Foundation press release:\nNew reports indicate up to 90% of children with autism are infected with Lyme disease. With autism at a staggering 1 out of 166 children, parents are questioning this new finding.Can you tell which organization is using scientific methodology? The L.I.A. Foundation's list of its own activities puts \"awareness\" and \"education\" ahead of \"research,\" which is putting the cart before the horse. (Of course, if they did research as a priority, that could cause problems for their chosen acronym--the L.I.A.R. Foundation probably wouldn't get as many donations.)\nIt should be noted that Welch and Gordon are not on the state homeopathy board today. But next time we have the opportunity, I suggest we Arizonans get rid of this board completely.\nUPDATE (February 9, 2011): I recently came across this April 10, 2008 New Times story that shows how Arizona's homeopathic board certification has effectively been an invitation to doctors who've lost their licenses in other states to come to Arizona and become M.D.h.'s.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/arizonas-homeopathic-medical-board.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003eDr. Kimball Atwood\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the Science-based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e included some observations about the overwhelming evidence against homeopathy being a valid or even remotely plausible treatment for anything.  During one of the Q\u0026amp;A sessions at that conference, someone made an observation that Arizona is a terrible state for all kinds of quackery, and even has a State Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe homeopathy board was created in 1982 by a law written and lobbied for by Dr. Harvey Bigelson, a homeopath who was indicted in 1992 by a federal grand jury on 63 counts of Medicare fraud, 44 counts of mail fraud, and eight counts of obstruction of justice.  He plea-bargained his way down to three counts and five years of probation, and lost both his medical and homeopathic licenses, making him one of only two homeopaths to lose their licenses by action of the board.  He subsequently opened a cancer clinic in Mexico to continue his quackery.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere was an opportunity for Arizona to dispose of its Homeopathy Board in 2006, when the law that created it would have expired under its sunset provisions, but our legislature foolishly renewed it despite overwhelming evidence that it not only gives an unmerited credence to nonsense, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t even do anything to keep criminals from practicing homeopathy.  An \u003ca href=\"http://www.valuemd.com/relaxing-lounge/43671-arizona-homeopathic-board-under-scrutiny.html\"\u003eOctober 9, 2005 story in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e pointed out several cases of convicted felons from other states permitted to obtain homeopathic licenses and practice in Arizona.  It also pointed out that complaints brought against homeopathy board members for malpractice and sexual harassment were simply dismissed:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona's homeopathic medical board"},{"content":"\nThere are just 11 days left to raise money for Bowl-a-Rama. We have one more fundraising event this Thursday, July 23rd at Rosita’s in Tempe or Mesa. Please come out, enjoy a great meal and support RESCUE. 15% of your purchase is donated back to RESCUE!!! Pictured is the flyer for the event (you’ll need it in order for us to receive the proceeds). I can email the flyer to you if you are interested, just ask me in the comments. All are welcome for lunch, dinner, dine in or take out. Jim \u0026amp; I will be at the Tempe location around 6:00pm, please stop by.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/bowl-rama-fundraiser-this-thursday.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/rositas.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 386px; height: 400px;\" src=\"/images/rositas.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360687691184175586\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:11;\"\u003eThere are just 11 days left to raise money for Bowl-a-Rama.   We have one more fundraising event this Thursday, July 23rd at Rosita’s in Tempe or Mesa.   Please come out, enjoy a great meal and support RESCUE.   15% of your purchase is donated back to RESCUE!!!  Pictured is the flyer for the event (you’ll need it in order for us to receive the proceeds).   I can email the flyer to you if you are interested, just ask me in the comments.  All are welcome for lunch, dinner, dine in or take out.  Jim \u0026amp; I will be at the Tempe location around 6:00pm, please stop by.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bowl-a-Rama Fundraiser this Thursday"},{"content":"This is a reverse-chronological list of conference and talk summaries I\u0026rsquo;ve written up, either at my blog or elsewhere. Most pertain to skepticism and critical thinking in some way (and I\u0026rsquo;d like to think that all involve the application of skepticism and critical thinking to the topics at hand), some are political, and some involve information security. I\u0026rsquo;ve got a few more of these in print form that are online in the issues of the Arizona Skeptic.\nBruce Wagman on \u0026ldquo;Many Species of Animal Law,\u0026quot; April 7, 2010, Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, Armstrong Hall 116. Joel Garreau on Radical Evolution, November 18, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536, CSPO Plausibility Project.\nRichard Carrier on \u0026ldquo;Christianity and Science (Ancient and Modern),\u0026quot; November 8, 2009, Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, Home Town Buffet, Scottsdale.\nRobert B. Laughlin on \u0026ldquo;The Crime of Reason,\u0026quot; November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law, Great Hall; 2009 Hogan \u0026amp; Hartson Jurimetrics Lecture in Honor of Lee Loevinger.\nRoger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Decision Theater.\nRoger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536.\nRobert Balling on climate change, October 30, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor L1-74.\nPersonalized medicine research forum, October 23, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, The Biodesign Institute.\nAtheist Alliance International convention, October 2-4, 2009, Burbank Marriott, Burbank, California. Speakers: P.Z. Myers, Ed Buckner, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Martin Pera, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Gerardo Romero, Jonathan Kirsch, Eugenie Scott, Brian Parra.\nMarco Iacoboni on imitation and sociality, August 27, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, psychology department colloquium, MU202.\nJoel Garreau on the future of cities, August 26, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes colloquium, Coor L1-10.\nThe Amazing Meeting 7, July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\nPart 1: Introduction, Hal Bidlack, Phil Plait, James Randi, Bill Prady keynote.\nPart 2: Fintan Steele, Phil Plait, Robert Lancaster.\nPart 3: Jamy Ian Swiss/James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel (Steven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, Derek Bartholomaus), Joe Nickell.\nPart 4: Skeptics Guide to the Universe/Rodrigues-Watson wedding, Michael Shermer, Adam Savage.\nPart 5: Panel on ethics of deception (D.J. Grothe, Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, Jamy Ian Swiss), Stephen Bauer, panel on skepticism and the media (Penn Jillette, Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, Jennifer Ouellette), Phil Plait.\nPart 6: Sunday paper sessions, Million Dollar Challenge with Danish dowser Connie Sonne.\nScience-Based Medicine Conference at The Amazing Meeting 7, July 9, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\nPart 1: Steven Novella on science-based medicine.\nPart 2: David Gorski on cancer quackery.\nPart 3: Harriet Hall on chiropractic.\nPart 4: Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy.\nPart 5: Mark Crislip on chronic Lyme disease.\nPart 6: Val Jones on online health and social media, and Q\u0026amp;A panel.\nAmerican Humanist Association annual conference at Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, Arizona, June 5-9, 2009.\nSorry, only covered my own talk from the pre-conference workshops and the ArizonaCOR press conference.\nJeff Benedict on the Kelo case and his book Little Pink House, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, April 15, 2009.\nSkeptiCamp Phoenix, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 28, 2009. Speakers: Tony Barnhart, Abraham Heward, David Jackemeyer, Don Lacey, Jim Lippard, Shannon Rankin, John Lynch, Jack Ray, David Weston, Mike Stackpole, Charlie Cavanaugh Toft, Xarold Trejo.\nDaniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s 2009 Beyond Center Lecture, Galvin Playhouse, Arizona State University, February 18, 2009, on \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\nBill of Rights celebration event at the Wrigley Mansion, Phoenix, Arizona, December 14, 2008.\nThe Amazing Meeting 6, June 19-22, 2008 at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\nOverview and photo link.\nPart 1: Banachek memory workshop.\nPart 2: Hal Bidlack, James Randi welcome, Ben Goldacre on homeopathy, Neil deGrasse Tyson keynote, Alec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics, Penn \u0026amp; Teller Q\u0026amp;A, George Hrab musical interlude, P.Z. Myers on bat wings, Richard Saunders on educational materials for kids, panel discussion on identifying as a skeptic (James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics whose name I didn\u0026rsquo;t catch).\nPart 3: Michael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe weird things, Sharon Begley on creationism and other weird beliefs, Derek and Swoopy on Skepticality and podcasting, Steven Novella on dualism and creationism, Jeff Wagg JREF update, Jim Underdown on the Independent Investigations Group and award to Randi, Randi on patching up relations with CSI (formerly CSICOP), Skeptologists pilot.\nPart 4: Phil Plait on astronomy, Adam Savage on his Maltese falcon, Matthew Chapman on creationism and Science Debate 2008, Richard Wiseman on the \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; and mass spoonbending lesson, panel discussion on the limits of skepticism (Goldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders), Sunday conference papers: John Janks on Marfa lights, Don Nyberg on pseudoscience, Steve Cuno on myths in marketing, Tracy King on viral video.\nPart 5: Lee Graham on artificial creatures and real evolution, Christopher French on anomalistic psychology, Tim Farley on building skeptical tools online, Brian Dunning on The Skeptologists.\nGene Healey on his book The Cult of the Presidency, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, May 1, 2008.\nRichard Dawkins 2008 Beyond Center Lecture, Grady Gammage Auditorium, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 6, 2008, on \u0026ldquo;The God Delusion.\u0026quot;\nNew Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance \u0026ldquo;$-Gard\u0026rdquo; conference, February 22, 2008, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Speakers: Frank Abagnale on protecting yourself from fraud, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist on malware secrets, Alex Quintana on current trends in malware, Melissa McBee-Anderson on the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).\nAyaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician Resort, Goldwater Institute award banquet, Phoenix, Arizona, December 7, 2007.\nScreening of \u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative\u0026rdquo; documentary about Barry Goldwater, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, August 16, 2007. Features Barry Goldwater, George Will, Barry Goldwater, Jr., Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Al Franken, Julian Bond, Hillary Clinton, and Jack Valenti.\nRon Paul launches Arizona campaign at private home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, March 30, 2007.\nFollowed up by Einzige\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Ron Paul, Religious Kook,\u0026quot; my \u0026ldquo;Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul,\u0026quot; and \u0026ldquo;Ron Paul connected to white supremacists?\u0026quot;\nSkeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot; Caltech, Pasadena, California, June 2006.\nIntro and links to other summaries.\nJonathan Adler on federal environmental regulation.\nEugenie Scott on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives,\u0026quot; Robert S. Dietz Memorial Lecture at Arizona State University, Physical Sciences building, February 3, 2006.\nNational White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) Economic Crime Summit, November 8-9, 2005, downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and Freedom Summit, November 12-13, 2005, Grace Inn Ahwatukee.\nEconomic Crime Summit and Freedom Summit comparison/contrast/overview\u0026ndash;prayer vs. atheism debate, Terry Goddard, Roger Vanderpool, John Vincent, Kevin Robinson, Charles Cohen, George H. Smith, Eric Lounsbery, David Friedman, Chris Heward, Karen Kwiatkowski, Jim Bovard.\nFreedom Summit: Stuart Krone on technology and why we\u0026rsquo;re screwed.\nFreedom Summit: Steven Greer on aliens and conspiracy.\nFreedom Summit: Links to photos and other summaries.\nCSICOP Conference on \u0026ldquo;The Psychology of Belief,\u0026quot; Seattle, Washington, June 23-26, 1994.\nCSICOP Conference on \u0026ldquo;Fairness, Fraud, and Feminism: Culture Confronts Science,\u0026quot; Dallas, Texas, October 16-18, 1992.\nPart 1: Panel on multicultural approaches to science (moderator Eugenie Scott, Diana Marinez, Joseph Dunbar, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano), unofficial session on faith healing with Ole Anthony.\nPart 2: Intro remarks by Lee Nisbet, panel on gender issues in science and pseudoscience (moderator James Alcock, Carol Tavris, Susan Blackmore, Steven Goldberg), Richard Dawkins keynote on viruses of the mind.\nPart 3: Fraud in science panel (moderator Ray Hyman, Elie Shneour, Paul Friedman, Walter Stewart), Sergei Kapitza and Evry Schatzman on international skepticism, panel on crashed saucer claims (Philip Klass, James McGaha).\nPart 4: Robert Young on the Kecksburg meteor, Donald Schmitt on Roswell, awards banquet (Richard Dawkins, Henry Gordon, Andrew Skolnick), entertainment by Steve Shaw (now better known as Banachek), visit to Dealey Plaza.\nCSICOP Workshop on UFOs, Ramada Inn Airport Hotel, Tucson, Arizona, November 16-17, 1990. James McGaha, Robert Sheaffer, Robert Baker, and Ronald Story, all on UFOs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/index-of-conference-summaries.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a reverse-chronological list of conference and talk summaries I\u0026rsquo;ve written up, either at my blog or elsewhere.  Most pertain to skepticism and critical thinking in some way (and I\u0026rsquo;d like to think that all involve the application of skepticism and critical thinking to the topics at hand), some are political, and some involve information security.  I\u0026rsquo;ve got a few more of these in print form that are online in \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/arizona-skeptic-online-vol-1-1987-1988.html\"\u003ethe issues of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBruce Wagman on \u003ca href=\"/2010/04/many-species-of-animal-law.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Many Species of Animal Law,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e April 7, 2010, Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, Armstrong Hall 116. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/joel-garreau-on-radical-evolution.html\"\u003eJoel Garreau on Radical Evolution\u003c/a\u003e, November 18, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cspo.org/projects/plausibility/\"\u003eCSPO Plausibility Project\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/richard-carrier-on-ancient.html\"\u003eRichard Carrier on \u0026ldquo;Christianity and Science (Ancient and Modern),\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 8, 2009, Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, Home Town Buffet, Scottsdale.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/robert-b-laughlin-on-crime-of-reason.html\"\u003eRobert B. Laughlin on \u0026ldquo;The Crime of Reason,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor School of Law, Great Hall; 2009 Hogan \u0026amp; Hartson Jurimetrics Lecture in Honor of Lee Loevinger.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change_07.html\"\u003eRoger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation\u003c/a\u003e, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Decision Theater.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nRoger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation\u003c/a\u003e, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/robert-balling-on-climate-change.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nRobert Balling on climate change\u003c/a\u003e, October 30, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor L1-74.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/personalized-medicine-research-forum.html\"\u003ePersonalized medicine research forum\u003c/a\u003e, October 23, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, The Biodesign Institute.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/atheist-alliance-international.html\"\u003eAtheist Alliance International convention\u003c/a\u003e, October 2-4, 2009, Burbank Marriott, Burbank, California. Speakers: P.Z. Myers, Ed Buckner, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Martin Pera, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Gerardo Romero, Jonathan Kirsch, Eugenie Scott, Brian Parra.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/marco-iacoboni-on-imitation-and.html\"\u003eMarco Iacoboni on imitation and sociality\u003c/a\u003e, August 27, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, psychology department colloquium, MU202.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/joel-garreau-on-future-of-cities.html\"\u003eJoel Garreau on the future of cities\u003c/a\u003e, August 26, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes colloquium, Coor L1-10.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Amazing Meeting 7, July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 1: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003eIntroduction, Hal Bidlack, Phil Plait, James Randi, Bill Prady keynote\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 2: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-steele-plait.html\"\u003eFintan Steele, Phil Plait, Robert Lancaster\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 3: \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-swissrandi-ouellette.html\"\u003eJamy Ian Swiss/James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel (Steven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, Derek Bartholomaus), Joe Nickell\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 4: \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sgu-shermer-savage.html\"\u003eSkeptics Guide to the Universe/Rodrigues-Watson wedding, Michael Shermer, Adam Savage\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 5: \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-ethics-of-deception.html\"\u003ePanel on ethics of deception (D.J. Grothe, Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, Jamy Ian Swiss), Stephen Bauer, panel on skepticism and the media (Penn Jillette, Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, Jennifer Ouellette), Phil Plait\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 6: \u003ca href=\"/2009/08/amazing-meeting-7-sunday-paper-sessions.html\"\u003eSunday paper sessions, Million Dollar Challenge with Danish dowser Connie Sonne\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine Conference\u003c/span\u003e at The Amazing Meeting 7, July 9, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 1: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003eSteven Novella on science-based medicine\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 2: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003eDavid Gorski on cancer quackery\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 3: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003eHarriet Hall on chiropractic\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 4: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003eKimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 5: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003eMark Crislip on chronic Lyme disease\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 6: \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003eVal Jones on online health and social media, and Q\u0026amp;A panel\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAmerican Humanist Association annual conference\u003c/span\u003e at Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, Arizona, June 5-9, 2009.\u003cbr /\u003e\nSorry, \u003ca href=\"/2009/06/my-aha-workshop-session-on-thursday.html\"\u003eonly covered my own talk from the pre-conference workshops and the ArizonaCOR press conference\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/04/jeff-benedict-and-little-pink-house.html\" style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJeff Benedict on the Kelo case and his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLittle Pink House\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, April 15, 2009.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix\u003c/span\u003e, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 28, 2009.  Speakers: \u003ca href=\"/2009/03/skepticamp-phoenix-today.html\"\u003eTony Barnhart, Abraham Heward, David Jackemeyer, Don Lacey, Jim Lippard, Shannon Rankin, John Lynch, Jack Ray, David Weston, Mike Stackpole, Charlie Cavanaugh Toft, Xarold Trejo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDaniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s 2009 Beyond Center Lecture\u003c/span\u003e, Galvin Playhouse, Arizona State University, February 18, 2009, on \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/daniel-dennett-at-asu.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/bill-of-rights-celebration-at-wrigley.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBill of Rights celebration event\u003c/span\u003e at the Wrigley Mansion\u003c/a\u003e, Phoenix, Arizona, December 14, 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Amazing Meeting 6\u003c/span\u003e, June 19-22, 2008 at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eOverview and photo link\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 1: \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003eBanachek memory workshop\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 2: \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003eHal Bidlack, James Randi welcome, Ben Goldacre on homeopathy, Neil deGrasse Tyson keynote, Alec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics, Penn \u0026amp; Teller Q\u0026amp;A, George Hrab musical interlude, P.Z. Myers on bat wings, Richard Saunders on educational materials for kids, panel discussion on identifying as a skeptic (James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics whose name I didn\u0026rsquo;t catch).\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 3: \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003eMichael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe weird things, Sharon Begley on creationism and other weird beliefs, Derek and Swoopy on Skepticality and podcasting, Steven Novella on dualism and creationism, Jeff Wagg JREF update, Jim Underdown on the Independent Investigations Group and award to Randi, Randi on patching up relations with CSI (formerly CSICOP), Skeptologists pilot\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 4: \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003ePhil Plait on astronomy, Adam Savage on his Maltese falcon, Matthew Chapman on creationism and Science Debate 2008, Richard Wiseman on the \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; and mass spoonbending lesson, panel discussion on the limits of skepticism (Goldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders), Sunday conference papers: John Janks on Marfa lights, Don Nyberg on pseudoscience, Steve Cuno on myths in marketing, Tracy King on viral video\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 5: \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003eLee Graham on artificial creatures and real evolution, Christopher French on anomalistic psychology, Tim Farley on building skeptical tools online, Brian Dunning on The Skeptologists\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/gene-healy-on-cult-of-presidency.html\" style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eGene Healey on his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Cult of the Presidency\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, May 1, 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRichard Dawkins 2008 Beyond Center Lecture\u003c/span\u003e, Grady Gammage Auditorium, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 6, 2008, on \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/richard-dawkins-lecture-at-asu.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The God Delusion.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNew Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance \u0026ldquo;$-Gard\u0026rdquo; conference\u003c/span\u003e, February 22, 2008, Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Speakers: \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/new-mexico-infragard-conference.html\"\u003eFrank Abagnale on protecting yourself from fraud, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist on malware secrets, Alex Quintana on current trends in malware, Melissa McBee-Anderson on the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/ayaan-hirsi-ali-receives-goldwater.html\" style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nAyaan Hirsi Ali\u003c/a\u003e at the Phoenician Resort, Goldwater Institute award banquet, Phoenix, Arizona, December 7, 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScreening of \u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative\u0026rdquo; documentary about Barry Goldwater\u003c/span\u003e, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, August 16, 2007.  Features \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/mr-conservative.html\"\u003eBarry Goldwater, George Will, Barry Goldwater, Jr., Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Al Franken, Julian Bond, Hillary Clinton, and Jack Valenti\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/ron-paul-in-phoenix.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRon Paul launches Arizona campaign\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e at private home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, March 30, 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\nFollowed up by Einzige\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/ron-paul-religious-kook.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ron Paul, Religious Kook,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e my \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/spammers-and-criminals-for-ron-paul.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/ron-paul-connected-to-white.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ron Paul connected to white supremacists?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSkeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e Caltech, Pasadena, California, June 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/skeptics-society-conference.html\"\u003eIntro and links to other summaries\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/adler-on-federal-environmental.html\"\u003eJonathan Adler on federal environmental regulation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEugenie Scott on \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/eugenie-scott-gives-robert-s-dietz.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Robert S. Dietz Memorial Lecture at Arizona State University, Physical Sciences building, February 3, 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNational White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) Economic Crime Summit\u003c/span\u003e, November 8-9, 2005, downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eFreedom Summit\u003c/span\u003e, November 12-13, 2005, Grace Inn Ahwatukee.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/conferences-on-economic-crime-and.html\"\u003eEconomic Crime Summit and Freedom Summit comparison/contrast/overview\u0026ndash;prayer vs. atheism debate, Terry Goddard, Roger Vanderpool, John Vincent, Kevin Robinson, Charles Cohen, George H. Smith, Eric Lounsbery, David Friedman, Chris Heward, Karen Kwiatkowski, Jim Bovard\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nFreedom Summit: \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/freedom-summit-technological-fud.html\"\u003eStuart Krone on technology and why we\u0026rsquo;re screwed\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nFreedom Summit: \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/freedom-summit-complete-kookery.html\"\u003eSteven Greer on aliens and conspiracy\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nFreedom Summit: \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/freedom-summit-photos-and-blog-entries.html\"\u003eLinks to photos and other summaries\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2014/10/summary-of-1994-csicop-conference.html\"\u003eCSICOP Conference on \u0026ldquo;The Psychology of Belief,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/b\u003e Seattle, Washington, June 23-26, 1994.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCSICOP Conference on \u0026ldquo;Fairness, Fraud, and Feminism: Culture Confronts Science,\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e Dallas, Texas, October 16-18, 1992.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 1: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1992/1992december/december1992.htm#conference\"\u003ePanel on multicultural approaches to science (moderator Eugenie Scott, Diana Marinez, Joseph Dunbar, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano), unofficial session on faith healing with Ole Anthony\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 2: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993january/january1993.htm#conference\"\u003eIntro remarks by Lee Nisbet, panel on gender issues in science and pseudoscience (moderator James Alcock, Carol Tavris, Susan Blackmore, Steven Goldberg), Richard Dawkins keynote on viruses of the mind\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 3: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993february/february1993.htm#conference\"\u003eFraud in science panel (moderator Ray Hyman, Elie Shneour, Paul Friedman, Walter Stewart), Sergei Kapitza and Evry Schatzman on international skepticism, panel on crashed saucer claims (Philip Klass, James McGaha)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\nPart 4: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993march/march1993.htm#conference\"\u003eRobert Young on the Kecksburg meteor, Donald Schmitt on Roswell, awards banquet (Richard Dawkins, Henry Gordon, Andrew Skolnick), entertainment by Steve Shaw (now better known as Banachek), visit to Dealey Plaza\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCSICOP Workshop on UFOs\u003c/span\u003e, Ramada Inn Airport Hotel, Tucson, Arizona, November 16-17, 1990.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/skepticalbriefs199102.html\"\u003e James McGaha, Robert Sheaffer, Robert Baker, and Ronald Story, all on UFOs\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Index of Conference Summaries"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice short YouTube video documenting several cases of deception in the documentary \u0026ldquo;The Great Global Warming Swindle.\u0026quot; And on the same subject, I\u0026rsquo;m rather fond of an exchange between Martin Durkin, the producer of that film, and geneticist Armand Leroi, journalist Ben Goldacre, and science writer Simon Singh, which prompted Durkin to respond, \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re a big daft cock\u0026rdquo; after Leroi pointed out that the film had used completely erroneous data that was possibly even faked.\n(Via the Deltoid blog.)\nKtisophilos (2009-07-21):\nCf. a British court found 11 errors in Al \u0026quot;fighting global warming is like fighting the Nazis\u0026quot; Gore\u0026#39;s film An Inconvenient Truth. Aside from this, now matter how Obama wrecks the US economy even more with his green scheme, it won't make a detectable difference as long as China and India continue to increase their output. And Shikha Dalmia explains why they won't impoverish themselves to by refusing to:\nConsider what would be necessary to slash global greenhouse-gas emissions just 50% below 2000 levels by 2050—a far less aggressive goal than what the enviros say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe. According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce calculations, even if the West reduced its emissions by 80% below 2000 levels, developing countries would still have to return their emissions to 2000 levels to meet the 50% target. However, Indians currently consume roughly 15 times less energy per capita than Americans—and Chinese consume seven times less. Asking them, along with the rest of the developing world, to go back to 2000 emission levels with a 2050 population would mean putting them on a very drastic energy diet.\nThe human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes—for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach—would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.\nIn short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?\nAnonymous (2009-08-03):\nRE: Ktisophilos The US and indeed every other advanced economy has evolved without considering the environmental cost of products and services (externalities) and as such presents an inherently false representation of cost and profit. These externalities instead of simply vanishing have accumulated and are manifesting as delayed real economic costs. The emissions trading scheme seeks to recognise these externalised costs before the environmental deficit presents an insurmountable financial hurdle. SO in effect if the economy is already \u0026quot;wrecked\u0026quot; it has been wrecked by its own historical operation, not Obama's attempt to ensure its survival.\nYour argument regarding the developing world over simplifies the situation and fails to consider changes to changes to energy efficiency through the investment portion of a carbon economy, the income to these manufacturing hubs resulting from renewable technology and western investments in these nations through aid, and tools such as clean development mechanisms. Fundamentally, increased costs associated with emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes can will be significantly passed on the ultimate customer in the west due to the vast export volume of these economies.\nThere will be significant challenges for the developing world to address the costs of climate change, but to suggest the cost will be immediate suicide through starvation is superficial and lazy.\nLippard (2009-08-03):\nMark: I agree with your basic point about the negative externalities, but I lean towards _The Economist_\u0026#39;s view that a Pigouvian carbon tax is a better solution than a cap-and-trade system that hands out most of its credits for free and provides another potential arena for the same people who gamed the financial markets to game the system again.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/deception-in-great-global-warming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a nice short YouTube video documenting several cases of deception in the documentary \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Great Global Warming Swindle.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  And on the same subject, I\u0026rsquo;m rather fond of \u003ca href=\"http://ocean.mit.edu/%7Ecwunsch/papersonline/durkinemails.htm\"\u003ean exchange between Martin Durkin, the producer of that film, and geneticist Armand Leroi\u003c/a\u003e, journalist Ben Goldacre, and science writer Simon Singh, which prompted Durkin to respond, \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re a big daft cock\u0026rdquo; after Leroi pointed out that the film had used completely erroneous data that was possibly even faked.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/boj9ccV9htk\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/boj9ccV9htk\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/whats_wrong_with_the_great_glo.php\"\u003eDeltoid blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deception in \"The Great Global Warming Swindle\""},{"content":"One of the main points of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004 was to centralize oversight over a wide array of agencies with responsibility for the safety and security of the United States and its territories. The 9/11 Commission made 41 specific recommendations to Congress, and one of those was \u0026ldquo;create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security.\u0026rdquo; But that\u0026rsquo;s one that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been accomplished\u0026ndash;DHS oversight by Congress is through 86 separate committees and subcommittees (see chart below, click on it for the full-sized image).\nThe Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting have joined forces to investigate the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s efforts since its creation, and will be publishing a series of reports over the next several months which should prove quite interesting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/dhs-still-mess-five-years-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the main points of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004 was to centralize oversight over a wide array of agencies with responsibility for the safety and security of the United States and its territories.  The 9/11 Commission made 41 specific recommendations to Congress, and one of those was \u0026ldquo;create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security.\u0026rdquo;  But that\u0026rsquo;s one that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been accomplished\u0026ndash;DHS oversight by Congress is through 86 separate committees and subcommittees (see chart below, click on it for the full-sized image).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/\"\u003eCenter for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e and the Center for Investigative Reporting have joined forces to investigate the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s efforts since its creation, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1549/\"\u003ewill be publishing a series of reports over the next several months\u003c/a\u003e which should prove quite interesting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/img/HHR_graphic_full.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 350px; height: 267px;\" src=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/img/HHR_graphic_expand.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DHS still a mess, five years on"},{"content":"Looks like the chiropractic post has been referenced at a chiropractic forum, which is generating a fair amount of traffic:\nhttp://www.chiroweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/dcs_only/forumdisplay.cgi?action=displayprivate\u0026amp;amp;number=4\u0026amp;amp;topic=014324\nAnd the chronic Lyme disease post has been referenced at a Lyme disease forum:\nhttp://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7\u0026amp;amp;t=2623\u0026amp;amp;p=19265\nIt remains to be seen if this will produce any critical comments, though I noticed that an advocate for chiropractic, \u0026ldquo;nobs,\u0026rdquo; showed up in the comments at the Science-Based Medicine blog and made a mistaken inference about the conference content\u0026ndash;that it was 25% about chiropractic\u0026ndash;because he failed to realize that my conference summary had only covered the first four of the six speakers at the time.\nNothing yet from homeopaths that I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-posts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like the chiropractic post has been referenced at a chiropractic forum, which is generating a fair amount of traffic:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.chiroweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/dcs_only/forumdisplay.cgi?action=displayprivate\u0026amp;number=4\u0026amp;topic=014324\"\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.chiroweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/dcs_only/forumdisplay.cgi?action=displayprivate\u0026amp;amp;number=4\u0026amp;amp;topic=014324\"\u003ehttp://www.chiroweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/dcs_only/forumdisplay.cgi?action=displayprivate\u0026amp;amp;number=4\u0026amp;amp;topic=014324\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the chronic Lyme disease post has been referenced at a Lyme disease forum:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7\u0026amp;t=2623\u0026amp;p=19265\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7\u0026amp;amp;t=2623\u0026amp;amp;p=19265\"\u003ehttp://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7\u0026amp;amp;t=2623\u0026amp;amp;p=19265\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt remains to be seen if this will produce any critical comments, though I noticed that an advocate for chiropractic, \u0026ldquo;nobs,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=560\"\u003eshowed up in the comments at the Science-Based Medicine blog\u003c/a\u003e and made a mistaken inference about the conference content\u0026ndash;that it was 25% about chiropractic\u0026ndash;because he failed to realize that my conference summary had only covered the first four of the six speakers at the time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNothing yet from homeopaths that I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference posts yield new visitors"},{"content":"This is the sixth and final part of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is here. Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is here. Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is here. Part four, Dr. Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here. Part five, Dr. Mark Crislip on chronic Lyme disease, is here.\nThe sixth session speaker was Dr. Val Jones, CEO of BetterHealth, on \u0026ldquo;Online Health and Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.\u0026rdquo; In this last post of my SBM conference summary, I\u0026rsquo;ll cover her talk as well as the Q\u0026amp;A panel that concluded that day\u0026rsquo;s events.\nPersonal Story\nDr. Jones began her talk with her personal history\u0026ndash;she was raised in Nova Scotia by hippie parents from New York City and grew up on a farm with cows. She said her parents were \u0026ldquo;moderately weird\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they would ascribe magical powers to yogurt, but they vaccinated their children. She called herself a \u0026ldquo;shruggie\u0026rdquo; with respect to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)\u0026ndash;ambivalent about whether there could be anything to it.\nShe worked with the Ontario March of Dimes, became a doctor, did biophysics and vaccination research at the Mayo Clinic, and earned her M.D. in physical medicine at Columbia. She then worked at Medscape with George Lundberg, editor of JAMA, and created the Clinical Nutrition \u0026amp; Obesity journal there (at Medscape). She was then recruited by RevolutionHealth, an online provider of health information started by Steve Case of America Online. She described it as an \u0026ldquo;OnStar system for navigating the health care system.\u0026rdquo; She moved to Washington D.C. to take the job, and, as she put it, \u0026ldquo;entered the Twilight Zone.\u0026quot;\nRevolution Health\nShe served as an editorial director and medical reviewer with a staff of 100 doctors across the country, and \u0026ldquo;couldn\u0026rsquo;t believe the crap that came across [her] desk. Who are these people and why are they so into their colons?\u0026quot;\nAt one point, an article was submitted from a writer for Alternative Medicine magazine that claimed olive oil cures breast cancer. The study behind the story showed that breast cancer cells in a petri dish, exposed to a chemical found in olive oil, made some kind of genetic change\u0026ndash;that was transformed into an alleged cure for breast cancer.\nThe company developed a health tracker tool, and developers kept adding trackers based on what they thought would be cool, such as a \u0026ldquo;hot flash tracker.\u0026rdquo; She asked, \u0026ldquo;Why?\u0026rdquo; The developers answered, \u0026ldquo;so they can tell the doctor if a hot flash occurred at 2 or at 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock!\u0026rdquo; There was no clinical review of the tracking tools.\nMedicine Chest\nAnother product was developed called Medicine Chest, which allowed people to vote their medicines up or down for how much they like them. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not going to be misinformation, it\u0026rsquo;s the wisdom of crowds,\u0026rdquo; the developers said. Not only could users vote on their medicines that were listed, they could add suggestions of their own in free-format text fields. The display of the results on the site didn\u0026rsquo;t distinguish FDA-approved treatments from what people entered in on their own.\nThe result was that the best treatment for headaches, back pain, strains, etc. was narcotics, followed by marijuana. The best treatment for diabetes (without distinguishing type 1 from type 2) was dog walking.\nDr. Jones compared this to the Citizens\u0026rsquo; Briefing Book on Obama\u0026rsquo;s change.gov website, where the general public could vote on what they considered to be the most important issues, with the resulting winner being the legalization of marijuana.\nOther recommended treatments from the Medicine Chest feature included yogurt for colon cancer, acupuncture for ovarian cysts, herbal treatments for hip fracture, and steroids for cellulitis (which she observed is \u0026ldquo;very bad and dangerous\u0026rdquo;). Other similar sites took things to a further extreme, such as Patientslikeme.com, which allowed patients to conduct and report their own clinical trials online. This led to promotion of fish oil to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis and ALS. And beer and dogs as a treatment for lack of motivation.\nShe cited a quote from Poincare: \u0026ldquo;Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.\u0026quot;\nShe searched the Internet for help understanding the craziness, and came across Orac\u0026rsquo;s Respectful Insolence blog, which she followed for several months. The last straw for her at Revolution Health was when it promoted chelation as a treatment for autism, which could kill a child, and she felt violated her Hippocratic Oath.\nDr. Jones listed a set of psychological factors which lead people to wrong conclusions, of the sort you might find in Kahnemann \u0026amp; Tversky\u0026rsquo;s Judgment Under Uncertainty. On the list was the Hawthorne Effect, which purportedly showed that any change made in a business environment temporarily improves productivity. This effect was named after a study of worker productivity based on data collected after changes in lighting and other conditions at the Hawthorne Works between 1924 and 1932, but subsequent studies have failed to replicate the effect. The original data was recently rediscovered and reanalyzed by Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics) and John List, with the result that \u0026ldquo;we find that existing descriptions of supposedly remarkable data patterns prove to be entirely fictional. There are, however, hints of more subtle manifestations of a Hawthorne effect in the original data.\u0026quot;\nMiscellaneous Slides\nShe concluded her talk with a few slides with various observations, such as The Onion\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;NSF: Science Hard\u0026rdquo; article and a quote from Surgeon General Rich Carmona that the average American understands medicine at the 4th to 6th grade level. She pointed out that there\u0026rsquo;s a cottage industry of quack cancer treatment providers around the M.D. Anderson cancer center, taking advantage of cancer patients. She criticized the 1994 passage of DSHEA and its signing into law by Bill Clinton, which exempted dietary supplements from FDA approval requirements unless they\u0026rsquo;re found to be harmful. She quoted lots of examples of harm from whatstheharm.net. She recommended Memorial Sloan Kettering\u0026rsquo;s herbal guide, noting that \u0026ldquo;doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026rdquo; is the conclusion for most descriptions, and recommended ClinicalTrials.gov for accurate information. And she closed with a quote from Hippocrates: \u0026ldquo;There are two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.\u0026quot;\nQ\u0026amp;A\nThere was then a Q\u0026amp;A panel with all speakers. The first questioner came up to note that the CDC of Maine recently sent pediatricians copies of Paul Offit\u0026rsquo;s book, Autism\u0026rsquo;s False Prophets. He also noted that humor of the sort in the \u0026ldquo;That Mitchell and Webb Look\u0026rdquo; clip about the homeopathic emergency room was effective, and we need more things like that. Steven Novella responded that we need lots of different things, not any one thing, because AltMed has its marketing down pat.\nAnother questioner asked if there was a way for social media to work effectively in medicine, to which Dr. Jones responded that MedHealth \u0026ldquo;has lifeguards in the pool\u0026ndash;physicians to moderate.\u0026rdquo; In a later comment, she pointed out that MedHealth has 200-300 doctors who answer questions for free, because the referrals they get as a result more than make up for the [opportunity cost].\nSomeone else said that the book Snake Oil Science needs to be turned into an easily usable website, and complained that Quackwatch is hard to use and too polemical. Dr. Novella agreed that SBM needs to provide more, better, and more usable information. It would be good to have a place where you can find overviews on topics, allow you to dig as deep into technical detail as you want, and provides a list of sentinel references. (This is essentially what the TalkOrigins Archive provides for the creation/evolution debate, in particular with Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s Index of Creationist Claims; the power of providing these kinds of broad and deep archives of reliable material was one of the key points of the talk I gave in June to the American Humanist Association.)\nAnother questioner asked whether there is anything we can do to get rid of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Dr. Novella said that it is becoming more widely known that NCCAM\u0026rsquo;s Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, its largest and most expensive trial to date, is loaded with \u0026ldquo;quacks and criminals\u0026rdquo; (guilty of insurance fraud and worse) and \u0026ldquo;totally corrupt,\u0026rdquo; as has been reported by the Associated Press in several good stories. Bioethicist Art Caplan has pointed out that these are unethical experiments on human subjects that would (should?) never be tolerated by NIH. (NCCAM is part of NIH.) NCCAM has spent $1.2 billion $2.5 billion of taxpayer money to date, and produced zero new treatments.\nSomeone raised the question of what kinds of questions to ask your own doctors to make sure they\u0026rsquo;re giving good advice. Dr. Jones suggested asking, \u0026ldquo;Do you use UpToDate?\u0026rdquo;, which is a service that searches the world medical literature regularly and provides current data reviewed by 300 full-time reviewers. Dr. Gorski suggested asking whether a doctor follows the NCCN guidelines, which are evidence-based cancer treatment recommendations. Dr. Novella observed that just using Google, a \u0026ldquo;pull approach,\u0026rdquo; how most people look for medical information online, is highly unreliable because \u0026ldquo;bad sites are good at looking like good sites.\u0026rdquo; (I\u0026rsquo;d suggest that a more specialized search engine is a better way\u0026ndash;Tim Farley suggested some ways of creating such capabilities at TAM6 last year.) Dr. Hall said that Stephen Barrett\u0026rsquo;s rule of thumb for distinguishing good from bad sites is that \u0026ldquo;if it\u0026rsquo;s selling something, it\u0026rsquo;s a bad site.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how effective that rule is, since even good sites are typically selling something.\nSomeone raised a problem for use of prior probability, noting that it could have made us miss out on the discovery of lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder, since it was originally postulated on rather shaky grounds. He gave a second example as SSRIs, which are effective in treating depression, but the original MAOI hypothesis of their operation has been refuted. Dr. Novella responded by saying that first of all, no known mechanism should imply a neutral prior probability (i.e., 0.5). Second, in deciding what to research, it\u0026rsquo;s better to err on the side of the implausible\u0026ndash;but not for treatment. He further suggested that lack of mechanism should not be equated with implausibility. Dr. Atwood seconded that there is a difference between lack of mechanism and contravention of a physical law, and made reference to the discussion that he and I had during the break. He gave aspirin as another example of a substance where the mechanism was discovered later than its effectiveness, and expressed doubt about the questioner\u0026rsquo;s story of the discovery of lithium\u0026rsquo;s usefulness.\nDavid Whitlock raised the question of framing, asking why we don\u0026rsquo;t draw the distinction as science-based vs. faith-based medicine. Dr. Novella responded that this would cause more problems than it would solve, at least in the United States, because of the immunities granted to the free exercise of religion. A questioner wondered whether it might at least stop the government from paying for \u0026ldquo;faith-based\u0026rdquo; medicine under single payer. (I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;re likely to get single payer, and I note that we still have an Office of Faith-Based Programs, so I think this is not a good suggestion.) Dr. Gorski noted that very little CAM is actually religion-based.\nA questioner asked how corrupt the Cochrane data is, to which Dr. Atwood replied that the contributions on CAM subjects are unreliable, but reviews of substances are good and Cochrane in general is good. Dr. Novella said that he uses Cochrane to get studies and results, but ignores their conclusions, and pays close attention to authorship. Dr. Hall said that when it comes to meta-analysis, if the result is negative, you should believe it, but if the result is positive, you should look further. Dr. Novella noted that the systematic reviews in Cochrane aren\u0026rsquo;t actually meta-analyses.\nAnd that pretty much wrapped up the day for the Science-based Medicine conference.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;d like to continue on to my summary of The Amazing Meeting 7, it begins here.\nUPDATE (July 19, 2009): I\u0026rsquo;ve been reminded that I neglected to mention one of the more interesting questioners, a massage therapist who stood up and said that he was probably the only \u0026ldquo;woo practitioner\u0026rdquo; in the room (though the doctors disagreed that massage therapy really counts as \u0026ldquo;woo\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and see Dr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s talk, where he classified massage therapy as having high prior plausibility), who regularly attends CAM conferences. He complimented the speakers and the audience for having a level of displayed intelligence, sophistication, and scientific knowledge that is not seen at those CAM conferences.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2009-07-22):\nSnake Oil Science is an excellent book, by the way.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the sixth and final part of my summary of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself.  Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part four, Dr. Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part five, Dr. Mark Crislip on chronic Lyme disease, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe sixth session speaker was Dr. Val Jones, CEO of BetterHealth, on \u0026ldquo;Online Health and Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.\u0026rdquo;  In this last post of my SBM conference summary, I\u0026rsquo;ll cover her talk as well as the Q\u0026amp;A panel that concluded that day\u0026rsquo;s events.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePersonal Story\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Jones began her talk with her personal history\u0026ndash;she was raised in Nova Scotia by hippie parents from New York City and grew up on a farm with cows.  She said her parents were \u0026ldquo;moderately weird\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they would ascribe magical powers to yogurt, but they vaccinated their children.  She called herself a \u0026ldquo;shruggie\u0026rdquo; with respect to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)\u0026ndash;ambivalent about whether there could be anything to it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe worked with the Ontario March of Dimes, became a doctor, did biophysics and vaccination research at the Mayo Clinic, and earned her M.D. in physical medicine at Columbia.  She then worked at Medscape with George Lundberg, editor of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJAMA\u003c/span\u003e, and created the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClinical Nutrition \u0026amp; Obesity\u003c/span\u003e journal there (at Medscape).  She was then recruited by RevolutionHealth, an online provider of health information started by Steve Case of America Online.  She described it as an \u0026ldquo;OnStar system for navigating the health care system.\u0026rdquo;  She moved to Washington D.C. to take the job, and, as she put it, \u0026ldquo;entered the Twilight Zone.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRevolution Health\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe served as an editorial director and medical reviewer with a staff of 100 doctors across the country, and \u0026ldquo;couldn\u0026rsquo;t believe the crap that came across [her] desk.  Who are these people and why are they so into their colons?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt one point, an article was submitted from a writer for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAlternative Medicine\u003c/span\u003e magazine that claimed olive oil cures breast cancer.  The study behind the story showed that breast cancer cells in a petri dish, exposed to a chemical found in olive oil, made some kind of genetic change\u0026ndash;that was transformed into an alleged cure for breast cancer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe company developed a health tracker tool, and developers kept adding trackers based on what they thought would be cool, such as a \u0026ldquo;hot flash tracker.\u0026rdquo;  She asked, \u0026ldquo;Why?\u0026rdquo;  The developers answered, \u0026ldquo;so they can tell the doctor if a hot flash occurred at 2 or at 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock!\u0026rdquo;  There was no clinical review of the tracking tools.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMedicine Chest\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother product was developed called Medicine Chest, which allowed people to vote their medicines up or down for how much they like them.  \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not going to be misinformation, it\u0026rsquo;s the wisdom of crowds,\u0026rdquo; the developers said.  Not only could users vote on their medicines that were listed, they could add suggestions of their own in free-format text fields.  The display of the results on the site didn\u0026rsquo;t distinguish FDA-approved treatments from what people entered in on their own.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe result was that the best treatment for headaches, back pain, strains, etc. was narcotics, followed by marijuana.  The best treatment for diabetes (without distinguishing type 1 from type 2) was dog walking.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Jones compared this to the Citizens\u0026rsquo; Briefing Book on Obama\u0026rsquo;s change.gov website, where the general public could vote on what they considered to be the most important issues, with the resulting winner being the legalization of marijuana.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOther recommended treatments from the Medicine Chest feature included yogurt for colon cancer, acupuncture for ovarian cysts, herbal treatments for hip fracture, and steroids for cellulitis (which she observed is \u0026ldquo;very bad and dangerous\u0026rdquo;).  Other similar sites took things to a further extreme, such as Patientslikeme.com, which allowed patients to conduct and report their own clinical trials online.  This led to promotion of fish oil to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis and ALS.  And beer and dogs as a treatment for lack of motivation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe cited a quote from Poincare: \u0026ldquo;Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe searched the Internet for help understanding the craziness, and came across Orac\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/\"\u003eRespectful Insolence blog\u003c/a\u003e, which she followed for several months.  The last straw for her at Revolution Health was when it promoted chelation as a treatment for autism, which could kill a child, and she felt violated her Hippocratic Oath.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Jones listed a set of psychological factors which lead people to wrong conclusions, of the sort you might find in Kahnemann \u0026amp; Tversky\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases/dp/0521284147/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJudgment Under Uncertainty\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  On the list was the Hawthorne Effect, which purportedly showed that any change made in a business environment temporarily improves productivity.  This effect was named after a study of worker productivity based on data collected after changes in lighting and other conditions at the Hawthorne Works between 1924 and 1932, but subsequent studies have failed to replicate the effect.  The original data \u003ca href=\"http://www.nber.org/papers/w15016\"\u003ewas recently rediscovered and reanalyzed by Steven Levitt (author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFreakonomics\u003c/span\u003e) and John List\u003c/a\u003e, with the result that \u0026ldquo;we find that existing descriptions of supposedly remarkable data patterns prove to be entirely fictional. There are, however, hints of more subtle manifestations of a Hawthorne effect in the original data.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMiscellaneous Slides\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe concluded her talk with a few slides with various observations, such as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38575\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;NSF: Science Hard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e article and a quote from Surgeon General Rich Carmona that the average American understands medicine at the 4th to 6th grade level.  She pointed out that there\u0026rsquo;s a cottage industry of quack cancer treatment providers around the M.D. Anderson cancer center, taking advantage of cancer patients.  She criticized the 1994 passage of DSHEA and its signing into law by Bill Clinton, which exempted dietary supplements from FDA approval requirements unless they\u0026rsquo;re found to be harmful.  She quoted lots of examples of harm from \u003ca href=\"http://whatstheharm.net/\"\u003ewhatstheharm.net\u003c/a\u003e.  She recommended \u003ca href=\"http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11570.cfm\"\u003eMemorial Sloan Kettering\u0026rsquo;s herbal guide\u003c/a\u003e, noting that \u0026ldquo;doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026rdquo; is the conclusion for most descriptions, and recommended ClinicalTrials.gov for accurate information.  And she closed with a quote from Hippocrates:  \u0026ldquo;There are two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQ\u0026amp;A\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere was then a Q\u0026amp;A panel with all speakers.  The first questioner came up to note that the CDC of Maine recently sent pediatricians copies of Paul Offit\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Autisms-False-Prophets-Science-Medicine/dp/0231146361/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAutism\u0026rsquo;s False Prophets\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  He also noted that humor of the sort in the \u0026ldquo;That Mitchell and Webb Look\u0026rdquo; clip about the homeopathic emergency room was effective, and we need more things like that.  Steven Novella responded that we need lots of different things, not any one thing, because AltMed has its marketing down pat.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked if there was a way for social media to work effectively in medicine, to which Dr. Jones responded that MedHealth \u0026ldquo;has lifeguards in the pool\u0026ndash;physicians to moderate.\u0026rdquo;  In a later comment, she pointed out that MedHealth has 200-300 doctors who answer questions for free, because the referrals they get as a result more than make up for the [opportunity cost].\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomeone else said that the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary-Alternative/dp/0195383427/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSnake Oil Science\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e needs to be turned into an easily usable website, and complained that Quackwatch is hard to use and too polemical.  Dr. Novella agreed that SBM needs to provide more, better, and more usable information.  It would be good to have a place where you can find overviews on topics, allow you to dig as deep into technical detail as you want, and provides a list of sentinel references.  (This is essentially what the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003eTalkOrigins Archive\u003c/a\u003e provides for the creation/evolution debate, in particular with \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html\"\u003eMark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s Index of Creationist Claims\u003c/a\u003e; the power of providing these kinds of broad and deep archives of reliable material was one of the key points of \u003ca href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/lippard/2009ahalippard\"\u003ethe talk I gave in June to the American Humanist Association\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked whether there is anything we can do to get rid of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  Dr. Novella said that it is becoming more widely known that NCCAM\u0026rsquo;s Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, its largest and most expensive trial to date, is loaded with \u0026ldquo;quacks and criminals\u0026rdquo; (guilty of insurance fraud and worse) and \u0026ldquo;totally corrupt,\u0026rdquo; as has been reported by the Associated Press in several good stories.  Bioethicist Art Caplan has pointed out that these are unethical experiments on human subjects that would (should?) never be tolerated by NIH.  (NCCAM is part of NIH.)  NCCAM has spent \u003cstrike\u003e$1.2 billion\u003c/strike\u003e \u003cA HREF = \"http://abcnews.go.com/Business/WireStory?id=7804031\u0026page=1\"\u003e$2.5 billion\u003c/A\u003e of taxpayer money to date, and produced zero new treatments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomeone raised the question of what kinds of questions to ask your own doctors to make sure they\u0026rsquo;re giving good advice.  Dr. Jones suggested asking, \u0026ldquo;Do you use UpToDate?\u0026rdquo;, which is a service that searches the world medical literature regularly and provides current data reviewed by 300 full-time reviewers.  Dr. Gorski suggested asking whether a doctor follows \u003ca href=\"http://www.nccn.org/index.asp\"\u003ethe NCCN guidelines, which are evidence-based cancer treatment recommendations\u003c/a\u003e.  Dr. Novella observed that just using Google, a \u0026ldquo;pull approach,\u0026rdquo; how most people look for medical information online, is highly unreliable because \u0026ldquo;bad sites are good at looking like good sites.\u0026rdquo;  (I\u0026rsquo;d suggest that a more specialized search engine is a better way\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003eTim Farley suggested some ways of creating such capabilities at TAM6 last year\u003c/a\u003e.)  Dr. Hall said that Stephen Barrett\u0026rsquo;s rule of thumb for distinguishing good from bad sites is that \u0026ldquo;if it\u0026rsquo;s selling something, it\u0026rsquo;s a bad site.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how effective that rule is, since even good sites are typically selling something.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomeone raised a problem for use of prior probability, noting that it could have made us miss out on the discovery of lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder, since it was originally postulated on rather shaky grounds.  He gave a second example as SSRIs, which are effective in treating depression, but the original MAOI hypothesis of their operation has been refuted.  Dr. Novella responded by saying that first of all, no known mechanism should imply a neutral prior probability (i.e., 0.5).  Second, in deciding what to research, it\u0026rsquo;s better to err on the side of the implausible\u0026ndash;but not for treatment.   He further suggested that lack of mechanism should not be equated with implausibility.  Dr. Atwood seconded that there is a difference between lack of mechanism and contravention of a physical law, and made reference to the discussion that he and I had during the break.  He gave aspirin as another example of a substance where the mechanism was discovered later than its effectiveness, and expressed doubt about the questioner\u0026rsquo;s story of the discovery of lithium\u0026rsquo;s usefulness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Whitlock raised the question of framing, asking why we don\u0026rsquo;t draw the distinction as science-based vs. faith-based medicine.  Dr. Novella responded that this would cause more problems than it would solve, at least in the United States, because of the immunities granted to the free exercise of religion.  A questioner wondered whether it might at least stop the government from paying for \u0026ldquo;faith-based\u0026rdquo; medicine under single payer.  (I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;re likely to get single payer, and I note that we still have an Office of Faith-Based Programs, so I think this is not a good suggestion.)  Dr. Gorski noted that very little CAM is actually religion-based.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA questioner asked how corrupt the Cochrane data is, to which Dr. Atwood replied that the contributions on CAM subjects are unreliable, but reviews of substances are good and Cochrane in general is good.  Dr. Novella said that he uses Cochrane to get studies and results, but ignores their conclusions, and pays close attention to authorship.  Dr. Hall said that when it comes to meta-analysis, if the result is negative, you should believe it, but if the result is positive, you should look further.  Dr. Novella noted that the systematic reviews in Cochrane aren\u0026rsquo;t actually meta-analyses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that pretty much wrapped up the day for the Science-based Medicine conference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;d like to continue on to my summary of The Amazing Meeting 7, it begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 19, 2009):  I\u0026rsquo;ve been reminded that I neglected to mention one of the more interesting questioners, a massage therapist who stood up and said that he was probably the only \u0026ldquo;woo practitioner\u0026rdquo; in the room (though the doctors disagreed that massage therapy really counts as \u0026ldquo;woo\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and see Dr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s talk, where he classified massage therapy as having high prior plausibility), who regularly attends CAM conferences.  He complimented the speakers and the audience for having a level of displayed intelligence, sophistication, and scientific knowledge that is not seen at those CAM conferences.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 6: online health and social media, and Q\u0026A"},{"content":"This is part five of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is here. Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is here. Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is here. Part four, Dr. Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here.\nThe fifth session speaker was Dr. Mark Crislip, infectious disease specialist and host of the Quackcast podcast, on \u0026ldquo;Lyme from the IDSA to the ILADS to the ABA.\u0026quot;\nLike several of the other speakers, Dr. Crislip began with a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, saying that he had \u0026ldquo;barely any\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;[hasn\u0026rsquo;t] spoken to a drug rep in 25 years.\u0026quot;\nHe started his talk with a description of Lyme disease. It\u0026rsquo;s caused by a spirochete related to syphilis, that comes in three varieties, European, Asian, and North American. The latter is Borellia burgdorferi, a nasty little organism that lives in ticks, primarily deer ticks. It\u0026rsquo;s transmitted via a tick bite, requiring 36 hours of attachment for transmission, and has grown in prevalence in the northeastern United States with the growth of the deer population. In the northeastern U.S., most ticks have Lyme, while in the northwestern U.S., only 1.3% of ticks have Lyme, because those ticks feed on the blood of a fence-sitting lizard that contains something that kills the spirochetes. (Here, Dr. Crislip joked that despite the presence of numerous fence-sitting lizards in Washington, D.C., the effect doesn\u0026rsquo;t work there.)\nNorth American Lyme disease goes through three stages:\nskin rash, arthritisspreads to whole body, causes meningitisresults in encephalomyelitis and neurological symptomsThere are drugs that work well to treat the disease at all three stages.\nHowever, there are \u0026ldquo;also people who think they have Lyme but don\u0026rsquo;t,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;post-Lyme disease.\u0026quot;\nTwo Camps\nDr. Crislip identified two groups that have radically different views about Lyme disease:\n1. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).\n2. The International Lme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS)\nThe latter says that Lyme is common, hard to diagnose, and \u0026ldquo;requires infinite antibiotic treatment.\u0026rdquo; The former says nearly the opposite.\nThe New England Journal of Medicine published a critical appraisal of \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo; which put the sufferers into four categories:\n1. Symptoms of unknown cause, no evidence of B. bergdorferi.\n2. Well-defined illness unrelated to B. Bergdorferi (e.g., ringworm).\n3. No history of Lyme disease, but blood contains B. Bergdorferi antibodies.\n4. Post-Lyme disease syndrome, chronic illness.\nThe study performed controlled trials of those in category four, and concluded that there is no evidence of B. Bergdorferi persisting beyond treatment, the name \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo; is a misnomer, and there is no justification for continued antibiotic treatment of such persons.\nDr. Crislip then stated that the two camps present a false dichotomy, but that the truth is closer to the IDSA position. He asked, \u0026ldquo;is there asymptomatic Lyme?\u0026rdquo;, and answered \u0026ldquo;yes.\u0026rdquo; 7% of test subjects have asymptomatic seroconversion (show B. Bergdorferi antibodies) in vaccine trial placebo groups. He asked, \u0026ldquo;can [Lyme be] persistent due to antibiotic resistance?\u0026rdquo;, and answered that there is no good data of that.\nHe pointed out that Borellia can exist in three forms, the spirochete, a cyst, and an L-shaped form with no cell wall. The cysts appear when the organism is stressed, but isn\u0026rsquo;t found in humans (and is supported in fewer than 25 references in PubMed) and the L-shaped form can be made in the lab but doesn\u0026rsquo;t survive in humans.\nDiagnostic Testing\nDr. Crislip said that the standard test for Lyme disease is a two-step process, an ELISA test confirmed with a Western Blot (the same process used for testing for HIV). With classic Lyme disease, this is a very reliable method. It can also be tested with PCR and with antigen assays, and \u0026ldquo;there is genotypic variation in Lyme that could potentially make the two-step test less sensitive.\u0026quot;\nThere are also labs which perform their own unvalidated tests, such as a lab in Texas that he says \u0026ldquo;almost always yield[s] positive results.\u0026rdquo; These labs with unvalidated diagnostic tests have caused the CDC and FDA to issue warnings about non-valid Lyme tests.\nDr. Crislip posted a list of alleged symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, which was a very long list including \u0026ldquo;unexplained hair loss\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;feeling as if you are losing your mind,\u0026rdquo; along with another list of alleged symptoms of chronic candida, and noted that they were quite similar. Using such lists, virtually any symptom is an indicator of these alleged chronic conditions.\nThe ILADS guidelines go even further, and say such things as:\nThe labs are all unreliable, so treat for Lyme even if the test is negative.The primary symptom is that the patient thinks they have the condition.Physical findings are nonspecific and often normal.If the Western blot result is ambiguous, treat it as positive (the opposite of what you do with HIV).A comparison to tuberculosis and leprosy provides justification for long-term antibiotic treatment (even though those diseases are biologically dissimilar to Lyme).In short, the ILADS guidelines provide a nonfalsifiable definition of Lyme disease.\nThe best trials in the NEJM treated Lyme disease patients with a month of cipro (and?) doxycycline. The \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo; advocates say that the immune system is damaged with antibiotic use, and then Lyme disease increases as the immune response declines\u0026ndash;based on no data.\nIf you don\u0026rsquo;t have the data, sue\nThe state of Connecticut passed a bill \u0026ldquo;giving doctors immunity for giving infinite supplies of antibiotics\u0026rdquo; to patients purportedly suffering from \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease.\u0026rdquo; Since the IDSA guidelines are against long-term antibiotic use, the Connecticut Attorney General sued the IDSA. They couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford $250,000 in legal expenses, so they settled the case.\nDr. Crislip concluded by pointing out that the cause of this unsubstantiated syndrome will be promoted by a new film coming out, called \u0026ldquo;Under Our Skin,\u0026rdquo; which has the tag line \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s no medicine for someone like you.\u0026rdquo; Crislip noted that of the two doctors in the film promoting this illness, one lost his license for diagnosing Lyme disease over the telephone.\n(Part six of my conference summary, on online health and social media, and the final Q\u0026amp;A panel session, is here.)\nNickname (2009-11-01):\nWow, a lot of slanted opinion in this article. It doesn\u0026#39;t take a genius to figure out that when the medical establishment is publishing obviously propagandist articles like \u0026quot;A Critical Appraisal of Chronic Lyme Disease\u0026quot; by the same authors that came up with the diagnosis and treatment guidelines, that something has gone horribly wrong in medicine. Check out the conflicts of interest published along with the article: Dr. Feder reports receiving lecture fees from Merck and serving as an expert witness in medical-malpractice cases related to Lyme disease. Dr. Johnson reports holding patents on diagnostic antigens for Lyme disease. Dr. O'Connell reports serving as an expert witness related to Lyme disease issues in civil and criminal cases in England. Dr. Shapiro reports serving as an expert witness in medical-malpractice cases related to Lyme disease, reviewing claims of disability related to Lyme disease for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and receiving speaker's fees from Merck and Sanofi-Aventis. Dr. Steere reports receiving a research grant from Viramed and fees from Novartis. Dr. Wormser reports receiving research grants related to Lyme disease from Immunetics, Bio-Rad, and Biopeptides and education grants from Merck and AstraZeneca to New York Medical College for visiting lecturers for infectious-disease grand rounds, being part owner of Diaspex (a company that is now inactive with no products or services), owning equity in Abbott, serving as an expert witness in a medical-malpractice case, and being retained in other medical-malpractice cases involving Lyme disease. He may become a consultant to Biopeptides. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.\nI think I will have to go with Upton Sinclair on this one. \u0026quot;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-11-01):\na_riot: You say there is \u0026quot;a lot of slanted opinion in this article,\u0026quot; but you didn\u0026#39;t identify any. What I wrote is a summary of Dr. Crislip\u0026#39;s presentation. You\u0026#39;ll note that although he cited the NEJM article, he \u0026quot;stated that the two camps present a false dichotomy.\u0026quot; I agree with you that if someone has financial interests in holding and arguing for a particular position, that is a reason for skepticism\u0026ndash;and is the reason for academic disclosure standards on such article publications.\nI also think that there is good evidence that some diseases of recent vintage without obvious causes do have real causes beyond the psychological, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, which many doctors have been skeptical about but now has been correlated with the XMRV retrovirus (which may not be the actual cause). New developments in the emerging field of \u0026quot;personalized medicine\u0026quot; will probably be revolutionary in identifying new diseases and subtypes of diseases.\nThat said, however, there are obviously still significant psychological and sociological factors that can lead to erroneous reports, and the main upshot of Dr. Crislip's talk seems to be that there is little or no evidence that what is called \u0026quot;chronic lyme disease\u0026quot; is related to the spirochete that causes lyme disease, and you've presented no evidence to the contrary.\nNickname (2010-04-24):\n\u0026quot;the main upshot of Dr. Crislip\u0026#39;s talk seems to be that there is little or no evidence that what is called \u0026quot;chronic lyme disease\u0026quot; is related to the spirochete that causes lyme disease, and you\u0026#39;ve presented no evidence to the contrary.\u0026quot; There are plenty of peer reviewed studies showing the persistence of borrelia past the standard 2-4 weeks of treatment both in animals and humans, and I am sure whoever has the desire can easily find them. Ask any veterinarian, as they correctly treat lyme disease as a relapsing disease that is very dangerous. Animals are treated more carefully than humans when it comes to this illness. The 'there is no scientific evidence that\u0026hellip;' ruse is often used to try and discredit anyone not in the medical establishment, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are no double-blind placebo controlled studies showing that banging your head against the wall can cause concussion. So I guess you wouldn't recommend I stop?\nLippard (2010-04-26):\nYou seem to be asserting that chronic Lyme disease is caused by the persistence of borrelia beyond original treatment, but the best available evidence is that diagnoses of chronic Lyme disease are being made in the absence of supporting evidence of that, similar to past erroneous diagnoses of \u0026quot;tertiary syphilis.\u0026quot; The recommended treatment also seems to be long-term use of antibiotics, which the available evidence also suggests is not effective. We don't need double-blind placebo controlled trials to learn anything, but it certainly seems to be the best method for determining the efficacy of medical treatments of chronic conditions. Your example of concussion isn't analogous.\nRefs:\nNeuroLogica Blog, \u0026quot;The NEJM Takes on Lyme Quackery\u0026quot;\nScience-Based Medicine Blog, \u0026quot;Lyme disease\u0026ndash;who is credible?\u0026quot;\nScience-Based Medicine Blog, \u0026quot;Define the disease first\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part five of my summary of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself.  Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part four, Dr. Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe fifth session speaker was \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=228\"\u003eDr. Mark Crislip\u003c/a\u003e, infectious disease specialist and host of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.quackcast.com/\"\u003eQuackcast\u003c/a\u003e podcast, on \u0026ldquo;Lyme from the IDSA to the ILADS to the ABA.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLike several of the other speakers, Dr. Crislip began with a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, saying that he had \u0026ldquo;barely any\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;[hasn\u0026rsquo;t] spoken to a drug rep in 25 years.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe started his talk with a description of Lyme disease.  It\u0026rsquo;s caused by a spirochete related to syphilis, that comes in three varieties, European, Asian, and North American.  The latter is \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBorellia burgdorferi\u003c/span\u003e, a nasty little organism that lives in ticks, primarily deer ticks.  It\u0026rsquo;s transmitted via a tick bite, requiring 36 hours of attachment for transmission, and has grown in prevalence in the northeastern United States with the growth of the deer population.  In the northeastern U.S., most ticks have Lyme, while in the northwestern U.S., only 1.3% of ticks have Lyme, because those ticks feed on the blood of \u003ca href=\"http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/herps/scel-occ.html\"\u003ea fence-sitting lizard\u003c/a\u003e that contains something that kills the spirochetes.  (Here, Dr. Crislip joked that despite the presence of numerous fence-sitting lizards in Washington, D.C., the effect doesn\u0026rsquo;t work there.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNorth American Lyme disease goes through three stages:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003eskin rash, arthritis\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003espreads to whole body, causes meningitis\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eresults in encephalomyelitis and neurological symptoms\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eThere are drugs that work well to treat the disease at all three stages.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowever, there are \u0026ldquo;also people who think they have Lyme but don\u0026rsquo;t,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;post-Lyme disease.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTwo Camps\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Crislip identified two groups that have radically different views about Lyme disease:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).\u003cbr /\u003e2.  The International Lme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe latter says that Lyme is common, hard to diagnose, and \u0026ldquo;requires infinite antibiotic treatment.\u0026rdquo;  The former says nearly the opposite.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/14/1422\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew England Journal of Medicine\u003c/span\u003e published a critical appraisal of \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which put the sufferers into four categories:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Symptoms of unknown cause, no evidence of B. bergdorferi.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Well-defined illness unrelated to B. Bergdorferi (e.g., ringworm).\u003cbr /\u003e3. No history of Lyme disease, but blood contains B. Bergdorferi antibodies.\u003cbr /\u003e4. Post-Lyme disease syndrome, chronic illness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe study performed controlled trials of those in category four, and concluded that there is no evidence of B. Bergdorferi persisting beyond treatment, the name \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo; is a misnomer, and there is no justification for continued antibiotic treatment of such persons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Crislip then stated that the two camps present a false dichotomy, but that the truth is closer to the IDSA position.  He asked, \u0026ldquo;is there asymptomatic Lyme?\u0026rdquo;, and answered \u0026ldquo;yes.\u0026rdquo;  7% of test subjects have asymptomatic seroconversion (show B. Bergdorferi antibodies) in vaccine trial placebo groups.  He asked, \u0026ldquo;can [Lyme be] persistent due to antibiotic resistance?\u0026rdquo;, and answered that there is no good data of that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe pointed out that Borellia can exist in three forms, the spirochete, a cyst, and an L-shaped form with no cell wall.  The cysts appear when the organism is stressed, but isn\u0026rsquo;t found in humans (and is supported in fewer than 25 references in PubMed) and the L-shaped form can be made in the lab but doesn\u0026rsquo;t survive in humans.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDiagnostic Testing\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Crislip said that the standard test for Lyme disease is a two-step process, an ELISA test confirmed with a Western Blot (the same process used for testing for HIV).  With classic Lyme disease, this is a very reliable method.  It can also be tested with PCR and with antigen assays, and \u0026ldquo;there is genotypic variation in Lyme that could potentially make the two-step test less sensitive.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are also labs which perform their own unvalidated tests, such as a lab in Texas that he says \u0026ldquo;almost always yield[s] positive results.\u0026rdquo;  These labs with unvalidated diagnostic tests have caused the CDC and FDA to issue warnings about non-valid Lyme tests.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Crislip posted a list of alleged symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, which was a very long list including \u0026ldquo;unexplained hair loss\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;feeling as if you are losing your mind,\u0026rdquo; along with another list of alleged symptoms of chronic candida, and noted that they were quite similar.  Using such lists, virtually any symptom is an indicator of these alleged chronic conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ILADS guidelines go even further, and say such things as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe labs are all unreliable, so treat for Lyme even if the test is negative.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe primary symptom is that the patient thinks they have the condition.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePhysical findings are nonspecific and often normal.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf the Western blot result is ambiguous, treat it as positive (the opposite of what you do with HIV).\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eA comparison to tuberculosis and leprosy provides justification for long-term antibiotic treatment (even though those diseases are biologically dissimilar to Lyme).\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eIn short, the ILADS guidelines provide a nonfalsifiable definition of Lyme disease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe best trials in the NEJM treated Lyme disease patients with a month of cipro (and?) doxycycline.  The \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease\u0026rdquo; advocates say that the immune system is damaged with antibiotic use, and then Lyme disease increases as the immune response declines\u0026ndash;based on no data.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIf you don\u0026rsquo;t have the data, sue\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe state of Connecticut passed a bill \u0026ldquo;giving doctors immunity for giving infinite supplies of antibiotics\u0026rdquo; to patients purportedly suffering from \u0026ldquo;chronic Lyme disease.\u0026rdquo;  Since the IDSA guidelines are against long-term antibiotic use, the Connecticut Attorney General sued the IDSA.  They couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford $250,000 in legal expenses, so they settled the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Crislip concluded by pointing out that the cause of this unsubstantiated syndrome will be promoted by a new film coming out, called \u0026ldquo;Under Our Skin,\u0026rdquo; which has the tag line \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s no medicine for someone like you.\u0026rdquo;  Crislip noted that of the two doctors in the film promoting this illness, one lost his license for diagnosing Lyme disease over the telephone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part six of my conference summary, on online health and social media, and the final Q\u0026amp;A panel session, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 5: chronic lyme disease"},{"content":"This is part four of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is here. Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is here. Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is here.\nThe next session was Dr. Kimball Atwood, an anesthesiologist who is also board-certified in internal medicine and associate editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. He spoke on \u0026ldquo;Why Evidence-Based Medicine is not yet Science-Based Medicine,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Do Clinical Studies of Highly Implausible Methods Help or Hinder?\u0026quot;\nDr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s talk made some points right at the start similar to the critique of evidence-based medicine (EBM) given in Dr. Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction\u0026ndash;that EBM makes the mistake of devaluing what he called \u0026ldquo;pre-clinical knowledge.\u0026rdquo; Unlike Dr. Novella, however, he also stated that random controlled trials (RCTs) \u0026ldquo;cannot, by themselves, overturn well-established medical principles.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that his talk actually demonstrated that point\u0026ndash;as stated, it sounds like \u0026ldquo;well-established medicalscientific principles\u0026rdquo; are part of a \u0026ldquo;hard core\u0026rdquo; of medical theory (in Imre Lakatos\u0026rsquo; sense) that cannot be refuted even if found to be in conflict with empirical results, because they are shielded by the addition of auxiliary hypotheses to salvage it. I don\u0026rsquo;t think that was his intent, as surely even \u0026ldquo;well-established medical principles\u0026rdquo; should be eligible for revision in light of contrary empirical evidence. Instead, what I think he meant by \u0026ldquo;pre-clinical knowledge\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;well-established medical principles\u0026rdquo; is really more like a demand for consilience with the rest of scientific knowledge, adherence to logic and mathematical principles, and having a plausible mechanism (or at least not having a purported mechanism in conflict with other known facts). More on that in the \u0026ldquo;Q\u0026amp;A\u0026rdquo; section, below. [UPDATE (July 21, 2009): As Dr. Atwood notes in the comments, I incorrectly transcribed what his slide said. Also note his further discussion on what he means by a \u0026ldquo;plausible mechanism.]\nHe began his talk with an overview of EBM\u0026ndash;EBM advocates, to quote EBM pioneer David Sackett, \u0026ldquo;use of the best available evience, especially from patient-centered clinical research.\u0026rdquo; It relies on randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews. Dr. Atwood gave two examples of successes of EBM. First was the standard practice of giving heart attack patients anti-arrhythmia drugs post-myocardial infarction, which EBM trials showed causes excess deaths and was an incorrect practice. Second was the Women\u0026rsquo;s Health Initiative study on hormone replacement theory, which showed that risks exceed benefits for taking estrogen. (I\u0026rsquo;m no authority, but I am skeptical of this claim based on my understanding of the flaws in that study from conversations with the late Chris Heward, who is co-author on a paper in Fertility and Sterility that challenged the WHI study for methodological flaws which made it unable to detect cardioprotective effects.)\nThe four steps of \u0026ldquo;pull\u0026rdquo; EBM are:\nformulate an answerable questiontrack down the best evidencecritically appraise the evidenceindividualize, based on clinical expertise and patient concernsAtwood stated that those in practice the longest perform the worst, by not keeping up to date with their fields.\nCochrane Collaboration\nAtwood next turned to the Cochrane Collaboration, the organization that maintains a library of EBT results, classified by type of evidence and evaluated with reviews in the form of evidence statements and recommendations. He gave a few examples, such as a statement about the effect of physical activity on dementia: \u0026ldquo;[There is] insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of \u0026hellip; physical activity programs in managing or improving \u0026hellip; dementia.\u0026rdquo; And a seemingly equivalent statement about the use of homeopathy for the same purpose: \u0026ldquo;In view of the absence of evience, it is not possible to comment on the use of \u0026hellip; homeopathy in treating dementia.\u0026rdquo; This, according to Dr. Atwood, is B.S. \u0026ndash; Bogus Science. Why don\u0026rsquo;t they just say that homeopathy doesn\u0026rsquo;t work? Because there are no sound clinical trials in the database.\nEBT categorizes evidence into three classes. Class I evidence involves randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Class II involves controlled trials without randomization (or several other forms of case-control studies). Class III involves one or more case studies of a treatment without a control group and is considered insufficient for a treatment to be called \u0026ldquo;evidence-based medicine.\u0026rdquo; Within each class there are further divisions, for example, Class I is broken down further, with systematic reviews of RCTs at the top (1a), followed by individual RCTs (1b), and so forth.\nAtwood objected that this devalues pre-clinical knowledge by making \u0026ldquo;evidence\u0026rdquo; synonymous with clinical trials, and that therefore EBM \u0026ldquo;is not based on all of the evidence.\u0026rdquo; He provided a few more examples of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments from Cochrane, described with terms like \u0026ldquo;Not enough evidence to \u0026hellip;,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;little evidence,\u0026rdquo; and, in the case of laetrile as a cancer treatment, \u0026ldquo;No studies found that met inclusion criteria.\u0026rdquo; There was, however, a 1982 New England Journal of Medicine clinical trial on 180 patients which yielded a negative result and the conclusion that the treatment is dangerous, but this constituted a case study at the lowest level of evidence in EBM.\nAtwood quoted a statement from Edzard Ernst, co-author with Simon Singh on the chiropractic-critical book, Trick or Treatment, to the effect that \u0026ldquo;a priori plausibility has become less and less important\u0026rdquo; as a result of EBM (which Ernst advocates).\nHe then continued with more CAM treatments in Cochrane, such as craniosacral therapy, reflexology, Kirlian photography (\u0026ldquo;may be more reliable than chance\u0026rdquo;), and therapeutic touch (\u0026ldquo;remains controversial\u0026rdquo;).\nHomeopathy\nAtwood then described the case of homeopathy in order to make his central argument critical of EBM. Samuel Hahnemann invented homeopathy in 1796, on the basis of two principles. The first principle is \u0026ldquo;similia similibus curantur,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;like cures like,\u0026rdquo; or the \u0026ldquo;law of similars.\u0026rdquo; This claims that if you find a substance that gives you symptoms similar to an illness, that\u0026rsquo;s the substance you use to cure that illness. Hahnemann read in William Cullen\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;A treatise of the materia medica\u0026rdquo; that cinchona bark could be used to treat malaria (now known to be true because of quinine in the bark). He gave himself a sample of that bark while healthy and observed that he developed symptoms that were similar to malaria. From this single example, he concluded that all medicines produce symptoms in healthy people similar to the symptoms of diseases they effectively treat.\nThe second principle of homeopathy is the \u0026ldquo;law of infinitesimals.\u0026rdquo; He reasoned that dosages sufficient to produce overt symptoms were too high, so the substances should be diluted in order to provide an effective treatment, and in fact the more diluted, the more powerful the cure. Homeopathic remedies of 24X (or 12C) are the equivalent of diluting 0.36mL of salt into a volume of water the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Hahnemann most commonly recommended an even greater dilution of 60X (30C). For all intents and purposes, homeopathic remedies of standard dilutions are indistinguishable from the water used to dilute them.\nAtwood went on to note that homeopaths do not agree on prescriptions for various maladies.\nOn top of that, the outcome of all trials to date have been failures. This is a long list of powerful reasons for rejecting homeopathy, but the last one is the only one EBM considers relevant. There is clearly a very low degree of plausibility for homeopathy independently of such trials, and homeopathy is a clear case in point that \u0026ldquo;some hypotheses are too implausible to spend time on (or spend more time on).\u0026quot;\nPrior Probabilities\nAtwood offered the following set of broad categories of prior probability and types of treatments that fall into them:\nPrior probability of about zero: homeopathy, neurocranial restructuring (putting balloons up your nose and inflating them).\nPrior probability significantly lower than (\u0026laquo;) 1: metabolic therapies for cancer, detoxification, chiropractic for any purpose other than back pain Prior probability very low: acupuncture for pain most popular herbal claims (St. John\u0026rsquo;s wort, echinacea) Prior probability moderate to high: massage, relaxation techniques for anxiety reduction and chronic pain Prior probability depends on: basic sciencecogency of theoryprevious studiessourceHe then discussed Bayes\u0026rsquo; Theorem, which says that the odds of a hypothesis being true given certain evidence is equal to the odds of the hypotheses (prior probability) multiplied by the Bayes factor, which is the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis divided by the probability of the evidence given the null hypothesis. If the prior probability is near zero, then much greater evidence is needed in the Bayes factor to result in a probability of the hypothesis being true. (Note that Atwood gave the theorem partly in terms of odds rather than probability for the purposes of his talk. Odds = probability / (1 - probability).)\nWhen Bayes\u0026rsquo; Theorem is taken into account, the p-value of a statistical result can become much less impressive. For example, with a p-value of .05, which means that a result would be expected to occur by chance 5 times in 100 with a Bayes factor of 2.7, if the prior probability is only 1%, that result only raises the posterior probability to 3%. If the prior probability is 20%, it raises it to only 40%. With a p-value of .01, a result expected to occur by chance only 1 time in 100, and a Bayes factor of 15, a prior probability of 1% is raised to 13%; a prior probability of 20% raised to 78%. Dr. Atwood provided a table with more detail that went up to p=.001 (result expected by chance 1 in 1000 times).\nDr. Atwood advocated that \u0026ldquo;prior probability ought to be formally considered in EBT,\u0026rdquo; and gave the further example of a \u0026ldquo;positive\u0026rdquo; trial for intercessory prayer in the critical care unit (CCU) with an 11% reduction in some harm with a p-value of .04, and noted that if the prior probability was 1%, this still produces less than 6% odds of a genuine effect. A few other similar examples were given involving acupuncture, homeopathy, and distant healing, the final example of which had Edzard Ernst as a study co-author and concluded that it \u0026ldquo;warrants further study,\u0026rdquo; but which he subsequently backed away from after \u0026ldquo;some positive trials [were] found to be fraudulent.\u0026quot;\nFinally, he noted that pre-trial knowledge is not sufficient, but is necessary for a treatment claim.\nQ\u0026amp;A\nI asked Dr. Atwood if, in his final statement, he was saying that you have to have a plausible mechanism for a treatment in order for a treatment to be justified (a positive requirement), or if he only wanted to impose a negative requirement that the proposed mechanism or method did not contradict known facts from other realms. His initial answer was that he thought those would be equivalent, but I observed that we can discover cause-effect relationships without having any knowledge of the underlying mechanism, such as Mendel\u0026rsquo;s discovery of genetics. At that point, he agreed that he just wanted to require the negative condition. Another audience member then suggested that this might be accomplished by creating a categorization scheme for levels of plausibility that in some way parallels the levels of evidence scheme.\nAnother questioner asked how to standardize assignment of prior probabilities and address bias, to which Dr. Atwood said that you could just pick neutral prior probabilities, since if you do enough studies the posterior probability of each study becomes the prior probability for the next.\nEXTRA: As appropriate for a talk that touched on homeopathy, prior to Dr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s presentation this excerpt from the fourth episode of season three of \u0026ldquo;That Mitchell and Webb Look\u0026rdquo; was shown to the audience:\n(Part five of my conference summary, on chronic Lyme disease, is here. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is here.)\nKtisophilos (2009-07-15):\nBartenders should try watering down drinks and calling it homeopathic alcohol.\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nI take it you posted that before I added the video at the end of the post, which I\u0026#39;m sure you will enjoy...\nKtisophilos (2009-07-21):\nBrilliant! LOL.\nKimball Atwood, MD (2009-07-21):\nJim, Thank you very much for summarizing all of our talks. This was undoubtedly a substantial effort. Regarding one of your points: You reported that I argued that \u0026quot;RCTs cannot, by themselves, overturn well-established medical principles.\u0026quot; What I believe I said, and what is definitely on my slide, is \u0026quot;RCTs cannot, by themselves, overturn well-established scientific principles.\u0026quot; Thus what I meant was exactly what you subsequently wrote: \u0026quot;what I think he meant by \u0026quot;pre-clinical knowledge\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;well-established medical principles\u0026quot; is really more like a demand for consilience with the rest of scientific knowledge, [etc.]\u0026quot;\nBy the way, I have had the discussion of 'plausible mechanism' many times, and frequently there is a disconnect between what I mean by 'plausible' and what others think I mean. As I explained, by \u0026quot;having to have a plausible mechanism\u0026quot; I do not mean that we necessarily know that mechanism. I mean that whatever it might be it had better be plausible (homeopathy, psychokinesis, etc. cannot be made plausible no matter how hard their advocates may try). That's what I meant when at first I opined that your two conditions were equivalent.\nThank you for making me understand that I had been, well, misunderstood. The 'negative condition' is a good way to make the point. I'll try to make this distinction clearer in the future. The \u0026quot;categorization scheme for levels of plausibility\u0026quot; would figure heavily into estimating prior probabilities, as I asserted in my talk without using the term per se.\nKimball Atwood\nLippard (2009-07-21):\nDr. Atwood: Thank you for the correction re my mistranscription of your slide. I\u0026#39;ve updated the post to reflect that, as well as to direct readers to your further comment on what you meant by \u0026quot;plausible mechanism.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part four of my summary of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself.  Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part three, Dr. Harriet Hall on chiropractic, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next session was \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=226\"\u003eDr. Kimball Atwood\u003c/a\u003e, an anesthesiologist who is also board-certified in internal medicine and associate editor of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sram.org/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific Review of Alternative Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  He spoke on \u0026ldquo;Why Evidence-Based Medicine is not yet Science-Based Medicine,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Do Clinical Studies of Highly Implausible Methods Help or Hinder?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s talk made some points right at the start similar to the critique of evidence-based medicine (EBM) given in Dr. Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction\u0026ndash;that EBM makes the mistake of devaluing what he called \u0026ldquo;pre-clinical knowledge.\u0026rdquo;  Unlike Dr. Novella, however, he also stated that random controlled trials (RCTs) \u0026ldquo;cannot, by themselves, overturn well-established medical principles.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that his talk actually demonstrated that point\u0026ndash;as stated, it sounds like \u0026ldquo;well-established \u003cstrike\u003emedical\u003c/strike\u003escientific principles\u0026rdquo; are part of a \u0026ldquo;hard core\u0026rdquo; of medical theory (in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos\"\u003eImre Lakatos\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo; sense) that cannot be refuted even if found to be in conflict with empirical results, because they are shielded by the addition of auxiliary hypotheses to salvage it.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think that was his intent, as surely even \u0026ldquo;well-established medical principles\u0026rdquo; should be eligible for revision in light of contrary empirical evidence.  Instead, what I think he meant by \u0026ldquo;pre-clinical knowledge\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;well-established medical principles\u0026rdquo; is really more like a demand for consilience with the rest of scientific knowledge, adherence to logic and mathematical principles, and having a plausible mechanism (or at least not having a purported mechanism in conflict with other known facts).  More on that in the \u0026ldquo;Q\u0026amp;A\u0026rdquo; section, below.  [UPDATE (July 21, 2009):  As Dr. Atwood notes in the comments, I incorrectly transcribed what his slide said.  Also note his further discussion on what he means by a \u0026ldquo;plausible mechanism.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began his talk with an overview of EBM\u0026ndash;EBM advocates, to quote EBM pioneer David Sackett, \u0026ldquo;use of the best available evience, especially from patient-centered clinical research.\u0026rdquo;  It relies on randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews.  Dr. Atwood gave two examples of successes of EBM.  First was the standard practice of giving heart attack patients anti-arrhythmia drugs post-myocardial infarction, which EBM trials showed causes excess deaths and was an incorrect practice.  Second was the Women\u0026rsquo;s Health Initiative study on hormone replacement theory, which showed that risks exceed benefits for taking estrogen.  (I\u0026rsquo;m no authority, but I am skeptical of this claim based on my understanding of the flaws in that study from conversations with the late Chris Heward, who is \u003ca href=\"http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282%2804%2900504-7/abstract\"\u003eco-author on a paper in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFertility and Sterility\u003c/span\u003e that challenged the WHI study for methodological flaws which made it unable to detect cardioprotective effects\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe four steps of \u0026ldquo;pull\u0026rdquo; EBM are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003eformulate an answerable question\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003etrack down the best evidence\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ecritically appraise the evidence\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eindividualize, based on clinical expertise and patient concerns\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eAtwood stated that those in practice the longest perform the worst, by not keeping up to date with their fields.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCochrane Collaboration\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood next turned to the Cochrane Collaboration, the organization that maintains a library of EBT results, classified by type of evidence and evaluated with reviews in the form of evidence statements and recommendations.  He gave a few examples, such as a statement about the effect of physical activity on dementia:  \u0026ldquo;[There is] insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of \u0026hellip; physical activity programs in managing or improving \u0026hellip; dementia.\u0026rdquo;  And a seemingly equivalent statement about the use of homeopathy for the same purpose:  \u0026ldquo;In view of the absence of evience, it is not possible to comment on the use of \u0026hellip; homeopathy in treating dementia.\u0026rdquo;  This, according to Dr. Atwood, is B.S. \u0026ndash; Bogus Science.  Why don\u0026rsquo;t they just say that homeopathy doesn\u0026rsquo;t work?  Because there are no sound clinical trials in the database.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEBT categorizes evidence into three classes.  Class I evidence involves randomized controlled trials (RCTs).  Class II involves controlled trials without randomization (or several other forms of case-control studies).  Class III involves one or more case studies of a treatment without a control group and is considered insufficient for a treatment to be called \u0026ldquo;evidence-based medicine.\u0026rdquo;  Within each class there are further divisions, for example, Class I is broken down further, with systematic reviews of RCTs at the top (1a), followed by individual RCTs (1b), and so forth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood objected that this devalues pre-clinical knowledge by making \u0026ldquo;evidence\u0026rdquo; synonymous with clinical trials, and that therefore EBM \u0026ldquo;is not based on all of the evidence.\u0026rdquo;  He provided a few more examples of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments from Cochrane, described with terms like \u0026ldquo;Not enough evidence to \u0026hellip;,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;little evidence,\u0026rdquo; and, in the case of laetrile as a cancer treatment, \u0026ldquo;No studies found that met inclusion criteria.\u0026rdquo;  There was, however, a 1982 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew England Journal of Medicine\u003c/span\u003e clinical trial on 180 patients which yielded a negative result and the conclusion that the treatment is dangerous, but this constituted a case study at the lowest level of evidence in EBM.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood quoted a statement from Edzard Ernst, co-author with Simon Singh on the chiropractic-critical book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Trick-Treatment-Undeniable-Alternative-Medicine/dp/0393066614/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTrick or Treatment\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, to the effect that \u0026ldquo;a priori plausibility has become less and less important\u0026rdquo; as a result of EBM (which Ernst advocates).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then continued with more CAM treatments in Cochrane, such as craniosacral therapy, reflexology, Kirlian photography (\u0026ldquo;may be more reliable than chance\u0026rdquo;), and therapeutic touch (\u0026ldquo;remains controversial\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHomeopathy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood then described the case of homeopathy in order to make his central argument critical of EBM.  Samuel Hahnemann invented homeopathy in 1796, on the basis of two principles.  The first principle is \u0026ldquo;similia similibus curantur,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;like cures like,\u0026rdquo; or the \u0026ldquo;law of similars.\u0026rdquo;  This claims that if you find a substance that gives you symptoms similar to an illness, that\u0026rsquo;s the substance you use to cure that illness.  Hahnemann read in William Cullen\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;A treatise of the materia medica\u0026rdquo; that cinchona bark could be used to treat malaria (now known to be true because of quinine in the bark).  He gave himself a sample of that bark while healthy and observed that he developed symptoms that were similar to malaria.  From this single example, he concluded that all medicines produce symptoms in healthy people similar to the symptoms of diseases they effectively treat.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe second principle of homeopathy is the \u0026ldquo;law of infinitesimals.\u0026rdquo;  He reasoned that dosages sufficient to produce overt symptoms were too high, so the substances should be diluted in order to provide an effective treatment, and in fact the more diluted, the more powerful the cure.  Homeopathic remedies of 24X (or 12C) are the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#cite_note-47\"\u003eequivalent of diluting 0.36mL of salt into a volume of water the size of the Atlantic Ocean\u003c/a\u003e.  Hahnemann most commonly recommended an even greater dilution of 60X (30C).  For all intents and purposes, homeopathic remedies of standard dilutions are indistinguishable from the water used to dilute them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood went on to note that homeopaths do not agree on prescriptions for various maladies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn top of that, the outcome of all trials to date have been failures.  This is a long list of powerful reasons for rejecting homeopathy, but the last one is the only one EBM considers relevant.  There is clearly a very low degree of plausibility for homeopathy independently of such trials, and homeopathy is a clear case in point that \u0026ldquo;some hypotheses are too implausible to spend time on (or spend more time on).\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePrior Probabilities\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtwood offered the following set of broad categories of prior probability and types of treatments that fall into them:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrior probability of about zero:  homeopathy, neurocranial restructuring (putting balloons up your nose and inflating them).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrior probability significantly lower than (\u0026laquo;) 1:  metabolic therapies for cancer, detoxification, chiropractic for any purpose other than back pain  Prior probability very low:  acupuncture for pain most popular herbal claims (St. John\u0026rsquo;s wort, echinacea)  Prior probability moderate to high:  massage, relaxation techniques for anxiety reduction and chronic pain  Prior probability depends on: \u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003ebasic science\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ecogency of theory\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eprevious studies\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003esource\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eHe then discussed \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem\"\u003eBayes\u0026rsquo; Theorem\u003c/a\u003e, which says that the odds of a hypothesis being true given certain evidence is equal to the odds of the hypotheses (prior probability) multiplied by the Bayes factor, which is the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis divided by the probability of the evidence given the null hypothesis.  If the prior probability is near zero, then much greater evidence is needed in the Bayes factor to result in a probability of the hypothesis being true.  (Note that Atwood gave the theorem partly in terms of odds rather than probability for the purposes of his talk.  Odds = probability / (1 - probability).)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen Bayes\u0026rsquo; Theorem is taken into account, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value\"\u003ep-value\u003c/a\u003e of a statistical result can become much less impressive.  For example, with a p-value of .05, which means that a result would be expected to occur by chance 5 times in 100 with a Bayes factor of 2.7, if the prior probability is only 1%, that result only raises the posterior probability to 3%.  If the prior probability is 20%, it raises it to only 40%.  With a p-value of .01, a result expected to occur by chance only 1 time in 100, and a Bayes factor of 15, a prior probability of 1% is raised to 13%; a prior probability of 20% raised to 78%.  Dr. Atwood provided a table with more detail that went up to p=.001 (result expected by chance 1 in 1000 times).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Atwood advocated that \u0026ldquo;prior probability ought to be formally considered in EBT,\u0026rdquo; and gave the further example of a \u0026ldquo;positive\u0026rdquo; trial for intercessory prayer in the critical care unit (CCU) with an 11% reduction in some harm with a p-value of .04, and noted that if the prior probability was 1%, this still produces less than 6% odds of a genuine effect.  A few other similar examples were given involving acupuncture, homeopathy, and distant healing, the final example of which had Edzard Ernst as a study co-author and concluded that it \u0026ldquo;warrants further study,\u0026rdquo; but which he subsequently backed away from after \u0026ldquo;some positive trials [were] found to be fraudulent.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, he noted that pre-trial knowledge is not sufficient, but is necessary for a treatment claim.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQ\u0026amp;A\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI asked Dr. Atwood if, in his final statement, he was saying that you have to have a plausible mechanism for a treatment in order for a treatment to be justified (a positive requirement), or if he only wanted to impose a negative requirement that the proposed mechanism or method did not contradict known facts from other realms.  His initial answer was that he thought those would be equivalent, but I observed that we can discover cause-effect relationships without having any knowledge of the underlying mechanism, such as Mendel\u0026rsquo;s discovery of genetics.  At that point, he agreed that he just wanted to require the negative condition.  Another audience member then suggested that this might be accomplished by creating a categorization scheme for levels of plausibility that in some way parallels the levels of evidence scheme.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother questioner asked how to standardize assignment of prior probabilities and address bias, to which Dr. Atwood said that you could just pick neutral prior probabilities, since if you do enough studies the posterior probability of each study becomes the prior probability for the next.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEXTRA:  As appropriate for a talk that touched on homeopathy, prior to Dr. Atwood\u0026rsquo;s presentation this excerpt from the fourth episode of season three of \u0026ldquo;That Mitchell and Webb Look\u0026rdquo; was shown to the audience:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/HMGIbOGu8q0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/HMGIbOGu8q0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"340\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part five of my conference summary, on chronic Lyme disease, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 4: evidence-based medicine and homeopathy"},{"content":"This is part three of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is here. Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is here.\nThe next session was Dr. Harriet A. Hall, the \u0026ldquo;SkepDoc,\u0026rdquo; a retired family physician and former Air Force flight surgeon, on \u0026ldquo;A Scientific Critique of Chiropractic.\u0026quot;\nChiropractic\nDr. Hall began her talk by observing that 10% of Americans see a chiropractor some time each year, and said that her talk would address the questions of when you should see a chiropractor, what they really do, is it based on science, and why isn\u0026rsquo;t it part of regular medicine.\nChiropractic, she said, is a pre-scientific system that was discovered on a single day (September 18, 1895) by D. D. Palmer, a grocer and magnetic healer. On that day, he performed a spinal manipulation on a deaf janitor and allegedly cured his hearing, and based on that single case, claimed that he had found the cause of all disease. Hall noted that in 1895, Pasteur had just died, X-rays had just been discovered, and the germ theory of disease was just catching on. For perspective, she noted that 1900 was the first year in which you would have a 50% chance of having a beneficial outcome from a visit to a doctor.\nChiropractic theory says that all disease is caused by subluxations, or dislocated joints, causing nerve impairment, thereby impacting the flow of \u0026ldquo;Innate,\u0026rdquo; a mystical force that flows through us. There are real subluxations, which are visible on X-rays, but chiropractic subluxations have never been demonstrated to exist. The chiropractic finding of \u0026ldquo;Boop\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;bone out-of-place\u0026ndash;can\u0026rsquo;t be documented on X-rays, and chiropractors have claimed that they are as small as 1/10,000,000 mm.\nThe current chiropractic definition of subluxation (as defined by the American Association of Chiropractic Colleges) has been adjusted to be more vague: \u0026ldquo;a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system and general health.\u0026quot;\nPalmer said that 95% of ill health and disease is caused by spinal subluxations, and 5% from misalignments of other bones. Hall suggested that if this were true, invertebrates wouldn\u0026rsquo;t get sick, though perhaps chiropractors would say that Palmer was only speaking of the causes in humans. She went on to point out that a ruptured disc is an example of a spinal injury which causes pain without subluxation, directly refuting Palmer\u0026rsquo;s claim.\nThe chiropractic theory of nerve impingement often uses a garden hose analogy, that a kink in the hose causes water to back up on one side of the kink. But this analogy is not correct, because nerve conduction speed is only affected at the point of compression, as seen in carpal tunnel syndrome. While such nerve dysfunctions do exist, they don\u0026rsquo;t work the way chiropractic says, and they are not the cause of most disease.\nA further problem for chiropractic is that 12 cranial nerves and 5 sacral nerves are out of reach for chiropractic manipulation.\nHall showed a diagram about the flow of \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; which showed the doctor\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; influencing the patient\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Innate,\u0026rdquo; but for which there was no described mechanism. There is, of course, no evidence that \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; exists, and it\u0026rsquo;s now rejected by many chiropractors.\nThe audible crack from chiropractic manipulation, Hall said, is just like knuckle cracking, and has no therapeutic effect except perhaps for its psychological impact. She noted that at least one chiropractor cracks her own wrists and doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually touch her patients!\nOsteopathy and Chiropractic\nHall compared osteopathy to chiropractic with this chart:\nOsteopathyChiropractic\nrestoring blood flowminimize spinal manipulation therapy (SMT)adopted sciencerestoring nerve flowmaximize SMTnope\nSpinal manipulation therapy, said Hall, works as well as other treatments in treating back pain, and there is no evidence that it assists in treating anything other than back pain. A problem in testing SMT is that good placebo controls are impossible, because the patient can tell when SMT is occurring or not. Single blinding is impossible, let alone double blinding. There are also many variations of technique possible.\nTooth Fairy Science\nDr. Hall argued that chiropractic study is something like what she called \u0026ldquo;tooth fairy science.\u0026rdquo; You could perform tests of the tooth fairy, by putting lost teeth into baggies vs. facial tissue before putting it under the pillow, comparing the amount of money received for the first lost tooth to the last lost tooth, looking for correlations with parental income, and so forth, but none of this would tell you anything about an entity called the Tooth Fairy.\nShe gave an anecdote of a man suffering from back pain who made an appointment with a chiropractor for the following Monday. Over the weekend, his pain went away\u0026ndash;if he had made his appointment for Friday, he would have attributed the pain going away to the chiropractic treatment and perhaps ended up as a believer and regular patient.\nShe compared this to the \u0026ldquo;blue dot cure,\u0026rdquo; a treatment by painting a blue dot on your nose (any nonsensical treatment suffices for the illustration). If the patient gets better, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that it worked. If the patient stays the same, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that the treatment kept him from getting worse. And if the patient gets worse, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that the disease was too far advanced, and if only he had come sooner it would have been treatable. (Or, alternatively, it\u0026rsquo;s evidence that more treatment is required\u0026ndash;say, upping the dosage of the remedy or painting a darker blue spot on the patient\u0026rsquo;s nose.)\nWhat chiropractors do well, Hall said, is help with back pain and act as good psychologists. But they\u0026rsquo;ve gotten thumbs down the New England Journal of Medicine, Consumer Reports, The Medical Newsletter, Canadian neurologists, and many other sources, not just because of claims to be able to treat things that it can\u0026rsquo;t treat, but because of safety issues.\nThe Big Downside of Chiropractic\nChiropractic manipulation of the head and neck turns out to be dangerous. It can compress or tear vertebral arteries, resulting in strokes, perhaps as frequently as in one in a million manipulations, and perhaps 20% of basilar strokes are caused by spinal manipulations. Hall pointed out that mobilization is as effective as manipulation, yet is safe\u0026ndash;so there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to use the riskier method.\nThe Canadian neurologists mentioned above have recommended that signs warning signs be posted in chiropractic offices and that neck manipulation of children be prohibited.\nInsurance data on payouts for chiropractic malpractice show that about 9% of payouts in 2002 were for \u0026ldquo;CVA,\u0026rdquo; or cerebrovascular accident.\nThe numbers are likely under-reported, since there may be some time between a manipulation that causes damage and a stroke.\nChiropractors as Quack Magnets\nA further problem with chiropractic is that practitioners are \u0026ldquo;quack magnets,\u0026rdquo; promoting all sorts of bogus diagnostic methods and treatments such as moire contour analysis, use of a \u0026ldquo;neuroscope\u0026rdquo; that measures temperature differences and pressure, biofeedback as a form of electrodermal testing, applied kinesiology (pseudoscientific muscle strength testing), unnecessary dietary supplements, homeopathy, and reflexology. Hall also mentioned B.J. Palmer\u0026rsquo;s (D.D. Palmer\u0026rsquo;s son) \u0026ldquo;Atlas Adjustment\u0026rdquo; technique, or \u0026ldquo;hole in one\u0026rdquo; technique, which suggests that manipulation of the Atlas vertebra is sufficient to cause the rest of the spine to fall into alignment.\nChiropractors also tend to overuse X-rays, such as taking full-spine X-rays which expose the reproductive organs and inevitably produce overexposed or underexposed areas. Proper X-raying focuses on smaller areas to get the right exposure.\nChiropractors offer bad advice, frequently discourage immunizations and other medical treatments, and they frequently miss diagnoses of real illnesses. In one test of chiropractors, patients were sent in to describe classic heart attack symptoms, but none of the chiropractors in the test recognized it or its significance, and none suggested that the patient visit an emergency room.\nTypes of Chiropractor\nThere are three major chiropractic groups. The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), or \u0026ldquo;straights,\u0026rdquo; who practice only chiropractic. The American Chiropractic Association (ACA), or \u0026ldquo;mixers,\u0026rdquo; who mix chiropractic with other diagnostic and treatment techniques. And the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine (NACM), who are attempting to reform chiropractic by disassociating it from Palmer\u0026rsquo;s pseudoscience and using only evidence-based scientific medicine.\nChiropractic Thinking and Hallmarks of Pseudoscience\nHall gave some examples of chiropractic thinking that is blatantly wrong or harmful:\nIf spine is straight, we can\u0026rsquo;t die.Germs don\u0026rsquo;t cause disease, or we\u0026rsquo;d all be dead.Muscle testing to find allergies. (In one case, a patient was tested for job-related stress with applied kinesiology, by pushing down on his arm while he thought of work.)Spinal adjustments as the only treatment for meningitis, resulting in the child\u0026rsquo;s death\u0026ndash;and it was the chiropractor\u0026rsquo;s own child.A \u0026ldquo;no-touch\u0026rdquo; chiropractor (cracking own wrists, mentioned above).And examples of how chiropractic exhibits the hallmarks of pseudoscience:\n\u0026ldquo;If science disproved it, I\u0026rsquo;d still use it.\u0026quot;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t give up ineffective treatments.It\u0026rsquo;s made no progress over the last century.It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s true as long as it makes you feel better.Dr. Hall concluded her talk by giving several three examples of concrete harm from chiropractic taken from Tim Farley\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the Harm\u0026rdquo; website, which lists 312 specific cases of chiropractic harm:\nKristi Bedenbaugh: Suffered a stroke and died.\nSandra Nette: Suffered multiple strokes and was left paralyzed with locked-in syndrome.\nLaurie Jean Mathiason: Fell into a coma and died after receiving 186 neck manipulations in a six-month period.\nDr. Hall recommended the Quackwatch site and Chirobase.org as online resources on chiropractic, and the book Inside Chiropractic by chiropractor Samuel Homola and Quackwatch founder Stephen Barrett.\nQ\u0026amp;A\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, Dr. Hall was asked whether chiropractors are required to follow a standard of care and whether informed consent is required. She said that informed consent is not required, it is voluntary, and the informed consent forms that she\u0026rsquo;s seen are very bad. She was also asked how many chiropractors meet the good and safe criteria, and she made a guess of under 10%.\n(Part four of my conference summary, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here. Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is here. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is here.)\nprivate (2009-07-14):\nI agree. Most traditional chiropractic or \u0026quot;crack your back\u0026quot; style chiropractic does more harm than good and leaves a person more and more dependent on the \u0026quot;crack\u0026quot; to feel better. However, a very new technique called Blair does not crack or twist or tork and deals only with the top 4 vertebrae. I already commented on your first post on this so i won\u0026#39;t ramble. http://www.blairchiropractic.com/\nZeno (2009-07-14):\nAn excellent summary of chiroquacktic - I wish I had been there! If anyone wants to keep up with happenings in the UK with the Simon Singh affair and the multiple complaints about chiropractors, see my blog: Zeno's Blog. There are some pages of links to other blogs, including a legal view of things on Jack of Kent's Blog.\nLippard (2009-07-14):\nZeno: Thanks for the blog references. I hold out hope that the BCA's lawsuit will prove to be a strategic misstep that causes them far more trouble than if they had done nothing. I think that may already be the case, with the \u0026quot;backlash\u0026quot; of all of the complaints about the bogus claims (yes, I can say that here in the U.S.) of chiropractic offices and websites being filed with their local Trading Standards offices.\nIt reminds me a little bit of when Scientology tried to tangle with the Internet about 13 years ago.\nDerek (2011-10-08):\nChiropractors are quite conservative in their approach. They don’t practice the usage of drugs and surgery for a large extent. If you are diagnosed with something serious like a neck fracture the best option in that case would be to visit a mainstream orthopedic doctor who make use of techniques that are most effective in such cases. Janine Zargar\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part three of my summary of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself.  Part one, Dr. Steven Novella\u0026rsquo;s introduction, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part two, Dr. David Gorski on cancer quackery, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next session was \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepdoc.info/\"\u003eDr. Harriet A. Hall\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;SkepDoc,\u0026rdquo; a retired family physician and former Air Force flight surgeon, on \u0026ldquo;A Scientific Critique of Chiropractic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eChiropractic\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Hall began her talk by observing that 10% of Americans see a chiropractor some time each year, and said that her talk would address the questions of when you should see a chiropractor, what they really do, is it based on science, and why isn\u0026rsquo;t it part of regular medicine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChiropractic, she said, is a pre-scientific system that was discovered on a single day (September 18, 1895) by \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_David_Palmer\"\u003eD. D. Palmer\u003c/a\u003e, a grocer and magnetic healer.  On that day, he performed a spinal manipulation on a deaf janitor and allegedly cured his hearing, and based on that single case, claimed that he had found the cause of all disease.  Hall noted that in 1895, Pasteur had just died, X-rays had just been discovered, and the germ theory of disease was just catching on.  For perspective, she noted that 1900 was the first year in which you would have a 50% chance of having a beneficial outcome from a visit to a doctor.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChiropractic theory says that all disease is caused by subluxations, or dislocated joints, causing nerve impairment, thereby impacting the flow of \u0026ldquo;Innate,\u0026rdquo; a mystical force that flows through us.  There are real subluxations, which are visible on X-rays, but chiropractic subluxations have never been demonstrated to exist.  The chiropractic finding of \u0026ldquo;Boop\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;bone out-of-place\u0026ndash;can\u0026rsquo;t be documented on X-rays, and chiropractors have claimed that they are as small as 1/10,000,000 mm.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe current chiropractic definition of subluxation (as defined by the American Association of Chiropractic Colleges) has been adjusted to be more vague:  \u0026ldquo;a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system and general health.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePalmer said that 95% of ill health and disease is caused by spinal subluxations, and 5% from misalignments of other bones.  Hall suggested that if this were true, invertebrates wouldn\u0026rsquo;t get sick, though perhaps chiropractors would say that Palmer was only speaking of the causes in humans.  She went on to point out that a ruptured disc is an example of a spinal injury which causes pain without subluxation, directly refuting Palmer\u0026rsquo;s claim.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe chiropractic theory of nerve impingement often uses a garden hose analogy, that a kink in the hose causes water to back up on one side of the kink.  But this analogy is not correct, because nerve conduction speed is only affected at the point of compression, as seen in carpal tunnel syndrome.  While such nerve dysfunctions do exist, they don\u0026rsquo;t work the way chiropractic says, and they are not the cause of most disease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA further problem for chiropractic is that 12 cranial nerves and 5 sacral nerves are out of reach for chiropractic manipulation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHall showed a diagram about the flow of \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; which showed the doctor\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; influencing the patient\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Innate,\u0026rdquo; but for which there was no described mechanism.  There is, of course, no evidence that \u0026ldquo;Innate\u0026rdquo; exists, and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_intelligence\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s now rejected by many chiropractors\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe audible crack from chiropractic manipulation, Hall said, is just like knuckle cracking, and has no therapeutic effect except perhaps for its psychological impact.  She noted that at least one chiropractor cracks her own wrists and doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually touch her patients!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOsteopathy and Chiropractic\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHall compared osteopathy to chiropractic with this chart:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth\u003eOsteopathy\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth\u003eChiropractic\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003erestoring blood flow\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eminimize spinal manipulation therapy (SMT)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eadopted science\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003erestoring nerve flow\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003emaximize SMT\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003enope\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003eSpinal manipulation therapy, said Hall, works as well as other treatments in treating back pain, and there is no evidence that it assists in treating anything other than back pain.  A problem in testing SMT is that good placebo controls are impossible, because the patient can tell when SMT is occurring or not.  Single blinding is impossible, let alone double blinding.  There are also many variations of technique possible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTooth Fairy Science\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Hall argued that chiropractic study is something like what she called \u0026ldquo;tooth fairy science.\u0026rdquo;  You could perform tests of the tooth fairy, by putting lost teeth into baggies vs. facial tissue before putting it under the pillow, comparing the amount of money received for the first lost tooth to the last lost tooth, looking for correlations with parental income, and so forth, but none of this would tell you anything about an entity called the Tooth Fairy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe gave an anecdote of a man suffering from back pain who made an appointment with a chiropractor for the following Monday.  Over the weekend, his pain went away\u0026ndash;if he had made his appointment for Friday, he would have attributed the pain going away to the chiropractic treatment and perhaps ended up as a believer and regular patient.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe compared this to the \u0026ldquo;blue dot cure,\u0026rdquo; a treatment by painting a blue dot on your nose (any nonsensical treatment suffices for the illustration).  If the patient gets better, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that it worked.  If the patient stays the same, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that the treatment kept him from getting worse.  And if the patient gets worse, that\u0026rsquo;s evidence that the disease was too far advanced, and if only he had come sooner it would have been treatable.  (Or, alternatively, it\u0026rsquo;s evidence that more treatment is required\u0026ndash;say, upping the dosage of the remedy or painting a darker blue spot on the patient\u0026rsquo;s nose.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat chiropractors do well, Hall said, is help with back pain and act as good psychologists.  But they\u0026rsquo;ve gotten thumbs down the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew England Journal of Medicine\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eConsumer Reports\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Medical Newsletter\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.chirobase.org/15News/neurol.html\"\u003eCanadian neurologists\u003c/a\u003e, and many other sources, not just because of claims to be able to treat things that it can\u0026rsquo;t treat, but because of safety issues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Big Downside of Chiropractic\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChiropractic manipulation of the head and neck turns out to be dangerous.  It can compress or tear vertebral arteries, resulting in strokes, perhaps as frequently as in one in a million manipulations, and perhaps 20% of basilar strokes are caused by spinal manipulations.  Hall pointed out that mobilization is as effective as manipulation, yet is safe\u0026ndash;so there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to use the riskier method.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Canadian neurologists mentioned above have recommended that signs warning signs be posted in chiropractic offices and that neck manipulation of children be prohibited.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInsurance data on payouts for chiropractic malpractice show that about 9% of payouts in 2002 were for \u0026ldquo;CVA,\u0026rdquo; or cerebrovascular accident.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe numbers are likely under-reported, since there may be some time between a manipulation that causes damage and a stroke.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eChiropractors as Quack Magnets\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA further problem with chiropractic is that practitioners are \u0026ldquo;quack magnets,\u0026rdquo; promoting all sorts of bogus diagnostic methods and treatments such as moire contour analysis, use of a \u0026ldquo;neuroscope\u0026rdquo; that measures temperature differences and pressure, biofeedback as a form of electrodermal testing, applied kinesiology (pseudoscientific muscle strength testing), unnecessary dietary supplements, homeopathy, and reflexology.  Hall also mentioned B.J. Palmer\u0026rsquo;s (D.D. Palmer\u0026rsquo;s son) \u0026ldquo;Atlas Adjustment\u0026rdquo; technique, or \u0026ldquo;hole in one\u0026rdquo; technique, which suggests that manipulation of the Atlas vertebra is sufficient to cause the rest of the spine to fall into alignment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChiropractors also tend to overuse X-rays, such as taking full-spine X-rays which expose the reproductive organs and inevitably produce overexposed or underexposed areas.  Proper X-raying focuses on smaller areas to get the right exposure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChiropractors offer bad advice, frequently discourage immunizations and other medical treatments, and they frequently miss diagnoses of real illnesses.  In one test of chiropractors, patients were sent in to describe classic heart attack symptoms, but none of the chiropractors in the test recognized it or its significance, and none suggested that the patient visit an emergency room.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTypes of Chiropractor\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are three major chiropractic groups.  The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), or \u0026ldquo;straights,\u0026rdquo; who practice only chiropractic.  The American Chiropractic Association (ACA), or \u0026ldquo;mixers,\u0026rdquo; who mix chiropractic with other diagnostic and treatment techniques.  And the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine (NACM), who are attempting to reform chiropractic by disassociating it from Palmer\u0026rsquo;s pseudoscience and using only evidence-based scientific medicine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eChiropractic Thinking and Hallmarks of Pseudoscience\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHall gave some examples of chiropractic thinking that is blatantly wrong or harmful:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf spine is straight, we can\u0026rsquo;t die.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGerms don\u0026rsquo;t cause disease, or we\u0026rsquo;d all be dead.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMuscle testing to find allergies.  (In one case, a patient was tested for job-related stress with applied kinesiology, by pushing down on his arm while he thought of work.)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSpinal adjustments as the only treatment for meningitis, resulting in the child\u0026rsquo;s death\u0026ndash;and it was the chiropractor\u0026rsquo;s own child.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eA \u0026ldquo;no-touch\u0026rdquo; chiropractor (cracking own wrists, mentioned above).\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAnd examples of how chiropractic exhibits the hallmarks of pseudoscience:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;If science disproved it, I\u0026rsquo;d still use it.\u0026quot;\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t give up ineffective treatments.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s made no progress over the last century.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s true as long as it makes you feel better.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eDr. Hall concluded her talk by giving several three examples of concrete harm from chiropractic taken from Tim Farley\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://whatstheharm.net/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the Harm\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e website, \u003ca href=\"http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html\"\u003ewhich lists 312 specific cases of chiropractic harm\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKristi Bedenbaugh:  Suffered a stroke and died.\u003cbr /\u003eSandra Nette:  Suffered multiple strokes and was left paralyzed with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome\"\u003elocked-in syndrome\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003eLaurie Jean Mathiason: Fell into a coma and died after receiving 186 neck manipulations in a six-month period.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Hall recommended the \u003ca href=\"http://quackwatch.org/\"\u003eQuackwatch\u003c/a\u003e site and \u003ca href=\"http://www.chirobase.org/\"\u003eChirobase.org\u003c/a\u003e as online resources on chiropractic, and the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Chiropractic-Patients-Consumer-Library/dp/1573926981/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInside Chiropractic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e by chiropractor Samuel Homola and Quackwatch founder Stephen Barrett.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQ\u0026amp;A\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, Dr. Hall was asked whether chiropractors are required to follow a standard of care and whether informed consent is required.  She said that informed consent is not required, it is voluntary, and the informed consent forms that she\u0026rsquo;s seen are very bad.  She was also asked how many chiropractors meet the good and safe criteria, and she made a guess of under 10%.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part four of my conference summary, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 3: chiropractic"},{"content":"This is part two of my summary of the Science-Based Medicine conference at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself. Part one is here.\nDavid Gorski, surgical oncologist and associate professor of surgery at Wayne State University, perhaps better known as Orac of the Respectful Insolence blog, spoke next on \u0026ldquo;Case studies in cancer quackery: Testimonials, anecdotes, and pseudoscience.\u0026rdquo; He began with a disclaimer (he doesn\u0026rsquo;t speak for his employer) and some disclosures (he receives no pharma funding and isn\u0026rsquo;t paid to blog).\nHis talk was about misrepresentations by cancer quacks, who use exaggeration and misrepresentation and make false promises. To illustrate exaggeration, he showed a cartoon that described \u0026ldquo;three approved paths to the graveyard,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;cut\u0026rdquo; (surgery), \u0026ldquo;burn\u0026rdquo; (radiation), and \u0026ldquo;poison\u0026rdquo; (chemotherapy) (the exaggeration is in the title rather than the descriptions, which are he admitted were accurate). To illustrate the latter, he showed a series of book covers by Hulda Clark\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Advanced Cancers,\u0026rdquo; then \u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Cancers,\u0026rdquo; and then \u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Diseases.\u0026rdquo; She thinks that all cancers and diseases are caused by liver flukes, to be diagnosed with a \u0026ldquo;Syncrometer,\u0026rdquo; a device similar to a Scientology E-meter, a galvanometer that measures electrical resistance of the skin, and cured with the \u0026ldquo;Zapper,\u0026rdquo; a low voltage electrical device.\nSome of the frequent claims of cancer quacks are that they are \u0026ldquo;wholistic\u0026rdquo; and treat the whole patient rather than a part or a symptom, that \u0026ldquo;we treat the real cause of cancer,\u0026rdquo; that their treatment is \u0026ldquo;natural,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;cancer is not the disease, it\u0026rsquo;s a manifestation of something else\u0026rdquo; such as psychological conflict. And, of course, the ever-popular generic \u0026ldquo;toxins.\u0026rdquo; They also claim that natural cures are being suppressed because Big Pharma can\u0026rsquo;t make a profit from them.\nTestimonials\nGorski next turned to the role of testimonials in cancer quackery, which he said are being used for several reasons, the first N of which are \u0026ldquo;to sell a product.\u0026rdquo; Two other reasons are \u0026ldquo;to persuade others\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to attack standard evidence.\u0026quot;\nHe gave Gorski\u0026rsquo;s Laws of Testimonials:\n1st Law: When a believer in Alternative-Based Medicine (ABM) uses a combination of both science-based medicine (SBM) and ABM and gets better, it\u0026rsquo;s always the ABM that gets the credit.\n2nd Law: When a believer in ABM uses a combination of both SBM and ABM and dies or gets worse, it\u0026rsquo;s always SBM that gets the blame.\nHe next described two cases of testimonials, the first of which was an example of a \u0026ldquo;not cancer\u0026rdquo; testimonial. This was a testimony of a man who felt a lump on his chest which he claimed to be breast cancer, which was successfully treated by some quack remedy. But this was never diagnosed as cancer, and Gorski noted that from the description it actually sounded like a case of gynecomastia rather than cancer. His second case was that of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin\u0026rsquo;s lymphoma, who went through one round of chemotherapy with good results, but then stopped taking it because he and his mother wanted to use an alternative treatment from \u0026ldquo;Chief Cloudpiler.\u0026rdquo; The judge ordered chemotherapy to be continued, and he and his mom took off, though ultimately returned and re-started chemotherapy. During the time chemotherapy stopped, the tumor grew to larger than it was originally, and when it was restarted, it again responded to treatment\u0026ndash;but of course his mother gave credit to the alternative treatment.\nThe problems with testimonials are that there may not have been a diagnosis of cancer, there may have been a misunderstanding of the diagnosis (e.g., \u0026ldquo;I was sent home to die\u0026rdquo;), there may be important information withheld, the diagnosis may have been done by quack tests with no validity (e.g., the Syncrometer or live blood cell analysis), and there may be a selection bias. As an example of the latter, he noted that dead people don\u0026rsquo;t give testimonials.\nQuestions for Evaluating Testimonials\nHe provided a modified version of Dr. Moran\u0026rsquo;s questions to ask in order to evaluate testimonial evidence. These questions include:\nWas cancer definitely present?Did it go away?Was the advocated treatment the only one used?Was the alternative therapy a replacement for primary or for adjuvant therapy?At this point, he distinguished primary, adjuvant, and neo-adjuvant therapies. The primary therapy for most cancer treatments is surgery, to remove as much of it as possible. Adjuvant therapy is designed to reduce the risk of recurrence, where radiation is used to reduce the risk of local recurrence (cancer in the same place, to make sure you get rid of it all) and chemotherapy is used to reduce the risk of a systemic recurrence (cancer that may have spread to other parts of the body). Neo-adjuvant therapy is designed to shrink a tumor prior to surgery, and may reduce complications and produce better results from surgery.\nSuzanne Somers\nTo illustrate the importance of these questions and distinctions, he used the case of Suzanne Somers, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 54, probably at stage I. She had no positive lymph nodes and underwent a lumpectomy, radiation, and a lymph node biopsy, but refused chemotherapy with tamoxifen in favor of mistletoe extract and other supplements.\nIn her case, the answers to the questions were:\nWas cancer present? Yes.Did it go away? Yes\u0026ndash;it was removed by surgery.Was the alternative medicine the only or primary treatment? No.He then examined her probable survival rates with and without chemotherapy, and noted that if the tumor was small, the benefit of chemotherapy for her 10-year survival rate could be as low as 1%. With a larger tumor, her 10-year survival rate improvement could still be as low as 4% (and would already be at 90% prior to chemo). But, Gorski noted, most women say that they would go with chemotherapy even for as little as a 1% increase in survival rate.\nSurgery cures most cancers that can be cured, up to stage III, and the corresponding benefits of chemo and hormonal therapy increase with more advanced stages of cancer.\nGorski then observed that there may be cases where a person is diagnosed with cancer by a biopsy, declines further treatment, and has a good survival rate, where they fail to realize that the biopsy itself has been a surgical primary treatment that has excised all of the cancer\u0026ndash;an excisional biopsy may be equivalent to a lumpectomy. He also noted that many people say to go ahead and take out the tumor but don\u0026rsquo;t touch my lymph nodes, and he agreed that lymphedema, which can be caused by surgical or radiation treatment of the lymph nodes, is \u0026ldquo;not a fun thing.\u0026rdquo; But the new standard of care is to use blue dye and a radiotracer procedure to find lymph nodes likely to be positive for cancer (\u0026ldquo;sentinel lymph nodes\u0026rdquo;), and treat accordingly.\nKim Tinkham\nKim Tinkham is a woman who saw The Secret, had stage III breast cancer, and declined all treatment. She now claims the cancer is gone, based on a quack blood test, even though the lump is still present, and has written a book about it. She is a follower of Mormon naturopath Robert O. Young, who claims that acid is the cause of all disease and alkalinization is the cure for everything. He says there is no such thing as a cancer cell, just a healthy cell spoiled by acid. Two years after her initial diagnosis, Tinkham is still alive.\nGorski pointed out that for a case like hers, expected survival for five years with treatment could be over 50%, but at ten years it goes way down. Data about untreated cancer comes from 250 cases of \u0026ldquo;large palpable tumors\u0026rdquo; from 1805-1933 at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut. At 10 years, 3% were still alive, and at 15 years, 0.8% were still alive; the median survival rate was 2.87 years.\nHe noted that breast cancer biology is \u0026ldquo;highly variable in clinical behavior\u0026rdquo; and in some cases may be \u0026ldquo;indolent, slow-growing, and slow to metastasize.\u0026quot;\nThe answers to the testimonial questions for Tinkham are:\nWas cancer definitely present? Yes.Did it go away? No.Was the alternative treatment the only one? Yes.Time will no doubt soon tell how (in)effective this alternative treatment has been, unfortunately.\nTestimonials as Conversion Stories\nGorski suggested that these testimonies are really part of \u0026ldquo;cult medicine\u0026rdquo; and seem to follow a pattern like religious conversion stories. The specter of death comes like a \u0026ldquo;bolt out of the blue,\u0026rdquo; the person repents and says \u0026ldquo;I brought this upon myself,\u0026rdquo; they face temptation in the form of standard medical care, they search for enlightenment, and then they find enlightenment in the form of some alternate description of their ailment which they then want to evangelize.\nMichaela Jakubczyk-Eckert\nDr. Gorski concluded his talk with the story of Michaela Jakubczyk-Eckert (warning, graphic images), who was born on November 14, 1964 and died on November 12, 2005, just two days short of her 41st birthday. She had a T4 lesion eating through the skin of her breast, a case of \u0026ldquo;classic delayed diagnosis.\u0026rdquo; She received neo-adjuvant chemotherapy treatment which shrank the tumor considerably, but then discovered Ryke Geerd Hamer, the inventor of German New Medicine, who argued that cancer is caused by psychological conflict rather than anything biological. She stopped her chemotherapy, and suffered a horrible relapse. As Gorski put it, she \u0026ldquo;died a horrible, horrible death\u0026rdquo; with her final days being subjected to the pain of a rotting-away body of skin and bones\u0026ndash;a death far worse than chemotherapy. It was a vivid depiction of the alternative that cancer quacks can cause for their victims. Her husband has put up a website to try to dissuade others from being fooled by Hamer\u0026rsquo;s theories (see link above to her story).\nDr. Gorski has written a blog post at the Science-Based Medicine blog on alternative medicine testimonials that covers some of the above subjects in more detail.\n(Part three of my conference summary, on chiropractic, is here. Part four, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here. Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is here. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is here.)\nMichael Norton (2009-07-14):\nJim, Good article(s). One minor factual issue under the \u0026quot;Kim Tinkham\u0026quot; tesimonial, you don't actually know for certain that the cancer did not go away. I suspect you are correct, but I don't think you can say for certain from the evidence you present.\nAs a cancer patient, it is easy to understand how people turn to \u0026quot;quackery\u0026quot; after scientific methods fail. Or even before they fail. Cancer has an extremely strong emotional impact and I've experienced first hand having logic and rationality go right out the window.\nLippard (2009-07-14):\nDr. Gorski has a blog post at the Science-Based Medicine blog which discusses Tinkham\u0026#39;s case. He quotes her testimonial: \u0026quot;She can still feel the tumor just underneath the surface of her skin, where it will probably remain for a while. But she knows it’s harmless. Now, it’s simply her badge of honor - the reminder that she, Kim Tinkham, defeated cancer without any surgery, invasive procedures, radiation or chemotherapy.\u0026amp;quot; He goes on to note that there is no blood test that can tell a woman she is free of breast cancer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part two of my summary of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e at TAM7, which will be followed by a summary of TAM7 itself.  Part one is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?author=8\"\u003eDavid Gorski\u003c/a\u003e, surgical oncologist and associate professor of surgery at Wayne State University, perhaps better known as Orac of the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/\"\u003eRespectful Insolence blog\u003c/a\u003e, spoke next on \u0026ldquo;Case studies in cancer quackery: Testimonials, anecdotes, and pseudoscience.\u0026rdquo;  He began with a disclaimer (he doesn\u0026rsquo;t speak for his employer) and some disclosures (he receives no pharma funding and isn\u0026rsquo;t paid to blog).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis talk was about misrepresentations by cancer quacks, who use exaggeration and misrepresentation and make false promises.  To illustrate exaggeration, he showed a cartoon that described \u0026ldquo;three approved paths to the graveyard,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;cut\u0026rdquo; (surgery), \u0026ldquo;burn\u0026rdquo; (radiation), and \u0026ldquo;poison\u0026rdquo; (chemotherapy) (the exaggeration is in the title rather than the descriptions, which are he admitted were accurate).  To illustrate the latter, he showed a series of book covers by \u003ca href=\"http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/clark.html\"\u003eHulda Clark\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Advanced Cancers,\u0026rdquo; then \u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Cancers,\u0026rdquo; and then \u0026ldquo;The Cure for All Diseases.\u0026rdquo;  She thinks that all cancers and diseases are caused by liver flukes, to be diagnosed with a \u0026ldquo;Syncrometer,\u0026rdquo; a device similar to a Scientology E-meter, a galvanometer that measures electrical resistance of the skin, and cured with the \u0026ldquo;Zapper,\u0026rdquo; a low voltage electrical device.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the frequent claims of cancer quacks are that they are \u0026ldquo;wholistic\u0026rdquo; and treat the whole patient rather than a part or a symptom, that \u0026ldquo;we treat the real cause of cancer,\u0026rdquo; that their treatment is \u0026ldquo;natural,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;cancer is not the disease, it\u0026rsquo;s a manifestation of something else\u0026rdquo; such as psychological conflict.  And, of course, the ever-popular generic \u0026ldquo;toxins.\u0026rdquo;  They also claim that natural cures are being suppressed because Big Pharma can\u0026rsquo;t make a profit from them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTestimonials\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGorski next turned to the role of testimonials in cancer quackery, which he said are being used for several reasons, the first N of which are \u0026ldquo;to sell a product.\u0026rdquo;  Two other reasons are \u0026ldquo;to persuade others\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to attack standard evidence.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave Gorski\u0026rsquo;s Laws of Testimonials:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1st Law:  When a believer in Alternative-Based Medicine (ABM) uses a combination of both science-based medicine (SBM) and ABM and gets better, it\u0026rsquo;s always the ABM that gets the credit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2nd Law:  When a believer in ABM uses a combination of both SBM and ABM and dies or gets worse, it\u0026rsquo;s always SBM that gets the blame.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe next described two cases of testimonials, the first of which was an example of a \u0026ldquo;not cancer\u0026rdquo; testimonial.  This was a testimony of a man who felt a lump on his chest which he claimed to be breast cancer, which was successfully treated by some quack remedy.  But this was never diagnosed as cancer, and Gorski noted that from the description it actually sounded like a case of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynecomastia\"\u003egynecomastia\u003c/a\u003e rather than cancer.  His second case was that of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/daniel_hauser_and_the_rejection_of_chemo.php\"\u003eDaniel Hauser\u003c/a\u003e, a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin\u0026rsquo;s lymphoma, who went through one round of chemotherapy with good results, but then stopped taking it because he and his mother wanted to use an alternative treatment from \u0026ldquo;Chief Cloudpiler.\u0026rdquo;  The judge ordered chemotherapy to be continued, and he and his mom took off, though ultimately returned and re-started chemotherapy.  During the time chemotherapy stopped, the tumor grew to larger than it was originally, and when it was restarted, it again responded to treatment\u0026ndash;but of course his mother gave credit to the alternative treatment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe problems with testimonials are that there may not have been a diagnosis of cancer, there may have been a misunderstanding of the diagnosis (e.g., \u0026ldquo;I was sent home to die\u0026rdquo;), there may be important information withheld, the diagnosis may have been done by quack tests with no validity (e.g., the Syncrometer or live blood cell analysis), and there may be a selection bias.  As an example of the latter, he noted that dead people don\u0026rsquo;t give testimonials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQuestions for Evaluating Testimonials\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe provided a modified version of Dr. Moran\u0026rsquo;s questions to ask in order to evaluate testimonial evidence.  These questions include:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas cancer definitely present?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDid it go away?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas the advocated treatment the only one used?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas the alternative therapy a replacement for primary or for adjuvant therapy?\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAt this point, he distinguished primary, adjuvant, and neo-adjuvant therapies.  The primary therapy for most cancer treatments is surgery, to remove as much of it as possible.  Adjuvant therapy is designed to reduce the risk of recurrence, where radiation is used to reduce the risk of local recurrence (cancer in the same place, to make sure you get rid of it all) and chemotherapy is used to reduce the risk of a systemic recurrence (cancer that may have spread to other parts of the body).  Neo-adjuvant therapy is designed to shrink a tumor prior to surgery, and may reduce complications and produce better results from surgery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSuzanne Somers\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo illustrate the importance of these questions and distinctions, he used the case of Suzanne Somers, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 54, probably at stage I.  She had no positive lymph nodes and underwent a lumpectomy, radiation, and a lymph node biopsy, but refused chemotherapy with tamoxifen in favor of mistletoe extract and other supplements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn her case, the answers to the questions were:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas cancer present?  Yes.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDid it go away?  Yes\u0026ndash;it was removed by surgery.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas the alternative medicine the only or primary treatment?  No.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eHe then examined her probable survival rates with and without chemotherapy, and noted that if the tumor was small, the benefit of chemotherapy for her 10-year survival rate could be as low as 1%.  With a larger tumor, her 10-year survival rate improvement could still be as low as 4% (and would already be at 90% prior to chemo).  But, Gorski noted, most women say that they would go with chemotherapy even for as little as a 1% increase in survival rate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSurgery cures most cancers that can be cured, up to stage III, and the corresponding benefits of chemo and hormonal therapy increase with more advanced stages of cancer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGorski then observed that there may be cases where a person is diagnosed with cancer by a biopsy, declines further treatment, and has a good survival rate, where they fail to realize that the biopsy itself has been a surgical primary treatment that has excised all of the cancer\u0026ndash;an \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsy#Excisional_biopsy\"\u003eexcisional biopsy\u003c/a\u003e may be equivalent to a lumpectomy.  He also noted that many people say to go ahead and take out the tumor but don\u0026rsquo;t touch my lymph nodes, and he agreed that \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphedema\"\u003elymphedema\u003c/a\u003e, which can be caused by surgical or radiation treatment of the lymph nodes, is \u0026ldquo;not a fun thing.\u0026rdquo; But the new standard of care is to use blue dye and a radiotracer procedure to find lymph nodes likely to be positive for cancer (\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_lymph_node\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;sentinel lymph nodes\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e), and treat accordingly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eKim Tinkham\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/01/a_horrifying_breast_cancer_testimonial_f.php\"\u003eKim Tinkham\u003c/a\u003e is a woman who saw The Secret, had stage III breast cancer, and declined all treatment.  She now claims the cancer is gone, based on a quack blood test, even though the lump is still present, and has written a book about it.  She is a follower of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Young_%28author%29\"\u003eMormon naturopath Robert O. Young\u003c/a\u003e, who claims that acid is the cause of all disease and alkalinization is the cure for everything.  He says there is no such thing as a cancer cell, just a healthy cell spoiled by acid.  Two years after her initial diagnosis, Tinkham is still alive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGorski pointed out that for a case like hers, expected survival for five years with treatment could be over 50%, but at ten years it goes way down.  Data about untreated cancer comes from 250 cases of \u0026ldquo;large palpable tumors\u0026rdquo; from 1805-1933 at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut.  At 10 years, 3% were still alive, and at 15 years, 0.8% were still alive; the median survival rate was 2.87 years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe noted that breast cancer biology is \u0026ldquo;highly variable in clinical behavior\u0026rdquo; and in some cases may be \u0026ldquo;indolent, slow-growing, and slow to metastasize.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe answers to the testimonial questions for Tinkham are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas cancer definitely present?  Yes.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDid it go away?  No.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWas the alternative treatment the only one?  Yes.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eTime will no doubt soon tell how (in)effective this alternative treatment has been, unfortunately.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTestimonials as Conversion Stories\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGorski suggested that these testimonies are really part of \u0026ldquo;cult medicine\u0026rdquo; and seem to follow a pattern like religious conversion stories.  The specter of death comes like a \u0026ldquo;bolt out of the blue,\u0026rdquo; the person repents and says \u0026ldquo;I brought this upon myself,\u0026rdquo; they face temptation in the form of standard medical care, they search for enlightenment, and then they find enlightenment in the form of some alternate description of their ailment which they then want to evangelize.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMichaela Jakubczyk-Eckert\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Gorski concluded his talk with \u003ca href=\"http://www.ariplex.com/ama/amamiche.htm\"\u003ethe story of Michaela Jakubczyk-Eckert\u003c/a\u003e (warning, graphic images), who was born on November 14, 1964 and died on November 12, 2005, just two days short of her 41st birthday.  She had a T4 lesion eating through the skin of her breast, a case of \u0026ldquo;classic delayed diagnosis.\u0026rdquo;  She received neo-adjuvant chemotherapy treatment which shrank the tumor considerably, but then discovered \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryke_Geerd_Hamer\"\u003eRyke Geerd Hamer\u003c/a\u003e, the inventor of German New Medicine, who argued that cancer is caused by psychological conflict rather than anything biological.  She stopped her chemotherapy, and suffered a horrible relapse.  As Gorski put it, she \u0026ldquo;died a horrible, horrible death\u0026rdquo; with her final days being subjected to the pain of a rotting-away body of skin and bones\u0026ndash;a death far worse than chemotherapy.  It was a vivid depiction of the alternative that cancer quacks can cause for their victims.  Her husband has put up a website to try to dissuade others from being fooled by Hamer\u0026rsquo;s theories (see link above to her story).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Gorski has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=10\"\u003ea blog post at the Science-Based Medicine blog on alternative medicine testimonials\u003c/a\u003e that covers some of the above subjects in more detail.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part three of my conference summary, on chiropractic, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part four, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 2: cancer quackery"},{"content":"This year\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting\u0026rdquo; (TAM7) was preceded by a Science-Based Medicine conference, organized by Steven Novella and the Science-Based Medicine blog; the speakers were all contributors to that blog. This summary is from my hand-written notes\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve tried to quote and summarize accurately, but keep in mind that some of the quotations and bulleted items may not be verbatim. The conference was videotaped and may become available via DVD or online video; keep an eye on the SBM blog for that. Steven Novella has posted a short summary of the SBM conference at the SBM blog.\nI am in the process of posting a summary of TAM7 itself, which begins here. (I summarized 2008\u0026rsquo;s TAM6 here.)\nNovella\u0026rsquo;s Introduction\nThe SBM conference began with Novella\u0026rsquo;s presentation, titled \u0026ldquo;Science-Based Medicine: Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Decision Making,\u0026rdquo; which distinguished science-based medicine (SBM) from the recently popular \u0026ldquo;evidence-based medicine\u0026rdquo; (EBM) and explained the motivation for promoting the SBM concept.\nNovella, assistant professor of clinical neurology at Yale University School of Medicine, began with a slide titled \u0026ldquo;Foundations of Medicine\u0026rdquo; which described some historical varieties of medicine:\nSuperstition/philosophy-based medicine.Scientific medicine.Evidence-based medicine (EBM).Eastern vs. Western medicine.Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).He made the point that modern scientific medicine, which arose in the western world, is relatively young, though attempts to put it on a more scientific footing go back much farther.\nNext, he discussed \u0026ldquo;What is science,\u0026rdquo; first observing that \u0026ldquo;scientifically formulated\u0026rdquo; is a meaningless marketing label, then noting that there is a battle of memes about science between its defenders, who use it as a label connoting \u0026ldquo;objective truth, quality, and professionalism,\u0026rdquo; and its critics, who use it as a label connoting \u0026ldquo;arrogance, oppression, and elitism.\u0026rdquo; Marketers also use it \u0026ldquo;to imply product safety, effectiveness, and overall value.\u0026quot;\nHe argued that we should adopt \u0026ldquo;common sense standards\u0026rdquo; which require that treatments \u0026ldquo;reasonably account for all available evidence,\u0026rdquo; use \u0026ldquo;valid and internally consistent logic,\u0026rdquo; have been rigorously and methodically investigated and judged with fair and unbiased criteria, and are conducted by practitioners who adhere to \u0026ldquo;standards of ethics and professionalism.\u0026quot;\nEvidence-Based Medicine\nNext, he looked at evidence-based medicine, a term of art in use for the past couple of decades. EBM begins with the premise that \u0026ldquo;products and practices that work and are safe are better than those that don\u0026rsquo;t work or are unsafe,\u0026rdquo; an uncontroversial premise. It promotes scientific investigation as the measure of what works and is safe. But, according to Novella (and later, other speakers), EBM has \u0026ldquo;too much focus on evidence, and not enough on logic and prior probability, and good science must consider both.\u0026rdquo; He argued that EBM made sense at the time it was introduced, because practices were being used largely \u0026ldquo;because they made sense, not because of supporting evidence.\u0026rdquo; The introduction of EBM effectively \u0026ldquo;leveled the playing field, but also opened it up to implausible treatments,\u0026rdquo; with bad timing due to the rise of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).\nThe standard reference for evidence in the EBM framework is the Cochrane Reviews. The data reported in the Cochrane Reviews includes not only tests of legitimate medical treatments, but of completely implausible research such as chiropractic treatment for migraine. The problem with the framework is that it assumes that everyone is \u0026ldquo;playing fair,\u0026rdquo; it does not account sufficiently for fraud or publication bias (such as the \u0026ldquo;file drawer effect\u0026rdquo;), it ignores prior probability, and it \u0026ldquo;doesn\u0026rsquo;t adequately consider the big picture of the entire literature.\u0026rdquo; According to Novella, with EBM it is typical to see the quality of studies decline over time, in order to continue to yield positive results for implausible treatments.\nHe then discussed \u0026ldquo;The Work of John Ioannidis,\u0026rdquo; who argues that \u0026ldquo;most published research findings are false.\u0026rdquo; The reasons are that\nThe majority of highly-cited initial medical research is later refuted.There\u0026rsquo;s a bias towards publishing positive studies.There\u0026rsquo;s a bias towards researchers publishing provocative research.\nAnd a \u0026ldquo;low prior probability worsens the effect,\u0026rdquo; i.e., studies of treatments with low prior probability are more likely to be refuted.\nScience-Based Medicine\nBy contrast with EBM, Novella identified the following features to distinguish Science-Based Medicine, SBM:\nIt affirms high-quality science as a basis for standard of care in medicine.It acknowledges the consilience of science.It considered scientific medical plausibility of an intervention when weighing evidence.It considers the overall pattern in the literature.In other words, SBM considers prior probability in a Bayesian sense as part of the evaluation, it looks at whether there is other scientific evidence that casts doubt on the plausibility of a suggested treatment (like violating the laws of physics or including unknown entities and mechanisms), in addition to merely looking at the specific results of controlled trials of the particular treatment. CAM, in particular, is loaded with claims that have extremely low and near-zero prior plausibility, as evidenced by the fact that $1.2 billion of U.S. taxpayer funding to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine since its founding in 1991 (originally as the Office of Alternative Medicine) has so far yielded zero effective treatments for anything.\nHe stated that finding anomalies argues for deeper research, and we can\u0026rsquo;t have two inconsistent views that both work. Here, I think he overstated his case, since we have had cases in science where there are mutually inconsistent theories that both work, though we also take the inconsistency as grounds that something is wrong and ultimately needs to be reconciled (e.g., light wave/particle duality, quantum field theory vs. general relativity). Even theories that are wrong at some level can still work for solving certain kinds of problems (e.g., Newtonian physics)\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;d agree with Novella\u0026rsquo;s claim that scientific medicine is still in its infancy. A point Novella didn\u0026rsquo;t make that I would like to insert here is that when you have two inconsistent views that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that only one of them must be wrong\u0026ndash;they could both be wrong.\nNovella did go on to mention two cases where things that seemed initially implausible or lacking in mechanism have turned out to be correct, the postulation of dark energy in physics, and, more directly relevant to the topic at hand, the use of botulinum as a treatment for migraine. This treatment seemed to him completely implausible even though the evidence of trials suggested its effectiveness, and now a mechanism has been discovered and is understood. (My Google searching on this subject, however, yielded some recent evidence that it is not a good treatment for migraines and is no better than placebo, so this appears to me to still be somewhat controversial.)\nClinical Decision-Making\nNovella ended his talk by talking about the process of clinical decision-making and pitfalls that arise as a result of human psychology and limitations. While clinical decision-making \u0026ldquo;individualizes the best available evidence to a specific patient\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;considers risk vs. benefit in both therapeutic and diagnostic intervention,\u0026rdquo; this evaluation needs to include not acting as an alternative. In some cases, screening for certain diseases causes more harm than not performing the screening test, because conducting the test will yield far more false positives than true positives. (This is an effect discussed in some detail in John Allen Poulos\u0026rsquo; book, Innumeracy, and is a reason not to do things like mandatory HIV screening as a condition of a marriage license, drug testing of grade school students, and certain kinds of security screening for terrorists\u0026ndash;if your baseline prevalence of what you\u0026rsquo;re testing for is very low, your false positive results will swamp your true positive results.)\nHe briefly discussed the claim that \u0026ldquo;surgery kills more people than car accidents,\u0026rdquo; noting that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t really compare against the outcomes that would occur without surgery\u0026ndash;far more deaths.\nHe then recounted some examples of pitfalls in the clinical context, such as the human capacity for pattern recognition even when the pattern isn\u0026rsquo;t really there (pareidolia), the tendency to be \u0026ldquo;unduly influenced by quirky experience\u0026rdquo; or to \u0026ldquo;value experience over evidence,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;failure to consider alternatives,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;over-reliance on non-specific signs and symptoms,\u0026rdquo; and confirmation bias (e.g., the sorts of heuristics and biases discussed in Kahneman and Tversky\u0026rsquo;s classic Judgment Under Uncertainty). He then listed a few logical fallacies, pointed out the confounding factor of the placebo effect, and a couple of statistical effects\u0026ndash;regression to the mean and the fact that most diseases are self-limiting.\nQ\u0026amp;A\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, someone asked what Novella thought of legislation supporting evidence-based medicine, apparently referring to $1.1 billion in the stimulus package for evidence-based medicine research. Novella said that he thought conceptually it was a good idea but wasn\u0026rsquo;t familiar with the specifics of the legislation. Another question was whether, given the current state of health care and the desire for reform, SBM would be challenged or supported. Novella said that the delivery of healthcare is a separate issue from how we decide what to research or what treatments are appropriate, and that things will either get much better or much worse. If he had also added that things might also stay about the same in overall quality, I\u0026rsquo;d say he\u0026rsquo;s certainly correct; without it, merely probably correct.\n(Part two of my conference summary, on cancer quackery, is here. Part three, on chiropractic, is here. Part four, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is here. Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is here. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is here.)\nprivate (2009-07-14):\nInteresting notes, Jim. I would agree with most of the points. However, I am not sure I would dismiss some \u0026quot;natural\u0026quot; remedies or all types of chiropractic so easily as the presenters. Two examples: In regard to natural treatments, Honey has been shown to be an effective topical antibiotic. It is so thick that it essentially \u0026quot;suffocates\u0026quot; bacteria. The age old science experiment from 8th grade of swabbing things into petri dishes shows that honey swabs don't render any bacterial growth. http://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/07/27/19109.aspx\nAlso,in regard to chiropractic care, a new method is gaining recognition. it is called the \u0026quot;Blair Technique\u0026quot; and approaches the spinal system from a scientific perspective. Only the top 4 vertebrae in the neck are adjusted to be in proper alignment so that the rest of the spin can \u0026quot;fix\u0026quot; itself. In my family, my father had started developing a backwards curvature of the neck that was turning into spurs on the vertebral bones, threatening to fuse together by the time he was 60. The Blair technique reversed this curvature over the course of 4 years and his spurs have subsequently decreased in size. periodic xrays demonstrate this change.\nI have been receiving Blair for 7 years now. Before I started, I had chronic lower back pain at the age of 16. My xrays showed a pronounced imbalance in my shoulder and hip horizontal alignment at the time. I am currently pain free and in proper alignment. Unlike regular chiropractic, the goal of the Blair doctor is to see less and less of a patient. The goal is to help the body do what it naturally wants to do: be in proper spin alignment. Setting the moving vertebrae of the neck on the right path gives the body a chance to retrain muscles around the spine to hold a proper alignment. After time, a patient goes to the chiropractor less and less. You can read more about it here: http://www.blairchiropractic.com/\nHaving said that, I would never consider going to a \u0026quot;crack your back\u0026quot; chiropractor. such treatments only treat the symptoms, not the source causing the pain.\nCheers! Chrystine\nLippard (2009-07-14):\nI think you\u0026#39;ve drawn an incorrect inference. The presenters don\u0026#39;t use \u0026quot;natural\u0026quot; as a category for acceptance or dismissal--what matters is what is supported by scientific evidence. Many medical treatments are derived from natural effects, including aspirin and pennicilin. The presenter on chiropractic, Harriet Hall, also stated that spinal manipulation therapy *does* work for the treatment of back pain. Where it goes wrong is being based on bogus claims of why it works and bogus claims about what it can treat, along with other bogus treatments and diagnostic techniques being used in chiropractic practice. I'm not familiar with Blair Chiropractic, but a quick look at their website looks like it bears some resemblance to B.J. Palmer's (D.D. Palmer's son) \u0026quot;Atlas Adjustment\u0026quot; technique, or \u0026quot;hole in one\u0026quot; technique, which suggests that manipulation of the Atlas vertebra is sufficient to cause the rest of the spine to fall into alignment. Blair, by contrast, adds three more vertebra.\nFrankly, I'd be quite surprised if there is any scientific evidence supporting the Blair technique.\nThere does appear to be some evidence from preliminary studies that some types of honey (but not all) is effective at killing bacteria.\nLippard (2009-07-17):\ns/pennicilin/penicillin/, oops.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis year\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting\u0026rdquo; (TAM7) was preceded by a \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=426\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine conference\u003c/a\u003e, organized by \u003ca href=\"http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?page_id=2\"\u003eSteven Novella\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/\"\u003ethe Science-Based Medicine blog\u003c/a\u003e; the speakers were all contributors to that blog.  This summary is from my hand-written notes\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve tried to quote and summarize accurately, but keep in mind that some of the quotations and bulleted items may not be verbatim.  The conference was videotaped and may become available via DVD or online video; keep an eye on the SBM blog for that.  Steven Novella \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=560\"\u003ehas posted a short summary of the SBM conference at the SBM blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI am in the process of posting a summary of TAM7 itself, which begins \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/amazing-meeting-7-intro.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (I summarized 2008\u0026rsquo;s TAM6 \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNovella\u0026rsquo;s Introduction\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe SBM conference began with Novella\u0026rsquo;s presentation, titled \u0026ldquo;Science-Based Medicine: Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Decision Making,\u0026rdquo; which distinguished science-based medicine (SBM) from the recently popular \u0026ldquo;evidence-based medicine\u0026rdquo; (EBM) and explained the motivation for promoting the SBM concept.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella, assistant professor of clinical neurology at Yale University School of Medicine, began with a slide titled \u0026ldquo;Foundations of Medicine\u0026rdquo; which described some historical varieties of medicine:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eSuperstition/philosophy-based medicine.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eScientific medicine.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEvidence-based medicine (EBM).\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEastern vs. Western medicine.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eComplementary and alternative medicine (CAM).\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eHe made the point that modern scientific medicine, which arose in the western world, is relatively young, though attempts to put it on a more scientific footing go back much farther.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, he discussed \u0026ldquo;What is science,\u0026rdquo; first observing that \u0026ldquo;scientifically formulated\u0026rdquo; is a meaningless marketing label, then noting that there is a battle of memes about science between its defenders, who use it as a label connoting \u0026ldquo;objective truth, quality, and professionalism,\u0026rdquo; and its critics, who use it as a label connoting \u0026ldquo;arrogance, oppression, and elitism.\u0026rdquo;  Marketers also use it \u0026ldquo;to imply product safety, effectiveness, and overall value.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe argued that we should adopt \u0026ldquo;common sense standards\u0026rdquo; which require that treatments \u0026ldquo;reasonably account for all available evidence,\u0026rdquo; use \u0026ldquo;valid and internally consistent logic,\u0026rdquo; have been rigorously and methodically investigated and judged with fair and unbiased criteria, and are conducted by practitioners who adhere to \u0026ldquo;standards of ethics and professionalism.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEvidence-Based Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, he looked at evidence-based medicine, a term of art in use for the past couple of decades.  EBM begins with the premise that \u0026ldquo;products and practices that work and are safe are better than those that don\u0026rsquo;t work or are unsafe,\u0026rdquo; an uncontroversial premise.  It promotes scientific investigation as the measure of what works and is safe.  But, according to Novella (and later, other speakers), EBM has \u0026ldquo;too much focus on evidence, and not enough on logic and prior probability, and good science must consider both.\u0026rdquo;  He argued that EBM made sense at the time it was introduced, because practices were being used largely \u0026ldquo;because they made sense, not because of supporting evidence.\u0026rdquo;  The introduction of EBM effectively \u0026ldquo;leveled the playing field, but also opened it up to implausible treatments,\u0026rdquo; with bad timing due to the rise of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe standard reference for evidence in the EBM framework is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/\"\u003eCochrane Reviews\u003c/a\u003e.  The data reported in the Cochrane Reviews includes not only tests of legitimate medical treatments, but of completely implausible research such as chiropractic treatment for migraine.  The problem with the framework is that it assumes that everyone is \u0026ldquo;playing fair,\u0026rdquo; it does not account sufficiently for fraud or publication bias (such as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepdic.com/filedrawer.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;file drawer effect\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e), it ignores prior probability, and it \u0026ldquo;doesn\u0026rsquo;t adequately consider the big picture of the entire literature.\u0026rdquo;  According to Novella, with EBM it is typical to see the quality of studies decline over time, in order to continue to yield positive results for implausible treatments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then discussed \u0026ldquo;The Work of John Ioannidis,\u0026rdquo; who argues that \u0026ldquo;most published research findings are false.\u0026rdquo;  The reasons are that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe majority of highly-cited initial medical research is later refuted.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a bias towards publishing positive studies.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a bias towards researchers publishing provocative research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAnd a \u0026ldquo;low prior probability worsens the effect,\u0026rdquo; i.e., studies of treatments with low prior probability are more likely to be refuted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eScience-Based Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy contrast with EBM, Novella identified the following features to distinguish Science-Based Medicine, SBM:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt affirms high-quality science as a basis for standard of care in medicine.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt acknowledges the consilience of science.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt considered scientific medical plausibility of an intervention when weighing evidence.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIt considers the overall pattern in the literature.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eIn other words, SBM considers prior probability in a Bayesian sense as part of the evaluation, it looks at whether there is other scientific evidence that casts doubt on the plausibility of a suggested treatment (like violating the laws of physics or including unknown entities and mechanisms), in addition to merely looking at the specific results of controlled trials of the particular treatment.  CAM, in particular, is loaded with claims that have extremely low and near-zero prior plausibility, as evidenced by the fact that $1.2 billion of U.S. taxpayer funding to the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Alternative_Medicine\"\u003eNational Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine\u003c/a\u003e since its founding in 1991 (originally as the Office of Alternative Medicine) has so far yielded zero effective treatments for anything.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe stated that finding anomalies argues for deeper research, and we can\u0026rsquo;t have two inconsistent views that both work.  Here, I think he overstated his case, since we have had cases in science where there are mutually inconsistent theories that both work, though we also take the inconsistency as grounds that something is wrong and ultimately needs to be reconciled (e.g., light wave/particle duality, quantum field theory vs. general relativity).  Even theories that are wrong at some level can still work for solving certain kinds of problems (e.g., Newtonian physics)\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;d agree with Novella\u0026rsquo;s claim that scientific medicine is still in its infancy.  A point Novella didn\u0026rsquo;t make that I would like to insert here is that when you have two inconsistent views that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that only one of them must be wrong\u0026ndash;they could both be wrong.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella did go on to mention two cases where things that seemed initially implausible or lacking in mechanism have turned out to be correct, the postulation of dark energy in physics, and, more directly relevant to the topic at hand, the use of botulinum as a treatment for migraine.  This treatment seemed to him completely implausible even though the evidence of trials suggested its effectiveness, and now a mechanism has been discovered and is understood.  (My Google searching on this subject, however, yielded \u003ca href=\"http://www.medpagetoday.com/PainManagement/Migraines/9339\"\u003esome recent evidence that it is not a good treatment for migraines and is no better than placebo\u003c/a\u003e, so this appears to me to still be somewhat controversial.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eClinical Decision-Making\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella ended his talk by talking about the process of clinical decision-making and pitfalls that arise as a result of human psychology and limitations.  While clinical decision-making \u0026ldquo;individualizes the best available evidence to a specific patient\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;considers risk vs. benefit in both therapeutic and diagnostic intervention,\u0026rdquo; this evaluation needs to include not acting as an alternative.  In some cases, screening for certain diseases causes more harm than not performing the screening test, because conducting the test will yield far more false positives than true positives.  (This is an effect discussed in some detail in John Allen Poulos\u0026rsquo; book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInnumeracy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, and is a reason not to do things like mandatory HIV screening as a condition of a marriage license, drug testing of grade school students, and certain kinds of security screening for terrorists\u0026ndash;if your baseline prevalence of what you\u0026rsquo;re testing for is very low, your false positive results will swamp your true positive results.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe briefly discussed the claim that \u0026ldquo;surgery kills more people than car accidents,\u0026rdquo; noting that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t really compare against the outcomes that would occur without surgery\u0026ndash;far more deaths.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then recounted some examples of pitfalls in the clinical context, such as the human capacity for pattern recognition even when the pattern isn\u0026rsquo;t really there (\u003ca href=\"http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html\"\u003epareidolia\u003c/a\u003e), the tendency to be \u0026ldquo;unduly influenced by quirky experience\u0026rdquo; or to \u0026ldquo;value experience over evidence,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;failure to consider alternatives,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;over-reliance on non-specific signs and symptoms,\u0026rdquo; and confirmation bias (e.g., the sorts of heuristics and biases discussed in Kahneman and Tversky\u0026rsquo;s classic \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases/dp/0521284147/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJudgment Under Uncertainty\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).  He then listed a few logical fallacies, pointed out the confounding factor of the placebo effect, and a couple of statistical effects\u0026ndash;regression to the mean and the fact that most diseases are self-limiting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eQ\u0026amp;A\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A session, someone asked what Novella thought of legislation supporting evidence-based medicine, apparently referring to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/health/policy/16health.html?_r=1\"\u003e$1.1 billion in the stimulus package for evidence-based medicine research\u003c/a\u003e.  Novella said that he thought conceptually it was a good idea but wasn\u0026rsquo;t familiar with the specifics of the legislation.  Another question was whether, given the current state of health care and the desire for reform, SBM would be challenged or supported.  Novella said that the delivery of healthcare is a separate issue from how we decide what to research or what treatments are appropriate, and that things will either get much better or much worse.  If he had also added that things might also stay about the same in overall quality, I\u0026rsquo;d say he\u0026rsquo;s certainly correct; without it, merely probably correct.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part two of my conference summary, on cancer quackery, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_13.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part three, on chiropractic, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_14.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part four, on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_9316.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Part five, on chronic Lyme disease, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_15.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. Part six, on online health and social media, and the closing Q\u0026amp;A panel, is \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/science-based-medicine-conference-part_1401.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science-based medicine conference, part 1"},{"content":"About a week and a half ago, I heard NPR\u0026rsquo;s ombudsman, Alicia Shepherd, defending NPR\u0026rsquo;s policy on refusing to identify waterboarding as torture. Her argument was that NPR had a journalistic responsibility not to take sides on any issue, and that to identify waterboarding as torture was to take a side. She actually wrote that \u0026ldquo;I believe that it is not the role of journalists to take sides or to characterize things.\u0026quot;\nI think this is not only ridiculous, but an abdication of journalistic responsibility in favor of a bogus view of reporting \u0026ldquo;objectivity\u0026rdquo; by using only \u0026ldquo;he said, she said\u0026rdquo; descriptions, to an extreme.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what I posted to the NPR blog on July 2:\nThere is no reasonable debate about whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding has been legally determined to be criminal torture by U.S. courts in 1947, when Yukio Asano was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor for it (among other war crimes). Other Japanese war criminals, such as Kenji Dohihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Hideki Tojo, were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for engaging in torture during WWII, including waterboarding, and several were executed for it.\nU.S. soldiers who undergo waterboarding as part of SERE training receive that training in order to understand what torture is.\nIt is bad journalism to defend \u0026ldquo;there are two sides to every issue\u0026rdquo; as a form of phony objectivity. Sometimes there are more than two sides of merit, and sometimes there is only one (and there is always some nut who will take issue with any well-established claim). In this case, there is no reasonable argument by which waterboarding is not torture. It makes no more sense to call it \u0026ldquo;what some people refer to as torture\u0026rdquo; than it does to insert similar qualifications on the front of every noun used in a sentence on NPR.Another commenter replied to point out that waterboarding has been legally torture for longer than that in the U.S.\nI was glad to hear Adam Savage of Mythbusters, at TAM7, answer the question \u0026ldquo;what has been the biggest media failure of skepticism lately\u0026rdquo; by saying that the biggest failure has been the NPR ombudsman\u0026rsquo;s statement that calling waterboarding torture is taking sides and they have to be \u0026ldquo;balanced.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Pierre Stromberg (2009-07-13):\nThanks for pointing this out. I\u0026#39;ve left my own comment on NPR\u0026#39;s website.\nThomas Dimitri (2009-07-13):\nWell written Jim. Of course water boarding is torture... that is why they went to the effort to perform the act. If it wasn't psychologically effective, it would be pointless to attempt it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/npr-ombudsman-on-torture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAbout a week and a half ago, I heard NPR\u0026rsquo;s ombudsman, Alicia Shepherd, defending NPR\u0026rsquo;s policy on refusing to identify waterboarding as torture.  Her argument was that \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.html\"\u003eNPR had a journalistic responsibility not to take sides on any issue, and that to identify waterboarding as torture was to take a side\u003c/a\u003e.  She actually wrote that \u0026ldquo;I believe that it is not the role of journalists to take sides or to characterize things.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think this is not only ridiculous, but an abdication of journalistic responsibility in favor of a bogus view of reporting \u0026ldquo;objectivity\u0026rdquo; by using only \u0026ldquo;he said, she said\u0026rdquo; descriptions, to an extreme.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s what I posted to the NPR blog on July 2:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThere is no reasonable debate about whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding has been legally determined to be criminal torture by U.S. courts in 1947, when Yukio Asano was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor for it (among other war crimes). Other Japanese war criminals, such as Kenji Dohihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Hideki Tojo, were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for engaging in torture during WWII, including waterboarding, and several were executed for it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eU.S. soldiers who undergo waterboarding as part of SERE training receive that training in order to understand what torture is.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is bad journalism to defend \u0026ldquo;there are two sides to every issue\u0026rdquo; as a form of phony objectivity. Sometimes there are more than two sides of merit, and sometimes there is only one (and there is \u003cem\u003ealways\u003c/em\u003e some nut who will take issue with any well-established claim). In this case, there is no reasonable argument by which waterboarding is not torture. It makes no more sense to call it \u0026ldquo;what some people refer to as torture\u0026rdquo; than it does to insert similar qualifications on the front of every noun used in a sentence on NPR.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnother commenter replied to point out that waterboarding has been legally torture for longer than that in the U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was glad to hear Adam Savage of Mythbusters, at TAM7, answer the question \u0026ldquo;what has been the biggest media failure of skepticism lately\u0026rdquo; by saying that the biggest failure has been the NPR ombudsman\u0026rsquo;s statement that calling waterboarding torture is taking sides and they have to be \u0026ldquo;balanced.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NPR ombudsman on torture"},{"content":"The judge has ruled in Preston v. Hallman, and again it goes in favor of the Prestons. As expected, he ruled that the city\u0026rsquo;s decision to revoke their permit was \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; since it did not meet any existing standard for denial.\nThe judge ruled that Tempe must re-issue their permit and allow their business to open. The city has 30 days to file an appeal.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t heard how the judge ruled on the other issue, which I predicted might go the city\u0026rsquo;s way, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter for the overall outcome\u0026ndash;it was enough for the Prestons to prevail on either of the two issues, and they won on the one that they had a very strong case for.\nThe Goldwater Institute has issued a press release about the victory, and the Arizona Republic has run a story on it.\n(Previously.)\nHistorical Comments John Lynch (2009-07-10):\nThis is good news for us in Tempe. More worrying is the 33% in the AZ Republic poll who said that they didn't want a tattoo parlor in their neighborhood because of the clientele.\n-jml\n/who has no ink\nHigh Power Rocketry (2009-07-12):\nOwned.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/prestons-win-in-court.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe judge has ruled in Preston v. Hallman, and again it goes in favor of the Prestons.  As expected, he ruled that the city\u0026rsquo;s decision to revoke their permit was \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; since it did not meet any existing standard for denial.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge ruled that Tempe must re-issue their permit and allow their business to open.  The city has 30 days to file an appeal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t heard how the judge ruled on the other issue, which I predicted might go the city\u0026rsquo;s way, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter for the overall outcome\u0026ndash;it was enough for the Prestons to prevail on either of the two issues, and they won on the one that they had a very strong case for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Goldwater Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/3320\"\u003ehas issued a press release about the victory\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2009/07/09/20090709tattoo0709-On.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e has run a story on it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/tempe-tattoo-parlor-case.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prestons win in court"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m in the Phoenix airport waiting for my early morning flight to Las Vegas for today\u0026rsquo;s conference on science-based medicine, followed by The Amazing Meeting 7, at the new South Point Casino and Hotel.\nI hope to write up a summary like I did for last year\u0026rsquo;s TAM 6.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-10):\nScience-based medicine? Is there any other kind?\nLippard (2009-07-11):\nYes--they distinguished science-based medicine from evidence-based medicine and from complementary and alternative medicine, for example. The U.S. government has spent over $1.5 billion on research on complementary and alternative medicine, for example, since the founding of the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Number of new treatments produced as a result of that research: 0. It's recently come out that some of that research money is going to criminals\u0026ndash;people with felony fraud convictions. I'll have much more on this when I write up my summary (probably next week).\nLippard (2009-07-11):\nBTW, just to forgo the obvious question just raised by what I said--evidence-based medicine (EBM) is based on looking only at controlled trials, preferably randomized controlled trials, without regard to logic, theory, or mechanism. The speakers offered some critiques of this approach as a method for treatment selection. I raised the question of whether this requires that one must already have a plausible mechanism for the effect, arguing that this should *not* be required, and another questioner raised a similar objection about the potential for not finding a valid treatment by closing off research (i.e., making a Type II error). They seemed willing to take a more open-minded approach to EBT for research with private funds, but the NCCAM example shows that there\u0026#39;s merit in adding some requirements for prior plausibility.\nDr Jonathan Sarfati (2009-07-11):\nSurely science-based medicine would be evidence-based as well? The only sensible medicine should have scientific evidence that it works.\nLippard (2009-07-12):\nJonathan: EBM is a specific approach to medicine that categorizes evidence in a particular way and gives no role to prior plausibility or mechanism. Science-based medicine agrees with the requirement for evidence, but it isn\u0026#39;t EBM. It is evidence-based in the generic sense, but not in the sense of the term of art \u0026quot;evidence-based medicine.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/on-my-way-to-tam-7.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in the Phoenix airport waiting for my early morning flight to Las Vegas for \u003ca href=\"http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=491\"\u003etoday\u0026rsquo;s conference on science-based medicine\u003c/a\u003e, followed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/445-the-amazing-meeting-7.html\"\u003eThe Amazing Meeting 7\u003c/a\u003e, at the new South Point Casino and Hotel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI hope to write up a summary like I did for \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003elast year\u0026rsquo;s TAM 6\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKtisophilos\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-07-10)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eScience-based medicine?  Is there any other kind?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-07-11)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYes--they distinguished science-based medicine from evidence-based medicine and from complementary and alternative medicine, for example.\n\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. government has spent over $1.5 billion on research on complementary and alternative medicine, for example, since the founding of the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  Number of new treatments produced as a result of that research:  0.  It's recently come out that some of that research money is going to criminals\u0026ndash;people with felony fraud convictions.  I'll have much more on this when I write up my summary (probably next week).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On my way to TAM 7"},{"content":"From Sons of Maxwell:\nIn the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.\nUPDATE (August 18, 2009): \u0026ldquo;United Breaks Guitars\u0026rdquo; song 2 and video are now on YouTube and below:\nHistorical Comments banchukita (2009-07-08):\nI *LOVE* this! Hopefully Taylor will come through and give these guys some kind of endorsement...\nEamon Knight (2009-07-09):\nWhich reminds me of this blast from the past, apparently based on a real incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6PRqU0sU8I Travelling musicians have been having this problem for as long as there have been airlines, I think. I have a Stan Rogers songbook with a news item relating his guitar-on-airplane problems. Of course, Stan himself eventually got killed by Air Canada\u0026hellip;.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-09):\nGood grief. Once I peeked behind the screen at an Australian airport, and saw the suitcases thrown from the truck onto the platform below, to be pushed onto the conveyor belt.\nUnknown (2009-07-10):\nSeems this bit has already made the rounds on the wider web, but I\u0026#39;ll comment. Every time I had to check my bass guitar at the airport I wondered if I\u0026#39;d ever get it back intact. Thankfully, those days are long gone. The hard-shell case now has numerous gouges and chips, but the bass survived. However, I'll never forget the time, one early morning in Seattle, when I was asked if I was trying to check a shotgun. I had to open the case to convince the nice lady at the counter that it was merely a musical instrument. This was 1997\u0026ndash;I'd probably have been strip-searched today.\nSchtacky (2009-07-13):\nFurther: http://consumerist.com/5311943/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/united-breaks-guitars.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story/united-breaks-guitars\"\u003eSons of Maxwell\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/5YGc4zOqozo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/5YGc4zOqozo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 18, 2009): \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UoERHaSQg\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;United Breaks Guitars\u0026rdquo; song 2 and video are now on YouTube\u003c/a\u003e and below:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/h-UoERHaSQg\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\u0026\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/h-UoERHaSQg\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\u0026\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"United breaks guitars"},{"content":"Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake), arguing in favor of a bill to allow uranium mining north of the Grand Canyon, casually says that the earth is 6,000 years old, and therefore a little uranium mining isn\u0026rsquo;t going to hurt anything.\nSnowflake, the home of the logging team that included claimed UFO abductee Travis Walton, also has a large Mormon population, and Mormons have power in the Arizona legislature far beyond their numbers.\nThe ignorant Senator Allen should step on over to the Talk.Origins Archive and read the Age of the Earth FAQ. (UPDATE: For a more readable introduction, how about Chris Turney\u0026rsquo;s Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened, or G. Brent Dalrymple\u0026rsquo;s The Age of the Earth.)\n(Via the Bad Astronomy blog.)\ncowmix (2009-07-07):\nGood grief.\nPhishybongwaters (2009-07-07):\nWhat a twat, it\u0026#39;s scary to think those people are charged with LEADING YOUR COUNTRY Hell, we can find ruins that date older than 6000 years, what kind of half assed education did this nitwit get?\nLippard (2009-07-07):\nAnd there\u0026#39;s lots of well-known old stuff in Arizona--Barringer Meteor Crater is from an impact about 50,000 years ago, and of course the Grand Canyon, the area where she wants to open up uranium mining, exposes rock layers from 250 million to 2 billion years old.\nPhishybongwaters (2009-07-07):\nJim Lippard you are so wrong. God put those there to test our faith, just like fossilized dinosaur remains. pffft..\n(sarcasm!)\nGhdjd (2009-07-07):\nI believe you cannot know if the earth is 6000 years old, since you were not there went it was created\nLippard (2009-07-07):\nMartiendejong: So it\u0026#39;s impossible to have knowledge of any events unless you were physically present when they occurred? I think you have a rather impoverished and incorrect understanding of human knowledge. By your reasoning, you don't know of the existence of other people or nations when you're not physically present.\nThere are multiple ways of measuring the age of the earth, and they all converge on the same answer, 4.5 billion years. You don't find them converging on an age of 6,000 years or anywhere close to that\u0026ndash;on the contrary, there is a vast wealth of evidence\u0026ndash;including tree ring data\u0026ndash;that shows that the earth can't possibly be 6,000 years old.\n(BTW, it was the tree ring data that convinced Gerald Aardsma of the Institute for Creation Research that the earth is not young.)\nLippard (2009-07-07):\nPhishy: I do have the t-shirt.\nSchtacky (2009-07-07):\nJim - I have to doubt your existence. I wasn\u0026#39;t there to witness your birth, and though I have met you on several occasions, the evidence, no matter how compelling, will not convince me otherwise. I am hoping the Martien just made a poor attempt at sarcasm.\nUnknown (2009-07-07):\nActually, the honorable senator is off by a factor of 1,000. The earth is actually SIX years old. I should know, I\u0026#39;m 60 and for many years had to live on the moon waiting for the construction crews to finish the Earth. They never did finish the job, and each summer you can see them on the highways doing God\u0026#39;s work. Amen, brethern!\nLippard (2009-07-07):\nTom: Say hello to Slartibartfast for me.\nUnknown (2009-07-07):\ngod help us...\nLegion (2009-07-08):\nIt\u0026#39;s always a Republican moron, huh? The uneducated cult Party.\nKimo C (2009-07-09):\nShe just mad Worst Person on Keith Olbermann tonight\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-09):\nWord, Mr. Lippard. But that was kinda corny.\nKeith Olbermann's take on this, that is.\nNow, granted K.O.'s take on things is not YOUR fault.\nHe's an idiot. You're obviously not.\nBut his mirth level meter at this is about the same, I'd guess, and perhaps you can use your apparently abundant time at the helm of the glowing screen to send the word here.\nNot sure about the old earth or its age, but my patience with Keith Olbermann's urine stained pants and his shtick is about 6000 years old by now.\nHe needs a good bitch slap.\nSounds mean?\nPerhaps an explanation is in order:\nWhen not competing with David Letterman's metrosexual writers when it comes to cornball jokes, Keith and the lovely Rachel Maddow to follow just can't seem to get the jive of humor.\nEverybody likes to laugh. But I have a message for Mr. Pissy Pants over on MSNBC, since his Vaudeville act is all about anal-retention in those handy \u0026quot;facts of the matter\u0026quot; slot, and terminology. He makes much mirth and a living off of inconsequential jibber. These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else's teeny-tiny, spiderleg sized mistakes are the lifeblood of little people. But two can play that game, including some of us adults:\nYou have to get ALL the facts straight, Keith, not just the ones you heard someone else repeat and you think are funny. Let your writers in the boardroom know that.\nK.O. was in his usual form tonight on MSNBC, which I had the distinct misfortune of watching out of a sense of deliberately creating indigestion and enduring his Schadenfreude. Mocking a small town councilwoman pitching for uranium mining and talking about how the earth is about 6000 years old, there is a little mirth here regarding the irony that the poor benighted woman had no idea that uranium itself is used via what K.O. calles \u0026quot;radiocarbon\u0026quot; dating to determine the age of the earth.\nAnd so it was\u0026ndash;and is.\nWell. Sort of\u0026hellip;..\nOnly problem is, Keith then extolled the wonders of \u0026quot;Carbon Dating\u0026quot;, and then in more cornball form pondered if Republicans have confused this kind of \u0026quot;dating\u0026quot; with gay marriage. And, of course, he mocks Christianity for supposedly claiming the earth is \u0026quot;6000\u0026quot; years old. No such claim is made or implied in Scripture, and the Bible is NOT a book on scientific exegesis or explanation\u0026hellip;.\nSorry Keith. This is a little hollow. First of all, get some new writers regarding the gay stuff.\nSecond, Keith, consult the Periodic Table of Elements.\nYes, Keith, radioACTIVE dating is used with Uranium's constant rate of decay. It is NOT, however, radioCARBON dating. The concept is the same, yes, but mind your elements here, smartypants.\nYou see, Mr. Tinkle, radioCARBON dating has to do with CARBON\u0026ndash;not Uranium.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-09):\nK.O. is looking for the word \u0026quot;RadioMETRIC\u0026quot;, for the all-encompassing term here. _________________ Come to think of it, I might have slapped him upside the head even for saying little-to-nothing at all\u0026hellip;.\nWe have a nuclear N. Korea run by a guy who dresses like Bea Arthur and swills gin, we have a \u0026quot;health care\u0026quot; plan that will no doubt do exactly what the CBO says and push 23 million people out of their current plans and cost about one-tril-five to an already expanding vapor trail of IOU notes at the Treasury, we have a bog-down war in Afghanistan where the Talibs defy our most expensive efforts at quelling, and we have the Great Apologia Tour 09' where the US is guilty of every woe and misfortune the world has known, and NOW of course this is a lovely apropros time to mention Cap-n-tax levies at the very moment the economy is souring as we speak. Oh yeah\u0026ndash;and spending bill (\u0026quot;stimulus\u0026quot;) 2.0 is about to be downloaded. Not that the first one went for more than glop and social service flush rather than the \u0026quot;shovel ready\u0026quot; crap Obama mentioned in the sales pitch.\nSo\u0026hellip;.WHO is Number One BAD GUY for K.O.'s countdown last night?\nSome woman from Arizona in a just-above-dog-catcher type office, and her commentary on uranium mining needs.\nWhich, back to Mr. Lippard here, while it's not as safe as cooking eggs, since we're not exactly in good from on US energy needs here, we have to weigh some more options beyond chicken manure and windmills and just taxing the hell out rich people and Robin Hoodin' that money over to the po folks.\nRedistribution of either money or talent would be one thing (mostly its the former), but PRODUCTION of new energy is a site finer. Regardless of the age of Gaia and her precious thoughts on the matter.\nDig? Yeah\u0026ndash;time to DIG.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-11):\nВасилий, что это означает? Почему Бог?\nBrad (2009-07-12):\nWakefield: \u0026quot;These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else\u0026#39;s teeny-tiny, spiderleg sized mistakes are the lifeblood of little people. But two can play that game, including some of us adults:\u0026quot; So what makes you a righteous adult for doing the same thing that makes Olbermann a pants-peeing child?\nLippard (2009-07-12):\nWakefield: If Keith Olbermann said that radiocarbon dating is used to date the age of the earth, he's wrong.\nBut it does provide evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 years. It can be used to date things back to a limit of 50,000 years.\nKtisophilos: Do you speak Russian, or did you use Google Translate for that? (I used Google Translate to read it.)\nUnknown (2009-07-13):\nSylvia Allen makes me proud of Arizona\u0026#39;s educational system. It is so good, we managed to teach this severely mentally retarded woman to speak and walk. Some might complain that she should have some amount of critical thinking skills, but really, how much can you expect from an educational system that gets its funding cut and teachers fired every time we have an imbalanced budget? With the rates of maternal drug use and child abuse in this fine state, I\u0026#39;m amazed that she can utter vaguely coherent sentences. This post has inspired me to keep a list of all the morons in Arizona and their crimes against logic and common sense so that I can vote against them.\nGhdjd (2009-07-13):\nJim Lippard, Since I am not a geologist I am no expert on the subject. However, one thing I know is that there are many different points of view on the age of the earth. Every party claims to have their own proof. Most of these claims have to do with the aging of material which we only have been able to study yet for about a hundred. It means that for the other 454 billion years, we just have to guess. I am not saying that the earth is 6000 years old and that it is created by God. But the theories about the opposite (454 billion yrs) are not that solid either. I can imagine that a statement like the one made by this lady is a bit ignorant and politicians should avoid making it. If you can prove there is no god, you are my hero. Best regards, Martien\nBrad (2009-07-13):\n“Since I am not a geologist I am no expert on the subject. “However, one thing I know is that there are many different points of view on the age of the earth. “Every party claims to have their own proof. “ Keep in mind you are admittedly not an expert, so your evaluation of points of view is on a social level, not an informed level.\n“Most of these claims have to do with the aging of material which we only have been able to study yet for about a hundred. “\nThe claims that the earth is young, 6000 years (or anything less than 4.5 billion [not 454 billion]) are not based on material evidence, they are based on a literal interpretation of the bible.\n“It means that for the other 454 billion years, we just have to guess.”\nNo it doesn’t mean that at all. Those who wrote the bible may have been guessing as well as fabricating, but the scientific view is… scientific. If the age of the earth was suddenly falsified, the professional scientists would be delighted to be able to go back over the data and find the proper age.\n“I am not saying that the earth is 6000 years old and that it is created by God. “But the theories about the opposite (454 billion yrs) are not that solid either.\nWell, if you heard a theory about the earth being 454 billion years, that’s definitely not solid. However, the theories (read “facts”) have been tested and retested to the point there isn’t a reasonable doubt. Imagine putting someone on trial thousands of times for the same crime, they’re found innocent with vast evidence supporting their alibi every time- now imagine the public who wants continually claims the person is guilty as those who believe the bible is literally true and the earth is 6000 years old.\n“If you can prove there is no god, you are my hero.”\nIf you can prove that you didn’t begin to exist a split second ago, and all reality and your memories were fabrications by your god, you are my hero.\nLippard (2009-07-13):\nMartien: There is a very firmly established scientific consensus about the age of the earth, on the one hand, and a few crackpots with thoroughly bogus and refuted arguments on the other. Your claim that the old age of the earth is not that solid is just wrong. That's irrespective of the existence of God, about which the arguments are more tenuous. It is, however, much easier to disprove particular conceptions of God than it is to disprove all conceptions of gods. If you're really interested in disproofs of gods, I recommend reading Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification or J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism, or the arguments for atheism section of the Secular Web, which is complementary to its arguments for the existence of God section. The former is positive logical and evidential arguments for atheism, the latter is refutations of/rebuttals to arguments for theism.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nBrad: \u0026quot;So what makes you a righteous adult for doing the same thing that makes Olbermann a pants-peeing child?\u0026quot;\nJust a word up, and some levity here, to make sure there is at least a snowflake chance in hell that K.O. will get the hint that more than one person can play the pageantry of pedantics.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nJim is correct about radiocarbon dating. Though I thought the upper limit on accuracy is far lower than 50,000 years. But it does not matter in any case.\nIt does show a regular decay rate that can often go beyond 6000 years.\nTrue enough.\nJim you remain so cool about all this.\nJim, you've defied all my attempts at pissing you off!\n(lol)\nCongrats are in order on your aid to animals. You are to be praised for that.\nBrad (2009-07-15):\nWakefield: \u0026quot;Just a word up, and some levity here, to make sure there is at least a snowflake chance in hell that K.O. will get the hint that more than one person can play the pageantry of pedantics.\u0026quot; That just begs the question: what makes your rant levity, and his rant odious pedantics?\nI personally find outright absurdity or blatant juxtaposition to be the pinnacle of humor. I guess I could describe your style of humor as \u0026quot;Poe\u0026quot; humor, ie professing an ideological point while feigning ignorance of the main issues?\nGhdjd (2009-07-15):\nI admit that I am no expert on the subject. This does not mean I am not informed. Just not as well as an expert would be. However, I did some internet research: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debate-age-of-earth.html http://www.asa3.org/asa/education/ORIGINS/agescience2.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9-lyZEgqlI\nAs you can see, all of those sites/video use the word 'assumption' and 'estimate' a lot. There also seems to be a lot of disagreement on the topic. Therefore I conclude that we cannot know (yet).\nIf any of you knows of a place that obliterates all doubt, please point me to it, and I will believe.. :)\nRegards, Martien\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nMartien: You didn't read the age of the earth FAQ very carefully. The appearance of the word \u0026quot;assumption\u0026quot; is in this sentence:\n\u0026quot;A young-Earther would object to all of the 'assumptions' listed above. However, the test for these assumptions is the plot of the data itself. The actual underlying assumption is that, if those requirements have not been met, there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line.\u0026quot;\nThey aren't just assumptions, they are tested and found to be correct.\nI suggest you read Turney's book, referenced in the original post. If at that point you think there are still any unfounded or unsupported assumptions, or you think there is any ground whatsoever for thinking that the earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old, come back and we can discuss them.\nBrad (2009-07-15):\nJim mentioned tree ring data. Dendrochronology is the science of examining tree rings and the width of each individual tree ring which indicates the seasonal environment for the entire area. Since all the trees in one area are the same sort of trees and receive the same weather, we can identify discernible patterns between a very old tree that has died, and a tree that began growing a significant handful of years before the old one died!\nUsing this method, we can form an unbroken chain of about 10,000 years.\nWhile trees can't take us back 4.5 billion years, it certainly nullifies \u0026quot;Archie\u0026quot; Usher's assertion that the earth is 6000 years old.\nhttp://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/oldearth.html\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nWakefield: Looks like I\u0026#39;m actually out-of-date on radiocarbon dating, as accelerator techniques have extended it to 100,000 years now. Brad: I'm glad you brought up dendrochronology, which can also be used to validate radiocarbon dating back to about 11,800 years. There's a really good dendrochronology lab at the University of Arizona (and a really good radiocarbon lab there, too\u0026ndash;they tested the Shroud of Turin and I interviewed the physicists involved in that project, Paul Damon and Douglas Donohue, for an article I wrote for The Arizona Skeptic that I should really put online).\nMartien: I previously mentioned Gerald Aardsma, formerly a young-earth creationist of the Institute for Creation Research, who has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. You might also want to check out his website, www.biblicalchronologist.org, in particular his page about assumptions behind radiocarbon dating and how they're validated, not mere assumptions.\neyeontruth (2009-07-17):\nI really need to speak to the person who wrote this blog.....it is very important. I was a resident of Arizona for 23 years and moved due to the Mormon controls.Mormons are deeply involved in all levels of government, food control, control of children through CPS, DHS, ADOPTIONS,AND FAMILY COURT LAW, LAWYERS, POLICE OFFICERS, SHERIFFS, AND MORE.........THERE IS MUCH MORE TO ALL OF THIS PLEASE EMAIL ME elizabethsarmor@ados.net\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/arizona-state-senator-sylvia-allen.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake), arguing in favor of a bill to allow uranium mining north of the Grand Canyon, casually says that the earth is 6,000 years old, and therefore a little uranium mining isn\u0026rsquo;t going to hurt anything.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSnowflake, the home of the logging team that included claimed UFO abductee Travis Walton, also has a large Mormon population, and Mormons have power in the Arizona legislature far beyond their numbers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ignorant Senator Allen should step on over to \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003ethe Talk.Origins Archive\u003c/a\u003e and read \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html\"\u003ethe Age of the Earth FAQ\u003c/a\u003e.  (UPDATE: For a more readable introduction, how about Chris Turney\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Bones-Rocks-Stars-Science-Happened/dp/0230551947/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eBones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened\u003c/a\u003e, or G. Brent Dalrymple\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Age-Earth-G-Dalrymple/dp/0804723311/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eThe Age of the Earth\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PtzJhTfQiMA\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PtzJhTfQiMA\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/06/arizona-is-6000-years-old/\"\u003eBad Astronomy blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona state senator Sylvia Allen thinks the earth is 6000 years old"},{"content":"\nIn late June 2007, Tom and Elizabeth Preston obtained a use permit from the City of Tempe to open a tattoo studio. The Prestons signed a five-year lease and invested $30,000 in the property, but then a local neighborhood group appealed to the city, arguing that this would have a negative impact on the neighborhood, lowering property values and increasing crime. (Other businesses in the same area include a liquor store, bail bondsman, lingerie shop, check cashing store, and an adult video store.)\nTempe Mayor Hallman and the City Council voted unanimously to override the zoning officials who had approved the permit on the basis that there was a \u0026ldquo;perception\u0026rdquo; that the business would contribute to neighborhood deterioriation.\nThe Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation has taken the case on behalf of the Prestons, with former Institute for Justice litigator Clint Bolick as the primary attorney for the plaintiffs.\nIn a previous hearing in May, the court ruled in favor of the Prestons and remanded the case back to the City Council for reconsideration. The city then asked for a new hearing on the grounds that it had found some new relevant case law, and that hearing occurred at 11 a.m. today before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig.\nThe judge first stated, that the city\u0026rsquo;s motion for reconsideration in today\u0026rsquo;s hearing was appropriate and that the hearing would take place, setting aside the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s objections to that. He then focused most of the hearing on two issues. First, what was the appropriate level of burden of proof for the appeal to the city which revoked the permit? And second, did the city provide \u0026ldquo;credible evidence\u0026rdquo; that the Prestons\u0026rsquo; business would lead to neighborhood deterioration?\nBurden of Proof\nThe burden of proof argument centered around two parts of the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s Zoning and Development Code. These were Section 1-305 (D), which says:\nHearing Officer – Appeals. Any person aggrieved by a decision of the Hearing Officer under this Code may file an appeal to the Board of Adjustment, or the Redevelopment Review Commission as applicable, within fourteen (14) calendar days after the Hearing Officer has rendered its decision, in accordance with Part 6, Chapter 8, Appeals. Appeals of the decisions of the Hearing Officer shall be heard de novo by the Board of Adjustment, or the Redevelopment Review Commission as applicable.and Section 6-802(C), which says:\nIn the event that a decision made under this Code is appealed, the appeal does not invalidate the approval. The holder of the approval may proceed with a use or development at their own risk.The plaintiffs argued that this second section means that the permit was granted and created a vested right for the Prestons to use the property, and that in the event of an appeal the burden of proof was on the city to demonstrate a reason to revoke, rather than a completely new (\u0026ldquo;de novo\u0026rdquo;) process that was as though they were applying for the permit for the first time. The city, by contrast, put emphasis on the first passage, arguing that the appeal hearing was \u0026ldquo;de novo\u0026rdquo; and had no burden of proof on the city. The city argued that the \u0026ldquo;at their own risk\u0026rdquo; phrase in the second section indicated that the permit was, in fact, conditional and did not give the Prestons any vested rights.\nThe plaintiffs were previously victorious on this issue on the grounds that the second section did entail a vested right for the plaintiffs. This time around, however, the city argued that case law from outside of Arizona demonstrated that there was no vested right. They agreed that the city made a botch of this case from a customer service perspective, in that the Prestons were not told that their permit was conditional and could be appealed, and they were in fact sent a letter by the city telling them to go ahead and start doing work on the property to meet other requirements of the city, such as the addition of windows.\nThe judge seemed amenable to the city\u0026rsquo;s argument, and questioned Clint Bolick over this thoroughly. He noted that the Arizona cases presented by the plaintiffs on this issue were not in the context of a pending appeal, though Bolick disagreed with the judge, pointing to a 1939 case from Iowa City, Iowa, Crow vs. Board of Adjustment. The city responded by noting that a 1981 Iowa Supreme Court case, Grandview Baptist Church v. Davenport, argued the opposite\u0026ndash;that a church couldn\u0026rsquo;t apply a vested right during a pending appeal to keep a storage shed it had built.\nThe judge then pointed out that there were two arguments of equitable estoppel here\u0026ndash;one is whether the city\u0026rsquo;s actions in granting the permit shifted the burden of proof to the city and in favor of the plaintiffs for the subsequent appeal, and second regarding the potential for damages to be awarded to the plaintiff. He set the second issue aside, and then asked to continue the hearing to the question of the city\u0026rsquo;s evidence of negative impact by the Prestons\u0026rsquo; business, which would become relevant if he ruled in favor of the city on this first issue.\nThe Credible Evidence Issue\nOn this issue, the city got a thorough grilling by the judge. The relevant context here was the city\u0026rsquo;s use permit test criteria, part (c) of which supplies a ground for denying a use permit if a proposed use will cause:\nContribution to the deterioration of the neighborhood or to the downgrading of property values which is in conflict with the goals, objectives or policies for rehabilitation, redevelopment or conservation as set forth in the City\u0026rsquo;s adopted plans, or General plan.The hearing officer for the initial permit application ruled that this was not the case, but the City Council and Mayor overturned the permit on these grounds based on complaints from neighbors.\nThe judge made it clear that the city had the burden of providing not just evidence, but credible evidence that this would be the case. He noted that in the city\u0026rsquo;s filings, it expressed concern that the tattoo studio is a \u0026ldquo;de facto adult business\u0026rdquo; which would contribute to a clustering of adult businesses (even though there is no clustering provision in statute) and thereby would cause a deleterious effect on the neighborhood.\nThe city\u0026rsquo;s attorneys then noted that Tempe does now have an anti-clustering ordinance, which the judge seemed to suggest was not good for the city\u0026rsquo;s case, but rather evidence that they didn\u0026rsquo;t have the necessary ordinances in place at the time of their decision. He asked, \u0026ldquo;why even discuss a clustering effect\u0026rdquo; at this hearing?\nThe city responded that it was an issue raised by the neighbors, to which the judge responded that the city should have responded as the hearing officer already did on that issue\u0026ndash;sorry, we don\u0026rsquo;t have an ordinance on that, but we need another reason, such as contravention of the city\u0026rsquo;s general plan or some other plan. But the hearing officer approved the use permit, and noted that it was in furtherance of, not in detriment to, the city\u0026rsquo;s general plan.\nThe city\u0026rsquo;s attorneys noted that the city didn\u0026rsquo;t object to the business in general, and that Mayor Hallman had said that he hoped the Prestons would keep their business in Tempe.\nAt this point, the judge noted that the Prestons have had a successful tattoo business in Mesa for 15 years with no complaints, and asked, \u0026ldquo;So on what basis was this rejected?\u0026quot;\nThe city attorneys noted that nobody from the city has objected to tattoos, but it was complaints by third parties, neighbors of the business who \u0026ldquo;want some other type of business\u0026ndash;a Starbuck\u0026rsquo;s, or a drugstore,\u0026rdquo; to stop the clustering. They made reference to a study from New York City (perhaps referenced by the complaining neighbors?) arguing that clusters of adult businesses contribute to neighborhood deterioriation and crime. They admitted that a tattoo parlor is not an adult business under city code, and again, that there was no anti-clustering ordinance at the time. (I find it interesting that both of the city\u0026rsquo;s examples of preferred types of businesses are in the business of drug distribution. The space, in fact, remains vacant to this day, demonstrating that the real choice is between the Preston\u0026rsquo;s business or no business at all.)\nThe judge then asked, \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the credible evidence? A New York study that\u0026rsquo;s apples and oranges? A real estate person who steps up to the microphone [and offers objections]? If there\u0026rsquo;s no credible evidence, [then] this [decision] could be arbitrary and capricious. If we have an anti-clustering statute, the permit process should incorporate that.\u0026rdquo; He offered a few specific objections to the NYC study and its applicability here, and noted that in order to have substantive due process in the permitting procedure, the applicant needs to know up front that there are rules objecting to clustering. He stated that the city seemed, in effect, to have a secret unadopted city plan that requires third party intervention to enforce requirements that are not in the city\u0026rsquo;s plans or ordinances. And he noted that the city had already overruled the arguments of the third parties in its initial granting of the permit.\nAt this point, the judge asked Bolick if he had anything to add, and he asked permission to give another argument on the previous point, arguing that it was the city\u0026rsquo;s actions that caused the defendants to engage in detrimental reliance upon their representations. The judge told Bolick that \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re still missing the first step in the analysis\u0026ndash;that it\u0026rsquo;s a person who knows the law. It must be reasonable detrimental reliance.\u0026rdquo; This exchange suggests to me that the judge will rule in favor of the city on the prior point. Bolick responded that there is a factual aspect to the meaning of the statute, and that the Prestons would never have made the investment if not specifically told to go ahead and do so by the city and by a hearing officer.\nBolick then made a few remarks on the credible evidence issue. He pointed out that the City Council and the City Attorney said in deposition that the city\u0026rsquo;s standard must be satisfied, but the city also admitted that the business is in furtherance of the general plan. The judge said that the city is now focusing on a prior point, that the business is \u0026ldquo;detrimental to the public.\u0026rdquo; Bolick said this is a post hoc change of the city\u0026rsquo;s legal position and asked how a permit applicant would know. He stated that \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rsquo;s not only no credible evidence for the city\u0026rsquo;s position, there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence.\u0026rdquo; And he also noted that \u0026ldquo;there are constitutional dimensions to \u0026lsquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;there has to be a standard.\u0026quot;\nImmunity for Damages\nAt this point, the judge said there were a couple other issues to discuss. If the city didn\u0026rsquo;t meet its standard and so has to issue the use permit, there\u0026rsquo;s an immunity for damages issue. The city has argued for immunity to damages on two grounds. First, absolute immunity on the grounds that its action was a legislative action, as per an opinion from the city attorney. Second, immunity on the grounds that the \u0026ldquo;at your own risk\u0026rdquo; clause was sufficient warning to the plaintiffs. The city added a third argument, noting that while they want the case to be decided based on the current record, they have other documents that are relevant to a decision about damages. Specifically, they argued that there are emails between Preston and his contractors which appear to make the contracts conditional upon the granting of a permit and so neither Preston nor the city should be liable for that. Bolick agreed that there should be a separate factual review on damages, but that plaintiffs should win damages if they either win on the burden of proof issue or if they win on the \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; issue and it\u0026rsquo;s an administrative act.\nThe judge observed that the City Council has a legislative function, a judicial function, and an administrative function, and that if this was an administrative function, this was not a matter of determining fundamental government policy. Bolick cited the Reynolds case (?) and another to the effect that issuing a building permit is an administrative act. The city attorneys objected that Reynolds didn\u0026rsquo;t involve a de novo appeal process, and that the city was going forward on the assumption that it was a legislative process, as argued in a position from the city attorney on which the City Council relied. The judge asked, \u0026ldquo;is it clearly not judicial?\u0026rdquo; The city said that perhaps it might be, if the judge ruled that there couldn\u0026rsquo;t be a de novo review in this case (i.e., if they lost on the burden of proof claim) and were thereby acting in an appellate capacity.\nAfter a few more exchanges, the judge indicated that he would deliberate and be back shortly to issue a ruling from the bench. A few of us gathered outside the courtroom to talk, including Bolick, the plaintiffs, a few other supporters of the plaintiffs, and a reporter from the Arizona Republic. At around 1 p.m., the bailiff summoned us back into the courtroom, to inform us that we were all dismissed and the judge would be issuing a written ruling, which is apparently what he did at the May hearing as well.\nMy understanding is that the plaintiffs win the case if they win on either of the above two grounds, the burden of proof issue or the credible evidence/\u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; issue, and the case will not go back to the City Council this time. Of course, it may be appealed by the losing side. My best guess is that the city will prevail on the first issue and the plaintiffs on the second.\nCBS Channel 5 was also filming the hearing, but you heard the details here first.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll update this post with information about the decision after it happens.\nThe Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s website has more on the Preston case.\n(The photo of the Maricopa County Court House in downtown Phoenix, above, is a Creative Commons licensed photo (attribution, noncommercial, no derivative works) from the flickr photostream of Steve Minor, user lumierefl. Click on the photo to get to that photo in his photostream.)\nUPDATE (July 9, 2009): The Prestons won their case, again, on the grounds that the city\u0026rsquo;s decision to revoke their permit was \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious.\u0026quot; I haven\u0026rsquo;t heard how the judge ruled on the other issue. The city has 30 days to appeal the decision; otherwise they must issue the permit and allow the business to open.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/tempe-tattoo-parlor-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/sminor/3160516957/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 342px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3132/3160516957_ffa2b5abdf.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn late June 2007, Tom and Elizabeth Preston obtained a use permit from the City of Tempe to open a tattoo studio.  The Prestons signed a five-year lease and invested $30,000 in the property, but then a local neighborhood group appealed to the city, arguing that this would have a negative impact on the neighborhood, lowering property values and increasing crime.  (Other businesses in the same area include a liquor store, bail bondsman, lingerie shop, check cashing store, and an adult video store.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTempe Mayor Hallman and the City Council voted unanimously to override the zoning officials who had approved the permit on the basis that there was a \u0026ldquo;perception\u0026rdquo; that the business would contribute to neighborhood deterioriation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation has taken the case on behalf of the Prestons, with former Institute for Justice litigator Clint Bolick as the primary attorney for the plaintiffs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn a previous hearing in May, the court ruled in favor of the Prestons and remanded the case back to the City Council for reconsideration.  The city then asked for a new hearing on the grounds that it had found some new relevant case law, and that hearing occurred at 11 a.m. today before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge first stated, that the city\u0026rsquo;s motion for reconsideration in today\u0026rsquo;s hearing was appropriate and that the hearing would take place, setting aside the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s objections to that.  He then focused most of the hearing on two issues.  First, what was the appropriate level of burden of proof for the appeal to the city which revoked the permit?  And second, did the city provide \u0026ldquo;credible evidence\u0026rdquo; that the Prestons\u0026rsquo; business would lead to neighborhood deterioration?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBurden of Proof\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe burden of proof argument centered around two parts of the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s Zoning and Development Code.  These were Section 1-305 (D), which says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e  \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003eHearing Officer – Appeals.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e    Any person aggrieved by a decision of the Hearing Officer under this Code   may file an appeal to the Board of Adjustment, or the Redevelopment Review   Commission as applicable, within fourteen (14) calendar days after the   Hearing Officer has rendered its decision, in accordance with Part 6,   Chapter 8, Appeals. Appeals of the decisions of the Hearing Officer shall be   heard de novo by the Board of Adjustment, or the Redevelopment Review   Commission as applicable.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eand Section 6-802(C), which says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e  In the event that a decision made under this Code is appealed, the appeal does not invalidate the approval.  The holder of the approval may proceed with a use or \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003edevelopment\u003c/span\u003e at their own risk.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe plaintiffs argued that this second section means that the permit was granted and created a vested right for the Prestons to use the property, and that in the event of an appeal the burden of proof was on the city to demonstrate a reason to revoke, rather than a completely new (\u0026ldquo;de novo\u0026rdquo;) process that was as though they were applying for the permit for the first time.  The city, by contrast, put emphasis on the first passage, arguing that the appeal hearing was \u0026ldquo;de novo\u0026rdquo; and had no burden of proof on the city.  The city argued that the \u0026ldquo;at their own risk\u0026rdquo; phrase in the second section indicated that the permit was, in fact, conditional and did not give the Prestons any vested rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe plaintiffs were previously victorious on this issue on the grounds that the second section did entail a vested right for the plaintiffs.  This time around, however, the city argued that case law from outside of Arizona demonstrated that there was no vested right.  They agreed that the city made a botch of this case from a customer service perspective, in that the Prestons were not told that their permit was conditional and could be appealed, and they were in fact sent a letter by the city telling them to go ahead and start doing work on the property to meet other requirements of the city, such as the addition of windows.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge seemed amenable to the city\u0026rsquo;s argument, and questioned Clint Bolick over this thoroughly.  He noted that the Arizona cases presented by the plaintiffs on this issue were not in the context of a pending appeal, though Bolick disagreed with the judge, pointing to a 1939 case from Iowa City, Iowa, Crow vs. Board of Adjustment.  The city responded by noting that a 1981 Iowa Supreme Court case, Grandview Baptist Church v. Davenport, argued the opposite\u0026ndash;that a church couldn\u0026rsquo;t apply a vested right during a pending appeal to keep a storage shed it had built.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge then pointed out that there were two arguments of equitable estoppel here\u0026ndash;one is whether the city\u0026rsquo;s actions in granting the permit shifted the burden of proof to the city and in favor of the plaintiffs for the subsequent appeal, and second regarding the potential for damages to be awarded to the plaintiff.  He set the second issue aside, and then asked to continue the hearing to the question of the city\u0026rsquo;s evidence of negative impact by the Prestons\u0026rsquo; business, which would become relevant if he ruled in favor of the city on this first issue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Credible Evidence Issue\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn this issue, the city got a thorough grilling by the judge.  The relevant context here was the city\u0026rsquo;s use permit test criteria, part (c) of which supplies a ground for denying a use permit if a proposed use will cause:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e Contribution to the deterioration of the neighborhood or to the downgrading of property values which is in conflict with the goals, objectives or policies for rehabilitation, redevelopment or conservation as set forth in the City\u0026rsquo;s adopted plans, or General plan.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe hearing officer for the initial permit application ruled that this was not the case, but the City Council and Mayor overturned the permit on these grounds based on complaints from neighbors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge made it clear that the city had the burden of providing not just evidence, but credible evidence that this would be the case.  He noted that in the city\u0026rsquo;s filings, it expressed concern that the tattoo studio is a \u0026ldquo;de facto adult business\u0026rdquo; which would contribute to a clustering of adult businesses (even though there is no clustering provision in statute) and thereby would cause a deleterious effect on the neighborhood.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city\u0026rsquo;s attorneys then noted that Tempe does now have an anti-clustering ordinance, which the judge seemed to suggest was not good for the city\u0026rsquo;s case, but rather evidence that they didn\u0026rsquo;t have the necessary ordinances in place at the time of their decision.  He asked, \u0026ldquo;why even discuss a clustering effect\u0026rdquo; at this hearing?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city responded that it was an issue raised by the neighbors, to which the judge responded that the city should have responded as the hearing officer already did on that issue\u0026ndash;sorry, we don\u0026rsquo;t have an ordinance on that, but we need another reason, such as contravention of the city\u0026rsquo;s general plan or some other plan.  But the hearing officer approved the use permit, and noted that it was in furtherance of, not in detriment to, the city\u0026rsquo;s general plan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city\u0026rsquo;s attorneys noted that the city didn\u0026rsquo;t object to the business in general, and that Mayor Hallman had said that he hoped the Prestons would keep their business in Tempe.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, the judge noted that the Prestons have had a successful tattoo business in Mesa for 15 years with no complaints, and asked, \u0026ldquo;So on what basis was this rejected?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city attorneys noted that nobody from the city has objected to tattoos, but it was complaints by third parties, neighbors of the business who \u0026ldquo;want some other type of business\u0026ndash;a Starbuck\u0026rsquo;s, or a drugstore,\u0026rdquo; to stop the clustering.  They made reference to a study from New York City (perhaps referenced by the complaining neighbors?) arguing that clusters of adult businesses contribute to neighborhood deterioriation and crime. They admitted that a tattoo parlor is not an adult business under city code, and again, that there was no anti-clustering ordinance at the time.  (I find it interesting that both of the city\u0026rsquo;s examples of preferred types of businesses are in the business of drug distribution.  The space, in fact, remains vacant to this day, demonstrating that the real choice is between the Preston\u0026rsquo;s business or no business at all.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge then asked, \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the credible evidence?  A New York study that\u0026rsquo;s apples and oranges?  A real estate person who steps up to the microphone [and offers objections]?  If there\u0026rsquo;s no credible evidence, [then] this [decision] could be arbitrary and capricious.  If we have an anti-clustering statute, the permit process should incorporate that.\u0026rdquo;  He offered a few specific objections to the NYC study and its applicability here, and noted that in order to have substantive due process in the permitting procedure, the applicant needs to know up front that there are rules objecting to clustering.  He stated that the city seemed, in effect, to have a secret unadopted city plan that requires third party intervention to enforce requirements that are not in the city\u0026rsquo;s plans or ordinances.  And he noted that the city had already overruled the arguments of the third parties in its initial granting of the permit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, the judge asked Bolick if he had anything to add, and he asked permission to give another argument on the previous point, arguing that it was the city\u0026rsquo;s actions that caused the defendants to engage in detrimental reliance upon their representations.  The judge told Bolick that \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re still missing the first step in the analysis\u0026ndash;that it\u0026rsquo;s a person who knows the law.  It must be reasonable detrimental reliance.\u0026rdquo;  This exchange suggests to me that the judge will rule in favor of the city on the prior point.  Bolick responded that there is a factual aspect to the meaning of the statute, and that the Prestons would never have made the investment if not specifically told to go ahead and do so by the city and by a hearing officer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBolick then made a few remarks on the credible evidence issue.  He pointed out that the City Council and the City Attorney said in deposition that the city\u0026rsquo;s standard must be satisfied, but the city also admitted that the business is in furtherance of the general plan.  The judge said that the city is now focusing on a prior point, that the business is \u0026ldquo;detrimental to the public.\u0026rdquo;  Bolick said this is a post hoc change of the city\u0026rsquo;s legal position and asked how a permit applicant would know.  He stated that \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rsquo;s not only no credible evidence for the city\u0026rsquo;s position, there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence.\u0026rdquo;  And he also noted that \u0026ldquo;there are constitutional dimensions to \u0026lsquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;there has to be a standard.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eImmunity for Damages\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, the judge said there were a couple other issues to discuss.  If the city didn\u0026rsquo;t meet its standard and so has to issue the use permit, there\u0026rsquo;s an immunity for damages issue.  The city has argued for immunity to damages on two grounds.  First, absolute immunity on the grounds that its action was a legislative action, as per an opinion from the city attorney.  Second, immunity on the grounds that the \u0026ldquo;at your own risk\u0026rdquo; clause was sufficient warning to the plaintiffs.  The city added a third argument, noting that while they want the case to be decided based on the current record, they have other documents that are relevant to a decision about damages.  Specifically, they argued that there are emails between Preston and his contractors which appear to make the contracts conditional upon the granting of a permit and so neither Preston nor the city should be liable for that.  Bolick agreed that there should be a separate factual review on damages, but that plaintiffs should win damages if they either win on the burden of proof issue or if they win on the \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; issue and it\u0026rsquo;s an administrative act.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge observed that the City Council has a legislative function, a judicial function, and an administrative function, and that if this was an administrative function, this was not a matter of determining fundamental government policy.  Bolick cited the Reynolds case (?) and another to the effect that issuing a building permit is an administrative act.  The city attorneys objected that Reynolds didn\u0026rsquo;t involve a de novo appeal process, and that the city was going forward on the assumption that it was a legislative process, as argued in a position from the city attorney on which the City Council relied.  The judge asked, \u0026ldquo;is it clearly not judicial?\u0026rdquo;  The city said that perhaps it might be, if the judge ruled that there couldn\u0026rsquo;t be a de novo review in this case (i.e., if they lost on the burden of proof claim) and were thereby acting in an appellate capacity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter a few more exchanges, the judge indicated that he would deliberate and be back shortly to issue a ruling from the bench.  A few of us gathered outside the courtroom to talk, including Bolick, the plaintiffs, a few other supporters of the plaintiffs, and a reporter from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e.  At around 1 p.m., the bailiff summoned us back into the courtroom, to inform us that we were all dismissed and the judge would be issuing a written ruling, which is apparently what he did at the May hearing as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy understanding is that the plaintiffs win the case if they win on either of the above two grounds, the burden of proof issue or the credible evidence/\u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious\u0026rdquo; issue, and the case will not go back to the City Council this time.  Of course, it may be appealed by the losing side.  My best guess is that the city will prevail on the first issue and the plaintiffs on the second.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCBS Channel 5 was also filming the hearing, but you heard the details here first.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll update this post with information about the decision after it happens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/case/64\"\u003eGoldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s website has more on the Preston case\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(The photo of the Maricopa County Court House in downtown Phoenix, above, is a Creative Commons licensed photo (attribution, noncommercial, no derivative works) from the flickr photostream of Steve Minor, user \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/sminor/\"\u003elumierefl\u003c/a\u003e.  Click on the photo to get to that photo in his photostream.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 9, 2009):  The \u003ca href=\"/2009/07/prestons-win-in-court.html\"\u003ePrestons won their case, again, on the grounds that the city\u0026rsquo;s decision to revoke their permit was \u0026ldquo;arbitrary and capricious.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  I haven\u0026rsquo;t heard how the judge ruled on the other issue.  The city has 30 days to appeal the decision; otherwise they must issue the permit and allow the business to open.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tempe tattoo parlor case"},{"content":"\nI have only one month to try to reach my fundraising goal for this year\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-A-Rama. I know times are tight, but if you can spare a few dollars please visit my page and make a donation.\n(Photo is of the Lippard household\u0026rsquo;s latest adoptee from RESCUE, Buster.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/07/fundraising-for-bowl-rama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/buster_flowers.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 278px;\" src=\"/images/buster_flowers.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353976670835935410\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have only one month to try to reach my fundraising goal for this year\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-A-Rama.  I know times are tight, but if you can spare a few dollars please visit my \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstgiving.com/kathleenlippard\"\u003epage \u003c/a\u003eand make a donation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Photo is of the Lippard household\u0026rsquo;s latest adoptee from RESCUE, Buster.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fundraising for Bowl-A-Rama"},{"content":"\nCharles Blow has an op-ed piece in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s The New York Times commenting on the spate of recent Republican sex scandals which contains this infographic (an aptly named \u0026ldquo;blowchart\u0026rdquo;) ranking the states based on divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, and subscriptions to online porn sites as a percentage of broadband subscribers.\nBlow suggests that conservatives address this hypocrisy by becoming more concerned about what goes on in their own bedrooms than in everyone else\u0026rsquo;s. It also highlights the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.\n(BTW, the data for the third column comes from the work of Ben Edelman (PDF), who I\u0026rsquo;ve cited here before for his excellent work on spyware and adware, and on the ineffectiveness of TRUSTe.)\nUPDATE (June 30, 2009): There\u0026rsquo;s at least one error in this chart, in that Tennessee should be red, not blue, near the bottom of the broadband porn column.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-29):\nProbably just like crime: blue counties in red states are largely responsible for the higher figures, while \u0026quot;blue states\u0026quot; are really red states with huge blue cities. As for sex ed, as Thomas Sowell points out in The Vision of the Anointed (summarized by his friend and fellow economist Dr Walter Williams):\n‘In the early 60s, Planned Parenthood and other groups convinced the nation there was a \u0026quot;crisis\u0026quot; in teen pregnancy and venereal disease. They got Congress to give them our money to sponsor sex education (read: indoctrination) classes, often showing films to junior high school students depicting hetero- homosexual couples engaged in sex; teenage birth control clinics were set up and condom distribution programs started.\n‘Was there a crisis in the first place? Since 1950, teenage fertility rates had been declining as were venereal disease rates. By 1960 syphilis and gonorrhea infections were less than half of what they were in 1950. We all know the story after \u0026quot;sex education.\u0026quot; Teen pregnancy rose from 68 per thousand in 1970 to 96 per thousand by 1980. Venereal disease rate skyrocketed 350 percent between 1965 and 1978.’\nLippard (2009-06-29):\nThat\u0026#39;s a reasonable objection to looking at data at the state level rather than more granularly. If Arizona is any indication the teen birthrate figures may be correlated with race:\n\u0026quot;Other states with high birth rates include New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas; Mississippi led the nation. All have teen birth rates 50 percent or more above the national average. Those states have large proportions of Black or Hispanic teenagers, groups that traditionally have high birth rates.\u0026quot;\nWho had sex ed with films showing heterosexual and homosexual couples having sex? It certainly wasn't in my schools in the 70s.\nmikespeir (2009-07-02):\nI looked quickly through the study about teenage pregnancy and saw nothing to suggest that married teens were distinguished from married teens. (I did do a search on words like \u0026quot;married\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;marriage,\u0026quot; with not results.) Seems to me that that little detail ought to be a big detail.\nJane (2009-07-05):\nIt\u0026#39;s always helpful to look beyond the surface in these statistics. For example, the states with the highest divorce rates also tend to have higher marriage rates. So a state like Arkansas with a marriage rate of 12.2 and a Divorce rate of 5.7 has a high divorce rate compared with Pennsylvania that has a 5.5 percent MARRIAGE rate. In addition to the other factors mentioned in the teen pregnancy issue, in many of the blue states teen births were prevented by abortion. According to AGI, the twenty top states for abortion are all blue states. (I only looked at 20.)\nLippard (2009-07-05):\nJane: Thanks for that. Shouldn't the right comparison be # of divorces / # of married couples (rather than marriage rate)?\nNot sure that the abortion rate is entirely relevant since the second column is based on pregnancy rates rather than birth rates.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-10):\nI think this has all been claimed before on many levels, including at the international level where Sweden is some paradise on all this compared to the US (though it\u0026#39;s not, when we correct for some context). I would agree with Ktisophilos that the state level analysis of anything like this is suspect at best.\nGeorgia has horrible stats, but are conditions all that much better on ANY of these leading indicators when you go from the redneck countryside like Forstyh county used to be, and traipse into the inner city of Altanta.\nHardly. Ohhhhh\u0026ndash;woe be unto those who think this way.\nBut I assure you the big Hotlanta is squarely BLUE. Your chances of finding some Bible thumpers in Midtown is less than winning the Powerball lotto\u0026hellip;\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-10):\nPS-- Granted, this is more of a quip here, but in the major areas where no father was around not long after fertilization, and \u0026quot;father\u0026quot; means sperm donor with no marriage taking place to beging with, and thousands upon thousands of domestic and other relations that have nothing to do with the legal definition of marraige\u0026ndash;how can the very word \u0026quot;divorce\u0026quot; figure into such things?\nAs the above mentioned Sowell would also be more than happy to point out elsewhere, I'm sure, the government is in large part responsible for this handy arrangement of seeing fathers as periperhal to childrens lives.\nAs to adults who merely live together\u0026hellip;.well\u0026hellip;.they aren't getting divorced at high rates either, now are they?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-10):\nOf course, the other claim was the famous Gregoy S Paul study, taken apart and rightsized by Gallop. http://www.verumserum.com/?p=1639\nFollow the bouncing links\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/republican-states-lead-in-divorce-teen.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/27/opinion/27blowlarge.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 1140px;\" src=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/27/opinion/27blowlarge.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCharles Blow \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/opinion/27blow.html\"\u003ehas an op-ed piece in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e commenting on the spate of recent Republican sex scandals which contains \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/opinion/27blow.html\"\u003ethis infographic\u003c/a\u003e (an aptly named \u0026ldquo;blowchart\u0026rdquo;) ranking the states based on divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, and subscriptions to online porn sites as a percentage of broadband subscribers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBlow suggests that conservatives address this hypocrisy by becoming more concerned about what goes on in their own bedrooms than in everyone else\u0026rsquo;s.  It also highlights the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(BTW, the data for the third column comes from \u003ca href=\"http://www.people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf\"\u003ethe work of Ben Edelman\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), who I\u0026rsquo;ve cited here before for his \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/big-companies-funding-adware-netflix.html\"\u003eexcellent work\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/direct-revenue-exposed.html\"\u003espyware\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/banner-farms-and-spyware_115012668233363470.html\"\u003eadware\u003c/a\u003e, and on \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/ineffectiveness-of-truste.html\"\u003ethe ineffectiveness of TRUSTe\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 30, 2009): There\u0026rsquo;s at least one error in this chart, in that Tennessee should be red, not blue, near the bottom of the broadband porn column.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republican states lead in divorce, teen pregnancy, and porn subscriptions"},{"content":"I just came across an April 2009 BBC story which shows that USAF Col. Williamson is still promoting his idea of building a U.S. military botnet to engage in offensive denial of service attacks against foreign targets on the Internet.\nBut I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen him respond to any of the criticisms of his bad idea, including in the online forum of the journal where he published it.\nI think a more effective idea would be to adjust the computer crime statutes to provide immunity to prosecution (or at the very least an affirmative defense to criminal charges) for private responses to attacks that meet certain criteria, so that ISPs, security researchers, and competent individuals could engage in offensive actions against compromised machines to disable malicious software or take them off the network. Perhaps some kind of licensing or bonding would do the trick, and ISPs could put an exception into their acceptable use policies for entities that met the criteria.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s also my partial response to this more recent BBC story about \u0026ldquo;what rules apply in cyber-wars\u0026rdquo; which led me to find the Williamson article.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/bad-military-botnet-proposal-still.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8026964.stm\"\u003ean April 2009 BBC story which shows that USAF Col. Williamson is still promoting his idea of building a U.S. military botnet to engage in offensive denial of service attacks against foreign targets on the Internet\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen him respond to \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/bad-military-botnet-proposal.html\"\u003eany of the criticisms of his bad idea\u003c/a\u003e, including in the online forum of the journal where he published it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think a more effective idea would be to adjust the computer crime statutes to provide immunity to prosecution (or at the very least an affirmative defense to criminal charges) for private responses to attacks that meet certain criteria, so that ISPs, security researchers, and competent individuals could engage in offensive actions against compromised machines to disable malicious software or take them off the network.  Perhaps some kind of licensing or bonding would do the trick, and ISPs could put an exception into their acceptable use policies for entities that met the criteria.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s also my partial response to \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8114444.stm\"\u003ethis more recent BBC story about \u0026ldquo;what rules apply in cyber-wars\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which led me to find the Williamson article.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad military botnet proposal still being pushed"},{"content":"In April 2009, the city of Phoenix received $40 million in federal stimulus money under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This program is designed to put a floor on house prices by providing zero-interest loans of up to $15,000 to home buyers to cover downpayments and closing costs on purchases of foreclosed homes.\nThe number of home buyers who have used this program to date: zero.\nSeveral hundred people have applied for the program, but none has purchased a home yet.\nThe program requires that buyers have incomes between $55,350 and $104,400, depending on size of family, must complete eight hours of financial counseling in budgeting and home ownership, and must invest $1,000 of their own money. The NSP loan must be repaid in the event that the home is sold or refinanced.\n(Via ABC15.com.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/40-million-in-federal-housing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn April 2009, the city of Phoenix received $40 million in federal stimulus money under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.  This program is designed to put a floor on house prices by providing zero-interest loans of up to $15,000 to home buyers to cover downpayments and closing costs on purchases of foreclosed homes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe number of home buyers who have used this program to date:  zero.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral hundred people have applied for the program, but none has purchased a home yet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe program requires that buyers have incomes between $55,350 and $104,400, depending on size of family, must complete eight hours of financial counseling in budgeting and home ownership, and must invest $1,000 of their own money.  The NSP loan must be repaid in the event that the home is sold or refinanced.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/central/story/Multimillion-dollar-program-yet-to-help-Valley/Zl-BAhxdN0OikwDMaw7szA.cspx?rss=704\"\u003eABC15.com\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"$40 million in federal housing stabilization money not working in Phoenix"},{"content":"John Wilkins has written a blog post on definitions of atheism and agnosticism, in which he suggests that the definition of atheism has been shifting of late (and encroaching upon agnosticism\u0026rsquo;s territory). His discussion and that which follows in the comments is well worth reading.\nAnonymous (2009-06-26):\nJim, Why don't you weigh in? You, Wilkins, and Moran\u0026hellip; just like the old days of USENET.\nLippard (2009-06-26):\nMike: My view is similar to John's in that there's come to be a difference between what atheism means to atheists and what it means to the general population. Atheists have started to use it to mean merely a lack of belief in gods, while the general public still sees it as disbelief in gods (and in particular, disbelief in their God).\nAnd I agree that agnosticism (or weak atheism) is the default position.\nBut I disagree with the equation of atheism with certainty or even knowledge (as opposed to justified belief, or subjective probability \u0026gt; .5). If you're willing to assert that there's probably no gods, then you're an atheist.\nAnd you can be an atheist with respect to some gods and an agnostic with respect to others. Or an atheist with respect to some and a theist with respect to others, though that's a non-standard usage of atheist that should be spelled out before use.\nSo I think it's best to define terms up front.\nAnonymous (2009-06-26):\nJim, I think you have things exactly right. I almost always say agnostic around my theistic friends because atheist as I mean it, is almost always misunderstood.\nWhy do you think so much heat is generated amoung the atheist-agnostic crowd, when it is so clear (at least to me) that the view you hold is dependent on the definition of theist being used at the time?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/john-wilkins-on-atheism-and-agnosticism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Wilkins has written \u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/24/definitions-of-atheism/\"\u003ea blog post on definitions of atheism and agnosticism\u003c/a\u003e, in which he suggests that the definition of atheism has been shifting of late (and encroaching upon agnosticism\u0026rsquo;s territory).  His discussion and that which follows in the comments is well worth reading.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-06-26)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eJim,\n\u003cp\u003eWhy don't you weigh in? You, Wilkins, and Moran\u0026hellip; just like the old days of USENET.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Wilkins on atheism and agnosticism"},{"content":"Talk about great timing\u0026ndash;a few minutes ago, I received an email from \u0026ldquo;Governor Sanford\u0026rdquo; with the subject \u0026ldquo;Join Me.\u0026rdquo; I thought perhaps it might be an invitation to travel to Buenos Aires. But no, it\u0026rsquo;s an appeal from the Goldwater Institute to join, signed by Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina who is in the news today for confessing that his recent week-long disappearance was to visit a woman in Argentina that he\u0026rsquo;s been having an affair with.\nI suppose they can be sure the recipients are more likely to open such an email today, though I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how much Sanford\u0026rsquo;s name will result in people giving them money.\nBTW, Fox News ran a caption on Sanford\u0026rsquo;s confession press conference identifying him as a Democrat, just like they did with Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida back in 2006.\nUnknown (2009-06-25):\nWhy are you so gung-ho to crucify this man because he loved someone so much he was willing to risk everything - his career, his marriage, his entire life - to travel to a faraway land to be with them?\nPierre Stromberg (2009-06-25):\nWell, in my opinion, I think the government shouldn\u0026#39;t be in the business of recognizing the marriages of Republican politicians. Wouldn\u0026#39;t you agree Dropsy? Take my poll. http://twtpoll.com/14d7rx\nPierre\nLippard (2009-06-25):\nDropsy: You\u0026#39;re wanted back at the Scientology post you were previously commenting on. I'm not out to nail Mark Sanford to a cross\u0026ndash;I'm just making an observation about the either very poor or very good timing of the Goldwater Institute's email under his name, as well as the Fox News attempt to brand another religious right moral failure in the Republican party as a Democratic one.\nBTW, I think Sanford could have done what he did in a moral way\u0026ndash;but that would have involved divorcing his wife first, or at least getting her permission to change the terms of their marriage before stepping out on her. It was also wrong of him as the governor of his state to not let anyone know where he was, which is part of the reason why he now has no chance of being a Republican nominee for president in the next election.\nSchtacky (2009-06-25):\nDropsy: Jump...jump...jump to conclusions. Do you actually read the text of a post before commenting? Jim was so quick to condemn Sanford that he forgot to condemn him. The fact that he went outside of his marriage is pretty horrifying, but I would be willing to bet that we'd have an easier time counting the politicians that haven't done so, versus those that have.\nWhat's troubling here is that a sitting governor took off for a week without telling anyone - that's irresponsible and calls into question his fitness as an elected official.\nI second the motion for follow-up on your Scientology postings as well. Dropsy?\nKtisophilos (2009-06-25):\nWell, maybe Sanford could re-elected if he does a (Benedict Arlen) Specter. After all, Democrat Gerry Stubbs managed to get re-elected after having sex with a teenage page boy and turning his back on Congress when it censured him. Slick Willy is still a Dem hero.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/mark-sanford-wants-me-to-join-him.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalk about great timing\u0026ndash;a few minutes ago, I received an email from \u0026ldquo;Governor Sanford\u0026rdquo; with the subject \u0026ldquo;Join Me.\u0026rdquo;  I thought perhaps it might be an invitation to travel to Buenos Aires.  But no, it\u0026rsquo;s an appeal from the Goldwater Institute to join, signed by Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina who is in the news today for confessing that his recent week-long disappearance was to visit a woman in Argentina that he\u0026rsquo;s been having an affair with.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suppose they can be sure the recipients are more likely to open such an email today, though I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how much Sanford\u0026rsquo;s name will result in people giving them money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, Fox News \u003ca href=\"http://wonkette.com/409435/fox-news-scoop-uhhmark-sanford-is-a-democrat\"\u003eran a caption on Sanford\u0026rsquo;s confession press conference identifying him as a Democrat\u003c/a\u003e, just like \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/04/fox-news-identifies-.html\"\u003ethey did with Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida back in 2006\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mark Sanford wants me to join him..."},{"content":"Radley Balko summarizes PolitiFact\u0026rsquo;s report card on Obama\u0026rsquo;s promises, as:\n31 promises kept, of which 20 expand government power and 6 of which make it smaller, more transparent, or more accountable, and 5 are neutral.\n6 promises broken, 5 of which would have limited presidential power, provided tax breaks, or more transparency or accountability to federal government, and one of which was symbolic (recognizing the Armenian genocide).\nNo promises broken which expand government power.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-24):\nNot bad, especially the conclusion: “even when you assume the positions of left-of-center, big government Obama-the-candidate as your baseline, Obama-the-president comes up short.”\nAnonymous (2009-06-24):\nWhat president in our history did not come up short for someone or some group of people in various ways. Name one who was perfect for all...\nLippard (2009-06-24):\nKarina: I think that's the wrong measure. The measure should be, which presidents governed well in accordance with the Constitution.\nCertainly none have been perfect, but the presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries haven't been anywhere close.\nI think Obama's certainly far better than Bush Jr. so far, but that's setting the bar way too low. We had a lot of far better presidents early in the country's history, and Washington was perhaps the best.\nMore recently, Harding is unfairly underrated.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-24):\nI totally agree with JL on \u0026quot;The measure should be, which presidents governed well in accordance with the Constitution.\u0026quot; Harding was indeed under-rated, as was Coolidge, since both of them were non-interventionists and allowed the economy to recover on its own, giving the \u0026quot;roaring 20s\u0026quot;. Hoover and FDR were big interventionists, resulting in the Great Depression and then prolonging it.\nGWB deserves much censure for throwing America into debt. I fail to see how Barack \u0026quot;GM-Boss-in-Chief\u0026quot; Obama is better when he quadrupled this debt.\n\u0026quot;You'll remember the stimulus plan had to be passed without a second's delay or we would see 8.7 percent unemployment. We're almost at 10.\u0026quot; \u0026ndash;columnist David Harsanyi\nFund manager Cliff Asness clearly doesn't agree with JL about Obama, given that Obama spat on the rule of law to bully rightful creditors and benefit his political allies.\nHume's Ghost (2009-06-26):\nGlenn Greenwald has been doing a series of on-going posts documenting the disparity between Obama\u0026#39;s campaign promises and his actions in office, too (e.g. defending Dick Cheney in court from law suits, invoking \u0026quot;states secrets\u0026quot;, preventive detention, not releasing torture photos, arguing to the Supreme Court in favor of limiting DNA evidence access etc.)\nKtisophilos (2009-06-26):\nBTW, what has happened to Obama\u0026#39;s supposedly great economic advisers? They must know that going into trillions of dollars of debt is a disastrous idea. It should have been obvious that Summmers is too much of a wimp to challenge his Master—just look at the way he grovelled in vain to the feminazis at Harvard for what JL rightly called an \u0026quot;overblown\u0026quot; issue.\nAnother conclusion: Obama is a bully at home and a coward overseas.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/obamas-record-of-kept-and-broken.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2009/06/22/obama-keeps-campaign-promises-that-expand-government-abandons-those-that-limit-it-or-hold-it-accountable/\"\u003esummarizes PolitiFact\u0026rsquo;s report card on Obama\u0026rsquo;s promises\u003c/a\u003e, as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e31 promises kept, of which 20 expand government power and 6 of which make it smaller, more transparent, or more accountable, and 5 are neutral.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6 promises broken, 5 of which would have limited presidential power, provided tax breaks, or more transparency or accountability to federal government, and one of which was symbolic (recognizing the Armenian genocide).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNo promises broken which expand government power.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama's record of kept and broken promises"},{"content":"The third part of the St. Petersburg Times story on Scientology, \u0026ldquo;Ecclesiastical justice,\u0026quot; is out, and it\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a disappointment. It\u0026rsquo;s a few more charges of abuse by the four high-ranking defectors that were already summarized in the first part, plus some accounts of the well-known Sea Org practice of \u0026ldquo;overboarding,\u0026rdquo; used with swimming pools when ships aren\u0026rsquo;t available. Surprisingly, the story doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention that the Olympic-sized swimming pool at the Scientology \u0026ldquo;Gold Base\u0026rdquo; compound in Hemet has a faux ship, the Star of California, built into the hill next to it.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s stories also include some more detail about the departures from Scientology of the four senior-level defectors interviewed for the story, and some media and Internet reactions.\nAll in all, I think this new series of stories is not as damning as, say, Janet Reitman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Inside Scientology\u0026rdquo; that appeared in Rolling Stone in 2006, nor as any of the older classic exposures like the six-part Los Angeles Times series by Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos from 1990, Richard Behar\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power\u0026rdquo; from Time magazine in 1991, or Richard Leiby\u0026rsquo;s work in the Clearwater Sun in the 1970s and 1980s and the Washington Post in the 1990s.\nI hope someday we\u0026rsquo;ll see a more detailed exposure of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battle with the IRS, and the role of the Church of Spiritual Technology/L. Ron Hubbard Library in the Scientology organizational structure, and why its trustees are lawyers who aren\u0026rsquo;t Scientologists, including a former Assistant Commissioner of the IRS.\nUPDATE (August 2, 2009): Other Scientology defectors are now coming forward with their stories, some of which confirm the accounts of abuse given by Rinder, Rathbun, and De Vocht.\nUnknown (2009-06-23):\nThe article is total bullshit from start to finish. Anyone can make kooky allegations about a famous organization like the Church of Scientology, spout them to a newspaper while offering no proof, and then sit back and laugh as that newspaper passes the gossip along with zero fact-checking, and without even getting David Miscavige\u0026#39;s side of the story. DM deserves to have his own three-part space in the paper to address these slanderous lies being told about him. I hope he sues the paper into oblivion. (Of course, if he DOES sue for slander or libel, these same Scientology-hating bigots will automatically bleat like sheep about how \u0026quot;Scientology loves to sue people\u0026quot;. There's no ethical or logical way out of the trap of disinfo these pathetic haters have constructed. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't.)\nLippard (2009-06-23):\nDropsy: Uh, no. Almost everything in the articles is already well-known, and even the new material such as the allegations of abuse by David Miscavige, have already been alleged previously by others. Scientology's negligence and incompetence in the handling of Lisa McPherson which led to her death is well-documented; they escaped criminal liability but settled a civil suit with McPherson's family.\nScientology is a highly litigious cult, with a past history of serious abuses and faux reform (e.g., changing the name of the Guardian Office to OSA; repealing the use of the name of the \u0026quot;fair game\u0026quot; HCOPL, rather than its content).\nI guarantee you that the Church of Scientology will not sue the St. Petersburg Times into oblivion. If they do sue, it will be in accordance with Hubbard policy of \u0026quot;never defend, always attack,\u0026quot; rather than to any merit in their case.\nUnknown (2009-06-23):\nJust because a rumor is \u0026quot;well known\u0026quot; does not make it true. You said it yourself: they\u0026#39;re allegations. Alleging something does not make it true. Anyone can allege anything about anyone, especially if you have a paper like the SP Times willing to parrot whatever unprovable tall tales you want to spout. Whether it's at Gold Base or at a Burger King restaurant, there's one thing you can always count on: disgruntled ex-employees will say anything, no matter how implausible or hateful, to lash out and \u0026quot;get back\u0026quot; at their old boss. True that.\nBlaming the entire religion of Scientology, from the top down, for Lisa McPherson's death is typical bigot-spin. It's exactly like when anti-Catholic nuts blame the Pope and the entire Vatican every time some priest somewhere on the planet is accused of doing something wrong. It must be really weird for David Miscavige to have to hear the nonstop barrage of bizarre things he's personally blamed for.\n(Hey, I hear he shot JFK from the window just above Oswald! I know it's true because a few lonely cranks said so on the internets, and then a newspaper repeated it!)\nLippard (2009-06-23):\nDropsy: The Catholic church isn\u0026#39;t responsible for every molestation, but they are responsible for moving priests responsible for molestation from parish to parish where they continued to act as predators, and for actually having had formal policy to sweep such things under the rug and hide them. Similarly, Scientology isn't responsible for every case of abuse by a Scientologist, but it is responsible for people who die as a result of its policies or from negligent actions by people acting as agents of the organization.\nDisgruntled employees or parishioners are not always reliable, but their stories can be checked for consistency with each other and with the facts, and there are plenty of them that have held up quite well over the years. By contrast, Hubbard himself was a liar and a fraud, Dianetics is a bogus pseudoscience, and Scientology was and is a concocted farrago of nonsense promoted by an organization that extracts money from the pockets of people that it dupes into believing it, and frequently lashes out deceptively, dishonestly, unethically, and sometimes illegally against those who criticize it.\nUnknown (2009-06-24):\n\u0026quot;Hubbard himself was a liar and a fraud, Dianetics is a bogus pseudoscience, and Scientology was and is a concocted farrago of nonsense promoted by an organization that extracts money from the pockets of people that it dupes into believing it\u0026quot; Hmmm\u0026hellip;. alrighty then! Don't mince words, Jim, what do you really think? ;)\nFunny, I'm supposed to be the cultist here, but clearly I'm talking to a ideological brick wall here, who already knows everything there is to know with great certainty about people he's never met and Churches he's never set foot in, and cannot be told any different, no matter what.\nGet well soon.\nLippard (2009-06-24):\nDropsy: You didn\u0026#39;t substantiate anything you said. I can (and have, in past writing) substantiate everything I said. I've been to Scientology orgs, I've met with Scientologists and ex-Scientologists, I've read Scientology materials, I've read Russell Miller's biography of Hubbard and some of the supporting documents, I've read HCOPLs, and I've read numerous books about Scientology. I've even been threatened with legal action by Scientology.\nI'm more than willing to hear any evidential case or logical argument you care to present, but you haven't presented one\u0026ndash;all you've done is make the unsubstantiated assertion that everything in the SP Times articles is false (an absurdity), that the allegations against Miscavige are false, and that he somehow deserves his own three-part article of equal size to rebut them. That's not how the newspaper business works. The SP Times did give Scientology space for a response, and they did give Miscavige ample opportunity to meet with or talk with them over a period of months, which he failed to make use of.\nSo, do you have anything of substance? Can you identify any specific falsehoods in the SP Times coverage that you can provide any actual evidence for? If so, please post it, and I'll be happy to concede whatever points you can demonstrate.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-24):\nJL: “The Catholic church isn\u0026#39;t responsible for every molestation, but they are responsible for moving priests responsible for molestation from parish to parish where they continued to act as predators, and for actually having had formal policy to sweep such things under the rug and hide them.” Yet sometimes this was done in collusion with the secular government. For example, according to this report, the state of Ireland \u0026quot;colluded with religious authorities to hide child abuse\u0026quot;.\nAnd as we have discussed before, “The LA Times recently reported on many cases of sexual abuse in the Los Angeles Unified School District where the offender is simply put back into a classroom elsewhere.”\nLippard (2009-06-24):\nKtisophilos: That others have also been complicit or engaged in similar behavior doesn\u0026#39;t reduce the responsibility of the RCC, does it?\nKtisophilos (2009-06-24):\nJim: certainly not. Nor should other organizations be exempt from the same sort of contempt for allowing the same sort of abuses.\nLippard (2009-06-24):\nLooks like dropsy is practicing what Scientologists call \u0026quot;non-confront,\u0026quot; and has suffered an \u0026quot;ARC break\u0026quot; (\u0026quot;a sudden drop or cutting of one\u0026#39;s affinity, reality, or communication with someone or something\u0026quot;) and is \u0026quot;not there.\u0026quot; Let's hope he recovers and returns.\nUnknown (2009-06-27):\nClearwater Flag Base\u0026#39;s official response: \u0026quot;The St. Petersburg Times' June 24 editorial The abuse behind Scientology's facade proves beyond doubt that any aura of objectivity in the Times' so-called \u0026quot;special report\u0026quot; was illusory. The report attempted to give the appearance of balance by quoting statements from Church of Scientology representatives, but the editorial exposes this exercise as a hollow pretense.\nThe editorial uncritically accepts as true statements from a handful of former church staff without ever addressing their lack of credibility, their underlying motivations and the voluminous evidence proving their stories were false. These individuals lost their positions of authority within the church for incompetence and for serious misconduct. Your sources' statements to the Times plainly targeted the man who removed them, David Miscavige.\nTimes readers should be aware that Miscavige had agreed and made arrangements to be interviewed in Clearwater by the Times in early July. The Times' rush to press without hearing from Miscavige, much less the dozen other church executives who traveled to Clearwater last week to talk to the reporters, amply shows that the editors already had their minds made up.\nThe paper and its editorial staff have single-mindedly pursued a vendetta against the church from the moment it arrived in Clearwater more than 30 years ago. Since 1993, the Times has railed against the church's tax exemption rulings from the IRS without ever once giving serious attention to the voluminous public record upon which those rulings were based. The Times takes every opportunity to dredge up past false allegations from their own archives. And now, absent anything tangible and relevant, the Times has launched a scurrilous attack on the character of the church's leader, David Miscavige.\nFinding none of the usual avenues of attack viable — no alcohol or drug issues, no financial misdeeds, no sex scandals — the Times has seized on tired, old allegations from the \u0026quot;grassy knoll\u0026quot; of the Internet to falsely portray Miscavige, a beloved, albeit demanding religious leader, in a manner that is completely contrary to his true personality. This caricature is belied by the respect and admiration he has earned from millions of Scientologists who have witnessed a renaissance in the church and unprecedented growth and expansion under Miscavige's stewardship.\nIn the end, the \u0026quot;special report\u0026quot; and its culmination in the editorial say far more about the Times than they do about the church. A more accurate title would be \u0026quot;The bigotry behind the Times' facade of responsible journalism.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-06-27):\nPlompton: \u0026quot;The editorial uncritically accepts as true statements from a handful of former church staff without ever addressing their lack of credibility, their underlying motivations and the voluminous evidence proving their stories were false.\u0026quot; If these spokesmen lack credibility, that reflects badly on the Church of Scientology for allowing them to be in positions of leadership for many years. This is a serious problem with the \u0026quot;dead agent\u0026quot; technique applied to people who were running significant parts of the Church.\nAs for the \u0026quot;voluminous evidence proving their stories were false\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;that doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Where and what is that evidence?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/part-3-of-sp-times-series-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/article1012575.ece\"\u003ethird part of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSt. Petersburg Times\u003c/span\u003e story on Scientology, \u0026ldquo;Ecclesiastical justice,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e is out, and it\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a disappointment.  It\u0026rsquo;s a few more charges of abuse by the four high-ranking defectors that were already summarized in the first part, plus some accounts of the well-known Sea Org practice of \u0026ldquo;overboarding,\u0026rdquo; used with swimming pools when ships aren\u0026rsquo;t available.  Surprisingly, the story doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention that the Olympic-sized swimming pool at the Scientology \u0026ldquo;Gold Base\u0026rdquo; compound in Hemet has a faux ship, the Star of California, built into the hill next to it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s stories also include some \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/article1012520.ece\"\u003emore detail about the departures from Scientology of the four senior-level defectors interviewed for the story\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012324.ece\"\u003esome media and Internet reactions\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll in all, I think this new series of stories is not as damning as, say, \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9363363/inside_scientology/1\"\u003eJanet Reitman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Inside Scientology\u0026rdquo; that appeared in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRolling Stone\u003c/span\u003e in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, nor as any of the older classic exposures like \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/business/la-scientology-sg,0,6926242.storygallery\"\u003ethe six-part \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e series by Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos from 1990\u003c/a\u003e, Richard Behar\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power\u0026rdquo; from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e magazine in 1991\u003c/a\u003e, or \u003ca href=\"http://www.lermanet2.com/leiby.htm\"\u003eRichard Leiby\u0026rsquo;s work in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClearwater Sun\u003c/span\u003e in the 1970s and 1980s and the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e in the 1990s\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI hope someday we\u0026rsquo;ll see a more detailed exposure of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s battle with the IRS, and the role of the Church of Spiritual Technology/L. Ron Hubbard Library in the Scientology organizational structure, and why its trustees are lawyers who aren\u0026rsquo;t Scientologists, including a former Assistant Commissioner of the IRS.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 2, 2009): Other Scientology defectors \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/article1023717.ece\"\u003eare now coming forward with their stories\u003c/a\u003e, some of which confirm the accounts of abuse given by Rinder, Rathbun, and De Vocht.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Part 3 of SP Times series on Scientology"},{"content":"Via John Lynch\u0026rsquo;s blog, I see that Creation Ministries International has made a docu-drama about Darwin titled \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World,\u0026rdquo; featuring professional historians who are well-known experts on Darwin. And why did these historians participate in a creationist project?\nIt seems that CMI took a page from the producers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and set up a separate production company, and failed to disclose the nature of their production to the historians in question. That suggests to me unethical deception\u0026ndash;lying by omission\u0026ndash;though I\u0026rsquo;d like to know what exactly the historians were told and what releases they signed before they participated.\nUpdates to come if I find out.\nUPDATE (June 27, 2009): CMI describes its process for the documentary, including the document sent to interviewees, on its website. No mention is made of CMI or a creationist slant to the film. The director says that \u0026ldquo;if anything, CMI’s influence was one of moderation, ensuring that all sides were fairly represented,\u0026rdquo; but if he is himself a creationist and set out to make the film from a creationist viewpoint, this isn\u0026rsquo;t much of a defense. Note that at least one participant questioned who was providing the funding, and was told only \u0026ldquo;private investors.\u0026rdquo; And one participant tried to return his fee in order to not appear in the film.\nThe proof will be in the pudding\u0026ndash;it will be interesting to see what the film\u0026rsquo;s narration says and how they fit the interviews into it. There\u0026rsquo;s clearly no defense if it says things that are false or misleading.\nImplicit in the CMI position is that creationism is a valid, reasonable, and evidence-supported viewpoint that deserves equal representation, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the case.\nOne thing that\u0026rsquo;s clear is that anyone being interviewed for a documentary in the age of Borat and Expelled should do some due diligence before signing a release.\nUPDATE: John Lynch has responded further, as well, and I agree with everything he says. Their statement about atheists having \u0026ldquo;no compunction to be truthful at all\u0026rdquo; is false and offensive, and their analogy to an investigation of the Communist party is a bad analogy.\nUPDATE: P.Z. Myers has weighed in. This may be the sort of online media coverage they\u0026rsquo;re hoping for\u0026ndash;the film is showing at so few places that the biggest place in Arizona to see it is a church in Miami, AZ (population \u0026lt; 2,000).\nUPDATE (June 29, 2009): The CMI web page contains this statement under the movie poster image: \u0026ldquo;The Voyage that Shook the World, CMI’s documentary, has atheists ranting and raging. Rather than critique the film, they falsely accuse CMI of deception.\u0026rdquo; This statement itself is dishonest\u0026ndash;the accusations of deception are accurate, and the current complaints are not necessarily in lieu of critiquing the film, if it becomes feasible to view it.\nUPDATE: John Lynch responds further to CMI, and notes that he has been incorrectly identified as an atheist (he\u0026rsquo;s an agnostic).\nDaleFlannery (2009-06-27):\nThe document sent to all interviewees prior to their interview is reproduced on this page: http://tinyurl.com/r789dm\nKtisophilos (2009-06-28):\n\u0026quot;Implicit in the CMI position is that creationism is a valid, reasonable, and evidence-supported viewpoint that deserves equal representation, but that\u0026#39;s not the case.\u0026quot; Oh, what a surprise, CMI thinks that creation is valid, and thinks it's OK to make films to support its own raison d'être. What an amazing revelation!\nImplicit in the Dem party position (and that of many Republicans) is that socialism, in effect, is a valid economic policy, but that's not the case \u0026hellip; It doesn't mean they are dishonest to support this nonsense.\nJohn Lynch (2009-06-28):\n@ Ktisophilos \u0026quot;socialism\u0026quot;\nYou don't know what that word means, do you?\nKtisophilos (2009-06-28):\n@ John Lynch: then the same applies to Newsweek which claimed \u0026quot;we are all socialists now\u0026quot; as well as that Obama is \u0026quot;sort of God\u0026quot;. Rather, it's clear that many politicians and commentators don't know what \u0026quot;free market\u0026quot; means. After all, they blame the financial crisis on this entity although as George Reisman pointed out, the highly regulated US economy was anything but (The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis).\nKtisophilos (2009-06-28):\nWell, the evolutionary experts had to concede that the Voyage film didn\u0026#39;t distort what they said. Compare this with a bigoted bibliophobic program by those atheopathic celebutards Penn and Teller, featuring cherry-picking and outright disortion of Christian scholar Paul Maier, who was interviewed under blatantly false pretenses.\nLippard (2009-06-28):\nWhere is the concession that the film doesn\u0026#39;t distort what people have said by cherry-picking from their quotes and leaving out significant points, and surrounding it with misleading narration? Penn \u0026amp; Teller's show is subject to similar criticisms, I agree, but that provides no support whatsoever to your position. It's not hard to find skeptics who agree that their show is unfair to its interviewees\u0026ndash;I suspect Penn \u0026amp; Teller would even admit that's the case.\nRegarding my \u0026quot;equal representation\u0026quot; argument\u0026ndash;creationist arguments proceed by ignoring most of the evidence to cherry-pick apparent anomalies by which to attack evolution, while failing to produce an explanation which fits most of the facts. That's misrepresentation, and that's what I expect to see in this film. Your political analogy misses the point.\nI'd argue that both major political parties in the U.S. tend to ignore most of the relevant factual information about public policy, economics, and law and cherry-pick results to fit preconceived policies\u0026ndash;that seems to be how most advocacy organizations function, but it's not how institutions of science, history, public policy, law, journalism, etc. should work.\nLippard (2009-06-28):\nFurther note: A documentary for the general public must, of necessity, omit lots of relevant facts and data. But an honest documentary presenting a minority position (especially a radically minority position like young-earth creationism) should at least make it clear that it is presenting a minority position and explain how it differs from the mainstream, so that a watcher ends up with a clear and accurate picture of both mainstream and minority viewpoints (and I don\u0026#39;t mean to suggest that that is necessarily only two viewpoints). I've yet to come across a creationist book, film, or article that accurately and honestly depicted evidence for evolution, as opposed to a grossly inaccurate caricature. If creationists were serious about doing science, they would first learn a field directly relevant to evolution thoroughly enough that they could explain and present arguments for evolution based on accurate facts, and then show how they have an alternative that better explains all of the same facts and more.\nThe problem is that nearly every creationist who has tried to go that path has ceased to be a creationist. And that's why most creationists are M.D.s, veterinarians, dentists, engineers, mathematicians, chemists, and so forth (e.g., John Lynch's analysis of the signatories of the Dissent from Darwinism petition of the Discovery Institute).\nKtisophilos (2009-06-28):\n\u0026#39;Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026#39;s show is subject to similar criticisms, I agree ...\u0026#39; Nothing similar at all. You have yet to show the slightest parallel with teh Voyage movie to what historian Dr Maier said:\n'In no way did I get the impression that this would be anything other than a serious television program on which I could vigorously defend the faith.\n\u0026hellip;\n'twisting my words, taking me out of context, and cutting 97% of my bristling defense in behalf of the Bible and Christianity. Oh, and the outright falsehoods too: I never \u0026quot;called myself ‘Doctor’,\u0026quot; as they claimed. Even where I did \u0026quot;get a few good licks in\u0026quot; they clouded my comments with silly black/white footage playing while I talked.\n\u0026hellip;\n' \u0026quot;Well, don’t the two chapters [Gen. 1\u0026amp;2] contradict one another, as liberals claim? What’s their viewpoint?\u0026quot; he then continued. I answered, as quoted directly on the tape, \u0026quot;Well, I wouldn’t call them contradictions as much as commentaries the one on the other. We probably have two different authors here, whose work was blended together, then, with editorial revising.\u0026quot; Then they cut the crucial next phrase: \u0026quot;But this is the liberal viewpoint, of course.\u0026quot; '\nMichael Shermer was an integral part of this deceitful film. Yet he is one of the most piteous bleaters about Expelled.\nAs for the next post, Blind Freddie's deaf guide dog would realize that creation is a minority position without it needing to be spoonfed in that film. But what you really mean is that would have been impossible for CMI to produce any film about Darwin that you wouldn't whinge about. So why are we even having this debate?\nBTW, it's extremely rare to see an evolutionist book deal fairly with creation fairly. For example, many falsely accuse creationists believe fixity of species, or take everything in the Bible literally.\nLippard (2009-06-28):\nI apparently misunderstood the point of your comparison, I thought you were making a tu quoque. As for whether the interviewees have been similarly misrepresented, I have to go back to my original statement that the proof will be in the pudding--I haven\u0026#39;t seen the film, but the study guide content suggests it\u0026#39;s a possibility. Shermer was another interviewee of the Penn \u0026amp; Teller show\u0026ndash;he didn't write it or produce it or edit it.\nAs to whether it's possible for CMI to do an honest and accurate documentary, I think it is, I thought Facing the Fire was an example. Specifically about Darwin, well, we'll see.\nI think your objection to evolutionist misrepresentations of creationism falls flat against any of the major critiques of creationism (e.g., Arthur N. Strahler's Science and Earth History, Philip Kitcher's Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, Eugenie Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, Laurie Godfrey's Scientists Confront Creationism, etc.) Off the top of my head, I can't think of any critiques of creationism that assume creationists don't allow for microevolution within \u0026quot;kinds\u0026quot; or think that every parable, poem and passage in the Bible must be taken literally (as opposed to young-earth creationists typically being biblical literalists, which isn't the same thing).\nmirele (2009-06-28):\nI guess the question I\u0026#39;d like the good creationists to ask (and this gets beyond cherrypicking) is: Has \u0026quot;Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness\u0026quot; been removed from your Bibles? Is it appropriate to lie to your potential interviewees to obtain an interview if you are an avowedly Christian organization? If it is appropriate, why on earth would anyone want to be a Christian, if your morals are no different than that of non-Christians?\nI can't believe that so-called Christians are defending lying. It boggles the mind.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-28):\nI guess the question to ask Mirele is: \u0026quot;why do you ask leading questions?\u0026quot; And why do you want Christian morality anyway given your evident christophobia? As for JL's \u0026quot;biblical literalists\u0026quot;, obviously that IS the same thing in many people's minds as taking everything in the Bible literally. A more accurate term, as I've explained before on this blog, would be a textualist or originalist, as per those theories of interpreting the US Constitution.\nI have definitely seen those misreprentations by people who should know better. Hang, it's not too uncommon to see \u0026quot;creationists believe God placed fossils to test our faith\u0026quot;.\nAnd do you really think that Shermer was just another duped interviewee of Penn and Teller? No, he wouldn't have known what they're like, and saw nothing strange in having a chance to attack selected soundbites from Maier?\nKtisophilos (2009-06-29):\nJL: \u0026quot;As to whether it\u0026#39;s possible for CMI to do an honest and accurate documentary, I think it is, I thought _Facing the Fire_ was an example.\u0026quot; So this doesn't count as \u0026quot;Lying for Jesus\u0026quot; as that atheopathic bloviator Pee-Zed Myers claims about CMI—sounding suspiciously like your old adversary Plimer? And I would remind you of a common skeptical charge that Richard \u0026quot;Big Jewish Conspiracy\u0026quot; Dawkins was misrepresented in From a Frog to a Prince, but some of the more honorable ones apologized for the false accusation.\nLippard (2009-06-29):\n\u0026quot;And do you really think that Shermer was just another duped interviewee of Penn and Teller? No, he wouldn\u0026#39;t have known what they\u0026#39;re like, and saw nothing strange in having a chance to attack selected soundbites from Maier?\u0026quot; Perhaps I haven't seen enough episodes of the show \u0026quot;Bullshit!\u0026quot; (I've seen about half of each of the first two seasons), but most of their subject matter is genuinely accurately described by the title, and while they're not fair in the sense of giving equal time to the proponents of bullshit, they're often fair in that they accurately depict the facts about what they're talking about, even in this case\u0026ndash;P\u0026amp;T mostly have the right conclusions, even though they were unfair to Maier and apparently misrepresented his views (e.g., sometimes depicting him as though the liberal views he discussed were his own and claiming that he referred to himself as \u0026quot;Dr.\u0026quot;).\nI'll ask Shermer about it when I see him in a couple of weeks at TAM7\u0026ndash;whether he aware of how Maier was edited and what his reasons were for participating. I suspect he wasn't aware that Maier was edited in a way to misrepresent what he said, and that he participated because of his friendship with P\u0026amp;T and to get the chance to convey his own views.\nNote that \u0026quot;Bullshit!\u0026quot; is also a comedy show, not a serious documentary\u0026ndash;though again, Maier apparently didn't know that's the show he was being filmed for, and I think that's wrong.\n\u0026quot;So this doesn't count as \u0026quot;Lying for Jesus\u0026quot; as that atheopathic bloviator Pee-Zed Myers claims about CMI\u0026quot; \u0026ndash; what does \u0026quot;this\u0026quot; refer to? If it refers to \u0026quot;Facing the Fire,\u0026quot; I agree. If it refers to the content of the docu-drama, I'm not yet in a position to answer. If it refers to the intentional withholding of information about who was behind the documentary in obtaining releases and footage of participants, that does, I think, constitute lying by omission.\nThe CMI page seems to be arguing that lying by omission is morally acceptable, with prooftexts from the synoptic gospels where Jesus made statements about speaking in parables to hide the truth from the masses (expressed in strongest form in Mark 4:11-12, which seems to me to be saying that Jesus is intentionally being unintelligible because he doesn't want the masses to receive salvation, which seems counter to the entire purpose of an evangelical Christian organization; this is a key verse of the \u0026quot;Messianic Secret\u0026quot; in Mark).\nThe CMI page now has some additions in the footnotes, which include multiple uses of the neologism \u0026quot;atheopathic\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;your contribution, since you've used it in comments here, too? I've noticed the tendency in some highly intelligent, yet isolated and eccentric individuals to have a tendency to generate many neologisms as a form of ridicule of their opponents and critics. Sadly, it seems to me a habit that doesn't do anything to promote understanding, but rather conveys the impression that the author is a crank.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-29):\nOh, Jim, I\u0026#39;m touched by your concern about promoting \u0026quot;understanding\u0026quot; etc. ;) It doesn\u0026#39;t seem like Myers, Dawkins et al. care about anything other than vicious attack against those who disagree. I remind you of the parallel of Myers\u0026#39; charge against CMI with the title of Plimer\u0026#39;s abusive and incompetent book, and that Dawkins commended this same book. Even the word that irks you should be compared with Dawkins\u0026#39; charge that theistic religion is a mind virus, i.e. disease. \u0026quot;Lying by omission\u0026quot; is your term. You apparently were not distorted by the CMI Facing the Fire, and there is no reason to believe any different with Voyage.\nMessianic Secret theories are hardly news.\nLippard (2009-06-29):\nMy objections to Plimer\u0026#39;s book were based on its misrepresentations, not its title; Myers\u0026#39; use of the same phrase appears to me accurate. Dawkins' parallel between genes and ideas (\u0026quot;memes\u0026quot;) is one where memes do propagate much like viruses; religion is one of many cultural collections of ideas that he draws such an analogy for, and I think it's accurate. Dennett's Breaking the Spell offers a more nuanced picture of religion that I prefer\u0026ndash;there are positive and negative side-effects of religious beliefs and practices. Taken as a whole, I think your sort of religion has more negative than positive.\nI'm well aware that the Messianic Secret idea is not new\u0026ndash;my link, to Wikipedia, gives a better overview than your link to the insufferable and dishonest Robert Turkel's website.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-29):\nYet the Facing the Fire was NOT \u0026quot;lying\u0026quot;, for Jesus or anyone else. There is no getting around Plimer-fan Dawkins' claim that religion as a disease — and he has even more contempt for churchians who deny that the Bible teaches creation than creation itself, and that's saying a lot! But then don't whinge when the same charge is thrown back at him.\nBTW, even many evolutionists think that memetics is vacuous. Even Dawkins' friend Jerry Coyne, an embarrassment to theistic evolutionists, claims that memes are ‘but a flashy new wrapping around a parcel of old and conventional ideas.’\nWikipedia a good source? Don't make me laugh — anyone can edit it at any time. BTW, James Patrick Holding is his real name now; you're way behind the times obsessing about his former real name. He's right to call Wiki \u0026quot;The Abomination that Causes Misinformation\u0026quot;, cites the example of an Irish student who put a fake quote on it and it was dutifully copied by journalists all around the world.\nDo let us know how Shermer can justify his association with the deceitful Penn/Teller show, “lying for bibliophobia” one might say.\nLippard (2009-06-29):\nWho are you responding to re Facing the Fire? Who called it \u0026quot;lying\u0026quot;? I was less-than-impressed with memetics until reading Dennett's \u0026quot;The New Replicators.\u0026quot; Its fruitfulness ultimately remains to be seen.\nWikipedia is a generally reliable source, despite the fact that (almost) anyone can edit it\u0026ndash;they have developed processes to identify and respond to vandalism. Some areas are better than others\u0026ndash;it's excellent on pop culture, creation/evolution, and Scientology, for example, while not very good on alternative medicine. I discussed this briefly in my AHA talk. I've blogged about the Nature study that compared Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica (which had some flaws, but found them comparable in error rates). The example you give is more indicative of a problem with journalism than with Wikipedia.\nMy opinion of Holding doesn't change with his official change of name.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-30):\nThere are some skeptics like Kyle Gerkin who have friendly dialogues with JPH. JPH just doesn\u0026#39;t take any crap from nasty atheopaths, and uses the challenge-riposte approach with its ample biblical precedents. I thought UK commentator Dr Theodore Dalrymple, certainly no creationist or even theist, nailed Dennett about memetics:\n“Dennett argues that religion is explicable in evolutionary terms—for example, by our inborn human propensity, at one time valuable for our survival on the African savannahs, to attribute animate agency to threatening events.\n“For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.” [What the new atheists don’t see: to regret religion is to regret Western civilization, City Journal, Autumn 2007]\nAs for religion being good or bad, ironically Plimer was one of the negative speakers in a recent public debate on the proposition, Would the world be better off without religion?\nLippard (2009-06-30):\nI don\u0026#39;t think Dalrymple\u0026#39;s objection works--it looks to me like a false dilemma. Dennett\u0026#39;s position on meme replication doesn\u0026#39;t eliminate or ignore the further constraints on idea propagation that come from logical inference and empirical testing (which are themselves toolsets of ideas that are propagated). Nor does it eliminate the relevance of judgments of truth and falsity (or the concepts of truth and falsity). Religion, though, tends to involve ideas that have little in the way of empirical testing, or use various means to avoid the consequences of empirical testing.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-30):\nWm. Dembski sez: ‘Lynch is outraged: the documentary makers are guilty of “lies” and “deception”. Would a charge of fraud hold up in court? I suspect the documentary makers simply withheld information. Is that wrong? The BBC, for instance, didn’t inform me that a documentary they were making about ID was to be called “A War on Science”, and that I would be portrayed as one of the “bad people” trying to “destroy science.” I was, to be sure, displeased with this outcome, but I recognize that this is the way the game is played. The other side has been dishing it out for a long time, but has a hard time of it when the tables are turned.’\n[I cherry-picked that ↑ ;)]\nSeems as bad as the Penn/Teller deceit with Maier. CMI doesn't seem to be doing anything like that, i.e. following the bad example of their critics. Rather, there is no evidence that the producers went contrary to the statements given to each interviewee.\nKen (2009-07-02):\nLet us review: “And why did these historians participate in a creationist project?” This statement may be categorized as what in logic is known as an “ad hominem” or “genetic fallacy” whereby one attacks the source of an argument whilst disregarding the actual argument.\n“CMI…set up a separate production company” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“failed to disclose the nature of their production to the historians in question.” How do you know?\n“No mention is made of CMI or a creationist slant to the film.” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“who was providing the funding” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“Implicit in the CMI position is that creationism is a valid…” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“One thing that's clear is that anyone being interviewed for a documentary in the age of Borat and Expelled should do some due diligence before signing a release.” Agreed; Bill Maher conveniently edited out inconvenient comments by scientists and Richard Dawkins edited out inconvenient comments by Alister McGrath in “Root of All Evil” – see here and here.\n“P.Z. Myers has weighed in” And he states, “there is no scientific controversy anymore on this matter” ya vol! comes to mind.\n“it's produce by Creation Ministries International” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“which tells you right there what their agenda is: to tell lies for Jesus.” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“Here's where the parallel to Expelled lies…in the lies.” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“they admit to cherry-picking the interviews to put together their story.” This is actually the one and only way to produce any interview, documentary, movie, tv show, etc. (I would personally prefer full and uncut interviews shown back to back but 10 hour documentaries do not seen to sell very well).\n“if they could be trusted to present the opinions of the experts accurately…” How does he know that they did not?\n“Doesn't this tell you something about the credibility of the creationist movement?” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“At least they didn't hire Ben Stein as a frontman.” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy.\n“P.Z. Myers has weighed in” And this is the best that a professor of biology can do?\n“the film is showing at so few places…” Ad hominem / genetic fallacy. From what I understand the film has not been released yet and generally when films are not yet released they, by definition, show in few places.\nIt appears that neither you, nor PZ Myers, nor John Lynch (?) have seen the film. Yet, your barrage of fallacies and emotionally reactions speak volumes.\nI understand that you are desperate for reasons to not believe in something that we have not seen yet: funding issues, creationist slant, editing, thus saith PZ Myers, anything, anything at all.\nEinzige (2009-07-02):\nMariano, many of your quotes refer to nothing in this blog post or the comments after. What\u0026#39;s up with that? Also, you appear to not really understand what an ad hominem actually is.\nFor just one example, here:\n“And why did these historians participate in a creationist project?” This statement may be categorized as what in logic is known as an “ad hominem” or “genetic fallacy” whereby one attacks the source of an argument whilst disregarding the actual argument.\nFirst off, the quote is not a statement. It is a question.\nSecondly, where is the \u0026quot;attack\u0026quot;?\nLippard (2009-07-02):\nMariano, you are engaging in the fallacy of false accusation of fallacy, as well as tu quoque. It's not ad hominem or a genetic fallacy to accurately describe a sequence of events.\nHow do I know that they didn't disclose the nature of their production or the fact that they were creationists? Because the historians said so, and because the CMI web page says so!\nYour Bill Maher/Dawkins reference is a tu quoque.\nLynch and I have both said that we haven't seen the film, we are commenting specifically on the evidence that we do have\u0026ndash;how the production came to be made, the study guide materials, and CMI's defense of its actions. We are both obtaining copies of the film and will comment on its content after we've seen it.\nI think you're engaging in a bit of projection.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-09):\nJL: \u0026quot;I think your objection to evolutionist misrepresentations of creationism falls flat against any of the major critiques \u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nSez he who bragged in the Sylvia Allen thread about this nonsensical T-shirt that perpetuates Phishy's moronic post:\n\u0026quot;God put those there to test our faith, just like fossilized dinosaur remains.\u0026quot;\nSounds closer to paganism. The closest in reality would be Platonic forms theory whereby organic beings would have an inorganic representation of the same form. The creationist founders of modern geology like Woodward and Steno had no time for such stuff, and neither has any real creationist since.\nSo who's \u0026quot;projecting\u0026quot;?\nLippard (2009-07-10):\nThe t-shirt is a joke based on the \u0026quot;teach the controversy\u0026quot; strategy to get intelligent design into schools. There are similar shirts with a flat earth on a pair of elephants on a turtle, and a periodic table of five elements, earth, air, fire, and water. The shirts don't purport to present any actual common views, but to draw an analogy. They aren't intended to represent actual views of creationists, but to show the error of the \u0026quot;teach the controversy\u0026quot; gambit with even-more-absurd discarded ideas.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-10):\nStill looks like one of the lies that I frequently come across, and what Phishy was promoting. So is misrepresentation only wrong when it\u0026#39;s about evolution? As for \u0026quot;teach the controversy\u0026quot;, my own views are more aligned with this evolutionary libertarian's approach, which is dispensing with government schools altogether.\nLippard (2009-07-11):\nKtisophilos: I had a chance to ask Shermer about his appearance on Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;Bullshit!\u0026quot; show last night. He said that he never saw any video of Maier--he was just filmed and asked questions in an unscripted interview, and has participated in a number of their shows. I don\u0026#39;t think he had even heard about Maier being misrepresented. BTW, even Penn \u0026amp; Teller don't write for the show, they just go to a studio and film the segments they're in and record some voice overs based on scripts written and produced by Star Price and his company.\nRe: \u0026quot;devil buried the bones\u0026quot;\u0026ndash;it's not what creationist organizations believe, but I'm pretty sure I've run across individual creationists making that or similar arguments. It's Gosse's Omphalos argument, after all. I don't see that the shirt constitutes a \u0026quot;lie\u0026quot; since it makes no attribution to any individual or group, and in the context of the other shirts it's clearly a reductio ad absurdum argument of the \u0026quot;teach the controversy\u0026quot; approach, not an attribution of a straw man.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-11):\nIt\u0026#39;s rather implausible that Penn/Teller are innocent of such a hatchet job. I withhold opinion of Shermer. Maybe there are individual creationists who believe that the devil buried the bones, or that God put them there to test the faith. But as you say, no creationist organization does.\nAnd while you may have met \u0026quot;fundamentalist Aunt Sally\u0026quot; types who held this view, it was certainly held by no creationist with as high a profile as atheopathic evolutionist Bill Maher, who denies the germ theory of disease and rejects vaccinations. So should I make a T-shirt claiming that evolutionists deny germ theory and \u0026quot;science-based medicine\u0026quot; on such grounds?\nYou have clearly misunderstood Gosse's omphalos argument, as bizarre as it is. It was nothing to do with testing anyone's faith, and everything to do with his view of cyclical time. In his view, God interrupted this cyclical time with creation, which began real time which he called \u0026quot;diachronic\u0026quot;. \u0026quot;Before\u0026quot; creation, there was virtual time he called \u0026quot;prochronic\u0026quot;, which still left traces. The most famous was the eponymous Omphalos (navel), which reflected a prochronic history of development in a womb. The problems were its complete lack of biblical evidence, and the scientific inability to differentiate effects of prochronic and diachronic time. Let Gosse speak for himself\n\u0026quot; … we cannot avoid the conclusion that each organism was from the first marked with the records of a previous being. But since creation and previous history are inconsistent with each other; as the very idea of the creation of an organism excludes the idea of pre-existence of that organism, or any part of it; it follows, that such records are false, so far as they testify to time; that the developments and processes thus recorded have been produced without time, or are what I call 'prochronic'.\u0026quot;\nBut like the dishonest \u0026quot;devil buried bones\u0026quot; straw man, Gosse didn't win a single convert to his idea.\nLippard (2009-07-12):\nKtisophilos: You\u0026#39;re right that Gosse\u0026#39;s argument wasn\u0026#39;t about \u0026quot;testing faith,\u0026quot; but the t-shirt doesn\u0026#39;t say anything about that either. Today at TAM there was a panel on the ethics of deception in magic which featured Penn \u0026amp; Teller, during which they and all other members of the panel made clear their disapproval of lying by omission. I attempted to raise the question about Maier during that Q\u0026amp;A session, but there was only time for two questions.\nHowever, I did get to raise the question during a later panel on skepticism in broadcast media which also featured Penn \u0026amp; Teller. Penn misunderstood my question as though I was asking about some blogger criticizing the show, rather than a participant on the show\u0026ndash;but he clearly didn't recognize the name Paul Maier.\nA bit later in the day, I had the chance to talk to him directly, and pointed out that I was talking about someone who was actually on the show. Penn said that the contracts for everyone who appears on the show state that the show is Penn \u0026amp; Teller's Bullshit!, but that just because he was given that information in the contract and signed it doesn't mean that he read it and knew it. I offered to point him to Maier's critique, and he said that he had no interest in reading it and Maier can say whatever he likes.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-13):\nOf course, the Penn and Teller show involving Maier did far worse than \u0026quot;lying by omission\u0026quot;. Clearly, \u0026quot;devil burying bones\u0026quot; is NOT Gosse's argument. BTW, Gosse was the Victorian era's version of David Attenborough, a hugely popular author of illustrated books about nature, and the main popularizer of the aquarium. He was also anti-slavery and lacked a racist bone in his body.\nThat silly Omphalos book might be explained by his mind's being messed up by watching his beloved first wife die horribly of breast cancer. After this failure, he had a further successful career as a writer and a second happy marriage. Ann Thwaite's biography Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888 corrects a number of errors in the vindictive Father and Son and paints a more sympathetic picture. So does your favored Wikipedia, even ;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/cmi-makes-darwin-docu-drama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia John Lynch\u0026rsquo;s blog, I see that Creation Ministries International \u003ca href=\"http://jmlynch.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/creationists-lie-to-historians-and-deny-subterfuge/\"\u003ehas made a docu-drama about Darwin titled \u0026ldquo;The Voyage That Shook the World,\u0026rdquo; featuring professional historians who are well-known experts on Darwin\u003c/a\u003e.  And why did these historians participate in a creationist project?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems that CMI took a page from the producers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and set up a separate production company, and failed to disclose the nature of their production to the historians in question.  That suggests to me unethical deception\u0026ndash;lying by omission\u0026ndash;though I\u0026rsquo;d like to know what exactly the historians were told and what releases they signed before they participated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUpdates to come if I find out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 27, 2009):  CMI \u003ca href=\"http://creation.com/the-voyage-darwin-film-defended\"\u003edescribes its process for the documentary, including the document sent to interviewees, on its website\u003c/a\u003e.  No mention is made of CMI or a creationist slant to the film.  The director says that \u0026ldquo;if anything,     CMI’s influence was one of moderation, ensuring that all sides were fairly     represented,\u0026rdquo; but if he is himself a creationist and set out to make the film from a creationist viewpoint, this isn\u0026rsquo;t much of a defense.  Note that at least one participant questioned who was providing the funding, and was told only \u0026ldquo;private investors.\u0026rdquo;  And one participant tried to return his fee in order to not appear in the film.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe proof will be in the pudding\u0026ndash;it will be interesting to see what the film\u0026rsquo;s narration says and how they fit the interviews into it.  There\u0026rsquo;s clearly no defense if it says things that are false or misleading.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eImplicit in the CMI position is that creationism is a valid, reasonable, and evidence-supported viewpoint that deserves equal representation, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne thing that\u0026rsquo;s clear is that anyone being interviewed for a documentary in the age of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBorat\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExpelled\u003c/span\u003e should do some due diligence before signing a release.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: John Lynch \u003ca href=\"http://jmlynch.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/more-on-creationists-lying-to-historians/\"\u003ehas responded further\u003c/a\u003e, as well, and I agree with everything he says.  Their statement about atheists having \u0026ldquo;no compunction to be truthful at all\u0026rdquo; is false and offensive, and their analogy to an investigation of the Communist party is a bad analogy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/expelled_redux.php\"\u003ehas weighed in\u003c/a\u003e.  This may be the sort of online media coverage they\u0026rsquo;re hoping for\u0026ndash;the film is showing at so few places that the biggest place in Arizona to see it is a church in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami,_Arizona\"\u003eMiami, AZ\u003c/a\u003e (population \u0026lt; 2,000).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 29, 2009): The CMI web page contains this statement under the movie poster image: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe Voyage that Shook the World\u003c/em\u003e, CMI’s documentary, has atheists ranting and         raging. Rather than critique the film, they falsely accuse CMI of deception.\u0026rdquo;  This statement itself is dishonest\u0026ndash;the accusations of deception are accurate, and the current complaints are not necessarily in lieu of critiquing the film, if it becomes feasible to view it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: John Lynch \u003ca href=\"http://jmlynch.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/on-lying-cherry-picking-atheism-and-a-new-word-of-the-day/\"\u003eresponds further to CMI\u003c/a\u003e, and notes that he has been incorrectly identified as an atheist (he\u0026rsquo;s an agnostic).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CMI makes Darwin docu-drama"},{"content":"\nPart two of the three-part series in the St. Petersburg Times on Scientology has been published, and it\u0026rsquo;s a detailed account of the death of Lisa McPherson. Some of the previously unpublished details include that David Miscavige was personally monitoring McPherson\u0026rsquo;s auditing over closed circuit television and deemed her \u0026ldquo;clear\u0026rdquo; in 1995, prior to her minor car accident and subsequent death after being held for 17 days in the Fort Harrison hotel and being subjected to the \u0026ldquo;introspection rundown.\u0026rdquo; This is according to Tom De Vocht and Don Jason, both former high-ranking Scientologists in Clearwater. The Church of Scientology denies that Miscavige was even present in Clearwater.\nIn December 1999, when a judge ruled that Miscavige could be added as a defendant in the McPherson wrongful death case, he allegedly became more abusive and irrational. The criminal case against the church fell apart when the medical examiner changed her ruling from undetermined cause of death to accidental death. Former Scientologist Marty Rathbun, one of the critics speaking out for this series, agrees with the church on this point that the medical examiner\u0026rsquo;s decision was based on the evidence rather than on blackmail or pressure from the church.\n(Previously.)\n(Photograph is of a Scientology Sea Org bus near the Fort Harrison Hotel, with a couple members of the Sea Org in uniform, on June 25, 2005. Sea Org members sign billion-year contracts.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/sp-times-scientology-article-on-lisa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P6250011.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P6250011.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350179525953165282\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart two of the three-part series in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSt. Petersburg Times\u003c/span\u003e on Scientology has been published, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012234.ece\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s a detailed account of the death of Lisa McPherson\u003c/a\u003e.  Some of the previously unpublished details include that David Miscavige was personally monitoring McPherson\u0026rsquo;s auditing over closed circuit television and deemed her \u0026ldquo;clear\u0026rdquo; in 1995, prior to her minor car accident and subsequent death after being held for 17 days in the Fort Harrison hotel and being subjected to the \u0026ldquo;introspection rundown.\u0026rdquo;  This is according to Tom De Vocht and Don Jason, both former high-ranking Scientologists in Clearwater.  The Church of Scientology denies that Miscavige was even present in Clearwater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn December 1999, when a judge ruled that Miscavige could be added as a defendant in the McPherson wrongful death case, he allegedly became more abusive and irrational.  The criminal case against the church fell apart when the medical examiner changed her ruling from undetermined cause of death to accidental death.  Former Scientologist Marty Rathbun, one of the critics speaking out for this series, agrees with the church on this point that the medical examiner\u0026rsquo;s decision was based on the evidence rather than on blackmail or pressure from the church.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2009/06/former-high-ranking-scientologists.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Photograph is of a Scientology Sea Org bus near the Fort Harrison Hotel, with a couple members of the Sea Org in uniform, on June 25, 2005.  Sea Org members sign billion-year contracts.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SP Times Scientology article on Lisa McPherson"},{"content":"More on Zion Oil and Gas, a company tied to Hal Lindsey that picks sites to drill for oil based on misinterpretations of the Bible\u0026ndash;and they\u0026rsquo;re looking in Israel. The Bronte Capital blog writes about the company as a counterexample to the claim that all oil exploration work uses mainstream old-earth geology, so now, to be accurate, you need to say that this is true of all successful oil exploration work. (I believe Uri Geller allegedly helped in some oil or mineral exploration in the past, so the former claim had already been falsified, though I think the latter still holds.)\nBronte Capital notes that since Zion can claim that it is making its decisions based on constitutionally protected religious belief, that may be a defense against accusations of stock fraud.\nZion\u0026rsquo;s stock trades on the American Exchange under stock symbol ZN. It has a market capitalization of $85.17 million, and closed last week at $8.00/share, near the bottom of its 52-week range ($5.07-$17.68). The company formed in 2000 and has offices in Texas and Israel.\nThe company\u0026rsquo;s stock is, unfortunately, not available for shorting.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a Zion promotional video:\n(Previously.)\npee (2009-06-22):\nI guess if you are going to toss out geology and the other related sciences this method of finding oil is probably just as good as any other. You'd think solar would be a better bet there for a primary energy source in Israel. My brain is slow but I think they've had laws about residential hot water for a long time.\nTrott (2009-06-25):\nAre you sure this company is creationist and not merely Biblical? At about 6:20 or so in the first video, a guy from the company talks about \u0026quot;the Permian section of the Paleozoic Age.\u0026quot; That doesn\u0026#39;t sound like creationist talk to me. I guess they could be old earthers. Or maybe young earthers using the terminology just to identify different strata that they attribute to the flood of Noah.\nLippard (2009-06-25):\nTrott: Young-earth creationist geologist Andrew Snelling also makes use of the standard names in the geological column in his scientific publications, but your point is good--I don\u0026#39;t know whether Hal Lindsey or Zion are actually young-earth creationists or old-earth creationists. I would be willing to bet, however, that they are creationists.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/creationist-oil-drilling.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore on Zion Oil and Gas, a company tied to Hal Lindsey that picks sites to drill for oil based on misinterpretations of the Bible\u0026ndash;and they\u0026rsquo;re looking in Israel.  The Bronte Capital blog \u003ca href=\"http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/06/creation-science-oil-drilling-naked.html\"\u003ewrites about the company as a counterexample to the claim that all oil exploration work uses mainstream old-earth geology\u003c/a\u003e, so now, to be accurate, you need to say that this is true of all \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003esuccessful\u003c/span\u003e oil exploration work.  (I believe Uri Geller allegedly helped in some oil or mineral exploration in the past, so the former claim had already been falsified, though I think the latter still holds.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBronte Capital notes that since Zion can claim that it is making its decisions based on constitutionally protected religious belief, that may be a defense against accusations of stock fraud.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eZion\u0026rsquo;s stock trades on the American Exchange under stock symbol ZN.  It has a market capitalization of $85.17 million, and closed last week at $8.00/share, near the bottom of its 52-week range ($5.07-$17.68).  The company formed in 2000 and has offices in Texas and Israel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe company\u0026rsquo;s stock is, unfortunately, not available for shorting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a Zion promotional video:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NXyeTU3QucY\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NXyeTU3QucY\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6IItfblL5II\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\u0026\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6IItfblL5II\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\u0026\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/10/zion-oil-and-gas.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist oil drilling"},{"content":"\nIt turns out former head of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Office of Special Affairs Mike Rinder, who left the Church of Scientology in 2007, has decided to speak out after all. And so has Marty Rathbun, who was Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, the organization that acts as agent for all of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s intellectual property and was prominent in legal action against online critics.\nThe St. Petersburg Times is running a multi-part story on their allegations of corruption and abuse inside the Church of Scientology, confirming and expanding upon stories that have long been staples of online criticisms of the church:\n• Physical violence permeated Scientology\u0026rsquo;s international management team. Miscavige set the tone, routinely attacking his lieutenants. Rinder says the leader attacked him some 50 times. Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht admit that they, too, attacked their colleagues, to demonstrate loyalty to Miscavige and prove their mettle. • Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multi­layered system of \u0026ldquo;ecclesiastical justice.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; It includes publicly confessing sins and crimes to a group of peers, being ordered to jump into a pool fully clothed, facing embarrassing \u0026ldquo;security checks\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; or, worse, being isolated as a \u0026ldquo;suppressive person.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, Miscavige commands such power that managers follow his orders, however bizarre, with lemming-like obedience. • Church staffers covered up how they botched the care of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after they held her 17 days in isolation at Clearwater\u0026rsquo;s Fort Harrison Hotel. Rathbun, who Miscavige put in charge of dealing with the fallout from the case, admits that he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence. He and others also reveal that Miscavige made an embarrassing miscalculation on McPherson\u0026rsquo;s Scientology counseling. • With Miscavige calling the shots and Rathbun among those at his side, the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status. Offering fresh perspective on one of the church\u0026rsquo;s crowning moments, Rathbun details an extraordinary campaign of public pressure backed by thousands of lawsuits. • To prop up revenues, Miscavige has turned to long-time parishioners, urging them to buy material that the church markets as must-have, improved sacred scripture. Church officials deny the accusations. Miscavige never hit a single church staffer, not once, they said. This is likely to create a huge uproar within the Church of Scientology, and provoke more significant departures over the next few years.\nThe first of three parts is up at the St. Petersburg Times, which gives some highlights of the allegations, Scientology\u0026rsquo;s response, and a brief history of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Operation Snow White,\u0026quot; David Miscavige\u0026rsquo;s rise to power as head of the church, and the church\u0026rsquo;s battles with the IRS, which culminated in a secret agreement that gave Scientologists tax deductions no other religions get. (They get to write off the full value of their payments for \u0026ldquo;services,\u0026rdquo; not just the portion above the value received in return\u0026ndash;though perhaps that\u0026rsquo;s just an implicit acknowledgment that they have no value.)\nScientology has responded by attacking the sources in its usual manner, arguing that they had ethical problems while they were in Scientology (they agree\u0026ndash;Rinder admits he lied to the media when he was working for Scientology) and releasing their confessions to wrong-doing from auditing sessions. They also have produced current Scientologists who deny the accounts of abuse by Miscavige, and included \u0026ldquo;a story of Miscavige spotting an injured sparrow, talking to it and checking back later to see if it lived. \u0026lsquo;It was immensely tender.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; And they assert that this is part of an extortion campaign by the former members.\nPart two will focus on the Lisa McPherson case, which was brought to the world\u0026rsquo;s attention when critic Jeff Jacobsen, my co-author on \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet\u0026rdquo; for Skeptic magazine, discovered it and recognized its significance. (Also see Jeff\u0026rsquo;s more recent article on \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; and Scientology.)\nPart three will have more information from recent high-ranking defectors\u0026ndash;in addition to Rinder and Rathbun, Amy Scobee of the Church\u0026rsquo;s Celebrity Center network and Tom DeVocht, who oversaw the church\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;spiritual headquarters\u0026rdquo; in Clearwater, Florida (where Lisa McPherson died), have spoken to the Times.\n(The photo is of the Scientology \u0026ldquo;Super Power\u0026rdquo; building in Clearwater, Florida, taken on June 25, 2005.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/former-high-ranking-scientologists.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P6250009.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P6250009.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349828189256991458\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt turns out former head of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Office of Special Affairs \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rinder\"\u003eMike Rinder\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/mike-rinder-left-scientology.html\"\u003ewho left the Church of Scientology in 2007\u003c/a\u003e, has decided to speak out after all.  And so has \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rathbun\"\u003eMarty Rathbun\u003c/a\u003e, who was Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, the organization that acts as agent for all of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s intellectual property and was prominent in legal action against online critics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSt. Petersburg Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/#story_anchor\"\u003eis running a multi-part story on their allegations of corruption and abuse inside the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e, confirming and expanding upon stories that have long been staples of online criticisms of the church:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Former high-ranking Scientologists speak out in SP Times"},{"content":"From the Technology Quarterly report in the June 6-12, 2009 issue of The Economist, a few articles of interest:\nGasoline/compressed-air hybrid vehicles may prove more cost-effective than gas-electric hybrids.Bigelow Aerospace wins challenge against export control regulations that would have required non-U.S. passengers on space flights to be treated as recipients of technology transfers, which would have required an onerous approval and monitoring process. (Not reported in the story is that Robert Bigelow is now funding MUFON to pay UFO researchers.)Delay-tolerant network protocol (DTN), developed with assistance from Vint Cerf, has been tested to transfer data between NASA\u0026rsquo;s EPOXI probe and earth-based stations, which will lead to an interplanetary internet that includes the International Space Station.The heart of the cockroach has been used as the model for a new type of low-cost artificial heart for humans.Researchers are devising a laser-based defense mechanism to shoot down mosquitoes rather than missiles. Funded by the Gates Foundation, the prototype cost is only about $100. We\u0026rsquo;d like one.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-18):\nThe Revetech engine, first developed in Australia, is 60% more fuel efficient than conventional petrol engines. This one uses a three-loved cams instead of the grossly inefficient crankshaft. See how it works and a prototype in action. The colour-changing cuttlefish has inspired a TV screen design that uses only 1% of normal power. In particular, one colour-change mechanism of the cuttlefish is the iridophore, tiny parallel plates that act a variable diffraction grating. The TV screen uses applies a voltage to thicken multiple polymer layers, which changes the observed light wavelength.\nnolandda (2009-06-18):\nThere are mosquitoes in Phoenix? Wouldn\u0026#39;t think that there was enough standing water.\nLippard (2009-06-18):\nThere are lots of mosquitoes in Phoenix, and lots of standing water in swimming pools of foreclosed homes. Maricopa County has regularly been a leader for number of cases of West Nile Virus.\nWe were just getting buzzed by them last night\u0026hellip; a few years ago we had to use mosquito netting over our bed, it was so bad.\nMagic Tony (2009-06-19):\nSure, Jim. If cockroaches had hearts, they wouldn\u0026#39;t be constantly trying to invade my home. Nice try, Economist!\nKtisophilos (2009-06-21):\nQueensland, Australia: experts “have created the world\u0026#39;s first artificial heart which fits inside a human body and can mimic the pumping fluctuations of a healthy heart.” This BiVACOR has a twin impeller mounted on both sides of a central wall; one half pumps deoxygenated blood from the body to the lungs, and the other half pumps oxygenated blood from the lungs to the body, just like our hearts. It works a bit like a revolving door, and has a variable speed and tilt, so it can cope with varying needs of the body. The tilting and spinning is achieved with electromagnetism, so the blades are not in contact with the walls, which minimizes damage to the blood cells.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/technology-tidbits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the Technology Quarterly report in the June 6-12, 2009 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, a few articles of interest:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eGasoline/compressed-air hybrid vehicles \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13725715\"\u003emay prove more cost-effective than gas-electric hybrids\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBigelow Aerospace \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13725723\"\u003ewins challenge against export control regulations\u003c/a\u003e that would have required non-U.S. passengers on space flights to be treated as recipients of technology transfers, which would have required an onerous approval and monitoring process.  (Not reported in the story is that \u003ca href=\"http://ufos.about.com/od/ufogroupsorganizations/a/bigelow.htm\"\u003eRobert Bigelow is now funding MUFON to pay UFO researchers\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDelay-tolerant network protocol (DTN), developed with assistance from Vint Cerf, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13725833\"\u003ehas been tested to transfer data between NASA\u0026rsquo;s EPOXI probe and earth-based stations\u003c/a\u003e, which will lead to an interplanetary internet that includes the International Space Station.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13725825\"\u003eheart of the cockroach has been used as the model for a new type of low-cost artificial heart for humans\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eResearchers are devising \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13725733\"\u003ea laser-based defense mechanism to shoot down mosquitoes\u003c/a\u003e rather than missiles.  Funded by the Gates Foundation, the prototype cost is only about $100.  We\u0026rsquo;d like one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Technology tidbits"},{"content":"John Wilkins sets out \u0026ldquo;a code of conduct for effective rational discussion,\u0026quot; a list of principles for debate and discussion that aims at approaching truth rather than winning a rhetorical battle, at the new location of his Evolving Thoughts blog.\nThe list of proposed principles is:\nThe Fallibility PrincipleThe Truth-Seeking PrincipleThe Clarity PrincipleThe Burden of Proof PrincipleThe Principle of CharityThe Relevance PrincipleThe Acceptability PrincipleThe Sufficiency PrincipleThe Rebuttal PrincipleThe Resolution PrincipleThe Suspension of Judgement PrincipleThe Reconsideration PrincipleFleck’s AddendumCheck out Evolving Thoughts for discussion of each of these principles.\nHistorical Comments John S. Wilkins (2009-06-10):\nTechnically I stole these principles from a book via another blog via a commenter on my blog. But I added witty paragraphs. Let's just say it's a barb aimed at a few recent critics\u0026hellip;\nKtisophilos (2009-06-10):\nNot too bad actually. “Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above him only by excelling him; so shall thy contest for superiority be crowned with honour, if not with success.”\nAttributed to Akhenaton, Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, 14th C BC\nHume's Ghost (2009-06-10):\nGood list. I'm also a fan of Sidney Hook's Decalogue for Democratic Discourse, although I think listening to AM radio for too long has left me more dismissive and vitriolic than I was when I first started blogging.\nReed (2009-06-12):\nI\u0026#39;ve been a fan of \u0026quot;Rules for Rationals\u0026quot; as found in the appendix of the book The Psychology of the Psychic (Prometheus) by David Marks and the late Richard Kammann. Sadly the version that was online is gone.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Wilkins sets out \u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;a code of conduct for effective rational discussion,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a list of principles for debate and discussion that aims at approaching truth rather than winning a rhetorical battle, at the new location of his Evolving Thoughts blog.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe list of proposed principles is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-fallibility-principle\"\u003eThe Fallibility Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-truth-seeking-principle\"\u003eThe Truth-Seeking Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-clarity-principle\"\u003eThe Clarity Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-burden-of-proof-principle\"\u003eThe Burden of Proof Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-principle-of-charity\"\u003eThe Principle of Charity\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-relevance-principle\"\u003eThe Relevance Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-acceptability-principle\"\u003eThe Acceptability Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-sufficiency-principle\"\u003eThe Sufficiency Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-rebuttal-principle\"\u003eThe Rebuttal Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-resolution-principle\"\u003eThe Resolution Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-suspension-of-judgement-principle\"\u003eThe Suspension of Judgement Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-the-reconsideration-principle\"\u003eThe Reconsideration Principle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/#toc-flecks-addendum\"\u003eFleck’s Addendum\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/06/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/\"\u003eEvolving Thoughts\u003c/a\u003e for discussion of each of these principles.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A code of conduct for effective rational discussion"},{"content":"Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky giving a lecture on the evolution of schizophrenia, and how schizotypal personality and its associated \u0026ldquo;metamagical thinking\u0026rdquo; may be adaptive, and a source or driver for religious belief in a community.\n(Via boingboing.)\nHistorical Comments Brad (2009-06-09):\nI love this type of discussion. There does seem to be a touch of post-hoc assumptions, but assumptions that have a large volume of rational support compared to any alternative I can think of.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/evolution-religion-schizophrenia-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStanford neuroscientist \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky\"\u003eRobert Sapolsky\u003c/a\u003e giving a lecture on the evolution of schizophrenia, and how schizotypal personality and its associated \u0026ldquo;metamagical thinking\u0026rdquo; may be adaptive, and a source or driver for religious belief in a community.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://blip.tv/play/AYGHoAKXoHo\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"300\" width=\"480\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/06/evolution-religion-s.html\"\u003eboingboing\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eBrad\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-06-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI love this type of discussion. There does seem to be a touch of post-hoc assumptions, but assumptions that have a large volume of rational support compared to any alternative I can think of.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evolution, religion, schizophrenia, and the schizotypal personality"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is now out:\nEpisode 016 Atheism and Bleep-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Special Guest August Berkshire. August Berkshire is vice-president of Atheist Alliance International (AAI), and past president of Minnesota Atheists.\nHe is also in the midst of a three-week tour through the midwest and southwest visiting various atheist groups along the way including our own Phoenix Atheist group. Intro: Roll with an Atheist by Charlie Checkm. Outro: Fallen on the Front Lines by Galt Aureus.\nAugust is the owner of the “ATHEIST” license plate for Minnesota and is proud to be listed in the reference book Who’s Who in Hell.\n\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\nOrigin of the \u0026ldquo;Seven Deadly Sins\u0026rdquo;: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins\nHistorical Comments private (2009-06-19):\nnice! I envy that Atheist license plate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/apostaz-podcast-16.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is now out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz016.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz016.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 016\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Bleep-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/\"\u003emeetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Special Guest \u003ca href=\"http://www.augustberkshire.com/\"\u003eAugust Berkshire\u003c/a\u003e. August Berkshire is vice-president of Atheist Alliance International (AAI), and past president of Minnesota Atheists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe is also in the midst of a three-week tour through the midwest and southwest visiting various atheist groups along the way including our own Phoenix Atheist group. Intro: Roll with an Atheist by Charlie Checkm. Outro: Fallen on the Front Lines by Galt Aureus.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAugust is the owner of the “ATHEIST” license plate for Minnesota and is proud to be listed in the reference book Who’s Who in Hell.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\u003cbr /\u003eOrigin of the \u0026ldquo;Seven Deadly Sins\u0026rdquo;: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins\"\u003ehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #16"},{"content":"As newspapers decline and die, it\u0026rsquo;s good to see other opportunities opening up to support investigative journalism. Along with wire services, which are beefing up their staffs and seeing growing profits as their content is syndicated to more and more places including websites and broadcast media, think tanks are also getting into the business. (There are also other nonprofits that support investigative journalism, such as the Center for Public Integrity.)\nThe Goldwater Institute has hired investigative reporter Mark Flatten from the Tribune to investigate and report on cases of government corruption, abuse, and waste. Flatten is an award-winning reporter who has covered state government for nearly 20 years in Arizona, including covering the impeachment of former Gov. Evan Mecham, the AzScam corruption scandal, and the alternative fuels fiasco.\nFlatten is the only reporter who has ever been banned from the floor of the state legislature, which occurred at the order of former Arizona Speaker of the House Don Aldridge (R-Lake Havasu City) because of Flatten\u0026rsquo;s reporting on links between Aldridge and Max Dunlap, who was convicted for his part in the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. In 1976, Aldridge was a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and he accompanied Dunlap to the law office of Neal Roberts on June 2, the day a bomb went off under Bolles\u0026rsquo; car, allegedly about a runway paving problem at the Mohave County Airport (as reported in the Kingman Daily Miner, June 28, 1976). On June 3, Roberts and Dunlap met at Durant\u0026rsquo;s Restaurant to discuss raising $25,000 for the defense of Bolles\u0026rsquo; killer, John Harvey Adamson, who was at the time facing a minor criminal charge and had not yet been caught for the murder.\nA May 10 NPR story describes the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s job ad for this position and raises concerns about political bias infecting any stories produced. While I think that\u0026rsquo;s a real concern, I think it\u0026rsquo;s often better to have stories come from an advertised bias rather than pretend objectivity. In any case, Flatten\u0026rsquo;s stories have gone after abuse regardless of party (Mecham was a Republican, the alternative fuels fiasco was caused by a Republican, and AzScam caught both Republicans and Democrats taking bribes).\nI look forward to seeing what he will investigate and write about in this new role.\nUPDATE (October 19, 2009): Flatten has published his first major investigative piece since being hired by the Goldwater Institute, and it\u0026rsquo;s an account of how a federal program designed to provide business opportunities to the disadvantaged is being used by political insiders for their own benefit, including County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. Wilcox obtained the Chili\u0026rsquo;s Too franchise in Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor Airport as an Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE), which requires that the owner participate in the day-to-day operation of the business, which she does not (though perhaps her co-owner does?). She also received a $450,000 loan from Host International which meant she didn\u0026rsquo;t have to bring any money to the table, a loan which violated city policy (the City of Phoenix owns and operates Sky Harbor).\nFlatten\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;High Fliers\u0026rdquo; report may be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/goldwater-institute-hires-investigative.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs newspapers decline and die, it\u0026rsquo;s good to see other opportunities opening up to support investigative journalism.  Along with wire services, which are beefing up their staffs and seeing growing profits as their content is syndicated to more and more places including websites and broadcast media, think tanks are also getting into the business.  (There are also other nonprofits that support investigative journalism, such as the \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/center-for-public-integrity-is-doing.html\"\u003eCenter for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Goldwater Institute has hired investigative reporter Mark Flatten from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTribune\u003c/span\u003e to investigate and report on cases of government corruption, abuse, and waste.  Flatten is an award-winning reporter who has covered state government for nearly 20 years in Arizona, including covering the impeachment of former Gov. Evan Mecham, the AzScam corruption scandal, and the alternative fuels fiasco.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFlatten is the only reporter who has ever been banned from the floor of the state legislature, which occurred at the order of former Arizona Speaker of the House Don Aldridge (R-Lake Havasu City) because of Flatten\u0026rsquo;s reporting on links between Aldridge and \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/max-dunlap-clemency-hearing.html\"\u003eMax Dunlap, who was convicted for his part in the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles\u003c/a\u003e.  In 1976, Aldridge was a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and he accompanied Dunlap to the law office of Neal Roberts on June 2, the day a bomb went off under Bolles\u0026rsquo; car, allegedly about a runway paving problem at the Mohave County Airport (\u003ca href=\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=932\u0026amp;dat=19760628\u0026amp;id=IRcPAAAAIBAJ\u0026amp;sjid=5IIDAAAAIBAJ\u0026amp;pg=6871,7214322\"\u003eas reported in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKingman Daily Miner\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, June 28, 1976).  On June 3, Roberts and Dunlap met at Durant\u0026rsquo;s Restaurant to discuss raising $25,000 for the defense of Bolles\u0026rsquo; killer, John Harvey Adamson, who was at the time facing a minor criminal charge and had not yet been caught for the murder.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103987017\"\u003eA May 10 NPR story describes the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s job ad for this position\u003c/a\u003e and raises concerns about political bias infecting any stories produced.  While I think that\u0026rsquo;s a real concern, I think it\u0026rsquo;s often better to have stories come from an advertised bias rather than pretend objectivity.  In any case, Flatten\u0026rsquo;s stories have gone after abuse regardless of party (Mecham was a Republican, the alternative fuels fiasco was caused by a Republican, and AzScam caught both Republicans and Democrats taking bribes).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI look forward to seeing what he will investigate and write about in this new role.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 19, 2009):  Flatten has published his first major investigative piece since being hired by the Goldwater Institute, and it\u0026rsquo;s an account of how a federal program designed to provide business opportunities to the disadvantaged is being used by political insiders for their own benefit, including County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox.  Wilcox obtained the Chili\u0026rsquo;s Too franchise in Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor Airport as an Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE), which requires that the owner participate in the day-to-day operation of the business, which she does not (though perhaps her co-owner does?).  She also received a $450,000 loan from Host International which meant she didn\u0026rsquo;t have to bring any money to the table, a loan which violated city policy (the City of Phoenix owns and operates Sky Harbor).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFlatten\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;High Fliers\u0026rdquo; report may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/highfliers\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Goldwater Institute hires investigative journalist"},{"content":"David Paszkiewicz, the Kearny, NJ high school teacher who was proselytizing for Christianity and creationism and then lied about it when his student Matthew LaClair complained, only to be caught because LaClair recorded the evidence, is taking students from the school on a field trip to the Creation Museum. Paszkiewicz, who is also the advisor for the school\u0026rsquo;s Christian Club, wants students to be exposed to the \u0026ldquo;science behind creationism.\u0026quot;\nApparently the original plan was to take this field trip during school hours using taxpayer funds.\nMatthew LaClair will be discussing this tonight on Equal Time for Freethought on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in NYC at 6:30 p.m. EDT, 3:30 p.m. MST (Arizona). WBAI broadcasts on the Internet in several streaming audio formats, so you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be in NYC to listen.\nThe White Man (2009-06-08):\nwants students to be exposed to the \u0026quot;science behind creationism.\u0026quot; Something not likely to happen in any other natural history museum.\nLippard (2009-06-08):\nThe White Man: Of course not, since creationism isn\u0026#39;t science. There\u0026#39;s no science going on at the Creation Museum, or behind their claims. The phrase \u0026quot;science behind creationism\u0026quot; is somewhat ambiguous; it could refer to a scientific examination of creationist claims, which is legitimate\u0026ndash;but it's a record of refutation.\nUnknown (2009-06-08):\nBehe testified that not ONE scientific paper has been produced in favor of ID/creationism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/david-paszkiewicz-takes-students-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Paszkiewicz, the Kearny, NJ high school teacher who was proselytizing for Christianity and creationism and then lied about it when his student Matthew LaClair complained, only to be caught because LaClair recorded the evidence, is taking students from the school on a field trip to the Creation Museum.  Paszkiewicz, who is also the advisor for the school\u0026rsquo;s Christian Club, wants students to be exposed to the \u0026ldquo;science behind creationism.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently the original plan was to take this field trip during school hours using taxpayer funds.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMatthew LaClair will be discussing this tonight on \u003ca href=\"http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/\"\u003eEqual Time for Freethought\u003c/a\u003e on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in NYC at 6:30 p.m. EDT, 3:30 p.m. MST (Arizona).  WBAI \u003ca href=\"http://stream.wbai.org/\"\u003ebroadcasts on the Internet in several streaming audio formats\u003c/a\u003e, so you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be in NYC to listen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Paszkiewicz takes students to Creation Museum"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll be giving a talk during the pre-conference workshop sessions at this week\u0026rsquo;s American Humanist Association conference, which is being held June 5-7 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel.\nMy talk is on Thursday, June 4, from 4-5 p.m. in the Palm F room. While there is ordinarily a $20 charge for the pre-conference workshops, readers of this blog may attend for free (but donations to the AHA are appreciated).\nMy talk is entitled \u0026ldquo;Lessons learned from 25 years of battling creationists, Scientologists, and fundamentalists online.\u0026quot;\nI\u0026rsquo;ll also be representing the Arizona Coalition of Reason at a press conference on Friday morning about a new billboard campaign.\nMore about that on Friday.\nUPDATE (June 4, 2009): My presentation (Keynote format) is here, published with a Creative Commons license (noncommercial, attribution, no derivative works).\nUPDATE (June 8, 2009): Friday\u0026rsquo;s press conference was held by the American Humanist Association, the United Coalition of Reason, and the Arizona Coalition of Reason. Roy Speckhardt of the AHA introduced the press conference, Fred Edwords of United COR announced his new group and that it plans to start up about 20 COR groups throughout the country by the end of the year, and I spoke on behalf of ArizonaCOR. We have a billboard up at 44th St. and Washington, on the southbound route into Sky Harbor airport.\nWe got press coverage from ABC Ch. 15, Fox Ch. 10, and independent Ch. 3, from the Arizona Republic and New Times, and from KTAR radio. ASU\u0026rsquo;s State Press will also be running a story.\nMost spun the issue as a big controversy, but that seems outlandish to me. Fox\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;man on the street\u0026rdquo; interviews ended up with two atheists out of five interviewed, and most didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to think it was a big deal. The owner of the business near the billboard made some strange argument about how the billboard should have required special regulatory approval, since he needed to get approval for his own business\u0026rsquo;s signs\u0026ndash;but apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize that such approval would only be needed for the billboard itself (unless it was grandfathered), not for its content.\nUPDATE (June 21, 2009): Here\u0026rsquo;s my presentation, embedded via SlideShare:\nUPDATE (June 29, 2009): Leslie Zukor of the Reed Secular Alliance at Reed College gives a recap of the AHA conference.\nSchtacky (2009-06-03):\nJim, I would be happy to donate and will likely attend your talk. Thanks for posting this! Will there be any sort of Q\u0026amp;A?\nJoe\nLippard (2009-06-03):\nThere will be Q\u0026amp;A.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-03):\nWill one of these lessons be \u0026quot;how NOT to argue with creationists\u0026quot;? ;)\nLippard (2009-06-05):\nKtisophilos: A big chunk of the talk addressed that topic, yes.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-05):\nCool. Any Plimer devotees there? Dawkins is a big fan: \u0026hellip; Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) \u0026hellip;\nLippard (2009-06-05):\nNobody identified themselves as such. I had my copy of that book with me and read the first paragraph of his attack on me, as an illustration of the lesson that sometimes being honest, correcting errors by people on your own side, and being civil to your opposition can lead to personal attacks from people on your own side. I've put up a link to my presentation, which is in Keynote format.\nReed (2009-06-05):\nLooks like it was a great presentation. Coincidentally I actually attended the Kitcher/Gish debate in 1985.\nI don't remember much, except that Gish had many supporters in the audience \u0026ndash; at least a third. At the end both sides were convinced they had trounced the opposition.\nSchtacky (2009-06-08):\nAnyone know of a good Keynote converter or Windows plug-in?\nKtisophilos (2009-06-16):\nObviously this humanist talkfest is needed. After all, President \u0026quot;Head Automaker\u0026quot; Obama, who Jim campaigned for, is now considered \u0026quot;sort of God\u0026quot; by the Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. And he says I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. If we\u0026#39;re not careful, it will be like the UK monarch\u0026#39;s title of \u0026quot;Defender of the Faith\u0026quot;. And he even gave the same bigoted answer on gay marriage that Carrie Prejean gave, that it was for one man and one woman!\nLippard (2009-06-16):\nKtisophilos: I\u0026#39;d appreciate it if you try to make comments that are a bit more on-topic than that. Anti-Obama remarks should really go on posts about Obama.\nPerhaps you should start your own blog.\nLippard (2009-06-21):\nSchtacky: My presentation is now embedded in the post, thanks to SlideShare, which now supports Keynote.\nLippard (2009-06-22):\nSchtacky: There\u0026#39;s now an audio track for that presentation...\nSchtacky (2009-06-23):\nThanks, Jim!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/06/my-aha-workshop-session-on-thursday.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be giving a talk during the pre-conference workshop sessions at this week\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanhumanist.org/what_we_do/annual_conference\"\u003eAmerican Humanist Association conference\u003c/a\u003e, which is being held June 5-7 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy talk is on Thursday, June 4, from 4-5 p.m. in the Palm F room.  While there is ordinarily a $20 charge for the pre-conference workshops, readers of this blog may attend for free (but donations to the AHA are appreciated).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy talk is entitled \u0026ldquo;Lessons learned from 25 years of battling creationists, Scientologists, and fundamentalists online.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll also be representing the \u003ca href=\"http://www.arizonacor.org/\"\u003eArizona Coalition of Reason\u003c/a\u003e at a press conference on Friday morning about \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/06/02/20090602humanist0605.html\"\u003ea new billboard campaign\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore about that on Friday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 4, 2009): My presentation (Keynote format) is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/2009-AHA-Lippard.key\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, published with a Creative Commons license (noncommercial, attribution, no derivative works).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 8, 2009): Friday\u0026rsquo;s press conference was held by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanhumanist.org/\"\u003eAmerican Humanist Association\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.unitedcor.org/\"\u003eUnited Coalition of Reason\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.arizonacor.org/\"\u003eArizona Coalition of Reason\u003c/a\u003e.  Roy Speckhardt of the AHA introduced the press conference, Fred Edwords of United COR announced his new group and that it plans to start up about 20 COR groups throughout the country by the end of the year, and I spoke on behalf of ArizonaCOR.  We have a billboard up at 44th St. and Washington, on the southbound route into Sky Harbor airport.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe got press coverage from \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/central/story/Controversial-Valley-billboard-gets-Phoenix/FIpLQyB5y0u9yLtKdf7gng.cspx\"\u003eABC Ch. 15\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/billboard_controversy_060509\"\u003eFox Ch. 10\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/Phoenix-news-060409-billboard-god-atheist-controve.4c473c82.html\"\u003eindependent Ch. 3\u003c/a\u003e, from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/06/02/20090602humanist0605.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/06/godless_atheists_agnostics_and.php\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, and from \u003ca href=\"http://ktar.com/?nid=6\u0026amp;sid=1176915\"\u003eKTAR radio\u003c/a\u003e.  ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e will also be running a story.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMost spun the issue as a big controversy, but that seems outlandish to me.  Fox\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;man on the street\u0026rdquo; interviews ended up with two atheists out of five interviewed, and most didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to think it was a big deal.  The owner of the business near the billboard made some strange argument about how the billboard should have required special regulatory approval, since he needed to get approval for his own business\u0026rsquo;s signs\u0026ndash;but apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize that such approval would only be needed for the billboard itself (unless it was grandfathered), not for its content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 21, 2009): Here\u0026rsquo;s my presentation, embedded via SlideShare:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"width: 425px; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cobject style=\"margin: 0px;\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2009ahalippard-124560612135-phpapp01\u0026amp;stripped_title=2009ahalippard\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2009ahalippard-124560612135-phpapp01\u0026amp;stripped_title=2009ahalippard\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 29, 2009): Leslie Zukor of the Reed Secular Alliance at Reed College \u003ca href=\"http://www.secularstudents.org/node/2510\"\u003egives a recap of the AHA conference\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My AHA workshop session on Thursday"},{"content":"On May 19, 2005, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spoke out against filibustering judicial nominations of President George W. Bush, and said he was willing to give up the tool permanently, and not block future Democratic presidential nominees:\n\u0026ldquo;Republicans seek to right a wrong that has undermined 214 years of tradition - wise, carefully thought-out tradition. The fact that the Senate rules theoretically allowed the filibuster of judicial nominations but were never used to that end is an important indicator of what is right, and why the precedent of allowing up-or-down votes is so well established. It is that precedent that has been attacked and which we seek to restore\u0026hellip;. My friends argue that Republicans may want to filibuster a future Democratic President\u0026rsquo;s nominees. To that I say, I don\u0026rsquo;t think so, and even if true, I\u0026rsquo;m willing to give up that tool. It was never a power we thought we had in the past, and it is not one likely to be used in the future. I know some insist that we will someday want to block Democrat judges by filibuster. But I know my colleagues. I have heard them speak passionately, publicly and privately, about the injustice done to filibustered nominees. I think it highly unlikely that they will shift their views simply because the political worm has turned.\u0026quot;\nBut now he suggests he\u0026rsquo;s willing to lead the filibustering against any Obama nominee who uses empathy:\nThe Senate\u0026rsquo;s No. 2 Republican on Sunday refused to rule out an effort to block confirmation if President Barack Obama seeks a Supreme Court justice who decides cases based on \u0026ldquo;emotions or feelings or preconceived ideas.\u0026rdquo; Sen. Jon Kyl made clear he would use a filibuster, a procedural move to delay a final vote on a bill or nominee, if Obama follows through on his pledge to nominate someone who takes into account human suffering and employs empathy from the bench.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nUPDATE (May 28, 2009): Kyl continues to expand upon his hypocrisy on this issue:\nKyl, when Bush was in office, about the lack of necessity for long hearings on judicial nominees:\nOne might wonder why we would need more than just a couple of days of debate (the average of recent nominees is two to three days), especially since nothing new has been said for weeks. But, if the public has noticed anything during this process it is that senators value their right of unlimited debate.Kyl on the need for long hearings on judicial nominees, now that Obama is in office:\n\u0026ldquo;To that end, when John Roberts was first nominated on July 19, 2005, and subsequently re-nominated to be Chief Justice on September 6, 2005, Senate Republicans afforded the minority ample time to adequately examine his background and qualifications before he received a confirmation vote 73 days later. \u0026ldquo;When Samuel Alito was first nominated on October 31, 2005, the minority was afforded 93 days before he received a confirmation vote on January 31, 2006.\n\u0026ldquo;I would expect that Senate Democrats will afford the minority the same courtesy as we move forward with this process.\u0026quot;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a bit of further irony here in that the delay for Alito\u0026rsquo;s hearing, originally scheduled for December 2005 but moved to January 2006, was caused by Republican Senators Kyl and Mike DeWine (R-OH), because they needed the time for campaigning for re-election in their home districts.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-27):\nWhat about a filibuster of judges who clearly can't keep the oath that all SCOTUS justices swear? \u0026ldquo;I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.\u0026rdquo;\nObama\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;empathy\u0026rdquo; contradicts \u0026ldquo;administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich\u0026rdquo;.\nI thought you were an originalist, Jim?\nLippard (2009-05-27):\nSee the Volokh Conspiracy discussion on what Obama means by \"empathy.\"I have to agree that it's unclear what he means (and note the typo in the linked transcript, which said \"wasn't\" instead of \"was an\" at a critical place). But what he means is irrelevant to the positions of any nominees, what's relevant is the nominee's positions. And if the nominee is bad, the Senate should not vote to confirm. I\u0026rsquo;m a fan of a qualified original meaning interpretation, or \u0026ldquo;original principles.\u0026rdquo; You start with original meaning, and if the world has significantly changed (e.g., with respect to technology, or the morality of slavery, racism, or homosexuality) you apply the original principles to the changed world. Thus the equal protection clause correctly entailed the result in Loving v. Virginia and will entail overturning of bans on same-sex marriage.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-27):\nMy point was that a nominee fulfilling Obama's \"empathy\" criterion could not honestly swear the oath. There is a good reason why Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Yet we know that Sotomayor perfunctorily ruled in Ricci v. DeStefano against a white dyslexic firefighter denied his hard-earned promotion because of his race.\nAlso, Dr Richard Epstein, Distinguished Law professor at Univerity of Chicago (thus Obama\u0026rsquo;s colleague and superior who has interesting things to say about him) regards her ruling in Didden v. Village of Port Chester as an even more egregious attack on property rights than Kelo.\nAs for filibustering, Obama has no right to expect easy confirmation of his choices after voting against his predecessor\u0026rsquo;s choices he admitted were well qualified. But justifiably so after Robert\u0026rsquo;s racist and sexist comment: \u0026ldquo;I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina female who hasn’t lived that life.\u0026rdquo; Oops sorry, I\u0026rsquo;ve got that mixed up something Sotomayor said \u0026hellip; ;)\nI have to say that your view doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like \u0026ldquo;originalism\u0026rdquo; but more like the \u0026ldquo;evolving standard of decency\u0026rdquo; of the anti-originalists.\nLippard (2009-05-27):\nEd Brayton on Ricci v. DeStefano: \u0026ldquo;The case that seems to be getting the most attention from opponents is Ricci v. DeStefano, a case involving claims of reverse discrimination because the city of New Haven, Connecticut, decided to set aside the results of a written test for firefighters because basing promotions on those results would have a disparate impact on minorities.\nA group of firefighters filed suit claiming that this amounted to reverse discrimination. The district court ruled in favor of the city, finding that their intent was not to discriminate but to avoid potential lawsuits from the other side based on Title XII discrimination claims. Judge Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that upheld that district court ruling, but they did so in a per curiam ruling, without spelling out the reasons why.\nThey did, however, offer some reasons for upholding the district court in an opinion written when the full circuit considered an appeal for an en banc rehearing (reconsideration of a case by the full appeals court), an opinion joined by Judge Sotomayor. In essence, they argue that the legal standard requires that the plaintiffs show that the city acted with the intent to discriminate, but the evidence in the case indicates that the city acted in order to avoid potential lawsuits.\nThe case is now on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and a ruling will be issued before the confirmation hearings for Judge Sotomayor begin. It is quite possible that the Supreme Court will overturn that ruling and remand the case back down to the district court for a retrial, but if they do so it will likely be a 5-4 decision because it\u0026rsquo;s really a close call in terms of the legal issues.\u0026rdquo;\nBrayton argues that Sotomayor is not a radical, she\u0026rsquo;s fairly conservative in following precedent.\nMy position on constitutional interpretation is mostly in agreement with Randy Barnett\u0026rsquo;s Restoring the Lost Constitution (click for my Amazon.com review), which is based on original meaning (as opposed to original intent, like Scalia).\nKtisophilos (2009-05-28):\nScalia has made it clear that he supports original meaning not original intent. That is, what the words [note, not some \"principles\"] would have meant at the time, not the impossible task of trying to get into what was in legislators' heads. According to one of your fellow atheists: “Curiously, though, Scalia is unusual among conservative judges in that he rejects the Original Intent doctrine, according to which the best way to interpret a law or the Constitution is to find out what the original authors intended it to mean and to do. According to Scalia, \u0026ldquo;It is our task \u0026hellip;not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress — who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective.\u0026rdquo; Instead, Scalia focuses on what he calls \u0026ldquo;original meaning\u0026rdquo; — he looks at what the authors of the Constituton meant at the time because it creates a \u0026ldquo;rock-solid\u0026rdquo; foundation upon which he can base objectively correct decisions, but does not rely upon it solely.”\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a weak excuse for Sotomayor\u0026rsquo;s perfunctory dismissal of firefighters who were clearly denied a promotion because of their skin colour. And if she had \u0026ldquo;empathy\u0026rdquo;, it should have been for a hard-working dyslexic fireman who spend lots of money preparing for the test, then told afterwards, just because he suffers dermal hypomelanism, \u0026ldquo;just kidding, you don\u0026rsquo;t get the promised promotion.\u0026rdquo;\nBack to Kyl, it\u0026rsquo;s just a case of \u0026ldquo;what goes around, comes around.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-05-28):\nYou're right, Scalia calls himself an originalist with respect to meaning, not intent--the most famous advocate of the latter is probably Bork. He has said: \"The theory of originalism treats a constitution like a statute, and gives it the meaning that its words were understood to bear at the time they were promulgated. You will sometimes hear it described as the theory of original intent. You will never hear me refer to original intent, because as I say I am first of all a textualist, and secondly an originalist. If you are a textualist, you don't care about the intent, and I don't care if the framers of the Constitution had some secret meaning in mind when they adopted its words. I take the words as they were promulgated to the people of the United States, and what is the fairly understood meaning of those words.\" Scalia\u0026rsquo;s often inconsistent in his application of originalism, however (unlike Thomas), and doesn\u0026rsquo;t like to look at legislative history for determining original meaning (though he sometimes does).\nThere are clearly changes over time to what cultures consider morally acceptable; I think there is such a thing as moral progress, with the abolition of slavery being a fairly clear-cut case. There have been past cases where the principles enshrined in the Constitution are at odds with the law, yet were considered constitutional based on the current climate, such as Dred Scott, which denied that Scott was a U.S. citizen because he was property, not a person, and slaves could not be citizens, even though Dred Scott was a person born in the U.S. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution refers to \u0026ldquo;natural-born citizens,\u0026rdquo; thus implying that there\u0026rsquo;s birthright citizenship, which Justice Curtis\u0026rsquo; dissent in Dred Scott pointed out, and birthright citizenship was made explicit in the 14th Amendment.\nThe Constitution\u0026rsquo;s original meaning has a very expansive view of individual rights and limited view of government powers, and there are clearly many laws (and court decisions, including Supreme Court decisions) at odds with what it says. In my view, slavery, anti-miscegenation laws, anti-same-sex-marriage laws, and drug prohibition laws all fall afoul of what it says in various ways. It\u0026rsquo;s not so much that our understanding of the Constitution needs to change to reverse these decisions, it\u0026rsquo;s that our understanding of what individual rights are and misunderstandings and errors in past constitutional decisions need to be reversed.\nLippard (2009-05-29):\nKtisophilos: Looks like the conservative view of empathy has changed since the confirmation hearings of Alito: U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK): Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what\u0026rsquo;s important to you in life?\nALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point.\nALITO: I don\u0026rsquo;t come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.\nAnd I know about their experiences and I didn\u0026rsquo;t experience those things. I don\u0026rsquo;t take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.\nBut I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.\nAnd that\u0026rsquo;s why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let\u0026rsquo;s say, someone who is an immigrant \u0026ndash; and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases \u0026ndash; I can\u0026rsquo;t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn\u0026rsquo;t that long ago when they were in that position.\nAnd so it\u0026rsquo;s my job to apply the law. It\u0026rsquo;s not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.\nBut when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, \u0026ldquo;You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.\u0026rdquo;\nWhen I have cases involving children, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that\u0026rsquo;s before me.\nAnd that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who\u0026rsquo;s been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I\u0026rsquo;ve known and admire very greatly who\u0026rsquo;ve had disabilities, and I\u0026rsquo;ve watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t think of what it\u0026rsquo;s doing \u0026ndash; the barriers that it puts up to them.\nSo those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.\nCOBURN: Thank you.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-30):\nHere's the difference: Alito wasn't nominated because of his \"empathy\", or because he was a wise white man for that matter. As for slavery, this was countered by an amendment to the Constitution, not pretending that its meaning changed with \u0026ldquo;evolving standards of decency\u0026rdquo;. Of course, standards do not always evolve towards decency, e.g. Germany from the 1920s through 40s.\nI agree about the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s view of limited government though, but the socialists in both parties, as Hayek put it, don\u0026rsquo;t care. Also a view about expansive individual freedom. This in line with the traditional British common law view that anything was allowed unless it was forbidden.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-03):\nHere\u0026#39;s real flip-flopping: the Dems\u0026#39; pontificating against allowing “rhetoric to cloud the confirmation process”, compared with their disgraceful attacks on a better qualified Hispanic nominee, and only to the appellate court, Miguel Estrada. But Estrada\u0026#39;s problem was that he was a Hispanic who wasn\u0026#39;t liberal. And the confirmation battle was so nasty that his wife died at the time. Let's also not forget the disgusting attacks on Charles Pickering, accused of being racist although he was long an enemy of the KKK and was highly respected by the African-American community of his own area.\nIf the GOP just let Sotomayor be confirmed without a fight, they just show that they deserved to lose. It's pathetic how they let radicals like Ginsberg be confirmed after the way the Dems “Borked” and subjected Thomas to a “high-tech lynching”, and the Dems including Obama himself paid back Ginsberg's easy ride by blocking a lot of GWB's appointments.\nWho wants to support a party that lets the opposition gets its way, no matter who won the election?\nLippard (2009-06-03):\nOne correction: Estrada\u0026#39;s wife died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 2004, three years after Estrada\u0026#39;s confirmation battle.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-08):\nNow we know that Sotomayor\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;Wise Latina\u0026quot; bloviating was not just a slip of the tongue, as Obama claims. She has repeatedly said much the same thing since 1994. See also Krauthammer: Sotomayor Believes That Females \u0026amp; Minorities Have Superior Judgment \u0026amp; Entitlements. So much for Obama the Carmaker-in-Chief\u0026#39;s claim for bringing in a \u0026quot;post-racial America\u0026quot;.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-30):\nSupreme Court overturn\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;wise Latina\u0026#39;s\u0026quot; racist ruling. High Court Rules for White Firefighters in Discrimination Suit Ruling Reverses High-Profile Decision by Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 29, 2009 12:07 PM\n‘\u0026hellip; In effect, the court was deciding when avoiding potential discrimination against one group amounted to actual discrimination against another.\n‘The court's conservative majority said in a 5 to 4 vote that is what happened in New Haven.\n‘\u0026quot;Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,\u0026quot; wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. \u0026hellip;\n‘Kennedy said the standard for whether an employer may discard a test is whether there is a strong reason to the employer to believe that the test is flawed in a way that discriminates against minorities, not just by looking at the results.\n‘In New Haven's case, \u0026quot;there is no evidence — let alone the required strong basis in evidence — that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city,\u0026quot; Kennedy wrote.\n‘\u0026hellip;The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is a veteran firefighter who said in sworn statements that he spent thousands of dollars in preparation and studied for months for the exam. Ricci said he is dyslexic, so he had tapes made of the test materials and listened to them on his commute to work.’ [The Wise Latina had no empathy for him! I'm just waiting for the media/dem hatchet job on \u0026quot;Frank the Firefighter\u0026quot; matching that on \u0026quot;Joe the Plumber\u0026quot;.]\nTo avoid a charge of \u0026quot;lying by omission\u0026quot;, I'll point out that the usual leftist suspects once again argued, in effect, argued that equality of outcome was more important than equality of opportunity.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-09):\nSotomayor not only lacked empathy for the white dylexic fireman denied promotion for racist reasons, but also for the white Jeffrey Deskovic, wrongly convicted of rape and murder despite negative DNA evidence? She denied two valid appeals on technicalities, costing him six more years in jail. He was eventually exonerated when new DNA evidence pointed to another man\u0026#39;s guilt. Deskovic says: \u0026quot;Despite Sotomayor's rhetoric, her ruling in my case showed a callous disregard for the real-life implications of her rulings. She opted for procedure over fairness and finality of conviction over accuracy. Many of the victims of wrongful convictions serving long sentences had exhausted their appeals long before they were exonerated. In how many of those cases did Sotomayor vote to refuse to even consider evidence of innocence?\u0026quot;\nSo what's so great about Sotomayor, apart from her appointment by the Obamessiah-who-is-almost-God?\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nEd Brayton on Sotomayor, Alito, and the Ricci case. Sessions embarrassed by his appeal to Cederbaum to criticize Sotomayor, reminiscent of the Marshall McLuhan scene in Woody Allen's \u0026quot;Annie Hall.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nInvestigative journalist Dennis King, who\u0026#39;s done in-depth investigation of Lyndon LaRouche, on Sotomayor\u0026#39;s ties to a cultish Marxist psychotherapy group.\nKtisophilos (2009-07-21):\nBrayton and his source are unreasonable. The Ricci case was clearly a case of denying these firefighters a promotion they had earned, solely because of their skin colour. Of course, this is a reversal of MLK\u0026#39;s dream. As for \u0026quot;Also: if empathy is irrelevant to judicial decision-making, why are GOP Senators calling Frank Ricci as a witness at this hearing?\u0026quot; What's the problem? It's fighting the opponents with their own weapons: \u0026quot;OK, Obama, since you want \u0026quot;empathy\u0026quot; so much, we'll give you empathy, and show that two can play that game.\u0026quot;\nSame goes for the whinging about Kyl: it's quite reasonable for the GOP to complain about Dem filibustering, including by Obama, then argue, \u0026quot;well, if that's the way you want to play, then what goes around comes around.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/sen-jon-kyls-flip-flop-on-judicial.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn May 19, 2005, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spoke out against filibustering judicial nominations of President George W. Bush, and said he was willing to give up the tool permanently, and not block future Democratic presidential nominees:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Republicans seek to right a wrong that has undermined 214 years of tradition - wise, carefully thought-out tradition. The fact that the Senate rules theoretically allowed the filibuster of judicial nominations but were never used to that end is an important indicator of what is right, and why the precedent of allowing up-or-down votes is so well established. It is that precedent that has been attacked and which we seek to restore\u0026hellip;. \u003cp\u003eMy friends argue that Republicans may want to filibuster a future Democratic President\u0026rsquo;s nominees. To that I say, I don\u0026rsquo;t think so, and even if true, I\u0026rsquo;m willing to give up that tool. It was never a power we thought we had in the past, and it is not one likely to be used in the future. I know some insist that we will someday want to block Democrat judges by filibuster. But I know my colleagues. I have heard them speak passionately, publicly and privately, about the injustice done to filibustered nominees. I think it highly unlikely that they will shift their views simply because the political worm has turned.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sen. Jon Kyl's flip-flop on judicial filibustering"},{"content":"As was mentioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming.\nPlimer is an Australian professor of geology who I criticized for his methods in debate with creationists, as well as for his reliability and accuracy. He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book Telling Lies for God, which contained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book. (The Creation Ministries International documentary for which I was interviewed, Facing the Fire, is about Plimer\u0026rsquo;s 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.)\nIt now appears that Plimer\u0026rsquo;s latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions. Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies a long list of problems in the book by page number, points out the facts about Plimer\u0026rsquo;s misleading figure 3, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t originate from the source Plimer has claimed, and about another misrepresented source and graph.\nSome Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as Bill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog. This strikes me as an inconsistent position\u0026ndash;Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as a source for either. That doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy. If it checks out, then it\u0026rsquo;s better to cite the original source, not Plimer.\nUPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out a review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book by Barry Brook, which also includes a link to a point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne (PDF). (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.)\nUPDATE (May 28, 2009): Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, continuing his past record. I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation:\n1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009:\nI am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer\u0026rsquo;s methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book:\nhttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php\nhttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php\nI think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it\u0026rsquo;s nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009:\nBill:\nI do hope you will let my comments through moderation.\nHere is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources:\nhttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.phpUPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer has descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot.\nUPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer engaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Lateline\u0026rdquo; program. Monbiot offers his overview of how it went.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-23):\nTim Lambert? A self-described computer scientist is an authority on climatology, especially one not necessarily so reliable? I would agree about taking Plimer with a grain of salt, but find it amusing that his former media allies have turned on him. One example is Leigh Dayton, who used to write fluffy feelgood pieces on Plimer's battle with the Ark Search people, but was savage on his latest book.\nLippard (2009-05-25):\nThanks for the link to that Lambert DDT debate. I am not well-versed in that dispute, but from what I see, I'm disappointed that Lambert didn't offer a comprehensive response that either rebutted or acknowledged error on each point--in formal debate terms, he simply dropped most of the arguments. I think that\u0026rsquo;s a sufficient argument that Lambert\u0026rsquo;s review of Plimer should be scrutinized point-by-point; the only argument he\u0026rsquo;s made that I\u0026rsquo;ve personally reviewed in any detail is the one about the misleading table 3, and that looks like a pretty well-established screwup by Plimer.\nPaul Foord (2009-05-26):\nYou may be interested in this review of Plimer's book by Prof Barry Brook and the associated lnks http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/\nTim Lambert (2009-05-26):\nIt is very disappointing that you fell for Beck's version of the Gish gallop.\nLippard (2009-05-26):\nTim: The Gish gallop is a strategy in a live debate where there isn\u0026rsquo;t sufficient time for a comprehensive response to every point. The Beck post in question was from a year ago, but as far as I saw in my short review, you didn\u0026rsquo;t respond to most of it\u0026ndash;you appear to have left the arguments unanswered (but please correct me if I am mistaken).\nGish, by contrast, is responded to quite comprehensively in published books, papers, and online materials. That may also be the case for J.F. Beck or the arguments he\u0026rsquo;s making, but I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely sure what his general position is (apart from the very specific quibbling cited).\nNow, perhaps I\u0026rsquo;ve just missed where you\u0026rsquo;ve pointed to the materials that offer such a response or would come to a different conclusion in digging deeper, but it appeared to me that at least some of the arguments did hit home (e.g., about citing sources that didn\u0026rsquo;t say what was claimed). I\u0026rsquo;ve just now dug in a bit on a few of them, such as the dispute about a Miranda Devine misquote of Rachel Carson, and I agree that one is very weak (Devine was personally accused of quote doctoring and it appears to have been an editorial change; at least one of the people charging Devine personally with the misquote apologized).\nI should add that I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve come across J.F. Beck before, and am not clear on what the opposing positions are here. I see Beck correctly opposing the apparent claim that there was no U.S. ban on DDT in 1972, but also attributing an increase in malaria cases to WHO and environmentalist opposition to DDT, which looks to me like at least a gross oversimplification (with this letter from Dr. Alan Lymbery offering a rebuttal). There are clearly insect resistance and public health issues with DDT, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s an environmentalist conspiracy that is the cause of its disuse (or lack of development of a malaria vaccine, for that matter). An organization I support, PATH, is very active in combating malaria via multiple means including working to develop a vaccine, and I\u0026rsquo;ve never seen them suggest that if only DDT were heavily used, the problem would be solved.\nBTW, there are effective strategies for dealing with the Gish gallop in a live debate, though most of Gish\u0026rsquo;s debate opponents have failed to do so. Two opponents who did very well\u0026ndash;and left Gish as the one dropping most of the arguments\u0026ndash;were Ken Saladin and Philip Kitcher. For example, multiple Gish points can be treated as a group and rebutted with references to comprehensive responses, so that while they aren\u0026rsquo;t directly responded to by the debater, the arguments aren\u0026rsquo;t dropped. Most of Gish\u0026rsquo;s opponents were not as well versed with Gish\u0026rsquo;s arguments and simply weren\u0026rsquo;t prepared.\nLippard (2009-05-26):\nPaul: Thanks very much for the Barry Brook review, which is a good complement to Tim Lambert's list of criticisms.\nTim Lambert (2009-05-27):\nJim, I dealt with three of Beck's 24 claims in detail as well as his responses and it took 2300 words. While in theory it is possible to devote unlimited space on a blog to debunking him, I feel there are better uses for my time, especially since most of his stuff is just a rehash of stuff that has already been rebutted. I think that if you read through the exchanges on those three posts you should conclude that Beck is not to be trusted -- he refused to budge an inch, despite being proved wrong on all three points. You suggested two points where you think Beck may have a point:\n\u0026ldquo;citing sources that didn\u0026rsquo;t say what was claimed\u0026rdquo;\nI have not done this. If you can be specific, I\u0026rsquo;ll be happy to address this.\n\u0026ldquo;Beck correctly opposing the apparent claim that there was no U.S. ban on DDT in 1972\u0026rdquo;\nThe \u0026ldquo;apparent claim\u0026rdquo; is a strawman.\nLippard (2009-05-28):\nTim: Beck claims you appealed to the \"Roll Back Malaria\" document as evidence of WHO support of DDT use, even though it doesn't mention DDT. He doesn't link to your claim, however--is he putting words in your mouth? What did you actually write? Re: the \u0026ldquo;straw man\u0026rdquo; about \u0026ldquo;no U.S. ban on DDT in 1972\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;what is your actual position about the 1972 U.S. DDT ban that has been misrepresented?\nI just came across this Roger Bate article that criticizes you, have you responded to it somewhere?\nI\u0026rsquo;ve not previously read anything by Bate, but his reply in this instance appears to stake out a reasonable position (and it looks like calling him a \u0026ldquo;tobacco lobbyist\u0026rdquo; was a mistake, if his response is accurate).\nBrad (2009-05-28):\nWhy do you think climate change is the biggest talking point while in populated valleys we're breathing the pollutants and experiencing the health effects first-hand?\nTim Lambert (2009-05-28):\nYes, Beck is, as usual, misrepresenting what I wrote. In my post I said that that document shows that the WHO \"clearly supports IRS in regions of unstable transmission\". Part of the problem is that the DDT fetishists like to categorize vector control efforts as \u0026ldquo;DDT\u0026rdquo; vs \u0026ldquo;no DDT\u0026rdquo;, but if you are actually interested in vector control, the categories you use are IRS vs ITN. DDT is just one of the insecticides used for IRS and whether you use it or one of the other insecticides is not a big deal unless you are obsessed with DDT.\nThat document is a response to calls that they should be using more DDT, and when they talk about IRS in it they are referring to using DDT and other insecticides.\nMy position on the US ban is that the US banned DDT in 1972 (though with an exception for public health use).\nMy post on Bate\u0026rsquo;s claim that he just did a little consulting for the tobacco industry is here and continues here.\nLippard (2009-05-28):\nThanks, Tim--I'm persuaded. The cases I've looked at all appear to go your way rather than your critics'. Ktisophilos: Looks to me like Tim\u0026rsquo;s a reliable enough source\u0026ndash;but even if he wasn\u0026rsquo;t, there are at least three different sources of serious critiques of multiple parts of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book. BTW, Bill Muehlenberg still hasn\u0026rsquo;t let my comments through moderation\u0026ndash;looks like he\u0026rsquo;s continuing his record of quashing critical viewpoints, i.e., he\u0026rsquo;s dishonest.\nBrad: I think there isn\u0026rsquo;t much debate over pollution and its attendant health risks\u0026hellip; everyone agrees that things we can do to improve efficiency and reduce pollution are good. The disagreement over AGW/climate change is over whether there are further risks which merit additional regulation and government spending that is extremely costly and will impact efficiency as well as economic growth.\nBrad (2009-05-28):\nIt's still hard for me to swallow that we must in a sense allow awful things to occur because of limited resources. Its hard to reconcile that with my opinion that all human beings are of equal worth.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-30):\nJL: \"Bill Muehlenberg still hasn't let my comments through moderation--looks like he's continuing his record of quashing critical viewpoints, i.e., he's dishonest.\" Why is it \u0026ldquo;dishonest\u0026rdquo;? He makes no pretence of doing otherwise:\nCommenting RulesReaders are welcome to post comments on the material posted here, but some simple rules apply:\nI reserve the right to edit or refuse comments.\nThis site is meant to express my point of view. If you are looking for a soapbox to promote your own views, create your own website or blog site. \u0026hellip;He is under no obligation to post anything, even your comments which are quite tame by comparison with some he allows.\nSome of the blog entries on this site have moderation on comments too, which is your right.\nLippard (2009-05-30):\nI think it's dishonest to suppress contrary information. He has the right to run his blog however he likes, I agree. This blog is set to moderate comments on posts that are more than N days old (I think N=10), but I let anything through that\u0026rsquo;s not spam\u0026ndash;I have never deleted or suppressed comments because they express disagreement.\nIan (2009-06-02):\nA number of people have noted that I have taken up Plimer\u0026#39;s challenge (Hot air doomsayers in the Australian) to address the science. This is an ongoing activity. Our intention is that the latest available version (currently 1.7) will be available from\nhttp://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91\nIan Enting\nLippard (2009-06-02):\nProf. Enting: Thanks for the link. I have updated my post to link to your critique of Plimer\u0026#39;s book at that location.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/ian-plimer-on-climate-change.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs was \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/facing-fire.html?showComment=1233719100000#c6429305567860456680\"\u003ementioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos\u003c/a\u003e, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHeaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science\u003c/span\u003e, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlimer is an Australian professor of geology who \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/hnta.html\"\u003eI criticized for his methods in debate with creationists\u003c/a\u003e, as well as for \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/how-not-to-argue.html\"\u003ehis reliability and accuracy\u003c/a\u003e.  He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTelling Lies for God\u003c/span\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003econtained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book\u003c/a\u003e.  (The Creation Ministries International \u003ca href=\"/2009/01/facing-fire-creationist-video.html\"\u003edocumentary for which I was interviewed, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFacing the Fire\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, is about Plimer\u0026rsquo;s 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt now appears that Plimer\u0026rsquo;s latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions.  Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php\"\u003ea long list of problems in the book by page number\u003c/a\u003e, points out the facts about \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php\"\u003ePlimer\u0026rsquo;s misleading figure 3, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t originate from the source Plimer has claimed\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php\"\u003eabout another misrepresented source and graph\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/04/20/more-global-cooling/\"\u003eBill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog\u003c/a\u003e.  This strikes me as an inconsistent position\u0026ndash;Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as a source for either.  That doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy.  If it checks out, then it\u0026rsquo;s better to cite the original source, not Plimer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out \u003ca href=\"http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/\"\u003ea review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book by Barry Brook\u003c/a\u003e, which also includes a link to \u003ca href=\"http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91\"\u003ea point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 28, 2009):  Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/christian-deception-about-art-of.html\"\u003econtinuing his past record\u003c/a\u003e.  I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer\u0026rsquo;s methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php\"\u003ehttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php\"\u003ehttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it\u0026rsquo;s nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.\u003c/blockquote\u003e2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBill:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI do hope you will let my comments through moderation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php\"\u003ehttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/01/heaven-earth-answers-plimer\"\u003ehas descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/15/2772906.htm\"\u003eengaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Lateline\u0026rdquo; program\u003c/a\u003e.  Monbiot offers \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/dec/16/ian-plimer-versus-george-monbiot\"\u003ehis overview of how it went\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ian Plimer on climate change"},{"content":"Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s New York Times has an interesting article about how security researchers at the University of Toronto have helped uncover online spy activity, apparently conducted by the Chinese government, against the Dalai Lama\u0026rsquo;s office in India.\nOne odd comment in the article: \u0026ldquo;And why among the more than 1,200 compromised government computers representing 103 countries, were there no United States government systems?\u0026quot;\nI find this particularly odd in that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen compromised U.S. government systems plenty of times in my information security career, including spam issued from military computers. I don\u0026rsquo;t find it plausible that the U.S. government has recently improved the security of all of its computers and networks so that there are no more compromised systems.\nIn the context of the article, it\u0026rsquo;s discussing more specifically compromises due to the particular spy ring being monitored. The preceding sentences point out that they weren\u0026rsquo;t able to determine with certainty who was running it, and the immediately preceding sentence asks, \u0026ldquo;Why was the powerful eavesdropping system not password-protected, a weakness that made it easy for Mr. Villeneuve to determine how the system worked?\u0026quot;\nThe question should actually have asked why it wasn\u0026rsquo;t encrypted, rather than \u0026ldquo;password-protected,\u0026rdquo; but the possibilities suggested to me here are that (a) this particular activity is being run by amateurs or (b) this particular activity was intentionally detectible as either (i) a distraction from other, more hidden activity or (ii) to put the blame on China by somebody other than China.\nHistorical Comments Theo Bromine (2009-05-13):\nIt's disturbingly difficult to come up with a plausible explanation for the conspicuous lack of compromised US systems without reference to either a government coverup or a convoluted conspiracy theory.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/tracking-cyberspies-through-web.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12cyber.html?_r=1\u0026amp;partner=rss\u0026amp;emc=rss\"\u003ean interesting article about how security researchers at the University of Toronto have helped uncover online spy activity\u003c/a\u003e, apparently conducted by the Chinese government, against the Dalai Lama\u0026rsquo;s office in India.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne odd comment in the article:  \u0026ldquo;And why among the more than 1,200 compromised government computers representing 103 countries, were there no United States government systems?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find this particularly odd in that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen compromised U.S. government systems plenty of times in my information security career, including spam issued from military computers.  I don\u0026rsquo;t find it plausible that the U.S. government has recently improved the security of all of its computers and networks so that there are no more compromised systems.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the context of the article, it\u0026rsquo;s discussing more specifically compromises due to the particular spy ring being monitored.  The preceding sentences point out that they weren\u0026rsquo;t able to determine with certainty who was running it, and the immediately preceding sentence asks, \u0026ldquo;Why was the powerful eavesdropping system not password-protected, a weakness that made it easy for Mr. Villeneuve to determine how the system worked?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe question should actually have asked why it wasn\u0026rsquo;t encrypted, rather than \u0026ldquo;password-protected,\u0026rdquo; but the possibilities suggested to me here are that (a) this particular activity is being run by amateurs or (b) this particular activity was intentionally detectible as either (i) a distraction from other, more hidden activity or (ii) to put the blame on China by somebody other than China.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tracking cyberspies through the web wilderness"},{"content":"The April 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine prints two letters about February\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Darwin and Lincoln\u0026rdquo; article under the heading \u0026ldquo;Twin piques.\u0026rdquo; The first reads:\nThe only place Darwin and Lincoln are equals is in the mind of author Adam Gopnik [\u0026quot;Twin Peaks\u0026quot;]. What a stretch to weave their lives together because they share a birthday. \u0026ldquo;High peaks [that] look out toward each other\u0026rdquo;? Total hyperbole.\nRick Munsell\nThe Villages, FloridaUnfortunately, Dr. Munsell, a veterinarian from Florida who got his college degrees in Mississippi, doesn\u0026rsquo;t tell us which reputation he thinks is exaggerated. Given his status as a southerner, he could either be a fan of the Confederacy and southern secession, or he could be an anti-evolutionist. Then again, perhaps he just thinks nobody is ever equal to anybody else\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/ambiguous-letter-in-smithsonian.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe April 2009 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSmithsonian\u003c/span\u003e magazine prints two letters about February\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Darwin and Lincoln\u0026rdquo; article under the heading \u0026ldquo;Twin piques.\u0026rdquo;  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Letters-200904.html\"\u003efirst reads\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe only place Darwin and Lincoln are equals is in the mind of author Adam Gopnik  [\u0026quot;\u003ca href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Darwin-Lincoln-Twin-Peaks.html\"\u003eTwin Peaks\u003c/a\u003e\u0026quot;]. What a stretch to weave their lives together because they share a birthday. \u0026ldquo;High peaks [that] look out toward each other\u0026rdquo;? Total hyperbole.\u003cbr /\u003eRick Munsell\u003cbr /\u003eThe Villages, Florida\u003c/blockquote\u003eUnfortunately, Dr. Munsell, a veterinarian from Florida who got his college degrees in Mississippi, doesn\u0026rsquo;t tell us which reputation he thinks is exaggerated.  Given his status as a southerner, he could either be a fan of the Confederacy and southern secession, or he could be an anti-evolutionist.  Then again, perhaps he just thinks nobody is ever equal to anybody else\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ambiguous letter in Smithsonian magazine"},{"content":"\nIn any event, the next Carolina sighting is only briefly detailed, sadly, since it sounds even more interesting than most. On the afternoon of 16 September 1904, in the countryside near Troutman, North Carolina, Mrs John B Lippard and her children saw \"30 or more large snakes sailing through the air\" over their farm. Each was about 5ft (1.5m) long and 4-5in (10-13cm) wide. \"They watched the snakes sail around and alight in a piece of thickety pine woods... Most assuredly these people saw something.\" (Statesville Landmark, 20 Sept) Quoted from p. 34 of Jerome Clark, \"Sky Serpents,\" Fortean Times magazine, #248, June 2009, pp. 30-36.\nUPDATE (12 September 2014): \u0026nbsp;There are, in fact, gliding snakes in the jungles of south and southeast Asia. Gridman (2009-05-09):\nDarn, that sounds like a good one. Pity I let my subscription to the Fortean Times lapse. Obviously they weren\u0026rsquo;t really snakes but it might have been a primitive form of UFO. I believe that before they setup the Sedona Vortex UFO re-energizing portal UFOs had to generate their own dimension power by undulating wildly.\nOr that might be apocryphal.\nMoonglo (2009-06-05):\nMust have been the Flying Spaghetti Monster.\nLippard (2009-06-07):\nMoonglo: Aha! You may be right! They weren't snakes, but noodly appendages.\njoel hanes (2009-06-07):\nEver see a flock of wet cormorants alight and stand in a tree? Pretty big, and pretty snaky looking.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/lippards-sight-flying-snakes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos.forteantimes.com/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_8/fortean_times_4135_7.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://photos.forteantimes.com/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_8/fortean_times_4135_7.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 272px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 408px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nIn any event, the next Carolina sighting is only briefly detailed, sadly, since it sounds even more interesting than most.  On the afternoon of 16 September 1904, in the countryside near Troutman, North Carolina, Mrs John B Lippard and her children saw \"30 or more large snakes sailing through the air\" over their farm.  Each was about 5ft (1.5m) long and 4-5in (10-13cm) wide.  \"They watched the snakes sail around and alight in a piece of thickety pine woods... Most assuredly these people saw something.\" (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStatesville Landmark\u003c/span\u003e, 20 Sept)\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nQuoted from p. 34 of Jerome Clark, \"Sky Serpents,\" \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e magazine, #248, June 2009, pp. 30-36.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (12 September 2014): \u0026nbsp;There are, in fact, \u003ca href=\"http://leelavadeeflower.blogspot.com/2014/09/flying-snake-chrysopelea.html\"\u003egliding snakes in the jungles of south and southeast Asia\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGridman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-05-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eDarn, that sounds like a good one. Pity I let my subscription to the Fortean Times lapse. \n\u003cp\u003eObviously they weren\u0026rsquo;t really snakes but it might have been a primitive form of UFO. I believe that before they setup the Sedona Vortex UFO re-energizing portal UFOs had to generate their own dimension power by undulating wildly.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lippards sight flying snakes"},{"content":"The Center for Public Integrity, an organization I support, has just published the results of an investigation into the roots of the recent economic crisis and the major players involved:\nThe top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.\n\u0026hellip;\nAccording to the analysis:\nAt least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by banks that received bailout money — through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization. Nine of the top 10 lenders were based in California, including all of the top five — Countrywide Financial Corp., Ameriquest Mortgage Co., New Century Financial Corp., First Franklin Corp., and Long Beach Mortgage Co. Twenty of the top 25 subprime lenders have closed, stopped lending, or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. Most were non-bank lenders. Eleven of the lenders on the list, including four recipients of bank bailout funds, have made payments to settle claims of widespread lending abuses.Check out the full report.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-11):\nFund manager Cliff Asness defended his industry from the president's \"backwards and libelous\" charges:“Managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients' money as best they can, not to support the president, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their political views. … “The president\u0026rsquo;s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes.”\nWell, good luck in recovering from this meltdown if future investors know that presidential politics will trump bankruptcy laws. They already know that both parties in Congress are willing to slap an ex post facto bill of attainder, the latter of which is almost certainly anti-Constitutional to assuage popular rage over AIG bonuses that Congress had agreed to.\nLippard (2009-05-11):\nI agree completely with Asness's argument.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-12):\nAnd surely someone like Larry Summers would too ...\nKtisophilos (2009-05-28):\nThanks for alerting me to the Volokh site elsewhere. I normally avoid anything that sounds conspiratorial, but this one had an instructive post: The Financial Crisis, Free Markets, and the Nirvana FallacyDavid Bernstein, 27 May 2009\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure everyone has seen various op-eds, blog posts, and so forth proclaiming that the financial crisis shows that capitalism can\u0026rsquo;t be left \u0026ldquo;unregulated\u0026rdquo;, and that the end of \u0026ldquo;free market ideology\u0026rdquo; is nigh.\nIt seems obvious to me, though, that critics are comparing markets (which were far from unregulated) to a hypothetical, rational, efficient, regulatory system, which is a classic nirvana fallacy.\n\u0026hellip;\nSure, if you compare actual market actors to imaginary perfect government officials, government is going to come out looking like a mighty good alternative. But if you compare actual market actors to actual government actors, it hardly seems that the financial crisis shows the latter\u0026rsquo;s superiority to the former, nor does it support the idea that turning over more and more of the economy to the tender mercies of government regulation is likely to benefit the public.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/whos-behind-financial-meltdown.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Center for Public Integrity, an organization I support, \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/economic_meltdown/\"\u003ehas just published the results of an investigation into the roots of the recent economic crisis and the major players involved\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccording to the analysis:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's behind the financial meltdown?"},{"content":"In an op-ed at the New York Times, Charles Blow offers a rebuttal to the claim that most people follow particular religions because they are raised in those religions with the following:\nMaybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.\n(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)I don\u0026rsquo;t think this is particularly informative or much of a rebuttal, given that most of those \u0026ldquo;unaffiliated\u0026rdquo; were not actually raised atheist or agnostic, and that it would not be particularly surprising that someone raised in an unaffiliated-but-religious environment would end up joining a particular church that they found compatible with the views they were raised with. Without more specific data, I don\u0026rsquo;t think this at all refutes the claim that most people follow the religious traditions and views they are raised with, which I think is very well supported by the geographical distribution of religious belief.\nIt is still interesting, however, that a majority of the unaffiliated become affiliated, and that the number one reason for that, according to Blow, is that \u0026ldquo;Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met.\u0026rdquo; Blow writes:\nAs the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.Here, I think he makes a good point, though I think the label of \u0026ldquo;spiritual needs\u0026rdquo; is a misnomer. This is, I think, the same point I\u0026rsquo;ve made in a few posts at this blog, including one on April 29 where I wrote that an overly intellectualized understanding of human beings is a mistake that some atheists make, and one on how Pentecostalism has been tremendously successful with its focus on these other aspects of humanity.\nBy the way, it\u0026rsquo;s important to note that even if a greater percentage of the nonreligious join religion than vice versa, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that a greater number of the nonreligious join religion than vice versa, and in fact we know that isn\u0026rsquo;t the case from the data that shows that the \u0026ldquo;unaffiliated\u0026rdquo; group is the fastest growing group in the U.S.\nHistorical Comments Cairnarvon (2009-05-05):\nJohn Allen Paulos would be turning in his grave, if he were actually dead.\nJames Hanley (2009-05-05):\nGoing fishing would solve the same need. The only problem is you have to get up even earlier on Sunday..\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/greater-percentage-of-nonreligious-join.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn an op-ed at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e, Charles Blow \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/opinion/02blow.html?_r=1\u0026amp;th\u0026amp;emc=th\"\u003eoffers a rebuttal to the claim that most people follow particular religions because they are raised in those religions with the following\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaybe, but \u003ca href=\"http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=409\" title=\"The complete study\"\u003ea study\u003c/a\u003e entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Greater percentage of nonreligious join religion than vice-versa"},{"content":"Jinxiboo\u0026rsquo;s blog reports on Saint Sergius and Bacchus, officers in the Roman army exposed as secret Christians and martyred in the fourth century:\nA Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine\u0026rsquo;s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.\n\u0026hellip;\nProf. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the \u0026ldquo;Office of Same-Sex Union\u0026rdquo; (10th and 11th century), and the \u0026ldquo;Order for Uniting Two Men\u0026rdquo; (11th and 12th century).\nThese church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.\nSuch same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.\nSame-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, \u0026ldquo;Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union\u0026rdquo;, invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to \u0026ldquo;vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints\u0026rdquo;. The ceremony concludes: \u0026ldquo;And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded\u0026rdquo;.\nAnother 14th century Serbian Slavonic \u0026ldquo;Office of the Same Sex Union\u0026rdquo;, uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.\nRecords of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.\nThe Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).\nWhile homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.\nThe evangelical Christian response will likely be to either question whether these were really like \u0026ldquo;marriage\u0026rdquo; or reject them as Satan-inspired evil that shows how far astray the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have gone.\nWikipedia has more on Sergius and Bacchus.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-09):\nBut Camille Paglia denounced Boswell’s research despite having everything to gain by supporting it (‘Plighting Their Troth’, Guardian Weekly, 11 Sept. 1994, p. 18.): “Despite sporadic qualifications, Boswell repeatedly implies a genital subtext to intense spiritual alliances, even when his supporting manuscripts make clearly uncarnal invocations to martyred paired saints, who died in the service of Christ. …\n“Whatever medieval ceremonies of union may have been found, Boswell has not remotely established that they were originally homosexual in our romantic sense. Their real meaning has yet to be determined. Sacrilegious misuse of such ceremonies may indeed have occurred, leading to their banning, but historians are unjustified in extrapolating backwards and reducing fragmentary evidence to its lowest common denominator.\n“The cause of gay rights, which I support, is not helped by this kind of slippery, self-interested scholarship, where propaganda and casuistry impede the objective search for truth.”\nLippard (2009-05-09):\nSo the argument then is that while there were these same-sex unions, there was at least the pretense that there was no sexual contact between the participants? Given the sexual activity of many purportedly celibate priests, I am somewhat skeptical.\nLippard (2009-05-09):\nTo clarify: I am skeptical that the *reality* was that there was no sex, not that there wasn't such a pretense.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-11):\nThese unions were not even romantic, according to Paglia. BTW, the priests you\u0026rsquo;re thinking of really are celibate, since the word means \u0026ldquo;unmarried\u0026rdquo;. Your beef is their lack of chastity, which was certainly meant to accompany their celibacy.\nAnd what\u0026rsquo;s with the \u0026ldquo;many\u0026rdquo;? I don\u0026rsquo;t see the liberals ragging teachers because quite a lot of them have sexual relations with their students.\nLippard (2009-05-11):\nI appreciate the clarification on celibacy vs. chastity. The popular use of the former term is causing that distinction to be blurred. I don\u0026rsquo;t think your comparison between clergy abuse and teacher abuse is quite apt. Teachers who engage in sexual activity with underage students do get vilified in the press and the result is usually criminal prosecutions, and schools, unlike the Catholic Church, have not generally made a habit of attempting to conceal the abuse and move the perpetrator to another location to continue the abuse.\nIf you look at all sexual relationships between consenting adults, not just the abusive ones with children, priests are unlikely to be vilified in the press for their sexual activity, as opposed to for their hypocrisy. Teachers, by contrast, don\u0026rsquo;t generally take a vow of chastity.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-16):\nIs that so? The LA Times recently reported on many cases of sexual abuse in the Los Angeles Unified School District where the offender is simply put back into a classroom elsewhere: “A jury late last year ordered the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay nearly $1.6 million to the families of three girls molested by Ricardo Guevara, who is now serving 15 years in prison for lewd acts with a child.\n“But there was something the jury — and the public — was never told: This was the third set of accusations that Guevara had molested students. Twice before, when law enforcement officials had decided they lacked the evidence to win a criminal conviction, L.A. Unified officials had quietly put him back in the classroom.\n“Guevara\u0026rsquo;s case fits a pattern, a Times investigation shows: Repeatedly, the district failed to follow up on sexual misconduct complaints against employees once police or prosecutors dropped criminal actions. Some ended up at new schools. In at least one instance — involving Guevara — the new principal had no idea of his history.\n“In three other cases documented by The Times, the employee went on to be charged with or convicted of molesting another student \u0026hellip;”\nMoving sexual predators around was just like the scandalous way the Catholic Church moved abusive priests to new parishes. But there is precious little about this in other media, compared to the voluminous coverage of any abusive priest anywhere in the world, no matter how long ago.\nLippard (2009-05-16):\nTo the extent those cases are like the RCC cases, I feel the same way about them and the administrators involved.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-17):\nI thought you would. A simple explanation for both is: those with proclivity to abuse minors sexually will gravitate to those occupations that allow them to be in a position of authority over said minors.\nLippard (2009-05-17):\nI think that explanation is sound--that's a good reason for carefully screening and monitoring people who are in such positions. Similarly for any position of power\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not just that power corrupts, but that corrupt people are attracted to positions of power.\nIf we selected political leaders at random, we probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be any worse off than with democratic elections.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-28):\nWell put. Oh, I never thanked you for making the dates unambiguous, so here goes. Another request: place the most recent posts and blog entries higher up on the left column of the home page.\nLippard (2009-05-28):\nThat's a good suggestion. I've accumulated a lot of widgets on the left side without thinking too much about the organization. I've done some rearranging now, to put the archives links and comments at the top, and some of the less useful items down lower.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/05/same-sex-marriage-in-christian-history.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJinxiboo\u0026rsquo;s blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.jinxiboo.com/blog/2009/5/3/when-same-sex-marriage-was-a-christian-rite.html\"\u003ereports on Saint Sergius and Bacchus\u003c/a\u003e, officers in the Roman army exposed as secret Christians and martyred in the fourth century:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine\u0026rsquo;s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eProf. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the \u0026ldquo;Office of Same-Sex Union\u0026rdquo; (10th and 11th century), and the \u0026ldquo;Order for Uniting Two Men\u0026rdquo; (11th and 12th century).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Same-sex marriage in Christian history"},{"content":"Evidence continues to mount that human decision-making occurs in the brain prior to conscious awareness of the decision, which is evidence against the common religious view of a soul, separate from the brain, which is the seat of all of our mental capacities. It\u0026rsquo;s also at odds with an overly intellectualized view of human beings held by some atheists (as well as all Scientologists, who consider unconscious decision-making by the \u0026ldquo;reactive mind\u0026rdquo; or festering \u0026ldquo;body thetans\u0026rdquo; to be the cause of human unhappiness), on which we must strive to make all of our decisions based on conscious, deliberative reason. I don\u0026rsquo;t think this is a very common view among atheists today, who tend to have some familiarity with evolution and cognitive science, but there are still some out there who have an overly idealized view of what a rational human being should be.\nA view of human beings that focuses solely on the intellectual and reason is not only at odds with the facts about how our cognition works, it gives short shrift to the importance of social bonds and emotion, which are areas that some religions focus on to the exclusion of the intellectual\u0026ndash;with great success in expanding their memberships, at least over the short term.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/unconscious-decision-making.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEvidence \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13489722\"\u003econtinues to mount that human decision-making occurs in the brain prior to conscious awareness of the decision\u003c/a\u003e, which is evidence against the common religious view of a soul, separate from the brain, which is the seat of all of our mental capacities.  It\u0026rsquo;s also at odds with an overly intellectualized view of human beings held by some atheists (as well as all Scientologists, who consider unconscious decision-making by the \u0026ldquo;reactive mind\u0026rdquo; or festering \u0026ldquo;body thetans\u0026rdquo; to be the cause of human unhappiness), on which we must strive to make all of our decisions based on conscious, deliberative reason.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think this is a very common view among atheists today, who tend to have some familiarity with evolution and cognitive science, but there are still some out there who have an overly idealized view of what a rational human being should be.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA view of human beings that focuses solely on the intellectual and reason is not only at odds with the facts about how our cognition works, it gives short shrift to the importance of social bonds and emotion, which are areas that some religions focus on to the exclusion of the intellectual\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/rise-of-pentecostalism-and-economist.html\"\u003ewith great success in expanding their memberships\u003c/a\u003e, at least over the short term.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Unconscious decision-making"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there\u0026rsquo;s an allegation of abuse \u0026hellip; there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. \u0026hellip; In other words, people want to know the truth. That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation.\u0026quot;\nAnd on the treatment of war crimes: \u0026ldquo;War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.\u0026quot;\nThe former quote is from the video below, the latter quote is from this March 2003 CNN transcript.\n(First quote via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, second quote via The Agitator.)\nAnd, for your edification, please read Scott Horton\u0026rsquo;s article, \u0026ldquo;Busting the Torture Myths.\u0026quot;\nKtisophilos (2009-05-09):\nShall we begin by prosecuting Nancy Pelosi who was briefed on use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’?\nLippard (2009-05-09):\nKtisophilos: It\u0026rsquo;s unclear whether the details of the use of waterboarding were part of the briefing.\n(Also see this.)\nKtisophilos (2009-05-11):\nYet even the überliberal Daily Kos about 18 months ago referred to Pelosi's \"complicity over the last five years.\"\nKtisophilos (2009-05-23):\nHere is the soi-disant non-partisan FactCheck.org piece: Pelosi\u0026rsquo;s Tortured Denials21 May 2009 The facts behind the speaker\u0026rsquo;s changing story about her knowledge of CIA waterboarding.\nLippard (2009-05-27):\nI'm fine with adding Pelosi to the list of officials to be punished for complicity in torture.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/george-w-bush-on-difference-between.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there\u0026rsquo;s an allegation of abuse \u0026hellip; there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. \u0026hellip; In other words, people want to know the truth. That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd on the treatment of war crimes:  \u0026ldquo;War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe former quote is from the video below, the latter quote is from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/17/sprj.irq.bush.transcript/\"\u003ethis March 2003 CNN transcript\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(First quote via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/04/bush_demands_his_own_prosecuti.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, second quote via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2009/04/27/who-said-it-2/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd, for your edification, please read Scott Horton\u0026rsquo;s article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-27/myth-and-reality-about-torture/full/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Busting the Torture Myths.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/W5DaY2Uyu64\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/W5DaY2Uyu64\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"George W. Bush on the difference between democracy and dictatorship"},{"content":"The FCC rule on \u0026ldquo;fleeting expletives,\u0026rdquo; permitting massive fines even for individual occurrences of the \u0026ldquo;seven words you can\u0026rsquo;t say on television,\u0026rdquo; arguing that they always have sexual connotations even when used as an intensifier, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. The decision is noteworthy for using the terms \u0026ldquo;F-word\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;S-word\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;fing\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;s*\u0026rdquo; in its text, rather than spelling them out.\nClarence Thomas\u0026rsquo; concurrence in the majority, however, questioned the constitutional basis of the FCC\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate content. It should be just a matter of time before the FCC\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate indecency is curtailed, but the Supreme Court did not rule on that issue in this case.\nAdam Thierer at the Technology Liberation Front has a thorough commentary:\nPart 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4\nThierer points out that Scalia, purportedly a strict constitutionalist, in his decision has endorsed a brand-new justification for the FCC\u0026rsquo;s power to regulate broadcast content. The original justification was that the airwaves were a scarce resource that needed to be protected for productive uses; the new argument is that because there are so many unregulated alternatives like cable, satellite, and the Internet, that the government needs to protect one last refuge from offensive content.\n(Previously, previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/fleeting-expletives-fcc-rule-upheld.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FCC rule on \u0026ldquo;fleeting expletives,\u0026rdquo; permitting massive fines even for individual occurrences of the \u0026ldquo;seven words you can\u0026rsquo;t say on television,\u0026rdquo; arguing that they always have sexual connotations even when used as an intensifier, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103572904\"\u003ewas upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision\u003c/a\u003e.  The decision is noteworthy for \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/posts/1240936129.shtml\"\u003eusing the terms \u0026ldquo;F-word\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;S-word\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;f\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eing\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;s\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e*\u0026rdquo; in its text\u003c/a\u003e, rather than spelling them out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClarence Thomas\u0026rsquo; concurrence in the majority, however, questioned the constitutional basis of the FCC\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate content.  It should be just a matter of time before the FCC\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate indecency is curtailed, but the Supreme Court did not rule on that issue in this case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Thierer at the Technology Liberation Front has a thorough commentary:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://techliberation.com/2009/04/28/supreme-court-decision-in-fcc-v-fox-part-1-the-decision/\"\u003ePart 1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://techliberation.com/2009/04/28/supreme-court-decision-in-fcc-v-fox-part-2-initial-thoughts/\"\u003ePart 2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://techliberation.com/2009/04/28/supreme-court-decision-in-fcc-v-fox-part-3-the-majority-decision/\"\u003ePart 3\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://techliberation.com/2009/04/28/supreme-court-decision-in-fcc-v-fox-part-4-the-thomas-concurrence/\"\u003ePart 4\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThierer points out that Scalia, purportedly a strict constitutionalist, in his decision has endorsed a brand-new justification for the FCC\u0026rsquo;s power to regulate broadcast content.  The original justification was that the airwaves were a scarce resource that needed to be protected for productive uses; the new argument is that because there are so many unregulated alternatives like cable, satellite, and the Internet, that the government needs to protect one last refuge from offensive content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/fcc-chairman-kevin-martin-responds-to.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/fcc-indecency-rules.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Fleeting expletives\" FCC rule upheld"},{"content":"A nice visual depiction of what it amounts to.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-05-03):\nGood one!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/obamas-100m-proposed-budget-cut-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA nice visual depiction of what it amounts to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cWt8hTayupE\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cWt8hTayupE\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2009/04/27/shaving-100-million-of-the-federal-budget-in-proper-perspective/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKtisophilos\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-05-03)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eGood one!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Obama's $100M proposed budget cut, in perspective"},{"content":"Whoops, forgot to report on this one when it was released last month:\nEpisode 015 Atheism and wheat-gluten-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem and Compton Effect,Group Events, Sao Paulo- Making Hard Decisions is a Crime Against the Church, Half of UK Folks Agree that Evolution Makes God Obsolete, Thunderf00t\u0026rsquo;s PEARL of a Youtube vid.Comments: The woman who claimed that someone being \u0026ldquo;dead\u0026rdquo; and resuscitated after eight minutes was miraculous is a bit off in her claim, since hearts and lungs are routinely stopped in open heart surgery for 4-6 hours, though that involves oxygenation of the blood by a heart-lung bypass machine. Perhaps more to the point are some hypothermia near-death cases, some of which have lasted for hours, like this recent case in Minnesota.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/apostaz-podcast-15.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhoops, forgot to report on this one when it was released last month:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz015.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz015.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 015\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and wheat-gluten-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem and Compton Effect,Group Events, Sao Paulo- Making Hard Decisions is a Crime Against the Church, Half of UK Folks Agree that Evolution Makes God Obsolete, Thunderf00t\u0026rsquo;s PEARL of a Youtube vid.\u003c/blockquote\u003eComments: The woman who claimed that someone being \u0026ldquo;dead\u0026rdquo; and resuscitated after eight minutes was miraculous is a bit off in her claim, since hearts and lungs are routinely stopped in open heart surgery for 4-6 hours, though that involves oxygenation of the blood by a heart-lung bypass machine.  Perhaps more to the point are some hypothermia near-death cases, some of which have lasted for hours, like \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28562207/\"\u003ethis recent case in Minnesota\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #15"},{"content":"At the Financial Times (with more detail for each item):\n1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.\n2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.\n3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.\n4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.\n5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.\n6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning .\n7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”.\n8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.\n9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement.\n10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs.\n(Via Will Wilkinson.)\nSchtacky (2009-04-29):\nNumber 2 just about sums up the last 8 years plus 100 days, doesn't it?\nLippard (2009-04-29):\nMinus the \"no\" on the front...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/nassim-talebs-ten-principles-for-black.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1\u0026amp;_i_referer=\u0026amp;nclick_check=1\"\u003eFinancial Times\u003c/a\u003e (with more detail for each item):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning .\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/04/08/talebs-ten-principles/\"\u003eWill Wilkinson\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nassim Taleb's ten principles for a black-swan-proof world"},{"content":"A banker who resisted the urge to invest in toxic assets during the boom is cleaning up during the bust. Andy Beal of Beal Bank in Plano, Texas \u0026ldquo;virtually stopped making or buying loans\u0026rdquo; from 2004 to 2007, leading people around him to think he was crazy. Now he\u0026rsquo;s buying up loans at fire sale prices and has tripled his bank\u0026rsquo;s assets to $7 billion in the last 15 months, and without government bailout money.\nBeal is also known for high-stakes poker games against the top poker players in the world, in which he has lost more than he\u0026rsquo;s won, but occasionally taken for a lot of money (including an $11 million win in one day).\nHistorical Comments Schtacky (2009-04-29):\nThere's a very interesting poker book called _The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King_ written about Beal's experiences in the big game at the Bellagio. I would recommend it even for non-poker fans/players. It has quite a bit of insight in regards to Beal in addition to the poker material.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/banker-who-said-know.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/banking-andy-beal-business-wall-street-beal.html\"\u003ebanker who resisted the urge to invest in toxic assets during the boom is cleaning up during the bust\u003c/a\u003e.  Andy Beal of Beal Bank in Plano, Texas \u0026ldquo;virtually stopped making or buying loans\u0026rdquo; from 2004 to 2007, leading people around him to think he was crazy.  Now he\u0026rsquo;s buying up loans at fire sale prices and has tripled his bank\u0026rsquo;s assets to $7 billion in the last 15 months, and without government bailout money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBeal is also known for high-stakes poker games against the top poker players in the world, in which he has lost more than he\u0026rsquo;s won, but occasionally taken for a lot of money (including an $11 million win in one day).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The banker who said no"},{"content":"Cambridge University physicist David MacKay\u0026rsquo;s book, Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, is available for free download or perusal in a variety of forms including HTML, PDF and PostScript, at the website www.withouthotair.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/what-laws-of-physics-say-about.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCambridge University physicist David MacKay\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air\u003c/span\u003e, is available for free download or perusal in a variety of forms including HTML, PDF and PostScript, at the website \u003ca href=\"http://www.withouthotair.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.withouthotair.com\"\u003ewww.withouthotair.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What the laws of physics say about sustainable energy"},{"content":"The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has filed a lawsuit in the state of Texas over its inability to advertise master\u0026rsquo;s degrees in science that it is not accredited or permitted to offer in the state of Texas.\nAn attorney evaluates their lawsuit and finds that it\u0026rsquo;s as crazy as their science, and doomed to dismissal.\n(Via Pharyngula).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/icr-does-law-as-well-as-it-does-science.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has filed a lawsuit in the state of Texas over its inability to advertise master\u0026rsquo;s degrees in science that it is not accredited or permitted to offer in the state of Texas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/you-dont-trust-creationists-with-your-science-education-heres-why-you-shouldnt-trust-their-lawyers-either/\"\u003eAn attorney evaluates their lawsuit and finds that it\u0026rsquo;s as crazy as their science\u003c/a\u003e, and doomed to dismissal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/legal_analysis_of_the_icrs_rec.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The ICR does law as well as it does science"},{"content":"The American Religious Identification Study 2008 has been published, and the only group to grow across the entire country is the \u0026ldquo;no religion\u0026rdquo; group.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how Arizona\u0026rsquo;s religious identifications have changed in the last decade:\n1990: 24% Catholic, 57% other Christian, 3% other religions, 13% none, 3% don\u0026rsquo;t know/refused to answer.\n2009: 29% Catholic, 44% other Christians, 5% other religions, 17% none, 5% don\u0026rsquo;t know/refused to answer.\nThe states with the highest percentage of persons identifying themselves as having no religion in 2008 are:\nVermont, 34%\nNew Hampshire, 29%\nWyoming, 28%\nMaine, 25%\nWashington, 25%\nNevada, 24%\nOregon, 24%\nDelaware, 23%\nIdaho, 23%\nMassachusetts, 22%\nColorado, 21%\nMontana, 21%\n(Via the Secular Outpost.)\nReed (2009-04-18):\nFrom the study, it appears that Christianity's loss is the non-theist's gain: \u0026ldquo;in recent decades the challenge to Christianity in American society does not come from other world religions or new religious movements (NRMs) but rather from a rejection of all organized religions. To illustrate the point, Table 1 shows that the non-theist and No Religion groups collectively known as “Nones” have gained almost 20 million adults since 1990 and risen from 8.2 to 15.0 percent of the total population.\u0026rdquo;\nInterestingly, the vast majority of those 20 million came aboard during the 1990s. I wonder what was behind that?\nMichael C. Rush (2009-04-20):\nNote: Email to your address is bouncing. I don't know whether this relates to your job change or not.\nLippard (2009-04-29):\nNope, that was due to a mistake during a system upgrade on my mail server...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/american-religious-identification-study.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/highlights.html\"\u003eAmerican Religious Identification Study 2008 has been published\u003c/a\u003e, and the only group to grow across the entire country is the \u0026ldquo;no religion\u0026rdquo; group.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s how Arizona\u0026rsquo;s religious identifications have changed in the last decade:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1990: 24% Catholic, 57% other Christian, 3% other religions, 13% none, 3% don\u0026rsquo;t know/refused to answer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2009: 29% Catholic, 44% other Christians, 5% other religions, 17% none, 5% don\u0026rsquo;t know/refused to answer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe states with the highest percentage of persons identifying themselves as having no religion in 2008 are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVermont, 34%\u003cbr /\u003eNew Hampshire, 29%\u003cbr /\u003eWyoming, 28%\u003cbr /\u003eMaine, 25%\u003cbr /\u003eWashington, 25%\u003cbr /\u003eNevada, 24%\u003cbr /\u003eOregon, 24%\u003cbr /\u003eDelaware, 23%\u003cbr /\u003eIdaho, 23%\u003cbr /\u003eMassachusetts, 22%\u003cbr /\u003eColorado, 21%\u003cbr /\u003eMontana, 21%\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2009/04/aris-2008.html\"\u003eSecular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"American Religious Identification Study 2008"},{"content":"CMI has taken down its AiG-critical material and posted a notice that reads:\nCMI and AiG are pleased to inform you that the dispute between the ministries has been settled to their mutual satisfaction. Each ministry is now focused on its respective mission, having put this dispute behind them in April of 2009.Nathan Zamprogno noted in a comment on my last blog post on this dispute that AiG still had some of its CMI-critical material about the case online, but it now appears to have been taken down as well.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/aigcmi-dispute-settled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCMI has taken down its AiG-critical material and posted \u003ca href=\"http://creation.com/dispute-settled\"\u003ea notice that reads\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCMI and AiG are pleased to inform you that the dispute between the ministries has been settled to their mutual satisfaction.  Each ministry is now focused on its respective mission, having put this dispute behind them in April of 2009.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNathan Zamprogno \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-tells-aig.html?showComment=1239623160000#c8075740687516778417\"\u003enoted in a comment on my last blog post on this dispute\u003c/a\u003e that AiG still had some of its CMI-critical material about the case online, but it now appears to have been taken down as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AiG/CMI dispute settled"},{"content":"This afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing writer Jeff Benedict speak about his book, Little Pink House, which is the story behind the Kelo v. New London case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. That case, which ruled that New London did have the right to use eminent domain to seize private property and turn it over to another private entity\u0026ndash;effectively retranslating the Fifth Amendment\u0026rsquo;s use of the words \u0026ldquo;public use\u0026rdquo; into the meaning \u0026ldquo;public benefit\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;was a case I thought I was familiar with. But Benedict\u0026rsquo;s talk revealed that while I was aware of some of the facts relevant to the legal case, I really had no idea about the whole story. In his short talk, he conveyed some of the events and details that did not make it to the national press, but which make the story all the more interesting. The political battles between state and city government, the plan to get Pfizer to stay in Connecticut when it was looking elsewhere, and the personalities involved made for a genuinely moving talk even when we already know how the story ends.\nI look forward to reading his book.\nKtisophilos (2009-04-24):\nOK Jim, so what was his verdict: fair ruling or travesty of justice? The dissenters argued that no private property would be safe if a government could take it for what they claim is a public benefit.\nLippard (2009-04-24):\nI finished the book and it was excellent--it does a great job of clearly explaining every player's motivations in a way that they're all understandable, including fairly representing the views of the New London city attorney. Nobody was acting in a way that was completely irrational or selfish or with disregard for others. It's a very well-done book, and he did an enormous amount of research to fill in all of the details. This was actually not as ideal a case against eminent domain as I thought\u0026ndash;the original judge\u0026rsquo;s decision found for some plaintiffs and against others; he found for the plaintiffs where New London had no plan for what to do with their land, and against those where there was a plan and there was public use\u0026ndash;specifically a roadway. Kelo\u0026rsquo;s house was actually partly in the roadway.\nThere was, however, clear sleaziness in how the New London Development Corporation acted in trying to steamroll the homeowners, and the city attorney refused a compromise at the end that could have yielded a better outcome.\nIn the end, Kelo got another waterfront house and her home has been moved and preserved as a monument against eminent domain abuse.\nKtisophilos (2009-05-03):\nThanx Jim; seems a balanced treatment that still regards it as an unfair use of eminent domain.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/jeff-benedict-and-little-pink-house.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing writer Jeff Benedict speak about his book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLittle Pink House\u003c/span\u003e, which is the story behind the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKelo v. New London\u003c/span\u003e case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.  That case, which ruled that New London did have the right to use eminent domain to seize private property and turn it over to another private entity\u0026ndash;effectively retranslating the Fifth Amendment\u0026rsquo;s use of the words \u0026ldquo;public use\u0026rdquo; into the meaning \u0026ldquo;public benefit\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;was a case I thought I was familiar with.  But Benedict\u0026rsquo;s talk revealed that while I was aware of some of the facts relevant to the legal case, I really had no idea about the whole story.  In his short talk, he conveyed some of the events and details that did not make it to the national press, but which make the story all the more interesting.  The political battles between state and city government, the plan to get Pfizer to stay in Connecticut when it was looking elsewhere, and the personalities involved made for a genuinely moving talk even when we already know how the story ends.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI look forward to reading his book.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeff Benedict and Little Pink House"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s FUD spreading about Sec. 14 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, maintaining that it amounts to an effective repeal of the 4th Amendment for the Internet. That\u0026rsquo;s not so\u0026ndash;the scope is restricted to \u0026ldquo;threat and vulnerability information\u0026rdquo; regarding the Internet, which I interpret to mean network service provider knowledge about compromised systems, botnets, etc., much of which is no doubt already being voluntarily shared with the government as is permissible under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, when, in the course of a provider\u0026rsquo;s normal service monitoring, it becomes aware of possible criminal activity.\nI expect I\u0026rsquo;ll have more to say after I have a chance to read through the whole bill (PDF).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/04/cybersecurity-act-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/04/can-obama-shut-down-the-internet/\"\u003eFUD spreading about Sec. 14 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009\u003c/a\u003e, maintaining that it amounts to an effective repeal of the 4th Amendment for the Internet.  That\u0026rsquo;s not so\u0026ndash;the scope is restricted to \u0026ldquo;threat and vulnerability information\u0026rdquo; regarding the Internet, which I interpret to mean network service provider knowledge about compromised systems, botnets, etc., much of which is no doubt already being voluntarily shared with the government as is permissible under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, when, in the course of a provider\u0026rsquo;s normal service monitoring, it becomes aware of possible criminal activity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI expect I\u0026rsquo;ll have more to say after I have a chance to read through \u003ca href=\"http://cdt.org/security/CYBERSEC4.pdf\"\u003ethe whole bill\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Cybersecurity Act of 2009"},{"content":"\nToday is the big day for SkeptiCamp Phoenix, starting at about 12:30 p.m. this afternoon.\nMagic Tony, one of our presenters, will be live-blogging the event at his blog, and there may also be twittering at #skepticamp. No live video this time, but there will likely be video of at least some talks put online after the event, along with photos, presentations, and recaps.\nI received the t-shirts last night (the back of which is shown in the photo) and the official SkeptiCamp 2009 banner earlier in the week, and I\u0026rsquo;ve got boxes of Skeptic magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, and some books for distribution to participants. Thanks to the generous contributions of our sponsors, the Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry/Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and the James Randi Educational Foundation, who provided the materials and funds for the t-shirts (which will also defray a portion of our dinner tonight after the event at Tempe\u0026rsquo;s Rula BulaBoulders on Broadway).\nIt looks like we\u0026rsquo;ll have about twenty people physically present at the event, and twelve or thirteen presentations, some 30-minute presentations and some 10-minute presentations. The current list of presentations:\nTony Barnhart, Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic\nAbraham Heward, What\u0026rsquo;s the difference between skepticism and denial? (led discussion)\nDavid Jackemeyer, Henry Hazlitt\u0026rsquo;s Thinking as Science\nDon Lacey, Words Important to Skepticism (PowerPoint 2007)\nJim Lippard, Positive Side-effects of Misinformation (SlideShare)\nJohn Lynch, Academic Freedom and Intelligent Design (SlideShare)\nShannon Rankin, Skepticism for Dummies\nDavid Weston, Creating Skeptical Happiness (PowerPoint)\nJack Ray, Skeptical Dating\nMike Stackpole, Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism\nCharlie Cavanaugh Toft, Teaching Critical Thinking\nXarold Trejo, Why I am a Skeptic\nSkeptiCamp Phoenix will be the first live-blogged SkeptiCamp event, and this is also the first day on which there will be two SkeptiCamp events in the same day\u0026ndash;the other one going on today is SkeptiCamp Vancouver, which is occurring this afternoon at Langara College, with the sponsorship of the BC Skeptics.\nUPDATE (April 2, 2009): Don Lacey of the Skeptics of Tucson, who participated in SkeptiCamp Phoenix, offers his thoughts at the James Randi Educational Foundation\u0026rsquo;s Swift blog. ScienceBlogger and SkeptiCamp Phoenix participant John Lynch gives a recap at his blog.\nHistorical Comments John Lynch (2009-03-30):\nMy slides are at http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/pub/talks/skepticamp.pdf\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/skepticamp-phoenix-today.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/P3280013.med.JPG\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318228269844949106\" src=\"/images/P3280013.med.JPG\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 150px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 200px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday is the big day for \u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCampPhoenix2009\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, starting at about 12:30 p.m. this afternoon.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMagic Tony, one of our presenters, \u003ca href=\"http://magictony.blogspot.com/2009/03/live-blogging-skepticamp-phoenix.html\"\u003ewill be live-blogging the event at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, and there may also be \u003ca href=\"http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23skepticamp\"\u003etwittering at #skepticamp\u003c/a\u003e.  No live video this time, but there will likely be video of at least some talks put online after the event, along with photos, presentations, and recaps.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI received the t-shirts last night (the back of which is shown in the photo) and the official SkeptiCamp 2009 banner earlier in the week, and I\u0026rsquo;ve got boxes of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e, and some books for distribution to participants.  Thanks to the generous contributions of our sponsors, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.org/\"\u003eSkeptics Society/\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/\"\u003eCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry/\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/\"\u003eJames Randi Educational Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, who provided the materials and funds for the t-shirts (which will also defray a portion of our dinner tonight after the event at Tempe\u0026rsquo;s \u003cstrike\u003eRula Bula\u003c/strike\u003eBoulders on Broadway).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looks like we\u0026rsquo;ll have about twenty people physically present at the event, and twelve or thirteen presentations, some 30-minute presentations and some 10-minute presentations.  The current list of presentations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTony Barnhart, Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic\u003cbr /\u003eAbraham Heward, What\u0026rsquo;s the difference between skepticism and denial? (led discussion)\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Jackemeyer, Henry Hazlitt\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThinking as Science\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDon Lacey, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/DonLacey-090328-SkeptiCamp-Words.pptx\"\u003eWords Important to Skepticism\u003c/a\u003e (PowerPoint 2007)\u003cbr /\u003eJim Lippard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/lippard/lippard-skepticamp-2009\"\u003ePositive Side-effects of Misinformation\u003c/a\u003e (SlideShare)\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Lynch, \u003ca href=\"https://www.slideshare.net/jmlynch/intelligent-design-and-academic-freedom\"\u003eAcademic Freedom and Intelligent Design\u003c/a\u003e (SlideShare)\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Rankin, Skepticism for Dummies\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Weston, \u003ca href=\"http://files.meetup.com/287805/Creating%20Skeptical%20Happiness.ppt\"\u003eCreating Skeptical Happiness\u003c/a\u003e (PowerPoint)\u003cbr /\u003eJack Ray, Skeptical Dating\u003cbr /\u003eMike Stackpole, Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism\u003cbr /\u003eCharlie Cavanaugh Toft, Teaching Critical Thinking\u003cbr /\u003eXarold Trejo, Why I am a Skeptic\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix will be the first live-blogged SkeptiCamp event, and this is also the first day on which there will be two SkeptiCamp events in the same day\u0026ndash;the other one going on today is \u003ca href=\"http://www.bcskeptics.info/skepticamp/2009.04.html\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Vancouver\u003c/a\u003e, which is occurring this afternoon at Langara College, with the sponsorship of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.bcskeptics.info/index.cgi\"\u003eBC Skeptics\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 2, 2009): Don Lacey of the Skeptics of Tucson, who participated in SkeptiCamp Phoenix, \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20140909110907/http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/502-report-from-phoenix-skepticamp.html\"\u003eoffers his thoughts at the James Randi Educational Foundation\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSwift\u003c/span\u003e blog\u003c/a\u003e.  ScienceBlogger and SkeptiCamp Phoenix participant John Lynch \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20110819144028/https://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2009/03/skepticamp_phoenix_2009_1.php\"\u003egives a recap at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SkeptiCamp Phoenix today"},{"content":"Dan Barker\u0026rsquo;s book, Losing Faith in Faith, has been translated into Spanish and is available as a free PDF download, Perder la fe en la fe.\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2009-04-11):\nWhen I first read you headline to this post I asked myself, \"Why is Dan Barker losing faith in the spanish language?!\":)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/dan-barkers-losing-faith-in-faith-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDan Barker\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLosing Faith in Faith\u003c/span\u003e, has been translated into Spanish and is available \u003ca href=\"http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/PerderLaFe.pdf\"\u003eas a free PDF download, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePerder la fe en la fe\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ecowmix\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-04-11)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWhen I first read you headline to this post I asked myself, \"Why is Dan Barker losing faith in the spanish language?!\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e:)\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith, in Spanish"},{"content":"From the Philadelphia Daily News:\nON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop.\nThen, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam.\nThe five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties.\n“I so scared,” said Eunice Nam, 56. “We were on floor. Handcuffs on me. I so, so scared, I wet my pants.”\nThe officers rifled through drawers, dumped cigarette cartons on the floor and took cash from the registers. Then they hauled the Nams to jail.\nThe Nams were arrested for selling tiny ziplock bags that police consider drug paraphernalia, but which the couple described as tobacco pouches.\nWhen they later unlocked their store, the Nams allege, they discovered that a case of lighter fluid and handfuls of Zippo lighters were missing. The police said they seized $2,573 in the raid. The Nams say they actually had between $3,800 and $4,000 in the store.\nThe Nams’ story is strikingly similar to those told by other mom-and-pop store owners, from Dominicans in Hunting Park to Jordanians in South Philadelphia.\nVia The Agitator. Officer Cujdik has other issues.\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-03-25):\nButt Out, Fedsby John Stossel 24 March 2009...You see, Lynch sold medical marijuana, which has been declared legal by California and 12 other states. California says if a doctor recommends that you use the drug, it's perfectly legal. ...Federal authorities cleverly avoided California's state courts and took Charlie into federal court, where his lawyers were not even allowed to tell the jury that medical marijuana is legal in California. Not surprisingly, Charlie was convicted. Possible sentence: 100 years in federal prison. ...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/corrupt-drug-cops-in-philadelphia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20090320_DRUG_RAIDS_GONE_BAD.html?page=1\u0026amp;c=y\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhiladelphia Daily News\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThen, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Corrupt drug cops in Philadelphia"},{"content":"Despite the common concern that immigrants to the U.S. take jobs that would otherwise go to American citizens, immigrants actually create jobs and promote innovation. Two recent articles in The Economist look at this topic. In the March 7, 2009 issue, a study by Harvard economist William Kerr and University of Michigan economist William Lincoln looked at how patent production changes in response to changes in the number of H-1B visa holders, immigrants with technical skills. When the number of H-1B visas was increased by 10%, total patenting increased by 2%, caused mostly by patent activity by immigrants. However, rather than reducing the number of patents by the native population, those also increased.\nIn the March 14, 2009 issue\u0026rsquo;s special report on entrepreneurship, it\u0026rsquo;s noted that H-1B visas are capped at 85,000/year, and a maximum of 10,000 from any one country, increasing the wait for large countries such as India and China, where the wait time is about six years. There are over one million people waiting. This issue also notes that about half of Silicon Valley\u0026rsquo;s startups are founded by immigrants, and about 25% of all U.S. science and technology startups have a CEO or CTO who is an immigrant, and these companies employ 450,000 people and generate $52 billion in annual revenue. A quarter of U.S. patent applications in 2006 name foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.\njackd (2009-03-23):\nThe article, and presumably the underlying research, does support the idea that immigration positively correlates with innovation. But it does not address the question of whether the H-1B program is being used primarily to fill positions for which there's a shortage of US talent (as intended) or if employers are gaming the system to hold down salaries and get employees they have additional leverage over.A quick Google search turned up http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/FY03H1BFnlCharRprt.pdf. It shows that only about only 20% of H-1B's were granted to holders of professional or doctoral degrees, the ones I would expect produce most of the patent activity that Kerr and Lincoln studied was generated by PhD's. That leaves over 170,000 visa holders with Master's degrees or less.So, H-1B immigrants promote innovation? I'll buy that, at least if we're talking about research scientists. But that's a long way from establishing that it's beneficial to import system admins and DBAs because US citizens won't take the jobs at $50k/year.\nLippard (2009-03-23):\n\"only about only 20% of H-1B's were granted to holders of professional or doctoral degrees, the ones I would expect produce most of the patent activity that Kerr and Lincoln studied was generated by PhD's.\"Speaking as a patent co-inventor with an M.A., do you have any evidence for this assumption? My speculation is that named inventors and co-inventors on patents are far more likely to hold a Master's degree than a doctorate for the same reason that average salaries for those holding a master's degree are greater than those for Ph.D.s--the latter are more likely to be in academia than in business.\nEinzige (2009-03-23):\njackd, your argument is flawed.How is it not beneficial to increase the pool of available workers for a given position? More applicants translates to greater opportunity for the employer to find a more highly skilled and/or cheaper employee. This in turn leads to greater profitability and/or cheaper prices for the firm's customers.If the hiring of an H-1B employee doesn't pencil then it doesn't happen.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/immigration-and-jobs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDespite the common concern that immigrants to the U.S. take jobs that would otherwise go to American citizens, immigrants actually create jobs and promote innovation.  Two recent articles in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e look at this topic.  In the March 7, 2009 issue, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13234953\"\u003ea study by Harvard economist William Kerr and University of Michigan economist William Lincoln\u003c/a\u003e looked at how patent production changes in response to changes in the number of H-1B visa holders, immigrants with technical skills.  When the number of H-1B visas was increased by 10%, total patenting increased by 2%, caused mostly by patent activity by immigrants.  However, rather than reducing the number of patents by the native population, those also increased.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13216037\"\u003ethe March 14, 2009 issue\u0026rsquo;s special report on entrepreneurship\u003c/a\u003e, it\u0026rsquo;s noted that H-1B visas are capped at 85,000/year, and a maximum of 10,000 from any one country, increasing the wait for large countries such as India and China, where the wait time is about six years.  There are over one million people waiting.  This issue also notes that about half of Silicon Valley\u0026rsquo;s startups are founded by immigrants, and about 25% of all U.S. science and technology startups have a CEO or CTO who is an immigrant, and these companies employ 450,000 people and generate $52 billion in annual revenue.  A quarter of U.S. patent applications in 2006 name foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Immigration and jobs"},{"content":"\nOn our dog walk this evening, we found that two neighborhoods to the south of us have been targeted by a new sort of marketing technique\u0026ndash;in each yard was a bag containing a few rocks and a business card, apparently dropped by someone driving by who was too lazy to deliver them to the front door. In one neighborhood, these were like the ones pictured, in a ziploc bag with a card advertising a landscaping service. In another neighborhood, they were in twist-tied baggies with a piece of paper advertising a cleaning service.\nThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to me like a very effective method of advertising. The door hanger flyers are annoying already, but these are worse\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s like tossing trash into people\u0026rsquo;s yards.\nEamon Knight (2009-03-17):\nWell, obviously you need to hire their landscaping service to pick up the trash that people throw into your yard....Or something.\nLippard (2009-03-17):\nMy thought was printing up flyers saying \"I've cleaned up your yard of junk that people have thrown into it, if you need any other yard service, please call ...\" and then taking all of those baggies.\nJohn Lynch (2009-03-17):\nWe've been getting this in Tempe for years. I had assumed it was happening everywhere.\nGridman (2009-03-18):\nI suppose a complaint to the city might be in order... they conveniently left their name for you...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/physical-spam.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P3160002.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P3160002.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313988476663550802\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn our dog walk this evening, we found that two neighborhoods to the south of us have been targeted by a new sort of marketing technique\u0026ndash;in each yard was a bag containing a few rocks and a business card, apparently dropped by someone driving by who was too lazy to deliver them to the front door.  In one neighborhood, these were like the ones pictured, in a ziploc bag with a card advertising a landscaping service.  In another neighborhood, they were in twist-tied baggies with a piece of paper advertising a cleaning service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to me like a very effective method of advertising.  The door hanger flyers are annoying already, but these are worse\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s like tossing trash into people\u0026rsquo;s yards.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Physical spam"},{"content":"The March 7th, 2009 issue of The Economist Technical Quarterly has some items of interest:\nCool Earth Solar of Livermore, California is using balloons as solar energy collectors.\nNarasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra, and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found a way to turn coffee grounds into biodiesel.\nDavid Whitten of the University of New Mexico and Kirk Schanze of the University of Florida have built \u0026ldquo;micro-sized \u0026lsquo;roach motels\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; for capturing bacteria in hospitals and on the surfaces of ships.\nNicholas Kotov and his team at the University of Michigan have come up with a way to coat cotton threads with carbon nanotubes which can be used to carry electricity, and to add an additional material that reacts with human serum albumin, in order to detect bleeding, which might be used by the military in monitoring soldiers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/some-interesting-technology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 7th, 2009 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist Technical Quarterly\u003c/span\u003e has some items of interest:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCool Earth Solar of Livermore, California is \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174508\"\u003eusing balloons as solar energy collectors\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNarasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra, and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174477\"\u003efound a way to turn coffee grounds into biodiesel\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Whitten of the University of New Mexico and Kirk Schanze of the University of Florida \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174498\"\u003ehave built \u0026ldquo;micro-sized \u0026lsquo;roach motels\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; for capturing bacteria in hospitals and on the surfaces of ships\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNicholas Kotov and his team at the University of Michigan \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174469\"\u003ehave come up with a way to coat cotton threads with carbon nanotubes which can be used to carry electricity\u003c/a\u003e, and to add an additional material that reacts with human serum albumin, in order to detect bleeding, which might be used by the military in monitoring soldiers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some interesting technology"},{"content":"Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2001, and Glenn Greenwald discusses the evidence that he says shows it has been \u0026ldquo;an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-03-17):\nThe Drug War Body Count by Debra J. Saunders supports your case, and cites some former Central and South Americans as well as The Economist\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/success-of-drug-decriminalization-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePortugal decriminalized drugs in 2001, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/14/portugal/index.html\"\u003eGlenn Greenwald discusses the evidence that he says shows\u003c/a\u003e it has been \u0026ldquo;an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKtisophilos\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-03-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003cA HREF=\"http://townhall.com/Columnists/DebraJSaunders/2009/03/16/the_drug_war_body_count\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eThe Drug War Body Count\u003c/A\u003e by Debra J. Saunders supports your case, and cites some former Central and South Americans as well as \u003cI\u003eThe Economist\u003c/I\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The success of drug decriminalization in Portugal"},{"content":"Commenter Tim H pointed me to a post at Tim Martin\u0026rsquo;s Beyond Creation Science blog about another Answers in Genesis controversy. Old-earth creationist Charles Spurgeon delivered a June 17, 1855 sermon (four years before Darwin published Origin of Species) in which he stated that the earth had to be \u0026ldquo;many millions of years\u0026rdquo; old. When Answers in Genesis published that sermon on their website, they omitted that sentence, \u0026ldquo;We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be-certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam.\u0026quot;\nAfter Martin pointed out the omission, Answers in Genesis inserted a footnote containing the omitted sentence, stating that this footnote was inadvertently omitted from their publication of the sermon. But they made no apologies for removing the sentence in question from its proper context and relegating it to a footnote.\nUPDATE: AiG did more than just remove that sentence\u0026ndash;they revised language throughout the sermon, which in some other areas also changed the intended meaning to bring it in line with young-earth creationist dogma.\nAnonymous (2009-03-15):\nThis is not the first time this despicable quote-mining act of AiG is being reported. Planet Preterist, a site dealing with the Christian doctrine of preterism (believing all the prophesies of the bible have been fulfilled when Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD), made this known before you brought it up on your blog.Why Doesn't Answers in Genesis Tell You the Truth?\nDanny Boy, FCD (2009-03-15):\nWow, that is sheer dishonesty. This is just another reason why everyone should doubt any reference or quote given by a creationist. Not only do they misquote evolutionists, they misquote from their own side.\nLippard (2009-03-16):\nCrazyharp: The Planet Preterist posting is also by Timothy P. Martin. You're right that this has been out there for a few weeks, but it was new to me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/answers-in-genesis-censorship-turns-old.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html?showComment=1236970380000#c1188009007004714763\"\u003eCommenter Tim H pointed\u003c/a\u003e me to \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyondcreationscience.com/index.php?pr=Why_Doesnt_Answers_in_Genesis_Tell_You_the_Truth\"\u003ea post at Tim Martin\u0026rsquo;s Beyond Creation Science blog about another Answers in Genesis controversy\u003c/a\u003e. Old-earth creationist Charles Spurgeon delivered a June 17, 1855 sermon (four years before Darwin published \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrigin of Species\u003c/span\u003e) in which he stated that the earth had to be \u0026ldquo;many millions of years\u0026rdquo; old.  When Answers in Genesis published that sermon on their website, they omitted that sentence, \u0026ldquo;We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be-certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter Martin pointed out the omission, Answers in Genesis inserted a footnote containing the omitted sentence, stating that this footnote was inadvertently omitted from their publication of the sermon.  But they made no apologies for removing the sentence in question from its proper context and relegating it to a footnote.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: AiG did more than just remove that sentence\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://johnscorner.blogspot.com/2009/02/honesty-its-such-lonely-word.html\"\u003ethey revised language throughout the sermon\u003c/a\u003e, which in some other areas also changed the intended meaning to bring it in line with young-earth creationist dogma.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis censorship turns old-earther into young-earther"},{"content":"Remember how the press was all over the story of the 29-year-old millionaire white supremacist and fan of Adolf Hitler in Maine who was building a dirty bomb that he planned to set off at Obama\u0026rsquo;s inauguration, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen because his wife shot and killed him?\nMe neither, but James G. Cummings of Belfast, Maine, had (quoting Wikileaks) \u0026ldquo;four lots of one gallon containers of bomb-grade hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium (also radioactive), lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium (radiation booster), boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon\u0026rdquo; which he somehow planned to set off at the inauguration. Personally, I don\u0026rsquo;t think that volume of material could have been easily smuggled in anywhere near the inauguration activities without raising suspicion.\nWhy no press coverage of this story, apart from the Bangor Daily News?\nWikileaks has a summary; Wonkette has summarized that; the Washington D.C. Regional Threat and Analysis Center report (PDF) is here.\nReed (2009-03-15):\nDHS/USSS had closed I-25 that passes by the stadium where Obama's inauguration took place, presumably to guard against this sort of threat.\nLippard (2009-03-15):\nYou're thinking of the nomination acceptance in Denver, not the inauguration in D.C., which had vehicle traffic sealed off for blocks.\nReed (2009-03-16):\nThanks for correcting my error.So many ceremonies, I can hardly keep track of them.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/us-nazi-dirty-bomb-plot.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember how the press was all over the story of the 29-year-old millionaire white supremacist and fan of Adolf Hitler in Maine who was building a dirty bomb that he planned to set off at Obama\u0026rsquo;s inauguration, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen because his wife shot and killed him?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMe neither, but James G. Cummings of Belfast, Maine, had (quoting Wikileaks) \u0026ldquo;four lots of one gallon containers of bomb-grade hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium (also radioactive), lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium (radiation booster), boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon\u0026rdquo; which he somehow planned to set off at the inauguration.  Personally, I don\u0026rsquo;t think that volume of material could have been easily smuggled in anywhere near the inauguration activities without raising suspicion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy no press coverage of this story, apart from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/100021.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBangor Daily News\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWikileaks \u003ca href=\"http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_%22dirty_bomb%22_that_disappeared\"\u003ehas a summary\u003c/a\u003e; Wonkette \u003ca href=\"http://wonkette.com/406925/us-nazi-trust-fund-millionaire-was-building-dirty-radioactive-anti-obama-bomb-but-his-wife-shot-him-dead-first\"\u003ehas summarized that\u003c/a\u003e; the Washington D.C. Regional Threat and Analysis Center report (PDF) is \u003ca href=\"http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Washington_DC_Regional_Threat_and_Analysis_Center_report_re_Inauguration%2C_16_Jan_2009\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The U.S. Nazi dirty bomb plot"},{"content":"From the J-Walk blog:\nPat Robertson answers a question from a \u0026ldquo;pastor of a ministry to international college students\u0026rdquo; who asks whether his ministry leaders should be permitted to study the Koran in order to understand Islam, which he thinks is a bad idea since \u0026ldquo;there are plenty of Christian resources out there to get information on other religions.\u0026quot;\nRobertson\u0026rsquo;s reply:\nKelly, it won\u0026rsquo;t be wrong if somebody studies Islam, but they need guided study, because somebody needs to go along and point out the incredible inconsistencies in that book. And if you have a guided study of the Koran and see how much in there is just repetitious, how much comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament, how much is just plagiarism from the Bible, etc.?. If you will go through it with them, I think it would be a very helpful exercise. But I doubt very seriously by reading the Koran they\u0026rsquo;re going to get converted to Islam. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t worry about it. But I think they need to see it. They need to see what is in there. Many people who are Muslim don\u0026rsquo;t know what the Koran says. And when you begin to tell them, they say, \u0026ldquo;Well, I don\u0026rsquo;t believe that.\u0026rdquo; And you say, \u0026ldquo;Well, it\u0026rsquo;s in your sacred book. It\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be holy words.\u0026rdquo; So it won\u0026rsquo;t hurt, but guided study.\nBlogger John Walkenbach responds: \u0026ldquo;Now, turn that answer around a pretend it\u0026rsquo;s in response to a Muslim asking if he should study the Bible. It still works!\u0026quot;\nIndeed, with a few small changes. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer at the SKEPTIC list for the pointer to Robertson\u0026rsquo;s Q\u0026amp;A.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/pat-robertson-on-christians-studying.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/should_christians_study_the_koran/\"\u003ethe J-Walk blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePat Robertson answers a question from a \u0026ldquo;pastor of a ministry to international college students\u0026rdquo; who asks whether his ministry leaders should be permitted to study the Koran in order to understand Islam, which he thinks is a bad idea since \u0026ldquo;there are plenty of Christian resources out there to get information on other religions.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/BringItOn/bible-index.aspx#DL5\"\u003eRobertson\u0026rsquo;s reply\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e   \u003cp\u003e   Kelly,    it won\u0026rsquo;t be wrong if somebody studies Islam, but they need guided study,    because somebody needs to go along and point out the incredible    inconsistencies in that book. And if you have a guided study of the Koran and    see how much in there is just repetitious, how much comes out of the Old    Testament and the New Testament, how much is just plagiarism from the Bible,    etc.?. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pat Robertson on Christians studying the Koran"},{"content":"The U.S. government is negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty which imposes new controls over copyright, but refuses to let the general public know its specific content. In response to a Freedom of Information Act Request from Knowledge Ecology International, the Obama administration responded that the content is classified for national security reasons pursuant to Executive Order 12958, a Clinton order from 1995.\nAs Declan McCullagh points out, the executive order \u0026ldquo;allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do \u0026lsquo;damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; He also points out that one of Obama\u0026rsquo;s first acts as president was to sign a memo that said that FOIA \u0026ldquo;should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure.\u0026quot;\nThe claim that this treaty cannot be disclosed for national security reasons sounds bogus, but if it\u0026rsquo;s so, what\u0026rsquo;s the purported damage being prevented? In the absence of a clear rationale, this treaty should be openly discussed and available to the general public.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/copyright-treaty-classified-on-national.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. government is negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty which imposes new controls over copyright, but refuses to let the general public know its specific content.  In response to a Freedom of Information Act Request from Knowledge Ecology International, the Obama administration responded that the content is classified for national security reasons pursuant to Executive Order 12958, a Clinton order from 1995.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10195547-38.html\"\u003eDeclan McCullagh points out\u003c/a\u003e, the executive order \u0026ldquo;allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do \u0026lsquo;damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; He also points out that one of Obama\u0026rsquo;s first acts as president was to sign a memo that said that FOIA \u0026ldquo;should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe claim that this treaty cannot be disclosed for national security reasons sounds bogus, but if it\u0026rsquo;s so, what\u0026rsquo;s the purported damage being prevented?  In the absence of a clear rationale, this treaty should be openly discussed and available to the general public.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Copyright treaty classified on national security grounds"},{"content":"On March 28, SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 will take place at Arizona State University in Tempe.\nParticipants include Mike Stackpole of the Phoenix Skeptics on \u0026ldquo;Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism,\u0026rdquo; John Lynch on \u0026ldquo;Academic Freedom and Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; and Tony Barnhart on \u0026ldquo;Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic.\u0026quot;\nThe event is sponsored by the Skeptics Society/Skeptic magazine, the Center for Skeptical Inquiry/Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and by the James Randi Educational Foundation. It will be the fifth SkeptiCamp, after two in Colorado, one in Vancouver, and one in Atlanta.\nFor more information on the event, see the SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 wiki page, the SkeptiCamp Phoenix registration site, or the SkeptiCamp Phoenix Facebook page.\nFor more on SkeptiCamp, see Reed Esau\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Skepticamp Bargain\u0026rdquo; in JREF\u0026rsquo;s Swift and his article \u0026ldquo;Raising Our Game\u0026rdquo; (PDF) published by the Skeptics Society.\n(Previously, previously, previously.)\nantichomsky (2009-03-15):\nI'm sorry for the off-topic comment, but are you the same Lippard who used to frequent \"The Wall\" BBS in Tucson?If so, I'm wondering if you are still in contact with any of the old crew (Pentax, Plato, Scolding Box, Fresh Fish, etc)?\nLippard (2009-03-15):\nYes, and yes. Drop me an email (my last name at discord.org).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/skepticamp-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn March 28, SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 will take place at Arizona State University in Tempe.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eParticipants include Mike Stackpole of the Phoenix Skeptics on \u0026ldquo;Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism,\u0026rdquo; John Lynch on \u0026ldquo;Academic Freedom and Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; and Tony Barnhart on \u0026ldquo;Methods of the Pseudo-Psychic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe event is sponsored by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003eSkeptics Society/\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e magazine, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/\"\u003eCenter for Skeptical Inquiry/\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, and by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/\"\u003eJames Randi Educational Foundation\u003c/a\u003e.  It will be the fifth SkeptiCamp, after two in Colorado, one in Vancouver, and one in Atlanta.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more information on the event, see the \u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCampPhoenix2009\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 wiki page\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticamp.org/events/3-skepticamp-phoenix\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix registration site\u003c/a\u003e, or the \u003ca href=\"http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=46183004103\u0026amp;ref=ts\"\u003eSkeptiCamp Phoenix Facebook page\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more on SkeptiCamp, see Reed Esau\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/409-the-skepticamp-bargain.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Skepticamp Bargain\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in JREF\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSwift\u003c/span\u003e and his article \u003ca href=\"http://skeptic.com/downloads/raising-our-game-oct-2008.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Raising Our Game\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) published by the Skeptics Society.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/skepticamp.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/skepticamp-2.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/vancouver-skepticamp.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SkeptiCamp Phoenix"},{"content":"Jeff Jacobsen has a new article on Scientology\u0026rsquo;s use of religious R-1 visas to bring people from other countries to the U.S. to work at menial labor for $50/week (with billion-year Sea Org contracts). R-1 visas are supposed to be for religious ministers who have been working for the U.S. organization sponsoring them for at least two years, and it appears that Scientology has abused these conditions to get cheap labor. And in the process, they\u0026rsquo;ve brought in people like Artur Solomonyan from Armenia, who was subsequently arrested and found guilty of illegal weapons sales after trying to sell weapons including surface-to-air missiles to an FBI informant.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2009-03-06):\nIf the appeal to come to the US and start a new life is still strong, where the only path to do so is to get sponsored by the CoS to do (basically unpaid) volunteer work, then we shouldn't be surprised that many will avail themselves of the opportunity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/scientology-and-religious-visas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Jacobsen has \u003ca href=\"http://www.lisamcpherson.org/visas.htm\"\u003ea new article on Scientology\u0026rsquo;s use of religious R-1 visas to bring people from other countries to the U.S.\u003c/a\u003e to work at menial labor for $50/week (with billion-year Sea Org contracts).  R-1 visas are supposed to be for religious ministers who have been working for the U.S. organization sponsoring them for at least two years, and it appears that Scientology has abused these conditions to get cheap labor.  And in the process, they\u0026rsquo;ve brought in people like Artur Solomonyan from Armenia, who was subsequently arrested and found guilty of illegal weapons sales after trying to sell weapons including surface-to-air missiles to an FBI informant.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology and religious visas"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Overcompensating makes a timely proposal. Just as the repeal of Prohibition during the Great Depression helped economic recovery and reduced associated criminal activity, repealing the drug war could do the same. Legalizing prostitution along the lines of the New Zealand model (adopted in 2003, and in 2008 in Western Australia) is also a good idea.\nNow that Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign promise that the feds will not engage in drug raids against medical marijuana operations in states that have legalized such activity, the time is right.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-03):\nDo you support Milton Friedman's case against legalizing drugs, made as long ago as 1972?\nLippard (2009-03-03):\nI think you mean his case against prohibition--he favored legalization. Yes, I think he makes good arguments.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-04):\nOops, of course, you're right. Friedman also made a good case that the FDA stands for \"Frustrating Drug Advancement\", because this bureaucracy holds up life-saving drugs. This is because the bureaucrats will be pilloried if a someone dies from a drug they approve, but they are far less likely to get into trouble if even thousands die because they didn't receive a drug they held back, since it's far harder to prove a negative. Thus he argued that the only solution is abolition of the FDA, since replacing the personnel would as useless as demanding Barking Cats as long as the incentives were unchanged.\nepe (2009-03-06):\nDid you see the Glenn Beck interview with Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project? (Transcript here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,500965,00.html ). All sorts of stupid. Check out the video; you get to see all of Beck's juvenile facial expressions.\nEinzige (2009-03-06):\nGlenn Beck describes himself as a \"libertarian\", huh?He's a libertarian like Britney Spears is an intellectual.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-18):\nGo one step further: make drug trade a government monopoly—then it would be as dead as Amtrak and the US Postal service ;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/legalize-pot-and-tax-crap-out-of-it.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20090303.html\"\u003eOvercompensating\u003c/a\u003e makes a timely proposal.  Just as the repeal of Prohibition during the Great Depression helped economic recovery and reduced associated criminal activity, repealing the drug war could do the same.  Legalizing prostitution \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_New_Zealand\"\u003ealong the lines of the New Zealand model\u003c/a\u003e (adopted in 2003, and in 2008 in Western Australia) is also a good idea.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow that Attorney General Eric Holder \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2009/02/27/holder-says-no-more-federal-medical-marijuana-raids/\"\u003ehas confirmed Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign promise that the feds will not engage in drug raids against medical marijuana operations in states that have legalized such activity\u003c/a\u003e, the time is right.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20090303.html\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://www.overcompensating.com/comics/20090303.png\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Legalize pot and tax the crap out of it"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports:\n2 fatally killed after fight near house party by Ofelia Madrid - Feb. 28, 2009 07:51 PM\nThe Arizona Republic Two men are dead after an early morning shooting in south Phoenix, police said. Officers responded to a shooting near 36th Avenue and Broadway Road a little after midnight Friday, police said. Officers arrived to find numerous people fleeing and were directed to a 27-year-oldman who was dead in the alley from gunshot wounds, police said. Police later learned that another victim, a 20-year-old man, died as he was being driven to St. Joseph\u0026rsquo;s Hospital and Medical Center.\nInvestigators received initial reports of a party in the area and a fight nearby. No further information was available.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s too bad they weren\u0026rsquo;t non-fatal killings. (Perhaps an editor changed \u0026ldquo;shot\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;killed\u0026rdquo;?)\nUPDATE: They changed the link to say \u0026ldquo;2 fatally shot\u0026rdquo; and on the story itself to \u0026ldquo;2 shot, killed after fight near house party.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/2-fatally-killed-after-fight-near-house.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/02/28/20090228murder28-ON.html\"\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ch1 class=\"topHeadline\"\u003e2 fatally killed after fight near house party\u003c/h1\u003e                         \u003cp class=\"byline clearfix\"\u003e           \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/02/28/20090228murder28-ON.html#comments\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"bylinecomments\" id=\"commentcount\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e               by \u003cstrong\u003eOfelia Madrid\u003c/strong\u003e - Feb. 28, 2009 07:51 PM\u003cbr /\u003e                   \u003cspan class=\"org\"\u003eThe Arizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e         \u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo men are dead after an early morning shooting in south Phoenix, police said. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOfficers responded to a shooting near 36th Avenue and Broadway Road a little after midnight Friday, police said. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOfficers arrived to find numerous people fleeing and were directed to a 27-year-oldman who was dead in the alley from gunshot wounds, police said. \u003cspan id=\"articleFlex1\"\u003e\u003cscript type=\"text/javascript\"\u003eOAS_AD(\u0026lsquo;ArticleFlex_1\u0026rsquo;)\u003c/script\u003e\u003cscript style=\"display: none;\" text=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://gannett.gcion.com/addyn/3.0/5111.1/133600/0/0/ADTECH;alias=az-phoenix.azcentral.com/news/local/articles_ArticleFlex_1;cookie=info;loc=100;target=_blank;grp=349551;misc=1235937093247\"\u003e\u003c/script\u003e\u003c/span\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"2 fatally killed after fight near house party"},{"content":"$10.1 billion in federal stimulus money has been released to the states by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Arizona is receiving more than $150 million of that. And what is that money to be used for, in a state where there are tens of thousands of homes for sale with few buyers (50,000+ in Maricopa county alone)?\nBuilding more housing.\nThe Arizona Republic reports that\nMillions of dollars more will go to state and local programs. That includes $32 million to begin construction of affordable rental housing, $22 million to prevent homelessness and $12 million to build or repair public housing across the state.To the extent this money is used to build new homes, as opposed to repairing deteriorating ones, it\u0026rsquo;s just going to accelerate the decline of home prices, putting more homeowners underwater and providing them with more incentive to walk away from their mortgages. Now, I think that a further decline in home prices is inevitable, no matter what the stimulus money tries to do, but it\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous to throw additional money at accelerating that process. It makes about as much sense as using federal stimulus money to give grants to investment bankers to develop more complex collateralized debt obligations.\nNow, this isn\u0026rsquo;t actually quite that bad, since it does apparently focus on some particular communities\u0026ndash;a third of the money is for Native American communities that didn\u0026rsquo;t get a housing bubble of speculative buying. Some of it is also for families that need short-term help with utility bills, rent, or other expenses (something that the Modest Needs Foundation has been doing for years with private donations). And Tucson is apparently using it to improve energy efficiency of existing public housing units. Those are all much more reasonable uses of the money than building more houses.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-02):\nWell, good thing Obama has such great economic advisers, otherwise the stockmarket could tank too. Oh, wait ...\nKtisophilos (2009-03-05):\nThe Obama Economy: As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.Yet moderate Obama supporters claim to be surprised that he's governing like the rabid socialist he always was.\nLippard (2009-03-06):\nResponse:Barry Ritholtz, \"Was the '00-03 crash Bush's fault? '09 Obama's?\"\nKtisophilos (2009-03-08):\nThis is not a fair comparison: NASDAQ with the whole market, which has dropped to its lowest level in 12 years. Furthermore, the current falls happen right after Obama or a minion makes a pronouncement.It's hardly surprising: why should people invest if Obama wants to tax profits more? Why invest in sound companies while the government rescues their competitors? E.g. decent carmakers must not only compete with Detroit but with the Government as well.The article Jim cited says:\"I am not an Obama cheerleader. For the record, I found his selection of Larry Summers to be awful, and his choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary ill-advised [he of the Kent Hovind school of tax compliance ;) -- KT.]. But to hold him responsible for a market collapse on day 41 of his Presidency — following 8 years of gross negligence and ruinous incompetency under the Bush regime — is simply too much stupidity for any damaged nation to bear.\"Well yes: Bush presided over increased spending and indebtedness that caused immense problems. So the solution is far more of the same?BTW, Former Australian Prime Minister and Treasurer Paul Keating (and a Labor man, akin to the Dems) just denounced Geithner, as the ”gigantic fool” who helped to create the “greatest mess” the IMF ever made.\nLippard (2009-03-08):\nI think that (a) capital injections into the banks were necessary, though done poorly--the toxic loans need to be exposed and written off, the insolvent banks need to be shut down and those that are strong enough to survive supported; and (b) some form of stimulus is probably essential, so long as it does things like build and improve infrastructure that will be used for many decades to come.Hyperinflation is not a real concern now, though it may become one later (probably years later)--I think we're in a deflationary spiral already, and the amount of the stimulus is tiny compared to the amount of credit destruction that is occurring.There's a lot of counter-productive stuff going on--throwing good money after bad at AIG, Citibank, GM, and Chrysler, for example. But I don't think Obama tax policy has anything to do with the market tanking. It may cause some significant problems for charities, since he's reducing deductions for charitable contributions for those who make over $250K.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-08):\nThe above makes far more sense.Investors can have little confidence because of the way this big spending was handled. Once again, it's the Politician's Logic exposed by Yes Minister:We must do something.This particular Stimulus bill is something.Therefore we must do it.Yet this thousand-page monstrosity was passed before anyone had a chance to read it. What moron signs something without reading it?The assault on charities is consistent with Obama's real religion: \"In Big Government We Trust\". I.e. the government knows how to spend money better both than those who earn it and the charities they donate to.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/03/using-stimulus-to-accelerate-downturn.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e$10.1 billion in federal stimulus money has been released to the states by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Arizona is receiving more than $150 million of that.  And what is that money to be used for, in a state where there are tens of thousands of homes for sale with few buyers (50,000+ in Maricopa county alone)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBuilding more housing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/02/28/20090228stim-housing0228.html\"\u003ereports that\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMillions of dollars more will go to state and local programs. That includes $32 million to begin construction of affordable rental housing, $22 million to prevent homelessness and $12 million to build or repair public housing across the state.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo the extent this money is used to build new homes, as opposed to repairing deteriorating ones, it\u0026rsquo;s just going to accelerate the decline of home prices, putting more homeowners underwater and providing them with more incentive to walk away from their mortgages.  Now, I think that a further decline in home prices is inevitable, no matter what the stimulus money tries to do, but it\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous to throw additional money at accelerating that process.  It makes about as much sense as using federal stimulus money to give grants to investment bankers to develop more complex collateralized debt obligations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, this isn\u0026rsquo;t actually quite that bad, since it does apparently focus on some particular communities\u0026ndash;a third of the money is for Native American communities that didn\u0026rsquo;t get a housing bubble of speculative buying.  Some of it is also for families that need short-term help with utility bills, rent, or other expenses (something that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.modestneeds.org/\"\u003eModest Needs Foundation\u003c/a\u003e has been doing for years with private donations).  And Tucson is apparently using it to improve energy efficiency of existing public housing units.  Those are all much more reasonable uses of the money than building more houses.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Using the stimulus to accelerate the downturn"},{"content":"I just read this email this morning, which has to win a prize for the best Nigerian 419 scam I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen:\nReply-To: marysderrick@att.net\nFrom: \u0026ldquo;Mrs. Mary S. Derrick\u0026rdquo;marysderrick@att.net\nSubject: Stop Contacting those people !!!\nDate: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:43:50 +0100\nX-Priority: 3\nX-MSMail-Priority: Normal\nX-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000\nX-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000\nTo: undisclosed-recipients:;\nX-NetStation-Status: PASS\nAttn: My Dear,\nI am Mrs Mary Susan Derrick, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $20,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I was directed to meet Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson, who is the member of COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\nHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $1,500,000.00 Moreover, Mr Henshaw I. Anderson, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE\nName : Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson\nEmail: henshawanderson@sbcglobal.net\nPhone: +234 802 739 4935\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson was just $580 for the paper works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr Henshaw I. Anderson so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed.\nMrs. Mary Susan Derrick.She\u0026rsquo;s being so honest about those other Nigerian scammers that ripped her off, so surely she must be honest about this compensation fund. The sad thing is that those who have been ripped off multiple times already will probably fall for this one, too.\nHistorical Comments Theo Bromine (2009-02-28):\nThe \"most happiest woman on the earht\"; proponent of the Nigerian meta-scam scam....\nBen April (2009-03-10):\nThat is a nice one, The best one I have seen was offering a share of $3.24!\nCarrie (2009-03-16):\nI just read this one tonight, you can tell it's a scam because of the gramatical errors. I know where this address is too, an hour from where my mom lives in Austin.\nUnknown (2009-04-18):\nI just got the same one, but it was Rev. Solomon who helped her, and she only had to pay $350 for the \"paper works\"! Looks like Rev. Solomon is the better deal. lol\nFoxMcLeod (2009-06-30):\nI got the same e-mail today, except it was Annette Jenkins, she got $15 million, not $1,500,000 and the paper work is only $280 to get the money through Mr. Martins Dike. And her address changed, too. She is now living at 320 First Street,NW Washington, District of Columbia 20534, United States Ha!\njohn gardner (2009-08-12):\nShe only wanted $155.00 from me, must be getting desperate. John\nresch23 (2009-08-20):\nWell now shes back to living outside of Austin and asking for $580.00. The email for the attorney in Nigeria is linked to a cable co. in Canada.\nCharles (2009-10-28):\nDerrick?? Texas?? Do I see a connection?\nFlowman (2009-11-12):\nThis is a pretty good one, but my all time favorite is still the one about the weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These were apparently found in \u0026quot;some boxes\u0026quot; in \u0026quot;some cave\u0026quot; in Iraq by a Marine officer when he was \u0026quot;torturing some prisoners\u0026quot;. For a reasonable consideration, you can share in the profits from selling these, and also keep them out of the hands of \u0026quot;some terrorists\u0026quot;.\nUnknown (2010-02-13):\nWell 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas must be a busy place. I just received a letter from the nice Mrs Courtney Wells who lives there too. Not for long though because a philanthropist lawyer Mr. Charles Zigler has released $1.5 million of her money from Nigerian compensation, for the small fee of $270. And guess what? He\u0026#39;s going to do the same for me!\nUnknown (2010-03-17):\nIt is now Debbie Anderson and the money person is COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name : Mr Michael Bolts Email: michaelbolts@hdrmut.net Phone: +234-807-266-4115 One of them like the apartment so much that they Moved it and built a Duplex with one one level! I goggled the address and did a street view. `I even did a search of who was there and it was not Debbie Anderson! I am so shock :\u0026lt;)\nUnknown (2010-07-02):\nWell Mr. Michael Bolts has changed jobs, now he can be located at: COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name : Mr Michael Bolts Email: michaelbolts@rogers.com Phone: +234-807-266-4115\nwt1078 (2010-07-14):\nwill he has not move. i get one today email all the ip add.to get there email add. remove COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name : Mr Michael Bolts Email: michaelbolts@rogers.com Phone: +234-807-266-4115\nUnknown (2010-12-10):\nWell, well, now it appears that Mrs. Lisa Jones (how original!) has moved into this very crowded apartment. She paid Dr. Scott Daniel $320 and received a cool $1.5 million! She appears to be as gramatically challenged as everyone else that lives in apartment #303. Maybe the apartment was recently painted and the fumes have caused brain damage to all of the residents...\nUnknown (2011-03-27):\nParece que esa es una dirección muy concurrida: acabo de recibir un mail de un tal Ronald Landon, que dice que vive en la misma dirección que Mary Derric. Y dice el mismo mensaje...\nUnknown (2011-03-27):\nFrom: Ms Anita Johnson (anitajhn@aol.com) Hello , I am Ms Anita Johnson. I am a 48 years Old United States citizen. I reside here in New Braunfels , Austin , Texas . I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $35,000 while in the US , trying to get my payment all to no avail. So I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I was directed to meet Mrs. Lindley Gary S ,a staff of U.S. embassy in Nigeria who is also a member of COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE. I contacted her to explain to her of all I have passed through in the hands of Nigerians who I think are all fraudsters and scam artists and he took time to listen to my story.\nAfter listening to my story, she told me that the problem is that I have been dealing with the wrong people and promised to use his good office through the Consulate to assist me in my case. she took me immediately to some relevant offices to make inquiries regarding my transaction.\nThey directed us to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment.Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of through the Embassy's assistance. Moreover,Mrs. Lindley Gary S showed me a comprehensive list of other beneficiaries whose payment are still lying in his office waiting to be claimed but who might be ignorant of where to receive their payment. That was how I saw your email address and thought that it will be good to email you and tell you of my experiences and how I was able to receive my own fund. That is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people who had been exploiting you and taking advantage of you in the past, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you.\nI will advise you to contact Lindley Gary S, a staff of U.S. embassy in Nigeria so that he can assist you as well in getting your long overdue funds/payment. You have to contact her directly with her private ID with this information below.\nName:Mrs. Lindley Gary S E-mail: lindleygarys@gmail.com\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing. The only money I paid after I met Mrs. Lindley Gary S ,a staff of U.S. embassy was just $270(Two hundred and Seventy Dollars) for the paperwork. Please take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mrs. Lindley Gary S via her private e-mail address of lindleygarys@gmail.com\u0026quot; so that He can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed.\nMs Anita Johnson. 108 Crockett Court . Apt 303, New Braunfels ,Austin-Texas. United States Of America\nGlynis (2011-05-28):\nDear Friend, I am Mrs. Mary Susan; I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. MyResidential Address is as follows, 108 Crockett Court, Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States.\nI am one of those that executed a contract in Nigeria years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $20,000 trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my contract documents, and I was directed to meet theAttorney in charge of contract and beneficiary funds, Barrister Billy Harmony, who is the member of theNNPC CONTRACT AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me.\nHe said that those people that are contacting us through emails are fake imposters and wants to rip us off. Then he took me to the paying bank, which is International offshore Bank NIGERIA PLC, and I am the happiest woman on this Earth because I have received my NNPC CONTRACT funds of $5, 000, 000, 00.(five million united states Dollars) Moreover, Barrister Billy Harmony, showed me the full information of those that have not received Their payment and I saw your name as one of the beneficiary on the NNPC CONTRACT AWARD CERTIFICATE Including your email address, that why I decided to email you and tell you to stop dealing with those Imposters, they are not with your fund.\nI will advise you to contact the attorney in charge of funds issued to beneficiaries, Barrister Billy Harmony now so as for him to assist you to get your fund transfer into your bank account.\nYou have to contact him direct on this information below.\nName: Attorney Billy Harmony Esq. Email: barrbillyharmony003@hotmail.com Office Address: 13, Cole Street, Ikeja Lagos Nigeria.\nYou really have to stop dealing with those scam imposters and fraudsters that are contacting you via email And telephone informing you of your funds with them why your fund is not with them, they are only taking Advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing left to eat.\nThe only money I paid to the attorney was just $650 for NRTC (Non Residence Tax Clearance), which is Necessary to be paid, so you have to take note of that. Once again stop contacting those people, I will Advice you to contact Barrister Billy Harmony so that he can help you to finalize the transfer of your Fund, instead of dealing with those Imposters that will be turning you around asking for different kind of Money to complete your transfer.\nThank You and God Blessed.\nMrs. Mary Susan.\nAli (2011-06-17):\nI got one from a lovely woman named Rose Hills...must be a full house. Also, Dr. Thomas is giving away the money at the bargain-basement price of $390! Attn: My Dear,\nI am Mrs Rose Hills, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Dr.Sola Thomas, who his a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria. and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\nHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15,Million Us Dollars Moreover, Dr.Sola Thomas, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making metonym out of you. I will advise you to contact Dr.Sola Thomas.\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE\nName : Dr.Sola Thomas\nEmail: solathomas3@rediffmail.com\nPhone: +234-80-39213270\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Dr.Sola Thomas was just $390 for the paper works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Dr.Sola Thomas so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed.\nMrs.Rose Hills\n108 Crockett Court.\nApt 303, New Braunfels Texas,\nUnited States Of America.\nIan Michel (2011-09-15):\nAttn: My Dear, I am Mr. Steve Morgan, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, and I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Mr. Anthony Powell, who is a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\nHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest man on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $1.5 Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr. Anthony Powell, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr. Anthony Powell.\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name: Mr. Anthony Powell Email: anthonypowell03@one.co.il Phone Number:+234-7063-365-378\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr. Anthony Powell was just $100 for the paper works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr. Anthony Powell so that he can help you to deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed. LAME plus i got one from the FBI tracking these guys, for only 98 bucks they too can get me my money! Really ? I guess i'll just write a check to our broke government and have them use it to do what, again?\nRae Rai (2011-11-25):\nI got the Steve Morgan one as well.... and then one from the Benin Republic .... is great! Lol!\nUnknown (2011-12-24):\nFrom: Mrs Susan Derick (test@he.lss.gov.cn) Sent: December-24-11 1:43:52 PM To: Microsoft SmartScreen marked this message as junk and we'll delete it after ten days. Wait, it's safe! Attn: My Dear,\nI am Mrs Mary Susan Derrick, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams, who his a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria.and I contacted him and he explained everything to He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15,Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr.Kelvin Williams, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address,that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people,they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams.\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name : Mr.Kelvin Williams Email :kelvin.williams1@mail.com Phone : +2347056568144\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr.Kelvin Williams was just $400 for the paper works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed. Mrs. Mary Susan Derrick 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States Of America\nthat is what i received today, nice work on the grammar. what a bunch of sorry ppl who make these up.\nkelliegirl83 (2012-01-28):\nThis was my letter I received in my email. The subject title was {Spam?}ATTENTION STOP ALL TRANSACTIONS‏. What kind of idiots fall for this lol. Attn: My Dear, I am Mr. Steve Morgan, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail. So I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, and I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Mr. Anthony Powell, who is a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake. He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest man on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $1.5 Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr. Anthony Powell, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr. Anthony Powell. You have to contact him directly on this information below. COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSEName: Mr. Anthony PowellEmail: anthonypowell@skymail.mnPhone Number:+234-7063-365-378 You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing. The only money I paid after I met Mr. Anthony Powell was just $400 for the paper works, take note of that. Once again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr. Anthony Powell so that he can help you to deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction. Thank You and Be Blessed. Mr. Steve Morgan108 Crockett Court.Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas,United States of America\nJCofKC (2012-03-16):\nI received this scam this AM also....glad to have Googled the address and gotten the correct info on them.. Thanx\nMusic Man (2012-10-09):\nBRUCE WILLIS IS INVOLVED NOW HAHAHAHA! Attn:\nI am Mr.Steve Morgan, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 102 Crockett Ct New Braunfels, TX 78130, I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Bruce Willis, who his a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria.and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\nHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest man on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15 Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr.Bruce Willis, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr.Bruce Willis.\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name : Mr.Bruce Willis Email: brucewillis2012@e-mail.ua Contact Number: +2348167033036\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr.Kelvin Williams was just $390 for the paper works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed.\nMr. Steve Morgan 102 Crockett Ct New Braunfels, TX 78130, United States Of America\nAnonymous (2014-04-04):\nAttn: My Dear, I am Mrs Mary Susan Derrick, I am a USA citizen 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas My residential address is as follows 108 Crockett Court Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich, I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the United State trying to get my payment all to no avail.\nSo I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Agent Mr.Kelvin Williams who his a representative of the ( FB I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE in Europe and I contacted him, he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\nHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15,Million Us Dollars, Moreover, Mr Kelvin Williams showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payment and I saw your email address as one of the beneficiaries,that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you i will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams.\nYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name: Mr Kelvin Williams Email: agke2@mail.com\nYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your funds is with them, it is not in anyway with them they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr.Kelvin Williams was just $400 for the paper works take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nMrs. Mary Susan Derrick 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas,\nthis is the one I got.\nAnonymous (2014-08-20):\nLikewise, also received this sham...what a shame :P...alas, hate to be a unnaturally restrictive orifice, but when pointing out obvious grammatical errors w/ numerous \u0026#39;gramatical\u0026#39; criticisms creates quite the irony, so-to-speak, Lol!...Jus\u0026#39; Sayin\u0026#39;!!! ;) -Keep on keepin' on! :)\nAnonymous (2018-10-17):\nAttn:Dear, I am Mrs.Ruth Cousin I am a US citizen, 58 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in west Africa many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $79,000 while in the USA, trying to get my payment all to no avail And they always stopped my funds with one reason or the order.\nSo I decided to travel with my Son to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the (F B I) Director to contact Mr.Bailey Wallace, who his a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Ada Michigan. And I contacted him and he explained everything to He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15, Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr.Bailey Wallace, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr.Bailey Wallace.\nI will advise you to contact Mr.Bailey Wallace directly today on the information below to know if he can help you too.\nCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE Name:Mr.Bailey Wallace Email:baileywallace1111@gmail.com\nnote: am sending you this email because of the love I have for you and for all those innocent people been scammed day by day, by various scam artist claming to be with there fund, You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\nThe only money I paid after I met Mr.Bailey Wallace was just $220 for the Ownership Paper Works, take note of that.\nOnce again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr.Bailey Wallace so that he can help you to deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\nThank You and Be Blessed.\nMrs.Ruth Cousin 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas\nOnly just received this, it's almost 2019 and they're still trying it on! lol\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/best-nigerian-419-scam-ever.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just read this email this morning, which has to win a prize for the best Nigerian 419 scam I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eReply-To: \u003ca href=\"mailto:marysderrick@att.net\"\u003emarysderrick@att.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom: \u0026ldquo;Mrs. Mary S. Derrick\u0026rdquo;\u003ca href=\"mailto:marysderrick@att.net\"\u003emarysderrick@att.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Stop Contacting those people !!!\u003cbr /\u003eDate: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:43:50 +0100\u003cbr /\u003eX-Priority: 3\u003cbr /\u003eX-MSMail-Priority: Normal\u003cbr /\u003eX-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000\u003cbr /\u003eX-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000\u003cbr /\u003eTo: undisclosed-recipients:;\u003cbr /\u003eX-NetStation-Status: PASS\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAttn: My Dear,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI am Mrs Mary Susan Derrick, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas, United States, am thinking of relocating since I am now rich. I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $20,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I was directed to meet Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson, who is the member of COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment.  Right now I am the most happiest woman on  earth because I have received my compensation funds of $1,500,000.00 Moreover, Mr Henshaw I. Anderson, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou have to contact him directly on this information below.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCOMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE\u003cbr /\u003eName : Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson\u003cbr /\u003eEmail: \u003ca href=\"mailto:henshawanderson@sbcglobal.net\"\u003ehenshawanderson@sbcglobal.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhone: +234 802 739 4935\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe only money I paid after I met Mr. Henshaw I. Anderson was just $580 for the paper works, take note of that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnce again stop contacting those people, I will  advise you to contact Mr Henshaw I. Anderson so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThank You and Be Blessed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMrs. Mary Susan Derrick.\u003c/blockquote\u003eShe\u0026rsquo;s being so honest about those other Nigerian scammers that ripped her off, so surely she must be honest about this compensation fund.  The sad thing is that those who have been ripped off multiple times already will probably fall for this one, too.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Best Nigerian 419 scam ever"},{"content":"\nWe found this dog\u0026ndash;some kind of Spaniel?an Aussie sheepdog\u0026ndash;at 20th St. and Euclid, where he appeared to be wanting to get into a mini-van with a group of mariachis. They just drove off and ignored him, so we stopped our dog walk to pick him up. He had a collar, no tags. This dog is a neutered male, unusual for the strays we find.\nThis could have been our seventh stray of 2009, but the pack of three dogs we saw running along the canal yesterday morning wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let us near them.\nUPDATE: We\u0026rsquo;ve been contacted in email by the owner; this dog\u0026rsquo;s name is Woody and the owner will be going to pick him up at the pound.\nJohn Lynch (2009-02-22):\nIt's an Aussie sheepdog (actually an American breed). They're very variable, but I'm sure that's what it is. (We have one).\nLippard (2009-02-22):\nThanks, John!\nAlex (2009-02-22):\nCongratulations Woody! It's always nice to see a lost pet getting home.\nJohn Lynch (2009-02-23):\nHappy that it's going to end OK. Was even contemplating taking him ... our 13 yr old is getting on and we should probably be transitioning for my daughter's sake.\nSchtacky (2009-02-23):\nWay to go, Jim! I have always admired you and Kat's dedication to this sort of thing!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/fourth-stray-dog-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P2220003.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P2220003.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305691125394903266\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe found this dog\u0026ndash;\u003cstrike\u003esome kind of Spaniel?\u003c/strike\u003ean Aussie sheepdog\u0026ndash;at 20th St. and Euclid, where he appeared to be wanting to get into a mini-van with a group of mariachis.  They just drove off and ignored him, so we stopped our dog walk to pick him up.  He had a collar, no tags.  This dog is a neutered male, unusual for the strays we find.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis could have been our seventh stray of 2009, but the pack of three dogs we saw running along the canal yesterday morning wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let us near them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  We\u0026rsquo;ve been contacted in email by the owner; this dog\u0026rsquo;s name is Woody and the owner will be going to pick him up at the pound.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fourth stray dog of 2009"},{"content":"The Weekly World News, now online only, looks like it\u0026rsquo;s trying to become more like The Onion:\nBristol Palin held her first interview since giving birth Monday night with Greta Von Susteren. The 18 year old daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin talked about her experience as a mother and her mother’s policies towards education.\n“Mom says that science and stuff is too hard to force kids to learn. That the world is too complicated to have just happened by accident, and things like an eyeball show signs of a designer. She’s right, Bio is totally hard. But if you work at it, it does kinda make sense.”\nShe then went on a diatribe about carbon dating, genetic transference, and paleoanthropology.\nBristol held up her Lisa Frank notebook filled with equations and diagrams which categorically disprove the possibility of Intelligent Design.\n“It’s a nice idea, but it’s just not realistic. I mean, Lucy? The entire pre-hominid fossil record? Hello??”\nSarah Palin, who was sitting in the room at the time, looked increasingly more uncomfortable. Eventually she broke the silence saying:\n“Well now none of us were there so we can’t know for sure…”\n“Omigod Mom, it’s called Gene Mapping, don’t even get me started!”\nThe two sat in an awkward silence until Sarah went into a speech thanking Von Susteren and the other personalities at Fox News for being the last saviors of Democracy. Bristol rolled her eyes and mumbled math equations under her breath.\nEamon Knight (2009-02-20):\nI thought that WWN was pretty much already working in that space. Ie: unlike the Nat'l Enquirer and the other tabs, they didn't even expect to be taken seriously.\nLippard (2009-02-20):\nEamon: I think it's true that they've never expected to be taken seriously, but usually they've been pro-paranormal, UFO, woo, and religious craziness in the process. This is the first time I've seen a WWW story where scientists were the good guys, as opposed to someone who wanted to blow up the moon or inadvertently drilled a hole to hell.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/bristol-palin-disproves-intelligent.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWeekly World News\u003c/span\u003e, now online only, \u003ca href=\"http://weeklyworldnews.com/celebs/6355/bristol-palin-disproves-intelligent-design/\"\u003elooks like it\u0026rsquo;s trying to become more like \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eBristol Palin held her first interview since giving birth Monday night with Greta Von Susteren.  The 18 year old daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin talked about her experience as a mother and her mother’s policies towards education.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e“Mom says that science and stuff is too hard to force kids to learn.  That the world is too complicated to have just happened by accident, and things like an eyeball show signs of a designer.  She’s right, Bio is totally hard.  But if you work at it, it does kinda make sense.”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bristol Palin disproves intelligent design"},{"content":"Radley Balko at Reason magazine exposes video that shows Michael West in the act of falsifying evidence used to frame someone for rape and murder, by using plaster casts of the accused\u0026rsquo;s teeth to make bite marks on a toddler\u0026rsquo;s corpse.\nThis is one of three cases in which Michael West and Steven Hayne provided evidence in the form of bite marks on a body to link a murder victim to an accused rapist and murderer\u0026ndash;and in the other two cases, the alleged killers were subsequently freed when exonerated by DNA evidence which linked the cases to the actual murderer, who confessed when they were released.\nWest and Hayne belong in jail, as does the judge who claimed that the referenced video contained \u0026ldquo;no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant.\u0026quot;\nHayne performed over 80% of Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s autopsies for the last 20 years, and was permitted to complete a backlog of 600 autopsies even after he was terminated as the state\u0026rsquo;s coroner as a result of Balko\u0026rsquo;s exposure of other misconduct. This misconduct and the state\u0026rsquo;s failure to hold them accountable brings every criminal case they\u0026rsquo;ve ever touched into question.\n(Previously on Hayne.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/mississippis-medical-forensic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine \u003ca href=\"http://reason.com/news/show/131527.html\"\u003eexposes video that shows Michael West in the act of falsifying evidence used to frame someone for rape and murder\u003c/a\u003e, by using plaster casts of the accused\u0026rsquo;s teeth to make bite marks on a toddler\u0026rsquo;s corpse.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is one of three cases in which Michael West and Steven Hayne provided evidence in the form of bite marks on a body to link a murder victim to an accused rapist and murderer\u0026ndash;and in the other two cases, the alleged killers were subsequently freed when exonerated by DNA evidence which linked the cases to the actual murderer, who confessed when they were released.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWest and Hayne belong in jail, as does the judge who claimed that the referenced video contained \u0026ldquo;no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHayne performed over 80% of Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s autopsies for the last 20 years, and was permitted to complete a backlog of 600 autopsies even after he was terminated as the state\u0026rsquo;s coroner as a result of Balko\u0026rsquo;s exposure of other misconduct.  This misconduct and the state\u0026rsquo;s failure to hold them accountable brings every criminal case they\u0026rsquo;ve ever touched into question.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/bad-coroner-to-be-stopped-from.html\"\u003ePreviously on Hayne\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mississippi's medical forensic fraudsters"},{"content":"\nLast night, Daniel Dennett gave the 2009 Beyond Center lecture with a talk appropriate for the bicentennial of Charles Darwin\u0026rsquo;s birthday, titled \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; While not quite drawing the crowd that last year\u0026rsquo;s lecture by Richard Dawkins did (3000 people at Gammage Auditorium), Dennett filled the 485-seat Galvin Playhouse and an overflow room was set up with a video link. The Phoenix Atheists Meetup group alone had about 57 members who attended.\nThe talk was videotaped by the Beyond Center, and what may be an unauthorized video has been made available on YouTube.\nSkyhooks and Cranes\nThe content of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk was largely drawn from his book, Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea, and centered on the idea that Darwin brought about a change from thinking of the world as the product of top-down design to a recognition of apparent design as the result of bottom-up processes. Dennett referred to the former as the \u0026ldquo;trickle-down theory of creation\u0026rdquo; and the latter as the \u0026ldquo;bubble-up theory of creation,\u0026rdquo; and used his \u0026ldquo;intuition pump\u0026rdquo; of skyhooks vs. cranes to make the point.\n\u0026ldquo;Skyhooks\u0026rdquo; are explanations of design in terms of miraculous intervention by an entity which itself has no explanation, a deus ex machina. Dennett illustrated that with the drawing above, a Guy Billout illustration titled \u0026ldquo;Deus ex Machina,\u0026rdquo; from the May 1999 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. By contrast, \u0026ldquo;cranes\u0026rdquo; are built up from the ground to provide scaffolding for constructing new things. The dome of the Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), depicted in Billout\u0026rsquo;s illustration, was a marvel of engineering by Filippo Brunelleschi, which used some innovative construction techniques to build something that many thought was not possible.\nDarwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning\u0026rdquo;\nThe title of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk came from a critique of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of natural selection by Robert Beverley MacKenzie in 1868, who wrote (as quoted by Dennett in DDA, p. 65):\nIn the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin\u0026rsquo;s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.To which Dennett\u0026rsquo;s response was: \u0026ldquo;Exactly!\u0026rdquo; He illustrated the point with an example that is now somewhat commonplace, the computer. Dennett observed that prior to Alan Turing, \u0026ldquo;computers\u0026rdquo; referred to people who were hired to perform tasks that today are performed by mechanical devices with the same name. In order to perform these functions, people had to understand arithmetic. Dennett cited Turing\u0026rsquo;s 1936 paper, \u0026ldquo;On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem\u0026quot; (PDF), a demonstration that arithmetic computation is a specific case where, in fact, understanding is not required to perform the action\u0026ndash;another example of the same kind of \u0026ldquo;strange inversion of reasoning.\u0026rdquo; Dennett quotes Turing: \u0026ldquo;The behaviour of the computer [meaning a person] at any moment is determined by the symbols which he is observing and his \u0026lsquo;state of mind\u0026rsquo; at that moment,\u0026rdquo; noting that \u0026ldquo;state of mind\u0026rdquo; is in quotes because Turing\u0026rsquo;s showing a method by which no mental activity or understanding is actually required. Substituting into MacKenzie\u0026rsquo;s argument, we get \u0026ldquo;IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS.\u0026quot;\nCreationists and Mind-Creationists\nDennett observed that many people cannot abide Darwin, and we call them creationists. There are also people who can\u0026rsquo;t abide Turing, and he suggests we call them mind-creationists. (Steve Novella\u0026rsquo;s presentation at last year\u0026rsquo;s The Amazing Meeting, on \u0026ldquo;Dualism and Creationism,\u0026quot; drew this same analogy.) Dennett said that there are some people who can\u0026rsquo;t abide either\u0026ndash;including both Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel, referring to his paper \u0026ldquo;Public Education and Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo; in Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 36, no. 2. I think Dennett mischaracterizes Nagel\u0026rsquo;s position here\u0026ndash;Nagel is an atheist who thinks that we don\u0026rsquo;t have the full account of evolutionary theory, and who also thinks that if a god exists, there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to think science couldn\u0026rsquo;t study such a being and its effects. I agree with Nagel about that\u0026ndash;methodological naturalism could potentially find its own limits and suggest the existence of entities that operate independently of the laws of physics we\u0026rsquo;ve discovered. I think we\u0026rsquo;d end up just modifying our understanding of those laws and continuing to call the result \u0026ldquo;natural.\u0026rdquo; Jake Young, at the Pure Pedantry ScienceBlog, argues otherwise, defending Stephen J. Gould\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Nonoverlapping Magisteria\u0026rdquo; (NOMA), the view that science and religion are completely distinct subjects with no intersection, a view I find implausible unless religion is restricted to matters that are completely unobservable and have no causal consequences in the empirical world\u0026ndash;which is not the case for any actual religion that I\u0026rsquo;m aware of.\nA few of the \u0026ldquo;mind-creationists\u0026rdquo; Dennett pointed out were Jerry Fodor and John Searle. Another is Victor Reppert, author of C.S. Lewis\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, the main argument of which I criticized in a short paper (\u0026ldquo;Historical But Indistinguishable Differences: Some Notes on Victor Reppert\u0026rsquo;s Paper,\u0026rdquo; Philo vol. 2, no. 1, 1999, pp. 45-47). Reppert\u0026rsquo;s position is that Turing machines don\u0026rsquo;t actually do arithmetic, because they have no semantics, only syntax, and that you only get meaning through original intentionality of the sort that John Searle argues is an irreducible feature of the world. Computers only have semantics when we impute it to them. My argument was that if you have two possible worlds that are exactly alike, except that one was created by a top-down designer and one evolved, there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to say that one has semantics and the other one doesn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;how they got to the point at which they have creatures with internal representations that stand in the right causal relationships to the external world doesn\u0026rsquo;t make a difference to whether or not those representations actually refer and have meaning. [UPDATE (March 3, 2009): Victor Reppert says I\u0026rsquo;ve misdescribed his position and elaborates a bit at his own blog.]\nHunting for Skyhooks\nDennett observed that people\u0026rsquo;s issues with bubble-up theories of creation and design center around the fact that some designs seem to be too remarkable to have evolved. Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s notion of \u0026ldquo;irreducible complexity\u0026rdquo; is the idea that some structures require all of their parts in place to function at all, and cannot evolve step-by-step from a previous structure that doesn\u0026rsquo;t also have all of those parts. (The mistake there is that the previous structure may have some other function.) So those arguing for intelligent design have gone \u0026ldquo;hunting for skyhooks,\u0026rdquo; to try to find examples of design in nature that require a top-down designer\u0026rsquo;s intervening hand to bring into existence. Dennett observed that all of the hunting for skyhooks has failed to come up with any actual examples, but instead has resulted in multiple new discoveries of cranes. This is certainly true for the main examples of \u0026ldquo;irreducible complexity,\u0026rdquo; blood clotting systems and bacterial flagella. This has led to the quip, \u0026ldquo;evolution is cleverer than you are,\u0026rdquo; which Dennett discussed in the Q\u0026amp;A as \u0026ldquo;Orgel\u0026rsquo;s Second Rule.\u0026quot;\nAnother example Dennett gave was the discovery of motor proteins, which he showed using a clip from the film \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell,\u0026quot; produced by XVIVO for Harvard University. Dennett didn\u0026rsquo;t mention that this film was the subject of a controversy regarding the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026quot; pre-release versions of which used XVIVO footage without permission. Earlier still, intelligent design advocate William Dembski used an overdubbed version of their film in his lectures.\nThe Bubble-up Path\n\u0026ldquo;We are made of trillions of mindless little robots,\u0026rdquo; Dennett said, \u0026ldquo;but not a one of them knows who you are or cares.\u0026rdquo; But we do know, and we do care. How is that possible? The bubble-up view has to provide an explanation. Dennett provided some examples of how certain evolutionary changes in the past have created entirely new ways for evolution to proceed. His first example was one that was championed for years by Lynn Margulis to much resistance, but which has now become mainstream, which is the idea of a symbiotic origin for eukaryotes.\nFor the first 2.5 billion years of life, everything was prokaryotic\u0026ndash;single-celled organisms without a nucleus. But then, one form of single-celled organisms invaded another without destroying each other, and came to evolve together, forming eukaryotic life. Each of our cells has not only its own genome in the cell nucleus, but a separate genome in its mitochondria, which is inherited only from our mothers. This development allowed cells to become more complex and versatile, as well as allowed a division of labor that made multicellular life possible.\nThe Need-to-Know Principle\nDennett showed a video clip about the cuckoo (the link is to a different but similar one). The mother bird lays her egg in the nest of another bird, and removes one of the other bird\u0026rsquo;s eggs. The other bird is then surprised to find that one of its eggs\u0026ndash;the cuckoo\u0026rsquo;s egg\u0026ndash;hatches first, and the hatchling pushes the other eggs out of the nest. It seems evil, Dennett said, but \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t worry, the cuckoo chick doesn\u0026rsquo;t know what it does. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to know.\u0026quot;\nA principle something like the CIA\u0026rsquo;s need-to-know principle applies in evolution as a matter of thrift, but matters are often confused because biologists tend to attribute more understanding when explaining a feature of living things than actually exists. This, Dennett says, is partly a linguistic matter, because we don\u0026rsquo;t have a word for a \u0026ldquo;semi-understood quasi-representation\u0026rdquo; or a \u0026ldquo;hemi-semi-demi-understood quasi-representation.\u0026rdquo; But Turing does give us models of competence without comprehension.\nHe then showed a video of a New Caledonian crow trying to use a bit of metal wire to get a worm out of a glass beaker. The crow bends the wire around the glass to make it into a hook, then uses it to fish the worm out of the beaker. This was an example of a creature that goes a step beyond the cuckoo chick. Dennett cited the work of Ruth Millikan, noting that the crow is an example of an animal that represents its goals in the same system in which it represents its facts\u0026ndash;but not its reasons for those goals, which are produced by evolution and not represented within the organism.\nThe MacCready Explosion and Memes\nDennett observed that there has been about 3.5 billion years since the start of the whole tree of life, and only about 6 million years since the divergence of humans from chimps and bonobos, our closest hominid relatives. But a mere 10,000 years ago, as Paul MacCready pointed out, the total human population plus livestock and pets composed about a tenth of one percent of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass. Today, however, we consume 98% of it (most of which is cattle).\nThe Cambrian \u0026ldquo;explosion\u0026rdquo; in which multicellular life became dramatically more diversified took place over millions of years, while the \u0026ldquo;MacCready explosion\u0026rdquo; took place over a mere 500 generations, and the explanation is science and technology, communicated from parents to children not by biological evolution but through culture.\nHere Dennett gave an introduction to memes by analogy\u0026ndash;the cultural highway of transmission of ideas, once it exists, can be invaded by \u0026ldquo;rogue cultural variants,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;memes,\u0026rdquo; as Richard Dawkins originally called them They are vehicles of information, like viruses, that invade our brains.\nHe then paused for a \u0026ldquo;skeptical interlude\u0026rdquo; to address the question of what\u0026rsquo;s the evidence that memes even exist. He asked, \u0026ldquo;do you believe that words exist?\u0026rdquo; If so, then those are examples of a subset of memes, those that can be pronounced. (I\u0026rsquo;m not sure of the practical benefit of talk of memes as opposed to ideas, concepts, and language, but I\u0026rsquo;ll save commentary on that until I read the meme chapters in DDI.)\nSo, said Dennett, we are apes with \u0026ldquo;infected\u0026rdquo; brains, or, on analogy to prokaryotes/eukaryotes, we are \u0026ldquo;euprimates.\u0026rdquo; We carry with us virtual machines that give us new powers and versatility to bring organization of the world up another level.\nMind Tools\nDennett quoted one of his own students, Bo Dahlborn, who wrote, \u0026ldquo;Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there is not much thinking you can do with your bare brain.\u0026rdquo; We have conceptual tools and methods. At the very simplest level, there are words as tools, such as passwords or labels. Douglas Hofstadter\u0026rsquo;s I Am A Strange Loop identifies a bunch of phrases that are frequently used as tools for analogies, such as \u0026ldquo;wild goose chases,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;tackiness,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;loose cannons,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;feet of clay,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;feedback,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;slamdunks,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;lip service,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;elbow grease.\u0026rdquo; Dennett compared these to Java applets for the mind\u0026ndash;collections of information transmitted from one person to another that allow them to do something more.\nLong division is a more complex example. With a sufficiently well developed English (or other language) \u0026ldquo;virtual machine,\u0026rdquo; you can \u0026ldquo;download\u0026rdquo; the procedure in the form of mathematical instruction or from a book, to be able to perform the process. Cost-benefit analysis is a bigger, more complex set of tools learned in the same way.\nWhile some such tools have distinct authors, others have evolved. Language itself, money, and tonal music are examples of such mental tools that were not created at once by individual authors, but have evolved over time.\nWhat this implies for who we are is that we are not Cartesian egos with original intentionality, but \u0026ldquo;an alliance of hemi-semi-demi-understood virtual machines.\u0026quot;\nDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Trio\nDarwin proposed three types of selection. First, two types of selection where the selective force is human beings. 1. Methodical selection, or intentional artificial selection, where humans intentionally breed creatures for particular characteristics. 2. Unconscious selection, where humans simply preferred certain organisms to others, and helped those to reproduce\u0026ndash;such as in farming, and raising domestic animals. To those, Darwin added 3. Natural selection.\nNow we\u0026rsquo;ve also added 4. Genetic engineering.\nAnd the same categories can be applied to memes. There are original, synanthropic memes, those which live with us but are not domesticated, such as superstitions; these are analogous to memes created by natural selection. There are memes replicated by unconscious selection, such as differential replication of tunes based on how catchy they are. Dennett noted that the Germans call tunes that get stuck in your head \u0026ldquo;earworms.\u0026rdquo; And then there is methodical selection of domesticated memes, which would include science, literature, and calculus. Dennett compared calculus to laying hens, for which broodiness has been selected out\u0026ndash;you have to work hard to get it to reproduce.\nAnd to these categories we can add memetic engineering\u0026ndash;spin-doctoring, marketing, propaganda, etc.\nBootstrapping\nDennett asked, how do you draw a straight line? We use a straight edge. And how do we make straight edges? By drawing a line along a piece of metal with a straight edge, and cutting it. How do we get the first straight edge? He pointed to a book on the history of straight edges, and observed that over time we have gradually improved our technology for making straight edges, and can now measure far more precisely how we fall short in reaching the unattainable goal of a perfectly straight line. We can represent our goal, our reasons for achieving the goal, and the imperfections and errors in reaching that goal.\nHe suggested that the Platonic \u0026ldquo;form of the true\u0026rdquo; has a similar history, and that in science \u0026ldquo;memes have been selected for veridicality.\u0026quot;\nAt this point, we really do have the capacity for genuine top-down design.\nDennett concluded his talk (apart from the next section, which seemed more like an afterword) by stating that \u0026ldquo;What makes us human is not our genetic children, but our brainchildren. We\u0026rsquo;ve finally reached genuine intelligent design.\u0026quot;\nDarwin Fish\nDennett concluded his prepared lecture by pointing out that he was wearing a Darwin fish lapel pin. The physicist Murray Gell-Mann observed to Dennett that this was patterned after the Jesus fish, a fish symbol which contains the Greek word for fish, which was apparently the first acronym. The Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ stand for the Greek words for Jesus Christ, God\u0026rsquo;s Son, the Savior, said Gell-Mann. But what does \u0026ldquo;DARWIN\u0026rdquo; stand for?\nDennett took that as a challenge, and came up with a Latin expansion for \u0026ldquo;DARUUIN\u0026rdquo; (since there is no letter \u0026ldquo;W\u0026rdquo; in Latin):\nDelere\nAuctorem\nRerum\nUt Universum\nInfinitum\nNoscas\nThis translates into English as\nDestroy\nthe author\nof things\nin order to understand\nthe infinite\nuniverse\nI\u0026rsquo;m not too fond of this\u0026ndash;it confirms anti-evolutionists\u0026rsquo; worst fears of evolution, and refers to an \u0026ldquo;author of things\u0026rdquo; to be destroyed, as though there is one that exists, rather than a myth not to be believed. It\u0026rsquo;s clever, though.\nUPDATE (February 20, 2009):\nDennett then answered a few brief questions, and then signed a bunch of books. The first question (and the only one I\u0026rsquo;ll note) was what it was like to work with W.V. Quine, his mentor. Dennett said that he transferred to Harvard University as an undergraduate specifically to work with Quine, and that two of the most significant influences from Quine were the view that science and philosophy are significantly overlapping and parts of the same larger project, and that the quality of Quine\u0026rsquo;s writing (in contrast to his lecture style) was something to aspire to.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s well-spoken, entertaining, and thought-provoking, and I encourage you to hear him speak if you have the opportunity. I think that his views, like those of Richard Dawkins, argue that science and evolution in particular either imply or at least cohere better with or provide evidence for atheism. I don\u0026rsquo;t think there is a logical implication, and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure Dennett and Dawkins do, either\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s something that anti-evolutionist lawyer Phillip Johnson has argued, which I\u0026rsquo;ve critiqued at the talkorigins.org website, and which the views of Christian evolutionists like Kenneth Miller, Glenn Morton, and Mike Beidler contradict by their very existence. On the other hand, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure Miller\u0026rsquo;s position is coherent (I really should get around to writing a summary of last year\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference), and I reject the NOMA view that there is no overlap between the domains of religion and science and agree with Dennett\u0026rsquo;s and Quine\u0026rsquo;s views that there is significant overlap between science and philosophy (and history, for that matter).\nThe National Center for Science Education and many scientists argue for a sharp divide between science and philosophy, and between science and religion, and find cases like those made by Dawkins and Dennett (and P.Z. Myers) to be problematic, especially when it comes to the legal arena and the goal of keeping intelligent design and creationism out of the public schools (though public universities have more freedom). I think that this is ultimately due to a tension between the principles of separation of church and state, public education, and academic freedom, given that there is no sharp divide between the domains of science and religion (or science and philosophy). In my view, in any case where a religion makes an empirical claim, if there\u0026rsquo;s scientific evidence against that claim, it should be legitimate to discuss that scientific evidence in a public school classroom even if that has the primary effect of inhibiting (or promoting) religion (violating the second prong of the Lemon Test for measuring whether a government action is a violation of the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause). I consider it a flaw in the Lemon Test that people can always create new religions which attempt to turn secular ideas into religious content with the specific intent of turning government actions into church-state violations (e.g., creating a doctrine that paying taxes is a sin), as well as the fact that it provides an unwarranted immunity to criticism in the classroom for religious claims, even if they are empirically falsified or conceptually incoherent. (See the comments of this Ed Brayton post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars on the Summum monument case for some legal puzzles. BTW, Justice O\u0026rsquo;Connor argued for a either a different test in Lynch v. Donnelly, the \u0026ldquo;endorsement test,\u0026rdquo; which asks whether a reasonable person would conclude government is endorsing or disapproving religion from the action. This has sometimes been interpreted as a complement to the Lemon Test, and sometimes as a substitute for it. Judge Jones in the Dover case applied both the endorsement test and the Lemon Test, and argued that the Dover school district violated both, including all three prongs of Lemon.)\nAnother resolution is to finesse the issue by getting government out of the business of being a direct provider of education, and instead meet the goal of free public education by providing government funding and standards that include mandatory curriculum requirements that any school can exceed with content that expresses particular religious viewpoints. By providing a fixed amount of per-pupil funding and a mandatory minimum curriculum that doesn\u0026rsquo;t include religious content, those two items are tied together and anything beyond it would be considered provided at the school\u0026rsquo;s own expense, and thus not a church-state violation. In my view, more discussion and debate of religious claims at a younger age will yield better-educated adults (and probably more atheists). Ironically, it is western democracies without a strong history of separation of church and state where religion is weakest and acceptance of evolution is strongest.\nWithout finessing the problem like that or modifying the Lemon Test, views like those of Dennett and Dawkins must be excluded from public school classrooms along with creationism for the same reasons (to the extent that they express a religious viewpoint), and I think that ultimately the \u0026ldquo;exploring evolution\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; strategies of the creationists for getting critiques of evolution into the public school classrooms will succeed in passing constitutional muster. Ultimately, the reason their arguments should be excluded from science classrooms is not that they are religious, but that they are bad arguments, and there\u0026rsquo;s no constitutional provision prohibiting the establishment of bad arguments.\nEamon Knight (2009-02-19):\nSounds like the talk he gave at Carleton last week (no surprise). We got books signed ;-) and presented him with one of the Tree-of-Life T-shirts we were selling for the Beagle Project.\nJoshua Harwood (2009-02-19):\nI was also there. Happy you posted the notes, so now I don't have to do it (division of labor at work).However, it's only the second centennial of Darwin's birth, not the 200th. He's not that old yet.\nLippard (2009-02-20):\nthe.yangist: Happy to be of assistance, and thanks for the correction--that's what happens when I think \"bicentennial\" and \"200th birthday\" at the same time...\nEinzige (2009-02-22):\nThanks for the summary, Jim.The quote \"evolution is cleverer than you are\" reminds me of the corollary thought, \"the market is smarter than you\", and John Allen Paulos' remarks (in Irreligion) about how odd it is that the two sides of the American political spectrum can't seem to see their inherent similarity as spontaneously ordered complex systems.\nPerezoso (2009-03-03):\nLike his master Quine and other \"greedy reductionists\" he supposedly opposes, Dennett has a certain knack for lobotomizing the human subject, so-called, and saying so doesn't mean one thereby upholds religion of whatever sort. Darwinism works fine accounting for the evolution of mammals: not so well for Mozart.\nEinzige (2009-03-03):\nYou're saying that Mozart couldn't have evolved?\nPerezoso (2009-03-03):\nAh man, you never heard: great geniuses like WA Mozart are born--not made. Really, if you accept Dennett's deterministic, naturalist premises and his application of Darwin to human affairs, then you would probably approve of his discussions, and agree that Mozart was just a human-monkey, but more talented than most (how could that talent be measured--is a sonata a tool? Nyet) . I don't accept his premises, or at least not all of them, as outlined in DDI (and even some biologists objected to sections of DDI). Darwin/Lyell/Mendel, et al will do for the natural sciences. Were we to discuss Mozart or metaphysics (even to criticize it) the Darwinian context seems inappropriate. A Scriabin prelude is not a tool.\nEinzige (2009-03-04):\nIf I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that because we can create and appreciate beauty, we can't have evolved?\nPerezoso (2009-03-04):\nGuess you didn't understand the argument correctly. I don't deny Darwinian evolution, or most of what Dennett says. Darwinism is not a comforting doctrine, however: indeed rather nasty and brutal. Genetically, great white sharks have done much better than humans have. Dennett and Dawkins, however, offer this somewhat odd optimistic spin on Darwinism--the tool makers! Abrams tanks are tools too. Dennett's like the Al Gore of atheists. Dennett doesn't even address the sort of obvious, undergraduate philosophy points; doesn't Darwin mean no firm basis for something like Justice, Doc D. ? Why not be like wolves, and eat a child, Doc, especially since doing so might improve matters for the others? Imagine some gangsta daddy in the ASU audience: \"Why, given Darwinian-monkey principles applied to all human actions, Doc, don't we rob you in the parking lot after the lecture, take the money and feed our starving kids?? etc etc. There's no strong evidence for altruism in nature, either, contrary to some of the neo-ath's claims. Some species might cooperate--even wolves. Then Alpha wolf sees a big litter of pups and eats one or two. The real Darwinist, like Queequeg, sees the centuries of shark massacres, the wolf pack following the caribou, baboons fighting for harems, OR even inner city jungles etc. Dennett's like Darwinism for cafe liberals. Capiche? cool\nEinzige (2009-03-06):\nI confess to still not getting your point.You don't deny evolution, but you don't think humans are primates, or that we evolved from simpler forms?Why, given Darwinian-monkey principles applied to all human actions, Doc, don't we rob you in the parking lot after the lecture, take the money and feed our starving kids??Why don't you?\nPerezoso (2009-03-06):\nUsing little hypothetical questions ..\"why don't you? ...in an attempt to suggest some point, does not effective writing make, Herr Doktor Einzige.Let's put it another way: why not have Darwinian-business professors teach ASU students advanced white- collar crime, hacking, ID theft, securities fraud, etc? It would advance their interests financially, and thus most likely sexually, and genetically. Chicks dig rich wise guys.A Dennett could say little against that, especially if the Prof. was very good, and had succeeded. What's Justice, or crime, or \"ethics\" ? To a real Darwinist, the words are meaningless. So, without getting real metaphysical, I would suggest the real Darwinist must be an nihilist, except in cases where some type of \"ethics\" or Justice would provably advance his interests. Ergo, Al Caponay--not to say Hitler, Stalin, etc--just primates doing what they can to advance their genetic interests. THey are not \"evil\" but merely poorly conditioned--according to some (Stalin had a few kids, and plenty of mistresses, so really successful in Darwinian terms, regardless of a few million killed).\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nPerezoso: Dennett explicitly disclaims being a greedy reductionist, and would clearly disagree with your attempt to paint him as one. His whole project has always emphasized the importance of the intentional stance and higher levels of explanation. His position in _Freedom Evolves_ doesn't entail that justice, freedom, crime, or ethics are meaningless--they are constructed with cranes, not skyhooks, for Dennett, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.\nEinzige (2009-03-11):\nUsing little hypothetical questions ..\"why don't you? ...in an attempt to suggest some point, does not effective writing make, Herr Doktor Einzige.I'm forced to agree with you. Which is why my question was not a hypothetical in an attempt to \"suggest some point\", but it was in fact a serious question, expecting a serious answer from you. What is your moral guide? What stops you from robbing, raping, lying, and cheating? Implicit in your argument is a belief that you'd be better off if you did. So why don't you?I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the position of the nihilist, but I won't go so far as to believe that alienating people will make me better off. I'm confused, though, because this seems to be your argument.Also, as Jim alludes to, there are good reasons to think that an ethical sense evolved. Chicks may dig rich wise guys, but they also dig guys who aren't sociopaths.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/daniel-dennett-at-asu.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99may/images/9905billout.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 380px; height: 527px;\" src=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99may/images/9905billout.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLast night, Daniel Dennett gave the 2009 \u003ca href=\"http://beyond.asu.edu/\"\u003eBeyond Center\u003c/a\u003e lecture with a talk appropriate for the bicentennial of Charles Darwin\u0026rsquo;s birthday, titled \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  While not quite drawing the crowd that \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/richard-dawkins-lecture-at-asu.html\"\u003elast year\u0026rsquo;s lecture by Richard Dawkins\u003c/a\u003e did (3000 people at Gammage Auditorium), Dennett filled the 485-seat Galvin Playhouse and an overflow room was set up with a video link.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/calendar/9577645/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists Meetup group\u003c/a\u003e alone had about 57 members who attended.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe talk was videotaped by the Beyond Center, and what may be an unauthorized video \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9AF0B9A4041E3437\"\u003ehas been made available on YouTube\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSkyhooks and Cranes\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe content of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk was largely drawn from his book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea\u003c/span\u003e, and centered on the idea that Darwin brought about a change from thinking of the world as the product of top-down design to a recognition of apparent design as the result of bottom-up processes.  Dennett referred to the former as the \u0026ldquo;trickle-down theory of creation\u0026rdquo; and the latter as the \u0026ldquo;bubble-up theory of creation,\u0026rdquo; and used his \u0026ldquo;intuition pump\u0026rdquo; of skyhooks vs. cranes to make the point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Skyhooks\u0026rdquo; are explanations of design in terms of miraculous intervention by an entity which itself has no explanation, a deus ex machina.  Dennett illustrated that with the drawing above, a Guy Billout illustration titled \u0026ldquo;Deus ex Machina,\u0026rdquo; from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99may/9905billout.htm\"\u003eMay 1999 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  By contrast, \u0026ldquo;cranes\u0026rdquo; are built up from the ground to provide scaffolding for constructing new things.  The dome of the Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), depicted in Billout\u0026rsquo;s illustration, was a marvel of engineering by Filippo Brunelleschi, \u003ca href=\"http://www.obscure.org/%7Eperky/uofr/fall2002/ISYS203U/Duomo_Site/construction.html\"\u003ewhich used some innovative construction techniques\u003c/a\u003e to build something that many thought was not possible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Strange Inversion of Reasoning\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe title of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s talk came from a critique of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of natural selection by Robert Beverley MacKenzie in 1868, who wrote (as quoted by Dennett in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDDA\u003c/span\u003e, p. 65):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT.  This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin\u0026rsquo;s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo which Dennett\u0026rsquo;s response was:  \u0026ldquo;Exactly!\u0026rdquo;  He illustrated the point with an example that is now somewhat commonplace, the computer.  Dennett observed that prior to Alan Turing, \u0026ldquo;computers\u0026rdquo; referred to people who were hired to perform tasks that today are performed by mechanical devices with the same name.   In order to perform these functions, people had to understand arithmetic.  Dennett cited Turing\u0026rsquo;s 1936 paper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/turing_oncomputablenumbers_1936.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;On computable numbers, with an application to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEntscheidungsproblem\u003c/span\u003e\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), a demonstration that arithmetic computation is a specific case where, in fact, understanding is not required to perform the action\u0026ndash;another example of the same kind of \u0026ldquo;strange inversion of reasoning.\u0026rdquo;  Dennett quotes Turing: \u0026ldquo;The behaviour of the computer [meaning a person] at any moment is determined by the symbols which he is observing and his \u0026lsquo;state of mind\u0026rsquo; at that moment,\u0026rdquo; noting that \u0026ldquo;state of mind\u0026rdquo; is in quotes because Turing\u0026rsquo;s showing a method by which no mental activity or understanding is actually required.  Substituting into MacKenzie\u0026rsquo;s argument, we get \u0026ldquo;IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCreationists and Mind-Creationists\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett observed that many people cannot abide Darwin, and we call them creationists.  There are also people who can\u0026rsquo;t abide Turing, and he suggests we call them mind-creationists.  (Steve Novella\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epresentation at last year\u0026rsquo;s The Amazing Meeting, on \u0026ldquo;Dualism and Creationism,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e drew this same analogy.)  Dennett said that there are some people who can\u0026rsquo;t abide either\u0026ndash;including both Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel, referring to his paper \u003ca href=\"http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121376225/abstract\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Public Education and Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo; in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhilosophy and Public Affairs\u003c/span\u003e vol. 36, no. 2\u003c/a\u003e.  I think Dennett mischaracterizes Nagel\u0026rsquo;s position here\u0026ndash;Nagel is an atheist who thinks that we don\u0026rsquo;t have the full account of evolutionary theory, and who also thinks that if a god exists, there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to think science couldn\u0026rsquo;t study such a being and its effects.  I agree with Nagel about that\u0026ndash;methodological naturalism could potentially find its own limits and suggest the existence of entities that operate independently of the laws of physics we\u0026rsquo;ve discovered.  I think we\u0026rsquo;d end up just modifying our understanding of those laws and continuing to call the result \u0026ldquo;natural.\u0026rdquo;  Jake Young, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/09/thomas_nagel_on_id_and_evoluti.php\"\u003eat the Pure Pedantry ScienceBlog, argues otherwise, defending Stephen J. Gould\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Nonoverlapping Magisteria\u0026rdquo; (NOMA)\u003c/a\u003e, the view that science and religion are completely distinct subjects with no intersection, a view I find implausible unless religion is restricted to matters that are completely unobservable and have no causal consequences in the empirical world\u0026ndash;which is not the case for any actual religion that I\u0026rsquo;m aware of.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few of the \u0026ldquo;mind-creationists\u0026rdquo; Dennett pointed out were Jerry Fodor and John Searle.  Another is Victor Reppert, author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/C-S-Lewiss-Dangerous-Idea-Argument/dp/0830827323/jimlippardwebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eC.S. Lewis\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, the main argument of which I criticized in a short paper (\u0026ldquo;Historical But Indistinguishable Differences: Some Notes on Victor Reppert\u0026rsquo;s Paper,\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhilo\u003c/span\u003e vol. 2, no. 1, 1999, pp. 45-47).  Reppert\u0026rsquo;s position is that Turing machines don\u0026rsquo;t actually do arithmetic, because they have no semantics, only syntax, and that you only get meaning through original intentionality of the sort that John Searle argues is an irreducible feature of the world.  Computers only have semantics when we impute it to them.  My argument was that if you have two possible worlds that are exactly alike, except that one was created by a top-down designer and one evolved, there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to say that one has semantics and the other one doesn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;how they got to the point at which they have creatures with internal representations that stand in the right causal relationships to the external world doesn\u0026rsquo;t make a difference to whether or not those representations actually refer and have meaning.  [UPDATE (March 3, 2009): Victor Reppert says \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/03/lippard-blog-daniel-dennett-at-asu.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve misdescribed his position and elaborates a bit at his own blog\u003c/a\u003e.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHunting for Skyhooks\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett observed that people\u0026rsquo;s issues with bubble-up theories of creation and design center around the fact that some designs seem to be too remarkable to have evolved.  Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s notion of \u0026ldquo;irreducible complexity\u0026rdquo; is the idea that some structures require all of their parts in place to function at all, and cannot evolve step-by-step from a previous structure that doesn\u0026rsquo;t also have all of those parts.  (The mistake there is that the previous structure may have some other function.)  So those arguing for intelligent design have gone \u0026ldquo;hunting for skyhooks,\u0026rdquo; to try to find examples of design in nature that require a top-down designer\u0026rsquo;s intervening hand to bring into existence.  Dennett observed that all of the hunting for skyhooks has failed to come up with any actual examples, but instead has resulted in multiple new discoveries of cranes.  This is certainly true for the main examples of \u0026ldquo;irreducible complexity,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html\"\u003eblood clotting systems\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html\"\u003ebacterial flagella\u003c/a\u003e.  This has led to the quip, \u0026ldquo;evolution is cleverer than you are,\u0026rdquo; which Dennett discussed in the Q\u0026amp;A as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgel%27s_rule\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Orgel\u0026rsquo;s Second Rule.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother example Dennett gave was the discovery of motor proteins, which he showed using a clip from \u003ca href=\"http://www.xvivo.net/press/harvard_university.htm\"\u003ethe film \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e produced by XVIVO for Harvard University.  Dennett didn\u0026rsquo;t mention that this film \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/david-bolinsky-on-expelled-and-dembskis.html\"\u003ewas the subject of a controversy regarding the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e pre-release versions of which used XVIVO footage without permission.  Earlier still, intelligent design advocate William Dembski used an overdubbed version of their film in his lectures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Bubble-up Path\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;We are made of trillions of mindless little robots,\u0026rdquo; Dennett said, \u0026ldquo;but not a one of them knows who you are or cares.\u0026rdquo;  But we do know, and we do care.  How is that possible?  The bubble-up view has to provide an explanation.  Dennett provided some examples of how certain evolutionary changes in the past have created entirely new ways for evolution to proceed.  His first example was one that was championed for years by Lynn Margulis to much resistance, but which has now become mainstream, which is the idea of a symbiotic origin for eukaryotes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor the first 2.5 billion years of life, everything was prokaryotic\u0026ndash;single-celled organisms without a nucleus.  But then, one form of single-celled organisms invaded another without destroying each other, and came to evolve together, forming eukaryotic life.  Each of our cells has not only its own genome in the cell nucleus, but a separate genome in its mitochondria, which is inherited only from our mothers.  This development allowed cells to become more complex and versatile, as well as allowed a division of labor that made multicellular life possible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Need-to-Know Principle\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett showed \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbvDQjhO9nY\"\u003ea video clip about the cuckoo\u003c/a\u003e (the link is to a different but similar one).  The mother bird lays her egg in the nest of another bird, and removes one of the other bird\u0026rsquo;s eggs.  The other bird is then surprised to find that one of its eggs\u0026ndash;the cuckoo\u0026rsquo;s egg\u0026ndash;hatches first, and the hatchling pushes the other eggs out of the nest.  It seems evil, Dennett said, but \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t worry, the cuckoo chick doesn\u0026rsquo;t know what it does.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to know.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA principle something like the CIA\u0026rsquo;s need-to-know principle applies in evolution as a matter of thrift, but matters are often confused because biologists tend to attribute more understanding when explaining a feature of living things than actually exists.  This, Dennett says, is partly a linguistic matter, because we don\u0026rsquo;t have a word for a \u0026ldquo;semi-understood quasi-representation\u0026rdquo; or a \u0026ldquo;hemi-semi-demi-understood quasi-representation.\u0026rdquo;  But Turing does give us models of competence without comprehension.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then showed \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg\"\u003ea video of a New Caledonian crow\u003c/a\u003e trying to use a bit of metal wire to get a worm out of a glass beaker.  The crow bends the wire around the glass to make it into a hook, then uses it to fish the worm out of the beaker.  This was an example of a creature that goes a step beyond the cuckoo chick.  Dennett cited the work of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Millikan\"\u003eRuth Millikan\u003c/a\u003e, noting that the crow is an example of an animal that represents its goals in the same system in which it represents its facts\u0026ndash;but not its reasons for those goals, which are produced by evolution and not represented within the organism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe MacCready Explosion and Memes\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett observed that there has been about 3.5 billion years since the start of the whole tree of life, and only about 6 million years since the divergence of humans from chimps and bonobos, our closest hominid relatives.  But a mere 10,000 years ago, as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_MacCready\"\u003ePaul MacCready\u003c/a\u003e pointed out, the total human population plus livestock and pets composed about a tenth of one percent of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass.  Today, however, we consume 98% of it (most of which is cattle).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Cambrian \u0026ldquo;explosion\u0026rdquo; in which multicellular life became dramatically more diversified took place over millions of years, while the \u0026ldquo;MacCready explosion\u0026rdquo; took place over a mere 500 generations, and the explanation is science and technology, communicated from parents to children not by biological evolution but through culture.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere Dennett gave an introduction to memes by analogy\u0026ndash;the cultural highway of transmission of ideas, once it exists, can be invaded by \u0026ldquo;rogue cultural variants,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;memes,\u0026rdquo; as Richard Dawkins originally called them  They are vehicles of information, like viruses, that invade our brains.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then paused for a \u0026ldquo;skeptical interlude\u0026rdquo; to address the question of what\u0026rsquo;s the evidence that memes even exist.  He asked, \u0026ldquo;do you believe that words exist?\u0026rdquo;  If so, then those are examples of a subset of memes, those that can be pronounced.  (I\u0026rsquo;m not sure of the practical benefit of talk of memes as opposed to ideas, concepts, and language, but I\u0026rsquo;ll save commentary on that until I read the meme chapters in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDDI\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo, said Dennett, we are apes with \u0026ldquo;infected\u0026rdquo; brains, or, on analogy to prokaryotes/eukaryotes, we are \u0026ldquo;euprimates.\u0026rdquo;  We carry with us virtual machines that give us new powers and versatility to bring organization of the world up another level.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMind Tools\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett quoted one of his own students, Bo Dahlborn, who wrote, \u0026ldquo;Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there is not much thinking you can do with your bare brain.\u0026rdquo;  We have conceptual tools and methods.  At the very simplest level, there are words as tools, such as passwords or labels.  Douglas Hofstadter\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI Am A Strange Loop\u003c/span\u003e identifies a bunch of phrases that are frequently used as tools for analogies, such as \u0026ldquo;wild goose chases,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;tackiness,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;loose cannons,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;feet of clay,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;feedback,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;slamdunks,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;lip service,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;elbow grease.\u0026rdquo;  Dennett compared these to Java applets for the mind\u0026ndash;collections of information transmitted from one person to another that allow them to do something more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLong division is a more complex example.  With a sufficiently well developed English (or other language) \u0026ldquo;virtual machine,\u0026rdquo; you can \u0026ldquo;download\u0026rdquo; the procedure in the form of mathematical instruction or from a book, to be able to perform the process.  Cost-benefit analysis is a bigger, more complex set of tools learned in the same way.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile some such tools have distinct authors, others have evolved.  Language itself, money, and tonal music are examples of such mental tools that were not created at once by individual authors, but have evolved over time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat this implies for who we are is that we are not Cartesian egos with original intentionality, but \u0026ldquo;an alliance of hemi-semi-demi-understood virtual machines.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Trio\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDarwin proposed three types of selection.  First, two types of selection where the selective force is human beings.  1.  Methodical selection, or intentional artificial selection, where humans intentionally breed creatures for particular characteristics.  2.  Unconscious selection, where humans simply preferred certain organisms to others, and helped those to reproduce\u0026ndash;such as in farming, and raising domestic animals.  To those, Darwin added 3. Natural selection.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow we\u0026rsquo;ve also added 4. Genetic engineering.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the same categories can be applied to memes.  There are original, synanthropic memes, those which live with us but are not domesticated, such as superstitions; these are analogous to memes created by natural selection.  There are memes replicated by unconscious selection, such as differential replication of tunes based on how catchy they are.  Dennett noted that the Germans call tunes that get stuck in your head \u0026ldquo;earworms.\u0026rdquo;  And then there is methodical selection of domesticated memes, which would include science, literature, and calculus.  Dennett compared calculus to laying hens, for which broodiness has been selected out\u0026ndash;you have to work hard to get it to reproduce.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd to these categories we can add memetic engineering\u0026ndash;spin-doctoring, marketing, propaganda, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBootstrapping\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett asked, how do you draw a straight line?  We use a straight edge.  And how do we make straight edges?  By drawing a line along a piece of metal with a straight edge, and cutting it.  How do we get the first straight edge?  He pointed to a book on the history of straight edges, and observed that over time we have gradually improved our technology for making straight edges, and can now measure far more precisely how we fall short in reaching the unattainable goal of a perfectly straight line.  We can represent our goal, our reasons for achieving the goal, and the imperfections and errors in reaching that goal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe suggested that the Platonic \u0026ldquo;form of the true\u0026rdquo; has a similar history, and that in science \u0026ldquo;memes have been selected for veridicality.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, we really do have the capacity for genuine top-down design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett concluded his talk (apart from the next section, which seemed more like an afterword) by stating that \u0026ldquo;What makes us human is not our genetic children, but our brainchildren.  We\u0026rsquo;ve finally reached genuine intelligent design.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDarwin Fish\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett concluded his prepared lecture by pointing out that he was wearing a Darwin fish lapel pin.  The physicist Murray Gell-Mann observed to Dennett that this was patterned after the Jesus fish, a fish symbol which contains the Greek word for fish, which was apparently the first acronym.  The Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ stand for the Greek words for Jesus Christ, God\u0026rsquo;s Son, the Savior, said Gell-Mann.  But what does \u0026ldquo;DARWIN\u0026rdquo; stand for?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett took that as a challenge, and came up with a Latin expansion for \u0026ldquo;DARUUIN\u0026rdquo; (since there is no letter \u0026ldquo;W\u0026rdquo; in Latin):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDelere\u003cbr /\u003eAuctorem\u003cbr /\u003eRerum\u003cbr /\u003eUt Universum\u003cbr /\u003eInfinitum\u003cbr /\u003eNoscas\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis translates into English as\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDestroy\u003cbr /\u003ethe author\u003cbr /\u003eof things\u003cbr /\u003ein order to understand\u003cbr /\u003ethe infinite\u003cbr /\u003euniverse\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not too fond of this\u0026ndash;it confirms anti-evolutionists\u0026rsquo; worst fears of evolution, and refers to an \u0026ldquo;author of things\u0026rdquo; to be destroyed, as though there is one that exists, rather than a myth not to be believed.  It\u0026rsquo;s clever, though.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 20, 2009):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDennett then answered a few brief questions, and then signed a bunch of books.  The first question (and the only one I\u0026rsquo;ll note) was what it was like to work with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine\"\u003eW.V. Quine\u003c/a\u003e, his mentor.  Dennett said that he transferred to Harvard University as an undergraduate specifically to work with Quine, and that two of the most significant influences from Quine were the view that science and philosophy are significantly overlapping and parts of the same larger project, and that the quality of Quine\u0026rsquo;s writing (in contrast to his lecture style) was something to aspire to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s well-spoken, entertaining, and thought-provoking, and I encourage you to hear him speak if you have the opportunity.  I think that his views, like those of Richard Dawkins, argue that science and evolution in particular either imply or at least cohere better with or provide evidence for atheism.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think there is a logical implication, and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure Dennett and Dawkins do, either\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s something that anti-evolutionist lawyer Phillip Johnson has argued, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/johnson.html\"\u003ewhich I\u0026rsquo;ve critiqued at the talkorigins.org website\u003c/a\u003e, and which the views of Christian evolutionists like \u003ca href=\"http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/\"\u003eKenneth Miller\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm\"\u003eGlenn Morton\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/creation-of-evolutionist.html\"\u003eMike Beidler\u003c/a\u003e contradict by their very existence.  On the other hand, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure Miller\u0026rsquo;s position is coherent (I really should get around to writing a summary of last year\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference), and I reject the NOMA view that there is no overlap between the domains of religion and science and agree with Dennett\u0026rsquo;s and Quine\u0026rsquo;s views that there is significant overlap between science and philosophy (and history, for that matter).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe National Center for Science Education and many scientists argue for a sharp divide between science and philosophy, and between science and religion, and find cases like those made by Dawkins and Dennett (and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e) to be problematic, especially when it comes to the legal arena and the goal of keeping intelligent design and creationism out of the public schools (though public universities have more freedom).  I think that this is ultimately due to a tension between the principles of separation of church and state, public education, and academic freedom, given that there is no sharp divide between the domains of science and religion (or science and philosophy).   In my view, in any case where a religion makes an empirical claim, if there\u0026rsquo;s scientific evidence against that claim, it should be legitimate to discuss that scientific evidence in a public school classroom even if that has the primary effect of inhibiting (or promoting) religion (violating the second prong of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_v._Kurtzman#Lemon_test\"\u003eLemon Test\u003c/a\u003e for measuring whether a government action is a violation of the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause).  I consider it a flaw in the Lemon Test that people can always create new religions which attempt to turn secular ideas into religious content with the specific intent of turning government actions into church-state violations (e.g., creating a doctrine that paying taxes is a sin), as well as the fact that it provides an unwarranted immunity to criticism in the classroom for religious claims, even if they are empirically falsified or conceptually incoherent.  (See the comments of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/11/oral_argument_in_summum_case.php\"\u003ethis Ed Brayton post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars on the Summum monument case\u003c/a\u003e for some legal puzzles. BTW, Justice O\u0026rsquo;Connor argued for a either \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsement_test\"\u003ea different test in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLynch v. Donnelly\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;endorsement test,\u0026rdquo; which asks whether a reasonable person would conclude government is endorsing or disapproving religion from the action.  This has sometimes been interpreted as a complement to the Lemon Test, and sometimes as a substitute for it.  Judge Jones in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDover\u003c/span\u003e case applied both the endorsement test and the Lemon Test, and argued that the Dover school district violated both, including all three prongs of Lemon.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother resolution is to finesse the issue by getting government out of the business of being a direct provider of education, and instead meet the goal of free public education by providing government funding and standards that include mandatory curriculum requirements that any school can exceed with content that expresses particular religious viewpoints.  By providing a fixed amount of per-pupil funding and a mandatory minimum curriculum that doesn\u0026rsquo;t include religious content, those two items are tied together and anything beyond it would be considered provided at the school\u0026rsquo;s own expense, and thus not a church-state violation.  In my view, more discussion and debate of religious claims at a younger age will yield better-educated adults (and probably more atheists).  Ironically, it is \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/us-acceptance-of-evolution-ranks-us-33.html\"\u003ewestern democracies without a strong history of separation of church and state where religion is weakest and acceptance of evolution is strongest\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWithout finessing the problem like that or modifying the Lemon Test, views like those of Dennett and Dawkins must be excluded from public school classrooms along with creationism for the same reasons (to the extent that they express a religious viewpoint), and I think that ultimately the \u0026ldquo;exploring evolution\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; strategies of the creationists for getting critiques of evolution into the public school classrooms will succeed in passing constitutional muster.  Ultimately, the reason their arguments should be excluded from science classrooms is not that they are religious, but that they are bad arguments, and there\u0026rsquo;s no constitutional provision prohibiting the establishment of bad arguments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daniel Dennett at ASU"},{"content":"I recently wrote about how Chase Bank\u0026rsquo;s inflexible systems just cost it money by not allowing me to make a $100 payment to my mortgage account to make up an erroneous underpayment. Instead, I had to make an entire additional payment, depriving them of a significant amount of future interest.\nIn January, I received an offer from Chase Bank to open a checking account with them, with a minimum deposit of $100. After I set up direct deposit, within ten business days of the first deposit they would deposit $125, which would be mine to keep so long as I left the account open and receiving direct deposits for at least six months.\nI asked an online banker whether there was any minimum amount that had to be direct deposited, and was told no. I decided to set up the account in person at a branch near my office, and again asked whether there was any minimum direct deposit. The banker told me no, there was no minimum\u0026ndash;if I wanted to deposit only $1 per paycheck, that would be fine.\nAs I have no interest in using Chase Bank as my primary bank\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m quite happy with a regional bank that is one of the top-rated places to work in the country and has demonstrated reliability to me repeatedly over several decades\u0026ndash;I decided to maximize my return on this otherwise non-interest-earning account by minimizing my deposits. My employer provides a convenient way for me to control my own direct deposits into up to three different banks, so I added a new direct deposit of $0.01 per paycheck into my new Chase Bank account.\nThe first $0.01 went in on January 15. On January 30, no $125 had been deposited, so I sent an online email inquiry asking when I could expect to see it. A response a couple days later told me I needed to call in to get an answer to my question, so I dialed the toll-free number, waited on hold, and finally got to a person who told me I needed to wait four to six weeks after the first direct deposit.\nMy second $0.01 went in on January 30. My third $0.01 went in on February 13. Still no $125.\nToday, I got another $125 offer from Chase Bank, which prompted me to dig up my application materials and see that they promised my $125 would be deposited within ten business days, not four to six weeks. So I called and left a message for the banker at my branch, I sent another online inquiry asking whether Chase Bank is going to remedy its failure to honor its offer, and called in to the toll-free number again. I described the issue to my \u0026ldquo;telephone banker,\u0026rdquo; and he asked for my account information. When he brought up my account, he asked if the $0.01 deposits were pre-authorizations for direct deposit, and I told him no, those are the deposits\u0026ndash;I was told multiple times that there was no minimum deposit, and there is nothing in the written offer that mentions a minimum deposit. He was unable to solve the problem, and said he would have to send it to be researched, and I would hear back within a couple of days.\nIf they didn\u0026rsquo;t want to honor the offer, they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have made it in the first place. By failing to live up to it, they\u0026rsquo;re costing themselves even more money. It\u0026rsquo;s surprising to me that this is probably the strongest of the major banks in the U.S., and the least likely of the majors to end up costing the U.S. Treasury money in the long run from the TARP\u0026rsquo;s preferred investments ($25 billion put into Chase so far).\nUPDATE (February 18, 2009): I received a voice mail from Chase Bank stating that the promised $125 will be deposited into my account within the next two weeks. My real-life banker left me a voice mail saying that the issue was that their system doesn\u0026rsquo;t automatically count direct deposits for issuing an award if they are less than $1. So they do intend to honor their offer, it will just take longer since I used the system in a way they apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t anticipate (or did anticipate with the same reasoning companies use with rebates).\nUPDATE (February 25, 2009): My $125 was deposited yesterday.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2009-03-03):\nYay!The fuckers.\nAlessandro Machi (2009-07-21):\nPeople are protesting. CONSUMERS to lose 100 MILLION to 1 BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH BECAUSE OF CHASE BANK'S RAISE IN THE MONTHLY MINIMUM PAYMENT ON LOW INTEREST CREDIT CARDS.\nDaily-PROTEST.com\nBLOGGERS AGAINST CHASE BANK.com\nChangeinTerms.com\nCREDIT CARD COMPANIES ME FIRST AGENDA IS CAUSING SOME STATES SERIOUS FINANCIAL LOSSES.\nOVER ONE THOUSANDS LETTERS OF FEAR AND LOATHING AGAINST CHASE BANK IN LESS THAN 3 MONTHS AT CONSUMER AFFAIRS DOT ORG.\nChase BANK SUED FOR FREEZING HOME EQUITY LINES.\nJamie Dimon's Competence Called into Question by John Kay.\nIt has been said of CE of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon (who does not have a banking qualification), that his dominance exists because at every meeting all the participants know that he could do each of their jobs better than they could. But the business world cannot operate at all if it can operate only with individuals of the calibre of Dimon. \u0026ndash;John Kay\nswalston (2009-07-29):\nI have banking with WAMU for over 6 years and ever since Chase bought out WAMU I have had nothing but trouble. In Feb. 2009 they raised my credit card APR from 12% to 28% (and gave a lame excuse when I questioned it) there solution was if I don\u0026#39;t like it pay it off and close the account. As of two days ago, THEY closed my account. I have never been late on a payment and always paid more than my minimum. I hope Karma comes around ant bites Chase in the a** for the disrespect they show their long time customers. I am taking my banking needs elsewhere (I also have two checking and a savings acoont). Bye-Bye Chase. Keep \u0026quot;Chasing\u0026quot; your customers away.\nJohn Anthony (2010-07-27):\nYou had said, \u0026quot;If they didn\u0026#39;t want to honor the offer, they shouldn\u0026#39;t have made it in the first place. By failing to live up to it, they\u0026#39;re costing themselves even more money.\u0026quot; First of all, if you never intended to use Chase as a primary bank, and if Chase realized you were gaming the system, for Chase bank to do anything but not to reward your behavior would lose them money.\nOn the other hand, if you were talking about Chase's dishonesty losing business, I'm certain that Chase will surely lose substantial profits that all those monthly $.01 direct deposits they would miss out on. Though as far as those individuals will direct deposits greater than $.01, which arguably would be the vast majority of their prospective business, this incident will hardly be noticed.\nAnyway, I honestly cannot decide which is more, as you put it, \u0026quot;stupid,\u0026quot; the deals that Chase is making or the expectation that Chase eagerly honors those offers for a $.01 per month direct deposit.\nNo offense is intended, but we must be rational thinking individuals.\nAlessandro Machi (2017-06-05):\nI think I have to agree with Antonio J. Romero III. Why would you demand Chase Bank honor a bad deal that causes them to lose money? For me the issue is Why didn\u0026#39;t Chase Bank honor a GOOD DEAL for customers when they pulled the rug out from possibly a million customers who had low interest rate, life of the loan credit card balance transfer offers rescinded after they had been consummated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/chase-bank-makes-stupid-offers-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI recently wrote about how Chase Bank\u0026rsquo;s inflexible systems just cost it money by not allowing me to make a $100 payment to my mortgage account to make up an erroneous underpayment.  Instead, I had to make an entire additional payment, depriving them of a significant amount of future interest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn January, I received an offer from Chase Bank to open a checking account with them, with a minimum deposit of $100.  After I set up direct deposit, within ten business days of the first deposit they would deposit $125, which would be mine to keep so long as I left the account open and receiving direct deposits for at least six months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI asked an online banker whether there was any minimum amount that had to be direct deposited, and was told no.  I decided to set up the account in person at a branch near my office, and again asked whether there was any minimum direct deposit.  The banker told me no, there was no minimum\u0026ndash;if I wanted to deposit only $1 per paycheck, that would be fine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs I have no interest in using Chase Bank as my primary bank\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m quite happy with a regional bank that is one of the top-rated places to work in the country and has demonstrated reliability to me repeatedly over several decades\u0026ndash;I decided to maximize my return on this otherwise non-interest-earning account by minimizing my deposits.  My employer provides a convenient way for me to control my own direct deposits into up to three different banks, so I added a new direct deposit of $0.01 per paycheck into my new Chase Bank account.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first $0.01 went in on January 15.  On January 30, no $125 had been deposited, so I sent an online email inquiry asking when I could expect to see it.  A response a couple days later told me I needed to call in to get an answer to my question, so I dialed the toll-free number, waited on hold, and finally got to a person who told me I needed to wait four to six weeks after the first direct deposit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy second $0.01 went in on January 30.  My third $0.01 went in on February 13.  Still no $125.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday, I got another $125 offer from Chase Bank, which prompted me to dig up my application materials and see that they promised my $125 would be deposited within ten business days, not four to six weeks.  So I called and left a message for the banker at my branch, I sent another online inquiry asking whether Chase Bank is going to remedy its failure to honor its offer, and called in to the toll-free number again.  I described the issue to my \u0026ldquo;telephone banker,\u0026rdquo; and he asked for my account information.  When he brought up my account, he asked if the $0.01 deposits were pre-authorizations for direct deposit, and I told him no, those are the deposits\u0026ndash;I was told multiple times that there was no minimum deposit, and there is nothing in the written offer that mentions a minimum deposit.  He was unable to solve the problem, and said he would have to send it to be researched, and I would hear back within a couple of days.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf they didn\u0026rsquo;t want to honor the offer, they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have made it in the first place.  By failing to live up to it, they\u0026rsquo;re costing themselves even more money.  It\u0026rsquo;s surprising to me that this is probably the strongest of the major banks in the U.S., and the least likely of the majors to end up costing the U.S. Treasury money in the long run from the TARP\u0026rsquo;s preferred investments ($25 billion put into Chase so far).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 18, 2009): I received a voice mail from Chase Bank stating that the promised $125 will be deposited into my account within the next two weeks.  My real-life banker left me a voice mail saying that the issue was that their system doesn\u0026rsquo;t automatically count direct deposits for issuing an award if they are less than $1.  So they do intend to honor their offer, it will just take longer since I used the system in a way they apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t anticipate (or did anticipate with the same reasoning companies use with rebates).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 25, 2009): My $125 was deposited yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chase Bank makes stupid offers, and loses money by failing to live up to them"},{"content":"The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis to settle their dispute with private arbitration, the outcome sought by Answers in Genesis and affirming the trial court\u0026rsquo;s ruling. CMI had hoped to force the U.S. dispute into the Australian courts, where a second lawsuit is ongoing and has its next hearing in April. This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States.\nThe court\u0026rsquo;s decision is here (PDF).\nIt appears to me that CMI is going to be held to the agreements that its previous board of directors signed, however foolish, irresponsible, or unethical it was of them to do so. As those previous board members resigned in return for indemnification, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me that CMI is likely to obtain any remedy for the wrongs it alleges have occurred. It looks like AiG operated within the bounds of the law in its actions.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-18):\nSince AiG is evidently taking the view that whatever is legal is moral, one wonders if they can any longer write credibly against legal things they disagree with, e.g. abortion, for example, without blatant hypocrisy.\nImTheNana (2009-02-19):\nYou wrote: \"This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States.\"The district court \"declined to issue a foreign antisuit injunction to halt the Australian litigation\", and the Federal court \"affirm[ed] the judgment of the district court in its entirety\", stating the lower court \"did not abuse its discretion in declining to issue an antisuit injunction based upon the facts as they now stand\".If I understand correctly, then AIG could still be held accountable in Australia.\nLippard (2009-02-19):\nMrs: That is correct, the court declined \"to issue a foreign anti-suit injunction,\" but the decision also says that \"Should the status of the Australian litigation [currently suspended] change following the issuance of our opinion, AiG may renew its motion for an injunction before the district court. At that time, the district court may apply the Gau Shan factors to the then-present facts and make a new determination\" (p. 17). See the bottom of p. 16 for a quick summary of those factors (in general, not in this particular case); the suggestion is that if CMI is using the Australian venue in \"attempting to evade [an] important public policy of this forum,\" then such an injunction could be issued. The court declines to speculate on the details.\nNathan Zamprogno (2009-04-13):\nThis URL:http://creation.com/dispute-settledclaims that the dispute has now been settled. CMI's uncharacteristic terseness in this announcement strongly suggests that one of the clauses was an ultimatum to \"shut up\". If so, the continued presence of a number of documents at AiG's version of the \"dispute\" website (and which AiG pointed many supporters to as presenting \"their side\"):http://66.42.196.216:50050/is worth remarking on.This announcement is irrelevant. There is no way that the personal animosity between Carl Wieland and Ken Ham is likely to have abated, and the conduct of both sides over the last four years has done immeasurable harm to the reputation of both organisations.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-tells-aig.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/471/story/693927.html\"\u003ehas ordered Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis to settle their dispute with private arbitration\u003c/a\u003e, the outcome sought by Answers in Genesis and affirming the trial court\u0026rsquo;s ruling.  CMI had hoped to force the U.S. dispute into the Australian courts, where a second lawsuit is ongoing and has its next hearing in April.  This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe court\u0026rsquo;s decision is \u003ca href=\"http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/09a0055p-06.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt appears to me that CMI is going to be held to the agreements that its previous board of directors signed, however foolish, irresponsible, or unethical it was of them to do so.  As those previous board members resigned in return for indemnification, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me that CMI is likely to obtain any remedy for the wrongs it alleges have occurred.  It looks like AiG operated within the bounds of the law in its actions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"6th Circuit Court of Appeals tells AiG and CMI to go to arbitration"},{"content":"This black unneutered male Cocker Spaniel came up to us at around 11th St. and Caldwell while we were walking our dogs. There were some people nearby, and we asked if this was their dog, and they said no, so we brought him home and called Animal Care \u0026amp; Control.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s wearing a spiked collar with no tags and looks like he\u0026rsquo;s been wandering the streets for a couple of days or so. He was very tired and thirsty.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve put his picture and description up on Pets911.com.\nMisanthrope (2009-02-14):\nAre you some kind of stray dog magnet or is the neighborhood full of irresponsible pet owners? I walk my dogs 2 miles almost every day and I see maybe 1 dog a year running loose.\nLippard (2009-02-14):\nThere are several factors at play here, and irresponsible pet owners is certainly a large part.We've always seen quite a few strays in this neighborhood, and they tend to be unneutered males with either collars but no tags, or no collars at all. Our past rate of finding and catching strays has been about 5 or 6 per year, with another 2 or so getting away. This year the rate is already more than double the usual, likely due to people abandoning their pets when their homes are foreclosed upon. There are lots of bank-owned empty homes on the street where we found this dog and in the surrounding area.Maricopa County Animal Care and Control also changed its policies so that their officers no longer will pick up loose strays nor even respond to calls about loose strays--they'll only come and take a dog if somebody has the stray in their possession and is present when they arrive to make the handoff.Like you, we walk our dogs about two miles each day, often up and down the Highline Canal, which is a place where a stray dog can find water.We also live in a neighborhood with a large lower-income Hispanic population, many of whom seem to have Mexican cultural attitudes towards dogs--no neutering, vaccination, or licensing, and letting the dogs run loose.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/our-third-stray-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/cocker4.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/cocker4.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302451397334584994\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThis black unneutered male Cocker Spaniel came up to us at around 11th St. and Caldwell while we were walking our dogs.  There were some people nearby, and we asked if this was their dog, and they said no, so we brought him home and called Animal Care \u0026amp; Control.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s wearing a spiked collar with no tags and looks like he\u0026rsquo;s been wandering the streets for a couple of days or so.  He was very tired and thirsty.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve put his picture and description up on Pets911.com.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our third stray of 2009"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:\nEpisode 014 Atheism and Sucker-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Intro from Vocab Malone \u0026lsquo;Lean Back- But think\u0026rsquo;, Guest Shawn from the Tough Questions Podcast and http://www.youtube.com/user/azsuperman01 and Josh, Religion and the Workplace, Outro Music from Greydon Square- CPT TheoremComments:\nI wish people would stop saying that you can\u0026rsquo;t prove a negative. You can. (Also see this.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/apostaz-podcast-14.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is now available:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz014.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz014.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 014\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Sucker-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/\"\u003emeetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Intro from Vocab Malone \u0026lsquo;Lean Back- But think\u0026rsquo;, Guest Shawn from the \u003ca href=\"http://toughquestionspodcast.com/\"\u003eTough Questions Podcast\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/azsuperman01\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/azsuperman01\"\u003ehttp://www.youtube.com/user/azsuperman01\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and Josh, Religion and the Workplace, Outro Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem\u003c/blockquote\u003eComments:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wish people would stop saying that you can\u0026rsquo;t prove a negative.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/debiak.html\"\u003eYou can\u003c/a\u003e.  (Also see \u003ca href=\"http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articles/proveanegative.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #14"},{"content":"So much for change.\nABC News:\nThe Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.\nThe case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured.\nNew York Times:\nDuring the campaign, Mr. Obama harshly criticized the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees, and he has broken with that administration on questions like whether to keep open the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But a government lawyer, Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. “Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.\n“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.\nJudge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”\nOnce more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.\nThe Telegraph:\nMr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year. Two High Court judges last week said they wanted to release the full contents of a CIA file on his treatment but they held back seven paragraphs of information after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, argued that it could compromise intelligence sharing with the US. A British official, who is regularly briefed on intelligence operations, said: \u0026ldquo;The concern was that the document revealed that intelligence from the British agencies was used by the Americans and that there were British questions asked while Binyam Mohamed was being tortured. \u0026ldquo;Miliband is being pushed hard by the intelligence agencies to protect the identity of those involved.\u0026rdquo; The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed\u0026rsquo;s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, \u0026ldquo;is very far down the list of things they did,\u0026rdquo; the official said. (Via the Volokh Conspiracy).\nGlenn Greenwald writes of this that \u0026ldquo;Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability\u0026ndash;resoundingly and disgracefully.\u0026quot;\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nOf course he backs such. Just as one supposes members of either party or most any ideology (besides some Dutch Stoner hippy dippy shit-for-brains groupie) would also. Just as I anticipate Obama, regardless of my disdain for his hot air and jabber on most issues and his egalitarian twaddle, would also seem to support:A) BreathingB) EatingC) Sleeping.The security of this nation is a more stable feature, and depsite the murmbers on PMSNMC to the effect of Kum Ba Ya and holding hands and a Rodney Kingish smirk about getting along, the fact is that this area is, shall we say, less malleable than economic policy.Either we defend ourselves.Or we don't.After all the slush and gush--those remain the only valid options.Perhaps then, the morons who placed the Messiah in office on Hopey Changemass crapola would prefer that Obama did NOT defer to the magical realm called \"reality\"--and instead reverted, ever so liberally--back to the Cloud Cuckooland Alice in Wonderland realm where Islamists get to have their Koran's and special feast meats handed to them on platters, with white gloves. Literally. That's the winning ticket! Pay homage to Islamist paranoia's and psychopathies, and offer them literal kid glove treatment on par with how the London Times is offered to His Lordship on Downing Street?Obama is a marxian warlord steeped in radicalism, to be sure. And the path to Euro style milkwater socialism that will in the very end be our undoing is on the way.However, giving credit where due, I'd say that once he scanned the intel reports over coffee and Marlboro lights one morning, his Harvard brain kicked in and realized that the lords of terror can get some handy handling once in a while on the side under cover of darkness. And not to mention that no serious legal scholar truly thinks that the \"spirit\" of an age means that Geneva applies to headhackers and gutrippers for Allah. Dig?Take the full monty of good tidings where you find it, chief.Rendition is good news for getting info out of otherwise recalcitrant headhunters engaged in Jihad.Ya see, Geneva has a dark side:It is not supposed to protect--and indeed warns against--those who take advantage of our judicial systems and protections to carry out acts of terror. On the day they have uniforms, belong to a nation, and don't hide under the skirts and markets and kids toys of the civilian populace, I'll consult Geneva.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nI meant \"KORANS\" (plural)Not, \"Koran's\" (possessive)Though to be sure, possession of more and more cultures is on the way in any case, so it makes little difference.\nLippard (2009-02-25):\nSo it's your position that we either defend ourselves or not, and there are no methods or tactics which should ever be off limits for the former position?I take it that you would also favor removing the Bill of Rights from the Constitution, by the same reasoning?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nIn the first matter of thing, I'd actually \"favor\" YOU reading the post again.chThe \"spirit\" of an age and the current hoop over \"rights\" of which these, God, how can I say this nicely.....um....\"defendents\" are NOT entitled to, has no bearing and receives no bearing from Constitutional law.Period.The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which was the contraindication/compromise to what the anti-Federalists felt was too much federal level power, appy to US citizens. Noble as they are, they are not applied even to Frenchmen, else our supreme court would have told the frogs they can have 9mm Glocks in their glove boxes as well. The issue of national security, by my reasoning, is that when it comes to foreign (let me find yet another friendly word for meat rippers who bomb fruit stands here...ummm...crap...) \"insurgents\", not part of anything organized beyond ideology, we have the right and the duty to extract information by whatever methods are appropriate. The new president and Commander-In-Grief understands this.Even if his business acumen and prowess never went beyond a lemonade stand, at most. Even BEYOND ALL THIS, the court system was already knotted up for FOUR. SOLID. G-DAMN. YEARS by ONE--count him, ONE defendent--Shiek Khalidi. Who said, quite appropriately, \"America, you lose.\"And I can't disagree. What a colossal waste of resources and bureacratic paperchasing down the court system. Military tribunals all the way back to Lincoln, when he used them to smash Slavocracy, and more recently in the cases of foreign spies from Nazi Germany in the 40's, have been effective in getting to the bottom of things in a crisp, effective manner without tying up the regular civilian court system for decades. Hundreds of, err, \"insurgents\" in the US court systems? Granted, many trials would be held concurrently, but still.I am not advocating ripping flesh from bone and making them sit in dog squeeze. But if the New York Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, and hosts of other creeps think that a stern sit-down session and not getting your feast meats and being forced to answer questions for more than one hour at a time constitutes \"torment\", these charitable chaps never went through geometry class or got stuck on I-285 at rush hour. Torment is what we say it is.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-26):\nPS-\"Rendition\" was not just a bad movie; it was, after all, a policy started by Clinton. Not the horrid Night of Terror under Bush/Cheney's mad rush to create fantasies like Islamic terror lords. In any event....\nLippard (2009-02-26):\nYou are correct that rendition was started by Clinton (in 1995).The Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to U.S. citizens and others within U.S. jurisdiction; the powers granted in the Constitution are limited regardless of where U.S. government powers are being exercised on the globe.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-26):\nI understand that, but within that framework, or \"penumbra\" the courts have also stated on more than one occasion that military tribunals are fair and just and practical for the administration of military justice for those caught in what is generally considered unorthodox belligerency.The case law is fairly firm on this.Elsewhere with rendition, however, the jurisdiction is transferred to those nations where these insurgents hail from. That is more than fair also. If GITMO and other locals of incarceration are deemed burdensome or unjust and the Administration needs more real estate to place these terrorists, then they (both the administration and the terrorists themselves) can consider the ultimate fate of simply being sent back.\nEinzige (2009-02-27):\nI am not advocating ripping flesh from bone and making them sit in dog squeeze.Why not, if that's what gets them to spill the info?And, more generally, where do rights come from? Are they prior to governments, or created by governments?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nWhy not, if that's what gets them to spill the info?And, more generally, where do rights come from? Are they prior to governments, or created by governments?I doubt that would be necessary.Like so much of what the Left claims, that's hyperbolic nonsense designed to make people cringe. Having said that, no pol currently in office would hesitate to part with tradition and make hash out of someone if there was credible evidence that such could extract meaningful information. Unlikely, but theoretically possible. But then, that's not the same as saying I'd approve, now is it? The CIA has testified that you don't always know what info you're going to get by certain techniques. All can be valuable depending on the exact connections to events and people established. Most of the time no real shocking of the conscience is needed to get info out of most people. So what is for certain is that in yet another one of those \"facts of the matters\" claims that liberals claim in their ever-expanding search in the galaxy for minutia and trivial pursuit, it seems at least on this issue it is NOT true, as often claimed that \"it is 'fact' that torture does not work.\"If it did not work (and here I'll revert to what Lippert does not admire when it comes to common sense input observations) then obviously cultures the world over would not use it at all. All prisoners of war would get automatic Geneva status even if legally they don't qualify (as is the case with terror creeps) and merely be given their feast meats and Korans with no further commentary or questions. Too bad that's of no effect in our national security.Back on planet earth: Making terrorists stay up late, lose some sleep, and sit in some rather uncomfortable metal chairs and get denied their kid glove treatment with their Korans and maybe eating someting not on the regular menu is actualy better treatments than some corrections officers remind me goes on at the local State prison on a daily basis.They also get their own cells--something mising from the local pen as well.As to rights--well I guess that depends on whom you ask, now dosen't it? Both the Right and the Left have legalisms and philosophical input about how rights are \"inherent\" in law and philosphy and we automatically get these downloaded to us--computer file like--upon our very birth.Sounds conveninet!How could it be otherwise?But it can. A late left wing blogger named Steve Kangas referenced hundreds of \"works\" and materials from liberal philosophers and deep thinkers from Woodstock and the German school of philosophy, of one stripe or another, to the effect that \"rights\" of one groups are not automatic. Why do you ask?Metaphysially, rights do not \"exist\" ...out there...floating around somewhere on some stone obelisk in space like in 2001 Space Odeyssy, waiting to be carved in stone by us lowley humans. At least not apart from other considerations.They are agreed upon in what we political scientists call \"the Social Contract\", and thus \"dependent\"--on the rights of others and the full context of conflicts. Kangas has a point here, even if I personally find him repulsive elsewhere and don't want him to. There can ultimately be no firm \"rights\" in the sense of \"we hold these truths to be self-evident\". I actually partially agree with this. I'd like to think of \"we hold these truths to be self-evident\" but realize this is to some degree wrong. How could there be self-evidence here? Self-evident to WHOM? TO FDR, and his internment of the Japanese? To Japanese military commanders via the Battan Death March?? Under what cultural circumstances? The Left has long acknowledged you don't have a right to yell fire in a crowded theatre, cook your kids for lunch even in \"the privacy of your own home\" or serve hot fresh fetal meat to restaurants or kill your dog or punch your neighbors lights out. But then we get into the hippies of the Right--the Libertarians, who claim you can do most anything you like, including owning galaxy detonating energy spheres, and having Polygamous Marriage, so long as you don't \"harm others.\" But what is meant by THAT????hmmm.Some claim the very presence of handguns should be outlawed. Others deign to outlaw personal vehicles if they could somehow do so. Or alternate forms of schooling. Others want religion banned (Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett). Some cultures ban homeschooling, like German, on the neo-Hitlerian/Weimar-esque notion that it is not a cohesive way to structure and teach the next generation and takes no account of Multi-Cultural needs, blah blah.The point I'm making is not either disdain or even adovocacy of any of these positions at the moment, but rather to demonstrate that there is no firm set of encoded \"rights\" that all can agree on or are deemed appropriate for all times. People meantion Constitutional law, but that is up for grabs by liberal interpretations of culture and history as well, with even as we speak \"liberals\" on the Court like Ginsberg now wishing us to defer to international law. Obama's new attorney general appointee wants the same thing--a supercedure of US law--all of it--by international law norms.And \"more generally\"--does US law apply to all contexts and indeed to all the planet? If so, then how so? Only if we were truly imperialistic, by tradition that liberals claim, could that be the case. But if Constitutional law truly applied worldwide and US dominion is seen planetwide, then we could tell Frenchmen they can have guns in their glove boxes after all! Mais non!Different cultures have varying standards. Some argue that's the way it should be. Much as I might disdain the French.\nLippard (2009-03-01):\nI'll let Einzige continue his own argument, but I must point out that (1) You've misspelled my name even though it's spelled correctly on every page of this blog, and (2) you are mistaken when you claim that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett advocate banning religion. Dennett's statement about religion being kept in a cage is an argument that religion must not be permitted to override human rights or to replace the teaching of science in public schools with pseudoscience, which he has elaborated in an exchange with Michael Rea. I'm not sure which Dawkins statement you are alluding to, but my guess would be his comparison of religious indoctrination to child abuse, or his signing of a petition (which he later recanted) that called for it to be made illegal to indoctrinate children in religion or define children by religion prior to the age of 16.\nEinzige (2009-03-02):\nI doubt that would be necessary.The implication here is that you don't have a problem with torturing people to whatever extent is \"necessary\". Is that a fair assessment?Having said that, no pol currently in office would hesitate to part with tradition and make hash out of someone if there was credible evidence that such could extract meaningful information. Unlikely, but theoretically possible.What does this (or quite a bit of the rest of what you wrote) have to do with the questions I asked you?Making terrorists stay up late...This is question begging, isn't it?I recommend a viewing of Taxi to the Dark Side before you go calling everyone in custody a \"terrorist\"--though I'm sure you'll just call the film \"left wing propanganda\" and write it off.As to rights--well I guess that depends on whom you ask, now dosen't it?I am asking you. You are the one making moral claims. And it seemed to me odd that you would stop short of \"advocating ripping flesh from bone and making them sit in dog squeeze\"--though apparently your objection to such techniques is not due to any moral revulsion.But then you go and make statements like this: \"...we have the right and the duty to extract information by whatever methods are appropriate\" followed by this: \"...there is no firm set of encoded 'rights'...\"How do you reconcile those statements? Note I'm not asking for long-winded, tiresome pontifications about what \"the left says\" or \"some claim\", etc. I'm asking you what you think.If so, then how so? Only if we were truly imperialistic, by tradition that liberals claim, could that be the case. But if Constitutional law truly applied worldwide and US dominion is seen planetwide, then we could tell Frenchmen they can have guns in their glove boxes after all!I am not going to allow you to obfuscate your original point, which seemed to be that it's okay for the US to torture non-citizens because they are not protected under the US Constitution. This seems to imply that, as far as the US Government is concerned, no person not a citizen has any rights whatsoever. If that's not what you're claiming then perhaps you'd better explain yourself.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nThere are no easy quips on such things, Einzige. So while you don't like the long pontifications, that's the rules about law. There is only, at best, the application of philsophy and what the courts have said. If issues were this simple we'd not get ignored by the politicians who will always have fallback positions of semi-legitimacy on everything that seems, and is, obnoxious.In this case, my opinion is that sitting in a chair for a few hours answering some hard questions about one's connections and being denied you pathologies about Infidels not handling the Koran properly or not getting your feast meats like camel and goat on time is fine and dandy.Havings said that, US law does not extend to all the planet. It cannot. That's a metaphysial impossibility. It can be said to extend by proxy under military jurisdiction and in context to non-uniformed combatants. Geneva does not either. If some all-encompassing statement of, say, the First Amendment or any other provision of the Bill of Rights could do this, then you'd have the \"right\" to tell a sargent to knick off while being trained as \"freedom of speech\" and then sue him in the courts for distress at having to make you run around the base 3 times. This laughable issue is made to point out that likewise, under military jurisdiction, military tribunals have in fact been upheld by the courts going back to the days of Lincoln's use of them. This expedites the process and prevents the knotting up of our courts for decades on \"civil rights\" issues regarding people who slice heads off and blow up girls schools in Afghanistan.As with everything else, context is key. It always is.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nEinzige said, in part:...(W)hich seemed to be that it's okay for the US to torture non-citizens because they are not protected under the US Constitution. This seems to imply that, as far as the US Government is concerned, no person not a citizen has any rights whatsoever. If that's not what you're claiming then perhaps you'd better explain yourself. It is unlikely that you really care what I think, but just to play along in this high school shiggles popularity contest to score points, these \"insurgents\", as the media call them, are in fact entitled to procedural rights under US military law. That is not the same as saying they have or are entitled to the full monty of rights as you and I understand the term. My commentary before was to point out that rights are dependent on the rights and needs of others. We know this intuitively, and so do the courts, until recently. I might even LIKE to disagree with this, but from history we know that \"rights\" of say, water usage, on someone's land, still had to be considered, if say, you planned to dam up the whole Nile due to it being \"your\" property. This is ever the same with rights today.We cannot operate as a society when we are held to impractical and even absurd contraints--whether the demand is battlefield precision or situations where terrorists linger in cells and say nothing due to the comfort of waiting on their lawyers to jet in from the States. What would YOU have us do then?THAT would not be question begging, by the way.I take it you might disagree with this and think that rights are some kind of firm, cut in stone concept a la Moses' insights after lightning hit Mount Sinai? Modern law does not work this way, regardless of what I happen to think. But I would say that anything that does not shock the conscience (and this threshold is different for different people) is a good standard. Waterboarding and forced to sit for hours without any input from others until later do not cross this line. The plot to bomb airliners over the ocean and kill hundreds of people for the will of Allah was discovered with such techniques.The rules the CIA laid down I generally agree with, if you REALLY must know and give a rip about what I think.\nEinzige (2009-03-02):\nTHAT would not be question begging, by the way.You're right, it would not.My commentary before was to point out that rights are dependent on the rights and needs of others.Now, that, on the other hand, would be an example of question begging.I take it you might disagree with this and think that rights are some kind of firm, cut in stone concept a la Moses' insights after lightning hit Mount Sinai?Why, no, that's not what I would think. My skills as a moral theorist aren't nearly as honed as yours. Based on what you've written here, I am far less confident about what constitutes right and wrong, so I'm trying to learn from you.I have more questions about other things you've said in your latest post, but I'll have to get to them later this afternoon. I hope you won't mind the delay.\nEinzige (2009-03-02):\nYou say:It can be said to extend by proxy under military jurisdiction and in context to non-uniformed combatants.So, the US government has dominion over militarily occupied territories and can decide who is and who is not an \"enemy combatant\" without recourse to due process?This strikes me as essentially the same as saying that the US govt. can do--nay, has the right to do--whatever it can get away with. Do you disagree?... these \"insurgents\"... are in fact entitled to procedural rights under US military law.Only because the US military says so. Right? If the US military said they didn't have these rights then they wouldn't have them. Right?We cannot operate as a society when we are held to impractical and even absurd constraintsSuch as that non-US citizens shouldn't be kidnapped and tortured?In this case, my opinion is that sitting in a chair for a few hours answering some hard questions about one's connections and being denied you pathologies about Infidels not handling the Koran properly or not getting your feast meats like camel and goat on time is fine and dandy.Okay. However, what if I fundamentally disagree with such an assessment? You have, as yet (as far as I can tell), provided no criterion by which to decide between our opinions on this point--other than that yours is in line with the position of Bush and Obama administrations.I wonder this: if we were living in 1845 in the antebellum South, would you be okay with the institution of slavery? Or how about Germany in 1939? Would you believe that Jews needed to be eliminated for the good of the fatherland?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-10):\n(Einzige's comments italicized)You say:It can be said to extend by proxy under military jurisdiction and in context to non-uniformed combatants.So, the US government has dominion over militarily occupied territories and can decide who is and who is not an \"enemy combatant\" without recourse to due process?This strikes me as essentially the same as saying that the US govt. can do--nay, has the right to do--whatever it can get away with. Do you disagree?Far from the case. Yes, I disagree. No, you can't do \"whatever\" you want. No one can. My acquaintance with people in both the high and lower levels of the military have never given me the impression that these people are any more moral or immoral than the rest of us. They are people. Not mindless automaton minions of Emperor Palpatine. The leadership of the military makes errors in judgment and faux pas just like the rest of us. But, ethically, I think their training could make a claim to even having a slight ethical edge over some of us--and certainly over many of the politicians they ultimately work for. Some people will always go overboard. Most are just there to serve as best they can. For the most part, My Lai is behind us for most people who live and work in military positions, even in the \"fog of war.\"The issue of jurisdiction was brought before the courts over and over--and they have ruled thusly. Tribunals are fine to process most belligerents, uniformed or not. In fact, in SOME limited case, citizens or not. Of course, today's courts are different in ideological makeup, so things might change. They DO have due process, but for reasons the courts have said regarding practicality and the duress of the situation (and not to mention NOT revealing classified methods of discovery), we can't have thousands of combatants tying up the courts for decades on end, each one knotting up the court with filing after filing after filing and making it broadcast to a wider audience the how and why of capture and the methodology of military operations. Much as the idiots at the dying NY Times would like to yet again reveal state secrets, it is probably not the best idea, and the NY Times moronic punchline of \"we're not revealing troop movements after all\" misses the point that a war on terror has a different strategic dynamic than other wars.With military justice, it is not done for US soldiers (who, last I check, were US citizens), who also can be set before a military tribunal. It is about the expediting of a process, not the denial of rights.... these \"insurgents\"... are in fact entitled to procedural rights under US military law.Only because the US military says so. Right? If the US military said they didn't have these rights then they wouldn't have them. Right?No, the courts have said so. And they might rule sharply different in the future. The military does not say in the final analysis. No. But then, who in your opinion should have the final say? International Law, which is usually aligned with some rather suspect nations with an agenda all their own? In the past, International Law was simply what the US and Britain said it was? Would THAT be good enough?Where do you think these \"rights\" are located, if not encoded into law, and if case law from the past serves absolutely no precedent here as it does in almost EVERY. SINGLE. CASE. ON. ALL. OTHER. ISSUES. This is called by the legalism of Stare Decisis (let the decision stand). Case law in military issues has a long history, and was not cooked up last year by the Night of Terror or Rove/Cheney. It is all we have, in the final analysis. As I'm quite sure, given the nature of this blog, you're not going to defer to spiritual or theological argument, and no doubt mere cultural input is not enough, since all opinions are different and vary as many as there are people. And since my opinion on the issue no doubt would not be deemed enough, then all we have left is the encoding of law. Shall I ask Slate' editors? Farmer John? Joe the Plumber? Either the law can stand, or it cannot. But, as with another issue on the blog, I did notice that not all people are on board with what the laws of the land say. We cannot operate as a society when we are held to impractical and even absurd constraintsSuch as that non-US citizens shouldn't be kidnapped and tortured?Not what I was referring to. What I was referring to are the spurious \"rights\" advocates demanding kid glove treatment of Islamist pathologies like gloves only for Koran distribution and feast meats, foot baths, and other absurdist impracticalities. And the other depends on what you mean by \"kidnapping.\" In my experience the term is usually employed by law enforcement to denote a situation where extortion for the return of the person is demanded. Apprehension might be a better term. Often, other than a daylight apprehension with cuffs and the reading of Miranda, it IS done under cover of secrecy so as to remove the methodology from public awareness. In these kinds of operations that is probably justified. Unpleasant? Yes. Immoral? Not necessarily. Unpleasantry is not the same is immorality. Going to the dentist is painful, as are many demands of life for health and safety. But dentists are not immoral. No doubt more than one child rapist, or murderer, or thief, or carjacker, finds his arrival in handcuffs to appear at court is highly unpleasant and downright obnoxious. But I rarely hold that law enforcement is evil per se. Obnoxious speed demons have felt they were being inconvenienced and dissed just for being delayed for a ticket and have raised holy hell in court. Too bad. If we don't like the speed signs, petition the local government to have them altered or removed. Make the case. But don't slam the law for being the law, or its operatives for doing their jobs. Though, I must admit lately I see there are some who'd rather us not have border patrol agents. True.In this case, my opinion is that sitting in a chair for a few hours answering some hard questions about one's connections and being denied you pathologies about Infidels not handling the Koran properly or not getting your feast meats like camel and goat on time is fine and dandy.Okay. However, what if I fundamentally disagree with such an assessment? You have, as yet (as far as I can tell), provided no criterion by which to decide between our opinions on this point--other than that yours is in line with the position of Bush and Obama administrations.I wonder this: if we were living in 1845 in the antebellum South, would you be okay with the institution of slavery? Or how about Germany in 1939? Would you believe that Jews needed to be eliminated for the good of the fatherland? Hyperbolic nonsense. I'm not sure how your last jibes kicked in, or why. That's what I'm wondering at the moment. But what else should I have anticipated? What if I fundamentally disagree on current legalisms as well? So what? There are many laws I don't happen to like. And? Little I can do about them from here but join some like-minded group and petition the leaders. What criterion would you see--other than law--that would be universally satisfying to all times and places and contexts and cultural norms/expections? How would we go about this? And what if you DID disagree? What if I did? So what? Ultimately, you could argue that in the long haul, based on some collective input from citizens, the courts could respond in some like-minded manner. Though I notice this is not the case in, say, California, regarding Prop 8. But no matter--why in the hell would the courts listen to a businessman low on the totem pole like myself? What criterion would you have us follow, if not case law? How is such ethical dilemma resolved, if not by law? Where else do we go? Charleton Heston, as Moses, throwing stone tablets at us? Yes, in the distant past there were some laws, like Jim Crow and the results of the Dread Scot decision before that, which, in the old South, limited what blacks could do and participate in. Moreover, technically, they DID contradict earlier philosophical statements interpreted as law about all men being equal before the law. The Weimar Republic fell victim to Germanic philosophies of Nietzsche, who after proudly dispensing with God and moral suasion and told the world he had a path \"beyond good and evil\"(?!), gave other philosophers (and then \"strong horse\" leaders) the ideological ammunition to abuse others in situations of duress. And to perform...evil. This was also contradictory to prior legalisms in that nation, though in Europe generally the Jews were easy targets for a number of groups for a number of reasons.True enough. But in our nation, we have to set the standard with law--not radicalized men or their rulers--as has generally happened the world over. There is no other reliable method. That is why I referred you to important landmark cases in the past when these issues came up among our own countrymen in pitched battles for power. Yes, in the early days, the Constitution had its internal contradictions--like slavery--that the Founders knew could not be settled in 1787, and so had to defer the issue until such time as the nation was ready. They could not wait for social perfection and racial equality before moving onto the path to building a new nation. That was a sorry state of affairs, but slavery at that point had had a legacy of more than 3000 years of practice. It was not started by White Europeans, nor were we its larger users and proponents. But we were the ones who killed each other in bloody pitched battles that took the lives of 700,000 young men (and much property and treasure) to end it---an event missing from most of the traditional homelands of most slaves to this day. Whether it be Arabic slavery of white girls and white boy eunuchs at this moment, or black Africa's long heralded practice going back thousands of years. In any case, paraphrasing Yale scholar William Henry III, an imperfect society is not the same as a worthless one. Societies evolve socially as well as organically.What is your point then? If the law is to be changed we can do that, and coddle everyone who slices heads and supply hordes of headnippers their own lawyer and flood the already burdoned courts with a another backlog. Yeah, we could do that. If not, we have to go SOMEWHERE to make the deferment to authority. What shall that be?But no, not only do I NOT think one can legitimize the killing of innocent people who happen to be scapegoated or for being the target of ethnic smears due the rantings of an Austrian madman, I also find no real analogy from that tragedy to anything current. The inclusion of Hitler's antics into any discussion almost never adds anything of merit. Few things are analogous to his actions. This is no exception. Our own situation would be no better nor worse than if 20 million lily-white, pasty-faced Englishmen hit the shores next Thursday demanding benefits and jobs in unison. So the issue is not race or religion. The \"good\" of the nation in our case is the rule of law. In the case of terrorism, it is the expediting of justice without knotting the courts up for decades. In the case of illegal immigration, it is the avoidance of what everyone knows is actually another handy demographic fix by (primarily) Democrats to set a lock on power via various social programs. Who said we would need to nix them? Just send them home.Now, back to the law about \"insurgents\": It is true that the USSC recently ruled (apparently) in favor of handing out Constitutional rights to terrorist combatants, reversing decades-old decisions that stood to the effect that such was not generally applicable, or at least not in the usual sense beyond tribunals. Or, not in the strict sense of saying the Bill of Rights applies to terrorists. So we'll have to see how this administration plays this out. So far, his consultation with security experts indicates he's willing to compromise on the issue. In the past, the issue of detention of irregular combatants hostile to the United States has gone through some interesting moments, but there is a common sense consistency from the courts that rises to the surface after a while. Granted, not all onlookers in power dig this. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) is one of those not too familiar with the laws, but nontheless loves to grandstand and preach to people pulled before him to answer committe questions. His idiotic questions might almost be as nasty as getting grilled at GITMO.Leahy declared in the days of Atty Gen. John Ashcroft, that the War on Terror is (like John Edwards says too), is \"merely a slogan\", like the \"War on Drugs\" or \"Use Lifestyles Condoms, for her pleasure and yours!\", and this means that as there is \"no formal declaration of war,\" thus the \"courts are open\"--meaning to this bozo, as it does the ACLU, that the civilian courts are the correct vehicle for processing the goobers who turn humans into chop suey and boffo Internet snuff film fodder. Leahy went on to say that he questioned \"whether the president can lawfully authorize the use of military commissions (Re: \"tribunals\") to try persons arrested here.\"But we ARE at war. Strike one. There is no official talismanic formulation about this. Except that when you get attacked, you are at war. Thus we have been at war since about 8:48 AM Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when the sons of Allah followed FAA protocals almost to a \"T\" except for boxcutters and their somewhat altered course from the flight plan. I'll resist for now the urge to say we got a \"crash course\" in Islam's multiculturalist accommodation of the West on that day.It is myth that Congress MUST declare war for the state of affairs to exist. Fortunately for the nation, Congress and men like Leahy are limited in their role in this. In any case, Congress need not declare war. For example, in the event thousands of Americans get roasted alive and/or crushed to death. Bush said in his address to the nation later in the day to a joint session of Congress that a state of war existed, henceforth, with the agents of terror from whatever source. This covers wide girth, and includes groups and parties not directly involved in the attacks except for their ideological connection or complicity. Smart move, as that increased the liability for terror worldwide for the inevitable operations later on. (A formal declaration of war has consequences only under international law, which is not relevant to domestic security measures taken under the president's war powers). (And if Spain or Syria is on that panel, we'll probably not be taking their words to heart anyhow.) International law otherwise is what we say it is, and like Santa Claus, we can tell Virginia its real despite what your friends at school say, or we can dump it when you're old enough to know that it makes little matter, and exists generally in the minds of little professors in law schools who think the Hague or the UN supersedes US law. Granted, what IS scary is that a nutcase lunatic named Ruth Ginsberg thinks this way. We'll keep on eye on her and give her some leeway before putting her in a padded cell to scribble on the walls with crayons in her toes just yet. In 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, the USSC upheld the use of military tribunals for eight German spies captured on US soil. Two of whom were US Citizens. In this case, Ex Parte Quirin, the court found that military tribunals--not civilian courts--were appropriate for suspected enemies who have \"entered or remained after entry in our territory without uniform\", to engage in an act of belligerency against the United States. The USSC ruled on Quirin in less than 24 hours. A military found the saboteurs guilty three days later and six of the eight were executed, including Herbert Haupt, a US citizen. The other two were spared a hanging due to ratting out the whole plot and were given prison time. The \"courts are open\" phase used by Sen. Leahy, refers to the USSC decision in Ex Parte Milligan, a Civil War era case. He muffed it. The Milligan court said a citizen could not be tried in a military tribunal \"where the courts are open, and their process unobstructed.\"--i.e.--the absence of martial law. But the crucial part of the Court's decision that Leahy missed was its determination that Milligan was a NON-belligerent. A situation that most assuredly does NOT apply to the Hid Nip Brigade now vacationing at GITMO. The fact that Milligan was a US citizen was actually not important to this decision. His position as a non-combatant was. As the USSC would explain nearly a century later in Quirin, the court in Milligan concluded that \"Milligan, NOT being part of or associated with the armed forces of the enemy, was a nonbelligerent, not subject to the law of war.\" Milligan was only being tried in a military tribunal due to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. So it seems a military tribunal is just fine for belligerents intending us harm. If even US citizens have fallen under military jurisdiction due to not being of a foreign uniformed force but merely working on their behalf, terrorists can likewise certainly be tried by the military without a reference to the civilians courts stateside.Likewise, the Geneva Conventions have a coverage that is very specific. It does NOT cover non-uniformed \"warriors\" who take belligerent action. This is on purpose, as a means of discouraging terrorist tactics considered outside the bounds of the rules of war. In wars in the past, it is questionable whether Geneva protections even have any practical effect. It is difficult to imagine the US going to war with anyone other than the savages that now plague the planet. Sharp as our differences can be regarding the Brits and the French, it is unlikely we'll be attacking those signatories to the Geneva Convention. Indeed, in a war with the savagery under the directorship of 9th century imams. Regardless of Geneva in any case, we all know that any American soldier captured on the field of battle would be dismembered and gutted and decapitated and photos taken of the remains, if anything were left. In fact, this has happened. Some of the gore and splatter sites on the Net are fake. But I'm sorry to say that in a few cases the gruesome photos of guts being pulled from US soldiers' remains is true--and on par with the kind of human garbage we're fighting, and all the more reason to stanch this kind of culture. I think the equivalent of Chinese water torture pales considerably next to this kind of bestial behavior. In WWII the Japanese tortured American POWs and, per the testimony of more than a few men, including my wife's father, who survived the ordeal, they would cut open even captured pregnant Filipino women and girls, rape them, and nail the remains to trees. Of course, one must admit that as far as what happened to the fetus in these transactions is not all that far removed from your local Women's Clinic. American soldiers were decapitated, photos released of the pulsing neck stumps, buried in pits, burned alive with kerosene, run over by trucks repeatedly and bets made among the Japanese soldiers as to how long it would take for the ground underneath to show up underneath the guts. Others were shot for walking too slow in the Bataan Death March. The sick were killed by decapitation immediately. Others would be hit with a sideswipe of a bayonet to see how long it took for the neck to bleed out. Medicine from the remaining American medics was confiscated and used by the Japanese. Attending to one another's wounds was forbidden upon pain of death. In some experiments American and Russian soldiers were placed in either hot fires or freezing cold water to see how fast the flesh would come off the bone. Back in the fields and the internment camps, genitals were cut off and stuffed in already severed heads' mouths. In Vietnam, the beastly behavior was not much less. In Iraq from Hussein's men and now the terror lords running amuck, US soldiers have been mutilated. Female POWs were penetrated rectally and vaginally as well in Gulf I. So, it appears this Geneva thing is not working out so well for us. I understand the emphasis on ethics, and that's a swell thing. But at a certain juncture we have to ask about the practicalities of any action or idea. If it does no good or doesn't mirror reality, it can and should be jettisoned.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-10):\n(Mr. Lippard's comments in italics)you are mistaken when you claim that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett advocate banning religion. Dennett's statement about religion being kept in a cage is an argument that religion must not be permitted to override human rights or to replace the teaching of science in public schools with pseudoscience, which he has elaborated in an exchange with Michael Rea. I'm not sure which Dawkins statement you are alluding to, but my guess would be his comparison of religious indoctrination to child abuse, or his signing of a petition (which he later recanted) that called for it to be made illegal to indoctrinate children in religion or define children by religion prior to the age of 16. Greetings again, Mr. Lippard: Crocs tears of regret is what most likely hits men like Dennett and Dawkins. Either these individuals would allow for alternative opinions (as taught by parents) about cosmology and spiritual side of things---or they don't. And, as training on these matters usually must begin young, their collective claim that they don't really mean to influence the teaching of faith, overall, is what my father would have said is \"a distinction without any real difference\". In any case, they hold an advocacy that is not supported by the facts of how religion and science have interacted in history. I'm not sure how Dennet means religion would \"override\" human rights. More often than religion, the State is the taker of rights and the abuser of people. Surely someone of his sophistication knows this. It can be the interaction of the State and religion that HAS caused some problems, but religion per se is just a set of ideas about mankind's role in the larger scheme of things and the cosmology (ultimate origins) of existence, by whatever means. Those instances that seemed to implicate religion can always be shown to have a political component. But to \"define children by religion\" sounds like typical hyperbole from Dawkins, which, like Dennett, is his main comedy routine stand-up shtick to this own flock: Accusing mainline Christians of being secret authoritarian bootstompers who put their kids in dark closets and feed them watery oatmeal and use mind control to make them Crusaders. But to whom does this psychotic sophist Dennett defer to for moral guidance? Fredrich Nietzsche. The philosopher who boasted that with the putative death of God, mankind would drench itself in blood. So it has. It seems by \"rights\" Team D (Dennett and Dawkins) mean to say they have the latest fads in mutli-culti, PCism, and other Leftist projects. Leftists don't have in mind what are traditionally called \"rights.\" By this they mean rectal thrusting advocacy as \"marriage\" in California, though the people just said \"NO\", suppression of religion and traditional morals, the expansion of deviance and cultural anomalies, and the worship of sexuality. And of course, advocacy of abortion on demand as their special sacrament of \"choice\". Gale force winds meet protestors of abortion or advocates of parental notification laws regarding minors not old enough to buy cigarettes, beer, or drive, but need to trash a fetus in order to keep a boyfriend. The catcall is \"choice\", of course. But when it comes to \"choice\" in other areas of life. With choices that also really matter: School choice, media choice, choice of guns for home defense, the right to make your own decisions about how to use your own moneys, liberals are more than happy, as are Dennett and presumably Dawkins (though he's not a Yank like us) to default to the Euro version of \"rights\", where the State is the arbiter of \"rights\", and we are to live in a highly regulated, regimented society under the protection of our betters. \"Rights\" to the PC liberal crowd mean the satiation of sexual appetites and having someone grease the skids for you, like Obama had done for him, and the \"right\" to sumptuous pleasures and benefits handed out by the taxpayers. Yet, life is more than this. Life is beyond abortion and screwing and smoking funny weeds.Contra all the lying from Harris and Dawkins and other PC do-gooders who fret over mutli-culti mess, Christianity has historically been on the forefront of human rights from its inception, first opposing Roman abuses in the stadiums and later the abolishing of slavery. Historians like Rodney Stark mention, among others, point out the role of Christianity in Europe in codifying human rights into law. There were of course many contradictions, but as a theologian friend of mine points out, when it comes to sheer brutality, it is historically secular regimes that have done the most damage to rights. But that is another discussion. For more on that, see Beastrabban's weblog, where he goes into far more detail than can be had here in this kind of exchange. He points out the entire development of Democracy in Europe, and points to who advocated what, their various statements, and how what you and I call representative government even came about. More recently, Mark Steyn pointed out that when it comes to sheer \"secularism\", and culture, the two rightly cannot logically even go together. Secularism as an answer is not one. It is a present tense culture. More properly it is not even culture. It is a present tense NOTION about life that, a la Europe, is on par with pleasure, comfort, amusement, and present tense issues that have no connections to the past and therefore cannot defend itself on a wide range of issues both social and economic. But that is another topic also. Dawkins and Dennett get it horridly wrong when they suggest faith is the enemy of science, or that rights emanate from some scientific basis apart from culture (though I think even Dawkins says now that he's a \"cultural Christian\")http://beastrabban.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/the-medieval-christian-contribution-to-western-democracy-part-one/http://jameshannam.com/http://rationalperspective.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/the-war-of-science-and-religion/#more-71And we'd then have to ask, if religion stanches scientific inquiry, how certain lists even came about:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_scienceThe Dawkins quote was indeed partially as you claim, and while I was not aware that he recanted anything, the context WAS one where parents would be subject to some kind of state mandated prescription about child-rearing. Its either that, or he's just running his mouth to the amen choir. I guess the latter is possible. But this kind of advocacy is not for lack of desire. In my own line of thinking I always try and default to freedom, where possible. Others sternly disagree.Dawkins is not ABLE to outlaw certain kinds of parenting. So my guess is his attitude adjustment is probably a recognition of the legal difficulties, and the outrage over such statements--not some apparent change of heart. It would not be for lack of trying that his kind of thinking would rule this day. But this is a nation of law (well, on some issues), and he is not even our nationality, and even in the European mindset from which he hails would not be able to consistently get away with banning one form a teaching but allowing English kids to be taught about Islam and counting in Punjabi in school. He is limited by law, not by his own twisted sense of history. So more likely Dawkins is just out of luck on this issue. Which is kinda funny (this claim about parents harming their kids though belief of some kind), since contra what many people think, as John Taylor Gatto reminds us, going all the way back to the days of John Dewey and other social engineers and as advocated by people like nutcase Marxian pill popper Margaret Sanger, and many others, the public schools were always to be the anvil and on which new social engineering was to be hammered out. All of your high-octane tyrannies had structured, forced public schooling, come to think of it. I think it was Joseph Sobran who pointed out that far from \"neutrality\" on most social issues, the public schools not only fail us academically, their real focus is conformity, stasis, propaganda about economics and secularist morals, the \"moral equivalency\" mantra that cultures who put bones in their noses are on par with those that can send men to the moon, and the fostering of dullness and compliance. So, they serve as \"the reproductive system of Leftism\". Talk about progogandistic efforts. However, the law of our land, from way before the famous Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) case, says that the courts generally held that while the State has practical interests in the overall education of children (i.e.--seeing it actually gets done), it has not come to the attention to the courts, other than extreme cases of PROVEN abuse, that the State knows more than parents about religious or other spiritual input of any other kind of training. It is as it should be. The State, not parents, has (ask any real civil libertarian) done the most damage to families and their own citizens via various forms of micromanagement. One can look at the grievous results of the \"Great Society\" to see that the resultant scourge of single motherhood and all its paroxysms and predictable pathologies contradicts liberal efforts at making noble savages out the kiddies via legislation and welfare. So Dawkins gets to take a hike on this one, regardless of what he claims about Ultimate Origins. Dennett, for his case? He can join his pal.You are again partially correct on his quote, except that you forgot to mention that his emphasis was not so much about his hyperbolic \"protection\" of anyone from anything nefarious, but rather (in the quote I have) the amusement of onlookers to some kind of zoological exhibit to merely \"preserve\" some cultural anomalies on the way to some higher path. Dennett later equivocates and claims that he's been taken out of context. But the ugly implication is there all along; that religion has no more to offer us than some tribal dirge or native dance, and is to be relegated to some museum as an artifact of interest, but no real edification or aid to any issue of the modern world. Further, Dennett confuses the reader, and understandably so and perhaps on purpose. He mentions in hyperbolic tones the contract on Salmon Rushdie's very life, clitoral mutilation, slavery, and the subordination of women Islam but then equates this with evangelical Christianity, as if this had any reality even at the most extreme flavors of this tradition. It does not. And he knows it. But hyperbole is easy, and it comes to Dennett's hysterics over \"protection\" of society just as it does with Dawkins. Of course, Dennett gives the obligatory mumblings about flat earths (which no Christian father ever taught in the early church, according to historians like Jeffrey Burton Russell http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/russell/FlatEarth.html and others http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/ ) and the need to \"protect\" society from the ways of religion and the misteachings of Christians, etc. But his history and his cross comparisons to the ugly side of Islam is suspect. More likely this is a world view masquerading as \"science.\" Dennett feigns outrage that he's called to the carpet to answer for his statements, but his sarcasm about zoological exhibitionism for religion on par with ancient pottery is so thick you can cut if with a grapefruit spoon.I think millions of believers might remind Dawkins and Dennett that there is more than meets the eye in the physical world, and more that aids the soul than knowledge about why one bird beak is different from another.But yes, both are nasty, reptilian men whose hatred of some people is hard to hide, no matter their absurd equivocations about bad parenting and such frets. They make outrageous statements, like Peter Singer and Stephen Pinker, and then try desperately to cover their tracks. I take it as given that parents generally, and with a few exceptions, have their kids interests at heart more often than state authorities and other busybodies.\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nYou've written many words, but provided very little in the way of argument as opposed to assertion. I disagree with your claim that there can be no culture without religion, or that secularism entail hedonism and no long-term thinking. China and the Long Now Foundation are two counterexamples.Dennett's point isn't even that children may not be taught religion by their parents--it's that religion can't intrude into the public school system to teach misinformation like young-earth creationism, parents who allow their children to die by withholding medical treatment for religious reasons should be held responsible, and so forth.I agree with you that fundamentalist Christianity today is much milder than fundamentalist Islam today, but I'd say that's because Christianity has gone through a Reformation more than to anything inherent in the religion--it had its moments in the past, and some of its followers still occasionally turn to violence, like the gunman who shot up the Unitarian Universalist church.Your statements on gay marriage are sheer religious bigotry.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/obama-administration-backs-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo much for change.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/obama-administr.html\"\u003eABC News\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit \u003ci\u003eMohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama administration backs state secrets defense of extraordinary rendition and torture"},{"content":"Russ Baker\u0026rsquo;s new book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces that Put it in Power, and What Their Influence Means for America, states that George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s conversion to evangelical Christianity was staged as a way to wipe the slate clean of his past record of misbehavior. It further makes the case that his story of a conversion after a visit from Billy Graham was his second conversion, the first coming a year earlier after a meeting with evangelist Arthur Blessit, who was determined to be too controversial for the story Bush wanted to convey:\n\u0026hellip; what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush\u0026rsquo;s run for president in 1988\u0026ndash;and W.\u0026rsquo;s political future. Baker\u0026rsquo;s chapter titled \u0026ldquo;The Conversion\u0026rdquo; features startling revelations that challenge the well-known narratives of the Bush family\u0026rsquo;s religious history\u0026ndash; including the way they crafted a strategy for winning over the religious right, and the creation of a conversion legend for George W. Bush. The purpose of the latter was not only to position him as a religious and political man of his time, but to neutralize the many issues from his past that threatened to undermine his future in politics (and possibly that of his father as well). The plan probably worked far better than anyone could have hoped. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m still amazed,\u0026rdquo; Doug Wead, a key architect of the Bush family\u0026rsquo;s evangelical outreach strategy told Baker, \u0026ldquo;how naïve so many journalists are who have covered politics all of their life.\u0026quot;\nUnder [Doug] Wead\u0026rsquo;s tutelage, Poppy would learn the ins and outs of the evangelical world. But Poppy and W. had a problem in common. Baker writes that they knew that W.\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;behavior before becoming governor [of Texas in 1994] his partying, his womanizing, and in particular his military service problems\u0026ndash;posed a serious threat to his presidential ambitions. Their solution was to wipe the slate clean\u0026ndash;through religious transformation.\u0026quot; A Tale of Two Conversions\nFor this to work they needed \u0026ldquo;a credible conversion experience and a presentable spiritual guide.\u0026rdquo; And so the legend goes that none other than Billy Graham paid a visit to his longtime friends at the Bush family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine. This led to the famous walk on the beach that George W. Bush says \u0026ldquo;planted a mustard seed in my soul,\u0026rdquo; and to his supposed rebirth as an evangelical Christian. That was the accepted narrative in the media and throughout the evangelical world for years. But Graham later told a journalist that he does not remember the encounter; and to another said he does remember a walk on the beach\u0026ndash;but not, apparently, any kind of spiritually meaningful conversation. Whatever the facts of the Graham episode, there are actually two conversion stories. The second was deep-sixed in favor of the Graham story, and only emerged after George W. was elected president.\nThe itinerant evangelist Arthur Blessitt, famous for dragging (mostly on wheels) a 12-foot cross around the world, posted the story on his Web site in October 2001, noting that he met with George W. Bush a full year earlier than Graham. \u0026ldquo;Mr. George W. Bush,\u0026rdquo; wrote Blessitt, \u0026ldquo;a Midland oilman, listened to the radio broadcast and asked one of his friends Can you arrange for me to meet Arthur Blessitt and talk to him about Jesus?' And so it came to pass.\u0026quot; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt; Wead, Baker reports, \u0026quot;had warned the Bushes that they had to be careful how they couched their conversion story. It couldn't be seen as something too radical or too tacky. Preachers who performed stunts with giant crosses would not do. Billy Graham, spiritual counselor to presidents,\u0026rsquo; would do perfectly.\u0026rdquo; And that was the story that speechwriter Karen Hughes wove into Bush\u0026rsquo;s 1999 campaign book, A Charge to Keep. There was no mention of Blessitt.\n(Via Frederick Clarkson at Talk2Action.)\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure how credible Baker\u0026rsquo;s book is. The link I\u0026rsquo;ve just given also includes a quote from the book claiming that Bush helped a Texas girlfriend procure an illegal abortion prior to Roe v. Wade, and I think this is the book that I\u0026rsquo;ve heard suggests George H.W. Bush and the CIA had involvement in the JFK assassination, which I find wildly implausible.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/two-religious-conversions-of-george-w.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRuss Baker\u0026rsquo;s new book, \u003cem\u003eFamily of Secrets:  The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces that Put it in Power, and What Their Influence Means for America\u003c/em\u003e, states that George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s conversion to evangelical Christianity was staged as a way to wipe the slate clean of his past record of misbehavior.  It further makes the case that his story of a conversion after a visit from Billy Graham was his \u003cem\u003esecond\u003c/em\u003e conversion, the first coming a year earlier after a meeting with evangelist Arthur Blessit, who was determined to be too controversial for the story Bush wanted to convey:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip; what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush\u0026rsquo;s run for president in 1988\u0026ndash;and W.\u0026rsquo;s political future.\u003cp\u003e Baker\u0026rsquo;s chapter titled \u0026ldquo;The Conversion\u0026rdquo; features startling revelations that challenge the well-known narratives of the Bush family\u0026rsquo;s religious history\u0026ndash; including the way they crafted a strategy for winning over the religious right, and the creation of a conversion legend for George W. Bush. The purpose of the latter was not only to position him as a religious and political man of his time, but to neutralize the many issues from his past that threatened to undermine his future in politics (and possibly that of his father as well). The plan probably worked far better than anyone could have hoped. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m still amazed,\u0026rdquo; Doug Wead, a key architect of the Bush family\u0026rsquo;s evangelical outreach strategy told Baker, \u0026ldquo;how naïve so many journalists are who have covered politics all of their life.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The two religious conversions of George W. Bush"},{"content":"My mortgage has been purchased by Chase Bank a couple of times (after the first time, I refinanced with another bank and then Chase bought my mortgage from them), and they\u0026rsquo;re my current lender. I pay extra principal with every payment, usually about 30% more. For my February payment, I decided to reduce the extra principal a bit, for various reasons including keeping a bit more cash on hand in current economic conditions.\nUnfortunately, I made a $100 error in my payment. Rather than paying an extra $40.37, I underpaid the monthly payment by $59.63. I learned my mistake when I received my mortgage statement, indicating that my entire payment was in \u0026ldquo;suspense funds received\u0026rdquo; and had not been applied to my mortgage at all.\nI immediately called Chase. Even though it was an hour before their call center closed, I was unable to get to a human being. Instead, after being told I was being transferred to customer service, I got an automated message saying that my call could not by completed. I looked for online options for payment, but the Chase website referred me instead to their phone-based \u0026ldquo;FastPay\u0026rdquo; system. The \u0026ldquo;FastPay\u0026rdquo; system by phone charges a $15 fee (which the phone system says can be avoided by using the online payment system) and only allows making a full payment.\nI tried again the next morning, and got through to Tonja, a customer service rep who told me that I could only make a full payment through the phone (not the $100 I wanted to pay), but said if I connected an external bank account online, I could make the payment that way, and as soon as the extra $100 was received, the payment would be applied as normal. I\u0026rsquo;m also well within the 15-day grace period for a payment, so I don\u0026rsquo;t have to worry about late fees.\nOnline, I searched through some counter-intuitive menu options\u0026ndash;within the mortgage account, payment options send you to the page about FastPay over the phone\u0026ndash;I finally found that from the front page I could get to an option to connect an external account. I started the process, and learned that my bank could not be connected instantly by putting in my online banking authentication information, but had to use a method of verification where Chase puts two small deposits in my account and I come back later and input those amounts back to Chase to prove that it\u0026rsquo;s my account (or at least that I have access to it). It then allowed me to attempt the instant verification method, despite its previous claim that my bank didn\u0026rsquo;t accept it, but that failed (and I probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have tried\u0026ndash;Chase shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have my authentication credentials to another bank). It then said it would take up to two business days for these deposits to go through.\nThe next day, my bank showed me that there were two pending deposits from Chase (yet another cost Chase is incurring), so I went back to the verification page and entered those amounts. Chase\u0026rsquo;s website informed me that because those deposits had not been made yet, I was not allowed to verify the amounts yet. Dumb design. I tried again later in the evening, and my verification was accepted. Now I went to the page to make a payment, only to find that once again, the only option is to make an entire payment. Contrary to what Tonja told me, I cannot pay just an additional $100, because there is an outstanding payment that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been made, and my $1100 sitting in \u0026ldquo;suspense funds\u0026rdquo; doesn\u0026rsquo;t count and can\u0026rsquo;t be used.\nWell, I\u0026rsquo;ve got the money in savings, so I decided that if Chase is going to make things so difficult, I\u0026rsquo;m going to go ahead and make a full extra payment and deprive them of a little more interest over the life of my loan, in addition to the overhead costs they\u0026rsquo;ve incurred through this episode. The website told me it would take two business days to process, so it will be applied on February 11\u0026ndash;still during the grace period. But now I still am not sure that the $1100 will be applied to principal reduction, so I called in again and spoke with Kim. I explained what has happened, and pointed out to her that Chase is losing money from its inflexibility, and she offered to move $100 from my January extra payment to February so that I could cancel the additional payment. I thanked her for the option (which I would have needed to take if I didn\u0026rsquo;t have the money to spare), but declined, since that would result in an increase in interest. I asked if she could verify that the $1100 would be applied correctly, and she suggested that I call in again after I see online that the new payment is applied\u0026ndash;which will incur yet further costs to Chase.\nThis is a nice demonstration of how an inflexible payment system doesn\u0026rsquo;t deal well with partial payments can cost a company money and customer goodwill.\ndonna (2009-02-07):\nThey are an evil company. I spent five years fighting with JP Morgan/Chase to settle my mom's estate. They truly suck.If my sister and nephew's trust funds weren't still with them, I would wish really hard for them to fail completely.Sorry you have to deal with them at all. I sincerely hope all the current creators of this mortgage mess are soon drummed out of all these companies, and replaced with sane people.\nmartin rosolowski (2009-03-19):\nI wish I read this blog before choosing chase to handle the sale of my house. 18 weeks and still counting. They even had the nerve to question a county court order giving me the right to sell. How arrogant!\ndlontos (2009-09-15):\nI would advise that no one uses Chase Bank. They have so much non-value added waste in their processes it is no wonder they needed government money (and they are still making a profit). The majority of their CSR\u0026#39;s have no idea what they are talking about and I have spent hours being bounced back and forth from the same two departments (neither that I needed or requested). At any rate, I have taken my banking elsewhere and suggest everyone does the same.\nRaymond Cudar (2010-09-16):\nChase Bank is not a good company to do business with, especially for personal accounts. They are very inflexible. I was a WAMU customer before they acquired Washington Mutual. I have several checking accounts, savings and credit card accounts, and have been treated bad from a customer standpoint by Chase Corporate. The local branches are pleasant enough, but have no real power, or at least that is what they say. Credit cards rate through the roof, savings accounts minimum requirements raised, extra fees added and assessed at every turn. Believe me when I say I have a long list of how Chase does not care about its customers. Now they have had a “server crash”, which does happen to all companies, but it looks more like a security breach. My userID was changed, and all of my on-line bill-pay information wiped out. The only good thing Chase had going for it was its systems, and now if those have been compromised …… don’t walk but run away from them.\nLippard (2010-09-17):\nRaymond: Looks like Chase had a 3-day online service outage for unspecified \u0026quot;technical reasons.\u0026quot;\nAnonymous (2011-03-12):\nI had $800 in suspense (my original payments were 896) this is the account where chase holds your money until a full payment is received. I entered a trial modification for 781.33: sent the 1st payment certified mail, I called and asked if I can use that 800 I already had in suspense to make the second payment-the rep said that some of that went to fees I would have to add twenty dollars to it and I did getting her name and confirmation number. Made the third payment by certified mail. I had not heard from anyone by the time the first rolled around again. I called they (the rep that answered the phone)said continue to make the same payment amounts until I hear from them and I did on Feb. 25-I did not send this through certified mail since this was not a trial payment. Since there was 28 days in Feb and the 25 was on a Friday I called on the 1st to see if they had received the payment-they had not and instructed me to give it a week and call back the following Monday to see if it had posted yet. So I waited and called back- to my surprise they cancelled my modification stating I did not make the three payments. Apparently they were not suppose to take monies out of suspense for a payment and therefore did not count my second payment. They thought my Feb. payment was a very late 3rd one. After several attempts I finally was able to talk to my relationship manager. She said she would speak to her manager to open the modification back up in the meantime I was to send in my updated information because they would need that for the permanent modification. I faxed it all that same evening. The next day I called to make sure they received the fax (they did) and I was told I had a new relationship manager and she won’t be in until the 14th. To make this long story short-I am now in debt further (thousands) then what I was before I first started this journey. I do not have enough money to stop any foreclosure and I am scared I will loose my home if this ball gets dropped again.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/how-chase-banks-inflexibility-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy mortgage has been purchased by Chase Bank a couple of times (after the first time, I refinanced with another bank and then Chase bought my mortgage from them), and they\u0026rsquo;re my current lender.  I pay extra principal with every payment, usually about 30% more.  For my February payment, I decided to reduce the extra principal a bit, for various reasons including keeping a bit more cash on hand in current economic conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, I made a $100 error in my payment.  Rather than paying an extra $40.37, I underpaid the monthly payment by $59.63.  I learned my mistake when I received my mortgage statement, indicating that my entire payment was in \u0026ldquo;suspense funds received\u0026rdquo; and had not been applied to my mortgage at all.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI immediately called Chase.  Even though it was an hour before their call center closed, I was unable to get to a human being.  Instead, after being told I was being transferred to customer service, I got an automated message saying that my call could not by completed.  I looked for online options for payment, but the Chase website referred me instead to their phone-based \u0026ldquo;FastPay\u0026rdquo; system.  The \u0026ldquo;FastPay\u0026rdquo; system by phone charges a $15 fee (which the phone system says can be avoided by using the online payment system) and only allows making a full payment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI tried again the next morning, and got through to Tonja, a customer service rep who told me that I could only make a full payment through the phone (not the $100 I wanted to pay), but said if I connected an external bank account online, I could make the payment that way, and as soon as the extra $100 was received, the payment would be applied as normal.  I\u0026rsquo;m also well within the 15-day grace period for a payment, so I don\u0026rsquo;t have to worry about late fees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnline, I searched through some counter-intuitive menu options\u0026ndash;within the mortgage account, payment options send you to the page about FastPay over the phone\u0026ndash;I finally found that from the front page I could get to an option to connect an external account.  I started the process, and learned that my bank could not be connected instantly by putting in my online banking authentication information, but had to use a method of verification where Chase puts two small deposits in my account and I come back later and input those amounts back to Chase to prove that it\u0026rsquo;s my account (or at least that I have access to it).  It then allowed me to attempt the instant verification method, despite its previous claim that my bank didn\u0026rsquo;t accept it, but that failed (and I probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have tried\u0026ndash;Chase shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have my authentication credentials to another bank).  It then said it would take up to two business days for these deposits to go through.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next day, my bank showed me that there were two pending deposits from Chase (yet another cost Chase is incurring), so I went back to the verification page and entered those amounts.  Chase\u0026rsquo;s website informed me that because those deposits had not been made yet, I was not allowed to verify the amounts yet.  Dumb design.  I tried again later in the evening, and my verification was accepted.  Now I went to the page to make a payment, only to find that once again, the only option is to make an entire payment.  Contrary to what Tonja told me, I cannot pay just an additional $100, because there is an outstanding payment that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been made, and my $1100 sitting in \u0026ldquo;suspense funds\u0026rdquo; doesn\u0026rsquo;t count and can\u0026rsquo;t be used.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;ve got the money in savings, so I decided that if Chase is going to make things so difficult, I\u0026rsquo;m going to go ahead and make a full extra payment and deprive them of a little more interest over the life of my loan, in addition to the overhead costs they\u0026rsquo;ve incurred through this episode.  The website told me it would take two business days to process, so it will be applied on February 11\u0026ndash;still during the grace period.  But now I still am not sure that the $1100 will be applied to principal reduction, so I called in again and spoke with Kim.  I explained what has happened, and pointed out to her that Chase is losing money from its inflexibility, and she offered to move $100 from my January extra payment to February so that I could cancel the additional payment.  I thanked her for the option (which I would have needed to take if I didn\u0026rsquo;t have the money to spare), but declined, since that would result in an increase in interest.  I asked if she could verify that the $1100 would be applied correctly, and she suggested that I call in again after I see online that the new payment is applied\u0026ndash;which will incur yet further costs to Chase.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a nice demonstration of how an inflexible payment system doesn\u0026rsquo;t deal well with partial payments can cost a company money and customer goodwill.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Chase Bank's inflexibility is costing it money"},{"content":"\nAs we prepared to take our dogs for a walk this evening, we found this guy in our yard. He has a collar, but no tags. We\u0026rsquo;ve put his photo up on Pets911.com, and he\u0026rsquo;ll spend the night here and get a pound pickup tomorrow.\nUPDATE (February 7, 2009): This black lab (mix?) isn\u0026rsquo;t happy-go-lucky like our first stray of the year\u0026ndash;he was quite fearful, but did relax a bit when we got him on leash. He was interested in our dog Fred, which we used to catch him. Once on leash and after receiving some attention, he warmed up, and he would then come back after being let off leash.\nHe was terrified to come in the house, and didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to want to walk on the wood floor of the kitchen, but we did eventually get him into the spare bedroom, where I stayed with him overnight. He ended up sleeping peacefully at the foot of the bed.\nThis morning, I had the same challenge getting him out of the bedroom that I had getting in\u0026ndash;so I ended up letting him straight out to the side patio, and he\u0026rsquo;s now back out in the front yard.\nUPDATE: The same animal control officer who picked up our first stray just picked up this dog, and gave us some good news\u0026ndash;the first stray we turned in was successfully adopted, and is now named Truman!\nUPDATE: We got our first call today about our Pets911.com listing for the above dog, which includes a photo and a description. The call went like this:\nME: Hello?\nCALLER: Uh. Did you find a lost dog?\nME: Yes, we did.\nCALLER: What did it look like?\nME: It\u0026rsquo;s a black lab mix, young \u0026hellip;\nCALLER: Oh, that can\u0026rsquo;t be our dog. Our dog is white.Every phone call save one that we\u0026rsquo;ve received as a result of our found dog notices online has been from someone whose dog could not possibly have been confused with the dog in the description. (The one exception was one where the dog was returned to his rightful owner.) By contrast, when we\u0026rsquo;ve put up posters there\u0026rsquo;s been no similar mistake. I suspect the Internet information is being passed on to the callers by friends or family, but apparently people who look at lost dog information on the Internet do not know how to communicate basic information about color or breed. Or perhaps this caller has a computer infected by a virus that replaces all images with photographic negatives?\ndonna (2009-02-07):\nHmm, I think someone must know you take in strays!Our humane societies here are just inundated with pets from all the foreclosures....\nLippard (2009-02-07):\nYeah, we've had that thought ourselves. This isn't the first dog who has just wandered in while the front gate was open, we caught two at once like that on my birthday in 2005.\nRBH (2009-02-07):\nGood for Truman! That's news that's always nice to hear.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/our-second-stray-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/3.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/3.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299902519471944946\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs we prepared to take our dogs for a walk this evening, we found this guy in our yard.  He has a collar, but no tags.  We\u0026rsquo;ve put his photo up on Pets911.com, and he\u0026rsquo;ll spend the night here and get a pound pickup tomorrow.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 7, 2009): This black lab (mix?) isn\u0026rsquo;t happy-go-lucky like \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/our-first-stray-of-2009.html\"\u003eour first stray of the year\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;he was quite fearful, but did relax a bit when we got him on leash.  He was interested in our dog Fred, which we used to catch him.  Once on leash and after receiving some attention, he warmed up, and he would then come back after being let off leash.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe was terrified to come in the house, and didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to want to walk on the wood floor of the kitchen, but we did eventually get him into the spare bedroom, where I stayed with him overnight.  He ended up sleeping peacefully at the foot of the bed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis morning, I had the same challenge getting him out of the bedroom that I had getting in\u0026ndash;so I ended up letting him straight out to the side patio, and he\u0026rsquo;s now back out in the front yard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: The same animal control officer who picked up our first stray just picked up this dog, and gave us some good news\u0026ndash;the first stray we turned in was successfully adopted, and is now named Truman!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: We got our first call today about our Pets911.com listing for the above dog, which includes a photo and a description.  The call went like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eME:  Hello?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCALLER:  Uh.  \u003clong\u003e  Did you find a lost dog?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eME:  Yes, we did.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCALLER:  What did it look like?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eME:  It\u0026rsquo;s a black lab mix, young \u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCALLER:  Oh, that can\u0026rsquo;t be our dog.  Our dog is white.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEvery phone call save one that we\u0026rsquo;ve received as a result of our found dog notices online has been from someone whose dog could not possibly have been confused with the dog in the description.  (The one exception was one where the dog was returned to his rightful owner.)  By contrast, when we\u0026rsquo;ve put up posters there\u0026rsquo;s been no similar mistake.  I suspect the Internet information is being passed on to the callers by friends or family, but apparently people who look at lost dog information on the Internet do not know how to communicate basic information about color or breed.  Or perhaps this caller has a computer infected by a virus that replaces all images with photographic negatives?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our second stray of 2009"},{"content":"Just as Conservapedia is often edited with parodies that even the real conservatives there can\u0026rsquo;t distinguish from conservatism (let alone everyone else), the global warming-denying Heartland Institute has mistaken a parody video for a real one, and briefly posted it on their site until they realized they\u0026rsquo;d been had. It was probably the traffic from Tim Lambert\u0026rsquo;s Deltoid blog that tipped them off.\nThis is a problem faced by ideological groups that search for evidence to support their established positions rather than trying to honestly evaluate the evidence. This isn\u0026rsquo;t the first time the Heartland Institute has demonstrated that this is how they operate, and I\u0026rsquo;m sure it won\u0026rsquo;t be the last.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/heartland-institute-mistakes-parody-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust as Conservapedia is \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/02/72818\"\u003eoften edited with parodies\u003c/a\u003e that even the real conservatives there can\u0026rsquo;t distinguish from conservatism (let alone \u003ca href=\"http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law\"\u003eeveryone else\u003c/a\u003e), the global warming-denying Heartland Institute \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/02/heartland_posts_frank_bis_paro.php\"\u003ehas mistaken a parody video for a real one, and briefly posted it on their site until they realized they\u0026rsquo;d been had\u003c/a\u003e.  It was probably the traffic from \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/02/heartland_posts_frank_bis_paro.php\"\u003eTim Lambert\u0026rsquo;s Deltoid blog\u003c/a\u003e that tipped them off.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a problem faced by ideological groups that search for evidence to support their established positions rather than trying to honestly evaluate the evidence.  This \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/heartland-institute-publishes-bogus.html\"\u003eisn\u0026rsquo;t the first time the Heartland Institute has demonstrated that this is how they operate\u003c/a\u003e, and I\u0026rsquo;m sure it won\u0026rsquo;t be the last.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Heartland Institute mistakes parody for reality"},{"content":"Orac at Respectful Insolence shows the deception from Bishop Richard Williamson, the formerly excommunicated Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop who was recently reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI. Williamson created a recent media firestorm because of his Holocaust denial, and has now apologized\u0026ndash;not for his Holocaust denial, but for the fact that there was a media reaction to it. It\u0026rsquo;s a not-pology.\nOrac debunks some of Williamson\u0026rsquo;s falsehoods about the Holocaust, and points to some of the best sites for responding to Holocaust denial: Nizkor, The Holocaust History Project, and Holocaust Denial on Trial.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-02-02):\nThat guy is way way out there. Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt has a number of posts about that guy on her blog, this one is worth looking at as she has a number of links to his writings.One of those links is to an article he wrote about the Rwandan genocide, in which he argues that liberal democracy caused the genocide by erroneously teaching the Hutu majority that they should have a say in their government.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-08):\nDenial of the Nazi Holocaust is unspeakably evil, given 21 million murdered including 6 million Jews. It's no excuse that a free pass is often given to denial of the even worse holocausts that Rummel documented in Death By Government. I.e. the \"Soviet GULag state\" murdered 65 million and the \"Communist Chinese Ant Hill\" murdered 35 million.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-11):\nHere's some unmitigated filth: Essa bin Mohammed Al Zedjali, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Times of Oman, the sultanate’s oldest English-language newspaper, says that the Jews of Europe deserved it, and Hitler's brutal measures were justified:\"It is illustrative to browse through the relevant pages of history to know the real history of the Jews in Germany. You would then come to know why Hitler had taken harsh measures against them. The entire economy of Germany, including banks, publishing houses, jewellery stores, light and heavy industries and almost all economic organisations of consequence, was under the total control of the Jews.\"It should be no surprise. Here is some footage of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, whom Arafat called \"our hero\", with the Nazis, meeting with Hitler and Himmler, and recruiting 30,000 Bosnian Muslims for the Handžar division of the SS. Then it documents Mein Kampf and Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Islamic bookshops, as well as \"God bless Hitler\" signs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/not-pology-from-holocaust-denying.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrac at Respectful Insolence \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/01/holocaust-denying_conservative_bishop.php\"\u003eshows the deception from Bishop Richard Williamson\u003c/a\u003e, the formerly excommunicated Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop who was recently reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI.  Williamson created a recent media firestorm because of his Holocaust denial, and has now apologized\u0026ndash;not for his Holocaust denial, but for the fact that there was a media reaction to it.  It\u0026rsquo;s a not-pology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOrac debunks some of Williamson\u0026rsquo;s falsehoods about the Holocaust, and points to some of the best sites for responding to Holocaust denial:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.nizkor.org/\"\u003eNizkor\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.holocaust-history.org/\"\u003eThe Holocaust History Project\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.hdot.org/\"\u003eHolocaust Denial on Trial\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Not-pology from Holocaust-denying bishop reinstated by the Pope"},{"content":"At The Agitator blog, Radley Balko writes what Michael Phelps should have said when a photograph of him taking a bong hit was published in a tabloid:\nDear America,\nI take it back. I don’t apologize. Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.\nI put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. You’re watching the Super Bowl tonight. You’re watching 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. That’s about 20 years shorter than your average non-NFL player. Yet you watch. And cheer. And you jump up spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route across the middle. The harder he gets hit, the louder and more enthusiastically you scream.\nYet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have have without a shred of evidence beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.\nYou’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.\nRead the rest at The Agitator.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2009-02-02):\nWhat absolutely drives me nuts is how we have this stalker media that invades every single moment of celebrities lives, then when they after stealing some private moment and blowing it up out of proportion and turning it into a subject of national scrutiny they get indignant that someone would do something in their personal private life that they don't approve of.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/what-michael-phelps-should-have-said.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt The Agitator blog, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2009/02/01/a-letter-id-like-to-see-but-wont/\"\u003eRadley Balko writes what Michael Phelps should have said when a photograph of him taking a bong hit was published in a tabloid\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eDear America,\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-02-01-michael-phelps_N.htm\"\u003eI take it back\u003c/a\u003e. I don’t apologize. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBecause you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What Michael Phelps should have said"},{"content":"\nWe found this dog at Circle K Park while walking our dogs. He is a friendly pit bull mixed with something big and shaggy (perhaps Bernese Mountain Dog), with a partly brindle coat. He was easy to capture on leash\u0026ndash;he came right up to Kat. We brought him home and he eagerly drank a full bowl of water and some food. He raced around our front yard and chased a ball and brought it back. He\u0026rsquo;s just a puppy with perfect teeth and bad habits of jumping up and being overly excited.\nWe put his picture on Pets911 and took him by the house of a neighbor who said he lost a brindle-coated pit bull a few months ago that had been seen in the vicinity of the park. We had trouble coaxing him into the car, but eventually he crawled in on his own accord. Unfortunately, the man\u0026rsquo;s wife said this wasn\u0026rsquo;t their dog\nHe seemed to have some kind of allergy, as he had red around his eyes and his gums were bright red, so we gave him a Benadryl. I spent the night with him in our spare bedroom, and he couldn\u0026rsquo;t seem to sit still or stop breathing hard (or stop wanting attention) until the Benadryl kicked in, and he had a couple of decently long periods of sleep and rest. When he got up this morning, his eyes and gums looked much better, and he again enjoyed racing around the front yard and playing fetch.\nAnimal Care and Control picked him up just a few minutes ago, and he was shaking in the kennel on the truck. I don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s one who is going to do well in a kennel situation. We got his case number, in case someone calls us as a result of the Pets911 ad, but unfortunately, that rarely happens.\nUPDATE (February 7, 2009): When the animal control officer picked up our second stray of 2009, he let us know that this good boy was quickly adopted, and is now known as Truman.\nCongratulations, Truman!\nHistorical Comments RBH (2009-02-01):\nMan, I hate to see them hauled away in the animal control truck. :( But there are so many one can't take them all in.We kicked in to our local shelter to build a decent-sized run so the pet adoption people that come to our rural shelter every month can evaluate the dogs for potential adoption. Previously they wouldn't take any from our shelter because there wasn't a large enough space in which to evaluate them. But it's still chancy for the poor mutts.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/our-first-stray-of-2009.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/good.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/good.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297863229658442178\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe found this dog at Circle K Park while walking our dogs.  He is a friendly pit bull mixed with something big and shaggy (perhaps Bernese Mountain Dog), with a partly brindle coat.  He was easy to capture on leash\u0026ndash;he came right up to Kat.  We brought him home and he eagerly drank a full bowl of water and some food.  He raced around our front yard and chased a ball and brought it back.  He\u0026rsquo;s just a puppy with perfect teeth and bad habits of jumping up and being overly excited.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe put his picture on Pets911 and took him by the house of a neighbor who said he lost a brindle-coated pit bull a few months ago that had been seen in the vicinity of the park.  We had trouble coaxing him into the car, but eventually he crawled in on his own accord.  Unfortunately, the man\u0026rsquo;s wife said this wasn\u0026rsquo;t their dog\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/with_ball.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/with_ball.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297863155463126194\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe seemed to have some kind of allergy, as he had red around his eyes and his gums were bright red, so we gave him a Benadryl.  I spent the night with him in our spare bedroom, and he couldn\u0026rsquo;t seem to sit still or stop breathing hard (or stop wanting attention) until the Benadryl kicked in, and he had a couple of decently long periods of sleep and rest.  When he got up this morning, his eyes and gums looked much better, and he again enjoyed racing around the front yard and playing fetch.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnimal Care and Control picked him up just a few minutes ago, and he was shaking in the kennel on the truck.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s one who is going to do well in a kennel situation.  We got his case number, in case someone calls us as a result of the Pets911 ad, but unfortunately, that rarely happens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 7, 2009): When the animal control officer picked up our \u003ca href=\"/2009/02/our-second-stray-of-2009.html\"\u003esecond stray of 2009\u003c/a\u003e, he let us know that this good boy was quickly adopted, and is now known as Truman.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongratulations, Truman!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our first stray of 2009"},{"content":"June 4 will be the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. March 10 is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that led to the Dalai Lama\u0026rsquo;s exile. July 22 is the 10th anniversary of the banning of the Falun Gong cult in China. And October 1 is the celebration of 60 years of Communist rule in China.\nChinese leaders worry that the first three anniversaries may cause issues for the last, and they are right to worry. This looks like it will be a year for dissidents in China to come forward, and it has already begun with an online petition issued in December called Charter 08 at the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.\nCharter 08 (in English here) was named after Charter 77, a human rights manifesto issued by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977. Charter 08, which has been signed by more than two thousand Chinese citizens, calls for recognition of \u0026ldquo;basic universal values\u0026rdquo;:\nFreedom. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.\nHuman rights. Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China\u0026rsquo;s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime\u0026rsquo;s disregard for human rights.\nEquality. The integrity, dignity, and freedom of every person—regardless of social station, occupation, sex, economic condition, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or political belief—are the same as those of any other. Principles of equality before the law and equality of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights must be upheld.\nRepublicanism. Republicanism, which holds that power should be balanced among different branches of government and competing interests should be served, resembles the traditional Chinese political ideal of \u0026ldquo;fairness in all under heaven.\u0026rdquo; It allows different interest groups and social assemblies, and people with a variety of cultures and beliefs, to exercise democratic self-government and to deliberate in order to reach peaceful resolution of public questions on a basis of equal access to government and free and fair competition.\nDemocracy. The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign and the people select their government. Democracy has these characteristics: (1) Political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people. (2) Political power is exercised through choices that the people make. (3) The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections. (4) While honoring the will of the majority, the fundamental dignity, freedom, and human rights of minorities are protected. In short, democracy is a modern means for achieving government truly \u0026ldquo;of the people, by the people, and for the people.\u0026quot;\nConstitutional rule. Constitutional rule is rule through a legal system and legal regulations to implement principles that are spelled out in a constitution. It means protecting the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power, and providing the administrative apparatus necessary to serve these ends.\nMore concretely, Charter 08 offers the following 19 more-specific recommendations:\n1. A New Constitution. We should recast our present constitution, rescinding its provisions that contradict the principle that sovereignty resides with the people and turning it into a document that genuinely guarantees human rights, authorizes the exercise of public power, and serves as the legal underpinning of China\u0026rsquo;s democratization. The constitution must be the highest law in the land, beyond violation by any individual, group, or political party.\n2. Separation of Powers. We should construct a modern government in which the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive power is guaranteed. We need an Administrative Law that defines the scope of government responsibility and prevents abuse of administrative power. Government should be responsible to taxpayers. Division of power between provincial governments and the central government should adhere to the principle that central powers are only those specifically granted by the constitution and all other powers belong to the local governments.\n3. Legislative Democracy. Members of legislative bodies at all levels should be chosen by direct election, and legislative democracy should observe just and impartial principles.\n4. An Independent Judiciary. The rule of law must be above the interests of any particular political party and judges must be independent. We need to establish a constitutional supreme court and institute procedures for constitutional review. As soon as possible, we should abolish all of the Committees on Political and Legal Affairs that now allow Communist Party officials at every level to decide politically sensitive cases in advance and out of court. We should strictly forbid the use of public offices for private purposes.\n5. Public Control of Public Servants. The military should be made answerable to the national government, not to a political party, and should be made more professional. Military personnel should swear allegiance to the constitution and remain nonpartisan. Political party organizations must be prohibited in the military. All public officials including police should serve as nonpartisans, and the current practice of favoring one political party in the hiring of public servants must end.\n6. Guarantee of Human Rights. There must be strict guarantees of human rights and respect for human dignity. There should be a Human Rights Committee, responsible to the highest legislative body, that will prevent the government from abusing public power in violation of human rights. A democratic and constitutional China especially must guarantee the personal freedom of citizens. No one should suffer illegal arrest, detention, arraignment, interrogation, or punishment. The system of \u0026ldquo;Reeducation through Labor\u0026rdquo; must be abolished.\n7. Election of Public Officials. There should be a comprehensive system of democratic elections based on \u0026ldquo;one person, one vote.\u0026rdquo; The direct election of administrative heads at the levels of county, city, province, and nation should be systematically implemented. The rights to hold periodic free elections and to participate in them as a citizen are inalienable.\n8. Rural–Urban Equality. The two-tier household registry system must be abolished. This system favors urban residents and harms rural residents. We should establish instead a system that gives every citizen the same constitutional rights and the same freedom to choose where to live.\n9. Freedom to Form Groups. The right of citizens to form groups must be guaranteed. The current system for registering nongovernment groups, which requires a group to be \u0026ldquo;approved,\u0026rdquo; should be replaced by a system in which a group simply registers itself. The formation of political parties should be governed by the constitution and the laws, which means that we must abolish the special privilege of one party to monopolize power and must guarantee principles of free and fair competition among political parties.\n10. Freedom to Assemble. The constitution provides that peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, and freedom of expression are fundamental rights of a citizen. The ruling party and the government must not be permitted to subject these to illegal interference or unconstitutional obstruction.\n11. Freedom of Expression. We should make freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom universal, thereby guaranteeing that citizens can be informed and can exercise their right of political supervision. These freedoms should be upheld by a Press Law that abolishes political restrictions on the press. The provision in the current Criminal Law that refers to \u0026ldquo;the crime of incitement to subvert state power\u0026rdquo; must be abolished. We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.\n12. Freedom of Religion. We must guarantee freedom of religion and belief, and institute a separation of religion and state. There must be no governmental interference in peaceful religious activities. We should abolish any laws, regulations, or local rules that limit or suppress the religious freedom of citizens. We should abolish the current system that requires religious groups (and their places of worship) to get official approval in advance and substitute for it a system in which registry is optional and, for those who choose to register, automatic.\n13. Civic Education. In our schools we should abolish political curriculums and examinations that are designed to indoctrinate students in state ideology and to instill support for the rule of one party. We should replace them with civic education that advances universal values and citizens\u0026rsquo; rights, fosters civic consciousness, and promotes civic virtues that serve society.\n14. Protection of Private Property. We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature, that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.\n15. Financial and Tax Reform. We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government—central, provincial, county or local—are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.\n16. Social Security. We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.\n17. Protection of the Environment. We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendants and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of nongovernmental organizations.\n18. A Federated Republic. A democratic China should seek to act as a responsible major power contributing toward peace and development in the Asian Pacific region by approaching others in a spirit of equality and fairness. In Hong Kong and Macao, we should support the freedoms that already exist. With respect to Taiwan, we should declare our commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and then, negotiating as equals and ready to compromise, seek a formula for peaceful unification. We should approach disputes in the national-minority areas of China with an open mind, seeking ways to find a workable framework within which all ethnic and religious groups can flourish. We should aim ultimately at a federation of democratic communities of China.\n19. Truth in Reconciliation. We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.\nThe Chinese government\u0026rsquo;s response has been to detain Charter 08\u0026rsquo;s chief organizer, Liu Xiaobo, question or threaten signers of the document, shut down websites that contain or discuss the document, and require Google to return no results for searches on Charter 08, but instead produce a warning that \u0026ldquo;according to local laws, regulations and policies, some results have not been displayed.\u0026quot;\nMore on Charter 08:\n\u0026ldquo;The year of living dissidently,\u0026quot; The Economist, January 17, 2009, pp. 42-43.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/2009-year-for-chinese-dissidents.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJune 4 will be the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  March 10 is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that led to the Dalai Lama\u0026rsquo;s exile.  July 22 is the 10th anniversary of the banning of the Falun Gong cult in China.  And October 1 is the celebration of 60 years of Communist rule in China.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChinese leaders worry that the first three anniversaries may cause issues for the last, and they are right to worry.  This looks like it will be a year for dissidents in China to come forward, and it has already begun with an online petition issued in December called Charter 08 at the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCharter 08 (in English \u003ca href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e) was named after Charter 77, a human rights manifesto issued by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977.  Charter 08, which has been signed by more than two thousand Chinese citizens, calls for recognition of \u0026ldquo;basic universal values\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2009: A Year for Chinese Dissidents"},{"content":"In a recent paper, Jamie Napier and John Jost argue that the reason conservatives are happier than liberals is that they are, for ideological reasons, not pained by observing high levels of income inequality. They draw this conclusion on the basis of responses to a survey item about attitudes about meritocracy that ranges from a scale of \u0026ldquo;hard work generally doesn\u0026rsquo;t bring success\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s more a matter of luck\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;hard work pays,\u0026rdquo; which Will Wilkinson shows cannot do the job of supporting their explanation:\nI strongly agree that success, understood as a significant upward move on a valued status dimension, is largely a matter of luck. But I also strongly agree that hard work (in a society with decent institutions) usually brings a better life. It’s possible to work hard and achieve a better life without ever winning anything you’d count as success. So I haven’t a clue how I’d answer this question. Do I believe in meritocracy or not?He observes that there\u0026rsquo;s also a much better explanation for the answers to that question than assuming a blindness or lack of care about inequality:\nIf one wants to see a meritocratic bent as a common cause of conservative leanings and higher happiness, here’s a less tendentious explanation. (1) Those with a greater sense of the efficacy of their behavior — with a greater sense of being in control — will tend to (a) think hard work brings a better life, (b) be happier, (c) see policies that seem to penalize hard work as unjust. (2) People likely to see high taxes as an unjust penalty on hard work tend to identify as “conservative.”And a further problem about attributing a blindness to inequality to conservatives is that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, as Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s commenter John Thacker points out (and I\u0026rsquo;ve previously observed at this blog). Thacker attributes the difference to religiosity; again, I\u0026rsquo;ve previously pointed out that he is apparently correct on this point (also see this post and the previous reference on conservatives vs. liberals), that the religious give far more to charity than the secular, even if you don\u0026rsquo;t count donations to churches. (But apparently Christians are well-known in the service industry as lousy tippers.)\nThe same Napier and Jost paper is discussed at Marginal Revolution, where commenter DocMerlin points out that:\nA rather simple answer follows with (A) and (B) being true statements that result in the same statistics without the rediculious \u0026ldquo;conservatives are happy with evil\u0026rdquo; result that the study got.\n1)\nA) Women are much more likely to self report depression and unhappiness than men are.\nB) Men are more conservative than women.\n2)\nA) Divorced/unmarried women are on average more liberal than married women\nB) Married people are happier.\n3)\nA) Conservatives are more likely to attend church regularly\nB) People who attend church regularly are found to be happier and healthier than those who don\u0026rsquo;t (on average).\n4)\nA) Liberals feel guilty for their own success.\nB) Conservatives don\u0026rsquo;t feel guilty for their own success.\nAnother possible explanation is that liberals and the secular value truth over happiness, but it seems to me that the Napier and Jost paper is an example of trying to explain away an unpalatable truth. It\u0026rsquo;s better to dig deeper to understand the causes of these differences before offering public policy prescriptions (or even arguments for what is individually better to do). Wilkinson, who has done extensive review of the literature on happiness and proposed public policy prescriptions, seems to me to have the better psychological explanation for the happiness difference in terms of sense of control over outcomes. That explanation also comports well with a charitability difference\u0026ndash;if you don\u0026rsquo;t feel that your contribution could make much difference, you\u0026rsquo;re probably less likely to make a contribution.\nRBH (2009-02-01):\nLooks to me like a rehashing of the locus of control stuff.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-08):\nYou want stinginess? How about the President with whom leftists and atheists had a \"slobbering love affair\", who gave only 1% of his ample income to charity for many years? For leftists, charity means spreading other people's wealth around.\nLippard (2009-02-08):\nBernard Goldberg is a guy who strains at gnats and swallows camels.I wouldn't say that atheists have had a \"slobbering love affair\" with Obama--he's far better than Bush on church/state issues and acknowledging that nonbelievers exist and deserve a say in government, but he's still expanding the Office of Faith-Based Programs. P.Z. Myers has given Obama sharp criticism as Pharyngula for his wishy-washiness on religion; I put up a fairly pessimistic list of \"hopes and expectations\" for the Obama administration on Facebook.I previously compared Obama and Biden's charitable giving to McCain's at this blog. The Obamas were quite generous in 2007, giving more than 5% of their gross income to charity, but only gave 1% in 2000. The Bidens were the real offenders on charitable giving, giving away only 0.3% in their peak year--$995 from $319,853 of income, and a total of $3,690 over 10 years. That's pathetic.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-09):\nA very fair previous comment about those other tax records.I disagree about Goldberg. Even in Australia, we didn't miss Chris Matthews: \"I Felt This Thrill Going Up My Leg\" As Obama Spoke. That was hardly the only example of media figures in the tank for Obama, thus failing in their duties to provide proper questioning and criticism. Even Saturday Night Live parodied this obvious bias.\nLippard (2009-02-09):\nI didn't dispute that there's been a left-wing love-fest, only the atheist part.My comment about Goldberg is based on my view of him as a whole, not based on this new book, which I haven't read. I saw him interviewed on the Daily Show, and have read parts of his previous book, _100 People Who Are Screwing Up America_. That's a book that has some very weak cases included and very significant cases excluded, and that was the primary reason I made my comment. That book was clearly written by somebody with significant ideological blindness, which is ironic considering he earlier wrote a book titled _Bias_.Looks like he makes similar omissions in his new book.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-12):\nYet even the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, herself an Obama voter, recognized An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage and Obama's [3-1] Edge in the Coverage Race, and that \"some of the conservatives' complaints about a liberal tilt are valid\" and steps need to be taken in Remedying the Bias Perception, e.g. with more intellectual diversity among journalists.\nLippard (2009-02-16):\nInteresting thing I just learned--the Knoxville, TN church shooter, Jim Adkisson, wanted to kill all of the people in Bernard Goldberg's _100 People Who Are Screwing Up America_, but decided instead to take out a few Unitarians.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-17):\nThe fault of course is Adkisson's, not Goldberg's. Note that Goldberg listed some conservatives like Judge Roy Moore.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-17):\nThis older column is quite good: Compassionate conservatism is old stuff by African-American author and economist Dr Thomas Sowell (1999).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/02/happiness-charity-religiosity-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a recent paper, Jamie Napier and John Jost argue that the reason conservatives are happier than liberals is that they are, for ideological reasons, not pained by observing high levels of income inequality.  They draw this conclusion on the basis of responses to a survey item about attitudes about meritocracy that ranges from a scale of \u0026ldquo;hard work generally doesn\u0026rsquo;t bring success\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s more a matter of luck\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;hard work pays,\u0026rdquo; which \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/01/31/if-youre-not-outraged-youve-internalized-a-system-justifying-ideology/\"\u003eWill Wilkinson shows cannot do the job of supporting their explanation\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI strongly agree that success, understood as a significant upward move on a valued status dimension, is largely a matter of luck. But I also strongly agree that hard work (in a society with decent institutions) usually brings a better life. It’s possible to work hard and achieve a better life without ever winning anything you’d count as \u003cem\u003esuccess\u003c/em\u003e. So I haven’t a clue how I’d answer this question. Do I believe in meritocracy or not?\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe observes that there\u0026rsquo;s also a much better explanation for the answers to that question than assuming a blindness or lack of care about inequality:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf one wants to see a meritocratic bent as a common cause of conservative leanings and higher happiness, here’s a less tendentious explanation. (1) Those with a greater sense of the efficacy of their behavior — with a greater sense of being in control — will tend to (a) think hard work brings a better life, (b) be happier, (c) see policies that seem to penalize hard work as unjust. (2) People likely to see high taxes as an unjust penalty on hard work tend to identify as “conservative.”\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd a further problem about attributing a blindness to inequality to conservatives is that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, as Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s commenter John Thacker points out (and \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously observed at this blog\u003c/a\u003e).  Thacker attributes the difference to religiosity; again, I\u0026rsquo;ve previously pointed out that he \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/atheists-weak-on-charitable-giving.html\"\u003eis apparently correct on this point\u003c/a\u003e (also see \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/taner-edis-on-generosity-of-religious.html\"\u003ethis post\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003ethe previous reference on conservatives vs. liberals\u003c/a\u003e), that the religious give far more to charity than the secular, even if you don\u0026rsquo;t count donations to churches.  (But apparently Christians are well-known in the service industry as \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/01/30/dont-serve-the-christians-on-a-sunday/\"\u003elousy\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=7721\"\u003etippers\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe same Napier and Jost paper \u003ca href=\"http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/01/department-of-guffaw.html\"\u003eis discussed at Marginal Revolution\u003c/a\u003e, where commenter DocMerlin points out that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happiness, charity, religiosity, and liberals vs. conservatives"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:\nEpisode 013 Atheism and Shit-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem, Ten Things the Pope Hates About Reality, Some Obama Topics, Family Planning and Stem Cell Research, REBT: Self-Downing.\nJan. 31: Filming for ArizonaCOR welcome video (happened today).\nFeb. 13: Phoenix Atheists meetup new member welcome at Baby Kay\u0026rsquo;s.\nFeb. 15: SMOCA 10th anniversary, Phoenix Atheists will attend.\nFeb. 18: Daniel Dennett speaking at ASU on \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rdquo; Phoenix Atheists will attend.\nComments on this episode:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think the difference between a religion and a cult is just the number of members, though growing large enough certainly tends to change social perception. As I\u0026rsquo;ve written previously at this blog, I think the characteristics that make a group a cult are something like Steve Hassan\u0026rsquo;s BITE model (Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotional control) or better yet (since it doesn\u0026rsquo;t depend on questionable notions of mind control), Isaac Bonewits\u0026rsquo; Advanced Bonewits\u0026rsquo; Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (ABCDEF).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/apostaz-podcast-13.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast is now available:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz013.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 013\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Shit-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/\"\u003emeetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem, Ten Things the Pope Hates About Reality, Some Obama Topics, Family Planning and Stem Cell Research, REBT: Self-Downing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eJan. 31: Filming for ArizonaCOR welcome video (happened today).\u003cbr /\u003eFeb. 13: \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/calendar/9472868/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists meetup new member welcome at Baby Kay\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003eFeb. 15: SMOCA 10th anniversary, \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/calendar/9473569/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists will attend\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003eFeb. 18: Daniel Dennett speaking at ASU on \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Strange Inversion of Reasoning.\u0026rdquo;  \u003ca href=\"http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/calendar/9577645/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists will attend\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eComments on this episode:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t think the difference between a religion and a cult is just the number of members, though growing large enough certainly tends to change social perception.  As \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/sam-harris-and-atheist-label.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve written previously at this blog\u003c/a\u003e, I think the characteristics that make a group a cult are something like \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/articles/BITE.htm\"\u003eSteve Hassan\u0026rsquo;s BITE model\u003c/a\u003e (Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotional control) or better yet (since it doesn\u0026rsquo;t depend on questionable notions of mind control), \u003ca href=\"http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html\"\u003eIsaac Bonewits\u0026rsquo; Advanced Bonewits\u0026rsquo; Cult Danger Evaluation Frame\u003c/a\u003e (ABCDEF).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #13"},{"content":"Kat and I made arrangements to travel to D.C. for the inauguration a few months before the election. Our plan was to attend regardless of who was elected president, but we preferred Obama over McCain and his winning the election solidified our plans. We flew to D.C. on U.S. Airways Flight 44 to see the 44th president inaugurated, leaving 72-degree weather in Phoenix and arriving to 26-degree weather in D.C. We had prepared with layered clothing, but I found that my toes were still freezing in my shoes with two layers of socks, so we visited a mall near our hotel and found evidence of massive price deflation in coats and boots. I picked up a nice pair of Dupont \u0026ldquo;thinsulate\u0026rdquo; insulated boots, and Kat bought a full-length padded coat, each of which were only $20. We saw some further evidence of price deflation in goods at the Smithsonian gift shop in the National Museum of the American Indian, where T-shirt prices had been lowered from $20 last time we visited to $16 this trip. Food prices, however, seemed to be about the same, and the price of a 7-day Metro pass had climbed from $20 to $26.40 (no doubt still a subsidized price).\nOn Saturday, we visited the newly-reopened National Museum of American History, where there were special events going on with actors portraying figures from American history such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. We paid a visit to the American flag from Fort McHenry (the star-spangled banner), the First Ladies\u0026rsquo; dresses collection, the pop culture exhibit, \u0026ldquo;The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,\u0026rdquo; musical instruments, the Gunboat Philadelphia, and a few other exhibits. We followed this up with lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian, then checked out the new Capitol visitors\u0026rsquo; center and took a look at the setup for the inauguration. We then walked over by the Newseum, passing the Canadian Embassy and its huge banners welcoming President Obama.\nThe theme of pending change was everywhere\u0026ndash;not only the expected political banners, but in commercial advertising (e.g., Metro ads from Pepsi and Ikea), religious advertising (the Seventh-Day Adventists were handing out a magazine with Obama\u0026rsquo;s photograph on the front), and even by the homeless begging for \u0026ldquo;change I can believe in.\u0026quot;\nOn Sunday we went to the Columbia Heights Metro station and were amazed at how much the area has changed. We visited an apartment building in the area where Kat used to live in the 1990s, finding it boarded up and for sale (last sold 10/16/2008 for $1.1M). Next was Adams-Morgan, where there was a kiosk to \u0026ldquo;Tell the President \u0026hellip; tell him what you think! tell him what you want!\u0026rdquo; by sticking up handwritten notes. A few examples: \u0026ldquo;TAKE A STAND 4 PALESTINE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;WE ARE HUMANS NOT MACHINES,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;GAY MARRIAGE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Make Weed Legal,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;fix our schools,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;NO MORE LIES PLEASE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Respect our privacy! Stop USA spying on Americans!,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;MAKE LOVE TO ME.\u0026quot;\nWe visited a friend\u0026rsquo;s clothing store (Redeem, on 14th St. south of S), walked past the Church of Scientology near Dupont Circle that was in the act by offering free \u0026ldquo;touch assists\u0026rdquo; for D.C. visitors, and approached as close as we could to the White House, which was to walk on Pennsylvania Ave. near the president\u0026rsquo;s inaugural parade viewing stand. From there we could hear U2 playing at the \u0026ldquo;We Are One\u0026rdquo; concert on the Mall, which we chose not to brave the crowds to see.\nMonday we spent time with family in the early afternoon, and spent the rest of our afternoon paying a visit to the American Humanist Society\u0026rsquo;s MLK Day open house. In the evening, we went back to Dupont Circle, where a giant inflatable George W. Bush with a giant nose labeled \u0026ldquo;GIVE BUSH THE BOOT\u0026rdquo; was available to throw shoes at.\nTuesday morning, we got up at 5:30 a.m. and got to the Silver Spring Metro Station by 6:40 a.m. The station was packed, and we squeezed into a very crowded train. We got out at Gallery Place and walked towards the Mall, where we ran into an immense crowd at 7th and E that was waiting to go through security screening to the inaugural parade seats. We hung out there for a while, where several people from Meetup.com were handing out nametags and pens, and then walked around the security perimeter to the west to get to the Mall. This required us to go back north to I St., and west to 19th St. (we could have gone down 18th, but 19th was less crowded). We went through no security and had no trouble getting to the Mall.\nWe walked east past the Washington Monument, but U.S. Army soldiers suddenly closed the road at 15th St. and so we went back and found a good spot in front of the Jumbotron just northeast of the Monument. The crowd continued to build, and the Jumbotron showed a replay of the \u0026ldquo;We are One\u0026rdquo; concert from Sunday (which would might have been annoying if we had already seen it).\nAt long last, the Jumbotrons switched to a live (with audio slightly delayed) feed, with a live mike somewhere in the expensive seats that seemed unintentional. We got to hear one side of multiple conversations, including Sen. Joe Lieberman telling someone, \u0026ldquo;I love your mother!\u0026rdquo; The captioning was a little behind the already-delayed audio, and occasionally bizarrely off. When Aretha Franklin sang, one caption at the end of her song said \u0026ldquo;THREAT RING.\u0026quot;\nI thought that Pastor Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s invocation was awful\u0026ndash;it was sectarian and it was blatantly hypocritical (cf. Matthew 6:5-7), and I considered it, along with the cold, to be the low-light of the swearing-in ceremony.\nGeorge W. Bush attracted some mild booing, and we almost (but not quite) felt sorry for him. But the crowd was ecstatic at Obama\u0026rsquo;s being sworn in (and at Bush\u0026rsquo;s helicopter leaving).\nObama\u0026rsquo;s inaugural speech seemed to mostly be fairly generic new-politician-in-office platitudes, but there were a few standout positive points for me. First, his acknowledgement that some Americans are nonbelievers and we have a stake and a voice in this country was a breath of fresh air. I cheered that line, and several people near by looked at me and smiled. His affirmation that science must be \u0026ldquo;restore[d] \u0026hellip; to its rightful place\u0026rdquo; was another good one, as was his statement that we cannot give up the Constitution for safety.\nIt is a pleasure to again have a president who can speak in complete English sentences and not make me cringe every time I hear him.\nAfter the swearing-in ceremony was over, it took us well over an hour to leave the Mall. People were packed in trying to leave, and at one point we saw the crowd knock down a barricade on the north side of the Mall, and a second barricade just north of that, to get access to Constitution. We moved in the opposite direction, which proved to be the right move to get to a flowing stream of people moving towards the actual exit. Police showed up at the downed barricades after about ten minutes, and put them back in place.\nOn Wednesday, we visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in North America, on the grounds of Catholic University of America. It was interesting to see the different ethnic versions of Mary, Mother of Jesus in the Shrine, including Our Mother of Africa, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Our Lady of La Vang (Vietnam). We did a little shopping for Obama swag at Union Station.\nOn Thursday, our last day in D.C., we visited Battleground National Cemetery on Georgia Ave., a little-known burial ground of Union soldiers killed at the battle of Fort Stevens, the only Civil War battle that occurred in D.C. We also visited Fort Stevens itself, which has a monument where President Lincoln stood on the rampart and was told to \u0026ldquo;Get down, you fool\u0026rdquo; as he was likely to be killed by attacking Confederate soldiers there. Finally, we visited the recently restored Lincoln Cottage at the Old Soldier\u0026rsquo;s Home, just north of Catholic University of America, where Lincoln spent about a quarter of his presidential term, made many of his decisions, and drafted and finalized the Emancipation Proclamation.\nLaika (2009-02-01):\n\u0026gt;where President Lincoln stood on the rampart and was told to \u0026quot;Get down, you fool\u0026quot; before he was killed by attacking Confederate soldiers.This is a version of history of which I was previously unaware! So you don\u0026#39;t buy the whole John Wilkes Booth coverup story?\nTheo Bromine (2009-02-01):\n\u0026gt;where President Lincoln stood on the rampart and was told to \u0026quot;Get down, you fool\u0026quot; before he was killed by attacking Confederate soldiers.I too suffered a parsing error when I read that, and wondered for a while if my Canadian grasp of US history was worse than I thought!For another view of the inauguration, check out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/jan/16/barack-obama-lego-legoland?lightbox=1\nLippard (2009-02-01):\nMark, Theo: Wow, that was a very unfortunate ambiguous phrasing, wasn't it!\nLippard (2009-02-01):\nI've revised that sentence in order to make it more clear, if less amusing.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-09):\nObama spruiks forth: \"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.\" But see this clip on the exact same sort of \"Politician's Logic\" from the great 1980s British political TV satire Yes Minister. :)\nLippard (2009-02-09):\n\"Yes, Minister\" and \"Yes, Prime Minister\" are must-see shows for anyone who wants to understand how politics really works (at least in any country with temporary elected officials and a permanent civil service).The _Yes, Minister_ book is as funny and incisive as the show, too.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-19):\nI'm impressed whenever an American has even heard of this classic series, let alone know it so well and appreciate it :)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/dc-and-inauguration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKat and I made arrangements to travel to D.C. for the inauguration a few months before the election.  Our plan was to attend regardless of who was elected president, but we preferred Obama over McCain and his winning the election solidified our plans.  We flew to D.C. on U.S. Airways Flight 44 to see the 44th president inaugurated, leaving 72-degree weather in Phoenix and arriving to 26-degree weather in D.C.  We had prepared with layered clothing, but I found that my toes were still freezing in my shoes with two layers of socks, so we visited a mall near our hotel and found evidence of massive price deflation in coats and boots.  I picked up a nice pair of Dupont \u0026ldquo;thinsulate\u0026rdquo; insulated boots, and Kat bought a full-length padded coat, each of which were only $20.  We saw some further evidence of price deflation in goods at the Smithsonian gift shop in the National Museum of the American Indian, where T-shirt prices had been lowered from $20 last time we visited to $16 this trip.  Food prices, however, seemed to be about the same, and the price of a 7-day Metro pass had climbed from $20 to $26.40 (no doubt still a subsidized price).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1170038.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1170038.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297674445556955730\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Saturday, we visited the newly-reopened \u003ca href=\"http://americanhistory.si.edu/\"\u003eNational Museum of American History\u003c/a\u003e, where there were special events going on with actors portraying figures from American history such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.  We paid a visit to the American flag from Fort McHenry (the star-spangled banner), the First Ladies\u0026rsquo; dresses collection, the pop culture exhibit, \u0026ldquo;The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,\u0026rdquo; musical instruments, the Gunboat Philadelphia, and a few other exhibits.  We followed this up with lunch at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nmai.si.edu/\"\u003eNational Museum of the American Indian\u003c/a\u003e, then checked out the new Capitol visitors\u0026rsquo; center and took a look at the setup for the inauguration.  We then walked over by the Newseum, passing the Canadian Embassy and its huge banners welcoming President Obama.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1170095.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1170095.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297673113659855954\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe theme of pending change was everywhere\u0026ndash;not only the expected political banners, but in commercial advertising (e.g., Metro ads from Pepsi and Ikea), religious advertising (the Seventh-Day Adventists were handing out a magazine with Obama\u0026rsquo;s photograph on the front), and even by the homeless begging for \u0026ldquo;change I can believe in.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1180008.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1180008.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297672620636986770\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Sunday we went to the Columbia Heights Metro station and were amazed at how much the area has changed.  We visited an apartment building in the area where Kat used to live in the 1990s, finding it boarded up and for sale (last sold 10/16/2008 for $1.1M).  Next was Adams-Morgan, where there was a kiosk to \u0026ldquo;Tell the President \u0026hellip; tell him what you think! tell him what you want!\u0026rdquo; by sticking up handwritten notes.  A few examples: \u0026ldquo;TAKE A STAND 4 PALESTINE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;WE ARE HUMANS NOT MACHINES,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;GAY MARRIAGE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Make Weed Legal,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;fix our schools,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;NO MORE LIES PLEASE,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Respect our privacy! Stop USA spying on Americans!,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;MAKE LOVE TO ME.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1180033.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1180033.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297672333466164562\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eWe visited a friend\u0026rsquo;s clothing store (Redeem, on 14th St. south of S), walked past the Church of Scientology near Dupont Circle that was in the act by offering free \u0026ldquo;touch assists\u0026rdquo; for D.C. visitors, and approached as close as we could to the White House, which was to walk on Pennsylvania Ave. near the president\u0026rsquo;s inaugural parade viewing stand.  From there we could hear U2 playing at the \u0026ldquo;We Are One\u0026rdquo; concert on the Mall, which we chose not to brave the crowds to see.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1190014.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;\" src=\"/images/P1190014.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297673330647173186\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMonday we spent time with family in the early afternoon, and spent the rest of our afternoon paying a visit to the American Humanist Society\u0026rsquo;s MLK Day open house.  In the evening, we went back to Dupont Circle, where a giant inflatable George W. Bush with a giant nose labeled \u0026ldquo;GIVE BUSH THE BOOT\u0026rdquo; was available to throw shoes at.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1200004.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1200004.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297673555305917442\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTuesday morning, we got up at 5:30 a.m. and got to the Silver Spring Metro Station by 6:40 a.m.  The station was packed, and we squeezed into a very crowded train.  We got out at Gallery Place and walked towards the Mall, where we ran into an immense crowd at 7th and E that was waiting to go through security screening to the inaugural parade seats.  We hung out there for a while, where several people from Meetup.com were handing out nametags and pens, and then walked around the security perimeter to the west to get to the Mall.  This required us to go back north to I St., and west to 19th St. (we could have gone down 18th, but 19th was less crowded).  We went through no security and had no trouble getting to the Mall.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1200024.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1200024.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297673725922420274\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eWe walked east past the Washington Monument, but U.S. Army soldiers suddenly closed the road at 15th St. and so we went back and found a good spot in front of the Jumbotron just northeast of the Monument.  The crowd continued to build, and the Jumbotron showed a replay of the \u0026ldquo;We are One\u0026rdquo; concert from Sunday (which would might have been annoying if we had already seen it).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt long last, the Jumbotrons switched to a live (with audio slightly delayed) feed, with a live mike somewhere in the expensive seats that seemed unintentional.  We got to hear one side of multiple conversations, including Sen. Joe Lieberman telling someone, \u0026ldquo;I love your mother!\u0026rdquo; The captioning was a little behind the already-delayed audio, and occasionally bizarrely off.  When Aretha Franklin sang, one caption at the end of her song said \u0026ldquo;THREAT RING.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI thought that Pastor Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s invocation was awful\u0026ndash;it was sectarian and it was blatantly hypocritical (cf. Matthew 6:5-7), and I considered it, along with the cold, to be the low-light of the swearing-in ceremony.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge W. Bush attracted some mild booing, and we almost (but not quite) felt sorry for him.  But the crowd was ecstatic at Obama\u0026rsquo;s being sworn in (and at Bush\u0026rsquo;s helicopter leaving).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eObama\u0026rsquo;s inaugural speech seemed to mostly be fairly generic new-politician-in-office platitudes, but there were a few standout positive points for me.  First, his acknowledgement that some Americans are nonbelievers and we have a stake and a voice in this country was a breath of fresh air.  I cheered that line, and several people near by looked at me and smiled.  His affirmation that science must be \u0026ldquo;restore[d] \u0026hellip; to its rightful place\u0026rdquo; was another good one, as was his statement that we cannot give up the Constitution for safety.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1200040.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1200040.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297675809796689282\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is a pleasure to again have a president who can speak in complete English sentences and not make me cringe every time I hear him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1200044.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1200044.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297676201837731842\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the swearing-in ceremony was over, it took us well over an hour to leave the Mall.  People were packed in trying to leave, and at one point we saw the crowd knock down a barricade on the north side of the Mall, and a second barricade just north of that, to get access to Constitution.  We moved in the opposite direction, which proved to be the right move to get to a flowing stream of people moving towards the actual exit.  Police showed up at the downed barricades after about ten minutes, and put them back in place.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1210052.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"/images/P1210052.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297675397077067410\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Wednesday, we visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in North America, on the grounds of Catholic University of America.  It was interesting to see the different ethnic versions of Mary, Mother of Jesus in the Shrine, including Our Mother of Africa, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Our Lady of La Vang (Vietnam).  We did a little shopping for Obama swag at Union Station.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Thursday, our last day in D.C., we visited Battleground National Cemetery on Georgia Ave., a little-known burial ground of Union soldiers killed at the battle of Fort Stevens, the only Civil War battle that occurred in D.C.  We also visited Fort Stevens itself, which has a monument where President Lincoln stood on the rampart and was told to \u0026ldquo;Get down, you fool\u0026rdquo; as he was likely to be killed by attacking Confederate soldiers there.  Finally, we visited the recently restored \u003ca href=\"http://www.lincolncottage.org/\"\u003eLincoln Cottage\u003c/a\u003e at the Old Soldier\u0026rsquo;s Home, just north of Catholic University of America, where Lincoln spent about a quarter of his presidential term, made many of his decisions, and drafted and finalized the Emancipation Proclamation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"D.C. and the inauguration"},{"content":"Via the Village Voice, a prerecord call promoting a Scientology event by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson (and a Scientologist):\nEamon Knight (2009-01-30):\nIs she violating any Fox IP by using the Bart Simpson persona in her pitch?\nLippard (2009-01-30):\nProbably.When Dan Castellaneta introduced Paul Krassner for a standup performance, in character as Homer Simpson, that was recorded for a CD, Artemis Records contacted Fox for permission to use it, and was denied. (But apparently they haven't gone after Paul for putting the MP3 on his website.)\nLegion (2009-01-30):\nWhat's bizarre is that she apparently thought she would get away with it, that nobody would record the civil crime and expose it. She must feel like heterosexual Tom Cruise does: The laws don't apply to Scientology customers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/bart-simpson-shilling-for-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia the \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/01/voice_of_bart_s.php\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/a\u003e, a prerecord call promoting a Scientology event by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson (and a Scientologist):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cnoMGqcN554\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cnoMGqcN554\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-01-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIs she violating any Fox IP by using the Bart Simpson persona in her pitch?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-01-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eProbably.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhen Dan Castellaneta introduced Paul Krassner for a standup performance, in character as Homer Simpson, that was recorded for a CD, Artemis Records contacted Fox for permission to use it, \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.paulkrassner.com/homersuppressed.htm\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eand was denied\u003c/A\u003e. (But apparently they haven't gone after Paul for putting the MP3 on his website.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bart Simpson shilling for Scientology"},{"content":"Obama\u0026rsquo;s inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn\u0026rsquo;t like these two sentences:\n\u0026ldquo;Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.\u0026rdquo; The words \u0026ldquo;and communism\u0026rdquo; were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency.\n\u0026ldquo;To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.\u0026rdquo; That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation.\nRick Warren\u0026rsquo;s invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying \u0026ldquo;God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!\u0026quot;\nOn Obama\u0026rsquo;s first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures.\nThe Obameter is tracking Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign promises. So far he\u0026rsquo;s kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises\u0026hellip;\nUPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He\u0026rsquo;s broken that promise repeatedly already.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/obama-odds-and-ends.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eObama\u0026rsquo;s \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7841580.stm\"\u003einauguration speech was censored in China\u003c/a\u003e.  They didn\u0026rsquo;t like these two sentences:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.\u0026rdquo;  The words \u0026ldquo;and communism\u0026rdquo; were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.\u0026rdquo;  That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRick Warren\u0026rsquo;s invocation speech \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/1/21/04126/1622\"\u003ewas the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer\u003c/a\u003e who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying \u0026ldquo;God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOn Obama\u0026rsquo;s first day in office, \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/22/america/22obama.php?page=2\"\u003ehe issued executive orders\u003c/a\u003e to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/\"\u003eObameter is tracking Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign promises\u003c/a\u003e.  So far he\u0026rsquo;s kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none.  He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them.  He\u0026rsquo;s broken that promise repeatedly already.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama odds and ends"},{"content":"\nThis Sunday, January 25th is the first annual Petwalk. Fred and I are participating and need your help in the form of a donation. Sure the economy looks bad right now, but if you can spare just $5 for a great cause, I\u0026rsquo;d really appreciate it. To learn more, please visit my donation page. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/petwalk-donations-plea.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/fred_homestarr.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294529347584713778\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"/images/fred_homestarr.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eThis Sunday, January 25th is the first annual Petwalk. Fred and I are participating and need your help in the form of a donation. Sure the economy looks bad right now, but if you can spare just $5 for a great cause, I\u0026rsquo;d really appreciate it. To learn more, please visit my donation \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstgiving.com/kathleenlippard\"\u003epage\u003c/a\u003e. \u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Petwalk donations plea!"},{"content":"A conference on \u0026ldquo;The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case\u0026rdquo; will be held on March 5-6, 2009 at The New School in New York City. The conference will:\nexplore the tension between religion and secularity in the United States, which is long-standing, widespread, and increasingly intense. This is evident in contemporary debates over such issues as evolution and intelligent design, the importance of religion in political decision-making, and in spiritual or faith-based philanthropy. These issues will be addressed from the perspectives of religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Charles Taylor will deliver the keynote address on March 5th at 6:00pm.The conference website may be found here. The current speaker list is:\nRichard J. Bernstein Jose Casanova\nDavid L. Chappell\nWilliam E. Connolly\nJames Davison Hunter\nDaniel Dennett\nNoah Feldman\nYvonne Yazbeck Haddad\nSusan F. Harding\nGeorge Kateb\nMark Lilla\nDavid Martin\nMichael W. McConnell\nJames A. Morone John T. Noonan, Jr.\nAnn Pellegrini\nWinnifred Sullivan\nCharles Taylor\nPeter van der Veer\nHistorical Comments Adelante4 (2009-01-20):\nSounds like a good lineup dude. Thanks for the heads up. I wonder if any of it will be available on podcast? Keep up the good blogging :)Bedding Mattress\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/ny-conference-on-religious-secular.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA conference on \u0026ldquo;The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case\u0026rdquo; will be held on March 5-6, 2009 at The New School in New York City.  The conference will:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eexplore the tension between religion and secularity in the United States, which is long-standing, widespread, and increasingly intense. This is evident in contemporary debates over such issues as evolution and intelligent design, the importance of religion in political decision-making, and in spiritual or faith-based philanthropy. These issues will be addressed from the perspectives of religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Charles Taylor will deliver the keynote address on March 5th at 6:00pm.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe conference website may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The current speaker list is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Bernstein\"\u003eRichard J. Bernstein \u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e             \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Casanova\"\u003eJose Casanova\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e              \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Chappell\"\u003eDavid L. Chappell\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e             \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Connolly\"\u003eWilliam E. Connolly\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e              \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Hunter\"\u003eJames Davison Hunter\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Dennett\"\u003eDaniel Dennett\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Feldman\"\u003eNoah Feldman\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Haddad\"\u003eYvonne Yazbeck Haddad\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Harding\"\u003eSusan F. Harding\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Kateb\"\u003eGeorge Kateb\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Lilla\"\u003eMark Lilla\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Martin\"\u003eDavid Martin\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#McConnell\"\u003eMichael W. McConnell\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Morone\"\u003eJames A. Morone \u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Noonan\"\u003eJohn T. Noonan, Jr.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Pellegrini\"\u003eAnn Pellegrini\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Sullivan\"\u003eWinnifred Sullivan\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Taylor\"\u003eCharles Taylor\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e            \u003ca href=\"http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide/bios.html#Veer\"\u003ePeter van der Veer\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NY conference on the religious-secular divide"},{"content":"The Sunlight Foundation, promoting transparency in government, has issued an invitation to check out the beta of Little Sis, a wiki described as \u0026ldquo;an involuntary Facebook of powerful Americans,\u0026rdquo; created by the Public Accountability Initiative.\nYou can sign up for an account to edit the wiki at http://www.littlesis.org/join, or just check out the site at http://www.littlesis.org.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/big-brother-meet-little-sis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/\"\u003eSunlight Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, promoting transparency in government, has issued an invitation to check out the beta of Little Sis, a wiki described as \u0026ldquo;an involuntary Facebook of powerful Americans,\u0026rdquo; created by the \u003ca href=\"http://public-accountability.org/\"\u003ePublic Accountability Initiative\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can sign up for an account to edit the wiki at \u003ca href=\"http://littlesis.org/join\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.littlesis.org/join\"\u003ehttp://www.littlesis.org/join\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, or just check out the site at \u003ca href=\"http://www.littlesis.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.littlesis.org\"\u003ehttp://www.littlesis.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Big Brother, meet Little Sis"},{"content":"Radley Balko, guest-blogging at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, describes three police officers, asking whether each has engaged in egregious enough conduct to be fired:\nOne,\nShoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?Two,\nHow about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?Three,\nHow about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man\u0026rsquo;s home?Can you guess which of these officers lost their jobs for the described conduct? Read Balko\u0026rsquo;s post to find out.\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2009-01-15):\nObviously the guy who has conscience.Sleazy cops always stay on the force.\nAnonymous (2009-01-15):\nI think the recent BART debacle is going to bring some much needed public scrutiny to police culture. I don't know how things have managed to get to the point where they are now, but it seems like there is an inherently corrupt culture within police forces throughout the country. Hundreds of years ago, the need for checks and balances was realized and implemented for the benefit of government, it would be nice to see the same sort of system implemented for institutions where corruption is potentially a huge problem. In the long run, it would make for a much more effective police force as well.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/what-does-it-take-for-police-officer-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/what_does_it_take_for_a_police.php\"\u003eguest-blogging at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, describes three police officers, asking whether each has engaged in egregious enough conduct to be fired:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eShoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?\u003c/blockquote\u003eTwo,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHow about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep \u003cem\u003ein his cruiser\u003c/em\u003e in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThree,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHow about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man\u0026rsquo;s home?\u003c/blockquote\u003eCan you guess which of these officers lost their jobs for the described conduct?  Read \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/what_does_it_take_for_a_police.php\"\u003eBalko\u0026rsquo;s post\u003c/a\u003e to find out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What Does It Take for a Police Officer to Get Fired?"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:\nEpisode 012 Atheism and Nonsense-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Solstice Party Wrap Up, January Events, UK Atheist Bus, Papua New Guinea Witch Burning\u0026hellip; In This Century! Yeah! Jeremy\u0026rsquo;s Funeral Proselytization, REBT: Unconditional Other Acceptance.Comments:\nThe \u0026ldquo;penis panics\u0026rdquo; (also known as \u0026ldquo;koro\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;genital retraction syndrome\u0026rdquo;) are typically in Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin, but have also appeared in parts of Asia such as China and Singapore.\nJeremy\u0026rsquo;s funeral proselytization story is unfortunate. I\u0026rsquo;ve attended a few too many funeral services of late (six so far this century), of which four have been religious and two have been completely secular. All of the religious ones had a tone to them that occasionally seemed to assume that everyone present was Christian, but none had a hellfire component or a call to Jesus that I remember\u0026ndash;they were focused on remembering the person who was gone and addressing the loss of the people present. I have heard of churches that emphasize the hellfire component, and in 2003 a priest at the funeral service of Ben Martinez in Chama, NM, said that the deceased was a lukewarm Catholic who now burns in hell. The family filed a lawsuit over it.\nShannon and Noel, congratulations on your engagement!\nRe: Jeremy\u0026rsquo;s godfather story\u0026ndash;you should say sure, you\u0026rsquo;ll be happy to tell the kid all about their faith, thinking to yourself, \u0026ldquo;including that most of what you believe is not true.\u0026rdquo;\nBrad (2009-02-06):\nIs \"koro\" what qualifies this as an animal rescue blog post? \"Tie a shoelace around that turtle head before it disappears!\"\nLippard (2009-02-07):\nI think you must have been looking at the tags on another post...\nBrad (2009-02-07):\nYou're absolutely right, the tags I was referring to are in the upper left, and refer to your entire blog.My mistake.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/apostaz-podcast-12.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast is now available:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz012.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 012\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Nonsense-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Solstice Party Wrap Up, January Events, UK Atheist Bus, Papua New Guinea Witch Burning\u0026hellip; In This Century! Yeah! Jeremy\u0026rsquo;s Funeral Proselytization, REBT: Unconditional Other Acceptance.\u003c/blockquote\u003eComments:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;penis panics\u0026rdquo; (also known as \u003ca href=\"http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/9/16/81843/6555\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;koro\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_panic\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;genital retraction syndrome\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e) are typically in Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin, but have also appeared in parts of Asia such as China and Singapore.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeremy\u0026rsquo;s funeral proselytization story is unfortunate.  I\u0026rsquo;ve attended a few too many funeral services of late (six so far this century), of which four have been religious and two have been completely secular.  All of the religious ones had a tone to them that occasionally seemed to assume that everyone present was Christian, but none had a hellfire component or a call to Jesus that I remember\u0026ndash;they were focused on remembering the person who was gone and addressing the loss of the people present.  I have heard of churches that emphasize the hellfire component, and in 2003 a priest at the funeral service of Ben Martinez in Chama, NM, said that the deceased was a lukewarm Catholic who now burns in hell.  The family \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E5D8113CF93AA25754C0A9659C8B63\"\u003efiled a lawsuit over it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon and Noel, congratulations on your engagement!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRe: Jeremy\u0026rsquo;s godfather story\u0026ndash;you should say sure, you\u0026rsquo;ll be happy to tell the kid \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eall\u003c/span\u003e about their faith, thinking to yourself, \u0026ldquo;including that most of what you believe is not true.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #12"},{"content":"The creation of jobs in the economy is neither the president\u0026rsquo;s responsibility nor within his power to do anything other than influence through policy, but it\u0026rsquo;s still interesting to look at the record of job creation under the last eleven presidents (Truman to Bush Jr.), as presented at Barry Ritholtz\u0026rsquo;s blog (from the Wall Street Journal\u0026rsquo;s Real Time Economics):\nKtisophilos (2009-02-09):\nSo how many jobs will the new one destroy with his love of protectionism, including his party's \"Buy American\" provisions in the Porkfest, oops sorry, Stimulus bill.Remember the Smoot–Hawley tariff act of 1930, which helped to make the Depression \"great\". And it was signed by that interventionist big-spending buffoon Hoover. And this atrocious president is absurdly called a \"laissez-faire capitalist\", a revisionist myth that Bush and Cheney fell for in their bailout of the auto industries.\nLippard (2009-02-10):\nObama called for dropping any provision in the House bill that could trigger a trade war (referring to the \"Buy American\" provision), and it has been modified in the Senate bill.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/job-creation-by-president.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe creation of jobs in the economy is neither the president\u0026rsquo;s responsibility nor within his power to do anything other than influence through policy, but it\u0026rsquo;s still interesting to look at the record of job creation under the last eleven presidents (Truman to Bush Jr.), \u003ca href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/01/from-truman-to-bush-presidential-employment-gains/\"\u003eas presented at Barry Ritholtz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e (from the Wall Street Journal\u0026rsquo;s Real Time Economics):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/payroll-expansion-by-presdient.png\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 638px; height: 509px;\" src=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/payroll-expansion-by-presdient.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Job creation by president"},{"content":"The photo P.Z. linked here with was taken in Phoenix, Arizona in February 1999, near the intersection of 19th Ave. and Campbell. The post at this blog which links to it is this one.\nWhile you\u0026rsquo;re here, here\u0026rsquo;s an index of some of my better posts.\nGridman (2009-01-14):\nIt's funny, I live just a few blocks from that intersection and pass it all the time. I can't recall ever seeing the sign.\nLippard (2009-01-14):\nIt's 1830 W. Glenrosa. The marquee is visible but not legible in Google StreetView.The photo was taken in February 1999.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/welcome-pharyngulites.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe photo P.Z. linked here with was taken in Phoenix, Arizona in February 1999, near the intersection of 19th Ave. and Campbell.  The post at this blog which links to it is \u003ca href=\"/2008/01/message-from-god-billboards.html\"\u003ethis one\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile you\u0026rsquo;re here, here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/best-of-lippard-blog-index.html\"\u003ean index of some of my better posts\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGridman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-01-14)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt's funny, I live just a few blocks from that intersection and pass it all the time.  I can't recall ever seeing the sign.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Welcome, Pharyngulites!"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out an account of a 15-year-old kidnapped from his grandmother\u0026rsquo;s house at the request of his parents, and taken to the Utah Boys Ranch, then run by Utah Senator Chris Buttars. Apparently the mind-control treatment didn\u0026rsquo;t take, and he started the Utah Boys Ranch Network to expose the abuse.\nDFV (2009-02-19):\nSorry to bother you, but...This is now Feb. 19th - why can't I find ONE DAMNED THING on the Mormon Gulag in major papers, TV, blogs, etc. after January? E.G.: was West Ridge Academy's license renewed? Why wasn't any of this covered by mainstream media?Dan Vojirdan-vojir@sbcglobal.net\nLippard (2009-02-20):\nGood questions.Some online searches yield only the blog posts and a September 27, 2004 AP story about Buttars getting possibly illegal assistance from the Utah Boys Ranch for his re-election campaign (but apparently all he did was ship campaign materials there and take them home the same day they arrived).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/utah-sen-chris-buttars-mormon-gulag.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/chris_buttars_and_the_mormon_g.php\"\u003epoints out an account of a 15-year-old kidnapped from his grandmother\u0026rsquo;s house at the request of his parents, and taken to the Utah Boys Ranch\u003c/a\u003e, then run by Utah Senator Chris Buttars.  Apparently the mind-control treatment didn\u0026rsquo;t take, and he started \u003ca href=\"http://www.mormongulag.com/\"\u003ethe Utah Boys Ranch Network\u003c/a\u003e to expose the abuse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDFV\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-02-19)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSorry to bother you, but...\u003cBR/\u003eThis is now Feb. 19th - why can't I find ONE DAMNED THING on the Mormon Gulag in major papers, TV, blogs, etc. after January? E.G.: was West Ridge Academy's license renewed? Why wasn't any of this covered by mainstream media?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDan Vojir\u003cBR/\u003edan-vojir@sbcglobal.net\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Utah Sen. Chris Buttars' Mormon Gulag"},{"content":"The record labels and the RIAA have insisted that peer-to-peer filesharing is cannibalizing the music industry and that aggressive lawsuits and copy protection are necessary to protect the industry. But Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons license which allowed free redistribution from its initial release, while also selling it in MP3 format from its website and via Amazon.com, with no copy protection. The result\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the #1 selling MP3 album on Amazon.com for 2008 and generated $1.6 million in revenue for the band in its first week, with no cut to a record label.\nLooks like record labels are now superfluous for established artists, who no longer need to see their revenue cannibalized by middlemen.\nReed (2009-01-07):\nI speculate that the labels will argue that little has changed -- i.e., NIN would never have achieved its level of success had they not benefited from the risk taking, marketing expertise and influence of a major label.\nLippard (2009-01-08):\nEven if that's the case (and a few more independent successes like OK Go will disprove that), it's still a different game--one where major labels are solely for building initial success, not for keeping a successful act in business.This also provides disincentive for any new or breaking act to sign contracts with labels under terms as onerous as they have historically been. The labels make most of their money from established, successful acts, and that era is coming to an end. The size of their pie is shrinking, unless they transform themselves into a business that is focused on providing real value to both musicians and listeners, rather than trying to extract value from the mere fact that they're in an intermediary position.\nReed (2009-01-09):\nI can see the labels continuing in that marketing role. Few artists will want to rely on word-of-mouth alone for their future success. Many will want to claw their way above the cacophony of a million competitors for the listener's ear (and wallet.)So if this is the case we could yet expect that they will continue to sign artists for a cut of the revenue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/cc-licensed-nin-album-is-amazons-1-mp3.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe record labels and the RIAA have insisted that peer-to-peer filesharing is cannibalizing the music industry and that aggressive lawsuits and copy protection are necessary to protect the industry.  But Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons license which allowed free redistribution from its initial release, while also selling it in MP3 format from its website and via Amazon.com, with no copy protection.  The result\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/11947\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s the #1 selling MP3 album on Amazon.com for 2008 and generated $1.6 million in revenue for the band in its first week\u003c/a\u003e, with no cut to a record label.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like record labels are now superfluous for established artists, who no longer need to see their revenue cannibalized by middlemen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CC-licensed NIN album is Amazon's #1 MP3 seller for 2008"},{"content":"Jeff Jacobsen and Mark Bunker are hosting a 90-minute Internet radio show on the battle between Scientology and the Internet that took place before Anonymous, and it\u0026rsquo;s about to start now (4 p.m. Arizona time, 3 p.m. PST, 6 p.m. EST). A number of old-timers from alt.religion.scientology will likely be calling in.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s on blogtalkradio, show title is \u0026ldquo;Old-Timers give a history lesson.\u0026quot;\nFirst guest: Modemac, skeptic, SubGenius, and author of an Introduction to Scientology website, on the early history of alt.religion.scientology.\nSecond guest: Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology, an early major book-length criticism of Scientology, who was the victim of dirty tricks including framing her for a bomb threat and filing 19 lawsuits against her.\nThird guest: Ron Newman, author of the Church of Scientology vs. the Net web pages and alt.religion.scientology regular.\nFourth guest: Yours truly.\nUPDATE (January 5, 2009): A few clarifications and additional links:\nThe \u0026ldquo;Miss Bloodybutt\u0026rdquo; story Modemac referred to is described in the article Jeff and I wrote in Skeptic magazine, which includes dates. The -AB- posting didn\u0026rsquo;t predate the event and included information from the police report. I interviewed Tom Klemesrud and Linda Woolard as part of my research for that story.\nI was taken out to lunch by Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Mesa Org OSA Director, Ginny Leeson, who asked what they could do to stop the criticism and pickets. My reply was that if they stopped suing people and trying to stop criticism, the pickets would probably stop. Ginny Leeson was soon replaced by a new OSA Director, Leslie Duhrman, who was a lot more hostile and aggressive\u0026ndash;she went after picketer Bruce Pettycrew with legal action. I have received legal threats from Scientology and a DMCA notice, but nothing ever came of them; I periodically see Church of Scientology IP addresses visiting my web sites (also here).\nMy Scientology private investigators page is still online, though woefully out-of-date.\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t the one who first called for coordinated international pickets, that was Jeff Jacobsen. I did issue (on behalf of the \u0026ldquo;Ad Hoc Committee Against Internet Censorship\u0026rdquo;) the first coordinated press release about why the picketing was occurring, in response to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cancelbunny\u0026rdquo; that was issuing cancellations of Usenet posts containing their secrets.\nThere was a Salon.com article in 1999 about Susan Mullaney (\u0026ldquo;xenubat\u0026rdquo;)\u0026rsquo;s posted audio files of L. Ron Hubbard saying embarrassing things, which Scientology used the DMCA to shut down. She issued a counter-notice and the material came back online. Some of those clips were used in very funny Scientology-critical songs by \u0026ldquo;Enturbulator 009\u0026rdquo; or the \u0026ldquo;El Queso All-Stars.\u0026quot;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve previously posted a \u0026ldquo;Scientology sampler\u0026rdquo; of my history of Scientology criticism and some posts about the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; protests. This blog has a \u0026ldquo;Scientology\u0026rdquo; label you can click to find all my Scientology-related posts.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/scientology-vs-internet-history-lesson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Jacobsen and Mark Bunker are hosting a 90-minute Internet radio show on the battle between Scientology and the Internet that took place before Anonymous, and it\u0026rsquo;s about to start now (4 p.m. Arizona time, 3 p.m. PST, 6 p.m. EST).  A number of old-timers from alt.religion.scientology will likely be calling in.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s on \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cultxpt\"\u003eblogtalkradio\u003c/a\u003e, show title is \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cultxpt/2009/01/04/Old-Timers-give-a-history-lesson\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Old-Timers give a history lesson.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst guest:  Modemac, skeptic, SubGenius, and author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.modemac.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/An_Introduction_to_Scientology\"\u003ean Introduction to Scientology website\u003c/a\u003e, on the early history of alt.religion.scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSecond guest: Paulette Cooper, author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/tsos/sos.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Scandal of Scientology\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, an early major book-length criticism of Scientology, who was the victim of dirty tricks including framing her for a bomb threat and filing 19 lawsuits against her.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThird guest: Ron Newman, author of \u003ca href=\"http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/scientology/home.html\"\u003ethe Church of Scientology vs. the Net web pages\u003c/a\u003e and alt.religion.scientology regular.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFourth guest:  Yours truly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 5, 2009):  A few clarifications and additional links:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Miss Bloodybutt\u0026rdquo; story Modemac referred to is \u003ca href=\"https://www.discord.org/lippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003edescribed in the article Jeff and I wrote in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, which includes dates.  The -AB- posting didn\u0026rsquo;t predate the event and included information from the police report.  I interviewed Tom Klemesrud and Linda Woolard as part of my research for that story.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was taken out to lunch by Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Mesa Org OSA Director, Ginny Leeson, who asked what they could do to stop the criticism and pickets.  My reply was that if they stopped suing people and trying to stop criticism, the pickets would probably stop.  Ginny Leeson was soon replaced by a new OSA Director, Leslie Duhrman, who was a lot more hostile and aggressive\u0026ndash;she went after picketer Bruce Pettycrew with legal action.  I have received legal threats from Scientology and a DMCA notice, but nothing ever came of them; I \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/scientologists-pay-another-web-visit.html\"\u003eperiodically see Church of Scientology IP addresses visiting my web sites\u003c/a\u003e (also \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/welcome-church-of-scientology-visitors.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy \u003ca href=\"https://www.discord.org/lippard/pis.html\"\u003eScientology private investigators page\u003c/a\u003e is still online, though woefully out-of-date.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wasn\u0026rsquo;t the one who first called for coordinated international pickets, that was Jeff Jacobsen.  I did issue (on behalf of the \u0026ldquo;Ad Hoc Committee Against Internet Censorship\u0026rdquo;) \u003ca href=\"https://www.discord.org/lippard/bunny-release.html\"\u003ethe first coordinated press release about why the picketing was occurring\u003c/a\u003e, in response to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cancelbunny\u0026rdquo; that was issuing cancellations of Usenet posts containing their secrets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere was \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/07/22/scientology/index1.html\"\u003ea Salon.com article in 1999 about Susan Mullaney (\u0026ldquo;xenubat\u0026rdquo;)\u0026rsquo;s posted audio files of L. Ron Hubbard saying embarrassing things\u003c/a\u003e, which Scientology used the DMCA to shut down.  She issued a counter-notice and the material came back online.  Some of those clips were used in \u003ca href=\"http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=23466\"\u003every funny Scientology-critical songs by \u0026ldquo;Enturbulator 009\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e or the \u0026ldquo;El Queso All-Stars.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously posted a \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology sampler\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e of my history of Scientology criticism and \u003ca href=\"/2008/01/anonymous-launches-war-against.html\"\u003esome\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2008/01/hoax-white-powder-sent-to-scientology.html\"\u003eposts\u003c/a\u003e about the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; protests.  This blog has \u003ca href=\"/tags/Scientology\"\u003ea \u0026ldquo;Scientology\u0026rdquo; label\u003c/a\u003e you can click to find all my Scientology-related posts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology vs. the Internet history lesson"},{"content":"The creationist video I was filmed for, Creation Ministries International\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire,\u0026rdquo; a documentary about the 1988 creation/evolution debate between Ian Plimer and Duane Gish, is available on YouTube in four parts (and embedded below). I first appear around 4:34 in the first segment, at 1:06 in the second, at 1:04 in the third, and at the very beginning of the fourth segment.\nI described my experience being filmed and reasons for appearing in this documentary here, my reaction to the result here (which includes links to critiques of Gish), and you can find the articles I refer to in the documentary here:\n\u0026ldquo;Some Failures of Organized Skepticism,\u0026quot; The Arizona Skeptic vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990, pp. 2-5.\n\u0026ldquo;How Not to Argue with Creationists,\u0026quot; Creation/Evolution vol. 11, issue XXIX, Winter 1991-92, pp. 9-21.\n\u0026ldquo;How Not to Respond to Criticism: Barry Price Compounds His Errors,\u0026quot; talkorigins.org FAQ, 1993.\n\u0026ldquo;Criticisms from an Obscure Corner of the World,\u0026quot; review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s Telling Lies for God.\nPart 1:\nPart 2:\nPart 3:\nPart 4:\nnolandda (2009-01-02):\nAny intent to post your full interview footage? I recall that you mentioned that you had the right to do so earlier.\nLippard (2009-01-02):\nI've got it on DVD but haven't watched it. I think they included most of what I said minus the flubs and retakes, but at some point I'll force myself to watch it through and see if there's anything worth putting up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2009/01/facing-fire-creationist-video.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/filmed-for-creationist-dvd.html\"\u003ecreationist video I was filmed for\u003c/a\u003e, Creation Ministries International\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire,\u0026rdquo; a documentary about the 1988 creation/evolution debate between Ian Plimer and Duane Gish, is available on YouTube in four parts (and embedded below). I first appear around 4:34 in the first segment, at 1:06 in the second, at 1:04 in the third, and at the very beginning of the fourth segment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI described my experience being filmed and reasons for appearing in this documentary \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/filmed-for-creationist-dvd.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, my reaction to the result \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/facing-fire.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (which includes links to critiques of Gish), and you can find the articles I refer to in the documentary here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/some-failures.txt\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Some Failures of Organized Skepticism,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/em\u003e vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990, pp. 2-5.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/hnta.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How Not to Argue with Creationists,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003cem\u003eCreation/Evolution\u003c/em\u003e vol. 11, issue XXIX, Winter 1991-92, pp. 9-21.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/how-not-to-argue.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How Not to Respond to Criticism: Barry Price Compounds His Errors,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e talkorigins.org FAQ, 1993.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Criticisms from an Obscure Corner of the World,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eTelling Lies for God\u003c/em\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 1:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/LawGTZXBQrQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/LawGTZXBQrQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 2:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Hm6umxwRKK8\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Hm6umxwRKK8\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 3:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NCQn5s1fSZ0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NCQn5s1fSZ0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 4:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/aYalAhw8T8s\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/aYalAhw8T8s\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Facing the Fire: creationist video"},{"content":"Now that Berkley Books has just cancelled Herman Rosenblat\u0026rsquo;s Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived after the core story about how he met his wife while in a concentration camp was proven false, ABC News has put together a slide show of some other famous literary hoaxes.\nThe list includes, in addition to Rosenblat:\nJames Frey\nJT Leroy\nNorma Khouri\nMargaret B. Jones\nMisha Defonseca\nNasdijj\nAnthony Godby Johnson\nLauren Stratford\nClifford Irving\nAraki Yususada\nJayson Blair\nBinjamin Wilkomirski\nForrest Carter\nKaavya Viswanathan\nTom Carew\nJanet Cooke\nThe Hitler Diaries\nThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion\nThere are a few others they could have covered\u0026ndash;there are entire genres of hoaxes, like Christian conversion stories of fake Illuminati, witches, Satanists, Jesuits, and terrorists, stories of fake undercover agents and spies, stories of mind-controlled sex slaves, and so on. The Christian conversion stories are the ones I\u0026rsquo;m most familiar with, many of which have been promoted by Jack T. Chick of Chick tract fame, or have involved film producer David Balsiger (see especially footnote 7 of the linked article).\nHistorical Comments Ermelinda (2009-01-06):\nWhat a shame that the Rosenblats lied about their story. I wish Oprah would publicize only checked-out true stories from now on forward.I read about a genuine Holocaust love story in the NY Times recently and it\u0026#39;s better than the Rosenblats anyway. Stan Lee and Neal Adams the famous comic book artists were publicizing the story of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt. I checked and I\u0026#39;m surprised there\u0026#39;s no book on this yet. It\u0026#39;s a great story! It also appears to be all true, thankfully.Dina Gottliebova Babbitt who was a 19 year old art student at Auschwitz. There she painted Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the wall of the children\u0026#39;s barracks to cheer them up. Dina\u0026#39;s art became her salvation and helped her find true love!Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death, found out about the mural Dina painted and called for her. She thought she was going to be gassed, but she bravely stood up to Mengele and he decided to make her his portrait painter, saving herself and her mother from the gas chamber.After the war, Dina interviewed for a job as an animator based on the art she did in Auschwitz and the person interviewing her turned out to be the man who created Snow White \u0026amp; the 7 Dwarfs for the movie. They fell in love and got married. Show White saved Dina\u0026#39;s life twice! I love this story!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/literary-hoaxes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that Berkley Books has just cancelled Herman Rosenblat\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAngel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived\u003c/span\u003e after \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/12/27/publisher-cancels-rosenblat-memoir-after-tnr-exposes-hoax.aspx\"\u003ethe core story about how he met his wife while in a concentration camp was proven false\u003c/a\u003e, ABC News \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/US/popup?id=2784903\u0026amp;contentIndex=1\u0026amp;start=false\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003ehas put together a slide show of some other famous literary hoaxes\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe list includes, in addition to Rosenblat:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/fictional-autobiographies-frey-joins.html\"\u003eJames Frey\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJT Leroy\u003cbr /\u003eNorma Khouri\u003cbr /\u003eMargaret B. Jones\u003cbr /\u003eMisha Defonseca\u003cbr /\u003eNasdijj\u003cbr /\u003eAnthony Godby Johnson\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/fictional-autobiographies-frey-joins.html\"\u003eLauren Stratford\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClifford Irving\u003cbr /\u003eAraki Yususada\u003cbr /\u003eJayson Blair\u003cbr /\u003eBinjamin Wilkomirski\u003cbr /\u003eForrest Carter\u003cbr /\u003eKaavya Viswanathan\u003cbr /\u003eTom Carew\u003cbr /\u003eJanet Cooke\u003cbr /\u003eThe Hitler Diaries\u003cbr /\u003eThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/soap-writer-kola-boof-joins-bogus-sex.html\"\u003ea\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/fictional-autobiographies-frey-joins.html\"\u003efew\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/ex-terrorists-turned-christian.html\"\u003eothers\u003c/a\u003e they could have covered\u0026ndash;there are entire genres of hoaxes, like \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/fictional-autobiographies-frey-joins.html\"\u003eChristian conversion stories of fake Illuminati, witches, Satanists, Jesuits\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/ex-terrorists-turned-christian.html\"\u003eterrorists\u003c/a\u003e, stories of fake undercover agents and spies, stories of \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/soap-writer-kola-boof-joins-bogus-sex.html\"\u003emind-controlled sex slaves\u003c/a\u003e, and so on.  The Christian conversion stories are the ones I\u0026rsquo;m most familiar with, many of which have been promoted by Jack T. Chick of Chick tract fame, or \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/02.3.lippard-ark-hoax.html\"\u003ehave involved film producer David Balsiger\u003c/a\u003e (see especially footnote 7 of the linked article).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Literary hoaxes"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Anchoring\u0026rdquo; is the psychological effect that, when presented with a sample number prior to being asked to estimate some quantity, people tend to stick closer to that sample number than they would if no number were mentioned, even if the number is completely irrelevant to what\u0026rsquo;s being estimated.\nA study by Neil Stewart at Warwick University suggests that minimum payment amounts on credit card bills cause people to pay less on their credit cards per month than they otherwise would, since the minimum payment tends to be extremely low. While it has no effect on those who intend to pay off the full monthly amount (the only reasonable way to use credit cards, in my opinion), Stewart\u0026rsquo;s work suggests that those who pay less than the full amount pay 43% less on average than they would if no minimum payment were specified.\nWhile this might be interpreted as counter to the intent of a minimum payment, I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s exactly the intended effect from the credit card companies\u0026ndash;to drag out payments over the longest possible time and accumulate the most interest.\nAnonymous (2008-12-31):\nFascinating stuff Jim, I agree with you on the CCs doing it on purpose. It's a shame to think that psychological research these days is being invested in figuring out to extract money from people, or how to convince people to do things they otherwise would not. More about the CC companies please.Josh.\nLippard (2008-12-31):\nI was thinking about putting up a post about yesterday's mail, which was full of ridiculous credit card offers. I think my opting out of pre-approved credit card offers must have expired.I dumped them all in the shredder already, though...\nGordon (2009-01-01):\nWhen I was a professional fundraiser we used this principal to get larger donations by putting tick boxes on forms starting with higher amounts at the left hand side. The amounts were selected depending on the net worth of the target audience. We tested putting them in ascending or decending order and we made a lot more by putting the higher values first.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/anchoring-and-credit-card-minimum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Anchoring\u0026rdquo; is the psychological effect that, when presented with a sample number prior to being asked to estimate some quantity, people tend to stick closer to that sample number than they would if no number were mentioned, even if the number is completely irrelevant to what\u0026rsquo;s being estimated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA study by Neil Stewart at Warwick University \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12777711\u0026amp;fsrc=rss\"\u003esuggests that minimum payment amounts on credit card bills cause people to pay less on their credit cards per month than they otherwise would\u003c/a\u003e, since the minimum payment tends to be extremely low.  While it has no effect on those who intend to pay off the full monthly amount (the only reasonable way to use credit cards, in my opinion), Stewart\u0026rsquo;s work suggests that those who pay less than the full amount pay 43% less on average than they would if no minimum payment were specified.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile this might be interpreted as counter to the intent of a minimum payment, I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s exactly the intended effect from the credit card companies\u0026ndash;to drag out payments over the longest possible time and accumulate the most interest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anchoring and credit card minimum payments"},{"content":"Once again, here\u0026rsquo;s my annual list of books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last year. I did somewhat worse than last year in finishing books I started, and I found last year disappointing. The piles of started but unfinished books are growing\u0026ndash;but perhaps I can match last year\u0026rsquo;s total by the end of the year (I\u0026rsquo;m only threetwo short at the moment). I\u0026rsquo;ve not done a good job of writing Amazon.com reviews of any of these, though I\u0026rsquo;ve put a few short comments on Facebook\u0026rsquo;s Visual Bookshelf for a few of these. I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book, which I recommend as a nice (and less threatening) companion piece to Julian Baggini\u0026rsquo;s Atheism: A Very Short Introduction as an introduction to atheism.\nAyaan Hirsi Ali, InfidelMatthew Chapman, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in PennsylvaniaAnderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and SurvivalCory Doctorow, Little Brother\nCory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town\nJoseph Finder, ParanoiaGuy P. Harrison, 50 reasons people give for believing in a godGene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Devotion to Presidential Power\nJeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil WarSusan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism\nRobert A. Levy and William Mellor, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded FreedomMaureen McCormick, Here\u0026rsquo;s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice\nMary Roach, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and SexWilliam C. Speidel, Sons of the ProfitsJim Steinmeyer, Art \u0026amp; Artifice and Other Essays on IllusionJim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural\nNassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly ImprobableCarl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain\u0026ndash;And How It Changed the WorldJonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It\n(Previously: 2007, 2006, 2005.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-12-27):\n\"I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book..\"Argh. I still owe the ACLU a review of Bill of Wrongs by Ivins and Dubose which they courteously sent me a free copy of last year around this time.---Inspired by your list last year I kept one this year. I'm pretty sure I've read less books than the year before, and I'm a few books short of the target number I set for myself, although I may be able to get there by midnight 31st. The only book on your list that I read this year is Cult of the Presidency and the only other one that I've read previously is Freethinker; I enjoyed both.\nPodblack (2008-12-28):\nLittle Brother was great. Mind, I read it after a day touring San Fran, so all the locations were fresh in my mind. :)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce again, here\u0026rsquo;s my annual list of books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last year.  I did somewhat worse than last year in finishing books I started, and I found last year disappointing.  The piles of started but unfinished books are growing\u0026ndash;but perhaps I can match last year\u0026rsquo;s total by the end of the year (I\u0026rsquo;m only \u003cstrike\u003ethree\u003c/strike\u003etwo short at the moment).  I\u0026rsquo;ve not done a good job of writing Amazon.com reviews of any of these, though I\u0026rsquo;ve put a few short comments on Facebook\u0026rsquo;s Visual Bookshelf for a few of these.  I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book, which I recommend as a nice (and less threatening) companion piece to Julian Baggini\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192804243/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAtheism: A Very Short Introduction\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e as an introduction to atheism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cli\u003eAyaan Hirsi Ali, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743289684/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eInfidel\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMatthew Chapman, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9780061179464/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAnderson Cooper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Edge-Memoir-Disasters-Survival/dp/0061136689/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ca href=\"http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLittle Brother\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ca href=\"http://craphound.com/someone/download.php\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSomeone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJoseph Finder, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312940912/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eParanoia\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGuy P. Harrison, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9781591025672/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e50 reasons people give for believing in a god\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGene Healy, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Presidency-Americas-Dangerous-Executive/dp/1933995157/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Cult of the Presidency: America\u0026rsquo;s Dangerous Devotion to Presidential Power\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJeffrey Rogers Hummel, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Emancipating-Slaves-Enslaving-Free-Men/dp/0812693124/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEmancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSusan Jacoby, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Freethinkers-American-Secularism-Susan-Jacoby/dp/0805077766/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFreethinkers: A History of American Secularism\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRobert A. Levy and William Mellor, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9781595230508/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMaureen McCormick, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Heres-Story-Surviving-Marcia-Finding/dp/0061490148/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9780393064643/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWilliam C. Speidel, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0914890069/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSons of the Profits\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJim Steinmeyer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786718064/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eArt \u0026amp; Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJim Steinmeyer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Fort-Man-Invented-Supernatural/dp/B001LRPTEI/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCharles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNassim Nicholas Taleb, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400063515/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCarl Zimmer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Made-Flesh-Discovery-Brain/dp/0743272056/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSoul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain\u0026ndash;And How It Changed the World\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJonathan Zittrain, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Future-Internet-How-Stop/dp/0300124872/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Future of the Internet and How To Stop It\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Previously: \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html\"\u003e2007\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2008"},{"content":"I am once again asking for donations. I will be walking January 25, 2009 in the 1st annual PetSmart PetWalk to help raise funds for R.E.S.C.U.E.\nPlease visit my donations page and help out if you can, as always, donations are tax deductible.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/looking-for-donations-again.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI am once again asking for donations.  I will be walking January 25, 2009 in the 1st annual \u003ca href=\"http://www.kintera.org/site/c.goIJLNOnGlF/b.4283907/\"\u003ePetSmart PetWalk \u003c/a\u003eto help raise funds for \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/index.php\"\u003eR.E.S.C.U.E.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlease visit my donations \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstgiving.com/kathleenlippard\"\u003epage \u003c/a\u003eand help out if you can, as always, donations are tax deductible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.firstgiving.com/kathleenlippard\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Looking for donations, again!"},{"content":"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.\n(From mlaw.org; a repost from 2006.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/happy-holidays.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePlease accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy holidays!"},{"content":"In the January 2009 issue of Fortean Times, Theo Paijmans reports the following story of \u0026ldquo;The Hound of Mons,\u0026rdquo; quoted from the Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, 11 August 1919:\nThat weird legend of No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land, the gruesome epice of the \u0026ldquo;hound of Mons,\u0026rdquo; has, according to F.J. Newhouse, a returned Canadian veteran, been vindicated throughout Europe as fact and not fiction. For four years civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers\u0026rsquo; tale of a giant, skulking hound, which stalked among the corpses and shell holes of No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land and dragged down British soldiers to their death. An apparition of fear-crazed minds, they said. But to the soldiers it was a reality and one of the most fearful things of the world war.\n\u0026ldquo;The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin,\u0026rdquo; said Capt. Newhouse, \u0026ldquo;has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist\u0026rsquo;s skill that have astounded Europe. For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination\u0026ndash;it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known.\nTeeth Marks in Throats.\nWhat was the hound of Mons? According to the soldiers, the legend started in the terrible days of the defense of Mons. On the night of November 14, 1914, Capt. Yeskes and four men of the London Fusiliers entered No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land on patrol. The last living trace of them was when they started into the darkness between the lines. Several days afterward their dead bodies were found\u0026ndash;just as they had been dragged down\u0026ndash;with teeth marks at the throats.\nSeveral nights later a weird, blood-curdling howl was heard from the darkness toward which the British trenches faced. It was the howl of the hound of Mons. From then on this phantom hound became the terror of the men who faced death by bullets with a smile. It was the old fear of the unknown.\nHowl is Heard.\nPatrol after patrol, during two years of warefare, ventured out only to be found days later with the telltale marks at their throats. The ghastly howl continued to echo through No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land. Several times sentries declared that they saw a lean, grey wraith flit past the barbed wire\u0026ndash;the form of a gigantic hound running silently. But civilian Europe always doubted the story.\nThen after two years, while many brave men lost their lives with only those teeth marks at the throat to show, the hound of Mons disappeared. From then on the Germans never had another important success.\n\u0026ldquo;And now,\u0026rdquo; says Captain Newhouse, \u0026ldquo;secret papers have been taken from the residence of the late Dr. Hochmuller which prove that the hound of Mons was a terrible living reality, a giant hound with the brain of a human madman.\u0026quot;\nHound Had Human Brain.\nCaptain Newhouse says that the papers show that this hound was the only successful issue of a series of experiments by which Dr. Hochmller hoped to end the war in Germany\u0026rsquo;s favor. The scientist had gone about the wards of the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad as the result of his insane hatred of England. Hochmuller, with the sanction of the German government, operated upon him and removed his brain, taking in particular the parts which dominated hatred and frenzy.\nAt the same time a like operation was performed on a giant Siberian wolfhound. Its brain was taken out and the brain of the madman inserted. By careful nursing the dog lived. The man was permitted to die.\nThe dog rapidly grew stronger and, after careful training in fiendishness, wa taken to the firing line and released in No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land. There for two years it became the terror of outposts and patrols.Back before the Internet, the local newspapers met our needs for fabulous hoaxes, and many of them applied, at least periodically, the journalistic standards of the Weekly World News\u0026ndash;you only need one source.\nUPDATE (April 25, 2009): Fortean Times reader Alistair Moffatt writes in a letter in the May 2009 issue (p. 73) to point out that while F.J. Newhouse did exist, there was no Captain Yeskes of the London Fusiliers and Yeskes is an American or Canadian name, not a British one, suggesting a local origin for the above tale. He also notes that the Battle of Mons took place in August 1914, not November. He suggests that the tale may have originated from a propagandized and heavily distorted account of Captain Max von Stephanitz\u0026rsquo;s breeding of the German Shepherd.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-12-31):\nIt's an interesting story, it may have been easier to believe in a time when people thought that you could just swap brains between people and animals, or people and people.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/hound-of-mons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the January 2009 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e, Theo Paijmans reports the following story of \u0026ldquo;The Hound of Mons,\u0026rdquo; quoted from the Ada \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvening News\u003c/span\u003e, Ada, Oklahoma, 11 August 1919:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThat weird legend of No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land, the gruesome epice of the \u0026ldquo;hound of Mons,\u0026rdquo; has, according to F.J. Newhouse, a returned Canadian veteran, been vindicated throughout Europe as fact and not fiction.  For four years civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers\u0026rsquo; tale of a giant, skulking hound, which stalked among the corpses and shell holes of No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land and dragged down British soldiers to their death.  An apparition of fear-crazed minds, they said.  But to the soldiers it was a reality and one of the most fearful things of the world war.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin,\u0026rdquo; said Capt. Newhouse, \u0026ldquo;has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist\u0026rsquo;s skill that have astounded Europe.  For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination\u0026ndash;it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTeeth Marks in Throats.\u003cbr /\u003eWhat was the hound of Mons?  According to the soldiers, the legend started in the terrible days of the defense of Mons.  On the night of November 14, 1914, Capt. Yeskes and four men of the London Fusiliers entered No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land on patrol.  The last living trace of them was when they started into the darkness between the lines.  Several days afterward their dead bodies were found\u0026ndash;just as they had been dragged down\u0026ndash;with teeth marks at the throats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral nights later a weird, blood-curdling howl was heard from the darkness toward which the British trenches faced.  It was the howl of the hound of Mons.  From then on this phantom hound became the terror of the men who faced death by bullets with a smile.  It was the old fear of the unknown.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowl is Heard.\u003cbr /\u003ePatrol after patrol, during two years of warefare, ventured out only to be found days later with the telltale marks at their throats.  The ghastly howl continued to echo through No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land.  Several times sentries declared that they saw a lean, grey wraith flit past the barbed wire\u0026ndash;the form of a gigantic hound running silently.  But civilian Europe always doubted the story.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen after two years, while many brave men lost their lives with only those teeth marks at the throat to show, the hound of Mons disappeared.  From then on the Germans never had another important success.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;And now,\u0026rdquo; says Captain Newhouse, \u0026ldquo;secret papers have been taken from the residence of the late Dr. Hochmuller which prove that the hound of Mons was a terrible living reality, a giant hound with the brain of a human madman.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHound Had Human Brain.\u003cbr /\u003eCaptain Newhouse says that the papers show that this hound was the only successful issue of a series of experiments by which Dr. Hochmller hoped to end the war in Germany\u0026rsquo;s favor.  The scientist had gone about the wards of the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad as the result of his insane hatred of England.  Hochmuller, with the sanction of the German government, operated upon him and removed his brain, taking in particular the parts which dominated hatred and frenzy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the same time a like operation was performed on a giant Siberian wolfhound.  Its brain was taken out and the brain of the madman inserted.  By careful nursing the dog lived.  The man was permitted to die.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe dog rapidly grew stronger and, after careful training in fiendishness, wa taken to the firing line and released in No Man\u0026rsquo;s Land.  There for two years it became the terror of outposts and patrols.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBack before the Internet, the local newspapers met our needs for fabulous hoaxes, and many of them applied, at least periodically, the journalistic standards of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWeekly World News\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;you only need one source.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 25, 2009):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e reader Alistair Moffatt writes in a letter in the May 2009 issue (p. 73) to point out that while F.J. Newhouse did exist, there was no Captain Yeskes of the London Fusiliers and Yeskes is an American or Canadian name, not a British one, suggesting a local origin for the above tale.  He also notes that the Battle of Mons took place in August 1914, not November.  He suggests that the tale may have originated from a propagandized and heavily distorted account of Captain Max von Stephanitz\u0026rsquo;s breeding of the German Shepherd.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Hound of Mons"},{"content":"Greta Christina writes a list of \u0026ldquo;nine tips for believers who want to reach out\u0026rdquo; to atheists:\n1: Familiarize yourself with the common myths and misconceptions about atheists \u0026ndash; and don\u0026rsquo;t perpetuate them.\n2: Familiarize yourself with what it\u0026rsquo;s like to be an atheist, both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world.\n3: Find common ground.\n4: Speak out against anti-atheist bigotry and other forms of religious intolerance.\n5: Be inclusive of atheists.\n6: Don\u0026rsquo;t divide and conquer, and don\u0026rsquo;t try to take away our anger.\n8: Do not \u0026ndash; repeat, DO NOT \u0026ndash; talk about \u0026ldquo;fundamentalist atheists.\u0026quot;\n9: Be aware of how religious belief gives you a place of mainstream and privilege.Read her article for the details.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/how-to-get-on-atheists-good-side.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreta Christina writes a list of \u003ca href=\"http://www.alternet.org/story/114009\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;nine tips for believers who want to reach out\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to atheists:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1: Familiarize yourself with the common myths and misconceptions about atheists \u0026ndash; and don\u0026rsquo;t perpetuate them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2: Familiarize yourself with what it\u0026rsquo;s like to be an atheist, both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3: Find common ground.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e4: Speak out against anti-atheist bigotry and other forms of religious intolerance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e5: Be inclusive of atheists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e6: Don\u0026rsquo;t divide and conquer, and don\u0026rsquo;t try to take away our anger.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e8: Do not \u0026ndash; repeat, DO NOT \u0026ndash; talk about \u0026ldquo;fundamentalist atheists.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e9: Be aware of how religious belief gives you a place of mainstream and privilege.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.alternet.org/story/114009\"\u003eher article\u003c/a\u003e for the details.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to get on an atheist's good side"},{"content":"Last Sunday, Rick Warren recorded a video for his congregation in which he denies ever comparing gay marriages to incest or pedophilia:\nI have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophila. Now, of course as members of Saddleback Church, you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You\u0026rsquo;ve never once heard me in thirty years talk that way about that.But Rachel Maddow shows that he made exactly that comparison:\nI\u0026rsquo;m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I\u0026rsquo;m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I\u0026rsquo;m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.\nQ. Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?\nOh, I do!Rick Warren has been caught lying, in addition to being anti-gay and anti-evolution. He should ask to be taken off the agenda for the inauguration, and if he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, Barack Obama should just withdraw his invitation to speak.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-12-25):\nI'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.I'm still waiting for an explanation of why \"Dick\" Warren is so opposed to the Biblical model of marriage. If it was good enough for the OT patriarchs, it should be good enough for him!\nnormdoering (2008-12-25):\nEamon Knight wrote:\"I'm still waiting for an explanation of why \"Dick\" Warren is so opposed to the Biblical model of marriage. If it was good enough for the OT patriarchs, it should be good enough for him!\"Was that a rhetorical question?I think the answer has a lot to do with fear of change and culture shock, and it has little to do with the Bible. Marriage, one man to one woman, is the culture he knows and change scares him.My own take on Rick Warren.\nEamon Knight (2008-12-26):\nWas that a rhetorical question?If course. It's an ironic comment on the historical ignorance implied by Warren's claims about marriage -- when even the one \"history\" book I'm absolutely sure he's read (and trusts) contradicts him!\nEamon Knight (2008-12-26):\nUm...\"Of course...\"I blame a combination of the digital tendonitis and the Riesling....\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/rick-warren-caught-lying.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast Sunday, Rick Warren recorded a video for his congregation in which he denies ever comparing gay marriages to incest or pedophilia:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophila.  Now, of course as members of Saddleback Church, you know I believe no such thing, I never have.  You\u0026rsquo;ve never once heard me in thirty years talk that way about that.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut Rachel Maddow shows that he made exactly that comparison:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage.  I\u0026rsquo;m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage.  I\u0026rsquo;m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eQ.  Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOh, I do!\u003c/blockquote\u003eRick Warren \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/rick_warrens_bill_buckingham_m.php\"\u003ehas been caught lying\u003c/a\u003e, in addition to being anti-gay and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/what_do_you_imagine_rick_warre.php\"\u003eanti-evolution\u003c/a\u003e.   He should ask to be taken off the agenda for the inauguration, and if he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, Barack Obama should just withdraw his invitation to speak.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-004844688668623742 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6rwk845iMXY\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0050355476320739334 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6rwk845iMXY\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6rwk845iMXY\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6rwk845iMXY\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;feature=player_embedded\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rick Warren caught lying"},{"content":"At Not Exactly Rocket Science is a video of a man navigating a hallway filled with obstacles, even though he\u0026rsquo;s completely blind\u0026ndash;he has zero conscious awareness of visual perception and his visual cortex shows no activity when given visual tasks (most of which he fails), but he does have an ability known as blindsight. He became blind as a result of strokes which caused damage to the occipital lobe of his brain, including his visual cortex. Yet his eyes still function and there is still some visual processing occurring without rising to the level of conscious awareness. He can perform a number of visual tasks with perfect accuracy, even though his conscious perception is that he is simply guessing.\n(Hat tip to Dan Noland for the link.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/blindsight.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Not Exactly Rocket Science is \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/12/blind_man_navigates_obstacle_course_perfectly_with_no_visual.php\"\u003ea video of a man navigating a hallway filled with obstacles, even though he\u0026rsquo;s completely blind\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;he has zero conscious awareness of visual perception and his visual cortex shows no activity when given visual tasks (most of which he fails), but he does have an ability known as blindsight.  He became blind as a result of strokes which caused damage to the occipital lobe of his brain, including his visual cortex.  Yet his eyes still function and there is still some visual processing occurring without rising to the level of conscious awareness.  He can perform a number of visual tasks with perfect accuracy, even though his conscious perception is that he is simply guessing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dan Noland for the link.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blindsight"},{"content":"I just came across this post from Duae Quartunciae from July about the American Physical Society\u0026rsquo;s publication of pro and con arguments on the subject of anthropogenic global warming, and I direct it to your attention now because it has a very lengthy, detailed, and respectful debate in the comments.\nI recently heard Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons speak about global warming (she thinks it\u0026rsquo;s a pseudoscientific scam), in which she promoted the paper she published by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon and the Petition Project. Before the event, I sent an email to the event organizer with links to Michael MacCracken\u0026rsquo;s critique of that paper (PDF) and a wiki page critiquing the paper and the Robinsons\u0026rsquo; Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (where Dr. Orient is listed on the faculty as a professor of medicine; she also teaches a course on \u0026ldquo;global warming controversies\u0026rdquo; for the Schlaflys\u0026rsquo; Eagle Forum University). While my links weren\u0026rsquo;t redistributed to the other attendees of the talk, I did get a chance to express my skepticism in the discussion, which led to an email exchange with Dr. Orient.\nShe took the position that advocates of anthropogenic global warming are engaging in pseudoscience and are biased by their own need to keep up the hype in order to continue to receive government funding, but will ultimately be refuted by a growing disconnect between the projections of the climate models and the facts\u0026ndash;she seems to think that the recent warming trends have been the result of solar irradiance and that we are now on a cooling trend. She stated in her talk that James Hansen is unreliable because he falsely claimed that 1998 was the warmest year on record, and was forced to retract it and admit that 1934 was the warmest year on record; and similarly was forced to retract an incorrect claim that October 2008 was the warmest October on record after Steve McIntyre found that there was an error in some of the reported data. I pointed out that her first claim is incorrect\u0026ndash;1998 is still the warmest year on record for global temperatures, but the second-warmest for the contiguous 48 U.S. states after 1934, which is what Hansen said. And while she was correct about October 2008, after the correction it still remains the fifth-warmest October on record. The top three years for global temperatures are 1998, 2005, and 2002; the eight warmest years on record are all since 1998; the fourteen warmest years on record are since 1990.\nI also pointed out Skeptic magazine\u0026rsquo;s recent critique of the Petition Project, which she dismissed as a criticism of Robinson for not using methodology to do something he was not trying to do; that all he was trying to do is show that there is no consensus among scientists. I compared the Petition Project to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dissent from Darwinism,\u0026rdquo; which she said she did not see as analogous.\nWe found some points of agreement\u0026ndash;we both support the legitimacy of questioning, and of science over pseudoscience, though we disagree about who\u0026rsquo;s doing science and who\u0026rsquo;s doing pseudoscience.\nUPDATE (December 16, 2009): The \u0026ldquo;Petition Project\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a petition of scientists, it\u0026rsquo;s a petition of people with at least a bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degree in a science-related field. Whittenberger at eSkeptic points out that the signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent. By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science. The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field. I conclude that it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to conclude on the basis of that petition that there\u0026rsquo;s dissent among scientists with relevant credentials\u0026ndash;it is just like the DI petition in that regard.\nHistorical Comments Misanthrope (2008-12-24):\n\"...though we disagree about who's doing science and who's doing pseudoscience.\"This seems to be a common theme with Global Warming. Until this gets worked out I prefer the Copenhagen Consensus approach.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/anthropogenic-global-warming-debate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across \u003ca href=\"http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html\"\u003ethis post from Duae Quartunciae from July about the American Physical Society\u0026rsquo;s publication of pro and con arguments on the subject of anthropogenic global warming\u003c/a\u003e, and I direct it to your attention now because it has a very lengthy, detailed, and respectful debate in the comments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recently heard Jane Orient of the \u003ca href=\"http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfellows\"\u003eAssociation of American Physicians and Surgeons\u003c/a\u003e speak about global warming (she thinks it\u0026rsquo;s a pseudoscientific scam), in which she promoted \u003ca href=\"http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Review_Article.html\"\u003ethe paper she published by Arthur and Noah Robinson and Willie Soon\u003c/a\u003e and the Petition Project.  Before the event, I sent an email to the event organizer with links to \u003ca href=\"http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf\"\u003eMichael MacCracken\u0026rsquo;s critique of that paper\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=OISM\"\u003ea wiki page critiquing the paper and the Robinsons\u0026rsquo; Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine\u003c/a\u003e (where Dr. Orient is listed on the faculty as a professor of medicine; she also teaches a course on \u0026ldquo;global warming controversies\u0026rdquo; for the Schlaflys\u0026rsquo; Eagle Forum University).  While my links weren\u0026rsquo;t redistributed to the other attendees of the talk, I did get a chance to express my skepticism in the discussion, which led to an email exchange with Dr. Orient.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe took the position that advocates of anthropogenic global warming are engaging in pseudoscience and are biased by their own need to keep up the hype in order to continue to receive government funding, but will ultimately be refuted by a growing disconnect between the projections of the climate models and the facts\u0026ndash;she seems to think that the recent warming trends have been the result of solar irradiance and that we are now on a cooling trend.  She stated in her talk that James Hansen is unreliable because he falsely claimed that 1998 was the warmest year on record, and was forced to retract it and admit that 1934 was the warmest year on record; and similarly was forced to retract an incorrect claim that October 2008 was the warmest October on record after Steve McIntyre found that there was an error in some of the reported data.  I pointed out that her first claim is incorrect\u0026ndash;1998 is still the warmest year on record for global temperatures, but the second-warmest for the contiguous 48 U.S. states after 1934, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/08/so_who_exactly_reported_that_n.php\"\u003ewhich is what Hansen said\u003c/a\u003e.  And while she was correct about October 2008, after the correction \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/11/more_on_booker.php\"\u003eit still remains the fifth-warmest October on record\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116114150.htm\"\u003etop three years for global temperatures are 1998, 2005, and 2002; the eight warmest years on record are all since 1998; the fourteen warmest years on record are since 1990\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also pointed out \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12.html#feature\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s recent critique of the Petition Project\u003c/a\u003e, which she dismissed as a criticism of Robinson for not using methodology to do something he was not trying to do; that all he was trying to do is show that there is no consensus among scientists.  I compared the Petition Project to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dissent from Darwinism,\u0026rdquo; which she said she did not see as analogous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe found some points of agreement\u0026ndash;we both support the legitimacy of questioning, and of science over pseudoscience, though we disagree about who\u0026rsquo;s doing science and who\u0026rsquo;s doing pseudoscience.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 16, 2009): The \u0026ldquo;Petition Project\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a petition of scientists, it\u0026rsquo;s a petition of people with at least a bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degree in a science-related field.  Whittenberger at eSkeptic points out that the signature breakdown by level of education was 29% Ph.D., 22% M.S., 7% M.D. or D.V.M., and 41% B.S. or equivalent.  By field, it was 12% earth science, 3% computer science or mathematics, 18% physics and aerospace sciences, 15% chemistry, 9% biology and agriculture, 10% medicine, and 32% engineering and general science.  The percentage of Ph.D.s in relevant areas isn’t available, but it’s clear from the breakdown that at least two thirds have less than a Ph.D. and at least 80% do not have education in a relevant field.  I conclude that it\u0026rsquo;s not possible to conclude on the basis of that petition that there\u0026rsquo;s dissent among scientists with relevant credentials\u0026ndash;it is just like the DI petition in that regard.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anthropogenic global warming debate"},{"content":"The City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s $97.4 million sales tax subsidy to the CityNorth retail center project in north Phoenix has been declared unconstitutional, a violation of the Arizona Constitution\u0026rsquo;s gift clause. All three members of the appeals court agreed, writing in their opinion that \u0026ldquo;We think these payments are exactly what the Gift Clause was intended to prohibit.\u0026quot;\nThe city\u0026rsquo;s subsidy would have granted $97.4 million in sales tax revenues (or less, not to exceed 50% of the sales taxes collected by CityNorth businesses) over 11 years to the project developer, the Klutznick Company, in return for 3,180 parking spaces, including 200 parking lot spaces set aside for public use for \u0026ldquo;park and ride,\u0026rdquo; for the next 45 years. The ruling found that the only public benefit for which the city could legitimately be paying were the 200 \u0026ldquo;park and ride\u0026rdquo; spaces, and that the city may still pay market rate for those 200 spaces (probably about $6 million over 45 years), but not for the other 3,180 spaces. The appeals court\u0026rsquo;s ruling may be found here (PDF).\nCongratulations to Goldwater litigation director Clint Bolick and the owners of the six small businesses that were plaintiffs in the case: Meyer Turken of Turken Industrial Properties, Ken Cheuvront of Cheuvront Wine and Cheese Cafe and Cheuvront Construction (and Democratic State Senator), Zul Gilliani who owns an ice cream shop at Paradise Valley Mall, James Iannuzo of Sign-a-Rama, Kathy Rowe of Music Together, and Justin Shafer of Hava Java.\nThe Goldwater Institute team initially lost the case, Turken v. Gordon, at the trial court level in Maricopa County Superior Court. The City of Phoenix tried unsuccessfully to get an award of $600,000 in attorney\u0026rsquo;s fees from the Goldwater Institute in an attempt to chill future public interest lawsuits; now they\u0026rsquo;ll no doubt appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.\n(Previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/arizona-court-of-appeals-overturns.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s $97.4 million sales tax subsidy to the CityNorth retail center project in north Phoenix has been declared unconstitutional, a violation of the Arizona Constitution\u0026rsquo;s gift clause.  All three members of the appeals court agreed, writing in their opinion that \u0026ldquo;We think these payments are exactly what the Gift Clause was intended to prohibit.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city\u0026rsquo;s subsidy would have granted $97.4 million in sales tax revenues (or less, not to exceed 50% of the sales taxes collected by CityNorth businesses) over 11 years to the project developer, the Klutznick Company, in return for 3,180 parking spaces, including 200 parking lot spaces set aside for public use for \u0026ldquo;park and ride,\u0026rdquo; for the next 45 years.  The ruling found that the only public benefit for which the city could legitimately be paying were the 200 \u0026ldquo;park and ride\u0026rdquo; spaces, and that the city may still pay market rate for those 200 spaces (probably about $6 million over 45 years), but not for the other 3,180 spaces.  The appeals court\u0026rsquo;s ruling may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Img/1223%20CityNorth%20Court%20of%20Appeals%20ruling.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongratulations to Goldwater litigation director Clint Bolick and the owners of the six small businesses that were plaintiffs in the case:  Meyer Turken of Turken Industrial Properties, Ken Cheuvront of Cheuvront Wine and Cheese Cafe and Cheuvront Construction (and Democratic State Senator), Zul Gilliani who owns an ice cream shop at Paradise Valley Mall, James Iannuzo of Sign-a-Rama, Kathy Rowe of Music Together, and Justin Shafer of Hava Java.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Goldwater Institute team initially lost the case, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTurken v. Gordon\u003c/span\u003e, at the trial court level in Maricopa County Superior Court.  The City of Phoenix tried unsuccessfully to get an award of $600,000 in attorney\u0026rsquo;s fees from the Goldwater Institute in an attempt to chill future public interest lawsuits; now they\u0026rsquo;ll no doubt appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/goldwater-institute-takes-on-sheriff.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Court of Appeals overturns CityNorth subsidy"},{"content":"The cases continue to mount\u0026ndash;when police officers come to search property and they are confronted by dogs, they often shoot and kill them, even if they are puppies.\nA Milwaukee resident whose Labrador-Springer Spaniel mix was killed by police in 2004 has filed a lawsuit against the city, and she requested a list of every dog killed by city policy for the last nine years. There were 434\u0026ndash;a dead dog every seven and a half days, and that\u0026rsquo;s just one city.\nIn Oklahoma, a police officer pulled into a driveway to ask a woman for directions, and when the woman\u0026rsquo;s Wheaton Terrier came bounding toward him, he shot and killed it. The police refused to do anything about the woman\u0026rsquo;s complaint, and tried to pay her off to shut her up when she let them know that her security cameras had captured the incident. She also sued.\nRadley Balko at The Agitator has been doing a great job of collecting and reporting on cases of unwarranted police killings of dogs. His latest summary of cases, from which the above two cases were taken, is his 16th \u0026ldquo;puppycide\u0026rdquo; blog post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/more-police-puppycide.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe cases continue to mount\u0026ndash;when police officers come to search property and they are confronted by dogs, they often shoot and kill them, even if they are puppies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Milwaukee resident whose Labrador-Springer Spaniel mix was killed by police in 2004 has filed a lawsuit against the city, and she requested a list of every dog killed by city policy for the last nine years.  There \u003ca href=\"http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/35288314.html\"\u003ewere 434\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;a dead dog every seven and a half days, and that\u0026rsquo;s just one city.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Oklahoma, a police officer pulled into a driveway to ask a woman for directions, and when the woman\u0026rsquo;s Wheaton Terrier came bounding toward him, he shot and killed it.  The police refused to do anything about the woman\u0026rsquo;s complaint, and tried to pay her off to shut her up when she let them know that \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/129620.html\"\u003eher security cameras had captured the incident\u003c/a\u003e.  She also sued.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRadley Balko at The Agitator has been doing a great job of collecting and reporting on cases of unwarranted police killings of dogs.  His \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/23/puppycide-16/\"\u003elatest summary of cases\u003c/a\u003e, from which the above two cases were taken, is his 16th \u0026ldquo;puppycide\u0026rdquo; blog post.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More police puppycide"},{"content":"In Montgomery County, Maryland, teens have found a new use for speed cameras\u0026ndash;getting revenge on people they don\u0026rsquo;t like or who have wronged them. Since the tickets from photo radar cameras are issued to the owners of the cars whose license plates are captured, they print out fake license plates on glossy photo paper, stick them over their own license plates, and then go out speeding.\nThis shows yet another flaw in the photo radar ticket process. I\u0026rsquo;ve speculated that registering your cars in the name of an LLC or trust is probably sufficient to make it difficult to assign individual responsibility to a speeding incident.\nUPDATE (December 23, 2008): In Australia, an even more creative revenge against a mobile speed camera\u0026ndash;have it issue tickets to itself! They could have just noted the plate number and followed the example of the Maryland teens, rather than stealing the actual plate\u0026hellip; (Thanks, Adam, for the link.)\nGordon (2008-12-22):\nIn the UK the police got round this by writing to the owner asking them to say who was driving. If they refuse then the owner gets the ticket personally. In the case of a company the company secretary would get the ticket. There is no escape.\nLippard (2008-12-22):\nThat could potentially work here for civil violations, but would require legislation to enact that kind of liability.I don't think it could work for criminal violations (in Arizona, speeding 20 mph or more over the limit is a criminal violation). If you didn't actually engage in the crime, you can't be held liable, and the government has the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt.\nEinzige (2008-12-23):\nIf civil fines become transferable here as in the UK then I think we\u0026#39;ll see a large increase in people having their friends drive \u0026gt;20MPH over the speed limits. I assume, of course, that criminal charges won\u0026#39;t become similarly transferable, though who knows?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/unintended-side-effects-of-speed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn Montgomery County, Maryland, teens have found a new use for speed cameras\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.thesentinel.com/302730670790449.php\"\u003egetting revenge on people they don\u0026rsquo;t like or who have wronged them\u003c/a\u003e.  Since the tickets from photo radar cameras are issued to the owners of the cars whose license plates are captured, they print out fake license plates on glossy photo paper, stick them over their own license plates, and then go out speeding.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis shows yet another flaw in the photo radar ticket process.  I\u0026rsquo;ve speculated that registering your cars in the name of an LLC or trust is probably sufficient to make it difficult to assign individual responsibility to a speeding incident.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 23, 2008): In Australia, \u003ca href=\"http://www.davesdaily.com/pictures/908-mischievous-aussies.htm\"\u003ean even more creative revenge against a mobile speed camera\u0026ndash;have it issue tickets to itself\u003c/a\u003e!  They could have just noted the plate number and followed the example of the Maryland teens, rather than stealing the actual plate\u0026hellip; (Thanks, Adam, for the link.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Unintended side-effects of speed cameras"},{"content":"Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, charging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment. Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level Scientologist (OT VIII) and member of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), which means that he follows Hubbard \u0026ldquo;management technology\u0026rdquo; in how he runs his businesses and donates a portion of revenues to the Church of Scientology.\nUPDATE (December 25, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more.\nMisanthrope (2008-12-21):\nSo which party are you supporting, the right of the business to fire someone who refuses mandatory training or the employee who demands his right to work at a company, but not follow its rules? I'm no fan of Scientology, but if a company wants to dictate silly rules that lower productivity through employee attrition and lower quality product and services then that's their right. The market will punish them.\nUnknown (2008-12-21):\nI was just looking for a blog that might help me with a boot time defrag problem on DK 2008.I'm on my 4th version of Diskeeper, and have recommended the product to many of my friends and family.It is a great product, however since my money is going to support a Cult, I will be switching to another product.If Christian Indoctrination was a job requirement for any corporation, the news media would be having a field day. I think it is doubtful that any court will affirm a company's right to discriminate on the basis of religion.So Long DK, I need to pass this info along to others.\nEamon Knight (2008-12-21):\nMisanthrope: Read the linked article. Scientology is deemed (including by themselves) a religion, and you can't make religious indoctrination a condition of employment.\nMisanthrope (2008-12-21):\nI'm aware that in today's regulatory climate they cannot get away with this kind of required training. The point of my original comment was that they should be able to do this and be punished by the free market instead of the EEOC.\nLippard (2008-12-21):\nMisanthrope: Diskeeper is obliged to follow the law. As far as what the law says, and in terms of both morality and reason I think that Diskeeper is in the wrong. I suspect that Diskeeper will try to argue that the Hubbard management technology is not religious, and if they can make that case, they may win a dismissal. The strongest piece of evidence against that in the complaint is the conversation between Staffer and Godelman reported on p. 8 of the complaint. I'm curious to hear more details about what specifically was mandatory at Diskeeper.As for whether, *all else being equal*, we would be better off today if all regulations regarding employment discrimination were removed, I'm inclined to doubt it, though I do find it plausible that there are possible sets of conditions and institutional frameworks where we would indeed be better off without such regulations. I suspect that without them today, there would be a lot more discrimination against members of minority religions and nonbelievers, and a lot more imposition of various forms of Christianity upon the workplace.In my ideal society, there would be no special privileges granted to religion per se; rather, employers would not care about what you believe or what you do outside of the workplace except to the extent that it genuinely interfered with your ability to do the job you were hired to do.\nLegion (2008-12-22):\nOrganized crime. Scientology is nothing but organized crime, and this criminal enterprise is trying to force Scientology criminality down the throats of its employees. God damned fucking crooks!!!Since the Scientology crime syndicate wants to play pretend that it's some how a religion, the violently insane criminals get to be sued for violating people's Constitutional rights. If the insane criminals would not have tried to claim they're some how a religion, they wouldn't be getting sued for their freakishly bizarre antics directed against their employees.I hope the company is sued to death and that the crime bosses at DiskKeeper go to prison and get beaten bloody every day for their crimes against society.Nobody can trust a Scientology crook. Whether these people infiltrate malicious software in to their products or not is utterly irrelevant. We don't need crimial enterprises sneaking their products in to our computers and these insane criminals are too fucking close to being allowed to do so if they are not already doing so.We have enough of that with Republican government traitors, we don't need the Scientology crime syndicate adding their criminal actions to the mix.My opinions only and only my opinions.\nMisanthrope (2008-12-22):\n\"Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of.\" - Thomas SowellIt's their private property and business to be run how they deem fit. You can choose to work there. You can choose to buy their products. Or not. Obviously this doesn't include or condone fraud and coercion. And this isn't referring to today's economy. I'm speaking about my laissez faire utopia. Per Mr. Sowell's quote, I think its important to defend the freedoms of those individuals and groups that we disagree with otherwise who will defend our freedoms.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/diskeeper-sued-for-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, \u003ca href=\"http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F20%2F2239255\u0026amp;from=rss\"\u003echarging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment\u003c/a\u003e.  Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/c/craig-jensen.html\"\u003ehigh-level Scientologist\u003c/a\u003e (OT VIII) and member of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Institute_of_Scientology_Enterprises\"\u003eWorld Institute of Scientology Enterprises\u003c/a\u003e (WISE), which means that he follows Hubbard \u0026ldquo;management technology\u0026rdquo; in how he runs his businesses and donates a portion of revenues to the Church of Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 25, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/interesting_scientology_discri.php\"\u003ehas more\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Diskeeper sued for Scientology indoctrination"},{"content":"Four people associated with the anti-Arpaio group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, were arrested on Wednesday for standing and applauding a speaker at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting. The East Valley Tribune notes that:\nA double standard clearly was in effect during the Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday. At one point, public-transit advocate Blue Crowley used part of his public-comment time allotment to sing a birthday song to [MCBoS chairman Andy] Kunasek. Kunasek blushed and several people applauded, but none was ordered to leave or threatened with arrest.\nHowever, Kunasek, deputies and security officers refused to tolerate applause after the anti-Arpaio speech minutes later.The criminal clappers were charged with \u0026ldquo;suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing.\u0026quot;\nThis brings the arrests of MCSA members to eight for the week and nine for the last four months.\nFour other members of MCSA were arrested on Monday, after a group of 20 went to Andy Kunasek\u0026rsquo;s office to talk with him and he refused to meet with them. Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputies asked them to leave and arrested the four who refused.\nThe other arrest was MCSA co-founder Randy Parrez, who was arrested on September 29 outside a Board of Supervisors meeting on similar charges\u0026ndash;suspicion of trespassing and disorderly conduct.\nAll but one of the members of the Board of Supervisors are Republicans. The Tribune article quotes Supervisor Max Wilson (R-District 4) as saying, \u0026ldquo;I don’t tell the police how to do their job. I don’t instruct them to do it or when to do it. They’re professionals at it and that’s the way they handle it.\u0026rdquo; The lone Democrat, Mary Rose Wilcox (D-District 5), however, stated that she thought the arrests were excessive and that she would talk to security about it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/arpaio-foes-arrested-for-clapping.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFour people associated with the anti-Arpaio group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, were arrested on Wednesday for standing and applauding a speaker at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/132686?12341234\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEast Valley Tribune\u003c/span\u003e notes that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA double standard clearly was in effect during the Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday. At one point, public-transit advocate Blue Crowley used part of his public-comment time allotment to sing a birthday song to [MCBoS chairman Andy] Kunasek. Kunasek blushed and several people applauded, but none was ordered to leave or threatened with arrest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowever, Kunasek, deputies and security officers refused to tolerate applause after the anti-Arpaio speech minutes later.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe criminal clappers were charged with \u0026ldquo;suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis brings the arrests of MCSA members to eight for the week and nine for the last four months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFour other members of MCSA were arrested on Monday, after a group of 20 went to Andy Kunasek\u0026rsquo;s office to talk with him and he refused to meet with them.  Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputies asked them to leave and arrested the four who refused.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe other arrest was MCSA co-founder Randy Parrez, who was arrested on September 29 outside a Board of Supervisors meeting on similar charges\u0026ndash;suspicion of trespassing and disorderly conduct.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll but one of the members of the Board of Supervisors are Republicans.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTribune\u003c/span\u003e article quotes Supervisor Max Wilson (R-District 4) as saying, \u0026ldquo;I don’t tell the police how to do their job. I don’t instruct them to do it or when to do it. They’re professionals at it and that’s the way they handle it.\u0026rdquo;  The lone Democrat, Mary Rose Wilcox (D-District 5), however, stated that she thought the arrests were excessive and that she would talk to security about it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arpaio foes arrested for clapping"},{"content":"For a second time, a U.S. appeals court has found unconstitutional the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act which forbids recipients of National Security Letters from disclosing that they have received them. After the first time around, Congress amended the law to introduce some minimal judicial review, but maintained the burden of proof on the recipient if the government claimed there were national security reasons for the NSL to remain secret. The courts have ruled that this burden needs to fall on the government.\nIf this continues to stand, then perhaps the rsync.net warrant canary will become superfluous.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/patriot-act-nsl-gag-order.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor a second time, a U.S. appeals court \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/appeals_court_patriot_act_gag.php\"\u003ehas found unconstitutional the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act which forbids recipients of National Security Letters from disclosing that they have received them\u003c/a\u003e.  After the first time around, Congress amended the law to introduce some minimal judicial review, but maintained the burden of proof on the recipient if the government claimed there were national security reasons for the NSL to remain secret.  The courts have ruled that this burden needs to fall on the government.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf this continues to stand, then perhaps \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/rsyncnet-warrant-canary.html\"\u003ethe rsync.net warrant canary\u003c/a\u003e will become superfluous.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"PATRIOT Act NSL gag order unconstitutional"},{"content":"In a fiendishly clever plan, Credit Suisse Group AG has found a way to reduce its exposure to toxic securities and transfer risk off its balance sheets\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s paying senior executives\u0026rsquo; bonuses with them.\nManaging directors and directors, the two highest ranks at the Zurich-based company, will be paid year-end bonuses in its most illiquid loans and debt. Those assets will be transferred to a \u0026ldquo;Partner Asset Facility,\u0026rdquo; and those directors will receive shares of ownership in the facility. Those assets will make semi-annual payments to the owners, with the full value only to be known as the assets mature or default.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/credit-suisse-helps-solve-toxic-debt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a fiendishly clever plan, Credit Suisse Group AG has found a way to reduce its exposure to toxic securities and transfer risk off its balance sheets\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087\u0026amp;sid=auEEfFRNdqcs\u0026amp;refer=home\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s paying senior executives\u0026rsquo; bonuses with them\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eManaging directors and directors, the two highest ranks at the Zurich-based company, will be paid year-end bonuses in its most illiquid loans and debt.  Those assets will be transferred to a \u0026ldquo;Partner Asset Facility,\u0026rdquo; and those directors will receive shares of ownership in the facility.  Those assets will make semi-annual payments to the owners, with the full value only to be known as the assets mature or default.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Credit Suisse helps solve the toxic debt problem"},{"content":"Last night Einzige, frequent commenter Schtacky, and I went to see \u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo; in Tempe, put on by the Stray Cat Theatre. By lucky coincidence, local Scientology expert and critic Jeff Jacobsen was also attending (see his recent article), and we sat with him in the front row for what proved to be a very enjoyable performance.\nOn the way to work this morning, I heard Robrt Pela of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s New Times reading his review on the local NPR station, and his review describes our experience quite well:\nAbout three minutes into Stray Cat Theatre\u0026rsquo;s newest production, I found myself thinking: This can\u0026rsquo;t be really happening. When you go to see it — and you must, if you do nothing else this holiday season, go see this astonishing stage production — you will almost certainly experience the same sense of delighted confusion. \u0026hellip; I rarely stopped laughing during this barely-hour-long show, and my single complaint about A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant is that it ended too soon.The play was a special treat for those of us who already know something about Scientology and the life of L. Ron Hubbard.\nThe production tells the story of L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s life (\u0026ldquo;writer, explorer, nuclear physicist \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;) and how he came to develop Dianetics and Scientology, in the form of a children\u0026rsquo;s holiday pageant. Cheesy props and frequent costume changes are used to portray rapid changes of location, from Hawaii to New York to China. Much of what is presented is accurate\u0026ndash;Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s birthplace, some of his claims about his life, and especially the content of Dianetics and Scientology. A few liberties are taken in the story of his life, though fewer than Hubbard himself and contemporary Scientologists take in describing his achievements. While there are countless amusing and disturbing events of Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s actual life that could have been used for comic relief but were omitted, we were surprised at how much they managed to pack into a short show. If you want the longer version, you can read Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, online, complete with supporting documentation including paperwork from his FBI files.\nThe show continues tonight and tomorrow\u0026ndash;if you have the opportunity to see it, take it, and you\u0026rsquo;ll be very glad you went.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/very-merry-unauthorized-childrens.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night Einzige, frequent commenter Schtacky, and I went to see \u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo; in Tempe, put on by the Stray Cat Theatre.  By lucky coincidence, local Scientology expert and critic Jeff Jacobsen was also attending (see \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/jeff-jacobsen-article-on-anonymous.html\"\u003ehis recent article\u003c/a\u003e), and we sat with him in the front row for what proved to be a very enjoyable performance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the way to work this morning, I heard Robrt Pela of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e reading his review on the local NPR station, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-12-18/culture/a-very-merry-unauthorized-children-s-scientology-pageant-is-a-true-gift/\"\u003ehis review describes our experience quite well\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAbout three minutes into Stray Cat Theatre\u0026rsquo;s newest production, I found myself thinking: This can\u0026rsquo;t be really happening. When you go to see it — and you must, if you do nothing else this holiday season, go see this astonishing stage production — you will almost certainly experience the same sense of delighted confusion.  \u0026hellip; I rarely stopped laughing during this barely-hour-long show, and my single complaint about \u003ci\u003eA Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u003c/i\u003e is that it ended too soon.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe play was a special treat for those of us who already know something about Scientology and the life of L. Ron Hubbard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe production tells the story of L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s life (\u0026ldquo;writer, explorer, nuclear physicist \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;) and how he came to develop Dianetics and Scientology, in the form of a children\u0026rsquo;s holiday pageant.  Cheesy props and frequent costume changes are used to portray rapid changes of location, from Hawaii to New York to China.  Much of what is presented is accurate\u0026ndash;Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s birthplace, some of his claims about his life, and especially the content of Dianetics and Scientology.  A few liberties are taken in the story of his life, though fewer than Hubbard himself and contemporary Scientologists take in describing his achievements.  While there are countless amusing and disturbing events of Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s actual life that could have been used for comic relief but were omitted, we were surprised at how much they managed to pack into a short show.  If you want the longer version, you can read Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s biography of Hubbard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nots.org/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBare-Faced Messiah\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, online, complete with supporting documentation including paperwork from his FBI files.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe show continues tonight and tomorrow\u0026ndash;if you have the opportunity to see it, take it, and you\u0026rsquo;ll be very glad you went.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant"},{"content":"The traditional bank lobby, filled with expensive marble and and furnishings, is designed to signal to the customer that the bank is stable and isn\u0026rsquo;t going anywhere.\nSome recent failed banks have used advertising slogans also designed to inspire confidence, such as IndyMac\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;you can count on us.\u0026quot;\nOthers, however, should perhaps have been recognized as clues of impending problems:\nDexia: \u0026ldquo;The short term has no future.\u0026quot;\nFortis: \u0026ldquo;Here today, where tomorrow?\u0026quot;\nCountrywide: \u0026ldquo;[A] lender that actually finds ways to make loans.\u0026quot;\nFannie Mae: \u0026ldquo;As the American dream grows, so do we.\u0026quot;\nWashington Mutual: \u0026ldquo;Whoo hoo!\u0026quot;\n(Via The Economist, October 2, 2008.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/bank-slogans-as-signals-to-depositors.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe traditional bank lobby, filled with expensive marble and and furnishings, is designed to signal to the customer that the bank is stable and isn\u0026rsquo;t going anywhere.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome recent failed banks have used advertising slogans also designed to inspire confidence, such as IndyMac\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;you can count on us.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOthers, however, should perhaps have been recognized as clues of impending problems:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDexia:  \u0026ldquo;The short term has no future.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003eFortis: \u0026ldquo;Here today, where tomorrow?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003eCountrywide: \u0026ldquo;[A] lender that actually finds ways to make loans.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003eFannie Mae: \u0026ldquo;As the American dream grows, so do we.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003eWashington Mutual:  \u0026ldquo;Whoo hoo!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=1780456\u0026amp;story_id=12342164\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, October 2, 2008.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bank slogans as signals to depositors"},{"content":"The award appears to be well-deserved.\n(Hat tip to Schtacky.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-12-20):\nHe deserves it, but to be fair, there would be no contest if they gave it to the person who flat out misinforms the most. That would be Sean Hannity's idol Rush Limbaugh - and he would win every single year he's on the air. The amount of idiocy across a spectrum of subjects he is able to disseminate on a sentence to sentence basis is staggering.\nHume's Ghost (2009-01-05):\nI just remembered this. Hannity credulously presenting a man who alleges to have literally spent 20 plus minutes in Hell.Of course, the entire run of Beyond Belief segments is pretty ridiculous. Here's a typical promo: 'I See Dead People'Could your children possess psychic powers\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/sean-hannity-media-matters-misinformer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe award \u003ca href=\"http://mediamatters.org/items/200812170007?src=misinformer-2\"\u003eappears to be well-deserved\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Schtacky.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-12-20)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHe deserves it, but to be fair, there would be no contest if they gave it to the person who flat out misinforms the most. That would be Sean Hannity's idol Rush Limbaugh - and he would win every single year he's on the air. The amount of idiocy across a spectrum of subjects he is able to disseminate on a sentence to sentence basis is staggering.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sean Hannity: Media Matters' Misinformer of the Year for 2008"},{"content":"Jeff Jacobsen has written a detailed article about the Anonymous protests against Scientology, which brings the reader up-to-date on Internet-supported counter-Scientology protesting since the article we wrote for Skeptic in 1995, \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech and Copyright Infringement on the Information Superhighway.\u0026quot;\nThe new article is called \u0026ldquo;We Are Legion: Anonymous and the War on Scientology.\u0026quot; Check it out.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-12-19):\nI've read the first chapter. Jacobsen provides much detail on the CoS's missteps of which I've heard only bits and pieces over the years. Excellent stuff.What made it especially engaging was having read and studied Shirky's book beforehand. Anonymous' protest serves as a fascinating example of undirected collective action of which Shirky basically said \"it's coming.\"IIRC, Shirky's book hit the shelves about the same time the Anonymous thing got big.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/jeff-jacobsen-article-on-anonymous.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Jacobsen has written a detailed article about the Anonymous protests against Scientology, which brings the reader up-to-date on Internet-supported counter-Scientology protesting since the article we wrote for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e in 1995, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech and Copyright Infringement on the Information Superhighway.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe new article is called \u003ca href=\"http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;We Are Legion: Anonymous and the War on Scientology.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Check it out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eReed\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-12-19)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI've read the first chapter.  Jacobsen provides much detail on the CoS's missteps of which I've heard only bits and pieces over the years.  Excellent stuff.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhat made it especially engaging was having read and studied Shirky's book beforehand.  Anonymous' protest serves as a fascinating example of undirected collective action of which Shirky basically said \"it's coming.\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIIRC, Shirky's book hit the shelves about the same time the Anonymous thing got big.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeff Jacobsen article on Anonymous protests against Scientology"},{"content":"If there was any doubt that the SkyMall catalog is full of bogus products that are complete ripoffs for idiots, that should be removed by this product\u0026ndash;a \u0026ldquo;wine and liquor accelerator\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;surrounds the beverage with a powerful triangular-shaped magnetic field, and in just 10 seconds, you\u0026rsquo;ll taste a premium drink\u0026rsquo;s smooth, mellow flavor equal to years of traditional slow aging.\u0026quot;\nAnd here, Alex Chiu has been telling us that magnetic devices slow aging, not speed it up.\nNot to mention that aging is not something that tends to improve the quality of wine.\nHistorical Comments Schtacky (2008-12-17):\nJim - this is perhaps your most rhetorical post to date. I mean, where else in the world will afford you the opportunity to purchase a $200 dog bed that could be acquired at Costco for $25?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/wine-accelerator-from-skymall.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf there was any doubt that the SkyMall catalog is full of bogus products that are complete ripoffs for idiots, that should be removed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.skymall.com/shopping/detail.htm?pid=102726830\u0026amp;c=\"\u003ethis product\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;a \u0026ldquo;wine and liquor accelerator\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;surrounds the beverage with a powerful triangular-shaped magnetic field, and in just 10 seconds, you\u0026rsquo;ll taste a premium drink\u0026rsquo;s smooth, mellow flavor equal to years of traditional slow aging.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd here, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Chiu\"\u003eAlex Chiu\u003c/a\u003e has been telling us that magnetic devices slow aging, not speed it up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot to mention that \u003ca href=\"http://www.winepros.org/aftertaste/3-myths.htm\"\u003eaging is not something that tends to improve the quality of wine\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wine accelerator from SkyMall"},{"content":"The Center for Public Integrity has published a slew of new investigative reports:\n\u0026ldquo;Global Warming: Heated Denials\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; reporting on climate change denialism pseudoscience from the Heartland Institute.\n\u0026ldquo;The Shadow Government\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; 900 little-known federal advisory committees wielding influence over public policy.\n\u0026ldquo;Divine Intervention\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; how the Bush Administration\u0026rsquo;s initiative to fight AIDS abroad is hampered by conservative ideology.\n\u0026ldquo;Broken Government\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; an assessment of 128 executive branch failures since 2000.\nCheck them out, and consider providing financial support for this organization, which is one of my top organizations to support.\nEamon Knight (2008-12-30):\nJim: Random posts (like this one) of yours seem to be generating backlinks over at my place, even though they don't actually link to my post.\nLippard (2008-12-30):\nEamon: It looks like a bug in Blogger's new Blogroll widget--the links in my blogroll sidebar to the most recent post at the blogs in my blogroll are, for some reason, generating backlinks at those blogs that are also Blogger blogs...\nHume's Ghost (2008-12-30):\nI was wondering about that - I noticed it yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/center-for-public-integrity-is-doing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/\"\u003eCenter for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e has published a slew of new investigative reports:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/731/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Global Warming: Heated Denials\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; reporting on climate change denialism pseudoscience from the Heartland Institute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/projects/entry/283/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Shadow Government\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; 900 little-known federal advisory committees wielding influence over public policy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/projects/entry/284/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Divine Intervention\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; how the Bush Administration\u0026rsquo;s initiative to fight AIDS abroad is hampered by conservative ideology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Broken Government\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; an assessment of 128 executive branch failures since 2000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck them out, and consider \u003ca href=\"http://cpi.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=donationredesignpage\"\u003eproviding financial support for this organization\u003c/a\u003e, which is one of my top organizations to support.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Center for Public Integrity is doing great work"},{"content":"This is what we need more of in apocalyptic future science fiction\u0026ndash;rampaging herds of feral hogs:\nThere are thought to be between 4m and 5m feral hogs at large in America, spread across 38 states. The biggest population is in Texas, but states from Florida to Oregon are infested and worried. Feral hogs destroy the habitats of plants and animals, spread diseases, damage crops, kill and eat the eggs and young of wildlife and sometimes menace people with their aggressive behaviour. The problem originated with the Spanish conquistadors, who took herds of pigs with them as they marched across the American continent. Stragglers reverted to their wild state. Much later “sportsmen” began releasing hogs into reserves for commercial hunting. More recently still declining pork prices have induced farmers to turn some of their stock loose rather than continue feeding them. Pigs produce so many piglets that a feral herd can double or even triple within as little as a year. Via The Economist. Eamon Knight (2008-12-17):\nThis is what we need more of in apocalyptic future science fiction--rampaging herds of feral hogs:I take it you've read Oryx and Crake? Make that genetically-enhanced, intelligent rampaging herds of feral hogs...\nLippard (2008-12-17):\nNope, haven't read that Margaret Atwood book. Looks like I should put it on the list...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/beware-feral-hogs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is what we need more of in apocalyptic future science fiction\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12725704\"\u003erampaging herds of feral hogs\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nThere are thought to be between 4m and 5m feral hogs at large in America, spread across 38 states. The biggest population is in Texas, but states from Florida to Oregon are infested and worried. Feral hogs destroy the habitats of plants and animals, spread diseases, damage crops, kill and eat the eggs and young of wildlife and sometimes menace people with their aggressive behaviour. \u003cbr /\u003e\nThe problem originated with the Spanish conquistadors, who took herds of pigs with them as they marched across the American continent. Stragglers reverted to their wild state. Much later “sportsmen” began releasing hogs into reserves for commercial hunting. More recently still declining pork prices have induced farmers to turn some of their stock loose rather than continue feeding them. Pigs produce so many piglets that a feral herd can double or even triple within as little as a year.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12725704\" style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-12-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003cI\u003eThis is what we need more of in apocalyptic future science fiction--rampaging herds of feral hogs:\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI take it you've read \u003cI\u003eOryx and Crake\u003c/I\u003e? Make that \u003cB\u003egenetically-enhanced, intelligent\u003c/B\u003e rampaging herds of feral hogs...\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Beware the feral hogs"},{"content":"\nKat and I attended Alan Korwin\u0026rsquo;s Bill of Rights celebration, celebrating the 217th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which was held this evening at the Wrigley Mansion. There were several hundred people in attendance, mostly civil libertarians of both liberal and libertarian varieties, including people from the Institute for Justice and the ACLU. We were asked in the invitation to think about which Amendment is our favorite\u0026ndash;I would probably rank the 1st and 4th at the top of my list, of which the 1st is much healthier than the 4th. I\u0026rsquo;d also put the 8th and 5th high in importance, both of which have taken some recent hits but are showing signs of recovery. And of course the 6th, and the under-utilized 9th\u0026hellip; ah, heck, they\u0026rsquo;re all important. The crowd seemed dominated by 2nd Amendment fans, not surprising since Alan Korwin is the author and publisher of numerous books on U.S. gun laws.\nThe reading of the Bill of Rights and its preamble was excellent, but I was disappointed that the event included a Patrick Henry impersonator played by Lance Hurley of Founding Fathers Ministries. Hurley is a Christian who endorses David Barton\u0026rsquo;s works of pseudohistory on his website (for which the antidote is Chris Rodda\u0026rsquo;s Liars for Jesus), and at the event argued in character, with quotations from Henry, that the 2nd Amendment came from the teachings of Jesus Christ, that the American revolution was fought on Christian principles, and the Constitutional Convention succeeded because of Ben Franklin\u0026rsquo;s prayer. He also stated, when there were discussions of the health of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, that freedom of religion is in serious danger, because no one can mention God in schools but the Koran can be discussed. This is simply untrue\u0026ndash;God and the Bible can be discussed by students, but such discussions cannot constitutionally be imposed by state agents such as teachers and administrators in a way that constitutes an establishment of religion. The Bible can be legally taught as the combination of myth, history, poetry, literature, and religious doctrine that it is, but Christianity cannot be endorsed as true by state agents. The same rules apply to the Koran. Hurley seems not to realize that Madison\u0026rsquo;s version of the First Amendment won out, not Henry\u0026rsquo;s. Some Christians\u0026ndash;and it appears that Hurley may be one of them\u0026ndash;have a view that their freedom of religion is infringed if they are prevented from legally imposing their religion on others through acts of state agents.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll find it amazing that Christians consider themselves to be a poor, persecuted minority prohibited from expressing their religious views when they are, in fact, regularly engaging in establishment clause violations, and Congressmen are signing on to bills like last year\u0026rsquo;s House Resolution 847.\nHurley does public speaking as both Patrick Henry and George Washington\u0026ndash;I wonder if his George Washington is historically accurate with respect to Washington\u0026rsquo;s religious views. He\u0026rsquo;s also an advocate of conspiracy theories (Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, etc.) and an advocate of the National Day of Prayer.\nFurther fringe elements were represented at the event by Ernie Hancock of the Ron Paul Revolution, who distributed multiple pieces of literature promoting his Freedom\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix website, billed as \u0026ldquo;uncovering the secrets \u0026amp; exposing the lies.\u0026rdquo; That site also promotes conspiracy theory, including \u0026ldquo;9/11 truth\u0026rdquo; conspiracy claims.\nIn the discussions, several people brought up Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s recently installed freeway traffic speed cameras as evidence of the sickliness of the Bill of Rights, though no one really offered an explanation of how the Bill of Rights is violated by them. And the objection seemed to only be to the cameras, not to speed limit laws. I\u0026rsquo;m not a fan of speed cameras, and I agree that they are more of a revenue generation method than a safety measure, but I don\u0026rsquo;t see an obvious case that they violate the Bill of Rights.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not to say that the event was entirely dominated by the lunatic fringe\u0026ndash;one woman in the audience commented that she was particularly concerned about the 4th Amendment, because she is now regularly stopped at a \u0026ldquo;border checkpoint\u0026rdquo; while driving between destinations well inside the U.S. border, because of the 100-mile \u0026ldquo;Constitution-free zone\u0026rdquo; that the courts have created around the perimeter of the U.S. And Jennifer Perkins of the Institute for Justice pointed out that even though the U.S. Supreme Court blew a gigantic hole in the 5th Amendment with the Kelo case, nearly all of the states have passed legislation adding further protections against eminent domain abuse (and Arizona\u0026rsquo;s are the strongest).\nThere was one critical mention of the USA PATRIOT Act (by the Patrick Henry impersonator, to well-deserved applause), but no mention of Guantanamo Bay, the Military Commissions Act, or torture that I noticed. I think concern over traffic cameras is at least a bit lower on the priority list than any of these items. A point in favor of the Patrick Henry arguments is that he correctly identified the risk of expanding executive power and judicial decisions that disregarded basic rights (the fact that the Bill of Rights, as well as the Constitution itself, has many passages that have effectively been written out of it, is testament to the accuracy of that prediction).\nThe First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s guarantee of free speech, at least, is alive and relatively well.\nUPDATE (December 16, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out that Ron Paul introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act which would:\nRepeal the \u0026ldquo;Military Commissions Act of 2006\u0026rdquo; and thereby restore the ancient right of habeas corpus and end legally sanctioned torture by U.S. government agents Restore the \u0026ldquo;Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act\u0026rdquo; (FISA) and thereby outlaw warrantless spying on American citizens by the President of the United States\nGive Congress standing in court to challenge the President\u0026rsquo;s use of \u0026ldquo;signing statements\u0026rdquo; as a means to avoid executing the nation\u0026rsquo;s laws\nMake it illegal for government agents to kidnap people and send them abroad to be tortured by foreign governments\nProvide legal protection to journalists who expose wrong-doing by the Federal government\nProhibit the use of secret evidence to label groups or individuals as terrorists for the purpose of criminal or civil sanctions\nEd suggests, and I agree, that writing or calling your elected representatives and asking them to support this bill is a good way to do something to preserve and protect the Bill of Rights.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-12-16):\nMy appreciation for the 9th Amendment grew substantially after reading Retained by the People\nHume's Ghost (2008-12-16):\n\"that the 2nd Amendment came from the teachings of Jesus Christ\"I now have an image of Jesus hunting deer with a semi-automatic in my head, like something out of the discussion of Jesus from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricki Bobbi.Which also reminds me of seeing The Chronicles of Narnia in the theatre: I had to restrain myself from laughing out loud when Santa showed up to give the children weapons.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/bill-of-rights-celebration-at-wrigley.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/3115084306_745f7d1950.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/3115084306_745f7d1950.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKat and I attended Alan Korwin\u0026rsquo;s Bill of Rights celebration, celebrating the 217th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which was held this evening at the Wrigley Mansion.  There were several hundred people in attendance, mostly civil libertarians of both liberal and libertarian varieties, including people from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/\"\u003eInstitute for Justice\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.acluaz.org/\"\u003eACLU\u003c/a\u003e.   We were asked in the invitation to think about which Amendment is our favorite\u0026ndash;I would probably rank the 1st and 4th at the top of my list, of which the 1st is much healthier than the 4th.  I\u0026rsquo;d also put the 8th and 5th high in importance, both of which have taken some recent hits but are showing signs of recovery.  And of course the 6th, and the under-utilized 9th\u0026hellip; ah, heck, they\u0026rsquo;re all important.  The crowd seemed dominated by 2nd Amendment fans, not surprising since \u003ca href=\"http://www.gunlaws.com/\"\u003eAlan Korwin is the author and publisher of numerous books on U.S. gun laws\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe reading of the Bill of Rights and its preamble was excellent, but I was disappointed that the event included a Patrick Henry impersonator played by Lance Hurley of Founding Fathers Ministries.  Hurley is a Christian who endorses David Barton\u0026rsquo;s works of pseudohistory on his website (for which the antidote is \u003ca href=\"http://www.liarsforjesus.com/\"\u003eChris Rodda\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLiars for Jesus\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e), and at the event argued in character, with quotations from Henry, that the 2nd Amendment came from the teachings of Jesus Christ, that the American revolution was fought on Christian principles, and \u003ca href=\"http://candst.tripod.com/franklin.htm\"\u003ethe Constitutional Convention succeeded because of Ben Franklin\u0026rsquo;s prayer\u003c/a\u003e.  He also stated, when there were discussions of the health of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, that freedom of religion is in serious danger, because no one can mention God in schools but the Koran can be discussed.  This is simply untrue\u0026ndash;God and the Bible can be discussed by students, but such discussions cannot constitutionally be imposed by state agents such as teachers and administrators in a way that constitutes an establishment of religion.  The Bible can be legally taught as the combination of myth, history, poetry, literature, and religious doctrine that it is, but Christianity cannot be endorsed as true by state agents.  The \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/violation-of-separation-of-church-and.html\"\u003esame rules apply to the Koran\u003c/a\u003e.  Hurley seems not to realize that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2003/12/answering_a_christian_nation_e_1.php\"\u003eMadison\u0026rsquo;s version of the First Amendment won out, not Henry\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e.  Some Christians\u0026ndash;and it appears that Hurley may be one of them\u0026ndash;have a view that their freedom of religion is infringed if they are prevented from legally imposing their religion on others through acts of state agents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll find it amazing that Christians consider themselves to be a poor, persecuted minority prohibited from expressing their religious views when they are, in fact, regularly engaging in establishment clause violations, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/maybe_theyre_protecting_us_fro.php\"\u003eCongressmen are signing on to bills like last year\u0026rsquo;s House Resolution 847\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHurley does public speaking as both Patrick Henry and George Washington\u0026ndash;I wonder if his George Washington is historically accurate with respect to Washington\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/11/washingtons-farewell-address-the-christian-nation-claim.html\"\u003ereligious\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/03/george-washington-on-christianity.html\"\u003eviews\u003c/a\u003e.  He\u0026rsquo;s also \u003ca href=\"http://www.hurleypatriot.org/files/you_can_help.htm\"\u003ean advocate of conspiracy theories\u003c/a\u003e (Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, etc.) and an advocate of \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer.html\"\u003ethe National Day of Prayer\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurther fringe elements were represented at the event by Ernie Hancock of the Ron Paul Revolution, who distributed multiple pieces of literature promoting his Freedom\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix website, billed as \u0026ldquo;uncovering the secrets \u0026amp; exposing the lies.\u0026rdquo;  That site also promotes conspiracy theory, including \u0026ldquo;9/11 truth\u0026rdquo; conspiracy claims.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the discussions, several people brought up Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s recently installed freeway traffic speed cameras as evidence of the sickliness of the Bill of Rights, though no one really offered an explanation of how the Bill of Rights is violated by them.  And the objection seemed to only be to the cameras, not to speed limit laws.  I\u0026rsquo;m not a fan of speed cameras, and I agree that they are more of a revenue generation method than a safety measure, but I don\u0026rsquo;t see an obvious case that they violate the Bill of Rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s not to say that the event was entirely dominated by the lunatic fringe\u0026ndash;one woman in the audience commented that she was particularly concerned about the 4th Amendment, because she is now regularly stopped at a \u0026ldquo;border checkpoint\u0026rdquo; while driving between destinations well inside the U.S. border, \u003ca href=\"/2008/10/constitution-free-zone.html\"\u003ebecause of the 100-mile \u0026ldquo;Constitution-free zone\u0026rdquo; that the courts have created around the perimeter of the U.S.\u003c/a\u003e  And Jennifer Perkins of the Institute for Justice pointed out that even though the U.S. Supreme Court blew a gigantic hole in the 5th Amendment with the Kelo case, nearly all of the states have passed legislation adding further protections against eminent domain abuse (and Arizona\u0026rsquo;s are the strongest).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere was one critical mention of the USA PATRIOT Act (by the Patrick Henry impersonator, to well-deserved applause), but no mention of Guantanamo Bay, the Military Commissions Act, or torture that I noticed.  I think concern over traffic cameras is at least a bit lower on the priority list than any of these items.  A point in favor of the Patrick Henry arguments is that he correctly identified the risk of expanding executive power and \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JEKH8280WJ7E/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm\"\u003ejudicial decisions that disregarded basic rights\u003c/a\u003e (the fact that the Bill of Rights, as well as the Constitution itself, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R1HC6PZD2EBPV1/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm\"\u003ehas many passages that have effectively been written out of it\u003c/a\u003e, is testament to the accuracy of that prediction).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s guarantee of free speech, at least, is alive and relatively well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 16, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/happy_bill_of_rights_day.php\"\u003epoints out that Ron Paul introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act which would\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRepeal the \u0026ldquo;Military Commissions Act of 2006\u0026rdquo; and thereby restore the ancient right of habeas corpus and end legally sanctioned torture by U.S. government agents \u003cp\u003eRestore the \u0026ldquo;Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act\u0026rdquo; (FISA) and thereby outlaw warrantless spying on American citizens by the President of the United States\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill of Rights celebration at the Wrigley Mansion"},{"content":"\nOur dog Otto continues his celebrity career by being featured on the front of a \u0026ldquo;save the date\u0026rdquo; postcard for a fundraiser for Altered Tails, a local charity that provides low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats. The image is a painting done by local artist Susan Barken.\nHistorical Comments donna (2008-12-16):\nSuch a star!\nLisa (2008-12-16):\nNext time I see him I will have to ask for his 'Otto'graph. : )\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/otto-on-fundraising-mailer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3047/3110829355_ffb7a0648c.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 333px; height: 500px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3047/3110829355_ffb7a0648c.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/3110829401_bb2a72c5b3.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 415px; height: 500px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/3110829401_bb2a72c5b3.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur dog Otto continues his celebrity career by being featured on the front of a \u0026ldquo;save the date\u0026rdquo; postcard for a fundraiser for Altered Tails, a local charity that provides low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats.  The image is \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/ottos-painting.html\"\u003ea painting done by local artist Susan Barken\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Otto on a fundraising mailer"},{"content":"I had previously been aware of Fox News \u0026ldquo;The Big Story\u0026rdquo; anchor John Gibson\u0026rsquo;s book, The War on Christmas, as well as former National Review author John O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan\u0026rsquo;s 2001 article on the subject, and of course Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s repeated misrepresentations on the subject. But until I read Max Blumenthal\u0026rsquo;s article, \u0026ldquo;Who Started the War on Christmas?,\u0026quot; I wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware of VDare founder Peter Brimelow\u0026rsquo;s role. Turns out he blames it on the Jews.\n(Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/who-started-war-on-christmas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had previously been aware of Fox News \u0026ldquo;The Big Story\u0026rdquo; anchor John Gibson\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe War on Christmas\u003c/span\u003e, as well as former \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Review\u003c/span\u003e author John O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan\u0026rsquo;s 2001 article on the subject, and of course Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/bill-oreilly-war-on-christmas-lies.html\"\u003erepeated misrepresentations on the subject\u003c/a\u003e.  But until I read Max Blumenthal\u0026rsquo;s article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-09/who-started-the-war-on-christmas\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Who Started the War on Christmas?,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e I wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware of VDare founder Peter Brimelow\u0026rsquo;s role.  Turns out he blames it on the Jews.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/war-on-christmas-casualties-in-nyc.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/war-on-christmas-exposed-by-new-yorker.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/bill-oreilly-war-on-christmas-lies.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/phony-war-against-christmas-product-of.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/activist-judge-cancels-christmas.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who started the \"War on Christmas\""},{"content":"Mario Chavez was driving drunk when he hit another car, killing its driver, 20-year-old University of Maryland student Brian Gray. Gray\u0026rsquo;s mother was traveling behind him in another vehicle, and watched her son die. When police arrived at the scene, they did not bother to give Chavez a test for his blood alcohol level. Chavez lied to investigators about what he was doing prior to the crash, claiming he was sleeping even though his cell phone records show that he was talking on the phone. He didn\u0026rsquo;t lose his job and he has only received a speeding ticket. Brian Gray, however, had blood taken from his dead body to see if he had been drinking, but he had not.\nIt seems the rules are different when the guilty party is a police officer. Mario Chavez is a Prince George\u0026rsquo;s County, Maryland police officer who was driving his patrol car at the time of the accident. For some reason the black box recording device for his police cruiser has not been checked for evidence due to \u0026ldquo;software problems.\u0026rdquo; A page of nurse\u0026rsquo;s notes about Chavez after his admission to Prince George\u0026rsquo;s Hospital after the crash has also disappeared.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-12-15):\nI'm surprised it's not routine procedure for police in any state to administer blood-alcohol tests to those involved in accidents involving fatalities.They drew blood from the victim, but gave the officer a pass, which would suggest it's optional.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/drunk-driver-kills-someone-yet-gets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMario Chavez was driving drunk when he hit another car, killing its driver, 20-year-old University of Maryland student Brian Gray.  Gray\u0026rsquo;s mother was traveling behind him in another vehicle, and watched her son die.  When police arrived at the scene, they did not bother to give Chavez a test for his blood alcohol level.  Chavez lied to investigators about what he was doing prior to the crash, claiming he was sleeping even though his cell phone records show that he was talking on the phone.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t lose his job and he has only received a speeding ticket.  Brian Gray, however, had blood taken from his dead body to see if he had been drinking, but he had not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/12/AR2008121203765.html\"\u003ethe rules are different when the guilty party is a police officer\u003c/a\u003e.  Mario Chavez is a Prince George\u0026rsquo;s County, Maryland police officer who was driving his patrol car at the time of the accident.  For some reason the black box recording device for his police cruiser has not been checked for evidence due to \u0026ldquo;software problems.\u0026rdquo;  A page of nurse\u0026rsquo;s notes about Chavez after his admission to Prince George\u0026rsquo;s Hospital after the crash has also disappeared.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/13/the-new-professionalism-12/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Drunk driver kills someone, yet gets only a speeding ticket"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m generally quite averse to watching sports, let alone reading about them. But I did read Michael Lewis\u0026rsquo;s Moneyball at one sitting and just read Malcolm Gladwell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Most Likely to Succeed\u0026rdquo; in the December 15 issue of The New Yorker.\nGladwell\u0026rsquo;s article looks at examples of jobs where there are few, if any, available measurements of performance available before hiring that correlate with success in the position. The performance of college quarterbacks doesn\u0026rsquo;t track their success in the NFL (apparently due to factors such as the sizes of players and the types of offensive formations used), and none of the items on a resumé seem to predict the success of teachers or financial advisors.\nYet quality of teaching is a huge factor in student educational success (as I\u0026rsquo;ve previously noted on this blog with regard to an Economist article about a McKinsey \u0026amp; Co. study that compared education across OECD nations). As The Economist article I referenced noted, \u0026ldquo;Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.\u0026quot;\nGladwell suggests that we should find a way to hire more teachers, have them apprentice with demonstrably successful teachers, and weed out the bad ones. But the most successful nations do not follow Gladwell\u0026rsquo;s suggestion of increasing the number of new teachers, instead doing nearly the opposite. Again quoting The Economist:\nNor do they try to encourage a big pool of trainees and select the most successful. Almost the opposite. Singapore screens candidates with a fine mesh before teacher training and accepts only the number for which there are places. Once in, candidates are employed by the education ministry and more or less guaranteed a job. Finland also limits the supply of teacher-training places to demand. In both countries, teaching is a high-status profession (because it is fiercely competitive) and there are generous funds for each trainee teacher (because there are few of them).\nSouth Korea shows how the two systems produce different results. Its primary-school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. Getting in requires top grades; places are rationed to match vacancies. In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria. This has produced an enormous glut of newly qualified secondary-school teachers—11 for each job at last count. As a result, secondary-school teaching is the lower status job in South Korea; everyone wants to be a primary-school teacher. The lesson seems to be that teacher training needs to be hard to get into, not easy.\nGladwell\u0026rsquo;s suggestion of apprenticeship, however, fits with the McKinsey \u0026amp; Co. study suggestion of improving teacher training and encouraging good teachers to share information and lesson plans with each other, as well as having top teachers provide oversight to teacher training.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/quarterbacks-teachers-and-financial.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m generally quite averse to watching sports, let alone reading about them.  But I did read Michael Lewis\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMoneyball\u003c/span\u003e at one sitting and just read Malcolm Gladwell\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Most Likely to Succeed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in the December 15 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGladwell\u0026rsquo;s article looks at examples of jobs where there are few, if any, available measurements of performance available before hiring that correlate with success in the position.  The performance of college quarterbacks doesn\u0026rsquo;t track their success in the NFL (apparently due to factors such as the sizes of players and the types of offensive formations used), and none of the items on a resumé seem to predict the success of teachers or financial advisors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet quality of teaching is a huge factor in student educational success (as \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/how-to-improve-education.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously noted on this blog with regard to an \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEconomist\u003c/span\u003e article about a McKinsey \u0026amp; Co. study that compared education across OECD nations\u003c/a\u003e).  As \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e article I referenced noted, \u0026ldquo;Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGladwell suggests that we should find a way to hire more teachers, have them apprentice with demonstrably successful teachers, and weed out the bad ones.  But the most successful nations do not follow Gladwell\u0026rsquo;s suggestion of increasing the number of new teachers, instead doing nearly the opposite.  Again quoting \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quarterbacks, teachers, and financial advisors"},{"content":"\n(Via FailBlog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/wal-mart-pricing-on-jesus-shirts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/fail-owned-jesus-walmart-price-fail.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 375px; height: 500px;\" src=\"http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/fail-owned-jesus-walmart-price-fail.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://failblog.org/2008/11/28/price-fail/\"\u003eFailBlog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wal-Mart pricing on Jesus shirts"},{"content":"Tempe\u0026rsquo;s Stray Cat Theatre is performing \u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant,\u0026rdquo; December 5-20.\nThe East Valley Tribune has described the show, and more details may be found at the Stray Cat Theatre\u0026rsquo;s website.\nUPDATE (December 19, 2008): A few of us went to see the show last night, which I\u0026rsquo;ve described in a separate post.\nHistorical Comments Schtacky (2008-12-04):\nJim,Are you and Kat going to attend? If so, let me know and perhaps we will join you.Joe\nKat Lippard (2008-12-04):\nHi Joe! I didn't know you were Schtacky... I'm not going, but I think Jim is. The only thing worse than hearing about Scientology from a Scientologist is hearing about it from an anti-Scientologist. (I'm kidding, kind of.)\nSchtacky (2008-12-05):\nI understand. How can you possibly be entertained if the premise of what you're trying to be entertained by frustrates you to no end... I feel the same way, but also think that there are not enough people making fun of this particular cult and that we should encourage more!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/very-merry-childrens-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTempe\u0026rsquo;s Stray Cat Theatre is performing \u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant,\u0026rdquo; December 5-20.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEast Valley Tribune\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/131687\"\u003ehas described the show\u003c/a\u003e, and more details may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://straycattheatre.org/\"\u003ethe Stray Cat Theatre\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 19, 2008):  A few of us went to see the show last night, \u003ca href=\"/2008/12/very-merry-unauthorized-childrens.html\"\u003ewhich I\u0026rsquo;ve described in a separate post\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSchtacky\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-12-04)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eJim,\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAre you and Kat going to attend?  If so, let me know and perhaps we will join you.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eJoe\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant"},{"content":"In what may be the most entertaining review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; yet, Roger Ebert gives Ben Stein what for in the Chicago Sun Times:\nThis film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.\nAnd there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it \u0026ldquo;From Darwin to Hitler.\u0026rdquo; He finds a Creationist who informs him, \u0026ldquo;Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.\u0026rdquo; He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment. Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one \u0026ldquo;result\u0026rdquo; of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. \u0026ldquo;As a Jew,\u0026rdquo; he says, \u0026ldquo;I wanted to see for myself.\u0026rdquo; We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,\u0026rdquo; he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-12-05):\nWhen he wants to Ebert can write some really good substantial pieces ... somewhere on his site there is an article about \"under God\" that is pretty darn good ... I'll see if I can track it down later on when I have more time.\nHume's Ghost (2008-12-06):\n\"Public Prayer Fantatics Borrow Page from Enemy's Script\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/12/roger-ebert-reviews-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn what may be the most entertaining review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; yet, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html\"\u003eRoger Ebert gives Ben Stein what for in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChicago Sun Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it \u0026ldquo;From Darwin to Hitler.\u0026rdquo; He finds a Creationist who informs him, \u0026ldquo;Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.\u0026rdquo; He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment.    \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBen Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one \u0026ldquo;result\u0026rdquo; of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. \u0026ldquo;As a Jew,\u0026rdquo; he says, \u0026ldquo;I wanted to see for myself.\u0026rdquo; We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,\u0026rdquo; he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Roger Ebert reviews Expelled"},{"content":"Lest there was any remaining doubt that the 1954 insertion of \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; into the pledge of allegiance was explicitly religious, the news has covered the death of the Rev. George M. Docherty, a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, noting that it was his sermon heard by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that prompted the change:\n\u0026ldquo;I didn\u0026rsquo;t know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and he recited it, \u0026lsquo;one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. \u0026ldquo;I came from Scotland, where we said \u0026lsquo;God save our gracious queen,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;God save our gracious king.\u0026rsquo; Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it at all.\u0026quot;He delivered his sermon calling for \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; to be added to the pledge first in 1952 with little effect, but delivered it again on February 7, 1954, while Eisenhower was in attendance at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., near the White House. Eisenhower immediately let Congress know he wanted it to happen, and Rep. Charles G. Oakman (R-MI) introduced a bill the very next day to make that addition, which Eisenhower signed into law on Flag Day.\nMichael Newdow currently has a second lawsuit working its way through the courts to remove \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; from the pledge on the grounds that Congress\u0026rsquo;s action was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. His first lawsuit went to the Supreme Court, where the justices declined to rule on the merits of the argument, and instead reasoned that he lacked standing to bring the suit because he was involved in a custody dispute over his daughter, who was the plaintiff because she was required to recite the pledge in school. That ruling, like Eisenhower\u0026rsquo;s signing of the original unconstitutional bill, was delivered on Flag Day (in 2004).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/pastor-who-got-under-god-added-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLest there was any remaining doubt that the 1954 insertion of \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; into the pledge of allegiance was explicitly religious, the news has covered the death of the Rev. George M. Docherty, a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsPqRkpCUZpCoOOBoe2dND_4z4ogD94OQ8EO0\"\u003enoting that it was his sermon heard by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that prompted the change\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;I didn\u0026rsquo;t know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and he recited it, \u0026lsquo;one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. \u0026ldquo;I came from Scotland, where we said \u0026lsquo;God save our gracious queen,\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;God save our gracious king.\u0026rsquo; Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it at all.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe delivered his sermon calling for \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; to be added to the pledge first in 1952 with little effect, but delivered it again on February 7, 1954, while Eisenhower was in attendance at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., near the White House.  Eisenhower immediately let Congress know he wanted it to happen, and Rep. Charles G. Oakman (R-MI) introduced a bill the very next day to make that addition, which Eisenhower signed into law on Flag Day.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Newdow currently has a second lawsuit working its way through the courts to remove \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; from the pledge on the grounds that Congress\u0026rsquo;s action was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.  His first lawsuit went to the Supreme Court, where the justices declined to rule on the merits of the argument, and instead reasoned that he lacked standing to bring the suit because he was involved in a custody dispute over his daughter, who was the plaintiff because she was required to recite the pledge in school.  That ruling, like Eisenhower\u0026rsquo;s signing of the original unconstitutional bill, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/14/scotus.pledge/\"\u003ewas delivered on Flag Day\u003c/a\u003e (in 2004).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pastor who got \"under God\" added to pledge dies"},{"content":"Yesterday the Arizona Republic had an interactive foreclosure map and document of data (PDF) which includes the monthly foreclosure statistics for the last eighteen months:\nApril 2007: 553\nMay 2007: 475\nJune 2007: 579\nJuly 2007: 676\nAugust 2007: 806\nSeptember 2007: 1,093\nOctober 2007: 936\nNovember 2007: 1,344\nDecember 2007: 1,617\nJanuary 2008: 2,052\nFebruary 2008: 2,249\nMarch 2008: 2,365\nApril 2008: 2,969\nMay 2008: 3,402\nJune 2008: 3,717\nJuly 2008: 4,104\nAugust 2008: 4,013\nSeptember 2008: 4,378\nOctober 2008: 4,587\nTotal foreclosures per year:\n2004: 4,444\n2005: 1,370\n2006: 1,070\n2007: 9,920\n2008: 33,836 through October\nThis is not good news for a state where construction and real estate provide a large share of the employment opportunities. It is good news for those who do not own homes and have been waiting to buy at lower prices\u0026ndash;it looks like next year will offer significantly better prices than this year, but there are still a lot of delusional sellers out there asking way too much. (There\u0026rsquo;s a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood near us that looks very nice, but is probably worth about half of the $429,000 asking price, based on comparable sales and the current downward trend. Zillow says it\u0026rsquo;s worth $277,000.)\nSee their summary article, which has links to the map and other documents.\nPierre Stromberg (2008-12-01):\nThis is stunning. And it must have a collateral effect on Arizona state government operations. Don't they rely heavily on real estate taxes?\nLippard (2008-12-01):\nThe state doesn't depend on property taxes, but the counties and cities do for services like schools, libraries, and fire protection services.The county will turn around and sell the property tax debt at auction, in what are called tax lien sales. The county will still get money for most of these properties, but at a reduced rate. Those who purchase the tax liens either get paid back in full plus interest, or if nobody pays the taxes for three years, they get the deed to the property. For properties that end up in the hands of banks, they don't want to hang on to them and be responsible for the property taxes and maintenance, they are selling properties off as quickly as possible by dropping the prices rapidly (e.g., $5,000 drop per week until it sells). They may also end up dumping properties at auction to get them off their hands.State revenues are primarily from income tax and sales tax. There is currently a huge deficit. The state maintains a budget stabilization fund (or \"rainy day fund\") for years like this, but I think it's mostly already been drained last year. Nevada also drained their rainy day fund last year.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/phoenix-area-foreclosures.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e had \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/flash/foreclosures/113008/fmapv1.html\"\u003ean interactive foreclosure map\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/1130foreclosures.pdf\"\u003edocument of data\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) which includes the monthly foreclosure statistics for the last eighteen months:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApril 2007: 553\u003cbr /\u003eMay 2007: 475\u003cbr /\u003eJune 2007: 579\u003cbr /\u003eJuly 2007: 676\u003cbr /\u003eAugust 2007: 806\u003cbr /\u003eSeptember 2007: 1,093\u003cbr /\u003eOctober 2007: 936\u003cbr /\u003eNovember 2007: 1,344\u003cbr /\u003eDecember 2007: 1,617\u003cbr /\u003eJanuary 2008: 2,052\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 2008: 2,249\u003cbr /\u003eMarch 2008: 2,365\u003cbr /\u003eApril 2008: 2,969\u003cbr /\u003eMay 2008: 3,402\u003cbr /\u003eJune 2008: 3,717\u003cbr /\u003eJuly 2008: 4,104\u003cbr /\u003eAugust 2008: 4,013\u003cbr /\u003eSeptember 2008: 4,378\u003cbr /\u003eOctober 2008: 4,587\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTotal foreclosures per year:\u003cbr /\u003e2004: 4,444\u003cbr /\u003e2005: 1,370\u003cbr /\u003e2006: 1,070\u003cbr /\u003e2007: 9,920\u003cbr /\u003e2008: 33,836 through October\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not good news for a state where construction and real estate provide a large share of the employment opportunities.  It is good news for those who do not own homes and have been waiting to buy at lower prices\u0026ndash;it looks like next year will offer significantly better prices than this year, but there are still a lot of delusional sellers out there asking way too much.  (There\u0026rsquo;s a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood near us that looks very nice, but is probably worth about half of the $429,000 asking price, based on comparable sales and the current downward trend.  Zillow says it\u0026rsquo;s worth $277,000.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSee \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/articles/2008/11/29/20081129foreclosure-blomo1130.html\"\u003etheir summary article\u003c/a\u003e, which has links to the map and other documents.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix-area foreclosures"},{"content":"\nWhen Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City, he had a zero-tolerance policy on graffiti, litter, and broken windows, on the assumption that small crimes like vandalism create an environment conducive to more serious crimes.\nNow, a study in the Netherlands published in Science provides support for this theory. In an alley used to park bicycles, the experimenters set up two conditions, one in which the walls of the alley were freshly painted and one in which they were tagged with graffiti. Flyers advertising a bicycle shop were attached to the handlebars of all parked bicycles. In the graffiti condition, 69% of bicyclists dumped the flyer on the ground as litter; in the clean condition, 33% littered. They performed several other similar experiments, and in each case the test subjects were more likely to engage in anti-social acts such as littering, trespassing, and stealing in the condition of disorder as opposed to in the condition of order.\n(Via The Economist, where you can read more details of the experiments.)\nHistorical Comments Trott (2008-11-26):\nVery interesting. I recall (I hope mostly accurately) an economist five or so years ago applying methods used in economics to determine what correlated with the reduction in crime seen during the 90s. He concluded that zero-tolerance was not a significantly correlated. He found that the only things that were significantly correlated were the crack explosion/implosion and an increase in the size of the police force. This would seem to contradict those findings. I do not have the necessary skill set to compare methodologies, et cetera, but I'd love to see these two apparently contradictory findings resolved. (Of course, the resolution is probably to throw out one or the other as spurious on some grounds.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/disorder-breeds-disorder.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://media.economist.com/images/20081122/4708ST1.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 315px;\" src=\"http://media.economist.com/images/20081122/4708ST1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City, he had a zero-tolerance policy on graffiti, litter, and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows\"\u003ebroken windows\u003c/a\u003e, on the assumption that small crimes like vandalism create an environment conducive to more serious crimes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, a study in the Netherlands published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e provides support for this theory.  In an alley used to park bicycles, the experimenters set up two conditions, one in which the walls of the alley were freshly painted and one in which they were tagged with graffiti.  Flyers advertising a bicycle shop were attached to the handlebars of all parked bicycles.  In the graffiti condition, 69% of bicyclists dumped the flyer on the ground as litter; in the clean condition, 33% littered.  They performed several other similar experiments, and in each case the test subjects were more likely to engage in anti-social acts such as littering, trespassing, and stealing in the condition of disorder as opposed to in the condition of order.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12630201\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, where you can read more details of the experiments\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Disorder breeds disorder"},{"content":"Gee, who was completely full of crap?\nI love the captions\u0026ndash;Dow over 13,000 and Ben Stein is saying now\u0026rsquo;s the time to buy\u0026hellip; Merrill Lynch a buy at $76, Charles Payne says buy Bear Stearns\u0026hellip; they were delusional idiots.\nSchiff was right about everything except inflation and gold (at least so far\u0026ndash;deflation looks like a bigger immediate risk than inflation). He was saying to buy gold at $830 in late 2007; it\u0026rsquo;s at about the same point today, but if you had taken his advice you could have sold higher earlier this year, and at least you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken any real losses.\n(Hat tip to Brett Vickers for the video.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-11-25):\nAbout 30 minutes ago I finished listening to a podcast of Real Time with Bill Maher in which he called out Laffer on the bet ... Laffer pretty much completely waved his hands at his wrongness.\nHume's Ghost (2008-11-25):\nFootage here (with annoying comments added in by whoever uploaded the video.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/peter-schiff-vs-art-laffer-tom-adkins.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGee, who was completely full of crap?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-033604662785324513 visible\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-033604662785324513 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-033604662785324513 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-033604662785324513 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/2I0QN-FYkpw\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI love the captions\u0026ndash;Dow over 13,000 and Ben Stein is saying now\u0026rsquo;s the time to buy\u0026hellip;  Merrill Lynch a buy at $76, Charles Payne says buy Bear Stearns\u0026hellip; they were delusional idiots.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSchiff was right about everything except inflation and gold (at least so far\u0026ndash;deflation looks like a bigger immediate risk than inflation).  He was saying to buy gold at $830 in late 2007; it\u0026rsquo;s at about the same point today, but if you had taken his advice you could have sold higher earlier this year, and at least you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken any real losses.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Hat tip to Brett Vickers for the video.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Peter Schiff vs. Art Laffer, Tom Adkins, Mike Norman, Ben Stein, Charles Payne"},{"content":"The case of Philip J. Berg v. Barack Hussein Obama, filed in the eastern district of Pennsylvania in an attempt to argue that Obama cannot become president because he is not a U.S. citizen, has been joined by Paul Andrew Mitchell, a \u0026ldquo;private attorney general\u0026rdquo; and 9/11 truther known for filing nonsensical papers with the courts. The character of Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s filing can be seen on p. 5, where he writes that \u0026ldquo;I, Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris, hereby verify, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the United States of America, without the \u0026lsquo;United States\u0026rsquo; (federal government), that the above statement of facts and laws is true and correct \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; The italics and bolding are as in the filing. Mitchell is one of the crackpots who argues that the United States of America is distinct from the United States and that he\u0026rsquo;s not subject to the laws of the latter, including the income tax, because he\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;sovereign citizen.\u0026quot;\nMitchell used to be a customer of Primenet, an Internet Service Provider based in Phoenix, that was my employer. He named us in one of his lawsuits, along with numerous other ISPs, on the grounds that one of our users had the temerity to put a link on his web page to a copy of Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue.\u0026rdquo; Mitchell insisted that he didn\u0026rsquo;t authorize that copy of his work, and that our user\u0026rsquo;s link constituted contributory infringement of his copyright. When I pointed out that the link was actually a dead link and didn\u0026rsquo;t point to anything at all, this did not persuade him that Primenet shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be sued. He never bothered to properly serve Primenet with papers, and the case was thrown out of court.\nMitchell is or was also a member of the \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; organization; I\u0026rsquo;ve previously written more about Mitchell and that organization on this blog.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-12-12):\nThat was the funniest thing I read all day. Even better than Berg's idiotic ramblings on his page. You rock!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/cranky-911-truther-joins-lawsuit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe case of Philip J. Berg v. Barack Hussein Obama, filed in the eastern district of Pennsylvania in an attempt to argue that Obama cannot become president because he is not a U.S. citizen, \u003ca href=\"http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/11/\"\u003ehas been joined by Paul Andrew Mitchell\u003c/a\u003e, a \u0026ldquo;private attorney general\u0026rdquo; and 9/11 truther known for filing nonsensical papers with the courts.  The character of Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s filing can be seen on p. 5, where he writes that \u0026ldquo;I, Paul Andrew Mitchell, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSui Juris\u003c/span\u003e, hereby verify, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnited States of America\u003c/span\u003e, without the \u0026lsquo;\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnited States\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo; (federal government), that the above statement of facts and laws is true and correct \u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;  The italics and bolding are as in the filing.  Mitchell is one of the crackpots who argues that the United States of America is distinct from the United States and that he\u0026rsquo;s not subject to the laws of the latter, including the income tax, because he\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;sovereign citizen.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMitchell used to be a customer of Primenet, an Internet Service Provider based in Phoenix, that was my employer.  He named us in one of his lawsuits, along with numerous other ISPs, on the grounds that one of our users had the temerity to put a link on his web page to a copy of Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue.\u0026rdquo;  Mitchell insisted that he didn\u0026rsquo;t authorize that copy of his work, and that our user\u0026rsquo;s link constituted contributory infringement of his copyright.  When I pointed out that the link was actually a dead link and didn\u0026rsquo;t point to anything at all, this did not persuade him that Primenet shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be sued.  He never bothered to properly serve Primenet with papers, and the case was thrown out of court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMitchell is or was also a member of the \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; organization; I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/scholars-for-911-truth.html\"\u003epreviously written more about Mitchell and that organization on this blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cranky 9/11 truther joins lawsuit against Obama"},{"content":"The FFRF\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; billboard in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is being removed by General Outdoor Advertising after they received a request to remove it from the city. The city asserts that it requested the removal but did not demand it, and therefore did not violate the First Amendment. The contract no doubt gives General Outdoor the ability to back out of the contract and refund the money in response to controversy. FFRF says the company has agreed to refund the money.\nThe city reports that they received about 90 complaints.\nHas anyone ever heard of a religious billboard in this country being removed after a government request?\nUPDATE (November 25, 2008): FFRF plans to sue Rancho Cucamonga for this infringement of its freedom of speech. The city\u0026rsquo;s Redevelopment Director, Linda Daniels, apparently realizes now that she has done something wrong, and has changed her story:\nLast Thursday, Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels said a member of her staff had informed the sign company about the 90 complaints the city received regarding the billboard. \u0026ldquo;We contacted the sign company and asked if there was a way to get it removed,\u0026rdquo; Daniels told the Daily Bulletin. On Friday, Daniels denied making the comment. Historical Comments Anonymous (2008-11-23):\nI wish they remove a certain billboard from a certain highway in Montana.Ken Ham is polluting our nation’s highways\nReed (2008-11-23):\nThough the city might claim it wasn't a 'demand' the effect is the same.If the sign company had stood their ground on behalf of free speech or whatever, they risked angering the city officials who could cause trouble the next time the company had business before the council or zoning board or whatever.\nHarvey Morrell (2009-06-13):\nDon\u0026#39;t know if you read German, but there is a related campaign in Bavaria, with signs on buses.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/ffrf-billboard-in-california-taken-down.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FFRF\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; billboard in Rancho Cucamonga, California, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_11037875\"\u003eis being removed by General Outdoor Advertising after they received a request to remove it from the city\u003c/a\u003e.  The city asserts that it requested the removal but did not demand it, and therefore did not violate the First Amendment.  The contract no doubt gives General Outdoor the ability to back out of the contract and refund the money in response to controversy.  FFRF says \u003ca href=\"http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_atheist21.44263f8.html\"\u003ethe company has agreed to refund the money\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city reports that they received about 90 complaints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHas anyone ever heard of a religious billboard in this country being removed after a government request?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 25, 2008): FFRF \u003ca href=\"http://www2.sbsun.com/news/ci_11066977\"\u003eplans to sue Rancho Cucamonga for this infringement of its freedom of speech\u003c/a\u003e.  The city\u0026rsquo;s Redevelopment Director, Linda Daniels, apparently realizes now that she has done something wrong, and has changed her story:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eLast Thursday, Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels said a member of her staff had informed the sign company about the 90 complaints the city received regarding the billboard. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"FFRF billboard in California taken down at city request"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:\nEpisode 011 Atheism and Feces-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Shyness, Group News,Election Post-Mortem, Email from Shawn of Tough Questions Podcasts, Winter Solstice, Musings on Rhetorical Debate Styles, Ridiculous Marriage Amendment.My comments: Duane Gish was vice president of the Institute for Creation Research.\nNice listener email on the FLDS members pretending to be truck stop hookers\u0026ndash;I like the listener feedback.\nObama opposes same-sex marriage.\nOn proving a negative, please see this and/or this.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/apostaz-podcast-11.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast is now available:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz011.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz011.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 011\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Feces-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Shyness, Group News,Election Post-Mortem, Email from Shawn of Tough Questions Podcasts, Winter Solstice, Musings on Rhetorical Debate Styles, Ridiculous Marriage Amendment.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMy comments:  Duane Gish was vice president of the Institute for Creation Research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNice listener email on the FLDS members pretending to be truck stop hookers\u0026ndash;I like the listener feedback.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eObama opposes same-sex marriage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn proving a negative, please see \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/debiak.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e and/or \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomu.edu/departments/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articles/proveanegative.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #11"},{"content":"October set a new record of 8,503 notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa County, of which 900 were duplicates of previous notices. The number of pending foreclosures has dropped, as Bank of America cancelled numerous foreclosures after acquiring Countrywide. 3,516 foreclosures were cancelled in October, about double September\u0026rsquo;s rate.\nAt the end of October, there were 27,874 pending foreclosures in Maricopa County. (Back in the summer of 2005, the total inventory of homes for sale was around 5,000. Today it\u0026rsquo;s around 50,000 34,000, which obviously has the potential to go much higher.)\nTrustee\u0026rsquo;s sales hit 4,587 in October, up from 4,378 in September.\n(Via azcentral.com.)\nUPDATE (November 26, 2008): Updated the inventory number to October 21, 2008, which is down from a peak of over 50,000, but which has been climbing back up from a recent low of just under 26,000 at the beginning of August 2008.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/phoenix-area-foreclosures-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOctober set a new record of 8,503 notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa County, of which 900 were duplicates of previous notices.  The number of pending foreclosures has dropped, as Bank of America cancelled numerous foreclosures after acquiring Countrywide.  3,516 foreclosures were cancelled in October, about double September\u0026rsquo;s rate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the end of October, there were 27,874 pending foreclosures in Maricopa County.  (Back in the summer of 2005, the total inventory of homes for sale was around 5,000.  Today it\u0026rsquo;s around \u003cstrike\u003e50,000\u003c/strike\u003e 34,000, which obviously has the potential to go much higher.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTrustee\u0026rsquo;s sales hit 4,587 in October, up from 4,378 in September.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2008/11/11/20081111biz-catherine1112.html\"\u003eazcentral.com\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 26, 2008): Updated the inventory number to October 21, 2008, which is down from a peak of over 50,000, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.housingtracker.net/old_housingtracker/location/Arizona/Phoenix/\"\u003ewhich has been climbing back up from a recent low of just under 26,000 at the beginning of August 2008\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix-area foreclosures and preforeclosures"},{"content":"Lawsuits by the National Security Archive of George Washington University and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have won a ruling from a U.S. district court judge that the White House can be forced to recover the five million \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo; emails that were deleted between March 2003 and October 2005. Those emails were required to have been preserved under the Presidential Records Act. Another set of emails from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney from September 30, 2003 to October 6, 2003 were found to be \u0026ldquo;lost and unrecoverable\u0026rdquo; by an Office of Administration investigation.\n65,000 backup tapes have been preserved as part of the litigation, and those tapes will apparently be available for review to recover some of the five million lost emails.\nMore details at IntelDaily.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/white-house-may-be-forced-to-recover.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLawsuits by the National Security Archive of George Washington University and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have won a ruling from a U.S. district court judge that the White House can be forced to recover the five million \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo; emails that were deleted between March 2003 and October 2005.  Those emails were required to have been preserved under the Presidential Records Act.  Another set of emails from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney from September 30, 2003 to October 6, 2003 were found to be \u0026ldquo;lost and unrecoverable\u0026rdquo; by an Office of Administration investigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e65,000 backup tapes have been preserved as part of the litigation, and those tapes will apparently be available for review to recover some of the five million lost emails.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details at \u003ca href=\"http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=144\u0026amp;a=8704\"\u003eIntelDaily\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"White House may be forced to recover \"lost\" emails"},{"content":"Looks like the air marshals have a problem similar to the TSA and the Border Patrol:\nShawn Nguyen bragged that he could sneak anything past airport security using his top-secret clearance as a federal air marshal. And for months, he smuggled cocaine and drug money onto flights across the country, boasting to an FBI informant that he was \"the man with the golden badge.\" Michael McGowan used his position as an air marshal to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he showed him child porn, took pictures of him naked and sexually abused him. And when Brian \"Cooter\" Phelps wanted his ex-wife to disappear, he called a fellow air marshal and tried to hire a hit man nicknamed \"the Crucifixer.\" Since 9/11, more than three dozen federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct, an investigation by ProPublica, a non-profit journalism organization, has found. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan. More details at USA Today. UPDATE (8 March 2015): Another air marshals scandal: What began as an internal investigation into allegations of harassment and threats stemming from a spat between ex-lovers has expanded into a criminal inquiry focused on the Federal Air Marshal Service’s dispatch hub in Herndon, Virginia. More than 60 federal employees are under scrutiny as investigators look into whether flights considered at risk of hijacking or a terrorist attack were left without marshals on board, sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reveal. Historical Comments Sheldon (2008-11-18):\nWow! Thats 36 Federal law enforcment officials who had passsed the background checks to fill those positions, and then went bad, some very bad. Pretty scary when you think about it.Thanks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/criminal-activity-by-air-marshals.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-11-12-air-marshals_N.htm\"\u003ethe air marshals have a problem\u003c/a\u003e similar to \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12302041/\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://consumerist.com/5063212/tsa-screener-helped-himself-to-200000-worth-of-your-stuff\"\u003eTSA\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/homeland-security-threat.html\"\u003eBorder Patrol\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nShawn Nguyen bragged that he could sneak anything past airport security using his top-secret clearance as a federal air marshal. And for months, he smuggled cocaine and drug money onto flights across the country, boasting to an FBI informant that he was \"the man with the golden badge.\"\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nMichael McGowan used his position as an air marshal to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he showed him child porn, took pictures of him naked and sexually abused him.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nAnd when Brian \"Cooter\" Phelps wanted his ex-wife to disappear, he called a fellow air marshal and tried to hire a hit man nicknamed \"the Crucifixer.\"\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nSince 9/11, more than three dozen federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct, an investigation by ProPublica, a non-profit journalism organization, has found. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nMore details at \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-11-12-air-marshals_N.htm\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\nUPDATE (8 March 2015): \u003ca href=\"http://www.revealnews.org/article/did-air-marshals-abandon-high-risk-flights-for-sexual-trysts/\"\u003eAnother air marshals scandal\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tr_bq\"\u003e\nWhat began as an internal investigation into allegations of harassment and threats stemming from a spat between ex-lovers has expanded into a criminal inquiry focused on the Federal Air Marshal Service’s dispatch hub in Herndon, Virginia. More than 60 federal employees are under scrutiny as investigators look into whether flights considered at risk of hijacking or a terrorist attack were left without marshals on board, sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reveal.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSheldon\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-11-18)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWow!  Thats 36 Federal law enforcment officials who had passsed the background checks to fill those positions, and then went bad, some very bad.  Pretty scary when you think about it.\u003cBR/\u003eThanks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Criminal activity by air marshals"},{"content":"John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog writes:\nObama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.I find it difficult to imagine the amount of delusion and cognitive dissonance that can produce such a paragraph. George W. Bush is the man whose spoken words have produced multiple books of \u0026ldquo;Bushisms,\u0026quot; and multiple years of \u0026ldquo;Bushism\u0026rdquo; calendars with a quotation for every day of the year.\nThe Sadly No blog responded to this paragraph with a series of YouTube videos vividly depicting Bush gaffes. I prefer this Andy Dick contribution:\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-11-12):\nI saw that and was going to post something along the lines of \"this is your brain on Bush worship\" but I thought, otherwise, hoping that when Bush leaves office the (in my opinion) horrendous Powerline blog will be rendered irrelevant.How persons such as Hinderaker can make such statements and maintain credibility with their audience is beyond me ... I'm still trying to figure out how someone can listen to Rush Limbaugh say that carrots are deadlier than second hand cigarette smoke (as I did once when randomly turning the program on) and think that sounds about right.\nHume's Ghost (2008-11-12):\nI do not know why I put commas around 'otherwise'.\nnormdoering (2008-11-14):\nHume's Ghost asked: \"How persons such as Hinderaker can make such statements and maintain credibility with their audience is beyond me ...\" I think that right wing punditry, reading it or writing it, causes brain damage.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/how-delusional-is-john-hinderaker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Hinderaker \u003ca href=\"http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/14211.html\"\u003eof the Powerline blog writes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eObama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI find it difficult to imagine the amount of delusion and cognitive dissonance that can produce such a paragraph.  George W. Bush is the man whose spoken words have produced multiple books of \u003ca href=\"http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bushisms,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and multiple years of \u0026ldquo;Bushism\u0026rdquo; calendars with a quotation for every day of the year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/14211.html\"\u003eSadly No blog responded to this paragraph with a series of YouTube videos\u003c/a\u003e vividly depicting Bush gaffes.  I prefer this Andy Dick contribution:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-02962998011847826 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/O_RSQSYgGB4\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/O_RSQSYgGB4\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/O_RSQSYgGB4\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How delusional is John Hinderaker?"},{"content":"Day one steps are closing Guantanamo Bay, ceasing and prohibiting torture, ceasing and prohibiting extraordinary rendition; steps for the first 100 days include ending warrantless spying, watch lists, the Ashcroft doctrine on FOIA requests, monitoring of activists, the Real ID Act, the abortion gag rule, the death penalty, and faith-based initiatives.\nAt least one of Obama\u0026rsquo;s transition teams is, at the very least, reviewing Bush\u0026rsquo;s executive orders for constitutionality, which covers some elements of the above. Most, however, have been implemented by act of Congress, which will require Congressional action to repeal.\nMisanthrope (2008-11-09):\nDo you have a link to an article or an Obama website that talks about his transition team reviewing this plan? It would be great if true, but my google-fu hasn't turned anything up.\nLippard (2008-11-09):\nMisanthrope: I thought I read that in the source which I read linking to the ACLU plan, but now I cannot remember what that was or find it myself.I've rewritten the entry to cover what I can verify, which is that Obama has a transition team reviewing Bush's executive orders for constitutionality.\nMichael Norton (2008-11-10):\nIt will be interesting to see if Bush's constitutional scholars (I'm looking at you, Yoo) continue to write papers expanding the theory of the \"Unitary Executive\" or if they fade into the woodwork.I know which I'm betting on.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/aclu-plan-for-restoring-us-civil-rights.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDay one steps are closing Guantanamo Bay, ceasing and prohibiting torture, ceasing and prohibiting extraordinary rendition; steps for the first 100 days include ending warrantless spying, watch lists, the Ashcroft doctrine on FOIA requests, monitoring of activists, the Real ID Act, the abortion gag rule, the death penalty, and faith-based initiatives.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt least one of Obama\u0026rsquo;s transition teams is, at the very least, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/11/good_news_from_obama_camp.php\"\u003ereviewing Bush\u0026rsquo;s executive orders for constitutionality\u003c/a\u003e, which covers some elements of the above.  Most, however, have been implemented by act of Congress, which will require Congressional action to repeal.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ACLU plan for restoring U.S. civil rights"},{"content":"Newsweek reports some interesting tidbits from behind the scenes of the election process in both the McCain and Obama campaigns:\nBoth the McCain and Obama campaigns had computers compromised by \u0026ldquo;a foreign entity or organization [which] sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps\u0026rsquo; policy positions.\u0026rdquo; And that entity was successful in collecting such data, apparently.\nPalin\u0026rsquo;s shopping spree was more extensive and expensive than has previously been reported: \u0026ldquo;While publicly supporting Palin, McCain\u0026rsquo;s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.\u0026rdquo; The spending was allegedly tens of thousands of dollars more than reported.\nMcCain rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and although she wanted to speak in Phoenix along with McCain for his concession speech, this was vetoed by McCain\u0026rsquo;s campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt.The Secret Service reported \u0026ldquo;a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied.\u0026quot;Palin attacked Obama about his connection to William Ayers before the campaign had finalized its plan about that issue\u0026ndash;McCain had not given his approval, and a top advisor was resisting it.Hillary Clinton was on much better terms with McCain than with Obama, and McCain feared that Hillary Clinton would be named as Obama\u0026rsquo;s VP, and was glad when he chose Biden.There are lots of other interesting bits in the article, as well.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/behind-scenes-during-election-process.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581\"\u003ereports some interesting tidbits from behind the scenes of the election process in both the McCain and Obama campaigns\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eBoth the McCain and Obama campaigns had computers compromised by \u0026ldquo;a foreign entity or organization [which] sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps\u0026rsquo; policy positions.\u0026rdquo;  And that entity was successful in collecting such data, apparently.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePalin\u0026rsquo;s shopping spree was more extensive and expensive than has previously been reported:  \u0026ldquo;While publicly supporting Palin, McCain\u0026rsquo;s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.\u0026rdquo;  The spending was allegedly tens of thousands of dollars more than reported.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMcCain rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and although she wanted to speak in Phoenix along with McCain for his concession speech, this was vetoed by McCain\u0026rsquo;s campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe Secret Service reported \u0026ldquo;a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied.\u0026quot;\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePalin attacked Obama about his connection to William Ayers before the campaign had finalized its plan about that issue\u0026ndash;McCain had not given his approval, and a top advisor was resisting it.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eHillary Clinton was on much better terms with McCain than with Obama, and McCain feared that Hillary Clinton would be named as Obama\u0026rsquo;s VP, and was glad when he chose Biden.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThere are lots of other interesting bits in the article, as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Behind the scenes during the election process"},{"content":"Good: Washington joins Oregon in allowing doctor-assisted suicide, South Dakota rejects further abortion limits, Michigan allows medical marijuana and stem cell research, California rejects further abortion limits, Colorado rejects the definition of person as beginning at conception.\nBad: California, Arizona, and Florida ban gay marriage with constitutional amendments, Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children.\n(Results at CNN.)\nUPDATE: Ed Brayton notes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars that the California result on gay marriage was evidently due to religious bigotry:\nIn California, exit polls showed that those who attended church regularly voted against marriage equality 83-17%. Those who attended church only occasionally voted for marriage equality 60-40%. Those who do not attend church at all voted for marriage equality 86-14%.The same was true in Arizona, where exit polling found that:\nProtestants generally supported the measure but that Catholics were fairly evenly divided. Nonreligious voters were solidly against it. \u0026hellip; Proposition 102 had slight leads among Whites and among Hispanics.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe youngest voters were split for and against, with support for Proposition 102 increasing among voters in older age groups. Voters age 65 or over were solidly for the amendment.Prop. 102 will ultimately be overturned as the older generation dies off.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-11-06):\n\"Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children.\"Yeah, and they did it a sleezy manner, too. The law prohibits cohabitants from adopting, not singles. Since gay couples can't get married they're prohibited from adopting.\nnormdoering (2008-11-12):\nKeith Olbermann had a great \"special comment\" on the passage of Proposition Eight in California.It's up on my blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/good-and-bad-news-on-propositions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGood:  Washington joins Oregon in allowing doctor-assisted suicide, South Dakota rejects further abortion limits, Michigan allows medical marijuana and stem cell research, California rejects further abortion limits, Colorado rejects the definition of person as beginning at conception.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBad:  California, Arizona, and Florida ban gay marriage with constitutional amendments, Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Results at \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/ballot.measures/\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/11/random_thoughts_the_morning_af.php\"\u003enotes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars that the California result on gay marriage was evidently due to religious bigotry\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn California, exit polls showed that those who attended church regularly voted against marriage equality 83-17%. Those who attended church only occasionally voted for marriage equality 60-40%. Those who do not attend church at all voted for marriage equality 86-14%.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe same was true in Arizona, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/11/05/20081105gay-marriage1105-ON.html\"\u003ewhere exit polling found that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eProtestants generally supported the measure but that Catholics were fairly evenly divided. Nonreligious voters were solidly against it.  \u0026hellip; Proposition 102 had slight leads among Whites and among Hispanics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eThe youngest voters were split for and against, with support for Proposition 102 increasing among voters in older age groups. Voters age 65 or over were solidly for the amendment.\u003c/blockquote\u003eProp. 102 will ultimately be overturned as the older generation dies off.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Good and bad news on propositions"},{"content":"Arizona will now have a majority of Democratic Representatives in the House, as Rick Renzi is replaced by Ann Kirkpatrick in District 1 in a close race. The other close race is District 5, where Harry Mitchell has defeated David Schweikert. This means the Arizona delegation will be Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl (both Republicans), and Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick (D-District 1), Trent Franks (R-District 2), John Shadegg (R-District 3), Ed Pastor (D-District 4), Harry Mitchell (D-District 5), Jeff Flake (R-District 6), Raul Grijalva (D-District 7), Gabrielle Giffords (D-District 8).\nBad news: Andrew Thomas was re-elected as Maricopa County Attorney, and Joe Arpaio was re-elected as Maricopa County Sheriff. And Arizona went for John McCain as president, though he has graciously conceded to Barack Obama.\nSome bad results on the propositions: Prop. 102 is passing, amending the Arizona constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Prop. 101 on medical choice is failing. But there\u0026rsquo;s also good news: the payday loan industry-backed Prop. 200 is failing (that would add barriers to entry to new payday loan companies, as well as prevent the current payday loan legislation from sunsetting), and Prop. 100\u0026rsquo;s ban on additional home transfer taxes is passing.\nUPDATE (November 5, 2008): Prop. 101 is still too close to call, with \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes leading by 2,195 votes (867,924 no, 865,729 yes). There should be a conclusive result tomorrow.\nUPDATE (November 6, 2008): Still counting on Prop. 101\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s now a 2,944-vote lead for no, 887,821 to 884,877.\nUPDATE (November 12, 2008): Prop. 101 has been defeated, 961,567 no votes to 950,440 yes votes.\nNMHIMA Message Board (2008-11-05):\nMaybe 102 needs to be challenged in court to see if it is constitutional.\nLippard (2008-11-05):\nIt should be, and it isn't constitutional (under the U.S. Constitution) for the same reason anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional as per Loving v. Virginia.\n~-,, Miesche ,,-~ (2008-11-05):\nIf Joe Arpaio being reelected is bad... and people hate him so much... Why is it, no matter how many people run against him, not matter how much the AZ Repub writes negative about him, no matter what he does, maricopa, as a majority *always* re elects him?\nLippard (2008-11-05):\nBecause Maricopa County has a Republican majority that loves him for being \"tough on crime\" and illegal immigration, and apparently doesn't care about his abuses and the cost to taxpayers of the successful civil lawsuits against him.The demographics are slowly changing--I think this was his closest race to date.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/arizona-election-results.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona will now have a majority of Democratic Representatives in the House, as Rick Renzi is replaced by Ann Kirkpatrick in District 1 in a close race.  The other close race is District 5, where Harry Mitchell has defeated David Schweikert.  This means the Arizona delegation will be Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl (both Republicans), and Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick (D-District 1), Trent Franks (R-District 2), John Shadegg (R-District 3), Ed Pastor (D-District 4), Harry Mitchell (D-District 5), Jeff Flake (R-District 6), Raul Grijalva (D-District 7), Gabrielle Giffords (D-District 8).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBad news:  Andrew Thomas was re-elected as Maricopa County Attorney, and Joe Arpaio was re-elected as Maricopa County Sheriff.  And Arizona went for John McCain as president, though he has graciously conceded to Barack Obama.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome bad results on the propositions:  Prop. 102 is passing, amending the Arizona constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Prop. 101 on medical choice is failing.  But there\u0026rsquo;s also good news: the payday loan industry-backed Prop. 200 is failing (that would add barriers to entry to new payday loan companies, as well as prevent the current payday loan legislation from sunsetting), and Prop. 100\u0026rsquo;s ban on additional home transfer taxes is passing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 5, 2008): Prop. 101 is still too close to call, with \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes leading by 2,195 votes (867,924 no, 865,729 yes).  There should be a conclusive result tomorrow.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 6, 2008): Still counting on Prop. 101\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s now a 2,944-vote lead for no, 887,821 to 884,877.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 12, 2008): Prop. 101 has been defeated, 961,567 no votes to 950,440 yes votes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona election results"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast #10 is out:\nEpisode 010 Atheism and Dogma-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Quiverfull, Innocence, Over-population, Which Came First, Religion or Ignorance? (Some of David\u0026rsquo;s artwork: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/), Fear and Dogma, Ignosticism, Priming the Gish Gallop.There\u0026rsquo;s some discussion of what the legal standards should be for government prevention of abuses by separatist religious groups like Warren Jeffs\u0026rsquo; FLDS group. It\u0026rsquo;s a tough problem, especially when various child protective agencies themselves have a poor reputation and cause harm themselves. In the FLDS case in Texas, the state raided the FLDS compound on the basis of a hoaxed complaint, adult women were taken and held as minors, and the Texas CPS repeatedly misrepresented the facts to try to justify its actions (links are to several of numerous blog posts by economist David Friedman, who blogged the FLDS situation in detail).\nHistorical Comments Silver Fox (2008-11-04):\nThe behavior of the Texas authorities was disgraceful. They went into a family compound, pointing guns, kidnapping women and children and traumatizing children beyond repair and all of this on the basis of a hoax telephone call. They then attempted to justify this tradegy by saying they were \"protecting\" children.They could have secured legal authority to investigate activities in the compound and then set up a monitoring program that would secure the safety of children. In other words, they could have more effectively protected children without all the trauma and theatrics.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/11/apostaz-podcast-10.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast #10 is out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz010.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 010\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Dogma-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://meetup.com/phoenix-atheists\"\u003emeetup.com/phoenix-atheists\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Quiverfull, Innocence, Over-population,  Which Came First, Religion or Ignorance? (Some of David\u0026rsquo;s artwork: \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/\"\u003ehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e), Fear and Dogma, Ignosticism, Priming the Gish Gallop.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s some discussion of what the legal standards should be for government prevention of abuses by separatist religious groups like Warren Jeffs\u0026rsquo; FLDS group.  It\u0026rsquo;s a tough problem, especially when various child protective agencies themselves have a poor reputation and cause harm themselves.  In the FLDS case in Texas, the state raided the FLDS compound \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/04/and-yet-more-on-flds-phone-call.html\"\u003eon the basis of a hoaxed complaint\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/05/flds-and-arithmetic-part-ii.html\"\u003eadult women were taken and held as minors\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-views-on-flds-v-texas-interim.html\"\u003ethe Texas CPS repeatedly misrepresented the facts to try to justify its actions\u003c/a\u003e (links are to several of numerous blog posts by economist David Friedman, who blogged the FLDS situation in detail).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #10"},{"content":"From the Iowa State Daily:\nAudience members escorted out of Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., campaign event in Cedar Falls questioned why they were asked to leave Sunday’s rally even though they were not protesting.\nDavid Zarifis, director of public safety for the University of Northern Iowa, said McCain staffers requested UNI police assist in escorting out “about four or five” people from the rally prior to McCain’s speech.\nZarifis said while the people who were taken out weren’t protesting or causing problems, McCain’s staff were worried they would during the speech.\n“Apparently, they had been identified by those staffers as potential protesters within the event,” Zarifis said.\n\u0026hellip;\nLara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing.\n\u0026hellip;\nElborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.\n“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/republicans-kicked-out-of-mccain-event.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://www.iowastatedaily.com/articles/2008/10/28/news/local_news/doc49068f6ccce49245010961.txt\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIowa State Daily\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAudience members escorted out of Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., campaign event in Cedar Falls questioned why they were asked to leave Sunday’s rally even though they were not protesting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Zarifis, director of public safety for the University of Northern Iowa, said McCain staffers requested UNI police assist in escorting out “about four or five” people from the rally prior to McCain’s speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eZarifis said while the people who were taken out weren’t protesting or causing problems, McCain’s staff were worried they would during the speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“Apparently, they had been identified by those staffers as potential protesters within the event,” Zarifis said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eLara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eElborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republicans kicked out of McCain event for not looking right"},{"content":"Amy Silverman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Love the War, Neglect the Warrior: His fame\u0026rsquo;s based on his POW status, but Senator John McCain\u0026rsquo;s made a point of voting against fellow veterans,\u0026quot; tells the story of McCain\u0026rsquo;s voting record on support for war veterans, and how various veterans\u0026rsquo; groups and retired military personnel feel about him:\nMost vet special-interest groups decline to officially take sides (even VoteVets hasn\u0026rsquo;t made a presidential endorsement).\nBut VoteVets is among many veterans groups to note the discrepancy between John McCain\u0026rsquo;s talk and his actions.\nIn both 2006 and 2007-08, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a D for his record on key congressional votes.\nThe Disabled American Veterans scored him at 20 percent in 2006; 25 percent in 2005; and 50 percent in 2004.\nAnd the Retired Enlisted Association gave him a 0 in 2006 and a rating of 18 percent in 2004. These are the most recent rankings released by the groups.\nAnother organization, Veterans for Common Sense, posted this comment on its website earlier this year: \u0026ldquo;John McCain is yet another Republican\u0026hellip;military veteran who likes to talk a big game when it comes to having the support of the military. Yet, time and time again, he has gone out of his way to vote against the needs of those who are serving in our military. If he can\u0026rsquo;t even see his way to actually do what the troops want, or what the veterans need, and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the support of veterans, then how can he be a credible commander in chief?\u0026quot;\nThe article notes that while polls tend to show military support for McCain over Obama, Obama has raised $74,000 from active military personnel, to McCain\u0026rsquo;s $16,000.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/love-war-neglect-warrior-mccains-lack.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmy Silverman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2008-10-29/news/love-the-war-neglect-the-warrior-his-fame-s-based-on-his-pow-status-but-senator-john-mccain-s-made-a-point-of-voting-against-fellow-veterans/1\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Love the War, Neglect the Warrior: His fame\u0026rsquo;s based on his POW status, but Senator John McCain\u0026rsquo;s made a point of voting against fellow veterans,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e tells the story of McCain\u0026rsquo;s voting record on support for war veterans, and how various veterans\u0026rsquo; groups and retired military personnel feel about him:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost vet special-interest groups decline to officially take sides (even VoteVets hasn\u0026rsquo;t made a presidential endorsement).\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eBut VoteVets is among many veterans groups to note the discrepancy between John McCain\u0026rsquo;s talk and his actions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Love the War, Neglect the Warrior: McCain's lack of support for veterans"},{"content":"\nLast night Otto was barking at something while inside the house. This isn\u0026rsquo;t unusual, but what was unusual was that he didn\u0026rsquo;t run out into the backyard to bark. I was trying to get to sleep early in order to deal with 4 a.m. irrigation, and he came upstairs and continued to bark. Kat went outside to see if there was an animal outside (such as a cat that spends a lot of time in our front yard), and heard a dog barking nearby that was too close to be one of the neighbor dogs.\nShe got a flashlight and went out to find a dog trapped in the Highline Canal, struggling to get out, but the sides were too steep. The dog\u0026rsquo;s front paws were bloody from the effort. She managed to get a leash around its neck to try to pull him out, but he resisted. She called the Arizona Humane Society to get someone to come take him (and help get him out if we were unable to manage it)\u0026ndash;since he\u0026rsquo;s an injured dog, this was a case they are permitted to deal with. (If a stray dog is over 6 months old and uninjured, Maricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control is the only entity legally permitted to take them.)\nI went and got a ladder and put it into the water to see if he could use it to pull himself up, but he just used it to hold himself in place.\nWhen the Arizona Humane Society arrived, they had a dog snare which, combined with the leash, we were able to use to pull the dog to safety. He was dried off and willingly jumped into the kennel on the truck.\nThe dog had a collar, but no tags. Kat will be putting his photo up on Pets911 this morning.\nThanks to Otto\u0026rsquo;s barking, this dog avoided the fate of another whose skeleton was pulled out of the canal by our house, in the same location, earlier this year.\nHistorical Comments Kat Lippard (2008-10-30):\nJim- The text above the top photo runs into the photo and is unreadable.He was a super sweet dog even though he was scared to death. If no one claims him, he will be available for adoption, if deemed adoptable.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/otto-saves-canal-dog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2986193887_4bdd02e6c6.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2986193887_4bdd02e6c6.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2986193943_3ec328b322.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2986193943_3ec328b322.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cP\u003eLast night Otto was barking at something while inside the house.  This isn\u0026rsquo;t unusual, but what was unusual was that he didn\u0026rsquo;t run out into the backyard to bark.  I was trying to get to sleep early in order to deal with 4 a.m. irrigation, and he came upstairs and continued to bark.  Kat went outside to see if there was an animal outside (such as a cat that spends a lot of time in our front yard), and heard a dog barking nearby that was too close to be one of the neighbor dogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe got a flashlight and went out to find a dog trapped in the Highline Canal, struggling to get out, but the sides were too steep.  The dog\u0026rsquo;s front paws were bloody from the effort.  She managed to get a leash around its neck to try to pull him out, but he resisted.  She called the Arizona Humane Society to get someone to come take him (and help get him out if we were unable to manage it)\u0026ndash;since he\u0026rsquo;s an injured dog, this was a case they are permitted to deal with.  (If a stray dog is over 6 months old and uninjured, Maricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control is the only entity legally permitted to take them.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI went and got a ladder and put it into the water to see if he could use it to pull himself up, but he just used it to hold himself in place.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen the Arizona Humane Society arrived, they had a dog snare which, combined with the leash, we were able to use to pull the dog to safety.  He was dried off and willingly jumped into the kennel on the truck.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe dog had a collar, but no tags.  Kat will be putting his photo up on Pets911 this morning.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks to Otto\u0026rsquo;s barking, this dog avoided the fate of another whose skeleton was pulled out of the canal by our house, in the same location, earlier this year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3140/2986241579_b0752de975.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 375px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3140/2986241579_b0752de975.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Otto saves the canal dog"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Captain Disillusion\u0026rdquo; has produced a re-edited version of a news story about a ghost caught on a gas station security camera that is much better than the original.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2008-10-30):\nHilarious!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/gas-station-ghost-captain-disillusions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Captain Disillusion\u0026rdquo; has produced \u003ca href=\"http://openfilm.com/videos/gas_station_ghost_recut/\"\u003ea re-edited version of a news story about a ghost caught on a gas station security camera that is much better than the original\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-10-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHilarious!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Gas station ghost: Captain Disillusion's re-edit"},{"content":"\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a nice set of graphs from the New York Times that shows various economic metrics by President and party majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.\nFor the budget surplus vs. deficit, there seems to be a benefit to having one party in the presidency and another party in control of Congress. In general, it looks like Republicans in the presidency and the Senate produce bad results\u0026hellip;\n(Via the Big Picture blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/economic-results-by-political-party.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/images/2008/10/23/business_cycle_president.png\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 520px; height: 308px;\" src=\"http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/images/2008/10/23/business_cycle_president.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/18/business/20081019-metrics-graphic.html\"\u003ea nice set of graphs from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e that shows various economic metrics by President and party majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor the budget surplus vs. deficit, there seems to be a benefit to having one party in the presidency and another party in control of Congress.  In general, it looks like Republicans in the presidency and the Senate produce bad results\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e (Via \u003ca href=\"http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/presidents-the.html\"\u003ethe Big Picture blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Economic results by political party"},{"content":"There are reports that Sarah Palin is \u0026ldquo;going rogue\u0026rdquo; by continually going off message and clashing with key McCain aides. One McCain aide reports:\n\u0026ldquo;She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,\u0026rdquo; said this McCain adviser. \u0026ldquo;She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.\n\u0026ldquo;Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.\u0026quot;This is not the kind of person who should be in a position of political leadership in a representative democracy\u0026ndash;perhaps in a banana republic, but not a first-world nation.\n(I do agree with her that \u0026ldquo;robocalls\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;prerecorded political advertisements\u0026ndash;are extremely annoying.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/palin-going-rogue.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html\"\u003ereports that Sarah Palin is \u0026ldquo;going rogue\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e by continually going off message and clashing with key McCain aides.  One McCain aide reports:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,\u0026rdquo; said this McCain adviser. \u0026ldquo;She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is not the kind of person who should be in a position of political leadership in a representative democracy\u0026ndash;perhaps in a banana republic, but not a first-world nation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(I do agree with her that \u0026ldquo;robocalls\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;prerecorded political advertisements\u0026ndash;are extremely annoying.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin \"going rogue\""},{"content":"Sarah Palin says that Bill Ayers counts as a domestic terrorist for setting off bombs, but declines to apply the term to those who set off bombs to blow up abortion clinics:\nWILLIAMS: Are we changing \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s been said that to give it a vaguely post-9/11 hint, using that word that we don\u0026rsquo;t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the \u0026rsquo;60s terrorists in \u0026ndash; under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?\nPALIN: There\u0026rsquo;s no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There\u0026rsquo;s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to \u0026ndash; I don\u0026rsquo;t know if you\u0026rsquo;re going to use the word terrorist there, but it\u0026rsquo;s unacceptable, and it would not be condoned, of course, on our watch. But I don\u0026rsquo;t know \u0026ndash; if what you\u0026rsquo;re asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist, I don\u0026rsquo;t regret characterizing him as that.\nWILLIAMS: No, I\u0026rsquo;m just asking what other categories you would put in there, abortion clinic bombers, protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails were thrown, people died?\nPALIN: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to campaign, to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.\nI agree with her that Bill Ayers\u0026rsquo; actions constituted domestic terrorism. But so do those of abortion clinic bombers, which is why they are considered an appropriate target for the FBI\u0026rsquo;s counterterrorism efforts. The RAND Corporation\u0026rsquo;s terrorism incident database is no longer available via the web, but when I last looked at it, bombing incidents by abortion opponents was one of the largest categories of U.S. domestic terrorism, along with actions by animal rights activists and environmental activists.\nVideo:\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-10-26):\nYep, and given that we can expect a rise in abortion clinic bombings if Obama is elected, it is really not good that she won't call them terrorists, given that her base thinks Obama is a baby killer (Sean Hannity had Jerome Corsi on Fox News several times saying as much.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-26):\nThis Talk 2 Action article kind of hits the same point:It is unclear what Palin believes regarding the themes of violence of most the extreme elements of the groups that she has associated with for many years. But if she is going to use guilt by association methods based on activities that occurred decades ago, she has some more recent associations of her own to explain. If she believes her frequents assertions that the US is a \"great nation,\" then why does she associate with secessionists that try to break it up? If she opposes domestic violence for political ends, how can she be associated with a group with leaders that have embraced `justifiable homicide\"? It is disturbing that she declined to condemn the violence and murder against abortion providers in the NBC interview with Brian Williams, even though he asked her twice about that matter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/palin-going-rogue.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSarah Palin says that Bill Ayers counts as a domestic terrorist for setting off bombs, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/10/24/palin_abortion/print.html\"\u003edeclines to apply the term to those who set off bombs to blow up abortion clinics\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e     \u003cp\u003eWILLIAMS: Are we changing \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s been said that to give it a vaguely post-9/11 hint, using that word that we don\u0026rsquo;t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the \u0026rsquo;60s terrorists in \u0026ndash; under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin declines to call abortion clinic bombers terrorists"},{"content":"\nVia the Reason blog: The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte established an exception to the Fourth Amendment, allowing the federal government to establish roadblock checkpoints within 100 miles of U.S. borders to stop people and search for illegal immigrants and smuggling.\nThe ACLU notes that 190 million people live within 100 miles of U.S. borders, providing this helpful map. (Although Lake Michigan is entirely within U.S. boundaries, by treaty Canada is allowed full navigation rights to the lake\u0026ndash;so it\u0026rsquo;s not clear if that 100-mile boundary would actually be as in the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s map around Lake Michigan.)\nThere are currently 33 checkpoints in operation within the boundary area. Here\u0026rsquo;s some video footage of one of them in Arizona:\n(Via Checkpoint USA, which has numerous videos of interactions at one of these temporary checkpoints.)\nReed (2008-10-26):\nA few months back I was waved through such a checkpoint while visiting Texas.But then again I'm white and probably didn't meet any of their profiling criteria.\nEamon Knight (2008-10-26):\nOh, is that why there are often checkpoints on the I-5 north of San Diego? By \"often\" I mean, almost every time in the last 25 years that I've driven that way, which is like half-a-dozen times. Of course, usually being there in the middle of winter, we're bleached-out Canadians (we probably look albino to the cops), who could never be suspected of being Mexican, so we just get waved through.\nLippard (2008-10-26):\nI got stopped and had my car searched just north of El Paso in 1992 on the way to the CSICOP Conference--I had long hair at the time.I've often had to stop at the Highway 85 checkpoint in the Organ Pipe National Monument north of Lukeville, Arizona on the way back from Rocky Point, where we're asked if we're U.S. citizens, then waved through upon a \"yes\" answer.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nIs the law on immigration of no effect?Wait--don't answer that. I know the answer.The reality is that of all great powers in history in the Modern Age, we have the most lax and laughable \"border\" sitation.The good news is that we no longer even have to worry about having schoolkids draw a border on pieces of paper in Geography class.Why bother?The bad news--where to begin is hard to pin down for best effect--is that the ACLU has had little comfort to the hundreds of Americans killed, injured, kidnapped, or muscled out of work by the flood of immigrants who have basically turned us into a large parking lot.\nLippard (2009-02-27):\nYour claim that the U.S. has the most lax borders (or open immigration policies) of any major modern country is not correct. Movement of labor is more free between EU countries, and Singapore has a more open guest worker program, for example.Your claim that a wave of immigrants has turned the U.S. into a giant parking lot is ludicrous.Do illegal immigrants commit more crimes than native-born and legal immigrants?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-27):\nMore importantly, one might ask the people on the border who live in fear for their lives. The effect is not evenly spread, and I'd dare say that small towns like Hemingway SC don't get the full monty as much as, say, Dallas, or Phoenix. But yes, there is a rash of crime that can be quantified at about 25 killings a day from illegal immigration, not to mention insurance scammery and social security fraud and the immense costs of social services that are legitimate and on the books (i.e.-anchor babies) I can ask aquaintances of mine, who never used to piddle with guns but now have learned the fine honed art of high powered weaponry. People who live in fear on the border. Or just abandon their homes and split.As a proportion of the population, I have no direct or concrete proof that illegals commit more crime overall than the compatriots in the US. The stats vary according to whom you ask. Though my guesses usually serve me well on such things. Here in Atlanta, my current location, there is in point of fact quite a bit of ugly activity that happens on a regular basis due to illegals. From crime to gangs to dope lords and of course the lower level holdups at ATM's, I'd say a damn good guess is we're in the running to justify owning a handgun. In my own profession this is a wise choice.VDARE's site no doubt has sterner stats than those of Bill Moyers' site NOW. But why pile on? Polar bears don't kill humans all that frequently either. But if one showed up in Richland County, SC, you'd bet that the animal would be dead or captured before the 6 PM news hit. I promise you.What if the creature were \"merely\" killing, say, 25 children a day on the way home from school?Is this an acceptable loss factor? If these cutie pie fuzzy wuzzy polar bears were merely expensive to maintain and merely killed a few people a year, would that be a better gig?The law is the law. And even if the local society is nuts and deadly, I'd say its not a good mix to toss in the help from people not even legally here.Other nations like Singapore, who have lax borders don't have to suffer the same demographic dynamics on this issue.Though having said, it depends on what the Euros deal with in the particulars. With Islamic immigrants, many of these are legal, and for those who're not, there IS much consternation about the effects on social policy. There, as here, the stats so far demonstrate easily that when it comes to handing out the usual health care, housing, feeding, and various other social service abuses, illegals are a net loss on both societies. It is an unholy alliance of corporate greed and Democratic need for increased welfare and social service dependency (hence, the garnering of a new set of default potential voters after a time) that creates this. While Europe is certainly lax almost to our extent, they are also taking a second look at immigration. In their case, the issue is also cultural, but there is a concern of social identity and terror as well. The sophisticates on both sides of the Pond can natter about the need for Multi-Culti, but neither culture can feed and clothe the Third World. In fact, this condition harms illegals as well in the long run. I don't blame them for their plight nor their desire to get work. That is understandable. I've been to Mexico and it is ridden with poverty and desperation as well as murder and mayhem, and now the drug lords are basically bending local laws their direction. The rash of beheadings on the border and now the kidnapping of Americans on this side of the fence as well as the older tradition of killings of their own is being brought to the forefront more and more every day.However, by taking in these teeming millions, the harm we do is we SHIELD their own governments and economies from making the requisite changes necessary to actually make their homelands better. Where is the cutoff line? How far can this go? Environmentalists actually get into a whinefest about \"sustainability\" issues in the richer local economy and social services. If this is spread even thinner among non-citizens, how does THAT improve our lot?Insanity, at best.Let's hope stem cell research can help our politicians grow a backbone at some point.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-27):\nPS--A \"guest worker\" program like Singapore's would be interesting to examine. It has a more offical flair to it (as one would expect from an semi-authoritarian government like Singapore's) anddoes not sound the same as \"someone who happens to cross the border unimpeded.\"In my understanding, \"guest worker\" means you are in a foreign locale legally.One can claim we have need for such on occasion. Even Australia has this. But for the most part for Down Under, you have to demonstrate WHO you are, why you are coming there, and YOUR contribution to that society. That is more than fair. You can't just show up one day uninvited to the Aussies. Good for them. They understand you can't house and feed the whole damned planet.We can justify a guest worker program in some highly selective situations where local expertise is not found. But do we need millions of people to trim lawns and clean golf courses when the larded fannies of teens in this nation could do quite well in that area?\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-27):\nAccording to many studies, illegals commit more FELON type crimes. And more VIOLENT crimes.That's a distinction here that means something against a general population that gets nailed for a wider variety of \"crime\" and incarceration that is a wider swatch of naughtiness.http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_crime_summary.htmlhttp://uscitizensrights.org/crimesbyillegalshttp://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/10/06/illegal-immigrants-commit-20-of-aggravated-duis-but-make-up-only-9-of-the-population/http://icarizona.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-study-illegal-immigrants-commit.htmlhttp://www.alipac.us/article3597.html\nLippard (2009-02-28):\nYour polar bear comparison is faulty--these are people, not animals. Their \"crime\" of illegal entry is a misdemeanor on a par with a speeding ticket; they come here to earn a better life. Those who commit crimes while here should be treated as criminals, but deporting eight million illegal immigrants would not only be detrimental to them, but to the rest of us--most of them are producing more than they consume, and adding value to the economy.It is ironic that Arizona has passed various anti-illegal immigration propositions at a time when the economy is collapsing and many illegal immigrants have returned home due to lack of work here.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nThe polar bear comparison was what to do horrid crimes ALREADY committed beyond just showing up at the border unannonced. The issue was not animals. However, it could be boiled down to animialistic behavior that of all the imports we need these days--this ain't one of them. It was not just about speed ticket level violations. But KILLINGS. And yes, to the other query, illegals not only commit crime upon their very entry, they do seem according to some stats a higher level of the VIOLENT crime that plagues inner cities and now even the countryside. You made the distinction here as well, so I will too. However--That illegal entry is a FEDERAL level crime and is in fact more serious than some speeding ticket analogy. Further, I'd say the murder of an aquaintance of mine is beyond traffic ticket comparisons and needing work. That's tough crap. Working or not, crossing the border should be a ticket back to Mexico. It IS VERY serious. It taxes our resources to the breaking point when 20 million illiterate peasants set up shop unaccounted for. Grady Hospital in Atlanta is at the breaking point, as are ER rooms all over the nation. Elsewhere as to your prior query and claims, a few pointers.Social services handouts in Cally are bankrupting the state, and the \"anchor baby\" situation is long term unsustainable. And the questions remains. First and foremost, if we are to handle 20 million peasants and try and feed and house and clothed them--why the hell not all of Mexico? What is the cutof line here? IS there one? Should this even occur to us?Rather suspect, at best.1) The issue with Singapore and Europe is very deceptive. \"guest worker programs\" are not on par with just simply showing up one day unannounced. First, Europe IS having numerous demographic and cultural problems. But that's another issue, though closely related. Second, the claim that \"immigrants\" make societies more dynamic as analogous to events in the past that built are nation are not exactly hitting the main points. Singapore is a city-state--and can't handle 20 million human beings begging for low skilled labor jobs and free food, housing, and medical care. That analogy was spurious. Also, Singapore's \"guest\" programs require some formality of legality. Most of that immigration in OUR past was LEGAL--and limited. You were scanned at Ellis Island for all manner of illness--some of which according to some physicians pals of mine are making a return after decades of apparent defeat in US hospitals. And those immigrants were FORCED to integrate into society. They did not get the teachers' unions' pitches of free bilinqual education and other forms of coddling. Third, on this very term \"immigrant\" it seems either you misunderstand the cross comparisons or mispoke. Immigration in and of itself is LEGAL. Showing up at the border per se is not. Those who wish to enter this nation need to demonstrate, as with Australia, why they are here and what their contribution to the society will be. This nation can't feed, clothe, and house the entire Third World if no reciprocity is in order. And we don't need 20 millinos roofers and restraunt workers. Nor do we need that many people to cleanse golf courses. The left has a very elastic agenda here. On the one hand that think its fine and dandy that these people are adding some kind of alleged \"net\" benefit to our economy (most unlikely) when it comes to holding down low paying jobs sweeping things up at Walmart or working in chicken processing plants. But the same group of critics thinks its wrong for Wal-Mart to hand out that \"geared down\" wage scale (the other result of wage depression--the market will handle only what it wills in the overall scheme of the offerings) and attack such organizations. But hey, that's now the market. 5 bucks an hour for snapping chicken necks. Hundreds of illegals just got busted at Columbia Farms chicken processing plant here in Columbia SC for violating Federal law. No doubt they just hired more. So yes, in answer to THAT query, this IS a Constitution free zone, but not in the way you posted. Moreover, it is just a LAWLESS zone period. With citizens getting nailed and raped and robbed and undercut in nuberous ways every day of the week. Every day. This information is suppressed, but my contacts at the Richland County Police department confirm the issues on a number of fronts about the dope and crime and other shinanigans being brought into the city.The polar bear analogy is right on par. If a dangerous situation goes unabated, it can be nasty and horrific. And would not be tolerated. The criminal element first of all occurs in the blatant violation of Federal law that is nontheless simply unenforced in the current climate. And the idea that most will high tait it home is wishful thinking to boot. Some will. But the business community for its part has shown no interest in altering the wage scales, and the government community is now perched to even INCREASE the sumptious goodies handed out to illegals.Either we are to honor our own laws before preaching about other level laws--or we'll just keep our mouths shut, prepare to integrate 20 million people to add to already busted and broke social services nets, and just erase the border. Why even bother then?We'll \"merely\" monetorize the debt and raise taxes to 85% on everyone.I suppose we could just Swedenize the tax structure. And some people think that's the path to prosperity. But more likely if we do that we'll discover what even the socialist Swedes have. They are not bailing everyone out, and there is an upper limit and what and whom is to be paid for, and even retract their immigration policies to something sane.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nPS--A frind of mine looking over my shoulder who is in law enforcement just reminded me of another apropos analogy--identity theft.And yes, more than a speeding ticket, ID theft if done stateside is a SERIOUS crime. Even had credit cards stolen?Things mucked up? Illegals do this with almost every entry. Stolen SS numbers is a crime. Pretending to be who're you're not and cashing in then on societies social services and good will is a crime.I take it this is a different horse of another color from legal \"guest worker\" programs of small city-states like Singapore?Are 20 million of Singapore or even Europe's residents living off the fat of the land?You example of Europe is closer to be contraindicative to what I said earlier. They ARE having some second looks there to--for more than one good reason. But even there I think that most of the Turkish and other immigrants are TRUE IMMIGRANTS--legal.For all their faults--and mabe its too late for their fabulous social services handouts-the Euros are starting to clamp down on at least the Islamist immigration.I meant to add earlier, that unlike the past of immigration, those immigrants were not allowed to remain in their own enclaves for more than a couple of generations. Few people would guess that I'm a combo of Irish and English and German all rolled into one. But I speak only English. Nothing else. See the difference?It's an important one. In Arizona and elsewhere in the west, Latino and other organizations are openly now advocating a return of large portions of what is currently the US southwest to Mexico--with all cultural issues/results that implies.\"Constitution-Free Zone\" indeed.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nWow--almost missed this one:most of them are producing more than they consume, and adding value to the economy.The sad tales--of which the world has many millions more, is not a keen basis for violation of law.NOW: If by this you mean on the basis of holding prices down? In some cases, perhaps. Like Columbia Farms having chicken processors for 5 bucks an hour. Yeah--that makes chickens cheaper, and theoretically likewise in other industries this frees up spending money elsewhere. Say hello to the elastic agenda. How many labor unions and labor lawers have to look the other way for this to happen?Hmmm.But with all the lying doing on with illegal advocacy, since the usual cost to society in social services, crime, and other enforcement issues dealing with this fraud is about 30,000 dollars per \"immigrant\", I doubt there is any net benefit to society.That is extremely counterintutive a statement.\nLippard (2009-03-01):\n\"However--That illegal entry is a FEDERAL level crime and is in fact more serious than some speeding ticket analogy. Further, I'd say the murder of an aquaintance of mine is beyond traffic ticket comparisons and needing work. That's tough crap. Working or not, crossing the border should be a ticket back to Mexico. It IS VERY serious.\"I disagree on illegal entry into the country; I agree regarding murder.\"It taxes our resources to the breaking point when 20 million illiterate peasants set up shop unaccounted for. Grady Hospital in Atlanta is at the breaking point, as are ER rooms all over the nation. Elsewhere as to your prior query and claims, a few pointers. Social services handouts in Cally are bankrupting the state, and the \"anchor baby\" situation is long term unsustainable. And the questions remains. First and foremost, if we are to handle 20 million peasants and try and feed and house and clothed them--why the hell not all of Mexico? What is the cutof line here? IS there one? Should this even occur to us?\"That's an argument against welfare, not immigration.\"1) The issue with Singapore and Europe is very deceptive. \"guest worker programs\" are not on par with just simply showing up one day unannounced. First, Europe IS having numerous demographic and cultural problems. But that's another issue, though closely related.\"The type of complaint made against, e.g., Poles immigrating to Britain, is similar to your objections about illegal immigrants from Mexico. Guest worker programs are different, but the volume of immigration and capacity for immigrant labor in the economy was the point of that comparison, rather than the legality. I'd rather see more legal immigration for the same reason I'd like to see drug decriminalization--it would help reduce the associated criminal activity that should legitimately be stopped, while not wasting resources on prosecuting victimless crimes where no party to the transaction has a problem with it except the government.\"You were scanned at Ellis Island for all manner of illness--some of which according to some physicians pals of mine are making a return after decades of apparent defeat in US hospitals.\"The biggest cause of the resurgence of formerly defeated diseases is anti-vaccination nonsense prevalent among home schoolers and hippies.\"And those immigrants were FORCED to integrate into society. They did not get the teachers' unions' pitches of free bilinqual education and other forms of coddling.\"We should have more bilingual education for our English-speaking children, and less of it for those who don't speak English.\"And we don't need 20 millinos roofers and restraunt workers. Nor do we need that many people to cleanse golf courses.\"This shouldn't be for you or I to decide, but for employers to decide. \"But the same group of critics thinks its wrong for Wal-Mart to hand out that \"geared down\" wage scale (the other result of wage depression--the market will handle only what it wills in the overall scheme of the offerings) and attack such organizations. But hey, that's now the market.\"It's a global economy, and if the jobs aren't here, they'll go somewhere else. The crackdowns on illegal immigrants in Arizona have recently caused some businesses to move across the border into Mexico.\"A frind of mine looking over my shoulder who is in law enforcement just reminded me of another apropos analogy--identity theft.\"I agree that ID theft should be prosecuted.\"It's an important one. In Arizona and elsewhere in the west, Latino and other organizations are openly now advocating a return of large portions of what is currently the US southwest to Mexico--with all cultural issues/results that implies.\"I see conservatives claiming this, but where's the evidence? What organizations are advocating this?\"The sad tales--of which the world has many millions more, is not a keen basis for violation of law.\"I think denying people the ability to obtain employment in this country and dramatically improve their lives, when there are willing employers who want to employ them, on the grounds that they weren't fortunate enough to be born here is unethical.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nThe biggest cause of the resurgence of formerly defeated diseases is anti-vaccination nonsense prevalent among home schoolers and hippies.Well I don't keep up with the hippies. But for the homeschoolers, it is unlikely that is but a small, small, small, sliver of that group, which is at most a small percentage of, in turn, about 1.5 million children. If these small percentage of kids are as socially isolated as some pundits claim, then there is little to worry about and in any case expose to the public school kids who are innoculated would result in obnoxious habits more often than antiquated diseases.More likely you're going to get a host of disease from the border if these people are not scanned properly. That was the Ellis tradtition. The last time I got wretching sick in a small village called Ciadad Victoria put all doubts away about the health profile of our new.....guests...\nLippard (2009-03-02):\nVaccinations are not 100% effective, so outbreaks as a result of those who don't vaccinate can also cause harm to those who have, as occurred in a 2005 measles outbreak in Indiana--two people who had been vaccinated got the measles, along with 32 who hadn't been vaccinated.Your getting sick in Mexico was more likely due to an unsanitary public water supply than to a human contact vector.\nEinzige (2009-03-02):\n...I got wretching sick in a small village called Ciadad (sic) Victoria put all doubts away about the health profile of our new.....guests...This seems to say more about your health profile (not to mention your own tendency toward logical fallacy) than anything else.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nFirst of all, I stayed away from the water. But anything is possible. The point was that it is a nasty country where the vectors are numerous, and when the border is no better screen than the people coming in are for lack of political backbone or the alliance of alleged business needs and cultural awareness crapola, the carrying capacity of these vectors now comes northward. Many things are in confluence here and only some of them are being corrected, like the overdependence in pediatrics units of anti-biotics to soothe anxious parents. But along with this, more than one physicians has told me in so many words that their guest clientele is seeing the resurgence of diseases that used to be considered extinct.At the very least, any sane policy, if we are justifying, as do the Australians, some special issue with some legal immigrants from time to time for very specialized skillsets, to screen them at the door. That's just application of common sense. As I said regarding the issue of crime, there is no need to pile on things if we already have problems at home. The search for some kind of \"Cosmic\" equality in all things need not apply to diseases we thought we conquered decades ago.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nPS--Never, not ONCE. Not ever, have I been \"stopped\" in my own area for scans of illegals. Not once. Nor do I know anyone who has gone through this. I would welcome it. And so would the people who've gotten nailed at ATMs and by illegals smashed drunk who took their kids from them.I realize, of course, in the search for Cosmic Justice, we need to bust a few heads to make the omelet. It need not be mine of my family's, however. This zone is just as prone to abuse by illegals and aliens as any in the nation. The police generally look the other way and serve to clean up the blood and put name tags on the deceased. That about covers law enforment in South Carolina.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nand siccing people says more about YOUR profile than you might imagine as well.It's really kind of obnoxious.And not germaine to anything here.But feel free to go there.However its spelled. I'm fine right here. And yes, others have gotten sick in such wretched places on the planet.\nEinzige (2009-03-02):\nAnd not germaine to anything here.Actually, it was quite germane to my quoting of your text.And yes, others have gotten sick in such wretched places on the planet.Now, this is a perfect example of something that is not germane.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nOf course it was germane to what we were talking about.If others got sick, then it was not merely my allegedly lousy health profile that sent my to the porcelain god, and it demonstrated the vector could have been a numbers of paths.I'm not going to be generally available until later in the week, but you're welcome to post away.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-02):\nEinzige:I don't typically get around to correcting people's English. I quote much as I see and try to stay in context if possible. If you have the King's English on your side and your vision is better than my 42 year old eyes, then bully for you. Congrats.If not, then not.I have neither the time nor the inclination. With few exceptions, I am extraordinarily busy, and must be one of those icky people the new Bambi administration thinks don't create jobs after all but nontheless can be prodded, cattle-like, to cough up the tax loot. So off to work I go this afternoon at last.To those ends when I do have time to jot things down, I have to write quickly, and this particular laptop is my wife's at the moment (at home) and does not have a spellcheck. I can outtype most corporate admin. assistants but no doubt some things fall through the cracks in the screen.Seeing that I have 100 things to do (yesterday, Sunday, being a rare 1/7 of the week exception and a must-needed fun break where I could piddle with online stuff and banter), and this is not even on list B-525, you'll forgive me for falling down on the job on grammar, as well as messing up our blog host's name. But overall I think I've done fairly well. I don't like E-Z-Does-It quips, so I DO often go overboard on context--which all of life gives us. Quips can often be the equivlanet of saying:\"Lots of people end up dying in hospitals and ambulances--thus, its time to ban both.\"Now as concerns rights being dependent on the needs of others, that general statement certainly was not \"question begging\" to me, since the point was that every situation in war and other horrific events is different, and we can't make some blanket statement about the rights of detanees without considering the full context and/or results of any policy. We now know that early release and lack of garnering information has let slip through several \"insurgents\" who've merely done the predictable thing and returned to the wonders of Jihad and the continuation of actions we might have found out about.____________________________My apologies also, to Mr. Lippard, on his name.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-10):\n(Mr. Lippard's comments in italics)\"However--That illegal entry is a FEDERAL level crime and is in fact more serious than some speeding ticket analogy. Further, I'd say the murder of an acquaintance of mine is beyond traffic ticket comparisons and needing work. That's tough crap. Working or not, crossing the border should be a ticket back to Mexico. It IS VERY serious.\"I disagree on illegal entry into the country; I agree regarding murder.\"It taxes our resources to the breaking point when 20 million illiterate peasants set up shop unaccounted for. Grady Hospital in Atlanta is at the breaking point, as are ER rooms all over the nation. Elsewhere as to your prior query and claims, a few pointers.Social services handouts in Cally are bankrupting the state, and the \"anchor baby\" situation is long term unsustainable. And the questions remains. First and foremost, if we are to handle 20 million peasants and try and feed and house and clothed them--why not all of Mexico? What is the cutoff line here? IS there one? Should this even occur to us?\"That's an argument against welfare, not immigration. Indeed it is that also. Nice try on the generalized, homogenized, plain-jane, term. Immigration implies LEGALITY. I am speaking primarily of illegal immigration, which properly should be called MIGRATION, much in the same way antelopes cross borders on the Veldt and Serengheti lands in search of food. You did not mention where the cutoff line is for handing out goodies to all the world. Where would that be? We cannot maintain illegal immigration without these payouts and crime costs that, in addition to the social services costs, contribute to welfare issues. Even IF we allow for not condemning illegal entry in the first place. We are not about to allow millions of \"guests\" AND have them do the heavy and unpleasant work without accompanying benefits. The two ideas are joined at the hip---intertwined. How could they not be? See California's Proposition 187's flaming defeat on this one. The migrants have bankrupted our hospitals, taxed the patience of our law enforcement people, who deserve a break from the calumny, and endangered our health profile far beyond spaced-out hippies worried about Thimerosal injections.http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200604040747.aspThe costs will to continue to be astronomical. And only worsen at that. It's like one of those fundamental laws of physics--in this case, political inertia. A policy set in motion tends--like all \"temporary\" government programs (social security was to be this way), to STAY in motion.As someone who works compiling stats in this area wrote me the other day:\"(A)t least half of the $890 billion in stimulus money from the Federal Government will be going to illegal immigrants and their families via construction, education, and medical spending. Please note that costs are immediate and long-term. \" Indeed. \"Long-term\" is anyone's guess, but we know it will be another vapor trail of zeros behind some other larger number, just like the current gallery of \"bailouts\"--regardless of the political climate to come.As to the crime component:According to Wikipedia, in a study from Edmonton and Smith, there are several reasons why the full extent of crimes committed by illegals is difficult to measure accurately, and probably underreported:For many minor crimes, especially crimes involving juveniles, those who are apprehended are not arrested. And only a fraction of those who are arrested are ever brought to the courts for disposition.[60] Many illegal immigrants who are apprehended by Border Patrol agents are voluntarily returned to their home countries and are not ordinarily tabulated in national crime statistics. If immigrants, whether illegal or legal, are apprehended entering the United States while committing a crime, they are usually charged under federal statutes and, if convicted, are sent to federal prisons. Throughout this entire process, immigrants may have a chance of deportation, or of sentencing that is different from that for a native-born person.[60] We lack comprehensive information on whether arrested or jailed immigrants are illegal immigrants, nonimmigrants, or legal immigrants. Such information can be difficult to collect because immigrants may have a reason to provide false statements (if they reply that they are an illegal immigrant, they can be deported, for instance). And the verification of these data is troublesome because it requires matching INS records with individuals who often lack documentation or present false documents.[60] Noncitizens may have had fewer years residing in the United States than citizens, and thus less time in which to commit crimes and be apprehended.[60] In 1999, law enforcement activities involving unauthorized immigrants in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas cost a combined total of more than $108 million. This cost did not include activities related to border enforcement. In San Diego County, the expense (over $50 million) was nine percent of the total county's budget for law enforcement that year.[115]A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has found that while property-related crime rates have not been affected by increased immigration (both legal and illegal), in border counties there is a significant positive correlation between illegal immigration and violent crime, most likely due to extensive smuggling activity along the border.[117]On August 6, 2008, an audit done by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that 137 of the 637 jail inmates in the Lake County, Illinois jail were illegal immigrants. According to Lake County sheriff Mark Curran, illegal immigrants were charged with half of the 14 murders in the county.[119]Other examples abound, and are very easy to find. What we DO know is that about 30% of all Federal prisoners are in the United States Illegally in the first place, and their crimes are NOT having them linger there merely for crossing the border. For that issue, you simply get a court date to be sent back.Now, if by \"ethical\"--your term below--we should open the doors to this flood of peasantry, then of course it goes without saying that the job levels they qualify for are not going to allow them to have a lifestyle that handles health and general social needs. So the difference of course is made up--absurdly especially in this bedraggled economy, when many are joining the ranks of the unemployed and catcalls are being made about the teeming uninsured--by the taxpayer. And no politician seriously advocates shutting this goodie valve off any time soon. Not a chance. It is like asking men to dig a hole in the ground, but disallowing them from using shovels, spoons, spades, and even their hands. It's what is called a metaphysical contradiction. It is an impossible sales pitch. The better answer is to reform the immigration policy to the point where entry is like that of how the Aussies do it. Rare. It should be investigated by official agencies, with a sworn affidavit from a business's legal team that can appear as a court document. Said Immigration agency at the FEDERAL level will verify the documentation that the business in question has highly specialized needs for a prospective immigrant's skillsets that are NOT easily available or undersupplied in your own nation. Rarely would this be the case. And rarely would this include illiterate peasants having the requisite skills. That needs to be the general standard. It has served other advanced industrial nations quite well.\"The issue with Singapore and Europe is very deceptive. \"guest worker programs\" are not on par with just simply showing up one day unannounced. First, Europe IS having numerous demographic and cultural problems. But that's another issue, though closely related.\"The type of complaint made against, e.g., Poles immigrating to Britain, is similar to your objections about illegal immigrants from Mexico. Guest worker programs are different, but the volume of immigration and capacity for immigrant labor in the economy was the point of that comparison, rather than the legality. I'd rather see more legal immigration for the same reason I'd like to see drug decriminalization--it would help reduce the associated criminal activity that should legitimately be stopped, while not wasting resources on prosecuting victimless crimes where no party to the transaction has a problem with it except the government.The Brits ARE having some problems with this. But the Poles are not that problem. The Islamists are. The Pole comparison is suspect due to sheer numbers lack of, compared to some others, and the nature of the issue at hand. Poland is not English, but their inhabitants have a closer relation to countryside ethics and religion and culture than Islamists hailing from a Bedouin faith. And the legality here IS the point in addition to the sheer volume. With Sharia Law now coming to Britain, I'd say they have some bigger cultural fish to fry than what the Poles like to eat vs. chips and fish at the local pub. And in France and other locales, you better not get caught on the Riviera beach wearing nothing but Ambre Solei while smooching your Infidel whore. Oh yeah--they got some issues. And more unpleasant ones than we have. They might be acting too late and saying things too late, like Dutch politician Geert Wilders has before he got in hot water, but more will come to his side in the coming years. We ignore cultural shift at our own peril. Ironic, really. Whether or not drug legalization and a more relaxed policy of immigration would reduce the resultant crime from the dope lords is questionable. Whatever the case about drugs, the very real social services consequences regarding millions of illegals feeding off the taxpayers is costly enough, and wasteful enough, and would not vanish into the morning mist due some general amnesty for them, or for legalization of dope. In fact, it could be made worse. And, it is not just about dope lords coming in. Issues not even directly involved with drugs are causing problems also. We call them \"gangs\" in our \"neck\" of the woods. And drugs is not all they're up to on any given night of mayhem and shootouts with the cops and even private homeowners.\"You were scanned at Ellis Island for all manner of illness--some of which according to some physicians pals of mine are making a return after decades of apparent defeat in US hospitals.\" Follow up: It is merely sound policy to scan all legal entrants to this society for illness. Not sure why that has to be a thorny problem, or why hippies domestically would have exotic diseases Third Worlders would not. That makes no sense. Even if scores of Americans were not vaccinated in childhood in recent years, for some of these ailments I'm guessing you'd have to have outside vectors to cause problems. The Native Americans never got measles (and none were inoculated in 1491!). Period. Until the day Chris Columbus' men showed up. It is exposure to outside sources where the immunological response is not honed to a particular virus, not lack of vaccination per se, that causes the problems. I would agree, however, that children need at least a rudimentary but regular pediatric schedule of visits--whether public or other schooled--in order to create a shielding from what will no doubt be a riskier set of pathogens if trends remain the same. They probably will. Likewise, on the other side of this transmission tube, we need to have more people at border stick some tongues out if we're to continue this trend in immigration.\"And those immigrants were FORCED to integrate into society. They did not get the teachers' unions' pitches of free bilingual education and other forms of coddling.\"We should have more bilingual education for our English-speaking children, and less of it for those who don't speak English.If the job markets of overseas work justifies that, then perhaps. As a teachers' union payoff and make work--no. Education in the border areas is unproductive enough. Intensive courses like the MIBS program here at Columbia's USC can handle any prospective high-powered jet setter who travels abroad for business. They'll teach you German or Korean or Japanese in 8 months flat. This is not necessary for most interactions. If this WERE the case, then I'd demand more teaching of Korean, Arabic, Japanese, and the other languages not usually thought of in \"bilingual\" education but common contacts in my line of work. Usually not Spanish. The latter in the schools is usually done as make work (among other faddishness in the schools) for teachers, and to assuage the feelings of multiculturalist heavy hitters in the Southwest states. It is pitched as a way to help \"integrate\" the children of migrant workers, for the most part. The language of this nation is English. There are cultural reasons for preserving this as well. It's true that what passes for multi-lingual for most Americans would not pass muster with your average Swiss chamber maid. But then, most of us have no need for that. English is understood the planet over by the elites. It is the language of our culture and nation and of international commerce and travel. Contra what Karl Marx wished, it is the elites and jet setters, not the common workers, who comprise the real \"internationalists.\" The problem here is that the usual emphasis on bilingual education in this nation has been the claim that it better assimilates non-natives, a claim contradicted by history. Second, the advocacy seems to emanate from groups and organizations seeking a cultural identity within a larger one. Experience with other bilingual nations, like Canada, suggest a fracturing or splintering of a society on language and culture lines is a recipe for political trouble and (eventually) calls for separation to one degree or another. Historian Arthur Schlesinger warned against such, in that if a nation does not have a commonality of culture it is at high risk of fracture and division. Language is part of a larger cultural identity.\"And we don't need 20 millions roofers and restaurant workers. Nor do we need that many people to cleanse golf courses.\"This shouldn't be for you or I to decide, but for employers to decide. The free market returns! WOW! I've missed her charm for so long these days. Perhaps you can send a memo to Bambi's administration about this special and earthshattering insight. (He apparently never got the other angry memos about market forces and not government being our guiding hand).But if that's the case, they can just as easily pull the labor resources from the locals. They might not like it, but that's tough. Obviously, businesses go with the path of least resistance. It is union pressure, in addition to market forces, that has telephone employees making 50K a year for customer service jobs yickking on the telephone. Absurd, but there they are. Now, the contrast should not quite be so dire when it comes to manual labor and construction, and accounting for the fact that the social services pressures would be greatly reduced in any case if businesses paid more on the hour, paying a few cents more for lettuce or a very small hike in golf fees is worth the price. Employers would get around to getting the jive of this also. I've seen it before. As with so much else, they are more than capable of working within the law. They do it every day. Instead of 5 bucks an hour under the table and not reported and not taxed, we can not only increase our tax base with legitimate employment, but pay a couple of dollars extra on the hour. I take it that few Americans in this economy would shoo that offer away. Oh yeah--and say hello to more tax revenue as well. Can't discount that, now that government is supposed to do everything just shy of wiping our arses for us and bail out mortgages. Besides, as Rich Lowry said, if we TRULY needed millions of poorly educated workers to fill in the gaps in chicken processing plants and cleaning golf courses, we have them already. Our public schools churn out bumper crops of that yearly. Problem solved. Of all the imports we need, the poor of Latin America is no doubt the last on that list. Having millions more feast on the benefits that some analysits think will amount to about 20-30% of the bailouts is not a good idea. \"But the same group of critics thinks its wrong for Wal-Mart to hand out that \"geared down\" wage scale (the other result of wage depression--the market will handle only what it wills in the overall scheme of the offerings) and attack such organizations. But hey, that's now the market.\"It's a global economy, and if the jobs aren't here, they'll go somewhere else. The crackdowns on illegal immigrants in Arizona have recently caused some businesses to move across the border into Mexico. Tough crap. But not all of them--right? The major \"run for the border\" in most states will still be a Taco Bell night out. In any case enterprising startups and others can take their place. Let them go; they aren't doing us much good anyhow. And could even help Mexico, which is the \"ethical\" thing to do. Right?Or, you can change the game. Why not? The game gets changed all the time for the rest of us in the negative. How about change it to the positive: You could offer tax breaks to those that stay. We have the highest corporate taxation, after Japan and Britain perhaps, in the industrial world. Time for that to get nixed anyhow. Instituting something along the lines of a consumption-based Fair Tax was estimated by 20 economists after spending 20 million dollars and pouring over numerous studies, to probably yield 14 TRILLION (almost 5 times the Obama level Bailout Syndrome)in extra revenue returned to IRS tax ledgers when these businesses return home from the Cayman Islands and other tax shelters. Now, in some border areas no doubt this is a simple matter of packing up machinery and heading southbound. We can't stop all of that. No. Maybe we shouldn't. But in some cities, like my own, and in places where I used to work that had manual labor as the main thing going on, after the INS raided the place, they quietly hired some country boys from small towns, with little advertising and little effort. Word of jobs gets around, has long legs, and moves fast. So it is myth that the permanent 5 dollar-an-hour job is going to be a feature of manual labor no matter what and that only illegals are willing to do it. And in any case, since the golf guys were willing to spend about 5 cents more for coffee at the pro shop and have their fees raised by a dollar or two a month, it suddenly became affordable when the law got involved. Which is exactly the issue.I agree that ID theft should be prosecuted.Good show. Because that's one of the chief methods by which illegals abuse the system. In fact, this theft starts about an hour after they arrive across the border in some cases. When migrant workers end up getting busted for having an SS number that actually belongs to some old lady in Kansas who wonders where her SS checks went to, and handed out by one of the numerous fraud organizations set up to give these out, it needs to make the news more often. And in order to facilitate this, we'll need to find out who is who. And so much the easier to pick through the files when there are fewer files to pick over. Same for the phony shops in trailers with the phony state of South Carolina backdrops set up to hand out balonious state drivers' licenses. \"It's an important one. In Arizona and elsewhere in the west, Latino and other organizations are openly now advocating a return of large portions of what is currently the US southwest to Mexico--with all cultural issues/results that implies.\"I see conservatives claiming this, but where's the evidence? What organizations are advocating this?Several. But first, the happy fun time!Nifty little site here has a pictionary of some things being advocated, as does the Zombie blog. Highly recommended when it comes to seeing how some groups really think. Like Arthur Schlesinger said, we can't exist as a fractured nation of mini-nations for very long. There have been some multi-RACIAL societies that were successful, yes. But not multi-CULTURAL. That's another issue, and problem.http://www.predatoryaliens.com/Or, for even better visual dictionary advocacy of a \"Nation Latino\", and all that entails: http://www.wehategringos.com/Under the title of what might be termed La Reconquista, you might check out organizations like La Raza (\"The Race\"), a racist organization for brown people, instead of Whites. Check out also Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations, and then perhaps move on to an organization called MEChA, or perhaps the concept of Aztlán. Of course, La Raza denies any advocacy of separatist movement of reconquest of the American Southwest, but their associations and statements belie this claim. They also deny the charges that they are actively involved in promoting illegal migration to the US and of aiding and abetting to that end. But I can attest that from their demonstrations in Atlanta and elsewhere, their advocacy of this--at least among their spokespersons--is rather strong. MEChA is a Latino student organization that actively seeks and pushes for a return of major portions of the US to Mexican sovereignty and culture. Ricky Sierra of the Chicano National Guard has exulted in the idea that whites will someday, in part due to low birthrates and in part due to being muscled out, be removed from the Southwest. Jose' Angel Gutierrez, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and director of something called the UTA Mexican American Study Center, told a university crowd fairly much the same thing, adding only that he hopes they day will come when whites (sic)\"shit their pants with fear\" over the booming Latino nation. Not politically powerful enough a form of advocacy, you might think? Not enough pull? Never underestimate social movements that begin in and around college campuses among the young and the impudent. The Bolsheviks did not start as a large group either. Neither did Mussolini's men.One guesses that at the university level and with La Raza getting funding from numerous left wing advocacy organization, this is more than just the Corona talking while doing the Macarena.The Mexican Consul General Jose' Pescador Osuna remarked in 1998 that de facto, what we are seeing via Mexican government policy is not just getting poor peasants a better life, but rather also \"La Reconquista.\" California legislator Art Torres called Prop 187 (to cut off welfare to illegal aliens) \"the last gasp of the whites.\"Mario Obledo, president of League of United Latin American Citizens, and recipient of the Medal Of Freedom from then Pres. Clinton, has told audiences that California is destined to be another district managed by Mexico at some point. And that is some don't like it, they can take a hike. On that note, however, I might add that as California is the epitome of what happens when liberals run a state (into the gutter) most of your more well-heeled citizens of any color and certainly most businesses with any common sense not to pay confiscatory tax rates might high tail it out of there anyway....Then President Ernesto Zedillo confirmed his belief in about the same, in essence. MEChA has its clarion call as the following:(In El Plan), \"Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign (sic) Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze continent. \" The slogan is \"Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.\" (\"For our race, everything. For those outside our race, nothing.\")Meanwhile, on the border, the fear that has some nervous, and others pondering simply abandoning their homes due to lax law enforcement, is reaching crisis proportions. Daily confrontations are routine. Cattle are poisoned, fences cut, fires started to create distractions for border patrol units, and hundreds of cases of property destroyed or stolen continue to mount yearly. The Mexican army is showing its contempt and complicity in all this as well, with nightly incursions into US territory and assistance and maps and food and water stations paid for by them and various organizations now the norm on the path northward. Harassment and even murder of border residents is common. Adding some high tech dimensions to this, the Mexican army is also using jammers to bungle the transmissions and thus co-ordination efforts of Border Security agents. Nice.Few other nations on the planet would tolerate this kind of disrespect. They would mount concrete walls with motion sensing .50 caliber machine guns at the border (which is not a bad idea, come to think of it), and pursue a more sane policy of \"an as needs basis\" in regards to legitimate immigration policy.\"The sad tales--of which the world has many millions more, is not a keen basis for violation of law.\"I think denying people the ability to obtain employment in this country and dramatically improve their lives, when there are willing employers who want to employ them, on the grounds that they weren't fortunate enough to be born here is unethical. The businesses you mentioned packing up to head south might make some inroads there. But, it is not the responsibility of the US to improve people's lives the world over. We don't have the resources for this anyhow. That's a fool's errand. Those nations the migrants hail from must be the ones to call the shots, economically. Money and talent have to be honed, developed, taught, and inculcated, and wealth is more a state of mind and innovation than some static resources the pols move around like pawns on a chess board as was the common thinking in the Middle Ages, when gold or land was held to be \"intrinsic\" value. If we TRULY wish to improve things for us and the Third World, a few pointers: Both sides of the border would be better off if we cleaned our own house up, got rid of men like Bambi and his (oh, what was your word), \"cronies\" and radicals, and returned to the business of business with Americans placed at work. Then we could lead by a more productive--and less contradictory--example. No, our example would not work everywhere, and it would be Pollyannaish to think so. But it would work for SOME places. And that's a great start.For ethics, we do far more damage to these societies, and to us, and our employers, and thus our long term economy and culture, and the people in this nation (who'd also be willing to work), by using our resources to have THEIR governments get absolved from taking the requisite steps to improve THEIR own economies. Socialism and malfeasance is all around, but we end up feeding their unemployables. Unbelievable. It's astonishing that we're losing our nation to this, and we're even having this discussion any more than if someone had told me we need to allow in 20 million beings who suck blood from people's necks and should be allowed to do so due to their being perpetually hungry, and they can't get the right blood type in their native lands. We have 0-positive human, but their government and economy can only provide goat's blood. Etc. Northward ho!?Free trade advocacy would help, of course, but allowing one third of entire other nations to march forward is absurd---and only delays the inevitable fall of those societies. Mexico is falling apart monthly. Economically and socially. Beyond this, there are cultural and health considerations not being met when it comes to our....guests, not even to mention the social services drain and the jobs outlook at a time when many Americans would be more than happy to work menial labor. The better bet is to do what hitherto has been regarded as Pollyannaish and trite, in exporting the ideas about free markets abroad and demonstrating (even at the moment our advice seems, not unfairly, a little contradictory now that Bambi has blasted capitalism as the scourge of Egypt) how market forces work. All the planet over socialism is the rule and yet all the world is clamoring to come here. I guess on a positive note--sort of--is that after Bambi finishes polishing off what is left of market forces stateside, they'll be no where left to migrate to, and everyone will just go home...But seriously, no, we can't ship 8 million people home all at once. Or 20 million (which is probably the closer figure at last estimation), with 500K--1 million new bodies hitting us every year. True. But we can stanch the bleeding at the border. And, we can deliberately make things difficult in the social services area and levy stiffer fines for hiring illegals. Most would leave on their own accord after numerous dry hits and failures at the local DMV or applying for Medicare or EBT (food stamps). One good stiff session with one of those clerks over at the Department of Motor Vehicles named Shakananiqua, who looks a prospective illegal with phony SS numbers in the eye, does that head-bobbing thing, and says \"Sorry, honey child, due to the fact of the matter you ain't qualify\", will put an end to that attempted scam. That will dry things up quickly. It won't be discriminatory, either. The DMV here is South Carolina treats almost everyone that way. The very fact that Mexico facilitates this to delay her own desperate need for reforming a corrupt government is all the more reason to stand firm. And WE can reform how many come in and under stricter circumstances to that end. This is a matter of principle and law. If the law is to be relaxed of altered, it needs to be an advocacy that is more than just \"millions of people need a better life.\"So does the whole world. But we only delay such aid by absolving other governments from making hard choices by taking on their poor. Allowing governments the world over to wallow in the same socialist muck long discredited by most honest economists, and disdained by the lowest level pragmatism of your average Romanian peasant, is far more hurtful than a closed border, or a demand for payment in kind. We could at least start cleaning our own house. After Bambi finishes trashing the courtyard and the kitchen of the nation's housecleaning, and sinking the Dow Jones to about 200 every time he opens his mouth, maybe we could turn over our hard learned experiences and lessons to others. THAT would be ethical. Perhaps, after Barry gets done dissing our British allies in creative ways, in addition to removing legacies of that allegiance (like the removal of Churchill's bust from the White House as not being sufficiently multicultural), or paying yet more homage to Iran, Hamas, and Vladimir Putin, and then hiking fuel costs with his Carbon Crap, or saving the Maldives Islands and lowering sea levels, or maybe just hearing Michelle Obama declare her pride in America for the SECOND time in her life for being a millionairess next to the world's most powerful office, we can finally get around to the ugly economic and strategic realities that face our nation. The one major critique I have for BOTH sides of the aisle is that they (including Bush) conspired to have a Do-Nothing policy about this Unwanted Migration issue. While there are many legitimate issues with Bush, like your mention of Medicare being expanded to almost Democrat levels of desired entitlement (though their preferred path to socialized meds is a baby called S-CHIP), I think we can't discount his insistence that our \"casa\" is everyone else's \"casa\". Or that illegal immigrants do the \"work Americans won't do\" (also false). Or for that matter, Islam is a \"religion of peace\". Those were the most serious \"Bushisms\" of all--not the fact that he is probably dyslexic. (As am I). But I have yet to see them collected by Jacob Weisberg over at Slate. We are losing our nation, and we are losing our culture. Many on the Right might worry about this but have no solutions if they are in the business community. The Left of course sees this issue of Migration as an easy way to expand on what the Bambi administration seeks in the expansion of the FDR legacy--the use of illegals as a future voting bloc to outmuscle everyone else and thus place a lock on socialist policies and power. Many Democrats of my acquaintance actually brag that this strategy is more likely that not to work in the long run. So this issue is less about compassion and \"ethics\" from well-meaning liberals than a hard nosed strategy to make sure that since the Left has locked up most media, Hollywood, universities, inner cities, and the public schools, the last segment up for grabs is the demographic ones. Since whites don't generally reproduce all that much other than a designer kid at age 39, this last one is almost a shoo-in. This falls well in line in the hand-out mentality in the current \"bailout.\" The reality of which is a handout to every liberal group that has had its hand out for 40 years. The \"bailout\" Porculous (\"stimulus\") is a punchlist of liberal causes. It has little to do with boosting the free market. The Illegal Migration issue is the demographic frontline battleground that assures the handout money/mentality is a permanent feature of the landscape, and that will assure liberals that power over us would be absolute. And you know it as well as I do. Contrast this with the only disdain known in liberal circles for a Hispanic group--or ANY group, for that matter: The Cubans. Certainly for those with a distaste of that guy still clinging to life down in Cuba who looks like Bigfoot in Camo gear, and tend to vote Republican. Rather than make a noble production of Elian Gonzales, after his mother died at sea trying to bring him to a better life beyond all his homeland's \"free healthcare\" charm, this new \"immigrant\" to our shores, \"yearning to be free\", apparently either came into the wrong port, or more likely had the wrong kind of relatives with the wrong kind of voting record. The liberals and the media, under the watchful guns of Janet Reno--the provincial Duchess of Waco among other claims to fame--mocked his relatives, praised the tenacity of a sperm donor stooge often referred to as \"Elian's Father\", and knocked his tail back to Cuba so fast it could have warped the fabric of space time. It was perhaps the only time in history liberals (see Thomas Friedman, et al) praised a photo of a gun being pointed at the snout of a foreigner who didn't have his documentation in order. Fascinating.\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nCan you start by substantiating the claim that half of the stimulus money will be going to illegal immigrants and their families? Once you've demonstrated that, I'll be happy to carefully read the rest of your comment and reply.In fact, why don't you hold off on posting any more multi-hundred-line comments here until you substantiate that assertion. Better yet, if you want to make a comment that long, post it at your own blog and just post a link here.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-09):\nhttp://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2009-03-08-immigrant-jobs_N.htm http://www.ketknbc.com/news/economy/report-300000-stimulus-jobs-going-illegal-immigrants\nhttp://washingtonindependent.com/32952/growing-furor-over-undocumented-immigrants-getting-stimulus-jobs\nOh\u0026ndash;and you DID ask about the advocacy groups that pushed for this, and other goodies.\nWell\u0026ndash;there you were.\nLippard (2009-07-14):\nIn support of the claim that *half* of the stimulus money was going to illegal immigrants, you cite a USA Today story that says that two conservative think tanks have estimated that 15% of the construction jobs created by the stimulus could go to illegal immigrants. The article also says that this could have been prevented if the feds required the use of the DHS E-Verify program, and goes on to list Arizona as one of the key states where construction jobs are likely to go to illegal immigrants. But Arizona already mandates the use of E-Verify, under the Legal Arizona Workers Act (ARS 23-214), which went into effect at the beginning of 2008. I conclude that the evidence doesn't support the original claim.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nI realize there is some dispute over the math. Some dispute even the more modest figures you found and then as proof that the numbers are bad point the reader to links associated with the White House and its defenders on immigration policy. That larger figure came to me from an email from someone at an organization called ALIPAC. I was not anticipating coming back here and found your response by accident when looking over some old email follow up notices that one can sign up for, so I might be SOL here until further notice.\nUnfortunatley you have me at a loss as of this writing, as I looked at their site and could not find this mention other than a still rather large number of 300,000 illegals getting stimuls money due of course in large part to construction money.\nI should have followed up with this individual before quoting part of his email and then losing the email (I think).\nIt is possible I can still contact this person and if that occurs I'll get back to you.\nNevertheless, 300,000 illegals, though disputed by some sources close quoting the White House's math, is still a large number in its own right, even no firm number is known about what this will cost.\nAS to verification\u0026hellip;.well\u0026hellip;.there's more than one way to skin that cat.\nCertain things are not legal in my own neck of the woods, but chances are high you can find workers at golf courses who cannot produce documentation here in SC.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nFurther: Regardless of the numbers and the money, we need to cull this as much as possible.\nThis is an outrage at a time when things are getting sour by the hour and government is now pondering Stimulus Download 2.0, at least as a trial balloon, over frets about the economy. Regardless of what one thinks about this and the history of stimulus projects, we've got some problems in these porous borders not helping matters at a time when we might go to double digit unemployment.\nIt is not our duty or out ability to feed, house, clothe, and medicate a large portion of the world's disinherited and thus alleviate the need for their governing bodies to make vital internal economic reforms.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-09-27):\nI think what Paul Tarullo must have meant to say is that half of the stimulus money will go to projects that in some way either benefit or reimburse the services of illegal aliens.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/constitution-free-zone.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/cfz_map/Image-Map.gif\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 525px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 700px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/129612.html\"\u003ethe Reason blog\u003c/a\u003e: The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eU.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte\u003c/span\u003e established an exception to the Fourth Amendment, allowing the federal government to establish roadblock checkpoints within 100 miles of U.S. borders to stop people and search for illegal immigrants and smuggling.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/privacy/37293res20081022.html\"\u003eACLU\u003c/a\u003e notes that 190 million people live within 100 miles of U.S. borders, providing this helpful map.  (Although Lake Michigan is entirely within U.S. boundaries, by treaty Canada is allowed full navigation rights to the lake\u0026ndash;so it\u0026rsquo;s not clear if that 100-mile boundary would actually be as in the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s map around Lake Michigan.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere are currently 33 checkpoints in operation within the boundary area.  Here\u0026rsquo;s some video footage of one of them in Arizona:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-03745658783744521 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gRk3awO1Jq0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gRk3awO1Jq0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gRk3awO1Jq0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Via \u003ca href=\"https://www.checkpointusa.org/\"\u003eCheckpoint USA\u003c/a\u003e, which has numerous videos of interactions at one of these temporary checkpoints.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Constitution-free zone"},{"content":"Daniel Zubairi, one of McCain\u0026rsquo;s state leaders for Maryland, stepped forward to publicly criticize a person who was criticizing Obama and claiming that he\u0026rsquo;s tainted because of a Muslim background. CNN wanted to put Zubairi on air, but the McCain campaign said no.\n(Via Daily Kos.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/muslim-mccain-supporter-shut-down-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Zubairi, one of McCain\u0026rsquo;s state leaders for Maryland, stepped forward to publicly criticize a person who was criticizing Obama and claiming that he\u0026rsquo;s tainted because of a Muslim background.  CNN wanted to put Zubairi on air, but the McCain campaign said no.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03745658783744521 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UkAHwhPNCqQ\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03745658783744521 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UkAHwhPNCqQ\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UkAHwhPNCqQ\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UkAHwhPNCqQ\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/23/14361/223/752/639952\"\u003eDaily Kos\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Muslim McCain supporter shut down by McCain"},{"content":"Former George W. Bush press secretary Scott McClellan says he\u0026rsquo;s voting for Obama:\n\u0026ldquo;From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama and clapping,\u0026rdquo; McClellan told new CNN Host D.L. Hughley.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/scott-mcclellan-is-voting-for-obama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer George W. Bush press secretary Scott McClellan \u003ca href=\"http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/23/former-bush-aide-voting-for-obama/\"\u003esays he\u0026rsquo;s voting for Obama\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama and clapping,\u0026rdquo; McClellan told new CNN Host D.L. Hughley.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scott McClellan is voting for Obama"},{"content":"Arizona ballot proposition 101, the Medical Choice for Arizona amendment, says this:\nBe it enacted by the People of Arizona: 1. Article II, Section 36: Constitution of Arizona is proposed to be added as follows if approved by the voters and on proclamation of the Governor:\nARTICLE II, SECTION 36. BECAUSE ALL PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR HEALTH CARE, NO LAW SHALL BE PASSED THAT RESTRICTS A PERSON\u0026rsquo;S FREEDOM OF CHOICE OF PRIVATE HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS OR PRIVATE PLANS OF ANY TYPE. NO LAW SHALL INTERFERE WITH A PERSON\u0026rsquo;S OR ENTITY\u0026rsquo;S RIGHT TO PAY DIRECTLY FOR LAWFUL MEDICAL SERVICES, NOR SHALL ANY LAW IMPOSE A PENALTY OR FINE, OF ANY TYPE, FOR CHOOSING TO OBTAIN OR DECLINE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE OR FOR PARTICIPATION IN ANY PARTICULAR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM OR PLAN.\n2. The Secretary of State shall submit this proposition to the voters at the next general election as provided by Article XXI, of the Constitution of Arizona.\nIt prohibits the State of Arizona from passing any legislation that prevents individuals from choosing to purchase or decline to purchase any type of health care or health care insurance from what\u0026rsquo;s available, or that imposes a penalty or fine for doing so. That\u0026rsquo;s it. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t introduce any new taxes, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t ban any state spending on health care programs, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t prevent anything except the institution of a state health care or health care insurance program that requires mandatory participation, and it guarantees your right to privately arrange for health care with your own funds from the health care provider of your own choice.\nNow, this does ban some kinds of health care program that some people advocate, such as the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Law of 2006, which required all Massachusetts residents to purchase health care insurance or face legal penalties\u0026ndash;similar to mandatory automobile insurance. That program, supported by Gov. Mitt Romney, is similar to Hillary Clinton\u0026rsquo;s health care proposal, but neither Obama nor McCain advocates mandatory health care insurance. If they did, however, this proposition would not prevent such a program from being instituted at the federal level.\nBut the opposition to Proposition 101 has been wholly deceptive. Here\u0026rsquo;s some text from a mailer sent out to most Arizona residents last week:\nTop 5 Reasons To Vote No On 101\nIs an unclear permanent constitutional amendment that is so poorly written that it will ensure that our health care decisions will be dictated by the courts for years to come.\nMakes health insurance so expensive, employers will be unable to provide coverage for their employees.\nJeopardizes Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Medicare and Medicaid programs by destroying the cost containment measures adopted to provide affordable health care.\nIs opposed by Doctor groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.\nWill increase health care costs to Arizona taxpayers by $2 Billion.Most of these items are simply fabrications or non sequiturs put forth without argument, and the mailer conveniently fails to mention anything about what the proposition actually says. Further, this mailing contained a photograph of Gov. Janet Napolitano under the State Seal of Arizona, which is a violation of state law, a class 3 misdemeanor.\nThe signs by the roadside urging opposition to Proposition 101 are equally deceptive, and include the claim that it will increase health care costs to Arizona taxpayers by $2 billion.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also seen claims online (in the comments on about.com\u0026rsquo;s discussion) that Prop. 101 is backed by the insurance industry. That\u0026rsquo;s false\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s opposed by the insurance industry, because they support mandatory health insurance programs for obvious reasons. This was a grassroots effort, led by Arizona doctors Eric Novack and Jeff Singer. (I contributed to the funds for signature collection for this ballot proposition.)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also seen claims at about.com that Prop. 101 will deregulate the healthcare and health insurance industries. Again, nonsense\u0026ndash;the proposition has no effect on the state\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate healthcare or health insurance, except that it can\u0026rsquo;t impose mandatory insurance or prevent you from purchasing any legal healthcare service or program. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that the state can\u0026rsquo;t ban or regulate healthcare, or determine what constitutes lawful healthcare.\nThe opponents of Prop. 101 are engaging in the most deceptive campaign against a ballot proposition that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in several years. If you think the state of Arizona should be able to impose mandatory health insurance, then that\u0026rsquo;s a reason to vote no on Prop. 101. If you think the right to opt-in or opt-out of health care or health insurance coverage should be left to the individual, then that\u0026rsquo;s a reason to vote yes on Prop. 101.\nClint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute has issued a press release about the deceptive arguments against Proposition 101. I\u0026rsquo;ve been meaning to write something about it since I received the dishonest mailing, but seeing his press release prompted me to actually do it.\nUPDATE (November 12, 2008): Prop. 101 was defeated in a very close race, 961,567 votes against and 950,440 votes for.\nThe Priestly Wannabee (2008-10-28):\nWho knows what we may need to do at a future date. We should keep our options open - always.Passing an initiative that says \"no law shall be passed...\" sets a dangerous precedent. Even the governor is against this one, probably partly for that reason.Who knows, there may come a day when we need to pass some sort of universal government-sponsored one payer system that is mandatory. To make it available for everyone and avoid any confusion or \"falling through the cracks\" of anyone. \"No mandatory\" you say??? Well - you are already doing it - if you drive a motor vehicle you *must* purchase insurance - no choice - **it's mandatory**. What's the difference is you have mandatory health insurance??? So what? Maybe some day we'll need to do that.My own opinion on a lot of these AZ \"ballot initiatives\" is that they are deliberately dishonest and misleading, and are usually designed in some way or form to superficially look good and reasonable. But if you look closer and actually think them through, they really stink, and are basically slyly designed to benefit and elite few who proposed them, and screw everyone else in some way. An \"old codger\" that I used to know when I lived in South Dakota once told me the best policy on ballot initiatives to have is to vote \"no\" if you aren't sure if it's a good thing or not. A \"no\" vote doesn't change anything and just leaves things the way they are.\nLippard (2008-10-28):\n\"Who knows what we may need to do at a future date. We should keep our options open - always.Passing an initiative that says \"no law shall be passed...\" sets a dangerous precedent. Even the governor is against this one, probably partly for that reason.\"So I take it that you think the First Amendment is a bad idea?\"Who knows, there may come a day when we need to pass some sort of universal government-sponsored one payer system that is mandatory.\"This amendment doesn't have any effect on such a federal program, only on a state one. Arizona will provide a good contrasting experiment to Massachusetts.You're correct that mandatory health insurance is quite similar to mandatory auto insurance in structure, however people use auto insurance quite differently from health insurance. Auto insurance really is used as a last resort, which is what insurance is supposed to be. Nobody uses auto insurance for regular repairs (aside from windshield repair, an area interestingly full of scam-like behavior) or maintenance, though they may use a non-mandatory auto warranty for that purpose. Many people use health insurance, however, as a full-blown health plan for all medical care--also with the result that there seems to be a lot of scammy behavior. If there were more affordable cash-based options for everything but the catastrophic issues (like the clinics that have been popping up lately), and we solely used insurance for the catastrophic issues, we'd have a much better health care system.\nLippard (2008-10-28):\n\"Who knows what we may need to do at a future date. We should keep our options open - always.\"Actually, this merits stronger response. We're talking about powers of the government, not \"us.\" You apparently do not believe in the idea of a constitutionally limited government. I strongly disagree with your position.We're better off in a state where we have islands of government power in a sea of individual freedom than we are with islands of individual freedom in a sea of government power.\nUnknown (2008-10-28):\nAs I understand it, Prop. 101 will guarantee that no piece of legislation can prevent you from paying for an alternative form of health care, if that is what you desire. No law can stop you from paying for additional professional opinions, or paying for tests that are not \"authorized\" by a health plan, or obtaining a therapy that is not considered \"mainstream.\" Prop. 101 respects your precious right as an adult to decide for yourself about such matters.Prop. 101 is not \"for\" or \"against\" universal health care. Prop. 101 is not a \"health care reform\" measure. Prop. 101 is concerned with just one goal: protecting our right to make our own health care decisions.More info at: http://www.yeson101.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/blatant-deception-on-arizona.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona ballot proposition 101, the Medical Choice for Arizona amendment, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azsos.gov/election/2008/Info/PubPamphlet/english/Prop101.htm\"\u003esays this\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBe it enacted by the       People of Arizona:     \u003cp class=\"Text-2-Column\"\u003e \u003ca name=\"pgfId-1000105\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e1. Article II, Section       36: Constitution of Arizona is proposed to be added as follows if approved       by the voters and on proclamation of the Governor:\u003c/p\u003e     \u003cp class=\"Text-2-Column\"\u003e \u003ca name=\"pgfId-1000106\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eARTICLE         II, SECTION 36. BECAUSE ALL PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE DECISIONS         ABOUT THEIR HEALTH CARE, NO LAW SHALL BE PASSED THAT RESTRICTS A PERSON\u0026rsquo;S         FREEDOM OF CHOICE OF PRIVATE HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS OR PRIVATE PLANS OF         ANY TYPE. NO LAW SHALL INTERFERE WITH A PERSON\u0026rsquo;S OR ENTITY\u0026rsquo;S RIGHT TO         PAY DIRECTLY FOR LAWFUL MEDICAL SERVICES, NOR SHALL ANY LAW IMPOSE A         PENALTY OR FINE, OF ANY TYPE, FOR CHOOSING TO OBTAIN OR DECLINE HEALTH         CARE COVERAGE OR FOR PARTICIPATION IN ANY PARTICULAR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM         OR PLAN.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blatant deception on Arizona Proposition 101"},{"content":"\nGood news!\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-10-24):\nThose 'None' are better labeled as 'unaffiliated.' But striking nonetheless.Details from the original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html (may require registration)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/religious-makeup-of-united-states.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/25/us/makeup-graph.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 251px; height: 346px;\" src=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/25/us/makeup-graph.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGood news!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/a_heartening_graph.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eReed\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-10-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThose 'None' are better labeled as 'unaffiliated.'  But striking nonetheless.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDetails from the original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html (may require registration)\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Religious makeup of the United States"},{"content":"The City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;notes\u0026rdquo; newsletter for October 2008 (PDF), which comes with the water bill, features a story on the front page about its Glenrosa Service Center receiving the city\u0026rsquo;s first LEED Gold certification for its environmentally sound features, like being \u0026ldquo;build with wood from responsibly managed forests\u0026rdquo; and possessing \u0026ldquo;low energy and water use fixtures, non-toxic carpet and paint, energy-saving lighting sensors, native drought-resistant vegetation, dual-pane windows, an under-floor air distribution system and a heat-reflecting roof.\u0026quot;\nPage two features an announcement that \u0026ldquo;The APS Fiesta of Light will kick off the city\u0026rsquo;s holiday activities this season with a long-time tradition\u0026ndash;the APS Electric Light Parade.\u0026rdquo; This parade of \u0026ldquo;illuminated floats, marching bands, performance units [?] and helium balloons\u0026rdquo; has a theme of \u0026ldquo;Preserving a Family Holiday Tradition.\u0026rdquo; I wonder how many years of the Glenrosa Service Center\u0026rsquo;s energy savings will be expended this year in preserving that tradition.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-10-23):\nScrooge ;-).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/city-of-phoenix-foolishness.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://phoenix.gov/PIONEWS/1008note.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;notes\u0026rdquo; newsletter for October 2008\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), which comes with the water bill, features a story on the front page about its Glenrosa Service Center receiving the city\u0026rsquo;s first LEED Gold certification for its environmentally sound features, like being \u0026ldquo;build with wood from responsibly managed forests\u0026rdquo; and possessing \u0026ldquo;low energy and water use fixtures, non-toxic carpet and paint, energy-saving lighting sensors, native drought-resistant vegetation, dual-pane windows, an under-floor air distribution system and a heat-reflecting roof.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePage two features an announcement that \u0026ldquo;The APS Fiesta of Light will kick off the city\u0026rsquo;s holiday activities this season with a long-time tradition\u0026ndash;the APS Electric Light Parade.\u0026rdquo;  This parade of \u0026ldquo;illuminated floats, marching bands, performance units [?] and helium balloons\u0026rdquo; has a theme of \u0026ldquo;Preserving a Family Holiday Tradition.\u0026rdquo;  I wonder how many years of the Glenrosa Service Center\u0026rsquo;s energy savings will be expended this year in preserving that tradition.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"City of Phoenix foolishness"},{"content":"Colorado College political science professor David Hendrickson has put together a nice resource at his new \u0026ldquo;Cause for Depression\u0026rdquo; blog:\nThink of it as a cartoon guide to the ongoing earthquake in the world of high finance. Through pictures, we will try to understand the dimensions of the current financial crisis\u0026ndash;its origins and causes, its likely consequences, its potential remedies.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Labels\u0026rdquo; in Blogspot allow us to construct a chapter organization that the reader should approach as she would a book. By hitting on the topics under \u0026ldquo;Labels,\u0026rdquo; the presentation will appear in an orderly fashion.\nBlogspot is not made for blogbooks, though it is easily adaptable to that purpose. Ordering within each of the chapters depends on time of posting, so my time stamps are not necessarily indicative of the actual time the material was posted. I have altered them to allow for an orderly presentation. If it seems to matter, I will post the date of composition and updates in the entry. The initial foray of posts was made in mid-October 2008.\nIn seeking to understand the crisis, we need to begin with the credit mechanism. We are living through the bust of one of the greatest credit cycles of all financial history. In order get a handle on the seriousness of the bust, we must register the mania that fed the boom.\nWe’ll first look at some measures indicative of the financial turmoil. Then we examine general conditioning circumstances: the role of the housing boom and bust, the general growth of credit market debt, the explosion in derivatives, all of which are relevant in considering how much insolvency exists within the financial system. That question\u0026ndash;are our financial institutions insolvent?\u0026ndash;in turn is vital in assessing the wisdom of various bailouts and rescues, the opportunity costs associated with the government-mandated maintenance of the \u0026ldquo;FIRE\u0026rdquo; sector (Financials, Insurance, Real Estate), and how the global imbalances that have marked the last fifteen years are likely to change. I conclude with some lessons. The final entry is a collection of paper topics for interested students to consider.\nWhere possible, I’ve tried to indicate where readers can find updated sources of information for the material presented here. Given my harsh view of \u0026ldquo;derivatives,\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m obliged to say that this compendium is almost entirely derivative. I’m deeply indebted to my blogroll for ideas, inspiration, and many of the charts contained herein.\nSo, if you\u0026rsquo;ve read thus far, go now to \u0026ldquo;Financial Stress\u0026rdquo; in the \u0026ldquo;Labels\u0026rdquo; section.(Via Financial Armageddon.)\nThe amount of public and non-public U.S. debt will inevitably come back down, one way or another. I just hope we don\u0026rsquo;t end up as a third-world nation (or worse yet, multiple third world nations) in the process.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/financial-crisis-via-charts-and-graphs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eColorado College political science professor David Hendrickson has put together \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-this-is-about.html\"\u003ea nice resource at his new \u0026ldquo;Cause for Depression\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThink of it as a cartoon guide to the ongoing earthquake in the world of high finance. Through pictures, we will try to understand the dimensions of the current financial crisis\u0026ndash;its origins and causes, its likely consequences, its potential remedies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Labels\u0026rdquo; in Blogspot allow us to construct a chapter organization that the reader should approach as she would a book. By hitting on the topics under \u0026ldquo;Labels,\u0026rdquo; the presentation will appear in an orderly fashion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBlogspot is not made for blogbooks, though it is easily adaptable to that purpose. Ordering within each of the chapters depends on time of posting, so my time stamps are not necessarily indicative of the actual time the material was posted. I have altered them to allow for an orderly presentation. If it seems to matter, I will post the date of composition and updates in the entry. The initial foray of posts was made in mid-October 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn seeking to understand the crisis, we need to begin with the credit mechanism. We are living through the bust of one of the greatest credit cycles of all financial history. In order get a handle on the seriousness of the bust, we must register the mania that fed the boom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe’ll first look at \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/B.%20Financial%20Stress\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 153, 153);\"\u003esome measures indicative of the financial turmoil\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. Then we examine general conditioning circumstances: the role of the \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/C.%20Housing%20Bubble\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003ehousing boom\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and bust, the general growth of \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/D.%20Debt%20Binge\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003ecredit market debt\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, the explosion in \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/E.%20Derivatives%20Jungle\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 153, 153);\"\u003ederivatives\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, all of which are relevant in considering \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/F.%20Scale%20of%20Losses\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003ehow much insolvency\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e exists within the financial system. That question\u0026ndash;are our financial institutions insolvent?\u0026ndash;in turn is vital in assessing the \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/G.%20Rescues%20and%20Remedies\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003ewisdom of various bailouts and rescues\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, the opportunity costs associated with the government-mandated maintenance of the \u0026ldquo;FIRE\u0026rdquo; sector (Financials, Insurance, Real Estate), and how the \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/H.%20Global%20Imbalances\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003eglobal imbalances\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e that have marked the last fifteen years are likely to change. I conclude with some \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/I.%20Lessons\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 153, 153);\"\u003elessons\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. The final entry is a collection of \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/2008/10/paper-topics.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(85, 136, 170);\"\u003epaper topics \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003efor interested students to consider.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhere possible, I’ve tried to indicate where readers can find updated sources of information for the material presented here. Given my harsh view of \u0026ldquo;derivatives,\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m obliged to say that this compendium is almost entirely derivative. I’m deeply indebted to my blogroll for ideas, inspiration, and many of the charts contained herein.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo, if you\u0026rsquo;ve read thus far, go now to \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/search/label/B.%20Financial%20Stress\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 153, 153);\"\u003eFinancial Stress\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; in the \u0026ldquo;Labels\u0026rdquo; section.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2008/10/a-picture-guide-to-the-financial-crisis.html\"\u003eFinancial Armageddon\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe amount of public and non-public U.S. debt will inevitably come back down, \u003ca href=\"http://pictorial-guide-to-crisis.blogspot.com/2008/10/federal-reserve-balance-sheet-oct-8.html\"\u003eone way or another\u003c/a\u003e.  I just hope we don\u0026rsquo;t end up as a third-world nation (or worse yet, multiple third world nations) in the process.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The financial crisis via charts and graphs"},{"content":"IM conversation between two Standard \u0026amp; Poore\u0026rsquo;s employees, April 2007, as revealed in testimony before Congress today:\nShannon Mooney: i didn\u0026rsquo;t really notice\u0026hellip;but now that i think about it i kindof tune her out when she talks\nRahul Dilip Shah: well she just is too political\u0026hellip;and she doesn\u0026rsquo;t have anything of substance to say\u0026hellip;but keeps thinking that she does.\nRahul Dilip Shah: (I\u0026rsquo;m done venting now) :)\nShannon Mooney: k go take a nap\nShannon Mooney: see you later\nRahul Dilip Shah: ok\nRahul Dilip Shah: btw - that deal is ridiculous\nShannon Mooney: i know right\u0026hellip;model def does not capture half of the rish\nShannon Mooney: risk\nRahul Dilip Shah: we should not be rating it\nShannon Mooney: we rate every deal\nShannon Mooney: it could be structured by cows and we would rate it\nRahul Dilip Shah: but there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of risk associated with it - I don\u0026rsquo;t personally feel comfy signing off as a committee member.(Via the Big Picture blog and The Epicurean Dealmaker. The latter has a pictorial illustration that I like, Mark Tansey\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Innocent Eye Test\u0026rdquo;; the former has links to the transcript.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/s-enron-moment.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIM conversation between two Standard \u0026amp; Poore\u0026rsquo;s employees, April 2007, as revealed in testimony before Congress today:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eShannon Mooney: i didn\u0026rsquo;t really notice\u0026hellip;but now that i think about it i kindof tune her out when she talks\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah: well she just is too political\u0026hellip;and she doesn\u0026rsquo;t have anything of substance to say\u0026hellip;but keeps thinking that she does.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah:  (I\u0026rsquo;m done venting now) :)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: k go take a nap\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: see you later\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah: ok\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah: btw - that deal is ridiculous\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: i know right\u0026hellip;model def does not capture half of the rish\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: risk\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah: we should not be rating it\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: we rate every deal\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon Mooney: it could be structured by cows and we would rate it\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRahul Dilip Shah: but there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of risk associated with it - I don\u0026rsquo;t personally feel comfy signing off as a committee member.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/sp-its-not-our.html\"\u003eBig Picture blog\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2008/10/credit-ratings-process-illustrated.html\"\u003eThe Epicurean Dealmaker\u003c/a\u003e.  The latter has a pictorial illustration that I like, Mark Tansey\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Innocent Eye Test\u0026rdquo;; the former has links to the transcript.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"S\u0026P's Enron moment"},{"content":"Keith Augustine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences\u0026rdquo; article on the Internet Infidels website has been updated to reflect its publication as a three-part series of articles in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, where it was published along with commentary from leading researchers of near-death experiences. The online version of the article includes content that was not published in the JNDS due to space considerations.\nKeith has done a great job of reviewing the evidence that near-death experiences contain elements that are demonstrably hallucinatory, and therefore not evidence for survival or for consciousness leaving the body.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/hallucinatory-near-death-experiences.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKeith Augustine\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e article on the Internet Infidels website has been updated to reflect its publication as a three-part series of articles in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Near-Death Studies\u003c/span\u003e, where it was published along with commentary from leading researchers of near-death experiences.  The online version of the article includes content that was not published in the JNDS due to space considerations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKeith has done a great job of reviewing the evidence that near-death experiences contain elements that are demonstrably hallucinatory, and therefore not evidence for survival or for consciousness leaving the body.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hallucinatory near-death experiences"},{"content":"This is no doubt not a representative cross-section of McCain and Palin supporters, but it\u0026rsquo;s a disturbingly ugly set of them. It\u0026rsquo;s fortunate that most of the worst comments are from the older generation\u0026ndash;I hope that younger people are less likely to hold such views. McCain has shot down such remarks from supporters when they\u0026rsquo;ve been made in his presence, to his credit. (And yes, this is from Aljazeera.)\nUPDATE: Here are more bigoted McCain and Palin supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:\nUPDATE (October 20, 2008): Sarah Palin says if she heard such bigoted comments she\u0026rsquo;d shut them down:\n\u0026ldquo;What we have heard through some mainstream media is that folks have hollered out some atrocious and unacceptable things like kill him,\u0026rsquo; \u0026quot; Palin said, referring to a Washington Post story two weeks ago about angry supporters at a Palin rally in Florida. \u0026ldquo;If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mike, I would call them out on that, and I would tell these people, no, that\u0026rsquo;s unacceptable.\u0026quot;She goes on to break with McCain by supporting a U.S. Constitutional amendment to oppose gay marriage and claim that \u0026ldquo;Faith in God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and choose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (October 21, 2008): And here\u0026rsquo;s another video, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (same link provided by Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost in the first comment), of McCain and Palin supporters entering Lehigh University (the school where intelligent design advocate Michael Behe is a professor):\nUPDATE (October 22, 2008): And be sure to check out this woman\u0026rsquo;s reasons for voting for McCain, at the Secular Web.\nUPDATE: And more videos of McCain supporters heckling early voters (most of whom were from an Obama rally) in West Virginia.\nUPDATE (April 10, 2026): Google seems to think that this calling out of bigoted and ignorant statements from 18 years ago itself constitutes \u0026ldquo;dangerous or derogatory content\u0026rdquo; in 2026, which is absurd. These videos are hosted on YouTube, Google\u0026rsquo;s platform, so if they have a problem with the content they should take down the videos.\nUPDATE (April 13, 2026): My request for a review was unsuccessful. Here\u0026rsquo;s the policy that Google claims is being violated by this 18-year-old blog post in 2026 (a time when the rhetoric has become far, far, worse, including from the president of the United States): \u0026ldquo;We do not allow content that:incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals.threatens or advocates for harm to oneself or others.relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus.exploits others through extortion.\u0026quot;It is absolutely absurd to think that the content of this blog post does any of these things.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-19):\nAnd then there's this oneSeeing all these angry old mean-as-hell white people is giving me flashbacks to working grounds on an exclusive golf course, where the club members would refer to my 30-40 year old Mexican co-workers as \"boy.\"\nUnknown (2008-10-20):\nignorance doesn't actually look that bliss after all....\nThe Chemist (2008-10-21):\nHoly hell!I am legitimately concerned, very concerned, about Obama's safety. I hope the Secret Service is up to the difficult task ahead of them.McCain has stoked a fire and now it's out of control. Wow, just wow.Wow.\ntruthmattes (2008-10-21):\nThere are people of low IQs and bigotted opinions in each political party. The video you chose to purport McCain/Palin supporter are bigotted idiots is a work of your artistic dishonesty. TRUTH IS WHAT MATTERS. I don't appreciate either party stopping to this level of dishonety to make their point. Ideas are more powerfully expressed with the Truth. But that may be too much to expect from those that are narrowminded enought to look for truth only in one box. Expand your universe a bit to included something that might just pop up to suprise you someday. Like ... an Intelligent Designer. (But not like the one who made this video.) Or did this video just evolve from goo in siber space?\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-21):\n???????\nDaniel Poehlman (2008-10-21):\nThe stupid... IT BURNS!Those must be the \"pro-Americans\" we've been hearing about. These people are just parrots. Look at the one cow who said, \"Ayers, Obama... connection! What more needs to be said\" as her answer to who was a terrorist. What kind of answer is that? Seriously. In what conversation would that answer be acceptable? These window-lickers have been pumped with eight years of non-stop fear and hate, and now they can't even think or speak straight. Anger, ignorance and paranoia mix into some seriously terrifying shit, and it's not going to be easy for these people to shake that.\nAsylum Seeker (2008-10-21):\n\"Expand your universe a bit to included something that might just pop up to suprise you someday. Like ... an Intelligent Designer. (But not like the one who made this video.) Or did this video just evolve from goo in siber space?\"Wait a minute...what does the Cybernetic Slime Architect have to do with footage of rabid McCain fans foaming at the mouth? Sure, I'll grant that both sides have their deranged and ignorant folks out for partisan blood, but...very few up until now gave the impression that they are out for literal blood. I assume that it is merely the specter of racism, giving us the willies. Ideally, it is just that, rather than a full blown resurrection (as per a certain lovable space being, known simply to humans as E.T.).\nJuliet And Sasha (2008-10-21):\nThe video kind of speaks for itself. I don't see how it was dishonest to expose these nuts by simply recording them.I attended an Obama rally and people quietly and respectfully walked past the Pro-Life protester without making any comments.To just dismiss these McCainiacs by trying to equalize the issue is logically unfair. There behavior is unacceptable, and the Republican candidates (especially Palin) encouraged it.\nLippard (2008-10-21):\ntruthmattes: \"I don't appreciate either party stopping to this level of dishonety to make their point.\"What dishonesty are you speaking of? My introduction to the videos says \"this is no doubt not a representative cross-section of McCain and Palin supporters, but it's a disturbingly ugly set of them.\"\nLippard (2008-10-21):\ntruthmattes: When you answer my question about what dishonesty you're referring to, I'm also interested in pointers to the \"'intelligent' responses refuting an article that Jim Lippardwrote\" that you mentioned in a comment at the Secular Web.\nNomad (2008-10-21):\nI'm not sure how much McCain has really done to contradict these statements. I saw the video where he's booed for simply saying that Obama shouldn't be feared, but when that one redneck woman said that she doesn't trust him because he's a Muslim, McCain didn't say anything about that. He sort of cuddled with her for a moment and shook his head, but he didn't actually say anything about it.I'm not sure he wants to give up the Muslim scare card.\nLippard (2008-10-21):\nNomad: There was an instance where a woman said that Obama is an Arab, and McCain responded in a way that put his foot in his mouth, saying \"He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.\" The problem is the implication that Arabs can't be decent family men... The Daily Show ran with this one, and Juan Cole discusses it here.\nLippard (2008-10-21):\nHere's the video.Saturday Night Live did a \"crazy McCain rally lady\" bit a couple weeks ago based on this woman.\nTony Sidaway (2008-10-21):\nThese poor people are in need of an education. I hope this is one of the priorities of the Presidency and the Congress in the next term.\nWhateverman (2008-10-21):\nI hesitate attributing this stupidity to McCain. To be sure, his campaign may have started some of the rumors, but it's clear that these people WANT to believe such things.We are all responsible for the information we accept or portray as Factual. A healthy dose of skepticism will quickly reveal when someone is telling you what you want to hear. These idiots would do themselves and their kids some good by not being so eager to lap up extreme right-wing propaganda\naubrey (2008-10-21):\nI love seeing these idiots say things like, \"This is a Christian nation!\" Wow.. so we've forgotten that our ancestors came to this land fleeing religious persecution and that one of the first things guaranteed to every American is the 'freedom of religion.' That includes the right to not have a faith. Many of the founding fathers were also Universalists. But this is a Christian nation? These morons tell people to go back to their country of origin and don't even know what rights this country was founded on? To me, THEY should leave. Not people that are actually paying attention.\nCalladus (2008-10-21):\n\"siber space\" rhymes with \"gibber face\"\nLippard (2008-10-21):\nWhateverman: \"I hesitate attributing this stupidity to McCain.\"Has someone attributed this stupidity to McCain, as opposed to a subset of his supporters?\nsaltydogmn (2008-10-21):\n(Sorry - URL was too long!)I'm guessing Oberdork just did...(See the vid at Pharyngula... )...but I since I'm not watching anything MSNBC-related, I don't actually know what he says. You'll have to take PZ's word for it.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-21):\nI don't blame McCain for the stupidity, but I hold him accountable for irresponsible rhetoric which works to incite this sort of stupidity.ACORN is now getting death threats from racists. Is it McCain's fault that there are racist idiots who want to kill Obama and black? No. Is McCain responsible for generating the backlash against ACORN and minorities by making absurd and bogus allegations that the organization is a threat to democracy while people like Michelle Malkin are blogging about how ACORN is going to steal the election with fraudulent minority votes? Yes.\nrlr6435 (2008-10-22):\nYou know there are bigots on both sides as there are racist in virtually all races. I question these videos from both sides as to what is really being shown.What these videos indicate that everyone that is for McCain/Palim MUST be a idiot, racist who are out to completely destroy this country.And yes, the other side selects their videos as well to present their side in the best light as possible.\nLippard (2008-10-22):\nRonald: \"What these videos indicate that everyone that is for McCain/Palim MUST be a idiot, racist who are out to completely destroy this country.\"Clearly not. What they do indicate is that many of the people shown in them have shown themselves to be idiots, bigots, and genuinely scary people.\nGinny (2008-10-22):\nI found it interesting the difference between the McCain \u0026amp; Obama rallies. The people at the Obama rallies were all smiling and seemed excited. The rest seemed so angry. It is truly sad.I found it quite disgusting when the one man said the Rape survivor should pay for her own kit \u0026amp; then pay double. While he is saying that, everyone around him has huge smiles. Totally disgusting. Yet, Democrats are the disgusting ones for supporting choice. I love that. If they think overturning Roe vs Wade will stop abortions they are so wrong. It will only cause more women to suffer. By seeing how they felt about a rape survivor though, I\u0026#39;m sure that isn\u0026#39;t it a big deal to most pro-life.On the argument that these videos only show a certain side, yes that is true. Regardless though, the videos are the truth. Those people knew what they were yelling and what they were saying. Anyone with common sense would know that the videos do not show every single McCain supporter.\nthe Mover (2008-10-22):\n\"Seeing all these angry old mean-as-hell white people is giving me flashbacks”The comments on this subject are amazing. Flashbacks, indeed. Who told you that would sound smart, Hume's Ghost?Now you've done it, truthmattes. Hume's Ghost is confused. He wasn't taught that in pre-school.the chemist says he's \"legitimately concerned about Obama's safety\". This pure nonsense. The only person who claims to have heard anyone yell out \"kill him\" was a reporter. The USSS could find no witnesses to this remark and no one but the reporter heard it. I'm thinking it might have been his own voice he heard.So, McCain supporters are \"window lickers\". I am amused to see how the true mushbrains in our country can project their own shortcomings to people they never met and have no clue about their lives. Just knowing that they are not voting for Obamesiah is proof positive that they are lacking something. Is that right folks?And \"the chemist\" is concerned about Obama's safety. Why? Well everyone with a brain knows Republicans are just plain mean and stupid, right? Let's ignore all the cars with McCain bumper stickers that have been keyed, had the windows broken and set on fire by Obama supporters.If you support Obama and cannot come up with one concrete thing that he has done in the past as some kind of evidence that he will do as he says as president, then you've become just another follower in a country that needs independent thinkers.Progressives, you drink from the party trough and believe you're smarter than your political opponents. Have you watched C-SPAN and noticed how your elected officials address each other? No one who remains in office ever refers to his/her opponents as \"Bigoted and ignorant\", \"angry old mean-as-hell white people\", \"cow \", \"These poor people are in need of an education\", \"these idiots\", \"These morons\", etc.And I thought Progressives were the people of inclusion, hope and civility. It's very hard to find any of that here.\nLippard (2008-10-22):\nMover: Your comment strikes me as rather hypocritical, in that you're engaging in the same sort of namecalling that you decry.I note that you do not dispute that the \"bigoted and ignorant\" statement is accurate, only that it's not a statement that an elected politician would make. Perhaps so, but I'm grateful that I am not an elected politician, and have the freedom to express accurate judgments about members of the U.S. voting public.You claim that there are multiple cars with McCain bumper stickers that have been keyed and set on fire by Obama supporters. There seems to have been a single instance of a Lexus vandalized in a parking garage in Clearwater, FL, which the owner suspects was due to his McCain sticker. That's a deplorable action, but it doesn't appear to be the epidemic your comment implies.I can condemn bad acts and statements no matter who performs them. Can't you?\nthe Mover (2008-10-22):\nMr. Lippard,I believe that you do not understand the term \"hypocritical\". I used the term mushbrains to typify the rude comments I see here. If anyone believes, excuse me, \"feels\" that about half of the voting population can be described in the terms used here, then they need to broaden their sources of information.And BTW: I did not \"dispute that the \"bigoted and ignorant\" statement is accurate,\" as it may be accurate for the folks in your videos. But doesn't generally apply to every other voter, no matter their political affiliation. There are a few bigots and ignorant people on both sides of the isle. However, the vast majority of voters on either side are not. The thing is that I listen to talk radio, watch local, national news and the Foxnews and I almost never hear Republicans using the terminology that I see here to describe Democrats. Hilary elicited a few names, but I think she's proud of them.\nLippard (2008-10-22):\nMover: I understand the meaning of the word \"hypocrisy,\" and engaging in the behavior that you criticize others for is a paradigm case.I haven't seen anyone make the claim that half the voting population is properly described as bigoted and ignorant--if anyone thinks that, they are mistaken.Comparing Internet postings (where there is nearly complete freedom of expression) to broadcast television or radio (which have relatively strict standards imposed by the FCC) isn't a fair comparison. If you compare the comments here to, say, those at FreeRepublic.com, I think you'll find the ones here relatively mild by comparison. I try to encourage civility at my blog, but at the same time I'm quite liberal about what comments I allow to remain, even if I disagree with them.I still haven't seen you offer agreement with the characterization of the individuals in the videos as \"bigoted and ignorant.\" Is there a reason why you refuse to condemn the actions and speech of those particular McCain and Palin supporters? It seems to me perfectly clear that we should both (a) not smear a whole set of supporters by the actions of a few and (b) should be willing to criticize bigotry wherever it appears, but you seem to only be concerned about (a). I agree with you on (a). Don't you agree with me on (b)?\nLippard (2008-10-23):\nActually, Mover, I think I gave too much credit to your claim about what you hear on the radio and see on TV. If you listen to people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the guests they have on their programs, you know exactly where the people in these videos get their ideas, however further distorted they may have made them.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-23):\n\"The thing is that I listen to talk radio ... and I almost never hear Republicans using the terminology that I see here to describe Democrats\"He's right. AM radio is far worse.And that's not some anonymous commenter - that's a central figure in Republican politics, someone regularly visisted by the likes of the Vice President and what not.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-23):\nAnd my favorite, Melanie Morgan doing her best impression of Radio Rwanda.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-23):\nMy favorite - by the way - because the post got cited in the Chicago Sun-Times (I think - it was definitely in the on-line edition.)\nLippard (2008-10-23):\nThanks for those links, Hume's Ghost. I don't think it gets uglier than suggesting that those you disagree with should be killed.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-24):\nAbout 30 minutes ago I flipped on the Neal Boortz radio show. He was taking callers. The caller I heard was saying comparing Obama to Hitler; saying Hitler promised change, was not a real German, etc.When the caller got done, Boortz said that he was not sure he wanted to compare Obama to Hitler, but that he would say that if Obama could he'd send capitalism to the ovens.And Boortz has previously described Democrats (including H. Clinton and Obama) as fascists, citing Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism as a source.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/bigoted-and-ignorant-mccainpalin.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is no doubt not a representative cross-section of McCain and Palin supporters, but it\u0026rsquo;s a disturbingly ugly set of them.  It\u0026rsquo;s fortunate that most of the worst comments are from the older generation\u0026ndash;I hope that younger people are less likely to hold such views.   McCain has shot down such remarks from supporters when they\u0026rsquo;ve been made in his presence, to his credit.  (And yes, this is from Aljazeera.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-01783202343523672 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 0px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-01783202343523672 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 0px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-07138762642224782 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-07138762642224782 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" /\u003e\u003cembed allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zRqcfqiXCX0\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Here are more bigoted McCain and Palin supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-07138762642224782 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 0px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-07138762642224782 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" /\u003e\u003cembed allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lPg0VCg4AEQ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 20, 2008): Sarah Palin \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/election08/articles/2008/10/20/20081020palingaymarriage1020.html\"\u003esays if she heard such bigoted comments she\u0026rsquo;d shut them down\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;What we have heard through some mainstream media is that folks have hollered out some atrocious and unacceptable things like kill him,\u0026rsquo; \u0026quot; Palin said, referring to a Washington Post story two weeks ago about angry supporters at a Palin rally in Florida. \u0026ldquo;If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mike, I would call them out on that, and I would tell these people, no, that\u0026rsquo;s unacceptable.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eShe goes on to break with McCain by supporting a U.S. Constitutional amendment to oppose gay marriage and claim that \u0026ldquo;Faith in God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and choose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 21, 2008):  And here\u0026rsquo;s another video, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (same link provided by Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost in the first comment), of McCain and Palin supporters entering Lehigh University (the school where intelligent design advocate Michael Behe is a professor):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/itEucdhf4Us\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-08084953492794784 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/itEucdhf4Us\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/itEucdhf4Us\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" /\u003e\u003cembed allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/itEucdhf4Us\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 22, 2008):  And be sure to check out \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2008/10/his-mother-was-atheist-horrors.html\"\u003ethis woman\u0026rsquo;s reasons for voting for McCain\u003c/a\u003e, at the Secular Web.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: And more \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-bellantoni/mccain-supporters-heckle_b_136099.html\"\u003evideos of McCain supporters heckling early voters (most of whom were from an Obama rally) in West Virginia\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (April 10, 2026): Google seems to think that this calling out of bigoted and ignorant statements from 18 years ago itself constitutes \u0026ldquo;dangerous or derogatory content\u0026rdquo; in 2026, which is absurd. These videos are hosted on YouTube, Google\u0026rsquo;s platform, so if they have a problem with the content they should take down the videos.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (April 13, 2026): My request for a review was unsuccessful.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the policy that Google claims is being violated by this 18-year-old blog post in 2026 (a time when the rhetoric has become far, far, worse, including from the president of the United States): \u0026ldquo;\u003cem style=\"background-color: white; color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.2px; object-fit: contain;\"\u003eWe do not allow content that:\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.2px;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cul style=\"background-color: white; color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.2px; object-fit: contain;\"\u003e\u003cli style=\"object-fit: contain;\"\u003eincites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"object-fit: contain;\"\u003eharasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"object-fit: contain;\"\u003ethreatens or advocates for harm to oneself or others.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"object-fit: contain;\"\u003erelates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"object-fit: contain;\"\u003eexploits others through extortion.\u0026quot;\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eIt is absolutely absurd to think that the content of this blog post does any of these things.\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bigoted and ignorant McCain/Palin supporters in Ohio"},{"content":"Jeffrey Goldberg explains why in The Atlantic. The check for whether you\u0026rsquo;re on the no-fly list is at the time of ticket purchase and check-in; there is no validation of your actual ticket against your ID at the TSA checkpoint (you can easily print and use a fake boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint); there is no check of ID when you board the plane. The checks for substances and items at the TSA checkpoint are easily subverted, with the restrictions on liquids probably the most absurd and pointless.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re throwing away billions of taxpayer dollars per year on security theater.\n(Hat tip to John Lynch.)\n(Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/tsa-airport-security-is-waste-of-time.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeffrey Goldberg \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security\"\u003eexplains why in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  The check for whether you\u0026rsquo;re on the no-fly list is at the time of ticket purchase and check-in; there is no validation of your actual ticket against your ID at the TSA checkpoint (you can easily print and use a fake boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint); there is no check of ID when you board the plane.  The checks for substances and items at the TSA checkpoint are easily subverted, with the restrictions on liquids probably the most absurd and pointless.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re throwing away billions of taxpayer dollars per year on security theater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/are-you-on-tsa-no-fly-list.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/02/tsa-continues-to-demonstrate.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/ny-times-theater-of-absurd-at-tsa.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/tsa-fails-screening-tests-looks-for.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/us-no-fly-list-is-joke.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/kip-hawley-is-idiot.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TSA airport security is a waste of time and money"},{"content":"Jesse Dylan has made a short video about Creative Commons licensing (which is used for the contents of this blog), and how it helps patch the flaws in current copyright law.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/shared-culture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJesse Dylan has made \u003ca href=\"http://creativecommons.org/asharedculture\"\u003ea short video about Creative Commons licensing\u003c/a\u003e (which is used for the contents of this blog), and how it helps patch the flaws in current copyright law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-01783202343523672 visible ontop\" href=\"http://blip.tv/play/gds1yZQBg9ky\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://blip.tv/play/gds1yZQBg9ky\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"720\" height=\"510\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Shared Culture"},{"content":"\nThe Door Christian Fellowship, a creepily cultish Pentecostal Christian sect that\u0026rsquo;s an offshoot of Aimee Semple McPherson\u0026rsquo;s Foursquare Gospel Church, is putting on a \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; in Chandler. They\u0026rsquo;re calling it \u0026ldquo;Hell 101,\u0026quot; and, as usual, they are advertising it in a deceptive manner that attempts to hide the fact that it\u0026rsquo;s religious propaganda. I say \u0026ldquo;as usual\u0026rdquo; because not only have they put on such \u0026ldquo;hell houses\u0026rdquo; for years around Halloween, they\u0026rsquo;re also known for advertising events such as Christian rock concerts while conveniently forgetting to mention the \u0026ldquo;Christian\u0026rdquo; part.\nSuch deception has long been associated with Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), who was a fraudulent faith healer, alcohol Prohibitionist, and anti-evolutionist who later in life faked her own abduction in order to run off with her lover, Kenneth G. Ormiston, who had been an engineer for her radio station KFSG in Los Angeles. After disappearing for 35 days, she stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona, and told a phony story of kidnapping which quickly fell apart when witnesses came forth who had seen her at a resort in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She ended up dying of an accidental drug overdose from taking too many Seconol sleeping pills, but her Foursquare Gospel Church still exists today with over two million members, mostly outside of the U.S. (Interestingly, as a teenager McPherson was an agnostic who defended evolution in letters to the newspaper.)\nThe Potter\u0026rsquo;s House, The Door, Victory Chapel, and other Foursquare Gospel spinoff churches are Pentecostal churches that engage in faith healing, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and other activities of anthropological interest. They can be very hardcore in the pushiness of their evangelism, and engage in cult-like conversion techniques such as separating people from groups they come with, pairing them off with someone of the same approximate age and sex, and bombarding them with rehearsed questions designed to push someone to a conclusion that they need to accept Jesus and join their group. (The Wikipedia page on The Potter\u0026rsquo;s House describes this particular sect\u0026rsquo;s origins in Prescott, Arizona in 1970, originally officially affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. The Wikipedia biography of its founder, Wayman O. Mitchell, is also of interest. The sect\u0026rsquo;s origins trace back to Los Angeles, as does the Pentecostal movement in general.)\n\u0026ldquo;Hell 101\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s website calls it \u0026ldquo;Final Destination III,\u0026rdquo; and describes the hell house as \u0026ldquo;a twist on a haunted house style attraction that was described by Phoenix Arizona NBC News Affiliate Channel 12 as \u0026lsquo;scary, horrifying, suspenseful, sick\u0026hellip;.\u0026rsquo; NBC 12 News had a live video feed from our annual event where hundreds waited up to two hours in line to have the hell-scared out of them.\u0026rdquo; Their FAQ has the question \u0026ldquo;If I quit because I was scared or anything else can I get a refund?\u0026rdquo; The \u0026ldquo;anything else\u0026rdquo; would include feeling defrauded by having paid money for a haunted house, but getting instead Christian propaganda. The answer: \u0026ldquo;There are no refunds if you get scared, cry, feel angry, get sick, hate it, love it or just want to run!!! Our job is to confront your senses and that we do!\u0026quot;\nA Christian hell house can be quite entertaining, so long as you know what to expect and are prepared to exercise your right to walk away at the end when the attempts at conversion go into overdrive (they may suggest that the doors are locked and that you may not leave). George Ratliff\u0026rsquo;s documentary film \u0026ldquo;Hell House\u0026rdquo; is a great way to get a preview, and shows some of the unintentional comedy that can be produced when a bunch of ignorant people try to put together a scary haunted house designed to persuade you that you\u0026rsquo;re going to hell unless you believe the way they do. That documentary also shows how ineffectual some atheists can be in their confrontation of Christians, and I highly recommend that anyone planning to visit one of these hell houses for any reason give it a watch before going.\nA \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; usually follows a common script template which the churches purchase and customize. They go through a writing, casting, and production process similar to a high school stage production. The \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; script typically guides a group of visitors through a series of rooms, each of which contains a brief performance by actors portraying some scene that argues for certain practices, beliefs, or actions as likely to terminate with eternity in hell, though that latter point may initially be somewhat subtle. (By the end, it is anything but.)\nI attended a hell house at a Potter\u0026rsquo;s House church in Tucson in 1990, from which the flyer image was obtained. (Also see this PDF of an Arizona Daily Star newspaper story about that particular hell house, which got in trouble with the local fire department for fire code violations.) That hell house followed a female character from scene to scene which included a car crash caused by teenage drinking (featuring an actual wrecked car and empty beer cans), a band of demons playing AC/DC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Highway to Hell\u0026rdquo; (suggesting that at least some rock music is demonic in origin and consequences), and the ever-popular hanging nun in hell (Catholicism is regarded by this sect as ruled by Satan) and young woman on a stretcher with a pool of blood between her legs shrieking that she\u0026rsquo;s killed her own baby (the anti-abortion segment). At the end, there\u0026rsquo;s a high-pressure call to Jesus which provides an opportunity to argue with someone who may be something like a street preacher in their skill of providing pre-programmed responses to common objections they\u0026rsquo;ve heard many times but is unlikely to have actually thought deeply about. If you do choose to visit one of these, I advise not getting involved in such a discussion if you\u0026rsquo;re somebody who is likely to blow up, call people stupid, or otherwise lose your cool\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s just going to be seen as confirming evidence that you\u0026rsquo;re under the control of the devil and anything you say can be dismissed without consideration.\nUPDATE (October 31, 2008): New Times has a review of The Door\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Final Destination III\u0026rdquo; hell house.\nHistorical Comments pee (2008-10-20):\nMore like scaring \"the hell\" into you ;).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/hell-house.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/Nightmare.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/Nightmare.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258509876214080498\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Door Christian Fellowship, a creepily cultish Pentecostal Christian sect that\u0026rsquo;s an offshoot of Aimee Semple McPherson\u0026rsquo;s Foursquare Gospel Church, is putting on a \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; in Chandler.  They\u0026rsquo;re calling it \u003ca href=\"http://hell101.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hell 101,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and, as usual, they are advertising it in a deceptive manner that attempts to hide the fact that it\u0026rsquo;s religious propaganda.  I say \u0026ldquo;as usual\u0026rdquo; because not only have they put on such \u0026ldquo;hell houses\u0026rdquo; for years around Halloween, they\u0026rsquo;re also known for advertising events such as Christian rock concerts while conveniently forgetting to mention the \u0026ldquo;Christian\u0026rdquo; part.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSuch deception has long been associated with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Semple_McPherson\"\u003eAimee Semple McPherson\u003c/a\u003e (1890-1944), who was a fraudulent faith healer, alcohol Prohibitionist, and anti-evolutionist who later in life faked her own abduction in order to run off with her lover, Kenneth G. Ormiston, who had been an engineer for her radio station KFSG in Los Angeles.  After disappearing for 35 days, she stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona, and told a phony story of kidnapping which quickly fell apart when witnesses came forth who had seen her at a resort in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.  She ended up dying of an accidental drug overdose from taking too many Seconol sleeping pills, but her Foursquare Gospel Church still exists today with over two million members, mostly outside of the U.S.  (Interestingly, as a teenager McPherson was an agnostic who defended evolution in letters to the newspaper.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Potter\u0026rsquo;s House, The Door, Victory Chapel, and other Foursquare Gospel spinoff churches are Pentecostal churches that engage in faith healing, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and other activities of anthropological interest.  They can be very hardcore in the pushiness of their evangelism, and engage in cult-like conversion techniques such as separating people from groups they come with, pairing them off with someone of the same approximate age and sex, and bombarding them with rehearsed questions designed to push someone to a conclusion that they need to accept Jesus and join their group.  (The Wikipedia page on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Potter%27s_House\"\u003eThe Potter\u0026rsquo;s House\u003c/a\u003e describes this particular sect\u0026rsquo;s origins in Prescott, Arizona in 1970, originally officially affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.  The Wikipedia biography of its founder, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayman_O_Mitchell\"\u003eWayman O. Mitchell\u003c/a\u003e, is also of interest.  The sect\u0026rsquo;s origins trace back to Los Angeles, as does \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/rise-of-pentecostalism-and-economist.html\"\u003ethe Pentecostal movement in general\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hell 101\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s website calls it \u0026ldquo;Final Destination III,\u0026rdquo; and describes the hell house as \u0026ldquo;a twist on a haunted house style attraction that was described by Phoenix Arizona NBC News Affiliate Channel 12 as \u0026lsquo;scary, horrifying, suspenseful, sick\u0026hellip;.\u0026rsquo;    NBC 12 News had a live video feed from our annual event where hundreds waited up to two hours in line to have the hell-scared out of them.\u0026rdquo;  Their FAQ has the question \u0026ldquo;If I quit because I was scared or anything else can I get a refund?\u0026rdquo;  The \u0026ldquo;anything else\u0026rdquo; would include feeling defrauded by having paid money for a haunted house, but getting instead Christian propaganda.  The answer:  \u0026ldquo;There are no refunds if you get scared, cry, feel angry, get sick, hate it, love it or just want to run!!!  Our job is to confront your senses and that we do!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Christian hell house can be quite entertaining, so long as you know what to expect and are prepared to exercise your right to walk away at the end when the attempts at conversion go into overdrive (they may suggest that the doors are locked and that you may not leave).  George Ratliff\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R34IKVA2IGIIY2/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm\"\u003edocumentary film \u0026ldquo;Hell House\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e is a great way to get a preview, and shows some of the unintentional comedy that can be produced when a bunch of ignorant people try to put together a scary haunted house designed to persuade you that you\u0026rsquo;re going to hell unless you believe the way they do.  That documentary also shows how ineffectual some atheists can be in their confrontation of Christians, and I highly recommend that anyone planning to visit one of these hell houses for any reason give it a watch before going.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; usually follows a common script template which the churches purchase and customize.  They go through a writing, casting, and production process similar to a high school stage production.  The \u0026ldquo;hell house\u0026rdquo; script typically guides a group of visitors through a series of rooms, each of which contains a brief performance by actors portraying some scene that argues for certain practices, beliefs, or actions as likely to terminate with eternity in hell, though that latter point may initially be somewhat subtle.  (By the end, it is anything but.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI attended a hell house at a Potter\u0026rsquo;s House church in Tucson in 1990, from which the flyer image was obtained.  (Also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/HellHouse.pdf\"\u003ethis PDF\u003c/a\u003e of an \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Daily Star\u003c/span\u003e newspaper story about that particular hell house, which got in trouble with the local fire department for fire code violations.)  That hell house followed a female character from scene to scene which included a car crash caused by teenage drinking (featuring an actual wrecked car and empty beer cans), a band of demons playing AC/DC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Highway to Hell\u0026rdquo; (suggesting that at least some rock music is demonic in origin and consequences), and the ever-popular hanging nun in hell (Catholicism is regarded by this sect as ruled by Satan) and young woman on a stretcher with a pool of blood between her legs shrieking that she\u0026rsquo;s killed her own baby (the anti-abortion segment).   At the end, there\u0026rsquo;s a high-pressure call to Jesus which provides an opportunity to argue with someone who may be something like a street preacher in their skill of providing pre-programmed responses to common objections they\u0026rsquo;ve heard many times but is unlikely to have actually thought deeply about.  If you do choose to visit one of these, I advise not getting involved in such a discussion if you\u0026rsquo;re somebody who is likely to blow up, call people stupid, or otherwise lose your cool\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s just going to be seen as confirming evidence that you\u0026rsquo;re under the control of the devil and anything you say can be dismissed without consideration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 31, 2008): \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2008/10/haunted_house_review_final_des.php\"\u003ehas a review of The Door\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Final Destination III\u0026rdquo; hell house\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hell House"},{"content":"In The Daily Beast:\nAt best, Stone’s interpretation is educated conjecture. He takes plenty of liberties with the facts, a story-telling strategy he considers justified in order to get at larger truths in a 2-hour movie. As a result, the real-life complexities of the characters and events are left unexplored.\n\u0026hellip;\nOverall, as should be expected from the high-caliber cast, the acting was fabulous. Brolin rightly deserves kudos for his portrayal of Bush. He has the swagger down, and does a decent job on Bush’s voice and gestures. The president’s eating habits were overdone, but not completely off the mark (you will know what I mean when you see the movie). \u0026hellip; The most unflattering portrayal was that of Condi Rice, caricatured by Thandie Newton as a mere yes–woman, which is excessively denigrating but not entirely without basis. There are a number of inaccuracies in the movie, some grounded in Stone’s satirical impulse. (Maybe I was too close to the real-life situations to laugh at those moments.)\n\u0026hellip;\nStone also exaggerates in painting Bush as a simple-minded born-again Christian. President Bush is a man of deep personal faith who may have felt a calling to enter politics, but he never came across to me as presuming to know God’s will. Nor does he consider himself an evangelical Christian or fundamentalist Baptist (though along with Rove he placed a high priority on keeping that wing of the Republican base happy).\nI also felt it was grossly unfair to portray Bush as merrily oblivious and somewhat smug when visiting wounded soldiers at a military hospital. Having been at President Bush’s side during such visits, I know they were somber, emotionally-draining moments for him. They were also probably the only time I ever noticed self-doubt creep into his eyes, however fleetingly, as he confronted the terrible human costs of his misguided, instinctive decision to rush into an unnecessary war.\nBut W. is a drama, not an historical documentary. Stone tries to play it fairly straight. Even if he misses the mark at times, he deserves credit for the glimpses of inner truth he provides, which can only be instructive, especially as we prepare to elect a new president.\nMy guess is the most vocal Bush critics will view Stone’s account as too soft on Bush and his top advisers, while Bush’s chief advocates will ignore and dismiss it. But I think the average Joe just might find it entertaining and thought-provoking. I won’t go as far as to borrow a line from Bush 43 and say, “Heck of a job, Stonie.” But I will borrow one from Bush 41 and say, “It’s good, not bad.”\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/scott-mcclellan-reviews-oliver-stones-w.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-17/my-w-and-oliver-stones/1/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Daily Beast\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt best, Stone’s interpretation is educated conjecture. He takes plenty of liberties with the facts, a story-telling strategy he considers justified in order to get at larger truths in a 2-hour movie. As a result, the real-life complexities of the characters and events are left unexplored.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eOverall, as should be expected from the high-caliber cast, the acting was fabulous. Brolin rightly deserves kudos for his portrayal of Bush. He has the swagger down, and does a decent job on Bush’s voice and gestures. The president’s eating habits were overdone, but not completely off the mark (you will know what I mean when you see the movie). \u0026hellip; The most unflattering portrayal was that of Condi Rice, caricatured by Thandie Newton as a mere yes–woman, which is excessively denigrating but not entirely without basis. \u003cp\u003eThere are a number of inaccuracies in the movie, some grounded in Stone’s satirical impulse. (Maybe I was too close to the real-life situations to laugh at those moments.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scott McClellan reviews Oliver Stone's \"W\""},{"content":"Last night at a party, a few of us were discussing some recent self-published books by crackpots that we\u0026rsquo;ve seen or had pushed on us. We noted that these books seem to have in common a few features. They seem to often have long rambling introductions that are missing key elements like thesis statements or an indication of what the book is about. They use words in non-standard ways, yet don\u0026rsquo;t bother to explain how they are being redefined. They claim that the author has some special knowledge, yet don\u0026rsquo;t provide any reason to believe it is the case.\nI had a dim recollection of having come across a \u0026ldquo;crackpot index\u0026rdquo; before somewhere, and a little bit of searching yielded Fred J. Gruenberger\u0026rsquo;s December 1962 publication from the RAND Corporation titled \u0026ldquo;A Measure for Crackpots\u0026rdquo; (PDF), which offers the following scoring mechanism for distinguishing the scientist from the crackpot:\n1. Public verifiability (12 points)\nScientists promote public verifiability; crackpots rely on revealed truth.\n2. Predictability (12 points)\nScientists promote predictability and track their record of failure as well as success; crackpots promote wild predictions and count only successes, not failures.\n3. Controlled experiments (13 points)\nScientists promote controlled experiments; crackpots avoid them.\n4. Occam\u0026rsquo;s razor (5 points)\nScientists prefer the simplest explanation that covers all the facts; crackpots enjoy wildly complex theories.\n5. Fruitfulness (10 points)\nScientists prefer theories that generate new ideas and new experiments; crackpots prefer theories that produce nothing of value for further research.\n6. Authority (10 points)\nScientists seek the endorsement and validation of known authorities and tend to obtain it if their work is valid; crackpots usually fail to obtain it.\n7. Ability to communicate (8 points)\nScientists tend to promote clear (if sometimes dull) communications through approved channels; crackpots tend to be incomprehensible and self-published.\n8. Humility (5 points)\nHumility is a desirable (if sometimes lacking) trait in scientists; it is rare in the crackpot.\n9. Open mindedness (5 points)\nScientists tend to qualify and carefully couch their statements as tentative based on the current evidence; crackpots tend to make absolutely certain statements that may not be challenged.\n10. The Fulton non sequitur (5 points)\nI\u0026rsquo;m more familiar with this as the \u0026ldquo;Galileo Gambit,\u0026rdquo; or the common crackpot claim that \u0026ldquo;They laughed at Galileo; they\u0026rsquo;re laughing at me; therefore I\u0026rsquo;m right just as Galileo was.\u0026rdquo; Gruenberger uses steamboat inventor Robert Fulton in place of Galileo. This logically invalid argument is refuted by the Bozo rejoinder, which is that \u0026ldquo;they also laughed at Bozo the clown.\u0026rdquo; This is a negative test, lack of the characteristic is 5 points, presence is 0.\n11. Paranoia (5 points)\nAnother negative test\u0026ndash;crackpots tend to be paranoid about their ideas being actively suppressed by conspiracy.\n12. The dollar complex (5 points)\nAnother negative test. The crackpot claims immeasurable value for his discoveries as revolutionary, worthy of the Nobel prize, and world-changing.\n13. Statistics compulsion (5 points)\nThe crackpot tends to use and continuously explain statistics allegedly supporting his claim, while the scientist tends to use standard methods and assume the reader is familiar with them.\nGruenberger\u0026rsquo;s index is focused on science crackpots rather than philosophy crackpots, but a number of the above features do apply to the books we were talking about.\nA more recent \u0026ldquo;Crackpot Index,\u0026quot; also focused on physics, was created by John Baez, a mathematical physicist at the University of California, Riverside:\nA simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics: A -5 point starting credit. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction. 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment. 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards). 5 points for each mention of \u0026ldquo;Einstien\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Hawkins\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Feynmann\u0026rdquo;. 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence). 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity. 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don\u0026rsquo;t know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen. 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory. 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it. 10 points for each statement along the lines of \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations\u0026rdquo;. 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is \u0026ldquo;only a theory\u0026rdquo;, as if this were somehow a point against it. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t explain \u0026ldquo;why\u0026rdquo; they occur, or fails to provide a \u0026ldquo;mechanism\u0026rdquo;. 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence). 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a \u0026ldquo;paradigm shift\u0026rdquo;. 20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index, e.g. saying that it \u0026ldquo;suppresses original thinkers\u0026rdquo; or saying that I misspelled \u0026ldquo;Einstein\u0026rdquo; in item 8. 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize. 20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence). 20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact. 20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories. 20 points for each use of the phrase \u0026ldquo;hidebound reactionary\u0026rdquo;. 20 points for each use of the phrase \u0026ldquo;self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy\u0026rdquo;. 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.) 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence). 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts. 40 points for claiming that the \u0026ldquo;scientific establishment\u0026rdquo; is engaged in a \u0026ldquo;conspiracy\u0026rdquo; to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on. 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.) 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions. Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice crackpot response to that index.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-12):\nFrom Martin Gardner's description of the hermit scientist:He considers himself a genius. He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads … He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to “enemies” for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work … He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father symbolof authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein … He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in manycases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.\nMichael Phoenix (2008-10-13):\nWe should apply this to the Matthew 10:10 crackpottery!\nLippard (2008-10-13):\nThat's one of the books I had in mind in the first paragraph...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/measure-for-crackpots.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night at a party, a few of us were discussing some recent self-published books by crackpots that we\u0026rsquo;ve seen or had pushed on us.  We noted that these books seem to have in common a few features.  They seem to often have long rambling introductions that are missing key elements like thesis statements or an indication of what the book is about.  They use words in non-standard ways, yet don\u0026rsquo;t bother to explain how they are being redefined.  They claim that the author has some special knowledge, yet don\u0026rsquo;t provide any reason to believe it is the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI had a dim recollection of having come across a \u0026ldquo;crackpot index\u0026rdquo; before somewhere, and a little bit of searching yielded Fred J. Gruenberger\u0026rsquo;s December 1962 publication from the RAND Corporation titled \u003ca href=\"http://wwwcgi.rand.org/pubs/papers/2006/P2678.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Measure for Crackpots\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), which offers the following scoring mechanism for distinguishing the scientist from the crackpot:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePublic verifiability (12 points)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003eScientists promote public verifiability; crackpots rely on revealed truth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e2. Predictability (12 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists promote predictability and track their record of failure as well as success; crackpots promote wild predictions and count only successes, not failures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e3. Controlled experiments (13 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists promote controlled experiments; crackpots avoid them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e4. Occam\u0026rsquo;s razor (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists prefer the simplest explanation that covers all the facts; crackpots enjoy wildly complex theories.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e5. Fruitfulness (10 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists prefer theories that generate new ideas and new experiments; crackpots prefer theories that produce nothing of value for further research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e6. Authority (10 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists seek the endorsement and validation of known authorities and tend to obtain it if their work is valid; crackpots usually fail to obtain it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e7. Ability to communicate (8 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists tend to promote clear (if sometimes dull) communications through approved channels; crackpots tend to be incomprehensible and self-published.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e8. Humility (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHumility is a desirable (if sometimes lacking) trait in scientists; it is rare in the crackpot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e9. Open mindedness (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientists tend to qualify and carefully couch their statements as tentative based on the current evidence; crackpots tend to make absolutely certain statements that may not be challenged.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e10. The Fulton non sequitur (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m more familiar with this as the \u0026ldquo;Galileo Gambit,\u0026rdquo; or the common crackpot claim that \u0026ldquo;They laughed at Galileo; they\u0026rsquo;re laughing at me; therefore I\u0026rsquo;m right just as Galileo was.\u0026rdquo;  Gruenberger uses steamboat inventor Robert Fulton in place of Galileo.  This logically invalid argument is refuted by the Bozo rejoinder, which is that \u0026ldquo;they also laughed at Bozo the clown.\u0026rdquo;  This is a negative test, lack of the characteristic is 5 points, presence is 0.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e11. Paranoia (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother negative test\u0026ndash;crackpots tend to be paranoid about their ideas being actively suppressed by conspiracy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e12. The dollar complex (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother negative test.  The crackpot claims immeasurable value for his discoveries as revolutionary, worthy of the Nobel prize, and world-changing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e13. Statistics compulsion (5 points)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe crackpot tends to use and continuously explain statistics allegedly supporting his claim, while the scientist tends to use standard methods and assume the reader is familiar with them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGruenberger\u0026rsquo;s index is focused on science crackpots rather than philosophy crackpots, but a number of the above features do apply to the books we were talking about.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA more recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Crackpot%20Index\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Crackpot Index,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e also focused on physics, was created by John Baez, a mathematical physicist at the University of California, Riverside:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A measure for crackpots"},{"content":"The October 4, 2008 issue of The Economist has an interesting article, \u0026ldquo;Sons of heaven,\u0026quot; about Christianity in China, which reports that the official estimate of 21 million Chinese Christians (16 million Protestants, 5 million Catholics) is probably a vast underestimate. The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that the number is 70 million, while the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, former Communist Party official turned Christian Zhao Xiao, and the China Aid Association all think the number may be as high as 130 million. This is compared to membership in the Chinese Communist Party of 74 million.\nThe reason for the underestimate is that many Christians in China are unaffiliated with any official church. The government doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow more than 25 people to meet in a gathering without official permission, so Christians in China have formed thousands of \u0026ldquo;house churches,\u0026rdquo; similar to the way Pentecostalism has grown through small groups across South Korea. Just as private meetings in homes were how Christianity spread in Rome, the result has been a proliferation of more and more smaller groups in China. These house churches tend to be unaffiliated with any denomination, with \u0026ldquo;no fixed liturgy or tradition,\u0026rdquo; and run by recent converts who themselves are not expert on Christianity.\nThe article points out that in China, Christianity is not associated with tradition and ritual, but with modernity, business and the market economy (where it\u0026rsquo;s seen as a necessary check on the market to provide ethics in business), and science. Six of the 30 leaders of the student protests at Tiananmen Square became Christians, and the article states that \u0026ldquo;One Confucian Chinese says with a rueful smile that most of the pretty girls at university were Christians\u0026ndash;and would date only other Christians.\u0026quot;\nChristianity has spread in China as a result of rural Christians migrating to the cities, and students who travel to the United States and become Christians and then return home.\nI look forward to seeing a similar article in the future about the spread of atheism, skepticism, and pro-science groups in the United States through Meetup groups and student groups.\nHistorical Comments webfogey (2008-11-07):\nhttp://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1672376334699388731\u0026amp;ei=hlwUSezzEoiG2gLPn9yaCg\u0026amp;q=christianity+in+china\u0026amp;hl=enhttp://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1661035924920547138\u0026amp;ei=hlwUSezzEoiG2gLPn9yaCg\u0026amp;q=christianity+in+china\u0026amp;hl=en\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/christianity-in-china.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe October 4, 2008 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e has an interesting article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12342509\u0026amp;fsrc=rss\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sons of heaven,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about Christianity in China, which reports that the official estimate of 21 million Chinese Christians (16 million Protestants, 5 million Catholics) is probably a vast underestimate.  The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that the number is 70 million, while the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, former Communist Party official turned Christian Zhao Xiao, and the China Aid Association all think the number may be as high as 130 million.  This is compared to membership in the Chinese Communist Party of 74 million.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe reason for the underestimate is that many Christians in China are unaffiliated with any official church.  The government doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow more than 25 people to meet in a gathering without official permission, so Christians in China have formed thousands of \u0026ldquo;house churches,\u0026rdquo; similar to the way \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/rise-of-pentecostalism-and-economist.html\"\u003ePentecostalism has grown through small groups across South Korea\u003c/a\u003e.  Just as private meetings in homes were how Christianity spread in Rome, the result has been a proliferation of more and more smaller groups in China.  These house churches tend to be unaffiliated with any denomination, with \u0026ldquo;no fixed liturgy or tradition,\u0026rdquo; and run by recent converts who themselves are not expert on Christianity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe article points out that in China, Christianity is not associated with tradition and ritual, but with modernity, business and the market economy (where it\u0026rsquo;s seen as a necessary check on the market to provide ethics in business), and science.  Six of the 30 leaders of the student protests at Tiananmen Square became Christians, and the article states that \u0026ldquo;One Confucian Chinese says with a rueful smile that most of the pretty girls at university were Christians\u0026ndash;and would date only other Christians.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChristianity has spread in China as a result of rural Christians migrating to the cities, and students who travel to the United States and become Christians and then return home.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI look forward to seeing a similar article in the future about the spread of atheism, skepticism, and pro-science groups in the United States through Meetup groups and student groups.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christianity in China"},{"content":"\nAs of last Tuesday (October 7), the ducks have returned to the Highline Canal. They left sometime after May 18.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/return-of-canal-ducks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3063/2932439222_1970e1b746.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3063/2932439222_1970e1b746.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs of last Tuesday (October 7), the ducks have returned to the Highline Canal. They left sometime after May 18.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Return of the canal ducks"},{"content":"The Economist conducted a poll of 683 research associates of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 142 responded, of whom 46% self-identified as Democrats, 10% as Republicans, and 44% as neither.\n80% of respondents, 71% of those who did not identify a political affiliation, and 46% of those who identified themselves as Republicans said that Obama has a better grasp of economics than McCain. (Only 23% of those who identified themselves as Republicans said that McCain had better understanding of economics.)\n81% of respondents, 71% of the unaffiliated, and 31% of the Republicans said that Obama will pick a better team of economic advisors to run the country than McCain.\nThe full results can be found at The Economist\u0026rsquo;s website.\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-06-03):\nAh yes, no wonder Obama should now be running General Motors with such a fine grasp of economics. “This week, the president [declared], 'What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is running GM.' It was during the same speech in which he announced that the federal government was forcing GM into bankruptcy, deciding what creditors should get (regardless of what bankruptcy law says), and taking a 60 percent stake in the company.” —columnist Jacob Sullum\n“Obama is fond of calling upon Americans to make sacrifices — or rather, he is fond of forcing Americans into sacrificing themselves at a time and place of his choosing. Heroic sacrifice requires volunteerism, or at least an element of extraordinary choice; Obama's sort of sacrifice \u0026hellip; names the time and the place, and you are expected to put your neck on the altar.” —columnist Ben Shapiro\n“The Constitution of the United States set out to limit the powers of the federal government, but judges have greatly eroded those limitations over the years, and the dispensing of bailout money has allowed the Obama administration to exercise powers that the Constitution never bestowed.” —economist Thomas Sowell\n“By definition, government that works will be limited because government will not reach into areas in which it has no constitutional business.” —columnist Cal Thomas\n“When government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.” —political analyst Michael Barone\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/economists-poll-of-economists.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12342127\"\u003econducted a poll of 683 research associates of the National Bureau of Economic Research\u003c/a\u003e.  142 responded, of whom 46% self-identified as Democrats, 10% as Republicans, and 44% as neither.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e80% of respondents, 71% of those who did not identify a political affiliation, and 46% of those who identified themselves as Republicans said that Obama has a better grasp of economics than McCain.  (Only 23% of those who identified themselves as Republicans said that McCain had better understanding of economics.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e81% of respondents, 71% of the unaffiliated, and 31% of the Republicans said that Obama will pick a better team of economic advisors to run the country than McCain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full results can be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/ecsurvey/\"\u003eat \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Economist's poll of economists"},{"content":"An article at Time magazine suggests that those following the \u0026ldquo;prosperity theology\u0026rdquo; of some Pentecostal ministers are more likely than average to have obtained mortgages they cannot afford, leading to foreclosure:\nHas the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants \u0026ndash; and hence, victims \u0026ndash; of the current financial crisis? That\u0026rsquo;s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity\u0026rsquo;s central promise \u0026ndash; that God will \u0026ldquo;make a way\u0026rdquo; for poor people to enjoy the better things in life \u0026ndash; had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe \u0026ldquo;God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.\u0026rdquo; The results, he says, \u0026ldquo;were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.\u0026quot;Yet another case of religious trust being exploited to victimize those who have it.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-10-10):\nI wonder if The Secret, whose \"Law of Attraction\" leads people down a similar path of optimism, can be credited with any of those foreclosures as well?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/prosperity-theology-created-foreclosure.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1847053,00.html?cnn=yes\"\u003earticle at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e suggests that those following the \u0026ldquo;prosperity theology\u0026rdquo; of some Pentecostal ministers are more likely than average to have obtained mortgages they cannot afford, leading to foreclosure:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHas the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants \u0026ndash; and hence, victims \u0026ndash; of the current financial crisis? That\u0026rsquo;s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity\u0026rsquo;s central promise \u0026ndash; that God will \u0026ldquo;make a way\u0026rdquo; for poor people to enjoy the better things in life \u0026ndash; had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe \u0026ldquo;God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.\u0026rdquo; The results, he says, \u0026ldquo;were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eYet another case of \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/08/religious-fraud-increasing.html\"\u003ereligious trust being exploited to victimize those who have it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/foreclosures_and_the_prosperit.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prosperity theology created foreclosure victims?"},{"content":"The bailout bill has a few extra features:\n* Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.\n* Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.\n* Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.\n* Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.\n* Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.\n* Sec. 405. Increase and extension of Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax.\n* Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.\n* Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.\n* Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.\n* Sec. 503 Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.It also includes tax credits for solar and wind power, a requirement that health insurance companies cover mental health the same way they cover physical health (so look for some huge premium increases on your health insurance).\nAnd during all the bailout bill discussion, Congress quietly authorized another $612 billion defense authorization bill.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nKtisophilos (2008-10-07):\nThis is a good thing? The stockmarket didn't suggest so.\nLippard (2008-10-07):\nIf you thought I was suggesting it was a good thing, you've misunderstood me.I think the fact that about 20% of the bailout bill was completely unrelated pork is appalling.\nworkingsmart (2008-10-07):\nAt the same time, it is a silver lining that, indirectly, may help us get out of the financial disaster by encouraging energy independence... I'd expect this pork to start having a positive effect on the economy in around three to five years. Depending on how long it takes for our renewable infrastructure to take hold, this could allow us to be a less warlike, energy independent nation in 15 years.So, in the meantime, as the country goes bankrupt and begins to follow the path to the post-apocalyptic Atlas Shrugged distopia, we should stock up on guns and canned goods and bury our gold.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-08):\nThanx for clarifying. Yes, 20% pork is a disgrace. All who voted for it deserve to lose their seats.\nBrad (2008-10-09):\nWhere did the money go in the first place? At some point someone had to stick a wad of cash in their back pocket and haul ass to the Poconos.\nLippard (2008-10-09):\nPart of what we're seeing is sheer destruction of money as monetary deflation occurs.The banks only keep a fraction of deposits on reserve, the rest they loan out. Those loans are going bad, as are the credit default swaps used to insure the loans against default.Part of the answer of where the money went is into land and houses that are now sitting vacant. Part of it is salaries, bonuses, and commissions of people in the real estate, mortgage, and financial industries. Part of it is cars, motorcycles, boats, granite countertops, and restaurant bills of people who used their homes as ATMs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/bailout-bill-bonuses.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe bailout bill has a few extra features:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e* Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 405. Increase and extension of Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.\u003cbr /\u003e* Sec. 503 Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt also includes tax credits for solar and wind power, a requirement that health insurance companies cover mental health the same way they cover physical health (so look for some huge premium increases on your health insurance).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd during all the bailout bill discussion, \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/129190.html\"\u003eCongress quietly authorized another $612 billion defense authorization bill\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/10/02/bailout-redux/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bailout bill bonuses"},{"content":"Radley Balko on Palin\u0026rsquo;s performance in the VP debate:\nPalin was rambling, didn’t answer the questions she was asked, and the folksy stuff felt contrived. I suppose Palin did okay in that she didn’t come off like the train wreck she was in her Katie Couric interview, but Jesus, is that the standard? Is the bar that low for vice president of the United States? That seems to be the way the conventional wisdom is playing out. Oddly, the Couric interview may have actually helped her, then.\nPalin seems to have crammed just enough so she could toss out key phrases here and there to give the veneer that she’s informed. But it’s pretty clear she was in way over her head for most of the debate. Pick her apart with follow-up questions, as Couric and Gibson did, and she falls to pieces.\nThis growing anti-intellectualism on the right is alarming. It isn’t that Palin is dumb. I don’t think she is. It’s that she has no interest in learning, no interest in reading or experiencing anything that might challenge what she already knows she believes. She thinks with her gut, as Steven Colbert might put it. She’s a female W. And they seem to love her for it. The GOP has gone populist. Knowledge, worldliness, and learning are to be shunned, swept aside as East Coast elitism. It’s all about insularity, earthy values, and simpleness. Remember the beating John Kerry took in 2004 for daring to use the word “nuance?” There’s no room for complexity on the right anymore. It’s good and evil. Black and white. Us and them.\nMaybe a good butt-kicking this November will bring about some soul searching.\nAnd Ed Brayton on Bush, quoting this ABC News story:\nAfter some more give and take, Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, presents a five-page list of 192 economists and business school professors who oppose the plan. Bush isn\u0026rsquo;t impressed. \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t care what somebody on some college campus says,\u0026rdquo; Bush says. He might as well have said, \u0026ldquo;I ain\u0026rsquo;t never had no need for book learnin\u0026rsquo;.\u0026quot;\nI agree with Balko\u0026ndash;Palin seems exactly like a female \u0026ldquo;W\u0026rdquo; in this respect.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-05):\nThink Progress has a video posted showing that Palin was relying heavily on scripted answers from her notes ... this wasn't as obvious in the network broadcast because the podium they were standing at hid the notes from view.I've started to think of Palin as Mrs. Windrip - an allusion to Buzz Windrip from It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.From the review in the link:PICTURE THIS: A folksy, self-consciously plainspoken Southern politician rises to power during a period of profound unrest in America. The nation is facing one of the half-dozen or so of its worst existential crises to date, and the people, once sunny, confident, and striving, are now scared, angry, and disillusioned.This politician, a ''Professional Common Man,'' executes his rise by relentlessly attacking the liberal media, fancy-talking intellectuals, shiftless progressives, pinkos, promiscuity, and welfare hangers-on, all the while clamoring for a return to traditional values, to love of country, to the pie-scented days of old when things made sense and Americans were indisputably American. He speaks almost entirely in ''noble but slippery abstractions''-Liberty, Freedom, Equality-and people love him, even if they can't fully articulate why without resorting to abstractions themselves.Through a combination of factors-his easy bearing chief among them (along with massive cash donations from Big Business; disorganization in the liberal opposition; a stuffy, aloof opponent; and support from religious fanatics who feel they've been unfairly marginalized)-he wins the presidential election.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-05):\nD'oh! I see TP has updated that post since I first looked at and says Palin was reading from notes she wrote during the the course of the debate.\nLarry Moran (2008-10-05):\nIt's frustrating, isn't it?We're all in favor of democracy but some of us get real upset when a majority of the people elect fools. It's even worse when they re-elect them (this is about to happen in Canada). You really can't blame the fools, can you? We need to start blaming the voters for being so foolish but that's not politically correct.\nRyan Decker (2008-10-07):\nWell said. We will never know if Palin is intelligent, since she bends most of her mental capacity towards embracing and furthering unsound ideology.The anti-intellectualism of the Right is deeply concerning. It hinders America's ability to develop solutions to problems like climate change, energy dependence, and economic instability, as I recently argued at Pendulum Politics.The reward for conservative anti-intellectualism is, in part, complete irrelevance of the GOP for at least 4, probably more, years.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-07):\nWhen was the last time Couric really grilled a liberal Democrat? And Couric is hardly an intellectual giant.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nThis post, as with the one below by goof-off Sam Harris, who never misses any opportunity to omit vast swaths of context and history about Christianity and his own ignorant/take/opinions on Church crimes vs. those of secular regimes, and who for the life of him cannot see analogies, metaphors, and valid comparisons, nor plays by a fair record-keeping book, is hilarious. What is more important? Impressing the elites of Manhattan coffee shop encounters and blogfests while pretending to work? Or maintaining cultural confidence in an age when, as one writer placed it decades ago, it is \"closing time in the gardens of the West\"?Remember that the latter is a form of \"elitism\" as well--albeit a good one. As \"elitist\" himself Henry William III wrote in 1993, there is a form of elitism that is good to the effect that it honors Western civilizational confidence in the face of what appears to be a darkening world, both economically and spiritually. A good call can be made for the latter, now that not only can we NOT afford our increasingly comfy entitlements modeled on Euro fashion for the sumptuous generation of two it might last, but we're facing enemies with a more determined grit than any in history. As Calvin Coolege said, \"I favor the policy of 'economy' not to save money, but to save PEOPLE.\"Meaning: Free-born citizens need cultural and personal confidence of the variety generally missing from the clientele of European state welfarism now coming to America in from of ever more edicts from government. In an age when the burning questions of life are about sexual appetites and \"free\" daycare and other forms of care for this and that need, the freeborn citizen is hijacked, gets his life contracted out to government busybodies of the creepy types that infest all \"advanced\" \"social democracies\", and the bigger questions of life are on the back burner. In a wonderful book called The Servile State, written long before socialist pieties, author Hillarie Belloc warned about where \"progressive\" economic and not a few liberal social policies leave the population: Infantilized. We demand thousands of actual choices on CD selections and food, but defer to government on health care and keeping granny well-heeled and shut away on the taxpayer dime outside our own little flat?Not good. Not the higher path to creativity, independence (both economic and social), and freedom.Obama is the epitome of being steeped in this kind of Euro crap. Of course, every culture and nation is different, and no doubt our path to self-immolation and where the mockery of the more \"folksy\" polititions will yield more creeps like him will be a different path. Perhaps slower to boot.As I wrote a while back, when the Coalition of the Cockamamie (see John Zogby's research on this one, speaking of less than elite thinking), who now think that their fuel needs/mortgages will be all but scott-free, showed us the full monty of the word \"elite\" after November 4 of '08:Obama has written autobiographies before almost anything else in life, before actual achievement; certainly before stepping so much as to the podium of higher level politics. This is not, contra the NY Times' opinion, the making of a legendary writer along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt, but a self-absorbed individual steeped in Leftist ideology and the Political Machine. GOVERNOR Palin has run a commercial fishing operation, a town, and a state that has more than a smidgen to do with energy policy from time to time. Obama has, for the most part, merely run his mouth. His real-world experience with \"business\" concerns and monetary transaction is making pitches to the public schools growing wish list of social activism, and the baloney of \"community organizer\" in Chicago. Whatever that really means.Palin, the \"ignorant\" Guns-n'-God Girl, by contrast, has what British Labour Party pol Denis Healy likes to call a \"hinterland\" existence - a life beyond politics. When Senator Obama attempts anything \"beyond\" politics, such as bowling, or visiting a Waffle House, he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting conscripted into some bizarre local folk ritual for the camera. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual staged \"hunting\" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle, but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama and virtually all polysci profs and urban-bound bureaucracy peddling politicians alike, she's been to the icebound wasteland called ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there. There is more than meets the eye here. Cultural confidence of Palin's type--not eggheadery--is key to a nation's long-term survival. Recognition of freedom, our past, our core values, our faiths, our confidence and not compromise and \"negotiation\" with the terror lords, our shared experience as Americans, etc.Citizens should be given a DECENT education and then mostly cut loose to reproduce and get on with job training, child rearing, and the fripperies as well as other rewards and trials of life. The elite need not worry. They can scratch their own backs and fund their own issues of whatever level. More important and far more edifying than the Soviet styled, post-industrial learning regimen that John T. Gatto warns is ruining young minds in the public schools, would be a policy of a good education where, since no high school kids can recite Boyle's law with any regularity anyhow, you get a good education on the fundamentals, offer competitive choices like vouchers and reimbursed homeschooling, and thus halt or slow down using the public schools as the reproductive system of leftism.\nLippard (2009-02-27):\nThis post isn't about Obama, it's about Palin and Bush.Palin's \"confidence\" is an arrogance combined with ignorance, which is the worst kind.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-27):\nWhen it comes to the starkness of this contrast, the missive works just fine. I don't notice any of an Obama-esque arrogance in GOVERNOR Palin. IN the real world, outisde of the creepy self-absorption of the type you handily find in Chicago's inner city, you have to have a true resume to work either in the private or public realm. One wonders if newbies in your own profession would be welcome in IT for merely glaring at computer screens.I'm betting not.Likewise, Palin's \"ignorance\" (or Bush's) on abstruse subjects the media fantasizes about when asking about the current governor of Zanzibar all the while tossing one softball question to men like Obama after another (and to boot, never met the word \"no\" in his life), makes this all the more stark.On where it matters, Bush and Palin are heads above most of the ninnies who breathe politics. At least at one time their \"arrogance\" hails from real jobs.\nLippard (2009-02-28):\nYour comment doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.George W. Bush never had a real job in his life--he's lived a life of privilege, with businesses handed to him which he ran into the ground. When he speaks he frequently makes major faux pas, which is why there are multiple books of \"Bushisms\" (and enough to fill several years worth of calendars). He thinks with his gut rather than his intellect, isn't interested in details, and his administration rewarded loyalty rather than (and at the expense of) competence. Numerous posts at this blog over the years have documented examples.Palin's history in Alaska seems to be somewhat similar--she's engaged in crony politics. Her only non-government jobs were a year as a sports reporter and helping her husband's commercial fishing business. Her anti-intellectualism, like Bush's, has been documented in numerous posts at this blog. Like Bush, she seems uninterested in things like details or facts.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nI have not commented on most items here but am in fact quite aware that your blog parrots most of the angry chorus I'd see at some other places and media driven fantasy about what the coffee house crowd thinks is important. Most of it is not. And even if it was, it is more than doubtful if Obama and other wet-eared people are really on top of all this hype just because he speaks melliflously and gives some pathetic grown men shivers down their legs. Or that he's surrounded himself with men who slam corporate jets and have no idea that that is a legitimate use that also puts hundreds of other to work every time one is fired up, but can't manage to pay their own taxes they onerously plop in OUR laps, and make full use of taxpayer dough all the while never having any real world experience in most matters themselves. When have these men even heard the word \"no\"-as have Palin and Bush, for example, in their \"hinterland\" careers? Not once. Does having an armada of minutia at your side that pleases Manhattan elites and promises the obliteration of capitalism (pleasing his radical friends and playing the Envy Card to full measure) really mean you can govern effectively? NO. How could it?By contrast, regardless of whether you like their style or their input on many matters, Palin and Bush HAVE GOVERNED. They have made the unpopular moves and dealt with the wind. They didn't hold their fingers in the wind to see the mood of things and pals. To govern is to CHOOSE. Something Obama has not done, and never had to face until very recently. Not once in his life has he heard the magical and edifying word \"no\". Not when he voted about 93% of the time with his own party. Not when he was absolved from paying his own way to college. Not when he voted PRESENT on a host of controversial issues. Not when he refused to answser hard queries about his past and his associations and when the Obots and Oprah types in the media fawned over his visage and shielded and coddled him from tough answers. The list goes on and on.-----------------------Thinking with your guts has served human beings more than is generally acknowledged. The brain assesses a range of information far beyond that the alleged \"facts of the matter\" often detail. We can ask any war historican who would claim that on paper the \"facts of the matter\" detail the \"facts\" that the South was a shoo-in for victory owing their familiarity with the countryside and rural life and horses and living off the land, or that the combo of Nazis and Tojo's forces were all but unbeatable in 1941. Sheer will and determination is often the key to success. The world is loaded with eggheads and men like Obama. It is NOT loaded with people who intuitively know how to get things done. And as is painfully obvious from these last few weeks, Obama is a know-nothing on economics, disdains the common sense that escaped FDR's ruinous push to socialization, and his team is a laughing stock of utter incompetence. A major study came out a while back from O'hanian about how government intervention and massive spending in the 1930's actually prolongued desperate economic times, and the EZ credit then, as now, was actually the proximate cause of the economic downturn, the overextension of credit, and housing crunchs. So when it comes to ignoring \"facts\" of the matter, no one has bested the Messiah. More ominous than his ignorance of economic history or his associations with radicals determined to have us all in hock to government and spend trillions we don't have and therefore monetorized the debt, is this anacountable adulation. I thought that died with Mao's little Red Brevities.Bush has at least held down real occupations. It is common in the business world to hand down professions. So what? That common tactic is what used to be called in the olden days the \"apprenticeship\"--and I'be noticed in my line of work few high rollers COMPLETELY invented EVERYTING that they themselves deal with on a daily basis. That is a metaphysical requirement you asking that is difficult to require. And rare. Many times children take the reigns of business or somesuch. And what kinds of facts and details would you have them learn?Obama has never held a real job in his life. Not once. And certainly nothing dealing with the intricacies of fishing interest. He's a self-absorbed creep who piddles with--and always did--a kind of radicalism for which marxian dialectics and other hogwash (separated from the real world of \"facts\" of the kind most of the rest of us deal with) is minimal entry. His associations also have no input on real world issues except to make ludicrous and contradictory statements about small business owners being non-productive or non-hiring next to the bigwigs (worse than untrue--as self made people and their employees are statistically far more common than the big wheels you see on the front of magazines). His associates range from the criminally neglegent and outright weird to tax cheats who've honed their skills of evasion and chicanery with Chicago styled intrique--at best. That's not a good thing. As to cronyism and Palin, I;'ll take her path that contains an actual resume to run with next to the New Messiah's any day of the week. Most of the claims about Palin are either untrue, or as with the whole \"wolf\"-killing bruha actually initiated by the State of Alaska's DNR agency, has been vastly blown out of proportion. Context is key. And on most every issues where Bush and Palin are accused of something ignorant or nefarious, there is vast context missing, whereas by contrast we see Obama getting the kid glove treatments and softball questions about his alleged martydom or some other cornball claim.For both Bush and Palin, the alleged anti \"intellectualism\" is actually the Left's obsessive focus on minutia to no effect and fantasy about terminology like Charle's Gibson's faux pax on \"the Bush Doctrine\" (there are several different forumaltions of this myth, and non are official policy, as was the old claim about M.A.D.), etc. These are at their core policy disputes about things like Iraq, embyonic stem cells (for which Palin knows the real science supports ADULT stems cell research, and that it is a lie that the other version is outlawed, etc), homeschooling, union issues,and other initiatives the Left wants to see fulfilled. This is all too funny, as on some blogs the accusaion against Palin in particular is that she hails from some elitist background, and yet she's held real jobs with concrete results, and Most of these claims are tall tales at best. I made the stark contrast with Obama since apparently when it comes to resumes, I'd say non-governmental jobs in the Hinterlands can also have another angle. What about hobbies? What about a LIFE beyond politics? What about a life beyond figuring out yet more ways to CONTROL other human beings? In the final analysis, it is like Mark Steyn said: In an age when a darker and more dangerous world is upon us, when Islamists get a foothold every day due to PC and multi-culti pieties and legalisms strategically designed to hamstring us, when allies now have inacted de fact and de jure Sharia Law in a desperate gambit to pacify 9th century warriors--we need more than people who pinter around with blogs and laptops and minutia that for the most part is media-driven fantasy. I have more knowledge than most people on crocodilians. I doubt Obama or any other pol could tell me about the intricate difference between caiman crocodylus vs. caiman yacare, or cite the relevant laws and ecological preservation acts that surround either. But so what? How is that germain to economic policy? Likewise I'm not familiar with many of the plants and trees I grew up with, and many people are.So what? The ability to govern does not hinge on these things. An overall sense of perspective IS how this is done. Palin and Bush have this. More important than crocs and species of trees is a cultural imperitive to defend this Republic--another requirement of the Constitution, speaking of those \"constitution free zones the ACLU claims\", and actually combat what will be a darker and more demographically upheaved world. We have far more to fear, according to many demographers, from Islamist claims and demographics, than any theoretical sinking of the Maldive Islands.I promise you. That is our imperitive at this moment in history. If we follow the Euro path, if we don't reign in unaffordable albeit sumptious entitlements, and if we can't make tax policies that stop punishing people for reproducing and can't sustain our culture--we're cooked.The Maldives and the fate of Surinamean dart frogs might have to wait on the back burner. Those are fripparies. Humans and law are paramount. Real governance knows that along these lines you have to CHOOSE. We can't do it all. Obama is not about to make these hard choices. Bush and Palin can and have already done so. They know--\"intuitively, in the guts--that we can't be all things to all people.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-01):\nPS:\"cronyism\" is also a political skilled that has to be honed to be effective.It is merely the pejorative form of saying \"associations\" and \"pals\" and other individuals in one's inner circle of aids.Shrimp--prawn.cattle-cow.rocks--stone.ice--frozen water.The terms are interchangeable, depending on use.Obama, of courfse, has merely his \"associations.\"\nLippard (2009-03-01):\nI'm not defending Obama here, I'm criticizing Bush and Palin, and you don't appear to want to engage with what I've actually written.You write that \"Bush has at least held down real occupations.\" Name one that he has \"held down\" by demonstrating success or business acumen.You write: \"For both Bush and Palin, the alleged anti \"intellectualism\" is actually the Left's obsessive focus on minutia to no effect and fantasy about terminology like Charle's Gibson's faux pax on \"the Bush Doctrine\" (there are several different forumaltions of this myth, and non are official policy, as was the old claim about M.A.D.), etc.\"Nonsense. Bush has engaged in political interference in scientific reporting, he's filled volumes of \"Bushisms\" books with ignorant misspeaking, and he made a gigantic mess in Iraq by staffing the occupational government with loyal incompetents. He passed a gigantic government boondoggle in the Medicare drug act, did significant damage to the Bill of Rights (carrying on the work of predecessors in the office), and squandered a budget surplus, nearly doubled the national debt, and left office with the economy in shambles, for which he and his party take at least partial blame.Your suggestion that Palin's problem with the Bush doctrine was that she had too nuanced a view of the terminology strikes me as patently ludicrous.I agree with you that entitlements and the so-called \"nondiscretionary\" budget items are a huge looming problem that needs a radical solution, but I didn't see Bush make any progress on that front.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-10):\n(Mr. Lippard's comments in italics)I'm not defending Obama here, I'm criticizing Bush and Palin, and you don't appear to want to engage with what I've actually written.You write that \"Bush has at least held down real occupations.\" Name one that he has \"held down\" by demonstrating success or business acumen.You write: \"For both Bush and Palin, the alleged anti \"intellectualism\" is actually the Left's obsessive focus on minutia to no effect and fantasy about terminology like Charle's Gibson's faux pax on \"the Bush Doctrine\" (there are several different formulations of this myth, and non are official policy, as was the old claim about M.A.D.), etc.\"Nonsense. Bush has engaged in political interference in scientific reporting, he's filled volumes of \"Bushisms\" books with ignorant misspeaking, and he made a gigantic mess in Iraq by staffing the occupational government with loyal incompetents. He passed a gigantic government boondoggle in the Medicare drug act, did significant damage to the Bill of Rights (carrying on the work of predecessors in the office), and squandered a budget surplus, nearly doubled the national debt, and left office with the economy in shambles, for which he and his party take at least partial blame.........I agree with you that entitlements and the so-called \"nondiscretionary\" budget items are a huge looming problem that needs a radical solution, but I didn't see Bush make any progress on that front. As for loyal but affible incompetents, one IS taken aback. Yeah. Bad stuff. Like Tim Geithner--the \"only\" man for the job of the TREASURY, who seems to have a lapse with the realm of numbers, eh?While it's true that Bush, bowing to political pressures, initiated many obnoxious things like the boondoggle in both the Medicare department and other areas, this only highlights the fact that compromise is not a noble goal sometimes. No surprises there. What Bush should have done, now that I see someone is interested in the hard nosed old days when \"budget\" surpluses are back on the menu, and not multi-trillion buck expenditures, is to recognize what all pols should: The issue is not taxations per se. It is the programs. It is the spending. And theoretically you can reach a point where spending is so high (fast approaching that point) where a 95% tax on every man, child, dog, and a few pet birds to boot would not cover the bill. You're right. It has to be paid for with our monetorizing the debt. Bush's real incompetence came in trying to pacify the liberals both here and abroad. But the appeal to internationalists (and international socialism) is of limited or little effect, if any. The children of the next generation are broke before their very first job.Most of said programs of which would be immoral in any case. Even if covered completely, in fact. These programs would be a scourge to free enterprise and initiative even if Bill Gates and George Soros wrote a personal check to cover the whole packet. This coddling of the population and both Republican and Democrat compromise to a Euro styled socialism is the undoing of a free born people. And I take it as given that we're not improving the situtation on Bush's errors by forcing unionism down the gullets of even small businesses with the \"card check\" stuff to apply pressure on the holdouts, all these massive bailouts that will no doubt create inflationary pressures at a time when we can hardly even keep up with the treadmill on the home front of just buying food and insurance for the kids. The bailout for the banks and the insurance industry is not even working in a bad, half-assed manner. Obama's ideology since his days being raised by a hippy mom and a non-existant father who had a cock-of-the-walk (big rooster in charge) mentality about females, has been that life is just capricious and unfair, and those who earn or have wealth didn't really earn it. As to jobs and those \"inherited\" not being \"real\"?That's one heck of a note, Mr. Lippard. One must assume then that of the millions and millions and millions and millions of Americans who've taken the reigns of power on business large and small from their parents, that these are therefore not \"real jobs\"--or their continuation is sheer luck (which, come to think of it, some people DO think business success is all in the realm of luck and no other input is necessary; Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and our own dear Bambi Obama think this as well, so you do have some noble company. )The reason I mentioned Obama, although there does seem to be defense by default here, is that HE, and not the others, is the very epitome of nonsensical, coddling, and childlike assertions that is not just bad policy making, as with some allegations about Bush, but rather a complete otherworldly persona that has no contact with real world issues. One supposes that since I am taking over my own father's business (eventually), it is therefore not a \"real occupation\" next to being, a......community organizer????So, no insights on how the daily grind of business can be handled?Or the dozens of other people in similar situations I know of personally? The rules of my own line of work were written, as is typically the case, by people who came long before us. The software and equipment was created by others. How many tens of millions of people, who participate in jobs they had no input in \"creating\" (to your satisfaction) in the very first place way back in eons of time, would therefore not qualify as showing \"initiative\", or holding \"real jobs.\" Modern blacksmiths didn't invent the processes they themselves use. Do they therefore not work for a living, what few there are left of them?Is your standard, then, that only ORIGINAL innovation qualifies as work? Would a failure in business mean you weren't working at all--next to being a rabble rousier in Chicago's ACORN shakedown artistry on the streets.Are you an inventor of the modern computer? Did the very concept of IT security evolve only with YOU?Of course not. This is not to say you're not a hard worker knowledgeable in your own area. I'm sure you are.So, I have engaged what you've written.Minutia about things (some of which are media fantasy and not even real) is not what policy is about. Politicians of all types DELEGATE those kinds of responsibilities. You have to. There is no other way. (i.e.--\"cronyism\")That's the first rule in politics. I can ask questions of some fellow political scientists that few could answer if I get detailed enough. So what?The acumen comes in when learning how to assess the information as a whole. Sometimes you defer to others if necessary. Which for most of us is quite often.I can formulate 20 questions about science myself that few people could answer, much less most politicians. That does not mean they have no muster in politics, or that my local plumber is incompetent due to not sharing my peculiar interests in crocodilians and gardening and abstruse books on philosophy.And, as with all the hoopla about alleged \"suppression\" of science (though to that point, real biologists and meteorologists and climatologists and some other researchers HAVE lost their tenure or jobs regarding no towing some ideological line in science), the real issues, as I said before, had to do with ideology. Not science. On some rare occasions this cat gets let out of the bag as when Anna Quindlin and other journalists paint this stem cell issue (as but one example) as some kind of Galileo vs. the Church issue. When in fact as science journalist Michael Fumento pointed out, there is much lying here going on over at Science Blogs, and Tim Lambert's Vendetta/Vengeance.com styled websites. On stem cells, the heavy lifting is done by ASCs (adult stem cells), not the embryonic version that has its tin cup out for federal monies. And the issue of climate change is no more settled than water-witching, now that 100 years of \"climate change\" (the new term that makes sure that no amount of contraindicative evidence can falsify what used to be called \"global warming\") just got nixed with falling temps for the last 10 years of global cooling. Beyond this, and knowing that in the distant past there were times it never snowed even north of the Arctic Circle and by contrast we had ice down to what is now St. Louis--what IS the ideal temperature of the earth, and should be keep it from shifting again? As no doubt it will, carbon variation or not? Research done by Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser indicates that carbon contribution of human beings is too small in the overall workings of the carbon cycle to make any significant contribution to carbon induced warming. But having the sky fall has been a perennial favorite of politicians of all stripes since long before Chicken Little. For a more detailed history on this, I would suggest you read Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns(Jay H. Lehr): A very long book that details not only the myths about climate, asbestos, landfills, dioxin, the Alar flim flam, DDT' untimely demise in saving human life, nuclear energy, and a host of other scares, but also goes over the rather suspect, illogical, and quasi-religious undertones of the modern environmentalist movement and its roots in radicalist ideology and mysticism and statism. Even if you disagree with what you find, you'll come away with a larger perspective on such matters. And that Chris Mooney has some \"learnin'\" to do yet. And that media can and does have bias and complicity in enviro-fads. So, these are policy issue differences. Not science disputes per se. Besides, if Bush was really that ignorant, then he'd not even know how to go about \"suppressing\" certain kinds of scientific not to his liking (RE: ideological, actually) issues in the first place, while keeping the others. Notice that the bruha on \"science\" from Chris Mooney and others is generally about items requiring massive expenditures to fix some hobgoblin that somehow manages to yet again outsource our lives and money to yet another UNELECTED, perpetual crisis-mongering lobby as the solution. Interesting. No one is hitting anyone over the head regarding Boyle's Law. Presumably because this can't be used to justify more tax revenue to government coffers or control people's lives.That's the real animus here, and why it looks contradictory. And everyone knows it. The mudslinging is about ideology--not science. It is about control; of business, of people, of habits, of lifestyles, and some socialist perceptions about our collective resources as a nation. It is about some pet projects not getting funding to whatever level. And all this crap about Europe and Hong Kong and other making the great strides vs. us in science research is bull. Their men of science typically study over here, and admire the open pursuit of science fostered by our more accepting culture. That is the testimony given to me. They know where the studying is most likely to yield results.Example on the alleged \"suppression\": The \"science\" of the AIDS-gripe lobby has no facts behind the notion that monogamous, married people need to hit the sack dripping with nonoxynal-9 and condoms, vs. the reality that rectal thrusting is the proximate vector of transmission. They DO get sympathy and tears and all manner of myth making when it comes to making sure tax dollars flow to African warlords (the usual destination) even as Bush gave 64 BILLION DOLLARS under such nonsensical pressure--only to be slammed for not giving yet more. He can't win. I don't know about you, but 64 billion in my thinking is quite a bit of dough to hand out over a policy that is baloney in the first place only to get nailed for it nonetheless---as uncompassionate. On and on it goes. The stem cell lobby does not like the fact they can't yet force the taxpayer to cough up the dough by legislative fiat, or that others are aware that when it comes to killers of human beings in Africa, the very real but NON-sexy, boring, NON-politicized diseases like dysentery and malaria kill MAGNITUDES more humans than AIDS, so they get mad, chimp out, like PZ Myers' shtick---and start calling names. Then they murmur about \"hate\" and anti-\"science\" types for not holding a certain ideological position when in fact real dangers to the commonweal are far less expensive if our goal is to help people, rather than keep the AIDS lobby in business to legitimize certain dangerous behavior-driven illnesses. Fumento goes on to demonstrate (actually done years ago) that true heterosexual AIDS is about as common as winning the Powerball lottery several times in a row. We know the vector, and how to stanch it. Its not for lack of Trojans at the local curb store, or not teaching 5th graders how to put them on cucumbers. But that's not nice to talk about these days.http://www.fumento.com/suaids.htmlOther examples abound: In the case of stem cells, for example it is myth that the embryonic version is banned. It is not. Only FEDERAL FUNDING is, and even at that only new lines are banned---private donations were never outlawed, nor state funding. It is just that when it comes to budgetary priorities, we see that these studies (contrasted next to ASCs, which can be pulled from tissue without destruction of embryos and are almost as pluripotent in some varieties as ESCs, and can also be custom-designed) show ESCs ineffective. The penchant the media has for telling parts of the whole brings home the reality that agendas are the order of the day, not \"facts\" in an of themselves. Context is such a magical word. As Newsweek's Anna Quindlin admitted, the abortion issue looms in the minds of people here also. As with illegals popping people's heads under the presumption that to make a more noble society you have to crack of few heads once in a while, and prohibit the rights of native born people, (and the analogy to some being akin to making a nice omelet by breaking some eggs), so too here the \"higher\" of halting opposition to abortion is a large measure of support for piercing allegedly lesser forms of human life (human embryos). Of course, for a noble cause like making Michael J. Fox get back to Back to the Future again, or maybe having Al Gore stop talking through his nose. Problem is, so far, ESCs have bombed out. No matter. This advocacy \"softens the blow\" on the \"A-Word\", so to speak. http://www.fumento.com/sustemcell.htmlAs Fumento follows up elsewhere, the real \"War on Science\" (Mooney's phase) comes generally from the Left's determination to revert to a kind of sun worship and primitivism and the advocacy of a cosseted poverty on behalf of Gaia (Mother Earth worship), and is in fact its own form of religion from which we should be shielded. The Left of Mooney's and PZ Myers' stripe is Luddite in orientation; they exhibit a general mistrust of technology the Left is famous for, though their worries have been exploded since the days of Thomas Malthus (Julian Simon, among others). They praise \"all Natural\" this and that (when in fact with Nature, death and horror and misery are just as common as beauty), and have a general disdain for the fact that \"better living through science\" is supposed to HELP humanity (and has). For the Left, \"science\" means creative ways to inact virtual economic serfdom, and a dependency on government and carbon demonization in order to save the beloved cutey-pie polar bear and stink beetles. This quasi-religious worship of non-human animation and even inanimate rock and ice formations is a reversion to a type of primitive animism, and serves primarily politicians and university research grants, but not their citizens who'll pay for all this largesse.Perhaps for his next trick, Chris Mooney can charm his Atlantic Monthly readers by getting his crack team of investigators to proclaim that his version of \"science\" will now squeeze blood from turnips and rocks, spin hay into gold, make Obama walk on water, spray the Palestinians with Peaceout Mist, end foreclosures with the Mortgage-O-Matic Magic Money Printer, and have food stamps supplanted with a fish-and-loaves trick the real Messiah would be proud of. Mooney, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, Stephen Pinker, Tim Lambert, and the others who haunt ScienceBlogs and other Vendetta.com outlets are Leftists, almost to a person. It is highly unlikely these individuals give a piffle about the future of science and science education per se, except as it furthers an agenda about the nature of government and power. They all but admit this. Their goal, and perpetual frustration, is that like all Leftists they see the world as a place that must have absolute equality, nothing left to chance, no disparities, no anomolies in life, no problems, no differences (cultural, economic, meritous, ability or otherwise), no heirarchies, and no capitalist impulses that supposedly create all these alleged problems. To that end, these men have, like the media, their goal of transformation of society in utopia. All else is secondary. They hate modern society, its wealth, its money, its divisions, its inequalities, its uncertainties, etc. The destruction of this one is paramount. This is why you see sympathy from liberals and leftists--indeed, outright admiration--of massive power (other than American) and statism, and dictatorial regimes. The early days of the ACLU and similar organizations saw advocacy of the USSR. Today it is Cuba and the ugly, bootstomping, nanny-state, statist impulses of secular modern Europe. Why should I place trust in detractors like these? Mooney and Lambert and Dawkins and Dennett and that chimpanzee Myers believe fairly much the same in one form or another: Wealth just falls out of the sky and hits some people and not others, like some fortuitous meteor wheeling in from outer space. This is the liberal mentality about wealth. It is stolen, at best, or it just \"happens\", like leaves growing on a tree or low lying areas turning into mudpuddles. We must \"magage\" the mudpuddles and leaves that the gods of nature never saw fit to dole out equally across all racial and gender and ethnic lines. No intelligence or input need apply, because they never did. Their \"science\" advocacy is about agendas and directions. If this intelligentsia/brain trust is on par with Obama's (and it seems to be a mirror reflection at least on ideology), then this does not bode well. Sophistication can often be merely a cover for sheer sophistry. In WWII, the Soviet Army was mocked by Hitler's generals. Indeed, the writings of Soviets on matters of war have been as primitive as their take on economics. But nevertheless these primitives SMASHED the German Wermacht. Tenacity, more than most anything else, is often the key to getting things done. Your suggestion that Palin's problem with the Bush doctrine was that she had too nuanced a view of the terminology strikes me as patently ludicrous.Indeed. I can see why, too: I made no such claim. I did not suggest of imply that Governor Palin had some \u0026quot;nuanced\u0026quot; view of the \u0026quot;Bush Doctrine\u0026quot; that Gibson got away with by merely talking through his media hat. The reason is that no nuance exists. The reason, in turn, for THAT, is that as far as policy there is no doctrine of such, except in the minds of media mythmakers based on a couple of statements by Bush. That\u0026#39;s all. Like MAD, it is myth. It is just a notion, and an ethereal one at that known to talking heads and poly sci wonks. Palin didn\u0026#39;t know for the same reason Charlie Gibson didn\u0026#39;t know either. Neither do the experts. There was little to know. Just because pundits elsewhere yammer about something on cable TV does not give the beast any reality. Except as some ethereal, grandiose claim about security, it is a myth. Gibson had this myth whispered in his ear about some meme that the studio discovered was circulating like chewing gum going from shoe to shoe in some Chatter Class circles with perhaps some input from idiot boxes like Slate Magazine\u0026#39;s Jacob Weisberg. But that does not make it real. It\u0026#39;s just a very generalized NOTION about policy in the 21st century that says--again very generally--that our security depends on the freedom aspirations of others. That\u0026#39;s a swell notion, but hard to encode into any real policy. And hell on earth, that\u0026#39;s only one form of what the experts chatter about. Gibson pulled this off easily not for his erudition, but rather due to few people knowing, investigating, or giving a rat\u0026#39;s rump outside the Chatter Class\u0026#39;s pretensions. If I make up the name of a fictional creature known only to fantasy types who piddle in their parents\u0026#39; basements, it is no real crime that I would not know the name of Lord Yipnarth, the Scion of Darkness, known to gaming boarders only. The so-called experts thought of about 7 or 8 differing formulations on the Bush Doctrine, some of which are contradictory since they didn\u0026#39;t think matters through. A common media myth sign. Some said there are only two. And also as to Gibson and that lovable Eva Braun of America, Katie Couric, you cannot find a more laughable set up. Both of whom claimed they had used Palin\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;exact\u0026quot; quotes on issues like religion--and then it turns out this was far from the case, as with Gibson\u0026#39;s mention of Lincoln praying to God about wisdom during some dark days of the Civil War. On and on it goes. Other tales have her doing everything from sleeping with a friend\u0026#39;s husband to firing people without cause (both untrue), and getting the issue of Vice Presidential power wrong. Turns out she got that one right after all, and a little deeper consultation about that role confirms this. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/opinion/27reynolds.html?_r=3\u0026amp;ei=5070\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=sloginThen there is that crap about Russia being visible from Alaska.On this issue, as with the bruha about the alleged Bush Doctrine, it is noteworthy that Wikipedia got mysteriously edited at the last minute to make sure the \u0026quot;facts\u0026quot; jived more closely with Gibson\u0026#39;s version of the tales of \u0026quot;exact\u0026quot; quotes--of which they were not, of course. Same for Eva Braun\u0026#39;s, err, I mean, Katie Couric\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;exact\u0026quot; quotes.http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/11/just-as-i-kinda-suspected.htmlSome \u0026quot;feminists\u0026quot;, like the hysterical Eve Ensler and the laughable Virginia Wolf, hate Palin because she\u0026#39;s actually dared to reproduce in an age when that\u0026#39;s considered an icky redneck thing to do with one\u0026#39;s uterus, and of course for not supporting abortion on demand every time a teen chick is too chunky to fit into her prom dress. So this is primarily a clash of culture and priorities more than knowledge. It is about belief systems. Motherhood is passé and icky. (Apparently the vagina is to be merely a fleshly amusement park, and not to be considered for making babies). http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/09/whos-afraid-of-naomi-wolf.htmlOther examples Chris Mooney and others like to groan about include abstinence education, and the insistence by some groups on oversexualizing youth and then making sure that the self-fulfilling prophecy that the kids can\u0026#39;t keep their zippers up is made manifest when told that being a Trojan warrior makes the going great with no consequences emotionally or spiritually either, and that your parents are just old fogies. (Apparently today\u0026#39;s teens are so blinkered stupid they know where to buy cigarettes and booze at the local corner pantry store, but are not aware by age 19 that Trojans are also sold there).The point I was making was that this kind of fretting over things the media have set up, and that they themselves (including not a few policy wonks) are not sure about, is an absurdity. Moreover, it is not even on par with their softball, messianic complex questions to Obama, about his laughable \u0026quot;martyrdom\u0026quot; at the hands of increasingly vocal critics. I point out these stark contrasts to demonstrate not only the Death of Journalism in 2008, where enemies of certain ideologies are investigated--but not facts. But rather, to also point out the utter hypocrisy of their tactics and plaintive wails of mistreatment and faux moral outrage. All through the Bush years--from DAY ONE of his presidency on January 20th 2001, the media assailed HIM, conservative talk radio, some magazines, most all pundits on the Right, and others along with the administration on policy issues on.....whatever. \u0026quot;Artists\u0026quot; made movies about killing Bush in those days, and wrote entire novels to that effect. The mockery/hatred didn't pretend to be subtle. At every turn the media myrmidons of the Left accused the troops and the military leadership of murder and virtual Nazism on and off the field. Bush was parodied in every possible manner and some new types as well. Palin and Bush and even the Great Compromiser John McCain who \"reached across the aisles\", were burned and/or hung in effigy. Now that the tables are turned, the major media cry foul. One radio personality--just one--is causing a surrealist firestorm in the Bambi administration. A minority conservative ideology that still has a voice is a voice too loud to some liberals: The Democrats are raising hell with every broadcast of late night radio. It's surrealistic. We're not being \"fair\" to Barry. We're \"mean.\" We're \"not on board\" with the Messiah's Changy-Change mantras, his Maoist praises, or the rapid expansion of government into...well...just about everything. At first this was denied, but in a recent forum from a history prof. writing in Newsweek, we see the proud crowing from a Yale historian about the proximate cause for Obama's ascendancy being the role of government, not Iraq. On the former, the issue with some voters in the aftermath of Katrina and the dependency class fostered there in New Orleans, was the perception among the elites that government is simply too damned SMALL, not too large. So for all his blunders on expansion of government and government spending, the elites and \"sophisticates\" in the media now proudly proclaim the coming age of government after all. It is far less about blunders about Iraq, Joe Wilson's lying pie hole on WMD and Nigerian yellowcake, or volumes of Bushspeak. It is about Bush expanding some areas of government but not--in their own ISM books--not quite enough. This is now admitted by those liberals less shy about their words now that the election is over and Bambi is nationalizing everything just shy of your corner Pantry store. And even that might be on the docket soon. We're said to hope for \"failure\" of the new Prez, when in fact the real context of that statement now making the rounds is that anyone who cares about this nation would more properly be justified in saying they hope for a failure of these new Marxian economics. Not the man as a person. Then as expected, as with Palin's unwarranted rectal probing by the media and the tall tales, we had this new tale of people catcalling to \"kill\" Obama at McCain/Palin rallies. The Secret Service confirms what I had suspected from day one when the story hit the waves--false. So, in an age when the media have as their mission to investigate their perceived enemies--not the facts (ask Joe the Plumber at the hands of the Ohio Secretary of State, an action yet to be punished)--and to send teams of lawyers and talking heads to give Palin's associations virtual rectal exams and spill out all manner of salacious and generally false information while giving Bambi a free ride to his throne, you'll forgive me for having a jaundiced eye about these \"facts\", as concocted. As to leaving the \"economy in shambles\", you can mostly credit the CRA and other loan mills that, under pressure from various heavy hitting con artist agencies like ACORN and left wing ninnies who think home ownership is some kind of \"right\", made sure that the erstwhile hard-nosed banks plopped people in housing both participants in these transactions knew they could NOT afford. It started under Carter, but under Clinton this passion for loosening the rules of mortgages under Fannie Mae was more than just a gentle \"nudge\" or \"handy memo\" \"suggestion\" to the banks. What is that old phase about the nature of the road to Hell and noble intentions? This is all very well documented. It's kinda odd that the same crowd that yells that yard services and golf courses are supposedly to have free reign over hiring practices in the name of \"market forces\" don't see this Econ 101 rule when it comes to housing and other major segments--like health care and banking--of the nation's economy. The ripple effect of this cannot be discounted. I see it everywhere I go in my line of work. Having your brother-in-law help you make payments on occasion, welfare payments, and food stamps, should not qualify at the local bank for the lofty but rather difficult goal of home ownership. Sorry, its not that easy. Rather, it shouldn't be. The economy needs to return to a more hard-nosed way of looking at things if we're to get out of this mess. And leave government intervention behind in the FDR days where it failed us for the first time until WWII came along to actually bail us with higher productivity beyond shoveling dirt from point A to point B----and handing out checks. Bush's compromises certainly made a mockery of free-market ideas. True. For that, his worst legacy other than Illegal Migration, is one of appearances; the irony is that now capitalism is blamed on the sinking morass, and the apparent answer from Bambi is going to be a trickle-upward poverty and government worker expenditures and government job programs, all the while slamming productive people, and proclaiming his corrupt administration of erstwhile jobless hacks and tax cheats is the Change We Need. Cute. And if you're worried about a doubling of the national debt, compared to the current situation, those would be the good old nostalgic days. Ironic, really. These problems are now blamed on \"free markets\" and Bush's alleged connection to such (far from the case, as any real conservative knows that the whole \"Bush\" family name rhymes with \"Squish\", when it comes to conservative economics), all the while it was Democrats who encouraged and goaded most of the very Democrat inspired, government intervention in the housing markets that caused all this. However, now that Obama and his associates, or \"cronies\", as you might say, are garnering most of the benefits of the \"bailout\" or \"stimulus\" money, and the Dow has been hacked in half, it remains to be seen (but one can guess) as to the future of the markets under a neo-socialist thinker. Obama and his \"associates\" may yet make Bernie Madoff look like a Boy Scout.http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo125.htmlhttp://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/echist/eh02/ohanian-021008.pdfhttp://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3357As to the Bill of Rights, I have no idea what you would be talking about regarding Bush. It is the Left that is petering around with the Fairness Doctrine, of rather questionable history and application to modern media and surely outlived its decades old beginnings about \"public ownership\" of airwaves and other nonsense (the reasoning here is even worse, as that issue was about wavelength separation, not first amendment issues), and contra the efforts of Ginsberg and three others, his best legacy is shielding the Second Amendment from big city crappola about public safety meaning private citizens can't own guns. That's the greatest victory for Rights since the Founding. Freeborn people own guns. Slaves and serfs do not. As to the first Amendment, it was not designed by the Founders to create a religion-free zone in public life--just simply not an advocacy of one faith over another. This is confirmed in modern decisions as well as Court historians such as Joseph Story. It is the Democrats--not the Republicans--who own the major media, the courts, the universities, the public schools, most all Hollywood sap tales that praise city workers as \"bold\" gay men for merely having sex with other males, and of course now the other branches of government and most every municipality with tins cups out for more tax money and bailout. The response from Democrats, contra the First Amendment, is to nip the remainder---the internet and talk radio--with some form of heavy regulation. Liberal scholar of some part time variety Carl Sunstein, author of Republic.com frets that too many people are getting info tailor-made from the Net, thus more regulation is in order to control the flow of opinion. Echoing his sentiments is not the unsophisticated Bush. Nay, that would be one high brow charmer named Will Hutton, who boasts that the Europeans know just how to control speech and opinion in THEIR airwaves with the bland phrase called \"Public Interest Criteria\" and other bureaucratic speak. The people are too dangerous, says Hutton, to go with the traditional interpretation of the First Amendment, which for his part he despises and suggests a more, shall we say, \"collective understanding\" of political opinion content. Could have guessed that one from today's \"liberals.\" The so-called \"Fairness Doctrine\", the only demon left to unleash against conservative late talk radio, is now on the burner to be resurrected at some point 50 years after losing its original intent. But liberals are not happy that there is one major holdout to their monopoly. Air America blew its propellers, so libs can't compete in the free market of ideas and must resort to the F.D. and NPR (which would be exempt, as would all other media now controlled by the left). Charming. To the last. As to the war in Iraq, while it was true that Bush had some major bungling of operations, such as the military-recommended dismantling of the Iraqi army (though this idea was the military leaderships, I suppose we can place the final go-ahead at Bush's feet), the war itself is more likely than not to be a general success. If, as you've claimed elsewhere, our goal should be ethics and compassion to the disinherited of the Earth, then in addition to handing all these goodies and medical rescue missions to the world's beleaguered, we might also consider the ideology and governmental structure of some of these places. And make adjustments to that as needed. Liberals get contradictory in saying that Africa needs AIDS money, Darfur needs humanitarian relief from war, and throngs of people elsewhere need food and meds, but we are not to question the type of governments (typically statist or some other authoritarians) that have a large part in this societal rot in the first place. The two ideas feed off one another. Intervention is intervention, and if we're talking ethics of helping others, then using the Marines to kick sand around while ignoring the warlords but handing out sacks of rice with empty rifle cartridges slung on their backs is useless, as is saying that we should feed millions of Mexicans but are not to expect fundamental changes in their arid, socialist economy and so \"business as usual\" with poverty and desperation. If the question is what is the least bloody (for us) kind of operation or \"intervention\", then we'll always be running at the first pinprick, even with historically low albeit tragic deaths of American soldiers in places like Iraq. What is the next threshold for running with tails tucked firmly under the legs? 1000 deaths? 500? 50? 25?The biggest error in Iraq was having Hussein hang around as long as he did, and paying far too much attention in Gulf I to our idiot allies' demands that he stay in power and the mandate should stop thusly at the gates of Baghdad. Bad move. Clinton and Bush followed up to the massacre of the Kurd by Hussein by some rather ineffective flyovers and bombing hits every other week, during which \"containment\" time the Left complained that millions of Iraqis were perishing to hunger. In reality, the Oil for Food scam did most of this damage. But no matter, as soon as Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the Left figured out that \"containment\" was a holy, blessed event after all. Again, an elastic agenda bubbles forth to smirk at us. The reality is that containment, like \"balance of power\" is something that many political scientists like myself know to be another one of those highly overvalued commodities that mean little in reality. \"Containment\" is really just a spineless way of saying you're in a Mexican standoff and hope nobody makes a brash move. It is an expensive dictator management program, and not just in dollars, but in human lives. Just ask the citizens of Eastern Europe, pacified and imprisoned by communism's \"containment\" for half a century in the name of \"peace\" and \"stability.\" When in reality no such animal was materialized. Just a slower spiritual death of a people.The Bush administration rightly considered the issue of terror, WMD, and Iraq's grotesque abuse of human rights (real one's--not the rectal pump ethics of Richard Dawkins and pals) to be linked. This is one sandwich. Others knew this as well. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/zawahiri-zarqawi-letter_9jul2005.htm Leftist Christopher Hitchens, to his credit, also recognized these nefarious Sadammic connections to terror and quelled the myth that all was loving and lovely and peaceful and terror/conflict free in the good old days of Hussein's gentle, flower-strewn rule.While it turned out Hussein did not have WMD to any real degree after all, the Duelfer Report, which was the final word on the issue and exhaustively researched, said he DID want to have them BACK once the cat and mouse games with the UN inspectors was done and gone. Not good. And while there was never any evidence that Iraq was connected directly with 911, Hussein did have working relationships with numerous terror organizations like Hamas, and was involved in the gut-splat self-detonation techniques used frequently against allies like Israel. That is fact, not conjecture. Bush never claimed Iraq had anything to do with 911, as is yet another common high-cotton mythology generated by sophisticates like Dan Rather (who got burned on another issue, come to think of it), but that Hussein had too cozy a relationship with terrorists generally in the region, and that his removal for a number of reasons would bring some semblance of stability and economic order to the region. Other non-ignorant media stars: Joe Wilson turned out to be a contemptible liar on the issue of Nigerian uranium. The British government's Intel agencies know to this day that Saddam wanted to obtain such material's for exploration of nuclear weapons. Much as Iran is now. Bush never said, as Wilson claimed in an adulating Vanity Fair write-up along side his secret cloak and dagger wife, Valerie Plame (whose not-so-secret code name, despite the liars about her outing, was.....\"Valerie Plame\"), that Hussein HAD yellowcake. Only that he SOUGHT it at one point. Elsewhere many agencies around the world at the time, including Hans Blix, the UN, the Israeli Mossad, the Russians, and dozens of other agencies and governments, thought Hussein had access to WMD. Bush's team made an error in this calculation. But he was not lying. This has been confirmed also by non-partisan investigation teams like Factcheck.org. Those on the Paleo Right, like Pat Buchanan, and the Neo-Isolationist Left who pretend to be \"internationalist\" because they advocate UN sanction for all actions, might both want to reconsider the wisdom of proclaiming that we need only defend our borders with a mulish stubbornness to see beyond even that. In fact, as you well know, we lack the political courage to defend our own borders. So the \"non-interventionist\" crowds of both Right and Left converge against the common sense realities of the modern era. They call themselves the \"RealPolitick\" crowd. But they might want to get \"real.\" You can't say on the one hand it's OK to send money to African warlords to continue torment of their own people while calling this \"AIDS\" money (or just \"aid\" money), but disdain the need to intervene when the planet begins to fall to pieces on numerous fronts; the Left, the Old Right, the libertarian nutcases like Ron Paul, all giving us a new version of isolationism with a sappy face, called \"sophistication\" and \"compromise\" on issues like the Hamas intent of ridding the planet of Jews and terrorists nipping heads, need to understand that its not a good show to think the rest of the world can go to hell and we'll be OK on the home front so long as we just adjust the tax tables and have \"free\" healthcare. We'll supposedly limp on as a lonely candle of freedom in a darkening world that gets darker by the month in the new Dark Ages. Let's see here. A totalitarian China, a demographically crumbling Russia, an crapped out Middle East where nukes and nuts are snickering at Obama and planning to send the Jews into the sea, a disease-ridden Africa, a civil war torn Europe of tomorrow? Dream on, Peaceniks and do-gooders who claim to love humanity. On this, Bush's legacy is at least one where it is recognized that we can't wait for a complete spinout to take action. The Iraqi people will be better off for our efforts, and not those of Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore. Even if Iraq must eventually be divided into several zones. In any event, perhaps worse than even the Obama neo-Maoist children's choirs sprouting up singing the paeans to the Dear Leader, when it comes to the sheer advocacy of \"ignorance\" as blissful Hopey Changmass style and panache, I can see your claim and raise you one:http://www.howobamagotelected.comI have to give Obama credit for throwing people off the ballot in Chicago, and learning what the media likes to see and report. It was an unprecedented ugly move to toss three people off, but he's clever in that regard. He's been a gunslinger fast on the draw. True enough. Now, if you truly care to see the face of ignorance, just find a car that has one of those Obama stickers on the back of some wretched Volkswagen or Volvo or other Changemobiles zooming through stop signs and red lights and delivering the finger to anyone who honks at them or screeches out of the way. For that matter, just hang up posters of race-baiters Joseph Lowry and Eric Holder, nutcases like Andrea Dworkin, Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney, expert climatologists Paul Begala, Albert Gore Jr., James Carville, neo-Trotskyist Paul Krugman (though in his case he might just be a good liar on economics), legal experts Patrick Leahy and Joe Biden, giggle box Rachel Maddow, the affable quote manufacturers Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, NPR's multiculturalist anchorette, Renee Montagne, Jocelyn Elders, or Barbara Boxer--or beloved Cindy Sheehan. The last three faces certainly no strangers to confusion. Not to mention Barbara Eirenreich and Gloria Steinem. (The last of whom discovered that women might need bicycles as much as fish do after all--after she got hitched up after long denouncing marriage as \"mating in captivity.\")For sheer stupidity in the black-tie cocktail attire, I could always mention the academic scribblers who plague the universities with advocacy of the virtual destruction of Israel and our economy and replacing petroleum with chicken manure and windmills but naysaying the best de-carbonizer, nuclear power. Bambi hasn't mentioned it either, come to think of it. Madalene Albright also went to the hoity-toity schools for smart girls and helped oversee the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Africans and other suave adventures in running from terror lords and tribal warriors. Perhaps you'd enjoy the precious insights of high-cotton warriors like Robert McNamara: Mastermind of the Vietnam war. With a multicultural, well-heeled, decidedly non-Palinesque IQ allegedly high enough to boil water for tea, and carrying himself with far more style and panache than the man he worked for at first (LBJ), this warrior of book tours and the martyrdom of the cocktail party circuit. He helped engineer a ground war in the damned jungle with little military direction or sustainable goals for freedom for the South Vietnamese and made sure we fought under constraints that assured 50,000 young men died for literally no reason. 30 years later he pens a book declaring his suspicion it (the war) was all for naught after all. Beautiful. Atta Boy, Bobby Mac. Compared to Palin, I hear he DOES gave one hell of a toast. **tink tink tink** Here here.Keep in mind that sophistication has not always been a positive word. It comes from the Greek word for chicanery and specious arguments designed to make short quips that shut out all other inquiry. That fits today's political and intellectual climate to a tee. For more on this, you might consult Peter Shaw's The War Against the Intellect, along with Allen Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, both of which describe the academic rot and demotion of human values and the rusting of erstwhile standards and culture that used to define American culture.My larger point about Palin, for her end of things, is that she has a cultural confidence that is far more important than \"community organizer\" horsecrap (and the crap from the Glurge Gallery above) for what will no doubt be a darker and uglier world. One where the sappy-faced nothingness of multi-culti and PCism is no match for Islam's numerous challenges. Bambi is not up to it, but then, few are. A culture that is secularist is not actually even a real culture. Just an amusement park of fleshly and temporal delights that specializes in using government to make assertions about sex and fun time at the beach and endless amusements to oblivion. Like modern Europe. The ultimate in adolescent fantasy. The government hands you goodies, watches the kids, tells you how to raise your rugrats, takes care of gramps and grandma so you can work 28 hours a week and take 8 weeks of paid vacation on year one of your first job, but gives the \"freedom\" to bob your head up and down like a teenaged girl with an Ipod stapled to your ear. 10,000 choices on music. Few on the core responsibilities of life. Not good enough. There IS some fraying on the edges in the modern secular state, and not just in the department of low birth rates needing massive immigration to sustain the bustling old folks homes in contrast to the dearth of babies in maternity wards who could be future taxpayers. More seriously, this is seen in the fact that hundreds of young men with pasty white faces in places like Limerick and London and Paris and Antwerp are turning to Islam yearly for more \"meat\" in their lives than the vapid nothingness offered by secularism. Secularism is just a happy faced lollipop on a government-sponsored stick. As the churches empty and the atheists pump their fists and say hurrah, they might keep in mind that the mosques are beginning to fill up, ever so slowly, like a garden hose hung over the side of a large pool. The water level shift is imperceptible to most, but rise the water will. The reason is simple: Secularism is a \"culture\" that has no moorings or meaning, and thus is a \"culture\" that has no faith in itself. How can it? And there is no market for a culture that has no faith in itself. That ready-made market is at the local mosque, however many more hundreds will be built in Europe by next summer. It is counteracted by its own pieties about mutli-culti and PCness telling us that all cultures are equal. But how could this be? To be sure, the candy asses in the Republican party and their golf pals hanging out coddling drinks while asking about the par 3 problems at Hole 15 won't do the trick either. Now, Palin certainly would not have their style and panache in the club house. No question she can't sparkle like a trophy wife. And she's probably not as familiar with Beltway types on some terminology. Why would she? But she has sources of pride far removed from dripping with emeralds and giving great toasts. Alaskans pride themselves on a life based on freedom. They don't typically conspire to control the lives and economics of whole nations. Palin lives a life outside of the creepy interactions of politics and the demiurge to control other people, and is willing to have Hamas, the sons of Allah, Sharia Law, the headnippers, Handgun control, Inc, and socialist muck and mire and multi-culti nonsense in the schools blown to oblivion, both figuratively and/or literally as needed, in order to save America. That's a good start. Nor did she have to consult Couric or Gibson's mythology, or phony \"exact quote\" quotes to come up with this. As Mark Steyn has written, contra what you thought you learned from Katrina, it is BIG GOVERNMENT--not limited government--that the Founders knew would be the enemy of freedom in the future. In fact it is said that Big Government, like terror, is actually a security threat. It saps will and initiative of the common person when government mandates, adjudicates, and micromanages all areas of life. People like Sarah Palin instinctively understand this, while others wring their hands as to why the sons of Allah keep trying to nip heads and push planes through windows, nor matter how much we accommodate and apologize for our very existence. Oh yeah--and she would at least know enough in her Snobilly ignorance to not diss the leader of America's closet ally, Great Britain. Icons of western political saavy, like Winston Churchill's bust, would get to stay.It was big government that failed us on 9/11. All the rules were followed the walls of separation between agencies to assure the rights of those investigated were held high and proud even as Islamists ended up abusing the visa schedule and crashed through windows. The airlines safety protocols were the epitome of this. The modern jet under FAA guidelines is the microcosm of big nanny government, gone airborne, making your decisions for you: Sit down, shut up, no guns, no smoking, be still, stay in your seat--and yet under those same rules, box cutters managed to sneak through the dragnet anyhow. It was private citizens taking action after defenseless pilots got their throats slashed, who downed Flight 93. Everyone on board died, yes, but the plane did not wreak the intended Jihad of hitting another target in DC. That speaks for something about the assertion of individual rights. Governor Palin, more than the cocktail circuit set, or Sean Penn's whine at another Hollywood backslap session, or PZ Myers' chimp-out sessions, and the people who post their snarlings to his site, is far ahead of the game here. But this is the legacy of the New Left's ascension to power. No doubt Bush was rightfully targeted on some issues and was contradictory about ideology. We all know that. But Palin, as surely you know, was targeted for being a very real threat to the plans of people who lack an individualist spirit and worship government power. Virile, sexual, attractive, confident, still sleeping with her husband, and not looking like some vicious harpie from N.O.W., living the 2nd Amendment rather than just jawboning about endless theoretical constructs, and the fact that she was a successful businesswoman and governor with a high approval rating from a relatively conservative state? Thus, she is an irritant to many women who lack self-confidence and power but jabber about such things. She lived success. And still does. There is your answer to the media's insistence on destroying her while greasing the racetrack for the beloved neo-Marxian Bambi. Like El Presedente' Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Latin version of Obama, the American media and \"academic\" community are standard setters of using themselves as attack lap dogs--as with the incessant smearing of Palin--to destroy political enemies. Thus the almost other-worldly attack by Obama and his media warriors against radio personalities and the proposed legislation to end what is left of that medium. The trend is to continue.\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nI'm not sure this is worth my time to read, let alone respond to. Skimming it I saw a comment about how Valerie Plame's secret code name was Valerie Plame, a point which fails to comprehend how the CIA operates. Plame was a covert agent for the CIA when she was outed in 2003, and had previously traveled under aliases and under her real name with both official and non-official cover. It's common for CIA covert agents to use their real names, but use cover such as an appointment in the State Department or in a private company.You say it's the Democrats, not the Republicans, who own the major media. I'll give you Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom, even though he supported George W. Bush in 2004, but apparently you've forgotten about Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. The CEOs of Disney and Time Warner seem to give money to whichever political party is in power (or most likely to be in power).You claim CRA is responsible for the economy being in shambles, but omit the role of credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations--CRA loans were only a very tiny percentage of the subprime and Alt-A loans going bad. While I don't dispute that the Clinton-era changes to the CRA may have had an impact, the financial instruments that created the leverage, the Fed rate being held low for too long, and the excess capital seeking return were what inflated the bubble.Alaskans may pride themselves on freedom, but they are also federal welfare pigs in a state that has opposed justice for William Osborne in a way that should be criminal.You continue to go on about Obama and big government. Even though I preferred Obama to McCain, I'm no advocate of big government. See my review of Randy Barnett's Restoring the Lost Constitution, for example.Regarding bumper stickers, anyone with more than three bumper stickers on the back of their car is probably a loony, regardless of what the stickers say.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-03-11):\nBy no means will I tell you what is worth YOUR time. No doubt most posters don't get into it with you. That's fine too. I'm not trying to be difficult or acrimonious, but since this weighs on interests of mine, I chipped in where I could. Which is not often. So feel honored compared to most bloggers. Right? Despite our profound disagreements, yours is a higher level of thinking things through than about 98 percent.____________________________Yes, it is common for some names to be \"hiding\" in plain site. But is was a Democrat operative, not Karl Rove or some other negarious cloak, who outed Plame.Joe Wilson was a Waler Mitty fantasist who in point of fact got his facts wrong. I don't even know where to start except to give a precis on this: Wilson was a low level wonk who got the job at the behest of his wife, his info was contradicted by Brit Intel, and as far as anyone can tell, it was Richard Armitage who \"outed\" the low level, but admittedly rather striking Plame. He is wrong for the issue at hand, and wrong that the main impetus for the war was claims about uranium. Like even the anti-war libertarian economist and historian Thomas DiLorenzo has commented, it is very common that wars are always complex events, and to say that this one did not have numerous layers of its own complexity is beyond the pale or reason. I'm NOT going to get into the history of all this about Iraq. For this kind of trouble would have been absurd. Wilson did most of his own discrediting himself, as Factcheck.org, among other sites, attests to.You can find hypocrisy in Alaskans just as the other 49 states, I'm sure. I doubt Simon-purity can even be found in today's politics.AS far as the banks, that issue was fairly well summed up by Manikow and many others. The banks will always get their dough. Else they won't be banks but charitable trusts that hand out money. The deregulation bugbear du jour is a side issue. I'll stop with the references, but suffice it to say that creative financing is what you can expect when food stamps and your brother in law's job count as \"income\" for collateral. The banks, like all of us, deal with unfunded mandates to the degree they can. As Mankow pointed out, at some point the chickens come home....Some, like the aforementioned Steve Kangas and others, go on and on about media ownership. But ownership is not always about the talking heads. Most people could not tell you the names you just mentioned. I know them, yes. But the public face is more often Rachel Maddow than some sultan who works the crowd along with the stock market. It's the message, not the medium. This is why what cannot be controlled makes some Democrats very nervous. Seems counterintuitive, yes. But business is just business. One guessed that's why Columbia Farms disdains the workers who will kill chickens for 8 bucks an hour (country boys from town with names like Elgin) for the workers who're not even supposed to be in town. Which is exactly why ideologically many outlets are in trouble. They will have a hard core cadre of lookers who giggle at what amuses them while the rest of the populace eventually moves on. As you mentioned yourself, its about power.Not good. It should be about honest investigations. Not power brokerage to curry favor with Mr. Whomever.\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nAbstinence education doesn't result in abstinence, it results in a slight deferral of first sexual activity AND an increase in STDs and unwanted pregnancies. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do.If you think Wikipedia got \"mysteriously edited,\" point out the identity or IP address of the mysterious editor.You write: \"As to jobs and those \"inherited\" not being \"real\"?\"You are the one who introduced talk of \"real\" jobs, accusing Obama of never having had one, to which I responded that Bush had his jobs handed to him rather than earning them through his own efforts. You responded that \"Bush has at least held down real occupations,\" to which I responded by asking you a question which you haven't answered: \"Name one that he has 'held down' by demonstrating success or business acumen.\"Why do you refer to Obama as \"Bambi\"? It doesn't seem to add any credence or persuasiveness to your argument--on the contrary, it makes you sound like a kook.\nKtisophilos (2009-04-07):\nYeah, how silly, Palin thinking that Austrians spoke Austrian. … Oh wait, this was the Hopechanger-In-Chief, He Who Can Do No Wrong: “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian”.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-09):\nWhy do you refer to Obama as \u0026quot;Bambi \u0026hellip;because his child-like innocence at how the world actually operates is about on par with that Disney character.\nI though it a better fit at the moment. More so now.\nAs to abstinence education, that is debatable and depends on the exact methodology of what is being offered and how the material is taught.\nIt's like saying that a study of Emerson is not worthy for mention in a poetry class and no one gets much from it, only to discover the course syllubus gleans over all his material and just has the students draw a cartoon or some such.\nWhatever the case, it is hard to fathom that anything done, unfortunately, in the public schools is of much value despite however earnestly taught.\nYou wanted links, so at the end of this one you'll find some studies regarding abstinence and its effectiveness, etc.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nhttp://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/05/pelvic-privacy-as-public-policy.html No-not to plug my own site, but at the end of this article are some stats on the differing methodologies of abstinence education.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-07-15):\nI searched out the Wikipedia issue and discovered that people can hide their IP addresses, unless perhaps by \u0026quot;point out\u0026quot; them I could somehow get Wiki site workers to hand these over, which is unlikely. In any case, regarding Obama and Bush, while it's true Bush is the scion of privledge in his own way, whereas Obama's situation is to have had the skids greased for him all his life and having never heard the magical word \u0026quot;no\u0026quot;, I'd say that at least Bush has ATTENDED the running of business.\nHowz that? That counts for more than is given credit. I've failed in things like sales and keying crap into computers for an insurance company. But the current gig is doing well, and the business acumen gained if for the price of experience alone is more than acknowledged.\nLippard (2009-07-15):\nWakefield: Wikipedia retains a history of all edits to all pages. In that history, for each edit, there is either a Wikipedia user ID or, if the edit was performed anonymously, an IP address. That information is publicly available.\nIf the editing is done with a user ID, the IP address is not publicly available (though Wikipedia has that information for itself).\nIt is possible to use proxies as a way of hiding oneself, in which case the IP address that Wikipedia sees is the IP address of the proxy rather than the ultimate source IP.\nBut in any case, the information I was after was a reference to the \u0026quot;mysterious edits\u0026quot; in question, which should be present in the Wikipedia history. Then the proximate IP address or Wikipedia user name would be available, associated with that edit in the history.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/bush-and-palin-anti-intellectualism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/10/03/debate/\"\u003eon Palin\u0026rsquo;s performance in the VP debate\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePalin was rambling, didn’t answer the questions she was asked, and the folksy stuff felt contrived. I suppose Palin did okay in that she didn’t come off like the train wreck she was in her Katie Couric interview, but Jesus, is that the standard? Is the bar that low for vice president of the United States? That seems to be the way the conventional wisdom is playing out. Oddly, the Couric interview may have actually helped her, then.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003ePalin seems to have crammed just enough so she could toss out key phrases here and there to give the veneer that she’s informed. But it’s pretty clear she was in way over her head for most of the debate. Pick her apart with follow-up questions, as Couric and Gibson did, and she falls to pieces.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush and Palin anti-intellectualism"},{"content":"Mexico\u0026rsquo;s President Felipe Calderon has sent a proposal to Congress to decriminalize possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, opium, and marijuana for personal use. This is similar to a proposal that actually passed Congress in 2006 which then-president Vicente Fox said he would sign, but then backed down from after pressure from the United States.\nThe purpose is to free up police and court resources to go after the major drug gangs, which it would certainly do.\nHistorical Comments Michael C. Rush (2008-10-03):\nNot to mention, I would imagine, being a huge boon for tourism (Mexico being a lot closer to the U.S. than the Netherlands).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/mexico-to-try-again-to-decriminalize.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMexico\u0026rsquo;s President Felipe Calderon has \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081002/wl_nm/us_mexico_drugs_1\"\u003esent a proposal to Congress to decriminalize possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, opium, and marijuana for personal use\u003c/a\u003e.  This is similar to \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/mexicos-congress-passes-bill-to.html\"\u003ea proposal that actually passed Congress in 2006\u003c/a\u003e which then-president Vicente Fox said he would sign, but then backed down from after pressure from the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe purpose is to free up police and court resources to go after the major drug gangs, which it would certainly do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mexico to try again to decriminalize drug possession"},{"content":"The New York Times, September 11, 2003:\n\"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'\" said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. \"The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.\" The Washington Post, November 7, 2003:\nRep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said the administration's position is driven by concerns about the financial safety and soundness of the companies \"to the exclusion of concern about housing.\" Committee members were ready to support legislation that would give the Treasury Department oversight of Fannie and Freddie, as the administration has sought, Frank said, not power over the companies' housing activities, which are regulated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Now he seems to have forgotten what he said back then, and the fact that he was encouraging the moral hazard created by the GSEs encouraging and buying up bad loans.\nUPDATE: A friend points out this post at the Big Picture blog by Barry Ritholtz arguing that the Community Reinvestment Act and GSEs had nothing to do with the housing bubble. While I think Ritholtz makes some excellent points that demonstrate there were other factors, he doesn't really address the GSE moral hazard issue and he makes this statement that seems to me to offer a striking disconnect from reality:\n\"The four biggest problem areas for housing (by price decreases) are: Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida, and San Diego, California. Explain exactly how these affluent, non-minority regions were impacted by the Community Reinvestment Act ?\" All of those cities have very large non-affluent minority populations. I'm most familiar with Phoenix, where the housing bubble was marked by expansion of housing into South Phoenix (where I live), Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek, Surprise, and other outlying areas around Phoenix which have very large Hispanic populations. Also see my comment below about mortgage broker telemarketing targeting low-income areas of town with minority majorities.\nHe wants to place the blame on deregulation, but if you need to find a single cause, I think the Fed keeping interest rates too low is a better root cause. My own experience regarding telemarketing showed that there existed regulations that could have been applied to the sleazy telemarketers that simply weren't being enforced. When you have an enforcement problem, all the regulations in the world won't help, in fact adding more regulations is likely to increase the severity of your enforcement problem.\nUPDATE (November 21, 2011): Barry Ritholtz argues persuasively that the Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with the housing bubble.\u0026nbsp; He also downplays the role for the GSEs, though I think they had a contributory role (which is also what the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded) to play in increasing the size of the bubble--they purchased half of the U.S. mortgage market by 2008, $5.1T in loans, including $90B-$175B/year in subprime and Alt-A between 2002 and 2006.\u0026nbsp; But the above analysis overlooks other important factors including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 2004 SEC decision to reduce capitalization requirements on investment banks, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which allowed credit default swaps with little regulatory oversight, and inaccurate credit ratings from the Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations.\u0026nbsp; Wikipedia's entry on \"Subprime mortgage crisis\" has a good referenced list. cowmix (2008-10-01):\nJim.. This thread on ask.metafilter.com (which I started) is sort of on topic to your post here..http://ask.metafilter.com/103119/Did-FannieFreddie-cause-this-mess\nLippard (2008-10-01):\nI agree with \"themel.\" It's a mistake to put all the blame on the GSEs, and it's a mistake to absolve them of any blame.There was a lot of mortgage fraud on the part of mortgage brokers--these are the same people who I was suing for illegal prerecord telemarketing calls in 2003, total scumbags with no regard for any law, who were deceiving people into taking out loans they couldn't afford just to keep the fees and commissions rolling in. There were also people taking out loans who were committing fraud, there were banks creating fraudulent investment products out of securitized mortgages, the ratings agencies were complicit by giving out high ratings to that toxic garbage while accepting money from the banks they were giving the ratings to, and the GSEs were happily buying up the garbage as well.The reason that Paul LaChance of Millennium Mortgage Group in Tempe was running an autodialer and calling people like me in 2003 (while also doing things like withholding employee payroll taxes yet not paying the IRS, and taking customers from his former employer NovaStar Mortgage, and getting sued all over the place) is that he was able to make a lot of money at it by immediately being able to resell all of those mortgages to a larger company/bigger fool, ultimately up to the GSEs, who were the penultimate fools in the chain. (The ultimate fools have now been demonstrated to be the U.S. taxpayers.)\nLippard (2008-10-01):\nI should add that the Arizona regulators were completely useless--I reported the mortgage fraud I came across in my telemarketing lawsuits to the Arizona Department of Banking, that was responsible for regulating mortgage brokers, and they refused to do anything even when I pointed out the specific banking regulations and statutes being violated.\nLippard (2008-10-01):\nOne more point relevant to the CRA--I believe I got a lot more mortgage prerecords than anyone else I know because I live in South Phoenix. I think the unscrupulous brokers were specifically targeting low income people in South Phoenix, and sought leads by robo-calling every prefix in the area. When I sued LaChance, I ended up talking to some other people who were also suing him. A former employee of his told me about another lawsuit by a Hispanic couple who spoke virtually no English, who got put into a bad mortgage and claimed to have been defrauded. That's only a single example, but my suspicion is that Hispanics in South Phoenix were targeted by sleazy mortgage brokers.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-01):\nBut are the media holding the likes of Frank responsible for protecting Fannie and Freddie?\nKtisophilos (2008-10-02):\n\"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.\" — Bill Clinton, Good Morning America, ABC, 25 September 2008.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/barney-frank-and-financial-crisis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63\u0026amp;sec=\u0026amp;spon=\u0026amp;pagewanted=all\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e, September 11, 2003\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'\" said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. \"The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.\"\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail/?display=discussion\u0026amp;code=cotn%3AFNM\u0026amp;it=ye\u0026amp;action=detail\u0026amp;id=2395631\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c/span\u003e, November 7, 2003\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nRep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said the administration's position is driven by concerns about the financial safety and soundness of the companies \"to the exclusion of concern about housing.\" Committee members were ready to support legislation that would give the Treasury Department oversight of Fannie and Freddie, as the administration has sought, Frank said, not power over the companies' housing activities, which are regulated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. \u003c/blockquote\u003e\nNow he seems to have forgotten what he said back then, and the fact that he was encouraging the moral hazard created by the GSEs encouraging and buying up bad loans.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  A friend points out \u003ca href=\"http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/misunderstandin.html\"\u003ethis post at the Big Picture blog\u003c/a\u003e by Barry Ritholtz arguing that the Community Reinvestment Act and GSEs had nothing to do with the housing bubble.  While I think Ritholtz makes some excellent points that demonstrate there were other factors, he doesn't really address the GSE moral hazard issue and he makes this statement that seems to me to offer a striking disconnect from reality:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\"\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eThe four biggest problem areas for \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e housing \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e(by price decreases) are: Phoenix, \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eArizona; \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eLas Vegas, Nevada; \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eMiami, Florida, and San Diego, \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eCalifornia\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e. Explain exactly how these affluent, non-minority regions\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e were impacted by the Community Reinvestment Act ?\"  All of those cities have very large non-affluent minority populations.  I'm most familiar with Phoenix, where the housing bubble was marked by expansion of housing into South Phoenix (where I live), Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek, Surprise, and other outlying areas around Phoenix which have very large Hispanic populations.  Also see my comment below about mortgage broker telemarketing targeting low-income areas of town with minority majorities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe wants to place the blame on deregulation, but if you need to find a single cause, I think the Fed keeping interest rates too low is a better root cause.  My own experience regarding telemarketing showed that there existed regulations that could have been applied to the sleazy telemarketers that simply weren't being enforced.  When you have an enforcement problem, all the regulations in the world won't help, in fact adding more regulations is likely to increase the severity of your enforcement problem.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: black;\"\u003eUPDATE (November 21, 2011): Barry Ritholtz \u003ca href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/dissecting-the-big-lie-about-the-economic-crisis/\"\u003eargues persuasively that the Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with the housing bubble\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp; He also downplays the role for the GSEs, though I think they had a contributory role (which is also what the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded) to play in increasing the size of the bubble--\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"zj\"\u003ethey purchased half of the U.S. mortgage market by \n2008, $5.1T in loans, including $90B-$175B/year in subprime and Alt-A \nbetween 2002 and 2006.\u0026nbsp; But the above analysis overlooks other important factors including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 2004 SEC decision to reduce capitalization requirements on investment banks, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which allowed credit default swaps with little regulatory oversight, and inaccurate credit ratings from the Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations.\u0026nbsp; Wikipedia's entry on \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis\"\u003e\"Subprime mortgage crisis\"\u003c/a\u003e has a good referenced list.\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ecowmix\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-10-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eJim.. This thread on ask.metafilter.com (which I started) is sort of on topic to your post here..\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://ask.metafilter.com/103119/Did-FannieFreddie-cause-this-mess\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Barney Frank and the financial crisis"},{"content":"If Einzige and I were not going to be in Pasadena for the Skeptics Society conference, we would be attending the CD release show for FutureKind\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Surround,\u0026rdquo; Friday, October 3 at the Last Exit Bar and Grill, 1425 W. Southern Ave., Tempe, AZ 85282. There\u0026rsquo;s a $5 cover charge and it\u0026rsquo;s a 21 and over show, and other bands performing are DJ Seduce, Human Mirror, Talk Fiction, and Random Karma.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s FutureKind\u0026rsquo;s video for their song \u0026ldquo;Hideaway,\u0026rdquo; the first song on the new CD:\nUPDATE (October 6, 2008): The show apparently went well, and I agree with the New Times reviewer that Thalia\u0026rsquo;s singing is sometimes reminiscent of Björk.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/10/futurekind-cd-release-show.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf Einzige and I were not going to be in Pasadena for the Skeptics Society conference, we would be attending the CD release show for \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/futurekind\"\u003eFutureKind\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Surround,\u0026rdquo; Friday, October 3 at the Last Exit Bar and Grill, 1425 W. Southern Ave., Tempe, AZ 85282.  There\u0026rsquo;s a $5 cover charge and it\u0026rsquo;s a 21 and over show, and other bands performing are DJ Seduce, Human Mirror, Talk Fiction, and Random Karma.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s FutureKind\u0026rsquo;s video for their song \u0026ldquo;Hideaway,\u0026rdquo; the first song on the new CD:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0753014266419984 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03962097009023525 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03962097009023525 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03962097009023525 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-03962097009023525 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/8CuO_FAYQRA\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 6, 2008): The show apparently went well, and I agree with \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2008/10/futurekind_at_last_exit.php\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e reviewer that Thalia\u0026rsquo;s singing is sometimes reminiscent of Björk.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FutureKind CD release show"},{"content":"Dustin Chalker, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas, has filed a lawsuit about being forced to attend Christian proselytization events in the military, including a presentation which claimed that Christianity and creationism give life meaning, while evolution and atheism remove hope. The complaint describes this event, which took place at a U.S. military base in England, delivered by Chaplain Christian Biscotti (!) and was approved by Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop (!) who spoke afterward:\nAnother slide titled \u0026ldquo;Contrasting Theories of Hope, Ultimate Theories Explaining Our Existence,\u0026rdquo; has two columns, the first titled \u0026ldquo;Chance,\u0026rdquo; and the second \u0026ldquo;Design,\u0026rdquo; comparing Charles Darwin, creationism, and religion are also part of a chart comparing the former Soviet Union to the United States, concluding that \u0026ldquo;Naturalism/Evolution/Atheism\u0026rdquo; leads to people being \u0026ldquo;in bondage\u0026rdquo; and having \u0026ldquo;no hope,\u0026rdquo; while theism leads to \u0026ldquo;People of Freedom\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;People of hope/destiny.\u0026rdquo; After several more slides like these, the presentation continues with a slide titled \u0026ldquo;Christian\u0026rsquo;s Message,\u0026rdquo; and a slide with an image of a man looking upwards with his hands outstretched and the caption \u0026ldquo;Please open up both of your hands to receive this powerful tool.\u0026quot;This lawsuit, like that of Jeremy Hall, was filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.\nChaplain Biscotti is a real person, currently stationed at the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nUPDATE (October 18, 2008): Jeremy Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he\u0026rsquo;s out. Chalker\u0026rsquo;s case continues.\nUPDATE (January 7, 2009): Chalker\u0026rsquo;s suit has been updated and expanded to add further examples of \u0026ldquo;the noxiously unconstitutional pattern and practice of fundamentalist\nChristian oppression\u0026rdquo; in the military, including the Air Force sponsoring \u0026ldquo;Team Faith\u0026rdquo; motocross stunt shows, promoting attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to Christianity, and the Army\u0026rsquo;s 2008 manual on suicide prevention, which promotes \u0026ldquo;religiosity\u0026rdquo; as a necessary component.\nHistorical Comments Joe McCaffrey (2008-09-29):\nThings haven't changed. I was in the US Army in the 1960s and wanted to get Atheist on my dog tags. I was told it was either Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or No Preference. I said I had a preference, and that was Atheist. No luck. They put No Preference, which I figured was harmless. Then my company commander, apparently Italian-American from his name, called me into the orderly room and reamed me out for my rejection of Catholicism. He told me I had no future in the army as an Atheist. So I didn't reenlist, and took my GI Bill and got an Ivy League education, thank you very much.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/another-military-religious-freedom-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDustin Chalker, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas, has filed a lawsuit about being forced to attend Christian proselytization events in the military, including a presentation which claimed that Christianity and creationism give life meaning, while evolution and atheism remove hope.  The complaint describes this event, which took place at a U.S. military base in England, delivered by Chaplain Christian Biscotti (!) and was approved by Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop (!) who spoke afterward:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnother slide titled \u0026ldquo;Contrasting Theories of Hope, Ultimate Theories Explaining Our Existence,\u0026rdquo; has two columns, the first titled \u0026ldquo;Chance,\u0026rdquo; and the second \u0026ldquo;Design,\u0026rdquo; comparing Charles Darwin, creationism, and religion are also part of a chart comparing the former Soviet Union to the United States, concluding that \u0026ldquo;Naturalism/Evolution/Atheism\u0026rdquo; leads to people being \u0026ldquo;in bondage\u0026rdquo; and having \u0026ldquo;no hope,\u0026rdquo; while theism leads to \u0026ldquo;People of Freedom\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;People of hope/destiny.\u0026rdquo; After several more slides like these, the presentation continues with a slide titled \u0026ldquo;Christian\u0026rsquo;s Message,\u0026rdquo; and a slide with an image of a man looking upwards with his hands outstretched and the caption \u0026ldquo;Please open up both of your hands to receive this powerful tool.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis lawsuit, like that of \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/onward-christian-soldiers.html\"\u003eJeremy Hall\u003c/a\u003e, was filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChaplain Biscotti is a real person, currently stationed \u003ca href=\"http://jwc.nato.int/article.php?articleID=318\"\u003eat the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/mrff_files_second_lawsuit.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 18, 2008): Jeremy Hall \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/mrff_withdraws_hall_lawsuit.php\"\u003ehas withdrawn his lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he\u0026rsquo;s out.  Chalker\u0026rsquo;s case continues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 7, 2009): Chalker\u0026rsquo;s suit \u003ca href=\"http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/956364.html\"\u003ehas been updated and expanded\u003c/a\u003e to add further examples of \u0026ldquo;the noxiously unconstitutional pattern and practice of fundamentalist\u003cbr /\u003eChristian oppression\u0026rdquo; in the military, including the Air Force sponsoring \u0026ldquo;Team Faith\u0026rdquo; motocross stunt shows, promoting attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to Christianity, and the Army\u0026rsquo;s 2008 manual on suicide prevention, which promotes \u0026ldquo;religiosity\u0026rdquo; as a necessary component.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another military religious freedom case"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast #9 is out, and it\u0026rsquo;s something new and different\u0026ndash;atheists Brad and Shannon in conversation and debate with evangelical Christian hip-hop artist Vocab Malone and Omri Miles.\nEpisode 009 Atheism and Evangelism in Phoenix! Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! What can be euphemistically termed a conversation between two non-believers, an evangelist, and a non-denominational Christian. Guests Vocab Malone and Omri Miles. How long can a civil conversation last? Brad\u0026rsquo;s brain turns to mush (even more than usual)!\nAdditional info from Susan Jacoby\u0026rsquo;s History of American Secularism (great book, buy it!)There\u0026rsquo;s an interesting followup exchange between Vocab and Brad at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum.\nThe ApostAZ podcast is also now available through iTunes.\nI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to listening to this one, and may add some commentary here and at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum when I do.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/apostaz-podcast-9.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast #9 is out, and it\u0026rsquo;s something new and different\u0026ndash;atheists Brad and Shannon in conversation and debate with evangelical Christian hip-hop artist Vocab Malone and Omri Miles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz009.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 009\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Evangelism in Phoenix! Go to \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/\"\u003eatheists.meetup.com/157\u003c/a\u003e for group events! What can be euphemistically termed a conversation between two non-believers, an evangelist, and a non-denominational Christian. Guests Vocab Malone and Omri Miles. How long can a civil conversation last? Brad\u0026rsquo;s brain turns to mush (even more than usual)!\u003cbr /\u003eAdditional info from Susan Jacoby\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHistory of American Secularism\u003c/span\u003e (great book, buy it!)\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/messages/boards/thread/5476840#21411159\"\u003ean interesting followup exchange between Vocab and Brad at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ApostAZ podcast is also now available through iTunes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to listening to this one, and may add some commentary here and at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum when I do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #9"},{"content":"Google is closing its office in Tempe, Arizona on November 21. It\u0026rsquo;s also closing offices in Denver and Dallas.\nAlan Eustace, SVP of Engineering \u0026amp; Research, writes at Google\u0026rsquo;s blog:\nAt Google, engineering is everything - no great engineers, no life enhancing products, no happy users. So we\u0026rsquo;ve spent a lot of time structuring our engineering operations to make the most of the exceptional talent that\u0026rsquo;s available across America - developing local centers that give engineers the autonomy and opportunity to be truly innovative. These principles have served us well as we\u0026rsquo;ve grown, so when the model fails, it\u0026rsquo;s doubly disappointing.\nWe opened our Phoenix office in 2006 and hoped that it would develop to support many of our internal engineering projects, the systems that make Google, well, Google. But we\u0026rsquo;ve found that despite everyone\u0026rsquo;s best efforts, the projects our engineers have been working on in Arizona have been, and remain, highly fragmented. So after a lot of soul searching we have decided to incorporate work on these projects into teams elsewhere at Google. We will therefore be closing our Arizona office on November 21, 2008.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d like to thank everyone involved in this project for their energy and enthusiasm: our engineers; the engineering community in Arizona; Arizona State University; the city of Tempe; and the greater Phoenix area. We are now working with the Phoenix Googlers to transition them to other locations, or to identify other opportunities for them at Google.I\u0026rsquo;ve been expecting to see Google start cutting back on expenses in various ways, as it seems to me that their model of business, with huge per-employee expenses, isn\u0026rsquo;t sustainable for the long term. Apparently it\u0026rsquo;s also the case that it\u0026rsquo;s not cost-effective to put separate engineering centers in many locations\u0026ndash;they probably need a critical mass of engineers and profitable projects that they didn\u0026rsquo;t get here. This is probably good news for other high-tech companies and startups in Phoenix, as those Googlers who wish to stay in the Valley become available talent.\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2008-09-22):\nI don't think this is particularly good news any way you look at it. If Google had 100s of talented engineers housed in their Tempe office and thus was brain-draining from other firms in the valley, this departure would be good news for at least some organizations. However from everything I know, they only grew their workforce here to 50 or so. The word on the street is that they just couldn't find the talent here in the Valley of th Sun. (In fact, from day one I heard a lot of grumbling that the office really should of been based in Tucson rather then the Phoenix/Tempe area.)Even if that last point turns out to be not the whole truth.. it doesn't look good for Arizona.\ndonna (2008-10-02):\nShoulda come to San Diego like I told them when they kept calling me bugging me to work for them. ;^)I loved those calls -- \"Well, what do you want me to do for you?\"\"We don't know, we just want to hire you!\"Huh?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/google-to-close-arizona-office.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGoogle is closing its office in Tempe, Arizona on November 21.  It\u0026rsquo;s also closing offices in Denver and Dallas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlan Eustace, SVP of Engineering \u0026amp; Research, \u003ca href=\"http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/changes-in-phoenix.html\"\u003ewrites at Google\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt Google, engineering is everything - no great engineers, no life enhancing products, no happy users. So we\u0026rsquo;ve spent a lot of time structuring our engineering operations to make the most of the exceptional talent that\u0026rsquo;s available across America - developing local centers that give engineers the autonomy and opportunity to be truly innovative. These principles have served us well as we\u0026rsquo;ve grown, so when the model fails, it\u0026rsquo;s doubly disappointing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe opened our Phoenix office in 2006 and hoped that it would develop to support many of our internal engineering projects, the systems that make Google, well, Google. But we\u0026rsquo;ve found that despite everyone\u0026rsquo;s best efforts, the projects our engineers have been working on in Arizona have been, and remain, highly fragmented. So after a lot of soul searching we have decided to incorporate work on these projects into teams elsewhere at Google. We will therefore be closing our Arizona office on November 21, 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;d like to thank everyone involved in this project for their energy and enthusiasm: our engineers; the engineering community in Arizona; Arizona State University; the city of Tempe; and the greater Phoenix area. We are now working with the Phoenix Googlers to transition them to other locations, or to identify other opportunities for them at Google.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been expecting to see Google start cutting back on expenses in various ways, as it seems to me that their model of business, with huge per-employee expenses, isn\u0026rsquo;t sustainable for the long term.  Apparently it\u0026rsquo;s also the case that it\u0026rsquo;s not cost-effective to put separate engineering centers in many locations\u0026ndash;they probably need a critical mass of engineers and profitable projects that they didn\u0026rsquo;t get here.  This is probably good news for other high-tech companies and startups in Phoenix, as those Googlers who wish to stay in the Valley become available talent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google to close Arizona office"},{"content":"McCain\u0026rsquo;s economic advisors:\nDoug Holtz-Eakin source\nHoltz-Eakin is a formerly respected academic and government economist who has been reduced to making distortionary arguments to paper over the massive deficit black hole McCain\u0026rsquo;s tax cuts would create.\nArthur Laffer source\nLaffer is the originator of the Laffer curve, the fringe view that claims government revenue increases when tax rates are lowered. There is zero empirical evidence this is true at current tax rates. McCain has repeatedly said that he believes this foolishness, but Holtz-Eakin has said (also repeatedly) that McCain does not.\nPhil Gramm source\nGramm is a lobbyist who was vice president of one of the investment houses most heavily implicated in the mortage industry scandal. As a senator he pushed for the banking deregulation that contributed to the current crisis. See more here.\nKevin Hassett source\nHassett has been widely ridiculed for writing the book Dow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market in 1999, predicting that the Dow would hit 36,000 within five years, if not sooner.\nDonald Luskin source\nLuskin has been repeatedly named the Stupidest Man Alive by Brad Delong. See here for an example. I can attest based on my own interaction with him a few years back that in addition to being not the sharpest tack in the box, he is also an extremely unpleasant person.\nNancy Pfotenhauer source\nPfotenhauer is a pure distilled product of Koch Industries, an oil company which funds much of the right wing message machine. See here for details.\nCarly Fiorina source\nFiorina was spectacularly fired from her previous job as CEO of HP. According to the Times,\n\u0026hellip; Republicans say Ms. Fiorina is using the McCain campaign to rebuild her image after her explosive tenure at Hewlett-Packard. They also say it is hard to see why a woman widely criticized for mismanaging one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies is advising and representing a candidate who acknowledged last year that he did not understand the economy as well as he should.\nRegarding Fiorina, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for executive programs at the Yale School of Management, says \u0026ldquo;What a blind spot this is in the McCain campaign to have elevated her stature and centrality in this way. You couldn’t pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer.”Obama\u0026rsquo;s economic advisors:\nJason Furman (director of economy policy) source bio\nAustan Goolsbee (senior economic policy advisor), University of Chicago tax policy expert source Wikipedia website\nKaren Kornbluh (policy director) source bio Wikipedia\nDavid Cutler, Harvard health policy expert source Wikipedia website\nJeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert source Wikipedia website\nMichael Froman, Citigroup executive source bio\nDaniel Tarullo, Georgetown law professor source bio\nDavid Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist source website\nChristina Romer, Berkeley economic historian source website\nRichard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert source Wikipedia\nRobert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary source Wikipedia bio\nLarry Summers, former Treasury Secretary source Wikipedia bio\nAlan Blinder, former Vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve source Wikipedia bio website\nJared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute labor economist source bio\nJames Galbraith, University of Texas macroeconomist source Wikipedia website\nPaul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987 source Wikipedia\nLaura Tyson, Berkeley international economist, Bill Clinton economic adviser source Wikipedia\nRobert Reich, Berkeley public policy professor, former Secretary of Labor source Wikipedia weblog\nPeter Henry, Stanford international economist source website\nGene Sperling, former White House economic adviser source WikipediaMy comment on the Laffer curve\u0026ndash;Laffer\u0026rsquo;s basic point is obviously correct, that there are points at which raising taxes further would cause revenues to decline and points where lowering taxes further would cause revenues to increase (most obviously at a 100% tax rate), but to the best of my knowledge he never did any empirical or mathematical work to show what the Laffer curve actually looks like and what factors play into it. If you don\u0026rsquo;t know the shape of the curve or where we currently fall on it, you don\u0026rsquo;t know without testing that raising taxes will reduce revenue or lowering taxes will increase revenue. Factcheck.org looks at the actual effects of some U.S. tax cuts in this regard.\nI do think that we can speculate that reducing U.S. corporate taxes (currently the highest in the OECD with the exception of Japan) could increase corporate tax revenue, given Ireland\u0026rsquo;s experience with just that happening. Multinational companies will do their best to book their profits in the countries with the lowest corporate tax rates, thus increasing the tax revenue in those countries. Of course, there are other factors, such as regulatory environment, cost of labor, risk of litigation, etc.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-22):\nBefore Laffer even came up with the curve he was considered a laughing stock. He had made some prediction about the economy regarding Nixon that turned out to be dead wrong. I suppose in movement conservatism spectacular failures in analysis only count against you if your conclusion is ideologically suspect.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-22):\n\"I do think that we can speculate that reducing U.S. corporate taxes\"In Supercapitalism Reich proposed doing away with the corporate income tax, giving dividends back to shareholders then taxing that as personal income. I'm not sure how this would work out with foreign companies, and I don't recall Reich addressing that point in the book.\nEinzige (2008-09-22):\nI suppose in movement conservatism spectacular failures in analysis only count against you if your conclusion is ideologically suspect.I don't believe that movement conservatism has the monopoly on this practice.\nLippard (2008-09-23):\nThat's for sure. There are still people who give credence to Paul Ehrlich after _The Population Bomb_.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-25):\nOh man ... I was flipping through my notes and I see that back around Dec. 06/Jan. 07 I have jotted down that Art Laffer was on the Rush Limbaugh radio progam saying that the United States currently has the greatest economy in the history of the world. One would think that monumental level of wrongness would disqualify someone from being a presidential advisor.I really wish I could track down that progam and get the exact quote.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-29):\nSo any criticism of Obama's economists? Not even that Larry Summers was forced out of the presidency of Harvard because of accusations of sexism?JL's source on the Laffer Curve:\"the fringe view that claims government revenue increases when tax rates are lowered.\"You mean the view expressed by Obama's hero JFK:\"It is a paradoxical truth, that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates.\"Factcheck: ‘This economic theory is what George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics”.’ During his debate with Reagan, who proceded to cut tax rates anyway and help America come out of the Carter stagflation. At the time Bush said it, America's tax rates were likely above Laffer's maximum. And even Factcheck agree that tax cuts can spur economic growth that will at least partly pay for the lost revenue, a partial payment that is often ignored when the media claim that \"tax cuts will cost X billion dollars.\" I wouldn't mind seeing economic growth and smaller government anyway.\nEinzige (2008-09-30):\nI wouldn't mind seeing economic growth and smaller government anyway.This seems unlikely regardless of who gets in office.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nI thought the Summers issue was overblown--don't you agree?When JFK made his statement, the highest marginal income tax rate in the U.S. was 91%. It was at 70% when Reagan took office, which I agree is still confiscatory. It's now at 35%, which is pretty low by comparison to most of the world--the tax rates in the U.S. that are excessive by world standards are corporate income tax rates, not personal income tax rates.Reagan didn't do anything to shrink the size of government or reduce the debt--he increased both. Welfare reform and budget surpluses occurred under Clinton when the Republicans controlled Congress. When either party controls Congress and the presidency, they cannot be trusted to keep spending in check.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nOf course the Summers issue was overblown. But the feminazis who had his head are now flocking to Obama, so the double standards are glaring. All Summers did was try to explan why there are fewer females in science. He mentioned several possibilities, but one caused the feminist ire. That is, males and females have about the same mean in ability, but have a higher standard deviation, so there are both more geniuses and more male dunces. But this was enough to give some feminists the attack of the vapours. Upon which Summers, instead of grovelling and trying in vain to appease, should have said, \"See what I mean\" :PAnd of course Obama dutifully repeats in his policy list the \"women earn only 77% of what men earn\" furphy, and promises more government intervention to fix. But if that were true, no employer would hire men if he can save 23% by hiring women.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\n\"It was at 70% when Reagan took office, which I agree is still confiscatory.\" Yet this is when Bush Sr. called the tax cut strategy was \"voodoo economics\", with approval from the ostensibly neutral Factcheck crowd.\"It's now at 35%, which is pretty low by comparison to most of the world--the tax rates in the U.S. that are excessive by world standards are corporate income tax rates, not personal income tax rates.\"What is really excessive is the bloated tax code that costs so much merely to comply with it, and so complex that many professionals don't understand it.America should also adopt Australia's fair policy of dividend imputation that avoids double taxation.\"Reagan didn't do anything to shrink the size of government or reduce the debt--he increased both.\" He had a Dem congress, and he was also spending to win the cold war instead of the previous strategy of letting the Communists expand. This produced a \"peace dividend\".\"When either party controls Congress and the presidency, they cannot be trusted to keep spending in check.\"A very good reason for opposing the Obamessiah, one would think.\nEinzige (2008-09-30):\nAnd of course Obama dutifully repeats in his policy list the \"women earn only 77% of what men earn\" furphy, and promises more government intervention to fix. But if that were true, no employer would hire men if he can save 23% by hiring women.He's a politician. How can you expect him to avoid the easy pander?The numbers are probably true, but the origin of the discrepancy is almost certainly not due to sexism (qua sexism, that is). Attempts to \"correct\" the \"imbalance\" will undoubtedly lead to higher female unemployment.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nEinzige: right you are (on all three above).\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nBTW Jim, what's your view on the Libertarian Party? Would they be worth voting for if, it were not a wasted voted?\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nI don't think much of the Libertarian Party. I've voted for LP candidates many times, but (a) there are too many kooks in the party (including many of the candidates) and (b) they have suffered the same kind of ethical scandals as other political parties, even without getting anybody into office (with a very few exceptions). _Liberty_ magazine exposed misuse of funds by LP presidential candidates Andre Marrou and Harry Browne.The LP tries to maintain that it is more ideologically pure than the Republicans and Democrats, and while that is probably true, there still seem to be a lot of distinctly different groups that call themselves libertarian.I think groups like the Institute for Humane Studies, Institute for Justice, and the Cato Institute (and locally, the Goldwater Institute) are far better at getting serious consideration for classical liberal and libertarian ideas than the LP.After reading Brian Doherty's _Radicals for Capitalism_, I became less enamored of the libertarian label than I ever had been, because I think there are some seriously bad arguments for some claimed libertarian first principles. For example, the claim that governments can never have any legitimate powers beyond those of the individuals in them is something like a sorites paradox, and ignores the possibility of emergent properties. I also think a lot of libertarian arguments treat government as a kind of magical evil institution, completely different in nature from all others, when in practice governments are much like many other kinds of institutions--even the claim of monopoly on force isn't really accurate when there are multiple layers of governmental institutions which compete for jurisdiction.I think libertarians tend to overlook the degree to which they are being conservative about existing institutional structures that are dependent upon government (and have evolved over time as a result of various competing forces). But it's also clear that rules for social order spontaneously form quickly in the absence of government or in the gaps between governments or spheres slightly outside their control, as I find most interestingly exemplified in the history of Kowloon Walled City (a no-man's-land squatter city between British Hong Kong and China) and the squatter cities studied by Robert Neuwirth. (Or in the TV show \"Deadwood,\" or in the drug trade, the Sicilian mafia, or in cybercrime on the Internet.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-30):\n'Yet this is when Bush Sr. called the tax cut strategy was \"voodoo economics\",'That's because it is and was voodoo economics. Reagan's supply side economics started racking up the defict and debt. Arguing for reducing a top tax rate is not the same thing as endorsing the monocausal supply side theory which posits that top tax rate cuts generate profit, period.Even the conservative economist Greg Mankiw who favors supply side cuts when coupled with spending reductions called Reagan's economic advisors \"charlatans and cranks.\"\nKtisophilos (2008-10-01):\nHG, so the big spending Dems don't share any of the blame for the Reagan deficits? Reagan was determined to spend on the military to win the cold war, which was a good move.I wonder if the naysaying on Reagan and hero-worship of Obama is partly due to people forgetting how atrocious Carter was: stagflation, waiting lines at gasoline stations ... and those are just the economic policies. Obama's policies sound eerily similar.Jim: thanx for the info.\nHume's Ghost (2008-10-01):\n\"HG, so the big spending Dems don't share any of the blame for the Reagan deficits? Reagan was determined to spend on the military to win the cold war, which was a good move.\"Both points are red herring.\nAnonymous (2008-10-23):\nWow! Looking for an impartial list of names and backgrounds.... Obviously I didn't find it here.\nLippard (2008-10-23):\nLauren: You got an accurate list of names, along with both objective and opinionated descriptions. Sorry you're not satisfied with that.Let us know if you find any evidence of a competent McCain economic advisor other than Holtz-Eakin.\nKtisophilos (2009-04-24):\nLOL, Larry Summers pays due attention to his Commander's soaring rhetoric to credit card executives.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/comparing-obamas-and-mccains-economic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/other-list-mccains-economists.html\"\u003eMcCain\u0026rsquo;s economic advisors\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDoug Holtz-Eakin\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087\u0026amp;sid=a.kqHZUSP2fI\u0026amp;refer=home\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHoltz-Eakin is a formerly respected academic and government economist who has been reduced to making distortionary \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/04/doug-holtz-eakins-vision-thing.html\"\u003earguments\u003c/a\u003e to paper over the massive deficit black hole McCain\u0026rsquo;s tax cuts would create.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eArthur Laffer\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/business/26supply.html?_r=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaffer is the originator of the Laffer curve, the fringe view that claims government revenue increases when tax rates are lowered. There is zero empirical evidence this is true at current tax rates. McCain has repeatedly \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/05/few-weeks-ago-i-attended-talk-at-tax.html\"\u003esaid\u003c/a\u003e that he believes this foolishness, but Holtz-Eakin has said (also repeatedly) that McCain does not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePhil Gramm \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/18/news/newsmakers/tully_gramm.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008021917\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGramm is a lobbyist who was vice president of one of the investment houses most heavily implicated in the mortage industry scandal. As a senator he pushed for the banking deregulation that contributed to the current crisis. See more \u003ca href=\"http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9246.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eKevin Hassett\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/business/26supply.html?_r=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHassett has been widely \u003ca href=\"http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005_archives/000025.html\"\u003eridiculed\u003c/a\u003e for writing the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market\u003c/span\u003e in 1999, predicting that the Dow would hit 36,000 within five years, if not sooner.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDonald Luskin \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.smartmoney.com/ahead-of-the-curve/index.cfm?story=20080208-futures-bet-on-obama\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLuskin has been repeatedly named the Stupidest Man Alive by Brad Delong. See \u003ca href=\"http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2005-3_archives/001736.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e for an example. I can attest based on my own interaction with him a few years back that in addition to being not the sharpest tack in the box, he is also an extremely unpleasant person.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNancy Pfotenhauer\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hhxMU1MfCDE3qBIymD8o20smfmVAD930QNQ00\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePfotenhauer is a pure distilled product of Koch Industries, an oil company which funds much of the right wing message machine. See \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/28/dirty-nancy-pfotenhauer/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e for details.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCarly Fiorina\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/us/politics/06fiorina.html?_r=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFiorina was spectacularly fired from her previous job as CEO of HP. According to the Times,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip; Republicans say Ms. Fiorina is using the McCain campaign to rebuild her image after her explosive tenure at Hewlett-Packard. They also say it is hard to see why a woman widely criticized for mismanaging one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies is advising and representing a candidate who acknowledged last year that he did not understand the economy as well as he should.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eRegarding Fiorina, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for executive programs at the Yale School of Management, says \u0026ldquo;What a blind spot this is in the McCain campaign to have elevated her stature and centrality in this way. You couldn’t pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer.”\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-economic-advisors-and-economic.html\"\u003eObama\u0026rsquo;s economic advisors\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eJason Furman (director of economy policy) \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.brookings.edu/experts/furmanj.aspx\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAustan Goolsbee (senior economic policy advisor), University of Chicago tax policy expert \u003ca href=\"http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/austangoolsbee\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austan_Goolsbee\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/austan.goolsbee/website/\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKaren Kornbluh (policy director) \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2007/09/obamas-econ-peeps.html\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002673.php\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kornbluh\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Cutler, Harvard health policy expert \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2007/09/obamas-econ-peeps.html\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cutler\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2007/09/obamas-econ-peeps.html\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Liebman\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.hks.harvard.edu/jeffreyliebman/\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Froman, Citigroup executive \u003ca href=\"http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2007/09/obamas-econ-peeps.html\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://www.citigroupai.com/about_our_team.htm\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDaniel Tarullo, Georgetown law professor \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080331nj1.htm\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/facinfo/tab_faculty.cfm?Status=Faculty\u0026amp;ID=1298\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080331nj1.htm\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://emlab.berkeley.edu/econ/faculty/romer_d.shtml\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChristina Romer, Berkeley economic historian \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080331nj1.htm\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Ecromer/index.shtml\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRichard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert \u003ca href=\"http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4d40a39e-8f57-4054-bd99-94bc9d19be1a\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRobert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rubin\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.treas.gov/education/history/secretaries/rerubin.shtml\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLarry Summers, former Treasury Secretary \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.treas.gov/education/history/secretaries/lhsummers.shtml\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlan Blinder, former Vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blinder\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eblinder/bio.htm\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eblinder/\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute labor economist \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/economist#bernstein\"\u003ebio\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJames Galbraith, University of Texas macroeconomist \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103\u0026amp;sid=acigw2e6gl8Y\u0026amp;refer=us\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Galbraith\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/faculty/galbraith.html\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987 \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2731965020080627\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLaura Tyson, Berkeley international economist, Bill Clinton economic adviser \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2731965020080627\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Tyson\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRobert Reich, Berkeley public policy professor, former Secretary of Labor \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2731965020080627\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.robertreich.blogspot.com/\"\u003eweblog\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePeter Henry, Stanford international economist \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2731965020080627\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/henry/Homepage/Homepage.htm\"\u003ewebsite\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGene Sperling, former White House economic adviser \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/29/magazines/fortune/easton_economicteam.fortune/?postversion=2008082905\"\u003esource\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sperling\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eMy comment on the Laffer curve\u0026ndash;Laffer\u0026rsquo;s basic point is obviously correct, that there are points at which raising taxes further would cause revenues to decline and points where lowering taxes further would cause revenues to increase (most obviously at a 100% tax rate), but to the best of my knowledge he never did any empirical or mathematical work to show what the Laffer curve actually looks like and what factors play into it.  If you don\u0026rsquo;t know the shape of the curve or where we currently fall on it, you don\u0026rsquo;t know without testing that raising taxes will reduce revenue or lowering taxes will increase revenue.  Factcheck.org \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/have_tax_cuts_always_resulted_in_higher.html\"\u003elooks at the actual effects of some U.S. tax cuts in this regard\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI do think that we can speculate that reducing U.S. corporate taxes (currently the highest in the OECD with the exception of Japan) could increase corporate tax revenue, given Ireland\u0026rsquo;s experience with just that happening.  Multinational companies will do their best to book their profits in the countries with the lowest corporate tax rates, thus increasing the tax revenue in those countries.  Of course, there are other factors, such as regulatory environment, cost of labor, risk of litigation, etc.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comparing Obama's and McCain's economic advisors"},{"content":"Sam Harris has a great op-ed piece at Newsweek:\nThe problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin\u0026rsquo;s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. \u0026ldquo;They think they\u0026rsquo;re better than you!\u0026rdquo; is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!\u0026rdquo; Yes, all too ordinary.\nWe have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter\u0026rsquo;s microphone, saying things like, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m voting for Sarah because she\u0026rsquo;s a mom. She knows what it\u0026rsquo;s like to be a mom.\u0026rdquo; Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.\n\u0026hellip;\nWhat doesn\u0026rsquo;t she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.\n\u0026hellip;\nWhat is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world\u0026rsquo;s only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:\n\u0026ldquo;Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child\u0026rsquo;s brain?\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I\u0026rsquo;m an avid hunter.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink.\u0026quot;\nRead the rest at Newsweek.\nUPDATE: A letter written to The Economist (September 20, 2008, p. 26) from Sue Crane of Johns Creek, Georgia, expresses the anti-elitist pride in ignorance Harris condemns, when she writes:\nSir - Lexington (September 6) lapsed into the same mode of thinking that exists in the powdered-wig political salons and among the media twitterati in his assessment of Sarah Palin, which stopped him from understanding why she strikes a chord with America\u0026rsquo;s heartland. Mrs. Palin connects with voters because she is one of us, not some elite politician entrenched in Washington\u0026rsquo;s ways. John McCain had a problem with energising the Republican base, hence his choice of Mrs. Palin. I, along with many other Republicans, was prepared to sit this contest out had he chosen either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge.\nThis contrasts with a letter on the same page from Michael Golay, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, who writes:\nSir - Alaska is very different from the rest of the United States, and this difference affects the fitness of Mrs Palin to be vice-president. Fundamentally, Alaska is a pre-modern welfare state, where the economy is almost purely extractive (with the exception of defense and tourism). If you don\u0026rsquo;t kill it, dig it or cut it down you don\u0026rsquo;t get it. From that perspective \u0026ldquo;bridges to nowhere\u0026rdquo; are simply further extractions, or tokens for transfer payments from the rest of us, as are the annual payments to residents from North Slope oil revenues.\nNot surprisingly Alaska is largely an innovation-free zone. It is also the only world that Mrs Palin has known. Along with her chronological and career inexperience this background renders her unprepared to lead the country.\nIn the same issue of The Economist, the Lexington column, \u0026ldquo;Richard Milhous McCain,\u0026quot; points out that the McCain strategy in selecting Palin \u0026ldquo;is perfectly designed to create a cycle of accusation and counter-accusation. The \u0026rsquo;liberal media\u0026rsquo; cannot do its job without questioning Mrs Palin\u0026rsquo;s qualifications, which are astonishingly thin; but they cannot question her qualifications without confirming the Republican suspicion that they are looking down on ordinary Americans.\u0026rdquo; It attributes this strategy to Richard Nixon, who \u0026ldquo;recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from \u0026lsquo;positive polarisation\u0026rsquo;: dividing the electorate over values.\u0026quot;\nKtisophilos (2008-09-29):\n\"The 'liberal media' cannot do its job without questioning Mrs Palin's qualifications, which are astonishingly thin ...\"That was probably one of McCain's points in selecting her. When the liberal media rail in on her thin resume, it draws attention to Obama's even thinner one, and might make people wonder why the liberal media gave him such a free pass.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nI don't think Obama's qualifications are thinner than Palin's by any reasonable measure.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nPalin: Mayor and Governor and others. She has actually had executive experience.What has Obama done? A first term senator who spent most of his time campaining for president? An Illinois senator whose favorite vote was \"present\", not good practice for presidential decision making? Receiving the second highest senatorial contributions from Fannie Mae, and selecting their CEO to head his VP selection committee? Community organizing with unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers, and launching his political career from his home?Also, Palin would be in training right away to take over as President. Obama would be President right away.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nPalin: 4 years on the city council and 6 years mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. 1.5 years governor of Alaska. She has a record of putting people into positions on the basis of friendship rather than competence. She seems to be incredibly ignorant to the point that she's painful to listen to speak. I think she'd be about as good a president as George W. Bush, for the same reasons.Obama: 8 years in the Illinois state legislature (Senate), 3.5 years in U.S. legislature (also Senate). And he has worked as a constitutional law professor and financial analyst, and is intelligent and well-spoken. Even as I disagree with him as president, I won't have to cringe in embarrassment at his idiocy every time he speaks, as I do for our current president.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nAppointing friends is a political trait, unfortunately. Look at Janet Reno, and Clinton firing all 93 US attorneys and the White House travel staff. And although Bush appointed some Democrats, like the head of the TSA Norm Mineta who presided over airport security becoming the neo-Gestapo, what thanks did Bush get?For sure, Obama is a great speaker — if you like listening to \"hope\", \"change\", and of course turning back the waves and healing the planet. But Americans are supposed to be electing Commander in Chief not Orator in Chief.That the lacklustre McCain and Obama are the candidates shows the huge flaws in the first-past-the-post system in the Primaries. The inadequate VP choices of both were pretty much forced on them by politics.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\n\"Look at Janet Reno, and Clinton firing all 93 US attorneys and the White House travel staff.\"It's customary for a newly elected president to remove the entire slate of U.S. attorneys appointed by his predecessor and replace them with new appointees--Reagan did it when first elected, George H.W. Bush did it, and Clinton did it. Those who suggest that George W. Bush was treated unfairly on this issue haven't actually looked at the details.The travel staff issue was unusual, which was why it caused a scandal at the time.George W. Bush's mid-term removal of 9 U.S. attorneys--all his own appointees--was also highly unusual. The reasons given for firing them (\"performance\") appear unfounded, and there is evidence that they were actually fired for resisting political pressure and interference with their work, or for taking prosecutions in directions the administration didn't want to occur, which is why Bush's new AG has just appointed a special prosecutor to look into the matter.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-01):\nHmmm, Palin is so ignorant, but Biden for his debate apparently needs a moderator who is blatantly in his corner. This is Gwen Ifill, who recently wrote the adulatory The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, due to emerge on inauguration Day. Her sales would be far greater if Obama won.The pro-Dem mass media would be howling piteously if the mod were Joe Hilley, author of the to-be-released Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader, and rightly so. Even if such mods were totally balanced on the night, the conflict of interest is still there.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-02):\nOh, and Palin presumably knows that FDR wasn't president during the 1929 crash, and that Americans didn't have TVs then, unlike Biden:“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’”It wouldn't be too difficult to play “gotcha” ping pong with Obama either, with his “57 states” gaffe.But when Dem gaffes are allegedly honest slips, while GOP gaffes are repeated all over the airwaves and print, claims of media neutrality don't wash.\nLippard (2008-10-02):\nSome have argued that Biden was referring to when FDR was Gov. of New York, but he could also have mean \"during the Great Depression\" instead of \"when the stock market crashed.\" But I call it a dumb error.When Obama said 57 states, he clearly meant 47, which was the number of states he actually visited. Again, a gaffe, but one on the level of a typographical error, mispronunciation, or Spoonerism.\nKtisophilos (2008-10-02):\nGoing on TV was certainly a dumb error, and even dumber if he meant when FDR was NY Governor.I agree that Obama made a slip of the tongue and really does know how many states are united. But I can't help thinking that the Leftmedia would have been all over McPalin if they had said the same thing. Look at the way the Leftmedia hammered Dan Quayle over misspelling \"potatoe\", and they ignored the fact that this was from a teacher's flash card. Thus the episode reflected more on the state of the government school system than on the VP, given that it's the teacher's job to teach not the VP's. In any case, the boy who spelled \"potato\" would later become a 16yo father and highschool dropout working low-paying jobs, while Quayle became a successful businessman.\ndonna (2008-10-02):\n\"I'm voting for SP because she's a mom\" -- Weird, I initially read that as \"moron\"... ;^)I'm really fed up with people being proud of being stupid.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/sam-harris-on-sarah-palin-and-elitism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSam Harris has \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/1\"\u003ea great op-ed piece at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin\u0026rsquo;s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. \u0026ldquo;They think they\u0026rsquo;re better than you!\u0026rdquo; is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!\u0026rdquo; Yes, all too ordinary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and elitism"},{"content":"At Trading Markets is a story about the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, with the recent Chapter 11 filing of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. at the top of the list.\nAt #9 on the list is my employer, Global Crossing Ltd., about which the article says:\nHurt by a sluggish demand and declining prices for bandwidth capacity, and burdened by a heavy debt load, telecom company Global Crossing Ltd. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 28, 2002. At the time of filing, Global Crossing had $30 billion in assets and $12 billion in debts. In December 2003, Singapore Technologies Telemedia acquired a 61.5% equity share in Global Crossing for $250 million, paving way for the troubled telecom company to exit Chapter 11. In addition, Singapore Technologies Telemedia agreed to purchase $200 million in senior secured notes that were meant to be distributed to former creditors. Global Crossing used the $200 million cash to pay off its creditors. The company emerged from bankruptcy on December 9, 2003. By the time, Global Crossing exited bankruptcy, its debt was reduced to a mere $200 million from $11 billion at the end of 2001, including $1 billion of Asia Global Crossing debt. As of the most-recent quarter ended June 30, 2008, Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s total debt was $1.45 billion and for the past 52-weeks, the shares have been trading in the range of $14.54 - $24.75. There\u0026rsquo;s much more that could be said about that. For some of the other companies, the article reports on employee layoffs. Global Crossing went from a peak of nearly 15,000 employees down to just above 3,000, a process that was painful for both those who were laid off and those who remained and had to pick up the slack. The process was much-needed, however, and forced consolidation of acquired assets that had been operating in separate silos with separate management structures, eliminated many middle management positions, saw the departures of almost all senior management, and resulted in improved network performance and customer satisfaction ratings and subsequent growth in number of customers and customer traffic on the network. Global Crossing remained a tier 1 network provider through the bankruptcy, and is now #3 on Renesys\u0026rsquo; list of the top 25 Internet service providers by customer base.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/largest-corporate-bankruptcies-in-us.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Trading Markets is \u003ca href=\"http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/TOP%20STORY/1892983/\"\u003ea story about the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, with the recent Chapter 11 filing of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. at the top of the list\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt #9 on the list is my employer, Global Crossing Ltd., about which the article says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eHurt by a sluggish demand and declining prices for bandwidth capacity, and burdened by a heavy debt load, telecom company Global Crossing Ltd. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 28, 2002. At the time of filing, Global Crossing had $30 billion in assets and $12 billion in debts. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history"},{"content":"Troy Britain gives John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research a thorough debunking regarding his article in the September 2008 issue of the ICR\u0026rsquo;s Acts \u0026amp; Facts, demonstrating that Morris really has no idea what he\u0026rsquo;s talking about.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/john-morris-exposes-his-ignorance-about.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTroy Britain \u003ca href=\"http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/more-scientific-ignorance-from-dr-john-morris/\"\u003egives John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research a thorough debunking regarding his article in the September 2008 issue of the ICR\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eActs \u0026amp; Facts\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, demonstrating that Morris really has no idea what he\u0026rsquo;s talking about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Morris exposes his ignorance about horse fossils"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve previously written to critique claims that Sarah Palin is a Christian reconstructionist or dominionist, or that she\u0026rsquo;s a young-earth creationist or tried to put creationism in the public schools.\nI still stand behind the former argument, but I think there is now some evidence that she is a young-earth creationist and supported Mat-Su Borough School Board candidates who aimed to put creationism in the public schools, but never got a majority on the school board. There\u0026rsquo;s also now evidence that Palin is an advocate of pushing an allegedly secularized version of principles from Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which I previously wrote about here when serial killer Matthew Murray blamed them for his problems.\nPalin\u0026rsquo;s Creationism\nDavid Talbot\u0026rsquo;s article at Salon.com about Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s clashes with Rev. Howard Bess over his book about how churches should deal with homosexuality contained a passage that stated that she is a young-earth creationist:\nAnother valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. \u0026ldquo;She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,\u0026rdquo; said Munger, a music composer and teacher. \u0026ldquo;I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, \u0026lsquo;Sarah, how can you believe in creationism \u0026ndash; your father\u0026rsquo;s a science teacher.\u0026rsquo; And she said, \u0026lsquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t have to agree on everything.\u0026rsquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I pushed her on the earth\u0026rsquo;s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she\u0026rsquo;d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.\u0026quot;Munger said the same thing on his own blog:\nIn June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her [former -jjl] church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.\nPalin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.\nAs the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.\nI asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon \u0026ldquo;during MY lifetime,\u0026rdquo; were obvious. \u0026ldquo;I can see that, maybe you can\u0026rsquo;t - but it guides me every day.\u0026quot;I spoke with Philip Munger by telephone on September 17, hoping to be able to find others who could confirm Palin\u0026rsquo;s creationist views. Unfortunately, he said that there weren\u0026rsquo;t other witnesses to his conversation, but he did give me a lot of background information about Palin\u0026rsquo;s political career. He said that the Wasilla government had been dominated by Democrats until 1994, when it shifted to Republicans and John Stein became mayor. Stein was Palin\u0026rsquo;s original political mentor, but she decided to run against Stein in 1996, under the tutelage of Alaska State Rep. Victor Kohring, Republican representative from Wasilla, who began a 3.5-year prison term for corruption in July. Munger described Kohring, a member of the Christian Businessman\u0026rsquo;s Association, as a member of the religious right. Stein, while a Republican, was vulnerable to attack as being not sufficiently conservative, due to the fact that his wife is a pro-choice Democrat who hasn\u0026rsquo;t taken his last name.\nMunger told me that Palin also supported a slate of religious right candidates for the Mat-Su Borough School Board, including Cheryl Turner, who he described as a creationist. But he said that the creationists didn\u0026rsquo;t win a majority on the school board, and as a result made no attempt to push that agenda.\nMunger said that he called in a question to Sarah Palin when she appeared on the Don Fagan program around October of 2006, and he asked her if her views on creationism had moderated since the Dover case. Her response indicated that her views had not changed, and that she had no idea what the Dover case was. Munger offered to explain it to her in detail if she contacted him, but she never did. He said that she didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything to explicitly endorse creationism, instead resorting to the same tactics suggested by the Discovery Institute of protecting academic freedom, allowing \u0026ldquo;both\u0026rdquo; views to be taught, teaching the controversy, etc.\nMy impression is that Palin is likely a young-earth creationist, but not one who knows much about it or has it high on her agenda for political change. She\u0026rsquo;s probably smart enough to see that such could be a liability for her future political career and so will avoid questions about it or answer in generalities.\nPalin and Bill Gothard\nSarah Posner has a new article at Salon.com titled \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor.\u0026quot; This article points out that the Wasilla City Council passed a resolution in April 2000 at her direction declaring Wasilla to be a \u0026ldquo;City of Character\u0026rdquo; and a supporter of the International Association of Character Cities, run by Steven Menzel. This organization promotes a secularized version of the principles from Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is a sort of Christianity-lite cult that promotes the prosperity gospel and a whole lot of craziness like this:\nWives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard\nIt is a total insult in Scripture to be called uncircumcised, and the only moral choice parents can make is to have their sons circumcised in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus — Bill Gothard\n“Unmerited favor” is a “faulty definition” of grace. Grace for sanctification is merited as we humble ourselves before God — Bill Gothard\nFemales who enjoy horseback riding have a problem with rebellion — Bill Gothard, from testimonies of people who use their real names who have heard him say this in person\nUnbiblical submission taught — Abigail was WRONG to do what she did in saving Nabal and his servants — Bill Gothard\nTamar was partially at fault for being raped, because she wasn’t spiritually alert and didn’t cry out — Bill Gothard\nRock music is evil because it is evil — Bill Gothard\nCabbage Patch dolls are demonized — Bill Gothard\nPalin learned about the IACC at a conference held at Gothard\u0026rsquo;s IBLP International Training Center in Indianapolis in April 2000, a conference at which speakers included Bill Gothard and crackpot pseudohistorian David Barton, who argues that the separation of church and state is a myth.\nIt appears that the IACC features actually implemented in Wasilla are pretty mild and unobjectionable\u0026ndash;giving out certificates of good character to citizens who do things like return lost wallets, as an example given by the executive assistant to Wasilla\u0026rsquo;s current mayor.\nPalin\u0026rsquo;s also clearly no hardcore advocate of Gothard, at least with respect to the first rule listed above about women not working outside of the home. And I still don\u0026rsquo;t think the fears of theocracy, dominionism, and Christian reconstruction have any substance. But what is concerning about her IBLP involvement is that she looks very much like another George W. Bush. As Posner\u0026rsquo;s article notes, Gothard promotes the idea of \u0026ldquo;confidence that what I have to say or do is true and just and right in the sight of God,\u0026rdquo; which seems to promote the idea of moving confidently forward in decisions with blinkered ignorance and disastrous consequences that are simply ignored. Palin seems to have governed Alaska in such a manner, acting above the law in \u0026ldquo;Troopergate\u0026rdquo; with her husband refusing to show up to testify and claiming to support the environment while implementing policies that have left both lakes in Wasilla devoid of life. She also seems to be submissive to her husband in ways which do not seem appropriate for a governor, such as allowing him to play a role in making government decisions, adding some real substance to the concerned questions raised at Debunking Christianity:\n• Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God\u0026rsquo;s plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?\n• Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?\n• If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women\u0026rsquo;s leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?\n• Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?\n• Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home? If so, does this affect your support for Palin? If not, are you willing to change your position and instead argue for flexibility in the distribution of child care responsibilities according to the needs of the family?(As I\u0026rsquo;ve already noted here, there are some evangelicals who oppose Sarah Palin because they don\u0026rsquo;t think a woman should be in such a position of authority, which is more consistent with Gothard.)\nUPDATE (September 24, 2008): David Talbot\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Mean Girl\u0026rdquo; at Salon.com confirms several things that Munger told me, including Palin\u0026rsquo;s betrayals of former mentors and (something I didn\u0026rsquo;t write about here) her allusions that John Stein wasn\u0026rsquo;t really a Christian, but a Jew, as part of her campaign to defeat him as mayor of Wasilla.\nUPDATE (November 19, 2009): Palin\u0026rsquo;s book shows that she\u0026rsquo;s certainly a creationist.\nHistorical Comments TLC Tugger (2008-09-21):\nThanks for that info about Bill Got Hard. I was pretty alarmed that he doesn't know that there are many new testament passages which make it clear that circumcision is not part of Christianity (Romans 2:29, Romans 3:30, Acts 15:10, I Corinthians 7:18, Galatians 5:6, Galatians 5:2, Galatians 6:15, Philippians 3:2, Colossians 2:12, Matthew 9:12). 95% of the world's Christians do not circumcise. The ones that do are mainly in the US, but also heavily in South Korea and The Philippines. How many boys have been harmed by GotHard's ignorant spoutings?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/palins-christianity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written to critique claims that \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/left-wing-conspiracy-theories.html\"\u003eSarah Palin is a Christian reconstructionist or dominionist\u003c/a\u003e, or that \u003ca href=\"/2008/09/factcheckorg-on-bogus-palin-claims.html\"\u003eshe\u0026rsquo;s a young-earth creationist or tried to put creationism in the public schools\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI still stand behind the former argument, but I think there is now some evidence that she is a young-earth creationist and supported Mat-Su Borough School Board candidates who aimed to put creationism in the public schools, but never got a majority on the school board.  There\u0026rsquo;s also now evidence that Palin is an advocate of pushing an allegedly secularized version of principles from Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/fundamentalist-legalism-and-murder.html\"\u003eI previously wrote about here when serial killer Matthew Murray blamed them for his problems\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePalin\u0026rsquo;s Creationism\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Talbot\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/15/bess/index1.html\"\u003earticle at Salon.com about Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s clashes with Rev. Howard Bess\u003c/a\u003e over his book about how churches should deal with homosexuality contained a passage that stated that she is a young-earth creationist:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnother valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. \u0026ldquo;She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,\u0026rdquo; said Munger, a music composer and teacher. \u0026ldquo;I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, \u0026lsquo;Sarah, how can you believe in creationism \u0026ndash; your father\u0026rsquo;s a science teacher.\u0026rsquo; And she said, \u0026lsquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t have to agree on everything.\u0026rsquo;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I pushed her on the earth\u0026rsquo;s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she\u0026rsquo;d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eMunger said \u003ca href=\"http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/09/saradise-lost-chapter-sixten-palins.html\"\u003ethe same thing on his own blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her [former -jjl] church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePalin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon \u0026ldquo;during MY lifetime,\u0026rdquo; were obvious. \u0026ldquo;I can see that, maybe you can\u0026rsquo;t - but it guides me every day.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eI spoke with Philip Munger by telephone on September 17, hoping to be able to find others who could confirm Palin\u0026rsquo;s creationist views.  Unfortunately, he said that there weren\u0026rsquo;t other witnesses to his conversation, but he did give me a lot of background information about Palin\u0026rsquo;s political career.  He said that the Wasilla government had been dominated by Democrats until 1994, when it shifted to Republicans and John Stein became mayor.  Stein was Palin\u0026rsquo;s original political mentor, but she decided to run against Stein in 1996, under the tutelage of Alaska State Rep. Victor Kohring, Republican representative from Wasilla, \u003ca href=\"http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/kohring/story/451772.html\"\u003ewho began a 3.5-year prison term for corruption in July\u003c/a\u003e.  Munger described Kohring, a member of the Christian Businessman\u0026rsquo;s Association, as a member of the religious right.  Stein, while a Republican, was vulnerable to attack as being not sufficiently conservative, due to the fact that his wife is a pro-choice Democrat who hasn\u0026rsquo;t taken his last name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMunger told me that Palin also supported a slate of religious right candidates for the Mat-Su Borough School Board, including Cheryl Turner, who he described as a creationist.  But he said that the creationists didn\u0026rsquo;t win a majority on the school board, and as a result made no attempt to push that agenda.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMunger said that he called in a question to Sarah Palin when she appeared on the Don Fagan program around October of 2006, and he asked her if her views on creationism had moderated since the Dover case.  Her response indicated that her views had not changed, and that she had no idea what the Dover case was.  Munger offered to explain it to her in detail if she contacted him, but she never did.  He said that she didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything to explicitly endorse creationism, instead resorting to the same tactics suggested by the Discovery Institute of protecting academic freedom, allowing \u0026ldquo;both\u0026rdquo; views to be taught, teaching the controversy, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy impression is that Palin is likely a young-earth creationist, but not one who knows much about it or has it high on her agenda for political change.  She\u0026rsquo;s probably smart enough to see that such could be a liability for her future political career and so will avoid questions about it or answer in generalities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePalin and Bill Gothard\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSarah Posner has \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/18/palin_iacc/index.html\"\u003ea new article at Salon.com titled \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e This article points out that the Wasilla City Council passed a resolution in April 2000 at her direction declaring Wasilla to be a \u0026ldquo;City of Character\u0026rdquo; and a supporter of the International Association of Character Cities, run by Steven Menzel.  This organization promotes a secularized version of the principles from Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is a sort of Christianity-lite cult that promotes the prosperity gospel and \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/fundamentalist-legalism-and-murder.html\"\u003ea whole lot of craziness like this\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eWives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin's Christianity"},{"content":"Craig Cantoni has pointed out the following January 19, 2004 press release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development:\nBUSH ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEW HUD \u0026ldquo;ZERO DOWN PAYMENT\u0026rdquo; MORTGAGE\nInitiative Aimed at Removing Major Barrier to Homeownership LAS VEGAS - As part of President Bush\u0026rsquo;s ongoing effort to help American families achieve the dream of homeownership, Federal Housing Commissioner John C. Weicher today announced that HUD is proposing to offer a \u0026ldquo;zero down payment\u0026rdquo; mortgage, the most significant initiative by the Federal Housing Administration in over a decade. This action would help remove the greatest barrier facing first-time homebuyers - the lack of funds for a down payment on a mortgage. Speaking at the National Association of Home Builders\u0026rsquo; annual convention, Commissioner Weicher indicated that the proposal, part of HUD\u0026rsquo;s Fiscal Year 2005 budget request, would eliminate the statutory requirement of a minimum three percent down payment for FHA-insured single-family mortgages for first-time homebuyers.\n\u0026ldquo;Offering FHA mortgages with no down payment will unlock the door to homeownership for hundreds of thousands of American families, particularly minorities,\u0026rdquo; said HUD\u0026rsquo;s Acting Secretary Alphonso Jackson. \u0026ldquo;President Bush has pledged to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners this decade, and this historic initiative will help meet this goal.\u0026rdquo; Preliminary projections indicate that the new FHA mortgage product would generate about 150,000 homebuyers in the first year alone.\n\u0026ldquo;This initiative would not only address a major hurdle to homeownership and allow many renters to afford their own home, it would help these families build wealth and become true stakeholders in their communities,\u0026rdquo; said Commissioner Weicher. \u0026ldquo;In addition, it would help spur the production of new housing in this country.\u0026quot;\nFor those that choose to participate in the Zero Down Payment program, HUD would charge a modestly higher insurance premium, which would be phased down over several years, and would also require families to undergo pre-purchase housing counseling. So, how\u0026rsquo;s that program working out?\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re not in a position to be able to save funds for a downpayment, you\u0026rsquo;re also not in a position to be able to have an emergency savings account for all of the unexpected expenses that arise with home ownership.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/hud-zero-down-payment-mortgages.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCraig Cantoni has pointed out \u003ca href=\"http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr04-006.cfm\u0026amp;CFID=11329458\u0026amp;CFTOKEN=49302597\"\u003ethe following January 19, 2004 press release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003ch3\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBUSH ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEW HUD \u0026ldquo;ZERO DOWN PAYMENT\u0026rdquo; MORTGAGE\u003cbr /\u003e  \u003ci\u003eInitiative Aimed at Removing Major Barrier to Homeownership \u003c/i\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e  \u003cp\u003e LAS VEGAS - As part of President Bush\u0026rsquo;s ongoing effort to help American families    achieve the dream of homeownership, Federal Housing Commissioner John C. Weicher    today announced that HUD is proposing to offer a \u0026ldquo;zero down payment\u0026rdquo;    mortgage, the most significant initiative by the Federal Housing Administration    in over a decade. This action would help remove the greatest barrier facing    first-time homebuyers - the lack of funds for a down payment on a mortgage.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"HUD zero down payment mortgages"},{"content":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed Jewel v. NSA to try another tactic in stopping unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping of U.S. residents. Their previous lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T, Hepting v. AT\u0026amp;T, is still in federal court as the EFF argues with the government over whether the telecom immunity law passed by our spineless Congress is itself constitutional or applicable to the case.\nJewel v. NSA names as defendants the National Security Agency, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney\u0026rsquo;s chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and \u0026ldquo;other individuals who ordered or participated in warrantless domestic surveillance.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/eff-sues-nsa-bush-cheney-addington-etc.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Electronic Frontier Foundation \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/09/17-0\"\u003ehas filed Jewel v. NSA to try another tactic in stopping unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping of U.S. residents\u003c/a\u003e.  Their previous lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T, Hepting v. AT\u0026amp;T, is still in federal court as the EFF argues with the government over whether the telecom immunity law passed by our spineless Congress is itself constitutional or applicable to the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJewel v. NSA names as defendants the National Security Agency, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney\u0026rsquo;s chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and \u0026ldquo;other individuals who ordered or participated in warrantless domestic surveillance.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"EFF sues the NSA, Bush, Cheney, Addington, etc."},{"content":"In another amusing unintended consequence of the war on drugs, it turns out that the pharmaceuticals most likely to get disposed of into city water supplies are controlled substances. The restrictions on who has access to over 365 controlled substances are such that they can\u0026rsquo;t be disposed of via normal hazardous waste disposal methods such as incineration, due to the costs of maintaining the controls on contractors who handle and haul away drugs for disposal.\nAs a result, hospitals and assisted living facilities are dumping drugs like codeine, morphine, oxycodone, diazepam (e.g., Valium) and methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin) down the drains, behind locked doors with a witness to the disposal for record-keeping purposes.\nThe DEA is reportedly working out some modified regulations with the assistance of the EPA.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/drugs-in-drinking-water-are-controlled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn another amusing unintended consequence of the war on drugs, it turns out that \u003ca href=\"http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/EMIHC267/333/21291/832203.html?d=dmtICNNews\"\u003ethe pharmaceuticals most likely to get disposed of into city water supplies are controlled substances\u003c/a\u003e.  The restrictions on who has access to over 365 controlled substances are such that they can\u0026rsquo;t be disposed of via normal hazardous waste disposal methods such as incineration, due to the costs of maintaining the controls on contractors who handle and haul away drugs for disposal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs a result, hospitals and assisted living facilities are dumping drugs like codeine, morphine, oxycodone, diazepam (e.g., Valium) and methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin) down the drains, behind locked doors with a witness to the disposal for record-keeping purposes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe DEA is reportedly working out some modified regulations with the assistance of the EPA.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Drugs in drinking water are controlled substances"},{"content":"Orcinus has an interesting article about Sarah Palin, prompted by the finding of a 1995 photograph of Palin at her Wasilla city council desk with an article from the March 1995 issue of the John Birch Society\u0026rsquo;s New American in front of her. Ben Smith at Politico has a more balanced piece on the same subject, which points out that there were lots of copies of that particular article sent out, and that Birchers themselves don\u0026rsquo;t appear to be particularly impressed with Palin.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-10-20):\nAnd we thought that we beat nazism in WW2 and now we have them taking over the republican party. If IKE was alive he would have a fit!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/sarah-palin-and-john-birch-society.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrcinus has \u003ca href=\"http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/09/is-sarah-palin-closet-john-bircher.html\"\u003ean interesting article about Sarah Palin\u003c/a\u003e, prompted by the finding of a 1995 photograph of Palin at her Wasilla city council desk with an article from the March 1995 issue of the John Birch Society\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew American\u003c/span\u003e in front of her.  Ben Smith at Politico has \u003ca href=\"http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Whats_on_the_desk.html?showall\"\u003ea more balanced piece on the same subject\u003c/a\u003e, which points out that there were lots of copies of that particular article sent out, and that Birchers themselves don\u0026rsquo;t appear to be particularly impressed with Palin.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sarah Palin and the John Birch Society"},{"content":"A lot of my investments are in S\u0026amp;P 500 index funds, which, until the recent dive by financial institutions, included financial stocks as its largest sector of investment (finance is now third after energy and IT). Over the past couple years, I\u0026rsquo;ve held shares in the Prudent Bear Fund (BEARX), a mutual fund that uses a strategy of shorting various stocks, purchasing put options, and investing in gold, as well as making some short-term trades of the exchange-traded funds ProShares UltraShort S\u0026amp;P 500 (SDS), which goes up when the S\u0026amp;P 500 goes down, and ProShares UltraShort Financial (SKF), which goes up when the Dow Jones U.S. Financials Index (DJUSFI) goes down.\nI had been holding some shares of SKF for a couple weeks with a 30-day limit order to sell at $142, which would give me a nice profit. When it shot up Thursday, I upped my limit, and ended up selling some of my shares at over $150, and closing out my position. The market then reversed, and SKF dropped as low as $110, so I picked up a few more shares at around $117. Friday morning, SKF dropped to $87 and started to climb back up, when all of a sudden it stuck at $93 and no more trades went through. Trading was halted.\nThe SEC announced a \u0026ldquo;temporary emergency action\u0026rdquo; to ban short selling in 799 stocks of financial companies for the next ten business days (until the end of the day on October 2), which may be extended for up to another twenty business days (until the end of the day on October 31, bringing us right up to the election). The UK instituted a similar ban. Because of this ban, trading in SKF was temporarily halted. The SEC seems to be under the illusion that short sellers are responsible for the stocks of financial companies falling, rather than the fact that these companies have been engaging in risky behavior and are now loaded down with bad debt.\nBut a short time later today, trading in SKF resumed, after ProShares announced that they cannot accept orders to create new shares in the fund, since that would require taking new short positions in financial stocks, but those who hold existing positions are still permitted to trade them.\nThis effectively turns SKF into a closed-end fund, making SKF shares more scarce than they otherwise would be. When I saw that SKF was again trading, I bought more shares at $90, reasoning that the financial problems are far from fixed, the proposed government action is likely to be full of holes, and with normal routes to short selling closed, more of those who wish to hedge their bets against further drops in the financial sector will turn to other alternatives such as put options (though options markets are likely to be hurt by this ban as well, since the U.S., unlike the UK, didn\u0026rsquo;t make an exception for options market makers) or shares in funds like SKF, the latter of which they will only be able to purchase from existing holders of the fund.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a serious mistake to think that short selling is something solely done by vultures trying to destroy companies at risk\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a defensive measure against catastrophe for those who are mostly holding long-term investment positions.\nAn Associated Press story on the ban shows that the SEC is starting to recognize that it may cause some unintended problems:\nBut on Wall Street, professional short-sellers said they were being unfairly targeted by the SEC\u0026rsquo;s prohibition. And some analysts warned of possible negative consequences, maintaining that banning short-selling could actually distort \u0026ndash; not stabilize \u0026ndash; edgy markets.\nIndeed, hours after the new ban was announced, some of its details appeared to be a work in progress. The SEC said its staff was recommending exemptions from the ban for trades market professionals make to hedge their investments in stock options or futures.\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s going to accomplish what they\u0026rsquo;re after,\u0026rdquo; said Jeff Tjornehoj, senior analyst at fund research firm Lipper Inc. Without short sellers, he said, investors will have a harder time gauging the true value of a stock.\n\u0026ldquo;Most people want to be in a stock for the long run and want to see prices go up. Short sellers are useful for throwing water in their face and saying, `Oh yeah? Think about this,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; Tjornehoj said. As a result, restricting the practice could inflate the value of some stocks, opening the door for a big downward correction later.\n\u0026ldquo;Without offering a flip-side to the price-discovery mechanism, I think there\u0026rsquo;s a pressure built up in stock prices that only gets relieved in a great cataclysm,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nDisclosure: I presently hold no shares of BEARX or SDS, but do have a position in SKF. This post does not constitute investment advice.\nUPDATE (September 20, 2008): Paul Krugman critiques leaked details of the bailout deal. If accurate, I agree with him that it\u0026rsquo;s a bad deal and I expect to see SKF climb on Monday.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\nLooks like Krugman was rigth: no deal. The Sharemarket has plummetted.As for the ban on short-selling: the unintended consequences of government intervention in the market are a surprise, why? Yet this blog supports the most anti-market and most pro-intervention presidential candidate since that buffoon Carter.In Australia, there was some justification for a ban: the shortists have to get their shares from somewhere, and it turns out that superannuation funds were lending them. This means they were abetting a practice that caused their members' portfolios to plummet. It also seems that some companies were the victims of false rumours spread by more unscrupulous shortists.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nObama is far from an ideal candidate, but I think he's better than McCain, all things considered. The civil liberties encroachments of the Bush administration need to be reversed, and I don't think Obama is as dangerous economically as some of his rhetoric might suggest (and he's certainly moderated his positions since winning the Democratic primary), based on who his economic advisors are.\nLippard (2008-09-30):\nWill Wilkinson found a nice post on the difference between Obama and McCain.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-30):\n“I prefer Obama over McCain in much the way I prefer rancid milk over rancid milk regurgitated by a cat.”For the opposite point of view, Thomas Sowell wrote:“Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.”\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/government-restriction-on-short-sales.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA lot of my investments are in S\u0026amp;P 500 index funds, which, until the recent dive by financial institutions, included financial stocks as its largest sector of investment (finance is now third after energy and IT).  Over the past couple years, I\u0026rsquo;ve held shares in the Prudent Bear Fund (BEARX), a mutual fund that uses a strategy of shorting various stocks, purchasing put options, and investing in gold, as well as making some short-term trades of the exchange-traded funds ProShares UltraShort S\u0026amp;P 500 (SDS), which goes up when the S\u0026amp;P 500 goes down, and ProShares UltraShort Financial (SKF), which goes up when the Dow Jones U.S. Financials Index (DJUSFI) goes down.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI had been holding some shares of SKF for a couple weeks with a 30-day limit order to sell at $142, which would give me a nice profit.  When it shot up Thursday, I upped my limit, and ended up selling some of my shares at over $150, and closing out my position.  The market then reversed, and SKF dropped as low as $110, so I picked up a few more shares at around $117. Friday morning, SKF dropped to $87 and started to climb back up, when all of a sudden it stuck at $93 and no more trades went through.  Trading was halted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe SEC \u003ca href=\"http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-211.htm\"\u003eannounced a \u0026ldquo;temporary emergency action\u0026rdquo; to ban short selling in 799 stocks of financial companies\u003c/a\u003e for the next ten business days (until the end of the day on October 2), which may be extended for up to another twenty business days (until the end of the day on October 31, bringing us right up to the election).  The UK instituted a similar ban.  Because of this ban, trading in SKF was temporarily halted.  The SEC seems to be under the illusion that short sellers are responsible for the stocks of financial companies falling, rather than the fact that these companies have been engaging in risky behavior and are now loaded down with bad debt.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut a short time later today, trading in SKF resumed, after \u003ca href=\"http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080919/20080919005500.html?.v=1\"\u003eProShares announced that they cannot accept orders to create new shares in the fund\u003c/a\u003e, since that would require taking new short positions in financial stocks, but those who hold existing positions are still permitted to trade them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis effectively turns SKF into \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-end_fund\"\u003ea closed-end fund\u003c/a\u003e, making SKF shares more scarce than they otherwise would be.  When I saw that SKF was again trading, I bought more shares at $90, reasoning that the financial problems are far from fixed, the proposed government action is likely to be full of holes, and with normal routes to short selling closed, more of those who wish to hedge their bets against further drops in the financial sector will turn to other alternatives such as put options (though \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087\u0026amp;sid=aJ0LXWUmmLBg\u0026amp;refer=home\"\u003eoptions markets are likely to be hurt by this ban as well\u003c/a\u003e, since the U.S., unlike the UK, didn\u0026rsquo;t make an exception for options market makers) or shares in funds like SKF, the latter of which they will only be able to purchase from existing holders of the fund.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a serious mistake to think that short selling is something solely done by vultures trying to destroy companies at risk\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a defensive measure against catastrophe for those who are mostly holding long-term investment positions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080919/sec_short_selling.html?.v=16\"\u003eAssociated Press story on the ban\u003c/a\u003e shows that the SEC is starting to recognize that it may cause some unintended problems:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Government restriction on short sales may have unintended consequences"},{"content":"Reuters reports that nighttime satellite photos from Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad show that the lights in those areas began to go out before the U.S. troop surge began in 2007, suggesting that population shift, rather than the surge, may have had greater responsibility for the drop in violence.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/iraq-peace-surge-working-or-results-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReuters reports that \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080919/sc_nm/iraq_lights_dc\"\u003enighttime satellite photos from Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad show that the lights in those areas began to go out before the U.S. troop surge began in 2007\u003c/a\u003e, suggesting that population shift, rather than the surge, may have had greater responsibility for the drop in violence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Iraq peace:  surge working, or results of ethnic cleansing?"},{"content":"Sarah Palin has apparently been using a personal email account for State of Alaska business (perhaps following Republican precedent on how to avoid subpoenas?), and it\u0026rsquo;s been compromised.\nWikileaks has the documents.\nUPDATE (September 19, 2008): The screenshots used by the attacker showed that he used ctunnel as his web proxy, and contained enough information to identify his source IP in ctunnel\u0026rsquo;s logs.\nAs pointed out by commenter Schtacky, it looks like they\u0026rsquo;ve identified the culprit, who used some Google research and Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s password recovery feature to change the password on the account to break in.\nThis shows the problem with choosing \u0026ldquo;security questions\u0026rdquo; for password recovery that have answers which are easily publicly available.\nI hope that this kid\u0026rsquo;s actions don\u0026rsquo;t sabotage the corruption case against Palin that may have been supported by evidence in her Yahoo email, evidence that is now tainted by the fact that it was compromised (and subsequently deleted).\nHistorical Comments Badger3k (2008-09-19):\nWill this hacking do any damage to the case? Will this be used to argue that any emails found might have been hacked or planted and are not Palins?\nSchtacky (2008-09-19):\nPerhaps they've found the offender: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation_continues/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/sarah-palins-yahoo-account-hacked.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSarah Palin has apparently been using a personal email account for State of Alaska business (perhaps following \u003ca href=\"/2007/04/rnc-accidentally-loses-white-house.html\"\u003eRepublican precedent on how to avoid subpoenas?\u003c/a\u003e), and \u003ca href=\"http://gawker.com/5051193/sarah-palins-personal-email-account-hacked\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s been compromised\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWikileaks \u003ca href=\"http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008\"\u003ehas the documents\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 19, 2008): The screenshots \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation/\"\u003eused by the attacker showed that he used ctunnel as his web proxy, and contained enough information to identify his source IP in ctunnel\u0026rsquo;s logs\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs pointed out by commenter Schtacky, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation_continues/\"\u003eit looks like they\u0026rsquo;ve identified the culprit\u003c/a\u003e, who used some Google research and Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s password recovery feature to change the password on the account to break in.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis shows the problem with choosing \u0026ldquo;security questions\u0026rdquo; for password recovery that have answers which are easily publicly available.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI hope that this kid\u0026rsquo;s actions don\u0026rsquo;t sabotage the corruption case against Palin that may have been supported by evidence in her Yahoo email, evidence that is now tainted by the fact that it was compromised (and subsequently deleted).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sarah Palin's Yahoo account hacked"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars discusses those right-wing Christians who oppose Sarah Palin because God doesn\u0026rsquo;t want women to hold leadership positions or even vote.\nHe lays out some choice quotes from Covenant News, the website promoting these extreme views, and observes that this website is the home to contributors such as Gary North and Ron Paul.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/religious-rights-religious-right.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars discusses \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/the_religious_rights_religious.php\"\u003ethose right-wing Christians who oppose Sarah Palin because God doesn\u0026rsquo;t want women to hold leadership positions or even vote\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe lays out some choice quotes from Covenant News, the website promoting these extreme views, and observes that this website is the home to contributors such as Gary North and Ron Paul.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Religious Right's Religious Right"},{"content":"Radley Balko at The Agitator replies to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary about why the Washington Post\u0026rsquo;s coverage of Cindy McCain\u0026rsquo;s addiction to painkillers and commission of crimes to support it is newsworthy.\nBalko gives two reasons:\nJohn and Cindy McCain have touted her addiction an example in overcoming adversity. That presents quite the contrast to McCain’s legislative history as an ardent drug warrior. People accused of crimes similar to those Cindy McCain was accused of committing usually go to prison (even when they’re innocent). Her crimes haven’t been well-reported in the media. And they show how John McCain (who, by the way, is running for president) believes in one set of rules for the friends and family of powerful politicians, and a different set of rules for everyone else. While Cindy McCain’s addiction and theft from her children’s charity to support that addiction were lightly covered at the time, there has yet to be much coverage of it at all during this campaign. And one aspect of the case that’s been covered even less is John and Cindy McCain’s attempt to railroad Tom Gosinski, the guy who blew the whistle on Cindy McCain’s theft from her children’s charity. The Post story is one of the first to get his version of what happened. And Balko concludes:\nSo here we have a U.S. senator who tried to destroy the guy who blew the whistle on his wife’s crimes, who then used his political power to work out a sweetheart deal with prosecutors to get his wife a slap on the wrist for those crimes (which often send others to prison), and who has then spent his entire career fighting for longer sentences and less leniency for people who commit similar crimes. And he’s now running for president.\nThe Washington Post story is here. Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s New Times covered the story of Cindy McCain\u0026rsquo;s drug addiction and Tom Gosinski whistle-blowing back in 1994. The New Times story contains much more detail than the Post story, including lies told by Cindy McCain as part of the McCains handling of the unwanted media coverage of the story.\nAmy Silverman of New Times, who has covered McCain in detail for many years, has a lengthy recent article about McCain here, which includes stories about McCain such as his sabotaging a hearing of Arizona Gov. Rose Mofford, Barry Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s irritation with McCain, McCain\u0026rsquo;s exploitation of the illness of Mo Udall for publicity, and more.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/cindy-mccains-drug-related-crimes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/15/why-cindy-mccains-drug-addiction-is-a-legitimate-news-story/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e replies to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary about why the Washington Post\u0026rsquo;s coverage of Cindy McCain\u0026rsquo;s addiction to painkillers and commission of crimes to support it is newsworthy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBalko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/15/why-cindy-mccains-drug-addiction-is-a-legitimate-news-story/\"\u003egives two reasons\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e John and Cindy McCain have touted her addiction an example in overcoming adversity. That presents quite the contrast to McCain’s legislative history as an ardent drug warrior. People accused of crimes similar to those Cindy McCain was accused of committing usually go to prison (\u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/news/show/123589.html\"\u003eeven when they’re innocent\u003c/a\u003e). Her crimes haven’t been well-reported in the media. And they show how John McCain (who, by the way, is running for president) believes in one set of rules for the friends and family of powerful politicians, and a different set of rules for everyone else. \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e While Cindy McCain’s addiction and theft from her children’s charity to support that addiction were lightly covered at the time, there has yet to be much coverage of it at all during this campaign. And one aspect of the case that’s been covered even less is John and Cindy McCain’s attempt to railroad Tom Gosinski, the guy who blew the whistle on Cindy McCain’s theft from her children’s charity. The \u003cem\u003ePost\u003c/em\u003e story is one of the first to get his version of what happened.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e \u003cp\u003eAnd Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/15/why-cindy-mccains-drug-addiction-is-a-legitimate-news-story/\"\u003econcludes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cindy McCain's drug-related crimes"},{"content":"A McCain-Palin ad cites factcheck.org to claim that Obama has made false attacks on Palin\u0026ndash;but the attacks haven\u0026rsquo;t come from Obama. McCain and Palin are appealing to factcheck.org\u0026rsquo;s accurate content in order to lie about Obama, and factcheck.org calls them on their dishonesty.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/mccain-and-palin-lie-about-factcheckorg.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA McCain-Palin ad cites factcheck.org to claim that Obama has made false attacks on Palin\u0026ndash;but the attacks haven\u0026rsquo;t come from Obama.  McCain and Palin are appealing to factcheck.org\u0026rsquo;s accurate content in order to lie about Obama, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccain-palin_distorts_our_finding.html\"\u003efactcheck.org calls them on their dishonesty\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain and Palin lie about factcheck.org"},{"content":"Sarah Palin said in an interview with Charlie Gibson that Alaska \u0026ldquo;produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.\u0026quot;\nNot true.\nAlaska produces 14% of the oil from U.S. wells (not 14% of oil consumed), produces 3.5% of domestically produced U.S. energy, about 2.4% of U.S. energy consumed.\nMcCain repeated the same falsehood to Gibson, saying \u0026ldquo;[Palin\u0026rsquo;s] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America\u0026rsquo;s energy supply.\u0026quot;\n(Via factcheck.org.)\nIf they keep repeating this claim, they are liars. There\u0026rsquo;s already good evidence that they are bullshitters.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/palin-falsely-claims-alaska-produces-20.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSarah Palin said in an interview with Charlie Gibson that Alaska \u0026ldquo;produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot true.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlaska produces 14% of the oil from U.S. wells (not 14% of oil consumed), produces 3.5% of domestically produced U.S. energy, about 2.4% of U.S. energy consumed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMcCain repeated the same falsehood to Gibson, saying \u0026ldquo;[Palin\u0026rsquo;s] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America\u0026rsquo;s energy supply.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/energetically_wrong.html\"\u003efactcheck.org\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf they keep repeating this claim, they are liars.  There\u0026rsquo;s already good evidence that they are \u003ca href=\"/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html\"\u003ebullshitters\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin falsely claims Alaska produces 20% of U.S. energy"},{"content":"Kat and I went last night to see \u0026ldquo;Walking with Dinosaurs\u0026rdquo; at the U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix. It was a visually impressive show\u0026ndash;they did a great job on the dinosaurs, which were quite realistic in appearance and movement, with only minor distractions. The smaller dinosaurs were operated by a person inside, whose legs were partially visible since a human\u0026rsquo;s legs don\u0026rsquo;t fit into the shape of the dinosaur\u0026rsquo;s legs. The larger dinosaurs were each mounted on some kind of flat long vehicle that was colored to match the floor, but was still visible.\nThe music was loud and somewhat bombastic, the kind of stirring movie soundtrack music that can be sometimes irritating\u0026ndash;but not as much so as the typical Phoenix Suns intro that regularly happens at the same location. The dinosaurs movements involved very limited interactions with each other\u0026ndash;only occasionally so much as touching each other\u0026ndash;which made the \u0026ldquo;battles\u0026rdquo; more of a suggestion than a depiction. No doubt this was to avoid damaging some expensive dinosaurs.\nThe production was narrated by an actor playing \u0026ldquo;Huxley\u0026rdquo; the paleontologist, who walked around on the floor with the dinosaurs, describing the historical context with the help of video projected onto several screens. The arena itself was encircled by inflatable plant life that \u0026ldquo;grew\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;died\u0026rdquo; at the appropriate times. Some lighting and smoke effects also contributed to the atmosphere, for fires, volcanos, and the comet theory of the K-T mass extinction. Some other props included some giant rocks which were also used to represent the continents, and a big ball of dinosaur poop (one of several kid-pleasing elements that I also appreciated).\nIt was definitely a bit more on the entertainment side of \u0026ldquo;edutainment\u0026rdquo; than the education side. Although the script tried to convey the timescales involved, it didn\u0026rsquo;t try very hard\u0026ndash;some visual analogies on the video screen might have helped. It explained the difference between fossils of dead animals and trace fossils that show evidence of how they lived, but made no attempt to talk about the geological strata or how we know the enormous ages involved. It didn\u0026rsquo;t, to my mind, do much of anything to try to proactively counter young-earth creationist nonsense about the dinosaurs.\nAnd that was a pity, because as we left the arena, we were confronted by young-earth creationists from the Arizona Origin Science Association handing out copies of Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s booklet, \u0026ldquo;What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?\u0026rdquo; I heard one gentleman come back and ask for another copy, saying \u0026ldquo;my brother[-in-law?] is an evolutionary biologist, and I want to give him one.\u0026rdquo; I hope that man\u0026rsquo;s relative takes the time to rebut it.\nThere are some photos and video of \u0026ldquo;Walking with Dinosaurs\u0026rdquo; at Brian Switek\u0026rsquo;s Laelaps blog, along with his description of the show.\nAnonymous (2008-09-15):\nCreationists. They're just the kind of lying scoundrels to completely ruin a great dinosaur show like this.I'm glad you had fun at the show, Jim. I think that show's awesome.Here. I have a video on my blog that shows clips from the show that would be very interesting to your regular readers like me who never saw the show, yet or plan on not seeing the show because of it being too expensive for them to go see in person.It's right here. Hope you'll enjoy it.Walking with Dinosaurs the Live Action Show\nGridman (2008-09-16):\nJim, I'd almost think you'd not seen the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, on which this was based.With the groundbreaking digital effects (at the time) of the original series, it was quite amazing. My kids never get tried of watching it. (And the other two pieces, Walking with Monsters (pre-dinosauria) and Walking with Beasts (post-dinosauria))But one thing that the TV series still doesn't accomplish is that sense of scale, and seeing them, life-sized, in an arena was amazing.One thing that I thought was absolutely correct in Walking with Dinosaurs was that the did not address creationist bullshit. Why should they any more than they should discuss flat-Earth theory?They simply laid out the facts and didn't confuse the issues by bringing up baseless nonsense.(Although, one criticism, rightly, leveled at Walking with Dinosaurs was that it presented some things that really are the subject of debate as fact, such as things about behavior patterns and social structures.)It was difficult to get pictures in the low-light, but I also got a few which can be seen on my flickr set.\nLippard (2008-09-16):\nGridman: You're right, I've never seen the BBC series.I'll have to check out your pictures.\nLippard (2008-09-16):\nYour link is bad... an anchor tag with no target.\nGridman (2008-09-16):\nOops, well, that's strange about the link. In my defense, I got a nice does of salmonella and that might be an excuse,,,Let's try this again: Flickr set\nqraal (2008-09-21):\nHi JimHaving seen \"Walking With Dinosaurs\" here in Australia over a year ago, with my son, I have to agree about how impressive it was. And, weirdly, we ran into a lonely-looking Hovind fanatic handing out DVDs to people on their way home. \"Dr.Dino\" sounded so enticing to my son... I had to explain he was a liar and a convicted criminal.\nLippard (2008-09-21):\nqraal: That's ironic. You're in Australia, but were handed material by a creationist from the U.S. (Kent Hovind), while we in the U.S. were handed material by a creationist from Australia (Ken Ham).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/walking-with-dinosaurs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKat and I went last night to see \u0026ldquo;Walking with Dinosaurs\u0026rdquo; at the U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix.  It was a visually impressive show\u0026ndash;they did a great job on the dinosaurs, which were quite realistic in appearance and movement, with only minor distractions.  The smaller dinosaurs were operated by a person inside, whose legs were partially visible since a human\u0026rsquo;s legs don\u0026rsquo;t fit into the shape of the dinosaur\u0026rsquo;s legs.  The larger dinosaurs were each mounted on some kind of flat long vehicle that was colored to match the floor, but was still visible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe music was loud and somewhat bombastic, the kind of stirring movie soundtrack music that can be sometimes irritating\u0026ndash;but not as much so as the typical Phoenix Suns intro that regularly happens at the same location.  The dinosaurs movements involved very limited interactions with each other\u0026ndash;only occasionally so much as touching each other\u0026ndash;which made the \u0026ldquo;battles\u0026rdquo; more of a suggestion than a depiction.  No doubt this was to avoid damaging some expensive dinosaurs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe production was narrated by an actor playing \u0026ldquo;Huxley\u0026rdquo; the paleontologist, who walked around on the floor with the dinosaurs, describing the historical context with the help of video projected onto several screens.  The arena itself was encircled by inflatable plant life that \u0026ldquo;grew\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;died\u0026rdquo; at the appropriate times.  Some lighting and smoke effects also contributed to the atmosphere, for fires, volcanos, and the comet theory of the K-T mass extinction.  Some other props included some giant rocks which were also used to represent the continents, and a big ball of dinosaur poop (one of several kid-pleasing elements that I also appreciated).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was definitely a bit more on the entertainment side of \u0026ldquo;edutainment\u0026rdquo; than the education side.  Although the script tried to convey the timescales involved, it didn\u0026rsquo;t try very hard\u0026ndash;some visual analogies on the video screen might have helped.  It explained the difference between fossils of dead animals and trace fossils that show evidence of how they lived, but made no attempt to talk about the geological strata or how we know the enormous ages involved.  It didn\u0026rsquo;t, to my mind, do much of anything to try to proactively counter young-earth creationist nonsense about the dinosaurs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that was a pity, because as we left the arena, we were confronted by young-earth creationists from the Arizona Origin Science Association handing out copies of Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s booklet, \u0026ldquo;What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?\u0026rdquo;  I heard one gentleman come back and ask for another copy, saying \u0026ldquo;my brother[-in-law?] is an evolutionary biologist, and I want to give him one.\u0026rdquo;  I hope that man\u0026rsquo;s relative takes the time to rebut it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are some photos and video of \u0026ldquo;Walking with Dinosaurs\u0026rdquo; at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2007/11/walking_with_dinosaurs_live.php\"\u003eBrian Switek\u0026rsquo;s Laelaps blog\u003c/a\u003e, along with his description of the show.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Walking with the Dinosaurs"},{"content":"As Jim pointed out here, Maricopa County saw another record month for pre-foreclosures - though AZ Central\u0026rsquo;s count is different than mine. I can only tell you what I get from the recorder\u0026rsquo;s office (which was 7286).\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08AugNTRs.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245866439526765986\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/augusts-notices-of-trustees-sales.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Jim pointed out \u003ca href=\"/2008/09/foreclosures-hit-record-high.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, Maricopa County saw another record month for pre-foreclosures - though AZ Central\u0026rsquo;s count is different than mine. I can only tell you what I get from the recorder\u0026rsquo;s office (which was \u003cb\u003e7286\u003c/b\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08AugNTRs.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08AugNTRs.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245866439526765986\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"August's Notices of Trustee's Sales"},{"content":"USA Today reports that the Biden family has given $3,690 to charity over the last decade, an average of $369 per year, on \u0026ldquo;modest\u0026rdquo; income that has ranged from a low of $210,797 in 1999 to a high of over $320,000 in 2005. Last year, they gave $995 on income of $319,853 (0.3%), their highest giving rate of the decade.\nA 2005 study of households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,000 per year shows average charitable giving of $40,746 per year.\nJohn McCain has given $202,000 to charity in the last two years, about 25% of his income\u0026ndash;but of course he is married to a very wealthy woman who earned more than $6 million in 2006. Last year he gave $105,467 (half of what he and his wife donated as a couple) on income of $405,409, which would be more impressive if it weren\u0026rsquo;t just an even division of their reported expenses reported without the comparison figure of her income.\nThe Obamas gave $240,000 to charity last year on income of more than $4.2 million (5.7%). In 2000, they gave $2,350 to charity on income of $240,726 (1%).\nPalin\u0026rsquo;s tax data hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet been released. There may be some tax problems lurking in her records.\nJohn McCain\u0026rsquo;s personal charitable giving appears quite generous, but it\u0026rsquo;s somewhat less so considering his wife\u0026rsquo;s much higher separate income and my suspicion that she effectively subsidized his charitable giving as the chief breadwinner and provider. The Obamas were very generous last year, but not so much in 2000. The Bidens, not at all generous. This seems to lend further support to the thesis that conservatives are more generous with their own money than liberals.\nMy feeling is that most professionals earning six-figure incomes should be able to give 5-10% of their gross income to charitable causes without much trouble. The average figures for those earning $200,000 to $500,000 strike me as just about right.\n(UPDATE, 17 May 2021): The Bidens\u0026rsquo; 2020 tax returns show much more generous charitable contributions:\nThe Bidens donated $30,704 to 10 charities last year. The largest gift was $10,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit focused on child abuse that is named after the president\u0026rsquo;s deceased son.But that\u0026rsquo;s on $607,336 in income, so it\u0026rsquo;s just over 5%. Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff gave just under 1.6%:\nVice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released their 2020 tax filings. They paid a rate of 36.7% on income of $1,695,225 and contributed $27,006 to charity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/candidate-charitable-contributions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-12-biden-financial_N.htm?csp=34\"\u003ereports that the Biden family has given $3,690 to charity over the last decade\u003c/a\u003e, an average of $369 per year, on \u0026ldquo;modest\u0026rdquo; income that has ranged from a low of $210,797 in 1999 to a high of over $320,000 in 2005.  Last year, they gave $995 on income of $319,853 (0.3%), their highest giving rate of the decade.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eA 2005 study of households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,000 per year shows average charitable giving of $40,746 per year.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eJohn McCain has given $202,000 to charity in the last two years, about 25% of his income\u0026ndash;but of course he is married to a very wealthy woman who earned more than $6 million in 2006.  Last year he gave $105,467 (half of what he and his wife donated as a couple) on income of $405,409, which would be more impressive if it weren\u0026rsquo;t just an even division of their reported expenses reported without the comparison figure of her income.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eThe Obamas gave $240,000 to charity last year on income of more than $4.2 million (5.7%).  In 2000, they gave $2,350 to charity on income of $240,726 (1%).\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003ePalin\u0026rsquo;s tax data hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet been released.  There \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/15/palin-tax-mystery-enters_n_126553.html\"\u003emay be some tax problems lurking in her records\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eJohn McCain\u0026rsquo;s personal charitable giving appears quite generous, but it\u0026rsquo;s somewhat less so considering his wife\u0026rsquo;s much higher separate income and my suspicion that she effectively subsidized his charitable giving as the chief breadwinner and provider.  The Obamas were very generous last year, but not so much in 2000.  The Bidens, not at all generous.  This seems to lend further support to the thesis that \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003econservatives are more generous with their own money than liberals\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eMy feeling is that most professionals earning six-figure incomes should be able to give 5-10% of their gross income to charitable causes without much trouble.  The average figures for those earning $200,000 to $500,000 strike me as just about right.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e(UPDATE, 17 May 2021):  The Bidens\u0026rsquo; 2020 tax returns \u003ca href=\"https://www.azfamily.com/news/us_world_news/bidens-paid-25-9-rate-and-earned-607-336-tax-returns-show/article_8e3e1dbc-5bb4-59d0-8ad7-624d39060a4f.html\"\u003eshow much more generous charitable contributions\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote style=\"border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;\"\u003eThe Bidens donated $30,704 to 10 charities last year. The largest gift was $10,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit focused on child abuse that is named after the president\u0026rsquo;s deceased son.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut that\u0026rsquo;s on $607,336 in income, so it\u0026rsquo;s just over 5%.  Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff gave just under 1.6%:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Candidate charitable contributions"},{"content":"Spammer Julian Jaynes now gets off as a result of a bad decision from the Virginia Supreme Court, reversing its own previous decision from six months ago.\nThe court ruled that the Virginia anti-spam law\u0026rsquo;s prohibition of header falsification constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of the right to anonymous political and religious speech, suggesting that it would have been acceptable of it was limited to commercial speech.\nThe court\u0026rsquo;s decision was predicated on the assumption that header falsification is a necessary requirement for anonymity, but this is a faulty assumption. All that is needed for anonymity is the omission of identity information that leads back to an individual, not the falsification of headers or identity information. That can be done with remailers, proxies, and anonymously-obtained email accounts, with no header falsification required. I previously made this argument in more detail in response to the arguments given by Jaynes\u0026rsquo; attorney in the press.\nI also disagree with the court\u0026rsquo;s apparent assumption that commercial speech is deserving of less protection than religious or political speech. What makes spam a problem is its unsolicited bulk nature, not its specific content.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/virginia-supreme-court-strikes-down.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpammer Julian Jaynes \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091201211.html?hpid=topnews\"\u003enow gets off as a result of a bad decision from the Virginia Supreme Court\u003c/a\u003e, reversing its \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/julian-jaynes-loses-appeal-on-spamming.html\"\u003eown previous decision from six months ago\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe court ruled that the Virginia anti-spam law\u0026rsquo;s prohibition of header falsification constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of the right to anonymous political and religious speech, suggesting that it would have been acceptable of it was limited to commercial speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe court\u0026rsquo;s decision was predicated on the assumption that header falsification is a necessary requirement for anonymity, but this is a faulty assumption.  All that is needed for anonymity is the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eomission\u003c/span\u003e of identity information that leads back to an individual, not the falsification of headers or identity information.  That can be done with remailers, proxies, and anonymously-obtained email accounts, with no header falsification required.  I \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/julian-jaynes-loses-appeal-on-spamming.html\"\u003epreviously made this argument in more detail in response to the arguments given by Jaynes\u0026rsquo; attorney in the press\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also disagree with the court\u0026rsquo;s apparent assumption that commercial speech is deserving of less protection than religious or political speech.  What makes spam a problem is its unsolicited bulk nature, not its specific content.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Virginia Supreme Court strikes down anti-spam law"},{"content":"CNN reports:\nForeclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and 91,000 families lost their houses. More than 770,000 homes have been repossessed by lenders since August 2007, when the credit crunch took hold.\nThe report from RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosures properties, is the latest in string of bad news for housing.\nForeclosure filings of all kinds, including notices of defaults, notices of auctions and bank repossessions, grew 12% in August over July, and 27% compared with August 2007.\nArizona preforeclosures also set another record in August, according to the Arizona Republic:\n\u0026hellip;notice of trustee sales, in metropolitan Phoenix hit a new high of 7,271 in August, according to the real-estate-data firm Information Market. Foreclosures in the Valley have been hovering around 4,000 for each of the past few months but are bound to climb if more struggling homeowners don\u0026rsquo;t get help.\nSo much for seeing July\u0026rsquo;s drop as the start of a trend.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/foreclosures-hit-record-high.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/12/real_estate/foreclosures/index.htm?postversion=2008091205?cnn=yes\"\u003eCNN reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eForeclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and 91,000 families lost their houses. \u003cp\u003eMore than 770,000 homes have been repossessed by lenders since August 2007, when the credit crunch took hold.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe report from RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosures properties, is the latest in string of bad news for housing.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForeclosure filings of all kinds, including notices of defaults, notices of auctions and bank repossessions, grew 12% in August over July, and 27% compared with August 2007.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foreclosures hit a record high"},{"content":"Yahoo reports:\nAlaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain\u0026rsquo;s Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children. Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims — nearly $17,000 over 19 months — were permitted because her \u0026ldquo;duty station\u0026rdquo; is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away.\nPalin spends little time at the governor\u0026rsquo;s mansion in Juneau, especially when the Legislature is out of session, and instead prefers to live in Wasilla and commute to her office in Anchorage.\nI think the travel to and from Wasilla is arguably reasonable, depending on frequency, but per diem for meals and incidentals in Wasilla seems as wrong as if she were taking the per diem for meals and incidentals while staying in the governor\u0026rsquo;s mansion.\nUPDATE (September 15, 2008): The Palins haven\u0026rsquo;t yet released their tax records, and it may be that she owes taxes on those per diems.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/palin-collected-per-diem-from-alaska.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"yshortcuts\" id=\"lw_1220993321_0\"\u003eYahoo \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080909/ap_on_el_pr/palin_travel_expenses\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"yshortcuts\" id=\"lw_1220993321_0\"\u003eAlaska Gov. Sarah Palin\u003c/span\u003e has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c/span\u003e reported Tuesday.                                               \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain\u0026rsquo;s Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children.                         \u003cp\u003ePer diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Post\u003c/span\u003e her claims — nearly $17,000 over 19 months — were permitted because her \u0026ldquo;duty station\u0026rdquo; is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin collected per-diem from Alaska while at home"},{"content":"This doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem terribly surprising, but Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a New York Times op-ed piece that observes that the U.S. ties with Hungary for most abortions among OECD nations, even though Denmark has the most sexually active teenage girls. Denmark\u0026rsquo;s teenage birthrate is 1/6 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and its abortion rate is 1/2 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s. The Netherlands has a teenage birthrate 1/7 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and an abortion rate 1/7 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and its teenagers start having sex on average two years after U.S. teens. The difference is that Denmark and the Netherlands have comprehensive sex education, while the U.S. has been pushing abstinence-only education that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work, and about half of U.S. states now reject federal funding for abstinence-only sex education for that reason.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-09-10):\nJimmy Carter raised this point 3 years or so ago in Our Endangered Values. I like quoting the NYT Book Review by Gary Wills since Carter kind of punctures the reality that the RR like's to portray of itself having a monopoly on knowing what the \"Christian\" thing to do is:Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy \"brought about by a combination of human errors.\" But the \"pro-life\" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the \"pro-life\" movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:\"Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/sex-education-reduces-abortion-rates.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem terribly surprising, but \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/great_oped_on_sex_ed.php\"\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e op-ed piece\u003c/a\u003e that observes that the U.S. ties with Hungary for most abortions among OECD nations, even though Denmark has the most sexually active teenage girls.  Denmark\u0026rsquo;s teenage birthrate is 1/6 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and its abortion rate is 1/2 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s.  The Netherlands has a teenage birthrate 1/7 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and an abortion rate 1/7 of the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s, and its teenagers start having sex on average two years after U.S. teens.  The difference is that Denmark and the Netherlands have comprehensive sex education, while the U.S. has been pushing abstinence-only education that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work, and about half of U.S. states now reject federal funding for abstinence-only sex education for that reason.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sex education reduces abortion rates"},{"content":"Factcheck.org has a section up on \u0026ldquo;Sliming Palin.\u0026quot; Check it before forwarding on emails, and reply to the authors who are spreading falsehoods.\nPalin didn\u0026rsquo;t cut Alaska\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;special needs\u0026rdquo; education budget by 62% (she tripled it), she didn\u0026rsquo;t ask for any books to be banned, she was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (though her husband was), she didn\u0026rsquo;t endorse Patrick Buchanan for president in 2000 (she wore a Buchanan button as a courtesy when Buchanan visited Wasilla, but worked for Steve Forbes\u0026rsquo; campaign), and she hasn\u0026rsquo;t tried to put creationism in schools.\nUPDATE (September 16, 2008): Apparently one of the books that Palin had inquired about how to challenge and remove from the library was a book by a local Palmer, AK pastor named Rev. Howard Bess titled, Pastor, I am Gay. It does appear that there were some particular books that caught her attention which is why she made the inquiry.\nUPDATE (September 16, 2008): Philip Munger of Wasilla says that Palin is definitely a young-earth creationist:\nIn June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.\nPalin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.\nAs the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.\nI asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon \u0026ldquo;during MY lifetime,\u0026rdquo; were obvious. \u0026ldquo;I can see that, maybe you can\u0026rsquo;t - but it guides me every day.\u0026quot;Surely there must be other witnesses besides Munger to her creationist views who can provide confirmation.\nAIGBusted (2008-09-10):\nSarah Palin did attempt to remove books from the library, and I can prove it. See:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?_r=3\u0026amp;hp\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin(Remove Spaces)\ntom (2008-09-10):\nWhy not go read the article in question, which, far from being refuted by the evidence in your link, directly addresses it?Factcheck.org is a pretty careful \u0026amp; reliable nonpartisan site. They debunk half truths as well as full blow lies; your claim that Palin \u0026quot;did attempt to remove books from the library\u0026quot;, as well as the widely circulated follow-up that she fired the librarian for standing up to her, are in the former category (along with most of the other points Jim mentions).In case you have any concerns about my motives: I despise Palin and would not even consider voting for McCain, largely because of her. But let us be careful about our reasons for opposing this despicable politician: it\u0026#39;s not as if there\u0026#39;s a shortage of legit evidence motivating that position.\nLippard (2008-09-10):\naigbusted: Your source says \"Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.\"As Tom observes, that's what Factcheck.org said, and what I said as well. Asking how to do something is not the same as trying to do it.I agree completely with Tom--Sarah Palin is an awful candidate for many reasons, so there is no need to attack her with half-truths and falsehoods. That's counterproductive.\nAIGBusted (2008-09-12):\nI quote from the NY Times Article:\"The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support.\"Unless the NY Times can be proven wrong, I don't know a single reason not to trust them.\nLippard (2008-09-12):\nWe're not disagreeing with what the NY Times said, we're disagreeing with what you said, which is different. You said \"Sarah Palin did attempt to remove books from the library, and I can prove it.\" The article you cited doesn't say that she attempted to remove books from the library, it says she asked about it. The quote you're pointing to now doesn't say she attempted to remove books from the library, it says she fired a librarian from the library, but then changed course. Actually, the specifics are that the librarian received a letter saying that she was going to be fired, but the firing is what Palin changed course on.As I've already said, there are good reasons to oppose Palin, and firing a librarian for personal reasons is one. But that's different from \"attempt[ing] to remove books from the library.\"USA Today also has an article about this controversy.\ntom (2008-09-12):\nOne gets the sense that aigbusted still hasn't read the Factcheck piece we're discussing, if he thinks that his last post disagrees with it. It takes about 2 min to read; well worth the time of anyone who wants to have an argument on this subject.I'm not trying to be flippant, but the disagreement here consists entirely in aig's misconceptions of what we're talking about and what the Factcheck piece is claiming.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-13):\nI posted something titled \"Palin is a book banner\" ... I may go back and qualify it but given I had already linked and quoted the Time piece saying that she asked a librarian about removing books then tried to fire her for insufficient loyalty, which I would have expected to provide the context for understanding why I would call her a \"book banner.\"FactCheck.org is pretty good, but I'm still annoyed with their crappy Bush yellocake page.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/factcheckorg-on-bogus-palin-claims.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFactcheck.org has a section up on \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sliming Palin.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Check it before forwarding on emails, and reply to the authors who are spreading falsehoods.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePalin didn\u0026rsquo;t cut Alaska\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;special needs\u0026rdquo; education budget by 62% (she tripled it), she didn\u0026rsquo;t ask for any books to be banned, she was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (though her husband was), she didn\u0026rsquo;t endorse Patrick Buchanan for president in 2000 (she wore a Buchanan button as a courtesy when Buchanan visited Wasilla, but worked for Steve Forbes\u0026rsquo; campaign), and she hasn\u0026rsquo;t tried to put creationism in schools.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 16, 2008): Apparently one of the books that Palin had inquired about how to challenge and remove from the library was \u003ca href=\"http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2008/09/did-pro-gay-tom.html\"\u003ea book by a local Palmer, AK pastor named Rev. Howard Bess titled, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePastor, I am Gay\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  It does appear that there were some particular books that caught her attention which is why she made the inquiry.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 16, 2008): Philip Munger of Wasilla says that \u003ca href=\"http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/09/saradise-lost-chapter-sixten-palins.html\"\u003ePalin is definitely a young-earth creationist\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePalin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon \u0026ldquo;during MY lifetime,\u0026rdquo; were obvious. \u0026ldquo;I can see that, maybe you can\u0026rsquo;t - but it guides me every day.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eSurely there must be other witnesses besides Munger to her creationist views who can provide confirmation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Factcheck.org on bogus Palin claims"},{"content":"Christina Caldwell has written a thoughtful and positive piece on the FFRF billboards in Phoenix for Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s student newspaper online.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/asu-webdevil-article-on-ffrf-billboards.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristina Caldwell has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.asuwebdevil.com/node/680\"\u003ea thoughtful and positive piece\u003c/a\u003e on the FFRF billboards in Phoenix for Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s student newspaper online.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU WebDevil article on FFRF billboards"},{"content":"A \u0026ldquo;You are not alone\u0026rdquo; billboard promoting a group for people who have left the Mormon religion is up in Mesa, put up by Paul Hahn of www.postmormon.org.\nUnlike usual anti-Mormon proselytizing, this group isn\u0026rsquo;t promoting evangelical Christianity\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s religiously neutral, and its website includes comments about Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Root of All Evil,\u0026rdquo; the film \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp,\u0026rdquo; and a debate between Rev. Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens, along with criticisms of Mormonism based on DNA evidence and the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which are good rational reasons not to believe in the religion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/post-mormon-billboard-in-gilbert.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/09/08/20080908billboards.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;You are not alone\u0026rdquo; billboard promoting a group for people who have left the Mormon religion is up in Mesa\u003c/a\u003e, put up by Paul Hahn of \u003ca href=\"http://www.postmormon.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.postmormon.org\"\u003ewww.postmormon.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnlike usual anti-Mormon proselytizing, this group isn\u0026rsquo;t promoting evangelical Christianity\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s religiously neutral, and its website includes comments about Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Root of All Evil,\u0026rdquo; the film \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp,\u0026rdquo; and a debate between Rev. Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens, along with criticisms of Mormonism based on DNA evidence and the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which are good rational reasons not to believe in the religion.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Post-Mormon billboard in Gilbert"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast #8 is out:\nEpisode 008 Atheism and Sam Kinnison!!! in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Discussion of Matthew 10:10\u0026rsquo;s Energeticism. (Matt: you have an open invite to be on the show and discuss it) Basics of Evolutionary Psychology. http://www.mixx.com/s\u0026hellip; Billboards and Photos.This is really #9, and #8 is the \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo; podcast, thanks to the burglary of Brad\u0026rsquo;s home and theft of his computer.\nMy comments on energeticism may be found at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group message board. I\u0026rsquo;ve got a copy of Matthew\u0026rsquo;s book but haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to get past the first chapter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/apostaz-podcast-8.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast #8 is out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz008.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz008.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 008\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Sam Kinnison!!! in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Discussion of Matthew 10:10\u0026rsquo;s Energeticism. (Matt: you have an open invite to be on the show and discuss it) Basics of Evolutionary Psychology. \u003ca href=\"http://www.mixx.com/stories/1926394/friend_or_foe_crows_never_forget_a_face\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.mixx.com/s\"\u003ehttp://www.mixx.com/s\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://img1.dev.meetupstatic.com/img/clear.gif\" class=\"brImage\" alt=\"\" width=\"0\" /\u003e Billboards and Photos.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is really #9, and #8 is the \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo; podcast, thanks to the burglary of Brad\u0026rsquo;s home and theft of his computer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy comments on energeticism may be found \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/messages/boards/thread/5044805/0#19310391\"\u003eat the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group message board\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ve got a copy of Matthew\u0026rsquo;s book but haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to get past the first chapter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #8"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic has published this obituary:\nChester William Anderson passed away at age 97 on August 19, 2008, following a brief illness. Beloved husband of the late Laurel R. Anderson, he is survived by three children : Kelly (Will) Momsen, Barbara Anderson and Bob (Jannie) Anderson. He was blessed with five grandchildren : Bill (Lara) Momsen, Kirsten (Rob) Carr, Rick Momsen, Laura (David) Meehan and David (Marnie) Momsen. He is further survived by six great-grandchildren. He was born in Burlington, Iowa, to Charles and Hulda Anderson on February 6, 1911 together with siblings Carl Anderson, John Robert Anderson and Mildred Anderson. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1934. After working at Standard Oil of Indiana and Ordnance Steel Foundry, he became Executive Vice-President of Associated Industries of the Quad Cities. After 7 years, his family moved to Milwaukee where he became the President of Management Resources Assoc. of Milwaukee, an organization dedicated to providing information to employers in the area of labor/management. He retired after 26 years and moved to Phoenix in 1980. During his illustrious career, he was Chairman of the Illinois Industrial Council, the Wisconsin Industrial Council and the National Industrial Council\u0026rsquo;s Industrial Relations Group. He was a Founding Board Member of the Council on a Union-Free Environment (Washington DC) and a lifetime member of the Foundation for Economic Education. He was Chairman and Board Member for the Institute for Humane Studies (Arlington, Virginia) and a lifetime Member of the Mont Pelerin Society of Economists, an international society of top economic thinkers. Among his proudest accomplishments was the creation of the Milwaukee Forum, a discussion group of business and professional leaders and educators who met with nationally known speakers on a quarterly basis. In Phoenix, he created the Economics Discussion Group in 1982 which continues to meet to this day. Other than his devotion to family, his greatest love was liberty and promoting the concept through education. With this in mind, memorial gifts to the Institute for Humane Studies (3301 Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA, 22201) are suggested in lieu of flowers. Memorial at Sunland Memorial Park September 7th at 2 PM.I met Chet Anderson around 2001 when I joined his Economics Discussion Group, after learning of it at a reception for the Institute for Humane Studies. (I attended several IHS seminars and received IHS fellowships during grad school.) Chet was personally acquainted with many prominent figures in classical liberal and libertarian circles, including F.A. \u0026ldquo;Baldy\u0026rdquo; Harper (founder of IHS, on whose board Chet sat), Ludwig von Mises (Chet attended some of his lectures), Milton Friedman, Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Education), and Ayn Rand (Chet once had lunch with her).\nChet always seemed positive and optimistic every time I spoke with him, and he remembered and asked about details of my life each time I met him, right up to the last meeting I saw him at a few months ago. His mind seemed clear and sharp even then, though I know he had a stroke in the weeks before he died and was unable to speak to a friend who visited him in the hospital.\nAt and after today\u0026rsquo;s memorial service, many people spoke of Chet\u0026rsquo;s optimism, his love for ideas and liberty, and his willingness to engage in courteous and patient discussion with anyone. He was an advocate for liberty and freedom who has done much to promote those ideas around the world, and I\u0026rsquo;ve gained much from my participation in the group he started 26 years ago.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2008-09-08):\nChet was such an amiable character. I am better for having known him, even though it was on a fairly superficial level.Some would say that 97 is a good, long, life--certainly more than most get--and Chet was witness to a lot of amazing things... The Depression, the beginning and end of Prohibition, the rise and fall of NAZI Germany and Soviet Russia, the birth of the space age... but to my mind this just underlines more starkly death's cruelty. To acquire all that wisdom and experience and have no opportunity to put it to any good use strikes me as just a little ironic. I sincerely hope that the legacy he left in IHS helps to bring about the liberty that he fought all his life for, even though he'll never get to see it for himself.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/rip-chester-william-anderson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.legacy.com/azcentral/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory\u0026amp;PersonId=116231313\"\u003ehas published this obituary\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eChester William Anderson\u003c/b\u003e passed away at age 97 on August 19, 2008, following a brief illness. Beloved husband of the late Laurel R. Anderson, he is survived by three children : Kelly (Will) Momsen, Barbara Anderson and Bob (Jannie) Anderson. He was blessed with five grandchildren : Bill (Lara) Momsen, Kirsten (Rob) Carr, Rick Momsen, Laura (David) Meehan and David (Marnie) Momsen. He is further survived by six great-grandchildren. He was born in Burlington, Iowa, to Charles and Hulda Anderson on February 6, 1911 together with siblings Carl Anderson, John Robert Anderson and Mildred Anderson. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1934. After working at Standard Oil of Indiana and Ordnance Steel Foundry, he became Executive Vice-President of Associated Industries of the Quad Cities. After 7 years, his family moved to Milwaukee where he became the President of Management Resources Assoc. of Milwaukee, an organization dedicated to providing information to employers in the area of labor/management. He retired after 26 years and moved to Phoenix in 1980. During his illustrious career, he was Chairman of the Illinois Industrial Council, the Wisconsin Industrial Council and the National Industrial Council\u0026rsquo;s Industrial Relations Group. He was a Founding Board Member of the Council on a Union-Free Environment (Washington DC) and a lifetime member of the Foundation for Economic Education. He was Chairman and Board Member for the Institute for Humane Studies (Arlington, Virginia) and a lifetime Member of the Mont Pelerin Society of Economists, an international society of top economic thinkers. Among his proudest accomplishments was the creation of the Milwaukee Forum, a discussion group of business and professional leaders and educators who met with nationally known speakers on a quarterly basis. In Phoenix, he created the Economics Discussion Group in 1982 which continues to meet to this day. Other than his devotion to family, his greatest love was liberty and promoting the concept through education. With this in mind, memorial gifts to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theihs.org/\"\u003eInstitute for Humane Studies\u003c/a\u003e (3301 Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA, 22201) are suggested in lieu of flowers. Memorial at Sunland Memorial Park September 7th at 2 PM.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI met Chet Anderson around 2001 when I joined his Economics Discussion Group, after learning of it at a reception for the Institute for Humane Studies.  (I attended several IHS seminars and received IHS fellowships during grad school.)  Chet was personally acquainted with many prominent figures in classical liberal and libertarian circles, including F.A. \u0026ldquo;Baldy\u0026rdquo; Harper (founder of IHS, on whose board Chet sat), Ludwig von Mises (Chet attended some of his lectures), Milton Friedman, Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Education), and Ayn Rand (Chet once had lunch with her).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChet always seemed positive and optimistic every time I spoke with him, and he remembered and asked about details of my life each time I met him, right up to the last meeting I saw him at a few months ago. His mind seemed clear and sharp even then, though I know he had a stroke in the weeks before he died and was unable to speak to a friend who visited him in the hospital.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt and after today\u0026rsquo;s memorial service, many people spoke of Chet\u0026rsquo;s optimism, his love for ideas and liberty, and his willingness to engage in courteous and patient discussion with anyone. He was an advocate for liberty and freedom who has done much to promote those ideas around the world, and I\u0026rsquo;ve gained much from my participation in the group he started 26 years ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Chester William Anderson"},{"content":"Long-time drug warrior politician Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) turns out to be a dirty politician. As Radley Balko of The Agitator puts it:\n\u0026hellip;the chair of the House Committee that writes our tax laws didn’t know that he’d been given an interest-free loan for a luxury Caribbean Villa, didn’t know that he was getting taxable income off of rentals from said villa, and didn’t know that he had a duty to report and disclose and report the $75,000 in income from said rentals that apparently slipped his notice? Riiii-iiiight. This would be the same guy who didn’t know how he somehow was able to accumulate four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, and didn’t know about laws against using rent-controlled apartments for purposes other than a primary residence.\nRangel’s either a corrupt liar, or he’s shockingly ignorant of laws a man with his position and responsibilities ought to know about. Either way, he should be stripped of his chairmanship.\nI\u0026rsquo;d go farther than that\u0026ndash;any corrupt politician should be removed from office and tossed into prison. It rarely happens, because nearly all of them, along with the leaders in the executive branch, are similarly corrupt.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-09-07):\nThe last thing I had heard about Rangel was thisHouse Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel, hoping to raise $30 million for a new academic center that will house his papers when he retires.The New York Democrat has penned letters on congressional stationery and has sought meetings to ask for corporate and foundation contributions for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, a project that caused controversy last year when he won a $1.9 million congressional earmark to help start it. Republican critics dubbed the project Rangel's \"Monument to Me.\" The congressman has corralled more federal money as well, securing two Department of Housing and Urban Development grants totaling $690,500 to help renovate the college-owned Harlem brownstone that will house the center, according to HUD and school officials. \"It is a personal dream of mine to see this Center at City College, which resides in my congressional district and where so many talented young men and women from the community have gotten an excellent education,\" Rangel wrote in a March 7, 2007, letter to real estate mogul Donald Trump, one of the business leaders the congressman has solicited. Ethics experts and government watchdogs say it is troubling that one of the nation's most powerful lawmakers would seek money from businesses that have interests before the committee he leads. Rangel's panel has broad jurisdiction over tax policy, trade, Social Security and Medicare.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/dirty-politician-rep-charles-rangel-d.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong-time \u003ca href=\"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n5_v44/ai_7405467\"\u003edrug warrior\u003c/a\u003e politician Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) turns out to be a dirty politician.  As \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/07/lemme-see-if-i-have-this-right/\"\u003eRadley Balko of The Agitator puts it\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503442.html\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503442.html\"\u003e\u0026hellip;the chair of the House Committee that writes our tax laws\u003c/a\u003e \u003cem\u003edidn’t know\u003c/em\u003e that he’d been given an interest-free loan for a luxury Caribbean Villa, \u003cem\u003edidn’t know\u003c/em\u003e that he was getting taxable income off of rentals from said villa, and \u003cem\u003edidn’t know\u003c/em\u003e that he had a duty to report and disclose and report the $75,000 in income from said rentals that apparently slipped his notice? \u003cp\u003eRiiii-iiiight.  This would be the same guy who \u003cem\u003edidn’t know\u003c/em\u003e how he somehow was able to accumulate four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, and \u003cem\u003edidn’t know\u003c/em\u003e about laws against using rent-controlled apartments for purposes other than a primary residence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)"},{"content":"The Daily Show has outdone itself with this one.\nUPDATE (September 8, 2008): The part about McCain crashing five planes isn\u0026rsquo;t true.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/ian-mcshane-narrates-mccain-reformed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Daily Show has outdone itself with this one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-047015466502282943 visible\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/omsKRyWqeEU\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-047015466502282943 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/omsKRyWqeEU\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/omsKRyWqeEU\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/omsKRyWqeEU\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 8, 2008): The part about McCain crashing five planes \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_mccain_crash_five_planes.html\"\u003eisn\u0026rsquo;t true\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ian McShane narrates McCain: Reformed Maverick"},{"content":"\nA group of us from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup had lunch today near one of the billboards and used the occasion for a photo op. This is one of the five billboards, which, contrary to my earlier descriptions, are all of the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; design. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen the \u0026ldquo;Beware of Dogma\u0026rdquo; design up, as well as the \u0026ldquo;Keep Religion Out of Politics\u0026rdquo; slogan. (If I obtain permission, I\u0026rsquo;ll update this photo with one of the group shots, which can be seen at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup site.)\nThere\u0026rsquo;s some additional coverage in Ed Montini\u0026rsquo;s column at the Arizona Republic.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/ffrf-billboards-are-up.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P9060002.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P9060002.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243120586124527234\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA group of us from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup had lunch today near one of the billboards and used the occasion for a photo op.  This is one of the five billboards, which, contrary to my earlier descriptions, are all of the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; design.  Too bad, I would have liked to have seen the \u0026ldquo;Beware of Dogma\u0026rdquo; design up, as well as the \u0026ldquo;Keep Religion Out of Politics\u0026rdquo; slogan.  (If I obtain permission, I\u0026rsquo;ll update this photo with one of the group shots, which can be seen at the \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists Meetup site\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2008/09/09/20080909Montini0908.html\"\u003esome additional coverage in Ed Montini\u0026rsquo;s column at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FFRF billboards are up"},{"content":"The Gulfstream II jet that crashed in Mexico last year with 3.7 tons of cocaine on board was frequently used by the CIA to fly terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay, and may have also been used for \u0026ldquo;extraordinary rendition\u0026rdquo; flights to CIA prisons overseas, as well as for Bush fundraisers. Donna Blue Aircraft, the company the plane was registered to, took down its website yesterday.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/cocaine-plane-was-used-by-cia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Gulfstream II jet that crashed in Mexico last year with 3.7 tons of cocaine on board \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/05/update-on-cia-drug-p.html\"\u003ewas frequently used by the CIA to fly terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay\u003c/a\u003e, and may have also been used for \u0026ldquo;extraordinary rendition\u0026rdquo; flights to CIA prisons overseas, \u003ca href = \"http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/29/bush-fundraiser-link.html\"\u003eas well as for Bush fundraisers\u003c/a\u003e.  Donna Blue Aircraft, the company the plane was registered to, took down its website yesterday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/06/hmm-9/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cocaine plane was used by CIA"},{"content":"\nSee the story at BLDGBLOG. (Thanks for the link, Reed!)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/bobcats-taking-over-foreclosed-homes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2323/2827258090_3270ae8fcd_o.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2323/2827258090_3270ae8fcd_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSee the story at \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/wildcats-of-foreclosure.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.  (Thanks for the link, Reed!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bobcats taking over foreclosed homes"},{"content":"Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say what they really think about Sarah Palin. Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t they be honest about it on the air?\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-09-05):\n\"Why couldn't they be honest about it on the air?\"Because they're partisan hacks. Which is why our \"news\" networks need to quit using so many spinsters and political operatives for analysis and commentary.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-05):\nNoonan two days later in the WSJ:She has the power of the normal. Hillary Clinton is grim, stentorian, was born to politics and its connivances. Nancy Pelosi, another mother of five,often seems dazed and ad hoc. But this state governor and mother of a big family is a woman in a good mood. There is something so normal about her, so \"You've met this person before and you like her,\" that she broke through in a new way,as a character vividly herself, and vividly genuine.Her flaws accentuated her virtues. Now and then this happens in politics,but it's rare. An example: The very averageness of her voice, the not-wonderfulness of it, highlighted her normality: most people don't have great voices. That normality in turn highlighted the courage she showed in being there, on that stage for the first time in her life and under trying circumstances. Her averageness accentuated her specialness. Her commonality highlighted her uniqueness.I really find it sickening that transparent propaganda is passed off as opinion journalism.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-06):\nAt the top of her Sept. 3 column Noonan says that she was taken out of context in the clip, that she meant that the time when Republicans can assume the thinking of the base matches the thinking of the American public is over. Chuck Todd apparently confirmed this take.I still have my reservations given Noonan's chameleon like ability to hold at any moment the belief that is most convenient for to have.And that would still not change the fact that two days after she called Palin's choice a \"bullshit\" attempt at selling a narrative she was busy selling that exact narrative - the narrative that Noonan always sells about Republicans having such strong, saintly virtuous character while Democrats do not - in her column.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/pundits-are-more-honest-when-they-think.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePeggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say what they really think about Sarah Palin.  Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t they be honest about it on the air?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-04330851413844302 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Dq4sOM4tpno\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Dq4sOM4tpno\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Dq4sOM4tpno\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-09-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\"Why couldn't they be honest about it on the air?\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eBecause they're partisan hacks.  Which is why our \"news\" networks need to quit using so many spinsters and political operatives for analysis and commentary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pundits are more honest when they think they're off the air"},{"content":"Campbell Brown at CNN shows what a reporter is supposed to do when questioning the representative of a political candidate\u0026ndash;insist that they actually answer the questions asked in a meaningful way. After this interview with McCain representative Tucker Bounds, McCain cancelled an interview with CNN in response to what he viewed as unreasonable behavior.\n(Via Juan Cole.)\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-09-05):\nGolly, that's about the most obvious (and therefore incompetent) avoidance of a simple question I've ever seen,\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/cnn-finally-does-its-job.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCampbell Brown at CNN shows what a reporter is supposed to do when questioning the representative of a political candidate\u0026ndash;insist that they actually answer the questions asked in a meaningful way.  After this interview with McCain representative Tucker Bounds, \u003ca href=\"http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccain_cancels_cnn_interview_a.php\"\u003eMcCain cancelled an interview with CNN in response to what he viewed as unreasonable behavior\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-04330851413844302 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UYYiw_y2qDI\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UYYiw_y2qDI\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/UYYiw_y2qDI\u0026amp;color1=0xb1b1b1\u0026amp;color2=0xcfcfcf\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.juancole.com/2008/09/cnn-does-its-job-mccain-punishes-it.html\"\u003eJuan Cole\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CNN finally does its job"},{"content":"Before Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town received no federal funds. As mayor, she hired the Anchorage law firm of Robertson, Monagle \u0026amp; Eastaugh, to help the town obtain federal funds. The Wasilla account was handled by Steven W. Silver, a partner in the firm and former chief of staff to indicted-for-corruption Sen. Ted Stevens, who helped secure $67 million in federal earmarks for the town of 6,700 residents\u0026ndash;$4,000 per person.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nPalin has stood up to corruption, blowing the whistle on unethical behavior by the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party despite taking a lot of heat for it. But she\u0026rsquo;s also gotten into some trouble of her own, and it almost seems that she fell into her anti-corruption role by accident.\nA description of Palin from her fellow Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny is well worth reading. (Kilkenny is also quoted regarding Palin in this New York Times story.) For further perspective, here\u0026rsquo;s another close-up view of Palin as she\u0026rsquo;s seen in Alaska.\nUPDATE (September 4, 2008): As governor of Alaska, Palin asked for $550 million in earmarks in her first year in office, and for 31 federal earmarks totaling $198 million so far this year. Oink!\nJohn McCain has long been a critic of earmarks. Turns out he has specifically been critical of earmarks requested by Sarah Palin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/sarah-palin-promoter-of-pork-barrel.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBefore Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town received no federal funds.  As mayor, she hired the Anchorage law firm of Robertson, Monagle \u0026amp; Eastaugh, to help the town obtain federal funds.  The Wasilla account was handled by Steven W. Silver, a partner in the firm and former chief of staff to indicted-for-corruption Sen. Ted Stevens, who helped secure $67 million in federal earmarks for the town of 6,700 residents\u0026ndash;$4,000 per person.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/john_mccain_has_tried_througho.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePalin has stood up to corruption, \u003ca href=\"http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/elections/story/8337406p-8233470c.html\"\u003eblowing the whistle on unethical behavior by the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party despite taking a lot of heat for it\u003c/a\u003e.  But she\u0026rsquo;s also gotten into some trouble of her own, and it almost seems that she fell into her anti-corruption role by accident.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.andrys.com/palin-kilkenny.html\"\u003edescription of Palin from her fellow Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny\u003c/a\u003e is well worth reading.  (Kilkenny is also quoted regarding Palin in \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?_r=1\u0026amp;em\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ethis \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e story\u003c/a\u003e.)  For further perspective, \u003ca href=\"http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/an-alaskan-view-of-palin/?8ty\u0026amp;emc=ty\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s another close-up view of Palin as she\u0026rsquo;s seen in Alaska\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 4, 2008): As governor of Alaska, Palin \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/03/palin_reports_throw_curve_to_campaign?mode=PF\"\u003easked for $550 million in earmarks in her first year in office, and for 31 federal earmarks totaling $198 million so far this year\u003c/a\u003e.  Oink!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn McCain has long been a critic of earmarks.  Turns out he \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-earmarks3-2008sep03,0,284198.story\"\u003ehas specifically been critical of earmarks requested by Sarah Palin\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sarah Palin, promoter of pork barrel spending"},{"content":"Adam Frucci at Gizmodo writes:\nSo, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn\u0026rsquo;t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa?This is false. The EULA doesn\u0026rsquo;t transfer ownership of anything. The provision that has everyone upset is the rather broadly worded provision 11.1:\n11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.Note that the very first sentence says that you retain all intellectual property rights. This gives Google the rights to do the things it already does\u0026ndash;let other people play YouTube videos you upload, syndicate your Blogger content, store cached versions of your web pages, allow people to see versions of your web pages translated into other languages, display thumbnails of images on your web pages in Google Images search, and so forth. The last sentence appears to limit it solely for the purpose \u0026ldquo;to display, distribute and promote the Services\u0026rdquo; and not allow them to, say, use your content in order to compete with you, undermine your intellectual property rights, etc.\nAn earlier provision in the EULA also makes this explicit:\n9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.So even if 11.1 is a bit too broad, there\u0026rsquo;s this provision to fall back on if you feel your intellectual property rights are being infringed.\nSome commenters at Gizmodo said that they didn\u0026rsquo;t agree with this provision and therefore have uninstalled the software, but that\u0026rsquo;s not sufficient to terminate this agreement. Terminating the agreement requires you to give notice to Google in writing and close all of your accounts with them:\n13.2 If you want to terminate your legal agreement with Google, you may do so by (a) notifying Google at any time and (b) closing your accounts for all of the Services which you use, where Google has made this option available to you. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to Google’s address which is set out at the beginning of these Terms.One thing that is clear from these terms is that Google definitely wants to interpose itself between user and content in a manner similar to what Microsoft has done for years with Windows, and in a much stickier way than telecom providers are between user and content. If you have network neutrality concerns about telecom providers or had antitrust concerns about Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s bundling of the Internet Explorer web browser with Windows, you should probably have similar concerns about Google, given the way use of its browser is bundled with an EULA covering all of its services. Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t I be able to discontinue this EULA by getting rid of the browser, and not by terminating all of my accounts with Google? Will there be a lawsuit about unbundling the Google Chrome browser from the rest of its services?\nUPDATE: Ars Technica reports that Google says this was an error and they will be correcting the license, which was borrowed from other Google services, apparently without careful review. It also notes that since Chrome is distributed under an open license, users can download the source code and compile it themselves without being bound by the agreement.\nThe major flaw in the 11.1 language is that it gives Google the right to publish content you merely \u0026ldquo;display\u0026rdquo; in the browser, even if it\u0026rsquo;s private content on a local server or restricted content from a secured website. That clearly wasn\u0026rsquo;t their intent, but that\u0026rsquo;s an implication of how it was written.\nHistorical Comments Frank (2008-09-04):\nThanks for clearing that up Jim\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/misinformation-about-googles-chrome.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdam Frucci at \u003ca href=\"http://gizmodo.com/5044871/google-chrome-eula-claims-ownership-of-everything-you-create-on-chrome-from-blog-posts-to-emails\"\u003eGizmodo writes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSo, are you enjoying the \u003ca href=\"http://gizmodo.com/5044492/google-chrome-hands-on-and-first-impressions-with-screenshots\"\u003esnappy, clean performance of Google Chrome\u003c/a\u003e since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn\u0026rsquo;t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is false.  The EULA doesn\u0026rsquo;t transfer ownership of anything.  The provision that has everyone upset is the rather broadly worded provision 11.1:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNote that the very first sentence says that you retain all intellectual property rights.  This gives Google the rights to do the things it already does\u0026ndash;let other people play YouTube videos you upload, syndicate your Blogger content, store cached versions of your web pages, allow people to see versions of your web pages translated into other languages, display thumbnails of images on your web pages in Google Images search, and so forth.  The last sentence appears to limit it solely for the purpose \u0026ldquo;to display, distribute and promote the Services\u0026rdquo; and not allow them to, say, use your content in order to compete with you, undermine your intellectual property rights, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn earlier provision in the EULA also makes this explicit:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo even if 11.1 is a bit too broad, there\u0026rsquo;s this provision to fall back on if you feel your intellectual property rights are being infringed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome commenters at Gizmodo said that they didn\u0026rsquo;t agree with this provision and therefore have uninstalled the software, but that\u0026rsquo;s not sufficient to terminate this agreement.  Terminating the agreement requires you to give notice to Google in writing and close all of your accounts with them:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e13.2 If you want to terminate your legal agreement with Google, you may do so by (a) notifying Google at any time and (b) closing your accounts for all of the Services which you use, where Google has made this option available to you. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to Google’s address which is set out at the beginning of these Terms.\u003c/blockquote\u003eOne thing that is clear from these terms is that Google definitely wants to interpose itself between user and content in a manner similar to what Microsoft has done for years with Windows, and in a much stickier way than telecom providers are between user and content.  If you have network neutrality concerns about telecom providers or had antitrust concerns about Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s bundling of the Internet Explorer web browser with Windows, you should probably have similar concerns about Google, given the way use of its browser is bundled with an EULA covering all of its services.  Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t I be able to discontinue this EULA by getting rid of the browser, and not by terminating all of my accounts with Google?  Will there be a lawsuit about unbundling the Google Chrome browser from the rest of its services?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Ars Technica\u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-google-on-chrome-eula-controversy-our-bad-well-change-it.html\"\u003e reports that Google says this was an error and they will be correcting the license\u003c/a\u003e, which was borrowed from other Google services, apparently without careful review.  It also notes that since Chrome is distributed under an open license, users can download the source code and compile it themselves without being bound by the agreement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe major flaw in the 11.1 language is that it gives Google the right to publish content you merely \u0026ldquo;display\u0026rdquo; in the browser, even if it\u0026rsquo;s private content on a local server or restricted content from a secured website.  That clearly wasn\u0026rsquo;t their intent, but that\u0026rsquo;s an implication of how it was written.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Misinformation about Google's Chrome EULA"},{"content":"Last year, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared \u0026ldquo;Christian Heritage Week\u0026rdquo; in Alaska from October 21-27, 2007, with a proclamation that misquoted and misrepresented various Founding Fathers, at least two of whom would have opposed just such a proclamation (Jefferson and Madison).\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars steps through her proclamation and corrects the misinformation.\ntom (2008-09-02):\nAndrew Sullivan had these up as well:Justifying her position on the Alaskan pipeline:\"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.\"On Iraq:for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.On the Pledge:Q: Are you offended by the phrase \"Under God\" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not? PALIN: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.I can't imagine that this is going to help McCain's numbers with independents.\nLippard (2008-09-03):\nI think what looks like the most accurate assessment of Palin's views and actions as Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska is this one from Wasilla resident (a Democrat) Anne Kilkenny.\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-03):\nPalin must obviously also believe in ghosts who sometimes possess the living, given that the founders were all dead when the Pledge was written and that it wasn't until another half-century or so that the phrase \"under God\" made it in.\ntom (2008-09-03):\nRight. I was going to point out the parallel with the old line \"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me\", but the guy at Dispatches beat me too it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/09/palin-christian-heritage-declaration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast year, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared \u0026ldquo;Christian Heritage Week\u0026rdquo; in Alaska from October 21-27, 2007, with a proclamation that misquoted and misrepresented various Founding Fathers, at least two of whom would have opposed just such a proclamation (Jefferson and Madison).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/palins_christian_heritage_decl.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars steps through her proclamation and corrects the misinformation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003etom\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-09-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAndrew Sullivan had these up as well:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eJustifying her position on the Alaskan pipeline:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003e\"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.\"\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eOn Iraq:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003efor this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eOn the Pledge:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003eQ: Are you offended by the phrase \"Under God\" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?  \u003cBR/\u003ePALIN: Not on your life. \u003cB\u003eIf it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me\u003c/B\u003e and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI can't imagine that this is going to help McCain's numbers with independents.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin Christian heritage declaration misquotes, misrepresents"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars shows that McCain\u0026rsquo;s VP nominee, Sarah Palin, didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to utter her first falsehood as candidate. Near the beginning of her acceptance speech, she said:\nAnd I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress \u0026ndash; I told Congress, \u0026ldquo;Thanks, but no thanks,\u0026rdquo; on that bridge to nowhere. (APPLAUSE)\nIf our state wanted a bridge, I said we\u0026rsquo;d build it ourselves.\nBut in fact, she actually did the opposite. During her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, here\u0026rsquo;s how she answered a question about the bridge when addressing an audience of Alaskans:\n5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges? Yes. I would like to see Alaska\u0026rsquo;s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now\u0026ndash;while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.\nShe went on to seek other projects not out of a desire for self-reliance and avoiding wasteful federal spending, but because she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get enough federal funding:\n\u0026ldquo;Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it\u0026rsquo;s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,\u0026rdquo; Governor Palin added. \u0026ldquo;Much of the public\u0026rsquo;s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.\u0026quot;See the full story and references at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nUPDATE: Andrew Sullivan\u0026rsquo;s blog reposts this photo that shows Palin\u0026rsquo;s support for the \u0026ldquo;bridge to nowhere.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (September 14, 2008): Some Alaskans are not happy with Palin\u0026rsquo;s claiming that she doesn\u0026rsquo;t support what she told them she supported.\nTheo Bromine (2008-08-31):\nThis is off topic, but I have to ask if it is your intention that going to lippard.blogspot.com is supposed to automagically launch a news report about the \"Imagine no religion\" billboard campaign?\nLippard (2008-08-31):\nTheo: No, that's not my intent, that's a side-effect of the Dayport video player used by ABC News for embedded video content. It's annoying, but hasn't affected me because I use Firefox with NoScript, and don't automatically trust Dayport's domain for scripting. I *highly* recommend the use of Firefox with NoScript, as web scripts are a very common malware delivery mechanism.The annoying automatic launch will cease as soon as that blog post moves off the front page of the blog... probably only a few more posts before that happens. My apologies for the inconvenience.\nLippard (2008-08-31):\nBTW, I like the new pseudonym.\nTheo Bromine (2008-09-01):\nThanks for the tip - I have now added NoScript to my Firefox. It looks like it will be very useful. In any case, congrats on a good interview and I hope that the billboards generate just the right amount of controversy. BTW, I'm glad you like it, but Theo Bromine isn't a new pseudonym, it's an old pseudonym for the other human blogger at Thinking for Free (aka Eamon Knight's spouse).\nLippard (2008-09-01):\nMy apologies, Theo!\nKtisophilos (2008-09-01):\nAt least this isn't like the vile smear against Palin's daughter on the loony left Daily Kos site.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-01):\nAnd a smear from Alan Colmes.\nLippard (2008-09-01):\nKtisophilos: When I first heard the claim that Palin was raising her teenager's daughter as her own, my thought was--so? How is that a damaging allegation even if true?I know someone who just a month or so ago was introduced to his teenage daughter, who had been raised by her grandmother and thought her mother was her sister until the truth was revealed. There are a lot worse things that could happen.Now, it's arguably a bit different with a public figure in a leadership position, to the extent that falsehoods are stated to the public, as this reader's comment at Andrew Sullivan's blog argues. And the fact that Palin flew back from Texas to give birth (most airlines won't let you fly 30 days or 7 days before your due date, depending on airline) and her daughter has been absent from school for 5-8 months at the same time is certainly weird.Sullivan has posted about some of the oddities, and has also posted evidence that Palin was indeed pregnant and gave birth.\nLippard (2008-09-01):\nFurther debunking of the claim that Palin wasn't pregnant here.One of the photos allegedly showing her daughter pregnant was published in 2006!\nLippard (2008-09-01):\nTurns out Palin's daughter Bristol is currently five months pregnant. If there's no rounding up on that \"five months,\" then she got pregnant in late March or early April, while Trig Palin was born on April 18.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-29):\n\"When I first heard the claim that Palin was raising her teenager's daughter as her own, my thought was--so? How is that a damaging allegation even if true?\"You'll have to ask Daily Kos and other sufferers of Palin Derangement Syndrome who evidently thought so.To teh topic of the thread, let's see:McCain opposed pork, including this one.Palin was for this pork before she was against it.Obama and Biden voted for this pork.Somehow this makes them a better team. go figure.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/palin-lies-about-bridge-to-nowhere.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/well_that_didnt_take_long.php\"\u003eshows that McCain\u0026rsquo;s VP nominee, Sarah Palin, didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to utter her first falsehood as candidate\u003c/a\u003e.  Near the beginning of her acceptance speech, she said:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnd I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress \u0026ndash; I told Congress, \u0026ldquo;Thanks, but no thanks,\u0026rdquo; on that bridge to nowhere. \u003cp\u003e(APPLAUSE)\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eIf our state wanted a bridge, I said we\u0026rsquo;d build it ourselves.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Palin lies about the bridge to nowhere"},{"content":"Conspiracy theorists like to make arguments of the form \u0026ldquo;A is linked to B, B is linked to C, therefore A and C are in cahoots,\u0026rdquo; where the links between each entity may be extremely tenuous.\nP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, following dogemperor at the DailyKos, maintains that \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army,\u0026rdquo; for which the evidence dogemperor provides is the following:\nA look at the home website of Palin\u0026rsquo;s church tends to be revealing. Among other things, a particular Assemblies buzzword associated frequently with Hillsong A/G and New Zealand Assemblies churches shows up (\u0026ldquo;Destiny\u0026rdquo;, here, is a buzzword for \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo;, and is being preferred even as the phrase \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; is getting enough negative spin that even the Assemblies is now having to do some rather massive spin control); cell churches are promoted (of the same sort that are linked to short-term and longterm psychological damage and are among the most coercive tactics ever documented in spiritually abusive groups). The church, like a number of other large Assemblies churches, is the center of a dominionist broadcast TV center whose programming is carried across multiple channels in Alaska.\nIn a trend that has been recently documented by no less than Southern Poverty Law Center (in its recent report on the Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army movement), the church operates a Seven Project-esque targeted recruitment campaign aiming at teens (this is common across the Assemblies and across \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; groups in general; fully a third of the documented national-level front groups operated by the Assemblies target teens). And\u0026hellip;believe you me, Palin\u0026rsquo;s church is definitely \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo;.\nBut hold on a minute here\u0026ndash;the article on \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; that Myers initially points readers to is a reasonable article at Alternet that points out that \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; is a minority of Pentecostals that has been explicitly rejected by the Assemblies of God:\nNot every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that\u0026rsquo;s troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world\u0026rsquo;s largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army movement.\nIn a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that \u0026ldquo;such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged.\u0026rdquo; They are right to worry. Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city.\nYet dogemperor\u0026rsquo;s evidence of a link to Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army is:\n1. The Juneau Christian Center website uses the word \u0026ldquo;Destiny.\u0026rdquo; They have a link on the front page labeled \u0026ldquo;Building for Destiny,\u0026rdquo; which links to a web page that says:\nDestiny has begun! The new youth center for children through high school youth is taking shape. The purpose of The Hub is reach out to youth and parents in Juneau, giving kids a positive place: to grow in safety, build strong relationships, be encouraged to learn in surroundings that match their interests, acquire confidence and prepare for fantastic futures\u0026hellip;\nThe technology in these 21st century centers will encourage kids to enjoy learning in academics, sports, music, art, finances, computers, health, and life skills. From IPOD/study stations and video game terminals to a pool tables and plasma screen TV\u0026rsquo;s there is something of interest for everyone. Oh yes, The Hub also provides a hip cafe serve smoothies, drinks and light food to encourage fellowship.\nSounds pretty scary, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?\n2. The church is \u0026ldquo;the center of a dominionist broadcast TV center whose programming is carried across multiple channels in Alaska.\u0026rdquo; This links to a page on the Juneau Christian Center website which says:\nPastor\u0026rsquo;s [sic] Mike and Deenie Rose have been the senior Pastors of Juneau Christian Center since 1987. The theme of their ministry is to win the lost and make disciples. Pastor Rose\u0026rsquo;s preaching inspires people to live the abundant life by receiving and using their God given authority, gifts and talents to advance God\u0026rsquo;s Kingdom. Pastor Rose has daily television and radio programs which are broadcast throughout the state of Alaska, and throughout much of the lower 48. All this says is that he preaches on TV and doesn\u0026rsquo;t know how to use apostrophes. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t say anything at all to support a claim that he\u0026rsquo;s teaching dominionist theology or has any connection to \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army.\u0026quot;\n3. The church \u0026ldquo;operates a Seven Project-esque targeted recruitment campaign aiming at teens (this is common across the Assemblies and across \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; groups in general; fully a third of the documented national-level front groups operated by the Assemblies target teens).\u0026quot;\nDogemperor\u0026rsquo;s parenthetical remark undermines his claim that this supports a link to Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026ndash;if this is something common across the Assemblies of God, which rejects the authority of \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army,\u0026rdquo; then it stands to reason that \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; adopted it from the AOG, rather than the reverse. And targeting teens is common for all churches. None of that says anything about the Juneau Christian Center\u0026rsquo;s theology or suggests a connections to \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army.\u0026quot;\nThis is very weak and poorly reasoned \u0026ldquo;guilt by association\u0026rdquo; reasoning of the sort that justifies all sorts of lunatic claims, including fringe Christian arguments about secular humanists trying to take control of the U.S. government.\nIf Sarah Palin is an advocate of dominionist theology or Christian reconstructionism, I expect a lot better evidence than this to demonstrate it.\nUPDATE: The \u0026ldquo;Secular Apostate,\u0026rdquo; a retired psychophysicist who converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult, criticizes dogemperor\u0026rsquo;s post as a \u0026ldquo;truthiness parfait.\u0026quot; Note carefully what he says about the very term \u0026ldquo;dominionism\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it didn\u0026rsquo;t used to be synonymous with or a superset of theocracy, theonomy, or Christian reconstructionism, and it appears to be a term applied as such only by its critics, not by those who actually hold any of those positions.\nUPDATE: Commenter \u0026ldquo;raven\u0026rdquo; at Pharyngula shows clearly that he\u0026rsquo;s applying the term \u0026ldquo;dominionist\u0026rdquo; in a very fast and loose fashion. He wrote:\nPretty much all the fundies are Doms. I\u0026rsquo;d never even heard of xian Dominionists a year or so ago. The difference between reconstructionists and dominionists is\u0026hellip;nothing.To which I replied:\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re claiming that all fundamentalists are reconstructionists are dominionists, that is nonsense on a par with saying that all atheists are secular humanists are Marxists.This was apparently sufficient for him to identify me as a dominionist! He responded with this:\nJust stating a fact. There might be one or two who lie about it.\nYou are one, obviously. The tipoff is the raging hatred of everyone especially those coreligionists who differ in minute details of theology. A liberal Dom is one who might let the Jews live if they keep a low profile and all convert to fundie Death Cultism. The other Doms all hate them as blashemous heretics and apostates, of course.\nSo who is on your \u0026ldquo;To Kill\u0026rdquo; list? You all have them. Gays, Catholics, Episcopalians, Democrats, atheists, scientists, MDs, so many people to murder and so little time. The old record is Rushdooney, the founder of modern Dominionism who wanted to kill 297 million of the 300 million US residents alive today. The modern record is the \u0026ldquo;Nuke \u0026rsquo;em all now and let god sort it out\u0026rdquo; crowd. Sounds like you want to stop that fooling around with armies of religious fanatics with automatic rifles and just go for the quick clean kill.\nAt this point, P.Z. Myers stepped in and let him know he was drawing some unwarranted inferences.\nRaven has supplied a perfect example of the kind of erroneous reasoning that I\u0026rsquo;m trying to warn against with this post.\nUPDATE: After raven learned he was mistaken about my views, rather than recognize that he\u0026rsquo;s gone wrong somewhere and make an effort to learn from his mistake, he simply proclaimed me to be \u0026ldquo;an idiot\u0026rdquo; and went off on a rant. It\u0026rsquo;s sad to see that kind of irrationality.\nUPDATE: Here are some quotes at the Harper\u0026rsquo;s Magazine blog from sermons of Pastor Mike Rose of Palin\u0026rsquo;s current church and Pastor David Pepper of her previous church. Looks like standard evangelical Christianity, to me\u0026ndash;nothing overtly political apart from a statement by Pepper that \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t care what the ACLU says,\u0026rdquo; though there\u0026rsquo;s some anti-evolution. There\u0026rsquo;s a claim here that Rose has \u0026ldquo;ties to Hagee\u0026rsquo;s Christians United for Israel,\u0026rdquo; without specifying what those ties are. Pepper, it is stated, \u0026ldquo;is outspoken on slavery, racism, and the massacres of Native Americans, all of which he terms \u0026lsquo;sins\u0026rsquo; that still cast a long shadow on minority communities.\u0026rdquo; The Harper\u0026rsquo;s blog has links to \u0026ldquo;many hours of Mike Rose\u0026rsquo;s sermons\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;numerous sermons of David Pepper\u0026rsquo;s,\u0026rdquo; so if there is anything to the dominionist claims, this is the place to look.\nUPDATE (September 1, 2008): Although Palin sometimes attends the Juneau Christian Center and considers her home church to be The Church on the Rock in Wassila, both of which are members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America, she does not consider herself to be a Pentecostal, according to Christianity Today, and her profile in the Wall Street Journal identified her as a Lutheran.\nAnother story, in the Boston Herald, says that Palin\u0026rsquo;s home church is Wasilla Bible Church, headed by Pastor Larry Kroon. This has also been reported by Time magazine. The above claim about The Church on the Rock is a second-hand report by an Associated Press reporter, Eric Gorski, who heard it from Pastor Paul Riley of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, as also reported in the Christianity Today piece. It appears to be false, though no doubt she\u0026rsquo;s visited that and other churches. If Wasilla Bible Church isn\u0026rsquo;t Pentecostal (and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be), that weakens the allegations of dogemperor even further.\nIn a Time interview, Palin stated that she attends \u0026ldquo;A non-denominational Bible church. I was baptized Catholic as a newborn and then my family started going to non-denominational churches throughout our life.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (September 7, 2008): Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s New York Times reports on Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s church attendance:\nOne of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.I don\u0026rsquo;t think the theocracy/reconstructionism/dominionism charge sticks at all. There are lots of good reasons to oppose Palin as vice president, but the idea that she wants to impose theocracy isn\u0026rsquo;t one of them.\nUPDATE (September 26, 2008): Palin\u0026rsquo;s certainly a religious kook, as the video of her being blessed with a protection from witchcraft from a Kenyan minister and her subsequent touting of that blessing as a reason she\u0026rsquo;s been selected for public office demonstrates:\nThe video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of\nthe Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus\nChrist to keep her safe from \u0026ldquo;every form of witchcraft.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan!\u0026quot;\nMuthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin\u0026rsquo;s shoulders. \u0026ldquo;Make\nher way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of\nJesus\u0026hellip;.Use her to turn this nation the other way around!\u0026quot;\nOn a visit to the church in June 2008, Palin spoke fondly of the Kenyan\npastor and told a group of young missionaries that Muthee\u0026rsquo;s prayers had\nhelped her to become governor.UPDATE (January 1, 2009): dogemperor now argues that Pastor Rick Warren is \u0026ldquo;connected to\u0026rdquo; Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026ndash;on the grounds that he once spoke at a 1997 conference of David Yonggi Cho, head of the largest Assemblies of God megachurch in South Korea, and that Cho has argued for Pentecostal revival. Uh, so what are the actual connections between Warren and the \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, the Five-fold Ministry, or the \u0026ldquo;latter rain\u0026rdquo; movement? What\u0026rsquo;s key to all of these is that they are Pentecostal/charismatic movements that argue that there are new prophets and apostles coming who can perform miracles, signs, and wonders. Rick Warren isn\u0026rsquo;t an advocate of speaking in tongues or performing healing miracles, rather, he relies on modern-day marketing techniques, modern music, and technology. This isn\u0026rsquo;t to say he\u0026rsquo;s not about using Christianity for political influence\u0026ndash;he obviously is.\nA Christian critique of the \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; movement which explains it far better than dogemperor is Jewel Grewe\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army.\u0026quot; Also worth reading is this AlterNet article by Casey Sanchez of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some people who really are advocates of the \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; movement include Todd Bentley, John Crowder, Paul Cain, Mike Bickle, and Rick Joyner.\nTheo Bromine (2008-08-31):\nWhat a great cover for a dominionist to pose as a liberal atheist blogger (not to mention all those years on usenet). Don't try to deny it; that will just confirm your guilt...\nHume's Ghost (2008-09-01):\n\"You are one, obviously.\"Priceless.\nEinzige (2008-09-01):\nBoy do I feel stupid.I've known you for well nigh 20 years, now. I can't believe I never saw the signs before.\nMartyn (2008-09-03):\nUnfortunately, this theocratic takeover stuff is real. My criminal law professor at Pepperdine University openly advocated for a constituitional theocracy. Even more unfortunately, it wouldn't take much to put it in place. A veep that ascends to the presidency is a great start. Palin is a stalking horse for push toward theocracy prior to the demographic shift that is also coming. This is not the change we need.\nLippard (2008-09-04):\nMartyn: Your comment is noticeably devoid of the necessary evidence or reasons to connect and establish your claims. Who is your criminal law professor that advocates theocracy, what exactly did he or she say, and what's the evidence that Palin shares this professor's views?I note that Pepperdine University, a Christian school, has a constitutional law professor, Douglas W. Kmiec, who supports Obama for president.\nJohn S. Wilkins (2008-09-07):\nJim, I'm astonished to find out you are a theocratic dominionist. Who knew? It was a good bit of conspiratorial manoeuvring to hide it all that time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/left-wing-conspiracy-theories.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConspiracy theorists like to make arguments of the form \u0026ldquo;A is linked to B, B is linked to C, therefore A and C are in cahoots,\u0026rdquo; where the links between each entity may be extremely tenuous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.Z. Myers at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/be_afraid_1.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, following dogemperor at the DailyKos, maintains that \u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army,\u0026rdquo; for which the evidence dogemperor provides is the following:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eA look at the \u003ca href=\"http://jccalaska.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=7035445ca9bc40af\u0026amp;pagename=FaithHighway/10000/3000/582JU/vision\"\u003ehome website of Palin\u0026rsquo;s church\u003c/a\u003e tends to be revealing.  Among other things, a particular Assemblies buzzword associated frequently with Hillsong A/G and New Zealand Assemblies churches shows up (\u0026ldquo;Destiny\u0026rdquo;, here, is a buzzword for \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo;, and is being preferred even as the phrase \u0026ldquo;Joel\u0026rsquo;s Army\u0026rdquo; is getting enough negative spin that \u003ca href=\"http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=964\"\u003eeven the Assemblies is now having to do some rather massive spin control\u003c/a\u003e); \u003ca href=\"http://jccalaska.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/applogic+ftcontentserver?pagename=faithhighway/10000/3000/582JU/ministry5\"\u003ecell churches are promoted\u003c/a\u003e (of the same sort that \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/15/15587/1892/116/515505\"\u003eare linked to short-term and longterm psychological damage\u003c/a\u003e and are among \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/10/1787/26874/752/511810\"\u003ethe most coercive tactics ever documented in spiritually abusive groups\u003c/a\u003e).  The church, like a number of other large Assemblies churches, is the center of \u003ca href=\"http://jccalaska.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=FaithHighway/10000/3000/582JU/staff1\"\u003ea dominionist broadcast TV center\u003c/a\u003e whose programming is carried across \u003ca href=\"http://207.200.19.180/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/applogic+ftcontentserver?pagename=FaithHighway/10000/3000/582JU/Ministry6\"\u003emultiple channels\u003c/a\u003e in Alaska.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Left-wing conspiracy theories"},{"content":"Integrity Bank of Georgia, set up to run on Christian principles, has failed.\nIntegrity\u0026rsquo;s employees regularly prayed before meetings or in branch lobbies with customers, while the bank gave 10 percent of its net income to charities.\n\u0026ldquo;We felt if we prayed and obeyed God\u0026rsquo;s word and did what He asked, that He would help us be successful,\u0026rdquo; the bank\u0026rsquo;s founder, Steve Skow, told the Journal-Constitution in 2005.\nThe executives seem to have done OK, though:\nCEO Steve Skow earned $1.8 million that year, while senior lender and executive vice president Doug Ballard earned $847,222. A typical community bank CEO, banking consultants said, earn roughly $300,000 per year.(Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/bank-set-up-on-christian-principles.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIntegrity Bank of Georgia, set up to run on Christian principles, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/banking_with_jesus_is_a_bad_id.php\"\u003ehas failed\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntegrity\u0026rsquo;s employees regularly prayed before meetings or in branch lobbies with customers, while the bank gave 10 percent of its net income to charities.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We felt if we prayed and obeyed God\u0026rsquo;s word and did what He asked, that He would help us be successful,\u0026rdquo; the bank\u0026rsquo;s founder, Steve Skow, told the Journal-Constitution in 2005.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe executives seem to have done OK, though:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCEO Steve Skow earned $1.8 million that year, while senior lender and executive vice president Doug Ballard earned $847,222. A typical community bank CEO, banking consultants said, earn roughly $300,000 per year.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/banking_with_jesus_is_a_bad_id.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bank set up on Christian principles fails"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers reports on the behavior of police in Minneapolis, which looks similar to Denver.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/rnc-protesters-getting-similar.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/shame_on_minnesota.php\"\u003ereports on the behavior of police in Minneapolis\u003c/a\u003e, which looks similar to Denver.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RNC protesters getting similar treatment as DNC protesters"},{"content":"Barack Obama has supplied his answers to the fourteen questions from Sciencedebate 2008.\nJohn McCain has said that he will also be supplying answers.\nUPDATE (September 17, 2008): John McCain has also supplied his answers to the Sciencedebate 2008 questions. Click here to see their answers side-by-side.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/barack-obama-answers-sciencedebate-2008.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBarack Obama \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=40\"\u003ehas supplied his answers to the fourteen questions from Sciencedebate 2008\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn McCain has said that he will also be supplying answers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 17, 2008): John McCain \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=44\"\u003ehas also supplied his answers to the Sciencedebate 2008 questions\u003c/a\u003e.  Click \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=42\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e to see their answers side-by-side.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Barack Obama answers the Sciencedebate 2008 questions"},{"content":"\n(Image from here. Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/are-republicans-fans-of-battlestar.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/McCainTighPalinRoslin.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/McCainTighPalinRoslin.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240385912045389874\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Image from \u003ca href=\"http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=86644d1220036174funnystuo4.jpg\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Are the Republicans fans of Battlestar Galactica?"},{"content":"Since the Helicobacter pylori bacterium was discovered and proven to be the cause of gastric ulcers, it has been disappearing from the developed world as it\u0026rsquo;s treated with antibiotics. But multiple studies are now showing that there can be negative side-effects from its disappearance, including acid reflux, asthma, and obesity.\nH. pylori helps regulate stomach acidity, the byproduct of which is sometimes ulcers. But when it is taken out of the picture, stomach acidity can increase and cause esophageal reflux disease, a disease which has increased to match the decrease in ulcers as H. pylori has been eradicated.\nThe asthma mechanism is less clear, but may be from H. pylori stimulating immune response. The evidence supporting the link is that U.S. children aged 3-13 who have H. pylori are 60% less likely to have asthma than those who do not.\nThe obesity connection is also not definitively established, but people without H. pylori produce more grehlin (which makes you feel hungry) than those who have it.\n(Via \u0026ldquo;The twists and turns of fate,\u0026rdquo; about the work of Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at New York University School of Medicine, in The Economist, August 23, 2008, pp. 68-69.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/unintended-effects-of-helicobacter.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHelicobacter pylori\u003c/span\u003e bacterium was \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2008/07/helicobacter_pylori_an_introdu.php\"\u003ediscovered and proven to be the cause of gastric ulcers\u003c/a\u003e, it has been disappearing from the developed world as it\u0026rsquo;s treated with antibiotics.  But multiple studies are now showing that there can be negative side-effects from its disappearance, including acid reflux, asthma, and obesity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eH. pylori\u003c/span\u003e helps regulate stomach acidity, the byproduct of which is sometimes ulcers.  But when it is taken out of the picture, stomach acidity can increase and cause esophageal reflux disease, a disease which has increased to match the decrease in ulcers as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eH. pylori\u003c/span\u003e has been eradicated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe asthma mechanism is less clear, but may be from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eH. pylori\u003c/span\u003e stimulating immune response.  The evidence supporting the link is that U.S. children aged 3-13 who have \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eH. pylori\u003c/span\u003e are 60% less likely to have asthma than those who do not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe obesity connection is also not definitively established, but people without \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eH. pylori\u003c/span\u003e produce more grehlin (which makes you feel hungry) than those who have it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11959214\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The twists and turns of fate,\u0026rdquo; about the work of Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at New York University School of Medicine, in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, August 23, 2008\u003c/a\u003e, pp. 68-69.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Unintended effects of Helicobacter pylori eradication"},{"content":"One of my prized possessions, now in a box in a closet somewhere, is a T-shirt that says on its front \u0026ldquo;This T-shirt is a munition.\u0026rdquo; Underneath it is some machine-readable barcode that encodes the RSA public-key encryption algorithm expressed in Perl. As the seller of the shirt advertised, \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s machine washable and machine readable.\u0026quot;\nWhen I bought and regularly wore that shirt, taking it out of the country was a crime punishable by up to a $1 million fine and 10 years in federal prison. This is because U.S. rules under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), then enforced by the Department of Commerce, ruled that strong encryption qualified as a munition subject to export controls and requiring a special license for export. After the Dan Bernstein case was decided in 1996, computer source code printed in a book (human readable format) was not subject to export controls, but computer source code in a machine readable format, such as on my shirt, still was. So I could wear my other T-shirt with RSA Perl code on it, which had a program in the shape of a dolphin, out of the country, but not the machine readable \u0026ldquo;This T-shirt is a munition\u0026rdquo; shirt. The implication was that you could take a copy of Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s Applied Cryptography out of the country without an export license, but not a disk containing the very same code fragments printed in the book. This website authored by Adam Back, written at the time, proposed some possible motives for government restrictions on cryptography.\nWhat the ITAR regulations on cryptography did for Internet software development was prohibit web browsers and server software from implementing the strong encryption necessary to protect electronic commerce from being exported from the United States. The result was that this development work simply occurred offshore. There were no barriers to importation of the software into the U.S., only to export it out. So the software was developed and sold by companies in places like Canada, Russia, and Estonia, which had no such inane restrictions.\nFinally, in 1999, the U.S. wised up and relaxed the ITAR restrictions on encryption, allowing export without a license to most countries (the exceptions being countries with links to state-sponsored terrorism).\nBut ITAR is still around, and still having the unintended effect of pushing business out of the United States. The current victim is commercial satellite production. In 1999, ITAR authority over satellite technology export was shifted from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, and since that time the U.S. share of commercial satellite manufacturing has dropped from 83% to 50%. The company Alcatel Alenia Space, now known as Thales Alenia, took steps in the late nineties to eliminate all U.S.-manufactured components from its satellites, with the result that it has subsequently doubled its market share to over 20%. The European Space Agency, Canada\u0026rsquo;s Telesat, and the French company EADS Sodern, that makes satellite control and positioning systems, have all been phasing out their use of U.S.-supplied components. They\u0026rsquo;ve done this because dealing with U.S. vendors increases costs (due to regulatory compliance costs) and causes unpredictable delays in the supply of parts.\nNevada\u0026rsquo;s Bigelow Aerospace delivered an aluminum satellite stand to Russia in 2006, which Robert Bigelow described as \u0026ldquo;indistinguishable from a common coffee table.\u0026rdquo; But because it\u0026rsquo;s associated with a satellite and officially part of a satellite assembly, it is covered by ITAR and had to be guarded by two security guards at all times. Even commodity items like screws and wiring, when part of a satellite, are covered by ITAR regulations.\nThe purpose of ITAR is to prevent key U.S. technologies with military applications from being leaked out to other countries that might be hostile to the U.S. But the effect of its overly broad application has been to shift the development of that technology to other countries and reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in the commercial satellite business.\nCongress should look to reform ITAR\u0026ndash;when export controls are so badly broken as to have nearly the opposite of the intended effect, they clearly need to be relaxed.\n(Satellite and ITAR info via \u0026ldquo;Earthbound,\u0026rdquo; The Economist, August 23, 2008, pp. 66-67.)\nHistorical Comments Chumgrinder (2013-12-14):\nFurther ITAR idiocy: the NRA has warned its instructors not to provide gun-safety training to non-citizens because of ITAR\u0026#39;s ban on \u0026quot;formal or informal instruction of foreign persons in the United States… by technical, educational, or information publications and media of all kinds, training aid, orientation, training exercise...\u0026quot; http://blog.joehuffman.org/2013/05/09/faceless-bureaucrats-not-blue-helmeted-elk/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/when-t-shirts-coffee-tables-and-screws.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of my prized possessions, now in a box in a closet somewhere, is a T-shirt that says on its front \u0026ldquo;This T-shirt is a munition.\u0026rdquo;  Underneath it is some machine-readable barcode that encodes the RSA public-key encryption algorithm expressed in Perl.  As the seller of the shirt advertised, \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s machine washable and machine readable.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen I bought and regularly wore that shirt, taking it out of the country was a crime punishable by up to a $1 million fine and 10 years in federal prison.  This is because U.S. rules under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), then enforced by the Department of Commerce, ruled that strong encryption qualified as a munition subject to export controls and requiring a special license for export.  After the\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States\"\u003e Dan Bernstein case was decided in 1996\u003c/a\u003e, computer source code printed in a book (human readable format) was not subject to export controls, but computer source code in a machine readable format, such as on my shirt, still was.  So I could wear my other T-shirt with RSA Perl code on it, which had a program in the shape of a dolphin, out of the country, but not the machine readable \u0026ldquo;This T-shirt is a munition\u0026rdquo; shirt.  The implication was that you could take a copy of Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eApplied Cryptography\u003c/span\u003e out of the country without an export license, but not a disk containing the very same code fragments printed in the book.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/rsa/legal.html\"\u003eThis website authored by Adam Back\u003c/a\u003e, written at the time, proposed some possible motives for government restrictions on cryptography.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat the ITAR regulations on cryptography did for Internet software development was prohibit web browsers and server software from implementing the strong encryption necessary to protect electronic commerce from being exported from the United States.  The result was that this development work simply occurred offshore.  There were no barriers to importation of the software into the U.S., only to export it out.  So the software was developed and sold by companies in places like Canada, Russia, and Estonia, which had no such inane restrictions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, in 1999, the U.S. wised up and relaxed the ITAR restrictions on encryption, allowing export without a license to most countries (the exceptions being countries with links to state-sponsored terrorism).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut ITAR is still around, and still having the unintended effect of pushing business out of the United States.  The current victim is commercial satellite production.  In 1999, ITAR authority over satellite technology export was shifted from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, and since that time the U.S. share of commercial satellite manufacturing has dropped from 83% to 50%.  The company Alcatel Alenia Space, now known as Thales Alenia, took steps in the late nineties to eliminate all U.S.-manufactured components from its satellites, with the result that it has subsequently doubled its market share to over 20%.  The European Space Agency, Canada\u0026rsquo;s Telesat, and the French company EADS Sodern, that makes satellite control and positioning systems, have all been phasing out their use of U.S.-supplied components.  They\u0026rsquo;ve done this because dealing with U.S. vendors increases costs (due to regulatory compliance costs) and causes unpredictable delays in the supply of parts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNevada\u0026rsquo;s Bigelow Aerospace delivered an aluminum satellite stand to Russia in 2006, which Robert Bigelow described as \u0026ldquo;indistinguishable from a common coffee table.\u0026rdquo;  But because it\u0026rsquo;s associated with a satellite and officially part of a satellite assembly, it is covered by ITAR and had to be guarded by two security guards at all times.  Even commodity items like screws and wiring, when part of a satellite, are covered by ITAR regulations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe purpose of ITAR is to prevent key U.S. technologies with military applications from being leaked out to other countries that might be hostile to the U.S.  But the effect of its overly broad application has been to shift the development of that technology to other countries and reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in the commercial satellite business.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongress should look to reform ITAR\u0026ndash;when export controls are so badly broken as to have nearly the opposite of the intended effect, they clearly need to be relaxed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Satellite and ITAR info via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11965352\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Earthbound,\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, August 23, 2008\u003c/a\u003e, pp. 66-67.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"When t-shirts, coffee tables, and screws are munitions"},{"content":"Police told ABC News producer Asa Eslocker to move off a public sidewalk, pushed him into the street, and then arrested him after telling him he was trespassing and \u0026ldquo;impeding the flow of traffic.\u0026rdquo; ABC has video at their site, which shows another police officer who needs to be fired.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/abc-news-producer-arrested-in-denver.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePolice told ABC News producer Asa Eslocker to move off a public sidewalk, pushed him into the street, and then arrested him after telling him he was trespassing and \u0026ldquo;impeding the flow of traffic.\u0026rdquo;  ABC \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Conventions/story?id=5668622\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003ehas video at their site\u003c/a\u003e, which shows another police officer who needs to be fired.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ABC News producer arrested in Denver"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m quoted in Peter Buxbaum\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Battling Botnets\u0026rdquo; article in the August 20, 2008 Military Information Technology. It didn\u0026rsquo;t really fully capture the points I made in the interview, and I don\u0026rsquo;t remember saying the statement at the end about using botnets as an offensive measure as \u0026ldquo;a nuclear option.\u0026rdquo; I said that nullrouting is a much better method of denial of service for network service providers than flooding attacks, and made a point similar to Schneier\u0026rsquo;s about military attacks on the infrastructure of another nation that the U.S. is at war with\u0026ndash;it would be more useful to obtain access to their systems, monitor, and disrupt than to just shut off access completely, but those points weren\u0026rsquo;t reflected in the article.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve written more about military use of botnets at this blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/military-botnets-article.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m quoted in Peter Buxbaum\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.mit-kmi.com/article.cfm?DocID=2569\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Battling Botnets\u0026rdquo; article in the August 20, 2008 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMilitary Information Technology\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  It didn\u0026rsquo;t really fully capture the points I made in the interview, and I don\u0026rsquo;t remember saying the statement at the end about using botnets as an offensive measure as \u0026ldquo;a nuclear option.\u0026rdquo;  I said that nullrouting is a much better method of denial of service for network service providers than flooding attacks, and made a point similar to Schneier\u0026rsquo;s about military attacks on the infrastructure of another nation that the U.S. is at war with\u0026ndash;it would be more useful to obtain access to their systems, monitor, and disrupt than to just shut off access completely, but those points weren\u0026rsquo;t reflected in the article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve written \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/bad-military-botnet-proposal.html\"\u003emore about military use of botnets at this blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Military botnets article"},{"content":"We put a Barack Obama for President sign in front of our house on Sunday; it\u0026rsquo;s already gone today.\nA Google search for \u0026ldquo;Obama sign stolen\u0026rdquo; shows that thefts of Obama yard signs are occurring all over the place\u0026ndash;Midland, TX; Staunton, VA; Springfield, MO; Ivins and St. George, UT; Sartell, MN; Upper Arlington, OH; and so on. A Google search for \u0026ldquo;McCain sign stolen\u0026rdquo; shows allegations about McCain stealing a prisoner of war story, Cindy McCain stealing a recipe, and stories of thefts of Obama yard signs\u0026ndash;but no reports of stolen McCain signs.\nI suppose either our sign was stolen by an unethical Obama supporter for their own use (in which case the stolen sign should be popping up elsewhere), or by an unethical McCain supporter who has no respect for freedom of speech or private property. I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s probably the latter.\nUPDATE (November 5, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s a story about a university instructor who wrote about his stealing a McCain/Palin sign in Minnesota\u0026ndash;he has resigned his visiting professorship at St. Olaf College as a result. Philip Busse is described in the article as a journalist and political activist from Portland, Oregon.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-30):\n\"I suppose either our sign was stolen by an unethical Obama supporter for their own use (in which case the stolen sign should be popping up elsewhere), or by an unethical McCain supporter who has no respect for freedom of speech or private property.\"Or it was stolen by some \"right-wing\" racist who hates Republicans, hates Democrats even more, believes that Obama is a Manchurian Muslim black supremacist, and will vote Constitution Party.\nLippard (2008-08-30):\nThere are no doubt persons of that description in this city. That description would also possibly fit the person who spray-painted swastikas on our wall and a nearby tree last November, as well. Whoever did that painted it wrong (legs sticking out counterclockwise, or left-facing, and not at a 45-degree rotation), which would also fit that description.\nPLB (2008-09-23):\nOn the subject of stolen Obama signs,check this out... (Forgive the self-promotion folks...)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-lawsonblack/hey-dont-steal-that-obama_b_128306.html\nLippard (2008-09-23):\nNot a problem, Pat, good story, but I was hoping for the perp to get caught at the end.\nPLB (2008-09-23):\nNot so fast Jim. Let's have a bit of fun with it first... and that streaming site is a hoot!Three hundred visitors in the middle of the night, discussing the political preferences of the moths hitting SignKid's window!It's pure gold...\nOz (2008-10-13):\nI had my $40 McCain/Palin sign (complete with photos) stolen plus every other McCain / Palin sign on all the main streets around here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/obama-sign-stolen.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe put a Barack Obama for President sign in front of our house on Sunday; it\u0026rsquo;s already gone today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Google search for \u0026ldquo;Obama sign stolen\u0026rdquo; shows that thefts of Obama yard signs are occurring all over the place\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/megandorfner/gGBnH4\"\u003eMidland, TX\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080814/OPINION03/808140324\"\u003eStaunton, VA\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://ky3.blogspot.com/2008/08/obama-signs-stolen-in-springfield.html\"\u003eSpringfield, MO\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/ruffledfeathers/gGx4WN\"\u003eIvins and St. George, UT\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080820/OPINION/108200016/-1/archives\"\u003eSartell, MN\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/daveharding/C27y\"\u003eUpper Arlington, OH\u003c/a\u003e; and so on.  A Google search for \u0026ldquo;McCain sign stolen\u0026rdquo; shows allegations about McCain stealing a prisoner of war story, Cindy McCain stealing a recipe, and stories of thefts of Obama yard signs\u0026ndash;but no reports of stolen McCain signs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suppose either our sign was stolen by an unethical Obama supporter for their own use (in which case the stolen sign should be popping up elsewhere), or by an unethical McCain supporter who has no respect for freedom of speech or private property.  I suspect it\u0026rsquo;s probably the latter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 5, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.startribune.com/33829604.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsl\"\u003ea story about a university instructor who wrote about his stealing a McCain/Palin sign in Minnesota\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;he has resigned his visiting professorship at St. Olaf College as a result.  Philip Busse is described in the article as a journalist and political activist from Portland, Oregon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama sign stolen"},{"content":"Lori Lipman Brown, the nonbelievers\u0026rsquo; lobbyist in Washington D.C., will appear on The Colbert Report tonight. She works for the Secular Coalition of America, an organization whose members include the American Humanist Association, the American Ethical Union, Atheist Alliance International, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Internet Infidels, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the Secular Students Alliance, and the Society for Humanistic Judaism.\nUPDATE: She won\u0026rsquo;t be on tonight\u0026ndash;maybe next week?\nUPDATE (August 30, 2008): She was on last night\u0026rsquo;s show, which is online.\nMichael Phoenix (2008-08-28):\nJust looking at the number of secular/non-belief/atheist groups out there makes you wonder why we are so ignored in American politics...\nLippard (2008-08-28):\nNah, it's microscopic compared to the number of religious groups. Anybody can start a group (or multiple groups), but what counts is how many people there are supporting them, not how many groups there are.\nJerry Wesner (2008-08-29):\nI guess it depends on your basis for comparison. Lippard called us (Humanists, non-theists, agnostics, whatever) microscopic in number. Well, we outnumber practicing Jews of all stripes, and they seem able to get attention from the government. No, we don't all belong to one organization. Some are Unitarians, some Humanists (and even there we have several groups, sort of like the Protestant churches), and still more of us just don't feel a need to join a group to show what we don't believe in. But our main effort is not to get the government to do things for us; merely to stop doing things to us.\nLippard (2008-08-29):\nJerry: I didn't say that humanists/nontheists/etc. are microscopic in number. I said that the number of secular/nonbelief/atheist groups is microscopic in comparison to the number of religious groups. The number of such groups is also small compared to the number of Jewish groups, even though, as you point out, there are more people in the nonbeliever category, broadly construed, than there are Jews in the U.S. That's why I said \"what counts is how many people there are supporting them, not how many groups there are.\"I agree with the rest of what you say.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/lori-lipman-brown-on-colbert-report.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLori Lipman Brown, the nonbelievers\u0026rsquo; lobbyist in Washington D.C., will appear on The Colbert Report tonight.  She works for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.secular.org/\"\u003eSecular Coalition of America\u003c/a\u003e, an organization whose members include the American Humanist Association, the American Ethical Union, Atheist Alliance International, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Internet Infidels, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the Secular Students Alliance, and the Society for Humanistic Judaism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: She won\u0026rsquo;t be on tonight\u0026ndash;maybe next week?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 30, 2008): She was on last night\u0026rsquo;s show, which is \u003ca href=\"http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?episodeId=180208\"\u003eonline\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lori Lipman Brown on the Colbert Report tonight"},{"content":"Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is behind Rifftrax, a website that allows you to download commentaries to play along with DVDs you watch. One of the commentaries currently available is for Ocean\u0026rsquo;s Eleven and features Mike Nelson and our friend Richard Cheese. Many of the commentaries also feature MST3K writer and the voice of Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy, and MST3K writer and the voice of Crow, Bill Corbett.\nOthers include Weird Al Yankovic joining Nelson on Jurassic Park, Neil Patrick Harris joining Nelson on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and commentaries on Alien, Cloverfield, Forbidden Zone, I Am Legend, and the creepy short educational bicycle safety film from 1963, One Got Fat. Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Cumudgeon, joins Nelson on the Spiderman 2 commentary.\nLooks like they charge $2.99 or $3.99 for the feature film commentaries, $0.99 for the shorts, which are all DRM-free.\nCheck them out at Rifftrax.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/rifftrax.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is behind \u003ca href=\"http://www.rifftrax.com/\"\u003eRifftrax\u003c/a\u003e, a website that allows you to download commentaries to play along with DVDs you watch.  One of the commentaries currently available is for Ocean\u0026rsquo;s Eleven and features Mike Nelson and our friend \u003ca href=\"http://www.richardcheese.com/\"\u003eRichard Cheese\u003c/a\u003e.  Many of the commentaries also feature MST3K writer and the voice of Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy, and MST3K writer and the voice of Crow, Bill Corbett.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOthers include Weird Al Yankovic joining Nelson on Jurassic Park, Neil Patrick Harris joining Nelson on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and commentaries on Alien, Cloverfield, Forbidden Zone, I Am Legend, and the \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/bizarre-bicycle-safety-film-from-1963.html\"\u003ecreepy short educational bicycle safety film from 1963, One Got Fat\u003c/a\u003e.  Josh Fruhlinger, the \u003ca href=\"http://joshreads.com/\"\u003eComics Cumudgeon\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://joshreads.com/?p=1693\"\u003ejoins Nelson on the Spiderman 2 commentary\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like they charge $2.99 or $3.99 for the feature film commentaries, $0.99 for the shorts, which are all DRM-free.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck them out at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rifftrax.com/\"\u003eRifftrax.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rifftrax"},{"content":"On September 26, 2007, I submitted a request to the Department of Homeland Security requesting copies of information relating to me in the Automated Targeting System (ATS), a system that collects information about individuals who travel internationally. Travelers are then assigned a risk score; passengers who have higher scores are subjected to a higher level of screening, despite the fact that Congress has attached restrictions to its appropriations for passenger screening stating that \u0026ldquo;None of the funds provided in this or previous appropriations Acts may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists.\u0026quot;\nTraveler risk scores are maintained for 40 years and individuals are not allowed to know their scores. The system has come under criticism for sometimes including information such as what books or magazines a passenger is carrying.\nI followed the process suggested by The Identity Project, which stated that DHS was supposed to respond within 30 days. It took a little longer than expected\u0026ndash;I just received my travel dossier today. It\u0026rsquo;s fifteen pages of fairly cryptic documentation, with frequent short redactions. The redactions are each labeled with the section of 5 USC 552 which provides grounds for exemption from disclosure, (b)(2)(low), (b)(6), and (b)(7)(C). The first of those \u0026ldquo;exempts from disclosure records that are related to internal matters of a relatively trivial nature, such as internal administrative tracking,\u0026rdquo; and accounts for the majority of the redactions. The other two are for \u0026ldquo;personnel or medical files and similar files the release of which would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes that could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.\u0026rdquo; I have a few of each of that type of redaction.\nThe documents include most\u0026ndash;but not all\u0026ndash;of my international air travel, including from as far back as 1984. There appear to be reports from two systems. There are four pages labeled \u0026ldquo;TECSII - PRIMARY QUERY HISTORY\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;PASSENGER ACTIVITY.\u0026rdquo; TECS II is the Treasury Enforcement Communications System II, the primary database of IBIS, the Interagency Border Inspection System. This report lists a series of records of two lines each. The first line contains my name, date of birth, date and time of the query, the agency making a query, a result column (entirely redacted under (b)(2)), a column labeled \u0026ldquo;LNE TYP\u0026rdquo; that appears to use both of the two lines and has codes such as \u0026ldquo;API,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;AIR,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;VEH.\u0026rdquo; Finally on the first line are a completely redacted column labeled \u0026ldquo;TERM\u0026rdquo; and single-letter codes under the headings \u0026ldquo;API\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;DIM.\u0026rdquo; The second line of each record contains airline flight numbers in some cases, and the name of the departure city in one case, a field labeled \u0026ldquo;DOC:\u0026rdquo; followed by a blank or my passport number, and, under the heading \u0026ldquo;LANE,\u0026rdquo; the characters \u0026ldquo;INSP:\u0026rdquo; followed by a blank or a redacted field, probably the name of the agent making the query. At the bottom of each page of results are three or four lines that are completely redacted, probably part of a help screen or menu\u0026ndash;the output looks like something from an IBM 3270 display terminal.\nThe other eleven pages of output look like IBM 3270-style output pasted into a single Word document that begins with my name and birthdate. It\u0026rsquo;s divided into several sections, each headed with a date of travel and containing what appears to be passenger name records (PNR) taken directly from SABRE. The redactions in these sections seem to be somewhat haphazard\u0026ndash;in one place part of my corporate email address was redacted, in another a different form of my corporate email addresses was not. My American Express card number is present, as is my Hertz #1 Club Gold membership number. It includes complete itineraries for the most recent travel, including hotel booking information (including type of room and bed), airline seat assignment information, and ticket price. There\u0026rsquo;s less information for older travel, which is mostly obscure to me apart from dates and airport codes.\nNext I\u0026rsquo;ll have to check out my FBI file\u0026hellip;\nUPDATE (September 9, 2008): DHS has responded to charges that it is illegal for them to be recording and keeping certain border-crossing records in ATS by moving them to another database, called BCI.\nUPDATE (December 31, 2008): DHS is in violation of its obligations to U.S. citizens under the Privacy Act, and to foreign nationals in Europe under the DHS-EU agreement on access to and use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data. DHS has not been complying with requests for data in the legally required time periods, nor with all of the relevant data. Data has also been illegally copied into other databases. Not surprisingly, the DHS\u0026rsquo;s own internal review claims, even as the evidence contradicts the claim, that it is in compliance with the law.\nEdward Hasbrouck has posted about the difference between American and European attitudes towards privacy and surveillance, and notes that at least one European airline, KLM, had never developed processes for complying with the law for passenger requests of records.\nUPDATE (July 19, 2014): An editor at Ars Technica has just discovered that his PNR contains full credit card numbers and IP addresses. Not exactly news, at this point\u0026hellip;\nGridman (2008-08-28):\nDoes your risk score go up because you've had the temerity to ask to see your file?\nLippard (2008-08-28):\nThe only indirect evidence would be if I suddenly start getting special screening at the airport. I'll comment here if that happens.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/dhs-responds-to-my-foia-request-for-my.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn September 26, 2007, I submitted a request to the Department of Homeland Security requesting copies of information relating to me in the \u003ca href=\"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw2005/Automated_Targeting_System\"\u003eAutomated Targeting System\u003c/a\u003e (ATS), a system that collects information about individuals who travel internationally.  Travelers are then assigned a risk score; passengers who have higher scores are subjected to a higher level of screening, despite the fact that \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72250\"\u003eCongress has attached restrictions to its appropriations for passenger screening\u003c/a\u003e stating that \u0026ldquo;None of the funds provided in this or previous appropriations Acts may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTraveler risk scores are maintained for 40 years and individuals are not allowed to know their scores.  The system \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102347.html\"\u003ehas come under criticism for sometimes including information such as what books or magazines a passenger is carrying\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI followed the process suggested by \u003ca href=\"http://papersplease.org/wp/\"\u003eThe Identity Project\u003c/a\u003e, which stated that DHS was supposed to respond within 30 days.  It took a little longer than expected\u0026ndash;I just received my travel dossier today.  It\u0026rsquo;s fifteen pages of fairly cryptic documentation, with frequent short redactions.  The redactions are each labeled with the section of 5 USC 552 which provides grounds for exemption from disclosure, (b)(2)(low), (b)(6), and (b)(7)(C).  The first of those \u0026ldquo;exempts from disclosure records that are related to internal matters of a relatively trivial nature, such as internal administrative tracking,\u0026rdquo; and accounts for the majority of the redactions.  The other two are for \u0026ldquo;personnel or medical files and similar files the release of which would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes that could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.\u0026rdquo;  I have a few of each of that type of redaction.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe documents include most\u0026ndash;but not all\u0026ndash;of my international air travel, including from as far back as 1984.  There appear to be reports from two systems.  There are four pages labeled \u0026ldquo;TECSII - PRIMARY QUERY HISTORY\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;PASSENGER ACTIVITY.\u0026rdquo;  TECS II is the \u003ca href=\"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw2005/Treasury_Enforcement_Communications_System_%28TECS%29\"\u003eTreasury Enforcement Communications System\u003c/a\u003e II, the primary database of IBIS, the Interagency Border Inspection System.  This report lists a series of records of two lines each.  The first line contains my name, date of birth, date and time of the query, the agency making a query, a result column (entirely redacted under (b)(2)), a column labeled \u0026ldquo;LNE TYP\u0026rdquo; that appears to use both of the two lines and has codes such as \u0026ldquo;API,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;AIR,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;VEH.\u0026rdquo;  Finally on the first line are a completely redacted column labeled \u0026ldquo;TERM\u0026rdquo; and single-letter codes under the headings \u0026ldquo;API\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;DIM.\u0026rdquo;  The second line of each record contains airline flight numbers in some cases, and the name of the departure city in one case, a field labeled \u0026ldquo;DOC:\u0026rdquo; followed by a blank or my passport number, and, under the heading \u0026ldquo;LANE,\u0026rdquo; the characters \u0026ldquo;INSP:\u0026rdquo; followed by a blank or a redacted field, probably the name of the agent making the query.  At the bottom of each page of results are three or four lines that are completely redacted, probably part of a help screen or menu\u0026ndash;the output looks like something from an \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270\"\u003eIBM 3270 display terminal\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe other eleven pages of output look like IBM 3270-style output pasted into a single Word document that begins with my name and birthdate.  It\u0026rsquo;s divided into several sections, each headed with a date of travel and containing what appears to be \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Name_Record\"\u003epassenger name records (PNR) \u003c/a\u003etaken directly from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_%28computer_system%29\"\u003eSABRE\u003c/a\u003e.  The redactions in these sections seem to be somewhat haphazard\u0026ndash;in one place part of my corporate email address was redacted, in another a different form of my corporate email addresses was not.  My American Express card number is present, as is my Hertz #1 Club Gold membership number.   It includes complete itineraries for the most recent travel, including hotel booking information (including type of room and bed), airline seat assignment information, and ticket price.  There\u0026rsquo;s less information for older travel, which is mostly obscure to me apart from dates and airport codes.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNext I\u0026rsquo;ll have to \u003ca href=\"http://www.getmyfbifile.com/\"\u003echeck out my FBI file\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (September 9, 2008): DHS \u003ca href=\"http://www.papersplease.org/wp/2008/08/25/dhs-plays-a-shell-game-with-border-crossing-records/\"\u003ehas responded to charges that it is illegal for them to be recording and keeping certain border-crossing records in ATS by moving them to another database, called BCI\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (December 31, 2008): DHS is \u003ca href=\"http://www.papersplease.org/wp/2008/12/24/dhs-admits-problems-in-disclosing-travel-surveillance-records/\"\u003ein violation of its obligations to U.S. citizens under the Privacy Act, and to foreign nationals in Europe under the DHS-EU agreement on access to and use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data\u003c/a\u003e.  DHS has not been complying with requests for data in the legally required time periods, nor with all of the relevant data.  Data has also been illegally copied into other databases.  Not surprisingly, the DHS\u0026rsquo;s own internal review claims, even as the evidence contradicts the claim, that it is in compliance with the law.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEdward Hasbrouck \u003ca href=\"http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001595.html\"\u003ehas posted about the difference between American and European attitudes towards privacy and surveillance\u003c/a\u003e, and notes that at least one European airline, KLM, had never developed processes for complying with the law for passenger requests of records.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (July 19, 2014): An editor at Ars Technica \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/ars-editor-learns-feds-have-his-old-ip-addresses-full-credit-card-numbers/\"\u003ehas just discovered that his PNR contains full credit card numbers and IP addresses\u003c/a\u003e. Not exactly news, at this point\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DHS responds to my FOIA request for my travel dossier"},{"content":"Science writer Simon Singh (author of The Code Book on yesterday\u0026rsquo;s list of science books) is a columnist for The Guardian, for which he wrote a column critical of chiropractic titled \u0026ldquo;Beware the spinal trap.\u0026rdquo; The British Chiropractic Association sued him for the column, and it was withdrawn from the Guardian\u0026rsquo;s website. Svetlana Pertsovich has posted the offending column from Internet cache on her website in Russia, James Steinberg has posted it at his blog, and I\u0026rsquo;ve included it below.\nUK libel law is still in need of reform.\nBeware the spinal trap\nSome practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal\nSimon Singh The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008 This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body. In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra. You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments. I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions. But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic. In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors. More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures. Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection. Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.” This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher. Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.\n· Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial\nwww.simonsingh.net\nUPDATE: The part about chiropractic-induced stroke is of interest to me, as I had once heard of a case of chiropractic manipulation leading to blindness. When I mentioned it at a dinner of skeptics in Tempe, Arizona in 1987 that included James Randi and Jim Lowell of the National Council Against Health Fraud, both of them suggested that this was impossible because the optic nerves don\u0026rsquo;t come anywhere near the spine. But nobody at the table (including me) thought about the possibility of spinal manipulation inducing a stroke causing damage to the visual system. This article from a chiropractic journal discusses cases of visual loss as a result of spinal surgery as a sort of tu quoque defense of chiropractic for similar problems, citing this article:\nMyers M, Hamilton S, Bogosian A, Smith C, Wagner T Visual loss as a complication of spine surgery. Spine June 15, 1997;22(12).\nSo perhaps my remark from 21 years ago is vindicated?\nUPDATE (November 4, 2009): Simon Singh gave an overview and update on his case on June 3.\nSimon Singh fought against the libel claim despite the state of UK law, and has successfully won the right to appeal in October.\nUPDATE (April 16, 2010): Simon Singh won his appeal, and the BCA dropped their suit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/simon-singh-sued-and-silenced-svetlana.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScience writer Simon Singh (author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Code Book\u003c/span\u003e on \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/science-books.html\"\u003eyesterday\u0026rsquo;s list of science books\u003c/a\u003e) is a columnist for The Guardian, for which he wrote a column critical of chiropractic titled \u0026ldquo;Beware the spinal trap.\u0026rdquo;  The \u003ca href=\"http://holfordwatch.info/2008/08/16/british-chiropractors-join-the-legal-intimidation-party/\"\u003eBritish Chiropractic Association sued him for the column\u003c/a\u003e, and it was withdrawn from the Guardian\u0026rsquo;s website.  Svetlana Pertsovich \u003ca href=\"http://svetlana14s.narod.ru/Simon_Singhs_silenced_paper.html\"\u003ehas posted the offending column from Internet cache on her website in Russia\u003c/a\u003e, James Steinberg \u003ca href=\"http://miedvied.com/?p=62\"\u003ehas posted it at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, and I\u0026rsquo;ve included it below.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUK libel law is \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/uk-infringement-of-freedom-of-speech.html\"\u003estill in need of reform\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eBeware the spinal trap\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nSome practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal\u003cbr /\u003e\nSimon Singh The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008 \u003cbr /\u003e\nThis is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body. \u003cbr /\u003e\nIn fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra. \u003cbr /\u003e\nYou might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments. \u003cbr /\u003e\nI can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions. \u003cbr /\u003e\nBut what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic. \u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors. \u003cbr /\u003e\nMore worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures. \u003cbr /\u003e\nWorse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection. \u003cbr /\u003e\nLaurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.” \u003cbr /\u003e\nThis case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher. \u003cbr /\u003e\nBearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.\u003cbr /\u003e\n· Simon Singh is the co-author of \u003ca href=\"http://trickortreatment.com/\"\u003eTrick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.simonsingh.net\"\u003ewww.simonsingh.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  The part about chiropractic-induced stroke is of interest to me, as I had once heard of a case of chiropractic manipulation leading to blindness.  When I mentioned it at a dinner of skeptics in Tempe, Arizona in 1987 that included James Randi and Jim Lowell of the National Council Against Health Fraud, both of them suggested that this was impossible because the optic nerves don\u0026rsquo;t come anywhere near the spine.  But nobody at the table (including me) thought about the possibility of spinal manipulation inducing a stroke causing damage to the visual system.  \u003ca href=\"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3987/is_200209/ai_n9145881\"\u003eThis article from a chiropractic journal\u003c/a\u003e discusses cases of visual loss as a result of spinal surgery as a sort of tu quoque defense of chiropractic for similar problems, citing this article:\u003cbr /\u003e\nMyers M, Hamilton S, Bogosian A, Smith C, Wagner T Visual loss as a complication of spine surgery. \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpine\u003c/span\u003e June 15, 1997;22(12).\u003cbr /\u003e\nSo perhaps my remark from 21 years ago is vindicated?\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (November 4, 2009): Simon Singh gave \u003ca href=\"http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/340\"\u003ean overview and update on his case\u003c/a\u003e on June 3.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSimon Singh fought against the libel claim despite the state of UK law, and \u003ca href=\"http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/10/permission-granted.html\"\u003ehas successfully won the right to appeal\u003c/a\u003e in October.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (April 16, 2010): Simon Singh \u003ca href=\"http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2010/04/bca-v-singh-ends-what-does-this-mean.html\"\u003ewon his appeal, and the BCA dropped their suit\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Simon Singh sued and silenced; Svetlana and Steinberg's speech surmounts suppression"},{"content":"From Cocktail Party Physics by way of Stranger Fruit\u0026hellip; bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve read, asterisk the ones you intend to read:\nMicrographia, Robert Hooke The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin\nNever at Rest, Richard WestfallSurely You\u0026rsquo;re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney The Devil\u0026rsquo;s Doctor, Philip Ball The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard RhodesLonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow (I\u0026rsquo;ve not read this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve read Mr. Tompkins in Paperback)\nThe Elegant Universe, Brian Greene Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (I listened to it on tape on a drive to the Dallas CSICOP conference in 1992)Universal Foam, Sidney PerkowitzVermeer\u0026rsquo;s Camera, Philip Steadman The Code Book, Simon Singh The Elements of Murder, John Emsley Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer (I\u0026rsquo;m currently reading this)Time\u0026rsquo;s Arrow, Martin Amis\nThe Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson Einstein\u0026rsquo;s Dreams, Alan LightmanGodel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss E=mc\u0026lt;2\u0026gt;, David Bodanis Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin Warped Passages, Lisa Randall Apollo\u0026rsquo;s Fire, Michael Sims Flatland, Edward Abbott Fermat\u0026rsquo;s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel Stiff, Mary Roach Astroturf, M.G. Lord The Periodic Table, Primo Levi Longitude, Dava Sobel The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg The Mummy Congress, Heather PringleThe Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin The Executioner\u0026rsquo;s Current, Richard Moran Krakatoa, Simon Winchester Pythagorus\u0026rsquo; Trousers, Margaret Wertheim Neuromancer, William Gibson The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik Einstein\u0026rsquo;s Clocks and Poincare\u0026rsquo;s Maps, Peter Galison The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears Consilience, E.O. WilsonWonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould (haven\u0026rsquo;t read this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve read all of his books of collected Natural History articles) Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris Storm World, Chris Mooney The Carbon Age, Eric Roston The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind Copenhagen, Michael Frayn From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson Chaos, James GleickInnumeracy, John Allen Paulos The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky Subtle is the Lord, Abraham PaisI\u0026rsquo;d add some Oliver Sacks and A.R. Luria (neuroscience case studies), V.S. Ramachandran\u0026rsquo;s A Brief Tour of Consciousness, Charles Mackay\u0026rsquo;s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and some philosophy of science like Larry Laudan\u0026rsquo;s Science and Relativism (nicely written in the form of a dialogue between advocates of different views), Philip Kitcher\u0026rsquo;s The Advancement of Science, Thomas Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s The Copernican Revolution, John Losee\u0026rsquo;s A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, and Ian Hacking\u0026rsquo;s Representing and Intervening. There are lots more to list, but those are a few that I\u0026rsquo;ve read. My science reading has leaned very strongly towards cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, which is only weakly represented on the above list, and on the creation/evolution debate, which isn\u0026rsquo;t really represented on the above list at all, except by Darwin himself.\nNow John Lynch can tell me that I really need to read Origin of Species.\nUPDATE (August 28, 2008):\nEnhanced with P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; additions:\nAscent of Man, Jacob BronowskiBasin and Range, John McPheeBeak of the Finch, Jonathan WeinerChance and Necessity, Jacques MonodDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson (reading now)\n*Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean CarrollEvolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl ZimmerGenome, Matt RidleyGuns, Germs, and Steel, Jared DiamondIt Ain\u0026rsquo;t Necessarily So, Richard LewontinOn Growth and Form, D\u0026rsquo;Arcy Wentworth ThompsonPhantoms in the Brain, VS RamachandranThe Ancestor\u0026rsquo;s Tale, Richard DawkinsThe Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth LloydThe Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland JudsonThe Great Devonian Controversy, Martin RudwickThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver SacksThe Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay GouldThe Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard LewontinTime, Love, Memory, Jonathan WeinerVoyaging and The Power of Place, Janet BrowneWoman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-27):\nI've got a gorgeous Barnes and Noble HC edition of all five of Darwin's books that I've been meaning to read but haven't gotten around to yet ... I'm pretty sure I read Voyage of the Beagle in the 7th grade and did a report on it but I'm not sure.Another book I'd add to the list is The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. I started reading it last year and had to stop because the material was too engaging for me to do the usual 3-4 books at a time deal.When I post this I think I'm going to add some more philosophy of science books in, too.How has Soul Made Flesh been? I've wanted to read that for years now.\nLippard (2008-08-27):\nI've not had a chance to read any more of Soul Made Flesh since I started it during my vacation, but so far it's been excellent. I think I'm about four or five chapters in.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2008-08-28):\nSoul Made Flesh, like Zimmer's other books, is well written and very engaging. As for the list, I think I've read only seven. Shameful, I know.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-28):\nI mispoke about Road to Reality. I should have said \"demanding\" rather than \"engaging.\" The book has practice problems in it to help you learn the math and science - I had planned on working out the problems - graded easy, intermediate, and difficult. They all seemed fairly difficult to me despite having once been decent at calculus based physics.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-28):\ncollege intro level physics, of course.\nEinzige (2008-08-28):\nIt's amazing how quickly that stuff goes. I aced my first semester of calculus a couple years ago (I even helped proofread a few chapters of this text) but I'd be lucky if I could find the limit of a function today.\nLippard (2008-08-28):\nI picked up Soul Made Flesh again. I'm six chapters in, and came across this sentence that I'm not happy with: \"Boyle was impressed by the way that a dead man's nails could keep growing for months, long after the rational soul had left his body.\" (p. 144)Sure, that's what Boyle *thought* he was seeing, but Zimmer doesn't note that this is a myth.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-28):\nI was in the library today to return a book and could not resist checking out a copy of Zimmer's Microcosm that was featured on the New Books shelf.I also noticed that my library has a new service that allows you do check out on-line editions of books which you can then burn onto cds. I'm hoping they eventually get plenty of public domains books available this way. I jogged my way through Plato's Republic on my IPod earlier this year.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-28):\nD'oh! I forgot to mention The Scientists. And I even made that my Book of the Year for 2007 (that being the best Doubter related book I read during the course of the year.)\nLippard (2008-08-29):\nAdded to my wish list. Thanks!\nDanny Boy, FCD (2008-08-29):\nHere are my additions to the list (some are already listed by PZ):Beak of the Finch by Jonathan WeinerChance in the House of Fate by Jennifer AckermanFads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin GardnerGuns, Germs and Steel by Jared DiamondJust Six Numbers by Martin ReesReinventing Darwin by Niles EldredgeThe Dinosaur Heresies by Robert BakkerThe God Particle by Leon Lederman\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-29):\nI just remembered that Discover did a list of top science books about year and a half ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/science-books.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/2008/08/the-great-pop-s.html\"\u003eCocktail Party Physics\u003c/a\u003e by way of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/08/the_great_popsci_book_project.php\"\u003eStranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip; bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve read, asterisk the ones you intend to read:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eMicrographia\u003c/em\u003e, Robert Hooke \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-weight: normal;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Origin of the Species\u003c/em\u003e, Charles Darwin\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eNever at Rest\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Westfall\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eSurely You\u0026rsquo;re Joking, Mr. Feynman\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Feynman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eTesla: Man Out of Time\u003c/em\u003e, Margaret Cheney \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Devil\u0026rsquo;s Doctor\u003c/em\u003e, Philip Ball \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Making of the Atomic Bomb\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Rhodes\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eLonely Hearts of the Cosmos\u003c/em\u003e, Dennis Overbye \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhysics for Entertainment\u003c/em\u003e, Yakov Perelman \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003e1-2-3 Infinity\u003c/em\u003e, George Gamow (I\u0026rsquo;ve not read this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve read \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMr. Tompkins in Paperback\u003c/span\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Elegant Universe\u003c/em\u003e, Brian Greene \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eWarmth Disperses, Time Passes\u003c/em\u003e, Hans Christian von Bayer \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eAlice in Quantumland\u003c/em\u003e, Robert Gilmore \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhere Does the Weirdness Go?\u003c/em\u003e David Lindley \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Short History of Nearly Everything\u003c/em\u003e, Bill Bryson \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Force of Nature\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Rhodes \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlack Holes and Time Warps\u003c/em\u003e, Kip Thorne \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Brief History of Time\u003c/em\u003e, Stephen Hawking\u003c/strong\u003e (I listened to it on tape on a drive to the Dallas CSICOP conference in 1992)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eUniversal Foam\u003c/em\u003e, Sidney Perkowitz\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eVermeer\u0026rsquo;s Camera\u003c/em\u003e, Philip Steadman \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Code Book\u003c/em\u003e, Simon Singh\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Elements of Murder\u003c/em\u003e, John Emsley \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eSoul Made Flesh\u003c/em\u003e, Carl Zimmer (I\u0026rsquo;m currently reading this)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eTime\u0026rsquo;s Arrow\u003c/em\u003e, Martin Amis\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Ten Most Beautiful Experiments\u003c/em\u003e, George Johnson \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eEinstein\u0026rsquo;s Dreams\u003c/em\u003e, Alan Lightman\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eGodel, Escher, Bach\u003c/em\u003e, Douglas Hofstadter\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Curious Life of Robert Hooke\u003c/em\u003e, Lisa Jardine \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Matter of Degrees\u003c/em\u003e, Gino Segre \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Physics of Star Trek\u003c/em\u003e, Lawrence Krauss \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eE=mc\u0026lt;2\u0026gt;\u003c/em\u003e, David Bodanis \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eZero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea\u003c/em\u003e, Charles Seife \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eAbsolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold\u003c/em\u003e, Tom Shachtman \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Madman Dreams of Turing Machines\u003c/em\u003e, Janna Levin \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eWarped Passages\u003c/em\u003e, Lisa Randall \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eApollo\u0026rsquo;s Fire\u003c/em\u003e, Michael Sims \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eFlatland\u003c/em\u003e, Edward Abbott\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eFermat\u0026rsquo;s Last Theorem\u003c/em\u003e, Amir Aczel \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eStiff\u003c/em\u003e, Mary Roach\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eAstroturf\u003c/em\u003e, M.G. Lord \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Periodic Table\u003c/em\u003e, Primo Levi \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eLongitude\u003c/em\u003e, Dava Sobel \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe First Three Minutes\u003c/em\u003e, Steven Weinberg \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Mummy Congress\u003c/em\u003e, Heather Pringle\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Accelerating Universe\u003c/em\u003e, Mario Livio \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eMath and the Mona Lisa\u003c/em\u003e, Bulent Atalay \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is Your Brain on Music\u003c/em\u003e, Daniel Levitin \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Executioner\u0026rsquo;s Current\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Moran \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eKrakatoa\u003c/em\u003e, Simon Winchester \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003ePythagorus\u0026rsquo; Trousers\u003c/em\u003e, Margaret Wertheim \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eNeuromancer\u003c/em\u003e, William Gibson\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Physics of Superheroes\u003c/em\u003e, James Kakalios \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump\u003c/span\u003e, Sandra Hempel \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eAnother Day in the Frontal Lobe\u003c/em\u003e, Katrina Firlik \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eEinstein\u0026rsquo;s Clocks and Poincare\u0026rsquo;s Maps\u003c/em\u003e, Peter Galison \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Demon-Haunted World\u003c/em\u003e, Carl Sagan \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Blind Watchmaker\u003c/em\u003e, Richard Dawkins\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Language Instinct\u003c/em\u003e, Steven Pinker \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn Instance of the Fingerpost\u003c/em\u003e, Iain Pears \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eConsilience\u003c/em\u003e, E.O. Wilson\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eWonderful Life\u003c/em\u003e, Stephen J. Gould (haven\u0026rsquo;t read this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve read all of his books of collected \u003cem\u003eNatural History\u003c/em\u003e articles) \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eTeaching a Stone to Talk\u003c/em\u003e, Annie Dillard \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eFire in the Brain\u003c/em\u003e, Ronald K. Siegel\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Life of a Cell\u003c/em\u003e, Lewis Thomas \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eComing of Age in the Milky Way\u003c/em\u003e, Timothy Ferris \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eStorm World\u003c/em\u003e, Chris Mooney \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Carbon Age\u003c/em\u003e, Eric Roston \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Black Hole Wars\u003c/em\u003e, Leonard Susskind \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eCopenhagen\u003c/em\u003e, Michael Frayn \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom the Earth to the Moon\u003c/em\u003e, Jules Verne \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eGut Symmetries\u003c/em\u003e, Jeanette Winterson \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eChaos\u003c/em\u003e, James Gleick\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eInnumeracy\u003c/em\u003e, John Allen Paulos\u003c/strong\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Physics of NASCAR\u003c/em\u003e, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eSubtle is the Lord\u003c/em\u003e, Abraham Pais\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d add some Oliver Sacks and A.R. Luria (neuroscience case studies), V.S. Ramachandran\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Brief Tour of Consciousness\u003c/span\u003e, Charles Mackay\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExtraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds\u003c/span\u003e, and some philosophy of science like Larry Laudan\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience and Relativism\u003c/span\u003e (nicely written in the form of a dialogue between advocates of different views), Philip Kitcher\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Advancement of Science\u003c/span\u003e, Thomas Kuhn\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Copernican Revolution\u003c/span\u003e, John Losee\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science\u003c/span\u003e, and Ian Hacking\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRepresenting and Intervening\u003c/span\u003e.  There are lots more to list, but those are a few that I\u0026rsquo;ve read.  My science reading has leaned very strongly towards cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, which is only weakly represented on the above list, and on the creation/evolution debate, which isn\u0026rsquo;t really represented on the above list at all, except by Darwin himself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow John Lynch can tell me that I really need to read \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrigin of Species\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 28, 2008):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEnhanced with \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/popsci_book_meme.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; additions\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col start=\"76\"\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAscent of Man\u003c/span\u003e, Jacob Bronowski\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBasin and Range\u003c/span\u003e, John McPhee\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBeak of the Finch\u003c/span\u003e, Jonathan Weiner\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChance and Necessity\u003c/span\u003e, Jacques Monod\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation\u003c/span\u003e, Olivia Judson (reading now)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e*\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEndless Forms Most Beautiful\u003c/span\u003e, Sean Carroll\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvolution: The Triumph of an Idea\u003c/span\u003e, Carl Zimmer\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGenome\u003c/span\u003e, Matt Ridley\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGuns, Germs, and Steel\u003c/span\u003e, Jared Diamond\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIt Ain\u0026rsquo;t Necessarily So\u003c/span\u003e, Richard Lewontin\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOn Growth and Form\u003c/span\u003e, D\u0026rsquo;Arcy Wentworth Thompson\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhantoms in the Brain\u003c/span\u003e, VS Ramachandran\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Ancestor\u0026rsquo;s Tale\u003c/span\u003e, Richard Dawkins\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution\u003c/span\u003e, Elisabeth Lloyd\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Eighth Day of Creation\u003c/span\u003e, Horace Freeland Judson\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Great Devonian Controversy\u003c/span\u003e, Martin Rudwick\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat\u003c/span\u003e, Oliver Sacks\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Mismeasure of Man\u003c/span\u003e, Stephen Jay Gould\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment\u003c/span\u003e, Richard Lewontin\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime, Love, Memory\u003c/span\u003e, Jonathan Weiner\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVoyaging and The Power of Place\u003c/span\u003e, Janet Browne\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWoman: An Intimate Geography\u003c/span\u003e, Natalie Angier\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science books"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers has a post at Pharyngula about how the Democratic National Convention itself is prioritizing religious speakers who disagree with planks of the party platform over non-religious speakers who do not, which goes on to report allegations from an attorney that police from the Aurora, Colorado Police Department have been arresting peaceful protesters on bogus charges, apparently confiscating a compact flash card documenting police behavior, shooting pepper spray into the face of a protester who was obeying police instructions, and illegally not wearing badges or using means to obstruct their names and badge numbers.\nCops who act illegally should be fired and prosecuted, every time. They hold a position of public trust and need to be held to a higher standard than civilians, not a lower one.\nUPDATE: Police claim protesters were carrying rocks. They arrested about 100 protesters. The group Recreate \u0026lsquo;68 says it was denied its use of a legal permit for the use of Civic Center Park, while police helped to protect and bring in Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church. About a dozen abortion protesters were arrested on Tuesday, so they weren\u0026rsquo;t being given special treatment.\nIn the Denver Post\u0026rsquo;s photos, I don\u0026rsquo;t see any cops without visible badges, though in only a few photos of cops with riot gear are the pictures close enough to see the numbers in white on the front of their uniforms.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/police-violating-rights-at-democratic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/the_right_of_the_people_to_pea.php\"\u003ea post at Pharyngula about how the Democratic National Convention itself is prioritizing religious speakers who disagree with planks of the party platform over non-religious speakers who do not\u003c/a\u003e, which goes on to report allegations from an attorney that police from the Aurora, Colorado Police Department have been arresting peaceful protesters on bogus charges, apparently confiscating a compact flash card documenting police behavior, shooting pepper spray into the face of a protester who was obeying police instructions, and illegally not wearing badges or using means to obstruct their names and badge numbers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCops who act illegally should be fired and prosecuted, every time.  They hold a position of public trust and need to be held to a higher standard than civilians, not a lower one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Police \u003ca href=\"http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_10306204\"\u003eclaim protesters were carrying rocks\u003c/a\u003e.  They arrested about 100 protesters.  The group Recreate \u0026lsquo;68 \u003ca href=\"http://www.commondreams.org/news-2008/0826-31793.htm\"\u003esays it was denied its use of a legal permit for the use of Civic Center Park, while police helped to protect and bring in Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church\u003c/a\u003e.  About a dozen abortion protesters were arrested on Tuesday, so they weren\u0026rsquo;t being given special treatment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDenver Post\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s photos, I don\u0026rsquo;t see any cops without visible badges, though in only a few photos of cops with riot gear are the pictures close enough to see the numbers in white on the front of their uniforms.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Police violating rights at the Democratic National Convention?"},{"content":"Focus on the Family told its followers to pray for rain on Obama\u0026rsquo;s speech at the Democratic National Convention, and as it turns out, there was some flooding. But the flooding filled the Fox skybox in the Pepsi Center with 50 to 100 gallons of water per minute for about five minutes when the fire suppression sprinkler system went off. A little bit off from the desired location in both time and space, yet somehow more appropriate.\nGod works in mysterious ways.\nObama speaks tomorrow evening at Invesco Field. California pastor Wiley Drake has been praying for rain every morning for the past two weeks, and is inviting Christians from around the country to join him tomorrow night on a two-hour conference call to pray for rain on Obama.\nWeather.com\u0026rsquo;s forecast for Denver tomorrow is sunny with a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit and 0% change of precipitation, though it\u0026rsquo;s partly cloudy with 10% chance of precipitation tonight.\n(Hat tip to John Hummel.)\nUPDATE (August 30, 2008): And now it looks like Hurricane Gustav may cause the Republican National Convention to be suspended!\nHistorical Comments John (2008-08-27):\nIf you liked \"Pray for Rain\", you will love the new parody video: Pray for Diarrhea.\nEamon Knight (2008-08-27):\nThis is evidence that there is a God -- and he's got a sense of humour, dislikes FOX, and is thumbing his divine nose at FoF.I think I like this guy ;-).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/focus-on-familys-prayers-answered.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFocus on the Family \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/focus-on-family-pray-for-rain-on-obama.html\"\u003etold its followers to pray for rain on Obama\u0026rsquo;s speech at the Democratic National Convention\u003c/a\u003e, and as it turns out, there was some flooding.  But the flooding \u003ca href=\"http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=98286\u0026amp;catid=188\"\u003efilled the Fox skybox in the Pepsi Center with 50 to 100 gallons of water per minute for about five minutes when the fire suppression sprinkler system went off\u003c/a\u003e.  A little bit off from the desired location in both time and space, yet somehow more appropriate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGod works in mysterious ways.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eObama speaks tomorrow evening at Invesco Field.  California pastor Wiley Drake has been praying for rain every morning for the past two weeks, and \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121971501325271597.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\"\u003eis inviting Christians from around the country to join him tomorrow night on a two-hour conference call to pray for rain on Obama\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWeather.com\u0026rsquo;s forecast for Denver tomorrow is sunny with a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit and 0% change of precipitation, though it\u0026rsquo;s partly cloudy with 10% chance of precipitation tonight.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://johnhummel.blogspot.com/2008/08/gods-aim-is-off.html\"\u003eJohn Hummel\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 30, 2008): And now it looks like \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/mccain-hurrican.html\"\u003eHurricane Gustav may cause the Republican National Convention to be suspended\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Focus on the Family's prayers answered"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic has a story up about the FFRF billboards coming to Phoenix, with quotes from a local atheist, clergy, and a legislator. The quotes from the atheist, Harold Saferstein of the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, and the clergyman, Bob Mitchell, senior pastor at Central United Methodist Church, are both quite reasonable. The quote from the legislator, Sen. Linda Gray, not so much. She is quoted as writing in an email that \u0026ldquo;The FFRF fails to acknowledge history which recognized the strong Christian commitment of those who attended the Constitutional Convention.\u0026rdquo; First of all, how does she know what FFRF \u0026ldquo;fails to acknowledge\u0026rdquo; unless she is very familiar with the organization, which I doubt. Second, it\u0026rsquo;s Gray who\u0026rsquo;s talking out of her hat. While most of America\u0026rsquo;s Founding Fathers were nominally Christian, this was the same Constitutional Convention that voted against opening its meetings with prayers and produced a document that contains no references to a deity except in the year before the signatures (\u0026quot;Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth\u0026quot;). It is a document which explicitly says in Article VI that \u0026ldquo;no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\u0026rdquo; Its primary author, James Madison, was a strong advocate of strict separation of church and state who thought that even government-paid legislative chaplains were a violation of religious liberty.\nMitchell, the pastor quoted in the story, is quoted as saying \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem with people expressing their points of view in public. \u0026hellip; I would prefer that there was serious tolerant dialogue that might emerge from this publicity campaign because it is much needed.\u0026rdquo; The article says he hoped that there would be no backlash against the billboards, but would not be surprised if it happened. I agree with him.\n(My previous posts on the FFRF billboards coming to Phoenix are here, here, and here.)\nUPDATE: The Arizona Republic fails to note that much of the money for these billboards was raised by the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group.\nHere are the specific billboard locations:\nThe five new billboard locations are confirmed and approved by CBS Outdoor. They are on surface streets all within 1 to 3 miles of central Phoenix. Billboards are numbered and say CBS on them.\n#2501 Start Date: August 29\nCross Streets: 19th Ave \u0026amp; Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex.\n#2701 Start Date: August 29\nCross Streets: Van Buren \u0026amp; 15th Ave. Located just north east of the State Capital area on Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Van Buren just prior to 15th Ave. The sign is on the south side of Van Buren and is located within a few blocks of the State Capital complex.\n#2821 Start Date: August 29\nCross Streets: Indian School \u0026amp; 23rd St. Best viewing occurs while traveling westbound on Indian School Rd just after 23rd St. The sign is on the south side of Indian School Rd.\n#2911 Start Date: August 29\nCross streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.\n#2945 Start Date: August 29\nCross Streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 3rd St. Best viewing occurs while traveling westbound on McDowell. The sign is on the southwest corner of McDowell and 3rd St.UPDATE: I was interviewed today by Brian Webb of KNXV-TV ABC 15 News and by Melissa Gonzalo of KPNX NBC 12 News about the billboards, as a local member of FFRF and the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group. Their stories should air tonight, at 5 or 6 p.m. on 15 and at 6 p.m. on 12. The NBC story should appear on their website after it airs, and both suspected that the stories would air again with footage of the actual billboards on Friday.\nThis story has also been covered by NPR locally, and is the subject of a very poorly worded poll on Fox News 10, which seems to think that the only two possible reactions to the billboard are not be offended because it\u0026rsquo;s free speech (not because you agree with it) or to be offended because America needs religion. P.Z. Myers has pointed Pharyngulites to the poll, so at least it has a sizable majority supporting freedom of speech.\nUPDATE: The Channel 15 interview aired at 5 p.m. and I was happy with the result. (This video is two segments, one 0:41 segment that I\u0026rsquo;m not in, and a 1:36 segment where I appear from about 0:49 to 0:52.) Here\u0026rsquo;s the video I appear in:\nThe Channel 12 interview aired at 6 p.m., and Melissa Gonzalo did a better job\u0026ndash;she spent more time in the interview, and her piece came out better, in my opinion (but what\u0026rsquo;s with the \u0026ldquo;Billboard Battle\u0026rdquo; tagline? What battle?). It\u0026rsquo;s here:\nGridman (2008-08-25):\nI don't know if it is related or in any way in response, but there's a new billboard up at Indian School and the I-17 that admonishes people to \"quit praying now\" and directs them to a similarly named website.It's entirely a sham, because it redirects to a website with exactly the opposite message... and selling their message at that.\nLippard (2008-08-25):\nquitprayingnow.com / beginprayingnow.com, set up by \"The Overcomers Prayer Camp, LLC, P.O. Box 51054, Mesa, AZ 85208\", run by Vaughn M. Pruitt, Sr., an evangelical Christian of Southern Baptist education from Tennessee, a retired pastor from the Dobbins Road Christian Fellowship in South Phoenix. He's selling prayer manuals and Bible study documents online through his website.I think it's probably not related, but the Arizona Republic's coverage of the FFRF billboards might lead some people to initially think that his is one of theirs. The website will quickly demonstrate otherwise.\nGordo (2008-08-25):\nSome people *want* to be offended. \"Imagine\" is an invitation to use your creativity, to ponder, to conduct the self-determined act of thinking. What if I put a BB with \"Imagine if religion lead to world peace\"?.\nworkingsmart (2008-08-26):\nGreat interviews Jim... WAY less controversial than I expected... good job.\nSheldon (2008-08-28):\nJim,You godless bastard! Why do you want to shut down all those hospitals? :)The first video by the way plays automatically, and even after I pause it, it starts up again. Pretty annoying!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/arizona-republic-on-ffrf-billboards-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arizona Republic has \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/24/20080824billboard0824-ON.html\"\u003ea story up about the FFRF billboards coming to Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, with quotes from a local atheist, clergy, and a legislator.  The quotes from the atheist, Harold Saferstein of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hsgp.org/\"\u003eHumanist Society of Greater Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, and the clergyman, Bob Mitchell, senior pastor at Central United Methodist Church, are both quite reasonable. The quote from the legislator, Sen. Linda Gray, not so much.  She is quoted as writing in an email that \u0026ldquo;The FFRF fails to acknowledge history which recognized the strong Christian commitment of those who attended the Constitutional Convention.\u0026rdquo;  First of all, how does she know what FFRF \u0026ldquo;fails to acknowledge\u0026rdquo; unless she is very familiar with the organization, which I doubt.  Second, it\u0026rsquo;s Gray who\u0026rsquo;s talking out of her hat.  While most of America\u0026rsquo;s Founding Fathers were nominally Christian, this was the same Constitutional Convention that voted against opening its meetings with prayers and produced a document that contains no references to a deity except in the year before the signatures (\u0026quot;\u003ca name=\"Sigs\"\u003eDone\u003c/a\u003e in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth\u0026quot;).  It is a document which explicitly says in Article VI that \u0026ldquo;no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\u0026rdquo;  Its primary author, James Madison, was a strong advocate of strict separation of church and state who thought that even government-paid legislative chaplains were a violation of religious liberty.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMitchell, the pastor quoted in the story, is quoted as saying \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem with people expressing their points of view in public. \u0026hellip; I would prefer that there was serious tolerant dialogue that might emerge from this publicity campaign because it is much needed.\u0026rdquo;  The article says he hoped that there would be no backlash against the billboards, but would not be surprised if it happened.  I agree with him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(My previous posts on the FFRF billboards coming to Phoenix are \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/ffrf-billboards-are-coming-to-phoenix.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/ffrf-billboard-update.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/ffrf-billboards-delayed-due-to-cbs.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e fails to note that much of the money for these billboards was raised by the \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists Meetup Group\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are the specific billboard locations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe five new billboard locations are confirmed and approved by CBS Outdoor. They are on surface streets all within 1 to 3 miles of central Phoenix. Billboards are numbered and say CBS on them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2501 Start Date: August 29\u003cbr /\u003eCross Streets: 19th Ave \u0026amp; Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2701 Start Date: August 29\u003cbr /\u003eCross Streets: Van Buren \u0026amp; 15th Ave. Located just north east of the State Capital area on Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Van Buren just prior to 15th Ave. The sign is on the south side of Van Buren and is located within a few blocks of the State Capital complex.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2821 Start Date: August 29\u003cbr /\u003eCross Streets: Indian School \u0026amp; 23rd St. Best viewing occurs while traveling westbound on Indian School Rd just after 23rd St. The sign is on the south side of Indian School Rd.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2911 Start Date: August 29\u003cbr /\u003eCross streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2945 Start Date: August 29\u003cbr /\u003eCross Streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 3rd St. Best viewing occurs while traveling westbound on McDowell. The sign is on the southwest corner of McDowell and 3rd St.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE:  I was interviewed today by Brian Webb of KNXV-TV ABC 15 News and by Melissa Gonzalo of KPNX NBC 12 News about the billboards, as a local member of FFRF and the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group.  Their stories should air tonight, at 5 or 6 p.m. on 15 and at 6 p.m. on 12.  The NBC story should appear on their website after it airs, and both suspected that the stories would air again with footage of the actual billboards on Friday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis story has also been covered by NPR locally, and is the subject of a very poorly worded poll on Fox News 10, which seems to think that the only two possible reactions to the billboard are not be offended because it\u0026rsquo;s free speech (not because you agree with it) or to be offended because America needs religion.  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/this_one_is_a_poll.php\"\u003ehas pointed Pharyngulites to the poll\u003c/a\u003e, so at least it has a sizable majority supporting freedom of speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=cedd0e7c-4177-488e-8b21-64277d369cac\"\u003eChannel 15 interview aired at 5 p.m.\u003c/a\u003e and I was happy with the result.  (This video is two segments, one 0:41 segment that I\u0026rsquo;m not in, and a 1:36 segment where I appear from about 0:49 to 0:52.)  Here\u0026rsquo;s the video I appear in:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cscript language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://knxv.img.cdn.entriq.net/dayportcore/dpm/DayPortPlayers.js\"\u003e\u003c/script\u003e\u003cscript language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text/javascript\"\u003eDayPortPlayer.newPlayer({articleID:\u0026ldquo;15437\u0026rdquo;,bannerAdConDefID:\u0026ldquo;5\u0026rdquo;,videoAdObjectID:\u0026ldquo;4\u0026rdquo;,videoAdConDefID:\u0026ldquo;2\u0026rdquo;,accPos:\u0026ldquo;CCTVI.OTHER\u0026rdquo;,accSite:\u0026ldquo;KNXV\u0026rdquo;,playerInstanceID:\u0026ldquo;79E9B438-E8FF-FFD4-61AC-E88644E2C20B\u0026rdquo;,domain:\u0026ldquo;knxv.dayport.com\u0026rdquo;});\u003c/script\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/launch.html?maven_playerId=news\u0026amp;maven_referralObject=832128528\"\u003eChannel 12 interview aired at 6 p.m.\u003c/a\u003e, and Melissa Gonzalo did a better job\u0026ndash;she spent more time in the interview, and her piece came out better, in my opinion (but what\u0026rsquo;s with the \u0026ldquo;Billboard Battle\u0026rdquo; tagline?  What battle?).  It\u0026rsquo;s here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-05200596751119874 visible ontop\" href=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-05200596751119874 visible ontop\" href=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-05200596751119874 visible ontop\" href=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-05200596751119874 visible ontop\" href=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0\" id=\"embeddedplayer\" width=\"320\" height=\"305\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"scale\" value=\"noscale\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"salign\" value=\"LT\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#000000\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"window\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"playerId=news\u0026amp;referralObject=832128528\u0026amp;adServerBasePath=http://gcirm.gannettvideo.gcion.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_sx.ads\u0026amp;adPositionId=Video_prestream\u0026amp;adSiteId=gci-az-phoenix.com\u0026amp;gpaperCode=gpaper158,gntbcstglobal\u0026amp;marketName=azcentral\u0026amp;division=newspaper\u0026amp;pageContentCategory=videonetwork\u0026amp;pageContentSubcategory=videonetwork\"\u003e\u003cembed type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-phoenix-531-pub01-live/current/sectionfronttanazc/singleplaylist/client/embedded/embedded.swf\" id=\"embeddedplayer\" pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer\" menu=\"false\" quality=\"high\" play=\"false\" name=\"singleplaylist\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" scale=\"noscale\" salign=\"LT\" bgcolor=\"#000000\" wmode=\"window\" flashvars=\"playerId=news\u0026amp;referralObject=832128528\u0026amp;adServerBasePath=http://gcirm.gannettvideo.gcion.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_sx.ads\u0026amp;adPositionId=Video_prestream\u0026amp;adSiteId=gci-az-phoenix.com\u0026amp;gpaperCode=gpaper158,gntbcstglobal\u0026amp;marketName=azcentral\u0026amp;division=newspaper\u0026amp;pageContentCategory=videonetwork\u0026amp;pageContentSubcategory=videonetwork\" width=\"320\" height=\"305\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Republic on FFRF billboards in Phoenix"},{"content":"Tom Willis, the creationist behind the \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; claim I debunked in a Talk Origins FAQ, who in June stated that evolutionists should be \u0026ldquo;violently expelled\u0026rdquo; from the United States or denied the right to vote, now says that evolutionists should be imprisoned in labor camps.\nI think Mr. Willis is either a lunatic or desperate for attention. I think he should get the latter, as a poster boy for creationist rationality.\nI discussed Willis and the Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint claim in the fourth ApostAZ podcast.\n(Willis is not actually in Kansas, but in Missouri, where he runs \u0026ldquo;The Berry Patch.\u0026quot;)\nUPDATE: Ed Brayton has a more detailed take-down of Willis\u0026rsquo; latest at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-08-25):\nFrom my brief skim I would say Willis is joking -- in a very boorish, obnoxious and un-funny way, but joking nonetheless. In the wake of the Knoxville UU shootings, it's doubly boorish, obnoxious, un-funny and irresponsible, too.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/tom-willis-suggests-labor-camps-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom Willis, the creationist behind the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; claim I debunked in a Talk Origins FAQ\u003c/a\u003e, who \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/creationist-wants-to-violently-expel.html\"\u003ein June stated that evolutionists should be \u0026ldquo;violently expelled\u0026rdquo; from the United States or denied the right to vote\u003c/a\u003e, now says that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/krazy_kansas_kook_wants_to_eli.php\"\u003eevolutionists should be imprisoned in labor camps\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think Mr. Willis is either a lunatic or desperate for attention.  I think he should get the latter, as a poster boy for creationist rationality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI discussed Willis and the Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint claim in \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/apostaz-podcast-4.html\"\u003ethe fourth ApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Willis is not actually in Kansas, but in Missouri, where he runs \u003ca href=\"http://theberrypatchonline.com/pickrpt.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Berry Patch.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Ed Brayton has a more detailed take-down of Willis\u0026rsquo; latest at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/tom_willis_returns_with_more_i.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tom Willis suggests labor camps for evolutionists"},{"content":"Jack Cafferty writes at CNN about how McCain seems to be as intellectually vacuous as George W. Bush.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-23):\nHe has to be, doesn't he? The inmates are now running the asylum in the GOP and their presidential candidate has to run against reality to appease the base.Hence the mocking of Obama when he made the accurate statement about tire inflation and care maintenance.\ntom (2008-08-25):\nI\u0026#39;m not a McCain supporter, but it would improve the debate for everyone if detractors like Cafferty would stop pretending that McCain\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;$5 million\u0026quot; remark was meant seriously. It\u0026#39;s hard to win people over when even a small part of your case involves putting blatant \u0026amp; disingenuous misconstruals in front of them.\nLippard (2008-08-25):\nActually, I think that his $5 million remark was both serious and *correct*.Most of the candidate questions about what makes somebody \u0026quot;rich\u0026quot; are based on complete ignorance of the difference between income and wealth.Obama has had income of over $1M per year for the last three years, but his net worth is barely over $1M, because he\u0026#39;s spending most of the money he makes. Apparently he bought a house worth nearly $2M once he first got a big book advance, which has no doubt greatly increased his living expenses. In my opinion, if you\u0026#39;ve had three years of \u0026gt; $1M income but your net worth is barely over $1M, you\u0026#39;re probably doing something very wrong. In his case, I suspect he\u0026#39;s counting on a continued future of such high-level income, which is almost certainly correct in his circumstances, but he\u0026#39;s certainly not being frugal.On the other hand, having a $1M net worth doesn\u0026#39;t make you rich--if you have $1M at retirement, that will support you for 30 years at $40K/year, which is below-average income. $5M, by contrast, will give you 30 years of $200K/year. (In both cases assuming a 4% annual draw from retirement funds.)\ntom (2008-08-25):\nJim-I'm not sure I understand your comment, so apologies if I've managed to get your point backwards, but I think both parts of your first statement there are wrong.First, that it's \"correct\": McCain's $5 million remark was about income, not net worth. But I take you to be saying that $5 million is actually a reasonable cutoff (for what counts as \"rich\") when considering net worth, but not when considering income. Have I misunderstood you?If I'm right about the first part, then I doubt I need to muster much of a case to establish that he was clearly joking. He makes the comment and chuckles, Warren cracks up, the audience laughs, and McCain starts saying \"but seriously ...seriously ... the point is, seriously...\"Here's the video, in case you haven't seen it in context:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q2sAFH7zj0\nEinzige (2008-08-25):\nWhat if a person's $5M net worth was entirely tied up in inaccessible vacant land in Southern Utah? Would they be \"rich\"?Now, imagine a talented Neurosurgeon who easily makes $250K per year, but rents an apartment in Manhattan and owns no other real estate or stocks/bonds... Is that person \"rich\"?Perhaps these are unlikely scenarios.\nLippard (2008-08-25):\nTom: You're correct that my discussion was about $5 million net worth.$5 million income doesn't say anything about whether the earner is rich. If you earn $5 million on expenses of $10 million, you're $5 million in the hole.If the average person were suddenly to receive a windfall of $5 million, they would probably become rich--and probably would remain so for a very short period of time, because most people have little conception of finance. Thus my \"lottery winners and losers\" category of posts, which is very heavy on the \"losers\" side.\ntom (2008-08-26):\nJim-Gotcha. I agree with your point about net worth, and income vs. expenses, I just didn\u0026#39;t see it as germane to the issue of McCain\u0026#39;s comments.While you\u0026#39;re on the topic of lottery winners\u0026amp;losers: This American Life did a good segment on the phenomenon you mention (they interviewed someone who buys up lottery jackpots and pays out lump sums; he explains the sad truth about what happens to his clients and their lump sums).Costs a buck to download but you can listen to the whole thing for free on their site. If you\u0026#39;re interested, it\u0026#39;s Act II of this episode:http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1235The interviewee has a book called \u0026quot;Money for Nothing: One Man\u0026#39;s Journey through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions.\u0026quot; Haven\u0026#39;t read it, but I figured the title might spark your interest. :)\nworkingsmart (2008-08-26):\nAfter reading the comments and the initial blog here mccain sounds reasonable. Obama's attacks seem lame when he has to distort what mccain said in order to attack him. I'm really pissed off at where this election is heading.\nKtisophilos (2008-09-01):\nShrubby obtained better Uni grades than both alGore and Kerry.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/mccain-another-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJack Cafferty writes at CNN about how \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/18/cafferty.mccain/index.html\"\u003eMcCain seems to be as intellectually vacuous as George W. Bush\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-08-23)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHe has to be, doesn't he? The inmates are now running the asylum in the GOP and their presidential candidate has to run against reality to appease the base.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHence the mocking of Obama when he made the accurate statement about tire inflation and care maintenance.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain another Bush?"},{"content":"Abraham Katsman and Kory Bardash point out several instances of Obama inflating his resumé with bogus claims about his record in The Jerusalem Post. They argue that he is doing this because despite holding multiple noteworthy positions, he really hasn\u0026rsquo;t accomplished much of anything in any of them. He\u0026rsquo;s published not a single academic paper while Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, published nothing while Harvard Law Review President, and can\u0026rsquo;t point to any significant legislation he spearheaded in the U.S. Senate or in the Illinois State Senate.\nUPDATE: John Lynch, in the comments, has, to my mind, refuted the concerns about publications (a Lecturer is not expected to publish, nor is the Harvard Law Review President), but my main concern was about the false statements. Two of the false statements are that he claimed to have \u0026ldquo;passed laws\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;extended healthcare for wounded troops who\u0026rsquo;d been neglected\u0026rdquo; when he didn\u0026rsquo;t vote on the bill in question, and his statement that \u0026ldquo;Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee\u0026ndash;which is my committee\u0026ndash;a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don\u0026rsquo;t obtain a nuclear weapon\u0026rdquo; when he\u0026rsquo;s not even on the Senate Banking Committee.\nOn the latter point, Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign says he meant to say \u0026ldquo;my bill\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;my committee,\u0026rdquo; in which case the statement becomes somewhat more accurate, as Obama did supply some of the provisions to the bill in question. But it isn\u0026rsquo;t really Obama\u0026rsquo;s bill, despite his contributions. It\u0026rsquo;s more accurately described as Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby\u0026rsquo;s bill.\nJohn Lynch (2008-08-23):\nWhat every about Obama's legislative record, the authors of this piece show that they know nothing about Law schools.Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty--singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship--and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself.As anyone who has spent time in academia knows, lecturers (particularly part-time ones in Law Schools) are not expected to publish any academic papers. See the current Chicago lecturers for example; most are practicing lawyers (tenure-track faculty are not and they are expected to publish). The same goes for the HLR President; the journal is a student-lead one (like all law reviews) and the president (who is usually a 2L student) is not expected (afaik) to publish in it. Neither of the positions would result in \u0026quot;a serious impact\u0026quot; as Katsman \u0026amp; Bardash claim. The JP post is really just a hatchet job and you\u0026#39;re doing yourself a disservice by posting it.\nJohn Lynch (2008-08-23):\nAnd while I'm at it ...Katsman has worked on several political campaigns, including Rudy Giuliani's successful run for mayor and Bush's 2004 re-election. He is involved with Republicans Abroad Israel (for which Bardash in co-Chairman). They have written a whole series of anti-Obama pieces.\nLippard (2008-08-23):\nJohn:Another commenter on the SKEPTIC list where I came across this made the point that anyone who cites Michael Medved (as these authors did) is clearly full of shit, which is an argument I have sympathy with.Your response is fair enough regarding those two positions, but I do think the fact remains that Obama's political record is exceedingly thin and (as the JP article points out) that he has made false claims about himself--unless you have refutations for those?On the other hand, I think Obama has chosen well by putting Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution as head of his campaign's top economic advisor.I favor Obama over McCain for many reasons, but he shouldn't be exempted from criticism where it's deserved.\nJohn Lynch (2008-08-23):\nJim,Fair enough (and you will note that I did not make any comment on their charges regarding his legislative record). Any way, while you were replying, I was posting this over at my blog. Feel free to comment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/obama-resume-padding.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAbraham Katsman and Kory Bardash point out several instances of \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218710381368\u0026amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter\"\u003eObama inflating his resumé with bogus claims about his record in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Jerusalem Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  They argue that he is doing this because despite holding multiple noteworthy positions, he really hasn\u0026rsquo;t accomplished much of anything in any of them.  He\u0026rsquo;s published not a single academic paper while Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, published nothing while Harvard Law Review President, and can\u0026rsquo;t point to any significant legislation he spearheaded in the U.S. Senate or in the Illinois State Senate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: John Lynch, in the comments, has, to my mind, refuted the concerns about publications (a Lecturer is not expected to publish, nor is the Harvard Law Review President), but my main concern was about the false statements.  Two of the false statements are that he claimed to have \u0026ldquo;passed laws\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;extended healthcare for wounded troops who\u0026rsquo;d been neglected\u0026rdquo; when he didn\u0026rsquo;t vote on the bill in question, and his statement that \u0026ldquo;Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee\u0026ndash;which is my committee\u0026ndash;a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don\u0026rsquo;t obtain a nuclear weapon\u0026rdquo; when he\u0026rsquo;s not even on the Senate Banking Committee.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the latter point, Obama\u0026rsquo;s campaign says he meant to say \u0026ldquo;my bill\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;my committee,\u0026rdquo; in which case the statement becomes somewhat more accurate, as \u003ca href=\"http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/barack_obama_gaffe.html\"\u003eObama did supply some of the provisions to the bill in question\u003c/a\u003e.  But it isn\u0026rsquo;t really Obama\u0026rsquo;s bill, despite his contributions.  It\u0026rsquo;s more accurately described as Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby\u0026rsquo;s bill.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama resume-padding"},{"content":"\nWe got back from Maryland last night, after spending most of a week at Deep Creek Lake and making day trips to D.C. and Baltimore. The Deep Creek Lake time was mostly relaxing, spending some time on the lake, visiting a few sites in nearby Oakland, visiting Swallow Falls and Muddy Creek Falls, and attending the Garrett County Fair, where I viewed my first demolition derby and pig and duck races. We went to a few of the less common attractions in D.C.\u0026ndash;the crystal skull exhibit in the basement of the National Museum of Natural History, Owney the dog at the National Postal Museum, and had an excellent lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian. In Baltimore, we visited Fort McHenry, Poe\u0026rsquo;s grave, and Fells Point.\nOwney the dog traveled the world from 1888 to 1897, when, as the National Postal Museum\u0026rsquo;s website says, \u0026ldquo;Owney became ill tempered and although the exact circumstances were not satisfactorily reported, Owney died in Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897.\u0026rdquo;\nHarvey Morrell (2008-08-22):\nYou came to Baltimore and didn't stop to say, 'hi?' I would love to have treated you to a brew at the Brewer's Art or the Wharf Rat.\nLippard (2008-09-05):\nNext time, Harvey... I'm sure we'll be back in a future summer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/back-from-maryland.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3180/2784564758_bece9d54d8.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3180/2784564758_bece9d54d8.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/2783711933_abc0465353.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/2783711933_abc0465353.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe got back from Maryland last night, after spending most of a week at Deep Creek Lake and making day trips to D.C. and Baltimore.  The Deep Creek Lake time was mostly relaxing, spending some time on the lake, visiting a few sites in nearby Oakland, visiting Swallow Falls and Muddy Creek Falls, and attending the Garrett County Fair, where I viewed my first demolition derby and pig and duck races.  We went to a few of the less common attractions in D.C.\u0026ndash;the \u003ca href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The_Smithsonians_Crystal_Skull.html\"\u003ecrystal skull\u003c/a\u003e exhibit in the basement of the National Museum of Natural History, \u003ca href=\"http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2c1f_owney.html\"\u003eOwney the dog\u003c/a\u003e at the National Postal Museum, and had an excellent lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian.  In Baltimore, we visited \u003ca href=\"http://www.nps.gov/fomc/\"\u003eFort McHenry\u003c/a\u003e, Poe\u0026rsquo;s grave, and Fells Point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOwney the dog traveled the world from 1888 to 1897, when, as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2c1f_owney.html\"\u003eNational Postal Museum\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e says, \u0026ldquo;Owney became ill tempered and although the exact circumstances were not satisfactorily reported, Owney died in                       Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from Maryland"},{"content":"Daniel Radosh has a new book out titled Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, which might be entertaining. There\u0026rsquo;s a chapter on creationism that talks about Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, and possibly the split by Creation Ministries International, since Google Books tells me my name is mentioned on p. 279.\nAnybody at Scribner want to send me a review copy?\nBased on the reviews at Amazon.com, it sounds like Radosh gives Christian pop culture a sympathetic and even-handed portrayal that also points out its absurdities and self-contradictions, similar to the excellent documentary Hell House.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/daniel-radoshs-rapture-ready.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Radosh has a new book out titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Rapture-Ready-Adventures-Parallel-Christian/dp/0743297709/jimlippardwebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which might be entertaining.  There\u0026rsquo;s a chapter on creationism that talks about Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, and possibly the split by Creation Ministries International, since Google Books tells me my name is mentioned on p. 279.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnybody at Scribner want to send me a review copy?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBased on the reviews at Amazon.com, it sounds like Radosh gives Christian pop culture a sympathetic and even-handed portrayal that also points out its absurdities and self-contradictions, similar to the excellent documentary \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R34IKVA2IGIIY2/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eHell House\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is out:\nEpisode 007 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Monthly Meetup Epilogue. Debate Tactics and Rhetoric. Sweden Rules Against Prayer as Truth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/. Prayer and Aggression. Obama and Faith Based Initiatives. Pickett Church? http://www.atheistrev.com/ Aggression study: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract. Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;Funny analogy from Shannon: \u0026ldquo;Prayer is a homeless dude on your couch.\u0026quot;\nCharity Navigator is another site similar to CharityWatch.\nShannon incorrectly states that McCain is a creationist. He\u0026rsquo;s not. And the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, not Tennessee.\nPicketing churches on the basis of its beliefs and doctrines is a terrible idea that should be left to Fred Phelps and similar kooks. The picketing of the Church of Scientology has generally been based on its behavior, not its doctrines\u0026ndash;to the extent the focus is on opposing criminal behavior, that\u0026rsquo;s reasonable.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/apostaz-podcast-7.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz007.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 007\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157\"\u003eatheists.meetup.com/157\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Monthly Meetup Epilogue. Debate Tactics and Rhetoric. Sweden Rules Against Prayer as Truth: \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/\"\u003ehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/\u003c/a\u003e. Prayer and Aggression. Obama and Faith Based Initiatives. Pickett Church? \u003ca href=\"http://www.atheistrev.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.atheistrev.com/\"\u003ehttp://www.atheistrev.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Aggression study: \u003ca href=\"http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract\"\u003ehttp://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;\u003c/blockquote\u003eFunny analogy from Shannon: \u0026ldquo;Prayer is a homeless dude on your couch.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.charitynavigator.org/\"\u003eCharity Navigator\u003c/a\u003e is another site similar to \u003ca href=\"http://www.charitywatch.org/\"\u003eCharityWatch\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShannon incorrectly states that McCain is a creationist.  \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.physicstoday.org/politics08/2008/01/john_mccain_on_teaching_evolut.html\"\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s not\u003c/a\u003e.  And the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, not Tennessee.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePicketing churches on the basis of its beliefs and doctrines is a terrible idea that should be left to Fred Phelps and similar kooks.  The picketing of the Church of Scientology has generally been based on its behavior, not its doctrines\u0026ndash;to the extent the focus is on opposing criminal behavior, that\u0026rsquo;s reasonable.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #7"},{"content":"Via the Arizona Republic:\nA man who won $10 million in a California lottery game has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for a drunken-driving crash that killed three people. Thomas Turnour had pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and causing injury while driving intoxicated.\nThe winner of a SuperLotto game in 2001 was sentenced Friday in San Bernardino. Authorities say the 52-year-old man from Victorville was driving a pickup truck that hit a car stopped at a red light in San Bernardino three years ago. Three people inside the first car died.\nHis attorney says Turnour essentially \u0026ldquo;turned over everything he has\u0026rdquo; to settle a lawsuit filed by the victims\u0026rsquo; families.\nSheldon (2008-08-16):\nMmm...I guess my question is, so what is your point?Seems like if I guy who won the lottery and liked to drink alot, would budget enough money for a chaffeur or at least cab fair.Or did he blow the whole wad and the his victims aren't going to get squatt?\nLippard (2008-08-16):\nThe point of the posts under the \"lottery winners and losers\" label is that winning the lottery seems to often be correlated with being a loser in one's subsequent life, and this is another confirming data point. I have also included the one disconfirming data point I've come across, Brad Duke. (I wonder how his investment program is doing in the current market?)$10 million should have been plenty of cab fare.It's not clear how much was left for the victims of his accident.\nSheldon (2008-08-17):\nThanks for responding Jim, I did click on the label and found the articles very interesting.I liked the story about Whittaker who obviously was a gambling addict being that he was getting into trouble at the race track.\nEinzige (2008-08-19):\nWinning the lottery seems to be correlated with being a loser in one's former life, too, since, by virtue of playing the lottery at all, a person is showing poor judgment--and certainly poor money management skills.\nSheldon (2008-08-23):\nJim,Here is another lottery story for you, I found this rather humorous. From today\u0026#39;s NY Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22super.html?adxnnl=1\u0026amp;adxnnlx=1219463976-lkYadtbDzmwex44rlXlFEg\u0026quot;Winning is, of course, the essence of the lottery, though it might be said that losing is its natural state. And Mr. Otero is certainly a natural — at losing. For the last three years, he has utterly failed to recoup a rather staggering investment: $500 to $700on the lottery a week.\u0026quot; The punch line is even sweeter. They interview this fool, who is complaining about an acquaintance who won the lottery, but routinely spent very little. This fool actually is planning on winning the lottery, and thus rationalizes throwing away substantial sums of cash. Actually enough to make some good investments!\nLippard (2008-08-23):\nSheldon: Wow, that's a good story! Thanks!I like how Otero complains that it's \"not fair\" that the other guy wins, because he wasn't spending as much to play.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/another-lottery-loser.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2008/08/16/20080816lotterycrash-ON.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA man who won $10 million in a California lottery game has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for a drunken-driving crash that killed three people. \u003cp\u003eThomas Turnour had pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and causing injury while driving intoxicated.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe winner of a SuperLotto game in 2001 was sentenced Friday in San Bernardino. \u003cspan id=\"articleFlex1\"\u003e\u003cscript type=\"text/javascript\"\u003eOAS_AD(\u0026lsquo;ArticleFlex_1\u0026rsquo;)\u003c/script\u003e\u003cscript text=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://gannett.gcion.com/addyn/3.0/5111.1/133600/0/0/ADTECH;alias=azcentral.com/news/offbeat/articles_ArticleFlex_1;cookie=info;loc=100;target=_blank;grp=535563;misc=1218905863466\"\u003e\u003c/script\u003e\u003c/span\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAuthorities say the 52-year-old man from Victorville was driving a pickup truck that hit a car stopped at a red light in San Bernardino three years ago. Three people inside the first car died.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another lottery loser"},{"content":"The Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group has sent a letter (PDF) and ten questions (PDF) to John McCain, Barack Obama, and the 114 candidates for the Arizona State Senate and House of Representatives who are listed in the Citizens Clean Election Commission candidate statement booklet. Any received answers will be posted here.\nThe ten questions are:\n1) Given a legislative voting scenario that presents you with a direct conflict between your religious beliefs/values and your duties to uphold the Constitution which do you choose and how would you make that decision?\n2) What is your position regarding prayer while acting in your official capacity as an elected official and what role if any do you think prayer should play in the legislative body you wish to hold?\n3) What is your position on enacting law that has religious tenets and/or dogma as its main motivation and reasoning?\n4) Is it acceptable for elected officials to hold back or alter scientific reports if they conflict with their own views, and how will you balance scientific information with politics and personal beliefs in your decision-making?\n5) Should the modern synthesis of Creationism known as “Intelligent Design” be taught in the public school and is it acceptable for religious ideology to interfere in science?\n6) Would you allow a non theistic individual (atheist, humanist, freethinker, etc) to openly serve on your staff?\n7) What is your position on a constitutional amendment to define marriage and if in favor of a constitutional amendment to define marriage are your motivations religious or secular?\n8) What is your position on abstinence-only sex education?\n9) What is your position on government regulation and funding of stem cell research?\n10) With regards specifically to the establishment of the United States as a nation, the history of the United States, and the law of the United States do you consider our country to be a “Christian Nation”?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/atheists-questions-for-candidates.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group has sent \u003ca href=\"http://files.meetup.com/12920/Letter%20to%20Candidates.pdf\"\u003ea letter\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) and \u003ca href=\"http://files.meetup.com/12920/10%20Questions%20to%20Candidates.pdf\"\u003eten questions\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) to John McCain, Barack Obama, and the 114 candidates for the Arizona State Senate and House of Representatives who are listed in the Citizens Clean Election Commission candidate statement booklet.  Any received answers will be posted \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/messages/boards/thread/5258000\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ten questions are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1) Given a legislative voting scenario that presents you with a direct conflict between your religious beliefs/values and your duties to uphold the Constitution which do you choose and how would you make that decision?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2) What is your position regarding prayer while acting in your official capacity as an elected official and what role if any do you think prayer should play in the legislative body you wish to hold?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3) What is your position on enacting law that has religious tenets and/or dogma as its main motivation and reasoning?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4) Is it acceptable for elected officials to hold back or alter scientific reports if they conflict with their own views, and how will you balance scientific information with politics and personal beliefs in your decision-making?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5) Should the modern synthesis of Creationism known as “Intelligent Design” be taught in the public school and is it acceptable for religious ideology to interfere in science?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6) Would you allow a non theistic individual (atheist, humanist, freethinker, etc) to openly serve on your staff?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e7) What is your position on a constitutional amendment to define marriage and if in favor of a constitutional amendment to define marriage are your motivations religious or secular?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e8) What is your position on abstinence-only sex education?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e9) What is your position on government regulation and funding of stem cell research?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10) With regards specifically to the establishment of the United States as a nation, the history of the United States, and the law of the United States do you consider our country to be a “Christian Nation”?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheists' questions for candidates"},{"content":"The FFRF billboards planned for Phoenix that were supposed to be launched on August 18 have been postponed after CBS Outdoor became uncomfortable with the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; slogan. They have decided to apply an analogue of their policy requiring that billboards advertising alcohol and tobacco, which must be at least 1000 feet from any school or church.\nApparently CBS Outdoor considers atheism to be equivalent to alcohol or tobacco, unfit to be advertised near sensitive churchgoers or students.\nThey are probably within their rights to do this\u0026ndash;they own the billboards\u0026ndash;but their belief that this is a sound business decision is pretty absurd and cowardly. (I haven\u0026rsquo;t actually seen the contracts, but I suspect they are crafted in such a way to leave themselves the option to move locations or even cancel the contract if there\u0026rsquo;s a whiff of controversy that they\u0026rsquo;d prefer to avoid.)\nI suspect the locations of the billboards are unlikely to make much difference about whether controversy is generated, but this change gives CBS Outdoor something they can appeal to in response to criticism\u0026ndash;see, we tried to be sensitive to religious concerns about the expression of disagreement.\nThe new locations are likely to be approved on Monday, and I\u0026rsquo;ll report here what they are. I\u0026rsquo;m actually surprised that there are any billboard locations in Phoenix that aren\u0026rsquo;t within 1000 feet of a church or a school.\n(Previously, previously, subsequently.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/ffrf-billboards-delayed-due-to-cbs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FFRF billboards planned for Phoenix that were supposed to be launched on August 18 have been postponed after CBS Outdoor became uncomfortable with the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; slogan.  They have decided to apply an analogue of their policy requiring that billboards advertising alcohol and tobacco, which must be at least 1000 feet from any school or church.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently CBS Outdoor considers atheism to be equivalent to alcohol or tobacco, unfit to be advertised near sensitive churchgoers or students.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey are probably within their rights to do this\u0026ndash;they own the billboards\u0026ndash;but their belief that this is a sound business decision is pretty absurd and cowardly.  (I haven\u0026rsquo;t actually seen the contracts, but I suspect they are crafted in such a way to leave themselves the option to move locations or even cancel the contract if there\u0026rsquo;s a whiff of controversy that they\u0026rsquo;d prefer to avoid.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect the locations of the billboards are unlikely to make much difference about whether controversy is generated, but this change gives CBS Outdoor something they can appeal to in response to criticism\u0026ndash;see, we tried to be sensitive to religious concerns about the expression of disagreement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe new locations are likely to be approved on Monday, and I\u0026rsquo;ll report here what they are.  I\u0026rsquo;m actually surprised that there are any billboard locations in Phoenix that aren\u0026rsquo;t within 1000 feet of a church or a school.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/ffrf-billboard-update.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/ffrf-billboards-are-coming-to-phoenix.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/arizona-republic-on-ffrf-billboards-in.html\"\u003esubsequently\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FFRF billboards delayed due to CBS Outdoor cowardice"},{"content":"Via Stranger Fruit.\n1. Venison\n2. Nettle tea\n3. Huevos rancheros\n4. Steak tartare\n5. Crocodile\n6. Black pudding (in Buenos Aires)\n7. Cheese fondue\n8. Carp (fish allergy)\n9. Borscht\n10. Baba ghanoush\n11. Calamari\n12. Pho\n13. PB\u0026amp;J sandwich\n14. Aloo gobi\n15. Hot dog from a street cart\n16. Epoisses\n17. Black truffle\n18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes\n19. Steamed pork buns\n20. Pistachio ice cream\n21. Heirloom tomatoes\n22. Fresh wild berries\n23. Foie gras\n24. Rice and beans\n25. Brawn, or head cheese\n26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper\n27. Dulce de leche (in Buenos Aires)\n28. Oysters\n29. Baklava\n30. Bagna cauda\n31. Wasabi peas\n32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl\n33. Salted lassi\n34. Sauerkraut\n35. Root beer float\n36. Cognac with a fat cigar\n37. Clotted cream tea\n38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O\n39. Gumbo\n40. Oxtail\n41. Curried goat\n42. Whole insects (chocolate covered ants/grasshoppers/crickets)\n43. Phaal\n44. Goat\u0026rsquo;s milk\n45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more\n46. Fugu\n47. Chicken tikka masala\n48. Eel\n49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut\n50. Sea urchin\n51. Prickly pear\n52. Umeboshi\n53. Abalone\n54. Paneer\n55. McDonald\u0026rsquo;s Big Mac Meal\n56. Spaetzle\n57. Dirty gin martini\n58. Beer above 8% ABV (Elephant beer at Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen)\n59. Poutine\n60. Carob chips\n61. S\u0026rsquo;mores (last night)\n62. Sweetbreads\n63. Kaolin\n64. Currywurst\n65. Durian\n66. Frogs\u0026rsquo; legs\n67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (Beignets at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans)\n68. Haggis\n69. Fried plantain\n70. Chitterlings, or andouillette\n71. Gazpacho\n72. Caviar and blini\n73. Louche absinthe\n74. Gjetost, or brunost\n75. Roadkill\n76. Baijiu\n77. Hostess Fruit Pie\n78. Snail\n79. Lapsang souchong\n80. Bellini\n81. Tom yum\n82. Eggs Benedict\n83. Pocky\n84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant\n85. Kobe beef\n86. Hare\n87. Goulash\n88. Flowers\n89. Horse\n90. Criollo chocolate\n91. Spam\n92. Soft shell crab\n93. Rose harissa\n94. Catfish\n95. Mole poblano\n96. Bagel and lox\n97. Lobster Thermidor\n98. Polenta\n99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (I\u0026rsquo;d rather try Kopi Luwak)\n100. Snake Fried rattlesnake at Rustler\u0026rsquo;s Rooste\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/food-tasting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/08/mmmmmm_roadkill_drool.php\"\u003eStranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e1. Venison\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. Nettle tea\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3. Huevos rancheros\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e4. Steak tartare\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5. Crocodile\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e6. Black pudding\u003c/strong\u003e (in Buenos Aires)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e7. Cheese fondue\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrike\u003e8. Carp\u003c/strike\u003e (fish allergy)\u003cbr /\u003e9. Borscht\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e10. Baba ghanoush\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e11. Calamari\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e12. Pho\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e13. PB\u0026amp;J sandwich\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e14. Aloo gobi\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e15. Hot dog from a street cart\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e16. Epoisses\u003cbr /\u003e17. Black truffle\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e19. Steamed pork buns\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e20. Pistachio ice cream\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e21. Heirloom tomatoes\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e22. Fresh wild berries\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrike\u003e23. Foie gras\u003c/strike\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e24. Rice and beans\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e25. Brawn, or head cheese\u003cbr /\u003e26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e27. Dulce de leche\u003c/strong\u003e (in Buenos Aires)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e28. Oysters\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e29. Baklava\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e30. Bagna cauda\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e31. Wasabi peas\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e33. Salted lassi\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e34. Sauerkraut\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e35. Root beer float\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e36. Cognac with a fat cigar\u003cbr /\u003e37. Clotted cream tea\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e39. Gumbo\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e40. Oxtail\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e41. Curried goat\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e42. Whole insects\u003c/strong\u003e (chocolate covered ants/grasshoppers/crickets)\u003cbr /\u003e43. Phaal\u003cbr /\u003e44. Goat\u0026rsquo;s milk\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e46. Fugu\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e47. Chicken tikka masala\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e48. Eel\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e50. Sea urchin\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e51. Prickly pear\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e52. Umeboshi\u003cbr /\u003e53. Abalone\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e54. Paneer\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e55. McDonald\u0026rsquo;s Big Mac Meal\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e56. Spaetzle\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e57. Dirty gin martini\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e58. Beer above 8% ABV\u003c/strong\u003e (Elephant beer at Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen)\u003cbr /\u003e59. Poutine\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e60. Carob chips\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e61. S\u0026rsquo;mores\u003c/strong\u003e (last night)\u003cbr /\u003e62. Sweetbreads\u003cbr /\u003e63. Kaolin\u003cbr /\u003e64. Currywurst\u003cbr /\u003e65. Durian\u003cbr /\u003e66. Frogs\u0026rsquo; legs\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake\u003c/strong\u003e (Beignets at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans)\u003cbr /\u003e68. Haggis\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e69. Fried plantain\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e70. Chitterlings, or andouillette\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e71. Gazpacho\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e72. Caviar and blini\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e73. Louche absinthe\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e74. Gjetost, or brunost\u003cbr /\u003e75. Roadkill\u003cbr /\u003e76. Baijiu\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e77. Hostess Fruit Pie\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e78. Snail\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e79. Lapsang souchong\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e80. Bellini\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e81. Tom yum\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e82. Eggs Benedict\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e83. Pocky\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e85. Kobe beef\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e86. Hare\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e87. Goulash\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e88. Flowers\u003cbr /\u003e89. Horse\u003cbr /\u003e90. Criollo chocolate\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e91. Spam\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e92. Soft shell crab\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e93. Rose harissa\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e94. Catfish\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e95. Mole poblano\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e96. Bagel and lox\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e97. Lobster Thermidor\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e98. Polenta\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (I\u0026rsquo;d rather try Kopi Luwak)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e100. Snake\u003c/strong\u003e Fried rattlesnake at Rustler\u0026rsquo;s Rooste\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Food tasting"},{"content":"\nPhotograph taken at the Farmer\u0026rsquo;s Market \u0026ldquo;Candyland\u0026rdquo; near Deep Creek Lake, August 14, 2008.\nThey also make candy \u0026ldquo;crayons\u0026rdquo; that are packaged much like candy cigarettes, and also called \u0026ldquo;quality sticks.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/candy-cigarettes-are-now-quality-sticks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3045/2766948864_d76c425a62.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3045/2766948864_d76c425a62.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3166/2766110513_741a072d26.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3166/2766110513_741a072d26.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhotograph taken at the Farmer\u0026rsquo;s Market \u0026ldquo;Candyland\u0026rdquo; near Deep Creek Lake, August 14, 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey also make candy \u0026ldquo;crayons\u0026rdquo; that are packaged much like candy cigarettes, and also called \u0026ldquo;quality sticks.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Candy cigarettes are now \"quality sticks\""},{"content":"On August 7, the Arizona Republic reported:\nThe race for a state Senate seat in west Mesa broke out into a wide-open brawl Wednesday, with allegations that Rep. Russell Pearce attacked his wife nearly three decades ago and Pearce\u0026rsquo;s campaign firing back that the charge is false and the height of sleazy campaigning.\nA mailer sent to voters in west Mesa cited a divorce petition that LuAnne Pearce filed in 1980. In it, she charges that her husband had a violent temper, hit her and shoved her. The petition also says that two days before the filing, Pearce \u0026ldquo;grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down.\u0026quot;\nThe petition was later withdrawn, and the Pearces remain married.This mailer came from an organization called Mesa Deserves Better, chaired by Republican fundraiser and dirty tricks operator Nathan Sproul, who is former head of the Arizona Republican Party and former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition. Sproul was previously mentioned on this blog during his support of the failed gubernatorial campaign of Len Munsil, when he was complaining about a campaign by a deceptively-named group called the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; that criticized Munsil.\nAnother mailer from Mesa Deserves Better made reference to Pearce\u0026rsquo;s connection to J.T. Ready of Mesa, a white supremacist who has taken part in neo-Nazi rallies. Mesa Deserves Better also rightly opposes Pearce\u0026rsquo;s anti-immigration stance.\nSproul is known nationally for engaging in deceptive tactics in multiple states to help George W. Bush and other Republicans get elected by forming \u0026ldquo;get out the vote\u0026rdquo; organizations which worked to get Republicans registered to vote and to deter or discard Democrative voter registrations.\nIn reality, the Republican would be better off without Pearce or Sproul.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/arizona-republicans-turn-on-themselves.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn August 7, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/07/20080807pearce0807.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reported\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe race for a state Senate seat in west Mesa broke out into a wide-open brawl Wednesday, with allegations that Rep. Russell Pearce attacked his wife nearly three decades ago and Pearce\u0026rsquo;s campaign firing back that the charge is false and the height of sleazy campaigning.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA mailer sent to voters in west Mesa cited a divorce petition that LuAnne Pearce filed in 1980. In it, she charges that her husband had a violent temper, hit her and shoved her. The petition also says that two days before the filing, Pearce \u0026ldquo;grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Republicans turn on themselves"},{"content":"Creation Ministries International has updated its website to respond to the trove of documents released by Answers in Genesis. The Answers in Genesis site now includes the U.S. judge\u0026rsquo;s order to compel arbitration in the U.S. (PDF). The court\u0026rsquo;s order requires arbitration to occur in the U.S., but does not put a stop to the legal action in Australia, on the grounds that one of the documents at issue (the Deed of Copyright License or DOCL) says that the parties do \u0026ldquo;not object to the exercise of jurisdiction by [the Australian courts] on any basis\u0026rdquo; (to quote the judge\u0026rsquo;s quotation from the document). The judge describes his order as granting in part and denying in part the Answers in Genesis petition, though Answers in Genesis describes it merely as granting their petition to compel arbitration.\nThe CMI update has a lengthy list of \u0026ldquo;WHAT AIG IS CAREFUL NOT TO TELL YOU\u0026rdquo; that makes the point that the U.S. and Australian groups were not as separate as AiG has tried to convey, with interesting examples such as that the U.S. group had appointed a CEO/COO to report to Ken Ham as president, and Carl Wieland of the Australian group was given the task of firing this person. Another is that the letter from Wieland to the U.S. board that AiG describes as \u0026ldquo;unsolicited\u0026rdquo; was actually specifically requested by the U.S. board in response to Wieland\u0026rsquo;s criticisms that he had previously made to the Australian board (three members of which were also on the U.S. board).\nAiG describes its former executive VP, Brandon Vallorani, as a dupe or co-conspirator with Carl Wieland, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t note that when he was terminated he was given a payment in return for being bound to silence, and so is unable to comment on what actually happened without breaching that agreement.\nThe CMI summary notes (as I mentioned, via Kevin Henke, in my previous post) that the Thallon document contradicts other testimony from Thallon about whether the Australian board was pressured to accept the October 2005 agreement: \u0026ldquo;Ironically, there is eyewitness testimony of people having heard Thallon himself claim that they acted under duress in signing, and we have in writing (written back at the time) from a leading creation scientist and professor that Thallon personally told him that Ken Ham had threatened to not buy the next issue of the magazine if they failed to sign. So Thallon is either telling the truth to this scientist, or he is telling the truth in these documents–it’s hard to see how both can be the case.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s also interesting to note that the Thallon document alternates between U.S. and Australian spellings of some words (e.g. \u0026ldquo;organization\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;organisation\u0026rdquo; are both used in paragraph 22), which probably indicates a document prepared by Thallon (an Australian) and one or more Americans (such as AiG\u0026rsquo;s attorneys) that was not fully reviewed carefully for consistency.\nNathan Zamprogno (2008-08-16):\nAlthough both sides are as bad as each other, for the sake of balance it should be pointed out that there is also a list of things that CMI have been careful to not tell us. Consider this extract from one of John Mackay's public newsletters.Ken Evans was a former, senior member of Creation Ministries International staff, and Carl Wieland's former ministry co-ordinator. He was disgusted enough with CMI's double dealing to resign and write a \"letter of apology\" for the hostility Carl Wieland was directing to a former colleague and friend. Evidently the admonition in 1 John 2:9; \"Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.\" is lost on Wieland. Wieland’s vaunted Briese report runs to more than fifty pages and Ken Evans is not mentioned ONCE.This is what Ken Evans had to say:\"You have my permission, without restraint, to circulate the letter through your mailing list. May our Almighty Saviour God be glorified.\" \"I write to confirm that during the time (mid-1999 to May 2004) I was employed as senior ministry co- ordinator for Carl Wieland (now Creation Ministries International but then the Australian 'branch' of Creation Science Foundation / Answers in Genesis), one of my key tasks was to check John Mackay's movements via his website. One reason for doing so was to ensure that Carl and his team pre-empted any visit to any town or district by John Mackay so as to ensure Carl's ministry received the 'lion's share' of sales, donations, etc. This was never more obvious than in 2002 when John Mackay's bookings in Western Australia were already confirmed and Carl's organisation established alternate meetings for Peter Sparrow and the 'Creation Bus' as close to a week before John Mackay. The other reason was to provide opportunity to send church leaders in the district copies of Carl Wieland's 'Anti John Mackay information pack' so as to turn any potential support for John's ministry across to his own group. Carl's arrangement was covert, in that it was never discussed openly during planning forums. On several occasions during the above mentioned period Carl Wieland visited the ministry co-ordination department and asked where John Mackay was speaking. Once informed, he then privately instructed me that a ministry tour be arranged for that region slightly ahead of John's advertised schedule. Carl also went to great length to turn any new ministry co-ordination staff against John Mackay by instructing them to read and become familiar with his 'Anti-John Mackay pack' as part of their orientation. I am sincerely sorry for any part that Carl was able to use me in such an anti-Christian way to achieve his own bitter ends.\" Signed Kenneth Evans.(End of newsletter quote.) Furthermore, there is the astonishing claim that, despite CMI's sustained attack of Mackay for a host of sins, CMI was prepared to reverse its position and remove all material damaging to Mackay on their website if Mackay would be prepared to \"come over\" and support CMI (or at least stop supporting Ken Ham). Note that one of the distinctive differences between CMI's and AiG's websites since the split was that CMI retained material critical to (for example) Kent Hovind as a matter of particular principle, and yet they offered to abandon that principle for the sake of a tactical move against AiG. Mackay confirms this in saying:Wieland's law suit followed his trying (late 06) to broker a secret deal with us at Creation Research. In return for our NOT supporting Ken Ham, Carl offered to remove the huge amount of anti Creation Research propaganda pages he had posted on the CMI web site soon after he had gotten rid of the original long time AIG Australia Board and re-invented the organisation as CMI. Carl argued that if we accepted his deal, it would leave him free to concentrate on Ken Ham and Andrew Snelling. We told him we do not do such ungodly deals and we don't deal behind peoples' backs!\nKtisophilos (2008-08-16):\nZamprogno is foolish to trust the unsubstantiated word of someone working now in the Mackay ministry. By contrast, there is immense eye-witness corroboration of the accusations against Mackay, such as his bizarre and slanderous accusations of witchcraft and necrophilia, and his official church discipline. This should make us very wary of trusting this source, or one of his proxies. Zamprogno needs to recover some objectivity, presuming that he ever had it in the first place.\nLippard (2008-08-16):\nNathan:Is there any evidence to support Ken Evans' allegations about schedule coordination to preempt Mackay?Carl Wieland says, in a response to your comment that he's given me permission to post (I'm considering posting it as a separate comment), that the text you quote from Ken Evans appeared in John Mackay's newsletter, minus one paragraph that has been added. Can you comment on where this additional paragraph came from, or provide me with a PDF of the newsletter you're quoting?\"Carl's arrangement was covert, in that it was never discussed openly during planning forums. On several occasions during the above mentioned period Carl Wieland visited the ministry co-ordination department and asked where John Mackay was speaking. Once informed, he then privately instructed me that a ministry tour be arranged for that region slightly ahead of John's advertised schedule.\"\nLippard (2008-08-16):\nHere is CMI's response to the Ken Evans allegations as published in John Mackay's newsletter in October 2007:RESPONSE TO MACKAY NEWSLETTER FALSE CLAIMSStatement by Creation Ministries International, prepared 8 October 2007, in response to John Mackay’s unfortunate newsletter of a few days prior.We regret very much that such ugliness and vindictiveness has emerged in the public arena. It is particularly unfortunate that, as Mr Mackay well knew, its appearance was at a time when we would be limited in our ability to defend our Christian reputation. This is because the verbal agreement reached in Hawaii to seek to end a very inappropriate and unnecessary dispute involved giving our word to AiG-US to keep certain matters confidential.This statement will therefore seek to maintain as much Christian dignity as possible while giving only indisputable facts that in our understanding do not breach this confidentiality.Facts:• The account of the dispute in Mr Mackay’s newsletter is seriously misleading. For example, Carl Wieland did not undertake any legal action of any sort. This is more than semantics, as those who know the details of our ministry’s dilemma would well know. (We removed these details from our website as a gesture of good faith after shaking hands on the agreement in Hawaii, hoping it would be finalized on paper soon). Almost all who read through the details of the legal dangers and dilemmas our ministry had been embroiled in, and who worked through our attempt to have a careful biblical approach to the matter, ended up being highly supportive.• There is additional serious misrepresentation in Mr Mackay’s account concerning secular newspapers. No representative of this ministry ever approached any newspaper or used it for ‘releases’. We were rung by reporters who had ‘sniffed out’ the details of the dispute which were on the public record.• For Mr Mackay to attempt to impugn the reputation of former NSW Chief Magistrate Clarrie Briese (see www.creationontheweb.com/briese is almost unimaginable to us. • Concerning Mr Mackay’s account of an ‘agreement’ or ‘deal’ allegedly sought with him: this borders on the bizarre, as no-one in any responsible or management position in this ministry has even had any contact with Mr Mackay or anyone in his ministry for many years. The account is rejected by us as a fabrication. Sadly, there is a track record of such things—see www.creationontheweb.com/mackay. This almost 20-year-old documentation has important and pertinent comments by Ken Ham, despite attempts by Ham family members and supporters to have this documentation removed since John Mackay recently became Ken Ham’s Australian defender.• The account in Mr Mackay’s newsletter attributed to Mr Ken Evans is nothing short of astonishing, and is refuted by the eyewitness testimony of our current head ministry coordinator, Mrs Fran Bates. Mrs Bates worked as a colleague of Mr Evans in the same ministry department for over a year until Mr Evans departed under unfortunate circumstances of his own making. These circumstances seem to have left him with a desire to harm the ministry somehow, particularly Carl, whose leadership responsibility meant he was Mr Evan’s boss and charged with the responsibility of the best outcome for the ministry. This bitterness is made even more hurtful and sad given the ministry’s ex gratia help to Mr Evans, i.e. doing things to help him that it was not obliged to, after his time of service had drawn to a close.• Mr Evans’ claim about CMI targeting ministry in locations where Mr Mackay was scheduled to do ministry is patently false. Ironically, the converse seems to be the case—we had noted that Mackay seemed to be doing ministry where CMI was scheduled too often to be just coincidences.• Mr Evans’ claim about CMI sending Mackay packs in an unsolicited manner to church leaders is also highly misleading and largely false. For many years now, information has been supplied in response to queries and almost always only when the enquirer was persistent in wanting to know. In the last 10 years it has been rare for such information to be supplied, contrary to the implication in the newsletter. And when the information was supplied, particularly in the early years, it was part of a policy strongly encouraged by Mr Mackay’s former church (in an attempt to bring him to the point of reconciliation and restoration) and enthusiastically supported by Ken Ham. • The obvious thing would be for us to seek Mt 18 resolution of these issues of serious sin against the ministry and Carl. Regrettably, as the above web documentation shows, Mr Mackay has a track record of not only seeking to undermine this ministry’s activities, but evading all responsibility under Mt 18. At the time of his initial attack on the ministry, he was excommunicated unanimously by an entire Baptist church of some 80 people, yet evaded any consequences by changing his attendance to another church of another denomination, where he had kept a previous membership. Concerning Mr Evans, the last we knew, his ‘church’ consisted of himself and his family, so there seems little point following that approach there either. However:• CHALLENGE TO FACE ACCOUNTABILITY:We would challenge Mr Mackay and Mr Evans to do the decent Christian thing and be prepared to join with us in submitting these latest claims (along with our counterclaim that they are, in those few areas where they are not outright fabrication, severe distortions of truth) to an open and formal Christian forum in the spirit of Matthew 18, and cease their ‘onslaught by newsletter’. We suggest that Mr Mackay and Mr Evans each nominate an ordained minister of the Gospel, we nominate two, with an additional one to be selected by the head of the Evangelical Alliance (whom we have not approached). With the parties to share the expenses of these good folks’ time.[1] Based on the track record of similar offers to meet to discuss issues ‘in the open’, and being confident in what we know to be the truth of the matter, we would think it highly likely that this will never have a positive response, despite whatever excuses and evasions might be proffered. • We would hope and pray that this brief set of comments would be limited to folk who have been exposed to this unfortunate slander, and that it will help them reach their own judgements according to John 7:24. It is so sad that in an age of rampant evolutionism, the Enemy is able to get professing believers to attack their brethren instead of getting on with the job. [1] Alternatively, a panel of three, with one only nominated by each side, would suffice as far as we were concerned.\nNathan Zamprogno (2008-08-17):\nFar from taking sides, as ktisophilos suggests, I wish to make it clear that I regard CMI, AiG and Mackay's Creation Research organisations as all equally bad, equally damaging to the cause of Christ, equally embarassing, and all as equally mired in self-deception and/or self-aggrandizement. I am merely making the comment that so long as CMI tries to hide behind the high moral ground of \"total disclosure\" by showing all their dirty laundry to the public, they should not be as selective as they accuse their opponents to be. I trust neither Ken Evans nor John Mackay to lay straight in bed. The least that can be said, however, is that it is both plausible and logical that CMI, like any money-focused corporation, would try to a) Corner their respective market by squeezing their competition (pre-empting Mackay's ministry schedule), and b) Be prepared to compromise a principle for the tactical advantage of potentially neutralising a foe (stopping Mackay from being Ham's proxy).Any suggestion that Evans' public letter which I quoted has an \"extra paragraph\" of which Wieland was unaware - well, the copy passed to me by someone deep inside a \"fifth column\" in one of the protagonist's organisations, had it, in the body of the quote attributed to Evans and above his signature. The context in which it appeared was:Mackay's October 2007 Newsletter:SOME NOT SO GOOD NEWS FROM CREATION RESEARCH.\"How was our law suit against Ken Ham going?\" was the very public challenge to Creation Research during question time at our August 07 debate in Melbourne University. Likewise on recent ministry trips and via the press and the net, we have had lengthy questioning both public and private re the Wieland/Ham saga and our role in it. You all need to know that it is not Creation Research that had taken a lawsuit out against Ken Ham - it is Carl Weiland and Creation Ministries International who had sued Ken Ham personally and Answers in Genesis corporately at the time the debate was held (August 2007). We have already printed in a recent (limited distribution) e-Prayer News, a rebuke to Carl Weiland and CMI, for their very public announcement via the Australian Newspaper of their lawsuit against Ken Ham. As stated previously Weiland obviously does not believe the Bible's teaching in 1 Corinthians 6 applies to him, since it forbids a Christian taking a Christian brother to the world's courts. Ken Ham has our full support and we would ask you to pray for him at this tragic time. Weiland's law suit followed his trying (late 06) to broker a secret deal with us at Creation Research. In return for our NOT supporting Ken Ham, Carl offered to remove the huge amount of anti Creation Research propaganda pages he had posted on the CMI web site soon after he had gotten rid of the original long time AIG Australia Board and re-invented the organisation as CMI. Carl argued that if we accepted his deal, it would leave him free to concentrate on Ken Ham and Andrew Snelling. We told him we do not do such ungodly deals and we don't deal behind peoples' backs! This year's media 'infomercials' on the law suit, leaked to the media by Weiland, beginning with the Australian Newspaper, have been revelled in by both the media and the Skeptics. They and others worldwide are now questioning us at Creation Research (despite the fact we have nothing to do with the law suit), because Weiland has repeatedly included anti Creation Research propaganda in media reports wherever he could. It's been a very obvious vengeance for our refusal to do a deal, and has led to the necessity of this public statement from Creation Research. At the time of this printing (October 07), Weiland has temporarily put the lawsuit on hold pending the outcome of a negotiated settlement, but it is still a threat hanging over Ken Ham and AiG if Ken Ham doesn't do as he wants by mid October. Carl Weiland has dressed this position to his own advantage via items to the world's press and on the CMI website, with the spin that he had withdrawn the slanderous Anti Ken Ham Briese Report from the CMI website in the hope of reconciliation. Weiland's and CMI's ungodly and worldly antics have brought shame and disgrace on the whole Christian community, and given the enemies of the Lord Jesus an excuse to pour scorn on His Name. Carl Weiland's previous ministry coordinator Ken Evans, has forwarded us a letter of apology for his role in Weiland's actively undermining our Creation Research ministry, a policy we know Weiland and team have pursued for the last 20 years. Ken Evans' wrote, (And there follows the Evans letter in full, as quoted in my previous comment, including the paragraph claimed as \"added\", followed by (to confirm it is in the body of Evans' words)),\"Signed Kenneth Evans.\"Now again, the events recounted here have largely been superceded, and I have no opinion on the claims made or the rebuttal CMI offer, beyond this: Ktisophilos asks rightly if the claims on either side are substantiated. Consider that the statements of all parties (AiG, CMI, Mackay and Evans) are all offered with emphatic oaths \"May our Almighty Saviour God be glorified.\", etc. The sorry lot of them seem keen to outdo each other in playing the the \"sinned against\" card, and witlessly they pin their entire integrity on the veracity of their accounts. And yet, one characteristic of the war of words in the whole tragi-comic saga is the degree to which the accounts are all at total, 180 degree odds to one another. As a peripheral, bemused follower of these events, excuse me and most others from concluding that they are all bare faced liars.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-17):\nZamprogno has a history of a glaring lack of objctivity when it comes to CMI. He trusted such demonstrably unreliable sources as Barry Price and Ian Plimer, and now one of John Mackay's stooges.The hyper-piety of AiG and Mackay's lot is indeed sickening. Conversely, the documentation adduced by CMI mostly sticks to a plurality of eye-witnesses and states the facts. Does Zamprogno have any evidence that there are any lies in this documentation?\nPeter henderson (2008-08-17):\nIf you take a look at AiG's current prayer requests, AiG (UK) is collaborating with John McKay on an anti Darwin DVD to be released next year. I'm not sure if there's any significance to this or not but it would appear that Ham and McKay have both \"made-up\", so to speak. McKay also visited the creation museum last year Project: Darwin DVDPurpose: AiG-U.K. is planning and filming a documentary biography of Charles Darwin. This project is being closely coordinated with John Mackay of Creation Research, who is producing a related DVD documentary. The two documentaries will therefore be like part 1 and part 2, as they will contain different material. Interest in the documentaries has been expressed by some of the Christian satellite TV channels which broadcast to the U.K.Specifics: Please pray for both these projects. The AiG-U.K. filming has already begun with a great deal of film taken in Shrewsbury, Darwin's birthplace. Pray for organization and planning for the Darwin DVD and for filming at Down House and Westminster Abbey, both of which could be problematic.Deadline: We want to get all filming done by the end of September to leave plenty of time for production.\nLippard (2008-08-17):\nPeter: That is correct--and the reconciliation between Mackay and Ham is something that CMI has objected to for reasons given here.\nLippard (2008-08-17):\nNathan: I don't think the accounts are 180 degrees out of sync with each other--there are clearly a lot of commonalities between the accounts. I also don't agree that the cases are equivalent on both sides. For example, I find the affidavit from Carl Wieland to be a more solid document than those from Looy (a complete waste of a filing), Landis, or Thallon (due to its inconsistencies with other evidence). I also find AiG's PowerPoint presentation to be quite instructive in that several of the arguments it presents as though they obviously indicate the superiority of their position are actually arguments that undermine their position--such as that Wieland was concerned about Ham endorsing a book (Lubenow's _Bones of Contention_) that makes arguments that AiG's website had already said creationists should not use. AiG expresses no concern about such inconsistency, but instead faults Wieland for raising the issue.BTW, in addition to the Lubenow argument mentioned in the presentation (that all mutations are harmful or neutral), the main argument of Lubenow's book is another such argument--that the continuing existence of ancestral species contemporaneous with descendant species is somehow a problem for evolution. See AiG's web page, where these two arguments are called \"If we evolved from apes, apes shouldn't exist today\" and \"There are no beneficial mutations.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/cmi-responds-to-aig-dispute-summary.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreation Ministries International \u003ca href=\"http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5963\"\u003ehas updated its website to respond to the trove of documents released by Answers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e.  The Answers in Genesis site now includes \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/Court%20Order%20of%20Aug%2008%20Granting%20AiG%20position%20to%20compel%20arbitration.pdf\"\u003ethe U.S. judge\u0026rsquo;s order to compel arbitration in the U.S.\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  The court\u0026rsquo;s order requires arbitration to occur in the U.S., but does not put a stop to the legal action in Australia, on the grounds that one of the documents at issue (the Deed of Copyright License or DOCL) says that the parties do \u0026ldquo;not object to the exercise of jurisdiction by [the Australian courts] on any basis\u0026rdquo; (to quote the judge\u0026rsquo;s quotation from the document).  The judge describes his order as granting in part and denying in part the Answers in Genesis petition, though Answers in Genesis describes it merely as granting their petition to compel arbitration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe CMI update has a lengthy list of \u0026ldquo;WHAT AIG IS CAREFUL NOT TO TELL YOU\u0026rdquo; that makes the point that the U.S. and Australian groups were not as separate as AiG has tried to convey, with interesting examples such as that the U.S. group had appointed a CEO/COO to report to Ken Ham as president, and Carl Wieland of the Australian group was given the task of firing this person.  Another is that the letter from Wieland to the U.S. board that AiG describes as \u0026ldquo;unsolicited\u0026rdquo; was actually specifically requested by the U.S. board in response to Wieland\u0026rsquo;s criticisms that he had previously made to the Australian board (three members of which were also on the U.S. board).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAiG describes its former executive VP, Brandon Vallorani, as a dupe or co-conspirator with Carl Wieland, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t note that when he was terminated he was given a payment in return for being bound to silence, and so is unable to comment on what actually happened without breaching that agreement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe CMI summary notes (as I mentioned, via Kevin Henke, in my previous post) that the Thallon document contradicts other testimony from Thallon about whether the Australian board was pressured to accept the October 2005 agreement:  \u0026ldquo;Ironically, there is eyewitness testimony of people         having heard Thallon himself claim that they acted under duress in signing, and         we have in writing (written back at the time) from a leading creation scientist         and professor that Thallon personally told him that Ken Ham had threatened to not         buy the next issue of the magazine if they failed to sign. So Thallon is either         telling the truth to this scientist, or he is telling the truth in these documents–it’s         hard to see how both can be the case.\u0026rdquo;  It\u0026rsquo;s also interesting to note that the Thallon document alternates between U.S. and Australian spellings of some words (e.g. \u0026ldquo;organization\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;organisation\u0026rdquo; are both used in paragraph 22), which probably indicates a document prepared by Thallon (an Australian) and one or more Americans (such as AiG\u0026rsquo;s attorneys) that was not fully reviewed carefully for consistency.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CMI responds to AiG dispute summary"},{"content":"Kim Komando (who at least used to be based here in Phoenix) is promoting nonsense about \u0026ldquo;digital drugs\u0026rdquo;:\nBut websites are targeting your children with so-called digital drugs. These are audio files designed to induce drug-like effects. All your child needs is a music player and headphones. Digital drugs supposedly synchronize your brain waves with the sound. Hence, they allegedly alter your mental state. Binaural beats create a beating sound. Other noises may be included with binaural beats. This is intended to mask their unpleasant sound.\nSome sites provide binaural beats that have innocuous effects. For example, some claim to help you develop extrasensory powers like telepathy and psychokinesis. Other sites offer therapeutic binaural beats. They help you relax or meditate. Some allegedly help you overcome addiction or anxiety. Others purport to help you lose weight or eliminate gray hair. However, most sites are more sinister. They sell audio files (\u0026ldquo;doses\u0026rdquo;) that supposedly mimic the effects of alcohol and marijuana. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t end there. You\u0026rsquo;ll find doses that purportedly mimic the effects of LSD, crack, heroin and other hard drugs. There are also doses of a sexual nature. I even found ones that supposedly simulate heaven and hell.\nMany are skeptical about the effects of digital drugs. Few scientific studies have been conducted on binaural beats. However, a Duke University study suggests that they can affect mood and motor performance. Dr. Nicholas Theodore, a brain surgeon at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, said there is no real evidence that idosers work. [emphasis added] But he noted that musical preference is indicative of emotional vulnerability. Trying idosers could indicate a willingness to experiment with drugs and other dangerous behavior. Theodore added that idosers are another reason to monitor kids\u0026rsquo; Internet usage. And, he said, kids need frank talks with their parents about correct choices.\n\u0026hellip;\nLet\u0026rsquo;s think about this for a moment. The sites claim binaural beats cause the same effects as illegal drugs. These drugs impair coordination and can cause hallucinations. They\u0026rsquo;ve caused countless fatal accidents, like traffic collisions. If binaural beats work as promised, they are not safe. They could also create a placebo effect. The expectation elicits the response. Again, this is unsafe. At the very least, digital drugs promote drug use. Some sites say binaural beats can be used with illegal drugs. At least she doesn\u0026rsquo;t call for new laws. I\u0026rsquo;d endorse consumer civil complaints, if not fraud charges, against sellers of bogus products, which would include the so-called \u0026ldquo;therapeutic\u0026rdquo; binaural beats just as much as the allegedly \u0026ldquo;sinister\u0026rdquo; ones.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments John S. Wilkins (2008-08-13):\nWell, personally I reckon hiphop should be mandated by the FDA as a potentially dangerous drug.\nEinzige (2008-08-13):\nWow. Absurd.Meanwhile, this reminds me of something that Ray Kurzweil mentioned in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, way back in 1998: Brain Generated Music, which, to me, seems so much cooler.Sadly, the web page I've linked to has been exactly the same for at least 8 years, now, and I doubt there is--nor will there be--actually any way to acquire a machine that would enable one to experience it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/dangers-of-digital-drugs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKim Komando (who at least used to be based here in Phoenix) \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5544919\"\u003eis promoting nonsense about \u0026ldquo;digital drugs\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut websites are targeting your children with so-called digital drugs. These are audio files designed to induce drug-like effects. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e All your child needs is a music player and headphones. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Digital drugs supposedly synchronize your brain waves with the sound. Hence, they allegedly alter your mental state. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Binaural beats create a beating sound. Other noises may be included with binaural beats. This is intended to mask their unpleasant sound.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The dangers of digital drugs"},{"content":"The judge in the U.S. lawsuit filed by Answers in Genesis against Creation Ministries International said that he intended to rule that the groups go into arbitration in Kentucky, under the rules of the American Arbitration Association. But he rejected AiG\u0026rsquo;s demands to stop the legal proceeding in Australia or to force arbitration by Peacemakers/ICC, the organization they had selected for Christian arbitration.\nAfter the hearing, CMI\u0026rsquo;s attorney proposed that the judge himself mediate a one-day attempt to resolve the dispute more quickly, and the judge agreed on the condition that the mediation meeting be limited to Carl Wieland, Ken Ham, and their respective attorneys. CMI agreed, posted a note to that effect on their website, and booked airfare.\nAiG, however, objected to the restriction to one person, and requested that an additional person participate, on the grounds that Ken Ham is not a member of the AiG board of directors.\nThe judge then withdrew the mediation offer, and the case will continue in the U.S., without going to Christian arbitration.\nCMI has a new web page up describing the mediation offer and speculating on the next steps. They observe that the judge has made multiple statements to the effect that the only jurisdiction mentioned in the legal documents between the groups is Australia, and point out that they have already filed an appeal on that basis regarding the judge\u0026rsquo;s decision to require arbitration in the United States.\nCMI has also updated their main web page on the dispute.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/aigcmi-judge-accepts-then-withdraws.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe judge in the U.S. lawsuit filed by Answers in Genesis against Creation Ministries International said that he intended to rule that the groups go into arbitration in Kentucky, under the rules of the American Arbitration Association.  But he rejected AiG\u0026rsquo;s demands to stop the legal proceeding in Australia or to force arbitration by Peacemakers/ICC, the organization they had selected for Christian arbitration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the hearing, CMI\u0026rsquo;s attorney proposed that the judge himself mediate a one-day attempt to resolve the dispute more quickly, and the judge agreed on the condition that the mediation meeting be limited to Carl Wieland, Ken Ham, and their respective attorneys.  CMI agreed, posted a note to that effect on their website, and booked airfare.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAiG, however, objected to the restriction to one person, and requested that an additional person participate, on the grounds that Ken Ham is not a member of the AiG board of directors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge then withdrew the mediation offer, and the case will continue in the U.S., without going to Christian arbitration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI has \u003ca href=\"http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5957/\"\u003ea new web page up describing the mediation offer and speculating on the next steps\u003c/a\u003e.  They observe that the judge has made multiple statements to the effect that the only jurisdiction mentioned in the legal documents between the groups is Australia, and point out that they have already filed an appeal on that basis regarding the judge\u0026rsquo;s decision to require arbitration in the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI has also updated \u003ca href=\"www.creationontheweb.com/dispute\"\u003etheir main web page on the dispute\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AiG/CMI: judge accepts, then withdraws mediation offer"},{"content":"This is a video of a presentation at the TED conference by Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, about how the growth of squatter cities represents the cities of the future, as a growing percentage of the world\u0026rsquo;s population will live in such cities. I find it fascinating how such extra-legal cities which tend to operate beyond the fringes of the law, are places of considerable freedom and opportunity despite their poverty. Another similar book is Ian Lambot and Greg Girard\u0026rsquo;s City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon City, about the squatter city of Kowloon Walled City on the peninsula south of Hong Kong, where squatters developed their own systems of property rights and rules in the absence of government intervention.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/robert-neuwirth-at-ted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is \u003ca href=\"https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_neuwirth_the_hidden_world_of_shadow_cities\"\u003ea video of a presentation at the TED conference by Robert Neuwirth\u003c/a\u003e, author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415933196/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eShadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, about how the growth of squatter cities represents the cities of the future, as a growing percentage of the world\u0026rsquo;s population will live in such cities.  I find it fascinating how such extra-legal cities which tend to operate beyond the fringes of the law, are places of considerable freedom and opportunity despite their poverty.  Another similar book is Ian Lambot and Greg Girard\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/City-Darkness-Life-Kowloon/dp/1873200137/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCity of Darkness: Life in Kowloon City\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, about the squatter city of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City\"\u003eKowloon Walled City\u003c/a\u003e on the peninsula south of Hong Kong, where squatters developed their own systems of property rights and rules in the absence of government intervention.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c!--cut and paste--\u003e\u003ca class=\"abp-objtab-06663400333812161 visible ontop\" href=\"https://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf\" style=\"left: 0px; top: 15px;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject align=\"middle\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"https://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0\" height=\"285\" id=\"VE_Player\" width=\"320\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"bgColor=FFFFFF\u0026amp;file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/ROBERTNEUWIRTH-2005_high.flv\u0026amp;autoPlay=false\u0026amp;fullscreenURL=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html\u0026amp;forcePlay=false\u0026amp;logo=\u0026amp;allowFullscreen=true\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"quality\" value=\"high\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#FFFFFF\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"scale\" value=\"noscale\" /\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"window\" /\u003e\u003cembed align=\"middle\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" flashvars=\"bgColor=FFFFFF\u0026amp;file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/ROBERTNEUWIRTH-2005_high.flv\u0026amp;autoPlay=false\u0026amp;fullscreenURL=https://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html\u0026amp;forcePlay=false\u0026amp;logo=\u0026amp;allowFullscreen=true\" height=\"285\" name=\"VE_Player\" pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer\" quality=\"high\" scale=\"noscale\" src=\"http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"320\" wmode=\"window\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Robert Neuwirth at TED"},{"content":"Yesterday while getting my car serviced, I noticed that Toyota\u0026rsquo;s brochure about its latest vehicles says on the back that \u0026ldquo;Moving Forward is in our DNA,\u0026rdquo; and became annoyed. \u0026ldquo;X is in our corporate DNA\u0026rdquo; has become an incredibly popular marketing buzzphrase lately, and I\u0026rsquo;ve heard it said for some value of X in almost every vendor presentation I\u0026rsquo;ve heard this year. My thought yesterday was that I don\u0026rsquo;t really care if X is in the genotype if it isn\u0026rsquo;t expressed in the phenotype. If the company really wants to make the point that X is a core competency or value, saying \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s in our DNA\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t really an accurate way of putting it.\nSo this morning I did a search to see if any biologists have commented on this buzzphrase, and was pleased to see that Keith Robison commented on it last December:\nThe question posed is this: what do companies asking this really mean, or more specifically what might it mean that they don\u0026rsquo;t intend (very Dilbert-esque). Presumably they are trying to make a statement about deeply embedded values, but what does it really mean to have something in your DNA? For example, do they mean to imply:\nA lot of our company is unfathomable to the human mindThere\u0026rsquo;s a lot of redundancy hereOften we often repeat ourselves often repeatedly, often repeating repetitiously.We retain bits of those who invade our corporate DNA, though with not much rhyme or reasonA lot of pieces of the organization resemble decayed portions of other pieces of our organizationSome pieces of our organization are non-functional, though they closely resemble functional pieces of related organizationsMost of our organization has no immediate impact on routine operations, or emergency onesMost of our organization has no immediate obvious purpose, if anyOur corporate practices are not the best designable, but rather reflect an accumulation of historical accidentsNow, many of these statements may well be true about a given company, but is that what you really want to project?This gives me some great ideas on how to respond the next time I hear a vendor use the phrase.\nHistorical Comments Michael C. Rush (2008-08-11):\nThe reason they do this, of course, is that for the majority of their audience/customer base, referencing DNA is akin to referencing magic (a corollary to Clarke's 3rd Law being that in our current society, virtually all technology and science is \"sufficiently advanced\" to be opaque to the average person). There have been numerous such buzzwords used over the years. Think of references to \"rocket science,\" \"brain surgery,\" and the near infinite capabilities attributed to \"computers.\"Good job picking apart the inappropriateness of the reference!\nJames Hanley (2008-08-11):\nGreat post, and thanks to Keith Robison. I'd say \"Our corporate practices are not the best designable, but rather reflect an accumulation of historical accidents\" isn't what is intended, but is probably the one that most accurately applies to most companies.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/in-our-corporate-dna.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday while getting my car serviced, I noticed that Toyota\u0026rsquo;s brochure about its latest vehicles says on the back that \u0026ldquo;Moving Forward is in our DNA,\u0026rdquo; and became annoyed.  \u0026ldquo;X is in our corporate DNA\u0026rdquo; has become an incredibly popular marketing buzzphrase lately, and I\u0026rsquo;ve heard it said for some value of X in almost every vendor presentation I\u0026rsquo;ve heard this year.  My thought yesterday was that I don\u0026rsquo;t really care if X is in the genotype if it isn\u0026rsquo;t expressed in the phenotype.  If the company really wants to make the point that X is a core competency or value, saying \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s in our DNA\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t really an accurate way of putting it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo this morning I did a search to see if any biologists have commented on this buzzphrase, and was pleased to see that \u003ca href=\"http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2007/12/corporate-dna.html\"\u003eKeith Robison commented on it last December\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe question posed is this: what do companies asking this really mean, or more specifically what might it mean that they don\u0026rsquo;t intend (very Dilbert-esque). Presumably they are trying to make a statement about deeply embedded values, but what does it really mean to have something in your DNA? For example, do they mean to imply:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eA lot of our company is unfathomable to the human mind\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a lot of redundancy here\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOften we often repeat ourselves often repeatedly, often repeating repetitiously.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWe retain bits of those who invade our corporate DNA, though with not much rhyme or reason\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eA lot of pieces of the organization resemble decayed portions of other pieces of our organization\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSome pieces of our organization are non-functional, though they closely resemble functional pieces of related organizations\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMost of our organization has no immediate impact on routine operations, or emergency ones\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMost of our organization has no immediate obvious purpose, if any\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOur corporate practices are not the best designable, but rather reflect an accumulation of historical accidents\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eNow, many of these statements may well be true about a given company, but is that what you really want to project?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis gives me some great ideas on how to respond the next time I hear a vendor use the phrase.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"In our corporate DNA\""},{"content":"The lunatics at Focus on the Family want people to pray for rain on Obama\u0026rsquo;s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. This is absurd on multiple levels\u0026ndash;not only does nothing fail like prayer, but how on earth do they consider this to be a remotely ethical or rational thing to do?\nWhy not just pray that Obama doesn\u0026rsquo;t get elected? Or follow the pattern with Supreme Court justices, and pray for death?\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nUPDATE (August 12, 2008): Focus on the Family has pulled the video from their site, claiming that it was all just a joke, as the Rocky Mountain News reports:\nFocus on the Family Action pulled a video from its Web site today that asked people to pray for \u0026ldquo;rain of biblical proportions\u0026rdquo; during Barack Obama\u0026rsquo;s Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field at Mile High to accept the Democratic nomination for president.\nStuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, said the video he wrote and starred in was meant to be \u0026ldquo;mildly humorous.\u0026quot;\nBut complaints from about a dozen Focus members convinced the organization to pull the video, said Tom Minnery, Focus Action vice president of public policy.\n\u0026ldquo;If people took it seriously, we regret it,\u0026rdquo; Minnery said Monday.\nUPDATE (August 27, 2008): There was flooding at the Democratic National Convention\u0026ndash;but it was flooding of the Fox skybox at the Pepsi Center when a sprinkler system went off for about five minutes, dumping 50 to 100 gallons of water per minute.\nUPDATE (August 30, 2008): Obama\u0026rsquo;s speech went off without a hitch, but it looks like Hurricane Gustav may cause a suspension of the Republican National Convention.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-08-11):\nWhat's this, FotF now appeals to God to do its dirty work?\nJames Hanley (2008-08-11):\nWell, God is obviously on their side. But just as obviously quite unwilling to act as if he is until X people spend Y hours on their knees. So he just can't really care that damn much, can he? And if doesn't, why do they?\nKtisophilos (2008-08-21):\nThis reminds me of Ken Ham's puppet board chairman Don LandAss, in his oh-so-pious request for prayer from \"Dear friends and acquaintances of AiG-U.S\" about the CMI-AiG dispute.If he really wanted an army of \"prayer warriors\", then surely he could have contacted the hundreds of thousands on the main US-mailing list. But this doesn't seem to have happened, because that might alert them to the dispute and the fact that they were duped about Creation magazine.Instead, the letter seemed to be aimed at anyone they could find in countries with a strong CMI presence, and Americans already aware of the dispute. This makes it most likely that the \"call to prayer\" was a pseudo-pious sham, and was really to stir up doubts among CMI supporters, and likely waste much CMI staff time dealing with the nonsense.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/focus-on-family-pray-for-rain-on-obama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.citizenlink.org/Stoplight/A000007910.cfm\"\u003elunatics at Focus on the Family want people to pray for rain on Obama\u0026rsquo;s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention\u003c/a\u003e.  This is absurd on multiple levels\u0026ndash;not only does nothing fail like prayer, but how on earth do they consider this to be a remotely ethical or rational thing to do?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy not just pray that Obama doesn\u0026rsquo;t get elected?  Or follow the pattern with Supreme Court justices, and pray for death?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/focus_on_the_family_pray_for_r.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 12, 2008):  Focus on the Family \u003ca href=\"http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/11/focus-action-pulls-video-asking-people-pray-rain-b/\"\u003ehas pulled the video from their site, claiming that it was all just a joke, as the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Focus on the Family: Pray for rain on Obama"},{"content":"Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico have published a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in which they hypothesize that patterns of behavior that promote exclusivity act as a response to disease transmission, including both religion and language. They looked at the average number of religions per country and how disease-ridden each country is, and found a positive correlation between number of parasitic diseases and number of religions. The number of religions per country studied ranged from 3 to 643, with an average of 31; the number of parasitic diseases ranged from 178 to 248, with an average of 200. They also found that people in countries with more religions and diseases were less mobile\u0026ndash;they moved shorter differences\u0026ndash;than countries with fewer religions and diseases.\nDoes this mean that religion is a response to disease, prompting people to keep to themselves and be less mobile, or does it mean that religion acts similarly to disease (prompting people to behave in that same way)?\n(Via The Economist, August 2, 2008, p. 83.)\nHistorical Comments workingsmart (2008-08-26):\nPositive Correlation by itself cannot show causation.There is a potentially infinite set of possible explanations for this correlation, the subset of posibilities that I see are:1) Multiple religions cause diseases. e.g. Perhaps differing human ritualistic behaviors allow different vectors to spread contagious diseases.2) There is an underlying factor not tested in the study. a. Perhaps the predisposition to immobility is caused by a gene that also increases susceptibility to parasitic disease. b. Perhaps increased mobility is associated with increased access to medical care and exposure to memes that are destructive of tribal religions, thereby reducing the number of religions in mobile areas.3) Lack of mobility causes disease.Besides these possibilities, the argument has a fault in that if patterns of exclusivity are a response to disease transmission then the response is not an effective response or else exclusive groups would have fewer and not more diseases. Therefore there isn't an evolutionary survival benefit to exclusivity. In fact, if the studies hypothesis were true, areas with more isolated groups would have less disease and not more.Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill have made a logical error in their interperetation of their results and have only shown that reduced mobility and greater number of locally exclusive groups is not an effective protection from disease.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/is-religion-response-to-disease.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCorey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico have published a report in the\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e Proceedings of the Royal Society\u003c/span\u003e in which they hypothesize that patterns of behavior that promote exclusivity act as a response to disease transmission, including both religion and language.  They looked at the average number of religions per country and how disease-ridden each country is, and found a positive correlation between number of parasitic diseases and number of religions.  The number of religions per country studied ranged from 3 to 643, with an average of 31; the number of parasitic diseases ranged from 178 to 248, with an average of 200.  They also found that people in countries with more religions and diseases were less mobile\u0026ndash;they moved shorter differences\u0026ndash;than countries with fewer religions and diseases.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoes this mean that religion is a response to disease, prompting people to keep to themselves and be less mobile, or does it mean that religion acts similarly to disease (prompting people to behave in that same way)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11839270\u0026amp;fsrc=RSS\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, August 2, 2008\u003c/a\u003e, p. 83.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is religion a response to disease?"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an interesting article in the August 2, 2008 issue of The Economist about \u0026ldquo;Cults of violence\u0026rdquo; in Nigeria. Campus \u0026ldquo;cults\u0026rdquo; have arisen in Nigeria\u0026rsquo;s university system that are something along the lines of a cross between a fraternity and a criminal gang. These \u0026ldquo;cults\u0026rdquo; have killed 115 students and teachers between 1993 and 2003, according to the Exam Ethics Project. The first such group, the Pyrates Confraternity, was founded by Wole Soyinka, a Nobel prizewinner in literature, in 1952 at the University of Ibadan. Subsequent groups had names like the Black Axe, the Vikings Confraternity, and the Klansmen Konfraternity. Members of these groups were originally elite students who have moved on to positions of authority in Nigeria. The groups charge membership fees, but members typically make the money back by performing actions for the group, such as acting on behalf of politicians connected to the group. Such actions of late have included harassment, violence, and murder. Rivers State University banned \u0026ldquo;cultism\u0026rdquo; in 2004, but since the groups are provided with cash and weapons by politicians, the ban has had little effect.\nUPDATE (December 2, 2021): This article in The Record (November 24, 2021) is of relevance: Olatunji Olaigbe, \u0026ldquo;How the pandemic pulled Nigerian university students into cybercrime.\u0026quot;\nHistorical Comments workingsmart (2008-08-26):\nI had never heard of anything like this before today. very interesting, if I believed in evil this would be included under the title.\ntempest (2010-11-29):\nfirstly, i don\u0026#39;t see a reason why prof. WOLE SOYINKA should alwasy b under attack for d actions of cultist in d high intitutions,out of every good things a bad is attached to it \u0026amp; its not his fault that things are d way they are. cultism in general was meant for young undergraduates to come together with a common purpose of success \u0026amp; higher achivement within \u0026amp; after their university. it is not d entire body of a particular cult that steals,rapes or perform any crime that its labeled with.most young people that carry out these crimes do them without the knowledge of the family or not even cultist but when caught hides under the banner of one. i was a member of d BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD AKA 22(apache aka black berets) in futo \u0026amp; graduated as of 08,till date i think its one of the best things that happend to me as an undergraduate. the government can never eradicate cultism, but they should try to reorientate these young undergraduates to use their position to help,challenge \u0026amp; advance our socities in positive ways because majority have the view of fraternty. what promted me to become a cultist was after saw d movie STOMP THE YARD,the government should help organise events \u0026amp; sbows that will challenge them \u0026amp; produce awinner openly because f tey are open,they are nolonger secret \u0026amp; dengerous. still remain a tiger in ODB,Apaches the night is ALWAYS DARK. DEVILS MAILBAG.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/nigerian-university-cults.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting article in the August 2, 2008 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e about \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11849078\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Cults of violence\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in Nigeria.  Campus \u0026ldquo;cults\u0026rdquo; have arisen in Nigeria\u0026rsquo;s university system that are something along the lines of a cross between a fraternity and a criminal gang.  These \u0026ldquo;cults\u0026rdquo; have killed 115 students and teachers between 1993 and 2003, according to the Exam Ethics Project.  The first such group, the Pyrates Confraternity, was founded by Wole Soyinka, a Nobel prizewinner in literature, in 1952 at the University of Ibadan.  Subsequent groups had names like the Black Axe, the Vikings Confraternity, and the Klansmen Konfraternity.  Members of these groups were originally elite students who have moved on to positions of authority in Nigeria.  The groups charge membership fees, but members typically make the money back by performing actions for the group, such as acting on behalf of politicians connected to the group.  Such actions of late have included harassment, violence, and murder.  Rivers State University banned \u0026ldquo;cultism\u0026rdquo; in 2004, but since the groups are provided with cash and weapons by politicians, the ban has had little effect.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (December 2, 2021): This article in \u003ci\u003eThe Record\u003c/i\u003e (November 24, 2021) is of relevance: Olatunji Olaigbe, \u003ca href=\"https://therecord.media/how-the-pandemic-pulled-nigerian-university-students-into-cybercrime/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How the pandemic pulled Nigerian university students into cybercrime.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nigerian university cults"},{"content":"Mississippi coroner Steven Hayne, whose incompetent and dishonest work has been exposed in numerous articles by Radley Balko at The Agitator, will be cut off from future work\u0026ndash;but only after he completes a backlog of 400-500 autopsies in the next 90 days. That\u0026rsquo;s more than double the number of annual autopsies per year per coroner according to the National Association of Medical Examiners, and he\u0026rsquo;s typically done 1,500 per year. The NAME says a coroner shouldn\u0026rsquo;t do more than 250 a year, and will not certify any coroner who does over 350 a year.\nBalko points out how inept and dishonest Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s government and newspapers have been in dealing with Hayne.\nMississippi is not a state I ever want to visit, let alone live in.\nUPDATE (September 7, 2008): Radley Balko has tracked down a file of complaints about Hayne going back to the early nineties which shows, among other things, that the government in Mississippi was well aware of what Hayne was doing, and used him because he gave them the results they wanted.\nUPDATE (September 10, 2008): Balko has an update to his September 7 post that corrects a statement about Dr. Emily Ward, Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s last official state medical examiner.\nEamon Knight (2008-08-11):\nMississippi is not a state I ever want to visit, let alone live in.Seems to me in this case, it's mostly that you wouldn't want to die there ;-).\nUnknown (2008-08-11):\nI lived in Mississippi for 4 years. I enjoyed my time there. I think you'd do well to not judge a state by the actions of one or a minority of people.\nLippard (2008-08-11):\nMy concern is with the minority of people who run the state government and the local media. The fact that Hayne was able to get away with what he did for decades is a clear demonstration of corruption on the part of government and ineptitude or lack of will on the part of the local media. The way the government has finally acted with respect to Hayne is further demonstration that the underlying problems are still present.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/bad-coroner-to-be-stopped-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMississippi coroner Steven Hayne, whose incompetent and dishonest work has been exposed in numerous articles by Radley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/05/mississippi-official-fires-hayne-then-praises-him/\"\u003ewill be cut off from future work\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;but only after he completes a backlog of 400-500 autopsies in the next 90 days.  That\u0026rsquo;s more than double the number of annual autopsies per year per coroner according to the National Association of Medical Examiners, and he\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/08/what-has-four-eyes-but-still-cant-see/\"\u003etypically done 1,500 per year\u003c/a\u003e.  The NAME says a coroner shouldn\u0026rsquo;t do more than 250 a year, and will not certify any coroner who does over 350 a year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBalko points out how inept and dishonest Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/06/mississippi-cya/\"\u003egovernment\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/08/what-has-four-eyes-but-still-cant-see/\"\u003enewspapers\u003c/a\u003e have been in dealing with Hayne.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMississippi is not a state I ever want to visit, let alone live in.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 7, 2008): Radley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/07/old-file-shows-problems-with-hayne-date-back-to-early-1990s/\"\u003ehas tracked down a file of complaints about Hayne going back to the early nineties\u003c/a\u003e which shows, among other things, that the government in Mississippi was well aware of what Hayne was doing, and used him because he gave them the results they wanted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 10, 2008): Balko has \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/09/09/correction-to-my-previous-post-on-dr-hayne/\"\u003ean update to his September 7 post that corrects a statement about Dr. Emily Ward, Mississippi\u0026rsquo;s last official state medical examiner\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad coroner to be stopped from performing Mississippi autopsies"},{"content":"Via The Agitator, here\u0026rsquo;s video from a Critical Mass event in New York City which compares what actually happened on the scene from multiple angles to what police officers wrote in their reports. I have no sympathy for people who violate traffic laws like running red lights (which happens near the beginning of the video) or behaving like five-year-olds (which happens near the end), but this video also shows people who are supposed to be public servants violating people\u0026rsquo;s rights and lying to make arrests on false pretenses. Officers like Sgt. Timothy Horohoe need to be not just fired, but criminally prosecuted.\nThe video asserts that Joyce Lin (the aforementioned person acting like a five-year-old) was within her rights to not produce identification and walk away, but this may not be true depending on New York law. Nevada has a law that requires suspects to identify themselves in certain conditions, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada (542 U.S. 177, 2004). If New York has a similar law, Lin was required to identify herself.\nUPDATE (December 17, 2008): A Critical Mass bicyclist knocked from his bike by an NYPD cop in a similar incident in July, caught on video and viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube has been cleared, and the cop indicted, stripped of his badge and gun, and assigned to desk duty. The NYPD officer in that case was Patrick Pogan. Sometimes flagrant police abuses do get punished, but it\u0026rsquo;s a pity they often have to be caught on video and seen widely for that to happen.\nUnknown (2008-08-20):\nNew York appears to work differently:\"Under New York law, an individual is seized if the police action results in a \"‘significant interruption [of the] individual's liberty of movement’\" (People v Bora, 83 NY2d 531, 534 [1994] quoting People v De Bour, 40 NY2d 210, 216 ). Not all encounters with the police amount to seizures. In People v De Bour, the Court of Appeals set out a four-tiered method for evaluating the propriety of encounters initiated by police officers in their criminal law enforcement capacity. The first level is referred to as a request for information and that request must be supported by an objective, credible reason, not necessarily indicative of criminality.\"http://vertumnus.courts.state.ny.us/claims/html/2006-011-513.html\nLippard (2008-08-20):\nMight not the mere fact that Critical Mass bicyclists had been running red lights be such an objective, credible reason? At which point fleeing from the officer without comment might constitute grounds for seizure?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/lying-nypd-cops.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/06/more-nypd-vs-bikers/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s video from a Critical Mass event in New York City which compares what actually happened on the scene from multiple angles to what police officers wrote in their reports.  I have no sympathy for people who violate traffic laws like running red lights (which happens near the beginning of the video) or behaving like five-year-olds (which happens near the end), but this video also shows people who are supposed to be public servants violating people\u0026rsquo;s rights and lying to make arrests on false pretenses.  Officers like Sgt. Timothy Horohoe need to be not just fired, but criminally prosecuted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe video asserts that Joyce Lin (the aforementioned person acting like a five-year-old) was within her rights to not produce identification and walk away, but this may not be true depending on New York law.  Nevada has a law that requires suspects to identify themselves in certain conditions, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiibel_v._Sixth_Judicial_District_Court_of_Nevada\"\u003eHiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada\u003c/a\u003e (542 U.S. 177, 2004).  If New York has a similar law, Lin was required to identify herself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 17, 2008): A Critical Mass bicyclist knocked from his bike by an NYPD cop in a similar incident in July, \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ\"\u003ecaught on video and viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube\u003c/a\u003e has been cleared, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,467426,00.html\"\u003ethe cop indicted, stripped of his badge and gun, and assigned to desk duty\u003c/a\u003e.  The NYPD officer in that case was Patrick Pogan.  Sometimes flagrant police abuses do get punished, but it\u0026rsquo;s a pity they often have to be caught on video and seen widely for that to happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-05969266326396916 visible ontop\" href=\"http://blip.tv/play/gZIVsKRHgpUe\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://blip.tv/play/gZIVsKRHgpUe\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"510\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lying NYPD cops"},{"content":"I received a letter in the mail from Chase Bank offering me a fee waiver on a mortgage refinance to \u0026ldquo;lower [my] monthly payments,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;to save interest,\u0026rdquo; and to \u0026ldquo;Save up to $1,000 in waived fees.\u0026quot;\nThe letter gives me two options for \u0026ldquo;a fixed-rate first mortgage tailored to fit [my] needs - and with a new low rate.\u0026rdquo; Option one is a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.13% (6.26% APR) with a payment of principal and interest that is described as giving me \u0026ldquo;monthly payment savings\u0026rdquo; of $178 and \u0026ldquo;total annual savings\u0026rdquo; of $2,132. Option two is a 10-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.63% (5.80% APR) that is described as giving me \u0026ldquo;total interest savings\u0026rdquo; of $12,817.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s just one problem with this. My current mortgage is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.25%. I currently make extra principal payments every month so I am paying more than what my new monthly payment would be for option two of their refinance offer, the 10-year fixed-rate mortgage.\nThis means that both option one and option two are losers\u0026ndash;neither will save me a cent. If I keep doing what I\u0026rsquo;m doing now, I\u0026rsquo;ll have my mortgage paid off in nine years, paying less in interest and in total than in either option one or option two. By choosing option one I could choose to pay less per month without being penalized (except due to the higher interest rate), but I\u0026rsquo;d pay significantly more over the term of the loan\u0026ndash;more than $50,000 more. By choosing option two, the \u0026ldquo;total interest savings\u0026rdquo; would only occur by comparison to my current loan if I were not making extra principal payments. But compared to what I\u0026rsquo;m actually doing, it again would cost a bit more (by a few thousand dollars), and I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have the flexibility of paying less in a given month if necessary that I have now with my current loan.\nIn short, Chase Bank has knowingly sent me an offer with two options that will cost me more money than my current loan, given how I am currently paying it off (and have been for as long as I\u0026rsquo;ve had the loan). But they\u0026rsquo;ve tried to describe them to me as though they will save me money, when they won\u0026rsquo;t.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t accept one of these offers unless you either need to (e.g., it will give you lower monthly payments and you\u0026rsquo;re struggling to make your current payments) or it will genuinely save you money in the long term (e.g., it has a lower interest rate that saves you more than any fees that may be rolled into the new loan).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/deceptive-mortgage-refinance-offer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI received a letter in the mail from Chase Bank offering me a fee waiver on a mortgage refinance to \u0026ldquo;lower [my] monthly payments,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;to save interest,\u0026rdquo; and to \u0026ldquo;Save up to $1,000 in waived fees.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe letter gives me two options for \u0026ldquo;a fixed-rate first mortgage tailored to fit [my] needs - and with a new low rate.\u0026rdquo;  Option one is a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.13% (6.26% APR) with a payment of principal and interest that is described as giving me \u0026ldquo;monthly payment savings\u0026rdquo; of $178 and \u0026ldquo;total annual savings\u0026rdquo; of $2,132.  Option two is a 10-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.63% (5.80% APR) that is described as giving me \u0026ldquo;total interest savings\u0026rdquo; of $12,817.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s just one problem with this.  My current mortgage is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.25%.  I currently make extra principal payments every month so I am paying more than what my new monthly payment would be for option two of their refinance offer, the 10-year fixed-rate mortgage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis means that both option one and option two are losers\u0026ndash;neither will save me a cent.  If I keep doing what I\u0026rsquo;m doing now, I\u0026rsquo;ll have my mortgage paid off in nine years, paying less in interest and in total than in either option one or option two.  By choosing option one I could choose to pay less per month without being penalized (except due to the higher interest rate), but I\u0026rsquo;d pay significantly more over the term of the loan\u0026ndash;more than $50,000 more.  By choosing option two, the \u0026ldquo;total interest savings\u0026rdquo; would only occur by comparison to my current loan if I were not making extra principal payments.  But compared to what I\u0026rsquo;m actually doing, it again would cost a bit more (by a few thousand dollars), and I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have the flexibility of paying less in a given month if necessary that I have now with my current loan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn short, Chase Bank has knowingly sent me an offer with two options that will cost me more money than my current loan, given how I am currently paying it off (and have been for as long as I\u0026rsquo;ve had the loan).  But they\u0026rsquo;ve tried to describe them to me as though they will save me money, when they won\u0026rsquo;t.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t accept one of these offers unless you either need to (e.g., it will give you lower monthly payments and you\u0026rsquo;re struggling to make your current payments) or it will genuinely save you money in the long term (e.g., it has a lower interest rate that saves you more than any fees that may be rolled into the new loan).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A deceptive mortgage refinance offer"},{"content":"Answers in Genesis (AiG) sent out a new letter to supporters dated July 23, 2008, and is distributing copies of court filings in the United States regarding their attempt to force Creation Ministries International (CMI) into arbitration and override the lawsuit CMI filed in Australia. An AiG supporter contacted me in email and sent me one of those documents, a motion that AiG filed in U.S. court arguing for arbitration (PDF). (Is there any significance to the fact that it is dated April 1, 2008?) He didn\u0026rsquo;t sent me the other documents, which include CMI\u0026rsquo;s reply to AiG\u0026rsquo;s motion, AiG\u0026rsquo;s response to CMI\u0026rsquo;s reply, and CMI\u0026rsquo;s argument filed with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to oppose AiG\u0026rsquo;s attempt to register \u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; as a trademark there. These documents are hosted at http://66.42.196.216:50050/arbitration.htm and each PDF has the password \u0026ldquo;john17\u0026rdquo;; my copy of the AiG motion PDF, linked above, has no password.\nThe AiG filing argues that CMI is the organization that has behaved unreasonably, that CMI has rebuffed attempts at reconciliation, and that Carl Wieland is the one who was trying to take over AiG internationally, not Ken Ham. It argues that the arbitration clauses in the agreement that CMI has issues with\u0026ndash;the one signed in October 2005 by the Australian organization\u0026rsquo;s directors who subsequently resigned en masse\u0026ndash;are the key applicable clauses. They may have a good legal case, but their overall story seems to me to be at odds with a number of the facts set forth in CMI\u0026rsquo;s detailed chronology of events (PDF). In that chronology, it was CMI that first attempted to argue for arbitration, while AiG ignored their attempts. CMI rejected the specific form and location of arbitration suggested by AiG, as that proposal required keeping the October 2005 agreement in place, when the content and manner in which that agreement was put into place is at the center of the dispute, and required that the arbitration occur in the U.S.\nPerhaps most significantly, AiG reneged on the verbal agreement that was reached in Hawaii, saying in writing that it is \u0026ldquo;off the table.\u0026rdquo; Instead, AiG says the parties agreed to return to Hawaii for another session if no written agreement was reached in a certain period of time\u0026ndash;while ignoring the fact that it has made no attempt to reach such written agreement, suggesting that its verbal commitment was not genuine.\nCMI has put up a new version of its web page of links to relevant documents, which includes the AiG July 23 letter from Don Landis and their response to it. Their main points of response to the Landis letter are to criticize it for omitting the following:\nAiG’s rejecting or ignoring every one of the straightforward models of Christian arbitration proposedThat their wanting to have the organisation of their choice arbitrate was only after we had made it plain that if there were no settlement discussions, or Christian arbitration, we had no choice but to launch legal action due to our lawful (hence biblical, cf Romans 13) duties as directors (to have the legal snare their lawyers’ actions had placed around our ministry’s neck removed).That our early settlement proposals involved being ready to walk away, with them being allowed to keep the overwhelming bulk of what they had seized. We did not at that stage even request that they do the right thing as far as the magazine subscribers that were deceived in the US were concerned, we just assumed that in due course their consciences would make that happen — it has not happened.That by AiG-US seeking to force Christian arbitration to happen in the USA, rather than the countries we offered in the course of the matter (Australia, NZ, Hong Kong, Singapore) it is to their great legal and commercial advantage; including forcing us to spend a great deal more money, despite being the smaller ministry that has suffered the losses in all of this.That the jurisdiction their infamous entrapment documents mentions is the courts of Australia, yet they sought to block accountability in those courts and Australian Christian arbitration.That the alleged ‘agreement to arbitrate’ they rely upon has nothing to do with their unlawful actions in relation to the magazine.Even more importantly, that a settlement agreement was reached at a formal settlement meeting in August 2007, in Hawaii, between all the parties. Though Ken Ham did not appear, although we were told he would, the verbal agreement was reached with formal representatives of both organisations, was sealed with a handshake and a gentleman’s agreement to get it all down on paper urgently and end the matter — but AiG sought to subsequently shift the goalposts and in essence reneged on their commitment. And have since officially stated in writing that the Hawaii agreement is ‘off the table’.That they used false pretences to cause our trademark to lapse in Canada, so that theirs could get off the ground, allowing them to immediately use AiG-Canada — see next bullet point about the deceptive confusion this would cause.That at the Hawaii meeting, there was general understanding of the reason why the AiG trademark (we have owned that trademark in Australia all along) was important to our safety, which is why they agreed in Hawaii to not use it for several years here and in Canada, for instance. It is not because of wanting to stifle ministry, it is because they had already tried to demand that we hand it over, and had started a widely publicised attempt to get Australian supporters to enlist with them instead. We have NO problem with fair competition, but the law is there to protect against deceptive use of a mark. Our documentation shows how we were forced by AiG to change our name, and if they had then come into Australia or Canada under the old name, people would have been misled into thinking that this was us. I.e. this ministry spent many years building up a reputation under the name AiG. We have said all along that once sufficient time passes, it makes perfect sense to hand over the name rights to AiG, once people realize that these are two different organisations. The same is true for Canada — if we did not act to protect the organisation that used to be called AiG there, their frequently demonstrated desire to destroy that fledgling ministry would have meant that they could do it great harm.A major point is that they freely agreed in Hawaii to these temporary restraints on their use of the trademark in those countries.There was supposed to be a court hearing in Australia yesterday, August 8\u0026ndash;I haven\u0026rsquo;t heard whether that occurred and, if it did, what happened, but I will report here when I do.\nUPDATE (August 10, 2008): There are now 25 documents on the Answers in Genesis site, and passwords are no longer required for most documents. I\u0026rsquo;ve only begun reviewing the documents beyond the first five.\nCourt Order of August 8 (Granting AiG\u0026rsquo;s petition to compel arbitration)\nAiG’s memo in support of compelling arbitrationCMI’s response to AiG’s MotionAiG’s reply to CMI’s response\nCMI’s Australian lawsuit against AiG and Ken HamCMI’s Canadian legal opposition against AiG\nAffidavit of John Thallon Thallon presents a case that Wieland wanted \u0026ldquo;democratic reform\u0026rdquo; that would give him more control of the overall organization and that the U.S. group was having issues with complaints from him, Gary Bates, and Jonathan Sarfati. This affidavit strikes me as an honest declaration of Thallon\u0026rsquo;s perceptions of the controversy (though possibly with some self-deception) and is probably a good indication of how AiG-US sees its position. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t comment on issues such as AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s reneging on the verbal agreement in Hawaii, the specific terms of the October 2005 agreement, or the way in which AiG-US was deceptive about the continuing availability of the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s publications to U.S. subscribers. There\u0026rsquo;s a funny account of how Wieland became upset by AiG-US making changes to an Australian-authored article, changing the correctly spelled \u0026ldquo;toe the line\u0026rdquo; to the incorrect \u0026ldquo;tow the line.\u0026rdquo; Thallon describes Wieland\u0026rsquo;s reaction as unreasonable, but I\u0026rsquo;m sympathetic\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s very annoying when an editor introduces an error into an article, without checking with the author. Thallon claims in this affidavit that he was not pressured into signing the October 2005 agreement, but this is not consistent with the Briese report, which says that (a) \u0026ldquo;In the presence and hearing of the other Board directors and Paul Salmon, Thallon told Wieland the Board had no choice in the matter. If they didn\u0026rsquo;t sign, he said, they faced a \u0026lsquo;hostile separation\u0026rsquo; from AiG-USA. (The Board was firmly against a separation of the ministries.)\u0026rdquo; and (b) \u0026ldquo;Subsequently, Dr John Hartnett, an associate professor and volunteer speaker for CMI, telephoned Thallon to get answers for what had happened. Thallon said words to the following effect: \u0026lsquo;We had no choice. If we didn\u0026rsquo;t sign, Ken Ham would not have bought the next issue of the magazine.\u0026rsquo; (There were approximately 35,000 US subscribers to the magazine and the journal.)\u0026rdquo; (Thanks to Kevin Henke for identifying this contradiction.)\nAffidavit of John E. Pence This affidavit, like the Thallon one, argues that Wieland was unhappy with Ham\u0026rsquo;s leadership of AiG-US and was asking for changes in the organizational structure that the U.S. group did not want to make. I think this declaration makes a strong case that the U.S. and Australian groups needed to go their separate ways. I like the claim that Creation magazine was seen as becoming \u0026ldquo;too technical\u0026rdquo; for U.S. readers. Pence argues that the magazine distribution issue was caused by Wieland refusing to provide proofs until after the U.S. group purchased the next issue, and they refused to do so for fear that there was something in the magazine designed to \u0026ldquo;harvest\u0026rdquo; information from U.S. subscribers, which there was\u0026ndash;but why would it be unreasonable for them to point U.S. readers to their new website if they wanted to renew subscriptions, since they rightly suspected the U.S. group was going to cut off distribution? In Wieland\u0026rsquo;s response, he points out that he had relented and agreed to provide the proofs before payment was made. This declaration, unlike Looy\u0026rsquo;s (below), enumerates specific statements by CMI that the author considers to be false and defamatory, such as that \u0026ldquo;AiG forced CMI to sign the MOA and DOCL, and that through such documents AiG took valuable property from CMI and attempted to take control over CMI\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;AiG discontinued purchasing and distributing Creation magazine in bad faith and for purposes of harming CMI.\u0026quot;\nExhibits 1-8 Exhibits 9-11 Exhibits 12-15 Exhibits 16-18 These exhibits include the report from the mediator in Hawaii, and letters from AiG and CMI\u0026rsquo;s attorneys about the settlement and arbitration process. The impression I get is that CMI, more than AiG, was an obstacle to the settlement. Exhibits 19-23 There are further documents here from AiG\u0026rsquo;s U.S. attorney and from CMI\u0026rsquo;s Australian attorney to AiG\u0026rsquo;s Australian firm\u0026ndash;again, these make CMI look like the bigger obstacle to settlement.Affidavit of Mark Looy\nLooy accuses CMI of false and defamatory statements, but fails to identify even one such statement.Affidavit of Walter Donald Landis Landis, chairman of the board of directors of AiG-US and lead pastor of Community Bible Church in Jackson, WY, speaks in generalities about the AiG/CMI disagreement, and makes accusations of falsehoods and defamation with little in the way of particulars to substantiate them. He says he wants to participate in any lawsuit, but due to health considerations (he had a heart bypass and prostate cancer, and has \u0026ldquo;severe anxiety concerning flying\u0026rdquo;), he can\u0026rsquo;t travel to Australia. Landis\u0026rsquo; affidavit gives me the impression that he\u0026rsquo;s a major ass.\nDeclaration of Kenneth Duncan MacDonald This declaration is from an Australian attorney who has served on multiple corporate boards as to the legitimacy of the October 2005 documents, the MOA and DOCL. He argues that, given the information he has and a few assumptions he enumerates, that these are validly executed documents.\nDeclaration of Simon Fisher Another Australian attorney and law professor, this one hired by CMI. He enumerates deficiencies in the MOA and DOCL, and argues that they result in making several provisions of the MOA unenforceable, and putting the status of the MOA as a whole in doubt. He argues that there were transfers from CMI to AiG in the agreement without remuneration and that the board did not appear to consider \u0026ldquo;the interests of its members as a whole when entering into the MOA and DOCL.\u0026rdquo; He also responds to specific arguments of MacDonald.\nDeclaration of Carl Wieland This document contains point-by-point responses to the declarations of Thallon, Pence, Looy, and Landis. There\u0026rsquo;s an error in paragraph 154 where it says \u0026ldquo;Don Landis Ham\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;I believe it means Landis, not Ham.\nExhibit 1 Exhibit 2 Exhibit 3 Exhibit 4 Exhibit 5 Exhibit 6 Exhibit 7 CMI AiG dispute historical docs This document is a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation that has been given by AiG about the dispute, with a lot of emphasis on Carl Wieland\u0026rsquo;s statements about and impressions of Ken Ham. The presentation seems to have the underlying assumption that Wieland\u0026rsquo;s impressions of Ham couldn\u0026rsquo;t possibly be accurate. It also has a slide that indicates that AiG-US was focused on biblical doctrine while the Australian group was focused on science (p. 32, compare to p. 30). An email shows Wieland chiding Ham for endorsing a book that makes arguments that was on their list of arguments that the groups recommended not be used (p. 36). This confirms my original impression of the schism that it partly involved this issue.\nleadsoldier (2008-08-14):\nHi Mr. Lippard,I want to thank you for the great detail you have provided here, even though it seems you don't favour creation movements (!).I personally am a believer, but in any case I thank you for the clarity and order you have provided here for anyone who wants to know what's going on.best Wishes\nLippard (2008-08-14):\nChuck:You're welcome, and you are correct. While I bought into young-earth creationism in my youth, I subsequently came to find that it is not supported by scientific evidence and indeed is strongly refuted by the evidence across many domains of science.But regardless of the facts of creationism, I think it's worth having an accurate recounting of the facts in this dispute between creationist organizations.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-18):\nThere is so much self-serving nonsense by Pence related to Creation magazine, and dutifully accepted by Thallon's muddled account.Some obvious questions come to mind:If Creation were really so unpopular in the US, why, when I would check out of curiosity, was it almost always the #1 best-seller in the AiG-US webstore's Top 10 list, as well as in the webstores of other countries? Many times, from memory, renewal of subscription would be in the top 10.If Creation were so unpopular, then why did AiG-US speakers Drs David Menton, TErry Mortenson and Jason Lisle, promote it with sincere praises (their older DVDs, once publicly available, prove this, and many people besides me could confirm this).Can one really trust their poll that justified AiG-US's bait-and-switch of subscribers? Watch Sir Humphrey Appleby explain to Bernard Woolley how you can get the result you want with the right poll questions (from the brilliant British political satire Yes Prime Minister).While Thallon thinks that Australia got a good deal from America's hosting the website, AiG admitted as recently as 2004 that most of the intellectual content came from the Australian publications they supposedly had to replace:\"To keep up with the latest creation views on the Oort cloud and other critical developments, go to the source! Creation and TJ are preeminent publications in the creation debate today, and the source of most of the information-packed (and in the case of TJ, in-depth) articles on our website—including all the AiG articles cited in this article!\" One must wonder how long this will last before it joins AiG's other disappearing content).Speaking of disappearing content, CMI has retained an AiG website poll ending 24 July 2005 (not long before the split)Total responses: 646What is your favorite type of AiG web article?Response Total % Media responses/news 227 35% [Many written by staff now with CMI)Feedback 165 26% (almost all by staff now with CMI)TJ/\"techie\" 107 17% Creation magazine 98 15% Personal interest 30 5% Book chapters 19 3% Another web poll of 31 July 2005 (also disappeared from AiG for some reason)Total responses: 1,079Do you subscribe to Creation magazine?Response Total % Yes 730 68% No 349 32% No wonder CMI is furious with Thallon and the other old board members for signing those nefarious agreements without the consultation they had promised. They were at best duped.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-18):\nMark Looy seems too lacking in objectivity to realize that he has shot himself in the foot by presenting the letter from RS:\"It is quite clear that you were wrong in how you changed our subscription from Creation to Answers magazine. I only found out recently that I could still get TJ or Creation. I originally thought Creation had simply changed names and format.\"If things continue this way with no explanation, I will not be able to receive Answers with a clear conscience or even support the ministry in the way I have in the past.\"This supports CMI's claim that supporters were misled. But apparently AiG is too narcissistic to take any blame for misleading them—it's all the fault of CMI for alerting them of the availability of the publications!\nKtisophilos (2008-08-19):\nHey, there is one glaring omission:Where is an affidavit or statement from Ken Ham??He is happy to let his minions or his puppet board do his dirty work for him, but is too gutless to put anything in writing himself that might come back to bite him. He also sent his minions to Hawaii but didn't front up himself.This of course contrasts with Carl Wieland who writes what he thinks, and fronts up to Hawaii.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/cmiaig-lawsuit-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnswers in Genesis (AiG) sent out \u003ca href=\"http://creationontheweb.com/www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5947\"\u003ea new letter to supporters dated July 23, 2008\u003c/a\u003e, and is distributing copies of court filings in the United States regarding their attempt to force Creation Ministries International (CMI) into arbitration and override the lawsuit CMI filed in Australia.  An AiG supporter contacted me in email and sent me one of those documents, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/AiG-Motion-US-2008.pdf\"\u003ea motion that AiG filed in U.S. court arguing for arbitration\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  (Is there any significance to the fact that it is dated April 1, 2008?)  He didn\u0026rsquo;t sent me the other documents, which include CMI\u0026rsquo;s reply to AiG\u0026rsquo;s motion, AiG\u0026rsquo;s response to CMI\u0026rsquo;s reply, and CMI\u0026rsquo;s argument filed with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to oppose AiG\u0026rsquo;s attempt to register \u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; as a trademark there.  These documents are hosted at \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/arbitration.htm\"\u003ehttp://66.42.196.216:50050/arbitration.htm\u003c/a\u003e and each PDF has the password \u0026ldquo;john17\u0026rdquo;; my copy of the AiG motion PDF, linked above, has no password.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe AiG filing argues that CMI is the organization that has behaved unreasonably, that CMI has rebuffed attempts at reconciliation, and that Carl Wieland is the one who was trying to take over AiG internationally, not Ken Ham.  It argues that the arbitration clauses in the agreement that CMI has issues with\u0026ndash;the one signed in October 2005 by the Australian organization\u0026rsquo;s directors who subsequently resigned en masse\u0026ndash;are the key applicable clauses.  They may have a good legal case, but their overall story seems to me to be at odds with a number of the facts set forth in CMI\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\"\u003edetailed chronology of events\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  In that chronology, it was CMI that first attempted to argue for arbitration, while AiG ignored their attempts.  CMI rejected the specific form and location of arbitration suggested by AiG, as that proposal required keeping the October 2005 agreement in place, when the content and manner in which that agreement was put into place is at the center of the dispute, and required that the arbitration occur in the U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps most significantly, AiG reneged on the verbal agreement that was reached in Hawaii, saying in writing that it is \u0026ldquo;off the table.\u0026rdquo;  Instead, AiG says the parties agreed to return to Hawaii for another session if no written agreement was reached in a certain period of time\u0026ndash;while ignoring the fact that it has made no attempt to reach such written agreement, suggesting that its verbal commitment was not genuine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI has put up \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5563/\"\u003ea new version of its web page of links to relevant documents\u003c/a\u003e, which includes \u003ca href=\"http://creationontheweb.com/www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5947\"\u003ethe AiG July 23 letter from Don Landis and their response to it\u003c/a\u003e.  Their main points of response to the Landis letter are to criticize it for omitting the following:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAiG’s rejecting or ignoring every one of the straightforward models of Christian arbitration proposed\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat their wanting to have the organisation of their choice arbitrate was only after we had made it plain that if there were no settlement discussions, or Christian arbitration, we had no choice but to launch legal action due to our lawful (hence biblical, cf Romans 13) duties as directors (to have the legal snare their lawyers’ actions had placed around our ministry’s neck removed).\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat our early settlement proposals involved being ready to walk away, with them being allowed to keep the overwhelming bulk of what they had seized. We did not at that stage even request that they do the right thing as far as the magazine subscribers that were deceived in the US were concerned, we just assumed that in due course their consciences would make that happen — it has not happened.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat by AiG-US seeking to force Christian arbitration to happen in the USA, rather than the countries we offered in the course of the matter (Australia, NZ, Hong Kong, Singapore) it is to their great legal and commercial advantage; including forcing us to spend a great deal more money, despite being the smaller ministry that has suffered the losses in all of this.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat the jurisdiction their infamous entrapment documents mentions is the courts of Australia, yet they sought to block accountability in those courts \u003cem\u003eand\u003c/em\u003e Australian Christian arbitration.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat the alleged ‘agreement to arbitrate’ they rely upon has nothing to do with their unlawful actions in relation to the magazine.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eEven more importantly, that a settlement agreement was reached at a formal settlement meeting in August 2007, in Hawaii, between all the parties. Though Ken Ham did not appear, although we were told he would, the verbal agreement was reached with formal representatives of both organisations, was sealed with a handshake and a gentleman’s agreement to get it all down on paper urgently and end the matter — but AiG sought to subsequently shift the goalposts and in essence reneged on their commitment. And have since officially stated in writing that the Hawaii agreement is ‘off the table’.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat they used false pretences to cause our trademark to lapse in Canada, so that theirs could get off the ground, allowing them to immediately use AiG-Canada — see next bullet point about the deceptive confusion this would cause.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThat at the Hawaii meeting, there was general understanding of the reason why the AiG trademark (we have owned that trademark in Australia all along) was important to our safety, which is why they agreed in Hawaii to not use it for several years here and in Canada, for instance. It is not because of wanting to stifle ministry, it is because they had already tried to demand that we hand it over, and had started a widely publicised attempt to get Australian supporters to enlist with them instead. We have NO problem with fair competition, but the law is there to protect against \u003cem\u003edeceptive\u003c/em\u003e use of a mark. Our documentation shows how we were forced by AiG to change our name, and if they had then come into Australia or Canada under the old name, people would have been misled into thinking that this was us. I.e. this ministry spent many years building up a reputation \u003cem\u003eunder the name AiG\u003c/em\u003e. We have said all along that once sufficient time passes, it makes perfect sense to hand over the name rights to AiG, once people realize that these are two different organisations. The same is true for Canada — if we did not act to protect the organisation that used to be called AiG there, their frequently demonstrated desire to destroy that fledgling ministry would have meant that they could do it great harm.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eA major point is that they freely agreed in Hawaii to these temporary restraints on their use of the trademark in those countries.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThere was supposed to be a court hearing in Australia yesterday, August 8\u0026ndash;I haven\u0026rsquo;t heard whether that occurred and, if it did, what happened, but I will report here when I do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 10, 2008): There are now 25 documents on the Answers in Genesis site, and passwords are no longer required for most documents.  I\u0026rsquo;ve only begun reviewing the documents beyond the first five.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/Court%20Order%20of%20Aug%2008%20Granting%20AiG%20position%20to%20compel%20arbitration.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCourt Order of August 8 (Granting AiG\u0026rsquo;s petition to compel arbitration)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.7%5D%20Memo%20in%20Support%20of%20Preliminary%20Injunction.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAiG’s memo in support of compelling arbitration\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.20%5D%20Resp%20to%20Mt.%20for%20Prelim%20Inj.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCMI’s response to AiG’s Motion\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.29%5D%20Reply%20in%20Support%20of%20MT%20for%20PI.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAiG’s reply to CMI’s response\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/statement-of-claim.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCMI’s Australian lawsuit against AiG and Ken Ham\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/ANSWERS%20IN%20GENESIS.PDF\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCMI’s Canadian legal opposition against AiG\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/Affidavit%20of%20John%20Thallon.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAffidavit of John Thallon\u003c/a\u003e Thallon presents a case that Wieland wanted \u0026ldquo;democratic reform\u0026rdquo; that would give him more control of the overall organization and that the U.S. group was having issues with complaints from him, Gary Bates, and Jonathan Sarfati.  This affidavit strikes me as an honest declaration of Thallon\u0026rsquo;s perceptions of the controversy (though possibly with some self-deception) and is probably a good indication of how AiG-US sees its position.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t comment on issues such as AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s reneging on the verbal agreement in Hawaii, the specific terms of the October 2005 agreement, or the way in which AiG-US was deceptive about the continuing availability of the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s publications to U.S. subscribers.  There\u0026rsquo;s a funny account of how Wieland became upset by AiG-US making changes to an Australian-authored article, changing the correctly spelled \u0026ldquo;toe the line\u0026rdquo; to the incorrect \u0026ldquo;tow the line.\u0026rdquo;  Thallon describes Wieland\u0026rsquo;s reaction as unreasonable, but I\u0026rsquo;m sympathetic\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s very annoying when an editor introduces an error into an article, without checking with the author.  Thallon claims in this affidavit that he was not pressured into signing the October 2005 agreement, but this is not consistent with the Briese report, which says that (a) \u0026ldquo;In the presence and hearing of the other Board directors and Paul Salmon, Thallon told Wieland the Board had no choice in the matter. If they didn\u0026rsquo;t sign, he said, they faced a \u0026lsquo;hostile separation\u0026rsquo; from AiG-USA. (The Board was firmly against a separation of the ministries.)\u0026rdquo; and (b) \u0026ldquo;Subsequently, Dr John Hartnett, an associate professor and volunteer speaker for CMI, telephoned Thallon to get answers for what had happened. Thallon said words to the following effect: \u0026lsquo;We had no choice. If we didn\u0026rsquo;t sign, Ken Ham would not have bought the next issue of the magazine.\u0026rsquo; (There were approximately 35,000 US subscribers to the magazine and the journal.)\u0026rdquo;  (Thanks to Kevin Henke for identifying this contradiction.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-4%5D%20Affidavit%20of%20John%20E.%20Pence.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAffidavit of John E. Pence\u003c/a\u003e This affidavit, like the Thallon one, argues that Wieland was unhappy with Ham\u0026rsquo;s leadership of AiG-US and was asking for changes in the organizational structure that the U.S. group did not want to make.  I think this declaration makes a strong case that the U.S. and Australian groups needed to go their separate ways.  I like the claim that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation\u003c/span\u003e magazine was seen as becoming \u0026ldquo;too technical\u0026rdquo; for U.S. readers.  Pence argues that the magazine distribution issue was caused by Wieland refusing to provide proofs until after the U.S. group purchased the next issue, and they refused to do so for fear that there was something in the magazine designed to \u0026ldquo;harvest\u0026rdquo; information from U.S. subscribers, which there was\u0026ndash;but why would it be unreasonable for them to point U.S. readers to their new website if they wanted to renew subscriptions, since they rightly suspected the U.S. group was going to cut off distribution?  In Wieland\u0026rsquo;s response, he points out that he had relented and agreed to provide the proofs before payment was made.  This declaration, unlike Looy\u0026rsquo;s (below), enumerates specific statements by CMI that the author considers to be false and defamatory, such as that \u0026ldquo;AiG forced CMI to sign the MOA and DOCL, and that through such documents AiG took valuable property from CMI and attempted to take control over CMI\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;AiG discontinued purchasing and distributing \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation\u003c/span\u003e magazine in bad faith and for purposes of harming CMI.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-5%5D%20Exhibits%201-8.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibits 1-8\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-6%5D%20Exhibits%209-11.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibits 9-11\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-7%5D%20Exhibits%2012-15.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibits 12-15\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-8%5D%20Exhibits%2016-18.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibits 16-18\u003c/a\u003e These exhibits include the report from the mediator in Hawaii, and letters from AiG and CMI\u0026rsquo;s attorneys about the settlement and arbitration process.  The impression I get is that CMI, more than AiG, was an obstacle to the settlement.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-9%5D%20Exhibits%2019-23..pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibits 19-23\u003c/a\u003e  There are further documents here from AiG\u0026rsquo;s U.S. attorney and from CMI\u0026rsquo;s Australian attorney to AiG\u0026rsquo;s Australian firm\u0026ndash;again, these make CMI look like the bigger obstacle to settlement.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/Aff%20of%20Mark%20Looy.pdf\"\u003eAffidavit of Mark Looy\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Looy accuses CMI of false and defamatory statements, but fails to identify even one such statement.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.5-3%5D%20Affidavit%20of%20Walter%20Donald%20Landis.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAffidavit of Walter Donald Landis\u003c/a\u003e Landis, chairman of the board of directors of AiG-US and lead pastor of Community Bible Church in Jackson, WY, speaks in generalities about the AiG/CMI disagreement, and makes accusations of falsehoods and defamation with little in the way of particulars to substantiate them.  He says he wants to participate in any lawsuit, but due to health considerations (he had a heart bypass and prostate cancer, and has \u0026ldquo;severe anxiety concerning flying\u0026rdquo;), he can\u0026rsquo;t travel to Australia.  Landis\u0026rsquo; affidavit gives me the impression that he\u0026rsquo;s a major ass.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.9.2%5D%20%20Declaration%20of%20Kenneth%20Duncan%20MacDonald..pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDeclaration of Kenneth Duncan MacDonald\u003c/a\u003e  This declaration is from an Australian attorney who has served on multiple corporate boards as to the legitimacy of the October 2005 documents, the MOA and DOCL.  He argues that, given the information he has and a few assumptions he enumerates, that these are validly executed documents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.23%5D%20Declaration%20of%20Simon%20Fisher.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDeclaration of Simon Fisher\u003c/a\u003e  Another Australian attorney and law professor, this one hired by CMI.  He enumerates deficiencies in the MOA and DOCL, and argues that they result in making several provisions of the MOA unenforceable, and putting the status of the MOA as a whole in doubt.  He argues that there were transfers from CMI to AiG in the agreement without remuneration and that the board did not appear to consider \u0026ldquo;the interests of its members as a whole when entering into the MOA and DOCL.\u0026rdquo;  He also responds to specific arguments of MacDonald.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24%5D%20Declaration%20of%20Carl%20Wieland.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDeclaration of Carl Wieland\u003c/a\u003e  This document contains point-by-point responses to the declarations of Thallon, Pence, Looy, and Landis.  There\u0026rsquo;s an error in paragraph 154 where it says \u0026ldquo;Don Landis Ham\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;I believe it means Landis, not Ham.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-2%5D%20Exhibit%201%20-%20Search%20Conducted%20May%2023,%202008.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 1 \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-3%5D%20Exhibit%202%20-%20Search%20Conducted%20May%2023,%202008.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 2 \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-4%5D%20Exhibit%203%20-%20Australian%20Claim%20and%20Statement%20of%20Claim.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 3 \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-5%5D%20Exhibit%204%20-%20Conditional%20Notice%20of%20Intention%20to%20Defend.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 4\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-6%5D%20Exhibit%205%20-%20Chronology%20of%20Events.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 5\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-7%5D%20Exhibit%206%20-%20Creation%20Magazine%20Distribution%20Agreement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 6 \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e    \u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/%5BD.24-8%5D%20Exhibit%207%20-%20July%2025,%202007%20Letter%20to%20Peter%20Reynolds.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eExhibit 7 \u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://66.42.196.216:50050/CMI%20AiG%20dispute%20historical%20docs.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCMI AiG dispute historical docs\u003c/a\u003e This document is a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation that has been given by AiG about the dispute, with a lot of emphasis on Carl Wieland\u0026rsquo;s statements about and impressions of Ken Ham.  The presentation seems to have the underlying assumption that Wieland\u0026rsquo;s impressions of Ham couldn\u0026rsquo;t possibly be accurate.  It also has a slide that indicates that AiG-US was focused on biblical doctrine while the Australian group was focused on science (p. 32, compare to p. 30).  An email shows Wieland chiding Ham for endorsing a book that makes arguments that was on their list of arguments that the groups recommended not be used (p. 36).  This confirms \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html\"\u003emy original impression of the schism that it partly involved this issue\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CMI/AiG lawsuit update"},{"content":"The Los Angeles Times reports:\nLong controversial for its aggressive evangelism aimed at those with a troubled past \u0026ndash; ex-convicts and drug addicts among them \u0026ndash; the Anaheim-based Christian motorcycle gang known as the Set Free Soldiers found itself in deeper trouble Wednesday when its leader and half a dozen members were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.\nThe arrests, which followed a double stabbing in a brawl with the Hells Angels at a Newport Beach bar July 27, was the latest brush with the law for the group of black-leather-clad bikers, which has straddled the line between Christian outreach group and outlaw motorcycle gang.I\u0026rsquo;ll add this one to my response to Beliefnet commenter Houghton, who seem to think that we should be more concerned about P.Z. Myers-inspired atheist violence.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/members-of-christian-biker-gang.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bikers7-2008aug07,0,2962846.story\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eLong controversial for its aggressive evangelism aimed at those with a troubled past \u0026ndash; ex-convicts and drug addicts among them \u0026ndash; the Anaheim-based Christian motorcycle gang known as the Set Free Soldiers found itself in deeper trouble Wednesday when its leader and half a dozen members were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe arrests, which followed a double stabbing in a brawl with the Hells Angels at a Newport Beach bar July 27, was the latest brush with the law for the group of black-leather-clad bikers, which has straddled the line between Christian outreach group and outlaw motorcycle gang.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll add this one to \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/rod-dreher-and-francis-beckwith.html\"\u003emy response to Beliefnet commenter Houghton\u003c/a\u003e, who seem to think that we should be more concerned about P.Z. Myers-inspired atheist violence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Members of Christian biker gang arrested on suspicion of attempted murder"},{"content":"A new peer-produced skeptical website, De-fact-o, has popped up to provide skeptical, fact-based evaluation of claims of history, politics, science, health, environment, religion, pop culture, conspiracy theories, questionable quotes, fake photos, and more. There\u0026rsquo;s a page per claim, and the claim is rated true, false, mostly false, probably false, or unknown. The site is reminiscent of (and not yet as comprehensive as) Snopes.com, but I hope to see it grow substantially with member-produced content.\nThe articles I\u0026rsquo;ve checked out appear to be well-done. Those who register on the site can comment on articles, vote on their accuracy, and write new ones, but unlike Wikipedia, approval from the site owners is required before new articles get posted. All articles on the site are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). I would have preferred a Creative Commons license, myself, due to some oddities of the GFDL (see the Wikipedia article on the GFDL, which is where the term is linked to from this paragraph).\nReed (2008-08-10):\nTheir article on the artificial sweetener Aspartame (sold commercially as Nutrasweet) causing cancer is interesting as it exhibits a blazing green \"TRUE\".Whoa, this is at odds with the articles I've read before which suggest \"NO EVIDENCE YET\".Putting aside the merits of any particular conclusion regarding the science, I have a larger question. To what extent can De-fact-o be trusted to be impartial on this or any other issue?The editors are unnamed. The article content is controlled exclusively by those editors. Changes to the articles aren't tracked, at least publicly.Contrast with the Wikipedia page on the Apartame Controversy which can be patrolled and corrected by parties on all sides of the issue and which has a visible 'talk page' to argue the merits of the content to be added to the article.ETA: fix poor wording\nLippard (2008-08-10):\nIt looks like they have taken some content from Wikipedia.As for aspartame and cancer, I'm willing to believe that \"true\" is not correct, but I don't think \"no evidence yet\" could possibly be correct, since the issue has been studied. There may not be sufficient evidence to draw a conclusion, but that's not the same as \"no evidence.\" The \"unknown\" category would be a better choice in such a case.I've sent an email to the contact address on the site asking who they are, whether they are formally incorporated anywhere, and whether they have a DMCA Agent. I raised the trust issue with them.In my opinion, they should set up a system that allows registered users to make changes that go live without approval, and to allow users to rate each other for reliability as well as rating pages.\nAnonymous (2008-08-11):\nThank you for your input on De-Fact-o.com Many of your suggestions were very well received and changes have been made to the site based on most of them. Aspartame has been shown to cause cancer in animals, which was why it received the TRUE label, but the title could be seen as misleading, so we've revised it to pertain to humans.Also, very few articles will be turned away. We primarily go through an approval process so that we do not get inappropriate content on the site. Thank you~De-Fact-o.com\nReed (2008-08-12):\nde-fact-o:Glad to see that you're taking our criticism as it was intended -- to be constructive.To get the most out of any newly-launched web effort, you might want to read Clay Shirky's recent book. He speaks at length about user's motivations to participate, where the trust in the content comes from, etc.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/de-fact-o.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA new peer-produced skeptical website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.de-fact-o.com/\"\u003eDe-fact-o\u003c/a\u003e, has popped up to provide skeptical, fact-based evaluation of claims of history, politics, science, health, environment, religion, pop culture, conspiracy theories, questionable quotes, fake photos, and more.  There\u0026rsquo;s a page per claim, and the claim is rated true, false, mostly false, probably false, or unknown.  The site is reminiscent of (and not yet as comprehensive as) \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/\"\u003eSnopes.com\u003c/a\u003e, but I hope to see it grow substantially with member-produced content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe articles I\u0026rsquo;ve checked out appear to be well-done.  Those who register on the site can comment on articles, vote on their accuracy, and write new ones, but unlike Wikipedia, approval from the site owners is required before new articles get posted.  All articles on the site are licensed under the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License\"\u003eGNU Free Documentation License\u003c/a\u003e (GFDL).    I would have preferred a Creative Commons license, myself, due to some oddities of the GFDL (see the Wikipedia article on the GFDL, which is where the term is linked to from this paragraph).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"De-fact-o"},{"content":"The FFRF billboards are going to start earlier than planned, and unfortunately the first one will be up on August 18, when I\u0026rsquo;ll be in Maryland.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the new schedule:\nBillboard #2501 Start Date: August 18 \u0026ndash; 19th Ave. and Fillmore\nBillboard #2005 Start Date: August 25 \u0026ndash; Jefferson and 13th St.\nBillboard #2911 Start Date: August 25 \u0026ndash; McDowell and 14th St.\nBillboard #1103 Start Date: September 1 \u0026ndash; 3rd Ave. and Van Buren\nBillboard #1245 Start Date: September 8 \u0026ndash; 7th St. and Coolidge\nEach billboard will be up for one month, so the billboards will be up from August 18 to October 8 instead of from September 1-October 1.\n(Previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/ffrf-billboard-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/ffrf-billboards-are-coming-to-phoenix.html\"\u003eFFRF billboards\u003c/a\u003e are going to start earlier than planned, and unfortunately the first one will be up on August 18, when I\u0026rsquo;ll be in Maryland.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the new schedule:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBillboard #2501 Start Date: August 18 \u0026ndash; 19th Ave. and Fillmore\u003cbr /\u003eBillboard #2005 Start Date: August 25 \u0026ndash; Jefferson and 13th St.\u003cbr /\u003eBillboard #2911 Start Date: August 25 \u0026ndash; McDowell and 14th St.\u003cbr /\u003eBillboard #1103 Start Date: September 1 \u0026ndash; 3rd Ave. and Van Buren\u003cbr /\u003eBillboard #1245 Start Date: September 8 \u0026ndash; 7th St. and Coolidge\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEach billboard will be up for one month, so the billboards will be up from August 18 to October 8 instead of from September 1-October 1.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/ffrf-billboards-are-coming-to-phoenix.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FFRF billboard update"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve received my copies of the Creation Ministries International DVD, \u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire,\u0026quot; a documentary about the 1988 Gish-Plimer debate in Australia that I was an interview subject for. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I was misrepresented, though the documentary doesn\u0026rsquo;t use everything I said (not that I expected it to).\nIt is one-sided in that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t critique Gish in any way, even though there is plenty of criticism to be made about Gish\u0026rsquo;s presentation as well as Plimer\u0026rsquo;s.\nThe documentary ends by pointing you to CMI\u0026rsquo;s website\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ll point you to the Talk.Origins website.\nUPDATE: This web page at the Talk.Origins website points out that Plimer was correct in his criticisms of Gish\u0026rsquo;s booklet. The ICR did finally update and correct that booklet around 1994, meaning they continued to sell a booklet which made false claims for nearly a decade after they knew that to be the case.\nUPDATE (January 1, 2009): You can see the \u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire\u0026rdquo; video yourself here.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-04):\nPlimer has just written a book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science:\"The hypothesis that humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy. The hypothesis is rejected.\"A new ignorance fills the yawning spiritual gap in Western society. Climate change politics is religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. Its triumph is computer models unrelated to observations in nature. There has been no critical due diligence of the science of climate change, dogma dominates, sceptics are pilloried and 17th Century thinking promotes prophets of doom, guilt and penance.\"Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic as well as the EU, 2009 gives it a glowing recommendation:\"He also convincingly criticizes the UN, the IPCC, UK and US politicians as well as “Hollywood show business celebrities”. He strictly distinguishes science and environmental activism, politics and opportunism. The book I wrote two years ago “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” comes to very similar conclusions but I have to say that if I’d had a chance to read Professor Plimer’s book, my book would have been better.\"\nLippard (2009-02-04):\nHas the quality of his criticism improved?Tim Lambert at the Deltoid blog has occasionally raked Plimer over the coals for misrepresentations about climate change.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/facing-fire.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve received my copies of the Creation Ministries International DVD, \u003ca href=\"https://store.creationontheweb.com/au/product_info.php?products_id=691\u0026amp;osCsid=79a7a986af3836cdbc0f8920f3d9c9bd\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a documentary about the 1988 Gish-Plimer debate in Australia that \u003ca href = \"/2008/04/filmed-for-creationist-dvd.html\"\u003eI was an interview subject for\u003c/a\u003e.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think I was misrepresented, though the documentary doesn\u0026rsquo;t use everything I said (not that I expected it to).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is one-sided in that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t critique Gish in any way, even though \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/gishwadjak.html\"\u003ethere\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-rutgers/spin-doctor.html\"\u003eis\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html\"\u003eplenty\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticfiles.org/evolut/bfrog2.htm\"\u003eof\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/gish.html\"\u003ecriticism\u003c/a\u003e to be made about Gish\u0026rsquo;s presentation as well as Plimer\u0026rsquo;s.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe documentary ends by pointing you to CMI\u0026rsquo;s website\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ll point you to \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003ethe Talk.Origins website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-exposed.html\"\u003eThis web page at the Talk.Origins website\u003c/a\u003e points out that Plimer was correct in his criticisms of Gish\u0026rsquo;s booklet.  The ICR did finally update and correct that booklet around 1994, meaning they continued to sell a booklet which made false claims for nearly a decade after they knew that to be the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 1, 2009): You can see the \u0026ldquo;Facing the Fire\u0026rdquo; video yourself \u003cA HREF = \"/2009/01/facing-fire-creationist-video.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Facing the Fire"},{"content":"The Smoking Gun has a collection of documents about the government\u0026rsquo;s case against suicidal government bioweapons researcher Bruce Ivins that is fascinating. Apparently he engaged in an \u0026ldquo;edit war\u0026rdquo; on the Wikipedia entry for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (which my mother belonged to). He regularly posted negative information there, and became angry when it was deleted. He claimed that KKG had labeled him an \u0026ldquo;enemy\u0026rdquo; and issued a \u0026ldquo;fatwah\u0026rdquo; against him, and he broke into a KKG sorority house to steal a KKG handbook during his postdoc fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill.\nThe documents also show ties between Ivins and the American Family Affiliation, a conservative Christian group known for threatening boycotts against companies that do things like support gay rights, and with pro-life groups.\nHe was a regular user of pseudonyms and multiple email addresses.\nThe documents show that he was clearly a very disturbed individual.\n(Previously.)\nUPDATE (August 9, 2008): Ivins\u0026rsquo; coworker Meryl Nass lays out the case for reasonable doubt about Ivins\u0026rsquo; involvement at her blog.\nHume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost points out in the comments that the anthrax attacks were used to help justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the anthrax apparently originated there. One of the Glenn Greenwald articles Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost alludes to, about false claims that the anthrax contained bentonite which tied it to Iraq, may be found here. A nice quote from that article:\nCritically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks \u0026ndash; every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks \u0026ndash; persisted. We now know \u0026ndash; we knew even before news of Ivins\u0026rsquo; suicide last night, and know especially in light of it \u0026ndash; that the anthrax attacks didn\u0026rsquo;t come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government\u0026rsquo;s scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government \u0026ndash; from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves. Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role \u0026ndash; I\u0026rsquo;d argue a very major role \u0026ndash; in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue \u0026ndash; including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework \u0026ndash; were justified and even necessary in order to survive. ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and \u0026ndash; as importantly \u0026ndash; to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They\u0026rsquo;re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later. They\u0026rsquo;re not protecting \u0026ldquo;sources.\u0026rdquo; The people who fed them the bentonite story aren\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;sources.\u0026rdquo; They\u0026rsquo;re fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far. Greenwald goes on, in a series of updates, to point out that several of the pieces of evidence of Ivins\u0026rsquo; unusual behavior that is now pointed to as evidence of his guilt were already published in newspapers in 2004.\nIn a followup, Greenwald writes about whether journalists should expose sources who lie to them. I think I good case can be made that they should, in cases where the source is lying as opposed to being used as a dupe, and the journalist has good evidence to that effect. Being exposed for such lies would act as a disincentive for such lying to take place.\nUPDATE (July 30, 2009): The New York Times reports that the National Academy of Sciences has assembled a 15-member panel to review the scientific work done by the FBI to identify Ivins as the culprit. The process is expected to take a year and a half to complete.\nUPDATE (November 27, 2009): Glenn Greenwald argues that the case on Ivins shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be closed, and cites various mainstream sources that agree.\nEamon Knight (2008-08-08):\n....which doesn't mean he was guilty, of course: he might just have become a target because we was weird.OTOH, the more I hear anout him, the more I think he might very well be the perp. We may never know for sure.\nLippard (2008-08-08):\nI think the four genetic markers that show that the strain of weaponized anthrax that was mailed out came out of a single flask under Ivins' control is the most damning evidence.If it wasn't him, it was somebody else who had access to his lab.\nEamon Knight (2008-08-08):\nAh, I hadn't heard about that part. I think the first thing I heard was an interview with his lawyer claiming, no he didn't have the required expertise or access etc, etc. So I'm sort of working my way back from that as a starting point.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-09):\nGlenn Greenwald has been doing extensive blogging about the anthrax attacks. He's been particularly focused on who the sources were that told Brian Ross of ABC News that the anthrax came from Iraq. Give the role Ross's reporting played in misleading America into a disastrous war, you would think he'd be less sanguine about it.\nLippard (2008-08-09):\nEamon:Apparently although the vial in question belonged to Ivins, there were \"as many as 100 people\" who might have had access to it, according to Ivins' coworker Meryl Nass, as reported by Farhad Manjoo at Slate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/case-against-bruce-ivins.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Smoking Gun \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0806081anthrax1.html\"\u003ehas a collection of documents about the government\u0026rsquo;s case against suicidal government bioweapons researcher Bruce Ivins\u003c/a\u003e that is fascinating.  Apparently he engaged in an \u0026ldquo;edit war\u0026rdquo; on the Wikipedia entry for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (which my mother belonged to).  He regularly posted negative information there, and became angry when it was deleted.  He claimed that KKG had labeled him an \u0026ldquo;enemy\u0026rdquo; and issued a \u0026ldquo;fatwah\u0026rdquo; against him, and he broke into a KKG sorority house to steal a KKG handbook during his postdoc fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe documents also show ties between Ivins and the American Family Affiliation, a conservative Christian group known for threatening boycotts against companies that do things like support gay rights, and with pro-life groups.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe was a regular user of pseudonyms and multiple email addresses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe documents show that he was clearly a very disturbed individual.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/prosecution-target-for-anthrax-attacks.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 9, 2008): Ivins\u0026rsquo; coworker Meryl Nass lays out the case for reasonable doubt about Ivins\u0026rsquo; involvement \u003ca href=\"http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2008/08/beyond-reasonable-doubt.html\"\u003eat her blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost points out in the comments that the anthrax attacks were used to help justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the anthrax apparently originated there.  One of the Glenn Greenwald articles Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost alludes to, about false claims that the anthrax contained bentonite which tied it to Iraq, may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  A nice quote from that article:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Case Against Bruce Ivins"},{"content":"Radley Balko points out an article on the Answers in Genesis website (dating to before its split with Creation Ministries International) by CMI head Carl Wieland and Don Batten interviewing Christian \u0026ldquo;physicist of medicine\u0026rdquo; Saami Shaibani, and observes that this individual is a phony who has lied about his credentials and academic affiliation when testifying as an expert witness in several trials. He claimed to be a clinical associate professor at Temple University, when he was not.\nThis is not the first time that creationist organizations have promoted individuals with phony credentials (see Dmitri Kouznetsov), and I\u0026rsquo;m sure it won\u0026rsquo;t be the last. Will AiG and CMI point out that they\u0026rsquo;ve been duped again?\nI pointed out issues with Saami Shaibani to CMI in October 2003, to which they responded that they were satisfied that he has the degrees he claimed\u0026ndash;though they agreed to some concern about his claiming a false affiliation. I sent them multiple sources including this CourtTV link and three other newspaper links that are now dead links.\nShaibani gets some terrible ratings as a teacher for his alleged repeated assertions that the United States sucks and England is wonderful.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/lying-for-jesus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/07/lying-for-jesus/\"\u003eRadley Balko\u003c/a\u003e points out \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i1/shaibani.asp\"\u003ean article on the Answers in Genesis website\u003c/a\u003e (dating to before its split with Creation Ministries International) by CMI head Carl Wieland and Don Batten interviewing Christian \u0026ldquo;physicist of medicine\u0026rdquo; Saami Shaibani, and observes that \u003ca href=\"http://www.examiner.com/a-1482603%7ECourt_orders_comparison_of_cases_involving_expert_witness.html\"\u003ethis individual is a phony who has lied about his credentials and academic affiliation when testifying as an expert witness in several trials\u003c/a\u003e.  He claimed to be a clinical associate professor at Temple University, when he was not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not the first time that creationist organizations have promoted individuals with phony credentials (see \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kouznetsov.html\"\u003eDmitri Kouznetsov\u003c/a\u003e), and I\u0026rsquo;m sure it won\u0026rsquo;t be the last.  Will AiG and CMI point out that they\u0026rsquo;ve been duped again?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI pointed out issues with Saami Shaibani to CMI in October 2003, to which they responded that they were satisfied that he has the degrees he claimed\u0026ndash;though they agreed to some concern about his claiming a false affiliation.  I sent them multiple sources including \u003ca href=\"http://www.courttv.com/trials/novelist/092603_ctv.html\"\u003ethis CourtTV link\u003c/a\u003e and three other newspaper links that are now dead links.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShaibani gets \u003ca href=\"http://www.ratevtteachers.com/detail.asp?id=2388\"\u003esome terrible ratings as a teacher for his alleged repeated assertions that the United States sucks and England is wonderful\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lying for Jesus"},{"content":"In yet another absurd drug raid, a Prince George\u0026rsquo;s County special operations team busted down the doors of the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and shot his two dogs dead. This case was part of a scheme where drugs were being sent to homes of innocent people and then intercepted. Maryland does not allow no-knock warrants, but the authorities who entered Calvo\u0026rsquo;s home did not knock and refused to show a warrant when asked for one. The police expressed regret, but no apologies, for killing the mayor\u0026rsquo;s dogs.\nThe militarization of U.S. police, their completely inappropriate tactics in drug raids, and their repeated killing of dogs all need to stop.\nRadley Balko at The Agitator has documented countless cases of such abusive actions, yet police are almost never held accountable for their actions. Perhaps in this case, since it involves a city mayor, someone will be held accountable. But I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hold my breath.\nUPDATE (August 10, 2008): The police in this case claimed that they don\u0026rsquo;t have a standard practice of shooting dogs, but Balko shows that this case is far from unique in that respect.\nCalvo has spoken publicly about this raid and the fact that it is far from unique, except that in this case it was against the home of a mayor.\nHistorical Comments Jonny Suavo (2008-08-08):\nRight on! Live it and learn it! For the people reading this! Freedom is a PRIVILEGE that you must continually fight for to keep. If you really want to begin to stop the erosion of our rights SPEAK OUT. Write the;Police Chief of Prince Georges CountySheriff of Prince Georges CountyCounty Board of SupervisorsGovernor EhrlichMaryland Senate President MillerHouse Speaker BuschUS Maryland Senator Mikulski and CardinYour local, state and federal government.SPCAIt is important that we hold those that we place our safety in accountable for their role in providing that safety.I believe that in time, this event will turn into one of the most despicable and notorious stories of our present memory. Certainly the largest tragedy is the killing of two innocent bystanders. We put Michael Vick in jail for murdering canines. I think that should weigh in on everyone's mind that one of our most fabled animal friends of Man's world is now on the chopping blocks. How far behind is a human?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/swat-team-kills-mayors-dogs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn yet another absurd drug raid, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/07/mayor.warrant/index.html\"\u003ea Prince George\u0026rsquo;s County special operations team busted down the doors of the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and shot his two dogs dead\u003c/a\u003e.  This case was part of a scheme where drugs were being sent to homes of innocent people and then intercepted.  Maryland does not allow no-knock warrants, but the authorities who entered Calvo\u0026rsquo;s home did not knock and refused to show a warrant when asked for one.  The police expressed regret, but no apologies, for killing the mayor\u0026rsquo;s dogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe militarization of U.S. police, their completely inappropriate tactics in drug raids, and their repeated killing of dogs all need to stop.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRadley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/08/the-berwyn-heights-drug-raid-the-police-keep-digging/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e has documented countless cases of such abusive actions, yet police are almost never held accountable for their actions.  Perhaps in this case, since it involves a city mayor, someone will be held accountable.  But I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hold my breath.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 10, 2008): The police in this case claimed that they don\u0026rsquo;t have a standard practice of shooting dogs, but Balko shows that \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/10/puppycide-in-prince-georges-county/\"\u003ethis case is far from unique in that respect\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCalvo \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/10/cheye-calvo-gets-it/\"\u003ehas spoken publicly about this raid and the fact that it is far from unique, except that in this case it was against the home of a mayor\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SWAT team kills mayor's dogs"},{"content":"Bad timing for this ad campaign. I suppose Greyhound will be looking for a new ad agency?\nEinzige (2008-08-07):\nHoly Christ!What would inspire a person to such heights of sheer insanity?What's the new ad campaign going to be?\"Greyhound. We drive you insane.\"\nEamon Knight (2008-08-08):\nEinzige:That campaign was already running. Greyhound seems to be pulling the posters as fast as they can find them.Now PETA's new campaign, OTOH....\nLippard (2008-08-08):\nFor anybody who hasn't heard of it, the new PETA ad says \"An innocent young victim's throat is cut\" and \"The man with the knife shows no emotion,\" referring to slaughtering animals. They wanted to run it in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic, a Canadian newspaper that refused the ad. You can see the ad here.I find PETA very annoying in that they kill animals for no reason--they euthanize nearly every animal that comes into their hands (97% of them), even if they are adoptable animals. (Isn't it better to kill animals for food, clothing, and medical research than for *no reason at all*?) They're pretty clever about getting free publicity with their over-the-top ad campaigns, though.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/theres-reason-youve-never-heard-of-bus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBad timing for \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/consumer/articles/2008/08/06/20080806biz-grayhoundad06-ON.html\"\u003ethis ad campaign\u003c/a\u003e.  I suppose Greyhound will be looking for a new ad agency?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-08-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHoly Christ!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhat would inspire a person to such heights of sheer insanity?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhat's the new ad campaign going to be?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\"Greyhound. We drive you insane.\"\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-08-08)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eEinzige:\u003cBR/\u003eThat campaign was already running. Greyhound seems to be pulling the posters as fast as they can find them.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eNow PETA's new campaign, OTOH....\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There's a reason you've never heard of \"bus rage.\""},{"content":"Rod Dreher wrote a column on the Beliefnet blog titled \u0026ldquo;P.Z. Myers hates Christians exclusively,\u0026quot; in ignorance of the fact that his desecration of a consecrated host also included pages from the Koran and from Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; The God Delusion. I think it\u0026rsquo;s fair to criticize Myers for being too easy on the Muslims who have reacted with violence for the Mohammed cartoons, but to say that he \u0026ldquo;hates Christians exclusively\u0026rdquo; is a gross misrepresentation of his views.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve responded to a couple of comments at the blog, which is full of comments from blinkered hypocrites who fail to recognize the beams in their own eyes:\nHoughton writes (July 14, 2008 3:08 PM): \u0026ldquo;Those who think of themselves as \u0026ldquo;brights\u0026rdquo; will now start behaving in increasingly nakedly aggressive ways in America and the rest of the West. There won\u0026rsquo;t be a need to \u0026ldquo;spiritualize\u0026rdquo; at that point, because the snarling rage and violent attacks we\u0026rsquo;ll witness will be quite open for all to see.\u0026quot;\nBut it\u0026rsquo;s not Myers who has promoted violence or criminal activity, it\u0026rsquo;s the Catholics who have been sending him death threats and threats of violence against his children, yet where is your condemnation of that?\nA \u0026ldquo;Fr. J\u0026rdquo;, posting at Pharyngula, made a similar remark to the above, and tried to claim that the recent attempted attack on a Christian radio station on College Station, PA was by an atheist\u0026ndash;when in fact the man was a mentally ill Christian off his meds. And the FBI\u0026rsquo;s primary suspect for the 2001 anthrax attacks who just killed himself was a Catholic. Back in 2006, a conservative Christian was arrested in Los Angeles for sending threats and fake anthrax.\nFrancis Beckwith commented (July 15, 2008 11:36 AM): \u0026ldquo;According to PZ, Catholic outrage is unwarranted, but Muslim outrage is, though the latter hurt their cause because they resort to violence. Muslims are portrayed as victims, albeit irrational and misguided, who harm their cause by overreacting. Catholics are told by PZ to remain completely silent and speak only when spoken to as they sit in the back of the secular bus.\u0026quot;\nWhere has P.Z. Myers criticized Catholics for being outraged, as opposed to criticizing them for issuing death threats, threatening the lives of his children, trying to get him fired from his job, trying to get Webster Cook and his friend expelled from the University of Central Florida, and for saying things that are idiotic, like the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy\u0026rsquo;s laughably absurd statement about the meaning of the First Amendment. You should give that statement a read.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/rod-dreher-and-francis-beckwith.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRod Dreher wrote \u003ca href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/07/pz_myers_hates_christians_excl_comments.html\"\u003ea column on the Beliefnet blog titled \u0026ldquo;P.Z. Myers hates Christians exclusively,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e in ignorance of the fact that \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/pz-myers-has-desecrated-cracker.html\"\u003ehis desecration of a consecrated host\u003c/a\u003e also included pages from the Koran and from Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe God Delusion\u003c/span\u003e.  I think it\u0026rsquo;s fair to criticize Myers for being too easy on the Muslims who have reacted with violence for the Mohammed cartoons, but to say that he \u0026ldquo;hates Christians exclusively\u0026rdquo; is a gross misrepresentation of his views.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve responded to a couple of comments at the blog, which is full of comments from blinkered hypocrites who fail to recognize the beams in their own eyes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHoughton writes (July 14, 2008  3:08 PM): \u0026ldquo;Those who think of themselves as \u0026ldquo;brights\u0026rdquo; will now start behaving in increasingly nakedly aggressive ways in America and the rest of the West. There won\u0026rsquo;t be a need to \u0026ldquo;spiritualize\u0026rdquo; at that point, because the snarling rage and violent attacks we\u0026rsquo;ll witness will be quite open for all to see.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut it\u0026rsquo;s not Myers who has promoted violence or criminal activity, it\u0026rsquo;s the Catholics who have been sending him death threats and threats of violence against his children, yet where is your condemnation of that?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u0026ldquo;Fr. J\u0026rdquo;, posting at Pharyngula, made a similar remark to the above, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/write_to_ucf.php#comment-1013535\"\u003etried to claim that the recent attempted attack on a Christian radio station on College Station, PA was by an atheist\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;when in fact \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/write_to_ucf.php#comment-1013577\"\u003ethe man was a mentally ill Christian off his meds\u003c/a\u003e.  And \u003ca href=\"/2008/08/prosecution-target-for-anthrax-attacks.html\"\u003ethe FBI\u0026rsquo;s primary suspect for the 2001 anthrax attacks who just killed himself was a Catholic\u003c/a\u003e.  Back in 2006, \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/christian-conservative-arrested-for.html\"\u003ea conservative Christian was arrested in Los Angeles for sending threats and fake anthrax\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrancis Beckwith commented (July 15, 2008 11:36 AM): \u0026ldquo;According to PZ, Catholic outrage is unwarranted, but Muslim outrage is, though the latter hurt their cause because they resort to violence. Muslims are portrayed as victims, albeit irrational and misguided, who harm their cause by overreacting. Catholics are told by PZ to remain completely silent and speak only when spoken to as they sit in the back of the secular bus.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhere has P.Z. Myers criticized Catholics for being outraged, as opposed to criticizing them for issuing death threats, threatening the lives of his children, trying to get him fired from his job, trying to get Webster Cook and his friend expelled from the University of Central Florida, and for saying things that are idiotic, like \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/pz-myers-has-desecrated-cracker.html\"\u003ethe Confraternity of Catholic Clergy\u0026rsquo;s laughably absurd statement about the meaning of the First Amendment\u003c/a\u003e.  You should give that statement a read.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rod Dreher and Francis Beckwith misrepresent P.Z. Myers"},{"content":"White House officials pressured the FBI to blame the 2001 anthrax attacks on al Qaeda, even after it was already known that the anthrax was a strain that came from U.S. Army laboratories, according to a retired senior FBI official.\nJust another example of Bush administration deception.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-08-06):\nSeen this yet?The bit about Suskind's research assistant getting detained is interesting. After his first book about Bush, the book's main subject Paul O'Neal was investigated for breaking the law (he was cleared.) I forgot to make note of it in my post, but we do already know that this administration has stepped up its surveillance effforts of journalists when it comes to pursuing leaks - which is precisely what Suskind is good at getting ... as indicated by the absolute jaw-dropper in the link.I also watched Suskind on Olbermann this evening. Two of his sources have come out saying they didn't tell Suskind what they told him, but he kind of laughed that off because he says he has the taped conversations.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-06):\nPaul O'Neal was investigated for illegally leaking info, I should say.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/bush-pressured-fbi-to-blame-anthrax-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhite House officials \u003ca href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/08/02/2008-08-02_fbi_was_told_to_blame_anthrax_scare_on_a.html\"\u003epressured the FBI to blame the 2001 anthrax attacks on al Qaeda\u003c/a\u003e, even after it was already known that the anthrax was a strain that came from U.S. Army laboratories, according to a retired senior FBI official.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust another example of Bush administration deception.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-08-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSeen \u003cA HREF=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/08/slam-dunk-case-for-impeachment.html\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ethis\u003c/A\u003e yet?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThe bit about Suskind's research assistant getting detained is interesting. After his first book about Bush, the book's main subject Paul O'Neal was investigated for breaking the law (he was cleared.) I forgot to make note of it in my post, but we do already know that this administration has stepped up its surveillance effforts of journalists when it comes to pursuing leaks - which is precisely what Suskind is good at getting ... as indicated by the absolute jaw-dropper in the link.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI also watched Suskind on Olbermann this evening. Two of his sources have come out saying they didn't tell Suskind what they told him, but he kind of laughed that off because he says he has the taped conversations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush pressured FBI to blame anthrax on al Qaeda"},{"content":"\nShelby was a puppy from my sister\u0026rsquo;s dog Sheba, a Queensland Heeler/Border Collie mix. We don\u0026rsquo;t know who the father was, but Shelby had a black tongue and seemed to have some Chow in her. She was born on February 7, 1997, and I adopted her a few months later. She was a smart dog\u0026ndash;I took her to obedience training at six months, and she picked up the basics and retained them her whole life, though often when she wanted a treat she would go through the whole routine instead of responding to the specific command given. She had a strong herding instinct, and acted to police the behavior of other dogs.\nIn her early years her constant companion was my Shih-Tzu, Blossom, who I adopted from Shih-Tzu rescue in late 1996. Blossom was the top dog despite her smaller size, and the two of them would frequently wrestle and play. Shelby loved to go for walks or runs\u0026ndash;I think she would be happy to run continuously until she dropped from exhaustion, given the opportunity. My father adopted her brother, Fox, and we\u0026rsquo;d occasionally take the two of them to hike on the trails at Squaw Peak. She had serious separation anxiety for the first few years, and I\u0026rsquo;d often come home from work to find the couch cushions on the floor with stuffing ripped out of them. I used to leave the doggie door open back then, and I remember one time I came home to find the backyard strewn with tiny fragments of foam from the inside of Blossom\u0026rsquo;s bed. It took me a couple days to get them all picked up. Fortunately, she grew out of this habit and the only messes she made in subsequent years were when she learned to knock over the kitchen garbage cans or when some food items like a loaf of bread were left to close to the edge of the counter.\nIn August of 2001 I moved to a new house with a very large backyard and a fence around the entire property, including a gated driveway. I had a doggie door put in, and again used to leave it open. On August 11, I spent the night away from home, with the doggie door open, and on my way home received a call on my cell phone from a woman who said she had found my dog in the road in front of my house and had put her in a plastic bag by the gate. When I got home I found that there was a missing iron bar on the front gate that made a hole that Blossom had gotten through, and just outside of the gate was Shelby\u0026rsquo;s collar. Shelby had apparently tried to get through the hole to follow Blossom, but was unable to fit, and pulled her collar off in the process\u0026ndash;I found her waiting for me inside the house. From that point on, we\u0026rsquo;ve never left the doggie door open when we\u0026rsquo;re not home. I also fixed the hole in the front gate and added additional fencing to separate the front and back yards\u0026ndash;a defense-in-depth strategy that has occasionally still been tested by some foster dogs who were particularly small or efficient at digging under fences and gates and finding points of failure that I\u0026rsquo;ve fixed by burying bricks. Fortunately, no other dog has met Blossom\u0026rsquo;s fate through an escape.\nShelby was somewhat particular about what dogs she\u0026rsquo;d get along with, which limited our options when we started fostering rescue dogs. Kat\u0026rsquo;s dog, a very large German short-haired pointer named Oscar, stayed at her parents\u0026rsquo; house because Shelby didn\u0026rsquo;t get along with him. Oscar ended up suffering from a degenerative neurological condition which deprived him of the use of his back legs, and he had to use a cart to go on walks. His condition deteriorated and he was euthanized in November 2007.\nIn December 2001 I adopted Otto, a rescue dog, who became Shelby\u0026rsquo;s new closest companion and regular morning wrestling partner. In August 2002, Kat found an Australian cattle dog outside her work place, which we took to the pound, notified RESCUE about, and ended up fostering and very quickly adopting. She typically didn\u0026rsquo;t get along with females or with dogs her size or larger, so we\u0026rsquo;ve mostly fostered smaller male dogs.\nShelby started to have trouble with arthritis in her back legs in 2005, and would have trouble getting up and going up stairs after walks, so we put her on medication, which was extremely effective. She would occasionally show some signs of weakness or pain in her legs after a long walk, but she\u0026rsquo;d quickly recover and be ready to go again.\nOn April 21, we awoke to hear her breathing heavily and whining downstairs. X-rays showed that her bowel was full of fecal matter, and an enema provided her with relief. Her white blood cell count was slightly low, so we treated her with a cycle of antibiotics to fight any infection, and she seemed fine after that. This last Saturday night, August 2, I let the dogs out at midnight to go to the bathroom, and they all came back inside for a treat, and everything seemed fine. But at about four a.m., it seemed like a repeat of April 21. Shelby was breathing rapidly and shallowly, whining, and didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get up. She was having periodic spasms of her abdomen, and seemed like she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get comfortable. We took her in to the vet, where her X-rays showed some fecal material in her bowel, but nothing like April 21. Her blood work showed a low white blood cell count again, and also a low platelet count. The doctor suggested that there was something else going on now, that could include tick fever, an autoimmune disorder, or internal bleeding. They had no one at the hospital overnight, so we took her home Sunday and were under instructions to immediately take her to a 24-hour emergency clinic if she showed any signs of bruising under the skin, petechiae on her gums, or blood from her nose, or if she showed difficulty breathing or otherwise seemed to be in distress. She devoured the canned food we bought for her at the vet when we got her home, and I slept downstairs with her.\nI ended up waking up several times during the night. Sometimes I found her peacefully asleep, other times she was sitting up and acting uncomfortable, but she didn\u0026rsquo;t seem as bad as she had the night before. She refused to drink any water I gave her. Monday morning we decided to take her in again, and since she still hadn\u0026rsquo;t had a bowel movement, we asked the vet to give her an enema. Kat also observed that her abdomen appeared to be somewhat distended. The enema was successful, and when I spoke to a vet tech later in the day, she said Shelby seemed comfortable, but said the doctor wanted to take some more X-rays, and I gave my approval. At about 4 p.m. in the afternoon, Kat called the vet for status, and he said that the new X-rays appeared to show evidence of internal bleeding, and he had found that the fluid causing her distended abdomen was blood. He asked us to please come and take her to another emergency clinic that could do an ultrasound to locate the cause of the bleeding and take appropriate action. We got to the vet around 4:30 p.m. and it seemed like we had to wait forever to consult with the doctor and get her out of there. The doctor told us her prognosis was not good\u0026ndash;most likely the cause would be found to be a cancerous tumor of some kind. It was after 5 p.m. when we left for the emergency clinic, just in time for rush hour traffic.\nWe arrived at the emergency clinic at about 5:45 p.m., filled out paperwork, and met with Brian, an emergency veterinary doctor. Brian told us the same thing as the other doctor\u0026ndash;that her prognosis, given her age and likely cause, was not good. He said that his recommended action was to perform an ultrasound, and if the cause appeared to be a single tumor, to operate and try to save her in hopes that it\u0026rsquo;s benign. On the other hand, if there were multiple tumors, he advised that surgery would not significantly prolong her life and would probably reduce its quality. We agreed with his recommendation, and Shelby went in the back for her ultrasound.\nIt was probably around 7 p.m. when we got the news that Shelby had tumors in multiple lobes of her liver, as well as some possible metastasis to her lungs.\nWe spent some time with Shelby, giving her attention and letting her know she was a good dog. She spent some time laying on her side and resting, but she would frequently whine as we touched her. But she was also alert enough to sit up, to wag her tail, and to walk around when asked. We made the decision to go ahead and euthanize, given her distress and prognosis.\nThe doctor\u0026rsquo;s first attempt to administer \u0026ldquo;Sleepaway\u0026rdquo;-brand sodium pentobarbitol to a vein in Shelby\u0026rsquo;s back leg met with resistance, so he decided it was best to set up an IV, which required Shelby going back into a back room. She didn\u0026rsquo;t want to go with the vet tech, she sat down and pulled against her collar. Finally, when Kat went with her, she cooperated.\nShe came back to the room with her IV in place on her front right paw, and laid down on the blanket that was put down for her. We petted her and I rubbed her head with my hands and told her she was a good dog. The doctor slowly administered the drug, and she let out a big last breath with a sigh and dropped her head into my hands. The doctor reported that she was asleep, with a faint heartbeat. A few moments later, at about 7:55 p.m., she was gone.\nHer absence is painful. The sound of her collar clinking on the water bowl as she drinks. Her standing closely behind Kat as she cuts vegetables waiting for a piece of carrot, broccoli, or lettuce. The sound of her 55-pound body hitting the wood of the hallway floor outside my home office as she lays down waits for me to return to the living room. Her vicious-sounding wrestling with Otto in the mornings. Her putting her head on my knee for attention (or, more often, for food). Her barking at Einzige (while wagging her tail) every time he comes to visit. Whenever Kat or I would go on a trip for work, she\u0026rsquo;d wait expectantly by the door each evening hoping that we would return.\nShe was a loyal, intelligent, loving friend, and we\u0026rsquo;ll miss her terribly.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put up a few pictures from her life in a public Flickr set.\nThe Amiable Atheist (2008-08-05):\nThat's really sad. I'm sorry for your loss. But how lucky for Shelby that she had a loving family. I think it's wonderful what you do (fostering animals). It breaks my heart whenever I go to the \"pound\". Thanks for sharing that story.\nEinzige (2008-08-05):\nI will definitely miss her barking at me. She was a silly one!Very sad.\nSchtacky (2008-08-05):\nI am sorry for your loss. Reading through your post, one can really gain an understanding of how much Shelby meant to you and after having had to put down our 6-year-old golden 3 months ago, Kristen and I can both sympathize greatly.Our thoughts are with you and Kat.\nRBH (2008-08-05):\nWhat's difficult is the sudden cessation of the regular rituals associated with a friend like Shelby. We lost a 6 year-old little blond beagle cross in late March to thyroid cancer. Even though we have three other dogs (all adopted, as was Lacey), all of the rituals -- who ate where, who got walked with whom, who slept where -- were upset and still are upset. While the other three dogs have adapted, we haven't yet. Once in a while I still call for the two little dogs to go for a walk together and then realize belatedly that Lacey isn't here any more and I'm sad again.\nReed (2008-08-05):\nMy condolences to you all.\nLippard (2008-08-05):\nThanks very much to all of you for your condolences. Schtacky, RBH, I'm sorry to hear about your recent losses as well.\ncmgomes (2008-08-06):\nJim and Kat, I'm so sorry for your loss. I was browsing your (Jim's) recent photos in Facebook and my heart dropped when I read \"I think this is the last picture of Shelby\" on one of the comments. Then I saw this tribute. Thanks for taking the time to share your memories. There are many unknowns in this crazy life, but I do know that Shelby was very much loved by both of you.\nJohn S. Wilkins (2008-08-06):\nHaving just done this with a favoured cat of 17 years partnership (Vale Chesh}, I know how you feel. My sorrows to you.\nLippard (2008-08-08):\nCarlos, John: Thanks so much. John, I'm sorry about your recent loss.\ncowmix (2008-08-10):\nJim and Kat.. my wife and I are sorry to hear of your loss.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/rip-shelby-1997-2008.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/2735819008_92db29043a.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/2735819008_92db29043a.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShelby was a puppy from my sister\u0026rsquo;s dog Sheba, a Queensland Heeler/Border Collie mix.  We don\u0026rsquo;t know who the father was, but Shelby had a black tongue and seemed to have some Chow in her.  She was born on February 7, 1997, and I adopted her a few months later.  She was a smart dog\u0026ndash;I took her to obedience training at six months, and she picked up the basics and retained them her whole life, though often when she wanted a treat she would go through the whole routine instead of responding to the specific command given.  She had a strong herding instinct, and acted to police the behavior of other dogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn her early years her constant companion was my Shih-Tzu, Blossom, who I adopted from Shih-Tzu rescue in late 1996.  Blossom was the top dog despite her smaller size, and the two of them would frequently wrestle and play.  Shelby loved to go for walks or runs\u0026ndash;I think she would be happy to run continuously until she dropped from exhaustion, given the opportunity.  My father adopted her brother, Fox, and we\u0026rsquo;d occasionally take the two of them to hike on the trails at Squaw Peak.  She had serious separation anxiety for the first few years, and I\u0026rsquo;d often come home from work to find the couch cushions on the floor with stuffing ripped out of them.  I used to leave the doggie door open back then, and I remember one time I came home to find the backyard strewn with tiny fragments of foam from the inside of Blossom\u0026rsquo;s bed.  It took me a couple days to get them all picked up.  Fortunately, she grew out of this habit and the only messes she made in subsequent years were when she learned to knock over the kitchen garbage cans or when some food items like a loaf of bread were left to close to the edge of the counter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn August of 2001 I moved to a new house with a very large backyard and a fence around the entire property, including a gated driveway.  I had a doggie door put in, and again used to leave it open.  On August 11, I spent the night away from home, with the doggie door open, and on my way home received a call on my cell phone from a woman who said she had found my dog in the road in front of my house and had put her in a plastic bag by the gate.  When I got home I found that there was a missing iron bar on the front gate that made a hole that Blossom had gotten through, and just outside of the gate was Shelby\u0026rsquo;s collar.  Shelby had apparently tried to get through the hole to follow Blossom, but was unable to fit, and pulled her collar off in the process\u0026ndash;I found her waiting for me inside the house.  From that point on, we\u0026rsquo;ve never left the doggie door open when we\u0026rsquo;re not home.  I also fixed the hole in the front gate and added additional fencing to separate the front and back yards\u0026ndash;a defense-in-depth strategy that has occasionally still been tested by some foster dogs who were particularly small or efficient at digging under fences and gates and finding points of failure that I\u0026rsquo;ve fixed by burying bricks.  Fortunately, no other dog has met Blossom\u0026rsquo;s fate through an escape.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShelby was somewhat particular about what dogs she\u0026rsquo;d get along with, which limited our options when we started fostering rescue dogs.  Kat\u0026rsquo;s dog, a very large German short-haired pointer named Oscar, stayed at her parents\u0026rsquo; house because Shelby didn\u0026rsquo;t get along with him. Oscar ended up suffering from a degenerative neurological condition which deprived him of the use of his back legs, and he had to use a cart to go on walks.  His condition deteriorated and he was euthanized in November 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn December 2001 I adopted Otto, a rescue dog, who became Shelby\u0026rsquo;s new closest companion and regular morning wrestling partner.   In August 2002, Kat found an Australian cattle dog outside her work place, which we took to the pound, notified RESCUE about, and ended up fostering and very quickly adopting.  She typically didn\u0026rsquo;t get along with females or with dogs her size or larger, so we\u0026rsquo;ve mostly fostered smaller male dogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShelby started to have trouble with arthritis in her back legs in 2005, and would have trouble getting up and going up stairs after walks, so we put her on medication, which was extremely effective.  She would occasionally show some signs of weakness or pain in her legs after a long walk, but she\u0026rsquo;d quickly recover and be ready to go again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn April 21, we awoke to hear her breathing heavily and whining downstairs.  X-rays showed that her bowel was full of fecal matter, and an enema provided her with relief.  Her white blood cell count was slightly low, so we treated her with a cycle of antibiotics to fight any infection, and she seemed fine after that.  This last Saturday night, August 2, I let the dogs out at midnight to go to the bathroom, and they all came back inside for a treat, and everything seemed fine.  But at about four a.m., it seemed like a repeat of April 21.  Shelby was breathing rapidly and shallowly, whining, and didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get up.  She was having periodic spasms of her abdomen, and seemed like she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get comfortable.  We took her in to the vet, where her X-rays showed some fecal material in her bowel, but nothing like April 21.  Her blood work showed a low white blood cell count again, and also a low platelet count.  The doctor suggested that there was something else going on now, that could include tick fever, an autoimmune disorder, or internal bleeding.  They had no one at the hospital overnight, so we took her home Sunday and were under instructions to immediately take her to a 24-hour emergency clinic if she showed any signs of bruising under the skin, petechiae on her gums, or blood from her nose, or if she showed difficulty breathing or otherwise seemed to be in distress.  She devoured the canned food we bought for her at the vet when we got her home, and I slept downstairs with her.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI ended up waking up several times during the night.  Sometimes I found her peacefully asleep, other times she was sitting up and acting uncomfortable, but she didn\u0026rsquo;t seem as bad as she had the night before.  She refused to drink any water I gave her.  Monday morning we decided to take her in again, and since she still hadn\u0026rsquo;t had a bowel movement, we asked the vet to give her an enema. Kat also observed that her abdomen appeared to be somewhat distended. The enema was successful, and when I spoke to a vet tech later in the day, she said Shelby seemed comfortable, but said the doctor wanted to take some more X-rays, and I gave my approval.  At about 4 p.m. in the afternoon, Kat called the vet for status, and he said that the new X-rays appeared to show evidence of internal bleeding, and he had found that the fluid causing her distended abdomen was blood.  He asked us to please come and take her to another emergency clinic that could do an ultrasound to locate the cause of the bleeding and take appropriate action.  We got to the vet around 4:30 p.m. and it seemed like we had to wait forever to consult with the doctor and get her out of there.  The doctor told us her prognosis was not good\u0026ndash;most likely the cause would be found to be a cancerous tumor of some kind.  It was after 5 p.m. when we left for the emergency clinic, just in time for rush hour traffic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe arrived at the emergency clinic at about 5:45 p.m., filled out paperwork, and met with Brian, an emergency veterinary doctor.  Brian told us the same thing as the other doctor\u0026ndash;that her prognosis, given her age and likely cause, was not good.  He said that his recommended action was to perform an ultrasound, and if the cause appeared to be a single tumor, to operate and try to save her in hopes that it\u0026rsquo;s benign.  On the other hand, if there were multiple tumors, he advised that surgery would not significantly prolong her life and would probably reduce its quality.  We agreed with his recommendation, and Shelby went in the back for her ultrasound.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was probably around 7 p.m. when we got the news that Shelby had tumors in multiple lobes of her liver, as well as some possible metastasis to her lungs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe spent some time with Shelby, giving her attention and letting her know she was a good dog.  She spent some time laying on her side and resting, but she would frequently whine as we touched her.  But she was also alert enough to sit up, to wag her tail, and to walk around when asked.  We made the decision to go ahead and euthanize, given her distress and prognosis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe doctor\u0026rsquo;s first attempt to administer \u0026ldquo;Sleepaway\u0026rdquo;-brand sodium pentobarbitol to a vein in Shelby\u0026rsquo;s back leg met with resistance, so he decided it was best to set up an IV, which required Shelby going back into a back room.  She didn\u0026rsquo;t want to go with the vet tech, she sat down and pulled against her collar.  Finally, when Kat went with her, she cooperated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe came back to the room with her IV in place on her front right paw, and laid down on the blanket that was put down for her.  We petted her and I rubbed her head with my hands and told her she was a good dog.  The doctor slowly administered the drug, and she let out a big last breath with a sigh and dropped her head into my hands.  The doctor reported that she was asleep, with a faint heartbeat.  A few moments later, at about 7:55 p.m., she was gone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHer absence is painful.  The sound of her collar clinking on the water bowl as she drinks.  Her standing closely behind Kat as she cuts vegetables waiting for a piece of carrot, broccoli, or lettuce.  The sound of her 55-pound body hitting the wood of the hallway floor outside my home office as she lays down waits for me to return to the living room.  Her vicious-sounding wrestling with Otto in the mornings.  Her putting her head on my knee for attention (or, more often, for food).  Her barking at Einzige (while wagging her tail) every time he comes to visit.  Whenever Kat or I would go on a trip for work, she\u0026rsquo;d wait expectantly by the door each evening hoping that we would return.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe was a loyal, intelligent, loving friend, and we\u0026rsquo;ll miss her terribly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve put up \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/82216042@N00/sets/72157606555526908/\"\u003ea few pictures from her life in a public Flickr set\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Shelby, 1997-2008"},{"content":"Chris Anderson\u0026rsquo;s book, The Long Tail, showed how the Internet has made it possible for business models that focus on small niche markets rather than mass markets to be successful. While a bricks-and-mortar bookstore will typically have at most a couple hundred thousand titles and make most of its money from bestsellers, Amazon.com can list millions of titles and makes a quarter to a third of its revenue from the \u0026ldquo;long tail\u0026rdquo; of books that are not in the top 100,000 sellers.\nOne might think that putting science journals online would mean that more obscure articles would get greater readership, but a study by James Evans published in Science argues that as more journals are published online, fewer articles are being cited, and those that are tend to be more recently published. While the ability to search online by keywords means that an author of a scientific paper is unlikely to overlook any published paper containing those keywords, it also means that authors are less likely to look at other articles published in the same issues or run into articles that may be related in the big picture but don\u0026rsquo;t contain the selected keywords. Evans found that for each additional year of back issues available online, the average age of articles cited in that journal fell by a month. He predicts that for the average journal, adding five years of back issues online results in a drop in the number of articles cited per year from 600 to 200.\nThe concern here is similar to the concern about online social networks that become narrowly focused\u0026ndash;that people are missing exposure to ideas that they might have previously come across, now that they can select more specifically the items they want. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how seriously to take this concern. In my own case, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like the Internet is causing me to overspecialize, rather it\u0026rsquo;s providing me with access to all sorts of information I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t previously have run into. I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like the Internet is in danger of subdividing into sections of compartmentalized information the way that Bill Bishop\u0026rsquo;s book, The Big Sort, suggests people are forming physical like-minded clusters of neighborhoods. I wonder if Evans would have found different results if, instead of looking at journal citations, he looked at the role being played by electronic publications such as blogs and mailing lists, where I suspect there is increasing interdisciplinary cross-pollination.\n(Via The Economist, July 19, 2008, p. 89.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/is-online-journal-publication-shrinking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Anderson\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thelongtail.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Long Tail\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, showed how the Internet has made it possible for business models that focus on small niche markets rather than mass markets to be successful.  While a bricks-and-mortar bookstore will typically have at most a couple hundred thousand titles and make most of its money from bestsellers, Amazon.com can list millions of titles and \u003ca href=\"http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/08/a_methodology_f.html\"\u003emakes a quarter to a third of its revenue from the \u0026ldquo;long tail\u0026rdquo; of books that are not in the top 100,000 sellers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne might think that putting science journals online would mean that more obscure articles would get greater readership, but a study by James Evans published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e argues that as more journals are published online, fewer articles are being cited, and those that are tend to be more recently published.  While the ability to search online by keywords means that an author of a scientific paper is unlikely to overlook any published paper containing those keywords, it also means that authors are less likely to look at other articles published in the same issues or run into articles that may be related in the big picture but don\u0026rsquo;t contain the selected keywords.  Evans found that for each additional year of back issues available online, the average age of articles cited in that journal fell by a month.  He predicts that for the average journal, adding five years of back issues online results in a drop in the number of articles cited per year from 600 to 200.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe concern here is similar to the concern about online social networks that become narrowly focused\u0026ndash;that people are missing exposure to ideas that they might have previously come across, now that they can select more specifically the items they want.  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how seriously to take this concern.  In my own case, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like the Internet is causing me to overspecialize, rather it\u0026rsquo;s providing me with access to all sorts of information I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t previously have run into.  I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like the Internet is in danger of subdividing into sections of compartmentalized information the way that \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature\u0026amp;story_id=11581447\"\u003eBill Bishop\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Big Sort\u003c/span\u003e, suggests people are forming physical like-minded clusters of neighborhoods\u003c/a\u003e.  I wonder if Evans would have found different results if, instead of looking at journal citations, he looked at the role being played by electronic publications such as blogs and mailing lists, where I suspect there is increasing interdisciplinary cross-pollination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745514\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, July 19, 2008\u003c/a\u003e, p. 89.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is online journal publication shrinking the long tail?"},{"content":"\nI bought my first house 10 years ago, in July, 1998. Prior to the purchase I was living in a nearby apartment complex, paying $435/month for a 2-bedroom, 1 bath. I (over)paid $86,500 for the house, putting 3% down, so my monthly payments, at roughly $600, were ~35% higher than my rent\u0026ndash;a reasonable premium to me, considering I\u0026rsquo;d suddenly be living and building equity in \u0026ldquo;my own place.\u0026quot;\nToday, zillow.com says the house is worth about $192,000, and monthly payments at 3% down would come to just under $1300/month. By comparison, you can still rent that 2 bedroom apartment for around $600. Doing the same math again, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;d come to the conclusion that the \u0026ldquo;ownership premium\u0026rdquo; is really worth it. Would you?\nYou might be wondering what my little story has to do with July\u0026rsquo;s notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u0026ndash;which, at 6412, as you can see from the graph, were lower than June\u0026rsquo;s. Bush\u0026rsquo;s housing bailout bill recently became law, which may mean that we have just passed the peak for home foreclosures\u0026ndash;and soon we may even see a stop to falling home prices. Great news for current home owners, but, as my personal anecdote suggests, not-so-great news for housing affordability in general. The bailout essentially is a subsidy to current home owners at the expense of future home owners.\nBecause it will prop up current prices beyond where they would have naturally fallen, housing affordability will remain low, encouraging the spawning of all sorts of new government programs to help address \u0026ldquo;the affordability gap\u0026rdquo; (or some such wealth-transfer justificationist nonsense)\u0026ndash;making money cheaper than it actually is, which will in turn encourage sellers to raise their prices still further while at the same time creating homeowners out of people who probably aren\u0026rsquo;t fiscally responsible enough to be ones. Is this sounding familiar, yet?\nAs a non-homeowner who is making twice what he made in 1998 but would have an extremely hard time justifying paying $1300/month to own a crappy house, I would have preferred if Congress could\u0026rsquo;ve just left well enough alone.\nUnknown (2008-08-03):\nReal estate ownership is a long term investment. Historically, except during artificially created boom periods, it does not “pencil” over the short term. Buying the property for $86,500, in 1998 at a 35% premium (compared to renting) was not necessarily a mistake, Einzige. Selling it before it went up in value, however, prevented you from getting the best return on your investment. Consider where you might be today if you had kept the property. Even after the recent downturn in property values, your equity in this property (now valued at $192,000) would be about $100,000. As a renter, all you have to show for your trouble is rent receipts. While ownership may temporarily cost a little more than renting on a monthly basis, eventually, inflation in rental rates catches up. Long term, appreciation in the value of the property more than makes up for any short term premium on ownership. This will continue to be true as long as governments keep inflating currencies. I think it is not unreasonable to believe that the time will come when $192,000 will seem to be as low a price for this house as $86,500 does today. The key question is: When is the best time to buy? Your chart helps me in my effort to answer that question. Thanks for that!!\nEinzige (2008-08-03):\nGood points, but the numbers mentioned don't include such things as maintenance costs, which do increase yearly, and most certainly negatively affect returns on investment.I think it might also be a safe assumption that the next 10 years will not see a similar run-up in property values in Maricopa County.\nLippard (2008-08-03):\nThis is the first time we've seen a dip to the level of the previous month. I hope we look back at this chart in a few months and see June as the peak for preforeclosures.\nLippard (2008-08-03):\nChristopher wrote: \"Long term, appreciation in the value of the property more than makes up for any short term premium on ownership.\"Robert Shiller's figures shows only about a 1% average annual appreciation for home ownership in real terms, so homes in general are not great as an investment, as opposed to a place to live.\nUnknown (2008-08-04):\nI am not sure I agree with Einzige about inflation in the next ten years being less than in the past ten years. Expansion of the money supply is continuing unabated with no end in sight. The disconnect that occurred in the 1990's between the increasing money supply and the inflation rate cannot continue indefinitely. As worldwide demand for dollars declines, real goods and services (including real estate) are bound to go up in value (as measured in dollars).While Robert Shiller may be correct about home ownership in general, I know a great many people (myself included) who have done MUCH better than 1% per year in real terms. Timing is everything!\nEinzige (2008-08-04):\nWhat you are suggesting, it seems to me, is that I engage in pure speculation--as that is what trying to \"time the market\" is all about.If it's safe to assume that real estate is a hedge against inflation, then it's also safe to assume that equities--say in an index fund of REITs, if you're intent on investments in real estate--are a hedge against inflation.Given that...1) It's likely that some form of the efficient markets hypothesis holds,2) I am not possessed of unusual skills or talents related to investment in real estate,3) Without unusual talents or skills, or doing lots of extra work (an opportunity cost, that should be factored into any ROI calculation) I will have to pay retail price for any property I purchase--a near guarantee against a decent return,4) There is less risk involved in owning index funds of equities than a single property, and5) Returns on retirement funds are tax-deferred,...I believe I am likely better off putting my investment dollars into my IRA and 401k than into a home--at least until I have maximized the allowable contributions.Your contention that real estate is a \"long term investment\" is an implicit admission that the typical investment property is, in fact, a guaranteed loser for the first few years, and I remain unconvinced that the returns seen in later years are high enough to offset the initial losses and bring the total returns in line with, e.g., an S\u0026amp;P 500 index fund.\nUnknown (2008-08-11):\nOkay, you win. Homeowners end up in the poorhouse and renters get rich by investing the money they save on mortgage payments in S\u0026amp;P 500 Index funds.\nLippard (2008-08-11):\nChristopher: I think there's a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy implicit in your sarcastic comment. The wealthy tend to own their homes and the poor tend to rent, but I don't think I'd infer from that the conclusion that the wealthy have become so because they own their own homes or that the poor have become so because they rent.(BTW, this website says that 46% of those in the U.S. below the poverty line own their own homes--but often have difficulty paying for basic repairs, an issue that renters don't have.)\nUnknown (2008-08-15):\nJim: My previous sarcastic comment was not intended to be an argument at all, implicit or otherwise. It was intended as a joke to emphasize the fact that continuing this argument is a waste of time. Either you accept the notion that real property can be a good long-term hedge against inflation or you don't. I don't have time to debate it. You guys have too much time on your hands!\nEinzige (2008-08-15):\n\"Either you accept the notion that real property can be a good long-term hedge against inflation or you don't.\"Your phraseology implies that it is, and that one can choose to see this truth or not.I actually never claimed that owning property wasn't a hedge against inflation. I argued that there are demonstrably better alternatives available. I am reasonably sure that, had I taken all the money I spent on my houses including all costs, such as maintenance, repair, mortgage, management, etc., and put it into my IRA, 401K, and brokerage accounts, in index funds, then today I'd be net ahead of where I would have otherwise been, had I kept the houses.I would, on the other hand, agree that, absent other forms of asset ownership, you're probably better off owning a house. But at this point I think I'm repeating myself.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/julys-pre-foreclosure-numbers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08JulNTRs.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/08JulNTRs.jpg\" alt=\"Click for full size\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230355616871798498\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI bought my first house 10 years ago, in July, 1998. Prior to the purchase I was living in a nearby apartment complex, paying $435/month for a 2-bedroom, 1 bath. I (over)paid $86,500 for the house, putting 3% down, so my monthly payments, at roughly $600, were ~35% higher than my rent\u0026ndash;a reasonable premium to me, considering I\u0026rsquo;d suddenly be living and building equity in \u0026ldquo;my own place.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday, zillow.com says the house is worth about $192,000, and monthly payments at 3% down would come to just under $1300/month. By comparison, you can still rent that 2 bedroom apartment for around $600. Doing the same math again, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;d come to the conclusion that the \u0026ldquo;ownership premium\u0026rdquo; is really worth it. Would you?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou might be wondering what my little story has to do with July\u0026rsquo;s notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u0026ndash;which, at \u003cb\u003e6412\u003c/b\u003e, as you can see from the graph, were lower than June\u0026rsquo;s. Bush\u0026rsquo;s housing bailout bill recently became law, which may mean that we have just passed the peak for home foreclosures\u0026ndash;and soon we may even see a stop to falling home prices. Great news for current home owners, but, as my personal anecdote suggests, not-so-great news for housing affordability in general. The bailout essentially is a subsidy to current home owners at the expense of future home owners.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBecause it will prop up current prices beyond where they would have naturally fallen, housing affordability will remain low, encouraging the spawning of all sorts of new government programs to help address \u0026ldquo;the affordability gap\u0026rdquo; (or some such wealth-transfer justificationist nonsense)\u0026ndash;making money cheaper than it actually is, which will in turn encourage sellers to raise their prices still further while at the same time creating homeowners out of people who probably aren\u0026rsquo;t fiscally responsible enough to be ones. Is this sounding familiar, yet?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs a non-homeowner who is making twice what he made in 1998 but would have an extremely hard time justifying paying $1300/month to own a crappy house, I would have preferred if Congress could\u0026rsquo;ve just left well enough alone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"July's Pre-foreclosure Numbers"},{"content":"Yesterday we participated in the 6th Annual PACC911 Bowl-a-Rama on Arizona RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s dog team. I bowled in the cat team\u0026rsquo;s lane and brought down their average score, helping the dog team to another win\u0026ndash;apparently Nintendo Wii bowling doesn\u0026rsquo;t help train for the real thing. The event had a morning and afternoon session; RESCUE was in the morning session from 10-12:30. RESCUE came in second place for \u0026ldquo;loudest cheer,\u0026rdquo; which added another $50 There were about 60 groups participating in the morning session which raised a total of about $122,000\u0026ndash;of which RESCUE alone raised $42,000! Thanks to everyone who supported our efforts and to Lisa and Einzige for coming out to the event to cheer us on!\nDanny Boy, FCD (2008-08-03):\nWhat were your scores?\nLippard (2008-08-03):\nI just played one game. I scored almost twice as high as Barack Obama's game in Altoona, PA--he got 37, I got 70.I've never been a great bowler, but last time I bowled in Bowl-a-Rama a few years back, I did at least break 100.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/bowl-rama-success.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday we participated in the 6th Annual \u003ca href=\"http://www.pacc911.org/Bowl-A-Rama.html\"\u003ePACC911 Bowl-a-Rama\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eArizona RESCUE\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s dog team.  I bowled in the cat team\u0026rsquo;s lane and brought down their average score, helping the dog team to another win\u0026ndash;apparently Nintendo Wii bowling doesn\u0026rsquo;t help train for the real thing.  The event had a morning and afternoon session; RESCUE was in the morning session from 10-12:30.  RESCUE came in second place for \u0026ldquo;loudest cheer,\u0026rdquo; which added another $50   There were about 60 groups participating in the morning session which raised a total of about $122,000\u0026ndash;of which RESCUE alone raised $42,000!  Thanks to everyone who supported our efforts and to Lisa and Einzige for coming out to the event to cheer us on!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bowl-a-Rama success"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast #6 is up:\nEpisode 006 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Jim Lippard teases three cool books. \u0026ldquo;Squared\u0026rdquo; from Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;. Evolution Laments God of the Gaps. Saying Naughty Words. Bad reasons to be an atheist. Outro from \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;Comments: The podcast gets better each time. I disagree with the idea that everyone who is an agnostic is just trying to be politically correct, or is fence-sitting out of non-rational reasons. John Wilkins and Paul Draper are two examples of philosophers who are agnostic because they have rational reasons for thinking that there is some balance between arguments for and against the existence of gods, that there aren\u0026rsquo;t methods for weighing such arguments, or that there isn\u0026rsquo;t sufficient evidence to conclude that gods exist or do not exist.\nHistorical Comments John S. Wilkins (2008-08-03):\nThank you, Jim. Now, can you convince his PZedness and Moran?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/apostaz-podcast-6.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ\u003c/a\u003e podcast #6 is up:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz006.mp3\"\u003eEpisode 006\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/\"\u003eatheists.meetup.com/157\u003c/a\u003e for group events! Jim Lippard teases three cool books. \u0026ldquo;Squared\u0026rdquo; from Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;. Evolution Laments God of the Gaps. Saying Naughty Words. Bad reasons to be an atheist. Outro from \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;\u003c/blockquote\u003eComments:  The podcast gets better each time.  I disagree with the idea that everyone who is an agnostic is just trying to be politically correct, or is fence-sitting out of non-rational reasons.  \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/\"\u003eJohn Wilkins\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_draper/\"\u003ePaul Draper\u003c/a\u003e are two examples of philosophers who are agnostic because they have rational reasons for thinking that there is some balance between arguments for and against the existence of gods, that there aren\u0026rsquo;t methods for weighing such arguments, or that there isn\u0026rsquo;t sufficient evidence to conclude that gods exist or do not exist.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #6"},{"content":"Via Podblack Cat, I read Adam Gopnik\u0026rsquo;s fascinating account of magic as practiced by Jamy Ian Swiss, David Blaine, and with a few remarks from Teller and a visit to David Copperfield\u0026rsquo;s private museum of magic. Gopnik discusses the history and psychology of magic, and the only false note I encountered was at the end, where he writes:\nThe magicians have the boys for a moment, between their escape from their fathers and their pursuit of girls. After that, they become sexual, outwardly so, and learn that women (or other men) cannot be impressed by tricks of any kind: if they are watching at all, they are as interested as they are ever going to be, and tricks are of no help. You cannot woo anyone with magic; the magic that you have consciously mastered is the least interesting magic you have.That\u0026rsquo;s a statement that seems to suggest that the general public can\u0026rsquo;t be fooled by slick politicians using Machiavellian methods, that there\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as effective marketing techniques, and that the methods of pick-up artists don\u0026rsquo;t really work. But you really can fool all of the people some of the time.\nPodblack (2008-08-02):\nHmm, I read it more from the 'romance' angle - how no matter how polished, slick or professional your stagecraft is... it's going to take more to win a lady's heart (or a man's, depending on your preference). :)\nPodblack (2008-08-02):\nOh, although you mention 'pick up artists'... I think there is a distinction between the 'artistry' of magic and the 'artifice' of lounge-louches. Perhaps there should be a study set in the smoky bars in Las Vegas and NY, rating lousy pick-up lines of magicians...\nLippard (2008-08-02):\nThe techniques are different, but the sphexishness of human behavior (to use Daniel Dennett's term) allows similar kinds of manipulation in both cases. But you're no doubt correct that the relevant skills are distinct.And there's also a difference between techniques that get someone into bed and those that support a successful and happy long-term relationship.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/new-yorker-article-on-magic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://podblack.com/?p=804\"\u003ePodblack Cat\u003c/a\u003e, I read Adam Gopnik\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/17/080317fa_fact_gopnik?currentPage=all\"\u003efascinating account of magic\u003c/a\u003e as practiced by Jamy Ian Swiss, David Blaine, and with a few remarks from Teller and a visit to David Copperfield\u0026rsquo;s private museum of magic.  Gopnik discusses the history and psychology of magic, and the only false note I encountered was at the end, where he writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe magicians have the boys for a moment, between their escape from their fathers and their pursuit of girls. After that, they become sexual, outwardly so, and learn that women (or other men) cannot be impressed by tricks of any kind: if they are watching at all, they are as interested as they are ever going to be, and tricks are of no help. You cannot woo anyone with magic; the magic that you have consciously mastered is the least interesting magic you have.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a statement that seems to suggest that the general public can\u0026rsquo;t be fooled by slick politicians using Machiavellian methods, that there\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as effective marketing techniques, and that the methods of pick-up artists don\u0026rsquo;t really work.  But you really can fool all of the people some of the time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Yorker article on magic"},{"content":"Science writer Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) has put out a YouTube video of \u0026ldquo;Large Hadron Rap.\u0026rdquo; The LHC begins operation with a test on August 9, and the first protons are expected to circle the entire track in early September. The New York Times has the background on the LHC and the rap video.\n(Via Podblack Cat.)\nUPDATE (August 10, 2008): The Economist has a good article on what the Large Hadron Collider has the potential to discover\u0026ndash;not just the Higgs boson, but supersymmetric particles with names like neutralinos (making up dark matter), and creating tiny short-lived black holes that will generate Hawking radiation and possibly win Hawking a Nobel prize.\nHistorical Comments Podblack (2008-08-02):\n*dances to the song*\njimpurdy1943@yahoo.com (2008-09-07):\nI've Got Einstein on my Mindby Jim PurdyListen to me one and all, Oh dear,For bad news I bring, The End is Near.In the UK, the Daily Mail tried to clue us in,That those mad scientists are going to do us in.Yes indeed, they have published a news articleWarning us of a runaway sub-atomic particle.The Large Hadron Collider is to blame,And our universe will soon end in flame.Oh man, the fireworks will be spectacular,It'll be so big, I won't need my binocular.As the end nears, some may grieve and mourn,But I'll enjoy the show, just eating my popcorn. Someday I'll entertain grandkids with the story I'll tell,Oh. Wait. I guess I won't have any grandkids, oh well.In college, we laughed at those physics dorks,Always talking about their tachyons and quarks.Yes, soon the world will be gone, we'll be no more,Thanks to guys named Fermi, Heisenberg and Bohr.So, as I await the end of all mankind,I've got Albert Einstein on my mind.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/large-hadron-collider-rap.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScience writer Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) has put out a YouTube video of \u0026ldquo;Large Hadron Rap.\u0026rdquo;  The LHC begins operation with a test on August 9, and the first protons are expected to circle the entire track in early September.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/science/29cernrap.html?_r=1\u0026amp;em\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ehas the background on the LHC and the rap video\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-07046966943132321 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/j50ZssEojtM\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/j50ZssEojtM\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/j50ZssEojtM\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://podblack.com/?p=806\"\u003ePodblack Cat\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 10, 2008): \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11837478\"\u003ehas a good article on what the Large Hadron Collider has the potential to discover\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;not just the Higgs boson, but supersymmetric particles with names like neutralinos (making up dark matter), and creating tiny short-lived black holes that will generate Hawking radiation and possibly win Hawking a Nobel prize.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Large Hadron Collider rap"},{"content":"Baltimore\u0026rsquo;s Columbus Center Maritime Museum had the world\u0026rsquo;s largest horseshoe crab model built for them\u0026ndash;it is 68 feet long, 28 feet long, and has a 13-foot-high domed ceiling (apparently you can go inside it). The museum was in need of revenue, so it sold the giant horseshoe crab to the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum as it was under construction. AiG realized that the crab was too large to fit in their museum, and so they gave it to the Freedom Worship Church in Blanchester, Ohio. That church put the crab into a \u0026ldquo;scripture garden\u0026rdquo; and a \u0026ldquo;fossil courtyard,\u0026rdquo; where it is used to argue for creationism on the grounds that the horseshoe crab has not evolved over time and exhibits evidence of design as \u0026ldquo;a true gift from God, with its blood being used as a clotting agent for disease in scientific research.\u0026rdquo; And now it is going to be jumped over with a motorcycle for a fundraising event called \u0026ldquo;Crabfest,\u0026rdquo; by Evel Knievel\u0026rsquo;s former bodyguard, Gene Sullivan.\nHow could anyone fail to be convinced by that?\n(Via the Wilmington News Journal, Ohio.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/worlds-largest-horseshoe-crab-promotes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBaltimore\u0026rsquo;s Columbus Center Maritime Museum had the world\u0026rsquo;s largest horseshoe crab model built for them\u0026ndash;it is 68 feet long, 28 feet long, and has a 13-foot-high domed ceiling (apparently you can go inside it).  The museum was in need of revenue, so it sold the giant horseshoe crab to the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum as it was under construction.  AiG realized that the crab was too large to fit in their museum, and so they gave it to the Freedom Worship Church in Blanchester, Ohio.  That church put the crab into a \u0026ldquo;scripture garden\u0026rdquo; and a \u0026ldquo;fossil courtyard,\u0026rdquo; where it is used to argue for creationism on the grounds that the horseshoe crab has not evolved over time and exhibits evidence of design as \u0026ldquo;a true gift from God, with its blood being used as a clotting agent for disease in scientific research.\u0026rdquo;  And now it is going to be jumped over with a motorcycle for a fundraising event called \u0026ldquo;Crabfest,\u0026rdquo; by Evel Knievel\u0026rsquo;s former bodyguard, Gene Sullivan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow could anyone fail to be convinced by that?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://www.wnewsj.com/main.asp?SectionID=49\u0026amp;SubSectionID=156\u0026amp;ArticleID=168048\u0026amp;TM=22804.34\"\u003eWilmington News Journal\u003c/a\u003e, Ohio.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"World's largest horseshoe crab promotes creationism through motorcycle jump"},{"content":"Upon learning that he was about to be the target of a prosecution for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, U.S. government biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins killed himself on Tuesday with an overdose of Tylenol with codeine.\nIvins became a suspect after it was discovered that he had failed to report anthrax contaminations at his lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2002. In late 2008, he was ordered to stay away from a social worker who had counseled him, Jean Duley, who would have testified against him at his trial. In Duley\u0026rsquo;s application for a protective order, she said that Ivins had stalked her and threatened to kill her.\nIvins worked at the same lab where a prior \u0026ldquo;person of interest\u0026rdquo; in the case, Stephen Hatfill, also worked. Hatfill was cleared of involvement with the attacks and won a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department after he sued for harassment and privacy act violations. Hatfill also won a $10 million libel judgment against Vanity Fair and Reader\u0026rsquo;s Digest for an article by Donald Foster which claimed that Hatfill\u0026rsquo;s writings and travels connected him to the anthrax attacks.\nIvins\u0026rsquo; attorney claims that he was innocent, but if that were the case, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t his response have been more like Hatfill\u0026rsquo;s? Perhaps, perhaps not. Private investigator and former CNN reporter Pat Clawson, who was also a spokesperson for Hatfill,\nsaid on Friday that news organizations and the public should be “deeply skeptical” about any notion that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax killer unless and until solid evidence is brought forth.“Everybody is jumping to the conclusion that because this guy committed suicide, he must be the anthrax killer,” Mr. Clawson said. “That is a lousy premise. The pressure of these F.B.I. investigations on individuals is phenomenal, and it is quite likely that this guy cracked under that pressure but had nothing to do with the killings.”\nIvins was a church-going Catholic and a married father of two.\n(Hat tip to Greg Laden.)\nUPDATE (August 7, 2008): The government\u0026rsquo;s case against Ivins includes tracing the strain of anthrax to his specific lab, the fact that he worked long periods alone in a secure lab that housed that strain and could not account for his activity, that when asked to provide spores from his laboratory to investigators he gave them different spores and then lied about it, that he sent an email to an associate after 9/11 saying that terrorists have \u0026ldquo;anthrax and sarin gas\u0026rdquo; and have \u0026ldquo;decreed death to all Jews and Americans,\u0026rdquo; language similar to statements in threatening letters included in the mailed anthrax envelopes. All of the spores used in the anthrax attacks came from a single flask in Ivins\u0026rsquo; lab, RMR-1029. That\u0026rsquo;s probably the most conclusive evidence that Ivins was behind the attacks.\nApparently Ivins also engaged in an \u0026ldquo;edit war\u0026rdquo; on the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority\u0026rsquo;s Wikipedia page, repeatedly posting negative information there, and thought that the group had declared a \u0026ldquo;fatwah\u0026rdquo; on him. (Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/prosecution-target-for-anthrax-attacks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUpon learning that he was about to be the target of a prosecution for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/01/anthrax.terrorism?gusrc=rss\u0026amp;feed=worldnews\"\u003eU.S. government biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins killed himself on Tuesday\u003c/a\u003e with an overdose of Tylenol with codeine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIvins became a suspect after it was discovered that he had failed to report anthrax contaminations at his lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2002.  In late 2008, he was ordered to stay away from a social worker who had counseled him, Jean Duley, who would have testified against him at his trial.  In Duley\u0026rsquo;s application for a protective order, she said that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/washington/02anthrax.html?_r=2\u0026amp;hp=\u0026amp;adxnnl=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;pagewanted=all\u0026amp;adxnnlx=1217620810-lqh95dm5tRfhd2UrbjeRyg\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003eIvins had stalked her and threatened to kill her\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIvins worked at the same lab where a prior \u0026ldquo;person of interest\u0026rdquo; in the case, Stephen Hatfill, also worked.  Hatfill was cleared of involvement with the attacks and \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087\u0026amp;sid=aftgJ3S0euEQ\u0026amp;refer=home\"\u003ewon a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department\u003c/a\u003e after he sued for harassment and privacy act violations.  Hatfill also won \u003ca href=\"http://www.nysun.com/national/hatfill-settles-10m-libel-lawsuit/49333/\"\u003ea $10 million libel judgment against \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVanity Fair\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReader\u0026rsquo;s Digest\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e for an article by Donald Foster which claimed that Hatfill\u0026rsquo;s writings and travels connected him to the anthrax attacks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIvins\u0026rsquo; attorney claims that he was innocent, but if that were the case, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t his response have been more like Hatfill\u0026rsquo;s?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Private investigator and former CNN reporter Pat Clawson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/washington/02anthrax.html?_r=2\u0026amp;hp=\u0026amp;adxnnl=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;pagewanted=all\u0026amp;adxnnlx=1217620810-lqh95dm5tRfhd2UrbjeRyg\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ewho was also a spokesperson for Hatfill\u003c/a\u003e,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003esaid on Friday that news organizations and the public should be “deeply skeptical” about any notion that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax killer unless and until solid evidence is brought forth.\u003cp\u003e“Everybody is jumping to the conclusion that because this guy committed suicide, he must be the anthrax killer,” Mr. Clawson said. “That is a lousy premise. The pressure of these F.B.I. investigations on individuals is phenomenal, and it is quite likely that this guy cracked under that pressure but had nothing to do with the killings.”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prosecution target for anthrax attacks commits suicide"},{"content":"Ed Brayton gives a summary of Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s list of tough questions for the candidates. It\u0026rsquo;s a pity that our mass media is unlikely to ask any of them. (Yet kudos to Fox News for publishing Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s columns asking them\u0026ndash;they seem to be a whole lot better on the web than they are on television.) Brayton quotes the questions for McCain about how serious he is about cutting corporate pork when he personally profits from it (the laws that mandate alcohol be sold through distributors like Hensley \u0026amp; Co, where his wife got her fortune) and how he reconciles his support for the drug war with the fact that his wife was permitted to avoid any criminal penalties for her prescription drug problems. For Obama, he selected as favorites how Obama plans to pay for his proposed civilian national security force, how he reconciles his support for the drug war with his own past use of marijuana and cocaine, and why he supported the farm bill and supports ethanol subsidies.\nI think Ed clearly picked out the best questions Balko asked of McCain, but here are a couple other questions for Obama that I particularly liked:\nIn a speech to Cuban-Americans in Miami, you called the Cuban trade embargo \u0026ldquo;an important inducement for change,\u0026rdquo; a 180-degree shift from your prior position. The trade embargo has been in place for 46 years. Did denying an entire generation of Cubans access to American goods, culture, and ideas induce any actual change? Wasn\u0026rsquo;t the real effect just to keep Cubans poor and isolated? In communist countries like Vietnam and China, trade with the U.S. has ushered in economic reform, and vastly improved the standard of living. Why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be the same if we were to start trading with Cuba?\nIn addition to the drugs, Cuba, and school voucher issues, you have also changed or revised your position in recent months on the war in Iraq, government eavesdropping and immunity for the telecom companies, and holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. Under some circumstances, changing or revising one\u0026rsquo;s position can show admirable introspection — the ability to revise prior conceptions with new information. Some of your new positions are more conservative. Some are more liberal. But they do seem to have one thing in common: Should we be concerned that your shifts have been to those positions that give more power and influence to government? Are there any areas where you\u0026rsquo;d actually roll back the federal government?Balko asked a question of McCain about the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold), which I think did serious damage to the First Amendment and protects incumbent politicians by prohibiting any corporation (including nonprofits) or by an unincorporated entity using any corporate funds from running ads critical or supportive of a candidate within 30 days of a primary or within 60 days of a general election. I agree McCain should be asked tough questions about his apparent disrespect for political speech, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t particularly care for the specific question Balko came up with.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-17):\nGood, common sense on ethanol, a ridiculous fuel. It is already partially oxidized, extremely hygroscopic, and ordinary distillation will always leave 4% water (i.e. there is a 96-4 azeotrope). If it's so great, lets see them produce it without subsidies coerced from taxpayers, and crass mandated fuel compositions.BTW, to most of the world, 8-1-2008 means 8 January: i.e. they use the sensible ordering of time units in increasing size of day, month, year.\nLippard (2008-08-17):\nI agree with the rest of the world's preference for ISO date formats... my usual date format on a letter is \"dd Mmmmmmm yyyy\" for that same reason. I'll have to see if there's an easy way to use a different ISO format with this blog template. I chose one that gave both date and time on posts and comments, since I dislike seeing blog comments that only have a time and no date.\nLippard (2008-08-17):\nNo such luck--the only comment format with both date and time is mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/tough-questions-for-mccain-and-obama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton gives \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/tough_questions_for_both_candi.php\"\u003ea summary of Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s list of tough questions for the candidates\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s a pity that our mass media is unlikely to ask any of them.  (Yet kudos to Fox News for publishing Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s columns asking them\u0026ndash;they seem to be a whole lot better on the web than they are on television.)  Brayton quotes the questions for McCain about how serious he is about cutting corporate pork when he personally profits from it (the laws that mandate alcohol be sold through distributors like Hensley \u0026amp; Co, where his wife got her fortune) and how he reconciles his support for the drug war with the fact that his wife was permitted to avoid any criminal penalties for her prescription drug problems.  For Obama, he selected as favorites how Obama plans to pay for his proposed civilian national security force, how he reconciles his support for the drug war with his own past use of marijuana and cocaine, and why he supported the farm bill and supports ethanol subsidies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think Ed clearly picked out the best questions Balko asked of \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,381841,00.html\"\u003eMcCain\u003c/a\u003e, but here are a couple other questions for \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392283,00.html\"\u003eObama\u003c/a\u003e that I particularly liked:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003eIn a speech to Cuban-Americans in Miami, you called the Cuban trade embargo \u0026ldquo;an important inducement for change,\u0026rdquo; a 180-degree shift from your prior position. The trade embargo has been in place for 46 years. Did denying an entire generation of Cubans access to American goods, culture, and ideas induce any actual change? Wasn\u0026rsquo;t the real effect just to keep Cubans poor and isolated? In communist countries like Vietnam and China, trade with the U.S. has ushered in economic reform, and vastly improved the standard of living. Why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be the same if we were to start trading with Cuba?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003eIn addition to the drugs, Cuba, and school voucher issues, you have also changed or revised your position in recent months on the war in Iraq, government eavesdropping and immunity for the telecom companies, and holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. Under some circumstances, changing or revising one\u0026rsquo;s position can show admirable introspection — the ability to revise prior conceptions with new information. Some of your new positions are more conservative. Some are more liberal. But they do seem to have one thing in common: Should we be concerned that your shifts have been to those positions that give more power and influence to government? Are there \u003cem\u003eany\u003c/em\u003e areas where you\u0026rsquo;d actually roll back the federal government?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eBalko asked a question of McCain about the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisan_Campaign_Reform_Act\"\u003eBipartisan Campaign Reform Act\u003c/a\u003e (BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold), which I think did serious damage to the First Amendment and protects incumbent politicians by prohibiting any corporation (including nonprofits) or by an unincorporated entity using any corporate funds from running ads critical or supportive of a candidate within 30 days of a primary or within 60 days of a general election.  I agree McCain should be asked tough questions about his apparent disrespect for political speech, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t particularly care for the specific question Balko came up with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tough questions for McCain and Obama"},{"content":"I saw two articles this morning which I think invite comparison. First, Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP Corporation, says people visiting China should take laptops with no data, or encrypt what data they have:\nTravelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive personal or business information to officials who monitor state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger said.\nHe said that without data encryption, executives could have business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists\u0026rsquo; lists of contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk.\nDunkelberger said that during unrest in Tibet in March, overseas Tibetan activists found their computer systems under heavy pressure from Chinese security agencies trying to trace digital communications.\n\u0026ldquo;What the Chinese tried to do was infiltrate their security to see who in China the Tibet movement was talking to,\u0026rdquo; he said.\n\u0026hellip;\nDunkelberger, whose firm serves many multinational corporations operating in China, said, \u0026ldquo;A lot of places in the world, including China, don\u0026rsquo;t have the same view of personal space and privacy that we do in the United States.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ve got to suspect that every place you\u0026rsquo;re doing work is being monitored and being watched,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nDunkelberger\u0026rsquo;s advice is good as far as it goes. Of course, PGP Whole Disk Encryption won\u0026rsquo;t help protect data in transit, and while PGP Email will protect the content of email messages, it won\u0026rsquo;t conceal the source and destination. The threat described is one where traffic analysis enough can reveal a lot, and so you\u0026rsquo;d want to make use of a corporate VPN, some kind of proxy, or a system like TOR if you want to protect information about where your Internet traffic is ultimately going. PGP is a good company that makes great products; my employer uses PGP Whole Disk Encryption and Email products.\nThe second article, however, casts some doubt on the last part of what Dunkelberger says. It looks like the U.S., where the NSA engages in warrantless wiretapping with the assistance of the large incumbent telecoms (and a spineless Congress gives them immunity for violations of the law), the CIA spies on foreign visitors within the borders of the U.S. in conjunction with the FBI\u0026rsquo;s counterintelligence division, isn\u0026rsquo;t so different from other countries. It\u0026rsquo;s now publicly admitted by DHS that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers have the right to seize laptops and other electronic devices from people entering the U.S. and hang on to them indefinitely in order to search them. Therefore Dunkelberger\u0026rsquo;s advice should be taken by anyone coming into the U.S., as well\u0026ndash;use blank laptops or laptops with encryption only. Some companies have begun to only allow employees to have a web browser and a VPN client on their laptops, and keep all data in the corporation, which can completely eliminate this particular governmental risk.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/08/expert-tells-china-visitors-to-encrypt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI saw two articles this morning which I think invite comparison.  First, Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP Corporation, says \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080801/wr_nm/olympics_visitors_encryption_dc_1\"\u003epeople visiting China should take laptops with no data, or encrypt what data they have\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Travelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or  laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive  personal or business information to officials who monitor  state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger  said.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e  He said that without data encryption, executives could have  business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists\u0026rsquo; lists of  contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expert tells China visitors to encrypt data as U.S. announces policy of laptop seizure"},{"content":"Kat\u0026rsquo;s trip to work this morning was delayed by road closures due to the aftermath of a foiled attempt to hold up a neighborhood liquor store, Minute Liquors, owned and run by a Bulgarian immigrant couple of our acquaintance. The gunman who chose their store to rob made a slight miscalculation, since the store is directly across 16th St. from a Department of Public Safety facility. The robber came out of the store to face about a dozen officers, who were at the facility preparing for training when they were informed of a robbery in progress across the street. The armed robber was shot in the abdomen and taken to the hospital.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/foolish-man-attempts-to-rob-liquor.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKat\u0026rsquo;s trip to work this morning was delayed by road closures due to the aftermath of \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/31/20080731officerinvolvedshooting-CR.html\"\u003ea foiled attempt to hold up a neighborhood liquor store\u003c/a\u003e, Minute Liquors, owned and run by a Bulgarian immigrant couple of our acquaintance.  The gunman who chose their store to rob made a slight miscalculation, since the store is directly across 16th St. from a Department of Public Safety facility.  The robber came out of the store to face about a dozen officers, who were at the facility preparing for training when they were informed of a robbery in progress across the street.  The armed robber was shot in the abdomen and taken to the hospital.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foolish man attempts to rob liquor store"},{"content":"A parent complained about Sarah Brannen\u0026rsquo;s book, Uncle Bobby\u0026rsquo;s Wedding, about same-sex marriage, that was in the children\u0026rsquo;s book section in the Douglas County Library system in Colorado. Librarian Jamie Larue wrote an excellent, kind, and thoughtful response to the library patron about why the library is not going to move or remove the book.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/librarian-responds-to-parental.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA parent complained about Sarah Brannen\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUncle Bobby\u0026rsquo;s Wedding\u003c/span\u003e, about same-sex marriage, that was in the children\u0026rsquo;s book section in the Douglas County Library system in Colorado.  Librarian Jamie Larue wrote \u003ca href=\"http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2008/07/uncle-bobbys-wedding.html\"\u003ean excellent, kind, and thoughtful response to the library patron about why the library is not going to move or remove the book\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A librarian responds to a parental challenge"},{"content":"\nIt\u0026rsquo;s official, the contracts have been signed and paid for\u0026ndash;the Freedom From Religion Foundation\u0026rsquo;s billboards will be coming to Phoenix. There will be five of them, all in central Phoenix, and both of the FFRF\u0026rsquo;s designs will be represented. There\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; billboard, pictured here in Denver, and another design that says \u0026ldquo;Beware of Dogma.\u0026quot;\nThe billboards will appear starting September 1, and I\u0026rsquo;ll post some photos once they\u0026rsquo;re up. The billboard locations will be:\n#1103 Cross streets: 3rd Ave \u0026amp; Van Buren. Located on 3rd Ave just north of Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 3rd Ave approaching Van Buren. At this intersection look forward and right. The sign is setback from a parking lot which makes for clear viewing and efficient picture taking. The Arizona State Capital, Phoenix City Hall, FOX News, and the Arizona Republic are all within a few blocks.\n#1245 Cross streets: 7th St \u0026amp; Coolidge. Located just north of the downtown area on 7th Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling southbound on 7th Ave just south of Camelback Rd but just prior to Coolidge. The sign is on the east side of 7th Street.\n#2005 Cross Streets: Jefferson \u0026amp; 13th St. Located just east of the downtown area and Chase Field on Jefferson Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Jefferson just after 13th Street. The sign is on the south side of Jefferson Street.\n#2501 Cross Streets: 19th Ave \u0026amp; Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex.\n#2911 Cross streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.When these billboards have gone up in other locations, they\u0026rsquo;ve usually generated some protests and complaints, as well as competing billboards, such as this one in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which accused atheists of hating America. That misses the whole point\u0026ndash;the point is to let nonbelievers know that they are not alone, and to put them in touch with the FFRF and other local groups of people with similar opinions about the supernatural. One can certainly express disagreement with the sentiment (or the likelihood of a world without religion\u0026ndash;I think it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely that religion will disappear from the world as long as there are social groups of human beings on it), but a response that claims that atheists hate America or are engaged in persecution is to mistake reality for a caricature like the one depicted in Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\nFunding for these billboards was a joint project of the FFRF and various Meetup groups led by some folks from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup group, which is now up to 411 members. There are plans for a followup billboard, for which funds are still being raised, which will advertise a website promoting a diverse set of groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists, brights, and freethinkers.\nHistorical Comments Gridman (2008-07-31):\nSounds like an occaision for a group photo op.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/ffrf-billboards-are-coming-to-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://ffrf.org/news/images/denver01.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://ffrf.org/news/images/denver01.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s official, the contracts have been signed and paid for\u0026ndash;the Freedom From Religion Foundation\u0026rsquo;s billboards will be coming to Phoenix.  There will be five of them, all in central Phoenix, and both of the FFRF\u0026rsquo;s designs will be represented.  There\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;Imagine No Religion\u0026rdquo; billboard, \u003ca href=\"http://ffrf.org/news/2008/denver_billboard_pub.php\"\u003epictured here in Denver\u003c/a\u003e, and another design that says \u0026ldquo;Beware of Dogma.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe billboards will appear starting September 1, and I\u0026rsquo;ll post some photos once they\u0026rsquo;re up.  The \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/messages/boards/thread/4955502\"\u003ebillboard locations will be\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e#1103 Cross streets: 3rd Ave \u0026amp; Van Buren. Located on 3rd Ave just north of Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 3rd Ave approaching Van Buren. At this intersection look forward and right. The sign is setback from a parking lot which makes for clear viewing and efficient picture taking. The Arizona State Capital, Phoenix City Hall, FOX News, and the Arizona Republic are all within a few blocks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#1245 Cross streets: 7th St \u0026amp; Coolidge. Located just north of the downtown area on 7th Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling southbound on 7th Ave just south of Camelback Rd but just prior to Coolidge. The sign is on the east side of 7th Street.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2005 Cross Streets: Jefferson \u0026amp; 13th St. Located just east of the downtown area and Chase Field on Jefferson Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Jefferson just after 13th Street. The sign is on the south side of Jefferson Street.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2501 Cross Streets: 19th Ave \u0026amp; Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2911 Cross streets: McDowell \u0026amp; 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhen these billboards have gone up in other locations, they\u0026rsquo;ve usually generated some protests and complaints, as well as competing billboards, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/news/2008/hatebillboard.php\"\u003ethis one in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which accused atheists of hating America\u003c/a\u003e.  That misses the whole point\u0026ndash;the point is to let nonbelievers know that they are not alone, and to put them in touch with the FFRF and other local groups of people with similar opinions about the supernatural.  One can certainly express disagreement with the sentiment (or the likelihood of a world without religion\u0026ndash;I think it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R2J6GZ9ATK4MW0/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eunlikely that religion will disappear from the world\u003c/a\u003e as long as there are social groups of human beings on it), but a response that claims that atheists hate America or are engaged in persecution is to mistake reality for a caricature like the one depicted in Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/misc/humor.archive//lioaca.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFunding for these billboards was a joint project of the FFRF and various Meetup groups led by some folks from the \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/\"\u003ePhoenix Atheists Meetup group\u003c/a\u003e, which is now up to 411 members.  There are plans for a followup billboard, for which \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/157/messages/boards/thread/4964050\"\u003efunds are still being raised\u003c/a\u003e, which will advertise a website promoting a diverse set of groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists, brights, and freethinkers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FFRF billboards are coming to Phoenix"},{"content":"Orac at Respectful Insolence critiques Dr. Jay Gordon\u0026rsquo;s argument that breastfeeding and eating less cheese is a better way to prevent communicable diseases than vaccination.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/dr-jay-gordons-bogus-anti-vaccine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrac at Respectful Insolence \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/07/dr_jay_gordon_pediatrician_to_the_stars.php\"\u003ecritiques Dr. Jay Gordon\u0026rsquo;s argument that breastfeeding and eating less cheese is a better way to prevent communicable diseases than vaccination\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Jay Gordon's bogus anti-vaccine arguments"},{"content":"At Rational Rant is an excellent three-part critique of a document that\u0026rsquo;s been floating around the Internet which claims to support the case that America was intended by its founders to be a Christian nation. In fact, the document is a mish-mash of fabricated quotations and misinformation. Rational Rant has gone to the trouble of digging up the details and even comparing four different versions of the document.\n\u0026ldquo;Dubious Documents\u0026rdquo;: part one, part two, part three\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/dubious-documents-of-american-history.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Rational Rant is an excellent three-part critique of a document that\u0026rsquo;s been floating around the Internet which claims to support the case that America was intended by its founders to be a Christian nation.  In fact, the document is a mish-mash of fabricated quotations and misinformation.  Rational Rant has gone to the trouble of digging up the details and even comparing four different versions of the document.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dubious Documents\u0026rdquo;:  \u003ca href=\"http://rationalrant.blogspot.com/2008/07/dubious-documents-case-of-fractured.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://rationalrant.blogspot.com/2008/07/dubious-documents-case-of-fractured_09.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://rationalrant.blogspot.com/2008/07/dubious-documents-case-of-fractured_17.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://rationalrant.blogspot.com/2008/07/dubious-documents-case-of-fractured_09.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dubious Documents of American History"},{"content":"He actually did give at least one more lecture after this at another university, but this was his last lecture at CMU, given on September 18, 2007 for a series originally titled \u0026ldquo;The Last Lecture.\u0026rdquo; Pausch was born October 23, 1960 and died today, July 25, 2008. You can read his story at his CMU web page, at least once the traffic dies down.\nThis lecture is on achieving your childhood dreams, most of which he did, and on enabling the childhood dreams of others. Pausch was the founder of the Alice Project, which is a 3D programming environment for teaching students.\nUPDATE (July 26, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;m getting lots of traffic to this post from people searching for Randy Pausch\u0026rsquo;s name and the word \u0026ldquo;atheist,\u0026rdquo; apparently from people trying to find out if he was an atheist. His CMU web page thanks his church, so he belonged to one, whatever his religious beliefs may have been. He didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything in his lecture to indicate what they were. As an atheist, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter to me so much what he believed, as opposed to how he lived. That is in sharp contrast to several Christian sites which have condemned him for being a nonbeliever (which they don\u0026rsquo;t know to be the case) or for failing to evangelize. These people strike me as angry believers looking for reasons to criticize someone who led a good life. One Christian writer criticized Pausch\u0026rsquo;s talk by attempting to paraphrase it as \u0026ldquo;I lived a meaningless life following meaningless rules, so should you.\u0026rdquo; The same writer says, \u0026ldquo;Yes, he lived a nice and successful life, but so what? Who cares? He will be forgotten as were many people before and after him. His impact on the world would soon disappear. Whatever he achieved in research will soon become useless.\u0026rdquo; What nonsense! So what? Those who knew him and worked with him disagree. He will eventually be forgotten, as we all will, but it will always be the case that he did live and he did make a mark on the people around him and his time was not wasted. And he will be no more harmed by his nonexistence after his death than he was by his nonexistence before he was born.\nI question the motivation of those who argue critically of those who have lived happy and productive lives, arguing that so much better are the lives of those who live miserable, angry, critical, and destructive lives, just so long as they accept Jesus before they die. Surely the universe they want to believe in is an unjust and immoral one.\nReckless Divinity (2008-11-05):\nGood post, I had been keeping tabs on him after his lecture to find out his status. I found this line very interesting: \"And he will be no more harmed by his nonexistence after his death than he was by his nonexistence before he was born.\"Not that this isn't true or is true, it is just asserted as a fact, which for some reason was odd to me, but nevertheless a good post.\nLippard (2008-11-06):\nInvisible Pills: I said it because I believe it is true.It's a reference to very old arguments from the Epicureans about death not being a harm to those who are dead. This one is the \"symmetry argument\" from Lucretius (99 B.C.E.-55 B.C.E.).The other common Epicurean argument is from Epicurus himself (341 B.C.E.-271 B.C.E.), which is the \"no subject\" argument--when you're dead, you've been annihilated and no longer exist, so there is no you to be harmed.Both arguments have been discussed and argued about by philosophers to the present day. I just came across a Master's Thesis on the symmetry argument by a student at GSU, who defends the symmetry argument against Thomas Nagel's objections.\nReckless Divinity (2008-11-06):\nI am familiar with Epicurus essentially saying they do not touch each other, and I understand that you said it in that manner because you believe it to be true. That was the only thing I was confused about - that whether you believed it to be true because you perceive it to be a fact or that it is a known fact and you are stating it as such. You clarified for me, so I have my answer. Thanks for the reply.\nReckless Divinity (2008-11-06):\nHave you ever had conversations or debates with the gentleman who is dubbed the \"Maverick Philosopher\"? If so please share those materials with me. Thanks.\nLippard (2008-11-06):\nI've never met him or conversed with him (though he's here in Arizona, just east of Phoenix where I live), but I've occasionally read his blog. I don't believe I've debated him, unless we've exchanged comments at Victor Reppert's blog.\nReckless Divinity (2008-11-06):\nI will definitely have to peruse V.R.'s blog again to see the exchanges, I didn't even realize Bill comments on Victor's blog.I read the paper from the student. It is well written, but I do like Nagel's asymmetry argument better as a whole in distinguishing between the two forms of non-existence even if the current state of self is the same, I do think it is rational to fear what is in front of you before it arrives, especially if it is known what it such an event would entail,(even if technically we are not a part of that event, the anticipation warrants fear), as opposed to what is behind you and already overcomed so to speak.However, what do I know? I am an agnostic that hopes some form of survival dualism is true even if my left hemisphere of the brain says otherwise. However I would say this - if the survival hypothesis is true, then it is more rational to fear death in that circumstance than to fear non-existence.\nChris mankey (2009-01-09):\nRandy Pausch was a unitarian.http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/117142.shtml\nLippard (2009-01-09):\nChris:Thanks!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/randy-pauschs-last-lecture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHe actually did give at least one more lecture after this at another university, but this was his last lecture at CMU, given on September 18, 2007 for a series originally titled \u0026ldquo;The Last Lecture.\u0026rdquo;  Pausch was born October 23, 1960 and died today, July 25, 2008.  You can read his story at \u003ca href=\"http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/%7Epausch/news/index.html\"\u003ehis CMU web page\u003c/a\u003e, at least once the traffic dies down.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis lecture is on achieving your childhood dreams, most of which he did, and on enabling the childhood dreams of others. Pausch was the founder of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.alice.org/\"\u003eAlice Project\u003c/a\u003e, which is a 3D programming environment for teaching students.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 26, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;m getting lots of traffic to this post from people searching for Randy Pausch\u0026rsquo;s name and the word \u0026ldquo;atheist,\u0026rdquo; apparently from people trying to find out if he was an atheist. His CMU web page thanks his church, so he belonged to one, whatever his religious beliefs may have been.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything in his lecture to indicate what they were.  As an atheist, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter to me so much what he believed, as opposed to how he lived.  That is in sharp contrast to several Christian sites which have condemned him for being a nonbeliever (which they don\u0026rsquo;t know to be the case) or for failing to evangelize.  These people strike me as angry believers looking for reasons to criticize someone who led a good life.  One Christian writer criticized Pausch\u0026rsquo;s talk by attempting to paraphrase it as \u0026ldquo;I lived a meaningless life following meaningless rules, so should you.\u0026rdquo; The same writer says, \u0026ldquo;Yes, he lived a nice and successful life, but so what? Who cares? He will be forgotten as were many people before and after him. His impact on the world would soon disappear. Whatever he achieved in research will soon become useless.\u0026rdquo;  What nonsense!  So what?  Those who knew him and worked with him disagree.  He will eventually be forgotten, as we all will, but it will always be the case that he did live and he did make a mark on the people around him and his time was not wasted.  And he will be no more harmed by his nonexistence after his death than he was by his nonexistence before he was born.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI question the motivation of those who argue critically of those who have lived happy and productive lives, arguing that so much better are the lives of those who live miserable, angry, critical, and destructive lives, just so long as they accept Jesus before they die.  Surely the universe they want to believe in is an unjust and immoral one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0530922263237027 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Randy Pausch's \"last lecture\""},{"content":"Creation Ministries International has updated its website about its legal battles with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky. The latest addition reports that in April, AiG served CMI with a lawsuit in the United States trying to stop the legal action in Australia\u0026ndash;even though one of the two contracts AiG is trying to enforce specifies the law of the Australian state of Victoria as the governing law and forum. CMI will be defending itself in the U.S. against the new action.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/update-on-cmi-aig-lawsuits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreation Ministries International has updated \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080509143221/http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5563/\"\u003eits website about its legal battles with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080509143221/http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5900\"\u003elatest addition\u003c/a\u003e reports that in April, AiG served CMI with a lawsuit in the United States trying to stop the legal action in Australia\u0026ndash;even though one of the two contracts AiG is trying to enforce specifies the law of the Australian state of Victoria as the governing law and forum.  CMI will be defending itself in the U.S. against the new action.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update on CMI-AiG lawsuits"},{"content":"Kat saw multiple police cars on her way home and now we hear a bunch of helicopter action nearby, and it appears there has been a shooting incident at South Mountain Community College, with three victims and a suspect in custody.\nUPDATE (5:08 p.m.): The shooting apparently took place at the campus Technology Center around 4 p.m., and the campus was quickly locked down, but the suspect had already left. The suspect was arrested at around 23rd Ave. and Grove, near his home. The news is reporting four victims admitted to the Maricopa Medical Center, two men aged 17 and 19, one 20-year-old woman, and one possible additional victim not confirmed. At least one male victim was aware and speaking as he was admitted, and the woman spoke with her father, Otis Williams, by cell phone after she was shot.\nOne news report claims the suspect was known on campus, and that was apparently why he was quickly apprehended.\nStudents are now being permitted to leave campus. Classes for the rest of today and tomorrow are cancelled.\nUPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Apparently the suspect, a black male driving a white truck, drove home where his father persuaded himself to give himself up to police, which he did. Police and fire department officials were on site at the campus within about five minutes after the first reports of a shooting (both police and fire stations are quite close by).\nUPDATE (6:04 p.m.): The ages of victims have been changed\u0026ndash;the woman, a pharmacy student, from 22 to 20, and the 25-year-old male to 19. The 17-year-old has been identified as Christopher Taylor, by his brother Jay. A student reports that the shooter was one of two men who had been fighting in the computer center. The 19-year-old victim is reported in critical condition, while the other two victims are in stable condition. (Yet CNN reports that the woman was shot in the abdomen while the other two victims were shot in the leg. It describes the males as aged 17 and 25.)\nThe alleged fourth victim apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, and was incorrectly reported by one of the news reporters on the basis of watching people being brought in to the hospital. Or perhaps there was a 25-year-old shot in the leg and a 19-year-old who received more serious injuries?\nUPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News 5 reports that there was a long-running dispute between the shooter and one of the victims, and police say that the shooting was gang-related.\nUPDATE (July 25, 2008): The shooter has been identified as 22-year-old Rodney Smith, a former SCC student and known as a regular at the computer lab, who came to campus to pick a fight with 19-year-old Isaac Deshay Smith, who was shot in the leg and was still in critical condition last night. The other two victims caught in the crossfire were 20-year-old Charee Williams, who was shot in the hip, and 17-year-old Christopher Lee Taylor, who was also shot in the leg. Five family members and friends of Rodney Smith were also taken into custody last night for interfering with the investigation and disobeying police officers. The most recent report does not mention gangs, but only a long-standing feud between the two Smiths.\nUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Rodney Smith has apologized to his \u0026ldquo;innocent victims\u0026rdquo; in court, and it has been reported that Isaac Deshay Smith and two others were involved in a fight last year in which Rodney Smith was punched and kicked while lying on the ground and his jaw broken in two places.\nMatthew Self (2008-07-25):\nHey Jim, how closer are you to the school? What's the scene like there?\nLippard (2008-07-25):\nI'm about a mile away. 24th St. was completely shut down from Baseline to Southern. There are still helicopters above the school, so I suspect you can get a good picture of the area from channels 12 or 15.\nLippard (2008-07-25):\nMatthew: I checked out your blogs--your Dave Barry-like book idea sounds like a good one. Are you familiar with the Wittenburg Door?\nAnonymous (2008-07-25):\nWow. Am I sure glad I don't go to school anymore. I'm also glad I didn't go to college either.\nEinzige (2008-08-06):\nYou're glad you didn't go to college because it saved you from exposure to the exceedingly rare chance of getting shot on campus?I hope you're joking.\nGanesh Totaganti (2008-10-13):\nOH, I am afraid ,Iam remembering my college days ,thank god I passed that stage .\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/shootings-at-south-mountain-community.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKat saw multiple police cars on her way home and now we hear a bunch of helicopter action nearby, and it appears there has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/24/20080724kpnx-collegeshooting0724-CP.html\"\u003ea shooting incident at South Mountain Community College\u003c/a\u003e, with three victims and a suspect in custody.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (5:08 p.m.):  The shooting apparently took place at the campus Technology Center around 4 p.m., and the campus was quickly locked down, but the suspect had already left.  The suspect was arrested at around 23rd Ave. and Grove, near his home.  The news is reporting four victims admitted to the Maricopa Medical Center, two men aged 17 and 19, one 20-year-old woman, and one possible additional victim not confirmed.  At least one male victim was aware and speaking as he was admitted, and the woman spoke with her father, Otis Williams, by cell phone after she was shot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne news report claims the suspect was known on campus, and that was apparently why he was quickly apprehended.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStudents are now being permitted to leave campus.  Classes for the rest of today and tomorrow are cancelled.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Apparently the suspect, a black male driving a white truck, drove home where his father persuaded himself to give himself up to police, which he did.  Police and fire department officials were on site at the campus within about five minutes after the first reports of a shooting (both police and fire stations are quite close by).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (6:04 p.m.): The ages of victims have been changed\u0026ndash;the woman, a pharmacy student, from 22 to 20, and the 25-year-old male to 19.  The 17-year-old has been identified as Christopher Taylor, by his brother Jay.  A student reports that the shooter was \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/24/20080724kpnx-collegeshooting0724-CP.html\"\u003eone of two men who had been fighting in the computer center\u003c/a\u003e.  The 19-year-old victim is reported in critical condition, while the other two victims are in stable condition.  (Yet CNN reports that the woman was shot in the abdomen while the other two victims were shot in the leg.  It describes the males as aged 17 and 25.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe alleged fourth victim apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, and was incorrectly reported by one of the news reporters on the basis of watching people being brought in to the hospital.  Or perhaps there was a 25-year-old shot in the leg and a 19-year-old who received more serious injuries?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News 5 \u003ca href=\"http://www.kpho.com/news/16981542/detail.html?iref=topnews\"\u003ereports that there was a long-running dispute between the shooter and one of the victims\u003c/a\u003e, and police say that the shooting was gang-related.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 25, 2008):  The shooter has been identified as 22-year-old Rodney Smith, a former SCC student and known as a regular at the computer lab, who came to campus to pick a fight with 19-year-old Isaac Deshay Smith, who was shot in the leg and was still in critical condition last night.  The other two victims caught in the crossfire were 20-year-old Charee Williams, who was shot in the hip,  and 17-year-old Christopher Lee Taylor, who was also shot in the leg.  Five family members and friends of Rodney Smith were also taken into custody last night for interfering with the investigation and disobeying police officers.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/25/20080725college-shooting0725.html\"\u003emost recent report does not mention gangs\u003c/a\u003e, but only a long-standing feud between the two Smiths.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Rodney Smith has apologized to his \u0026ldquo;innocent victims\u0026rdquo; in court, and it \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/25/20080725college-shooting0725.html\"\u003ehas been reported that Isaac Deshay Smith and two others were involved in a fight last year\u003c/a\u003e in which Rodney Smith was punched and kicked while lying on the ground and his jaw broken in two places.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shootings at South Mountain Community College"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers has eloquently described what he did, after a bit of history from 1215 to the present. There\u0026rsquo;s so much well-described in his article that I resist the urge to quote from it at all\u0026ndash;go read the whole thing, \u0026ldquo;The Great Desecration,\u0026quot; at Pharyngula.\nUPDATE: Bill Donohue has used the occasion to issue yet another apoplectic press release.\nUPDATE (July 30, 2008): The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the First Amendment in their condemnation of Myers\u0026rsquo; action. They seem to think it means that you can\u0026rsquo;t make fun of a religion unless you\u0026rsquo;re a member of it, and that everybody has to be a member of some religion.\nPhysicalist (2008-07-24):\nJust wanted to give you kudos for your attempts to educate \"the country shrink\". Nice work!\nLippard (2008-07-25):\nThanks, Physicalist!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/pz-myers-has-desecrated-cracker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers has eloquently described what he did, after a bit of history from 1215 to the present.  There\u0026rsquo;s so much well-described in his article that I resist the urge to quote from it at all\u0026ndash;go read the whole thing, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Great Desecration,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e at Pharyngula.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Bill Donohue has used the occasion to issue \u003ca href=\"http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1465\"\u003eyet another apoplectic press release\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 30, 2008): The \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_confraternity_of_catholic.php\"\u003eConfraternity of Catholic Clergy has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the First Amendment in their condemnation of Myers\u0026rsquo; action\u003c/a\u003e.  They seem to think it means that you can\u0026rsquo;t make fun of a religion unless you\u0026rsquo;re a member of it, and that everybody has to be a member of some religion.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"P.Z. Myers has desecrated a cracker"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on his recent exchanges on a religion law mailing list with former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, in which Klingensmitt repeatedly makes false statements and attacks straw men.\nUPDATE: After reading more about Klingenschmitt, I\u0026rsquo;m going with dishonest.\nRBH (2008-07-24):\nKlingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?False dichotomy. You neglected the most likely alternative: \"crazy.\"\nLippard (2008-07-24):\nI'll be happy to accept that additional disjunct.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/klingenschmitt-intellectually-dishonest.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/the_continued_absurdity_of_gor.php\"\u003ereports on his recent exchanges on a religion law mailing list with former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt\u003c/a\u003e, in which Klingensmitt repeatedly makes false statements and attacks straw men.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  After reading \u003ca href=\"http://shamefulchaplain.blogspot.com/2007/02/conservative-navy-chaplains-speak-out.html\"\u003emore about Klingenschmitt\u003c/a\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;m going with dishonest.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eRBH\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-07-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003cI\u003eKlingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eFalse dichotomy.  You neglected the most likely alternative: \"crazy.\"\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-07-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI'll be happy to accept that additional disjunct.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Klingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an interesting article in the July 23, 2008 The New Yorker by David Samuels, \u0026ldquo;Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry.\u0026quot; It describes the current state of medical marijuana business in California, where the operators of small dispensaries, which are fully compliant with state law but not federal, are not prosecuted despite occasional fed harassment. That harassment will no doubt continue until either Raich v. Ashcroft gets overturned (it was a terrible Supreme Court decision) or the feds decide to decriminalize marijuana themselves, one of which I expect to happen in the next decade.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/medical-marijuana-in-california.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting article in the July 23, 2008 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e by David Samuels, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_samuels\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  It describes the current state of medical marijuana business in California, where the operators of small dispensaries, which are fully compliant with state law but not federal, are not prosecuted despite occasional fed harassment.  That harassment will no doubt continue until either \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRaich v. Ashcroft\u003c/span\u003e gets overturned (it was a terrible Supreme Court decision) or the feds decide to decriminalize marijuana themselves, one of which I expect to happen in the next decade.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Medical marijuana in California"},{"content":"The Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century biblical manuscript that includes the oldest complete new Testament and a partial Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint), will be available online at http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/ beginning tomorrow, July 24. The site is currently live with a few page images from the manuscript, which was written over 1600 years ago (between 330-350 C.E.). Tomorrow, you will be able to look at images of the pages, see the Greek text in a window next to it, and translation into another language in a window below that\u0026ndash;English, German, Russian, or Greek (presumably modern Greek).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/oldest-complete-manuscript-of-bible-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century biblical manuscript that includes the oldest complete new Testament and a partial Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint), will be available online at \u003ca href=\"http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/\"\u003ehttp://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e beginning tomorrow, July 24.  The site is currently live with a few page images from the manuscript, which was written over 1600 years ago (between 330-350 C.E.).  Tomorrow, you will be able to look at images of the pages, see the Greek text in a window next to it, and translation into another language in a window below that\u0026ndash;English, German, Russian, or Greek (presumably modern Greek).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oldest complete manuscript of Bible to be available online"},{"content":"The New York Times reported Monday about Mexican pet shops selling pentobarbital, which is being purchased by international visitors for euthanasia purposes. The pet shops sell it for pet euthanasia, and were apparently surprised to hear that their recent sales have been for use on humans.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/mexican-suicide-aid.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/world/americas/21tijuana.html?th\u0026amp;emc=th\"\u003ereported Monday about Mexican pet shops selling pentobarbital\u003c/a\u003e, which is being purchased by international visitors for euthanasia purposes.  The pet shops sell it for pet euthanasia, and were apparently surprised to hear that their recent sales have been for use on humans.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mexican suicide aid"},{"content":"A few years ago, people were using their homes as ATMs to purchase all sorts of consumer goods including cars. More recently, desperate home sellers were offering to throw in a \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; car with the purchase of a house. Now at least one auto dealer is offering to pay your mortgage.\nThis morning I heard a commercial for one of the local Phoenix Nissan dealers (one that receives frequent complaints from people who appear to not pay very close attention to what they are purchasing). The ad offers to make your mortgage payments for the rest of the year when you buy a car from them, even if your mortgage is as much as $2,000, without changing the sale price of the car. I suspect that means without lowering the sale price of the car below the point of profit.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as a sensible way to avoid foreclosure.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/car-dealer-strategies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few years ago, people were using their homes as ATMs to purchase all sorts of consumer goods including cars.  More recently, desperate home sellers were offering to throw in a \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; car with the purchase of a house.  Now at least one auto dealer is offering to pay your mortgage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis morning I heard a commercial for one of the local Phoenix Nissan dealers (one that receives \u003ca href=\"http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/189/RipOff0189764.htm\"\u003efrequent complaints\u003c/a\u003e from \u003ca href=\"http://ripoffreport.com/reports/0/134/RipOff0134966.htm\"\u003epeople who appear to not pay very close attention to what they are purchasing\u003c/a\u003e).  The ad offers to make your mortgage payments for the rest of the year when you buy a car from them, even if your mortgage is as much as $2,000, without changing the sale price of the car.  I suspect that means without lowering the sale price of the car below the point of profit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as a sensible way to avoid foreclosure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car dealer strategies"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a good article on Camp Inquiry in the Buffalo News:\nDeep in the Holland woods, D.J. Grothe wowed a group of kids at summer camp with a series of magic tricks. Seemingly impermeable steel rings were combined and separated again; rubber bands were melded into each other; coins vanished and returned in the unlikeliest of places. Then, Grothe, national field director for the Council for Secular Humanism, did something even more amazing: He gave away the trick, detailing exactly how anyone can do magic.\nIt was another day at Camp Inquiry, where instead of swapping ghost tales or learning Bible stories, children take a critical look at claims of magic, the supernatural and even religion.\nThe camp\u0026rsquo;s mission: Help young people \u0026ldquo;confront the challenges of living a nontheistic [or] secular lifestyle in a world dominated by religious belief and pseudoscience.\u0026quot;\nThe unusual camp, now in its third year, brings together curious children from across the country to hone their skills as skeptics and critical thinkers.\nTwenty-seven campers spent the past week following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, digging up fossils and learning how to face moral dilemmas.See the full article here. I\u0026rsquo;m glad to see it\u0026rsquo;s not just a camp for atheists, but is open to theistic freethinkers as well:\nOrganizers don\u0026rsquo;t specifically address faith or religion in their planned programming, which also includes a variety of art, music and leisure activities.\nBut the topics arise frequently in casual discussions among campers. Some profess to be atheists, others refer to themselves as secular humanists, and a few say they believe in a higher power.Much better than Jesus Camp.\nUPDATE: I originally referred to Camp Inquiry as Camp Quest, a different set of camps with similar aims. Thanks, Carol, for the correction.\nUPDATE (August 9, 2008): NPR has also done a good story on Camp Inquiry.\nAnonymous (2008-07-24):\nThe article was about Camp Inquiry, not about one of the growing number of Camp Quests across the country.\nGridman (2008-07-24):\nI'm just wishing there was something like that in this area. My kids are approaching \"camp age\".\nLippard (2008-07-24):\nThere is a Center for Inquiry in Tucson... perhaps a chat with them about their future plans is in order, as well as talking to the Camp Quest folks about what it would take to get one going.HSGP would also be a good group to talk to, as they've been talking about doing something like \"atheist Sunday school\" for members with kids.I think Phoenix certainly has a critical mass of nonbelievers that could support such a thing here. Which reminds me, I need to post about the FFRF billboard.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/nice-article-on-camp-quest.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/395157.html\"\u003ea good article on Camp Inquiry in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBuffalo News\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDeep in the Holland woods, D.J. Grothe wowed a group of kids at summer camp with a series of magic tricks. Seemingly impermeable steel rings were combined and separated again; rubber bands were melded into each other; coins vanished and returned in the unlikeliest of places.  \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen, Grothe, national field director for the Council for Secular Humanism, did something even more amazing: He gave away the trick, detailing exactly how anyone can do magic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was another day at Camp Inquiry, where instead of swapping ghost tales or learning Bible stories, children take a critical look at claims of magic, the supernatural and even religion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe camp\u0026rsquo;s mission: Help young people \u0026ldquo;confront the challenges of living a nontheistic [or] secular lifestyle in a world dominated by religious belief and pseudoscience.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe unusual camp, now in its third year, brings together curious children from across the country to hone their skills as skeptics and critical thinkers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTwenty-seven campers spent the past week following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, digging up fossils and learning how to face moral dilemmas.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSee the full article \u003ca href=\"http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/395157.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m glad to see it\u0026rsquo;s not just a camp for atheists, but is open to theistic freethinkers as well:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOrganizers don\u0026rsquo;t specifically address faith or religion in their planned programming, which also includes a variety of art, music and leisure activities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut the topics arise frequently in casual discussions among campers. Some profess to be atheists, others refer to themselves as secular humanists, and a few say they believe in a higher power.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMuch better than \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/jesus-camp-camp-quest-and-eagle-lake.html\"\u003eJesus Camp\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  I originally referred to Camp Inquiry as \u003ca href=\"http://www.camp-quest.com/\"\u003eCamp Quest\u003c/a\u003e, a different set of camps with similar aims.  Thanks, Carol, for the correction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 9, 2008): NPR \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93174374\"\u003ehas also done a good story on Camp Inquiry\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nice article on Camp Inquiry"},{"content":"The Skeptics Society has officially announced its 2008 conference, and the topic is not the one that was first suggested, war, terrorism, and security. Instead, this year\u0026rsquo;s conference is on \u0026ldquo;Origins: The Big Questions,\u0026rdquo; and is co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation.\nThe conference will be held at Caltech on October 3-4, and the speaker lineup includes Sean Carroll (the Caltech theoretical physicist, not to be confused with Sean B. Carroll, the University of Wisconsin at Madison professor of molecular biology and genetics), Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, Christof Koch, Kenneth Miller, Nancey Murphy, Donald Prothero, Hugh Ross, Victor Stenger, Leonard Susskind, Michael Shermer, Philip Clayton, and Mr. Deity.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s an interesting mix of speakers for the subject matter, and I suspect I will attend, but I\u0026rsquo;d really rather go to a conference that brought critical thinking to the subjects of war, terrorism, and security.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/skeptics-society-2008-conference.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Skeptics Society \u003ca href=\"http://origins.skeptic.com/\"\u003ehas officially announced its 2008 conference\u003c/a\u003e, and the topic is not the one that was first suggested, war, terrorism, and security.  Instead, this year\u0026rsquo;s conference is on \u0026ldquo;Origins: The Big Questions,\u0026rdquo; and is co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conference will be held at Caltech on October 3-4, and the speaker lineup includes Sean Carroll (the Caltech theoretical physicist, not to be confused with Sean B. Carroll, the University of Wisconsin at Madison professor of molecular biology and genetics), Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, Christof Koch, Kenneth Miller, Nancey Murphy, Donald Prothero, Hugh Ross, Victor Stenger, Leonard Susskind, Michael Shermer, Philip Clayton, and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Deity\"\u003eMr. Deity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s an interesting mix of speakers for the subject matter, and I suspect I will attend, but I\u0026rsquo;d really rather go to a conference that brought critical thinking to the subjects of war, terrorism, and security.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics Society 2008 conference"},{"content":"A month or so ago, we got a mailing from the City of Phoenix, which bills itself as the \u0026ldquo;best run city in the world\u0026rdquo; on the basis of an award it won in 1993, telling us that our garbage and recycling pick up days would be changing. You can see that mailing here (PDF); the announcement is on the right hand side of the first page. The flyer states that pickup days will change the week of July 14, but notice that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t say when or how they are changing. Instead, it says \u0026ldquo;Watch your mail for additional information.\u0026rdquo; It didn\u0026rsquo;t say to call in, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t say to check the city\u0026rsquo;s website. In fact, it says \u0026ldquo;Residents impacted by these changes will be notified through multiple mailings identifying the specific changes to their homes.\u0026rdquo; That turned out to be false.\nA week or so later, a second mailing came from the city. It also didn\u0026rsquo;t say how the pickup days were changing, and it also said to watch for a further notification in the mail. It didn\u0026rsquo;t say to call in, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t say to check the city\u0026rsquo;s website.\nNo further notification came. Everyone in my neighborhood apparently continued to put out recycling and garbage bins on the same days, and they didn\u0026rsquo;t get picked up. Kat called today, and the person answering the phone for the City of Phoenix waste disposal said that they did no specific mailings, rather, they expected people to \u0026ldquo;get curious\u0026rdquo; and either look online or call them.\nWell, we did indeed \u0026ldquo;get curious\u0026rdquo; as to why our garbage wasn\u0026rsquo;t picked up, so I guess their expectation was valid. My initial assumption was that we had a new garbageman who didn\u0026rsquo;t know my house was on his route, since I\u0026rsquo;ve had to call a few dozen times in the past about garbage and recycling not being picked up for that reason.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put out the recycling bin for pickup tomorrow\u0026ndash;next to the full garbage bin that will be sitting out there until next week. So far, none of my neighbors have done the same.\nGridman (2008-07-24):\nJim, I got roughly the same thing, and was irritated that they didn't bother to tell exactly what the changes were in the initial flyers.However, I did receive a third mailing that said they\u0026#39;d be swapping garbage and recycling collection dates, and a further mailing indicating that, because of the swap, I\u0026#39;d go over a week without garbage collection, so there was an additional garbage collection scheduled on the first Saturday to compensate.In addition to that, a city employee went door to door the day before the first swap and reminded us of the change. (That just irritated me because I thought that it was UPS delivering our new iMac.)Still, and I kick myself for not pulling out my phone and taking a picture, on that first day, the cans running down the street were alternating green/blue. I remember saying as I got in my car, \u0026quot;Plays well with other children, but cannot follow written instructions.\u0026quot;(Central Phoenix area, 19th \u0026amp; Indian School)\nLippard (2008-07-24):\nGridman: It's nice to know that they did actually send out the specific mailing in at least some cases, let alone have somebody go door-to-door. We wouldn't have noticed the door-to-door person, most likely, though, since we keep our outside gate locked most of the time.The alternating can colors sounds like a good photo op.In my neighborhood we didn't have a swap, we had each pickup shift to a day earlier. Today is recycling day. I can see the road across the street from us (we have no neighbors directly on our street), and there are no blue bins out. In the development behind us, I see only one blue bin out.(We're in South Phoenix, in \"South Mountain Village\")\nGridman (2008-07-24):\nActually, that begins to make a little more sense to me.I was pondering the waste of sending out 4 mailers when 1 or 2 should have done, and I wasn't exactly seeing the benefit of just \"swapping\" Tuesday and Friday's collections.I suppose that the idea was to have ever-increasingly specific mailings for the neighborhoods impacted with their specific changes. Perhaps they just ran out of money? :-)Now I wonder if my neighbors who didn't seem to get the message really didn't get the flyers and I was just judging them a little too harshly.\nKat Lippard (2008-07-24):\nI asked my mother, who lives at 47th Avenue \u0026amp; Peoria, if they were notified, or had any changes. She said there was no change in their pick up schedule and that they had received a letter telling them so. I saw 2 blue bins out this morning in our neighborhood, then a few more when I went home at lunch. I think the City of Phoenix just doesn\u0026#39;t care about South Phoenix...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/best-run-city-in-world.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA month or so ago, we got a mailing from the City of Phoenix, which bills itself as the \u0026ldquo;best run city in the world\u0026rdquo; on the basis of an award it won in 1993, telling us that our garbage and recycling pick up days would be changing.  You can see that mailing \u003ca href=\"http://phoenix.gov/publicworks/flier08.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF); the announcement is on the right hand side of the first page.  The flyer states that pickup days will change the week of July 14, but notice that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t say when or how they are changing.  Instead, it says \u0026ldquo;Watch your mail for additional information.\u0026rdquo;  It didn\u0026rsquo;t say to call in, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t say to check the city\u0026rsquo;s website.  In fact, it says \u0026ldquo;Residents impacted by these changes will be notified through multiple mailings identifying the specific changes to their homes.\u0026rdquo;  That turned out to be false.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA week or so later, a second mailing came from the city.  It also didn\u0026rsquo;t say how the pickup days were changing, and it also said to watch for a further notification in the mail.  It didn\u0026rsquo;t say to call in, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t say to check the city\u0026rsquo;s website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNo further notification came.  Everyone in my neighborhood apparently continued to put out recycling and garbage bins on the same days, and they didn\u0026rsquo;t get picked up.  Kat called today, and the person answering the phone for the City of Phoenix waste disposal said that they did no specific mailings, rather, they expected people to \u0026ldquo;get curious\u0026rdquo; and either look online or call them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWell, we did indeed \u0026ldquo;get curious\u0026rdquo; as to why our garbage wasn\u0026rsquo;t picked up, so I guess their expectation was valid.  My initial assumption was that we had a new garbageman who didn\u0026rsquo;t know my house was on his route, since I\u0026rsquo;ve had to call a few dozen times in the past about garbage and recycling not being picked up for that reason.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve put out the recycling bin for pickup tomorrow\u0026ndash;next to the full garbage bin that will be sitting out there until next week.  So far, none of my neighbors have done the same.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Best run city in the world?"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic is catching up with reality:\nForeclosures across metro Phoenix number 16,647 for the first half of the year compared with 9,966 during all of 2007 and 1,070 in 2006.\n\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;It has become more of an equity problem than a subprime problem,\u0026rdquo; said Tom Ruff, a real-estate analyst with Information Market.\n\u0026hellip;\nNotice of trustee sales, or pre-foreclosures, also continue to climb. There were 35,111 pre-foreclosures filed in Maricopa County through July. That compares with 30,166 for all of 2007.The article also notes that the median resale price for a home in Phoenix is now $210,000, down 30% from the peak in 2006.\nMore people are speculating about reaching a bottom. That would be nice, but we\u0026rsquo;ve still not seen a peak on preforeclosures, which set another record in June (6929, vs. 6416 in May). For comparison, the total sales volume in June was 5748 (and 5656 in May), according to the Arizona Realtor\u0026rsquo;s Association. (These stats via Einzige, thanks!)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/phoenix-foreclosures-spreading.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/07/22/20080722foreclosure0722.html\"\u003eis catching up with reality\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eForeclosures across metro Phoenix number 16,647 for the first half of the year compared with 9,966 during all of 2007 and 1,070 in 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;It has become more of an equity problem than a subprime problem,\u0026rdquo; said Tom Ruff, a real-estate analyst with Information Market.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eNotice of trustee sales, or pre-foreclosures, also continue to climb. There were 35,111 pre-foreclosures filed in Maricopa County through July. That compares with 30,166 for all of 2007.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe article also notes that the median resale price for a home in Phoenix is now $210,000, down 30% from the peak in 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore people are \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_30/b4093032842512.htm\"\u003especulating about reaching a bottom\u003c/a\u003e.  That would be nice, but we\u0026rsquo;ve still not seen a peak on preforeclosures, which set another record in June (6929, vs. \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/phoenix-trustees-sale-notices-for-may.html\"\u003e6416 in May\u003c/a\u003e).  For comparison, the total sales volume in June was 5748 (and 5656 in May), according to the Arizona Realtor\u0026rsquo;s Association.  (These stats via Einzige, thanks!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix foreclosures spreading"},{"content":"Former McCain advisor and security researcher Stephen Spoonamore suggested at a press conference on Thursday that Diebold tampered with Georgia\u0026rsquo;s 2002 elections for Governor and Senator, in which Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democrat Sen. Max Cleland. Spoonamore was given a copy of a patch applied to Diebold machines in two strongly Democratic counties, DeKalb and Fulton, by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, allegedly in order to fix a clock-related problem. Spoonamore found that the patch did nothing to correct the clock problem, and contained two copies of the same program, but was unable to determine exactly what it did without access to the Diebold hardware. He has supplied a copy of the patch, which he obtained from a whistleblower in the Georgia Secretary of State\u0026rsquo;s office, to the Department of Justice.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/did-diebold-tamper-with-georgias-2002.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer McCain advisor and security researcher Stephen Spoonamore \u003ca href=\"http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=11267\"\u003esuggested at a press conference on Thursday that Diebold tampered with Georgia\u0026rsquo;s 2002 elections for Governor and Senator\u003c/a\u003e, in which Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democrat Sen. Max Cleland.  Spoonamore was given a copy of a patch applied to Diebold machines in two strongly Democratic counties, DeKalb and Fulton, by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, allegedly in order to fix a clock-related problem.  Spoonamore found that the patch did nothing to correct the clock problem, and contained two copies of the same program, but was unable to determine exactly what it did without access to the Diebold hardware.  He has supplied a copy of the patch, which he obtained from a whistleblower in the Georgia Secretary of State\u0026rsquo;s office, to the Department of Justice.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Did Diebold tamper with Georgia's 2002 elections?"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a telecom panel at the Netroots Nation conference today on the subject of \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom: An Emerging Threat to Our Democracy?\u0026rdquo; The implied answer is yes, and it appears that every participant on the panel will be making that case. Here\u0026rsquo;s the description of the panel:\nMassive telecom companies control virtually all of our voice and internet communications these days—and new evidence shows a near-total lack of commitment to our democracy. AT\u0026amp;T has proposed filtering all content traveling on its network. Verizon tried initially to block NARAL\u0026rsquo;s pro-choice text messages. Most telecom companies are fighting net neutrality. Can democracy survive an assault by those who control the tubes?The panel members don\u0026rsquo;t include anyone with any experience managing or operating an actual telecom network, but instead includes two people who have repeatedly demonstrated not only an ignorance of telecom law, technology, and policy, but who have misrepresented facts and failed to engage with the arguments of their critics, Matt Stoller and Timothy Karr (see posts on this blog in the \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; category). The closest person to a representative of a telecom is Michael Kieschnick of Working Assets, a company that is a reseller of long distance and wireless service on Sprint\u0026rsquo;s network.\nI agree with many of their positions\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think ISPs should be allowed to block websites on the basis of disagreement with content. I think ISPs should be transparent about their network management processes and filtering. Where I disagree with them is that they advocate that the FCC step in to regulate the Internet in a way that it has never had authority to do so before, and demand that network operators not be allowed to implement classes of service with different rates of charges, or even usage caps. Art Brodsky expresses the point which has also been made by Robb Topolsky of Public Knowledge, Timothy Karr of Free Press, and Matt Stoller:\nIn the name of \u0026ldquo;network management,\u0026rdquo; some companies want to throttle down the use of legal applications, like BitTorrent which may, coincidentally, provide competition in entertainment programming. They want to impose usage caps across the board on all customers which would stifle innovation and curb the use of video (there\u0026rsquo;s that anti-competitive meme again) without actually solving the problem of the so-called \u0026ldquo;bandwidth hogs.\u0026rdquo; The way caps are being discussed now, they would only lead to higher prices and less usage for an industry that already charges more for less than most broadband providers around the world. Parts of our broadband industry may be the only sector in the world that wants to cut down the amount of its product it wants customers to use.Brodsky\u0026rsquo;s last sentence is clearly false\u0026ndash;broadband is like a fixed-price all-you-can-eat buffet. All businesses want to maximize their profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing costs. When bandwidth is sold at a fixed cost in unlimited amounts, where a small number of users are consuming the majority of the service, it\u0026rsquo;s in the business\u0026rsquo;s interest to restrict those users or charge them more for what they consume in order to satisfy the rest in a cost-effective manner. The options are few\u0026ndash;you can either restrict the \u0026ldquo;bandwidth hogs\u0026rdquo; in some way, charge them more so that they pay for what they use, or raise the price for everyone. These guys seem to advocate the latter approach, while I\u0026rsquo;m in favor of allowing all the options to be used in a competitive market. Where I disagree with Comcast\u0026rsquo;s approach in issuing RST packets to block BitTorrent traffic is not that they did it, but that they were not transparent about what they were doing (and apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get it quite right\u0026ndash;it should not have completely broken BitTorrent, but only slowed it down).\nBrodsky\u0026rsquo;s suggestion that Comcast has an interest in blocking BitTorrent because it provides competition in the entertainment space is absurd\u0026ndash;they have an interest in blocking it because it\u0026rsquo;s a very popular application which itself exploits Internet protocols in a way not anticipated by the designers in order to consume more bandwidth, getting around the congestion controls in TCP/IP by using multiple TCP streams. If BitTorrent traffic wasn\u0026rsquo;t filling up the majority of Comcast\u0026rsquo;s bandwidth, they\u0026rsquo;d have no interest in it, except when the MPAA and RIAA issue them subpoenas about their users infringing copyrights.\nIf the government prohibits the use of differential classes of service (which is already heavily used by private companies to give priority to applications within their enterprise which have requirements for low latency and jitter, such as real-time streaming audio and video, including Voice over IP) and requires that congestion be dealt with by building out infrastructure sufficiently that there will never be congestion no matter how many users max out their connectivity with BitTorrent, that will reduce competition by culling smaller companies out of the picture and making market entry more difficult. In any environment where a provider\u0026rsquo;s upstream capacity is less than the sum of the capacity to every customer (and that\u0026rsquo;s everywhere, today, and always has been), all-you-can-eat bandwidth is like a commons. The more that is available, the more the heavy users will consume, to the detriment of each other and the light users. Without setting caps and having tiered pricing or implementing technology that prioritizes packets and drops from the heavy users and from less-realtime-sensitive applications first (like BitTorrent), there are no incentives against consuming everything that is available.\nI also think it\u0026rsquo;s a huge mistake to have the FCC start regulating the Internet. FCC chairman Kevin Martin would no doubt love to place indecency standards and filtering requirements on Internet content. Once you open the door to FCC regulation of the Internet, that becomes more likely. And the FCC has been completely ineffectual at dealing with existing abuses like fraudulent telemarketing, illegal prerecord calls to residences and cell phones, caller ID spoofing, etc., already covered by statute and regulation. I\u0026rsquo;d rather see clear statutes that include private rights of action than entrust control of the Internet to the FCC. The FCC is a slow-moving bureaucracy, and AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon have the deepest pockets, the most lawyers, and the most personnel who have shuffled back and forth between government (including the NSA) and industry. That gives AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon the tactical advantage, and leads to less competition rather than more.\nWhich brings me to the warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity issues, which Cindy Cohn of the EFF no doubt addressed on the Netroots Nation panel. I suspect I have little if any disagreement with her. I\u0026rsquo;ve long been a supporter of the EFF, as are many people involved in the management of ISPs. I strongly oppose telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping, a complete abdication of Congress\u0026rsquo; responsibility to support the U.S. Constitution. But this shows the power of AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon. Not only did they get what they wanted, but the very infrastructure which was built to do this massive interception of traffic for the NSA and for law enforcement interception under the CALEA laws was built for them with assistance from government funds. All telecoms have to be compliant with CALEA (now including VoIP and broadband Internet providers), but the big incumbents who were most capable of affording it on their own got it at the lowest costs, while their competition was required to build it out at their own expense even if it never gets used.\nBut there are legitimate uses for deep packet inspection, for understanding the nature of the traffic on a network for management purposes, including tracking down security and abuse issues. Since it is in the hands of the end user to use encryption to protect sensitive content, I think use of DPI by network providers is reasonable for the purposes of providing better service in the same way that it\u0026rsquo;s reasonable for a voice provider to intercept traffic for quality measurement purposes. It\u0026rsquo;s also reasonable for interception to occur for \u0026ldquo;lawful intercept,\u0026rdquo; but it should always require a court order (i.e., both executive and judicial branch approval) on reasonable grounds. The difficulty of obtaining wiretaps depicted in the television program \u0026ldquo;The Wire\u0026rdquo; is how it should be.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve written a lot on these issues, much which can be found in this blog\u0026rsquo;s Network Neutrality Index.\nIf any reader of this blog happens to have attended the Netroots Nation telecom panel or comes across a description of its content, please point me to it, as I\u0026rsquo;d like to see what was said. I don\u0026rsquo;t have high hopes for the accuracy or reasonability of statements from Stoller and Karr, but I could be surprised, and the other panelists probably had interesting and important things to say.\n(See my Blogger profile for the disclosure of my employment by Global Crossing, which is currently listed by Renesys as the #3 network provider on the Internet in terms of number of customers, ahead of AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon, behind Sprint and Level 3.)\nUPDATE: The \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom\u0026rdquo; panel was live-blogged (dead, unarchived link: http://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=C865142FFB85E14AAD27045B9A342B15?diaryId=7032\u0026quot;). Stoller\u0026rsquo;s anecdote about the Bill of Rights on metal is referring to Dean Cameron\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;security edition\u0026rdquo; of the Bill of Rights, which was also promoted by Penn Jillette.\nMichael C. Rush (2008-07-20):\nYour perspective on ISP's \"right\" to control individual use of the internet seems short-sighted in the extreme. The claims of a shortage of bandwidth have never been demonstrated; indeed, there are numerous reports available that suggest that it is simply not true. Certainly, it could become true in the future, but that remains hypothetical at this point...rather like weapons of mass destruction. With the advances in technology being made almost daily, no one can claim to know whether there will ever be such an insufficiency or not.These technological advances lead to another problem, as well. Recently announced is the ability to, using current infrastructure, increase transfer speeds by a factor of (I believe it was) 40. So, what? On a metered system, we are going to use up our daily download allotment in five minutes?Bandwidth providers should do just that, and nothing more--provide access and bandwidth to the user. What one chooses to do online is not and should not be their concern. If they cannot provide sufficient bandwidth to support their customers, they should a) improve their infrastructure (they could start by utilizing the tons of dark fiber already laid across the U.S.) or b) decrease their customer base to a level they can support and let other companies pick up the slack. You know, like every other kind of business which provides a service.The funniest thing of all is that the phone/cable companies' attempts to limit bandwidth (and make no mistake about it, such attempts are a veiled attempt to dictate not just \"how much\" we use but \"what type,\" since newer services tend to be higher bandwidth--\"why would average people need so much anyway? all we want them to do is email and a bit of surfing!\") is doomed from the start. Not because they will be fighting the consumer, but because they will be fighting the media giants who want us to download/stream movies, listen to streaming radio broadcasts, play MMORPGs 24/7, store or at least backup our files online on their servers, videoconference, and use all the OTHER high-bandwidth applications which they can make a buck off of. So all the ISPs will accomplish is to inconvenience us for a couple of years before they are forced to acquiesce to the bigger boys (and the actual usage requirements of their customer base).I currently use a satellite ISP with strictly metered bandwidth. I have upgraded my service two levels to their \"professional\" tier, and my limit is still such that it can be exceeded by a large MS Windows update (and if you go over your daily limit, you are cut off for 24 hours, which is devastating in a business environment). If Time-Warner goes to this system, as they are threatening to, you are going to be hearing a lot more about this sort of unreasonable restriction.Oh, and \"it's a very popular application which itself exploits Internet protocols in a way not anticipated by the designers in order to consume more bandwidth\" is silly. Everything that has ever been developed on the internet \"exploits Internet protocols in a way not anticipated by the designers.\" Otherwise, we'd all still be using Gopher. It's not the role of an ISP to regulate and restrict innovation (a top-down, autocratic model); it's to provide the raw bandwidth that innovation needs to develop (a bottom-up, democratic model) and stay out of the actual evolutionary process.\nLippard (2008-07-20):\n\u0026quot;The claims of a shortage of bandwidth have never been demonstrated; indeed, there are numerous reports available that suggest that it is simply not true.\u0026quot;My cable modem provider, Cox, has regularly had to add capacity in my area via capital expenditures in order to support additional customers and higher bandwidths. I don\u0026#39;t know of any provider--retail, carrier, or backbone--that hasn\u0026#39;t had to spend millions in capital in the past few years to add capacity. That includes my own employer\u0026#39;s subsea and U.S. capacity. What reports are you referring to, and what exactly are they claiming? If the claim is that there is excess overall *fiber* capacity (which requires capital expenditures on equipment upgrades to take advantage of), then that doesn\u0026#39;t contradict my point.\u0026quot;Recently announced is the ability to, using current infrastructure, increase transfer speeds by a factor of (I believe it was) 40.\u0026quot;This refers to going from 10 Gbps (OC-192 backbone links) capacity to 40 Gbps on existing fiber (on the road to 100 Gbps), but it DOES require capital expenditure on new equipment to take advantage of. This doesn\u0026#39;t come for free, with exactly the same current infrastructure, it just means you don\u0026#39;t have to lay new fiber.You haven\u0026#39;t addressed the point that some applications are sensitive to latency and jitter, and some are not. There is no question in my mind that providers need to be able to give priority to the former applications, especially if they are going to be held liable for services like E911 over VoIP.Regarding BitTorrent--TCP/IP was specifically designed to put some congestion management at the endpoints, so that applications would back off in the case of congestion. BitTorrent, however, does not back off, it attempts to use as much bandwidth as possible--it\u0026#39;s a non-cooperative application. Without additional measures to cap individual users or give priority to, say, VoIP, BitTorrent will happily use up all excess capacity, no matter how much there is available.\u0026quot;The funniest thing of all is that the phone/cable companies\u0026#39; attempts to limit bandwidth (and make no mistake about it, such attempts are a veiled attempt to dictate not just \u0026quot;how much\u0026quot; we use but \u0026quot;what type,\u0026quot; since newer services tend to be higher bandwidth--\u0026quot;why would average people need so much anyway? all we want them to do is email and a bit of surfing!\u0026quot;) is doomed from the start.\u0026quot;This strikes me as rubbish. The telecoms are clearly interested in providing all sorts of new high-bandwidth applications, including television over Internet (which, of course, they want to provide and control)--the \u0026quot;email and a bit of surfing\u0026quot; is a straw man, without question. Verizon\u0026#39;s FiOS is not for \u0026quot;email and a bit of surfing.\u0026quot; My own bandwidth with Cox has gone from less than 1Mbps to 4Mbps recently, and they are offering 7Mbps to consumers for less than I\u0026#39;m paying for 4Mbps. And the FCC\u0026#39;s definition of \u0026quot;broadband\u0026quot; is anything over 250Kbps.Your satellite experience is based on limitations of the particular technology you\u0026#39;re using--you\u0026#39;ve got latency issues that have the speed of light as a barrier, as well as satellite expense and capacity issues. The bandwidth caps and metered usage for terrestrial broadband are not subject to the limitations of satellite, and I strongly suspect that the average user who isn\u0026#39;t using BitTorrent to pull down huge amounts of content is likely to notice.Do you dispute that it\u0026#39;s a small number (\u0026lt; 10%) of broadband users consuming most (\u0026gt; 90%) of the bandwidth?\nMichael C. Rush (2008-07-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I don\u0026#39;t know of any provider--retail, carrier, or backbone--that hasn\u0026#39;t had to spend millions in capital in the past few years to add capacity.I would suggest that that is a result of market growth—a good thing for them. Saying they \u0026quot;spend millions\u0026quot; is meaningless unless you put that up against the amount of additional profit that those expenditures have allowed them to reap. Or do you think that they should be entitled to profit without expense (and if so, why are they different from any other type of business?)?\u0026gt;\u0026gt;but it DOES require capital expenditure on new equipment to take advantage of.Of course it does. My point is that this expense is trivial next to the cost of laying new fiber. And a normal upgrade cost, part of the ongoing cost of doing business (and staying ahead of your competitors).\u0026gt;\u0026gt;Without additional measures to cap individual users or give priority to, say, VoIP, BitTorrent will happily use up all excess capacity, no matter how much there is available.This is obviously false, as it assumes that there is an infinite amount of content to be transferred. I do agree that, without ongoing infrastructure upgrades, available bandwidth will quickly be filled—this has always been true and will be for a long time to come.And why should VoIP be privileged over BitTorrent? You may be free to make that judgment call for yourself, but not to impose it on everyone else on the internet, which was designed to be (and some of us still believe should be) content-neutral.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;My own bandwidth with Cox has gone from less than 1Mbps to 4Mbps recentlyYou are conflating two issues: bandwidth and transfer caps/limits. The FCC\u0026#39;s ridiculous definition of \u0026quot;broadband\u0026quot; merely illustrates how outdated and clueless the government is (what else is new). Note the U.S.\u0026#39;s low and falling position among other nations on the available bandwidth chart. That is a better indicator of how competitive our providers are (and of the validity of their complaints of the difficulty of offering better service) than a small increase in your local, still-slow speed.You will, I hope, concede that it is a fallacy to say that \u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t use it; therefore no one needs it\u0026quot;?\u0026gt;\u0026gt;and I strongly suspect that the average user who isn\u0026#39;t using BitTorrent to pull down huge amounts of content is likely to notice.I\u0026#39;m not sure what you\u0026#39;re saying here. Did you mean \u0026quot;NOT likely to notice\u0026quot;? If TimeWarner goes ahead with their current plans, they will be offering a service very similar to what HughesNet currently offers, and I assure you, people WILL notice when they can\u0026#39;t stream a movie from Netflix or access the online content of their Tivo or PS3 because it pushes them over their cap.As for satellite latency, it\u0026#39;s overrated. I have no problem playing MMORPGs such as EverQuest and Vanguard, which many say should be impossible over satellite. As for capacity, again, that\u0026#39;s a technological problem, not an absolute one.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;Do you dispute that it\u0026#39;s a small number (\u0026lt; 10%) of broadband users consuming most (\u0026gt; 90%) of the bandwidth?I\u0026#39;d say that up until recently that was a fair stat. But that ratio is changing every day as average users adopt high-bandwidth applications, and it won\u0026#39;t be long until it has leveled out a great deal (think about the number of hours the average person watches television a day, then translate that to bandwidth figures). So this demonization of early adopters is really not very relevant (nevermind that it\u0026#39;s also not very fair). Tomorrow, we will ALL be high-bandwidth users. Unless the telcos have their way and are given the authority to tell us what we can do online, when, and for how long.\nLippard (2008-07-21):\n\"I would suggest that that is a result of market growth—a good thing for them. Saying they \"spend millions\" is meaningless unless you put that up against the amount of additional profit that those expenditures have allowed them to reap. Or do you think that they should be entitled to profit without expense (and if so, why are they different from any other type of business?)?\"In my own employer's case, we're still struggling to reach profitability. We spent $22B to build our original network, went bankrupt, came out of bankruptcy, and have had to continually do upgrades *somewhere*.I'm not assuming there's a right to profit without expense, but you seem to be assuming that the owner of a network has no right to recoup its expense, or at least that the government has a right to force a network provider into a particular business model.\"Of course it does. My point is that this expense is trivial next to the cost of laying new fiber. And a normal upgrade cost, part of the ongoing cost of doing business (and staying ahead of your competitors).\"If hundreds of millions in capital expense is \"trivial.\"\"This is obviously false, as it assumes that there is an infinite amount of content to be transferred.\"No, because capacity will never be infinite and there will always be cases of the same content being transferred multiple times (think of popular websites, for example).\"why should VoIP be privileged over BitTorrent?\"The requirements for VoIP function are different from the requirements for BitTorrent function. On the technological side, VoIP requires low latency and jitter, BitTorrent does not. On the legal side, VoIP imposes special liabilities on providers (e.g., the need for E911 support), while there are no special legal requirements to support BitTorrent. In fact, the legality tends to go the other way, for much of the content being transmitted with BitTorrent being copyright infringing, and providers having an obligation under the DMCA to deny service to repeat offenders.\"You may be free to make that judgment call for yourself, but not to impose it on everyone else on the internet, which was designed to be (and some of us still believe should be) content-neutral.\"Was content-neutrality ever a design objective for the Internet? I don't think so--and it certainly wasn't designed to be able to support real-time applications. Those who advocate net neutrality are, in effect, arguing for the Internet to be fixed in its current form and for the providers who build and maintain their respective networks to *not* be free to experiment with new technologies and business models, despite the fact that they're the ones spending their own money to build them. Remember \"the Internet\" is not one thing, it's a whole bunch of interconnected networks, most of which are privately owned. Network neutrality is an argument that the government impose restrictions on those private owners.\"You are conflating two issues: bandwidth and transfer caps/limits.\" No, I was making the point that my available bandwidth (a measure of how much is available at any one time) has gone up in virtue of Cox's spending on building additional capacity. The aggregate bandwidth upstream of customers is oversubscribed--there isn't enough capacity for all customers to max out their bandwidth at all times, and this is a condition that has always been the case for every provider, everywhere, even back in the dialup days. You're arguing for a model that says there must be no oversubscription, but that would probably increase capital costs by a factor of 10, most which would have to be passed on to customers. You're also arguing for a model that says all customers must share that cost equally, regardless of usage. I'm asking why that should be the case.\"Note the U.S.'s low and falling position among other nations on the available bandwidth chart.\" I haven't looked at these lately, but in the past I think the differences have been exaggerated by the fact that the countries at the top have much denser population centers where deployment of new network capacity is much cheaper (fewer route-miles needed), as well as more heavily subsidized by the government. In the U.S., the incumbent telcos have a huge advantage in the form of free access to rights-of-ways, which we should be getting something in return for, but I don't favor policies that impose conditions on all Internet providers without accounting for the differences or are going to have bad unintended consequences.\"You will, I hope, concede that it is a fallacy to say that \"I don't use it; therefore no one needs it\"?\"I've not said that and don't agree with it.\"I'm not sure what you're saying here. Did you mean \"NOT likely to notice\"? If TimeWarner goes ahead with their current plans, they will be offering a service very similar to what HughesNet currently offers, and I assure you, people WILL notice when they can't stream a movie from Netflix or access the online content of their Tivo or PS3 because it pushes them over their cap.\"I'm suggesting that the caps will be high enough that fewer than 1 in 10 users will ever see it. And I suspect exceeding the cap will be made easy to do with additional charges on your bill, so it won't prevent anything unless you don't want to spend the money.\"I'd say that up until recently that was a fair stat. But that ratio is changing every day as average users adopt high-bandwidth applications, and it won't be long until it has leveled out a great deal (think about the number of hours the average person watches television a day, then translate that to bandwidth figures).\"What's your evidence? I'm skeptical. I agree that the average is going up, but I think there will always be activities that the power users engage in that will consume far more than the average. You seem to be assuming that the caps will never go up, and that the telcos want to have most of their customers hit them. I think that's extremely unlikely, so long as there's competition for customers. And I think a bad unintended side effect of net neutrality regulation would be reduced competition, by reducing the ability to experiment with different technologies and business models, and by raising the cost of business, which would serve to eliminate smaller players and raise barriers to entry.\nLippard (2008-07-21):\nBTW, just to clarify, since I suspect we have similar views about the FCC. Are you arguing for net neutrality principles as something you'd like to see businesses follow, or for net neutrality regulations that would be the FCC's first entry into having jurisdiction over the Internet? Because the latter is the main thing I am arguing against. I think the four principles that the FCC put forth that originally were given the name \"net neutrality\" are more or less reasonable principles, but I disagree with every attempt I've seen to translate them into statutory requirements (as I've argued here in response to, e.g., the Snowe-Dorgan and Markey bills).\nLippard (2008-07-21):\n\"but that would probably increase capital costs by a factor of 10\"Before this gets commented upon, I was no doubt guilty of hyperbole here. Even if oversubscription was 10-to-1, the cost of upgrading to not be oversubscribed would likely be less than a factor of 10, since you get economies of scale in the aggregation. (On the other hand, when you get to the point that you can't just add new hardware, but have to replace existing hardware with next generation equipment, costs make a big jump.) And I don't know what the rates of oversubscription are, I suspect they vary by region and type of customer.\nLippard (2008-07-21):\nRichard Bennett points to a letter Brett Glass of Lariat.net has filed with the FCC about the \"four freedoms\" and the Comcast case as \"recommended reading\"; I agree, it's well worth reading. I think there is a point of disanalogy between the FCC's own wireless network and service provided by an ISP, but I don't see any reason why ISPs should be forbidden from selling services like filtered Internet (as some Christian ISPs provide, for example). What's key is transparency about what they're selling; competition forced AOL to open up unrestricted Internet access, and I believe it will force the wireless walled gardens to open up as well, just as it's killing DRM.\nLippard (2008-07-21):\nAh, and that reminds me of another response to your statement about the Internet being designed to not have any restriction on the basis of content--that's false, since commercial content used to be forbidden on the NSFNet backbone, and there have always been restrictions on content like child porn. Most Usenet providers stopped carrying groups with names that suggested their purpose was for child porn distribution years ago; many more companies are now either dropping all of the alt.* hierarchy (overkill, in my opinion) or discontinuing Usenet services completely. (I recognize that Usenet is slightly different in that it is a particular hosted application and not Internet service in general, but I'm not convinced that the rules that apply should be any different, in a competitive environment where bandwidth may be purchased from multiple providers.)\nMichael C. Rush (2008-07-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;but you seem to be assuming that the owner of a network has no right to recoup its expenseOf course no business has a \u0026quot;right\u0026quot; to recoup its expense. Capitalism is a gamble. Perhaps what you meant was that they have the right to TRY to do so, which I would agree with, so long as they don\u0026#39;t violate certain other principles.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;We spent $22B to build our original network, went bankrupt, came out of bankruptcyBut how much of this is due to the 10% that you stipulate use \u0026quot;too much\u0026quot; (whatever that means) of your network capacity? Because that\u0026#39;s the only relative part to the discussion here, it seems to me. In fact, much (or all) of a company\u0026#39;s losses may be attributed to poor management decisions, inability to anticipate technological and social developments, etc., which have nothing to do with providing bandwidth. I have no way of knowing what percentage falls to each for each different provider, but I certainly wouldn\u0026#39;t dismiss the latter out of hand.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;If hundreds of millions in capital expense is \u0026quot;trivial.\u0026quot;It may be, I don\u0026#39;t know. It would have to be assessed in a ratio to profit.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;No, because capacity will never be infinite and there will always be cases of the same content being transferred multiple timesThis still doesn\u0026#39;t prove your contention that \u0026quot;BitTorrent will happily use up all excess capacity, no matter how much there is available.\u0026quot; It is quite possible to imagine a capacity X that could contain a usage Y, or even 2Y or 3Y. It\u0026#39;s just that X would have to be a number larger than current capacity.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;The requirements for VoIP function are different from the requirements for BitTorrent function.That\u0026#39;s a technological issue, not a philosophical one justifying preferential treatment for one type of data over another (and it\u0026#39;s all just data). I\u0026#39;m not suggesting that BitTorrent in its current form is the best way of doing what it tries to do (although I suspect that it is easier on the network than previous protocols, such as Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, etc.). I don\u0026#39;t think anyone thinks so, which is why many people are currently working on improving it—some of them in conjunction with the major media companies that previously opposed it so vociferously. If something has problems, I\u0026#39;d rather see them fixed than the whole thing banned or made incompatible with the network.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;much of the content being transmitted with BitTorrent being copyright infringingThis is irrelevant, as there are legal uses of BitTorrent, which are increasing in number and popularity every day. You can\u0026#39;t penalize a technology for how some people choose to use it.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I was making the point that my available bandwidth (a measure of how much is available at any one time) has gone up in virtue of Cox\u0026#39;s spending on building additional capacity.This would seem to argue against your position that it is too costly to increase bandwidth, since they have done so.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;Was content-neutrality ever a design objective for the Internet? I don\u0026#39;t think so--and it certainly wasn\u0026#39;t designed to be able to support real-time applications.I don\u0026#39;t think that the haphazard way that the internet came together really lent itself to that sort of \u0026quot;intelligent design\u0026quot; (heh). Nobody was thinking of streaming multicast video when Mosaic was cobbled together, for example. But if someone had argued to disallow http because we already had ftp, or because it would use more bandwidth over time, I think virtually everyone concerned would have opposed such a limitation.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I haven\u0026#39;t looked at these lately, but in the past I think the differences have been exaggerated by the fact that the countries at the top have much denser population centers where deployment of new network capacity is much cheaperObviously, that is a factor. If you\u0026#39;d rather see apples to apples, compare Singapore (or wherever) to Manhattan. The comparison is still pathetic.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I\u0026#39;m suggesting that the caps will be high enough that fewer than 1 in 10 users will ever see it.That has not been my real world experience, and the caps that TimeWarner (and others) are hinting at are not that much higher than HughesNet\u0026#39;s (and note that HughesNet provides no \u0026quot;overage fee\u0026quot; that I can pay to keep my access from getting shut down if I go over my cap). And, as I said, I think it is useless to predict future (even near-future) usage based on past or current usage patterns, given the plethora of new high-bandwidth applications coming online that will appeal to the general population.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;You seem to be assuming that the caps will never go up, and that the telcos want to have most of their customers hit them. I think that\u0026#39;s extremely unlikely, so long as there\u0026#39;s competition for customers.I\u0026#39;ve already said that I think that they will inevitably go up, or go away, when the media companies weigh in (and/or when the ISPs continue to move toward becoming media/content providers). And since it is inevitable, I object to being screwed around in the interim.As for the FCC, I'm no fan of excessive regulation, but I think that looking at how the FCC has screwed up broadcast and cable regulation, that we'd be better off with a clear standard of open pipes, where bandwidth providers and content providers are kept separate. Let an ISP provide as much or as little bandwidth as they like, or as they can, but let them PROVIDE what they advertise, without caps or screwing around with transmission of different protocols. My data should be of no concern to them; all I want from them is a pipe to send it down.People attempt to prohibit the transmission (more often, the storage) of child porn online because it is illegal. Other types of data are also currently illegal, such as copyrighted media. But no one argues that to stop the proliferation of child porn, the internet should be wired in such a way as to disallow the transmission of ALL video, just in case it happens to be child porn. Unfortunately, that is often the argument made for BitTorrent vis a vis copyrighted media.I also don't have your faith in the long-term existence of \"a competitive environment where bandwidth may be purchased from multiple providers.\" We have gone from dozens of small dial-up providers per town to a few very large ones, and the cost-of-entry is now prohibitive to most newcomers. Look at the consolidation in the long distance, cable, and cellphone providers in recent years. Where I am, I already am subject to HughesNet's monopoly. My only alternative is to not have internet access (which is obviously unacceptable).\nLippard (2008-07-21):\n\u0026quot;Of course no business has a \u0026quot;right\u0026quot; to recoup its expense. Capitalism is a gamble. Perhaps what you meant was that they have the right to TRY to do so, which I would agree with, so long as they don\u0026#39;t violate certain other principles.\u0026quot;Yes, that\u0026#39;s what I meant.\u0026quot;It is quite possible to imagine a capacity X that could contain a usage Y, or even 2Y or 3Y. It\u0026#39;s just that X would have to be a number larger than current capacity.\u0026quot;Yes, but my point is that it changes the business model in a way that will reduce competition and favor the incumbents.\u0026quot;This would seem to argue against your position that it is too costly to increase bandwidth, since they have done so.\u0026quot;No, that misrepresents my position. My position is not that businesses don\u0026#39;t invest in bandwidth as overall growth occurs, it is that they don\u0026#39;t rely on the model you suggest above with your imagined capacities. They try to stay ahead of overall growth, but there are always points where growth catches up and they still want to maximize the use of what they have, and if a small subset of users are using most of the bandwidth, the options are: (1) charge them more to cover upgrades that wouldn\u0026#39;t otherwise have been necessary, (2) charge everybody more to cover the upgrades, or (3) place some limits on the small subset of users. Your view is that only (2) is acceptable, my view is that (1)-(3) are all acceptable, so long as the provider is transparent about what they\u0026#39;re doing.\u0026quot;That\u0026#39;s a technological issue, not a philosophical one justifying preferential treatment for one type of data over another (and it\u0026#39;s all just data).\u0026quot;I don\u0026#39;t understand your argument. Some uses of data have different requirements--it\u0026#39;s all just data, but the technological requirements of use differ. You are arguing that those differing requirements don\u0026#39;t justify a business treating them differently. But why not? I don\u0026#39;t think \u0026quot;it\u0026#39;s all just data\u0026quot; is an argument that it should all be treated the same and companies should be prohibited from offering services that treat them differently.I\u0026#39;d prefer as a customer that Cox give me the option of filling all my available bandwidth with Internet or dedicating some of it to voice and video, but if they chose to offer a service which didn\u0026#39;t allow me to use voice or video-allocated bandwidth for Internet, I don\u0026#39;t see why that would be a violation of my rights. (As it happens, I don\u0026#39;t get my voice or video services from Cox, so I\u0026#39;d definitely prefer to max out the cable\u0026#39;s capacity with Internet.)\u0026quot;That has not been my real world experience\u0026quot;I\u0026#39;ve already said why I think satellite is different; I also don\u0026#39;t know anything about your usage habits. Do you have any references for either Singapore v. Manhattan bandwidth availability and pricing, or TimeWarner\u0026#39;s proposed usage caps? Real data would certainly be helpful.\u0026quot;As for the FCC, I\u0026#39;m no fan of excessive regulation, but I think that looking at how the FCC has screwed up broadcast and cable regulation, that we\u0026#39;d be better off with a clear standard of open pipes, where bandwidth providers and content providers are kept separate.\u0026quot;I think there are more distinctions to be drawn--the area about which you and I care the most is about last-mile connectivity services, where I think the strongest case can be made (especially for the telcos, which got free rights-of-way) for some regulatory protections. But none of the bills or proposals have made a distinction between consumer last mile and connectivity at commercial facilities or backbones, where the market is extremely competitive and the incumbent local telcos weren\u0026#39;t even the top players until they merged with them (U.S. West/Qwest, SBC/AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon/MCI).The worst possible outcome would be a regulatory regime that eliminates Level 3, Sprint, Global Crossing, and other small players from the picture and leaves us with only Verizon, AT\u0026amp;T, and Qwest.I don\u0026#39;t argue that BitTorrent should be eliminated or even that ISPs should be permitted to ban its use, but I think that they should have relatively broad freedom to manage their networks in order to make them usable for all of their customers.\u0026quot;I also don\u0026#39;t have your faith in the long-term existence of \u0026quot;a competitive environment where bandwidth may be purchased from multiple providers.\u0026quot;\u0026quot;I think advocating FCC control of the Internet makes a competitive environment less likely rather than more likely, and also opens it up to the possibility of content-based restrictions that are unlikely today.\nMichael C. Rush (2008-07-21):\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;Do you have any references for either Singapore v. Manhattan bandwidth availability and pricing, or TimeWarner\u0026#39;s proposed usage caps?I\u0026#39;m not the data hound that you are and this isn\u0026#39;t a topic that I\u0026#39;ve made any effort to document, but here is what I turned up quickly:http://gizmodo.com/5012427/time-warner-monthly-data-caps-detailedhttp://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/time-warner-download-too-much-and-you-might-pay-30-a-movie/http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/25/US-lags-behind-other-countries-in-broadband-speed_1.htmlhttp://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/broadbandspeedchart.jpghttp://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/133390/study_us_lags_behind_in_broadband_speeds.htmlAnd on some of the tech advances that may render current speed and bandwidth irrelevant:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ecehttp://ip-vpn.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-wireless-access/articles/34735-fidelity-access-networks-selects-xos-10gbps-high-speed.htm(Neither of these are the particular development I was referring to before, but I can\u0026#39;t find the link to that atm. The specific tech isn\u0026#39;t really important, though; even if none of the current projects prove viable commercially, do you really doubt that something will, over the next 2-10 years?)\u0026gt;\u0026gt;my point is that it changes the business model in a way that will reduce competition and favor the incumbents.\u0026gt;\u0026gt;I think advocating FCC control of the Internet makes a competitive environment less likely rather than more likely, I just don\u0026#39;t see all this competitiveness currently, or much chance of its returning soon, so I guess it\u0026#39;s less of an issue to me. Certainly, the incumbents already have a prohibitive advantage. (Remember, the only reason Qwest became a player in the market was because its owner bought up all the unused railway right-of-ways and laid cable when people said he was crazy to do so.)\u0026gt;\u0026gt;and also opens it up to the possibility of content-based restrictions that are unlikely today.This could be a danger, but I don\u0026#39;t see why we should avoid good regulation out of fear of bad which isn\u0026#39;t currently on the table.\nLippard (2008-07-22):\n\"This could be a danger, but I don't see why we should avoid good regulation out of fear of bad which isn't currently on the table.\"Today, the FCC has no jurisdiction over the Internet. Internet backbone connectivity is unregulated and competitive, and the top three players are not incumbent telcos--Sprint, Level 3, and Global Crossing. My view is that no good will come of handing the FCC control over that realm, which is also a realm distinct from the issues of consumer last-mile Internet service.\"I just don't see all this competitiveness currently, or much chance of its returning soon, so I guess it's less of an issue to me.\"Broadband is not as competitive as dialup, no doubt due to cost of market entry, but the situation in Phoenix is more competitive than it was when I wrote this, now that 3G wireless data access is available at low cost. And we'll see in the near future what Sprint and Clearwire's rollout of WiMax does to the picture--that might help you out.Your first article says that the Time Warner caps are not caps that stop service, but result in additional charges of $1/Gb after 5 Gb per month, with no extra charges assessed for the first two months the caps are in effect, so customers will know in advance if they're likely to hit them.The first link on average broadband speeds seems out-of-date. I hope BroadbandCensus.com will successfully collect significant amounts of U.S. data, but at the moment I am still be the only person in my entire zipcode who has contributed data. I guess I should do a blog post suggesting that people contribute...Cloud computing is certainly the direction that companies like Google and VMWare are pushing things, but there's still a need for bandwidth to the end user. Personally, while I'm exposing some personal information via social networking sites and some photos Flickr, I still run my own mail, web, and DNS servers, and prefer to keep my own data on my own servers.\nMichael C. Rush (2008-07-22):\nWell, we shall see how access is regulated and billed in five years. I predict and hope that it will be unmetered and uncapped, whether this comes about via market forces or through government fiat.To tell the truth, I am more concerned, in this instance, about corporate abuses (which have already been documented) than about the government (though clearly the two often work in tandem). As we have seen with Big Media, the profit motive has been somewhat subverted and can no longer be relied upon as the only or even the primary motivator for large corporations, which often act for other interests, pursuing other agendas. Giving the owners of the pipes the power to inhibit development of future technology for any reason would be bad for all of us. With luck, someday we can move to a true peer-to-peer broadband network invulnerable to such attempts at manipulation and control.\nLippard (2008-07-22):\n\"To tell the truth, I am more concerned, in this instance, about corporate abuses (which have already been documented) than about the government (though clearly the two often work in tandem).\"My impression is that the corporate abuses are few and far between (like Telus blocking the TWU Local 207 website), often grossly exaggerated (like the false claim that Cox was blocking Craigslist), and publicity has been more likely to stop any real abuses than government action (e.g., Verizon's initial refusal to allow NARAL's SMS messaging), while governments have been responsible for more real abuses, like blocking entire services like YouTube or Geocities because they don't like one video or website. Or shutting down the domain wikileaks.com.The only case I've heard of where government action stopped a case of corporate abuse was the Madison River blocking of Vonage, for which Madison River was fined $15,000 by the FCC. I wouldn't mind at all a statute prohibiting that kind of outright blocking for reasons other than protecting a network from security or abuse issues.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/netroots-and-telecom.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a telecom panel at the Netroots Nation conference today on the subject of \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom: An Emerging Threat to Our Democracy?\u0026rdquo;  The implied answer is yes, and it appears that every participant on the panel will be making that case.  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20111102221935/https://netrootsnation.org/node/791\"\u003ethe description of the panel\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMassive telecom companies control virtually all of our voice and internet communications these days—and new evidence shows a near-total lack of commitment to our democracy. AT\u0026amp;T has proposed filtering all content traveling on its network. Verizon tried initially to block NARAL\u0026rsquo;s pro-choice text messages. Most telecom companies are fighting net neutrality. Can democracy survive an assault by those who control the tubes?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe panel members don\u0026rsquo;t include anyone with any experience managing or operating an actual telecom network, but instead includes two people who have repeatedly demonstrated not only an ignorance of telecom law, technology, and policy, but who have \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/update-on-cox-blocking-of-craigslist.html\"\u003emisrepresented\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-from-save-internet.html\"\u003efacts\u003c/a\u003e and failed to engage with the arguments of their critics, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Matt_Stoller\"\u003eMatt Stoller\u003c/a\u003e and Timothy Karr (see posts on this blog in the \u003ca href=\"https://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/net%20neutrality\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e category).  The closest person to a representative of a telecom is Michael Kieschnick of Working Assets, a company that is a reseller of long distance and wireless service on Sprint\u0026rsquo;s network.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI agree with many of their positions\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think ISPs should be allowed to block websites on the basis of disagreement with content.  I think ISPs should be transparent about their network management processes and filtering.  Where I disagree with them is that they advocate that the FCC step in to regulate the Internet in a way that it has never had authority to do so before, and demand that network operators not be allowed to implement classes of service with different rates of charges, or even usage caps.  Art Brodsky \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-brodsky/netroots-should-tend-to-t_b_113165.html\"\u003eexpresses the point\u003c/a\u003e which has also been made by Robb Topolsky of Public Knowledge, Timothy Karr of Free Press, and Matt Stoller:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn the name of \u0026ldquo;network management,\u0026rdquo; some companies want to throttle down the use of legal applications, like BitTorrent which may, coincidentally, provide competition in entertainment programming. They want to impose usage caps across the board on all customers which would stifle innovation and curb the use of video (there\u0026rsquo;s that anti-competitive meme again) without actually solving the problem of the so-called \u0026ldquo;bandwidth hogs.\u0026rdquo; The way caps are being discussed now, they would only lead to higher prices and less usage for an industry that already charges more for less than most broadband providers around the world. Parts of our broadband industry may be the only sector in the world that wants to cut down the amount of its product it wants customers to use.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBrodsky\u0026rsquo;s last sentence is clearly false\u0026ndash;broadband is like a fixed-price all-you-can-eat buffet.  All businesses want to maximize their profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing costs.  When bandwidth is sold at a fixed cost in unlimited amounts, where a small number of users are consuming the majority of the service, it\u0026rsquo;s in the business\u0026rsquo;s interest to restrict those users or charge them more for what they consume in order to satisfy the rest in a cost-effective manner.  The options are few\u0026ndash;you can either restrict the \u0026ldquo;bandwidth hogs\u0026rdquo; in some way, charge them more so that they pay for what they use, or raise the price for everyone.  These guys seem to advocate the latter approach, while I\u0026rsquo;m in favor of allowing all the options to be used in a competitive market.  Where I disagree with Comcast\u0026rsquo;s approach in issuing RST packets to block BitTorrent traffic is not that they did it, but that they were not transparent about what they were doing (and apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get it quite right\u0026ndash;it should not have completely broken BitTorrent, but only slowed it down).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrodsky\u0026rsquo;s suggestion that Comcast has an interest in blocking BitTorrent because it provides competition in the entertainment space is absurd\u0026ndash;they have an interest in blocking it because it\u0026rsquo;s a very popular application which itself exploits Internet protocols in a way not anticipated by the designers in order to consume more bandwidth, getting around the congestion controls in TCP/IP by using multiple TCP streams.  If BitTorrent traffic wasn\u0026rsquo;t filling up the majority of Comcast\u0026rsquo;s bandwidth, they\u0026rsquo;d have no interest in it, except when the MPAA and RIAA issue them subpoenas about their users infringing copyrights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf the government prohibits the use of differential classes of service (which is already heavily used by private companies to give priority to applications within their enterprise which have requirements for low latency and jitter, such as real-time streaming audio and video, including Voice over IP) and requires that congestion be dealt with by building out infrastructure sufficiently that there will never be congestion no matter how many users max out their connectivity with BitTorrent, that will reduce competition by culling smaller companies out of the picture and making market entry more difficult.  In any environment where a provider\u0026rsquo;s upstream capacity is less than the sum of the capacity to every customer (and that\u0026rsquo;s everywhere, today, and always has been), all-you-can-eat bandwidth is like a commons.  The more that is available, the more the heavy users will consume, to the detriment of each other and the light users.  Without setting caps and having tiered pricing or implementing technology that prioritizes packets and drops from the heavy users and from less-realtime-sensitive applications first (like BitTorrent), there are no incentives against consuming everything that is available.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also think it\u0026rsquo;s a huge mistake to have the FCC start regulating the Internet.  FCC chairman Kevin Martin \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/fcc-chairman-kevin-martin-responds-to.html\"\u003ewould no doubt love to place indecency standards and filtering requirements on Internet content\u003c/a\u003e.  Once you open the door to FCC regulation of the Internet, that becomes more likely.  And the FCC has been completely ineffectual at dealing with existing abuses like fraudulent telemarketing, illegal prerecord calls to residences and cell phones, caller ID spoofing, etc., already covered by statute and regulation.  I\u0026rsquo;d rather see clear statutes that include private rights of action than entrust control of the Internet to the FCC.  The FCC is a slow-moving bureaucracy, and AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon have the deepest pockets, the most lawyers, and the most personnel who have shuffled back and forth between government (including the NSA) and industry.  That gives AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon the tactical advantage, and leads to less competition rather than more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhich brings me to the warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity issues, which Cindy Cohn of the EFF no doubt addressed on the Netroots Nation panel.  I suspect I have little if any disagreement with her. I\u0026rsquo;ve long been a supporter of the EFF, as are many people involved in the management of ISPs.  I strongly oppose telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping, a complete abdication of Congress\u0026rsquo; responsibility to support the U.S. Constitution.  But this shows the power of AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon.  Not only did they get what they wanted, but the very infrastructure which was built to do this massive interception of traffic for the NSA and for law enforcement interception under the CALEA laws was built for them with assistance from government funds.  All telecoms have to be compliant with CALEA (now including VoIP and broadband Internet providers), but the big incumbents who were most capable of affording it on their own got it at the lowest costs, while their competition was required to build it out at their own expense even if it never gets used.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut there are legitimate uses for deep packet inspection, for understanding the nature of the traffic on a network for management purposes, including tracking down security and abuse issues.  Since it is in the hands of the end user to use encryption to protect sensitive content, I think use of DPI by network providers is reasonable for the purposes of providing better service in the same way that it\u0026rsquo;s reasonable for a voice provider to intercept traffic for quality measurement purposes.  It\u0026rsquo;s also reasonable for interception to occur for \u0026ldquo;lawful intercept,\u0026rdquo; but it should always require a court order (i.e., both executive and judicial branch approval) on reasonable grounds.  The difficulty of obtaining wiretaps depicted in the television program \u0026ldquo;The Wire\u0026rdquo; is how it should be.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve written a lot on these issues, much which can be found in this blog\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/net-neutrality-index.html\"\u003eNetwork Neutrality Index\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf any reader of this blog happens to have attended the Netroots Nation telecom panel or comes across a description of its content, please point me to it, as I\u0026rsquo;d like to see what was said.  I don\u0026rsquo;t have high hopes for the accuracy or reasonability of statements from Stoller and Karr, but I could be surprised, and the other panelists probably had interesting and important things to say.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(See my Blogger profile for the disclosure of my employment by Global Crossing, which is currently \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080303063532/https://renesys.com/products_services/market_intel/\"\u003elisted by Renesys as the #3 network provider on the Internet in terms of number of customers\u003c/a\u003e, ahead of AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon, behind Sprint and Level 3.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom\u0026rdquo; panel was live-blogged (dead, unarchived link: \u003ca href=\"http://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=C865142FFB85E14AAD27045B9A342B15?diaryId=7032%22)\"\u003ehttp://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=C865142FFB85E14AAD27045B9A342B15?diaryId=7032\u0026quot;)\u003c/a\u003e.  Stoller\u0026rsquo;s anecdote about the Bill of Rights on metal is referring to Dean Cameron\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080207020157/http://www.securityedition.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;security edition\u0026rdquo; of the Bill of Rights\u003c/a\u003e, which was also promoted by \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20071219224226/https://pennandteller.com/sincity/penniphile/roadpennsecurityedition.html\"\u003ePenn Jillette\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Netroots and telecom"},{"content":"The mainstream media has reported the arrest of the City of San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s network administrator, being held on $5 million bond, as though he had secretly taken control of the city\u0026rsquo;s network and servers and held them hostage, and implies that he has access to data stored on servers on the network. The reality, however, appears to be somewhat different.\nPaul Venezia at InfoWorld has dug a little deeper, and found that Terry Childs, a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE, Cisco\u0026rsquo;s top certification), was responsible for managing San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;FiberWAN\u0026rdquo; MPLS network, which he, though not the top network architect, built and managed himself. He has always been the only one with access, which he protected vigorously for fear that no one else around him was competent to do so. His paranoia seems to me excessive and misplaced\u0026ndash;the risk of no one else having access is itself a single point of failure, and the fact that he originally refused to write remote configuration to flash, meaning that in the event of power failure the devices would not come back up and function properly without intervention, shows him to be a bit off.\nChilds never \u0026ldquo;tampered\u0026rdquo; with any system or network device to take it hostage, he simply maintained control of what he built and refused to give others access to it. He never has had control of any servers or databases apart from the ones directly involved in managing the network, such as the authentication servers for the network. So the talk of data being stored on the network including \u0026ldquo;officials\u0026rsquo; e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings\u0026rdquo; appears to be irrelevant. Nothing has been done to prevent anyone from accessing any of those things or to gain unauthorized access to them; the network is still up and functioning normally, and Childs didn\u0026rsquo;t have any special access to or manage or control the host-level access to the servers with that data. Now, he was probably able to intercept data transmitted on the network (necessary for troubleshooting), but if sensitive data was only accessed via encrypted sessions, even that risk wouldn\u0026rsquo;t exist.\nChilds\u0026rsquo; problem appears to be that he was overprotective, untrusting of the competence of his peers and management (perhaps with some justification), and placed technological purity and security over business requirements. Not unusual features for people with a very high level of technical skill.\nCheck out Venezia\u0026rsquo;s article\u0026ndash;it looks to me like he\u0026rsquo;s got the goods on this story.\nUPDATE (July 23, 2008): Childs gave up the passwords to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, after a secret visit arranged by his attorney, Erin Crane, with the mayor. Childs\u0026rsquo; attorney\u0026rsquo;s statements are consistent with Venezia\u0026rsquo;s article:\nIn her motion to reduce bail, Crane said Childs had been the victim of a \u0026ldquo;bad faith\u0026rdquo; effort to force him out of his post by incompetent city officials whose meddling was jeopardizing the network Childs had built. At one point, she said, Childs discovered that the network was at risk of being infected with a computer virus introduced by a colleague.\n\u0026ldquo;Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password,\u0026rdquo; Crane said. \u0026ldquo;His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it \u0026hellip; and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves.\n\u0026ldquo;He was the only person in that department capable of running that system,\u0026rdquo; Crane said. \u0026ldquo;There have been no established policies in place to even dictate who would be the appropriate person to hand over the password to.\u0026quot;\nThe defense attorney added that \u0026ldquo;to the extent that Mr. Childs refused to turn over the password \u0026hellip; this was not a danger to the public.\u0026quot;\nChilds intends to fight the computer tampering charges:\nReferring to the felony computer-tampering counts, Crane said, \u0026ldquo;Mr. Childs intends to not only disprove those charges, but also expose the utter mismanagement, negligence and corruption at (the Technology Department) which, if left unchecked, will in fact place the city of San Francisco in danger.\u0026quot;UPDATE (September 11, 2008): Venezia has a new story about the latest round of motions in the Childs case, where the prosecution has filed some apparently technically inept documents. I\u0026rsquo;ve also come across an affidavit supporting Childs\u0026rsquo; arrest from SFPD Inspector James Ramsey (PDF), which presents a very strong case that Childs was up to no good\u0026ndash;he had set up his own racks of equipment including modems in a training room, was running his own mail servers and intrusion detection systems, and connecting his own personal equipment to the network. He had cut holes in a locked cabinet next to his cubicle to run cables into them, where he had placed a dialup modem and a computer to allow himself unauthorized access to the city network. The guy seems like a bit of a nut who was engaged in some highly inappropriate behavior meriting termination and criminal prosecution.\nUPDATE (August 22, 2009): The judge in the Childs case, Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy, has dismissed three charges of tampering, leaving one count related to his initial refusal to give up the passwords, which has a maximum sentence of five years. Childs has served over a year in jail, due to his inability to raise $5 million in bail. He will appear in court on Monday regarding the final charge. Childs gave up the passwords to San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom after spending eight days in jail.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/san-franciscos-city-network-held.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe mainstream media \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/16/national/a153828D36.DTL\u0026amp;hw=Terry+Childs\u0026amp;sn=007\u0026amp;sc=281\"\u003ehas reported the arrest of the City of San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s network administrator\u003c/a\u003e, being held on $5 million bond, as though he had secretly taken control of the city\u0026rsquo;s network and servers and held them hostage, and implies that he has access to data stored on servers on the network.  The reality, however, appears to be somewhat different.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaul Venezia at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfoWorld\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis\u0026amp;A=/article/08/07/18/30FE-sf-network-lockout_1.html\"\u003ehas dug a little deeper\u003c/a\u003e, and found that Terry Childs, a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE, Cisco\u0026rsquo;s top certification), was responsible for managing San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;FiberWAN\u0026rdquo; MPLS network, which he, though not the top network architect, built and managed himself.  He has always been the only one with access, which he protected vigorously for fear that no one else around him was competent to do so.  His paranoia seems to me excessive and misplaced\u0026ndash;the risk of no one else having access is itself a single point of failure, and the fact that he originally refused to write remote configuration to flash, meaning that in the event of power failure the devices would not come back up and function properly without intervention, shows him to be a bit off.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChilds never \u0026ldquo;tampered\u0026rdquo; with any system or network device to take it hostage, he simply maintained control of what he built and refused to give others access to it.  He never has had control of any servers or databases apart from the ones directly involved in managing the network, such as the authentication servers for the network.  So the talk of data being stored on the network including \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003eofficials\u0026rsquo; e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings\u0026rdquo; appears to be irrelevant.  Nothing has been done to prevent anyone from accessing any of those things or to gain unauthorized access to them; the network is still up and functioning normally, and Childs didn\u0026rsquo;t have any special access to or manage or control the host-level access to the servers with that data.  Now, he was probably able to intercept data transmitted on the network (necessary for troubleshooting), but if sensitive data was only accessed via encrypted sessions, even that risk wouldn\u0026rsquo;t exist.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChilds\u0026rsquo; problem appears to be that he was overprotective, untrusting of the competence of his peers and management (perhaps with some justification), and placed technological purity and security over business requirements.  Not unusual features for people with a very high level of technical skill.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis\u0026amp;A=/article/08/07/18/30FE-sf-network-lockout_1.html\"\u003eVenezia\u0026rsquo;s article\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;it looks to me like he\u0026rsquo;s got the goods on this story.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 23, 2008): Childs \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/22/BAGF11T91U.DTL\u0026amp;tsp=1\u0026amp;Yay\"\u003egave up the passwords to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, after a secret visit arranged by his attorney, Erin Crane, with the mayor\u003c/a\u003e.  Childs\u0026rsquo; attorney\u0026rsquo;s statements are consistent with Venezia\u0026rsquo;s article:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"San Francisco's city network held hostage"},{"content":"Stephen Baldwin says he will leave the country if Obama wins. But will he stay away for at least four years?\nOf course, he\u0026rsquo;s just mocking his brother Alec\u0026rsquo;s statement that he would leave the country if Bush were elected in 2000, which he didn\u0026rsquo;t follow through on, either.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/another-reason-to-hope-obama-wins.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStephen Baldwin \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/01/stephen-baldwin-on-fox-ne_n_110169.html\"\u003esays he will leave the country if Obama wins\u003c/a\u003e.  But will he stay away for at least four years?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf course, he\u0026rsquo;s just mocking his brother Alec\u0026rsquo;s statement that he would leave the country if Bush were elected in 2000, which he didn\u0026rsquo;t follow through on, either.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another reason to hope Obama wins the election"},{"content":"The latest ApostAZ podcast is available, and it\u0026rsquo;s an \u0026ldquo;Apostamini\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a short one. This one has a short commentary from me about The Amazing Meeting 6.\nContents:\nApostamini 001 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- \u0026ldquo;Squared\u0026rdquo; from Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;. Ingersoll\u0026rsquo;s Vow. Amanda :). Pope George Carlin. Jim Lippard illustrates the cool points of TAM6 in Las Vegas (http://www.discord.org/). Greydon Square, \u0026ldquo;Dream\u0026rdquo; from \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo; album.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/apostaz-podcast-apostamini-1.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is available, and it\u0026rsquo;s an \u0026ldquo;Apostamini\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a short one.  This one has a short commentary from me about The Amazing Meeting 6.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eContents:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/ApostaMini001.mp3\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/ApostaMini001.mp3\"\u003eApostamini 001\u003c/a\u003e Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- \u0026ldquo;Squared\u0026rdquo; from Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;. Ingersoll\u0026rsquo;s Vow. Amanda :). Pope George Carlin. Jim Lippard illustrates the cool points of TAM6 in Las Vegas (\u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/)\"\u003ehttp://www.discord.org/)\u003c/a\u003e. Greydon Square, \u0026ldquo;Dream\u0026rdquo; from \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo; album.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast -- Apostamini #1"},{"content":"As seen from the Deep Impact probe, 31 million miles away.\n(Via Bad Astronomy, where you can find more information and some related videos.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/moon-transits-earth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs seen from the Deep Impact probe, 31 million miles away.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-06491802709250336 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/MEcqWuYqrSo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/MEcqWuYqrSo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/MEcqWuYqrSo\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/17/holy-frak-moon-transits-earth/\"\u003eBad Astronomy\u003c/a\u003e, where you can find more information and some related videos.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Moon transits earth"},{"content":"Via Long or Short Capital comes a children\u0026rsquo;s story authored by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. The blog gives two versions of the story, first from the Amazon description of the book:\nRock and Brock may be twins, but they are as different as two twins can be. One day, their grandpa offers them a plan-for ten straight weeks on Saturday he will give them each one dollar for doing their chores. But there is a catch! Each dollar they save, he will match. Rock is excited-there are all sorts of things he can buy for one dollar. So each week he spends his money on something different-a toy moose head, green hair goo, white peppermint wax fangs. But while Rock is spending his money, Brock is saving his. And each week when Rock gets just one dollar, Brock’s savings get matched. By summer’s end, Brock has five hundred and twelve dollars, while Rock has none. When Rock sees what his brother has saved, he realizes he has made a mistake. But Brock shows him that it is never too late to start saving.\nAnd a second version based on Sheila Bair\u0026rsquo;s recent urging that lenders freeze mortgage teaser rates and the government create a $50 billion loan program for mortgage holders in trouble to pay down their mortgages:\nI think it is time to tell the real story of Rock and Brock. The one, where Brock puts his money into an FDIC insured savings account, while Rock asks his friend Kerimov to hook him up with some later-untraceable source of leverage, investing the proceeds in Russian oil assets. At the end of 10 weeks, Brock’s savings bank is kaput, wiping out most of his savings. Over the same period, Rock’s oil assets have doubled, which leaves him with enough cash to purchase the operating assets of Rock’s S\u0026amp;L, after negotiating a free put from the Fed. And a Ferrari Enzo.Long or Short Capital is excellent for cynical and hilarious commentary on current financial events.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/rock-brock-and-savings-shock.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/effin-fdic.htm\"\u003eLong or Short Capital\u003c/a\u003e comes a children\u0026rsquo;s story authored by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair.  The blog gives two versions of the story, first from the Amazon description of the book:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRock and Brock may be twins, but they are as different as two twins can be. One day, their grandpa offers them a plan-for ten straight weeks on Saturday he will give them each one dollar for doing their chores. But there is a catch! Each dollar they save, he will match. \u003cp\u003eRock is excited-there are all sorts of things he can buy for one dollar. So each week he spends his money on something different-a toy moose head, green hair goo, white peppermint wax fangs. But while Rock is spending his money, Brock is saving his. And each week when Rock gets just one dollar, Brock’s savings get matched. By summer’s end, Brock has five hundred and twelve dollars, while Rock has none. When Rock sees what his brother has saved, he realizes he has made a mistake. But Brock shows him that it is never too late to start saving.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock"},{"content":"Scott Conover was arrested by a Johnson County, TN sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputy for taking his picture during a traffic stop\u0026ndash;not his own, someone else\u0026rsquo;s. He drove up to a stop in progress, slowed down, took a picture with his iPhone, and kept going. Officer Kenneth Lane went after him, pulled him over, falsely claimed that taking a picture of him was illegal and that he had to turn it over, and then arrested the guy, using two sets of handcuffs. The charge: \u0026ldquo;disorderly conduct, unlawful photographing, and pointing a laser at law enforcement officers\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;all three of which were bogus.\nMore information, including a link to the officer\u0026rsquo;s barely literate report, written four days after the fact, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nUPDATE (August 9, 2008): Turns out there\u0026rsquo;s more to the story, and it makes the cops look even worse. Conover was taking a picture of what was part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against him, by going after the patrons of his bar. In this particular case, Conover knew that the driver of the car was a woman who was acting as designated driver for her husband, and only the husband had been drinking, and so he followed to take pictures to document what was going on. And this harassment of his patrons began after Conover was a witness to deputies beating up a man outside of his establishment, and he made a statement supporting that man. Conover had also previously sued the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s department and settled for an undisclosed sum.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/man-arrested-for-photographing-cop.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScott Conover was arrested by a Johnson County, TN sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputy for taking his picture during a traffic stop\u0026ndash;not his own, someone else\u0026rsquo;s.  He drove up to a stop in progress, slowed down, took a picture with his iPhone, and kept going.  Officer Kenneth Lane went after him, pulled him over, falsely claimed that taking a picture of him was illegal and that he had to turn it over, and then arrested the guy, using two sets of handcuffs.  The charge: \u0026ldquo;disorderly conduct, unlawful photographing, and pointing a laser at law enforcement officers\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;all three of which were bogus.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore information, including a link to the officer\u0026rsquo;s barely literate report, written four days after the fact, at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/under_arrest_for_unlawful_phot.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 9, 2008):  Turns out \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/update_on_unlawful_photography.php\"\u003ethere\u0026rsquo;s more to the story, and it makes the cops look even worse\u003c/a\u003e.  Conover was taking a picture of what was part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against him, by going after the patrons of his bar.  In this particular case, Conover knew that the driver of the car was a woman who was acting as designated driver for her husband, and only the husband had been drinking, and so he followed to take pictures to document what was going on.  And this harassment of his patrons began after Conover was a witness to deputies beating up a man outside of his establishment, and he made a statement supporting that man.  Conover had also previously sued the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s department and settled for an undisclosed sum.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Man arrested for photographing cop"},{"content":"Colorado voters will get to vote in November on a proposition that defines personhood as beginning at conception. This will have the implication that in vitro fertilization involves murder, as the process standardly involves the disposal of fertilized eggs. As right-to-lifers are also often advocates of IVF, this places them into a bit of a quandary. In my opinion, this should even have the implication that all frozen embryos need to be brought to term\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s surely wrong to freeze people and prevent them from living their lives without their consent.\nPuffsPlus (2008-07-17):\nHmm, what's the source for the claim that right-to-lifers are also advocates of IVF? In my experience, most right-to-lifers are Catholics, and the Catholic Church forbids IVF...precisely for the reasons you point out.\nLippard (2008-07-17):\nI see lots of evangelical Protestant right-to-lifers in addition to Catholics. Every recent case of large numbers of multiple births (quadruplets, quintuplets, sextuplets, and now septuplets) I've seen in the media has been an evangelical Protestant or Mormon right-to-lifer using IVF and refusing to engage in \"fetal reduction\" to ensure the health of the rest.\nLippard (2008-07-17):\nAdrienne: I guess it is already clear to the groups like Concerned Women for America that IVF is an issue for them, which is why they advocate the adoption of \"snowflake babies\"--frozen embryos that are the by-products of other couples' IVF.\nMark (2008-07-17):\nI think they should have a vote on the speed of light.\ncrf (2008-07-20):\nAre they going to lower the voting age by one year as well?Can you get a conception certificate?If the state decides that the vessel of some \"person\" is unfit, can it apply to make the \"person\" a ward of the state? What happens to the vessel then?Did the Colorado supreme court make a wrong a turn on their way to abu dhabi?\nSheldon (2008-07-22):\n\"Did the Colorado supreme court make a wrong a turn on their way to abu dhabi?\"Its a ballot initiative, which means that anybody with only half a brain gets to vote on it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/colorado-initiative-to-define.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eColorado voters \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201615.html\"\u003ewill get to vote in November on a proposition that defines personhood as beginning at conception\u003c/a\u003e.  This will have the implication that in vitro fertilization involves murder, as the process standardly involves the disposal of fertilized eggs.  As right-to-lifers are also often advocates of IVF, this places them into a bit of a quandary.  In my opinion, this should even have the implication that all frozen embryos need to be brought to term\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s surely wrong to freeze people and prevent them from living their lives without their consent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Colorado initiative to define personhood as beginning at conception"},{"content":"The Presidential Prayer Team has called for supporters to \u0026ldquo;Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God\u0026rsquo;s Word and His standards will be honored by our government.\u0026quot;\nA piece of unattributed email has been going around in support of this proposition, with the following suggested Constitutional amendment to put that into effect:\nMarriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) Marriage shall not impede a man\u0026rsquo;s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother\u0026rsquo;s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)For some reason Len Munsil\u0026rsquo;s Center for Arizona Policy organization hasn\u0026rsquo;t pushed this amendment in Arizona, instead preferring the unbiblical idea, not even widely recognized yet at the time of Charlemagne, that marriage should only be between one man and one woman.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/presidential-prayer-team-asks-your.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ppt_homepage\"\u003ePresidential Prayer Team\u003c/a\u003e has called for supporters to \u0026ldquo;Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles.  With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God\u0026rsquo;s Word and His standards will be honored by our government.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA piece of unattributed email has been going around in support of this proposition, with the following suggested Constitutional amendment to put that into effect:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMarriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) Marriage shall not impede a man\u0026rsquo;s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother\u0026rsquo;s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)\u003c/blockquote\u003eFor some reason Len Munsil\u0026rsquo;s Center for Arizona Policy organization hasn\u0026rsquo;t pushed this amendment in Arizona, instead preferring the unbiblical idea, not even widely recognized yet at the time of Charlemagne, that \u003ca href=\"http://azformarriage.com/\"\u003emarriage should only be between one man and one woman\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Presidential Prayer Team asks your support for biblical marriage"},{"content":"Tredell County deputies have confiscated 175 marijuana plants from a barn on Lippard Farm Road in Statesville, NC. No arrests have been made in that case, but \u0026ldquo;charges are pending.\u0026quot;\nCome on, North Carolina. If you can grow tobacco, why not marijuana?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/lippard-related-crime-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTredell County deputies \u003ca href=\"http://www.statesville.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=SRL%2FMGArticle%2FSRL_BasicArticle\u0026amp;c=MGArticle\u0026amp;cid=1173355901786\u0026amp;path=%21news\"\u003ehave confiscated 175 marijuana plants from a barn on Lippard Farm Road\u003c/a\u003e in Statesville, NC.  No arrests have been made in that case, but \u0026ldquo;charges are pending.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCome on, North Carolina.  If you can grow tobacco, why not marijuana?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lippard-related crime update"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a nice takedown of David Kupelian\u0026rsquo;s article at the WorldNutDaily bemoaning how atheists are being allowed to publish books in these Christian United States. Ed shows that Kupelian has no idea what he\u0026rsquo;s talking about when he writes about Christianity in American history.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/ed-brayton-on-david-kupelians-latest.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/the_atheists_are_coming_the_at.php\"\u003ehas a nice takedown of David Kupelian\u0026rsquo;s article at the WorldNutDaily\u003c/a\u003e bemoaning how atheists are being allowed to publish books in these Christian United States.  Ed shows that Kupelian has no idea what he\u0026rsquo;s talking about when he writes about Christianity in American history.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton on David Kupelian's latest foolishness"},{"content":"Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, back on June 6:\nBarack Obama isn\u0026rsquo;t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.\n\u0026hellip;\nMany spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.Sorry, but this is crazy talk\u0026ndash;and crazy talk of the sort that the religious right will grab a hold of, translate \u0026ldquo;Lightworker\u0026rdquo; into \u0026ldquo;Light bearer\u0026rdquo; into \u0026ldquo;Lucifer,\u0026rdquo; and decide that Obama\u0026rsquo;s the Antichrist.\nMorford writes that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t literally believe this, and warns up front that:\nWarning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former \u0026rsquo;60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain\u0026rsquo;t gonna like this one little bit.But even on a non-literal level, I don\u0026rsquo;t like it. The job of the president is to lead the executive branch of the government, not to be national daddy, mommy, or Messiah. Obama clearly has a lot of charisma and speaks very well, which is something that can be used positively or negatively\u0026ndash;and more often than not it\u0026rsquo;s the latter.\nmikeb (2008-07-17):\nI'm not sure if you ever the chance to listen to \"The Glenn Beck Program\" on KTAR mid-day, but I did get to hear the entertaining conversation of Obama being the devil one day on my way to run some errands. I found myself drawn to listen in some horrible Howard Stern train wreck kind of way. It was a caller who brought it up, but Beck made sure to say \"mmhmmm\" in agreement repeatedly so as to not have a sound bite of him really agreeing.Ahhhh, politics and religion. What fun.\nLippard (2008-07-17):\nI've read some of what Glenn Beck has written and seen some film clips, which is enough to let me know that listening to him on the radio would raise my blood pressure.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-18):\nHeck, watching him on the tv is just as bad.Yep, Glenn Beck asked John Hagee - on air - if Obama is the Anti-Christ. Hagee answered no ...I find that New Age mumbo jumbo unbearable. When I was in therapy last year after suffering a nervous breakdown I was somewhat mortified when the therapist recommend I read Eckhart Tolle. How someone trained in the way the mind functions could buy into that jazz is beyond me ... I stopped going not long after that.\nLippard (2008-07-18):\nI'm under the impression, after reading Robyn Dawes' book, House of Cards, that most therapists have no idea how the mind functions.Sorry to hear that you had suffered a nervous breakdown.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/obama-lightworker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Morford at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL\"\u003ewrote\u003c/a\u003e, back on June 6:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003eBarack Obama isn\u0026rsquo;t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003eMany spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in \u003ci\u003ea new way of being on the planet\u003c/i\u003e, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us \u003ci\u003eevolve\u003c/i\u003e. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003eSorry, but this is crazy talk\u0026ndash;and crazy talk of the sort that the religious right will grab a hold of, translate \u0026ldquo;Lightworker\u0026rdquo; into \u0026ldquo;Light bearer\u0026rdquo; into \u0026ldquo;Lucifer,\u0026rdquo; and decide that Obama\u0026rsquo;s the Antichrist.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMorford writes that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t literally believe this, and warns up front that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"bodytext\" class=\"georgia md\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWarning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former \u0026rsquo;60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, \u003ca href=\"http://metaatem.net/words/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eclick away right now\u003c/a\u003e, because you ain\u0026rsquo;t gonna like this one little bit.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut even on a non-literal level, I don\u0026rsquo;t like it.  The job of the president is to lead the executive branch of the government, not to be national daddy, mommy, or Messiah.  Obama clearly has a lot of charisma and speaks very well, which is something that can be used positively or negatively\u0026ndash;and more often than not it\u0026rsquo;s the latter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Obama the Lightworker"},{"content":"Network World has a good summary of the story of the firing of Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s firing by 1-800-Flowers. Kroll was fired after her husband Chuck sent a death threat to P.Z. Myers using her corporate email account, saying that if he didn\u0026rsquo;t quit his job by the first of the month, he would \u0026ldquo;get [his] brains beat in.\u0026rdquo; Chuck Kroll, presumably a conservative Catholic, issued this threat because Myers blogged in support of University of Central Florida student Webster Cook, who took a consecrated host from a Catholic church in Orlando, Florida. Cook was accused of a hate crime equivalent to kidnapping by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. After receiving threats, Cook returned the magic cracker. Cult members believe the wafer has been literally transformed into the body of Jesus, while also retaining the properties of a cracker. This is not to be confused with Scientology, which believes that we are infested with the bodies of murdered space aliens, though both views seem to be on a par with respect to their reasonableness and quality of supporting evidence.\nUPDATE (July 16, 2008): Melanie Kroll has been active in the comments at Greg Laden\u0026rsquo;s blog, where she claims she was not connected to her company VPN when the email was sent. This is patently false, since otherwise her computer would not have been able to send the email through the company mail server from an RFC 1918 private IP address, which it did. It seems that she, like her husband, is incapable of taking responsibility for her own errors. She also writes this, by way of explanation for husband\u0026rsquo;s behavior:\nMy husband went on to the drudge report site that he reads and clicked on a link and came across that man pz\u0026rsquo;s notice and responded as he always does when he is upset. Was his text extreme yes it was, would he follow through, never.So he always sends email to the authors of people who write things that make him upset, threatening to beat their brains in if they don\u0026rsquo;t quit their jobs by the end of the month? That sounds like a very serious personal problem.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/network-world-covers-biscuit-cult-death.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNetwork World\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/071608-woman-fired-over-death-threat.html?page=1\"\u003ea good summary of the story of the firing of Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s firing by 1-800-Flowers\u003c/a\u003e.  Kroll was fired after her husband Chuck sent a death threat to P.Z. Myers using her corporate email account, saying that if he didn\u0026rsquo;t quit his job by the first of the month, he would \u0026ldquo;get [his] brains beat in.\u0026rdquo;  Chuck Kroll, presumably a conservative Catholic, issued this threat because \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/wacky-cult-wants-magic-biscuit-back.html\"\u003eMyers blogged in support of University of Central Florida student Webster Cook\u003c/a\u003e, who took a consecrated host from a Catholic church in Orlando, Florida.   Cook was accused of a hate crime equivalent to kidnapping by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.  After receiving threats, Cook returned the magic cracker.  Cult members believe the wafer has been literally transformed into the body of Jesus, while also retaining the properties of a cracker.  This is not to be confused with Scientology, which believes that we are infested with the bodies of murdered space aliens, though both views seem to be on a par with respect to their reasonableness and quality of supporting evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 16, 2008): Melanie Kroll has been active in \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/07/pz_myers_death_threat_confessi.php\"\u003ethe comments at Greg Laden\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, where she claims she was not connected to her company VPN when the email was sent.  This is patently false, since otherwise her computer would not have been able to send the email through the company mail server from an RFC 1918 private IP address, which it did.  It seems that she, like her husband, is incapable of taking responsibility for her own errors.  She also writes \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/07/pz_myers_death_threat_confessi.php#comment-988489\"\u003ethis, by way of explanation for husband\u0026rsquo;s behavior\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMy husband went on to the drudge report site that he reads and clicked on a link and came across that man pz\u0026rsquo;s notice and responded as he always does when he is upset. Was his text extreme yes it was, would he follow through, never.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo he always sends email to the authors of people who write things that make him upset, threatening to beat their brains in if they don\u0026rsquo;t quit their jobs by the end of the month?  That sounds like a very serious personal problem.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Network World covers biscuit cult death threat and firing"},{"content":"The New York Times says that some banking analysts (two of which are mentioned by name) predict that \u0026ldquo;as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months.\u0026rdquo; If that were to happen, that would likely exhaust the Deposit Insurance Fund of the FDIC, which will be spending $4 to $8 billion to cover the insured deposits of failed IndyMac bank. The Deposit Insurance Fund had about $52.4 billion at the end of 2007.\nThe worst case scenarios I\u0026rsquo;ve seen frequently discussed are hyperinflation and a Greater Depression. The way to survive the former would be to keep funds in more-stable foreign currencies and gold; for the latter it would be better to stay in cash and bonds (so long as none of the bonds default). A diversified set of investments is still your best bet, in my opinion.\nUPDATE (September 12, 2008): The Economist (August 30, 2008) reports that the FDIC has 117 banks on its watch list, compared to 90 at the end of March, and reports that the drawdown on the Deposit Insurance Fund for IndyMac is sufficient to trigger a required funds \u0026ldquo;restoration\u0026rdquo; plan within the next 90 days.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-16):\n\"The worst case scenarios I've seen frequently discussed are hyperinflation and a Greater Depression.\"Ironic, given that income concentration at the top is now back to the level it was at in 1928-29 before the Great Depression.David Cay Johnston has a chapter in his new book - Free Lunch - entitled \"Not Since Hoover\" specifically about the income inequality.\nLippard (2008-07-19):\nI kind of feel this way about \"income inequality.\"I've only read Johnston's previous book, which I liked, but had some serious criticisms of (see my Amazon.com review).\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-19):\nI know. I quoted from your review of Perfectly Legal in a post I wrote before ... interestingly, about a day later I got an e-mail from Johnston alerting me about the then soon-to-be released Free Lunch.Free Lunch got a sympathetic reading at Reason magazine. I actually think this book will reach a wider audience than the previous one ... as this one focuses on the way that the market is being rigged in a very un-Smithian manner to benefit a select few.It will take me a while to try to absord that guy's argument, but I've got notes for Johnston's \"Not Since Hoover\" chapter that I'll post later this week.\nLippard (2008-07-19):\nLet me know when you post it, I'll let your review be my guide to whether and how soon I should read it. Thanks!\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-27):\nHere is the post.I don't think that will help you decide to read it or not, however. As you've already read Perfectly Legal, you'll already be familiar with these sorts of numbers, and this chapter is unique within the book as the rest are specific case studies about ways that taxpayer money are given to the already rich to subvert the market and what not.The Fora tv talk might be a better resource for deciding to read it or not ... the talk is extensive (over an hour) yet it has a feature that lets you skip around to specific segments of the talk.\nLippard (2008-07-27):\nDoes he talk about the composition of these slots? It's possible to have rising inequality yet also rising income mobility, so that people are moving around a lot from group to group. The stats in your post are given as though the membership of each group is static, though I'm sure that's not actually the case. Also, what happens if you account for inflation? It seems that it could show that the increases among the richest were less significant than they appear, but also show a more significant drop for those at the bottom.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-27):\nIt's my understanding that those figures are adjusted for inflation.Johnston does not talk about mobility as far as I remember.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-29):\nYikes. I was trying to see if I could find any articles from Johnston addressing social mobility and I found this article, which would seem to indicate that I got part of my facts confused (in the direction of making things sound better than they are.)Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000.¶Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.I had confused those making 10 million a year with the richest 400.Some of the numbers are a bit different, too. Johnston cites there being 14,000 people in the .01 bracket in '05, but the figure (from a Piketty and Saez paper) I was using from the book gives 30,000. Frack. I'm going to have to recheck the book out from the library to double check and see where or if I got the numbers confused.At the end of the article it asserts that social mobility has not increased ... which was my understanding, too. Although my most distinct memory on the subject is an article in The Economist from a few years ago.\nLippard (2008-07-29):\nThat article has a couple sentences on mobility at the end, but doesn't indicate a source or method of measurement. As Will Wilkinson has observed, there is a difference between movement and mobility, though I'm not sure how you can easily measure the latter as opposed to the former. Movement implies mobility, but mobility doesn't entail movement.In my own case, I've gone from the lowest quintile to the highest quintile of U.S. income earners, which I think is very common for those in the top quintile, since they're often in the bottom quintile while working part-time attending school. I came from a family which was in the top quintile; my parents divorced and my household was then probably in the fourth quintile. In grad school and the first job I took afterward were in the bottom quintile, and I worked my way up to the middle and fourth over 3-4 years, and into the fifth after about six years.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-30):\nMaybe investigating mobility can be a third book in the series for Johnston ...I did notice that one of the economists Johnston relies on heavily in that chapter has also published a paper on mobility.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-26):\n\"Some of the numbers are a bit different, too.\"The copy my library had of Free Lunch is out at another branch currently, but I went to a book store and flipped back through the section ... the reason the numbers conflict is that I mixed to data sets that employed different methodologies to count tax units ... I should probably make a note of that when I get a chance to get a hold of the book again.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/analysts-say-150-us-banks-will-fail-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/105391/Analysts-Say-More-Banks-Will-Fail\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e says\u003c/a\u003e that some banking analysts (two of which are mentioned by name) predict that \u0026ldquo;as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months.\u0026rdquo;  If that were to happen, that would likely exhaust the Deposit Insurance Fund of the FDIC, which will be spending \u003ca href=\"http://www.thestreet.com/s/indymac-insurance-tab-could-hit-8b/newsanalysis/small-cap-stock-spotlight/10426345.html?puc=googlefi\u0026amp;cm_ven=GOOGLEFI\u0026amp;cm_cat=FREE\u0026amp;cm_ite=NA\"\u003e$4 to $8 billion to cover the insured deposits of failed IndyMac bank\u003c/a\u003e.  The Deposit Insurance Fund had about $52.4 billion at the end of 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe worst case scenarios I\u0026rsquo;ve seen frequently discussed are hyperinflation and a Greater Depression.  The way to survive the former would be to keep funds in more-stable foreign currencies and gold; for the latter it would be better to stay in cash and bonds (so long as none of the bonds default).  A diversified set of investments is still your best bet, in my opinion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 12, 2008): \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e (August 30, 2008) \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12007269\"\u003ereports that the FDIC has 117 banks on its watch list\u003c/a\u003e, compared to 90 at the end of March, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12010642\"\u003ereports that the drawdown on the Deposit Insurance Fund for IndyMac is sufficient to trigger a required funds \u0026ldquo;restoration\u0026rdquo; plan within the next 90 days\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Analysts say 150 U.S. banks will fail in next 18 months"},{"content":"Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, writing at the Evolution News \u0026amp; Views blog (which accurately describes itself with its motto that begins \u0026ldquo;The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site\u0026rdquo;), has outdone himself again.\nRegarding a paper by Neil Shubin about Tiktaalik, Luskin complains that Shubin makes a comparison to the wrist bones of tetrapods, but never identifies any by name:\nWhen discussing Tiktaalik\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;wrist,\u0026rdquo; Shubin says he \u0026ldquo;invites direct comparisons\u0026rdquo; between Tiktaalik\u0026rsquo;s fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely this paper must have a diagram comparing the \u0026ldquo;wrist\u0026rdquo;-bones of Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:\n1. Shubin et al.: \u0026ldquo;The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations.\u0026rdquo; (Note: I have labeled the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)\nTranslation: OK, then exactly which \u0026ldquo;wrist bones of tetrapods\u0026rdquo; are Tiktaalik\u0026rsquo;s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn\u0026rsquo;t say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding \u0026ldquo;wrist bone\u0026rdquo;-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.\nAs P.Z. Myers points out, Luskin apparently doesn\u0026rsquo;t realize what the word \u0026ldquo;eponymous\u0026rdquo; means. The wrist bones that the intermedium and ulnare bones of Tiktaalik are homologous to in tetrapods? The bones that are \u0026ldquo;eponymous,\u0026rdquo; that have been given the same names: the intermedium and the ulnare.\nCarl Zimmer points out the same Luskin faux pas.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-07-15):\nTook me a second or so to get what Shubin meant, but I managed it. Is that really the worst that Luskin coudl find to say about the paper? That it used too many high-falutin' words, and he doesn't have a dictionary? C'mon Casey: I'm just an engineer and code-jockey with an interested layman's knowledge of all things bio, paleo and what not -- am really thta much smarter than you?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/luskins-latest-howler.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCasey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, writing at the Evolution News \u0026amp; Views blog (which accurately describes itself with its motto that begins \u0026ldquo;The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site\u0026rdquo;), has outdone himself again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRegarding a paper by Neil Shubin about \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTiktaalik\u003c/span\u003e, Luskin complains that Shubin makes a comparison to the wrist bones of tetrapods, but never identifies any by name:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote class=\"creationist\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen discussing Tiktaalik\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;wrist,\u0026rdquo; Shubin says he \u0026ldquo;invites direct comparisons\u0026rdquo; between Tiktaalik\u0026rsquo;s fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely this paper must have a diagram comparing the \u0026ldquo;wrist\u0026rdquo;-bones of Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Luskin's latest howler"},{"content":"If you\u0026rsquo;re the wife of a criminal defense attorney, you can get arrested for DUI even if you\u0026rsquo;ve not had a single drink. (This one was right here in Mesa, Arizona.)\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re a cop, the expectation is that you won\u0026rsquo;t get arrested for DUI even if you crash your car because you\u0026rsquo;re so drunk you can\u0026rsquo;t remember what year it is. Because if a cop arrests a cop for DUI, things get ugly.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/cops-and-dui.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re the wife of a criminal defense attorney, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/07/05/dwi-arrest-at-00/\"\u003eyou can get arrested for DUI even if you\u0026rsquo;ve not had a single drink\u003c/a\u003e.  (This one was right here in Mesa, Arizona.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re a cop, the expectation is that \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/07/08/professional-courtesy-and-dwi/\"\u003eyou won\u0026rsquo;t get arrested for DUI even if you crash your car because you\u0026rsquo;re so drunk you can\u0026rsquo;t remember what year it is\u003c/a\u003e.  Because if a cop arrests a cop for DUI, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/07/11/more-professional-courtesy-and-dwi/\"\u003ethings get ugly\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cops and DUI"},{"content":"Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom. A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded \u0026ldquo;the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises\u0026hellip;doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large.\u0026quot;\nMore at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/guillermo-gonzalez-new-school.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGuillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.  The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom.  A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded \u0026ldquo;the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises\u0026hellip;doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/the_irony_of_gonzalez_new_job.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guillermo Gonzalez' new school"},{"content":"There’s a saying in the non-profit world that people don’t donate to organizations, they donate to the individuals that represent them. Let me introduce you to two wonderful representatives of RESCUE: Otto was saved from the euthanasia list in December 2001.\nFred was saved in August 2002.\nOtto and Fred were both found on the streets of Phoenix and wound up on the kill list. They would not be with us if not for RESCUE. Otto and Fred are just two examples of the over 9,000 lives that RESCUE has saved thanks to donations. All of RESCUE’s cats and dogs are taken directly from the kill list at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. If you have not donated to our largest fundraiser of the year – Bowl-A-Rama, PLEASE do so today! No donation is too large or too small. If you are outside of Arizona and can spare $5, please make a donation, there is an informal competition to see who can get donations from the farthest place. Be sure to put Jim or Kat Lippard as the referrer.\nPlease help us help them!\nHistorical Comments Schtacky (2008-07-10):\nDonated! Good luck!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/bowl-rama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003eThere’s a saying in the non-profit world that people don’t donate to organizations, they donate to the individuals that represent them.    Let me introduce you to two wonderful representatives of RESCUE:\u003c/span\u003e    \u003cp style=\"font-family: arial;font-family:Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;\"  class=\"EC_MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e Otto was saved from the euthanasia list in December 2001.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"font-family: arial;font-family:Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;\"  class=\"EC_MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/otto.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/otto.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5221080358978528034\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e    \u003cp style=\"font-family: arial;font-family:Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;\"  class=\"EC_MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e Fred was saved in August 2002.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"font-family: arial;font-family:Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;\"  class=\"EC_MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/fred.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/fred.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5221080594140384770\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bowl-A-Rama!!"},{"content":"President George W. Bush gave a speech at Monticello on July 4 that said, quoting Jefferson:\nOn the 50th anniversary of Americas independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, May it be to the world, what I believe it will be to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.Here\u0026rsquo;s what Jefferson actually wrote:\nMay it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.As Wonkette aptly notes, \u0026ldquo;Yeah dude, looks like you forgot the good part.\u0026rdquo; (Though Wonkette incorrectly attributes the Constitution to Jefferson along with the Declaration of Independence.)\n(Thanks to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC list.)\nUPDATE (July 16, 2008): Roger Kimball has responded to this issue, and Ed Brayton points out what he\u0026rsquo;s gotten right and what he\u0026rsquo;s gotten wrong about Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s views on religion. (Contrary to Dawkins and Hitchens, Jefferson was no atheist, nor even a deist. He referred to himself as a Unitarian, and Brayton calls him a \u0026ldquo;theistic rationalist.\u0026rdquo;)\nHistorical Comments Jason G (2008-07-09):\nHopefully anyone hearing Bush quote a great mind will think better than to take him at his word that he got the actual quote, if not the intent, right. If nothing else, it drove thousands to read Jefferson's original sayings.....never a bad thing\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/bush-july-4-speech-censors-jefferson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePresident George W. Bush gave a speech at Monticello on July 4 that said, quoting Jefferson:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOn the 50th anniversary of Americas independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, May it be to the world, what I believe it will be  to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s what Jefferson actually wrote:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMay it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\"\u003eunder which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves\u003c/span\u003e, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://wonkette.com/400915/july-4-bush-speech-censors-thomas-jefferson\"\u003eWonkette aptly notes\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;Yeah dude, looks like you forgot the good part.\u0026rdquo;  (Though Wonkette incorrectly attributes the Constitution to Jefferson along with the Declaration of Independence.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Thanks to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 16, 2008): Roger Kimball has responded to this issue, and Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/answering_roger_kimball.php\"\u003epoints out what he\u0026rsquo;s gotten right and what he\u0026rsquo;s gotten wrong about Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s views on religion\u003c/a\u003e.  (Contrary to Dawkins and Hitchens, Jefferson was no atheist, nor even a deist.  He referred to himself as a Unitarian, and Brayton calls him a \u0026ldquo;theistic rationalist.\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush July 4 speech censors Jefferson"},{"content":"Webster Cook smuggled a magic biscuit out of the service of a lunatic cult, in order to show a friend what it was like. Members of the cult issued death threats, the local spokespeople for the cult suggested that he was in danger of eternal damnation and called it a \u0026ldquo;hate crime,\u0026rdquo; and completely insane national spokespeople claimed that he had committed the moral equivalent of kidnapping.\nDetails at Pharyngula. This sounds like something that could have fit in Bill Maher\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Religulous.\u0026quot;\n(Hat tip to Wowbagger for the title.)\nUPDATE (July 10, 2008): The Pharyngula post linked to above has resulted in Bill Donohue of the Catholic League taking notice and calling for P.Z. Myers to be fired. That in turn has resulted in P.Z. Myers receiving 39 pieces of hate mail so far today, of which 34 have demanded that he be fired and four have included death threats. 25 have suggested that, instead of desecrating a cracker, Myers should desecrate a Koran\u0026ndash;showing that those individuals don\u0026rsquo;t think the tolerance they demand for themselves applies to other religions. (Sounds like our commenter Jenn!)\nUPDATE (July 11, 2008): The Catholic League has issued another press release, which contains this insanity:\nAs a result of the hysteria that Myers\u0026rsquo; ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia\u0026rsquo;s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia\u0026rsquo;s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year\u0026rsquo;s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers\u0026rsquo; backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley\u0026rsquo;s request.It\u0026rsquo;s the Catholics who have been comparing taking instead of eating a cracker to kidnapping and hate speech, and issuing death threats against someone who suggested doing the same. But now the Republican National Convention, being held 150 miles away from Myers\u0026rsquo; home, needs extra security because of his proximity? Lunacy.\nMyers has also published the email he\u0026rsquo;s received. Some of the alleged death threats don\u0026rsquo;t, I think, pass legal muster as such, but I think this one does:\nYou are really fucked now. Lock your doors at night, and check under your car before you turn the ignition key.This one doesn\u0026rsquo;t quite make it:\nIF Catholics had half the testosterone of muzzies, the answer would be simple. Holy hollowpoint. But alas, I expect they will whimper and grovel as usual.UPDATE (July 12, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars weighs in. Andrew Sullivan, after taking Myers to task, publishes dissenting opinions that make better arguments than his. Ed Brayton responds to Sullivan. P.Z. Myers catches Catholic sock puppets commenting on his blog. John Wilkins writes an insightful comment on \u0026ldquo;Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (July 13, 2008): P.Z. Myers has received more nasty email, which he has posted with full headers. If the first one is not actually from Melanie Kroll at 1800flowers.com, I\u0026rsquo;d say she has a compromised machine, and it\u0026rsquo;s a clear death threat. The second is from Steve C. Montemurro, a 41-year-old conservative Catholic from Hastings on Hudson, NY, and it appears to be more of a wish for Myers\u0026rsquo; death than a threat.\nUPDATE (July 16. 2008): Turns out the email from Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s machine was the result of a compromise of sorts\u0026ndash;it was from her husband, Chuck Kroll, and she lost her job as a result of it. Makes sense\u0026ndash;she shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have allowed her husband to use her computer to access her work resources at all, let alone to send death threats. Details at Pharyngula.\nUPDATE (July 18, 2008): Network World has coverage of Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s firing. The Science Museum of Minnesota will be closed down during the Republican National Convention as part of the security measures for the Xcel Energy Center, across the street. As P.Z. Myers observes, there\u0026rsquo;s a metaphor in that.\nUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Webster Cook has been impeached and removed from his position in student government at the University of Central Florida, and both he and his friend Benjamin Collard have been charged with misconduct, disruptive conduct, and giving false identification and had a hold put on their ability to sign up for classes. The school is buckling under to pressure from Bill Donohue and the Catholic League to persecute these students on trumped up charges. P.Z. Myers suggests writing to the UCF president; I suggest the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education get involved.\nP.Z. Myers has posted another selection of crazy Catholic hate mail he\u0026rsquo;s received. Do these people genuinely think they are doing the Lord\u0026rsquo;s work?\nAnonymous (2008-07-09):\nNot to be unoriginal, but I found this story so inspiring I wanted to be the first foreign copycat. I've currently got a basic plan.\nLippard (2008-07-09):\nGreat ideas!\nReed (2008-07-09):\nLet's assume the wafer was actually a cat and not the transubstantiated body of Christ...\"You bastard, you stole the cat. How DARE you! You were actually supposed to eat the cat.\"\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nYikes! Such stupendously ignorant comments by people who accuse others of not being as low and common as they are. I'm glad I'm a Catholc who knows that the Host is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in His glorified body.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nSaying it doesn't make it so. There are no physical changes that occur in transsubstantiation, yet you insist that the wafer has magically become the body of a long-dead man. It's just as crazy as Scientology claiming that we're all infested with the bodies of murdered space aliens.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nBTW, Jenn, I advise not reading this news story about how prostitutes are expecting more business when the Pope comes to Sydney later this month, or taking a look at this motivational poster parody, which points out the absurdity of the Popemobile having bulletproof windows by observing \"bullets are real, your god is not.\"And you definitely don't want to watch this Louis CK video explaining the beliefs of the Catholic Church.But then again, since you are defending a position in which you engage in *actual cannibalism* (or theophagy, to be precise) as opposed to merely symbolic ritual cannibalism, perhaps you have some interesting rationalizations to share with us on these subjects as well.\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nFirst, Christ is not merely a man. He is GodSecond, I didn't say thatI was just \"Saying\" the statement, I said I KNOW it to be TRUE. Which of course is a lot more than your silly irrational hate-speak.Third, stick to the subject. You Catholic haters can throw a thousand of you lies at once.\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nBy the way, I've heard Catholic hater's lies a thousand times before and felt the hot breath of their hatred spewing in my face as they scream their vile epithets. Nothing you say will convince me that you are nothing but the devil's pawn. But I am warmed, because it again affirms that for the legions who propound error and hatred - the ersatz religions, the fraudulent philosophers, the idolators of the State - there is only one eternal enemy: the Roman Catholic Church.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nWhether you assert that p or assert that you know that p, neither conveys any evidence that p. Do you have any to supply?Do you think that the student in the original story was guilty of a hate crime equivalent to kidnapping? Should somebody who walks out with a consecrated host be prosecuted for kidnapping Jesus, as Bill Donohue suggests? Or do you think maybe he's gone a little bit overboard?If you have nothing of substance to add to that, the original subject of this post, then what is your point in coming here and making false accusations of lying and hate? (Don't Catholics still believe in the Ten Commandments?) I haven't said anything I don't believe, and I haven't expressed any hate, merely sarcasm and disbelief in what I see as absurdity.This is my blog, not yours. If you don't like the content, I encourage you to engage in argument and discussion, but if all you have is ad hominem and argument by assertion, then you should post that somewhere else.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nBTW, Jenn got here by searching for \"Webster Cook\" and is located in Florida. Webster Cook, the guy who got death threats for walking out with the consecrated host, is a student at the University of Central Florida, Orlando.Are you in Orlando, or perhaps somewhere further south and west like Naples? Got any plans to move into Thomas Monaghan's Ave Maria community? (Domino's founder Monaghan is building a planned community that will be a Catholic town. He originally planned to contractually forbid retailers there from selling contraceptives or pornography, but I believe he has backed away from that as legally unviable. He's also the founder of the Thomas More Law Center, the organization that lost the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in Pennsylvania.)\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nJenn: Your last comment doesn't exactly inspire confidence in your rationality. I don't think anyone here thinks that the Roman Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon or the greatest threat to the world. IMHO, it's a declining religious sect that is mostly harmless in the developed world, apart from the occasional child molestation by a priest and coverup by the Church, its helping contribute to the spread of AIDS with its irrational opposition to contraception, and rampant diocese embezzlement. It's a bit more harmful in the developing world and anywhere it holds political power (like on the U.S. Supreme Court).\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nYawn....ho hum. Sigh. I've heard it all before. You are so boring and tedious. Hint: If the Catholic Church isn't a threat to satan, what is? Mega evangelical churches? Don't make me laugh.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nJenn: So boring and tedious that you have to keep coming back?Catholicism doesn't get singled out for criticism here, contrary to your earlier statement. Evangelical Protestantism and Scientology are more frequently critiqued here. No religion is exempt from criticism, nor is atheism or agnosticism.I don't think it makes any more sense to talk about which religion is a \"threat to Satan\" than it does about which religion is a threat to Santa Claus. (Actually, I guess that would be the Jehovah's Witnesses.) Satan doesn't exist.BTW, the Christian Scientist who showed up after we were criticizing her religion was a lot nicer than you are. Do you win many hearts or minds to Christ with your attitude?\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nI'm sure that if I were nice, you would chew me to pieces.Satan's most clever lie is that he doesn't exist. He has you by the...well, you know what I mean.\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nBTW - There are presently over a billion Catholics in the world. Probably several more billion who have ever lived during the past 2000 years. So much for your erroneous theory of the Catholic Church being a \"declining religious sect that is mostly harmless in the developed world\". If it's so harmless, why are you upset?\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nJenn: How about answering my questions from 8:31 p.m. last night, which are directly on topic to the original post?I'll respond to your comments, as I have been doing so all along.\"I'm sure that if I were nice, you would chew me to pieces.\" Again, compare to Jodie--did we chew her to pieces when she came and explained Christian Science views? Or Mike Beidler, or Stephen Douglas, who have recently commented about how they support their views of scripture? Nope. The Golden Rule is one of the best things in the Bible, you might give it a try.\"Satan's most clever lie is that he doesn't exist. He has you by the...well, you know what I mean.\"That made a good movie plot--however implausible--in \"The Usual Suspects.\" But if you look at the history of the concept of Satan, he was a rather later invention. The original Old Testament view was that God was the creator of all things, including all good and evil (e.g., Isaiah 45:7, Lamentations 3:38, Amos 3:6). The gnostics thought there were at least two gods, the Demiurge who created the material world (which some identified as the evil Old Testament god, and some identified as Satan), and Jesus the good spiritual god. The Bible itself has parallel passages which identify the source of one and the same action as God in one case (2 Samuel 24:1) and Satan in the other (1 Chronicles 21:1). In any case, if God is omnipotent and omniscient and created Satan, anything Satan does is with God's full knowledge, consent, and responsibility (since Satan, like the rest of the angels, presumably lacks free will).\"There are presently over a billion Catholics in the world. Probably several more billion who have ever lived during the past 2000 years.\"Your first statement is correct, if we accept baptism records as an accurate reflection of who's a practicing Catholic, which strikes me as similar to accepting Scientology's claims that everyone who has ever taken a Scientology course is a Scientologist. They claim 8 million members; the reality is probably a hundred thousand practicing Scientologists. I know Catholics like to say, \"once a Catholic, always a Catholic,\" but that's not a terribly accurate way to count who's actually a practitioner.If we just accept that as a hypothesis, Catholics are still the largest Christian sect (pretty close to half of all nominal Christians today), but they are shrinking on a percentage basis (compared to both world population and other sects of Christianity). Pentecostals have come out of nowhere (they started in the early 20th century) to 400 million today. Muslims have gone from less than a billion at the beginning of the 20th century to 1.5 billion today.25% of all Catholics in the world live in Europe, but the number of Catholics in Europe has only increased by 1% from 2000-2006, while the number of priests there has dropped--I think Africa is the only region where growth is ahead of population growth. Though Brazil is the #1 country for Catholics (134M in 1998, 140M in 2007; the U.S. is #3 after Mexico which is #2), none of those nations is even in the top ten for Catholics on a percentage basis, and Brazil's hot growing religion is Pentecostalism (24M there now), not Catholicism. Part of Catholicism's problem there is lack of priests--apparently Brazilians aren't so keen on the idea of celibacy.\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nYou poor deluded man.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nI'm engaging with your points, you're not engaging with mine--yet somehow that makes *me* deluded? If you aren't going to answer any questions or engage in discussion, what's your purpose in commenting here? Are you engaging in \"hate speech\"?\nJenn (2008-07-10):\nwbifqbruThere is nothing I could say that you wouldn't override with a misconception - either on purpose or out of never having tried to find out what the Catholic teaching is or why. Your comment on satan is a prime example. Satan is an angel. In the beginning God made all the angels and gave them free will. Satan and 1/3 of the created angels he led into Hell CHOSE to disobey and become evil. God made man and gave him free will also. Therefore, we can choose to do either good or evil, and there are plenty of people who deliberately choose to evil. But since you already know just everything, you already know this and have a smart comeback, not the least of which has to do with your trying to know Truth. You merely make up your own truth as you see it and it's just your own opinion, and really, I'm not interested in your opinion. I'm only interested in God's Truth, but since you're on satan's side, being an atheist and all, you would not be inetrested in knowing exactly what that is. As to your snide remarks about priest abusers - it's clear that you have never seen, much less talked to, a good holy priest. You don't know what \"holy\" means, do you? And don't threaten me with the hate speech spiel what with your hateful remarks about the Holy Eucharist. In case you don't know it, Catholics here on earth are what's called the Church Militant. Souls in Heaven are the Church Triumphiant and souls in Purgatory are the ...oh well...you already know this. Why do I bother. Anyway, I am part of the Church Militant and like to fight the culture wars against the Culture of Death - you know...abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, etc. Writing to you is just one more day in the life of a Catholic taking up for her Faith.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nJenn: The Catholic Encyclopedia does argue that the angels had some form of will (though it carefully avoids putting the adjective \"free\" in front of it), and notes the problem of explaining how perfect creations of God, not subject to the temptations of the flesh, could go wrong (with God having omniscient foreknowledge that this would occur, and omnipotent power to prevent it).Are you one of the people sending death threats to P.Z. Myers? Do you condone such death threats as part of your \"Church Militant\" membership? How about the Inquisition, would you like to bring that back, too? Or is today's \"Church Militant\" membership indistinguishable from griefers?\nJenn (2008-07-11):\nWho is PZ Myers? As far as the supposed \"death threats\" to Cook, considering his behavior, how do we know they're true? Has anyone seen them or is the world merely content to take his word for it? Also, I don't know what a griefer is. As for the Inquisition (may Queen Isabella become a canonized saint)obviously you read history from the other side. Who on earth wrote the Catholic Encyclopedia you referenced? If God had not given us (and the angels) free will, we would all be robots. He wants us to FREELY love Him - freely with our own will. If He forced His will on us like we were robots, we would be forced to love, not love given freely. The definition of Free Will in the Catholic Dictionary I have is: Free Will - The power of the will to determine itself and to act of itself, without compulsion from within or coersion from without. It is the faculty of an intelligent being to act or not act, to act this way or another way, and is therefore essentially different from the operations of irrational beings that merely respond to a stimulus and are conditioned by sensory objects.As for daily activities of being a Catholic - among other things, like praying the Rosary (bet you don't know what that is REALLY), for me it means not taking any lies people like to shove down Catholics' throats.\nLippard (2008-07-11):\nMy previous comment linked to the Wikipedia page that explains what a griefer is.Given your statements about free will, you should enjoy Raymond Smullyan's dialogue between a human and God about free will.P.Z. Myers is the author of the Pharyngula blog. If you look at the original post, you'll see that he was the author of the article about Webster Cook that I originally linked to, and I've also linked to his reports of receiving hate mail and death threats from Catholics upset by his postings on the subject.\nJenn (2008-07-11):\nOh. Well, that wouldn't be me because I don't do death threats. It's much more fun to let them live, pray for them, and let them LIVE with the results. I'm a pro-lifer. Do you make up the word verification letters? Are they randomly sent by a program or are they something mean?\nLippard (2008-07-11):\nI'm glad to hear that you don't do death threats--at last we've found some common ground.The word verifications are generated by Google/Blogger, not by me.\nJenn (2008-07-11):\nWell, we did make a bit of progress then, right? With that I'll leave you in peace and will remember you in prayer.Your Catholic friend,Jenn\nEinzige (2008-07-11):\nAre we sure that Jenn isn't just trying to be funny?I know I've laughed more than a couple times reading this thread.\nJenn (2008-07-12):\nLaugh at this, einzige:http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1460\nEinzige (2008-07-12):\nSure. Okay. Now what?I await your next over-the-top wacko post with baited breath (and still not convinced that you're not simply doing parody).\nJenn (2008-07-12):\nYeah, einzige, I know. You love me. Admit it.\nEinzige (2008-07-12):\nOops, I meant \"bated\"--as in the opposite of \"abated\"... oh well.\nnormdoering (2008-07-13):\nThat story got me back away from posting on TV shows. One thing I noticed, Bill Donohue may have answered Christopher Hitchen's Atheist Challenge, and that challenge goes like this:\"Here is my challenge. Let anyone name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.\"No nonbeliever would ever say what Bill Donohue said:\"It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ.\"And by \"Body of Christ\" Bill Donohue refers to a dry and tasteless cracker.Is it a moral statement? When you call something vile or a hate crime you are making a moral statement. Would an atheist ever claim that abusing a cracker is the most vile thing he could think of? I don't think so.Why don't Christians offer that as an example to prove Hitchens wrong?When I take a look at those who actually try to answer Christopher Hitchens' Challenge they all fall into Hitchens' trap and try to make a moral argument that Hitchens would not consider insane and thus automatically make statements an atheist could make.Also noteworthy, The Wikipedia entry on Host desecration. It's apparently old anti-Semitic nonsense.\nPodblack (2008-07-14):\nDigital Cuttlefish's take on it all:http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/07/all-this-over-ritual-cannibalism.htmlOh, funny that the article about the brothel is in a UK paper, not an Australian! I'll have to see if it's been covered here...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/wacky-cult-wants-magic-biscuit-back.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWebster Cook smuggled a magic biscuit out of the service of a lunatic cult, in order to show a friend what it was like.  Members of the cult issued death threats, the local spokespeople for the cult suggested that he was in danger of eternal damnation and called it a \u0026ldquo;hate crime,\u0026rdquo; and completely insane national spokespeople claimed that he had committed the moral equivalent of kidnapping.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDetails at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.  This sounds like something that could have fit in Bill Maher\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Religulous.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php#comment-969038\"\u003eWowbagger\u003c/a\u003e for the title.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 10, 2008): The Pharyngula post linked to above \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/now_ive_got_bill_donohues_atte.php\"\u003ehas resulted in Bill Donohue of the Catholic League taking notice and calling for P.Z. Myers to be fired\u003c/a\u003e.  That in turn \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fight_back_against_bill_donohu.php\"\u003ehas resulted in P.Z. Myers receiving 39 pieces of hate mail so far today\u003c/a\u003e, of which 34 have demanded that he be fired and four have included death threats.  25 have suggested that, instead of desecrating a cracker, Myers should desecrate a Koran\u0026ndash;showing that those individuals don\u0026rsquo;t think the tolerance they demand for themselves applies to other religions.  (Sounds like our commenter Jenn!)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 11, 2008): The Catholic League \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/can_this_possibly_get_more_ins.php\"\u003ehas issued another press release, which contains this insanity\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAs a result of the hysteria that Myers\u0026rsquo; ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia\u0026rsquo;s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia\u0026rsquo;s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year\u0026rsquo;s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers\u0026rsquo; backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley\u0026rsquo;s request.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s the Catholics who have been comparing taking instead of eating a cracker to kidnapping and hate speech, and issuing death threats against someone who suggested doing the same.  But now the Republican National Convention, being held 150 miles away from Myers\u0026rsquo; home, needs extra security because of his proximity?  Lunacy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMyers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/i_get_email_special_cracker_ed.php\"\u003ehas also published the email he\u0026rsquo;s received\u003c/a\u003e.  Some of the alleged death threats don\u0026rsquo;t, I think, pass legal muster as such, but I think this one does:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eYou are really fucked now. Lock your doors at night, and check under your car before you turn the ignition key.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis one doesn\u0026rsquo;t quite make it:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIF Catholics had half the testosterone of muzzies, the answer would be simple. Holy hollowpoint. But alas, I expect they will whimper and grovel as usual.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (July 12, 2008): Ed Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/pz_is_being_a_very_bad_boy.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars weighs in\u003c/a\u003e.  Andrew Sullivan, after taking Myers to task, \u003ca href=\"http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/07/dissent-of-the.html\"\u003epublishes dissenting opinions that make better arguments than his\u003c/a\u003e.  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/sullivan_on_pzs_sacrilege_thre.php\"\u003eresponds to Sullivan\u003c/a\u003e.  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php\"\u003ecatches Catholic sock puppets commenting on his blog\u003c/a\u003e.  John Wilkins writes an insightful comment on \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/07/desecration_blasphemy_in_publi.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 13, 2008): P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/mail_dump.php\"\u003ehas received more nasty email, which he has posted with full headers\u003c/a\u003e.  If the first one is not actually from Melanie Kroll at 1800flowers.com, I\u0026rsquo;d say she has a compromised machine, and it\u0026rsquo;s a clear death threat.  The second is from Steve C. Montemurro, a 41-year-old conservative Catholic from Hastings on Hudson, NY, and it appears to be more of a wish for Myers\u0026rsquo; death than a threat.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 16. 2008):  Turns out the email from Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s machine was the result of a compromise of sorts\u0026ndash;it was from her husband, Chuck Kroll, and she lost her job as a result of it.  Makes sense\u0026ndash;she shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have allowed her husband to use her computer to access her work resources at all, let alone to send death threats.  Details at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_cost_of_delusional_derange.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 18, 2008):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNetwork World\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/network-world-covers-biscuit-cult-death.html\"\u003ehas coverage of Melanie Kroll\u0026rsquo;s firing\u003c/a\u003e.  The Science Museum of Minnesota \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/i_guess_this_shouldnt_be_surpr.php\"\u003ewill be closed down during the Republican National Convention as part of the security measures for the Xcel Energy Center, across the street\u003c/a\u003e.  As P.Z. Myers observes, there\u0026rsquo;s a metaphor in that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Webster Cook has been impeached and removed from his position in student government at the University of Central Florida, and both he and his friend Benjamin Collard have been charged with misconduct, disruptive conduct, and giving false identification and had a hold put on their ability to sign up for classes.  The school is buckling under to pressure from Bill Donohue and the Catholic League to persecute these students on trumped up charges.  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/write_to_ucf.php\"\u003esuggests writing to the UCF president\u003c/a\u003e; I suggest the \u003ca href=\"http://www.thefire.org/\"\u003eFoundation for Individual Rights in Education\u003c/a\u003e get involved.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.Z. Myers has posted \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/i_get_email_20.php\"\u003eanother selection of crazy Catholic hate mail he\u0026rsquo;s received\u003c/a\u003e.  Do these people genuinely think they are doing the Lord\u0026rsquo;s work?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wacky cult wants magic biscuit back"},{"content":"I just came across Doug LaPointe\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution\u0026rdquo; which is noteworthy for being wrong in every point, including the bogus argument about \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint which I refuted in a Talk Origins FAQ. LaPointe wrote his article of nonsense while a student at the Calvary Academy, a Christian school in Lakewood, NJ. It is responded to point-by-point by \u0026ldquo;A Critical Look at Doug LaPointe\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution,\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; which includes reference to my FAQ in part 2. (I can\u0026rsquo;t vouch for the rest of the response, as I haven\u0026rsquo;t reviewed it in detail, and I see that it misspells \u0026ldquo;hominid\u0026rdquo; repeatedly in part 2, but a quick scan looks like the author has otherwise done a decent job.)\nSo what is LaPointe up to today? He\u0026rsquo;s a pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Stuart, FL, and still proudly advertises that he is the author of \u0026ldquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution.\u0026rdquo; A naive person would think that a man of God would correct his mistakes. A cynic would think that a man of God makes a living from spreading falsehoods.\nTim H (2008-07-10):\nInteresting stuff. I'm a Christian, but I know the earth is old and I'm fed up with the junk YECs are trying to feed us. Also wanted to say that there's no link to a response to points 7, 8, or 9, but I know the stuff he says in point 9 about Grand Canyon and geology in general is nonsense.\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nTim:Thanks for pointing out the omission, and thanks for stopping by.Points 7, 8, and 9 are referenced in Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims.Point 7 includes multiple claims, including that natural selection requires \"barbarianism\" or Social Darwinism (claim CA002) and a version of the irreducible complexity argument (claim CI102). Point 8 claims that various things are better evidence for a common designer than common ancestry (claims CI120, CI130, CI141, and strong contrary evidence may be found here). Point 9 talks about the geological column (claims CH100-CH111) and argues for flood geology (claims CH540-CH589).\nTim H (2008-07-10):\nThanks - I've checked Mark's index several times - there's a lot of good material there. I also bought his book, which is based on his web material. My only gripe with the book is that Mark may be getting a bit out of his area of expertise when he gets into theology issues. It's still a great book, though.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/spread-falsehoods-about-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across Doug LaPointe\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which is noteworthy for being wrong in every point, including the bogus argument about \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint which I refuted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003ea Talk Origins FAQ\u003c/a\u003e.  LaPointe wrote his article of nonsense while a student at the Calvary Academy, a Christian school in Lakewood, NJ.  It is responded to point-by-point by \u003ca href=\"http://members.aol.com/ps418/dl.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Critical Look at Doug LaPointe\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution,\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which includes reference to my FAQ in \u003ca href=\"http://members.aol.com/ps418/dl2.html\"\u003epart 2\u003c/a\u003e.  (I can\u0026rsquo;t vouch for the rest of the response, as I haven\u0026rsquo;t reviewed it in detail, and I see that it misspells \u0026ldquo;hominid\u0026rdquo; repeatedly in part 2, but a quick scan looks like the author has otherwise done a decent job.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo what is LaPointe up to today?  He\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.stuartpres.com/thepastor.php\"\u003ea pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Stuart, FL\u003c/a\u003e, and still proudly advertises that he is the author of \u0026ldquo;Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution.\u0026rdquo;  A naive person would think that a man of God would correct his mistakes.  A cynic would think that a man of God makes a living from spreading falsehoods.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spread falsehoods about evolution, become a pastor"},{"content":"That\u0026rsquo;s the title of Vincent Bugliosi\u0026rsquo;s latest book, which just reached #14 on the New York Times bestseller list on Sunday despite having virtually no mainstream media attention. It has sold 130,000 copies, but ABC Radio refused to allow an advertisement for the book on the Don Imus show, and both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report declined to show any interest in having Bugliosi on as a guest.\nThe book sets out a legal case for a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush as being criminally responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.\nBugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor with a perfect record of murder prosecutions, including the prosecution of Charles Manson which he recounted in his book Helter Skelter 30 years ago, most recently authored the book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a massive 1,612-page book that responds in detail to conspiracy theorists. That book is being made into a 10-hour miniseries by Tom Hanks for HBO. A shorter book, drawn from the content of Reclaiming History, has been published under the title Four Days in November.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/prosecution-of-george-w-bush-for-murder.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s the title of Vincent Bugliosi\u0026rsquo;s latest book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/business/media/07bugliosi.html?_r=2\u0026amp;ref=business\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ewhich just reached #14 on the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e bestseller list on Sunday despite having virtually no mainstream media attention.  It has sold 130,000 copies, but ABC Radio refused to allow an advertisement for the book on the Don Imus show, and both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report declined to show any interest in having Bugliosi on as a guest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe book sets out a legal case for a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush as being criminally responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor with a perfect record of murder prosecutions, including the prosecution of Charles Manson which he recounted in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHelter Skelter\u003c/span\u003e 30 years ago, most recently authored the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.reclaiminghistory.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a massive 1,612-page book that responds in detail to conspiracy theorists.  That book is being made into a 10-hour miniseries by Tom Hanks for HBO.  A shorter book, drawn from the content of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReclaiming History\u003c/span\u003e, has been published under the title \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFour Days in November\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder"},{"content":"The spoonscience.com website and YouTube now has the video of the world record for largest simultaneous spoonbending activity (816 spoons) that took place at TAM6 under the guidance of Richard Wiseman and following the tutelage of Teller. Be sure to check out the second video at spoonscience.com on \u0026ldquo;The Science of Spoonbending.\u0026rdquo; (Looks like the Podblack blog has video of Teller\u0026rsquo;s lesson on spoonbending.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/amazing-spoonbending-video.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.spoonscience.com/\"\u003espoonscience.com\u003c/a\u003e website and YouTube now has the video of the world record for largest simultaneous spoonbending activity (816 spoons) that \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003etook place at TAM6 under the guidance of Richard Wiseman and following the tutelage of Teller\u003c/a\u003e.  Be sure to check out the second video at \u003ca href=\"http://spoonscience.com/\"\u003espoonscience.com\u003c/a\u003e on \u0026ldquo;The Science of Spoonbending.\u0026rdquo;  (Looks like the Podblack blog has \u003ca href=\"http://podblack.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/karen-and-teller-talking/\"\u003evideo of Teller\u0026rsquo;s lesson on spoonbending\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-026188921339772464 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-026188921339772464 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-026188921339772464 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-039211147541179725 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/qTE9e2mZyqs\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Spoonbending Video"},{"content":"A short conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells (MP3) aired live on KTSA radio in San Antonio on October 28, 1940. The main subjects are the Welles\u0026rsquo; radio production of Wells\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;War of the Worlds,\u0026rdquo; from two years prior, the accuracy of Wells\u0026rsquo; science fiction, and a Wells-incited plug for Welles\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Citizen Kane.\u0026quot;\n(Via Alan Dean Foster\u0026rsquo;s remembrance of Arthur C. Clarke in the July/August 2008 Skeptical Inquirer.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/orson-welles-meets-hg-wells.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/401028.mp3\"\u003eshort conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells\u003c/a\u003e (MP3) aired live on KTSA radio in San Antonio on October 28, 1940.  The main subjects are the Welles\u0026rsquo; radio production of Wells\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;War of the Worlds,\u0026rdquo; from two years prior, the accuracy of Wells\u0026rsquo; science fiction, and a Wells-incited plug for Welles\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Citizen Kane.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Alan Dean Foster\u0026rsquo;s remembrance of Arthur C. Clarke in the July/August 2008 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Orson Welles meets H.G. Wells"},{"content":"The fifth ApostAZ podcast (MP3) is out:\nEpisode 005 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- \u0026ldquo;Every Sperm is Sacred\u0026rdquo; from Monty Python\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Meaning of Life\u0026rsquo;. Group Events. Phoenix, Billboards! Suckics hone in on Autism. Astromnology. Us vs Them? Phelps Hallucinations. Gay marriage, still an issue, still a tax money black-hole! Greydon Square, \u0026ldquo;Dream\u0026rdquo; from \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo; album.I didn\u0026rsquo;t get my contribution in on time, but I\u0026rsquo;ll have a science and skepticism segment in episode 006.\nMy comments on this episode:\nWhile McCain opposes gay marriage and pays lip service to the idea of same-sex civil unions, Obama also opposes gay marriage (though says he\u0026rsquo;d like to repeal DOMA and institute a federal law supporting same-sex civil unions, even in front of audiences that oppose gay rights, so he is somewhat better than McCain on that issue). They also both support faith-based government programs\u0026ndash;neither is a strict separationist on church and state. (But again, I think Obama is slightly better than McCain on that subject in terms of what he says\u0026ndash;at least he opposes giving federal funding to groups that discriminate or proselytize, though it\u0026rsquo;s unclear he\u0026rsquo;ll take action to stop it.)\nOn abortion, there can certainly be secular moral arguments for restrictions on late-term abortion, just as there can be secular moral arguments against infanticide. Arguments that abortion involves killing a person, a being with a right to life, need to come to terms with Judith Jarvis-Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument, which argues that even if a fetus has a right to life, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the right to be supported by its mother\u0026rsquo;s body if the mother did not consent. This has further implication that if the fetus could be transplanted or removed and survive on its own (e.g., it\u0026rsquo;s already reached the point of viability, which is the standard applied by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade), then that\u0026rsquo;s immoral and criminalizable. But it also implies, it seems to me, that there is a reasonable range of actions which could constitute consent to supporting a fetus\u0026ndash;such as voluntarily engaging in sex without contraception, which any reasonable person should know has a reasonably high probability of producing a child.\nMy own view is that abortion is immoral to the point of justifying legal prohibition in any case where (a) there\u0026rsquo;s such at least tacit consent to carry a child and (b) the fetus has reached a point of brain development where there\u0026rsquo;s a reasonable case to be made for personhood. I\u0026rsquo;m not convinced that (b) ever happens in reality, since I think there\u0026rsquo;s a strong argument that personhood requires a capacity for self-awareness, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to occur until about six months after birth, but I can certainly conceive of empirical evidence that would change my mind about when that point is reached. There may be other cases where abortion is immoral, e.g., intentionally waiting until late in the pregnancy, and then terminating for a trivial reason of convenience.\nOn the Biblical justification for opposition to medical treatment: Jehovah\u0026rsquo;s Witnesses oppose blood transfusions on the grounds of Old Testament prohibitions on consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11-14, and Acts 15:20, 29), even though those all refer to consuming animal blood and have nothing to do with transfusions of human blood. Christian Scientists oppose medical treatment not on the basis of anything in the Bible, but based on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Their view is that everything good and holy is spiritual, while everything physical or material is evil, yet is also illusory or at least a distortion of the spiritual world. This has some resemblance to Buddhist views of \u0026ldquo;maya,\u0026rdquo; and also to the early Christian heresy known as Docetism, which was the view that Jesus\u0026rsquo; humanity was an illusion, because the physical cannot be holy. Thus, under this view, engaging in physical repair (medicine) of what is an illusory distortion of the underlying spiritual reality is not only a waste of time, but sinful\u0026ndash;the only real repair possible is spiritual, through prayer. (And further, illness itself is of the physical, and thus illusory.)\nThe ApostAZ website is here.\nMichael Phoenix (2008-07-08):\nThanks for the comments Jim! We should probably prepare our topics more carefully so we can back up our statements a bit more.I agree with you that there are secular moral arguments against abortion, and I for one am not opposed to taking them into consideration in the creation of public policy; but I feel that due to the affects of forcing women (young and old) to have unwanted children, there need to be additional social programs to supplement the newly formed lack of choice. Religious driven \"Abstinence Programs\" that fail to teach children and teens about safe sex are worthless and should be banned unless there can be statistical/experimental data proving they work. Contraceptives (including the \"Morning After\" pill) should be readily available for when people inevitably make mistakes. Also, there would need to be a reformation of the adoption/foster care system to provide these young people with options, so simply outlawing abortions would not be at all benificial in my opinion.As for the Jehovah's Witnesses' opposition to blood transfusions because they are not to drink blood.. I am assuming then that they strongly oppose the idea behind the Catholic communion and transubstation? I will admit I know little of their belief system...Oh, and Christian Scientists...if they believe that everything physical or material is evil... then do they believe that Jesus was evil when he was a material man? Or if they believe that he wasn't at all material, how did he sacrifice himself for the sins of mankind??? I'm sure I am talking to those that already see the fallacy of such an argument, but still... do these people refuse to think at all?Anyways, I cannot wait for your portion for #6, and if you can make it to the Meetup at Rock Bottom in Chandler on 7/13, we will be recording the Podcast live from there!\nLippard (2008-07-08):\nShannon: Most health insurance programs already cover contraception, but I agree that access to and promotion of contraception is the best way to prevent the need for abortion. I don't agree that abstinence programs should be *banned*, only that government should not be wasting any money on them--you're right that they demonstrably don't work. At best, they slightly defer the time of initial sexual experience but also decrease the likelihood that contraception will be used when it happens, with the result of increasing the propagation of STDs and the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy.Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches believe in transsubstantiation. Some Protestants believe in \"consubstantiation\" (the bread and wine do not transform, but are magically fully the body and blood of Christ while also fully continuing to be bread and wine), which is similar to the view that Jesus was simultaneously both fully human and fully divine (and perhaps also the way that the three members of the trinity are supposed to all be one and the same substance, homoousios, rather than merely similar but distinct, or homoiousios, the theological debate that gave us the phrase \"not an iota of difference\"). Some other Protestants believe that there is a \"real presence\" of Jesus in the host, but most treat it as strictly symbolic, and that includes the Jehovah's Witnesses, who also only celebrate communion once per year.I'm no expert on Christian Science, but they say that the Christ was entirely spiritual and divine, not physical, but I think they do also say that Jesus was a physical being. Also, I think I've misconstrued their position on evil--they apparently consider evil, like sickness and even death, to be illusory. So they aren't like the gnostics in that regard--their solution to the problem of evil is to deny that it actually exists.I'm planning to be at Rock Bottom on the 13th.\nMichael Phoenix (2008-07-09):\nOh man... you have to twist your brain around and make it ignore so many things that it will scream at you \"THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!\" just to start to get into the mindset of these people...\nJodie (2008-07-09):\nHi guys, it's great to read your thoughts. I just wanted to chime in here as a Christian Scientist. I completely admire the dedication and commitment of people within the medical profession, it’s just that I choose to experience healing in a different manner. You know, my mother, was not a Christian Scientist. She suffered for many many years with many different health problems and was always in hospital. In the end she was told her there was nothing more that could be done for her and she passed away. I also have a sister who is a trained medical sister working in a private hospital. So it’s not about thinking that medicine is “evil” or that Christian Scientists don’t have a choice, or that the physical is \"evil\" etc. it’s just that when you’ve found what works for you why would you choose any differently? I’ve had healings of eating disorders, chicken pox, influenza and numerous other problems and the healings have all come entirely without medicine. You can read about my healings and many others on www.spirituality.com. So it’s not so much that Christian Scientists “choose not to see a doctor” or that anything physical is evil etc. It’s just that they have a different understanding of how healing occurs and also because they’ve experienced healing so consistently this way. Thanks for the opportunity to share!\nLippard (2008-07-09):\nJodie: Thanks for stopping by to present the Christian Scientist view first-hand. Would you say that it's accurate to describe your view by saying that disease is illusory, and medicine is treating the wrong thing?Empirically, I think the evidence is very strongly against you--modern medicine clearly prevents, treats, and often cures illnesses, while there are numerous cases of children of Christian Scientists dying from ailments that are easily treatable. While there is a clear and not-fully-understood placebo effect, studies of prayer don't show any effect over the placebo effect.\nEinzige (2008-07-09):\nRe: placebo effect...Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the placebo effect only applies in cases of pain management.I can't imagine there's a placebo effect for, e.g., the elimination of a tapeworm from the gut.\nLippard (2008-07-09):\nThere have been claims for placebo effect far beyond pain relief (link is to FDA Consumer magazine), but there have also been criticisms of placebo studies (link to the Skeptic's Dictionary). The consensus seems to me to be that it has objective effects beyond the merely psychological (even the SkepDic link concludes that).You're surely right about tapeworm, though. (BTW, just watched the first two episodes of \"House\" last night, the first of which involved a tapeworm.)\nEinzige (2008-07-09):\nExcellent SkepDic article.The key sentences from it:\"In fact, Martina Amanzio et al. (2001) demonstrated that \"at least part of the physiological basis for the placebo effect is opioid in nature\" (Bausell 2007: 160). We can be conditioned to release such chemical substances as endorphins, catecholamines, cortisol, and adrenaline.\"As such, it seems highly likely that any condition not treatable via internally producible hormones will see no genuine placebo effect. I say \"genuine\" because, as the SkepDic points out, it's possible to attribute \"placebo\" to many other causes (Regression to the mean, observer bias, answers of politeness, etc.).\nJodie (2008-07-09):\nHi JimGreat to hear from you. I really appreciate your kind reply. The issue about Christian Science and children is always very sensitive, understandably. Commonsense and wisdom must prevail. You know, from my point of view, I've seen my own sister's baby (my sister is a medical nurse, not into Christian Science) die in hospital. Her baby only lived three days and she was told by the hospital they could not do anything about it.Re your question on disease - Healing in Christian Science results from a change in thinking. And disease is seen as an externalised condition of thought. So because disease originates in thought, it can be healed without medicine. So Christian Science treatment treats the \"inside\" (our thinking) which determines the \"outside\".Hope I answered your questions okay, feel free to ask me anything else. It's great to be able to have this dialogue.\nJodie (2008-07-09):\nHey JimTo give you an idea of how all that plays out - here's an article I wrote about a healing I had. It may explain the process of healing in Christian Science a little better. Just copy and past the link below: http://www.spirituality.com/tte/article_display.jhtml?ElementId=/repositories/shcomarticle/Sep2004/1095867485.xmlAlternatively, type in \"Beauty from the Inside Out\" (inverted commas included) in the search box of www.spirituality.com. Thanks. :)\nJodie (2008-07-09):\nHey JimI forgot to quickly mention,(which I didn't in my article) that when I was sick, my mum who wasn't a Christian Scientist, insist I go to hospital. They diagnosed me with adult chickenpox and told me that it would last at least two weeks. Okay, sorry for hogging the post!Take care, Jodie.\nBrad (2009-01-30):\nDamn, I wish you'd do more segments for our show, especially segments commenting on and/or correcting previous shows.Wish in one hand, pray in the other though, I guess. ;-D\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/apostaz-podcast-5.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz005.mp3\"\u003efifth ApostAZ podcast \u003c/a\u003e(MP3) is out:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eEpisode 005 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- \u0026ldquo;Every Sperm is Sacred\u0026rdquo; from Monty Python\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;The Meaning of Life\u0026rsquo;. Group Events. Phoenix, Billboards! Suckics hone in on Autism. Astromnology. Us vs Them? Phelps Hallucinations. Gay marriage, still an issue, still a tax money black-hole! Greydon Square, \u0026ldquo;Dream\u0026rdquo; from \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo; album.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t get my contribution in on time, but I\u0026rsquo;ll have a science and skepticism segment in episode 006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy comments on this episode:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile McCain opposes gay marriage and pays lip service to the idea of same-sex civil unions, Obama also opposes gay marriage (though says he\u0026rsquo;d like to repeal DOMA and institute a federal law supporting same-sex civil unions, even in front of audiences that oppose gay rights, so he is somewhat better than McCain on that issue).  They also both support faith-based government programs\u0026ndash;neither is a strict separationist on church and state.  (But again, I think Obama is \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eslightly\u003c/span\u003e better than McCain on that subject in terms of what he says\u0026ndash;at least he opposes giving federal funding to groups that discriminate or proselytize, though it\u0026rsquo;s unclear he\u0026rsquo;ll take action to stop it.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn abortion, there can certainly be \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/secularist/abortion/roth1.html\"\u003esecular moral arguments for restrictions on late-term abortion\u003c/a\u003e, just as there can be secular moral arguments against infanticide.  Arguments that abortion involves killing a person, a being with a right to life, need to come to terms with \u003ca href=\"http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Eheathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm\"\u003eJudith Jarvis-Thomson\u0026rsquo;s violinist argument\u003c/a\u003e, which argues that even if a fetus has a right to life, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the right to be supported by its mother\u0026rsquo;s body if the mother did not consent.  This has further implication that if the fetus could be transplanted or removed and survive on its own (e.g., it\u0026rsquo;s already reached the point of viability, which is the standard applied by the U.S. Supreme Court in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRoe v. Wade\u003c/span\u003e), then that\u0026rsquo;s immoral and criminalizable.  But it also implies, it seems to me, that there is a reasonable range of actions which could constitute consent to supporting a fetus\u0026ndash;such as voluntarily engaging in sex without contraception, which any reasonable person should know has a reasonably high probability of producing a child.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy own view is that abortion is immoral to the point of justifying legal prohibition in any case where (a) there\u0026rsquo;s such at least tacit consent to carry a child and (b) the fetus has reached a point of brain development where there\u0026rsquo;s a reasonable case to be made for personhood.  I\u0026rsquo;m not convinced that (b) ever happens in reality, since I think there\u0026rsquo;s a strong argument that personhood requires a capacity for self-awareness, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to occur until about six months after birth, but I can certainly conceive of empirical evidence that would change my mind about when that point is reached.  There may be other cases where abortion is immoral, e.g., intentionally waiting until late in the pregnancy, and then terminating for a trivial reason of convenience.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the Biblical justification for opposition to medical treatment:  Jehovah\u0026rsquo;s Witnesses oppose blood transfusions on the grounds of Old Testament prohibitions on consuming blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11-14, and Acts 15:20, 29), even though those all refer to consuming animal blood and have nothing to do with transfusions of human blood.  Christian Scientists oppose medical treatment not on the basis of anything in the Bible, but based on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy.  Their view is that everything good and holy is spiritual, while everything physical or material is evil, yet is also illusory or at least a distortion of the spiritual world.  This has some resemblance to Buddhist views of \u0026ldquo;maya,\u0026rdquo; and also to the early Christian heresy known as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism\"\u003eDocetism\u003c/a\u003e, which was the view that Jesus\u0026rsquo; humanity was an illusion, because the physical cannot be holy.  Thus, under this view, engaging in physical repair (medicine) of what is an illusory distortion of the underlying spiritual reality is not only a waste of time, but sinful\u0026ndash;the only real repair possible is spiritual, through prayer.  (And further, illness itself is of the physical, and thus illusory.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ApostAZ website is \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #5"},{"content":"The country shrink, whose point #2 from his post on \u0026ldquo;some psychological aspects of atheists\u0026rdquo; I critiqued in my previous post, also listed six other alleged characteristics of atheists. These were:\n1). They tend to take the moral high ground. They look down on believers as simplistic, uneducated, stupid, weak, intolerant, gun toting, racists, and simple minded dolts.\n2). [Responded to in my previous post.]\n3). There is something in their lives that they are afraid they would have to give up if they believed in God. It’s usually some pattern that brings them pleasure in a way that they feel believers might label as immoral. They are typically not conscious of this.\n4). They portray themselves as enlightened, intelligent, tolerant, moral, caring, accepting, loving, peacible, and kind. And sometimes, they really and truly are. I’ve known them and met them. However, they are not tolerant, in general, of the beliefs of “believers.” They can tolerate anything but that.\n5). Just like the fervent believer, they have trouble avoiding proselytising their belief system. They often try to promote their views to believers. They get a kick out seeing believers squirm when they ask them some deep philosophical question which the believer has not considered nor been confronted with. As an aside, in treatment, I’ve noted a number of youngsters who are constipated, like to “crap on people rather that in the toilet.” Once they start utilizing the toilet appropriately, they stop utilizing people as a repository for their bound up bodily functions. They have to be taught to drink appropriate amounts of water and eat fiber to achieve this.\n6) They find a replacement for “religion.” Whether it’s the environment, political causes, sociological wrongs, whatever, but they find a replacement. They have the notions of sin, redemption, and salvation, in their substitute belief system. 7) They pretend their emotional and psychological system has nothing to do with their lack of belief. But readily attribute psychological factors to those who do believe (i.e., needing a crutch, simple minded, lacking education, delusional). They espouse that naturalism is the true faith of intellectuals. Only a simple and weak minded fool would believe anything different.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my response to these (also posted in comments at his blog):\nRe: #1: I think “taking the moral high ground” is a good thing, but that’s probably not what you mean–I think what you mean is claiming to have the moral high ground (and, by implication, when one doesn’t actually have it). Nobody likes arrogant people with an air of superiority, but we also must admit that there are also people who genuinely are stupid, small-minded, uneducated, ignorant, etc., and in my opinion, nobody should be exempt from criticism. If an atheist criticizes something a Christian says as stupid, ignorant, or fallacious, that may mean that the atheist is an arrogant jerk, but it may also mean that the Christian has said something stupid, ignorant, or fallacious.\nRe: #3: I think this is much rarer that most Christians seem to think. In any case, the public behavior of prominent Christians shows them to actively engage in any sort of immorality I can think of (whether a genuine immorality or simply something that conservative Christianity labels as such), so Christianity doesn’t seem to be any barrier to such actions.\nRe: #4: Most atheists of my acquaintance genuinely have most of those characteristics. Some do not. Most Christians of my acquaintance genuinely have most of those characteristics. Some do not. As for tolerance, in my experience atheists are far more tolerant than Christians (including more tolerant of Christians than Christians are of atheists).\nRe: #5: Among my acquaintances, I don’t see any greater proclivity towards proselytization by atheists than Christians–in fact, it seems to me that it’s the reverse. There are numerous Christian streetcorner and campus preachers, Christian missionary organizations, etc., but I’ve yet to run into any similar atheist streetcorner or campus preachers or missionaries. If somebody knocks on your door to tell you about their religious views, the safe bet is that it’s an advocate of some sort of Christianity rather than an atheist.\nRe: #6: If person A has a life filled with a rewarding career, raising a family, contributing to the community through public service, engaging in recreational activities, while person B is cloistered and spends all of his time praying and chanting, would you say that person A has replaced religion with other activities and has a less well-rounded life than person B? How do you distinguish someone simply filling their life with valuable activity from someone who is “replacing religion with a substitute”? I can think of some activities which are religion-like, including sports fanaticism, but I don’t think most atheists find religion substitutes which include correlaries to the notions of sin and salvation.\nRe: #7: You really make two points here. One is a claim that atheists don’t recognize their nonbelief as a (or the) cause of their psychology. I think that in many cases, it’s not. Most atheists live lives that are indistinguishable from those of most nominal or mostly secularized Christians (of the sort who make up the majority of Christians in Europe). Your second point is that atheists often attribute some delusion or pathological need to religious believers. On that point I think you are correct, and that atheists who do that are mistaken. Pascal Boyer’s excellent book Religion Explained argues, correctly in my opinion, that religious inferences are just like other kinds of inferences that we make, and that it is the natural state of humans that they infer agency behind causes. Unfortunately, our natural inference patterns get it wrong much of the time–when we inferred that lightning bolts were thrown by the gods, that was incorrect, for example.\nGridman (2008-07-05):\nRe: Re #7 - People do make inferences, and that includes atheists. Like all humans we try to find cause in things.That carries through to atheists who are also trying tp make sense of the seemingly senseless - in this case, belief in god itself.We can go on all day about all the various potential reasons used to explain religion (and, from the atheist standpoint, all of those reasons are, by definition, sans diety) but I think they all fall somewhere on one side or the other of a line.That line represents, for want of a better word, \"credibility\". That line in a debate, particularly a debate based on factual data rather than opinion (that is, a debate such as \"is the Earth flat?\" vs \"Is nuclear power a good thing?\"), tends to move with time and with data collection.At some point, that line moves so far to one side, it becomes difficult to take the other side seriously, and when you can't take someone's position seriously, the tendency is to attribute their argument to something other than reason.I can't take flat-earthers seriously. I'd like to think they exist just to get together at the pub and have some beers, but... I can't imagine that being the real reason, either. So, other ideas start creeping into my head: They're delusion, they're somehow pushing an agenda for their own benefit, they're nuts, they're stupid, etc.And I stand by that assessment because those are all more likely than that they've considered the evidence and made a reasoned decision.I don't consider myself to be \"arrogant\" in my belief that the Earth is round(ish), yet I'll defend that position tenaciously until (and if) something more compelling comes along to explain the shape of the Earth.I can, however, see how someone on the flat side of that argument (assuming they really believe their argument) could see that position as arrogant.This is not far removed from the standpoint that many atheists hold about religion, and for the same reasons - it is difficult to credit that someone espousing religion came to that position through rational thought.\nSusannah Anderson (2008-07-05):\n\"As for tolerance, in my experience atheists are far more tolerant than Christians (including more tolerant of Christians than Christians are of atheists).\"I would add, ... and usually more tolerant of Christians than Christians are of Christians of a conflicting denomination.\nLippard (2008-07-05):\nWanderin' Weeta: Good point!\nHumanist.Observer (2008-07-06):\n\"3). There is something in their lives that they are afraid they would have to give up if they believed in God. It’s usually some pattern that brings them pleasure in a way that they feel believers might label as immoral. They are typically not conscious of this.\"Ok!!! He's got a point! I like sleeping in on Sunday mornings! But I am conscious of this!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/country-shrinks-other-points-and-my.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe country shrink, whose point #2 from his post on \u0026ldquo;some psychological aspects of atheists\u0026rdquo; I critiqued \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/atheism-and-difference-between.html\"\u003ein my previous post\u003c/a\u003e, also listed six other alleged characteristics of atheists.  These were:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e1).  They tend to take the moral high ground.  They look down on believers as simplistic, uneducated, stupid, weak, intolerant, gun toting, racists, and simple minded dolts.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e2).  [Responded to in \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/atheism-and-difference-between.html\"\u003emy previous post\u003c/a\u003e.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3). There is something in their lives that they are afraid they would have to give up if they believed in God.  It’s usually some pattern that brings them pleasure in a way that they feel believers might label as immoral.  They are typically not conscious of this.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The country shrink's other points, and my response"},{"content":"A Christian rural psychologist has posted on his blog about \u0026ldquo;some psychological aspects of atheism,\u0026quot; where he claims that:\n[Atheists] tend to not be able to understand that their position means “anything goes,” with respect to morality. If there is no God, then there is no objective thing as morality. It’s all subjective… They always find some way to justify the fact that they practice at least some moral principles. Whether they think it’s biologically ingrained through millions of years of evolution or morality is simply “adaptive in allowing the species to survive.” Most often; however, they have never even considered the logical consequences of atheism and morality. He also engages in some armchair theorizing about atheism being caused by absent fathers, being intolerant, etc., all without any reference to empirical evidence. (And given the recent Pew Forum survey results where one in five self-reported \"atheists\" say that they believe in God or a higher power, I think any study of atheists needs to make sure that it's dealing with people who actually know what the word means.)\nBut the quoted passage is completely off-base. Atheism is a denial of the existence of gods. That entails the falsity of divine command theory as a basis for morality, but not much else. Most philosophers have rejected divine command theory as an adequate basis for morality since Plato wrote the \"Euthyphro\" and asked the critical question, \"is the pious [or right] loved by the gods because it is pious [right], or is it pious [right] because it is loved by the gods\"? Either fork of the dilemma leads to bad consequences--if the former, then there must be some other ground for moral rightness than because the gods will it to be so, and so the gods themselves are unnecessary. If the latter, then the gods could make acts that we consider to be clearly immoral into right actions according to whim. The latter seems more consistent with the morality of the Bible, since God is depicted therein as commanding murderous acts including the killing of women and children, but it is simply a \"might makes right\" philosophy of morality. But I think the former is clearly the right horn of the dilemma to grasp--morality is not something which requires gods.\nNow, there are certainly atheist philosophers who have argued that atheism precludes more than the divine command theory. The atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie, in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, argues against morality being objective properties of the world on the basis of their \"queerness.\" And I think he is probably right at least to the extent that moral properties are not human-independent properties. My view is that there are certain basic values, held by most human beings and evolutionary in origin, essential to social organization and beneficial to our survival and thriving, which objectively entail moral consequences for us, composed as we are and in the environment (physical and social) we find ourselves in.\nBut my view is not important for confronting the claim of the quoted passage. All atheism means is the denial of the existence of gods. It is not a complete worldview, it is simply a single component in an infinite number of possible consistent worldviews. An atheist can, like J. M. E. McTaggart, believe in reincarnation and immortality. An atheist can believe in the paranormal, in ghosts, in supernatural beings other than gods. An atheist can be a nihilist, a relativist, a utilitarian, a contractarian, an existentialist. An atheist can be a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, an anarchist, a monarchist, a libertarian, a Marxist, or hold any other possible view of political philosophy that doesn't entail the existence of gods. All of these views are consistent with atheism, meaning simply that no contradiction is produced by the combination of the views.\nAmorality and nihilism are consistent with atheism--it is certainly possible for an atheist to hold that there are no moral truths, that there is no difference between right and wrong. But mere consistency is not the same as entailment--it does not follow that if you are an atheist, it logically follows or is necessary to hold such views. Yet that's what the quoted author is falsely claiming to be the case.\nNote that amorality and nihilism are also consistent with theism--and in my opinion, both are possible for theists whichever horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is grasped. If the ground of what is morally right is something independent of the gods that does not exist, even while gods do, then that's an amoral theism. And if all there is to morality is what the gods will it to be, that makes morality dependent upon the values of the gods--if the gods choose to be amoral or nihilists, then again there's amoral theism.\nThe Christian psychologist goes on to write (citing this very blog for the quote):\nNow, I have only seen or read about one logically consistent atheist…..Jeffrey Dahmer. There have been philosophers, I know, who have come to this logical conclusion. But I’m talking about someone who logically practiced what he believed. “If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…” (1) So said Dahmer. The \"what's the point\" question is easy to answer--there are clearly consequences for us to our own behavior regardless of any accountability to God. Sane, rational people desire to live good and happy lives, rather than follow the example of Dahmer. Even leaving God out of the picture, where is the slightest appeal in following Dahmer as a model of rational living? I see none.\nBut the position this psychologist takes opens up an obvious question that he doesn't notice--God isn't accountable to anyone. Why should God be good, instead of acting maliciously, callously, and evilly, in the absence of any accountability to anyone? According to this psychologist, the answer should be that God should rationally act as an omnipotent Jeffrey Dahmer. Having no greater God to hold him responsible, he should not be bound to any code of morality, his word should be valueless, and every action based on the whims of the moment without regard to any future consequences.\nThat should be considered a reductio ad absurdum of his position. Either there are rational reasons to not act like Jeffrey Dahmer independently of being held accountable to a higher being, or God behaves irrationally by not acting like Jeffrey Dahmer. (Or perhaps, given the content of the Old Testament, God does act like Jeffrey Dahmer.)\nUPDATE: I've engaged in further argument with the psychologist in the comments of his blog, as have others.\nUPDATE: After a few back-and-forth exchanges, I don't think the psychologist means to talk about logical consequences of beliefs. I think probably the best reconstruction of his actual argument is something like this:\n1. Human beings find it psychologically necessary to believe in an objective external source of morality. (In order to be happy, function well psychologically, etc.)\n2. Atheism doesn't provide such a source by itself.\n3. Those whose worldview is composed entirely of atheism, without augmenting it with some objective external source of morality, have no psychological reasons to act in moral ways.\nThis is a much more plausible argument. He says something very much like (3), and goes on to say something to the effect that none of these substitutes are sufficient, and his reason seems to be along the lines that people's choices for these substitutes are arbitrary or that they are not externally imposed. But his reasoning is faulty--the fact that people choose for themselves doesn't mean that their choices are arbitrary (they can have good reasons), and external imposition seems to be irrelevant. Presumably he would agree that someone who converts to Christianity as an adult can have all of the psychological benefits he's claiming for theism. And what of the thousands of other religions, sects, and interpretations that can be acquired from one's parents or others? His argument doesn't have any way of singling out Christianity (or any particular version thereof) as special in this regard. It seems to me that it really comes down to an argument about the social and psychological benefits of adopting the beliefs of one's culture that most people accept--though I'm sure he doesn't want to accept the cultural relativism that seems to me to be implied by his position.\nUPDATE: The \"Country Shrink\" has resorted to \"let's agree to disagree\" without even attempting to respond to the criticism of his claim that morality requires theism, nor has he responded to my attempted reformulation. Instead, he has asked whether my impressions of atheists differ from him--claiming the moral high ground, intellectual superiority, etc., to which I responded that I see that as most prevalent among atheists who were previously evangelical Christians, and that he's likely attributing causes to the wrong place. I don't think it's caused by atheism as much as by reaction to Christianity.\nUPDATE (July 6, 2008): The \"Country Shrink\" has made a followup post in which he takes a stab of sorts at addressing some of the philosophical arguments I made, but mostly by engaging in argument from ignorance and attempting to shift the burden of proof to me, even though he is the one maintaining that it is impossible for there to be any objective meta-ethical framework without gods. He also asserts (rather than argues) that incompatibilism is the correct position in the free will debate and that consciousness cannot be explained naturalistically. I don't discern any actual arguments for either of those positions other than failure of imagination. Hume's Ghost (2008-07-04):\nJeffrey Dahmer is an interesting choice, considering he was raised in a fundamentalist home. Him being a sociopath is another reason that he's a particularly poor choice, especially for a psychologist who would presumably have the training to understand why choosing a sociopath would not make the point he seeks to make.\nLippard (2008-07-04):\nHume's Ghost: Was Dahmer raised as a fundamentalist, or did his father, Lionel Dahmer, convert later? I was looking for evidence of that when I wrote the post that the psychologist cites for the quote, but couldn't find it. I was told that Lionel Dahmer, a chemist, converted to creationism after his son's arrest. He's listed as a scientist who supports creationism on Answers in Genesis's website.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-04):\nAh, I see in the Dahmer link that you've already tried to source the claim that Dahmer was raised fundamentalist.My source for making the claim is The Fundamentals of Extremism, which I don't have with me at the moment. When I get home I'll check it to see how well the author sourced that claim.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-05):\nI left a comment at the country shrink blog. Couldn't resist.\nEamon Knight (2008-07-05):\nI read the whole exchange -- gods, that guy is obtuse. To me, it looks like he keeps confounding psychological \"consistency\" with logical necessity, while never realizing he's doing it. And then he links to AiG....and you sort of know it's hopeless.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-06):\nIt would seem to me that objective morality is being confused with moral absolutes. I do believe that atheism entails no moral absolutes, but I do not believe it entails moral subjectivty. Indeed, as I commented over there, it would seem to me that Divine absolutism itself is a position that leads to moral subjectivy.I went and looked up my copy of Fundamentals of Extremism.The other side of the efforts to repress homosexuality is most dramatically illustrated by the case of Jeffrey Dahmer. The insistence that homosexuality is a disorder and a sin has taken a visible toll on society. Convicted serial murderer Dahmer suffered from severe self-hatred because of his own homosexuality. He was convinced by his fundamentalist upbringing that he was at heart a sinner and that his family would never accept him if they knew of this. Dahmer’s rage was catastrophically turned against seventeen men and boys. He murdered and then performed sex acts on them before mutilating their bodies. Psychiatrist George Palermo testified in Dahmer’s trial. He said to the Milwaukee Sentinel, “I believe Jeffrey Dahmer killed his victims because he hated homosexuality.”The citation given is for:David Doege, \"Anger at homosexuality led Dahmer to kill, psychiatrist says.\" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Feb. 7 1992\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-06):\nI would also observe that the quote from Dahmer about evolution sounds like what someone who raised with fundamentalist influences would say about evolution.\nLippard (2008-07-06):\nHume's Ghost: Thanks for the quotation and the further info about Dahmer.I don't agree that atheism entails the impossibility of moral absolutes (or objectivity). Absolutism just says that there is at least one exceptionless moral principle. Why would the existence of gods make a difference to whether that is a possibility?\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-06):\nI just read the article. The citation only backs up the statement by the psychiatrist, but not the bit about a fundamentalist upbringing.I did find this, however, which is consistent with the book's assertion.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-06):\nI meant that in the sense that a disbelief in an absolute moral rule-maker means no moral absolutes ... I'm not sure that I could make a logical argument deriving no moral absolutes from atheism itself\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-07):\nI also found the hand-waiving at Euthyphro's dilemma to be feeble and the objection that it was directed at the Greek gods trivial.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/atheism-and-difference-between.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Christian rural psychologist has posted on his blog about \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080922125923/http://thecountryshrink.com/2008/07/03/some-psychological-aspects-of-atheism-part-ii/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;some psychological aspects of atheism,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e where he claims that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n[Atheists] tend to not be able to understand that their position means “anything goes,” with respect to morality.  If there is no God, then there is no objective thing as morality.  It’s all subjective…  They always find some way to justify the fact that they practice at least some moral principles.  Whether they think it’s biologically ingrained through millions of years of evolution or morality is simply “adaptive in allowing the species to survive.”  Most often; however, they have never even considered the logical consequences of atheism and morality.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nHe also engages in some armchair theorizing about atheism being caused by absent fathers, being intolerant, etc., all without any reference to empirical evidence.  (And given \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300818.html\"\u003ethe recent Pew Forum survey results where one in five self-reported \"atheists\" say that they believe in God or a higher power\u003c/a\u003e, I think any study of atheists needs to make sure that it's dealing with people who actually know what the word means.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut the quoted passage is completely off-base.  Atheism is a denial of the existence of gods.  That entails the falsity of divine command theory as a basis for morality, but not much else.  Most philosophers have rejected divine command theory as an adequate basis for morality since Plato wrote the \"Euthyphro\" and asked the critical question, \"is the pious [or right] loved by the gods because it is pious [right], or is it pious [right] because it is loved by the gods\"?  Either fork of the dilemma leads to bad consequences--if the former, then there must be some other ground for moral rightness than because the gods will it to be so, and so the gods themselves are unnecessary.  If the latter, then the gods could make acts that we consider to be clearly immoral into right actions according to whim.  The latter seems more consistent with the morality of the Bible, since God is depicted therein as commanding murderous acts including the killing of women and children, but it is simply a \"might makes right\" philosophy of morality.  But I think the former is clearly the right horn of the dilemma to grasp--morality is not something which requires gods.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNow, there are certainly atheist philosophers who have argued that atheism precludes more than the divine command theory.  The atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie, in his book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Inventing-J-L-Mackie/dp/0140135588/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEthics: Inventing Right and Wrong\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, argues against morality being objective properties of the world on the basis of their \"queerness.\"  And I think he is probably right at least to the extent that moral properties are not human-independent properties.  My view is that there are certain basic values, held by most human beings and evolutionary in origin, essential to social organization and beneficial to our survival and thriving, which objectively entail moral consequences for us, composed as we are and in the environment (physical and social) we find ourselves in.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut my view is not important for confronting the claim of the quoted passage.  All atheism means is the denial of the existence of gods.  It is not a complete worldview, it is simply a single component in an infinite number of possible consistent worldviews.  An atheist can, like \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart\"\u003eJ. M. E. McTaggart\u003c/a\u003e, believe in reincarnation and immortality.  An atheist can believe in the paranormal, in ghosts, in supernatural beings other than gods.  An atheist can be a nihilist, a relativist, a utilitarian, a contractarian, an existentialist.  An atheist can be a conservative, a liberal, a socialist, an anarchist, a monarchist, a libertarian, a Marxist, or hold any other possible view of political philosophy that doesn't entail the existence of gods.  All of these views are consistent with atheism, meaning simply that no contradiction is produced by the combination of the views.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAmorality and nihilism are consistent with atheism--it is certainly possible for an atheist to hold that there are no moral truths, that there is no difference between right and wrong.  But mere consistency is not the same as entailment--it does not follow that if you are an atheist, it logically follows or is necessary to hold such views.  Yet that's what the quoted author is falsely claiming to be the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNote that amorality and nihilism are also consistent with theism--and in my opinion, both are possible for theists whichever horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is grasped.  If the ground of what is morally right is something independent of the gods that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003edoes not exist\u003c/span\u003e, even while gods do, then that's an amoral theism.  And if all there is to morality is what the gods will it to be, that makes morality dependent upon the values of the gods--if the gods choose to be amoral or nihilists, then again there's amoral theism.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Christian psychologist goes on to write (citing \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/jeffrey-dahmer-and-answers-in-genesis.html\"\u003ethis very blog\u003c/a\u003e for the quote):\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nNow, I have only seen or read about one logically consistent atheist…..Jeffrey Dahmer.  There have been philosophers, I know, who have come to this logical conclusion.  But I’m talking about someone who logically practiced what he believed. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"\u003e\n“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…” (1)\u003c/div\u003e\nSo said Dahmer.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe \"what's the point\" question is easy to answer--there are clearly consequences for us to our own behavior regardless of any accountability to God.  Sane, rational people desire to live good and happy lives, rather than follow the example of Dahmer.  Even leaving God out of the picture, where is the slightest appeal in following Dahmer as a model of rational living?  I see none.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBut the position this psychologist takes opens up an obvious question that he doesn't notice--God isn't accountable to anyone.  Why should God be good, instead of acting maliciously, callously, and evilly, in the absence of any accountability to anyone?  According to this psychologist, the answer should be that God should rationally act as an omnipotent Jeffrey Dahmer.  Having no greater God to hold him responsible, he should not be bound to any code of morality, his word should be valueless, and every action based on the whims of the moment without regard to any future consequences.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThat should be considered a reductio ad absurdum of his position.  Either there are rational reasons to not act like Jeffrey Dahmer independently of being held accountable to a higher being, or God behaves irrationally by not acting like Jeffrey Dahmer.  (Or perhaps, given the content of the Old Testament, God does act like Jeffrey Dahmer.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  I've \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080922125923/http://thecountryshrink.com/2008/07/03/some-psychological-aspects-of-atheism-part-ii/\"\u003eengaged in further argument with the psychologist in the comments of his blog\u003c/a\u003e, as have others.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  After a few back-and-forth exchanges, I don't think the psychologist means to talk about logical consequences of beliefs.  I think probably the best reconstruction of his actual argument is something like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1.  Human beings find it psychologically necessary to believe in an objective external source of morality.  (In order to be happy, function well psychologically, etc.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n2.  Atheism doesn't provide such a source by itself.\u003cbr /\u003e\n3.  Those whose worldview is composed entirely of atheism, without augmenting it with some objective external source of morality, have no psychological reasons to act in moral ways.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis is a much more plausible argument.  He says something very much like (3), and goes on to say something to the effect that none of these substitutes are sufficient, and his reason seems to be along the lines that people's choices for these substitutes are arbitrary or that they are not externally imposed.  But his reasoning is faulty--the fact that people choose for themselves doesn't mean that their choices are arbitrary (they can have good reasons), and external imposition seems to be irrelevant.  Presumably he would agree that someone who converts to Christianity as an adult can have all of the psychological benefits he's claiming for theism.  And what of the thousands of other religions, sects, and interpretations that can be acquired from one's parents or others?  His argument doesn't have any way of singling out Christianity (or any particular version thereof) as special in this regard.  It seems to me that it really comes down to an argument about the social and psychological benefits of adopting the beliefs of one's culture that most people accept--though I'm sure he doesn't want to accept the cultural relativism that seems to me to be implied by his position.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE: The \"Country Shrink\" has resorted to \"let's agree to disagree\" without even attempting to respond to the criticism of his claim that morality requires theism, nor has he responded to my attempted reformulation.  Instead, he has asked whether my impressions of atheists differ from him--claiming the moral high ground, intellectual superiority, etc., to which I responded that I see that as most prevalent among atheists who were previously evangelical Christians, and that he's likely attributing causes to the wrong place.  I don't think it's caused by atheism as much as by reaction to Christianity.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (July 6, 2008): The \"Country Shrink\" has made \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080801162427/http://thecountryshrink.com/2008/07/06/since-the-atheists-are-about-the-only-ones-commenting-on-my-post/\"\u003ea followup post in which he takes a stab of sorts at addressing some of the philosophical arguments I made\u003c/a\u003e, but mostly by engaging in argument from ignorance and attempting to shift the burden of proof to me, even though he is the one maintaining that it is impossible for there to be any objective meta-ethical framework without gods.  He also asserts (rather than argues) that incompatibilism is the correct position in the free will debate and that consciousness cannot be explained naturalistically.  I don't discern any actual arguments for either of those positions other than failure of imagination.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-07-04)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eJeffrey Dahmer is an interesting choice, considering he was raised in a fundamentalist home. Him being a sociopath is another reason that he's a particularly poor choice, especially for a psychologist who would presumably have the training to understand why choosing a sociopath would not make the point he seeks to make.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheism and the difference between consistency and entailment"},{"content":"Jeremy the Skeptic has been tracking Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s record of success on her predictions. Once again, the evidence of psychic ability seems to be absent.\nJeremy\u0026rsquo;s got two posts, one with her predictions for 2007, and one with a mid-year update on her predictions for 2008.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2009-01-14):\nWell, there are lots of celebrity psychics out there that gives readings that seems odd and most of them doesn't really come true, not even close, but I think that what is important with this sort of things is on how we as individuals will interpret those readings and use them on our daily lives\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/sylvia-brownes-prediction-record.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeremy the Skeptic has been tracking Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s record of success on her predictions.  Once again, the evidence of psychic ability seems to be absent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeremy\u0026rsquo;s got two posts, one with \u003ca href=\"http://jeremytheskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-recent-writing-of-summary-of.html\"\u003eher predictions for 2007\u003c/a\u003e, and one with \u003ca href=\"http://jeremytheskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/07/alleged-psychic-sylvia-brownes-2008.html\"\u003ea mid-year update on her predictions for 2008\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2009-01-14)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWell, there are lots of \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.psychicguild.com/reports_celebrity.ph\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ecelebrity psychics\u003c/A\u003e out there that gives readings that seems odd and most of them doesn't really come true, not even close, but I think that what is important with this sort of things is on how we as individuals will interpret those readings and use them on our daily lives\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sylvia Browne's prediction record"},{"content":"BBC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Conspiracy Files\u0026rdquo; investigative report on the collapse of WTC 7 will air on Sunday, July 6. They have some promotional videos on the web, including an explanation of their reporter\u0026rsquo;s statement that WTC 7 had collapsed before it did.\nThe conspiracy theorists claim that it had to be a controlled demolition, because WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and was virtually untouched. But the latter claim is false\u0026ndash;WTC 7 was heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, with a giant hole in the southwest corner about 20 stories high. There were raging fires in a building full of diesel fuel and backup generators.\nThe BBC investigation will no doubt report in more detail on the facts that the conspiracy theorists like to pretend don\u0026rsquo;t exist.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/911-third-tower.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBBC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Conspiracy Files\u0026rdquo; investigative report on the collapse of WTC 7 will air on Sunday, July 6.  They have some promotional videos on the web, \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/7485111.stm\"\u003eincluding an explanation of their reporter\u0026rsquo;s statement that WTC 7 had collapsed before it did\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conspiracy theorists claim that it had to be a controlled demolition, because WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and was virtually untouched.  But the latter claim is false\u0026ndash;WTC 7 was heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, with \u003ca href=\"http://911myths.com/html/wtc7_damage.html\"\u003ea giant hole in the southwest corner about 20 stories high\u003c/a\u003e.  There were raging fires in a building full of diesel fuel and backup generators.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe BBC investigation will no doubt report in more detail on the facts that the conspiracy theorists like to pretend don\u0026rsquo;t exist.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 - The Third Tower"},{"content":"Robert Lancaster of StopSylviaBrowne.com was able to attend one of her \u0026ldquo;performances\u0026rdquo; at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino after The Amazing Meeting, and his description of the event is fascinating. He, his wife, and another skeptic were each able to ask a question\u0026ndash;she batted 0/2 for the two personal questions, and Lancaster himself asked where she obtained her Master\u0026rsquo;s degree in English literature. She was then foolish enough to call him back to the microphone in an apparent attempt to cause a scene, which only served to advertise his website to the entire audience.\nWhat I found most interesting about his account of the show was his description of his conversations with other attendees after it was over. Browne\u0026rsquo;s alleged psychic powers were apparently failing her at this event.\nUPDATE (July 12, 2008): Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s shows at the Excalibur, originally scheduled to run through August, have been cancelled. Due to unforeseen circumstances, no doubt.\nHistorical Comments karen (2008-09-02):\nIn 1995 on September 4th my sister went missing in Florida. After many painful months my family and the police department felt that my sister's boyfriend killed her and disposed the body. At that time my family went to Sylvia Browne seeking help. Trust me when your loved one is missing it is so surreal, you are definitely at your weakest point and this is when you need compassionate people to be involved with the case. Sylvia Browne came to Florida, I didn't mind paying her expenses and a fee. But I felt like she was in a hurry to do a read and leave. Even after my mother went on the Williams show, Sylvia was almost impossible to reach. It blows me away, that she claims not to charge for her readings. This is not true, not only dose she charge, but believe me they are timed to the minute. I was told that my sister was gone, that there was no body. She then looked at a few photos and pointed at a man who happened to be the father of the boyfriend and said that he knew everything. After those words she was gone. When I tried to reach her again, she didn't have time for me and my family. So shame on you Sylvia Browne. I hope you are enjoying all your money from all the cases you never were able to solve. Believe me, there are many more cases unsolved then solved. 13 years later I am still haunted by my sister's unsolved case. Nothing that Sylvia Browne said either solved the case or brought comfort to our family.\nAnonymous (2009-01-14):\nWell, there are lots of celebrity psychics out there that gives readings that seems odd and most of them doesn't really come true, not even close, but I think that what is important with this sort of things is on how we as individuals will interpret those readings and use them on our daily lives\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/robert-lancaster-observes-sylvia-browne.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Lancaster of StopSylviaBrowne.com \u003ca href=\"http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/articles/ispeakwithbrowne.shtml\"\u003ewas able to attend one of her \u0026ldquo;performances\u0026rdquo; at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino after The Amazing Meeting\u003c/a\u003e, and his description of the event is fascinating.  He, his wife, and another skeptic were each able to ask a question\u0026ndash;she batted 0/2 for the two personal questions, and Lancaster himself asked where she obtained her Master\u0026rsquo;s degree in English literature.  She was then foolish enough to call him back to the microphone in an apparent attempt to cause a scene, which only served to advertise his website to the entire audience.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat I found most interesting about his account of the show was his description of his conversations with other attendees after it was over.  Browne\u0026rsquo;s alleged psychic powers were apparently failing her at this event.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 12, 2008):  Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s shows at the Excalibur, originally scheduled to run through August, \u003ca href=\"http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/articles/ispeakwithbrowne2.shtml\"\u003ehave been cancelled\u003c/a\u003e.  Due to unforeseen circumstances, no doubt.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Robert Lancaster observes Sylvia Browne first-hand"},{"content":"When in 2002 military trainers came to Guantanamo Bay to teach a course on interrogation techniques, they included a chart of the effects of prospective techniques. That chart came from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War on U.S. soldiers to extract false confessions. The study, by Albert D. Biderman, was titled \u0026ldquo;Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton comments on how McCain\u0026rsquo;s torture using these very techniques led to a false confession\u0026ndash;so why do we believe that torture will lead to true confessions?\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-07-03):\nIn a better world, Bill O'Reilly would feel compelled, or would be compelled by management, to go on the air in contrition and apologize for characterizing opposition to this administration's \"coercive interrogation\" as a far left \"S-P\" position.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/guantanamo-interrogation-class-based-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen in 2002 military trainers came to Guantanamo Bay to teach a course on interrogation techniques, they included a chart of the effects of prospective techniques.  That chart \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/importing_torture_from_china.php\"\u003ecame from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War on U.S. soldiers to extract false confessions\u003c/a\u003e.  The study, by Albert D. Biderman, was titled \u0026ldquo;Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton c\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/mccains_false_confession.php\"\u003eomments on how McCain\u0026rsquo;s torture using these very techniques led to a false confession\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;so why do we believe that torture will lead to true confessions?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guantanamo interrogation class based on Chinese Communist torture techniques"},{"content":"This is part five of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part three, part four).\nContinuing my descriptions of Sunday\u0026rsquo;s paper presentations\u0026hellip;\nLee Graham on \u0026ldquo;Artificial Creatures, Real Evolution\u0026rdquo;: Lee Graham, a Ph.D. student in computer science and member of the Ottawa Skeptics, gave a fascinating presentation about his 3D virtual creature evolution program (3DVCE), which he said was inspired by and based on 1994 work by Karl Sims of Thinking Machines Corporation on \u0026ldquo;Evolved Virtual Creatures.\u0026quot; He developed software to evolve simulated creatures. The simulated creatures have perceptual sensors that detect surface inclines, contact, and proprioception (position of body parts), he measured fitness in terms of distance traveled, jump height, etc., and then engaged in selection of parents and reproduction based on that fitness, producing new offspring with both mutations and crossover (mixing of genes from the parents). While it is far from a complete model of evolution\u0026ndash;lacking such features as food and environmental threats such as predators\u0026ndash;it is sufficient to show that new complexity can evolve.\nHe showed a video of various creatures that evolved in the world, such as an interesting worm-like creature he called an \u0026ldquo;end-over-end worm,\u0026quot; and then asked where does the complexity and information come from? There\u0026rsquo;s the fitness function, the choice of primitive components, and the environment, each of which have counterparts in reality. But the real answer is from the process of variation plus selection. The development of complexity simply does not require top-down design.\nChristopher French on anomalistic psychology: French, founder of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London, gave a talk that was supposed to be about his own research, but there was a mixup with presentations and it was an earlier version of his talk. APRU does research, teaching, and public education on anomalistic psychology, a field that I believe was first named by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones\u0026rsquo; book, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (the second edition from 1989 now sells for $129.45, I wonder what my first edition is worth?).\nTim Farley of whatstheharm.net on \u0026ldquo;Building Internet Tools for Skeptics\u0026rdquo;: Tim Farley gave an excellent talk about developing new technological tools using the web in order to promote skepticism and critical thinking. His talk used a minimalist approach on his presentation, with slides containing individual words and phrases about each point he discussed (a technique promoted by Larry Lessig and known as the \u0026ldquo;Lessig Method\u0026rdquo; or the \u0026ldquo;Takahashi Method\u0026rdquo;). Farley spoke about the battle on the Internet between information and misinformation. Skeptics are using blogs, social networks, social linking, and search engines (e.g., Google bombing), but these methods are ad hoc and tend to promote preaching to the choir. We need to extend our reach and be more systematic, making use of new Web 2.0 methods for community, specialization, programmability, and mashups. Farley suggested the following steps to apply Web 2.0 to skepticism: work smarter, not harder\u0026ndash;use services like Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds to present on web pages. Specialize\u0026ndash;find and fill a niche. Open up your data, so that others can make use of it in their web pages. Mash up data\u0026ndash;combine geocoded data with Google Maps, for example. Appeal to people who are neutral.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s working on creating a filter that searches just believer sites, which will allow the ability to search the entire web minus the believer sites. whatstheharm.net is a collection of victim reports, and a useful rhetorical tool for answering the question when people ask, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the harm in believing X?\u0026quot;\nHe suggested that all sites should publish their data using RSS, use iCal for calendar information, and use microformats like hReview so that you can show approval or disapproval of the things you link to.\nFarley strongly advocated the use of geocoding and geoRSS, as well as KML (like RSS for maps, used by Google Earth) in order to put links on maps. He gave the example of the Church of Scientology in Boston on Beacon Street, where there are links to YouTube videos of protests in the intersection near the facility on Google Earth.\nHe gave the examples of disbeliefnet.com, promoting Bill Maher\u0026rsquo;s new film \u0026ldquo;Religulous,\u0026rdquo; which has a section called The Heretic Press which uses Yahoo Pipes to automatically pull in crazy religious stories.\nFarley\u0026rsquo;s new site of tools for skeptics is called skeptools.com, and you can find a version of his presentation there. Check it out.\nBrian Dunning of the \u0026ldquo;Skeptoid\u0026rdquo; podcast, on \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists\u0026rdquo;: Brian Dunning, executive producer of \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026rdquo; showed the whole pilot episode, which had some over-the-top music. He brought on stage his fellow executive producer and director Ryan Johnson, and they described the show. Where most pilots are kept secret, they are making theirs widely known in order to promote skeptical interest. He took questions from the audience, one of the most interesting was, \u0026ldquo;Do you have any plans to show things that turn out to be true?\u0026rdquo; Unfortunately, the answer was no, though that they will try to show real science for things \u0026ldquo;that have some similarity to the bogus claims.\u0026rdquo; This makes it more of a preconceived debunking show rather than promotion of science and critical thinking.\nConclusion\nAt the end of the conference, Hal Bidlack suggested that next year\u0026rsquo;s TAM may have a panel discussion on who\u0026rsquo;s been sued and for what, along with a lawyer, on steps to take to avoid lawsuits.\nThere may have been a bit more after that, but things were a bit behind schedule and I had to rush off to catch a shuttle to the airport, so that was the end of the conference for me.\nHistorical Comments Podblack (2008-07-03):\nI seriously regret not being able to meet Chris French.By the way, I got a first edition of 'Anomalistic Psychology' for $20 Au, due to a psychologist selling off his library here in Australia. The second edition is in my local library, is hardly ever checked out. I did it once to compare them... the first edition funnily enough contains more!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part five of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eintro\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eContinuing my descriptions of Sunday\u0026rsquo;s paper presentations\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eLee Graham\u003c/span\u003e on \u0026ldquo;Artificial Creatures, Real Evolution\u0026rdquo;:  Lee Graham, a Ph.D. student in computer science and member of the Ottawa Skeptics, gave a fascinating presentation about his \u003ca href=\"http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html\"\u003e3D virtual creature evolution program\u003c/a\u003e (3DVCE), which he said was inspired by and based on 1994 work by \u003ca href=\"http://www.karlsims.com/\"\u003eKarl Sims\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines\"\u003eThinking Machines Corporation\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://www.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Evolved Virtual Creatures.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  He developed software to evolve simulated creatures.  The simulated creatures have perceptual sensors that detect surface inclines, contact, and proprioception (position of body parts), he measured fitness in terms of distance traveled, jump height, etc., and then engaged in selection of parents and reproduction based on that fitness, producing new offspring with both mutations and crossover (mixing of genes from the parents).  While it is far from a complete model of evolution\u0026ndash;lacking such features as food and environmental threats such as predators\u0026ndash;it is sufficient to show that new complexity can evolve.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe showed a video of various creatures that evolved in the world, such as an interesting worm-like creature he called an \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qOBi2tAnI\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;end-over-end worm,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and then asked where does the complexity and information come from?  There\u0026rsquo;s the fitness function, the choice of primitive components, and the environment, each of which have counterparts in reality.  But the real answer is from the process of variation plus selection.  The development of complexity simply does not require top-down design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eChristopher French\u003c/span\u003e on anomalistic psychology:  French, founder of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/\"\u003eAnomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, University of London\u003c/a\u003e, gave a talk that was supposed to be about his own research, but there was a mixup with presentations and it was an earlier version of his talk.  APRU does research, teaching, and public education on anomalistic psychology, a field that I believe was first named by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones\u0026rsquo; book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Anomalistic-Psychology-Study-Magical-Thinking/dp/0805805087/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAnomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (the second edition from 1989 now sells for $129.45, I wonder what my first edition is worth?).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTim Farley\u003c/span\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://whatstheharm.net/\"\u003ewhatstheharm.net\u003c/a\u003e on \u0026ldquo;Building Internet Tools for Skeptics\u0026rdquo;:  Tim Farley gave an excellent talk about developing new technological tools using the web in order to promote skepticism and critical thinking.  His talk used a minimalist approach on his presentation, with slides containing individual words and phrases about each point he discussed (a technique promoted by Larry Lessig and known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2005/10/the_lessig_meth.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lessig Method\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e or the \u003ca href=\"http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/living_large_ta.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Takahashi Method\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e).  Farley spoke about the battle on the Internet between information and misinformation.  Skeptics are using blogs, social networks, social linking, and search engines (e.g., Google bombing), but these methods are ad hoc and tend to promote preaching to the choir.  We need to extend our reach and be more systematic, making use of new Web 2.0 methods for community, specialization, programmability, and mashups.  Farley suggested the following steps to apply Web 2.0 to skepticism:  work smarter, not harder\u0026ndash;use services like \u003ca href=\"http://pipes.yahoo.com/\"\u003eYahoo Pipes\u003c/a\u003e to filter RSS feeds to present on web pages.  Specialize\u0026ndash;find and fill a niche.  Open up your data, so that others can make use of it in their web pages.  Mash up data\u0026ndash;combine geocoded data with Google Maps, for example.  Appeal to people who are neutral.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s working on creating a filter that searches just believer sites, which will allow the ability to search the entire web minus the believer sites.  \u003ca href=\"http://whatstheharm.net/\"\u003ewhatstheharm.net\u003c/a\u003e is a collection of victim reports, and a useful rhetorical tool for answering the question when people ask, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the harm in believing X?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe suggested that all sites should publish their data using RSS, use iCal for calendar information, and use microformats like \u003ca href=\"http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview\"\u003ehReview\u003c/a\u003e so that you can show approval or disapproval of the things you link to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFarley strongly advocated the use of geocoding and geoRSS, as well as KML (like RSS for maps, used by Google Earth) in order to put links on maps.  He gave the example of the Church of Scientology in Boston on Beacon Street, where there are links to YouTube videos of protests in the intersection near the facility on Google Earth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe gave the examples of disbeliefnet.com, promoting Bill Maher\u0026rsquo;s new film \u0026ldquo;Religulous,\u0026rdquo; which has a section called \u003ca href=\"http://www.disbeliefnet.com/index.php?page=heretic_press\"\u003eThe Heretic Press\u003c/a\u003e which uses Yahoo Pipes to automatically pull in crazy religious stories.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFarley\u0026rsquo;s new site of tools for skeptics is called \u003ca href=\"http://skeptools.com/\"\u003eskeptools.com\u003c/a\u003e, and you can find a version of his presentation there.  Check it out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBrian Dunning\u003c/span\u003e of the \u0026ldquo;Skeptoid\u0026rdquo; podcast, on \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists\u0026rdquo;:  Brian Dunning, executive producer of \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026rdquo; showed the whole pilot episode, which had some over-the-top music.  He brought on stage his fellow executive producer and director Ryan Johnson, and they described the show.  Where most pilots are kept secret, they are \u003ca href=\"http://skeptologists.com/\"\u003emaking theirs widely known\u003c/a\u003e in order to promote skeptical interest.  He took questions from the audience, one of the most interesting was, \u0026ldquo;Do you have any plans to show things that turn out to be true?\u0026rdquo;  Unfortunately, the answer was no, though that they will try to show real science for things \u0026ldquo;that have some similarity to the bogus claims.\u0026rdquo;  This makes it more of a preconceived debunking show rather than promotion of science and critical thinking.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eConclusion\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the end of the conference, Hal Bidlack suggested that next year\u0026rsquo;s TAM may have a panel discussion on who\u0026rsquo;s been sued and for what, along with a lawyer, on steps to take to avoid lawsuits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere may have been a bit more after that, but things were a bit behind schedule and I had to rush off to catch a shuttle to the airport, so that was the end of the conference for me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part five"},{"content":"Christopher Hitchens decided to experience waterboarding first-hand at the hands of experts, and he did so twice. He vividly describes the experience in Vanity Fair, which also has video.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/christopher-hitchens-gets-waterboarded.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristopher Hitchens decided to experience waterboarding first-hand at the hands of experts, and he did so twice.  He \u003ca href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808\"\u003evividly describes the experience in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVanity Fair\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which also has video.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded"},{"content":"David Byrne has collaborated with David Hanson, the guy who made the Philip K. Dick robot at NextFest in 2005, to make a robot named Julio that sings, for a show titled \u0026ldquo;Machines and Souls: Digital Art\u0026rdquo; at the Museo de Arta Reina Sofia in Madrid.\nByrne writes:\nI love where this is going. It brings to mind an image of someone sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe with friends, and maybe they’re having drinks—and at the same time Jentsch posits that layered over or under this image is the profoundly creepy, the deeply strange and disturbing. We’re in the land of David Lynch and Hitchcock. ET landing in the familiar U.S. suburbs could be viewed this way, or the various living dead and vampire movies.\nMore recently Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed the existence of something called the uncanny valley. This “valley” is an area of emotional uncertainty and often revulsion experienced by an observer when a robot or computer animation (for example) approaches being human, is almost believable, but not quite.\nHe suggests that our emotional empathy with animations and robots increases as they get closer and closer to being human (or animal)—but then, at a certain point, they fall into the valley, and our empathy turns to disgust. In his view they switch from being a cute thing approaching humanity to a bad or faulty version of humanity. It is at this point that we see them as not merely slightly strange, but as a human with serious problems. If the creation can succeed in being a little bit better as a believable creature the feeling of revulsion disappears. For some viewers, recent films like Beowulf fall into this valley, while others find the almost humans acceptable.\nMori further suggests that this reaction might be innate—that it might be linked to our biological reactions to people who are physically or mentally ill—or to corpses. Evolution would have ingrained this reaction as a way of weeding out sick people from the social group. Hanson and others dispute the scientific veracity of the uncanny valley, but I think no one can doubt the strange and weird emotions that well up when confronted by one of these entities.\nThe point about disgust brings to mind Antonio Damasio\u0026rsquo;s work on emotions, as well as Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s comments about religious rituals for corpse disposal in Religion Explained.\nIn a subsequent post, as Julio nears completion, Byrne writes:\nLike many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.To see and hear video of Julio singing, check out Byrne\u0026rsquo;s blog. The show \u0026ldquo;Máquinas y Almas: Arte digital\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Machines and Souls: Digital Art\u0026rdquo;) opened on June 25.\nUnknown (2008-07-02):\nHi there I just saw this and I thought you would like to know (note I am not a bot and this is not spam and not porn!!):http://img388.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lippardblogta8.jpgAnd here is the link:http://www.y-origins.com/?gclid=CNL98aiDoZQCFQ-mQwodBW68tgI myself would be a little pissed.\nLippard (2008-07-02):\nOskar:Thanks for the info. Actually, I kind of like the idea that intelligent design supporters are spending money to help support my blog... I don't particularly fear that my audience will find their material persuasive.\nUnknown (2008-07-02):\nWhen you put it like that I see that you are right, especially the comment about your readers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/david-byrnes-singing-robot.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Byrne has collaborated with David Hanson, the guy who made \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/23/philip-k-dick-robot.html\"\u003ethe Philip K. Dick robot at NextFest in 2005\u003c/a\u003e, to make a robot named Julio that sings, for a show titled \u0026ldquo;Machines and Souls: Digital Art\u0026rdquo; at the Museo de Arta Reina Sofia in Madrid.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eByrne \u003ca href=\"http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2008/06/06102008-voice.html\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI love where this is going. It brings to mind an image of someone sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe with friends, and maybe they’re having drinks—and at the same time Jentsch posits that layered over or under this image is the profoundly creepy, the deeply strange and disturbing. We’re in the land of David Lynch and Hitchcock. ET landing in the familiar U.S. suburbs could be viewed this way, or the various living dead and vampire movies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore recently Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed the existence of something called the uncanny valley. This “valley” is an area of emotional uncertainty and often revulsion experienced by an observer when a robot or computer animation (for example) approaches being human, is almost believable, but not quite.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Byrne's singing robot"},{"content":"This is part four of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part three, part five).\nPhil Plait\nAstronomer Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog began by saying that the Internet is \u0026ldquo;a system for rapidly distributing sewage,\u0026rdquo; but also for distributing astronomy. His talk went through the solar system from Mercury to KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a \u0026ldquo;Buffy,\u0026rdquo; with interesting photographs and facts about various planets and moons along the way.\nMercury: The 2004 MESSENGER probe took photographs of the Caloris basin, the single biggest feature on Mercury, originally thought to be 1300 km in diameter but revised upward to 1550 km based on those photos. Because Mercury spins twice for every three times it revolves around the sun, this basin is directly under the sun, every other orbit. It\u0026rsquo;s a gigantic impact crater that\u0026rsquo;s 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old.\nVenus: The hottest planet, a hell hole about the size of earth and with about the same amount of carbon and just a little bit closer to the sun, but it suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect. It\u0026rsquo;s been photographed by the Russian Venera probes from 1962 to 1982 and by Magellan in 1990.\nEarth: Plait spoke of an HD movie of Earth shrinking into the distance as MESSENGER departed.\nPhobos: This moon of Mars has a giant crater\u0026ndash;had it been hit by anything bigger, Phobos would have disintegrated. Phobos is apparently a captured asteroid, which orbits backward from other moons in the solar system. Unlike Earth\u0026rsquo;s moon, it is gradually getting closer to Mars, and will collide with it in about the next 50 million years, causing an impact greater than the asteroid that created the Yucatan basin.\nJupiter\u0026rsquo;s acne: The Great Red Spot (Cassini, named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, who first observed it in 1655), a 400-year-old hurricane, has now been joined in 2000 by another little spot. The new spot was white but has now turned red and is known as Oval BA (or Red Jr.)\u0026ndash;it is as large as the Earth.\nIapetus: This moon of Saturn has one light hemisphere and one dark, and was recently discovered to have a 20 km high ridge almost perfectly around its equator. (I remarked that it looks like a Death Star.)\nUranus: It\u0026rsquo;s tipped 98 degrees on its side in its orbit, likely as a result of an impact from something very large, perhaps Earth-sized.\nNeptune: The other blue planet, it contains lots of methane and emanates 1.6 times the heat it receives from the Sun. It has 2,200 kph winds. Where is that energy coming from?\nPluto: It\u0026rsquo;s not a planet, so we don\u0026rsquo;t care about it.\nKBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a \u0026ldquo;Buffy\u0026rdquo;: This is an odd trans-Neptunian object\u0026ndash;where almost all objects in the solar system have very elliptical orbits, it is an object 8.5 billion km from the Sun\u0026ndash;twice the distance from the Sun of Neptune\u0026ndash;yet its orbit is circular.\nPlait concluded by noting that he hasn\u0026rsquo;t even talked about the Sun, Milleomeda (what the galaxy will be after Andromeda and the Milky Way collide), or countless other things that we don\u0026rsquo;t understand. But this lack of understanding doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we know nothing. \u0026ldquo;The universe is cool enough without making up crap about it. That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m a skeptic.\u0026quot;\nAdam Savage\nAdam Savage of \u0026ldquo;Mythbusters\u0026rdquo; brought a box of about 1,000 ping pong balls which were used to raise a boat from the bottom of Monterey Bay, and gave them out to members of the audience, and signed his autograph on many of them. He then gave a talk entitled \u0026ldquo;My Maltese Falcon,\u0026rdquo; about his obsession with recreating a precise replica of one of the two lead sculptures from the movie of the same name. He did extensive research into its measurements, even paying to purchase used auction catalogs from Christie\u0026rsquo;s to examine photographs. Joseph Warner gave one of the two lead ones to Joseph Conrad, one which Humphrey Bogart dropped and put a dent in. He sculpted one based on photographs, sprayed it with 75 coats of auto primer, then buffed and sanded it. He freeze framed every still from the original film in a scene where the statue was rotated. Someone offered to cast it in bronze for him, and he had two made\u0026ndash;but the casting process caused it to lose size, and so his bronze model is 3/4\u0026rdquo; shorter in height at the beak, with the result that he hates it. At a conference he met the man who purchased William Conrad\u0026rsquo;s lead statue, which he hopes to be able to scan and use to make the most accurate replica ever, which he\u0026rsquo;ll report back on next year.\nHe showed a couple of world premiere viral videos\u0026ndash;one in which he and Jamie simultaneously solved Rubik\u0026rsquo;s cubes, one while blindfolded and the other with his feet. The footage was actually reversed\u0026ndash;they started with solved cubes and then just messed them up. In a second video, he inhaled some helium and spoke with a high voice, then inhaled some sulfur hexafluoride (which he informed us is very expensive) and spoke with a deep voice, and everyone laughed. He said that someone (a producer?) thought that the cube video was cool, but that the balloon stunt was obviously faked.\nHe took questions and answers from the audience; a few highlights were that they want to do a full 60 minute show on the JFK assassination, Discovery has said no to \u0026ldquo;21 grams\u0026rdquo; (do we lose weight when we die), the Cheney shooting, vinyl vs. CD, and speaker cable vs. coat hanger.\nHis segment concluded with some footage of \u0026ldquo;explosion porn\u0026rdquo; from the show.\nMatthew Chapman\nMatthew Chapman, great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, screenwriter (\u0026ldquo;The Runaway Jury\u0026rdquo; and nine other films), and author (Trials of the Monkey and 40 Days and 40 Nights, the latter of which, about the Dover trial, I am currently reading), spoke about three things: Science Debate 2008, his love of America, and \u0026ldquo;Darwin, creationism, etc.\u0026rdquo; He began with his love of America, noting that he had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, raised by parents who read the New Yorker and were fans of Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, and so he always wanted to be an American. He moved to the U.S. to get into the film business, and went to L.A. A woman he knew to be educated asked him what his sign was\u0026ndash;he thought she was kidding, but she was not. Ever since he has been fascinated with Americans\u0026rsquo; fondness for pseudoscience. He was invited to a \u0026ldquo;shack\u0026rdquo; (of the $5 million variety) in Malibu to see someone channel \u0026ldquo;Basha,\u0026rdquo; and he couldn\u0026rsquo;t help but laugh out loud. A woman present asked the channeler, \u0026ldquo;I have a potential development deal at Warner Brothers. What is Basha\u0026rsquo;s advice?\u0026quot;\nWhen he expressed indignation at such expressions of irrationality, he was told, \u0026ldquo;Oh, you\u0026rsquo;re so rational\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re so British.\u0026rdquo; He felt alone until he came across the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and he promptly purchased and read every back issue. (I had a similar experience in my life\u0026ndash;I read Skeptical Inquirer while still a religious believer, and also ended up purchasing and reading every back issue from cover to cover.) He became enraged by Scientology, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, crystals, telepathy, Shirley MacLaine (who he\u0026rsquo;s met), Nostradamus, pyramid power, etc. etc. While in an elevator with James Randi at an event in UCLA, he asked Randi if he\u0026rsquo;d heard of some Brazilian paranormalist (a psychic surgeon?), and Randi responded by pulling a pen out of his ear.\nDespite the far more voluminous \u0026ldquo;loony bullshit\u0026rdquo; in the U.S. than in Europe, he still loves it here, and became an American citizen.\nHe next spoke about creationism. His book Trials of the Monkey was about his visit to Dayton, Tennessee to learn about the Scopes Trial, and he found that the people there today are much the same as they were back then. His newer book, 40 Days and 40 Nights, was written during and after his observation of the entirety of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, which he witnessed from the jury box (where the press sat, since it was a non-jury trial). Through the Dover trial, he learned that it is possible to make science interesting to non-scientists.\nFinally, he talked about Science Debate 2008. As the political debate season began, he watched all the debates, expecting to see questions about ozone, ocean health, climate change, etc., but only saw questions about lapel pins, religion, etc. There were more questions about UFOs than about global warming. He suggested the idea of a debate on science at the Atheist Alliance confernece, and Chris Mooney, who he had met earlier, got on board, along with his fellow Intersection Science Blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum. Soon thereafter, John Rennie of Scientific American became a backer, and Lawrence Krauss of The Physics of Star Trek (Chapman inadvertently said \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo;) also joined. They ended up starting an organization and collecting over 50,000 signatures, including the support of 51 colleges, 5 museums, 10 magazines, 112 science organizations, 14 Congresspeople, 7 presidential science advisors, 143 CEOs of science and technology companies, 28 Nobelists, 102 college and university presidents, PBS, Nova, the Franklin Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and even Newt Gingrich. A Harris poll says that 85% of voters would like to see a science debate.\nBut so far, all of the candidates have said no or failed to respond at all. Chapman said that McCain was the most polite in saying no, and seemed to leave the door open.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve now developed 14 questions and are preparing a new invitation to be sent to Obama and McCain.\nChapman then took questions, and someone asked if there was any opposition from scientists on the grounds that this is politicizing science. Chapman said he\u0026rsquo;s had negative reactions from about three scientists, one of whom was present at this conference.\nAfter Chapman\u0026rsquo;s talk, I had a chance to speak with him briefly (he noticed the NCSE Grand Canyon trip T-shirt I was wearing, and commented on what great people Genie Scott and Nick Matzke are), as well as with his wife, Denise, who was also present at the conference. Denise Chapman, a Brazilian who has acted in television and film (including \u0026ldquo;Kiss of the Spider Woman\u0026rdquo; and Woody Allen\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Radio Days\u0026rdquo;), is the daughter of composer and musician Humberto Teixeira, started Baiao music and was the composer of the popular Brazilian song \u0026ldquo;Asa Branca\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;White Wing\u0026rdquo;). She was pleased to hear that some friends of mine named their African grey parrot \u0026ldquo;Asa Cinza\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Grey Wing\u0026rdquo;) in honor of that song. She has been working on a documentary film about her father that will be premiering later this month at MoMA.\nRichard Wiseman\nBritish psychologist Richard Wiseman spoke a little bit about his book Quirkology, presented a few optical illusions, and commented about his obtaining a videotape of Indian \u0026ldquo;God-man\u0026rdquo; Sai Baba in which he was caught engaging in sleight of hand, which he then showed to us. (Sai Baba was debunked well in a book by Dale Beyerstein titled Sai Baba\u0026rsquo;s Miracles: An Overview, which describes some other instances of Sai Baba being caught in trickery.\nHe then showed his now-famous viral video of the \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick,\u0026quot; and followed it up showing a video of how it was made (it took many takes to get it right; he showed some amusing failures). This video, which has had over 2.5 million views, demonstrates the phenomena of \u0026ldquo;change blindness,\u0026rdquo; and they\u0026rsquo;ve used eye-tracking to study viewers of the video to see if they are not looking in the right place or simply failing to register the changes, and it seems to be the latter. This video has apparently now inspired a routine in Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s show.\nThis was followed up by a spoon-bending lesson from an expert\u0026ndash;Teller. Teller explained that there is a method, the trick that deceives the eye, and there is misdirection, the trick that deceives the mind. The spoon-bending trick is based on a pre-stressed spoon, but to allay suspicion he only does the trick about once every five times he creates a pre-stressed spoon, because he waits for an opportunity to swap the spoon with a neighbor, and then only does the trick if the conversation happens to turn in a direction that makes it seem appropriate. He told the story of how Danny Hillis (of Connection Machine and Long Now Foundation fame) was invited to a posh party at the home of Courtney Ross (widow of Steve Ross, CEO of Time Warner). At dinner, the conversation turned to Rupert Sheldrake. Hillis had pre-stressed his neighbor\u0026rsquo;s spoon, and put his own spoon on a plate so that the waiter took it away. Hillis borrowed his neighbor\u0026rsquo;s spoon and did the trick, bending and breaking the spoon and dropping it into his wine. His hostess said, \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t believe you did that.\u0026rdquo; He made a comment to the effect that it was a trick, and she said, \u0026ldquo;No, I can\u0026rsquo;t believe you did that.\u0026rdquo; She was horrified that he had destroyed one of a fixed number of identical place settings by some famous designer which she had painstakingly collected over the years. And that, said Teller, made it funny.\nWiseman then came back and said that we would now make the world\u0026rsquo;s largest spoonbending video for YouTube. We were given one run-through of the simple script, and then did it on video, all 900 of us (though there were only 800 pre-stressed spoons, so the 100 in the back had to mime). The video will make its debut at www.spoonscience.com (which as of this moment still says \u0026ldquo;coming soon\u0026rdquo;).\nPanel discussion on the limits of skepticism\nGoldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders assembled on stage for this panel discussion, which I don\u0026rsquo;t recall actually addressing a subject that I\u0026rsquo;d characterize as the limits of skepticism. Instead, it seemed to be pretty much a free-for-all Q\u0026amp;A about skepticism.\nAt one point, someone spoke of \u0026ldquo;winning the war\u0026rdquo; against irrationality, and Banachek said he preferred to think in terms of making a mark rather than winning a war.\nRandi commented on the famous quotation attributed to him by Dennis Rawlins\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;sTARBABY\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;I always have an out,\u0026rdquo; suggesting that his then-$10,000 and now $1 million reward for the successful demonstration of a paranormal event is not fair. He stated that this quotation was out-of-context, and that what he actually said was \u0026ldquo;I always have an out\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m right.\u0026rdquo; Dennis Rawlins, however, says that this is untrue, and that Randi has only recently started appending \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m right\u0026rdquo; to this quotation. In 2000, when Matt Kriebel made his \u0026ldquo;sTARBABY mini-FAQ,\u0026quot; Randi had a different explanation, stating that the \u0026ldquo;out\u0026rdquo; was about his stage act rather than his challenge.\nAdam Savage observed that at the last TAM he mentioned that he was an atheist, and now that\u0026rsquo;s appeared on his Wiki page.\nIn answer to a question about what\u0026rsquo;s the worst thing you\u0026rsquo;ve ever been called, Richard Saunders said he had been accused of being \u0026ldquo;a mouseketeer of evil.\u0026quot;\nSavage made the statement that \u0026ldquo;You might think the world has color before critical thinking, but when you start thinking critically, it goes to HD.\u0026quot;\nIt was mentioned that skeptical materials are appearing in other languages\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Mythbusters\u0026rdquo; is now in 145 countries and 9 languages, and Benjamin Radford is editor of the Spanish-language skeptical magazine, Pensar, along with the Skeptical Inquirer.\nSunday conference papers\nThe final session of the conference, Sunday morning until noon, was for presentation of conference papers.\nJohn Janks on the Marfa Lights: I regret that I missed this, since I published two papers on the Marfa lights in The Arizona Skeptic when I was editor, but I made the mistake of assuming the session would begin at 9 a.m. like previous days\u0026ndash;nope, it was 8:30 a.m.\nDon Nyberg on \u0026ldquo;What Every Student Needs to Hear from Every Science Teacher\u0026rdquo;: Nyberg, a physics professor who apparently plays a mean game of poker, said that he attacks pseudoscience, and especially \u0026ldquo;religious pseudoscience,\u0026rdquo; in his classroom. Unfortunately, his talk didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to define what he meant by this term, and his talk was a series of arguments by assertion, arguments from authority, and ad hominem that I thought was embarrassingly badly argued. He seemed to be arguing that anyone with a degree in science who expressed support for religion should have their degrees revoked, which prompted the moderator Ray Hall to ask Nyberg whether he thought that biologist Kenneth Miller, whose testimony helped produce the proper outcome in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, should have his degrees revoked. Nyberg responded that yes, he should, if he\u0026rsquo;s promoting his religious beliefs in the science classroom (a qualifier which hadn\u0026rsquo;t been included in his earlier statement). I\u0026rsquo;d like to obtain a copy of Nyberg\u0026rsquo;s actual materials to review, to see how they compare to his talk.\nSteve Cuno: The head of an \u0026ldquo;evidence-based marketing company,\u0026rdquo; he gave an excellent talk about myths in marketing. Such myths include:\nWe control your mind.Creativity is magi.No one reads long ads.Awareness creates sales.Focus groups are predictive.Sales went up because of ads.He gave some examples associated with each of these, and described some of the tests that his company had performed to test marketing campaigns to find what causes responses to direct mailings and what leads to conversions to sales. He suggested the classic book Tested Advertising Methods, and pointed out that he has his own book coming out in December, with an intro by Michael Shermer, titled Prove It Before You Promote It.\nOne of the questions asked was \u0026ldquo;is Seth Godin full of shit?\u0026rdquo; Cuno tactfully said that no doubt some of what Godin says is speculative.\nTracy King: She gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;The Most Popular Science Video in the World - How to Make Your Message Famous.\u0026rdquo; She talked about Wiseman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; video, which got 80,000 views in the first two weeks and 2 million views by 18 weeks, and has now been seen by 80 million people on South American Globo TV, used in classrooms, and recreated by students.\nShe looked at other science videos that have been viral hits, such as the Diet Coke and Mentos videos, the first of which was uploaded in 2006 by Fritz Grobe, a juggler, and Stephen Voltz, a lawyer. They chose Diet Coke for its strong brand, and when it became a viral hit they received funding from Mentos to make more, and ultimately got a sponsorship deal from Coca Cola.\nKing pointed out that a lot of viral techniques are now illegal in the UK\u0026ndash;you must be explicit about being paid to produce videos, for example.\nShe talked about the bogus popcorn/mobile phone video, which is one that would be in violation of the UK law today. It was created in multiple versions\u0026ndash;English (where they\u0026rsquo;re drinking orange juice), French (where they\u0026rsquo;re drinking beer), and Japanese (where they have miso soup). These videos were made for Cardo Systems, a bluetooth headset manufacturer, and are clearly designed to encourage the idea that cell phones are dangerous to hold near your head. (Someone should make a viral video about bluetooth headsets.)\nSo what makes a successful viral video? There is no formula, but there are common themes\u0026ndash;humor, surprise, fear/scaremongering, emotion, skill, embarrassment. One thing she didn\u0026rsquo;t mention which I think was a factor in the success of the \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; video is that there were already multiple videos spreading widely with the exact same name, where the focus really was on that card trick. The Wiseman video was an interesting twist on what was already spreading virally, with the element of surprise and humor at the end. In essence, that video caught the wave of the other card trick videos, and then took it much farther. When I first saw the Wiseman video, I thought I was just seeing another version of that same trick.\nAnd why do we pass on viral videos?\nReflected glory.Being the first to know.Being part of a crowd with similar tastes.Being part of a shared cultural experience.(Participating in the formation of) the language of your generation.She mentioned Ray Comfort\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Atheist\u0026rsquo;s Nightmare\u0026rdquo; as something which has effectively spread virally, but didn\u0026rsquo;t exactly get the desired message across.\nShe ended by encouraging everyone to make videos promoting skepticism and critical thinking, and offered the following suggestions:\nIdentify what your message is\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t be preachy or superior, which is a turnoff.Determine what your objectives are\u0026ndash;to build website traffic, tell friend, etc.? If you don\u0026rsquo;t have a call to action, your message may be lost.Find a creative concept\u0026ndash;it may be explicit, subtle, or obscure.Make the video.Promote the video\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not going to circulate itself, and professional seeding (e.g., making use of a company like hers that has relationships with bloggers, forum participants, etc. to promote things in a subtle, unobtrusive, and unspammy way).And finally, she explicitly listed: don\u0026rsquo;t spam.She ended by saying that while she can\u0026rsquo;t recommend or encourage a \u0026ldquo;Jackass\u0026rdquo; approach to skepticism, it\u0026rsquo;s something she\u0026rsquo;d certainly like to see.\nOn to TAM6 summary, part five.\nPodblack (2008-07-02):\nDamn, you do comprehensive summaries! Thanks!Regarding \"He seemed to be arguing that anyone with a degree in science who expressed support for religion should have their degrees revoked\" - gah. I wonder how he'd feel about most of the science teachers I worked with in a religious school who were more than supportive of the students investigating UFOs, dowsing, psychics, et al... or that I have some qualifications in Theology due to graduating from a Catholic university.... :(\nLippard (2008-07-02):\nThank you! I hope this summary will be helpful both to those who were and those who were unable to attend the conference.I suspect Nyberg would have a negative impression of any teacher supporting a student investigating any of those subjects except with a view to debunk them. I also suspect that the best way for any of those students to actually learn would be to teach them *how* to think critically and apply scientific methods themselves, and come to their own conclusions rather than being told what outcome was correct.\nkarenB (2008-08-08):\nJim,Hi, it's John Janks the guy who gave the Marfa Lights presentation at 8:30 AM on June 22nd at the Amaz!ng Meeting 6. You didn't miss much. My ppt presentation didn't activate the videos and I was woefully sick from a 6-wk hospital stay with that newly-evolved MRSA (opps! I mean an MRSA CREATED all along but bunch of us are just getting it now.)Regardless, go to YouTube, look up \"telluricfields\" and you'll see all four videos.john janks\nLippard (2008-08-08):\nJohn: Thanks for the info. So, do the lights correspond to automobile traffic on the U.S. 67?\nkarenB (2008-08-08):\nJim,Overall, yes, the Lights follow Hwy 67, but low-angle carlights also reflect off road shoulder gravel, and the USDA soils exposed along the mountain flank: Borunda, Nillo and Portrillo [USDA] soil series.Thus, yes, an observer will see a reflected light, but it is not necessarily the carlight itself.If you start with the \"Marfa Lights Optical Experiment\" video, I think (or hope) it will become clearer. I published a short article on it:janks, j.s., 2002, \"The Mysterious Marfa Lights - a riddle solved by remote sensing,\" Earth Observation Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 10, pp. 31-32.If you can'find it, (EOM is a remote sensing professional journal), I'll email you a copy.Jj\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part four of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eintro\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhil Plait\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAstronomer Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog began by saying that the Internet is \u0026ldquo;a system for rapidly distributing sewage,\u0026rdquo; but also for distributing astronomy. His talk went through the solar system from Mercury to KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a \u0026ldquo;Buffy,\u0026rdquo; with interesting photographs and facts about various planets and moons along the way.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMercury:  The 2004 MESSENGER probe took photographs of the Caloris basin, the single biggest feature on Mercury, originally thought to be 1300 km in diameter but revised upward to 1550 km based on those photos.  Because Mercury spins twice for every three times it revolves around the sun, this basin is directly under the sun, every other orbit.  It\u0026rsquo;s a gigantic impact crater that\u0026rsquo;s 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVenus:  The hottest planet, a hell hole about the size of earth and with about the same amount of carbon and just a little bit closer to the sun, but it suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect.  It\u0026rsquo;s been photographed by the Russian Venera probes from 1962 to 1982 and by Magellan in 1990.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEarth:  Plait spoke of an HD movie of Earth shrinking into the distance as MESSENGER departed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhobos:  This moon of Mars has a giant crater\u0026ndash;had it been hit by anything bigger, Phobos would have disintegrated.  Phobos is apparently a captured asteroid, which orbits backward from other moons in the solar system.  Unlike Earth\u0026rsquo;s moon, it is gradually getting closer to Mars, and will collide with it in about the next 50 million years, causing an impact greater than the asteroid that created the Yucatan basin.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJupiter\u0026rsquo;s acne:  The Great Red Spot (Cassini, named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, who first observed it in 1655), a 400-year-old hurricane, has now been joined in 2000 by another little spot.  The new spot was white but has now turned red and is known as \u003ca href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/02mar_redjr.htm\"\u003eOval BA\u003c/a\u003e (or Red Jr.)\u0026ndash;it is as large as the Earth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIapetus:  This moon of Saturn has one light hemisphere and one dark, and was recently discovered to have \u003ca href=\"http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070915.html\"\u003ea 20 km high ridge\u003c/a\u003e almost perfectly around its equator.  (I remarked that it looks like a Death Star.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUranus:  It\u0026rsquo;s tipped 98 degrees on its side in its orbit, likely as a result of an impact from something very large, perhaps Earth-sized.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNeptune:  The other blue planet, it contains lots of methane and emanates 1.6 times the heat it receives from the Sun.  It has 2,200 kph winds.  Where is that energy coming from?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePluto:  It\u0026rsquo;s not a planet, so we don\u0026rsquo;t care about it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a \u0026ldquo;Buffy\u0026rdquo;:  This is an odd trans-Neptunian object\u0026ndash;where almost all objects in the solar system have very elliptical orbits, it is an object 8.5 billion km from the Sun\u0026ndash;twice the distance from the Sun of Neptune\u0026ndash;yet its orbit is circular.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlait concluded by noting that he hasn\u0026rsquo;t even talked about the Sun, Milleomeda (what the galaxy will be after Andromeda and the Milky Way collide), or countless other things that we don\u0026rsquo;t understand.  But this lack of understanding doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we know nothing.  \u0026ldquo;The universe is cool enough without making up crap about it.  That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m a skeptic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAdam Savage\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Savage of \u0026ldquo;Mythbusters\u0026rdquo; brought a box of about 1,000 ping pong balls which were used to\u003ca href=\"http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2004/11/mythbusters_ping_pong_balls_an.html\"\u003e raise a boat from the bottom of Monterey Bay\u003c/a\u003e, and gave them out to members of the audience, and signed his autograph on many of them.  He then gave a talk entitled \u0026ldquo;My Maltese Falcon,\u0026rdquo; about his obsession with recreating a precise replica of one of the two lead sculptures from the movie of the same name.  He did extensive research into its measurements, even paying to purchase used auction catalogs from Christie\u0026rsquo;s to examine photographs.  Joseph Warner gave one of the two lead ones to Joseph Conrad, one which Humphrey Bogart dropped and put a dent in.  He sculpted one based on photographs, sprayed it with 75 coats of auto primer, then buffed and sanded it.  He freeze framed every still from the original film in a scene where the statue was rotated.  Someone offered to cast it in bronze for him, and he had two made\u0026ndash;but the casting process caused it to lose size, and so his bronze model is 3/4\u0026rdquo; shorter in height at the beak, with the result that he hates it.  At a conference he met the man who purchased William Conrad\u0026rsquo;s lead statue, which he hopes to be able to scan and use to make the most accurate replica ever, which he\u0026rsquo;ll report back on next year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe showed a couple of world premiere viral videos\u0026ndash;one in which he and Jamie simultaneously solved Rubik\u0026rsquo;s cubes, one while blindfolded and the other with his feet.  The footage was actually reversed\u0026ndash;they started with solved cubes and then just messed them up.  In a second video, he inhaled some helium and spoke with a high voice, then inhaled some sulfur hexafluoride (which he informed us is very expensive) and spoke with a deep voice, and everyone laughed.  He said that someone (a producer?) thought that the cube video was cool, but that the balloon stunt was obviously faked.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe took questions and answers from the audience; a few highlights were that they want to do a full 60 minute show on the JFK assassination, Discovery has said no to \u0026ldquo;21 grams\u0026rdquo; (do we lose weight when we die), the Cheney shooting, vinyl vs. CD, and speaker cable vs. coat hanger.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis segment concluded with some footage of \u0026ldquo;explosion porn\u0026rdquo; from the show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMatthew Chapman\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0152466/\"\u003eMatthew Chapman\u003c/a\u003e, great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, screenwriter (\u0026ldquo;The Runaway Jury\u0026rdquo; and nine other films), and author (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTrials of the Monkey\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e40 Days and 40 Nights\u003c/span\u003e, the latter of which, about the Dover trial, I am currently reading), spoke about three things:  Science Debate 2008, his love of America, and \u0026ldquo;Darwin, creationism, etc.\u0026rdquo;  He began with his love of America, noting that he had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, raised by parents who read the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Yorker\u003c/span\u003e and were fans of Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, and so he always wanted to be an American.  He moved to the U.S. to get into the film business, and went to L.A.  A woman he knew to be educated asked him what his sign was\u0026ndash;he thought she was kidding, but she was not.  Ever since he has been fascinated with Americans\u0026rsquo; fondness for pseudoscience.  He was invited to a \u0026ldquo;shack\u0026rdquo; (of the $5 million variety) in Malibu to see someone channel \u0026ldquo;Basha,\u0026rdquo; and he couldn\u0026rsquo;t help but laugh out loud.  A woman present asked the channeler, \u0026ldquo;I have a potential development deal at Warner Brothers.  What is Basha\u0026rsquo;s advice?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen he expressed indignation at such expressions of irrationality, he was told, \u0026ldquo;Oh, you\u0026rsquo;re so rational\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re so British.\u0026rdquo;  He felt alone until he came across the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e magazine, and he promptly purchased and read every back issue.  (I had a similar experience in my life\u0026ndash;I read \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e while still a religious believer, and also ended up purchasing and reading every back issue from cover to cover.)  He became enraged by Scientology, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, crystals, telepathy, Shirley MacLaine (who he\u0026rsquo;s met), Nostradamus, pyramid power, etc. etc.  While in an elevator with James Randi at an event in UCLA, he asked Randi if he\u0026rsquo;d heard of some Brazilian paranormalist (a psychic surgeon?), and Randi responded by pulling a pen out of his ear.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDespite the far more voluminous \u0026ldquo;loony bullshit\u0026rdquo; in the U.S. than in Europe, he still loves it here, and became an American citizen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe next spoke about creationism.  His book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTrials of the Monkey\u003c/span\u003e was about his visit to Dayton, Tennessee to learn about the Scopes Trial, and he found that the people there today are much the same as they were back then.  His newer book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e40 Days and 40 Nights\u003c/span\u003e, was written during and after his observation of the entirety of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKitzmiller v. Dover\u003c/span\u003e trial, which he witnessed from the jury box (where the press sat, since it was a non-jury trial).  Through the Dover trial, he learned that it is possible to make science interesting to non-scientists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, he talked about \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/\"\u003eScience Debate 2008\u003c/a\u003e.  As the political debate season began, he watched all the debates, expecting to see questions about ozone, ocean health, climate change, etc., but only saw questions about lapel pins, religion, etc.  There were more questions about UFOs than about global warming.  He suggested the idea of a debate on science at the Atheist Alliance confernece, and Chris Mooney, who he had met earlier, got on board, along with his fellow \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/\"\u003eIntersection\u003c/a\u003e Science Blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum.  Soon thereafter, John Rennie of Scientific American became a backer, and Lawrence Krauss of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Physics of Star Trek\u003c/span\u003e (Chapman inadvertently said \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo;) also joined.  They ended up starting an organization and collecting over 50,000 signatures, including the support of 51 colleges, 5 museums, 10 magazines, 112 science organizations, 14 Congresspeople, 7 presidential science advisors, 143 CEOs of science and technology companies, 28 Nobelists, 102 college and university presidents, PBS, Nova, the Franklin Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and even Newt Gingrich.  A Harris poll says that 85% of voters would like to see a science debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut so far, all of the candidates have said no or failed to respond at all.  Chapman said that McCain was the most polite in saying no, and seemed to leave the door open.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey\u0026rsquo;ve now developed 14 questions and are preparing a new invitation to be sent to Obama and McCain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChapman then took questions, and someone asked if there was any opposition from scientists on the grounds that this is politicizing science.  Chapman said he\u0026rsquo;s had negative reactions from about three scientists, one of whom was present at this conference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter Chapman\u0026rsquo;s talk, I had a chance to speak with him briefly (he noticed the NCSE Grand Canyon trip T-shirt I was wearing, and commented on what great people Genie Scott and Nick Matzke are), as well as with his wife, Denise, who was also present at the conference.  Denise Chapman, a Brazilian who \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0241634/\"\u003ehas acted in television and film\u003c/a\u003e (including \u0026ldquo;Kiss of the Spider Woman\u0026rdquo; and Woody Allen\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Radio Days\u0026rdquo;), is the daughter of composer and musician \u003ca href=\"http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/09/91606.html\"\u003eHumberto Teixeira\u003c/a\u003e, started Baiao music and was the composer of the popular Brazilian song \u0026ldquo;Asa Branca\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;White Wing\u0026rdquo;).  She was pleased to hear that some friends of mine named their African grey parrot \u0026ldquo;Asa Cinza\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Grey Wing\u0026rdquo;) in honor of that song.  She has been \u003ca href=\"http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/11/11906_forr_in_n.html\"\u003eworking on a documentary film about her father\u003c/a\u003e that \u003ca href=\"http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=9219\"\u003ewill be premiering later this month at MoMA\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRichard Wiseman\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003eBritish psychologist Richard Wiseman spoke a little bit about his book Quirkology, presented a few optical illusions, and commented about his obtaining a videotape of Indian \u0026ldquo;God-man\u0026rdquo; Sai Baba in which he was caught engaging in sleight of hand, which he then showed to us.  (Sai Baba was debunked well in a book by Dale Beyerstein titled \u003ca href=\"http://home.hetnet.nl/%7Eex_baba/engels/articles/bcsceptics/index.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSai Baba\u0026rsquo;s Miracles: An Overview\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which describes some other instances of Sai Baba being caught in trickery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then showed his now-famous viral video of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and followed it up showing a video of how it was made (it took many takes to get it right; he showed some amusing failures). This video, which has had over 2.5 million views, demonstrates the phenomena of \u0026ldquo;change blindness,\u0026rdquo; and they\u0026rsquo;ve used eye-tracking to study viewers of the video to see if they are not looking in the right place or simply failing to register the changes, and it seems to be the latter.  This video has apparently now inspired a routine in Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was followed up by \u003ca href=\"http://podblack.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/karen-and-teller-talking/\"\u003ea spoon-bending lesson from an expert\u0026ndash;Teller\u003c/a\u003e.  Teller explained that there is a method, the trick that deceives the eye, and there is misdirection, the trick that deceives the mind.  The spoon-bending trick is based on a pre-stressed spoon, but to allay suspicion he only does the trick about once every five times he creates a pre-stressed spoon, because he waits for an opportunity to swap the spoon with a neighbor, and then only does the trick if the conversation happens to turn in a direction that makes it seem appropriate.  He told the story of how Danny Hillis (of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine\"\u003eConnection Machine\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.longnow.org/\"\u003eLong Now Foundation\u003c/a\u003e fame) was invited to a posh party at the home of Courtney Ross (widow of Steve Ross, CEO of Time Warner).  At dinner, the conversation turned to Rupert Sheldrake.  Hillis had pre-stressed his neighbor\u0026rsquo;s spoon, and put his own spoon on a plate so that the waiter took it away.  Hillis borrowed his neighbor\u0026rsquo;s spoon and did the trick, bending and breaking the spoon and dropping it into his wine.  His hostess said, \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t believe you did that.\u0026rdquo;  He made a comment to the effect that it was a trick, and she said, \u0026ldquo;No, I can\u0026rsquo;t believe you did that.\u0026rdquo;  She was horrified that he had destroyed one of a fixed number of identical place settings by some famous designer which she had painstakingly collected over the years.  And that, said Teller, made it funny.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWiseman then came back and said that we would now make the world\u0026rsquo;s largest spoonbending video for YouTube.  We were given one run-through of the simple script, and then did it on video, all 900 of us (though there were only 800 pre-stressed spoons, so the 100 in the back had to mime).  The video will make its debut at \u003ca href=\"http://www.spoonscience.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.spoonscience.com\"\u003ewww.spoonscience.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (which as of this moment still says \u0026ldquo;coming soon\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePanel discussion on the limits of skepticism\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGoldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders assembled on stage for this panel discussion, which I don\u0026rsquo;t recall actually addressing a subject that I\u0026rsquo;d characterize as the limits of skepticism.  Instead, it seemed to be pretty much a free-for-all Q\u0026amp;A about skepticism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt one point, someone spoke of \u0026ldquo;winning the war\u0026rdquo; against irrationality, and Banachek said he preferred to think in terms of making a mark rather than winning a war.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRandi commented on the famous quotation attributed to him by Dennis Rawlins\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/rawlins-starbaby.txt\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;sTARBABY\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;I always have an out,\u0026rdquo; suggesting that his then-$10,000 and now $1 million reward for the successful demonstration of a paranormal event is not fair.  He stated that this quotation was out-of-context, and that what he actually said was \u0026ldquo;I always have an out\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m right.\u0026rdquo;  Dennis Rawlins, however, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dioi.org/stb.htm\"\u003esays that this is untrue\u003c/a\u003e, and that Randi has only recently started appending \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m right\u0026rdquo; to this quotation.  In 2000, when Matt Kriebel made his \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/sci.skeptic/msg/0d4e7c7fcd3f988e?hl=en\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;sTARBABY mini-FAQ,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Randi had a different explanation, stating that \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/sci.skeptic/msg/c1e88067b489be96\"\u003ethe \u0026ldquo;out\u0026rdquo; was about his stage act rather than his challenge\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Savage observed that at the last TAM he mentioned that he was an atheist, and now that\u0026rsquo;s appeared on his Wiki page.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn answer to a question about what\u0026rsquo;s the worst thing you\u0026rsquo;ve ever been called, Richard Saunders said he had been accused of being \u0026ldquo;a mouseketeer of evil.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavage made the statement that \u0026ldquo;You might think the world has color before critical thinking, but when you start thinking critically, it goes to HD.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was mentioned that skeptical materials are appearing in other languages\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Mythbusters\u0026rdquo; is now in 145 countries and 9 languages, and Benjamin Radford is editor of the Spanish-language skeptical magazine, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pensar.org/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePensar\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, along with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSunday conference papers\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003eThe final session of the conference, Sunday morning until noon, was for presentation of conference papers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJohn Janks\u003c/span\u003e on the Marfa Lights:  I regret that I missed this, since I published two papers on the Marfa lights in The Arizona Skeptic when I was editor, but I made the mistake of assuming the session would begin at 9 a.m. like previous days\u0026ndash;nope, it was 8:30 a.m.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDon Nyberg\u003c/span\u003e on \u0026ldquo;What Every Student Needs to Hear from Every Science Teacher\u0026rdquo;:  Nyberg, a physics professor who apparently \u003ca href=\"http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/25336/don-nyberg.htm\"\u003eplays a mean game of poker\u003c/a\u003e, said that he attacks pseudoscience, and especially \u0026ldquo;religious pseudoscience,\u0026rdquo; in his classroom.  Unfortunately, his talk didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to define what he meant by this term, and his talk was a series of arguments by assertion, arguments from authority, and ad hominem that I thought was embarrassingly badly argued.  He seemed to be arguing that anyone with a degree in science who expressed support for religion should have their degrees revoked, which prompted the moderator Ray Hall to ask Nyberg whether he thought that biologist Kenneth Miller, whose testimony helped produce the proper outcome in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKitzmiller v. Dover\u003c/span\u003e case, should have his degrees revoked.  Nyberg responded that yes, he should, if he\u0026rsquo;s promoting his religious beliefs \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ein the science classroom\u003c/span\u003e (a qualifier which hadn\u0026rsquo;t been included in his earlier statement).  I\u0026rsquo;d like to obtain a copy of Nyberg\u0026rsquo;s actual materials to review, to see how they compare to his talk.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSteve Cuno\u003c/span\u003e:  The head of an \u0026ldquo;evidence-based marketing company,\u0026rdquo; he gave an excellent talk about myths in marketing.  Such myths include:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWe control your mind.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCreativity is magi.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNo one reads long ads.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAwareness creates sales.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFocus groups are predictive.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSales went up because of ads.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eHe gave some examples associated with each of these, and described some of the tests that his company had performed to test marketing campaigns to find what causes responses to direct mailings and what leads to conversions to sales.  He suggested the classic book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Advertising-Methods-Prentice-Business-Classics/dp/0130957011/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTested Advertising Methods\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, and pointed out that he has his own book coming out in December, with an intro by Michael Shermer, titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Prove-before-You-Promote-Guesswork/dp/0470381183/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProve It Before You Promote It\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of the questions asked was \u0026ldquo;is Seth Godin full of shit?\u0026rdquo;  Cuno tactfully said that no doubt some of what Godin says is speculative.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTracy King\u003c/span\u003e:  She gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;The Most Popular Science Video in the World - How to Make Your Message Famous.\u0026rdquo;  She talked about Wiseman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; video\u003c/a\u003e, which got 80,000 views in the first two weeks and 2 million views by 18 weeks, and has now been seen by 80 million people on South American Globo TV, used in classrooms, and recreated by students.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe looked at other science videos that have been viral hits, such as the Diet Coke and Mentos videos, the first of which was uploaded in 2006 by Fritz Grobe, a juggler, and Stephen Voltz, a lawyer.  They chose Diet Coke for its strong brand, and when it became a viral hit they received funding from Mentos to make more, and ultimately got a sponsorship deal from Coca Cola.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKing pointed out that a lot of viral techniques are now illegal in the UK\u0026ndash;you must be explicit about being paid to produce videos, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe talked about the bogus popcorn/mobile phone video, which is one that would be in violation of the UK law today.  It \u003ca href=\"http://www.sogoodblog.com/2008/06/10/who-is-behind-the-cell-phone-popcorn-videos/\"\u003ewas created in multiple versions\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;English (where they\u0026rsquo;re drinking orange juice), French (where they\u0026rsquo;re drinking beer), and Japanese (where they have miso soup).  These videos \u003ca href=\"http://www.sogoodblog.com/2008/06/12/cellphone-popcorn-viral-video-creators-revealed-cardo-systems-bluetooth-headsets/\"\u003ewere made for Cardo Systems, a bluetooth headset manufacturer\u003c/a\u003e, and are clearly designed to encourage the idea that cell phones are dangerous to hold near your head.  (Someone should make a viral video about bluetooth headsets.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo what makes a successful viral video?  There is no formula, but there are common themes\u0026ndash;humor, surprise, fear/scaremongering, emotion, skill, embarrassment.  One thing she didn\u0026rsquo;t mention which I think was a factor in the success of the \u0026ldquo;colour changing card trick\u0026rdquo; video is that there were already multiple videos spreading widely with the exact same name, where the focus really was on that card trick.  The Wiseman video was an interesting twist on what was already spreading virally, with the element of surprise and humor at the end.  In essence, that video caught the wave of the other card trick videos, and then took it much farther.  When I first saw the Wiseman video, I thought I was just seeing another version of that same trick.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd why do we pass on viral videos?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eReflected glory.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBeing the first to know.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBeing part of a crowd with similar tastes.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBeing part of a shared cultural experience.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e(Participating in the formation of) the language of your generation.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eShe mentioned Ray Comfort\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Atheist\u0026rsquo;s Nightmare\u0026rdquo; as something which has effectively spread virally, but \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/ray-comfort-concedes-banana-argument.html\"\u003edidn\u0026rsquo;t exactly get the desired message across\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe ended by encouraging everyone to make videos promoting skepticism and critical thinking, and offered the following suggestions:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eIdentify what your message is\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t be preachy or superior, which is a turnoff.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDetermine what your objectives are\u0026ndash;to build website traffic, tell friend, etc.?  If you don\u0026rsquo;t have a call to action, your message may be lost.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eFind a creative concept\u0026ndash;it may be explicit, subtle, or obscure.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMake the video.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePromote the video\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not going to circulate itself, and professional seeding (e.g., making use of a company like hers that has relationships with bloggers, forum participants, etc. to promote things in a subtle, unobtrusive, and unspammy way).\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAnd finally, she explicitly listed: don\u0026rsquo;t spam.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eShe ended by saying that while she can\u0026rsquo;t recommend or encourage a \u0026ldquo;Jackass\u0026rdquo; approach to skepticism, it\u0026rsquo;s something she\u0026rsquo;d certainly like to see.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn to TAM6 summary, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part four"},{"content":"I just figured out that Trevor Paglen, the co-author of Torture Taxi, a book about how planespotting was used to track information about the CIA\u0026rsquo;s extraordinary rendition flights, is also the author of I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s Black World, for which he appeared on the Colbert Report. At his blog, I\u0026rsquo;ve learned that the pilots of the CIA rendition flights associated with Khalid El-Masri have been identified at Sourcewatch, where you can also find extensive information about the planes and the fictional owners of the companies that operate them (in particular see the companies Premier Executive Transport Services and Bayard Foreign Marketing, which have both owned the same Gulfstream V (PDF), nicknamed the \u0026ldquo;Guantanamo Bay Express\u0026rdquo;).\nEl-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to a CIA black site called the \u0026ldquo;Salt Pit\u0026rdquo; in Afghanistan, where he was tortured, then later released in Albania after a second order to do so by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (the first was ignored). He was taken because his name resembled that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri.\nEl-Masri\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the CIA and three private companies that operated planes involved with his transport was dismissed in 2006 on grounds of state secrets privilege, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 2007. He has also sued in Germany, where there are outstanding warrants for pilots Eric Robert Hume, James Kovalesky, and Harry Kirk Ellarbee. All three of these pilots work or worked for alleged CIA front company Aero Contractors Ltd., live in Johnston County, North Carolina and have been visited by the German press in unsuccessful attempts to interview them.\nThe German warrants were passed to Interpol, but the German government declined to ask the U.S. for extradition after an informal request was given a negative reply.\nEl-Masri was sent to a mental institution in 2007 after being arrested for arson and an assault on a truck-driving instructor.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/more-on-cia-extraordinary-rendition.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just figured out that Trevor Paglen, the co-author of \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/how-planespotting-uncovered-cia.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTorture Taxi\u003c/span\u003e, a book about how planespotting was used to track information about the CIA\u0026rsquo;s extraordinary rendition flights\u003c/a\u003e, is also the author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/1933633328/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s Black World\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, for which he appeared on the Colbert Report.  At \u003ca href=\"http://www.paglen.com/pages/odds_n_ends.html\"\u003ehis blog\u003c/a\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;ve learned that the pilots of the CIA rendition flights associated with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri\"\u003eKhalid El-Masri\u003c/a\u003e have been identified at Sourcewatch, where you can also find extensive information about \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Planes_alleged_to_have_been_used_for_extraordinary_rendition\"\u003ethe planes\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/012307BURNS.shtml\"\u003ethe fictional owners\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Planes_alleged_to_have_been_used_for_extraordinary_rendition\"\u003ethe companies that operate them\u003c/a\u003e (in particular see the companies \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Premier_Executive_Transport_Services%2C_Inc.\"\u003ePremier Executive Transport Services\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bayard_Foreign_Marketing%2C_LLC\"\u003eBayard Foreign Marketing\u003c/a\u003e, which have both owned \u003ca href=\"http://www.paglen.com/oddsnends/gitmoexpress.pdf\"\u003ethe same Gulfstream V\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), nicknamed the \u0026ldquo;Guantanamo Bay Express\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEl-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to a CIA \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site\"\u003eblack site\u003c/a\u003e called the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Pit\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Salt Pit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in Afghanistan, where he was tortured, then later released in Albania after a second order to do so by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (the first was ignored).  He was taken because his name resembled that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEl-Masri\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the CIA and three private companies that operated planes involved with his transport was dismissed in 2006 on grounds of state secrets privilege, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 2007.  He has also sued in Germany, where there are outstanding warrants for pilots \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Eric_Robert_Hume_%28alias_Eric_Matthew_Fain%29\"\u003eEric Robert Hume\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_Kovalesky_%28alias_James_Richard_Fairing%29\"\u003eJames Kovalesky\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Harry_Kirk_Elarbee_%28alias_Kirk_James_Bird%29\"\u003eHarry Kirk Ellarbee\u003c/a\u003e.  All three of these pilots work or worked for alleged CIA front company \u003ca href=\"http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Aero_Contractors_Ltd.\"\u003eAero Contractors Ltd.\u003c/a\u003e,  live in Johnston County, North Carolina and have been visited by the German press in unsuccessful attempts to interview them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe German warrants were passed to Interpol, but the German government declined to ask the U.S. for extradition after an informal request was given a negative reply.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEl-Masri \u003ca href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/rendition-victim-sent-to-mental-institution-after-arson-attack-449478.html\"\u003ewas sent to a mental institution in 2007 after being arrested for arson and an assault on a truck-driving instructor\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on CIA extraordinary rendition flights"},{"content":"How sad to see political partisanship turn him into an advocate for bad legislation. The telecoms shouldn\u0026rsquo;t get civil or criminal immunity for violations of our constitutional rights.\nUPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton comments on Obama\u0026rsquo;s attempt to explain his change of position on this issue.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-07-01):\nMethinks that Olbermann has run into a bit of cognitive dissonance and has tried to rationalize it away.In Olbermann's defense, he is at least considering criticism and trying to be consistent. His special comment last night was an improvement in that he abandoned the \"Obama isn't capitulating to the left\" angle and also demanded that Obama either vote against the legislation or promise to criminally prosecute the telecoms.Several problems with his stance, however.1.Olbermann seems to believe that the only problem with the legislation is the immunity, but in reality the bill grants the Exeuctive greater spy powers with less oversight. 2. Olbermann also misses the point when he keeps saying the bill establishes FISA as the relavant statute. This is meaningless: FISA was already the relevant statute and Bush ignored it. Giving him more powers and then reiterating that FISA applies does what exactly? Without punishment for lawbreaking this has no teeth.3.Glenn Greenwald has pointed out today some problems with criminal prosecutions. The most obvious problem I have is that I'm not inclined to bet my liberties on the naive belief that Obama would prosecute the telecoms - if Dems can't censore Bush for breaking the law there is no way that is going to happen. Olbermann also seems to believe that the appearance of impropiety would somehow prevent Bush from pardoning the telecoms before he leaves office - where has he been for the last 7.5 years?! 4.This is really an extension of the same point in 3, but I think it merits emphasis.The greatest problem I have with Olbermann's approach is that he is willing to trade citizens' access to the courts as a means of protecting their liberties on the belief that a candidate will do that for them. I am not willing to trade my liberty on the belief that every 4 to 8 years someone will be elected that might protect them.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-01):\nMistakes Were Made (but not by me) - which is plugged in the cognitive dissonance link - is a book that I think all skeptics should read or be familiar with.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-03):\n\"What they're doing is tantamount to someone who steals your wallet, takes all the money out, gives the empty wallet back to you, and then tells you that you should be grateful to them because you have your wallet.\"That is Greenwald describing the claim of Democrats that their bill is a compromise because it says FISA is the law that applies to spying. My favorite was an Obama advisor saying that Obama has to \"compromise\" and vote for telecom immunity because he doesn't want the bill he previously voted against to expire.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/07/keith-olbermann-flip-flops-on-telecom.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow sad to see political partisanship turn him \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/olbermann_obama_and_telecom_im.php\"\u003einto an advocate for bad legislation\u003c/a\u003e.  The telecoms shouldn\u0026rsquo;t get civil or criminal immunity for violations of our constitutional rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/obama_explains_fisa_flipflop.php\"\u003ecomments on Obama\u0026rsquo;s attempt to explain his change of position on this issue\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-07-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eMethinks that Olbermann has run into a bit of \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/an-interview-with-carol-tavris\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ecognitive dissonance\u003c/A\u003e and has tried to \u003cA HREF=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2006/04/remember-to-think.html\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003erationalize it\u003c/A\u003e away.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIn Olbermann's defense, he is at least considering criticism and trying to be consistent. His special comment last night was an improvement in that he abandoned the \"Obama isn't capitulating to the left\" angle and also demanded that Obama either vote against the legislation or promise to criminally prosecute the telecoms.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eSeveral problems with his stance, however.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e1.Olbermann seems to believe that the only problem with the legislation is the immunity, but in reality the bill grants the Exeuctive greater spy powers with less oversight. \u003cBR/\u003e2. Olbermann also misses the point when he keeps saying the bill establishes FISA as the relavant statute. This is meaningless: FISA was already the relevant statute and Bush ignored it. Giving him more powers and then reiterating that FISA applies does what exactly? Without punishment for lawbreaking this has no teeth.\u003cBR/\u003e3.Glenn Greenwald has pointed out today some problems with criminal prosecutions. The most obvious problem I have is that I'm not inclined to bet my liberties on the naive belief that Obama would prosecute the telecoms - if Dems can't censore Bush for breaking the law there is no way that is going to happen. Olbermann also seems to believe that the appearance of impropiety would somehow prevent Bush from pardoning the telecoms before he leaves office - where has he been for the last 7.5 years?! \u003cBR/\u003e4.This is really an extension of the same point in 3, but I think it merits emphasis.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThe greatest problem I have with Olbermann's approach is that he is willing to trade citizens' access to the courts as a means of protecting their liberties on the belief that a candidate will do that for them. I am not willing to trade my liberty on the belief that every 4 to 8 years someone will be elected that might protect them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Keith Olbermann flip-flops on telecom immunity"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ve purchased a few of these designs, at 25% off\u0026hellip; I didn\u0026rsquo;t get them in time for TAM6, but I wore the element one this weekend. Kat and I each have one of the \u0026ldquo;because we know that dinosaur bones were really planted by beelzebub\u0026rdquo; shirts, and I\u0026rsquo;ve got the \u0026ldquo;because we know that the earth sits on giant elephants which in turn ride on an even gianter turtle\u0026rdquo; one along with the \u0026ldquo;because we know that the real periodic table of elements only numbers five\u0026rdquo; shirt.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/summer-sale-on-teach-controversy-shirts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve purchased a few of \u003ca href=\"http://controversy.wearscience.com/\"\u003ethese designs\u003c/a\u003e, at 25% off\u0026hellip; I didn\u0026rsquo;t get them in time for TAM6, but I wore the element one this weekend.  Kat and I each have one of the \u0026ldquo;because we know that dinosaur bones were really planted by beelzebub\u0026rdquo; shirts, and I\u0026rsquo;ve got the \u0026ldquo;because we know that the earth sits on giant elephants which in turn ride on an even gianter turtle\u0026rdquo; one along with the \u0026ldquo;because we know that the real periodic table of elements only numbers five\u0026rdquo; shirt.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Summer sale on Teach the Controversy shirts"},{"content":"This is part three of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part four, part five).\nFriday night was my one late night out, as I went with a group of Denver and Boston skeptics (and one local friend) to Gallagher\u0026rsquo;s Steakhouse at the New York, New York Casino. On the walk down the strip, we passed some 9/11 truthers holding signs promoting a website promoting their views. I told one that he should check out 911myths.com, to which he responded, \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s funny.\u0026rdquo; He ended up going off on a rant about how I was sticking my head in the sand, to which Iunproductively responded in an off-color manner about where he was sticking his head. We had a fantastic, though expensive, meal, and I ended up leaving my camera at the restaurant. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve it even though the restaurant had closed.\nSaturday morning I had breakfast with an attorney from Florida and a regular attendee of hacker\u0026rsquo;s conferences from Pennsylvania; we talked a bit about criminal hacking on the Internet and copyright law.\nMichael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe in unseen things\nMichael Shermer gave the first talk of the day. He began by talking about how he recently accepted some money from the Templeton Foundation in return for editing a booklet of thirteen essays on the question \u0026ldquo;Does science make belief in God obsolete?\u0026quot;, which he agreed to do on the condition that he could pick at least some of the people to write answers to the question. Respondents included Kenneth Miller, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Pinker, and Stuart Kauffman.\nHe then showed a segment from a TV show pilot, \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026quot; that is now being pitched to the TV networks. The show features Yau-Man Chan, Mark Edward, Steven Novella, Phil Plait, Kirsten Sanford, Michael Shermer, and Brian Dunning investigating claims using the tools of skepticism. The segment shown was of Shermer, Sanford, and Novella investigating health claims made for wheat grass, such as that because it contains chlorophyll which is molecularly similar to hemoglobin, it turns into hemoglobin when you consume it.\nShermer then went on to give a talk about \u0026ldquo;why people believe in unseen things,\u0026rdquo; arguing that we engage in learning by association (something illustrated by Banachek\u0026rsquo;s memory workshop) and have a tendency to make type II errors (incorrectly accepting a belief in something false) over type I errors (incorrectly rejecting a belief in something true). He gave a brief review of some evidence that when we process a sentence in order to understand it, we go through the same steps as entertaining that it is true, and to exercise skepticism about it requires additional effort; disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection after the process of comprehension. This kind of acceptance of knowledge presented by others makes sense for a child growing up, especially in a hostile environment where survival is at stake.\nHumans also tend not to be persuaded by or even remember being told that something is false\u0026ndash;the negation can be forgotten while the statement being denied is remembered as true. A flyer put out by the CDC to rebut myths about flu vaccines turned out to have the opposite of the desired effect, at least by certain groups of people\u0026ndash;after 30 minutes, they remembered 28% of the false statements as being true, and after three days the percentage jumped to 40%. (Also see Sam Wang and Sandra Amodt\u0026rsquo;s op-ed in the June 27, 2008 New York Times, \u0026ldquo;Your Brain Lies to You.\u0026quot;)\nShermer didn\u0026rsquo;t mention the study I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, but rather later near the end of his talk referred to some fMRI studies by Sam Harris, Sameer Sheth, and Mark Cohen (PDF) about evaluating statements as true, false, or undecideable, comparing reaction times to different types of statements.\nAgency and the intentional stance\nShermer talked about the work of Pascal Boyer and Daniel Dennett on agency and the intentional stance\u0026ndash;that we tend to assume by default that everything that happens not only has a cause, but is caused by an agent, and particularly one that means us harm. Such an assumption may make evolutionary sense to enable survival, though it clearly doesn\u0026rsquo;t work well for accurate explanations of the world. But such appeal of agency lies behind intelligent design theory, and attributing supernatural intentions to natural phenomena. Shermer called this \u0026ldquo;The God Illusion\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;delusion,\u0026rdquo; because he, like Boyer and Dennett, see it as a normal cognitive illusion rather than something delusional or pathological.\nHe went on to talk about folk intuitions as being the engines of all sorts of beliefs. He gave examples from folk astronomy, folk biology (the elan vital), folk psychology (mind/brain dualism), and folk economics (centrally planned economies). He compared natural selection and Adam Smith\u0026rsquo;s invisible hand, observing that many people misconstrue one or the other as being something magical or directed. He observed that we have folk intuitions that have evolved for a particular environment, yet do not work well at the huge or tiny scales.\nThen, more controversially, he referred to folk politics, viewing societies as an extension of the family, and referred to \u0026ldquo;intelligent government theory,\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;God of the government\u0026rdquo; theory, and \u0026ldquo;the government illusion,\u0026rdquo; drawing an analogy to intelligent design, God of the gaps, and the God illusion, respectively. But where intelligent design says \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how X could have evolved, therefore it must have been designed,\u0026rdquo; he described \u0026ldquo;intelligent government theory\u0026rdquo; as based on the faulty reasoning that \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how X could be done privately, therefore a government must do it.\u0026rdquo; The difference here, as I\u0026rsquo;ve already mentioned, is that we know that governments exist and do provide services. The libertarian argument about private provision of services vs. government provision of services is one about whether government is necessary, or moral, or more efficient than private provision of services. To my mind, such arguments are well worth having, but come down to questions of competing values (e.g., liberty vs. justice) and empirical evidence about costs and benefits of competing approaches. It\u0026rsquo;s not really analogous to the question of the existence or nonexistence of gods, unless perhaps one takes that to partly be an issue about the pragmatic value of belief in an illusion vs. truth.\nSharon Begley\nNewsweek science writer Sharon Begley gave a talk titled \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Other Weird Beliefs: The Role of the Press,\u0026rdquo; with a subtitle \u0026ldquo;hint: don\u0026rsquo;t get your hopes up.\u0026rdquo; She was very pessimistic about the press being helpful in promoting critical thinking. She began by telling the story of the Tichbourne Claimant. In 1854, Roger Tichbourne was lost at sea off the coast of Brazil. He had been raised in France to the age of 16, then in England. He was very thin, and had blue eyes and tattoos. His mother refused to accept that he was dead, and placed ads in newspapers seeking him. Some 20 years later, a man from Wagga Wagga, Australia contacted her, claiming that he had not previously contacted her because he wanted to achieve success on his own accord, under the name \u0026ldquo;Mr. Castro,\u0026rdquo; but had failed to do so. This man, the Tichbourne Claimant, was obese, spoke no French, had no tattoos, had brown eyes, and was an inch taller than Roger Tichbourne, yet she accepted him as the genuine article.\nAccording to Begley, the role of the newspaper is not to educate. In the early years of the AIDS crisis, public health officials asked for the press to run informative stories, and they complied, but this was not helpful because:\nThe scientific ignorance of the American public.The capacity for rational thnking is not identical to the disposition to employ rational thinking.There is a disconnect between factual knowledge and belief, as exhibited in the case of Mrs. Tichbourne.Public attitudes towards the press are negative.The press has a commitment to \u0026ldquo;balance.\u0026quot;Common sense is not common.She gave some statistics on polls of Americans\u0026rsquo; agreement or disagreement with the statement that \u0026ldquo;Human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals\u0026rdquo;:\n1985: 45% agreed, 48% disagreed, 7% unsure.\n2005: 40% agreed, 39% disagreed, 21% unsure.\nBy comparison the percentage of agreement in Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden was over 80%; of OECD nations only Turkey had a lower percentage of acceptance than the U.S.\nEvolution, gay marriage, and abortion are all highly politicized in the U.S. in a way that they aren\u0026rsquo;t in Europe or Japan.\nBut if the question was \u0026ldquo;Can natural selection explain appearance and change over time of animals,\u0026rdquo; 78% of Americans agreed. Yet 62% agree that \u0026ldquo;God created humans as they are today.\u0026rdquo; This, according to Begley, is because Americans have a view of human exceptionalism.\nShe went through a list of facts that are beyond dispute, which were presented to Americans for acceptance or denial. Two examples:\nMore than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in mice. 33% agree\nMore than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in chimps. 38% agree\nOnly 9% of Americans know what a molecule is. Because of this, while sports writers can use abbreviations such as ERA and RBI without explaining them, Begley says she cannot assume her readers know anything at all, and recently learned that she can\u0026rsquo;t even refer to DNA and expect her readers to know what she\u0026rsquo;s talking about.\nShe observed that a disposition to critical thinking is associated with being more curious, open-minded, open to new experiences, conscientiousness, being less dogmatic, less close-minded, less authoritarian, and likely to rely more on epirical and rational data than on intution and emotion when weighing information and reaching conclusions. But you have to both have the skills and want to think critically in order to apply them. In addition to Tichbourne as an example of someone who had the skills but didn\u0026rsquo;t want to apply them, she noted that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u0026rsquo;s son was killed two weeks before the end of WWI, and he went to a medium who claimed to contact his son, which he very much wanted to believe. Alfred Russell Wallace, who formulated evolution by natural selection parallel to Darwin, was also a believer in ghosts, levitation, spirit photography, and clairvoyance. And she noted that a statement Penn Jillette made the previous day sounded like he was rejecting climate change on the basis of a dislike for Al Gore. (UPDATE, July 4, 2008: Sharon Begley wrote about this at the Newsweek blog, and Penn Jillette responded in the Los Angeles Times. I think Penn more accurately reports what happened than Sharon Begley did\u0026ndash;he really did say that he didn\u0026rsquo;t know, and that people he knows and considers reliable tell him that anthropogenic climate change is real. One thing Penn gets wrong is that Teller didn\u0026rsquo;t mention Gore\u0026rsquo;s name when he said that carbon credits are \u0026ldquo;bullshit modeled on indulgences.\u0026rdquo;)\nShe commented on some of the negative letters she has received any time she writes about evolution or critically about claims like alien abductions. When she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about the discovery of Tiktaalik, she received several letters which she read excerpts of, three examples of which were the standard argument that \u0026ldquo;evolution requires more faith\u0026rdquo; than believing that God did it, a letter asking \u0026ldquo;where are the billions of \u0026rsquo;transition fossils,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and one asking, \u0026ldquo;if you are terminal will you call on Darwin or God?\u0026quot;\nDon\u0026rsquo;t count on the press\nThe \u0026ldquo;reality-based community\u0026rdquo; must contend with contrarian politicians, the masses\u0026rsquo; distrust of elites, and new sources of news. With regard to the last point, she pointed out that Googling evolutionary biology terms often brings up Answers in Genesis sites prior to sites with accurate information.\nThe journalistic conceit of objectivity, she said, is imported from political disputes where there are two contrary sides. (I actually think that notion of balance is as often mistaken in politics as it is in science\u0026ndash;there may only be one side with any valid support, or there may be more than two sides deserving of representation, though the latter is more common in politics than in science. But dualism is a misrepresentation in both circumstances.)\nUncommon common sense\nBegley made the following points, which had some overlap with Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk:\nEvolution is not intuitive.Common sense can mislead us about the physical world.Our brains are driven to see patterns.We have a habit of imputing consciousness to inanimate objects.Someone is staring at me from behind. (People tend to have and respond to such feelings. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember if she actually discussed Rupert Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s studies of this, or of the skeptical critiques by Robert Baker or Richard Wiseman.)\nShe gave the example of an experiment with a sweater at Bristol University. Students were shown a ratty old sweater and asked who would be willing to put it on in return for a payment of twenty British pounds. Most indicated a willingness to do so. But if they were then told, oh, by the way, this sweater belonged to a murderer, many of the hands would go down\u0026ndash;as though evil were a property that contaminated the object. What she didn\u0026rsquo;t mention is that similarly, the value of something associated with someone of status has the reverse effect\u0026ndash;e.g., if the sweater were claimed to belong to Einstein. The effect of status on objects is one that is clearly prevalent even among skeptics, who are as likely as anyone to enjoy collecting autographs and memorabilia, or objects like ping pong balls used on a television show (see Adam Savage\u0026rsquo;s talk, below).\nDerek and Swoopy\nDerek and Swoopy, the hosts of the official Skeptics Society podcast, \u0026ldquo;Skepticality,\u0026rdquo; gave a short talk about their show and noted that they now have about 35,000 listeners per program, and that the top two skeptics\u0026rsquo; podcasts, \u0026ldquo;Skepticality\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Skeptics Guide to the Universe,\u0026rdquo; have over 4 million downloads between them. They reported that after some successful skeptical panels at science fiction conventions, Dragon*Con 2008 in Atlanta this Labor Day weekend, a conference so large that it occurs at four hotels, will have four full days of skeptical content, a \u0026ldquo;Skeptrack\u0026rdquo; featuring James Randi, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Ben Radford, Alison Smith, George Hrab, and others.\nSteven Novella\nDr. Novella gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Dualism and Creationism\u0026rdquo; covering the history of dualism in philosophy of mind, evidence from neuroscience, and a discussion of modern dualism. In his discussion of dualism in philosophy, he attributed to Descartes a notion of computation occurring in the brain and a position he called \u0026ldquo;consciousness dualism.\u0026rdquo; I think perhaps that gives Descartes too much credit, though he did think that \u0026ldquo;animal spirits\u0026rdquo; flowing in the brain caused signals from perception to be projected on the surface of the pineal gland, which was the seat of the soul and consciousness.\nHe referred to the advocacy of property dualism/epiphenomenalism by David Chalmers, and observed that his views would not be acceptable to most of those who advocate dualism. Chalmers\u0026rsquo;s position is that most mental activity is physical brain activity, but there\u0026rsquo;s a remaining hard problem of consciousness posed by the conscious properties of perception and feeling known as qualia, which distinguish unconscious zombies that could behave just like us from real people. He gave Deepak Chopra as an example of an individual who is essentially a denialist about contemporary neuroscience, an anti-materialist who supports \u0026ldquo;quantum woo,\u0026rdquo; Eastern mysticism, and what he called \u0026ldquo;substrate consciousness,\u0026rdquo; a feature of the universe itself.\nEvidence from neuroscience\nNovella gave the following points to summarize the evidence from neuroscience:\nBrain anatomy and activity correlates with mental activity.There is no mind without the brain.Brain development correlates with mental development.If you damage the brain, you damage the mind.Different states of consciousness correlate with different brain states.Turn off the brain and you turn off the mind.The mind does not survive the death of the brain.MEG (magnetoencephalography) can be used to provoke specific mental effects, including inducing out-of-body experiences at will.My notes on the last point suggest that Novella said that MEG could be used to induce OBEs. There were a couple of recent studies about two different methods for inducing OBEs, but I don\u0026rsquo;t recall either of them using magnetic induction (e.g., this 2007 Science paper). I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of Michael Persinger\u0026rsquo;s claims of magnetic induction of religious experiences (also see this 2004 Nature article).\nWe\u0026rsquo;re in the process of reverse-engineering the brain, and the materialist model of consciousness is working pretty well. The elements of consciousness are increasingly identifiable and localizable, and our ability to reconstruct them in artificial intelligence will be the ultimate test.\nNovella defined consciousness as the moment-to-moment functions of the brain, when it is processing information reflectively, and presenting it to the part of the brain that is paying attention. (Is it really commonly accepted that attention is localized to a particular part of the brain?) We are trying to assess our consciousness with our consciousness.\nThe vitalism analogy\nNovella stated, referencing Daniel Dennett, that just as life is an emergent property of living things, consciousness is the sum of the easy problems about consciousness, leaving no remaining residue of a hard problem, just as there is no elan vital for biology.\nEgnorance\nNovella then talked about neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who he said makes the mistake of confusing the question of \u0026ldquo;does\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;how.\u0026rdquo; That is, because we don\u0026rsquo;t know the details of how consciousness is physically generated, it must not be the case. He compared this to the \u0026ldquo;God of the gaps\u0026rdquo; argument\u0026ndash;whatever is currently unexplained must be caused by something supernatural.\nDefenses of dualism\nNovella then went through a few rhetorical strategies used to defend dualism. One is that any day now, evolution (or materialism) will collapse. But they\u0026rsquo;ve been saying this in the evolution case for 100 years. (Glenn Morton has a nice article titled \u0026ldquo;The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism,\u0026quot; which offers 178 years of such quotes.)\nAnother is to generate false controversy, and say that until the argument is resolved, it\u0026rsquo;s legitimate to accept dualism.\nThen there\u0026rsquo;s the claim of impending acceptance, the converse of the imminent demise argument\u0026ndash;that Deepak Chopra\u0026rsquo;s views are about to be accepted by the entire world, for example.\nThe need to change science\u0026ndash;Novella said that B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist, has argued that we need to reintroduce subjective evidence into science. Novella suggested that subjective evidence can\u0026rsquo;t be scientific evidence, which I think is a slight overstatement\u0026ndash;a self report is a valid source of data, we just need to have a way to correlate those self reports with other evidence.\nIn his conclusion, Novella stated that the purpose of modern Cartesian dualism is to provide intellectual cover for a belief system\u0026ndash;presumably including various religious views about immortality as well as Deepak Chopra\u0026rsquo;s views.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that Keith Augustine of the Internet Infidels has done a lot of work presenting the evidence against survival of death and the possibility of immortality, as well as critical of claims that near-death experiences are evidence of survival. He has recently published a four-part series of articles in the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the subject, which have been accompanied by responses from NDE researchers. He is also working on an anthology which will respond to recent arguments for dualism. I urge Novella to contact Augustine, as he might have some contribution to make to that anthology.\nJeff Wagg\nJeff Wagg of JREF stated that there is a possibility of a future TAM in the UK, and that TAM7 will be in Las Vegas on July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Casino. There will also be a JREF Mexican Riviera cruise in March, 2009, which still is looking for speakers.\nJim Underdown\nJim Underdown of the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles reported that the Independent Investigations Group, a skeptical group that does paranormal investigations, would be giving an award for best TV show or movie that debunks pseudoscience to Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s Bullshit!, and a lifetime achievement award to James Randi.\nRandi came up and said that some years ago he had terminated his relationship with CSICOP because they had asked him to stop going after Uri Geller, who was suing him repeatedly (and had also sued CSICOP as a result). Randi said that Geller only won once, in the Japan case, where the judgment was lowered from slander to insult, and that while Geller was suing for millions he was only awarded a small amount. The amount was 500,000 yen against Randi, and a larger amount against the Japanese magazine which reported Randi\u0026rsquo;s erroneous statement that Dr. Wilbur Franklin of Kent State University had killed himself after Randi discredited Geller, who Franklin had endorsed as genuine. Franklin had actually died of natural causes, and Randi attributed the Japanese magazine statement to a mistranslation of the phrase \u0026ldquo;shot himself in the foot,\u0026rdquo; though Randi had been quoted in a U.S. publication in English making the same statement about Franklin killing himself out of embarrassment over Geller\u0026rsquo;s exposure. Geller also won a case in Hungary for a statement by Randi that called Geller a swindler, though Randi was not named in that suit. After Geller sued Victor Stenger in Hawaii, CSICOP and Prometheus in England, and CSICOP and Prometheus in Miami, Prometheus Books added errata slips to Stenger\u0026rsquo;s Physics and Psychics and to Randi\u0026rsquo;s The Truth About Uri Geller regarding an incident where Geller was sued in Israel for breach of contract and not, as those two sources stated (Stenger relying upon Randi), \u0026ldquo;arrested.\u0026rdquo; The Miami suit was eventually won by Prometheus and CSICOP on the grounds that Geller had knowingly filed after the statute of limitations had expired, and Geller paid them slightly less than half of the fees, costs and sanctions that were originally awarded and dismissed his appeal. Contrary to the impression Randi has sometimes given, the vast majority of Geller\u0026rsquo;s lawsuits were not about paranormal abilities, but about accusations of other kinds of impropriety, such as fraud, criminal acts, plagiarism, and so forth. Geller gives his version of events on his web page.\nNow, apparently as a result of this award, Randi said he would like to forgive and forget, and resume his relationship with CSICOP (now CSI).\nThe Skeptologists\nDuring lunch was a showing of the full pilot episode of \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026rdquo; which also included a segment on the tools used for ghost hunting, testing them aboard the Queen Mary in order to see what they actually measure. I missed all but the ending, but it was shown again on Sunday, about which more later.\nThere were several more speakers on Saturday\u0026ndash;Phil Plait, Adam Savage, Matthew Chapman, Richard Wiseman, and a panel discussion ostensibly on \u0026ldquo;the limits of skepticism,\u0026rdquo; but I\u0026rsquo;ll save that for further summary tomorrow.\nOn to TAM6 summary, part four.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part three of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eintro\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFriday night was my one late night out, as I went with a group of Denver and Boston skeptics (and one local friend) to Gallagher\u0026rsquo;s Steakhouse at the New York, New York Casino.  On the walk down the strip, we passed some 9/11 truthers holding signs promoting a website promoting their views.  I told one that he should check out \u003ca href=\"http://www.911myths.com/\"\u003e911myths.com\u003c/a\u003e, to which he responded, \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s funny.\u0026rdquo;  He ended up going off on a rant about how I was sticking my head in the sand, to which Iunproductively  responded in an off-color manner about where he was sticking his head.  We had a fantastic, though expensive, meal, and I ended up leaving my camera at the restaurant.  Fortunately, I was able to retrieve it even though the restaurant had closed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSaturday morning I had breakfast with an attorney from Florida and a regular attendee of hacker\u0026rsquo;s conferences from Pennsylvania; we talked a bit about criminal hacking on the Internet and \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/disney-characters-explain-copyright-law.html\"\u003ecopyright law\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMichael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe in unseen things\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Shermer gave the first talk of the day.  He began by talking about how he recently accepted some money from the Templeton Foundation in return for editing \u003ca href=\"http://www.templeton.org/belief/\"\u003ea booklet of thirteen essays on the question \u0026ldquo;Does science make belief in God obsolete?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e, which he agreed to do on the condition that he could pick at least some of the people to write answers to the question.  Respondents included Kenneth Miller, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Pinker, and Stuart Kauffman.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then showed a segment from a TV show pilot, \u003ca href=\"http://skeptologists.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e that is now being pitched to the TV networks.  The show features Yau-Man Chan, Mark Edward, Steven Novella, Phil Plait, Kirsten Sanford, Michael Shermer, and Brian Dunning investigating claims using the tools of skepticism.  The segment shown was of Shermer, Sanford, and Novella investigating health claims made for wheat grass, such as that because it contains chlorophyll which is molecularly similar to hemoglobin, it turns into hemoglobin when you consume it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShermer then went on to give a talk about \u0026ldquo;why people believe in unseen things,\u0026rdquo; arguing that we engage in learning by association (something illustrated by Banachek\u0026rsquo;s memory workshop) and have a tendency to make type II errors (incorrectly accepting a belief in something false) over type I errors (incorrectly rejecting a belief in something true).  He gave a brief review of some evidence that when we process a sentence in order to understand it, we go through the same steps as entertaining that it is true, and to exercise skepticism about it requires additional effort; disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection after the process of comprehension.  This kind of acceptance of knowledge presented by others makes sense for a child growing up, especially in a hostile environment where survival is at stake.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHumans also tend not to be persuaded by or even remember being told that something is false\u0026ndash;the negation can be forgotten while the statement being denied is remembered as true.  A flyer put out by the CDC to rebut myths about flu vaccines turned out to have \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/memory-and-persistence-of-falsehood.html\"\u003ethe opposite of the desired effect, at least by certain groups of people\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;after 30 minutes, they remembered 28% of the false statements as being true, and after three days the percentage jumped to 40%.  (Also see Sam Wang and Sandra Amodt\u0026rsquo;s op-ed in the June 27, 2008 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/27aamodt.html?em\u0026amp;ex=1214884800\u0026amp;en=9b34d24b60bc382e\u0026amp;ei=5087%0A\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Your Brain Lies to You.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShermer didn\u0026rsquo;t mention the study I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, but rather later near the end of his talk referred to some \u003ca href=\"http://www.samharris.org/images/uploads/Harris_Sheth_Cohen.pdf\"\u003efMRI studies by Sam Harris, Sameer Sheth, and Mark Cohen\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) about evaluating statements as true, false, or undecideable, comparing reaction times to different types of statements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAgency and the intentional stance\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShermer talked about the work of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R2J6GZ9ATK4MW0/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm/jimlippardswebpaA/\"\u003ePascal Boyer\u003c/a\u003e and Daniel Dennett on agency and the intentional stance\u0026ndash;that we tend to assume by default that everything that happens not only has a cause, but is caused by an agent, and particularly one that means us harm.  Such an assumption may make evolutionary sense to enable survival, though it clearly doesn\u0026rsquo;t work well for accurate explanations of the world.  But such appeal of agency lies behind intelligent design theory, and attributing supernatural intentions to natural phenomena.  Shermer called this \u0026ldquo;The God Illusion\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;delusion,\u0026rdquo; because he, like Boyer and Dennett, see it as a normal cognitive illusion rather than something delusional or pathological.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe went on to talk about folk intuitions as being the engines of all sorts of beliefs.  He gave examples from folk astronomy, folk biology (the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eelan vital\u003c/span\u003e), folk psychology (mind/brain dualism), and folk economics (centrally planned economies).  He compared natural selection and Adam Smith\u0026rsquo;s invisible hand, observing that many people misconstrue one or the other as being something magical or directed.  He observed that we have folk intuitions that have evolved for a particular environment, yet do not work well at the huge or tiny scales.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen, more controversially, he referred to folk politics, viewing societies as an extension of the family, and referred to \u0026ldquo;intelligent government theory,\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;God of the government\u0026rdquo; theory, and \u0026ldquo;the government illusion,\u0026rdquo; drawing an analogy to intelligent design, God of the gaps, and the God illusion, respectively.  But where intelligent design says \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how X could have evolved, therefore it must have been designed,\u0026rdquo; he described \u0026ldquo;intelligent government theory\u0026rdquo; as based on the faulty reasoning that \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how X could be done privately, therefore a government must do it.\u0026rdquo;  The difference here, as I\u0026rsquo;ve already mentioned, is that we know that governments exist and do provide services.  The libertarian argument about private provision of services vs. government provision of services is one about whether government is necessary, or moral, or more efficient than private provision of services.  To my mind, such arguments are well worth having, but come down to questions of competing values (e.g., liberty vs. justice) and empirical evidence about costs and benefits of competing approaches.  It\u0026rsquo;s not really analogous to the question of the existence or nonexistence of gods, unless perhaps one takes that to partly be an issue about the pragmatic value of belief in an illusion vs. truth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSharon Begley\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e science writer Sharon Begley gave a talk titled \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Other Weird Beliefs: The Role of the Press,\u0026rdquo; with a subtitle \u0026ldquo;hint: don\u0026rsquo;t get your hopes up.\u0026rdquo;  She was very pessimistic about the press being helpful in promoting critical thinking.  She began by telling the story of the Tichbourne Claimant.  In 1854, Roger Tichbourne was lost at sea off the coast of Brazil.  He had been raised in France to the age of 16, then in England.  He was very thin, and had blue eyes and tattoos.  His mother refused to accept that he was dead, and placed ads in newspapers seeking him.  Some 20 years later, a man from Wagga Wagga, Australia contacted her, claiming that he had not previously contacted her because he wanted to achieve success on his own accord, under the name \u0026ldquo;Mr. Castro,\u0026rdquo; but had failed to do so.  This man, the Tichbourne Claimant, was obese, spoke no French, had no tattoos, had brown eyes, and was an inch taller than Roger Tichbourne, yet she accepted him as the genuine article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccording to Begley, the role of the newspaper is not to educate.  In the early years of the AIDS crisis, public health officials asked for the press to run informative stories, and they complied, but this was not helpful because:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe scientific ignorance of the American public.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe capacity for rational thnking is not identical to the disposition to employ rational thinking.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere is a disconnect between factual knowledge and belief, as exhibited in the case of Mrs. Tichbourne.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePublic attitudes towards the press are negative.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe press has a commitment to \u0026ldquo;balance.\u0026quot;\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCommon sense is not common.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eShe gave \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html\"\u003esome statistics on polls of Americans\u0026rsquo; agreement or disagreement with the statement that \u0026ldquo;Human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1985:  45% agreed, 48% disagreed, 7% unsure.\u003cbr /\u003e2005: 40% agreed, 39% disagreed, 21% unsure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy comparison the percentage of agreement in Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden was over 80%; of OECD nations only Turkey had a lower percentage of acceptance than the U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEvolution, gay marriage, and abortion are all highly politicized in the U.S. in a way that they aren\u0026rsquo;t in Europe or Japan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut if the question was \u0026ldquo;Can natural selection explain appearance and change over time of animals,\u0026rdquo; 78% of Americans agreed.  Yet 62% agree that \u0026ldquo;God created humans as they are today.\u0026rdquo;  This, according to Begley, is because Americans have a view of human exceptionalism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe went through a list of facts that are beyond dispute, which were presented to Americans for acceptance or denial.  Two examples:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in mice.  33% agree\u003cbr /\u003eMore than half of all genes in humans are identical to those in chimps.  38% agree\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnly 9% of Americans know what a molecule is.  Because of this, while sports writers can use abbreviations such as ERA and RBI without explaining them, Begley says she cannot assume her readers know anything at all, and recently learned that she can\u0026rsquo;t even refer to DNA and expect her readers to know what she\u0026rsquo;s talking about.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe observed that a disposition to critical thinking is associated with being more curious, open-minded, open to new experiences, conscientiousness, being less dogmatic, less close-minded, less authoritarian, and likely to rely more on epirical and rational data than on intution and emotion when weighing information and reaching conclusions.  But you have to both have the skills and want to think critically in order to apply them.  In addition to Tichbourne as an example of someone who had the skills but didn\u0026rsquo;t want to apply them, she noted that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u0026rsquo;s son was killed two weeks before the end of WWI, and he went to a medium who claimed to contact his son, which he very much wanted to believe.  Alfred Russell Wallace, who formulated evolution by natural selection parallel to Darwin, was also a believer in ghosts, levitation, spirit photography, and clairvoyance.  And she noted that a statement Penn Jillette made the previous day sounded like he was rejecting climate change on the basis of a dislike for Al Gore.  (UPDATE, July 4, 2008:  Sharon Begley \u003ca href=\"http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2008/06/27/penn-teller-and-believing-in-dumb-things.aspx\"\u003ewrote about this at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e blog\u003c/a\u003e, and Penn Jillette \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jillette3-2008jul03,0,2324899.story\"\u003eresponded in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  I think Penn more accurately reports what happened than Sharon Begley did\u0026ndash;he really did say that he didn\u0026rsquo;t know, and that people he knows and considers reliable tell him that anthropogenic climate change is real.  One thing Penn gets wrong is that Teller didn\u0026rsquo;t mention Gore\u0026rsquo;s name when he said that carbon credits are \u0026ldquo;bullshit modeled on indulgences.\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe commented on some of the negative letters she has received any time she writes about evolution or critically about claims like alien abductions.  When she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about the discovery of Tiktaalik, she received several letters which she read excerpts of, three examples of which were the standard argument that \u0026ldquo;evolution requires more faith\u0026rdquo; than believing that God did it, a letter asking \u0026ldquo;where are the billions of \u0026rsquo;transition fossils,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and one asking, \u0026ldquo;if you are terminal will you call on Darwin or God?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t count on the press\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;reality-based community\u0026rdquo; must contend with contrarian politicians, the masses\u0026rsquo; distrust of elites, and new sources of news.  With regard to the last point, she pointed out that Googling evolutionary biology terms often brings up Answers in Genesis sites prior to sites with accurate information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe journalistic conceit of objectivity, she said, is imported from political disputes where there are two contrary sides.  (I actually think that notion of balance is as often mistaken in politics as it is in science\u0026ndash;there may only be one side with any valid support, or there may be more than two sides deserving of representation, though the latter is more common in politics than in science.  But dualism is a misrepresentation in both circumstances.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUncommon common sense\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBegley made the following points, which had some overlap with Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eEvolution is not intuitive.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCommon sense can mislead us about the physical world.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOur brains are driven to see patterns.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWe have a habit of imputing consciousness to inanimate objects.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSomeone is staring at me from behind.  (People tend to have and respond to such feelings.  I can\u0026rsquo;t remember if she actually discussed Rupert Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s studies of this, or of the skeptical critiques by Robert Baker or \u003ca href=\"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_n3_v61/ai_20749205\"\u003eRichard Wiseman\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eShe gave the example of an experiment with a sweater at Bristol University.  Students were shown a ratty old sweater and asked who would be willing to put it on in return for a payment of twenty British pounds.  Most indicated a willingness to do so.  But if they were then told, oh, by the way, this sweater belonged to a murderer, many of the hands would go down\u0026ndash;as though evil were a property that contaminated the object.  What she didn\u0026rsquo;t mention is that similarly, the value of something associated with someone of status has the reverse effect\u0026ndash;e.g., if the sweater were claimed to belong to Einstein.  The effect of status on objects is one that is clearly prevalent even among skeptics, who are as likely as anyone to enjoy collecting autographs and memorabilia, or objects like ping pong balls used on a television show (see Adam Savage\u0026rsquo;s talk, below).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDerek and Swoopy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDerek and Swoopy, the hosts of the official Skeptics Society podcast, \u0026ldquo;Skepticality,\u0026rdquo; gave a short talk about their show and noted that they now have about 35,000 listeners per program, and that the top two skeptics\u0026rsquo; podcasts, \u0026ldquo;Skepticality\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Skeptics Guide to the Universe,\u0026rdquo; have over 4 million downloads between them.  They reported that after some successful skeptical panels at science fiction conventions, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dragoncon.org/\"\u003eDragon*Con 2008 in Atlanta\u003c/a\u003e this Labor Day weekend, a conference so large that it occurs at four hotels, will have \u003ca href=\"http://www.dragoncon.org/fan_tracks.php#SKEPTIC\"\u003efour full days of skeptical content, a \u0026ldquo;Skeptrack\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e featuring James Randi, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Ben Radford, Alison Smith, George Hrab, and others.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSteven Novella\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Novella gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Dualism and Creationism\u0026rdquo; covering the history of dualism in philosophy of mind, evidence from neuroscience, and a discussion of modern dualism.  In his discussion of dualism in philosophy, he attributed to Descartes a notion of computation occurring in the brain and a position he called \u0026ldquo;consciousness dualism.\u0026rdquo;  I think perhaps that gives Descartes too much credit, though he did think that \u0026ldquo;animal spirits\u0026rdquo; flowing in the brain caused signals from perception to be projected on the surface of the pineal gland, which was the seat of the soul and consciousness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe referred to the advocacy of property dualism/epiphenomenalism by David Chalmers, and observed that his views would not be acceptable to most of those who advocate dualism.  Chalmers\u0026rsquo;s position is that most mental activity is physical brain activity, but there\u0026rsquo;s a remaining hard problem of consciousness posed by the conscious properties of perception and feeling known as qualia, which distinguish unconscious zombies that could behave just like us from real people.  He gave Deepak Chopra as an example of an individual who is essentially a denialist about contemporary neuroscience, an anti-materialist who supports \u0026ldquo;quantum woo,\u0026rdquo; Eastern mysticism, and what he called \u0026ldquo;substrate consciousness,\u0026rdquo; a feature of the universe itself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEvidence from neuroscience\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella gave the following points to summarize the evidence from neuroscience:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eBrain anatomy and activity correlates with mental activity.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThere is no mind without the brain.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBrain development correlates with mental development.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIf you damage the brain, you damage the mind.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDifferent states of consciousness correlate with different brain states.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTurn off the brain and you turn off the mind.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe mind does not survive the death of the brain.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMEG (magnetoencephalography) can be used to provoke specific mental effects, including inducing out-of-body experiences at will.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eMy notes on the last point suggest that Novella said that MEG could be used to induce OBEs.  There were a couple of recent studies about two different methods for inducing OBEs, but I don\u0026rsquo;t recall either of them using magnetic induction (e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5841/1048\"\u003ethis 2007 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e paper\u003c/a\u003e).  I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2165004/\"\u003eMichael Persinger\u0026rsquo;s claims of magnetic induction of religious experiences\u003c/a\u003e (also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/news041206-10.html\"\u003ethis 2004 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re in the process of reverse-engineering the brain, and the materialist model of consciousness is working pretty well.  The elements of consciousness are increasingly identifiable and localizable, and our ability to reconstruct them in artificial intelligence will be the ultimate test.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella defined consciousness as the moment-to-moment functions of the brain, when it is processing information reflectively, and presenting it to the part of the brain that is paying attention.  (Is it really commonly accepted that attention is localized to a particular part of the brain?)  We are trying to assess our consciousness with our consciousness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe vitalism analogy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella stated, referencing Daniel Dennett, that just as life is an emergent property of living things, consciousness is the sum of the easy problems about consciousness, leaving no remaining residue of a hard problem, just as there is no \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eelan vital\u003c/span\u003e for biology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEgnorance\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella then talked about neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who he said makes the mistake of confusing the question of \u0026ldquo;does\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;how.\u0026rdquo;  That is, because we don\u0026rsquo;t know the details of how consciousness is physically generated, it must not be the case.  He compared this to the \u0026ldquo;God of the gaps\u0026rdquo; argument\u0026ndash;whatever is currently unexplained must be caused by something supernatural.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDefenses of dualism\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovella then went through a few rhetorical strategies used to defend dualism.  One is that any day now, evolution (or materialism) will collapse.  But they\u0026rsquo;ve been saying this in the evolution case for 100 years.  (Glenn Morton has a nice article titled \u003ca href=\"http://home.entouch.net/dmd/moreandmore.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which offers 178 years of such quotes.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother is to generate false controversy, and say that until the argument is resolved, it\u0026rsquo;s legitimate to accept dualism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen there\u0026rsquo;s the claim of impending acceptance, the converse of the imminent demise argument\u0026ndash;that Deepak Chopra\u0026rsquo;s views are about to be accepted by the entire world, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe need to change science\u0026ndash;Novella said that B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist, has argued that we need to reintroduce subjective evidence into science.  Novella suggested that subjective evidence can\u0026rsquo;t be scientific evidence, which I think is a slight overstatement\u0026ndash;a self report is a valid source of data, we just need to have a way to correlate those self reports with other evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn his conclusion, Novella stated that the purpose of modern Cartesian dualism is to provide intellectual cover for a belief system\u0026ndash;presumably including various religious views about immortality as well as Deepak Chopra\u0026rsquo;s views.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that Keith Augustine of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e has done a lot of work presenting the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/immortality.html\"\u003eevidence against survival of death and the possibility of immortality\u003c/a\u003e, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html\"\u003ecritical of claims that near-death experiences are evidence of survival\u003c/a\u003e.  He has recently published a four-part \u003ca href=\"http://www.iands.org/pubs/jnds/jnds25.html\"\u003eseries\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.iands.org/content/view/481/332/\"\u003earticles\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Near-Death Studies\u003c/span\u003e on the subject, which have been accompanied by responses from NDE researchers.  He is also working on an anthology which will respond to recent arguments for dualism.  I urge Novella to contact Augustine, as he might have some contribution to make to that anthology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJeff Wagg\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeff Wagg of JREF stated that there is a possibility of a future TAM in the UK, and that TAM7 will be in Las Vegas on July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Casino.  There will also be a JREF Mexican Riviera cruise in March, 2009, which still is looking for speakers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJim Underdown\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim Underdown of the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles reported that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.iigwest.org/\"\u003eIndependent Investigations Group\u003c/a\u003e, a skeptical group that does paranormal investigations, would be giving an award for best TV show or movie that debunks pseudoscience to Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBullshit!\u003c/span\u003e, and a lifetime achievement award to James Randi.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRandi came up and said that some years ago he had terminated his relationship with CSICOP because they had asked him to stop going after Uri Geller, who was suing him repeatedly (and had also sued CSICOP as a result).  Randi said that Geller only won once, in the Japan case, where the judgment was lowered from slander to insult, and that while Geller was suing for millions he was only awarded a small amount.  The amount was 500,000 yen against Randi, and a larger amount against the Japanese magazine which reported Randi\u0026rsquo;s erroneous statement that Dr. Wilbur Franklin of Kent State University had killed himself after Randi discredited Geller, who Franklin had endorsed as genuine.  Franklin had actually died of natural causes, and Randi attributed the Japanese magazine statement to a mistranslation of the phrase \u0026ldquo;shot himself in the foot,\u0026rdquo; though Randi had been quoted in a U.S. publication in English making the same statement about Franklin killing himself out of embarrassment over Geller\u0026rsquo;s exposure.  Geller also won a case in Hungary for a statement by Randi that called Geller a swindler, though Randi was not named in that suit.  After Geller sued Victor Stenger in Hawaii, CSICOP and Prometheus in England, and CSICOP and Prometheus in Miami, Prometheus Books added errata slips to Stenger\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhysics and Psychics\u003c/span\u003e and to Randi\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Truth About Uri Geller\u003c/span\u003e regarding an incident where Geller was sued in Israel for breach of contract and not, as those two sources stated (Stenger relying upon Randi), \u0026ldquo;arrested.\u0026rdquo;  The Miami suit was eventually won by Prometheus and CSICOP on the grounds that Geller had knowingly filed after the statute of limitations had expired, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/articles/uri_dis.html\"\u003eGeller paid them slightly less than half of the fees, costs and sanctions that were originally awarded and dismissed his appeal\u003c/a\u003e. Contrary to the impression Randi has sometimes given, the vast majority of Geller\u0026rsquo;s lawsuits were not about paranormal abilities, but about accusations of other kinds of impropriety, such as fraud, criminal acts, plagiarism, and so forth.  Geller gives \u003ca href=\"http://www.uri-geller.com/courts.htm\"\u003ehis version of events on his web page\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, apparently as a result of this award, Randi said he would like to forgive and forget, and resume his relationship with CSICOP (now CSI).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Skeptologists\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDuring lunch was a showing of the full pilot episode of \u0026ldquo;The Skeptologists,\u0026rdquo; which also included a segment on the tools used for ghost hunting, testing them aboard the Queen Mary in order to see what they actually measure.  I missed all but the ending, but it was shown again on Sunday, about which more later.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere were several more speakers on Saturday\u0026ndash;Phil Plait, Adam Savage, Matthew Chapman, Richard Wiseman, and a panel discussion ostensibly on \u0026ldquo;the limits of skepticism,\u0026rdquo; but I\u0026rsquo;ll save that for further summary tomorrow.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn to TAM6 summary, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part three"},{"content":"This is part two of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part three, part four, part five).\nFriday, the conference gets started\nMore skeptics from around the world began to show up on Friday. Checking in at the registration desk entitled each person to a name badge, a folder of materials, a laser pointer/reading light (which many put to use during the conference, sometimes to the irritation of a speaker or emcee Hal Bidlack), and a copy of An Objectivist Secular Reader, edited by Dr. Edward Hudgins. The book argues for common cause between skeptics and Objectivists \u0026ldquo;and the often-related libertarian perspective.\u0026rdquo; I happened to sit next to Hudgins through part of the conference, and spoke to him a bit between sessions, and found that we have some common friends and acquaintances. He said that he thinks the libertarian viewpoint does fit well with skepticism, which was a point made later in the conference by Michael Shermer by drawing an analogy between anti-authoritarianism in the religious sphere to anti-authoritarianism in the political sphere\u0026ndash;but of course governments actually exist, so the real underlying question is what legitimizes or justifies authority, which is a question also relevant in the scientific sphere. I\u0026rsquo;ll say more about this later when I summarize Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk.\nHudgins was working on a presentation for an upcoming speaking event which included statistics about changes in U.S. religious demographics over the last several decades, showing a rise in nonbelief. I asked to look at one page that showed a breakdown of U.S. religious adherents by sect, and pointed out the huge growth among Pentecostals (something I\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about here). This growth indicates to me that there\u0026rsquo;s more to religion than dogma and doctrine, and that a purely intellectual critique of beliefs and practices that are held for reasons that involve emotion and community is doomed to failure.\nI think that one of skepticism\u0026rsquo;s strengths is that it is a method, not a doctrine, and that turning it into dogma or trying to link it to a specific set of conclusions about religion or politics (or science, for that matter) is an enormous mistake that serves only to limit its appeal. Skepticism is at its best when it teaches people to think critically for themselves and at its worst when it tells people what to think. I\u0026rsquo;ll have more to say on this subject when I summarize Sunday\u0026rsquo;s talks, which included one by Don Nyberg railing against \u0026ldquo;religious pseudoscience.\u0026quot;\nFriday morning I sat down to breakfast with a young couple from Texas, whose names unfortunately escape me. He had just completed a semester of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she had finished a degree in neuroscience. We were soon joined by Tony, an Australian who had been living with his partner in Mexico City for the last several years and was now on his way back to Australia by way of a trip around the world. There was a strong international presence at the conference, with dozens of Australians in particular, probably due to the strength of the Australian Skeptics organization.\nAfter breakfast, I went up to the conference room to hear the end of the recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast which was being recorded live in the room, but somehow I completely failed to meet Steven Novella, one of the podcast\u0026rsquo;s hosts, through the entire conference. I had hoped to at least say hello and introduce myself, since we were cosigners of a letter to Skeptical Inquirer back in 1999.\nHal Bidlack opens the event\nThe conference officially kicked off with an introduction by Hal Bidlack, who is running for Congress in Colorado Springs, CO, a part of the country which would be greatly helped by a critically thinking legislator. He mentioned that two prominent skeptics have died since the last conference, Arthur C. Clarke and Jerry Andrus. Andrus was a regular attendee of Skeptics Society conferences and JREF conferences, known for setting up his optical illusions and his willingness to explain them patiently to all.\nRandi\u0026rsquo;s welcome\nHal then introduced James Randi, who was looking more frail than the last time I saw him in person, though he said that his health is much better than it has been in the recent past. Randi pointed out that a light, a chair, and a table commemorating Jerry Andrus and his illusions was set up in the back corner of the conference room, and will be set up at future Amazing Meetings as well\u0026ndash;while noting that this is for us to remember Jerry.\nRandi announced that the JREF library is up to 2282 books, that this conference had about 900 attendees, and that it attracts more women and young people than any other skeptics conference. My impressions supported that conclusion. He also stated that there are UK and Dutch skeptical TV series in the works, and ended by saying that he wanted everyone at the conference to come up, greet him, and shake his hand (which I had already done on Thursday when I ran into him by the registration desk).\nBen Goldacre on homeopathy\nThe first official conference presentation was by Ben Goldacre, M.D. of www.badscience.net, who spoke about \u0026ldquo;squabbles about homeopathy.\u0026rdquo; Goldacre described the basic arguments against homeopathy. The main argument against it is that its extreme dilutions are so extreme that a single molecule of a 30C diluted substance would be found in not an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but in ten thousand million million million million pools. A 55C dilution would be equivalent to a universe-sized sphere filled with water with a single molecule of the diluted substance in it. Goldacre observed that a label of a homeopathic remedy that says it is safe because it contains \u0026ldquo;less than 1 ppm\u0026rdquo; of the diluted substance is quite an understatement. The homeopaths respond that this is irrelevant; what makes the homeopathic remedy work is that \u0026ldquo;water has memory,\u0026rdquo; and its structure has somehow changed to reflect being in contact with the diluted substance. But, Goldacre asked, why does it remember the remedy and not, say, having been in Nelson\u0026rsquo;s colon or the Queen\u0026rsquo;s bladder, or in contact with countless other substances? The homeopathic answer to that is that the memory only comes into effect through \u0026ldquo;succussion,\u0026rdquo; when the remedy is in the water and the container is banged ten times firmly against a wooden striking board (for instance).\nAs homeopaths do want to present their work as scientific, they have been willing to engage with skeptics. Goldacre reported that his website was given permission to reprint papers from the journal Homeopathy on water memory, which were then critiqued in the JREF Forums, and the critiques assembled into a response which was submitted to and published in the same journal.\nBut Goldacre points out that the standard anti-homeopathy arguments have been made at least since John Forbes, Queen Victoria\u0026rsquo;s physician, made them in 1846, but they have proven ineffective in persuading homeopaths and users of homeopathic remedies from giving them up. He says the arguments are \u0026ldquo;irrelevant,\u0026rdquo; because homeopaths are persuaded that their remedies actually work. But that\u0026rsquo;s just not so, he argued. While one might think that homeopathy is like anesthetics where we don\u0026rsquo;t know how it works but it does, with homeopathy we have no good explanation for how it could work and we also have evidence that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work any better than a placebo.\nHe then went on to talk about how the placebo effect is a genuinely fascinating scientific anomaly far more worthy of interest than homeopathy. In pain relief, four sugar pills are more effective than two, salt water injection is more effective than sugar pills, and commercial packaging make placebos more effective. He argued that the extent to which homeopathy works is indistinguishable from the placebo effect, as demonstrated by a proper meta-analysis of homeopathic trials, reducing the weight of those which have flaws such as poor randomization and poor blinding.\nKeynote by Neil deGrasse Tyson\nNeil deGrasse Tyson, who was clearly the rock star of skepticism at the reception on Thursday night, surrounded by adoring fans (perhaps it was his hat, as P.Z. Myers suggests), gave the keynote address to the conference. When he began, many people had been shining their laser pointers on the wall above the stage, and Tyson informed the audience that he would express his \u0026ldquo;geek dominance.\u0026rdquo; He instructed everyone to point their laser pointers above the door on the opposite side of the room. Once everyone had done so, he pulled out his laser pointer\u0026ndash;shining from farther away than anyone else, since he was up on stage\u0026ndash;and shined a large green dot that outshone all of the red dots.\nTyson\u0026rsquo;s talk was called either \u0026ldquo;Adventures in Science Illiteracy\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Brain Droppings of a Skeptic\u0026rdquo; (a title cribbed from George Carlin). He began by saying that he had something to do with Pluto\u0026rsquo;s demotion from being a planet, and that anybody who didn\u0026rsquo;t like it should \u0026ldquo;get over it.\u0026rdquo; The rest of his talk wandered over a large range of topics that have come up in the Q\u0026amp;A sessions of his lectures:\nUFO Sightings: When people say they\u0026rsquo;ve seen a UFO, be sure to remind them what the \u0026ldquo;U\u0026rdquo; stands for. Typically, those who claim they\u0026rsquo;ve seen a UFO start by saying it was unidentified, then end up \u0026ldquo;inventing knowledge of everything\u0026rdquo; about it being an extraterrestrial spacecraft.\nAlien Abductions: Tyson said that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science (though it\u0026rsquo;s certainly not worthless, and even the scientific literature is a form of testimony about the results of experiments). He pulled out his iPhone and said that if he had one of these 10 years ago, he\u0026rsquo;d have been burned at the stake. If you get abducted by a UFO, you should take something not of this earth in order to prove your alien contact. He showed a slide of a cover of the book \u0026ldquo;How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction\u0026rdquo; and said that \u0026ldquo;I bought it, read it, and heeded its advice\u0026ndash;and I have not been abducted.\u0026quot;\nInept Aliens: They travel trillions of miles to get here, then crash.\nConspiracy Theory: They tend to tacitly admit insufficient data. If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.\nAstrology: If you read a horoscope to a group of people and ask if it describes them, approximately 2/3 will agree that it fits them. Most Scorpios are actually Ophiuchans.\nBirth Rates and Full Moons: Average human gestation is 295 days; the lunar cycle is 29.5 days. Full moon birth = full moon impregnation.\nBehavior and Full Moons: The pressure of an extra pillow is a trillion times greater than the tidal force on a cranium.\nSurviving Terminal Cancer: If someone gets three diagnoses from physicians giving them 5-7 months to live, then lives for five years, they credit God for their survival, rather than blaming doctors for a poor diagnosis.\nSwami Levitation: Tyson suggest 1,000 cans of baked beans would generate sufficient flatulence to become airborne.\nMoon Hoax: Modern technology is so advanced that some people can\u0026rsquo;t believe it. But if you learn the rocket equation and look at how much fuel was in the Saturn V, if the launch was fake, what was all that fuel for?\nMars \u0026ldquo;Virus\u0026rdquo;: In 2003, the Earth was the closest it had been to Mars than in the previous 60,000 years, which led to multiple stories (including in subsequent years) that some virus would jump from Mars to Earth. Tyson pointed to the side and said \u0026ldquo;Japan is that way.\u0026rdquo; He jumped a few feet to the side in that direction, and then said he is now as much closer to Japan as Mars came to the Earth from its average distance.\nFear of Numbers: 80% of building on Broadway in NYC have no 13th floor, due to an irrational fear of the number 13. (Yet who actually does fear 13?) And why don\u0026rsquo;t we use negative numbers on elevators for subfloors? Or negative numbers in financial ledgers, instead of parentheses? (Actually, I suspect that\u0026rsquo;s to avoid ambiguity with hyphens in dollar ranges, rather than a fear of negative numbers.)\nNaming Rights: Tyson pointed out countries that put scientists on their money\u0026ndash;Isaac Newton on the English one-pound note, Einstein on Israeli money. The U.S. has only one scientist\u0026ndash;Ben Franklin\u0026ndash;on money, on the $100 bill, but with no symbolism to represent his scientific work\u0026ndash;no kite, no key, no lightning rod. He also pointed to Gauss and the Gaussian distribution on British money as British support of science, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, points out that the financial field goes grossly astray by trying to using Gaussian distributions to describe phenomena that are not Gaussian. Taleb points to Gauss on British money as ironic and inept rather than pro-science.\nTyson also looked at the names of the elements, with slides of the periodic table that showed which ones were discovered when, and by which countries. While the U.S. was not the top country, it has discovered nearly all of the most recent elements. Tyson explained that Sweden has discovered so many elements because Ytterby cave was rich in undiscovered elements, and yielded the names of the elements Yttrium (39, 1795), Terbium (65, 1843), Erbium (68, 1843), Ytterbium (70, 1878), and Scandium (21, 1879).\nJury Duty I: Tyson described being called for jury duty. He was asked what he did, he said that he was an astrophysicist. When asked what he teaches, he said \u0026ldquo;a course on evaluating evidence and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony,\u0026rdquo; at which point he was promptly dismissed.\nJury Duty II: Tyson was called for jury duty again, and made the first cut of jurors. The facts of the case were described\u0026ndash;the defendant was charged with the possession of \u0026ldquo;2000 mg\u0026rdquo; of cocaine. When the jurors were asked if they had any questions, Tyson asked, \u0026ldquo;why did you describe it as 2000 mg instead of 2 g, about the weight of a postage stamp? Aren\u0026rsquo;t you trying to bias the jury by making it sound like a large quantity of drugs?\u0026rdquo; At which point he was promptly dismissed.\nMath?: Tyson pointed out a headline bemoaning the fact that \u0026ldquo;half the schools in the district are below average.\u0026rdquo; He also pointed out an article that pointed out that 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff as a suggestion that this is a good idea\u0026ndash;but it didn\u0026rsquo;t give the percentage of the nonsurvivors that had done the same. If 100% of the nonsurvivors had also studied the exit locations, would that be an argument not to do so?\nTyson responded to the common observation that the lottery is a tax upon the poor, saying that no, it\u0026rsquo;s a tax on the innumerate. Similarly, he pointed to the subprime mortgage mess as a mathematical illiteracy problem.\nBayer ad in Physics Today: Tyson described an advertisement that Bayer placed in Physics Today asking how to get students interested in \u0026ldquo;why heavy things fall faster than lighter things.\u0026rdquo; The ad was later changed to \u0026ldquo;why heavy things fall as fast as lighter things.\u0026quot;\nGeorge W. Bush: Tyson said that he lives closer to Ground Zero in Manhattan than the height of the WTC towers, and showed some photographs he took on September 11. He attended a science medal presentation at the White House since he was on the presidential advisory committee; at that event Bush stated that \u0026ldquo;Our God is the God who named the stars.\u0026rdquo; However, 2/3 of all stars with names have Arabic names, because from 800-1100 Islam was very supportive of math and science, giving us the names of algebra and algorithm, and the Arabic numerals. But in the 12th century, Imam Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the St. Augustine of Islam, stated that \u0026ldquo;manipulating numbers is the work of the devil.\u0026quot;\nThere are 1.2 billion Muslims, yet they\u0026rsquo;ve only earned 2 of 579 Nobel prizes (one in physics, one in economics), while Jews, who are 1/80 as numerous, have earned 143 Nobel prizes, and thus have had 6,400 times the impact of Muslims on modern science. He wondered how much more contribution they would have made if it had not been for al-Ghazali\u0026rsquo;s position of influence on Islam.\nIntelligent Design: A 2004 SUV ad said, \u0026ldquo;In the world of SUV\u0026rsquo;s, it\u0026rsquo;s the survival of the fittest.\u0026rdquo; In 2005, it was changed to \u0026ldquo;Its features are nothing short of a miracle.\u0026quot;\nTyson argued that the intelligent design idea\u0026ndash;stopping investigation with \u0026ldquo;God did it\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;has historically stopped scientific inquiry. He argued that Newton could have developed Laplace\u0026rsquo;s perturbation theory if he had not stopped his inquiry and appealed to God for the explanation of planetary movements that conflicted with his theory.\nStupid Design: Leukemia, vision loss with age, Alzheimer\u0026rsquo;s, exhaling most oxygen we inhale, our inability to smell CO or CO2, the fact that we eat, drink, and speak through the same opening (vs. dolphin design\u0026ndash;dolphins can\u0026rsquo;t die laughing). Tyson also mentioned the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed 70,000 people, mostly Christians who had gathered in churches that Sunday mornings.\nReligious People in the U.S.: Tyson observed that most people in the U.S. are religious\u0026ndash;about 90% believe in God. When you look at educated people, holding a master\u0026rsquo;s or Ph.D. degree, it drops to about 60%. When you look at scientists, it\u0026rsquo;s about 40%. The most elite scientists\u0026ndash;Nobel prizewinners, National Academy of Science members, etc.\u0026ndash;it drops to 7%, with physicists and biologists as the least religious. But he pointed out that the 7% is still a substantial number of people\u0026ndash;you cannot blame the general public for being religious if we don\u0026rsquo;t understand why 7% of the most educated elite people are religious and pray to a personal God.\nBible in Science Classroom: He observed that there aren\u0026rsquo;t scientists picketing in front of churches demanding equal time for science, referred to Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s confrontation with his history teacher for proselytizing in the classroom (a story broken by this blog), and read his letter to the editor of the New York Times about the case:\nTo the Editor: People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah\u0026rsquo;s ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it\u0026rsquo;s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.\nNeil deGrasse Tyson\nNew York, Dec. 19, 2006 Albert Einstein and God: Tyson pointed out the content of the recently published 1954 letter from Albert Einstein, and how religious believers who have claimed Einstein as one of their own have been in error.\nCosmic Perspective: Tyson went through a series of numbers with examples to clarify their magnitude: 1, or 100, a clear one. 1,000, a thousand, 103, kilo. 1,000,000, a million, 106, mega. 109, a billion, giga. There are 6,000 astrophysicists in 6 billion people, so astrophysicists are one in a million. (But someone observed that there were 3 astrophysicists present among the 900 attendees of the conference.) McDonald\u0026rsquo;s has sold 100 billion hamburgers\u0026ndash;which could encircle the globe 52 times, and then be stacked to the moon and back. At age 31, you will have lived for one billion seconds. 1012, trillion, tera. 1015, quadrillion, peta. The number of sounds emitted by all human beings who have ever lived. 1018, quadrillion, exa. The number of grains of sand on an average beach. 1021, septillion, zetta. The number of stars in the universe.\nTyson then made a list of the most abundant elements in the universe\u0026ndash;hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen\u0026ndash;and observed that, minus helium, these are also the same as the key ingredients of life.\nHe quoted the Bible\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;and the meek shall inherit the earth and live in a world of peace\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and suggested that the correct translation should have been \u0026ldquo;geek\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;meek.\u0026quot;\nAPS Conference in Vegas: Tyson closed by referring to a Las Vegas newspaper headline that said, \u0026ldquo;Meeting of physicists in town, lowest casino take ever.\u0026quot;\nAlec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics\nAlec Jason, an independent forensic photographer and investigator, described how he helped James Randi in his investigation of the faith healer and televangelist Peter Popoff, who claimed to use the \u0026ldquo;word of knowledge\u0026rdquo; to obtain detailed information from God about the people he was healing. In fact, Popoff\u0026rsquo;s wife Elizabeth was collecting the information from people before the show and transmitting it to Popoff via radio to an earpiece receiver he was wearing. Jason described how he went to Brooks Hall a day prior to the Popoff healing event to determine the normal background radio frequency broadcasts, and then scanned for traffic during the event while posing as a janitor at the facility. The device he used was an early Scanlock device, and although Popoff could have used countermeasures ranging such as frequency hopping, codes, spread spectrum, or encryption, none of these were in use and they quickly picked up the sound of footsteps and then Elizabeth Popoff saying, \u0026ldquo;Hi, Petey. I hope you can hear me, becasue if you can\u0026rsquo;t, you\u0026rsquo;re in trouble.\u0026quot;\nRandi exposed Popoff on the Tonight Show, and Popoff\u0026rsquo;s career seemed to have been derailed, though it took months for his followers to get the message. But now Popoff is back\u0026ndash;and while he was making $12 million a year before, he\u0026rsquo;s reporting over $24 million a year today. The message was a demoralizing one for skeptics\u0026ndash;even the exposure of a blatant fraud like Popoff\u0026rsquo;s is not sufficient to keep him from continuing to take money from the gullible and live a life of luxury.\nThere were some technical difficulties during the first part of Jason\u0026rsquo;s talk, and I found it mostly to be old hat\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve read Randi\u0026rsquo;s The Faith Healers, seen his Tonight Show appearance, and viewed multiple presentations about the Popoff exposure.\nThe remainder of Jason\u0026rsquo;s presentation was about his work in some criminal cases. In a case in Africa, a body was found with a SIG Sauer P226 pistol on its chest. The question to resolve was whether this was a suicide or a homicide\u0026ndash;after firing, the gun remains cocked and has to be manually decocked. A photo of the crime scene was too fuzzy to see clearly whether the gun was cocked, but Jason was able to compare reflectivity hot spots of a cocked vs. a decocked gun to determine that the gun was decocked. As it turned out, this didn\u0026rsquo;t show that it was a homicide, as the first officer on the scene said that he had picked up the gun and turned on the safety\u0026ndash;there is no safety on the pistol, and what he had actually done is decocked it, and thus the gun was shown to have been still cocked when the body was found.\nJason also went into a lot of detail in the Frank Zupan case, where Zupan was found at the scene of a vehicle accident where his wife was behind the wheel of their car and dead with gunshot wounds to the head. Zupan testified that they were driving at 25-30 mph when an oncoming car approached, and he thought rocks came through the window and hit his wife, which he then attributed to gunshots. Jason showed that a gun cannot be shot at faster than 10 rounds per second, and if gunfire came from a car approaching at 20 mph, there would be 3 feet of movement per shot. Since Zupan\u0026rsquo;s wife was shot twice in the head and there was no damage to the front windshield, there\u0026rsquo;s no way Zupan\u0026rsquo;s account made sense.\nPenn \u0026amp; Teller Q\u0026amp;A session\nPenn and Teller had no prepared material, but simply answered questions from the audience. They talked about a wide-ranging variety of subjects, including Penn\u0026rsquo;s radio show (which may come back in a different form), Teller\u0026rsquo;s short film that appears on George A. Romero\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Diary of the Dead\u0026rdquo; DVD, and the fact that their show Bullshit! is \u0026ldquo;fair and extremely biased.\u0026rdquo; In response to a question about what they may be wrong about, Penn said that he has symptoms of a believer with respect to his views on art and his libertarian politics. When asked what\u0026rsquo;s the line between reasonable concern for the environment and environmentalist nuttery, Penn answered \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know,\u0026rdquo; and Teller said, \u0026ldquo;carbon credits are bullshit, modeled on indulgences.\u0026quot;\nPenn stated that he thinks Obama is very classy and positive, but that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t agree with him about anything.\nTeller showed a video made by Jeff Levine about cold reading, called \u0026ldquo;The Cold Reader,\u0026rdquo; based on a story by Matthew Simmons.\nGeorge Hrab\u0026rsquo;s music\nGeorge Hrab came onstage briefly to play a couple of songs, one titled \u0026ldquo;God is Not Great\u0026rdquo; inspired by Hitchens\u0026rsquo; book, and another about being a skeptic.\nP.Z. Myers on bat wings\nP.Z. Myers gave a talk that presented some actual science\u0026ndash;he first gave a brief description of his field and his own work, and then a summary of work by Chris Cretekos on the genes that control the development of bat wings, and what happens when they are put into rats. Rather than attempt to summarize this myself, I\u0026rsquo;ll point the interested reader to Stephen Matheson\u0026rsquo;s description of the same work.\nRichard Saunders on himself and educational materials for kids\nRichard Saunders of the Australian Skeptics, author of 17 books on origami, creator of the origami Pigasus for JREF, founder of the Sydney Skeptics in the Pub group, former president and current VP of the Australian Skeptics, chief spoon bender for the Australian Skeptics, and producer of the TANK vodcast, said that he\u0026rsquo;s about to be the most famous TV skeptic in Australia. He will be the skeptical judge on \u0026ldquo;The One: The Search for Australia\u0026rsquo;s Most Gifted Psychic\u0026rdquo; show. After spending a lot of time talking about his past and coming achievements, he did a nice demonstration of a dowsing investigation for use by educators to teach children scientific methods. He had six volunteers from the audience as dowsers to try to find a bottle of water placed under one of six plastic bins. First he found the best dowser at detecting the bottle when it was out in the open, then did trials first blind and then double-blind.\nPanel discussion on identifying as a skeptic\nThe day\u0026rsquo;s events concluded with a panel discussion between James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics (I didn\u0026rsquo;t catch the name) about skepticism and identifying as a skeptic. Shermer began by saying that we start by assuming everything is false and require evidence to demonstrate that anything is true. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that\u0026rsquo;s actually a sound methodology\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a lot easier to dig yourself into a philosophically skeptical hole where you doubt the existence of an external world and other minds than it is to get out. Our actual belief methods start out with trust\u0026ndash;trust in our own senses and in the testimony of others as we learn language and concepts\u0026ndash;not with Cartesian skepticism. In my opinion, something like \u0026ldquo;trust but verify\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;determine the limits and faults in belief-forming methods, and avoid them\u0026rdquo; is a better procedure than trying to build up all knowledge from nothing or from indubitable foundational premises. In answer to a question about various kinds of deniers referring to themselves as skeptics, Phil Plait observed that skeptics demand evidence, while deniers deny evidence. Those who deny the Holocaust or that man landed on the moon are not skeptics, they are deniers.\nAt one point, Margaret Downey made a statement that testimony from individuals who claim remarkable experiences are not relevant because \u0026ldquo;first-hand reports are just hearsay.\u0026rdquo; But this is a mistake\u0026ndash;they may be characterized as hearsay to others, but not to those who are making the reports who have actually had the experiences. Further, reports themselves may be collected and correlated with other objective evidence and used to draw scientific conclusions. I think it\u0026rsquo;s a huge mistake to reject individual experience out of hand in the manner suggested; it\u0026rsquo;s generally possible to take a report of an experience and identify possible explanations for what could cause the experience (or the report of an experience and the false belief in an experience).\nThere was an excellent audience question about how those of us with limited scientific knowledge can come to conclusions about complex scientific topics where we lack expertise to evaluate the evidence ourselves\u0026ndash;aren\u0026rsquo;t we taking results on faith? Randi responded to the question, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think he really got the point. I went and spoke with the questioner afterward, and she agreed that he seemed to be answering a different question. I made the point that in such a case we need to determine who are the reliable experts, the trustworthy authorities, and that we have a number of clues we can use to help identify them.\nOn to TAM6 summary, part three.\nThe Man Who Couldn't Blog (2008-07-15):\nHi. Just wondering if \"The Cold Reader\" went over well? Glad you found the source and linked to it.-ms-\nLippard (2008-07-15):\nThe audience reaction seemed quite positive, I think it got a standing ovation, though I did hear some criticism afterward that it wasn't clear what the point was. I took it to just be an entertaining explanation of some cold reading basics from a cynical character.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part two of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eintro\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFriday, the conference gets started\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore skeptics from around the world began to show up on Friday.  Checking in at the registration desk entitled each person to a name badge, a folder of materials, a laser pointer/reading light (which many put to use during the conference, sometimes to the irritation of a speaker or emcee Hal Bidlack), and a copy of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAn Objectivist Secular Reader\u003c/span\u003e, edited by Dr. Edward Hudgins.  The book argues for common cause between skeptics and Objectivists \u0026ldquo;and the often-related libertarian perspective.\u0026rdquo;  I happened to sit next to Hudgins through part of the conference, and spoke to him a bit between sessions, and found that we have some common friends and acquaintances.  He said that he thinks the libertarian viewpoint does fit well with skepticism, which was a point made later in the conference by Michael Shermer by drawing an analogy between anti-authoritarianism in the religious sphere to anti-authoritarianism in the political sphere\u0026ndash;but of course governments actually exist, so the real underlying question is what legitimizes or justifies authority, which is a question also relevant in the scientific sphere.  I\u0026rsquo;ll say more about this later when I summarize Shermer\u0026rsquo;s talk.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHudgins was working on a presentation for an upcoming speaking event which included statistics about changes in U.S. religious demographics over the last several decades, showing a rise in nonbelief.  I asked to look at one page that showed a breakdown of U.S. religious adherents by sect, and pointed out the huge growth among Pentecostals (something \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/rise-of-pentecostalism-and-economist.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about here\u003c/a\u003e).  This growth indicates to me that there\u0026rsquo;s more to religion than dogma and doctrine, and that a purely intellectual critique of beliefs and practices that are held for reasons that involve emotion and community is doomed to failure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think that one of skepticism\u0026rsquo;s strengths is that it is a method, not a doctrine, and that turning it into dogma or trying to link it to a specific set of conclusions about religion or politics (or science, for that matter) is an enormous mistake that serves only to limit its appeal.  Skepticism is at its best when it teaches people to think critically for themselves and at its worst when it tells people what to think.  I\u0026rsquo;ll have more to say on this subject when I summarize Sunday\u0026rsquo;s talks, which included one by Don Nyberg railing against \u0026ldquo;religious pseudoscience.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFriday morning I sat down to breakfast with a young couple from Texas, whose names unfortunately escape me.  He had just completed a semester of medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she had finished a degree in neuroscience.  We were soon joined by Tony, an Australian who had been living with his partner in Mexico City for the last several years and was now on his way back to Australia by way of a trip around the world.  There was a strong international presence at the conference, with dozens of Australians in particular, probably due to the strength of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptics.com.au/\"\u003eAustralian Skeptics organization\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter breakfast, I went up to the conference room to hear the end of the recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast which was being recorded live in the room, but somehow I completely failed to meet Steven Novella, one of the podcast\u0026rsquo;s hosts, through the entire conference.  I had hoped to at least say hello and introduce myself, since we were \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skepticalinquirer-janfeb1999.html\"\u003ecosigners of a letter to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e back in 1999\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHal Bidlack opens the event\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conference officially kicked off with an introduction by Hal Bidlack, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bidlack2008.com/\"\u003ewho is running for Congress in Colorado Springs, CO\u003c/a\u003e, a part of the country which would be greatly helped by a critically thinking legislator.  He mentioned that two prominent skeptics have died since the last conference, Arthur C. Clarke and Jerry Andrus.  Andrus was a regular attendee of Skeptics Society conferences and JREF conferences, known for setting up his optical illusions and his willingness to explain them patiently to all.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRandi\u0026rsquo;s welcome\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHal then introduced James Randi, who was looking more frail than the last time I saw him in person, though he said that his health is much better than it has been in the recent past.  Randi   pointed out that a light, a chair, and a table commemorating Jerry Andrus and his illusions was set up in the back corner of the conference room, and will be set up at future Amazing Meetings as well\u0026ndash;while noting that this is for us to remember Jerry.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRandi announced that the JREF library is up to 2282 books, that this conference had about 900 attendees, and that it attracts more women and young people than any other skeptics conference.  My impressions supported that conclusion.  He also stated that there are UK and Dutch skeptical TV series in the works, and ended by saying that he wanted everyone at the conference to come up, greet him, and shake his hand (which I had already done on Thursday when I ran into him by the registration desk).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBen Goldacre on homeopathy\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first official conference presentation was by Ben Goldacre, M.D. of \u003ca href=\"http://www.badscience.net/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.badscience.net\"\u003ewww.badscience.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, who spoke about \u0026ldquo;squabbles about homeopathy.\u0026rdquo;  Goldacre described the basic arguments against homeopathy.  The main argument against it is that its extreme dilutions are so extreme that a single molecule of a 30C diluted substance would be found in not an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but in ten thousand million million million million pools.  A 55C dilution would be equivalent to a universe-sized sphere filled with water with a single molecule of the diluted substance in it.  Goldacre observed that a label of a homeopathic remedy that says it is safe because it contains \u0026ldquo;less than 1 ppm\u0026rdquo; of the diluted substance is quite an understatement.  The homeopaths respond that this is irrelevant; what makes the homeopathic remedy work is that \u0026ldquo;water has memory,\u0026rdquo; and its structure has somehow changed to reflect being in contact with the diluted substance.  But, Goldacre asked, why does it remember the remedy and not, say, having been in Nelson\u0026rsquo;s colon or the Queen\u0026rsquo;s bladder, or in contact with countless other substances?  The homeopathic answer to that is that the memory only comes into effect through \u0026ldquo;succussion,\u0026rdquo; when the remedy is in the water and the container is banged ten times firmly against a wooden striking board (for instance).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs homeopaths do want to present their work as scientific, they have been willing to engage with skeptics.  Goldacre reported that his website was given permission \u003ca href=\"http://www.badscience.net/?p=490\"\u003eto reprint papers from the journal \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHomeopathy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e on water memory, which were then critiqued in the JREF Forums, and the critiques assembled into a response which was submitted to and published in the same journal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut Goldacre points out that the standard anti-homeopathy arguments have been made at least since John Forbes, Queen Victoria\u0026rsquo;s physician, made them in 1846, but they have proven ineffective in persuading homeopaths and users of homeopathic remedies from giving them up.  He says the arguments are \u0026ldquo;irrelevant,\u0026rdquo; because homeopaths are persuaded that their remedies actually work.  But that\u0026rsquo;s just not so, he argued.  While one might think that homeopathy is like anesthetics where we don\u0026rsquo;t know how it works but it does, with homeopathy we have no good explanation for how it could work and we also have evidence that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work any better than a placebo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then went on to talk about how the placebo effect is a genuinely fascinating scientific anomaly far more worthy of interest than homeopathy.  In pain relief, four sugar pills are more effective than two, salt water injection is more effective than sugar pills, and commercial packaging make placebos more effective.  He argued that the extent to which homeopathy works is indistinguishable from the placebo effect,  as demonstrated by a proper meta-analysis of homeopathic trials, reducing the weight of those which have flaws such as poor randomization and poor blinding.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eKeynote by Neil deGrasse Tyson\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNeil deGrasse Tyson, who was clearly the rock star of skepticism at the reception on Thursday night, surrounded by adoring fans (perhaps \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/now_i_see_my_problem.php\"\u003eit was his hat, as P.Z. Myers suggests\u003c/a\u003e), gave the keynote address to the conference.  When he began, many people had been shining their laser pointers on the wall above the stage, and Tyson informed the audience that he would express his \u0026ldquo;geek dominance.\u0026rdquo;  He instructed everyone to point their laser pointers above the door on the opposite side of the room.  Once everyone had done so, he pulled out his laser pointer\u0026ndash;shining from farther away than anyone else, since he was up on stage\u0026ndash;and shined a large green dot that outshone all of the red dots.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTyson\u0026rsquo;s talk was called either \u0026ldquo;Adventures in Science Illiteracy\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Brain Droppings of a Skeptic\u0026rdquo; (a \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Droppings-George-Carlin/dp/0786891122/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003etitle cribbed from George Carlin\u003c/a\u003e).  He began by saying that he had something to do with Pluto\u0026rsquo;s demotion from being a planet, and that anybody who didn\u0026rsquo;t like it should \u0026ldquo;get over it.\u0026rdquo;  The rest of his talk wandered over a large range of topics that have come up in the Q\u0026amp;A sessions of his lectures:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUFO Sightings:  When people say they\u0026rsquo;ve seen a UFO, be sure to remind them what the \u0026ldquo;U\u0026rdquo; stands for.  Typically, those who claim they\u0026rsquo;ve seen a UFO start by saying it was unidentified, then end up \u0026ldquo;inventing knowledge of everything\u0026rdquo; about it being an extraterrestrial spacecraft.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlien Abductions:  Tyson said that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in science (though it\u0026rsquo;s certainly not worthless, and even the scientific literature is a form of testimony about the results of experiments).  He pulled out his iPhone and said that if he had one of these 10 years ago, he\u0026rsquo;d have been burned at the stake.  If you get abducted by a UFO, you should take something not of this earth in order to prove your alien contact.  He showed a slide of a cover of the book \u0026ldquo;How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction\u0026rdquo; and said that \u0026ldquo;I bought it, read it, and heeded its advice\u0026ndash;and I have not been abducted.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInept Aliens: They travel trillions of miles to get here, then crash.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConspiracy Theory:  They tend to tacitly admit insufficient data.  If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAstrology:  If you read a horoscope to a group of people and ask if it describes them, approximately 2/3 will agree that it fits them.  Most Scorpios are actually \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus\"\u003eOphiuchans\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBirth Rates and Full Moons:  Average human gestation is 295 days; the lunar cycle is 29.5 days.  Full moon birth = full moon impregnation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBehavior and Full Moons:  The pressure of an extra pillow is a trillion times greater than the tidal force on a cranium.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSurviving Terminal Cancer:  If someone gets three diagnoses from physicians giving them 5-7 months to live, then lives for five years, they credit God for their survival, rather than blaming doctors for a poor diagnosis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSwami Levitation:  Tyson suggest 1,000 cans of baked beans would generate sufficient flatulence to become airborne.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMoon Hoax:  Modern technology is so advanced that some people can\u0026rsquo;t believe it.  But if you learn the rocket equation and look at how much fuel was in the Saturn V, if the launch was fake, what was all that fuel for?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMars \u0026ldquo;Virus\u0026rdquo;:  In 2003, the Earth was the closest it had been to Mars than in the previous 60,000 years, which led to multiple stories (including in subsequent years) that some virus would jump from Mars to Earth.  Tyson pointed to the side and said \u0026ldquo;Japan is that way.\u0026rdquo;  He jumped a few feet to the side in that direction, and then said he is now as much closer to Japan as Mars came to the Earth from its average distance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFear of Numbers:  80% of building on Broadway in NYC have no 13th floor, due to an irrational fear of the number 13.  (Yet who actually does fear 13?)  And why don\u0026rsquo;t we use negative numbers on elevators for subfloors?  Or negative numbers in financial ledgers, instead of parentheses?  (Actually, I suspect that\u0026rsquo;s to avoid ambiguity with hyphens in dollar ranges, rather than a fear of negative numbers.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNaming Rights:  Tyson pointed out countries that put scientists on their money\u0026ndash;Isaac Newton on the English one-pound note, Einstein on Israeli money.  The U.S. has only one scientist\u0026ndash;Ben Franklin\u0026ndash;on money, on the $100 bill, but with no symbolism to represent his scientific work\u0026ndash;no kite, no key, no lightning rod.  He also pointed to Gauss and the Gaussian distribution on British money as British support of science, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/\"\u003eNassim Nicholas Taleb\u003c/a\u003e, in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Black Swan\u003c/span\u003e, points out that the financial field goes grossly astray by trying to using Gaussian distributions to describe phenomena that are not Gaussian.  Taleb points to Gauss on British money as ironic and inept rather than pro-science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTyson also looked at the names of the elements, with slides of the periodic table that showed which ones were discovered when, and by which countries.  While the U.S. was not the top country, it has discovered nearly all of the most recent elements.  Tyson explained that Sweden has discovered so many elements because Ytterby cave was rich in undiscovered elements, and yielded the names of the elements Yttrium (39, 1795), Terbium (65, 1843), Erbium (68, 1843), Ytterbium (70, 1878), and Scandium (21, 1879).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJury Duty I:  Tyson described being called for jury duty.  He was asked what he did, he said that he was an astrophysicist.  When asked what he teaches, he said \u0026ldquo;a course on evaluating evidence and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony,\u0026rdquo; at which point he was promptly dismissed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJury Duty II:  Tyson was called for jury duty again, and made the first cut of jurors.  The facts of the case were described\u0026ndash;the defendant was charged with the possession of \u0026ldquo;2000 mg\u0026rdquo; of cocaine.  When the jurors were asked if they had any questions, Tyson asked, \u0026ldquo;why did you describe it as 2000 mg instead of 2 g, about the weight of a postage stamp?  Aren\u0026rsquo;t you trying to bias the jury by making it sound like a large quantity of drugs?\u0026rdquo;  At which point he was promptly dismissed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMath?:  Tyson pointed out a headline bemoaning the fact that \u0026ldquo;half the schools in the district are below average.\u0026rdquo;  He also pointed out an article that pointed out that 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff as a suggestion that this is a good idea\u0026ndash;but it didn\u0026rsquo;t give the percentage of the nonsurvivors that had done the same.  If 100% of the nonsurvivors had also studied the exit locations, would that be an argument not to do so?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTyson responded to the common observation that the lottery is a tax upon the poor, saying that no, it\u0026rsquo;s a tax on the innumerate.  Similarly, he pointed to the subprime mortgage mess as a mathematical illiteracy problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBayer ad in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhysics Today\u003c/span\u003e:  Tyson described an advertisement that Bayer placed in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhysics Today\u003c/span\u003e asking how to get students interested in \u0026ldquo;why heavy things fall faster than lighter things.\u0026rdquo;  The ad was later changed to \u0026ldquo;why heavy things fall as fast as lighter things.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge W. Bush: Tyson said that he lives closer to Ground Zero in Manhattan than the height of the WTC towers, and showed some photographs he took on September 11.  He attended a science medal presentation at the White House since he was on the presidential advisory committee; at that event Bush stated that \u0026ldquo;Our God is the God who named the stars.\u0026rdquo;  However, 2/3 of all stars with names have Arabic names, because from 800-1100 Islam was very supportive of math and science, giving us the names of algebra and algorithm, and the Arabic numerals.  But in the 12th century, Imam Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the St. Augustine of Islam, stated that \u0026ldquo;manipulating numbers is the work of the devil.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are 1.2 billion Muslims, yet they\u0026rsquo;ve only earned 2 of 579 Nobel prizes (one in physics, one in economics), while Jews, who are 1/80 as numerous, have earned 143 Nobel prizes, and thus have had 6,400 times the impact of Muslims on modern science.  He wondered how much more contribution they would have made if it had not been for al-Ghazali\u0026rsquo;s position of influence on Islam.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIntelligent Design:  A 2004 SUV ad said, \u0026ldquo;In the world of SUV\u0026rsquo;s, it\u0026rsquo;s the survival of the fittest.\u0026rdquo;  In 2005, it was changed to \u0026ldquo;Its features are nothing short of a miracle.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTyson argued that the intelligent design idea\u0026ndash;stopping investigation with \u0026ldquo;God did it\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;has historically stopped scientific inquiry.  He argued that Newton could have developed Laplace\u0026rsquo;s perturbation theory if he had not stopped his inquiry and appealed to God for the explanation of planetary movements that conflicted with his theory.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStupid Design:  Leukemia, vision loss with age, Alzheimer\u0026rsquo;s, exhaling most oxygen we inhale, our inability to smell CO or CO2, the fact that we eat, drink, and speak through the same opening (vs. dolphin design\u0026ndash;dolphins can\u0026rsquo;t die laughing).  Tyson also mentioned the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed 70,000 people, mostly Christians who had gathered in churches that Sunday mornings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReligious People in the U.S.:  Tyson observed that most people in the U.S. are religious\u0026ndash;about 90% believe in God.  When you look at educated people, holding a master\u0026rsquo;s or Ph.D. degree, it drops to about 60%.  When you look at scientists, it\u0026rsquo;s about 40%.  The most elite scientists\u0026ndash;Nobel prizewinners, National Academy of Science members, etc.\u0026ndash;it drops to 7%, with physicists and biologists as the least religious.  But he pointed out  that the 7% is still a substantial number of people\u0026ndash;you cannot blame the general public for being religious if we don\u0026rsquo;t understand why 7% of the most educated elite people are religious and pray to a personal God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBible in Science Classroom:  He observed that there aren\u0026rsquo;t scientists picketing in front of churches demanding equal time for science, referred to Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s confrontation with his history teacher for proselytizing in the classroom (a story \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003ebroken by this blog\u003c/a\u003e), and read his \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E4DA1031F932A15751C1A9609C8B63\"\u003eletter to the editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e about the case\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTo the Editor: \u003cp\u003ePeople cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah\u0026rsquo;s ark carried dinosaurs. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part two"},{"content":"This is part one of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part two, part three, part four, part five).\nThe Amazing Meeting 6 was my first conference of the \u0026ldquo;Amazing\u0026rdquo; series of skeptics\u0026rsquo; conferences, sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. I\u0026rsquo;ve attended a variety of other skeptical conferences over the last fourteen years, from a CSICOP conference at Stanford University in November 1984 to the most recent Skeptics Society conference at Caltech in 2006, with numerous conferences in between. I\u0026rsquo;ve written summaries of a few of those for skeptical publications, such as a 1990 Tucson CSICOP UFO workshop and the 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).\nThe attendees at skeptics\u0026rsquo; conferences are usually older white males\u0026ndash;I was one of the youngest attendees, at 19, of the 1984 Stanford conference, by far. This conference, while still mostly older white males, was a much younger crowd with a lot more women than any other skeptical conference I\u0026rsquo;ve attended. At one point during the conference, a young man asked a question which began with a statement something like \u0026ldquo;At 19, I think I\u0026rsquo;m the youngest person here,\u0026rdquo; at which point whoever had the microphone onstage asked for anyone present younger than 19 to raise their hands\u0026ndash;and at least a dozen hands went up. Hal Bidlack, who was an excellent master of ceremonies for the conference, at one point made a point of publicly embarrassing a young man by observing that he was having his 15th birthday.\nThe conference began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19 with a series of optional workshops, of which I paid for one, a memory workshop with Banachek. (I didn\u0026rsquo;t attend the earlier workshop on skeptical investigation with Ben Radford.) Banachek\u0026rsquo;s workshop was a two-hour session which gave a basic overview of a number of different kinds of memory systems, with audience participation so that we actually used the systems ourselves.\nBanachek began his seminar with a demonstration where he looked at a deck of cards, then split it up into multiple pieces, had multiple people shuffle their respective parts, then reassemble it into two halves, each of which was given to a volunteer on stage. He proceeded to identify which person was holding each card of each suit in the deck, with 100% success. (He did admit that there was some trickery as well as memory to this demonstration.)\nThen it was on to the memory systems. First was a loci system, where you associate the items to be memorized with different physical locations\u0026ndash;in our case, we learned a list of object associated with different rooms of a house. By creating descriptions with some vivid features, such as a gun laying on a kitchen floor that had been fired, leaving black marks on the kitchen floor, we were all easily able to remember which objects were associated with which room. Next was a brief discussion of acronym-based mnemonics, such as \u0026ldquo;old elephants have much skin\u0026rdquo; as a way of remembering the names of the Great Lakes, from east to west.\nNext was a linking system, which we spent the most amount of time on. We all learned a list of fourteen items on a grocery list by creating vivid associations between each item and the next in the series. We broke off into groups of about ten each, and each group came up with its own associations. One person from each group was then tested by asking what was the next item on the list, and describing the link they chose to use for the association. Several of us tested each other or were tested by others who were in the workshop on subsequent days of the conference with questions like \u0026ldquo;what came after tangerines?\u0026rdquo; I can still generate the full list of fourteen items from memory, as I\u0026rsquo;m sure most of the attendees of the workshop can, as well.\nFinally, we spent a brief amount of time on peg systems and phonetic systems, which can be usefully combined into an extremely powerful memory system of the sort taught by Harry Lorayne. The basics of the system are to create associations between phonetic sounds (consonants only) and the numbers 0-9 (and then farther, as far as you want to go), so that words can be constructed associated with numbers and vice versa. He showed us a 74-digit number, and suggested that such a number could be learned with a phonetic system.\nBy creating associations between the \u0026ldquo;peg words\u0026rdquo; and items to be learned, you can remember lists of things, their relative positions to each other, as well as things like long lists of numbers or cards in a deck. Banachek then revealed that the grocery list we had learned, using the phonetic system he just described, encoded the 74-digit number\u0026ndash;thus, by learning the phonetic system, we had already memorized it through our earlier exercise.\nThis was the first time Banachek had given this training, and so he was not as polished as, say, Harry Lorayne. But it was definitely a handy overview. My only criticism is that it would have been better to spend more time on the peg system if it\u0026rsquo;s possible to do so in such a short time frame, as that\u0026rsquo;s clearly where the most benefit is to be had.\nAfter the workshop, I went out to dinner with some friends to a wonderful Thai restaurant\u0026ndash;Lotus of Siam\u0026ndash;and then returned for the conference reception. I ended up chatting briefly with Michael Shermer, P.Z. Myers, and some Denver and Ottawa Skeptics, and most significantly to me, finally meeting Reed Esau in person after an online acquaintance of about thirteen years, beginning when he created and I provided the hosting for the celebrity atheists list. Although Reed invited me to several parties, I only stayed out late one night during the conference, missing the fun, but waking up in plenty of time for morning discussions at breakfast before each day\u0026rsquo;s conference events.\nOn to TAM6 summary, part two.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-06-29):\nYou might have missed the fun, but you also avoided the hangovers. At TAM7 we'll change that. :^)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part one of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html\"\u003eintro\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Amazing Meeting 6 was my first conference of the \u0026ldquo;Amazing\u0026rdquo; series of skeptics\u0026rsquo; conferences, sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation.  I\u0026rsquo;ve attended a variety of other skeptical conferences over the last fourteen years, from a CSICOP conference at Stanford University in November 1984 to \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/skeptics-society-conference.html\"\u003ethe most recent Skeptics Society conference at Caltech in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, with numerous conferences in between.  I\u0026rsquo;ve written summaries of a few of those for skeptical publications, such as a \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skepticalbriefs199102.html\"\u003e1990 Tucson CSICOP UFO workshop\u003c/a\u003e and the 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference (\u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1992/1992december/december1992.htm#conference\"\u003epart 1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993january/january1993.htm#conference\"\u003epart 2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993february/february1993.htm#conference\"\u003epart 3\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ntskeptics.org/1993/1993march/march1993.htm#conference\"\u003epart 4\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe attendees at skeptics\u0026rsquo; conferences are usually older white males\u0026ndash;I was one of the youngest attendees, at 19, of the 1984 Stanford conference, by far.  This conference, while still mostly older white males, was a much younger crowd with a lot more women than any other skeptical conference I\u0026rsquo;ve attended.  At one point during the conference, a young man asked a question which began with a statement something like \u0026ldquo;At 19, I think I\u0026rsquo;m the youngest person here,\u0026rdquo; at which point whoever had the microphone onstage asked for anyone present younger than 19 to raise their hands\u0026ndash;and at least a dozen hands went up.  Hal Bidlack, who was an excellent master of ceremonies for the conference, at one point made a point of publicly embarrassing a young man by observing that he was having his 15th birthday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe conference began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19 with a series of optional workshops, of which I paid for one, a memory workshop with Banachek.  (I didn\u0026rsquo;t attend the earlier workshop on skeptical investigation with Ben Radford.) Banachek\u0026rsquo;s workshop was a two-hour session which gave a basic overview of a number of different kinds of memory systems, with audience participation so that we actually used the systems ourselves.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBanachek began his seminar with a demonstration where he looked at a deck of cards, then split it up into multiple pieces, had multiple people shuffle their respective parts, then reassemble it into two halves, each of which was given to a volunteer on stage.  He proceeded to identify which person was holding each card of each suit in the deck, with 100% success.  (He did admit that there was some trickery as well as memory to this demonstration.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen it was on to the memory systems.  First was a loci system, where you associate the items to be memorized with different physical locations\u0026ndash;in our case, we learned a list of object associated with different rooms of a house.  By creating descriptions with some vivid features, such as a gun laying on a kitchen floor that had been fired, leaving black marks on the kitchen floor, we were all easily able to remember which objects were associated with which room.  Next was a brief discussion of acronym-based mnemonics, such as \u0026ldquo;old elephants have much skin\u0026rdquo; as a way of remembering the names of the Great Lakes, from east to west.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext was a linking system, which we spent the most amount of time on.  We all learned a list of fourteen items on a grocery list by creating vivid associations between each item and the next in the series.  We broke off into groups of about ten each, and each group came up with its own associations.  One person from each group was then tested by asking what was the next item on the list, and describing the link they chose to use for the association.  Several of us tested each other or were tested by others who were in the workshop on subsequent days of the conference with questions like \u0026ldquo;what came after tangerines?\u0026rdquo;  I can still generate the full list of fourteen items from memory, as I\u0026rsquo;m sure most of the attendees of the workshop can, as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, we spent a brief amount of time on peg systems and phonetic systems, which can be usefully combined into an extremely powerful memory system of the sort taught by Harry Lorayne.  The basics of the system are to create associations between phonetic sounds (consonants only) and the numbers 0-9 (and then farther, as far as you want to go), so that words can be constructed associated with numbers and vice versa.  He showed us a 74-digit number, and suggested that such a number could be learned with a phonetic system.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy creating associations between the \u0026ldquo;peg words\u0026rdquo; and items to be learned, you can remember lists of things, their relative positions to each other, as well as things like long lists of numbers or cards in a deck.  Banachek then revealed that the grocery list we had learned, using the phonetic system he just described, encoded the 74-digit number\u0026ndash;thus, by learning the phonetic system, we had already memorized it through our earlier exercise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was the first time Banachek had given this training, and so he was not as polished as, say, Harry Lorayne.  But it was definitely a handy overview.  My only criticism is that it would have been better to spend more time on the peg system if it\u0026rsquo;s possible to do so in such a short time frame, as that\u0026rsquo;s clearly where the most benefit is to be had.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the workshop, I went out to dinner with some friends to a wonderful Thai restaurant\u0026ndash;Lotus of Siam\u0026ndash;and then returned for the conference reception.  I ended up chatting briefly with Michael Shermer, P.Z. Myers, and some Denver and Ottawa Skeptics, and most significantly to me, finally meeting Reed Esau in person after an online acquaintance of about thirteen years, beginning when he created and I provided the hosting for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Main_Page\"\u003ecelebrity atheists list\u003c/a\u003e.  Although Reed invited me to several parties, I only stayed out late one night during the conference, missing the fun, but waking up in plenty of time for morning discussions at breakfast before each day\u0026rsquo;s conference events.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn to TAM6 summary, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part one"},{"content":"Christian theologian Alister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion, managed to help persuade Norwegian astrophysicist Øystein Elgarøy that atheists had the better arguments. Elgarøy, formerly a liberal Christian, is now an atheist and a member of the Norwegian Humanist Association.\n(Hat tip to DMB at the Talk Rational forum.)\nEamon Knight (2008-06-27):\nOoh, thanks for that link. As someone who has made a similar journey from conservative Xty through liberal to atheist, I found that story fascinating. Elgarøy was asking many of the same question I asked myself, during my t.o years.\nSheldon (2008-06-28):\nSo is he now the atheist's Anthony Flew? At least we can see that he is not entering the twighlight of life and his change of thinking is not attributable to senility!\nLippard (2008-06-28):\nI wouldn't say he's the atheists' Antony Flew... that would have to be a mediocre but well-known theologian or philosopher of religion who converted from deism to atheism (remember, Flew didn't become a Christian), who couldn't remember what arguments he found persuasive in the deconversion, who had a book ghost-written for him by unethical atheists who presented it as an argument against Christianity. I think that would be approximately analogous...There have been plenty of Christian-to-atheist conversions, including former ministers like Farrell Till and Dan Barker.BTW, James Dobson's former on-air partner and colleague at Focus on the Family, Gil Alexander-Moegerle, broke with Dobson and wrote an expose, but I'm pretty sure he didn't abandon Christianity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/alister-mcgrath-scores-conversion-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristian theologian Alister McGrath, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Dawkins Delusion\u003c/span\u003e, managed to help persuade Norwegian astrophysicist Øystein Elgarøy that atheists had the better arguments.  Elgarøy, formerly a liberal Christian, \u003ca href=\"http://www.fritanke.no/ENGLISH/2008/Oystein_Elgaroy__Christian_defender_turned_atheist/\"\u003eis now an atheist and a member of the Norwegian Humanist Association\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=90080#post90080\"\u003eDMB at the Talk Rational forum\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOoh, thanks for that link. As someone who has made a similar journey from conservative Xty through liberal to atheist, I found that story fascinating. Elgarøy was asking many of the same question I asked myself, during my t.o years.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Alister McGrath scores a conversion for the other team"},{"content":"Barbara Forrest has an excellent article describing the passage of the recent \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; stealth creationism bill in Louisiana that\u0026rsquo;s was just signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal and will no doubt serve as a model for other states. She discusses the Louisiana Family Forum, which is behind the bill, as well as the involvement of the Discovery Institute.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/creationisms-latest-strategy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBarbara Forrest has \u003ca href=\"http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/6/26/18920/8497/Front_Page/The_Discovery_Institute_the_LA_Family_Forum_and_the_quot_LA_Science_Education_Act_quot_\"\u003ean excellent article describing the passage of the recent \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; stealth creationism bill in Louisiana\u003c/a\u003e that\u0026rsquo;s was just signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal and will no doubt serve as a model for other states.  She discusses the Louisiana Family Forum, which is behind the bill, as well as the involvement of the Discovery Institute.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationism's latest strategy"},{"content":"I just read yesterday at the Friendly Atheist blog that Ray Comfort has conceded that the banana is not really the \u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rsquo;s nightmare,\u0026quot; and that it\u0026rsquo;s not a good argument. But he is still continuing his habit of saying incredibly stupid things, such as that light is invisible and California wildfires are punishment for same-sex marriage. I find it remarkable that he continues to pass himself off as a \u0026ldquo;master\u0026rdquo; when his blog is full of commenters who are vastly more intelligent than he seems to be, who shred his arguments in a manner more amusing, witty, and persuasive than anything he writes.\nBut then, maybe he\u0026rsquo;s actually an atheist playing the role of an exaggeratedly dumb Christian, in the way that Stephen Colbert plays an exaggerated conservative. After all, there\u0026rsquo;s clearly success to be had and money to be made by being wrong on the Internet. I\u0026rsquo;ve speculated in the past that some people are intentionally putting forth bad arguments just to get the traffic from corrections.\nUnfortunately, I\u0026rsquo;m afraid that, despite the fact that people like Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Moore, Michelle Malkin, and the Stop the ACLU bloggers often say things that they clearly should know are false, it\u0026rsquo;s not that they are being ironic parodies like Colbert, it\u0026rsquo;s that they just don\u0026rsquo;t care about the difference between truth and falsehood\u0026ndash;they are bullshitters. And it\u0026rsquo;s just scary that there are people who take them seriously as reliable sources of facts.\nEamon Knight (2008-06-26):\nI'm getting \"This account has been suspended\" at the Friendly Atheist link. Is something going on over there?\nLippard (2008-06-26):\nI'm now getting the same...I've updated the second link (\"it's not a good argument\") to the Ray Comfort concession to another blog post with the transcript of what he said.\nLippard (2008-06-26):\nThe Friendly Atheist is back.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/ray-comfort-concedes-banana-argument.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just read yesterday \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/06/12/maybe-bananas-arent-our-worst-nightmare-after-all/\"\u003eat the Friendly Atheist blog\u003c/a\u003e that Ray Comfort has conceded that the banana is not really the \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/kirk-cameron-on-evolution-hes-against.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rsquo;s nightmare,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and that \u003ca href=\"http://goosetheantithesis.blogspot.com/2006/05/ray-comfort-concedes-banana-argument.html\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s not a good argument\u003c/a\u003e.  But he is still continuing his habit of saying incredibly stupid things, such as that \u003ca href=\"http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2008/06/thank-god-for-science.html\"\u003elight is invisible\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/ray_comfort_answers_a_question.php\"\u003eCalifornia wildfires are punishment for same-sex marriage\u003c/a\u003e.  I find it remarkable that he continues to pass himself off as a \u0026ldquo;master\u0026rdquo; when his blog is full of commenters who are vastly more intelligent than he seems to be, who shred his arguments in a manner more amusing, witty, and persuasive than anything he writes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut then, maybe he\u0026rsquo;s actually an atheist playing the role of an exaggeratedly dumb Christian, in the way that Stephen Colbert plays an exaggerated conservative.  After all, there\u0026rsquo;s clearly success to be had and money to be made by being \u003ca href=\"http://xkcd.com/386/\"\u003ewrong on the Internet\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/nick-carrs-bogus-criticism-of.html\"\u003especulated in the past\u003c/a\u003e that some people are intentionally putting forth bad arguments just to get the traffic from corrections.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, I\u0026rsquo;m afraid that, despite the fact that people like Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Moore, Michelle Malkin, and the Stop the ACLU bloggers often say things that they clearly should know are false, it\u0026rsquo;s not that they are being ironic parodies like Colbert, it\u0026rsquo;s that they just don\u0026rsquo;t care about the difference between truth and falsehood\u0026ndash;they are \u003ca href=\"/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html\"\u003ebullshitters\u003c/a\u003e.  And it\u0026rsquo;s just scary that there are people who take them seriously as reliable sources of facts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ray Comfort concedes banana argument"},{"content":"The world\u0026rsquo;s tallest building is the 1667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan. One of its features is a 730-ton steel ball, made of 41 steel plates, that acts as a damper against swaying motions of the skyscraper due to wind.\nOn May 12, 2008, the damper, which sits between the 87th and 89th floors of the building, got a workout from the earthquakes that hit China\u0026rsquo;s Sichuan province. And a YouTube user was there to get footage:\n(Via deputydog, which has more information about the damper. Hat tip to Dan Noland on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nHistorical Comments Gridman (2008-06-28):\nImpressive.I've visited Taipei 101 on a couple of occaisions.Those cables are so enormous and solid looking, that it is hard to imagine them being anything but rigid columns.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/taipei-101s-730-ton-damper-ball.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe world\u0026rsquo;s tallest building is the 1667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan.  One of its features is \u003ca href=\"http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/1612252.html\"\u003ea 730-ton steel ball, made of 41 steel plates\u003c/a\u003e, that acts as a damper against swaying motions of the skyscraper due to wind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn May 12, 2008, the damper, which sits between the 87th and 89th floors of the building, got a workout from the earthquakes that hit China\u0026rsquo;s Sichuan province.  And a YouTube user was there to get footage:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-08069759400827924 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NYSgd1XSZXc\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-08069759400827924 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NYSgd1XSZXc\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NYSgd1XSZXc\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NYSgd1XSZXc\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://deputy-dog.com/2008/06/22/in-action-a-skyscrapers-amazing-728-ton-stabilising-ball/\"\u003edeputydog\u003c/a\u003e, which has more information about the damper.  Hat tip to Dan Noland on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Taipei 101's 730-ton damper ball"},{"content":"The fourth episode of the ApostAZ podcast is now out, and this time I contributed a segment on \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint.\nEpisode 004: Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Squared by Greydon Square. Happy Freuder\u0026rsquo;s Day. Inappropriate Teachers and the Children They Burn. Philly Coalition of Reason creates the Sign of the Times, wow. Science and Skepticism Segment by Jim Lippard, \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s Knee Joint\u0026rdquo;. Fleshing Out the Humanity of Godlessness.\nCheck it out.\n(BTW, correction to the podcast: there\u0026rsquo;s a reference to Kenneth Starr that should be a reference to Ken Lay of Enron\u0026ndash;but he died of a heart attack, not a suicide or fake suicide like Samuel Israel III. And the quotation about \u0026ldquo;nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution\u0026rdquo; is from Theodosius Dobzhansky. ApostAZ talks about EquallyYoked.com, which this blog has discussed here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/apostaz-podcast-4.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe fourth episode of \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003ethe ApostAZ podcast\u003c/a\u003e is now out, and this time I contributed a segment on \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz004.mp3\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEpisode 004\u003c/a\u003e: Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Squared by Greydon Square. Happy Freuder\u0026rsquo;s Day. Inappropriate Teachers and the Children They Burn. Philly Coalition of Reason creates the Sign of the Times, wow. Science and Skepticism Segment by Jim Lippard, \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s Knee Joint\u0026rdquo;. Fleshing Out the Humanity of Godlessness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck it out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(BTW, correction to the podcast:  there\u0026rsquo;s a reference to Kenneth Starr that should be a reference to Ken Lay of Enron\u0026ndash;but he died of a heart attack, not a suicide or fake suicide like Samuel Israel III. And the quotation about \u0026ldquo;nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution\u0026rdquo; is from Theodosius Dobzhansky.  ApostAZ talks about EquallyYoked.com, which this blog has discussed \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/christian-dating-service-uses.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #4"},{"content":"For some reason, I decided to Google the name of a channeler I debated on radio back in 1987, to see if she was still in the business. While I didn\u0026rsquo;t come across any online references to her channeling, I did find her giving positive testimonials for a Sedona teacher of online newage courses that would be a lot funnier if they weren\u0026rsquo;t serious.\nThe course \u0026ldquo;Dowsing to Help the Animals\u0026rdquo; covers the following topics:\nHow to talk with pets and wild animals\nHow to find lost pets\nHow to protect pets and wild animals from danger\nHow to choose the right and perfect veterinarian\nHow to improve your pet’s health condition\nHow to understand and improve troublesome pet behavior\nHow to remove insects and other pests from your home\nAND MORE!\nThere\u0026rsquo;s also \u0026ldquo;Help Troubled Species\u0026rdquo;:\nWith the power of subtle energy technology, it is possible to help troubled species, both on a local and worldwide level. Dowsing, a simple, yet powerful subtle energy management too, can be utilized to shift circumstances, to communicate with animal and plant life, and to access information on how to best help the creatures that need assistance. There\u0026rsquo;s also \u0026ldquo;Dowsing to Help Plants.\u0026quot; These courses don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have basic dowsing skills as a prerequisite, though another course, \u0026ldquo;Making Peace with Earth Energies, Cosmic Forces \u0026amp; More\u0026rdquo; does, noting that \u0026ldquo;You must be able to achieve a “yes” and “no” response with a pendulum, other dowsing device, or through muscle testing.\u0026quot;\nAnother course that seems to be a prerequisite for a number of courses on the site is a self-help course in \u0026ldquo;Chasing the Shadow of Free Will: An Introduction to Belief Codes.\u0026quot; This course description claims that \u0026ldquo;MOST of your troublesome thoughts were inherited from members of your family or are the result of past life experiences\u0026rdquo; and that the course will teach you to \u0026ldquo;use intuitive skills to access your subconscious mind and uncover the hidden thoughts (belief codes) that are preventing you from fulfilling your heart\u0026rsquo;s desires.\u0026rdquo; By \u0026ldquo;clearing belief codes,\u0026rdquo; you can obtain a wide variety of salutory effects.\nIt sounds a lot like Dianetics, the core of Scientology\u0026ndash;that the key to overcoming negative psychological problems is the elimination of \u0026ldquo;engrams,\u0026rdquo; memory traces in the unconscious or \u0026ldquo;reactive mind\u0026rdquo; caused by negative prenatal (or evolutionary) experiences. The use of the term \u0026ldquo;clearing\u0026rdquo; is heavily used in Scientology, and the goal of Dianetics is to become \u0026ldquo;clear,\u0026rdquo; by completely eliminating the reactive mind so that all behavior is voluntary and consciously chosen. (I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what Scientologists think about the autonomic nervous system\u0026ndash;presumably they have decided that it is distinct from the reactive mind rather than something to be eliminated.)\nAt any rate, it appears that newage, if not channeling, is still alive and well in Sedona.\nEamon Knight (2008-06-26):\nThere seems to be a moderate undercurrent of newage woo in the pet industry -- it seems like every vet office I'm in, there's always some free magazine pushing crap about communicating telepathically with your cat, or some such rubbish.\nLippard (2008-06-26):\nI've also seen homeopathy quackery pushed by animal rescue groups, pet stores, and vets.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/help-troubled-animals-by-dowsing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor some reason, I decided to Google the name of a channeler I debated on radio back in 1987, to see if she was still in the business.  While I didn\u0026rsquo;t come across any online references to her channeling, I did find her giving positive testimonials for a Sedona teacher of online newage courses that would be a lot funnier if they weren\u0026rsquo;t serious.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe course \u003ca href=\"http://www.sedonaportal.com/animals.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dowsing to Help the Animals\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e covers the following topics:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp class=\"h4\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Help troubled animals, by dowsing"},{"content":"Offered without comment.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2008-06-25):\nThis reminds me of the discussion of names and their often negative correlation with success in life in Freakonomics.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/god-arrested-for-selling-cocaine-near.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOffered \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_fe_st/god_arrest\"\u003ewithout comment\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-25)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThis reminds me of the discussion of names and their often negative correlation with success in life in \u003cI\u003eFreakonomics\u003c/I\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"God arrested for selling cocaine near Tampa church"},{"content":"\nI\u0026rsquo;ve returned home after attending my first Amazing Meeting, TAM 6, and it was indeed an amazing meeting, with about 900 in attendance. There were many excellent speakers and talks, and it was a pleasure to meet and have conversations with many of my fellow skeptics at meals and between sessions.\nI took nearly 50 pages of notes, which I\u0026rsquo;ll use to write up a more detailed review. If any readers would like to point me to other summaries, I\u0026rsquo;ll link to those as well.\nThe photo is of an Australian black swan at the Flamingo Hotel, where the conference was held.\nPhysics teacher Dean Baird has a fantastic collection of photographs from the conference.\nUPDATE: Summary part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five.\nHistorical Comments Podblack (2008-07-02):\nHey, that's my state's emblem! Bring it back! :p\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2602629099_56156892af.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2602629099_56156892af.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve returned home after attending my first Amazing Meeting, TAM 6, and it was indeed an amazing meeting, with about 900 in attendance.    There were many excellent speakers and talks, and it was a pleasure to meet and have conversations with many of my fellow skeptics at meals and between sessions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI took nearly 50 pages of notes, which I\u0026rsquo;ll use to write up a more detailed review.  If any readers would like to point me to other summaries, I\u0026rsquo;ll link to those as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe photo is of an Australian black swan at the Flamingo Hotel, where the conference was held.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhysics teacher \u003ca href=\"http://phyzblog.blogspot.com/\"\u003eDean Baird\u003c/a\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://phyz.smugmug.com/gallery/5212117_mJHhn#321616391_cEU3C\"\u003ea fantastic collection of photographs from the conference\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Summary \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-one.html\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-two.html\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-three.html\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-four.html\"\u003epart four\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2008/07/amazing-meeting-6-summarized-part-five.html\"\u003epart five\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Amazing Meeting 6"},{"content":"Chris Rodda reports on the United States Services Command, a Christian evangelizing \u0026ldquo;disaster relief\u0026rdquo; organization that illegally uses U.S. military-style ranks and uniforms, yet rather than being prosecuted for its criminal impersonation, receives awards, recommendations, and commendations from military officers and from President George W. Bush.\nThe photo Rodda links to has been deleted, but can be found here, where some real military officers express their disgust with USSC\u0026rsquo;s fake soldiers.\n(Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the Rodda story.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/fake-military-for-christian-evangelism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Rodda \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/rapture-ready-evangelical_b_106739.html\"\u003ereports on the United States Services Command\u003c/a\u003e, a Christian evangelizing  \u0026ldquo;disaster relief\u0026rdquo; organization that illegally uses U.S. military-style ranks and uniforms, yet rather than being prosecuted for its criminal impersonation, receives awards, recommendations, and commendations from military officers and from President George W. Bush.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe photo Rodda links to has been deleted, but can be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.vajoe.com/board/viewtopic.php?id=799\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, where some real military officers express their disgust with USSC\u0026rsquo;s fake soldiers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/more_fundamentalist_infiltrati.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e for the Rodda story.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fake military for Christian evangelism"},{"content":"Well, apart from those in the illegal drug business themselves, who benefit from the lack of legal competition, it looks like the big winners are government contractors\u0026ndash;DynCorp and now Blackwater.\nMark (2008-06-16):\nAccording to NPR today, various police departments in Texas are profiting very nicely from the war on drugs.\nLippard (2008-06-16):\nYep, good point--I didn't even make passing reference to the abuse of civil forfeiture in the war on drugs.It's not just Texas!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/who-profits-from-war-on-drugs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, apart from those in the illegal drug business themselves, who benefit from the lack of legal competition, it looks like the big winners are government contractors\u0026ndash;DynCorp and now \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/blackwater_joins_war_on_drugs.php\"\u003eBlackwater\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMark\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAccording to NPR today, various police departments in Texas are profiting very nicely from the war on drugs.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYep, good point--I didn't even make passing reference to the abuse of civil forfeiture in the war on drugs.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIt's not just Texas!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who profits from the war on drugs?"},{"content":"Readers of Gerald Posner\u0026rsquo;s Why America Slept know that there has been evidence of Saudi royal family connections to the al Qaeda 9/11 terrorism plot. The final chapter of that book, titled \u0026ldquo;The Interrogation,\u0026rdquo; is about the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002 by a team that included American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams as well as Pakistani police and military. After he was captured, Zubaydah was subjected to interrogation by the CIA in a real \u0026ldquo;false flag\u0026rdquo; operation, where he was made to believe he had been transported to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation. While in fact he was in Afghanistan, he was made to believe he was in a Saudi jail, and two Arab-Americans with U.S. Special Forces played the role of his interrogators.\nTo their surprise, Zubaydah didn\u0026rsquo;t display fear, but relief. While previously he hadn\u0026rsquo;t even been willing to reveal his identity, he now gave his name, said he was happy to see them, and asked the interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family, for whom he provided private home and cell phone numbers from memory. That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd, owner of the Research and Marketing Group, and owner of the Kentucky Derby winning horse War Emblem.\nZubaydah claimed that bin Laden had made a cooperative arrangement with Pakistani air force chief Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, a military official with close ties to the pro-Islamist members of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and that this arrangement had the blessing of Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. Also according to Zubaydah, Turki had made a deal to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and would not ask for extradition of bin Laden, so long as his activities were directed away from Saudi Arabia.\nZubaydah also implicated Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir as supporters of al Qaeda, and stated that Mir and Prince Ahmed had advance knowledge that there would be terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.\nHis interrogators were skeptical of his claims, even though information from him was successfully used to capture Omar al-Faruq, a senior al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia. And when U.S. personnel (not posing as Saudis) confronted Zubaydah about his claims, he denied it all and said that he had made it up. CIA investigation of his claims found nothing to refute them, however, and some corroborating evidence. A report on his claims was submitted to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, each of which responded that the claims were entirely false.\nOn July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 43, and on July 23, 2002, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud was killed in a car accident at the age of 41. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found dead, having \u0026ldquo;died of thirst\u0026rdquo; at the age of 25. Prince Turki was fired from his position as head of Saudi Intelligence on September 1, 2001, and became the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2002.\nOn February 20, 2003, Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife, and fifteen others were killed in a plane crash.\nNone of this appeared in the 9/11 Commission Report, though it might have been planned for that document. This is because the Bush administration censored 28 pages of material about Saudi connections to 9/11 from the report on the grounds of national security.\nIn 2004, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, published a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America\u0026rsquo;s War on Terror, in which he claimed that Bush covered up evidence that the Saudi government was aiding at least two of the 9/11 hijackers via Omar al-Bayoumi, which Graham discussed in an interview with Salon.com.\nMore recently, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon\u0026rsquo;s book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, raises the same point about the Saudi government\u0026rsquo;s ties to Omar al-Bayoumi.\nI think the full story of Saudi and Pakistani involvement in 9/11 has yet to be told.\nNone of this involves munitions used to collapse buildings, unmanned drones, missiles hitting the Pentagon, or the innocence of Osama bin Laden, like the crazy 9/11 truth movement\u0026rsquo;s claims. It does involve U.S. political relations with nations that have been key allies in the war on terror, both of which have governments which have been close to collapse, and one of which (Pakistan) is a nuclear power and one of which is the source of most foreign oil imported by the U.S. It\u0026rsquo;s clear why the U.S. would treat relations with these countries gingerly even if they did have members of their governments directly involved in 9/11, and why those countries would want to quietly dispose of the problem.\nUPDATE (July 16, 2009): Greetings to Talking Points Memo readers, here because of a link in the comments from a story about a Bush/Cheney CIA assassination program apparently permitted to operate domestically. That commenter seemed to suggest that the CIA might have been behind the deaths described in the above post, which I think is highly unlikely in comparison to the speculation that the Saudis themselves might have taken care of matters.\nUPDATE (April 13, 2015): Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, claimed in February 2015 that members of the Saudi royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks. He specifically named Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud and Prince Bandar bin Sultan.\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2008-06-16):\nPosner's basic account of that interrogation has now been substantially corroborated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jame Risen of the New York Times, as I note here: www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com\nHume's Ghost (2008-06-21):\nThanks alot. I had talked myself out of buying the discount hardcover of Posner's Secrets of the Kingdom which on sale at Barnes and Noble for 5 dollars. Now I feel compelled to go purchase it.I'm going to need a couple more bookshelfs at this pace.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/real-911-conspiracy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReaders of Gerald Posner\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy America Slept\u003c/span\u003e know that there has been evidence of Saudi royal family connections to the al Qaeda 9/11 terrorism plot.  The final chapter of that book, titled \u0026ldquo;The Interrogation,\u0026rdquo; is about the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002 by a team that included American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams as well as Pakistani police and military.  After he was captured, Zubaydah was subjected to interrogation by the CIA in a real \u0026ldquo;false flag\u0026rdquo; operation, where he was made to believe he had been transported to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation.  While in fact he was in Afghanistan, he was made to believe he was in a Saudi jail, and two Arab-Americans with U.S. Special Forces played the role of his interrogators.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTo their surprise, Zubaydah didn\u0026rsquo;t display fear, but relief.  While previously he hadn\u0026rsquo;t even been willing to reveal his identity, he now gave his name, said he was happy to see them, and asked the interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family, for whom he provided private home and cell phone numbers from memory.  That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd, owner of the Research and Marketing Group, and owner of the Kentucky Derby winning horse War Emblem.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nZubaydah claimed that bin Laden had made a cooperative arrangement with Pakistani air force chief Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, a military official with close ties to the pro-Islamist members of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and that this arrangement had the blessing of Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia.  Also according to Zubaydah, Turki had made a deal to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and would not ask for extradition of bin Laden, so long as his activities were directed away from Saudi Arabia.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nZubaydah also implicated Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir as supporters of al Qaeda, and stated that Mir and Prince Ahmed had advance knowledge that there would be terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis interrogators were skeptical of his claims, even though information from him was successfully used to capture Omar al-Faruq, a senior al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia.  And when U.S. personnel (not posing as Saudis) confronted Zubaydah about his claims, he denied it all and said that he had made it up.  CIA investigation of his claims found nothing to refute them, however, and some corroborating evidence.  A report on his claims was submitted to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, each of which responded that the claims were entirely false.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 43, and on July 23, 2002, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud was killed in a car accident at the age of 41.  A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found dead, having \u0026ldquo;died of thirst\u0026rdquo; at the age of 25.  Prince Turki was fired from his position as head of Saudi Intelligence on September 1, 2001, and became the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2002.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn February 20, 2003, Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife, and fifteen others were killed in a plane crash.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNone of this appeared in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e9/11 Commission Report\u003c/span\u003e, though it might have been planned for that document.  This is because \u003ca href=\"http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s102803.html\"\u003ethe Bush administration censored 28 pages of material about Saudi connections to 9/11 from the report\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds of national security.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2004, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, published a book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIntelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America\u0026rsquo;s War on Terror\u003c/span\u003e, in which he claimed that Bush covered up evidence that the Saudi government was aiding at least two of the 9/11 hijackers via Omar al-Bayoumi, which \u003ca href=\"http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/08/graham/index.html\"\u003eGraham discussed in an interview with Salon.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMore recently, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Page_2_FBI_documents_contradict_Sept._0228.html\"\u003eraises the same point about the Saudi government\u0026rsquo;s ties to Omar al-Bayoumi\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI think the full story of Saudi and Pakistani involvement in 9/11 has yet to be told.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNone of this involves munitions used to collapse buildings, unmanned drones, missiles hitting the Pentagon, or the innocence of Osama bin Laden, like the crazy 9/11 truth movement\u0026rsquo;s claims.  It does involve U.S. political relations with nations that have been key allies in the war on terror, both of which have governments which have been close to collapse, and one of which (Pakistan) is a nuclear power and one of which is the source of most foreign oil imported by the U.S.  It\u0026rsquo;s clear why the U.S. would treat relations with these countries gingerly even if they did have members of their governments directly involved in 9/11, and why those countries would want to quietly dispose of the problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (July 16, 2009):  Greetings to Talking Points Memo readers, here because of a link in the comments from \u003ca href=\"http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/report_cia_assassin_program_could_operate_anywhere.php\"\u003ea story about a Bush/Cheney CIA assassination program apparently permitted to operate domestically\u003c/a\u003e.  That commenter seemed to suggest that the CIA might have been behind the deaths described in the above post, which I think is highly unlikely in comparison to the speculation that the Saudis themselves might have taken care of matters.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (April 13, 2015): Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/politics/9-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-involvement/index.html\"\u003eclaimed in February 2015 that members of the Saudi royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks\u003c/a\u003e. He specifically named Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud and Prince Bandar bin Sultan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The real 9/11 conspiracy"},{"content":"Blair Gadsby, a 45-year-old adjunct religious studies professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, has gone on hunger strike until John McCain agrees to meet with him about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Gadsby thinks that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 with explosives, even though he\u0026rsquo;s apparently read the Popular Mechanics book on Debunking 9/11 Myths, for which McCain wrote the foreword.\nIn how many different ways is this guy an idiot?\n1. He\u0026rsquo;s bought into nonsensical conspiracy theories\u0026ndash;his version has both Islamic terrorists flying planes into the WTC and explosives put there earlier, so he must believe something like this.\n2. He apparently can\u0026rsquo;t understand the refutations of them.\n3. He thinks a hunger strike is a good way to meet John McCain.\n4. He\u0026rsquo;s an adjunct professor of religious studies.\nFeel free to add to the list.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-06-15):\nThis June 11th column at a Phoenix alt-weekly suggests that Gadsby had declared victory and gave up his hunger strike.I suspect it's part of a disinformation campaign to confuse the troofers and set them into disarray. They know too much!heh\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/phoenix-911-truther-on-hunger-strike.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlair Gadsby, a 45-year-old adjunct religious studies professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/06/09/20080609hungerstrike0609NEW.html\"\u003ehas gone on hunger strike until John McCain agrees to meet with him about 9/11 conspiracy theories\u003c/a\u003e.  Gadsby thinks that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 with explosives, even though he\u0026rsquo;s apparently read the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePopular Mechanics\u003c/span\u003e book on \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDebunking 9/11 Myths\u003c/span\u003e, for which McCain wrote the foreword.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn how many different ways is this guy an idiot?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  He\u0026rsquo;s bought into nonsensical conspiracy theories\u0026ndash;his version has both Islamic terrorists flying planes into the WTC \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eand\u003c/span\u003e explosives put there earlier, so he must believe something like \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/matt-taibbi-takes-on-911-conspiracy_20.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  He apparently can\u0026rsquo;t understand the \u003ca href=\"http://www.debunking911.com/\"\u003erefutations\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html\"\u003eof\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.911myths.com/\"\u003ethem\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e3.  He thinks a hunger strike is a good way to meet John McCain.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  He\u0026rsquo;s an adjunct professor of religious studies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFeel free to add to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix 9/11 truther on hunger strike"},{"content":"Watch in the video below as Michelle Malkin claims that conservatives have not engaged in any ad hominem or unwarranted attacks on Barack Obama\u0026rsquo;s wife Michelle, even as Fox News places a caption below her, referring to Michelle Obama as \u0026ldquo;Obama\u0026rsquo;s baby mama,\u0026rdquo; a slang term which the Urban Dictionary defines as:\nThe mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved.”\n“Basically a woman you had a child or children with who you didn’t marry and are no longer involved with. Usually associated with hoodrats and trailer park b***hes.”\n“Like herpes, it won’t go away!!!!!” The always despicable, dishonest, sleazy, and inflammatory Michelle Malkin responded to this by trying to defend it as entirely unobjectionable, which John Scalzi vividly rebuts in his \u0026ldquo;Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment to Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan\u0026rsquo;s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul.\u0026quot; Fox has merely admitted that the caption showed \u0026ldquo;poor judgment.\u0026quot;\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-06-14):\nLook forward to more of it. Fox just gave Laura Ingraham a show.E.D. Hill's \"terrorist fist jab\" comment about Barack giving Michelle \"dap\" (aka a fist bump) is also designed to play upon racist and anti-Muslim fears. Fox is a national disgrace.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/sleaziness-of-fox-and-michelle-malkin.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatch in the video below as Michelle Malkin claims that conservatives have not engaged in any ad hominem or unwarranted attacks on Barack Obama\u0026rsquo;s wife Michelle, even as Fox News places a caption below her, referring to Michelle Obama as \u0026ldquo;Obama\u0026rsquo;s baby mama,\u0026rdquo; a slang term \u003ca href=\"http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane421\"\u003ewhich the Urban Dictionary defines as\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e“Basically a woman you had a child or children with who you didn’t marry and are no longer involved with. Usually associated with hoodrats and trailer park b***hes.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e“Like herpes, it won’t go away!!!!!” \u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-09223289603228999 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TvZEZL2LmA8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-09223289603228999 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TvZEZL2LmA8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TvZEZL2LmA8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TvZEZL2LmA8\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe always despicable, dishonest, sleazy, and inflammatory Michelle Malkin responded to this by trying to defend it as entirely unobjectionable, which John Scalzi vividly rebuts in his \u003ca href=\"http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=870\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment to Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan\u0026rsquo;s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Fox has merely admitted that \u003ca href=\"http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jlDT1TfqoK4Glx0Jy1SaWOoqsh7g\"\u003ethe caption showed \u0026ldquo;poor judgment.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/fox_news_obamas_baby_mama.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The sleaziness of Fox and Michelle Malkin"},{"content":"STATE OF OREGON PROCLAMATION\nOFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR\nWHEREAS: Application of reason offers a hope for developing and\nimplementing intelligent, humane, and ethical interactions among people; and\nWHEREAS: Philosophies of reason were emphasized when writing the\nConstitution of the United States of America and those of its several\nstates; and\nWHEREAS: Most citizens value reason and seek to apply it in making decisions\nand resolving problems in their lives; and\nWHEREAS: Educational programs emphasize acquisition of\nreasoning skills in preparing for one's future.\nNOW,\nTHEREFORE: I, Theodore R. Kulongoski, Governor of the\nState of Oregon, hereby proclaim\nJune 21, 2008\nto be\nA Day of Reason\nin Oregon and encourage all Oregonians to join in this observance.\nIN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my\nhand and cause the Great Seal of the State of\nOregon to be affixed. Done at the Capitol in the\nCity of Salem in the State of Oregon on the day,\nMay 29, 2008.\nTheodore R. Kulongoski, Governor\nBill Bradbury, Secretary of State(Via Serene Journal.) Historical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2008-06-14):\nGreat, and it coincides with World Humanist Day! Cheers!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/oregon-gov-declares-june-21-day-of.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003eSTATE OF OREGON PROCLAMATION\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWHEREAS: Application of reason offers a hope for developing and\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eimplementing intelligent, humane, and ethical interactions among people; and\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWHEREAS: Philosophies of reason were emphasized when writing the\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConstitution of the United States of America and those of its several\u003cbr /\u003estates; and\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWHEREAS: Most citizens value reason and seek to apply it in making decisions\u003cbr /\u003eand resolving problems in their lives; and\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWHEREAS: Educational programs emphasize acquisition of\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ereasoning skills in preparing for one's future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNOW,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTHEREFORE: I, Theodore R. Kulongoski, Governor of the\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eState of Oregon, hereby proclaim\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJune 21, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eto be\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Day of Reason\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ein Oregon and encourage all Oregonians to join in this observance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ehand and cause the Great Seal of the State of\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOregon to be affixed. Done at the Capitol in the\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCity of Salem in the State of Oregon on the day,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMay 29, 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheodore R. Kulongoski, Governor\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBill Bradbury, Secretary of State\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://serenejournal.livejournal.com/970759.html\"\u003eSerene Journal\u003c/a\u003e.)\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-14)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eGreat, and it coincides with World Humanist Day! Cheers!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oregon Gov. declares June 21 \"Day of Reason\""},{"content":"Paul McCartney, \u0026ldquo;Live and Let Die\u0026rdquo;:\nIn this ever-changing world in which we live in \u0026hellip;\nSome say the last part is \u0026ldquo;in which we\u0026rsquo;re livin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think so. One blogger has pointed out that usps.gov has a password hint prompt that asks \u0026ldquo;In what city were you born in?\u0026quot;\nMike Oldfield, \u0026ldquo;Crises\u0026rdquo;:\nCrises, crises, there\u0026rsquo;s gonna be a crises.\nNo, there may be multiple crises, but there would be a crisis.\nAlanis Morissette, \u0026ldquo;Ironic\u0026rdquo; (whole song):\nInconvenience is not irony. Dealt with here.\nThe Flobots, \u0026ldquo;No Handlebars\u0026rdquo;:\nI can shoot a target through a telescope \u0026hellip;\nNot without breaking it, you can\u0026rsquo;t.\nAnybody have any other song lyrics that are annoyingly ungrammatical, nonsensical, or stupid, that make you groan inwardly every time you hear them?\nUPDATE (July 16, 2008): I can\u0026rsquo;t believe I forgot this one, that I heard today on the way home from work:\nThe Beastie Boys, \u0026ldquo;Intergalactic\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026hellip; like a pinch from the neck of Mr. Spock.\nThis lyric is reported online as \u0026ldquo;like a pinch on the neck from Mr. Spock,\u0026rdquo; or as \u0026ldquo;like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock,\u0026rdquo; the former of which would make perfect sense and the latter of which would make some sense (perhaps referring to an action by a different Vulcan directed at Spock), but neither is what I hear the song say. Judge for yourself, it\u0026rsquo;s at about 3:27 in the video.\nBrad (2008-06-13):\nThe Killers, \"All these things that I've done\"A list of lines repeated:If you can hold onYeah, you know you got to help me outYeah, oh don’t you put me on the backburnerYeah, you’re gonna bring yourself downI got soul, but I’m not a soldierI think the soul/soldier line is repeated twenty times in a row toward the end of the song. It makes me think of a mentally disabled person obsessing on the word \"soul\" sounding like a word part of \"soldier\". The line is meaningless, as if taken from a drug-induced conversation where having a soul necessitates being a soldier.This has the three worst elements of song writing: repeated linesthe word \"yeah\" to jury-rig a song with a saccharine sense of metergobbledygook lines as an attempt to cram in cryptic meaning\ntom (2008-06-13):\nSongs that start with the word \"and\" have always irritated me. I'm sure there are better examples, but the MeatPuppets \"Backwater\" is the first that comes to mind:\"And when I wake up in the morningTo feel the daybreak on my face\"StoneTemplePilots' \"Plush\" is another:\"And I feel that times a wasted goSo where ya going to tommorrow?\"Pretty much anything involving Fergie tends to have unbearable lyrics, but I'll choose my two favorites:1. From \"Big Girls Don't Cry\":\"I need some shelter of my own protection baby\" (huh??) followed up by the equally incoherent \"To be with myself and center, clarity, peace, serenity\".2. All of \"My Humps\", which was lambasted in an extremely funny Slate.com essay a few years ago:(forgive my lack of html skills) Notes on Humps: A Song So Awful it Hurts the Mindhttp://www.slate.com/id/2131640/\nEinzige (2008-06-13):\nActually, I quite dig that Killers tune, myself.As you know, Jim, I've usually got lyrics at the ready for just about any occasion. In this instance I am, strangely, at a loss.I'll give it some thought, though.\nLippard (2008-06-13):\nEinzige, I agree with you on The Killers' song--when it comes on the radio the impulse to sing along is stronger than the urge to strangle the singer or songwriter responsible.I also don't find gobbledygook to necessarily be inherently annoying--I am a fan of the Cocteau Twins, and a lot of that is, if not actually gibberish, sung in a manner that it's mostly incomprehensible. I think the words were picked for sound over meaning. Shriekback and Wire also have songs where analysis of meaning is probably a waste of time, but they're still pleasant to listen to.\"My Humps\" may be the example to beat all examples of what I was trying to convey with my choices, though.\nEinzige (2008-06-13):\nShriekback lyrics are particularly noteworthy, I think.Totally meaningless and yet so friggin' compelling!We drink elixirs that we've refinedFrom the juices of the dyingWe are no monstersWe're moral peopleAnd yet we have the strength to do thisThis is the splendor of our achievementCall in the air strike with a poison kiss!\nLaika (2008-06-14):\nVanessa Williams, \"Save The Best For Last\":Sometimes the snow comes down in JuneSometimes the sun goes 'round the moonJust nonsense filler words totally at odds with astronomy, meant to just sound beautiful, but they only make me cringe.\nMike the Mad Biologist (2008-06-25):\nI don't exactly have a lyric, but I have a dissapointment. Joe Cocker's (well, it was not him but he did the best cover of it) \"feeling alright\" (aka Feelin' alright)... The words are NOT \"I'm feeling alright, I'm felling alright\" etc. etc. They are:YOU are feeling alright. I\"M not feeling so good myself...I've noticed that people who have that wrong feel bad when they hear the correct words for the first time. (Then there's that song .... about something being upstairs in the bathroom on the right...)By the way, I'm not Mike the Mad Biologist. I'm Greg Laden the Happy Biologist. But Blogger and Google, between them, cannot handle complexity.\nLippard (2008-07-12):\nHere's an emailed comment from Brian R.:I can't believe no one has mentioned some of the most famous and egregious examples. First off, there's this line from \"Small Town\" by my fellow Hoosier, John Mellencamp: \"No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from.\" This mirrors the McCartney lyric not only in its structure, but in that some people give a grammatically correct version (leaving out the first \"from\"). The next two examples are maybe the most famous and certainly the most grating to my ears - and they're both from The Doors! \"If they say I never loved you You know they are a liar.\" (L.A. Woman) and \"I'm gonna love you 'Til the stars fall from the sky For you and I\" (Touch Me) These two lyrics alone kept me from taking The Doors seriously for many years. (Now I can dislike them for other reasons, though!)\nHysteria (2008-09-14):\n*stumbling in and feeling compelled to reply*Mark, as thoroughly annoying as Vanessa Williams and her song are, those are hardly \"nonsense filler words\", I do believe the lyric writer is actually trying to convey the idea that what you think impossible can sometimes happen. Snow in June (not so impossible here in Sweden, unfortunately), the sun going around the moon (not even in Sweden, thank God), these events are compared to the singer finding that someone she thought would always remain \"just a friend\" turned out to be her perfect love partner.And now I can't believe that I took the time to discuss the merits of Vanessa Williams' lyrics. Good thing this will probably never be read by anyone ;)\nMichael James (mj) (2015-11-15):\nThis is Head Quasar. I got here by Googling \u0026quot;songs that start with the word and.\u0026quot; I was thinking about Rush\u0026#39;s \u0026quot;Closer To The Heart\u0026quot; in particular. That doesn\u0026#39;t annoy me as much as confuse me. A lyric I've always disliked is \u0026quot;Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/annoying-song-lyrics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul McCartney, \u0026ldquo;Live and Let Die\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIn this ever-changing world in which we live in\u003c/span\u003e \u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome say the last part is \u0026ldquo;in which we\u0026rsquo;re livin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.  One blogger \u003ca href=\"http://shouldveaskedme.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-ever-changing-world-in-which-we.html\"\u003ehas pointed out\u003c/a\u003e that usps.gov has a password hint prompt that asks \u0026ldquo;In what city were you born in?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMike Oldfield, \u0026ldquo;Crises\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCrises, crises, there\u0026rsquo;s gonna be a crises.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNo, there may be multiple crises, but there would be a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ecrisis\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlanis Morissette, \u0026ldquo;Ironic\u0026rdquo; (whole song):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInconvenience is not irony.  Dealt with \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/interview-with-jon-winokur.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Flobots, \u0026ldquo;No Handlebars\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI can shoot a target through a telescope\u003c/span\u003e \u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot without breaking it, you can\u0026rsquo;t.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnybody have any other song lyrics that are annoyingly ungrammatical, nonsensical, or stupid, that make you groan inwardly every time you hear them?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 16, 2008):  I can\u0026rsquo;t believe I forgot this one, that I heard today on the way home from work:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Beastie Boys, \u0026ldquo;Intergalactic\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e\u0026hellip; like a pinch from the neck of Mr. Spock.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis lyric is reported online as \u0026ldquo;like a pinch on the neck from Mr. Spock,\u0026rdquo; or as \u0026ldquo;like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock,\u0026rdquo; the former of which would make perfect sense and the latter of which would make some sense (perhaps referring to an action by a different Vulcan directed at Spock), but neither is what I hear the song say.  Judge for yourself, it\u0026rsquo;s at about 3:27 in \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk0xmCZQWmk\"\u003ethe video\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Annoying song lyrics"},{"content":"On yesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Daily Show,\u0026rdquo; Jon Stewart pointed out a quote from Cliff Schechter\u0026rsquo;s new book, The Real McCain, where McCain used the word \u0026ldquo;cunt.\u0026rdquo; I didn\u0026rsquo;t think he made it clear who McCain was referring to when he said it, however. The Raw Story has the quote from Schechter\u0026rsquo;s book:\nThree reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain\u0026rsquo;s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain\u0026rsquo;s hair and said, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re getting a little thin up there.\u0026rdquo; McCain\u0026rsquo;s face reddened, and he responded, \u0026ldquo;At least I don\u0026rsquo;t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.\u0026rdquo; McCain\u0026rsquo;s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.Nice. Apparently McCain was known as \u0026ldquo;McNasty\u0026rdquo; in high school for his foul-mouthed tirades. Sounds like another LBJ, in that regard.\n(Previously, regarding McCain\u0026rsquo;s f-bomb habit.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/mccains-c-bomb-habit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn yesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Daily Show,\u0026rdquo; Jon Stewart pointed out a quote from Cliff Schechter\u0026rsquo;s new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Real McCain\u003c/span\u003e, where McCain used the word \u0026ldquo;cunt.\u0026rdquo;  I didn\u0026rsquo;t think he made it clear who McCain was referring to when he said it, however.  \u003ca href=\"http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html\"\u003eThe Raw Story has the quote from Schechter\u0026rsquo;s book\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThree reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain\u0026rsquo;s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain\u0026rsquo;s hair and said, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re getting a little thin up there.\u0026rdquo; McCain\u0026rsquo;s face reddened, and he responded, \u0026ldquo;At least I don\u0026rsquo;t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.\u0026rdquo; McCain\u0026rsquo;s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNice.  Apparently McCain was known as \u0026ldquo;McNasty\u0026rdquo; in high school for his foul-mouthed tirades.  Sounds like another LBJ, in that regard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/john-mccains-f-bomb-habit.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, regarding McCain\u0026rsquo;s f-bomb habit.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain's c-bomb habit"},{"content":"\nFox 10 News in Phoenix did a story last night on how the mortgage crisis is resulting in more animals being turned in to the pound, and more animals being euthanized. The story featured Lisa Thomas from RESCUE, the organization we volunteer with, as well as the Corgi mix named Rascal (pictured) who we\u0026rsquo;ve taken out on weekends a few times. Check it out, and please consider donating to RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-a-Rama event. (Put Kat\u0026rsquo;s or my name in for the bowler to encourage, and The Lippard Blog as the referrer.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/fox-story-on-rescue.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://azrescue.org/imagesanimals/D1025149521_2.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://azrescue.org/imagesanimals/D1025149521_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFox 10 News in Phoenix \u003ca href=\"http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=6751966\u0026amp;version=1\u0026amp;locale=EN-US\u0026amp;layoutCode=VSTY\u0026amp;pageId=1.1.1\"\u003edid a story last night on how the mortgage crisis is resulting in more animals being turned in to the pound, and more animals being euthanized\u003c/a\u003e.  The story featured Lisa Thomas from RESCUE, the organization we volunteer with, as well as the Corgi mix named Rascal (pictured) who we\u0026rsquo;ve taken out on weekends a few times.  Check it out, and \u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.org/servlet/sponsor02?bowl=1\"\u003eplease consider donating to RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-a-Rama event\u003c/a\u003e.  (Put Kat\u0026rsquo;s or my name in for the bowler to encourage, and The Lippard Blog as the referrer.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox story on RESCUE"},{"content":"Will Wilkinson gives a long quotation from an argument by Milton Friedman, along with some explication. The basic argument is that free immigration to jobs is a good thing, free immigration to welfare is a bad thing, and in the absence of a separation between legal residency and eligibility for welfare, the best result is achieved by encouraging more illegal immigration:\nBut the important takeaway here is this: Friedman’s view is that a certain kind of unrestricted welfare state makes illegal immigration good, because it severs residency from welfare eligibility. Friedman is unequivocal about the desirability of free migration. Anyone really committed to Friedman’s stated view about welfare and immigration should by no means try to restrict immigration, but instead should try to enable illegal immigration. A devout Friedmanite should stand stoutly against every fence, every border cop, every increase in the INS budget, any proposed database check for a new workers’ legal status, etc. I think it makes more sense to argue first for a guest worker program. But if that is in fact impossible, then Friedman has it right: more illegal immigration is the best we can do.See the fuller discussion at Will Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s blog.\nUPDATE (June 13, 2008): And, of related interest, a discussion of how the benefits of remittances are really the benefits of labor migration, and how Switzerland, despite being difficult to immigrate to, has the highest percentage of foreign-born in its population of any OECD country, also both from Will Wilkinson. The latter provides further evidence for the logical separability of citizenship, residency, work rights, and welfare eligibility.\nBrad (2008-06-13):\nIt's my opinion that a country is like a house party. You can let everyone in freely, but eventually it's going to be a different kind of party.Speaking specifically of Mexican Catholic families, their reproduction rate is above and beyond replacement numbers.Eventually there's going to be an overwhelming amount of people at the American House Party, and it's going to become a different type of party.That's only a prediction, and whether it's a good thing, a bad thing, or doesn't matter at all, has yet to be seen. Will the reproduction rate slow down with increased education? Only with the introduction of critical thinking and responsible decision making.Slooooow friday. ;-)\nLippard (2008-06-13):\nThere's a very strong correlation between growing GDP, falling infant mortality rates, and falling rates of reproduction. High rates of reproduction in the third world *is* the result of critical thinking and responsible decision-making--if infant mortality is high, you have more kids to ensure that at least some of them make it to maturity.The American House Party is *inevitably* going to become a different type of party, no matter what. Change is inevitable, regardless of immigration policies. Immigration policies which are more open tend to encourage economic growth in both the country immigrated to and the country immigrated from. The more mobile the global workforce is, the more wealth is generated overall. And that's positively correlated with education levels, happiness, and lots of other good things.And higher education levels are positively correlated with lower levels of religiosity.\nLippard (2008-06-13):\nBTW, see Gapminder for some nice animated charts--you can look at GDP vs. # of children per mother globally, for example.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/milton-friedmans-argument-for-illegal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWill Wilkinson gives \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/11/milton-friedmans-argument-for-illegal-immigration/\"\u003ea long quotation from an argument by Milton Friedman, along with some explication\u003c/a\u003e.  The basic argument is that free immigration to jobs is a good thing, free immigration to welfare is a bad thing, and in the absence of a separation between legal residency and eligibility for welfare, the best result is achieved by encouraging more illegal immigration:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut the important takeaway here is this: Friedman’s view is that a certain kind of unrestricted welfare state makes \u003cem\u003eillegal \u003c/em\u003eimmigration\u003cem\u003e \u003c/em\u003egood, because it severs residency from welfare eligibility. Friedman is unequivocal about the desirability of free migration. Anyone really committed to Friedman’s stated view about welfare and immigration should by no means try to restrict immigration, but instead should try to enable\u003cem\u003e illegal\u003c/em\u003e immigration. A devout Friedmanite should stand stoutly against every fence, every border cop, every increase in the INS budget, any proposed database check for a new workers’ legal status, etc. I think it makes \u003cem\u003emore \u003c/em\u003esense to argue first for a guest worker program. But if that is in fact impossible, then Friedman has it right: more illegal immigration \u003cem\u003eis\u003c/em\u003e the best we can do.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSee the fuller discussion at \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/11/milton-friedmans-argument-for-illegal-immigration/\"\u003eWill Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 13, 2008): And, of related interest, \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/02/remittances/\"\u003ea discussion of how the benefits of remittances are really the benefits of labor migration\u003c/a\u003e, and how \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/11/why-is-switzerland-the-worlds-most-immigrant-friendly-country/\"\u003eSwitzerland, despite being difficult to immigrate to, has the highest percentage of foreign-born in its population of any OECD country\u003c/a\u003e, also both from Will Wilkinson.  The latter provides further evidence for the logical separability of citizenship, residency, work rights, and welfare eligibility.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Milton Friedman's argument for illegal immigration"},{"content":"Just like quack magnetic therapy for improving human health, Alan Archer\u0026rsquo;s product claims to improve fuel efficiency for your car. According to a ridiculously skepticism-free article on ABC15\u0026rsquo;s website:\nThe gas blaster clamps to your car\u0026rsquo;s fuel line. Two powerful magnets change the molecular structure of gasoline causing it to burn cleaner and more efficient.Archer, whose company\u0026rsquo;s name isn\u0026rsquo;t mentioned in the article (but it\u0026rsquo;s Adaptive Energy Solutions, LLC according to their website, a company incorporated in September 2003), guarantees that the product will improve gas mileage by at least 10% or your money will be returned. He\u0026rsquo;s probably banking on the fact that most people won\u0026rsquo;t have carefully measured their gas mileage before using it, and the fact that a 10% gain for a car that gets 25 mpg is only 2.5 mpg, well within the range of normal mileage variability given normal variations in driving conditions. There\u0026rsquo;s a quote in the news article from an individual who says \u0026ldquo;(Ten percent) is a lot when I only get ten miles to the gallon.\u0026rdquo; No, it\u0026rsquo;s only 1 mpg difference, and I bet his 10 mpg is already variable by more than 1 mpg.\nArcher\u0026rsquo;s claims for this product, an \u0026ldquo;adaptive gas blaster,\u0026rdquo; are identical to claims that have been made for similar fuel line magnet products for decades. All of them that have actually been tested have been found to have no measurable effect on gas mileage, and no doubt the same is true of Archer\u0026rsquo;s hokum.\nWhat I find remarkable is that the media continue to uncritically give a forum to hucksters to promote their nonsense. In this case, ABC15 even helpfully provides a link at the bottom of the page where you can click to order a $48 (plus shipping and handling) \u0026ldquo;adaptive gas blaster.\u0026quot;\nThe money-back guarantee lasts for 60 days, doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the shipping and handling fee, is available for only a limited time, and requires that you have the device installed by an \u0026ldquo;ASE\u0026rdquo; (I think they mean AES) mechanic or the guarantee is only for 30 days\u0026ndash;I suspect there\u0026rsquo;s a nonrefundable installation fee if they do it for you.\nSave your money\u0026ndash;you can save gas more easily without buying a bogus product by driving less often and more efficiently.\n(Hat tip to Gridman for bringing this to my attention.)\nHistorical Comments John Lynch (2008-06-12):\nI saw this on the 6pm news yesterday and was appalled at the lack of critical thinking being applied. Best part was their claim that you had to drive 1000 miles and get an oil change before you saw any of the 10% saving they claimed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/health-quackery-for-your-car.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust like quack magnetic therapy for improving human health, Alan Archer\u0026rsquo;s product claims to improve fuel efficiency for your car.  According to \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=cf93d439-46cc-4a7c-908d-3501f8f7b4fe\u0026amp;rss=704\"\u003ea ridiculously skepticism-free article on ABC15\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe gas blaster clamps to your car\u0026rsquo;s fuel line.  Two powerful magnets change the molecular structure of gasoline causing it to burn cleaner and more efficient.\u003c/blockquote\u003eArcher, whose company\u0026rsquo;s name isn\u0026rsquo;t mentioned in the article (but it\u0026rsquo;s Adaptive Energy Solutions, LLC according to their website, a company incorporated in September 2003), guarantees that the product will improve gas mileage by at least 10% or your money will be returned.  He\u0026rsquo;s probably banking on the fact that most people won\u0026rsquo;t have carefully measured their gas mileage before using it, and the fact that a 10% gain for a car that gets 25 mpg is only 2.5 mpg, well within the range of normal mileage variability given normal variations in driving conditions.  There\u0026rsquo;s a quote in the news article from an individual who says \u0026ldquo;(Ten percent) is a lot when I only get ten miles to the gallon.\u0026rdquo;  No, it\u0026rsquo;s only 1 mpg difference, and I bet his 10 mpg is already variable by more than 1 mpg.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArcher\u0026rsquo;s claims for this product, an \u0026ldquo;adaptive gas blaster,\u0026rdquo; are identical to claims that have been made for similar fuel line magnet products for decades.  All of them that have actually been tested have been found to have no measurable effect on gas mileage, and no doubt the same is true of Archer\u0026rsquo;s hokum.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat I find remarkable is that the media continue to uncritically give a forum to hucksters to promote their nonsense.  In this case, ABC15 even helpfully provides a link at the bottom of the page where you can click to order a $48 (plus shipping and handling) \u0026ldquo;adaptive gas blaster.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe money-back guarantee lasts for 60 days, doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the shipping and handling fee, is available for only a limited time, and requires that you have the device installed by an \u0026ldquo;ASE\u0026rdquo; (I think they mean AES) mechanic or the guarantee is only for 30 days\u0026ndash;I suspect there\u0026rsquo;s a nonrefundable installation fee if they do it for you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSave your money\u0026ndash;you can save gas more easily without buying a bogus product by driving less often and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecodriving\"\u003emore efficiently\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Gridman for bringing this to my attention.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Health quackery for your car"},{"content":"Tom Willis, the creationist responsible for the bogus claim that Donald Johanson found \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint at a great distance from the rest of the skeleton (CC003 in Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s Index to Creationist Claims), says that evolutionists should be \u0026ldquo;violently expelled\u0026rdquo; from the United States\u0026ndash;or at least denied the right to vote:\nThe arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously, professor. Oh, by the way… What is the chance evolutionists will vote or teach in the Kingdom of God? But, of course, I myself, am not deluded. \u0026ldquo;Kingdom Now\u0026rdquo; theology notwithstanding, I have no expectations that such a proposal will ever be implemented, for the simple reason that delusion is ordained by God to reign until Christ returns. (2 Thess 2:10)\nTom Willis is a fascist as well as a dishonest idiot.\nWillis was also behind the Kansas science standards that removed evolution and cosmology from the curriculum in 1999. He is the president of the Creation Science Association of Mid-America.\nUPDATE (June 13, 2008): Ed Brayton has awarded Tom Willis a Robert O\u0026rsquo;Brien award, and quotes more extensively from his nonsense.\nUPDATE (August 24, 2008): Wes Elsberry comments on this Willis essay. In comments at Wes\u0026rsquo;s blog, Jim Downard makes this observation:\nFYI I majored in Civil War history in college (BA history 1974) and couldn’t resist emailing Willis asking him to specify his claim that slavery advocates used evolutionary justifications (I knew of no such instances in all my study of the issues). Willis promptly replied that while he could do so, he declined to on the grounds that his discussion would grow to book length to cover it properly. He then switched gears and went on for several pages about the Marxism/Nazism/evolution connection and even longer defending the noble qualities of Biblical servitude laws. It is often quite illuminating to ask a straightforward question of someone who can’t think clearly; their replies will usually clarify just why they can’t think clearly.In light of Willis\u0026rsquo; more recent remarks, suggesting that evolutionists need to be put into labor camps, I think he\u0026rsquo;s a nut.\nHistorical Comments Pierre Stromberg (2008-06-12):\nWas the Kansas situation the reason why a book publisher removed all references to oil formation in the midwest? Because it would offend young-earth creationists like Willis?Pretty nice given today's gas prices eh?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/creationist-wants-to-violently-expel.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom Willis, the creationist responsible for \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003ethe bogus claim that Donald Johanson found \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s knee joint at a great distance from the rest of the skeleton\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC003.html\"\u003eCC003\u003c/a\u003e in Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/\"\u003eIndex to Creationist Claims\u003c/a\u003e), \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/i_dont_think_tom_willis_likes.php\"\u003esays that evolutionists should be \u0026ldquo;violently expelled\u0026rdquo; from the United States\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;or at least denied the right to vote:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote class=\"creationist\" style=\"font-family: comic sans ms;\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously, professor. Oh, by the way… What is the chance evolutionists will vote or teach in the Kingdom of God? \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist wants to \"violently expel\" evolutionists from U.S."},{"content":"Although his last attempt to introduce articles of impeachment (for Cheney) failed, on Monday, June 9, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced 35 new articles of impeachment for President George W. Bush. There\u0026rsquo;s no support from the Democratic leadership, of course.\nThe mainstream media seems to be almost completely ignoring this. Two days later, a news.google.com search for \u0026ldquo;Kucinich impeachment\u0026rdquo; gives only the Village Voice in results.\nUPDATE: Looks like the Arizona Republic covered it today, as did CNN.\nGridman (2008-06-12):\nI saw it on ABC15's website today, also.By the way, Jim, is there somewhere to send you a note about something without going through the comments on this page?\nLippard (2008-06-12):\nSure, Gridman--send to lippard at discord.org.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/kucinich-introduces-articles-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough his last attempt to introduce articles of impeachment (for Cheney) failed, on Monday, June 9, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/06/kucinich_impeac.php\"\u003eRep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced 35 new articles of impeachment for President George W. Bush\u003c/a\u003e.  There\u0026rsquo;s no support from the Democratic leadership, of course.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe mainstream media seems to be almost completely ignoring this.  Two days later, a news.google.com search for \u0026ldquo;Kucinich impeachment\u0026rdquo; gives only the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/span\u003e in results.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/06/11/20080611bush-impeach0611-ON.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e covered it today\u003c/a\u003e, as did \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/11/kucinich.impeach.vote/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment"},{"content":"ApostAZ podcast #3 is now online: \u0026ldquo;Jesus Loves the Little Zygotes\u0026rdquo; written by Frank Zindler, performed by Brad. Rev Wright is All Wrong for Obama. Catholic Anti-Feminism. Nóel\u0026rsquo;s story. For Love or Faith? Deity Nihilo: Proof #3 (2/50 from http://godisimaginary\u0026hellip; ). Absurd Dunkin\u0026rsquo; Terror. God\u0026rsquo;s Own Dealership. Group Events. Outro from \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;\nAnders Branderud (2008-06-15):\nHello! I found your website. My name is Anders Branderud and I am from Sweden.Who then was the historical “Jesus”?Did you know that the original “Matthew” was written in Hebrew and it’s called Hebrew Matityahu. It speaks about an Orthodox Jewish leader..I am a follower of Ribi Yehoshua – Mashiakh – who practiced Torah including Halakhah with all his heart.He was born in Betlehem 7 B.C.E . His faher name was Yoseiph and mother’s name was Mir′ yâm. He had twelve followers. He tought in the Jewish batei-haknesset (synagogues). Thousands of Jews were interested in His Torah-teachings. The “Temple” Sadducees (non-priests who bought their priest-ship in the “Temple” from the Romans, because they were assimilated Hellenist and genealogically non-priests acting as priests in the “Temple”; they were known by most 1st-century Jews as “Wicked Priests.” decided to crucify him. So they did - together with the Romans. His followers were called Netzarim (meaning offshoots [of a olive tree]) and they continued to pray with the other Jews in the synagogues.Christianity does not teach the teachings of Ribi Yehoshua. Ribi Yehoshuas teachings were pro-Torah.If you want to learn more click at our website www.netzarim.co.il -- than click at the lick \"Christians\"; click at my photo to read about what made my switch religion from Christianity to Orthodox Judaism.Anders BranderudFollower of Ribi Yehoshua in Orthodox Judaism\nLippard (2008-06-15):\nAnders:The gospel of Matthew was clearly written for a Jewish audience, just as Mark was written for a gentile audience. There is no evidence, however, that the gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, rather than koine Greek. Some think it might have been originally written in Aramaic, the primary language of the communities where Jesus and the apostles lived, but that's probably not the case, though there are Aramaic phrases in the gospels. The gospels of Matthew and Mark contain numerous word-for-word identical passages indicating that the author of Matthew copied from the earlier gospel of Mark, and that they likely shared at least one other common source.It sounds to me like you're a member of a cult, Anders--something like the Jews for Jesus cult here in the United States.You should consider another switch--to atheism.\nAnders Branderud (2008-06-16):\nJim,Surely there is evidence.\"The earliest extant Church historian, Eusebius further documented (EH III.xxvii.4-6) that the original Nәtzarim accepted only the Jewish Tana\"kh as Bible and only The Netzarim (\"their own\") Hebrew Matityahu (NHM) as an authentic account of the life and teachings of Ribi Yәhoshua, never accepting the the 2nd-4th century, heavily gentile-redacted (Greek), NT.\"Indeed Ribi Yehoshuas followers Netzarim were Torah-practicing Jews - and documents shows that Torah-practicing Jews talked Hebrew and Arameic at that time.Anders BranderudFollower of Ribi Yehoshua in Orthodox Judaismwww.netzarim.co.il\nAnders Branderud (2008-06-16):\nHello!Thanks for your reply!Why don't you do as Ribi Yehoshuas followers - and rely on the following:The earliest extant Church historian, Eusebius further documented (EH III.xxvii.4-6) that the original Nәtzarim accepted only the Jewish Tana\"kh as Bible and only The Netzarim (\"their own\") Hebrew Matityahu (NHM) as an authentic account of the life and teachings of Ribi Yәhoshua, never accepting the the 2nd-4th century, heavily gentile-redacted (Greek), NT.From Anders Branderudwww.netzarim.co.il\nLippard (2008-06-16):\nAnders:Your group appears to have originated in the 20th century. As is common among 20th century religious groups that claim a longer history, there seems to be little or no actual continuity with any previously extant group.I found this online document about a Hebrew version of Matthew, which says that Eusebius, Papias, Origen, Jerome, and Irenaeus all speak of (and several quote from) a Hebrew version of Matthew, but that the quotations have no relation to the extant Shem Tov version of a Hebrew gospel of Matthew. The claim of some resemblances to Codex Sinaiticus (a 4th century manuscript) is particularly interesting.Wikipedia's article on Hebrew versions of Matthew looks pretty good, including some of the discussion on the discussion page about Greek vs. Aramaic vs. Hebrew primacy, and 2nd century vs. medieval origin.In my opinion, though, while this is of interest in reconstructing Christian history, it doesn't lend any support to the *truth* of Christianity, or a Ribi Yehoshua version of Judaism, or the existence of the supernatural.BTW, do you follow the OT requirements for Nazarenes?\nAnders Branderud (2008-06-16):\nJim,You should rely on Scholars instead of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a serious alternative – it is not worth reading. Whoever can write whatever they want.You do misunderstand the origin of the Hebrew term נצרים (Netzarim), because it seems that you are not even doing minimum research at our website which is based on Scholar-sources.Ëvën Bokhan; The Touchstone (abbreviated EB), the earliest extant complete source text for Hebrew Matityahu, compiled by Sheim-Tov Ben-Yitzkhâq Ben-Shaprut in Spain, for polemical purposes, ca. 1380 C.E.In Bible Review (Winter 1986, p. 15), George Howard – Emeritus Head of the Department of Religion and Professor of Religion at the University of Georgia – argues that EB reflects the ancient Hebrew ms. Top scholars increasingly agree that, just as Eusebius documented, the original version of Matityahu was Hebrew (cf. The Nәtzarim Reconstruction of Hebrew Matityahu (NHM), note 1.0.1). EB is, as of this writing, the earliest extant complete Hebrew ms. of Matityahu. Its integrity within the Hebrew-Matityahu tradition remains unresolved (Hellenized to Greek Matthew). (source www.netzarim.co.il; Glossaries (firstpage)As you see: Top scholars increasingly agree that, just as Eusebius documented, the original version of Matityahu was Hebrew.From Anders BranderudFollower of Ribi Yehoshua - Mashiakh\nLippard (2008-06-16):\nMy last question should have said \"Nazirites\" instead of \"Nazarenes\" (e.g., Numbers 6:1-21).Wikipedia has its flaws, but I disagree that it is \"not worth using.\"You say that \"Top scholars increasingly agree that, just as Eusebius documented, the original version of Matityahu was Hebrew\"--what's the evidence that there is increasing support for this view among \"top scholars\"? Is that your claim, or a claim from the 1986 Howard article you cite?You're certainly correct that I'm not relying on your website. The advantage of Wikipedia is that it is composed by people with competing views, not a collection of information from people of a single viewpoint.\nAnders Branderud (2008-06-16):\nThe source for the information is in the quote I gave you – in NHM.If you reject the information of our website – than you reject the Scholarship of the sources that we quote.Instead you base your information on Wikipedia - information written by anonymous persons.Regarding Nazir – Now Netzarim have no connection to that term.Except for that – here I will give you two more sources for information – Oxford historian-scholar James Parker and Prof. Barrie Wilsson.:As the earliest church historians, most eminent modern university historians, our web site (see further down in this post) and our Khavruta (Distance Learning) texts confirm, the original teachings of Ribi Yәhoshua were not only accepted by most of the Pharisaic Jewish community, he had hoards of Jewish students. Contrary to popular Christian assumptions, the standards of the Jewish community didn't cause the \"break.\" Rather, as Oxford historian-scholar James Parkes indisputedly demonstrates in his book, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, it was the teachings that were perverted between the first and fourth centuries C.E. The first century teachings of Ribi Yәhoshua and his original Netzarim were acceptable in the Jewish community. Fourth century Christianity was the polar opposite to the original first century Pharisaic Torah teachings of Ribi Yәhoshua and his original Netzarim followers. Consequently, the Roman perversion of those teachings was never in the Jewish community at all! Ribi Yәhoshua's authentic teachings were never rejected by the Jews! And the perversion of those teachings by the Roman pagans, Christianity, was never in the Jewish community in the first place. There was no transition between the two! (source: netzarim.co.il)If you want to learn about the Historical Ribi Yehoshua, whom Orthodox Jews can live with (witness the Netzarim Jews in Raanana, Israel, members in good standing in an Orthodox synagogue), you must start with books like How Jesus Became Christian by Prof. Barrie Wilson (most bookstores) and Who Are The Netzarim? (publ. www.schuellerhouse.com) by Israeli Orthodox Jew, Paqid Yirmeyahu Ben-David.From Anders Branderudwww.netzarim.co.il\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/apostaz-podcast-3.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/Apostaz003.mp3\"\u003eApostAZ podcast #3\u003c/a\u003e is now online:  \u0026ldquo;Jesus Loves the Little Zygotes\u0026rdquo; written by Frank Zindler, performed by Brad. Rev Wright is All Wrong for Obama. Catholic Anti-Feminism. Nóel\u0026rsquo;s story. For Love or Faith? Deity Nihilo: Proof #3 (2/50 from \u003ca href=\"http://godisimaginary.com/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehttp://godisimaginary\u0026hellip;\u003c/a\u003e  ). Absurd Dunkin\u0026rsquo; Terror. God\u0026rsquo;s Own Dealership. Group Events. Outro from \u0026lsquo;Dream\u0026rsquo; Greydon Square\u0026rsquo;s Album \u0026lsquo;The Compton Effect\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnders Branderud\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-06-15)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHello! I found your website. My name is Anders Branderud and I am from Sweden.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWho then was the historical “Jesus”?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDid you know that the original “Matthew” was written in Hebrew and it’s called Hebrew Matityahu. It speaks about an Orthodox Jewish leader..\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI am a follower of Ribi Yehoshua – Mashiakh – who practiced Torah including Halakhah with all his heart.\u003cBR/\u003eHe was born in Betlehem 7 B.C.E . His faher name was Yoseiph and mother’s name was Mir′ yâm. He had twelve followers. He tought in the Jewish batei-haknesset (synagogues). Thousands of Jews were interested in His Torah-teachings. The “Temple” Sadducees (non-priests who bought their priest-ship in the “Temple” from the Romans, because they were assimilated Hellenist and genealogically non-priests acting as priests in the “Temple”; they were known by most 1st-century Jews as “Wicked Priests.” decided to crucify him. So they did - together with the Romans. His followers were called Netzarim (meaning offshoots [of a olive tree]) and they continued to pray with the other Jews in the synagogues.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eChristianity does not teach the teachings of Ribi Yehoshua. Ribi Yehoshuas teachings were pro-Torah.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIf you want to learn more click at our website www.netzarim.co.il -- than click at the lick \"Christians\"; click at my photo to read about what made my switch religion from Christianity to Orthodox Judaism.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnders Branderud\u003cBR/\u003eFollower of Ribi Yehoshua in Orthodox Judaism\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #3"},{"content":"Last night I attended an event at which one of the attendees promoted \u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie.\u0026rdquo; I was prompted to finally watch this piece of pernicious nonsense back in January when a commenter at this blog made reference to it, and I forced myself to sit through the whole thing. The movie is in three segments\u0026ndash;the first is on the origins of Christianity, in which it argues that Jesus was a myth derived from Egyptian myth, based on the work of Acharya S. The second is 9/11 conspiracy theory. The third is an argument that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a scam. It\u0026rsquo;s almost entirely garbage, dependent on crackpot sources.\nI posted a series of comments about the movie as I watched it, but I\u0026rsquo;ll summarize those here and add a bit more.\nThe first part argues that Christianity is derived from Egyptian myth, primarily by pointing out parallels between them. The arguments are apparently derived from the self-published \u0026ldquo;The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold\u0026rdquo; by Acharya S (Dorothy M. Murdock) and perhaps also from Tom Harpur\u0026rsquo;s The Pagan Christ, both works of pseudoscholarship based on the work of other pseudoscholars like 18th century archaeologist Godfrey Higgins, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet Gerald Massey, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology. For example, the film draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated\u0026ndash;Horus wasn\u0026rsquo;t born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on Horus and Isis is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained. The significance of a December 25 birthdate is nonexistent\u0026ndash;Christianity did acquire attributes of pagan religions later in its history, and it has clearly been a syncretistic religion, but while this is evidence of falsehood in Christian traditions, it is not a clue to its origin.\nFor accurate information about Christianity and the formation of the Christian tradition, virtually any mainstream academic work will be more reliable. There has been a lot discovered since the work of 19th century Theosophists, both in the form of document manuscripts and archaeology, that sheds light on the early history of Christianity. In discussions at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums, poster GreNME wrote:\nOh, those people were mostly made of of the beginnings of the Theosophist movements (Blavatsky and the like) or people with similar stated motivations but not the same organizational structure (like Graves). Yeah, Dorothy [Murdock] cites regularly enough from these people (especially Graves and Massey), but the thrust or crux of her writing tends to be more similar to those like Allegro-- taking the message into a realm of New-Age-y attempts to center on mid-20th-century discoveries about the mystery schools.\nThat's why I mentioned Ehrman, by the way. I had the opportunity to send him a question on the topic of the \"out of Egypt\" mystery school centric literature coming out about by those like Dorothy, and his response was essentially that people who stick to that thin and shallow an interpretation of the mystery schools really don't understand the materials they're trying to work with in the first place.\nI've read a few very well-worded academic arguments against a historical Jesus, but none of them rely on the mystery schools, Egyptian mythology, Krishna, or Mithras. They tend to focus on the culture of the region at the time and the unreliability of the few Roman authors who are used by apologists today. For me, all said and done, I don't much care because I'm not a Christian anyway. It's only reliably traceable back to Paul anyway, in my opinion. So read some Bart Ehrman for a more accurate picture. The best case I've read for Jesus being a myth is in the books of G.A. Wells, though I'm not inclined to buy it. (Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle has also been recommended as a strong case for Jesus being mythical, but I've not read it.) I think the Arabic text of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities of the Jews provides strong evidence that Josephus did refer to a historical Jesus and that his text was altered by later Christian interpolation rather than an insertion completely made up out of whole cloth.\nSome of the same kind of errors (via dependence on sources like Harpur and Kersey Graves) that are in \"Zeitgeist\" are also in Brian Flemming's \"The God Who Wasn't There,\" for which you an find a nice fair-minded critique, along with responses from Flemming and Richard Carrier, in \"God Who Wasn't There: an Analysis.\"\nThe second part is standard 9/11 conspiracy theory that has been refuted in previous posts at this blog. It completely ignores radical Islam and the actual events that led up to September 11, 2001, and like all such conspiracy theories, completely fails to provide a coherent explanation that incorporates the level of detail in the 9/11 Commission Report. That report is a flawed document, to be sure, but it is still far, far more comprehensive, detailed, and accurately sourced than anything the 9/11 truthers put out. The right way to investigate 9/11 is to start with the 9/11 Commission Report, with accounts of the movements and actions of the 19 terrorists, and going back farther to the 1993 WTC bombing, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, the murder of Emir Shalabi, the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane by El-Sayyid Nosair, the killing of Rashad Khalifa in Tucson in 1990 and the role of James Williams and Wadih el-Hage (secretary for Osama bin Laden in Sudan), and so on.\nThe U.S. government's connection is that it funded the mujahideen insurgents in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and then walked away after the Soviets were defeated, allowing rich Saudis to step in. There's no question that \"blowback\" has played a major role, and I'll also agree that the Bush Administration has hugely exploited the 9/11 attacks to its advantage and to expand presidential power (as the PBS Frontline on \"Cheney's Law\" documents, which I highly recommend watching and you can see online).\nThe right way to investigate 9/11 is to stick to reliable sources and accounts that attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, not bullshit stories made by collecting a few bits of data from unreliable sources and constructing elaborate fantasies of speculation. Some reliable sources I recommend are Gerald Posner's Why America Slept, James Bamford's A Pretext for War, and James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans. Specifically on 9/11 conspiracy theory, read the book of critiques published by Popular Mechanics and visit websites like 911myths.com and Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.\nInstead, Zeitgeist relies on crackpots like Michael Ruppert and Ted Gunderson, both former police officers who have a long history of promoting nonsensical conspiracy theories. Ruppert is best known for his claims to have found that the CIA was peddling drugs (itself a plausible claim, even if not well substantiated by him) while he was a narcotics detective for the LAPD; after being removed from the force in 1978, he has gone on to argue for Peak Oil and 9/11 conspiracy theory. In 2006, after facing charges of sexual harassment from a former employee whom he admits he paraded around the office in his underwear in front of, he fled to Venezuela, then moved to Canada, and then to New York and Los Angeles. Gunderson spouted nonsense about satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and has endorsed the accuracy of phony psychic Sylvia Browne, as well as promoting wild claims of child sexual abuse by \"some of America's leading politicians\" including George W. Bush, which makes him sound like the crazy mind-control sex slave claimants, \"Brice Taylor\" (Susan Ford), Cathy O'Brien, and Kola Boof (the last of whom makes the sex slave claims without the mind control claims).\nThe film provides no good sources for any of its claims, and seems to contradict itself. It claims there's no evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to the attacks (despite the fact that we have people like al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh, who attempted to enter the U.S. to enter a flight school but was denied a visa, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, head of al Qaeda's media committee and main plotter of the attacks, in custody), yet turns around and suggests that there's something suspicious about the Bush family connections to the bin Laden family and that two members of the bin Laden family lived in Falls Church, Virginia \"right next to CIA Headquarters.\" Why would that connection be relevant or suspicious if Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with it?\nOsama bin Laden's father had 55 children and 22 wives, and there are currently about 600 bin Laden family members--most appear to be law-abiding citizens who have disowned Osama. The two Falls Church residents, however, were two of Osama's sons, Abdallah and Omar, the latter of whom was a member of al Qaeda.\nThe charge of the FBI being told to \"back off\" from bin Laden investigations from the White House is now known to have been approved by counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, not exactly a fan of George W. Bush, whose testimony on the issue has been somewhat inconsistent. While Clarke originally claimed the plan came from top officials in the White House and was approved in consultation with the FBI, he subsequently said that he took personal responsibility for the decision to allow the bin Laden family members to leave the U.S., and that he didn't think it was a mistake, and that he'd do it again.\nThe third section of the movie is about the U.S. Federal Reserve, which appears to be derived from John Birch Society propaganda, with a bonus argument that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and thus federal income tax is invalid. It argues that the Panic of 1907 was caused by (rather than, as was actually the case, ended by) J.P. Morgan, and makes no mention of the Knickerbocker Trust. It argues that the Federal Reserve Act was put into effect by a conspiracy of international bankers and the Rockefellers through Sen. Nelson Aldrich, and claims that the Federal Reserve is entirely private. But the Fed's head and board of governors is appointed by the president, which isn't mentioned by the film. Wikipedia gets theFed's legal status right, it's part of the federal government but with a fair degree of independence so that politicians can't directly manipulate monetary policy. Its status is accurately described in Bill Woolsey's October 2004 article in Liberty magazine, \"Who Owns the Fed?\". A number of other Federal Reserve conspiracy claims are debunked here.\nIt then goes off into tax evader craziness, claiming that the 16th Amendment wasn't properly ratified, but without actually discussing the evidence. That argument is made in William J. Benson and Martin J. Beckman's book The Law That Never Was, which documents errors in the ratification documents, such as typos, alternate capitalization, alternate pluralization, etc. Courts have ruled that Benson's argument doesn't work and that his selling his book as part of a tax evasion defense package constitutes fraud, and he's served time in jail for tax evasion.\nAs an aside, while reviewing the above I came across an even more interesting argument against income tax (not in Zeitgeist) discussed by Cecil Adams in his \"Straight Dope\" column. The argument states that the 16th Amendment is invalid because Ohio was not a state at the time of ratification, and William H. Taft, who was president, was therefore not legally president since he was not a U.S. Citizen. Everybody thought Ohio was made a state in 1803, but in 1953 when Ohio was preparing for its 150th anniversary of statehood, they found that Congress had defined its boundaries and approved its constitution, but failed to admit it to statehood. Ohio made an appeal for statehood (delivering it to Congress by horseback) and Congress passed a resolution granting it retroactively. Cecil Adams' description and commentary about it is worth reading.\nTax protestor claims more generally are refuted at this GWU law professor's website, and a nice case study refutation is Sheldon Richman's three-part \"Beware Income-Tax Casuistry.\"\n\"Zeitgeist: The Movie\" was apparently put out by \"GMP, LLC\", which is a company based in Port Chester, NY registered to a James Coyman, who has been claimed to be the person behind the pseudonym \"Peter Joseph\" credited for the writing, producing, directing, and editing of the film. Other documents online associate GMP, LLC with John Giura, former vice chairman of north Chicago company CGI Holding Corporation (now Think Partnership, Inc., traded on AmEx under the symbol THK), a company with a subsidiary, WebSourced, Inc., which is \"a leader in search engine marketing (see www.keywordranking.com) and on-line dating (see www.Cherish.com).\" A John Giura has directed a music video for the Nashville, TN band Clem Snide, and a John P. Giura from New York City directed a 20-min short film called \"Inside Trip\" shown at the 2002 Maryland Film Festival, as well as some other videos found online attributed to him and his JPG Studio in NYC. The short festival film stars former Olympic wrestler John P. Giura, who has apparently lived in Oak Park, IL and New York City. In 1986, a John Giura of Oak Park, IL who was a partner in the firm of Stein, Roe, and Farnham, was charged by the SEC for participation in a complex \"kickback and payoff\" scheme which victimized Teamster union pension funds in upstate New York. It's not clear which, if any, of these is associated with the GMP, LLC that put out Zeitgeist. [See update below.]\nThere is a movie at Google Video titled \"Zeitgeist Refuted\" that appears to be itself filled with bad arguments promoting Christianity. Though I've only watched a small part of it, it doesn't seem to actually respond to the claims of \"Zeitgeist: The Movie.\"\nOther responses to \"Zeitgeist: The Movie\" include:\nThe criticism section of the Wikipedia article on \"Zeitgeist: The Movie\"\nThe Web Skeptic wiki entry on \"Zeitgeist: The Movie\"\nThe site \"Zeitgeist, the movie Debunked\"\nJay Kinney's review of \"Zeitgeist\" at boingboing\nTim Callahan's, \"The Greatest Story Ever Garbled,\" a debunking of part I of \"Zeitgeist\" for Skeptic magazine's e-skeptic newsletter\nHenry Makow's site, which amusingly takes issue with part one but swallows whole the nonsense in parts two and three and concludes that Zeitgeist is itself the product of a conspiracy, is worth a laugh.\nUPDATE (August 6, 2009): I decided to add to the main post the text of my comment from October 30, 2008 below, about \"Zeitgeist Addendum\":\nI watched a little bit (the first 30 minutes) of the \"Zeitgeist Addendum,\" which looks to be largely derived from \"Money is Debt,\" another video floating around the Internet. I skimmed through much of the rest.\nIt's somewhat more accurate than the previous parts, but has the same flaws as \"Money is Debt,\" most seriously in its discussion of interest. The creators of both films do not seem to understand the time-value of money, or that the expansion of the money supply doesn't create problems so long as non-monetary wealth is also expanding. No matter what you use as money, there will always be a system of credit that rides on top of it, of the sort that has been contracting rapidly in the current financial crisis. (This contraction has been *increasing* the value of the U.S. dollar this year.)\nThe idea that money creates slavery and that if we just got rid of fractional reserve banking, nobody would be forced to work for a living is a bit ridiculous.\nLooks like part 2 of the film is based on John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which is a book I've read. His book was entertaining, but mostly unbelievable, and he's not a credible source. Note that he claims that we all have the shamanic ability to shapeshift and become invisible, for example.\nSome of the stuff he talks about is correct, such as U.S. intervention using the CIA in the Middle East and South America, the history of which is told in Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes.\nIn part III, the film suggests that we only need money because of scarcity, and that scarcity is a fiction. But scarcity isn't a fiction, scarcity exists because there is no limit to what people can want and desire--there can be scarcity even when a resource is abundant.\nMy impression is that the \"Addendum\" is just as bogus as the first three parts--it's largely lifted from other sources, and those sources are unreliable.\nUPDATE (January 5, 2010): Better speculation by salvorhardin at Democratic Underground says that \"Peter Joseph\" is Peter J. Merola. This appears to be a correct identification if the Animation World Network's announcement of a multimedia event from May 29-June 3, 2007 is accurate:\nZEITGIEST is a unique and ambitious multimedia, musical event by P.J. Merola. This event is free and not for profit. It runs from May 29 - June 3, 2007 at 8:00-9:30 pm.\nZEITGEIST is an abstract, aesthetic exploration of personal belief and social myth -- told through a multimedia work of live solo percussion, stereo video displays and electronic music. Using animation, live performance, drama, humor, and narrative, ZEITGEIST attempts to bring its audience to a place that most likely counters what they believe as true.\nPlease visit http://www.zeitgeistnyc.com for a video preview and to make reservations. The \"GMP\" is then \"Gentle Machine Productions,\" as reported here. Gentle Machine Productions released a CD GMP001 titled \"J.S. Bach on the Marimba,\" arranged by P.J. Merola, with P.J. Merola playing the marimba.\nThe Village Voice ran a story in 2004 about P.J. Merola and his brother Eric. Hume's Ghost (2008-06-11):\nI applaud you. I tried watching the whole thing and couldn't. I'll forward this post onto the commenter who had prompted me to attempt to watch it in the first place (I had to respond that it was bunk but that I had not the inclination to spend the time necessary to respond to the film obviously progandistic claims.)\nDanica (2008-06-13):\nI was fine with your Blog Post until you reiterated a commonly told \"lie\" on African author Kola Boof.She has NEVER claimed that she was a \"sex slave.\" The U.S. Media invented that b.s. story and when Peter Bergen attacked her autobiography, it turned out that his information was INCORRECT and Ms. Boof's information was spot on accurate.I offer a link to Ms. Boof's statement regarding the slex slave story:http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=68443I also would like you to explain the recent accusation by a member of Sudan's parliament, Gamal Quttub Ibrahaim, who claims that Kola Boof is legally married to Osama Bin Laden and had a child by him in Sudan. Apparently there is more to this story than any of us know, but as a Black woman, I greatly resent the tepid white males no-it-alls who scoff at this woman's award winning memoir. I read her book and like most people who've read her incredibly detailed book, a book that dares to name names, I believe that there is something to her story.Has she told lies, exaggerated a few things and hidden parts of the truth? Yes, I think so.But I don't think your dismissal of a credible African literary writer like Kola Boof is wise or professional and I don't see what she possibly has to gain by all the controversial comments she makes.The fact that she is now one of the heads of a major Sudanese organization backed by the South Sudan government also sends up red flags about your comments.I and many educated intelligent black women like me are far more interested in what Kola Boof has to say about Osama Bin Laden than what men like yourself have to say mainly because of your prejudice and arrogance.Danica Bradley\nLippard (2008-06-13):\nDanica: Kola Boof apparently objects to the term \"sex slave.\" If you read the post I linked to with her name, you would have seen that I did report that \"The publisher of Boof's book has been contacting bloggers who refer to Boof as a \"sex slave,\" stating that she was bin Laden's mistress.\" That's the same content as the statement from Nafisa Goma that you link to.Yet Boof does claim that she was bin Laden's mistress *against her will*, and was forced to have sex with other al Qaeda members.How is the distinction you are trying to draw any more than splitting hairs? Is your only objection to the term \"sex slave\"?You say that \"she told lies, exaggerated a few things and hidden parts of the truth.\" In my book, that severely damages her credibility. In my post about her, I specifically documented some of her fabrications, including the fact that two of the al Qaeda members she says she was forced to have sex with were long dead at the time she describes. Apparently she now says she had sex with the grandchildren of those men, who had the same names.I have no explanation for the claim you say was made by Gamal Quttub Ibrahim, nor do I have any evidence that he has made such a claim.She was apparently appointed national chairwoman of the U.S. organization of the Sudan Sensitization Peace Project (SSPP), as you mention.I don't see how that has any bearing on what I've said.Can you point to any credible documentation that supports any of Kola Boof's claims about being forced to be Osama bin Laden's mistress in Morocco--or even any evidence that bin Laden was in Morocco in 1996, let alone a fan of smoking pot, being obsessed with Whitney Houston, and forcing her to dance naked to Van Halen? If you can, I will be glad to consider it.\nDanica (2008-06-13):\nMy understanding Jim is that in Arab Culture, \"sex slaves\" are raised from birth for that position and are not to look their master in the eye, not to share his bedroom, not to share meals with him, not to hold conversations, touch his hair, etc.Don't forget that by your definition, many WIVES in the Arab world would be classified as \"sex slaves\" also.Boof doesn't understand why Americans keep insisting she was a slave, because she had a maid and shopped using bin Ladens credit card in Milan.In her autobiography, she starts off a struggling whore/actress who is raped by him then tries to manipulate Bin laden as a 'sugar daddy' and clearly begins to run La Maison Arabe. Event hough she's not allowed to leave, she is in charge of the guards who are guarding her. The owner of the place, (Prince \"\"whateverhisname) makes an appearance in the book and has confirmed for the Pentagon that Ms. Boof lived there with Bin laden. Why has he not sued Kola Boof if she's lying on him?In her autobiography she writes that FOUR young men claimed to be the grandsons of those Arab guys you mentioned. She does not say that they ARE definitively. They conducted a gang rape that I just don't see her making up.Bin Laden's attraction to her was that she's over 6 feet tall, is \"infibulated' in her private area, speaks Arabic, is black and can shoot a duck better than he can.You would have to be a woman reading her accounts of these rapes to understand why so many women believe her.What makes it all the more believable is that she tells very embarrassing things about herself.There are other sexual incidents in the book where she clearly shows that \"SHE\" was a user of men (for their money) and did sexual acts to survive. There's a second gang bang in the book by SPLA members from Sudan, her fellow soldiers and she covers it up to protect the men, because she feels the cause of Sudan liberation is more important than the soldiers forcing a train on her.The book in no way portrays heras an 'angel' and yet she wrote it! She ran away from her American adoptive parents at 16 and became a mistress to white man in Virgina, had an abortion and got with another white man which is how she got back to North Africa.I just don't understand why she made herself look so bad in the book.It comes off as extremely honest.\nLippard (2008-06-13):\nDanica:I don't buy your reasoning for why you believe it. Portraying oneself in a negative light doesn't make James Frey's fraudulent autobiography, A Million Little Pieces, true, nor does it provide any logical or evidential support for Cathy O'Brien's book, nor Brice Taylor's, nor Lauren Stratford's. Describing oneself in horrible situations seems quite *common* in hoax biographies. The stories you describe make it sound *just like* that last set of bogus autobiographies, which is why my original post suggested that it belonged in the same genre.What would make her account plausible would be the inclusion of verifiable details that other people or other documentation could substantiate. It requires *external* verification, not just internal coherence. Is there any expert or credible witness who supports the details or even the plausibility of her story? From what I've seen, the reaction has been entirely the opposite, which is why her story does not appear in the Wikipedia article on Osama bin Laden, and even her own Wikipedia page has been deleted.\nLippard (2008-06-13):\n\"The owner of the place, (Prince \"\"whateverhisname) makes an appearance in the book and has confirmed for the Pentagon that Ms. Boof lived there with Bin laden.Why has he not sued Kola Boof if she's lying on him?\"The first point you make would count as external evidence in support of her story, if it can be substantiated. Can it?The second point doesn't necessarily prove anything. The \"sue or its true\" defense is a very weak one. Any choice to file a lawsuit involves weighing costs and benefits, and if the costs outweigh the benefits, only a fool would sue. Conversely, it has been common of late for certain wealthy Saudis to file libel lawsuits in the UK to stop the publication of true allegations against them. So a lawsuit or the lack thereof wouldn't prove anything one way or the other, though the evidence brought forth in such a lawsuit might.\nLippard (2008-06-13):\n\"Don't forget that by your definition, many WIVES in the Arab world would be classified as \"sex slaves\" also.\"If they do not consent, you are correct--I would consider them to be slaves, sex slaves, rape victims, and oppressed. The Arab world's treatment of women is immoral.\nLicht2202 (2008-07-02):\n1st off, the 1st part of the zeitgeist movie is completely fictional and made up. It all stems from Ms Murdock, who calls herself Acharya S, which means guru or teacher. There are 100s of references you can search out that discredit her work, but for starters you can check out the following links:www.answeringinfidels.comhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHCzQffIUchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKN_Vw0kDowww.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_similarities.htmlwww.tektonics.org/copycat/copycathub.htmlwww.kingdavid8.com/Copycat/Home.htmlvideo.google.com/videoplay?docid=7572663630528394775www.preventingtruthdecay.org/zeitgeistpartone.shtmlI only need to point out a few facts, which basically make the whole first part of the movie fall apart:* Jesus was not born on December 25th! This date was assigned by the Roman Catholic Church and is widely known to NOT be the actual date that he was born, and by the way neither were most of the gods that were mentioned in zeitgeist, part 1, not that it would matter anyways since that’s not even when Jesus was born. The only relevance December 25th holds is in Pagan traditions. * Not one of the gods presented in the zeitgeist movie was ever born of a virgin or crucified. Crucification wasn’t even invented, first of all, until the Roman Empire came into place. Hmm… I guess someone forgot to learn about history… I guess Ms. Murdock and zeitgeist like to dream up their own history when it comes to religion.* As far as astrology goes, the borders between the constellations are completely 100% modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping, and therefore never had any astrological significance in ancient times. * The Bible absolutely condones the worship of stars, moon, or sun and states that people were to be put to death for such an act in the Old Testament. So it makes absolutely no sense to say that Jesus was a sun god either or that such an act was the theme of the Bible!* There are plenty of sources outside the bible that point to Jesus actually living and being crucified… There is more physical evidence for Jesus living than any other person in history* On a final note, all the verses Ms. Murdock quotes in the bible as reference to her claims actually discredit her. One verse she speaks of in the Bible isn’t even there. All other verses she quotes either condone the act of worshiping anything other than God or plainly have nothing to do with what Ms. Murdock states! I could write more, but what’s the point. If you actually want to learn something, you need to research it yourself to learn something factual and come to your own conclusions based on reality and not someone’s imagination.\nLippard (2008-07-02):\nlicht2202: \"I could write more, but what’s the point. If you actually want to learn something, you need to research it yourself to learn something factual and come to your own conclusions based on reality and not someone’s imagination.\"Perhaps you should have read what I wrote before ranting--I agree that Zeitgeist is nonsense, from end to end.Some of your sources, however, themselves lack credibility--they are criticizing the nonsense in Zeitgeist in order to argue for their own nonsense. Tektonics.org, for instance, is run by the dishonest Robert Turkel.\nLicht2202 (2008-07-03):\nThanks for the info, will check it! Just trying to help get the word out that the first part of the movie is completely asinine. Licht\nLippard (2008-07-03):\nLicht: Parts two and three are no better than part one. It's all crap. Why only focus on part one?\nLicht2202 (2008-07-03):\nI just found most of the stuff in part one to be bogus, which pretty much set me off. I've watched the entire thing, but haven't had time to go into any errors in the 2nd and 3rd parts. I'm just focusing on part one of the movie at this time because I found most of the errors in this part of the movie, which contained what I find to be the most absurd lies and twisted information I've ever seen and I feel the need to point out this absurdity as best I can. I'll move on the other parts as time permits. I've started a blog on part one, and am adding to it little by little. zeitgeistmoviepart1.blogspot.comBy the way, how did you make your blog searchable in Google?\nUnknown (2008-07-23):\nI have no problem believing our government could take advantage of it's citizens. Through out history it's happened. Just look at what our government did to black men when they wanted to study the effect of untreated syphilis. Or giving pregnant american indian women doses of radiation telling them they were taking vitamins, just to see the effects on fetuses. I'm not saying it happened the way they say in the movie but it's believable and if you don't think so you're being ignorant. Second, The fed must be controlled, our country is printing money at a record pace and it will destroy our economy very soon. Again not the first time in history. Iran wants to trade oil in euros and this will kill the dollar that is why we will end up at war with Iran soon enough. The only ways to save our economy are to force people to take the dollar or to stop printing money and become fiscally responsible. Going back to the gold standard would be a great first step and then change our trade deficit to something more equal. But no politician will ask americans to become less child like and curtail their consumerism.\nUnknown (2008-07-23):\nOh one more thing. I'm just wondering if you believe in fairy tales like god and jesus because if you do we have nothing to talk about. I only debate with rational people.\nLippard (2008-07-23):\niantv: You gave some real examples of government abuses that I could enumerate many more of. But if you think going back to the gold standard is a good idea, you need to take a look at these disadvantages. In my opinion, we'd be better off with free banking, but we are pretty close to such an environment given how easy it is becoming to choose alternative currencies.I also have a problem with this statement of yours: \"I'm not saying it happened the way they say in the movie but it's believable and if you don't think so you're being ignorant.\" I strongly disagree. The 9/11 conspiracy theory section of \"Zeitgeist: The Movie\" is not remotely plausible--it's transparent nonsense, for the reasons I gave in this post. Did you bother reading it?In your second comment, you write: \"I'm just wondering if you believe in fairy tales like god and jesus because if you do we have nothing to talk about. I only debate with rational people.\"Given the content of your first comment and your inability to tell whether or not I'm an atheist, I question whether you are yourself a rational person. The posts on this blog are tagged with labels. One of them is \"atheism,\" which has 66 posts, and could provide a clue. You can also find another clue by Googling \"Jim Lippard\" and finding my publication record, or looking in Google Groups and seeing posts I made for years on alt.atheism and alt.atheism.moderated.Yet, I also disagree with your judgment that anyone who believes in gods or Jesus is irrational and unworthy of interaction. That's more of an expression of bigotry than of intelligence.\nLazarusDesigns (2008-08-05):\nJim,Thank you for your blog. I respect your intelligence and your ability to cite what you believe to be true with evidence. I have heard/read nearly all of the theories presented in Zeitgeist prior to seeing this movie and have always been skeptical. There is one aspect of the movie you did not comment on, and it is the one that i am most interested and concerned with; the chip.What is your take on the use of the chip, its probability of being implemented, practical uses of, and potential immoral or beneficial results?I appreciate the fact that your belief in atheism doesn't seem to obscure our open mindedness when looking for the truth. I am a believer in Christ, and have some concerns about the chip. In some ways i welcome it, because i am looking forward to the second coming, but i worry about the social and \"freedom\" implications of it as well.What are your thoughts?Dave\nLippard (2008-08-05):\nDave: I assume you mean implantable RFID chips of the sort that are commonly used for pets and have also had preliminary approval from the FDA for use in humans, where the primary planned use seems to be for hospital patients. If it just contains a number that is correlatable with hospital data, I don't see that particular use as much different from an ID bracelet, unless it's easily readable from a distance and left in the body after discharge. I am not a fan of government-assigned numbers that follow you around and are used to correlate information about you across multiple databases, but that also has to be weighed against the right of private companies and individuals to collect easily available information. I'm also not a fan of a single federal ID. I think it's a mistake to put lots of weight and power into a single form of identification credential. Jim Harper's book, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood, is one I highly recommend.\nJay (2008-08-22):\nAbout as well done an analysis/debunking as I have seen. Thanks for this. Unfortunately I spent an hour sending an email to my misguided cousin who urged 100 of hear friends to SEE THIS MOVIE, explaining to her that she should read The End of Faith by Sam Harris if she's interested in cogent arguments against the effects of organized religion, or some other \"reasoned\" criticisms of the 9/11 commission process or of our monetary system (not to mention the blatant factual innacuracies throughout the rest of the movie). Thanks again.\nLippard (2008-08-22):\nThanks, Jay. I hope your email to your cousin is effective!\nLippard (2008-08-22):\nLooks like the Wikipedia link I cited in my July 23, 2008 comment has changed. It is now here.\nBryan Braning (2008-08-26):\nSadly the maker of this blog is the exact type of person deplicted in the Zeitgeist film. I feel for you and the rest of country who lack true awareness. Have you studied in depth the claims in the film prior to denouncing it and labeling it as nonsense? Do your research and the truth found is staggering.\nLippard (2008-08-26):\nBryan:It doesn't sound like you bothered to read anything in this post. I backed up my points with supporting arguments and evidence. Perhaps you'd care to point out any errors on my part?\nOpenmind (2008-10-06):\nAll you people who don't believe that the New World Order is well on its way need to pull your heads out of the sand.\nLippard (2008-10-06):\nOpenmind: What do you mean by \"New World Order\"?\nOpenmind (2008-10-06):\nBy \"New World Order\" I mean. International bank aka the only bank, The Neo-Conservatives finally getting power and doing what they want in the open, domination of world markets into a monopoly. Marshal law and finally the vanishing of the Dollar only to be replace by the Amero, yes, just like europe got all their money replaced by the Euro.\nEinzige (2008-10-06):\nI think the chances that there's ever going to be only one bank in the world are so vanishingly small that they are essentially zero.\nLippard (2008-10-06):\n\"By \"New World Order\" I mean. International bank aka the only bank, The Neo-Conservatives finally getting power and doing what they want in the open, domination of world markets into a monopoly. Marshal law and finally the vanishing of the Dollar only to be replace by the Amero, yes, just like europe got all their money replaced by the Euro.\"Einzige has already correctly observed that the chance of a single world central bank is pretty much zero.I'll also note that the neo-cons *have* had power in the U.S. for the last eight years and it looks very likely that they are about to lose the presidency, your statement about \"domination of world markets into a monopoly\" requires some explication as to what you mean, but also sounds like something vanishingly unlikely to occur. Martial law, I could see some possibilities in the U.S., but again think it's pretty unlikely. Creation of a North American Union is semi-plausible as an economic zone for free trade, but is vanishingly unlikely as a political entity. Given the differences between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, I think a single currency for the region is also vanishingly unlikely.I don't get the impression that you have any understanding of banking, currencies, free trade agreements, or much else.\nUnknown (2008-10-07):\nlitch2202:I would like to refer you to the work of Alexander Gurshtein in respone to your comment about the constellations being something of modern times. It would seem that is not the accepted view of the academic community on the matter. As for the rest of the comments on this blog, i just watched the Zeitgeist movie a few days ago and i plan to investigate more thuroughly before attempting to comment. However, before ever watching the movie, based purly on the historical facts in reguards to all religions of the world. I did, and still do, believe that religion was meerly an attempt for primitive cultures to explain things around them they did not understand. Over time this evolved into orginizations used to influence and control larger populations, wage wars, and persecute people with different ideas then the established way of thinking. I believe that it is a nessisary step in human evolution to cast aside the greatest divider of us as nothing more then ancient superstitions.\nUnknown (2008-10-10):\nThe Federal Reserve Bank is a private corporation. Please check the LSU Libraries as well as Gov US to see that they are not under the jurisdiction of any governmental body.Instead they are an \u0026quot;Independent\u0026quot; organization. The only question I pose is that,\u0026quot;Couldn\u0026#39;t a private bank controlling the money supply of a supposedly free country have their own personal and secret agenda?\u0026quot;Politicians like Ron Paul and Daniel Kucinich (Republican \u0026amp; Democrat) party members have brought this subject matter to the attention of congress. Please just youtube \u0026quot;Ron Paul Congress\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;Ron Paul and Bernanke\u0026quot; and you will find plenty of videos.I am not saying that since a politician says it, it must be true, far from that. But please conduct accurate research about the FEDS.In a more recent development, Bush\u0026#39;s $700B bailout plan was opposed by both congressmen mentioned above as well as many others in Congress. It seems to have had a nil effect since the markets slid more than 200 points on the day it was signed and have continued on their downward trend.It is criminal to back the debt that greedy money hungry organizations knew was considered \u0026quot;Bad Debt\u0026quot; before their predatory lending and borrowing practices were initiated by American Tax dollars.Maybe, if the 700B would have gone to those in financial duress, they could have paid their mortgages and monthly payments ensuring that the banks would receive their payments and giving the credit market some much needed liquidity.The FED loaning the US Gov another 700B, backed by taxpayer money does nothing more than transfer the burden from the rich business owners to the poor and middle class who seem to be constantly exploited throughout history. It also could be a strange coincidence that this bailout was orchestrated only once Goldman Saachs had lost more than 40% of its share value and fears were arising about their liquidity and a looming bank run. Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury is the former CEO of Goldman’s, not more than 3 years ago. I do believe that there are special interests at heart in the FEDS as well as the media since there was a wide media blackout on Ron Paul’s campaign who had the record for most donations in a single day at Approx 6M (this was during the preliminary stages). He won virtually every debate that he was in (by public polling through internet) yet the web-pages were mysteriously not available after the debates. The last comment I am also accounting for my personal experience as well as others documented.I think I have given you guys enough to try to rip me apart, so enjoy and I look forward to your responses. But before you do respond, please take a look yourself into some of the things which I stated. I’ll leave you with a quote from a movie I watched a little while ago.V for Vendetta; while it was an entertaining FICTIONAL movie, I did enjoy one specific quote which definitely brings out the fear tactics of the American Gov’t as of late with the passing of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T act as well as Bush’s Wire Tapping. Please also do some research into these two laws, specifically the P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act:1) How it was passed and what time and Day2) What the Act Outlines for your Civil Liberties3) The fact that the government can do whatever they please as long as they deem you a potential threat to national security: send you to Guantanamo, restrict your right to trial, refuse to notify you of the charges you are being held on/tried for.... just to name a fewBUT PLEASE DON\u0026#39;T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.... Look for yourself.Now the quote:“The citizens of a country should not be afraid of the government; the government should be afraid of its citizens”Let’s not forget who votes the president in......\nLippard (2008-10-10):\n\"Please check the LSU Libraries as well as Gov US to see that they are not under the jurisdiction of any governmental body.\"Sure they are. The Fed was created by act of Congress, its president and board of governors are appointed by the President, and they have to comply with laws and regulations, and are subject to rulings of the federal court system.They are independent in their actions in the same way to a somewhat greater extent than other governmental agencies to the extent that banks get to elect the members of the regional boards of directors. That independence is intended to prevent political manipulation of monetary policy.It's not a secret, it's documented at the Fed's website.*All* organizations face the problem of the individuals running them looking out for their own interests.\nLippard (2008-10-10):\nBTW, the bailout bill hasn't really been used yet. In any case, today was an up day for financials.I share your concerns about the USA PATRIOT Act, how it was passed, and how it has been used by the Bush administration.\nOpenmind (2008-10-11):\nThen what HELL are they waiting FOR, total destruction?!\nLippard (2008-10-11):\nI think banks have been hesitant to sell distressed assets for fear of revealing their weakness. Citibank was going to buy Wachovia with government help, when Wells Fargo stepped in to buy them with their own money, which made Citibank look weak (I suspect they are the weakest of the largest U.S. banks, with Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo in better shape).It now appears that the government is going to take one of Nouriel Roubini's pieces of advice and inject capital into the banks by purchasing preferred shares of their stock.Neel Kashkari has been appointed as \"bailout czar\" at the Treasury Department. Great name.\nMɵᴅʊsa (2008-10-13):\nMr. Jim.You completely lost any credibility with me by citing The Bible and Wikipedia and inexorable sources of information.All these skeptics and debunkers that I've come across so far are missing the main point of Zeitgeist. It's only real point is to ask you to question things around you (not excluding the \"factual\" contents of the film!), and to have the courage to not blindly accept things as they are, just because they are.I would really like to see you \"debunk\" the last sentence I just wrote.\nEinzige (2008-10-13):\nIt's only real point is to ask you to question things around you (not excluding the \"factual\" contents of the film!), and to have the courage to not blindly accept things as they are, just because they are.If that's its only real point, then why does it use such a roundabout way to accomplish that? You'd think that the film's makers would have tried a different tack (like, say, using reputable sources, verifiable facts, and valid logical argumentation).And, if things \"are...because they are\", as you say, then wouldn't accepting that mean facing reality, and not accepting that mean deluding oneself? Are you suggesting the latter?\nLippard (2008-10-13):\nRaven: I think Einzige has sufficiently addressed your last point. I agree with him--\"Zeitgeist\" clearly expects us to believe what it's arguing for, it's not Robert Anton Wilson-style guerilla ontology where you can't be sure what he actually believes.You say I lost credibility with you by citing the Bible and Wikipedia. I think it can be perfectly legitimate to cite either of those sources (recognizing their respective weaknesses), but in fact I never made a single citation to the Bible in the original post. What does that say about your credibility?\nMɵᴅʊsa (2008-10-13):\nJim:Apologies, my mistake, it was someone else's post I mistook as yours.\nMɵᴅʊsa (2008-10-13):\nEinzige:If that's its only real point, then why does it use such a roundabout way to accomplish that? You'd think that the film's makers would have tried a different tack (like, say, using reputable sources, verifiable facts, and valid logical argumentation).Actually, it's not roundabout at all ... its message is actually very direct. It appeals immediately to the senses, and very deliberately so. It is nearly impossible for a viewer not to be affected by it on a visceral level, whether or not they subscribe to the ideas presented therein. Its appeal to logic (roundabout) is secondary to its emotional appeal to the senses (direct).I am surmising that the reason it was presented this way was in order to reach the largest possible audience. It's representation of \"facts\" may be insulting to some of us that possess critical thinking skills, but remember that a huge portion of people on earth do not possess these qualities -- even those that think that they do actually do not - it assumes most people have chosen to be imprisoned, if you will, by current pervasive ideologies. Which makes sense, since that’s a main message of this film. So, right or wrong, they have to be appealed to on a more base level. That said, I am fully aware that this film is the very definition of propaganda. It has all the features that skeptics look for when doing their “debunking”: dramatic musical score, vivid and disturbing imagery, simple yet forceful language and symbols. When the average person hears the word \"propaganda\", their first image is probably going to be of Hitler or some such horrid thing, but take a look around you. Most people are influenced by propaganda every minute of day in the form of advertising, public relations, politics, Hollywood, ad nauseam. Take it a step further and you could even say that every belief or opinion you have expressed without inexorable fact (whatever that is) to back it up is, in effect, propaganda. Expressing a view on abortion, religion, the birth of the universe, and so on could be eschewed as propaganda by its very definition. Human nature hasn't progressed all that much since the Third Reich, if at all; people are certainly not beyond being swayed by a mass \"mob\" mentality, no matter how much they may protest to the contrary. Maybe even more swayed these days; again, look at advertising, politics, fashion, et al. Especially during a time like the present, when a lot of people are scared shitless. The ethics involved in using such propaganda methods to deliver a message is, of course, up for debate. Manipulative? Maybe. Ethically grey? Perhaps. However, it seems you have to speak to people in the language that they are used to being spoken to in order for them to listen, and that language just happens to be the language of propaganda. Emotion and effect trumps logic in these matters, especially when you are trying to mobilize the masses, not just feed them information. Appeals made primarily to logic might cause a person to respond with a \"Huh, well, that's interesting\" and then quickly forget about it in a day or two. Without strong emotional appeal the potential of reaching and actually mobilizing a large diverse population is close to nil.If I was the filmmaker for this movie, would I present it the way Peter Joseph did? Probably not. I would try and do a better job factually backing up what I say. Only I am not sure how easy it would be know or judge which sources are reputable, or if anyone would agree as to what are reputable sources, especially when you are attacking the very basis of what hold a culture together, however precariously. I mean, come on, most people think MSNBC or FOX news or Wikipedia are reputable sources of information. Many people view the Bible as a reputable source of fact, while others view it as a manipulation of sacred texts for the political gain of King James. Yet even if I could manage to be factually correct, whatever that means, maybe I wouldn't have the visceral talent employed in Zeitgeist and therefore would not have nearly the same potentially mobilizing effect or distribution. To make something both completely 100% factually correct AND have the emotional impact would be quite the feat, and I welcome anyone out there to take on that challenge. Yet there will always be someone out there with the need to dispute it’s validity.So, in short, facts and logic has its limits when you are trying to appeal to the core of human nature, and to the very core of an entrenched culture.Besides, who says everything that's of value in this world must be backed up by logic and reason and “facts” anyway? Certainly not anyone who is religious. Certainly not anyone who enjoys a piece of music. Certainly not anyone who has ever been in love.All said, I choose to view Zeitgeist more as a piece of art than a documentary. It takes a view of truth and shapes it, manipulates it, bends its light through prism, distills a primordial essence out of it and onto a tangible medium in an attempt to allow the unseeable be seen, however imperfectly represented. Just like the terror in Edvard Munch's \"The Scream\" or Monet's \"Waterlillies\" or any worthwhile piece of abstract expressionism or music or whatever you choose. To show things in a new light, nevermind the colors or mediums employed in such a task. The only difference is that this film is based just enough in reality to perhaps make one desire action, unlike a painting or a symphony.The film is FAR from perfect, but it’s SOMETHING. It’s up to you what you get out of it, like anything in life. You may say Peter Joseph is a crackpot or whatever, but does that make his overall message unworthy of consideration?And, if things \"are...because they are\", as you say, then wouldn't accepting that mean facing reality, and not accepting that mean deluding oneself? Are you suggesting the latter?All the great movers and shakers stepped outside of empirical reality and into the realm of possibility. This is how someone once came up with the idea that the earth is not flat, and does not stand still. Some people call it genius.\nEinzige (2008-10-13):\nRaven:...does that make his overall message unworthy of consideration?By coming off as completely baseless and ridiculous, Zeitgeist fails utterly in the purpose you claim for it.I'm all for questioning the party line (you'll see that as a theme throughout both this blog and mine), but doing it in a way that is so easily dismissible seems at cross-purposes to that goal. It may even make people more secure in their complacency.All the great movers and shakers stepped outside of empirical reality and into the realm of possibility.That's just wrong. The great thinkers examined empirical reality and recognized, unafraid, where theory and facts did not coincide. They then came up with testable, falsifiable models that attempted to fit the facts.A round earth came out of recognizing things like shadow lengths on the same day in different places.Newtonian classical mechanics was superseded by Einstein's theory because of Newton's failed predictions for the planet's elliptical orbits.Quantum theory arose out of observation of the strange behavior of the electron.Notice the common thread?\nBilly T (2008-10-14):\nThe movie isnt all true but most of it is. Unofrtunately everyone looks to stay negative instead of focusing on the ways to fix the problems we have made. I would argue that most of you havent even been to college, or have even done the research on any of the movie. I would say you have read it all and agreed with what you read. Religion is a fat joke. Get over it. Fucking Retards.\nSchtacky (2008-10-14):\nBilly T: To whom are you referring with the \"Fucking Retards\" comment? Have you actually read anything that's posted on this blog?If you had, I am sure that you would have realized that the posters almost totally concern themselves with skeptical inquiry and observation.I will leave your petulant comment regarding having attended college alone since it's clearly an ignorant statement.Perhaps you should read up on the blog and in particular this entry before posting again? The readers of this blog will almost certainly love to engage in discussion with you should you be able to come up with any decent talking points.Take care!\nEinzige (2008-10-14):\nBilly T wrote:The movie isnt all true but most of it is.Which parts are true?Or--if it's a shorter list--which parts are not true?\nLippard (2008-10-15):\nraven: \"You may say Peter Joseph is a crackpot or whatever, but does that make his overall message unworthy of consideration?\"Even if I try to give credence to your interpretation, the message seems to be \"it's acceptable to question authority by using completely unsubstantiated bullshit. There are no standards of evidence that matter.\"In which case the overall message is, indeed, unworthy of consideration.\nLippard (2008-10-15):\nbillyt: \"The movie isnt all true but most of it is.\"I'd say, to the contrary, that every major point of the movie is false. There are some true statements scattered about within it, used to make bad arguments to false conclusions.\"Unofrtunately everyone looks to stay negative instead of focusing on the ways to fix the problems we have made.\"Which problems are you referring to?\"I would argue that most of you havent even been to college, or have even done the research on any of the movie.\"On what basis? I look forward to you actually producing such an argument, it should be quite funny.\nSovereign (2008-10-18):\nI am trying to get through the movie but its really awful :(Regularly i listen to alexjones but for the past few days ive been goofing off so i didnt know he interviewed peter joseph, the person who made zeitgeist. He was referring to the interview here and there so i had to hear it for myself, unlike the movie, the interview is hilarious.http://justgetthere.us/blog/archives/Alex-Jones-Heated-Interview-with-Peter-Joseph-of-Zeitgeist.htmlI saw zeitgeist 1 and immediately it looked like something to shatter the truth movement and bring bout mystery and confusion. The guy basically uses a lot of logical fallacies, neurolinguistic programming and dialectic tecniques to sell you on his refried utopia, which he may actually believe in. Its a process, at one time in my life i would have totally agreed with him, but after seriously looking through the religious texts i have lying around Quran, Torah, Bible, Mahabarata, the gita, egyptian book of the dead, herodotus, kebra nagast, im sorry, his stuff does not line up.Someone mentioned the mayan calendar thing too, and seriously on Dec 31, the only thing that starts over is the calendar- if that calendar measures anything it could be the sunspots which have died down recently, its worth investigating. Like it says in Zen, you dont have a teacher for the teacher you have a teacher for yourself, one day you will need to leave your teacher, kill the buddha, if you cant throw it into the fire you arent there yet, if your awakening is dependant on zeitgeist you are going to stay asleep, he is not all wrong, he just isnt the source. You have to be willing to accept that there may not be some fantastical, science fiction reality just around the corner, the truth could be everything as it is, messy religions, dogma ect. would that be good enough?If he has not actually read the writings of the people who have said this stuff before he isnt going to see it. Everything he is advocating for involves setting up a Guardian Class, such as the one from plato\u0026#39;s republic who will decide how much each person gets, never once does he address who is going to decide who has to do the back breaking work and who is going to put food on the shelves of the \u0026quot;grocery store\u0026quot; where \u0026quot;nobody steals\u0026quot; because we dont need to - seriously, the interview is a lot better than the movie.the utopian stuff he is talking about sets off esoteric nukes, the refrences to \u0026quot;nature\u0026quot; creeped me out judging from all my other studies and the regular theme of religious consolodation so that they are easier to discard, \u0026quot;intellegent management of the earth\u0026#39;s resources\u0026quot; by whom?nearly everything he said was ripped off from various independant researchers from all over the web he is selling new age garbage, the theosophical garbage that gave us hitler\u0026#39;s germany, look into The Occult History of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler, its not as spooky as it sounds, there are lots of interviews and videos and more about the actual ceremonies that took place, details which need to be known so we know what it looks like if its ever attempted again. Im not accusing him of being a Hitler type, im just saying knowing how BS starts is key to stopping it in its tracks.there is no \u0026quot;evil\u0026quot; \u0026quot;its all a matter of digree\u0026quot;alex jones \u0026quot;Do you believe evil exists?\u0026quot;peter joseph \u0026quot;absolutely not, because baised on the definition of evil its basically a religious conotation, it cant, it doesnt mean anything, its an empty distinction, if i was to re-define i would say evil is abhorent behavior....\u0026quot;he actually says \u0026quot;im a whore just like everyone else in this system\u0026quot; after he accused alex of being manipulating for pricing videos at $29.99 instead of $30Its just so funny that this guy is selling the same thing from plato\u0026#39;s republic, when you read that book a few times you realize that the only way it works is if every other system is destroyed, there is an enormous amount of deception.He is a crook trying using the truth movement to make some money, he wants to re-educate the religious people, recondition people, most of his money stuff was cut \u0026amp; paste from the video \u0026quot;The money masters\u0026quot; which is also on google, he also does that same thing bush does by saying \u0026quot;i want to talk to your audience\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;ladies and gentlemen....\u0026quot; this compares to bush\u0026#39;s speech to \u0026quot;the iraqi people\u0026quot; before the invasion, and his recent speeches to the iranian people, not their leader whom we cant talk to.After world war 2 it was all about \u0026quot;nations\u0026quot; now its all about disolving the \u0026quot;state\u0026quot; and being \u0026quot;one\u0026quot; or UN (one in french, hint hint) who is going to decide about the food? Look up codex alimentariushttp://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp# a World Health Organization which is \u0026quot;harmonizing\u0026quot; all our world standards so that we have the same amount of rat turds in our corn flakes as they do in JapanReligio means to bind, they want to be bound to god, for god\u0026#39;s sake, let them!When the muslims have their holiday when they eat lots of good food when the sun sets, i am so there, when the christians have christmas i am getting gifts for all the kiddies, frankly the nativity scene is cool, jews have lots of holidays with special foods, hindus has more gods than i have fingers, they all probably have birthdays or something, is it possible we can have like happy parvati day or something.This guy is selling ancient snake oil, its kinda funny and more sad- I dont expect people to feel the way i do about 9/11 yeah im a truther, and i dont appreciate this LLC carpetbagger giving us problems with his cut \u0026amp; paste of other people\u0026#39;s work, thats why his stuff is easily knocked down because its not meant to stand up to criticism, so he dont think jesus was real, well heck, the romans used to nail people to crosses for petty crimes, the story is about a guy who got nailed up there for making banker/currency exchange guys mad.Christianity actually supports his money ideas, its kinda hilarious, he pissed off a group that he could have had.______________________________By the way, GET OFF THE KOLA BOOF issue, to the woman earlier, i understand why you felt you needed to say what you did but i get really annoyed by anyone who comes in and right off the bat kicks the \u0026quot;tepid white male\u0026quot; leave him alone. He isnt going to walk in her shoes any lifetime soon so stop expecting him to have your level of sensitivity to whatever her issue is, this is a blog, we are allowed to have our own opinions and if you know something to be mis-stated send a personal e-mail to him so he can look into it further dont bring this catfight here about this issue, its just crass and beneath you, that woman is not representative of ANY black woman I know or would associate with.If you want to be her cheering section be my guest, but you dont get to sit here and act like your opinion is representative of any black woman other than yourself, you dont speak for me, i am a black female from the south side of chicago, born and raised with folks from arkansas who didnt get here on a carnival cruise.So no, you dont get to call him predjudiced, GET OFF IT, even with a light research into that woman smells like chocolate covered paris hilton - now lets get back to the actual issue and off the juices \u0026amp; berries talk.--------------------------------------------------------------\nUnknown (2008-10-19):\nJust watched the movie. The astronomical/astrological information in the first part is a total bullshit - just take a look at star map. Sirius is always aligned with the 3 stars of the Orion, not only on December 25. The stars cannot point to the Sun on December 25, because the Sun is on the opposite side of the ecliptic in winter. Finally, the Southern Cross constellation is far far away from the ecliptic, so the Sun cannot come even close to it.\nUnknown (2008-10-19):\nOh, I forgot: thank you for your blog, Jim.\ndocsensi (2008-10-30):\nThanks for the insight on the movie. I guess like many one becomes a bit frantic after watching stuff like this and it feels good to know that things aren't as bad even though they are pretty bad. I just finished seeing the zeitgeist addendum it is available in google video and on their website www.thezeitgeistmovement.com. it was a bit more convincing than the movei and also had a more positive tone towards the end. I'd like to hear your take on this one if possible. Blogging and extracting real unbiased news and views from the internet s new to me any suggestions as to where one might find these good sources? thanks again great day to you......\nLippard (2008-10-30):\nI watched a little bit (the first 30 minutes) of the \"Zeitgeist Addendum,\" which looks to be largely derived from \"Money is Debt,\" another video floating around the Internet. I skimmed through much of the rest.It's somewhat more accurate than the previous parts, but has the same flaws as \"Money is Debt,\" most seriously in its discussion of interest. The creators of both films do not seem to understand the time-value of money, or that the expansion of the money supply doesn't create problems so long as non-monetary wealth is also expanding. No matter what you use as money, there will always be a system of credit that rides on top of it, of the sort that has been contracting rapidly in the current financial crisis. (This contraction has been *increasing* the value of the U.S. dollar this year.)The idea that money creates slavery and that if we just got rid of fractional reserve banking, nobody would be forced to work for a living is a bit ridiculous.Looks like part 2 of the film is based on John Perkins' _Confessons of an Economic Hitman_, which is a book I've read. His book was entertaining, but mostly unbelievable, and he's not a credible source. Note that he claims that we all have the shamanic ability to shapeshift and become invisible, for example.Some of the stuff he talks about is correct, such as U.S. intervention using the CIA in the Middle East and South America, the history of which is told in Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes.In part III, the film suggests that we only need money because of scarcity, and that scarcity is a fiction. But scarcity isn't a fiction, scarcity exists because there is no limit to what people can want and desire--there can be scarcity even when a resource is abundant.My impression is that the \"Addendum\" is just as bogus as the first three parts--it's largely lifted from other sources, and those sources are unreliable.\nEinzige (2008-10-30):\nRe: \"scarcity is a fiction\" ...If that were true, there'd be no such thing as evolution.The notion is utterly absurd.\nLippard (2008-11-01):\nThe previous deleted comment was from Damon, who quoted an entire gigantic comment from raven just to add this \"me too\":\"This was the best comment I have found here regarding the Zeitguist Move (first one not the new one Addendium which some people have been confussed by)Hat's off to Raven. Logic and fact do have there limits. And can even be blinding to the more organic ways of understanding things.\"Damon: You're welcome to comment here, and my intent is not to censor you, but please don't repost large comments to add a short comment that does nothing more than agree.\nEinzige (2008-11-01):\nDamon apparently stopped reading after that.Neither he nor Raven have addressed our criticisms of Raven's position, the main points of which are:1) Logic and standards of evidence do matter.2) Empirical reality is not ignored by \"movers and shakers\" - at least ones who aren't bullshit artists.If you reject those two points then you open yourself up to believing whatever message is most effective emotionally--which is the only way I can interpret the meaning behind \"the organic way of understanding things.\" That's a dangerous path to take.\nzapstrung (2008-11-20):\nI randomly came across the final segment of the Zeitgeist movie (The Federal Reserve, etc..) while surfing through YouTube. My initial reaction to the 3rd movie segment was of paranoia, immediately followed by a lot of questions. Thankfully, I am not naïve enough to believe everything posted on YouTube (sadly, I think millions of people are), so I immediately did a Google search on Zeitgeist and came across this blog. Lippard, your rebuttal to the arguments in the 3rd segment of Zeitgeist are excellent and the format here allows for a far more intelligent debate than one will ever experience or view on YouTube’s comments pages.I would like to comment on what seemed to be the underlining thesis of Zeitgeist; the idea that there are a few elite groups or individuals that have been conspiring throughout the ages to divide the human race in order to scare it into complete submission under one banking system…which would somehow transform into a one world government. I am not going to explain the obvious contradiction inherent in such a global domination strategy. Instead, I would like to point out that the film wraps up its arguments in the end with some kind of new-age montage which promotes an idealistic concept of man being inherently one, interconnected, social fabric that is tied into a singular reality. This conclusion is an interesting choice considering the many arguments Zeitgeist made against the FED, the NAU, global banking, etc, were based on the idea that globalization is a negative result. These arguments completely contradict the conclusion…at least philosophically. A one world government should be celebrated by new age idealists who believe that mankind has been plagued by division. If world unity is something one desires, shouldn’t unified governments, economies, and society also be desired? The FED and the NAU have or will become threats because they unify governments, economies, and cultures…not because they divide them. Zeitgeist argues that the FED and NAU are a threat because they divide and isolate by bringing government and economies in unison…what?!?I doubt the makers of Zeitgeist believe in capitalism, but true capitalism is the real solution to these issues because it pivots individuals and organizations against themselves so there is diversity and free choice. Freedom is not achieved though a unified-quasi-world-order (the ideal proposed in Zeitgeist’s conclusion), but rather a division of governments, ideas, and beliefs.All of this is simply to point out that not only are Zeitgeist’s factual arguments sketchy and inconsistent, its general ideals and philosophical perspectives are inconsistent.\njohn (2008-11-24):\nCome on. Give Zeitgeist some credit. Or did you prejudge it before the first scene?This website is only strong on namecalling, not fact producing. I'd love to think all of Zeitgeist is fake, but until I see the volume of disparaging and convincing, opposite evidence equal to Zeitgeist's, I'd say Zeitgeist wins the debate easily. Zeitgeist's material is extremely convincing on the surface when you think, look and listen. Your argument is superficial as heck! And yes, reread your section on emotion: your caught up in the same error yourself. I sense a lot more emotion behind your claims than facts, unfortunately. It's hard to imagine, though I'm trying hard, that our government is as harmless, innnocent, and naive as this website suggests. What a pleasant world you must live in! And I don't care who made the film. One wise person said, \"Analyze the message, not the messenger.\"\nLippard (2008-11-25):\nJohn: I watched the whole thing. It's impossible not to prejudge the film before seeing the whole thing, because it makes bogus claims from end to end. What claims did you find persuasive?You write: \"It's hard to imagine, though I'm trying hard, that our government is as harmless, innnocent, and naive as this website suggests.\"How did you come to the conclusion that this blog suggests that the U.S. government is harmless, innocent, or naive? I think your examination of this blog was much less extensive than my examination of \"Zeitgeist.\"\nEinzige (2008-11-25):\nJohn, your comment is a string of bald assertions unsupported by facts or argument, so it's not difficult to understand why you found Zeitgeist to be persuasive.\nJoshy (2008-12-18):\nJim, I read the links you posted on the federal reserve portion of the film. Perhaps the only portion of the film that would be backed by large amounts of historical information, timelines, and records.You stated that it is clearly bogus, without really reading in depth the details of what exactly the federal reserve system is.After reading the same links you posted, I feel that the system is ripe for corruption. Ripe. It seems to me that there are simply people out there who feel that their government can do no wrong. If American history has shown anything, namely contemporary history, is that there is nothing but corruption, at the highest levels.You honestly don't think that politicians can be bought? The main argument against the conspiracy theorists is that the federal reserve board of governors is appointed by the public.Yet, the president and his cabinet, aka cronies, picks these posts. Last time I checked that is not a democracy picking appointments, more like a potential post bought at the right price.A notable point you don't mention in your blogs is the historical regret many politicians had against the federal reserve. Why it seems that clear logic fails in our country and that people who bring these points up are instantly labeled as trying to spread a form of propoganda. Even if it is to benefit society at a larger level.All I know is this, an evil is spreading across the world, invading every aspect of society, seperating people, and cutting them off to now only communicate coldly across the electronic distances that seperate us now.You are too quick to dismiss. Far too quick for me to consider you a true American patriot.\ni25xi80 (2008-12-18):\nIt would seem most of you have only researched as far as the established academia has provided for you as \"established fact\", and doing your own in depth investigation of the material presented is too consuming of your time or whatever, so you are the product of the \"mindset\" this movie is warning you about.If you want to see through the veil of Globalism / One World Government agenda, (yes it's real) then you will have to mature beyond the ego that is holding you down to some popular party affiliation or \"my side versus your side\", my side has more money, or published more books, or better friends, or been around the world more times, or has been studying it longer, or a better education, or what ever other criteria you may think makes ones opinion better than the next. You must dig deeper than they do and separate the opinions from the facts, and then form your own concepts based on those facts.Three areas of concentration for me when researching sociological phenomena, (such is civilization) power, money and history, these variables should not be ignored.Sorry Jim, but you have a lot more work to do!\nLippard (2008-12-18):\nJoshy:You write that \"You stated that it is clearly bogus, without really reading in depth the details of what exactly the federal reserve system is.\" On what do you base this statement about what I've *read*?\"You honestly don't think that politicians can be bought?\" Where do you get that? Try doing a Google search on \"site:lippard.blogspot.com Dirty politician\". Please don't attribute positions to me that I don't hold.\"The main argument against the conspiracy theorists is that the federal reserve board of governors is appointed by the public.\"No, the main argument against the claim that the Fed is not part of the government is that the president appoints the Fed chairman and board of governors.\"Yet, the president and his cabinet, aka cronies, picks these posts. Last time I checked that is not a democracy picking appointments, more like a potential post bought at the right price.\"The United States is a *representative* democracy. Many positions in government are appointed rather than directly elected. Of course there is opportunity for cronyism and the purchase of positions--look at Gov. Blagojevich in Illinois.\"A notable point you don't mention in your blogs is the historical regret many politicians had against the federal reserve.\" I know of one such quote, it appears in Zeitgeist, and is bogus. The quotation was constructed from multiple Wilson statements and one complete fabrication, and was made in a context that had nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. Thanks for prompting me to debunk another one of Zeitgeist's fabrications.i25xi80: You make a number of assertions, but you provide zero supporting evidence. Come back again when you have some.\nUnknown (2008-12-24):\nI have read every comment on this page and it seems that both sides are more than willing to go back and forth with \"supporting facts and evidence\". I don't claim to have extensive knowledge of any of the facts either in the movie or on this blog; and I think if someone asserts that through hours and hours of \"research\" they do know \"the truth\", they are exactly the kind of ignorant and self-centered person that Zeitgeist attempts to overcome. Of course not everything in Zeitgeist is true; no one knows the truth. There is always someone bigger and more powerful than you censoring and editing what you can say and see. But don't be so stubborn and self-centered that you ignore the message of the film, and it's addendum. Humans are a part of nature and the planet just as plants and water; we are all interconnected and rely on each other; we are part of a much bigger system. But the government and corporate jerk-offs are so obsessed with power and money that the well-being of the world and its people are of little to no importance. They use the unfortunate people on this planet to harvest and manufacture piles and piles of worthless crap; then they spend billions of dollars on advertising, movies, etc. to brainwash us into thinking we need it! And because our education system is so ridiculous (not due to lack of intelligent, caring teachers, but becuase of the governement's intention to have us lazy and stupid), very few of us can see that there is so much more that is important, and that Wal-Mart is not a great place to shop but an evil entity raping and pillaging the people of this plane, including you!Why are there so many children dying of curable disease? Why are there people starving every day when the big CEO's are sitting on billions, that they can never spend?It's no longer a question of right or left, educated or not, it's a matter of human concern, rights, and sense of true purpose. If everyone spent as much time being kind, doing good, and spreading knowledge, wealth, and good fortune, as they do scheming ways to get rich, the whole planet would be a better place.We have a lot to learn from each other, and disputing \"facts and evidence\" is a waste of time. You will not find the truth online, in your bible or in your library.\nEinzige (2008-12-25):\nSomething tells me, Michael, that a response to your post will be met with silence, but I guess I'll do it anyway...\"...if someone asserts that through hours and hours of \"research\" they do know \"the truth\", they are exactly the kind of ignorant and self-centered person that Zeitgeist attempts to overcome.Are you saying that Zeitgeist isn't itself making truth claims--one's based on many hours' \"research\"--or are you saying that the makers of Zeitgeist don't know what's true? Is Zeitgeist attempting to overcome itself?\"Of course not everything in Zeitgeist is true; no one knows the truth.\"On what basis do you make that claim, if \"facts and evidence\" are as worthless as you imply? How do you know which parts are true and which aren't?\"But don't be so stubborn and self-centered that you ignore the message of the film, and it's addendum.\"Presumably you've summarized \"the message\" of the film in the remainder of your post. However, if we were to ask 100 random people what they thought Zeitgeist's message was, I seriously doubt any of them would come up with the same one you've given. I fail to see how any of it is even remotely relevant to the question of whether or not bombs were planted in the twin towers.\nLippard (2008-12-25):\nMichael: I disagree with your claim that no one can know what is true. I think we can distinguish truth from falsehood, and while in many or most instances we may have less than complete certainty, we can still tell what's well supported and what's nonsense. Zeitgeist is full of a lot of the latter. It's not that not everything in Zeitgeist is true, it's that every major substantive claim that it makes is supported with claims that are not true. This makes Zeitgeist virtually worthless, though I can think of two ways it provides value. First, it provides a good set of relatively easy critical thinking exercises. Second, it provides an excellent litmus test for identifying people who fail those exercises.\nAnonymous (2009-01-13):\nJim - I appreciate your efforts and approach to defending your thoughts and positions using facts.I just wanted to mention something I have noticed. I have a friend that is so into Zeitgeist it is starting to affect everything he does. He is so devoted to the cause and message and blindly agrees with every word. His devotion and support of Zeitgeist makes him aggressive and harsh in his attempts to defend it. All driven by pure emotion.What is Ironic to me is that his devotion to the message and absolute belief in it reminds of those that are so deeply devoted to their religion. I find it interesting how a film that this so anti-religion has a cult or religious following. I am not religious myself, so maybe I just don't understanding giving myself so deeply to something. Or maybe Zeitgeist is just a new form of religion and those following it are no different than the religious fanatics they try so hard to discredit. The basics are all there. Believing in a set of philosophies and trying to carry out the message within the philosophies while denouncing all theories that do not agree.\nLippard (2009-01-13):\nJohnB: Thanks!I've seen similar sorts of single-mindedness among other sorts of conspiracy theorists. I think there's a social status-seeking aspect that's also common to religion--to be part of an elite in-group with the truth, while the rest of the world is too blind to see it. Communities of conspiracy theorists also provide an amateur, home-grown institution of debate and discussion that's a sort of pseudo-academic community, open to the common man without any formal training--you just need to watch Zeitgeist and read a few web pages. But in practice I think you're right that it works more like religion than science, since there's usually no real engagement with critics. (Though this happens sometimes within science, as well.)\nJerry (2009-01-17):\nJim, thanks for this blog entry. My son has hounded me for a week to watch the film, which I finally did. I found it nonsense but very effective. I've referred him to your site and others as the starting point to deprogram him :-)\nLippard (2009-01-17):\nJerry: You're very welcome. I hope your son is willing to put the claims of Zeitgeist to critical scrutiny.\nAnonymous (2009-01-19):\nTry watching the movie next time with your eyes open and your mind engaged....then step outside and look around.I leave you with a quote:\"When the pickpocket met the Buddha, all he saw was the Buddha's pockets.\"\nLippard (2009-01-19):\nBodhi: That's a little bit vague. Do you think there's something that Zeitgeist is substantially correct about? If so, what?\nMarmalade (2009-03-02):\nI have no grand opinion about he other parts of Zeitgeist, but I'm fascinated by the perspective on mythicism and astrotheology. I've read Acharya S and other similar authors. It convinces me, but I'm not going to defend any of it simply because it would just lead to pointless argument. If you want to learn more, there are many detailed books about the topic out there. I'd recommend reading for yourself and making up your own mind. Watching a single video like Zeitgeist or reading the comments of critics is good, but it is better to go the source of the scholarship.\nLippard (2009-03-03):\nMarmalade: But it's important to go to sources of well-supported scholarship that's been through peer review and debate, and assess the claims in the light of that evidence. Acharya S's work seems to be at best pseudo-scholarship on the fringes, which makes claims that are falsified by the best evidence.\nPeter (2009-03-14):\nHi everyone!I'm from Hungary. I saw Zeitgeist yesterday, and I'm very bitter about the first part of it. I'm catholic and a little bit nervous. WHO can make a film like this, and try to squelch christianity and say Jesus never exists??? I don't want to see the second and third parts after these...If you have hungarian friends or anyone who speaks hungarian fluently see this website in hungarian about the first part of the film. http://www.halado.hu/zeitgeist.pdf\nMarmalade (2009-03-31):\nI'd recommend going to primary sources and decide for yourself. I judge a scholar by their scholarship and the scholar's references. Acharya uses primary sources and many reputable sources. Check them out and learn for yourself rather than bowing down to someone else's opinion.Even so, Acharya's training is fairly wide.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharya_S\"According to her website, Acharya is classically educated in archaeology, history, mythology, and languages. Her formal training includes a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin and Marshall College. She also attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in Greece.Acharya served briefly as a fellow of The Council for Secular Humanism’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER).\"http://truthbeknown.com/author.htm“…she speaks, reads and/or writes English, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and a smattering of other languages to varying degrees.” (and she taught herself to read hieroglyphics for her book Christ in Egypt so that she could compare how earlier scholars had translated them.)If that still isn't good enough, here are some other scholars whose work supports the mythicist theory: Arthur Drews, Earl Doherty, Harold Liedner, Robert Price, Thomas Thompson, George Wells, Randel Helms, Alan Dundes, Erid Hornung, Richard Carrier.\nLippard (2009-04-02):\nMarmalade: You left out G.A. Wells.My argument isn't that there is no scholarly support for mythicism, though that is clearly a minority position. Richard Carrier is at work on a new book that will look at the evidence that favors historicity and the evidence that favors myth, and it looks like it will be a good book. That would be a much better book to read than Acharya S's, I believe.\nMarmalade (2009-04-08):\nYour argument may not be \"that there is no scholarly support for mythicism\", but you seem to present yourself as being more critical of it than not. I usually don't care about what people say about Acharya, but I happen to be reading her latest book right now. I feel compelled to respond to blogs sometimes because I've noticed an inverse relationship between how much someone knows about Acharya's work and how accepting they are of it.R.M. Price is a very respectable scholar who was originally critical of Acharya, but changed his mind. He has even written a foreword to one of her books. Price, along with Doherty, has written positive reviews of her books and have cited her in their own work. Carrier and Acharya have a dispute about the Luxor inscription (which she writes about in Christ In Egypt). In case you want to explore the Luxor debate, here is the view of Acharya:http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.htmlAnd the view of Doherty (scroll down):http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp13D.htmBut for some reason Carrier hasn't responded to Acharya's published criticism. I've heard that, despite his criticisms, he hasn't read any of Acharya's books. I'd love to read a book by him where he actually engages Acharya's arguments and evidence. He is a mythicist as far as I understand, but I don't know his theories beyond reading some of his blogs. I'm going to be watching closely Carrier's and Price's participation in the Jesus Project.By the way, mythicism isn't limited to seeking support from 19th century sources or mid 20th century scholarship about the mystery schools. It's just mainstream New Testament studies is behind the times (hopefully the Jesus Project will remedy this). The idea that cultures borrow from eachother and share common motifs isn't controversial in other fields outside of New Testament studies. - If you look at modern Egyptology, you'll find many of the parallels (so much in fact that Acharya wrote a nearly 600 pg book about just the Egyptian connections, about 40 pgs being bibliography). And, in the first half of the book I've read so far, she doesn't say much about mystery schools. - If you want to find even more mainstream evidence for mythicism, then you'll need to look at comparative mythologists who can be found in many fields besides religious studies (folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics). Folklore is interesting. I've read about explanations of how fictional stories arise very quickly without an original historical figure, and also how quickly folklore can come to be considered history. None of this necessitates borrowing from other cultures. - Further evidence (related to astrotheology) can be found in archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy (which mostly can be found in the fields of archaeology and ethnology).Websites, Wikipedia and Encyclopedias aren't the best sources of info beyond generalities. I agree this same criticism applies to popular media such as Zeitgeist. This is why one should read the actual work of scholars (which includes Acharya).\nLippard (2009-04-15):\nYou are correct that I am more critical of the mythicist position. The most comprehensive mythicist arguments I've read are those of G.A. Wells, and I don't find them compelling. I look forward to reading Carrier's book, but I don't have plans to read others on the topic at the moment; ultimately, it's not a topic of great concern to me. My main critique of Zeitgeist and Acharya S. is its dependence upon Theosophical pseudo-scholarship about Egyptian myth from Massey, Kuhn, et al., and I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen anything from you to allay that concern. Has Acharya S. published anything in a professional journal of Egyptology, or has her work been positively reviewed by anyone in that field? Does she have any relevant credentials in the field? If not, why should her work be given any weight?\nUnknown (2009-05-11):\nhi, i am currently studying architecture and thus having to watch the film, there is some questions left unanswered by the u.s. gov. in the manner in which the buildings fell(especially building 7. In terms of 9/11, i quite agree with the movie based on my research and understanding on structures and i think the gov must make an enquiry about this matter.\nLippard (2009-05-11):\nlebohang: What questions do you think are unanswered about the WTC building collapses? Have you read, e.g., Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and Controlled Demolition\u0026rsquo;s commentary on WTC7? Or 9/11 Myth\u0026rsquo;s commentary on WTC7?\nLippard (2009-05-11):\nBTW, there WAS a governmental inquiry on the building collapses, which yielded a lengthy NIST report and NIST website. Have you read it?\nKtisophilos (2009-05-12):\nProof that burning fuel can soften steel until it bends and a structure collapses. Where has this video been the past 7½ years? 11-9 conspiracists beware! Discovery Channel Videos: Destroyed in Seconds: Tanker Truck Inferno\nUnknown (2009-08-04):\nOne of the biggest problems I have with Zeitgeist debunker claims is they often make even more unfounded claims than the movie itself. I'm only bothering to post to this blog because it seems to have at least some indication that claims should be supported by evidence.\nWhile I'm no deep scholar on world religions or Christianity, a few things jump out at me.\nJesus was either a real man or a fabricated myth. Jesus was not the son of god. There is simply no scientifically provable evidence for the existence of god, much less that he had a son named jesus, and that the way to heaven is by accepting jesus as your personal savior. All of that is completely fabricated BS.\nIf Jesus was a fabricated myth, then the claims of Zeitgeist part 1, while possibly exaggerated or stretched for comparison (i.e. the Horus comparison), aren't too far off at least in one sense. If he was a myth, then undoubtedly stories of his life were grabbed from various older mythologies from other belief systems or stories.\nIf Jesus was real, then why is there so little written about him outside of the bible? Far more is known about Archimedes, Plato, Pythagoras, etc even though they lived long before Jesus. ACTUAL writings from those men can be found, and references of their books and sayings can be found in many other author's writings.\nIf Jesus is real, then what mythology supports his otherwise quite mortal existence? Is it possible for a human virgin birth outside of artificial insemination? Is there really evidence that he brought back to life a dead man? Did he really feed thousands of people with 2 fish and a few loaves of bread? Did he really walk on water? Did he rise from the dead? The unequivocal answer to all of those questions (and thousands of others) is a resounding NO. So while it may be cute and quaint to debunk Zeitgeist part 1, its rather disingenuous in the scheme of things since BILLIONS of people buy into the real propaganda device, the bible, the Koran, and the associated religious structures that back up those religions. That 50 million people may have watched zeitgeist and a few percent of them believe it wholely, puts it as far less of an insult to reality than the major religions themselves, for which billions of people are believers.\nThe astronomy portions of zeitgeist part 1 are very accurate, with only a couple of minor distortions. For example as a poster above noted, Orion's belt and Sirius are always in the same line, not only at Dec 25th. The zodiac has been known in roughly its present form for thousands of years. The definitions of 'age' are completely correct, and are correctly attributed to the 26,000 year wobble that the earth has on its axis\u0026hellip; something ancient peoples were very aware of. The sun had premiere importance to every single culture on earth, with the moon being very important as well. The planets were also important, and the stars through which the planets passed were also important \u0026hellip;. the stars in the zodiac. Most world cultures DID personify/anthropomorphise the stars in terms of worldly things they were familiar with.\n(continued)\nUnknown (2009-08-04):\n(continuing from above) The Dec 25th birthdate is given a lot of importance by the movie and by the debunkers. The whole point is that eventually the church designated dec 25th as the date of the birth of christ, even if that wasn't the 'real' birthdate. Why would the church do this? Why so close to the winter solstice? If it was merely a choice of convenience, what does that say about the rest of the information told by the Church regarding christianity? Is it all a choice of convenience as well?\nhttp://christianity.about.com/od/faqhelpdesk/qt/whyeasterchange.htm \u0026quot;Easter is always celebrated on the Sunday immediately following the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox.\u0026quot; This statement was true prior to 325 AD; however, over the course of history (beginning in 325 AD with the Council of Nicea), the Western Church decided to established a more standardized system for determining the date of Easter.\nInterestingly easter was historically determined by 2 astronomical events \u0026hellip; the vernal equinox (important for planting crops), and the first full moon afterwards (unimportant except for performing tasks at night). So even if you discount Dec 25th as the birthdate of Christ because thats not what it 'originally was', you have to simultaneously ignore that easter is fundamentally tied into 2 astronomical events because thats what it 'originally was'.\nZeitgeist part 1 may be riddled with innaccuracies and falacies. But why are the debunkers wasting their time on Zeitgeist instead of debunking the bible, the Church, and the vast majority of the world's religions? Surely several billion people believing in magic and invisible all-powerful beings is more dangerous to the sanity of the human condition than a few hundred thousand people lured into belief by an internet movie.\nLippard (2009-08-04):\nBilly: I deleted your duplicate post, which appeared to be the same as part one of the two parts.\nThere are lots of good critiques of Christianity, and it clearly is a syncretistic religion, picking up elements of other religions even today. But Zeitgeist isn't one of them.\nYou ask why pick on Zeitgeist rather than the Bible\u0026ndash;I ask, why choose one or the other, rather than both? I believe we should always be willing to criticize misinformation and error, even if\u0026ndash;and perhaps especially if\u0026ndash;it is used to promote an idea we otherwise agree with.\nLippard (2009-08-04):\nBilly: You began by saying \u0026quot;One of the biggest problems I have with Zeitgeist debunker claims is they often make even more unfounded claims than the movie itself.\u0026quot; Please provide evidence to support this assertion. If you're talking about religious defenders of the Bible responding to part 1 of the film, I find that within the realm of plausibility, but Zeitgeist makes an awful lot of unfounded claims in a short space of time\u0026hellip;\nUnknown (2009-08-05):\nMr. Lippard, As I indicated, yours is one of the ONLY debunkings I have seen with any real meat behind it. So that comment of mine was not directed at your site, but at all of the other 1,000 \u0026quot;debunking\u0026quot; sites which are less credible than the film itself.\nI only ran into your blog yesterday (because of this topic) and took a liking to most of your blog entries, so I may continue to peruse this blog. I see that you in fact do take on lots of topics, so I agree, lets take on ALL of the pseudo-information out there.\n:)\nLippard (2009-08-05):\nBilly: Thanks for the clarification and the compliment.\nLippard (2009-08-17):\nComment from Vincent Harrison (profile http://www.blogger.com/profile/02571004784757870370): Wow, I just have to say something here - this blog reads like the trash put out by Christian extremist keith \u0026quot;truth\u0026quot; on youtube. Bringing up Blavatsky (cited only once in ZG) and theosophy (wisdom of god) and all the trash talk about 18th/19th century writers like Gerald Massey who, if you knew his work, was actually quite peer reviewed by some of the most highly credentialed Egyptologists of his day.\nCiting \u0026quot;GreNME\u0026quot; alone is enough to ruin all credibility here - a guy who goes around maliciously trashing ZG and Acharya S at every opportunity posting what he thinks is her real name in every internet forum possible enabling stalkers (like what you've done here). Even though she has never used that name. And even worse is this blog is cited by Richard Carrier - which is how I found it.\nI notice you posted that crap from Tim Callahan but failed to post Acharya's/Murdock's response to it demonstrating his utter lack of knowledge on these issues. Her response should be included in Skeptic magazines next issue. I hope people contact them and demand it.\nSkeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST (and Religious History) (link http://stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html)\nAll one has to do is read the Q \u0026amp; A at the Zeitgeist website to see how ZG came into existence:\n\u0026quot;Zeitgeist came into existence as a personal project which was shown in New York as a free public awareness expression. After the event was over, \u0026quot;The Movie\u0026quot; was tossed online with little thought given to a public response. Within a month, the film was getting record views. Months later, the \u0026quot;Final Edition\u0026quot; was completed. In total, the views for \u0026quot;Zeitgeist, The Movie\u0026quot; have exceeded 50,000,000 on Google video alone. Considering the other posts in different formats, along with public screenings, it is estimated that the total world views are well over 100 Million.\u0026quot;\nhttp://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/q\u0026amp;amp;a.htm\nSo it was never intended to be a scholarly documentary in the 1st place.\nRichard Carrier's criticisms of Acharya S/Murdock's work has been quite egregious \u0026amp; sloppy for example:\n\u0026quot;However, in \u0026quot;skimming\u0026quot; Brunner's text, as he puts it, Carrier has mistakenly dealt with the substantially different Hatshepsut text (Brunner's \u0026quot;IV D\u0026quot;), demonstrating an egregious error in garbling the cycles, when in fact we are specifically interested in the Luxor narrative (IV L)\u0026hellip;..\u0026quot;\nLuxor (link http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.html)\nBut nobody has the balls chew Carrier out for this poor research. It's like it's okay to bash and smear Acharya S/Murdock no matter how inaccurate your claims are. He should be held to the fire for that. Her work is far better than he claims - that's probably because he has never actually read anything by her. Her book \u0026quot;Christ in Egypt\u0026quot; in the best book on the subject I've ever seen. She also makes the best case for the mythicist position I've ever seen too. Those who attack her have much to answer for and owe her an apology for all the malicious smears. She's had positive feed back from Earl Doherty, Dr. Price and many others.\nChrist in Egypt; The Horus-Jesus Connection (link http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/christinegypt.html)\nLippard (2009-08-17):\nVincent: Massey and the \u0026quot;Egyptologists of his day\u0026quot; couldn\u0026#39;t even read hieroglyphics. D.M. Murdock is currently posting on Examiner.com under her own name as a \u0026quot;Freethought Examiner,\u0026quot; and her bio says that she's Acharya S. Are you just complaining that we've pointed out that the \u0026quot;D\u0026quot; stands for \u0026quot;Dorothy\u0026quot;?\nBTW, her bio there also states, without qualification, that her work was used in Zeitgeist\u0026ndash;apparently she is proud of her connection to a shoddy piece of work.\nYou state that Doherty and Price have \u0026quot;given her positive feedback,\u0026quot; but you don't quote it and they aren't referenced at the link you give, which is a promotional website.\nI remain unaware of any positive reviews of her work by anyone with any credentials in the field, nor of any evidence that she has any credentials in the field or is even able to read hieroglyphics herself.\nIf you know of any such evidence, let me know.\nBy the way, I see that you are an Internet marketer who does search engine optimization. I suspect that you posted your comment with multiple links to sites promoting Acharya S works because you've been hired to do so. I'm not a big fan of that, so I've deleted and reposted your comment with the links visible, but not live. For anyone wanting to follow those links, sorry about the inconvenience.\nVincent (2009-08-17):\nThanks Jim Lippard for demonstrating your pure hatred of Acharya/ Murdock \u0026amp; utter fear that someone might actually read a link to her site. Are you really so afraid that others will notice all the smears and lies thrown her way are just that? Rest assured that I\u0026#39;m not an \u0026quot;Internet marketer\u0026quot; - I tried it and moved on. I have absolutely no idea where you got the notion that I do \u0026quot;search engine optimization\u0026quot; and your assumption that I\u0026#39;ve been hired by her is utterly bogus - just more of the same inaccurate garbage you keep posting on your site. Did you ever consider that I may actually own her books and know for fact that the trash being thrown her way is inaccurate or completely false? Just because one tries to set the record straight doesn\u0026#39;t mean they\u0026#39;ve been hired to do so. This type of treatment towards other freethinkers is an embarrassment for all freethinkers. Who needs intellectual enemies when so-called \u0026quot;freethinkers\u0026quot; are so willing to cannibalize their own? It\u0026#39;s despicable. jim \u0026quot;Massey and the \u0026quot;Egyptologists of his day\u0026quot; couldn't even read hieroglyphics.\u0026quot;\nActually:\n\u0026quot;Massey was fortunate enough to live during an exciting time when Egyptology was in its heyday, with the discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 by Champollion\u0026hellip;\u0026quot; - Christ in Egypt (CIE) 13\nMassey's work was peer reviewed by some of the most highly credentialed Egyptologists of his day which is detailed in CIE beginning on page 13. The notion that Egyptologists couldn't read hieroglyphs during Massey's day is false as Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 was 6 years prior the Massey's BIRTH! You seemed to know absolutely nothing about the subject, but here you are blabbering with a bunch of inaccuracies and lies. You really need to stop, because as you are WRONG about Massey and about my occupation, you are wrong about Acharya's work - you haven't even read it, have you? Just repeating trash from a bunch of Christian fundamentalists, without ever going to the source - what great scholarship! And Richard Carrier links to this absolute crap? How utterly embarrassing. You should all be raked over the coals for this disgusting tripe.\nJim \u0026quot;Are you just complaining that we've pointed out that the \u0026quot;D\u0026quot; stands for \u0026quot;Dorothy\u0026quot;?\u0026quot;\nDoes it really? And you know this how? It has never come from her because she has never used that name. You got it from malicious people like GrenMe whose real name is John Lieske\nJim \u0026quot;BTW, her bio there also states, without qualification, that her work was used in Zeitgeist\u0026ndash;apparently she is proud of her connection to a shoddy piece of work\u0026quot;\nMore false assumptions - she only vouches for what came from her own work in part 1 and nothing else. You say it's \u0026quot;shoddy,\u0026quot; when it's quite obvious you don't know the subject matter very well - and in your own incredibly SHODDY rubbish here you haven't studied her work but are just parroting others who also don't know what they're talking about - good job!\nJim \u0026quot;I remain unaware of any positive reviews of her work by anyone with any credentials in the field, nor of any evidence that she has any credentials in the field or is even able to read hieroglyphics herself.\u0026quot;\nThanks for admitting that you don't know her work at all, haven't been following it, and haven't read the book that specifically deals with claims in Zeitgeist, i.e., \u0026quot;Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection.\u0026quot; Your comments above reflect your utter ignorance of her work, and here you are pretending to know all about it. Talk about SHODDY WORK!\nIt looks like I'll have to make two posts\u0026hellip;CONTINUED\nLippard (2009-08-17):\nVincent\u0026#39;s part two, with active links replaced with references: Continued 2\nJim \u0026quot;You state that Doherty and Price have \u0026quot;given her positive feedback,\u0026quot; but you don't quote it and they aren't referenced at the link you give, which is a promotional website.\u0026quot;\nIt's not hard to find:\nStarting here with Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/whowasjesus1.html) you'll see a number of credentialed folks giving their thoughts on that book such as, Dr. Price (who wrote the FOREWORD):\n\u0026quot;I've known people with triple Ph.D's who haven't come close to the scholarship here\u0026hellip;I think I've read every popular alternative theory about Jesus that has come down the pike\u0026ndash;with Who Was Jesus I was very impressed.\nPastor David Bruce, M.Div Robert H. Eisenman, Ph.D and,\n\u0026quot;Thirty years ago, when in divinity school, I might have had second thoughts about becoming an Episcopal priest if a book like D. M. Murdock's Who Was Jesus? had been available to me.\nMurdock's book, probably the best of this genre - written with clarity, precision, and conviction - unpacks most of the nonsense and mythology surrounding the ancient Hebrew figure called Jesus and presents a compelling picture of a mythological amalgam to counter most of the misinformation and wishful-thinking that passes for Christian apologetics today.\nBob Semes, Retired university professor of History and Religion Founder and Executive Director of The Jefferson Center At her Companion Guide to ZEITGEIST, Part 1 (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeist.html) there's a comment by Robert Schoch, Ph.D.\n\u0026quot;We sorely need a new History of Religions School for the 21st century, to apply modern techniques to this important ancient material. Perhaps this book will help bring that about.\u0026quot;\nEarl Doherty, in a review of Acharya's \u0026quot;Christ Conspiracy\u0026quot; http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvTCC.htm And much more.\nThe fact remains that what you've posted in your blog that supposedly debunks Zeitgeist part 1 is trash, demonstrably so, and Acharya's response to the Callahan article is a prime example:\nSkeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST (and Religious History)\nThe hatred and knee-jerk reactions to Acharya/Murdock's work needs to stop. It just smells of jealousy.\nLippard (2009-08-17):\nVincent: I don\u0026#39;t see that you\u0026#39;ve responded with any of the evidence I said I was unaware of (the \u0026quot;field\u0026quot; I referred to was Egyptology). Schoch has some highly controversial theories about the Sphinx, but isn\u0026#39;t an Egyptologist, he\u0026#39;s a geologist/geophysicist. It\u0026#39;s interesting that some of those quotes--like Doherty\u0026#39;s--look rather non-committal about the quality of her work. Murdock has a Bachelor's of Liberal Arts in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin and Marshall College. Does she have any peer-reviewed publications in any relevant field? Has she presented her work to any professional conferences of her peers?\nIt doesn't appear that you've actually responded to any of the points at issue.\nLippard (2009-08-17):\nVincent: Let\u0026#39;s be clear--this is a review of Zeitgeist, not Acharya S\u0026#39;s work, which I haven\u0026#39;t read and have no inclination to do so based on what I\u0026#39;ve seen about her online, including from you and her own websites. The \u0026quot;shoddy work\u0026quot; referred to was Zeitgeist--which is indeed shoddy. Much of Acharya S\u0026#39;s response to Tim Callahan is a complaint that he reviewed the \u0026quot;wrong version\u0026quot; of Zeitgeist, which appears to be a concession that many of his points were correct criticisms of that version. I got the idea that you were an Internet Marketer from your own Blogger profile, which you've now deleted.\nI accept your correction of my mistake about Massey's time vs. hieroglyphics; however, he, Higgins, and Kuhn, like Harpur and Murdock, were all amateurs whose work is not seen as credible by experts in Egyptology. (Cf. this critique of Harpur\u0026ndash;the last comment is also worth reading.)\nAnonymous (2009-08-17):\nI am not agreeing with anyone but i will say... I think it is hysterical that anyone can say Zeitgeist has no proof to back it up but christianity has proof someone walked on water, made water into wine, died and came back from the dead, show me the evidence besides a book..\nAll knowledge is taken second hand, passed from 1 person to the next orally or written. Unless you were actually there, no one can account for the truth.\nThere for it is based on faith.. which is not scientific at all. Sources can be bent, broken and misinterpreted.\nThat goes for both Zeitgeist and Christianity.\nThe main point everyone is miss is that something is wrong in our government and you if you are totally happy being spied on and losing your liberties then thats fine.. but not me\nI dont know anything about banking so i wont even go ito that but\nNow if someone wants to argue 911\u0026hellip;I was there working at the pentagon.. lets have it out..\nI worked in it for months moving things from the slice that was hit by the \u0026quot;plane\u0026quot; into a new slice. We installed all the Fiber Optical systems in it.\nThe one that was hit was empty and under construction.. do you know what the odds are of that..\n6am Sept 11th my crew was called and told not to go to the Pentagon but to report to the Regan national trade center for now reason..there was no work there..\nTell me why my government contract would tell me that when we didnt know it was going to happen..\nAs for the world trade centers..NO Building has ever collapsed due to a fire.. EVER.. all you have to do..go see for youself..\nYou can go buy steel from any local manufacturer.. then.. i want you to ask them how hot it has to be to melt it.. which is 3000 degrees..\nThen tell me why here: http://www.ae911truth.org/ architects and Engineers are arguing that it is impossible\nOr even better yet go find one.. go to a local building engineer and ask is it possible for those 3 buildings..dont forget building 7 to collapse due to fire..\nLippard (2009-08-18):\nXavier: \u0026quot;I think it is hysterical that anyone can say Zeitgeist has no proof to back it up but christianity has proof someone walked on water, made water into wine, died and came back from the dead, show me the evidence besides a book..\u0026quot;\nNo one here is making that argument.\n\u0026quot;All knowledge is taken second hand, passed from 1 person to the next orally or written. Unless you were actually there, no one can account for the truth.\u0026quot;\nNo, that doesn't follow. First-hand evidence is not the only way to obtain truth, and sometimes people farther removed from events are in a better position to determine the truth than eyewitnesses. Eyewitness evidence is actually often poor evidence.\n[\u0026hellip;]\n\u0026quot;The main point everyone is miss is that something is wrong in our government and you if you are totally happy being spied on and losing your liberties then thats fine.. but not me\u0026quot;\nA legitimate concern, but not one that provides any support for Zeitgeist's particular claims.\n[\u0026hellip;]\n\u0026quot;The one that was hit was empty and under construction.. do you know what the odds are of that..\u0026quot;\nEmpty\u0026ndash;no, since people were killed in it. The odds? What do you think the odds were?\n\u0026quot;6am Sept 11th my crew was called and told not to go to the Pentagon but to report to the Regan national trade center for now reason..there was no work there..\nTell me why my government contract would tell me that when we didnt know it was going to happen..\u0026quot;\nYou didn't bother asking to find out why there was no work? You think the best explanation is that a government conspiracy that killed thousands of people wanted for some reason to spare a few contractors?\n\u0026quot;As for the world trade centers..NO Building has ever collapsed due to a fire.. EVER.. all you have to do..go see for youself..\u0026quot;\nDefinitely not true. There's even a 1988 book titled Collapse of Burning Buildings: A Guide to Fireground Safety. The NIST reports on the WTC building collapses have already been cited previously in the comments.\n\u0026quot;You can go buy steel from any local manufacturer.. then.. i want you to ask them how hot it has to be to melt it.. which is 3000 degrees..\u0026quot;\nAnd then ask how hot it has to be to weaken it, which is all that's necessary.\n\u0026quot;Then tell me why here: http://www.ae911truth.org/ architects and Engineers are arguing that it is impossible\u0026quot;\nLack of proper investigation, poor reasoning, and the same reasons that people deny the Holocaust, evolution, and the efficacy of vaccinations. I see a lot of people on there claiming it had to have been an explosive demolition\u0026ndash;where are the explosive demolition experts who think it looked like an explosive demolition?\n\u0026quot;Or even better yet go find one.. go to a local building engineer and ask is it possible for those 3 buildings..dont forget building 7 to collapse due to fire..\u0026quot;\nTop experts' opinions are represented in the NIST reports.\nLippard (2009-08-18):\nRobert M. Price\u0026#39;s opinion of Acharya S.\u0026#39;s work doesn\u0026#39;t seem that favorable. He wrote a quite negative review of _The Christ Conspiracy_ that he has, for some reason, removed from his website, but which is available via the Internet archive. A few quotes:\n\u0026quot;We hope our scholarly arguments will be evaluated on their own merits. And so it causes us chagrin to be lumped together with certain writers with whom we share the Christ Myth but little else. For instance, recently I was interviewed on local television on the subject of my book Deconstructing Jesus. The host recommended the book to viewers along with Earl Doherty’s masterful The Jesus Puzzle and Acharya S’s The Christ Conspiracy, a work utterly unknown to me. I got a copy and read it for myself, and immediately I cringed, realizing that skeptics and freethinkers might, as apparently the television host did, regard my book and The Christ Conspiracy as interchangeable polemical weapons. The latter would confirm my suspicion that such people are no more discriminating than their mirror-opposites, the fundamentalist apologists, and are interested in any book, any argument, well- or ill-founded, that appears useful in the service of one’s (religious or antireligious) cause.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;It will surprise no one that a book which uses words like “plagiarize” and “pilfer” to describe biblical borrowings from ancient mythology and castigates all the early Christian theologians as “psychotics” pure and simple will turn out to be sophomoric. That is not to say it does not offer the reader a wealth of fascinating information, but this is all second-hand.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Murdock’s book, a rehash of points from these books, shares their faults as well as their virtues. Writing at second hand, she is too quick to state as bald-faced fact what turn out to be, once one chases down her sources, either wild speculations or complex inferences from a chain of complicated data open to many interpretations. And sometimes she swallows their fanciful etymologies like so many shiny goldfish at a frat party. Worse yet, she just goofs here and there and betrays a lack of ability to weigh evidential claims.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;We sometimes feel, in these pages, to be lost in a forest of false cognates. Can it be true, for instance, that “Solomon” is a trilingual synthesis of words for “the sun”? Sol from Latin, Om from Sanskrit, On from Ethiopic. This conceit she derives from John Hazelrigg. Elsewhere she endorses a contradictory theory, from the same writer, that Solomon is instead derived from Suleyman (=universal emperor), a Persian title. It is symptomatic of the “kettle logic” that permeates this book: any argument is good, whether or not consistent with the others in the arsenal, as long as they are all aimed at the same target.\u0026quot;\n(1/2)\nLippard (2009-08-18):\n(2/2): \u0026quot;Murdock is quite correct in alleging that originally the Satan figure of the Bible was not a villain (no secret to anyone familiar with mainstream biblical studies; she writes as if there is only fundamentalism to deal with). But to support this point she notes that “In Dutch, a Lucifer is a match, a purely utilitarian object that brings light and fire” (p. 229), as if this were relevant linguistic evidence.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Were the Druids really Buddhists? Godfrey Higgins thought so. He was a nineteenth century occultist who in his double volume Anacalypsis: The Saitic Isis ventured his own counterpart to Madame Blavatsky’s two two-parters, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, compendia of esoterica and wild etymology. Here and in another work, The Celtic Druids, he makes this identification, highly dubious to say the least, but apodictically laid down by Ms. Murdock.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;She seems to be impatient of scholarly niceties like evidence and inference.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Unlike Malina, however, Murdock seems to uphold astrology as the true faith, long obscured by Christian belief. In fact, though much of the book would have read the same had it been written by an old-time Rationalist, even a village atheist, what we have here is really a case of what might be called “Aquarian skepticism.” Orthodox Christianity is chopped down so that other trees may stand higher.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;But it gets much, much weirder even than that. One begins looking for Rod Serling, if one has not already, when we start, in the last chapters, reading bits and pieces drawn from James Churchward, promoter of the imaginary lost continent of Mu, Charles Berlitz, apologist for sunken Atlantis, Zechariah Sitchen, advocate of flying saucers in ancient Akkadia, and of course all that stuff about the maps of the ancient sea kings. We have already seen how Murdock quotes theosophical scholars who sketch in all of world mythology as the cradle of Christian mythology. Murdock agrees, and her theory, derived from various pyramidologists and other occultists, is that there was a highly advanced worldwide culture millions of years ago, and that their religion and mythology spread all over the world, surviving not only in the form of Krishna crucifixes but even of Pygmy and South Sea Islander versions of Adam and Eve, Noah, etc.\u0026quot;\nAnd the conclusion:\n\u0026quot;The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney. If one has the time, it is fun trying to sort them out. But no one whose disquiet with traditional Christian faith is based on solid fact or credible theorizing will want to recommend this book, much less appeal to it as justification for one’s own doubts.\u0026quot;\nVincent (2009-08-18):\nJim Lippard \u0026quot;Robert M. Price\u0026#39;s opinion of Acharya S.\u0026#39;s work doesn\u0026#39;t seem that favorable. He wrote a quite negative review of _The Christ Conspiracy_ that he has, for some reason, removed from his website, but which is available via the Internet archive.\u0026quot; Thanks for proving my point once again, bringing up that old review which was removed by Dr. Price himself years ago because he no longer stands by it is just the same dishonest vitriol against Acharya/Murdock I've been talking about. It's disingenuous to keep posting that trash. He's written the foreword to her book WWJ and written positive reviews of her works since then. All you're doing is demonstrating your own level of utter dishonesty you are willing to stoop to smear.\nHere's Dr. Prices review of \u0026quot;Suns of God\u0026quot; making comments such as:\n\u0026quot;I know Acharya has given me many new questions and much to think about. That was true of her first book and equally true of this one. I do not mind acknowledging her as my teacher as well.\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;I must confess I never heard of this important essay until I read Acharya's own discussion of it! I owe her that, too.\u0026quot;\nOr here:\nBone-Box No Proof of Jesus\n\u0026quot;(NB: This article was published in a three-part series in the magazine Secular Nation, at the suggestion of Dr. Robert Price, who called the series \u0026quot;fine articles.\u0026quot; Secular Nation had never published a three-part article before.)\u0026quot; http://www.truthbeknown.com/ossuary.htm\nOr here is a radio show Dr. Price \u0026amp; Acharya did together on the Infidel Guy Show\n\u0026quot;Acharya S and Dr. Bob Price - Examining the Historicity of The Bible\u0026quot; http://infidelguy.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=175503\n\u0026quot;Dr. Robert Price and Acharya S on Infidel Guy\u0026quot; http://tbknews.blogspot.com/2006/08/dr-robert-price-and-acharya-s-on.html\nAnd the concept that Dr. Price has written the foreword to her book \u0026quot;Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ\u0026quot; seems impossible for you to grasp.\nDr. Price has demonstrated his maturity by getting over his jealousy of Acharya/Murdock. Maybe it's time you do the same.\nJim Lippard, what exactly are your qualifications and credentials? What languages do you read, write \u0026amp;/or speak? Where is your inerrant scholarly masterpiece?\nVincent (2009-08-18):\np.s. I asked for your qualifications \u0026amp; credentials - I know you have a Ph D. I was obviously asking for your relevant qualifications \u0026amp; credentials you have in the subject of religion and languages. Jim \u0026quot;I don't see that you've responded with any of the evidence I said I was unaware of\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nYes, I did. I gave you quotes from Dr. Price, Doherty and others highly respected and credentialed. If you went to the link to her book \u0026quot;Christ in Egypt\u0026quot; you'd see the list of highly respected Egyptologists utilized. The book, CIE is still fairly new and is nearly 600 pages with over 2,400 footnote/citations and over 900 bibliographical references so, reviews for such a scholarly work take time. http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/christinegypt.html\nJim \u0026quot;Let's be clear\u0026ndash;this is a review of Zeitgeist, not Acharya S's work, which I haven't read and have no inclination to\u0026quot;\nYes, I know this is about Zeitgeist but the smears and inaccuracies concerning Acharya/Murdock are so pathetic that they needed to be addressed.\nJim \u0026quot;Much of Acharya S's response to Tim Callahan is a complaint that he reviewed the \u0026quot;wrong version\u0026quot; of Zeitgeist\u0026quot;\nLOL, that's all huh? Geeez, how low can ya go? She demonstrated his ignorance on these issues quite handily.\nSkeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST (and Religious History) http://stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html\nThanks for this link there are some interesting articles there http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner\nJim \u0026quot;The \u0026quot;shoddy work\u0026quot; referred to was Zeitgeist\u0026ndash;which is indeed shoddy.\u0026quot;\nI've never even attempted to vouch for all of Zeitgeist - it's not necessary. The knee-jerk reactions to it are the issues of those having those knee-jerk reactions. The creator of Zeitgeist didn't take the movie as serious as you do. You \u0026amp; others who have such strong reactions are making a mountain out of a mole hill.\nAll one has to do is read the Q \u0026amp; A at the Zeitgeist website to see how ZG came into existence:\n\u0026quot;Zeitgeist came into existence as a personal project which was shown in New York as a free public awareness expression. After the event was over, \u0026quot;The Movie\u0026quot; was tossed online with little thought given to a public response. Within a month, the film was getting record views. Months later, the \u0026quot;Final Edition\u0026quot; was completed. In total, the views for \u0026quot;Zeitgeist, The Movie\u0026quot; have exceeded 50,000,000 on Google video alone. Considering the other posts in different formats, along with public screenings, it is estimated that the total world views are well over 100 Million.\u0026quot;\nhttp://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/q\u0026amp;amp;a.htm\nNevertheless, the trash thrown Acharya's way is dishonest and unnecessary. It speaks more about the jealousy and misogyny than it does her work. As pointed out in a review by David Mills author of of Atheist Universe:\n\u0026quot;D.M. Murdock/Acharya S, like all authors on controversial subjects, has many critics. But they all share one commonality: They don't know what they're talking about. Murdock understands many languages and has a breadth of knowledge her critics cannot match. This fact irks the uninformed. Having given a fair hearing to some of her online detractors and their \u0026quot;rebuttal\u0026quot; videos, I have detected not only a lack of knowledge on the part of her critics, but also, in some cases, a thinly disguised misogyny.\u0026quot; http://stellarhousepublishing.com/david-mills-wwj.html\nCONTINUED\u0026hellip;\nVincent (2009-08-18):\nContinued 2 ... As a freethinker, I enjoy Carrier's arguments against theism but I just have to reiterate my utter disgust with Richard Carrier and his attitude toward Acharya/Murdock's work - he claims to be so interested in historical accuracy regarding these religious issues yet he constantly inaccurately portrays Acharya/Murdock's work even though he's never actually read it - and nobody holds his feet to the fire for it. He inspires others like Rook/tom to smear her without ever actually reading her work as well. Now you (Jim Lippard) are doing the same - what kind of sloppy influence is Carrier having here? I've lost trust and respect for Carrier because of this intellectual dishonesty. He really needs to pay for all this - Carrier owes Acharya/Murdock an apology.\nAcharya/ Murdock has never said a single bad thing about Carrier or Rook/tom or anybody else even though they (and others) constantly smear her and misrepresent her work. I find the fact none of you have the integrity and character to hold them responsible for it utterly despicable. It's like as long as it's Acharya/Murdock it's okay to trash, smear, libel and defame her and be as intellectually dishonest, inaccurate and sloppy as you want to be. It's all just RAMPANT with jealousy and misogyny. You're all so brave dishonestly piling-on a single female who's works none of you have ever read. How intellectually dishonest can you possibly be? it's just cannibalism.\nLippard (2009-08-18):\nThere may well be merit to Murdock\u0026#39;s work--I haven\u0026#39;t read it and am relying on the opinions of others. I\u0026#39;ll have to ask Price about why he took down that review--it seems to make some pretty damning points about what that book actually says. Does she think there\u0026#39;s merit to astrology\u0026#39;s validity, or just that astrology is important for understanding what ancient cultures believed? The latter is plausible, while the former is not. You still haven't provided any evidence of support from Egyptologists, nor rejoinders to the specific points of criticism made in the original post of part 1 of Zeitgeist, other than to say that its reliance on Murdock's work is not a reason to fault it.\nI'm willing to accept that Christianity took some elements from Egyptian myth (as it did from multiple religions and myths, as did Judaism before it), though I'm somewhat skeptical that Egyptian was the primary source, as Harpur and Murdock appear to be arguing, and the specific parallel to Horus looks\nMy credentials on this subject aren't particularly relevant, since I've not claimed to be an expert in the field\u0026ndash;I'm not. I have taken courses in Latin, ancient (Homeric) Greek, formation of the Christian tradition, and ancient Greek philosophy.\nBTW, I do not yet have a Ph.D., though I am in a Ph.D. program. Part of my area of study is looking at how we determine what are reliable sources of information on the Internet, which I think is a matter of fallible heuristics which can generally do a pretty good job of evaluation.\nVincent (2009-08-20):\nJim \u0026quot;Does she think there\u0026#39;s merit to astrology\u0026#39;s validity, or just that astrology is important for understanding what ancient cultures believed?\u0026quot; Her work is actually more about astronomy than astrology. Here's an article titled, Astrotheology of the Ancients http://stellarhousepublishing.com/astrotheology.html\nJim \u0026quot;You still haven't provided any evidence of support from Egyptologists, nor rejoinders to the specific points of criticism made in the original post of part 1 of Zeitgeist, other than to say that its reliance on Murdock's work is not a reason to fault it.\u0026quot;\nThe \u0026quot;rejoinder\u0026quot; would be a 600 page book with nearly 2,400 footnotes/citations and over 900 bibliographical expert/scholarly references from a large variety of backgrounds specifically because the issues are so contentious, called \u0026quot;Christ in Egypt: The Horus Jesus Connection\u0026quot; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ZmsRUmuWU\u0026amp;amp;feature=channel_page\nShe now has 5 books totaling over 2,100 pages of text, over 300 images, over 5,700 footnotes/citations to over 1,600 bibliographical references.\nAnd I shared the link providing a list of highly respected Egyptologists utilized in CIE. You're free to canvas Egyptologists at your own expense or you can donate the money to send them all a copy of CIE. Or at least shoot them an e-mail asking them to review the book.\nNevertheless, It's time for people to stop repeating the smears and lies of others who also haven't read the work of Acharya S/Murdock. They're simply too lazy to do the research for themselves. If one hasn't studied her work then they're simply not qualified to pass authoritative judgments. Those opinions are lacking integrity and are in fact intellectually dishonest. This type of despicable behavior is as depraved as religious fanatics. Again, it's an utter embarrassment to all freethinkers everywhere.\nHere's a general response to ZG1 criticisms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_9ZyddjaM4\u0026amp;amp;feature=related\nhttp://tbknews.blogspot.com/2008/04/zeitgeist-refuted-not.html\nAnd, of course, the response to that crappy Callahan article:\nSkeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST (and Religious History) http://stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html\nHere are the FAQ's at her forum http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=1149\u0026amp;amp;start=0\nJim \u0026quot;I'm willing to accept that Christianity took some elements from Egyptian myth (as it did from multiple religions and myths, as did Judaism before it), though I'm somewhat skeptical that Egyptian was the primary source, as Harpur and Murdock appear to be arguing, and the specific parallel to Horus looks\u0026quot;\n\u0026quot;Over a century ago, renowned British Egyptologist Sir Dr. E.A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934), a Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, as well as a confessed Christian, remarked that a study tracing the \u0026quot;influence of ancient Egyptian religious beliefs and mythology on Christianity\u0026quot; would \u0026quot;fill a comparatively large volume.\u0026quot; Since Dr. Budge's time, for a variety of reasons, including the seemingly irreconcilable academic gap between historians and theologians, no one has taken up the call to produce such a volume—until now\u0026hellip;.\u0026quot;\nChrist in Egypt, Preface http://stellarhousepublishing.com/ciepreface.html Jim \u0026quot;My credentials on this subject aren't particularly relevant, since I've not claimed to be an expert in the field\u0026ndash;I'm not. I have taken courses in Latin, ancient (Homeric) Greek, formation of the Christian tradition, and ancient Greek philosophy.\u0026quot;\nOkay, so you're not any kind of authority on any of these issues concerning religion. With your experience, to whatever degree, in Latin and Greek, you should be able to appreciate the level of her scholarship even more so. http://www.truthbeknown.com/author.htm\nJim \u0026quot;I do not yet have a Ph.D., though I am in a Ph.D. program\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nAll the best to you on that.\npeace\nLippard (2009-08-21):\nVincent: I think you misunderstood me on one point. I wasn\u0026#39;t asking for evidence that she cites legitimate authorities in Egyptology, but rather evidence that her work is considered credible by legitimate authorities in Egyptology. The former can be answered by the sort of evidence you referenced, but not the latter.\nQuestion (2009-12-01):\nhi jim and everyone. i am totally new to this. i just watched the second zeitgeist and i think the fairest comment to make is that it is thought-provoking. i\u0026#39;ve read through your comments jim and i\u0026#39;ve also read through all the posts made thereafter. my first impression is that i\u0026#39;m totally out of my league in the \u0026#39;facts\u0026#39; department here. i hesitated posting my comments for fear of being intellectually bashed! the common theme seems to be facts facts facts facts. ok, that\u0026#39;s commendable in one sense. but in another sense, in looking so heavily into the external facts we miss the more important internal facts. the only \u0026#39;fact\u0026#39; i can be certain of is the following: i am unhappy. most of the people i know are either unhappy or unaware that they are unhappy. it\u0026#39;s not the times that i am with my friends that i am unhappy its the other 95% of the time that i am economically forced to do things i would never naturally do. most of the jobs are so specialized that we must literally numb our minds and souls in order to adhere to our career responsibilities. it seems to me that something is inherently wrong with the system. you don\u0026#39;t have to be a genius to look around and see that crime and greedy nature is born of the inequality of the system. what would an intellectually gifted person like yourself recommend we do to ensure the improved happiness of the masses? because it seems to me that nothing is more practical than happiness. my question i guess is of a philosophical nature which digresses from the nature of this thread but i don\u0026#39;t feel that that makes it irrelevant. my \u0026#39;ignorant\u0026#39; economic question (inspired by the zietgeist film) is the following: what purpose does the FED serve? i understand that money must be printed and fed into the market in order to keep up with the increase of production but i don\u0026#39;t understand why it needs to be introduced into the market as a debt to be repaid. i\u0026#39;m sure you will give me a simple answer and it will be much appreciated. Will.\nLippard (2009-12-02):\nQuestion: What makes people happy and what conditions and actions improve happiness is a long-standing philosophical question, and one that I don\u0026#39;t think Zeitgeist offers any assistance in answering. There has been a lot of recent research in psychology on happiness, including a few popular books, like Daniel Gilbert\u0026#39;s _Stumbling on Happiness_. A book on my to-read list is Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026#39;s _The Happiness Myth_. As to your question about what the Fed is for\u0026ndash;the U.S. monetary system is one of centralized, reserve banking, and the Fed is the central banking system. It's supposed to keep the monetary system stable by actions to influence interest rates, such as setting their own lending rate and putting more money into the banking system, act as lender of last resort in cases of bank panics or failures, and provide oversight and regulation on the banking system. The Wikipedia page on the Fed is pretty thorough, as is its page on central banks in general. Most developed countries have a similar central banking system; European countries that have joined the euro have the European Central Bank which serves a similar function. Historically, other modes of banking have existed, such as free banking.\nJason G (2009-12-23):\nNice work Jim. Carry on.\nUnknown (2009-12-30):\nFunny thing about zeitgeist fans and fans of the venus project, is they generally have a complete lack of knowledge of the objectives of the movement itself. Likewise they tend to simply quote the rhetoric of the movement and the movie like a public relations mouthpiece or an advertising campaign or even a news broadcast.\nAnyone with any experience from within the movement [like i have, ive been there since it started]would wonder why there is no evidence provided from the venus project after 30 years of existance, let alone any solid proof, simulated data, or verified scientific papers.\nIt has to be asked why have we not had any free thinkers produce backing evidence to their claims in this 3 decade span ?\nThe reason, which any experienced researcher will find is this, there are none, and the venus project does not want to actually build any cities.\nDont believe me?\nAsk the spokes people for the zeitgeist movement, check the venus project objectives, ask the venus project leaders themselves and you will see.\nNo the movement would rather focus its attention on a world wide publicity campaign to get people interested in an idea that isnt even built on solid ground.\nThey would prefer its members to willingly advertise it, and volunteer to work\nThe fact that the venus project only wants to \u0026quot;educate\u0026quot;, and i use that term very loosely, people about a rbe and the city is very telling.\nThe website [venus project] only requires 3d designers, artists, movie producers, script writers and other media people, even though they are asking people to do this for free.\nPeople dont question why they arent proving the idea, but they are happy they are advertising it.\nAnd people dont even bother to question why there is no timeline given for these efforts, why they cant build it now, even though Jacque himself states it is possible to prove his rbe now.\nLikewise most people are not even aware the two owners have trademarked the rbe so noone can use the idea without their consent, they also hold judge and jury over the projects objectives, not letting experts get the thing going.\nthe objectives are:\nphase 1 of the project advertise and recruit, spread awareness of the venus project and an rbe..even if it isnt supported by facts/eveidence or anyone but the members and leaders\nphase 2 create movies and advertising campaigns to recruit more members, yet more adverts/propaganda and infomercials discussing an unproven idea.\nphase 3 build a test site/city [wouldnt this be a lovely idea]\nphase 4 build a theme park, or technology museum, selling the ideas that the rbe is the way to save earth.\nIf you are a real scientist I would not bother since you will b placed into a data base and have little input into the movement or its obectives, until after their advertising campaign to recruit the entire human species.\nThe best thing you can do if you area scientist is this:\nAttempt to validate or invalidate the value of an rbe, attempt to do things yourself and get this seemingly cultish movement off the ground or off the radar.\nLikewise if you have any resources and finances, send them their way they clearly need them to validate their huge claims.\nLikewise if you are a bone fide researcher, watch this movements forum carefully, as right now the members are showing many signs that are stated in Robert Jay Lifton's Eight Point Model of Thought Reform.\nBen M (2010-01-30):\nWhat evidence is there that the John Perkins who teaches Animal Totemism is the same John Perkins who wrote COAEH? Did you just follow the Amazon link? Or is there a biography I can verify this on?\nLippard (2010-02-01):\nBen: It\u0026#39;s on Perkins\u0026#39; own website.\nVincent (2010-02-05):\nAhh, it appears Acharya\u0026#39;s book Christ in Egypt is getting strong reviews from highly respected scholars. Here are just a couple: Christ in Egypt: Reviewed by Dr. Robert M. Price http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/murdock_christ_egypt.htm\nProfessor of Archaeology endorses 'Christ in Egypt' http://www.freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content\u0026amp;amp;view=article\u0026amp;amp;id=262:archaeologist-endorses-christ-in-egypt\u0026amp;amp;catid=47:astrotheology\nOne problem I have with Zeitgeist is that it doesn't address Islam in any meaningful way. I found this blog by someone who was banned by the Zeitgeist forum for criticizing Islam.\nMuslims use Zeitgeist for Islamic Advantage http://news.stv.tv/scotland/143646-terror-dvd-student-jailed-for-six-months/\nDoes the Zeitgeist Movement support Islam? http://zeitgeistmovementsupportsislam.blogspot.com\nme (2010-02-10):\nInformation about the alleged identity of Peter Joseph from the zeitgeist movement. http://anticultist.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/who-is-peter-joseph/\nSeriously (2010-08-02):\n\u0026quot;I greatly resent the tepid white males no-it-alls who scoff at this woman\u0026#39;s award winning memoir.\u0026quot; \u0026quot;You would have to be a woman reading her accounts of these rapes to understand why so many women believe her.\u0026quot; Danica, as a mixed woman, it seems sexist and racist in itself to use gender and race as reasons to dismiss or support a persons credibility. Yes, the Caucasian male has become an archetype for arrogance and mistrust in our world, but that has very little to do with facts or a human being's credibility (or dis-credibility). Please, if you are concerned about sexism and racism, take the necessary steps to remove sexism and racism from your own consciousness.\nman with desire (2010-08-24):\nThis article refutes and disproves claims of Zeitgeist movie, from the part of Christianity: http://koti.phnet.fi/petripaavola/zeitgeist_movie.html\nI suggest to read the article!\nAnonymous (2010-12-29):\nI started reading this review with interest but I realised the writer is more biased and unreliable than what he is attacking: The work of mainstream biblical scholars like Elaine Pagels confirms the zeitgeist thesis. This is recent research based on recent discoveries of primary sources like the Nag Hammadi scriptures, not wacky theosophical poetic pseudo knowledge as the writer here seems determined to frame it. So I stopped reading the review. Maybe I'll come back.\nLippard (2010-12-31):\nanopilgrim: It would be nice to see some specifics about how I am \u0026quot;more biased and unreliable than what [I am] attacking\u0026quot; as well as how Elaine Pagels work or the Nag Hammadi works confirm anything in Zeitgeist. I\u0026#39;ve read Pagels\u0026#39; _The Gnostic Gospels_, James M. Robinson\u0026#39;s _The Nag Hammadi Library_, and Willis Barnstone\u0026#39;s _The Other Bible_, but off the top of my head I don\u0026#39;t recall anything in those works that confirms Zeitgeist arguments about Christianity being inspired by Egyptian myth. Can you back up your assertions? I have all of the referenced works in my library, so please point me to what you're talking about.\nerthluva (2011-06-14):\nPart 1 on religion of the original Zeitgeist movie has been completely substantiated by professional scholars. All the anti-Zeitgeist part 1 \u0026quot;debunkings\u0026quot; and \u0026quot;refutations\u0026quot; have been addressed and rendered obsolete. The anti-Zeitgeist part 1 critics will have to start all over. The new sourcebook below addresses the criticisms of the original sources in Zeitgeist part 1. The New Zeitgeist Part 1 Sourcebook (2010) http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf\nRebuttal to Dr. Chris Forbes concerning 'Zeitgeist, Part 1' http://truthbeknown.com/chrisforbeszeitgeist.html\nOther criticisms are addressed here http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=19\nEnjoy the Mythicist Position video and be sure to read the links in the info box too\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKW9sbJ3v2w\nLippard (2011-06-18):\nI\u0026#39;m still skeptical about \u0026quot;Acharya S.\u0026quot; She should really publish her work in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.\nerthluva (2011-06-20):\nAcharya S has been peer reviewed as well as published in scholarly Journals http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4\u0026amp;amp;t=3411\nMarmalade (2011-09-09):\nJim Lippard said... \u0026quot;I\u0026#39;m still skeptical about \u0026quot;Acharya S.\u0026quot; She should really publish her work in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.\u0026quot; erthluva said\u0026hellip; \u0026quot;Acharya S has been peer reviewed as well as published in scholarly Journals\u0026quot; http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4\u0026amp;amp;t=3411\nSo, now you no longer have any rational justification for further skepticism. Does that mean this discussion is finally concluded?\nAnonymous (2012-01-22):\nI so far find your post show you truly skeptical and logical. I would like your opinion on ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD. I would more specifically like your take on the statements Dr. Robert Sapolsky and Dr. Gábor Máté make, more so then any other part of the film. Next in interest would be you actually meeting Jacque Fresco and posting your findings of his intellect, knowledge, and honesty after such discussion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/zeitgeist-movie.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night I attended an event at which one of the attendees promoted \u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie.\u0026rdquo;  I was prompted to finally watch this piece of pernicious nonsense back in January when a commenter at this blog made reference to it, and I forced myself to sit through the whole thing.  The movie is in three segments\u0026ndash;the first is on the origins of Christianity, in which it argues that Jesus was a myth derived from Egyptian myth, based on the work of Acharya S.  The second is 9/11 conspiracy theory.  The third is an argument that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a scam.  It\u0026rsquo;s almost entirely garbage, dependent on crackpot sources.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI posted \u003ca href=\"/2008/01/false-statements-from-bush.html\"\u003ea series of comments about the movie as I watched it\u003c/a\u003e, but I\u0026rsquo;ll summarize those here and add a bit more.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe first part argues that Christianity is derived from Egyptian myth, primarily by pointing out parallels between them.  The arguments are apparently derived from the self-published \u0026ldquo;The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold\u0026rdquo; by \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharya_S\"\u003eAcharya S\u003c/a\u003e (Dorothy M. Murdock) and perhaps also from Tom Harpur\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Pagan Christ\u003c/span\u003e, both works of pseudoscholarship based on the work of other pseudoscholars like 18th century archaeologist \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Higgins\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eGodfrey Higgins\u003c/a\u003e, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Massey\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eGerald Massey\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Boyd_Kuhn\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eAlvin Boyd Kuhn\u003c/a\u003e, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology.  For example, the film draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated\u0026ndash;Horus wasn\u0026rsquo;t born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eHorus\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eIsis\u003c/a\u003e is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained.  The significance of a December 25 birthdate is nonexistent\u0026ndash;Christianity did acquire attributes of pagan religions later in its history, and it has clearly been a syncretistic religion, but while this is evidence of falsehood in Christian traditions, it is not a clue to its origin.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nFor accurate information about Christianity and the formation of the Christian tradition, virtually any mainstream academic work will be more reliable.  There has been a lot discovered since the work of 19th century Theosophists, both in the form of document manuscripts and archaeology, that sheds light on the early history of Christianity.  In discussions at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums, \u003ca href=\"http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?s=9e95e9665188c88a67a80dc2afb50437\u0026amp;p=3760391\u0026amp;postcount=218\"\u003eposter GreNME wrote\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zeitgeist: The Movie"},{"content":"Richard Lenski of Michigan State University used a single cell of E. coli to start 12 lab populations, which he observed for more than 44,000 generations. At the 31,500th generation, one of the populations suddenly developed the ability to metabolize citrate. He had saved frozen samples of each 500th population, and found that only that one of the twelve populations would re-evolve this ability, and then only when he started at the 20,000th generation or later, leading him to conclude that something had developed around the 20,000th generation of that population that provided the necessary foundation.\nAs New Scientist reports, \u0026ldquo;the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (June 11, 2008): Michael Behe has written a commentary on this result, which Ed Brayton criticizes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nUPDATE (June 13, 2008): Science writer Carl Zimmer has written a nice summary of this research, and the primary author of the research shows up in the comments to answer questions at comment #80.\nUPDATE (June 18, 2008): Lenski responds to a letter from Andy Schlafly of Conservapaedia.\nUPDATE (June 24, 2008): In a further exchange with Schlafly, Lenski politely shows Schlafly to be an idiot and a jerk. (The link edited out by Conservapaedia is to RationalWiki\u0026rsquo;s article on banning at Conservapaedia.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/nice-case-of-evolution-observed-in-lab.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Lenski of Michigan State University used a single cell of E. coli to start 12 lab populations, which he observed for more than 44,000 generations.  At the 31,500th generation, one of the populations suddenly developed the ability to metabolize citrate.  He had saved frozen samples of each 500th population, and found that only that one of the twelve populations would re-evolve this ability, and then only when he started at the 20,000th generation or later, leading him to conclude that something had developed around the 20,000th generation of that population that provided the necessary foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Scientist\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 11, 2008): Michael Behe has written a commentary on this result, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/behes_vapid_response_to_lenski.php\"\u003ewhich Ed Brayton criticizes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 13, 2008): Science writer Carl Zimmer has written \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php\"\u003ea nice summary of this research\u003c/a\u003e, and the primary author of the research shows up in the comments to answer questions\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php#comment-929821\"\u003e at comment #80\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 18, 2008): Lenski \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/hubris_gall_arroganceinanity.php\"\u003eresponds to a letter from Andy Schlafly of Conservapaedia\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 24, 2008): In a further exchange with Schlafly, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/lenski_gives_conservapdia_a_le.php\"\u003eLenski politely shows Schlafly to be an idiot and a jerk\u003c/a\u003e.  (The link edited out by Conservapaedia is to \u003ca href=\"http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Conservapedia#Banning_Users\"\u003eRationalWiki\u0026rsquo;s article on banning at Conservapaedia\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nice case of evolution observed in the lab"},{"content":"The June 7, 2008 issue of The Economist reports that Hugo Chavez issued a decree late last month which:\nauthorises police raids without warrant, the use of anonymous witnesses and secret evidence. Judges are obliged to collaborate with the intelligence services. Anyone caught investigating sensitive matters faces jail. The law contains no provision for any kind of oversight. It blurs the distinction between external threats and internal political dissent. It requires all citizens, foreigners and organisations to act in support of the intelligence system whenever required\u0026ndash;or face jail terms of up to six years.Though my employer operates in Venezuela, I think that\u0026rsquo;s one South American country I\u0026rsquo;d rather not visit at the moment\u0026hellip; I hope November\u0026rsquo;s elections reduce Chavez\u0026rsquo;s power and he steps down from power in 2013 as he\u0026rsquo;s previously said that he would.\nAnd Daniel Ortega has suspended elections in Nicaragua\u0026hellip; another country to avoid.\nHume's Ghost (2008-06-10):\nOne thing that annoys me is people who can see the obvious problems with Chavez slowly consolidating power for himself, but see no problem when President Bush does the same via his Yoo conception of a Emperor-King War Czar presidency. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in his pamphlet-esque How Would a Patriot Act?, the powers that Chavez has asserted do not differ from those claimed tacitly and implicitly by the Bush administration.I also find the converse annoying. That being people who have can see what is wrong with the Bush administration's power grabs but explain away what Chavez is doing. Greg Palast comes to mind (he is a big fan of Chavez and seems to have a blindspot for leftists populists like Huey Long.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-06-10):\nLet me clarify: Greenwald does not compare the Bush administration to Chavez. He does point out that the administration's claims of power inherent in the Constitution would effectively abrograte our civil liberties and pretty much the Constitution itself.\ncowmix (2008-06-11):\nI just find it hard to take anything our press says about Chavez seriously.. To put it nicely our press (and government) did very little to be accurate or even handed during the coup attempt of 2002. To this day I take everything I read, see and hear about Chavez with a grain of salt from our MSM.Watch this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(documentary)\nLippard (2008-06-11):\nFor what it's worth, The Economist is based in the UK... It seems to me that the UK press has been far more accurate than the U.S. press regarding the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.But it can't be denied that Chavez has done things like shut down RCTV for being critical of him.\ncowmix (2008-06-11):\nFirst.. I agree The Economist is way more balanced than some US media sources. However, I have to disagree that even the RCTV episode is anywhere a black and white case of Chavez being 'unfair' to the press. I'm not trying to be a Chavez apologist here but when I looked just a little under the covers of this issue it appears to be MUCH more complex than I originally thought. A while ago there was a series of 'threads' on BoingBoing regarding the shutdown of the TV station(s). This thread in particular is a good summary of an 'alternate' view.http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/28/venezuelan-media-cra.html\nLippard (2008-06-11):\nVery interesting. Thanks, cowmix, I'll have to check out that movie.\nLippard (2008-06-15):\nLooks like the so-called \"Gestapo decree\" was repealed on June 10.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/venezuela-moves-closer-to-police-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe June 7, 2008 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11502234\"\u003ereports that Hugo Chavez issued a decree late last month  which\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eauthorises police raids without warrant, the use of anonymous witnesses and secret evidence.  Judges are obliged to collaborate with the intelligence services.  Anyone caught investigating sensitive matters faces jail.  The law contains no provision for any kind of oversight.  It blurs the distinction between external threats and internal political dissent.  It requires all citizens, foreigners and organisations to act in support of the intelligence system whenever required\u0026ndash;or face jail terms of up to six years.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThough my employer operates in Venezuela, I think that\u0026rsquo;s one South American country I\u0026rsquo;d rather not visit at the moment\u0026hellip;  I hope November\u0026rsquo;s elections reduce Chavez\u0026rsquo;s power and he steps down from power in 2013 as he\u0026rsquo;s previously said that he would.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd Daniel Ortega \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11497005\"\u003ehas suspended elections in Nicaragua\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip; another country to avoid.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Venezuela moves closer to a police state"},{"content":"McCain continues to demonstrate mind-boggling ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, for someone who has already sworn numerous times to uphold it. He\u0026rsquo;s clearly unfit to be president\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s either ignorant of U.S. history or being dishonest in order to pander to the religious right. (I previously reported similar remarks by McCain last October.)\nThe Bible and the Christian tradition do not support a limited constitutional republic\u0026ndash;if you got your politics from the Bible or Christian tradition, you\u0026rsquo;d argue for a monarchy with virtually limitless power. That\u0026rsquo;s probably part of the reason that the Bush administration has argued against any limits on executive power.\n(From Atheist Media Blog by way of Pharyngula.)\nFergie (2008-06-08):\nJim,I completely agree. John McCain is either (a) a panderer to the Christian Right, or (b) actually believes the nonsense he is spouting, or (c) both.Either way, he is a dangerous man to be considered to be in The White House, especially after the horrific Constitutional violations of the Bush Administration over the course of the past 7+ years.Having said that, I support the freedom of Americans to practice whatever religious superstitions that they wish to endeavor, but let's keep the separation of Church and State sacrosanct -- our Founding Fathers framed the architecture of the U.S. Government that way for a very good reason.This is not to say that I do not respect John McCain for his service to our country -- in fact, I do very much. As a U.S. Army veteran, I have a very high regard for him in his sacrifices during the Vietnam War. But his views on governing this country from the Oval Office, I fear, will be detrimental to us all.- ferg\nHume's Ghost (2008-06-08):\nI love the part where he cites \"in god we trust\" as proof the founders wanted to establish a Christian nation on \"Christian principles\".\nLippard (2008-06-08):\nFergie: Agree. I'm not sure Obama will be any better--he says things like advocating \"belief in things not seen\" as \"God's greatest gift to us\" and seems to have a very broad view of the role of the president as national savior, but I'm hoping he'll reign in some of the recent constitutional abuses. I fear, though, that even if he reduces executive power in some areas, he will expand it in others.Hume's Ghost: Yeah, those Founding Fathers who were active in 1954... This all seems somehow familiar.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/mccain-thinks-constitution-establishes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMcCain continues to demonstrate mind-boggling ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, for someone who has already sworn numerous times to uphold it.  He\u0026rsquo;s clearly unfit to be president\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s either ignorant of U.S. history or being dishonest in order to pander to the religious right.  (I \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/mccain-hasnt-read-constitution.html\"\u003epreviously reported similar remarks by McCain last October\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Bible and the Christian tradition do not support a limited constitutional republic\u0026ndash;if you got your politics from the Bible or Christian tradition, you\u0026rsquo;d argue for a monarchy with virtually limitless power.  That\u0026rsquo;s probably part of the reason that the Bush administration has argued against any limits on executive power.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-04647685836933443 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9izhjnaLa3M\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-04647685836933443 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9izhjnaLa3M\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-04647685836933443 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9izhjnaLa3M\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9izhjnaLa3M\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9izhjnaLa3M\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(From \u003ca href=\"http://atheistmedia.blogspot.com/2008/06/john-mccain-constitution-established.html\"\u003eAtheist Media Blog\u003c/a\u003e by way of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/crush_mccain.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain thinks the Constitution establishes a Christian nation"},{"content":"No, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t reduce the amount of adolescent sexual activity\u0026ndash;it merely reduces the likelihood that teens who have sex will use condoms, and thus increases the prevalence of teens with sexually transmitted diseases. This is not merely useless, it\u0026rsquo;s actually harmful and counter-productive, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy\u0026rsquo;s anti-drug advertisements.\nBut empirical evidence is irrelevant to those who are pushing their programs due to religious fundamentalism. For such people, the fact that they not only don\u0026rsquo;t work but have the opposite of the desired effects just means they need to be pushed harder.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/abstinence-only-sex-education-is-good.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t reduce the amount of adolescent sexual activity\u0026ndash;it merely reduces the likelihood that teens who have sex will use condoms, and thus \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/more_evidence_on_failure_of_ab.php\"\u003eincreases the prevalence of teens with sexually transmitted diseases\u003c/a\u003e.  This is not merely useless, it\u0026rsquo;s actually harmful and counter-productive, like \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/anti-drug-ads-have-effect-of.html\"\u003ethe Office of National Drug Control Policy\u0026rsquo;s anti-drug advertisements\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut empirical evidence is irrelevant to those who are pushing their programs due to religious fundamentalism.  For such people, the fact that they not only don\u0026rsquo;t work but have the opposite of the desired effects just means they need to be pushed harder.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abstinence-only sex education is good for something"},{"content":"\nEinzige, Kat, and I attended the Richard Cheese show tonight, and he put on a great crowd-pleasing performance. The recorded versions of his songs don\u0026rsquo;t give a complete picture\u0026ndash;his performance is filled with a lot of audience interaction and humor, and he had quite a few special bits tailored to his hometown audience, such as the theme from \u0026ldquo;Alice\u0026rdquo; dedicated to the folks at Mel\u0026rsquo;s Diner (the fictional restaurant that the TV series put in Phoenix, rather than Tucson as in the Scorsese film \u0026ldquo;Alice Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Live Here Anymore\u0026rdquo;). After the show, Richard Cheese and the band spent about an hour signing autographs and having pictures taken with people in the first seven rows, and then there was a short period of time for him to talk to friends from grade school (me) and some friends from high school who came to his show and managed to stay up late.\nHe\u0026rsquo;ll be performing at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on August 29 and 31, and I recommend seeing his show if you get the chance.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/richard-cheese-concert.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2560739588_a87396f90c.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2560739588_a87396f90c.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEinzige, Kat, and I attended the \u003ca href=\"http://www.richardcheese.com/\"\u003eRichard Cheese\u003c/a\u003e show tonight, and he put on a great crowd-pleasing performance.  The recorded versions of his songs don\u0026rsquo;t give a complete picture\u0026ndash;his performance is filled with a lot of audience interaction and humor, and he had quite a few special bits tailored to his hometown audience, such as the theme from \u0026ldquo;Alice\u0026rdquo; dedicated to the folks at Mel\u0026rsquo;s Diner (the fictional restaurant that the TV series put in Phoenix, rather than Tucson as in the Scorsese film \u0026ldquo;Alice Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Live Here Anymore\u0026rdquo;).  After the show, Richard Cheese and the band spent about an hour signing autographs and having pictures taken with people in the first seven rows, and then there was a short period of time for him to talk to friends from grade school (me) and some friends from high school who came to his show and managed to stay up late.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;ll be \u003ca href=\"http://www.hardrockhotel.com/las-vegas/concerts/detail.cfm?id=1540\"\u003eperforming at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on August 29 and 31\u003c/a\u003e, and I recommend seeing his show if you get the chance.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Cheese concert"},{"content":"\n(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/why-its-dangerous-to-put-cell-phone-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/k0TSyIn5KMo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/k0TSyIn5KMo\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/893031.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why it's dangerous to put a cell phone in the microwave"},{"content":"This video gives a five-minute plain-language summary of the origin of the universe that is scientifically accurate, which any actually existing God should have been able to author instead of Genesis.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/accurate-creation-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis video gives a five-minute plain-language summary of the origin of the universe that is scientifically accurate, which any actually existing God should have been able to author instead of Genesis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/4qymoktf0wY\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/4qymoktf0wY\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/rewriting_genesisaccurately.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An accurate creation story"},{"content":"After I counted up May\u0026rsquo;s 6416 notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa county I took a look at the graph for May of 2007 and I just had to laugh. If you\u0026rsquo;ll recall, May of 2007 was Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s break-out month for pre-foreclosures. It was the month when the real estate bubble showed us that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t an also-ran, trouncing the dot bomb\u0026rsquo;s NTR record by almost 300. Yet here we are a year later and last May\u0026rsquo;s 2009 notices seem almost like something to pine for.\nNotice also the Gaussian descriptive statistics I was naïvely including with my posts back then. If we were to take those number seriously - in particular the standard deviation - then we\u0026rsquo;d be forced to conclude that May 2008\u0026rsquo;s number should essentially be impossible. Clearly foreclosure statistics are not Gaussian.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08MayNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for large version\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209193472323903762\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/phoenix-trustees-sale-notices-for-may.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter I counted up May\u0026rsquo;s \u003cb\u003e6416\u003c/b\u003e notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa county I took a look at the \u003ca href=\"/2007/05/maricopa-county-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003egraph for May of 2007\u003c/a\u003e and I just had to laugh. If you\u0026rsquo;ll recall, May of 2007 was Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s break-out month for pre-foreclosures. It was the month when the real estate bubble showed us that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t an also-ran, trouncing the dot bomb\u0026rsquo;s NTR record by almost 300. Yet here we are a year later and last May\u0026rsquo;s \u003cb\u003e2009\u003c/b\u003e notices seem almost like something to pine for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNotice also the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss\"\u003eGaussian\u003c/a\u003e descriptive statistics I was naïvely including with my posts back then. If we were to take those number seriously - in particular the standard deviation - then we\u0026rsquo;d be forced to conclude that May 2008\u0026rsquo;s number should essentially be impossible. Clearly foreclosure statistics are not Gaussian.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08MayNTR.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08MayNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for large version\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209193472323903762\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix Trustee's Sale Notices for May, 2008"},{"content":"Will Wilkinson has an interesting post about how his market liberal views are very like the views of Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan, and that the libertarian-conservative alliance against a slippery slope to socialism isn\u0026rsquo;t justified by what\u0026rsquo;s actually occurring in the world today.\nIn a subsequent post, he writes about how economic regulation and tax/transfer policies are logically separable, but most people think about them as if they aren\u0026rsquo;t; a comparison of levels of inequality and poverty across the EU shows that the common thought that less regulation and taxation goes hand-in-hand with higher levels of poverty and inequality (of the sort seen in the U.S. and UK) doesn\u0026rsquo;t hold. Thus you could have a regime with very low levels of regulation yielding more wealth, combined with more redistribution for a better safety net and less poverty and inequality.\nAnd in another post, he calls for greater empirical grounding for proposals in political philosophy, of the sort that has started to yield fruitful results in moral philosophy:\nBut shouldn’t it impossible to take seriously an argument to the effect that, say this or that policy is required in order to secure the conditions for the development of some capacity, in the absence of (a) a well-empirically-grounded theory of the nature of that capacity and its development, and (b) some kind of actual evidence that this or that policy in fact has the kind of effect on it that one hypothesizes? I wouldn’t mind so much if political philosophy arguments were more often in the form of “Hey, here’s a conjecture! I suggest somebody competent to do so try to find out if it’s true.” I would be quite happy if I saw more “Hey, here’s a conjecture, and here’s a my attempt to honestly synthesize the relevant literature in a first pass at getting the answer.” That would be terrific. But usually, the argument aims to establish something substantive with an armchair, a Joe Stiglitz op-ed, and something remembered from the Tuesday Science Times.Let\u0026rsquo;s hear it for empiricism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/liberaltarianism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWill Wilkinson has \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/05/30/liberaltarianism-back-the-future/\"\u003ean interesting post about how his market liberal views are very like the views of Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan\u003c/a\u003e, and that the libertarian-conservative alliance against a slippery slope to socialism isn\u0026rsquo;t justified by what\u0026rsquo;s actually occurring in the world today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/06/the-error-of-productributionism/\"\u003ea subsequent post\u003c/a\u003e, he writes about how economic regulation and tax/transfer policies are logically separable, but most people think about them as if they aren\u0026rsquo;t; a comparison of levels of inequality and poverty across the EU shows that the common thought that less regulation and taxation goes hand-in-hand with higher levels of poverty and inequality (of the sort seen in the U.S. and UK) doesn\u0026rsquo;t hold.  Thus you could have a regime with very low levels of regulation yielding more wealth, combined with more redistribution for a better safety net and less poverty and inequality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd in \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/06/political-philosophy-and-evidence/\"\u003eanother post\u003c/a\u003e, he calls for greater empirical grounding for proposals in political philosophy, of the sort that has started to yield fruitful results in moral philosophy:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut shouldn’t it impossible to take seriously an argument to the effect that, say this or that policy is required in order to secure the conditions for the development of some capacity, in the absence of (a) a well-empirically-grounded theory of the nature of that capacity and its development, and (b) some kind of actual evidence that this or that policy in fact has the kind of effect on it that one hypothesizes? I wouldn’t mind so much if political philosophy arguments were more often in the form of “Hey, here’s a conjecture! I suggest somebody competent to do so try to find out if it’s true.” I would be quite happy if I saw more “Hey, here’s a conjecture, and here’s a my attempt to honestly synthesize the relevant literature in a first pass at getting the answer.” That would be terrific. But usually, the argument aims to establish something substantive with an armchair, a Joe Stiglitz op-ed, and something remembered from the Tuesday Science Times.\u003c/blockquote\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s hear it for empiricism.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Liberaltarianism"},{"content":"Tom W. Bell proposes the following update to the pledge of allegiance:\nI pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statutory, with liberty and justice for all.That\u0026rsquo;s a pledge I could make, despite my skepticism about the use of the term \u0026ldquo;natural rights.\u0026rdquo; I do think there are moral rights entailed by the combination of certain common human values and empirical facts. (This conversation between Will Wilkinson and Shaun Nichols about Nichols\u0026rsquo; book, Sentimental Rules, suggests one way of getting to moral rules I find far more plausible than the natural rights/natural law tradition.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/update-to-pledge-of-allegiance.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom W. Bell \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2008/06/upgrading-pledge-of-allegiance.html\"\u003eproposes the following update to the pledge of allegiance\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statutory, with liberty and justice for all.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a pledge I could make, despite my skepticism about the use of the term \u0026ldquo;natural rights.\u0026rdquo;  I do think there are moral rights entailed by the combination of certain common human values and empirical facts.  (\u003ca href=\"http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11517\"\u003eThis conversation between Will Wilkinson and Shaun Nichols\u003c/a\u003e about Nichols\u0026rsquo; book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSentimental Rules\u003c/span\u003e, suggests one way of getting to moral rules I find far more plausible than the natural rights/natural law tradition.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An update to the pledge of allegiance"},{"content":"Dan Barker has a new book coming out, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America\u0026rsquo;s Leading Atheists. It\u0026rsquo;s available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Also check out the organization run by Dan and Annie Laurie Gaylor, the Freedom From Religion Foundation.\nKen (2008-07-09):\nThanks for the heads up.I think that some day Mr. Barker will wear out his arguments form authority by repeating once to often that he is an ex-preacher. If anyone ever specifically debated him on the biblical passages that he is constantly misunderstanding, misapplying and misinterpreting his arguments form authority would come to a screeching halt.Besides, (1) since he does not believe that lying in absolutely immoral and (2) he recommends lying in order to avert danger and (3) he believes that religion is dangerous (4) he leaves the logical thinker with no choice be to not believe a single word that comes out of his mouth since he could lie all that he wants and not even consider it immoral.Just some thoughts.aDios,Mariano\nLippard (2008-07-09):\nMariano:Perhaps you can point out an actual example of Dan Barker arguing from authority on basis of being an ex-preacher, as opposed to simply pointing out his experience as a former adherent of Christianity?I think your argument is a distortion of his position. I think (1) is correct--that's also true of most Christians, as well as anyone reasonable. Wouldn't you agree that it's better to lie to Nazis to protect Jews you're hiding, than to tell the truth?But in (2), you're probably distorting his position--I doubt he says that lying is legitimate to employ against any danger, as opposed to in very limited circumstances to stop an imminent threat to life or safety, as in the case I just described. In effect, this makes your argument based on the fallacy of equivocation on the word \"danger.\"\nJason G (2008-07-10):\nArgumentum ad verecundiam (argument from authority) doesn't apply here. First, Barker is not referring to someone else to make his point. Rather he is conveying his own experience. He's not saying \"Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in God therefore there is no God\"Second, he is an actual authority on the subject of \"ex-pastor gone astray\" so there's no fallacyAnyway, his story from preacher to atheist is the only reason the book exists. That's his niche. Would you read a book about your experiences in the NFL had you never had an NFL career? No. Would you say Joe Nameth wears thin his argument from authority as he publishes his 3rd book on his life experience? No\nKen (2008-07-23):\nJim Lippard and Copernic thank you both for your responses;I was not referring to his “simply pointing out his experience” as an “ex-pastor gone astray” but specifically referring on his assertions as to the Bible’s content. The authority which he is claiming is not someone else’s but his own since he is constantly stating that he is an ex-preacher and that the Bible states thus and such and I am an ex-preacher. As for (1) the Bible itself presents a scenario of someone who lied in order to protect the life of two men who were in danger. The Bible is not blind to circumstance. For instance, there were laws against eating the bread that was meant for tabernacle usage yet, David did it when he and his men had no food. However, this is a far cry from moral relativism gone wild - and I am not here implying that either one of you, nor Dan Barker, are going wild :o) As for (2) \u0026amp; (3) I did not say “any danger,” let us say “grave dangers” in which he certainly includes “religion”: “Religion is a powerful thing. Few can resist its charms and few can truly break its embrace. It is a siren who entices the wandering traveler with songs of love and desire and, once successful, turns a mind into stone. It is a Venus fly trap. Its attraction is like that of drugs to an addict who, whishing to be free and happy, becomes trapped and miserable (Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith In Faith—From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation, p. 51). Ergo, (4). All of this is actually secondary to the fact that he constantly displays a shocking level of lack of knowledge regarding the Bible’s contents. Thus, my point is not that Dan Barker should not speak on the Bible. In fact, I hope that he does so more and more because he betrays his lack of knowledge any time that he does so. And here is a test of our adherence to arguments from authority: have I ever read or heard Dan Barker make a statement about the Bible? Have I taken the time to look up the passage and read for context (immediate and greater)? Or have I just taken his word for it? [ditto for any secularist, clergy or anyone at all]aDios,Mariano\nLippard (2008-07-23):\nMariano: I'm glad we are in mutual agreement about (1).But you've not substantiated your claim that Barker believes that lying is justified in order to combat religion, or that he has ever done so, nor have you substantiated your claim that he has betrayed a lack of knowledge of the Bible or engaged in arguments from authority.If you're going to make these accusations, you should back them up with evidence. Right now, all you're doing is making unsubstantiated allegations. That does not seem to me to be either rational or ethical on your part.\nKen (2008-08-06):\nJim,Actually, I was following the cyber-ethic of not deluging your comments section with links to my posts – until you asked me for certain proofs. Well, perhaps cyber-ethics are somewhat relative :o)My claim about Barker lying is based on tying his statements together. It requires quite a bit more information than I have to prove that he is lying since lying is not just saying something that is not true but knowing that what we are saying is not true. Since I can only know what Barker knows if he reveals it I would not care to identify where, precisely, he has lied (or even if he actually has lied).As far as his lack of knowledge of the Bible please consult these posts:Dan Barker’s Scriptural Misinterpretations and MisapplicationsWhy Freethought?aDios,Mariano\nLippard (2008-08-06):\nI'm not a defender of relativism (though I do agree that *most* attempted formulations of absolute standards admit to exceptions). But you're a defender of a Bible that claims that God himself argues for genocide, slavery, and other acts that are clearly immoral in the context in which they are ordered.The Bible does condone not only slavery but rape, in Numbers 31:17-18.It appears to me that you're engaging in ad hoc arguments to try to defend indefensible statements through reinterpretation.\nKen (2008-08-13):\nLet me try this route:For a moment, let us consider the question of whether the Bible is God’s word or not to be irrelevant. Let us also not disregard it because there are things in it with which we disagree (including Numbers 31:17-18 which says nothing about rape).Now we are just reading a series of books and discussing what they state.Having read my critiques of Dan Barker’s claims do you still consider it unsubstantiated that he betrays a lack of knowledge of the Bible?We do not have to hold to any particular opinion about a text in order to determine whether its contents are being handled properly. Do you really not see how poorly he handles it?You will note that the vast majority of my corrections of Mr. Barker’s misunderstandings require that I do nothing more than read one or two verses beyond that which he cites.aDios,Mariano\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/dan-barkers-new-book.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDan Barker has a new book coming out, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGodless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America\u0026rsquo;s Leading Atheists\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  Also check out the organization run by Dan and Annie Laurie Gaylor, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/\"\u003eFreedom From Religion Foundation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKen\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-07-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks for the heads up.\u003cBR/\u003eI think that some day Mr. Barker will wear out his arguments form authority by repeating once to often that he is an ex-preacher. \u003cBR/\u003eIf anyone ever specifically debated him on the biblical passages that he is constantly misunderstanding, misapplying and misinterpreting his arguments form authority would come to a screeching halt.\u003cBR/\u003eBesides, (1) since he does not believe that lying in absolutely immoral and (2) he recommends lying in order to avert danger and (3) he believes that religion is dangerous (4) he leaves the logical thinker with no choice be to not believe a single word that comes out of his mouth since he could lie all that he wants and not even consider it immoral.\u003cBR/\u003eJust some thoughts.\u003cBR/\u003eaDios,\u003cBR/\u003eMariano\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dan Barker's new book"},{"content":"Richard Cheese will be performing live on the radio this afternoon on Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s KEDJ, 103.9 FM, at around 4:45 p.m. Arizona time, during Tim Virgin\u0026rsquo;s show. You can also listen via the Internet via a link at the radio station\u0026rsquo;s website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/richard-cheese-live-on-radio.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Cheese will be performing live on the radio this afternoon on Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s KEDJ, 103.9 FM, at around 4:45 p.m. Arizona time, during Tim Virgin\u0026rsquo;s show.  You can also listen via the Internet via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theedge1039.com/\"\u003ea link at the radio station\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Cheese live on the radio"},{"content":"RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-a-Rama fundraising event is here again, and Kat and I will both be bowling for the \u0026ldquo;Leader of the Pack\u0026rdquo; team of volunteers who work with dogs. There\u0026rsquo;s a competing \u0026ldquo;Rockin Bowlin Felines\u0026rdquo; team of volunteers who work with cats.\nOur goal is to raise $3,000 between us for RESCUE, of which we\u0026rsquo;ve so far raised $220.\nRESCUE is a group we\u0026rsquo;ve volunteered with since January 2002, which rescues dogs and cats from the euthanasia lists at the Maricopa County pound. It operates its own cat shelter, while dogs are kept in foster homes and boarded at Dog Days in Tempe, a boarding and doggie day care facility that has been a valued partner of RESCUE.\nTwo of our three dogs, Fred and Otto, were rescued from euthanasia by RESCUE.\nEvery donation helps save dogs and cats from unnecessary euthanasia\u0026ndash;if you can give even $5, it will be greatly appreciated.\nYou can make donations through RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s website, here. Specify \u0026ldquo;Leader of the Pack\u0026rdquo; as the team, and put Kat\u0026rsquo;s or my name under \u0026ldquo;Encourage Your Bowler\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Referrer.\u0026quot;\nThe actual bowling will occur on August 2, 2008 at AMF Shea Village Lanes. In past years there have been more than 60 organizations participating, so the bowling gets divided into morning and evening shifts and the place gets packed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/rescue-bowl-rama.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRESCUE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.org/servlet/sponsor02?bowl=1\"\u003eBowl-a-Rama fundraising event\u003c/a\u003e is here again, and Kat and I will both be bowling for the \u0026ldquo;Leader of the Pack\u0026rdquo; team of volunteers who work with dogs.  There\u0026rsquo;s a competing \u0026ldquo;Rockin Bowlin Felines\u0026rdquo; team of volunteers who work with cats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur goal is to raise $3,000 between us for RESCUE, of which we\u0026rsquo;ve so far raised $220.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRESCUE is a group we\u0026rsquo;ve volunteered with since January 2002, which rescues dogs and cats from the euthanasia lists at the Maricopa County pound.  It operates its own cat shelter, while dogs are kept in foster homes and boarded at Dog Days in Tempe, a boarding and doggie day care facility that has been a valued partner of RESCUE.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTwo of our three dogs, \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/vote-for-fred.html\"\u003eFred\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/otto-gets-discovered.html\"\u003eOtto\u003c/a\u003e, were rescued from euthanasia by RESCUE.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEvery donation helps save dogs and cats from unnecessary euthanasia\u0026ndash;if you can give even $5, it will be greatly appreciated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can make donations through RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s website, \u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.org/servlet/sponsor02?bowl=1\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Specify \u0026ldquo;Leader of the Pack\u0026rdquo; as the team, and put Kat\u0026rsquo;s or my name under \u0026ldquo;Encourage Your Bowler\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Referrer.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe actual bowling will occur on August 2, 2008 at AMF Shea Village Lanes.  In past years there have been more than 60 organizations participating, so the bowling gets divided into morning and evening shifts and the place gets packed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RESCUE Bowl-a-Rama"},{"content":"On May 8, 2008, \u0026ldquo;An end to the economy\u0026rsquo;s nose dive?\u0026quot;, MSN MoneyCentral, Jon Markman suggests that the recession may be over or not a big deal for major company stocks:\n\u0026ldquo;If Hyman is right, and StockScouter continues to highlight the right sectors and stocks to play, there is no reason for investors to fear the pressures facing big companies right now. It really may be time to go off high alert.\u0026quot;But just two months ago, Markman was saying that you should sell every stock you own and get out of the market, on March 13, 2008, in \u0026ldquo;Sell stocks while the selling\u0026rsquo;s good\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;Yet veteran observers are swiftly coming to the conclusion that attempts to regain world financial stability could be doomed due to a stunning crash of commercial-debt financing and lack of trusted leadership, and they now believe private investors should take advantage of any rallies to purge their portfolios of most stocks and nongovernment bonds.\u0026quot;My advice: Don\u0026rsquo;t take stock market advice from Jon Markman. The fact that he\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;technical analyst\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;making predictions based on short-term patterns of stock movement using methodology that has no better support than astrology, tea-leaf reading, or palmistry\u0026ndash;is further reason to avoid reading him for any reason other than humor value.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/worthless-stock-market-advice.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn May 8, 2008, \u003ca href=\"http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/AnEndToTheEconomicFreeFall.aspx\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;An end to the economy\u0026rsquo;s nose dive?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e, MSN MoneyCentral, Jon Markman suggests that the recession may be over or not a big deal for major company stocks:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;If Hyman is right, and StockScouter continues to highlight the right sectors and stocks to play, there is no reason for investors to fear the pressures facing big companies right now. It really may be time to go off high alert.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut just two months ago, Markman was saying that you should sell every stock you own and get out of the market, on March 13, 2008, in \u003ca href=\"http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/SellStocksWhileTheSellingsGood.aspx\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sell stocks while the selling\u0026rsquo;s good\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yet veteran observers are swiftly coming to the conclusion that attempts to regain world financial stability could be doomed due to a stunning crash of commercial-debt financing and lack of trusted leadership, and they now believe private investors should take advantage of any rallies to purge their portfolios of most stocks and nongovernment bonds.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eMy advice:  Don\u0026rsquo;t take stock market advice from Jon Markman.  The fact that he\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;technical analyst\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;making predictions based on short-term patterns of stock movement using methodology that has no better support than astrology, tea-leaf reading, or palmistry\u0026ndash;is further reason to avoid reading him for any reason other than humor value.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Worthless stock market advice"},{"content":"A man wearing a Transformers t-shirt was stopped by airport security at Heathrow Terminal 5 because the cartoon character on the shirt was depicted holding a gun.\nThis is about as idiotic as Michelle Malkin\u0026rsquo;s opposition to Rachael Ray wearing a paisley scarf that resembled a keffiyah\u0026ndash;even after she admitted it was a paisley scarf.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/heathrow-security-confuses-map-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA man wearing a Transformers t-shirt \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7431640.stm\"\u003ewas stopped by airport security at Heathrow Terminal 5 because the cartoon character on the shirt was depicted holding a gun\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is about as idiotic as Michelle Malkin\u0026rsquo;s opposition to Rachael Ray wearing a paisley scarf that resembled a keffiyah\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/05/28/rachael_ray,_dunkin_donuts_and_the_keffiyeh_kerfuffle\"\u003eeven after she admitted it was a paisley scarf\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Heathrow security confuses the map for the territory"},{"content":"In a decision issued today, the judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono\u0026rsquo;s motion for an injunction against the film, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense. So \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; intact.\nThis is an outcome I suggested would occur, and hoped for, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case. It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/expelled-producers-win-round-one-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a decision issued today, \u003ca href=\"http://lessig.org/blog/2008/06/a_nice_welcome_home_present_or.html\"\u003ethe judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono\u0026rsquo;s motion for an injunction against the film\u003c/a\u003e, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense.  So \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; intact.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is an outcome \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-uses-sample-from-imagine.html\"\u003eI suggested would occur, and hoped for\u003c/a\u003e, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case.  It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/yoko_loses.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" producers win round one on \"Imagine\" lawsuit"},{"content":"The second ApostAZ podcast is now available for listening at ApostAZ.org. Topics include the Virgin Mary visible on a biker\u0026rsquo;s leg wound, Phoenix atheists meetup group organizer Shannon\u0026rsquo;s deconversion story, an \u0026ldquo;Arizona Atheist Action\u0026rdquo; segment on the current proposal to create another anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution, and more.\nCorrection, guys\u0026ndash;our sun is a Class G star, not a Class B star. (It doesn\u0026rsquo;t negate your point\u0026ndash;Class G stars are more common than Class B stars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/apostaz-podcast-2.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe second ApostAZ podcast is now available for listening at \u003ca href=\"http://www.apostaz.org/\"\u003eApostAZ.org\u003c/a\u003e.  Topics include the Virgin Mary visible on a biker\u0026rsquo;s leg wound, Phoenix atheists meetup group organizer Shannon\u0026rsquo;s deconversion story, an \u0026ldquo;Arizona Atheist Action\u0026rdquo; segment on the current proposal to create another anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution, and more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCorrection, guys\u0026ndash;our sun is a Class G star, not a Class B star.  (It doesn\u0026rsquo;t negate your point\u0026ndash;Class G stars are \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification\"\u003emore common\u003c/a\u003e than Class B stars.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast #2"},{"content":"The Filter, officially debuting tomorrow but already available today, is a website that asks for some basic information about your tastes in film and music, and then makes recommendations about other things you\u0026rsquo;d like\u0026ndash;music, movies, web videos, and TV. It\u0026rsquo;s not clear from the CNN coverage how it compares to Amazon.com\u0026rsquo;s recommendation engine or to sites like Pandora, but it looks interesting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/peter-gabriels-new-filtering-website.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://thefilter.com/\"\u003eThe Filter\u003c/a\u003e, officially debuting tomorrow but already available today, is \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/02/music.peter.gabriel.ap/index.html\"\u003ea website that asks for some basic information about your tastes in film and music\u003c/a\u003e, and then makes recommendations about other things you\u0026rsquo;d like\u0026ndash;music, movies, web videos, and TV.  It\u0026rsquo;s not clear from the CNN coverage how it compares to Amazon.com\u0026rsquo;s recommendation engine or to sites like Pandora, but it looks interesting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Peter Gabriel's new filtering website"},{"content":"Former evangelical Christian and Bible college attendee Daniel Florien has put together a list of common Christian clichés, along with translations of the real meaning behind them, along with \u0026ldquo;acceptable\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;unacceptable\u0026rdquo; responses to each.\nFlorien\u0026rsquo;s short description of his deconversion is also worth your time.\n(Via Pharyngula; cross-posted to the Secular Outpost.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/guide-to-christian-cliches-and-phrases.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer evangelical Christian and Bible college attendee Daniel Florien has put together \u003ca href=\"http://unreasonablefaith.com/2008/05/29/a-guide-to-christian-cliches-and-phrases/\"\u003ea list of common Christian clichés\u003c/a\u003e, along with translations of the real meaning behind them, along with \u0026ldquo;acceptable\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;unacceptable\u0026rdquo; responses to each.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFlorien\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://unreasonablefaith.com/about/\"\u003eshort description of his deconversion\u003c/a\u003e is also worth your time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/now_ill_understand_what_theyre.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e; cross-posted to \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2008/06/guide-to-christian-cliches-and-phrases.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Guide to Christian Cliches and Phrases"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports that Sharon Lechter, co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and participant in the Rich Dad Co. joint venture with Robert Kiyosaki, is calling it quits and has filed a lawsuit in which she alleges \u0026ldquo;that her ex-business partner and his wife are enriching themselves, diverting assets and wasting money in a business that she claims to have helped build from scratch.\u0026quot;\nLechter, a CPA in Paradise Valley, claims that she \u0026ldquo;refined and created\u0026rdquo; the original book, while Kiyosaki is merely the public face of the book. If so, that makes the book even more bogus than it already appears to be\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s already apparent that the \u0026ldquo;rich dad\u0026rdquo; of the title is a fictional character and that the book is filled with bad advice. Lechter needs to be careful how much credit she claims if she wants to have any credibility for financial acumen\u0026ndash;but I suspect she will care more about the cash.\nThe Kiyosakis respond that Lechter was the editor rather than the author of the book and that she is exaggerating her contributions.\nThe Republic article includes some of the allegations from the Lechter suit, as well as some quotes from Kiyosaki critic John T. Reed. The most interesting point I saw was that the Kiyosakis have earned about $9 million from their Rich Dad entities, which is a lot less than I would have expected, at least if seminar income is included in that amount.\nLin Ennis (2008-06-02):\nHey Ken...interesting news, isn't it, the father of pop-finance duking it out with his team mate. Did you get the idea Sharon Lechter owns 1/3 of the Cashflow Technologies empire?Am I jaded that I don't think $9 million is a lot of money to fight about?I blogged this today over at http://www.letyourmortgagemakeyourich.com/kiyosaki-lechter-split-up/\nLippard (2008-06-02):\nI think you mean Jim, not Ken.My impression was that Lechter is claiming 1/2 of the things she was involved with... I don't see Mrs. Kiyosaki's name on \"Rich Dad, Poor Dad.\"\nKtisophilos (2008-06-17):\nPity the report didn't link to John Reed's detailed critique of the Kiyosaki rubbish.\nLippard (2008-06-17):\nI second the recommendation for Reed's critique, which I linked to in my previous commentary on Kiyosaki.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/kiyosaki-team-splits-up.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2008/06/02/20080602biz-richdad0602.html\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e that Sharon Lechter, co-author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRich Dad, Poor Dad\u003c/span\u003e, and participant in the Rich Dad Co. joint venture with Robert Kiyosaki, is calling it quits and has filed a lawsuit in which she alleges \u0026ldquo;that her ex-business partner and his wife are enriching themselves, diverting assets and wasting money in a business that she claims to have helped build from scratch.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLechter, a CPA in Paradise Valley, claims that she \u0026ldquo;refined and created\u0026rdquo; the original book, while Kiyosaki is merely the public face of the book.  If so, that makes the book even more bogus than it already appears to be\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s already apparent that the \u0026ldquo;rich dad\u0026rdquo; of the title is a fictional character and that the book is filled with bad advice.  Lechter needs to be careful how much credit she claims if she wants to have any credibility for financial acumen\u0026ndash;but I suspect she will care more about the cash.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Kiyosakis respond that Lechter was the editor rather than the author of the book and that she is exaggerating her contributions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2008/06/02/20080602biz-richdad0602.html\"\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRepublic\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e includes some of the allegations from the Lechter suit, as well as some quotes from Kiyosaki critic John T. Reed.  The most interesting point I saw was that the Kiyosakis have earned about $9 million from their Rich Dad entities, which is a lot less than I would have expected, at least if seminar income is included in that amount.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kiyosaki team splits up"},{"content":"Reuters reports:\nDuring a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama \u0026ndash; a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School \u0026ndash; was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. \u0026ldquo;I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,\u0026rdquo; said Obama.\nThat would be fantastic. Would would be even better would be if he would continue on with all standing executive orders from any president, after cleaning up the messes from the most recent one. It would be nice to see the federal government actually staying within constitutional limits of its power, but I won\u0026rsquo;t be holding my breath.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-06-03):\nObama must not be aware that Bush's Faith-Based Iniatives was created via Executive Order since his comments on them suggest he would seek to reform the program but keep it in place.At least, according to the Pew Forum that's what it sounds like:When asked if he would keep the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives open, Obama said he would need to investigate the office's operations because of the danger that federal money could be allocated to churches \"based on politics, as opposed to merit and substance.\" He says the office should be \"open to everybody\" and not allow \"certain groups to be able to evangelize.\"That being said, it's still great to hear the intention to review Bush's Executive Orders. I keep saying that we need someone to do for EOs what Charlie Savage has done for signing statements.\nHume's Ghost (2008-06-03):\nI phrased that poorly. I would issue the qualification that it could be the case that he considers that program Constitutional.\nGadfly (2008-06-04):\nAnd, that's exactly the deal, Hume.Obama's on record as favoring faith-based initiatives, as unconstitutional in spirit as they actually are.In the first issue of this year, the first column in Free Inquiry did a good job of taking both him and Clinton to the woodshed on this issue.Yet another reason I'll likely vote Green or not at all.\nHume's Ghost (2008-07-03):\nIt would appear my second take was correct. Obama is going to keep Bush's office of religion open (and actually expand the program), but will review executive orders relating to hiring practices and proselytization with the intention of overturning those that violate the separation of church/state.McCain wants to keep the office open and allow hiring discrimination.As so often is the case, we're left with a choice between bad and less bad.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/good-start.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReuters \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/2008/05/28/bushs-laws-will-be-scrutinized-if-i-become-president-obama-says/\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDuring a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama \u0026ndash; a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School \u0026ndash; was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,\u0026rdquo; said Obama.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003eThat would be fantastic.  Would would be even better would be if he would continue on with all standing executive orders from any president, after cleaning up the messes from the most recent one.  It would be nice to see the federal government actually staying within constitutional limits of its power, but I won\u0026rsquo;t be holding my breath.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/i_like_the_sound_of_this.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A good start"},{"content":"26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, are currently on trial in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping and \u0026ldquo;extraordinary rendition\u0026rdquo; of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. On Thursday, Italy\u0026rsquo;s top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, explained in court how they identified the CIA operatives responsible for Omar\u0026rsquo;s kidnapping:\nMegale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls. Then, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.\nIn his testimony, Megale revealed that one telephone number he recognized was that of Robert Seldon Lady, then-CIA station chief in Milan. Lady and Megale had worked together in counter-terrorism investigations. It was a number, Megale said somberly, that he and his team knew.\n(Via Talking Points Memo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/06/cia-operatives-on-trial-in-italy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, are currently on trial in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping and \u0026ldquo;extraordinary rendition\u0026rdquo; of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured.  On Thursday, Italy\u0026rsquo;s top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, \u003ca href=\"http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/american_spies_on_trial_in_ita.php\"\u003eexplained in court how they identified the CIA operatives responsible for Omar\u0026rsquo;s kidnapping\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMegale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls. \u003cp\u003eThen, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA operatives on trial in Italy"},{"content":"I saw on The Colbert Report that Major League Baseball is telling Little League teams that they can\u0026rsquo;t use the names of MLB teams unless they purchase their uniforms from MLB-authorized licensees. Nonsense\u0026ndash;a Little League team called the A\u0026rsquo;s or the Twins or the Mariners is in no danger of confusion with the MLB team, so there\u0026rsquo;s no infringement.\nTechdirt reports on this issue, and also that MLB is also still trying to claim ownership over game statistics, even though facts cannot be copyrighted.\nLittle League teams should tell MLB to take a hike.\nUPDATE (June 2, 2008): The Supreme Court denied cert on MLB\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing for its use of the names of MLB players and statistics for fantasy baseball, without a license from MLB. The court of appeals in St. Louis had already ruled that C.B.C. has a free speech right to use player names and statistics, which have previously been regarded as facts not subject to copyright. Some have worried that this ruling will endanger licensing arrangements regarding the use of celebrity names, but cases that involve an endorsement of a product seem to me to be clearly distinguishable from this case.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/major-league-baseball-misuse-of-ip-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI saw on The Colbert Report that Major League Baseball is telling Little League teams that they can\u0026rsquo;t use the names of MLB teams unless they purchase their uniforms from MLB-authorized licensees.  Nonsense\u0026ndash;a Little League team called the A\u0026rsquo;s or the Twins or the Mariners is in no danger of confusion with the MLB team, so there\u0026rsquo;s no infringement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTechdirt \u003ca href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080312/013742509.shtml\"\u003ereports on this issue, and also that MLB is also still trying to claim ownership over game statistics\u003c/a\u003e, even though facts cannot be copyrighted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLittle League teams should tell MLB to take a hike.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 2, 2008): The Supreme Court \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080602/wr_nm/usa_baseball_fantasy_dc_2\"\u003edenied cert on MLB\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing for its use of the names of MLB players and statistics for fantasy baseball\u003c/a\u003e, without a license from MLB.  The court of appeals in St. Louis had already ruled that C.B.C. has a free speech right to use player names and statistics, which have previously been regarded as facts not subject to copyright.  Some have worried that this ruling will endanger licensing arrangements regarding the use of celebrity names, but cases that involve an endorsement of a product seem to me to be clearly distinguishable from this case.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Major League Baseball misuse of IP law"},{"content":"Former Chicago police officer and FBI informant Keith Herrera told \u0026ldquo;60 Minutes\u0026rdquo; that pressure to get results in the war on drugs led to police officers lying about the facts in order to get arrests, and ultimately to a corrupt ring of officers engaging in thefts from drug dealers and a plot to kill two of fellow officers who weren\u0026rsquo;t with the program and were prepared to testify against them. Herrera is one of seven officers in the Special Operations Section who have been charged with robbery, kidnapping, and other crimes.\n(As reported by Reuters on Yahoo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/drug-war-led-to-chicago-pd-corruption.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Chicago police officer and FBI informant Keith Herrera told \u0026ldquo;60 Minutes\u0026rdquo; that pressure to get results in the war on drugs led to police officers lying about the facts in order to get arrests, and ultimately to a corrupt ring of officers engaging in thefts from drug dealers and a plot to kill two of fellow officers who weren\u0026rsquo;t with the program and were prepared to testify against them.  Herrera is one of seven officers in the Special Operations Section who have been charged with robbery, kidnapping, and other crimes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(As \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080530/ts_nm/chicago_police_dc_1\"\u003ereported by Reuters on Yahoo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Drug war led to Chicago PD corruption"},{"content":"Anti-piracy company MediaDefender, which defends its clients\u0026rsquo; intellectual property by disrupting the content on peer-to-peer networks, launched a denial of service attack (SYN flood) against Revision3 over Memorial Day weekend. The attack was launched after Revision3 discovered that their servers were being used by MediaDefender to post spoofed BitTorrent index files and Revision3 shut off their access.\nRevision3, a legitimate company that distributes HD video over the Internet using BitTorrent, was not amused, and the FBI is investigating.\nAny legitimate Internet provider should refuse to provide services to companies that engage in illegal or immoral tactics to try to stop peer-to-peer piracy of copyrighted content, such as denial of service attacks or interference with services that are being used legitimately, even if they are also being used for piracy. If they don\u0026rsquo;t have methods which can be targeted specifically against the copyrighted content they are authorized to protect, then their methods cross the line, in my opinion.\nMediaDefender\u0026rsquo;s upstream network providers are Savvis (ASN 3561), Beyond the Network (ASN 3491), WV Fiber (ASN 19151), and SingTel (ASN 7473). They all should have a problem with denial of service attacks by their customer.\nMediaDefender was previously in the news in September 2007 when its security was breached by hackers and 700 MB of executive emails and the content of VoIP telephone calls from the company were leaked to the Internet. This seems to me like a company that should not be in business.\nLegion (2008-06-02):\nI read about this in the RISKs Digest and immediately thought that there was probably some Scientology crime syndicate relation. The attempt to deny people their freedom of speech rights just automaticalkly invokes the Scientology name.I would like to hope that Repease3's people will file crimnal charges.\nLippard (2008-06-02):\nGreetings, Fredric! Good to see you here.The names associated with MediaDefender are easy enough to check against the Scientology completions list--you can get lots of names from their email that got made public last year after they were hacked, such as their CEO, Randy Saaf. I'm not aware of any Scientology connection.MediaDefender's parent company, ARTISTdirect, is a publicly traded company (stock symbol ARTD, traded over-the-counter) based in Santa Monica; interim CEO is film producer Dimitri Villard. Villard graduated from Harvard and was an editor of The Harvard Lampoon, which I'd say argues against his being a Scientologist. Russell Shaw is the only funny Scientologist I can think of.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/mediadefender-launches-denial-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnti-piracy company MediaDefender, which defends its clients\u0026rsquo; intellectual property by disrupting the content on peer-to-peer networks, \u003ca href=\"http://revision3.com/blog/2008/05/29/inside-the-attack-that-crippled-revision3\"\u003elaunched a denial of service attack (SYN flood) against Revision3 over Memorial Day weekend\u003c/a\u003e.  The attack was launched after Revision3 discovered that their servers were being used by MediaDefender to post spoofed BitTorrent index files and Revision3 shut off their access.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRevision3, a legitimate company that distributes HD video over the Internet using BitTorrent, was not amused, and the FBI is investigating.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAny legitimate Internet provider should refuse to provide services to companies that engage in illegal or immoral tactics to try to stop peer-to-peer piracy of copyrighted content, such as denial of service attacks or interference with services that are being used legitimately, even if they are also being used for piracy.  If they don\u0026rsquo;t have methods which can be targeted specifically against the copyrighted content they are authorized to protect, then their methods cross the line, in my opinion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMediaDefender\u0026rsquo;s upstream network providers are Savvis (ASN 3561), Beyond the Network (ASN 3491), WV Fiber (ASN 19151), and SingTel (ASN 7473).  They all should have a problem with denial of service attacks by their customer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMediaDefender \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/anti-p2p-company-suffers-major-security.html\"\u003ewas previously in the news in September 2007 when its security was breached by hackers and 700 MB of executive emails and the content of VoIP telephone calls from the company were leaked to the Internet\u003c/a\u003e.  This seems to me like a company that should not be in business.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MediaDefender launches denial of service attack against Revision3"},{"content":"The footage from eight years ago of a Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, being killed by Israeli gunfire, which was used by the killers of reporter Daniel Pearl in the video they posted to the Internet of that murder, was apparently a hoax, as reported by Australia\u0026rsquo;s Daily Telegraph.\nIn an appeals trial for a civil defamation lawsuit by the France 2 network and its cameraman, Charles Enderlin, against a media watchdog who claimed the footage was a hoax, the jury was shown 18 minutes of footage rather than the 57 seconds which were broadcast. That footage includes staged battle scenes, rehearsed ambulance evacuations, and even the boy\u0026ndash;supposedly dead\u0026ndash;moving and looking at the camera.\nThe French press, which had been siding with France 2 against Philippe Karsenty, director of the Media-Ratings watchdog group, appears to have been proven wrong and Karsenty vindicated.\nEnderlin has apparently been caught fabricating other footage as well.\n(This story also covered by the Wall Street Journal online, but apparently not by many other news sources, which is why I\u0026rsquo;m giving it attention.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-05-30):\nDid you see the movie Ghost Rider or ever read the comic book? I wouldn't mind having the video fabricator experience the penance stare for creating propaganda that was used to justify Pearl's horrific execution.\nLippard (2008-05-30):\nHaven't seen it or read the comic book, but I think it may be on the Netflix queue...\nJames Hanley (2008-06-02):\nI hope this entire video becomes available on youtube. This is something the whole world should have access to.\nLippard (2008-06-02):\nI agree!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/footage-of-palestinian-boy-killed-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe footage from eight years ago of a Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, being killed by Israeli gunfire, which was used by the killers of reporter Daniel Pearl in the video they posted to the Internet of that murder, \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23776421-2,00.html\"\u003ewas apparently a hoax\u003c/a\u003e, as reported by Australia\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn an appeals trial for a civil defamation lawsuit by the France 2 network and its cameraman, Charles Enderlin, against a media watchdog who claimed the footage was a hoax, the jury was shown 18 minutes of footage rather than the 57 seconds which were broadcast.  That footage includes staged battle scenes, rehearsed ambulance evacuations, and even the boy\u0026ndash;supposedly dead\u0026ndash;moving and looking at the camera.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe French press, which had been siding with France 2 against Philippe Karsenty, director of the Media-Ratings watchdog group, appears to have been proven wrong and Karsenty vindicated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEnderlin has apparently been caught fabricating other footage as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(This story \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121183757337520921.html\"\u003ealso covered by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e online\u003c/a\u003e, but apparently not by many other news sources, which is why I\u0026rsquo;m giving it attention.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Footage of Palestinian boy killed by Israeli fire apparent hoax"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Republic has an article about Richard Cheese, who will be appearing at the Celebrity Theater on June 7 with his Lounge Against the Machine band. The article describes his roots in Arizona and the man behind the leopard-print tuxedo\u0026ndash;who shared a table with me (we didn\u0026rsquo;t have desks) in sixth grade. (Mark and I attended the same schools and were friends from third through eighth grade, then went different ways, though we have crossed paths from time to time since then, including when he got me a DJ job for ASU\u0026rsquo;s campus radio station, KASR-AM, when we were both undergrads there. Sadly, KASR\u0026rsquo;s call letters now belong to a sports radio station in Arkansas.)\nEinzige, Kat, and I will be at the show.\nPhoenix New Times had a similar, more detailed story about Richard Cheese the week of May 19, 2005, \u0026ldquo;Big Cheese\u0026rdquo; by Jimmy Magahern.\nAlso watch for Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine on TV3\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Good Morning Arizona\u0026rdquo; program on Thursday, June 5, at around 8:30 a.m.\nJames Hanley (2008-06-02):\nI'm jealous!But I heard he had retired due to voice problems. Were the rumors of his demise premature? Dare I hope?\nLippard (2008-06-02):\nWell, he's been saying he's going to retire at least since 2005, but I'll find out what he says now after the show.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/richard-cheese-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0529richardcheese0529.html\"\u003ean article about Richard Cheese\u003c/a\u003e, who will be \u003ca href=\"http://www.celebritytheatre.com/upcoming.php?viewevent=628\"\u003eappearing at the Celebrity Theater on June 7\u003c/a\u003e with his Lounge Against the Machine band.  The article describes his roots in Arizona and the man behind the leopard-print tuxedo\u0026ndash;who shared a table with me (we didn\u0026rsquo;t have desks) in sixth grade.  (Mark and I attended the same schools and were friends from third through eighth grade, then went different ways, though we have crossed paths from time to time since then, including when he got me a DJ job for ASU\u0026rsquo;s campus radio station, KASR-AM, when we were both undergrads there.  Sadly, KASR\u0026rsquo;s call letters now belong to a sports radio station in Arkansas.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEinzige, Kat, and I will be at the show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e had \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-05-19/news/big-cheese/\"\u003ea similar, more detailed story about Richard Cheese the week of May 19, 2005, \u0026ldquo;Big Cheese\u0026rdquo; by Jimmy Magahern\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso watch for Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine on TV3\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azfamily.com/gmaz/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Good Morning Arizona\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e program on Thursday, June 5, at around 8:30 a.m.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Cheese in Phoenix"},{"content":"The Access Research Network, a young-earth creationist organization formerly known as Students for Origins Research, states the following in its description of a DVD it sells of the 2003 debate on the resurrection of Jesus between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas, a professor at Liberty University:\nDr. Habermas holds an M.A. in philosophical theology from the University of Detroit; a D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford; and Ph.D. in history and philosophy of religion from Michigan Sate [sic] University.The D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford is also mentioned in the description of Habermas on a website advertising the DVD \u0026ldquo;Jesus: Fact or Fiction.\u0026quot; It shows up in his bio for a talk he gave at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kansas.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a slight problem with a doctorate of divinity in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford\u0026ndash;there is no such college at Oxford. This same false claim is made in the Wikipedia article for Gary Habermas, with a link from \u0026ldquo;Emmanuel College\u0026rdquo; to the Wikipedia entry for Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, not Oxford. (Emmanuel College at Cambridge does have a \u0026ldquo;sister college\u0026rdquo; at Oxford, but its name is Exeter College.)\nHabermas\u0026rsquo;s current online resume lists no D.D. degree at all.\nSo what\u0026rsquo;s the story? Is this Habermas\u0026rsquo;s error, or someone else\u0026rsquo;s? And what kind of error is it? If Habermas has a D.D. degree from a UK school, why doesn\u0026rsquo;t his current resume list it?\n(Hat tip to Roger Stanyard, who pointed this out in a comment at RichardDawkins.net last year.)\nI once exchanged some letters with Gary Habermas, beginning with a critique I wrote of the first edition of the book on immortality that he co-wrote with J.P. Moreland. I don\u0026rsquo;t believe anything in my critique was accounted for in the second edition of their book; the second edition still includes this false statement about psychic detective Peter Hurkos, even though I pointed them to critical material: \u0026ldquo;In carefully documented situations, Hurkos demonstrated very precise knowledge of cases as famous as the stolen Stone of Scone\u0026hellip;and the Boston Strangler murders.\u0026rdquo; Even if they rejected my criticism, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of simple honesty to their readers have demanded that they include a reference to the existence of published rebuttals?\nHistorical Comments Leo (2008-05-28):\n...To this simple Christian you continue to prove the truth of Luke 12:2 - But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Hopefully Mr. Habermas is brought to task for what seems to be a lie.\nUnknown (2011-07-11):\nA D.D. degree is usually an honorary one and nothing to focus on when a professor has a Ph.D. degree. Why are you trying to attack his credibilty on such a small item? What a waste of time!\nSteve Baughman (2018-12-06):\nThere seems to be a sense of entitlement to credential padding amongst evangelical males. I do not know what happened with Gary Habermas, but he is qualified enough as a scholar that I doubt he lied about his credentials. Eager to know more, though. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/gary-habermas-dd-degree.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Access Research Network, a young-earth creationist organization formerly known as Students for Origins Research, \u003ca href=\"http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/php/video_show_item.php?id=64\"\u003estates the following\u003c/a\u003e in its description of a DVD it sells of the 2003 debate on the resurrection of Jesus between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas, a professor at Liberty University:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDr. Habermas holds an M.A. in philosophical theology from the University of Detroit; a D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford; and Ph.D. in history and philosophy of religion from Michigan Sate [sic] University.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/span\u003eThe D.D. in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford is also mentioned in the description of Habermas on \u003ca href=\"http://www.jesusfactorfiction.com/experts/ghabermas.html\"\u003ea website advertising the DVD \u0026ldquo;Jesus: Fact or Fiction.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  It shows up in \u003ca href=\"http://ffc.org/events/details.php?eventid=31\"\u003ehis bio for a talk he gave at First Family Church\u003c/a\u003e in Overland Park, Kansas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a slight problem with a doctorate of divinity in theology from Emmanuel College, Oxford\u0026ndash;there is no such college at Oxford.  This same false claim is made in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Habermas\"\u003ethe Wikipedia article for Gary Habermas\u003c/a\u003e, with a link from \u0026ldquo;Emmanuel College\u0026rdquo; to the Wikipedia entry for Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, not Oxford.  (Emmanuel College at Cambridge does have a \u0026ldquo;sister college\u0026rdquo; at Oxford, but its name is Exeter College.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.garyhabermas.com/habermas_resume.htm\"\u003eHabermas\u0026rsquo;s current online resume\u003c/a\u003e lists no D.D. degree at all.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo what\u0026rsquo;s the story?  Is this Habermas\u0026rsquo;s error, or someone else\u0026rsquo;s?  And what kind of error is it?  If Habermas has a D.D. degree from a UK school, why doesn\u0026rsquo;t his current resume list it?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Roger Stanyard, who pointed this out in \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/article,1859,Antony-Flews-Bogus-Book,Richard-Carrier#87209\"\u003ea comment at RichardDawkins.net\u003c/a\u003e last year.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI once exchanged some letters with Gary Habermas, beginning with \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_lippard/immortality.html\"\u003ea critique I wrote of the first edition of the book on immortality that he co-wrote with J.P. Moreland\u003c/a\u003e.  I don\u0026rsquo;t believe anything in my critique was accounted for in the second edition of their book; the second edition still includes this false statement about psychic detective Peter Hurkos, even though I pointed them to critical material: \u0026ldquo;In carefully documented situations, Hurkos demonstrated very precise knowledge of cases as famous as the stolen Stone of Scone\u0026hellip;and the Boston Strangler murders.\u0026rdquo;  Even if they rejected my criticism, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of simple honesty to their readers have demanded that they include a reference to the existence of published rebuttals?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gary Habermas' D.D. degree"},{"content":"James J. Buchanan of the Christ Life Church in Tempe, Arizona, is accused of defrauding 30-40 people out of over $5 million over the last ten years. He claimed to be a financial planner, and took many people\u0026rsquo;s life\u0026rsquo;s savings, as well as money from the church. The Maricopa County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office says it\u0026rsquo;s hard to tell where the money went, but it appears that he used some of it to pay off early investors in classic Ponzi scheme style, and spent the rest on himself. His scheme collapsed this March, after he refused to provide documentation to show where one investor\u0026rsquo;s money was, and that investor refused a payoff to stay quiet and went to the police.\n(A previous discussion of religious affinity fraud on the increase, at the Secular Outpost.)\nUPDATE (11 February 2012): Also see \u0026ldquo;Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock\u0026rdquo; from The Economist, January 28, 2012.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/phony-financial-planner-defrauds.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJames J. Buchanan of the Christ Life Church in Tempe, Arizona, is accused of \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2008/05/27/20080527fraud0527.html\"\u003edefrauding 30-40 people out of over $5 million over the last ten years\u003c/a\u003e.  He claimed to be a financial planner, and took many people\u0026rsquo;s life\u0026rsquo;s savings, as well as money from the church.  The Maricopa County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office says it\u0026rsquo;s hard to tell where the money went, but it appears that he used some of it to pay off early investors in classic Ponzi scheme style, and spent the rest on himself.  His scheme collapsed this March, after he refused to provide documentation to show where one investor\u0026rsquo;s money was, and that investor refused a payoff to stay quiet and went to the police.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(A \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/08/religious-fraud-increasing.html\"\u003eprevious discussion of religious affinity fraud on the increase, at the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (11 February 2012): Also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21543526\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e from \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e, January 28, 2012.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phony financial planner defrauds churchgoers"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars tells how Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza wrote an article in the 1980s about conservatives taking money from Rev. Sun Myung Moon, but then when he took money from Moon himself in 2007, denied that he knew anything about Moon.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/dsouza-dishonesty-about-rev-moon.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/dsouza_and_rev_moon.php\"\u003etells how Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza wrote an article in the 1980s about conservatives taking money from Rev. Sun Myung Moon\u003c/a\u003e, but then when he took money from Moon himself in 2007, denied that he knew anything about Moon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"D'Souza dishonesty about Rev. Moon"},{"content":"Rottin\u0026rsquo; in Denmark points out Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s absurd promotion of handwriting analysis of the presidential candidates.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-05-27):\nAdd to that Yahoo's mindless promotion of astrology.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/yahoos-mindless-promotion-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRottin\u0026rsquo; in Denmark \u003ca href=\"http://rottenindenmark.vox.com/library/post/why-does-yahoo-hate-journalism.html\"\u003epoints out Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s absurd promotion of handwriting analysis of the presidential candidates\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eReed\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-05-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAdd to that Yahoo's mindless promotion of \u003cA HREF=\"http://astrology.shine.yahoo.com/astrology/\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eastrology\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Yahoo's mindless promotion of pseudoscience"},{"content":"Some Arizona atheists are putting together a regular podcast called \u0026ldquo;ApostAZ,\u0026rdquo; including music from Greydon Square (who will be performing at The Amazing Meeting next month in Las Vegas).\nSubscribe to the RSS feed here.\nThe first episode discusses a woman who killed her six-year-old daughter thinking she was killing a demon, upcoming Atheist Meetup events (Arizona Fetish Prom, ballroom dancing\u0026ndash;which turned out to be swing dancing and was a fun event Kat, Einzige, and I attended, and a musical performance to benefit Ayaan Hirsi Ali), a baby-tossing event that they take issue with but seems unobjectionable to me, and more.\nApostAZ has a website here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/apostaz-podcast.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome Arizona atheists are putting together a regular podcast called \u0026ldquo;ApostAZ,\u0026rdquo; including music from \u003ca href=\"http://www.greydonsquare.com/\"\u003eGreydon Square\u003c/a\u003e (who will be performing at The Amazing Meeting next month in Las Vegas).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSubscribe to the RSS feed \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/Podcast/apostaz.xml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first episode discusses a woman who killed her six-year-old daughter thinking she was killing a demon, upcoming Atheist Meetup events (Arizona Fetish Prom, ballroom dancing\u0026ndash;which turned out to be swing dancing and was a fun event Kat, Einzige, and I attended, and a musical performance to benefit Ayaan Hirsi Ali), a baby-tossing event that they take issue with but seems unobjectionable to me, and more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApostAZ has a website \u003ca href=\"http://apostaz.org/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ApostAZ podcast"},{"content":"Dave Palmer recently finished reading Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and sent the following review to the SKEPTIC list on May 23. I liked it so much that I asked him if I could republish it here, and he agreed.\n\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\nSo back in April, I was in a bookshop, and my eyes fell on a meaty, red-covered book called Legacy of Ashes, the History of the CIA. \u0026ldquo;Huh, that looks interesting,\u0026rdquo; sez I. Then a more rational voice in my head pops up. \u0026ldquo;Are you frakking nuts? You already know a bit about that spook house, reading a book like that will only piss you off.\u0026rdquo; But it was my birthday, so I HAD to have me a little something.\nMan, does it get tiresome being right ALL the time\u0026hellip;\nThis is an appalling, sickening, infuriating book, particularly since its impeccable scholarship requires one to take it seriously. Unlike your average innuendo-and-hearsay CIA book, this one is based entirely on historical and declassified government documents and on-the-record interviews with named (and heavily-footnoted) sources, usually with the most senior personnel. The author, Tim Weiner, is a Pulitzer-winning NY Times reporter who has been covering US intelligence agencies for 20 years. He\u0026rsquo;s the kind of guy who just pops out for lunch with current and past CIA Directors.\nLike a lot of people, I had always assumed that the CIA might have a few massive public screwups (such as the Bay of Pigs), and there were surely times when Presidents ignored or twisted the CIA\u0026rsquo;s intelligence to political ends (witness the current misadventure in Iraq), but underneath it all, there was at least SOME small bit of competence at work in the agency; there were people there who at least knew how to gather useful intelligence. Like the old quote about the CIA goes, their failures are all public, their successes are all secret.\nOK, so maybe I\u0026rsquo;m not right ALL the time.\nTurns out, the CIA is in fact a Mongolian clusterfuck of staggering, breathtaking proportions. And they always have been, all the way back to their founding in 1947 (and even the OSS, the agency\u0026rsquo;s WWII precursor, wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite as swift as they\u0026rsquo;re made out to be on The History Channel). If the guy who coined the term \u0026ldquo;epic fail\u0026rdquo; had read this book, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have bothered, there is no point in describing the ocean with teaspoon-sized words. As far as I can tell, they have had NO significant successes at all. Ever.\nFrom the very start, they were constructed for failure. The main idea in founding the CIA was \u0026ldquo;to prevent another Pearl Harbor\u0026rdquo; by keeping a close eye on other nations and to distill those observations into a keen understanding of what those nations were actually up to. That notion (or at least, the actual practice of it) was pretty much tossed in the dumpster the day the doors opened. Instead, they jumped on the anti-Commie bandwagon like the rest of the government, and there they stayed until chunks of the Berlin Wall actually started falling on their heads some 30 years later. The black-or-white thinking that so characterizes the neocons of today was the CIA\u0026rsquo;s one and only mode of thought. The rules that set the entire tone for the CIA were simple:\n-There is ONE enemy in the world: the Commies.\n-The Commies want to destroy us.\n-If you\u0026rsquo;re not with us, you\u0026rsquo;re against us, and hence a Commie.\n-The enemy of my enemy is my friend.\nAnd that\u0026rsquo;s it. No shades of gray, no questioning of those basic principles, no consideration of other possibilities (apparently, not even that the recently-defeated Axis powers might be a threat again). This thinking would blind the intelligence-gathering division almost until the 1990s.\nThen it got worse. Almost immediately, the veterans of Wild Bill Donovan\u0026rsquo;s he-man OSS corps elbowed their way to the table and decreed that clandestine operations should be the REAL focus of the CIA. Screw this reading other people\u0026rsquo;s mail stuff, we\u0026rsquo;ve got to go and blow shit up, shoot people and sabotage the spread of communism wherever it shows its head. From that day on, the intelligence-gathering division was relegated to a barely-tolerated afterthought.\nThe major problem with this plan was that the CIA really sucked at it. No, I mean REALLY sucked\u0026hellip;and I mean both the clandestine and the intelligence-gathering. From the start, the agency was run by smugger-than-thou Yalies and uppercrust preppies who felt they didn\u0026rsquo;t need to actually KNOW about any of this stuff they were blowing up, it was Commie stuff, so it just needed blowing up. The willful ignorance and stupidity practiced by the CIA was just staggering.\nOver and over and over again, the book lays out details of CIA foreign stations where not a single officer there spoke the local language, knew anything about the history of the region, or ever made any effort to learn anything that was going on outside of what could be picked up over cocktails at the country club. The CIA guys in Laos who were arming and training Hmong tribesmen to fight the North Vietnamese didn\u0026rsquo;t even know the name \u0026ldquo;Hmong.\u0026rdquo; They called them by a term that the author says was somewhere between \u0026ldquo;barbarian\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;nigger.\u0026rdquo; In the 70s-80s, the agency\u0026rsquo;s TOP Soviet expert spoke not a single word of Russian. And he had never even set foot there. The way the CIA learned that the Berlin Wall was falling\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;m NOT making this up\u0026ndash;was when somebody at headquarters happened to tune into CNN.\nOver and over and over again, the book tells of CIA directors and top officers who were drunks, liars, con men. One CIA director was eventually committed to the happy home, and the guy who ran the counterintelligence division for years was widely regarded to be certifiable for most of his tenure.\nOver and over and over again, the author details clandestine operations that went horribly, disastrously wrong. Massive clusterfucks like the Bay of Pigs were far more the rule than the exception. For years, the CIA was supplying money and weapons to a Polish resistance group fighting the Soviets. The only problem was, it didn\u0026rsquo;t exist. It had been wiped out years earlier by the KGB, and the whole operation was just a scam on the CIA run by the Soviets. They even donated some of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s money to the Italian Communist Party as a final dig.\nOne side aspect of the story is that any JFK conspiracy theories that claim the CIA planned the assassination have had a stake decisively hammered through them. If the CIA had planned the JFK assassination, the only result would have been that a goatherd in a small Congolese village would have become the village\u0026rsquo;s head man when all seven other contenders for the job suddenly perished in a freak bobsled accident. And a baker in Skipros, Greece would have received a shipment of German anti-tank missiles in crates labeled in Linear B, and an envelope with 2 million Romanian Lei inside.\nAnd speaking of presidents and murder plots, the book suggests that the famous plot by Saddam to kill Papa Bush might not have been what it appeared. The \u0026ldquo;confession\u0026rdquo; of the plotters that they were working for Saddam was tortured out of them by the Kuwaitis, and the author notes that the alleged conspirators were really just a bunch of hash smugglers and other low-level criminal types.\nMeanwhile, over in the intelligence-gathering division (and of course, the two divisions did frequently overlap), things weren\u0026rsquo;t going any better. Over and over and over again, we read of utter and complete failure to plant spies in Commie countries. Not a single one of the dozens and dozens of spies dropped into North Korea during the Korean war was ever heard from again. The same was true for just about every other spy dropped into every other country. In one case, after dozens of spies disappeared without a trace, it was discovered later that the clerk who typed up the orders for the insertion was working for the Commies, so the KGB was there to meet them when they hit the ground. Although the CIA managed to recruit a handful of low-level spies in the Soviet Union (one was a high school teacher, another a roofer), in the entire cold war, they only ever managed to recruit three\u0026ndash;count em\u0026ndash;THREE spies of any consequence. All were arrested and shot.\nWhen they did gather intelligence, it was ludicrously wrong FAR more often than it was right. Indeed, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the book details a single case where the CIA got its intelligence right on a major issue. In 1961, they reported that the Soviets had 500 nukes pointed at the US. They were just a tad high. 496 high, to be precise. The Soviets had a grand total of FOUR nukes pointed at us. Nonetheless, that report set of a frenzy of weapons building that brought us to the brink of nuclear war and economic collapse. Over and over again, the book tells of the CIA reporting that \u0026lt;X\u0026gt; will never do \u0026lt;Y\u0026gt;. And then two days later, \u0026lt;X\u0026gt; doing \u0026lt;Y\u0026gt; was on the front page of the daily paper. They confidently predicted the Russians wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have a nuke for years just about 2 weeks before the Russians tested their first one. They said that Saddam was just bluffing when he massed tens of thousands of troops on the Kuwaiti border.\nThe few times they did score on a piece of correct intelligence, they got it from the spy agencies of other countries. In a 1956 speech to the Congress of the Communist Party, Khruschchev delivered a scathing denunciation of Stalin. The CIA had to get a copy of the speech from the Israeli secret service.\nEven the things that the CIA defined as \u0026ldquo;successes\u0026rdquo; were questionable at best, particularly in the long run. What the CIA did have a fair record at was overthrowing democratically-elected governments and replacing them with right-wing despots. When the democratically-elected PM of Iran suggested to the Brits and Americans that maybe Iran should get a little more of all that oil money that they were taking out of his country, they laughed and told him to STFU/GBTW. So he suggested that maybe he might just nationalize the oil fields. WELL, that\u0026rsquo;s your actual commie talk, of course, so the CIA overthrew him and put a puppet Shah in his place\u0026hellip;and then trained and outfitted a brutal secret police to keep the sheeple in line. That is the chief reason why a lot of Iranians hate our guts today. The CIA considered their arming and training of Afghan Muslim fanatics to kill Russians to be a spectacular success\u0026hellip;and I think we all know how that turned out in the third act.\nThat was the norm for the CIA. That \u0026ldquo;enemy of my enemy is my friend\u0026rdquo; thing led them into bed with every kind of lying, thieving, murdering drunken thug in the sewer, just as long as they were anti-Commie.The CIA cheerfully funded openly unrepentant Nazis just after the end of WWII, and actually went downhill from there. I can\u0026rsquo;t think of any case where the CIA helped overthrow a government and then replaced it with a fair, lawful one.\nAnd the thing is, they weren\u0026rsquo;t even any good at overthrowing governments, they were just lucky. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a case of skillful psychological warfare and precisely-timed black ops, they basically just paid goons to start shooting people in the streets. At least one operation, an attempted coup in Indonesia, ended with the US military shooting at the CIA\u0026rsquo;s own hired thugs.\nNow, even though no President in the CIA\u0026rsquo;s history comes off looking very good in this book, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t as if nobody noticed how bad the CIA\u0026rsquo;s record was. Over and over and over again, blue-ribbon panels, inspectors general, and even internal CIA reviewers were commissioned to report on the effectiveness of the agency, and like the reports were Xeroxed, they all reached the same conclusion: the CIA is seriously, SERIOUSLY broken, and probably the best thing we could do is just torch the place. These reports were all either just buried, or tut-tutted over in the press for a couple weeks, and then everything returned to incompetence as usual.\nThe punchline to all this is it really appears now that the Commies just weren\u0026rsquo;t that much of a threat, even when Stalin was in power. Khruschchev himself wrote that the concept of an all-out war with the west terrified Stalin, and then later Khruschchev was making tentative peace feelers with the US when the CIA sent \u0026ldquo;just one more\u0026rdquo; U2 flight into Russian airspace, and that slammed the door for years. Sure, the Soviets were out to flatter, bribe, steal, or bully influence in countries all around the world that had oil, minerals, or a strategic location. Just as we were. Just as every other world power has done in history. I think that a great deal of the fault for the cold war has to be laid at the CIA\u0026rsquo;s feet.\nAnd since \u0026ldquo;the only enemy in the world\u0026rdquo; up and vanished, the rudderless ship of the CIA has been even more adrift. After the 9/11 attacks, the command structure of the agency was changed (think re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic), and the former position of CIA director was more-or-less replaced by the position of Director of National Intelligence. The last actual CIA director was Porter Goss, and his main contribution to the fun was to systematically sack everybody in the agency who disagreed with Dubya\u0026rsquo;s policies. That got rid of the last people who might actually know something useful. After that, some 50% of the employees were so new as to be classified as \u0026ldquo;trainees.\u0026rdquo; And then it got worse. Today, a number of private intelligence agencies have sprung up like weeds, and they all pay much better than the CIA. So the current career track there is to join the CIA, get the training, put in five years or so, quit, join Spooks R Us for double the pay\u0026hellip;and then show up for work the next day at the CIA wearing a contractor badge instead of an employee badge.\nReading this book was a gut-wrenching, eye-opening experience. For the first couple hundred pages, I was outraged. Then, it just kept coming, it didn\u0026rsquo;t let up, and I was eventually left with just a numb shock, and even a kind of disgust at being an American. The book really gives you a better perspective of what\u0026rsquo;s been going on in the world for the last 60 years, and why we are where we are and why the people who hate us came to that opinion. The book has just been released in paperback, and it should be required reading in high school.\nMy opinion now (and I mean this with almost no sarcasm) is that one of the greatest threats\u0026ndash;perhaps THE greatest threat\u0026ndash;to America since 1947 has in fact been the CIA. They have spent uncounted billions of dollars, caused uncounted thousands, hundreds of thousands, of deaths, put America in bed with a staggeringly long list of murderers, liars, goons, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, \u0026hellip;well, lots of bad guys. And through all that, they failed to predict even a SINGLE event of significance to the US (there have been a couple of cases where they got something right, but nobody listened because they were usually wrong). Instead, they tarnished our reputation around the world, and led us to the brink of both nuclear and conventional war too many times to comfortably recount. And so far, every single President has gotten disgusted with them, decided they weren\u0026rsquo;t worth the powder and shot to put them down, and then increased their budget and left them as a mess for the next President to clean up. But the CIA HAS demonstrated a cheerful willingness to spy on Americans (they\u0026rsquo;ve been doing it at least since the 60s), and to do any vile thing they\u0026rsquo;re called upon to do. So with the current neocon push for an Imperial President and a Big Brother state, they are in a perfect position to step up and become our very own KGB or Gestapo\u0026hellip;but minus the competence.\n[Previously at this blog on Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book:\n\u0026ldquo;Abolish the CIA\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;The CIA in Venezuela in 2002\u0026rdquo;\nAlso Rottin\u0026rsquo; in Denmark has a review of the Weiner book similar in some respects to Dave\u0026rsquo;s.]\nHistorical Comments Vinny (2008-05-28):\nIt is a stunning story. I listened to the audiobook and I kept thinking to myself how much better off this country would have been if the CIA had devoted it's efforts to gathering information rather than covert operations.\"\nUnknown (2009-12-16):\nhttps://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-cia.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/dave-palmers-review-of-legacy-of-ashes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDave Palmer recently finished reading Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e, and sent the following review to the SKEPTIC list on May 23.  I liked it so much that I asked him if I could republish it here, and he agreed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo back in April, I was in a bookshop, and my eyes fell on a meaty, red-covered book called Legacy of Ashes, the History of the CIA. \u0026ldquo;Huh, that looks interesting,\u0026rdquo; sez I. Then a more rational voice in my head pops up. \u0026ldquo;Are you frakking nuts? You already know a bit about that spook house, reading a book like that will only piss you off.\u0026rdquo; But it was my birthday, so I HAD to have me a little something.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMan, does it get tiresome being right ALL the time\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is an appalling, sickening, infuriating book, particularly since its impeccable scholarship requires one to take it seriously. Unlike your average innuendo-and-hearsay CIA book, this one is based entirely on historical and declassified government documents and on-the-record interviews with named (and heavily-footnoted) sources, usually with the most senior personnel. The author, Tim Weiner, is a Pulitzer-winning NY Times reporter who has been covering US intelligence agencies for 20 years. He\u0026rsquo;s the kind of guy who just pops out for lunch with current and past CIA Directors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLike a lot of people, I had always assumed that the CIA might have a few massive public screwups (such as the Bay of Pigs), and there were surely times when Presidents ignored or twisted the CIA\u0026rsquo;s intelligence to political ends (witness the current misadventure in Iraq), but underneath it all, there was at least SOME small bit of competence at work in the agency; there were people there who at least knew how to gather useful intelligence. Like the old quote about the CIA goes, their failures are all public, their successes are all secret.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOK, so maybe I\u0026rsquo;m not right ALL the time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTurns out, the CIA is in fact a Mongolian clusterfuck of staggering, breathtaking proportions. And they always have been, all the way back to their founding in 1947 (and even the OSS, the agency\u0026rsquo;s WWII precursor, wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite as swift as they\u0026rsquo;re made out to be on The History Channel). If the guy who coined the term \u0026ldquo;epic fail\u0026rdquo; had read this book, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have bothered, there is no point in describing the ocean with teaspoon-sized words. As far as I can tell, they have had NO significant successes at all. Ever.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom the very start, they were constructed for failure. The main idea in founding the CIA was \u0026ldquo;to prevent another Pearl Harbor\u0026rdquo; by keeping a close eye on other nations and to distill those observations into a keen understanding of what those nations were actually up to. That notion (or at least, the actual practice of it) was pretty much tossed in the dumpster the day the doors opened. Instead, they jumped on the anti-Commie bandwagon like the rest of the government, and there they stayed until chunks of the Berlin Wall actually started falling on their heads some 30 years later. The black-or-white thinking that so characterizes the neocons of today was the CIA\u0026rsquo;s one and only mode of thought. The rules that set the entire tone for the CIA were simple:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e-There is ONE enemy in the world: the Commies.\u003cbr /\u003e-The Commies want to destroy us.\u003cbr /\u003e-If you\u0026rsquo;re not with us, you\u0026rsquo;re against us, and hence a Commie.\u003cbr /\u003e-The enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that\u0026rsquo;s it. No shades of gray, no questioning of those basic principles, no consideration of other possibilities (apparently, not even that the recently-defeated Axis powers might be a threat again). This thinking would blind the intelligence-gathering division almost until the 1990s.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen it got worse. Almost immediately, the veterans of Wild Bill Donovan\u0026rsquo;s he-man OSS corps elbowed their way to the table and decreed that clandestine operations should be the REAL focus of the CIA. Screw this reading other people\u0026rsquo;s mail stuff, we\u0026rsquo;ve got to go and blow shit up, shoot people and sabotage the spread of communism wherever it shows its head. From that day on, the intelligence-gathering division was relegated to a barely-tolerated afterthought.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe major problem with this plan was that the CIA really sucked at it. No, I mean REALLY sucked\u0026hellip;and I mean both the clandestine and the intelligence-gathering. From the start, the agency was run by smugger-than-thou Yalies and uppercrust preppies who felt they didn\u0026rsquo;t need to actually KNOW about any of this stuff they were blowing up, it was Commie stuff, so it just needed blowing up. The willful ignorance and stupidity practiced by the CIA was just staggering.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOver and over and over again, the book lays out details of CIA foreign stations where not a single officer there spoke the local language, knew anything about the history of the region, or ever made any effort to learn anything that was going on outside of what could be picked up over cocktails at the country club. The CIA guys in Laos who were arming and training Hmong tribesmen to fight the North Vietnamese didn\u0026rsquo;t even know the name \u0026ldquo;Hmong.\u0026rdquo; They called them by a term that the author says was somewhere between \u0026ldquo;barbarian\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;nigger.\u0026rdquo;  In the 70s-80s, the agency\u0026rsquo;s TOP Soviet expert spoke not a single word of Russian. And he had never even set foot there. The way the CIA learned that the Berlin Wall was falling\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;m NOT making this up\u0026ndash;was when somebody at headquarters happened to tune into CNN.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOver and over and over again, the book tells of CIA directors and top officers who were drunks, liars, con men. One CIA director was eventually committed to the happy home, and the guy who ran the counterintelligence division for years was widely regarded to be certifiable for most of his tenure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOver and over and over again, the author details clandestine operations that went horribly, disastrously wrong. Massive clusterfucks like the Bay of Pigs were far more the rule than the exception. For years, the CIA was supplying money and weapons to a Polish resistance group fighting the Soviets. The only problem was, it didn\u0026rsquo;t exist. It had been wiped out years earlier by the KGB, and the whole operation was just a scam on the CIA run by the Soviets. They even donated some of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s money to the Italian Communist Party as a final dig.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne side aspect of the story is that any JFK conspiracy theories that claim the CIA planned the assassination have had a stake decisively hammered through them. If the CIA had planned the JFK assassination, the only result would have been that a goatherd in a small Congolese village would have become the village\u0026rsquo;s head man when all seven other contenders for the job suddenly perished in a freak bobsled accident. And a baker in Skipros, Greece would have received a shipment of German anti-tank missiles in crates labeled in Linear B, and an envelope with 2 million Romanian Lei inside.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd speaking of presidents and murder plots, the book suggests that the famous plot by Saddam to kill Papa Bush might not have been what it appeared. The \u0026ldquo;confession\u0026rdquo; of the plotters that they were working for Saddam was tortured out of them by the Kuwaitis, and the author notes that the alleged conspirators were really just a bunch of hash smugglers and other low-level criminal types.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMeanwhile, over in the intelligence-gathering division (and of course, the two divisions did frequently overlap), things weren\u0026rsquo;t going any better. Over and over and over again, we read of utter and complete failure to plant spies in Commie countries. Not a single one of the dozens and dozens of spies dropped into North Korea during the Korean war was ever heard from again. The same was true for just about every other spy dropped into every other country. In one case, after dozens of spies disappeared without a trace, it was discovered later that the clerk who typed up the orders for the insertion was working for the Commies, so the KGB was there to meet them when they hit the ground. Although the CIA managed to recruit a handful of low-level spies in the Soviet Union (one was a high school teacher, another a roofer), in the entire cold war, they only ever managed to recruit three\u0026ndash;count em\u0026ndash;THREE spies of any consequence.   All were arrested and shot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen they did gather intelligence, it was ludicrously wrong FAR more often than it was right. Indeed, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the book details a single case where the CIA got its intelligence right on a major issue. In 1961, they reported that the Soviets had 500 nukes pointed at the US. They were just a tad high. 496 high, to be precise. The Soviets had a grand total of FOUR nukes pointed at us. Nonetheless, that report set of a frenzy of weapons building that brought us to the brink of nuclear war and economic collapse. Over and over again, the book tells of the CIA reporting that \u0026lt;X\u0026gt; will never do \u0026lt;Y\u0026gt;. And then two days later, \u0026lt;X\u0026gt; doing \u0026lt;Y\u0026gt; was on the front page of the daily paper. They confidently predicted the Russians wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have a nuke for years just about 2 weeks before the Russians tested their first one. They said that Saddam was just bluffing when he massed tens of thousands of troops on the Kuwaiti border.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe few times they did score on a piece of correct intelligence, they got it from the spy agencies of other countries. In a 1956 speech to the Congress of the Communist Party, Khruschchev delivered a scathing denunciation of Stalin. The CIA had to get a copy of the speech from the Israeli secret service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEven the things that the CIA defined as \u0026ldquo;successes\u0026rdquo; were questionable at best, particularly in the long run. What the CIA did have a fair record at was overthrowing democratically-elected governments and replacing them with right-wing despots. When the democratically-elected PM of Iran suggested to the Brits and Americans that maybe Iran should get a little more of all that oil money that they were taking out of his country, they laughed and told him to STFU/GBTW. So he suggested that maybe he might just nationalize the oil fields. WELL, that\u0026rsquo;s your actual commie talk, of course, so the CIA overthrew him and put a puppet Shah in his place\u0026hellip;and then trained and outfitted a brutal secret police to keep the sheeple in line. That is the chief reason why a lot of Iranians hate our guts today. The CIA considered their arming and training of Afghan Muslim fanatics to kill Russians to be a \u003cem\u003espectacular\u003c/em\u003e success\u0026hellip;and I think we all know how that turned out in the third act.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat was the norm for the CIA. That \u0026ldquo;enemy of my enemy is my friend\u0026rdquo; thing led them into bed with every kind of lying, thieving, murdering drunken thug in the sewer, just as long as they were anti-Commie.The CIA cheerfully funded openly unrepentant Nazis just after the end of WWII, and actually went downhill from there. I can\u0026rsquo;t think of any case where the CIA helped overthrow a government and then replaced it with a fair, lawful one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the thing is, they weren\u0026rsquo;t even any good at overthrowing governments, they were just lucky. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a case of skillful psychological warfare and precisely-timed black ops, they basically just paid goons to start shooting people in the streets. At least one operation, an attempted coup in Indonesia, ended with the US military shooting at the CIA\u0026rsquo;s own hired thugs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, even though no President in the CIA\u0026rsquo;s history comes off looking very good in this book, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t as if nobody noticed how bad the CIA\u0026rsquo;s record was. Over and over and over again, blue-ribbon panels, inspectors general, and even internal CIA reviewers were commissioned to report on the effectiveness of the agency, and like the reports were Xeroxed, they all reached the same conclusion: the CIA is seriously, SERIOUSLY broken, and probably the best thing we could do is just torch the place. These reports were all either just buried, or tut-tutted over in the press for a couple weeks, and then everything returned to incompetence as usual.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe punchline to all this is it really appears now that the Commies just weren\u0026rsquo;t that much of a threat, even when Stalin was in power. Khruschchev himself wrote that the concept of an all-out war with the west terrified Stalin, and then later Khruschchev was making tentative peace feelers with the US when the CIA sent \u0026ldquo;just one more\u0026rdquo; U2 flight into Russian airspace, and that slammed the door for years. Sure, the Soviets were out to flatter, bribe, steal, or bully influence in countries all around the world that had oil, minerals, or a strategic location. Just as we were. Just as every other world power has done in history. I think that a great deal of the fault for the cold war has to be laid at the CIA\u0026rsquo;s feet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd since \u0026ldquo;the only enemy in the world\u0026rdquo; up and vanished, the rudderless ship of the CIA has been even more adrift. After the 9/11 attacks, the command structure of the agency was changed (think re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic), and the former position of CIA director was more-or-less replaced by the position of Director of National Intelligence. The last actual CIA director was Porter Goss, and his main contribution to the fun was to systematically sack everybody in the agency who disagreed with Dubya\u0026rsquo;s policies. That got rid of the last people who might actually know something useful. After that, some 50% of the employees were so new as to be classified as \u0026ldquo;trainees.\u0026rdquo; And then it got worse. Today, a number of private intelligence agencies have sprung up like weeds, and they all pay much better than the CIA. So the current career track there is to join the CIA, get the training, put in five years or so, quit, join Spooks R Us for double the pay\u0026hellip;and then show up for work the next day at the CIA wearing a contractor badge instead of an employee badge.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReading this book was a gut-wrenching, eye-opening experience. For the first couple hundred pages, I was outraged. Then, it just kept coming, it didn\u0026rsquo;t let up, and I was eventually left with just a numb shock, and even a kind of disgust at being an American. The book really gives you a better perspective of what\u0026rsquo;s been going on in the world for the last 60 years, and why we are where we are and why the people who hate us came to that opinion. The book has just been released in paperback, and it should be required reading in high school.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy opinion now (and I mean this with almost no sarcasm) is that one of the greatest threats\u0026ndash;perhaps THE greatest threat\u0026ndash;to America since 1947 has in fact been the CIA. They have spent uncounted billions of dollars, caused uncounted thousands, hundreds of thousands, of deaths, put America in bed with a staggeringly long list of murderers, liars, goons, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, \u0026hellip;well, lots of bad guys. And through all that, they failed to predict even a SINGLE event of significance to the US (there have been a couple of cases where they got something right, but nobody listened because they were usually wrong). Instead, they tarnished our reputation around the world, and led us to the brink of both nuclear and conventional war too many times to comfortably recount. And so far, every single President has gotten disgusted with them, decided they weren\u0026rsquo;t worth the powder and shot to put them down, and then increased their budget and left them as a mess for the next President to clean up. But the CIA HAS demonstrated a cheerful willingness to spy on Americans (they\u0026rsquo;ve been doing it at least since the 60s), and to do any vile thing they\u0026rsquo;re called upon to do. So with the current neocon push for an Imperial President and a Big Brother state, they are in a perfect position to step up and become our very own KGB or Gestapo\u0026hellip;but minus the competence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Previously at this blog on Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/abolish-cia.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Abolish the CIA\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1945-1953-truman.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1953-1961.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/cia-in-venezuela-in-2002.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The CIA in Venezuela in 2002\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso \u003ca href=\"http://rottenindenmark.vox.com/library/post/things-that-struck-me-while-reading-legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-the-cia-by-tim-weiner.html\"\u003eRottin\u0026rsquo; in Denmark has a review of the Weiner book similar in some respects to Dave\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/y\u003e\u003c/x\u003e\u003c/y\u003e\u003c/x\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dave Palmer's review of Legacy of Ashes"},{"content":"The UK\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous laws are not only being used to infringe free speech in the UK, as when a 15-year-old picketing the Church of Scientology is given a citation for a sign referring to Scientology as a \u0026ldquo;cult,\u0026quot; but to chill speech elsewhere as a result of its bad libel laws, where it seems to be all-too-easy for a deep-pocketed plaintiff to get a judgment against publishers of legitimate criticism. Recent examples include Khalid Salim A. Bin Mahfouz\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld for her book Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, which resulted in a $225,000 default judgment against Ehrenfeld in London, even though she doesn\u0026rsquo;t live there and the book wasn\u0026rsquo;t published there; Bin Mahfouz obtained standing because some individuals in Britain purchased the book. This has led to the State of New York proposing an amendment to its code of civil practice to prohibit the enforcement of foreign libel judgments. Bin Mahfouz has similarly successfully sued in the UK against other writers 33 times for linking him to terrorism.\nSimilarly, a Ukrainian tycoon, Rinat Akhmetov, has sued in London against a Ukrainian newspaper, the Kyiv Post, owned by an American, even though it\u0026rsquo;s not published in the UK, on the grounds that 100 subscribers are located in Britain. Akhmetov has also successfully sued Obozrevatel (Observer), a Ukrainian Internet news site that\u0026rsquo;s not even in English, in the UK.\nI think New York has the right idea. Better yet would be if Britain reforms its libel and insult laws.\nUPDATE (May 23, 2008): The Crown Prosecution Service has declined to prosecute the boy with the \u0026ldquo;cult\u0026rdquo; sign, stating that \u0026ldquo;Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness (as opposed to criticism), neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression.\u0026rdquo; Yet abuse, insult, and offense should not be the standard in any case.\nEd Brayton has now commented on that story at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-05-23):\nSpeaking as a British citizen, I entirely agree, although I attribute this scandalous situation to the denial, by politicians of all stripes, of a written constitution to Her Majesty's subjects.Citizens of the United States have enjoyed the protections of such a constitution, embodying a codified declaration of fundamental human rights, since 1787. American citizens can cite The First Amendment as a statutory guarantee of their right to freedom of expression, for example. While recognizing the merits of the common law, the fact is that until the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into domestic law, a British citizen had nothing remotely equivalent in terms of a readily accessible guarantee of his or her right to freedom of speech.In this particular case, I would hope that consideration is being given to an action against the police under the terms of the Human Rights Act on the grounds that the victim's rights under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights were violated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/uk-infringement-of-freedom-of-speech.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe UK\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous laws are not only being used to infringe free speech in the UK, as when a 15-year-old picketing the Church of Scientology is \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/posts/1211313682.shtml\"\u003egiven a citation for a sign referring to Scientology as a \u0026ldquo;cult,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e but to \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11333006\"\u003echill speech elsewhere as a result of its bad libel laws\u003c/a\u003e, where it seems to be all-too-easy for a deep-pocketed plaintiff to get a judgment against publishers of legitimate criticism.  Recent examples include Khalid Salim A. Bin Mahfouz\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld for her book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFunding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It\u003c/span\u003e, which resulted in a $225,000 default judgment against Ehrenfeld in London, even though she doesn\u0026rsquo;t live there and the book wasn\u0026rsquo;t published there; Bin Mahfouz obtained standing because some individuals in Britain purchased the book.  This has led to the State of New York \u003ca href=\"http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6524051.html\"\u003eproposing an amendment to its code of civil practice to prohibit the enforcement of foreign libel judgments\u003c/a\u003e.  Bin Mahfouz has similarly successfully sued in the UK against other writers 33 times for linking him to terrorism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSimilarly, a Ukrainian tycoon, Rinat Akhmetov, has sued in London against a Ukrainian newspaper, the Kyiv Post, owned by an American, even though it\u0026rsquo;s not published in the UK, on the grounds that 100 subscribers are located in Britain.  Akhmetov has also successfully sued \u003ca href=\"http://www.obozrevatel.com/\"\u003eObozrevatel\u003c/a\u003e (Observer), a Ukrainian Internet news site that\u0026rsquo;s not even in English, in the UK.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think New York has the right idea.  Better yet would be if Britain reforms its libel and insult laws.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 23, 2008): The Crown Prosecution Service \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7416425.stm\"\u003ehas declined to prosecute the boy with the \u0026ldquo;cult\u0026rdquo; sign\u003c/a\u003e, stating that \u0026ldquo;Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness (as opposed to criticism), neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression.\u0026rdquo;  Yet abuse, insult, and offense should not be the standard in any case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/cant_call_scientology_a_cult_i.php\"\u003ehas now commented on that story at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"UK infringement of freedom of speech"},{"content":"Dennis Prager writes, regarding the California Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s decision to strike down a ban on same-sex marriage, that:\nThe sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity - especially females - can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction - until now, accomplished through marriage. It sounds like he thinks that female heterosexuality is so tenuous that it must be enforced by the power of law. Does he also think this is a justification for denying civil liberties and rights to women?\nEd Brayton gives a good fisking to Prager\u0026rsquo;s entire crazy essay on this subject, showing that his arguments are very similar to arguments that were made against integration and interracial marriage in response to Supreme Court decisions.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2008-05-23):\nThe real tragedy here, to my mind anyway, is that anything other than laughing in Prager's face is even considered necessary.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/dennis-prager-on-women-and-sex.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDennis Prager writes, regarding the California Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s decision to strike down a ban on same-sex marriage, that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity - especially females - can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction - until now, accomplished through marriage.\u003c/blockquote\u003e  It sounds like he thinks that female heterosexuality is so tenuous that it must be enforced by the power of law.  Does he also think this is a justification for denying civil liberties and rights to women?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/pragers_nonsense_on_the_califo.php\"\u003egives a good fisking to Prager\u0026rsquo;s entire crazy essay on this subject\u003c/a\u003e, showing that his arguments are very similar to arguments that were made against integration and interracial marriage in response to Supreme Court decisions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dennis Prager on women and sex"},{"content":"The latest e-Skeptic from the Skeptics Society features an article by former Phoenix New Times investigative reporter (and now editor of the Village Voice), Tony Ortega, titled \u0026ldquo;The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again).\u0026quot; Ortega already published the best explanation to date in Phoenix New Times shortly after the two events took place.\nHe doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention the \u0026ldquo;new Phoenix Lights\u0026rdquo; that appeared this year, which turned out to be flares tied to helium balloons, nor last year\u0026rsquo;s reappearances of the \u0026ldquo;Phoenix Lights,\u0026rdquo; which corresponded with Air Force training with flares, nor former Arizona Governor Fife Symington\u0026rsquo;s claim that he saw the original lights and thinks it was an extraterrestrial spacecraft, which shows that he\u0026rsquo;s an idiot.\nTony Ortega is also known for his hard-hitting investigative reporting on the Church of Scientology, and his work has been referenced at this blog regarding both subjects, along with the case of the killer who ran for state legislature in 2006.\nUPDATE (July 20, 2009): Tim Printy has more detail on the explanation of the Phoenix Lights than I\u0026rsquo;ve seen elsewhere.\nHistorical Comments Jerry (2009-05-14):\nI witnessed something similar to the Phoenix Lights and its' supposed mile long V shaped object. In 1990, near Elko, Nevada at around 1AM, Layne Western was drilling near the area and I was part of that crew. At the time, I was monitoring our water pit when I noticed the lights in the night sky. They were spread out like the Phoenix Lights and as it got closer, I could make a V shaped object that spanned from one end of the horizon to the other. It was enormous! What was eary is that it had no engine noise and quiet. So, when it got to close enough to our rig, I did notice what look like jet fighters on each side of this behemoth. I knew it was jet fighters because I recognize the fuselage shape of an F16 or F17. I then thought it might be some kind of military secret craft seeing as how it was near groom lake, NV. Then many years later, I saw the B2 bomber for the first time during the Iraq war and I thought that it might have been it. I just wanted to share this information. I attest this statement in its\u0026rsquo; entirety to be a true witnessed event.\nThanks!@\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/phoenix-lights-of-1997-explained-yet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest e-Skeptic from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003eSkeptics Society\u003c/a\u003e features an article by former \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix New Times\u003c/span\u003e investigative reporter (and now editor of the Village Voice), Tony Ortega, titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-05-21/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again).\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Ortega already published \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1998-03-05/news/the-hack-and-the-quack/\"\u003ethe best explanation to date in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhoenix New Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e shortly after the two events took place.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention the \u0026ldquo;new Phoenix Lights\u0026rdquo; that appeared this year, \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/new-phoenix-lights.html\"\u003ewhich turned out to be flares tied to helium balloons\u003c/a\u003e, nor last year\u0026rsquo;s reappearances of the \u0026ldquo;Phoenix Lights,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"/2007/02/return-of-phoenix-lights.html\"\u003ewhich corresponded with Air Force training with flares\u003c/a\u003e, nor former Arizona Governor Fife Symington\u0026rsquo;s claim that he saw the original lights and thinks it was an extraterrestrial spacecraft, \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/former-arizona-governor-endorses.html\"\u003ewhich shows that he\u0026rsquo;s an idiot\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTony Ortega is also known for his \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1999-12-23/news/double-crossed/\"\u003ehard-hitting investigative reporting on the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e, and his work has been referenced at this blog regarding \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/former-arizona-governor-endorses.html\"\u003eboth\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/scientology-celebrity-escapes.html\"\u003esubjects\u003c/a\u003e, along with \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/killer-runs-for-state-legislature.html\"\u003ethe case of the killer who ran for state legislature in 2006\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (July 20, 2009):  Tim Printy \u003ca href=\"http://home.comcast.net/%7Etprinty/UFO/AZUFO.htm\"\u003ehas more detail on the explanation of the Phoenix Lights than I\u0026rsquo;ve seen elsewhere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Phoenix Lights of 1997, explained yet again"},{"content":"New Scientist reports that a poll of 2000 high school teachers in 2007 with 939 respondents found that 2% did not cover evolution at all, the majority spent 3-10 classroom hours on evolution, about a quarter reported spending some time on creationism or intelligent design, and of those, 48% (12.5% of the respondents) taught it as a \u0026ldquo;valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species.\u0026quot;\n16% of high school science teachers in the sample said that they believed human beings were created in their current form by God within the last 10,000 years. Teachers who believed in young-earth creationism spent 35% fewer hours teaching evolution than other teachers.\nThe study in question, from PLoS Biology, may be found online.\nFurther summary may be found at Pharyngula.\nHistorical Comments James Hanley (2008-05-21):\nThat's a depressing way to start my morning.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/16-of-us-science-teachers-are.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Scientist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13930-16-of-us-science-teachers-are-creationists.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts\u0026amp;nsref=news4_head_dn1\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e that a poll of 2000 high school teachers in 2007 with 939 respondents found that 2% did not cover evolution at all, the majority spent 3-10 classroom hours on evolution, about a quarter reported spending some time on creationism or intelligent design, and of those, 48% (12.5% of the respondents) taught it as a \u0026ldquo;valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e16% of high school science teachers in the sample said that they believed human beings were created in their current form by God within the last 10,000 years.  Teachers who believed in young-earth creationism spent 35% fewer hours teaching evolution than other teachers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe study in question, \u003ca href=\"http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document\u0026amp;doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124\u0026amp;ct=1\u0026amp;SESSID=56fcc8b486ca8c8d28426a7d07705f87\"\u003efrom PLoS Biology, may be found online\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurther summary may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/creationists_in_the_american_c.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"16% of U.S. science teachers are creationists"},{"content":"The National Center for Science Education has a new YouTube video about how they proved in the Dover trial that the \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; in the book Of Pandas and People was simply old-school creationism under a different name.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/intelligent-design-creationism-ncse.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Center for Science Education has a new YouTube video about how they proved in the Dover trial that the \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e was simply old-school creationism under a different name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/GUB8Mv1SaKQ\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/GUB8Mv1SaKQ\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Intelligent design = creationism, NCSE video"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports today that Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s director of real estate studies at the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness has been presenting an unrealistically rosy picture of home resales in Maricopa County by including trustee sales as resales.\nTrustee\u0026rsquo;s sales are when banks take possession of a property from a borrower in default. As readers of this blog are aware, trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales have been going through the roof\u0026ndash;Einzige has been reporting notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales, issued when borrowers fall 90 days past due on their mortgages. The most recent such report was for April.\nBy including trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales, Butler\u0026rsquo;s numbers showed home resales up 15 percent in April 2008, year over year, the first uptick for year-over-year resales since July 2005. The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, on the other hand, showed a 12 percent decrease.\nApparently Butler failed to notice\u0026ndash;or didn\u0026rsquo;t see the point in telling\u0026ndash;that over a third of his reported resales were trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales (2,025 of 5,585). The corrected number for actual sales was 3,565 (lower than ARMLS\u0026rsquo;s number of 4,874).\nCompare that to April\u0026rsquo;s notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u0026ndash;6,184\u0026ndash;and you see the the immediate future prospects are bleak, not rosy. Homes are going on the resale market much faster than they are selling, which means further inventory growth and home prices have farther to fall.\nButler has agreed that he made a mistake and will report trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales separately from now on.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/asu-director-of-real-estate-studies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/articles/0520biz-homesales0520.html\"\u003ereports today that Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s director of real estate studies at the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness has been presenting an unrealistically rosy picture of home resales in Maricopa County by including trustee sales as resales\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTrustee\u0026rsquo;s sales are when banks take possession of a property from a borrower in default.  As readers of this blog are aware, trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales have been going through the roof\u0026ndash;Einzige has been reporting notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales, issued when borrowers fall 90 days past due on their mortgages.  The \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/aprils-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003emost recent such report was for April\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy including trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales, Butler\u0026rsquo;s numbers showed home resales up 15 percent in April 2008, year over year, the first uptick for year-over-year resales since July 2005.  The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, on the other hand, showed a 12 percent decrease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently Butler failed to notice\u0026ndash;or didn\u0026rsquo;t see the point in telling\u0026ndash;that over a third of his reported resales were trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales (2,025 of 5,585).  The corrected number for actual sales was 3,565 (lower than ARMLS\u0026rsquo;s number of 4,874).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCompare that to \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/aprils-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003eApril\u0026rsquo;s notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;6,184\u0026ndash;and you see the the immediate future prospects are bleak, not rosy.  Homes are going on the resale market much faster than they are selling, which means further inventory growth and home prices have farther to fall.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eButler has agreed that he made a mistake and will report trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales separately from now on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU director of real-estate studies uses bogus stats"},{"content":"The director of \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; video, Drew Heriot, is suing its author, Rhonda Byrne, for $150 million. Heriot claims he co-authored the screenplay and the book and is thus owed half of what the book and DVD have earned.\n\u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; advocates the \u0026ldquo;law of attraction,\u0026rdquo; which claims that everybody always gets what they deserve because what you think about comes to you. Apparently Heriot and Byrne have been thinking a lot about giving money to lawyers.\nByrne previously settled another legal case with \u0026ldquo;holistic healer\u0026rdquo; Vanessa Bonnette in Australia, and is facing two other lawsuits in the United States.\nPrevious critiques of the utter nonsense that is \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; may be found here. The fact that this claptrap has made so much money is a poor reflection on the gullibility and idiocy of far too many people on this planet.\nHistorical Comments Dr John Curtis (2008-05-19):\nAMEN!The Secret is the latest and by far the worst example of a HIGHLY profitable trend where self-help gurus with fabricated new age titles and little relevant education, credentials or legitimate expertise brainwash us into believing that they know what is best for us, our marriages and our families. Often their only contribution to society is introducing some exotic sounding, new age philosophy. However, they often cleverly form an incestuous group of like-minded “experts” who cross-promote each other by swearing their success is due to following the beliefs of another member of their “cult!” All the while, they ply the airwaves jockeying for an ever-larger audience by appearing in the national media to garner third-party endorsements. The Self-Help Movement has become the Self-Destruct Movement by diminishing or destroying our critical thinking skills to choose and evolve on our own. We have given up the freedom to build healthy lives, marriages and families based on our unique history and life experience. Instead many victims, blinded to the value of their own life experiences, are attracted to the latest secret in self-help, in an attempt to find out what they should think, feel and how they should act... this is the definition of a cult.The solution is a return to our (common) senses! The best way out of this learned “self-helplessness” is to go cold turkey. Stop following ALL self-help gurus now. Begin, instead, to reclaim your natural, God-given ability to think for yourself. The common sense that was once readily available to all of us is still there free of charge and waiting to be applied to just about any challenge we might face in life… all you have to do is use it.Please, let's all work together to stop the flock of \"sheepeople\" who blindly move from one UNPROVEN concept to the next, looking for the answers to life's challenges that you already possess and that is the OBVIOUS!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/secret-lawsuits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe director of \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; video, Drew Heriot, is suing its author, Rhonda Byrne, for $150 million.  Heriot \u003ca href=\"http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/17/1210765254572.html\"\u003eclaims he co-authored the screenplay and the book and is thus owed half of what the book and DVD have earned\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; advocates the \u0026ldquo;law of attraction,\u0026rdquo; which claims that everybody always gets what they deserve because what you think about comes to you.  Apparently Heriot and Byrne have been thinking a lot about giving money to lawyers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eByrne previously settled another legal case with \u0026ldquo;holistic healer\u0026rdquo; Vanessa Bonnette in Australia, and is facing two other lawsuits in the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrevious critiques of the utter nonsense that is \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; may be found \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/secretthe-law-of-attraction-critiqued.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The fact that this claptrap has made so much money is a poor reflection on the gullibility and idiocy of far too many people on this planet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Secret lawsuits"},{"content":"One of our Highline Canal ducks has had some children, which is probably why they\u0026rsquo;re still around even though temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/canal-ducks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2006/2504384076_a087c93d8a.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2006/2504384076_a087c93d8a.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOne of our Highline Canal ducks has had some children, which is probably why they\u0026rsquo;re still around even though temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Canal ducks"},{"content":"Conservative \u0026ldquo;family values\u0026rdquo; Republican Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) was arrested on DUI charges on May 1, 2008, and released to the custody of retired Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Fay. He originally claimed that he had been driving to pick up his sick daughter, then revised his story the next day to claim he was going to visit a sick friend. During his press conference, he refused to deny that he had previously driven under the influence of alcohol.\nIn fact, he had been having an extramarital affair with Fay for years, and had fathered an illegitimate child with her, which he admitted on May 8 after days of denials. He had essentially been living a double life, with his wife in New York City and with Fay and their now 3-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C.\nFossella has a lesbian sister, with whom he cut off all contact, and refuses to attend any family events if she is present with her partner.\nSome \u0026ldquo;family values.\u0026quot;\nHis Wikipedia page lists several other controversies regarding the Congressman, including financial misconduct. No doubt more will be found as his record is scrutinized further.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Wikipedia.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/dirty-politician-vito-fossella.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConservative \u0026ldquo;family values\u0026rdquo; Republican Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) was arrested on DUI charges on May 1, 2008, and released to the custody of retired Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Fay.  He originally claimed that he had been driving to pick up his sick daughter, then revised his story the next day to claim he was going to visit a sick friend.  During his press conference, he refused to deny that he had previously driven under the influence of alcohol.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn fact, he had been having an extramarital affair with Fay for years, and had fathered an illegitimate child with her, which he admitted on May 8 after days of denials.  He had essentially been living a double life, with his wife in New York City and with Fay and their now 3-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFossella has a lesbian sister, with whom he cut off all contact, and refuses to attend any family events if she is present with her partner.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome \u0026ldquo;family values.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis Wikipedia page lists several other controversies regarding the Congressman, including financial misconduct.  No doubt more will be found as his record is scrutinized further.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/fossella_story_gets_worse.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Fossella\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Vito Fossella"},{"content":"I was telling a coworker about the book A Planet for Texans, in which citizens sometimes have the right to assassinate politicians, and he told me about a little-known piece of U.S. history.\nIn 1936, political power in McMinn County, Tennessee was obtained by Paul Cantrell of Etowah, who ran as the Democratic candidate for county sheriff and successfully seized power from what had been a Republican-dominated county since the Civil War. Cantrell ended up putting in place a thoroughly corrupt political machine that retained power for a decade\u0026ndash;a crony of his, George Woods, was sent to the state legislature, and the county was redistricted to reduce the number of voting precincts and justices of the peace, and Cantrell\u0026rsquo;s power was solidified. There were unresolved reports of county election fraud in 1940, 1942, and 1944. The McMinn County Court, still dominated by Republicans, attempted to purchase voting machines to eliminate the fraud, but Woods, with the support of Democrats in the state legislature, responded by abolishing the county court. It all came to an end when Cantrell\u0026rsquo;s machine attempted to steal the 1946 election and was stopped with armed force in a battle involving more than 500 armed men with guns and dynamite who weren\u0026rsquo;t afraid to use them\u0026ndash;yet remarkably, no one was killed.\nWhat happened in 1946 was that a bunch of GIs returned home from the war. A group of them decided that they didn\u0026rsquo;t just fight for liberty in WWII to come back home to be governed by corrupt leadership, so they put together a slate to run for five county offices, including sheriff, under their own independent party. The GIs put an ad in the newspaper and drove around the county with a loudspeaker repeating their slogan, \u0026ldquo;your vote will be counted as cast.\u0026rdquo; Veterans from neighboring Blount County volunteered to help the McMinn County GIs in monitoring the election.\nOn the day of the election, August 1, 1946, the county saw the largest voter turnout in its history. In the afternoon, the Cantrell machine posted its own armed guards at each precinct, in preparation for transporting the ballot boxes to the county jail in Athens for counting. The GIs began assembling in Otto Kennedy\u0026rsquo;s Essankay Garage and Tire shop. At that meeting, it was reported that telegrams had been sent in late July to Gov. Jim McCord in Nashville and Tom Clark, the U.S. attorney general, asking for assistance to ensure a fair election, but neither had been answered. Those at the meeting agreed that those present who didn\u0026rsquo;t have their weapons with them should go home and get them. Most were back and armed by 3 p.m.\nAt that time, an elderly black farmer, Tom Gillespie, was told by Windy Wise, a Cantrell armed guard, that he could not vote, and Wise ended up beating him with brass knuckles and shooting him in the back. The two GI poll watchers at the precinct were taken hostage by Wise and Karl Neill, another Cantrell guard, and an angry crowd began to gather outside the polling place, the Athens Water Works. The two GIs ended up breaking through a plate glass window to escape into the crowd, and someone in the crowd shouted, \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s go get our guns!\u0026rdquo; When the Chief Deputy Boe Dunn and other Cantrell men showed up to get the ballot box to transport to the jail, they heard of this statement from Wise, and Dunn sent two deputies to the GI headquarters to make arrests. Those deputies were no match for the GIs, however, and were disarmed and taken hostage along with two others sent as reinforcements, and another three sent shortly thereafter. Those seven were beaten and then taken out to the woods and shackled to trees.\nAt another precinct, the polling place had been set up at the Dixie Cafe across an alley from the jail, where the GIs monitoring had seen a Cantrell man, Minus Wilburn, allowing minors to vote and giving cash to voters throughout the day. At about 3:45 p.m. when he attempted to allow a young woman to vote despite her name not appearing on the voter registration list and not having a poll tax receipt, one of the GIs protested and attempted to physically prevent Wilburn from depositing her ballot. Wilburn hit him in the head with a blackjack and kicked him in the face as he fell to the floor. Wilburn closed the polling place, put guards at both ends of the alley, and transported the ballot box to the jail and took the two GI poll-watchers prisoner.\nIt looked like Cantrell was about to successfully steal another election:\nThe Cantrell forces had calculated that if they could control the first, eleventh and twelfth precincts in Athens and the one in Etowah, the election was theirs. The ballot boxes from the Water Works (the eleventh) and the Dixie Cafe (the twelfth) were safely in the jail. The voting place for the first precinct, the courthouse, was barricaded by deputies who held four GIs hostage, and Paul Cantrell himself had Etowah under control.For what happened next (and a better account of what I\u0026rsquo;ve just described), I recommend this account from American Heritage Magazine by Lones Selber, who watched the battle of Athens first-hand as a seven-year-old child.\nAlthough the GIs were widely criticized for their actions, they seem quite justified to me\u0026ndash;their actions strike me as exactly what the 2nd Amendment is supposed to allow citizens to do in response to a corrupt government, remove it from power. (And really, if you read the full account, it was the fair outcome of the election that removed the corrupt officials from power, the GIs really just prevented the election from being stolen.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/battle-for-athens-tennessee-1946.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was telling a coworker about the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/item/parent-9780809501427/A-Planet-for-Texans-eBook.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Planet for Texans\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, in which citizens sometimes have the right to assassinate politicians, and he told me about a little-known piece of U.S. history.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1936, political power in McMinn County, Tennessee was obtained by Paul Cantrell of Etowah, who ran as the Democratic candidate for county sheriff and successfully seized power from what had been a Republican-dominated county since the Civil War.  Cantrell ended up putting in place a thoroughly corrupt political machine that retained power for a decade\u0026ndash;a crony of his, George Woods, was sent to the state legislature, and the county was redistricted to reduce the number of voting precincts and justices of the peace, and Cantrell\u0026rsquo;s power was solidified.  There were unresolved reports of county election fraud in 1940, 1942, and 1944.  The McMinn County Court, still dominated by Republicans, attempted to purchase voting machines to eliminate the fraud, but Woods, with the support of Democrats in the state legislature, responded by abolishing the county court.  It all came to an end when Cantrell\u0026rsquo;s machine attempted to steal the 1946 election and was stopped with armed force in a battle involving more than 500 armed men with guns and dynamite who weren\u0026rsquo;t afraid to use them\u0026ndash;yet remarkably, no one was killed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat happened in 1946 was that a bunch of GIs returned home from the war.  A group of them decided that they didn\u0026rsquo;t just fight for liberty in WWII to come back home to be governed by corrupt leadership, so they put together a slate to run for five county offices, including sheriff, under their own independent party.  The GIs put an ad in the newspaper and drove around the county with a loudspeaker repeating their slogan, \u0026ldquo;your vote will be counted as cast.\u0026rdquo;  Veterans from neighboring Blount County volunteered to help the McMinn County GIs in monitoring the election.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the day of the election, August 1, 1946, the county saw the largest voter turnout in its history.  In the afternoon, the Cantrell machine posted its own armed guards at each precinct, in preparation for transporting the ballot  boxes to the county jail in Athens for counting.  The GIs began assembling in Otto Kennedy\u0026rsquo;s Essankay Garage and Tire shop.  At that meeting, it was reported that telegrams had been sent in late July to Gov. Jim McCord in Nashville and Tom Clark, the U.S. attorney general, asking for assistance to ensure a fair election, but neither had been answered.  Those at the meeting agreed that those present who didn\u0026rsquo;t have their weapons with them should go home and get them.  Most were back and armed by 3 p.m.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt that time, an elderly black farmer, Tom Gillespie, was told by Windy Wise, a Cantrell armed guard, that he could not vote, and Wise ended up beating him with brass knuckles and shooting him in the back.  The two GI poll watchers at the precinct were taken hostage by Wise and Karl Neill, another Cantrell guard, and an angry crowd began to gather outside the polling place, the Athens Water Works.  The two GIs ended up breaking through a plate glass window to escape into the crowd, and someone in the crowd shouted, \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s go get our guns!\u0026rdquo;  When the Chief Deputy Boe Dunn and other Cantrell men showed up to get the ballot box to transport to the jail, they heard of this statement from Wise, and Dunn sent two deputies to the GI headquarters to make arrests.  Those deputies were no match for the GIs, however, and were disarmed and taken hostage along with two others sent as reinforcements, and another three sent shortly thereafter.  Those seven were beaten and then taken out to the woods and shackled to trees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt another precinct, the polling place had been set up at the Dixie Cafe across an alley from the jail, where the GIs monitoring had seen a Cantrell man, Minus Wilburn, allowing minors to vote and giving cash to voters throughout the day.  At about 3:45 p.m. when he attempted to allow a young woman to vote despite her name not appearing on the voter registration list and not having a poll tax receipt, one of the GIs protested and attempted to physically prevent Wilburn from depositing her ballot.  Wilburn hit him in the head with a blackjack and kicked him in the face as he fell to the floor.  Wilburn closed the polling place, put guards at both ends of the alley, and transported the ballot box to the jail and took the two GI poll-watchers prisoner.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looked like Cantrell \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1985/2/1985_2_72.shtml\"\u003ewas about to successfully steal another election\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Cantrell forces had calculated that if they could control the first, eleventh and twelfth precincts in Athens and the one in Etowah, the election was theirs. The ballot boxes from the Water Works (the eleventh) and the Dixie Cafe (the twelfth) were safely in the jail. The voting place for the first precinct, the courthouse, was barricaded by deputies who held four GIs hostage, and Paul Cantrell himself had Etowah under control.\u003c/blockquote\u003eFor what happened next (and a better account of what I\u0026rsquo;ve just described), I recommend \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1985/2/1985_2_72.shtml\"\u003ethis account from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAmerican Heritage Magazine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e by Lones Selber, who watched the battle of Athens first-hand as a seven-year-old child.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough the GIs were widely criticized for their actions, they seem quite justified to me\u0026ndash;their actions strike me as exactly what the 2nd Amendment is supposed to allow citizens to do in response to a corrupt government, remove it from power.  (And really, if you read the full account, it was the fair outcome of the election that removed the corrupt officials from power, the GIs really just prevented the election from being stolen.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Battle for Athens, Tennessee, 1946"},{"content":"The Washington Post reports that there have been more than 250 recent cases of the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency giving \u0026ldquo;pre-flight cocktail\u0026rdquo; injections of psychotropic drugs to foreigners being deported. These injections of antipsychotic drugs have been given to people with no history of mental illness and for no medical justification, with the only apparent purpose to sedate them during their flights.\nThe practice of \u0026ldquo;involuntary chemical restraint of detainees\u0026rdquo; without medical justification violates some international human rights codes, according to the Post, and is banned in several countries. Confidential documents obtained by the newspaper indicate that in some of the cases they report, detainees were not able to be given additional injections during layovers because to do so would be illegal in the countries in question.\nThese sedations violate the government\u0026rsquo;s own rules, which only permit sedation if the individual has a mental illness which requires the drugs or if the person is aggressive to the point of creating a danger to those around them.\nThe Post reports that during 2007, there were 67 people deported with medical escorts with no medical justification, 53 of whom were given psychiatric drugs, and 48 of whom had no documented history of violence. Most of those given drugs appear to be individuals who had previously resisted deportation.\nOne man deported to Nigeria was still under the effects of the drugs for four days after his arrival.\nOne drug often reported used was Haldol, which created some controversy during George H.W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s presidency when it was reported that he took the drug to avoid jet lag; some speculated that this drug was the cause of his vomiting at a dinner with (and vomiting on) the Prime Minister of Japan.\nA related story in the Post looks at 80 cases of deaths of immigration detainees, of which 30 were found to be \u0026ldquo;questionable,\u0026rdquo; including two in Arizona.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/pre-flight-cocktails.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d4p1.html\"\u003ereports that there have been more than 250 recent cases of the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency giving \u0026ldquo;pre-flight cocktail\u0026rdquo; injections of psychotropic drugs to foreigners being deported\u003c/a\u003e.  These injections of antipsychotic drugs have been given to people with no history of mental illness and for no medical justification, with the only apparent purpose to sedate them during their flights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe practice of \u0026ldquo;involuntary chemical restraint of detainees\u0026rdquo; without medical justification violates some international human rights codes, according to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePost\u003c/span\u003e, and is banned in several countries.  Confidential documents obtained by the newspaper indicate that in some of the cases they report, detainees were not able to be given additional injections during layovers because to do so would be illegal in the countries in question.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese sedations violate the government\u0026rsquo;s own rules, which only permit sedation if the individual has a mental illness which requires the drugs or if the person is aggressive to the point of creating a danger to those around them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePost\u003c/span\u003e reports that during 2007, there were 67 people deported with medical escorts with no medical justification, 53 of whom were given psychiatric drugs, and 48 of whom had no documented history of violence.  Most of those given drugs appear to be individuals who had previously resisted deportation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne man deported to Nigeria was still under the effects of the drugs for four days after his arrival.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne drug often reported used was Haldol, which created some controversy during George H.W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s presidency when it was reported that he took the drug to avoid jet lag; some speculated that this drug was the cause of \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnOnDatqENo\"\u003ehis vomiting at a dinner with (and vomiting on) the Prime Minister of Japan\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/map.html\"\u003erelated story in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePost\u003c/span\u003e looks at 80 cases of deaths of immigration detainees\u003c/a\u003e, of which 30 were found to be \u0026ldquo;questionable,\u0026rdquo; including two in Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/05/15/morning-links-44/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pre-flight cocktails"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s been a lot of commentary in the blogosphere about a January 3, 1954 letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind which contains the following statements:\nThe word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.and\nFor me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything \u0026lsquo;chosen\u0026rsquo; about them.Einstein expressed similar sentiments in a pair of letters he wrote on July 2, 1945 and September 28, 1949 to Ensign Guy H. Raner of the U.S.S. Bougainville which were first published in Skeptic magazine in 1997:\nFrom the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere\u0026ndash;childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of the world\u0026ndash;as far was we can grasp it, and that is all. [July 2, 1945]\nand\nI have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. [September 28, 1949]\nEinstein didn\u0026rsquo;t consider himself an atheist in the common usage of the term (his 1945 letter restricts the term to \u0026ldquo;from the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest\u0026rdquo;), though he was clearly comfortable being called an agnostic. He rejected the idea of a personal god, but was apparently willing to accept the possibility of Spinoza\u0026rsquo;s pantheistic god.\nUPDATE (May 14, 2008): ERV quotes this description of a statement by Oxford historian and theologian John Hedley Brooke, and describes it in a comment as \u0026ldquo;a \u0026lsquo;respected\u0026rsquo; theologian lying to try to \u0026lsquo;keep him\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (emphasis hers):\n\u0026ldquo;Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him,\u0026rdquo; said Brooke. \u0026ldquo;It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions \u0026hellip; but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.\u0026rdquo; Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. \u0026ldquo;The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.\u0026quot;\nERV also writes, after giving this quote, \u0026ldquo;Evangelical Atheism!!!! During the MCCARTHY ERA!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA! w00t!\u0026quot;\nBut she\u0026rsquo;s clearly wrong and Brooke is clearly right, if you read the quotation I gave from the 1949 letter. Einstein said \u0026ldquo;professional atheist\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;evangelical atheist,\u0026rdquo; but the point Brooke describes is exactly the point Einstein made.\nSome have argued that the newer 1954 letter is clearly more atheistic than the older letters I\u0026rsquo;ve quoted from above, in that it removes the qualifier \u0026ldquo;personal\u0026rdquo; from its expression of distaste about the use of the word \u0026ldquo;god.\u0026rdquo; But if Einstein continued to use the word \u0026ldquo;god\u0026rdquo; himself after the 1954 letter, then it\u0026rsquo;s not clear to me that he\u0026rsquo;s not simply continuing to make the same point about the word \u0026ldquo;god\u0026rdquo; as it\u0026rsquo;s normally used, to refer to the gods of the major world religions. Other than the lack of the qualifier \u0026ldquo;personal\u0026rdquo; in one sentence, the quotes from the new letter strike me as consistent with his position in the previous letters.\nUPDATE (October 27, 2009): Images of the Gutkind letter, its translation into English, and a transcription of the original German may be found here.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-05-14):\nJennifer Michael Hecht criticized Christopher Hitchens for claiming Einstein for atheism in her review of God is Not Great.That still doesn't compare to the worst usage of Einstein for political reasons that I've seen ... that being the absolutely attrocious Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible from Regnery publishing which attempted to use Einstein to buttress its central argument that the Bible is a necessary precursor to science.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/einsteins-god.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s been a \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/05/einstein_on_god.php?utm_source=sbhomepage\u0026amp;utm_medium=link\u0026amp;utm_content=toplink\"\u003elot\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/05/einsteins_god.php\"\u003ecommentary\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://womanwithoutsuperstition.blogspot.com/2008/05/einstein-religion-is-childish.html\"\u003ein\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/05/lol_atheism_wins.php\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/einstein_on_gods_and_judaism.php\"\u003eblogosphere\u003c/a\u003e about \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion\"\u003ea January 3, 1954 letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind\u003c/a\u003e which contains the following statements:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.\u003c/blockquote\u003eand\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFor me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything \u0026lsquo;chosen\u0026rsquo; about them.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEinstein expressed similar sentiments in \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/talk.atheism/msg/6338511d03da2832\"\u003ea pair of letters he wrote on July 2, 1945 and September 28, 1949 to Ensign Guy H. Raner of the U.S.S. Bougainville\u003c/a\u003e which were first published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine in 1997:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.  Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated.  It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere\u0026ndash;childish analogies.  We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of the world\u0026ndash;as far was we can grasp it, and that is all. [July 2, 1945]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eand\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination in youth.  I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. [September 28, 1949]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eEinstein didn\u0026rsquo;t consider himself an atheist in the common usage of the term (his 1945 letter restricts the term to \u0026ldquo;from the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest\u0026rdquo;), though he was clearly comfortable being called an agnostic.  He rejected the idea of a personal god, but was apparently willing to accept the possibility of Spinoza\u0026rsquo;s pantheistic god.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 14, 2008): ERV \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/05/lol_atheism_wins.php\"\u003equotes this description\u003c/a\u003e of a statement by Oxford historian and theologian John Hedley Brooke, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/05/lol_atheism_wins.php#comment-883570\"\u003edescribes it in a comment\u003c/a\u003e as \u0026ldquo;a \u0026lsquo;respected\u0026rsquo; theologian lying to try to \u0026lsquo;keep him\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (emphasis hers):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him,\u0026rdquo; said Brooke. \u0026ldquo;It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions \u0026hellip; but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.\u0026rdquo; \u003cp\u003eDespite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, \u003cstrong\u003eBrooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism\u003c/strong\u003e. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. \u0026ldquo;The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Einstein's God"},{"content":"An article by Col. Charles W. Williamson III titled \u0026ldquo;Carpet bombing in cyberspace: Why America needs a military botnet\u0026rdquo; has been published by the Armed Forces Journal.\nCol. Williamson, seeing that miscreants are using compromised machines all over the Internet to create botnets used for malicious purposes, has decided that the military needs to create its own, legitimate botnet. He proposes that this would be used in order to respond to online attacks from foreign countries by attacking the attackers, including both government and civilian attacking machines as necessary. He specifically proposes not using compromised machines (which would be illegal), but using machines on the af.mil (U.S. Air Force) network, including all hosts on the NIPRNet (Nonsecret IP Network).\nThe proposal doesn\u0026rsquo;t really make any sense to me.\nFirst of all, attacks from hostile compromised machines on the Internet occur on a daily basis and are already handled by network service providers. These attacks are never likely to be initiated specifically from an individual attacking country\u0026rsquo;s systems, but rather from compromised systems all over the world\u0026ndash;sometimes including compromised systems belonging to the U.S. military. Second, the best way to respond to attacking systems is not by launching hostile traffic back at them, but by filtering them or nullrouting them. Again, network service providers already do this today, and cooperate with each other in addressing major attacks. Thirdly, if the U.S. military sets up a botnet and uses it to launch denial of service attacks, it will be in violation of its own contracts with its network service providers\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t know of any network service provider that offers a military exception to its terms of service regarding denial of service attacks. Fourth, if all of the U.S. military bots are on its own network, their aggregate bandwidth still can\u0026rsquo;t exceed the bandwidth of its connections to other networks. Fifth, if there are attacks coming from another country that the U.S. is at war with, the recent subsea cable outages in the Middle East suggest that there are other effective mechanisms for disabling their ability to engage in Internet attacks.\nFinally, it\u0026rsquo;s not clear to me what benefit would be obtained from the military setting up its own botnet on its own network using its own IPs. Botnets offer two main benefits\u0026ndash;(1) offering a distributed platform for computing and traffic generation and (2) creating a buffer of separation between the agent performing an action and the action itself. The second benefit occurs because the miscreant doesn\u0026rsquo;t own the machines that make up the botnet, lots of other people do. A botnet composed entirely of hosts on the military\u0026rsquo;s network is relatively easy to identify, filter, and block\u0026ndash;the second benefit doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. The first benefit is also mostly lost if you use your own network and hosts. The point of a distributed denial of service attack is to use up the other guy\u0026rsquo;s bandwidth, but not your own. That\u0026rsquo;s very easy to do if you\u0026rsquo;re not using your own resources, which is why distributed denial of service attacks use compromised systems and, sometimes, methods to amplify attacks using other people\u0026rsquo;s servers that send out responses that are larger than the requests that prompt them. But if you\u0026rsquo;re using your own resources on your own networks, you\u0026rsquo;re limited to the bandwidth you have at your network interconnection points, and multiplying hosts inside that perimeter gains you nothing except a guarantee that you can saturate your own internetwork connectivity and cut yourself off from the outside unless your target has less bandwidth than you do. It\u0026rsquo;s ironic that Williamson complains about a \u0026ldquo;fortress mentality,\u0026rdquo; while making a proposal to create a gigantic bot army inside the military\u0026rsquo;s own perimeter. A million-man army doesn\u0026rsquo;t help you if they\u0026rsquo;re inside a fortress with exits that restrict its ability to be deployed, except when you can win the battle with the number of men who can leave the exits at any one time.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also posted a comment on the Armed Forces Journal article at the AFJ\u0026rsquo;s forum where I make a few additional points. I also agree with many of the other critical remarks that have been made in the thread there. \u0026ldquo;Crass Spektakel\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s point that \u0026ldquo;Whoever controls BGP and the backbone routers controls the internet\u0026rdquo; and that most of the control of BGP routing and the routing registries resides in the U.S. is a good one. A similar point could be made about DNS.\nOther posts on this subject:\nKevin Poulsen at the Wired blog\nJon Stokes at Ars Technica\nUPDATE (May 14, 2008): I may take some heat for even suggesting this, but an idea which actually takes advantage of both of the characteristic benefits of botnets I listed above and would be far, far more effective than Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal would be if the military produced bot software along the lines of SETI@Home and Folding@Home, which anyone could volunteer to download and run on their home or corporate machines (or better still, made available to run on XBoxes and Play Station 3s), for use by the military when needed. Some of the abuse worries could be defeated if the activation and deactivation of the software was fully under the control of the end user, and the military obtained appropriate permission from upstream ISPs for activities which would otherwise constitute AUP violations by end users.\nI hasten to add that this is still a terrible idea\u0026ndash;putting such software out in public makes it a certainty that it would be reverse-engineered, and the probability of it being compromised by third parties for their own abuses would correspondingly increase.\nUPDATE: Looks like Paul Raven beat me to the \u0026ldquo;Milnet@Home\u0026rdquo; idea, as he dubs it. A commenter at Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog also came up with the same idea.\nF-Secure\u0026rsquo;s blog also offers some good criticisms of Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal.\nJoshua (2008-05-20):\nThat's pretty interesting. So is the bottom line that the proposal isn't really injurious to our civil liberties but just breathtakingly stupid?\nLippard (2008-05-20):\nThe only threat to civil liberties and law I see is that launching DoS attacks violates terms of service of ISPs--the military would be violating its own agreements with its Internet providers--and that DDoS itself is likely to cause collateral damage to people's ability to access resources (including to the military's own network, since the proposal puts all of the bots there).Breathtakingly stupid is probably accurate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/bad-military-botnet-proposal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn article by Col. Charles W. Williamson III titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/05/3375884\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Carpet bombing in cyberspace: Why America needs a military botnet\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e has been published by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArmed Forces Journal\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCol. Williamson, seeing that miscreants are using compromised machines all over the Internet to create botnets used for malicious purposes, has decided that the military needs to create its own, legitimate botnet.  He proposes that this would be used in order to respond to online attacks from foreign countries by attacking the attackers, including both government and civilian attacking machines as necessary.  He specifically proposes not using compromised machines (which would be illegal), but using machines on the af.mil (U.S. Air Force) network, including all hosts on the NIPRNet (Nonsecret IP Network).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe proposal doesn\u0026rsquo;t really make any sense to me.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst of all, attacks from hostile compromised machines on the Internet occur on a daily basis and are already handled by network service providers.  These attacks are never likely to be initiated specifically from an individual attacking country\u0026rsquo;s systems, but rather from compromised systems all over the world\u0026ndash;sometimes including compromised systems belonging to the U.S. military.  Second, the best way to respond to attacking systems is not by launching hostile traffic back at them, but by filtering them or nullrouting them.  Again, network service providers already do this today, and cooperate with each other in addressing major attacks.  Thirdly, if the U.S. military sets up a botnet and uses it to launch denial of service attacks, it will be in violation of its own contracts with its network service providers\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t know of any network service provider that offers a military exception to its terms of service regarding denial of service attacks.  Fourth, if all of the U.S. military bots are on its own network, their aggregate bandwidth still can\u0026rsquo;t exceed the bandwidth of its connections to other networks.   Fifth, if there are attacks coming from another country that the U.S. is at war with, the \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/middle-east-subsea-cable-cuts.html\"\u003erecent subsea cable outages in the Middle East\u003c/a\u003e suggest that there are other effective mechanisms for disabling their ability to engage in Internet attacks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, it\u0026rsquo;s not clear to me what benefit would be obtained from the military setting up its own botnet on its own network using its own IPs.  Botnets offer two main benefits\u0026ndash;(1) offering a distributed platform for computing and traffic generation and (2) creating a buffer of separation between the agent performing an action and the action itself.  The second benefit occurs because the miscreant doesn\u0026rsquo;t own the machines that make up the botnet, lots of other people do.  A botnet composed entirely of hosts on the military\u0026rsquo;s network is relatively easy to identify, filter, and block\u0026ndash;the second benefit doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist.  The first benefit is also mostly lost if you use your own network and hosts.  The point of a distributed denial of service attack is to use up the other guy\u0026rsquo;s bandwidth, but not your own.  That\u0026rsquo;s very easy to do if you\u0026rsquo;re not using your own resources, which is why distributed denial of service attacks use compromised systems and, sometimes, methods to amplify attacks using other people\u0026rsquo;s servers that send out responses that are larger than the requests that prompt them.  But if you\u0026rsquo;re using your own resources on your own networks, you\u0026rsquo;re limited to the bandwidth you have at your network interconnection points, and multiplying hosts inside that perimeter gains you nothing except a guarantee that you can saturate your own internetwork connectivity and cut yourself off from the outside unless your target has less bandwidth than you do.  It\u0026rsquo;s ironic that Williamson complains about a \u0026ldquo;fortress mentality,\u0026rdquo; while making a proposal to create a gigantic bot army inside the military\u0026rsquo;s own perimeter.  A million-man army doesn\u0026rsquo;t help you if they\u0026rsquo;re inside a fortress with exits that restrict its ability to be deployed, except when you can win the battle with the number of men who can leave the exits at any one time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve also posted \u003ca href=\"http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/forums/showpost.php?p=38380580\u0026amp;postcount=10\"\u003ea comment on the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArmed Forces Journal\u003c/span\u003e article at the AFJ\u0026rsquo;s forum\u003c/a\u003e where I make a few additional points.  I also agree with many of the other critical remarks that have been made \u003ca href=\"http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3375884\"\u003ein the thread there\u003c/a\u003e.  \u0026ldquo;Crass Spektakel\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s point that \u0026ldquo;Whoever controls BGP and the backbone routers controls the internet\u0026rdquo; and that most of the control of BGP routing and the routing registries resides in the U.S. is a good one.  A similar point could be made about DNS.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOther posts on this subject:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/air-force-col-w.html\"\u003eKevin Poulsen at the Wired blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080512-preparing-for-cyber-warfare-us-air-force-floats-botnet-plan.html\"\u003eJon Stokes at Ars Technica\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 14, 2008):  I may take some heat for even suggesting this, but an idea which actually takes advantage of both of the characteristic benefits of botnets I listed above and would be far, far more effective than Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal would be if the military produced bot software along the lines of SETI@Home and Folding@Home, which anyone could volunteer to download and run on their home or corporate machines (or better still, made available to run on XBoxes and Play Station 3s), for use by the military when needed.  Some of the abuse worries could be defeated if the activation and deactivation of the software was fully under the control of the end user, and the military obtained appropriate permission from upstream ISPs for activities which would otherwise constitute AUP violations by end users.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI hasten to add that this is still a terrible idea\u0026ndash;putting such software out in public makes it a certainty that it would be reverse-engineered, and the probability of it being compromised by third parties for their own abuses would correspondingly increase.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Looks like \u003ca href=\"http://futurismic.com/2008/05/12/carpet-bombing-in-cyberspace-the-case-for-a-military-botnet/\"\u003ePaul Raven beat me to the \u0026ldquo;Milnet@Home\u0026rdquo; idea\u003c/a\u003e, as he dubs it.  A commenter at Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/air_force_consi.html#c269779\"\u003ealso came up with the same idea\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eF-Secure\u0026rsquo;s blog also \u003ca href=\"http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001434.html\"\u003eoffers some good criticisms of Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad military botnet proposal"},{"content":"The Arizona House has passed SB 10242 and sent it on to the Senate. This would put a measure to the voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. A similar proposal was voted down in 2006, but that measure included a provision that would have prohibited state benefits to domestic partners\u0026ndash;this one doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\nUnfortunately, I think this has a good chance of passing.\nArizona already bans same-sex marriage by statute, but not in its Constitution.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/same-sex-marriage-ban-amendment-may-go.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arizona House \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/05/12/20080512same-sex0512-ON.html\"\u003ehas passed SB 10242 and sent it on to the Senate\u003c/a\u003e.  This would put a measure to the voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.  \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/bad-argument-in-support-of-protect_20.html\"\u003eA similar proposal was voted down in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, but that measure included a provision that would have prohibited state benefits to domestic partners\u0026ndash;this one doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, I think this has a good chance of passing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003ealready bans same-sex marriage by statute\u003c/a\u003e, but not in its Constitution.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Same-sex marriage ban amendment may go to voters again"},{"content":"I was saddened to learn this morning of the death of Bill McCauley, who was my boss when he was Vice President of Operations for GlobalCenter for a year or so around 1999-2000. I last saw him in 2001 at NANOG 21, when he was working for a company called iAsiaWorks, and we chatted briefly. I never knew him well, but when I worked for him he would occasionally chat with me about network security.\nBill had left the technology field to run a food distributorship, Red Rock Foods, and recently opened a coffee shop in Queen Creek called Daily Buzz. Unfortunately, he was having financial troubles, and chose a gruesome and horrible way to end his own life, by backing his car into a storage area at his food distribution business, pouring gasoline behind his car, and setting it on fire. The fire burned him and his dachshund, Millikin, killing his dog and leading to his death in a hospital several hours after firefighters pulled him from his car, mortally injured but still alive.\nHis death has been reported at the Arizona-Coffee blog where he frequently posted. He apparently left no suicide note. It\u0026rsquo;s very sad that he chose to end his life this way, as well as that of his dog.\nHistorical Comments MisBeaHaven (2009-07-29):\nI just noticed this...Shocking and sad, indeed...I worked with Bill on a TBBS/Internet project in the mid 90s...He was one of the smartest people I ever met and an awesome individual...the world is a worse place for him not being in it. Rest in peace, Bill\nDanielsan (2010-09-08):\nDitto on just noticing. I, too, remember Bill from the TBBS days (he ran a BBS called \u0026quot;The Records Department\u0026quot;), though it was a bit earlier\u0026hellip; 86-89 or so. Saw him a few times after and always struck me as a happy guy.\nNot sure what inspired me to track him down\u0026hellip; Did a few searches for what I knew about him and found the link on this page. Then saw the photo which confirmed what I was afraid of.\nWhy people do this is impossible to understand and an impossible decision to judge. I'll trust he had his reasons.\nWish I'd had a chance to say goodbye.\n-Daniel\nTodd M (2011-05-31):\nWow... I knew Bill from the days of The Records Department. Last spoke with him back in 2002. What a tragic loss. RIP, Bill.\nDataSurfer (2011-11-14):\nI too knew him from The Records Department. That BBS was probably the longest running BBS of all time. Once he gave me one of his US Robotics 9600 baud modems when he upgraded. It sure beat the pants off the 2400 baud modem I had been using. I know the internet is a transient place but here are some links to pages that bear his name. http://bbslist.textfiles.com/510/oldschool.html http://www.memestreams.net/users/rattle/blogid10327525/ http://bbsmates.com/viewbbs.aspx?id=91725 Updated Link to the article of his passing: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/news/article_3c9ebce6-29b8-5874-abcd-f675a827e6ca.html\nvictor (2016-02-23):\nit\u0026#39;s coming up on 8 years now. Amazing how time flies. I still think of Bill (and Milikin) every now and then. I roast coffee down the street and around the corner from where it all happened. I wonder what Bill would be doing today if he was still here. His coffee shop (Daily Buzz), most certainly would have failed, as the location where it was has indeed failed several times since his departure (for various reasons). Red Rock Foods was not working. My guess is he\u0026#39;d have gone back into the tech business and been just fine, although he hated the idea of returning to it. An interesting tidbit that most don\u0026#39;t know is that he had a substantial amount of 401k money built up that he would be tapping into by now; that\u0026#39;s the part that doesn\u0026#39;t make sense to me. Many bill collectors after him, walls closing in on several fronts, but he could have pulled through it. Maybe he couldn\u0026#39;t stand the idea of losing face among his current peers (current at the time, which I was one of), whom all looked up so high to him.....\nmyke113 (2020-11-21):\nI knew Bill since I was 10. I was the Mac sysop on the Records Department for a time. RIP Bill.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/bill-mccauley-rip.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was saddened to learn this morning of \u003ca href=\"http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/116112\"\u003ethe death of Bill McCauley\u003c/a\u003e, who was my boss when he was Vice President of Operations for GlobalCenter for a year or so around 1999-2000.  I last saw him in 2001 at NANOG 21, when he was working for a company called iAsiaWorks, and we chatted briefly.  I never knew him well, but when I worked for him he would occasionally chat with me about network security.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBill had left the technology field to run a food distributorship, Red Rock Foods, and recently opened a coffee shop in Queen Creek called Daily Buzz.  Unfortunately, he was having financial troubles, and chose a gruesome and horrible way to end his own life, by backing his car into a storage area at his food distribution business, pouring gasoline behind his car, and setting it on fire.  The fire burned him and his dachshund, Millikin, killing his dog and leading to his death in a hospital several hours after firefighters pulled him from his car, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2008/05/07/20080507tr-fire0508.html\"\u003emortally injured but still alive\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis death \u003ca href=\"http://www.arizona-coffee.com/2008/rip-azbill\"\u003ehas been reported at the Arizona-Coffee blog\u003c/a\u003e where he frequently posted.  He apparently left no suicide note.  It\u0026rsquo;s very sad that he chose to end his life this way, as well as that of his dog.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill McCauley, RIP"},{"content":"Turkish creationist \u0026ldquo;Harun Yahya\u0026rdquo; (pseudonym for Adnan Oktar) has been sentenced to three years in prison for \u0026ldquo;creating an illegal organization for personal gain,\u0026quot; according to Reuters:\nOktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.\nIn that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.\nOktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV [Turkish acronym for Oktar\u0026rsquo;s Science Research Foundation] spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.\nOktar, born in 1956, is the driving force behind a richly funded movement based in Turkey that champions creationism, the belief that God literally created the world in six days as told in the Bible and the Koran.\nIstanbul-based Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has created waves in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islamic creationism to schools in several European countries.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve heard that many of \u0026ldquo;Harun Yahya\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s works are contain plagiarized bits of translations of books and articles from the Institute for Creation Research, minus the arguments for a young earth.\nAnother creationist currently in prison is young-earth creationist Kent Hovind, convicted for tax evasion.\nAccording to Adnan Oktar\u0026rsquo;s Wikipedia page, he was a former student of Edip Yuksel, a promoter of the works of Muslim imam Rashad Khalifa, who was murdered in Tucson, Arizona in 1990 by Islamic radicals. (One Islamic radical allegedly involved was Wadih el-Hage, a former Tucson resident who was Osama bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s secretary in Sudan.) I met Yuksel at the University of Arizona, when he attended some of the same philosophy classes I did, and he gave me some pamphlets which touted Khalifa\u0026rsquo;s claim that the Koran is demonstrably the word of God on the basis of numeric codes (similar to the Bible Codes), specifically involving multiples of 19.\nThe websites of Edip Yuksel criticizing Oktar are the reason why Wordpress.com is blocked in Turkey, as the result of a legal action by Oktar in that country. Yuksel describes his relationship with Oktar here.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-05-12):\nI'm curious to know if this conviction is expected to elevate Oktar's reputation as a champion of Oppressed Truth.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/another-creationist-goes-to-prison.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTurkish creationist \u0026ldquo;Harun Yahya\u0026rdquo; (pseudonym for \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harun_Yahya\"\u003eAdnan Oktar\u003c/a\u003e) \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSL0992091620080509?sp=true\"\u003ehas been sentenced to three years in prison for \u0026ldquo;creating an illegal organization for personal gain,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e according to Reuters:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an  Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous  trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of  his foundation, was arrested in 1999.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cspan id=\"midArticle_3\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e       \u003cp\u003e In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using  threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with  the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but  another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another creationist goes to prison"},{"content":"Charlie Black, a senior advisor to the McCain campaign, lent his name to and helped arrange the bizarre March 23, 2004 event on Capitol Hill in which Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned King of America and declared himself to be the Messiah.\nRev. Moon is a very powerful, wealthy man who has been regularly supported at public events by people such as former President George H. W. Bush and evangelical Christians like Tim and Beverly LaHaye (he helped found the Institute for Creation Research through his Christian Heritage College, co-author of Left Behind; she is the head of Concerned Women for America) and Jerry Falwell. Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute is a member of Moon\u0026rsquo;s Unification Church, which makes DI another organization where evangelical Christians join hands with members of Moon\u0026rsquo;s cult. Most of these people probably don\u0026rsquo;t agree with Moon\u0026rsquo;s nonsense, but they like his money and aren\u0026rsquo;t above prostituting themselves in order to receive some of it.\nUPDATE (May 13, 2008): More on Charlie Black, from FiretheLobbyists.com:\nCharlie Black, McCain’s senior counsel and spokesman, began his lobbying career by representing numerous dictators and repressive regimes\nBlack’s firm represented the governor of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. According to a 1985 report, the firm Black, Manafort \u0026amp; Stone earned $950,000 plus expenses for its work to provide “advice and assistance on matters relating to the media, public relations and public affairs interests.”1 Black’s firm lobbied on behalf of Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, earning $1 million a year for his efforts.2 Black’s firm lobbied on behalf of Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.3 Black’s firm represented Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida, earning at least $1 million for his efforts.4 Black’s firm has represented Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich state “best known for the outlandish brutality of its rulers.”5 Black represented Angolan rebel and “classical terrorist” Jonas Savimbi, a job that earned him $600,000.6 “We have to call him Africa’s classical terrorist,” Makau Mutua, a professor of law and Africa specialist told the New York Times. “In the history of the continent, I think he’s unique because of the degree of suffering he caused without showing any remorse.”7 In recent years his client list has also included the Iraqi National Congress8, Friends of Blackwater9, and the China National Off-Shore Oil Corp.10 Since 2005, BKSH has received more than $700,000 in fees from foreign entities.11 And Black is only one of several lobbyists for scumbags working on McCain\u0026rsquo;s campaign.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/senior-mccain-advisor-helped-arrange.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCharlie Black, \u003ca href=\"http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Senior_McCain_adviser_helped_arrange_to_0509.html\"\u003ea senior advisor to the McCain campaign, lent his name to and helped arrange the bizarre March 23, 2004 event on Capitol Hill in which Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned King of America and declared himself to be the Messiah\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRev. Moon is \u003ca href=\"http://www.michiganmessenger.com/tag.do?tag=Bad+Moon+Series\"\u003ea very powerful, wealthy man\u003c/a\u003e who has been regularly supported at public events by people such as \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/bush_41_pimps_for_moon_again.php\"\u003eformer President George H. W. Bush\u003c/a\u003e and evangelical Christians like \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/gorenfelds_video_blog_on_rev_m.php\"\u003eTim and Beverly LaHaye\u003c/a\u003e (he helped found the Institute for Creation Research through his Christian Heritage College, co-author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLeft Behind\u003c/span\u003e; she is the head of Concerned Women for America) and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2004/10/more_on_the_falwellmoon_connec.php\"\u003eJerry Falwell\u003c/a\u003e.   Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute is a member of Moon\u0026rsquo;s Unification Church, which makes DI another organization where evangelical Christians join hands with members of Moon\u0026rsquo;s cult.  Most of these people probably don\u0026rsquo;t agree with Moon\u0026rsquo;s nonsense, but they like his money and aren\u0026rsquo;t above prostituting themselves in order to receive some of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 13, 2008): More on Charlie Black, \u003ca href=\"http://www.firethelobbyists.com/facts.html\"\u003efrom FiretheLobbyists.com\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCharlie Black, McCain’s senior counsel and spokesman, began his lobbying career by representing numerous dictators and repressive regimes\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Senior McCain advisor helped arrange Rev. Moon coronation"},{"content":"Friday\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post describes an Arizona land swap deal\u0026ndash;the largest in Arizona history\u0026ndash;pushed through Congress by John McCain which had the effect of transferring valuable federal land to Fred Ruskin\u0026rsquo;s Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership, that ended up being developed by SunCor Development, owned by McCain supporter Steven A. Betts.\nThe Post article describes past land swap deals that McCain has also pushed through, which have benefited McCain donors Donald R. Diamond and Carl H. Lindner, Jr.\nProbably all just politics as usual.\nUPDATE (May 15, 2008): The Arizona Republic finally gets around to covering the story\u0026ndash;by reprinting a story from USA Today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/mccain-dishonesty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFriday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR2008050803494.html\"\u003edescribes an Arizona land swap deal\u0026ndash;the largest in Arizona history\u0026ndash;pushed through Congress by John McCain\u003c/a\u003e which had the effect of transferring valuable federal land to Fred Ruskin\u0026rsquo;s Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership, that ended up being developed by SunCor Development, owned by McCain supporter Steven A. Betts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Post article describes past land swap deals that McCain has also pushed through, which have benefited McCain donors Donald R. Diamond and Carl H. Lindner, Jr.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProbably all just politics as usual.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 15, 2008):  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/05/15/20080515mccain-land0515-ON.html\"\u003efinally gets around to covering the story\u0026ndash;by reprinting a story from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain questionable land swap deal"},{"content":"Arianna Huffington has given a list of occasions on which Arizona Sen. John McCain has \u0026ldquo;issued heartfelt denials of things that were actually true\u0026rdquo;:\n* That he had talked with John Kerry about possibly leaving the Republican Party to become his vice presidential running mate in 2004.\n* That he had claimed he didn\u0026rsquo;t know much about economics.\n* That he had ever asked for a budget earmark for Arizona.\n* That he\u0026rsquo;d ever had a meeting with lobbyist Vicky Iseman.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/mccain-dishonesty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArianna Huffington has given \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/what-john-mccain-told-me_b_100183.html\"\u003ea list of occasions on which Arizona Sen. John McCain has \u0026ldquo;issued heartfelt denials of things that were actually true\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* That he had talked with John Kerry about possibly leaving the Republican Party to become his vice presidential running mate in 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e* That he had claimed he didn\u0026rsquo;t know much about economics.\u003cbr /\u003e* That he had ever asked for a budget earmark for Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e* That he\u0026rsquo;d ever had a meeting with lobbyist Vicky Iseman.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain dishonesty"},{"content":"\nWe\u0026rsquo;re back from a week of vacation in Seattle\u0026ndash;this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights\u0026ndash;the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies\u0026ndash;a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology \u0026ldquo;free stress test\u0026rdquo; center, and building housing the Discovery Institute.\nAnd we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen in a while (or hadn\u0026rsquo;t met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food.\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those.\nSeattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll return.\nEinzige (2008-05-12):\nThat \"mermaid thing\" is disturbing.\nLippard (2008-05-14):\nFiji or Feejee mermaids were common sideshow attractions--P.T. Barnum and Robert Ripley both used them. There are other nice examples if you do a Google Image search for \"Feejee mermaid\".\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/back-from-seattle.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2343/2484343419_5231944064.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2343/2484343419_5231944064.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2485139766_32686d4410.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2485139766_32686d4410.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re back from a week of vacation in Seattle\u0026ndash;this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things.  We saw the usual sights\u0026ndash;the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island.  We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads).  We also managed to see some local crazies\u0026ndash;a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology \u0026ldquo;free stress test\u0026rdquo; center, and building housing the Discovery Institute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen in a while (or hadn\u0026rsquo;t met before in person).  Lots of Thai and Indian food.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe didn\u0026rsquo;t get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts.  Maybe next time for most of those.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is.  I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll return.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from Seattle"},{"content":"Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/ken-miller-op-ed-on-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/08/trouble_ahead_for_science/\"\u003ehas written an op-ed about \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ken Miller op-ed on \"Expelled\""},{"content":"Bush\u0026rsquo;s head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It\u0026rsquo;s not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.\nBloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.\nUPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story.\nUPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.\nUPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-05-07):\nI was listening to this news on NPR yesterday - and I was a bit distracted because I was ordering food from a drive through - but I think I recall that Block hired a computer tech to scrub his computer files, claiming that he was simply getting rid of a virus.Have I just not been paying attention during previous administrations, or is this an alarmingly absurd number of scandals that this administration has racked up?\nHume's Ghost (2008-05-07):\nD'oh! That's what I get for commenting before clicking the links.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/scott-bloch-gets-raided-by-fbi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBush\u0026rsquo;s head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90223448\"\u003ehas had his offices and home raided by the FBI\u003c/a\u003e.  The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email.  Bloch himself was interviewed.  It\u0026rsquo;s not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation.  There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBloch also \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/how-office-of-special-counsel-got.html\"\u003ehas a tie to the Sternberg case\u003c/a\u003e, the crown jewel of \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction.  His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/washington/06cnd-inquire.html?_r=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ealso covers the story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/goodbye_scott_bloch.php\"\u003ehas been fired\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch \u003ca href=\"http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/scott_bloch_sentenced_to_one_month_in_prison_in_geeks_on_call_case.php\"\u003ehas been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scott Bloch gets raided by the FBI"},{"content":"John McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather. He won\u0026rsquo;t throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that\u0026rsquo;s showing tails instead of heads. He won\u0026rsquo;t take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first. He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet. He wears lucky shoes. He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win.\nJohn McCain is a superstitious nut.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/superstitions-of-john-mccain.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather.  He won\u0026rsquo;t throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that\u0026rsquo;s showing tails instead of heads.  He won\u0026rsquo;t take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first.  He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet.  He wears lucky shoes.  He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn McCain \u003ca href=\"http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/05/superstition-aint-the-way/\"\u003eis a superstitious nut\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The superstitions of John McCain"},{"content":"\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08AprNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196577505470399650\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;Based on this chart, Ray Kurzweil would undoubtedly predict that in late 2009 or early 2010, Maricopa County will reach its foreclosure singularity - the moment at which all homes will simultaneously be served notices of foreclosure and beyond which it is impossible to predict what will happen.\nApril\u0026rsquo;s 6184 notices were yet another unprecedented high.\nHistorical Comments Michael Norton (2008-05-05):\nPerhaps Doug Adams would call it the \"trustee sale event horizon\"?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/aprils-trustees-sale-notices.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08AprNTR.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/08AprNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196577505470399650\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003eBased on this chart, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil\"\u003eRay Kurzweil\u003c/a\u003e would undoubtedly predict that in late 2009 or early 2010, Maricopa County will reach its \u003cb\u003eforeclosure \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity\"\u003esingularity\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/b\u003e - the moment at which all homes will simultaneously be served notices of foreclosure and beyond which it is impossible to predict what will happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApril\u0026rsquo;s \u003cb\u003e6184\u003c/b\u003e notices were yet another unprecedented high.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMichael Norton\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-05-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ePerhaps Doug Adams would call it the \"trustee sale event horizon\"?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"April's Trustee's Sale Notices"},{"content":"Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; and even included in one of the trailer previews, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates. Why not?\nThere are several likely explanations:\n1. He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia. He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University. (Point due to Tegamai Bopsulai.)\n2. He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook \u0026ldquo;silly,\u0026rdquo; he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God. (Points due to Larry Arnhart.)\n3. His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people. (Where\u0026rsquo;s Ben Stein on this one? Point due to RBH.)\nIt appears that ID\u0026rsquo;s big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside.\nVia:\nLarry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism\nBrian Switek at Laelaps\nJohn Lynch at Stranger Fruit\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-05-04):\nProfessor Schaeffer (chemistry) at the University of Georgia is one of the founders of the creationist movement and his job is secure ... as it should be so long as he doesn't try to turn his chemistry courses into a sermon for ID creationism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/michael-behe-expelled-from-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIntelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; and even \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/05/why_was_michael_behe_expelled.php\"\u003eincluded in one of the trailer previews\u003c/a\u003e, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates.  Why not?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are several likely explanations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia.  He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University.  (Point due to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/05/why_was_michael_behe_expelled.php#comment-867545\"\u003eTegamai Bopsulai\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Edge of Evolution\u003c/span\u003e, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook \u0026ldquo;silly,\u0026rdquo; he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God.  (Points due to \u003ca href=\"http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2008/05/has-michael-behe-fallen-from-favor-at.html\"\u003eLarry Arnhart\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people.  (Where\u0026rsquo;s Ben Stein on this one?  Point due to \u003ca href=\"http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2008/05/has-michael-behe-fallen-from-favor-at.html#c8561928293169688640\"\u003eRBH\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt appears that ID\u0026rsquo;s big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVia:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2008/05/has-michael-behe-fallen-from-favor-at.html\"\u003eLarry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/05/why_was_michael_behe_expelled.php\"\u003eBrian Switek at Laelaps\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/05/some_id_links.php\"\u003eJohn Lynch at Stranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Michael Behe: Expelled from Expelled"},{"content":"Last night I went to hear Gene Healy of the Cato Institute speak about his new book, The Cult of the Presidency, at the Goldwater Institute. I had a chance to speak to him briefly before his talk, and said I\u0026rsquo;d buy a copy of his book if I liked his talk. I did like his talk, and did buy his book\u0026ndash;the clincher was the \u0026ldquo;illegal\u0026rdquo; cover of his book. He said that he had sent the galleys to John Dean, former Nixon White House counsel who has become a vocal critic of overreaching executive power, for a blurb, only to receive word back from Dean that his book cover violates U.S. law regarding the use of the presidential seal. (This was ironic in light of Healy\u0026rsquo;s previous book, Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything.) The Onion was sent a cease-and-desist letter by the Bush administration in 2005 for using the presidential seal on its website. In my non-lawyerly opinion, neither The Onion nor the book are actually in violation of the law since the law prohibits the use of the presidential seal in a commercial context that suggests presidential endorsement or approval, and it\u0026rsquo;s pretty obvious in both cases that no presidential endorsement or approval is implied.\nHealy\u0026rsquo;s talk criticized the expansion of executive power from the original description in the U.S. Constitution. While George Washington described himself as \u0026ldquo;chief magistrate\u0026rdquo; and refused to start wars with the Indians without Congressional approval, subsequent presidents have expanded their power. Academics of both conservative and liberal stripes have ranked as the \u0026ldquo;best presidents\u0026rdquo; those who have engaged in bold exercises of power, while those who have taken more limited roles in line with the Constitution are ranked among the worst (such as Warren G. Harding, whom Healy identified as the best president). Even William Henry Harrison, who served only 30 days as president, receives low poll rankings. By contrast, presidents such as Woodrow Wilson (whom Healy identified as the worst president, for actions such as throwing Eugene V. Debs in jail for criticizing the draft) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who put 110,000 Japanese into internment camps and attempted to subvert the U.S. Supreme Court by packing it with six additional appointees loyal to him) are identified as among the best presidents in polls.\nAnd today, we have Hillary Clinton saying that she\u0026rsquo;s prepared to be \u0026ldquo;commander-in-chief of our economy\u0026rdquo; from the moment she takes office, yet that\u0026rsquo;s clearly not the job of the president described in the Constitution, where the only reference to CIC is \u0026ldquo;Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.\u0026rdquo; Healy identified his first moment of apprehension that things had gotten ridiculous about public expectations of the role of the president as a 1992 presidential town hall debate, in which Denton Walthall said (p. 132 of Healy\u0026rsquo;s book):\nThe focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you to met our needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it \u0026hellip; [emphasis in Healy]None of the candidates challenged Walthall\u0026rsquo;s assumption that citizens of the United States should be treated \u0026ldquo;symbolically\u0026rdquo; as children of a president-father.\nHealy also spoke about what he called \u0026ldquo;situational Constitutionalism,\u0026rdquo; where Republicans oppose expansions of executive power when a Democrat is president, but are happy to expand it with a Republican president, and Democrats do the opposite. It occurred to me that the timing of his book could lead to such a criticism of his work, except that he has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s abuses. It\u0026rsquo;s too bad it didn\u0026rsquo;t come out before Bush\u0026rsquo;s re-election, though I doubt it would have made any more difference to the outcome than James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s The Bush Betrayal, which came out in August 2004, just before that election.\nIn the Q\u0026amp;A, a self-identified liberal* asked if Healy thought that Bush was the worst abuser of executive power in light of his signing statements refusing to enforce, follow, or be bound by various laws. Healy answered that he didn\u0026rsquo;t consider the signing statements to be the worst of Bush\u0026rsquo;s actions, since at least they were written openly and not hidden. He said he considered the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII to be worse than anything Bush has done to date, and that he found other actions of Bush\u0026rsquo;s to be worse than the signing statements, such as his warrantless wiretapping, his misuse of military commissions, elimination of habeas corpus, etc. He followed that up by saying that what he fears most from Bush\u0026rsquo;s legacy is that by expanding executive power under a \u0026ldquo;time of war\u0026rdquo; doctrine for the \u0026ldquo;war on terror\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a war that will likely never end\u0026ndash;he has effectively made the powers permanent. The similar abuses of the past were during wars that at least were temporary conditions.\nI look forward to reading his book.\n* There were a few liberals in attendance, including a member of the Green Party who asked me if it was considered gauche to go for seconds on the food provided\u0026ndash;I said no, I was taking seconds myself.\nUPDATE (May 6, 2008): Also see Mike Linksvayer\u0026rsquo;s report on Healy\u0026rsquo;s talk in San Francisco.\nHume's Ghost (2008-05-04):\nAnother book on this subject that I found pretty good (excellent, really) is Unchecked and Unbalance: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror.\"Commander in chief of the economy\" sounds absolutely miserable to me ... I suppose Chalmers Johnson would argue that in one sense she is correct: due to our military Keynesian spending there isn't that great a distinction between the role of CinC and head of the economy.\nEinzige (2008-05-04):\nHere are some other reasons to conclude Wilson was possibly the worst US President.\nLippard (2008-05-04):\nI've just started reading the book, and here are a few other quotes Healy gives from presidential candidates with odd conceptions of what the president's job is:\"America needs positive, optimistic leadership to kind of turn this country around, to see a revival of our national soul.\" -- Mike Huckabee\"[Teddy Roosevelt] liberally interpreted the constitutional authority of the office\" and \"nourished the soul of a great nation.\" -- John McCainAnd his opening pages have several quotes from George W. Bush, for whom the job of the president includes to \"lift people's spirits as best as I possibly can and to hopefully touch somebody's sould be representing our country, and to let people know that while there was a dark day in the past, there's brighter days ahead\" and to \"answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-05-04):\nIf you really want to see someone tear into Wilson google Walter Karp at Third World Traveler.Karp HATED Wilson. Nevermind, I'll get the link myself since it has one of my favorite lines in it ...Here\"The triumph of Woodrow Wilson and the war party [World War I] struck the American republic a blow from which it has never recovered. If the mainspring of a republican commonwealth - its \"active principle,\" in Jefferson's words-is the perpetual struggle against oligarchy and privilege, against private monopoly and arbitrary power, then that mainspring was snapped and deliberately snapped by the victors in the civil war over war.\"This is the line I like: \"In postwar America the entire country lived on fantasy and breathed propaganda.\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-10):\nI used a gift card I got recently to purchase a copy of Healy's book. It was a close call between that and The Music of Pythagoras, though. This post likely tipped the scales in favor of Healy ... I may try to review it before the election comes around, but my eyes are biggers than my brain.I used the remaining balance on the card towards a discount hardcover of Why Orwell Matters by Chris Hitchens.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/gene-healy-on-cult-of-presidency.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night I went to hear Gene Healy of the Cato Institute speak about his new book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Presidency-Americas-Dangerous-Presidential/dp/1933995157/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Cult of the Presidency\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, at the Goldwater Institute.  I had a chance to speak to him briefly before his talk, and said I\u0026rsquo;d buy a copy of his book if I liked his talk.  I did like his talk, and did buy his book\u0026ndash;the clincher was the \u0026ldquo;illegal\u0026rdquo; cover of his book.  He said that he had sent the galleys to John Dean, former Nixon White House counsel who has become a vocal critic of overreaching executive power, for a blurb, only to receive word back from Dean that his book cover violates U.S. law regarding the use of the presidential seal.  (This was ironic in light of Healy\u0026rsquo;s previous book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Go-Directly-Jail-Criminalization-Everything/dp/1930865635/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGo Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)   \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/business/24onion.html?_r=1\u0026amp;pagewanted=print\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ewas sent a cease-and-desist letter by the Bush administration in 2005 for using the presidential seal on its website\u003c/a\u003e.  In my non-lawyerly opinion, neither \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e nor the book are actually in violation of the law since the law prohibits the use of the presidential seal in a commercial context that suggests presidential endorsement or approval, and it\u0026rsquo;s pretty obvious in both cases that no presidential endorsement or approval is implied.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHealy\u0026rsquo;s talk criticized the expansion of executive power from the original description in the U.S. Constitution.  While George Washington described himself as \u0026ldquo;chief magistrate\u0026rdquo; and refused to start wars with the Indians without Congressional approval, subsequent presidents have expanded their power.  Academics of both conservative and liberal stripes have ranked as the \u0026ldquo;best presidents\u0026rdquo; those who have engaged in bold exercises of power, while those who have taken more limited roles in line with the Constitution are ranked among the worst (such as Warren G. Harding, whom Healy identified as the best president).  Even William Henry Harrison, who served only 30 days as president, receives low poll rankings.  By contrast, presidents such as Woodrow Wilson (whom Healy identified as the worst president, for actions such as throwing Eugene V. Debs in jail for criticizing the draft) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who put 110,000 Japanese into internment camps and attempted to subvert the U.S. Supreme Court by packing it with six additional appointees loyal to him) are identified as among the best presidents in polls.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd today, we have Hillary Clinton saying that she\u0026rsquo;s prepared to be \u0026ldquo;commander-in-chief of our economy\u0026rdquo; from the moment she takes office, yet that\u0026rsquo;s clearly not the job of the president described in the Constitution, where the only reference to CIC is \u0026ldquo;Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.\u0026rdquo;  Healy identified his first moment of apprehension that things had gotten ridiculous about public expectations of the role of the president as a 1992 presidential town hall debate, in which Denton Walthall said (p. 132 of Healy\u0026rsquo;s book):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents.  And I ask the three of you, how can we, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eas symbolically the children of the future president\u003c/span\u003e, expect the two of you, the three of you to met our needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it \u0026hellip; [emphasis in Healy]\u003c/blockquote\u003eNone of the candidates challenged Walthall\u0026rsquo;s assumption that citizens of the United States should be treated \u0026ldquo;symbolically\u0026rdquo; as children of a president-father.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHealy also spoke about what he called \u0026ldquo;situational Constitutionalism,\u0026rdquo; where Republicans oppose expansions of executive power when a Democrat is president, but are happy to expand it with a Republican president, and Democrats do the opposite.  It occurred to me that the timing of his book could lead to such a criticism of his work, except that he has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s abuses.  It\u0026rsquo;s too bad it didn\u0026rsquo;t come out before Bush\u0026rsquo;s re-election, though I doubt it would have made any more difference to the outcome than\u003ca href=\"/2005/12/bush-medicare-fraud.html\"\u003e James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which came out in August 2004, just before that election.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Q\u0026amp;A, a self-identified liberal* asked if Healy thought that Bush was the worst abuser of executive power in light of his signing statements refusing to enforce, follow, or be bound by various laws.  Healy answered that he didn\u0026rsquo;t consider the signing statements to be the worst of Bush\u0026rsquo;s actions, since at least they were written openly and not hidden.  He said he considered the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII to be worse than anything Bush has done to date, and that he found other actions of Bush\u0026rsquo;s to be worse than the signing statements, such as his warrantless wiretapping, his misuse of military commissions, elimination of habeas corpus, etc.  He followed that up by saying that what he fears most from Bush\u0026rsquo;s legacy is that by expanding executive power under a \u0026ldquo;time of war\u0026rdquo; doctrine for the \u0026ldquo;war on terror\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a war that will likely never end\u0026ndash;he has effectively made the powers permanent.  The similar abuses of the past were during wars that at least were temporary conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI look forward to reading his book.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* There were a few liberals in attendance, including a member of the Green Party who asked me if it was considered gauche to go for seconds on the food provided\u0026ndash;I said no, I was taking seconds myself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 6, 2008): Also see \u003ca href=\"http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2008/05/04/cult-of-the-presidency/\"\u003eMike Linksvayer\u0026rsquo;s report on Healy\u0026rsquo;s talk in San Francisco\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gene Healy on The Cult of the Presidency"},{"content":"A couple weeks ago, YouTube removed Mark Bunker\u0026rsquo;s xenutv1 account on the grounds that his previous account, xenutv, had contained copyright infringements and thus violated YouTube\u0026rsquo;s terms of service\u0026ndash;even though his xenutv1 account did not. This caused a video interview of actor Jason Beghe, who recently left Scientology, to be temporarily unavailable.\nYouTube has also removed an account that the Church of Scientology was using to attack its Anonymous critics, anonymousfacts, for terms of service violations because it personally identified some individuals and referred to them as \u0026ldquo;terrorists.\u0026quot;\nBut now that Scientology is paying for an account (and for ads on YouTube), it\u0026rsquo;s being allowed to stay.\n(Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/youtubes-double-standard-on-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple weeks ago, YouTube removed Mark Bunker\u0026rsquo;s xenutv1 account on the grounds that his previous account, xenutv, had contained copyright infringements and thus violated YouTube\u0026rsquo;s terms of service\u0026ndash;even though his xenutv1 account did not.  This caused \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/scientology-celebrity-escapes.html\"\u003ea video interview of actor Jason Beghe\u003c/a\u003e, who recently left Scientology, to be temporarily unavailable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYouTube has also removed an account that the Church of Scientology was using to attack its Anonymous critics, anonymousfacts, for terms of service violations because it personally identified some individuals and referred to them as \u0026ldquo;terrorists.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut now that Scientology is paying for an account (and for ads on YouTube), \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/youtube_scientology_channel/\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s being allowed to stay\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"YouTube's double standard on Scientology"},{"content":"Dennis Avery and the Heartland Institute issued a list of \u0026ldquo;500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares\u0026rdquo; earlier this week. DeSmogBlog contacted 122 of the people on the list that they found email addresses for, and received replies from 45 of them within 24 hours, indicating that they did not agree to be on such a list and felt that the Heartland Institute had misrepresented their views.\nHere are some of the quoted responses:\n\u0026ldquo;I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.\u0026quot;\nDr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh\n\u0026ldquo;I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there.\u0026quot;\nDr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t believe any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article.\u0026quot;\nDr. Robert Whittaker, Professor of Biogeography, University of Oxford\n\u0026ldquo;Please remove my name. What you have done is totally unethical!!\u0026quot;\nDr. Svante Bjorck, Geo Biosphere Science Centre, Lund University\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m outraged that they\u0026rsquo;ve included me as an \u0026ldquo;author\u0026rdquo; of this report. I do not share the views expressed in the summary.\u0026quot;\nDr. John Clague, Shrum Research Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University\n\u0026ldquo;I am very shocked to see my name in the list of \u0026ldquo;500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares\u0026rdquo;. Because none of my research publications has ever indicated that the global warming is not as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, I view that the inclusion of my name in such list without my permission or consensus has damaged my professional reputation as an atmospheric scientist.\u0026quot; Dr. Ming Cai, Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University.\n\u0026ldquo;Just because you document natural climate variability doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean anthropogenic global warming is not a threat. In fact I would venture that most on that list believe a natural cycle and anthropogenic change combined represent a greater threat.\u0026quot; Peter F. Almasi, PhD Candidate in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Columbia University\n\u0026ldquo;Why can\u0026rsquo;t people spend their time trying to identify and evaluate the facts concerning climate change rather than trying to obscure them?\u0026quot; Dr. James P. Berry, Senior Scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute\n\u0026ldquo;They have taken our ice core research in Wyoming and twisted it to meet their own agenda. This is not science.\u0026quot; Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Hydrologist, US Geological Survey \u0026ldquo;Please remove my name IMMEDIATELY from the following article and from the list which misrepresents my research.\u0026quot; Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, Department of Geology, State University of New York at Buffalo\nThis demonstrates a very serious ethical lapse by the Heartland Institute\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;ve clearly tried to pull a fast one and been caught on it.\nArizona State Rep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) is on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute; her hobbies as a legislator apparently include both denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change and promoting legislation for the Church of Scientology.\nUPDATE (May 11, 2008): Pharyngula comments. The Heartland Institute, rather than issue a retraction or apology, has simply renamed their list to \u0026ldquo;500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (August 1, 2009): The Center for Inquiry has released its analysis of a similar list of dissenters promoted by Sen. James Inhofe.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-05-02):\nI've been comparing the tactics of folks like the Heartland Institute to creationists, myself. I even borrowed Chris Rodda's bit and rferred to them as Liars for Exxon.That post is also about a bogus list of scientists doubting warming.Sean Hannity likes to do the same thing ... when he talks about AGW he'll have a scrolling list of scientists at the bottom that don't believe in warming ... I'm guessing that if someone bothered to look into his list it would be as bogus. I believe I recall seeing Roger Pielk Sr. on his list even though he is not a denier of AGW though he has criticized the conclusions of the IPCC.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/heartland-institute-publishes-bogus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDennis Avery and the Heartland Institute issued a list of \u0026ldquo;500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares\u0026rdquo; earlier this week.  DeSmogBlog \u003ca href=\"http://www.desmogblog.com/500-scientists-with-documented-doubts-about-the-heartland-institute\"\u003econtacted 122 of the people on the list that they found email addresses for\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.desmogblog.com/outrage-in-the-climate-science-community-continues-over-the-500-scientist-list\"\u003ereceived replies from 45 of them within 24 hours\u003c/a\u003e, indicating that they did not agree to be on such a list and felt that the Heartland Institute had misrepresented their views.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are some of the quoted responses:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp class=\"blockquote\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Heartland Institute publishes bogus list of 500 scientists who doubt anthropogenic climate change"},{"content":"In an interview in Christianity Today:\nI believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr. (video is available if you follow the link):\nStein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.\nCrouch: That’s right.\nStein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.\nCrouch: Good word, good word.Note that he offers no qualifiers. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t say science must be complemented with ethics. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences. He simply says that science leads to mass murder.\nIf Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science. If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t genuinely believe it, then he\u0026rsquo;s not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he\u0026rsquo;s also dishonest.\nEither way, he\u0026rsquo;s demonstrated that he is a despicable character.\nAnd some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators.\nOthers on this subject:\nJohn Lynch at Stranger Fruit\nLarry Moran at The Sandwalk\nP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\nHistorical Comments AlanF (2008-05-02):\nStein is an idiot.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/ben-stein-thinks-science-leads-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/03/stein_on_scientists.php\"\u003ean interview in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChristianity Today\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRmOTU2YzZlN2RhMzhjNzEwNzQ3MzFiZDE2NjM3NWE=\"\u003ean interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr.\u003c/a\u003e (video is available if you follow the link):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eStein\u003c/b\u003e: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eCrouch\u003c/b\u003e:   That’s right.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eStein\u003c/b\u003e:   …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eCrouch\u003c/b\u003e:   Good word, good word.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/i\u003eNote that he offers no qualifiers.  He doesn\u0026rsquo;t say science must be complemented with ethics.  He doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences.  He simply says that science leads to mass murder.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science.  If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t genuinely believe it, then he\u0026rsquo;s not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he\u0026rsquo;s also dishonest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEither way, he\u0026rsquo;s demonstrated that he is a despicable character.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOthers on this subject:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/05/science_leads_you_to_killing_p.php\"\u003eJohn Lynch at Stranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/ben-stein-is-idiot.html\"\u003eLarry Moran at The Sandwalk\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/adl_makes_an_official_statemen.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/how_low_can_ben_stein_go.php\"\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ben Stein thinks science leads to killing people"},{"content":"Yesterday, Arizona Superior Court Judge William O\u0026rsquo;Neill struck down a Pinal County Court ruling that Dale Bell\u0026rsquo;s San Tan Flat steakhouse is a \u0026ldquo;dance hall,\u0026quot; freeing Bell from a ban against customers dancing outside his establishment. Pinal County\u0026rsquo;s attempt to ban dancing and extract fines from Bell had been hanging over his business since he opened in 2005.\nEamon Knight (2008-05-02):\nI have to ask: how on earth did this silly case get started? Did the neighbours complain about noise? Some petty control freak at City Hall decided to check every old law on the books? Someone had a grudge on the owner?\nLippard (2008-05-02):\nThere were noise complaints from the neighbors, which Pinal County tried to address by appeal to a 1962 ordinance banning dance halls which makes no reference to noise.The judge's ruling said the neighbors \"have every right to be disappointed\" that the county approved the restaurant in the first place.Bell's lawsuit against the county was for $1 and overturning the County Board of Supervisors' attempt to use the ordinance against him, for which they were threatening to fine him $700/day for noncompliance.So there's still a dispute about noise that may require some resolution, but now they can't just shut him down by claiming he's running a dance hall, when he's not.\nBobDotson (2008-05-11):\nI was in court on May 7th when Judge O'Neil made his ruling concerning the San Tan Flat violation of Pinal County Zoning Ordinances. Even though Judge O'Neil ruled in favor of Dale Bell, Judge O'Neil spent a significant amount of time speaking directly to Dale Bell about how the Judge understood the plight of the neighbors near Mr. Bell's establishment, and how Judge O'Neil would be appalled if the County ever allowed an establishment such as Mr. Bell operates, anywhere near the Judge's home in rural Pinal County. Judge O'Neil talked of individual property rights, and the exercise of those property rights as a ‘balancing act’, rubbing together his colliding fists to help demonstrate his point.It is this 'balancing act' of individual property rights that I would like to address in response to the various articles and editorials that have been published concerning this conflict over the past 2 years. The primary point I would like to discuss is the very important issue that Judge O'Neil pointed out in court, and that is the balancing act of property rights between property owners.On one side we find Mr. Bell, operating an establishment that he claims he built following all of the required guidelines and procedures, claiming he has honored all of his commitments, making claims of how good his business is for the 'community', all with what he claims are within his rights as a property owner, and that the County is trying to ‘ban dancing’ in Pinal county.On another side we find the surrounding property owners, who claim that every Friday and Saturday nights, holiday's nights, and many other nights in between, that Mr. Bell takes over our properties for his own use, blasting unbearable loud noise across our properties and into our homes, shines glaring commercial signage across our properties into the windows of our homes, casts a blanket of smoke across our properties from the marshmallow roasting fires fouling the air our families and livestock breath, and then nightly discharges inebriated patrons onto our neighborhood streets, patrons whom routinely choose our neighborhood streets to avoid encounters with law enforcement with no consideration for the families they put at risk. Unlike TV, radio, or the printed media where when you are offended, or tire of it, or find the timing inconvenient, then you can simply switch it off, set it aside, or not buy it in the first place; but here in our neighborhood, only Mr. Bell gets to choose what music and speech we will hear, blasting into our yards, our homes, our lives, night after night, like it or not, want it or not, only Dale Bell gets to choose when and what will be heard for all of the surrounding property owners. Now the predominance of the reporting and editorial about this conflict has focused around some injustice being perpetrated against Mr. Bell, which he has spun in the media as an attack on everyone’s right to dance. The candid truth is, we could care less about people dancing in Mr. Bell’s establishment. I don’t know a one among us who doesn’t like to dance. Mr. Bell, spun through his current proxies - the various media, would have us surrender our land, our homes, our dreams, our hopes, to the likes of the blatant recurring trespass from Mr. Bell, that we, Mr. Bell’s neighbors, somehow hold some odd notions of responsible property ownership and appropriate civil behavior, that we have been duped into some kind of flawed thinking about our plight in the face of a bully, that the idea that we might cry foul is somehow wrong, and that it is somehow inappropriate to plead with our elected government to right the wrong, and restore the peace to our neighborhood.If you remember, we all watched on television as a group of PSYOP soldiers played deafening rock music, 24 hours a day, over loudspeakers that ringed the Vatican Embassy compound where General Noriega had taken refuge. The siege continued until General Manuel Noriega couldn't take the 'constant bombardment of the music' anymore and surrendered. In Iraq, in Fallujah's darkened, empty streets, U.S. troops blast AC/DC's \"Hell's Bells\" and other rock music full volume from a huge speaker, hoping to grate on the nerves of this Sunni Muslim city's gunmen and give a laugh to Marines along the front line. That is Psychological Warfare Operations.Granted San Tan Ranches is not a war zone (although some of your readers would like to make it one), and Mr. Bell is not by any stretch of the imagination, a hoard of terrorists bent on killing us all. However, much of the editorial opinion and reporting so far would have us all believe that when our nation’s founding fathers were crafting the Declaration of Independence, that when Thomas Jefferson carefully scribed the concept \"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\", that we all must have missed the footnote lay hidden until Mr. Bell came along, that holds an exception - that Mr. Bell somehow enjoys greater privilege over everyone else. Putting the pun aside, it was this very concept of privilege that our founding fathers found to be so objectionable, so much so, that they were willing to risk everything to protect against it. With the 9th amendment of the US Constitution, the premise of Mr. Bell's extraordinary privilege that some of the editorials would try to convince us all of, is clearly dashed by \"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.\" Mr. Bell's rights clearly end where exercising his rights deny the rights of his neighbors, and that is exactly what Mr. Bell has been doing, continues to do, and is doing so with the support of the media, and particularly unfortunate for our Republic, ‘the press’ - the very place our founding fathers created extraordinary constitutional protections in order to make sure the exchange of ideas would be forever assured.The elected and appointed government officials in Pinal County, and the State of Arizona, as agents 'of the people, by the people, for the people' have an absolute obligation to protect the rights of 'all of its citizens', setting aside prejudice, special interests, and all other distractions that might interfere with protection of freedom and the fair application of justice, not just for Mr. Bell, but for all of its citizens. Mr. Bell has rights, and so far, the scale for the rights proposition has leaned heavily in Mr. Bell's favor, entirely at the expense of the rights of his neighbors. Mr. Bell is not entitled to the unencumbered use of our neighborhood properties, to use as he currently chooses to, constructively seizing them from us for his own enjoyment and enrichment, and the County through its actions or inaction, cannot surrender our properties to Mr. Bell or allow to continue, Mr. Bell's nightly trespass. That would effectively constitute an unlawful application of eminent domain, the taking of our properties, and handing them over to Mr. Bell, having denied our neighborhood property owners their due legal recourse, compensation and treatment under the law. The County is obliged to restore the \"balance\" Judge O'Neil referred to in court. As for the editorial staffs of the press, I say to you: It's time for you and your readers to face up to your own prejudices and misconceptions instead of relying on the propaganda fed to you by Mr. Bell, and recognize the real injustice that is occurring, the real tragedy in our community, the damage Mr. Bell has inflicted on the trust in the press that our founding fathers recognized as so crucial to the survival of our Republic. Mr. Bell has used your publications for his own selfish propaganda. Regardless how Mr. Bell has portrayed our neighbors in the San Tan Foothills, there are good, hardworking and honorable people here, caring people, and mostly people trying their best to help our community. It would sure be refreshing to see the media, and especially the editorial staffs of the press recognize the real injustice, and finally come to the aid of the neighborhood under siege in the San Tan Foothills.Respectfully,Bob Dotson\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/institute-for-justice-wins-san-tan-flat.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday, Arizona Superior Court Judge William O\u0026rsquo;Neill struck down \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/economic_liberty/az_santanflat/index.html\"\u003ea Pinal County Court ruling that Dale Bell\u0026rsquo;s San Tan Flat steakhouse is a \u0026ldquo;dance hall,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e freeing Bell from a ban against customers dancing outside his establishment.  Pinal County\u0026rsquo;s attempt to ban dancing and extract fines from Bell had been hanging over his business since he opened in 2005.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-05-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI have to ask: how on earth did this silly case get started? Did the neighbours complain about noise? Some petty control freak at City Hall decided to check every old law on the books? Someone had a grudge on the owner?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Institute for Justice wins San Tan Flat outdoor dance ban case"},{"content":"Max Dunlap, the convicted killer of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles, is seeking clemency in a hearing tomorrow. He would like to be released from his life sentence because he is 78 years old, suffering from incontinence from diabetes, and unable to walk easily due to a head injury received in prison. He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in paying two men (John Harvey Adamson and James Robison) to kill Bolles with a car bomb. Bolles died 11 days after the explosion, which took place on June 2, 1976 in the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel in downtown Phoenix.\nAlthough Dunlap has never fingered him, it is widely believed that the hit was ordered and paid for by Arizona liquor wholesaler, land magnate, and organized crime figure Kemper Marley, who was a primary target of Bolles\u0026rsquo; investigative reporting. (Adamson testified that Marley was behind the murder.) Not only did Marley never spend a day of his life in jail for his role in Bolles\u0026rsquo; murder or any other crime, he has a building named after him at the University of Arizona\u0026ndash;the Kemper Marley College of Agriculture building. He also has a building named after him at my high school alma mater, Brophy College Preparatory, called the Ethel and Kemper Marley Information Commons. He died in 1990 at the age of 83 at a beach home in La Jolla, CA.\nKemper Marley employed former bootlegger Jim Hensley in one of his wholesale liquor businesses, United Liquor, which had a monopoly on liquor distribution in Arizona. In 1948, Hensley was convicted on seven counts of filing false liquor records, and was charged again in 1953, but was found not guilty that time thanks to a defense from attorney William Rehnquist, future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. By 1955 Hensley had his own Budweiser distributorship.\nHensley\u0026rsquo;s daughter Cindy inherited his fortune in 2000. She now shares it with her husband, Arizona Senator John McCain.\nThe story of the Hensley fortune\u0026ndash;and of how McCain is beholden to liquor interests\u0026ndash;is told in a February 17, 2000 Phoenix New Times story, \u0026ldquo;Haunted by Spirits.\u0026quot;\nThe Arizona Project of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., is a package of stories, photos, and audio about Don Bolles, who was a member of the organization.\nUPDATE (July 22, 2009): Max Dunlap died in prison yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/max-dunlap-clemency-hearing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMax Dunlap, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/05/01/20080501dunlap0501.html\"\u003ethe convicted killer of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e investigative reporter Don Bolles, is seeking clemency in a hearing tomorrow\u003c/a\u003e.  He would like to be released from his life sentence because he is 78 years old, suffering from incontinence from diabetes, and unable to walk easily due to a head injury received in prison.  He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in paying two men (John Harvey Adamson and James Robison) to kill \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bolles\"\u003eBolles\u003c/a\u003e with a car bomb.  \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bolles\"\u003eBolles\u003c/a\u003e died 11 days after the explosion, which took place on June 2, 1976 in the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel in downtown Phoenix.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough Dunlap has never fingered him, it is widely believed that the hit was ordered and paid for by Arizona liquor wholesaler, land magnate, and organized crime figure Kemper Marley, who was a primary target of Bolles\u0026rsquo; investigative reporting.  (Adamson testified that Marley was behind the murder.)  Not only did Marley never spend a day of his life in jail for his role in Bolles\u0026rsquo; murder or any other crime, he has a building named after him at the University of Arizona\u0026ndash;the Kemper Marley College of Agriculture building.  He also has a building named after him at my high school alma mater, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brophy_College_Preparatory\"\u003eBrophy College Preparatory\u003c/a\u003e, called the Ethel and Kemper Marley Information Commons.  He \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7D7113FF93BA15755C0A966958260\"\u003edied in 1990 at the age of 83\u003c/a\u003e at a beach home in La Jolla, CA.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKemper Marley employed former bootlegger \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hensley\"\u003eJim Hensley\u003c/a\u003e in one of his wholesale liquor businesses, United Liquor, which had a monopoly on liquor distribution in Arizona.  In 1948, Hensley was convicted on seven counts of filing false liquor records, and was charged again in 1953, but was found not guilty that time thanks to a defense from attorney \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist\"\u003eWilliam Rehnquist\u003c/a\u003e, future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  By 1955 Hensley had his own Budweiser distributorship.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHensley\u0026rsquo;s daughter \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Hensley_McCain\"\u003eCindy\u003c/a\u003e inherited his fortune in 2000.  She now shares it with her husband, Arizona Senator John McCain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe story of the Hensley fortune\u0026ndash;and of how McCain is beholden to liquor interests\u0026ndash;is told in a February 17, 2000 Phoenix \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e story, \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2000-02-17/news/haunted-by-spirits/full\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Haunted by Spirits.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.ire.org/history/arizona.html\"\u003eArizona Project of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.\u003c/a\u003e, is a package of stories, photos, and audio about Don Bolles, who was a member of the organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 22, 2009):  Max Dunlap \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/07/22/20090722dunlap0722.html\"\u003edied in prison yesterday\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Max Dunlap clemency hearing"},{"content":"\nLocal artist Susan Barken completed her painting of Otto, and here it is. (Previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/ottos-painting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2354/2459749224_12ccc9c7a9.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2354/2459749224_12ccc9c7a9.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLocal artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.susanbarken.com/\"\u003eSusan Barken\u003c/a\u003e completed \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/otto-gets-discovered.html\"\u003eher painting of Otto\u003c/a\u003e, and here it is.  (\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/otto-gets-discovered.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Otto's painting"},{"content":"Today is Labor Day in much of Latin America, May Day or International Worker\u0026rsquo;s Day in many European countries, China, Cuba, and the Russian Federation (and in the U.S. and UK, though it\u0026rsquo;s not a federal holiday in either), Beltane for pagans and Wiccans (approximately the midpoint between the vernal equinox and summer solstice, though in reality it\u0026rsquo;s off by a few days), and the National Day of Prayer for evangelical Christians. While they pretend the day of prayer is for all religions that believe in the Abrahamic god, Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Faily, runs the national task force and requires coordinators to sign this statement of faith:\nI believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory. I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name. I agree that these statements are true in my life.So much for the \u0026ldquo;Judeo\u0026rdquo; in \u0026ldquo;Judeo-Christian.\u0026quot; Jews, Muslims, and liberal Christians don\u0026rsquo;t qualify\u0026ndash;this is an explicitly sectarian organization, endorsed by government in blatant contradiction of the First Amendment.\nPharyngula reports that the Minnesota Atheists have declared today a National Day of Reason and will be demonstrating at the state capitol in St. Paul.\nBy the way, today is also Loyalty Day in the United States, declared by every U.S. president every year on this day since 1958 as an anticommunist counter to May Day.\nSo there\u0026rsquo;s a wide variety of possible celebrations\u0026ndash;you can thank the labor workers of the past for the 8-hour workday, rage against capitalist exploitation, express your loyalty to our wise and just leaders, celebrate the act of pretending to talk to an invisible being, or be thankful that you\u0026rsquo;ve been fortunate enough to have the ability to reason.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/05/may-day.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday is \u003ca href=\"http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/common/labor-day\"\u003eLabor Day\u003c/a\u003e in much of Latin America, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day\"\u003eMay Day\u003c/a\u003e or International Worker\u0026rsquo;s Day in many European countries, China, Cuba, and the Russian Federation (and in the U.S. and UK, though it\u0026rsquo;s not a federal holiday in either), \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane\"\u003eBeltane\u003c/a\u003e for pagans and Wiccans (approximately the midpoint between the vernal equinox and summer solstice, though in reality it\u0026rsquo;s off by a few days), and the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/happy_national_day_of_prayer.php\"\u003eNational Day of Prayer\u003c/a\u003e for evangelical Christians.  While they pretend the day of prayer is for all religions that believe in the Abrahamic god, Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Faily, runs the national task force and requires coordinators to sign this statement of faith:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory. I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name. I agree that these statements are true in my life.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/judeo-christian-means-christian.html\"\u003eSo much for the \u0026ldquo;Judeo\u0026rdquo; in \u0026ldquo;Judeo-Christian.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Jews, Muslims, and liberal Christians don\u0026rsquo;t qualify\u0026ndash;this is an explicitly sectarian organization, endorsed by government in blatant contradiction of the First Amendment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/happy_national_day_of_prayer.php\"\u003ereports that the Minnesota Atheists have declared today a National Day of Reason\u003c/a\u003e and will be demonstrating at the state capitol in St. Paul.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy the way, today is also \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/loyalty-day.html\"\u003eLoyalty Day\u003c/a\u003e in the United States, declared by every U.S. president every year on this day since 1958 as an anticommunist counter to May Day.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo there\u0026rsquo;s a wide variety of possible celebrations\u0026ndash;you can thank the labor workers of the past for the 8-hour workday, rage against capitalist exploitation, express your loyalty to our wise and just leaders, celebrate the act of pretending to talk to an invisible being, or be thankful that you\u0026rsquo;ve been fortunate enough to have the ability to reason.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"May Day"},{"content":"The sadly defunct Spy magazine used to have a feature called \u0026ldquo;Logrolling in Our Time,\u0026quot; in which it pointed out examples of authors providing favorable cover blurbs to each other. Like this:\n\u0026ldquo;Written with his customary verve and flair, The Mind of the Market is Michael Shermer at his best. Roving over the entire sweep of history, and drawing on the best of modern science, Shermer attempts a grand synthesis of research from psychology and the neurosciences to demonstrate that markets are moral and that free trade meshes well with human nature. Shermer entertains as well as informs, and in the process he deepens the argument for economic, political and social freedom.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;Dinesh D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About America, on Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s book, The Mind of the Market\n\u0026ldquo;As an unbeliever I passionately disagree with Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read. His thorough research and elegant prose have elevated him into the top ranks of those who champion liberty and individual responsibility. Now he adds Christianity to his formula for a good society, and although non-Christians and non-theists may disagree with some of his arguments, we ignore him at our peril. D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book takes the debate to a new level. Read it.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;Michael Shermer, author of The Mind of the Market, on Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book, What\u0026rsquo;s So Great About Christianity\nD\u0026rsquo;Souza is clearly not a \u0026ldquo;first-rate scholar.\u0026quot; Neither, for that matter, is Shermer. Both are popularizers.\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-30):\nShermer has expertise but he doesn't seem to do all that much work in it. His book on Alfred Wallace is based on work he did for his PhD if I remember right. I haven't read that and have no idea what the quality of its scholarship is.D'Souza on the other hand ... has Shermer not noticed his book Enemies At Home? He sounds like Qutb and talks about their being a domestic insurgency of leftists that have given terrorists a legitimate reason to be angry with America.\nLippard (2008-04-30):\nYou're correct, Shermer did a Ph.D. in history of science and his Alfred Russell Wallace book is based on his doctoral dissertation. He briefly had some adjunct professorships, but now he's a professional skeptic and author of books for a popular audience, not an academic scholar.\nHume's Ghost (2008-05-01):\nI just noticed that the current issue of Skeptic has a review of D'Souza's book by Tim Callahan. I might have to swing by a book store and skim it, as I'm guessing that Callahan is going to be a bit more critical than that Shermer blurb.\nLippard (2008-05-01):\nYes. Tim Callahan's review in _Skeptic_ is definitely a critical review.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/logrolling-in-our-time.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe sadly defunct \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpy\u003c/span\u003e magazine used to have a feature called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Logrolling in Our Time,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e in which it pointed out examples of authors providing favorable cover blurbs to each other.  Like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Written with his customary verve and flair, \u003ci\u003eThe Mind of the Market\u003c/i\u003e is Michael Shermer at his best. Roving over the entire sweep of history, and drawing on the best of modern science, Shermer attempts a grand synthesis of research from psychology and the neurosciences to demonstrate that markets are moral and that free trade meshes well with human nature. Shermer entertains as well as informs, and in the process he deepens the argument for economic, political and social freedom.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;Dinesh D’Souza, author of \u003ci\u003eWhat’s So Great About America\u003c/i\u003e, on \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Market-Compassionate-Competitive-Evolutionary/dp/0805078320/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eMichael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ci\u003eThe Mind of the Market\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;As an unbeliever I passionately disagree with Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read. His thorough research and elegant prose have elevated him into the top ranks of those who champion liberty and individual responsibility. Now he adds Christianity to his formula for a good society, and although non-Christians and non-theists may disagree with some of his arguments, we ignore him at our peril. D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book takes the debate to a new level. Read it.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;Michael Shermer, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Mind of the Market\u003c/i\u003e, on \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R31OEN7YAV1OZ2/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm\"\u003eDinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ci\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s So Great About Christianity\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eD\u0026rsquo;Souza is clearly \u003ca href=\"/2007/02/nice-takedown-of-dinesh-dsouza.html\"\u003enot a \u0026ldquo;first-rate scholar.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Neither, for that matter, is Shermer.  Both are popularizers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Logrolling in our time"},{"content":"Ross Anderson, journalist and former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, gives an interesting history of the founding of the organization. He describes how DI got into the intelligent design business, which has proved to be its major source of funding.\nAbout two years ago, the Discovery Institute founded the Biologic Institute to perform scientific research. At long last, they finally have a website up, and its cast of characters contains many names recognizable from the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo; Still no scientific theory of intelligent design, however.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/history-and-future-of-discovery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRoss Anderson, journalist and former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, \u003ca href=\"http://www.crosscut.com/politics-government/13794/Evolution+of+a+think+tank/\"\u003egives an interesting history of the founding of the organization\u003c/a\u003e.  He describes how DI got into the intelligent design business, which has proved to be its major source of funding.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAbout two years ago, the Discovery Institute founded the Biologic Institute to perform scientific research.  At long last, they \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicinstitute.org/\"\u003efinally have a website up\u003c/a\u003e, and its cast of characters contains many names recognizable from the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;  Still no scientific theory of intelligent design, however.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"History and future of the Discovery Institute"},{"content":"John Derbyshire of National Review has written about \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot; A couple of key paragraphs:\nI think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old Biblical creationists were, in my opinion, wrong-headed, but they were mostly honest people. The “intelligent design” crowd lean more in the other direction. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It’s by no means all of them, but it’s enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.\n\u0026hellip;\nAnd now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”\nQuite right. There is no scientific theory of intelligent design.\nUPDATE (May 1, 2008): Commenter tom points out a subsequent Derbyshire post about Ben Stein\u0026rsquo;s remarkable statement on the Trinity Broadcasting Network that while \u0026ldquo;Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place \u0026hellip; science leads you to killing people.\u0026quot;\nBen Stein is a shameful, despicable human being.\nHistorical Comments tom (2008-05-01):\nhttp://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRmOTU2YzZlN2RhMzhjNzEwNzQ3MzFiZDE2NjM3NWE=Hi Jim-Just a heads up on a subsequent Derbyshire post, in which he quotes Ben Stein alienating a huge portion of the potential mainstream audience to which Expelled tries to appeal:\"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/national-review-on-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Derbyshire of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Review\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGYwMzdjOWRmNGRhOWQ4MTQyZDMxNjNhYTU1YTE5Njk=\u0026amp;w=MA\"\u003ehas written about \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  A couple of key paragraphs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old Biblical creationists were, in my opinion, wrong-headed, but they were mostly honest people. The “intelligent design” crowd lean more in the other direction. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It’s by no means all of them, but it’s enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eAnd now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eQuite right.  There is no scientific theory of intelligent design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 1, 2008): Commenter tom points out \u003ca href=\"http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRmOTU2YzZlN2RhMzhjNzEwNzQ3MzFiZDE2NjM3NWE=\"\u003ea subsequent Derbyshire post\u003c/a\u003e about Ben Stein\u0026rsquo;s remarkable statement on the Trinity Broadcasting Network that while \u0026ldquo;Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place \u0026hellip; science leads you to killing people.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBen Stein is a shameful, despicable human being.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"National Review on \"Expelled\""},{"content":"Matt Taibbi goes undercover with the Christian right\u0026ndash;at the megachurch of John Hagee, whose endorsement for president John McCain is happy to have.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/jesus-made-me-puke.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt Taibbi \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/print\"\u003egoes undercover with the Christian right\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;at the megachurch of John Hagee, \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/mccain-thankful-for-support-of-raving.html\"\u003ewhose endorsement for president John McCain is happy to have\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/atheism_is_a_condom_for_your_m.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jesus Made Me Puke"},{"content":"John Lynch points to an essay by Dennis Durst on \u0026ldquo;Evangelical Engagements with Eugenics, 1900-1940.\u0026quot;\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2008-05-05):\nYou can point to an essay; I can point to a book: Christine Rosen, Preaching Genetics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. As one review stated:\"Christine Rosen argues that religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists—those who challenged their churches to embrace modernity—became the eugenics movement’s most enthusiastic supporters. Their participation played an important part in the success of the American eugenics movement.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/evangelical-christian-support-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Lynch \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/eugenics_its_not_just_for_darw.php\"\u003epoints to\u003c/a\u003e an essay by Dennis Durst on \u003ca href=\"http://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/18/2/18-2-durst.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Evangelical Engagements with Eugenics, 1900-1940.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKtisophilos\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-05-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYou can point to an essay; I can point to a book: Christine Rosen, \u003cI\u003ePreaching Genetics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement\u003c/I\u003e, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. As one \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.eppc.org/publications/bookID.51/book_detail.asp\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ereview stated\u003c/A\u003e:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\"Christine Rosen argues that religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists—those who challenged their churches to embrace modernity—became the eugenics movement’s most enthusiastic supporters. Their participation played an important part in the success of the American eugenics movement.\"\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evangelical Christian support of eugenics"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars links to and comments on an essay by Elizabeth Castelli on the history of Christian persecution, real and imagined. It\u0026rsquo;s interesting how many Christians argue that they are being persecuted, even as they are engaged in persecution themselves.\nWhich reminds me again of Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s classic \u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-29):\nIt reminds me of white supremacists complaining about being persecuted by blacks.One of the most pathetic things that has always struck me when listening to white supremacists speak is their sense of being persecuted by an oppressive minority and/or the forces of liberalism. It is difficult to make sense of the assertion that white males in the USA are disadvantaged unless you consider that supremacists are 1)scapegoating an Other they are prejudiced against for perceived societal failings and 2)that their definition of being persecuted amounts to not being allowed to persecute others.Another group that shares the same persecution complex is that of the religious right. More specifically, the dominionist or Christian nationalist elements of the religious right which similarly consider the failures of society to stem from an oppressive minority and also feels that not being allowed to enforce religious orthodoxy on others amounts to being persecuted. I suspect, however, that it is easier to see the bigotry underlying the persecution complex of the white supremacists than it is from the Christian supremacists, for the obvious reason that we've as a nation already rejected the ideology of white supremacism.For example, if one were to hear someone say the following, it would be fairly obvious that the person making the statement is a bigot:You can be any race you want and PROUD of it... except white. I watch tv and flip around and you've got networks for gays, for women, for Spanish speakers ... There's even BET a network just for blacks. Obviously, the owners of the network are black and are proud of it, but if the owners were white and tried to create a White Entertainment Television channel all Hell would break loose. Is that really that different than this comment agreeing with Ron Paul's view that Christmas is under siege?You can be ANY faith you want and PROUD of it... except Christian. I walk around one of the largest malls in California, during the holidays, festive colors everywhere, and what is directly in the center of the mall? A massive menorah. Obviously, the owners are Jewish and expressing their faith. Were the owners Christian and tried to do the same with a crucifix, Hell would've broken loose.\nMoses Gunner (2008-04-30):\nChristians are under attack in America! Take Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America. Written by Robert S. McElvaine for example. This worthless\"hitorian\" attempts to attack Christians with the bible! This book is likely to be the refrence book of the Anti-Chris. I found this great review of GrandTheft Jeses that tears the arguments Dr. McElvaine to shreds.\nLippard (2008-04-30):\nI'm not familiar with the book in question, and the review you cite doesn't seem to say much about what the book's arguments actually are.But using the Bible to criticize Christianity as practiced in the U.S. today is perfectly legitimate, easy, and not persecution.Criticism is not persecution.\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-30):\nI should have mentioned that Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist has also used the juxtaposition of white supremacism onto the Pledge in order to help demonstrate anti-atheist bigotry in the Pledge.He's now turned that excellent (imo) post into a book.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/christian-persecution-complexes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/the_roots_of_the_christian_per.php\"\u003elinks to and comments on an essay by Elizabeth Castelli on the history of Christian persecution\u003c/a\u003e, real and imagined.  It\u0026rsquo;s interesting how many Christians argue that they are being persecuted, even as \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/onward-christian-soldiers.html\"\u003ethey are engaged in persecution themselves\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhich reminds me again of Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s classic \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/misc/humor.archive//lioaca.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eHume's Ghost\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-29)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt \u003cA HREF=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/12/persecution-complex.html\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ereminds me\u003c/A\u003e of white supremacists complaining about being persecuted by blacks.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cB\u003eOne of the most pathetic things that has always struck me when listening to white supremacists speak is their sense of being persecuted by an oppressive minority and/or the forces of liberalism. It is difficult to make sense of the assertion that white males in the USA are disadvantaged unless you consider that supremacists are 1)scapegoating an Other they are prejudiced against for perceived societal failings and 2)that their definition of being persecuted amounts to not being allowed to persecute others.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnother group that shares the same persecution complex is that of the religious right. More specifically, the dominionist or Christian nationalist elements of the religious right which similarly consider the failures of society to stem from an oppressive minority and also feels that not being allowed to enforce religious orthodoxy on others amounts to being persecuted. I suspect, however, that it is easier to see the bigotry underlying the persecution complex of the white supremacists than it is from the Christian supremacists, for the obvious reason that we've as a nation already rejected the ideology of white supremacism.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eFor example, if one were to hear someone say the following, it would be fairly obvious that the person making the statement is a bigot:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003eYou can be any race you want and PROUD of it... except white. I watch tv and flip around and you've got networks for gays, for women, for Spanish speakers ... There's even BET a network just for blacks. Obviously, the owners of the network are black and are proud of it, but if the owners were white and tried to create a White Entertainment Television channel all Hell would break loose.\u003c/I\u003e \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIs that really that different than this comment agreeing with Ron Paul's view that Christmas is under siege?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003eYou can be ANY faith you want and PROUD of it... except Christian. I walk around one of the largest malls in California, during the holidays, festive colors everywhere, and what is directly in the center of the mall? A massive menorah. Obviously, the owners are Jewish and expressing their faith. Were the owners Christian and tried to do the same with a crucifix, Hell would've broken loose.\u003c/I\u003e\u003c/B\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian persecution complexes"},{"content":"Simon Owens at Bloggasm interviewed Michael Edmondson, creator of the \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers\u0026rdquo; viral video that was widely acclaimed by critics of the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; for its humor and polish. Apparently the segment was originally intended to be in \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; but the producers decided to turn it into a viral video instead, since it didn\u0026rsquo;t fit with the character of the film. (Insert your choice of snarky comment about how it didn\u0026rsquo;t fit here.)\nHistorical Comments clockwork_watchmaker (2008-05-30):\nlol, it didn't fit because it wasn't as humorless and uninformed as the movie it was intended to complete.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/more-on-mike-edmondson-and-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSimon Owens at Bloggasm \u003ca href=\"http://bloggasm.com/mocking-the-mockers-the-ambiguity-of-a-youtube-video\"\u003einterviewed Michael Edmondson, creator of the \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers\u0026rdquo; viral video\u003c/a\u003e that was widely acclaimed by critics of the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; for its humor and polish.  Apparently the segment was originally intended to be in \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; but the producers decided to turn it into a viral video instead, since it didn\u0026rsquo;t fit with the character of the film.  (Insert your choice of snarky comment about how it didn\u0026rsquo;t fit here.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on Mike Edmondson and the Expelled viral video"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s a letter to the editor from Jeremy Gunn, director of the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the ACLU, in response to an idiotic falsehood-ridden column by Pat Boone.\nIf anyone ever comes across an attempt by the anti-ACLU crowd to actually respond to the content of Gunn\u0026rsquo;s letter, I\u0026rsquo;d be interested in seeing it. I suspect it will most likely be ignored, and any alleged responses will not respond to its content.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/worldnetdaily-publishes-something.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view\u0026amp;pageId=62500\"\u003ea letter to the editor from Jeremy Gunn, director of the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the ACLU\u003c/a\u003e, in response to an idiotic falsehood-ridden column by Pat Boone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf anyone ever comes across an attempt by the anti-ACLU crowd to actually respond to the content of Gunn\u0026rsquo;s letter, I\u0026rsquo;d be interested in seeing it.  I suspect it will most likely be ignored, and any alleged responses will not respond to its content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/gunn_shreds_boone.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WorldNetDaily publishes something sensible"},{"content":"Matthew LaClair has an op-ed piece in today\u0026rsquo;s Los Angeles Times in which he talks about his evangelizing history teacher and the biased textbook used in his class.\nJames Q. Wilson defends his textbook in a companion L.A. Times op-ed; the bulk of his defense is that the later edition of his book fixes the problems LaClair complains about.\nUPDATE (June 29, 2008): The July/August 2008 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer comments on this controversy. It seems that the later edition of the book is not yet available for schools and contains most, if not all, of the same misrepresentations and problems that LaClair complained about. Wilson, through his dishonest op-ed, has thrown away his credibility.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/matthew-laclair-op-ed-in-los-angeles.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew LaClair \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-laclairapr27,0,247646.story\"\u003ehas an op-ed piece in today\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e in which he talks about his evangelizing history teacher and the biased textbook used in his class.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJames Q. Wilson \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-wilson27apr27,0,5311132.story\"\u003edefends his textbook in a companion \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eL.A. Times\u003c/span\u003e op-ed\u003c/a\u003e; the bulk of his defense is that the later edition of his book fixes the problems LaClair complains about.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 29, 2008):  The July/August 2008 issue of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e comments on this controversy.  It seems that the later edition of the book is not yet available for schools and contains most, if not all, of the same misrepresentations and problems that LaClair complained about.  Wilson, through his dishonest op-ed, has thrown away his credibility.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matthew LaClair op-ed in Los Angeles Times"},{"content":"Jeff Shallit has a post at his Recursivity blog about some \u0026ldquo;comical misunderstandings\u0026rdquo; by intelligent design advocates Denyse O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Robert Marks. In O\u0026rsquo;Leary\u0026rsquo;s case, the misunderstanding is expected, but Marks is an engineering professor at Baylor University who should know better.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/mathematical-misunderstanding-by-marks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Shallit has a post at his Recursivity blog about some \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/04/comical-misunderstandings-of-oleary-and.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;comical misunderstandings\u0026rdquo; by intelligent design advocates Denyse O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Robert Marks\u003c/a\u003e.  In O\u0026rsquo;Leary\u0026rsquo;s case, the misunderstanding is expected, but Marks is an engineering professor at Baylor University who should know better.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mathematical misunderstanding by Marks and O'Leary"},{"content":"Jeff Shallit talks about Discovery Institute Fellow David Berlinski, notable as one of the few advocates of intelligent design who is not an evangelical Christian. He\u0026rsquo;s also not a scientist or a mathematician; he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. Although that\u0026rsquo;s a top school for philosophy in the U.S., Berlinski hasn\u0026rsquo;t been working as a professional philosopher, either.\nOf course, he was touted as an expert in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/david-berlinski-king-of-poseurs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Shallit \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/04/david-berlinski-king-of-poseurs.html\"\u003etalks about Discovery Institute Fellow David Berlinski\u003c/a\u003e, notable as one of the few advocates of intelligent design who is not an evangelical Christian.  He\u0026rsquo;s also not a scientist or a mathematician; he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton.  Although that\u0026rsquo;s a top school for philosophy in the U.S., Berlinski hasn\u0026rsquo;t been working as a professional philosopher, either.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf course, he was touted as an expert in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Berlinski, King of Poseurs"},{"content":"Arizona\u0026rsquo;s legislature, like Florida\u0026rsquo;s, is considering creating \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; license plates. Indiana already has them, which, unlike other specialty plates, require no additional fee. The ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit in Indiana against the plates was recently dismissed.\nIn Arizona, the state Senate approved legislation (HB 2046) sponsored by Rep. Ron Gould (R-Lake Havasu City) which would require the Department of Transportation to provide \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; license plates if some organization pays the $32,000 necessary for design costs. The bill was originally for \u0026ldquo;Arizona Highways\u0026rdquo; license plates when introduced in January, but has been modified into a religious proposal.\nIt looks to me like Gould\u0026rsquo;s proposal puts the imprimatur of government on the promotion of religion, which violates both the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions. A contrary argument would be that there\u0026rsquo;s no financial expenditure by the government, since the fees to produce such plates come from the individuals rather than the government. But by allowing the expression of a particular religious sentiment (supporting monotheistic religions) and not other religious sentiments (including disbelief in any religion), it will clearly favor one set of viewpoints on religion over others.\nUPDATE (May 1, 2008): Correction, the Florida license plate under consideration was one which said \u0026ldquo;I believe\u0026rdquo; with a picture of a cross. The Florida legislature looks set to allow the legislation to die without passage.\nCairnarvon (2008-04-28):\nThe obvious solution is to try to pay $32,000 for the design of plates for a different religion (or pro-atheism), and then sue again when that gets rejected.\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nCairnarvon:Nope. ARS 28-2404 says that an organization (that has to be a nonprofit which either has at least 200 members or agrees to pay for certain costs of the plate) can submit a request for a specialized plate, but the requirements include: 1. The primary activity or interest of the organization serves the community, contributes to the welfare of others and is not offensive or discriminatory in its purpose, nature, activity or name.2. The name of the organization or any part of the organization's purpose does not promote any specific product or brand name that is provided for sale.3. The purpose of the organization does not promote a specific religion, faith or antireligious belief.The proposed bill is bypassing the third requirement of the existing law.\nEinzige (2008-04-28):\nI don't yet see how it's doing that.The Organization in this case is the state of Arizona, which doesn't have the purpose of promoting a specific religion.A further argument could be made that \"monotheistic religions\" is not specific enough.I'm not saying that I am happy about the plates, mind you.\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nEinzige:You've already fallen into the trap of the misinterpretation of separation of church and state if you think that \"a specific religion\" must be promoted. The promotion of religion over nonreligion is itself a violation.It's more clear in the Arizona Constitution than in the wording of the U.S. Constitution. The Arizona Constitution, Article 2, Section 12 says: \"The liberty of conscience secured by the provisions of this constitution shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state. No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment. No religious qualification shall be required for any public office or employment, nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror in consequence of his opinion on matters of religion, nor be questioned touching his religious belief in any court of justice to affect the weight of his testimony.\"The key sentence: \"No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment.\"\nEinzige (2008-04-28):\nSo, no public money will be used, thus not violating the constitution, and (presumably) the organization that does end up fronting the money will be one that \"does not promote a specific religion.\"Voilà! We have \"In God We Trust\" license plates.What other key info am I missing?\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nSo is the DOT going to do all work associated with the \"In God We Trust\" plates on non-government property? Note that the Arizona Constitution prohibits the use of both public funds *and* property.Also, by allowing such plates and disallowing comparable expressions supporting atheism or non-Abrahamic religions, that's unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by a government agency.\nEinzige (2008-04-28):\nAh, yes. Good point.It's good, though, that AZ's constitution is clearer on this than the US Constitution, since \"In God We Trust\" is all over the currency.\nMarc (2012-04-09):\nIt looks like they\u0026#39;re here as of March 4,2012. Fortunately, though, it may not be for long. Since it came out a couple of years ago, I've wonderd if the \u0026quot;Golden Rule\u0026quot; plate is much different.\nIt is sponsored by the Arizona Interfaith Movement, not that you'd know this from the description of the plate on the AZ MVD website. Then again, they do include Humanism on their list of \u0026quot;Faith Groups,\u0026quot; so maybe that counts for something.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/in-god-we-trust-license-plates.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s legislature, like Florida\u0026rsquo;s, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/234602\"\u003eis considering creating \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; license plates\u003c/a\u003e.  Indiana already has them, which, unlike other specialty plates, require no additional fee.  The ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit in Indiana against the plates \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351721,00.html\"\u003ewas recently dismissed\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Arizona, the state Senate approved legislation (HB 2046) sponsored by Rep. Ron Gould (R-Lake Havasu City) which would require the Department of Transportation to provide \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; license plates if some organization pays the $32,000 necessary for design costs.  The bill was originally for \u0026ldquo;Arizona Highways\u0026rdquo; license plates when introduced in January, but has been modified into a religious proposal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looks to me like Gould\u0026rsquo;s proposal puts the imprimatur of government on the promotion of religion, which violates both the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions.  A contrary argument would be that there\u0026rsquo;s no financial expenditure by the government, since the fees to produce such plates come from the individuals rather than the government.  But by allowing the expression of a particular religious sentiment (supporting monotheistic religions) and not other religious sentiments (including disbelief in any religion), it will clearly favor one set of viewpoints on religion over others.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 1, 2008): Correction, the Florida license plate under consideration was one which said \u0026ldquo;I believe\u0026rdquo; with a picture of a cross.  The Florida legislature\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/you_didnt_pray_hard_enough_for.php\"\u003e looks set to allow the legislation to die without passage\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"In God We Trust\" license plates"},{"content":"Two of the least credible spokespeople for their respective political and religious positions\u0026hellip;\nGridman (2008-04-27):\nAd hominem reason, surely...\nLippard (2008-04-27):\nYou're correct that it's ad hominem--which is a perfectly good reason to distrust a *source*, but it doesn't actually make an argument against the *claim*.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/reason-to-be-skeptical-about.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo of the least credible spokespeople for their respective political and religious positions\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-06771957588601416 visible\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NhmpsUMdTH8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-06771957588601416 visible\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NhmpsUMdTH8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NhmpsUMdTH8\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NhmpsUMdTH8\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGridman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003cI\u003eAd hominem\u003c/I\u003e reason, surely...\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYou're correct that it's ad hominem--which is a perfectly good reason to distrust a *source*, but it doesn't actually make an argument against the *claim*.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reason to be skeptical about anthropogenic climate change"},{"content":"At the Evolved and Rational blog, John Ray gives a review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from a filmmaking perspective:\nCinematically, Expelled gets off to a lovely start. First-time director Nathan Frankowski chooses a nice, rich level of contrast and uses it to create some sparkling opening shots of our nation’s capitol. Those who knew what they were in for when they walked into the theater (presumably, most of the film’s so-far few attendees) were given an artistic visual rough outline of where the film was going. By the time we see Ben Stein taking a deep breath, looking indeed like “the little investigative journalist that could” in his trademark adorable little sneakers, the audience is practically eager to believe whatever he has to say.\nThen he starts talking and the effect is ruined.\nPoor narration, over- and under-exposed shots, \u0026ldquo;Lord Privy Seals,\u0026rdquo; and endless footage of Ben Stein walking are a few of the technical complaints.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-reviewed-from-filmmakers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the Evolved and Rational blog, John Ray \u003ca href=\"http://www.evolvedrational.com/2008/04/expelled-review-i.html\"\u003egives a review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from a filmmaking perspective\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCinematically, \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eExpelled\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e gets off to a lovely start. First-time director Nathan Frankowski chooses a nice, rich level of contrast and uses it to create some sparkling opening shots of our nation’s capitol. Those who knew what they were in for when they walked into the theater (presumably, most of the film’s so-far few attendees) were given an artistic visual rough outline of where the film was going. By the time we see Ben Stein taking a deep breath, looking indeed like “the little investigative journalist that could” in his trademark adorable little sneakers, the audience is practically eager to believe whatever he has to say.\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" reviewed from a filmmaker's perspective"},{"content":"Kendra Wiseman, Jenna Miscavige Hill (niece of David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology), and Astra Woodcraft are three ex-Scientologists who are now running the Ex-Scientology Kids website, critical of Scientology.\nJenna Hill will be on ABC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Nightline\u0026rdquo; tonight.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/ex-scientology-kids.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKendra Wiseman, Jenna Miscavige Hill (\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/niece-of-david-miscavige-speaks-out.html\"\u003eniece of David Miscavige\u003c/a\u003e, head of the Church of Scientology), and Astra Woodcraft are three ex-Scientologists who \u003ca href=\"http://www.exscientologykids.org/\"\u003eare now running the Ex-Scientology Kids website, critical of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJenna Hill \u003ca href=\"http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=4716462\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003ewill be on ABC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Nightline\u0026rdquo; tonight\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ex-Scientology Kids"},{"content":"In an interview with Newsweek, Ben Stein falsely stated that:\nThere are a number of scientists and academics who\u0026rsquo;ve been fired, denied tenure, lost tenure or lost grants because they even suggested the possibility of intelligent design. The most egregious is Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian, the editor of a magazine that published a peer-reviewed paper about ID. He lost his job.Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian and never lost his unpaid Research Associate position there. He never worked for any Smithsonian magazine, and resigned from his position as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington six months before the publication of the Stephen Meyer intelligent design article which he approved with inappropriate review.\nThe Smithsonian responded to Newsweek:\nSternberg has never been employed by the Smithsonian Institution. Since January 2004, he has been an unpaid research associate in the departments of invertebrate and vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian\u0026rsquo;s National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Sternberg continues to enjoy full access to research facilities at the museum. Moreover, Stein\u0026rsquo;s assertion that Sternberg was removed from a Smithsonian publication is not true. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is an independent journal and is not affiliated with the Smithsonian.(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/ben-stein-lies-about-sternberg-affair.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn an interview with Newsweek, Ben Stein \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/130619\"\u003efalsely stated that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThere are a number of scientists and academics who\u0026rsquo;ve been fired, denied tenure, lost tenure or lost grants because they even suggested the possibility of intelligent design. The most egregious is Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian, the editor of a magazine that published a peer-reviewed paper about ID. He lost his job.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian and never lost his unpaid Research Associate position there.  He never worked for any Smithsonian magazine, and resigned from his position as editor of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington\u003c/span\u003e six months before the publication of the Stephen Meyer intelligent design article which he approved with inappropriate review.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Smithsonian \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/132855\"\u003eresponded to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSternberg has never been employed by the Smithsonian Institution. Since January 2004, he has been an unpaid research associate in the departments of invertebrate and vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian\u0026rsquo;s National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Sternberg continues to enjoy full access to research facilities at the museum. Moreover, Stein\u0026rsquo;s assertion that Sternberg was removed from a Smithsonian publication is not true. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is an independent journal and is not affiliated with the Smithsonian.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/ben_stein_lies_about_sternberg.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ben Stein lies about Sternberg affair"},{"content":"I agree with Orac at Respectful Insolence, contra bioethicist Arthur Caplan, that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s argument that Darwinism was a contributing cause of (the main cause of?) the Holocaust doesn\u0026rsquo;t constitute Holocaust denial.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-24):\nYeah. \"Expelled\" abuses the Holocaust in a despicable way, but to call that \"Holocaust Denial\" is an abuse of that term.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-is-not-holocaust-denial.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI agree with \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/bioethicist_art_caplan_understands.php\"\u003eOrac at Respectful Insolence\u003c/a\u003e, contra bioethicist Arthur Caplan, that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s argument that Darwinism was a contributing cause of (the main cause of?) the Holocaust \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/bioethicist_art_caplan_understands.php\"\u003edoesn\u0026rsquo;t constitute Holocaust denial\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYeah. \"Expelled\" abuses the Holocaust in a despicable way, but to call that \"Holocaust Denial\" is an abuse of that term.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" is not Holocaust denial"},{"content":"Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education debated back and forth for five days in the Los Angeles Times on speech codes, faculty bias, and \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo; Actually, they were pretty much in agreement on \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot; (Where they disagree on other issues, I think Lukianoff generally has the better of the argument, though I side with Shermer on the rights of private institutions.)\nI happen to support both of their organizations, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s interesting to point out that FIRE is the major organization defending the freedom of speech of students and faculty in academia, though they\u0026rsquo;ve not noticed any issues of persecution of ID advocates worthy of their attention. They actually deal with real cases of suppression, censorship, and indoctrination, not phony cases like those in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/shermer-vs-lukianoff-in-la-times.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMichael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-dustup-apr14-18,1,5478870.storygallery\"\u003edebated back and forth for five days in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e on speech codes, faculty bias, and \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;  Actually, \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-shermer-lukianoff16apr16,1,7766893.story\"\u003ethey were pretty much in agreement on \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  (Where they disagree on other issues, I think Lukianoff generally has the better of the argument, though I side with Shermer on the rights of private institutions.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI happen to support both of their organizations, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s interesting to point out that FIRE is the major organization defending the freedom of speech of students and faculty in academia, though they\u0026rsquo;ve not noticed any issues of persecution of ID advocates worthy of their attention.  They actually deal with real cases of suppression, censorship, and indoctrination, not phony cases like those in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shermer vs. Lukianoff in L.A. Times"},{"content":"Some new \u0026ldquo;Phoenix Lights\u0026rdquo; were seen last night in north Phoenix, but these apparently were helium balloons with flares attached to them.\nThe original Phoenix Lights were apparently two events\u0026ndash;one a set of planes, and one flares dropped by military pilots.\nUPDATE (July 20, 2009): Tim Printy has more detail on the original Phoenix lights than I\u0026rsquo;ve seen elsewhere.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/new-phoenix-lights.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome new \u0026ldquo;Phoenix Lights\u0026rdquo; were seen last night in north Phoenix, but these apparently \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/northvalley/articles/2008/04/22/20080422abrk-strangelights0422.html\"\u003ewere helium balloons with flares attached to them\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe original Phoenix Lights were apparently two events\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0312ruelas0312.html\"\u003eone a set of planes, and one flares dropped by military pilots\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 20, 2009): Tim Printy \u003ca href=\"http://home.comcast.net/%7Etprinty/UFO/AZUFO.htm\"\u003ehas more detail on the original Phoenix lights than I\u0026rsquo;ve seen elsewhere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Phoenix Lights"},{"content":"Commenters \u0026ldquo;paul\u0026rdquo; and Jay Rogers claimed here that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;is not a Christian movie.\u0026quot;\nYet Troy Britain points out that the \u0026ldquo;leadership guide\u0026rdquo; distributed at the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; website is filled with statements which closely resemble quotations from young-earth creationist literature published by the Institute for Creation Research, an explicitly Christian organization.\nUPDATE (April 25, 2008): If \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a Christian movie, why does the \u0026ldquo;Expelled: The Movement\u0026rdquo; website look like a Christian website\u0026ndash;promoting Christian bands, Christian magazines, and Christian books by apologists like Lee Strobel, as well as young-earth creationism-promoting ministries like Coral Ridge Ministries (of the late D. James Kennedy, one of the most dishonest purveyors of bogus young-earth creationist arguments who has lived on this planet)?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-promotes-young-earth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCommenters \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html?showComment=1208649360000#c5530892696062923126\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;paul\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and  \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html?showComment=1208715960000#c978816792716252286\"\u003eJay Rogers\u003c/a\u003e claimed here that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;is not a Christian movie.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet Troy Britain points out that the \u0026ldquo;leadership guide\u0026rdquo; distributed at the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; website is filled with statements which closely resemble quotations from young-earth \u003ca href=\"http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/expelleds-intelligent-design-theory-this-is-your-daddys-creationism-part-i/\"\u003ecreationist\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/expelled%e2%80%99s-intelligent-design-theory-this-is-your-daddy%e2%80%99s-creationism-part-ii/\"\u003eliterature\u003c/a\u003e published by the Institute for Creation Research, an explicitly Christian organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 25, 2008):  If \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a Christian movie, why does the \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/expelledthemovement\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled: The Movement\u0026rdquo; website\u003c/a\u003e look like a Christian website\u0026ndash;promoting Christian bands, Christian magazines, and Christian books by apologists like Lee Strobel, as well as young-earth creationism-promoting ministries like Coral Ridge Ministries (of the late D. James Kennedy, one of the most dishonest purveyors of bogus young-earth creationist arguments who has lived on this planet)?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" promotes young-earth creationist materials"},{"content":"Wired magazine\u0026rsquo;s blog reports that NORAD and U.S. Northern Command \u0026ldquo;have released a copy of their audio files, telephone conversations and situation room discussions\u0026rdquo; from September 11, 2001.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/norad-releases-911-tapes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWired\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s blog reports that \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/04/norad-releases.html\"\u003eNORAD and U.S. Northern Command \u0026ldquo;have released a copy of their audio files, telephone conversations and situation room discussions\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e from September 11, 2001.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NORAD releases 9/11 tapes"},{"content":"\nRonald Bailey at Reason magazine has reviewed \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; and is one of the few who has pointed out that:\nYet despite its topic, the film is entirely free of scientific content\u0026ndash;no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; (ID) theory is given. Which makes sense because biological evolution is amply supported by evidence from the fossil record, molecular biology, and morphology. For example, the younger the rocks in which fossils are found, the more closely they resemble species alive today, and the older the rocks, the less resemblance there is. In addition, molecular biology confirms that the more distantly related the fossil record suggests species lineages are, the more their genes differ.\nInstead of evaluating this evidence, Stein spends most of the movie asking various proponents of evolutionary theory, including Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Michael Ruse, and Daniel Dennett, for their religious views. Neither the producers nor Stein understand that offering critiques of a theory with which they disagree is not the same as proving their own theory.\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is standard creationist and ID fare, in that regard.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/reason-magazine-review-of-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRonald Bailey at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/news/show/125988.html\"\u003ehas reviewed \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; and is one of the few who has pointed out that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eYet despite its topic, the film is entirely free of scientific content\u0026ndash;no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; (ID) theory is given. Which makes sense because biological evolution is amply supported by evidence from the fossil record, molecular biology, and morphology. For example, the younger the rocks in which fossils are found, the more closely they resemble species alive today, and the older the rocks, the less resemblance there is. In addition, molecular biology confirms that the more distantly related the fossil record suggests species lineages are, the more their genes differ.\u003cbr /\u003e                                                                                                                     \u003cbr /\u003eInstead of evaluating this evidence, Stein spends most of the movie asking various proponents of evolutionary theory, including Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Michael Ruse, and Daniel Dennett, for their religious views. Neither the producers nor Stein understand that offering critiques of a theory with which they disagree is not the same as proving their own theory.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is standard creationist and ID fare, in that regard.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reason magazine review of \"Expelled\""},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Sexpelled tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the ivory towers of academia, as the explanation for how new babies are created. Proponents of Stork Theory claim that \u0026lsquo;Big Sex\u0026rsquo; has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks.\u0026quot;\n(Via Wired\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Underwire\u0026rdquo; blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/sexpelled-no-intercourse-allowed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sexpelled\u003c/em\u003e tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the ivory towers of academia, as the explanation for how new babies are created. Proponents of Stork Theory claim that \u0026lsquo;Big Sex\u0026rsquo; has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0480413954925736 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-ThQQuHtzHM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0480413954925736 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-ThQQuHtzHM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-ThQQuHtzHM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-ThQQuHtzHM\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/backlash-to-ben.html\"\u003eWired\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Underwire\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed"},{"content":"\nClick the image for the facts that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; doesn\u0026rsquo;t give you.\nThis post is a placeholder to report on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s weekend box office and the accuracy of my five predictions about the film, as well as a few more I\u0026rsquo;ll add here. My five predictions were that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will:\n(1) be on fewer than 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won\u0026rsquo;t break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales).Prediction (1) is already falsified, since it\u0026rsquo;s opening in 1,052 theaters. Prediction (4) may well be wrong due to how weak this weekend is for new films\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s pretty clear that #1 and #2 will be \u0026ldquo;Forgetting Sarah Marshall\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Forbidden Kingdom.\u0026rdquo; Al Pacino\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;88 Minutes\u0026rdquo; is also opening in many theaters and has the draw of its star, but it\u0026rsquo;s getting terrible reviews. C.S. Strowbridge at The-Numbers estimates that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will only need a $3 million opening weekend to make the top ten, so my predictions are at least consistent with each other.\nLooking at the list of top Christian films below, I see that the most recent \u0026ldquo;Veggie Tales\u0026rdquo; movie, \u0026ldquo;The Pirates Who Don\u0026rsquo;t Do Anything,\u0026rdquo; came in at number 6 in January 2008 with an opening weekend of $4.2 million on 1,337 screens. I doubt that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will do that well, though I expect (6) it will break the top ten in the Christian films category, probably about to the eighth position. Looking at controversial films, however, I think it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely to make the top twenty\u0026ndash;(7) it will probably end up around 22nd at best, beating \u0026ldquo;The Last Temptation of Christ.\u0026rdquo; Documentaries are a bit easier, and it could very well make the top ten, but (8) I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect it to get above the seventh slot.\nFinally, (9) I expect to see its theater counts drop rapidly starting next week, losing at least 500 theaters by next Friday as its audience sees the film and more popular entries displace it in the new week.\nUPDATE (April 19, 2008): I expect that predictions (2) and (4) may be falsified; a weekend take of $3-4 million looks likely after Friday\u0026rsquo;s estimated take of $1,126,000 and its coming in at #8 on Friday. #1-#7 ahead of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; were: \u0026ldquo;The Forbidden Kingdom,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Forgetting Sarah Marshall,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Prom Night,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;88 Minutes,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;21,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Nim\u0026rsquo;s Island,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Street Kings.\u0026rdquo; Prediction (3) looks like it will easily be proven correct; \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; earned $1,070 per-theater on Friday, making it #5 for per-theater take.\nUPDATE (April 20, 2008): Prediction (2) has been falsified as the current estimated box office take is $3,152,896. Prediction (4) looks like it will be falsified, with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; barely cracking the top ten\u0026ndash;it has been passed by \u0026ldquo;Horton Hears a Who\u0026rdquo; and looks like it will be #9 for the weekend. Prediction (3) looks like it will be false, too, though in my defense I intended to predict a per-screen daily average take rather than a per-theater take for the entire weekend. Saturday\u0026rsquo;s take was $941/theater, versus Friday\u0026rsquo;s $1,145, and Sunday looks like it will be lower still (projected to be $911/theater).\nUPDATE (April 21, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s weekend take has been revised downward from the estimate, to $2,970,848, or $2,824 per-theater. So my prediction (3), taken the way I said it rather than meant it, was not wrong by much. It also came in at #10 for the weekend (#9 was Leatherheads), so prediction (4) was falsified in the most minimal way possible. Predictions (5)-(9) appear to be on solid ground. Sunday\u0026rsquo;s take was only $737/theater, and it\u0026rsquo;s all downhill from here.\nUPDATE (April 24, 2008): The-Numbers has posted its list of theater counts for the weekend of April 25, 2008, and \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t on the list. I\u0026rsquo;d guess this means they just don\u0026rsquo;t have the information yet, rather than that it\u0026rsquo;s not appearing in any theater (since none of last week\u0026rsquo;s openers and only one of this weekend\u0026rsquo;s openers are yet listed), but we\u0026rsquo;ll soon find out if my prediction (9) is correct and it is down to 552 or fewer theaters. (If Arizona is an indication, the drop may not occur until next week.) Box Office Mojo is now reporting \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s theater count at 1,041 for its second weekend, a drop of 11 theaters, which falsifies prediction (9). It looks like it\u0026rsquo;s not common for a huge drop in theater counts to occur in the first week, so this was probably a dumb prediction unless the movie was a total bomb, which it hasn\u0026rsquo;t been. I think a 500-theater drop is much more likely for next week, however\u0026ndash;call that prediction (10). For this weekend, I suspect we\u0026rsquo;ll see each day\u0026rsquo;s average take in the $500-$700 per-theater range, or $500,000-$700,000 total per day; probably closer to the low end, and thus ending the weekend with a total take of between $5.4M and $6M, and leaving prediction (5) accurate unless it turns out to be popular internationally. It will also probably drop out of the top ten starting today.\nUPDATE (April 26, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; began its second weekend with (The-Numbers\u0026rsquo; estimate) a $505,000 take ($485/theater) on Friday, even lower than I guessed yesterday. Box Office Mojo\u0026rsquo;s estimate is even lower: $450,000 ($432/theater).\nUPDATE (April 27, 2008): The second weekend\u0026rsquo;s estimated take is $1,378,867 ($1,325/theater, The-Numbers) or $1,379,000 ($1,324/theater, Box Office Mojo), which will put the total at about $5.2M, below the lower end of my guess on Thursday, with a total of about $5.2M.\nUPDATE (April 28, 2008): The weekend\u0026rsquo;s estimated take is now $1,395,000 ($1340/theater), with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ranked at #13, according to Box Office Mojo. Looks like it followed the more normal pattern with a Saturday peak ($529,000) and less on Friday ($452,000; The-Numbers estimates $505,000 for Friday) and Sunday ($414,000), all still estimates. Today will probably drop well below $200,000.\nUPDATE (April 29, 2008): Monday\u0026rsquo;s take was $157,191 ($151/theater), though the rank went up to #12.\nUPDATE (May 2, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is staying around longer than I would have imagined, but it has now dropped 386 theaters to 655, and its daily box office take will suffer accordingly. It looks like \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is going to end up doing about the same amount business as \u0026ldquo;Megiddo: The Omega Code 2,\u0026rdquo; and not as well as \u0026ldquo;The End of the Spear,\u0026rdquo; two Christian movies that were previously distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures. Prediction (5) looks dead on (less than $10 million in box office by the end of 2008); prediction (6) looks like it was too generous (\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; should easily break into the top ten on Christian films, but it now looks unlikely to reach #9, let alone #8); prediction (7) also looks too generous (hitting #22 on the \u0026ldquo;controversial\u0026rdquo; film list; #23 or #24 looks more likely, though Box Office Mojo has decided not to list \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in that category at all); prediction (8) is easy at this point (it won\u0026rsquo;t reach #7 on the documentary list; it looks like even breaking into the top 10 is out of reach). So my prediction accuracy was about as good as coin flipping. I was way off on theater count-related predictions, but more accurate on revenue and rank-related predictions. But enough about those predictions. I\u0026rsquo;ll continue to update this post with the data until it drops completely out of the theaters.\nSome websites for statistics:\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; box office numbers and rating at The-Numbers:\n4/19/2008: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; came in at #8 for Friday, with an estimated box office take of $1,126,000, and a per-theater take of $1,070 (ranked #5).\nThe-Numbers rating: 3.75/10 (16 votes; 25% rated it 10 and 62.5% rated it 1).\n4/20/2008: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has dropped to #9 for the weekend, with an estimated box office take of $3,152,896 for the whole weekend, and a per-theater take of $2,997.\n4/22/2008: The-Numbers gives different numbers than Box Office Mojo, though their weekend totals agree: Friday: $1,126,000 ($1070/theater), Saturday: $967,000 ($919/theater), Sunday: $878,000 ($835/theater), for an opening weekend total of $2,970,848 ($2,824/theater). Monday: $238,804 ($227/theater).\n04/23/2008: Tuesday, April 22: $227,232 ($216/theater). Total: $3,436,884.\n04/25/2008: Wednesday, April 23: $234,596 ($223). Thursday, April 24: $231,440 ($220). Friday, April 25: $505,000 ($485), ranked #13. Total: $4,408,000.\n4/30/2008: Still no numbers for Saturday or Sunday. Monday, April 28: $157,191 ($151).\n5/1/2008: Tuesday, April 29: $162,396 ($156). Wednesday, April 30: $159,273 ($153).\n5/2/2008: Thursday, May 1: $158,232 ($152).\n5/5/2008: May 2-4 weekend: $683,552 ($1,042/theater).\n5/6/2008: Monday, May 5: $66,912 ($102/theater).\n5/8/2008: Tuesday, May 6: $74,128 ($113), Wednesday, May 7: $73,472 ($112).\n5/9/2008: Thursday, May 8: $78,720 ($120). Total: $6,906,488.\n5/12/2008: Friday, May 9-Sunday, May 11: $328,836 ($818). Total: $7,235,324.\n5/14/2008: Monday, May 12: $38,994 ($97); Tuesday, May 13: $35,778 ($89).\n5/16/2008: Wednesday, May 14: $43,818 ($109), Thursday, May 15: $43,014 ($107).\n5/28/2008: Monday, May 26: $16,019 ($193). Total: $7,598,071.\nTheater counts at The-Numbers:\n4/18/2008: 1,052\n4/25/2008: 1,041\n5/2/2008: 656\n5/9/2008: 402\n5/16/2008: 210\n5/23/2008: 83\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ratings at Rotten Tomatoes:\n4/18/2008 7:54 a.m. MST: 8% fresh (12 reviews, 11 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\n4/18/2008 11:48 a.m. MST: 7% fresh (14 reviews, 13 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\n4/18/2008 1:35 p.m. MST: 5% fresh (21 reviews, 20 rotten, 2.8/10 rating)\n4/18/2008 2:56 p.m. MST: 9% fresh (22 reviews, 20 rotten, 3/10 rating) (Christianity Today review added)\n4/19/2008 4:15 p.m. MST: 9% fresh (23 reviews, 21 rotten, 3/10 rating)\n4/22/2008 6:23 p.m. MST: 12% fresh (25 reviews, 22 rotten, 3.2/10 rating)\n4/24/2008 4:39 p.m. MST: 10% fresh (30 reviews, 27 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\n4/292008 8:08 a.m. MST: 9% fresh (33 reviews, 30 rotten, 3/10 rating)\nTop Critics: 0% fresh (13 reviews, 13 rotten, 2.6/10 rating)\nRT Community rating: 50% fresh (377 reviews, 188 rotten, 4.8/10 rating)\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ratings at IMDB:\n4/19/2008 4:15 p.m. MST:\nAverage rating is 3.3/10 with 402 very polarized votes\u0026ndash;81 (20.1%) rated the movie a 10, 276 (68.7%) rated it a 1.\nFemales like it more than males, and those under 18 and over 45 like it more than those in between.\nAverage rating for males: 3.1\nAverage rating for females: 6.3\nAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.7 (male 6.7, female 10)\nAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.0 (male 2.5, female 7.7)\nAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.0 (male 3.1, female 2.0)\nAverage rating for 45+: 4.7 (male 4.5, female 5.5)\n4/21/2008 10:36 a.m. MST:\nAverage rating is now 3.6/10 with 659 votes, still highly polarized (22.2% 10, 61.0% 1), but now with a few more 7, 8, and 9 ratings (2.4%, 4.2%, and 4.7%, respectively), and a few more 2 and 3 ratings (2.1% and 1.2%, respectively).\nAverage rating for males: 3.3\nAverage rating for females: 6.7\nAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.5 (male 6.3, female 7.8)\nAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.4 (male 3.0, female 7.7)\nAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.3 (male 3.3, female 2.4)\nAverage rating for 45+: 4.1 (male 4.0, female 7.7)\n4/24/2008 4:41 p.m. MST:\nAverage rating is now 3.6/10 with 2,332 votes (25.4% 10, 57.0% 1; 5.1% 9, 4.0% 8, 2.0% 7, 1.5% 3, 3.1% 2).\nAverage rating for males: 3.4\nAverage rating for females: 5.4\nAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.0 (male 5.5, female 7.9)\nAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.2 (male 3.0, female 5.5)\nAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.6 (male 3.6, female 3.4)\nAverage rating for 45+: 4.6 (male 4.4, female 6.7)\nExpelled box office and ratings at Box Office Mojo:\n4/19/2008 9:54 a.m. MST: Box Office Mojo readers rate the movie a B, with 110 votes (66.4% A, 3.6% B, 28.2% F).\n4/20/2008 12:21 p.m. MST: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; took in less money on Saturday than on Friday\u0026ndash;$990,000, or $941 per theater. Sunday\u0026rsquo;s projected take is $958,000.\n4/21/2008 5:07 p.m. MST: The opening weekend box office take was $2,970,848, a per-theater average of $2,824. Sunday brought in only $775,000, or $737 per theater.\n4/22/2008 6:25 p.m. MST: Monday\u0026rsquo;s box office take was $238,804, another 68.8% drop in daily gross, for a per-theater average of $227. Total take is now $3,209,652. Friday-Sunday have been updated: Friday: $1,208,748 ($1,149), Saturday: $996,244 ($947), Sunday: $765,856 ($728). The weekend total agrees with The-Numbers, but the daily totals do not.\n4/23/2008 2:01 p.m. MST: Tuesday: $227,232 ($216); Wednesday: $234,596 ($223). Six-day total: $3,671,480.\n4/24/2008 3:04 p.m. MST: Thursday: $231,440 ($220). Seven-day total: $3,902,920.\n4/25/2008 6:56 p.m. MST: Friday: $450,000 ($432) (estimate), rank #13. Seven-day total: $4,353,000.\n4/30/2008 1:58 p.m. MST: Saturday: $529,000 ($508), Sunday: $414,000 ($398), Monday: $157,191 ($151), Tuesday: $162,396 ($156). Weekend numbers are all still estimates.\n5/2/2008 7:04 p.m. MST: Wednesday: $159,273 ($153), Thursday: $158,232 ($152).\n5/5/2008 9:20 a.m. PDT: May 2-4 weekend: $684,000 ($1,042).\n5/6/2008 7:40 p.m. PDT: Friday, May 2: $216,480 ($330), Saturday, May 3: $270,272 ($412), Sunday, May 4: $191,552 ($292), Monday, May 5: $66,912 ($102), ranked #15. Total: $6,680,168.\n5/7/2008 7:53 p.m. PDT: Tuesday, May 6: $74,128 ($113).\n5/8/2008 8:29 p.m. PDT: Wednesday, May 7: $73,472 ($112).\n5/9/2008 5:17 p.m. PDT: Thursday, May 8: $78,720 ($120).\n5/11/2008 4:01 p.m. MST: May 9-11 weekend: $328,836 ($818), in 402 theaters, ranked #21.\n5/12/2008 7:39 p.m. MST: Friday, May 9: $100,902 ($251); Saturday, May 10: $120,600 ($300); Sunday, May 11: $107,334 ($267). Total: $7,235,324.\n5/13/2008 3:55 p.m. MST: Monday, May 12: $38,994 ($97).\n5/14/2008 8:04 p.m. MST: Tuesday, May 13: $35,778 ($89).\n5/16/2008 7:40 p.m. MST: Wednesday, May 14: $43,818 ($109); Thursday, May 15: $43,014 ($107). Total: $7,396,927.\n5/18/2008 6:13 p.m.: May 16-18 weekend estimate: $89,000 ($423) in 210 theaters.\n5/21/2008 11:14 a.m. MST: May 16-18 weekend: $102,690 ($489). Total: $7,499,617.\n5/28/2008 12:38 p.m. MST: May 23-26 four-day weekend: $46,314 ($558). (May 23-25: $35,109 ($423).) Total: $7,598,071.\nAll-time top box office for documentaries at Box Office Mojo.\nAll-time top box office for controversial films at Box Office Mojo.\nAll-time top box office for Christian films at Box Office Mojo.\nReed (2008-04-18):\nThe RT freshness rating continues to slide, now down to 5%. Among 'Top Critics' there are no tomatoes.\nKen McKnight (2008-04-18):\nDid you notice that under the RT rating it now says, \"Consensus: Full of patronizing, poorly structured arguments, Expelled is a cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary\"? I think that accurately sums it up, don't you?\nsavvy (2008-04-19):\nI saw \"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed\" yesterday (Friday, 4/18.) Highly recommended.My observation is that those who agree with Stein highly rate the movie, those who disagree deride the film. The middle ground is desolate.That few top critics endorse, is therefore no surprise ... it speaks more to the \"group think\" among critics, than the merits of the movie.\nPaul (2008-04-19):\nI can't figure out why both Lippard Blog and Box Office Mojo are calling this a Christian movie. Stein, Berlinski? The film may be theist, but there is nothing particularly Christian about it. If Jesus had never existed, it wouldn't have directly affected the content of the film, except that some Christians were featured.I also don't understand how anyone thinks this is a film supporting ID (like \"Privileged Planet\") or trying to destroy Darwinism. It is a movie supporting freedom of inquiry when the prevailing view is atheistic naturalism. It further seems that the anger directed toward the movie tends to support its central allegations, no? Stein positioned himself in a no-lose posture, did he not? That's not genius (amorally, of course)?I do understand much of the critique and the use of Michael Moore techniques/deception, but I don't understand the hyperbolic and near-hysterical piling on, as if the sky were falling.Or is it?\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nPaul:Nearly everyone associated with the making and distribution of the film is an evangelical Christian. The producers are evangelical Christians (Craft, Ruloff, Mathis). The writers are evangelical Christians (Miller, Ruloff). The distributors are evangelical Christians who specialize in the distribution of Christian films (Rocky Mountain Pictures). The advocates of intelligent design (which is really just creationist arguments against evolution, it has no positive scientific content of its own) are evangelical Christians, except for a few people they've managed to pick up as supporters who have their own agendas, like Berlinski.Stein was specifically hired to provide cover for the Christian motivation behind the film.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nsavvyconsumer: If there was groupthink among critics, then wouldn't all of the ratings at Rotten Tomatoes fall at one end of the spectrum or the other? They don't--this film is relatively unique in the strength of the negative critical reviews, which is usually the sign of a genuine stinker.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nPaul: I'd say it's probably the case that the vast majority of the positive reviews and ratings are also from evangelical Christians.I suspect that the major effect of the film will be negative upon evangelical Christianity, however, because of the dishonesty of its producers.\nDana Hunter (2008-04-20):\nThis film is just having the effect of making anyone who falls for it look like a total boob. Great advertising for their ideas, eh?This film wasn't about academic freedom. It was about deceiving people into advocating said freedom, so that creationists can get their foot in the classroom door and boot science out. It's too bad there are some who are deceived by such transparent tactics, and who can't understand that maybe that kind of slimy dishonesty is why folks are so angry about it.\nJay Rogers (2008-04-20):\nWhat if it only breaks even before goes to DVD?At 3.4 million it would rank at only the #3 opening weekend for a documentary film?Oh! What a failure!Really, if it does that well, the DVD sales are sure to make it a big profit and Premise will trot out more of these low-budget documentary films.I see that as a great victory. See my blog for my take on all of this plus some EXPELLED clips.I saw a prescreening and one of the producers said it cost around $5 million to make (I've also heard $7 million including distribution) and they were planning to spend \"millions\" more in marketing. So I think it's safe to say the entire production was in the single digit millions.Think about it, DVDs cost about a buck to reproduce and package. That's where the profit is. It means Premise will have to sell about 200,000 units to raise a budget for another film like this one.Can't wait.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nJay:Thanks for outing yourself as a gleeful purveyor of lies, deception, and dishonesty for profit.\nJay Rogers (2008-04-20):\nDitto. Right back at ya!\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nThe difference between us, Jay, is that I've posted extensive documentation on the dishonesty in the film at this blog (see the \"Expelled\" label). You've offered no rebuttal.In your response to my comment on your own blog, you didn't address any of the evidence--you merely argued that Scott, Myers, Dawkins, Shermer, etc. were paid for their interviews and signed releases and have not filed lawsuits, therefore nothing unethical or deceptive occurred. That's a complete failure to engage with the actual evidence, as well as a bad argument that assumes that anything unethical must also be illegal.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nDana: Looks like Jay's out to prove your point.\nJay Rogers (2008-04-20):\nEXPELLED numbers for the weekend thus far.Rank: 9Theaters: 1,052 Per Theater: $2,997 Total Gross: $3,152,896 Days: 3**********So everything you predicted was wrong?Everything ...?Everything ...?Everything ...?**********Some unrelated questions ...I am somewhat new to the atheist blogosphere. The reaction to EXPELLED and posts to my YOUTUBE clips from a documentary I recently released called THE REAL JESUS, have clued me in.I notice a syndrome.Skeptics and atheists do battle by calling Christians \"stupid,\" \"dishonest\" and by fabricating claims of \"lying\" and \"illegal and unethical\" behavior.Or worse, that we refuse to a \"offer a rebuttal.\"Of course, any rebuttal to a \"begging the question\" fallacy won't ever be accepted as a valid rebuttal.For instance, \"When did YOU stop beating your wife?\" is tantamount to \"How do you justify the lying and dishonesty of the producers.\"It doesn't satisfy you to say that EXPELLED is a movie about \"the intersection or crossroads between faith and science.\" Isn't that what the movie is about?Did the producers give Myers and Dawkins the questions by email prior to the interviews? Were they satisfied enough with the interview results in order to sign releases AFTER the interviews?How is that lying and deception?Did you want them to say: \"This is a Christian movie promoting only creationism and I.D. in a favorable light.\"I saw the movie. It's not a Christian movie. It's not about I.D. per se.It's about freedom of speech vs. censorship in academia and \"the intersection of faith and science.\"I think your response is interesting because that was the Roman pagans' tactic to try to stop Christianity in the second century. If you read Justin's \"First Apology\" and his \"Dialog with Trypho\" -- you see the same tactics.The difference was that when the apologists tried to be reasonable and engage in debate, the pagans just responded by executing them.Today we are merely expelled from the debate as having \"not offered a rebuttal.\"\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nJay:The first part of your comment is redundant with what I've already posted here. I'm an honest person and I admit when I'm wrong. Not all of my predictions have been falsified at this point--note that (1)-(5) were made weeks ago, and I already indicated a week ago that some of them were likely to be false based on new information.You claim to have identified a \"begging the question\" fallacy in the form of leading questions, but I don't know what you're referring to.Answers to your questions:No, the movie is not about the intersection of science and religion--it is a propaganda film claiming that intelligent design is being systematically suppressed by atheist scientists. You already know that Myers would have had things to say specifically about intelligent design if he knew that was what the film was about and had been asked about it--you've been a commenter at Pharyngula in late March, so surely you've read some of what he's written on the subject. No one has argued that Myers et al were not given the questions in advance and did not sign releases afterward and accept payment for their appearance--your claim is itself a fallacious straw man argument.What is the deception? Here are just a few examples: Misdescribing the film with an alternate title and description when they already knew they were making \"Expelled,\" setting up a phony \"Rampant Films\" website as part of the deception when Barbara Forrest asked why they didn't have a website (she smelled a rat and refused to participate), using a copyright-infringing film taken from XVIVO's film for early screenings, filing a bogus lawsuit for declaratory judgment against XVIVO in Texas, giving false explanations for Myers' expulsion from an early screening, giving a misleading description of the film in order to get a license for the use of a song by The Killers in the film, falsely claiming that early screenings were cancelled in order to screen out undesirable attendees, giving the false impression that Richard Sternberg lost a job because of ID advocacy (while omitting good reasons that he could have been, but was not, removed from his position), giving the false impression that there were no good reasons for Guillermo Gonzalez to be denied tenure, giving the false impression that there were no good reasons for Caroline Crocker to not be rehired for an additional teaching contract at George Mason, and so on. You address none of this.Here are some questions for you:(1) You say you are being \"expelled from the debate for having 'not offered a rebuttal.'\" What debate are you being expelled from? I'm specifically soliciting your input, I've not expelled you from anything.(2) What is the scientific theory of intelligent design that is being suppressed from academia? (A pointer to a publication describing the theory, its predictions, and research supporting it would be nice.)(3) Who has been fired from a job for advocating ID?(4) How many scientific papers presenting positive results for ID have been rejected by science journals, and what reasons have been given for those rejections?(5) How much of the Discovery Institute's budget is spent on research? How much on PR?(6) Do you think that scientific theories should be taught in science classrooms before any research has been done into their validity?(7) Do you agree with the actions that have been taken against Christians who advocate evolution described here?\nReed (2008-04-20):\njay: that 'total gross' number of $3,152,896 is an estimate, not an actual. Reality suggests that the estimate was a bit optimistic. It'll probably be around $2.8M by my calculations.The movie only took in $990K on Saturday, which is a surprising drop-off from Friday's receipts.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nJay: I still expect predictions (5)-(9) to be accurate. If I had correctly phrased (3), it would have been accurate (as the movie peaked in its per-theater take on Friday at $1,145 and has been dropping since). My failure rate of 4/9 (3/9 given my intentions for prediction (3)) makes me far more accurate than \"Expelled\"'s producers' claims that it would be another \"Fahrenheit 9/11,\" \"An Inconvenient Truth,\" or \"Passion of the Christ.\"And my rate of correctly reporting all of my falsified predictions places me far ahead of the \"Expelled\" producers and the Discovery Institute on the honesty scale.\nKen McKnight (2008-04-20):\nThe box office take dropped off almost 18% from Friday to Saturday. Not one other film in the top 13 went DOWN in receipts for the same period. That's extremely telling. Expelled is a monumental BOMB!\nHarry Dale Huffman (2008-04-20):\nI am an independent research scientist, not a part of anyone else's agenda, including \"ID\". (In fact, I have started telling people that \"intelligent design\" is a redundant term, since \"design\" by itself means an intelligent plan.) I am the one scientist competent to comment on \"ID\", because in my own research into an objective origin of the \"ancient mysteries\", I discovered a wholesale re-design of the Earth and solar system, in precision mappings of the celestial sphere onto the Earth globe. My research has uncovered the fact--fact--that all of the ancient mysteries have their original motivation in that world design. So IT IS NOT TRUE that there is no scientific evidence for design in or of the natural world. I don't expect anyone here to confront the evidence--no other scientist or scientific publication has done so in the last five years--but it exists, and it is verifiable if one gives it the proper scientific consideration and study time. See http://www.lulu.com/hdhsciences, and my contact information is on that site. The movie (which I have not seen) is correct that science is wrongly suppressing the concept of design of the natural world. That is a fact I have five years of harsh experience with. The design I found was not creation but re-design of an already-populated Earth, and done by the \"gods\" of worldwide ancient testimony, not \"God\". So the assumptions of both sides of the ongoing dogmatic debate are equally wrong. Where do I get a hearing, under the present circumstances? (There are no easy answers--I have been trying all over for 5 years, and nobody wants to be bothered to learn new truth that proves a verifiable design.)\nReed (2008-04-20):\nJim: that Sunday 'projection' of $958K is merely the difference between the actual receipts (for Fri and Sat) and the original estimate.As hinted in my earlier message, I based my projection on an average dropoff from Saturday receipts to arrive at my wild-ass-guess of $2.8M for the weekend.\nLippard (2008-04-20):\nHarry:I looked at your document on independent confirmation of your claim that the earth and solar system were re-formed 20,000 years ago on a dodecahedral design of the earth's land masses. It seems that the scientists you say have \"independenly confirmed\" your findings have refused to respond to your emails, and that you have been unable to get your evidence published in scientific journals or even in alternative publications such as Nexus or Atlantis Rising.Have you tried submitting to Answers in Genesis or the Discovery Institute?I suggest that instead of selling your work through lulu.com that you make it all freely available on the web. I have no doubt that you will find some sympathetic readers, though I will not be one of them.\nLippard (2008-04-23):\nJay:I hope you'll come back and respond to the questions I've put to you.I'll also observe that, contrary to you claim that \"Expelled\" is not a Christian movie, the \"leadership guide\" distributed from the film's website contains young-earth creationist material.\nPhysicalist (2008-04-23):\n\"No one has argued that Myers et al were not given the questions in advance.\"A minor quibble: Myers wasn't given the questions in advance (but that's a non-issue).I love the way creationists like Jay Rogers pretend they're clever and persecuted, and then when they're asked some straightforward questions they suddenly disappear. No doubt he'll come squeaking out of the corner at some later date, whining about how you just ignore him.\nJohn Heininger (2008-04-28):\nBen Strein has hit on an issue that is at the core of what constitutes real science, and what is scientism and pseudo science. ID Vs Darwinism. Real science, based on the Empirical \u0026 Scientific Method, is testable, repeatable, verifiable and readily observable by all, such that people are compelled to except its conclusions, in spite of their beliefs. The Theory of Evolution is light years away from the Theory of Gravity or Electricity, which can be readily, proved when any evolutionist jumps off a roof or grabs both ends of a live wire.Because evolution and natural selection supposedly happened over vast spans of time (ensuring no observers) it is based exclusively on \"inferences\", \"interpretations\", and \"speculations\". In short, it is science by \"explanations\" (with Dawkins as the \"explanations\" guru) Yes, I am well aware of the supposed 'proofs' paraded by talkorigins and co, but these too turn out, on deeper analysis, to be presuppositional inferences based on Darwinian interpretations of fossil or other data. There exists no watertight evidence for evolution that is of a nature that, like empirical science, compels people to accept its conclusions, in spite of their beliefs. Because of this, all evidence advanced in support of evolution is based on subjective interpretations of fossils or other data.In the Evolutionary Wonderland, the impossible happens all the time, and always in reverse. For example, regularity comes from irregularity, life from non-life, consciousness from non-consciousness, mind from mindless matter, and intelligence from non-intelligence. Thus, we have a theory where the effect is not only far greater than the cause, but actually opposite to the cause. Moreover, all these natural 'miracles' supposedly happened without a miracle worker, which one would have to concede is \"really\" miraculous. Even more miraculous is the way natural selection preserved within human genetics the need for the vast majority of humanity to believe in a God/gods that don't exist.But nothing amazes me more than scientists and supposedly objective science magazines who banish the concept of Intelligent Design from science and the universe, when in fact the essential assumption within science (and mathematics), and the underlying foundation of science, is the starting premise that regularity, order and complexity exist within the universe that can be intelligently discovered and harnessed for practical purposes. In short, in their collective attempt to defend evolutionary theory they are now cutting of the limb they are sitting on. (Someone should whisper this in their scientism ear, before its too late).I was therefore intrigued by a review of Expelled in the Time article, Brainiac Brawl (Time April 21, 2008 p.59), where Jeffrey Klugers takes a shot at Stein, and the movie Expelled. Firstly, Klugers tells us what real evolutionary science is, \"Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing.\" Seemingly unaware that his conjecture is based on mere inference and speculation having no testable empirical basis. Even the simplest life form is complex well beyond chance events, needing pre-existing nurturing and reproduction capabilities, just for starters. Life only comes from life. There has never been an exception to this, either in nature or in any world laboratory. And secondly Klugers statement regarding the unsolved problems (of which there are heaps) of evolution that, \"A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish.\" I would suggest that for most people the issue now is not whether or not the net has holes in it, but whether the net exists at all.\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nJohn: You are sadly uninformed. First, your definition of science is deficient, and would be rectified by reading Christopher Toumey's _God's Own Scientists_. The kind of distinction you're trying to draw between directly observable and inferential doesn't get you the division you want--even the observational sciences rely on inferences, and even the historical sciences involve observation.Second, evolution and much of its evidence is directly observable. Speciation events have been observed. Evolution has left records in fossils and DNA. Common ancestry is supported by overwhelming evidence from many areas.You don't want to believe what this evidence shows, so you pretend it doesn't exist.\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nFor anyone who was wondering, John Heininger is described on this creationist web page thusly:John Heininger M.A. has been the Vice President/Secretary of the National Alliance of Christian Leaders (NACL) since its inception in 1986. A graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, he has done graduate studies at the Simon Greenleaf University in California, and received his MA from Sutherland, Australia. Heininger currently resides on the Gold Coast, where he serves as Director of Alpha Digital.---Simon Greenleaf University, founded in 1980 by John Warwick Montgomery and Walter Martin (the \"Bible Answer Man\"), is a school specializing in \"legal or juridical apologetics\"--applying 19th century legal scholarship to Christian apologetics. It's now Trinity Law School, part of Trinity International University. Sounds like Heininger didn't obtain his J.D.Sutherland, Australia is a suburb of Sydney, not an educational institution. There is a Sutherland University that's an online university, but its website doesn't seem to indicate where its operations are located.The NACL is based in New South Wales, Australia. John Heininger's picture is on this article he wrote on \"Culture Wars\", where he writes that \"In the midst of these difficult issues, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union threaten schools with financial devastation for permitting activities such as Bible clubs, pro-life clubs and community religious organisations' access to public school facilities.\" This is, in fact, a falsehood--the ACLU has argued forcefully for equal access to public school facilities. Apparently Heininger is no better informed about that than he is about evolution.\nJohn Heininger (2008-04-28):\nAppreciate your comments Jim, but your response doesn't quite do the trick. Firstly, there is a distinct difference between empirical science and historical science, no matter what definition of science you choose. I have worked in electrical systems design and IT most of my life I know what empirical science is. And evolutionary theory falls well short of that definition, which is precisely why evolution is still widely disputed and far from compelling.If the lizard example is the best empirical proof you have to offer for direct observation of evolution in action you are really grasping at straws, for several reasons. Firstly, for all the variation (as oppossed to evolution)you still finish up with a lizard, with all variations working towards the preservation of the lizard. The same applies to viruses, bacteria, or any other lifeform. As every breeder and researcher since the year dot well knows, there is a definite boundary beyond which lizards, dogs, or whatever cannot reproduce, however broad the variation. Secondly, the fact that the variation happened so quickly places it well beyond being the product of undirected chance mutations and natural selection. Rather, it necessitates the \"variation capability\" being already resident, or pre-existent, in the lizards DNA mechanism. In short, nothing comes out at the end that wasn't already inherently pre-existing in the beginning, as any software programmer or system designer well knows. An intelligent effect always demands an intelligent cause. And the variation in the lizard was certianly directed. Otherwise it would not have happened in such a short time. Establishing that chance mutations and natural selection had no detectable role. The key question therefore is where does this directed variation capability come from. Certainly not from chance undirected evens. And certainly not from simpler life forms, as random mutations only work on \"existing\" DNA. One must look elsewhere for where new DNA and information comes from. Thus, all the points I made in the previous post stand. Including the remarks about the role of intelligent causes being foundational to science. All evidence for evolution does in reality come down to the subjective \"interpretation\" of fossil data and disputable claims as to how certain direct (lizard) observations are to be interpreted. Define science as you will. This is far from compelling science, and well short of the Empirical \u0026 Scientific Method. This is the bottom line. All the other assortments of evolutionary proofs have similar deficiencies, but that will await another posting, at another time.(I head off for three weeks holiday tomorrow.) I was of course aware when I posted my comments that you would know my name, from past activities in support of origins by special creation. I organized the debate in Sydney between Gish and Plimer, and Plimer's now well documented misinformation, thanks partly to you. However, we are dealing with issues as to the scientific viability of evolutionary theory and that is the issue worthy of comment, and debate. Cheers\nJohn Heininger (2008-04-28):\nP.S. I don't know where you get you information from re my background. By relying on secondary sources is very risky business. Just though I would mention it. Attacking the man rather than the argument is one approach I suppose.\nLippard (2008-04-28):\nJohn: I actually don't recall having heard of you before, though given your role in the Gish/Plimer debate it is certainly possible. I linked to the source I was quoting about your background. It's by notoriously sloppy creationist Jerry Bergman, so it wouldn't surprise me if it contains errors.The lizard example was not necessarily the best example (perhaps a better example might be bacteria which have evolved to consume nylon), only one which I just came across yesterday.Creationists like to claim that there is some barrier to change, but they have yet to successfully document the existence of any such barrier. I've thought that might be a way to actually build a scientific case against evolution, and that's the line that Michael Behe took in his latest book, but it appears to be a failing strategy.Your claim that \"An intelligent effect always demands an intelligent cause\" is a philosophical one, but I see no reason to believe it and many reasons to think otherwise, including from genetic algorithms and cellular automata. You'll no doubt argue that such simulations have somehow smuggled intelligence into the simulation, but I think you're making a level confusion.I also think you're confusing engineering and science, as well as evaded the bulk of the points I made in my previous comment. The variation in life we see today is well explained by evolution, but not at all by creationism, and creationists still haven't even made an attempt to produce an explanation remotely comparable to those that evolutionary sciences have produced. Evolution dominates the biological sciences because it works and is fruitful in discovering new facts and building understanding of life. Creationism and intelligent design have utterly failed to do so.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-14):\nI appreciate your feedback Jim. I have read enough of your material to know you are sincere, honest and fair minded in your approach to the issues of life, and origins. And for that reason I take time interact on such issues, when time and commitments allows, and so make the effort to comment on your input, though a little late. I see atheism and philosophical naturalism (evolutionism) as being just another form of fundamentalism. (As you would be aware, in order to establish raw atheism and materialism you would need to prove a number of universal negatives, which is impossible, by any measure). God may be absent in Dawkin's and other evolutionist’s narrow atheistic world, but science has affirmed God's reality for the vast majority of humanity; revealed in the mathematical basis of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe's cosmological constants, the earth’s finely balanced ecological system/s, the dependent nature of the cosmos itself, and the breathtaking complexity and interdependent nature of all lifeforms. Lets face it! Even Dawkins is 'spiritually' moved by the marvels of the universe, and no doubt by the birth of a baby, with its astonishing proceedings. To use the bacteria example as proof of evolution is, like the lizard example, less than persuasive. You start with a bacteria and finish with a bacteria. A bacteria that possesses the preexisting capability to organise itself to consume nylon, and no doubt other materials. The flue virus has the preexisting capability to repeatedly vary its outer characteristics but not its core. Flu viruses have a preexisting capability to change through a genetic swapping method microbiologists call reassortment, and have a segmented genome that allows them to swap genetic information easily. Genetic material is located on eight discrete segments of RNA rather than on one string. This preexisting capability of bacteria and viruses is rather like my car which normally runs at 100km per hour, but, when pushed, has the preexisting capability to reach 200km per hour. The statement that “an intelligent effect always demands an intelligent cause” is both a philosophical statement and a reality that applies in every field of life, be it engineering, science, or biological systems. One could imagine what your response would have looked like had your posting been devoid of intelligence. I doubt anyone would bother to read it. Genetic algorithms and cellular automata only affirm that reality. To quote Wikipedia. “Every cell has the same rule for updating, based on the values in this neighbourhood. Each time the rules are applied to the whole grid a new generation is created”. So even here rules and judgements are made (needing a complex computer and an intellectually devised software program to carry out the rules). Hardly a non-intelligent cause or a product of chance! As for the variation of life being explained by evolution, we are light years away from ever establishing that one species can change into a species of a different kind, and this has never been observed or demonstrated in any world laboratory. It’s all based on inference. Even though you yourself may regard these inferences as conclusive, the evidence is not of the kind that compels belief, on the same level as the laws of gravity and motion. Every breeder knows there is a natural limit or boundary beyond which no offspring is possible, be it dogs, peas, horses, or bacteria. . All this cell activity works to preserve the particular lifeform. The “virus” is preserved as a virus, and not something else. In short, virus in, virus out; bacteria in, bacteria out; gumpies in, gumpies out; pigeons in, pigeons out; herring gulls in, herring gulls out. Indeed, were it possible for the extremes variants of each species to interbreed, there would be real case for macro evolution. However, all we ever get is a sub group of a particular species, with ever diminishing genetic material and code. There is proof of species boundaries is all around you. Just talk with any pigeon breeder. Of course, I could elaborate on the multitude of other reasons why evolution just does’nt fit reality, but that is for another time, and perhaps another place. Because Natural Selection is deemed to work at a local level, it can never account for the broader reality of a finely tuned life supporting planet and interdependent environment. There are at least 25 unique factors in terms of the earth alone for life to exist, including the presence of most remarkable molecule in the universe, the water molecule, which because of its unique displacement of hydrogen atoms, has the capacity to rise up against gravity. All of which explains why natural selection (which supposedly only preserves useful variations) would produce or maintain within human genetics the need for the vast majority of humanity to believe in a transcendent creator, that supposedly does not exist.\nLippard (2008-09-14):\nJohn: Just a quick reply tonight and I'll read your comment more carefully tomorrow. Your statement that it is impossible to prove universal negatives is mistaken, as I argue in detail here. It doesn't require doing the impossible to show that certain conceptions of God are logically inconsistent or that certain religious claims about the world are inconsistent with the facts.There is arguably such a thing as atheist fundamentalism (I think Madalyn Murray O'Hair might serve as an example of an atheist who had such a dogmatic form of believe), but not all atheists are fundamentalists any more than all Christians are fundamentalists.The evidence required to establish abiogenesis is different from the evidence required to establish biological evolution. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be a skeptic about any and all current proposals regarding the origin of life, but not reasonable to reject biological evolution and common ancestry.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-14):\nHi Jim,You must life at the computer to respond so quickly. Wow! I'm impressed! I have briefly checked out your links, and will comment once I have fleshed it out properly. Just a wee intrim post on the subject of proving universal negatives, as apposed to proving negatives. This was a real discussion. I post it below. THE ABSURDITY OF ATHEISMAS CONVERSATIONS GO:Some years ago I attended an event jointly run by the Humanists and Skeptics. One of the professors, who now heads up the science department of a major university, enjoyed a discussion we were having earlier and asked me to join him to continue our discussion at a post meeting dinner. I was the lone theist and creationist in a den of hard core evolutionist and skeptics (Daniel in the lions Den, literally) - It was great, and the dinner was free. I was placed at the end of the table with the professor on one side and a noted paleontologist on the other. The conversation went something like this:John: Professor, do you believe there is a God. Professor: No! I’m an atheist. John: How much knowledge do you have? Einstein said he had less than 1% of available knowledge. How do you think you compare to Einstein? Would you know more or less.Professor: I would have to say I know less than Einstein. John: So there’s over 99% of available knowledge you don’t have. Is that right? Professor: Yes! That right.John: So how can you say there is no God unless you know everything there is to know – you can’t can you?Professor: No! You can’t.John: You can’t logically be an atheist so you must be either a soft boiled or a hard boiled agnostic. Professor: What’s the difference?John: Well a hard boiled agnostic says that you can never know whether God exists or not…and…. Professor: Yes! Then I would have to say that I’m a hard boiled agnostic. I would say you can never know whether God exists or not.John: But unless you know all there is to know, how can you say that you can never know.Professor: I can’t really, can I. John: No! So you must be a soft boiled agnostic. Professor: What’s a soft boiled agnostic?.John: Someone who just doesn’t really know for sure. Would that be you, then?Professor: Yes! I guess so.At this point the leading paleontologist sitting on the other side of me, who had earlier been distracted, interjected.Paleontologist: What are you two talking about.Professor: Whether God exists or not.Paleontologist: I would have to say that I am agnostic or an atheist. Professor: it’s not logical to be an atheist.The science professor said it all for me. No need to even open my trap.hus\nEinzige (2008-09-14):\n\"...but science has affirmed God's reality for the vast majority of humanity; revealed in the mathematical basis of the universe...\"F=MA, therefore...Jesus is LordQEDThat's what you're claiming for science?...the fine tuning of the universe's cosmological constants...\"Fine tuning\" assumes that something was \"tuned\", which is begging the question. That the universe would be different if it weren't what it is is a meaningless tautology....the earth’s finely balanced ecological system/s, the dependent nature of the cosmos itself, and the breathtaking complexity and interdependent nature of all lifeforms.Again, these are all begging the question, as you (not science!) are making the claim that their origin is a causeless being that is even more complex.Plus, there's the problem of getting from that logical fallacy to the notion of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Where's the science in that?\nLippard (2008-09-14):\nJohn:I completely disagree with the professor in your reported conversation. He was mistaken to accede to your claim that you can't know whether God exists or doesn't exist if you only know 1% of what is available to know. The knowledge that we have is smeared out over the space of possible knowledge, not located down in one small corner of knowledge space. To refute the existence of the Christian God doesn't require knowing 99% or 100% of all possible knowledge, it only requires knowing a single fact that is logically inconsistent with claimed attributes of the Christian God, and we can do a whole lot better than that.Regarding your earlier comment: We *have* observed speciation, so we already know that evolution is capable of traversing species boundaries (though \"species\" itself is a fuzzy concept and probably not a \"natural kind\" that \"carves nature at its joints,\" as my friend John Wilkins can explain in detail). I completely disagree that \"intelligent effects require intelligent causes\" is any kind of demonstrated philosophical principle--on the contrary, we know for a fact that it is possible for simple, unintelligent, unconscious processes to generate complexity, as even the nylon-consuming bacteria example demonstrates. This means that the creationist argument for the impossibility of such increases in complexity are wrong, and the creationist's best option is to argue for limits to that capability. That's the maneuver Behe attempted in his latest book, that fell stillborn from the presses and was regarded as a failure by both evolution scientists and creationists.BTW, I do spend a lot of time at the computer, but catching you quickly last night was a matter of luck--I was up past my usual bedtime after going to see \"Walking with the Dinosaurs,\" and just checked email before hitting the sack. I ran into creationists outside the U.S. Airways Center, handing out copies of Ken Ham's \"What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?\" to as many people as they could.\nLippard (2008-09-14):\nBTW, John, you yourself clearly do not accept the argument you gave to the professor, unless you are a \"soft-boiled agnostic\" about the existence of Krishna.I suspect that you *disbelieve* in Krishna--you are an atheist with respect to all of the Hindu gods, as well as all of the tens of thousands of gods that humanity has invented but one--on the grounds that you believe that the God you do believe in has given you good reason to disbelieve in them. But you have that reason in the absence of knowledge of the 99% of possible knowledge that humanity has not yet attained.That is enough to demonstrate my point and refute your argument--you don't have to possess all knowledge in order to have a good reason to reject any particular god. Nor to reject any class of gods with relevantly similar attributes that those reasons serve to contradict.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-14):\nJim, I like your style, and the fact that you (and einzige) really hoe into these issues, but your response goes no where near addressing or answering the universal negative issue. I noticed from just a quick reading of the articles you referred to that there is a confused application (and understanding) of positive, negative and universal negative concepts (more on this later). No one, I repeat, no one, can affirm conclusively that something cannot exist in \"universal\" terms, unless they have total knowledge of all that exists, and can exist, have checked under every rock in the universe, simultaneously, been to every galaxy; the extremities of outer space, and checked out every dimension, including the supernatural. I'm sure that no one you know has done all of this. In fact, as stated by fellow evolutionist, Kenneth Miller, in Finding Darwin's God, \"Quantum physics tells us that absolute knowledge, complete understanding, a total grasp of universal reality, will never be ours.\" Similarly, French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sarte (and atheist), correctly concluded that we will never have a big enough picture to make universal negative claims, said Sarte, \"a finite point without an infinite reference point is meaningless and absurd.\"Jim, neither you nor I can \"conclusively\" and practically demonstrate that Krishna does not exist in some remote Galaxy or alternative dimension Morover, The fact that this universe exists testifies to both the possibility, and probability of other dimensions, including the supernatural. We can only argue that there is no positive evidence for Krishna's existence from our limited finite reasoning and perspective.The reason I personally don't believe in a multitude of Hindu gods is because there is positive evidence that the universe is too unified to have been organised by a \"committee\", and far too complex to have happened by chance. The reason I, and the vast majority, instinctively believe and logically conclude there is a God is because of the \"existence\" and \"dependent\" nature of the cosmos, and everything in it.A \"dependent\" universe running down towards maximum entropy cannot naturally wind itself up,nor bring itself into being, and this would apply to everything in the universe, including atheists. The reason we need a first cause for the existence of life, is because the same \"natural\" chemical processes that cause a dead body to decay once the code of life is gone, cannot have also initially brought it to life. Life comes only from life. If you know of any non-living thing that brought itself to life I would certainly like to know. Everything which is \"dependent\" in nature needs a cause outside itself. Which is why the universe, and us, needs something beyond ourselves to explain our existence. (likewise, if you know of anything in the universe that is not dependent in nature please let me know.) If whatever brought the universe into being is likewise dependent on something else, we would finish up with an \"infinite\" regression of preceding dependence, \"forever\", and thus no basis for existence, no ever. Yet the universe exists. The only way out of this infinite eternal dependence delimma is the necessary existence of a non-depended self-existing first cause, which theists call God. In other words, God is both a philosophical and scientific necessity, in order to explain why our dependent universe exists. Atheists remind me of the mechanic who looks at dissambled car parts (Mathematical structure, Cosmological constants, life, DNA, etc etc etc) and can't see the car or imagine a car designer. (more later)\nLippard (2008-09-14):\nJohn: \"No one, I repeat, no one, can affirm conclusively that something cannot exist in \"universal\" terms, unless they have total knowledge of all that exists, and can exist, have checked under every rock in the universe, simultaneously, been to every galaxy; the extremities of outer space, and checked out every dimension, including the supernatural.\"And again, I disagree. If the thing in question is logically incoherent or logically entails local consequences that are contradictory to what is observed where I have looked, then I can legitimately conclude that it doesn't exist.Further, absolute certainty is not a requirement for reasonable belief.It is reasonable to disbelieve in the existence of Krishna in this universe. It is likewise reasonable to disbelieve in the existence of the Christian God in this universe.\nEinzige (2008-09-15):\nThe reason I, and the vast majority, instinctively believe and logically conclude there is a God is because of the \"existence\" and \"dependent\" nature of the cosmos, and everything in it.So, the universe is dependent (i.e., \"needs a cause\"), but God is not. On what basis do you make that claim? And how exactly does this satisfy as an explanation of anything? It seems to me all you've done is \"solve\" one mystery by creating another, bigger, and (perhaps equally) insoluble one. What was God doing before he made the universe?Oh, and again, you've still got a large gap between \"God is first cause\" and \"Jesus is Lord\".\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nJohn: Einzige's final point can be expanded to observe that you're trying to take a short cut that doesn't lead to your destination. Even if you were able to prove atheism false--or even that something approximating the Christian God existed--that wouldn't make young-earth creationism true or evolution false without some additional premises.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-15):\nJim, the statement that nobody has universal knowledge of all that exists, or can exist, is a statement of fact, and is therefore both logical and coherent. (if you know of anyone who is an exception to this I would like to know their name). Furthermore, something with \"local\" consequences hardly fits the \"universal\" category, as any dictionary would show.Likewise, the fine tuning of the the universe is not a teutology but a statement of fact. If Elizije doubts this he could start pulling the leads off the spark plugs on his car and watch what happens to the cars tuning. Or, in the broader sense of the cosmos, if he could even slightly alter any of the values of the cosmological constants, I guarantee he would be able to watch himself disappear, as Stephen Hawking and other physicists would expect. Elizije also seems to have difficulty coming to terms with the resurrection. Firstly, it's not a matter of whether or not one believes in dead matter coming to life, but rather at what point. Every atheistic evolutionist believes that at some point in the past dead matter came to life. Its called abiogenesis. Point A, dead dumb lifeless matter. Point B, a living replicating lifeform. Secondly, at least the resurrected Christ had all the body pieces already in place to be refired up by the Guy who was the origin and author of life. I can affirm this with some confidence, as the origin of life by natural causes alone remains the achiles heel of atheism and philosophical naturalism. Life only comes from life, and that is scientific reality. Thus, the necessary non-dependent self-existing first cause. (I'm not sure either of you really understand the full implications of a \"dependent\" universe that had a beginning, and is running down. So I ask either of you, yet again, to name a single thing in the universe that is not contingent or dependent in nature and essence. To avoid an infinite regression of dependence you need, of necessity, a non-dependent self-existing first cause in order for the universe to exist at all. This also is a logical self evident reality.As for the resurrection of Christ, the evidence is more than adequate for me, and represents the highest probability. Articles by atheists attempting to refute this fall far short from my perspective. However, I have long ago discovered that there are people for whom no amount of evidence for God existence, however self evident and compelling, would ever be sufficient. And so, we will have to agree to disagree. None-the-less, on the resurrection I would recommend material by William Lane Craig. Even A. N. Wilson gets it too -- No Resurrection, No Christianity. Similarly, for those who argue that the Biblical prophecies about Christ don't stack up I would suggest they read the four volume set (soon to be five) by a leading jewish authority on this issue, Dr Micheal L Brown, titled \"Answering Jewish [and atheist]Objections To Jesus\". I suggest this because atheist and Skeptics web sites also fall well short of the mark in terms of scholarship on this issue. Jim, the issue of what constitutes a species may be \"fuzzy\" for evolutionists, but breeders well know where the boundary lies, as do the multitude of living fossils which seem forever stuck within their species boundaries. Anyway, guys, I appreciate your input. Hopefully, you guys are enjoy such dialogue too. Jim, I can't always respond immediately as I am building my own sizable home (in addition to other commitments) but there is still a lot of issues already covered to be more fully discussed and fleshed out, so I will continue to post as time allows. Also appreciate your input Elizige.\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nJohn: I don't think you're engaging with my knowledge argument. I agree that no one has all knowledge, but that doesn't contradict the premises or validity of my argument. There's a nice diagram in Douglas Hofstadter's _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ which depicts knowledge space which is a good companion to my argument.You write: \"Furthermore, something with \"local\" consequences hardly fits the \"universal\" category, as any dictionary would show.\" Universal claims have local consequences. That's all that my argument requires for the ability to logically infer conclusions about the universal claim from the observed local consequences. If a claimed god performs certain types of actions in certain circumstances universally, then a local failure for that to happen is sufficient to show that that claim about god is false.I'm the author of a critique of messianic prophecies, \"The Fabulous Prophecies of the Messiah.\"BTW, it's \"Einzige.\"\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nRobert M. Price and Jeffrey J. Lowder's book, _The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave_ (2005, Prometheus Books) responds to Craig and others. Perhaps someday Craig will write a response; so far he has not.\nEinzige (2008-09-15):\nI didn't say that \"the fine tuning of the the universe\" was a tautology. What I said was that it's assuming what it's trying to prove. It's as if I came along and asked you \"How hard did you beat your wife last night?\"The tautology arises from the notion that it's oh so amazing that the universe has the characteristics it has. No it isn't. If it didn't have these characteristics then it would have some others or it wouldn't exist. Big deal. Counter-factuals are sometimes fun, sometimes helpful, but in this case they're simply mental masturbation....the statement that nobody has universal knowledge of all that exists, or can exist, is a statement of fact, and is therefore both logical and coherent.Are you sure you want to take this road as a means for defending your Christianity?Every atheistic evolutionist believes that at some point in the past dead matter came to life.That's a straw-man argument, and if you talk with any biologist about this issue they'll tell you that, at the edges, the difference between life and non-life is pretty fuzzy. Is a virus \"alive\"? Meanwhile, the origin of life on Earth continues to be controversial subject in science.So I ask either of you, yet again, to name a single thing in the universe that is not contingent or dependent in nature and essence. To avoid an infinite regression of dependence you need, of necessity, a non-dependent self-existing first cause in order for the universe to exist at all. This also is a logical self evident reality.We're not the one's making the claim. That the universe exists is self-evident. Either everything has a cause or there's something that doesn't. If everything has a cause then God does too. If there's something that doesn't have a cause then it might as well be the universe. Why does it have to be \"God\"? On what basis do you make that claim? And how exactly does this satisfy as an explanation of anything? It seems to me all you've done is \"solve\" one mystery by creating another, bigger, and (perhaps equally) insoluble one. What was God doing before he made the universe?We are now repeating ourselves.As for the resurrection of Christ, the evidence is more than adequate for me, and represents the highest probability.What is your standard of acceptable evidence?\nPaul (2008-09-15):\n\"The tautology arises from the notion that it's oh so amazing that the universe has the characteristics it has. No it isn't.\"If I can jump in for just a moment...It seems to me that if the above statement is true, then, by definition, nothing--no scientific discoveries, no beauty, no human achievement, absolutely, positively nothing --in the universe is amazing. It just is, and the psychological phenomenon of amazement over anything (including the alleged fine tuning of the universe for life on earth) is simply a neurological weakness that may someday be overcome.But since that phenomenon exists and is endemic in the human race, it shouldn't be seen as philosophically anomalous, it just is as well.If you'll forgive me, I find that perspective amazing.It seems we all have our amazing, internally semi-consistent logical circles do we not? Yet we call each other's circles squares, which really advances knowledge, does it not?\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nI think we can all agree that there are amazing improbable things that happen, but all measures of improbability require a background measurement of either frequency of occurrency or subjective prior probabilities.What's the relevant background information to assign probabilities to the values of fundamental constants? Are all values equally probable? Is there an infinite number of possible universes, of which only one is actualized, or is there an infinite multiverse where all possibilities are actualized?I think it's *possible* that the universe we live in was exceedingly improbable and therefore amazing, but what's the background information against which to determine if that's the case?\nPaul (2008-09-15):\nWe only know what we know. That's why all new discoveries are \"amazing.\"To argue that we should not be amazed by each new advance in discovering realities, whether cosmological or otherwise, it seems to me, is to take away all wonder. It is the understatement of the year to say that we are less than tiny specks in a vast universe, the vast majority of which we do not yet understand. All present theories are tentative, and many slam-dunk present day theorems will be the flat-earth theories of tomorrow.So, in the meantime, why can't we give each other some space as we play in this huge cosmological sandbox? Why do we, as P.Z. Myers once said, have to \"get mean?\"One wonders what lies behind such ferocity.\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nPaul: What's the \"such ferocity\" to which you refer? Do you mean to refer to someone here with your remark about getting \"mean\"?Does your stance of epistemic humility only apply to science, or do you, as a Pentecostal pastor, apply it to the Bible and theology as well?\nPaul (2008-09-15):\nJim, my reference was to PZ Myers. If no one that reads this blog think his ideas are worth anything, then please feel free to dismiss the reference.Yes, Jim, I try to apply the same standard to me. In fact, I describe my biblical hermeneutic as a 'naive' hermeneutic, rather than 'literal.' You may not be familiar with the name, but it's kinda a bit to the right of Karl Barth, with a childlike experiential wonder tossed in.\nLippard (2008-09-15):\nPaul:I think I and many of my readers consider P.Z. Myers to be worth reading (and certainly wouldn't characterize his ideas as not worth anything), but here we also tend to be somewhat less incendiary, and to favor discussion to ridicule even with many whose beliefs might appear crazy to us. (That's not to say that it never occurs here--it does.)I've never read any Barth, but I've encountered his name from time to time, and I just read the Wikipedia entry on him. On which spectrum or issues do you consider yourself to the right of Barth?Do you not go as far as he does in the rejection of biblical inerrancy?Thanks for coming by my blog, I enjoy having commenters from different perspectives, especially if they're capable of cordial discussion, as you've demonstrated.Did you happen to discover my blog as a result of my past posts on Pentecostalism, or Sarah Palin, or some other subject like this particular post on \"Expelled\" where the comments have wandered rather far from the initial subject?\nPaul (2008-09-15):\nThanks, Jim.I found it during the Expelled aborted phenomenon and had commented early on, and just kept the blogger notification.Re:Barth, the big difference is that I embrace the historical/propositional truth of the Resurrection; Barth would not believe that to be essential.I love the phrase, \"second (or post-critical) naivete,\" coined by Paul Ricoeur, but I think it only works if you actually believe it. My Pentecostal phenomenological experiences help in that regard.Fundamentalists, on the other hand, feel a need to defend their faith/the Bible from the outside in. If one verse is not 100% accurate, the whole thing caves in.I think it should be seen from the center out. That center is the Resurrection, for me. If it were conclusively disproved, there is no reason for faith at all, I believe. In my understanding of Barth, he would not throw in the towel if Jesus was not physically raised from the dead.I don't know if that answers your questions, Jim, but I appreciate the opportunity to jump in.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-16):\nEinzige, re your comments on the fine tuning of the universe etc. As you stated, \"If it didn't have these characteristics then it would have some others or it wouldn't exist.\". That's the whole point. In addition to recognizing the fact of a finely tuned universe, you also realize that if is wasn't finely tuned we would not exist. The reality of this fine tuning throughout the universe, and in regard to the earth itself, points to a cause beyond the universe, as leading world scientists well recognize, for reasons mentioned later. The difference between life and non-life may be pretty fuzzy for you, but scientist and others have no trouble distinguishing between a dead life form and a live one, viruses included. A dead virus or other life form ceases to operate because the code of life imparted on the life form is gone, and normal natural chemical processes take over causing all lifeforms to decay, viruses included. Re your comment, \"If everything has a cause then God does too. If there's something that doesn't have a cause then it might as well be the universe.\". The problem here is that the universe (and everything in it) is \"dependent\" by nature, and therefore could not have brought itself into being, any more than you, as a \"dependent\" person, could bring yourself into existence without parents. This is further affirmed by the reality that the universe is running down towards heat death and maximum entropy. If it was its own cause it would be eternally self-existing. But it is not, and therefore we need, of necessity, to look beyond the dependent universe for its origin; because everything \"dependent\" needs a cause outside itself, just as we do. To repeat an earlier statement, if the cause of the universe (God) is likewise dependent on a preceding cause you have only two alternatives. Either an infinite regression or eternal dependent gods or causes, or a \"non-dependent, self-existing God or first cause\".The problem with the infinite eternal regression of dependent gods is that there is ultimately never any basis for existence. This is because an infinite regression of dependent gods or causes means that no preceding god or cause is \"ever\" able to bring \"itself\" into existence. So we have no basis as to why our dependent universe exists.Yet the universe does exist. The only possible resolution and basis for existence of our dependent universe is a \"necessary non-dependent self-existing first cause\", which theistic scientists and the vast majority of humanity call God. In short, the universe is not self existing and therefore cannot be its own cause. It cannot wind itself up, because it is in the process of running down. The issue then proceeds as to whether this God, or necessary self-existing first cause, is the revealed God of Judaism and Christianity, or some other worldview. This is a separate issue entirely, and arguments for and against must be evaluated in terms of other realities. None-the-less Einzige, you raised good questions that theists need to address, as does Jim.\nEamon Knight (2008-09-16):\nA dead virus or other life form ceases to operate because the code of life imparted on the life form is gone, and normal natural chemical processes take over causing all lifeforms to decay, viruses included.That sounds a lot like vitalism. If so, I think your understanding of biology is a tad out of date (to an extent that's likely to scupper the discussion).\nEinzige (2008-09-16):\n\"...the universe...is \"dependent\" by nature...\"You treat this claim as if it were, prima facie, apodictically certain when it's not. It may be true. I'm willing to admit that I don't know. Given your earlier exposition on the problem of induction I would assume that you are, too.If it was its own cause it would be eternally self-existing.Here's another statement I reject. What is your basis for such a claim?So we have no basis as to why our dependent universe exists.So your way out of this conundrum is to posit that an incredibly complex, intentional (i.e., conscious), benevolent being, itself entirely uncaused, \"fine-tuned\"--like some sort of auto-mechanic--the universe, then sent his only begotten son to save us from our sins. You find that you're able to sleep at night with that kind of solution to the problem?...viruses included.This statement makes me suspicious that you are ignorant of basic biology. Viruses lack almost all of the cellular structures that exist in, and are essential to, even the simplest of bacteria. A virus is almost nothing more than a packet of DNA surrounded by a lipid bi-layer. Viruses can't reproduce without commandeering the cellular machinery of a host organism. Whether this counts as \"alive\" is not just fuzzy to me....ceases to operate because the code of life imparted on the life form is gone...What is this \"code of life\" of which you speak?In addition to recognizing the fact of a finely tuned universe, you also realize that if is wasn't finely tuned we would not exist.Your attempt at being dense here is amusing.There's an interesting fact about a deck of cards. Because of the mathematics involved, when you randomly shuffle a regular deck, it's a near certainty that the resultant arrangement of cards has never before existed and never will exist again. Is that cause for amazement on our part? Would you hold up the deck and say \"This is a 'special' deck\" because the order of its cards is so amazingly unlikely? Would you say that you 'intended' it to have the arrangement that it has?\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-16):\nEamon, when I use the term code of life I'm talking about two different states of the \"existing\" genome code (material, DNA, or whatever term you want to use to describe what makes us human). One state in the genome code is alive, and a second state in which the same genome code is dead. Life is what makes the two states different, and what prevents the normal natural chemical processes from taking over causing decomposition. People use common generic expressions such as \"the spark of life has gone\" or the \"life force has left him\". That does not mean that people believe that there is actually something extra residing in the life form other than the state of the genome code itself. Some do of course believe a \"spirit\" or literal \"force\" in addition to the genetic material itself, but that is not my position. I would be most interested to hear you define what \"life\" actually is, and to explain what happens to the genome code in a living and dead state. Keeping in mind that at the instant of death the genome code is all in place.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-16):\nEinzige, it not only \"May be true\", it is true, and it would be a brave person or scientist who denies the contingent, or dependent, nature of the universe, or the related fact that it is running down towards a state of heat death and maximum entropy. To prove me wrong, all you have to demonstrate is that the universe, or anything in it, is non-dependent and self-existing. If you can you there may be a Nobel Prize on offer.Re, \"If it was its own cause it would be eternally self-existing.\" The basis for this has already been stated, and is that everything \"dependent\" needs a cause outside itself, with the only basis for existence being ultimately a non-dependent self-existing first cause, or an infinite regression of dependence forever, and thus no basis for existence.You may not like the idea of am \"incredibly complex, intentional (i.e., conscious), benevolent being, itself entirely uncaused\", but that is exactly what is necessary in the end to explain our dependent universe, and is one of the principle reasons why many of the world foremost scientists are theists, including those who believe evolution to be a fact (Miller, Collins, etc etc.As for the code of life, I have explained my position elsewere.That the universe is finely tuned has been recognized by the vast majority of scientists, Hawking included. If you deny this reality you may find yourself out to left field, without a paddle.As for the cards, having cards in any particular random state is no big deal. Try shuffling the cards and see how long it takes to get to a state where all the cards line up in the exact order and arrangements of the suits. Then you have something. Then try shuffling around 3 billion cards so they line up in specific way. Then you have something somewhat akin to the human genome. Just a final word of advice, cut the childish language such as, \"Your attempt at being dense here is amusing.\". If gives me the impression you are a real novice, which I am sure you are not. Take a leaf out of Jim's book. He answers issues directly and in a reasoned fashion, without all the garbage.\nEinzige (2008-09-16):\nI appreciate the suggestion, and I respect Jim a great deal--and often follow his example. I have my own style, however, and while you may see it as \"childish\", I think it works for me.Meanwhile, we seem to have reached an impasse, given that you are asserting the \"truth\" of unprovable statements, so I think it's time for me to bow out of the discussion.\nLippard (2008-09-16):\nJohn:Daniel Dennett's distinction between crane and skyhook explanations is that skyhooks come down from the sky as a deus ex machina, and don't really explain, while cranes provide a way to build up from the ground. We know from computer science, mathematics, and biology that complexity can evolve from simple rules without the need for the complexity being built in from the start. We are in the process of learning how mental phenomena arise from neurological material, and it is the crane explanations which are more productive than the skyhook explanations.I'm not sure that the idea of a \"self-caused\" being is coherent, nor that the idea of a necessarily-existing being is coherent. I do think that if there must be some logically necessary thing to answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing, I would expect that thing to be simple rather than complex, I would expect it to be external to space-time and unchanging, which seems to me to rule out a personal god, which would have to be immanent and changing in order to have mental activity (or any kind of activity at all). I'm not familiar with any reason to rule out the idea that there is a multiverse of universes contingently coming into existence for finite lives, given the existence of quantum fluctuations and current Big Bang/inflation cosmology.BTW, the more eminent a scientist is, the *less* likely he or she is to believe in God. Of all scientists in the U.S., about 40% believe in God (vs. 80%+ of the general population); of the most eminent such as Nobel prizewinners and members of the National Academy of Sciences, it drops to 7%. It's lowest of all among physicists and biologists; highest among mathematicians and engineers.I think your code of life comment engages in a level confusion--there is no *genetic* difference between a person at the moment before death and at the moment after death--the differences are at a higher level of biological description involving respiration, cardiovascular activity, and brain function. You can also look at living/dead at the cellular level, but again the difference is not a genetic one. Viruses fall into a borderland because they don't have all the features of cellular life, e.g., they can't reproduce on their own and don't have their own metabolism. BTW, scientists have built self-replicating molecules in the lab.\nLippard (2008-09-16):\nJohn: \"As for the cards, having cards in any particular random state is no big deal. Try shuffling the cards and see how long it takes to get to a state where all the cards line up in the exact order and arrangements of the suits. Then you have something.\"Yet that's exactly as likely as any other combination. With living things, on the other hand, not all combinations are equally likely, and when you have a process of self-replication and natural selection, you have a mechanism for generating new adaptive features. Snoke and Behe's paper attempting to show the impossibility of the evolution of a new disulfide bond in a bacterium, yet the cross-examination in the Kitzmiller case showed that in fact, his paper proved the very high probability of such evolution, given the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil.\nEamon Knight (2008-09-17):\nOne state in the genome code is alive, and a second state in which the same genome code is dead. Life is what makes the two states different, and what prevents the normal natural chemical processes from taking over causing decomposition.I'm sorry, but I can think of no kinder way to express this than to say: you are horribly confused, and are utterly and irredeemably wrong in two ways here.1) There is *no* *observable* *difference* in the genome in a living organism and in that same organism moments after it dies. The DNA is all there, in the same configuration it was before. About the only peri-mortem difference is that, over short period of time (I don't know how long; I'm not a biologist) as the energy reserves of the cell are depleted, various ongoing chemical processes associated with the genes (eg. the transcriptase enzymes that synthesize the messenger RNAs)will peter out.Indeed, this is one example of the fuzzy boundary between life and non-life: if my heart has stopped beating, but various bits of cellular metabolism continue for minutes or hours, am I alive or dead? As a medico-legal matter there must be a declaration one way or the other, but as a scientific or philosophical matter, the line is not so clear.2) The chemical processes that operate when the organism is alive are every bit as \"normal and natural\" as those that take place after death -- there is nothing mystical-magical about them. While the detailed list of reactions taking place will be different, there is no essential, ontological distinction between them. This has been known by chemists for something like a century now -- ever since it became apparent that organic compounds could be synthesized in the lab, and that many if not most reactions observed in vivo could be replicated in vitro.You may refrain from using the terms \"life force\", but the way you talk about \"two states\" is logically indistinguishable. However much you may waffle on the language, you are in fact a vitalist.Which means you are wrong.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-17):\nJim, I posted comments addressing the number of issues you raised, but for some reason it has not appeared on your blog, even though it seemed to go through. Included were details regarding factual shortcomings in your critique of messianic prophecy. It may have been too lengthy perhaps. Anyway, I will redo it in a week or so when I have time and break it into sections. Appreciate your feedback.\nLippard (2008-09-17):\nJohn: I don't have comment moderation turned on--so long as you have a Blogger account, anyone can post comments that immediately appear here. I have this blog configured to email copies of any comments posted, and I haven't received the ones of which you speak, so they apparently didn't get through to the blog for some reason.\nJohn Heininger (2008-09-18):\nThanks Jim. You did not appear to be the type that would monitor access our filter out responses. We have visitors from interstate at the moment, and a couple of Israeli friend's who were staying with us have only just left to return to Israel. But when it settles down I want to get back into the fray, as there are a number of issues raised that needs to be addressed. If I can get any time to post a brief comment off I will do so. Regards.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClick the image for the facts that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; doesn\u0026rsquo;t give you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis post is a placeholder to report on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s weekend box office and the accuracy of \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/is-expelled-going-to-show-up-in-any.html\"\u003emy five predictions about the film\u003c/a\u003e, as well as a few more I\u0026rsquo;ll add here.  My five predictions were that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e(1) be on fewer than\u003cstrike\u003e\u003c/strike\u003e 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won\u0026rsquo;t break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales).\u003c/blockquote\u003ePrediction (1) is already falsified, since it\u0026rsquo;s opening in 1,052 theaters.  Prediction (4) may well be wrong due to how weak this weekend is for new films\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s pretty clear that #1 and #2 will be \u0026ldquo;Forgetting Sarah Marshall\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Forbidden Kingdom.\u0026rdquo;  Al Pacino\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;88 Minutes\u0026rdquo; is also opening in many theaters and has the draw of its star, but it\u0026rsquo;s getting terrible reviews.  C.S. Strowbridge at The-Numbers \u003ca href=\"http://www.the-numbers.com/interactive/newsStory.php?newsID=3343\"\u003eestimates that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will only need a $3 million opening weekend to make the top ten\u003c/a\u003e, so my predictions are at least consistent with each other.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooking at the list of top Christian films below, I see that the most recent \u0026ldquo;Veggie Tales\u0026rdquo; movie, \u0026ldquo;The Pirates Who Don\u0026rsquo;t Do Anything,\u0026rdquo; came in at number 6 in January 2008 with an opening weekend of $4.2 million on 1,337 screens.  I doubt that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will do that well, though I expect (6) it will break the top ten in the Christian films category, probably about to the eighth position.  Looking at controversial films, however, I think it\u0026rsquo;s unlikely to make the top twenty\u0026ndash;(7) it will probably end up around 22nd at best, beating \u0026ldquo;The Last Temptation of Christ.\u0026rdquo;  Documentaries are a bit easier, and it could very well make the top ten, but (8) I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect it to get above the seventh slot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, (9) I expect to see its theater counts drop rapidly starting next week, losing at least 500 theaters by next Friday as its audience sees the film and more popular entries displace it in the new week.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 19, 2008):  I expect that predictions (2) and (4) may be falsified; a weekend take of $3-4 million looks likely after Friday\u0026rsquo;s estimated take of $1,126,000 and its coming in at #8 on Friday.  #1-#7 ahead of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; were: \u0026ldquo;The Forbidden Kingdom,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Forgetting Sarah Marshall,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Prom Night,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;88 Minutes,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;21,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Nim\u0026rsquo;s Island,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Street Kings.\u0026rdquo;  Prediction (3) looks like it will easily be proven correct; \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; earned $1,070 per-theater on Friday, making it #5 for per-theater take.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 20, 2008):  Prediction (2) has been falsified as the current estimated box office take is $3,152,896.  Prediction (4) looks like it will be falsified, with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; barely cracking the top ten\u0026ndash;it has been passed by \u0026ldquo;Horton Hears a Who\u0026rdquo; and looks like it will be #9 for the weekend.  Prediction (3) looks like it will be false, too, though in my defense I intended to predict a per-screen daily average take rather than a per-theater take for the entire weekend.  Saturday\u0026rsquo;s take was $941/theater, versus Friday\u0026rsquo;s $1,145, and Sunday looks like it will be lower still (projected to be $911/theater).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 21, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s weekend take has been revised downward from the estimate, to $2,970,848, or $2,824 per-theater.   So my prediction (3), taken the way I said it rather than meant it, was not wrong by much.  It also came in at #10 for the weekend (#9 was Leatherheads), so prediction (4) was falsified in the most minimal way possible.  Predictions (5)-(9) appear to be on solid ground.  Sunday\u0026rsquo;s take was only $737/theater, and it\u0026rsquo;s all downhill from here.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 24, 2008): The-Numbers has posted its list of theater counts for the weekend of April 25, 2008, and \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t on the list.  I\u0026rsquo;d guess this means they just don\u0026rsquo;t have the information yet, rather than that it\u0026rsquo;s not appearing in any theater (since none of last week\u0026rsquo;s openers and only one of this weekend\u0026rsquo;s openers are yet listed), but we\u0026rsquo;ll soon find out if my prediction (9) is correct and it is down to 552 or fewer theaters.  (If Arizona is an indication, the drop may not occur until next week.)  Box Office Mojo \u003ca href=\"http://www.boxofficemojo.com/counts/chart/?yr=2008\u0026amp;wk=17\u0026amp;p=.htm\"\u003eis now reporting \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s theater count at 1,041 for its second weekend\u003c/a\u003e, a drop of 11 theaters, which falsifies prediction (9).  It looks like it\u0026rsquo;s not common for a huge drop in theater counts to occur in the first week, so this was probably a dumb prediction unless the movie was a total bomb, which it hasn\u0026rsquo;t been.  I think a 500-theater drop is much more likely for next week, however\u0026ndash;call that prediction (10).  For this weekend, I suspect we\u0026rsquo;ll see each day\u0026rsquo;s average take in the $500-$700 per-theater range, or $500,000-$700,000 total per day; probably closer to the low end, and thus ending the weekend with a total take of between $5.4M and $6M, and leaving prediction (5) accurate unless it turns out to be popular internationally.  It will also probably drop out of the top ten starting today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 26, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; began its second weekend with (The-Numbers\u0026rsquo; estimate) a $505,000 take ($485/theater) on Friday, even lower than I guessed yesterday.  Box Office Mojo\u0026rsquo;s estimate is even lower: $450,000 ($432/theater).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 27, 2008):  The second weekend\u0026rsquo;s estimated take is $1,378,867 ($1,325/theater, The-Numbers) or $1,379,000 ($1,324/theater, Box Office Mojo), which will put the total at about $5.2M, below the lower end of my guess on Thursday, with a total of about $5.2M.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 28, 2008): The weekend\u0026rsquo;s estimated take is now $1,395,000 ($1340/theater), with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ranked at #13, according to Box Office Mojo.  Looks like it followed the more normal pattern with a Saturday peak ($529,000) and less on Friday ($452,000; The-Numbers estimates $505,000 for Friday) and Sunday ($414,000), all still estimates.  Today will probably drop well below $200,000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 29, 2008): Monday\u0026rsquo;s take was $157,191 ($151/theater), though the rank went up to #12.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 2, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is staying around longer than I would have imagined, but it has now dropped 386 theaters to 655, and its daily box office take will suffer accordingly.  It looks like \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is going to end up doing about the same amount business as \u0026ldquo;Megiddo: The Omega Code 2,\u0026rdquo; and not as well as \u0026ldquo;The End of the Spear,\u0026rdquo; two Christian movies that were previously distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures.  Prediction (5) looks dead on (less than $10 million in box office by the end of 2008); prediction (6) looks like it was too generous (\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; should easily break into the top ten on Christian films, but it now looks unlikely to reach #9, let alone #8); prediction (7) also looks too generous (hitting #22 on the \u0026ldquo;controversial\u0026rdquo; film list; #23 or #24 looks more likely, though Box Office Mojo has decided not to list \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in that category at all); prediction (8) is easy at this point (it won\u0026rsquo;t reach #7 on the documentary list; it looks like even breaking into the top 10 is out of reach).  So my prediction accuracy was about as good as coin flipping.  I was way off on theater count-related predictions, but more accurate on revenue and rank-related predictions.  But enough about those predictions.  I\u0026rsquo;ll continue to update this post with the data until it drops completely out of the theaters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome websites for statistics:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2008/EXPEL.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; box office numbers and rating at The-Numbers\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e4/19/2008:  \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; came in at #8 for Friday, with an estimated box office take of $1,126,000, and a per-theater take of $1,070 (ranked #5).\u003cbr /\u003eThe-Numbers rating: 3.75/10 (16 votes; 25% rated it 10 and 62.5% rated it 1).\u003cbr /\u003e4/20/2008: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has dropped to #9 for the weekend, with an estimated box office take of $3,152,896 for the whole weekend, and a per-theater take of $2,997.\u003cbr /\u003e4/22/2008: The-Numbers gives different numbers than Box Office Mojo, though their weekend totals agree:  Friday: $1,126,000 ($1070/theater), Saturday: $967,000 ($919/theater), Sunday: $878,000 ($835/theater), for an opening weekend total of $2,970,848 ($2,824/theater).  Monday: $238,804 ($227/theater).\u003cbr /\u003e04/23/2008: Tuesday, April 22: $227,232 ($216/theater).  Total: $3,436,884.\u003cbr /\u003e04/25/2008: Wednesday, April 23: $234,596 ($223).  Thursday, April 24: $231,440 ($220).  Friday, April 25: $505,000 ($485), ranked #13.  Total: $4,408,000.\u003cbr /\u003e4/30/2008: Still no numbers for Saturday or Sunday.  Monday, April 28: $157,191 ($151).\u003cbr /\u003e5/1/2008: Tuesday, April 29: $162,396 ($156).  Wednesday, April 30: $159,273 ($153).\u003cbr /\u003e5/2/2008: Thursday, May 1: $158,232 ($152).\u003cbr /\u003e5/5/2008: May 2-4 weekend: $683,552 ($1,042/theater).\u003cbr /\u003e5/6/2008: Monday, May 5: $66,912 ($102/theater).\u003cbr /\u003e5/8/2008: Tuesday, May 6: $74,128 ($113), Wednesday, May 7: $73,472 ($112).\u003cbr /\u003e5/9/2008: Thursday, May 8: $78,720 ($120).  Total: $6,906,488.\u003cbr /\u003e5/12/2008: Friday, May 9-Sunday, May 11: $328,836 ($818).  Total: $7,235,324.\u003cbr /\u003e5/14/2008: Monday, May 12: $38,994 ($97); Tuesday, May 13: $35,778 ($89).\u003cbr /\u003e5/16/2008: Wednesday, May 14: $43,818 ($109), Thursday, May 15: $43,014 ($107).\u003cbr /\u003e5/28/2008: Monday, May 26: $16,019 ($193).  Total: $7,598,071.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.the-numbers.com/features/TCountAll.php\"\u003eTheater counts at The-Numbers\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2008: 1,052\u003cbr /\u003e4/25/2008: 1,041\u003cbr /\u003e5/2/2008: 656\u003cbr /\u003e5/9/2008: 402\u003cbr /\u003e5/16/2008: 210\u003cbr /\u003e5/23/2008: 83\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ratings at Rotten Tomatoes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2008 7:54 a.m. MST: 8% fresh (12 reviews, 11 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2008 11:48 a.m. MST: 7% fresh (14 reviews, 13 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2008 1:35 p.m. MST: 5% fresh (21 reviews, 20 rotten, 2.8/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2008 2:56 p.m. MST: 9% fresh (22 reviews, 20 rotten, 3/10 rating) (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChristianity Today\u003c/span\u003e review added)\u003cbr /\u003e4/19/2008 4:15 p.m. MST: 9% fresh (23 reviews, 21 rotten, 3/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/22/2008 6:23 p.m. MST: 12% fresh (25 reviews, 22 rotten, 3.2/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/24/2008 4:39 p.m. MST: 10% fresh (30 reviews, 27 rotten, 2.9/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e4/292008 8:08 a.m. MST: 9% fresh (33 reviews, 30 rotten, 3/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003eTop Critics: 0% fresh (13 reviews, 13 rotten, 2.6/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003eRT Community rating: 50% fresh (377 reviews, 188 rotten, 4.8/10 rating)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091617/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; ratings at IMDB\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e4/19/2008 4:15 p.m. MST:\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating is 3.3/10 with 402 very polarized votes\u0026ndash;81 (20.1%) rated the movie a 10, 276 (68.7%) rated it a 1.\u003cbr /\u003eFemales like it more than males, and those under 18 and over 45 like it more than those in between.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for males: 3.1\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for females: 6.3\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.7 (male 6.7, female 10)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.0 (male 2.5, female 7.7)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.0 (male 3.1, female 2.0)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 45+: 4.7 (male 4.5, female 5.5)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4/21/2008 10:36 a.m. MST:\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating is now 3.6/10 with 659 votes, still highly polarized (22.2% 10, 61.0% 1), but now with a few more 7, 8, and 9 ratings (2.4%, 4.2%, and 4.7%, respectively), and a few more 2 and 3 ratings (2.1% and 1.2%, respectively).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for males: 3.3\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for females: 6.7\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.5 (male 6.3, female 7.8)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.4 (male 3.0, female 7.7)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.3 (male 3.3, female 2.4)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 45+: 4.1 (male 4.0, female 7.7)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4/24/2008 4:41 p.m. MST:\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating is now 3.6/10 with 2,332 votes (25.4% 10, 57.0% 1; 5.1% 9, 4.0% 8, 2.0% 7, 1.5% 3, 3.1% 2).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for males: 3.4\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for females: 5.4\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for under 18-year-olds: 6.0 (male 5.5, female 7.9)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 18-29 year-olds: 3.2 (male 3.0, female 5.5)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 30-44 year-olds: 3.6 (male 3.6, female 3.4)\u003cbr /\u003eAverage rating for 45+: 4.6 (male 4.4, female 6.7)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=expelled.htm\"\u003eExpelled box office and ratings at Box Office Mojo\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e4/19/2008 9:54 a.m. MST: Box Office Mojo readers rate the movie a B, with 110 votes (66.4% A, 3.6% B, 28.2% F).\u003cbr /\u003e4/20/2008 12:21 p.m. MST: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; took in less money on Saturday than on Friday\u0026ndash;$990,000, or $941 per theater.  Sunday\u0026rsquo;s projected take is $958,000.\u003cbr /\u003e4/21/2008 5:07 p.m. MST:  The opening weekend box office take was $2,970,848, a per-theater average of $2,824.  Sunday brought in only $775,000, or $737 per theater.\u003cbr /\u003e4/22/2008 6:25 p.m. MST: Monday\u0026rsquo;s box office take was $238,804, another 68.8% drop in daily gross, for a per-theater average of $227.  Total take is now $3,209,652.  Friday-Sunday have been updated: Friday: $1,208,748 ($1,149), Saturday: $996,244 ($947), Sunday: $765,856 ($728).  The weekend total agrees with The-Numbers, but the daily totals do not.\u003cbr /\u003e4/23/2008 2:01 p.m. MST: Tuesday: $227,232 ($216); Wednesday: $234,596 ($223).  Six-day total: $3,671,480.\u003cbr /\u003e4/24/2008 3:04 p.m. MST: Thursday: $231,440 ($220).  Seven-day total: $3,902,920.\u003cbr /\u003e4/25/2008 6:56 p.m. MST: Friday: $450,000 ($432) (estimate), rank #13.  Seven-day total: $4,353,000.\u003cbr /\u003e4/30/2008 1:58 p.m. MST: Saturday: $529,000 ($508), Sunday: $414,000 ($398), Monday: $157,191 ($151), Tuesday: $162,396 ($156).  Weekend numbers are all still estimates.\u003cbr /\u003e5/2/2008 7:04 p.m. MST: Wednesday: $159,273 ($153), Thursday: $158,232 ($152).\u003cbr /\u003e5/5/2008 9:20 a.m. PDT: May 2-4 weekend: $684,000 ($1,042).\u003cbr /\u003e5/6/2008 7:40 p.m. PDT: Friday, May 2: $216,480 ($330), Saturday, May 3: $270,272 ($412), Sunday, May 4: $191,552 ($292), Monday, May 5: $66,912 ($102), ranked #15.  Total: $6,680,168.\u003cbr /\u003e5/7/2008 7:53 p.m. PDT: Tuesday, May 6: $74,128 ($113).\u003cbr /\u003e5/8/2008 8:29 p.m. PDT: Wednesday, May 7: $73,472 ($112).\u003cbr /\u003e5/9/2008 5:17 p.m. PDT: Thursday, May 8: $78,720 ($120).\u003cbr /\u003e5/11/2008 4:01 p.m. MST: May 9-11 weekend: $328,836 ($818), in 402 theaters, ranked #21.\u003cbr /\u003e5/12/2008 7:39 p.m. MST: Friday, May 9: $100,902 ($251); Saturday, May 10: $120,600 ($300); Sunday, May 11: $107,334 ($267).  Total: $7,235,324.\u003cbr /\u003e5/13/2008 3:55 p.m. MST: Monday, May 12: $38,994 ($97).\u003cbr /\u003e5/14/2008 8:04 p.m. MST: Tuesday, May 13: $35,778 ($89).\u003cbr /\u003e5/16/2008 7:40 p.m. MST: Wednesday, May 14: $43,818 ($109); Thursday, May 15: $43,014 ($107).  Total: $7,396,927.\u003cbr /\u003e5/18/2008 6:13 p.m.: May 16-18 weekend estimate: $89,000 ($423) in 210 theaters.\u003cbr /\u003e5/21/2008 11:14 a.m. MST: May 16-18 weekend: $102,690 ($489).  Total: $7,499,617.\u003cbr /\u003e5/28/2008 12:38 p.m. MST: May 23-26 four-day weekend: $46,314 ($558).  (May 23-25: $35,109 ($423).)  Total: $7,598,071.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll-time top box office for documentaries at Box Office Mojo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=controversy.htm\"\u003eAll-time top box office for controversial films at Box Office Mojo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=christian.htm\"\u003eAll-time top box office for Christian films at Box Office Mojo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" weekend box office, theater counts, and ratings"},{"content":"\nHugh Ross\u0026rsquo;s old-earth creationist organization, Reasons to Believe, has issued a statement on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;:\nDear RTB Chapter members,\nWith the impending release of \u0026ldquo;EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed\u0026rdquo; (April 18), the Reasons to Believe scholar team thought it best to prepare a statement of our position, a guide for answering questions from chapters, networks, and apologists. Keep in mind that the mission of RTB centers on reaching out to science-minded people with two purposes:\n1. to bring the Gospel message to those who would not otherwise hear it, and\n2. to strengthen the faith of those who fear that science conflicts with the\nChristian faith-equipping them for ministry in the process.\nIn order to accomplish these purposes, we must first earn the right to be heard.\nAfter previewing the promotional materials provided by the movie\u0026rsquo;s marketers, we were concerned that the movie took an adversarial approach to the scientific community. A number of RTB scholars and staff attended a prerelease screening in Los Angeles recently and confirmed that EXPELLED definitely does take such an approach. The movie draws an analogy between the Berlin wall and the scientific community\u0026rsquo;s response to intelligent design. By doing so, EXPELLED implicitly argues that the scientific community deems certain questions off-limits, particularly any question about the legitimacy of neo-Darwinian evolution. The movie further argues that academia, the media, and the courts all conspire as \u0026ldquo;thought police\u0026rdquo; to oppress any and all dissent from the party line.\nClearly some oppression and discrimination have occurred, but the experience of RTB scholars and many of their contacts refutes the movie\u0026rsquo;s premise that the scientific community systemically and unilaterally fosters these injustices. While individual scientists and institutions have behaved unfairly at times, this charge cannot in all fairness be leveled against the scientific community as a whole.\nRegardless, from RTB\u0026rsquo;s perspective, the central question is this: when injustices do occur, how should we respond? Consider the response of Nate Saint to his son\u0026rsquo;s question, as depicted in the movie, End of the Spear. Nate, Jim Eliot, and three other missionaries were preparing to make contact with the notoriously violent Waodani tribe in Ecuador. Stevie asks if they will shoot the Waodani if attacked. Nate replies: \u0026ldquo;We can\u0026rsquo;t shoot the Waodani, son. They\u0026rsquo;re not ready for heaven. We are.\u0026quot;\nIf science-minded skeptics indeed represent a mission field, then we should not come out shooting. EXPELLED seems to do just that. While an entertaining movie, its main thrust runs counter to RTB\u0026rsquo;s mission of seeking to engage scientists in the scientific arena. Consequently, any endorsement of EXPELLED by RTB hinders our ability to spread the Gospel message to those we hope to reach.\nTherefore, we ask all chapter members and volunteers to refrain from endorsing EXPELLED in any official way. This request does not extend to your personal interactions-only to any actions taken in association with or on behalf of Reasons to Believe.\nThank you for your support and understanding.\nThe RTB Scholar Team (Hat tip to Blue Collar Scientist.)\nUPDATE (April 22, 2008): Reasons to Believe has issued another statement about \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; which says, in part:\nIn Reasons To Believe\u0026rsquo;s interaction with professional scientists, scientific institutions, universities, and publishers of scientific journals we have encountered no significant evidence of censorship, blackballing, or disrespect. As we have persisted in publicly presenting our testable creation model in the context of the scientific method, we have witnessed an increasing openness on the part of unbelieving scientists to offer their honest and respectful critique.\nOur main concern about EXPELLED is that it paints a distorted picture. It certainly doesn\u0026rsquo;t match our experience. Sadly, it may do more to alienate than to engage the scientific community, and that can only harm our mission.\nHistorical Comments Goober (2014-07-26):\nAnother Christian organization who in no way respects the others but in a way views them as competition!! Well I watched the movie and after considerable research (6 years) have found the movie to be spot on and above board! Where are the law suits?? I know some of these Profs. and if they were defamed in ANY way, they would use tax payer monies(their salaries)hire a lawyer and sue!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/reasons-to-believe-statement-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHugh Ross\u0026rsquo;s old-earth creationist organization, Reasons to Believe, \u003ca href=\"http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200804/0348.html\"\u003ehas issued a statement on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eDear RTB Chapter members,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith the impending release of \u0026ldquo;EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed\u0026rdquo; (April 18), the Reasons to Believe scholar team thought it best to prepare a statement of our position, a guide for answering questions from chapters, networks, and apologists. Keep in mind that the mission of RTB centers on reaching out to science-minded people with two purposes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reasons to Believe statement on \"Expelled\""},{"content":"\nThe Atheist Blogger points out that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is violating the license terms on the blog theme used at their blog.\nA commenter at The Playlist blog points out that while they did indeed purchase a license to use The Killers\u0026rsquo; song \u0026ldquo;All These Things That I\u0026rsquo;ve Done,\u0026rdquo; they did so in a deceptive way. Here\u0026rsquo;s how they described the film that they wanted the license for:\nThe film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.No mention of intelligent design or evolution. That\u0026rsquo;s a similar tactic to the deception they used to get some of the interviews in the film.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/even-more-expelled-copyright.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Atheist Blogger points out that \u003ca href=\"http://atheistblogger.com/2008/04/18/expelled-more-copyright-infringement/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is violating the license terms on the blog theme used at their blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2008/04/yoko-one-denies-expelled-lennon-song.html\"\u003ecommenter at The Playlist blog\u003c/a\u003e points out that while they did indeed purchase a license to use The Killers\u0026rsquo; song \u0026ldquo;All These Things That I\u0026rsquo;ve Done,\u0026rdquo; they did so in a deceptive way.  Here\u0026rsquo;s how they described the film that they wanted the license for:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNo mention of intelligent design or evolution.  That\u0026rsquo;s a similar tactic to \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html\"\u003ethe deception they used to get some of the interviews in the film\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Even more \"Expelled\" copyright infringement and deception"},{"content":"Declassified documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that while investigating a possible conspirator in the 2005 London bombings, the FBI forced an agent to return documents obtained from North Carolina State University under normal lawful process so that they could be requested again under the USA PATRIOT Act, using a power the FBI did not have but wanted. When the second request was rejected, the FBI used another subpoena\u0026ndash;just like the first one that had already been successful\u0026ndash;to again obtain the documents.\nThe purpose for this sham? So that FBI Director Robert Mueller could testify before Congress that the lack of the desired power caused a delay in obtaining these records.\nSorry, Director Mueller, but this \u0026ldquo;delay\u0026rdquo; was a fraud, which means your testimony was still false (though apparently unknowingly so on his part).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/fbi-faked-delay-in-terror-investigation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDeclassified documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that while investigating a possible conspirator in the 2005 London bombings, the FBI forced an agent to return documents obtained from North Carolina State University under normal lawful process so that they could be requested again under the USA PATRIOT Act, using a power the FBI did not have but wanted.  When the second request was rejected, the FBI used another subpoena\u0026ndash;just like the first one that had already been successful\u0026ndash;to again obtain the documents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe purpose for this sham?  So that \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/fbi-director-ci.html\"\u003eFBI Director Robert Mueller could testify before Congress that the lack of the desired power caused a delay in obtaining these records\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSorry, Director Mueller, but this \u0026ldquo;delay\u0026rdquo; was a fraud, which means your testimony was still false (though apparently unknowingly so on his part).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI faked delay in terror investigation to justify unneeded new powers"},{"content":"\nThis is pretty good\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/bensteinian-rhapsody.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/bensteinian_rhapsody.php\"\u003eThis\u003c/a\u003e is pretty good\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bensteinian Rhapsody"},{"content":"\nEd Brayton has written an article about the Richard Sternberg controversy at the Smithsonian for Skeptic magazine, which will appear in the next issue. The article has been published online in advance, along with an article by Michael Shermer about his interaction with Ben Stein.\nUPDATE (April 18, 2008): Ed Brayton has responded to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;non-response\u0026rdquo; on the Sternberg affair.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/ed-braytons-skeptic-article-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton has written an article about the Richard Sternberg controversy at the Smithsonian for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine, which will appear in the next issue.  The article \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-04-17.html\"\u003ehas been published online\u003c/a\u003e in advance, along with an article by Michael Shermer about his interaction with Ben Stein.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 18, 2008):  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/the_dis_nonresponse_on_sternbe.php\"\u003ehas responded to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;non-response\u0026rdquo; on the Sternberg affair\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton's Skeptic article on Sternberg"},{"content":"\nOn April 15, \u0026ldquo;getexpelled,\u0026rdquo; a user which has been posting the official clips from the movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; posted new animation footage of the operations of the cell which is clearly not derived from XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s footage. (ERV refers to this footage as a \u0026ldquo;toddler animation\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;a shitty Las-Vegas-Meets-TeleTubbies \u0026lsquo;Inner Life\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;.)\nI suspect they already took action to put this new footage into the film that will come out tomorrow instead of the animation which they copied from XVIVO, which means that they have already complied with that demand from XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s infringement letter. That also means that their lawsuit for a declaratory judgment in Texas is really an argument that this new footage is not infringing, which they\u0026rsquo;ll probably win\u0026ndash;this footage is not infringing. But it also means that, yet again, they\u0026rsquo;ve been thoroughly deceptive in how they operate, and have implicitly admitted that they were, in fact, infringing XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s copyright in the footage that they showed in the early screenings.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s probably not worth the effort for XVIVO to sue them over. But it\u0026rsquo;s definitely worth pointing out.\nUPDATE (April 22, 2008): Apparently the XVIVO-infringing animation is still in the released film, after all.\nHistorical Comments ERV (2008-04-17):\nXVIVO hasnt been served anything. IP-lawyer friends of mine called the filing 'bizarre' and 'nonsensical' (it is 95% about Texas, 4% an ad for EXPELLED, 1% complaint).It was a PR move to hide their acknowledgment of copyright infringement and removing the animation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/new-expelled-cell-footage-clip-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn April 15, \u0026ldquo;getexpelled,\u0026rdquo; a user which has been posting the official clips from the movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Abz0t_yf4\"\u003eposted new animation footage of the operations of the cell\u003c/a\u003e which is clearly not derived from XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s footage.  (\u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/premise-lawsuits-toddler-animations-and.html\"\u003eERV\u003c/a\u003e refers to this footage as a \u0026ldquo;toddler animation\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;a shitty Las-Vegas-Meets-TeleTubbies \u0026lsquo;Inner Life\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect they already took action to put this new footage into the film that will come out tomorrow instead of \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/official-expelled-paternity-test.html\"\u003ethe animation which they copied from XVIVO\u003c/a\u003e, which means that they have already complied with that demand from \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/david-bolinsky-on-expelled-and-dembskis.html\"\u003eXVIVO\u0026rsquo;s infringement letter\u003c/a\u003e.  That also means that their lawsuit for a declaratory judgment in Texas is really an argument that this new footage is not infringing, which they\u0026rsquo;ll probably win\u0026ndash;this footage is not infringing.  But it also means that, yet again, they\u0026rsquo;ve been thoroughly deceptive in how they operate, and have implicitly admitted that they were, in fact, infringing XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s copyright in the footage that they showed in the early screenings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s probably not worth the effort for XVIVO to sue them over.  But it\u0026rsquo;s definitely worth pointing out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 22, 2008):  Apparently the XVIVO-infringing animation is still in the released film, after all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New \"Expelled\" cell footage clip on YouTube"},{"content":"Actor Jason Beghe, who appeared as Demi Moore\u0026rsquo;s love interest in \u0026ldquo;G.I. Jane\u0026rdquo; as well as in episodes of \u0026ldquo;Numb3rs\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;CSI,\u0026rdquo; was a member of the Church of Scientology since first taking courses in 1994. In 2005, he appeared in promotional videos for the church. He\u0026rsquo;s now left Scientology and has appeared in a video made by long-time Scientology critic Mark Bunker:\nUPDATE: Since YouTube has removed not only the above clip but Mark Bunker\u0026rsquo;s YouTube account, here\u0026rsquo;s an Australian TV news story about Beghe leaving Scientology:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a rehosted version of the original interview clip:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an interview of Beghe by Tony Ortega, a journalist who used to write for Phoenix New Times and New Times LA, who has written several good stories on Scientology:\nTrott (2008-04-17):\nIt didn't take very long for that video to become unavailable from YouTube...\nLippard (2008-04-18):\nIt says \"terms of use violation,\" which probably means Scientology made a complaint about it. I hope Mark Bunker issues a counter-notice to bring it back.\nLippard (2008-04-18):\nActually, it looks like YouTube completely removed Mark Bunker's account!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/scientology-celebrity-escapes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eActor \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Beghe\"\u003eJason Beghe\u003c/a\u003e, who appeared as Demi Moore\u0026rsquo;s love interest in \u0026ldquo;G.I. Jane\u0026rdquo; as well as in episodes of \u0026ldquo;Numb3rs\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;CSI,\u0026rdquo; was a member of the Church of Scientology since first taking courses in 1994.  In 2005, he appeared in promotional videos for the church.  He\u0026rsquo;s now \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351287,00.html\"\u003eleft Scientology\u003c/a\u003e and has appeared in a video made by long-time Scientology critic Mark Bunker:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-018965610130048782 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/07m-IvvpK2E\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Since YouTube has removed not only the above clip but Mark Bunker\u0026rsquo;s YouTube account, here\u0026rsquo;s an Australian TV news story about Beghe leaving Scientology:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/--61oEkWGvM\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a rehosted version of the original interview clip:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NVuTapNuB74\u0026hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NVuTapNuB74\u0026hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s an interview of Beghe by Tony Ortega, a journalist who used to write for Phoenix \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times LA\u003c/span\u003e, who has written several good stories on Scientology:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-Bz_hMfybWg\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-Bz_hMfybWg\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-Bz_hMfybWg\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-Bz_hMfybWg\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ybPhfshl6oo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-0070551398361545 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ybPhfshl6oo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ybPhfshl6oo\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ybPhfshl6oo\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology celebrity escapes"},{"content":"\nThe copyright infringment continues\u0026ndash;it seems that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; makes use of about 25 seconds of John Lennon\u0026rsquo;s song \u0026ldquo;Imagine,\u0026rdquo; but permission was neither sought nor granted for its use:\nIn a written statement, the film\u0026rsquo;s three producers \u0026ndash; Walt Ruloff, John Sullivan and Logan Craft \u0026ndash; acknowledged that they did not seek permission, but they called the use \u0026ldquo;momentary.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;After seeking the opinion of legal counsel it was seen as a First Amendment issue and protected under the fair use doctrine of free speech,\u0026rdquo; the statement said. A spokeswoman said under 25 seconds of the song are used in the movie.Now this is actually an instance where I agree with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers\u0026ndash;this should fall within fair use guidelines. The courts, however, have already ruled otherwise. (UPDATE: Not quite accurate, see correction below.) In 2005, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films that even a 1.5-second sample requires a license. I\u0026rsquo;d be happy to see a lawsuit on this issue result in that ruling being overturned.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about the danger of such erosion of fair use to the creation of new music in one of this blog\u0026rsquo;s more popular posts. The link at the end of that post about \u0026ldquo;Amen Brother\u0026rdquo; is well worth your time.\n(Also related is this film in which fair-use samples from Disney films are used to make Disney characters explain current U.S. copyright law.)\nUPDATE (April 18, 2008): Russell Blackford argues that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s use of \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; is to make comment on the content of the song, and makes a moral case for the legitimacy of its use. I agree with his argument\u0026ndash;the use of a sample of the song to make comment on it enhances the case for \u0026ldquo;fair use,\u0026rdquo; but I think it should have met fair use guidelines even without that.\nUPDATE (April 23, 2008): As commenter lquilter points out below, the Bridgeport case did not say quite what I said above\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t eliminate fair use as a defense to a use of small samples, it eliminates the argument that sampling is using so little of the original material that no copyright applies. The result is that a lengthier court proceeding is required to fight for such use.\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s makers are now being sued over the use of \u0026ldquo;Imagine.\u0026quot; I don\u0026rsquo;t feel bad for them, but I think they should win their case. This probably guarantees that the film will not make a profit from its theatrical run, after deducting legal expenses.\nUPDATE (May 1, 2008): The Stanford Law School\u0026rsquo;s Fair Use Project has signed on to defend \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; against the Ono Lennon lawsuit. Good for them, I hope they win this one. It shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be difficult.\nUPDATE (May 2, 2008): P.Z. Myers points out distortions in \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s press release about the their defense in the \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; lawsuit. Even in the rare case when I agree with them (their fair use defense here), they still have to throw in a distortion or two to show that they are sleazy, I guess. (I disagree with Myers\u0026rsquo; assertion that there is no commentary on the song; see Russell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s analysis, linked to above.)\nPerhaps the strongest argument against \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in this case is that they sought licenses for other songs they used, but did not even attempt to get permission for \u0026ldquo;Imagine,\u0026rdquo; as pointed out by Laura Quilter (who has also commented here).\nUPDATE (May 5, 2008): The judge in the case has enjoined \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from any further distribution or DVD release, though they can continue showing the film in the theaters where it\u0026rsquo;s already playing (currently down to 655 theaters).\nUPDATE (May 9, 2008): And now down to 402 theaters.\nUPDATE (June 2, 2008): The judge has ruled against Yoko Ono\u0026rsquo;s motion for a permanent injunction against \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; on the grounds that the defendants are likely to prevail.\nReed (2008-04-17):\nHas anyone verified the sample is in the cut of the film that will be released on the 18th? Or might this be another case of using infringing material as a placeholder in the screenings?\nLippard (2008-04-17):\nReed: I suspect it may be as you say--a placeholder in the screenings (and also used in some of the advertising, I believe)--but then not in the final film.\nlaura quilter (2008-04-24):\nBridgeport got rid of de minimis for music samples, not fair use. The court clarified this in an amended decision. This was a blow for use, because de minimis is a quick way to get out of court, while fair use is a long, fact-intensive analysis.\nKtisophilos (2008-05-05):\nWhat a joke: suing about intellectual property rights for a song that says, \"Imagine no possessions\"!\nLippard (2008-05-06):\nHypocrisy doesn't result in estoppel... while I agree with you that there is at least some serious irony here, that doesn't provide a good legal argument for the \"Expelled\" team.And note that the lyrics say to *imagine* such a condition, not that it holds in reality. That particular line is one that never will, since even the most ardent communist must admit that there's got to be a role for personal possessions.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-uses-sample-from-imagine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe copyright infringment continues\u0026ndash;it seems that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120839097431221369.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\"\u003emakes use of about 25 seconds of John Lennon\u0026rsquo;s song \u0026ldquo;Imagine,\u0026rdquo; but permission was neither sought nor granted for its use\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn a written statement, the film\u0026rsquo;s three producers \u0026ndash; Walt Ruloff, John Sullivan and Logan Craft \u0026ndash; acknowledged that they did not seek permission, but they called the use \u0026ldquo;momentary.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;After seeking the opinion of legal counsel it was seen as a First Amendment issue and protected under the fair use doctrine of free speech,\u0026rdquo; the statement said. A spokeswoman said under 25 seconds of the song are used in the movie.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNow this is actually an instance where I agree with \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers\u0026ndash;this \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eshould\u003c/span\u003e fall within fair use guidelines.  The courts, however, have already ruled otherwise.  (UPDATE: Not quite accurate, see correction below.)  In 2005, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music_Inc._v._Dimension_Films\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e that even a 1.5-second sample requires a license.  I\u0026rsquo;d be happy to see a lawsuit on this issue result in that ruling being overturned.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about the danger of such erosion of fair use to the creation of new music in \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/derivative-musical-works-and-copyright.html\"\u003eone of this blog\u0026rsquo;s more popular posts\u003c/a\u003e.  The link at the end of that post about \u0026ldquo;Amen Brother\u0026rdquo; is well worth your time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also related is \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/disney-characters-explain-copyright-law.html\"\u003ethis film\u003c/a\u003e in which fair-use samples from Disney films are used to make Disney characters explain current U.S. copyright law.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 18, 2008): Russell Blackford \u003ca href=\"http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-defended-on-one-point.html\"\u003eargues that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s use of \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; is to make comment on the content of the song, and makes a moral case for the legitimacy of its use\u003c/a\u003e.  I agree with his argument\u0026ndash;the use of a sample of the song to make comment on it enhances the case for \u0026ldquo;fair use,\u0026rdquo; but I think it should have met fair use guidelines even without that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 23, 2008): As commenter lquilter points out below, the Bridgeport case did not say quite what I said above\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t eliminate fair use as a defense to a use of small samples, it eliminates the argument that sampling is using so little of the original material that no copyright applies.  The result is that a lengthier court proceeding is required to fight for such use.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/imagine_this.php\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s makers are now being sued over the use of \u0026ldquo;Imagine.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  I don\u0026rsquo;t feel bad for them, but I think they should win their case.  This probably guarantees that the film will not make a profit from its theatrical run, after deducting legal expenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 1, 2008): The Stanford Law School\u0026rsquo;s Fair Use Project \u003ca href=\"http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view\u0026amp;newsId=20080501005471\u0026amp;newsLang=en\"\u003ehas signed on to defend \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; against the Ono Lennon lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e.  Good for them, I hope they win this one.  It shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be difficult.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 2, 2008): P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/yoko_has_an_opponent.php\"\u003epoints out distortions in \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s press release about the their defense in the \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e.  Even in the rare case when I agree with them (their fair use defense here), they still have to throw in a distortion or two to show that they are sleazy, I guess.  (I disagree with Myers\u0026rsquo; assertion that there is no commentary on the song; see Russell Blackford\u0026rsquo;s analysis, linked to above.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps the strongest argument against \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in this case is that they sought licenses for other songs they used, but did not even attempt to get permission for \u0026ldquo;Imagine,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/yoko_has_an_opponent.php#comment-867746\"\u003eas pointed out by Laura Quilter\u003c/a\u003e (who has also commented here).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 5, 2008): The judge in the case \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/injunction_against_expelled.php\"\u003ehas enjoined \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from any further distribution or DVD release\u003c/a\u003e, though they can continue showing the film in the theaters where it\u0026rsquo;s already playing (\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html\"\u003ecurrently down to 655 theaters\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 9, 2008): And now down to 402 theaters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 2, 2008):  The judge \u003ca href=\"/2008/06/expelled-producers-win-round-one-on.html\"\u003ehas ruled against Yoko Ono\u0026rsquo;s motion for a permanent injunction against \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; on the grounds that the defendants are likely to prevail\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" uses sample from \"Imagine\" without permission"},{"content":"\nThe folks at XVIVO have argued that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has engaged in copyright infringement by directly copying from their film, \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell.\u0026rdquo; The \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers have responded by claiming that they constructed their film based on original research:\nHowever, the latest claim concerning the copyright status of our proprietary animation is so ridiculous, bogus and misinformed that we must respond. Premise Media invested significant time and money into the research and original creation of the animation used in our film to illustrate cellular activity. Our own team of experts created the highest quality of animation that is available. In fact, the animation we use in the theatrical release of our movie is only a small portion of the animation we have created and plan to use in future projects.Darwin Central has proposed a paternity test in the form of a series of image comparisons. On the left hand side, images from a variety of sources showing a particular process in the cell that is depicted by \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell.\u0026rdquo; On the right hand side, a comparison image from the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; segment at issue. Surely, if the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers are correct, there should be no reason to find any special similarity between the image on the left that comes from XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s film and the image that comes from \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; versus any of the other images on the left.\nSee for yourself.\nIt also appears that other parts of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s animations have been taken from other sources, to which John Wilkins has a connection!\nYet Premise Media is suing XVIVO, seeking a declaratory judgment in Texas! This sounds like venue shopping or \u0026ldquo;forum shopping,\u0026quot; since XVIVO is in Massachusetts.\nUPDATE: ERV has a copy of the complaint and a summary. She also includes a new video, that she speculates has replaced the XVIVO-copied video in the final film.\nUPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was apparently removed from the film before yesterday\u0026rsquo;s public release.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-16):\nAh hah! I was wondering about a possible Wilkins connection when I read ERV's post (since I recalled that John used to work in graphics publishing at WEHI).Is there any half-decent science animation these bottom-feeders didn't trawl through?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/official-expelled-paternity-test.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe folks at XVIVO \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/david-bolinsky-on-expelled-and-dembskis.html\"\u003ehave argued that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has engaged in copyright infringement\u003c/a\u003e by directly copying from their film, \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell.\u0026rdquo;  The \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers have responded by claiming that they constructed their film based on original research:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHowever, the latest claim concerning the copyright status of our proprietary animation is so ridiculous, bogus and misinformed that we must respond. Premise Media invested significant time and money into the research and original creation of the animation used in our film to illustrate cellular activity. Our own team of experts created the highest quality of animation that is available. In fact, the animation we use in the theatrical release of our movie is only a small portion of the animation we have created and plan to use in future projects.\u003c/blockquote\u003eDarwin Central \u003ca href=\"http://blog.darwincentral.org/2008/04/15/find-ben-steins-father/\"\u003ehas proposed a paternity test in the form of a series of image comparisons\u003c/a\u003e.  On the left hand side, images from a variety of sources showing a particular process in the cell that is depicted by \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of the Cell.\u0026rdquo;  On the right hand side, a comparison image from the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; segment at issue.  Surely, if the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers are correct, there should be no reason to find any special similarity between the image on the left that comes from XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s film and the image that comes from \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; versus any of the other images on the left.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blog.darwincentral.org/2008/04/15/find-ben-steins-father/\"\u003eSee for yourself\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt also appears that \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-erv-finally-gets-angry.html\"\u003eother parts of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s animations have been taken from other sources\u003c/a\u003e, to which \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/\"\u003eJohn Wilkins\u003c/a\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-erv-finally-gets-angry.html?showComment=1208323320000#c3331144387761568181\"\u003ea connection\u003c/a\u003e!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/expelled_draws_more_aggro.php\"\u003ePremise Media is suing XVIVO\u003c/a\u003e, seeking a declaratory judgment in Texas! This sounds like venue shopping or \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_shopping\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;forum shopping,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e since XVIVO is in Massachusetts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: ERV has \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/premise-lawsuits-toddler-animations-and.html\"\u003ea copy of the complaint and a summary\u003c/a\u003e.  She also includes a new video, that she speculates has replaced the XVIVO-copied video in the final film.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 19, 2008):  The footage copied from XVIVO \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/new-expelled-cell-footage-clip-on.html\"\u003ewas apparently removed from the film before yesterday\u0026rsquo;s public release\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The official \"Expelled\" paternity test"},{"content":"Discovery Institute Fellow and bad movie critic Michael Medved has written an article arguing that an atheist should not be elected U.S. president. P.Z. Myers gives it a hilarious fisking at Pharyngula.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/pz-myers-fisks-michael-medved.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDiscovery Institute Fellow and bad movie critic Michael Medved has written an article arguing that an atheist should not be elected U.S. president.  P.Z. Myers gives it \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/how_people_convince_themselves.php\"\u003ea hilarious fisking at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"P.Z. Myers fisks Michael Medved"},{"content":"Last November, I reported that year-over-year foreclosure rates had doubled and Arizona ranked #7 in the nation for foreclosures. Reuters reports that national foreclosure filings have gone up another 57% for the twelve-month period ending in March 2008. Arizona has been in fourth place for each of the first three months of 2008, despite foreclosures falling by 5% in March, and remains at the #7 position for overall number of foreclosures.\nThe twelve-month total foreclosure rankings:\n1. California\n2. Florida\n3. Ohio\n4. Georgia\n5. Texas\n6. Michigan\n7. Arizona\n8. Illinois\n9. Nevada\n10. Colorado\nThe March 2008 foreclosure rankings:\n1. Nevada (1 in 139 homes)\n2. California (1 in 204 homes)\n3. Florida (1 in 282 homes)\n4. Arizona (1 in 283 homes)\n5. Colorado (1 in 339 homes)\n6. Georgia (1 in 351 homes)\n7. Ohio (1 in 448 homes)\n8. Michigan (1 in 475 homes)\n9. Massachusetts (1 in 486 homes)\n10. Maryland (1 in 538 homes)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/arizona-still-7-in-foreclosures.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast November, I \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/foreclosure-rates-double-one-third-of.html\"\u003ereported that year-over-year foreclosure rates had doubled and Arizona ranked #7 in the nation for foreclosures\u003c/a\u003e.  Reuters \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080415/bs_nm/usa_mortgages_foreclosures_dc_1\"\u003ereports that national foreclosure filings have gone up another 57% for the twelve-month period ending in March 2008\u003c/a\u003e. Arizona has been in fourth place for each of the first three months of 2008, despite foreclosures falling by 5% in March, and remains at the #7 position for overall number of foreclosures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe twelve-month total foreclosure rankings:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. California\u003cbr /\u003e2. Florida\u003cbr /\u003e3. Ohio\u003cbr /\u003e4. Georgia\u003cbr /\u003e5. Texas\u003cbr /\u003e6. Michigan\u003cbr /\u003e7. Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e8. Illinois\u003cbr /\u003e9. Nevada\u003cbr /\u003e10. Colorado\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe March 2008 foreclosure rankings:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Nevada (1 in 139 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e2. California (1 in 204 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e3. Florida (1 in 282 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e4. Arizona (1 in 283 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e5. Colorado (1 in 339 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e6. Georgia (1 in 351 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e7. Ohio (1 in 448 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e8. Michigan (1 in 475 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e9. Massachusetts (1 in 486 homes)\u003cbr /\u003e10. Maryland (1 in 538 homes)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona still #7 in foreclosures"},{"content":"A group of about twenty people went to the Jefferson Memorial at midnight (it\u0026rsquo;s open 24/7) on Thomas Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s birthday to dance silently (with iPods) in celebration of freedom, only to be forced to leave by the Park Police. This exchange then occurred between participant Brooke Oberwetter and a member of the security force:\nGUARD: Exit, exit, exit. Lady, I\u0026rsquo;m not going to tell you again.\nOBERWETTER: I\u0026rsquo;m just\u0026hellip;what did we do?\nGUARD: Exit. Exit, now\u0026hellip;\nOBERWETTER: What rule are we breaking? It\u0026rsquo;s against the rules to dance?\nGUARD: Yes it is. Read the sign inside the memorial. It says quiet.\nOBERWETTER: I\u0026rsquo;m standing here being very quiet.\nGUARD: You\u0026rsquo;re dancing in here. That\u0026rsquo;s disorderly.\nAt that point, Oberwetter allegedly asked \u0026ldquo;Why?\u0026rdquo; and was arrested. She was taken to jail for the next five hours and charged with \u0026ldquo;interfering with an agency function.\u0026quot;\n(Via Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog and The Agitator. The Agitator has further coverage here, here, and here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/arrested-for-dancing-to-celebrate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA group of about twenty people went to the Jefferson Memorial at midnight (it\u0026rsquo;s open 24/7) on Thomas Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s birthday to dance silently (with iPods) in celebration of freedom, only to be forced to leave by the Park Police.  This \u003ca href=\"http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13056\"\u003eexchange then occurred between participant Brooke Oberwetter and a member of the security force\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eGUARD:\u003c/b\u003e Exit, exit, exit. Lady, I\u0026rsquo;m not going to tell you again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eOBERWETTER:\u003c/b\u003e I\u0026rsquo;m just\u0026hellip;what did we do?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eGUARD:\u003c/b\u003e Exit. Exit, now\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eOBERWETTER:\u003c/b\u003e What rule are we breaking? It\u0026rsquo;s against the rules to dance?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eGUARD:\u003c/b\u003e Yes it is. Read the sign inside the memorial. It says quiet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eOBERWETTER:\u003c/b\u003e I\u0026rsquo;m standing here being very quiet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eGUARD:\u003c/b\u003e You\u0026rsquo;re dancing in here. That\u0026rsquo;s disorderly.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt that point, Oberwetter allegedly asked \u0026ldquo;Why?\u0026rdquo; and was arrested.  She was taken to jail for the next five hours and charged with \u0026ldquo;interfering with an agency function.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.angryblog.org/?p=1125\"\u003eSinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/so-about-that-tree-of-liberty/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.  The Agitator has further coverage \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/jefferson-arrest-update/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/14/jefferson-dance-party-video/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/15/jefferson-dance-party-article-at-the-american-spectator/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arrested for dancing to celebrate freedom"},{"content":"\nThe NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo; website has now gone live, and it contains a wealth of factual background information about the alleged cases of suppression of intelligence design presented in the film \u0026ldquo;Exposed,\u0026rdquo; as well as highlighting other information left out of the film and the story of the deceptive methods used by the producers of the film.\nThe home page of the site features the story of Chris Comer, Director of Science for the Texas Education Agency. Unlike any of the alleged victims of persecution in \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; she was actually forced to resign from her position. Not because she was an advocate of intelligent design, but because she sent out an email announcing a university lecture by Barbara Forrest, a philosopher critical of intelligent design.\nThe next main area of the site is titled \u0026ldquo;The Truth Behind the Fiction,\u0026quot; which has the following sections:\nTHE SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS\nEvolutionIntelligent DesignChallenging ScienceScience \u0026amp; ReligionHitler \u0026amp; EugenicsTHE \u0026ldquo;EXPELLED\u0026rdquo;Richard SternbergGuillermo GonzalezCaroline CrockerRobert MarksPamela WinnickMichael Egnor\nThe next area of the site, \u0026ldquo;Behind the Scenes,\u0026quot; explains the deception, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of the makers of the film:\nWhat is Premise Media?Questionable Interview TacticsMarketing with a MotiveSilencing the Dissenters\nFinally, the last section of the site is a collection of resources which has been on the site for some time, but is constantly growing\u0026ndash;a list of news coverage and reviews of the film.\nCheck out the site for the facts that the makers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; don\u0026rsquo;t want you to see.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-exposed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e website has now gone live, and it contains a wealth of factual background information about the alleged cases of suppression of intelligence design presented in the film \u0026ldquo;Exposed,\u0026rdquo; as well as highlighting other information left out of the film and the story of the deceptive methods used by the producers of the film.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe home page of the site features the story of Chris Comer, Director of Science for the Texas Education Agency.  Unlike any of the alleged victims of persecution in \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; she was actually forced to resign from her position.  Not because she was an advocate of intelligent design, but because she sent out an email announcing a university lecture by Barbara Forrest, a philosopher critical of intelligent design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next main area of the site is titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Truth Behind the Fiction,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which has the following sections:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTHE SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eEvolution\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIntelligent Design\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eChallenging Science\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eScience \u0026amp; Religion\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eHitler \u0026amp; Eugenics\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eTHE \u0026ldquo;EXPELLED\u0026rdquo;\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eRichard Sternberg\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGuillermo Gonzalez\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCaroline Crocker\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRobert Marks\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePamela Winnick\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael Egnor\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThe next area of the site, \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/background\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Behind the Scenes,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e explains the deception, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of the makers of the film:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat is Premise Media?\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eQuestionable Interview Tactics\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMarketing with a Motive\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSilencing the Dissenters\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eFinally, the last section of the site is a collection of resources which has been on the site for some time, but is constantly growing\u0026ndash;a list of news coverage and reviews of the film.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out the site for the facts that the makers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; don\u0026rsquo;t want you to see.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled Exposed!"},{"content":"Yesterday I spent a few hours being filmed in an interview for a DVD being put out by Creationist Ministries International, a 20-year retrospective on the 1988 debate at the University of New South Wales between Duane Gish and Ian Plimer. I went back and forth a few times about whether I should do it, finally concluding that it would be worthwhile.\nI have no fear of an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;-like distortion in this case\u0026ndash;the questions were provided to me in advance, and I negotiated the terms of the release agreement and had my attorney review it. I have the right to use the full footage myself (to put on YouTube or otherwise distribute or broadcast), so if I were to find myself misrepresented through creative editing (which I don\u0026rsquo;t believe will happen), I would be able to demonstrate it.\nMy involvement was requested because of the role I played in criticizing Plimer and certain of the Australian Skeptics for misrepresentations of the creationists, which I wrote about first in the article \u0026ldquo;Some Failures of Organized Skepticism\u0026rdquo; in The Arizona Skeptic, and later in \u0026ldquo;How Not to Argue with Creationists\u0026rdquo; in the Creation/Evolution journal, \u0026ldquo;How Not to Respond to Criticism\u0026rdquo; which is available online through the talkorigins.org website, and in my review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book Telling Lies for God, on my website. In preparation for the interview, I dug out my file folders regarding these articles, which amounts to a stack of paper\nabout six inches thick. Reviewing the files, I re-read some of the correspondence I had with Mark Plummer, then president of the Victoria Branch of the Australian Skeptics, and former executive director of CSICOP (now CSI). At some point, I should put some of that stuff online\u0026ndash;it was quite unbelievable.\nI thought it went pretty well, though it took me several takes to get through some of the questions, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t say everything I wanted to say. The one item that I kick myself for forgetting to say was to emphasize the point that Duane Gish, debater for young-earth creationism, has two things that he always refuses to debate\u0026ndash;the age of the earth and flood geology. Those also happen to be the two main areas of positive claims that make up young-earth creationism, which he rules out of court at the start of every debate.\nThe interviewer, Tim, is a CMI supporter who once applied for a job with Answers in Genesis and is now happy that he didn\u0026rsquo;t get it, since he feels he was deceived by them about their split from CMI. The cameraman, Mike, who was hired for this job, was also a Christian, but didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a young-earth creationist. He frequently films both interviews and outdoor nature footage, often for science documentaries, and he expressed his love for knowledge and science. We had an interesting discussion after the interview about creationism, Christianity, and science.\nTim took the position that young-earth creationism is an essential part of Christianity, because God must have been able to communicate his word accurately in the first place, because Jesus endorsed the truth of Genesis, and because death before the Fall in Eden would imply that God didn\u0026rsquo;t create a perfect universe. He also holds the position that only \u0026ldquo;operational science\u0026rdquo; is valid science\u0026ndash;that which can take place in the laboratory and be \u0026ldquo;directly observed\u0026rdquo; (which philosophers of science know is very little, since instrument-assisted and even naked-eye observation is \u0026ldquo;theory-laden\u0026rdquo;). (Tim\u0026rsquo;s view of science, where it came from, and what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with it is the subject of Christopher Toumey\u0026rsquo;s excellent book, God\u0026rsquo;s Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World.) I pointed out to him that that\u0026rsquo;s the kind of choice\u0026ndash;young-earth creationism or atheism\u0026ndash;that helped drive me to atheism.\nMike, by contrast, didn\u0026rsquo;t think young-earth creationism was essential to Christianity, but that the discoveries of science open more possibilities for religious interpretation. Today, I agree with Mike\u0026ndash;given what I know about religions and how they work, Christianity is not defined solely in terms of the content of the Bible, even for evangelical Christians. Fundamentalism as it exists today didn\u0026rsquo;t exist until the early twentieth century. And even within evangelical Christianity, there are those who have argued very forcefully against young-earth creationism (I pulled out my copy of Daniel Wonderly\u0026rsquo;s Neglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary Strata Compared With Young Earth from the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, and could have also pointed to Davis Young and Howard Van Till\u0026rsquo;s Science Held Hostage: What\u0026rsquo;s Wrong with Creation Science and Evolutionism, or pointed to Mike Beidler\u0026rsquo;s blog, \u0026ldquo;The Creation of an Evolutionist\u0026rdquo;).\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that if all Christians took Tim\u0026rsquo;s viewpoint rather than Mike\u0026rsquo;s, there would probably be a lot more atheists and a lot fewer Christians.\nUPDATE (January 1, 2009): I wrote up my initial reaction to the completed documentary here, and you can view the video yourself here.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-16):\nJL: \"The one item that I kick myself for forgetting to say was to emphasize the point that Duane Gish, debater for young-earth creationism, has two things that he always refuses to debate--the age of the earth and flood geology.\" A good point to make. Dr Gish's presentations were basically Intelligent Design — long before anyone had ever heard of Johnson, Dembski, Behe et al.JL: \"I pointed out to him that that's the kind of choice--young-earth creationism or atheism--that helped drive me to atheism.\"Yeah yeah, and if you had been presented with theistic evolutionism in your youth, you would have found ways to reject this too. Maybe you would have wondered with Darwin why a God of love would create a germ as a pathogen and kill his 10yo daughter Annie. Maybe you would have argued with his bulldog T.H. Huxley:‘I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately among “types” and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that “the Flood came and destroyed them all,” did he believe that the Deluge really took, place, or not?’ ‘If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” … what value has Paul's dialectic.’Maybe you would have severely quizzed TEs with Monod: \"Namely, selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more and more complex and refined organisms … .\"The more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of destruction. The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modern ethics revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective society, is one where the weak is protected; which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution.\"Or finally with the believer in the Vast Jewish Conspiracy, Richard Dawkins:‘Oh but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic?! Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!’But when you find an argument for theistic evolution strong enough to convince you of its truth, please be sure to post it on your blog ;)JL: \"Fundamentalism as it exists today didn't exist until the early twentieth century.\"Yet most church fathers and reformers who commented on Genesis 1 argued that it taught creation in six-normal length days. Even the fathers who allegorized Genesis explicitly taught a young earth. See for example Robert Bradshaw's documentation at The Days of Genesis 1: The Early Church \u0026 the Age of the Earth. Those who commented on the Flood taught that it was global.Ron Numbers' revisionist history of YEC, blaming it on the SDAs, ignores all this.\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nIt's quite possible I would have still ended up an atheist--I did spend some amount of time as a generic theist before atheism.I don't expect to see an argument specifically for theistic evolution strong enough to convince me of its truth, but I can conceive of the possibility of arguments or experiences or a combination of the two which would convince me of the truth of theism involving a creator god, which I would believe in conjunction with evolution.Your point that Dr. Gish's presentations were intelligent design is, I believe, accurate--because intelligent design is nothing more than the same tired and poor creationist arguments against evolution, just as the NCSE maintains and just as Judge Jones ruled in the Dover case. There could perhaps be some positive theory of intelligent design, if Dembski could actually come up with an \"explanatory filter\" that worked, or if Behe could have proved that irreducibly complex structures can't evolve, but they haven't, and we still wait for a scientific theory of intelligent design or a scientific theory of creationism.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-16):\nYeah, the ID claim to be pioneers is somewhat suspect, although I might put it a bit differently ;)But really, you expect an Australian to take the opinion of an American judge seriously? We are talking about the country of the Stella awards, and inventing consitutional rights unknown in the Federalist Papers, but miraculously found in emanations upon penumbras in your Constitution. And about an issue in science, when according even to Time's fluff piece, Jones':‘previous claims to fame were a failed attempt to privatize Pennsylvania’s state liquor stores as chairman of the Liquor Control Board—and banning Bad Frog Beer on the grounds that its label was obscene.’ LOL!\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nKtisophilos: It's interesting that you advocate \"small tent\" Christianity which drives something of a reverse-wedge strategy, in opposition to the \"big tent\" views of the ID advocates. While the ID advocates want to only reject evolutionary biology, you also want to reject large parts of physics, geology, and astronomy, as well. In that way, YEC certainly clashes with some ID advocates, such as Behe. You are insisting that Christianity requires adherence to a very long string of conjunctions of views that are patently absurd, on the grounds that without those string of conjunctions, some part of Christianity will fall prey to contradiction. My view is the modus tollens to your modus ponens, and that we should believe *none* of those absurdities. Those Christians who reject YEC and those Christians who accept evolution fall somewhere in between--you and I both agree that they are likely believing things which are inconsistent, but I think I'm more open to the possibility that some of them may not be than you are. But contra Mike Beidler (I suspect), I think they have to give up biblical inerrancy.Your argument about Judge Jones and the U.S. is nothing more than ad hominem. (It's interesting that when he was selected, creationists like Dembski were proudly touting him, since he was a conservative Bush appointee; after his decision, creationists have looked for ways to ridicule him, and he's been the recipient of death threats.) Regarding Constitutional rights, you are implicitly taking an enumerated rights view (and ignoring the 9th Amendment), and rejecting an enumerated powers view (of the sort explicitly argued for by Madison and Jefferson, among others). It seems to me that if you want to reject Jones' reasoning you should do so with an argument directed at his reasoning; but my point here is that you have taken a position which *agrees* with one of Jones' conclusions!\nLippard (2008-04-16):\n\"Yet most church fathers and reformers who commented on Genesis 1 argued that it taught creation in six-normal length days. Even the fathers who allegorized Genesis explicitly taught a young earth. See for example Robert Bradshaw's documentation at The Days of Genesis 1: The Early Church \u0026 the Age of the Earth. Those who commented on the Flood taught that it was global.\"I don't find it at all surprising that members of a pre-scientific culture had no notion of geological time and thought that the local region was the whole world. Those are far from their only false beliefs.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-16):\nJim, I never claimed to be a Bush fan, or a fan of his judicial picks (Harriet Myers). Jones would hardly be the first Republican judicial pick to disappoint (Warren, O'Connor, Souter ...). The most interesting explanation is found in Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions, which discusses the incentives and constraints involved in decision making. Judges have their own incentives. Jones surely knew that by basically parroting the ACLU deposition, he would reap plenty of psychic rewards in the media and the lecture circuit. A ruling against the ACLU, as per Judge Richard Suhrheinrich in ACLU vs Mercer County (KY, 2005) would not have the same effects:‘[T]he ACLU makes repeated reference to “the separation of church and state.” This extra-constitutional construct grows tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state … our Nation’s history is replete with governmental acknowledgment and in some cases, accommodation of religion.’It may be ad hominem, but it's not abusive ad hominem to point out that Jones has no history as a great thinker, let alone on science. So it's amusing to see people cite a local judge's ruling as definitive evidence.So how does \"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people\" refute anything I've said? This is quite different from claiming new rights in emanations upon penumbras, or that the Constitution is \"living\" and \"evolving\".\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nThe \"emanations and penumbras\" language comes from William O. Douglas' opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, which claimed to find a right to privacy in the \"penumbras\" and \"emanations\" of other protections. The concurring opinions from Goldberg, Harlan, and White were more explicit, with Goldberg finding it in the 9th Amendment and Harlan and White finding it in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Black and Stewart dissented.Douglas' position was effectively an endorsement of Goldberg, Harlan, and White.In my opinion, the use of contraception is a freedom that falls under the 9th Amendment in the absence of an enumerated power for Congress to prohibit it.There are arguments for strict separation and for some degree of accomodation on the First Amendment's establishment clause; I side with Madison and Jefferson on the stricter side, as do many state constitutions including Arizona's.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-17):\nThe point of citing of the Church Fathers and Reformers is manyfold:Strongly indicates that Scripture really does teach YEC, since that is how people understood it through the ages. I am an originalist when it comes to Scripture and the American Constitution, a more accurate term than \"literalist\" or \"strict constructionist\".So argue all your want with chronological snobbery, since at least this is more honest than pretending that Scripture says something it plainly does NOT. Such pretence served only to annoy Huxley and Dawkins.Refutes Ron Numbers' claim that YEC is a recent invention. Yet his book is parroted as virtually verbally inspired by enemies of YEC.Refutes Hugh Ross's claim that the majority of Church Fathers taught long creation days.Refutes Dembski's error by omission when he claimed that the Church Fathers allowed for allegorizing: i.e. he failed to mention that even the minority that did allegorize were staunch YEC.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-17):\nBTW, American readers might be interested in what Plimer is doing now. He seems to have given up being a vociferous public anticreationist, and is now instead better known for being a prominent skeptic of global warming alarmism. So of course is no longer such a media darling. He has argued in Global warming zealots are stifling scientific debate:‘Groups like BAMOS and the IPCC deny, minimise or ignore significant recent climate changes that gave us the Roman Warming, the Dark Ages, the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age. Both history and archaeology show that in previous warmings, temperatures were far higher than at present. Populations and the economy thrived. Previous coolings led to famine, depopulation and social disruption. History shows that it is dangerous to ignore history.’And in Professor Plimer hits carbon dioxide doomsayers at Paydirt confab:\"We need to be far more realistic and educative about where the CO2 comes from that we blame as the causative factor behind global warming.\"The human contribution is minor. The majority of CO2 in the crustal atmospheric layers comes from volcanoes, earthquakes, pulling apart of the ocean floor, metamorphism, hot flushes of the Earth, ocean degassing, plant bacteria and comets,\" he explained. \"Super volcanoes such as Toba, Yellowstone, and Taupo have been the worst offenders. Just one volcano alone, Milos (Greece), produces 2% of the Earth's CO2 atmospheric levels from a hot spring the size of a table\", according to Plimer. \"Few people realise that water vapour in the atmosphere provides 96% of the greenhouse effect, raising temperature from minus 18 degrees to 15 degrees Celsius.\"Professor Plimer also challenged that, even if his beliefs were wrong, two factors — India and China — would prevent any major turnaround in global warming. \"If we think the citizens and governments of India and China will forego wealth and a higher standard of living for the good of the world, then we have kangaroos in the top paddock,\" he declared. \"Whatever Australia does will have no effect on India and China, will have no effect on global atmospheric emissions and will only contract our economy.'\"Until we know how climate changes naturally, then it would be folly to make structural changes to the economy based on incomplete scientific data.\"\nLippard (2008-04-17):\nI'm also an advocate of originalism (original meaning vs. original intent); I find Randy Barnett's position in his book Restoring the Lost Constitution (link is to Amazon.com where I have the top-rated review) largely persuasive. (Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars also argues forcefully for such a position.)I think the position also makes sense for biblical interpretation, but I don't think Christianity needs to require inerrancy. (Though I question the retention of falsehoods for anything other than historical interest.)Interesting that Plimer is a climate change skeptic, as is another geologist I know. I have much sympathy for his last three paragraphs--certainly radical intervention makes no sense from a cost-benefit perspective even if the IPCC is correct, as the cure would be worse than the disease. (I previously touched upon this subject on this blog here.)\nMike Beidler (2008-07-10):\nJim,Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this. Firstly, thanks for the HT toward the end of your post.Secondly, I guess I should address your statement that \"... contra Mike Beidler (I suspect), I think they have to give up biblical inerrancy.\"It all depends upon how you define \"inerrancy\" and to what degree it's applicable. As you can see, the concept is entirely too nebulous to be of any practical use, theologically speaking. I certainly believe the Bible is inspired by God and infallible in matters of faith and practice, but I would be intellectually dishonest with myself if I were to apply an attribute to the Bible (i.e., inerrancy) that the Bible does not claim for itself. So, to answer your question bluntly, yes, I deny inerrancy as defined by 1978's Chicago Statement. Rather, I appeal to the \"principle of accommodation,\" in which God accommodates theological truths to His people in terms that they can understand and to which they can relate. For example, the creation story was couched in mythical terms with which the Jews were already familiar, but \"inspired\" as necessary to demonstrate the theological truth of monotheism.Here's another example: was the crucifixion of Christ and the shedding of His blood necessary for redemption? Was there something magical about His blood? Honestly, I'd have to answer \"no.\" However, the act itself, couched in terms that the Jews could understand, did serve a purpose. It demonstrated the extent to which God was willing to reconcile Himself to His people, i.e., the sacrifice of Himself -- the Passover lamb.Does that make any sense?\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nMike: Thanks for the further explication of your views--I'm sorry I mistakenly attributed inerrancy to you.I think the route you've taken is the only one that can sensibly cohere with empirical knowledge that we've accumulated in the last couple thousand years, but I'm not sure I find it any more plausible.How do you distinguish your accomodationist interpretation from special pleading in order to save religious doctrine from what looks to me more like refutation? Have you written any blog posts about that?\nMike Beidler (2008-07-10):\nHow do you distinguish your accomodationist interpretation from special pleading in order to save religious doctrine from what looks to me more like refutation? Have you written any blog posts about that?Not quite sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nYou've adopted the views you have in order for your religious views (your interpretation of the Bible's content) to cohere with your knowledge of science, whereas taking that biblical content at face value would mean something has to give. I interpret it as meaning that the Bible contains glaring falsehoods, and that its doctrines are false. You reinterpret the doctrines to avoid what seems to me to be relatively obvious refutation by the science (including archaeology, historical records, etc.). Is there any criterion or standard that you appeal to in order to justify salvaging the religious doctrine rather than throwing it out? And by the same token, if there is such a standard, is it one where you could find that the religious doctrine doesn't meet it, and is jettisoned in toto, concluding that there is no baby in the bathwater?When I look at Mormons who accept that Joseph Smith was a con artist, that parts of the Book of Mormon were plagiarized from other sources, and that DNA evidence shows that Native Americans are not descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel, yet still say they believe in the Mormon religion, I have the same reaction. Seems to me that's far beyond the point where the rational response is to throw the whole religion on the trash heap.\nSteve (2008-07-10):\nHi Jim,For me, it's rather like being in a relationship. Laying aside any skepticism about how I know I'm in a relationship (which is a different issue), let's just say that I believe that I've been interacting with God, or with His system at least, for some 25 years. Whatever He is, be it delusion or metaphysical Being, I have far too much experience to let hard intellectual questions wipe that all away in a moment of indignation. When all one has is an intellectual assent to something as an idea, I can see that it would be easy to throw intellectual wrenches in and destroy the construct. But with any system, you've got to do more than invalidate certain non-essential concepts within it to issue its death certificate. Inerrancy is a non-essential, as God never in Scripture or logically was required to give us a magic book; on the whole, His modus operandi seems to have been partial revelation to fallible men who remain fallible, otherwise we should have a great deal more than one easily corruptible book.It's much as though someone tried to convince me that someone I trusted quite a lot subscribed to a philosophy that I disapprove of: I would give them the benefit of the doubt, and even try to disprove the report, but if in the end I found that the report was accurate, I would not begin to believe that the person in question did not exist. Rather, I would come to grips with the fact that the person didn't exist as I had perceived him. I had preferred that God might have given us an inerrant magic book; when I discovered that He didn't, that didn't mean I should have automatically assumed that my whole experience with Him and His ways was a lie. Coming to an understanding of how He runs it actually deepens my faith because it brings it into better focus.I am aware that some Christians don't see it this way. They view any attack on anything they believe as having the potential - even the likelihood - of undermining their whole construct, and this sort of Christianity, a rigid, brittle tower of crystal, often comes crashing down because there's no way we can expect all our beliefs to be right. This, I believe, is mostly responsible for setting up the choice you were talking about. I think we should view the faith not as a magic gift but as any other philosophical proposition. Christianity is not a crystal tower but an organic, living system, like a hearty animal. No given scratch or puncture of its hide necessarily spells doom for the whole beast.Even just on the intellectual side, what large and intricate system of belief is to be thrown out the window as soon as our inaccurate misunderstanding of it is exposed? The theory of evolution is robust: just because Darwin may have been wrong about something here or there, there is a kernel of truth within it that remains. Something so useful for explanation and predictions as Newtonian mechanics has not been discarded completely by scientists just because quantum mechanics contradicts parts of it: the Newtonian system is still the best explanation of certain facts. In short, it is only a rational humility to recognize that our understanding is always incomplete, so we are never justified in throwing the proverbial baby out when we find a fly floating in the bathwater.Joseph Smith? His is a religion built entirely upon the veracity and truthfulness of Smith himself; these have come crashing down. Hubbard, same thing. If someone were to be able to prove that Jesus knowingly lied and deceived us when he proclaimed that he was sent from God, that would be the bullet in the heart of the beast for me.Sorry this was so long! :)\nLippard (2008-07-10):\nSteve: Could that be summed up as saying that the central support for your belief is a matter of religious experience rather than intellectual argument?What's interesting is that I think that's also the reasoning of the Mormons who accept that Joseph Smith was a con artist, who maintain that he nonetheless managed to find deeper religious truths. It's slightly different from the case where Jesus himself were found to be a liar, since Smith didn't himself claim to be god incarnate, he claimed that he was a prophet and that Mormons would have the opportunity to *become* gods. If God can work through Satan, couldn't he work through a con artist?Personally, I'm suspicious of any justification which seems to me works just as well for Mormonism or any other religion, which seems to me to be the case for religious experience as a justification. I believe there are such things as religious and mystical experiences, but I don't think they support or are accurately explained by religious interpretation.\nSteve (2008-07-10):\nJim,Could that be summed up as saying that the central support for your belief is a matter of religious experience rather than intellectual argument?No, but religious experience was the way in which I was inducted to the belief in the first place, and is a component that helps prompts me to give the faith the benefit of the doubt when intellectual arguments are raised by unbelievers. I didn't start off tabula rasa and reason myself through to faith. I grew up in a Christian household, but by adolescence I was already starting to test the boundaries of its intellectual sustainability. Religious experience without sustainable intellectual arguments are unsustainable. I have been sufficiently satisfied that my belief system and my religious experience buttress one another.If God can work through Satan, couldn't he work through a con artist?Excellent question! God used Satan against Satan and for His purposes. He used Pharaoh against Pharaoh and for His people. He has used pride and self-ambition to expose the truth, not serve as an avatar for it. Moreover, although He could, as a sovereign Being, work through (i.e. in spite of) a charlatan, what kind of monster would He be to expect of us to believe forgeries done in His name? That is against His character as established by the witness of believers from the beginning (\"The Lord detests lying lips\") but being sovereign He must be able to work around and through human error when necessary. He was in no need to use a deceiver like Joseph Smith to reveal new truth, and would not have, since within our system, it doesn't comport with His character to present falsehoods as fact.Personally, I'm suspicious of any justification which seems to me works just as well for Mormonism or any other religion, which seems to me to be the case for religious experience as a justification.Here again, religious experience must correlate with an intellectually sound basis. As long as there is a coherent, internally consistent intellectual system that can explain religious experience, one is fully justified rationally to accept it, even if it doesn't decimate all other systems by a simple logical necessity. No worldview, theistic or atheistic, has a silver bullet that blows everyone else's system out of the water. It's the system that's the most coherent and internally consistent and has the ability to provide and explain religious experience that one should look for, and that I as a Christian believe that I have found.\nEinzige (2008-07-11):\nAs long as there is a coherent, internally consistent intellectual system that can explain religious experience, one is fully justified rationally to accept itAnd your claim is that Christianity fits the bill as a \"coherent, internally consistent intellectual system\"?What if Hinduism were to be found to also be a \"coherent, internally consistent intellectual system\"? Would the Hindus in India who claim to have religious experiences be justified in repudiating the divinity of Jesus? Based on their testimony, they certainly seem to think that Hinduism explains their experience.How does one choose between \"coherent, internally consistent intellectual system[s]\"--or is there, in truth, only one of these?\nLippard (2008-07-12):\nEinzige: If internal consistency is the only requirement, I suspect there's a lot more than one possible.And in reality, I don't think that complete consistency is a requirement for actual beliefs that a person holds, since we're looking for good enough to get by, not perfection. Of course, if we see obvious inconsistency, that's a good thing to try to eliminate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/filmed-for-creationist-dvd.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I spent a few hours being filmed in an interview for a DVD being put out by Creationist Ministries International, a 20-year retrospective on the 1988 debate at the University of New South Wales between Duane Gish and Ian Plimer.  I went back and forth a few times about whether I should do it, finally concluding that it would be worthwhile.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have no fear of an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;-like distortion in this case\u0026ndash;the questions were provided to me in advance, and I negotiated the terms of the release agreement and had my attorney review it.  I have the right to use the full footage myself (to put on YouTube or otherwise distribute or broadcast), so if I were to find myself misrepresented through creative editing (which I don\u0026rsquo;t believe will happen), I would be able to demonstrate it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy involvement was requested because of the role I played in criticizing Plimer and certain of the Australian Skeptics for misrepresentations of the creationists, which I wrote about first in the article \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/some-failures.txt\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Some Failures of Organized Skepticism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, and later in \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/hnta.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How Not to Argue with Creationists\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation/Evolution\u003c/span\u003e journal, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/how-not-to-argue.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How Not to Respond to Criticism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which is available online through the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003etalkorigins.org\u003c/a\u003e website, and in \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003emy review of Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTelling Lies for God\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, on my website.  In preparation for the interview, I dug out my file folders regarding these articles, which amounts to a stack of paper\u003cbr /\u003eabout six inches thick.  Reviewing the files, I re-read some of the correspondence I had with Mark Plummer, then president of the Victoria Branch of the Australian Skeptics, and former executive director of CSICOP (now CSI).  At some point, I should put some of that stuff online\u0026ndash;it was quite unbelievable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI thought it went pretty well, though it took me several takes to get through some of the questions, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t say everything I wanted to say.  The one item that I kick myself for forgetting to say was to emphasize the point that Duane Gish, debater for young-earth creationism, has two things that he always refuses to debate\u0026ndash;the age of the earth and flood geology.  Those also happen to be the two main areas of positive claims that make up young-earth creationism, which he rules out of court at the start of every debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe interviewer, Tim, is a CMI supporter who once applied for a job with Answers in Genesis and is now happy that he didn\u0026rsquo;t get it, since he feels he was deceived by them about their split from CMI.  The cameraman, Mike, who was hired for this job, was also a Christian, but didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a young-earth creationist.  He frequently films both interviews and outdoor nature footage, often for science documentaries, and he expressed his love for knowledge and science.  We had an interesting discussion after the interview about creationism, Christianity, and science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTim took the position that young-earth creationism is an essential part of Christianity, because God must have been able to communicate his word accurately in the first place, because Jesus endorsed the truth of Genesis, and because death before the Fall in Eden would imply that God didn\u0026rsquo;t create a perfect universe.  He also holds the position that only \u0026ldquo;operational science\u0026rdquo; is valid science\u0026ndash;that which can take place in the laboratory and be \u0026ldquo;directly observed\u0026rdquo; (which philosophers of science know is very little, since instrument-assisted and even naked-eye observation is \u0026ldquo;theory-laden\u0026rdquo;).  (Tim\u0026rsquo;s view of science, where it came from, and what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with it is the subject of Christopher Toumey\u0026rsquo;s excellent book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Own-Scientists-Creationists-Secular/dp/0813520444/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGod\u0026rsquo;s Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)  I pointed out to him that that\u0026rsquo;s the kind of choice\u0026ndash;young-earth creationism or atheism\u0026ndash;that helped drive me to atheism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMike, by contrast, didn\u0026rsquo;t think young-earth creationism was essential to Christianity, but that the discoveries of science open more possibilities for religious interpretation.  Today, I agree with Mike\u0026ndash;given what I know about religions and how they work, Christianity is not defined solely in terms of the content of the Bible, even for evangelical Christians.  Fundamentalism as it exists today didn\u0026rsquo;t exist until the early twentieth century.  And even within evangelical Christianity, there are those who have argued very forcefully against young-earth creationism (I pulled out my copy of Daniel Wonderly\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNeglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary Strata Compared With Young Earth\u003c/span\u003e from the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, and could have also pointed to Davis Young and Howard Van Till\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Science-Held-Hostage-Creation-Evolutionism/dp/0830812539//jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience Held Hostage: What\u0026rsquo;s Wrong with Creation Science and Evolutionism\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, or pointed to Mike Beidler\u0026rsquo;s blog, \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/creation-of-evolutionist.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Creation of an Evolutionist\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that if all Christians took Tim\u0026rsquo;s viewpoint rather than Mike\u0026rsquo;s, there would probably be a lot more atheists and a lot fewer Christians.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 1, 2009): I wrote up my initial reaction to the completed documentary \u003cA HREF = \"/2008/08/facing-fire.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/A\u003e, and you can view the video yourself \u003cA HREF = \"/2009/01/facing-fire-creationist-video.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Filmed for creationist DVD"},{"content":"\nJohn Lynch has discovered an unintentional irony in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot; While the movie tries to argue that Darwinism led to Hitler, one of the anti-Darwinists interviewed in the film, Maciej Giertych, also happens to be an old-fashioned anti-Semite who thinks that Jews intentionally create ghettos to live in, are unethical swindlers who do not have any moral respect for the law, and who move to rich countries in order to exploit them. One commenter points out that Giertych has also praised Spain\u0026rsquo;s fascist leader Francisco Franco (who is still dead). Another observes that Giertych is, in at least a small way, a Holocaust denier, denying that gentile Poles carried out the Jedwabne pogrom of 1941.\nGiertych has also been published by Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo; Creation magazine, in 1995, and is a signatory to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism\u0026rdquo; statement.\nClearly, racism does not require a belief in evolution.\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-13):\nFranco, heh.Tangential, but its also been nice to observe the irony of the online editor of the magazine that said of the quasi-fascist Franco (I accept Robert Paxton's argument that Franco wasn't quite fascist)General Franco is an authentic national hero... [with the] talents, the perseverance, and the sense of the righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists, and nihilists that were imposing... a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even, Spain's historical destiny. He saved the day.... The need was imperative... for a national policy [to]... make this concession to Churchill this morning, that one to Hitler this afternoon.... Franco reigns... supreme. He is not an oppressive dictator.... only as oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power... wrote a book arguing that fascism is a form of liberalism and that every major Democrat from Wilson to FDR to JKF to Hillary Clinton is a fascist.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-15):\nFar more evidence of antisemitism from Dawkins than from Giertych:'Jews monopolize American policy'Leading UK scientist draws fire from Jewish organizations; ADL: his remarks are 'classical anti-Semitism' Yaakov Lappin Published: 10.08.07 A top British scientist drew fire from American Jewish organizations on Monday, after remarking that the American Jewish lobby is \"monopolizing American foreign policy.\" Professor Richard Dawkins, a leading evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, was quoted by the British Guardian newspaper as saying last week: \"When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and (yet they) more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.\" The article quotes shocked Jewish reaction to this, and also reports that Dawkins was also a signatory to the academic boycott of Israel, that led to scholars being fired just for being Israeli.It's not necessarily antisemitic to criticise Israel, but singling Israel out for special vilification while ignoring far worse violations by their enemies and neighbours certainly counts, as Alan Dershowicz points out in The Case for Israel. It is also insulting to the others, implying that we hold them to lower standards than the Israelis.\nLippard (2008-04-15):\nDawkins has been rightly criticized for his remarks. See this commentary by Orac at the Respectful Insolence blog at Science Blogs, for example.But I don't see that what Dawkins said constitutes \"far more evidence of antisemitism.\" Dawkins hasn't said that Jews as a group have poor moral character, as Giertych has. He hasn't denied the reality of genocidal actions against Jews, as Giertych has. Why on earth do you think that Dawkins' statement is worse than what Giertych has written?\nKtisophilos (2008-04-16):\nGood for you in not defending Dawkins. All the same, this is Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff, providing much impetus to antisemites for the last century, and is still popular in Arab lands. And already, Dawkins has contributed to the firing of Israeli academics for being Israeli. The Holocaust started from such small beginnings.And from the links you gave, Giertych has not denied any part of the Holocaust, but whether the Jedwabne massacre was an atrocity committed by Poles, rather than by a Nazi Einsatzgruppe as was thought for decades. There seems to be ongoing debate about this: \"... a detailed study of the event by Polish-Jewish-American sociologist and historian Jan T. Gross, who described the massacre as a pogrom. Gross concluded that, contrary to the official accounts, the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up and killed by mobs of their own Polish neighbours, without any supervision or assistance from an Einsatzgruppe or other German force. He referred to the number of victims (1,600) presented on a memorial stone in Jedwabne. Nevertheless Gross states that this massacre could be a provocation, considering that two main local leaders inspiring the mob to murder, Zygmunt Laudański and Karol Bardoń, were NKVD agents.\"Not surprisingly, the book caused enormous controversy in Poland and many people, including historians, questioned its conclusions. Tomasz Strzembosz, Professor of History at the Catholic University of Lublin and at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Political Studies, argued that though Poles would have been involved, the operation had been supervised by the German forces.\"\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nYou're correct that it is a different form of denial--denial of responsibility of a particular group, not denial that the actions occurred at all. I retract that point.I'm not aware that \"Dawkins has contributed to the firing of Israeli academics for being Israeli\"--do you have a reference?\nKtisophilos (2008-04-16):\nAs per the link above:Fired for being IsraeliTwo noted Israeli scholars have been sacked from European journals, victims of a boycott against Israel. Why are progressive intellectuals descending to such bankrupt tactics?....According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, more than 300 European academics have in the past few months signed a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural and research institutions until Israel initiates serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians. There are now several such petitions in circulation on the Internet. One of the most notable was signed by such distinguished intellectuals as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins -- and by 10 Israeli scholars who don't seem to sense the counterproductivity of such a drive.\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nAn academic boycott seems to me like a stupid and counterproductive idea applied to any country. Academic boycotts should be restricted to individual scholars who engage in unethical research practices.I think it's legitimate to criticize Israel's political policies, but why punish academics?Sorry I missed the link the first time you posted it. Links don't come through in the copies of comments that are emailed to me.\nLippard (2008-04-16):\nAnd I guess I should have seen the text, even without the link...\nKtisophilos (2008-04-17):\nAgreed. Lots of academics would not agree with their political leaders, so it's crass to punish the academics.It's also legitimate to criticize Israel's policies. The line I draw is singling them out for criticism for things handled far worse by their enemies.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-features-anti-semitic-anti.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Lynch \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_now_with_added_antise.php\"\u003ehas discovered an unintentional irony in \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  While the movie tries to argue that Darwinism led to Hitler, one of the anti-Darwinists interviewed in the film, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Giertych\"\u003eMaciej Giertych\u003c/a\u003e, also happens to be an old-fashioned anti-Semite who thinks that Jews intentionally create ghettos to live in, are unethical swindlers who do not have any moral respect for the law, and who move to rich countries in order to exploit them.  One commenter \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_now_with_added_antise.php#comment-832866\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e that Giertych has also praised Spain\u0026rsquo;s fascist leader Francisco Franco (who is still dead).  Another \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_now_with_added_antise.php#comment-832981\"\u003eobserves that Giertych is, in at least a small way, a Holocaust denier\u003c/a\u003e, denying that gentile Poles carried out the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_Pogrom\"\u003eJedwabne pogrom of 1941\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGiertych has \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i3/genetics.asp\"\u003ealso been published by Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation\u003c/span\u003e magazine, in 1995\u003c/a\u003e, and is a signatory to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_From_Darwinism\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e statement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClearly, racism \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/racism.html\"\u003edoes not require a belief in evolution\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled features anti-Semitic anti-Darwinist"},{"content":"\nWesley Elsberry points out that Ben Stein has reported in an interview that he was approached for the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; project, described more or less as it finally came to be, back in 2006. Part of the pitch was that he was shown XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Inner Life of the Cell\u0026rdquo; video.\nYet in April 2007 (a month after the \u0026ldquo;expelledthemovie.com\u0026rdquo; domain was registered), Mark Mathis obtained the cooperation of Genie Scott, P.Z. Myers, and other participants by pitching the nonexistent film \u0026ldquo;Crossroads,\u0026rdquo; about the intersection of science and religion, from \u0026ldquo;Rampant Films,\u0026rdquo; which had an innocuous website and an address at an empty apartment complex in Los Angeles.\nStein\u0026rsquo;s interview provides further evidence that \u0026ldquo;Crossroads\u0026rdquo; was a dishonest subterfuge and that the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; crowd fully intended to use XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s film in their movie and did not commission their copy until after William Dembski was sent a cease and desist notice in September 2007, delaying the film\u0026rsquo;s release from February to April.\nSee Wesley\u0026rsquo;s Austringer blog for more details.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/ben-stein-proves-expelled-producers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWesley Elsberry \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2008/04/12/flunked-not-expelled-ben-stein-contradicts-mark-mathis/\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e that Ben Stein has reported in an interview that he was approached for the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; project, described more or less as it finally came to be, back in 2006.  Part of the pitch was that he was shown XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Inner Life of the Cell\u0026rdquo; video.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet in April 2007 (a month after the \u0026ldquo;expelledthemovie.com\u0026rdquo; domain was registered), Mark Mathis obtained the cooperation of Genie Scott, P.Z. Myers, and other participants by pitching the nonexistent film \u0026ldquo;Crossroads,\u0026rdquo; about the intersection of science and religion, from \u0026ldquo;Rampant Films,\u0026rdquo; which had an innocuous website and an address at an empty apartment complex in Los Angeles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStein\u0026rsquo;s interview provides further evidence that \u0026ldquo;Crossroads\u0026rdquo; was a dishonest subterfuge and that the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; crowd fully intended to use XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s film in their movie and did not commission their copy until after William Dembski was sent a cease and desist notice in September 2007, delaying the film\u0026rsquo;s release from February to April.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSee \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2008/04/12/flunked-not-expelled-ben-stein-contradicts-mark-mathis/\"\u003eWesley\u0026rsquo;s Austringer blog for more details\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ben Stein proves \"Expelled\" producers lied"},{"content":"\nERV reports that Mike Edmondson, who was listed as the animator for \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; has left his employment with Premise Media and asked to have his name removed from their website. (UPDATE: It looks like Edmondson probably was responsible for the \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers\u0026rdquo; YouTube video, but not the ripoff of the XVIVO film. Good for him for cutting ties with these liars and thieves.) (UPDATE April 21, 2008: It\u0026rsquo;s been confirmed that Edmondson made \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers.\u0026quot;)\nShe also points out that it is William Dembski who observed that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers set aside budget for copyright infringement lawsuits.\nAnd that Jonathan Wells is helping with the foot bullets by claiming that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; produced their version of the XVIVO film in 3 months with one guy (where it took XVIVO a team of people 14 months).\nLooks like ERV is the blog to watch on this issue. She\u0026rsquo;s also the one who documented that William Dembski knew well that he was violating XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s copyright.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelleds-animator-asked-to-have-his.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eERV reports that Mike Edmondson, who was listed as the animator for \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-is-world-is-mike-edmondson.html\"\u003ehas left his employment with Premise Media and asked to have his name removed from their website\u003c/a\u003e.  (UPDATE: It looks like Edmondson probably was responsible for the \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers\u0026rdquo; YouTube video, but not the ripoff of the XVIVO film.  Good for him for cutting ties with these liars and thieves.) (UPDATE April 21, 2008: It\u0026rsquo;s been \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/who_made_the_beware_the_believ.php\"\u003econfirmed that Edmondson made \u0026ldquo;Beware the Believers.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe also points out that it is William Dembski \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/anyone-want-seconds.html\"\u003ewho observed that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers set aside budget for copyright infringement lawsuits\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd that Jonathan Wells is \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-love-smell-of-roasted-creationists-in.html\"\u003ehelping with the foot bullets by claiming that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; produced their version of the XVIVO film in 3 months with one guy (where it took XVIVO a team of people 14 months)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/\"\u003eERV\u003c/a\u003e is the blog to watch on this issue.  She\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/dembski-knew-he-was-infringing.html\"\u003ealso the one who documented that William Dembski knew well that he was violating XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s copyright\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled's animator asked to have his name removed"},{"content":"\nAt Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; blog, David Bolinsky of XVIVO explains the extent of the copyright infringement and reveals a previous copyright infringement action against William Dembski:\nTo the anti-ID community which is giving XVIVO support in our ideological battle against the microcephalic apostates of \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo;:\nXVIVO created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard, through fourteen months of painstaking examination of how a myriad of systems, functional structures and proteins in a cell, could be depicted in a sweeping panoramic style of animation, reminiscent of cinema, that fundamentally raised the bar on the visualization of molecular and cellular biology for undergraduate students. In depicting what we did, other than merely maintaining the intent of the syllabus, we needed to edit like mad. A cell has billions of molecules, millions of active functional proteins and tens of thousands of structural elements separating, sequestering and joining compartments and systems into a functional whole. An initial foundational decision process of our creative vision, consisted of editing out 95% of the contents of our cell in order to gain, for our virtual camera, a vista to visualize what elements we left in. The decisions we made blended aesthetics with science. They were not made lightly, nor were they made without extensive consultation with researchers at Harvard, and an extensive body of literature, including protein data libraries and new findings by Harvard researchers.\nGiven the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining \u0026ldquo;on camera\u0026rdquo;, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! It is astonishing that among well over a dozen functional kinesins from which an animator might choose, we both chose the same configuration of kinesin, pulling the same protein-studded vesicle, on the same microtubule! Can YOU believe we coincidentally picked the same camera angles and left in the same specific structures in the background, positioned with the same composition? Equally astonishing is the \u0026ldquo;Intellgent Design\u0026rdquo; treatment of these and other proteins surfaces, which XVIVO derived using procedural iso-surface skinning of the PDB cloud data of our proteins\u0026rsquo; atom placement. There are an infinite number of possble \u0026ldquo;correct\u0026rdquo; solutions to that problem.\nCoincidence? Given their \u0026ldquo;access to the same literature\u0026rdquo; we had, where Graham Johnson at Scripps so brilliantly worked out the real motion of kinesins, I am simply blown away that the \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo; animators slavishly made the hands of their kenesins move exactly as we did, even though we intentionally left out the stochastic Brownian motion which actually characterizes the tractive force and periodic pedicle placement of these tiny motivators. We simply did not have the time or budget to render these, and a dozen other details, to the level of insanity we would like to have done! This was, after all, an underfunded proof-of-concept piece. The cellular biology that serves as \u0026ldquo;filler\u0026rdquo; material, between scenes copied from Inner Life, is riddled with biological errors. Imagine \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; depiction of protein synthesis without ribosomes!\nTo Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you \u0026ldquo;found somewhere\u0026rdquo;, with Harvard\u0026rsquo;s and XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to \u0026lsquo;swat the gnat\u0026rsquo; with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring!\nIt makes me happy, though, that you decided to implicate your friends in print, on your blog (http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/expelled-plagiarizing-harvard/#comment-229619), in what is legally, malignant infringement, since you no had doubt discussed with EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, Harvard\u0026rsquo;s previous legal infringement action against you, the Discovery Institute, where you are a fellow and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you teach. Once we uncover the EXPELLED animation dollar trail, and bring it to light, we will have even more fun. The sublimely ridiculous claim that EXPELLED uses completely original animation, in light of copying our work so closely that a budget was reserved to pay for an infringement suit by Harvard, is delicious! Why should I try to take you guys down when you are doing such a splendid job yourselves? For free! So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too.\nDavid Bolinsky\nFor more on David Bolinksy and the animation see:\n(http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147)UPDATE (April 12, 2008): P.Z. Myers comments. Blake Stacey also has a nice post summarizing the copyright infringement issue.\nUPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was apparently removed before the film\u0026rsquo;s public release yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/david-bolinsky-on-expelled-and-dembskis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; blog, David Bolinsky of XVIVO \u003ca href=\"http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,2460,Expelled-ripped-off-Harvards-Inner-Life-of-the-Cell-animation,David-Bolinsky\"\u003eexplains the extent of the copyright infringement and reveals a previous copyright infringement action against William Dembski\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTo the anti-ID community which is giving XVIVO support in our ideological battle against the microcephalic apostates of \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eXVIVO created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard, through fourteen months of painstaking examination of how a myriad of systems, functional structures and proteins in a cell, could be depicted in a sweeping panoramic style of animation, reminiscent of cinema, that fundamentally raised the bar on the visualization of molecular and cellular biology for undergraduate students. In depicting what we did, other than merely maintaining the intent of the syllabus, we needed to edit like mad. A cell has billions of molecules, millions of active functional proteins and tens of thousands of structural elements separating, sequestering and joining compartments and systems into a functional whole. An initial foundational decision process of our creative vision, consisted of editing out 95% of the contents of our cell in order to gain, for our virtual camera, a vista to visualize what elements we left in. The decisions we made blended aesthetics with science. They were not made lightly, nor were they made without extensive consultation with researchers at Harvard, and an extensive body of literature, including protein data libraries and new findings by Harvard researchers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGiven the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining \u0026ldquo;on camera\u0026rdquo;, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! It is astonishing that among well over a dozen functional kinesins from which an animator might choose, we both chose the same configuration of kinesin, pulling the same protein-studded vesicle, on the same microtubule! Can YOU believe we coincidentally picked the same camera angles and left in the same specific structures in the background, positioned with the same composition? Equally astonishing is the \u0026ldquo;Intellgent Design\u0026rdquo; treatment of these and other proteins surfaces, which XVIVO derived using procedural iso-surface skinning of the PDB cloud data of our proteins\u0026rsquo; atom placement. There are an infinite number of possble \u0026ldquo;correct\u0026rdquo; solutions to that problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCoincidence? Given their \u0026ldquo;access to the same literature\u0026rdquo; we had, where Graham Johnson at Scripps so brilliantly worked out the real motion of kinesins, I am simply blown away that the \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo; animators slavishly made the hands of their kenesins move exactly as we did, even though we intentionally left out the stochastic Brownian motion which actually characterizes the tractive force and periodic pedicle placement of these tiny motivators. We simply did not have the time or budget to render these, and a dozen other details, to the level of insanity we would like to have done! This was, after all, an underfunded proof-of-concept piece. The cellular biology that serves as \u0026ldquo;filler\u0026rdquo; material, between scenes copied from Inner Life, is riddled with biological errors. Imagine \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; depiction of protein synthesis without ribosomes!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you \u0026ldquo;found somewhere\u0026rdquo;, with Harvard\u0026rsquo;s and XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to \u0026lsquo;swat the gnat\u0026rsquo; with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt makes me happy, though, that you decided to implicate your friends in print, on your blog (\u003ca href=\"http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/expelled-plagiarizing-harvard/#comment-229619)\"\u003ehttp://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/expelled-plagiarizing-harvard/#comment-229619)\u003c/a\u003e, in what is legally, malignant infringement, since you no had doubt discussed with EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, Harvard\u0026rsquo;s previous legal infringement action against you, the Discovery Institute, where you are a fellow and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you teach. Once we uncover the EXPELLED animation dollar trail, and bring it to light, we will have even more fun. The sublimely ridiculous claim that EXPELLED uses completely original animation, in light of copying our work so closely that a budget was reserved to pay for an infringement suit by Harvard, is delicious! Why should I try to take you guys down when you are doing such a splendid job yourselves? For free! So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Bolinsky\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more on David Bolinksy and the animation see:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147\"\u003ehttp://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (April 12, 2008): P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/thieves_and_liars.php\"\u003ecomments\u003c/a\u003e.  Blake Stacey also has \u003ca href=\"http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=637\"\u003ea nice post summarizing the copyright infringement issue\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/new-expelled-cell-footage-clip-on.html\"\u003eapparently removed before the film\u0026rsquo;s public release yesterday\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Bolinsky on \"Expelled\" and Dembski's copyright infringement"},{"content":"An article by Philippe Sands in Vanity Fair sets out the evidence that the legal framework set out to justify aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay also caused the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that those responsible are guilty of war crimes. Ironically, the actions the Bush has taken to guarantee immunity from prosecution for these actions makes the case stronger for international war crimes prosecution, meaning that if any of these responsible individuals sets foot outside of the U.S., they could be at risk of seeing justice done.\n(Via The Daily Doubter.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-04-12):\nThat article is excerpted (or adapted - I forget which) from Sands forthcoming book The Torture Team. In his previous book, Lawless World Sands revealed President Bush having toyed with the idea of attempting to create his own Gulf Of Tonkin by tricking Hussein into shooting down a plane painted with UN colors.This is another case in point of: what would a Republican president possibly have to do to get impeached?Lying about oral sex: impeachable offense. Trying to fabricate a pretext for a war that has resulted in what is likely to be hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars of lost treasure (as well as numerous other deleterious consequences): Heck, that's barely even newsworthy.\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-13):\nLinks:Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules--From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War I linked to the hc of Lawless World since its cheaper, but I think the pb has a better (less confusing) subtitle: The Whistle-Blowing Account of How Bush and Blair Are Taking the Law into Their Own Hands\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/torture-team.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805?currentPage=1\"\u003earticle by Philippe Sands in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVanity Fair\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e sets out the evidence that the legal framework set out to justify aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay also caused the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that those responsible are guilty of war crimes.  Ironically, the actions the Bush has taken to guarantee immunity from prosecution for these actions makes the case stronger for international war crimes prosecution, meaning that if any of these responsible individuals sets foot outside of the U.S., they could be at risk of seeing justice done.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/04/torture-team.html\"\u003eThe Daily Doubter\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The torture team"},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis says that Christians who believe in evolution were intentionally excluded from the film because they \u0026ldquo;would have confused the film unnecessarily.\u0026rdquo; (Don\u0026rsquo;t confuse people with the truth!) He goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;the form of Catholicism that Ken Miller [biology professor at Brown University and co-author of a popular biology textbook] accepts and practices is, is nowhere near the form of Catholicism that is followed by Catholics who are members of the Catholic church, who believe in Catholic doctrine.\u0026quot;\nMathis, who is not a Catholic, is apparently unaware that Miller\u0026rsquo;s view of evolution is consistent with the official position of the Catholic Church as set forth by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic Church\u0026rsquo;s position on evolution has been that it\u0026rsquo;s not in conflict with Christianity, since Pope Pius XII.\nMathis should also take a look at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s Voices for Evolution, where he\u0026rsquo;ll find that a lot of other Christian sects similarly have no problem with evolution.\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and its producers seem to want to force a false dilemma of a choice between Christianity or evolution, just as the young-earth creationists do. They don\u0026rsquo;t seem to realize that this kind of forced choice is one which will make any honest, inquiring mind who accepts the false dilemma to choose against Christianity. J.P. Hunt, a student in Ray Baird\u0026rsquo;s 1980 \u0026ldquo;balanced treatment\u0026rdquo; class on creationism and evolution at Emma C. Smith Elementary School in Livermore, California, said on the 1982 PBS show \u0026ldquo;Creation vs. Evolution: Battle in the Classroom\u0026rdquo;:\nSomeone that I know has become an atheist because of this class, because the creationist theory was so stupid, he thought. Well, if religion requires me to believe this, then I don\u0026rsquo;t want to have any part of it.I don\u0026rsquo;t find this too objectionable as a consequence, personally. Learning that I was lied to by young-earth creationists was a significant factor in my abandonment of creationism, then Christianity, and then theism. The rampant dishonesty of the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; crowd will no doubt serve the same effect for others like me, and cause them to look to see if they\u0026rsquo;ve been similarly lied to about other things. Odds are, they will find that they have.\n(Via Stranger Fruit.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-producer-tells-catholics-what.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis says that Christians who believe in evolution were intentionally excluded from the film because they \u0026ldquo;would have confused the film unnecessarily.\u0026rdquo;  (Don\u0026rsquo;t confuse people with the truth!)  He goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;the form of Catholicism that Ken Miller [biology professor at Brown University and co-author of a popular biology textbook] accepts and practices is, is nowhere near the form of Catholicism that is followed by Catholics who are members of the Catholic church, who believe in Catholic doctrine.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMathis, who is not a Catholic, is apparently unaware that Miller\u0026rsquo;s view of evolution is consistent with the official position of the Catholic Church as set forth by both \u003ca href=\"http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM\"\u003ePope John Paul II\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22136550-5002700,00.html\"\u003ePope Benedict XVI.\u003c/a\u003e  The Catholic Church\u0026rsquo;s position on evolution has been that \u003ca href=\"http://atheism.about.com/od/popejohnpaulii/a/evolution.htm\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s not in conflict with Christianity\u003c/a\u003e, since Pope Pius XII.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMathis should also take a look at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/article.asp?category=2\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVoices for Evolution\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, where he\u0026rsquo;ll find that a lot of other Christian sects similarly have no problem with evolution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and its producers seem to want to force a false dilemma of a choice between Christianity or evolution, just as the young-earth creationists do.  They don\u0026rsquo;t seem to realize that this kind of forced choice is one which will make any honest, inquiring mind who accepts the false dilemma to choose against Christianity.  J.P. Hunt, a student in Ray Baird\u0026rsquo;s 1980 \u0026ldquo;balanced treatment\u0026rdquo; class on creationism and evolution at Emma C. Smith Elementary School in Livermore, California, said on the 1982 PBS show \u0026ldquo;Creation vs. Evolution: Battle in the Classroom\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSomeone that I know has become an atheist because of this class, because the  creationist theory was so stupid, he thought.  Well, if religion requires me to believe this, then I don\u0026rsquo;t want to have any part of it.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t find this too objectionable as a consequence, personally.  Learning that I was lied to by young-earth creationists was a significant factor in my abandonment of creationism, then Christianity, and then theism.  The rampant dishonesty of the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; crowd will no doubt serve the same effect for others like me, and cause them to look to see if they\u0026rsquo;ve been similarly lied to about other things.  Odds are, they will find that they have.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/framing_in_action_in_expelled.php\"\u003eStranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" producer tells Catholics what they believe"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sorry that I just came across this excellent speech by Matthew LaClair recounting his experiences with David Paszkiewicz which was published in Freethought Today in October 2007, reprinted by the Friendly Atheist blog on January 6, 2008. It\u0026rsquo;s probably the best concise summary of what happened and the subsequent events.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/matthew-laclairs-speech-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sorry that I just came across \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/01/06/matthew-laclairs-speech-you-belong-in-hell/\"\u003ethis excellent speech by Matthew LaClair recounting his experiences with David Paszkiewicz\u003c/a\u003e which was published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFreethought Today\u003c/span\u003e in October 2007, reprinted by the Friendly Atheist blog on January 6, 2008.  It\u0026rsquo;s probably the best concise summary of what happened and the subsequent events.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matthew LaClair's speech from Freethought Today"},{"content":"Another negative review for the film, by Jeffrey Kluger. He specifically calls out the film for dishonesty:\nThe man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth\u0026rsquo;s primordial soup. The answer is it couldn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;and it didn\u0026rsquo;t. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More dishonestly, Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can\u0026rsquo;t therefore argue that the net doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. Just ask the fish.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s in the film\u0026rsquo;s final third that it runs entirely off the rails as Stein argues that there is a clear line from Darwinism to euthanasia, abortion, eugenics and\u0026ndash;wait for it\u0026ndash;Nazism. Theories of natural selection, it\u0026rsquo;s claimed, were a necessary if not sufficient condition for Hitler\u0026rsquo;s killing machine to get started. The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human. We\u0026rsquo;ve always been a lustily fratricidal species, one that needed no Charles Darwin to goad us into millenniums of self-slaughter.\nKruger also criticizes Myers and Dawkins:\nIn fairness to Stein, his opponents have hardly covered themselves in glory. Evolutionary biologists and social commentators have lately taken to answering the claims of intelligent-design boosters not with clear-eyed scientific empiricism but with sneering, finger-in-the-eye atheism. Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting. Books such as Christopher Hitchens\u0026rsquo; God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; The God Delusion often read like pure taunting, as when Hitchens pettily and pointedly types God as lowercase god. Tautology as typography is not the stuff of deep thought. Neither, alas, is Expelled.Looks like a sub-50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a foregone conclusion. I see that rottentomatoes.com has a new April 18 film on the list, Jenna Jameson\u0026rsquo;s first non-porn film, \u0026ldquo;Zombie Strippers.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is still not on the list. Which will have the bigger opening weekend box office take?\n\u0026ldquo;Forgetting Sarah Marshall\u0026rdquo; (currently with a 93% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes) will most likely be the box office leader. \u0026ldquo;Forbidden Kingdom\u0026rdquo; with Jackie Chan and Jet Li may also do well. Al Pacino in \u0026ldquo;88 Minutes,\u0026rdquo; though it looks like a weak offering, is likely to have greater box office draw than \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo; Likewise for Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood in \u0026ldquo;Life Before Her Eyes.\u0026rdquo; Morgan Spurlock\u0026rsquo;s latest documentary, \u0026ldquo;Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?\u0026rdquo;, with a mere 33% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, is something \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; needs to beat if there\u0026rsquo;s really any hope of it making a mark on the top box office numbers for documentaries, as some of its advocates have claimed it will. (I predict it won\u0026rsquo;t get into the top ten documentaries by box office, let alone the top three as the delusional advocate I just linked to seems to think.)\nUPDATE (April 12, 2008): P.Z. Myers responds to the criticism directed at him by the Time reviewer.\nEamon Knight (2008-04-11):\nGiven the XVIVO copyright issue, I'm still sticking by my \"never opens at all\" prediction. (And I wonder if the DVD will keep the disputed segment, on the theory that a DVD distribution is low enough profile not to be noticed. Stupid of course, but these clowns excel in that department).\nLippard (2008-04-11):\nI disagree. I think it will open as planned in a week, with the footage intact. I suspect Premise Media has already lawyered up and will issue a blustery, aggressive response to XVIVO if they haven't already. I think XVIVO will probably sue, and then there will be an out-of-court settlement of some kind.Walt Ruloff has deep pockets, and I'm sure they'll weigh the potential cost of the lawsuit against what they expect in revenue for the movie, and make a decision on that basis.I suspect their expectations of revenue are overly rosy; after a disappointing opening they may be more likely to settle with XVIVO.\nLippard (2008-04-11):\nIf the \"Expelled\" website is any indication, they intend to go full speed ahead without regard for XVIVO's letter. Of course, they completely misrepresent the charges in their reply: Editor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false. Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film. The Producers of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed”As Darwin Central notes, if you hire your own animators to make a Mickey Mouse cartoon, but only change the color of his pants, that's not going to protect you from a Disney copyright infringement lawsuit.\nLippard (2008-04-12):\nAccording to David Bolinsky, \"Expelled\"'s budget has set aside funds specifically for defending against a copyright infringement lawsuit over this footage. If true, then they knew what they were doing was morally and legally wrong, but did it anyway. Par for the course.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/time-magazine-reviews-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnother negative review for the film, by Jeffrey Kluger.  He \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729703,00.html\"\u003especifically calls out the film for dishonesty\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth\u0026rsquo;s primordial soup. The answer is it couldn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;and it didn\u0026rsquo;t. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More dishonestly, Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can\u0026rsquo;t therefore argue that the net doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. Just ask the fish.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time magazine reviews \"Expelled\""},{"content":"\nScientific American:\n\u0026hellip;it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t handle the truth!\u0026rdquo;) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie\u0026ndash;which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it. Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film\u0026rsquo;s attacks\u0026ndash;all recycled from previous pro-ID works\u0026ndash;would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.\nScientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie:\nThe most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a “great chain of being.” The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word “pogrom.” Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, “We are at fault in not slaying them.” I don’t think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but whose ideas were most Lutheran Germans of the 1930s more familiar with: Darwin’s or Luther’s?\nScientific American columnist Michael Shermer, a former Pepperdine University student, points out yet another piece of dishonesty in the film:\nIt was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein\u0026rsquo;s antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.\nActually they didn\u0026rsquo;t. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein\u0026rsquo;s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, \u0026ldquo;the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus\u0026rdquo; but that \u0026ldquo;the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein\u0026rsquo;s lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.\u0026rdquo; And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.(Via Pharyngula.)\nUPDATE (April 11, 2008): Wesley Elsberry points out Jonathan Wells\u0026rsquo; inconsistent stance on peppered moths versus Pepperdine students.\nPat R (2008-04-23):\njust saw Expelled; the fact that Ben Stein isn't trying to win any popularity contests helps to validate his message... his goal is to promote free thought, especially more thinking about worldviews that drive American academia\nLippard (2008-04-23):\nPatrick:I disagree with your statement here and with the blog post you've linked to. Ben Stein isn't interested in freethought or critical thinking--if he were, he wouldn't be promoting such bad arguments or misinformation as he does in the film.You should really take a look at the content of ExpelledExposed.com.You might also want to take a look at the statements about \"Expelled\" released by Hugh Ross's \"Reasons to Believe\" organization.The fact is, you're promoting a thoroughly dishonest film produced by dishonest people, which is well documented. If you continue to promote the film without recognizing that, your own credibility will suffer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/shermer-and-scientific-american-review.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific American\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip;it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t handle the truth!\u0026rdquo;) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie\u0026ndash;which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.  \u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film\u0026rsquo;s attacks\u0026ndash;all recycled from previous pro-ID works\u0026ndash;would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shermer and Scientific American review \"Expelled\""},{"content":"\nXVIVO LLC has sent a copyright infringement warning letter to Premise Media about the computer animation that appears to have been based on XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of a Cell.\u0026rdquo; Some have speculated that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s release was moved from February to April because it had used the XVIVO film directly (just as William Dembski and other Discovery Institute fellows had been doing in public lectures), and they used the time to re-create the animation on their own.\nThe letter says that XVIVO considers the segment in the film to still be close enough to be an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and demands:\nThat Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all copies of the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008;\nThat all copies of the \u0026ldquo;Inner Life\u0026rdquo; video in your possession or under your control be returned to XVIVO;\nThat Premise Media notify XVIVO, on or before April 18, 2008, of its compliance with the above demands.\nIt sounds like either \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will be slightly shorter on April 18, or will be contributing some of the box office gross to XVIVO. Peter Irons, who drafted the copyright letter, says in a comment at Pharyngula that he suspects the cost of making changes to the film before April 18 would exceed $100,000. Andrea Bottaro offers this suggestion in a Pharyngula comment:\nI am sure that if the Expelled producers can show the judge all their notes and proof of intermediate production stages with respect to the scientific work that went from the analysis of the existing literature data to the construction of the molecular models, their rendering, and the final animations, the suit will be quickly dismissed. If on the other hand, all they have is a final product that looks just like XVIVO, and nothing to show about how they got there, the most logical conclusion is that their version is just a bad, unauthorized copy. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty straightforward, really: if they have been honest, they have nothing to fear.But of course they\u0026rsquo;ve been thoroughly dishonest from beginning to end. Commenter Michael X points out that they\u0026rsquo;ve got a further problem with resemblance to XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s work:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s actually worse than you think. Not only must they show their work, they have to explain (as PZ stated in the far earlier post on this topic, and ERV pointed out in this thread) the identical mistakes made in both videos. But, even more damning, how they ended up visualizing these mistakes in the exact same way as XVIVO. No amount of homework and fact checking will save you there.Intentionally inserting mistakes into maps is how map-makers prove copyright infringement, and the same principle applied to DNA demonstrates common ancestry and the truth of evolution. (Also see this previous Lippard Blog post on retroviruses and common ancestry.)\nUPDATE (April 11, 2008): William Dembski apparently wants to help XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s case:\nI ve gotten to know the producers quite well. As far as I can tell, they made sure to budget for lawsuits. Also, I know for a fact that they have one of the best intellectual property attorneys in the business. I expect that the producers made their video close enough to the Harvard video to get tongues awagging (Headline: Harvard University Seeks Injunction Against Ben Stein and EXPELLED you think that might generate interest in the movie?), but different enough so that they are unexposed.In other words, they did use the XVIVO film as the source, and theirs is a derived work.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; website misrepresents the XVIVO copyright infringement claim, by pretending that the claim is that they used the actual XVIVO film, rather than copying it to make their own:\nEditor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false. Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film.\nThe Producers of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed”\nAs Darwin Central notes, if you make your own animation of Mickey Mouse, changing the color of his pants won\u0026rsquo;t be enough to keep you from being sued for copyright infringement by Disney.\nUPDATE: David Bolinsky of XVIVO has commented publicly:\nXVIVO created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard, through fourteen months of painstaking examination of how a myriad of systems, functional structures and proteins in a cell, could be depicted in a sweeping panoramic style of animation, reminiscent of cinema, that fundamentally raised the bar on the visualization of molecular and cellular biology for undergraduate students. In depicting what we did, other than merely maintaining the intent of the syllabus, we needed to edit like mad. A cell has billions of molecules, millions of active functional proteins and tens of thousands of structural elements separating, sequestering and joining compartments and systems into a functional whole. An initial foundational decision process of our creative vision, consisted of editing out 95% of the contents of our cell in order to gain, for our virtual camera, a vista to visualize what elements we left in. The decisions we made blended aesthetics with science. They were not made lightly, nor were they made without extensive consultation with researchers at Harvard, and an extensive body of literature, including protein data libraries and new findings by Harvard researchers.\nGiven the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining \u0026ldquo;on camera\u0026rdquo;, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! It is astonishing that among well over a dozen functional kinesins from which an animator might choose, we both chose the same configuration of kinesin, pulling the same protein-studded vesicle, on the same microtubule! Can YOU believe we coincidentally picked the same camera angles and left in the same specific structures in the background, positioned with the same composition? Equally astonishing is the \u0026ldquo;Intellgent Design\u0026rdquo; treatment of these and other proteins surfaces, which XVIVO derived using procedural iso-surface skinning of the PDB cloud data of our proteins\u0026rsquo; atom placement. There are an infinite number of possible \u0026ldquo;correct\u0026rdquo; solutions to that problem.\nCoincidence? Given their \u0026ldquo;access to the same literature\u0026rdquo; we had, where Graham Johnson at Scripps so brilliantly worked out the real motion of kinesins, I am simply blown away that the \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo; animators slavishly made the hands of their kenesins move exactly as we did, even though we intentionally left out the stochastic Brownian motion which actually characterizes the tractive force and periodic pedicle placement of these tiny motivators. We simply did not have the time or budget to render these, and a dozen other details, to the level of insanity we would like to have done! This was, after all, an underfunded proof-of-concept piece. The cellular biology that serves as \u0026ldquo;filler\u0026rdquo; material, between scenes copied from Inner Life, is riddled with biological errors. Imagine \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; depiction of protein synthesis without ribosomes!He addresses Dembski directly, and reveals that Harvard did take copyright infringement action against Dembski:\nTo Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you \u0026ldquo;found somewhere\u0026rdquo;, with Harvard\u0026rsquo;s and XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to \u0026lsquo;swat the gnat\u0026rsquo; with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring!\nIt makes me happy, though, that you decided to implicate your friends in print, on your blog ([uncommon descent link removed, you can get there from the above link]), in what is legally, malignant infringement, since you no had doubt discussed with EXPELLED\u0026rsquo;s producers, Harvard\u0026rsquo;s previous legal infringement action against you, the Discovery Institute, where you are a fellow and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you teach. Once we uncover the EXPELLED animation dollar trail, and bring it to light, we will have even more fun. The sublimely ridiculous claim that EXPELLED uses completely original animation, in light of copying our work so closely that a budget was reserved to pay for an infringement suit by Harvard, is delicious! Why should I try to take you guys down when you are doing such a splendid job yourselves? For free! So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too.\nUPDATE (April 12, 2008): Blake Stacey has a nice post summarizing the copyright infringement issue.\nUPDATE (April 19, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; apparently removed the footage copied from XVIVO prior to the film\u0026rsquo;s public release yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/expelled-gets-copyright-infringement.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eXVIVO LLC has sent \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/peter_irons_drafts_a_letter.php\"\u003ea copyright infringement warning letter to Premise Media\u003c/a\u003e about the computer animation that appears to have been based on XVIVO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Inner Life of a Cell.\u0026rdquo;  Some have speculated that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s release was moved from February to April because it had used the XVIVO film directly (just as \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/discovery-institute-steals-content-and.html\"\u003eWilliam Dembski and other Discovery Institute fellows had been doing in public lectures\u003c/a\u003e), and they used the time to re-create the animation on their own.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe letter says that XVIVO considers the segment in the film to still be close enough to be an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and demands:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all copies of the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" gets a copyright infringement letter"},{"content":"Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school run out of the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and run by an imam, Asad Zaman, teaches Islamic studies and has mandatory prayers led by a non-student.\nSee, Christians\u0026ndash;this is what the separation of church and state legally prohibits schools from doing with your tax dollars. Get it?\nUPDATE (April 11, 2008): Very many conservative bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and the morons at Stop the ACLU, are protesting TIZA and asking why the ACLU isn\u0026rsquo;t doing anything. In fact, the ACLU was on this issue before any conservative bloggers were, though they are hampered by the lack of a plaintiff. These bloggers are blatantly expressing their hypocrisy. If the ACLU was so much as sending a warning letter to a charter school promoting Christianity, they\u0026rsquo;d be protesting it. But since it\u0026rsquo;s Islam, the ACLU can\u0026rsquo;t possibly do enough.\nReed (2008-04-10):\nFor those Christians who advocate the blurring of the line between church and state, is the fear of the spread of Islam sufficently strong to lead to a change of heart?\nsfc mac (2008-04-14):\n\"If the ACLU was so much as sending a warning letter to a charter school promoting Christianity, they'd be protesting it.\"You've GOT to be joking. One of the cornerstones of the ACLU is direct confrontation of ANYTHING remotely resembling Christianity in public schools. I'm agnostic, and even I can see their (and your) hypocrisy.\nEinzige (2008-04-14):\nAre you sure you've understood Jim's point, sfcmac?The only hypocrites I see in all this are the conservative bloggers.Perhaps you can clarify your position. Exactly what is the source of Jim's hypocracy?\nEinzige (2008-04-14):\nOh, jeez, my spelling is bad this morning!\nLippard (2008-04-14):\nPerhaps you misunderstood what I said, because I don't understand your comment.What you quoted from me is saying that in any case where the ACLU protests Christianity in charter schools (and I mean that also to apply to government-run public schools), the \"Stop the ACLU\" crowd protests it. I didn't say that the ACLU doesn't do so--of course they do!So where's the hypocrisy? My point is that the ACLU is right to take the same steps to fight Establishment Clause violations, no matter what religion is involved. They send a letter, and if that doesn't work they get a plaintiff and file a lawsuit. If they can't get a plaintiff, they can't sue, which is why there are cases of small communities getting away with things like teaching creationism in public schools.So please explain what hypocrisy you are talking about.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/violation-of-separation-of-church-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school run out of the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and run by an imam, Asad Zaman, \u003ca href=\"http://www.startribune.com/local/17406054.html\"\u003eteaches Islamic studies and has mandatory prayers led by a non-student\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSee, Christians\u0026ndash;this is what the separation of church and state legally prohibits schools from doing with your tax dollars.  Get it?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 11, 2008): \u003ca href=\"http://gatordoug.blogetery.com/2008/04/09/where-is-the-aclu-when-you-need-them/\"\u003eVery\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://olbroad.com/2008/04/09/calling-on-the-aclu-cue-the-crickets/\"\u003emany\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://blog.coincidencetheories.com/?p=186\"\u003econservative\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/creeping-islamofascism-in-american-education/\"\u003ebloggers\u003c/a\u003e, including \u003ca href=\"http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/09/establishing-islam-in-minnesota/\"\u003eMichelle Malkin\u003c/a\u003e and the morons at \u003ca href=\"http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/04/09/does-the-aclu-believe-in-the-seperation-of-mosque-and-state/\"\u003eStop the ACLU\u003c/a\u003e, are protesting TIZA and asking why the ACLU isn\u0026rsquo;t doing anything.  In fact, \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu-mn.org/home/news/aclumnopensinvestigationof.htm\"\u003ethe ACLU was on this issue before any conservative bloggers were\u003c/a\u003e, though they are hampered by the lack of a plaintiff.  These bloggers are blatantly expressing their hypocrisy.  If the ACLU was so much as sending a warning letter to a charter school promoting Christianity, they\u0026rsquo;d be protesting it.  But since it\u0026rsquo;s Islam, the ACLU can\u0026rsquo;t possibly do enough.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Violation of separation of church and state at Minnesota Islamic public school"},{"content":"From CNN:\nFederal employees charged millions of dollars to government credit or debit cards, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Wednesday. Those charges include Internet dating services, iPods, expensive clothing, a $13,500 dinner and lingerie to be worn during jungle training in Ecuador, the study said.\nThe audit also found that government agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items, which included computer servers, laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras.\nNearly half of transactions made in the 2006 fiscal year with government credit or debit cards \u0026ndash; referred to as \u0026ldquo;purchase cards\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; were improper, the study found, and the audit condemned the government-wide \u0026ldquo;rate of failure\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;unacceptably high.\u0026quot;\nThe improper purchases were either not authorized or did not meet the government\u0026rsquo;s requirements for using purchase cards, the study [(PDF)] said.\nWhat kind of lingerie is worn during jungle training in Ecuador? Was the jungle training itself an improper expenditure, or was that OK?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/gao-study-nearly-half-of-government.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/09/gao.spending/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFederal employees charged millions of dollars to government credit or debit cards, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Wednesday.                            \u003cp\u003e Those charges include Internet dating services, iPods, expensive clothing, a $13,500 dinner and lingerie to be worn during jungle training in Ecuador, the study said.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The audit also found that government agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items, which included computer servers, laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GAO study: nearly half of government credit card expenses improper"},{"content":"Mike Beidler stopped by to post a comment on the post about \u0026ldquo;truth tickets,\u0026rdquo; and I\u0026rsquo;m very pleased to see his blog, \u0026ldquo;The Creation of an Evolutionist,\u0026quot; which describes his personal journey from being a young-earth creationist to accepting the fact and theory of evolution. It\u0026rsquo;s people like Mike that are the most likely to have an influence on changing the minds of current young-earth creationists. Because of that, it\u0026rsquo;s also the case that people like Mike often get to take even more heat from creationist organizations than we atheists receive. Those organizations are premised on the assumption that Christianity requires creationism, and Mike is a living, breathing, and forcefully arguing counterexample.\nI, like Mike, used to be a young-earth creationist, but my journey continued on to the rejection of Christianity and theism.\nHistorical Comments RBH (2008-04-12):\nMike is a genuinely good guy. I have participated in the comments on his blog, and it's been interesting. (In fact, I owe him and a couple of other commenters resposnes right now!)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/creation-of-evolutionist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Beidler stopped by to post a comment on the post about \u0026ldquo;truth tickets,\u0026rdquo; and I\u0026rsquo;m very pleased to see his blog, \u003ca href=\"http://thecreationofanevolutionist.blogspot.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Creation of an Evolutionist,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which describes his personal journey from being a young-earth creationist to accepting the fact and theory of evolution.  It\u0026rsquo;s people like Mike that are the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/02.1.lippard-creationism.html\"\u003emost likely to have an influence on changing the minds of current young-earth creationists\u003c/a\u003e.  Because of that, it\u0026rsquo;s also the case that people like Mike often get to take even more heat from creationist organizations than we atheists receive.  Those organizations are premised on the assumption that Christianity requires creationism, and Mike is a living, breathing, and forcefully arguing counterexample.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI, like Mike, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Fold-Testimonies-Former-Fundamentalists/dp/1591022177/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eused to be a young-earth creationist\u003c/a\u003e, but my journey continued on to the rejection of Christianity and theism.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Creation of an Evolutionist"},{"content":"The Center for Inquiry has released a detailed critique (PDF) of a U.S. history textbook by James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio, Jr., pointing out that it falsely claims that there\u0026rsquo;s doubt about the very existence of the greenhouse effect, falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned prayer in schools (as opposed to teacher-led prayer), falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas overturned Texas\u0026rsquo;s anti-sodomy law on a close 5-4 vote (it was 6-3), falsely claims that the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution were motivated by worries about original sin, and so on. (A summary can be found at the Friendly Atheist blog.) Wilson is Ronald W. Reagan Professor for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute; Dilulio was the first head of George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.\nThe problems in this textbook were uncovered by Matthew LaClair of Kearny, NJ, who previously received a lot of press coverage for his exposure of a U.S. history teacher at his school, David Paskiewicz, who was using the classroom as a forum for proselytizing evangelical Christianity. That story broke in the mainstream media only after being publicized on this blog.\nTrott (2008-04-09):\nBy \"this blog\" you don't mean the Lippard Blog, right?\nLippard (2008-04-09):\nRich: Actually, I do.See this post from November 12, 2006. The Newark Star-Ledger and the Jersey Journal picked it up on November 15, The Observer (Kearny's paper) picked it up on November 22, and the New York Times first covered it on December 18.There are currently 18 posts in the \"David Paskiewicz\" category on this blog--we not only covered it first (thanks to an email from Matthew LaClair's father that was forwarded to the SKEPTIC mailing list), we covered it in more detail than anybody else.\nTrott (2008-04-09):\nWow! How did I not know that?!\nEinzige (2008-04-09):\nHey! Guess what!Just as I predicted, the incompetent boob David Paszkiewicz is still a history teacher at Kearny High School.What a school system!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/faith-based-us-history-text-exposed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Center for Inquiry has released \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/CFI_Textbook_Critique.pdf\"\u003ea detailed critique\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) of a U.S. history textbook by James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio, Jr., pointing out that it falsely claims that there\u0026rsquo;s doubt about the very existence of the greenhouse effect, falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned prayer in schools (as opposed to teacher-led prayer), falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLawrence v. Texas\u003c/span\u003e overturned Texas\u0026rsquo;s anti-sodomy law on a close 5-4 vote (it was 6-3), falsely claims that the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution were motivated by worries about original sin, and so on.  (A summary can be found \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/04/07/center-for-inquiry-critiques-civics-textbook/\"\u003eat the Friendly Atheist blog\u003c/a\u003e.)  Wilson is Ronald W. Reagan Professor for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute; Dilulio was the first head of George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe problems in this textbook \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/04/09/climate-textbook/\"\u003ewere uncovered by Matthew LaClair of Kearny, NJ\u003c/a\u003e, who previously received a lot of press coverage for his exposure of a U.S. history teacher at his school, David Paskiewicz, who was using the classroom as a forum for proselytizing evangelical Christianity.  That story broke in the mainstream media only after being publicized on this blog.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Faith-based U.S. history text exposed"},{"content":"\nRoger Friedman at Fox News reviews \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) \u0026ldquo;expose\u0026rdquo; of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But it does show that Stein, who’s carved out a career selling eye drops in commercials and amusing us on sitcoms, is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck.Looks like \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s positive reviews are limited to those by right-wing political talk show hosts on whose shows they\u0026rsquo;re buying advertising.\nGreg Wright (2008-04-09):\nKinda surprising for Fox News, though, isn't it? So much for groupthink and Kool-Aid.\nLippard (2008-04-09):\nFox News online seems to have a greater diversity of viewpoints than Fox News on television, but a single op-ed piece (not a news report) doesn't demonstrate a lack of bias at Fox News.E.g., compare this YouTube video on Fox News's coverage of the war in Iraq.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/fox-news-review-of-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRoger Friedman at Fox News \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348468,00.html\"\u003ereviews \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) \u0026ldquo;expose\u0026rdquo; of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But it does show that Stein, who’s carved out a career selling eye drops in commercials and amusing us on sitcoms, is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eLooks like \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s positive reviews are limited to those by right-wing political talk show hosts on whose shows they\u0026rsquo;re buying advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox News review of \"Expelled\""},{"content":"John Lynch brought my attention this morning to HB 2713, the student religious freedom act, in the Arizona legislature. At first I thought this was like the \u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; bills being pushed by the Discovery Institute (which I believe is also something that the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is being used to push), but those are about defending the ability of teacher to promote nonsense in the classroom, while this bill only defends student-initiated religious expression.\nThere is one serious problem with the bill, however, and that is its conflation of religious and secular viewpoints: \u0026ldquo;Each public educational institution shall permit religious viewpoints in the same manner and to the same extent as secular viewpoints are permitted on the same subject matter.\u0026rdquo; If instead, this said merely that if one religious viewpoint is permitted, all religious viewpoints must be permitted, I\u0026rsquo;d have no problem with it. But this wording has the effect that where you can discuss anything at all, you can also discuss religion. In a science classroom, since science is secular, you can talk about religion. In a math classroom, since math is secular, you can talk about religion. That\u0026rsquo;s ludicrous.\nI think the bill will die, if not for the good reason I\u0026rsquo;ve just given, for the reason that it does also open things up to all religions and to anti-religion. If students are permitted to wear shirts with a Christian message, they must also be permitted to wear shirts promoting an Islamic message, an atheist message, a Satanic message, or a Pastafarian message. Likewise, if students are permitted to use personal viewpoints in writing an essay or giving a presentation to the class, they may use their viewpoints on religious matters as well. Again, atheism would have to be as welcome as Christianity. (And it\u0026rsquo;s not that atheism is a religion, only that it is a viewpoint on religious matters.)\nI suspect the authors and sponsors of the bill\u0026ndash;State Representatives Clark, Anderson, Barto, Crump, Groe, Pearce, Robson, Tobin, and Yarbrough, and by State Senators Gorman, Gould, L. Gray, Harper, and Johnson\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t really want that consequence.\nI think a few supportive emails are in order, thanking them for endorsing the right of students to argue for atheism in the classroom (and Satanism, and Scientology, a religion that Johnson, Gray, Gorman, and Pearce are familiar with, since they\u0026rsquo;ve previously sponsored bills on behalf of the religion).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/student-religious-freedom-act.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Lynch brought my attention this morning to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/48leg/2r/bills/hb2713p.htm\"\u003eHB 2713, the student religious freedom act\u003c/a\u003e, in the Arizona legislature.  At first I thought this was like the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/another_academic_freedom_bill.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;academic freedom\u0026rdquo; bills\u003c/a\u003e being pushed by the Discovery Institute (which I believe is also something that the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; is being used to push), but those are about defending the ability of teacher to promote nonsense in the classroom, while this bill only defends student-initiated religious expression.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is one serious problem with the bill, however, and that is its conflation of religious and secular viewpoints:  \u0026ldquo;Each public educational institution shall permit religious viewpoints in the same manner and to the same extent as secular viewpoints are permitted on the same subject matter.\u0026rdquo;  If instead, this said merely that if one religious viewpoint is permitted, all religious viewpoints must be permitted, I\u0026rsquo;d have no problem with it.  But this wording has the effect that where you can discuss anything at all, you can also discuss religion.  In a science classroom, since science is secular, you can talk about religion.  In a math classroom, since math is secular, you can talk about religion.  That\u0026rsquo;s ludicrous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think the bill will die, if not for the good reason I\u0026rsquo;ve just given, for the reason that it does also open things up to all religions and to anti-religion.  If students are permitted to wear shirts with a Christian message, they must also be permitted to wear shirts promoting an Islamic message, an atheist message, a Satanic message, or a Pastafarian message. Likewise, if students are permitted to use personal viewpoints in writing an essay or giving a presentation to the class, they may use their viewpoints on religious matters as well. Again, atheism would have to be as welcome as Christianity.  (And it\u0026rsquo;s not that atheism is a religion, only that it is a viewpoint on religious matters.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect the authors and sponsors of the bill\u0026ndash;State Representatives Clark, Anderson, Barto, Crump, Groe, Pearce, Robson, Tobin, and Yarbrough, and by State Senators Gorman, Gould, L. Gray, Harper, and Johnson\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t really want that consequence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think a few supportive emails are in order, thanking them for endorsing the right of students to argue for atheism in the classroom (and Satanism, and Scientology, a religion that Johnson, Gray, Gorman, and Pearce are familiar with, \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003esince they\u0026rsquo;ve previously sponsored bills on behalf of the religion\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Student religious freedom act"},{"content":"Orac discusses a recent study in the Clinical Journal of Pain that compared the effects of \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; acupuncture (with real needles) to fake acupuncture (with needles with blunt ends that retract after hitting the skin, and do not puncture it) on test subjects between 2001 and 2003.\nThe result:\nBoth treatment groups, \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; and sham acupuncture, experienced decreases in the intensity of arm pain, arm symptoms, and noted improvement in arm function. However, patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; acupuncture group in the intensity of arm pain and just as much in measures of arm function and grip strength. The difference between the two groups was not sustained at a followup visit one month after the treatment ended, although the improvement in both groups remained detectable compared to baseline. Indeed, arm pain and arm symptoms scores declined faster in the sham compared with the \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; acupuncture group. In this study, which was the largest, best-designed trial thus far for acupuncture for arm pain due to RSI, sham acupuncture was better than \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; acupuncture!\nRead the details at Orac\u0026rsquo;s Respectful Insolence blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/fake-acupuncture-works-better-than-real.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrac \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/sham_acupuncture_is_better_than_true_acu.php\"\u003ediscusses a recent study in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eClinical Journal of Pain\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e that compared the effects of \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; acupuncture (with real needles) to fake acupuncture (with needles with blunt ends that retract after hitting the skin, and do not puncture it) on test subjects between 2001 and 2003.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe result:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBoth treatment groups, \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; and sham acupuncture, experienced decreases in the intensity of arm pain, arm symptoms, and noted improvement in arm function. However, patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; acupuncture group in the intensity of arm pain and just as much in measures of arm function and grip strength. The difference between the two groups was not sustained at a followup visit one month after the treatment ended, although the improvement in both groups remained detectable compared to baseline. Indeed, arm pain and arm symptoms scores declined faster in the sham compared with the \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; acupuncture group.  \u003cp\u003eIn this study, which was the largest, best-designed trial thus far for acupuncture for arm pain due to RSI, sham acupuncture was better than \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; acupuncture!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fake acupuncture works better than real acupuncture"},{"content":"Marco Cova looks in some detail at the contents of some phishing scam kits targeting particular banks that were released to the public recently. These sorts of kits, containing web code, are ordinarily sold to scammers, but these were given away free. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t out of generosity, but part of a larger scam\u0026ndash;the code was written using a variety of obfuscation techniques so that the unwary script kiddie who modifies it to send the captured information to their own email address will not receive it. Instead, that information is sent to various email addresses presumably controlled by the distributor of the scammer-scamming phishing kits.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/scammers-scamming-scammers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMarco Cova \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/%7Emarco/blog/2008/04/02/#scam-kits-analysis\"\u003elooks in some detail at the contents of some phishing scam kits targeting particular banks\u003c/a\u003e that were released to the public recently.  These sorts of kits, containing web code, are ordinarily sold to scammers, but these were given away free.  It wasn\u0026rsquo;t out of generosity, but part of a larger scam\u0026ndash;the code was written using a variety of obfuscation techniques so that the unwary script kiddie who modifies it to send the captured information to their own email address will not receive it.  Instead, that information is sent to various email addresses presumably controlled by the distributor of the scammer-scamming phishing kits.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scammers scamming scammers"},{"content":"Alonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist, has come up with an interesting suggestion\u0026ndash;rather than purchase a ticket to go see \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; purchase a \u0026ldquo;truth ticket\u0026rdquo; by sending a contribution equal in value to a movie ticket ($10 is the suggested number) to the National Center for Science Education. (Click that link, and select \u0026ldquo;donation only.\u0026rdquo;) Alonzo\u0026rsquo;s sending 10 \u0026ldquo;truth tickets\u0026rdquo; worth of payment to the NCSE to promote good science.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll match him, and raise him 5 \u0026ldquo;truth tickets.\u0026rdquo; Anyone else care to buy a few? Pass it on\u0026hellip;\nUPDATE (April 8, 2008): P.Z. Myers compares this idea to carbon offsets.\nThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb has also reported on the idea.\nUPDATE: BTW, if you must see the film in the theater (my wife and I rarely go to the movies anymore, since Netflix is so much more convenient, and I don\u0026rsquo;t really have any interest in seeing this movie in any case), wait until after opening weekend. The \u0026ldquo;stupidity offset\u0026rdquo; for contributing to the opening weekend box office gross should probably be a much, much larger donation to the NCSE\u0026ndash;better to make a smaller donation and see it the following week, if you must.\nKen McKnight (2008-04-08):\nWhat a great idea! I'm in. Be sure to pass this on to PZ.\nLightning Rose (2008-04-08):\nDo what I do when I want to see a movie but don't want any of my money passed on to the movie's makers.Go to a multiscreen theatre, buy a ticket for a movie other than the one I want to see starting at about the same time, and wander into the \"wrong\" theatre.\nUnknown (2008-04-09):\nI saw this blog and joined the NCSE. I have intended to that for a while now.\nLippard (2008-04-09):\nAl: Thanks! I'm glad you've joined up!\nUnknown (2008-04-09):\nI just bought a TruthTicket.\nLippard (2008-04-09):\nThanks, Walabio!\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-09):\nI posted this at my blog with the additional suggestion that if you know someone who is interested in seeing Expelled you propose an alternative viewing of the (available free on-line) award winning documentary from Nova - Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial so that they can learn why IDCreationism deserves to be \"expelled\" from biology class.\nMike Beidler (2008-04-09):\nI was planning to wait until the movie was available for \"free\" rental via Blockbuster Access, but I ended up winning two tickets to see it. (If there's anyone in the Monterey, CA, area that would like to see it, let me know!) I plan on posting a review of the movie on my blog The Creation of an Evolutionist. In the meantime, I just might buy a Truth Ticket!\nLippard (2008-04-09):\nMike: Thanks for stopping by and mentioning your blog--I'm also a former young-earth creationist, like yourself. I also ended up abandoning Christianity and theism completely, though.\nMike Beidler (2008-04-10):\nJim,Would love to hear/read about your journey. Are there any particular links to posts that detail the reasons behind abandoning theism?\nLippard (2008-04-10):\nMike: I haven't really blogged about that, or written anything besides my contribution to Ed Babinski's book, Leaving the Fold. The short answer is that I did a whole lot of reading, discussing, and debating, and ended up becoming a philosophy major and writing a pamphlet which alternated between the titles \"Fundamentalism is Nonsense\" and \"Some Reasons Not To Be A Christian.\" It ended up sticking with the former title, and reaching 57 pages in length when I last touched it in 1986. Unfortunately, it no longer exists in electronic form, though a friend of mine was planning a project to OCR scan it.\nEinzige (2008-04-10):\nI've still got my hard copy - I think.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/truth-tickets-to-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist, \u003ca href=\"http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-and-truth-tickets.html\"\u003ehas come up with an interesting suggestion\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;rather than purchase a ticket to go see \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; purchase a \u0026ldquo;truth ticket\u0026rdquo; by sending a contribution equal in value to a movie ticket ($10 is the suggested number) to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/membership.asp\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e.  (Click that link, and select \u0026ldquo;donation only.\u0026rdquo;)  Alonzo\u0026rsquo;s sending 10 \u0026ldquo;truth tickets\u0026rdquo; worth of payment to the NCSE to promote good science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll match him, and raise him 5 \u0026ldquo;truth tickets.\u0026rdquo;  Anyone else care to buy a few?  Pass it on\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 8, 2008):  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/truth_tickets_and_stupid_offse.php\"\u003ecompares this idea to carbon offsets\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/truth-tickets.html\"\u003ehas also reported on the idea\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  BTW, if you must see the film in the theater (my wife and I rarely go to the movies anymore, since Netflix is so much more convenient, and I don\u0026rsquo;t really have any interest in seeing this movie in any case), wait until after opening weekend.  The \u0026ldquo;stupidity offset\u0026rdquo; for contributing to the opening weekend box office gross should probably be a much, much larger donation to the NCSE\u0026ndash;better to make a smaller donation and see it the following week, if you must.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Truth Tickets\" to \"Expelled\""},{"content":"Last December, when Kat got her last paycheck of the year, I noticed that her employer\u0026rsquo;s payroll department had allowed a deferral $100 in excess of the IRS limits to her 401K. I\u0026rsquo;ve previously run into a similar problem when my employer\u0026rsquo;s 401K plan failed nondiscrimination tests, and I was given a refund of part of my deferrals for a prior year. Kat immediately contacted her employer and 401K plan advisor, and we were told that the excess deferral would be paid out before April 15. In the meantime, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t complete our tax return because we needed to know how much would be paid out (the amount would be different from $100, based on how much the funds it was invested in had lost or gained) and some other information in order to complete the appropriate additional paperwork.\nIn January, Kat invited me to attend a presentation at her company about their new 401K plan that they would be switching to in late February, through John Hancock. The investment options looked reasonable\u0026ndash;a wide variety of funds, including international and emerging market funds, and some index funds, mostly from third parties including Dimensional Fund Advisors. Her employer still wasn\u0026rsquo;t offering any matching funds, but was supposedly covering all plan expenses. A big plus was the availability of a Roth 401K option, which we selected to put all new contributions into. I was still expecting that the excess deferral would be paid out before or at the transition, but of course it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen. The old plan advisor said the new one would now have to deal with it, but that the old plan would issue the 1099-R form. But not until 2009, so I\u0026rsquo;d need to collect information myself to fill out a substitute Form 4852, because this would still count as 2007 income.\nIn early March, we got online access to the new 401K, and we were in for a surprise. I\u0026rsquo;m used to accounting for all of our investments using Quicken, which allows downloading of stock quotes via the Internet. But strangely, none of the prices reported online via John Hancock bore anything but a slight resemblance to the stock prices of the underlying funds we had selected to invest in. Rather, John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s website reported all of the funds as \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; instead of shares, and \u0026ldquo;unit values\u0026rdquo; instead of share prices. There seems to be no way to get the unit values on a daily basis, only when a transaction occurs, and then I get to enter them manually. It may be possible to import into Quicken by downloading the transaction history as a CSV document and writing a script to change its format, which I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ll pursue in due time.\nIf units were equal to shares, we were paying $2-$5 a share more than the market share price for every purchase. Fortunately, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be quite how it works, though I\u0026rsquo;m still unsure of the details since the plan advisor had made no mention of this. The John Hancock materials and plan administrators do not seem willing to explain in any detail, beyond noting that there are additional fees hidden in these costs, and that there is a benefit in getting access to A-shares of these funds at a discount. So much for the employer covering all of the plan costs.\nBut we still needed to get the incorrect excess deferral refunded so that we could file our tax return. Finally, the John Hancock site showed that a check for $97.39 had been issued on March 20\u0026ndash;but with no accounting for any subtractions of units from any of the subaccounts. The check arrived in our hands only yesterday\u0026ndash;April 5\u0026ndash;apparently delivered by pony express. The documentation with the check showed that there had been a further $30 transaction fee deducted from the account, eating away another third of that incorrect deferral \u0026ldquo;investment.\u0026rdquo; It also, helpfully, reported a number of units for both the check and the fee, something the online transaction history left unstated. It didn\u0026rsquo;t, however, show how many units were taken from each subaccount. I compared the number of units that we had purchased through all the transactions in the history, compared the difference to what John Hancock is currently reporting, and found that the difference was close to, but not identical to the sum of the units that had supposedly been taken out. This was made slightly more difficult by the fact that while the site reports on the dollar total of the Roth 401K, it only reports the units per subaccount as a combined total of the Roth and traditional 401Ks.\nIn attempting to check again in more detail today, I found that John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s site doesn\u0026rsquo;t permit users to look at transaction histories on Sundays (or before 9 a.m. ET or after 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, or between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. ET on weekdays). I could still look at total holdings, however\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what kind of rule is being followed here with this restriction, religious or otherwise.\nDoing a little searching online, I see multiple complaints about extortionately high expense ratios on John Hancock 401Ks. Apparently John Hancock is the choice of plan provider for small employers who want to minimize their costs and shift them to their employees in a relatively untransparent manner. For comparison, most index funds have relatively low expense ratios. I have some money invested in USAA\u0026rsquo;s S\u0026amp;P 500 Members Shares Index Fund, which has an expense ratio of 0.19%. (Once I reach $100,000 in that fund, I can move it to USAA\u0026rsquo;s S\u0026amp;P 500 Member Rewards Index Fund, which has an even lower expense ratio of 0.09%.) My 401K, through Fidelity, is mostly in Fidelity\u0026rsquo;s Spartan U.S. Equities Index, another S\u0026amp;P 500 index, with an expense ratio of 0.09%. John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s 500 Index Fund, by contrast, has an expense ratio of 0.54%, plus an apparently undisclosed \u0026ldquo;sales and service fee,\u0026rdquo; which apparently goes to third party plan advisors and managers. That is ridiculously high for an index fund. John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s other funds are worse. (We at least intentionally selected funds that had the lowest available expense ratios of the types we wanted, which included DFA\u0026rsquo;s international, emerging markets, and small cap funds.)\nI advise that you check out the 401K plan offerings of a prospective employer and weigh them as part of your decision in taking a job there. If they use John Hancock, that should be a mark against them. And once you leave a company that has a 401K through John Hancock, I recommend immediately rolling it over into an IRA with better investment options.\nIf any readers can shed additional light on how John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; work, along with any advice on how to get more transparency and accountability out of them, I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate it. Other reports of experiences with John Hancock are also welcome.\nUPDATE (April 10, 2008): I can get per-day unit values from the John Hancock site, but only for the previous day\u0026rsquo;s price, and there\u0026rsquo;s no way to download them in an importable format except with the quarterly statements, so if I want them in Quicken I need to look them up and input them manually, or just do it once per quarter.\nUPDATE (June 2, 2008): As moneyman2424\u0026rsquo;s comment below indicates, John Hancock, an insurance company, sells 401K investment options that are actually annuities, which have their own expenses on top of the underlying equities. There\u0026rsquo;s a good discussion of this subject at the FundAlarm discussion board.\nUPDATE (July 19, 2008): The John Hancock 401K suckage continues. Their website is down all weekend for maintenance, and the second quarter of 2008 is the second quarter in a row in which there have been extortionate unexplained fees, this time wiping out all gains and then some for the quarter. There are two line items for fees, one simply labeled \u0026ldquo;fees,\u0026rdquo; and the other labeled \u0026ldquo;RIA investment advisory fee.\u0026rdquo; An RIA is a \u0026ldquo;registered investment advisor,\u0026rdquo; but we\u0026rsquo;ve received no investment advice from anyone in the second quarter, or at all, for that matter. There was a presentation from someone explaining the 401K when we signed up, but he offered no investment advice worth paying for, simply explaining the funds and offering some suggested allocations which we didn\u0026rsquo;t follow. He also failed to mention any fees (rather, he said that the employer would be covering all of the fees, which was obviously not true), failed to point out expense ratios, and failed to mention that we\u0026rsquo;re investing in \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; in annuity \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; rather than actual shares in actual mutual funds. In short, if anything he should be paying out compensation for his omissions rather than receiving a cut.\nUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Another complaint\u0026ndash;John Hancock reports unit prices to three decimal points. With every reported purchase, there are several funds where the purchase price per unit is a tenth of a cent above the reported unit price for the day. It\u0026rsquo;s just another way for them to collect a little bit more money in a non-transparent manner.\nUPDATE (July 28, 2008): CNN/Money ran a story on July 23 about living with bad 401Ks.\nEinzige (2008-04-07):\nGiven that both ADP's and Meryl Lynch's 401Ks do the same sort of thing, I imagine this scheme is fairly common. The lack of transparency is definitely suspect (aside from being annoying).At least ADP updates the unit price on the site every day, so in Quicken I can manually update the value of my account whenever I'm curious.\nEinzige (2008-04-07):\nWow. I'm jealous of those expense ratios you mention. I got curious so I checked into my Vanguard funds, which I remember thinking were pretty low, the last time I looked. The ratio for their S\u0026P 500 Index fund is 0.15%.And, yikes, ADP's S\u0026P 500 Index fund has an expense ratio of 0.70%, which makes the John Hancock offering seem a bargain, by comparison.There's definitely a down side to working at small companies!\nmoneyman2424 (2008-05-21):\nMost John Hancock plans are group annuity contracts and do not use retail mutual funds. This is the reason for the hight expense ratios and why you cannot download the info into Quicken as the NAV's (net asset values) are not reported daily as they are for mutual funds. This is a typical broker sold plan. The brokers sell these plans at \"no cost\", and bury all of the plan expenses and their commissions into the expense rations of the underlying investments. These plans generally have \"all in\" costs of 2-3%, not a good deal for the employee.\nEinzige (2008-05-21):\nWhy they don't simply raise the allowable IRA contributions to the same level as 401Ks, thereby enabling employees to bypass the problem completely, is beyond me.Undoubtedly there's some rent seeking going on somewhere, here.\nUnknown (2008-06-05):\nWe are dealing with a JH 401(k) plan as well. It's horrible, no doubt. My eyes have been opened. I hope as you figure out ways to work around this plan, you will share them with me.We have gone with the S\u0026P 500 and the PIMCO Total Return for now... but I am also beginning a campaign to get the company to switch 401(k) providers. I'm working on a spreadsheet to show TPTB how they are getting hosed by fees. Hopefully it will be a good sales tool. We'll see.For further commiseration, You can reach me at rowofducks-at-comcast-dot-net- Ducks\nLippard (2009-07-29):\nsundayline: Since you have no employer match, you\u0026#39;re better off first maxing out ($5,000) an IRA or Roth IRA, where you can choose index funds with low expense ratios. To reach your current 15% figure, you then would only need to contribute 3.8% to your 401K. I'd strongly consider a Roth IRA\u0026ndash;although it lacks the income deferral/tax avoidance now, it will yield tax-free income at retirement. Since you're only 28, it will have a long time to make gains that will all be tax-free for you.\nNote that I'm not a financial advisor and this is solely my nonprofessional opinion.\nEinzige (2009-07-30):\nI second Jim\u0026#39;s comment (and I am also not a financial advisor). As I mentioned before, Vanguard has excellent expense ratios for the funds in their IRAs.\nAs to your 401k, I'd imagine they have at least 1 index fund in their menu of funds, and I imagine it's fee percentage is pretty low. Since you're presumably a long way from retirement, an index fund is going to be your best bet for the next few years.\nRealist777 (2009-11-19):\nEinzige, the expense ratio you are seeing for the S\u0026amp;P 500 Index fund is the total expense for that investment. Since ADP offers mutual funds on their platform, you aren\u0026#39;t comparing apples to apples. As the blog mentions, John Hancock plans are set up as a Group Annuity. The Expense ratio you see on their website might just be a portion of what you are actually paying for a particular investment. There is an addition Asset charge (that could be up anywhere from .5% - 3%) that is also coming out. This is usually only disclosed on the contract which is signed by the plan sponsor at your company. Transparency becomes an issue with plans like this. For anyone who is wondering how to find out what their total expenses are... First off, check your 401k website, and see if it refers to your investments as \u0026quot;units\u0026quot;. If so, you are investing in sub accounts (not mutual funds), and are in a Group annuity plan with \u0026quot;hidden fees\u0026quot;. John Hancock, Principle, Hartford, Lincoln, Met Life, etc are all insurance companies and predominantly offer Group annuity types of plans. You will need to go to your employer and request a full fee schedule from Hancock. Don\u0026#39;t be surprised if they don\u0026#39;t know what you are talking about as employers barely understand the fees half the time. On the other hand, if your investments have ticker symbols that you can look up on Morningstar, they are most likely mutual funds. Fidelity, American Funds, and ADP, are examples of 401k providers that don\u0026#39;t offer Group annuity plans. You are invested in the actual mutual fund itself, and there is no additional hidden asset charge. If you notice that your expense ratios don\u0026#39;t seem to be very competitive (in relation to other 401k plans you have seen), you are most likely employed for a small company. In general... the larger the pooled assets of your plan, the better share classes you can qualify for ... which means lower expense ratios. Feel free to bug your boss about it. It may be that no one has paid attention to it, and your plan may qualify for better share classes.\nGriff (2010-06-29):\nMy employer offers JH 401K\u0026#39;s and I have opted to sign up (they only offer sign ups every year). I am only 19 years old working part time while attending college and plan on contributing 6% of my yearly income (~$9000). My employer matches $0.50 up to the first 6% that I contribute. Should I be concerned about the things that you talk about in your article? I\u0026#39;m very new to investing and this is my first retirement account. I realize that this post is over 2 years old :(\nLippard (2010-06-30):\nGriff: You are right to take advantage of the 6% match--that\u0026#39;s essentially free money. You should be concerned about the expense ratios as well--they should factor into which investment options you choose. I wouldn\u0026#39;t contribute any more than the 6% to your 401K, though--if you can afford to invest more, better to contribute to an IRA which you can put into investments of your own selection with low expense ratios, rather than contributing more to the John Hancock 401K. (Unless, of course, you can afford to max out an IRA in addition to your 6% contribution and then some, in which case the \u0026quot;then some\u0026quot; can go into your 401K.) (This is just my opinion, and shouldn't be considered to be investment advice. Consult with your own financial advisor\u0026hellip;)\nUnknown (2011-02-20):\nThe retirement plan market is full of lemons. And low-quality providers want to make cost and quality determination as difficult as possible for consumers. (By the way, cost may be the most important indicator of quality in the investment business, and they are negatively related.) There are some competitive providers out there, but the market is so difficult to understand, that the lemon providers aren\u0026#39;t losing enought business to force them to get competitive.\nThe Warrior (2011-05-27):\nI am employed at a small company that has JOHN HANCOCK for its 401K account. My question is this...I had to borrow from my JOHN HANCOCK 401K Acct....The INTEREST RATE IS 9%...NINE PERCENT ! ITS MY MONEY ! IS 9% in a 2% economy actually legel ? Is there anything I can do to reduce it or make some noise \u0026amp; hope somebody hears me..\nLippard (2011-06-05):\nYeah, that\u0026#39;s legal. It\u0026#39;s your money, but it\u0026#39;s tax-deferred money, and that has conditions attached to it. Borrowing from your 401K is like borrowing from a pension, you have to pay it back with interest, and if you fail to pay it back, you then become liable for the deferred taxes.\nMW (2011-06-24):\nMy employer also offers JK. Would it be wise to take advantage of the free money my company matches by maximizing the percentage, then doing a direct roll over to an IRA when I no longer work there?\nLippard (2011-06-25):\nIf the value of the match exceeds the costs of the fees (which is likely), then yes, that sounds like a good idea.\nFinanceguy33 (2012-03-01):\nThe problem with John Hancock is that they charge an asset fee on top of the expense ratio. They are a group annuity contract. If something shows an expense of .15% it is usually 1.15%. With Fidelity and ADP they don\u0026#39;t have wrap fees.\nadisanta (2012-04-25):\nAnyone who is interested to learn more about the John Hancock Fees, I have all the internal Fee information provided to sales reps for John Hancock and after being in the Retirement plan industry, and selling against John Hancock for 5 years, I know and have proof of a breakdown of all layers of fees associated with not only each John Hancock plan, but each fund individually broken out with the the fees based on what share class you are in. If anyone is interested to discuss, I will be happy to educate and provide information that is all 100% from there company and I only look at facts, nothing assumed. All i ask for in return, is if you are happy with my help that you consider, trying to get me an \u0026quot;in\u0026quot; to your company to propose a better solution. I will be happy to give you all info before my request back and honestly, I have no problem doing it with nothing in return. Like I said, I would like an \u0026quot;In\u0026quot; but i will not hold anyone to it. I believe that everyone deserves to understand fees associated with their plans, and also be able to use their 401k as a benefit without being mislead or scammed by these company\u0026#39;s making a fortune off of people just trying to save for retirement! My email is: adisantagnese@yahoo.com\nAnonymous (2013-12-09):\nJH 401K sub account is a total sham. You can never tell if you are receiving the dividends that you are entitled to. I am on hold right now with hancock customer service trying to find out if I recd recent divided for Royce Opportunity fund RYPNX. They refuse to tell me what I recd in dividends. Royce shows Final year-end distributions will be payable on December 5, 2013 to shareholders of record as of December 4, 2013. Distributions will be paid to all Fund shareholders who own shares on the record date, regardless of how long they have held the shares. This fund dividend is 1.64 per share. Lucky for me my former employer is terminating the 401k plan for the entire company today. Now I can move the money into an ira where I can see everything in black and white.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/john-hancock-401ks-suck.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast December, when Kat got her last paycheck of the year, I noticed that her employer\u0026rsquo;s payroll department had allowed a deferral $100 in excess of the IRS limits to her 401K.  I\u0026rsquo;ve previously run into a similar problem when my employer\u0026rsquo;s 401K plan failed nondiscrimination tests, and I was given a refund of part of my deferrals for a prior year.  Kat immediately contacted her employer and 401K plan advisor, and we were told that the excess deferral would be paid out before April 15.  In the meantime, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t complete our tax return because we needed to know how much would be paid out (the amount would be different from $100, based on how much the funds it was invested in had lost or gained) and some other information in order to complete the appropriate additional paperwork.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn January, Kat invited me to attend a presentation at her company about their new 401K plan that they would be switching to in late February, through John Hancock.  The investment options looked reasonable\u0026ndash;a wide variety of funds, including international and emerging market funds, and some index funds, mostly from third parties including Dimensional Fund Advisors.  Her employer still wasn\u0026rsquo;t offering any matching funds, but was supposedly covering all plan expenses.  A big plus was the availability of a Roth 401K option, which we selected to put all new contributions into.  I was still expecting that the excess deferral would be paid out before or at the transition, but of course it didn\u0026rsquo;t happen.  The old plan advisor said the new one would now have to deal with it, but that the old plan would issue the 1099-R form.  But not until 2009, so I\u0026rsquo;d need to collect information myself to fill out a substitute Form 4852, because this would still count as 2007 income.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn early March, we got online access to the new 401K, and we were in for a surprise.  I\u0026rsquo;m used to accounting for all of our investments using Quicken, which allows downloading of stock quotes via the Internet.  But strangely, none of the prices reported online via John Hancock bore anything but a slight resemblance to the stock prices of the underlying funds we had selected to invest in.  Rather, John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s website reported all of the funds as \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; instead of shares, and \u0026ldquo;unit values\u0026rdquo; instead of share prices.  There seems to be no way to get the unit values on a daily basis, only when a transaction occurs, and then I get to enter them manually.  It may be possible to import into Quicken by downloading the transaction history as a CSV document and writing a script to change its format, which I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ll pursue in due time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf units were equal to shares, we were paying $2-$5 a share more than the market share price for every purchase.  Fortunately, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be quite how it works, though I\u0026rsquo;m still unsure of the details since the plan advisor had made no mention of this.  The John Hancock materials and plan administrators do not seem willing to explain in any detail, beyond noting that there are additional fees hidden in these costs, and that there is a benefit in getting access to A-shares of these funds at a discount.  So much for the employer covering all of the plan costs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut we still needed to get the incorrect excess deferral refunded so that we could file our tax return.  Finally, the John Hancock site showed that a check for $97.39 had been issued on March 20\u0026ndash;but with no accounting for any subtractions of units from any of the subaccounts.  The check arrived in our hands only yesterday\u0026ndash;April 5\u0026ndash;apparently delivered by pony express.  The documentation with the check showed that there had been a further $30 transaction fee deducted from the account, eating away another third of that incorrect deferral \u0026ldquo;investment.\u0026rdquo;  It also, helpfully, reported a number of units for both the check and the fee, something the online transaction history left unstated.  It didn\u0026rsquo;t, however, show how many units were taken from each subaccount.  I compared the number of units that we had purchased through all the transactions in the history, compared the difference to what John Hancock is currently reporting, and found that the difference was close to, but not identical to the sum of the units that had supposedly been taken out.  This was made slightly more difficult by the fact that while the site reports on the dollar total of the Roth 401K, it only reports the units per subaccount as a combined total of the Roth and traditional 401Ks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn attempting to check again in more detail today, I found that John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s site doesn\u0026rsquo;t permit users to look at transaction histories on Sundays (or before 9 a.m. ET or after 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, or between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. ET on weekdays).  I could still look at total holdings, however\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what kind of rule is being followed here with this restriction, religious or otherwise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoing a little searching online, I see \u003ca href=\"http://www.diehards.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10828\u0026amp;mrr=1199707137\"\u003emultiple\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all\u0026amp;address=364x1005452#1005480\"\u003ecomplaints\u003c/a\u003e about \u003ca href=\"http://consumerist.com/351048/how-your-401k-is-ripping-you-off\"\u003eextortionately high expense ratios\u003c/a\u003e on John Hancock 401Ks.  Apparently John Hancock is the choice of plan provider for small employers who want to minimize their costs and shift them to their employees in a relatively untransparent manner.  For comparison, most index funds have relatively low expense ratios.  I have some money invested in USAA\u0026rsquo;s S\u0026amp;P 500 Members Shares Index Fund, which has an expense ratio of 0.19%.  (Once I reach $100,000 in that fund, I can move it to USAA\u0026rsquo;s S\u0026amp;P 500 Member Rewards Index Fund, which has an even lower expense ratio of 0.09%.)  My 401K, through Fidelity, is mostly in Fidelity\u0026rsquo;s Spartan U.S. Equities Index, another S\u0026amp;P 500 index, with an expense ratio of 0.09%.   John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s 500 Index Fund, by contrast, has an expense ratio of 0.54%, plus an apparently undisclosed \u0026ldquo;sales and service fee,\u0026rdquo; which apparently goes to third party plan advisors and managers.  That is ridiculously high for an index fund.  John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s other funds are worse.  (We at least intentionally selected funds that had the lowest available expense ratios of the types we wanted, which included DFA\u0026rsquo;s international, emerging markets, and small cap funds.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI advise that you check out the 401K plan offerings of a prospective employer and weigh them as part of your decision in taking a job there.  If they use John Hancock, that should be a mark against them.  And once you leave a company that has a 401K through John Hancock, I recommend immediately rolling it over into an IRA with better investment options.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf any readers can shed additional light on how John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; work, along with any advice on how to get more transparency and accountability out of them, I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate it.  Other reports of experiences with John Hancock are also welcome.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 10, 2008): I can get per-day unit values from the John Hancock site, but only for the previous day\u0026rsquo;s price, and there\u0026rsquo;s no way to download them in an importable format except with the quarterly statements, so if I want them in Quicken I need to look them up and input them manually, or just do it once per quarter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 2, 2008):  As moneyman2424\u0026rsquo;s comment below indicates, John Hancock, an insurance company, sells 401K investment options that are actually annuities, which have their own expenses on top of the underlying equities.  There\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.fundalarm.com/wwwboard/messages/225226.html\"\u003ea good discussion of this subject at the FundAlarm discussion board\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 19, 2008): The John Hancock 401K suckage continues.  Their website is down all weekend for maintenance, and the second quarter of 2008 is the second quarter in a row in which there have been extortionate unexplained fees, this time wiping out all gains and then some for the quarter.  There are two line items for fees, one simply labeled \u0026ldquo;fees,\u0026rdquo; and the other labeled \u0026ldquo;RIA investment advisory fee.\u0026rdquo;  An RIA is a \u0026ldquo;registered investment advisor,\u0026rdquo; but we\u0026rsquo;ve received no investment advice from anyone in the second quarter, or at all, for that matter.  There was a presentation from someone explaining the 401K when we signed up, but he offered no investment advice worth paying for, simply explaining the funds and offering some suggested allocations which we didn\u0026rsquo;t follow.  He also failed to mention any fees (rather, he said that the employer would be covering all of the fees, which was obviously not true), failed to point out expense ratios, and failed to mention that we\u0026rsquo;re investing in \u0026ldquo;units\u0026rdquo; in annuity \u0026ldquo;subaccounts\u0026rdquo; rather than actual shares in actual mutual funds.  In short, if anything he should be paying out compensation for his omissions rather than receiving a cut.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 26, 2008): Another complaint\u0026ndash;John Hancock reports unit prices to three decimal points.  With every reported purchase, there are several funds where the purchase price per unit is a tenth of a cent above the reported unit price for the day.  It\u0026rsquo;s just another way for them to collect a little bit more money in a non-transparent manner.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 28, 2008): CNN/Money ran \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/23/pf/retirement/Ask_the_mole.moneymag/index.htm\"\u003ea story on July 23 about living with bad 401Ks\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Hancock 401Ks suck"},{"content":"Arizona ranked #11 for income growth among the states in 2006, but dropped to dead last in 2007, primarily due to the fact that so many jobs in the state have been dependent upon real estate.\nNote that one economist quoted in the cited article expressed skepticism about this result, and attributes it instead to an overestimate of Arizona population growth by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/arizona-ranks-dead-last-in-2007-income.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona ranked #11 for income growth among the states in 2006, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/06/20080406biz-indicators0406.html\"\u003edropped to dead last in 2007\u003c/a\u003e, primarily due to the fact that so many jobs in the state have been dependent upon real estate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote that one economist quoted in the cited article expressed skepticism about this result, and attributes it instead to an overestimate of Arizona population growth by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona ranks dead last in 2007 income growth"},{"content":"An NPR story on a Hawaiian botanist\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against CERN to try to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from being turned on for fear that it will destroy the earth. This is worth listening to in order to hear Rudy Rucker read from one of his novels, Spaceland.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-06):\nThere's a James Hogan (spit) novel uses the same idea (only in that case it was a pulsed-implosion fusion reactor).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/company-sued-for-potentially-ending.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89377945\"\u003eNPR story on a Hawaiian botanist\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against CERN to try to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from being turned on\u003c/a\u003e for fear that it will destroy the earth.  This is worth listening to in order to hear Rudy Rucker read from one of his novels, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/spaceland.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpaceland\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThere's a James Hogan (spit) novel uses the same idea (only in that case it was a pulsed-implosion fusion reactor).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Company sued for potentially ending the world"},{"content":"Wesley Elsberry has been in an extended exchange with Kevin Miller, co-writer of \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; in which Miller makes it clear that he\u0026rsquo;s unwilling to look at or attempt to address any actual evidence. Instead, he falls back on supporting postmodernist claims that everything is subject to interpretation. But he doesn\u0026rsquo;t give any reasons to support his purported interpretation, and ultimately descends into namecalling.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-06):\nThe reductio absurdum of fundamentalist absolutism: citing post-modern relativism in their defense.It is to laugh.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/evasion-and-ad-hominem-from-kevin.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWesley Elsberry has been \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2008/04/06/flunked-not-expelled-and-a-big-round-of-plain-old-defamatory-speech-from-kevin-miller/\"\u003ein an extended exchange with Kevin Miller\u003c/a\u003e, co-writer of \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; in which Miller makes it clear that he\u0026rsquo;s unwilling to look at or attempt to address any actual evidence.  Instead, he falls back on supporting postmodernist claims that everything is subject to interpretation.  But he doesn\u0026rsquo;t give any reasons to support his purported interpretation, and ultimately descends into namecalling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEamon Knight\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe \u003cI\u003ereductio absurdum\u003c/I\u003e of fundamentalist absolutism: citing post-modern relativism in their defense.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIt is to laugh.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evasion and ad hominem from Kevin Miller"},{"content":"Atheist Rob Sherman was at the Illinois General Assembly to argue against Gov. Rod Blagojevich\u0026rsquo;s unconstitutional grant of $1,000,000 to the Pilgrim Baptist Church when this exchange took place between him and Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago):\nDavis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school. I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?\nI’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–\nSherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?\nDavis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!\nSherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—\nDavis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon. (Via Friendly Atheist.)\nUPDATE (April 6, 2008): Rep. Davis, like Barack Obama, attends the Trinity United Church of Christ, formerly led by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.\nUPDATE (April 7, 2008): Pharyngula has commented on this (lots of good comments there). It\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that Rep. Davis is a legislator in the Land of Lincoln, and Lincoln was the U.S. president whose religious views were closest to atheism (he may actually have been an atheist, at least for part of his life; he definitely rejected Christianity). Illinois is also the state where noted agnostic orator, Robert Ingersoll, was attorney general after the Civil War.\nUPDATE (April 9, 2008): Monique Davis is ranked \u0026ldquo;worst person in the world\u0026rdquo; by Keith Olbermann.\nUPDATE (April 10, 2008): Monique Davis has apologized to Rob Sherman, who accepted it.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-04-05):\nBut ... but Ann Coulter said Democrats are Godless.\nGridman (2008-04-06):\nI can only hope that, if that pronouncement was met with silence, it wasn't the silence of respecting another person's opinion, but was instead a stunned silence because no one could believe anyone could utter such idiocy.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/il-state-legislator-says-its-dangerous.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAtheist Rob Sherman was at the Illinois General Assembly to argue against Gov. Rod Blagojevich\u0026rsquo;s unconstitutional grant of $1,000,000 to the Pilgrim Baptist Church when \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/04/04/its-dangerous-for-children-to-know-atheism-exists-says-illinois-state-legislator/\"\u003ethis exchange took place between him and Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago)\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eDavis\u003c/strong\u003e: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"IL state legislator says it's dangerous for children to know atheism exists"},{"content":"Movies.go.com is another site that now lists \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; with an April 18 release date, and includes a poll on how good you think the movie is likely to be. With 474 votes, the ratings are:\nA - Sizzlin\u0026rsquo;: 11%\nB - Cool: 1%\nC - Decent: 1%\nD - DVD-only: 2%\nF - Vile: 85%\nGridman (2008-04-05):\nI didn't vote until after you posted the link to the vote and it saids there were only 467 votes after I voted...More expelled trickery? :-)Still 85% vile, though...\nLippard (2008-04-05):\nBizarre. It's still telling me 474.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/grade-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMovies.go.com is another site that \u003ca href=\"http://movies.go.com/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed/d942707/documentary\"\u003enow lists \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; with an April 18 release date\u003c/a\u003e, and includes a poll on how good you think the movie is likely to be.  With 474 votes, the ratings are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA - Sizzlin\u0026rsquo;:  11%\u003cbr /\u003eB - Cool:  1%\u003cbr /\u003eC - Decent: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eD - DVD-only: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eF - Vile: 85%\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGridman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI didn't vote until after you posted the link to the vote and it saids there were only 467 votes after I voted...\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eMore expelled trickery?  :-)\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eStill 85% vile, though...\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Grade \"Expelled\""},{"content":"A bill in the Arizona legislature to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (which failed via initiative petition in 2006, being rejected by voters) died in the state House after it was similarly amended to ban domestic partner benefits. That\u0026rsquo;s the same reason the initiative, Proposition 107, failed.\nHistorical Comments Tim and Louie (2008-04-07):\nHurray!!! Finally some good news for us minority LGBT Arizonans! A far cry from other states' progress on LGBT equality, but progress nonetheless.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/arizona-bill-to-ban-gay-marriage-fails.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA bill in the Arizona legislature to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (which failed via initiative petition in 2006, being rejected by voters) \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/03/20080403marriage-measure0403-ON.html\"\u003edied in the state House after it was similarly amended to ban domestic partner benefits\u003c/a\u003e.  That\u0026rsquo;s the same reason the initiative, \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003eProposition 107\u003c/a\u003e, failed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eTim and Louie\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHurray!!! Finally some good news for us minority LGBT Arizonans! A far cry from other states' progress on LGBT equality, but progress nonetheless.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona bill to ban gay marriage fails"},{"content":"\nFelix Salmon at Portfolio.com offers an interesting review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from a non-scientist.\nRobert McHenry at the Encyclopedia Brittanica looks at some of the arguments of \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\nAnd you can find more information at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo; web page.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/more-expelled-dishonesty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/banner-thumb-125x35.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFelix Salmon at Portfolio.com offers \u003ca href=\"http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/04/03/ben-stein-watch-expelled-edition\"\u003ean interesting review of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; from a non-scientist\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRobert McHenry at the Encyclopedia Brittanica \u003ca href=\"http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/02/how-low-can-ben-stein-go/\"\u003elooks at some of the arguments of \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd you can find more information at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e web page.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More reviews of \"Expelled\""},{"content":"Mike Gravel has dropped out of the Democratic Party process and joined the Libertarian Party process seeking its nomination for president. Here\u0026rsquo;s his latest, uh, \u0026ldquo;campaign video\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;\n(Via Huffington Post.)\nHistorical Comments Michael Norton (2008-04-05):\nWow. That looks very slickly produced--except for his voice overs. Those look like they were done using home equipment.\nEinzige (2008-04-07):\nMike Gravel should be our president.I firmly believe this.We need a surrealist in the white house.\nThe Amiable Atheist (2008-04-09):\nstrange and comical.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/mike-gravel-helter-skelter-video.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Gravel has dropped out of the Democratic Party process and joined the Libertarian Party process seeking its nomination for president.  Here\u0026rsquo;s his latest, uh, \u0026ldquo;campaign video\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/02/campaign-adwatch-mike-gr_n_94623.html\"\u003eHuffington Post\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-035424870220998506 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/bA2LgJviH9w\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/bA2LgJviH9w\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/bA2LgJviH9w\u0026amp;hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMichael Norton\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-04-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWow. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThat looks very slickly produced--except for his voice overs. Those look like they were done using home equipment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mike Gravel \"Helter Skelter\" video"},{"content":"A 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled \u0026ldquo;Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States\u0026rdquo; stated that the Fourth Amendment\u0026rsquo;s prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism. The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that \u0026ldquo;Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.\u0026quot;\nOn Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo.\nThe March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. That memo asserts that the President has the right to authorize torture in violation of criminal law:\nIf a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. \u0026hellip; In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch\u0026rsquo;s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.The fact that Bush wasn\u0026rsquo;t impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve not been reading TPM lately.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-04-05):\nIt's a sign of how eroded democracy is that he has not been impeached.Incidentally, I randomly flipped to Fox News yesterday and saw Oliver North interviewing Michael Ledeen. I would also say it's a sign of how American political discourse has become that you can turn to a \"news\" channel and see to known liars (one criminally convicted) who helped wage an illegal war in defiance of the United States Congress chatting it up.I also think in a sane political environment Mukasey would be impeached immediately for his lies about 9/11 and FISA.\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-05):\n\"of how perverse American political discourse has become...\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-04-05):\nBy the way, Check out the Nexis break down on media coverage.I'd recommend reading Greenwald's blog on a regular basis. His coverage of these issues is top notch.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/bush-4th-amendment-doesnt-apply-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled \u0026ldquo;Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States\u0026rdquo; stated that \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/04/memo_justified_warrantless_sur.php\"\u003ethe Fourth Amendment\u0026rsquo;s prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations\u003c/a\u003e on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism.  The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that \u0026ldquo;Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.  That memo \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/34747prs20080401.html\"\u003easserts that the President has the right to authorize torture\u003c/a\u003e in violation of criminal law:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. \u0026hellip; In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch\u0026rsquo;s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe fact that Bush wasn\u0026rsquo;t impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve not been reading TPM lately.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush:  4th Amendment doesn't apply to domestic military operations"},{"content":"Science Blogger (and 2007 Arizona Professor of the Year) John Lynch signed up for the Tempe screening of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; which was supposed to occur at 7 p.m. last night. He received an email on April 2 telling him that it had been cancelled.\nBut it wasn\u0026rsquo;t cancelled\u0026ndash;it was just moved to 6 p.m. (as Lynch had been informed in an earlier email), and went on at Arizona Mills Mall as planned. Apparently the producers just decided to screen out some of the prospective attendees by lying to them, and professors who win awards for the excellence of their teaching are considered undesirables. Lynch noted that others were cc\u0026rsquo;d on both of the notices he received, and that while those with email addresses containing names like \u0026ldquo;boughtbythecross,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;homeschoolma,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;covenant-dad\u0026rdquo; apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t receive the bogus cancellation notice.\nLynch\u0026rsquo;s post has links to some comments containing reports of the event from those who still managed to attend.\nUPDATE: In Louisville, Kentucky, they also claimed that a screening was cancelled, but a screening for students and staff at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary did take place on the appointed date, and the schedule of events shows the screening as having taken place. Again, \u0026ldquo;undesirables\u0026rdquo; were screened out and not informed of the change in venue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/more-expelled-dishonesty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScience Blogger (and \u003ca href=\"http://asunews.asu.edu/20071129_lynch\"\u003e2007 Arizona Professor of the Year\u003c/a\u003e) John Lynch signed up for the Tempe screening of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; which was supposed to occur at 7 p.m. last night.  He \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_in_tempe_the_final_co.php\"\u003ereceived an email on April 2\u003c/a\u003e telling him that it had been cancelled.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut it wasn\u0026rsquo;t cancelled\u0026ndash;it was just moved to 6 p.m. (as \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/03/even_m7pmore_on_expelled_in_te.php\"\u003eLynch had been informed in an earlier email\u003c/a\u003e), and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_in_tempe_the_expected.php\"\u003ewent on at Arizona Mills Mall as planned\u003c/a\u003e.  Apparently the producers just decided to screen out some of the prospective attendees by lying to them, and professors who win awards for the excellence of their teaching are considered undesirables.  Lynch noted that others were cc\u0026rsquo;d on both of the notices he received, and that while those with email addresses containing names like \u0026ldquo;boughtbythecross,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;homeschoolma,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;covenant-dad\u0026rdquo; apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t receive the bogus cancellation notice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLynch\u0026rsquo;s post has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/04/expelled_in_tempe_the_expected.php\"\u003elinks to some comments containing reports of the event\u003c/a\u003e from those who still managed to attend.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  In Louisville, Kentucky, they also claimed that a screening was cancelled, but \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/they_just_keep_lying.php#comment-819945\"\u003ea screening for students and staff at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary did take place\u003c/a\u003e on the appointed date, and the schedule of events shows the screening as having taken place.  Again, \u0026ldquo;undesirables\u0026rdquo; were screened out and not informed of the change in venue.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More \"Expelled\" dishonesty"},{"content":"An interesting series of captioned photographs of people shortly before and shortly after their deaths (all of people who knew they were terminally ill). Most seem to have come to terms with their impending end, but sad are those like Gerda Strech (photos 13-14), who felt she was cheated out of a long-earned retirement, and Roswitha Pacholleck (photos 15-16), who was unhappy until she became terminally ill, only to enjoy every day of her life as she was dying. She vowed that she would volunteer in a hospice if she managed to survive her cancer.\nThe fact is, we\u0026rsquo;re all already terminal cases. Don\u0026rsquo;t wait until life is near its end to start living it.\n(Also via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/life-before-death.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn interesting \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401\"\u003eseries of captioned photographs of people shortly before and shortly after their deaths\u003c/a\u003e (all of people who knew they were terminally ill).  Most seem to have come to terms with their impending end, but sad are those like Gerda Strech (photos 13-14), who felt she was cheated out of a long-earned retirement, and Roswitha Pacholleck (photos 15-16), who was unhappy until she became terminally ill, only to enjoy every day of her life as she was dying.  She vowed that she would volunteer in a hospice if she managed to survive her cancer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe fact is, we\u0026rsquo;re all already terminal cases.  Don\u0026rsquo;t wait until life is near its end to start living it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/01/afternoon-links-6/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Life Before Death"},{"content":"Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackelton\u0026rsquo;s Antarctic campsite cabins at Cape Evans on Ross Island have been sitting there since 1913 and 1908, respectively, and are still intact and remarkably well preserved. The Fogonazos blog has the photos.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/interesting-photos-of-abandoned.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRobert F. Scott and Ernest Shackelton\u0026rsquo;s Antarctic campsite cabins at Cape Evans on Ross Island have been sitting there since 1913 and 1908, respectively, and are still intact and remarkably well preserved.  The \u003ca href=\"http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2008/03/scott-and-shackletons-abandoned-huts-in.html\"\u003eFogonazos blog has the photos\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/01/afternoon-links-6/\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Interesting photos of abandoned Antarctic outposts"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers recently offered a critique of a biology paper published on the Institute for Creation Research website that was presented at the 1998 International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, by Mark H. Armitage, M.S., then of the ICR Graduate School and now with the Van Andel Creation Research Center of the Creation Research Society (which is right here in Arizona, just north of Chino Valley, named after a deceased co-founder of Amway).\nMyers observed:\nNotice anything missing? Right, no results. That\u0026rsquo;s a metaphor for the whole creationist movement right there. There are some photos imbedded in the methods section, but it\u0026rsquo;s like a random set of random photos of random parasites this guy found in his fish; there\u0026rsquo;s nothing systematic about it, and the photos aren\u0026rsquo;t even very good — the SEMs are way too contrasty. Since he has no data, he has nothing to evaluate, and his discussion is a rehash of review papers he has read that highlight the complexity of the trematode life cycle (and it\u0026rsquo;s true, it is complex with a series of hosts), and that every once in a while raise a pointed question, such as, \u0026ldquo;What allows this cercaria to resist digestion within the fish stomach…?\u0026rdquo;, which I would have thought would be reasonable kinds of questions for a grad student to actually, you know, study. If this had been my grad student, anyway, I would have told him to knock off the pointless microphotography and focus on one of these questions and try to answer something.\n\u0026hellip;\nThis paper is completely unpublishable by any legitimate science journal. I doubt that it could get past an editor, who typically screen out the obvious crackpottery, and no reviewer would be fooled by it; it\u0026rsquo;s experiment-free and even its few observations are incoherent and pointless. Its conclusion reveals that the author doesn\u0026rsquo;t even understand the theory he claims to be criticizing.\nMyers\u0026rsquo; full critique is well worth reading, and if creationists read it, they might learn something about how science actually works.\nArmitage responded to Myers with a sarcastic email that didn\u0026rsquo;t bother addressing any of the actual criticism, prompting Myers to completely dissect Armitage and show him further to be an arrogant ignoramus. A commenter points out that Armitage managed to get a bad geology paper published in American Laboratory in 1997 (very similar to one which he had already published in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal in 1994, but which he failed to reference in the 1997 paper), which has similarly been completely shredded by a real geologist.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s amazing that there are people who think creationists like Armitage are scientists.\nUPDATE (April 3, 2008): Eamon Knight mentioned Armitage\u0026rsquo;s CV, a version of which can be found here.\nUPDATE (April 5, 2008): Armitage cc\u0026rsquo;s P.Z. Myers on a response to an email, and demonstrates further cluelessness. The guy has actually written a book titled Jesus is Like My Scanning Electron Microscope.\nEamon Knight (2008-04-03):\nNice catch, I didn't get that far down in the Pharyngula thread. I did go and look at Armitage's CV, and was struck by the number of microscopy jobs and pubs he has had. It's striking that he seems to have dabbled both in geology (the Po-halo stuff) and biology (trematodes) -- but only enough to produce the standard ICR-style devotional material dressed up in scientifical language.From that Am. Lab. smackdown, it looks like he's not even a competent microscopist.\nLippard (2008-04-05):\nPrevious comment had nothing to do with this blog post, but was an advertisement for the Hare Krishna creationist group, the Bhaktivedanta Institute, and specifically for its newsletter, Science and Scientist.For some background information about Bhaktivedanta Institute and its founder, Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, who also founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), better known as the Hare Krishnas, read the book _Monkey on a Stick_, which you can get for $0.01 from Amazon.com, or read excerpts from here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/very-bad-creationist-research.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers recently offered \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/they_call_this_science.php\"\u003ea critique of a biology paper\u003c/a\u003e published on the Institute for Creation Research website that was presented at the 1998 International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, by Mark H. Armitage, M.S., then of the ICR Graduate School and now with the Van Andel Creation Research Center of the Creation Research Society (which is right here in Arizona, just north of Chino Valley, named after a deceased co-founder of Amway).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMyers observed:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Very bad creationist research"},{"content":"Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe scored another \u0026ldquo;own goal\u0026rdquo; like he did in the Dover trial, this time in the law suit by the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School against the University of California. ACSI and Calvary were arguing that the UC system was unfairly refusing to accept transfer credits from certain courses taught at Christian schools which used inadequate materials in their curriculum.\nBehe testified in court on behalf of the plaintiffs that \u0026ldquo;it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea . . . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational outcome.\u0026quot;\nThe judge cited this reasoning in his decision in favor of the University of California:\nYet, the two Christian biology texts at issue commit this \u0026ldquo;wrenching violation.\u0026rdquo; For example, Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very first page that: (1) \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,\u0026rsquo; is the only [position] a Christian can take . . . .\u0026quot;\n(2) \u0026ldquo;If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.\u0026quot;\n(3) \u0026ldquo;Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible.\u0026quot;\nGood job!\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/another-own-goal-from-michael-behe.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIntelligent design advocate Michael Behe scored another \u0026ldquo;own goal\u0026rdquo; like he did in the Dover trial, this time in the law suit by the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School against the University of California.  ACSI and Calvary were arguing that the UC system was unfairly refusing to accept transfer credits from certain courses taught at Christian schools which used inadequate materials in their curriculum.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBehe testified in court on behalf of the plaintiffs that \u0026ldquo;it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea . . . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational outcome.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge cited this reasoning in his decision in favor of the University of California:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eYet, the two Christian biology texts at issue commit this \u0026ldquo;wrenching violation.\u0026rdquo; For example, Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very first page that: \u003cp\u003e(1) \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,\u0026rsquo; is the only [position] a Christian can take . . . .\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another \"own goal\" from Michael Behe"},{"content":"At least for Shirley Dobson (wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Family) and the National Day of Prayer Task Force, that is. On an application to be a coordinator for the Task Force, it claims:\nThe National Day of Prayer Task Force was a creation of the National Prayer Committee for the expressed purpose of organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a Judeo-Christian system of values.Sounds open to Jews and Christians, but not Muslims, right? But when you look further at the application, you see that you must be willing to sign the following statement of belief in order to be a coordinator:\nI believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory. I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name.(Via Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, where one commenter points out that they are probably open-minded enough to be willing to accept anyone of any religion or even an atheist, so long as they\u0026rsquo;re willing to sign that statement of belief, and another commenter suggests the alternate term \u0026ldquo;Christeo-Mormon.\u0026rdquo;)\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-03):\nAs I said over at Ed's place, in Christian Right parlance, \"Judeo-Christian\" means: \"Ignoring the fact that we treated you like shit for centuries, we'll now let you be honorary Christians when it's politically expedient\".\nReed (2008-04-03):\nPerhaps the Jews for Jesus are behind this new definition?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/judeo-christian-means-christian.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt least for Shirley Dobson (wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Family) and the National Day of Prayer Task Force, that is.  On an application to be a coordinator for the Task Force, it claims:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe National Day of Prayer Task Force was a creation of the National Prayer Committee for the expressed purpose of organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a \u003cstrong\u003eJudeo-Christian system of values\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSounds open to Jews and Christians, but not Muslims, right?  But when you look further at the application, you see that you must be willing to sign the following statement of belief in order to be a coordinator:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. \u003cstrong\u003eI believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God. I believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, the atoning work of his shed blood, his resurrection and ascension, his intercession and his coming return to power and glory.\u003c/strong\u003e I believe that those who follow Jesus are family and there should be unity among all who claim his name.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/the_vacuousness_of_judeochrist.php#more\"\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog\u003c/a\u003e, where one commenter \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/the_vacuousness_of_judeochrist.php#comment-816429\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e that they are probably open-minded enough to be willing to accept anyone of any religion or even an atheist, so long as they\u0026rsquo;re willing to sign that statement of belief, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/the_vacuousness_of_judeochrist.php#comment-817760\"\u003eanother commenter\u003c/a\u003e suggests the alternate term \u0026ldquo;Christeo-Mormon.\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Judeo-Christian means Christian"},{"content":"Clint Bolick, formerly the primary litigator for the Institute for Justice, is taking on some good causes as a litigator for the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s new Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation. He\u0026rsquo;s currently fighting against the City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s unconscionable and unconstitutional multimillion-dollar subsidy to the developers of the CityNorth project, and now he\u0026rsquo;s taking on popular Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.\nIn an article posted today called \u0026ldquo;Who\u0026rsquo;s in Charge?\u0026quot;, Bolick points out two cases of apparent misuse of funds by Arpaio\u0026ndash;using RICO funds to send staff to Honduras, and sending out nearly 200 deputies and \u0026ldquo;posse\u0026rdquo; members on \u0026ldquo;saturation patrols\u0026rdquo; that appear to be trespassing the jurisdiction of the Phoenix Police Department. Meanwhile, Bolick notes:\nWhatever the rationale the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had for those actions, both diverted scarce resources away from vital law enforcement duties that fall within the Sheriff’s Office’s core duties:\n• Unserved warrants, including those for violent offenders, number an estimated 70,000.\n• Dozens of criminal defendants have missed court appearances because deputies in charge of moving inmates were told to skip shifts due to excessive overtime.\n• The Sheriff’s Office closed three regional booking facilities in Surprise, Avondale, and Mesa, forcing police officers in all 26 Maricopa County jurisdictions to book criminal suspects at the Fourth Avenue jail in downtown Phoenix. The greatly increased transportation time removes officers from the streets and induces them to simply cite and release criminals.Arpaio has a long history of showy but useless or even counterproductive law enforcement activities, as well as costing the taxpayers millions by getting the MCSO sued repeatedly for wrongful death and injury cases as a result of abuse of inmates. But Maricopa County residents keep voting him back in, because he claims to be tough on crime and is often a good self-promoter. I hope that events like last October\u0026rsquo;s arrests of the owners of New Times and now Clint Bolick going after him will finally lead to his non-reelection for County Sheriff this year.\nDan Saban, who\u0026rsquo;s running against Arpaio, is saying all the right things about integrity, civil rights, and combating waste, though he also seems to take a hard line on illegal immigration (which is another area where Arpaio has taken a hard line and engaged in some theatrical activities). He looks like a marked improvement to Arpaio.\nUPDATE (April 2, 2008): Looks like Goldwater lost round one today on CityNorth, a project where the city is giving $97.4 million in taxpayer subsidies to the developers of a shopping mall over the next 11 years, and claiming that it is for the 3,180 parking spaces in the parking garage the project is building, 200 of which are reserved for carpoolers using park and ride city bus services for the next 45 years. If the subsidy is considered to be for those 200 spaces, that comes out to $487,000 per space over the 45-year period, or $10,822.22 per space per year. The average parking space annual lease price in Phoenix is $684, and ASU recently estimated that a parking garage would cost $14,000 per space to build. In other words, if instead of paying nearly $100 million to CityNorth, the city instead had purchased land and built its own parking garage, the construction would have cost less than what the city is paying for the first two years worth of the 45-year lease on the 200 spaces. And that doesn\u0026rsquo;t count the additional $10,000/week of taxpayer funds that has been spent on lawyers fighting for this subsidy.\nThe Goldwater Institute has announced that it will appeal.\nUPDATE (April 9, 2008): The New York Times has editorialized that Arpaio should be subpoenaed about his anti-illegal-immigrant sweeps:\nFor months now, Sheriff Joe has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers\u0026rsquo; and passengers\u0026rsquo; papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen. Because he sends out press releases beforehand, the sweeps are accompanied by TV crews and protesters — deport-\u0026rsquo;em-all hard-liners facing off against immigrant advocates. Being Arizona, many of those shouting and jeering are also packing guns. Sheriff Joe, seemingly addicted to the buzz, has been filmed marching down the street shaking hands with adoring Minutemen.\nIf this doesn\u0026rsquo;t look to you like a carefully regulated, federally supervised effort to catch dangerous criminals, that\u0026rsquo;s because it isn\u0026rsquo;t. It is a series of stunts focused mostly on day laborers, as Sheriff Joe bulldozes his way toward re-election.\nThe sheriff says he is keeping the peace, but it seems as if he is doing just the opposite — a useless, reckless churning of fear and unrest.\ntom (2008-04-02):\nHi Jim; sorry for the off-topic post, but I couldn't find an email address for you.I live in Scottsdale, near Redfield (about 96th st) \u0026 Frank Lloyd Wright. My wife and I have been caring for a stray cat in this area, trying to gradually domesticate her. Recently I found her with an injury to a front paw that left her unable to move around much on her own. I was hoping it was a sprain (rather than a fracture) that would mend within a few days, but she doesn't seem to be improving. I know from reading your blog that you and your wife have a lot of experience with dog rescue. My question is this: would you be able to recommend a place for me to take this cat so she can get examined and patched up? I can, of course, find a vet in the yellow pages, but if you are able to refer me to a place that specializes in strays (or would, for some other reason, be a less expensive option) that would help us out a lot. We're about 30 min. NE of the downtown Phx area, but I'm happy to travel a bit if there's someone you would recommend.Many thanks,Tom\nLippard (2008-04-02):\nTom:Try checking out Cat Nip and Tuck and the Arizona Cat Assistance Team, both of which are based in Scottsdale. If they can't help you directly, I'm sure they can provide a good nearby clinic referral for spay/neuter as well as treatment of the injury.The organization we volunteer for, RESCUE, usually sends its animals to Blue Cross at 36th St. and Indian School. The Arizona Humane Society also has low-cost clinics that provide high-quality care, but those are in central and south Phoenix.\nLippard (2008-04-02):\nTom: I also meant to add: both of those organizations specialize in trap/neuter/release programs for feral cats. It sounds like you're already able to handle this cat, but if not, they can provide you with help on trapping her so that she can be taken in for treatment.\ntom (2008-04-02):\nJim-Thanks very much for your recommendations; I'll give both of these places a call.best,tom\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/goldwater-institute-takes-on-sheriff.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eClint Bolick, formerly the primary litigator for the Institute for Justice, is taking on some good causes as a litigator for the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s new Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.  He\u0026rsquo;s currently fighting against \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/litigation/turkenvgordon.aspx\"\u003ethe City of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s unconscionable and unconstitutional multimillion-dollar subsidy to the developers of the CityNorth project\u003c/a\u003e, and now he\u0026rsquo;s taking on popular Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn an article posted today called \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2133\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Who\u0026rsquo;s in Charge?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e, Bolick points out two cases of apparent misuse of funds by Arpaio\u0026ndash;using RICO funds to \u003ca href=\"http://www.sabanforsheriff.com/2008/blog/viewtopic.php?t=147\u0026amp;start=0\u0026amp;postdays=0\u0026amp;postorder=asc\u0026amp;highlight=\u0026amp;sid=12480507f85187616be57386d73bc6b4\"\u003esend staff to Honduras\u003c/a\u003e, and sending out nearly 200 deputies and \u0026ldquo;posse\u0026rdquo; members on \u0026ldquo;saturation patrols\u0026rdquo; that appear to be trespassing the jurisdiction of the Phoenix Police Department.  Meanwhile, Bolick notes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhatever the rationale the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had for those actions, both diverted scarce resources away from vital law enforcement duties that fall within the Sheriff’s Office’s core duties:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e• Unserved warrants, including those for violent offenders, number an estimated 70,000.\u003cbr /\u003e• Dozens of criminal defendants have missed court appearances because deputies in charge of moving inmates were told to skip shifts due to excessive overtime.\u003cbr /\u003e• The Sheriff’s Office closed three regional booking facilities in Surprise, Avondale, and Mesa, forcing police officers in all 26 Maricopa County jurisdictions to book criminal suspects at the Fourth Avenue jail in downtown Phoenix.  The greatly increased transportation time removes officers from the streets and induces them to simply cite and release criminals.\u003c/blockquote\u003eArpaio has a long history of showy but useless or even counterproductive law enforcement activities, as well as costing the taxpayers millions by getting the MCSO sued repeatedly for wrongful death and injury cases as a result of abuse of inmates.  But Maricopa County residents keep voting him back in, because he claims to be tough on crime and is often a good self-promoter.  I hope that events like \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/sheriff-joe-arrests-owners-of-new-times.html\"\u003elast October\u0026rsquo;s arrests of the owners of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and now Clint Bolick going after him will finally lead to his non-reelection for County Sheriff this year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sabanforsheriff.com/2008/\"\u003eDan Saban\u003c/a\u003e, who\u0026rsquo;s running against Arpaio, is saying all the right things about integrity, civil rights, and combating waste, though he also seems to take a hard line on illegal immigration (which is another area where Arpaio has taken a hard line and engaged in some theatrical activities).  He looks like a marked improvement to Arpaio.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 2, 2008): Looks like Goldwater \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2134\"\u003elost round one today on CityNorth\u003c/a\u003e, a project where the city is giving $97.4 million in taxpayer subsidies to the developers of a shopping mall over the next 11 years, and claiming that it is for the 3,180 parking spaces in the parking garage the project is building, 200 of which are reserved for carpoolers using park and ride city bus services for the next 45 years.  If the subsidy is considered to be for those 200 spaces, that comes out to $487,000 per space over the 45-year period, or $10,822.22 per space per year.  The average parking space annual lease price in Phoenix is $684, and ASU recently estimated that a parking garage would cost $14,000 per space to build.  In other words, if instead of paying nearly $100 million to CityNorth, the city instead had purchased land and built its own parking garage, the construction would have cost less than what the city is paying for the first two years worth of the 45-year lease on the 200 spaces. And that doesn\u0026rsquo;t count the additional $10,000/week of taxpayer funds that has been spent on lawyers fighting for this subsidy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Goldwater Institute has announced that it will appeal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 9, 2008):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/CaseyNewton/21191\"\u003ehas editorialized that Arpaio should be subpoenaed about his anti-illegal-immigrant sweeps\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFor months now, Sheriff Joe has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers\u0026rsquo; and passengers\u0026rsquo; papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen. \u003cp\u003eBecause he sends out press releases beforehand, the sweeps are accompanied by TV crews and protesters — deport-\u0026rsquo;em-all hard-liners facing off against immigrant advocates. Being Arizona, many of those shouting and jeering are also packing guns. Sheriff Joe, seemingly addicted to the buzz, has been filmed marching down the street shaking hands with adoring Minutemen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Goldwater Institute takes on Sheriff Joe"},{"content":"A very nice sculpture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has joined other monuments outside a Cumberland County, Tennessee courthouse which is acting in good compliance with the First Amendment. (Apparently NOT an April Fool\u0026rsquo;s joke\u0026ndash;although Wired\u0026rsquo;s blog posted on April 1, it was announced a day earlier at the official FSM website.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/flying-spaghetti-monster-lands-outside.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA very nice sculpture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/flying-spaghett.html\"\u003ehas joined other monuments outside a Cumberland County, Tennessee courthouse\u003c/a\u003e which is acting in good compliance with the First Amendment.  (Apparently NOT an April Fool\u0026rsquo;s joke\u0026ndash;although Wired\u0026rsquo;s blog posted on April 1, it was announced a day earlier at the official FSM website.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Flying Spaghetti Monster lands outside Tennessee courthouse"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on some recent statements by Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech about political corruption, in which he lied about FISA\u0026rsquo;s impact on wiretapping, falsely claiming that FISA law had to be violated because it would require the methods of wiretapping being used to be discussed in open court.\nThe mainstream media seems to be mostly giving him a pass on his falsehoods.\nUPDATE (April 5, 2008): Glenn Greenwald uncovers more evidence that Mukasey is a liar, fabricating pre-9/11 events that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/another-liar-as-attorney-general.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/mukaseys_lies_about_fisa.php\"\u003ereports on some recent statements by Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech about political corruption, in which he lied about FISA\u0026rsquo;s impact on wiretapping\u003c/a\u003e, falsely claiming that FISA law had to be violated because it would require the methods of wiretapping being used to be discussed in open court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe mainstream media seems to be mostly giving him a pass on his falsehoods.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 5, 2008):  Glenn Greenwald \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/03/mukasey/index.html\"\u003euncovers more evidence that Mukasey is a liar, fabricating pre-9/11 events that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another liar as Attorney General"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve put up a post at the Secular Outpost about Dutch MP Geert Wilders\u0026rsquo; new film criticizing the Koran, \u0026ldquo;Fitna,\u0026rdquo; which has, unsurprisingly, resulted in governmental demands for YouTube to remove the video and calls for boycotts of Dutch goods.\nRead it at the Secular Outpost.\nAlso see P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; commentary on it at Pharyngula.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/fitna-film.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve put up a post at the Secular Outpost about Dutch MP Geert Wilders\u0026rsquo; new film criticizing the Koran, \u0026ldquo;Fitna,\u0026rdquo; which has, unsurprisingly, resulted in governmental demands for YouTube to remove the video and calls for boycotts of Dutch goods.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRead it \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2008/04/geert-wilders-film-fitna.html\"\u003eat the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/i_generally_favor_the_idea_of.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; commentary on it at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fitna: The Film"},{"content":"Maricopa County had another record month for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales. 5370 pre-foreclosure notices sent out to Phoenix area home owners\u0026hellip;\nRemember that last month\u0026rsquo;s figure was 5048 notices, while the number of homes sold in February was only 3448\u0026hellip;\nThese numbers, not surprisingly, continue to exert downward pressure on home prices in the valley. January\u0026rsquo;s median price of $220,000 fell to $213,800 in February\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/marchs-market-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaricopa County had another record month for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales. \u003cb\u003e5370\u003c/b\u003e pre-foreclosure notices sent out to Phoenix area home owners\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08marNTR.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/08marNTR.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184474024416975602\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRemember that \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/february-maricopa-county-notices-update.html\"\u003elast month\u0026rsquo;s figure\u003c/a\u003e was \u003cb\u003e5048\u003c/b\u003e notices, while the number of homes \u003ci\u003esold\u003c/i\u003e in February was only 3448\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08marSales.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/08marSales.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184475085273897730\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese numbers, not surprisingly, continue to exert downward pressure on home prices in the valley. January\u0026rsquo;s median price of $220,000 fell to $213,800 in February\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/08marPrice.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/08marPrice.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184476047346572050\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"March's Market Update"},{"content":"Google today announced that its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have teamed up with Richard Branson of Virgin to form \u0026ldquo;Project Virgle,\u0026rdquo; a project to form the first permanent human colony on Mars.\nRead more.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/virgle-adventure-of-many-lifetimes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGoogle today announced that its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have teamed up with Richard Branson of Virgin to form \u0026ldquo;Project Virgle,\u0026rdquo; a project to form the first permanent human colony on Mars.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html\"\u003emore\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes"},{"content":"CNN reports that Arizona\u0026rsquo;s paramedics have changed their processes for dealing with cardiac arrest victims, going against the recommendations of the American Heart Association, and the result has tripled the long-term survival rate:\nUntil three years ago, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s success rate in cases like this was no better than most of the country. This past month, however, physicians in the state reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a new regimen by paramedics has tripled the success rate, to more than 5 percent. Among patients whose collapse from cardiac arrest was observed, long-term survival went from 4.7 percent to 17.6 percent.\nIn a bold departure from standard practice, paramedics in most Arizona cities do not follow the guidance of the American Heart Association. Instead, they follow a protocol that was developed at the University of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Sarver Heart Center, largely by Dr. Gordon Ewy.\nEven after cardiac arrest, Ewy said, there\u0026rsquo;s enough oxygen in the body to feed the brain and keep a person alive for several minutes. But that air helps only if someone compresses the heart to circulate blood. In traditional CPR, rescuers alternate 30 chest compressions with two long \u0026ldquo;rescue breaths.\u0026rdquo; Paramedics are trained to start by checking the airway, and insert a breathing tube at the start of resuscitation. These extra steps, said Ewy, waste precious time.\nIn Arizona, paramedics skip the breathing step. They simply alternate two minutes of pumping on the chest \u0026ndash; 200 compressions \u0026ndash; with a single shock from a defibrillator.\nThis is similar to a story Newsweek reported last summer, which indicated that giving oxygen to cardiac arrest patients is the wrong thing to do. It\u0026rsquo;s nice to see Arizona on the cutting edge, here.\nHistorical Comments Chez Jake (2008-04-01):\nThe AHA changed their tune today.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080401/ap_on_he_me/hands_only_cpr\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/04/arizona-paramedics-change-treatment-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN reports that \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/31/moh.cpr/index.html\"\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s paramedics have changed their processes for dealing with cardiac arrest victims, going against the recommendations of the American Heart Association, and the result has tripled the long-term survival rate\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e Until three years ago, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s success rate in cases like this was no better than most of the country. This past month, however, physicians in the state reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a new regimen by paramedics has tripled the success rate, to more than 5 percent. Among patients whose collapse from cardiac arrest was observed, long-term survival went from 4.7 percent to 17.6 percent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona paramedics change treatment of cardiac arrest"},{"content":"I previously noted that none of the cases of alleged persecution of intelligent design advocates in the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; come close to the case of political persecution of an advocate of evolution, Chris Comer, who lost her job at the Texas Education Association for sending an email announcing an academic talk by a critic of intelligent design.\nTroy Britain now lists some additional cases where intelligent design advocates are the persecutors:\nNancey Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary, who said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.” Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.\nIn the mid-1990s, Christian biochemist Terry M. Gray also ran into problems associated with Phillip Johnson. When he wrote a negative review of the book in which he stated that humans have primate ancestors, he was charged with heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and forced to write a recantation in order to maintain his membership in the church.Christian physicist Howard Van Till, a critic of creationism and intelligent design, was criticized by the board of trustees at Calvin College for his views. Although his career was not ended, he ultimately abandoned his faith after the repeated insistence by his critics that his views were not compatible with it. I\u0026rsquo;ve heard that Duane Gish, former vice president of the Institute for Creation Research, was an individual who contributed to attacks on Van Till to try to get him removed from his position.Troy doesn\u0026rsquo;t (yet) mention this case, but Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb has written about Richard D. Colling, a biologist at Olivet Nazarene University, who has been forbidden to teach intro-level biology classes and his book, Random Designer, has been banned from use at his school. Although trustees attempted to have Colling fired, he has maintained his tenured position with the support of the university president\u0026ndash;but apparently that support is not sufficient to allow him to teach introductory biology classes to undergraduates or teach from his own book.\nIt seems there is quite a different movie still to be made here, about religious persecution of scientists who dare to argue for evolution.\nUPDATE (April 20, 2008): Blake Stacey has put together a more extensive list.\nHistorical Comments RBH (2008-03-31):\nJohn Lynch already has the emailing list for a showing of that potential film, which includes ...folks with e-mails like \"boughtbythecross,\" \"homeschoolma,\" and \"covenant-dad.\" :)\nRBH (2008-03-31):\nRats. Forgot Lynch's URL.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/more-cases-of-suppression-missed-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/thinking-christian-blog-blocks-my.html\"\u003epreviously noted\u003c/a\u003e that none of the cases of alleged persecution of intelligent design advocates in the film \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; come close to the case of political persecution of an advocate of evolution, Chris Comer, who lost her job at the Texas Education Association for sending an email announcing an academic talk by a critic of intelligent design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTroy Britain now \u003ca href=\"http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/more-irony-from-the-id-creationist-crowd/\"\u003elists some additional cases where intelligent design advocates are the persecutors\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eNancey Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary, who \u003cblockquote\u003esaid she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.” \u003cp\u003eMurphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More cases of suppression missed by \"Expelled\""},{"content":"Tom Gilson closed the comments at his Thinking Christian blog post about P.Z. Myers calling in to the presenter line on an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; event conference bridge, preventing me from posting this comment:\nThe claims of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; about individuals who have allegedly been persecuted are bogus\u0026ndash;Gonzales was denied tenure because he wasn\u0026rsquo;t publishing research, Sternberg wasn\u0026rsquo;t persecuted at all, and Crocker simply didn\u0026rsquo;t have her contract renewed (and deservedly so\u0026ndash;she was both a bad teacher and was making horrible creationist arguments, as has been documented with her PowerPoint slides online).\nOn the other hand, Chris Comer really was removed from her position as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency for simply sending out an email announcing that Barbara Forrest was giving a talk about \u0026ldquo;Creationism\u0026rsquo;s Trojan Horse.\u0026rdquo; The ID advocates have no case of persecution that approaches that in severity.He also deleted a link that Norman Doering included in a comment, and banned Norman from his blog. Norman\u0026rsquo;s comment was this:\nTom Gilson wrote:\nThe connection between Darwinism and the Holocaust is not a lie when it is understood the way thoughtful people have presented it.\nFeel free to present that “thoughtful way” here:\nhttp://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-hitler-was-darwinist.html\nBut Tom deleted the link because clicking on the link first gives a content warning from Blogger. Norman\u0026rsquo;s post is well worth reading, as I pointed out in a comment on Tom\u0026rsquo;s blog that made it under the wire before he closed comments:\nTom: It’s too bad you deleted Norman Doering’s link to his blog post. It’s actually a quite interesting post about how the Nazis actually banned writings promoting Darwinism, and how it was creationist Edward Blyth’s ideas that led to eugenics. Norman also points out multiple passages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf which look more like something written by a creationist than an evolutionist.By the way, Gilson claims that P.Z. Myers \u0026ldquo;crashed\u0026rdquo; the conference call. In fact, he was invited to attend, as was the entire Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb blogging crew\u0026ndash;just not to be a presenter on the call.\nPhysicalist (2008-03-29):\nWell, I can see why he might delete Doering's post; Christians are likely to consider the title \"Blog from Hell\" and the atheist death gif to be worse than pornography. But your comment seems to be purely informative (and right on the money), so that's just another example of creationists sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling \"la la la, I can't hear you.\"I think Raven posted a nice list in the comments of Pharyngula a while back of people who have been fired, assaulted, or harassed for not being creationist.\nEamon Knight (2008-03-29):\nI just read that thread at \"Thinking\" Christian (note scare quotes). What do you expect from a blog that gets endorsed by Josh McDowell.Not a single thought in sight anywhere -- just sycophantic praise for Mathis' poor excuse for a flippy-book cartoon.\nAnonymous (2008-03-29):\nI've read that article from A blog from hell and just had to wonder,When Hitler ordered such books to be burned, it's obvious he wanted to include Darwin's Origins of Species book in the burnt pile as well. Great post the author gave.\nEamon Knight (2008-03-29):\nI see that (Non-)Thinking Christian still hasn't re-opened comments. Of course the only reason (according to him) that he closed them is because he wants to babysit his blog to make sure he can delete Bad Words as soon as they are posted. That's fine, in that he has the right to control his own space. However, controlling outlinks is going a bit far. And considering that Norm's blog is fenced by a Google scare-screen first, you'd think Gilson could allow his readers to make their own choice, no?\nnormdoering (2008-12-10):\nJim,Have you had your comments deleted from any other websites? I have, sites like Uncommon Descent (at least a few years ago), Ray Comfort's blog, and Free Republic.I've got a new post on the subject.\nLippard (2008-12-11):\nOff the top of my head, I can't think of any that have actually deleted a comment, as opposed to refusing to allow a comment through moderation. Another that has refused to allow a comment through moderation was Bob McCarty.\nLippard (2008-12-11):\nAnother which just came to mind is Bill Muehlenberg's blog.\nnormdoering (2008-12-12):\nHi Jim,I now have a comment awaiting moderation on Bill Muehlenberg’s blog, in the post called \"Whatever Became of Sin?\"It has been awaiting moderation for almost 24 hours.Text of comment follows:When is something a sin?It seems obvious at first, but when you think about it there really isn’t any clarity to the concept. For example, Vox Day has a post here:http://voxday.blogspot.com/2007/02/mailvox-sharpening-knives.htmlcalled “sharpening knives” where he says “killing every child under two on the planet is no more inherently significant than a programmer unilaterally wiping out his AI-bots in a game universe.” And if ordered by God, he would do it. Is such murder not a sin if it’s is ordered by God?Is sin just disobeying God?If so, then which version of God’s rules you buy into determines what is and isn’t sin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/thinking-christian-blog-blocks-my.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom Gilson closed the comments at his \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkingchristian.net/?p=1310\"\u003eThinking Christian blog post about P.Z. Myers calling in to the presenter line on an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; event conference bridge\u003c/a\u003e, preventing me from posting this comment:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe claims of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; about individuals who have allegedly been persecuted are bogus\u0026ndash;Gonzales was \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/di_releases_more_data_damaging.php\"\u003edenied tenure\u003c/a\u003e because he \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/02/gonzalez_loses_di_whines_no_su.php\"\u003ewasn\u0026rsquo;t publishing research\u003c/a\u003e, Sternberg \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Sternberg%20affair\"\u003ewasn\u0026rsquo;t persecuted at all\u003c/a\u003e, and Crocker simply didn\u0026rsquo;t have her contract renewed (and deservedly so\u0026ndash;she was both a bad teacher and was making horrible creationist arguments, as \u003ca href=\"http://tinyfrog.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/ode-to-caroline-crocker/\"\u003ehas been documented with her PowerPoint slides online\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the other hand, Chris Comer really was \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/texas-education-agency-director-of.html\"\u003eremoved from her position as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency\u003c/a\u003e for simply sending out an email announcing that Barbara Forrest was giving a talk about \u0026ldquo;Creationism\u0026rsquo;s Trojan Horse.\u0026rdquo;  The ID advocates have no case of persecution that approaches that in severity.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe also deleted a link that Norman Doering included in a comment, and banned Norman from his blog.  Norman\u0026rsquo;s comment was this:\u003cbr /\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thinking Christian blog blocks my comment"},{"content":"From an interesting Radar magazine article about the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; protests against Scientology and various high-level defections (including church head David Miscavige\u0026rsquo;s niece, which I\u0026rsquo;ve already reported here), I learn that Mike Rinder, former head of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Office of Special Affairs, defected last year. Rinder was the main public spokesperson for the Church of Scientology. Chuck Beatty, a 27-year veteran of the Church, observes in the article that Rinder leaving Scientology is like Goebbels leaving the Nazi Party.\nRinder, an Australian who joined the Scientology Sea Org at the age of 18, left the Church in the summer of 2007.\nCongratulations, Mr. Rinder. Welcome back to reality. I hope you will speak out about your experiences.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/mike-rinder-left-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/03/scientology_anonymous_protests_tom_cruise_01.php\"\u003ean interesting \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRadar\u003c/span\u003e magazine article about the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; protests against Scientology and various high-level defections\u003c/a\u003e (including church head David Miscavige\u0026rsquo;s niece, which \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/niece-of-david-miscavige-speaks-out.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve already reported here\u003c/a\u003e), I learn that Mike Rinder, former head of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Office of Special Affairs, defected last year.  Rinder was the main public spokesperson for the Church of Scientology. Chuck Beatty, a 27-year veteran of the Church, observes in the article that Rinder leaving Scientology is like Goebbels leaving the Nazi Party.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRinder, an Australian who joined the Scientology Sea Org at the age of 18, left the Church in the summer of 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongratulations, Mr. Rinder.  Welcome back to reality.  I hope you will speak out about your experiences.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/great_report_on_scientology_pr.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mike Rinder left Scientology"},{"content":"All of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Operating Thetan (OT) levels have now been leaked through Wikileaks, which may account for considerable slowness of that website. Although at the very least large parts of these documents have previously leaked on the Internet (via Usenet) back in the mid-nineties, which led to multiple lawsuits by the Church of Scientology against those responsible, this may be the first time the entire 612-page manual of OT levels 1-8 has been circulating on the Internet.\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s likely that Scientology will be filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikileaks, which is distributing the document in a single large PDF.\nHistorical Comments David Gerard (2008-03-29):\nBut will they make a copyright violation claim against these versions of OT 8? If these are verified as accurate, that'll be a major win for Scientology scholarship.\nD.A. Reaume (2012-07-07):\nIt\u0026#39;s ironic, $cientology vigorously denies that the story of Xenu \u0026amp; the alien parasites (level OT 3) that are the source of all our mental/physical emotional problems are not part of their teachings or tech, yet whenever it\u0026#39;s reprinted (in LRH\u0026#39;s own handwriting) they claim copyright/trademark over it. Supposedly it\u0026#39;s denied for our own good as LRH (bless his heart) warned that those who haven\u0026#39;t studied the prep work leading up to this level will experience insomnia \u0026amp; other problems \u0026amp; could eventually die of pneumonia if they are exposed to this knowledge too early. In order to avoid death, (aka the wall of fire) one must study for 5-7 yrs (at the low price of 80-100 grand) so they are ready to learn this safely. Those $cientologist are always looking out foe our best interest. I know that the story of the virgin Mary giving birth to a child that can walk on water \u0026amp; turn water into wine sounds odd, but at least Christians openly acknowledge this \u0026amp; don\u0026#39;t charge a cent for their services (however donations are kindly accepted). Maybe I\u0026#39;m just not ready to understand the rational, perhaps some classes at the new \u0026quot;Superpower Center\u0026quot; would enlighten me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/scientology-ot-levels-leaked-through.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAll of \u003ca href=\"http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology%27s_%27Operating_Thetan%27_documents_leaked_online\"\u003eScientology\u0026rsquo;s Operating Thetan (OT) levels have now been leaked through Wikileaks\u003c/a\u003e, which may account for considerable slowness of that website.  Although at the very least large parts of these documents have previously leaked on the Internet (via Usenet) back in the mid-nineties, which led to multiple lawsuits by the Church of Scientology against those responsible, this may be the first time the entire 612-page manual of OT levels 1-8 has been circulating on the Internet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think it\u0026rsquo;s likely that Scientology will be filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikileaks, which is distributing the document in a single large PDF.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology OT levels leaked through Wikileaks"},{"content":"[UPDATE (April 15, 2008): See the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo; website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren\u0026rsquo;t showing you.]\n[UPDATE (April 18, 2008): Further updates on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; theater counts, box office take, and ratings are here.]\n\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; was originally claimed to be opening in February 2008, and I recall seeing claims that it would be on 4,000 screens. Its website has subsequently been claiming an April 18 opening date (\u0026ldquo;in theatres nationwide\u0026rdquo;), and somewhere I\u0026rsquo;ve seen an estimate of about 1,000 screens. (UPDATE: This was said by John Sullivan, an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer, on the Expelled blog in December 2007, as the estimated screen count for a February 2008 release.) But for some reason, the film is not listed on April 2008 distribution schedules:\nIMDB April 18 releasesRottentomatoes.com upcoming releases\nLaunchingfilms.com April 2008 releasesFilm-releases.com upcoming 2008 releasesPopculturemadness.com April 2008 releases\nI only found it listed with an April 18 date at AOL\u0026rsquo;s MovieFone, with no photo or trailer. Movieweb.com lists it with \u0026ldquo;To Be Announced 2008\u0026rdquo; as the release date. (UPDATE: It\u0026rsquo;s also at movies.go.com with an April 18 release date, and a poll to grade the movie. It\u0026rsquo;s polling at 85% \u0026ldquo;F,\u0026rdquo; 11% \u0026ldquo;A,\u0026rdquo; 2% \u0026ldquo;D,\u0026rdquo; and 1% each for \u0026ldquo;B\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;C,\u0026rdquo; with 474 votes.)\nIs it really going to show in theaters at all on April 18? Or are they just going to continue with these \u0026ldquo;private screenings\u0026rdquo; and then go direct to DVD, suitable for church and homeschool distribution?\nThe distributor for the film is Rocky Mountain Pictures (formerly R.S. Entertainment) of Salt Lake City, UT, distributor for the following films:\nAkira (1988, lots of distributors)Carman: The Champion (made 2001, released 2 March 2001, grossed $1,743,863, $769,080 opening weekend)Race to Space (2001, released 15 March 2001)Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (made 2001, released 21 September 2001, grossed $5,974,653, $1,573,454 opening weekend)Manna from Heaven (made 2002, grossed $505,675, shown in 5 cities, made $5,340 opening weekend on 4 screens)Elvira\u0026rsquo;s Haunted Hills (made 2001, released 31 October 2002)Luther (made 2003, released 30 October 2003, grossed $5,791,328, $908,446 opening weekend)Unspeakable (made 2002, released 27 February 2004)End of the Spear (2005, released 20 January 2006, grossed $11,703,287, $4,281,388 opening weekend)These guys are clearly not a blockbuster powerhouse of distributors\u0026ndash;their biggest film ever was back in 1988 when they were one of many distributors, they specialize in small independent films, mostly \u0026ldquo;family films\u0026rdquo; and often with an explicitly Christian theme, and they have rarely seen their films have an opening weekend of over $1,000,000. The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C. Rodgers and Randy Slaughter. Rodgers got his start in film with Sunn Classic Pictures in 1968, which made and distributed movies in the seventies and eighties like bad documentaries about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, The Bermuda Triangle, psychics, space aliens, conspiracy theories, and Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark, several of which were written by David W. Balsiger. Balsiger was the ghost author of several fabricated autobiographies, such as those of alleged Ark-finder Fernand Navarra, phony ex-Satanist Mike Warnke, and phony faith healer Morris Cerullo. (See my 1993 Skeptic magazine article on George Jammal\u0026rsquo;s Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark hoax, which Balsiger helped foist upon the American public along with a whole slew of bogus claims.) Slaughter has had a more mainstream career with bigger studios and distributors and working for a Texas theater chain.\n\u0026ldquo;End of the Spear\u0026rdquo; was financed by Philip Anschutz, founder and former head of Qwest Communications who also funded \u0026ldquo;The Chronicles of Narnia\u0026rdquo; (and has also been a contributor to the Discovery Institute). \u0026ldquo;End of the Spear\u0026rdquo; received some extra publicity because lead actor Chad Allen, who plays the lead in the film, came out as gay. (He told the producers before his contract was signed in 2003, when he came out publicly, and they did the right thing and continued with him in the project anyway). I suspect \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will have trouble doing anywhere near as well as \u0026ldquo;End of the Spear,\u0026rdquo; which appears to be the best Rocky Mountain Pictures has done to date.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll offer five predictions for \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;if it opens in theaters at all on April 18, it will (1) be on fewer than 500 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won\u0026rsquo;t break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales).\nNote that Philip Anschutz owns the Regal Entertainment Group, which Wikipedia says is \u0026ldquo;the largest theater chain in North America\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;6,423 screens in 529 locations in 41 U.S. states.\u0026rdquo; He may well push the film, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way he\u0026rsquo;s going to allow it to get in the way of making profit, but I\u0026rsquo;ll adjust my prediction (1) to be fewer than 800 screens on the assumption that Anschutz might put the film into each of his theaters. (UPDATE: Chez Jake has found and commented below that Anschutz is only showing \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in 141 of his 529 locations, which he suggests indicates a 27% level of confidence in the film by Anschutz.)\n(For my previous comments about a film\u0026rsquo;s opening weekend, see my blog post on the film \u0026ldquo;Untraceable.\u0026quot; In the comments there, I offered this bet to the film\u0026rsquo;s insiders who showed up at my blog to defend the film: \u0026ldquo;How about a deal\u0026ndash;if it gets a \u0026lsquo;cream of the crop\u0026rsquo; freshness percentage above 70% at rottentomatoes.com (say, by a week after release, when there are at least a dozen or so reviews), I\u0026rsquo;ll agree to watch it, if you\u0026rsquo;ll agree on a percentage of below 30% to post here that you were wrong, and it really does suck. Anywhere in between, we can agree to disagree.\u0026rdquo; Needless to say, I didn\u0026rsquo;t have to see that movie, as it ended up with a \u0026ldquo;freshness\u0026rdquo; rating of 15%.)\nUPDATE (March 28, 2008): Using Reed Esau\u0026rsquo;s excellent suggestion of using the theater locator on the Expelled website, here\u0026rsquo;s the current number of theaters where it\u0026rsquo;s planned to be showing per state:\nAK: 1\nAL: 15\nAR: 10\nAZ: 5\nCA: 52\nCO: 10\nCT: 3\nDC: 0\nDE: 0\nFL: 51\nGA: 11\nHI: 3\nIA: 6\nID: 6\nIN: 19\nIL: 21\nKS: 4\nKY: 6\nLA: 2\nMA: 0\nMD: 0\nME: 0\nMI: 11\nMN: 7\nMO: 6\nMS: 3\nMT: 5\nNC: 4\nND: 1\nNE: 1\nNH: 1\nNJ: 0\nNM: 2\nNV: 6\nNY: 2\nOH: 9\nOK: 5\nOR: 6\nPA: 11\nRI: 0\nSC: 5\nSD: 1\nTN: 17\nTX: 62\nUT: 3\nVA: 3\nVT: 0\nWA: 16\nWI: 17\nWV: 5\nWY: 1\nTotal U.S. theaters: 435\nUPDATE (March 28, 2008, 6:00 p.m.): The numbers have changed a bit:\nAK: 2 (up from 1)\nAL: 17 (up from 15)\nAR: 9 (down from 10)\nAZ: 7 (up from 5)\nCT: 2 (down from 3)\nDC: 1 (up from 0)\nFL: 50 (down from 51)\nGA: 17 (up from 11)\nIA: 7 (up from 6)\nIL: 18 (down from 21)\nKS: 7 (up from 4)\nKY: 7 (up from 6)\nLA: 6 (up from 2)\nMD: 7 (up from 0)\nMI: 10 (down from 11)\nMN: 10 (up from 7)\nMO: 16 (up from 6)\nMS: 4 (up from 3)\nMT: 3 (down from 5)\nNC: 17 (up from 4)\nNH: 0 (down from 1)\nNM: 1 (down from 2)\nNY: 1 (down from 2)\nOH: 13 (up from 9)\nOK: 8 (up from 5)\nOR: 7 (up from 6)\nPA: 6 (down from 11)\nSC: 10 (up from 5)\nTN: 16 (down from 17)\nTX: 61 (down from 62)\nVA: 16 (up from 3)\nWI: 14 (down from 17)\nWV: 1 (down from 5)\nAll the others have remained the same. That\u0026rsquo;s a net increase of 55 theaters to a new total of 490.\nUPDATE (March 31, 2008, 2:45 p.m. PDT):\nAK: 1\nAL: 20\nAR: 12\nAZ: 8\nCA: 60\nCO: 11\nCT: 3\nDC: 1\nDE: 3\nFL: 58\nGA: 19\nHI: 3\nIA: 9\nID: 6\nIN: 20\nIL: 23\nKS: 10\nKY: 7\nLA: 6\nMA: 0\nMD: 8\nME: 0\nMI: 20\nMN: 13\nMO: 18\nMS: 6\nMT: 5\nNC: 35\nND: 2\nNE: 1\nNH: 1\nNJ: 3\nNM: 5\nNV: 6\nNY: 12\nOH: 19\nOK: 9\nOR: 7\nPA: 27\nRI: 0\nSC: 16\nSD: 1\nTN: 23\nTX: 63\nUT: 3\nVA: 24\nVT: 0\nWA: 19\nWI: 19\nWV: 5\nWY: 1\nNew total: 651 theaters.\nUPDATE (April 4, 2008, 7:13 a.m. PDT):\nAK: 1\nAL: 20\nAR: 12\nAZ: 17 (up from 8)\nCA: 65 (up from 60)\nCO: 11\nCT: 5 (up from 3)\nDC: 1\nDE: 3\nFL: 60 (up from 58)\nGA: 29 (up from 19)\nHI: 3\nIA: 9\nID: 7 (up from 6)\nIN: 22 (up from 20)\nIL: 29 (up from 23)\nKS: 11 (up from 10)\nKY: 10 (up from 7)\nLA: 12 (up from 6)\nMA: 2 (up from 0)\nMD: 11 (up from 8)\nME: 1 (up from 0)\nMI: 27 (up from 20)\nMN: 23 (up from 13)\nMO: 20 (up from 18)\nMS: 8 (up from 6)\nMT: 5\nNC: 38 (up from 35)\nND: 2\nNE: 4 (up from 1)\nNH: 2 (up from 1)\nNJ: 8 (up from 3)\nNM: 8 (up from 5)\nNV: 6\nNY: 18 (up from 12)\nOH: 24 (up from 19)\nOK: 13 (up from 9)\nOR: 11 (up from 7)\nPA: 31 (up from 27)\nRI: 0\nSC: 18 (up from 16)\nSD: 1\nTN: 28 (up from 23)\nTX: 75 (up from 63)\nUT: 3\nVA: 31 (up from 24)\nVT: 0\nWA: 23 (up from 19)\nWI: 20 (up from 19)\nWV: 6 (up from 5)\nWY: 1\nNew total: 795 theaters (up 144 since March 31).\nUPDATE (April 6, 2008, 12:45 p.m. PDT):\nI checked again after seeing Kevin Miller claiming that the film is now set to open on 1,000 screens. There must be several theaters planning to show it on multiple screens, then.\nAK: 2 (up from 1)\nAL: 20\nAR: 12\nAZ: 17\nCA: 64 (down from 65)\nCO: 11\nCT: 5\nDC: 1\nDE: 3\nFL: 60\nGA: 29\nHI: 3\nIA: 9\nID: 7\nIN: 22\nIL: 29\nKS: 11\nKY: 10\nLA: 12\nMA: 2\nMD: 11\nME: 1\nMI: 27\nMN: 23\nMO: 20\nMS: 8\nMT: 5\nNC: 38\nND: 2\nNE: 4\nNH: 2\nNJ: 8\nNM: 8\nNV: 6\nNY: 18\nOH: 24\nOK: 14 (up from 13)\nOR: 12 (up from 11)\nPA: 31\nRI: 0\nSC: 18\nSD: 1\nTN: 28\nTX: 74 (down from 75)\nUT: 3\nVA: 31\nVT: 0\nWA: 23\nWI: 20\nWV: 6\nWY: 1\nNew total: 796 theaters (up by one theater since Friday).\nUPDATE (April 12, 2008, 8:16 a.m. MST):\nAK: 3 (up from 2)\nAL: 23 (up from 20)\nAR: 12\nAZ: 18 (up from 17)\nCA: 105 (up from 64)\nCO: 19 (up from 11)\nCT: 7 (up from 5)\nDC: 1\nDE: 3\nFL: 79 (up from 60)\nGA: 38 (up from 29)\nHI: 4 (up from 3)\nIA: 12 (up from 9)\nID: 7\nIN: 28 (up from 22)\nIL: 46 (up from 29)\nKS: 12 (up from 11)\nKY: 13 (up from 10)\nLA: 14 (up from 12)\nMA: 12 (up from 2)\nMD: 14 (up from 11)\nME: 1\nMI: 36 (up from 27)\nMN: 25 (up from 23)\nMO: 20\nMS: 8\nMT: 5\nNC: 45 (up from 38)\nND: 2\nNE: 4\nNH: 3 (up from 2)\nNJ: 24 (up from 8)\nNM: 8\nNV: 9 (up from 6)\nNY: 26 (up from 18)\nOH: 35 (up from 24)\nOK: 14\nOR: 17 (up from 12)\nPA: 32 (up from 31)\nRI: 1 (up from 0)\nSC: 20 (up from 18)\nSD: 2 (up from 1)\nTN: 28\nTX: 80 (up from 74)\nUT: 14 (up from 3)\nVA: 33 (up from 31)\nVT: 1 (up from 0)\nWA: 30 (up from 23)\nWI: 20\nWV: 8 (up from 6)\nWY: 1\nNew total: 1022. They now have theaters in every state, and clearly have more than 1,000 screens, falsifying my prediction (1). At this point, I think my prediction (4) may also be falsified, but prediction (3) has probably become more likely since their audience will be diluted across a larger number of theaters and screens.\nUPDATE (April 14, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has finally shown up in the \u0026ldquo;opening\u0026rdquo; category at Rotten Tomatoes (and was never listed as \u0026ldquo;upcoming\u0026rdquo;), with a 0% fresh (i.e., 100% rotten) rating. The only review counted at the moment is Variety\u0026rsquo;s review.\nUPDATE (April 16, 2008, 7:00 p.m. MST):\nAK: 2 (down from 3)\nAL: 23\nAR: 12\nAZ: 19 (up from 18)\nCA: 110 (up from 105)\nCO: 19\nCT: 9 (up from 7)\nDC: 1\nDE: 3\nFL: 81 (up from 79)\nGA: 42 (up from 38)\nHI: 5 (up from 4)\nIA: 12\nID: 7\nIN: 29 (up from 28)\nIL: 47 (up from 46)\nKS: 12\nKY: 13\nLA: 14\nMA: 16 (up from 12)\nMD: 13 (down from 12)\nME: 1\nMI: 37 (up from 36)\nMN: 24 (down from 25)\nMO: 22 (up from 20)\nMS: 8\nMT: 5\nNC: 43 (down from 45)\nND: 3 (up from 2)\nNE: 4\nNH: 4 (up from 3)\nNJ: 26 (up from 24)\nNM: 8\nNV: 9\nNY: 27 (up from 26)\nOH: 36 (up from 35)\nOK: 14\nOR: 16 (down from 17)\nPA: 34 (up from 32)\nRI: 1\nSC: 20\nSD: 2\nTN: 28\nTX: 81 (up from 80)\nUT: 14\nVA: 33\nVT: 1\nWA: 31 (up from 30)\nWI: 19 (down from 20)\nWV: 8\nWY: 1\nNew total: 1,049 theaters, up from 1,022 despite a few states losing a theater here and there. (The big drop will come next week.) Reviews are starting to show up at Rotten Tomatoes; it\u0026rsquo;s currently scoring one positive review and six negative, for a 14% freshness rating and an average rating of 2.8/10.\nUPDATE (April 18, 2008, 8:10 a.m. MST): It\u0026rsquo;s opening day, and further updates on theater counts, ratings, and box office will be posted here (and won\u0026rsquo;t include state-by-state breakdowns). The-Numbers.com reports that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s opening theater count is three more theaters than Wednesday\u0026rsquo;s total, 1,052.\nReed (2008-03-28):\nTheir Theater Locator may give an indication of the screen count for the 18th.For example, there are 10 theaters in CO and 5 in AZ.\nEamon Knight (2008-03-28):\nMy prediction: Expelled won't ever see big-screen release; it will go straight to DVD in Christian bookstores. Mathis \u0026 Co will blame Big Science and the Darwinist Cabal (headed by Dawkins and PZ) for trashing it by running a smear campaign.\nRon (2008-03-29):\nUsing the theater locator, the current count for PA is 6 (20:32 EDT). Are they losing theaters that fast?\nUnknown (2008-03-29):\nNY seems to be down from 2 to just 1 now (21:23 EDT)\nUnknown (2008-03-29):\nAnd PA has lost about half its locations too, though MN seems to have gained a few...\nLippard (2008-03-29):\nI've updated the numbers... while some states have lost theaters, there has been a net gain of 55 theaters nationwide.\nReed (2008-03-29):\nI hope you wrote a script to capture this data. :^)It'll be interesting to see how this number fluctuates as the 18th approaches.\nChez Jake (2008-03-30):\nHi Jim,I just did a little research on how much Anschutz is pushing Expelled! As of Sunday night, he only has it booked in 141 of those 529 theaters. We'll be generous and call that 27% confidence in the film.\nLippard (2008-03-30):\nChez Jake: I'd say that's a fair assessment! Thanks for checking that out, I'll add an update to the post referring to your comment.\nChez Jake (2008-03-30):\nI'm back with more data. As of this morning, Expelled! is *not* being shown in 5 of the 10 most populous cities in the US -- NYC, LA, Chicago, Philly, and San Jose. Also not being shown in 12 of the top 25 cities, and not shown in 36 of the top 100 cities by population.\nChez Jake (2008-03-30):\nAnd, BTW, that means that 49.75% of the population in the top 100 cities are not being exposed to Expelled!\nRich (2008-04-07):\nWhen it does show up go to boxofficemojo.com for real numbers (including direct to DVD).\nKen (2008-04-14):\nIt is being promoted by conservative Christian in New Zealand. However, they don't know of any local screenings.The publicity company for Expelled tells me that no screenings are planned for New Zealand.\nKen McKnight (2008-04-14):\nHas anyone else noticed that whatever happens with Expelled this weekend it is going to be buried in two major news stories, the Pennsylvania primary and the arrival of the pope in the United States. The news coverage from Friday until at least Wednesday is going to be pretty much wall-to-wall politics and papists. Another marketing coup from the brilliant minds behind Expelled. However, I'm sure Dembski will soon be blogging that they meant to do that, and--like all those negative reviews--it will somehow result in increased ticket sales!\nWedgie World (2008-04-15):\nCheck out the recently launched website Expelled Exposed which discusses the many flaws in the movie \"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed\"More information at PandasThumb\nLippard (2008-04-15):\nWedgie World: Yes, I've already updated the top of this post with a link to ExpelledExposed.com. It should definitely be perused by anyone who views the film.\nBen (2008-04-21):\nJust for fun I ran a map and per-capita scatter on today's showing numbers over at Many Eyes. Have a look.http://www.palewire.com/2008/04/20/creationism-george-clooney/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/is-expelled-going-to-show-up-in-any.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[UPDATE (April 15, 2008):  See the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren\u0026rsquo;t showing you.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[UPDATE (April 18, 2008): Further updates on \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; theater counts, box office take, and ratings are \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; was originally claimed to be opening in February 2008, and I recall seeing claims that it would be on 4,000 screens.  Its website has subsequently been claiming an April 18 opening date (\u0026ldquo;in theatres nationwide\u0026rdquo;), and somewhere I\u0026rsquo;ve seen an estimate of about 1,000 screens. (UPDATE: This was said by John Sullivan, an \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer, on the Expelled blog in December 2007, as the estimated screen count for a February 2008 release.)  But for some reason, the film is not listed on April 2008 distribution schedules:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/nowplaying/2008/04/18/\"\u003eIMDB April 18 releases\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/upcoming.php\"\u003eRottentomatoes.com upcoming releases\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.launchingfilms.com/releaseschedule/schedule.php?sort=date\u0026amp;startmonth=4\u0026amp;startyear=2008\"\u003eLaunchingfilms.com April 2008 releases\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.film-releases.com/film-release-schedule-2008.php\"\u003eFilm-releases.com upcoming 2008 releases\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.popculturemadness.com/Entertainment/Film-April.html\"\u003ePopculturemadness.com April 2008 releases\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eI only found it listed with an April 18 date at \u003ca href=\"http://movies.aol.com/movie/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed/32416/main\"\u003eAOL\u0026rsquo;s MovieFone\u003c/a\u003e, with no photo or trailer.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.movieweb.com/movies/film/59/6059/summary.php\"\u003eMovieweb.com\u003c/a\u003e lists it with \u0026ldquo;To Be Announced 2008\u0026rdquo; as the release date.  (UPDATE: It\u0026rsquo;s also at \u003ca href=\"http://movies.go.com/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed/d942707/documentary\"\u003emovies.go.com\u003c/a\u003e with an April 18 release date, and a poll to grade the movie.  It\u0026rsquo;s polling at 85% \u0026ldquo;F,\u0026rdquo; 11% \u0026ldquo;A,\u0026rdquo; 2% \u0026ldquo;D,\u0026rdquo; and 1% each for \u0026ldquo;B\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;C,\u0026rdquo; with 474 votes.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIs it really going to show in theaters at all on April 18?  Or are they just going to continue with these \u0026ldquo;private screenings\u0026rdquo; and then go direct to DVD, suitable for church and homeschool distribution?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe distributor for the film is Rocky Mountain Pictures (formerly R.S. Entertainment) of Salt Lake City, UT, distributor for the following films:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/\"\u003eAkira\u003c/a\u003e (1988, lots of distributors)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262462/\"\u003eCarman: The Champion\u003c/a\u003e (made 2001, released 2 March 2001, grossed $1,743,863, $769,080 opening weekend)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167360/\"\u003eRace to Space\u003c/a\u003e (2001, released 15 March 2001)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263728/\"\u003eMegiddo: The Omega Code 2\u003c/a\u003e (made 2001, released 21 September 2001, grossed $5,974,653, $1,573,454 opening weekend)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248169/\"\u003eManna from Heaven\u003c/a\u003e (made 2002, grossed $505,675, shown in 5 cities, made $5,340 opening weekend on 4 screens)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265171/\"\u003eElvira\u0026rsquo;s Haunted Hills\u003c/a\u003e (made 2001, released 31 October 2002)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309820/\"\u003eLuther\u003c/a\u003e (made 2003, released 30 October 2003, grossed $5,791,328, $908,446 opening weekend)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277412/\"\u003eUnspeakable\u003c/a\u003e (made 2002, released 27 February 2004)\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399862/\"\u003eEnd of the Spear\u003c/a\u003e (2005, released 20 January 2006, grossed $11,703,287, $4,281,388 opening weekend)\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThese guys are clearly not a blockbuster powerhouse of distributors\u0026ndash;their biggest film ever was back in 1988 when they were one of many distributors, they specialize in small independent films, mostly \u0026ldquo;family films\u0026rdquo; and often with an explicitly Christian theme, and they have rarely seen their films have an opening weekend of over $1,000,000.  The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C. Rodgers and Randy Slaughter.  Rodgers got his start in film with Sunn Classic Pictures in 1968, which made and distributed movies in the seventies and eighties like bad documentaries about \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073427/\"\u003eBigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077224/\"\u003eThe Bermuda Triangle\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075672/\"\u003epsychics\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080836/\"\u003espace aliens\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076315/\"\u003econspiracy theories\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076182/\"\u003eNoah\u0026rsquo;s Ark\u003c/a\u003e, several of which were written by David W. Balsiger.  Balsiger was the ghost author of several fabricated autobiographies, such as those of alleged Ark-finder Fernand Navarra, phony ex-Satanist Mike Warnke, and phony faith healer Morris Cerullo.  (See \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/jammal.html\"\u003emy 1993 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine article on George Jammal\u0026rsquo;s Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark hoax\u003c/a\u003e, which Balsiger helped foist upon the American public along with a whole slew of bogus claims.)  Slaughter has had a more mainstream career with bigger studios and distributors and working for a Texas theater chain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;End of the Spear\u0026rdquo; was financed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/clark/citizenanschutz/printcopy.asp\"\u003ePhilip Anschutz\u003c/a\u003e, founder and former head of Qwest Communications who also funded \u0026ldquo;The Chronicles of Narnia\u0026rdquo; (and has also been a contributor to the Discovery Institute).   \u0026ldquo;End of the Spear\u0026rdquo; received some extra publicity because lead actor Chad Allen, who plays the lead in the film, came out as gay. (He told the producers before his contract was signed in 2003, when he came out publicly, and they did the right thing and continued with him in the project anyway).  I suspect \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will have trouble doing anywhere near as well as \u0026ldquo;End of the Spear,\u0026rdquo; which appears to be the best Rocky Mountain Pictures has done to date.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll offer five predictions for \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;if it opens in theaters at all on April 18, it will (1) be on fewer than \u003cstrike\u003e500\u003c/strike\u003e 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won\u0026rsquo;t break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote that Philip Anschutz owns the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regal_Entertainment_Group\"\u003eRegal Entertainment Group\u003c/a\u003e, which Wikipedia says is \u0026ldquo;the largest theater chain in North America\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;6,423 screens in 529 locations in 41 U.S. states.\u0026rdquo;   He may well push the film, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way he\u0026rsquo;s going to allow it to get in the way of making profit, but I\u0026rsquo;ll adjust my prediction (1) to be fewer than 800 screens on the assumption that Anschutz might put the film into each of his theaters.  (UPDATE: Chez Jake \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/is-expelled-going-to-show-up-in-any.html?showComment=1206849600000#c2956455067557025724\"\u003ehas found and commented below\u003c/a\u003e that Anschutz is only showing \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; in 141 of his 529 locations, which he suggests indicates a 27% level of confidence in the film by Anschutz.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(For my previous comments about a film\u0026rsquo;s opening weekend, see \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/untraceable-looks-unwatchable.html\"\u003emy blog post on the film \u0026ldquo;Untraceable.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  In the comments there, I offered this bet to the film\u0026rsquo;s insiders who showed up at my blog to defend the film:  \u0026ldquo;How about a deal\u0026ndash;if it gets a \u0026lsquo;cream of the crop\u0026rsquo; freshness percentage above 70% at rottentomatoes.com (say, by a week after release, when there are at least a dozen or so reviews), I\u0026rsquo;ll agree to watch it, if you\u0026rsquo;ll agree on a percentage of below 30% to post here that you were wrong, and it really does suck. Anywhere in between, we can agree to disagree.\u0026rdquo;  Needless to say, I didn\u0026rsquo;t have to see that movie, as it ended up with a \u0026ldquo;freshness\u0026rdquo; rating of 15%.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 28, 2008):  Using Reed Esau\u0026rsquo;s excellent suggestion of using the theater locator on the Expelled website, here\u0026rsquo;s the current number of theaters where it\u0026rsquo;s planned to be showing per state:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 1\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 15\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 10\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 5\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 52\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 10\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 0\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 0\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 51\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 11\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 3\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 6\u003cbr /\u003eID: 6\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 19\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 21\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 4\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 6\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 2\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 0\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 0\u003cbr /\u003eME: 0\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 11\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 7\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 6\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 3\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 4\u003cbr /\u003eND: 1\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 1\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 1\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 0\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 6\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 2\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 9\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 5\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 6\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 11\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 0\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 5\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 1\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 17\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 62\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 3\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 0\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 16\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 17\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 5\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTotal U.S. theaters: 435\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 28, 2008, 6:00 p.m.):  The numbers have changed a bit:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 2 (up from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 17 (up from 15)\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 9 (down from 10)\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 7 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 2 (down from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 50 (down from 51)\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 17 (up from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 7 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 18 (down from 21)\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 7 (up from 4)\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 7 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 6 (up from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 7 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 10 (down from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 10 (up from 7)\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 16 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 4 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 3 (down from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 17 (up from 4)\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 0 (down from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 1 (down from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 1 (down from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 13 (up from 9)\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 8 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 7 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 6 (down from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 10 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 16 (down from 17)\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 61 (down from 62)\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 16 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 14 (down from 17)\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 1 (down from 5)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll the others have remained the same.  That\u0026rsquo;s a net increase of 55 theaters to a new total of 490.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 31, 2008, 2:45 p.m. PDT):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 1\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 20\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 12\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 8\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 60\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 11\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 3\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 58\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 19\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 3\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 9\u003cbr /\u003eID: 6\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 20\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 23\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 10\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 7\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 6\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 0\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 8\u003cbr /\u003eME: 0\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 20\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 13\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 18\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 6\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 35\u003cbr /\u003eND: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 1\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 1\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 3\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 6\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 12\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 19\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 9\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 7\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 27\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 0\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 16\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 1\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 23\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 63\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 24\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 0\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 19\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 19\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 5\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew total:  651 theaters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 4, 2008, 7:13 a.m. PDT):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 1\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 20\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 12\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 17 (up from 8)\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 65 (up from 60)\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 11\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 5 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 3\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 60 (up from 58)\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 29 (up from 19)\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 3\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 9\u003cbr /\u003eID: 7 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 22 (up from 20)\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 29 (up from 23)\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 11 (up from 10)\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 10 (up from 7)\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 12 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 2 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 11 (up from 8)\u003cbr /\u003eME: 1 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 27 (up from 20)\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 23 (up from 13)\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 20 (up from 18)\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 8 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 38 (up from 35)\u003cbr /\u003eND: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 4 (up from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 2 (up from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 8 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 8 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 6\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 18 (up from 12)\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 24 (up from 19)\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 13 (up from 9)\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 11 (up from 7)\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 31 (up from 27)\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 0\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 18 (up from 16)\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 1\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 28 (up from 23)\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 75 (up from 63)\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 31 (up from 24)\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 0\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 23 (up from 19)\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 20 (up from 19)\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 6 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew total: 795 theaters (up 144 since March 31).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 6, 2008, 12:45 p.m. PDT):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI checked again after seeing Kevin Miller claiming that the film is now set to open on 1,000 screens.  There must be several theaters planning to show it on multiple screens, then.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 2 (up from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 20\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 12\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 17\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 64 (down from 65)\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 11\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 3\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 60\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 29\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 3\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 9\u003cbr /\u003eID: 7\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 22\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 29\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 11\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 10\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 12\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 2\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 11\u003cbr /\u003eME: 1\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 27\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 23\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 20\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 8\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 38\u003cbr /\u003eND: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 4\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 8\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 8\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 6\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 18\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 24\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 14 (up from 13)\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 12 (up from 11)\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 31\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 0\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 18\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 1\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 28\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 74 (down from 75)\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 3\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 31\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 0\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 23\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 20\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 6\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew total: 796 theaters (up by one theater since Friday).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 12, 2008, 8:16 a.m. MST):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 3 (up from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 23 (up from 20)\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 12\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 18 (up from 17)\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 105 (up from 64)\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 19 (up from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 7 (up from 5)\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 3\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 79 (up from 60)\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 38 (up from 29)\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 4 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 12 (up from 9)\u003cbr /\u003eID: 7\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 28 (up from 22)\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 46 (up from 29)\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 12 (up from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 13 (up from 10)\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 14 (up from 12)\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 12 (up from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 14 (up from 11)\u003cbr /\u003eME: 1\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 36 (up from 27)\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 25 (up from 23)\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 20\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 8\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 45 (up from 38)\u003cbr /\u003eND: 2\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 4\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 3 (up from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 24 (up from 8)\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 8\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 9 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 26 (up from 18)\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 35 (up from 24)\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 14\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 17 (up from 12)\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 32 (up from 31)\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 1 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 20 (up from 18)\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 2 (up from 1)\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 28\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 80 (up from 74)\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 14 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 33 (up from 31)\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 1 (up from 0)\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 30 (up from 23)\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 20\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 8 (up from 6)\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew total:  1022.  They now have theaters in every state, and clearly have more than 1,000 screens, falsifying my prediction (1).  At this point, I think my prediction (4) may also be falsified, but prediction (3) has probably become more likely since their audience will be diluted across a larger number of theaters and screens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 14, 2008):  \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; has finally shown up in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/opening.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;opening\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e category at Rotten Tomatoes (and was never listed as \u0026ldquo;upcoming\u0026rdquo;), with \u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/\"\u003ea 0% fresh (i.e., 100% rotten) rating\u003c/a\u003e.  The only review counted at the moment is \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVariety\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s review.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 16, 2008, 7:00 p.m. MST):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAK: 2 (down from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eAL: 23\u003cbr /\u003eAR: 12\u003cbr /\u003eAZ: 19 (up from 18)\u003cbr /\u003eCA: 110 (up from 105)\u003cbr /\u003eCO: 19\u003cbr /\u003eCT: 9 (up from 7)\u003cbr /\u003eDC: 1\u003cbr /\u003eDE: 3\u003cbr /\u003eFL: 81 (up from 79)\u003cbr /\u003eGA: 42 (up from 38)\u003cbr /\u003eHI: 5 (up from 4)\u003cbr /\u003eIA: 12\u003cbr /\u003eID: 7\u003cbr /\u003eIN: 29 (up from 28)\u003cbr /\u003eIL: 47 (up from 46)\u003cbr /\u003eKS: 12\u003cbr /\u003eKY: 13\u003cbr /\u003eLA: 14\u003cbr /\u003eMA: 16 (up from 12)\u003cbr /\u003eMD: 13 (down from 12)\u003cbr /\u003eME: 1\u003cbr /\u003eMI: 37 (up from 36)\u003cbr /\u003eMN: 24 (down from 25)\u003cbr /\u003eMO: 22 (up from 20)\u003cbr /\u003eMS: 8\u003cbr /\u003eMT: 5\u003cbr /\u003eNC: 43 (down from 45)\u003cbr /\u003eND: 3 (up from 2)\u003cbr /\u003eNE: 4\u003cbr /\u003eNH: 4 (up from 3)\u003cbr /\u003eNJ: 26 (up from 24)\u003cbr /\u003eNM: 8\u003cbr /\u003eNV: 9\u003cbr /\u003eNY: 27 (up from 26)\u003cbr /\u003eOH: 36 (up from 35)\u003cbr /\u003eOK: 14\u003cbr /\u003eOR: 16 (down from 17)\u003cbr /\u003ePA: 34 (up from 32)\u003cbr /\u003eRI: 1\u003cbr /\u003eSC: 20\u003cbr /\u003eSD: 2\u003cbr /\u003eTN: 28\u003cbr /\u003eTX: 81 (up from 80)\u003cbr /\u003eUT: 14\u003cbr /\u003eVA: 33\u003cbr /\u003eVT: 1\u003cbr /\u003eWA: 31 (up from 30)\u003cbr /\u003eWI: 19 (down from 20)\u003cbr /\u003eWV: 8\u003cbr /\u003eWY: 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew total: 1,049 theaters, up from 1,022 despite a few states losing a theater here and there.  (The big drop will come next week.)  Reviews are \u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/\"\u003estarting to show up at Rotten Tomatoes\u003c/a\u003e; it\u0026rsquo;s currently scoring one positive review and six negative, for a 14% freshness rating and an average rating of 2.8/10.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 18, 2008, 8:10 a.m. MST):  It\u0026rsquo;s opening day, and further updates on theater counts, ratings, and box office will be posted \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/expelled-weekend-box-office-theater.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (and won\u0026rsquo;t include state-by-state breakdowns).  The-Numbers.com reports that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s opening theater count is three more theaters than Wednesday\u0026rsquo;s total, 1,052.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is \"Expelled\" going to show up in any theaters on April 18?"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m seriously considering attending the James Randi Educational Foundation\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting\u0026rdquo; (TAM) #6 this June 19-22 at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I\u0026rsquo;m really not a big fan of going to Vegas, but it is nearby and relatively cheap to get to, the list of speakers is impressive, and it sounds like a few people I\u0026rsquo;ve known for many years online but have never met in person will be there.\nAre any readers of this blog planning to attend this year?\nHistorical Comments RBH (2008-03-26):\nIf wishes were horses ....\nGridman (2008-03-26):\nI've been half entertaining the idea, but there's a couple logistical and financial issues that might skupper it for me...\nReed (2008-03-26):\nI'll be there along with a sizable contingent from Colorado. Looking forward to meeting you in person after knowing your for more than a decade online.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/tam-6.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m seriously considering attending \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/joom/registrationpro/index.php\"\u003ethe James Randi Educational Foundation\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Amazing Meeting\u0026rdquo; (TAM) #6\u003c/a\u003e this June 19-22 at the Flamingo in Las Vegas.  I\u0026rsquo;m really not a big fan of going to Vegas, but it is nearby and relatively cheap to get to, the list of speakers is impressive, and it sounds like a few people I\u0026rsquo;ve known for many years online but have never met in person will be there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre any readers of this blog planning to attend this year?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TAM 6"},{"content":"Andy Brice decided to test various download sites to see which ones would give awards (and expect a banner to be posted by the developer\u0026rsquo;s website with a link back) to a piece of \u0026ldquo;software\u0026rdquo; that consisted only of a text file named \u0026ldquo;awardmestars\u0026rdquo; containing the words \u0026ldquo;this program does nothing at all\u0026rdquo; repeated several times. He submitted it to 1033 sites, of which 218 sites listed it and 421 rejected it. Of those that accepted it, 11% gave it an award (he\u0026rsquo;s currently at 23 awards):\nThe truth is that many download sites are just electronic dung heaps, using fake awards, dubious SEO and content misappropriated from PAD files in a pathetic attempt to make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders will be put out of business by the continually improving search engines, leaving only the better sites.He notes the following sites which wrote him to say to stop wasting their time, indicating that they actually check submissions:\nwww.filecart.com\nwww.freshmeat.net www.download-tipp.de (German)\nThe author wonders whether download sites that certify software as \u0026ldquo;100% clean\u0026rdquo; actually scan submitted software for malware, but says to test it would be unethical. Actually, something very much like his test could be done, using the EICAR antivirus test file instead of his text file.\n(Via Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/software-awards-scam.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAndy Brice decided to \u003ca href=\"http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam/\"\u003etest various download sites to see which ones would give awards\u003c/a\u003e (and expect a banner to be posted by the developer\u0026rsquo;s website with a link back) to a piece of \u0026ldquo;software\u0026rdquo; that consisted only of a text file named \u0026ldquo;awardmestars\u0026rdquo; containing the words \u0026ldquo;this program does nothing at all\u0026rdquo; repeated several times.  He submitted it to 1033 sites, of which 218 sites listed it and 421 rejected it.  Of those that accepted it, 11% gave it an award (he\u0026rsquo;s currently at 23 awards):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe truth is that many download sites are just electronic dung heaps, using fake awards, dubious SEO and content misappropriated from PAD files in a pathetic attempt to make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders will be put out of business by the continually improving search engines, leaving only the better sites.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe notes the following sites which wrote him to say to stop wasting their time, indicating that they actually check submissions:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.filecart.com/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Software awards scam"},{"content":"The Swedish Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s online personality test page has a very interesting test for valid zipcodes, phone numbers, and ages, as TheDailyWTF reports. The same checks could each have been done in a single line with an appropriate regular expression.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/scientology-sucks-at-javascript.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Swedish Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s online personality test page has \u003ca href=\"http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/NReplace-ZeroTest.aspx\"\u003ea very interesting test for valid zipcodes, phone numbers, and ages\u003c/a\u003e, as TheDailyWTF reports.  The same checks could each have been done in a single line with an appropriate regular expression.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology sucks at JavaScript"},{"content":"It looks like Vancouver, British Columbia will become the second city to host a SkeptiCamp, which will be the third to occur.\n(Previously, previously.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-03-26):\nWe're quite pleased that the first skepticamp outside Colorado is even outside the borders of the US. We've gone international!Its organizer tells me that BC is a hotbed of crankery which should make for an eclectic event that will make Colorado's look tame by comparison.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/vancouver-skepticamp.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like Vancouver, British Columbia will become \u003ca href=\"http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=109725\"\u003ethe second city to host a SkeptiCamp\u003c/a\u003e, which will be the third to occur.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/skepticamp-2.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/skepticamp.html\"\u003epreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eReed\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-03-26)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWe're quite pleased that the first skepticamp outside Colorado is even outside the borders of the US.  We've gone international!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIts organizer tells me that BC is a hotbed of crankery which should make for an eclectic event that will make Colorado's look tame by comparison.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vancouver SkeptiCamp"},{"content":" Scott Hatfield looks at the backgrounds of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers.\n* Troy Britain and Jon Voisey recount the ever-changing stories of why P.Z. Myers was expelled from \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\n* Ed Brayton shows that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; co-writer and funder, software multimillionaire Walt Ruloff, lied about Myers\u0026rsquo; expulsion.\n* P.Z. Myers responds to today\u0026rsquo;s press release from \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers.\nAnd I\u0026rsquo;ve been continually updating my original post about P.Z. Myers being refused admittance to the screening of the film; you can find the above links there and many, many more. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/more-expelled-coverage-worth.html/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eScott Hatfield \u003ca href=\"http://monkeytrials.blogspot.com/2008/03/quacks-like-duck-conclusion.html\"\u003elooks at the backgrounds of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://pigeonchess.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/contradictory-stories-from-the-id-crowd-on-the-expelled-incident/\"\u003eTroy Britain\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://angryastronomer.blogspot.com/2008/03/who-got-tickets-or-flip-flops-of-stuart.html\"\u003eJon Voisey\u003c/a\u003e recount the ever-changing stories of why P.Z. Myers was expelled from \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e* Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/more_lies_from_expelled_produc.php\"\u003eshows that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; co-writer and funder, software multimillionaire Walt Ruloff, lied about Myers\u0026rsquo; expulsion\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e* P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/lying_by_press_release.php\"\u003eresponds to today\u0026rsquo;s press release from \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd I\u0026rsquo;ve been continually updating \u003ca href=\"/2008/03/expelled-from-expelled.html\"\u003emy original post about P.Z. Myers being refused admittance to the screening of the film\u003c/a\u003e; you can find the above links there and many, many more.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"More \"Expelled\" coverage worth highlighting"},{"content":"Amanda Gefter, opinion editor at New Scientist Blogs, attended a screening of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and has reported on the Q\u0026amp;A session with producer Mike Mathis that followed. She notes:\nHe began calling on others in the crowd, who asked friendlier questions. But Maggie and I quickly realised that we\u0026rsquo;d seen some of these people before - earlier that evening, in fact, working at the movie\u0026rsquo;s registration table. These friendly audience members worked for the film? Had Mathis planted questioners?Another amusing bit:\nAnother man in the front row wondered about the film\u0026rsquo;s premise that supporters of ID are being silenced. He pointed out that a recent trial about the teaching of intelligent design held in Dover, Pennsylvania, gave supporters of intelligent design all the time in the world to make their case, but most of the \u0026rsquo;leading lights\u0026rsquo; of ID didn\u0026rsquo;t even show up.\nWhen Mathis was responding, the guy asked another question, and the producer shot back, \u0026ldquo;How about you let me finish talking?\u0026rdquo; Then, a security guard for the film approached the calmly seated man and told him, \u0026ldquo;I may have to ask you to leave.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;Does anyone else see how ironic this is?\u0026rdquo; the guy asked.\n\u0026ldquo;Shut up!\u0026rdquo; someone shouted from the back.And she ends with:\nI asked how ID explains the complexity, but he said, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t have time for this,\u0026rdquo; and walked away.\nThroughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it\u0026rsquo;s a scary place. I also couldn\u0026rsquo;t help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren\u0026rsquo;t being silenced, so much as they\u0026rsquo;re being silent. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing to say. Read the whole thing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/expelled-producers-plant-softball.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmanda Gefter, opinion editor at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Scientist Blogs\u003c/span\u003e, attended a screening of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; and has reported on the Q\u0026amp;A session with producer Mike Mathis that followed.  She \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/03/are-id-proponents-being-silenced.html\"\u003enotes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe began calling on others in the crowd, who asked friendlier questions. But Maggie and I quickly realised that we\u0026rsquo;d seen some of these people before - earlier that evening, in fact, working at the movie\u0026rsquo;s registration table. These friendly audience members \u003ci\u003eworked\u003c/i\u003e for the film? Had Mathis planted questioners?\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnother amusing bit:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnother man in the front row wondered about the film\u0026rsquo;s premise that supporters of ID are being silenced. He pointed out that a recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/dn8498-judge-intelligent-design-is-relabelled-creationism.html\"\u003etrial about the teaching of intelligent design held in Dover, Pennsylvania\u003c/a\u003e, gave supporters of intelligent design all the time in the world to make their case, but most of the \u0026rsquo;leading lights\u0026rsquo; of ID didn\u0026rsquo;t even show up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen Mathis was responding, the guy asked another question, and the producer shot back, \u0026ldquo;How about you let me finish talking?\u0026rdquo; Then, a security guard for the film approached the calmly seated man and told him, \u0026ldquo;I may have to ask you to leave.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Does anyone else see how ironic this is?\u0026rdquo; the guy asked.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Shut up!\u0026rdquo; someone shouted from the back.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd she ends with:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI asked how ID explains the complexity, but he said, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t have time for this,\u0026rdquo; and walked away.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThroughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it\u0026rsquo;s a scary place. I also couldn\u0026rsquo;t help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren\u0026rsquo;t being silenced, so much as they\u0026rsquo;re being \u003ci\u003esilent\u003c/i\u003e. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing to say.   \u003c/blockquote\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/03/are-id-proponents-being-silenced.html\"\u003ethe whole thing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Expelled\" producers plant softball questions in screening Q\u0026As?"},{"content":"Phoenix Skeptics Executive Director Michael Stackpole now has an asteroid named after him:\nOn March 23, 2001, David Healy and Jeff Medkeff discovered an asteroid about a mile in diameter, in the asteroid belt on the Mars side of the solar system. It was designated 165612.\nUntil today.\nNow that asteroid is officially known as Stackpole. The International Astronomical Union approved the designation on March 21.\nAlso getting asteroids named after them: Rebecca Watson (Skepchick), Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy), and P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula).\nVery cool!\nUPDATE: And Mike Stackpole posts his reaction to learning the news.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/stackpole-asteroid.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePhoenix Skeptics Executive Director Michael Stackpole \u003ca href=\"http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=107\"\u003enow has an asteroid named after him\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn March 23, 2001, David Healy and \u003ca href=\"http://bluecollarscientist.com/2008/03/25/michael-stackpole-and-165612-stackpole/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eJeff Medkeff\u003c/a\u003e discovered an asteroid about a mile in diameter, in the asteroid belt on the Mars side of the solar system. It was designated 165612.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eUntil today.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNow that asteroid is officially known as \u003cb\u003eStackpole\u003c/b\u003e. The International Astronomical Union approved the designation on March 21.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003eAlso getting asteroids named after them:  Rebecca Watson (\u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1166\"\u003eSkepchick\u003c/a\u003e), Phil Plait (\u003ca href=\"http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/25/basteroid/\"\u003eBad Astronomy\u003c/a\u003e), and P.Z. Myers (\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/look_up.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVery cool!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  And \u003ca href=\"http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=107\"\u003eMike Stackpole posts his reaction to learning the news\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stackpole the asteroid"},{"content":"I thought I\u0026rsquo;d try to come up with an argument for Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s general position (though I don\u0026rsquo;t support the claims that all publicity is good publicity or that particular people should shut up), and came up with this (posted as a comment on Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s blog):\nSuppose U.S. demographics on belief and nonbelief were reversed, so that atheists made up 80%+ and those who explicitly believed in God were about 4-5% of the population (with the difference filled by agnostics, closeted believers, etc.). Suppose further that demographics of believers in science were reversed\u0026ndash;with most physicists and biologists being religious believers, who commonly said things like \u0026ldquo;the Big Bang shows evidence of a beginning of time, started by a creator God,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the intricate design of biology shows the hand of God.\u0026quot;\nPresumably Nisbet would tell those religious scientists that they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t say things like that in public, even if they firmly believe them to be true, because they would cause the atheist majority to stop listening to the part that\u0026rsquo;s actually science. And I think he\u0026rsquo;d have a point. To the extent that Dawkins and Myers go beyond the science into areas like philosophy and normative ethics, they are making non-scientific claims that are not entailed by the scientific evidence (though I happen to agree with them that atheistic views fit much better with the evidence than religious views). A division can be drawn, and if your goal is persuasion, somebody needs to draw the division and communicate with the audience that otherwise wouldn\u0026rsquo;t listen without including the nonscientific parts that will turn them off.\nBut, contra Nisbet, that somebody doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to be everybody, or Dawkins or Myers in particular.\nAs I\u0026rsquo;ve said elsewhere, I\u0026rsquo;m glad that the National Center for Science Education doesn\u0026rsquo;t take a position on theism vs. atheism and involves many religious believers who support the promotion of good science.\nMatt Nisbet and Chris Mooney have been getting support in their statements from people like intelligent design advocate William Dembski and \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; co-writer Kevin Miller, but I suspect that they would not really agree with Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s position if the demographics were reversed as above\u0026ndash;they would be defenders of the religious version of P.Z. Myers. Their position strikes me as opportunistic rather than principled.\nWhich raises the question\u0026ndash;if you support P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; approach and think that it\u0026rsquo;s beneficial for the promotion of science, but you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t support a religious counterpart\u0026rsquo;s approach in the reversal scenario, does that show an inconsistency or lack of principle in your position? I don\u0026rsquo;t think so, and my parenthetical comment is a start of the answer I\u0026rsquo;d give to why. (I think the underlying causes of the demographics are of relevance, and it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that only Nisbet seems to have tackled that subject in this discussion.) But I\u0026rsquo;m interested in hearing what others have to say, either way. I suspect that John Lynch and John Wilkins would argue that it does show an inconsistency.\nUPDATE (April 2, 2008): James Hrynyshyn at The Island of Doubt ScienceBlog offers a critique of Nisbettian framing. Somehow, I get the impression something\u0026rsquo;s missing here, though. Claiming that scientists are completely objective and trained to be so is to miss the fact that Kuhn, Latour and Woolgar, and the sociologists of science aren\u0026rsquo;t completely wrong about everything. (I\u0026rsquo;m still a big fan of Philip Kitcher\u0026rsquo;s book, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions.)\nUPDATE (April 3, 2008): John Wilkins offers a defense of \u0026ldquo;the f-word\u0026rdquo; in terms of simplification for the purposes of pedagogy.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-25):\nIF they were attempting to publish papers using science to argue atheism I'd see a problem. But they are scientists arguing their opinion that atheism is the most valid position given what we know about the world ... so long as the distinction is made I don't have a problem.I don't feel that this in an inconsistent position on my part because I'm not that worked up about the scientists who believe that science demonstrates a creator, either. I just think they're wrong.As long as either side makes clear they are drawing an inference that is not a necessary conlusion from the science I'm ok with it.\nJohn S. Wilkins (2008-03-26):\nI'm not sure what inconsistency is referred to here, Jim. Certainly I hold to a \"what's sauce for the goose\" philosophy in these matters - exceptionalism is always suspect to me. But I do not object to framing per se - it is a truism, as communication always involves adapting to the conventions and commitments of your audience. I just think that arguing, as Nisbet does, that only professional communicators can deal with issues is, at best, special pleading. Scientists ought to be better communicators, as well as better educators, and better administrators etc.\nLippard (2008-03-26):\nJohn:The inconsistency question is this: Would it be inconsistent to claim that Myers is doing good for science but that an anti-Myers in the reverse demographic situation would not be doing good for science?Hume's Ghost: I agree with you (if by \"publish papers\" you mean in science journals). In the reverse demographic, would you feel the same way about the religious anti-Myers?\nJohn S. Wilkins (2008-03-26):\nI think that if anyone, religious or not, tries to make a claim that science supports their opinion, they are misled. But I think that given human beings are far from Spock-like automata I would think the religious objector here would be doing a service to science by making people consider their underlying assumptions about the coincidence between science and (for want of a better term) metaphysical views.So I would still disagree with Matt and Chris about the rights and advisability of those who aren't \"science communicators\" speaking out. As Mill said, in plurality there is a better chance of hitting upon the truth.\nJohn S. Wilkins (2008-03-26):\nI should proffread...I meant in the first sentence, \"that science supports their non-scientific views\"...\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-26):\nI did mean peer review journals.\nStephen Matheson (2008-03-28):\nPerhaps because I'm a Christian (i.e. a believer) I don't see the distinction between the two scenarios, and I'd argue that yes, of course it's inconsistent to approve of Myers but not the anti-Myers. Both are \"bad for science\" for the same basic reason.I don't think that Myers and Dawkins are \"good for science\" when they use it to advance their religious agenda, but I've also argued strongly against even suggesting that they shut up.If there's a problem here, it seems to me that it's a problem with the prominence of certain voices that are thought not to represent the communities to which they belong. This is a problem for lots of communities. As a scientist, I don't want Dawkins speaking for me; as a Christian, I don't want Pat Robertson speaking for me; as an American, I don't want Dick Cheney speaking for me; as a Michigan resident, I don't want Michael Moore speaking for me. Somehow, I have to get the media or the public to understand that those people's opinions are perfectly legit, but their right to represent those communities is utterly nonexistent.\nLippard (2008-03-28):\nSteve: I think you make a good point.Personally, in general I don't like other people speaking for me or speaking for other people.\nStephen Matheson (2008-03-28):\nJim, you wrote: \"Personally, in general I don't like other people speaking for me or speaking for other people.\" I'm notorious for my aversion to this sort of thing, too.The challenge arises when a community needs or wants to speak with one voice. I think biologists, for example, need to speak as a community on issues such as creationism and research ethics. Sometimes, it would seem, it is valuable for someone else (ideally, a professional society or commission) to speak for me. Given our mutual discomfort with this very idea, I gather you'll agree with me that this sort of thing (communities speaking – or claiming to speak – with one voice) must be done carefully and deliberately. And the primary criteria for deciding when/if to make such declarations will not necessarily include the level of consensus on the matter in question, but will begin with the centrality of the topic with regard to the identity and mission of the community.So even if there was absolute consensus among molecular evolutionists regarding the excellence of Diet Coke versus Pepsi, or the merits of socialism versus laissez faire, or the ease of use of a particular PC operating system, it would not follow that molecular evolutionists should speak as a community on any of those subjects. The decision to do that begins somewhere other than the level of agreement on the topic itself. In my opinion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/argument-in-support-of-matt-nisbet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI thought I\u0026rsquo;d try to come up with an argument \u003cem\u003efor\u003c/em\u003e Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s general position (though I don\u0026rsquo;t support the claims that all publicity is good publicity or that particular people should shut up), and came up with this (posted as \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/03/why_the_pz_myers_affair_is_rea.php#comment-802693\"\u003ea comment on Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuppose U.S. demographics on belief and nonbelief were reversed, so that atheists made up 80%+ and those who explicitly believed in God were about 4-5% of the population (with the difference filled by agnostics, closeted believers, etc.). Suppose further that demographics of believers in science were reversed\u0026ndash;with most physicists and biologists being religious believers, who commonly said things like \u0026ldquo;the Big Bang shows evidence of a beginning of time, started by a creator God,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the intricate design of biology shows the hand of God.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An argument in support of Matt Nisbet"},{"content":"Although the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; RSVP page mysteriously dropped all upcoming screenings after the media coverage of P.Z. Myers being barred from a screening in Minnesota, a few cities have appeared on the list again and Phoenix is one of them. This could be a chance to see the film without giving its dishonest producers any money\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve signed up. (Free is the only way I\u0026rsquo;ll bother to see this film.)\nThe site now explains the cancelled screenings as follows:\nDue to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time.While that may be true, I wonder if it\u0026rsquo;s merely an excuse to drop all of the existing registrants and do more stringent screening of who is allowed to be admitted.\nGridman (2008-03-25):\nWell, I'm up for screening, will there be a group excursion?(Will Scooby and the Gang be there?)\nReed (2008-03-27):\nJim, what did you specify for your organization?In signing up for the Denver event, I used 'Denver Skeptics Meetup' to see how they'd react.\nLippard (2008-03-27):\nI gave my employer and title... perhaps they'll use that to exclude me since I didn't list a church or bible study group.\nReed (2008-03-27):\nIt doesn't appear they made any effort at the previous 'private' screenings to cross-reference the email invitations (containing the 'secret' url) with those who actually signed-up at that url, much as PZ did.Should I be accepted, I'll try to smuggle in Phil Plait as my Dawkins.\nReed (2008-03-29):\nI received noticed earlier this evening that the 'private' screening in Denver has been cancelled \"due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of EXPELLED.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/expelled-screening-coming-to-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; RSVP page mysteriously dropped all upcoming screenings after the media coverage of P.Z. Myers being barred from a screening in Minnesota, \u003ca href=\"http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled\"\u003ea few cities have appeared on the list again and Phoenix is one of them\u003c/a\u003e.  This could be a chance to see the film without giving its dishonest producers any money\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve signed up.  (Free is the only way I\u0026rsquo;ll bother to see this film.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe site now explains the cancelled screenings as follows:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDue to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhile that may be true, I wonder if it\u0026rsquo;s merely an excuse to drop all of the existing registrants and do more stringent screening of who is allowed to be admitted.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled screening coming to Phoenix"},{"content":"Via Chris Hallquist, an interesting paper by the atheist philosopher Simon Blackburn, titled \u0026ldquo;Religion and Respect\u0026rdquo; (24pp. PDF).\nWorth noting as an abbreviated summary of the paper is the H.L. Mencken quote referenced by a commenter on Hallquist\u0026rsquo;s post:\n\u0026ldquo;We must respect the other fellow\u0026rsquo;s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.\u0026rdquo;\nGeoff (2008-03-25):\nHey Jim, you need to catch up on your stack of books! I'm sure that somewhere in there is Louise Antony's \"Philosophers Without Gods\", from which the Blackburn piece is taken. I blogged about it here last August. I really think that it belongs in the canon of \"New Atheist\" books, along with the works of Dennett, Dawkins, Grayling, Hitchens, Harris, Carrier et al.\nLippard (2008-03-25):\nI don't have it and it wasn't on my wish list--thanks very much for the pointer, it's now on my wish list at the \"highest\" priority.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/simon-blackburn-on-respecting-religion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://gods4suckers.net/archives/2008/03/18/respecting-believers/\"\u003eChris Hallquist\u003c/a\u003e, an interesting paper by the atheist philosopher Simon Blackburn, titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/%7Eswb24/PAPERS/religion%20and%20respect.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Religion and Respect\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (24pp. PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWorth noting as an abbreviated summary of the paper is the H.L. Mencken quote referenced by a commenter on Hallquist\u0026rsquo;s post:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;We must respect the other fellow\u0026rsquo;s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eGeoff\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-03-25)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHey Jim, you need to catch up on your stack of books! I'm sure that somewhere in there is Louise Antony's \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.amazon.com/-/dp/0195173074/\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003e\"Philosophers Without Gods\"\u003c/A\u003e, from which the Blackburn piece is taken. I blogged about it \u003cA HREF=\"http://geoffarnold.com/?p=1654\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ehere\u003c/A\u003e last August. I really think that it belongs in the canon of \"New Atheist\" books, along with the works of Dennett, Dawkins, Grayling, Hitchens, Harris, Carrier \u003cI\u003eet al\u003c/I\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Simon Blackburn on respecting religion"},{"content":"Julia Sweeney writes at her blog:\nBen Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a “thinker” – when his public persona became the “smart guy” I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise.(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/julia-sweeney-on-ben-stein.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJulia Sweeney \u003ca href=\"http://juliasweeney.blogspot.com/2008/03/its-easter.html\"\u003ewrites at her blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBen Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a “thinker” – when his public persona became the “smart guy” I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Julia Sweeney on Ben Stein"},{"content":"It was only a matter of time. Where John Todd, Mike Warnke, \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; and others found that they could get attention and money by claiming to be ex-Satanists/witches/Illuminati converted to Christian evangelists, we now see \u0026ldquo;ex-Islamic terrorists\u0026rdquo; turned born-again Christians and hitting the lecture circuit, and getting paid for appearances at the U.S. Air Force Academy, as the New York Times reports. The Times article ends with the most obvious question:\nArab-American civil rights organizations question why, at a time when the United States government has vigorously moved to jail or at least deport anyone with a known terrorist connection, the three men, if they are telling the truth, are allowed to circulate freely. A spokesman for the F.B.I. said there were no warrants for their arrest.Of the three speakers, Zak Anani, Kamal Saleem, and Walid Shoebat, Anani is described as the most explicitly preaching born-again Christianity rather than providing information about Islamic terrorism. He also seems to be the one with the clearest record of making false claims about his own background:\nAnani, now an evangelical Christian, claims to be an expert on the topic because he killed 223 people in Allah\u0026rsquo;s name, \u0026ldquo;two-thirds of them by daggers.\u0026rdquo; He even claims to have killed a man for waking him up at 3 a.m. to pray.\nAnani, born in Lebanon, said he joined a militant Muslim group in the early 1970s at age 13, and made his first kill shortly after.\n\u0026hellip;\nHe said he was soon promoted to troop leader and formed his own regiment, but later met a Christian missionary and converted.\nAnani said he was persecuted for his conversion \u0026ndash; even his dad hired assassins to kill him.\nHe said he was soon promoted to troop leader and formed his own regiment, but later met a Christian missionary and converted.\nAnani said he was persecuted for his conversion \u0026ndash; even his dad hired assassins to kill him \u0026ndash; and he was technically dead for seven minutes after narrowly escaping a beheading. He fled to the West and moved to Windsor about 10 years ago. His wife and three daughters joined him three years later.\nEven in Canada, Anani said he\u0026rsquo;s been physically attacked, and his house and car have been burned in Windsor for speaking out against Islam.\n\u0026hellip;\nStaff. Sgt. Ed McNorton said Windsor police don\u0026rsquo;t have a record of physical attacks against Anani, and his house wasn\u0026rsquo;t burned.\nMcNorton said someone did torch his car, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for the reasons Anani has claimed.\n\u0026ldquo;There is nothing in the report we have to indicate it was in retaliation to his religious beliefs,\u0026rdquo; said McNorton.\nAnani\u0026rsquo;s bio also states he lectured at Princeton University. Cass Cliatt, Princeton\u0026rsquo;s media relations manager, said that never happened. She said Anani was scheduled to lecture there in late 2005 with the Walid Shoebat Foundation. But the event was cancelled and the foundation held a news conference at a nearby hotel.\nAnani has refused several requests from The Star to revisit his past in detail.\nFollowing a sermon Thursday night from Campbell Baptist Church Pastor Donald McKay \u0026ndash; Anani was scheduled to speak but his lecture was cancelled \u0026ndash; he again refused to answer questions.\n\u0026hellip;\nAnani has said he\u0026rsquo;s 49 years old, which would mean he was born in 1957 or 1958, said Quiggin. If he joined his first militant group when he was 13, it would have been in 1970 or 1971. But the fighting in Lebanon did not begin in earnest until 1975, Quiggin said.\n\u0026ldquo;His story of having made kills shortly after he joined and having made 223 kills overall is preposterous, given the lack of fighting during most of the time period he claims to have been a fighter,\u0026rdquo; Quiggin said. \u0026ldquo;He also states he left Lebanon to go to Al-Azhar University at the age of 18, which would mean he went to Egypt in 1976. In other words, according to himself, he left Lebanon within a year of when the fighting actually started.\u0026quot;\nHe also pointed to a story on WorldNetDaily in which Walid Shoebat, another ex-terrorist and friend of Anani, also claims to have killed 223 people, two-thirds of them with daggers.\n\u0026ldquo;What a coincidence,\u0026rdquo; Quiggin said.\nQuiggin said Anani\u0026rsquo;s description of himself as a Muslim terrorist also \u0026ldquo;defies logic\u0026rdquo; based on the time frame.\n\u0026ldquo;Most the groups involved in the fighting in Lebanon were secular and tended to be extreme leftists or Marxists,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nQuiggin said religious-based terrorism as part of the warring in Lebanon didn\u0026rsquo;t begin until after 1979, following the revolution in Iran, the Soviet attack on Afghanistan and the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni Muslim extremists.\nAnani\u0026rsquo;s claim to have survived a beheading attempt is also questionable, said Quiggin.\nJon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, can you take a look at these guys?\n(Hat tip to Jeffrey Shallit.)\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-03-23):\nWalid Shoebat was interviewed in the movie Obsession, which I blogged about.In the movie, they didn't indicate that Shoebat (or Nonie Darwish, I think) were now Evangelical Christians. It's also downplayed on Shoebat's website.I'd be fascinated to learn more about Shoebat -- in particular, whether his story can be confirmed or refuted.\nCritical Dragon 1177 (2012-05-31):\nJim Lippard, There's a lot of stuff debunking the claims of people like Walid Shoebat who claim to be ex Muslim, ex terrorists, but are little more than bigots and fraudsters. The anti Islamophobia blog, Loon Watch is a great place to get started.\nThey've done story after story refuting his claims.\nLoon Watch Archive : Walid Shoebat\nCNN also recently did a story exposing Shoebat for the fraud that he is. People should be very skeptical of people like him.\nWalid Shoebat Exposed Part 1 - Anderson Cooper 360\nWalid Shoebat Exposed Part 2\nCritical Dragon 1177 (2012-05-31):\nEamon Knight, You might want to also check out some my links in my previous comment. They go a long towards answering all your questions about Shoebat.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/ex-terrorists-turned-christian.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was only a matter of time.  Where John Todd, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Warnke\"\u003eMike Warnke\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; and others found that they could get attention and money by claiming to be ex-Satanists/witches/Illuminati converted to Christian evangelists, we now see \u0026ldquo;ex-Islamic terrorists\u0026rdquo; turned born-again Christians and hitting the lecture circuit, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/07muslim.html?_r=1\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003egetting paid for appearances at the U.S. Air Force Academy\u003c/a\u003e, as the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e reports.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes\u003c/span\u003e article ends with the most obvious question:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eArab-American civil rights organizations question why, at a time when the United States government has vigorously moved to jail or at least deport anyone with a known terrorist connection, the three men, if they are telling the truth, are allowed to circulate freely. A spokesman for the \u003ca href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org\" title=\"More articles about the Federal Bureau of Investigation.\"\u003eF.B.I.\u003c/a\u003e said there were no warrants for their arrest.\u003c/blockquote\u003eOf the three speakers, Zak Anani, Kamal Saleem, and Walid Shoebat, Anani is described as the most explicitly preaching born-again Christianity rather than providing information about Islamic terrorism.  He also seems to be the one with the clearest record of \u003ca href=\"http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=4a479502-4490-408e-bdb5-f2638619a62c\"\u003emaking false claims about his own background\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnani, now an evangelical Christian, claims to be an expert on the topic because he killed 223 people in Allah\u0026rsquo;s name, \u0026ldquo;two-thirds of them by daggers.\u0026rdquo; He even claims to have killed a man for waking him up at 3 a.m. to pray.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnani, born in Lebanon, said he joined a militant Muslim group in the early 1970s at age 13, and made his first kill shortly after.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe said he was soon promoted to troop leader and formed his own regiment, but later met a Christian missionary and converted.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ex-terrorists turned Christian evangelists"},{"content":"Jeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on \u0026ldquo;A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory.\u0026rdquo; The event wasn\u0026rsquo;t a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by \u0026ldquo;9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence. Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions.\nShallit\u0026rsquo;s posts:\n\u0026ldquo;An Evening with 9-11 Deniers\u0026rdquo; - Introduction and summary.\n\u0026ldquo;The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event\u0026rdquo; - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end.\n\u0026ldquo;An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee\u0026rdquo; - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event.\n\u0026ldquo;A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)\u0026quot; - A detailed summary of Dewdney\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the event, part 1.\n\u0026ldquo;A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)\u0026quot; - Part 2.\n\u0026ldquo;Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event\u0026rdquo; - A summary of MacQueen\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the event.\n\u0026ldquo;The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening\u0026rdquo; - Summary of the Q\u0026amp;A.\nOf particular note among the comments at Shallit\u0026rsquo;s blog is a lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief.\nUnknown (2008-03-23):\nI have been TRYING long and hard to get someone from the \"Anti 911 Truther Movement\" to appear for a live interview on my weekly live radio show. I have many question for both \"sides\"-James Arthur Jancikwww.feet2fire.com\nLippard (2008-03-24):\nThere's no such thing as \"the 'Anti 911 Truther Movement.'\" That's your problem.This isn't an issue with two sides.There is a huge number of events involving thousands of people that led up to and resulted in the attacks on the WTC towers and the Pentagon. There are those who believe in coming to an understanding of what happened on the basis of looking at all of the evidence, including the history of radical Islam in the United States and the movements of the individual terrorists. This group includes all of the genuine experts.Then there are conspiracy theorists who construct fantasies of what happened without looking at any of the history, but instead by looking for isolated anomalies like contradictions and mistakes in eyewitness statements and news reports and deciding that this completely undermines all other possible evidence and supports their fantasies. These people are the 9/11 Truth movement, and includes only people with no expertise, or who are speaking in domains outside their areas of expertise, many of whom are also known for views on the extreme fringe in other areas.\nUnknown (2008-03-25):\nIt is true, that many times, multi-level/layered reasons/issues are artificially distilled down to two sides. I think the 911 attacks is multi-layered/leveled, however, finding the truth has been hampered by distilling down to only two paradigms by which we can peer out for solutions.1)- Arab Terrorists (Outside Job)2)- Domestic Terrorist (Inside Job)People start out by ruling out or in either of these two, then go on looking through the colored glass of this initial decision. There seesm to be no one that is not in either of these groups.I have interviewed several of the \"Inside Job\" folks, and found both problem and merit with their arguments. I have not been able to have interviews with the \"Outside Job\" folks.Given these two slices of the whole pie of Truth, you would sound to be in thios latter group, and I would like to invite you to discuss it on my show.I do not rule out or in ANYTHING. If one does, one does not really seek truth, but seeks and personally exceptable answer. I do not except answers from \"experts\" bases on faith. Facts can be demostarated, and anomolies explained by such experts. I also do not automatically assume the paraniod theory is paraniod.Just like the policeman in a child murder case, ALL are suspect until ruled out. The distruction of those buildings, and the murder of those people on 911 were crimes and deserve an unbias look at the cause.The problem is, the only ones willing to talk about it is the \"Inside Job\" crowd. I am very fair, and asked questions on all sides as I think of them.mWill you (or recomend someone to) come on my show and partake in a search for the truth?\nLippard (2008-03-25):\nJames: Although I occasionally engage in media appearances outside my areas of expertise, this isn't one of them I'm interested in doing so on.I disagree with your assessment that initial choice of paradigm is the source of disagreement about 9/11. I think the source of disagreement is choice of methodology. I've not yet encountered a 9/11 Truther who showed any inclination to use standard methods of scientific or historical investigation, as opposed to the methods of creationists and Holocaust deniers (e.g., quote mining and anomaly mining--the sort of stuff discussed at the \"denialism\" blog). Given the topics of your show, it doesn't look like you're much of an advocate of science and reason as methods to obtain truth, either.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-25):\nI just find it hard to see how these folks don't draw a more obvious conclusion (and one that is still within their ideological conmfort zone.):The administration failed to stop the 9/11 attacks of al-Qaeda terrorists because they were pre-occupied with Iraq and ignored the terrorism issue for partisan reasons (i.e. considering it a Clinton issue and thus a low priority.)Once the attacks did happen, being the ideologues that they are, they morphed it into an excuse to attack Iraq and achieve the stuff they'd already wanted to do.\nUnknown (2008-03-28):\n\"Given the topics of your show, it doesn't look like you're much of an advocate of science and reason as methods to obtain truth, either.\" -quote from last postWhat I have consciously decided NOT to do is pre-filter what I will allow consideration for discussion by political, religious or paradigm bias.There were previous held science truths that took years to challenge, not with lack of proof, but due to paradigm bias. Evidence (and people's lives) was destroyed in the name of Kings and Popes AND threatened former science positions. I do not want to get caught in paradigm traps, and I wish to see proof, evidence and all/any questions answered with proof, evidence and real answers (as opposed to insults). THIS is evident my the topics and subject I have on my show.Name calling and dismissing as fringe, is not scientific inquiry. If there was nothing to the 911 Truth Movement, it can be easily dismissed if taken head on; which is what I am looking for.What I am finding is arrogant dismissal. Anomalies ARE a very important part of finding real truth. Real truth is not a consensus of evidence that fits a neat package. Anomalies tend to be the real road map to finding truth.\"There are no contradictions. Check your premises\" -Ayn Rand, \"Atlas Shrugs\"\"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.\"- (spoken in satire) Albert EinsteinI will change the explanation to fit the facts, and if the fact do not fit, you must questions ALL aspects until it fits.The some of the 911-Truth movement is built on finding anything that contradicts the Government... but, one of the cornerstones of the 911 Commission Report support appears to be the Government does not lie nor make mistakes.Which assumptions above are more wrong or more right?There are hundreds of inquiries being on the science level worldwide. But it is hard to produce clear Smoking Guns when the evidence was destroyed with amazing speed. Even with that, many questions have been raised, with little serious response. Prejudging the 911 Truth Movement's evidence WITHOUT scientific inquiry, is emotionally based and is, at least as \"bad\" as they claim the 911 Truthers are with their approach to anomalies.My desire is to have a discussion, LIVE on my show, with people from both \"sides\" dealing with each issue, open, honestly, in respect for each other's right to their positions, and let the chips fall based on facts, not emotion.I guess I will not find that here. But I will keep looking.Thank you for your time,-James\nEinzige (2008-03-28):\nJames,You sure used a lot of words to say nearly nothing.If anyone is being arrogant and dismissive, here, I'd say it's you, not Jim. I'm also unable to find any \"name calling\" in any of Jim's comments, either.All Jim has said is he's not interested in appearing on your show. You seem to have taken this personally.\nEinzige (2008-03-28):\nI retract the word \"All\" from the first sentence of my last paragraph, as it's not accurate.You're welcome to offer any evidence that contradicts any of the \"insulting\" remarks that you claim Jim has made, here. I'm curious to learn of it.\nLippard (2008-03-28):\nJames: \"one of the cornerstones of the 911 Commission Report support appears to be the Government does not lie nor make mistakes.\"I take it from this statement that you haven't read the report, which contains numerous scathing indictments of government errors and incompetence.\nRick Potvin (2008-04-10):\nHello people-- I attened UW in the 1970s-- and just recently looked at who was publishing blogs from UW and found you. On the matter of 9/11-- here's the best analsyis I foundQUOTEBLOOD: Do you believe that it was orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda?LAROUCHE: Not by them, but by those who control them.BLOOD: So, they were used as patsies in the event?LAROUCHE: Well, I say, frankly, look: You have to look at the British BAE, and the entire operation which happened in Manhattan, in September 2001. Which is the kind of event I expected—I didn't know where it was going to come from, how it was going to come from, but I knew it what it was. And I said it was going to happen. I said it before Bush was actually inaugurated. I warned of this thing. It was obvious it was going to happen: those of us who understand history, and know these kinds of events, looking back, for example, at the German Reichstag Fire, and similar things like that, which I did then, said, \"they're going to do it!\" And they did it!And it came from London. It came through the only capability that existed, which could have done what was done, in September of 2001, was BAE, the British-Saudi connection. And that Prince Bandar, of course, is a key figure in this thing. He's a very important figure, he's a key—. He's British intelligence, actually, he has been since he was 16 years of age. When he was sent to Britain as a Saudi prince, to be educated in the British military program.BLOOD: You do believe that 9/11 was used as a false-flag event to perpetuate the Project for New American Century global government. What is it exactly do you think they wanted?LAROUCHE: Well, the point is the British Empire. Think of it as the British Empire. That's exactly what it is. And the idea is, you have some people who are more British than they are America, particularly in our financial interests in Manhattan and so forth, and tSOURCEhttp://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2008/interviews/080401jack_blood_genesis.htmlMY comment-- I'll be waiting to see your reaction to that. The picutre of what is happening is bigger than 9/11-- 9/11 was USED as a means to another end-- NOT involving the Muslims-- but rather involving global empire-- by \"British Empire\"-- which is not exactly British-- but rather the financial cartel based in City of Lond. I await your reaction.\nLippard (2008-04-10):\nPhilo: Lyndon LaRouche is a raving lunatic who blames everything on the British (and the Queen in particular). The only grains of truth in what he said is that there is probably a Saudi royal family connection to the 9/11 hijackers, at least in terms of funding, and that there's government and defense contractor corruption involving Bandar and BAE Systems in the U.S. and the UK (link is to a post at this blog on the subject).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/911-truthers-at-university-of-waterloo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on \u0026ldquo;A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001:  Questioning the Official Theory.\u0026rdquo;  The event wasn\u0026rsquo;t a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by \u0026ldquo;9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence.  Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShallit\u0026rsquo;s posts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/evening-with-9-11-deniers.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;An Evening with 9-11 Deniers\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e - Introduction and summary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/questionnaire-at-911-denier-event.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-letter-to-richard-borshay-lee.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/k-dewdney-at-911-denier-evening-part-1.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e - A detailed summary of Dewdney\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the event, part 1.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/k-dewdney-at-911-denier-evening-part-2.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e - Part 2.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/graeme-macqueen-at-911-denier-evening.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e - A summary of MacQueen\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the event.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/question-and-answer-period-at-911.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e - Summary of the Q\u0026amp;A.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf particular note among the comments at Shallit\u0026rsquo;s blog is \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2008/03/graeme-macqueen-at-911-denier-evening.html#c5119933034366203115\"\u003ea lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 truthers at the University of Waterloo"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ve been watching reruns of \u0026ldquo;Millennium\u0026rdquo; on the Chiller channel, and just saw \u0026ldquo;Jose Chung\u0026rsquo;s Doomsday Defense,\u0026quot; about the fictional religion of \u0026ldquo;Selfosophy.\u0026rdquo; This episode was written by Darin Morgan, who also wrote \u0026ldquo;The X-Files\u0026rdquo; episode, \u0026ldquo;Jose Chung\u0026rsquo;s From Outer Space,\u0026quot; one of the best shows of that series.\nFantastic.\nThe opening sequence can be seen here.\nOne big difference between Selfosophy and Scientology\u0026ndash;the Selfosophists give the visiting cops copies of the Selfosophy book. Scientologists would have made them pay for it.\nCharles Nelson Reilly, who played Jose Chung, just died last May. I was pleased to see that they worked a clip from the crazy Sid and Marty Krofft TV series \u0026ldquo;Lidsville\u0026rdquo; into the opening story of Selfosophy. Too bad they didn\u0026rsquo;t also include a reference to \u0026ldquo;Uncle Croc\u0026rsquo;s Block,\u0026quot; which inspired me to some childhood musical creativity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/millennium-reruns.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve been watching reruns of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_%28TV_series%29\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Millennium\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e on the Chiller channel, and just saw \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Chung%27s_Doomsday_Defense_%28Millennium%29\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jose Chung\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDoomsday Defense\u003c/span\u003e,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about the fictional religion of \u0026ldquo;Selfosophy.\u0026rdquo;  This episode was written by Darin Morgan, who also wrote \u0026ldquo;The X-Files\u0026rdquo; episode, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Chung%27s_%22From_Outer_Space%22\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jose Chung\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFrom Outer Space\u003c/span\u003e,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e one of the best shows of that series.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFantastic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe opening sequence can be seen \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SyHLXvqPdY\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne big difference between Selfosophy and Scientology\u0026ndash;the Selfosophists give the visiting cops copies of the Selfosophy book.  Scientologists would have made them pay for it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCharles Nelson Reilly, who played Jose Chung, \u003ca href=\"http://www.world-actor.com/2008/03/04/actor-charles-nelson-reilly-passes-away/\"\u003ejust died last May\u003c/a\u003e.  I was pleased to see that they worked a clip from the crazy Sid and Marty Krofft TV series \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidsville\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lidsville\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e into the opening story of Selfosophy.  Too bad they didn\u0026rsquo;t also include a reference to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Croc%27s_Block\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Uncle Croc\u0026rsquo;s Block,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which inspired me to some childhood musical creativity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Millennium reruns"},{"content":"Allen MacNeill, who teaches introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University, reports that he and Will Provine were also interviewed by \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis under false pretenses last year. Unlike P.Z. Myers, Dawkins, and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, however, his interview was not used in the film. (Corrected: Provine was used in the film. Provine argues that evolution is evidence in support of atheism, which is probably why he was used in the movie.)\nWhy not?\nBecause they invite ID proponents to give presentations in their classrooms. Yet Mathis claimed that he was setting out to present an even-handed presentation, not propaganda.\nPersonally, I think it\u0026rsquo;s quite reasonable to talk about ID and creationism in college-level courses, provided that you actually evaluate their arguments. I occasionally included some creationist readings in critical thinking courses I taught at the University of Arizona, as exercises for spotting fallacies.\nBad (2008-04-11):\nProvine, at least, apparently is in the film.\nLippard (2008-04-12):\nThanks for the correction.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/other-scientists-expelled-from-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAllen MacNeill, who teaches introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University, \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/03/allen-macneill-2.html\"\u003ereports that he and Will Provine were also interviewed by \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis under false pretenses last year\u003c/a\u003e.  Unlike P.Z. Myers, Dawkins, and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, however, his interview was not used in the film.  (Corrected:  Provine was used in the film.  Provine argues that evolution is evidence in support of atheism, which is probably why he was used in the movie.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy not?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBecause they invite ID proponents to give presentations in their classrooms.  Yet Mathis claimed that he was setting out to present an even-handed presentation, not propaganda.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePersonally, I think it\u0026rsquo;s quite reasonable to talk about ID and creationism in college-level courses, provided that you actually evaluate their arguments.  I occasionally included some creationist readings in critical thinking courses I taught at the University of Arizona, as exercises for spotting fallacies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Other scientists expelled from Expelled"},{"content":"\nAt RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s 8th annual \u0026ldquo;Beauty to the RESCUE\u0026rdquo; fundraiser at the Mane Attraction on March 9, local artist Susan Barken spotted our dog Otto (a rescue dog himself) and thought he\u0026rsquo;d make a good subject for one of her paintings. Here are a couple of the photos she took of him on March 16. Susan donated a dog painting for RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s silent auction at the fundraiser. (UPDATE: here\u0026rsquo;s the painting.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/otto-gets-discovered.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2209/2353605438_f9cd7ece9a.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2209/2353605438_f9cd7ece9a.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eRESCUE\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s 8th annual \u0026ldquo;Beauty to the RESCUE\u0026rdquo; fundraiser at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.maneattractionsalon.com/ma_notes.asp\"\u003eMane Attraction\u003c/a\u003e on March 9, local artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.susanbarken.com/\"\u003eSusan Barken\u003c/a\u003e spotted our dog Otto (a rescue dog himself) and thought he\u0026rsquo;d make a good subject for one of her paintings.  Here are a couple of the photos she took of him on March 16.  Susan donated a dog painting for RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s silent auction at the fundraiser.  (UPDATE: \u003ca href=\"/2008/05/ottos-painting.html\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e the painting.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3167/2352774433_12ff8f38bd.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3167/2352774433_12ff8f38bd.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Otto gets discovered"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula, who is actually featured in the dishonest Ben Stein intelligent design propaganda movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; was denied admittance to a screening and asked to leave the premises. His guest, however, was permitted to attend, and was apparently, quite astonishingly, unrecognized\u0026ndash;Richard Dawkins. (Myers provides a few more details here.)\nThe New York Times contacted \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis about it, and he claimed that Dawkins was intentionally allowed in and insinuating that Myers would cause trouble at the screening. (Anyone who has met Myers in person knows this is ridiculous.)\nHere\u0026rsquo;s video of P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins describing their respective experiences.\nJeffrey Overstreet gives what appears to be the spin that will be used to respond to this event, based on the clearly mistaken description of Myers\u0026rsquo; removal from student Stuart Blessman:\nI just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.Myers points out:\nI had an invitation. I had applied through the channels Expelled set up. I applied under my own name, and was approved. I have the first email that confirmed it, and the second email reminder, all from Motive Entertainment. Wanna see them?\nYou were not near me when the security guard told me I was being kicked out. No one was. He first asked me to step aside, away from the line, and he told me directly that the producer had requested that I be evicted. Theater management had nothing to do with it.\nI returned to my family to explain what was happening. That’s when a theater manager came along and told me I’d have to leave right away. You might have been in a position to hear something then, but it certainly wasn’t that I was not on their pre-submitted list. I was.\nIf you were right there, you would have noticed my wife, daughter, and her boyfriend in line too. They got reservations in exactly the same way I did. They were not kicked out. How did that happen? Did they have invitations and they just didn’t tell me?\nUPDATE: Pharyngula commenter Sastra offers this hypothesis as to what \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mathis might have been thinking:\nRichard Dawkins writes:\nSeemingly oblivious to the irony, Mathis instructed some uniformed goon to evict Myers while he was standing in line with his family to enter the theatre, and threaten him with arrest if he didn\u0026rsquo;t immediately leave the premises\u0026hellip; did he not know that PZ is one of the country\u0026rsquo;s most popular bloggers, with a notoriously caustic wit, perfectly placed to set the whole internet roaring with delighted and mocking laughter?\nYou know, as I read this, something occurred to me regarding the reasoning behind Mathis\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;bungling incompetence,\u0026rdquo; as Dawkins calls it. I wonder if Mathis made a serious blunder in his assumptions on what PZ\u0026rsquo;s reaction to being thrown out of the theater would be. He just made a film where all the academics are whining and looking pathetic about being rejected, humiliated, and tossed unceremoniously out of academia and the Halls of Science. He has been surrounding himself with people playing the poor-me victim card, claiming ignominous oppression and unfair suppression. What then if Mathis assumed that PZ Myer\u0026rsquo;s reaction would not be \u0026ldquo;delighted and mocking laughter,\u0026rdquo; but what he was used to \u0026ndash; whimpering bellyaching. And then he could use that to make a point.\nPZ was to have gone to Phayngula to lick his wounds. \u0026ldquo;People, I have sad news. I am so ashamed and humiliated. I was kicked out of the theater when I went to see Expelled. I have never heard of someone doing something like that to an academic like me. It felt awful.\u0026rdquo; And then Mathis and his publicists would go in for the kill:\nAh-ha! Now the scientist knows JUST HOW IT FEELS! What has been done to other academics was done to him! And he complains, too. How ironic is THAT??\u0026quot;\nInstead, PZ reacts with amusement. Extreme amusement. And, worse, there is the Dawkins angle, which no, Mathis had not been expecting when he decided to play a game and toss PZ out. If PZ whines, he wins on tit for tat. If PZ creates a nasty, messy scene, he wins on \u0026rsquo;look at the immoral fascist-like atheist temper.\u0026rsquo; But instead, PZ laughs and laughs, and with Dawkins in the theater Mathis just looks like a fool.\nMore I think about it, the more I think Mathis underestimated PZ\u0026rsquo;s sense of humor about things, and how he would not be mortified by the incident, but jubilant. He\u0026rsquo;s been around too many pretentious professorial sob-sisters. He thought they were all like that.\nUPDATE: Several All of the pending screenings of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; have been removed from the registration website. That includes screenings scheduled for Santa Clara, CA, Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA. It also includes Tempe, AZ, as John Lynch points out.\nUPDATE: Richard Dawkins has written a review of the film. Short version: \u0026ldquo;A shoddy, second-rate piece of work. \u0026hellip; Positively barking with Lord Privy Seals. \u0026hellip; clunking \u0026hellip; artless \u0026hellip; self-indulgent \u0026hellip; goes shamelessly for cheap laughs.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; screenwriter Kevin Miller agrees with Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet that the controversy over P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; removal is actually beneficial for the film. I think that\u0026rsquo;s highly unlikely.\nUPDATE: At the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; show that P.Z. Myers was not permitted to attend, Kristine Harley asked Mark Mathis during the Q\u0026amp;A why he told Myers, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and others that he was working on a film called \u0026ldquo;Crossroads\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026rdquo; He answered that this was just a working title for the film. But this is apparently not true\u0026ndash;Wesley Elsberry has pointed out that they acquired the domain name \u0026ldquo;expelledthemovie.com\u0026rdquo; on March 1, 2007, while Eugenie Scott was interviewed in April 2007, Myers in April or later 2007, and Dawkins in Summer 2007. Mathis doesn\u0026rsquo;t explain why \u0026ldquo;Crossroads\u0026rdquo; was being produced by \u0026ldquo;Rampant Films\u0026rdquo; (which had a fake website with innocuous-looking films on it) rather than Premise Media.\nUPDATE (March 24, 2008): \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis admits that P.Z. Myers wasn\u0026rsquo;t kicked out for being unruly, but just because he wants to make him pay to see the movie. Mathis claims in Inside Higher Ed that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t like Myers\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;untruthful blogging about Expelled,\u0026rdquo; but with no details of what \u0026ldquo;untruthful blogging\u0026rdquo; he means.\nUPDATE: Ed Brayton pulls no punches when he points out that Walt Ruloff of Premise Media lied about why P.Z. Myers wasn\u0026rsquo;t allowed into the film.\nUPDATE: Mooney and Nisbett, supposed experts on \u0026ldquo;framing\u0026rdquo; communications about science in such a way as to be persuasive to the general public, have created a firestorm at Science Blogs and gained them the approval of William Dembski and \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; screenwriter Kevin Miller, but disagreements from just about everyone else at ScienceBlogs, bloggers and commenters alike. In hindsight, I think they should conclude that they are the ones who should have remained silent this time. (Some of my favorite posts on this topic are from Orac, Greg Laden, Mark Hoofnagle, Russell Blackford, and Mike/Tangled Up in Blue Guy. Greg Laden has thoughtfully collected a bunch of links on the topic.)\nUPDATE (March 25, 2008): P.Z. Myers has posted a roundup of additional coverage. Particularly noteworthy is Scott Hatfield\u0026rsquo;s look at the backgrounds of the people involved with making \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot; Troy Britain and Jon Voisey look at the IDers\u0026rsquo; mutually contradictory accounts of the Myers expulsion incident.\nMark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math gives a good overview of the framing debate (arguing in favor of the idea that framing is important, but that Mooney and Nisbet have made poor choices regarding framing in this recent kerfuffle.)\nSean Carroll also provides a very good analysis of the framing issue in terms of politicians and critics\u0026ndash;Mooney and Nisbet want politicians, but Dawkins and Myers are critics.\nUPDATE: \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s producers really are a bunch of liars who keep on lying. They\u0026rsquo;ve issued a press release claiming that their movie, rather than their stupid action, has been the top subject of discussion on the blogosphere, falsely claim that Richard Dawkins signed up with his \u0026ldquo;formal surname\u0026rdquo; Clinton (it\u0026rsquo;s his first name, not his surname, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t sign up at all but was one of Myers\u0026rsquo; RSVP\u0026rsquo;d guests), falsely allege that Dawkins and Myers have \u0026ldquo;slandered\u0026rdquo; them and their film (without giving a single example), and falsely claim that Myers has asked his readers to try to sneak in to screenings of the movie.\nUPDATE (March 28, 2008): The \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers had a telephone conference call with questions by email. P.Z. Myers dialed in early, and heard \u0026ldquo;Leslie and Paul\u0026rdquo; talking, and they gave out the telephone number to the conference bridge number for presenters (all other participants are muted). So Myers hung up and dialed back in on the presenter line. After listening to the producers dissemble and answer softball questions, he interrupted:\nI said, in essence, hang on \u0026ndash; you guys are spinning out a lot of lies here, you should be called on it. I gave a quick gloss on it, and said that, for instance, anti-semitism has a long history in Germany that preceded Darwin, and that they ought to look up the word \u0026ldquo;pogrom\u0026rdquo;. There was some mad rustling and flustering about on the other side of the phone some complaints, etc., and then one of them asked me to do the honorable thing and hang up…so I said yes, I would do the honorable thing and hang up while they continued the dishonorable thing and continued to lie. Then I announced that if any reporters were listening in, they could contact me at pzmyers@gmail.com and I\u0026rsquo;d be happy to talk to them.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers will probably now spin this as Myers having \u0026ldquo;hacked\u0026rdquo; their conference bridge or something. Personally, as much as I think this is amusing, I think Myers\u0026rsquo; actions were unethical and possibly illegal\u0026ndash;even if someone stupidly hands out an authentication credential (in this case, the presenter access code for a conferencing event bridge) when they don\u0026rsquo;t realize they\u0026rsquo;re being observed, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that they\u0026rsquo;ve authorized someone else to use it.\nUPDATE (March 29, 2008): Troy Britain gets to the bottom of exactly how P.Z. Myers originally signed up for the screening he was expelled from.\nWesley Elsberry reports that the \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producers are now offering financial incentives to groups that go see the movie\u0026ndash;the five largest groups will get $1,000 each.\nUPDATE (April 10, 2008): \u0026ldquo;William Wallace\u0026rdquo; argues that Myers did \u0026ldquo;gate crash\u0026rdquo; a \u0026ldquo;private screening.\u0026quot; I don\u0026rsquo;t think anyone questions that these screenings were \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; in the sense that you couldn\u0026rsquo;t just walk up and attend, you had to pre-register. But the pre-registration process was openly advertised on public web pages and there was no indication that it was limited to those who were explicitly invited due to membership in a church or similar organization. In the case of the conference call, Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb bloggers were directly invited by email as a group (and some individually as well), though Myers did not receive one directly addressed to him.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/expelled-from-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers of Pharyngula, who is actually featured in the dishonest Ben Stein intelligent design propaganda movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php?intelligent_indeed\"\u003ewas denied admittance to a screening and asked to leave the premises\u003c/a\u003e.  His guest, however, was permitted to attend, and was apparently, quite astonishingly, unrecognized\u0026ndash;Richard Dawkins.  (Myers provides a few more details \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/a_late_night_quick_one.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e contacted \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; producer Mark Mathis about it, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/still_straining_to_find_an_exc.php\"\u003ehe claimed that Dawkins was intentionally allowed in and insinuating that Myers would cause trouble at the screening\u003c/a\u003e.  (Anyone who has met Myers in person knows this is ridiculous.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/03/myers_and_dawkins_speak_out_on.php\"\u003evideo of P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins describing their respective experiences\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeffrey Overstreet \u003ca href=\"http://lookingcloser.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/richard-dawkins-crashes-the-party-at-a-screening-of-expelled/\"\u003egives what appears to be the spin that will be used to respond to this event\u003c/a\u003e, based on the clearly mistaken description of Myers\u0026rsquo; removal from student Stuart Blessman:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMyers \u003ca href=\"http://lookingcloser.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/richard-dawkins-crashes-the-party-at-a-screening-of-expelled/#comment-7613\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled from Expelled"},{"content":"The March 6, 2008 issue of The Economist features lots of interesting articles (it includes one of the quarterly technology reviews), one of which is \u0026ldquo;Feel safer now?\u0026quot; This is a report on a study by economists in Texas and Alabama commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, which looks at the effects of increased spending on counterterrorism efforts and \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; globally since 2001, and the effects. They calculate that while such spending has increased by somewhere between $65 billion and $200 billion a year, the benefits are far smaller than the costs of terrorism, which were about $17 billion in 2005. While the spending may have prevented some incidents, even if this extra spending prevented 30 attacks like the July 2005 London bombings every year, it would still be more expensive than the damage from terrorism. The authors suggest that the benefits from increased counterterrorism spending have been about 5-8 cents per each dollar of spending, whereas if instead money was spent specifically on disrupting terrorist finances, $5-$15 of benefits could be obtained for each dollar spent.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/most-antiterrorism-spending-is-wasteful.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 6, 2008 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e features lots of interesting articles (it includes one of the quarterly technology reviews), one of which is \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808502\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Feel safer now?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  This is a report on a study by economists in Texas and Alabama commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, which looks at the effects of increased spending on counterterrorism efforts and \u0026ldquo;homeland security\u0026rdquo; globally since 2001, and the effects.  They calculate that while such spending has increased by somewhere between $65 billion and $200 billion a year, the benefits are far smaller than the costs of terrorism, which were about $17 billion in 2005.  While the spending may have prevented some incidents, even if this extra spending prevented 30 attacks like the July 2005 London bombings every year, it would still be more expensive than the damage from terrorism.  The authors suggest that the benefits from increased counterterrorism spending have been about 5-8 cents per each dollar of spending, whereas if instead money was spent specifically on disrupting terrorist finances, $5-$15 of benefits could be obtained for each dollar spent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Most antiterrorism spending is wasteful"},{"content":"The March 2008 issue of Fortean Times has an interesting article by Rupert Sheldrake titled \u0026ldquo;Richard Dawkins calls.\u0026rdquo; In it, he describes his meeting with Dawkins for the filming of a segment originally planned to be part of Enemies of Reason, broadcast in August 2007. Apparently very little was filmed and nothing was used of the meeting.\nSheldrake was to be interviewed as a defender of scientific evidence for telepathy, which Sheldrake has studied with empirical research, and written and published papers about. (Sheldrake is perhaps best known for his theory of morphogenetic fields, which he wrote about in his book A New Science of Life, which a reviewer for Nature called \u0026ldquo;the best candidate for burning there has been in years.\u0026rdquo; He believes that the more an idea is used, the easier it becomes for others to think of\u0026ndash;along the lines of the \u0026ldquo;hundredth monkey\u0026rdquo; phenomenon which was a myth originated by Lyall Watson and promulgated by Ken Keyes, Jr., and debunked by philosopher Ron Amundson.) According to Sheldrake, he was promised that \u0026ldquo;this documentary, at Channel 4\u0026rsquo;s insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil? was\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry.\u0026quot;\nBut when the meeting occurred, it quickly came to an end because, according to Sheldrake, Dawkins said \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t want to discuss evidence. \u0026hellip; There isn\u0026rsquo;t time. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s too complicated. And that\u0026rsquo;s not what this programme is about.\u0026rdquo; (A charitable and likely accurate reading of what \u0026ldquo;that\u0026rdquo; refers to is specifically evidence for telepathy, though Sheldrake seems to suggest Dawkins means evidence of any kind.) Sheldrake reports that Russell Barnes, the director, also \u0026ldquo;confirmed that he was not interested in evidence either.\u0026rdquo; (Again, probably referring specifically to evidence for telepathy, rather than evidence in general.) Sheldrake responded that \u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it\u0026rsquo;s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that\u0026rsquo;s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t interested in taking part in another low-grade debunking exercise.\u0026rdquo; To which he reports that Dawkins responded, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not a low-grade debunking exercise. It\u0026rsquo;s a high-grade debunking exercise.\u0026rdquo; I don\u0026rsquo;t see how anyone can reasonably disagree with Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s statement.\nSheldrake told them he had received assurances that this would be \u0026ldquo;a balanced scientific discussion about the evidence,\u0026rdquo; and when Barnes asked to see the emails in question, he showed them. Sheldrake writes, \u0026ldquo;He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (April 25, 2008): Rupert Sheldrake has posted \u0026ldquo;Richard Dawkins comes to call\u0026rdquo; on his website, which looks to be more-or-less the same as the FT article. William Dembski has pointed to this article as evidence that Richard Dawkins has done the same kind of duping that he has complained about when the producers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; did it to him, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think they\u0026rsquo;re quite the same in a number of respects. While Dawkins was (to his discredit) uninterested in the scientific evidence underlying telepathy that Sheldrake wanted to discuss, footage from Sheldrake wasn\u0026rsquo;t used in the final documentary. The case would have been parallel if Dawkins had pretended to be interested in the scientific evidence, completed the interview, and then used the footage in such a way as to criticize and ridicule Sheldrake. And it would have been parallel to how P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; footage was used in \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; only if Dawkins had conversed with Sheldrake about the scientific evidence for telepathy and then used excerpts from it in a film on another topic that hadn\u0026rsquo;t been mentioned. (Myers wasn\u0026rsquo;t asked questions about intelligent design, only about the relationship between religion and science.)\nUPDATE (June 8, 2008): P.Z. Myers has weighed in on this controversy at Pharyngula, arguing that Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s evidence (which hasn\u0026rsquo;t been discussed, so far as I can see) doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as evidence because of a lack of a plausible mechanism. I disagree that lack of a mechanism means that anomalous data doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as evidence\u0026ndash;it is reason to reject a proposed explanation, but it\u0026rsquo;s not a reason to deny that there is anomalous data.\nUPDATE (June 15, 2008): Sheldrake responds to Myers:\n[W]ith such a farrago of prejudice, ignorance and arrogance, it’s hard to know where to begin. It doesn’t really seem worth replying to people who aren’t interested in the facts but simply in venting their rage.\nMyers has not taken the trouble to read any of my experiments on telephone telepathy nor any of my other research on the subject and is obviously as bigoted as Dawkins himself. For example when he refers to my experiments as \u0026ldquo;exercises in gullibility, anecdote and sloppy statistics\u0026rdquo; the only thing he refers to is an attack by some sceptics on my staring research based on a fallacious argument which I’ve already refuted in the Skeptical Inquirer. He has not taken the trouble to look at the telephone telepathy or email telepathy experiments, published in peer-reviewed journals, which are based not on anecdotes but on randomized controlled tests. Then he accuses me of not proposing any theory for telepathy, which in fact I have done. But there’s nothing one can do about ranters of this kind, who are beyond the reach of science and reason.\nSome of the comments following his blog are equally sad and remind me of the low level of debate found on the Dawkins website where people vie with each other in their prejudice, sneering and nastiness.\nI do believe he has a point.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-03-19):\nI had seen the show a while back and don't recall any in-depth treatment of paranormal or extraordinary claims. Not that it could readily have done so -- it was a brief series (less two hours total?) that covered a breadth of material.It sounds like they shouldn't have engaged Sheldrake in the first place.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/sheldrake-vs-dawkins.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 2008 issue of \u003ca href=\"http://www.forteantimes.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e has an interesting article by \u003ca href=\"http://www.sheldrake.org/\"\u003eRupert Sheldrake\u003c/a\u003e titled \u0026ldquo;Richard Dawkins calls.\u0026rdquo;  In it, he describes his meeting with Dawkins for the filming of a segment originally planned to be part of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEnemies of Reason\u003c/span\u003e, broadcast in August 2007.  Apparently very little was filmed and nothing was used of the meeting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSheldrake was to be interviewed as a defender of scientific evidence for telepathy, which Sheldrake has studied with empirical research, and written and published papers about.  (Sheldrake is perhaps best known for his theory of morphogenetic fields, which he wrote about in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA New Science of Life\u003c/span\u003e, which a reviewer for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e called \u0026ldquo;the best candidate for burning there has been in years.\u0026rdquo;  He believes that the more an idea is used, the easier it becomes for others to think of\u0026ndash;along the lines of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;hundredth monkey\u0026rdquo; phenomenon\u003c/a\u003e which was a myth originated by Lyall Watson and promulgated by Ken Keyes, Jr., and debunked by philosopher Ron Amundson.)  According to Sheldrake, he was promised that \u0026ldquo;this documentary, at Channel 4\u0026rsquo;s insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Root of All Evil?\u003c/span\u003e was\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut when the meeting occurred, it quickly came to an end because, according to Sheldrake, Dawkins said \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t want to discuss evidence. \u0026hellip; There isn\u0026rsquo;t time. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s too complicated.  And that\u0026rsquo;s not what this programme is about.\u0026rdquo;  (A charitable and likely accurate reading of what \u0026ldquo;that\u0026rdquo; refers to is specifically evidence for telepathy, though Sheldrake seems to suggest Dawkins means evidence of any kind.)  Sheldrake reports that Russell Barnes, the director, also \u0026ldquo;confirmed that he was not interested in evidence either.\u0026rdquo;  (Again, probably referring specifically to evidence for telepathy, rather than evidence in general.)  Sheldrake responded that \u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion.  If telepathy occurs, it\u0026rsquo;s not irrational to believe in it.  I thought that\u0026rsquo;s what we were going to talk about.  I made it clear from the outset that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t interested in taking part in another low-grade debunking exercise.\u0026rdquo;  To which he reports that Dawkins responded, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not a low-grade debunking exercise.  It\u0026rsquo;s a high-grade debunking exercise.\u0026rdquo;  I don\u0026rsquo;t see how anyone can reasonably disagree with Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s statement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSheldrake told them he had received assurances that this would be \u0026ldquo;a balanced scientific discussion about the evidence,\u0026rdquo; and when Barnes asked to see the emails in question, he showed them.  Sheldrake writes, \u0026ldquo;He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong.  The team packed up and left.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 25, 2008):  Rupert Sheldrake has posted \u003ca href=\"http://www.sheldrake.org/D\u0026amp;C/controversies/Dawkins.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Richard Dawkins comes to call\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e on his website, which looks to be more-or-less the same as the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFT\u003c/span\u003e article.  William Dembski \u003ca href=\"http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelled/duped-and-duping-what-goes-around-comes-around/\"\u003ehas pointed to this article as evidence that Richard Dawkins has done the same kind of duping that he has complained about when the producers of \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; did it to him\u003c/a\u003e, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think they\u0026rsquo;re quite the same in a number of respects.  While Dawkins was (to his discredit) uninterested in the scientific evidence underlying telepathy that Sheldrake wanted to discuss, footage from Sheldrake wasn\u0026rsquo;t used in the final documentary.  The case would have been parallel if Dawkins had pretended to be interested in the scientific evidence, completed the interview, and then used the footage in such a way as to criticize and ridicule Sheldrake.  And it would have been parallel to how P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; footage was used in \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; only if Dawkins had conversed with Sheldrake about the scientific evidence for telepathy and then used excerpts from it in a film on another topic that hadn\u0026rsquo;t been mentioned.  (Myers wasn\u0026rsquo;t asked questions about intelligent design, only about the relationship between religion and science.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 8, 2008): P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/the_sheldrake_phenomenon.php\"\u003ehas weighed in on this controversy at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, arguing that Sheldrake\u0026rsquo;s evidence (which hasn\u0026rsquo;t been discussed, so far as I can see) doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as evidence because of a lack of a plausible mechanism.  I disagree that lack of a mechanism means that anomalous data doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as evidence\u0026ndash;it is reason to reject a proposed explanation, but it\u0026rsquo;s not a reason to deny that there is anomalous data.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 15, 2008):  Sheldrake \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailygrail.com/news/expelling-sheldrake\"\u003eresponds to Myers\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e[W]ith such a farrago of prejudice, ignorance and arrogance, it’s hard to know where to begin. It doesn’t really seem worth replying to people who aren’t interested in the facts but simply in venting their rage.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sheldrake vs. Dawkins"},{"content":"The ACLU reports that the Terrorist Screening Center\u0026rsquo;s watch list reached 700,000 names in September 2007, and is adding 20,000 new names per month. \u0026ldquo;At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July. If there were really that many terrorists running around, we\u0026rsquo;d all be dead.\u0026quot;\nNames on the list include:\nRobert Johnson\nAlexandra Hay\nEvo Morales (president of Bolivia)\nSaddam Hussein (dead former dictator of Iraq)\nthe 9/11 hijackers (all still dead)\nGary Smith\nJohn Williams\nEdward Kennedy (Massachusetts Senator)\nJohn Lewis (U.S. Rep. from Georgia)\nDaniel Brown (U.S. soldier detained on way home from Iraq)\nJames Moore (author of book critical of Bush administration)\nCatherine (\u0026ldquo;Cat\u0026rdquo;) Stevens (wife of Sen. Ted Stevens)\nYusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens)\nVernon Lewis (retired Major General, U.S. Army)\nRobert Campbell (U.S. Navy, retired)\nDavid Nelson\nJohn William Anderson\nDon Young (U.S. Rep. from Alaska)\nThe whole idea of checking names for flight screening is nearly pointless, since terrorists are capable of getting fake ID. It\u0026rsquo;s absolutely idiotic to have extremely common names on the list and subject everyone who happens to have a common name to extra screening every time they fly. The right way to do screening is to use mechanisms like randomly subjecting people to extra screening and to have people undercover trained to identify suspicious behavior in the terminal\u0026ndash;and to use multiple mechanisms that are randomly changed from day to day, so that security measures tested on one day will not be the exact measures in place on a later day.\nUPDATE (March 18, 2008): Note that the no-fly list is a subset of the terrorist watch list. The former is what I criticize in the last paragraph. An FBI audit has stated that the information the FBI supplies for the terrorist watch list is \u0026ldquo;outdated and inaccurate.\u0026quot;\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-16):\nSuch a list seems like it would be an open invitation for political abuse, too.Seeing ACLU plaintiffs and Bush adminstration critics end up on the list is not a reassuring sign.As we head towards being a national surveillance state where, as Lewis Lapham put it, \"they ... put the entire country behind a one-way mirror that allows the government to see the people but prevents the people from seeing it\" its nearly inevitable that in such a state abuse will follow.For instance, a while back Glenn Greenwald was in the process of being smeared by Michelle Malkin-sphere blogs when a commenter claiming to work for the Dept. of Homeland Security revealed accurate travel information about Greenwald, which then was turned into the smear that Greenwald is a pseudo-American.\nLippard (2008-03-16):\nThat reminds me--I requested my DHS travel dossier via the mechanism suggested by The Identity Project, last September 26, and have still not received a response!OMB guidelines say I should have received an acknowledgment in 10 days and a response in 60.\nReed (2008-03-16):\nI wonder if political correctness figures into the existence of the no-fly-list?For instance, if anti-discrimination rules prevent the TSA from questioning every young Arab-looking male who looks the least bit suspicious, perhaps the TSA just needs any pretense to hold them for further questioning. A catch-all database of names might do the trick.In any case, it's security theater.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/terrorist-watch-list-grows-past-700000.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe ACLU \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html\"\u003ereports that the Terrorist Screening Center\u0026rsquo;s watch list reached 700,000 names in September 2007\u003c/a\u003e, and is adding 20,000 new names per month.  \u0026ldquo;At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July. If there were really that many terrorists running around, we\u0026rsquo;d all be dead.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNames on the list include:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRobert Johnson\u003cbr /\u003eAlexandra Hay\u003cbr /\u003eEvo Morales (president of Bolivia)\u003cbr /\u003eSaddam Hussein (dead former dictator of Iraq)\u003cbr /\u003ethe 9/11 hijackers (all still dead)\u003cbr /\u003eGary Smith\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Williams\u003cbr /\u003eEdward Kennedy (Massachusetts Senator)\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Lewis (U.S. Rep. from Georgia)\u003cbr /\u003eDaniel Brown (U.S. soldier detained on way home from Iraq)\u003cbr /\u003eJames Moore (author of book critical of Bush administration)\u003cbr /\u003eCatherine (\u0026ldquo;Cat\u0026rdquo;) Stevens (wife of Sen. Ted Stevens)\u003cbr /\u003eYusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens)\u003cbr /\u003eVernon Lewis (retired Major General, U.S. Army)\u003cbr /\u003eRobert Campbell (U.S. Navy, retired)\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Nelson\u003cbr /\u003eJohn William Anderson\u003cbr /\u003eDon Young (U.S. Rep. from Alaska)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe whole idea of checking names for flight screening is nearly pointless, since terrorists are capable of getting fake ID.  It\u0026rsquo;s absolutely idiotic to have extremely common names on the list and subject everyone who happens to have a common name to extra screening every time they fly.  The right way to do screening is to use mechanisms like randomly subjecting people to extra screening and to have people undercover trained to identify suspicious behavior in the terminal\u0026ndash;and to use multiple mechanisms that are randomly changed from day to day, so that security measures tested on one day will not be the exact measures in place on a later day.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 18, 2008):  Note that the no-fly list is a subset of the terrorist watch list.  The former is what I criticize in the last paragraph.  An FBI audit has stated that \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080317/ap_on_re_us/terror_watchlist\"\u003ethe information the FBI supplies for the terrorist watch list is \u0026ldquo;outdated and inaccurate.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Terrorist watch list grows past 700,000 names"},{"content":"The Eliott Spitzer prostitution scandal is bringing the moralizers out of the woodwork. At TPM Cafe, E.J. Graff writes:\nI'm tired of hearing about Eliot Spitzer's \"classical tragedy.\" I'm not interested in whether he was targeted by Republicans, especially since the TPMmuckrakers seem to have shown fairly clearly that his shady-looking wire transfers drew ordinary oversight attention. I'm a little sickened to read that paying thousands of dollars for sex is all about buying a \"positional good\"--if I understand Harold Meyerson correctly (and Harold is magnificent on other subjects, but very strange here), the point of paying $5500 for sex isn't that it gives you better-than-ordinary sex, but rather, that the cost itself makes it *higher status* than buying your way into a lower-cost vagina.\n...\nTo know that your father is paying to use the body of someone just a couple of years older than your own--well, I picture eating disorders ahead for those girls. I picture that in part because Eliot Spitzer cannot be going to a prostitute for the sex. He's a powerful, good-looking, wealthy man, and could seduce a woman if nonmarital sex were all he wanted. No: he wanted to order some woman around, wanted to treat her not like a person but like a collection of body parts put together for his pleasure. To use women this way -- just for the thrill of power -- is appalling. If that's how your dad treats women, that cannot make you feel good as a future woman yourself.\n...\nWe're not talking about a victimless crime. We're talking about a way of degrading and traumatizing women who have already been degraded and traumatized (and sometimes trafficked). Some of my friends who are recovering drug addicts (and, yes, violently abused as children) were once prostitutes, and what they've told me is fully in keeping with the studies: it's alienating, traumatizing, violent, and not what anyone dreams of doing when they grow up. So here's an idea: let's decriminalize *being* a prostitute ... but criminalize *patronizing* a prostitute. Leaving aside Graff's attribution of intentions and views to Spitzer on the basis of no evidence of any kind and her last comment advocating the Swedish model that's also advocated by Melissa Farley, contrast her moralizing with H.L. Mencken's views on prostitution in his \"The Lady of Joy\":\nEVEN PROSTITUTION, in the long run, may become more or less respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks. That quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary; whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for example, religion, fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin grammar. The prostitute is disesteemed today, not because her trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but because she is currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity, against her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is usually unsound is no objection to it; nearly all the thinking of the world, particularly in the field of morals, is based upon unsound assumption, e.g., that God observes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent. The truth is that prostitution is one of the most attractive of the occupations practically open to the sort of women who engage in it, and that the prostitute commonly likes her work, and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a waitress for anything in the world. The notion to the contrary is propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of professional reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter in order to cultivate their good will, just as convicts in prison, questioned by teetotalers, always ascribe their rascality to alcohol. No prostitute of anything resembling normal intelligence is under the slightest duress; she is perfectly free to abandon her trade and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the impulse strikes her; all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding such nonsense to the credulous. So long as the average prostitute is able to make a good living, she is quite content with her lot, and disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters. If she complains of it, then you may be sure that her success is below her expectations. A starving lawyer always sees injustice in the courts. A bad physician is a bitter critic of Ehrlich and Pasteur. And when a suburban clergyman is forced out of his cure by a vestry-room revolution he almost invariably concludes that the sinfulness of man is incurable, and sometimes he even begins to doubt some of the typographical errors in Holy Writ.\n...\nEven the most lowly prostitute is better off, in all worldly ways, than the virtuous woman of her own station in life. She has less work to do, it is less monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a far greater variety of men, and they are of classes distinctly beyond her own. Nor is her occupation hazardous and her ultimate fate tragic. A dozen or more years ago I observed a somewhat amusing proof of this last. At that time certain sentimental busybodies of the American city in which I lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution therein, and some of them came to me in advance, as a practical journalist, for advice as to how to proceed. I found that all of them shared the common superstition that the professional life of the average prostitute is only five years long, and that she invariably ends in the gutter. They were enormously amazed when they unearthed the truth. This truth was to the effect that the average prostitute of that town ended her career, not in the morgue but at the altar of God, and that those who remained unmarried often continued in practice for ten, fifteen and even twenty years, and then retired on competences. It was established, indeed, that fully eighty per cent married, and that they almost always got husbands who would have been far beyond their reach had they remained virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there were a dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen, small shopkeepers and minor officials, and at least two or three who married well-to-do tradesmen and professional men. Among the thousands whose careers were studied there was actually one who ended as the wife of the town's richest banker--that is, one who bagged the best catch in the whole community. This woman had begun as a domestic servant, and abandoned that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel. Her experiences there polished and civilized her, and in her old age she was a grande dame of great dignity. Much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the ancient profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward it. An educated woman, hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these men, however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably superior to men of the prostitute's own class--say her father and brothers--and that communion with them, far from being disgusting, is often rather romantic. Certainly there are prostitutes that meet Graff's description, but I suspect that those working for the Emperor's Club, including Ashley Alexandra Dupre, are more accurately described by Mencken.\nBetter than listening to either Graff or Mencken is to read what sex workers write about their own experiences (and not just those who have found new careers condemning their previous one), as in Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander's Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry.\nBTW, the comments on Graff are far, far better than her article, and are well worth reading. Commenter Common Dreamer in particular points to some actual empirical research on prostitution (including a newspaper article summarizing prostitution researchers' responses to some bad research by a particular individual with an axe to grind). (Compare the comments on that newspaper article to the comments on Graff's article--at least Graff has attracted a much higher quality commenter than the Las Vegas Sun gets.) Common Dreamer points to some references on the ProstitutionProCon website, which looks like a good source for arguments and evidence regarding the question of whether prostitution should be legal. Historical Comments Amber (2008-03-29):\nI liked your blog :)http://beinganescort.blogspot.com/My blog about being an escort,,,, it sucks\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/ej-graff-on-prostitution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Eliott Spitzer prostitution scandal is bringing the moralizers out of the woodwork.  At \u003ca href=\"http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/13/what_about_the_women_1/\"\u003eTPM Cafe, E.J. Graff writes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI'm tired of hearing about Eliot Spitzer's \"classical tragedy.\" I'm not interested in whether he was targeted by Republicans, especially since the TPMmuckrakers seem to have shown fairly clearly that \u003ca href=\"http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/todays_must_read_294.php\"\u003ehis shady-looking wire transfers drew ordinary oversight attention.\u003c/a\u003e I'm a little sickened to read that paying thousands of dollars for sex is all about buying a \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/11/AR2008031102463.html\"\u003e \"positional good\"\u003c/a\u003e--if I understand Harold Meyerson correctly (and Harold is magnificent on other subjects, but very strange here), the point of paying $5500 for sex isn't that it gives you better-than-ordinary sex, but rather, that the cost itself makes it *higher status* than buying your way into a lower-cost vagina.\u003cbr /\u003e\n...\u003cbr /\u003e\nTo know that your father is paying to use the body of someone just a couple of years older than your own--well, I picture eating disorders ahead for those girls. I picture that in part because Eliot Spitzer cannot be going to a prostitute for the sex. He's a powerful, good-looking, wealthy man, and could seduce a woman if nonmarital sex were all he wanted. No: he wanted to order some woman around, wanted to treat her not like a person but like a collection of body parts put together for his pleasure. To use women this way -- just for the thrill of power -- is appalling. If that's how your dad treats women, that cannot make you feel good as a future woman yourself.\u003cbr /\u003e\n...\u003cbr /\u003e\nWe're not talking about a victimless crime. We're talking about a way of degrading and traumatizing women who have already been degraded and traumatized (and sometimes trafficked). Some of my friends who are recovering drug addicts (and, yes, violently abused as children) were once prostitutes, and what they've told me is fully in keeping with the studies: it's alienating, traumatizing, violent, and not what anyone dreams of doing when they grow up.  \u003cbr /\u003e\nSo here's an idea: let's decriminalize *being* a prostitute ... but criminalize *patronizing* a prostitute. \u003c/blockquote\u003e\nLeaving aside Graff's attribution of intentions and views to Spitzer on the basis of no evidence of any kind and her last comment advocating the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden\"\u003eSwedish model\u003c/a\u003e that's also advocated by \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Farley\"\u003eMelissa Farley\u003c/a\u003e, contrast her moralizing with \u003ca href=\"http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/hlm/defense.htm#43\"\u003eH.L. Mencken's views on prostitution in his \"The Lady of Joy\"\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nEVEN PROSTITUTION, in the long run, may become more or less respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks.  That quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary; whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for example, religion, fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin grammar.  The prostitute is disesteemed today, not because her trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but because she is currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity, against her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is usually unsound is no objection to it; nearly all the thinking of the world, particularly in the field of morals, is based upon unsound assumption, \u003ci\u003ee.g.\u003c/i\u003e, that God observes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent. The truth is that prostitution is one of the most attractive of the occupations practically open to the sort of women who engage in it, and that the prostitute commonly likes her work, and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a waitress for anything in the world.  The notion to the contrary is propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of professional reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter in order to cultivate their good will, just as convicts in prison, questioned by teetotalers, always ascribe their rascality to alcohol.  No prostitute of anything resembling normal intelligence is under the slightest duress; she is perfectly free to abandon her trade and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the impulse strikes her; all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding such nonsense to the credulous.  So long as the average prostitute is able to make a good living, she is quite content with her lot, and disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters.  If she complains of it, then you may be sure that her success is below her expectations.  A starving lawyer always sees injustice in the courts.  A bad physician is a bitter critic of Ehrlich and Pasteur.  And when a suburban clergyman is forced out of his cure by a vestry-room revolution he almost invariably concludes that the sinfulness of man is incurable, and sometimes he even begins to doubt some of the typographical errors in Holy Writ.\u003cbr /\u003e\n...\u003cbr /\u003e\nEven the most lowly prostitute is better off, in all worldly ways, than the virtuous woman of her own station in life.  She has less work to do, it is less monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a far greater variety of men, and they are of classes distinctly beyond her own.  Nor is her occupation hazardous and her ultimate fate tragic. A dozen or more years ago I observed a somewhat amusing proof of this last.  At that time certain sentimental busybodies of the American city in which I lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution therein, and some of them came to me in advance, as a practical journalist, for advice as to how to proceed.  I found that all of them shared the common superstition that the professional life of the average prostitute is only five years long, and that she invariably ends in the gutter.  They were enormously amazed when they unearthed the truth.  This truth was to the effect that the average prostitute of that town ended her career, not in the morgue but at the altar of God, and that those who remained unmarried often continued in practice for ten, fifteen and even twenty years, and then retired on competences.  It was established, indeed, that fully eighty per cent  married, and that they almost always got husbands who would have been far beyond their reach had they remained virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there were a dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen, small shopkeepers and minor officials, and at least two or three who married well-to-do tradesmen and professional men.  Among the thousands whose careers were studied there was actually one who ended as the wife of the town's richest banker--that is, one who bagged the best catch in the whole community.  This woman had begun as a domestic servant, and abandoned that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel.  Her experiences there polished and civilized her, and in her old age she was a \u003ci\u003egrande dame\u003c/i\u003e of great dignity.  Much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the ancient profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward it.  An educated woman, hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely.  What she overlooks is that these men, however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably superior to men of the prostitute's own class--say her father and brothers--and that communion with them, far from being disgusting, is often rather romantic.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nCertainly there are prostitutes that meet Graff's description, but I suspect that those working for the Emperor's Club, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/03/13/1205126046260.html\"\u003eAshley Alexandra Dupre\u003c/a\u003e, are more accurately described by Mencken.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBetter than listening to either Graff or Mencken is to read what sex workers write about their own experiences (and not just those who have found new careers condemning their previous one), as in Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander's \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Work-Writings-Women-Industry/dp/1573440426/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nBTW, the comments on Graff are far, far better than her article, and are well worth reading.  Commenter \u003ca href=\"http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/13/what_about_the_women_1/#comment-2653338\"\u003eCommon Dreamer\u003c/a\u003e in particular points to some actual empirical research on prostitution (including \u003ca href=\"http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/31/bewildered-academics-pore-over-sex-trade-hysteria/\"\u003ea newspaper article summarizing prostitution researchers' responses to some bad research by a particular individual with an axe to grind\u003c/a\u003e).  (Compare the comments on that newspaper article to the comments on Graff's article--at least Graff has attracted a much higher quality commenter than the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLas Vegas Sun\u003c/span\u003e gets.)  Common Dreamer points to some references on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.prostitutionprocon.org/\"\u003eProstitutionProCon website\u003c/a\u003e, which looks like a good source for arguments and evidence regarding the question of whether prostitution should be legal.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAmber\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-03-29)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI liked your blog :)\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://beinganescort.blogspot.com/\u003cBR/\u003eMy blog about being an escort,,,, it sucks\u003c/p\u003e","title":"E.J. Graff on prostitution"},{"content":"The Miami Herald has uncovered a new Homeland Security threat\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents that are committing crimes. Bribery, drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, embezzlement, and other crimes have become so prevalent that a senior manager has issued a memo pointing out that agents are supposed to uphold, not break the law:\nU.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;disturbing events\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; and the ``increase in the number of employee arrests.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo;\nThomas S. Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times \u0026ndash; even when not on the job.\n\u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo obtained by The Miami Herald.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/homeland-security-threat.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMiami Herald\u003c/span\u003e has uncovered a new Homeland Security threat\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/v-print/story/444503.html\"\u003eU.S. Customs and Border Protection agents that are committing crimes\u003c/a\u003e.  Bribery, drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, embezzlement, and other crimes have become so prevalent that a senior manager has issued a memo pointing out that agents are supposed to uphold, not break the law:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eU.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;disturbing events\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; and the ``increase in the number of employee arrests.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Homeland Security threat"},{"content":"This cectic comic is a good one:\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/causing-violence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://cectic.com/121.html\"\u003ecectic comic is a good one\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://cectic.com/comics/121.png\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://cectic.com/comics/121.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Causing violence"},{"content":"Speechnow.org is being supported by the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics in its lawsuit against federal laws and regulations which forbid it from receiving more than $5,000 in donations per year from any individual and require it to file forms and engage in reporting in order to do what it wants to do.\nWhat does Speechnow.org want to do? It wants to advocate the view that voters should vote for candidates who support the First Amendment and against candidates who do not. It takes no corporate or union money, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t donate to or coordinate with individual candidates or political parties. Yet this is sufficient under current law to restrict its activities and entangle it in red tape, so Speechnow.org has filed a federal lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/ij-defends-speechnoworg.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.speechnow.org/\"\u003eSpeechnow.org\u003c/a\u003e is being supported by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/\"\u003eInstitute for Justice\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.campaignfreedom.org/\"\u003eCenter for Competitive Politics\u003c/a\u003e in its lawsuit against federal laws and regulations which forbid it from receiving more than $5,000 in donations per year from any individual and require it to file forms and engage in reporting in order to do what it wants to do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat does Speechnow.org want to do?  It wants to advocate the view that voters should vote for candidates who support the First Amendment and against candidates who do not.  It takes no corporate or union money, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t donate to or coordinate with individual candidates or political parties.  Yet this is sufficient under current law to restrict its activities and entangle it in red tape, so Speechnow.org \u003ca href=\"http://www.speechnow.org/pressreleaselawsuit\"\u003ehas filed a federal lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"IJ defends Speechnow.org"},{"content":"The March 10 Wall Street Journal contains a fairly detailed description of the data mining operation being run by the NSA. The program described is more data mining than eavesdropping, though it does involve the collection of transactional data like call detail records for telephone calls, and intercepted Internet data like web search terms and email senders and recipients. Also included is financial transaction data and airline data. I think most of this had already been pieced together, but this is a fairly comprehensive summary in one place. The WSJ story reports that leads generated from the data mining effort are then fed into the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which does warrantless eavesdropping. (An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the whole operation as the Terrorist Surveillance Program.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-13):\nWe still don't know what exactly it was that the adminstration was attempting to do that was so extreme that John Ashcroft refused to sign off on it.If Bush gets his way we'll never know, either.\nLippard (2008-03-13):\nHume's Ghost:I don't think you have it quite right. John Ashcroft refused to sign off on the *re-authorization* of what the administration was already doing, not a new program or new technique. He refused to do so because after Jack Goldsmith (author of _The Terror Presidency_) had looked into it (after he replaced his friend John Yoo as head of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel), he argued that it was clearly illegal. Goldsmith was able to persuade Ashcroft, Deputy AG James Comey, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others in the DOJ of his position in a dispute with Cheney's chief of staff David Addington. Bush personally overrode Ashcroft to continue the program, at which point Comey, Ashcroft, Mueller, and others threatened to resign if the administration didn't modify the program to make it constitutional, which apparently it did to their satisfaction.The Frontline on \"Cheney's Law\" goes into this.\nLippard (2008-03-13):\nSee pages 6-7 of this Jeffrey Rosen article in the NY Times last year about Goldsmith.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-14):\nThanks for the correction ... I've even read The Terror Presidency (and watched Cheney's Law previously.) You see what happens when I comment without refreshing my memory.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-14):\nI would still emphasize that we don't know the content and scope of what was going on with that program from 2001 - 2004.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/nsas-terrorist-surveillance-program.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 10 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120511973377523845.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news\"\u003econtains a fairly detailed description of the data mining operation being run by the NSA\u003c/a\u003e.  The program described is more data mining than eavesdropping, though it does involve the collection of transactional data like call detail records for telephone calls, and intercepted Internet data like web search terms and email senders and recipients.  Also included is financial transaction data and airline data.  I think most of this had already been pieced together, but this is a fairly comprehensive summary in one place.  The WSJ story reports that leads generated from the data mining effort are then fed into the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which does warrantless eavesdropping.  (An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the whole operation as the Terrorist Surveillance Program.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NSA's data mining  and eavesdropping described"},{"content":"Ramona Elementary in Los Angeles has adopted a Singapore math curriculum that includes a daily 60-second \u0026ldquo;sprint\u0026rdquo; drill to make some basic skills second-nature, and the result has been that the percentage of fifth-graders scoring at grade level went from 45% to 76% in two years. Singapore\u0026rsquo;s students regularly score at the top in international math skill comparisons.\nRamona\u0026rsquo;s students are mostly immigrants, with most of them from Central America; 6 of 10 speak English as a second language.\nThe books, with the no-nonsense title \u0026ldquo;Primary Mathematics,\u0026rdquo; are published for the U.S. market by a small company in \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026ldquo;PLGEO1001040000000000\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Oregon\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;, Marshall Cavendish International. They are slim volumes, weighing a fraction of a conventional American text. They have a spare, stripped-down look, and a given page contains no material that isn\u0026rsquo;t directly related to the lesson at hand.\nStanding in an empty classroom one recent morning, Ramos flipped through two sets of texts: the Singapore books and those of a conventional math series published by Harcourt. She began with the first lesson in the first chapter of first grade.\nIn Harcourt Math, there was a picture of eight trees. There were two circles in the sky. The instructions told the students: \u0026ldquo;There are 2 birds in all.\u0026rdquo; There were no birds on the page.\nThe instructions directed the students to draw little yellow disks in the circles to represent the birds.\nRamos gave a look of exasperation. Without a visual representation of birds, she said, the math is confusing and overly abstract for a 5- or 6-year-old. \u0026ldquo;The math doesn\u0026rsquo;t jump out of the page here,\u0026rdquo; she said.\nThe Singapore first-grade text, by contrast, could hardly have been clearer. It began with a blank rectangle and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;zero.\u0026rdquo; Below that was a rectangle with a single robot in it, and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;one.\u0026rdquo; Then a rectangle with two dolls, and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;two,\u0026rdquo; and so on.\n\u0026ldquo;This page is very pictorial, but it refers to something very concrete,\u0026rdquo; Ramos said. \u0026ldquo;Something they can understand.\u0026quot;\nNext to the pictures were dots. Beginning with the number six (represented by six pineapples), the dots were arranged in two rows, so that six was presented as one row of five dots and a second row with one dot.\nDay one, first grade: the beginnings of set theory.\n\u0026ldquo;This concept, right at the beginning, is the foundation for very important mathematics,\u0026rdquo; Ramos said. As it progresses, the Singapore math builds on this, often in ways that are invisible to the children.\nWord problems in the early grades are always solved the same way: Draw a picture representing the problem and its solution. Then express it with numbers, and finally write it in words. \u0026ldquo;The whole concept,\u0026rdquo; Ramos says, \u0026ldquo;is concrete to pictorial to abstract.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nMany eminent mathematicians agree. In fact, it is difficult to find a mathematician who likes the standard American texts or dislikes Singapore\u0026rsquo;s.\n\u0026ldquo;The Singapore texts don\u0026rsquo;t make a huge deal about the concepts, but they present them in the correct and economical form,\u0026rdquo; said Roger Howe, a professor of mathematics at \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026rdquo; OREDU0000166\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Yale University\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;. \u0026ldquo;It provides the basis for a very orderly and systematic conceptual understanding of arithmetic and mathematics.\u0026quot;So why aren\u0026rsquo;t these books more widely used? The L.A. Times article linked above says that the main resistance comes from teachers. The curriculum is not easy to use without special teacher training:\nAdding to the difficulty is that the Singapore texts are not as teacher-friendly as most American texts. \u0026ldquo;They don\u0026rsquo;t come with teachers editions, or two-page fold-outs with comments, or step-by-step instructions about how to give the lessons,\u0026rdquo; said Yale\u0026rsquo;s Howe. \u0026ldquo;Most U.S. elementary teachers don\u0026rsquo;t currently have that kind of understanding, so successful use of the Singapore books would require substantial professional development.\u0026quot;\nAlthough some U.S. schools have had spectacular results using Singapore texts, others have fared less well. A study found that success in \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026ldquo;PLGEO100100614000000\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Montgomery County\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;, Md., schools using the Singapore books was directly related to teacher training. At schools where teachers weren\u0026rsquo;t trained as well, student achievement declined.This seems to be further evidence for the recent McKinsey study comparing education internationally that concluded that the best results are obtained by hiring the best teachers, providing them with training and support to get the best out of them, and then intervening to provide students who fall behind with support.\nHistorical Comments Mark (2008-03-21):\nI guess you have to see it to understand, but from the brief description above, I have to wonder what could be simpler? Maybe teachers need to watch Sesame Street a few times.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/school-adopts-singapore-math-curriculum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRamona Elementary in Los Angeles h\u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-math9mar09,0,1449785.story?page=1\"\u003eas adopted a Singapore math curriculum that includes a daily 60-second \u0026ldquo;sprint\u0026rdquo; drill to make some basic skills second-nature\u003c/a\u003e, and the result has been that the percentage of fifth-graders scoring at grade level went from 45% to 76% in two years.  Singapore\u0026rsquo;s students regularly score at the top in international math skill comparisons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRamona\u0026rsquo;s students are mostly immigrants, with most of them from Central America; 6 of 10 speak English as a second language.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe books, with the no-nonsense title \u0026ldquo;Primary Mathematics,\u0026rdquo; are published for the U.S. market by a small company in \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026ldquo;PLGEO1001040000000000\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Oregon\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;, Marshall Cavendish International. They are slim volumes, weighing a fraction of a conventional American text. They have a spare, stripped-down look, and a given page contains no material that isn\u0026rsquo;t directly related to the lesson at hand.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStanding in an empty classroom one recent morning, Ramos flipped through two sets of texts: the Singapore books and those of a conventional math series published by Harcourt. She began with the first lesson in the first chapter of first grade.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Harcourt Math, there was a picture of eight trees. There were two circles in the sky. The instructions told the students: \u0026ldquo;There are 2 birds in all.\u0026rdquo; There were no birds on the page.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe instructions directed the students to draw little yellow disks in the circles to represent the birds.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRamos gave a look of exasperation. Without a visual representation of birds, she said, the math is confusing and overly abstract for a 5- or 6-year-old. \u0026ldquo;The math doesn\u0026rsquo;t jump out of the page here,\u0026rdquo; she said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Singapore first-grade text, by contrast, could hardly have been clearer. It began with a blank rectangle and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;zero.\u0026rdquo; Below that was a rectangle with a single robot in it, and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;one.\u0026rdquo; Then a rectangle with two dolls, and the number and word for \u0026ldquo;two,\u0026rdquo; and so on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;This page is very pictorial, but it refers to something very concrete,\u0026rdquo; Ramos said. \u0026ldquo;Something they can understand.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext to the pictures were dots. Beginning with the number six (represented by six pineapples), the dots were arranged in two rows, so that six was presented as one row of five dots and a second row with one dot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDay one, first grade: the beginnings of set theory.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;This concept, right at the beginning, is the foundation for very important mathematics,\u0026rdquo; Ramos said. As it progresses, the Singapore math builds on this, often in ways that are invisible to the children.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWord problems in the early grades are always solved the same way: Draw a picture representing the problem and its solution. Then express it with numbers, and finally write it in words. \u0026ldquo;The whole concept,\u0026rdquo; Ramos says, \u0026ldquo;is concrete to pictorial to abstract.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eMany eminent mathematicians agree. In fact, it is difficult to find a mathematician who likes the standard American texts or dislikes Singapore\u0026rsquo;s.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Singapore texts don\u0026rsquo;t make a huge deal about the concepts, but they present them in the correct and economical form,\u0026rdquo; said Roger Howe, a professor of mathematics at \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026rdquo; OREDU0000166\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Yale University\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;. \u0026ldquo;It provides the basis for a very orderly and systematic conceptual understanding of arithmetic and mathematics.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo why aren\u0026rsquo;t these books more widely used?  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eL.A. Times\u003c/span\u003e article linked above says that the main resistance comes from teachers.  The curriculum is not easy to use without special teacher training:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAdding to the difficulty is that the Singapore texts are not as teacher-friendly as most American texts. \u0026ldquo;They don\u0026rsquo;t come with teachers editions, or two-page fold-outs with comments, or step-by-step instructions about how to give the lessons,\u0026rdquo; said Yale\u0026rsquo;s Howe. \u0026ldquo;Most U.S. elementary teachers don\u0026rsquo;t currently have that kind of understanding, so successful use of the Singapore books would require substantial professional development.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough some U.S. schools have had spectacular results using Singapore texts, others have fared less well. A study found that success in \u0026lt;runtime:topic id=\u0026ldquo;PLGEO100100614000000\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Montgomery County\u0026lt;/runtime:topic\u0026gt;, Md., schools using the Singapore books was directly related to teacher training. At schools where teachers weren\u0026rsquo;t trained as well, student achievement declined.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis seems to be further evidence for \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/how-to-improve-education.html\"\u003ethe recent McKinsey study comparing education internationally\u003c/a\u003e that concluded that the best results are obtained by hiring the best teachers, providing them with training and support to get the best out of them, and then intervening to provide students who fall behind with support.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"School adopts Singapore math curriculum, sees gains in scores"},{"content":"Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine will be performing at the Celebrity Theatre on June 7, for his first headlining show in Arizona. Tickets go on sale on March 15, 18 \u0026amp; over only, $100 for front row, $60 for VIP rows 2-7, and $35 for remaining rows. Those in the front and VIP rows get an after-show \u0026ldquo;meet and greet\u0026rdquo; with Richard Cheese for photos and autographs at the Celebrity Club.\nMore details at www.richardcheese.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/richard-cheese-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine will be performing at the Celebrity Theatre on June 7, for his first headlining show in Arizona.  Tickets go on sale on March 15, 18 \u0026amp; over only, $100 for front row, $60 for VIP rows 2-7, and $35 for remaining rows.  Those in the front and VIP rows get an after-show \u0026ldquo;meet and greet\u0026rdquo; with Richard Cheese for photos and autographs at the Celebrity Club.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details at \u003ca href=\"http://www.richardcheese.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.richardcheese.com\"\u003ewww.richardcheese.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Cheese in Phoenix"},{"content":"A few articles of interest from the last couple of issues of The Economist:\nFebruary 23, 2008: \u0026ldquo;Moral thinking,\u0026quot; a summary of recent research that sheds light on human moral reasoning processes. Video here. (A related, more in-depth story is Steven Pinker\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Moral Instinct\u0026rdquo; which appeared in The New York Times Magazine on January 13.)\nMarch 1, 2008: \u0026ldquo;Winds of change,\u0026quot; a summary of research to use breathalyzer technology to diagnose medical conditions.\n\u0026ldquo;Telltale hairs,\u0026quot; about new methods of forensics to use hair analysis to identify a person\u0026rsquo;s location at a given time (based on water consumption\u0026ndash;could drinking imported bottled water be used to thwart this?).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/interesting-articles-in-economist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few articles of interest from the last couple of issues of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 23, 2008: \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10717915\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Moral thinking,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a summary of recent research that sheds light on human moral reasoning processes.  Video \u003ca href=\"http://video.economist.com/?fr_story=9ae27448091b0a17af96a669af43a50273fbbb28\u0026amp;rf=sitemap\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (A related, more in-depth story is Steven Pinker\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Moral Instinct\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which appeared in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e Magazine on January 13.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMarch 1, 2008:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10765361\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Winds of change,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a summary of research to use breathalyzer technology to diagnose medical conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10765352\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Telltale hairs,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about new methods of forensics to use hair analysis to identify a person\u0026rsquo;s location at a given time (based on water consumption\u0026ndash;could drinking imported bottled water be used to thwart this?).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Interesting articles in The Economist"},{"content":"\nOn Saturday, March 22, the second SkeptiCamp will take place, in Castle Rock, Colorado. Reed Esau, one of the organizers presenters (also known as the originator of the celebrity atheist list), reports that the James Randi Educational Foundation will be sponsoring the event this time, and the list of likely speakers looks quite interesting:\nSome of those who plan to present have posted their intentions: writerdd on \u0026lsquo;How I Became a Skepchick\u0026rsquo;, Gary on pareidolia, R. G. on the Family Tomb of Jesus, Abel on Weapons of Mass Deception, Linda Rosa on Therapeutic Touch, Larry Sarner with a legislative update (on naturopath licensing), Crystal on a the new Fund for Thought initiative, Joe (a pediatrician) dispelling myths about vaccines and autism, Rocky Mountain Paranormal Society makes another appearance, Amy on why women need to be active in the skeptic movement, Jeanette on denialism, Rusty on the reproduction of JFK ballistics test, Paul on the scientific understanding of mystical, psychic, and occult experiences, Marlowe on a Gemini-1 mission UFO cover-up (?!) and/or how scammers victimize seniors, Pete on the Scientific Method and me on the basics of Modern Skepticism.Check it out.\n(Previously.)\nUPDATE (March 24, 2008): Reed has written a summary of the event.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2008-03-10):\nOne minor correction. I'm not an organizer of this event and chose to give a presentation instead.But thanks for the mention nonetheless!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/skepticamp-2.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCampColorado2\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://barcamp.org/f/skepticamp_co_logo3.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Saturday, March 22, the second SkeptiCamp will take place, in Castle Rock, Colorado.  Reed Esau, one of the \u003cstrike\u003eorganizers\u003c/strike\u003e presenters (also known as the originator of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Main_Page\"\u003ecelebrity atheist list\u003c/a\u003e), reports that the James Randi Educational Foundation will be sponsoring the event this time, and \u003ca href=\"http://skeptics.meetup.com/131/messages/boards/thread/4328644\"\u003ethe list of likely speakers looks quite interesting\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSome of those who plan to present have posted their intentions: writerdd on \u0026lsquo;How I Became a Skepchick\u0026rsquo;, Gary on pareidolia, R. G. on the Family Tomb of Jesus, Abel on Weapons of Mass Deception, Linda Rosa on Therapeutic Touch, Larry Sarner with a legislative update (on naturopath licensing), Crystal on a the new Fund for Thought initiative, Joe (a pediatrician) dispelling myths about vaccines and autism, Rocky Mountain Paranormal Society makes another appearance, Amy on why women need to be active in the skeptic movement, Jeanette on denialism, Rusty on the reproduction of JFK ballistics test, Paul on the scientific understanding of mystical, psychic, and occult experiences, Marlowe on a Gemini-1 mission UFO cover-up (?!) and/or how scammers victimize seniors, Pete on the Scientific Method and me on the basics of Modern Skepticism.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCampColorado2\"\u003eCheck it out\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/skepticamp.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 24, 2008):  Reed has written \u003ca href=\"http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1162\"\u003ea summary of the event\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SkeptiCamp 2"},{"content":"The National Center for Science Education has put up a website, ExpelledExposed.com, to respond to the dishonest intelligent design movie featuring Ben Stein, Expelled. The current content is links to news coverage and reviews of the movie, but I expect the site will become more interesting when the movie is actually released on April 18.\ngeo (2008-03-09):\nIt should be noted for the benefit of fair minded readers here that...every one of the allegations made on the \"EXPOSED\" site are...false. Not merely inaccurate, but intentionally so.Fortunately, the film EXPELLED will serve as its own refutation of these allegattions. The lies will in fact corroborate the main point of the film, which is a chronicle of the depths to which Big Science will sink, when it is questioned in the harsh light of day.geo\nLippard (2008-03-09):\nGeorge:Please identify one false allegation on the site. You can't, because the only \"allegations\" on the Exposed site at the moment are a list of links to reviews and news coverage of the film.You've made an accusation of not only falsehood, but of dishonesty, yet it's you who is dishonest. Are you part of the Expelled PR team? We already know that the producers of the film are liars, who obtained footage of people in their film by telling them that the film was something other than it actually was.\ngeo (2008-03-09):\nIt's like I said, Jim. Exactly like I said.Trust me on this, you'll look better later, when you can see for yourself. :)geo\nLippard (2008-03-09):\nGeorge: You're being evasive.Identify one falsehood on the site. Here's the complete contents of the site at the moment:---Keep checking this space for the National Center for Science Education's official response to Expelled; for now, we hope you will find this collection of resources helpful.Reviews of Expelled from those who have seen it * Colorado Confidential: Science Sunday: Intelligent Design Goes to the Movies * The Orlando Sentinel: Is Ben Stein the new face of Creationism? * The Screengrab: Screengrab Exclusive Preview: EXPELLED - NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWEDOther News Coverage of Expelled * New York Times: Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life's Origin * The New University (University of California Irvine): I.D. Rakes it in and Gets Rake in Face * Encyclopedia Britannica Blog: How Low Can Ben Stein Go? (To the Maligning of Charles Darwin)For more information on creationism and evolution, see NCSE's main website at www.ncseweb.org.---You've claimed that \"every one of the allegations made on the 'EXPOSED' site are...false.\" I've just listed the entire site's content above, so point out a falsehood. Once you've done so, provide your evidence that it is \"Not merely inaccurate, but intentionally so.\"\nLippard (2008-03-09):\nGeorge:The last time I received a bunch of blog comments from people associated with an upcoming movie who didn't like what I said about it was the film \"Untraceable,\" which I predicted would do poorly and get bad reviews. The people associated with the movie disputed my position, but I turned out to be correct.I predict \"Expelled\" will similarly do poorly and get bad reviews, despite your efforts.\nLippard (2008-03-09):\nAfter a showing of \"Expelled\" led to a negative review by Dan Whipple, press invited to subsequent screenings have been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. A press conference on the film to which Whipple was invited screened questions from reporters, so that only four questions were answered in 50 minutes, all light-weight questions. Whipple's submitted question was ignored.Whipple gives his account of that here.\"Expelled\"'s producers claim they are fighting censorship, but they've demonstrated hypocrisy on that score.\nReed (2008-03-10):\nIt seems that George's first comment was a preemptive strike against what he anticipates to be damning content to be added to the site?The action strikes me as both opportunistic and disingenuous.\nLippard (2008-03-11):\nYou're probably right. I don't think George will be back.Yesterday's New York Times has the story of film critic Roger Moore being disinvited from a screening of \"Expelled.\"\nLippard (2008-03-14):\nLooks like only 100 people showed up for a *free* showing of Expelled at a Florida theater.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/expelled-exposed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e has put up a website, \u003ca href=\"http://expelledexposed.com/\"\u003eExpelledExposed.com\u003c/a\u003e, to respond to the \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html\"\u003edishonest intelligent design movie\u003c/a\u003e featuring Ben Stein, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExpelled\u003c/span\u003e.  The current content is links to news coverage and reviews of the movie, but I expect the site will become more interesting when the movie is actually released on April 18.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003egeo\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-03-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt should be noted for the benefit of fair minded readers here that...every one of the allegations made on the \"EXPOSED\" site are...false. Not merely inaccurate, but intentionally so.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eFortunately, the film EXPELLED will serve as its own refutation of these allegattions. The lies will in fact corroborate the main point of the film, which is a chronicle of the depths to which Big Science will sink, when it is questioned in the harsh light of day.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003egeo\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expelled Exposed"},{"content":"The writers of perhaps the best show on television, The Wire, have published an opinion piece in Time magazine in which they advocate that jurors vote to acquit any drug case defendant, and state that they will do so:\nIf asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun\u0026rsquo;s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens. Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren\u0026rsquo;t fictional.\nI agree with them. (And if you want to know how government and other institutions in the real world actually work\u0026ndash;or fail to do so\u0026ndash;The Wire offers a good education, perhaps approached only by a completely different kind of show, the British comedy Yes, Minister.)\nHat tip to Tim Lee at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/wires-war-on-drug-war.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe writers of perhaps the best show on television, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Wire\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1719872,00.html\"\u003ehave published an opinion piece in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e in which they advocate that jurors vote to acquit any drug case defendant, and state that they will do so:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun\u0026rsquo;s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Wire's War on the Drug War"},{"content":"Tonight we attended Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture (first stop of a 2008 college tour) at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Grady Gammage auditorium on \u0026ldquo;The God Delusion,\u0026rdquo; which was the 2008 Beyond Center lecture, introduced by Paul Davies. The lecture was accompanied by a giant screen on which the words of the lecture appeared for the hearing-impaired, apparently based on voice recognition. I was pretty impressed\u0026ndash;it was far more accurate than the typo-laden closed captioning that you can see on television, and kept up pretty closely with him, but it did make errors from time to time (some of which it corrected). My favorite uncorrected error was early on, when Dawkins was making the point that atheists disbelieve in just one more god than the countless gods that theists disbelieve in, and listed Zeus and Wotan among them. When Dawkins said \u0026ldquo;we don\u0026rsquo;t worship Wotan,\u0026rdquo; the captioner said \u0026ldquo;we don\u0026rsquo;t worship Voltaire.\u0026quot;\nDawkins began by saying that \u0026ldquo;this is the largest audience I have ever addressed.\u0026rdquo; Originally ASU just asked people to submit a form on a web page to indicate desire to attend, but they had such great response that they had to issue tickets through Ticketmaster. There were more people who didn\u0026rsquo;t get tickets who also showed up, and some of them were able to be seated in empty seats which were held for ticket holders who didn\u0026rsquo;t show up by 7:15 p.m. (the lecture started at 7:30 p.m.). The auditorium was very nearly full to its capacity of 3,017 seats.\nI still haven\u0026rsquo;t yet read Dawkins\u0026rsquo; The God Delusion, but I believe most of his lecture was drawn from the book\u0026rsquo;s content, accompanied by a slide presentation. At the end, he showed some twenty books that have been published in response to the \u0026ldquo;new atheists,\u0026rdquo; most of which were directed at his book. For good measure, he included a picture of the cover of a book titled The Dog Allusion.\nHe also responded to those atheists who have criticized him for intemperate and inflammatory language directed at religion, pointing out that far more inflammatory language may be found in London restaurant reviews (with several hilarious examples). He disagreed with the idea that religion deserves special treatment to be exempt from criticism, and quoted a passage from his book describing the God of the Bible which could be considered intemperate and inflammatory (e.g., God is \u0026ldquo;a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully\u0026rdquo;), but which he characterized as less inflammatory than the restaurant reviews. I think it was quite similar in character to the restaurant reviews he quoted, only less hyperbolic and more accurate.\nHe ended with some \u0026ldquo;consciousness-raising,\u0026rdquo; showing a photograph of three four-year-olds taken at a Christmas pageant play published in a British newspaper, along with its caption, which described them as \u0026ldquo;Muslim,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Sikh,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Christian.\u0026rdquo; Dawkins asked us to imagine instead that they were labeled \u0026ldquo;conservative,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;liberal,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;socialist,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;atheist,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;agnostic,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;secular humanist,\u0026rdquo; observing that these are all equally absurd. While it would be accurate to describe them as children of parents who are Muslim, Sikh, and Christian, a four-year-old is not old enough to have considered opinions on cosmology or anything approaching a critical world view. (My thought was that this is somewhat agist, and there are many adults haven\u0026rsquo;t given their religious views much more thought than most four-year-olds. But I think his basic point is sound.) During the Q\u0026amp;A, he was asked if he thought four-year-olds could be atheists, and he said he thought the same point applied\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not accurate to describe a four-year-old as an atheist, either.\nIn another question, someone asked whether Dawkins had a background in theology, to which he referred the audience to P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;The Courtier\u0026rsquo;s Reply\u0026rdquo; at Pharyngula, which he recommended that everyone Google and read as he didn\u0026rsquo;t think his paraphrase did it full justice.\nOne individual asking a question said that he is an atheist with a friend who is a very intelligent Mormon who he frequently converses with and believes he has helped lead to some mutual understanding and perhaps even some change in his views. He questioned Dawkins\u0026rsquo; approach. Dawkins responded that \u0026ldquo;seduction\u0026rdquo; is not his style, but commended the questioner and stated his approval for different styles of atheism, comparing it to a \u0026ldquo;good cop, bad cop\u0026rdquo; methodology.\nI found little to disagree with in Dawkins\u0026rsquo; presentation (and little of which I\u0026rsquo;ve described above, due to lack of note-taking). There were perhaps a few points where he presented metaphysics as science, but I agree with his point that science and religion are not \u0026ldquo;non-overlapping magisteria\u0026rdquo; (as Stephen Jay Gould put it) and that religions do make empirical claims and are criticizable when they contain false, ridiculous, unsupportable, and immoral statements.\nUPDATE (March 7, 2008): John Wilkins has posted some critical comments about Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture, which may be a topic of discussion when I meet him on Saturday for beer and conversation with John Lynch.\nJohn Wilkins writes that:\nIn particular I was annoyed that those of us who do not condemn someone for holding religious beliefs were caricatured as \u0026ldquo;feeling good that someone has religion somewhere\u0026rdquo;. Bullshit. That is not why we dislike the Us\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Themism of TGD. We dislike it because no matter what other beliefs an intelligent person may hold, so long as they accept the importance of science and the need for a secular society, we simply do not care if they also like the taste of ear wax, having sex with trees, or believing in a deity or two. Way to go, Richard. Good bit of framing and parodying the opposition. Real rational.While I agree with Dr. Wilkins that the particular beliefs he lists are not objectionable, I very much do care if people hold beliefs which cause them to engage in political actions such as denial of rights to homosexuals, female genital mutilation, honor killings, issuing of fatwas, suppression of factual information and dissemination of misinformation about evolution, and so forth, which I believe is the primary concern of Dawkins, as well. The mere belief in God is not a problem (as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, \u0026ldquo;it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg\u0026rdquo;), it\u0026rsquo;s all the additional baggage that religion typically brings along that causes the problems. (Likewise, mere lack of belief in God is not a problem, but it also seems to frequently be accompanied by political baggage.)\nWilkins writes as though the majority of religious believers in the world fall under 100-200 on the scale in this video for calculating your \u0026ldquo;God Delusion Index,\u0026quot; while I suspect Dawkins\u0026rsquo; (and I know that my) concerns are primarily with those who score much higher than 100. (My own score was not zero\u0026ndash;it was 45.)\nA few other blog posts reacting to Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture:\nLabyrinth: A Maze of Ramblings\nLone Locust Productions\nA post at the Motley Fool atheist forum\nI also should mention that Dawkins used one of my favorite arguments for the falsity and social transmission of religion, which is that people tend to believe the religions of their parents (and this is still the case despite the fact that in the U.S. a large minority of people tend to change religious sects within a religious tradition). Dawkins showed a map of the world displaying large geographic areas as represented by adherents of particular religions, and commented on how odd that fact is, if religion is supposed to be true. For contrast, he showed the same map, with the names of religions replaced with various scientific theses, and observed that that doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen. (In actuality, it does happen from time to time in science\u0026ndash;some scientific disputes have divided upon regional lines, though typically evidence on the dispute builds and the regional division goes away, replaced by consensus.)\nJohn Wilkins is unhappy about Dawkins\u0026rsquo; advocacy of truth as something that we care about from science, stating that we only care about good enough (pragmatism), not truth. I disagree\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think that even \u0026ldquo;good enough\u0026rdquo; can be talked about without reference to true predictions, at the very least, and I think Dawkins is quite right to care about truth. Certainly it can be hard to establish what is true (it\u0026rsquo;s often easier to establish what isn\u0026rsquo;t true), and it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to become wedded to a particular theory as true if that causes you to ignore anomalies and contrary evidence, but I likewise think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to say that science doesn\u0026rsquo;t care about getting true explanations.\nI\u0026rsquo;d also like to add a comment about one of the exchanges in the Q\u0026amp;A that came from a religious believer (of whom there were many in the audience\u0026ndash;I was coincidentally seated a few seats away from a gentleman who is in my parents\u0026rsquo; Bible study class, who had with him a worn and heavily annotated copy of Dawkins\u0026rsquo; book as well as a copy of one of the critiques published, The Dawkins Delusion). That person suggested that Dawkins was mistaken to assert (which he didn\u0026rsquo;t, at least not at the lecture) that religion was the primary cause of war without providing empirical evidence. He stated that this is certainly something that can be empirically studied, and that he doubts that it is true. He also stated that studies have shown that religious believers tend to be happier, are more likely to give to charitable causes, even non-religious charitable causes, than the secular, and so forth. (I\u0026rsquo;ve previously blogged about studies which show that religious believers are more generous than the secular, and conservatives more generous than liberals.) Dawkins\u0026rsquo; response was that he didn\u0026rsquo;t say what the questioner thought he did, and also observed that the two largest wars in the world\u0026rsquo;s history (WWI and WWII) were not about religion, and that the studies referred to by the questioner may be correct, but that they miss the point. For Dawkins, having better social consequences is not a reason to believe in religion if the religion is not true\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s truth that is the closest thing to sacred for Dawkins.\nUPDATE: P.Z. Myers takes issue with John Wilkins\u0026rsquo; criticisms of Dawkins.\nA poor quality video of the lecture (via cell phone?) is on Google Video.\nUPDATE (March 13, 2008): Chris Hallquist reports on Dawkins\u0026rsquo; appearance in Madison, Wisconsin.\nUPDATE (March 24, 2008): Near the end of Dawkins\u0026rsquo; talk, he showed this YouTube video of a Marcus Brigstocke rant about religion. (Thanks for the link, Tim K.)\nMichael (2008-03-07):\nIt sounds like an interesting evening. Thanks for sharing your experience\nRBH (2008-03-07):\nMuch as they do with The Selfish Gene, people read into Dawkins' The God Delusion notions that simply aren't in the book. Dawkins once characterized a review of The Selfish Gene as having been written by someone who apparently got no further in reading it than the title, and recommended reading the actual book, \"an extended footnote to the title.\"In particular, the questioner who objected that Dawkins attributed WWI and WWII to religion cannot have read the book.Dawkins' core argument is that both atheists and religionists do evil things, but religious people often do evil things precisely on account of their religiousity. The same is not true (he argues) of atheists (e.g., the usual suspects -- Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot). While they did evil, it was not (Dawkins argues) on account of their (purported) atheism; atheism was incidental to the evil they did. The same cannot be said of, say, the Inquisition; religion was central to that evil.\nLippard (2008-03-07):\nRBH: Good to see you here. Dawkins made exactly the point you describe in his lecture.Out of fairness to the questioner, he did not say anything in particular about WWI or WWII, or attribute claims about those wars to Dawkins. Rather, he attributed to Dawkins the view that religions are a primary cause of wars (and perhaps implicitly that if we abandoned religion we wouldn't have as many wars), and argued that this is a question that can be studied and answered empirically, and we might find that religion is not a significant cause of wars. It was Dawkins who brought up WWI and WWII in his response to the questioner, in agreement that wars and killing can occur independently of religion motivation. I also agree with the questioner on that point, while also agreeing, but not completely, with Dawkins. Where I disagree is that religion can often be an *excuse* or a *rallying cry* for bad acts which in fact have other motivations, such as political power grabbing. In such cases it isn't the *real* cause of the bad acts.\nLippard (2008-03-07):\nRBH: I see that it was my poor wording that caused you to attribute the WWI/II claims to the questioner--I've slightly changed the wording to eliminate that source of confusion.\nBrother Richard (2008-03-07):\nI was hoping that Dawkins would travel through Atlanta this time. We really need him.Did anyone video the event? I would love to see it on YouTube.Richardhttp://lifewithoutfaith.com\nLippard (2008-03-07):\nRichard:The event was videotaped, presumably by the Beyond Center.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-07):\nTangential, but I've got a copy of I don't Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges (whose previous book American Fascists argued that Christian Domininionists are nascent totalitarians) on hold at my local library. In it he argues that Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are atheist fundamentalists and what not.I tend to disagree although I noticed that some of the same things that bothered me about Harris are what bothered him; I find the charges towards Dawkins and Hitchens more absurd....\nServetus (2008-03-07):\nI thoroughly enjoyed spending my evening with Richard Dawkins last night I brought a friend that's evolving out of his religious mentality and slowly emerging into a freethinker.Dawkins helped him in the evolution last night. Servetus www.KickGasAtThePump.com\nBayesian Bouffant, FCD (2008-03-07):\nFor Dawkins, having better social consequences is not a reason to believe in religion if the religion is not true--it's truth that is the closest thing to sacred for Dawkins.As it is for me. One approach to getting across this point would be to ask: if the questioner considers social consequences to be an important benefit of religion, would he switch to a different religion if it were proven to have better social consequences?Because everyone knows that \"Jainism is the best religion.\"\nSteven (2008-03-08):\nTheist or Atheist denotes belief or lack of belief. Gnostic or Agnostic denotes knowledge or lack of. You can be an agnostic atheist. In other words you don't know there is no god(it is impossible to know even every definition of that word) but you just don't believe there is. I haven't visited everyone planet(or even one) in the Andromeda galaxy so I don't know there isn't an alien with 25 arses in the shape of my head that lives on one of those planets. However I don't believe there is.I am an agnostic atheist when it comes to a deistic type of god.I am a gnostic atheist when it comes to the Abrahamic gods because they actually posit claims about that god and they are easy to debunk.\nLippard (2008-03-08):\nSteven:Your definitions aren't universally accepted (and usually \"gnostic\" means something quite different), but I think your position given your definitions is quite reasonable and quite similar to my own.There might be other ways to disprove the existence of an alien with 25 asses in the shape of your head other than actually visiting all potential inhabited planets, though.See my brief article about proving negatives, as well as the links in it to others.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-08):\nGeorge Smith uses similar definitions in Atheism: The Case Against God, though Smith argues that agnosticism is not a philosophically tenable position.\nMike (2008-03-15):\nUm, sorry to burst your bubble regarding voice recognition... But that was a person typing. I go to ASU, and I was at the Beyond Center Lecture 2 previous, in which they first introduced the feature upon request. It's a person, same type that do court reporting, and although he was plainly in sight for the past 2 lectures, he/she was not for Richard Dawkins. I'm guessing that the person was having problems due to Richard Dawkins accent. Keep in mind that a recorder's keyboard is not Qwerty, but one based upon phonetic sounds....Regarding commenters... The Beyond center will post video of the lecture on their site when it becomes available... Otherwise, many presentations similar are on YouTube and Google Video.\nLippard (2008-03-15):\nMike: Thanks for the info about the typist... do you know if the system uses software to convert the phonetics to normal English spelling? It seemed to frequently start to write out one word and then change the spelling, and it was remarkably good at spelling some pretty long and unusually spelled names, which suggested to me that there was a system that had been pre-loaded with a dictionary of words likely to occur in the talk.BTW, I'd still call it voice recognition, just using traditional wetware...\nMike (2008-03-15):\nThe system, as it were, is known as a stenotype, manufactured by a company known as stenograph. I wouldn't exactly call it a system, because it's basically a keyboard that inputs to paper, or a laptop. I couldn't tell you much more than that, I'm not an expert on the machines, but knowing the names should allow you to find some information to satisfy your curiosity.Regarding Dawkin's talk, it was entirely out of the God Delusion. But even then, in 1996 he made a speech that basically laid out the God Delusion, so it's not like he's restricting his remarks to the book, he's just making his argument as always.If you want to hear more from Dawkins, you should check out his site, or do a Google Video search for him. There is a lot of information specifically because he's trying to get it out there. He's doing this not to sell books, but to motivate change.Here's one of Dawkins reciting the preface to the paperback edition. I would recommend listening to the audio book version of \"The God Delusion,\" because there's so much tone of voice that you just don't get from reading. He reads the book himself, along with his wife.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmALkvcG2M\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/richard-dawkins-lecture-at-asu.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTonight we attended Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture (first stop of a \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/article,2331,Richard-Dawkins-US-Tour-begins-this-week,RichardDawkinsnet\"\u003e2008 college tour\u003c/a\u003e) at ASU\u0026rsquo;s Grady Gammage auditorium on \u0026ldquo;The God Delusion,\u0026rdquo; which was the 2008 \u003ca href=\"http://beyond.asu.edu/home.html\"\u003eBeyond Center\u003c/a\u003e lecture, introduced by Paul Davies.  The lecture was accompanied by a giant screen on which the words of the lecture appeared for the hearing-impaired, apparently based on voice recognition.  I was pretty impressed\u0026ndash;it was far more accurate than the typo-laden closed captioning that you can see on television, and kept up pretty closely with him, but it did make errors from time to time (some of which it corrected).  My favorite uncorrected error was early on, when Dawkins was making the point that atheists disbelieve in just one more god than the countless gods that theists disbelieve in, and listed Zeus and Wotan among them.  When Dawkins said \u0026ldquo;we don\u0026rsquo;t worship Wotan,\u0026rdquo; the captioner said \u0026ldquo;we don\u0026rsquo;t worship Voltaire.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDawkins began by saying that \u0026ldquo;this is the largest audience I have ever addressed.\u0026rdquo;  Originally ASU just asked people to submit a form on a web page to indicate desire to attend, but they had such great response that they had to issue tickets through Ticketmaster.  There were more people who didn\u0026rsquo;t get tickets who also showed up, and some of them were able to be seated in empty seats which were held for ticket holders who didn\u0026rsquo;t show up by 7:15 p.m. (the lecture started at 7:30 p.m.).  The auditorium was very nearly full to its capacity of 3,017 seats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI still haven\u0026rsquo;t yet read Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe God Delusion\u003c/span\u003e, but I believe most of his lecture was drawn from the book\u0026rsquo;s content, accompanied by a slide presentation.  At the end, he showed some twenty books that have been published in response to the \u0026ldquo;new atheists,\u0026rdquo; most of which were directed at his book.  For good measure, he included a picture of the cover of a book titled \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/article,2271,n,n\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Dog Allusion\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also responded to those atheists who have criticized him for intemperate and inflammatory language directed at religion, pointing out that far more inflammatory language may be found in London restaurant reviews (with several hilarious examples).  He disagreed with the idea that religion deserves special treatment to be exempt from criticism, and quoted a passage from his book describing the God of the Bible which could be considered intemperate and inflammatory (e.g., God is \u0026ldquo;a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully\u0026rdquo;), but which he characterized as less inflammatory than the restaurant reviews.  I think it was quite similar in character to the restaurant reviews he quoted, only less hyperbolic and more accurate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe ended with some \u0026ldquo;consciousness-raising,\u0026rdquo; showing a photograph of three four-year-olds taken at a Christmas pageant play published in a British newspaper, along with its caption, which described them as \u0026ldquo;Muslim,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Sikh,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Christian.\u0026rdquo;  Dawkins asked us to imagine instead that they were labeled \u0026ldquo;conservative,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;liberal,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;socialist,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;atheist,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;agnostic,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;secular humanist,\u0026rdquo; observing that these are all equally absurd.  While it would be accurate to describe them as children of parents who are Muslim, Sikh, and Christian, a four-year-old is not old enough to have considered opinions on cosmology or anything approaching a critical world view.  (My thought was that this is somewhat agist, and there are many adults haven\u0026rsquo;t given their religious views much more thought than most four-year-olds.  But I think his basic point is sound.)  During the Q\u0026amp;A, he was asked if he thought four-year-olds could be atheists, and he said he thought the same point applied\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not accurate to describe a four-year-old as an atheist, either.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn another question, someone asked whether Dawkins had a background in theology, to which he referred the audience to P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Courtier\u0026rsquo;s Reply\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, which he recommended that everyone Google and read as he didn\u0026rsquo;t think his paraphrase did it full justice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne individual asking a question said that he is an atheist with a friend who is a very intelligent Mormon who he frequently converses with and believes he has helped lead to some mutual understanding and perhaps even some change in his views.  He questioned Dawkins\u0026rsquo; approach.  Dawkins responded that \u0026ldquo;seduction\u0026rdquo; is not his style, but commended the questioner and stated his approval for different styles of atheism, comparing it to a \u0026ldquo;good cop, bad cop\u0026rdquo; methodology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI found little to disagree with in Dawkins\u0026rsquo; presentation (and little of which I\u0026rsquo;ve described above, due to lack of note-taking).  There were perhaps a few points where he presented metaphysics as science, but I agree with his point that science and religion are not \u0026ldquo;non-overlapping magisteria\u0026rdquo; (as Stephen Jay Gould put it) and that religions do make empirical claims and are criticizable when they contain false, ridiculous, unsupportable, and immoral statements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 7, 2008):  John Wilkins \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/03/dawkins_lecture_in_phoenix.php\"\u003ehas posted some critical comments about Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture\u003c/a\u003e, which may be a topic of discussion when I meet him on Saturday for beer and conversation with \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/03/dawkins_at_asu.php\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Wilkins \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/03/dawkins_lecture_in_phoenix.php\"\u003ewrites that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn particular I was annoyed that those of us who do not condemn someone for holding religious beliefs were caricatured as \u0026ldquo;feeling good that someone has religion somewhere\u0026rdquo;. Bullshit. That is not why we dislike the Us\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Themism of TGD. We dislike it because no matter what \u003cem\u003eother\u003c/em\u003e beliefs an intelligent person may hold, so long as they accept the importance of science and the need for a secular society, we simply do not \u003cem\u003ecare\u003c/em\u003e if they also like the taste of ear wax, having sex with trees, or believing in a deity or two. Way to go, Richard. Good bit of framing and parodying the opposition. Real rational.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhile I agree with Dr. Wilkins that the particular beliefs he lists are not objectionable, I very much do care if people hold beliefs which cause them to engage in political actions such as denial of rights to homosexuals, female genital mutilation, honor killings, issuing of fatwas, suppression of factual information and dissemination of misinformation about evolution, and so forth, which I believe is the primary concern of Dawkins, as well.  The mere belief in God is not a problem (as \u003ca href=\"http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1500.htm\"\u003eThomas Jefferson famously wrote\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg\u0026rdquo;), it\u0026rsquo;s all the additional baggage that religion typically brings along that causes the problems.  (Likewise, mere lack of belief in God is not a problem, but it also seems to frequently be accompanied by political baggage.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWilkins writes as though the majority of religious believers in the world fall under 100-200 on the scale in \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCX0JJ16dFM\"\u003ethis video for calculating your \u0026ldquo;God Delusion Index,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e while I suspect Dawkins\u0026rsquo; (and I know that my) concerns are primarily with those who score much higher than 100.  (My own score was not zero\u0026ndash;it was 45.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few other blog posts reacting to Dawkins\u0026rsquo; lecture:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://djayha.livejournal.com/146531.html\"\u003eLabyrinth: A Maze of Ramblings\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://lonelocust.com/2008/03/06/941/\"\u003eLone Locust Productions\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=26449186\u0026amp;sort=postdate\"\u003epost at the Motley Fool atheist forum\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also should mention that Dawkins used one of my \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/review/R2J6GZ9ATK4MW0\"\u003efavorite\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=c757ea443f28c256f3471039852ff1c2\u0026amp;p=5074029#post5074029\"\u003earguments\u003c/a\u003e for the falsity and social transmission of religion, which is that people tend to believe the religions of their parents (and this is still the case despite the fact that in the U.S. \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2008/02/pew-forum-survey-on-american-religion.html\"\u003ea large minority of people tend to change religious sects within a religious tradition\u003c/a\u003e).  Dawkins showed a map of the world displaying large geographic areas as represented by adherents of particular religions, and commented on how odd that fact is, if religion is supposed to be true.  For contrast, he showed the same map, with the names of religions replaced with various scientific theses, and observed that that doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen.  (In actuality, it does happen from time to time in science\u0026ndash;some scientific disputes have divided upon regional lines, though typically evidence on the dispute builds and the regional division goes away, replaced by consensus.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Wilkins is unhappy about Dawkins\u0026rsquo; advocacy of truth as something that we care about from science, stating that we only care about good enough (pragmatism), not truth.  I disagree\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think that even \u0026ldquo;good enough\u0026rdquo; can be talked about without reference to true predictions, at the very least, and I think Dawkins is quite right to care about truth.  Certainly it can be hard to establish what is true (it\u0026rsquo;s often easier to establish what \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eisn\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/span\u003e true), and it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to become wedded to a particular theory as true if that causes you to ignore anomalies and contrary evidence, but I likewise think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to say that science doesn\u0026rsquo;t care about getting true explanations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d also like to add a comment about one of the exchanges in the Q\u0026amp;A that came from a religious believer (of whom there were many in the audience\u0026ndash;I was coincidentally seated a few seats away from a gentleman who is in my parents\u0026rsquo; Bible study class, who had with him a worn and heavily annotated copy of Dawkins\u0026rsquo; book as well as a copy of one of the critiques published, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Dawkins Delusion\u003c/span\u003e).  That person suggested that Dawkins was mistaken to assert (which he didn\u0026rsquo;t, at least not at the lecture) that religion was the primary cause of war without providing empirical evidence.  He stated that this is certainly something that can be empirically studied, and that he doubts that it is true.  He also stated that studies have shown that religious believers tend to be happier, are more likely to give to charitable causes, even non-religious charitable causes, than the secular, and so forth.  (I\u0026rsquo;ve previously blogged about \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/atheists-weak-on-charitable-giving.html\"\u003estudies which show that religious believers are more generous than the secular\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003econservatives more generous than liberals\u003c/a\u003e.)  Dawkins\u0026rsquo; response was that he didn\u0026rsquo;t say what the questioner thought he did, and also observed that the two largest wars in the world\u0026rsquo;s history (WWI and WWII) were not about religion, and that the studies referred to by the questioner may be correct, but that they miss the point.  For Dawkins, having better social consequences is not a reason to believe in religion if the religion is not true\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s truth that is the closest thing to sacred for Dawkins.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/wilkins_gets_shrill.php\"\u003etakes issue with John Wilkins\u0026rsquo; criticisms of Dawkins\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://efildenimaxenu.blogspot.com/2008/03/richard-dawkins-at-asu.html\"\u003epoor quality video of the lecture (via cell phone?) is on Google Video\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 13, 2008):  Chris Hallquist \u003ca href=\"http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2008/03/dawkins-in-madison.html\"\u003ereports on Dawkins\u0026rsquo; appearance in Madison, Wisconsin\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 24, 2008): Near the end of Dawkins\u0026rsquo; talk, he showed \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-ZrwFwLQg\u0026amp;NR=1\"\u003ethis YouTube video of a Marcus Brigstocke rant about religion\u003c/a\u003e.  (Thanks for the link, Tim K.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Dawkins lecture at ASU"},{"content":"It looks like I picked the wrong month to slack on an update to my graph of Phoenix area pre-foreclosures, as January\u0026rsquo;s notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales climbed to an amazing 5336!\nThat\u0026rsquo;s 1461 higher than December\u0026rsquo;s number, and when you consider that last January\u0026rsquo;s number was 1623, and that the peak seen by the bursting of the Tech bubble (which, by the way, is hardly noticeable in this graph), in January, 2003, was 1738 I think it becomes clear that we are witness to something rather scary.\nFebruary\u0026rsquo;s number dropped to a measly 5048.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/0802NTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full size\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174474898444172498\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nLippard (2008-03-07):\nAnd there are still a couple of months before subprime ARM resets peak!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/february-maricopa-county-notices-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like I picked the wrong month to slack on an update to my graph of Phoenix area pre-foreclosures, as January\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/33/00808.htm\"\u003enotices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u003c/a\u003e climbed to an amazing \u003cb\u003e5336\u003c/b\u003e!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s 1461 higher than \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/decembers-phoenix-housing-stats-update.html\"\u003eDecember\u0026rsquo;s number\u003c/a\u003e, and when you consider that \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/update-on-maricopa-county-trustee-sale.html\"\u003elast January\u0026rsquo;s number\u003c/a\u003e was \u003cb\u003e1623\u003c/b\u003e, and that the peak seen by the bursting of the Tech bubble (which, by the way, is hardly noticeable in this graph), in January, 2003, was \u003cb\u003e1738\u003c/b\u003e I think it becomes clear that we are witness to something rather scary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary\u0026rsquo;s number dropped to a measly \u003cb\u003e5048\u003c/b\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/0802NTR.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/0802NTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full size\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174474898444172498\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"February Maricopa County Notices Update"},{"content":"RateMyCop.com is a new website that allows you to rate individual police officers on the basis of your interactions with them, on the attributes of authority, fairness, and satisfaction, for which you can rate them poor, average, or good, and leave specific comments about your interactions. The site describes itself like this:\nWelcome to RATEMYCOP.com, the online watchdog organization serving communities nationwide. RATEMYCOP.com is not affiliated with any government agency; we are an independent, privately managed organization.\nOur mission is to compile information on cops’ performance and to provide a forum where users can freely share individual accounts. Good, bad or indifferent. Most of all, we would like to hear your stories. Your appreciation and your disapproval. Did you witness a cop doing a good deed, or were you involved in an unfortunate altercation? Tell us about it. Tell others about it. Let it out. Don’t feel intimidated by the badge to remain quiet.\nWhile we respect their authority we are also free to question it. You have the right to remain informed.The site has lists of 120,000 individual police officers from 450 departments around the country, which the site obtained directly from police departments, asking only for the names of patrol officers who work with the general public, not undercover officers. There are no photos, addresses, or telephone numbers, only names.\nThe city of Tempe has expressed disapproval and its intention to try to remove this information from the site, according to an ABC 15 News story which claims the site is a danger to officers. Tempe Police Department Officer Tony Miller is quoted in the story raising issues about undercover officers, and the article says that he \u0026ldquo;feels as though officers like him are scrutinized enough.\u0026rdquo; The article also states that \u0026ldquo;Tempe officer Brandon Banks says the department\u0026rsquo;s chief, human resources and even the city\u0026rsquo;s prosecutor are looking into the website and fighting it.\u0026rdquo; I don\u0026rsquo;t see that they have a case, this information should all be a matter of public record.\nIt seems to me that there is potential for abuse (especially in the form of inaccurate ratings and comments, just as on teacher rating websites), but less so than there is from other kinds of public records about all of us that are published on the web. I disagree with Officer Miller\u0026rsquo;s opinion that there is already sufficient accountability for police officers; this blog\u0026rsquo;s previous posts in the \u0026ldquo;police abuse and corruption\u0026rdquo; category and the far more numerous and detailed posts from Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s The Agitator blog and his article \u0026ldquo;Overkill\u0026rdquo; are overwhelming evidence to the contrary.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that the courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no duty of police officers to protect individual members of the public, and many states have statutes which prevent individual officers and departments from being held civilly liable for a failure to provide adequate protection, a fact often used by gun advocates to argue for widespread gun ownership for individual protection (e.g., here, here, and here). The U.S. Supreme Court also eliminated a major protection against police abuse in 2006, when it ruled in Hudson v. Michigan (PDF) that evidence from an illegal no-knock raid need not be excluded from trial, because police officers have entered a new realm of \u0026ldquo;professionalism\u0026rdquo; in which they recognize civil liberties and can be trusted to investigate and deter their own abuses. In the wake of such decisions and continuing abuses, a website such as RateMyCop.com seems to me like a good idea.\nWhat the site seems to be missing, though, is a way to quickly find officers who have received ratings (very few seem to have any yet), and to sort those in order to find those with favorable or unfavorable ratings.\nUPDATE (March 12, 2008): Apparently GoDaddy has pulled the plug on RateMyCop.com\u0026rsquo;s website without notice to the owner, allegedly first for \u0026ldquo;suspicious activity\u0026rdquo; and then for exceeding bandwidth limits, and the site is up with a new web hosting provider.\nIt looks like the ratings are now on a single category, and you can see a list of the most-rated and most-recently-rated on the front page. Another feature that would be nice would be a way to allow registered users to rate the raters for reliability, similar to the way Amazon.com book reviews can be rated as helpful or not helpful. That way, ratings could be weighted based on judgments of the reliability of the raters from the user base, and ratings from those with a personal axe to grind could have their weight minimized.\nLooks like Rackspace has also refused to host ratemycop.com.\nInterestingly, apparently Gino Sesto of RateMyCop.com was a Bush voter.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-03-10):\nMyself, I like this new trend of being able to get information about those around you.http://www.ratemycoworkers.com/ and http://www.rottenneighbor.com/ are two other good sites that let you rate those that you deal with on a daily basis.\nEinzige (2008-03-10):\nHas David Brin's \"Transparent Society\" finally arrived?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/ratemycop.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRateMyCop.com is a new website that allows you to rate individual police officers on the basis of your interactions with them, on the attributes of authority, fairness, and satisfaction, for which you can rate them poor, average, or good, and leave specific comments about your interactions.  The site \u003ca href=\"http://www.ratemycop.com/index.php?option=com_content\u0026amp;task=view\u0026amp;id=58\u0026amp;Itemid=148\"\u003edescribes itself like this\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWelcome to RATEMYCOP.com, the online watchdog organization serving communities nationwide. RATEMYCOP.com is not affiliated with any government agency; we are an independent, privately managed organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur mission is to compile information on cops’ performance and to provide a forum where users can freely share individual accounts. Good, bad or indifferent. Most of all, we would like to hear your stories. Your appreciation and your disapproval. Did you witness a cop doing a good deed, or were you involved in an unfortunate altercation? Tell us about it. Tell others about it. Let it out. Don’t feel intimidated by the badge to remain quiet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile we respect their authority we are also free to question it. You have the right to remain informed.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe site has lists of 120,000 individual police officers from 450 departments around the country, which the site obtained directly from police departments, asking only for the names of patrol officers who work with the general public, not undercover officers.  There are no photos, addresses, or telephone numbers, only names.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city of Tempe has expressed disapproval and its intention to try to remove this information from the site, \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=98F55252-9594-44F2-9776-FF44A4D34DF1\u0026amp;gsa=true\"\u003eaccording to an ABC 15 News story which claims the site is a danger to officers\u003c/a\u003e.  Tempe Police Department Officer Tony Miller is quoted in the story raising issues about undercover officers, and the article says that he \u0026ldquo;feels as though officers like him are scrutinized enough.\u0026rdquo;  The article also states that \u0026ldquo;Tempe officer Brandon Banks says the department\u0026rsquo;s chief, human resources and even the city\u0026rsquo;s prosecutor are looking into the website and fighting it.\u0026rdquo;  I don\u0026rsquo;t see that they have a case, this information should all be a matter of public record.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems to me that there is potential for abuse (especially in the form of inaccurate ratings and comments, just as on teacher rating websites), but less so than there is from other kinds of public records about all of us that are published on the web.  I disagree with Officer Miller\u0026rsquo;s opinion that there is already sufficient accountability for police officers; this blog\u0026rsquo;s previous posts in the \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/police%20abuse%20and%20corruption\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;police abuse and corruption\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e category and the far more \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/?s=new+professionalism\"\u003enumerous\u003c/a\u003e and detailed posts from Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/\"\u003eThe Agitator blog\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476\"\u003ehis article \u0026ldquo;Overkill\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e are overwhelming evidence to the contrary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that the courts have repeatedly ruled that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html\"\u003ethere is no duty of police officers to protect individual members of the public\u003c/a\u003e, and many states have statutes which prevent individual officers and departments from being held civilly liable for a failure to provide adequate protection, a fact often used by gun advocates to argue for widespread gun ownership for individual protection (e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.gunowners.org/sk0503.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://publicrights.org/Kennesaw/PoliceResponsibility.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).  The U.S. Supreme Court also eliminated a major protection against police abuse in 2006, when it ruled in \u003ca href=\"http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1360.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHudson v. Michigan\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) that evidence from an illegal no-knock raid need not be excluded from trial, because police officers have \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/06/16/scalias-alternate-universe/\"\u003eentered a new realm of \u0026ldquo;professionalism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in which they recognize civil liberties and can be trusted to investigate and deter their own abuses.  In the wake of such decisions and continuing abuses, a website such as RateMyCop.com seems to me like a good idea.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat the site seems to be missing, though, is a way to quickly find officers who have received ratings (very few seem to have any yet), and to sort those in order to find those with favorable or unfavorable ratings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 12, 2008):  Apparently \u003ca href=\"http://mashable.com/2008/03/11/ratemycop-shutdown/\"\u003eGoDaddy has pulled the plug on RateMyCop.com\u0026rsquo;s website without notice to the owner\u003c/a\u003e, allegedly first for \u0026ldquo;suspicious activity\u0026rdquo; and then for exceeding bandwidth limits, and the site is up with a new web hosting provider.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looks like the ratings are now on a single category, and you can see a list of the most-rated and most-recently-rated on the front page.  Another feature that would be nice would be a way to allow registered users to rate the raters for reliability, similar to the way Amazon.com book reviews can be rated as helpful or not helpful.  That way, ratings could be weighted based on judgments of the reliability of the raters from the user base, and ratings from those with a personal axe to grind could have their weight minimized.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/godaddy-silence.html\"\u003eRackspace has also refused to host ratemycop.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInterestingly, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.ca/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2HYEIFKMBRRVT/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reviews/701-2138165-1604361?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview\"\u003eapparently Gino Sesto of RateMyCop.com was a Bush voter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RateMyCop"},{"content":"John McCain is \u0026ldquo;very honored\u0026rdquo; for the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a televangelist who thinks that the Jews provoked the Holocaust, that the Illuminati is engaged in conspiratorial control of the world\u0026rsquo;s governments, that the Catholic Church is the \u0026ldquo;whore of Babylon\u0026rdquo; in the Book of Revelations, that George Washington hid a picture of a menorah in the tailfeathers of the eagle on the dollar bill, and that a U.S. invasion of Iran is prophesied by the Bible.\nEd Brayton has discussed Hagee\u0026rsquo;s views, and Troutfishing at Daily Kos has some videos documenting Hagee absurdity.\nUPDATE (May 22, 2008): Finally, McCain has repudiated Hagee\u0026rsquo;s endorsement, claiming that he\u0026rsquo;s only just learned of his nastier views and remarks.\nUPDATE (May 23, 2008): Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost points out the difference between McCain\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Hagee and Parsley, and Obama\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Wright, as well as the extremely nasty anti-Semitic remarks from Hagee that prompted McCain\u0026rsquo;s repudiation (all Jews have \u0026ldquo;dead souls,\u0026rdquo; for example).\nenigma_foundry (2008-03-05):\nBut so, when does this get covered by the media to the extent that Obama's endorsement by Louis Farrakhan has been?\nnate (2008-03-05):\nIs Hagee's organization considered for-profit, or non-profit?Mark E. Chopko, the general counsel, said: ''During an election campaign, exempt organizations remain free to address issues of concern to them and to their membership, even when such issues are relevant to the campaign. However, such discourse must focus on issues and NOT PERSONALITIES.''(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DB1E3AF932A3575BC0A96E948260)\nLippard (2008-03-05):\nHagee has at least three organizations:* Cornerstone Church, where he's pastor* John Hagee Ministries, where he's President and CEO* Christians United for Israel, where he's Founder and National ChairmanI would guess that all three are 501(c)(3) religious organizations; CUFI definitely is.Note that the \"general counsel\" you mention is general counsel of the United States Catholic Conference.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-05):\nChristians United for IsraelThe full name is silent:Christians United for Israel so that we Can See the Jews Burn in Hell When Christ Returns.Nothing as charming as antiSemitic zionism.\nHume's Ghost (2008-03-05):\nNo one makes much of an issue over Republicans getting endorsed by Pat Robertson, either, despite him being a anti-Semitic conspiracist and extremist, too.Shows you how effective the Drudge-Hannity-Limbaugh axis of misinformation is at getting their b.s. out there.\nnate (2008-03-05):\nThanks for the input!Even so, I thought there were federal regulations placed on non-profits when it came to endorsement...I thought Dobson and Focus on the Family were under pressure in recent times. I could be wrong.\nLippard (2008-03-05):\nNate: You're right that 501(c)(3)'s cannot endorse candidates, but Hagee can do so as an individual.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/mccain-thankful-for-support-of-raving.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn McCain is \u0026ldquo;very honored\u0026rdquo; for the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a televangelist who thinks that the Jews provoked the Holocaust, that the Illuminati is engaged in conspiratorial control of the world\u0026rsquo;s governments, that the Catholic Church is the \u0026ldquo;whore of Babylon\u0026rdquo; in the Book of Revelations, that George Washington hid a picture of a menorah in the tailfeathers of the eagle on the dollar bill, and that a U.S. invasion of Iran is prophesied by the Bible.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/mccain_endorsed_by_televangeli.php\"\u003ehas discussed Hagee\u0026rsquo;s views\u003c/a\u003e, and Troutfishing at Daily Kos \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/1/92552/92083/28/466793\"\u003ehas some videos documenting Hagee absurdity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 22, 2008): Finally, McCain \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080522/pl_nm/usa_politics_mccain_pastor_dc_4\"\u003ehas repudiated Hagee\u0026rsquo;s endorsement\u003c/a\u003e, claiming that he\u0026rsquo;s only just learned of his nastier views and remarks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 23, 2008): Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/05/mccain-renounces-endorsement-of-hagee.html\"\u003epoints out the difference between McCain\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Hagee and Parsley, and Obama\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Wright\u003c/a\u003e, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/05/pro-israel.html\"\u003ethe extremely nasty anti-Semitic remarks from Hagee\u003c/a\u003e that prompted McCain\u0026rsquo;s repudiation (all Jews have \u0026ldquo;dead souls,\u0026rdquo; for example).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain thankful for support of raving nutcase"},{"content":"Pat Boone writes a column in which he imagines a conversation between himself and Thomas Jefferson, in which he completely misrepresents Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s views and quite a few facts. Ed Brayton supplies a critique. (You can find the link to Boone\u0026rsquo;s column there.)\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2008-03-05):\nPat Boone writes fan fiction. Look at his history, his entire career was based on covers, stealing the work of superior black artists and white washing them. It's just more of the same for the zit meds huckster. Anthony McCarthy, who someday will stop reminding people that he used to be covered by olvlzl\nolvlzl (2008-03-05):\nOh. And that he'd try to appropriate Jefferson should give people pause. A large percentage of the trouble with the United States government stems from Jefferson and his associates. The \"founding fathers\" were a bunch of slave holders, pirates and crooks whose well founded distrust of each other makes the reform of the constitution they provided next to impossible. We won't ever get anywhere until we junk the founders. Anthony McCarthy\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/pat-boones-limitless-stupidity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePat Boone writes a column in which he imagines a conversation between himself and Thomas Jefferson, in which he completely misrepresents Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s views and quite a few facts.  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/pat_boones_limitless_stupidity.php\"\u003esupplies a critique\u003c/a\u003e.  (You can find the link to Boone\u0026rsquo;s column there.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eolvlzl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-03-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ePat Boone writes fan fiction.  Look at his history, his entire career was based on covers, stealing the work of superior black artists and white washing them.  It's just more of the same for the zit meds huckster.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnthony McCarthy, who someday will stop reminding people that he used to be covered by olvlzl\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pat Boone's Limitless Stupidity"},{"content":"Jeremy Jaynes, the spammer who was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison in 2003 for violating Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law, has lost his appeal before the Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling. Several of the dissents claimed that Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law, which criminalizes unsolicited bulk email with falsified headers, even if it is political or religious in content rather than commercial, is a violation of the First Amendment. The quotations from Justice Elizabeth Lacy and Jaynes\u0026rsquo; attorney Thomas M. Wolf both state that the law has diminished everyone\u0026rsquo;s freedom by criminalizing \u0026ldquo;bulk anonymous email, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion.\u0026quot;\nBoth Lacy and Wolf misrepresent the law, which makes it a crime to \u0026ldquo;Falsify or forge electronic mail transmission information or other routing information in any manner in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail through or into the computer network of an electronic mail service provider or its subscribers.\u0026quot;\nThere is a difference between forging headers and sending anonymous email\u0026ndash;the latter does not require the former, and the latter is not prohibited by the law. Jaynes wasn\u0026rsquo;t just trying to be anonymous\u0026ndash;he was engaged in fraud, and falsifying message headers and from addresses to try to avoid the consequences of his criminality. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t using anonymous remailers to express a political or religious message, and if he had been, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been able to be charged under this law.\nUPDATE (September 12, 2008): The Virginia Supreme Court has reversed itself and struck down Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law as unconstitutional, on the grounds that prohibiting false routing information on emails infringes upon the right to anonymous political or religious speech. This is a very bad decision for the reasons I gave above. There are ways to engage in anonymous speech without doing what Jaynes did, falsifying message headers and domain names. The court\u0026rsquo;s argument that one must falsify headers, IP addresses, and domain names in order to be anonymous is factually incorrect. Anonymity doesn\u0026rsquo;t require header falsification, it only requires omission of identifying information.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/03/julian-jaynes-loses-appeal-on-spamming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeremy Jaynes, the spammer who was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison in 2003 for violating Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law, h\u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/anti_spam_law\"\u003eas lost his appeal before the Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling\u003c/a\u003e.  Several of the dissents claimed that Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law, which criminalizes unsolicited bulk email with falsified headers, even if it is political or religious in content rather than commercial, is a violation of the First Amendment.  The quotations from Justice Elizabeth Lacy and Jaynes\u0026rsquo; attorney Thomas M. Wolf both state that the law has diminished everyone\u0026rsquo;s freedom by criminalizing \u0026ldquo;bulk anonymous email, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoth Lacy and Wolf misrepresent \u003ca href=\"http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?991+ful+CHAP0886\"\u003ethe law\u003c/a\u003e, which makes it a crime to \u0026ldquo;Falsify or forge electronic mail transmission information or other routing information in any manner in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail through or into the computer network of an electronic mail service provider or its subscribers.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is a difference between forging headers and sending anonymous email\u0026ndash;the latter does not require the former, and the latter is not prohibited by the law.  Jaynes wasn\u0026rsquo;t just trying to be anonymous\u0026ndash;he was engaged in fraud, and falsifying message headers and from addresses to try to avoid the consequences of his criminality.  He wasn\u0026rsquo;t using anonymous remailers to express a political or religious message, and if he had been, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been able to be charged under this law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 12, 2008): The Virginia Supreme Court \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091201211.html?hpid=topnews\"\u003ehas reversed itself and struck down Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law as unconstitutional\u003c/a\u003e, on the grounds that prohibiting false routing information on emails infringes upon the right to anonymous political or religious speech.  This is a very bad decision for the reasons I gave above.  There are ways to engage in anonymous speech without doing what Jaynes did, falsifying message headers and domain names.  The court\u0026rsquo;s argument that one must falsify headers, IP addresses, and domain names in order to be anonymous is factually incorrect.  Anonymity doesn\u0026rsquo;t require header falsification, it only requires \u003cem\u003eomission\u003c/em\u003e of identifying information.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeremy Jaynes loses appeal on spamming case"},{"content":"The United States has now reached an incarceration rate of 1 in every 99.1 adults, the highest rate in the world. We\u0026rsquo;re spending an enormous amount of money to train people to be hardened criminals by throwing people convicted of nonviolent drug-related crimes into prisons with real criminals.\nFinland, by contrast, has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world, which has been in place for over 30 years. There is no correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates. In my opinion, we should decriminalize drug use, get rid of mandatory minimums, and adopt a model much closer to Finland\u0026rsquo;s, where only violent offenders are imprisoned. Those who cause other kinds of harm to others should be required to make restitution to their victims.\nHistorical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-02-28):\nBut you're such a Gawdly nation!\nCaliban (2008-02-29):\nIt's absolutely terrible. And to some extent, (not sure if there's actual data on this) incarceration may increase crime for some individuals as they gain contacts in prison.This isn't a reason to not imprison murderers, but it is one to not imprison pot dealers.\nEamon Knight (2008-03-03):\nIt occurs to me to wonder what the effect on the GDP is.First I thought: that's 1% of the population that's not out producing goods, and buying other goods' ie. they're non-productive consumers. Thus, a 1% reduction in GDP. Then I thought: no, I bet the budget for the prison system (especially the privately-run ones) is counted in the GDP, and considering that the cost of keeping a prisoner can be as much or more than an average wage, it probably shows as a net increase in the GDP. Which just shows how artificial some of these measures are.But ICBW.\nrod williams (2008-03-06):\nEarly Arizona prisons ran their own farms, produced needed goods and services costing taxpayers very little if at all. Then the purveyors raised a stink and the state had to purchase milk and other commodities from private enterprise. The voters of Arizona approved medical marijuana two years in a row and it was ignored both times. There was a rider on that Proposition to release all prisoners who were being held for drug charges with no other crimes against them. This has not happened.What word best fits this inaction?Rod\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/1-in-100-american-adults-are-in-prison.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe United States has \u003ca href=\"http://wcbstv.com/national/prison.americans.prison.2.665053.html\"\u003enow reached an incarceration rate of 1 in every 99.1 adults\u003c/a\u003e, the highest rate in the world.  We\u0026rsquo;re spending an enormous amount of money to train people to be hardened criminals by throwing people convicted of nonviolent drug-related crimes into prisons with real criminals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinland, by contrast, \u003ca href=\"http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue43/Gardner43.htm\"\u003ehas one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world\u003c/a\u003e, which has been in place for over 30 years.  There is no correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates.  In my opinion, we should decriminalize drug use, get rid of mandatory minimums, and adopt a model much closer to Finland\u0026rsquo;s, where only violent offenders are imprisoned.  Those who cause other kinds of harm to others should be required to make restitution to their victims.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"1 in 100 American adults are in prison"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;d seen similar blogs for California cities, now I\u0026rsquo;m glad to see there\u0026rsquo;s one for Phoenix. The site lists homes currently for sale at a loss, ordered from greatest total loss to least. Most of these homes have been flipped multiple times before the current flipper got stuck with it.\nDespite what a realtor might tell you, when you see homeowners repeatedly reducing prices like this, it is not a good time to buy. It\u0026rsquo;s a good time to wait and watch prices continue to drop. When you start seeing prices go back up for a while, then it might be a good time to buy\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s much better to buy after things have bottomed out and started to increase again than it is to buy on the way down. That\u0026rsquo;s sometimes referred to as \u0026ldquo;catching a falling knife.\u0026quot;\nI wouldn\u0026rsquo;t consider buying anything until 2010 at the earliest. We haven\u0026rsquo;t yet even seen the peak of subprime ARM resets, which should hit in the next few months. Then we still have Alt-A ARM resets to peak after that.\nTrott (2008-02-28):\nFascinating. If you happen to be aware of a similar list for San Francisco, please clue me in!\nLippard (2008-02-28):\nThe first blog by the same guy who does the Phoenix one was his Sacramento Area Flippers in Trouble. Looks like those are currently the only two he's doing.\nnolandda (2008-02-28):\nThat site is very amusing.I am amazed to learn that you may have heretofore unknown powers to divine the \"bottom\" of a market. I thought Professor Fama said we cannot do that.\nLippard (2008-02-28):\nWhile I think enough of the efficient market hypothesis that most of my investments are based on long-term, diverse strategies and think that technical analysis is equivalent to tea-leaf reading, is real estate an efficient market? It seems to me that there have been some very clear indicators for the direction of real estate prices for several years, and that current trends will be continuing for some time. But you're certainly correct that witnessing a few months of price appreciation doesn't mean we hit bottom--we could be on the verge of another Great Depression, where the stock market had several periods of up-trends on its long downward slide.So my advice about real estate should really just be--purchase what you can afford.BTW, I think the strong version of EMH is clearly wrong--inside information can genuinely give you an edge. And pump and dump stock scams work:http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=119http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/180http://www.crummy.com/features/StockSpam/\nLippard (2008-02-28):\ns/long term, diverse strategies/long term buy and hold strategy and diversification/\nEinzige (2008-03-08):\nThat blog, at best understates the flippers' losses, since it only shows the difference between the the purchase and sale prices.None of those people got off that easy, since they all had to pay transaction costs and carrying costs, and I'm sure many of them did repairs or upgrades as well.\nNot a flipper (2009-03-15):\nI would like to find out the name and address of the person who created this site. I would like to sue this person for character defimation. I find my home listed on this site. If it isn't bad enough we are losing our home, they claim we are a flipper and what is why we are losing our home. They have no idea! We bout a home with an adjustable interest rate that came back to bite us. Anyone have a name and address?\nLippard (2009-03-15):\nThe \"Flippers in Trouble\" sites' FAQ defines a \"Flipper in Trouble\" as \"somebody who bought a house within the last two years and is selling it now for less than what they paid.\" The individual entries offer no comment on the homeowners who are selling, so I think you'd be hard-pressed to make a legal case.Considering that you are already in financial difficulties, it would probably be foolish to spend money on an attorney to go after a blog simply because you feel insulted by the blog's name. But then again, it doesn't sound like you knew what you were doing when you bought your house, either.There are attorneys online who can deal with both Internet defamation cases and foreclosure defense...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/phoenix-flippers-in-trouble.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d seen similar blogs for California cities, now I\u0026rsquo;m glad to see \u003ca href=\"http://phoenixflippers.blogspot.com/\"\u003ethere\u0026rsquo;s one for Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e.  The site lists homes currently for sale at a loss, ordered from greatest total loss to least.  Most of these homes have been flipped multiple times before the current flipper got stuck with it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDespite what a realtor might tell you, when you see homeowners repeatedly reducing prices like this, it is not a good time to buy.  It\u0026rsquo;s a good time to wait and watch prices continue to drop.  When you start seeing prices go back up for a while, then it might be a good time to buy\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s much better to buy after things have bottomed out and started to increase again than it is to buy on the way down.  That\u0026rsquo;s sometimes referred to as \u0026ldquo;catching a falling knife.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wouldn\u0026rsquo;t consider buying anything until 2010 at the earliest.  We haven\u0026rsquo;t yet even seen the peak of subprime ARM resets, which should hit in the next few months.  Then we still have Alt-A ARM resets to peak after that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix Flippers in Trouble"},{"content":"Nationwide, foreclosures are up 57% for January 2008 vs. January 2007 (and up 8% vs. December 2007), and the top states for foreclosures in January (on a per-capita basis) were:\n1. Nevada\n2. California\n3. Florida\n4. Arizona\n5. Colorado\n6. Massachusetts\n7. Georgia\n8. Connecticut\n9. Ohio\n10. Michigan\nRepossessions are up 90% or January 2008 compared to January 2007.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/arizona-4-for-january-foreclosures.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNationwide, foreclosures are up 57% for January 2008 vs. January 2007 (and up 8% vs. December 2007), and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/articles/0226foreclosures26-on.html\"\u003ethe top states for foreclosures in January (on a per-capita basis) were\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Nevada\u003cbr /\u003e2. California\u003cbr /\u003e3. Florida\u003cbr /\u003e4. Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e5. Colorado\u003cbr /\u003e6. Massachusetts\u003cbr /\u003e7. Georgia\u003cbr /\u003e8. Connecticut\u003cbr /\u003e9. Ohio\u003cbr /\u003e10. Michigan\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRepossessions are up 90% or January 2008 compared to January 2007.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona #4 for January foreclosures"},{"content":"I do try to be accurate and correct my mistakes. I was happy to read on the Village Voice\u0026rsquo;s blog that I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;right.\u0026quot; But I think they mean politically right. In some cases, I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m to the right of the Village Voice. In others, I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m right there with them on the left.\nI suppose it could be argued that defending InfraGard from falsehoods is \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; in both senses.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the comment I posted at the Village Voice blog:\nI\u0026rsquo;ll happily have my blog characterized as \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; meaning \u0026ldquo;correct,\u0026rdquo; but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s terribly accurate to refer to much of its content as politically right wing. I would be happy to hear that ending the war in Iraq, ending the war on drugs, legalizing gay marriage, impeaching George W. Bush, abolishing the CIA, strict separation of church and state, and free speech absolutism (all positions defended at my blog) are now endorsed by the political right\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s about time.\nThanks for the link.(Obligatory xkcd cartoon about being right. Kat can vouch for its accuracy.)\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-27):\nI can't stand getting identified as \"right\" or \"left\".Not that I get labeled \"right\" very often ... I can only think of a single instance of that.Applying an imaginary linear scale to every issue imaginable serves no good purpose other than to put ideological blinders on the public's eyes.I understand some utility in the left/right distinction but as a society we've gone way past that.\nrod williams (2008-03-06):\nYou are right.By the way, Head Quasar/Michael James found Zak Woodruff in San Diego. Way to go Zak, beat the heat.Petrisko lives in Phoenix on McDowell and is in the arts.Rod is alive but had a aneurysm in the basilar region of his brain in the summer of 04. After 6 weeks Jasmine was told to place him in a nursing home, that night Rod woke up and was released a week later. It took him about 6 months to rewire his brain with the help of Yahoo and Google but he did just fine.Him is me.What a trip. Rod\nLippard (2008-03-06):\nRod! It's good to hear from you. I'm sorry to hear about your aneurysm, but glad to hear that you've made a recovery.\nMichael James (2012-05-29):\nZak Woodruff was easy to find because his name is unusual, as is \u0026quot;Jim Lippard.\u0026quot; I probably should have remained Head Quasar. Rod was easy to find because he hasn't moved an inch since 1983. I guess motion cannot occur when time doesn't exist.\nJim, I want you to know I've always admired your work. I also overcame the strong religious beliefs I grew up with, but did it by making a mess of my life for a few years instead of producing useful articles like \u0026quot;Fundamentalism is Nonsense.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/of-course-im-right.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI do try to be accurate and correct my mistakes.   I was happy to read \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/02/hunter_students.php\"\u003eon the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s blog that I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;right.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  But I think they mean politically right.  In some cases, I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m to the right of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/span\u003e.  In others, I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m right there with them on the left.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suppose it could be argued that defending InfraGard from falsehoods is \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; in both senses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the comment I posted at \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/02/hunter_students.php\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/span\u003e blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll happily have my blog characterized as \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; meaning \u0026ldquo;correct,\u0026rdquo; but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s terribly accurate to refer to much of its content as politically right wing.  I would be happy to hear that ending the war in Iraq, ending the war on drugs, legalizing gay marriage, impeaching George W. Bush, abolishing the CIA, strict separation of church and state, and free speech absolutism (all positions defended at my blog) are now endorsed by the political right\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s about time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks for the link.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Obligatory \u003ca href=\"http://www.xkcd.com/386/\"\u003exkcd cartoon about being right\u003c/a\u003e.  Kat can vouch for its accuracy.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Of course I'm right"},{"content":"As ZDNet reports, yesterday afternoon, in response to a government order to filter YouTube (AS 36561), Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557, pie.net.pk) announced a more-specific route (/24; YouTube announces a /23) for YouTube\u0026rsquo;s IP space, causing YouTube\u0026rsquo;s Internet traffic to go to Pakistan Telecom. YouTube then re-announced its own IP space in yet more-specific blocks (/25), which restored service to those willing to accept routing announcements for blocks that small. Then Pakistan Telecom\u0026rsquo;s upstream provider, PCCW (AS 3491), which had made the mistake of accepting the Pakistan Telecom /24 announcement for YouTube in the first place, shut off Pakistan Telecom completely, restoring YouTube service to the world minus Pakistan Telecom. They got what they wanted, but not quite in the manner they intended.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t mess with the Internet.\nMartin Brown gives more detail at the Renesys Blog, including a comment on how this incident shows that it\u0026rsquo;s still a bit too easy for a small ISP to disrupt service by hijacking IPs, intentionally or inadvertently. Danny McPherson makes the same point at the Arbor Networks blog, and also gives a good explanation of how the Pakistan Internet provider screwed up what they were trying to do.\nSomebody still needs to update the Wikipedia page on how Pakistan censors the Internet to cover this incident.\nUPDATE: BoingBoing reports that the video which prompted this censorship order was an excerpt from Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders\u0026rsquo; film \u0026ldquo;Forbidden\u0026rdquo; criticizing Islam, which was uploaded to YouTube back on January 28. I\u0026rsquo;ve added \u0026ldquo;religion\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Islam\u0026rdquo; as labels on this post, accordingly. The two specific videos mentioned by Reporters without Borders as prompting the ban have been removed from YouTube, one due to \u0026ldquo;terms of use violation\u0026rdquo; and one \u0026ldquo;removed by user.\u0026quot; The first of these two videos was supposedly the Geert Wilders one; the second was of voters describing election fraud during the February 18 Parliamentary elections in Pakistan. This blog suggests that the latter video was the real source of the attempted censorship gone awry, though the Pakistan media says it was the former. So perhaps the former was the pretext, and the latter was the political motivator.\nA \u0026ldquo;trailer\u0026rdquo; for Wilders\u0026rsquo; film is on YouTube here. Wilders speaks about his film on YouTube here and here. Ayaan Hirsi Ali defends Wilders on Laura Ingraham\u0026rsquo;s show on Fox News here. (Contrary to the blog post I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, Hirsi Ali was not in the Theo Van Gogh film \u0026ldquo;Submission Part One,\u0026rdquo; which can itself be found here, rather, she wrote it. Van Gogh was murdered as a result of it. The beginning and end is in Arabic with Dutch subtitles, but most of it is in English with Dutch subtitles.)\nUPDATE (February 26, 2008): This just in, from Reuters\u0026ndash;Pakistan \u0026ldquo;might have been\u0026rdquo; the cause of the YouTube outage. Way to be on the ball with breaking news, Reuters!\nThe Onion weighs in on the controversy!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/pakistan-takes-out-youtube-gets-taken.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/\"\u003eZDNet reports\u003c/a\u003e, yesterday afternoon, in response to a government order to filter YouTube (AS 36561), Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557, pie.net.pk) announced a more-specific route (/24; YouTube announces a /23) for YouTube\u0026rsquo;s IP space, causing YouTube\u0026rsquo;s Internet traffic to go to Pakistan Telecom.  YouTube then re-announced its own IP space in yet more-specific blocks (/25), which restored service to those willing to accept routing announcements for blocks that small.  Then Pakistan Telecom\u0026rsquo;s upstream provider, PCCW (AS 3491), which had made the mistake of accepting the Pakistan Telecom /24 announcement for YouTube in the first place, shut off Pakistan Telecom completely, restoring YouTube service to the world minus Pakistan Telecom.  They got what they wanted, but not quite in the manner they intended.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t mess with the Internet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMartin Brown \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube_1.shtml\"\u003egives more detail at the Renesys Blog\u003c/a\u003e, including a comment on how this incident shows that it\u0026rsquo;s still a bit too easy for a small ISP to disrupt service by hijacking IPs, intentionally or inadvertently.  Danny McPherson \u003ca href=\"http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/02/internet-routing-insecuritypakistan-nukes-youtube/\"\u003emakes the same point at the Arbor Networks blog, and also gives a good explanation of how the Pakistan Internet provider screwed up what they were trying to do\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomebody still needs to update \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Pakistan\"\u003ethe Wikipedia page on how Pakistan censors the Internet\u003c/a\u003e to cover this incident.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  BoingBoing \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/23/youtube-blocked-in-p.html\"\u003ereports that the video which prompted this censorship order was an excerpt from Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders\u0026rsquo; film \u0026ldquo;Forbidden\u0026rdquo; criticizing Islam, which was uploaded to YouTube back on January 28\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ve added \u0026ldquo;religion\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Islam\u0026rdquo; as labels on this post, accordingly.  The two specific videos \u003ca href=\"http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25889\"\u003ementioned by Reporters without Borders\u003c/a\u003e as prompting the ban have been removed from YouTube, \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3s8jtvvg00\"\u003eone due to \u0026ldquo;terms of use violation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TPUHHFky38\"\u003eone \u0026ldquo;removed by user.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  The first of these two videos was supposedly the Geert Wilders one; the second was of voters describing election fraud during the February 18 Parliamentary elections in Pakistan.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloggernews.net/114054\"\u003eThis blog\u003c/a\u003e suggests that the latter video was the real source of the attempted censorship gone awry, though the Pakistan media says it was the former.  So perhaps the former was the pretext, and the latter was the political motivator.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u0026ldquo;trailer\u0026rdquo; for Wilders\u0026rsquo; film is on YouTube \u003ca href=\"http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/01/22/video-geert-wilders-forbidden-trailer/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.   Wilders speaks about his film on YouTube \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0jUuzdfqfc\u0026amp;feature=related\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W6twYw4E8w\u0026amp;feature=related\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.   \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/ayaan-hirsi-ali-receives-goldwater.html\"\u003eAyaan Hirsi Ali\u003c/a\u003e defends Wilders on Laura Ingraham\u0026rsquo;s show on Fox News \u003ca href=\"http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/01/25/video-ayaan-hirsi-ali-defends-geert-wilders-anti-islamic-film/\"\u003ehere.\u003c/a\u003e (Contrary to the blog post I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, Hirsi Ali was not in the Theo Van Gogh film \u0026ldquo;Submission Part One,\u0026rdquo; which can itself be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c2HgK84l8U\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, rather, she wrote it. Van Gogh was murdered as a result of it.  The beginning and end is in Arabic with Dutch subtitles, but most of it is in English with Dutch subtitles.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 26, 2008):  This just in, from Reuters\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080226/tc_nm/pakistan_youtube_dc_2\"\u003ePakistan \u0026ldquo;might have been\u0026rdquo; the cause of the YouTube outage\u003c/a\u003e.  Way to be on the ball with breaking news, Reuters!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/pakistan_bans_youtube\"\u003eweighs in on the controversy\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return"},{"content":"On Friday, I attended the New Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;$-Gard 2008\u0026rdquo; conference in Albuquerque. It was an excellent one-day conference that should be used as a model by other chapters. The conference was open to the public, and featured an informative and entertaining two-hour seminar on fraud and white collar crimes by Frank Abagnale, author of the autobiographical Catch Me If You Can and anti-fraud books The Art of the Steal and Stealing Your Identity. (Another version of Abagnale\u0026rsquo;s talk can be viewed as an online webinar courtesy of City National Bank.) Abagnale argued that fraud has become much easier today than it was when he was a criminal forger, with numerous examples, and also offered some simple and relatively inexpensive ways for businesses and individuals to protect themselves. For example, he recommended the use of microcut shredders, and observed that his own business keeps shredders near every printer, and no documents get thrown away, everything gets shredded. He recommended the use of a credit monitoring service like Privacy Guard, and that if you write checks, you use a black uniball 207 gel pen, which is resistant to check-washing chemicals. For businesses that accept cash, he recommended training employees in some of the security features of U.S. currency rather than relying on pH testing pens, which are essentially worthless at detecting counterfeit money. By recognizing where bills use optical variable ink, for example, you can easily test for its presence in the time it takes you to accept bills from a customer and transfer them into a cash register. He also recommended that businesses use bank Positive Pay services to avoid having business checks altered.\nOther speakers included Anthony Clark and Danny Quist of Offensive Computing, who gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Malware Secrets,\u0026rdquo; based on their research and collection of 275,000 malware samples. Their talk included an overview of the economics of malware, which I believe is essential for understanding how best to combat it. They looked at the underground economy fairly narrowly focused on malware itself, and the cycle of its production, use, reverse engineering by whitehats, the development of antivirus patterns, and then demand for new undetectible malware, and observed that in that particular cycle it\u0026rsquo;s probably the legitimate security companies such as antivirus and IDS vendors who make the most money. They didn\u0026rsquo;t really look at the broader features of the underground economy, such as how botnets are used as infrastructure for criminal enterprises, or the division of criminal labor into different roles to disperse risk, though they certainly mentioned the use of compromised machines for spamming and phishing attacks. They skipped over some of the technical details of their work on automating the unpacking and decryption of malware, which was probably appropriate given the mixed levels of technical background in this audience. A particularly noteworthy feature of their research was their list of features of antivirus software that should be examined when making a purchase decision\u0026ndash;performance, detection rates, miss rates, false positive rates, system intrusiveness, a product\u0026rsquo;s own security, ease of mass deployment, speed, update frequency, use of signatures vs. other detection methods, ability to clean, capabilities with various categories of malware (rootkits, trojans, worms, backdoors, spyware), and ability to detect in real time vs. during a scan.\nAlex Quintana of Sandia National Labs also spoke about current trends in malware, in the most frightening talk of the conference. He talked about how malware has gone from something that attacks exposed servers on the Internet to something that individual clients pull to their machines from the Internet, usually via drive-by downloads. He demonstrated real examples of malware attacks via web pages and via Shockwave Flash, PowerPoint, and Word documents, and explained how one of his colleagues has coined the word \u0026ldquo;snares\u0026rdquo; for emails or web pages that lure individuals into targeted drive-by malware downloads. There was a wealth of interesting detail in his presentation, about trojans that use covert tunnels and hiding techniques, injecting themselves into other running processes, using alternate data streams, and obfuscated information in HTTP headers and on web pages. One trojan he described rides on removable media such as USB thumbdrives and runs when inserted into a PC thanks to Windows Autorun; it drops one component that phones home to accept instructions from a command and control server, and another that causes the malware to be written out on any other removable device inserted into the machine. It\u0026rsquo;s a return of the old-fashioned virus vector of moving from machine to machine via removable media rather than over the network.\nFrom law enforcement, there were presentations from Melissa McBee-Anderson of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3, another public-private partnership, which acts as a clearinghouse for Internet crime complaints and makes referrals of complaints to appropriate federal, state, , local, and international law enforcement agencies) and from various agents of the Cyber Squad of the Albuquerque FBI office. These presentations were somewhat disappointing in that they demonstrated how huge the problem is, yet how few prosecutions occur. For example, after the 2004 tsunami disasters, there were over 700 fake online charities set up to prey on people\u0026rsquo;s generosity after a disaster, yet only a single prosecution came of it. In 2005, the number of fake online charities for hurricanes Katrina and Rita was over 7,000, yet only five prosecutions came of those, including one in Albuquerque. Yet even that \u0026ldquo;successful\u0026rdquo; prosecution led to no jail time, only community service and probation. Frank Abagnale\u0026rsquo;s presentation also included some woeful statistics about prosecutions for white collar crime and check fraud that explicitly made the same point that was implicit in several of the law enforcement presentations. To IC3\u0026rsquo;s credit, however, the showed an example of a link chart generated from their crime complaint data, a very tiny portion of which was brought to them by a law enforcement agency seeking more information, the rest of which came from multiple received complaints. That link chart showed many interconnected events by five organized fraud gangs. Ms. McBee-Anderson also reported on successful international rosecutions against individuals at Lagos, Nigeria\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;walking Wal-Mart,\u0026rdquo; where people were selling goods purchased with stolen credit card information and using forged cashier\u0026rsquo;s checks. (I\u0026rsquo;m still amazed that anyone actually falls for the Nigerian online fraud schemes, but they do.)\nThe conference did a good job of making clear some specific threats and offering recommendations on necessary (yet unfortunately individually insufficient) defenses. It\u0026rsquo;s quite clear that relying solely on law enforcement to provide you with a remedy after the fact is a bad idea. It\u0026rsquo;s essential that private enterprises take preventative measures to protect themselves, and use a layered, defense-in-depth approach to do so.\nUPDATE (23 October 2022): Note that Frank Abagnale\u0026rsquo;s life story of con artistry turned out itself to be a con, as documented in Alan C. Logan\u0026rsquo;s book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can (2020).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/new-mexico-infragard-conference.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Friday, I attended the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infragardnm.org:8080/dollargard/\"\u003eNew Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;$-Gard 2008\u0026rdquo; conference\u003c/a\u003e in Albuquerque.  It was an excellent one-day conference that should be used as a model by other chapters.  The conference was open to the public, and featured an informative and entertaining two-hour seminar on fraud and white collar crimes by Frank Abagnale, author of the autobiographical \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCatch Me If You Can\u003c/span\u003e and anti-fraud books \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Art of the Steal\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStealing Your Identity\u003c/span\u003e.  (Another version of Abagnale\u0026rsquo;s talk \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnb.com/fightfraud/\"\u003ecan be viewed as an online webinar courtesy of City National Bank\u003c/a\u003e.)  Abagnale argued that fraud has become much easier today than it was when he was a criminal forger, with numerous examples, and also offered some simple and relatively inexpensive ways for businesses and individuals to protect themselves.  For example, he recommended the use of microcut shredders, and observed that his own business keeps shredders near every printer, and no documents get thrown away, everything gets shredded.  He recommended the use of a credit monitoring service like Privacy Guard, and that if you write checks, you use a black uniball 207 gel pen, which is resistant to check-washing chemicals.  For businesses that accept cash, he recommended training employees in some of the security features of U.S. currency rather than relying on pH testing pens, which are essentially worthless at detecting counterfeit money.  By recognizing where bills use optical variable ink, for example, you can easily test for its presence in the time it takes you to accept bills from a customer and transfer them into a cash register.  He also recommended that businesses use bank \u003ca href=\"http://www.positivepay.net/\"\u003ePositive Pay services\u003c/a\u003e to avoid having business checks altered.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Mexico InfraGard conference"},{"content":"Arizona Republican Rep. Rick Renzi has finally been indicted, on 35 counts that include extortion, embezzlement, and money laundering. The investigation has been conducted by the FBI (working on priority #4, \u0026ldquo;combat public corruption at all levels\u0026rdquo;), the IRS, the U.S. Attorney\u0026rsquo;s office, and the Department of Justice\u0026rsquo;s Office of Public Integrity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/dirty-politician-rick-renzi-indicted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona Republican Rep. Rick Renzi \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0222renzi22-ON.html\"\u003ehas finally been indicted, on 35 counts that include extortion, embezzlement, and money laundering\u003c/a\u003e.  The investigation has been conducted by the FBI (working on \u003ca href=\"http://www.fbi.gov/priorities/priorities.htm\"\u003epriority #4, \u0026ldquo;combat public corruption at all levels\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e), the IRS, the U.S. Attorney\u0026rsquo;s office, and the Department of Justice\u0026rsquo;s Office of Public Integrity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Rick Renzi indicted"},{"content":"Gary D. Barnett, president of a financial services firm in Montana, has written an article about InfraGard for The Future of Freedom Foundation, apparently inspired by the Progressive article. Thankfully, he avoids the bogus \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; claims, but he introduces some erroneous statements of his own. It\u0026rsquo;s apparent that he didn\u0026rsquo;t bother speaking to anyone in InfraGard or doing much research before writing his article, which is another attempt to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the program.\nBarnett first goes wrong when he writes:\nInfraGard’s stated goal “is to promote ongoing dialogue and timely communications between members and the FBI.” Pay attention to this next part: Infragard members gain access to information that enables them to protect their assets and in turn give information to government that facilitates its responsibilities to prevent and address terrorism and other crimes. I take from this statement that there is a distinct tradeoff, a tradeoff not available to the rest of us, whereby InfraGard members are privy to inside information from government to protect themselves and their assets; in return they give the government information it desires. This is done under the auspices of preventing terrorism and other crimes. Of course, as usual, “other crimes” is not defined, leaving us to guess just what information is being transferred.First, there isn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;distinct tradeoff.\u0026rdquo; There is no \u0026ldquo;quid pro quo\u0026rdquo; required of InfraGard members. All InfraGard members get the same access to bulletins as the others, regardless of whether they share information back. There are some specific sector-oriented subgroups that share information only with each other (and such private groups also exist independently of InfraGard, such as the sector Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, or ISACs). The FBI may come to a company from time to time with specific threat information relevant to them (I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this happen once with respect to my own company), but that happens whether a company is a member of InfraGard or not. (Where InfraGard membership might give added benefit is that the FBI knows that the InfraGard member has undergone some rudimentary screening. There are companies that are set up and run by con artists, as well as by foreign intelligence agents, believe it or not, and where there is apparent risk of such a setup, the FBI is obviously going to be less forthcoming than with somebody they already know.)\nSecond, \u0026ldquo;not available to the rest of us\u0026rdquo; suggests that InfraGard membership is difficult to come by. It\u0026rsquo;s not. I suspect Mr. Barnett himself could be approved, as could whoever does IT security for his company.\nThird, there\u0026rsquo;s no need to guess about the \u0026ldquo;other crimes.\u0026rdquo; The FBI\u0026rsquo;s own priority list tells you:\n1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack. (Counterterrorism)\n2. Protest the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage. (Counterintelligence)\n3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes. (Cyber crime)\n4. Combat public corruption at all levels.\n5. Protect civil rights.\n6. Combat transnational/national criminal enterprises.\n7. Combat major white collar crime.\n8. Combat significant violent crime.\n9. Support federal, state, local, and international partners.\n10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI\u0026rsquo;s mission.\nSome might question this list, in particular #5, on the basis of the FBI\u0026rsquo;s past record, but my interactions with law enforcement lead me to believe that there are many who do take #5 quite seriously and would challenge and speak out against actions contrary to it. I was at an InfraGard conference in New Mexico yesterday at which an exchange occurred that went something like this:\nMe: I work for a global telecommunications company.\nHe: You\u0026rsquo;re not one of those companies that\u0026rsquo;s been eavesdropping on us, are you?\nMe: No.\nHe: Good.\n\u0026ldquo;He\u0026rdquo; was a member of New Mexico\u0026rsquo;s InfraGard\u0026ndash;and a member of law enforcement. I\u0026rsquo;ll have more to say about warrantless wiretapping in a moment.\nThe real issue with this list is that the top two are probably misplaced, and 6-8 (and #10!) have been suffering, as I\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about.\nBarnett goes on:\nSince these members of InfraGard are people in positions of power in the “private” sector, people who have access to a massive amount of private information about the rest of us, just what information are they divulging to government? Remember, they are getting valuable consideration in the form of advance warnings and protection for their lives and assets from government. This does not an honest partnership make; quite the contrary.There are several key ways in which private industry helps the FBI through InfraGard. One is securing their own infrastructure against attacks so that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t create a problem that the FBI needs to devote resources to. Two is by bringing criminal issues that are identified by private companies to the attention of the FBI so that it can investigate and bring prosecutions. Three is by assisting the FBI in its investigations by explaining what evidence that requires technical skills to understand means, and giving them guidance in how to successfully track down criminals.\nBarnett goes on to talk about Rep. Jane Harman\u0026rsquo;s bill in Congress, HR1955/S.1959, which I\u0026rsquo;ve also briefly commented on at this blog, and makes some significant errors of fact. He writes this this bill \u0026ldquo;if passed, will literally criminalize thought against government.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s false\u0026ndash;the bill doesn\u0026rsquo;t criminalize anything, it just creates a commission that will write a report and make recommendations. That commission has no law enforcement powers of any kind, not even the power of subpoena. Barnett also mistakenly thinks that this bill contains a reference to InfraGard. He writes:\nS.1959, if passed, will be attached to the Homeland Security Act and InfraGard is already a part of the Department of Homeland Security. This is not a coincidence. Under section 899b of S.1959 it is stated: Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts. This appears to be a direct reference to the InfraGard program.\nThe reference to \u0026ldquo;the incorporation of State and local efforts\u0026rdquo; into \u0026ldquo;traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts\u0026rdquo; in counterterrorism contains no reference to private partnerships, only to combining law enforcement efforts at federal, state, and local levels. This is a reference to what are called \u0026ldquo;fusion centers,\u0026rdquo; like the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC). The people who work in those centers are people from government agencies (at the federal, state, and local levels) with government security clearances. InfraGard in Phoenix does partner with ACTIC, which in practice means that ACTIC representatives give presentations to InfraGard (all of which I believe have also been open to the general public), ACTIC shares threat information with InfraGard much like the FBI does, and that InfraGard members are encouraged to report potential terrorist tip information to ACTIC. (ACTIC also encourages the general public to do this, which I think is far more likely to waste resources than identify any actual terrorists.)\nNote that Barnett is mistaken when he writes that InfraGard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. InfraGard is not a government agency or part of a government agency\u0026ndash;it is a non-governmental organization, or actually a collection of non-governmental organizations, which are 501(c)(3) nonprofits, with leadership provided by board members who are InfraGard members. Each chapter has a coordinator from the FBI who is not on the board. The FBI provides guidance and suggestions, but the organizations are run by the boards.\nNow Barnett goes into Matt Rothschild territory when he writes: \u0026ldquo;I’m just speculating, of course, but is it possible that InfraGard will be a domestic police and spying arm for the government concerning “thought crime”?\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s not just speculation, it\u0026rsquo;s uninformed speculation. InfraGard is not part of government and has no police powers of any kind. I\u0026rsquo;ve previously addressed the degree to which I think the \u0026ldquo;spying\u0026rdquo; is a risk\u0026ndash;I think it\u0026rsquo;s relatively low, but worth talking about.\nBarnett continues in a Rothschild vein when he says \u0026ldquo;InfraGard, on the other hand, is an organization cloaked in secrecy. It holds secret meetings with the FBI.\u0026rdquo; This talk of InfraGard being \u0026ldquo;cloaked in secrecy\u0026rdquo; is grossly exaggerated. The group has fairly open membership and most meetings are open to the public. When there are meetings restricted to membership, those typically wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be accurately described as \u0026ldquo;secret meetings with the FBI.\u0026rdquo; I and other members of InfraGard have had private meetings with FBI agents with respect to particular investigations, but it would be inaccurate to describe those as \u0026ldquo;InfraGard meetings.\u0026rdquo; Law enforcement by its very nature requires a high degree of confidentiality for ongoing investigations, but it is a mistake to infer that this means conspiratorial plotting or spying.\nTowards the end of his article, Barnett talks about warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, and the secrecy of InfraGard membership:\nConsidering the recent attempts by President Bush and his administration to protect many telecommunications companies and executives from prosecution for releasing private information, how many of the top telecom executives are members of InfraGard? I, for one, would be very interested in this information, but alas, it is not public information; it is secret.What\u0026rsquo;s the sense in which InfraGard membership is secret? Only in that it\u0026rsquo;s not made available to the general public. Barnett writes that \u0026ldquo;no one outside InfraGard is to know who is a member unless previous approval has been given,\u0026rdquo; but this is his misinterpretation of a guideline he quotes, not what it says. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing prohibiting an InfraGard member from identifying themselves as such, only from identifying others as such without their consent. And if you\u0026rsquo;re going to speak on behalf of InfraGard, you need to get approval from the organization first. (And note that I\u0026rsquo;m not speaking on behalf of InfraGard here, and have had no approval from InfraGard for what I\u0026rsquo;ve written on my blog.) If you\u0026rsquo;re an InfraGard member, you have access to the online directory of InfraGard members. If Barnett is really interested in knowing who is a member, all he has to do is join.\nAs for \u0026ldquo;how many of the top telecom executives are members of InfraGard,\u0026rdquo; I haven\u0026rsquo;t looked, but I would be willing to wager that the answer is none. I know that none of the members of the \u0026ldquo;Senior Leadership Team\u0026rdquo; of my company are members of InfraGard, though my boss, our VP of Global Security, heads the Rochester, NY chapter of InfraGard. Senior executives of large corporations don\u0026rsquo;t have time or interest to belong to InfraGard, and it\u0026rsquo;s not really geared to them, as opposed to members of their physical and IT security organizations.\nAnd as for warrantless wiretapping (I said I\u0026rsquo;d get back to it), InfraGard has nothing to do with that and it\u0026rsquo;s foolish to think that it would. That activity has involved direct relationships between incumbent telecom providers (AT\u0026amp;T certainly, and probably Verizon as well) and the National Security Agency, with information restricted to employees holding government security clearances on a \u0026ldquo;need to know\u0026rdquo; basis, as the ACLU and EFF lawsuits have revealed. These relationships also probably include commercial relationships, and have included movement of personnel from one to the other\u0026ndash;for example, AT\u0026amp;T has a Director of Government Solutions who came from the NSA. InfraGard members, many if not most of which hold no government security clearances, are not in the loop on that activity. (For that matter, I suspect few FBI personnel are in the loop on that, either.)\nI find it discouraging that articles like Barnett\u0026rsquo;s are written and published. Such inaccurate information serves to distract from real issues and real government abuses and to discredit those who repeat it, when they have other things to say that are worth hearing, paying attention to, and acting upon. I hope that Barnett and FFF will strive for greater accuracy in the future.\nLippard (2008-02-25):\nIn email to me, Gary Barnett stated that he feels my response is deceptive on the basis of alleged errors. For example, he claims that InfraGard is part of the Department of Homeland Security, on the basis of a statement that \"The FBI assigned national program responsibility of InfraGard to the former National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC)\" and the fact that NIPC is now part of DHS. But this statement doesn't say that InfraGard is part of DHS or NIPC, it says that \"national program responsibility of InfraGard\" has been assigned to DHS. What this means is that DHS pays the bills for InfraGard's national website, VPN, online forums, and so forth--this is why the infragard.org DNS service is provided by DHS name servers. The actual hosting is provided by Louisiana State University, under DHS contract.He also makes two claims in response to my statement that HR1955/S.1959 doesn't criminalize anything or create any law enforcement powers for the commission that it orders to solicit testimony and write a report. First is that this bill is part of the Homeland Security Act, and enforcement capability will come from there. Second is that the current administration isn't following the law, anyway. In response to the second, I agree, but that's not evidence that the bill changes the law in the way he claimed. In regard to the first, there's still nothing in the bill that amends the Homeland Security Act to add any new crimes or enforcement capabilities. No doubt the commission will make legislative recommendations (and I've already said I think having such a commission is a bad idea on this blog), but this bill itself doesn't do so.\nTaylor Norrish (2008-02-26):\nI would just like the basics... how should I vote on this bill?http://www.govit.com/S_1959/A_bill_to_establish_the_National_Commission_on_the_Preventio/\nLippard (2008-02-26):\nTaylor: Looks like your comment is borderline comment spam to promote your site. Are you posting similar comments on any blog posts that mention bills in Congress? I'll let your comment stand because at least your site looks like an interesting idea, though clearly not yet at a critical mass of users to make it work. I think your system, being based on votes with weak user registration and authentication, is likely to be less accurate at gauging opinion than random polling, and less accurate at predicting outcomes than prediction markets like Intrade (based on betting rather than voting).You have only one vote registered at your site on S.1959, and it's a vote against. I think that's certainly the way the vote *should* go in the actual Senate.\nTaylor Norrish (2008-02-26):\nJim... it's an honest comment and promoting the feature of a direct connection to your reps on govit.com (no more phone calls, letters, or trying to figure out which reps to contact). Isn't that cool!!!I am the founder, and would not try to hide that, or spam you. I honestly believe this is a great call to action for this article.Would be great to talk offline.Best,Taylor\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/more-infragard-fud-and-misinformation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGary D. Barnett, president of a financial services firm in Montana, has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.fff.org/comment/com0802g.asp\"\u003ean article about InfraGard for The Future of Freedom Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, apparently inspired by \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/tinfoil-hat-brigade-generates-fear.html\"\u003ethe Progressive article\u003c/a\u003e.  Thankfully, he avoids the bogus \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; claims, but he introduces some erroneous statements of his own.  It\u0026rsquo;s apparent that he didn\u0026rsquo;t bother speaking to anyone in InfraGard or doing much research before writing his article, which is another attempt to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBarnett first goes wrong when he writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"More InfraGard FUD and misinformation"},{"content":"This morning Canada arrested 17 people of ages ranging from 17 to 26 years old for running botnets containing \u0026ldquo;up to one million computers\u0026rdquo; in 100 countries. They face charges that could result in up to 10 years in prison.\nThis barely scratches the surface of online criminal activity. Niels Provos of Google did a study (PDF) that found that of 4.5 million websites scanned between March of 2006 and February of 2007, 450,000 of them attempt to load malware on visiting machines. Sophos\u0026rsquo; similar survey in July of last year that found that 29% of websites host malware, 28% host porn or gambling content, and 19% are spam-related. Drive-by malware installations (where merely visiting a website causes malware to be loaded onto your machine) are definitely the method of choice for creating botnets today. I recommend using Firefox with the NoScript plugin and the MyWOT plugin to help prevent getting infected by such sites.\nTomorrow, I\u0026rsquo;ll be attending a New Mexico InfraGard conference at which I hope to learn more about recent malware trends (and get my copy of Catch Me If You Can and/or The Art of the Steal autographed by their author). This is another one open to the general public, so I expect no talk about \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; powers except in jest.\nUPDATE (February 22, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;m quoted in Brian Jackson\u0026rsquo;s article on the Quebec botnet hacker bust on itbusiness.ca. I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely happy with the quotes attributed to me\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;tens of millions,\u0026rdquo; though I said there have been botnets with more than a million hosts, and there are multiple millions of compromised hosts out there. If tens of millions is not accurate today, it will be in the future. The other quotation about IRC got a little bit garbled, but is not far off\u0026ndash;I made the point that the bots of today have evolved from a combination of IRC bots of the past combined with denial of service attack tools, remote access trojans, and other malware, and many of them still use IRC as their mode of communication.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/canada-busts-17-in-botnet-ring.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning Canada \u003ca href=\"http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2008/02/botnet-busted.html?_log_from=rss\"\u003earrested 17 people of ages ranging from 17 to 26 years old for running botnets containing \u0026ldquo;up to one million computers\u0026rdquo; in 100 countries\u003c/a\u003e.  They face charges that could result in up to 10 years in prison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis barely scratches the surface of online criminal activity.  Niels Provos of Google \u003ca href=\"http://www.usenix.org/event/hotbots07/tech/full_papers/provos/provos.pdf\"\u003edid a study\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) that found that of 4.5 million websites scanned between March of 2006 and February of 2007, 450,000 of them attempt to load malware on visiting machines.  Sophos\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/07/securityrep.html\"\u003esimilar survey in July of last year\u003c/a\u003e that found that 29% of websites host malware, 28% host porn or gambling content, and 19% are spam-related.  \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download\"\u003eDrive-by malware installations\u003c/a\u003e (where merely visiting a website causes malware to be loaded onto your machine) are definitely the method of choice for creating botnets today.  I recommend using Firefox with the NoScript plugin and the MyWOT plugin to help prevent getting infected by such sites.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTomorrow, I\u0026rsquo;ll be attending \u003ca href=\"http://www.infragardnm.org:8080/dollargard/\"\u003ea New Mexico InfraGard conference\u003c/a\u003e at which I hope to learn more about recent malware trends (and get my copy of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCatch Me If You Can\u003c/span\u003e and/or \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Art of the Steal\u003c/span\u003e autographed by their author).  This is another one open to the general public, so I expect no talk about \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; powers except in jest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 22, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;m quoted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=47259\"\u003eBrian Jackson\u0026rsquo;s article on the Quebec botnet hacker bust on itbusiness.ca\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely happy with the quotes attributed to me\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;tens of millions,\u0026rdquo; though I said there have been botnets with more than a million hosts, and there are multiple millions of compromised hosts out there.  If tens of millions is not accurate today, it will be in the future.  The other quotation about IRC got a little bit garbled, but is not far off\u0026ndash;I made the point that the bots of today have evolved from a combination of IRC bots of the past combined with denial of service attack tools, remote access trojans, and other malware, and many of them still use IRC as their mode of communication.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Canada busts 17 in botnet ring"},{"content":"Although I\u0026rsquo;ve gone for the last several years with extremely few illegal prerecord telemarketing calls, I\u0026rsquo;ve received three to my cell phone in the last three weeks, all scams. (I wonder how many of these people were working in the mortgage business until recently?) Two of them came from faked caller IDs that look like UK telephone numbers (starting with +44), but which appear to actually be from Florida, a popular location for all kinds of scammers. The first call, on January 30, came from 44-207-490-6113and was selling auto warranties, no doubt at far above market prices, and was phrased in such a way as to attempt to deceive the recipient into thinking they needed to renew an existing warranty that is expiring. When I got to a human operator and asked to be put on their do-not-call list, the woman hung up on me. I need to learn to be more subtle in my questioning to get more information from these con artists.\nThe second call, on February 12, gave caller ID of 866-526-9732, and said that I had won a no-catch, all-expenses-paid vacation for two, and asked me for my name and number so that I could be called and told where to pick it up. Unfortunately, it hung up on me while I was trying to provide a fake name and real phone number, so that I could identify the caller and sue them.\nThe third call, today, gave caller ID of 44-207-414-4370 and was offering a credit card deal to \u0026ldquo;reduce my interest rate.\u0026rdquo; Again the wording expressed urgency about a limited-time offer and made it sound like it was with regard to a card I already hold. This time, I asked the human operator (after waiting quite some time to get one) what company he\u0026rsquo;s with. I had to ask three times\u0026ndash;he kept repeating his script about \u0026ldquo;any Mastercard or Visa,\u0026rdquo; and I kept saying \u0026ldquo;no, what company are YOU with.\u0026rdquo; Finally, he said \u0026ldquo;United Debt Aid,\u0026rdquo; which is no doubt a fake name. I asked him to put me on their do-not-call list and again was hung up on as I was telling him he was working for a bunch of criminals. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get a chance to ask for a written do-not-call policy from any of these three, but I\u0026rsquo;m sure they don\u0026rsquo;t have them since they\u0026rsquo;re violating the law in several ways already. Prerecord calls with advertising to cell phones are flat out illegal, just as prerecord calls with advertising to residential phones is illegal (without an existing business relationship, according to the FCC, which has incorrectly added an exception not present in the actual statute). So is falsifying caller ID information, so is failing to identify the business calling or on whose behalf the call is being made. So is failing to put me on their do-not-call list, and so is failing to send a written do-not-call policy upon request.\nIf anybody happens to come across more information that might identify who is behind these calls, let me know\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;d love to sue them.\nUPDATE (February 25, 2008): I got another auto warranty one today, Caller ID said 442074791697 and it began \u0026ldquo;Your auto warranty has expired\u0026rdquo; and claimed they had been trying unsuccessfully to contact me via mail\u0026ndash;two lies in the first two sentences. I pressed 1 to talk to a live operator, who immediately asked me for the year and make of my car. I asked what company is providing the warranty, and he hung up on me. Apparently any questioning at all is reason for these scammers to proceed to the next call recipient.\nUPDATE (March 27, 2008): I received two more of these in quick succession\u0026ndash;one on March 17 (auto warranty call from 505-217-2684) and one on March 19 (credit card rate reduction call from 305-654-1842).\nConsumerAffairs.com has a story about ripoff auto warranties sold by companies in St. Louis.\nVerizon Wireless has filed a law suit against John Does to go after these auto warranty calls.\nUPDATE (April 7, 2008): Another auto warranty one, from 305-672-6663.\nI believe that at least some of these calls are coming from businesses run by former associates of Fax.com, a defunct broadcast fax and prerecord telemarketing business that received a $5,379,000 fine from the FCC in 2002 which was never collected, and was successfully sued by the D.C. law firm of Covington \u0026amp; Burling for $2.3 million in 2003, which I believe was also never collected. The legal system is not good at dealing with these sorts of criminals, because it\u0026rsquo;s all being left to civil enforcement, when these are the kind of people who need to be thrown in jail.\nUPDATE (April 10, 2008): Another from \u0026ldquo;Heather at account services,\u0026rdquo; caller ID 561-482-7092, for credit card rate reduction. The human being I spoke with confirmed that she\u0026rsquo;s in Boca Raton, FL\u0026ndash;on a previous call the company was identified as \u0026ldquo;United Debt Aid\u0026rdquo; in Boca Raton.\nUPDATE (August 11, 2008): There\u0026rsquo;s a wealth of information about these calls and who\u0026rsquo;s behind them at the Stopping Heather Forums.\nJ (2008-02-22):\nI got a call with no one on the end from the 4370 number this evening. Hugely inconvenient. Who is your provider?\nLippard (2008-02-22):\nNot sure it matters--I'm with Alltel, with a number ported from Verizon.\nQueen of Pith (2008-02-25):\nUPDATE (February 25, 2008): I got another auto warranty one today, Caller ID said 442074791697 and it began \"Your auto warranty has expired\" and claimed they had been trying unsuccessfully to contact me via mail--two lies in the first two sentences. I pressed 1 to talk to a live operator, who immediately asked me for the year and make of my car. I asked what company is providing the warranty, and he hung up on me. Apparently any questioning at all is reason for these scammers to proceed to the next call recipient.Ditto just now. I looked up the number and found your blog.\nLippard (2008-02-25):\nThanks for stopping by... I may have to actually use the credit card and buy one of these warranties to find out who's behind it, then cancel within three days to avoid the charges. I've got several thousand dollars in TCPA claims against these guys now.\nDan Ellis (2008-02-25):\nI just got a call from the +442074791697 number. I didn't answer it, then ran a Google search and found this blog.They didn't leave a message.Please let me know if you ever get any more detail about this.\nUnknown (2008-02-25):\nI got a call from that number as well saying that my warranty has expired. I forwarded it to my husband who is an auto dealer to see if it is legit.\nUnknown (2008-02-25):\nI just got a call from the same +44 number, didn't answer, didn't get a voicemail, and found this blog after a Google search. I'm glad I didn't answer, but now I want to know how they got my number.. :\\\nDan Ellis (2008-02-25):\nI *HIGHLY* doubt the call is legit. My only vehicle is a '99 Saab that I bought used. As such, it didn't come with a warranty that *COULD* expire.Grrr!!\nLippard (2008-02-25):\nThere is no way this is legit, and they \"got your number\" by calling all numbers in an area in sequence with an autodialer.These guys are con artists running a boiler room operation.\nAnonymous (2008-02-26):\nI just received a call from 442-074-791697. It was about a warranty. I wasn't thinking and I pressed 2 to disconnect instead of just hanging up, and then it said your number has been removed (or something of that nature). Do you guys think that pressing a number could give them any type of information? I'm starting to get a little worried that I shouldn't have pressed any number or anything.\nLippard (2008-02-26):\nOdds are that pressing 2 didn't do anything at all. If it did, it didn't give them any information that they didn't already have (i.e., your telephone number).\njimbo (2008-02-26):\nJust received a call at 9pm est. I pressed #1 to speak with a rep to \"renew\" my auto insurance. When the man answered, he didn't say his name or the company name, just asked, \"whats the year and make of your vehicle\", and I replied by asking him if he had my information on his computer screen, if he could see my phone number, and he said, \"no, just a phone\", like he was the one that was being inconvenienced, then he hung up on me!!! This is wrong, and it wasn't even my home phone, it was my cell phone that he called, which costs money per minute of airtime usage!! Someone needs to stop this scam, IF THEY CALL YOU, JUST GO ALONG WITH IT AND FIND OUT \"POLITELY\" WHAT THE NAME OF THE COMPANY IS!!!!!!! Then please post it on this message board so others know, and can do something about it. I hope Lippard does decide to use his credit card and purchase it then sue the company. I am with AT\u0026T, and live in Pennsylvania, are you guys from this area, too, or just all over the U.S.?? Thanks, good luck.\nAnonymous (2008-02-26):\nVerizon, and Philadelphia here.\nAnonymous (2008-02-28):\nI just got the call for the lower interest rates. i also asked for the company name and was told \"United Debt Aid\". Googling the business brought me to this blog. The operator (a man) asked if I wanted the lower interest rate. I asked him on what card and he repeated the question. The second or third time he asked me wether or not I understood the question. When I asked who was really calling, he hung up. Good luck on the lawsuit. If they have taken anyone with this scam they deserve more than just that.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/con-artists-in-desperate-need-of-money.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough I\u0026rsquo;ve gone for the last several years with extremely few illegal prerecord telemarketing calls, I\u0026rsquo;ve received three to my cell phone in the last three weeks, all scams.  (I wonder how many of these people were working in the mortgage business until recently?)  Two of them came from faked caller IDs that look like UK telephone numbers (starting with +44), but which appear to actually be from Florida, a popular location for all kinds of scammers.  The first call, on January 30, came from 44-207-490-6113and was selling auto warranties, no doubt at far above market prices, and was phrased in such a way as to attempt to deceive the recipient into thinking they needed to renew an existing warranty that is expiring.  When I got to a human operator and asked to be put on their do-not-call list, the woman hung up on me.  I need to learn to be more subtle in my questioning to get more information from these con artists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe second call, on February 12, gave caller ID of 866-526-9732, and said that I had won a no-catch, all-expenses-paid vacation for two, and asked me for my name and number so that I could be called and told where to pick it up.  Unfortunately, it hung up on me while I was trying to provide a fake name and real phone number, so that I could identify the caller and sue them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe third call, today, gave caller ID of 44-207-414-4370 and was offering a credit card deal to \u0026ldquo;reduce my interest rate.\u0026rdquo;  Again the wording expressed urgency about a limited-time offer and made it sound like it was with regard to a card I already hold.  This time, I asked the human operator (after waiting quite some time to get one) what company he\u0026rsquo;s with.  I had to ask three times\u0026ndash;he kept repeating his script about \u0026ldquo;any Mastercard or Visa,\u0026rdquo; and I kept saying \u0026ldquo;no, what company are YOU with.\u0026rdquo;  Finally, he said \u0026ldquo;United Debt Aid,\u0026rdquo; which is no doubt a fake name.  I asked him to put me on their do-not-call list and again was hung up on as I was telling him he was working for a bunch of criminals.  I didn\u0026rsquo;t get a chance to ask for a written do-not-call policy from any of these three, but I\u0026rsquo;m sure they don\u0026rsquo;t have them since they\u0026rsquo;re violating the law in several ways already.  Prerecord calls with advertising to cell phones are flat out illegal, just as prerecord calls with advertising to residential phones is illegal (without an existing business relationship, according to the FCC, which has incorrectly added an exception not present in the actual statute).  So is falsifying caller ID information, so is failing to identify the business calling or on whose behalf the call is being made.  So is failing to put me on their do-not-call list, and so is failing to send a written do-not-call policy upon request.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf anybody happens to come across more information that might identify who is behind these calls, let me know\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;d love to \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/lawsuits.html\"\u003esue them\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 25, 2008): I got another auto warranty one today, Caller ID said 442074791697 and it began \u0026ldquo;Your auto warranty has expired\u0026rdquo; and claimed they had been trying unsuccessfully to contact me via mail\u0026ndash;two lies in the first two sentences.  I pressed 1 to talk to a live operator, who immediately asked me for the year and make of my car.  I asked what company is providing the warranty, and he hung up on me.  Apparently any questioning at all is reason for these scammers to proceed to the next call recipient.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 27, 2008):  I received two more of these in quick succession\u0026ndash;one on March 17 (auto warranty call from 505-217-2684) and one on March 19 (credit card rate reduction call from 305-654-1842).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConsumerAffairs.com \u003ca href=\"http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/03/cr_warranties.html\"\u003ehas a story about ripoff auto warranties sold by companies in St. Louis\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVerizon Wireless has \u003ca href=\"http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/NEWS/803270382/1001\"\u003efiled a law suit against John Does to go after these auto warranty calls\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 7, 2008): Another auto warranty one, from 305-672-6663.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI believe that at least some of these calls are coming from businesses run by former associates of Fax.com, a defunct broadcast fax and prerecord telemarketing business that \u003ca href=\"http://www.fcc.gov/eb/News_Releases/DOC-225128A1.html\"\u003ereceived a $5,379,000 fine from the FCC in 2002\u003c/a\u003e which was never collected, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/01/61861\"\u003ewas successfully sued by the D.C. law firm of Covington \u0026amp; Burling for $2.3 million\u003c/a\u003e in 2003, which I believe was also never collected. The legal system is not good at dealing with these sorts of criminals, because it\u0026rsquo;s all being left to civil enforcement, when these are the kind of people who need to be thrown in jail.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 10, 2008): Another from \u0026ldquo;Heather at account services,\u0026rdquo; caller ID 561-482-7092, for credit card rate reduction.  The human being I spoke with confirmed that she\u0026rsquo;s in Boca Raton, FL\u0026ndash;on a previous call the company was identified as \u0026ldquo;United Debt Aid\u0026rdquo; in Boca Raton.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 11, 2008): There\u0026rsquo;s a wealth of information about these calls and who\u0026rsquo;s behind them at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.heatherwithaccountservices.com/forum/index.php\"\u003eStopping Heather Forums\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Con artists in desperate need of money"},{"content":"Shawn Lonsdale, who began picketing the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida in 2006, was found dead in his home of an apparent suicide. A garden hose was run from his car\u0026rsquo;s exhaust into a window of his home, and a suicide note was found.\nHis protests against Scientology had declined last year, when he didn\u0026rsquo;t renew the domain registration for his critical website and stopped posting much on his blog. His conflict with Scientology began and peaked in 2006, when Scientology-hired PI\u0026rsquo;s dug up and publicized his two misdemeanor convictions for lewd and lascivious conduct, and subpoenaed him for a deposition regarding their claim that he was an agent of a group prohibited from protesting in downtown Clearwater. I would guess that the group in question was the Lisa McPherson Trust, and that the prohibition was the result of a legal settlement.\nLonsdale appeared in the BBC Panorama episode on Scientology, which can be found on YouTube in its entirety.\nOm (2008-02-21):\nWOW! Call me a conspiracy theorist but I doubt it was suicide! Why is it that all the deaths surrounding Scientology are so dramatic and 'stagey'.... Like their own video productions! Hmmm.. Just sayin'!\nLippard (2008-02-21):\nI'm inclined to believe this is a suicide unless some contrary evidence appears. There's a suicide note, he'd already withdrawn from his anti-Scientology activities, and he clearly had problems in his life.I also think suicide is the best explanation for the deaths of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, who claimed to be harrassed by Scientology--their story is told in the January 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. They also clearly had some problems with paranoia and alcohol and/or drug abuse.\nLippard (2008-02-21):\nBTW, New York magazine casts some doubt on Beck's claim to have never met Theresa Duncan to discuss being in her movie.\nBill (2008-02-28):\nMore on Shawn Lonsdale at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_lonsdale and http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/lonsdale1.html\nLippard (2008-05-27):\nTheresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake's story got the \"Law \u0026 Order\" treatment (in which the cult was called \"Systemotics\") in episode 15 of season 18, which aired on April 30, 2008.There's a YouTube clip here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/scientology-critic-shawn-lonsdale-dies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShawn Lonsdale, who began picketing the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida in 2006, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/19/Northpinellas/Scourge_of_Scientolog.shtml\"\u003ewas found dead in his home of an apparent suicide\u003c/a\u003e.  A garden hose was run from his car\u0026rsquo;s exhaust into a window of his home, and a suicide note was found.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis protests against Scientology had declined last year, when he didn\u0026rsquo;t renew the domain registration for his critical website and stopped posting much on his blog.  His conflict with Scientology began and peaked in 2006, when Scientology-hired PI\u0026rsquo;s dug up and publicized his two misdemeanor convictions for lewd and lascivious conduct, and subpoenaed him for a deposition regarding their claim that he was an agent of a group prohibited from protesting in downtown Clearwater.  I would guess that the group in question was the Lisa McPherson Trust, and that the prohibition was the result of a legal settlement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLonsdale appeared in \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwoM0OAlaaw\u0026amp;NR=1\"\u003ethe BBC Panorama episode on Scientology\u003c/a\u003e, which can be found on YouTube in its entirety.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology critic Shawn Lonsdale dies"},{"content":"Monday\u0026rsquo;s Los Angeles Times featured a short op-ed piece by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society about Anonymous\u0026rsquo; protests against Scientology, which is rightly both critical of Anonymous and Scientology.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/michael-shermer-on-anonymous-protest-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMonday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e featured \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-shermer18feb18,0,5813251.story\"\u003ea short op-ed piece by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society about Anonymous\u0026rsquo; protests against Scientology\u003c/a\u003e, which is rightly both critical of Anonymous and Scientology.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Michael Shermer on Anonymous protest of Scientology"},{"content":"As reported in Wired\u0026rsquo;s blog:\nWikileaks, the whistleblower site that recently leaked documents related to prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, was taken offline last week by its U.S. host after posting documents that implicate a Cayman Islands bank in money laundering and tax evasion activities.\nIn a pretty extraordinary ex-parte move, the Julius Baer Bank and Trust got Dynadot, the U.S. hosting company and domain registrar for Wikileaks, to agree not only to take down the Wikileaks site but also to \u0026ldquo;lock the wikileaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar.\u0026rdquo; A judge in the U.S. District Court for Northern California signed off on the stipulation between the two parties last week without giving Wikileaks a chance to address the issue in court.\nThe Julius Baer Bank, a Swiss bank with a division in the Cayman Islands, took issue with documents that were published on Wikileaks by an unidentified whistleblower, whom the bank claims is the former vice president of its Cayman Islands operation, Rudolf Elmer. The documents purport to provide evidence that the Cayman Islands bank helps customers hide assets and wash funds.\nAfter failing to convince Wikileaks to take down the documents, the bank went after its U.S. hosting service, which responded by agreeing not only to remove the Wikileaks account from Dyndadot\u0026rsquo;s server but also to help prevent Wikileaks from moving its site to a different host.\nWikileaks is actually still online, even though its domain has been taken out of its control in this highly unusual and inappropriate move by the courts. Bank Julius Baer and its attorneys are making a huge mistake that is now going to drive far more attention to the documents in question than they would have received otherwise.\nWikileaks publishes the correspondence between the organization and the bank\u0026rsquo;s attorneys, in which they refuse to identify their client or the specific documents that they take issue with.\nWikileaks board member Julian Assange (author of the security tool \u0026ldquo;strobe\u0026rdquo; and technical advisor and researcher for the excellent book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, by Suelette Dreyfus), has been quoted saying that Wikileaks will continue to publish:\n\u0026ldquo;The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction,\u0026rdquo; Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said in the e-mail statement issued from Paris on Monday. \u0026ldquo;Wikileaks will keep on publishing. In fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.\u0026quot;Wikileaks was set up primarily to allow the leaking and publishing of documents from non-Western authoritarian regimes, but it has gotten the most press for its earlier leak of the Guanatanomo Bay operating manual and now for this report of a Cayman Islands/Swiss bank\u0026rsquo;s activities.\nIn my opinion, Wikileaks is subject to abuse\u0026ndash;just like the Internet in general, as well as newspapers and other forms of publication\u0026ndash;but that organizations which attempt to use trade secret and copyright law as a tool to conceal illegal or immoral activity should not be permitted to succeed. This particular case appears to be somewhat complex and based on a particular whistleblower\u0026rsquo;s account, and if it only involves tax avoidance (as opposed to evasion), then it doesn\u0026rsquo;t involve the violation of any laws. It is, however, clearly inappropriate for the entire site to be shut down just because of a few specific documents from one case\u0026ndash;that would be like shutting down Wikipedia because of the content in one set of articles, or shutting down Blogger because of material posted on one blog. That\u0026rsquo;s the kind of censorship we have seen from some authoritarian regimes in response to critical material, but it\u0026rsquo;s not how the law should work in the United States.\nUPDATE (March 4, 2008): Judge White wisely reversed his decision and Wikileaks.org is back at its own domain name.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/cayman-islands-bank-gets-wikileaks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs reported in \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/cayman-island-b.html\"\u003eWired\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Wikileaks, the whistleblower site that recently leaked documents related to prisons in \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/wikileaks-posts.html\"\u003eIraq and Guantanamo Bay\u003c/a\u003e, was taken offline last week by its U.S. host after posting documents that implicate a Cayman Islands bank in money laundering and tax evasion activities.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In a pretty extraordinary ex-parte move, the Julius Baer Bank and Trust got Dynadot, the U.S. hosting company and domain registrar for Wikileaks, \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/Dynadot-injunction.pdf\"\u003eto agree not only to take down the Wikileaks site\u003c/a\u003e but also to \u0026ldquo;lock the wikileaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar.\u0026rdquo; A judge in the U.S. District Court for Northern California signed off on the stipulation between the two parties last week without giving Wikileaks a chance to address the issue in court.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cayman Islands bank gets Wikileaks taken offline"},{"content":"The Mocmex virus and other trojans have been found on digital photo frames from China sold at Target, Costco, Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club, and Best Buy. The photo frames are connected to a computer via USB to load photographs; on a Windows machine this will cause an executable stored on the photo frame to run, infecting the computer.\nThe SANS Internet Storm Center has documented more details here and here.\nAs more and more devices have built-in storage and can be connected via USB to PCs, we\u0026rsquo;ll see more and more attacks like this.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/malware-in-digital-photo-frames.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL\"\u003eMocmex virus and other trojans have been found on digital photo frames from China sold at Target, Costco, Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club, and Best Buy\u003c/a\u003e.  The photo frames are connected to a computer via USB to load photographs; on a Windows machine this will cause an executable stored on the photo frame to run, infecting the computer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe SANS Internet Storm Center has documented more details \u003ca href=\"http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3787\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3807\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs more and more devices have built-in storage and can be connected via USB to PCs, we\u0026rsquo;ll see more and more attacks like this.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Malware in digital photo frames"},{"content":"Mark Fiore helps teach kids about the importance of warrantless wiretapping.\n(Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/spies-who-love-you.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Fiore \u003ca href=\"http://www.markfiore.com/spies_who_love_you_0\"\u003ehelps teach kids about the importance of warrantless wiretapping\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Bob Hagen.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spies who love you"},{"content":"The FBI has issued an official response to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s Progressive article (PDF), which says, in part:\nIn short, the article\u0026rsquo;s claims are patently false. For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program. The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication. Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; than other civilians. The FBI encourages InfraGard members \u0026ndash; and all Americans \u0026ndash; to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.The FBI response also states that Rothschild has \u0026ldquo;refused even to identify when or where the claimed \u0026lsquo;small meeting\u0026rsquo; occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,\u0026rdquo; and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve updated my own response to Rothschild to include the above information.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/fbi-responds-to-shoot-to-kill-claims.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FBI \u003ca href=\"http://www.infragard.net/press/2008/progressive_article_response.pdf\"\u003ehas issued an official response to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s Progressive article\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), which says, in part:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn short, the article\u0026rsquo;s claims are patently false. For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program. The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication. Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; than other civilians. The FBI encourages InfraGard members \u0026ndash; and all Americans \u0026ndash; to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe FBI response also states that Rothschild has \u0026ldquo;refused even to identify when or where the claimed \u0026lsquo;small meeting\u0026rsquo; occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,\u0026rdquo; and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve updated \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/tinfoil-hat-brigade-generates-fear.html\"\u003emy own response to Rothschild\u003c/a\u003e to include the above information.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI responds to \"shoot to kill\" claims about InfraGard"},{"content":"A Pentagon-commissioned study from the Rand Corporation on U.S. military occupation in the Middle East, titled \u0026ldquo;War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency,\u0026rdquo; argues that the U.S. military efforts are \u0026ldquo;at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible\u0026rdquo;:\nThe United States should instead focus its priorities on improving \u0026ldquo;civil governance\u0026rdquo; and building \u0026ldquo;local security forces,\u0026rdquo; according to the report, referring to those steps as \u0026ldquo;capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces,\u0026rdquo; said David C. Gompert, the report\u0026rsquo;s lead author and a senior fellow at Rand. \u0026ldquo;Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge.\u0026quot;\nThe report argues for some of the things that have been done as part of the \u0026ldquo;surge,\u0026rdquo; such as training and equipping local security forces, but maintains that this needs to be done by professional police trainers, not by the military. Building local governments, an efficient and fair justice system, and accessible mass education are also recommendations. A bullet list of recommendations:\nAmerican military forces can\u0026rsquo;t keep up with training local militaries to match the growth of Muslim insurgent groups and that must improve. Police should be trained by professional police trainers. American military prowess should focus \u0026ldquo;on border and coastal surveillance, technical intelligence collection, air mobility, large-scale logistics, and special operations against high-value targets.\u0026quot; A new information-sharing architecture should be created. This \u0026ldquo;Integrated Counterinsurgency Operating Network\u0026rdquo; would promote \u0026ldquo;universal cell phone use, \u0026lsquo;wikis\u0026rsquo; and video monitoring.\u0026rdquo; [They could call it InfraGard Iraq.]\n\u0026ldquo;Pro-America\u0026rdquo; themes should be dropped \u0026ldquo;in favor of strengthening local government\u0026rdquo; and emphasizing the failure of jihadists to meet people\u0026rsquo;s needs. U.S. allies and international organizations, such as NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations could help the United States in areas such as \u0026ldquo;building education, health and justice systems, and training police and\u0026rdquo; military forces that perform civilian police duties.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/pentagon-commissioned-rand-report-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Pentagon-commissioned study from the Rand Corporation on U.S. military occupation in the Middle East, titled \u0026ldquo;War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/11/rand.insurgencies/index.html\"\u003eargues that the U.S. military efforts are \u0026ldquo;at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e The United States should instead focus its priorities on improving \u0026ldquo;civil governance\u0026rdquo; and building \u0026ldquo;local security forces,\u0026rdquo; according to the report, referring to those steps as \u0026ldquo;capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pentagon-commissioned Rand report on Iraqi occupation"},{"content":"Noted Scientologist critic and tireless picketer of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s London Org, Dave Bird, died on Sunday, the same day as the largest London Scientology picket that has ever occurred.\nDavid Gerard has posted a nice couple of obituaries and some photos at his blog.\nDave Bird had a crazy mountain man look, and I thought his postings and tactics were sometimes over the top, but he also had a gift for showmanship and entertainment, as you can see from the photos of his props that he brought to protests. He was one of the protesters that Scientology took seriously enough to attack on their \u0026ldquo;Religious Freedom Watch\u0026rdquo; website (which seems to still be offline since being attacked by \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo;).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/dave-bird-rip.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNoted Scientologist critic and tireless picketer of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s London Org, Dave Bird, died on Sunday, the same day as the largest London Scientology picket that has ever occurred.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Gerard has \u003ca href=\"http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2008/02/13/dave-bird-rip/\"\u003eposted a nice couple of obituaries and some photos at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDave Bird had a crazy mountain man look, and I thought his postings and tactics were sometimes over the top, but he also had a gift for showmanship and entertainment, as you can see from the photos of his props that he brought to protests.  He was one of the protesters that Scientology took seriously enough to attack on their \u0026ldquo;Religious Freedom Watch\u0026rdquo; website (which seems to still be offline since being attacked by \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo;).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dave Bird, RIP"},{"content":"The latest issue of Rolling Stone has an excellent article by Guy Lawson, \u0026ldquo;The Fear Factory,\u0026quot; about how joint terrorism task forces across the U.S. are engaging in wild goose chases and exaggerating the terrorist threat to justify their existence.\nA companion article, Tim Dickinson\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts,\u0026quot; reports on the real stories behind repeated terror scares that have been used to elevate the DHS advisory system over the last five years.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/chasing-ghosts-with-joint-terrorism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRolling Stone\u003c/span\u003e has an excellent article by Guy Lawson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18137343/the_fear_factory\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Fear Factory,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about how joint terrorism task forces across the U.S. are engaging in wild goose chases and exaggerating the terrorist threat  to justify their existence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA companion article, Tim Dickinson\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18056504/truth_or_terrorism_the_real_story_behind_five_years_of_high_alerts\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e reports on the real stories behind repeated terror scares that have been used to elevate the DHS advisory system over the last five years.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chasing ghosts with joint terrorism task forces"},{"content":"\nThe picture is of a pair of breasts, composed of 32,000 Barbie dolls. 32,000 is the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. in 2006.\nThis picture, along with a partial zoom and closeup and other similar works by Chris Jordan, may be found at his website. The photos depict such things as 2 million discarded plastic bottles (the number used in the United States every five minutes), a skull made from images of 200,000 packs of cigarettes (the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months), a version of Seurat\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte\u0026rdquo; made from 106,000 images of aluminum cans (the number used in the U.S. every 30 seconds), and so forth.\nHat tip to Barry Williams, who posted this on the SKEPTIC list.\nUPDATE (June 11, 2009): Jordan gave a TED Talk about his work last year:\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/visual-depictions-of-quantity-in-art.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.chrisjordan.com/images/current2/1200710813.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://www.chrisjordan.com/images/current2/1200710813.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe picture is of a pair of breasts, composed of 32,000 Barbie dolls.  32,000 is the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. in 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis picture, along with a partial zoom and closeup and other similar works by Chris Jordan, may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7\"\u003eat his website\u003c/a\u003e.  The photos depict such things as 2 million discarded plastic bottles (the number used in the United States every five minutes), a skull made from images of 200,000 packs of cigarettes (the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months), a version of Seurat\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte\u0026rdquo; made from 106,000 images of aluminum cans (the number used in the U.S. every 30 seconds), and so forth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to Barry Williams, who posted this on the SKEPTIC list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 11, 2009): Jordan gave a TED Talk about his work last year:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/f09lQ8Q1iKE\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/f09lQ8Q1iKE\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;fs=1\u0026amp;\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" height=\"344\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Visual depictions of quantity in art"},{"content":"Jenna Hill, niece of David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology, left the church in 2005 (her parents left in 2000). Her main point in this Inside Edition clip is to confirm claims that the church has a policy of \u0026ldquo;disconnection\u0026rdquo; that cuts off Scientologists from critical family members outside the church. (I wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware that the Church actually denied that it does this, as it\u0026rsquo;s quite well documented.)\nA NY Post story about Hill is a bit more informative than the clip.\nUPDATE (April 24, 2008): Jenna Miscavige Hill is now one of the admins at the Ex-Scientology Kids website.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-02-12):\nI haven't listened yet, but I just noticed the latest Point of Inquiry podcast features an interview with former member Tory Christman. The description says she discusses \"Anonymous\".\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/niece-of-david-miscavige-speaks-out.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJenna Hill, niece of David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology, left the church in 2005 (her parents left in 2000).  Her main point in this Inside Edition clip is to confirm claims that the church has a policy of \u0026ldquo;disconnection\u0026rdquo; that cuts off Scientologists from critical family members outside the church.  (I wasn\u0026rsquo;t aware that the Church actually denied that it does this, as it\u0026rsquo;s quite well documented.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.nypost.com/seven/02062008/gossip/pagesix/family_feud_in_toms_church_886708.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNY Post\u003c/span\u003e story about Hill\u003c/a\u003e is a bit more informative than the clip.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 24, 2008): Jenna Miscavige Hill is now \u003ca href=\"http://www.exscientologykids.org/\"\u003eone of the admins at the Ex-Scientology Kids website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-08341589071387375 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sUDjbwzCqv4\u0026amp;rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sUDjbwzCqv4\u0026amp;rel=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sUDjbwzCqv4\u0026amp;rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Niece of David Miscavige speaks out against Scientology"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; came through today with protests at Scientology organizations worldwide, getting media coverage for protests in Sydney, London, Edinburgh, Dallas, Detroit, Toronto, Amsterdam, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Clearwater, Seattle, Montreal, Milwaukee, and Boston, among other cities. There\u0026rsquo;s an excellent description of the London protests here.\nA protest here in Phoenix brought about 60 protesters.\nToday, February 10, was chosen because it was the birthday of Lisa McPherson, who died in Scientology care in Clearwater, Florida in 1995, and whose death was brought to public attention on the Internet through the efforts of Scientology critic Jeff Jacobsen, my co-author on our Skeptic magazine article about Scientology.\nOvercompensating has a cartoon on the Scientology protests.\nUPDATE (February 13, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s some British media coverage in which the Church of Scientology representative refers to the protesters as a \u0026ldquo;terrorist group.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/scientology-protests.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; came through today with protests at Scientology organizations worldwide, getting media coverage for protests in \u003ca href=\"http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/02/11/Scientology_under_worldwide_attack_Anonymously\"\u003eSydney\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.altogetherdigital.com/20080210/anonymous-vs-scientology-strange-goings-on-in-london/\"\u003eLondon\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Masked-protesters-hike-up-pressure.3763138.jp\"\u003eEdinburgh\u003c/a\u003e,  \u003ca href=\"http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080210_mo_protestors.acfdde3f.html\"\u003eDallas\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://glosslip.com/2008/02/10/detroit-anonymous-group-braves-cold-to-protest-church-of-scientology/\"\u003eDetroit\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://torontoist.com/2008/02/scientology_pro.php\"\u003eToronto\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/42592623@N00/sets/72157603885167741/\"\u003eAmsterdam\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaparral/2256249709/\"\u003eMinneapolis\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc11.com/news/15266848/detail.html\"\u003eLos Angeles\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-0210protestors,0,7606067.story\"\u003eClearwater\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_021008WAB_scientology_protest_SW.accc9b6e.html\"\u003eSeattle\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080210/protests_scientology_080210/20080210?hub=TopStories\"\u003eMontreal\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbs58.com/index.php?aid=1753\"\u003eMilwaukee\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.bostonnow.com/news/local/2008/02/11/masked-group-protests-to-039dissolve039-church-of-scientology\"\u003eBoston\u003c/a\u003e, among other cities.  There\u0026rsquo;s an excellent description of the London protests \u003ca href=\"http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA protest \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0210abrk-anonymous0210.html\"\u003ehere in Phoenix brought about 60 protesters\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday, February 10, was chosen because it was the birthday of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson\"\u003eLisa McPherson\u003c/a\u003e, who died in Scientology care in Clearwater, Florida in 1995, and whose death was brought to public attention on the Internet through the efforts of Scientology critic \u003ca href=\"http://www.jeffjacobsen.org/\"\u003eJeff Jacobsen\u003c/a\u003e, my co-author on \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003eour \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e magazine article about Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOvercompensating has \u003ca href=\"http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080211.html\"\u003ea cartoon on the Scientology protests\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 13, 2008):  Here\u0026rsquo;s some \u003ca href=\"http://www.chickyog.net/2008/02/11/were-all-al-qaeda-now/\"\u003eBritish media coverage in which the Church of Scientology representative refers to the protesters as a \u0026ldquo;terrorist group.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology protests"},{"content":"Another paper that seems to advocate creationism has somehow managed to fly under the radar and get published in a science journal, Proteomics, authored by a couple of South Koreans. Unfortunately for creationists, the paper is not only badly argued, it is full of plagiarism.\nPharyngula has a two-part summary, and one of the authors whose work has been copied has put together a side-by-side comparison of the plagiarized sections and their original sources (PDF). Lars Juhl Jensen has also reported details of the plagiarism at his blog.\nThe authors, Mohamad Warda and Jin Han, are both in South Korea. South Korea, perhaps not coincidentally, is the home to four of the world\u0026rsquo;s ten largest megachurches and a young-earth creationist movement second only to the one in the U.S. in size, and larger in percentage of the population with having membership in creationist organizations. Ronald L. Numbers\u0026rsquo; The Creationists (2nd ed.) states that \u0026ldquo;By 2000 the member ship [in the Korea Association of Creation Research] stood at 1,365, giving Korea claim to being the creationist capital of the world, in density if not in influence\u0026rdquo; (p. 418).\nUPDATE (February 11, 2008): Mike O\u0026rsquo;Risal at Hyphoid Logic finds someone (apparently a creationist) defending Warda and Han\u0026rsquo;s paper at something called \u0026ldquo;AcademicFreedomBlog.\u0026rdquo; That poster, \u0026ldquo;DrMC,\u0026rdquo; apparently thinks that plagiarism should be published as part of academic freedom. As it turns out, part of the reason that the logic seems so awry in the Warda and Han paper is that almost the entire thing (aside from a single paragraph, presumably the one with the God reference) has been cobbled together from pieces of other people\u0026rsquo;s work.\nUPDATE (February 13, 2008): The Guardian\u0026rsquo;s blog has an article on this issue, including a non-apologetic response from one of the authors (Warda) which denies plagiarism.\nUPDATE (March 14, 2008): A month later, Proteomics still hasn\u0026rsquo;t explained how it came to publish such an awful paper. Lars Juhl Jensen points out:\nThe manuscript contains four parts with unsupported claims that should have been caught by any peer reviewer or editor:\nTitle - “Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul”.Abstract - “These data are presented with novel proteomics evidence to disprove the endosymbiotic hypothesis of mitochondrial evolution that is replaced in this work by a more realistic alternative”.Section 3.4 - “More logically, the points that show proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating all other kinds of life”.Conclusions - “We realize so far that the mitochondria could be the link between the body and this preserved wisdom of the soul devoted to guaranteeing life”.Attila Csordas, PZ Myers, and Steven Salzberg joined with Lars Juhl Jensen to post on their blogs pointing out that Proteomics editor Prof. Michael J. Dunn still hasn\u0026rsquo;t answered these questions about those parts of the paper:\nWere they already in the initial version that was submitted to Proteomics and sent out for peer review?Did they appear in a revised version that was sent to the peer reviewers?Were they introduced in a revised version that was accepted without sending it to the reviewers?Or were they added at the copy editing stage, that is after the manuscript had formally been accepted?UPDATE (March 23, 2008): Commenter JPCollado at William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s Uncommon Descent blog has linked to this post as supporting evidence for his claim that the Warda and Han paper \u0026ldquo;seems like\u0026rdquo; a \u0026ldquo;false flag\u0026rdquo; operation to make creationists look bad. I don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any evidence for that here or in the sources I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to. I don\u0026rsquo;t think we do know the motivations behind their paper at this point, though we do know from Han\u0026rsquo;s response to P.Z. Myers that his English is very poor and his explanation for how the paper came to be written makes no sense.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/another-creationist-leaning-paper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnother paper that seems to advocate creationism has somehow managed to fly under the radar and get published in a science journal, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProteomics\u003c/span\u003e, authored by a couple of South Koreans.  Unfortunately for creationists, the paper is not only badly argued, it is full of plagiarism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula has a \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/a_baffling_failure_of_peer_rev.php\"\u003etwo-part\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/the_controversy_expands.php\"\u003esummary\u003c/a\u003e, and one of the authors whose work has been copied has put together a \u003ca href=\"http://udel.edu/%7Emcdonald/wandahan.pdf\"\u003eside-by-side comparison of the plagiarized sections and their original sources\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  Lars Juhl Jensen has also reported \u003ca href=\"http://larsjuhljensen.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/commentary-neither-buried-nor-treasure/\"\u003edetails of the plagiarism at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe authors, Mohamad Warda and Jin Han, are both in South Korea.  South Korea, perhaps not coincidentally, is the home to four of the world\u0026rsquo;s ten largest megachurches and a young-earth creationist movement second only to the one in the U.S. in size, and larger in percentage of the population with having membership in creationist organizations.  Ronald L. Numbers\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Creationists\u003c/span\u003e (2nd ed.) states that \u0026ldquo;By 2000 the member ship [in the Korea Association of Creation Research] stood at 1,365, giving Korea claim to being the creationist capital of the world, in density if not in influence\u0026rdquo; (p. 418).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 11, 2008): Mike O\u0026rsquo;Risal at \u003ca href=\"http://vyoma108.blogspot.com/2008/02/supporter-of-han-and-warda-mitochondria.html\"\u003eHyphoid Logic\u003c/a\u003e finds someone (apparently a creationist) defending Warda and Han\u0026rsquo;s paper at something called \u0026ldquo;AcademicFreedomBlog.\u0026rdquo;  That poster, \u0026ldquo;DrMC,\u0026rdquo; apparently thinks that plagiarism should be published as part of academic freedom.  As it turns out, part of the reason that the logic seems so awry in the Warda and Han paper is that \u003ca href=\"http://www.6thinternational.org/2008/02/distributed-int.html\"\u003ealmost the entire thing\u003c/a\u003e (aside from a single paragraph, presumably the one with the God reference) has been cobbled together from pieces of other people\u0026rsquo;s work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 13, 2008):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s blog \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/02/thanks_to_cjv5040_for_putting.html\"\u003ehas an article on this issue, including a non-apologetic response from one of the authors (Warda) which denies plagiarism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 14, 2008):  A month later, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProteomics\u003c/span\u003e still hasn\u0026rsquo;t explained how it came to publish such an awful paper.  Lars Juhl Jensen \u003ca href=\"http://larsjuhljensen.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/update-warda-and-han-one-month-after-the-storm/\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another creationist-leaning paper published"},{"content":"An article in The Progressive by Matthew Rothschild worries that the FBI\u0026rsquo;s InfraGard program is deputizing businesses, training them for martial law, and giving them a free pass to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill.\u0026rdquo; Rothschild writes:\nThe members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.Nonsense. I\u0026rsquo;ve been a member of the Phoenix InfraGard Members Alliance for years. It\u0026rsquo;s a 501(c)(3) organization sponsored by the FBI whose members have been subjected to some rudimentary screening (comparable to what a non-cleared employee of the federal government would get). Most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public (contrary to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s statement that \u0026ldquo;InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public\u0026rdquo;), but the organization facilitates communications between members about sensitive subjects like vulnerabilities in privately owned infrastructure and the changing landscape of threats. The FBI provides some reports of threat information to InfraGard members through a secure website, which is unclassified but potentially sensitive information. InfraGard members get no special \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; or law enforcement powers of any kind\u0026ndash;and membership in the organization is open to anyone who can pass the screening. As Rothschild notes in the first sentence of his article, there are over 23,000 members\u0026ndash;that is a pretty large size for a conspiracy plot.\nAt one point in the article, Rothschild quotes InfraGard National Members Alliance chairman Phyllis Schneck referring to a \u0026ldquo;special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.\u0026rdquo; This is referring to a GETS card, for the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, which provides priority service for call completion in times of emergency or disaster to personnel who are working to support critical infrastructure. There is a similar service for wireless priority (Wireless Priority Service), and yet another for critical businesses and organizations (like hospitals) which need to have their telecommunications service re-established first after a loss of service due to disaster (Telecommunications Service Priority). These programs are government programs that are independent of InfraGard, though InfraGard has helped members who represent pieces of critical infrastructure obtain GETS cards.\nThe ACLU\u0026rsquo;s concern about InfraGard being used as a tip line to turn businesses into spies is a more plausible but still, in my opinion, unfounded concern. Businesses are not under any pressure to provide information to InfraGard, other than normal reporting of criminal events to law enforcement. The only time I\u0026rsquo;ve been specifically asked to give information to InfraGard is when I\u0026rsquo;ve been asked to speak at a regular meeting, which I\u0026rsquo;ve done a few times in talks that have been open to the public about malware threats and botnets.\nCheck out the comments in The Progressive for some outright hysteria about fascism and martial law. I saw similar absurdity regarding the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s TOPOFF 4 exercise, which was a sensible emergency planning exercise. Some people apparently are unable to distinguish common-sense information sharing and planning in order to defend against genuine threats from the institution of a fascist dictatorship and martial law.\nNow, I think there are plausible criticisms to be made of the federal government\u0026rsquo;s use of non-governmental organizations\u0026ndash;when they\u0026rsquo;re used to sidestep laws and regulations like the Freedom of Information Act, to give lots of government grant money to organizations run by former government employees, to legally mandate funding of and reporting to private organizations and so forth. The FBI has created quite a few such organizations to do things like collect information about missing and exploited children, online crime, and so forth, typically staffed by former agents. But personally, I\u0026rsquo;ve not witnessed anything in InfraGard that has led me to have any concerns that it\u0026rsquo;s being used to enlist private businesses into questionable activities\u0026ndash;rather, it\u0026rsquo;s been entirely devoted to sharing information that private businesses can use to shore up their own security and for law enforcement to prosecute criminals.\nUPDATE (February 9, 2008): The irony is that Matthew Rothschild previously wrote, regarding 9/11 truthers:\nWe have enough proof that the Bush administration is a bunch of lying evildoers. We don\u0026rsquo;t need to make it up.He\u0026rsquo;s right about that, but he\u0026rsquo;s now helped spread nonsense about InfraGard and seriously damaged his own credibility. I find it interesting that people are so willing to conclude that InfraGard is a paramilitary organization, when it\u0026rsquo;s actually an educational and information sharing organization that has no enforcement or even emergency, disaster, or incident response function (though certainly some of its members have emergency, disaster, and incident response functions for the organizations they work for).\nUPDATE (February 10, 2008): I suspect tomorrow Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy will be getting calls from reporters asking what specifically she confirmed. I hope they ask for details about the conference in question, whether it was run by InfraGard or DHS, what the subject matter was, and who said what. If there\u0026rsquo;s actually an InfraGard chapter endorsing the idea that InfraGard members form armed citizen patrols authorized to use deadly force in time of martial law, that\u0026rsquo;s a chapter that needs to have its leadership removed. My suspicion, though, is that some statements about protection of infrastructure by their own security forces in times of disaster or emergency have been misconstrued. Alliant Energy operates nuclear plants, nuclear plants do have armed guards, and in Arizona, ARS 13-4903 describes the circumstances under which nuclear plant security officers are authorized to use deadly force. Those people, however, are thoroughly trained and regularly tested regarding the use of force and the use of deadly force in particular, which is not the case for InfraGard members.\nUPDATE (February 11, 2008): Somehow, above, I neglected to make the most obvious point\u0026ndash;that the FBI doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the authority to grant immunity to prosecution for killing. If anyone from the FBI made that statement to InfraGard members, they were saying something that they have no authority to deliver on.\nUPDATE (February 12, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;ve struck out part of the above about the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s concern about spying being unfounded, as I think that\u0026rsquo;s too strong of a denial. There is a potential slippery slope here. The 9/11 Commission Report pointed to various communication problems that led to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. These problems included failure to share information (mainly from the CIA to the FBI and INS), failure to communicate information within the FBI (like Phoenix Special Agent Ken Williams\u0026rsquo; memo about suspicious Middle Easterners in flight schools), and failure to have enough resources to translate NSA intercepts (some specific chatter about the attacks was translated after the attacks had already occurred). As a result, the CIA has been working closely with the FBI on counterterrorism and counterintelligence at least since 2001. (Also see Dana Priest, \u0026ldquo;CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations,\u0026rdquo; The Washington Post, October 23, 2002, p. A02, which is no longer available on the Post\u0026rsquo;s site but can be found elsewhere on the web, on sites whose other content is so nutty I refuse to link, as well as this January 2006 statement from FBI Director Robert Mueller on the InfraGard website, which includes the statement that \u0026ldquo;Today, the FBI and CIA are not only sharing information on a regular basis, we are exchanging employees and working together on cases every day.\u0026rdquo;)\nThe slippery slope is this\u0026ndash;the CIA is an organization which recruits and develops in its officers a sense of flexible ethics which has frequently resulted in incredible abuses, and which arguably has done more harm than good to U.S. interests. (My opinion on the CIA may be found in my posts on this blog labeled \u0026ldquo;CIA\u0026rdquo;; I highly recommend Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.) Some of that ethical flexibility may well rub off on FBI agents who work closely with CIA case officers. (The FBI itself has also had a history of serious abuses, an objective account of which may be found in Ronald Kessler\u0026rsquo;s book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI.) And then, that same ethical flexibility may rub off on InfraGard members as a result of their relationships with the FBI (and potentially relationships with the CIA, as well). The intelligence community seems to have a hunger for more and more information from more and more sources, but it is already awash in a sea of information that it has trouble processing today. (It doesn\u0026rsquo;t help that the Army fires direly needed Arabic translators because they are gay.) The need is to accurately assess the information that it has, and ensure that bits and pieces aren\u0026rsquo;t cherry-picked to produce desired conclusions, as well as ensure that information isn\u0026rsquo;t sought or assembled to serve personal and political ends of particular interests rather than combatting genuine threats to the country and its citizens.\nMy recommendation is that all InfraGard members read Kessler\u0026rsquo;s The Bureau, Weiner\u0026rsquo;s Legacy of Ashes, and view the film that won the 2007 Academy Award for best foreign film, \u0026ldquo;The Lives of Others,\u0026rdquo; to help innoculate them against such a slippery slope.\nUPDATE: Amy Goodman interviewed Matt Rothschild for \u0026ldquo;Democracy Now!\u0026rdquo; on Wisconsin Public Television, in which it is pretty clear to me that Rothschild is exaggerating something he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand\u0026ndash;what he cites as evidence doesn\u0026rsquo;t support what he claims. Here\u0026rsquo;s a key excerpt, see the link for the full transcript:\nMR: [\u0026hellip;] And one other member of InfraGard [Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy] confirmed to me that she had actually been at meetings and participated in meetings where the discussion of lethal force came up, as far as what businesspeople are entitled to do in times of an emergency to protect their little aspect of the infrastructure.\nAG: But just to clarify, Matt Rothschild, who exactly is empowered to shoot to kill if martial law were declared? The business leaders themselves?\nMR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nYou know, this is a secretive organization. They’re not supposed to talk to the press. You need to get vetted by the FBI before you can join it. They get almost daily information that the public doesn’t get. And then they have these extraordinary, really astonishing powers being vested in them by FBI and Homeland Security, shoot-to-kill powers. I mean, this is scary stuff.\nMR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.It looks to me like the following transformation has occurred:\n1. At a DHS conference on emergency response, somebody asks if owners of critical pieces of infrastructure should be expected to use deadly force if necessary to protect it (e.g., a nuclear power plant).\n2. Somebody at DHS answers yes. They may even add that in some cases the law provides specific justification for use of deadly force (as in the Arizona statute I cite above).\n3. Matt turns that into a general right to \u0026ldquo;shoot-to-kill\u0026rdquo; in times of martial law by any InfraGard member.\n4. The blogosphere turns that into roving citizen patrols unleashed on the nation as the Bush hit squad after declaration of martial law.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t see his key source\u0026ndash;Christine Moerke\u0026ndash;confirming anything beyond #1 and #2.\nNote other exaggerations and contradictions\u0026ndash;Rothschild claims that InfraGard is highly secretive and selective, yet has quickly grown to over 23,000 members and has multiple public websites. He fails to note that most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public, or that it has been discussed in many articles in the national press over the last decade. Rothschild speaks of \u0026ldquo;business leaders,\u0026rdquo; which the blogosphere has turned into \u0026ldquo;CEOs,\u0026rdquo; yet I suspect the most common \u0026ldquo;business leader\u0026rdquo; represented in InfraGard is an IT or physical security manager.\nUPDATE (February 15, 2008): The FBI has issued an official response to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s Progressive article (PDF), which says, in part:\nIn short, the article\u0026rsquo;s claims are patently false. For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program. The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication. Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; than other civilians. The FBI encourages InfraGard members \u0026ndash; and all Americans \u0026ndash; to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.The FBI response also states that Rothschild has \u0026ldquo;refused even to identify when or where the claimed \u0026lsquo;small meeting\u0026rsquo; occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,\u0026rdquo; and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information.\nUPDATE (February 25, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s another blogger with a rational response to The Progressive article.\nUPDATE (March 2, 2008): Matthew Rothschild has responded to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s response on Alex Jones\u0026rsquo; Info Wars blog, and he stands behind every word of his original article. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t display any knowledge of or response to any of the criticisms I\u0026rsquo;ve offered.\nAlan Clegg (2008-02-09):\nJim,Thanks for your in-depth analysis of this tempest in a teapot. I've written up a short response as well, and linked to your article.Alan CleggEastern Carolina InfraGard\nJohn (2008-02-10):\nSir,Given the ridiculous levels of useless security searches being conducted by our various security agencies at air terminals and borders (shoe searches, no more than 3 oz. of liquids on board, racial profiling, and invasive data searches on personal electronics), I really don't have much trouble giving credit to Mr. Rothchild's report. Honestly, if I thought I could trust the professionalism of people working on national security, it would be a different story for me. Unfortunately, I've held a government contractor job for 10 years, and observed firsthand the enormous waste the government is capable of, the number of inflated egos who feel their petty concerns must be prioritized over critical concerns, and the indifference to accomplishing the mission in fact versus accomplishing it on paper.In the face of what I've seen in my personal experiences, as well as the numberless news stories of mistaken identities and gross ineptitudes of our security agencies across the land, I have trouble giving your 'balderdash' response much credit at all.Sincerely,John Romero\nLippard (2008-02-10):\nJohn:I can't entirely blame you, given the abuses of the Bush administration, but let me point this out--the abuses of the Bush administration are easily documented. Where's the evidence for what is being claimed here? Even in Rothschild's own story, a second source who was present at the same conference denied the claim by the single source who asserted the \"shoot to kill\" capability. And the story isn't even consistent with the sorts of abuses of privatized paramilitary operations that we've seen. Blackwater's killings fell into a gap of law because they were defense contractors operating in an occupied country where the sovereign government is questionably sovereign because of the occupation. Here in the United States, there's no question about national sovereignty and in fact we have the opposite problem of an executive branch that is extending its powers beyond the Constitution.I agree with you that TSA rules are absurd and mostly constitute \"security theater\"--I've written about that myself at this blog. But note that the TSA's function is one that was nationalized, not privatized. Again, that's not consistent with Rothschild's account.Can you point to a law or presidential signing statement that mentions InfraGard by name or description and gives police powers to ordinary citizens who are members of such a group? Can you point to a plausible argument for why an information sharing organization most of whose members are not trained in police work would be given such powers? I expect that in coming days we will find out more about the conference that Rothschild referred to and what it was really about. My guess is that it was a conference on emergency or disaster response put on by DHS, and that Rothschild's source for the \"shoot to kill\" comment significantly misunderstood what he heard.I'm thinking about doing a followup post about who actually does have a right to shoot to kill in the United States--in Arizona, the answer is that *any* citizen has the right to shoot to kill to defend their own life or property, in that the criminal code explicitly recognizes defense of life and residential property as a justification to threaten or use deadly force for protection. I also would include something about how police are often not criminally prosecuted for killings (and it's happening more and more often as a result of paramilitarization of police forces, which Radley Balko has written at length about), though many municipalities have citizens' review commissions for police shootings, which I fully endorse. The paramilitarization of police and the incarceration of millions of Americans for nonviolent drug offenses are *real* problems that deserve attention, outrage, and response.\ncavjam (2008-02-10):\nFirst, I'm impressed enough by your writing and apparent sincerity to have bookmarked your site. However...I think you're categorization of this article as dictum of the \"tinfoil hat brigade\" is a bit hyperbolic. Granted the \"permission to 'shoot to kill' in the event of martial law\" bit doesn't wash (that right exists, even absent martial law, in all states with which I am familiar, providing it's in defense of life, limb or property, and would be prosecuted by the state not the feds anyway) but that bit is merely reported (and poorly analyzed) and the rest of the article seems fairly even-handed.Also, I'm not so sure fear is what's generated, except perhaps for whistleblowers; I think it's wariness, a condition duly warranted any time private blocs form a seeming alliance with gummint, especially the enforcement and info-gathering branch. After all, the wedding of corporate interests and State power was Il Duce's dream, hardly an ambience to be desired in a republic. It also seems to create a perquisite class redolent of the \"some are more equal than others\" meme common in caste systems.I won't even delve much into the context in which this program has expanded - that of a Cheneyworld in which Party is privilege, and secrecy and unchecked executive power is paramount.\ndilbertgeg (2008-02-10):\nOf the webpage I mention below, I'm going to update it soon, to clarify and address some issues raised in another forum.What is NOT being talked about sufficiently regarding Sept 11, is a) the gang of neo-con propagandists on Fox (and Philly paper) who debated if a new, repeat Sept 11 attack would be *good* and *necessary* for America, and another Fox host who OPENLY stated WE NEED A NEW 9-11.b) the number of relatively obscure (to the gen pub) Neo-Con opinion-makers, experts, strategists, etc. (not *only* PNAC), incl some Pentagon advisors who had special access to classified documents (Def Pol Bd), who stated PRIOR to Sept 11 that we (they) NEEDED a major bloodbath on American soil, to launch their global wars (called by various terms, new Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor event, major security threat)c) the fact that while such talk now constitutes a terrorist threat propagated by Fox/Murdoch, and there's been little debate and outrage on it, except on the weband the obvious fact that while such talk BEFORE 9-11 also constituted a possible terrorist threat, or possible foreknowledge or other information, to say the least, there has been almost complete silence about this from ALL sides of the Media, even including most \"Troofers\".www.Takeoverworld.info/proterrorism.htmlwww.Takeoverworld.infoThese guys who signed off on such statements actually represent the entire Neo-Conservative infrastructure (PNAC, AEI, Heritage, Family Security, and dozens more) which have a lot of overlap and interlink amongst them, and of course has a presence the Cabinet and WH, but similar statements were also published by the cofounder of the Tri-Lateral Commission (the Left??), good ol' Zbignew.So there was a lot of ... what's that word ... synchronicity ... prior to Sept 11 about the NEED for this bloodbath to happen, with huge fortunes riding on it, as well as the Fate of American Freedom and Prosperity and Hegemony as well as Global Peace, at least thats how they explained it.Why have these guys never been sent to Guantanimo or some secret overseas rendition to make them talk and tell us what they know? One of them actually FOUNDED Al-Qaeda a.k.a. the Islamic Radical Muj (before the Sovs invaded), and brags about it, and some of the others lobbied for Al-Qaeda in the B9-11 Era. Oh, maybe I just answered my own question. ;-) Well? Well? Do these published statements constitute \"tinfoil\"? No. Do questions about their relevance constitute tinfoil? Do questions about the near-TOTAL absence of these points in the MSM constitute tinfoil? Aren't they at least interesting and juicy questions?\nLippard (2008-02-10):\nDilbertgeg: I don't think there's any question that the neo-cons used 9/11 to put into effect plans regarding the Middle East that they'd already had in their minds (and in some cases in detail on paper) long beforehand. James Mann's _Rise of the Vulcans_ is a good source on the subject, as is James Bamford's _A Pretext for War_.Cavjam: I don't think I'm being hyperbolic--take a look at Google Blogs search for \"InfraGard\" to see what people have perceived Rothschild's article to be saying. It looks to me like the majority of blogs commenting on it are describing InfraGard as a Blackwater-style private paramilitary operation with licenses to kill, or \"Bush's hit men,\" as one blog called it. *That*'s over-the-top, not my response.\nLippard (2008-02-10):\nDilbertgeg: The answer to why those people aren't in Guantanamo for terrorist threats is that those statements do not constitute terrorist threats, but protected political speech. The question for me is why people who have said such things get elected and re-elected, and permitted to stay in positions of power and authority.I think freedom of speech is still very strongly protected in the U.S. (though it has suffered some indignities from time to time, and broadcast TV and radio are still nonsensically being treated differently with heavier restrictions and controls that should be abolished), but the rest of the bill of rights has been eroded far more, by the war on drugs and the war on terror.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-11):\nWhy have these guys never been sent to Guantanimo or some secret overseas rendition to make them talk and tell us what they know?Well, at least you understand the purpose of legal limbo detention camps: to tell us what we already \"know\". Which, of course, has always been the purpose of \"enhanced interrogation.\"\nAlessandro (2008-02-13):\nJim,I am an Italian journalist writing an article on this Infragard issue and I would like to call you for a short talk.If you're available, please write to me at a.ursic@peacereporter.netThanksAlessandro\nLippard (2008-02-13):\nstechi, ELIA: I'm not willing to become a media spokesperson for or about InfraGard, but you're welcome to engage me in questions here at my blog or via email. I am speaking only for myself, not for InfraGard.\nLippard (2008-02-14):\nI've deleted the post above from ELIA to keep her email address from spammers. Here's the text minus the email address:Mr. Lippard,I am invovled in an internet broadcast on nowlive.com. My partner is interested in having you as a callin guest to talk about Infragard.If you are interested please contact me via my email at [email address deleted]February 11, 2008 10:50 AM\nLionel (2008-02-16):\nPeople have an overactive imagination. I'm also a member of InfraGard. Sorry to spoil everyone's freak-out but it's certainly no conspiracy. The idea that martial law and use of force is discussed is silly and saying it is irresponsible. It's just not true. The boring truth is, it's a way for companies and the FBI to share information so we're not pants-down and unaware. It's as simple as that. Move along, nothing to see here.\nDandelionSalad (2008-02-16):\nJim, re: your comment on my post about Infragard. Please contact the author with your concerns as I have no idea. Virginia contacted me and asked me to post it and I copied it directly from her blog, links intact. (I took out the links just now.) Also went to her post and the links are not there any longer, so she took them out as well.Calling it fraudulent without backing it up isn’t cool, though.\nLippard (2008-02-16):\nIt is clearly fraudulent--it attributes actions to InfraGard that have nothing to do with InfraGard. I already pointed out in a comment on your blog that it refers to \"InfraGard officers\" as though they are law enforcement officers and to \"InfraGard contractors.\" It also is written as though \"InfraGard officers\" and \"InfraGard contractors\" are regularly visiting schools and conducting interviews.It appears to me that it's a document from another source that has had \"InfraGard\" inserted into it or substituted for another word. It looks to me to be literally fabricated disinformation.\nUnknown (2008-03-25):\nI think the journalist may be mistaken in what is considered lethal force. The article goes into detail about how these different businesses and entities report information that is considered subversive to their profits/cause and the FBI takes action based on their reports. Giving authorization to \"shoot to kill\" most likely means that the Infragard member can pass information regarding a potential \"terrorist\" or subversive event and the FBI will use that as concrete evidence to pursue the accused. In effect Infragard is a network of informants with the FBI working as the executioner. If nothing else I think we can all agree that there is a large risk of abuse of the Infragard system to suppress important public information. You can bet your knickers that the Monsanto Co. has their card.Remember that he only said \"shoot to kill\" in times of Marshall law. This may also be considered as the mode of control in a fascist coup where business and infrastructure becomes the eyes and ears of the dictatorship.\nLippard (2008-03-25):\nJose: No, InfraGard is not for \"these different businesses and entities [to] report information that is considered subversive to their profits/cause and the FBI takes action based on their reports\"--it's for them to report suspicious activity that is considered likely to be *criminal*.There's a difference.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/tinfoil-hat-brigade-generates-fear.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308\"\u003earticle in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Progressive\u003c/span\u003e by Matthew Rothschild\u003c/a\u003e worries that the FBI\u0026rsquo;s InfraGard program is deputizing businesses, training them for martial law, and giving them a free pass to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill.\u0026rdquo;  Rothschild writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNonsense.  I\u0026rsquo;ve been a member of the Phoenix InfraGard Members Alliance for years.  It\u0026rsquo;s a 501(c)(3) organization sponsored by the FBI whose members have been subjected to some rudimentary screening (comparable to what a non-cleared employee of the federal government would get).  Most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public (contrary to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s statement that \u0026ldquo;InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public\u0026rdquo;), but the organization facilitates communications between members about sensitive subjects like vulnerabilities in privately owned infrastructure and the changing landscape of threats.  The FBI provides some reports of threat information to InfraGard members through a secure website, which is unclassified but potentially sensitive information.  InfraGard members get no special \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; or law enforcement powers of any kind\u0026ndash;and membership in the organization is open to anyone who can pass the screening.  As Rothschild notes in the first sentence of his article, there are over 23,000 members\u0026ndash;that is a pretty large size for a conspiracy plot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt one point in the article, Rothschild quotes InfraGard National Members Alliance chairman Phyllis Schneck referring to a \u0026ldquo;special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.\u0026rdquo;  This is referring to a GETS card, for the \u003ca href=\"http://gets.ncs.gov/faq.html\"\u003eGovernment Emergency Telecommunications Service\u003c/a\u003e, which provides priority service for call completion in times of emergency or disaster to personnel who are working to support critical infrastructure.  There is a similar service for wireless priority (Wireless Priority Service), and yet another for critical businesses and organizations (like hospitals) which need to have their telecommunications service re-established first after a loss of service due to disaster (\u003ca href=\"http://tsp.ncs.gov/\"\u003eTelecommunications Service Priority\u003c/a\u003e).  These programs are government programs that are independent of InfraGard, though InfraGard has helped members who represent pieces of critical infrastructure obtain GETS cards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ACLU\u0026rsquo;s concern about InfraGard being used as a tip line to turn businesses into spies is a more plausible\u003cstrike\u003e but still, in my opinion, unfounded concern\u003c/strike\u003e.  Businesses are not under any pressure to provide information to InfraGard, other than normal reporting of criminal events to law enforcement.  The only time I\u0026rsquo;ve been specifically asked to give information to InfraGard is when I\u0026rsquo;ve been asked to speak at a regular meeting, which I\u0026rsquo;ve done a few times in talks that have been open to the public about malware threats and botnets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out the comments in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Progressive\u003c/span\u003e for some outright hysteria about fascism and martial law.  I saw similar absurdity regarding the Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s TOPOFF 4 exercise, which was a sensible emergency planning exercise.  Some people apparently are unable to distinguish common-sense information sharing and planning in order to defend against genuine threats from the institution of a fascist dictatorship and martial law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, I think there are plausible criticisms to be made of the federal government\u0026rsquo;s use of non-governmental organizations\u0026ndash;when they\u0026rsquo;re used to sidestep laws and regulations like the Freedom of Information Act, to give lots of government grant money to organizations run by former government employees, to legally mandate funding of and reporting to private organizations and so forth. The FBI has created quite a few such organizations to do things like collect information about missing and exploited children, online crime, and so forth, typically staffed by former agents.  But personally, I\u0026rsquo;ve not witnessed anything in InfraGard that has led me to have any concerns that it\u0026rsquo;s being used to enlist private businesses into questionable activities\u0026ndash;rather, it\u0026rsquo;s been entirely devoted to sharing information that private businesses can use to shore up their own security and for law enforcement to prosecute criminals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 9, 2008):  The irony is that \u003ca href=\"http://www.alternet.org/story/41601/\"\u003eMatthew Rothschild previously wrote, regarding 9/11 truthers\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e    We have enough proof that the Bush administration is a bunch of lying evildoers. We don\u0026rsquo;t need to make it up.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s right about that, but he\u0026rsquo;s now helped spread nonsense about InfraGard and seriously damaged his own credibility.  I find it interesting that people are so willing to conclude that InfraGard is a paramilitary organization, when it\u0026rsquo;s actually an educational and information sharing organization that has no enforcement or even emergency, disaster, or incident response function (though certainly some of its members have emergency, disaster, and incident response functions for the organizations they work for).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 10, 2008):  I suspect tomorrow Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy will be getting calls from reporters asking what specifically she confirmed.  I hope they ask for details about the conference in question, whether it was run by InfraGard or DHS, what the subject matter was, and who said what.  If there\u0026rsquo;s actually an InfraGard chapter endorsing the idea that InfraGard members form armed citizen patrols authorized to use deadly force in time of martial law, that\u0026rsquo;s a chapter that needs to have its leadership removed.  My suspicion, though, is that some statements about protection of infrastructure by their own security forces in times of disaster or emergency have been misconstrued.  Alliant Energy operates nuclear plants, nuclear plants do have armed guards, and in Arizona, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/13/04903.htm\"\u003eARS 13-4903\u003c/a\u003e describes the circumstances under which nuclear plant security officers are authorized to use deadly force.  Those people, however, are thoroughly trained and regularly tested regarding the use of force and the use of deadly force in particular, which is not the case for InfraGard members.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 11, 2008):  Somehow, above, I neglected to make the most obvious point\u0026ndash;that the FBI doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the authority to grant immunity to prosecution for killing.  If anyone from the FBI made that statement to InfraGard members, they were saying something that they have no authority to deliver on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 12, 2008):  I\u0026rsquo;ve struck out part of the above about the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s concern about spying being unfounded, as I think that\u0026rsquo;s too strong of a denial.  There is a potential slippery slope here.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e9/11 Commission Report\u003c/span\u003e pointed to various communication problems that led to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.  These problems included failure to share information (mainly from the CIA to the FBI and INS), failure to communicate information within the FBI (like Phoenix Special Agent Ken Williams\u0026rsquo; memo about suspicious Middle Easterners in flight schools), and failure to have enough resources to translate NSA intercepts (some specific chatter about the attacks was translated after the attacks had already occurred).  As a result, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1217/p2s1-usgn.html\"\u003eCIA has been working closely with the FBI on counterterrorism and counterintelligence at least since 2001\u003c/a\u003e. (Also see Dana Priest, \u0026ldquo;CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations,\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c/span\u003e, October 23, 2002, p. A02, which is no longer available on the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePost\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s site but can be found elsewhere on the web, on sites whose other content is so nutty I refuse to link, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://www.infragard.net/press_room/releases/mueller_11906.htm\"\u003ethis January 2006 statement from FBI Director Robert Mueller on the InfraGard website\u003c/a\u003e, which includes the statement that \u0026ldquo;Today, the FBI and CIA are not only sharing information on a regular basis, we are exchanging employees and working together on cases every day.\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe slippery slope is this\u0026ndash;the CIA is an organization which recruits and develops in its officers a sense of flexible ethics which has frequently resulted in incredible abuses, and which arguably has done more harm than good to U.S. interests.  (My opinion on the CIA may be found in \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/CIA\"\u003emy posts on this blog labeled \u0026ldquo;CIA\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e; I highly recommend Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/abolish-cia.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)  Some of that ethical flexibility may well rub off on FBI agents who work closely with CIA case officers.  (The FBI itself has also had a history of serious abuses, an objective account of which may be found in Ronald Kessler\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Bureau-Secret-History-FBI/dp/0312989776\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)  And then, that same ethical flexibility may rub off on InfraGard members as a result of their relationships with the FBI (and potentially relationships with the CIA, as well).  The intelligence community seems to have a hunger for more and more information from more and more sources, but it is already awash in a sea of information that it has trouble processing today.  (It doesn\u0026rsquo;t help that the Army fires direly needed Arabic translators because they are gay.)  The need is to accurately assess the information that it has, and ensure that bits and pieces aren\u0026rsquo;t cherry-picked to produce desired conclusions, as well as ensure that information isn\u0026rsquo;t sought or assembled to serve personal and political ends of particular interests rather than combatting genuine threats to the country and its citizens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy recommendation is that all InfraGard members read Kessler\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bureau\u003c/span\u003e, Weiner\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes\u003c/span\u003e, and view the film that won the 2007 Academy Award for best foreign film, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Lives of Others\u003c/a\u003e,\u0026rdquo; to help innoculate them against such a slippery slope.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/11/report_fbi_deputizes_23_000\"\u003eAmy Goodman interviewed Matt Rothschild for \u0026ldquo;Democracy Now!\u0026rdquo; on Wisconsin Public Television\u003c/a\u003e, in which it is pretty clear to me that Rothschild is exaggerating something he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand\u0026ndash;what he cites as evidence doesn\u0026rsquo;t support what he claims.  Here\u0026rsquo;s a key excerpt, see the link for the full transcript:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMR: [\u0026hellip;] And one other member of InfraGard [Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy] confirmed to me that she had actually been at meetings and participated in meetings where the discussion of lethal force came up, as far as what businesspeople are entitled to do in times of an emergency to protect their little aspect of the infrastructure.\u003cbr /\u003eAG: But just to clarify, Matt Rothschild, who exactly is empowered to shoot to kill if martial law were declared? The business leaders themselves?\u003cbr /\u003eMR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.\u003cbr /\u003e[\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003eYou know, this is a secretive organization. They’re not supposed to talk to the press. You need to get vetted by the FBI before you can join it. They get almost daily information that the public doesn’t get. And then they have these extraordinary, really astonishing powers being vested in them by FBI and Homeland Security, shoot-to-kill powers. I mean, this is scary stuff.\u003cbr /\u003eMR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt looks to me like the following transformation has occurred:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  At a DHS conference on emergency response, somebody asks if owners of critical pieces of infrastructure should be expected to use deadly force if necessary to protect it (e.g., a nuclear power plant).\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Somebody at DHS answers yes.  They may even add that in some cases the law provides specific justification for use of deadly force (as in the Arizona statute I cite above).\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Matt turns that into a general right to \u0026ldquo;shoot-to-kill\u0026rdquo; in times of martial law by any InfraGard member.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  The blogosphere turns that into roving citizen patrols unleashed on the nation as the Bush hit squad after declaration of martial law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t see his key source\u0026ndash;Christine Moerke\u0026ndash;confirming anything beyond #1 and #2.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote other exaggerations and contradictions\u0026ndash;Rothschild claims that InfraGard is highly secretive and selective, yet has quickly grown to over 23,000 members and has multiple public websites.  He fails to note that most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public, or that it has been discussed in many articles in the national press over the last decade.  Rothschild speaks of \u0026ldquo;business leaders,\u0026rdquo; which the blogosphere has turned into \u0026ldquo;CEOs,\u0026rdquo; yet I suspect the most common \u0026ldquo;business leader\u0026rdquo; represented in InfraGard is an IT or physical security manager.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 15, 2008):  The FBI \u003ca href=\"http://www.infragard.net/press/2008/progressive_article_response.pdf\"\u003ehas issued an official response to Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s Progressive article\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), which says, in part:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn short, the article\u0026rsquo;s claims are patently false.  For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program.  The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication.  Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; than other civilians.  The FBI encourages InfraGard members \u0026ndash; and all Americans \u0026ndash; to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe FBI response also states that Rothschild has \u0026ldquo;refused even to identify when or where the claimed \u0026lsquo;small meeting\u0026rsquo; occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,\u0026rdquo; and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 25, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://sunfell.livejournal.com/1086267.html\"\u003eanother blogger with a rational response to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Progressive\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 2, 2008):  Matthew Rothschild \u003ca href=\"http://www.infowars.com/?p=538\"\u003ehas responded to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s response on Alex Jones\u0026rsquo; Info Wars blog, and he stands behind every word of his original article\u003c/a\u003e.  He doesn\u0026rsquo;t display any knowledge of or response to any of the criticisms I\u0026rsquo;ve offered.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard"},{"content":"The Discovery Institute is behind an attempt to gather signatures and push state legislation to defend \u0026ldquo;the rights of teachers and students to study the full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;The full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution\u0026rdquo; is apparently the new code phrase for creationist misinformation and nonsense.\nThe proposed legislation prohibits termination, discipline, denial of tenure or other discrimination against K-12 teachers who lie to their students by teaching them creationist nonsense.\nThe promotion is tied in with the dishonest film, Expelled.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-02-08):\nThis gives meaning to the word insidious\nolvlzl (2008-02-12):\nWhat a price is paid for those working in science ignoring the limits of its methods and the scope of its actions. Ignoring that science only studies the physical universe that can be observed, quantified and analyzed and nothing else is a whole big enough for the \"Discovery Institute\" to drive a fleet of tractor trailers through. It's a shame but I've not noticed the would be 'science' side of it coming down off of its romantic Olympus to say that the religious motives of those who want to put \"ID\" in public school science class rooms are actually asking them to go past where science can look. That, unfortunately, is too big a price for the materialist fundamentalists to pay to protect the integrity of science, which is clearly not their real concern. Darwin Day is staffed by just such ideological, would be \"defenders of science\". Anthony McCarthy, the once and never more olvlzl\nolvlzl (2008-02-12):\nMake that \"a hole big enough\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-12):\n\"It's a shame but I've not noticed the would be 'science' side of it coming down off of its romantic Olympus to say that the religious motives of those who want to put \"ID\" in public school science class rooms are actually asking them to go past where science can look.\"yes, I never ever see scientists saying that the problem of ID is that it cannot be investigated with methodological naturalism.\nolvlzl (2008-02-12):\nI never ever see scientists saying that the problem of ID is that it cannot be investigated with methodological naturalism.To start, naturalism is an ideology, science is a collection of procedures. It is part of the current fad of naturalism to pretend that it is an essential foundation of science when it actually is a result of exactly the kind of disregard of the limits of science I mentioned earlier. Intelligent design is a lot like naturalism, it's a legitimate belief as long as it doesn't try to impose itself on science classrooms in public schools. Its entry into scientific publications is ill advised and, to the extent that it is accepted as science, it is harmful to science. It is fortunate that few religious scientists give in to the temptation to mix their personal belief in with science, unfortunate that so many irreligious scientists can't master the distinction. And that's not even getting to the level of carelessness found on the materialist blogs. Thank you for volunteering as an object lesson, Hume's Ghost. Anthony McCarthy, the former olvlzl.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-12):\nDelusions of grandeur, much?\nolvlzl (2008-02-12):\nHume's Ghost said... Delusions of grandeur, much?No, just everyday, non-ideological reality. Hey, Hume's, we can't all write like Shirley Maclaine. I'll leave that to your boss. Anthony McCarthy, annoying Kurtz Kult Klowns for eight years now.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-12):\nWeird.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-12):\nExpert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. This revolution entailed the rejection of the appeal to authority, and by extension, revelation, in favor of empirical evidence. Since that time period, science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth. In deliberately omitting theological or \"ultimate\" explanations for the existence or characteristics of the natural world, science does not consider issues of \"meaning\" and \"purpose\" in the world. While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as \"methodological naturalism\" and is sometimes known as the scientific method. Methodological naturalism is a \"ground rule\" of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify. -- Judge Jones, apparently writing like Shirley Maclain because he is a member of a Kurtz Kult Klown.\nolvlzl (2008-02-13):\nscience has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.Pretty much what I said.This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as \"methodological naturalism\" and is sometimes known as the scientific method.You'll notice, if you're a more careful reader than most of the blog materialists, Hume, that I addressed only \"naturalism\". If Jones made a distinction between the necessity of science only dealing with the physical universe and considers the methods used to do that with a reasonable degree of objective reliability \"methodological naturalism\" it's still pretty much what I said but notice he calls it a \"ground rule\" for practicing science. That would make it an entirely different thing from the kind of \"naturalism\" that holds it's a fact that only the material universe as can be known through science exists and that any other thing, the supernatural, for example is a delusion. That, Hume, is an ideology that isn't a foundation of science or even a ground rule. That is one of the most common delusions practiced by materialists today.Unfortunately, asserting that science can deal with things such as the supernatural opens the door for the IDers to assert that it can look for evidence of a \"designer\". I'd call that bad science and bad religion, though I'm not wasting my time on explaining the latter assertion tonight. All you've got to give up is the pretense that science can deal with what it plainly cannot and you diminish the size of that hole, though it's going to take a long time to close one that's been opened up for so long now. I hope that's not too high-fallutin' for you. Anthony McCarthy\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-13):\nYou don't get it. The point is that scientists have argued against ID on the very grounds that you've asserted that they don't because they are \"materialist fundamentalists\". The Judge Jones quote - which you've agreed with - cites the testimony of -surprise- scientists saying that science can say nothing about non-empirical claims.As usual, you're beating up on a straw-man of your own creation. Peruse through the secular web library and you'll find plenty of articles making the distinction between metaphysical and methodological naturalism.\nolvlzl (2008-02-13):\nHume's Ghost, I didn't say that every last scientist was clueless about the distinction between materialist fundamentalism and the necessary limits of science, just that too many of them are clueless. Clearly the Dover case held some lessons in practical application of those principles among the general population. You go on just about any neo-atheist blog or any blog where neo-atheists post comments and try to make the distinction and you'll find out just how clueless my pointing this out is. Try doing it incognito at PZ's blog, for example, without identifying yourself as an atheist and watch what happens if you refuse to be cowed by the initial response. Anthony McCarthy\nEinzige (2008-02-13):\nI've resisted the temptation as long as I could (and I'm surprised, Hume's Ghost, that you've ceased ignoring Mr. McCarthy)...Mr. McCarthy, can you stop speaking in vague generalities and broad strokes for one minute and make a specific reference to or direct quotation from an acknowledged scientist claiming that the tools of science are appropriate for things that are outside the realms of logic and/or empiricism?I submit that you cannot.Please note that I'm not talking about random morons who post comments on blogs, but genuine professional scientists/philosophers/ epistemologists.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-13):\nI'm know* someone who is staffing Darwin Day, so I found that comment particularly annoying.*As much as you can \"know\" someone from postings on a message board.\nolvlzl (2008-02-13):\nI've resisted the temptation as long as I couldYou want to watch that Einzige, next thing you know you'll be resisting other temptations. It's a slippery slope to theism.make a specific reference to or direct quotation from an acknowledged scientist claiming that the tools of science are appropriate for things that are outside the realms of logic and/or empiricism?\"Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question.\" Richard Dawkins, quoted by H. Allen Orr in the New York Review of Books, Jan.11, 2007.I wrote a little piece about it last year:http://olvlzl.blogspot.com/2007/08/science-without-physical-evidence.htmlI'm know* someone who is staffing Darwin Day, so I found that comment particularly annoying.What? That's forbidden to say? Next thing you know you'll be railing about the war against Darwin Day. The Irreverent A. M., Heretic.\nEinzige (2008-02-17):\nTouché, Mr. McCarthy.I agree with you. That statement is rather bizarre.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-17):\nI'd have to search my copy of God Delusion to find that particular passage, but switch \"empirical\" for \"scientific\" and consider if the statement is bizarre.The quote itself offers the qualification that there may not be enough evidence for science to determine a verdict. I would have given 10 to 1 odds when you asked for an example it would be Dawkins. Trouble could have been saved if olvlzl had just replied initially \"i hate richard dawkins\"\nEinzige (2008-02-17):\nIf what Dawkins means is: \"The claims of virgin birth and non-human parentage are, in general, ones that can be subjected to empirical analysis--even though the specific question of Jesus of Nazareth is no longer decidable.\" ...then, yes, I'd agree with him. And if that's what he means then he used poor wording for it.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-17):\nI agree with the statement even without such qualification. It's an empirical claim: there was a man who was born of a virgin.We have mountains of empirical evidence demonstrating that it a virgin birth is impossible, yet we zero contrary evidence except the lack of direct evidence of Jesus's birth which is supposed to somehow grant it somekind of exempt status from what we know about reality and make it something we remain agnostic about? Which would mean we have to entertain the possibility that a human can be born without sperm fertilizing an egg. I think its poorly worded, but I think its poorly worded in that its too weak a statement. Science can't test the evidence to refute the claim, but it can still inform our evaluation of it.That's the sense that I would guess Dawkins means it, though I don't at the moment have a copy at hand to make sure.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-17):\nLater today I'll see if I can find that exact passage and see what the context is.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-17):\nIn the interim, I'd wager this is the same context.To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: \"Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium.\" Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle - and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it - an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity's best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today\nEinzige (2008-02-17):\nThe problem I see is that the Christians engage in special pleading when it comes to Christ--in fact they insist on it, since his birth could hardly be considered miraculous if virgin births were a regular occurrence. That's what moves it beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. You can marshal all sorts of scientific facts against the claim. All the contrary evidence and argument is helpless against the person who says, \"But Jesus was a singular event. God bent the rules in his case.\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-18):\nMassimos Pigliucci criticized Dawkins for being scientistic in blurring the distinction between philosophical and scientific arguments.When you come to the special pleading that would seem like a demarcation point. To me, though, it makes as much sense to say that Socrates could fly like Superman and shoot laser beams out of his eyes and then say science can say nothing about that claim. A response is going to draw on science and philosophy, with it being obvious that we can't directly investigate Socrates to see if its true or not.I think Olvlz would have had a better candidate with the part where Dawkins says souls surviving death and what not is theory, which it is not. At least, if you're using the scientific definition of \"theory.\"\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-18):\nYou can also see Dawkins making another mistake in the quoted passage saying that evolution has changed from theory to fact.Theories do not become facts, they explain them.I'm not certain how any of this relates to the original contention about ID resulting from materialist fundamentalists failing to explain that ID is a metaphysical claim outside of science.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-18):\n\"Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why.\"I didn't get a hold of God Delusion yet, but I think that bit there is much more on the mark regarding Olvzl's criticism. Dawkins is making the argument that if we can explain something naturally the probability of God's existence goes down, but that doesn't make \"God's existence\" a scientific hypothesis. This is just careless.Sorry for the multiple comments ...\nEinzige (2008-02-18):\nHume's Ghost,I can't speak for Jim, but it doesn't seem to me like you have anything to apologize for.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-19):\nWell, to me at least, the multiple comments from the same person (me) in the Recent Comments thing on the left of the page looks rather obnoxious.I checked The God Delusion, and it's pretty much the same thing. Dawkins is saying that were Jesus alive today and it claimed that he was immaculately conceived that would be a matter of scientific inquiry. He was not saying that we can currently scientifically test the claim.\nEinzige (2008-02-19):\nSo you're saying that olvlzl is treating Dawkins unfairly?\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-19):\nHe took a quote that was out of context and assumed it said something it didn't.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/academic-fraud-petition.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Discovery Institute is behind an \u003ca href=\"http://www.academicfreedompetition.com/freedom.php\"\u003eattempt to gather signatures and push state legislation\u003c/a\u003e to defend \u0026ldquo;the rights of teachers and students to study the full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution.\u0026rdquo;  \u0026ldquo;The full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution\u0026rdquo; is apparently the new code phrase for creationist misinformation and nonsense.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe proposed legislation prohibits termination, discipline, denial of tenure or other discrimination against K-12 teachers who lie to their students by teaching them creationist nonsense.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe promotion is tied in with the \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html\"\u003edishonest\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2008/02/two-early-reviews-of-expelled.html\"\u003efilm\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExpelled\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Academic fraud petition"},{"content":"The Center for Public Integrity has released details of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has been blocked from publication for more than seven months. The report, titled Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was supposed to be released in July 2007.\nThe Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.\nIn many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.\n\u0026hellip;\nLast July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR suddenly withdrew it, saying that it needed further review. In a letter to Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine, Dr. Howard Frumkin, ATSDR’s chief, wrote that the quality of the study was “well below expectations.” When the Center contacted Frumkin’s office, a spokesman said that he was not available for comment and that the study was “still under review.”\nDe Rosa, who oversaw the study and has pressed for its release, referred the Center’s requests for an interview to ATSDR’s public affairs office, which, over a period of two weeks, has declined to make him available for comment. In an e-mail obtained by the Center, De Rosa wrote to Frumkin that the delay in publishing the study has had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.”\nSome members of Congress seem to agree. In a February 6, 2008, letter to CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who’s also administrator of ATSDR, a trio of powerful congressional Democrats—including Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology—complained about the delay in releasing the report. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of the letter to Gerberding, which notes that the full committee is reviewing “disturbing allegations about interference with the work of government scientists” at ATSDR. “You and Dr. Frumkin were made aware of the Committee’s concerns on this matter last December,” the letter adds, “but we have still not heard any explanation for the decision to cancel the release of the report.”\nYou can find the Center for Public Integrity\u0026rsquo;s summary and excerpts from the report here.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-02-08):\nLike I'm going to believe anything your \"study\" says Lippard. I know it was just socialist propaganda you funded, and I know you're a socialist because Human Events told me you were, i.e. the CPI's \"Supporters Page is a veritable Socialist, Anti-Bush, Anti-War What’s What and Who’s Who.\"You socialist enviro-fascists never stop. Oh, and I listened to Glenn Beck this morning, so I know that global warming is the liberal equivalent of the Reichstag fire./Snark off\\\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/great-lakes-health-issues.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Center for Public Integrity has released details of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has been blocked from publication for more than seven months.  The report, titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePublic Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern\u003c/span\u003e, was supposed to be released in July 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Great Lakes health issues"},{"content":"Daniel Brooks has written a fascinating summary of a 2006 conference put together by intelligent design advocates as a retrospective of the famous 1966 Wistar conference on evolution that is often cited by creationists who haven\u0026rsquo;t bothered to understand what actually happened at that conference. (It was an example of what happens when you try to come up with models for phenomena you don\u0026rsquo;t understand well enough to formulate models for.) The ID advocates invited numerous prominent scientists to the conference, including Brooks, whose book with E.O. Wiley, Evolution as Entropy, is a classic on evolution, thermodynamics, and information theory of the sort that creationists ignore except to quote mine (e.g., as Duane Gish did in his Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics). My favorite part of the summary is this paragraph, which ends the summary of a talk by ID advocate Ann Gauger:\nShe was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed “leaky growth,” in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, “So, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?” at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce beneficial new information.Quick\u0026ndash;time for an emergency coffee break, and let\u0026rsquo;s just forget that last question\u0026hellip;\nThe ID advocates repeatedly evaded tough questions from the scientists, and at the end of the conference\u0026hellip;\nA few days after the meeting ended, we all received an email stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting, and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the edited volume of presentations, in about a year, and wanted all of us to wait until then to say anything.So it\u0026rsquo;s left to the real scientists, not the ID advocates, to publicly discuss their conference and its implications.\nRead the full summary at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb, as well as some revealing exchanges in the comments between ID advocate and young-earth creationist Paul Nelson, Dan Brooks, and Nick Matzke. John Lynch also has a nice brief summary.\nThere is one notable error in Brooks\u0026rsquo; summary, and that is his erroneous claim that Richard von Sternberg was fired as editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Sternberg is actually a false martyr who hasn\u0026rsquo;t actually lost any jobs, positions, or status as a result of his opinions.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/science-meets-stupid.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Brooks has written \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/02/id-intelligent.html\"\u003ea fascinating summary of a 2006 conference put together by intelligent design advocates\u003c/a\u003e as a retrospective of the famous 1966 Wistar conference on evolution that is often cited by creationists who haven\u0026rsquo;t bothered to understand what actually happened at that conference.  (It was an example of what happens when you try to come up with models for phenomena you don\u0026rsquo;t understand well enough to formulate models for.)  The ID advocates invited numerous prominent scientists to the conference, including Brooks, whose book with E.O. Wiley, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvolution as Entropy\u003c/span\u003e, is a classic on evolution, thermodynamics, and information theory of the sort that creationists ignore except to quote mine (e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_lippard/gishreview.html\"\u003eas Duane Gish did in his \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation Scientists Answer Their Critics\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e).  My favorite part of the summary is this paragraph, which ends the summary of a talk by ID advocate Ann Gauger:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eShe was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed “leaky growth,” in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, “So, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?” at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce \u003cem\u003ebeneficial\u003c/em\u003e new information.\u003c/blockquote\u003eQuick\u0026ndash;time for an emergency coffee break, and let\u0026rsquo;s just forget that last question\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ID advocates repeatedly evaded tough questions from the scientists, and at the end of the conference\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA few days after the meeting ended, we all received an email stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting, and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the edited volume of presentations, in about a year, and wanted all of us to wait until then to say anything.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo it\u0026rsquo;s left to the real scientists, not the ID advocates, to publicly discuss their conference and its implications.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRead the \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/02/id-intelligent.html\"\u003efull summary at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e, as well as some revealing exchanges in the comments between ID advocate and young-earth creationist Paul Nelson, Dan Brooks, and Nick Matzke.  John Lynch \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/02/the_shy_fragile_face_of_id.php\"\u003ealso has a nice brief summary\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is one notable error in Brooks\u0026rsquo; summary, and that is his erroneous claim that Richard von Sternberg was fired as editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProceedings of the Biological Society of Washington\u003c/span\u003e.  Sternberg is actually \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Sternberg%20affair\"\u003ea false martyr who hasn\u0026rsquo;t actually lost any jobs, positions, or status as a result of his opinions\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science meets stupid"},{"content":"I agree with most of the positions taken by the Institute for Justice, an organization that fights for economic rights of entrepreneurs (especially small businesses fighting ridiculous regulations designed as barriers to entry), for freedom of speech, against eminent domain abuse, and for school choice. But I don\u0026rsquo;t understand its argument against Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Clean Elections law, which strikes me as conflicting with some of its other arguments.\nTim Keller, head of the Arizona chapter of the Institute for Justice, makes the following argument:\nDirect government limits on expenditures are unconstitutional. Instead of a direct limit, Arizona created so-called “matching funds” to enforce the caps. The system’s drafters knew that many candidates like Martin would reject taxpayer funding on principle and simply opt out, freeing them of the government caps. That would give them an advantage over those who accept taxpayer funds and thus discourage participation in the scheme. So there had to be a way to punish those who opt out. “Matching funds” is the punishment: Whenever a privately financed candidate or an independent group outspends a taxpayer-funded candidate, the government steps up to the ATM (in this case, Arizona Taxpayers’ Money) and matches those expenditures dollar-for-dollar, up to two times the initial payout.\n“Matching funds” are how Arizona rewards those who take taxpayer money for politics and punishes those who refuse it—as well as private citizens or groups who want to support them. “Matching funds” are how Arizona reins in speech about politics.\nIndeed, the dirty little secret of Arizona’s law is that it is designed to limit speech: Government controls the purse strings, so government decides how much speech is “enough.” But, in a free society, the government has no business micromanaging how citizens debate, of all things, who should run the government.\nState-imposed limits, even indirect limits, on grassroots advocacy and campaigns for public office violate the free speech and association guarantees of the First Amendment. That is why Dean Martin, the Freedom Club PAC and Taxpayer Action Committee joined with the Institute for Justice to ask the federal courts to vindicate their First Amendment rights. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently reinstated this lawsuit, originally filed in 2004 by IJ and Martin. Now we return to the trial court to argue the merits of the case.\nArizona’s election scheme, one of the most far-reaching in the nation, adds up to less speech from fewer voices resulting in a less robust public debate. If the Arizona model spreads, as so-called campaign finance “reformers” hope, our core rights as citizens to speak on political matters will give way to government control. But IJ is fighting back with a case that can set an important precedent against taxpayer-funded campaigns and in favor of unfettered First Amendment rights.In Arizona, candidates can either choose to be \"clean elections\" candidates receiving public funding, or not. If they choose public funding, they need to find a certain number of \"grassroots\" supporters to each make $5 donations (a number dependent upon the number of people in the district, or in the state, for statewide offices), and then they are eligible for matching funds for advertising if any non-\"clean elections\" candidates exceed the \"clean elections\" spending cap. Those funds come from money earmarked for the purpose by Arizona taxpayers when they file their state income tax returns--many people check the box that allows a $5 tax credit ($10 for married filing jointly) if the money is passed on to the clean elections fund.\nThe IJ argument is that this violates the First Amendment because a non-\"clean elections\" candidate's speech is chilled by the fact that matching funds will go to any \"clean elections\" candidates running for the same office if they exceed the spending cap. There's nothing else preventing them from exceeding the spending cap--only the knowledge that their opponent will get comparable funding. I don't see how this constitutes any restriction at all on a candidate's freedom of speech. The fact that someone else will get funding to promote their speech if I spend money to promote mine doesn't impact my ability to speak at all. This isn't like the Fairness Doctrine where some media outlet is being compelled to give equal time for opposing views, rather it's that taxpayers who have given money to clean elections are providing funding for such candidates to speak with a comparably loud voice to their opponents funded by special interests.\nThis is not to say there aren't good arguments against the clean elections law. I think one good argument against it is that it has been used by social conservatives to get fringe candidates elected to office. Another is that it makes complicated and seemingly arbitrary rules (PDF) about how a candidate can spend money, and involved the creation of a new bureaucracy, the Citizens Clean Elections Committee. It also used to (until successfully overturned by a previous lawsuit) involve compelled funding of speech, when it was funded by parking fines.\nIJ has argued (rightly, in my opinion) that a tax credit for donations to school choice organizations doesn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment if it goes to religious schools, since it's an individual taxpayer choosing to give their own money to a religious organization, not the government passing money along. I agree with Sam Coppersmith that similar reasoning should apply to the clean elections tax credit.\nUPDATE (February 7, 2008): Tim Keller has sent me a copy of the decision in Day v. Holohan, the case that overturned clean elections in Minnesota, as well as informing me that contrary to what I say above, 2/3 of Arizona's clean elections funding still comes from surcharges on civil and criminal fines--which I agree amounts to compelled speech for parking and traffic violators. I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that that source of funding had already been eliminated.\nTim also points out that, contrary to Sam Coppersmith, the clean elections tax credit doesn't quite work the same way as the school tuition credit. When a taxpayer checks the box for a $5 donation to the clean elections fund, $5 goes as a tax credit to the taxpayer and another $5 goes to the clean elections fund, so the general fund really is out $5 ($10 if you count the taxpayer being allowed to keep $5 of his own money to be a taking from the government, which I don't). The school tuition credit, by contrast, involves the taxpayer making a donation (up to $1,000 for a married couple filing jointly) directly to a school tuition organization which then counts as a tax credit on the return. No money at all goes from the treasury to the school, though it gets the amount of the donation less in taxes paid. With the clean elections credit, the state is out the money it has to pay to clean elections AND it doesn't get the money from the taxpayer, while with the school tuition organization tax credit, the state is only out the money it doesn't get from the taxpayer. Tim says that if clean elections was funded the same way, IJ wouldn't be suing.\nUPDATE (September 3, 2008): The Institute for Justice argument prevailed in court. Last Friday Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that the matching funds provision of the Clean Elections Act violates the First Amendment, following the Supreme Court case of Davis v. FEC. There will be a hearing today to determine what the implications are--whether matching funds will continue to be provided to candidates in this November's general election or not. IJ has asked for an injunction against matching funds.\nUPDATE (June 27, 2011): The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Institute for Justice on this (PDF), in a 5-4 decision.\u0026nbsp; The dissenting argument makes some of the same points I do above, and I still have to agree that it's a better argument.\u0026nbsp; As the dissent puts it:\nthe program does not discriminate against any candidate or point of view, and it does not restrict any person's ability to speak.\u0026nbsp; In fact, by providing resources to many candidates, the program creates more speech and thereby broadens public debate. ...\nAt every turn, the majority tries to convey the impression that Arizona's matching fund statute is of a piece with laws prohibiting electoral speech. The majority invokes the language of \"limits,\" \"bar[s],\" and \"restraints.\" ... It equates the law to a \"restrictio[n] on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign.\" ...\nThere is just one problem. Arizona's matching funds provision does not restrict, but instead subsidizes, speech. The law \"impose[s] no ceiling on [speech] and do[es] not prevent anyone from speaking.\" ... The statute does not tell candidates or their supporters how much money they can spend to convey their message, when they can spend it, or what they can spend it on. ...\nIn the usual First Amendment subsidy case, a person complains that the government declined to finance his speech, while financing someone else's; we must then decide whether the government differentiated between these speakers on a prohibited basis--because it preferred one speaker's ideas to another's. ... But the speakers bringing this case do not make that claim--because they were never denied a subsidy. ... Petitioners have refused that assistance. So they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance. Some people might call that chutzpah.\nIndeed, what petitioners demand is essentially a right to quash others' speech through the prohibition of a (universally available) subsidy program. Petitioners are able to convey their ideas without public financing--and they would prefer the field to themselves, so that they can speak free from response. To attain that goal, they ask this court to prevent Arizona from funding electoral speech--even though that assistance is offered to every state candidate, on the same (entirely unobjectionable) basis. And this court gladly obliges.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/institute-for-justice-argument-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI agree with most of the positions taken by the Institute for Justice, an organization that fights for economic rights of entrepreneurs (especially small businesses fighting ridiculous regulations designed as barriers to entry), for freedom of speech, against eminent domain abuse, and for school choice.  But I don\u0026rsquo;t understand its argument against Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Clean Elections law, which strikes me as conflicting with some of its other arguments.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nTim Keller, head of the Arizona chapter of the Institute for Justice, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/publications/liberty/2008/17_1_07_a.html\"\u003emakes the following argument\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Institute for Justice argument against Clean Elections"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve seen some speculation (at sites of dubious credibility) that the recent subsea cable cuts, which have apparently reduced Internet connectivity to Iran (though the impact to India has been more prominent), are a prelude to a U.S. attack of Iran. I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.\nFirst of all, subsea cable cuts (and the word \u0026ldquo;cut\u0026rdquo; is unfortunately overused to mean a non-functional cable even when it\u0026rsquo;s not actually severed) occur on a regular basis, and every company that owns subsea cables (such as employer, Global Crossing) contracts with a cable-laying company such as Global Marine (which Global Crossing used to own) to do repairs. Second, in December 2006, there were nine cable breaks in east Asia as a result of earthquakes. In this instance, we are up to only three cable breaks\u0026ndash;the first two were FLAG Telecom\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia link and SeaMeWe-4, which were broken by a tanker in the Mediterranean between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Sicily, causing disruption to Internet access in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and India. Those cables follow pretty much the same path, from Mumbai, India, to Djibouti, and from there into the Red Sea, past Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and into the Mediterranean to Sicily. It\u0026rsquo;s not surprising that both were cut simultaneously by the same tanker dragging its anchor, they are perhaps a quarter mile apart. An offshoot from those cables goes north from just off the coast of India into the Persian Gulf, past Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, and lands in Kuwait. In the other direction, it goes to Sri Lanka. The third cable cut was on this offshoot, FLAG Telecom\u0026rsquo;s FALCON cable, off the coast of Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Some have erroneously claimed that four cables were cut, on the basis of a report that a cable was cut between Sri Lanka and the Suez Canal\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s the FALCON cable off the coast of Dubai, not yet another cut.\nNone of these cables land in Iran or Iraq, at least on my cable map, though there is apparently a Kuwait-Iran subsea cable, so any impact from these cable breaks to Iran is incidental. I don\u0026rsquo;t see any evidence that these are anything other than normal accidental subsea cable breaks. (Correction: FLAG FALCON has a segment from Kuwait to Bandar Abbas, Iran, that was built in 2005 and isn\u0026rsquo;t on my map, which was printed in May 2004.)\nYou can see Telegeography\u0026rsquo;s submarine cable map of the world for yourself here.\nUPDATE (February 3, 2008): I didn\u0026rsquo;t check earlier, but I note that at the moment I have no problem reaching hosts in Iran, such as Mahmoud Ahamdinejad\u0026rsquo;s official blog, or pinging the primary mail server of the Datacommunications Company of Iran (mail.dci.co.ir). Others have previously noted the continuing availability of Ahamdinejad\u0026rsquo;s blog, which is hosted by DCI (AS 12880) and gets upstream connectivity from Singapore Telecom and TTNet (a Turkish ISP). I would hazard a guess that Iran\u0026rsquo;s TTNet connectivity is via terrestrial cable from Turkey.\nUPDATE: Egypt claims no ships were in the vicinity in the Mediterranean when the cable cuts there occurred. There is now a report of a fourth cable cut, in the Persian Gulf between the Qatari island of Haloul and the United Arab Emirates island of Das. This outage is now being attributed to a power system problem.\nUPDATE (February 4, 2008): The Renesys Blog has analyzed the breaks from a routing perspective, showing which countries have been affected, in a series of posts. In part one, they look at the first two breaks in the Mediterranean, and show that the most impacted countries were Pakistan and Egypt. In part two, they look at the impact by ISP. In part three, they look at how providers addressed their connectivity before and after the breaks. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice one country conspicuously absent from the list of impacted countries\u0026ndash;Iran. This is because while Iran has had some impact, it has not been significant. In a fourth post, The Renesys Blog discusses the Iran impact and the misinformation about it that has appeared in places like Slashdot and the blog of the first commenter on this post. In a fifth post, they look at how Indian providers weathered the problems. And in a sixth post, they sum up lessons learned.\nUPDATE: These cuts are all associated with bad weather in the region, which is also delaying repairs. Here\u0026rsquo;s a report from FLAG Telecom posted by a commenter at the Renesys Blog:\nUpdate on Submarine Cable Cut - Daily Bulletin\n@ 0900 GMT February 4 2008\nBulletin will be updated Daily with Progress.\nCut # 1:\n− FLAG Europe-Asia cable was reported cut at 0800 hrs GMT on January 30 2008.\n− Location of cut is at 8.3 kms from Alexandria, Egypt on segment between Egypt and Italy.\n− The Repair ship loaded with spares is expected to reach the repair ground by February 5 2008.\n− We have received the necessary permits to commence work from the Egyptian Authorities.\n− FLAG has restored circuits of customers covered under Pre-planned Restoration service.\n− FLAG has restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.\nCut # 2:\n− FALCON cable was reported cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1 2008.\n− Location of cut is reported at 56 kms from Dubai, UAE on segment between UAE and Oman.\n− The repair Ship is loaded with all spares and ready to sail. Awaiting clearance from Port Authorities due to 36 knots winds.\n− FLAG is executing restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.UPDATE (February 7, 2008): There have been some additional cable faults on FLAG\u0026rsquo;s cable systems, to a total of four or five. In addition to the two listed above (FLAG Europe-Asia, 8.3 km from Alexandria and FLAG FALCON 56 km from Dubai), there has been another on FLAG Europe-Asia 28 km from Penang, Malaysia scheduled for repair on February 11, and possibly two faults on FLAG FALCON near Bandar Abbas, Iran, on a segment that runs from Iran to Kuwait, which will be visited by a repair ship around February 19.\nThe current list is this:\n1. Consortium cable SeaMeWe-4, 12.334 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend.\n2. Qtel\u0026rsquo;s cable from Haloul (Qatar) to Das (UAE), in the Persian Gulf. Probably not a cut, but damaged power system due to weather.\n3. FLAG\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia (FEA Segment D), 8.3 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend by cable ship CS Certamen.\n4. FLAG\u0026rsquo;s FALCON (FALCON Segment 2), 56 km from Dubai, UAE in the Persian Gulf, on the route to Al Seeb, Oman. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend. This cut was due to a ship\u0026rsquo;s anchor\u0026ndash;an abandoned 5-6 ton anchor was recovered by FLAG at the site (see photo in FLAG\u0026rsquo;s update, PDF)\n5. FLAG\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia (FEA Segment M), 28 km from Penang, Malaysia. Scheduled for repair on February 11 by cable ship CS Asean Restorer.\n6. FLAG\u0026rsquo;s FALCON (FALCON Segments 7a and 7b), two faults on the cable between Kuwait and Bandar Abbas, Iran, scheduled for repair on February 19.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s an article in Technology Review about the cable breaks.\nAlex at the Yorkshire Ranter is a breath of fresh air on this subject, his commentary presents some common sense opinions with a factual basis and accompanied by lots of good links.\nUPDATE (February 11, 2008): The Economist also has an excellent summary.\nUPDATE (April 16, 2008): Two ships have been identified as the cause of damage to undersea cables in the Persian Gulf. An Indian officer a Syrian chief engineer of an impounded Iraqi ship are being held for trial in Dubai, and the ship owner will have to pay $350,000 in compensation. Another Korean ship was impounded and then released after its owners paid $60,000 in compensation to Flag Telecom. The two ships, the MV Hounslow and the MV Ann, were identified by satellite photos.\nHistorical Comments The Ty Report (2008-02-04):\nJimmy,Jimmy,Jimmy....I have responded to your comments.Thanks for your considered opinion.Amazing-Bastards\n(2008-02-05):\nAdding another border relem, to The Empire, that does not have reruns of \"Green Acres\".....unthinkable!Stay on groovin' safari,Tor\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-05):\nAlmost completely unrelated, but I thought it was interesting to see that someone from the Iranian Meteorological Service (by accident I would guess) visited my blog a few months ago.The thought that people living in that country, even working for the gov't, have internet access to American blogs was refreshing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/middle-east-subsea-cable-cuts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve seen some speculation (at sites of dubious credibility) that the recent subsea cable cuts, which have apparently reduced Internet connectivity to Iran (though the impact to India has been more prominent), are a prelude to a U.S. attack of Iran.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst of all, subsea cable cuts (and the word \u0026ldquo;cut\u0026rdquo; is unfortunately overused to mean a non-functional cable even when it\u0026rsquo;s not actually severed) occur on a regular basis, and every company that owns subsea cables (such as employer, Global Crossing) contracts with a cable-laying company such as Global Marine (which Global Crossing used to own) to do repairs.  Second, in December 2006, there were nine cable breaks in east Asia as a result of earthquakes.  In this instance, we are up to only three cable breaks\u0026ndash;the first two were \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Around_the_Globe\"\u003eFLAG Telecom\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia link and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4\"\u003eSeaMeWe-4\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/01/internationalpersonalfinancebusiness.internet\"\u003ewhich were broken by a tanker\u003c/a\u003e in the Mediterranean between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Sicily, causing disruption to Internet access in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and India.  Those cables follow pretty much the same path, from Mumbai, India, to Djibouti, and from there into the Red Sea, past Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and into the Mediterranean to Sicily.  It\u0026rsquo;s not surprising that both were cut simultaneously by the same tanker dragging its anchor, they are \u003ca href=\"http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Internet-Cable-May-Take-12-to-15-Days-to-Repair/\"\u003eperhaps a quarter mile apart\u003c/a\u003e.   An offshoot from those cables goes north from just off the coast of India into the Persian Gulf, past Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, and lands in Kuwait.  In the other direction, it goes to Sri Lanka.  The third cable cut was on this offshoot, \u003ca href=\"http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=144778\u0026amp;f_src=lightreading_default\"\u003eFLAG Telecom\u0026rsquo;s FALCON cable, off the coast of Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates\u003c/a\u003e.  Some have erroneously claimed that four cables were cut, on the basis of \u003ca href=\"http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid=%7B1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9%7D\"\u003ea report that a cable was cut between Sri Lanka and the Suez Canal\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FALCON_%28cable_system%29\"\u003eFALCON cable\u003c/a\u003e off the coast of Dubai, not yet another cut.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNone of these cables land in Iran or Iraq, at least on my cable map, though there is apparently a Kuwait-Iran subsea cable, so any impact from these cable breaks to Iran is incidental.  I don\u0026rsquo;t see any evidence that these are anything other than normal accidental subsea cable breaks.  (Correction: FLAG FALCON has a segment from Kuwait to Bandar Abbas, Iran, that was built in 2005 and isn\u0026rsquo;t on my map, which was printed in May 2004.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can see Telegeography\u0026rsquo;s submarine cable map of the world for yourself \u003ca href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/index.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 3, 2008):  I didn\u0026rsquo;t check earlier, but I note that at the moment I have no problem reaching hosts in Iran, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/\"\u003eMahmoud Ahamdinejad\u0026rsquo;s official blog\u003c/a\u003e, or pinging the primary mail server of the Datacommunications Company of Iran (mail.dci.co.ir).  Others have previously noted the continuing availability of Ahamdinejad\u0026rsquo;s blog, which is hosted by DCI (AS 12880) and gets upstream connectivity from Singapore Telecom and TTNet (a Turkish ISP).  I would hazard a guess that Iran\u0026rsquo;s TTNet connectivity is via terrestrial cable from Turkey.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Egypt claims \u003ca href=\"http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hTi5wNwTD66nvWdTAQw20SaFI_GQ\"\u003eno ships were in the vicinity in the Mediterranean when the cable cuts there occurred\u003c/a\u003e.  There is now a report of \u003ca href=\"http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ\"\u003ea fourth cable cut, in the Persian Gulf between the Qatari island of Haloul and the United Arab Emirates island of Das\u003c/a\u003e.  This outage \u003ca href=\"http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580660\"\u003eis now being attributed to a power system problem\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 4, 2008):  The Renesys Blog has analyzed the breaks from a routing perspective, showing which countries have been affected, in a series of posts.  In \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml\"\u003epart one\u003c/a\u003e, they look at the first two breaks in the Mediterranean, and show that the most impacted countries were Pakistan and Egypt.  In \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break_part_1.shtml\"\u003epart two\u003c/a\u003e, they look at the impact by ISP.  In \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part.shtml\"\u003epart three\u003c/a\u003e, they look at how providers addressed their connectivity before and after the breaks.  You\u0026rsquo;ll notice one country conspicuously absent from the list of impacted countries\u0026ndash;Iran.  This is because while Iran has had some impact, it has not been significant.  In \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/attention_iran_is_not_disconne_1.shtml\"\u003ea fourth post\u003c/a\u003e, The Renesys Blog discusses the Iran impact and the misinformation about it that has appeared in places like Slashdot and the blog of the first commenter on this post.  In \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part_3.shtml\"\u003ea fifth post\u003c/a\u003e, they look at how Indian providers weathered the problems.  And in \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/cable_breaks_lessons_learned_1.shtml\"\u003ea sixth post\u003c/a\u003e, they sum up lessons learned.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  These cuts are all associated with \u003ca href=\"http://www.lloyds.com/CmsPhoenix/DowJonesArticle.aspx?id=380222\"\u003ebad weather in the region, which is also delaying repairs\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s a report from FLAG Telecom posted by \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part.shtml#comment-7944\"\u003ea commenter at the Renesys Blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eUpdate on Submarine Cable Cut - Daily Bulletin\u003cbr /\u003e@ 0900 GMT February 4 2008\u003cbr /\u003eBulletin will be updated Daily with Progress.\u003cbr /\u003eCut # 1:\u003cbr /\u003e− FLAG Europe-Asia cable was reported cut at 0800 hrs GMT on January 30 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e− Location of cut is at 8.3 kms from Alexandria, Egypt on segment between Egypt and Italy.\u003cbr /\u003e− The Repair ship loaded with spares is expected to reach the repair ground by February 5 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e− We have received the necessary permits to commence work from the Egyptian Authorities.\u003cbr /\u003e− FLAG has restored circuits of customers covered under Pre-planned Restoration service.\u003cbr /\u003e− FLAG has restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.\u003cbr /\u003eCut # 2:\u003cbr /\u003e− FALCON cable was reported cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1 2008.\u003cbr /\u003e− Location of cut is reported at 56 kms from Dubai, UAE on segment between UAE and Oman.\u003cbr /\u003e− The repair Ship is loaded with all spares and ready to sail. Awaiting clearance from Port Authorities due to 36 knots winds.\u003cbr /\u003e− FLAG is executing restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (February 7, 2008):  There have been some additional cable faults on FLAG\u0026rsquo;s cable systems, to a total of  four or five.  In addition to the two listed above (FLAG Europe-Asia, 8.3 km from Alexandria and FLAG FALCON 56 km from Dubai), there has been another on FLAG Europe-Asia 28 km from Penang, Malaysia scheduled for repair on February 11, and possibly two faults on FLAG FALCON near Bandar Abbas, Iran, on a segment that runs from Iran to Kuwait, which will be visited by a repair ship around February 19.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe current list is this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Consortium cable SeaMeWe-4, 12.334 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean.  Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Qtel\u0026rsquo;s cable from Haloul (Qatar) to Das (UAE), in the Persian Gulf.  Probably not a cut, but damaged power system due to weather.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  FLAG\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia (FEA Segment D), 8.3 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend by cable ship CS Certamen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4.  FLAG\u0026rsquo;s FALCON (FALCON Segment 2), 56 km from Dubai, UAE in the Persian Gulf, on the route to Al Seeb, Oman.  Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend.  This cut was due to a ship\u0026rsquo;s anchor\u0026ndash;an abandoned 5-6 ton anchor was recovered by FLAG at the site (see photo in \u003ca href=\"http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%20Bulletin%20Release%20070208.pdf\"\u003eFLAG\u0026rsquo;s update\u003c/a\u003e, PDF)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5.  FLAG\u0026rsquo;s Europe-Asia (FEA Segment M), 28 km from Penang, Malaysia.  Scheduled for repair on February 11 by cable ship CS Asean Restorer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6.  FLAG\u0026rsquo;s FALCON (FALCON Segments 7a and 7b), two faults on the cable between Kuwait and Bandar Abbas, Iran, scheduled for repair on February 19.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854\u0026amp;a=f\"\u003ean article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTechnology Review\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about the cable breaks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-am-lineman-for-county.html\"\u003eAlex at the Yorkshire Ranter\u003c/a\u003e is a breath of fresh air on this subject, his commentary presents some common sense opinions with a factual basis and accompanied by lots of good links.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 11, 2008):  \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10653963\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e also has an excellent summary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 16, 2008):  Two ships \u003ca href=\"http://www.ibnlive.com/news/indian-officer-held-for-undersea-cable-damage/63234-3.html\"\u003ehave been identified as the cause of damage to undersea cables in the Persian Gulf\u003c/a\u003e.  An Indian officer a Syrian chief engineer of an impounded Iraqi ship are being held for trial in Dubai, and the ship owner will have to pay $350,000 in compensation.  Another Korean ship was impounded and then released after its owners paid $60,000 in compensation to Flag Telecom.  The two ships, the MV Hounslow and the MV Ann, \u003ca href=\"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2214202/two-held-undersea-cable-damage\"\u003ewere identified by satellite photos\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2214202/two-held-undersea-cable-damage\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Middle East subsea cable cuts"},{"content":"And they both appear to be pretty accurate, informed about the dishonesty of the movie\u0026rsquo;s producers.\nOne is by Dan Whipple in Colorado Confidential, the other by Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel.\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2008-02-03):\nSounds sleazy, using Myers under false pretenses. Sort of like Francis Collins got used a while back, not that the neo-atheists were all that willing to be understanding when it happened to him. A better way to fight ID might be the one that some materialists had trouble thinking their way through when I proposed it last week, science can't deal with \"a designer\" since it is made to only deal with the material universe and can't address the supernatural. Of course,though they would gain a logically strong arguement for keeping religion out of science, they would lose the entire basis of popular neo-atheism. I guess that could indicate which one is more important for them to keep. Anthony McCarthy formerly styling himself as olvlzl\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/02/two-early-reviews-of-expelled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd they both appear to be pretty accurate, informed about \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html\"\u003ethe dishonesty of the movie\u0026rsquo;s producers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne is by \u003ca href=\"http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3229\"\u003eDan Whipple in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eColorado Confidential\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, the other by \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2008/02/is-ben-stein-th.html\"\u003eRoger Moore in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrlando Sentinel\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eolvlzl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-02-03)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSounds sleazy, using Myers under false pretenses.  Sort of like Francis Collins got used a while back, not that the neo-atheists were all \u003cB\u003ethat\u003c/B\u003e willing to be understanding when it happened to him.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eA better way to fight ID might be the one that some materialists had trouble thinking their way through when I proposed it last week, science can't deal with \"a designer\" since it is made to only deal with the material universe and can't address the supernatural.  Of course,though they would gain a logically strong arguement for keeping religion out of science, they would lose the entire basis of popular neo-atheism.  I guess that could indicate which one is more important for them to keep. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnthony McCarthy formerly styling himself as olvlzl\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Two early reviews of Expelled"},{"content":"Police are investigating mailings of suspicious white powder, which proved to be a hoax (apparently cornstarch and wheat germ), to nineteen Church of Scientology addresses today, which led to evacuations and closures. The LAPD and FBI are both investigating.\nThe LA Times says that \u0026ldquo;there was no evidence that Wednesday\u0026rsquo;s mailings were connected to the hacking\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;a cyber attack last week\u0026rdquo;), though I suspect the mailings were from somebody participating in the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo; on Scientology.\nIf they happen to catch the people behind the hoax, I won\u0026rsquo;t have sympathy for them.\nThe San Francisco Chronicle reports that a married couple in Stockton were incorrectly targeted for harrassment on the belief they were pro-Scientology hackers.\nThe Scientology main website has been moved to Prolexic Technologies, a company that sells a service to filter denial of service traffic.\n\u0026ldquo;Google bombing\u0026rdquo; has been used to make the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s website the top Google search result for \u0026ldquo;dangerous cult\u0026rdquo; and Xenu.net the third result for \u0026ldquo;Scientology.\u0026quot;\nThe Economist has now reported on the battle, under the title \u0026ldquo;Fair game.\u0026quot;\nThe Wikipedia page on \u0026ldquo;Project Chanology\u0026rdquo; is a good place to keep up-to-date on the events of the latest Internet battles involving Scientology.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-01):\nThere are few things that make me angrier when someone, in the name of countering something heinous (such as the old Fair Game policy of Hubbard), turns around and engages in that very behavior.It's sickening. Where is Asimov when you need him? (see here for that to make sense)\njackd (2008-02-01):\nScientology is just about the only organization twisted enough to pull this to discredit their opponents. Not that I have any kind of evidence or anything. Not even saying this makes sense.\nSmaDo (2008-02-01):\nQuick denials where ever you look, ain't that interesting. And I thought you \"Anonymous\" are just a disorganized group of script kiddies who do not even know each other? What's next, 711chans? Murder? I hope they'll get you and I won't have a grain of sympathy when you end up in jail for stirring up hate crimes.\nLippard (2008-02-01):\nJack:That is actually a good point.Here's a quote from my \"Scientology v. the Internet: An Update and Response to Leisa Goodman\":\"Andrew Milne, for example, regularly posts the same press releases again and again, including one attacking Larry Wollersheim which accuses him of being a drug abusing con man and draft evader. Ironically, in this piece Milne suggests that Wollersheim engaged in dirty tricks to win his major lawsuit against the Church, such as drowning the judge's collie, Duke. When a quote from Judge Swearinger regarding the dog's drowning was published in The American Lawyer (Horne 1992), Scientologists denied any involvement, and Milne had previously maintained that the dog had simply had a heart attack and then fallen into the pool. Apparently Milne feels that it is legitimate to change stories when convenient for an attack on a Scientology critic--he has never explained his contradictory accounts.\"The judge thought Scientology had killed his dog and slashed his tires. So Scientology filed an appeal which included allegations that the judge was biased against Scientology, claiming that he had communicated to the jury that Scientology had killed his dog and slashed his tires, even though the jury foreman testified that no such communication had occurred.Steven Fishman testified that he had been told by a Scientologist that he drowned the judge's dog, and that Fishman had himself been ordered to call up jurors in the middle of the night and hang up on them.Wollersheim won in the end.\nLippard (2008-02-01):\nI think the \"they sent it to themselves\" hypothesis is somewhat less likely than the \"some idiot sent it to them as part of this 'war'\" hypothesis. But their sending it to themselves isn't beyond the realm of possibility, by any means.smado, if I had to guess, I'd say you're a Scientologist... do you happen to know Andy Milne?\njoel hanes (2008-02-08):\nOne remembers that Scientology's OSA sent bomb threats to themselves, as part of their campaign against Paulette Cooper.They sent them to other people too, of course ...\nLippard (2008-02-08):\nIt was the Guardian Office back then rather than OSA, but yes, they stole some of her stationery and sent themselves (Church of Scientology of New York) two bomb threats on that paper. They planned to go even further with something called \"Operation Freakout,\" with the intent of getting her imprisoned or confined to a mental institution, but the exposure of \"Operation Snow White\" put a stop to that.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/hoax-white-powder-sent-to-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePolice \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-threat31jan31,1,6115546.story\"\u003eare investigating mailings of suspicious white powder\u003c/a\u003e, which proved to be a hoax (apparently cornstarch and wheat germ), to \u003ca href=\"http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gTZImk3wpl6eQcVk480xp6M-l91QD8UH3JU84\"\u003enineteen Church of Scientology addresses\u003c/a\u003e today, which led to evacuations and closures.  The LAPD and FBI are both investigating.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLA Times\u003c/span\u003e says that \u0026ldquo;there was no evidence that Wednesday\u0026rsquo;s mailings were connected to the hacking\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;a cyber attack last week\u0026rdquo;), though I suspect the mailings were from somebody participating in the \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo; on Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf they happen to catch the people behind the hoax, I won\u0026rsquo;t have sympathy for them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/01/31/state/n182708S53.DTL\"\u003ereports that a married couple in Stockton were incorrectly targeted for harrassment on the belief they were pro-Scientology hackers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Scientology main website \u003ca href=\"http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141839-c,hackers/article.html\"\u003ehas been moved to Prolexic Technologies\u003c/a\u003e, a company that sells a service to filter denial of service traffic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Google bombing\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e has been used to make the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s website the top Google search result for \u0026ldquo;dangerous cult\u0026rdquo; and Xenu.net the third result for \u0026ldquo;Scientology.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e has now reported on the battle, under the title \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10609174\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fair game.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Wikipedia page on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Project Chanology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e is a good place to keep up-to-date on the events of the latest Internet battles involving Scientology.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hoax white powder sent to Scientology"},{"content":"\nFrom Scott Horton, \u0026ldquo;The Illustrated President,\u0026quot; Harper\u0026rsquo;s, January 24, 2008:\nGeorge W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it: I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves. So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.\n\u0026hellip;\nBush’s description of “A Charge to Keep” struck me as very strange. In fact, I’d say highly improbable. Now, however, Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy: [Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination. Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.” So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president. In an update, Horton points out that Sidney Blumenthal traced the story of this painting in an April 2007 column at Salon.com.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\nUPDATE (January 27, 2008): Commenter Bruce points out below that this painting misidentification was discovered even earlier by Jonathan Hutson in a blog post titled \u0026ldquo;Horseshit! Bush and the Christian Cowboy\u0026rdquo; at Talk to Action in May of 2006. Hutson uncovers the correct name of the painting and the story it was intended to illustrate, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t point out that the character in the story who Bush identifies with in the painting is a thief fleeing from justice.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-26):\nAdding another level to the irony, I just listened yesterday to a podcast of Weisberg on NPR's Fresh Air discussing his book and he points out that while Bush is an evangelical Christian, he doesn't actually act like an evangelical Christian. That is, he doesn't really make any effort to prosletyze, not even to his children.Weisberg says that he has a quote in the book from Bill Clinton about Bush that is dead on ... I can't remember it exactly but the gist was: Bush doesn't know anything, he doesn't want to know anything. But he's not stupid.Incidentally, I believe this is my favorite painting. I'm also partial to Magritte's other version. They're both titled \"The Human Condition\"\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nBoth are very nice. I've enjoyed Magritte's work since reading Goedel, Escher, Bach, which provoked me to buy Suzi Gablik's book on Magritte and a couple of Escher books.The most recent art books I've bought that I've found comparably interesting are Mark Ryden's Anima Mundi and the Codex Seraphinianus.\nBruce Wilson (2008-01-27):\nJim - Adding yet another level of irony to this is the fact that this story about George W. Bush's \"A Charge To Keep\" painting was actually first broken, by author and lawyer Jonathan Hutson, over a year and a half ago on Talk To Action. It's a great read too.\nBruce Wilson (2008-01-27):\nOops - let me provide a dedicated url for Hutson's story:Horseshit! Bush and the Christian Cowboy\nLippard (2008-01-27):\nBruce: Thanks for pointing out this earlier expose... I'll update the main post to include a link.\nnate (2008-01-27):\nAt least the guy who could be an inspiration for his maverick actions is dead...slightly better than the Falwell/Reagan relationship that yielded a dispensationally fueled cold war.Not much better though.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/george-w-bushs-favorite-painting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/koerner.gif\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/koerner.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom Scott Horton, \u003ca href=\"http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002237\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Illustrated President,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHarper\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/span\u003e, January 24, 2008:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eGeorge W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it: \u003c/p\u003e","title":"George W. Bush's favorite painting"},{"content":"After massive election fraud in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, and other countries, it\u0026rsquo;s nice to see that we know how to follow standard procedures and use mechanisms to ensure that our voting is fair and properly secured\u0026hellip;\nOr perhaps not. The video and the lengthier description at the link are from Beverly Davis\u0026rsquo; Black Box Voting project\u0026rsquo;s coverage of the New Hampshire recount process.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/election-fraud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter massive election fraud in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, and other countries, it\u0026rsquo;s nice to see that we know how to follow standard procedures and use mechanisms to ensure that our voting is fair and properly secured\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOr \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/71572.html\"\u003eperhaps not\u003c/a\u003e.  The video and the lengthier description at the link are from Beverly Davis\u0026rsquo; Black Box Voting project\u0026rsquo;s coverage of the New Hampshire recount process.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PKQEQ7qHvgM\u0026amp;rel=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PKQEQ7qHvgM\u0026amp;rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Election fraud"},{"content":"This should be considered old news, but the Center for Public Integrity has done an extensive analysis of statements made by the president, the vice president, and five other senior members of the Bush Administration between September 11, 2001 and September 2003 and identified 935 specific false statements made. These statements are now part of a searchable database, and they\u0026rsquo;ve put together a graph that shows how the frequency and number of false statements dramatically increased during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and then declined as the truth became known in the course of the war:\nPresident Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq\u0026rsquo;s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq\u0026rsquo;s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).\nThe massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.\nThe CPI report is titled \u0026ldquo;The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War.\u0026quot;\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-25):\nYep.\"Now let's see here. There have been 3931 US military deaths in Iraq. That's 4.2 US military deaths per lie.The lower estimate of Iraqi deaths from Iraq Body Count is 80,625. That's 86.2 Iraqi deaths per lie.The more realistic estimate of Iraqi deaths from the Lancet study is 655,000. That's 700.5 Iraqi deaths per lie.The Iraqi occupation has cost the United States about 500 billion dollars so far. That's 534,759,358 dollars per lie.A more realistic assessment of the cost of the Iraqi occupation is about 1 trillion dollars. That's 1,069,518,716 dollars per lie.And yet they sleep at night.\"Conspiracy to fraud is a serious crime. Imagine what might happen if the media pursued this story with the tenacity that they pursue missing white females, celebrity deaths, and Britney Spears's vagina.\nSeven Star Hand (2008-01-26):\nGreetings Class,Now please be seated and listen up! The lectures will now commence...The combination of the Center for Public Integrity's \"Iraq: The War Card\" research, George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, Eisner \u0026 Royce's The Italian Letter, and the books and research of many others in recent years now provide enough of a foundation for everyone to finally discern that 9:11 was a \"false flag\" operation against both the American public and the Muslim world. Notice how the Bush/Cheney crew and cohorts ruthlessly profited from these events and the resulting wars and how they were ready and prepared to do so, even before 9:11.Read More: What they knew and when they knew it!\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nPlease, don't try to connect 9/11 conspiracy nonsense to a carefully researched report.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-26):\nI listened to a podcast of Real Time with Bill Maher the other day. Rapper Mos Def was a guest and didn't believe that al Qaeda exists.Weird.I posted something about Ron Paul a while ago and got a reply with a link to a page with a video of about every conspiracy theory you can think of .... hold on ... here it is.\nSeven Star Hand (2008-01-26):\nHello again Jim,Those who deny the existence of conspiracies are doomed to be victims of deception. That is one reason why ignorance is symbolized as blindness.Remember, their is no wisdom without the truth, and no truth without discernment. When you paint all so-called \"conspiracy theories\" with the same wide brush, the truth becomes obscured, just as those who crafted the deception had hoped.What will it take for the blind to open their eyes to \"see the light\" (understand the truth)?Here is Wisdom !!\nEinzige (2008-01-26):\nWho is denying the existence of a conspiracy? Clearly there was one. How else did these 19+ conspirators co-ordinate their hijackings?\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nI guess I'm going to have to get around to watching that entire Zeitgeist movie at some point, so that I can critique it more fully. It seems to be getting passed around more and more.In the first 15 minutes it's already completely full of shit, with bogus parallels between Egyptian religion and Christianity from Tom Harpur's _The Pagan Christ_, a work of pseudoscholarship that relies heavily on other pseudoscholars (like 18th century archaeologist Godfrey Higgins, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet Gerald Massey, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology. For example, it draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated--Horus wasn't born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on Horus and Isis is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained.I'm not sure I can stand to watch another hour and 43 minutes, especially since I know reams of nonsense about the Federal Reserve and 9/11 conspiracy theory are coming...\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nThere was definitely a 9/11 conspiracy, probably funded by Saudi royalty and possibly by Pakistani intelligence services. But the \"9/11 truth\" people tend to be completely ignorant about radical Islam and the actual events leading up to September 11, 2001--and it shows in their crazy theories, which don't even begin to include the level of detail that's in the 9/11 Commission Report. Sure, it's a flawed document, just as the Warren Commission Report was flawed, but it is still far, far more comprehensive, detailed, and accurately sourced than anything the truthers put out. The right way to investigate 9/11 is to start with the 9/11 Commission Report, with accounts of the movements and actions of the 19 terrorists, and going back farther to the 1993 WTC bombing, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, the murder of Emir Shalabi, the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane by El-Sayyid Nosair, the killing of Rashad Khalifa in Tucson in 1990 and the role of James Williams and Wadih el-Hage (secretary for Osama bin Laden in Sudan), and so on. But I'd guess that this is all meaningless to Seven Star Hand.The U.S. government's connection is that it funded the mujahideen insurgents in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and then walked away after the Soviets were defeated, allowing rich Saudis to step in. There's no question that \"blowback\" has played a major role, and I'll also agree that the Bush Administration has hugely exploited the 9/11 attacks to its advantage and to expand presidential power (as the PBS Frontline on \"Cheney's Law\" documents, which I highly recommend watching and you can see online).But again, my point is stick to reliable sources and accounts that attempt to be as comprehensive as possible, not bullshit stories made by collecting a few bits of data from unreliable sources and constructing elaborate fantasies of speculation.\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nSeven Star Hand:Your \"two spirits\" link definitely falls into the bullshit category. One of the articles off your main page is titled \"Money: The Greatest Lie Ever Told\" and features this quote: \"Unknown to almost everyone, the Vatican is the secret ruler of Planet Earth. They are also the secret central bank that sits behind several layers of deception and manipulates the world’s financial systems. They are the hidden controllers of those who control national and international banking and economies. All national debts exist because of the Vatican’s manipulations, and all national debts ultimately enrich the Vatican and its primary cohorts. ... They secretly control or instigate all the primary secret societies such as the Illuminati, Masons, Skull and Bones, KKK, and various Nazi and White Supremacy movements.\"I note that there is no evidence supplied or referred to that supports any of these claims, and that document goes on to show that the writer doesn't have the slightest comprehension of money or finance, but thinks that if money went away we'd magically have some kind of socialist paradise. Guess what--in reality, even socialists use money, which is just a store of value used to facilitate voluntary exchanges. In reality, you can't get rid of money--if you abolish government currency, you'll get private currency and credit, since barter is too unwieldy for most transactions.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-26):\n\"I guess I'm going to have to get around to watching that entire Zeitgeist movie at some point, so that I can critique it more fully. It seems to be getting passed around more and more.\"Someone sent me an e-mail several months asking me to do that. I watched about 5 minutes and then I could take anymore. I responded that it was pretty obviously conspiracy propaganda, but that someone more knowledgeable than I am about world religions would need to rebut the specific allegations in the film. I fast-fowarded it and later on it shifts into more typical 9/11 conspiracy stuff.I was going to e-mail Skeptic magazine or Michael Shermer and recommend Tim Callahan doing a review but I never got around to it.\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nLooks like Zeitgeist's source on the Egyptian stuff could also be Acharya S's (D.M. Murdock) \"The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold.\" That seems likely.\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nThe 9/11 section of Zeitgeist is pretty bad, with a few accurate facts here and there. It relies heavily on Michael Ruppert, about whom I found this interesting news article.Nothing seems to be sourced, and it seems to contradict itself. It claims there's no evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to the attacks (despite the fact that we have people like al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh, who attempted to enter the U.S. to enter a flight school but was denied a visa, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, head of al Qaeda's media committee and main plotter of the attacks, in custody), yet turns around and suggests that there's something suspicious about the Bush family connections to the bin Laden family and that two members of the bin Laden family lived in Falls Church, Virginia \"right next to CIA Headquarters.\" Why would that connection be relevant or suspicious if Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with it?Osama bin Laden's father had 55 children and 22 wives, and there are currently about 600 of them--most appear to be law-abiding citizens who have disowned Osama. The two Falls Church residents, however, were two of Osama's sons, Abdallah and Omar, the latter of whom was a member of al Qaeda.The charge of the FBI being told to \"back off\" from bin Laden investigations from the White House is now known to have been approved by counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, not exactly a fan of George W. Bush, whose testimony on the issue has been somewhat inconsistent. While Clarke originally claimed the plan came from top officials in the White House and was approved in consultation with the FBI, he subsequently said that he took personal responsibility for the decision to allow the bin Laden family members to leave the U.S., and that he didn't think it was a mistake, and that he'd do it again.\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nAnother Zeitgeist source is Ted Gunderson, who I'm familiar with from his spouting nonsense about Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s. He also has endorsed the accuracy of phony psychic Sylvia Browne, and endorses wild claims of child sexual abuse by \"some of America's leading politicians\" including George W. Bush, which makes him sound like the crazy mind-control sex slave claimants, \"Brice Taylor\" (Susan Ford), Cathy O'Brien, and Kola Boof (the last of whom makes the sex slave claims without the mind control claims).\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-26):\nCheck it out. The usual suspects have once again discovered that all roads lead to the evil liberal Nazi fascist communist progressive George Soros.I'm trying to decide which I think is crazier - the 9/11 conspiracies or the 'all roads lead to George Soros' hate. If you check Google there are gaggles of bloggers saying the study is bogus because the institution has received funding from foundations connected to Soros. Off the top of my head, the conservative movement has now dismissed on the grounds that it can be connected to Soros: global warming, the Lancet study, a Free Press/CAP study about talk radio diversity, the Center for American Progress, Media Matters, um ... that's all I can think of off the top of my head.Funny how this standard doesn't go the same way. You don't see Malkin dismissing Murdoch owned entities, even though his influence in content is a bit more intrusive than their imaginings of Soros as the Liberal Fascist puppet master.Sorry for the rant. The reality dismissal sets me off ... I used to react the same way to creationism. I suppose I'll get used to this eventually.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-27):\nIs that you on the donors page? If so, I can imagine their response to this post:[channels inner Malkin]: Ha! Left-wing Bush Derangement Syndrome infected liberal moonbat Jim Lippard tries to pass off the \"study\" HE funded as \"journalism\" when in reality its just typical BDS talking points. The Truthers strike again!\nLippard (2008-01-27):\nNo problem, your comments are always welcome here. I agree with you that the Soros/Murdoch position shows a double standard. The fact that Soros funded one of the two organizations that funded this study says *nothing* about its accuracy. (BTW, I'm a funder of the other organization, the Center for Public Integrity.)There's a statement at the bottom of Malkin's blog piece that says \"Being proven wrong is not 'lying.'\" True, but repeating falsehoods after being corrected is lying. And some of the bullshit the administration was promulgating was transparently obvious bullshit, in my opinion--aluminum tubes, Nigerian uranium, 50kg of Turkish uranium, etc.I'm still working my way through Zeitgeist... the Federal Reserve section argues that the Panic of 1907 was caused by (rather than, as was actually the case, ended by) J.P. Morgan, and makes no mention of the Knickerbocker Trust. It argues that the Federal Reserve Act was put into effect by a conspiracy of international bankers and the Rockefellers through Sen. Nelson Aldrich, and claims that the Federal Reserve is entirely private (even though its head and board of governors is appointed by the president, which isn't mentioned--Wikipedia gets the legal status right, it's part of the federal government but with a fair degree of independence so that politicians can't directly manipulate the monetary policy). It then goes off into tax evader craziness, claiming that the 16th Amendment wasn't properly ratified, but without actually discussing the evidence. That argument is made in William J. Benson and Martin J. Beckman's book The Law That Never Was, which documents errors in the ratification documents, such as typos, alternate capitalization, alternate pluralization, etc. Courts have ruled that Benson's argument doesn't work and that his selling his book as part of a tax evasion defense package constitutes fraud, and he's served time in jail for tax evasion.I just came across an even more interesting argument against income tax (not in Zeitgeist) discussed by Cecil Adams in his \"Straight Dope\" column, which is that the 16th Amendment is invalid because Ohio was not a state at the time of ratification, and William H. Taft, who was president, was therefore not legally president since he was not a U.S. Citizen. Everybody thought Ohio was made a state in 1803, but in 1953 when Ohio was preparing for its 150th anniversary of statehood, they found that Congress had defined its boundaries and approved its constitution, but failed to admit it to statehood. Ohio made an appeal for statehood (delivering it to Congress by horseback) and Congress passed a resolution granting it retroactively. Cecil Adams' description and commentary about it is worth reading.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-27):\nStrictly speaking, much of the false statements are indeed not lies, but bullshit and self-deception based on cherry-picking the intelligence to find what they wanted to hear. Which doesn't excuse it in the slightest.William Clifford gives an excellent rebuttal in \"The Ethics of Belief\".A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him.Instead of a sound ship, they believed they had a sound war.\nRagin' Cajun (2008-02-02):\nI found it amusing while I was reading your article at the fact of someone searching for a fault in the President and his Cabinet because they don't have enough trust in their own goverment that they would try to detect a fault in the government, perhaps to make themselves feel somewhat witty and secure(though I'm not sure how that works). If there were false statements there was probably a reason that did not concern you. It was a time of crisis and you are out of line on scorning their decisions, for, as far as I know,you were never president. It's funny how you trust a single source over the leaders of our country.\nEinzige (2008-02-02):\nPenguin,There's no way you're for real. No one can possibly be that deluded.\nLippard (2008-02-02):\nPenguin: What are you talking about? No one is relying on \"a single source\" here. And nobody had to \"search\" very hard for faults in the president when we've had almost eight years of dishonesty and criminal acts documented by numerous sources.The president is damned by his own words and actions.\nHume's Ghost (2008-02-03):\nScrew trust.\"[F]ree government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go ... In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.\" - Thomas JeffersonIt's well past time that this president was impeached. As we speak he continues to assert the power to act in violation of laws duly passed by Congress and the Constitution of this nation, having done this through signing statments hundreds of times.We already fought a revolution over someone doing that.\"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.\" - Declaration of Independence\nRunning Writer (2009-03-31):\nHi Lippard,I only have 2 questions: Question one, is it true (from your research) that there were several planes on the air carrying out \"mock attacks\" on the WTC and pentagon on 9/11 with Cheney as the Commander In Chief?And from that context, are the following 9/11 statements true:\"Is this real world or an exercise?\" Col. Robert K. Marr Jr, NorthEast Air Defense Sector\"We didn't know how many more there were...\"Lt. Col. William E. Glover Jr. NORAD Air Defense OperationsSecond Question regards the \"warnings not to travel\" issued to the likes of the AG, Salman Rushdie and Condolezza Rice on the eve of 911. Were they warned? Why not the general public?What has your research uncovered regarding these two claims?The following link presents the claim in my first question more comprehensivelyhttp://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtmlKeep up the good work.Jacob\nLippard (2009-04-02):\nJacob: There were NORAD exercises occurring on 9/11, but not involving attacks on the WTC or the Pentagon, nor with Cheney as Commander in Chief. The two military officials quotes you have look accurate. For more info, see this blog post from The Lippard Blog.There were certainly warnings and chatter about the attacks for several weeks or months prior to 9/11, but not specific as to the targets. One of the key NSA intercepts about the attack wasn't translated until a few days after it was over. The biggest screwups were due to lack of communication between the INS, FBI, and NSA about specific individuals who should have been closely followed, but weren't due to that lack of communication.Your \"Crossing the Rubicon\" link's thesis strikes me as implausible.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/false-statements-from-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis should be considered old news, but the Center for Public Integrity has done an extensive analysis of statements made by the president, the vice president, and five other senior members of the Bush Administration between September 11, 2001 and September 2003 and identified 935 specific false statements made.  These statements are now part of a searchable database, and they\u0026rsquo;ve put together a graph that shows how the frequency and number of false statements dramatically increased during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and then declined as the truth became known in the course of the war:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"False statements from the Bush administration before the war in Iraq"},{"content":"In a press release yesterday that cites an article I co-authored in Skeptic magazine, a group referring to itself as \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; has announced that it has declared war against Scientology. The stated justification for the \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo; is the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s attempts to keep a video of Tom Cruise off the net. That video, which is still viewable at Gawker.com, was made for a Scientology awards ceremony. The longer video from which it was taken is also now viewable there. Gawker.com responded to a cease and desist letter with a refusal to remove the video, which it considers to be fair use for news and comment, but I\u0026rsquo;m not so sure that it has a good legal case for putting up more than short excerpts. (In case you\u0026rsquo;re wondering about all the Scientology jargon in the Tom Cruise video, MTV has done a good job of explaining it. Actor Jerry O\u0026rsquo;Connell has also put out a good parody.)\nThe \u0026ldquo;war,\u0026rdquo; which is described at another site under the name \u0026ldquo;Project Chanology\u0026rdquo; (a reference to 4chan, a popular message board, where most posts are made by people who don\u0026rsquo;t login and are thus attributed to \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo;), calls for denial of service attacks over the Internet, prank phone calls, spam emails, and personal visits involving vandalism and harassment. Apparently Scientology\u0026rsquo;s main website was down due to denial of service for at least part of the day yesterday.\nThe press release cites a number of web pages for further information about Scientology, the second of which is the article \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech \u0026amp; Copyright Infringement on the Information Super-Highway\u0026rdquo; which Jeff Jacobsen and I wrote for Skeptic magazine in 1995 after Scientology effectively declared war on the Internet. (A much lesser-known sequel to that article, published only on the web, is \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: An Update and Response to Leisa Goodman.\u0026quot;)\nI completely disagree with the tactics being used here\u0026ndash;Scientology has as much right to free speech and protection of their copyrights as anyone else, though I also condemn Scientology\u0026rsquo;s habitual misuse of copyright to try to suppress fair use of information. To the extent this is a prank designed to get media attention, well done. To the extent it gets taken seriously, though, it\u0026rsquo;s something that may not end well. Read the material, watch the videos, have a laugh, and tell others about the absurdity and abuses of Scientology. But please, don\u0026rsquo;t launch attacks on their websites, harass individuals, or engage in vandalism.\n\u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; previously received coverage for attacks on MySpace accounts on Fox 11 in Los Angeles on July 26, 2007.\nBTW, the press release gets its facts wrong when it claims that the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup was \u0026ldquo;shut down.\u0026rdquo; Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin issued an rmgroup message, but almost all news servers ignored it. The accurate facts may be found in Jeff\u0026rsquo;s and my Skeptic article.\nUPDATE: Wikinews and Xenu.net have more.\nCairnarvon (2008-01-23):\nPerhaps Scientology should get a dog. And/or curtains.(Is your misunderstanding of the nature of Anon an ironic jab at the Fox piece, or unintentional?)\nLippard (2008-01-23):\n\"Anonymous\" strikes me as a joke about attributing an action to an individual or group named \"anonymous\" rather than truly anonymous individuals. It seems to me that this press release is intended to provoke individual action, rather than action from an actual group called \"anonymous,\" yet the fact remains that there is some actual individual or group behind the press release.\nReed (2008-01-23):\nI'm surprised that we see DDOS attacks of an ideological nature so soon. You'd think that the botnets of compromised Windows machines (which are presumably being used in this case) would be used solely for illicit commercial and military ventures (extortion, etc.)Perhaps this is a taste of what's to come, where ideological battles aren't simply a war of words and images, but also of shutting-down the opponent's mouthpiece?I do admit to experiencing a bit of schadenfreude, however.\nCairnarvon (2008-01-23):\nBotnets have been around for many years, Reed. If they were only now beginning to be used for ideological ends, it would be surprisingly late.It would surprise me if botnets of any real size were used, though, and I can assure you there is no overlap between criminal organisations who'd use botnets for illicit commercial ventures or extortion and Anon. It's a very different kind of animal.If any Anons did maintain botnets, it would just be, as said, for the lulz.\nLippard (2008-01-23):\nI agree with Cairnarvon on that point... botnets have been around in something close to their current form since around 2002, though they didn't really start getting substantial media attention until 2006 (with a few exceptions, like The Register, which had stories in 2005, as well as Dave Dittrich's article in the March 2005 issue of Information Security), after the first U.S. prosecution (against Christopher Maxwell), which was publicized in May of that year (for events that took place in January 2005).I agree that the majority of botnet (and malware use in general) is for economic ends, but we already saw an ideological use with the Russian attack on Estonia in April of last year.InfoWorld just ran a story called \"Botnets: The New Political Activism\" earlier this month.\nRONBOTHUNTER (2008-09-02):\nWHAT IS THE SECRET THAT THE “ANTI-GOD CULT” CALLED “SCIENTOLGY” FEARS THE MOST FROM BEING EXPOSED?The secret most un-exposed about Scientology is that is it an “applied physiological philosophy” rather than an “applied religious philosophy”. All Scientology courses, all auditing processes, and all the management and professional courses are based on physiological phenomenas, psychophysiology, emotions, human behavior patterns etc., that are our birth right and used in Scientology as their own discoveries. Even their PTS-SP data is based upon how a “Symptom” re-stimulation is brought out by physiological reactions of the mind affecting the body when under stress. They blame innocent human beings called by them “suppressive persons” for bringing out a symptom that was there to warn you of hidden real illnesses caused by non-suppressive sources such as parasites, chemicals, poisons, toxins, viruses and bacteria. The data on PTS-SP is twisted by them to blame innocent people in order to keep them in line.The only way to fight them is to expose to the world--how Scientology has used physiological phenomenas as the basis for a false religion. How it has harmed families by claiming that innocent mothers and fathers are SPs -- when they lied about symptom re-stimulations to the world.No where in Scientology will you find courses on any bible, there is no study or belief in heaven, hell, saints, angels, the devil, or even God himself. They do not study religion or even believe in religions. They do not share common values with any other religion. Their goal is to eliminate all other religions.The E-meter reads your physiological reactions, the Ronbots never calls it that—they call it the “CHARGE” or the “MASS” or “ENGRAMS” OR “MENTAL IMAGE PICTURES” that you have in your brain—all meant to distract you from the truth.Know this fact --- There is a law of Nature or law of God called “Physiological Reactions” that is the true secret behind Scientology’s Dianectic study technology.AUDITING ERASES AND LESSONS YOUR PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIONS!!! Once they are gone – your symptoms can’t be re-stimulated by stress or arguments. This is NOT a good thing, because ALL doctors depend on symptoms to guide them in treating you! This is why they prohibit you from seeing the doctors of your choice!!! Understand now how the scam works? Now when you argue with your mother and don’t get sick – you think she was the cause of all your illnesses.If you were audited a hundred times (repeated) for a word that you were ordered to never clear or understand, and then made to read a page that contained that word—it would never again read on the Emeter or cause a physiological reaction.LRH discovered that when you passed a misunderstood word—you manifested many reactions of various types: Yawning, sleepiness, not there feeling, dizziness, blurry eyes, nervousness and dozens more.Being the liar that he was, he claimed that physiological reactions which he now calls “Dianetics” was “‘his” invention and not a law of God; he hid the fact that it is our human inheritance since time began.Granted that his power of obnosis (observation) was the best in the world, his crime against humanity was to make a “religion” based upon the falsehood, that it was his invention or creation and not a law of God belonging to all Humanity as their lawful right.For proof that the Cult has lied to you: -- Google “L. Ron Hubbard and Physiological Reactions” or visit their own Godless websites:http://www.studytechnology.org/10-barr.htm or http://www.lronhubbardstudytech.asn.au/10-barr.htm http://www.studytech.org/study_tech3.phphttp://www.effective-education.org/pg003.htmlLRH used God’s Natural laws to make slaves of mankind!“So long as a physiological phenomenon remains the knowledge of a few and is denied to the many it can be utilized to control the many.” LRH (from Journal of Scientology Issue 4-G from Oct. 1952)“This universe has long been looking for new ways to make slaves. Well, we\u0026#39;ve got some new ways to make slaves here.” LRH (from PDC tape lecture #20 “Formative State of Scientology, Definition of Logic”, given on 6 Dec 52) \u0026quot;All men shall be my slaves! LRHAll women shall submit to my charms! LRHAll mankind shall grovel at my feet and not know why!\u0026quot; [L. Ron Hubbard, \u0026quot;Affirmations\u0026quot;, late 1940s] Affirmations, exhibits 500-4D, E, F \u0026amp; G. See Church of Scientology v Armstrong, transcript volume 11, p.1886.\u0026quot;Somebody some day will say \u0026#39;this is illegal\u0026#39;.By then be sure the orgs say what is legal or not.\u0026quot;L. Ron Hubbard, HCOPL 4 January 1966\u0026quot;THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM”. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.\u0026quot; - L. Ron Hubbard, \u0026quot;Off the Time Track,\u0026quot; lecture of June 1952, excerpted in JOURNAL OF SCIENTOLOGY issue 18-G, reprinted in TECHNICAL VOLUMES OF DIANETICS \u0026amp; SCIENTOLOGY, vol. 1, p. 418\u0026quot;Scientology...is not a religion.\u0026quot; - L. Ron Hubbard, CREATION OF HUMAN ABILITY, 1954, p. 251All living beings have physiological (The functions and activities of life or of living matter such as the organic processes of organs, tissues, or cells) phenomenas (observable reactions known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition), or physical manifestations (made evident by showing or displaying) or physical reactions, that we see or feel as symptoms, and they are external and/or internal or visible signs or warnings given to us, by our creator to help us survive, help us increase our potential, our knowledge and our health.All life on Earth has these cause and effect reactions called physiological phenomenas. All living beings whether they are plant, insect, retile or animal or human could not live without these reactions. They influence the body’s and the mind’s reactions to any form of stimuli, and have an influence on every cell of the body and mind. [Noun. Physiological reaction – Is an automatic instinctive unlearned reaction to a stimulus.][Examples of physiological reactions: inborn reflex, innate reflex, instinctive reflex, reflex response, unconditioned reflex, accommodation reflex, Babinski reflex, belching, headache, migraines, swelling, sweating, erections, blinking, blushing, burping, defecation reflex, disgorgement, involuntary eye blinking, farting, skin flush, gag reflex, goose bump, goose pimple, gooseflesh, involuntary gulping, involuntary hiccup, knee-jerk reflex, light reflex, puking, papillary reflex, rectal reflex, regurgitation, shaking, shiver, shock, sneezing, startle, stretch reflex, suckling reflex, trembling, upset stomach, vomiting, involuntary winking, yawn, yawning -- plus hundreds more.] Ron studied Physiological reactions more than most scientists and applied it to invent a new Religion.He did not invent but copied the laws of nature and scammed the whole world into thinking that he alone discovered these reactions and no one else did. What he did do - was noticed the reactions of students and from this scam invented Dianetics “study tech”.Examples of Physiological reactions of the body and mind when reading:Falling asleep while reading - yawning, confusion, feeling blank, feeling anxious, not there feeling, tearing eyes, eyes going out of focus, dizziness, reeling, rebelliousness, headaches, skipping words, feeling nauseous, fidgeting, jumpy while reading, can’t stay still, mispronouncing words, feeling as if you are squashed, feeling as if you are over-whelmed, twitching, can’t apply what you are reading, can’t understand what you are reading, etc. are all due to physiological reactions when you read misunderstood words or misunderstood definitions. To understand the secrets of your enemy –is to know exactly where to hurt him.Scientology’s copyrighted files on based upon the laws of Nature and laws of God; they are in violation of copyrights and patent rights. Therefore, the contents or subjects can be used by anyone and can be talked about without fear of any lawsuit.Everything you do produces a reaction in your body and mind. Every time you read, eat, sleep, rest, run, etc. produces a reaction. To tell your mother that you invented a new religion, because you discovered why you farted, is a good example of the scam that Ron pulled on you. He got away with it because the world did not see these reactions as they applied to reading. Or if some scientist saw and knew it—he did not protest it and allowed a Cult to claim it as their own new discovery.If you want to destroy the cult, study your own reactions each time you do something—learn to read yourself and use your own power of obnosis to discover the real world within you.Yours trulyRonbotHunterAll Rights Reserved. Copyright Ronbothunter--- All Rights Reserved, Without Prejudice UCC 1-308 \u0026amp; 1-103.6 including rights under the UCC and common law remedies. I reserve my right not to be compelled to perform under any contract or commercial agreement that I did not personally sign and enter knowingly, voluntarily and intentionally and especially if I was not given full disclosure. I do not accept the liability of the compelled benefit of any unrevealed contract or commercial agreement.\nEinzige (2008-09-02):\nWow. I don't think I've ever read a better endorsement of Scientology than this twaddle from Ronbothunter (and, in case you're not paying attention, I think Scientology is pure crap).\nJustin (2008-12-02):\nWhile not all of what anonymous has done is good, it is about time for someone to question Scientology and its ways of getting whatever it wants. The internet is the perfect place for that to be done because it does provide a sense of anonymity in that the Scientology legal team can't try and screw over anyone who questions them.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/anonymous-launches-war-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a press release yesterday that cites an article I co-authored in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine, a group referring to itself as \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.prlog.org/10046797-internet-group-anonymous-declares-war-on-scientology.html\"\u003ehas announced that it has declared war against Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.  The stated justification for the \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo; is the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s attempts to keep a video of Tom Cruise off the net.  That video, \u003ca href=\"http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress\"\u003ewhich is still viewable at Gawker.com\u003c/a\u003e, was made for a Scientology awards ceremony.  The longer video from which it was taken is \u003ca href=\"http://gawker.com/345563/tom-cruise-uncut-the-freedom-medal-award-ceremony\"\u003ealso now viewable there\u003c/a\u003e.  Gawker.com \u003ca href=\"http://gawker.com/5002319/church-of-scientology-claims-copyright-infringement\"\u003eresponded to a cease and desist letter with a refusal to remove the video\u003c/a\u003e, which it considers to be fair use for news and comment, but I\u0026rsquo;m not so sure that it has a good legal case for putting up more than short excerpts.  (In case you\u0026rsquo;re wondering about all the Scientology jargon in the Tom Cruise video, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1579963/20080118/index.jhtml\"\u003eMTV has done a good job of explaining it\u003c/a\u003e.  Actor \u003ca href=\"http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3f716ffebe\"\u003eJerry O\u0026rsquo;Connell has also put out a good parody\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;war,\u0026rdquo; which is described \u003ca href=\"http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology\"\u003eat another site under the name \u0026ldquo;Project Chanology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (a reference to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan\"\u003e4chan\u003c/a\u003e, a popular message board, where most posts are made by people who don\u0026rsquo;t login and are thus attributed to \u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo;), calls for denial of service attacks over the Internet, prank phone calls, spam emails, and personal visits involving vandalism and harassment.  Apparently Scientology\u0026rsquo;s main website was down \u003ca href=\"http://gawker.com/347367/why-kids-on-the-internet-are-scientologys-most-powerful-enemy\"\u003edue to denial of service for at least part of the day yesterday\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe press release cites a number of web pages for further information about Scientology, the second of which is the article \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech \u0026amp; Copyright Infringement on the Information Super-Highway\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which Jeff Jacobsen and I wrote for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine in 1995 after Scientology effectively declared war on the Internet.  (A much lesser-known sequel to that article, published only on the web, is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/goodman-response.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet: An Update and Response to Leisa Goodman.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI completely disagree with the tactics being used here\u0026ndash;Scientology has as much right to free speech and protection of their copyrights as anyone else, though I also condemn Scientology\u0026rsquo;s habitual misuse of copyright to try to suppress fair use of information.  To the extent this is a prank designed to get media attention, well done.  To the extent it gets taken seriously, though, it\u0026rsquo;s something that may not end well.  Read the material, watch the videos, have a laugh, and tell others about the absurdity and abuses of Scientology.  But please, don\u0026rsquo;t launch attacks on their websites, harass individuals, or engage in vandalism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Anonymous\u0026rdquo; previously received coverage for attacks on MySpace accounts \u003ca href=\"http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=7792EF312630EB71B63AA5A1CE0E2118?contentId=3894628\u0026amp;version=7\u0026amp;locale=EN-US\u0026amp;layoutCode=VSTY\u0026amp;pageId=1.1.1\u0026amp;sflg=1\"\u003eon Fox 11 in Los Angeles on July 26, 2007\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, the press release gets its facts wrong when it claims that the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup was \u0026ldquo;shut down.\u0026rdquo;  Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin issued an rmgroup message, but almost all news servers ignored it.  The accurate facts may be found in Jeff\u0026rsquo;s and my \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Report:_Church_of_Scientology_website_being_attacked\"\u003eWikinews\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/news/20080122-OC_pressrelease.html\"\u003eXenu.net\u003c/a\u003e have more.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Anonymous\" launches \"war\" against Scientology"},{"content":"Back in 1999, a bunch of billboards popped up around Phoenix that had white letters on a black background and were signed by God. One I took a bad photo of said \u0026ldquo;You think it\u0026rsquo;s hot here? \u0026ndash;God.\u0026rdquo; They\u0026rsquo;re back. There\u0026rsquo;s now one near Kat\u0026rsquo;s workplace that says \u0026ldquo;Life is short. Eternity isn\u0026rsquo;t. \u0026ndash;God.\u0026rdquo; These come from a group that calls itself GodSpeaks, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually pay for or put up the billboards, they just help interested groups in doing it locally.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to see someone make one of those sign generators for these billboards, so I can make some parodies, which these are just asking for. These billboards aren\u0026rsquo;t as lighthearted as some of the church marquee signs (like this one, for example, which suggests a God who has mellowed considerably from the one who sent the plagues of the Exodus).\nHere are some ideas for better content:\nStop putting words in my mouth. \u0026ndash;God\nIf I existed, I\u0026rsquo;d communicate directly to all people in their own languages in a miraculous manner rather than through billboards put up by people pretending to be me, just as parents pretend to be Santa Claus. \u0026ndash; God\nPlease post further suggestions in the comments. (And if somebody writes or finds a billboard photo generator, please let me know.)\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2008-01-17):\nOK, so prove to me that Jim Lippard Exists. GodYou could substitute \"natural selection\" for Jim Lippard but your the one who made it personal. GodProve olvlzl exists. G.\nEinzige (2008-01-17):\nProve olvlzl exists.Why?\nspyder (2008-01-17):\nThis is a couple of years old, but it represents some of the thematic elements. I never stop laughing over the Tennessee Titans ad.\nolvlzl (2008-01-18):\nProve olvlzl exists.Why?To frustrate einzige. God.\nMichael Norton (2008-01-18):\n\"This is a sign\" - GodGod gets self-ref humor.\nCaliban (2008-01-23):\n\"This would make more sense in Aramaic.\" -- God\nNat (2008-02-07):\n\"You know I'm just a metaphor, right?\" - God.\nLord DoomRater (2008-11-25):\nAs a Christian myself I stand absolutely behind the \"Stop putting words in my mouth\" one. Doing so is a direct violation of the Third Commandment, after all, and it's absolutely hilarious how people seem to think it's an anti-cursing commandment and not something against putting words in God's mouth...!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/message-from-god-billboards.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in 1999, a bunch of billboards popped up around Phoenix that had white letters on a black background and were signed by God.  One I took \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/GodThreat.JPG\"\u003ea bad photo\u003c/a\u003e of said \u0026ldquo;You think it\u0026rsquo;s hot here?  \u0026ndash;God.\u0026rdquo;  They\u0026rsquo;re back.  There\u0026rsquo;s now one near Kat\u0026rsquo;s workplace that says \u0026ldquo;Life is short.  Eternity isn\u0026rsquo;t.  \u0026ndash;God.\u0026rdquo;  These come from a group that calls itself \u003ca href=\"http://www.godspeaks.com/AboutTheBillboards.asp\"\u003eGodSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually pay for or put up the billboards, they just help interested groups in doing it locally.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to see someone make one of those sign generators for these billboards, so I can make some parodies, which these are just asking for.  These billboards aren\u0026rsquo;t as lighthearted as some of the church marquee signs (like \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/Marquee.JPG\"\u003ethis one\u003c/a\u003e, for example, which suggests a God who has mellowed considerably from the one who sent the plagues of the Exodus).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are some ideas for better content:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStop putting words in my mouth.  \u0026ndash;God\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf I existed, I\u0026rsquo;d communicate directly to all people in their own languages in a miraculous manner rather than through billboards put up by people pretending to be me, just as parents pretend to be Santa Claus.  \u0026ndash; God\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlease post further suggestions in the comments.  (And if somebody writes or finds a billboard photo generator, please let me know.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Message from God billboards"},{"content":"William Lane Craig has given his account of the Roy Varghese book written for Antony Flew in an audio blog, which Richard Carrier ably dissects. Craig seems not to be interested in actually examining any of the evidence in any depth.\n(Carrier\u0026rsquo;s blog also had a more detailed post in response to Mark Oppenheimer\u0026rsquo;s article in the New York Times Magazine last November, which agreed with Oppenheimer\u0026rsquo;s analysis but provided further background detail, and he has added a 27 December 2007 update to his article on the Secular Web, \u0026ldquo;Antony Flew Considers God\u0026hellip; Sort Of.\u0026quot;)\nolvlzl (2008-01-13):\nFlew again? Let me ask you, if he was certifiably in possession of all his marbles and he decided to become a Muggletonian would it have the slightest effect on what you believe? What difference does it make? I thought you guys held with what you consider to be evidence, I hold with people getting to judge their own experience for themselves but I'd thought we could agree on the inadvisability to resorting to citation of authority, no matter how allegedly august. I don't really care if Lady Darwin was right about what her husband said while he was dying or what Hume said. Ayer, Flew, these aren't exactly important thinkers in the matter. G. E. Moore makes a bigger impression on me and I'd never have let him decide what I believe.\nLippard (2008-01-13):\nI don't think this controversy is interesting because of Flew, but because of what it says about Varghese, Habermas, Craig, etc.\nolvlzl (2008-01-21):\nI looked at Flew's Malthus stuff this weekend. And you still want to keep him? Now I know why he wants to be a deist, he's afraid of hell.\nLippard (2008-01-21):\nI've never said I wanted to keep him. I don't think he was a very good proponent for atheism even when he was an atheist. Again, I think this issue is of interest because of the behavior of Varghese, Hostetler, Moreland, Craig, etc., rather than because of Flew.Dennett's The Philosophical Lexicon makes amusing definitions out of the names of famous philosophers which reflect characteristics of their work. The definition of \"flew\" is:\"flew, (1) n. An old-fashioned device for blowing smoke into church. 'He was so annoyed by the fitch that he stuck it up the flew.' (2) v. To glide rapidly and superficially over difficult terrain (cf. foot and randall). 'We were trying to heidegg the suppesitions in hampshire but he just flew right by.'\"\nolvlzl (2008-01-22):\nUh, Mr. Lippard. I've read Dennett also. And you still want to keep him?\nEinzige (2008-01-22):\nI can't speak for Jim, but I, for one, have no idea what you mean by \"keep him\", in this context.\"Keep him\" where? As what?If you don't mind, I'll venture a guess at what you're talking about (dangerous territory when it comes to you, I know)... It seems you impart to us a desire to belong to something, to feel part of a group, to have leaders and heroes we can worship and allow to represent us and even speak for us.I imagine this is some kind of projection on your part. One that springs from your own collectivist proclivities. Perhaps you're incapable of fathoming a person who doesn't jump at the chance to subsume themselves into any cause or group that will have them. If I've managed, through some stroke of dumb luck, to have understood you correctly, olvlzl, I'd like to disabuse you of this notion.\nolvlzl (2008-01-22):\nEinzige, \"keeping him\" was a, you know, joke? I got the feeling that Jim Lippard got that part of it. As to the part about Malthus and Flew's position of having been an apologist by revision for that piece of scum, I figured at least he would get that too. Daniel Dennett wasn't introduced into this thread by me. He makes Flew look wise by comparison.\nolvlzl (2008-01-22):\nOh, almost forgot. As to \"projection\", I'm beginning to doubt that any of those ideas of ancient psychology had any scientific data to back up their existence, outside the fevered mind of the loons who are endemic to that \"study\" so I'm trying to give up the habit of using those words. Maybe that's due to having looked into Ayer recently, speaking of loons.\nLippard (2008-01-22):\nI disagree about Dennett. I haven't read Breaking the Spell, but I've read a lot of his other work and I think he's a much better philosopher than Flew, though he does often depend on \"intuition pumps\" over arguments. But my reference to the Philosophical Lexicon (a satirical work) was not bringing Dennett's philosophical work into the discussion.BTW, John Lynch wrote about Flew's entry on eugenics in Prometheus' New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-22):\nBreaking the Spell is the most substantial of the so-called New Atheism books (why aren't they simply atheism books?). With the exception of A.C. Grayling's, I've read or am in the process of reading (Hitchens) all of them. Where as the others are more polemical and for a general audience, B the S is more in line with Boyer's Religion Explained and urges directing more research into understanding religion as a natural phenomenon. Having said that, it's also somewhat dry. Hitchens is much more entertaining reading.\nLippard (2008-01-22):\nBoyer's book is also not easy reading, but excellent content.I've also just started reading Hitchens' book, thinking that I would find it very entertaining but not necessarily well argued. So far, it's exceeded my expectations in a positive way on both--it's more entertaining and better argued than I expected.I'll read Dennett after it's in paperback, probably won't read Dawkins without further persuasion, and my next atheism book will be Paulos' Irreligion (which I expect to be both entertaining and well-argued).\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-22):\nBreaking the Spell is out in paperback now.\nolvlzl (2008-01-22):\nthough he does often depend on \"intuition pumps\" over arguments.I'd thought maybe it was drugs. He's a seriously bad philosopher, though if you can stomach Dawkins' exo-evolutionary psychology you can take anything.\nLippard (2008-01-22):\nWho do you consider to be a good philosopher?\nolvlzl (2008-01-22):\nLogicians tend to be good. Clear writers too. I've got a real soft spot for Morris Cohen. I really meant it about Dawkins and Dennett, the assertion that Darwinism is the one and only possible means of life arising anywhere in the universe? It would make poor old Carl's job a lot harder if he couldn't make up all those stories, too bad, it would be fun to watch.\nLippard (2008-01-22):\nI take it you mean Morris R. Cohen? I was previously unfamiliar with him, despite the fact that Bertrand Russell called him \"the most significant philosopher in the United States,\" though I'm aware of his student (and logician) Ernest Nagel.So I take it you also like Russell, Quine, Goedel, Peirce, etc., and you already mentioned G.E. Moore in previous comment on this thread.\nLippard (2008-01-22):\nAnd of course, Turing...\nolvlzl (2008-01-23):\nDepends on what you're talking about with Russell and the others you named. Turing was brilliant but I entirely disagree with the idea derived from him that machines can be said to be intelligent simply because it seems as if they are. I don't think that human perception is the measure of the universe, just the one we've got.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/william-lane-craig-weighs-in-on-antony.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Lane Craig has given his account of the \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/antony-flews-new-book.html\"\u003eRoy Varghese book written for Antony Flew\u003c/a\u003e in an audio blog, which \u003ca href=\"http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/12/craig-annoyed.html\"\u003eRichard Carrier ably dissects\u003c/a\u003e.  Craig seems not to be interested in actually examining any of the evidence in any depth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Carrier\u0026rsquo;s blog also had \u003ca href=\"http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/11/antony-flew-bogus-book.html\"\u003ea more detailed post in response to Mark Oppenheimer\u0026rsquo;s article in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times Magazine\u003c/span\u003e  last November\u003c/a\u003e, which agreed with Oppenheimer\u0026rsquo;s analysis but provided further background detail, and he has added \u003ca href=\"http://www.secweb.org/index.aspx?action=viewAsset\u0026amp;id=369#December2007-1\"\u003ea 27 December 2007 update\u003c/a\u003e to his article on the Secular Web, \u003ca href=\"http://www.secweb.org/index.aspx?action=viewAsset\u0026amp;id=369\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Antony Flew Considers God\u0026hellip; Sort Of.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"William Lane Craig weighs in on Antony Flew book"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post reports:\nThe FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today. Telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of the bureau\u0026rsquo;s failure to pay its bills, the audit found. The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe report identified one case in which an order obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act \u0026ndash; which covers clandestine wiretaps of terrorism and espionage suspects \u0026ndash; was halted because of \u0026ldquo;untimely payment.\u0026quot;\nThe FBI says the problem is caused by an outdated financial management system and is working to fix it. The same Post article also points out that an examination of the backgrounds of the 35 employees with access to FBI funds used to pay for expenses for undercover investigations \u0026ldquo;found that half had personal bankruptcies or other financial problems\u0026rdquo; and one FBI telecommunications specialist pleaded guilty to \u0026ldquo;stealing more than $25,000 intended for telephone services.\u0026quot;\nThe article concludes by observing that Congress is still divided over the issue of granting retroactive immunity to telecoms that have engaged in illegal wiretapping for government surveillance programs and that the most recent extensions of the foreign wiretap law from last summer expire at the beginning of February.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/fbi-wiretaps-dropped-due-to-unpaid.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011001879.html?hpid=topnews\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today. \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eTelephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of the bureau\u0026rsquo;s failure to pay its bills, the audit found. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills"},{"content":"James Kirchick of The New Republic has gone back and reviewed the content of Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s newsletters published prior to 1998, and the results are not at all pretty. They contain repeated anti-black and anti-gay bigotry and conspiracy theory rhetoric, much of it under Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s byline. And the Paul campaign\u0026rsquo;s explanation is weak:\nWhen I asked Jesse Benton, Paul\u0026rsquo;s campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted \u0026ldquo;various levels of approval\u0026rdquo; to what appeared in his publications\u0026ndash;ranging from \u0026ldquo;no approval\u0026rdquo; to instances where he \u0026ldquo;actually wrote it himself.\u0026rdquo; After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, \u0026ldquo;A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no.\u0026rdquo; He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because \u0026ldquo;Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero.\u0026quot;\nIn other words, Paul\u0026rsquo;s campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically\u0026ndash;or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point\u0026ndash;over the course of decades\u0026ndash;he would have done something about it.\nYou can find numerous excerpts from Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s past publications here.\nolvlzl (2008-01-09):\nWhat is it with Republican doctors and gay sex? I've got to think that most of them seem to think about it more than any gay man I've known. Scratch a libertarian, find a fascist. One who is afraid of being caught doing something kinky.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-09):\nMy question is what's with Texas and nutty Republicans?\nEinzige (2008-01-09):\nLudwig von Mises must be spinning in his grave.\nUnknown (2008-01-10):\nhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=AvzsiESqVss\nLippard (2008-01-11):\nVictor: I have to agree with Time Lee that Ron Paul's response is unpersuasive: \"He says 'I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.' Which is the right thing to say. But where are the details that would make this credible? When was the author of those articles hired and how long did he work for Paul? If it was multiple bigoted individuals, how did Paul manage to make so many poor personnel decisions? If he really finds those words worthy of denunciation, shouldn’t there be an issue of his newsletter from the late 1990s in which he apologizes to his readers for inadvertently sending them bigoted articles under his name?It’s quite possible that Paul does not, personally, harbor racist or anti-gay beliefs. But it appears that at the very least, he doesn’t seem to find such beliefs especially objectionable. He doesn’t appear to have made any special effort to avoid associating with hateful people.\"And with Will Wilkinson: \"To my mind, the people who are trying to salvage something of Paul’s reputation are just making themselves look bad. No matter how much money, time, and devotion you’ve given to someone, sometimes the only right thing to do is spit on the ground and walk away, hurting. If it wasn’t before, it is now clear that this just isn’t a man who deserves decent people’s support. I had hoped Paul would do more good than harm for libertarianism, inspiring lots of college kids to get interested in the ideas of liberty. But now I’m pretty certain that he’s done a lot of harm, causing many people to associate libertarianism with racist cranks. I think it’s pretty important then to publicize the fact that there are genuinely liberal versions of libertarianism out there. The young people who got interested in libertarian ideas through Paul need to be able to find Cato, Reason, the IHS, and other places where one can learn about classical liberalism, which isn’t about keeping the Mexicans out, deploring the abolition of slavery, or hoarding gold.\"I also recommend Arnold Kling's recent article on politics and cults, that also addresses Ron Paul, and concludes:\"For libertarians, I recommend focusing on institutions that compete with government: families, private schools, charities, and religious organizations (short of becoming cult-like in your devotion). I recommend developing your logical reasoning skills and applying those skills to questioning what politicians say. But I do not recommend joining mass political movements. Instead, treat them as cults.\"\nLippard (2008-01-11):\nDoh, that was supposed to say Tim Lee, not Time Lee.\nLippard (2008-01-11):\nAlso note the comments at Tim Lee's blog post, where commenter David points to an article from 2001 by Virginia Postrel in the Texas Monthly that points out that Paul's initial response to criticism about some of these remarks was to defend them as his own remarks, and then second to deny having written them himself.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-12):\nReason's Hit and Run blog had some good posts on Paul, also.Here's one from Radley BalkoA big reason why is the latent sentiment at every level of the criminal justice system—from cops to prosecutors to jurors—that black people are inherently more prone to criminality than white people. It's sort of the opposite of \"group rights.\" It's \"group wrongs\"—or punishing black people on a individual basis for perceived transgressions by black people as a group. It's also a form of collectivist thinking—the antithesis of libertarianism.I have no idea if Paul is a racist. I suspect that he isn't, at least today. But he's certainly had no problem benefiting from the support of people who are. It's more than a little disingenuous for him to now defend himself by invoking what the criminal justice system has done to the black community when for fifteen years a newsletter bearing his name, and the profits from which went into his bank account, celebrated and encouraged the black-people-are-savage-criminals lie in particularly vile and perverse ways. The newsletter defended the Rodney King beating, for God's sake, on the bullshit argument that King was part of a criminal class of people. The implication is that some people deserve substandard treatment under the rule of law because of the color of their skin. There's nothing remotely libertarian about that.Whether he was active or passive in the newsletters doesn't matter. Paul perpetuated that way of thinking for more than a decade in a newsletter he published. He did it during the 1980s and 1990s, the very period over which the drug laws exacerbated the white-black disparity in America's prisons. He can't now use the \"blacks are treated poorly by our criminal justice system\" defense to distance himself from those very newsletters. Hume's Ghost (2008-01-12):\nI see that Kling article mentions that Fair Tax advocates come across as cultish. That sounds about right, given that it takes a cult mentality not to see what a flaming idiot Neal Boortz is.I'm not sure that he isn't significantly worse for libertarianism that Paul. Every year come election time Boortz starts opining about how we should take away the vote of people who don't vote his way (i.e. minorities, women, and the poor.)\nLippard (2008-01-14):\nThe cavalcade of Ron Paul criticism continues:The Volokh Conspiracy has assembled a list of stupid things Ron Paul believes.David Boaz has criticized Paul in depth for his ties to Lew Rockwell.Tim Lee points out Paul's newsletter references to race and racism.And Matt Welch finds that in 1996 Paul defended his newsletter comments on the grounds of being taken out of context, not his current story that he didn't write them or know about them.I think the Ron Paul presidential campaign is near its end.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-14):\nThat's the thing about the Paul cultists that really drives me nuts, how they keep saying \"he didn't write them blah blah\". I mean, c'mon! One newsletter and I would understand and accept that excuse, but this went on for years! One of those letters called Israel a Nazi state, which is Newspeak to the extreme.\nLippard (2008-01-16):\nThe author of the Ron Paul newsletter articles has been outed as Lew Rockwell.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/anti-black-anti-gay-and-conspiracy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJames Kirchick of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Republic\u003c/span\u003e has gone back and reviewed the content of Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s newsletters published prior to 1998, and the results are not at all pretty.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca\"\u003eThey contain repeated anti-black and anti-gay bigotry and conspiracy theory rhetoric\u003c/a\u003e, much of it under Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s byline.  And the Paul campaign\u0026rsquo;s explanation is weak:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp class=\"articleText\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp class=\"articleText\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhen I asked\u003c/strong\u003e Jesse Benton, Paul\u0026rsquo;s campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted \u0026ldquo;various levels of approval\u0026rdquo; to what appeared in his publications\u0026ndash;ranging from \u0026ldquo;no approval\u0026rdquo; to instances where he \u0026ldquo;actually wrote it himself.\u0026rdquo; After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, \u0026ldquo;A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no.\u0026rdquo; He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because \u0026ldquo;Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-black, anti-gay, and conspiracy rhetoric in Ron Paul newsletters"},{"content":"John Lynch has looked up the backgrounds of the 300 signatories to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dissent from Darwinism\u0026rdquo; statement who signed in 2004 (it\u0026rsquo;s now up to 700, which he plans to also examine). He reports on the backgrounds of the individuals who signed, finding that \u0026ldquo;Chemists, physicists, engineers, bench jockeys, doctors and mathematicians account for over 200 of the 300 signatories\u0026rdquo; but only five organismal biologists. He also notes that there\u0026rsquo;s also at least one soccer coach and a home-schooling mom in the list.\nThe comments are worth reading as well.\nUPDATE (January 27, 2008): John Lynch has a further post on this statement, and commenter Ken, below, points to his analysis of the religious beliefs of signers at his Open Parachute blog.\nUPDATE (May 14, 2008): A YouTube video documents further Discovery Institute deception with regard to this list.\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2008-01-09):\nIt's the great tragedy of evolutionary science that politics require it to pledge allegiance to a great figure, undoubtedly, but one who has been dead for almost a hundred twenty years. And it's not as if there haven't been many developments in the mean time. Still it's Darwin said this and Darwin said that, often by people with conflicting agendas both of which can find quotes to mine to claim themselves as the only true inheritors of Darwin's mantle. Give it up already and join the 21st Century. The use of evolution in the propaganda for atheism has been damaging to the science but not nearly as much as the use of Darwin's writing to support economic fascism and racism. Those are real features that can be found, if not in Darwin then in Huxley and a number of his intimate colleagues. Like the anti-Semitism in the Gospel of Matthew it is something that will never be put to rest until it is rejected once and for all. Unfortunately, those are some of the more enduring and outspoken points of view found in would be Darwinians today. Evolutionary scientists should stop cowering under the political attacks, stop being reactive for a change and face the problem in its entirety. If they would stop using the science of evolution for unscientific purposes and deal with the political implications of enthroning natural selection in its class origins, its limited usefulness to science and its clear political uses during the intervening period, they might find a lot less hostility to the science of it.\nKen (2008-01-24):\nI've had a close look at a subset of signatories to the \"dissenters\" and found in almost all cases they have strong religious views (see Who are the “dissenters from Darwinism”?). This suggests to me the overwhelming majority on this list have signed it for religious motives, rather than scientific motives.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/dis-dissent-from-darwinism-statement.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Lynch has looked up \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/01/dissenting_from_darwinism.php\"\u003ethe backgrounds of the 300 signatories to the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dissent from Darwinism\u0026rdquo; statement who signed in 2004\u003c/a\u003e (it\u0026rsquo;s now up to 700, which he plans to also examine).  He reports on the backgrounds of the individuals who signed, finding that \u0026ldquo;Chemists, physicists, engineers, bench jockeys, doctors and mathematicians account for over 200 of the 300 signatories\u0026rdquo; but only five organismal biologists.  He also notes that there\u0026rsquo;s also at least one soccer coach and a home-schooling mom in the list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe comments are worth reading as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 27, 2008):  John Lynch has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/01/that_di_list_again.php\"\u003ea further post on this statement\u003c/a\u003e, and commenter Ken, below, points to \u003ca href=\"http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/who-are-the-dissenters-from-darwinism/\"\u003ehis analysis of the religious beliefs of signers at his Open Parachute blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 14, 2008):  A YouTube video \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/an_examination_of_the_dis_diss.php\"\u003edocuments further Discovery Institute deception with regard to this list\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DI's Dissent from Darwinism statement analyzed"},{"content":"Creation Ministries International has published a new web page summarizing their dispute with Answers in Genesis, much of which is already familiar to readers of this blog. The summary includes an update of events immediately preceding and subsequent to the attempt at arbitration in Hawaii that occurred last August, and links to supporting documents, several of which are newly made public.\nNew in this report are two interesting emails from Philip Bell, former deputy CEO of AiG-UK, about what was going on inside AiG after the split from CMI. Bell resigned from AiG in June 2006 and is now head of CMI-UK. The first email is quoted in a letter from Carl Wieland to a CMI supporter in Australia who asked why CMI needed to take legal action against AiG, which includes these two paragraphs:\nI am very sorry to say that AiG leaders (on both sides of the Atlantic) have engaged not only in unbiblical/unethical behaviour but in the case of AiG-USA, unlawful too—to the great detriment of their former colleagues and sister ministries in the other former AiG countries, particularly Australia—this is not merely what I have been told by colleagues abroad but rather I have personal knowledge of these things. If anyone contacts AiG-USA to find out what’s going on, they are asked to ‘pick up the phone and talk to us’. This all sounds very reasonable but there is no accountability involved because such words are not recorded and amount to so much gossip—they can be flat out denied if it is deemed expedient. I am afraid to say that I have personally witnessed outright lies (of an incredible kind) involving four individual high-ups in AiG (and in one instance I was asked to give testimony to an independent enquiry; something I took no pleasure in doing). CMI’s response has been to put everything out in the open (not without criticism of some Christian brethren of course, some of whom are upset that this seems to amount to ‘hanging our dirty linen out before the world’. I share their dismay but believe that this has to be, if justice is to be done and the Lord’s name is not to be sullied even more in the long run. I take no pleasure in having to write these things and I know that I speak for my colleagues in CMI-Australia and around the world when I say that we long to get on with the real work that God has entrusted us with. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that I have no personal axe to grind with any of the AiG leaders concerned, all of whom I once considered friends and got on with very well. This is not about personal differences but about integrity and honesty—simply put, I left AiG because we had a ministry slogan (which I liked and still like) which said: “We are a Christ-centred, evangelistic ministry dedicated to upholding the Word of God from the very first verse.” I could no longer publicly represent AiG when the actions and words of its representatives were anything but Christ-centred (rather they were/and are often man-centred—pride and an unwillingness to admit fault became the order of the day). Neither could I stomach any longer hearing people talk about upholding God’s truth while I had personally witnessed deceit and even bare faced lies from the same people. I am not their judge and I find it very sobering to even be writing these words (James 4:11-12) but the Scripture also advocates that the Christian is to ‘judge with righteous judgment’. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but it is horrendous when pride prevents people acknowledging sin and they continue to cover their unbiblical/unethical actions in God-speak. Frankly, it appears that there is no fear of the Lord in such people. In spite of my strong feelings, I have continued to pray for AiG to this very day and earnestly desire that there will be a righteous outcome that will not allow God’s name to be sullied before the world.\nThe second email from Bell discusses a letter sent by Monty White of AiG-UK to supporters about the split (and links to a rebuttal of that Monty White letter) and gives a UK perspective on the AiG/CMI split, and reports that not only Bell but two other AiG-UK staff members, Tim Matthews and Rachel Revell, resigned from AiG-UK over these issues.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/new-summary-of-cmi-aig-dispute-from-cmi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreation Ministries International \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080509143221/http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5900http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5563/\"\u003ehas published a new web page summarizing their dispute with Answers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e, much of which is already familiar to readers of this blog.  The summary includes an update of events immediately preceding and subsequent to the attempt at arbitration in Hawaii that occurred last August, and links to supporting documents, several of which are newly made public.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNew in this report are two interesting emails from Philip Bell, former deputy CEO of AiG-UK, about what was going on inside AiG after the split from CMI.  Bell resigned from AiG in June 2006 and is now head of CMI-UK.  The first email is quoted in \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20080509143221/http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5900http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5561\"\u003ea letter from Carl Wieland to a CMI supporter in Australia who asked why CMI needed to take legal action against AiG\u003c/a\u003e, which includes these two paragraphs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New summary of CMI-AiG dispute from CMI"},{"content":"The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is equipped with systems to provide passengers with on-board Internet access. Unfortunately, the passenger network is also connected to the computer systems that control the plane, as well as communication and navigation systems, which the FAA has complained about in a \u0026ldquo;special conditions\u0026rdquo; document that covers issues that are a concern but are not specifically covered by regulations.\nBoeing says it has designed a solution that it will be testing shortly, and the FAA says that has to happen before any of these will be allowed to fly.\nA Boeing spokesperson claims that the FAA document criticizing the design is misleading because, as Wired reports, \u0026ldquo;the plane\u0026rsquo;s networks don\u0026rsquo;t completely connect.\u0026rdquo; She goes on in the article to say that there\u0026rsquo;s a combination of physical separation and software-based firewalls. Given the fact that software-based firewalls have themselves had vulnerabilities from time to time, I\u0026rsquo;d strongly prefer to see complete physical separation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/boeing-787-potentially-vulnerable-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Boeing 787 Dreamliner is equipped with systems to provide passengers with on-board Internet access.  Unfortunately, \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/01/dreamliner_security\"\u003ethe passenger network is also connected to the computer systems that control the plane, as well as communication and navigation systems\u003c/a\u003e, which the FAA has complained about in a \u0026ldquo;special conditions\u0026rdquo; document that covers issues that are a concern but are not specifically covered by regulations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoeing says it has designed a solution that it will be testing shortly, and the FAA says that has to happen before any of these will be allowed to fly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Boeing spokesperson claims that the FAA document criticizing the design is misleading because, as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWired\u003c/span\u003e reports, \u0026ldquo;the plane\u0026rsquo;s networks don\u0026rsquo;t completely connect.\u0026rdquo;  She goes on in the article to say that there\u0026rsquo;s a combination of physical separation and software-based firewalls.  Given the fact that software-based firewalls have themselves had vulnerabilities from time to time, I\u0026rsquo;d strongly prefer to see complete physical separation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boeing 787 potentially vulnerable to passenger software-based hijacking"},{"content":"Dlisted has the scoop on Andrew Morton\u0026rsquo;s book on Tom Cruise, to be released on January 15. I would surmise that it will not be published in the UK, which has much stricter libel laws.\nCruise was threatening to sue Morton for this book back in February 2006, before he had even started writing it, because Morton hired gay porn star turned private investigator Paul Baressi, whose allegations of a gay affair with John Travolta were published in the National Enquirer, only to retract them after being sued by Travolta. Photos of Travolta kissing a man on the steps of his private plane during the production of \u0026ldquo;Hairspray\u0026rdquo; were widely published in 2006.\nL. Ron Hubbard and Scientology consider homosexuality to be a perversion which falls at 1.1 on the tone scale, between fear and anger.\nUPDATE (January 12, 2007): Slate reads Morton\u0026rsquo;s book so you don\u0026rsquo;t have to, and reveals that the Tom Cruise of Morton\u0026rsquo;s book is strictly heterosexual.\nLermanet.com (2008-01-07):\nHi Jim, hope you been well. I was watching webstats soar and I knew something was up and then found the reviews of the cruise tell all. There is reference to the fields of flowers planted for tom and nicole to 'romp' in at the scientology scam's HQ.. you might want to point your readers at Andre Tabayoyan's declaration, line 124, here:http://www.lermanet.com/cos/andre.htmltake care and thanks for keeping on\nLippard (2008-01-07):\nHello, Arnie!Yes, I've been well.The webstats haven't really soared here, but someone from the Church of Scientology came by last night to check things out again:Domain Name (Unknown) IP Address 205.227.165.# (Church of Scientology International)ISP Level 3 CommunicationsLocation Continent : North AmericaCountry : United States (Facts)State : CaliforniaCity : Los AngelesLat/Long : 34.1006, -118.3275 (Map)Distance : 365 milesLanguage English (U.S.)en-usOperating System Microsoft WinNTBrowser FirefoxMozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11Javascript version 1.5Monitor Resolution : 1440 x 900Color Depth : 32 bitsTime of Visit Jan 6 2008 10:06:55 pmLast Page View Jan 6 2008 10:10:56 pmVisit Length 4 minutes 1 secondPage Views 3Referring URL http://blogsearch.go...on\u0026btnG=Search BlogsSearch Engine blogsearch.google.comSearch Words andrew mortonVisit Entry Page http://lippard.blogs...cruise-tell-all.htmlVisit Exit Page http://lippard.blogs...cruise-tell-all.htmlOut Click Time Zone UTC-8:00Visitor's Time Jan 6 2008 9:06:55 pmVisit Number 180,863\nolvlzl (2008-01-07):\nTom Cruise, John Travolta? As if we gay men didn't have enough trouble already. I do find it rather reassuring, though, that L Ron - sounds like an unproduced, discontinued prototype for a piece of 50s hardware, doesn't it - didn't approve, though it hardly makes up for the mental picture you forced me to have. No. I will not look.\nolvlzl (2008-01-07):\nAnd \"tone scale\", if that doesn't sound kind of swish I don't know what does. Yikes. Now I'm thinking about Topeka Phelps.\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-08):\nHey, how do you get the IP addresses of people who merely look at your website?What is the procedure for that, and how often do you do that? I would like to learn to do that.\nLippard (2008-01-08):\nTal:For my other websites, they are actually on hosts under my control, so I have the complete records of the web server access and error logs. For this blog, since it's on Blogger, I don't have access to the raw logs, but as Einzige pointed out, I can see the last 100 accesses reported via SiteMeter. That doesn't show people that get an RSS feed via FeedBurner, though, I believe.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/andrew-mortons-tom-cruise-tell-all.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDlisted \u003ca href=\"http://www.dlisted.com/node/21100\"\u003ehas the scoop on Andrew Morton\u0026rsquo;s book on Tom Cruise\u003c/a\u003e, to be released on January 15.  I would surmise that it will not be published in the UK, which has much stricter libel laws.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCruise \u003ca href=\"http://www.postchronicle.com/news/entertainment/tittletattle/article_2126642.shtml\"\u003ewas threatening to sue Morton for this book back in February 2006\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/13/tom-cruise-tell-all-book/\"\u003ebefore he had even started writing it\u003c/a\u003e, because Morton hired gay porn star turned private investigator Paul Baressi, whose allegations of a gay affair with John Travolta were published in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Enquirer\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/celebrities/celebrities142.html\"\u003eonly to retract them after being sued by Travolta\u003c/a\u003e.  Photos of Travolta \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=404299\u0026amp;in_page_id=1773\u0026amp;in_a_source\"\u003ekissing a man on the steps of his private plane\u003c/a\u003e during the production of \u0026ldquo;Hairspray\u0026rdquo; were widely published in 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eL. Ron Hubbard and Scientology consider \u003ca href=\"http://www.spaink.net/cos/mpoulter/sods/gays\"\u003ehomosexuality to be a perversion which falls at 1.1\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_scale\"\u003ethe tone scale\u003c/a\u003e, between fear and anger.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 12, 2007):  Slate \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2181858/\"\u003ereads Morton\u0026rsquo;s book so you don\u0026rsquo;t have to\u003c/a\u003e, and reveals that the Tom Cruise of Morton\u0026rsquo;s book is strictly heterosexual.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise tell-all"},{"content":"Alan Ralsky, at one time believed to be the top spammer in the world, has finally been indicted today by a federal grand jury. His home was raided back in 2005, and he\u0026rsquo;s now been charged along with ten other people in \u0026ldquo;a wide ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing.\u0026rdquo; Those indicted include James E. Bragg, 39, of Queen Creek, Arizona.\nThe indictment alleges that Ralsky\u0026rsquo;s spam gang \u0026ldquo;tried to send spam\u0026rdquo; through botnets and engaged in a \u0026ldquo;pump and dump\u0026rdquo; stock scam for Chinese companies. The Detroit Free Press\u0026rsquo;s coverage reports: \u0026ldquo;Prosecutors described Ralsky, 52, of West Bloomfield, as one of the most prolific spammers in the nation. Until 2005, when federal agents raided his home and seized his computers, his operation sent tens of millions of unsolicited email messages daily to Internet subscribers, hawking everything from sexual enhancement drugs, weight loss products and worthless stock, the government said. In the summer of 2005 alone, prosecutors said, his operation generated $3 million.\u0026quot;\nThe DOJ press release is here.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-01-04):\nIt's go great to see a spammer finally facing a jury of those who have undoubtedly received his spams. Most products and services advertised in spam e-mail are in one way or another are scams. Hopefully more spammers will be caught and brought to justice.\nolvlzl (2008-01-04):\nI wonder, was this the one who offered to render my phallus \"so big you'll need a crane\". I was left wondering why he didn't offer to supply the bird or the shell fish to feed it as well.Never saw the practical advantage to it.\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-04):\nIf this is the guy who sold me the herbal viagra, I might just sue him as well. That's because I have lost all sorts of income due to the fact that my penis is now so huge I can't even leave my apartment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/notorious-major-spammer-indicted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlan Ralsky, at one time believed to be the top spammer in the world, has finally been indicted today by a federal grand jury.  His home was raided back in 2005, and he\u0026rsquo;s now been charged along with ten other people in \u0026ldquo;a wide ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing.\u0026rdquo;  Those indicted include James E. Bragg, 39, of Queen Creek, Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe indictment alleges that Ralsky\u0026rsquo;s spam gang \u0026ldquo;tried to send spam\u0026rdquo; through botnets and engaged in a \u0026ldquo;pump and dump\u0026rdquo; stock scam for Chinese companies.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/NEWS06/80103045/1008/NEWS06\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDetroit Free Press\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s coverage reports\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Prosecutors described Ralsky, 52, of West Bloomfield, as one of the most prolific spammers in the nation. Until 2005, when federal agents raided his home and seized his computers, his operation sent tens of millions of unsolicited email messages daily to Internet subscribers, hawking everything from sexual enhancement drugs, weight loss products and worthless stock, the government said. In the summer of 2005 alone, prosecutors said, his operation generated $3 million.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe DOJ press release is \u003ca href=\"http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/January/08_crm_003.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Notorious major spammer indicted"},{"content":"Octavia, a New Zealand atheist who was formerly an administrator at IIDB until the recent controversies there, has followed through with her proposed creation of a community newsletter for participants of the proliferating atheist and freethought message boards, called Nexus and hosted at the Nontheist Nexus.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve just started looking at the first issue, and I went directly to the article \u0026ldquo;Atheist Cop,\u0026rdquo; which was a fascinating read. There\u0026rsquo;s also an excerpt from Thomas Paine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Age of Reason,\u0026rdquo; some nicely done artwork, some stills from a film being made by one of the board members, an account of a scientist who spent eight months at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, \u0026ldquo;Sarpedon\u0026rsquo;s Weird Science\u0026rdquo; with links to interesting recent articles about undersea life, a couple of reviews of \u0026ldquo;The Golden Compass,\u0026rdquo; a few holiday recipes, and more.\nIt looks like a great start, and I look forward to reading the rest of this issue and more in the future.\nMichael C. Rush (2008-01-03):\nLooks very promising, but they REALLY need an RSS feed...\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-04):\nTheir main page has a broken image. Not a good start.\nLippard (2008-01-04):\nI don't see a broken image on the main page, though there was one image that took longer to load.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/new-online-atheist-newsletter.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOctavia, a New Zealand atheist who was formerly an administrator at IIDB until the recent controversies there, has followed through with her proposed creation of a community newsletter for participants of the proliferating atheist and freethought message boards, called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNexus\u003c/span\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://nontheistnexus.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage\u0026amp;Itemid=1\"\u003ehosted at the Nontheist Nexus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just started looking at the first issue, and I went directly to the article \u0026ldquo;Atheist Cop,\u0026rdquo; which was a fascinating read.  There\u0026rsquo;s also an excerpt from Thomas Paine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Age of Reason,\u0026rdquo; some nicely done artwork, some stills from a film being made by one of the board members, an account of a scientist who spent eight months at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, \u0026ldquo;Sarpedon\u0026rsquo;s Weird Science\u0026rdquo; with links to interesting recent articles about undersea life, a couple of reviews of \u0026ldquo;The Golden Compass,\u0026rdquo; a few holiday recipes, and more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looks like a great start, and I look forward to reading the rest of this issue and more in the future.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New online atheist newsletter"},{"content":"Warren Allen Smith\u0026rsquo;s massive Who\u0026rsquo;s Who in Hell (2000, Barricade Books) is now online as a wiki, provided by the organization Philosopedia (not yet a 501(c)(3)), which manages a wiki of the same name.\nUnfortunately, they\u0026rsquo;re not allowing the public to edit the content. I hope they will at least open it up to registered users in some way. It\u0026rsquo;s also somewhat disappointing that the organization of Who\u0026rsquo;s Who in Hell puts all the entries into 26 wiki pages, one per letter of the alphabet, rather than having a separate entry for each person. My entry on the L page is woefully out of date.\nUPDATE: But they\u0026rsquo;re quite responsive\u0026hellip; I have a new entry already.\nReed (2008-01-02):\nAnother player in the celeb atheists space.Weren't we associated with that project a while back? :^)\nLippard (2008-01-02):\nI actually just made a post about celebrity atheists over at the Secular Outpost a few days ago. Not sure why I didn't think to connect or combine that post with this one.\nolvlzl (2008-01-03):\nThe problem I've got with this is it lists many people who I suspect wouldn't want anything to do with it. Neo-atheists, like \"Humanists\" and others who have more of an appreciation for PR than for integrity should not list people in a project like this without their prior approval. Unfortunately, the very famous and long dead are easily appropriated even if, as in the case of E.G. O'Neill, for example, I doubt they'd be enthusiastic. Hey, you got any evidence from him that I'm wrong about that? There are a few of the living who, I suspect, are appropriated on flimsy evidence or who are rather ambiguous, though they can speak for themselves. I'm a universalist, don't believe in hell. Though there are times I wish there was one, so many appropriate candidates present themselves.\nLippard (2008-01-03):\nolvlzl: The celebrity atheists wiki intentionally puts people into the categories \"atheist,\" \"agnostic,\" and \"ambiguous.\" Back when Reed ran it, it was limited to the living, though that no longer seems to be the case (since Sagan's still on the list, for example, as is Adrienne Shelly, one of the people I added).Who's Who in Hell is obviously somewhat less discriminating which is to be expected given the ambiguity of its title (it doesn't claim to list atheists).Personally, I'm not sure I find it any more objectionable to list famous long-dead people in Who's Who in Hell than it is to baptize them.I wonder if the Mormons have thought of doing baptisms for all of the dead listed in Who's Who in Hell? I think that would be a good way for them to spend time and money, doing something that causes no harm to anyone.\nolvlzl (2008-01-03):\nJim Lippard, when have I ever advocated baptizing dead people? Or living ones, for that matter. Since my objection is to attributing beliefs to people and listing them in groups they might object to, if they had a chance, this is an example of what I'm objecting to. By the way, one suspects that if a fee was paid in some way that any dead person could be baptized in the manner you wonder about. Which is about as slick an operation as you can imagine in this line of business. My point was about the intellectual honesty about listing people like O'Neill who was sufficiently complex so as to defy categorization. I knew one of the people listed and, while they were prone to giving conflicting signals, at times as jokes, I know that particular one was not a \"non-theist\".\nLippard (2008-01-03):\nI didn't mean to suggest that you advocated baptizing dead people--I rather thought you would find it objectionable for the same reasons you object to Who's Who in Hell.Again, I don't think it's intended that everyone listed in Who's Who in Hell be an atheist as their qualification. O'Neill is clearly in there for his statements critical of organized religion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2008/01/whos-who-in-hell-is-now-online.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWarren Allen Smith\u0026rsquo;s massive \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWho\u0026rsquo;s Who in Hell\u003c/span\u003e (2000, Barricade Books) is \u003ca href=\"http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Who%27s_Who_in_Hell\"\u003enow online as a wiki\u003c/a\u003e, provided by the organization Philosopedia (not yet a 501(c)(3)), which manages \u003ca href=\"http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Main_Page\"\u003ea wiki of the same name\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, they\u0026rsquo;re not allowing the public to edit the content.  I hope they will at least open it up to registered users in some way.  It\u0026rsquo;s also somewhat disappointing that the organization of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWho\u0026rsquo;s Who in Hell\u003c/span\u003e puts all the entries into 26 wiki pages, one per letter of the alphabet, rather than having a separate entry for each person.  My entry on \u003ca href=\"http://philosopedia.org/index.php/L\"\u003ethe L page\u003c/a\u003e is woefully out of date.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  But they\u0026rsquo;re quite responsive\u0026hellip; I have \u003ca href=\"http://philosopedia.org/index.php/James_Lippard\"\u003ea new entry already\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's Who in Hell is now online"},{"content":"Last night while looking for something else, I came across my copy of the September 1996 issue of Internet Underground, a short-lived glossy magazine promoting interesting things on the Internet. This issue featured an article I wrote for them about skepticism on the Internet, which I present for your enjoyment below. If I had to update it today, I\u0026rsquo;d need to add information about blogs (like Science Blogs), podcasts, and various online forums that have come into existence in the last eleven and a half years or so (including IIDB, its offshoots like Freethought Forum and Heathen Hangout, and skeptical forums like those of the James Randi Educational Foundation and Richard Dawkins), but everything I described below is still around, despite some name and domain changes (I\u0026rsquo;ve updated the links) and diminishing significance of Usenet. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I missed the Skeptics Dictionary or Snopes.com, which were both around at the time.\nYou can see a PDF of the article in its original format here.\n403 Forbidden: Skeptics Seek the Cold Hard Truth\nBy Jim LippardThe Internet is a place where world views collide. Christianity meets atheist, conventional wisdom meets conspiracy theory, fringe belief meets orthodox science. While most Usenet newsgroups promote particular views and are populated mostly by their purveyors, the critics make up the majority on sci.skeptic. These critics who refer to themselves as \u0026ldquo;skeptics\u0026rdquo; have only a tenuous connection to the skepticism of the ancient Greeks, such as Pyrrho, who denied the possibility of knowledge of any kind. Instead, they tend to hold that while knowledge is quite possible, it must be grounded in scientific inquiry and rational investigation. Doubt is valued as a means to reliable knowledge rather than an end in itself.\nSkeptics often share an interest in the unusual, bizarre, and the seemingly impossible with the denizens of newsgroups such as alt.paranormal, alt.astrology, alt.alien.visitors, and alt.forteana.misc. There are plenty of fans of The X-Files to be found among skeptics. Where skeptics differ from \u0026ldquo;believers\u0026rdquo; is with regard to what are acceptable standards of evidence and what constitutes reasonable methods of investigation. A commonly touted skeptical aphorism is \u0026ldquo;Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,\u0026rdquo; and testimonials, feelings and handwaving are not considered extraordinary enough to carry the weight.\nYet skeptics are not necessarily dogmatic disbelievers. Skeptics may be knee-jerk naysayers who reject anything supernatural or paranormal, open-minded doubters, or even those who shelter a few fringe beliefs of their own. The most outspoken critics of one paranormal theory are frequently advocates of other fringe theories, and such criticisms are often accepted and promoted by the skeptics. (In a similar vein, it has been pointed out that Christians agree with atheists about the nonexistence of all gods save one.)\nOrganized skepticism has largely centered around the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), http://www.csicop.org/, since its founding in 1976. But the growth of local, regional and national skeptical groups, and their interaction via the Internet has led to a diversification of approaches and emphases. The Los Angeles-based Skeptics Society, http://www.skeptic.com/, has published a thick magazine, Skeptic, since 1992 which emphasizes thorough and open investigation of claims, allows detailed responses from those who are criticized, is willing to examine claims within conventional science as well as on the fringes and encourages self-criticism of the skeptical movement. Likewise, the sci.skeptic newsgroup and the SKEPTIC mailing list (skeptic at listproc.hcf.jhu.edu) are places where\nwell-reasoned arguments by promoters of paranormal claims and skeptical detractors can find an attentive audience (amongst the obligatory flames and ridicule, of course\u0026ndash;but flamers may find themselves skewered by their fellow skeptics if they aren\u0026rsquo;t careful).\nWithin the broad class of skeptics are those who focus on more specific issues, like the Internet Infidels (http://freethought.tamu.edu/), whose Secular Web expresses skepticism about the existence of gods and value of religion. The National Center for Science Education (http://www.natcenscied.org/) engages in religiously neutral criticism of creationist pseudoscience. Trancenet (http://www.trancenet.org/) criticizes Transcendental Meditation. Each has related newsgroups (alt.atheism, talk.origins, alt.meditation.transcendental) and mailing lists, traffic from which tends to overflow into sci.skeptic, the catch-all newsgroup for skeptics.\nThe Internet has served as a means for skeptics worldwide to coordinate and expand their efforts; the skeptical organizations and publications have shown considerable growth in the last few years despite the fact that major media tends to give skeptical viewpoints short shrift.\nJim Lippard ([email address removed]), a skeptic, Web administrator and philosopher, is the Internet representative for Skeptic magazine.\nSkeptics Society Web\nhttp://www.skeptic.com\nOther Skeptical Resources\nhttp://www.primenet.com/~lippard/skeptical.html\nDanny Boy, FCD (2008-01-01):\nWhile I started using the Interwebs in 1996, I didn't start going to skeptic website till 2000. I wish I had read your essay earlier.Happy new year! :D\nolvlzl (2008-01-03):\nSkeptics may be knee-jerk naysayers who reject anything supernatural or paranormal, open-minded doubters, or even those who shelter a few fringe beliefs of their own.As commonly used today by people who adopt it to describe themselves, \"skeptics\" are people who share a narrow orthodoxy and, more particularly, an attitude of self-congratulatory superiority and a fraternity of dismissive ridicule and mockery of anyone who doesn't rigidly adhere to that orthodoxy. In that rigid orthodoxy, they are remarkably predictable and unvaried. Scientism is their religion. \"Skeptics\" generally are almost entirely ignorant of those ideas that fall outside of their orthodoxy, gossip and received opinion replacing dispassionate scholarship. In many cases such necessary groundwork to have any idea what they are talking about is dismissed as unimportant since what they take as science is supposed to be the only reliable oracle. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of \"humanism\" as the word has been so unfortunately appropriated, and the irony of its use by people who rail against the idea of anthropomorphic exceptionalism it assigns to religious people. I, for one, don't think that people have a special vantage point from which to observe and perceive the universe and that our means of comprehending it are limited, one suspects very limited. I suspect that our science, as much as our other attempts to understand reality is at best colored and limited by our peculiar point of view. Why I am not a \"humanist\".\nLippard (2008-01-03):\nI think you've got a narrow view of skeptics. I know quite a few of them, and I think there is much more diversity and sophistication among skeptics than you give them credit for.That you go on to rail against humanists--a distinct but overlapping group of people--suggests that you're again taking a rather narrow view of skeptics. I don't think humanists are even a majority of skeptics, which is why many leaders of regional skeptical groups have opposed Paul Kurtz's combination of humanists and skeptics under his Centers for Inquiry (e.g., this letter in Skeptical Inquirer in 1999).\nolvlzl (2008-01-03):\nJim Lippard, I was reacting to the list in your post. What I said was the clear and obvious substance of that kind of \"skepticism\", they seem to generally spout the same kind of stuff as the \"humanists\", the truly broadminded form of skepticism you advocate is the clear minority position in the movement, if \"movement\" is the right word for people more attracted to their in-group bigotry than in integrity and honesty. Religious liberals are always having to answer for people they have no connection to, you can't fault me for applying the same rule to skeptics who, by their own actions, unite with bigots like Dawkins and frauds like Randi.\nLippard (2008-01-03):\nWell, you were definitely projecting, because there's not a single humanist group listed.On the other hand, I'm not sure I've ever seen a group of any size that hasn't made decisions that favor in-group over out-group to the detriment of honesty and integrity. In my opinion, that's something that is sadly inherent to the human condition and social organization.\nolvlzl (2008-01-03):\nJim Lippard, the compartmentalization of \"skepticism\" from \"humanism\" in the manner you, perhaps correctly, propose requires a rather fine distinction, one which most of the \"skeptics\" I've seen in the groups you mention would seem incapable of carrying out. I would point out that it is far less difficult, considering the overlap in personnel within the \"skeptics\" and \"humanists\", to make the far less difficult distinction between religious liberals and fundamentalists, something which is almost never done among those pretending to complete objectivity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/skepticism-on-internet-in-1996.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night while looking for something else, I came across my copy of the September 1996 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInternet Underground\u003c/span\u003e, a short-lived glossy magazine promoting interesting things on the Internet.  This issue featured an article I wrote for them about skepticism on the Internet, which I present for your enjoyment below.  If I had to update it today, I\u0026rsquo;d need to add information about blogs (like \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/\"\u003eScience Blogs\u003c/a\u003e), podcasts, and various online forums that have come into existence in the last eleven and a half years or so (including \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/\"\u003eIIDB\u003c/a\u003e, its offshoots like \u003ca href=\"http://www.freethought-forum.com/\"\u003eFreethought Forum\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.heathen-hangout.com/forum1/\"\u003eHeathen Hangout\u003c/a\u003e, and skeptical forums like those of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.randi.org/joom/content/view/134/86/\"\u003eJames Randi Educational Foundation\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/forum/\"\u003eRichard Dawkins\u003c/a\u003e), but everything I described below is still around, despite some name and domain changes (I\u0026rsquo;ve updated the links) and diminishing significance of Usenet.  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I missed the \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepdic.com/\"\u003eSkeptics Dictionary\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/\"\u003eSnopes.com\u003c/a\u003e, which were both around at the time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can see a PDF of the article in its original format \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/InternetUnderground.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ch3\u003e403 Forbidden: Skeptics Seek the Cold Hard Truth\u003cbr /\u003eBy Jim Lippard\u003c/h3\u003eThe Internet is a place where world views collide.  Christianity meets atheist, conventional wisdom meets conspiracy theory, fringe belief meets orthodox science.  While most Usenet newsgroups promote particular views and are populated mostly by their purveyors, the critics make up the majority on sci.skeptic.  These critics who refer to themselves as \u0026ldquo;skeptics\u0026rdquo; have only a tenuous connection to the skepticism of the ancient Greeks, such as Pyrrho, who denied the possibility of knowledge of any kind.  Instead, they tend to hold that while knowledge is quite possible, it must be grounded in scientific inquiry and rational investigation.  Doubt is valued as a means to reliable knowledge rather than an end in itself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eSkeptics often share an interest in the unusual, bizarre, and the seemingly impossible with the denizens of newsgroups such as alt.paranormal, alt.astrology, alt.alien.visitors, and alt.forteana.misc. There are plenty of fans of \u003cem\u003eThe X-Files\u003c/em\u003e to be found among skeptics. Where skeptics differ from \u0026ldquo;believers\u0026rdquo; is with regard to what are acceptable standards of evidence and what constitutes reasonable methods of investigation.  A commonly touted skeptical aphorism is \u0026ldquo;Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,\u0026rdquo; and testimonials, feelings and handwaving are not considered extraordinary enough to carry the weight.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skepticism on the Internet in 1996"},{"content":"\n(Hat tip to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-12-31):\nBrilliant, funny, and sad, all at the same time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/disney-characters-explain-copyright-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/pUPsfYJONrU\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/pUPsfYJONrU\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-12-31)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eBrilliant, funny, and sad, all at the same time.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Disney characters explain copyright law"},{"content":"By now it\u0026rsquo;s barely even newsworthly that December saw another record number of notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa County (3875, which was more than 300 higher than last month\u0026rsquo;s record high, which was almost 100 higher than October\u0026rsquo;s record high, which was roughly 200 higher than August\u0026rsquo;s record high\u0026hellip;).\nFor some extra context and excellent commentary, after looking at the graphs\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;I recommend you check out Mish\u0026rsquo;s Pent Up Housing Demand, and the NYT\u0026rsquo;s Sound of a Bubble Bursting.\nHistorical Comments Tal Poleaf (2008-01-04):\nWhere did you get these graphs? (What is the public site that has them?) I would like to search that database. Thanks.\nEinzige (2008-01-04):\nI make the graphs in Excel using raw data I pull from the Maricopa County Recorder's Office and the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/decembers-phoenix-housing-stats-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBy now it\u0026rsquo;s barely even newsworthly that December saw \u003ci\u003eanother\u003c/i\u003e record number of notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Maricopa County (\u003cb\u003e3875\u003c/b\u003e, which was more than 300 higher than \u003ca href=\"/2007/12/have-things-finally-peaked.html\"\u003elast month\u0026rsquo;s record high\u003c/a\u003e, which was almost 100 higher than \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/back-with-vengeance.html\"\u003eOctober\u0026rsquo;s record high\u003c/a\u003e, which was roughly 200 higher than \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/this-is-getting-ridiculous.html\"\u003eAugust\u0026rsquo;s record high\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor some extra context and excellent commentary, after looking at the graphs\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/07DecNTR.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/07DecNTR.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Maricopa County Notices of Trustee's Sales - Click to Enlarge\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299145537480498\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/07DecMed.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/07DecMed.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Maricopa County Median Home Price - Click to Enlarge\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299506314733378\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/07DecSold.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/07DecSold.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Number of Homes Sold Per Month in Maricopa County - Click to Enlarge\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299845617149778\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;I recommend you check out Mish\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/12/pent-up-housing-demand-in-pictures.html\"\u003ePent Up Housing Demand\u003c/a\u003e, and the NYT\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/business/23house.html?ex=1356152400\u0026en=12f4ddea3bdf7d6a\u0026ei=5124\u0026partner=permalink\u0026exprod=permalink\"\u003eSound of a Bubble Bursting\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"December's Phoenix Housing Stats Update"},{"content":"rx, who put out some MP3s a couple of years ago that edited samples from George Bush speeches to make him sing songs like U2\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday\u0026rdquo; and John Lennon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; mixed with Lou Reed\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Walk on the Wild Side,\u0026rdquo; has made videos of several of these and some new songs:\nREM\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s the End of the World As We Know It\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\nU2\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\nThe Clash\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Should I Stay or Should I Go\u0026rdquo; (Tony Blair):\nJohn Lennon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo;/Lou Reed\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Walk on the Wild Side\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\nHistorical Comments Spooky (2007-12-29):\nSweet.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/rx-videos.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003erx, who \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/rx-party-party.html\"\u003eput out some MP3s a couple of years ago\u003c/a\u003e that edited samples from George Bush speeches to make him sing songs like U2\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday\u0026rdquo; and John Lennon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo; mixed with Lou Reed\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Walk on the Wild Side,\u0026rdquo; has made videos of several of these and some new songs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eREM\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s the End of the World As We Know It\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V3CmXGKXOmk\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V3CmXGKXOmk\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eU2\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PXnO_FxmHes\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/PXnO_FxmHes\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Clash\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Should I Stay or Should I Go\u0026rdquo; (Tony Blair):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/a1vwKZiDsY4\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/a1vwKZiDsY4\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Lennon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Imagine\u0026rdquo;/Lou Reed\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Walk on the Wild Side\u0026rdquo; (Bush):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/MT0XxtNPVdQ\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/MT0XxtNPVdQ\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"rx videos"},{"content":"Today I\u0026rsquo;ve read a few interesting commentaries on the role that certain fundamentalist Christian teachings (specifically a doctrine known as \u0026ldquo;legalism\u0026rdquo;) have had in producing the outcomes of Andrea Yates murdering her children and Matthew Murray killing several people in Colorado. Murray, who was raised in an ultra-fundamentalist home and home schooled, was in an environment based on the teachings of Bill Gothard, whose \u0026ldquo;seven basic life principles\u0026rdquo; may be found here. The obedience to authority component is one which has led to some problems, such as a sex scandal within Gothard\u0026rsquo;s organization. (An online forum for discussing Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s teachings, open to both supporters and critics, may be found here.)\nGothard has other teachings beyond his seven principles, some of which are enumerated by a commenter at Midwest Christian Outreach:\nWives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard\nIt is a total insult in Scripture to be called uncircumcised, and the only moral choice parents can make is to have their sons circumcised in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus — Bill Gothard\n“Unmerited favor” is a “faulty definition” of grace. Grace for sanctification is merited as we humble ourselves before God — Bill Gothard\nFemales who enjoy horseback riding have a problem with rebellion — Bill Gothard, from testimonies of people who use their real names who have heard him say this in person\nUnbiblical submission taught — Abigail was WRONG to do what she did in saving Nabal and his servants — Bill Gothard\nTamar was partially at fault for being raped, because she wasn’t spiritually alert and didn’t cry out — Bill Gothard\nRock music is evil because it is evil — Bill Gothard\nCabbage Patch dolls are demonized — Bill Gothard Matthew Murray wrote about some of these rules, observing that \"I still remember how we were told that 'The Simpsons' was a very evil and Satanic TV show with the intent of causing people to leave Christianity (as if that’s a bad thing). As a teenager my mother had the TV tuner removed by a TV technician so that it could only receive from the AV inputs, meaning, could only watch VHS and DVDs.\" He specifically blamed Gothard's teachings for his problems:\nI am 22 years old and I was raised in Bill Gothard's homeschool program all the way through high school. I went to both the Basic and Advanced Seminars. My Mother was fully into both Bill Gothard's programs AND the Charismatic movement. What I found were all these other rules Irealized I could never live up to, yet, the man seemed to have a biblical basis for everything. In Februrary 2001 at age 17 I plunged into a dark suicidal depression all because I thought I had lost my \"salvation\" and somehow couldn't live up to the rules. Every single hour of every single day, up until October 2001 I thought about ways of suicide and hating myself for not being worthy enough and failing God. I felt like there was no reason to live because I had lost my salvation and could never live up to the rules. By contrast, Bill Gothard blames it all on rock music:\nGothard, in an interview Wednesday, said he “didn’t recall\"ever meeting the Murray family, but he was sure one of the parents was probably trained in his program. Ultimately, Gothard blames rock music for Murray’s murderous rampage. “That is the most contributing factor,” said Gothard, who is based in a small town south of Chicago. “It’d be important to see the connection between his passion to rock music and how it ultimately brought this on.” Gothard said whenever he gets calls from parents having trouble with their kids, he asks about what they listen to. “In every case, (the kid) is listening to rock music,” he said. The Andrea Yates case didn't involve Bill Gothard--she was a follower of Michael Woroniecki, a traveling preacher who carried a cross onto college campuses. I met and argued with him at Arizona State University in October of 1986, where he was arrested (via citizen's arrest) for allegedly disrupting a campus event occurring on the mall. The charges were absurd--he wasn't creating a disturbance or disrupting any event--and some other skeptics and I attended his court hearing prepared to speak up for him, but the charges were dismissed when the ASU student who made the citizen's arrest failed to show up. Woroniecki's teachings are similar to Gothard in that he places a strong emphasis on following rules (and against following any church or leadership other than his own, since he doesn't seem to think anyone other than himself lives up to his standards, which apparently presents him with a bit of a problem in maintaining followers). He lacks the sophistication, charisma, and organizational skills of Gothard.\nThere is empirical evidence that excessively rigid parental control over children can cause serious dysfunction. Christians should take notice of this, rather than resort to blaming rock music.\nUPDATE (December 31, 2007): I just remembered, by way of contrast with Bill Gothard's view of The Simpsons, that a Christian satirical magazine, The Wittenburg Door, did an issue on the theology of Homer Simpson back in May/June 1999--the issue immediately preceding their \"XENA: Warrior Theologian of the Year\" issue. I've got a copy around here somewhere...\nUPDATE (February 3, 2010): Joshua Woroniecki, son of Michael Woroniecki, has a blog where he criticizes claims that his father had any responsibility for the actions of Andrea Yates, even denying that she and her husband were followers of his father. That should be contrasted with Wikipedia's discussion.\nUPDATE (March 1, 2014): Bill Gothard has been placed on administrative leave as a result of accusations of sexual harassment from at least 34 women. Eamon Knight (2007-12-29):\nGeez, Gothard is even loonier than I knew about.And of course all these \"problem teens\" are listening to rock music -- probably 99%+ of teens (including everyone who has been a teen, since ~1960) listen(ed) to rock music. Can you say \"blatantly obvious fallacy\", children?\nLeo (2007-12-29):\nInteresting I had almost forgot about Bill Gothard. I remember attending one of his basic youth conflict seminars and then coming home receiving a call from a friend of mind who told me to listen to Steve Taylor's album \"On the Fritz\" for the song called \"I Manipulate\" because it warned about Gothard. The song really crystallized the doubts that I was already having about Gothard and I never attended another seminar. My Christianity is much healthier now then it was then.Steve Taylor released a few albums in the 80's that satirized popular movements in evangelicalism.I ManipulateDoes your soul crave center stage?have you heard about the latest rage? read your Bible by lightning flash get ordained at the thunder crash build a kingdom with a cattle prod tell the masses it's a message from Godwhere the innocent congregateI manipulateTake your notebooks, turn with meto the chapter on authoritydo you top the chain of commandrule your family with an iron handI dispense little pills of powerfrom my hideaway ivory towerfrom the cover of heaven's gateI manipulateNow it's time to fill in the spacewhere we talk about the woman's place do you want to build a happy home? have you sacrificed a mind of your own? 'cause a good wife learns to cower underneath the umbrella of power from the cover of heaven's gateI manipulateYes, I know that parablethat's the story of the prodigalif you question what I'm teaching you you rebel against the Father too if he loved him why'd he let him go? well, I guess I don't really know but I see it's getting late...\nAnonymous (2007-12-29):\nThe incident involving Woroniecki at ASU is reported here: http://members.aol.com/niek02/UArchives/TravelingPreacherArrested_AzStUniv_StatePress_Nov03_1986.JPGWhat Woroniecki does is park his cross or sign right next to large events. He has nothing to offer the world to attact attention to his message other than provocation, so a ready made crowd is what he prefers. Then, he preaches during the event. This disrupts those near him who are trying to listen to the speaker, which in turn infuriates them. Woroniecki did the same thing in 1980 at a festival in his hometown, while people were trying to enjoy an outside rock concert. He was arrested for the same reason. Even if the speaker isn't interupted, the ability to hear of those near him is, and technically, that is a violation of their civil rights, which free speech doesn't protect. Such violations do not weigh the motivations of the accusers. In the case at ASU, Shishko, Woroniecki's accuser, didn't show up in court as promised, suggesting he was motivated with hatred towards religion in his complaint that his civil rights were violated. However, Woroniecki isn't as innocent as this one exception suggests.As an example, his daughters disrupted a Univ. of Madison 9/11 student rally only a few days after the hijackings. They carried their 2 large signs right in front of the speaker this time, shouting over his amplified voice and blocking the crowd's view of him. They raised their fists and shouted angrily at the crowd, which was already emotionally disturbed from the 9/11 violence. The Woroniecki's were very insensitive in their planned timing and provocation, and the girls were arrested for the same reason their father usually is--their own safety. More detail of this event can be read in Suzy Spencer's book, Breaking Point and here: http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/madison.com/html/archive_files/wsj/2001/09/25/0109240263.phpThis time it was the Woronieckis who did not show for their Madison, WI appointed court date. There is a warrant currently out for their arrest.A photo of this event exists here:http://members.aol.com/tensiontally/predator.htmlThese girls learned these tactics from their father because he practices it himself. As an example of how unbiblical this methodology is, Jesus used miracles to attract attention to his message (Luke 4), not interfering with other events. John the Baptist, someone often used to compare Woroniecki's preaching style, preached outside the city in the wilderness to those who came to him.\nLippard (2007-12-29):\nThanks for the additional references. Woroniecki may well have disrupted other events, but he wasn't doing so at the one I witnessed.Re your last point--so you don't think turning water into wine distracted people from the wedding at Cana?\nAnonymous (2007-12-29):\n?Jesus most likely didn't go to that wedding with any other intention than eating, drinking and having a good time. He was being pressured by his mother to work a miracle. He was reluctant and told her his time had not yet come, but he helped the feast anyway, above the call of duty so to speak.I welcome Woroniecki to contribute positively in such a way to any event. As it remains, he offers nothing but provocation, verbal abuser tactics and out of context biblical doctrine designed to isolate unsuspecting religious students from their churches and families and create a cult following, from which he can subsidize his vindictive hatred of all things relating to the Christian churches and religion in general.\nAnonymous (2007-12-30):\nBy the way, unlike Woroniecki at various events, Jesus, his mother and his new disciples were invited to the wedding in Cana. He was not yet famous as he had not yet worked any miracles; hence, his invitation was probably motivated for other reasons. He prevented a disruption of the wedding by supplying it with very good wine, and he didn't use it as an opportunity to preach--that was never his intention. Furthermore, no one had Jesus falsely arrested for crashing the wedding, which he didn't. He was just a cool guy being generously good to the friend who invited him. Except for when Jesus' home synagogue removed him from their assembly for identifying himself as the Messiah, a few angry money changers whom the Messiah had scriptural authority to cast out of the Temple, and the few envious religious Scribes and Pharisees who eventually conspired to have him crucified, having to manipulate a reluctant Pilate into issuing a death sentence since Rome forbade that power to governments of occupied territories, Jesus was well received and in high favor with the majority; that is why he was secretly tried at night by the Sanhedrin. It was the only time they could get away with it without the masses knowing. They would have prevented it.None of these facts are consistent with the way the majority of people perceive Michael Woroniecki and how he approaches large events. In fact, one could say the opposite of is true. Very few in comparison are tricked into liking the guy; very, very rarely is he ever invited to anything (and when he is, people wise up quickly--like when he was asked to preach at a funeral and he told everyone they were going to hell.) He would never supply 6 large barrels of wine for anyone's wedding, not even his own now adult offspring, for he has manipulatively forbidden his six children to marry. If Woroniecki found himself at a wedding, he would probably be \"provoked in the spirit\" to turn it upside down, using it as an opportunity to show the guests how depraved they were, \"eating and drinking and being merry\" when people are \"going to hell.\" (As he has done in similar fashion elsewhere). That's just his way. Any biblical comparisons drawn can only be done when errantly taken out of the context. Luke 4 reads that it was Jesus' custom to teach and heal in the synagogues. When the crowds grew large, he was forced to move outside in open spaces such as a mount, a wilderness or even in a boat facing the curved shore. Point is, unlike Woroniecki, the majority of people liked Jesus and wanted to hear him, so they followed him around. He was the event that gathered crowds, unlike Michael Woroniecki who parasitically attaches himself to someone else's crowd. Very few believe and follow him, and eventually, most of those see through his initial brotherly facade as love boming, can't handle the later verbal abuse of his \"rebukes\" and leave him altogether.\nAnonymous (2008-01-01):\nIn response to the following comment:\"There is empirical evidence that excessively rigid parental control over children can cause serious dysfunction. Christians should take notice of this, rather than resort to blaming rock music.\"I agree with the above statement. Excessively rigid authoritarianism can be dysfunctionally detrimental to those under it, particularly when that authority makes themselves answerable to no one, like in cult situations.Many of the Michael Woroniecki survivors I have interviewed all indicated they went through anything from mild depression to attempted suicide while under his leadership. Andrea Yates herself tried to commit suicide twice fearing she would harm her children.\"Harm\" must be understood in terms of how Andrea Yates' preacher defined it. Andrea said it was \"better to tie a millstone around her kids' neck and drown them in the river than to cause them to stumble.\" She said she was a \"bad mother,\" and killing them was the only way to save them for that very reason. These are all documented delusions she had, and they are all consistent with exactly what her preacher told her. Woroniecki told her that it was better to commit suicide than to cause her little ones to stumble. So she tried. Her last attempt came when she trusted the state of Texas would execute her and thus secure her children's place in heaven.People may tell you Andrea was suffering from postpartum depression and psychosis. That is correct. But what some people have failed to realize is that there were several factors leading to her mental illness and the severity thereof.Andrea clearly had mental issues like depression and bulimia long before she ever met Woroniecki. But does that prevent cultic domination and abuse from bringing her down further? Woroniecki's abusive manipulations utilizing the motherly natural affection she had for her children scripted the delusions that led her to kill her children.There have been several male followers documented as becoming suicial and even hospitalized because of Woroniecki's hell bent negative ministering. Obviously, none of these men had postpartum issues, yet they still became very depressed. Andrea Yates had a genetic predisposition to mental illness. Woroniecki's influence could only make such an illness even that much more severe. In fact, Dr. Lucy Puryear who examined Yates for the trial said after she watched the religious video that was the basis for her central delusion that she didn't believe Andrea Yates would have ever killed her children were it not for the religious influence of Michael Woroniecki.Andrea Yates was rigidly controlled by the cultic agenda of a what I believe is a delusional narcissist. I believe the evidence suggests that more than genetics and postpartum hormonal swings were at fault here. One should therefore not overlook the religious component that exacerbated her illness simply because another reason can be found.Thanks for the opportunity to comment, Jim. Have a happy new year.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-25):\nAre homeschooling parents killers then?In point of fact, I wonder how homeschool stats on abuse would stack up next to the very real scandals (that means more than one) in the public schools, ranging from sex after school (detention time has changed since my days in the public school rot, for certain) and educational achievement?Hmmm.You took one case pulled from the headlines and decked out for rabid media consumption--for the purpose of....?Are you going to do a rejoinder with Shakeshaft's (no giggles) analsis of the loosey goosey morals (which one assumes in not quite as \"authoritarian\" as what the rigid, hidebound homeschoolers go through), and sexual abuse from teachers in the public schools?Regail us then with homeschool failures and public school's monopolistic succcess--or admit that it is a relic of the 19th century industrial age that is the legacy of making the quotidian masses all think about the same thing?This is where I don't hold my breath and turn purple.\nLippard (2009-02-27):\nThis isn't a post about home schooling, it is a post about a particular nutty form of fundamentalist legalism.\nAnonymous (2010-04-10):\nReligion in which legalism is present is the product of mankind and not God. It was the high priest (Pharisee) who was responsible for the death of Christ. God is a God of grace and faith not works (legalism) of the law. Ephesians 2:8-9\nLippard (2010-04-11):\nReligion in which legalism is not present is also the product of mankind and not God, in case you were wondering.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/fundamentalist-legalism-and-murder.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday I\u0026rsquo;ve read \u003ca href=\"http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/content/comments/is_mike_huckabee_going_to_rock_roll_hell_a_public_letter_to_evangelist_bill/\"\u003ea\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Religion-Faith/Blog~404699.aspx\"\u003efew\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.midwestoutreach.org/blogs/66/matthew-murray-and-bill-gothard-is-there-a-connection\"\u003einteresting\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://thinkingforfree.blogspot.com/2007/12/blast-from-past.html\"\u003ecommentaries\u003c/a\u003e on the role that certain fundamentalist Christian teachings (specifically a doctrine known as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_%28theology%29\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;legalism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e) have had in producing the outcomes of Andrea Yates murdering her children and Matthew Murray killing several people in Colorado.  Murray, who was raised in an ultra-fundamentalist home and home schooled, was in an environment based on the teachings of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gothard\"\u003eBill Gothard\u003c/a\u003e, whose \u0026ldquo;seven basic life principles\u0026rdquo; may be found \u003ca href=\"http://billgothard.com/bill/teaching/basicprinciples/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The obedience to authority component is one which has led to some problems, such as \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gothard#Sexual_misconduct_in_IBLP_ministries\"\u003ea sex scandal within Gothard\u0026rsquo;s organization\u003c/a\u003e.  (An online forum for discussing Bill Gothard\u0026rsquo;s teachings, open to both supporters and critics, may be found \u003ca href=\"http://billgotharddiscussion.com/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nGothard has other teachings beyond his seven principles, some of which are \u003ca href=\"http://www.midwestoutreach.org/blogs/66/matthew-murray-and-bill-gothard-is-there-a-connection#comment-11328\"\u003eenumerated by a commenter at Midwest Christian Outreach\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fundamentalist legalism and murder"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out allegations from a neo-Nazi that Ron Paul has regularly met with a variety of white supremacists at a Thai restaurant in D.C. Others have pointed out that Paul campaign expenditures have included expenses at that restaurant and that he has spoken to some questionable groups.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also updated this blog\u0026rsquo;s post on \u0026ldquo;Ron Paul, religious kook\u0026rdquo; to point out his recent statement that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t accept the reality of evolution.\nUPDATE: The alleged campaign expenditure link to Wednesday restaurant meetings with white supremacist groups has been conclusively refuted at the Irregular Times blog, which goes through the expenditures in detail and shows that while Ron Paul has spent money for meetings at the Tara Thai restaurant in D.C. (which is right around the corner from an office he rents in D.C.), none of those expenditures have occurred on a Wednesday. The source of the allegations, Bill White of the American National Socialist Workers Party, is not a particularly credible source, as has been remarked repeatedly in the comments at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog (first link above).\nHowever, Paul has definitely taken contributions from and posed for photographs with at least one white supremacist, Don Black, who runs the Stormfront website.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nBack around May, before all this \"white supremacist\" BS was popping up, Ron Paul was asked who he would like as Vice President. Ron Paul responded to the effect, \"Walter Williams because he is a good economist.\" Guess what? Walter Williams is a black guy. Ron Paul believes in individual liberty. Ron Paul believes that racism is an ugly form of collectivism. Collectivism such as the brand that Jesse Jackson and the KKK equally represents. So what if Ron Paul took a picture with a white supremacist? In Ron Paul rally's hundreds, if not thousands of people, line up to get a picture with him. Do you think he asks people their life story? You show me one picture of Ron Paul with a white supremacist and I will show you 10 more pictures of Ron Paul with a minority. Enough of the BS arguments, it only makes this blog look foolish. Have some dignity and try to search for the truth instead of grasping at straws with cheap rumors.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nPaul probably isn't a white supremacist or racist, and may not be a conspiracy theorist (though he seems to be), but he's quite comfortable hanging out with them and pretending to agree with them. Has he ever spoken out and publicly disagreed with them? Has he ever rejected a campaign contribution from a source that supports racism or white supremacy?Paul is a politician who opposes pork, yet solicits earmarks for his constituents, knowing that his \"no\" votes will not stop the measures from passing. He purports to be in favor of unilateral free trade, yet opposes free trade agreements and is happy for protectionists to think that he's also a protectionist. He claims to be a supporter of the Constitution, but he wants to remove the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and thinks that the Constitution is \"replete with references\" to God.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim, if anyone has evidence that Ron Paul has lied, is inconsistent, is a white supremacist, etc than I want to know. I'm not a Ron Paul cheerleader that will ignore evidence.As for you comments:\"Paul probably isn't a white supremacist or racist, and may not be a conspiracy theorist (though he seems to be), but he's quite comfortable hanging out with them and pretending to agree with them. Has he ever spoken out and publicly disagreed with them?\"What's the evidence that he hangs out with white supremacist? Even in your own blog, you said it has been disproven that Ron Paul was hanging out with white supremacist at the thai restaurant. And like I said before, a picture means nothing because Ron Paul takes thousands of photos and it's imjpossible to ask people who they are.If you truly are concerned about racism then you are doing a great disservice. Ron Paul's principles are the antithesis of racism. He believes in individual liberty and treating people as individual. Asked about gays in the military, Ron Paul said, \"And the problem that we have with dealing with this subject is we see people as groups, as they belong to certain groups and that they derive their rights as belonging to groups. We don't get our rights because we're gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our Creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way. So if there is homosexual behavior in the military that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. But if there's heterosexual behavior that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. So it isn't the issue of homosexuality. It's the concept and the understanding of individual rights. If we understood that, we would not be dealing with this very important problem.\"[167]Does that sounds like a statement by a racist white supremacist?Yes, Ron Paul has always spoken out against white supremacist ideology. It's the principles that is relayed in all his speeches. The Campaign Manager Jesse Benton's take on this:\"Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money,\" Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said. \"Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom.\"Even the white supremacist Don Black who donated to Ron Paul says, \"We know that he's not a white nationalist. He says he isn't and we believe him, but on the issues, there's only one choice,\" Black said Wednesday.Black said he supports Paul's stance on ending the war in Iraq, securing America's borders and his opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim said... \"Has he ever rejected a campaign contribution from a source that supports racism or white supremacy?\" Campaign Manager Jesse Benton says,\"Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money,\" Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said. \"Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom.\"And that's $500 less that this guy has to do whatever it is that he does,\" Benton added.That makes sense to me. If all the white supremacist want to give their money to Ron Paul for Ron Paul to spread freedom then hurray for liberty. What sense does it make to return the money if it doesn't buy Ron Paul's influence? Other than a superficial political game of appearances it does nothing, but gives the money back to white supremacist.\nEinzige (2007-12-27):\nWe don't get our rights because we're gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our Creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way.I'd like to point out that such a sentiment is incompatible with Paul's stance on immigration.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nThe best evidence for Ron Paul hanging out with racists and white supremacists that I've seen is here.A rebuttal from Glenn Greenwald (not a Ron Paul supporter, which gives him more credibility in this dispute) is here.I'll retract the part about Paul hanging out with racists and white supremacists, but he definitely hangs out with conspiracy theorists.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim says.... Paul is a politician who opposes pork, yet solicits earmarks for his constituents, knowing that his \"no\" votes will not stop the measures from passing.Ron Paul explains the system like a tax credit. For example, Ron Paul wants to get rid of the income tax because it's ideaology is that the government owns 100% of us and that it will allow us to keep a percentage of our labors. However, it would be dumb if Ron Paul opposed taking tax credits just because it's part of the system. The earmarks are similar. The money has already been collected for government use. It would be dumb of him and a disservice for the people he represents to not ask for some of that money back because he opposes the collection of the money in the first place.Ron Paul said that he doesn't like the system and the solution is removing the power of the government from overtaxing us... collecting all the loot.. and then they become Santa Claus redistributing the wealth. No wonder corporations have lobbyists that buy out our politicians. The solution isn't to expect politicians to not play along with the corrupt game, but it is to stop the government from collecting the loot in the first place.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nIt's not really like a tax credit, because the earmarks cause money to flow to small groups in amounts that can far exceed what they are paying in taxes. It's a transfer payment to special interests. Ron Paul should join with Rep. Jeff Flake in opposing earmarks. (On many issues, I'd support Paul over Flake, but not this one.)\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim says...He purports to be in favor of unilateral free trade, yet opposes free trade agreements and is happy for protectionists to think that he's also a protectionist. Ron Paul believes these free trade agreements are \"free trade\" in name only. It is really corporate+big government managed trade.Ron Paul says, \"So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites. The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor’s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned. \"If you were against a tariff set up by one of the \"free trade\" organizations, who do you talk to? These free trade organizations are even less responsive to you and me then the Federal Government.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\njim says...He claims to be a supporter of the Constitution, but he wants to remove the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and thinks that the Constitution is \"replete with references\" to God. Please provide the reference to this statement.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nHave multilateral free trade agreements opened up markets, reduced tariffs and quotas, and increased trade? Yes, they have. To the extent they have, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. If you insist on waiting for completely open trade rather than any compromise that is closer to it than we have today, you'll be waiting forever. Nations don't want to give up the ability to regulate trade, but they have been willing to make compromises that increase trade.\nEinzige (2007-12-27):\nHere is the reference to Paul's idiotic \"replete\" quote.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\neinzige: Please tell me what you think our immigration policy should be? Do you believe that the amount of immigration shouldn't be controlled?Ron Paul has said that if we had a stronger economy then we could be a lot more generous in allowing LEGAL immigrants to the country. Also, if the welfare state wasn't as expensive than we could allow a lot more immigrants. With the current welfare state of allowing free education and free health care, the influx of immigrants is bankrupting many hospitals and hurting the schools. If you believe in open borders and easy legal immigration then I think you should look into Ron Paul's economic and monetary policy. I was first attracted to Ron Paul's message because of the economic policy. I'm a good sized \"amateaur\" investor who has seen the housing crash, the credit crisis well before Wallstreet (Wallstreet is still clueless) and I believe Ron Paul's economic policies would help stabilize the economy.A good economy will make America need immigrants to fill jobs and it will make people welcome immigrants.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nPaul was asked a question about birthright citizenship at his first campaign appearance in Phoenix, which I attended, but he dodged the question. You can find a link there to Sameer Parekh's blog and his discussion of the subject; he's the one who asked the question. Paul's argument against birthright citizenship can be found at lewrockwell.com, in which he says \"I’ve introduced legislation that would amend the Constitution and end automatic birthright citizenship.\"His statement about the U.S. Constitution being replete with references to God was discussed here in this post, which includes a longer quotation from and link to the essay at lewrockwell.com where he made the statement.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim says...Have multilateral free trade agreements opened up markets, reduced tariffs and quotas, and increased trade? Yes, they have. To the extent they have, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. If you insist on waiting for completely open trade rather than any compromise that is closer to it than we have today, you'll be waiting forever. Nations don't want to give up the ability to regulate trade, but they have been willing to make compromises that increase trade.I understand what you are saying and truthfully, I do not know enough about the history of this subject to comment right now about it. However, I'm wondering, is it not conceivable to have a world with true free trade without having a world government agency like the WTO? True there would be some countries who are foolish enough to enact protectionist policies, however, free market theory and history has shown this only goes to hurt their own economy the most. The problem I have with large government involved in these issues is that I believe free markets are a natural consequence if a country wants to do its best. It doesn't need trade agreements because those that don't participate in free trade are the ultimate losers and will face pressures to become free traders. The problem with large government agencies involved in this issue is that they do not represent us. True, you may agree with their policies today, but what about tomorrow when they do something you don't agree with? For examples, the regulation of natural herbal medicine or a tariff or sanctions placed on a country?\nLippard (2007-12-27):\n\"Ron Paul has said that if we had a stronger economy then we could be a lot more generous in allowing LEGAL immigrants to the country.\"Allowing more legal immigrants would be good for the economy, both here and in the rest of the world. They build wealth and they spend money. Our quotas for H1-B visas for the year get filled in a day.Compare Singapore, which allows a much larger percentage of foreign guest workers and provides a means for them to become permanent residents, if they choose (most don't). Beefing up border security actually encourages illegal immigrants to stay, rather than being mobile between countries, though it's also encouraging some to leave or at least move within the United States to more hospitable areas.\nHume's Ghost (2007-12-27):\nI'm not impressed by his naming Walter Williams as a potential VP. Williams is a true believer in The Market and guest host for Rush Limbaugh (which disqualifies him from credibility for any public office in my mind.) He also thinks that DDT is magic fairy dust that you can pounds of a day with no consequence.If - and I emphasize IF - Paul is racist, naming Williams in and of itself doesn't means he's not, since his hypothetical brand of racism is filtered through his libertarian views. Hence the Newspeak about collectivist aka people on welfare being racists.That Paul letter that was archived by Nizkor says as much, saying that when blacks can't take the white man's money via taxation that take it via rioting.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nJim says... His statement about the U.S. Constitution being replete with references to God was discussed here in this post, which includes a longer quotation from and link to the essay at lewrockwell.com where he made the statement.I'll check that later when I have more time.Jim says.. Paul was asked a question about birthright citizenship at his first campaign appearance in Phoenix, which I attended, but he dodged the question. You can find a link there to Sameer Parekh's blog and his discussion of the subject; he's the one who asked the question. Paul's argument against birthright citizenship can be found at lewrockwell.com, in which he says \"I’ve introduced legislation that would amend the Constitution and end automatic birthright citizenship.\"Well, at least Ron Paul is principle enough that he would amend the Constitution instead of ignoring it.Whether you agree with birthright citizenship is another issue. Ron Paul's take on this issue is:He think our whole immigration policy is ridiculous. We invite immigrants in with free health care, free education, and birth right citizenship. Then we treat them as second class citizens. Then we use them as scapegoats when the economy goes bad. My impression is that Ron Paul does not dislike immigrants and would actually welcome more immigrants once we get our spending under control. He just doesn't like the system.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\njim says...It's not really like a tax credit, because the earmarks cause money to flow to small groups in amounts that can far exceed what they are paying in taxes. It's a transfer payment to special interests. Ron Paul should join with Rep. Jeff Flake in opposing earmarks. (On many issues, I'd support Paul over Flake, but not this one.)I believe Ron Paul thinks he has the obligation to bring the requests of his constituency to the congress. Therefore, he passes all requests along. However, he has stated that he always votes NO on the actual bill because that is the stage where he decides the merit of it.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\n\"The problem with large government agencies involved in this issue is that they do not represent us. True, you may agree with their policies today, but what about tomorrow when they do something you don't agree with?\"This problem exists with any government, any agency, and any organization, for that matter, and the only solution is two-fold: constitutional/statutory limits on power and maintaining checks and balances on those in power so that they don't just ignore or override the constitutional limits.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nHume's ghost, I've heard about the the alleged racist newletters, but I have not ever seen any proof of it. I'm not asking this in an antagonistic way, but do you have proof of it? If it's out there I would like to see it.\nEinzige (2007-12-27):\nPlease tell me what you think our immigration policy should be? Do you believe that the amount of immigration shouldn't be controlled?I believe that government shouldn't \"control\" the amount of immigration (leaving aside the issue about whether or not such a thing is even possible) any more than it should \"control\" the trafficking of recreational drugs.However, I also believe that open borders will lead to a \"flooding\" of immigrants in much the same way as legalizing drugs will turn everyone into hopeless dope fiends -- which is to say: it won't.If you actually buy in to the idea that we'll be overrun by immigrants if we open the borders then you need to pick up your Econ 101 textbook again and revisit the section on \"diminishing marginal utility\". Probably also a good idea to brush up on the efficient markets hypothesis while you're at it.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\njim says... This problem exists with any government, any agency, and any organization, for that matter, and the only solution is two-fold: constitutional/statutory limits on power and maintaining checks and balances on those in power so that they don't just ignore or override the constitutional limits.The problem with big government like the Federal Government or world governments is that the bigger they get the less an individual's opinion can be heard. For example, our Federal Government is unresponsive to the American people. Their approval rating is in the 30s because their a disconnect with what they want and what the American people want. Checks and balances has not worked there. Our three branches of government are part of the same party. The Republicans and Democrats are more alike than people really know. It's a divide and conquer strategy and when someone like Ron Paul comes in they rally together to attack him.However, in smaller government like my city I can state my disagreements and at least I can get a live person to talk to me. And with enough of my neighbors we can get our representatives to act.\nHume's Ghost (2007-12-27):\nHere is the letter. The Paul campaign says it was not written by Paul, although that wouldn't excuse it going out in his name and Paul not distancing himself from it for years.It strikes me as strange as it would be were Barry Goldwater to attempt to distance himself from The Conscience of a Conservative by saying Brent Bozell wrote it. Although the difference being that the Paul campaign has created the impression that Paul had no say so or knowledge of the letter.\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nIf you actually buy in to the idea that we'll be overrun by immigrants if we open the borders then you need to pick up your Econ 101 textbook again and revisit the section on \"diminishing marginal utility\". Probably also a good idea to brush up on the efficient markets hypothesis while you're at it.What about the welfare state that they can take advantage of when they come here? Are you in favor of a reduction of the size of the welfare state? How do we pay for all these things? We are paying for it right now by borrowing money or printing money (monetizing the debt). This is obviously not sustainable.As for the\nUnknown (2007-12-27):\nI have a lot more to say about EMT and marginal utility, but I'll save that for when I have more time.Good discussing thing with you guys. If you guys have a scanned copy of the racist newsletter I would really like to see it.\nKat Lippard (2007-12-27):\nDennis for President!It seems that Ron Paul doesn't like the way many things are run, with good reason. But it also seems that there are some things he's willing to play along with - earmarks, and others he is not - free trade agreements.\nLippard (2007-12-27):\nI think welfare reform is a great idea. We actually had significant welfare reform in 1996, when Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.Wikipedia reports the outcome:\"The consequences of welfare reform have been dramatic. As expected, welfare rolls (the number of people receiving payments) dropped significantly (57%) in the years since passage of the bill. Substantially larger declines in welfare rolls were posted by many states, and even big city-dominated Illinois achieved an 86% reduction in welfare recipients. [MacDougal 2005] Child poverty rates for African American families have dropped the sharpest since statistics began to be tallied in the 1960s; although critics argue that this is due more to overall economic improvement than to welfare reform, and that in any case the rate of child poverty in the United States is still far higher than in nations with greater welfare protections. Some would counter that this apparent disparity is due to misleading statistical analysis (measuring inequality rather than poverty) and that welfare rolls in the United States historically are much more closely correlated with government spending rather than economic fluctuations.\"\nEinzige (2007-12-27):\nWhat about the welfare state that they can take advantage of when they come here?Is the problem the welfare state or is it immigration?\nLippard (2007-12-30):\nSheldon Richman has a nice series of posts about Ron Paul, in which he defends Paul's position on earmarks and excoriates him for his position on immigration.\nUnknown (2007-12-30):\neinzige says...Is the problem the welfare state or is it immigration? I think the problem is more welfare. If we didn't have this burdensome welfare state then a lot more immigrants would be welcomed and there would be no doubt that they all are coming to the U.S. to work.You mentioned the efficient market theory. I'm not quite sure what you are getting at related to the topic of immigration. The hard form of the efficient market theory is in my opinion complete BS. It doesn't explain the intentional misinformation of our government (yeah right.. inflation is at 2%). It doesn't explain the psychological effect of greed and fear that drives bubbles and busts. It doesn't explain the misaligned interests of the financial institutions. They claim to be professionals that look out for the best interest of the invidual customers, but they get paid billions of dollars by corporations such as Enron and they facilitate the CDO, MBS scams.\nUnknown (2007-12-30):\nHere is the reference to Paul's idiotic \"replete\" quote. First off, I'm an atheist.As far as I understand the Constitution isn't replete with reference to God. So I would agree with you that I think Ron Paul is wrong on that. However, in context of the article, \"The War on Religion\", I understand Ron Paul was trying to make his case and may have erred in that point. However, I don't entirely disagree with the article itself. It's not that I think the government should ever prop Christianity up to the official religion (not that Ron Paul wants that), it's just that I think we have a lot more things to worry about right now. If we are true to ourselves, none of us will ever agree 100% with a candidate. I have researched a good deal regarding all the other candidates and though I may not agree wtih entirely on all issues, Ron Paul differentiates himself in that he bases his views on a few core principles. That is the the rule of law, freedom, individual liberty, peace, and that the concept that the people own the government (not the other way around).You are bound to be able to disagree with him on some issues, however, I hope you look at the bigger picture. Ron Paul supporters support him because we are fighting for our freedom by restraining the move towards the police state. Sacrafice of individual liberty for perceived safety is never acceptable.We are fighting for our wealth. We are headed for a destruction of our currency. The Social Security has been raided and it is now nothing more than a giant pyramid scheme. Our monetary system is a scam. The financial industry is a scam. As an investor who understands the game I beat the market handidly every year. Top 99 percentile returns, so this game is actually very profitable to me. It is also very profitable to others who understand the game, which is probably why the game doesn't change. Something is wrong with our economic system when a trained engineer is able to make multiple times more in playing the financial markets than in a solid profession such as engineering.\nUnknown (2007-12-30):\nI believe that government shouldn't \"control\" the amount of immigration (leaving aside the issue about whether or not such a thing is even possible) any more than it should \"control\" the trafficking of recreational drugs.You would at least agree with me that we shouldn't subsidize illegal immigration?We give illegal immigration free education and free health care. (No, I'm not saying we should let illegal immigrants die in ER) Why wouldn't they want to come here?It would be like if we subsidized recreational drugs. For example, how about we give out free cocaine.\nEinzige (2007-12-30):\nI find your use of the word \"illegal\" to be distasteful. Because I am an individualist I make no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. I couldn't care less if a person has crossed a border \"illegally.\" Doing such a thing harms no one.I mostly mentioned the EMH as an afterthought, though an understanding of the underlying ideas is helpful. Marginal value theory is more apt to the discussion--and, no, I don't think government subsidies are a good idea, as the subsidy lowers the point at which the marginal cost of X equals the marginal value of X. So, you get too much of X--in this case, immigration. That, however, is not an indictment of immigration, per se--but of the subsidy.I'm not feeling particularly prolix today, so I'll leave it at that.\nLippard (2007-12-31):\nVictor:It's clear that Ron Paul has no chance of winning the presidential nomination (he's been dropping on Intrade, he's now at 7% from a peak of about 9%, well behind Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee). The only thing his campaign can achieve is to promote ideas and possibly have some influence on the Republican Party's platform--though that seems highly unlikely. I gave him $200, and I think I've gotten my money's worth for his anti-war stance, but I'm not at all happy with his courting the followers of Tom Tancredo through his anti-immigration positions. I don't think he's going to have any significant effect on the Republican Party, nor that he's building any kind of organization that will promote liberty beyond the election. I'd much rather devote any further funds to organizations that are more consistent in their stances and effective in their actions, like the Institute for Justice.Personally, I'd rather see a Democrat in the White House and another party in control of at least one House of the Legislature--my own informal look at NBER data suggests to me that such divided control of government tends to prevent the worst abuses.BTW, the Constitution has one reference to \"Lord\" and that's only in giving the date. There are no other references to God of any kind. James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, wrote in \"Memorial and Remonstrance\" (a critique of Patrick Henry's proposal to collect a tax for support of nonsectarian Christian education that was signed by several thousand people and led to the successful passage of Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786): \"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?\"This was the basis of the wording of the separation of church and state in the First Amendment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/ron-paul-connected-to-white.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/neonazi_leader_says_paul_is_on.php\"\u003epoints out allegations from a neo-Nazi that Ron Paul has regularly met with a variety of white supremacists\u003c/a\u003e at a Thai restaurant in D.C.  Others have pointed out that \u003ca href=\"http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/the-ron-paul-vid-lash/?ex=1199163600\u0026amp;en=7b25470d94ea3b8b\u0026amp;ei=5070\u0026amp;emc=eta1\"\u003ePaul campaign expenditures have included expenses at that restaurant and that he has spoken to some questionable groups\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve also updated \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/ron-paul-religious-kook.html\"\u003ethis blog\u0026rsquo;s post on \u0026ldquo;Ron Paul, religious kook\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to point out his recent statement that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t accept the reality of evolution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The alleged campaign expenditure link to Wednesday restaurant meetings with white supremacist groups \u003ca href=\"http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/20/tara-thai-ron-paul-and-white-supremacists-fec-report-data/\"\u003ehas been conclusively refuted at the Irregular Times blog\u003c/a\u003e, which goes through the expenditures in detail and shows that while Ron Paul has spent money for meetings at the Tara Thai restaurant in D.C. (which is right around the corner from an office he rents in D.C.), none of those expenditures have occurred on a Wednesday.  The source of the allegations, Bill White of the American National Socialist Workers Party, is not a particularly credible source, as has been remarked repeatedly in the comments at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog (first link above).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowever, Paul has definitely taken contributions from and posed for photographs with \u003ca href=\"http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/ron-paul-don-black-photo/\"\u003eat least one white supremacist, Don Black, who runs the Stormfront website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ron Paul connected to white supremacists?"},{"content":"In a September 2007 talk, Dembski used an over-dubbed version of a computer animation of the inner workings of the cell that he took from Harvard and XVIVO, which he subsequently claimed he had downloaded from the Internet in a form that didn\u0026rsquo;t have the credits (e.g., from YouTube).\nPeter Irons has now shown that the content of Dembski\u0026rsquo;s latest book, Design of Life, shows that his explanation is a lie. That book includes a reference to the same video, with a link to its original location, marked as \u0026ldquo;last accessed\u0026rdquo; on January 25, 2007. Since he knew where the video came from in January 2007, he also already knew in September 2007. ERV points out the details of Dembski\u0026rsquo;s deception.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nUPDATE (December 31, 2007): There is an entertaining exchange of letters between Peter Irons, Bill Dembski, and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s attorney John Gilmore posted at Pharyngula.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2007-12-30):\nDembski is an arrogant cockscomb and charlatan, who fancies himself above criticism by darwinists and the law. His smoke-and-mirrors mathematical humbug hides the hollowness of his position; a Hovind with an accredited degree. Martin Garder's Fads and Fallacies book has a list of criteria for judging if someone's a pseudo-scientist, and I think Dembski fits it perfectly.On any other issue, Dembski would be ignored and forgotten like the thousands of cranks and quacks before him. Sadly, he is supported by a well-financed and devoted core of fundamentalist backers. With such people cheering him on, no wonder he has delusions of grandeur.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/dembski-knew-he-was-infringing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a September 2007 talk, \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/discovery-institute-steals-content-and.html\"\u003eDembski used an over-dubbed version of a computer animation of the inner workings of the cell that he took from Harvard and XVIVO\u003c/a\u003e, which he subsequently claimed he had downloaded from the Internet in a form that didn\u0026rsquo;t have the credits (e.g., from YouTube).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePeter Irons has now shown that the content of Dembski\u0026rsquo;s latest book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDesign of Life\u003c/span\u003e, shows that his explanation is a lie.  That book includes a reference to the same video, with a link to its original location, marked as \u0026ldquo;last accessed\u0026rdquo; on January 25, 2007.  Since he knew where the video came from in January 2007, he also already knew in September 2007.  ERV \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/12/discovery-institute-dembski-copyright.html\"\u003epoints out the details of Dembski\u0026rsquo;s deception\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/dembski_knew.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 31, 2007):  There is an entertaining exchange of letters between Peter Irons, Bill Dembski, and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s attorney John Gilmore \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/peter_irons_makes_billy_dembsk.php\"\u003eposted at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dembski knew he was infringing copyright"},{"content":"The Washington Times reported on December 21 that several years ago, Chinese intelligence successfully subverted the National Security Agency in Hawaii. First, by creating a company based in Hawaii to do Chinese translations which successfully obtained government contracts with the NSA to translate intercepted Chinese communications. The intercepted communications included sufficient information to identify the sources, giving the Chinese the ability to control what information was obtained by the NSA either by preventing significant information from being carried over by the compromised channel or by introducing disinformation.\nThis shows one of the problems that faces a world superpower whose own language is commonly used and which does little or nothing to encourage its citizens to learn other languages. Understanding communications in other languages require the assistance of translators who may be working for the enemy, and the enemy can almost get away with speaking freely anywhere while being overheard, since the likelihood of comprehension is so small. The more communications you need translated, the more translators you need, and the greater the likelihood of compromise.\nUPDATE (January 2, 2008): Noah Schachtman at Wired and Jeffrey Carr at IntelFusion cast some doubt on this story.\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-02):\nThis is a very intersting story. Just curious, though: How much do you trust the Washington Times? I thought it was a known propaganda front for the NeoCon establishment? The paper is owned by Reverend Sun Myung-Moon or whatever, who is a very good friend of George Bush's. In fact it's been reported that Bush purchased 500 acres of land adjacent to a very large swath of land owned by Moon in Paraguay in anticipation of possibly having to leave the country in case of criminal charges. (Have you heard of this?)\nLippard (2008-01-02):\nI agree that one should be cautious about the Washington Times due to its bias and Moon's ownership, but that should go without saying. This particular story has been reported elsewhere as well, such as UPI--but that's also owned by Rev. Moon. I guess it all rests on the credibility of Bill Gertz, as this Wired piece says.Moon has a huge amount of political influence--he got himself coronated in a ceremony at an event at the U.S. Capitol attended by multiple Congressmen, for example.Ed Brayton has a very nice multi-part expose about Moon called Bad Moon Rising (now complete at 8 parts) at the Michigan Messenger.\nLippard (2008-01-02):\nHere's a good article about Bill Gertz and this story.\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-04):\nHey thanks for the info! By the way, here is where I read about George W. Bush buying land next to Moon's land in Paraguay: Wonkette.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/chinese-intelligence-was-translating.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071221/NATION/676409066/1001\"\u003ereported on December 21 that several years ago, Chinese intelligence successfully subverted the National Security Agency in Hawaii\u003c/a\u003e.  First, by creating a company based in Hawaii to do Chinese translations which successfully obtained government contracts with the NSA to translate intercepted Chinese communications.  The intercepted communications included sufficient information to identify the sources, giving the Chinese the ability to control what information was obtained by the NSA either by preventing significant information from being carried over by the compromised channel or by introducing disinformation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis shows one of the problems that faces a world superpower whose own language is commonly used and which does little or nothing to encourage its citizens to learn other languages.  Understanding communications in other languages require the assistance of translators who may be working for the enemy, and the enemy can almost get away with speaking freely anywhere while being overheard, since the likelihood of comprehension is so small.  The more communications you need translated, the more translators you need, and the greater the likelihood of compromise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 2, 2008):   \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/from-the-intrep.html\"\u003eNoah Schachtman at Wired\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2007/12/did-chinese-int.html\"\u003eJeffrey Carr at IntelFusion\u003c/a\u003e cast some doubt on this story.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chinese intelligence was translating for the NSA"},{"content":"As another year comes to a close, I\u0026rsquo;ve again put together a list of the books I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to read this year. Once again, there are many that I\u0026rsquo;ve not finished, some of which were started but left uncompleted in 2005 or 2006, but I\u0026rsquo;m not going to bother listing those this year. While in previous years I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed almost every book I read on Amazon.com, this year I\u0026rsquo;ve hardly done so at all, and my Amazon.com reviewer rank has dropped accordingly\u0026ndash;I had hopes at one time of cracking the top 2000 (and got up to 2,171), but that won\u0026rsquo;t happen if I don\u0026rsquo;t write some more reviews. I\u0026rsquo;m disappointed with how few books I\u0026rsquo;ve read this year\u0026ndash;this is the first time I can recall purchasing more new books than I\u0026rsquo;ve finished reading, so I plan to use my vacation days (the rest of the year) to see if I can finish a few more.\nAkhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A BiographyBarton Biggs, Hedge HoggingBrian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian MovementGiles Foden, Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake TanganyikaDiego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private ProtectionBarry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a ConservativeMadeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (nowhere near as good as I remembered, and the other two I read were so bad I didn't buy the fourth) Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet Mark R. Levin, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and AnguishRoger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital ManagementErnest Nagel and James R. Newman, Goedel's ProofRobert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban WorldRonald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (revised edition)Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of BushWilliam Poundstone, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall StreetRudy Rucker, Frek and the ElixirJim Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the \"Marvelous Chinese Conjurer\"Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIAJonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal StateCarl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea (Previously:\u0026nbsp;2006,\u0026nbsp;2005.) Danny Boy, FCD (2007-12-26):\nI know how you feel. Despite reading ten books in the last two months, my overall number of books read is fewer than the last couple of years. And given my sometimes impulsive buying spree (both online and off) I have over two dozen unread books bought just this year. BTW, in your list, I haven't read any of those except the last one by Carl Zimmer, which is awesome and should be required reading for anyone doubting Evolution (deniers won't be convinced, though).\nLippard (2007-12-26):\nI've only read one of yours, and it's on the same subject (Gould's The Panda's Thumb).I've got another Zimmer book ready to start reading, Soul Made Flesh.\nEinzige (2007-12-26):\nIn line with Kurt Goedel, I noticed that Douglas Hofstadter has a new book out--\"I am a Srange Loop\". It looks like a fun read.\nLippard (2007-12-26):\nThat one's on my wish list, but not yet purchased.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-12-26):\nI've read Soul Made Flesh too. Carl Zimmer is a genius in science writing. I wish some other science writers I read are half as good. :p\nHume's Ghost (2007-12-27):\nHm. I'm not even sure what books I've read this year ... I never thought to keep track (although it would probably be a good idea to start since I pick a book of the year every year ...).\nEinzige (2007-12-28):\nI'm leaning toward spam, Jim.However, the fact that I'm not sure is a tribute to the spammer.\nLippard (2007-12-28):\nYeah, I think spam... it's gone.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs another year comes to a close, I\u0026rsquo;ve again put together a list of the books I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to read this year.  Once again, there are many that I\u0026rsquo;ve not finished, some of which were started but left uncompleted in \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html\"\u003e2006\u003c/a\u003e, but I\u0026rsquo;m not going to bother listing those this year.  While in previous years I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed almost every book I read on Amazon.com, this year I\u0026rsquo;ve hardly done so at all, and my Amazon.com reviewer rank has dropped accordingly\u0026ndash;I had hopes at one time of cracking the top 2000 (and got up to 2,171), but that won\u0026rsquo;t happen if I don\u0026rsquo;t write some more reviews.  I\u0026rsquo;m disappointed with how few books I\u0026rsquo;ve read this year\u0026ndash;this is the first time I can recall purchasing more new books than I\u0026rsquo;ve finished reading, so I plan to use my vacation days (the rest of the year) to see if I can finish a few more.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2007"},{"content":"Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has written an article about how the religious right\u0026rsquo;s support for Mike Huckabee \u0026ldquo;represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right\u0026rdquo; in that Huckabee is a candidate who repudiates many of the core principles of conservatism in favor of populism. I\u0026rsquo;d say he\u0026rsquo;s more of a William Jennings Bryan than a Barry Goldwater.\nHedges\u0026rsquo; article correctly identifies some very serious reasons to be concerned about a Huckabee candidacy, with his ties to Christian reconstructionism and his complete ignorance of foreign policy. He concludes with a few paragraphs about Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s opposition to the HPV vaccine and his desire to quarantine AIDS patients. It\u0026rsquo;s here that Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit, when he writes that \u0026ldquo;Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position.\u0026rdquo; In fact, Huckabee hasn\u0026rsquo;t backed off from the position, only from the specific words he used to describe it.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what he said about it to Chris Wallace, as reported at the Huffington Post (with the accompanying video record):\nThis morning, Huckabee first tried to deny his comments. \u0026ldquo;Chris, I didn\u0026rsquo;t say that we should quarantine,\u0026rdquo; he said. In fact, he said we \u0026ldquo;need[ed]\u0026rdquo; to isolate AIDS patients.\nPressed repeatedly by host Chris Wallace, however, Huckabee relented. \u0026ldquo;That is exactly what I said. I don\u0026rsquo;t run from it, I don\u0026rsquo;t recant from it. Would I say it a little differently today? Sure, in light of 15 years of additional knowledge and understanding, I would.\u0026quot;That\u0026rsquo;s not backing off from the position.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/chris-hedges-gives-huckabee-too-much.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Hedges, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAmerican Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/article,2072,n,n\"\u003ehas written an article about how the religious right\u0026rsquo;s support for Mike Huckabee \u0026ldquo;represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in that Huckabee is a candidate who repudiates many of the core principles of conservatism in favor of populism.  I\u0026rsquo;d say he\u0026rsquo;s more of a William Jennings Bryan than a Barry Goldwater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHedges\u0026rsquo; article correctly identifies some very serious reasons to be concerned about a Huckabee candidacy, with his ties to Christian reconstructionism and his complete ignorance of foreign policy.  He concludes with a few paragraphs about Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s opposition to the HPV vaccine and his desire to quarantine AIDS patients.  It\u0026rsquo;s here that Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit, when he writes that \u0026ldquo;Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position.\u0026rdquo;  In fact, Huckabee hasn\u0026rsquo;t backed off from the position, only from the specific words he used to describe it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s what he said about it to Chris Wallace, \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/09/huckabee-wont-recant-h_n_75974.html\"\u003eas reported at the Huffington Post\u003c/a\u003e (with the accompanying video record):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis morning, Huckabee first tried to deny his comments. \u0026ldquo;Chris, I didn\u0026rsquo;t say that we should quarantine,\u0026rdquo; he said. In fact, he said we \u0026ldquo;need[ed]\u0026rdquo; to isolate AIDS patients.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePressed repeatedly by host Chris Wallace, however, Huckabee relented. \u0026ldquo;That is exactly what I said. I don\u0026rsquo;t run from it, I don\u0026rsquo;t recant from it. Would I say it a little differently today? Sure, in   light of 15 years of additional knowledge and understanding, I would.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s not backing off from the position.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chris Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit"},{"content":"The Onion has the story. The part about Jews for Jesus splitting into three groups is priceless.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/what-would-happen-if-jesus-converted-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29540\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/a\u003e has the story.  The part about Jews for Jesus splitting into three groups is priceless.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What would happen if Jesus converted to Islam?"},{"content":"Unlike the examples in Alanis Morissette\u0026rsquo;s misnamed song, this is both unfortunate and ironic:\nRoofing billionaire dies in fall through roof\nThe 91st richest man in the U.S., a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his home garage\u0026rsquo;s roof, local authorities said Friday.\nKen Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction on the roof over his garage at his home in the town of Rock Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Department commander Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company, ABC Supply Co.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/irony.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnlike \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/interview-with-jon-winokur.html\"\u003ethe examples in Alanis Morissette\u0026rsquo;s misnamed song\u003c/a\u003e, this is both unfortunate and ironic:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22360485/?GT1=10645\"\u003eRoofing billionaire dies in fall through roof\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp class=\"textBodyBlack\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp class=\"textBodyBlack\"\u003eThe 91st richest man in the U.S., a roofing company billionaire, has died after  falling through his home garage\u0026rsquo;s roof, local authorities said Friday.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp class=\"textBodyBlack\"\u003e\u003cspan id=\"byLine\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eKen Hendricks, 66, was checking on  construction on the roof over his garage at his home in the town of Rock  Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Department commander  Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company,  ABC Supply Co.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Irony"},{"content":"Yesterday, a group of Indians from the Lakota Nation announced that it has withdrawn from all U.S. treaties and will be issuing its own passports and driver\u0026rsquo;s licenses and creating a tax-free state where non-Native Americans are welcome to move so long as they renounce their U.S. citizenship. They\u0026rsquo;ve stated that they will be filing liens against the properties within their territory which have been illegally homesteaded, and have contacted the governments of Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela seeking recognition.\nYou can find a map of the Lakota Nation territory here, with more detail and explanation here. It covers western North and South Dakota and Nebraska, and eastern Montana and Wyoming.\nThis declaration of independence was made yesterday by Russell Means, leader of the American Indian Movement (who was nearly the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president instead of Ron Paul), and is based on many years of U.S. government failure to live up to its treaties with Indian tribes. But Means actually has no authority to speak for the Oglala Sioux (the Lakota tribe he is a member of), since he did not win the 2005 election for president of the tribe, though he unsuccessfully contested it.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t seen any specific mention with regard to the Lakota Nation\u0026rsquo;s action of the case of Cobell v. Kempthorne, a lawsuit which has been in federal court since 1996. This lawsuit is over the U.S. Department of the Interior\u0026rsquo;s mismanagement of Indian land lease trust funds, in which they\u0026rsquo;ve lost the accounting records for 118 years of data about $13 billion in funds and its accumulated interest, which the plaintiffs would like to see returned to them. (I previously mentioned this lawsuit two years ago as one of the issues former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth was on the right side of.) Eloise Cobell is a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana.\nMention has been made, however, of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision which awarded the Lakota $122 million in compensation for the land that had been taken from them in violation of treaties, but not any land. The Lakota refused the award, which has accrued interest bringing it close to $1 billion today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/lakota-nation-withdraws-from-us.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday,  \u003ca href=\"http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/NEWS/712200347/1001\"\u003ea group of Indians from the Lakota Nation announced that it has withdrawn from all U.S. treaties\u003c/a\u003e and will be issuing its own passports and driver\u0026rsquo;s licenses and creating a tax-free state where non-Native Americans are welcome to move so long as they renounce their U.S. citizenship.  They\u0026rsquo;ve stated that \u003ca href=\"http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/12/20/news/local/doc476a99630633e335271152.txt\"\u003ethey will be filing liens against the properties within their territory which have been illegally homesteaded\u003c/a\u003e, and have contacted the governments of Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela seeking recognition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find a map of the Lakota Nation territory \u003ca href=\"http://users.dma.ucla.edu/%7Eestevancarlos/images/lakotanation.jpg\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, with more detail and explanation \u003ca href=\"http://ishgooda.org/oglala/1868lnd.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  It covers western North and South Dakota and Nebraska, and eastern Montana and Wyoming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis declaration of independence was made yesterday by Russell Means, leader of the American Indian Movement (who was \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2D71F38F932A05756C0A961948260\"\u003enearly the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president\u003c/a\u003e instead of Ron Paul), and is based on many years of U.S. government failure to live up to its treaties with Indian tribes.  But Means actually has no authority to speak for the Oglala Sioux (the Lakota tribe he is a member of), since he did not win the 2005 election for president of the tribe, though \u003ca href=\"http://www.indianz.com/News/2005/006908.asp\"\u003ehe unsuccessfully contested it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t seen any specific mention with regard to the Lakota Nation\u0026rsquo;s action of the case of \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiantrust.com/\"\u003eCobell v. Kempthorne\u003c/a\u003e, a lawsuit which has been in federal court since 1996.  This lawsuit is over the U.S. Department of the Interior\u0026rsquo;s mismanagement of Indian land lease trust funds, in which they\u0026rsquo;ve lost the accounting records for 118 years of data about $13 billion in funds and its accumulated interest, which the plaintiffs would like to see returned to them.  (I \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/jd-hayworth-to-keep-donations-from.html\"\u003epreviously mentioned this lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e two years ago as one of the issues former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth was on the right side of.)  Eloise Cobell is a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMention \u003ca href=\"http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/12/20/news/local/doc476a99630633e335271152.txt\"\u003ehas been made\u003c/a\u003e, however, of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision which awarded the Lakota $122 million in compensation for the land that had been taken from them in violation of treaties, but not any land.  The Lakota refused the award, which has accrued interest bringing it close to $1 billion today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lakota Nation withdraws from U.S. treaties"},{"content":"Mitt Romney said on national television several times this year (including at least twice this month) that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1978, he claimed to the Boston Herald that he and his father both marched with King.\nSusan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, did some research and found that while Gov. George Romney (Michigan) issued a proclamation in support of King in June 1963 for a March in Detroit, he declined to attend, saying that he did not attend political events on Sundays. He participated in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe a few days later, but King did not attend that march.\nNow, after defending the claim repeatedly, Romney has admitted yesterday that neither he nor his father marched with King\u0026ndash;but not that he has said anything false. Instead, he says that he \u0026ldquo;saw\u0026rdquo; his father march with King in a figurative sense: \u0026ldquo;If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term \u0026lsquo;saw\u0026rsquo; includes being aware of in the sense I\u0026rsquo;ve described. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s a figure of speech and very familiar, and it\u0026rsquo;s very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/depends-on-what-meaning-of-saw-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMitt Romney said on national television several times this year (including at least twice this month) that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr.  In 1978, he claimed to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBoston Herald\u003c/span\u003e that he and his father both marched with King.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSusan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, did some research and found that while Gov. George Romney (Michigan) issued a proclamation in support of King in June 1963 for a March in Detroit, he declined to attend, saying that he did not attend political events on Sundays.  He participated in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe a few days later, but King did not attend that march.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, after defending the claim repeatedly, Romney \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/21/romney_never_saw_father_on_king_march/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Front+Page\"\u003ehas admitted yesterday that neither he nor his father marched with King\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;but not that he has said anything false.  Instead, he says that he \u0026ldquo;saw\u0026rdquo; his father march with King in a figurative sense:  \u0026ldquo;If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term \u0026lsquo;saw\u0026rsquo; includes being aware of in the sense I\u0026rsquo;ve described. \u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s a figure of speech and very familiar, and it\u0026rsquo;s very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Depends on what the meaning of \"saw\" is"},{"content":"A Blackwater bodyguard shot and killed Hentish, the mascot dog of the New York Times that has lived its entire life in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Blackwater claims Hentish attacked one of their bomb-sniffing dogs and had to be shot.\nHistorical Comments Rafal Los (2007-12-21):\nThat's classical resorting to 3rd grader tactics... you exposed me, so I'll shoot your dog.God help us.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-12-21):\nThose bastards!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/blackwater-shoots-ny-times-dog-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1819755220071218\"\u003eA Blackwater bodyguard shot and killed Hentish\u003c/a\u003e, the mascot dog of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e that has lived its entire life in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.  Blackwater claims Hentish attacked one of their bomb-sniffing dogs and had to be shot.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eRafal Los\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-12-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat's classical resorting to 3rd grader tactics... you exposed me, so I'll shoot your dog.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eGod help us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blackwater shoots the NY Times' dog in Baghdad"},{"content":"December 12, 2007\nThe Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman\nThe United States Senate\nSelect Committee on Intelligence\nWashington, DC 20510\nThe Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman\nThe United States House of Representatives\nPermanent Select Committee on Intelligence\nWashington, DC 20515\nDear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller:\nAs retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).\nWe believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.\nThe current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.\nThe Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.\nGeneral David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:\nWhat sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect\u0026hellip;. Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong.\nBeyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone \u0026ldquo;talk;\u0026rdquo; however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.\nEmploying interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.\nThis is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.\nSincerely,\nGeneral Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)\nGeneral Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)\nGeneral Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)\nGeneral David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)\nGeneral Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)\nAdmiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)\nVice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)\nLieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)\nLieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)\nVice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)\nLieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)\nLieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)\nMajor General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)\nMajor General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)\nMajor General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)\nRear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)\nMajor General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)\nRear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)\nMajor General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)\nMajor General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)\nMajor General Antonio \u0026lsquo;Tony\u0026rsquo; M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)\nBrigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General Richard O\u0026rsquo;Meara, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)\nBrigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)\nBrigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)\nThe bill in question has passed in the House. It still needs to pass in the Senate. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.\nUPDATE (December 20, 2007): Notes on a few of the above\u0026ndash;Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib. Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer). Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/former-us-military-officials-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDecember 12, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman\u003cbr /\u003eThe United States Senate\u003cbr /\u003eSelect Committee on Intelligence\u003cbr /\u003eWashington, DC 20510\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman\u003cbr /\u003eThe United States House of Representatives\u003cbr /\u003ePermanent Select Committee on Intelligence\u003cbr /\u003eWashington, DC 20515\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the   troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect\u0026hellip;. Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBeyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone \u0026ldquo;talk;\u0026rdquo; however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEmploying interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to   the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eGeneral Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eAdmiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eVice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eLieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eLieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eVice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eLieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eLieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eRear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eRear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eMajor General Antonio \u0026lsquo;Tony\u0026rsquo; M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General Richard O\u0026rsquo;Meara, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003eBrigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?\u0026amp;dbname=cp110\u0026amp;sid=cp110jIYFa\u0026amp;refer=\u0026amp;r_n=hr478.110\u0026amp;item=\u0026amp;sel=TOC_86724\u0026amp;\"\u003ebill in question\u003c/a\u003e has passed in the House.  It \u003ca href=\"http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN01538:\"\u003estill needs to pass in the Senate\u003c/a\u003e. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 20, 2007):  Notes on a few of the above\u0026ndash;Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib.  Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer).  Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Former U.S. military officials against \"enhanced interrogation\""},{"content":"This political advertisement explores those questions.\nHat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/who-gets-jesus-endorsement-and-is-it.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis political advertisement explores those questions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/jKI2C93T4CU\u0026rel=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/jKI2C93T4CU\u0026rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who gets Jesus' endorsement, and is it a good thing?"},{"content":"In January 2008 the film \u0026ldquo;Untraceable,\u0026quot; starring Diane Lane, will be released. It looks awful. The premise is that a serial killer is killing people live on the Internet, via an \u0026ldquo;untraceable website\u0026rdquo; that is connected to contraptions that kill his victims as more people visit the site.\nThe whole concept of an \u0026ldquo;untraceable website\u0026rdquo; or the idea that such a thing would be unstoppable by ISPs and law enforcement is absurd\u0026ndash;the immediate upstream provider of the site would merely need to null route the IP address(es) where the website is hosted, and traffic stops. They\u0026rsquo;d also be able to quickly identify the customer who owns the server in question. Even if that server was compromised and being used to reverse proxy or redirect traffic to other servers, it would still be a relatively simple matter to track that backwards, though it would be somewhat more difficult than stopping the traffic. Even if the domain name pointed to a new server on a compromised host every second, it would still be possible to contact the domain name registrar and get the domain name shut down.\nIf users can get to it, it can be seen how and what they\u0026rsquo;re getting to, even if that\u0026rsquo;s only the front end in a chain of successive proxies. If it has a domain name, that provides another path to shutting off access.\nUPDATE (January 2, 2008): I came across the script online while searching for information about the writers. Let\u0026rsquo;s just say that my opinion above is not nearly negative enough. In the first 16 pages are at least six or seven scenes that really bring on the stupid. For example, FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh, who works in the FBI\u0026rsquo;s cyber division, is monitoring machines that are being compromised by hackers (honeypots, essentially, though the script doesn\u0026rsquo;t use the word). One of her machines gets compromised and she sees that it copies her files including fake financial information. It then accesses eBay to use a stolen credit card to purchase a watch. In reality, the stolen financial information wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be likely to be used from the same machine, it would be sold to another player in the underground economy. Marsh then types commands to look for the IP address of the connecting host\u0026ndash;but if they\u0026rsquo;ve already got honeypots or honeynets in operation, that should already be logged. She then does the usual CSI-style conversion of an IP address into a name and address without issuing a subpoena to an ISP, and discovers that it\u0026rsquo;s a home belonging to a 56-year-old woman. She immediately concludes that the actual criminal must be a neighbor using her wireless connection, despite the fact that she has no evidence that the woman has a wireless access point and isn\u0026rsquo;t just another victim with a compromised machine being used as a proxy. Without doing any more verification, she arranges to get a warrant to knock the door of the neighbor down, and it turns out to be a teenage kid.\nOn p. 16 appears this nice quote: \u0026ldquo;She types several commands into a unix shell. Trace routing algorithms begin to run. A different screen shows possible IP addresses. The list begins growing, from ten to hundreds to thousands\u0026hellip;. Marsh shakes her head at the futility.\u0026rdquo; There are multiple methods of performing traceroutes and even of adding fake hops to a traceroute, but traceroute is unnecessary to find out the IP address of a website\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s only useful for finding the path traffic takes to get to that website, e.g., for finding the upstream provider. But getting a list of upstream providers is better done by looking at routing tables rather than doing traceroutes, anyway. The real investigative steps would be to look at the DNS information for the domain, get the IP address or addresses from the authoritative name server (and check to see if those are changing with a short TTL), then find the upstream providers.\nFunniest exchange I\u0026rsquo;ve seen so far in the script (p. 26) is this marvel of self-contradiction:\n[FBI agent] GRIFFIN: I traced it to a Georgetown sophomore named Andrew Kinross. But then I looked closer and saw the post didn\u0026rsquo;t actually originate from his computer.\nMARSH: Our guy got into his computer and posted it from there.\nGRIFFIN: That would be my guess.\nMARSH: So let\u0026rsquo;s go after the originating computer\u0026rsquo;s IP.\nAnd so far, I\u0026rsquo;ve not mentioned how the hacker mastermind hacks into the FBI agent\u0026rsquo;s car (which features the fictional \u0026ldquo;NorthStar\u0026rdquo; instead \u0026ldquo;OnStar\u0026rdquo;)\u0026ndash;in the preview, the hacker apparently is able to control the steering of her car. I suspect drive-by-wire steering will come soon in the future of the automobile, but I don\u0026rsquo;t believe it exists today. (Turns out the preview gives a misleading impression of what the script says is happening\u0026ndash;the hacker doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually control the steering, but remotely shuts off the car\u0026rsquo;s electrical systems and power steering.)\nmikeb (2007-12-19):\nThis post is exactly why my wife won't let me watch CSI with her. We have to learn to suspend disbelief for the purpose of entertainment Jim!Although it should probably be argued that a movie can afford a bit more research and should be given less slack than a TV show.Of course.. I won't be watching it either ;-).\nLippard (2007-12-19):\nI can actually tolerate the ridiculousness of the CSI shows' magical heads-up displays and ability to instantly access and search the internal records of ISPs and telephone companies to obtain customer information without bothering to issue a subpoena or get a court order (though not without commenting or making an audible groan). What I find different about this case is that it is so central to the plot of the movie, yet so completely absurd. You know the person who came up with this has no comprehension of how the world wide web works, yet somehow his ridiculous idea was taken and run with by hundreds of people spending tens of millions of dollars.It would have made more sense as a fantasy set in an alternative universe with magic and unicorns.\nEinzige (2007-12-19):\nWould it be any better if at the beginning of the film they explained that the EFF (say) had just introduced this new privacy technology that annonymizes web traffic in both directions?I'm not saying that the movie does this, mind you...\nLippard (2007-12-19):\nIt wouldn't have made me feel any better about it, since most people don't use anything like TOR.And for those that do, many of them have a false sense of security about their anonymity, since they are sending credentials unencrypted through TOR which are visible to those operating TOR exit nodes (widely believed to include various government agencies).\nP Pemberton (2007-12-20):\nSorry Jim on this occasion you have NO IDEA what you are talking about. Every and I mean EVERY thing you have said has been addressed and explained in the movie. It's all there up on screen. You have obviously judged (incorrectly) the entire movie on a few seconds of trailer footage. All your issues and questions are answered in the film.Also, the FBI was hugely involved in the making of the film in order to make the action on screen as authentic as possible. Sorry pal but you really are ill-informed on this one. Take care. http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=40337\nLippard (2007-12-20):\nOn the contrary, I'm quite familiar with the current practices of the phishing and botnet underground.The description you point to says this: \"When they stumble upon the KillWithMe site, that's when the pace is picked up. At first, it seems innocent, but after they find the live feed of a man chained up, bloody and dying, it becomes their lead case. What struck me was the man's chest was carved in dripping blood with the phrase \"killwithme.com.\" \"They're just trying to figure what's going on, and begin to track this guy,\" Greg said.What makes this one guy hard to find is the IP address keeps changing, from Russia to Portland, Oregon. How real are these cases? According to EJ, extremely. \"There's been a number of sites I've gone after where people are doing these exact things. On the internet, when you're querying the site, the IP address is monitored. This guy is running various IP addresses, his server would be poisoned to change on a regular basis – and he may be even controlling it. These would all be things the FBI would figure out and work through and track back; it's just a time issue, and could take upwards of a couple months.\"\"It's certainly possible for a site to jump from compromised machine to compromised machine by using a domain name with a very low time-to-live--this is, in fact, something done in reality by scammers. However, I already addressed this in my post--the way to shut it down is to shut down the domain name, which does not take \"a couple months.\"If, in the movie, the domain name itself is constantly changing and it's being advertised via spam emails, then that is more plausible. But the fact that we're talking about streaming video content, not static information stored on each server, would make it much easier to trace--there has to be a nearly continuous stream of data from the source to the sites that users are accessing, which is not the case for phishing scams.BTW, the January release of this film is itself an implicit admission by the studios that this is a stinker.\nLippard (2007-12-20):\nBTW, this quote from the FBI consultant in the cited article makes no sense: \"On the internet, when you're querying the site, the IP address is monitored. This guy is running various IP addresses, his server would be poisoned to change on a regular basis – and he may be even controlling it.\"Perhaps the writer of the article garbled it, but it is almost completely confused. It looks like it's trying to express something about DNS queries and possibly DNS cache poisoning, but it's so poorly stated that it fails to convey its meaning. It fails to distinguish DNS queries from the HTTP requests, monitoring of DNS queries from monitoring of HTTP requests, having a low DNS TTL from DNS round-robin or load balancing by returning different IPs to different querying rDNS servers... And it wouldn't be \"his server\" that is \"poisoned,\" it would be other provider's DNS caches.\nP Pemberton (2007-12-20):\nJim... I can't believe your insane posts. All of this that you are talking about IS in the movie. The characters are asking the exact questions that you are! You are being an idiot sorry!Do you over analyze and prjudice every book, film, TV show in this manner. Get a LIFE!\nP Pemberton (2007-12-20):\nThe recent \"DIE HARD\" had far more \"leaps of logic\" than this movie and did you rant and rave like a little child then?\nEinzige (2007-12-20):\n...did you rant and rave like a little child then?Is that what he's doing now???\nLippard (2007-12-20):\nP. Pemberton: I didn't see the most recent \"Die Hard\" movie.What's your association with the movie that you've already seen it and are so concerned to defend its accuracy (but only by making assertions without providing evidence to support them)? That seems more irrational than my criticisms. If my nit-picking a bad movie demonstrates my need for a life, doesn't that make your nit-picking my nit-picking (or, nit-picking twice removed) an even stronger demonstration of your need for one?\nP Pemberton (2007-12-20):\nFair enough einzige. That was a little overboard, but to dis this film before he's seen it is absurd when it in many ways totally agrees with what he is saying! The agents in the film do all the stuff that Jeff is talking about. It's all there and Jeff is dismissing it... yet it's all there. I think we best leave this as until Jeff has seen the film he is just making himself look a bit of an idiot dismissing a film that actually agrees with him!\nLippard (2007-12-20):\nIt's not uncommon for people to analyze the detail of movies that get something wrong within their fields of expertise. Some of us enjoy reading things like descriptions of film goofs and \"nit-picker's guides\" to films.BTW, who's Jeff?\nEinzige (2007-12-20):\n\"Jeff\"???I wonder if Pemberton is on a campaign to defend this film and forgot which site he was responding to...\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-02):\nLippard wrote: \"It's not uncommon for people to analyze the detail of movies that get something wrong within their fields of expertise. Some of us enjoy reading things like descriptions of film goofs and \"nit-picker's guides\" to films.\"You are correct -- it is not uncommon for people to nit-pick details of films. What is more uncommon is for people to make sweeping value judgments about the entire film based on those picked nits.\nEinzige (2008-01-02):\nIs it a sweeping value judgment?Here's an analogy (as I'm not a net security guru I can't vouch for it being 100% apt, but I hope it's close enough)...Imagine a film about a group of people trying to break into a house. The movie's budget is $300M. All the actors and the director are academy award winners. The writer of the film went to extreme pains to ensure the scientific accuracy behind the tensile strength of the materials used to line the walls, which are three feet thick and would even survive a direct hit by a ballistic missle.There's just one itty bitty thing wrong with the premise of this movie: the house's windows are single pane and the locks on the front and back doors are Kwikset.Is it a safe bet to conclude that this movie's premise suffers from such a serious flaw that it will be laughably unwatchable, regardless how well acted it is, or how beautiful the cinematography?\nLippard (2008-01-03):\nTal:I've read the whole script at this point, see my updated post. It's crap, all right, even worse than I imagined.P. Pemberton's claim that all of my criticisms are accounted for in the movie is false--as far as I see, all of my original criticisms stand, and there's lots more in the movie that is even worse than what we see in the preview.\nTal Poleaf (2008-01-04):\nHey Mr. Lippard: Thanks for the update. If you have a moment, can you please post a link to some \"IP addresses for dummies\" types of sites? What you say are obvious contradictions don't sound nearly as dumb to the average person as they do to you.The movie sounds goofy. But if Diane Lane removes her top, all bets are off.At the very least this is a step up from the horror movie where a hacker is able to manipulate somebody's toaster, or \"The Net\" with Sandra Bullock where identity thieves are able to get into every police database and credit-card company in minutes. \"Die Hard 4\" has similar scenes where one guy at a computer can control several public utilities and other networks at once without even crashing Windows XP. The John Travolta movie \"Swordfish\" has Hugh Jackman hacking a difficult password in the time it takes a woman to blow him, and the remade \"Italian Job\" has Seth Green (who \"invented Napster\") shutting down Los Angeles traffic lights like it's nothing. Then there is \"Hackers\" in which the only redeeming quality is Angelina Jolie's ta-tas under a see-thru shirt.Movies rarely get technical details right. It is not cinematic.\nEinzige (2008-01-04):\nSpeaking of Diane Lane removing her top, I really really wish that they would finally get around to releasing Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains on DVD already.I mean, Jeez...\nLippard (2008-01-04):\nThe contradictory exchange isn't quite as bad as I originally thought--if the initial statement from Griffin were rewritten slightly, it would actually make sense. The scenario they are trying to describe is that a remote hacker broke into Kinross's machine and used it to post the message to the forum. Griffin's initial statement, however, incorrectly states that the message didn't come from Kinross's computer, when Marsh and Griffin then subsequently agree that it did. If they rewrote it to have Griffin state that it came from Kinross's computer, but that it was a compromised machine that was relaying packets from another source, that would have made the point accurately and without contradiction.Here's an online source on tracking spam which teaches a lot of the basics.\nAl (2008-01-10):\nCompared to most movies that have no regard at all for reality, this film did its damnedest to please the technical community. There were three paid consultants, all at the tops of their fields. EJ from the FBi is an absolute pro and answers questions on the website. I think you are forgetting that things have to be phrased in a way so that the average person can comprehend them. Your are being terribly anal and pedantic, not to mention unfair. Relax, buy some popcorn, see the movie. It's terrific.\nLippard (2008-01-10):\nAl, thanks for coming by, but I read the script and if it hasn't been dramatically improved from that, it's a pretty weak story independently of the technical issues.But here's a quote from a site that actually makes sense and I don't recall seeing this in the script I read. The only problem with this excerpt is the fact that the domain name in the preview and in the script is not Russian (and the \"main server\" should be \"primary DNS server\", and that it wouldn't be the FBI doing any blackholing, it would be people like my security team at large backbone providers):In one of the early scenes that sets up the plot of the movie, Diane Lane's character explains the Internet site she has found, where a man hangs from chains in the ceiling of an apartment bleeding to death. Her supervisor tells her to shut the site down. She has already tried that, and explains, \"The site's IP keeps changing constantly. Each new address is an exploited server. It is running a mirror of the site. The site's Russian main server uses a low TTL so that your computer constantly queries the name server's record. And that is how it gives you a new address so consistently. There are thousands of exploited servers on the Internet, so he is not going to run out of victims anytime soon. But he is accessing these servers so quickly; he has got to be running his own botnet. I mean, we are black holing these IPs. Every time we shut one mirror down another one pops up.\"Her supervisor tells her, \"I didn't understand a single word that you said. I heard Russia. What do they have to do with this?\" Colin Hanks, playing Lane's partner, explains, \"The domain register and the domain names are all in Russian. We have no jurisdiction there.\"\nAl (2008-01-10):\nIsn't it obvious how much care was taken to make this movie as realistic as possible? You nitpick certain details, and surely you are right about some of them, but you are parsing at such an arcane level. We're talking about a story that is striving to reach a global audience.\nLippard (2008-01-10):\nThe quote I just supplied supports the care point you made, but the script I read doesn't. You've ignored the other point I made--the story itself is weak independent of the technical flaws.\nAl (2008-01-10):\nOn the imdb.com message board for the film the FBI cyberconsultant has been posting explanations and defenses of his work on the film. It's worth checking out. Here is a sample: Unfortunately the movie has not been released yet so I cannot explain why I reference the things I reference. As I have said in many other posts, no site is completely untraceable. However, it can be difficult to trace for a period of time and in that time things can occur. If the DNS points to a different IP everytime you query it and those IPs control mirrors of the feed, tracking it will be difficult but not impossible. Shutting down the domain in the real world, takes 24 to 72 hours to get a domain blocked in the US from the time the site is confirmed real. International DNS blacklisting can take a month or more from the time ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC, APNIC, etc are notified. Reason, some ISP do not regularly update their DNS records yet those DNS servers can still be queried. What can you do in that time frame? There are so many who claim it is so easy to track these sites and shut them down yet none have tracked the site I gave in this string, nor have they identified who owns it or what domain is running on it. Enjoy the movie and then comeback and tear me apart if if you dont like it. the tech side is only one portion of movie. There truly is a social commentary aspects as well.\nLippard (2008-01-10):\nLooks like another title they could have used for this film was Unoriginal.The link is to a plot synopsis of an episode of the show \"Millennium\" titled \"The Mikado,\" which sounds like a much more cleverly plotted story.\nLippard (2008-01-10):\nJust to answer the question in the post from imdb:\"Shutting down the domain in the real world, takes 24 to 72 hours to get a domain blocked in the US from the time the site is confirmed real. International DNS blacklisting can take a month or more from the time ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC, APNIC, etc are notified. Reason, some ISP do not regularly update their DNS records yet those DNS servers can still be queried.What can you do in that time frame? \"In this particular case, it's part of the scenario that the TTL on the domain is very small, so DNS propagation isn't going to cause much delay. All you do is pass the word to the major ISPs to introduce into their own DNS caches a record for the domain that points to something else and has a long TTL; problem solved immediately. Only a few huge ISPs taking such a measure cuts down the number of potential viewers enormously (say, Verizon, AT\u0026T, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable/Roadrunner, for example). And that's only necessary in the scenario where you get no cooperation from the DNS registrar.Secondarily, in the film's scenario, you let a honeypot get infected and reverse engineer the malware. You monitor the DNS server to collect IPs of infected hosts, you monitor your Netflow to see what the infected hosts are connecting to, and so long as any of them are connecting to the original server (and they have to be, since in this scenario there's live video--there's a LOT of traffic coming from the main server, and then being propagated through some limited number of viewer's hosts to each viewer).\nAl (2008-01-10):\nUntraceable makes a powerful social statement. It is an indictment of internet voyeurism and blood lust. From what I have read about it, the Mikado episode is entirely different in its function and aims.\nLippard (2008-01-11):\nI shall show my support for its social statement about blood lust and voyeurism by not going to see it.Seriously, Al, do you have some connection to this film?How about a deal--if it gets a \"cream of the crop\" freshness percentage above 70% at rottentomatoes.com (say, by a week after release, when there are at least a dozen or so reviews), I'll agree to watch it, if you'll agree on a percentage of below 30% to post here that you were wrong, and it really does suck. Anywhere in between, we can agree to disagree.\nAl (2008-01-11):\nI have seen too many interesting movies trashed on rotten tomatoes and too many shit ones praised to the skies to enter the deal. I just think you should wait and see the movie and stop trashing it for such pedantic reasons.\nEinzige (2008-01-11):\nName one movie you thought was good that, nonetheless, got under 30% on RT.\nAl (2008-01-11):\nHannibal Rising.It got a 15%.\nLippard (2008-01-11):\nReally? I haven't seen it and it's the only Thomas Harris book in the series I haven't read, but both the book and the movie got generally bad reviews. On the other hand, it has 6/10 at imdb.Here's the top \"most helpful\" review at Amazon.com: \"What unspeakable crud \"Hannibal Rising\" is. If you thought that parts of \"Hannibal\" were bad (especially that ridiculous ending), believe me it's a masterpiece compared to this new one. Words fail to say just how bad this book is. (For one thing, if Harris is going to have foreign-language quotations, at least get their spelling right!)How odd it is that Harris doesn't even seem to understand his own characters; that we the readers know Dr. Lecter better than the author does. The plot of this novel sets up the improbable situation that Lecter was the product of abuse by the Nazis and hence his insanity. Aw, poor li'l Hannibal; he couldn't help himself. This portrait is just inconsistent with the character we came to know so well in the earlier novels. Why doesn't Harris sell this character to another novelist who can treat Lecter with more creativity and credibility?Yes, there are a couple of good scenes. But they don't make up for the dozens of awful ones.\"Red Dragon was the best of the Harris books, IMHO (and 1986's \"Manhunter\" an underappreciated film).So, interesting choice--at least you didn't say \"Friday.\"But back to \"Untraceable\"--do you have some connection to this film? (It's strange that the people defending it here, who think my criticisms are crazy or unfair but keep coming back to keep this comment thread going, don't answer that question.)\nAl (2008-01-11):\nI have just enough of a connection to the film to know that you are treating it really unfairly. My God, One Missed Call just got a 00% on Rotten Tomatoes and made 12 million bucks opening weekend. if you feel the need to attack something, why look any farther? But a smart movie like Untraceable that seeks to inspire real discussion among thoughtful people, and has worked very hard to make itself the most plausible internet thriller yet, does not deserve condemnation like this, especially for someone who has not even seen it. Fortunately, all the press screenings have gone really well so far, and all the press feedback has been positive. So, ideally, you will be in the minority.I liked Hannibal Rising, the movie, that is, a lot. I thought The Orphanage was absolute crap and critics are lining up to kiss its ass. So you see I don't take critics all that seriously, but they can help with box office.\nEinzige (2008-01-11):\nThe way I interpret the Rotten Tomatoes rating is: The percentage likelihood that you're going to like the movie.For example, LOTR got a 97% rating, but I hated it (at least I hated the theatrical releases. I saw the director's cut DVDs recently, and adding the cut scenes back in made all the difference).\nAnonymous (2008-01-12):\nWow Im amazed at the trolling comments placed here.This is a movie, designed to entertain. Everything is not 100% accurate because it would be really boring to watch. Secondly it would be nearly impossible for the general public to understand.Jim you discuss in detail how to do certain things to take the site down but you forget the time and political factors that go into this. Nothing happens fast when it comes to government requests. When's the last time all the ISP did something requested by the government? Look at the fall out because of the warrantless searches for terrorist phone calls.I did exactly what you are suggesting fo 8 years it simply does not happen fastIm glad the world and you believe these things happen so quickly but they do not even thought I too feel they should because of how seemingly simple they are...Politics, sovereign countries and consitutional laws fall into place when trying to get things taken down by the USG both here and overseas.But each day as more people become aware more people force shange and things happen quicker and quicker. Im also curious how fast you can get a honeypot online and then determine who exactly is going to try to own/infect it. As I have stated in the past and I will state here the fact that we tell the story means that we can trace the story. I dont want anyone thinking they can get away with this because they can't.Again this is a movie.I must thank you Jim for pointing out the DNS poisoning issue, yes it was a screwed up quote.Go see the movie and if you dont like it for its entertainment value Ill personally send you a check for the cost of the movie ticket and popcorn.Also why did you trace the IP address I put in the IMDB post\nLippard (2008-01-12):\nCyberagent: Yet ANOTHER person associated with the movie here?\"When's the last time all the ISP did something requested by the government? Look at the fall out because of the warrantless searches for terrorist phone calls.\"Today, I guarantee it. Note that usually action gets taken regarding abusive websites and compromised hosts by ISPs *without* any involvement of government. The ISPs and security researchers usually learn of these things before the government does, and the government comes in after the fact to issue warrants and subpoenas and obtain the necessary evidence (which the private parties have preserved) and build a case that can be prosecuted. And in fact it's very common for a company like Microsoft (and previously Earthlink or AOL) to file a civil suit, win it, and only *then* does the government come along and prosecute criminally.ISPs generally require subpoenas and warrants to give information to governments, but not to take action if they are aware of a problem--there they are only limited by law and their contractual agreements. Any ISP is going to have contract provisions that allow traffic filtering to protect their network and for cases of extreme emergency.\"Im glad the world and you believe these things happen so quickly but they do not even thought I too feel they should because of how seemingly simple they are...\"Private action can be extremely quick--it's when government is involved that things slow down, for various reasons (due process, evidence collection, bureaucracy, etc.).\"Politics, sovereign countries and consitutional laws fall into place when trying to get things taken down by the USG both here and overseas.\"Yeah, but if I contact my counterpart at another provider (particularly if it's one that my employer is supplying connectivity to) and ask them to shut something down for good reason (with evidence), that's likely to happen very quickly.\"Also why did you trace the IP address I put in the IMDB post\"I don't know what you're talking about there. (But I do see that SiteMeter considers your IP to be in Silverado, CA. Hope you didn't have any losses from the recent fires.)\nLippard (2008-01-12):\nForgot to answer this part:\"Im also curious how fast you can get a honeypot online and then determine who exactly is going to try to own/infect it.\"Security researchers have lots of honeypots online at all times collecting malware. In the case described in the movie, the infection occurs when you visit the \"untraceable\" web site, so getting a honeypot infected would simply be a matter of opening up a web browser and pointing it at the site.BTW, I am available for paid technical consultation on future films...\nLippard (2008-01-12):\nThis blog site that reviews movies says that Untraceable is \"Unreviewable... until the day it comes out. :(\"Are reviews really embargoed on the film until the day of release? If so, that doesn't sound like confidence in its quality or appeal.\nEinzige (2008-01-18):\nThere's currently only 5 reviews, but, as of today, Untraceable is just on the line of a fresh rating.\nAl (2008-01-18):\nI think for any genre movie these days, when there are so many of them, it's tough to get good reviews. The fact that both the Hollywood Reporter and Variety liked this film so much, augurs well for it. I would say a say a final tomato rating anywhere near a 40 is fine. Agree, disagree?\nLippard (2008-01-18):\nI would not agree that 60% freshness constitutes good, nor that Variety's review was as positive as you seem to think, though it was positive (I haven't read the Hollywood Reporter's review). You must be posting as \"Trumboy\" on imdb, who said that \"This film got wonderful reviews from both Variety and Hollywood Reporter today. They both said it was smart and well done. So keep an open mind.\"Here's my reply to that at imdb:Variety's reviewer, Joe Leydon, wrote that Untraceable unfolds \"like a better-than-average episode of a first-rate TV police procedural\" with a \"formulaic plot\" which is \"enlivened with bracingly acerbic observations about Internet-enabled voyeurism.\" He notes that \"Unfortunately, the filmmakers shoot themselves in the foot and leave a gaping hole in their narrative by not revealing the ultimate fates of two key characters during their otherwise effective wrap-up.\" He gives high marks to Lane, Burke, Cross, Hurt, Haney-Jardine, and Hanks, in that order, as well as to the camera operator, Anastas Michos.I wouldn't exactly call it a \"wonderful review.\"\nAl (2008-01-18):\nFor a genre movie? I would.\nLippard (2008-01-20):\nNow it's down to 50%. Still good for a genre movie?\nAl (2008-01-20):\nJim, with all due respect, you are a horse's ass. I was trying to lend some credibility to your blog, but you are resolutely small-minded in your approach to film. Go make a movie of your own. It might alleviate some of your self-loathing and pettiness.\nEinzige (2008-01-20):\nWhy are people so prone to resort to attacks on a critic's alleged emotional or intellectual deficiencies, rather than remain focused on what is pertinent--namely, the merits of the argument in question?I see this over and over again in the responses to one of my posts on Nouveau Riche University.Perhaps to ask this question is to answer it.\nLippard (2008-01-20):\nAl: I'm not sure how you were trying to \"lend credibility to my blog.\" It looked to me more like you've trying to shill for a film you're connected with, and not doing a very good job of it. Viral marketing is clearly not your forte. Basically, you've given the impression that people associated with this film think that they can turn bad word of mouth into good word of mouth by insulting those who are critical. Your defensiveness gives the impression that the truth hurts.\nAnonymous (2008-01-20):\nJim,You stated \"Private action can be extremely quick--it's when government is involved that things slow down, for various reasons (due process, evidence collection, bureaucracy, etc.).\"YOU have made my point. It does not happen quickly.Can I ask what your real world credentials are? How many cyber criminals have you chased? How many have you caught?I have worked these crimes and fought these battles both within the government and in private corporations. In this litigious age, no major company takes \"private action\" unless it impacts their bottom line. It is that simple.If you feel the need to attack the story behind the movie, that is fine. But you have offered nothing here that indicates you are anything more than ignorant about how these crimes are investigated, what is truly required to stop things from a law enforcement perspective or what the public as a whole truly understands. As for my comments regarding tracking my IPA, I posted as EJHilbert and challenged all to find the location and the person behind a particular IPA. Since all claim it is so easy to do. Care to take a shot at it? Again you are entitled to your opinion about the story at is basic level. But until you have \"walked a mile\" in the shoes of the writer, producters, director and consultants and are willing to put up your real world experiences please refrain from commenting on the perceived inaccuracies or intentions of those who involved in making this film.My offer still stands, go see it and if you feel that it is so bad you walk out, I will personally reimburse you the cost of the film and a bucket of popcorn.thecyberfbi.blogspot.com\nLippard (2008-01-21):\nE.J.: You can find my real-world credentials by looking at my Blogger profile or my LinkedIn profile, or just Googling my name. It's not difficult to find.I understand that there are difficulties in finding and stopping things from a law enforcement perspective. There are procedures to be followed, and the evidence necessary for a legal case has more stringent requirements than to simply find out what is the case. It also can be difficult to find real-world identities of individuals engaged in electronic crimes, when those parties have distributed their workload (and their risk of identification and prosecution) among multiple groups of people in the underground economy. But all of that is quite distinct from the complaints I made in the post to which these comments have been made.I've not seen your IP address trace challenge, and you haven't posted a reference here. I'd be happy to take a look at it and offer my comments once I see it. What's the challenge?\nLippard (2008-01-21):\nE.J.: We have a LinkedIn connection in common, a gentleman formerly with the FBI Legal Attache's office in London who's now at Microsoft. I suspect we have plenty of mutual acquaintances in both law enforcement and private industry.Considering that my employer is one of the main providers of network connectivity to your current employer, I'm surprised we haven't met or spoken to each other (or that you haven't spoken to a member of my organization). Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn, as I'm sure we can help you out from time to time.\nLippard (2008-01-23):\nRottentomatoes.com's freshness rating for \"Untraceable\" is down to 38% with 8 reviews, five of which are negative.\nLippard (2008-01-23):\n\"Most hypocritical film of 2008. ... Untraceable--unwatchable.\"--Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips, on \"Ebert \u0026 Roeper,\" stealing my line.\nLippard (2008-01-23):\nContrarian indicator Rex Reed liked Unwatchable.\nLippard (2008-01-24):\nRottentomatoes: 29% freshness with 14 reviews.Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: \"Talk about your pious frauds. I've got a better way to show your disgust for Internet scum: Don't see Untraceable.\"\nLippard (2008-01-24):\nI wondered what connection \"P Pemberton,\" posting from a London hospital, might have to this movie. I've just learned that one of the writers, Mark Brinker, is Dr. Mark Brinker, a Houston orthopedic surgeon (who also has a sandwich named after him at the Camellia Grill in New Orleans, where he went to Tulane Medical School). So I'd guess \"P Pemberton\" is someone who knows Dr. Brinker and saw the movie in London, where it apparently opened earlier, based on the comments I've seen on several blogs.BTW, we're now up to 17 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, and freshness has gone from just under 1/3 to just under 1/4, at 24%. Average rating is 4.2/10. IMDB has no rating as there still aren't five votes yet, I expect it will show a rating this weekend and we'll get to see how it does at the box office for its first weekend by Monday.\nLippard (2008-01-25):\nSorry, E.J., but I'm definitely not going to the theater to watch this movie.Rotten Tomatoes: 39 reviews, 6 positive, 33 negative. Freshness: 15%, average rating: 4.1/10.\nLippard (2008-01-26):\nRotten Tomatoes: 84 reviews, 12 positive and 72 negative, average rating 4.2/10, \"freshness\": 14%.Consensus review: \"A run-of-the-mill thriller with a hypocritical message.\"Positive reviews came from Clark Collis at Entertainment Weekly, Kevin Crust at the Los Angeles Times, Kit Bowen at Hollywood.com, Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times (the most respectable of the positive reviewers, in my opinion), Joe Leydon at Variety, Jeff Otto at ReelzChannel.com, Prairie Miller at NewsBlaze, Larry Ratliff at the San Antonio Express-News, Michael Rechtshaffer at the Hollywood Reporter, Rex Reed at the New York Observer, M.K. Terrell at the Christian Science Monitor, and Doris Toumarkine at Film Journal International.I think Ebert makes the best case for the film that could be made. He's certainly correct about online chatroom idiots (and YouTube commenters), but it doesn't seem to me that this movie offers any constructive suggestions, rather than simply exploiting the amorality of viewers of nastiness as a plot point.IMDB still doesn't have five votes to produce a user rating.\nLippard (2008-01-28):\nIMDB raings are better, with 519 votes so far--overall rating is 6.2/10. In general, there's a downward rating trend based on age, with the under-18 crowd rating it 8.4, 18-29 rating it 6.5, 30-44 rating it 5.4, and then a slight increase as 45+ rate it at 5.6.In box office, Untraceable came in at #5 on its opening weekend (behind Meet the Spartans, Rambo, 27 Dresses, and Cloverfield) with $11.2 million on 2368 screens, for a per-screen take of $4730.\nhibbidyhooblah (2008-01-28):\nMikeb hit the nail on the head. It's entertainment. \"Suspend disbelief for the purpose of entertainment.\"The only argument you should be making is if they couldn't make it a decent movie. They should've at least made it technical to satisfy the tech nerds. Instead, the movie isn't very entertaining and I'll take your word on it being technically flawed. (Although a movie always will be.)Could be worse.. it could've been another Dane Cook film or Joss Whedon.\nAnonymous (2008-01-28):\nIt just struck me reading these posts that Jim's comments are all based on an old script most of whihc never made it into the movie and or was changed to address tech issues.If you were not entertained, such is life but do not assume the tech is wrong because someone read the script. Sorry Jim, I should have pointed this fact out before. Lines were changed inth e movie right up to December 06 to fix flaws or make points clearer. The whole each viewer becomes a seeder for a streaming bit torrent was dropped as was the hack into the FBI computers.For all those reading, Jim and I will most likely agree to disagree but that is the point of a movie like this, to get people talking about stuff like this. Enjoy the debate.\nLippard (2008-01-28):\nE.J., that's probably correct--I have no idea what version of the script I saw, but I think I did (somewhere in the comments above) point out that there was a quote a reviewer gave from the movie that I thought looked pretty accurate yet was not in the script I read.BTW, Bennett Haselton at Slashdot saw the movie and reported that he thought it was reasonably accurate, with specific examples.\nAnonymous (2008-01-28):\nJim,Thanks for that. If nothing else we geeks can say they got it almost right. My job to make the tech and the FBI response as truthful as possible and I did exactly thatMaybe Ill write a script and ask for input from the blogs. Unfortunately, Im not sure a ton of people will watch the real stuff. Maybe a special screen at DefCon :-)\nDennis Allen (2008-01-30):\nIt's a movie. Only a movie. It's better than swordfish for sure. And a bit closer to reality than firewall. Far from perfect, but certainly entertaining to watch 'em try.\nsandokas (2008-09-29):\nI would like to thank jim lippard for he's comments. I actually saw the movie (not read the script) and i thought the idea of a streaming web site that constantly changes ip is not doable also.Even if the server is registered in russia, and dns russia sites keeps the ip changing every second, dns is something that takes time to propagate, and viewers in the us would certainly be resolving 99.9% of the time to the fbi ip address.Even if something like Tor is used (the hacker is highly resourcefull and compromised 1 billion computers without getting caught, which is impossible) i can't see how fbi is unable to stop local people from accessing a domain that is streaming video from a local server.\nAnonymous (2014-05-08):\nOkay, I watched the movie just now, so forgive me for bumping a six-year-old thread. The movie is fun to watch, although the technobabble is mostly silly and wrong. Not to mention the complete ignorance of criminal procedure. But most people won\u0026#39;t notice a thing. But Pemberton is a obvious shill.\nAnonymous (2014-05-08):\nMovie was okay. Technobabble was silly and wrong. Ignorance of criminal procedure was unreal. Pemberton is a shill. Cyberagent can go on and on about the tech angles, but the second scene is outrageous from a criminal procedure perspective, which, unfortunately, is a part of fighting cyber crime. Sorry to bump such an old thread. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/untraceable-looks-unwatchable.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn January 2008 the film \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untraceable\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Untraceable,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e starring Diane Lane, will be released.  It looks awful.  The premise is that a serial killer is killing people live on the Internet, via an \u0026ldquo;untraceable website\u0026rdquo; that is connected to contraptions that kill his victims as more people visit the site.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe whole concept of an \u0026ldquo;untraceable website\u0026rdquo; or the idea that such a thing would be unstoppable by ISPs and law enforcement is absurd\u0026ndash;the immediate upstream provider of the site would merely need to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullroute\"\u003enull route\u003c/a\u003e the IP address(es) where the website is hosted, and traffic stops.  They\u0026rsquo;d also be able to quickly identify the customer who owns the server in question.  Even if that server was compromised and being used to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy\"\u003ereverse proxy\u003c/a\u003e or redirect traffic to other servers, it would still be a relatively simple matter to track that backwards, though it would be somewhat more difficult than stopping the traffic.  Even if the domain name pointed to a new server on a compromised host every second, it would still be possible to contact the domain name registrar and get the domain name shut down.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf users can get to it, it can be seen how and what they\u0026rsquo;re getting to, even if that\u0026rsquo;s only the front end in a chain of successive proxies.  If it has a domain name, that provides another path to shutting off access.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 2, 2008):  I came across the script online while searching for information about the writers.  Let\u0026rsquo;s just say that my opinion above is not nearly negative enough.  In the first 16 pages are at least six or seven scenes that really bring on the stupid.  For example, FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh, who works in the FBI\u0026rsquo;s cyber division, is monitoring machines that are being compromised by hackers (honeypots, essentially, though the script doesn\u0026rsquo;t use the word).  One of her machines gets compromised and she sees that it copies her files including fake financial information.  It then accesses eBay to use a stolen credit card to purchase a watch.  In reality, the stolen financial information wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be likely to be used from the same machine, it would be sold to another player in the underground economy.  Marsh then types commands to look for the IP address of the connecting host\u0026ndash;but if they\u0026rsquo;ve already got honeypots or honeynets in operation, that should already be logged.  She then does the usual CSI-style conversion of an IP address into a name and address without issuing a subpoena to an ISP, and discovers that it\u0026rsquo;s a home belonging to a 56-year-old woman.  She immediately concludes that the actual criminal must be a neighbor using her wireless connection, despite the fact that she has no evidence that the woman has a wireless access point and isn\u0026rsquo;t just another victim with a compromised machine being used as a proxy.  Without doing any more verification, she arranges to get a warrant to knock the door of the neighbor down, and it turns out to be a teenage kid.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn p. 16 appears this nice quote: \u0026ldquo;She types several commands into a unix shell.  Trace routing algorithms begin to run.  A different screen shows possible IP addresses.  The list begins growing, from ten to hundreds to thousands\u0026hellip;.  Marsh shakes her head at the futility.\u0026rdquo;  There are multiple methods of performing traceroutes and even of adding fake hops to a traceroute, but traceroute is unnecessary to find out the IP address of a website\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s only useful for finding the path traffic takes to get to that website, e.g., for finding the upstream provider.  But getting a list of upstream providers is better done by looking at routing tables rather than doing traceroutes, anyway.  The real investigative steps would be to look at the DNS information for the domain, get the IP address or addresses from the authoritative name server (and check to see if those are changing with a short TTL), then find the upstream providers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFunniest exchange I\u0026rsquo;ve seen so far in the script (p. 26) is this marvel of self-contradiction:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e[FBI agent] GRIFFIN: I traced it to a Georgetown sophomore named Andrew Kinross.  But then I looked closer and saw the post didn\u0026rsquo;t actually originate from his computer.\u003cbr /\u003eMARSH: Our guy got into his computer and posted it from there.\u003cbr /\u003eGRIFFIN: That would be my guess.\u003cbr /\u003eMARSH: So let\u0026rsquo;s go after the originating computer\u0026rsquo;s IP.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd so far, I\u0026rsquo;ve not mentioned how the hacker mastermind hacks into the FBI agent\u0026rsquo;s car (which features the fictional \u0026ldquo;NorthStar\u0026rdquo; instead \u0026ldquo;OnStar\u0026rdquo;)\u0026ndash;in the preview, the hacker apparently is able to control the steering of her car.  I suspect \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire\"\u003edrive-by-wire\u003c/a\u003e steering will come soon in the future of the automobile, but I don\u0026rsquo;t believe it exists today.  (Turns out the preview gives a misleading impression of what the script says is happening\u0026ndash;the hacker doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually control the steering, but remotely shuts off the car\u0026rsquo;s electrical systems and power steering.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Untraceable\" looks unwatchable"},{"content":"Mike Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s problems continue to accumulate. There\u0026rsquo;s the little problem of his son David hanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death\u0026ndash;and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that\u0026rsquo;s often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) on the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange. (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, poor record with dogs.) David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but in April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock.\nHuckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson\u0026rsquo;s CBN that \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree,\u0026rdquo; but he doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a theology degree\u0026ndash;he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, he\u0026rsquo;s a theology-school dropout.\nThen there\u0026rsquo;s his role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family. Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor. Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond\u0026rsquo;s brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled \u0026ldquo;Clinton\u0026rsquo;s Biggest Crime\u0026ndash;Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years\u0026rdquo; saying that \u0026ldquo;There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime.\u0026rdquo; But as we know today, Dumond was guilty\u0026ndash;he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women. Huckabee has refused to release his administration\u0026rsquo;s records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information.\nIn 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and refused to retract that position just recently, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992).\nOn top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb. While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians on preserving their capitol building, the national igloo. He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and has publicly supported creationism, though now he refuses to answer questions about it. He thinks that women\u0026rsquo;s role in marriage should be to \u0026ldquo;submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband\u0026rdquo;. And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that \u0026ldquo;We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.\u0026quot;\nIntrade currently puts Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%). But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%).\nUPDATE (December 25, 2007): Mike Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s tied to Christian reconstructionists and thinks that the Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional).\nHistorical Comments Dirk (2007-12-17):\nwww.TaxHikeMike.org\nHume's Ghost (2007-12-17):\nAll that is true, but even if I didn't know that, I'd know I'd never consider him for president based soley upon watching this campaign commercial\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/mike-huckabees-problems.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s problems continue to accumulate.  There\u0026rsquo;s the little problem of his son David \u003ca href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/update-on-junior-huck-by-digby-there.html\"\u003ehanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that\u0026rsquo;s often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/78241\"\u003eon the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange\u003c/a\u003e.  (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/mitt-romneys-dog.html\"\u003epoor record with dogs\u003c/a\u003e.)  David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,268762,00.html\"\u003ein April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHuckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson\u0026rsquo;s CBN that \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree,\u0026rdquo; but he doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a theology degree\u0026ndash;he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13923.html\"\u003ehe\u0026rsquo;s a theology-school dropout\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen there\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/05/exclusive-the-complete-h_n_75373.html\"\u003ehis role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond\u003c/a\u003e, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family.  Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.  Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond\u0026rsquo;s brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled \u0026ldquo;Clinton\u0026rsquo;s Biggest Crime\u0026ndash;Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years\u0026rdquo; saying that \u0026ldquo;There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime.\u0026rdquo;  But as we know today, Dumond was guilty\u0026ndash;he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women.  Huckabee has refused to release his administration\u0026rsquo;s records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/09/huckabee-wont-recant-h_n_75974.html\"\u003erefused to retract that position just recently\u003c/a\u003e, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb.  While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians \u003ca href=\"http://video.canadiancontent.net/16321139-talking-to-americans-capitol-building-is-an-igloo.html\"\u003eon preserving their capitol building, the national igloo\u003c/a\u003e.  He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007012800482.html\"\u003ehas publicly supported creationism\u003c/a\u003e, though now \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22111924/\"\u003ehe refuses to answer questions about it\u003c/a\u003e.  He thinks that women\u0026rsquo;s role in marriage should be to \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/10/12517/525/811/420237\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e.  And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that \u003ca href=\"http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/12/huckabee_american_should_end_energy_consumption_in_this_decade.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIntrade currently puts Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%).  But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 25, 2007):  Mike Huckabee\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/huckabees_ties_to_reconstructi.php\"\u003etied to Christian reconstructionists\u003c/a\u003e and thinks that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/more_huckabee_absurdity.php\"\u003ethe Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law\u003c/a\u003e (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mike Huckabee's problems"},{"content":"When Walter Adler and three friends, all Jewish, said \u0026ldquo;Happy Chanukah\u0026rdquo; to a group of subway riders who were yelling \u0026ldquo;Merry Christmas,\u0026rdquo; they found themselves physically attacked and beaten by the group of ten Christian defenders of the sanctity of Christmas.\nAdler and his friends were aided by Hassan Askari, a Muslim student who tried to stop the attackers, which allowed Adler to pull the emergency brake and get help.\nApparently no atheists were involved in the incident.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-12-16):\nSickening.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/war-on-christmas-casualties-in-nyc.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Walter Adler and three friends, all Jewish, said \u0026ldquo;Happy Chanukah\u0026rdquo; to a group of subway riders who were yelling \u0026ldquo;Merry Christmas,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.startribune.com/nation/12411086.html\"\u003ethey found themselves physically attacked and beaten by the group of ten Christian defenders of the sanctity of Christmas\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdler and his friends were aided by Hassan Askari, a Muslim student who tried to stop the attackers, which allowed Adler to pull the emergency brake and get help.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently no atheists were involved in the incident.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"War on Christmas\" casualties in NYC"},{"content":"In an excellent blog post at Quintessence of Dust, Stephen Matheson patiently examines the details of DI Fellow Jonathan Wells\u0026rsquo; only attempt to engage in scientific research in support of intelligent design by putting forth a hypothesis to be tested. By doing more of the work that Wells himself should have done, Matheson shows that Wells\u0026rsquo; efforts were far below expectations for scientists and that his hypothesis has subsequently (but with no thanks to ID theorists, who did no work on the subject) been falsified.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nStephen Matheson (2007-12-12):\nHey, thanks for the link! It was good to get that article out of my system; it's a lot more fun to write about real science.Since you're in Phoenix, I'll add the fact that I'm an Arizonan from days gone by. I grew up in West Phoenix, and went to Cortez High ('80). Turned Benedict Arnold and went to the UofA...it took me two years to be able to cheer for the Wildcats but once I turned to the Dark Side there was no turning back. Nice blog, and thanks again for the plug.\nLippard (2007-12-12):\nNo need to call it the Dark Side here... although Kat and I have our undergraduate degrees from ASU, she started at UofA and I got a master's degree at UofA. Einzige got his bachelor's at UofA, as well. And I don't think any of us here cheer for any sports teams...Thanks for stopping by!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/do-id-theorists-generate-data.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2007/11/do-id-theorists-generate-data.html\"\u003ean excellent blog post at Quintessence of Dust\u003c/a\u003e, Stephen Matheson patiently examines the details of DI Fellow Jonathan Wells\u0026rsquo; only attempt to engage in scientific research in support of intelligent design by putting forth a hypothesis to be tested.  By doing more of the work that Wells himself should have done, Matheson shows that Wells\u0026rsquo; efforts were far below expectations for scientists and that his hypothesis has subsequently (but with no thanks to ID theorists, who did no work on the subject) been falsified.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/that_wells_guy_gets_smacked_ar.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Do ID theorists generate data?"},{"content":"\nGives you some idea of the local demographic and economic conditions (or at least what the people behind these signs believe it to be).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/signs-in-my-neighborhood.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PC080003.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PC080003.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141805606225349010\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PC080002.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PC080002.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141805524620970370\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PC080001.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PC080001.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141805400066918770\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGives you some idea of the local demographic and economic conditions (or at least what the people behind these signs believe it to be).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Signs in my neighborhood"},{"content":"Last night Einzige and I attended the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s award dinner for Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, where she was given the 2007 Goldwater Award for her work in support of freedom, in defense of women against the oppression they face in Islamic countries. Copies of her autobiographical book, Infidel, were given to each table and I obtained the copy at our table since most everyone at the table had already read it and no one accepted my challenge to fight for it.\nIt was a rainy night and it was a huge event, with about 800 attendees. It took me about 25 minutes to get from the entrance of the Phoenician to the event venue, where I later heard that valets parked 400 cars for the event. It seemed as if the Phoenician wasn\u0026rsquo;t used to hosting an event of that size, which can\u0026rsquo;t possibly be true.\nI was extremely surprised to see that the schedule for the event included an invocation. I have attended multiple Goldwater events in the past (such as the screening of \u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative\u0026rdquo;), but this was the first time I had been to one that included a prayer. I noted at the table that it seemed disrespectful in the extreme that an event honoring an atheist would begin with a prayer. The prayer itself was an ecumenical, non-sectarian \u0026ldquo;meditation\u0026rdquo; (as the individual who spoke referred to it) of the sort likely to be as offensive to hardcore Christians as it is to atheists for its failure to appeal to Jesus Christ, but it was still a public verbal appeal to an imaginary being for his approval and support. It reminded me a little bit of the \u0026ldquo;Agnostic\u0026rsquo;s Prayer\u0026rdquo; in Roger Zelazny\u0026rsquo;s book Creatures of Light and Darkness, which goes like this (p. 40):\nInsofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you [a man about to die in a \u0026ldquo;suicide show\u0026rdquo; who the speaker has put his hand upon the head of] be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.And I continue to fail to understand why Christians cannot abide by Matthew 6:5-7.\nThe dinner at the event was phenomenal, though portions were small (filet mignon was the main course). Steve Forbes gave a keynote speech which was well done; it was primarily a recounting of some of the basic principles necessary for economic freedom, such as the importance of the rule of law and a system of stable property rights. Regarding property rights, I was pleased that he commented on a survey of businesses and property in Egypt that found that most businesses and buildings were illegal under the country\u0026rsquo;s laws, and noted that this is common throughout the world. Having recently read Robert Neuwirth\u0026rsquo;s excellent book Shadow Cities, I\u0026rsquo;m aware that over a billion people in the world live in squatter cities where they are illegally occupying land and often develop their own informal property rights that are not legally enforceable but tend to be respected within their own communities. Countries which manage to give some kind of enforceable title to such people can dramatically unlock wealth and improve their conditions.\nThe part of Forbes\u0026rsquo; talk which most caught my attention, however, was his discussion of the current mortgage crisis. He stated that this is a mere blip, so long as the government doesn\u0026rsquo;t overreact. He claimed that there is perhaps $400-$500 billion in losses hiding in securitized mortgage packages, which should be easy for the market to take since that\u0026rsquo;s the amount lost in a bad day on the stock market. The concern is that government or bankers will overreact and withdraw liquidity from everyone (rather than just bad risks) at a time when it is needed. In my opinion, Forbes understates the risks because he repeatedly assumed that the problem exists only within subprime loans, which is already demonstrably false. American Home Mortgage of Tucson, which filed for bankruptcy in August, did not originate subprime loans at all, only \u0026ldquo;Alt-A\u0026rdquo; loans, which fall between prime and subprime. The root of the problem has been people of all levels of credit risk using their homes as ATMs who are now underwater, and in particular those using adjustable rate mortgages. This article from someone inside the mortgage industry sets out a worst-case scenario that I think is far more plausible than Forbes\u0026rsquo; rosy picture, which fails to account for the cascading effects of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and loss of real estate jobs on the broader consumer-driven economy. But in any case, he predicts that the mortgage crisis will be over before the end of 2008, so by this time next year we will know who is right.\nAyaan Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s talk was actually an interview conducted by Darcy Olsen, the president of the Goldwater Institute, who asked her a series of questions about growing up in Somalia, her subsequent life, what motivated her to escape Islamic fundamentalism and her arranged marriage, and so forth. She was well-spoken (especially for a non-native speaker of English) and charming, and told of being inspired by works of fiction about individual freedom while living in a community that emphasized submission to family, tribe, and nation. Her sources of inspiration were all secular, of course, though surprisingly included Barbara Cartland romance novels and Nancy Drew mysteries as well as books like Huckleberry Finn.\nAfterward, I stood in line to get my book signed, and had a chance to speak to her directly. Although I thought of asking her what she thought of being honored at an event that opened with a prayer, our brief exchange went something like this:\nJL: Have you heard of the Internet Infidels?\nAHA: No. (She smiles.)\nJL: It\u0026rsquo;s at infidels.org, it is a group critical of religion. Are you familiar with Ibn Warraq? [I had also meant to mention Internet Infidels supporter Taslima Nasrin, but couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember her last name.]\nAHA: Yes.\nJL: Some of his material is published there, though it mostly focuses on Christianity, since it\u0026rsquo;s a bigger source of problems in this country.\nAHA: I think I would disagree that Christianity is a bigger problem than Islam in this country.\nJL: It\u0026rsquo;s Christianity that has control of the government here.\nAnd then I stepped away with my book, and joined the long line at valet parking right behind Barry Goldwater, Jr. I tipped my valet with a $20, which he seemed very pleased to receive, and then thought that I should have said \u0026ldquo;this is a tip from an atheist,\u0026rdquo; since I saw several other people (not Goldwater) apparently fail to tip at all, even though they were more elegantly dressed and driving vehicles several times the price of mine.\nAyaan Hirsi Ali seems to be focused exclusively on Islam\u0026ndash;not surprising given her history. Several of her answers were somewhat defensive of Christianity (no doubt appealing to her audience), at least by comparison to Islam, much like her response to me above. Yet the Bible contains teachings very similar to the Koran in regard to calling for the death of unbelievers, the subjection of women, slavery, and so forth\u0026ndash;the difference is that there are fewer who endorse those teachings, perhaps in part because Christianity has gone through a Reformation while Islam has not.\nUPDATE: Note that Wikipedia reports that Hirsi Ali has admitted to falsifying some information in her application for asylum in the Netherlands (specifically her name, date of birth, and claim to have spent time in refugee camps on the border of Somalia and Kenya), and her family disputes her account of her forced marriage, though Hirsi Ali has provided letters from family members (including her father) to the New York Times which substantiate her account. It was the exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down as a Member of the Dutch Parliament and led to Rita Verdonk saying that her Dutch nationality was therefore invalid, which was subsequently overridden by vote of Parliament.\nThis blog post quotes from a Reason magazine interview of Hirsi Ali that shows that she is somewhat extreme and illiberal in her position regarding Islam, as well as having some unusual ideas about Christianity (e.g., she thinks Catholics have a conception of God where there is no hell). One commenter at the Reason blog compared her to Ann Coulter. This post critiques her understanding of Islam as overly simplistic, like confusing all of Christianity with its most extreme fundamentalist varieties.\nUPDATE (February 20, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;ve just finished reading Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s book, Infidel, and I highly recommend it. Contrary to my statement above, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the \u0026ldquo;exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down\u0026rdquo; as an MP; she had been open with many people, including the press, about having used the name Ali instead of Magan on her asylum application and claiming to be a refugee from Somalia instead of a resident of Kenya fleeing a forced marriage to a Canadian.\nUPDATE (May 5, 2024): Since at least November of 2023, Hirsi Ali now identifies as a Christian, which for her seems to be a cultural stance not grounded in any reasons for believing Christianity to be true.\nUPDATE (January 11, 2025): Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no longer a remotely serious person. Hume's Ghost (2007-12-08):\n\"... in this country.\"She probably didn't mean what her words said, but she implied that Muslims in America are a greater threat than Christian nationalists. That's absurd.\nLippard (2007-12-08):\nNote that I'm reporting from memory--it's possible that she said \"to this country\", which would be more plausible. I know for sure that *I* said that Christianity is a bigger issue *in this country*, and I took her response to be a disagreement with what I was saying.\nHume's Ghost (2007-12-08):\nDuly noted. Incidentally, you have reminded me that I have been meaning to read Warraq's Leaving Islam.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/ayaan-hirsi-ali-receives-goldwater.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night Einzige and I attended the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s award dinner for Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, where she was given the 2007 Goldwater Award for her work in support of freedom, in defense of women against the oppression they face in Islamic countries.  Copies of her autobiographical book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfidel\u003c/span\u003e, were given to each table and I obtained the copy at our table since most everyone at the table had already read it and no one accepted my challenge to fight for it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was a rainy night and it was a huge event, with about 800 attendees.  It took me about 25 minutes to get from the entrance of the Phoenician to the event venue, where I later heard that valets parked 400 cars for the event.  It seemed as if the Phoenician wasn\u0026rsquo;t used to hosting an event of that size, which can\u0026rsquo;t possibly be true.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was extremely surprised to see that the schedule for the event included an \u003cem\u003einvocation\u003c/em\u003e.  I have attended multiple Goldwater events in the past (such as \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/mr-conservative.html\"\u003ethe screening of \u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e), but this was the first time I had been to one that included a prayer.  I noted at the table that it seemed disrespectful in the extreme that an event honoring an atheist would begin with a prayer.  The prayer itself was an ecumenical, non-sectarian \u0026ldquo;meditation\u0026rdquo; (as the individual who spoke referred to it) of the sort likely to be as offensive to hardcore Christians as it is to atheists for its failure to appeal to Jesus Christ, but it was still a public verbal appeal to an imaginary being for his approval and support.  It reminded me a little bit of the \u0026ldquo;Agnostic\u0026rsquo;s Prayer\u0026rdquo; in Roger Zelazny\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreatures of Light and Darkness\u003c/span\u003e, which goes like this (p. 40):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eInsofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you [a man about to die in a \u0026ldquo;suicide show\u0026rdquo; who the speaker has put his hand upon the head of] be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit.  I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony.  Amen.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd I continue to fail to understand why \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer.html\"\u003eChristians cannot abide by Matthew 6:5-7\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe dinner at the event was phenomenal, though portions were small (filet mignon was the main course).  Steve Forbes gave a keynote speech which was well done; it was primarily a recounting of some of the basic principles necessary for economic freedom, such as the importance of the rule of law and a system of stable property rights.  Regarding property rights, I was pleased that he commented on a survey of businesses and property in Egypt that found that most businesses and buildings were illegal under the country\u0026rsquo;s laws, and noted that this is common throughout the world.  Having recently read Robert Neuwirth\u0026rsquo;s excellent book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eShadow Cities\u003c/span\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;m aware that over a billion people in the world live in squatter cities where they are illegally occupying land and often develop their own informal property rights that are not legally enforceable but tend to be respected within their own communities.  Countries which manage to give some kind of enforceable title to such people can dramatically unlock wealth and improve their conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe part of Forbes\u0026rsquo; talk which most caught my attention, however, was his discussion of the current mortgage crisis.  He stated that this is a mere blip, so long as the government doesn\u0026rsquo;t overreact.  He claimed that there is perhaps $400-$500 billion in losses hiding in securitized mortgage packages, which should be easy for the market to take since that\u0026rsquo;s the amount lost in a bad day on the stock market.  The concern is that government or bankers will overreact and withdraw liquidity from everyone (rather than just bad risks) at a time when it is needed.  In my opinion, Forbes understates the risks because he repeatedly assumed that the problem exists only within subprime loans, which is already demonstrably false.  American Home Mortgage of Tucson, which filed for bankruptcy in August, did not originate subprime loans at all, only \u0026ldquo;Alt-A\u0026rdquo; loans, which fall between prime and subprime.  The root of the problem has been people of all levels of credit risk using their homes as ATMs who are now underwater, and in particular those using adjustable rate mortgages.  \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/\"\u003eThis article\u003c/a\u003e from someone inside the mortgage industry sets out a worst-case scenario that I think is far more plausible than Forbes\u0026rsquo; rosy picture, which fails to account for the cascading effects of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and loss of real estate jobs on the broader consumer-driven economy.  But in any case, he predicts that the mortgage crisis will be over before the end of 2008, so by this time next year we will know who is right.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAyaan Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s talk was actually an interview conducted by Darcy Olsen, the president of the Goldwater Institute, who asked her a series of questions about growing up in Somalia, her subsequent life, what motivated her to escape Islamic fundamentalism and her arranged marriage, and so forth.  She was well-spoken (especially for a non-native speaker of English) and charming, and told of being inspired by works of fiction about individual freedom while living in a community that emphasized submission to family, tribe, and nation.  Her sources of inspiration were all secular, of course, though surprisingly included Barbara Cartland romance novels and Nancy Drew mysteries as well as books like Huckleberry Finn.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfterward, I stood in line to get my book signed, and had a chance to speak to her directly.  Although I thought of asking her what she thought of being honored at an event that opened with a prayer, our brief exchange went something like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJL:  Have you heard of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e?\u003cbr /\u003eAHA:  No.  (She smiles.)\u003cbr /\u003eJL:  It\u0026rsquo;s at infidels.org, it is a group critical of religion.  Are you familiar with Ibn Warraq?  [I had also meant to mention Internet Infidels supporter Taslima Nasrin, but couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember her last name.]\u003cbr /\u003eAHA:  Yes.\u003cbr /\u003eJL:  Some of his material is published there, though it mostly focuses on Christianity, since it\u0026rsquo;s a bigger source of problems in this country.\u003cbr /\u003eAHA:  I think I would disagree that Christianity is a bigger problem than Islam in this country.\u003cbr /\u003eJL:  It\u0026rsquo;s Christianity that has control of the government here.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd then I stepped away with my book, and joined the long line at valet parking right behind Barry Goldwater, Jr.  I tipped my valet with a $20, which he seemed very pleased to receive, and then thought that I should have said \u0026ldquo;this is a tip from an atheist,\u0026rdquo; since I saw several other people (not Goldwater) apparently fail to tip at all, even though they were more elegantly dressed and driving vehicles several times the price of mine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAyaan Hirsi Ali seems to be focused exclusively on Islam\u0026ndash;not surprising given her history.  Several of her answers were somewhat defensive of Christianity (no doubt appealing to her audience), at least by comparison to Islam, much like her response to me above.  Yet the Bible contains teachings very similar to the Koran in regard to calling for the death of unbelievers, the subjection of women, slavery, and so forth\u0026ndash;the difference is that there are fewer who endorse those teachings, perhaps in part because Christianity has gone through a Reformation while Islam has not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Note that \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali\"\u003eWikipedia reports\u003c/a\u003e that Hirsi Ali has admitted to falsifying some information in her application for asylum in the Netherlands (specifically her name, date of birth, and claim to have spent time in refugee camps on the border of Somalia and Kenya), and her family disputes her account of her forced marriage, though Hirsi Ali has provided letters from family members (including her father) to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e which substantiate her account.  It was the exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down as a Member of the Dutch Parliament and led to Rita Verdonk saying that her Dutch nationality was therefore invalid, which was subsequently overridden by vote of Parliament.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2007/10/ayaan_hirsi_ali.php\"\u003eThis blog post\u003c/a\u003e quotes from \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/news/printer/122457.html\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine interview of Hirsi Ali\u003c/a\u003e that shows that she is somewhat extreme and illiberal in her position regarding Islam, as well as having some unusual ideas about Christianity (e.g., she thinks Catholics have a conception of God where there is no hell).  One commenter at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e blog compared her to Ann Coulter.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2007/06/ayaan_antihirsu.php\"\u003eThis post\u003c/a\u003e critiques her understanding of Islam as overly simplistic, like confusing all of Christianity with its most extreme fundamentalist varieties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 20, 2008):  I\u0026rsquo;ve just finished reading Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfidel\u003c/span\u003e, and I highly recommend it.  Contrary to my statement above, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the \u0026ldquo;exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down\u0026rdquo; as an MP; she had been open with many people, including the press, about having used the name Ali instead of Magan on her asylum application and claiming to be a refugee from Somalia instead of a resident of Kenya fleeing a forced marriage to a Canadian.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (May 5, 2024): Since at least November of 2023, Hirsi Ali \u003ca href=\"https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/\"\u003enow identifies as a Christian\u003c/a\u003e, which for her seems to be a cultural stance not grounded in any reasons for believing Christianity to be true.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (January 11, 2025): Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no longer a remotely serious person. \u003cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0-kwMi2atViygwNrJsT6tmaIk_FyrY-Vq8liTFbOpm35gqrZ9CnecYQlQKRiV1WVO5DctLMOWMBawHEVtmkHVzgbSECpJcJ9XSgvZ96hlCz8ICGnNzmUkGk-VSiSUC5KbB5Vqr_sxSSaZOxuXrK8a8JIgRzv4mHJGN4UDnCTjKnhwmawL1WJm\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" data-original-height=\"874\" data-original-width=\"1190\" height=\"235\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0-kwMi2atViygwNrJsT6tmaIk_FyrY-Vq8liTFbOpm35gqrZ9CnecYQlQKRiV1WVO5DctLMOWMBawHEVtmkHVzgbSECpJcJ9XSgvZ96hlCz8ICGnNzmUkGk-VSiSUC5KbB5Vqr_sxSSaZOxuXrK8a8JIgRzv4mHJGN4UDnCTjKnhwmawL1WJm\" width=\"320\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ayaan Hirsi Ali receives Goldwater Award"},{"content":"It turns out that part of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment.\nUPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding has now retracted the claim in his new book. He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding.\nTrott (2007-12-14):\nI passed the Sullivan article to a friend who sent me back, in part, the following response:Wikipedia has a good article on al-Libihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Shaykh_al-LibiThe wikipedia article suggests that \"al-Libi was intentionallymisleading interrogators\" while the Sullivan article suggests he\"fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harshtreatment.\" Pretty important difference, but I suppose in either casethe torture did not get us what we wanted. If he was misleading us,torturing al-Libi didn't necessarily put us in a worse position than weotherwise would have been in as Sullivan suggests.\nLippard (2007-12-17):\nThanks for the clarification, Rich. Wikipedia supports the point that torture is no guarantee of accurate information, but you're right that it removes the element that torture *caused* the false information.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/false-confessions-from-torture-produced.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt turns out that \u003ca href=\"http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/10/torture-or-nati.html\"\u003epart of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding \u003ca href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/26/cia_man_retracts_claim_on_waterboarding?page=0,0\"\u003ehas now retracted the claim in his new book\u003c/a\u003e.  He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"False confessions from torture produced Iraq WMD claims"},{"content":"Mitt Romney made his long-awaited \u0026ldquo;JFK-style\u0026rdquo; speech, which was hoped to alleviate concerns that he would rely on Mormon religious authority as the ultimate authority in making political decisions rather than the Constitution. His statement to that effect was rather weak, however, and he never actually came out and said that he would rely on the Constitution as the ultimate authority for his political decisions. He stated that \u0026ldquo;I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.\u0026rdquo; But he did assert that lack of faith was grounds for rejection of a candidate, and made the absurd statement that \u0026ldquo;Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.\u0026quot;\nRomney did say (as the Arizona Republic reported, but CNN did not, in the above link) that \u0026ldquo;Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.\u0026rdquo; Conversely, the Republic failed to report Romney\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;freedom requires religion\u0026rdquo; statement.\nFor Romney, it is clear that he does not agree with Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitutional Convention that the First Amendment protects the nonbeliever as well as the believer (as is clear from their writings, their actions as president, and from earlier drafts of the First Amendment that were rejected). Instead, his version of the Constitution requires everyone to belong to some religion, whether it\u0026rsquo;s a cult founded by a con artist or an ancient world religion. He thinks that freedom and religion always must coexist, despite thousands of years and millions of people worth of evidence to the contrary. (Though perhaps his \u0026ldquo;requires\u0026rdquo; is a moral claim, that in order to be worthwhile or good, those things must come together\u0026ndash;in which case I\u0026rsquo;d agree that religion requires freedom, but not that freedom requires religion.)\nThe Republic also noted another serious defect in Romney\u0026rsquo;s comprehension of the First Amendment:\nAt the same time, he decried those who would remove from public life “any acknowledgment of God,” and he said that “during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.”Such scenes are already welcome in public places, so long as those public places are equally open to religious and secular displays by believer and nonbeliever alike. The only thing that is forbidden is exclusively allowing displays by a particular religion, which of course is what many Christians are actually demanding. For such an exclusive right favoring a particular religion or religion over nonreligion, displays must be on private property. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple and fair concept, but the religious right repeatedly misrepresents it and falsely claims to be oppressed because they aren\u0026rsquo;t given special privileges that no one else has, and whines and complains when something happens like a Hindu giving a prayer before Congress. And nobody has tried to prevent Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the presidential candidates from their repeated references to God, despite the transparent phoniness of most of their claims to faith. It\u0026rsquo;s clear that most of them are simply signalling to the religious right that they will continue to be granted special preferences, rather than truly displaying what they believe\u0026ndash;their records of political expedience and lack of integrity speak more loudly than their words.\nWith people of such opinions in political power, explicitly willing to deny political freedoms to those who are nonbelievers and grant special privileges to anything calling itself a religion, it should not be surprising that some people will, out of pure expedience and self-defense, take steps to convert atheism into a religion. Yet that should be unnecessary under our Constitution, as a Washington Post editorial on Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech agrees.\nUPDATE: DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds comments on and posts the entirety of Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech, which is certainly better than the quotes above would suggest\u0026ndash;he does criticize the establishment of religion in the Massachusetts colony, for example: \u0026ldquo;Today’s generations of Americans have always known religious liberty. Perhaps we forget the long and arduous path our nation’s forbearers took to achieve it. They came here from England to seek freedom of religion. But upon finding it for themselves, they at first denied it to others.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE: P.Z. Myers and Greg Laden each give their take on Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech. And here\u0026rsquo;s Christopher Hitchens\u0026rsquo; view.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-12-07):\nHe also manages to ignore Article 6- no religious test for holding public office.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/mitt-romney-on-religious-freedom.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMitt Romney \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/06/romney.speech/?imw=Y\u0026amp;iref=mpstoryemail\"\u003emade his long-awaited \u0026ldquo;JFK-style\u0026rdquo; speech\u003c/a\u003e, which was hoped to alleviate concerns that he would rely on Mormon religious authority as the ultimate authority in making political decisions rather than the Constitution.  His statement to that effect was rather weak, however, and he never actually came out and said that he would rely on the Constitution as the ultimate authority for his political decisions.  He stated that \u0026ldquo;I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.\u0026rdquo;  But he did assert that lack of faith was grounds for rejection of a candidate, and made the absurd statement that \u0026ldquo;Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRomney did say (\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1206romneyreligion06-on.html\"\u003eas the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reported\u003c/a\u003e, but CNN did not, in the above link) that \u0026ldquo;Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.\u0026rdquo;  Conversely, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRepublic\u003c/span\u003e failed to report Romney\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;freedom requires religion\u0026rdquo; statement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor Romney, it is clear that he does not agree with Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitutional Convention that the First Amendment protects the nonbeliever as well as the believer (as is clear from their writings, their actions as president, and from earlier drafts of the First Amendment that were rejected).  Instead, his version of the Constitution requires everyone to belong to some religion, whether it\u0026rsquo;s a cult founded by a con artist or an ancient world religion.  He thinks that freedom and religion always must coexist, despite thousands of years and millions of people worth of evidence to the contrary.  (Though perhaps his \u0026ldquo;requires\u0026rdquo; is a moral claim, that in order to be worthwhile or good, those things must come together\u0026ndash;in which case I\u0026rsquo;d agree that religion requires freedom, but not that freedom requires religion.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRepublic\u003c/span\u003e also noted another serious defect in Romney\u0026rsquo;s comprehension of the First Amendment:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt the same time, he decried those who would remove from public life “any acknowledgment of God,” and he said that “during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.”\u003c/blockquote\u003eSuch scenes are already welcome in public places, so long as those public places are equally open to religious and secular displays by believer and nonbeliever alike.  The only thing that is forbidden is exclusively allowing displays by a particular religion, which of course is what many Christians are actually demanding.  For such an exclusive right favoring a particular religion or religion over nonreligion, displays must be on private property.  It\u0026rsquo;s a simple and fair concept, but the religious right repeatedly misrepresents it and falsely claims to be oppressed because they aren\u0026rsquo;t given special privileges that no one else has, and whines and complains when something happens like \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/more_hindu_prayer_reaction.php\"\u003ea Hindu giving a prayer before Congress\u003c/a\u003e.  And nobody has tried to prevent Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the presidential candidates from their repeated references to God, despite the transparent phoniness of most of their claims to faith.  It\u0026rsquo;s clear that most of them are simply signalling to the religious right that they will continue to be granted special preferences, rather than truly displaying what they believe\u0026ndash;their records of political expedience and lack of integrity speak more loudly than their words.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWith people of such opinions in political power, explicitly willing to deny political freedoms to those who are nonbelievers and grant special privileges to anything calling itself a religion, it should not be surprising that some people will, out of pure expedience and self-defense, take steps to convert atheism into a religion.  Yet that should be unnecessary under our Constitution, as \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602115.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1\u0026amp;sub=AR\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e editorial on Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech\u003c/a\u003e agrees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds\u003ca href=\"http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/12/06/the-romney-speech-an-analysis/\"\u003e comments on and posts the entirety of Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech\u003c/a\u003e, which is certainly better than the quotes above would suggest\u0026ndash;he does criticize the establishment of religion in the Massachusetts colony, for example: \u0026ldquo;Today’s generations of Americans have always known religious liberty. Perhaps we forget the long and arduous path our nation’s forbearers took to achieve it. They came here from England to seek freedom of religion. But upon finding it for themselves, they at first denied it to others.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/romneys_paean_to_piety.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2007/12/romney_has_a_big_tent.php\"\u003eGreg Laden\u003c/a\u003e each give their take on Romney\u0026rsquo;s speech.  And \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2179404/\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s Christopher Hitchens\u0026rsquo; view\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mitt Romney on religious freedom"},{"content":"The \u0026ldquo;Watchblog\u0026rdquo; at the Arizona Republic reports on how the local Christian Internet dating site, Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix, operates:\nC[***] P[***] says a sales manager at Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix blocked her exit, made unauthorized charges on a cutup credit card and told her she would never find a man before the holidays without their help.\nP[***], who filed a police report over the incident, says the dating service virtually emptied her bank account to secure a $1,700 membership fee, refused to cancel her contract and demanded that she sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to get a refund. Other commenters at the blog report similar, though less extreme, experiences:\nI feel for this lady, I know from experience what Equally Yoked is like. They used to call me every month or so and literally harass me into coming in for the preliminary meeting. Luckily, I usually so busy I never had time to go in, I am glad I read this article and I will avoid this place like the plague. and\nA friend joined Equally Yoked a couple of years ago and asked me to join with her so we could attend some of their events. I called them and made an appointment. My favorite cousin's wife died, however, the night of the appointment. I called and got Voice Mail to tell them I was too distraught to make the meeting. They called me back at least five times that night leaving increasingly nasty messages about how unprofessional I was cancelling my appointment. It's 18 months later and they finally stopped calling in October. I would never use Equally Yoked. The Republic notes that Equally Yoked has had eight BBB complaints in the last 36 months, four of which are contract issues, one a billing issue, one a service issue, and one a product issue, at least six of which were not resolved in a way acceptable to the consumer (\"The consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB\" or \"BBB determined the company made a reasonable offer to resolve the issues, but the consumer did not accept the offer.\"). For the BBB, that's good enough for a \"satisfactory\" record for a company that's an accredited member. That kind of complaint record would certainly make me avoid such a company, however.\nOther complaints about Equally Yoked in other locales can be found online at ripoffreport.com.\nThe service sounds like a Christian version of another dating company that offered services through local offices in major cities at an equally ridiculous price, Great Expectations. That video-based dating service, once shilled for by Harlan Ellison, has received similar complaints about high pressure sales tactics, deceptiveness, and failure to deliver on promises. Equally Yoked has simply taken this concept and applied it to an even more gullible segment of the population than those who think video dating is a good way to meet people--those who think that an organization catering to Christians (and which suggests, but never actually says that it's run by Christians) couldn't possibly rip them off.\nThe online dating services that charge minimal fees are clearly a much better deal--they have more people participating, they can often be used without cost or at a minimal monthly cost, and they don't have sleazy salespeople pushing you to sign ridiculous contracts. The one potential advantage of the expensive services is that they may perform criminal history checks, credit checks, and checks to make sure their clients are unmarried, but these are also all checks you can obtain on your own online at a much lower cost. And if you're really looking for someone on the basis of membership in a particular religion, wouldn't a church, mosque, or temple of your favored sect be the best place to search? Caliban (2007-12-06):\nPeople need to stay the hell away from any \"dating\" service that provides anything more than a social networking system, and even those seem kind of sketchy.(I need to learn how to type)\nLippard (2008-01-20):\ncderenberger said... I agree. I think many of the christian dating agencies could care less about our biblical principles. Actually, I just read online that Bigchurch.com just got sold to Penthouse, what does that tell you? January 20, 2008 5:42 AM Subtle, cderenberger, but I'm deleting your comment because your profile shows you have two blogs about Internet marketing and search engine optimization, so I think your link to \"christian dating agencies\" is actually intended to promote them, despite the apparent criticism of your comment. That would make your comment evidence of its own truth.\nTammara Garland (2008-11-21):\nInteresting to read this today - In that I recently divorced I just conversed over the phone with Equally Yoked this afternoon. The conversation quickly became a disappointment when one of the first questions the representative asked was; \"Do you have a bank account?\" That raised an immediate red flag for me in that she had not yet explained how their program worked!Also, when I asked how much the cost of membership was the representative also told me that she didn't even know! It's hard to believe that the representative that does the initial phone screening would not even know how much the membership is! It seemed to only be a ploy to get me to go to one of their offices, which I have decided to not do since the initial phone conversation went the way it did.Unfortunately, many Christian organizations have integrated the same tactics the secular business world does, which I feel is quite sad. Thanks for letting me vent!\nLippard (2008-11-22):\nTammara: I think you dodged a bullet!\nUnspokenHeart (2010-11-24):\nSo I know this was posted a couple yrs ago... but just as Tammara explain, a similiar phone conversatin happened with me just a couple days ago. And then today when I didnt show for my appointment due to being snowed in. Something in my spirit wasn\u0026#39;t at peace with how they were speaking, which lead me to my research tody. Thanks for posting! It helps to know and understand why I did not feel at peace and to not get caught up in it.\nAnonymous (2012-02-22):\nEqually Yoked is the biggest rip off I have ever seen. First of all it is more than double the price of other sites. I paid 895.00 for a two year agreement. My monthly payments where 39.70 a month after paying 100.00 down, and you are locked in for two years. If you think your not, just go 1 day past your due date and they will call you wanting their money. They do their best to get you to sign an Debit auto draft form that they can automatically take it from your account. if you miss they hit you with all kinds of fees. If you chose to pay by phone they charge an 11.00 convienience fee, or 7.95 if you pay online. Everything is slanted towards Equally Yoked and the customers have little rights. You would be better off to go on the free dating sites, because you will find many of the same women on there that are on Equally yoked. Provide them your bakground check and require one from them. you can get them for 9.95. I was an idiot for signing on and I continue to pay for nothing. But I thought I would pass along my bad. Equally Yoked will not quote you a price over the phone, they use high pressure sales techniques and misleading statements to get you in. But once you sign the contract your hung.\njens4jesus (2013-11-26):\nI was the manager for Equally Yoked when it moved to Garden Grove, Orange County, CA. We didn\u0026#39;t call it a \u0026quot;dating service\u0026quot;. We referred to Equally Yoked as a tool to fellowship with other Christians in a safe environment. Our location prayed with each person. We never used high-sales tactics. We had a lot of success in bringing couples together. However, I am not shocked with how EY evolved. When EY was sold to some corporate husks, it changed dramatically. I left the company because they were getting too secular. When I managed, I made sure we asked the hard questions. We felt compelled to keep the wolves out of the flock. We asked how they became a Christian...being \u0026quot;born\u0026quot; into it or told they were a Christian by a parent doesn\u0026#39;t make them a Christian; it is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Equally Yoked comes from the Bible. God is trying to warn us to marry a person with similar goals and beliefs. The hard part was the ownership change. Once that occurred, it wasn\u0026#39;t about the sheep staying safe, it was about money. Also, there are laws that don\u0026#39;t allow discrimination. The price would go up substantially when there was a wolf trying to enter...that is why we didn\u0026#39;t quote prices over the phone. Anyway, it was a great idea in the beginning, a vision given to Pam by God (founder) but unfortunately, she sold her dream and made it a nightmare. Anonymous (2014-01-04):\nYou have your information so wrong and some kind of a nut. Equally yoked has been around for 30 years and sounds like you where fired or let go for acting in an unchristian like behavior or a disgruntled x employee as you say you are. If you where a true Christian then you would not be posting such things as this. May God Bless you!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/christian-dating-service-uses.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Watchblog\u0026rdquo; at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/WATCHBLOG/11935\"\u003eon how the local Christian Internet dating site, Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix, operates\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nC[***] P[***] says a sales manager at Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix blocked her exit, made unauthorized charges on a cutup credit card and told her she would never find a man before the holidays without their help.\u003cbr /\u003e\nP[***], who filed a police report over the incident, says the dating service virtually emptied her bank account to secure a $1,700 membership fee, refused to cancel her contract and demanded that she sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to get a refund.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nOther commenters at the blog report similar, though less extreme, experiences:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nI feel for this lady, I know from experience what Equally Yoked is like. They used to call me every month or so and literally harass me into coming in for the preliminary meeting. Luckily, I usually so busy I never had time to go in, I am glad I read this article and I will avoid this place like the plague.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nand\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nA friend joined Equally Yoked a couple of years ago and asked me to join with her so we could attend some of their events.  I called them and made an appointment.  My favorite cousin's wife died, however, the night of the appointment. I called and got Voice Mail to tell them I was too distraught to make the meeting.  They called me back at least five times that night leaving increasingly nasty messages about how unprofessional I was cancelling my appointment.  It's 18 months later and they finally stopped calling in October.  I would never use Equally Yoked.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nThe Republic notes that Equally Yoked has had eight BBB complaints in the last 36 months, four of which are contract issues, one a billing issue, one a service issue, and one a product issue, at least six of which were not resolved in a way acceptable to the consumer (\"The consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB\" or \"BBB determined the company made a reasonable offer to resolve the issues, but the consumer did not accept the offer.\").  For the BBB, that's good enough for a \"satisfactory\" record for a company that's an accredited member.  That kind of complaint record would certainly make me avoid such a company, however.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOther complaints about Equally Yoked in other locales can be found online at \u003ca href=\"http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/288/RipOff0288381.htm\"\u003eripoffreport.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe service sounds like a Christian version of another dating company that offered services through local offices in major cities at an equally ridiculous price, Great Expectations.  That video-based dating service, once shilled for by Harlan Ellison, has received \u003ca href=\"http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/277/RipOff0277190.htm\"\u003esimilar\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/176/RipOff0176636.htm\"\u003ecomplaints\u003c/a\u003e about high pressure sales tactics, deceptiveness, and failure to deliver on promises.  Equally Yoked has simply taken this concept and applied it to an even more gullible segment of the population than those who think video dating is a good way to meet people--those who think that an organization catering to Christians (and which suggests, but never actually says that it's run by Christians) couldn't possibly rip them off.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe online dating services that charge minimal fees are clearly a much better deal--they have more people participating, they can often be used without cost or at a minimal monthly cost, and they don't have sleazy salespeople pushing you to sign ridiculous contracts.   The one potential advantage of the expensive services is that they may perform criminal history checks, credit checks, and checks to make sure their clients are unmarried, but these are also all checks you can obtain on your own online at a much lower cost.  And if you're really looking for someone on the basis of membership in a particular religion, wouldn't a church, mosque, or temple of your favored sect be the best place to search?\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eCaliban\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-12-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ePeople need to stay the hell away from any \"dating\" service that provides anything more than a social networking system, and even those seem kind of sketchy.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e(I need to learn how to type)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian dating service uses unChristian sales tactics"},{"content":"Christopher Hitchens gets right to the point with his piece on Hanukkah:\n\u0026hellip;to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism\u0026rsquo;s bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.A similar point is made, in a more tactful way, in Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s excellent book, Doubt: A History, which she also told on the New York Times\u0026rsquo; blog last December. She tells the story of how the events that led to the celebration of Hanukkah were a triumph of religious dogmatism and zealotry over secularism. She recommends lighting an extra candle in the memory of Miriam, the Hellenized Jewish woman who thought sacrifice was superstition and was \u0026ldquo;punished\u0026rdquo; for striking the temple altar with her sandal, yelling \u0026ldquo;Wolf, wolf, you have squandered the riches of Israel!\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-12-05):\nI need to re-read Doubt.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/hitchens-happy-hanukkah-message.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristopher Hitchens gets right to the point with \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2179045/fr/rss/\"\u003ehis piece on Hanukkah\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip;to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism\u0026rsquo;s bastard child in the shape of Christianity.  You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.\u003c/blockquote\u003eA similar point is made, in a more tactful way, in Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s excellent book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDoubt: A History\u003c/span\u003e, which she also told on \u003ca href=\"http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/my-real-holiday/\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo; blog last December\u003c/a\u003e.  She tells the story of how the events that led to the celebration of Hanukkah were a triumph of religious dogmatism and zealotry over secularism.  She recommends lighting an extra candle in the memory of Miriam, the Hellenized Jewish woman who thought sacrifice was superstition and was \u0026ldquo;punished\u0026rdquo; for striking the temple altar with her sandal, yelling \u0026ldquo;Wolf, wolf, you have squandered the riches of Israel!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hitchens' \"Happy Hanukkah\" message"},{"content":"Dan Smith has written a very nice critique of Rep. Jane Harman\u0026rsquo;s attempt to create a new McCarthyism with her HR1955, the \u0026ldquo;Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (July 18, 2009): I must agree with commenter Jack\u0026ndash;HR1955/S.1959 doesn\u0026rsquo;t criminalize anything or create any law enforcement powers for the commission that it orders to solicit testimony and write a report. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing in the bill that amends the Homeland Security Act to add any new crimes or enforcement capabilities. No doubt the commission will make legislative recommendations (and I think having such a commission is a bad idea), but this bill itself doesn\u0026rsquo;t do so.\njackd (2007-12-05):\nI have to disagree. Col. Smith's essay is not a critique of the bill, but a bit of alarmism that revolves around one introductory \"whereas\" clause and a few definitions. For what proves to be good reason, there is no link to the actual bill. It can be read in its entirety here. Although the text he and many others have highlighted is alarming, the only action the bill provides for is creating a Commission and a Center of Excellence.Also note that despite Col. Smith's concern over the Finding (#8) that \"any measure...should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents,\" Sec 899F(a) states that DHS \"shall not violate\" those same rights [emphasis added]. The phrase he is disturbed about follows, \"The Congress finds the following\", which he omits. Since \"finding\" is an observation and \"shall\" is an imperative, it's nonsense to claim that this finding is some sign that Harman is weak on civil liberties.My impression is that the uproar over HR1955 is vastly overblown, and I'm disappointed that you seem to be contributing - you're usually more careful than that.\nLippard (2007-12-05):\nThe fact remains that this bill creates an unnecessary and wasteful Commission which will no doubt operate in a manner similar to the two Presidents' Commissions on Pornography, collecting testimony from witnesses promoting FUD about domestic terrorism, and publishing a report with recommendations to Congress for action including legislation.This is not as bad as McCarthy's HUAC, in that the Commission doesn't have Congressional subpoena power, but I think Smith's points about the merit of such a Commission are sound even if some of his remarks are unduly alarmist.If the Commission comes back with a report that says \"we don't think we need any more laws or that domestic terrorism is a significant problem worthy of more billions of dollars of funding,\" then I'll consider it to have, after all, had a positive result (though its cost should still be subtracted from that value).\nLippard (2007-12-10):\nLooks like Jane Harman was the only member of the House Intelligence Committee to object to waterboarding.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/dan-smiths-critique-of-rep-jane-harmans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDan Smith has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.counterpunch.org/smith10252007.html\"\u003ea very nice critique of Rep. Jane Harman\u0026rsquo;s attempt to create a new McCarthyism\u003c/a\u003e with her HR1955, the \u0026ldquo;Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 18, 2009): I must agree with commenter Jack\u0026ndash;HR1955/S.1959 doesn\u0026rsquo;t criminalize anything or create any law enforcement powers for the commission that it orders to solicit testimony and write a report. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing in the bill that amends the Homeland Security Act to add any new crimes or enforcement capabilities. No doubt the commission will make legislative recommendations (and I think having such a commission is a bad idea), but this bill itself doesn\u0026rsquo;t do so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dan Smith's critique of Rep. Jane Harman's HR1955"},{"content":"I figured I\u0026rsquo;d present the foreclosure notice data a little differently, to make it easier visually to compare it with Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s median price and sales data. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in seeing the numbers prior to 2001, check out last month\u0026rsquo;s post. And, by the way, if you somehow found your way to this page via a Google search for \u0026ldquo;Phoenix foreclosures\u0026rdquo; or something similar and it\u0026rsquo;s not currently December of 2007, you\u0026rsquo;d do well to click here so you can see the latest information.\nNovember was yet another record month for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in the Phoenix area, with 3543 filed.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/07NovNTR.png\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales, Jan 2001 to Nov 2007\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139582868522735842\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;Meanwhile, home sales are the lowest they\u0026rsquo;ve been since January of 2001. Note that the graph\u0026rsquo;s latest data point is from October, since ARMLS is not quick to update its stats, but I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine that November\u0026rsquo;s numbers are going to be any better, since traditionally it\u0026rsquo;s a slow month, regardless.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/sales.png\u0026rdquo; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Phoenix area home sales data\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139583401098680562\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/12/have-things-finally-peaked.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI figured I\u0026rsquo;d present the foreclosure notice data a little differently, to make it easier visually to compare it with Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s median price and sales data. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in seeing the numbers prior to 2001, check out \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/back-with-vengeance.html\"\u003elast month\u0026rsquo;s post\u003c/a\u003e. And, by the way, if you somehow found your way to this page via a Google search for \u0026ldquo;Phoenix foreclosures\u0026rdquo; or something similar and it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003enot\u003c/i\u003e currently December of 2007, you\u0026rsquo;d do well to click \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/housing%20bubble\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e so you can see the latest information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovember was yet another record month for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in the Phoenix area, with 3543 filed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/07NovNTR.png\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/07NovNTR.png\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales, Jan 2001 to Nov 2007\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139582868522735842\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003eMeanwhile, home sales are the lowest they\u0026rsquo;ve been since January of 2001. Note that the graph\u0026rsquo;s latest data point is from October, since ARMLS is not quick to update its stats, but I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine that November\u0026rsquo;s numbers are going to be any better, since traditionally it\u0026rsquo;s a slow month, regardless.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/sales.png\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/sales.png\u0026rdquo; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Phoenix area home sales data\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139583401098680562\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Have things finally peaked?"},{"content":"Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, was forced to resign from her position. Her offense? Forwarding an email from the National Center for Science Education announcing a talk by philosopher and intelligent design critic Barbara Forrest, and adding the text \u0026ldquo;FYI.\u0026quot;\nThe call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, formerly at the U.S. Department of Education and former deputy legislative director for Texas Gov. George W. Bush. She wrote in an email to Comer\u0026rsquo;s supervisors that \u0026ldquo;This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities.\u0026quot;\nThe movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; makes a big deal about cases like the Sternberg affair, where nobody lost a job or responsibilities, and the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzales, whose publication record didn\u0026rsquo;t merit tenure. But here\u0026rsquo;s a case of someone who appears to have actually been removed from her position for sending out an announcement of a talk critical of intelligent design\u0026ndash;a subject which the courts have already ruled is unconstitutional to teach in the science classroom. TEA officials claim that Comer was removed for \u0026ldquo;repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination,\u0026rdquo; which Comer describes as really meaning her concerns about teaching creationism in schools. The Texas Republican Party platform explicitly advocates teaching intelligent design in public schools.\nWesley Elsberry has more about the Comer case at the Austringer blog, where he wonders whether the Discovery Institute will decry Comer\u0026rsquo;s firing, since they\u0026rsquo;ve been willing to stretch the facts to complain about cases with far less substance to them:\nWill the Discovery Institute come forward to say that the TEA is repressing Ms. Comer’s free speech rights? Will they urge her to become the star of the “Expelled” movie? After all, she did actually lose her job over her stance on evolution in education, as opposed to various people noted as being featured in the film who did not. But the DI is unlikely to do so because Ms. Comer is on the opposite side of the issue from them. They aren’t defending a principle, they are pushing a particular line of propaganda.I agree with Wesley. The Discovery Institute has a long record of misrepresenting facts (and not just about science) in order to promote its views. I suspect they will either remain silent or try to defend Comer\u0026rsquo;s removal.\nPharyngula also comments on Comer\u0026rsquo;s removal, including the following explanation from Comer\u0026rsquo;s boss:\nthe forwarding of this event announcement by Ms. Comer, as the Director of Science, from her TEA email account constitutes much more than just sharing information. Ms. Comer\u0026rsquo;s email implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker\u0026rsquo;s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral. Thus, sending this email compromises the agency\u0026rsquo;s role in the TEKS revision process by creating the perception that TEA has a biased position on a subject directly related to the science education TEKS.As P.Z. Myers comments: \u0026ldquo;Whoa. The Texas Education Agency is neutral on the subject of teaching good science? It\u0026rsquo;s bad if the TEA takes a position on the subject of science education? Apparently, TEA members are supposed to close their eyes and maximize ignorance before making decisions. I really feel sorry for Texas.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (December 2, 2007): And more, from Texas Citizens for Science (via Pharyngula).\nUPDATE (December 4, 2007): The New York Times editorializes on this subject.\nUPDATE (December 6, 2007): DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds agrees that TEA is in the wrong here.\nUPDATE (December 12, 2007): The Society for the Study of Evolution has sent an open letter to \u0026ldquo;Texas TEA.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (December 20, 2007): Glenn Branch has written a nice blog post about his email that cost Comer her job.\nUPDATE (July 3, 2008): Chris Comer has filed a lawsuit regarding her termination.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-21):\nHmmm:\"I suspect they [Discovery Institute] will either remain silent or try to defend Comer's removal.\"Only a week later:UPDATE (December 6, 2007 [actually 12.05.2007 = 12 May 2008 according to the normal worldwide way of writing dates :P ): DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds agrees that TEA is in the wrong here.So much for predictions.A better lesson would be: the government educracy sucks! Milton Friedman had the right idea with school vouchers. Walter Williams explains that partisan politics are precisely due to compulsory government funding of education, and would be just as bad if government funded cars or computers. See also Libertarian Solution to Evolution Education Controversy: No More Public Schools.\nLippard (2008-08-21):\nKtisophilos: That's DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds, speaking on his own behalf, not on behalf of the Discovery Institute.Can you find anything official from the Discovery Institute that falsifies my prediction?BTW, school vouchers are government funding of education, which points out that funding, setting standards, and providing the education are logically separable. I think that getting bad schools to go out of business (and having going out of business be a genuine threat to a bad school or bad teacher) is an important incentive for good education.I don't think the empirical evidence supports a claim that private education is necessarily better than public--the charter school system in Arizona has shown that privately supplied/publicly funded schools can be awful as well as excellent, but if they have their charters revoked for failure to perform, at least they go away.\nKtisophilos (2008-08-21):\nThe DI didn't boot Reynolds out for disagreeing with the treatment of Comer (I too disagree with this treatment).Williams also pointed out that just because a government funds something, it doesn't follow that the government needs to provide it. At least if parents are not happy with the private education, they can stop funding it, so there is an incentive to perform. But the teachers unions will fight vouchers tooth and nail in the name of \"the children\".\nLippard (2008-08-21):\nThe DI didn't boot out Reynolds, nor have they booted out Behe for endorsing common descent (though they seem to be giving him a bit of a cold shoulder after his last book). But they don't appear to have taken an official position. Has anybody associated with DI besides Reynolds made a similar statement?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/texas-education-agency-director-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, was forced to resign from her position.  Her offense?  Forwarding an email from the National Center for Science Education announcing a talk by philosopher and intelligent design critic Barbara Forrest, and adding the text \u0026ldquo;FYI.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, formerly at the U.S. Department of Education and former deputy legislative director for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.  She wrote in an email to Comer\u0026rsquo;s supervisors that \u0026ldquo;This is highly inappropriate.  I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe movie \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e makes a big deal about cases like \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Sternberg%20affair\"\u003ethe Sternberg affair\u003c/a\u003e, where nobody lost a job or responsibilities, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/post_2.php\"\u003ethe denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzales\u003c/a\u003e, whose publication record didn\u0026rsquo;t merit tenure.  But here\u0026rsquo;s a case of someone who appears to have actually been removed from her position for sending out an announcement of a talk critical of intelligent design\u0026ndash;a subject which the courts have already ruled is unconstitutional to teach in the science classroom.  TEA officials claim that Comer was removed for \u0026ldquo;repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination,\u0026rdquo; which Comer describes as really meaning her concerns about teaching creationism in schools.  The Texas Republican Party platform explicitly advocates teaching intelligent design in public schools.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWesley Elsberry has more about the Comer case \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2007/11/29/expelled-texas-education-agency-fires-staffer-for-announcing-talk-by-barbara-forrest/\"\u003eat the Austringer blog\u003c/a\u003e, where he wonders whether the Discovery Institute will decry Comer\u0026rsquo;s firing, since they\u0026rsquo;ve been willing to stretch the facts to complain about cases with far less substance to them:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWill the Discovery Institute come forward to say that the TEA is repressing Ms. Comer’s free speech rights? Will they urge her to become the star of the “Expelled” movie? After all, she did \u003ci\u003eactually\u003c/i\u003e lose her job over her stance on evolution in education, as opposed to various people noted as being featured in the film who did not. But the DI is unlikely to do so because Ms. Comer is on the opposite side of the issue from them. They aren’t defending a principle, they are pushing a particular line of propaganda.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI agree with Wesley.  The Discovery Institute has a long record of misrepresenting facts (and not just about science) in order to promote its views.  I suspect they will either remain silent or try to defend Comer\u0026rsquo;s removal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula also \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/fear_of_barbara_forrest.php\"\u003ecomments on Comer\u0026rsquo;s removal\u003c/a\u003e, including the following explanation from Comer\u0026rsquo;s boss:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ethe forwarding of this event announcement by Ms. Comer, as the Director of Science, from her TEA email account constitutes much more than just sharing information. Ms. Comer\u0026rsquo;s email implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker\u0026rsquo;s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral. Thus, sending this email compromises the agency\u0026rsquo;s role in the TEKS revision process by creating the perception that TEA has a biased position on a subject directly related to the science education TEKS.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs P.Z. Myers comments: \u0026ldquo;Whoa. The Texas Education Agency is \u003ci\u003eneutral\u003c/i\u003e on the subject of teaching good science? It\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003ebad\u003c/i\u003e if the TEA takes a position on the subject of science education? Apparently, TEA members are supposed to close their eyes and maximize ignorance before making decisions. I really feel sorry for Texas.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 2, 2007):  And more, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/the_real_scoop_on_the_texas_sc.php\"\u003efrom Texas Citizens for Science (via Pharyngula)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 4, 2007): The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04tue3.html?_r=3\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003eeditorializes on this subject\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 6, 2007):  DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds \u003ca href=\"http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/12/05/support-open-inquiry-for-all-the-obligation-of-christians-to-have-learned-from-history/\"\u003eagrees that TEA is in the wrong here\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 12, 2007): The Society for the Study of Evolution \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2007/12/12/sse-open-letter-to-texas-tea/\"\u003ehas sent an open letter to \u0026ldquo;Texas TEA.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 20, 2007):  Glenn Branch \u003ca href=\"http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2007/12/muzzling-dissen.html\"\u003ehas written a nice blog post about his email that cost Comer her job\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 3, 2008): Chris Comer \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/chris_comer_strikes_back.php\"\u003ehas filed a lawsuit regarding her termination\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Texas Education Agency director of science curriculum fired for announcing Barbara Forrest talk"},{"content":"A letter in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine suggests that theism and atheism are both correlated with \u0026ldquo;fewer reported depressive symptoms than the in-between state of \u0026rsquo;existential uncertainty\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\nJohn S. Wilkins (2007-11-27):\nWell, it's easier to be certain than to be right, I guess.\nEinzige (2007-11-27):\nHow is calling oneself an atheist a claim to certainty?In what way can the lack of knowledge about something be considered \"right\"? (I have a theory, but I'd like to know what you meant)\nLippard (2007-11-27):\nJohn's an agnostic who spells out his position in more detail here.I don't think John is making the claim that theists or agnostics asset 100% confidence in their beliefs, only that they are more certain than agnostics. And I'm sure he's not making the claim that agnostics are right--only that they're properly refusing to answer \"a question that merely has the form of an interrogative, but which admits of no answer even in principle.\"But I disagree with that--surely if God exists he can demonstrate his existence, and many theists claim that he has, in fact, done so repeatedly. Religions *do* make empirical claims, even if they tend to backtrack from them when pressed.\nEinzige (2007-11-27):\nI suppose my first question was as much directed at the original article as it was at John's statement. At the risk of inviting proselytizers, I'll admit that I'm wracked by existential crises on a regular basis. (I should note that intellectually honest religious people should be, too. I mean, what if God's \"plan\" for us is equivalent to a lab tech's \"plan\" for a petri dish of bacteria?)Regarding my second question, I assume that he meant it's only \"right\" to admit that certain knowledge in this realm is impossible, hence only agnostics are right. I can't be sure that's what he meant, though, so I'm agnostic about it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/theists-and-atheists-less-depressed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/11/840\"\u003eletter in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eQJM: An International Journal of Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e suggests that theism and atheism are both correlated with \u0026ldquo;fewer reported depressive symptoms than the in-between state of \u0026rsquo;existential uncertainty\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eJohn S. Wilkins\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWell, it's easier to be certain than to be right, I guess.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-27)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHow is calling oneself an atheist a claim to certainty?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIn what way can the lack of knowledge about something be considered \"right\"? (I have a theory, but I'd like to know what you meant)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Theists and atheists less depressed than agnostics?"},{"content":"The November 21, 2007 issue of Time magazine includes a story titled \u0026ldquo;Sunday School for Atheists,\u0026quot; about how the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, California has been offering Sunday school classes for kids for the last three years. The article notes that similar programs are under consideration in Albuquerque, NM, Portland, OR, and Phoenix. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention it, but the Phoenix group considering offering such a program is the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, a group which has meetings for adults, often with quite interesting speakers, every two weeks. (Kat and I are members, but we have a pretty poor attendance record.)\nAlso mentioned in the article are Camp Quest, a summer camp program operating in five states and Ontario, Canada, and the Carl Sagan Academy in Tampa, FL, the nation\u0026rsquo;s first humanist charter school.\nUPDATE: Mark at Protestant Pontifications has written a blog post on this Time magazine article, and I\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this comment:\nWhen you write “But there is danger in thinking one can siphon off certain aspects of community and still achieve the same result - especially when trying to mimic the benefits of religious community,” do you mean to suggest that any religion can have such benefits, or do you mean to restrict it to Christianity (and perhaps Judaism)?\nIt seems to me that other religions clearly have communities with the same social benefits and same self-ascriptions of worship and spiritual value. Yet clearly not all religions are true, which means that either some of the participants are self-deceived or that the benefits do not require the religion to be true. I think the latter is better supported by the evidence.\nSince I happen to think that there is no true religion, I don’t see the problem with what these humanists are trying to do. I’ve recently attended memorial services of deeply religious evangelical Christians, of a liberal universalist Christian, and of an atheist, and they each evoked the same emotions and sense of community and fellowship with the people at the services; in my case, I felt a deeper fellowship and companionship with those at the atheist service since those are like-minded people. The emotions were the same–a combination of grief at the departure yet happiness at the memories of the departed’s life–yet there was no self-deception about seeing the departed again in the future.\nBTW, it is somewhat ironic for a member of such a syncretistic religion as Christianity to criticize an atheist group for “trying to mimic” a religious practice. Virtually every component of the Christian religion was appropriated from other religions, and that’s not even counting holiday celebrations. The most rapidly growing religious sect in the world today, Pentecostalism (from 0 to 400 million members in about a century), is also quite syncretistic, appropriating components of local religions everywhere it spreads.\nThe Christian CADRE blog has a post on the article titled \u0026ldquo;The Cult-like Culture of Atheism, Part II,\u0026quot; which says that \u0026ldquo;If atheists cannot see how that is just another step on the road to finally recognizing themselves as a religion then they really need to think a little bit more about how they act.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve responded with this comment:\nHumanism (which is not just atheism, it has specific positive tenets, and should be distinguished from \u0026ldquo;secular humanism\u0026rdquo;) does recognize itself as a religion, and has for many years. The American Humanist Association is a 501(c)(3) religious organization. It has officiants who perform marriage and memorial services, it has groups that hold regular meetings and social events in most countries of the world. In the Netherlands, 26% of the population consider themselves humanists (vs. 31% Catholic, 13% Dutch Reformed, 7% Calvinist); another 18% are non-religious and non-Humanist.\nBTW, \u0026ldquo;cult\u0026rdquo; is a term that, in my opinion, should be restricted to religious groups that have most or all of a set of features that include being centered around an authoritarian leader, requiring members to restrict contact with non-members, controlling all aspects of the group\u0026rsquo;s lives, etc. Steve Hassan\u0026rsquo;s book Combatting Cult Mind Control has a good list of cult characteristics. Most sects of Christianity are not cults; there could certainly be atheist cults, and Madalyn Murray O\u0026rsquo;Hair\u0026rsquo;s American Atheists group was probably close to one, if not one, while she was alive.\nI disagree with Mr. Ragland [another commenter who said this shows man to be a religious creature] about what this particular evidence shows\u0026ndash;I think it shows that man is a social creature, though I think there are other reasons (put forth in Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s Religion Explained book, for example) to think that man is, indeed, a religious creature.\nMark (2007-11-26):\nThanks for the comment. My response is here and below:Thanks for the comment, though I’m going to avoid the trap you layed of trying to address the truth of differing religions. The salient and animating difference between religious churches and atheist ‘churches’ is, simply put, a belief in God. As I openly noted above, I encourage the strengthening of communities in general and freely acknowledge that the humanist organizations mentioned in the article will achieve *some* of the benefits found in religious churches. However, when it comes to actually teaching morals and “values,” those taught in a secularist setting ultimately ring hollow.As for being a syncretistic religion, I’m not sure how this weakens my argument. The irony I was pointing to is when atheists denounce organized religion and then turn around and make atheism itself into an organized religion. And again, one of the big differences has to do with a belief in God. There’s nothing alarming in various religions appropriating certain practices or liturgy, when relevant. But when a group largely opposed to religion itself, particularly organized religion, starts mimicking religious groups, one can’t help but chuckle.\nLippard (2007-11-26):\nMark: Thanks for the comment.I think that it is fair to criticize any atheist who criticizes an aspect of organized religion and then adopts it for an atheist organization. But I'm not convinced that's occurring here. I think most atheists recognize that there *is* value to the social and community-building aspects of religion.\nPeter (2007-11-26):\nto me, it looks like a whole lot of church people just got even more scared. pretty soon they'll have to be promising miracles to folks just to get them in the door.\nLippard (2007-11-26):\nBTW, Mark, I don't think it was a \"trap,\" it was a genuine dilemma for your position. And keep in mind that there are *many* religions which do not involve a single God. Arguably, the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is not a single God, either. It's only the Bahai who say that all religions worship the same God (and thereby disagrees with all religions).\nKat Lippard (2007-11-26):\nMarkWhy do you think that \"when it comes to actually teaching morals and “values,” those taught in a secularist setting ultimately ring hollow\"?I think my moral values are just as strong, if not stronger, than a religious person because I don't have the 'threat' of eternal damnation or whatever. My moral sense was not imposed upon me, but acquired through reason and thought.I also think it's funny when atheists have 'church' groups. One of the side benefits of being an atheist is sleeping in on Sundays.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/sunday-school-for-atheists.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe November 21, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e magazine includes \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686828,00.html\"\u003ea story titled \u0026ldquo;Sunday School for Atheists,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about how the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, California has been offering Sunday school classes for kids for the last three years.  The article notes that similar programs are under consideration in Albuquerque, NM, Portland, OR, and Phoenix.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention it, but the Phoenix group considering offering such a program is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hsgp.org/\"\u003eHumanist Society of Greater Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, a group which has meetings for adults, often with quite interesting speakers, every two weeks.  (Kat and I are members, but we have a pretty poor attendance record.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso mentioned in the article are \u003ca href=\"http://www.camp-quest.org/\"\u003eCamp Quest\u003c/a\u003e, a summer camp program operating in five states and Ontario, Canada, and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.carlsaganacademy.org/\"\u003eCarl Sagan Academy\u003c/a\u003e in Tampa, FL, the nation\u0026rsquo;s first humanist charter school.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Mark at Protestant Pontifications has \u003ca href=\"http://www.protestantpontifications.com/?p=559\"\u003ewritten a blog post on this \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e magazine article\u003c/a\u003e, and I\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this comment:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sunday School for Atheists"},{"content":"I wish I had seen this before my Channel 3 News interview about a similar painting coming to Phoenix.\nFrom Associated Press, September 19, 2007:\nBLANCO, Texas \u0026ndash; Samuel A. Greene Jr., the founder of a monastery that closed amid scandal over the alleged sexual abuse of novice monks and a fraudulent weeping Virgin Mary painting, has died. He was 63.\nGreene\u0026rsquo;s death was being investigated as a suicide, but officials were waiting for autopsy results before ruling on the cause of death. Greene\u0026rsquo;s body was found Monday morning in his home on the grounds of Christ of the Hills Monastery.\nThe monastery was allied with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia from 1991 to 1999, but the church broke ties with the monastery when allegations surfaced of indecency by Greene with a juvenile novice monk.\nGreene, who founded the monastery in 1981, pleaded guilty in 2000 to indecency and was sentenced to 10 years probation. In 2006, Greene told his probation officer in a secretly taped interview that he had sexual contact with boys over a 30-year period starting in the 1970s.\nGreene also reportedly confirmed that the monastery\u0026rsquo;s weeping painting was fake. Authorities seized the icon, which was said to cry tears of myrrh, a sign of divine intervention. It had drawn thousands of visitors, and their donations, to the area.\nThe interview also prompted authorities to file child sexual assault and organized crime charges against Greene and four other monks in July 2006. Greene maintained his innocence and was released on his own recognizance because of health problems.\nGreene was due Friday in court, where prosecutors planned to seek to have his probation revoked. Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Nelson said she would have asked the judge to sentence him to the maximum 20-year term on each of his nine indecency counts.\nThis obituary omits what Time magazine reported (I don\u0026rsquo;t have the exact issue, but it was cut-and-pasted into the November 20, 2007 issue of Saucer Smear):\nWhen the compound was closed, investigators found eyedroppers and bottles of rosewater used to fake the tears that prompted donations. Last year Greene confessed to the ruse, and his sexual relations with teenage students, to his probation officer.It\u0026rsquo;s interesting how AP omitted that information.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/fake-weeping-virgin-mary-painting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI wish I had seen this before \u003ca href=\"/2007/10/very-brief-tv-appearance.html\"\u003emy Channel 3 News interview about a similar painting coming to Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://obits.eons.com/national/feature/national_other/20893\"\u003eAssociated Press, September 19, 2007\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eBLANCO, Texas \u0026ndash; Samuel A. Greene Jr., the founder of a monastery that closed amid scandal over the alleged sexual abuse of novice monks and a fraudulent weeping Virgin Mary painting, has died. He was 63.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eGreene\u0026rsquo;s death was being investigated as a suicide, but officials were waiting for autopsy results before ruling on the cause of death. Greene\u0026rsquo;s body was found Monday morning in his home on the grounds of Christ of the Hills Monastery.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fake weeping Virgin Mary painting"},{"content":"In 1901, Bible college students at Charles Fox Parham\u0026rsquo;s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas prayed to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. At a New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve service that year, as Parham preached, Agnes Ozman began to speak in tongues, and Pentecostalism was born.\nWilliam J. Seymour, a one-eyed black minister, attended Parham\u0026rsquo;s college in Houston, Texas, though he had to sit in another room across the hall and listen in, due to Texas race laws of the time. Seymour moved to Los Angeles, where he sparked the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.\nToday there are over 400 million Pentecostals in the world, and it is the world\u0026rsquo;s fastest-growing religious sect. The Mormons are lightweights by comparison, having only reached 13 million followers worldwide after nearly twice as long an existence. In Guatemala, Pentecostals have built a 12,000 seat church; in Lagos, one church supposedly has 2 million followers; and South Korea is home to five of the world\u0026rsquo;s ten largest megachurches.\nWhat makes Pentecostalism successful? It\u0026rsquo;s not intellectual argument. Pentecostalism is what The Economist\u0026rsquo;s recent special report on \u0026ldquo;The new wars of religion\u0026rdquo; refers to as a \u0026ldquo;hot\u0026rdquo; religion. It\u0026rsquo;s not particularly concerned about doctrinal details (which is not to say it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have them), but about religious experience and personal interaction and participation. The Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest megachurch in South Korea, has 830,000 members (one in 20 Seoul residents is a member), holds seven Sunday services each of which has 12,000 people in the main auditorium and 20,000 watching on television in chapels in neighboring buildings. While you wait (and you will wait, especially if you want to attend one of the two services led by founder David Cho), you can listen to choirs sing, and sing along with the help of karaoke-style captions on TV screens. Translation is supplied to provide the services in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Malay, and Arabic.\nThe Yoido church, like many U.S. megachurches, works by organizing around many small groups. For Yoido, these are \u0026ldquo;home cells\u0026rdquo; of around a dozen people that meet in people\u0026rsquo;s homes. Yoido has 68,000 female deacons and half as many male deacons, who may make 35 visits a week to parishioners. There\u0026rsquo;s little hierarchy, and an emphasis on evangelizing, sending out missionaries, and producing more and more \u0026ldquo;home cells.\u0026rdquo; And it\u0026rsquo;s a methodology that appears to be winning the religious competition.\nAn earlier Economist story (from 2005, pay content) on the business practices of U.S. megachurches, likewise observed that they function by providing a diverse variety of services to lots of small niches, with groups for hikers, skateboarders, mountain bikers, book readers, and so forth, creating many small communities out of which a larger one is formed.\nThe lesson I take from this for the nonreligious is that a diversity of groups that cooperate with each other on common causes is far more likely to grow and have influence than individual groups that take a hard line on admissions requirements and require conformity to a narrow notion of what it is to be a freethinker or a skeptic, such as an adherence to scientism or atheism. The late Clark Adams of the Internet Infidels and Las Vegas Freethought Society was a strong proponent of cooperation between a broad set of secular groups as a way of strengthening their influence and being able to create organizations like the Secular Coalition for America. He was also a supporter of groups that engaged in social activities rather than intellectual navel-gazing, and promoted his views with humor and popular culture references more than with step-by-step argument.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ve thought about starting a secular, freethought, or skeptical group around some interest of your own that\u0026rsquo;s not currently served by an existing group, go for it. Meetup.com is a great way to get started or to find an existing group\u0026ndash;you can find atheist groups, agnostic groups, deism groups, ex-Christian groups, Discordian groups, humanist groups, secular humanist groups, brights groups, skeptics\u0026rsquo; groups, separation of church and state groups, and many more.\nReed (2007-11-22):\nFascinating stuff, Jim.Promoting social events (like meetup and the more recent Drinking Skeptically) among skeptics and secularists is a great first step.However, social activities will not provide enough substance to keep people engaged in any way approaching the Pentecostal's success. Compare the active vs inactive members of any of those social-oriented meetup groups for an example. It's pathetic. A turnout of 5% of the active members for an event is doing well!Providing events (speakers, e.g.) that go beyond the social have done wonders for Denver Skeptics meetup, vaulting us well ahead of similar groups in metropolitan areas with 5x the population.I'd offer that one even has to go further to go beyond mediocre growth -- i.e., to provide a range of meaningful ways for the average person to contribute. One example would be skepticamp-like events, gatherings where the attendees provide the content.I've added more here.\nLippard (2007-11-23):\nI think your last paragraph is quite right--providing people with meaningful ways to contribute, actively participate, and have a sense of accomplishment is important to the success of any kind of organization.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/rise-of-pentecostalism-and-economist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1901, Bible college students at Charles Fox Parham\u0026rsquo;s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas prayed to be baptized by the Holy Spirit.  At a New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve service that year, as Parham preached, Agnes Ozman began to speak in tongues, and Pentecostalism was born.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWilliam J. Seymour, a one-eyed black minister, attended Parham\u0026rsquo;s college in Houston, Texas, though he had to sit in another room across the hall and listen in, due to Texas race laws of the time.  Seymour moved to Los Angeles, where he sparked the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday there are over 400 million Pentecostals in the world, and it is the world\u0026rsquo;s fastest-growing religious sect.  The Mormons are lightweights by comparison, having only reached 13 million followers worldwide after nearly twice as long an existence.  In Guatemala, Pentecostals have built a 12,000 seat church; in Lagos, one church supposedly has 2 million followers; and South Korea is home to five of the world\u0026rsquo;s ten largest megachurches.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat makes Pentecostalism successful?  It\u0026rsquo;s not intellectual argument.  Pentecostalism is what \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015239\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s recent special report on \u0026ldquo;The new wars of religion\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e refers to as a \u0026ldquo;hot\u0026rdquo; religion.  It\u0026rsquo;s not particularly concerned about doctrinal details (which is not to say it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have them), but about \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/09/pentecostal-rave-party.html\"\u003ereligious experience and personal interaction and participation\u003c/a\u003e.  The Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest megachurch in South Korea, has 830,000 members (one in 20 Seoul residents is a member), holds seven Sunday services each of which has 12,000 people in the main auditorium and 20,000 watching on television in chapels in neighboring buildings.  While you wait (and you will wait, especially if you want to attend one of the two services led by founder David Cho), you can listen to choirs sing, and sing along with the help of karaoke-style captions on TV screens.  Translation is supplied to provide the services in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Malay, and Arabic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Yoido church, like many U.S. megachurches, works by organizing around many small groups.  For Yoido, these are \u0026ldquo;home cells\u0026rdquo; of around a dozen people that meet in people\u0026rsquo;s homes.  Yoido has 68,000 female deacons and half as many male deacons, who may make 35 visits a week to parishioners.  There\u0026rsquo;s little hierarchy, and an emphasis on evangelizing, sending out missionaries, and producing more and more \u0026ldquo;home cells.\u0026rdquo;  And it\u0026rsquo;s a methodology that appears to be winning the religious competition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5323597\"\u003eearlier \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEconomist\u003c/span\u003e story (from 2005, pay content)\u003c/a\u003e on the business practices of U.S. megachurches, likewise observed that they function by providing a diverse variety of services to lots of small niches, with groups for hikers, skateboarders, mountain bikers, book readers, and so forth, creating many small communities out of which a larger one is formed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe lesson I take from this for the nonreligious is that a diversity of groups that cooperate with each other on common causes is far more likely to grow and have influence than individual groups that take a hard line on admissions requirements and require conformity to a narrow notion of what it is to be a freethinker or a skeptic, such as an adherence to scientism or atheism.  The \u003ca href=\"/2007/05/clark-adams-rip.html\"\u003elate Clark Adams\u003c/a\u003e of the Internet Infidels and Las Vegas Freethought Society was a strong proponent of cooperation between a broad set of secular groups as a way of strengthening their influence and being able to create organizations like the \u003ca href=\"http://www.secular.org/\"\u003eSecular Coalition for America\u003c/a\u003e.  He was also a supporter of groups that engaged in social activities rather than intellectual navel-gazing, and promoted his views with humor and popular culture references more than with step-by-step argument.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;ve thought about starting a secular, freethought, or skeptical group around some interest of your own that\u0026rsquo;s not currently served by an existing group, go for it.  Meetup.com is a great way to get started or to find an existing group\u0026ndash;you can find \u003ca href=\"http://atheists.meetup.com/\"\u003eatheist groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://agnostic.meetup.com/\"\u003eagnostic groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://deism.meetup.com/\"\u003edeism groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://exchristian.meetup.com/\"\u003eex-Christian groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://discordians.meetup.com/\"\u003eDiscordian groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://humanism.meetup.com/\"\u003ehumanist groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://secularhumanism.meetup.com/\"\u003esecular humanist groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://brights.meetup.com/\"\u003ebrights groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://skeptics.meetup.com/\"\u003eskeptics\u0026rsquo; groups\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://churchandstate.meetup.com/\"\u003eseparation of church and state groups\u003c/a\u003e, and many more.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Rise of Pentecostalism and the Economist Religion Wars issue"},{"content":"The Telegraph reports on a \u0026ldquo;surfer dude\u0026rdquo; (who happens to have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. though he spends his time surfing and snowboarding) who has come up with a unified theory of everything that is getting some serious attention from other physicists.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-11-24):\nTurns out the guy is good friends with several people I work with. He's one of our system's beta testers. At the risk of sounding like a total doofus... I sat next to him at dinner a few months ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/surfer-dude-comes-up-with-unified.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Telegraph reports on a \u0026ldquo;surfer dude\u0026rdquo; (who happens to have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. though he spends his time surfing and snowboarding) \u003ca href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003ewho has come up with a unified theory of everything that is getting some serious attention from other physicists\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/028341.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eTurns out the guy is good friends with several people I work with. He's one of \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.qtask.com\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eour system's\u003c/A\u003e beta testers. At the risk of sounding like a total doofus... I sat next to him at dinner a few months ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Surfer dude\" comes up with unified theory"},{"content":"As this story from the Boulder Weekly shows. (This link is to a copy since the Boulder Weekly\u0026rsquo;s website has a database issue at the moment.)\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/prohibition-creates-profitable-black.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=24056994\"\u003ethis story from the Boulder Weekly shows\u003c/a\u003e.  (This link is to a copy since the Boulder Weekly\u0026rsquo;s website has a database issue at the moment.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/028339.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prohibition creates profitable black markets"},{"content":"When law professor (and President of the Evangelical Theological Society) Francis Beckwith converted from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism earlier this year, he made somewhat of a public splash. When he subsequently resigned as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in July, neither DI nor Beckwith made any public comment. But law professor Peter Irons writes at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog:\nBeckwith, who is a recognized scholar on church-state issues, has made no public statement on the reasons for his resignation (and his private comments on those reasons, while revealing, are not for publication, at least now). After Beckwith resigned, the DI quietly removed his bio from its website, and he just disappeared into the ether.Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog post is reporting on the addition of a new Discovery Institute Fellow, movie reviewer and culture critic Michael Medved, an intellectual lightweight who believes in Sasquatch. (The link here also includes criticism of Medved for an article about American slavery, but I actually think Medved\u0026rsquo;s article is better than the critique of it.)\nAs Irons notes in his comment, \u0026ldquo;In replacing Beckwith with Medved, the DI has traded intellectual substance for Hollywood glitz.\u0026quot;\nAnd Medved isn\u0026rsquo;t even a good movie reviewer.\nHistorical Comments Leo (2007-11-22):\nMedved never ceases to disappoint. It is a wonder that he is taken seriously in evangelical circles. I suppose that the evangelical community thinks that \"a name\" gives legitimacy - sadly tis not true...There are atleast two Medveds or two Bartons for every Mark Noll or George Marsden. They gotta look beyond the surface.\nLeo (2007-11-29):\nDid you know that the December issue of Scientific American contains a sympathetic discussion on a scientist who hypothesizes that Sasquatch exists? Maybe Medved is not totally nuts...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/discovery-institute-steals-content-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen law professor (and President of the Evangelical Theological Society) \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_J._Beckwith\"\u003eFrancis Beckwith\u003c/a\u003e converted from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism earlier this year, \u003ca href=\"http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_return_to_th.html\"\u003ehe made somewhat of a public splash\u003c/a\u003e.  When he subsequently resigned as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in July, neither DI nor Beckwith made any public comment.  But law professor Peter Irons \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/meet_the_new_di_fellow.php#comment-646733\"\u003ewrites at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBeckwith, who is a recognized scholar on church-state issues, has made no public statement on the reasons for his resignation (and his private comments on those reasons, while revealing, are not for publication, at least now). After Beckwith resigned, the DI quietly removed his bio from its website, and he just disappeared into the ether.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog post \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/meet_the_new_di_fellow.php\"\u003eis reporting on the addition of a new Discovery Institute Fellow, movie reviewer and culture critic Michael Medved\u003c/a\u003e, an intellectual lightweight who \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/11/michael_medved_evolution_scholar.php\"\u003ebelieves in Sasquatch\u003c/a\u003e.  (The link here also includes criticism of Medved for an article about American slavery, but I actually think Medved\u0026rsquo;s article is better than the critique of it.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Irons notes in his comment, \u0026ldquo;In replacing Beckwith with Medved, the DI has traded intellectual substance for Hollywood glitz.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd Medved isn\u0026rsquo;t even a good movie reviewer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute loses, gains a Fellow"},{"content":"ERV has found that William Dembski (and apparently other DI fellows) have misappropriated a computer animated video of the cell from Harvard and XVIVO, replaced the narration with their own, and presented it as though it\u0026rsquo;s their own work without giving credit to the original source.\nHer blog shows the original video and a presentation of the video at a lecture by William Dembski.\nThe Discovery Institute really is shameless.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/discovery-institute-steals-content-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eERV has found that William Dembski (and apparently other DI fellows) have misappropriated a computer animated video of the cell from Harvard and XVIVO, replaced the narration with their own, and presented it as though it\u0026rsquo;s their own work without giving credit to the original source.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHer blog shows \u003ca href=\"http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/11/di-fellows-expelled-for-plagiarism.html\"\u003ethe original video and a presentation of the video at a lecture by William Dembski\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Discovery Institute really is shameless.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/creationist_crooks_pilfer_harv.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute steals content and presents it as their own"},{"content":"Some nice high-definition video images have been taken by the Japanese lunar orbiter \u0026ldquo;Kaguya,\u0026quot; showing the earth setting behind the moon\u0026rsquo;s surface.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/earth-setting-as-seen-from-lunar-orbit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome \u003ca href=\"http://space.jaxa.jp/movie/20071113_kaguya_movie02_e.html\"\u003enice high-definition video images have been taken by the Japanese lunar orbiter \u0026ldquo;Kaguya,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e showing the earth setting behind the moon\u0026rsquo;s surface.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Earth setting as seen from lunar orbit"},{"content":"John Allen Paulos, the mathematician and author of such excellent books as Innumeracy, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (all three of which I recommend), has a new book coming out on January 3, 2008 titled Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don\u0026rsquo;t Add Up. Here\u0026rsquo;s the review from Publishers Weekly:\nFew of the recent books on atheism have been worth reading just for wit and style, but this is one of them: Paulos is truly funny. Despite the title, the Temple University math professor doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss mathematics much, which will be a relief to any numerically challenged readers who felt intimidated by his previous book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. In this short primer (\u0026ldquo;just the gist with an occasional jest\u0026rdquo;) Paulos tackles 12 of the most common arguments for God, including the argument from design, the idea that a \u0026ldquo;moral universality\u0026rdquo; points to a creator God, the notion of first causes and the argument from coincidence, among others. Along the way, he intersperses irreverent and entertaining little chapterlets that contain his musings on various subjects, including a hilarious imagined IM exchange with God that slyly parodies Neale Donald Walsch\u0026rsquo;s Conversations with God. \u0026ldquo;Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion?\u0026rdquo; Paulos asks, clearly bemoaning the dearth of humor. This little book goes a long way toward correcting the problem, and provides both atheists and religious apologists some digestible food for thought along the way. (Jan. 3) I hope the IM exchange described is as witty and funny as Raymond Smullyan\u0026rsquo;s dialogue with God, \u0026ldquo;Is God a Taoist?\u0026quot; (also found in his excellent book The Tao is Silent and in Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter\u0026rsquo;s anthology, The Mind\u0026rsquo;s I).\nUPDATE (January 14, 2008): Jim Holt reviews Paulos\u0026rsquo; book for the New York Times.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2007-11-16):\nWow, never saw this coming. Seems this fad for atheists writings has inspired even John Paulos to write one. I can't wait to get a copy.BTW, I have read all three Paulos books you listed, and I heartily recommend them all too. :)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/john-allen-paulos-comes-out-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Allen Paulos, the mathematician and author of such excellent books as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInnumeracy\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Mathematician Plays the Stock Market\u003c/span\u003e, and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Mathematician Reads the Newspaper\u003c/span\u003e (all three of which I recommend), has a new book coming out on January 3, 2008 titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIrreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don\u0026rsquo;t Add Up\u003c/span\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6501066.html?nid=2287#review4\"\u003ethe review from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFew of the recent books on atheism have been worth reading just for wit and style, but this is one of them: Paulos is truly funny. Despite the title, the Temple University math professor doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss mathematics much, which will be a relief to any numerically challenged readers who felt intimidated by his previous book \u003cem\u003eInnumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences\u003c/em\u003e. In this short primer (\u0026ldquo;just the gist with an occasional jest\u0026rdquo;) Paulos tackles 12 of the most common arguments for God, including the argument from design, the idea that a \u0026ldquo;moral universality\u0026rdquo; points to a creator God, the notion of first causes and the argument from coincidence, among others. Along the way, he intersperses irreverent and entertaining little chapterlets that contain his musings on various subjects, including a hilarious imagined IM exchange with God that slyly parodies Neale Donald Walsch\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eConversations with God\u003c/em\u003e. \u0026ldquo;Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion?\u0026rdquo; Paulos asks, clearly bemoaning the dearth of humor. This little book goes a long way toward correcting the problem, and provides both atheists and religious apologists some digestible food for thought along the way. (Jan. 3) \u003c/blockquote\u003eI hope the IM exchange described is as witty and funny as Raymond Smullyan\u0026rsquo;s dialogue with God, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is God a Taoist?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (also found in his excellent book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Tao is Silent\u003c/span\u003e and in Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter\u0026rsquo;s anthology, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Mind\u0026rsquo;s I\u003c/span\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 14, 2008): Jim Holt \u003ca href=\"http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1\u0026amp;emc=tnt\u0026amp;tntget=2008/01/13/books/review/Holt-t.html\u0026amp;tntemail1=y\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ereviews Paulos\u0026rsquo; book for the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Allen Paulos comes out with an atheism book"},{"content":"The unclassified, for official use only, operations manual for U.S. soldiers stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been leaked to the Internet on the Wikileaks.org website, which is being crushed by traffic at the moment.\nThe manual allegedly contradicts U.S. military claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been denied access to some parts of the facility at Guantanamo.\nThe manual unsurprisingly prohibits soldiers from subjecting prisoners to \u0026ldquo;abuse, or any form of corporal punishment,\u0026rdquo; since specific interrogation procedures are no doubt covered in separate classified documents. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s a good thing to see in writing.\nA Reuters story at Yahoo has more specifics, and I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll see mirrored copies of the document appearing elsewhere to reduce the load on Wikileaks.org.\nHistorical Comments nolandda (2007-11-15):\nHere you go:http://nolandda.org/sekrit/gitmo-sop.pdf\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/guantanamo-bay-operations-manual-leaked.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe unclassified, for official use only, operations manual for U.S. soldiers stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been leaked to the Internet on the Wikileaks.org website, which is being crushed by traffic at the moment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe manual allegedly contradicts U.S. military claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been denied access to some parts of the facility at Guantanamo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe manual unsurprisingly prohibits soldiers from subjecting prisoners to \u0026ldquo;abuse, or any form of corporal punishment,\u0026rdquo; since specific interrogation procedures are no doubt covered in separate classified documents.  Still, it\u0026rsquo;s a good thing to see in writing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071114/wr_nm/guantanamo_manual_dc_2\"\u003eReuters story at Yahoo\u003c/a\u003e has more specifics, and I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll see mirrored copies of the document appearing elsewhere to reduce the load on Wikileaks.org.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guantanamo Bay operations manual leaked to Internet"},{"content":"Creation Ministries International has put up a web page explaining the breakdown in settlement talks with Answers in Genesis:\nUnfortunately, the actions of AiG-US since the ‘Hawaii handshake settlement’ have meant that, barring a near-miraculous change of heart on their part, the situation appears to have broken down once more. The terms of settlement were, in the understanding of all parties present, effectively finalized and agreed upon in Hawaii in mid-August (see two ‘stop press’ announcements below) by duly authorized and empowered representatives of the ministries—even though Ken Ham was not present, although we had been led to believe that he would be. The only thing left was to discuss the details of how to commit the handshake agreement to writing. Both sides agreed to reconvene in Hawaii 60 days later (at the latest), if absolutely necessary, if we failed to finish the process of committing it to writing.\nThe page goes on to explain that this has not happened, because AiG waited until after the 60 days was over to respond to CMI\u0026rsquo;s written proposal based on the verbal agreement, and AiG\u0026rsquo;s response was to invent an entirely new agreement which omitted conditions that had been verbally agreed to and inserted new conditions which had not been agreed to.\nCMI proposed that they move forward by meeting again in person in a neutral country (such as Singapore or New Zealand) with an independent Christian arbitrator and hammering out an agreement in writing. AiG\u0026rsquo;s lawyers responded with a rejection.\nAt the same time, John Mackay\u0026rsquo;s mailing list in Australia has been ratcheting up the assault on the alleged \u0026ldquo;spiritual problems\u0026rdquo; of CMI, which CMI has responded to by sending out this email:\nFrom: CMI INFObytes Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 7:53 AM Subject: Serious slander issue against CMI Serious slander issue against CMI A short time ago, we were in receipt of a very vicious document circulating from a professing Christian ministry (which not many are aware is operated by an unrepentant church excommunicant) that made astonishing allegations against CMI-Australia and in particular its Managing Director, Dr Carl Wieland. We did not react at the time, because the vendetta has been in operation for some 20 years now, and we assumed that surely people would have sufficient discernment to contact us to check the veracity of these allegations. However, we are concerned that some might think there might be some substance to the allegations, without understanding that they are clearly designed to undermine the confidence of the Christian public, and to thus attack CMI\u0026rsquo;s ability to do outreach. We have prepared a written response which makes it plain that these are falsehoods, documentable as such by eyewitness testimony. In it we have challenged the perpetrators to \u0026lsquo;front up\u0026rsquo; and make these claims openly in a proper Christian forum, instead of by slanderous gossip techniques. If you know of any person who has been in receipt of this particular \u0026lsquo;spiritual-sounding\u0026rsquo; slander, or if your church leaders have heard these unfortunate allegations, please encourage them to email us at [mail at creation.NOSPAMinfo \u0026ndash; edited to prevent spam harvesting -jjl] and request our response to the article in question. If after reading that response, they have any further questions, we will be pleased to answer them. It is a real pity that we cannot just continue our ministry in peace and safety without such distractions. If you are unaware of any such contemplated move against CMI in your circles, please just pray for this situation in general terms. Your ongoing support of the outreach is much appreciated. Yours in Christ, Gary Bates Head of Ministry, CMI-AustraliaIt will be interesting to see if AiG makes any public comment.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-11-16):\nI wonder if those \"slanderous\" allegations are coming from none other than Ham and AiG itself..Hmm.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/creation-ministries-explains-settlement.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreation Ministries International has put up \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/?page=breakdown\"\u003ea web page explaining the breakdown in settlement talks with Answers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eUnfortunately, the actions of AiG-US since the ‘Hawaii handshake settlement’     have meant that, barring a near-miraculous change of heart on their part, the situation     appears to have broken down once more.  \u003cp\u003e     The terms of settlement were, in the understanding of all parties present, effectively     finalized and agreed upon in Hawaii in mid-August (see two ‘stop press’     announcements below) by duly authorized and empowered representatives of the ministries—even     though Ken Ham was not present, although we had been led to believe that he would     be. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creation Ministries explains settlement breakdown"},{"content":"The full source code to the last official release of the Multics operating system has been released to the general public (though full source was always made available to all customers, except for specific \u0026ldquo;unbundled\u0026rdquo; applications). Multics, the predecessor system to Unix (and in a number of ways still its superior), was a general purpose commercial operating system best known for its security.\nThat release, Multics MR12.5 (MR = \u0026ldquo;Multics Release\u0026rdquo;), was released to customers in November 1992. The last Multics system was shut down in 2000.\nThe software can be downloaded from a website at MIT, though it requires specialized hardware to run on, so don\u0026rsquo;t expect to be able to run it. My name appears a few times throughout the software, as I worked as a Multics software developer from 1983 to 1988. The MIT site incorrectly states that Multics development was ended by Bull in 1985\u0026ndash;that may have been the time when Bull decided to pull the plug, but there was still development (though primarily bug fixing) going on in 1988 when I left.\nOne of the pieces I wrote was a rewrite of the interactive message facility, in some ways a predecessor of instant messaging (except that it operated on a single timesharing host rather than over a network between hosts).\nMost of the software is in the \u0026ldquo;ldd\u0026rdquo; hierarchy (for library directory directory, the directory of directories of libraries). The software is in Multics \u0026ldquo;archive\u0026rdquo; format which is similar to Unix tar files. The message facility software is in /ldd/sss/source/bound_msg_facility_.s.archive.\nKudos to Group Bull, the copyright holder of Multics, for making the software open source. Bull purchased Multics as part of its acquisition of Honeywell\u0026rsquo;s Large Computer Products Division in the mid-eighties.\nFrank (2007-11-14):\nYou worked on an OS!?!? Too cool.\nLippard (2007-11-14):\nYep. I have many fond memories from that job. Multics was an incredibly elegant system built by brilliant people, and the Multics organization was a wonderful work environment.When Honeywell and Bull decided to get out of the Multics business, I ended up changing my undergraduate major to philosophy and completely changing my planned career path.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/multics-source-code-released.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe full source code to the last official release of the Multics operating system \u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org/articles/07/11/13/1710224.shtml\"\u003ehas been released to the general public\u003c/a\u003e (though full source was always made available to all customers, except for specific \u0026ldquo;unbundled\u0026rdquo; applications).  Multics, the predecessor system to Unix (and in a number of ways still its superior), was a general purpose commercial operating system best known for its security.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat release, Multics MR12.5 (MR = \u0026ldquo;Multics Release\u0026rdquo;), was released to customers in November 1992.  The last Multics system was shut down in 2000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe software can be downloaded from \u003ca href=\"http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/\"\u003ea website at MIT\u003c/a\u003e, though it requires specialized hardware to run on, so don\u0026rsquo;t expect to be able to run it.  My name appears a few times throughout the software, as I worked as a Multics software developer from 1983 to 1988.  The MIT site incorrectly states that Multics development was ended by Bull in 1985\u0026ndash;that may have been the time when Bull decided to pull the plug, but there was still development (though primarily bug fixing) going on in 1988 when I left.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of the pieces I wrote was a rewrite of the interactive message facility, in some ways a predecessor of instant messaging (except that it operated on a single timesharing host rather than over a network between hosts).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMost of the software is in the \u0026ldquo;ldd\u0026rdquo; hierarchy (for library directory directory, the directory of directories of libraries).  The software is in Multics \u0026ldquo;archive\u0026rdquo; format which is similar to Unix tar files.  The message facility software is in /ldd/sss/source/bound_msg_facility_.s.archive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKudos to Group Bull, the copyright holder of Multics, for making the software open source.  Bull purchased Multics as part of its acquisition of Honeywell\u0026rsquo;s Large Computer Products Division in the mid-eighties.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Multics source code released"},{"content":"After Answers in Genesis met with Creation Ministries International in Hawaii to hammer out their differences verbally in mid-August, CMI issued a statement indicating that they had agreed to convert their verbal agreement into a written one over the next 60 days. The time has come and gone, and apparently no written agreement has been reached.\nCMI\u0026rsquo;s web pages about their lawsuit are back online.\nFor more information about the dispute, see the \u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis schism\u0026rdquo; label on this blog or the excellent summary at Duae Quartunciae.\nUPDATE (November 16, 2007): I\u0026rsquo;ve posted a more detailed account of the settlement breakdown.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-11-13):\nI knew that's not going to last.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/aigcmi-settlement-seems-to-have-fallen.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter Answers in Genesis met with Creation Ministries International in Hawaii to hammer out their differences verbally in mid-August, CMI issued \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/aigcmi-reach-verbal-settlement.html\"\u003ea statement\u003c/a\u003e indicating that they had agreed to convert their verbal agreement into a written one over the next 60 days.  The time has come and gone, and apparently no written agreement has been reached.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/?page=lawsuit_justification\"\u003eweb pages about their lawsuit are back online\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more information about the dispute, see the \u003ca href=\"https://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Answers%20in%20Genesis%20schism\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis schism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e label on this blog or \u003ca href=\"http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-lawsuit.html\"\u003ethe excellent summary at Duae Quartunciae\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 16, 2007): I\u0026rsquo;ve posted \u003ca href=\"/2007/11/creation-ministries-explains-settlement.html\"\u003ea more detailed account of the settlement breakdown\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AiG/CMI settlement seems to have fallen apart"},{"content":"The October 20, 2007 issue of The Economist has an interesting article about a study by McKinsey \u0026amp; Co. which looks for explanations of the differences in standards and performance of primary education systems between OECD nations, based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results.\nThe top performing countries are countries which do the three things the studies recommend: hire the best teachers, get them to do their best, and intervene when students fall behind. In South Korea, primary schools recruit teachers from the top 5% of college graduates, Singapore from the top 30%. Finland requires primary school teachers to have a master\u0026rsquo;s degree. Yet they don\u0026rsquo;t offer as much money as possible to attract the best, nor try to obtain as large a pool of teachers to choose from as possible\u0026ndash;countries with the highest teacher salaries, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland, are not among those with the best-performing schools.\nSingapore and Finland both provide significant teacher training and encourage teachers to share information and lesson plans. In Korea, secondary school teachers have lower status than primary school teachers: \u0026ldquo;Its primary school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. \u0026hellip; In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria.\u0026quot;\nThe McKinsey study offers an explanation for why there\u0026rsquo;s no correlation between spending or class size and student performance. Increasing spending doesn\u0026rsquo;t guarantee that you get the best teachers, train them well, or intervene appropriately for students who fall behind. Reducing class size means a need for more teachers, which all else being equal means lower salaries and lower status, when the apparent way to succeed is to be more selective about who is teaching, not less.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/how-to-improve-education.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe October 20, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9989914\"\u003ean interesting article about a study by McKinsey \u0026amp; Co.\u003c/a\u003e which looks for explanations of the differences in standards and performance of primary education systems between OECD nations, based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe top performing countries are countries which do the three things the studies recommend:  hire the best teachers, get them to do their best, and intervene when students fall behind.  In South Korea, primary schools recruit teachers from the top 5% of college graduates, Singapore from the top 30%.  Finland requires primary school teachers to have a master\u0026rsquo;s degree.  Yet they don\u0026rsquo;t offer as much money as possible to attract the best, nor try to obtain as large a pool of teachers to choose from as possible\u0026ndash;countries with the highest teacher salaries, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland, are not among those with the best-performing schools.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSingapore and Finland both provide significant teacher training and encourage teachers to share information and lesson plans.  In Korea, secondary school teachers have lower status than primary school teachers:  \u0026ldquo;Its primary school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. \u0026hellip; In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe McKinsey study offers an explanation for why there\u0026rsquo;s no correlation between spending or class size and student performance.  Increasing spending doesn\u0026rsquo;t guarantee that you get the best teachers, train them well, or intervene appropriately for students who fall behind.  Reducing class size means a need for more teachers, which all else being equal means lower salaries and lower status, when the apparent way to succeed is to be more selective about who is teaching, not less.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to improve education"},{"content":"From January through the end of October, there were 7,139 foreclosures in the metropolitan Phoenix area, compared to 1,072 foreclosures during the same period last year. It\u0026rsquo;s expected to hit 10,000 by the end of the year, compared to fewer than 2,000 last year.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/phoenix-area-foreclosures-up-566.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom January through the end of October, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/homevalues/articles/1110foreclosures1110.html\"\u003ethere were 7,139 foreclosures in the metropolitan Phoenix area\u003c/a\u003e, compared to 1,072 foreclosures during the same period last year.  It\u0026rsquo;s expected to hit 10,000 by the end of the year, compared to fewer than 2,000 last year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix-area foreclosures up 566 percent"},{"content":"\nIf you advocate torture and car bombs, how can you have any moral justification for saying that those who use such tactics against us are wrong or evil?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/fox-news-anchor-calls-for-us-to-support.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/mH3BTaWrQ3I\u0026amp;rel=1\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/mH3BTaWrQ3I\u0026amp;rel=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you advocate torture and car bombs, how can you have any moral justification for saying that those who use such tactics against us are wrong or evil?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox News Anchor calls for U.S. to support terrorism in Iran"},{"content":"The Parents Television Council, the organization that is responsible for generating over 99.8% of all indecency complaints to the FCC, has further demonstrated its own complete pointlessness by putting out a website that assembles a collection of the most indecent clips from broadcast television, with no parental controls of any kind on the page. Each clip is categorized with labels like \u0026ldquo;sex,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;violence,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;foul language.\u0026quot;\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s a kid more likely to come across? A five-second bit in one of thousands of television shows, or a huge collection of the worst of the worst all in one place on the Internet?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s high time for broadcast television indecency rules to be dropped.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/parents-television-council-demonstrates.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Parents Television Council, the organization that is \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20041207-4442.html\"\u003eresponsible for generating over 99.8% of all indecency complaints to the FCC\u003c/a\u003e, has further demonstrated its own complete pointlessness by putting out a website that assembles \u003ca href=\"http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/clips/main.asp\"\u003ea collection of the most indecent clips from broadcast television\u003c/a\u003e, with no parental controls of any kind on the page.  Each clip is categorized with labels like \u0026ldquo;sex,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;violence,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;foul language.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s a kid more likely to come across?  A five-second bit in one of thousands of television shows, or a huge collection of the worst of the worst all in one place on the Internet?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s high time for \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/fcc-chairman-kevin-martin-responds-to.html\"\u003ebroadcast television indecency rules to be dropped\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/019140.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Parents Television Council demonstrates their own pointlessness"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;that they\u0026rsquo;re now \u0026ldquo;bottoming out\u0026rdquo; the boats on the \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a Small World\u0026rdquo; ride at Disneyland, for the first time in its 41-year history. Disneyland is now redesigning the ride, and preventing overweight patrons from bringing the ride to a halt is part of the plan.\nHistorical Comments AIGBusted (2007-11-09):\nHi Jim!Answers in Genesis is now exploiting a Finnish school shooting because the Killer was a \"Social Darwinist\". I think we need to make people aware of what they are doing, and show them for what they are. I have written an article on it here:http://aigbusted.blogspot.comSincerely,Ryan\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/americans-are-so-fat.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;that \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1108disneyland-smallworld1108-ON.html\"\u003ethey\u0026rsquo;re now \u0026ldquo;bottoming out\u0026rdquo; the boats on the \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a Small World\u0026rdquo; ride at Disneyland, for the first time in its 41-year history\u003c/a\u003e.  Disneyland is now redesigning the ride, and preventing overweight patrons from bringing the ride to a halt is part of the plan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAIGBusted\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHi Jim!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnswers in Genesis is now exploiting a Finnish school shooting because the Killer was a \"Social Darwinist\". I think we need to make people aware of what they are doing, and show them for what they are. I have written an article on it here:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://aigbusted.blogspot.com\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eSincerely,\u003cBR/\u003eRyan\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Americans are so fat..."},{"content":"Tom Ptacek at Matasano Chargen has a rundown on the new security features in Mac OS X Leopard, which are still not quite up to snuff with what\u0026rsquo;s in Windows Vista or OpenBSD.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a followup with more details.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/macintosh-security-lags-behind-windows.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom Ptacek at Matasano Chargen has \u003ca href=\"http://www.matasano.com/log/981/a-roundup-of-leopard-security-features/\"\u003ea rundown on the new security features in Mac OS X Leopard\u003c/a\u003e, which are still not quite up to snuff with what\u0026rsquo;s in Windows Vista or OpenBSD.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.matasano.com/log/986/what-weve-since-learned-about-leopard-security-features/\"\u003ea followup with more details\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Macintosh security lags behind Windows and BSD"},{"content":"Declan McCullagh live-blogged the U.S. House of Representatives hearing on \u0026ldquo;Yahoo Inc.\u0026rsquo;s Provision of False Information to Congress,\u0026quot; which was about an incident in which Yahoo responded to a subpoena from the Chinese government for the identity of a subscriber who turned out to be a Chinese reporter, who was convicted of leaking \u0026ldquo;state secrets.\u0026quot;\nAnybody note anything ironic or hypocritical in these excerpts?\n10:20 a.m. ET:\nApparently, the Beijing State Security Bureau provided a document to Yahoo\u0026ndash;similar to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s national security letters\u0026ndash;to Yahoo China on April 24, 2004. It invoked the term \u0026ldquo;state secrets\u0026rdquo; when demanding information about Shi Tao. Callahan never saw the document, which was written in Chinese, before testifying last year. Lantos says Callahan should have demanded a translation before his testimony, and Yahoo should have known that any request invoking state secrets is suspect because \u0026ldquo;state secrets is a trick phrase used to fabricate phony but devastating (charges against an) innocent person who shares our values in an open and free society.\u0026quot;\n10:30 a.m. ET\nNow the two Yahoo execs are being asked to apologize to Shi Tao\u0026rsquo;s mother, who is sitting in a front row of the hearing room. Lantos: \u0026ldquo;I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars thanks to Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s actions.\u0026rdquo; I wonder if Lantos and other Patriot Act supporters will apologize to Americans like Brandon Mayfield (falsely jailed under the Patriot Act) or Sami al-Hussayen (a Webmaster who provided hyperlinks to Muslim sites and was prosecuted under the Patriot Act).\n10:45 a.m. ET\nRep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Affairs panel last year, is now speaking. He\u0026rsquo;s saying that \u0026ldquo;Yahoo knew the police requests had to do with \u0026lsquo;state secrets.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; That may not be as descriptive as he (and the other panelists) seem to think. It seems to me that it\u0026rsquo;s a catchall term that\u0026rsquo;s probably invoked regularly by China\u0026rsquo;s security apparatchiks. It\u0026rsquo;s not like the police requests said \u0026ldquo;give us this information so we can put an innocent journalist in jail.\u0026quot;\n12:20 p.m. ET\nNow it\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican: \u0026ldquo;Were any of them fired?\u0026rdquo; He\u0026rsquo;s referring to Yahoo employees. Rohrabacher again: \u0026ldquo;Are you going to comply with requests from authoritarian governments in the future?\u0026rdquo; Callahan replies: \u0026ldquo;We are looking at ways to operationally and legally structure the entity\u0026hellip; so we would not have to do that.\u0026quot;\n12:52 p.m. ET\nLantos again, to Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s Callahan, excerpted: \u0026ldquo;Morally you are pygmies\u0026hellip; An appallingly disappointing performance. I think we cannot begin to tell you how disappointing Mr. Yang\u0026rsquo;s and your performance was\u0026hellip; attempt to obfuscate and divert\u0026hellip; outrageous behavior.\u0026quot;Why don\u0026rsquo;t we see some of this moral outrage from Congress directed at the executive branch of the United States, at a time when 64% of the country disapproves and 50% of the country strongly disapproves of the president\u0026rsquo;s performance (beating Nixon\u0026rsquo;s worst performance)?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/congress-grills-yahoo-over-chinese.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDeclan McCullagh \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9811598-38.html?part=rss\u0026amp;tag=feed\u0026amp;subj=TheIconoclast\"\u003elive-blogged the U.S. House of Representatives hearing on \u0026ldquo;Yahoo Inc.\u0026rsquo;s Provision of False Information to Congress,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which was about an incident in which Yahoo responded to a subpoena from the Chinese government for the identity of a subscriber who turned out to be a Chinese reporter, who was convicted of leaking \u0026ldquo;state secrets.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnybody note anything ironic or hypocritical in these excerpts?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e10:20 a.m. ET:\u003cbr /\u003eApparently, the Beijing State Security Bureau provided a document to Yahoo\u0026ndash;similar to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca title=\"Judge deals blow to Patriot Act -- Thursday, Sep 6, 2007\" context=\"com.caucho.jsp.PageContextImpl@6366ce5f\" href=\"http://www.news.com/Judge-deals-blow-to-Patriot-Act/2100-1028_3-6206570.html\"\u003enational security letters\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;to Yahoo China on April 24, 2004. It invoked the term \u0026ldquo;state secrets\u0026rdquo; when demanding information about Shi Tao. Callahan never saw the document, which was written in Chinese, before testifying last year. Lantos says Callahan should have demanded a translation before his testimony, and Yahoo should have known that any request invoking state secrets is suspect because \u0026ldquo;state secrets is a trick phrase used to fabricate phony but devastating (charges against an) innocent person who shares our values in an open and free society.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10:30 a.m. ET\u003cbr /\u003eNow the two Yahoo execs are being asked to apologize to Shi Tao\u0026rsquo;s mother, who is sitting in a front row of the hearing room. Lantos: \u0026ldquo;I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars thanks to Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s actions.\u0026rdquo; I wonder if Lantos and other Patriot Act supporters will apologize to Americans like Brandon Mayfield (falsely jailed under the Patriot Act) or Sami al-Hussayen (a Webmaster who provided hyperlinks to Muslim sites and was prosecuted under the Patriot Act).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10:45 a.m. ET\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Affairs panel last year, is now speaking. He\u0026rsquo;s saying that \u0026ldquo;Yahoo knew the police requests had to do with \u0026lsquo;state secrets.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; That may not be as descriptive as he (and the other panelists) seem to think. It seems to me that it\u0026rsquo;s a catchall term that\u0026rsquo;s probably invoked regularly by China\u0026rsquo;s security apparatchiks. It\u0026rsquo;s not like the police requests said \u0026ldquo;give us this information so we can put an innocent journalist in jail.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e12:20 p.m. ET\u003cbr /\u003eNow it\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican: \u0026ldquo;Were any of them fired?\u0026rdquo; He\u0026rsquo;s referring to Yahoo employees. Rohrabacher again: \u0026ldquo;Are you going to comply with requests from authoritarian governments in the future?\u0026rdquo; Callahan replies: \u0026ldquo;We are looking at ways to operationally and legally structure the entity\u0026hellip; so we would not have to do that.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e12:52 p.m. ET\u003cbr /\u003eLantos again, to Yahoo\u0026rsquo;s Callahan, excerpted: \u0026ldquo;Morally you are pygmies\u0026hellip; An appallingly disappointing performance. I think we cannot begin to tell you how disappointing Mr. Yang\u0026rsquo;s and your performance was\u0026hellip; attempt to obfuscate and divert\u0026hellip; outrageous behavior.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhy don\u0026rsquo;t we see some of this moral outrage from Congress directed at the executive branch of the United States, at a time when \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/06/bush-beats-nixons-disapproval-ratings/\"\u003e64% of the country disapproves and 50% of the country strongly disapproves of the president\u0026rsquo;s performance\u003c/a\u003e (beating Nixon\u0026rsquo;s worst performance)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congress grills Yahoo over Chinese subpoenas"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars observes that \u0026ldquo;the US has not only always considered waterboarding to be torture, but has aggressively prosecuted other nation\u0026rsquo;s for war crimes for using that technique on American POWs,\u0026rdquo; quoting Judge Evan Wallach:\nAfter World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: \u0026ldquo;I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure.\u0026rdquo; He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. \u0026ldquo;Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning,\u0026rdquo; he replied, \u0026ldquo;just gasping between life and death.\u0026quot;\nNielsen\u0026rsquo;s experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan\u0026rsquo;s military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding\u0026hellip;.\nAs a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the \u0026ldquo;water cure\u0026rdquo; to question Filipino guerrillas.\nMore recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that \u0026ldquo;the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee\u0026rsquo;s mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation.\u0026quot;\nIn 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners\u0026rsquo; civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to \u0026ldquo;subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning.\u0026quot;\nThe four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.\nAnd in the comments at Ed\u0026rsquo;s blog, tacitus notes the following from a contributing editor at the National Review Online, Deroy Murdock:\nWhile the White House must beware not to inform our enemies what to expect if captured, today\u0026rsquo;s clueless anti-waterboarding rhetoric merits this tactic\u0026rsquo;s vigorous defense. Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud.Unbelievable.\nUPDATE (February 14, 2008): Happy Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day. The current head of the Department of Justice\u0026rsquo;s Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury, USA Today reports, says that waterboarding is illegal and that \u0026ldquo;There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law.\u0026rdquo; The military banned such practices in 2006. Waterboarding is still \u0026ldquo;in the CIA toolkit\u0026rdquo; but requires approval by the president and the attorney general in order to be used, and has allegedly not been used since 2003. Congress is considering legislation to ban the CIA from using it at all; CIA Director Michael Hayden says current law already casts doubt on whether the CIA can legally use it.\nUPDATE (March 9, 2008): George W. Bush has vetoed legislation which would have explicitly banned waterboarding from the CIA repertoire.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/more-on-waterboarding-as-torture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/more_on_waterboarding_as_a_war.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars observes that\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;the US has not only always considered waterboarding to be torture, but has aggressively prosecuted other nation\u0026rsquo;s for war crimes for using that technique on American POWs,\u0026rdquo; quoting \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170_pf.html\"\u003eJudge Evan Wallach\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: \u0026ldquo;I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure.\u0026rdquo; He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. \u0026ldquo;Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning,\u0026rdquo; he replied, \u0026ldquo;just gasping between life and death.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on waterboarding as torture"},{"content":"From metafilter:\nWhen Ron Paul email spam started hitting inboxes in late October, UAB Computer Forensics Director Gary Warner published findings on the spam\u0026rsquo;s textual patterns and the illicit botnet used to spread it \u0026ndash; findings which were picked up by media outlets and tech websites like Salon, Ars Technica, and Wired Magazine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Threat Level\u0026rdquo; blog, the latter in a set of followup posts by writer Sarah Stirland: 1, 2, 3.\nThe Ron Paul fan response was swift and decisive: clearly the botnet was the work of anti-Ron Paul hackers trying to discredit his campaign, and Rudy Giuliani had paid Stirland (and not UAB Computer Forensics) to do a smear piece \u0026ndash; as claimed by a YouTube video pointing to posts on RudyGiulianiForum.com. Thus proving, once again, that the Ron Paul campaign\u0026rsquo;s greatest liability is not so much his far-right conspiracy-driven antifederal libertarianism, but rather the spittle-flecked anger of his own noisiest supporters.There are definitely a lot of nuts among Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s supporters. Meanwhile, he raised $3.8 million yesterday (apparently a number revised downward from $4.3 million) in the largest one-day online political fundraiser ever. Intrade currently shows Paul as the third most likely GOP nominee, after Giuliani and Romney.\nA few other Ron Paul-related blog posts that I realize I\u0026rsquo;ve neglected to mention here, from Dispatches from the Culture Wars:\n\u0026ldquo;Is Ron Paul a Dominionist?\u0026quot; Argues that Paul appears to have much in common with some theocrats.\n\u0026ldquo;Sandefur on Ron Paul\u0026rdquo; Doubts that Paul is a dominionist, but suggests he might be a Thomas DiLorenzo-style neo-confederate who thinks we don\u0026rsquo;t even need a federal government (in which case he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t really be the supporter of the Constitution that he seems to be) and that the U.S. Civil War wasn\u0026rsquo;t about slavery (which is pernicious nonsense).\nI also just came across this story, which says that Paul would like to see the U.S. Constitution amended to remove the subject of abortion from the purview of the courts, which is yet more anti-constitutional insanity.\nUnknown (2007-11-06):\nHere they come, the anti-paul extremists, nutjobs, and smearbots all out in full force.\nRebel Prof (2007-11-06):\nYep, the \"smear Ron Paul\" campaigns have begun, sadly it was Fred that had a convicted Criminal working in his campaign. Bookmaking, Cocaine trafficing, and dealing pot - at the multiple pound level, and only got probation - he must also have connections. a Brother would get 10 years for that crime, and gets 2 years for a bit of weed. Ron paul would end that, and that's why they hate him.\nLippard (2007-11-06):\nI don't hate Ron Paul, and I'm fully supportive of ending the war on drugs (and the war on Internet gambling). I also agree with his opposition to the war in Iraq, his opposition to torture, and his support of the Constitution (even though he gets parts of it wrong). He's easily the best of the Republican candidates for president, but that's faint praise.I do think Ron Paul is somewhat of a kook and would make a poor president, but that's because of his stances on separation of church and state, ending birthright citizenship, illegal immigration, abortion, free trade agreements, a return to the gold standard, and his apparent gullibility for conspiracy theories of the fringe. And probably a few other areas I'm forgetting.\nHume's Ghost (2007-11-06):\nDave Neiwert is a journalist who covered the patriot/milita movement in the 90s and knew Paul from back then when he would pop up in their circuit.At his blog - Orcinus - multiple posts have been written about Paul and his pandering to extremists and conspiracists of various sorts.Man of the Hour at that link you'll see a picture of Ron Paul shaking hands withs the founder of the South Carolina Constitution Party at the Patriot baquest that was thrown in his honor.Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast responds to Paul's defense of his Survival Report letter - posted by a neo-nazi and archived by Nizkor - that says that America is being attacked by terrorists who can be identified by the color of their skin (black)The Trouble with Ron more on Paul and his affinity for loons, and why they like him. She says that Paul got a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition but I have never seen any evidence of that (I've seen scores of about 75%). There's a quote in this one I found at Stormfront that concisely explains why such people like Paul so much. Ron Paul vs. the New World Order Neiwert writing about Paul's track record of dalliances with extremists/conspiracistsNo fault of his own explains why the fringe likes Paul\nolvlzl (2007-11-06):\nRon Paul is politically insignificant, he won't get the nomination, his only hope at having an impact would be to run a third party campaign and, unfortunately, I don't see it happening. I'm kind of interested in his supporters thinking that anyone on the left would fall for his odd mix of fascism with libertarian talk. Having always figured that if libertarians ever took power they would soon discover their program is pathetically unrealistic and that fascism was their fall back position. Both are essentially the same form of arrested emotional development. Primitive nativeism might have the virtue of wanting to avoid entanglements in foreign affairs but it's energies would turn from those to finding the enemy within. That's what they did before.\nUnknown (2007-11-07):\nYou said, \"stances on separation of church and state, ending birthright citizenship, illegal immigration, abortion, free trade agreements, a return to the gold standard, and his apparent gullibility for conspiracy theories of the fringe. \"Separation of Church and State. He believes States should handle the issue not the Federal Govt, because the constitution says \"Congress shall make no law regarding religion.\"Birthright Citizenship - He wants to eliminate birthright citizenship to ILLEGAL immigrants. What's wrong with that? If you haven't noticed anchor babies get a free ride. Illegal Immigration - If people are illegally here they are breaking the law. Ron Paul wants to eliminate welfare, free education and free health care for illegals. Illegals are forcing hospitals to close shop. What's wrong with his stance?\nolvlzl (2007-11-07):\nSeparation of Church and State. He believes States should handle the issue not the Federal Govt, because the constitution says \"Congress shall make no law regarding religion.\" - \"States should handle the issue\" is shorthand for saying he doesn't have any problem with states establishing an official religion, in fact, though perhaps with some kind of legal smokescreen as cover. \"States rights\" is the excuse for allowing every horror seen in the 19th century including segregation and other forms of legalized discrimination. Birthright Citizenship - He wants to eliminate birthright citizenship to ILLEGAL immigrants. What's wrong with that? If you haven't noticed anchor babies get a free ride. - You can't \"eleiminate birthright citizenship to ILLEGAL immigrants\" since the constitution grants automatic citizenship to anyone born within the United States. If they are born here they have citizenship. I think what you mean is children born to those here illegally. Would you extend this to grandchildren and great grand children unto the third and forth generations? Because you might find a lot less support for the logical extension of this. In actual effect, it's just another means of exploiting anti-Latino bigotry. Illegal Immigration - If people are illegally here they are breaking the law. Ron Paul wants to eliminate welfare, free education and free health care for illegals. Illegals are forcing hospitals to close shop. What's wrong with his stance? - Why stop at people who break that law? Why not extend that to people who break other laws, including white collar criminals? You're a lot more likely to be ripped off or hurt by a white collar criminal than an illegal immigrant. What's wrong with it is that you would allow people to die for lack of the most basic humanitarian services, to create an even larger underclass of uneducated people to be exploited by those who anyone with a sense of reality would know Ron Paul and the rest of you would give tacit or explicit permission to exploit them, in any way any of the states would see fit to allow. It's a recipe for the worst of the conditions of the 19th century to return. You know what is the real evidence is that conservatives in the United States don't care about illegal immigration except to exploit it as yet another useful form of bigotry among the majority population? Conservatives have promoted policies that keep people in Latin America in poverty and without education, the conditions that create the pressure for illegal immigration. They have since the founding of the country and the desire of the slave holding class to extend their influence. That's the reason that Texas and other parts of the South West were stolen from Mexico, why dictator after corrupt dictator was supported, etc. The right in America is hardly interested in really eliminating the conditions that produce illegal immigration when it is so useful to them both politically and economically. And if those problems were solved, most of the illegal immigrants would do what most people around the world do, stay home with the people closest to them. Ron Paul is no different from the rest of the far right in America, it's just he keeps his sheet in the linen closet. But it's still there.\nLippard (2007-11-07):\nolvlzl: While reading Victor's comment my responses were very close to yours, so I'll just add a little bit of additional comment.Victor: \"Separation of Church and State. He believes States should handle the issue not the Federal Govt, because the constitution says 'Congress shall make no law regarding religion.'\"The establishment clause also applies to the states in virtue of the 14th Amendment. While many states (including Arizona) have Constitutions which prohibit the use of public funds to promote religion, such actions by state and local governments are also prohibited by the U.S. Constitution in virtue of the fact that the Bill of Rights applies to the states via the 14th Amendment (see its second sentence). The framers of the 14th Amendment, in their debate on its content, clearly intended all of the \"privileges and immunities\" and individual rights in the Bill of Rights to be included in what the individual states must respect, and that's how it's been enforced since then. Ron Paul doesn't know what he's talking about when he says false things about the separation of church and state and claims that the U.S. Constitution is \"replete with references to God.\" States *cannot* establish state religions. We already experimented with that in the past with the Massachusetts colony, and it was not a good thing. Victor: \"Birthright Citizenship - He wants to eliminate birthright citizenship to ILLEGAL immigrants. What's wrong with that? If you haven't noticed anchor babies get a free ride.\"As olvlzl already pointed out, citizenship is guaranteed to anyone born in the United States by explicit language in the 14th Amendment's very first sentence regardless of the status of their parents.Further, those who have entered the country illegally have committed a crime that is a misdemeanor at about the level of a traffic violation, for which there are no criminal penalties. And \"anchor babies\" don't get any more of a free ride than any other babies.I think opposition to allowing people to come to the U.S. for a better life is one of the most immoral and unethical positions that anyone can hold--it says that purely in virtue of someone's geographic place of birth, they should be condemned to a worse life.I recommend that those who hold such positions read a few articles by Will Wilkinson, such as his \"Questions for Particularists\", \"Who Matters?\", and \"Prebuttal on Immigration and Poverty.\"\nHume's Ghost (2007-11-07):\nBoth Olvlzl and Jim beat me to it, but I was going to point out that States rights in the context of church/state separation and the conservative movement is dog whistle politics for the notion that 1st Amendment only prevents the creation of a national church.Regnery's Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution says as much on the cover.And given the fact that Paul clearly travels in the intellectual circles of neo-confederates, reconstructionists and such it makes his comment suspicious.\nEinzige (2007-11-07):\nI am amazed at the amount of sense that olvlzl just made!Victor, if your problem is with \"illegal\" immigration, then I wonder if you'd have a similar problem with illegal gun ownership, if the owning of a gun was made illegal tomorrow.As long as we're giving reading recommendations, I enjoyed this article immensely.\nUnknown (2007-11-07):\nI'm glad we're having this civil discussion guys, but I can't post much since I'm at work. I'll post later tonight. For now, please youtube Ron Paul and learn his reasoning from the man himself. He isn't the typical Republican. He isn't the typical politician. The one thing that all his supporters of his admires is his integrity and honesty. You know where he stands. Check his record. His views seemed kind of out there for me at first, but once I resrarched it then I understood where he comes from.I shared some of the same concerns you guys expressed here. On some issues I still do. However, notice the common theme in his reasoning... Obey the Constitution (admend it if you need to, but don't ignore it), promote freedom, these are some things we all can agree on.I will write in more detail after work.\nLippard (2007-11-07):\nRon Paul does seem to take mostly consistent stances and show a lot of integrity, at least by politician standards, but I have been disappointed by a few of his stances which seem designed to mislead.One, he claims to be in favor of free trade, yet he opposes all free trade agreements and allows himself to be portrayed as an opponent of free trade in order to pander to protectionists. Two, he votes no on most (all?) appropriation bills, but he still puts in earmarks for his own constituents, knowing full well that his \"no\" vote will not win the day. By putting in those earmarks, he is delivering porkbarrel spending to his district even though he votes against the bills.If you click the \"Ron Paul\" label at this blog, you'll see that we've written a fair amount about him, pro and con. (And you'll also see a photo of me with him at his first campaign stop in Phoenix.)\nUnknown (2007-11-08):\nRegarding Birth Right Citizenship, yes Ron Paul recognizes that he would need to amend the Constitution to prevent illegal immigrants from gaining citizenship through birthright. Ron Paul (RP) has often said that he believes illegal immigrants have been the scapegoats because of our failing economy. However, he also recognizes the fact that we can't keep up this welfare state for illegal immigrants. There's a moral question with taxing citizens and giving that money to illegal immigrants through welfare programs. Yes, I understand that illegal immigrants do pay some taxes and they don't get to use all the benefits of a citizen, but they still net a positive in receiving more benefits than their fair share. RP has often said that if we had a more prosperous economy we could contemplate being so generous, however, our economy is on the brink of disaster right now. The Dollar is falling and inflation is high. The Dollar has lost 40% of it's value as compared to the Euro and the Canadian dollar in the last 5 years. I estimate real inflation to be greater than 6%-10%. This is all the result of politicians spending us into debt through needless war, the welfare state, and the growth of the beaucratic govt.Bottom line. We can't afford it and we have to cut our spending. First thing that needs to go is welfare to non-citizens.\nUnknown (2007-11-08):\n\"\"Why stop at people who break that law? Why not extend that to people who break other laws, including white collar criminals? You're a lot more likely to be ripped off or hurt by a white collar criminal than an illegal immigrant.\"\"I agree, that white collar crimes and the collusion of our govt with corps like Halliburton and all the other wasteful spending in Iraq is significant. I never said that we should tolerate that. You can't justify an illegal activity by saying that other illegal activities are occuring elsewhere. \"\"In actual effect, it's just another means of exploiting anti-Latino bigotry.\"\"I think any rational person reading any of my comments can say I never said anything to indicate I am a bigot. You are the one who brought up race. Nowhere did I even mention latinos. I said \"illegal immigrants.\" My problem with illegal immigrants isn't because of their race... it's because they pay less taxes then a citizen, and get more than their fair share of govt assistance. Why don't you argue for more legal immigration? That's a debate that is actually credible. I think it's incredibly unfair that our Federal Govt have in all intents and purposes invited illegal immigrants into our country and now they are all making these noises about passing these laws to make their life difficult here. Yes, I do think it's unfair. We should have never allowed illegal activity to occur. If we wanted more workers, we could have had worker visa programs or even allowed more immigrants into the country. The key point is that the rule of law isn't ignored.\nUnknown (2007-11-08):\nJim Lippard said \"I think opposition to allowing people to come to the U.S. for a better life is one of the most immoral and unethical positions that anyone can hold--it says that purely in virtue of someone's geographic place of birth, they should be condemned to a worse life.\"That's an interesting argument and it's a very noble position. See my other post regarding illegal immigration. Bottom line.. we can't afford to subsidize illegal immigrants. If they paid their fair share of taxes then I wouldn't have much of a problem. Our economy is on the brink of disaster. Inflation is through the roof, the dollar is crashing, the housing bubble is crashing. We have $7 trillion in debt and $70 trillion in future obligations.\nUnknown (2007-11-08):\nRegarding the Free Trade Agreements. The reason RP doesn't support these agreements is because it's actually managed trade. Just like how the Patriot Act is not what it's name purports to be, the Free Trade Agreements is just nation managed trades. They are just bigger government.. even bigger than the federal govt.. meaning the people have even less control over what happens.\nUnknown (2007-11-08):\nTo me this isn't the left vs the right, or me rooting for my team or political party.This is about me trying to find the truth. If you want to give yourself the opportunity to see things from all sides before making a choice check out videos of Ron Paul explaining his position. Here's one video that covers a lot of the issues:http://youtube.com/watch?v=yCM_wQy4YVgIf you wish to continue to attack him by saying things like white supremacist support him or he's crazy.. then.. i feel sorry for our country.. I support him and I'm asian and I don't consider myself crazy... Am I an idiot? Am I stupid? I consider myself very well informed on economics and the current issues. I saw through the lies of the housing bubble, I saw through the lies of the \"contained\" subprime, I saw through the lies of inflation being at 0.8% (used to cal gdp), I see through the lies of the fed reserve and I know a recession is inevitable, and I see through the lies in Iraq.I'm not stupid. I make a lot of money off investing in our fixed financial market. If RP wins, I gain freedom and a more prosperous nation, but I lose the fixed game of a financial system we have. I would like to think I care more about the welfare of all then my personal wealth.Bottom line is RP support him because we believe in freedom and we believe in self-responsibility. We believe the govt shouldn't gather up our tax money and then have the power to be santa claus. No wonder there's lobbyists and corruption. We believe the govt shouldn't create new money out of thin air which causes inflation and destroys the middle class and the poor... I can go on and on, but I'm not... Check out youtube to find out more.oh.. and rp explained the earmark issue in one of those videos.\nLippard (2007-11-08):\nVictor: If welfare, not illegal immigration, is the real issue, then address welfare. (BTW, I do think we should greatly increase the availability of legal immigration. It's insane that the entire annual quota of H1B visas was filled in less than a day.) Opposition to \"illegal immigrants\" almost always really means specifically opposition to Latinos (and Mexicans in particular) coming to America, since they make up the bulk of illegal immigrants.You say that \"First thing that needs to go is welfare to non-citizens.\" Why is that the first thing that needs to go? Why not a criminal president, a criminal war, corporate welfare, or political pork? I note that Arizona just passed a number of anti-illegal immigrant propositions last year. While some of them were specifically directed at preventing state-level benefits from being given to illegal immigrants, they went far beyond that to attempt to deny them the use of courts. Why on earth would we want to deny any human being in this country access to redress of legal wrongs?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/spammers-and-criminals-for-ron-paul.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.metafilter.com/66234/Ron-Paul-Spam\"\u003emetafilter\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e When \u003ca href=\"http://www.salberg.org/2007/10/29/ron-paul-using-spam-emails-to-get-out-message/\"\u003eRon Paul email spam\u003c/a\u003e started hitting inboxes in late October, \u003ca href=\"http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=114955\"\u003eUAB Computer Forensics\u003c/a\u003e Director Gary Warner published findings on the \u003ca href=\"http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2007/10/first-2008-campaign-spamming-virus.html\"\u003espam\u0026rsquo;s textual patterns\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-paul-spam-and-online-support.html\"\u003eillicit botnet used to spread it\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; findings which were picked up by media outlets and tech websites like \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/10/31/ron_pauls_botnet/\"\u003eSalon\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071031-ron-paul-camp-gets-over-enthusiastic-with-spam.html\"\u003eArs Technica\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/\"\u003eWired Magazine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Threat Level\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e, the latter in a set of followup posts by writer Sarah Stirland: \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/astroturfing-in.html\"\u003e1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/more-on-ron-pau.html\"\u003e2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/ron-paul-spam-u.html\"\u003e3\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e The Ron Paul fan response was swift and decisive: clearly the botnet was the work of \u003ca href=\"http://www.nolanchart.com/article259.html\"\u003eanti-Ron Paul hackers trying to discredit his campaign\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://disinter.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/giuliani-behind-alleged-ron-paul-spam/\"\u003e Rudy Giuliani had paid Stirland (and not UAB Computer Forensics) to do a smear piece\u003c/a\u003e   \u0026ndash; as claimed by a \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5LgUiz2mBA\"\u003eYouTube video\u003c/a\u003e pointing to posts on \u003ca href=\"http://www.rudygiulianiforum.com/index.php?topic=38.0\"\u003eRudyGiulianiForum.com\u003c/a\u003e. Thus proving, once again, that the Ron Paul campaign\u0026rsquo;s greatest liability is not so much his \u003ca href=\"http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/06/ron-paul-vs-new-world-order.html\"\u003efar-right conspiracy-driven antifederal libertarianism\u003c/a\u003e, but rather \u003ca href=\"http://suicidegirls.com/news/politics/22557/\"\u003ethe spittle-flecked anger\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://spaceramblings.blogsome.com/2007/11/02/ron-paul-supporters-gaming-youtube-digg-to-smear-reporter-critical-of-ron-paul/\"\u003ehis own noisiest supporters\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere are definitely a lot of nuts among Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s supporters.  Meanwhile, he raised $3.8 million yesterday (apparently a number revised downward from $4.3 million) in \u003ca href=\"http://www.patrickruffini.com/2007/11/06/what-ron-pauls-38m-means/\"\u003ethe largest one-day online political fundraiser ever\u003c/a\u003e.  Intrade \u003ca href=\"http://www.angryblog.org/?p=956\"\u003ecurrently shows Paul as the third most likely GOP nominee\u003c/a\u003e, after Giuliani and Romney.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few other Ron Paul-related blog posts that I realize I\u0026rsquo;ve neglected to mention here, from Dispatches from the Culture Wars:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/is_ron_paul_a_dominionist.php\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is Ron Paul a Dominionist?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Argues that Paul appears to have much in common with some theocrats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/sandefur_on_ron_paul.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sandefur on Ron Paul\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e Doubts that Paul is a dominionist, but suggests he might be a Thomas DiLorenzo-style neo-confederate who thinks we don\u0026rsquo;t even need a federal government (in which case he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t really be the supporter of the Constitution that he seems to be) and that the U.S. Civil War wasn\u0026rsquo;t about slavery (which is pernicious nonsense).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also just came across \u003ca href=\"http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/ron_pauls_money_bomb_records_a.html\"\u003ethis story\u003c/a\u003e, which says that Paul would like to see the U.S. Constitution amended to remove the subject of abortion from the purview of the courts, which is yet more anti-constitutional insanity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul"},{"content":"This is an index to some of the best posts of The Lippard Blog, which started in August of 2005.\nMany posts on Network Neutrality\n\u0026ldquo;Network Neutrality Index\u0026rdquo;\nMany posts on Information Security\n\u0026ldquo;Information Security Index\u0026rdquo;\nMany posts summarizing conference presentations\n\u0026ldquo;Index of Conference Summaries\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Who are the climate skeptics?\u0026quot; December 16, 2009\nA concise take-down of all three parts of \u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie\u0026rdquo; June 11, 2008\nPosts on skepticism\n\u0026ldquo;Arizona\u0026rsquo;s homeopathic medical board\u0026rdquo; July 21, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Brian Dunning on debate\u0026rdquo; August 19, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo; October 21, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Skepticism, belief revision, and science\u0026rdquo; October 21, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;What are the goals of Skepticism 2.0?\u0026quot; November 4, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Where is the academic literature on skepticism as a social movement?\u0026rdquo; November 4, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;A few comments on the nature and scope of skepticism\u0026rdquo; January 6, 2010\n\u0026ldquo;What to think vs. how to think\u0026rdquo; November 20, 2010 \u0026ldquo;Christian deception about The Art of Deception\u0026rdquo; June 23, 2007\nDavid Paszkiewicz evangelizing to his public school classroom. The Lippard Blog broke this story to the blogosphere before the mainstream media picked it up.\n\u0026ldquo;Public school teacher tells class: \u0026lsquo;You belong in hell\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; November 12, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Kearny High School students defend their teacher\u0026rdquo; November 15, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Embarrassingly bad arguments in support of David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo; November 20, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz makes the New York Times\u0026rdquo; December 18, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;A Letter from Paul LaClair about David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo; December 18, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Kearny High School and David Paszkiewicz make the NY Times again\u0026rdquo; December 31, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz publicly displays his incompetence\u0026rdquo; January 14, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Letters to the editor about David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo; January 20, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Kearny Board of Education releases memo and statement\u0026rdquo; January 23, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz on global warming; Kearny High School bans recording\u0026rdquo; February 1, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Paszkiewicz has Matthew LaClair removed from his class\u0026rdquo; February 9, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;ACLU, PFAW give notice of possible lawsuit against Kearny public schools district\u0026rdquo; February 19, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Recording proves Paszkiewicz denied making comments\u0026rdquo; February 24, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Kearny Board of Education and LaClairs settle case\u0026rdquo; May 9, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Kearny board of education member hasn\u0026rsquo;t had enough controversy\u0026rdquo; May 15, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz takes students to Creation Museum\u0026rdquo; June 7, 2009\nMatthew LaClair went on to generate more press by pointing out misrepresentations in a popular textbook.\n\u0026ldquo;Faith-based U.S. history text exposed\u0026rdquo; April 9, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s speech from Freethought Today\u0026rdquo; April 10, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Matthew LaClair op-ed in Los Angeles Times\u0026rdquo; April 27, 2008\nAnswers in Genesis Schism: How Creation Ministries International split from Answers in Genesis.\n\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis schism: U.S. group goes solo\u0026rdquo; March 3, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;More from behind the scenes of the Australian/U.S. creationism schism at Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; November 20, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;John Mackay and Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; November 21, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis revenue declines by 50% in 2005\u0026rdquo; December 29, 2006 A huge mistake\u0026ndash;this was a half-year financial report.\n\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries International gets into the UFO business\u0026rdquo; December 30, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries International sues Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; June 3, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis responds to CMI\u0026rdquo; June 5, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Kentucky newspaper covers creationist lawsuit\u0026rdquo; June 17, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;More disappearing content from the Answers in Genesis website\u0026rdquo; June 18, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis hires Andrew Snelling\u0026rdquo; June 19, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;NCSE on Answers in Genesis schism\u0026rdquo; June 21, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI reach verbal settlement\u0026rdquo; August 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI settlement seems to have fallen apart\u0026rdquo; November 13, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries explains settlement breakdown\u0026rdquo; November 15, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;New summary of CMI-AiG dispute from CMI\u0026rdquo; January 8, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Update on CMI-AiG lawsuits\u0026rdquo; July 25, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;CMI/AiG lawsuit update\u0026rdquo; August 9, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI: judge accepts, then withdraws mediation offer\u0026rdquo; August 12, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;CMI responds to AiG dispute summary\u0026rdquo; August 15, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;6th Circuit Court of Appeals tells AiG and CMI to go to arbitration\u0026rdquo; February 14, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI dispute settled\u0026rdquo; April 15, 2009\nCreationist Finances\n\u0026ldquo;Creationist finances: Some conclusions\u0026rdquo; January 8, 2007 Concluding post in a series of examinations of creationist organizations\u0026rsquo; finances.\nCopyright\n\u0026ldquo;Derivative musical works and copyright\u0026rdquo; March 20, 2007\nHistory of the CIA\n\u0026ldquo;CIA employee identities discoverable via web searches\u0026rdquo; March 12, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Libby says Bush gave him permission to out Plame\u0026rdquo; April 6, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights\u0026rdquo; October 20, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Redacted Iran op-ed shows Bush administration insanity\u0026rdquo; December 26, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;CIA and White House block Cunningham investigation\u0026rdquo; January 12, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;White House involvement in Duke Cunningham scandal\u0026rdquo; March 27, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;BAE, Bandar, and Bush\u0026rdquo; June 12, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Abolish the CIA\u0026rdquo; August 1, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)\u0026quot; August 11, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;The CIA in Venezuela in 2002\u0026rdquo; August 15, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)\u0026quot; August 27, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations\u0026rdquo; October 4, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;CIA head investigates CIA Inspector General\u0026rdquo; October 13, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;If you think waterboarding isn\u0026rsquo;t torture\u0026hellip;\u0026quot; November 4, 2007\nInfraGard\n\u0026ldquo;Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard\u0026rdquo; February 8, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;FBI responds to \u0026lsquo;shoot to kill\u0026rsquo; claims about InfraGard\u0026rdquo; February 15, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;More InfraGard FUD and misinformation\u0026rdquo; February 23, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;New Mexico InfraGard conference\u0026rdquo; February 24, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Of course I\u0026rsquo;m right\u0026rdquo; February 26, 2008\nScientology\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo; March 4, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Arizona legislators sponsoring bills for Scientology front group\u0026rdquo; March 11, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Antony Flew on advisory board of Scientology front group\u0026rdquo; March 11, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Matt Stone calls Isaac Hayes on his double standard\u0026rdquo; March 13, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Comedy Central pulls Scientology episode from reruns\u0026rdquo; March 17, 2006\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Industry sources\u0026rsquo; confirm Cruise role in \u0026lsquo;South Park\u0026rsquo; controversy\u0026rdquo; March 20, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Fox News: Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park\u0026rdquo; March 21, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;CBS series pilot based on Scientology?\u0026quot; March 28, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Scientologists pay another web visit\u0026rdquo; May 30, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Welcome, Church of Scientology visitors!\u0026quot; September 23, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology-friendly Foley in rehab in Clearwater, Florida\u0026rdquo; October 2, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;The Bridge: Attacked by Scientology\u0026rdquo; October 17, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology \u0026lsquo;Industry of Death\u0026rsquo; exhibit in Missouri capitol\u0026rdquo; January 11, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;State legislator who supported Scientology also supports global warming denial\u0026rdquo; January 27, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Karen Johnson trying to become Arizona\u0026rsquo;s dumbest legislator\u0026rdquo; February 1, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Keith Henson arrested in Prescott, Arizona\u0026rdquo; February 4, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Thayer Verschoor\u0026rsquo;s latest attempt at censoring academia\u0026rdquo; February 17, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Christian ministers partnering with Scientology\u0026rdquo; November 4, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Andrew Morton\u0026rsquo;s Tom Cruise tell-all\u0026rdquo; January 6, 2008\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Anonymous\u0026rsquo; launches \u0026lsquo;war\u0026rsquo; against Scientology\u0026rdquo; January 22, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Hoax white powder sent to Scientology\u0026rdquo; January 31, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology protests\u0026rdquo; February 10, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Niece of David Miscavige speaks out against Scientology\u0026rdquo; February 12, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Dave Bird, RIP\u0026rdquo; February 13, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Michael Shermer on Anonymous protest of Scientology\u0026rdquo; February 20, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology critic Shawn Lonsdale dies\u0026rdquo; February 20, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Millennium reruns\u0026rdquo; March 22, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology sucks at JavaScript\u0026rdquo; March 25, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology OT levels leaked through Wikileaks\u0026rdquo; March 28, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Mike Rinder left Scientology\u0026rdquo; March 28, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology celebrity escapes\u0026rdquo; April 17, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Ex-Scientology Kids\u0026rdquo; April 24, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;YouTube\u0026rsquo;s double standard on Scientology\u0026rdquo; May 2, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo; December 3, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Jeff Jacobsen article on Anonymous protests against Scientology\u0026rdquo; December 17, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo; December 19, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Diskeeper sued for Scientology indoctrination\u0026rdquo; December 21, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet history lesson\u0026rdquo; January 4, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Bart Simpson shilling for Scientology\u0026rdquo; January 29, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Scientology and religious visas\u0026rdquo; March 5, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;Former high-ranking Scientologists speak out in SP Times\u0026rdquo; June 21, 2009\n\u0026ldquo;SP Times Scientology article on Lisa McPherson\u0026rdquo; June 22, 2009\nPakistan and YouTube\n\u0026ldquo;Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return\u0026rdquo; February 25, 2008\nHousing Bubble: Einzige\u0026rsquo;s series on Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s preforeclosure rates.\n\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales Notices\u0026rdquo; September 30, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;A Steep Cliff\u0026ndash;Phoenix Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales\u0026rdquo; December 12, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;Update on Maricopa County Trustee Sale Notices\u0026rdquo; January 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Phoenix Foreclosure Update\u0026rdquo; March 1, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Latest Real Estate Market Info for Maricopa County\u0026rdquo; March 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Where Are We Headed?\u0026quot; April 30, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices for May 2007\u0026rdquo; May 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;The Trend Continues\u0026rdquo; July 4, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Words Fail Me\u0026rdquo; July 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;This is getting ridiculous\u0026rdquo; September 6, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;September\u0026rsquo;s Fall\u0026rdquo; September 28, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Back with a Vengeance\u0026rdquo; October 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Have things finally peaked?\u0026quot; December 2, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;December\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix Housing Stats Update\u0026rdquo; December 31, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;February Maricopa County Notices Update\u0026rdquo; March 5, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;March\u0026rsquo;s Market Update\u0026rdquo; April 1, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;April Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices\u0026rdquo; May 4, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Phoenix Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices for May, 2008\u0026rdquo; June 7, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;July\u0026rsquo;s Pre-foreclosure Numbers\u0026rdquo; August 3, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;August\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales\u0026rdquo; September 14, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Phoenix-area foreclosures\u0026rdquo; November 30, 2008\n\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales for October 2009\u0026rdquo; October 30, 2009\nAtheism: Einzige\u0026rsquo;s parable.\n\u0026ldquo;The Parable of the Roommate\u0026rdquo; November 1, 2005\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/best-of-lippard-blog-index.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is an index to some of the best posts of The Lippard Blog, which started in August of 2005.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMany posts on Network Neutrality\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/net-neutrality-index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Network Neutrality Index\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMany posts on Information Security\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/information-security-index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Information Security Index\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMany posts summarizing conference presentations\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/index-of-conference-summaries.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Index of Conference Summaries\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/12/who-are-climate-change-skeptics.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Who are the climate skeptics?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e December 16, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nA concise take-down of all three parts of \u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/zeitgeist-movie.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Zeitgeist: The Movie\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 11, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPosts on skepticism\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/arizonas-homeopathic-medical-board.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Arizona\u0026rsquo;s homeopathic medical board\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e July 21, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/brian-dunning-on-debate.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Brian Dunning on debate\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 19, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/massimo-pigliucci-on-scope-of-skeptical.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Massimo Pigliucci on the scope of skeptical inquiry\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 21, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/skepticism-belief-revision-and-science.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Skepticism, belief revision, and science\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 21, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/what-are-goals-of-skepticism-20.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;What are the goals of Skepticism 2.0?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 4, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/11/where-is-academic-literature-on.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Where is the academic literature on skepticism as a social movement?\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003eNovember 4, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2010/01/few-comments-on-nature-and-scope-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A few comments on the nature and scope of skepticism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 6, 2010\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2010/11/what-to-think-vs-how-to-think.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;What to think vs. how to think\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 20, 2010 \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/christian-deception-about-art-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Christian deception about The Art of Deception\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 23, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDavid Paszkiewicz evangelizing to his public school classroom.  The Lippard Blog broke this story to the blogosphere before the mainstream media picked it up.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Public school teacher tells class: \u0026lsquo;You belong in hell\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 12, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/kearny-high-school-students-defend.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kearny High School students defend their teacher\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 15, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/embarrassingly-bad-arguments-in.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Embarrassingly bad arguments in support of David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 20, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/david-paszkiewicz-makes-new-york-times.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz makes the New York Times\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 18, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair-about-david.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Letter from Paul LaClair about David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 18, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/kearny-high-school-and-david.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kearny High School and David Paszkiewicz make the NY Times again\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 31, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/david-paszkiewicz-publicly-displays-his.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz publicly displays his incompetence\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 14, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/letters-to-editor-about-david.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Letters to the editor about David Paszkiewicz\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 20, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/kearny-board-of-education-releases-memo.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kearny Board of Education releases memo and statement\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 23, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/david-paszkiewicz-on-global-warming.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz on global warming; Kearny High School bans recording\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 1, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/paszkiewicz-has-matthew-laclair-removed.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Paszkiewicz has Matthew LaClair removed from his class\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 9, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/aclu-pfaw-give-notice-of-possible.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;ACLU, PFAW give notice of possible lawsuit against Kearny public schools district\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 19, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/recording-proves-paszkiewicz-denied.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Recording proves Paszkiewicz denied making comments\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 24, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/kearny-board-of-education-and-laclairs.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kearny Board of Education and LaClairs settle case\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 9, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/kearny-board-of-education-member-hasnt.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kearny board of education member hasn\u0026rsquo;t had enough controversy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 15, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/06/david-paszkiewicz-takes-students-to.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;David Paszkiewicz takes students to Creation Museum\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 7, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMatthew LaClair went on to generate more press by pointing out misrepresentations in a popular textbook.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/faith-based-us-history-text-exposed.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Faith-based U.S. history text exposed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 9, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/matthew-laclairs-speech-from.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s speech from Freethought Today\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 10, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/matthew-laclair-op-ed-in-los-angeles.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Matthew LaClair op-ed in Los Angeles Times\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 27, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnswers in Genesis Schism:  How Creation Ministries International split from Answers in Genesis.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis schism: U.S. group goes solo\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 3, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/more-from-behind-scenes-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;More from behind the scenes of the Australian/U.S. creationism schism at Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 20, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/john-mackay-and-answers-in-genesis.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;John Mackay and Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 21, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/answers-in-genesis-revenue-declines-by.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis revenue declines by 50% in 2005\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 29, 2006 A huge mistake\u0026ndash;this was a half-year financial report.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creation-ministries-international-gets.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries International gets into the UFO business\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 30, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/creation-ministries-international-sues.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries International sues Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 3, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-responds-to-cmi.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis responds to CMI\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 5, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/kentucky-newspaper-covers-creationist.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kentucky newspaper covers creationist lawsuit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 17, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/more-disappearing-content-from-answers.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;More disappearing content from the Answers in Genesis website\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 18, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-hires-andrew.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis hires Andrew Snelling\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 19, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/ncse-on-answers-in-genesis-schism.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;NCSE on Answers in Genesis schism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 21, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/aigcmi-reach-verbal-settlement.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI reach verbal settlement\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/aigcmi-settlement-seems-to-have-fallen.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI settlement seems to have fallen apart\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 13, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/creation-ministries-explains-settlement.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Creation Ministries explains settlement breakdown\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 15, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/new-summary-of-cmi-aig-dispute-from-cmi.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;New summary of CMI-AiG dispute from CMI\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 8, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/update-on-cmi-aig-lawsuits.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Update on CMI-AiG lawsuits\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e July 25, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/cmiaig-lawsuit-update.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CMI/AiG lawsuit update\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 9, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/aigcmi-judge-accepts-then-withdraws.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI: judge accepts, then withdraws mediation offer\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 12, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/cmi-responds-to-aig-dispute-summary.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CMI responds to AiG dispute summary\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 15, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/02/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-tells-aig.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;6th Circuit Court of Appeals tells AiG and CMI to go to arbitration\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 14, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/04/aigcmi-dispute-settled.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;AiG/CMI dispute settled\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 15, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCreationist Finances\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-some-conclusions.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Creationist finances: Some conclusions\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 8, 2007 Concluding post in a series of examinations of creationist organizations\u0026rsquo; finances.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nCopyright\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/derivative-musical-works-and-copyright.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Derivative musical works and copyright\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 20, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHistory of the CIA\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/cia-employee-identities-discoverable.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CIA employee identities discoverable via web searches\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 12, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/04/libby-says-bush-gave-him-permission-to.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Libby says Bush gave him permission to out Plame\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 6, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/how-planespotting-uncovered-cia.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 20, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/redacted-iran-op-ed-shows-bush.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Redacted Iran op-ed shows Bush administration insanity\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 26, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/cia-and-white-house-block-cunningham.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CIA and White House block Cunningham investigation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 12, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/white-house-involvement-in-duke.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;White House involvement in Duke Cunningham scandal\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 27, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/bae-bandar-and-bush.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;BAE, Bandar, and Bush\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 12, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/abolish-cia.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Abolish the CIA\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 1, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1945-1953-truman.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e August 11, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/cia-in-venezuela-in-2002.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The CIA in Venezuela in 2002\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 15, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1953-1961.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e August 27, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/10/secret-us-endorsement-of-severe.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 4, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/10/cia-head-investigates-cia-inspector.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CIA head investigates CIA Inspector General\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 13, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/if-you-think-waterboarding-isnt-torture.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;If you think waterboarding isn\u0026rsquo;t torture\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e November 4, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nInfraGard\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/tinfoil-hat-brigade-generates-fear.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 8, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/fbi-responds-to-shoot-to-kill-claims.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;FBI responds to \u0026lsquo;shoot to kill\u0026rsquo; claims about InfraGard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 15, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/more-infragard-fud-and-misinformation.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;More InfraGard FUD and misinformation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 23, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/new-mexico-infragard-conference.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;New Mexico InfraGard conference\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 24, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/of-course-im-right.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Of course I\u0026rsquo;m right\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 26, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nScientology\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 4, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Arizona legislators sponsoring bills for Scientology front group\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 11, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/antony-flew-on-advisory-board-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Antony Flew on advisory board of Scientology front group\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 11, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/matt-stone-calls-isaac-hayes-on-his.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Matt Stone calls Isaac Hayes on his double standard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 13, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/comedy-central-pulls-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Comedy Central pulls Scientology episode from reruns\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 17, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/industry-sources-confirm-cruise-role.html\"\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Industry sources\u0026rsquo; confirm Cruise role in \u0026lsquo;South Park\u0026rsquo; controversy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 20, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/fox-news-isaac-hayes-did-not-quit.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fox News: Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 21, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/cbs-series-pilot-based-on-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CBS series pilot based on Scientology?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e March 28, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/scientologists-pay-another-web-visit.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientologists pay another web visit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 30, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/09/welcome-church-of-scientology-visitors.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Welcome, Church of Scientology visitors!\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e September 23, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/scientology-friendly-foley-in-rehab-in.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology-friendly Foley in rehab in Clearwater, Florida\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 2, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/bridge-attacked-by-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Bridge: Attacked by Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 17, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/scientology-industry-of-death-exhibit.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology \u0026lsquo;Industry of Death\u0026rsquo; exhibit in Missouri capitol\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 11, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/state-legislator-who-supported.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;State legislator who supported Scientology also supports global warming denial\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 27, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/karen-johnson-trying-to-become-americas.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Karen Johnson trying to become Arizona\u0026rsquo;s dumbest legislator\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 1, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/keith-henson-arrested-in-prescott.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Keith Henson arrested in Prescott, Arizona\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 4, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/thayer-verschoors-latest-attempt-at.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Thayer Verschoor\u0026rsquo;s latest attempt at censoring academia\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 17, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/christian-ministers-partnering-with.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Christian ministers partnering with Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 4, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/andrew-mortons-tom-cruise-tell-all.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Andrew Morton\u0026rsquo;s Tom Cruise tell-all\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 6, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/anonymous-launches-war-against.html\"\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Anonymous\u0026rsquo; launches \u0026lsquo;war\u0026rsquo; against Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 22, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/hoax-white-powder-sent-to-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hoax white powder sent to Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 31, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/scientology-protests.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology protests\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 10, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/niece-of-david-miscavige-speaks-out.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Niece of David Miscavige speaks out against Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 12, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/dave-bird-rip.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dave Bird, RIP\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 13, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/michael-shermer-on-anonymous-protest-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Michael Shermer on Anonymous protest of Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 20, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/scientology-critic-shawn-lonsdale-dies.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology critic Shawn Lonsdale dies\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 20, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/millennium-reruns.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Millennium reruns\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 22, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/scientology-sucks-at-javascript.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology sucks at JavaScript\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 25, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/scientology-ot-levels-leaked-through.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology OT levels leaked through Wikileaks\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 28, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/mike-rinder-left-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mike Rinder left Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 28, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/scientology-celebrity-escapes.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology celebrity escapes\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 17, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/ex-scientology-kids.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ex-Scientology Kids\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 24, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/youtubes-double-standard-on-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;YouTube\u0026rsquo;s double standard on Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 2, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/very-merry-childrens-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 3, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/jeff-jacobsen-article-on-anonymous.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jeff Jacobsen article on Anonymous protests against Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 17, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/very-merry-unauthorized-childrens.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Very Merry Unauthorized Children\u0026rsquo;s Scientology Pageant\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 19, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/diskeeper-sued-for-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Diskeeper sued for Scientology indoctrination\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 21, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/01/scientology-vs-internet-history-lesson.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet history lesson\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 4, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/01/bart-simpson-shilling-for-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bart Simpson shilling for Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 29, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/03/scientology-and-religious-visas.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology and religious visas\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 5, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/06/former-high-ranking-scientologists.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Former high-ranking Scientologists speak out in SP Times\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 21, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/06/sp-times-scientology-article-on-lisa.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;SP Times Scientology article on Lisa McPherson\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 22, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPakistan and YouTube\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/pakistan-takes-out-youtube-gets-taken.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e February 25, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHousing Bubble: Einzige\u0026rsquo;s series on Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s preforeclosure rates.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/09/maricopa-countys-trustee-sale-notices.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales Notices\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e September 30, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/steep-cliff-phoenix-notices-of-trustees.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Steep Cliff\u0026ndash;Phoenix Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 12, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/update-on-maricopa-county-trustee-sale.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Update on Maricopa County Trustee Sale Notices\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e January 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/phoenix-foreclosure-update.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Phoenix Foreclosure Update\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 1, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/latest-real-estate-market-info-for.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Latest Real Estate Market Info for Maricopa County\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/04/where-are-we-headed.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Where Are We Headed?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e April 30, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/maricopa-county-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Trustee\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/maricopa-county-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003e\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices for May 2007\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/07/trend-continues.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Trend Continues\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e July 4, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/07/words-fail-me.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Words Fail Me\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e July 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/this-is-getting-ridiculous.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is getting ridiculous\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e September 6, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/septembers-fall.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;September\u0026rsquo;s Fall\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e September 28, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/10/back-with-vengeance.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Back with a Vengeance\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/have-things-finally-peaked.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Have things finally peaked?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e December 2, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/decembers-phoenix-housing-stats-update.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;December\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix Housing Stats Update\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e December 31, 2007\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/february-maricopa-county-notices-update.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;February Maricopa County Notices Update\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e March 5, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/marchs-market-update.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;March\u0026rsquo;s Market Update\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e April 1, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/aprils-trustees-sale-notices.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;April Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e May 4, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/06/phoenix-trustees-sale-notices-for-may.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Phoenix Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices for May, 2008\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e June 7, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/julys-pre-foreclosure-numbers.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;July\u0026rsquo;s Pre-foreclosure Numbers\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e August 3, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/09/augusts-notices-of-trustees-sales.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;August\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e September 14, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2008/11/phoenix-area-foreclosures.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Phoenix-area foreclosures\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 30, 2008\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2009/10/maricopa-county-notices-of-trustees.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales for October 2009\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e October 30, 2009\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAtheism: Einzige\u0026rsquo;s parable.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/parable-of-roommate.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Parable of the Roommate\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e November 1, 2005\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/information-security-index.html\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Best of the Lippard Blog Index"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s New York Times has the story about how Roy Varghese wrote Antony Flew\u0026rsquo;s new book for him, titled There Is A God: How the World\u0026rsquo;s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2007-11-05):\nHow sad. Though it's not clear just which contentions are closest to the truth of the matter. It could be a lot more complex than the story of a bunch of evangelicals exploiting a failing philosopher but it's unlikely we'll ever know. The trophy aspect of this seems to go both ways, though. Flew, like Ayer and Ingersol and a few others besides, seem to be useful to either side. The best way to handle the situation is for everyone to stop using people like this as poster boys for their side and give up the futile pursuit of an intellectual solution to an essentially unanswerable question. There is no science or philosophy that can answer the \"existence of God\" question because if there is a one, God is not part of the physical world that science and philosophy were invented to discover. If there is a God it's obvious that for reasons not given to us, she doesn't want to be observed objectively, though people report subjective knowledge of God. Subjective knowledge isn't transferable through logic or science, it's personal.Flew's current belief should not have any effect on anyone else anymore than his previous belief did. It's meaningful for Flew, it shouldn't matter for anyone else. They should consult their own experience and draw their own conclusions.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/antony-flews-new-book.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/11/antony-flews-new-book.html\"\u003ehas the story about how Roy Varghese wrote Antony Flew\u0026rsquo;s new book for him\u003c/a\u003e, titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThere Is A God: How the World\u0026rsquo;s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eolvlzl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-05)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHow sad. Though it's not clear just which contentions are closest to the truth of the matter.  It could be a lot more complex than the story of a bunch of evangelicals exploiting a failing philosopher but it's unlikely we'll ever know.  The trophy aspect of this seems to go both ways, though.  Flew, like Ayer and Ingersol and a few others besides, seem to be useful to either side.  The best way to handle the situation is for everyone to stop using people like this as poster boys for their side and give up the futile pursuit of an intellectual solution to an essentially unanswerable question.  There is no science or philosophy that can answer the \"existence of God\" question because if there is a one, God is not part of the physical world that science and philosophy were invented to discover.  If there is a God it's obvious that for reasons not given to us, she doesn't want to be observed objectively, though people report subjective knowledge of God. Subjective knowledge isn't transferable through logic or science, it's personal.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eFlew's current belief should not have any effect on anyone else anymore than his previous belief did. It's meaningful for Flew, it shouldn't matter for anyone else.  They should consult their own experience and draw their own conclusions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Antony Flew's new book"},{"content":"The Register (UK) reports that C I Host, a webhosting provider, has now had a fourth break-in at its Chicago colocation facility. Someone cut through a wall with a saw and stole customer equipment (and the DVRs or tape recording devices for the CCTV system). C I Host apparently took days to inform its customers of the break-in, and some have voiced suspicions that it was an inside job.\nUPDATE (February 4, 2007): There was some followup discussion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/break-in-at-ci-host-colo-facility.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Register (UK) \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/02/chicaco_datacenter_breaches/\"\u003ereports that C I Host, a webhosting provider, has now had a fourth break-in at its Chicago colocation facility\u003c/a\u003e.  Someone cut through a wall with a saw and stole customer equipment (and the DVRs or tape recording devices for the CCTV system).  C I Host apparently took days to inform its customers of the break-in, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=6ab986e7a1ff53fa72b45545f4bb0c23\u0026amp;t=639284\"\u003esome have voiced suspicions that it was an inside job\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 4, 2007):  There was \u003ca href=\"http://www.thewhir.com/features/110607_C_I_Host_Responds_to_Robbery_Reports.cfm\"\u003esome followup discussion\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Break-in at CI Host colo facility"},{"content":"CNN reports that the Church of Scientology is partnering with ministers of low-income Christian churches to provide free tutoring, using L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;study technology.\u0026rdquo; More at the Secular Outpost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/christian-ministers-partnering-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN reports that the Church of Scientology is partnering with ministers of low-income Christian churches to provide free tutoring, using L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;study technology.\u0026rdquo;  More at \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/11/scientology-offering-hubbard-study-tech.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian ministers partnering with Scientology"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;read this description of it from Malcolm Nance, former chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego:\nI have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school\u0026rsquo;s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.\nIn the media, waterboarding is called \u0026ldquo;simulated drowning,\u0026rdquo; but that\u0026rsquo;s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.\nUnless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.\nHow much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim\u0026rsquo;s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.\nWaterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nMost of the media discussions of waterboarding have completely omitted the part about the subject\u0026rsquo;s lungs filling with water and made it sound like it\u0026rsquo;s no more than having your head dunked under water, like bobbing for apples at Halloween.\nUPDATE (November 14, 2007): Some doubts have been raised about Nance\u0026rsquo;s reliability and whether waterboarding actually involves water filling the lungs (as opposed to triggering the gag reflex and some drops of water entering the lungs), though it\u0026rsquo;s clear that the psychological effects are extremely strong, with the average CIA Officer able to withstand 18 seconds before begging for it to end. For the doubts on Nance and the details of waterboarding, see the comments on these posts at Positive Liberty and Captain\u0026rsquo;s Quarters.\nUPDATE (December 31, 2007): Here\u0026rsquo;s a guy who experimented with waterboarding techniques on himself, and vividly explains the results.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-11-04):\nI hope you caught the story of acting assistant Attorney General Levin undergoing waterboarding himself while attempting to determine its legality and concluding that it was indeed torture. Then Gonzales became AG and had him removed.That there isn't a national furor over this is sad beyond words. I'm starting to understand what Bertrand Russell meant about stoicism being a philosophy born out of feeling helpless at the collapse of democracy.\nHume's Ghost (2007-11-05):\nhere's a link for the story.\nDiocletian Blobb (2007-11-07):\n[Excerpted from a longer post at Framed][M]emo to anti-torture demonstrators: you do our cause no good at all by controlled namby-pamby simulations of waterboarding. You can't approach the pain and horror of the real thing, so what you wind up communicating is that it isn't all that bad. Cut it out.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/if-you-think-waterboarding-isnt-torture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;read this description of it from Malcolm Nance, former chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school\u0026rsquo;s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. \u003cp\u003eHaving been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"If you think waterboarding isn't torture..."},{"content":"Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation responds to criticisms from Chuck Norris.\nScary number quoted: Campus Crusade for Christ\u0026rsquo;s 2006 annual revenue, $497,516,000.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/mikey-weinstein-vs-chuck-norris.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation \u003ca href=\"http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/six-month-report-2007/six_month_report.html\"\u003eresponds to criticisms from Chuck Norris\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScary number quoted:  Campus Crusade for Christ\u0026rsquo;s 2006 annual revenue, $497,516,000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/mikey_weinstein_v_chuck_norris.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mikey Weinstein vs. Chuck Norris"},{"content":"And boy, are they crazy.\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/max-blumenthal-attends-values-voters.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd boy, \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/theocracy-now_b_70314.html\"\u003eare they crazy\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/star_parker_quarantine_sodomit.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Max Blumenthal attends the Values Voters Summit"},{"content":"U.S. foreclosure rates are double what they were last year, and the top states for foreclosures are:\n1. Nevada\n2. California\n3. Florida\n4. Michigan\n5. Ohio\n6. Colorado\n7. Arizona\n8. Georgia\n9. Indiana\n10. Texas\n36% of homes for sale in Phoenix are vacant, either due to speculators getting caught holding the bag or people who have bought and moved to new homes without finding a buyer for their previous home. Average time to sell (for those houses that are actually selling) is 94 days, versus 73 days a year ago.\nZillow seemed to have stopped updating Phoenix-area home prices on September 11, but they\u0026rsquo;ve now given an update with October 25 data, and my home\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;zestimate\u0026rdquo; value has dropped by 3.6% since the September 11 data.\nMichael Norton (2007-12-04):\nI love this quote: \"It's a great time to buy, but sellers have a lot of competition now.\" from Jim Sexton, president of the Phoenix real-estate firm John Hall \u0026 Associates. Since the article was published 31 Oct things have gotten worse for sellers. So it must be an even better time to buy now!\nLippard (2007-12-04):\nIt's always a great time to buy, according to real estate agents.If house prices are going up, they're going to keep going up, so you should buy.If house prices are going down, we're near a bottom, so you should buy.It's kind of like the excuses used by purveyors of quack remedies that don't do anything--if you get better, it worked. If you get worse, you need to increase your dosage until you get better. If you die, you didn't use enough quickly enough. Since disease progression has ups and downs, they can explain any outcome in a way favorable to their remedy.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/11/foreclosure-rates-double-one-third-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eU.S. foreclosure rates \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/articles/1101biz-foreclosures01-ON.html\"\u003eare double what they were last year, and the top states for foreclosures are\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Nevada\u003cbr /\u003e2. California\u003cbr /\u003e3. Florida\u003cbr /\u003e4. Michigan\u003cbr /\u003e5. Ohio\u003cbr /\u003e6. Colorado\u003cbr /\u003e7. Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e8. Georgia\u003cbr /\u003e9. Indiana\u003cbr /\u003e10. Texas\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/articles/1031vacant-homes1031.html\"\u003e36% of homes for sale in Phoenix are vacant\u003c/a\u003e, either due to speculators getting caught holding the bag or people who have bought and moved to new homes without finding a buyer for their previous home.  Average time to sell (for those houses that are actually selling) is 94 days, versus 73 days a year ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eZillow seemed to have stopped updating Phoenix-area home prices on September 11, but they\u0026rsquo;ve now given an update with October 25 data, and my home\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;zestimate\u0026rdquo; value has dropped by 3.6% since the September 11 data.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foreclosure rates double, one-third of Phoenix homes for sale vacant"},{"content":"Jon Ronson, the author of the excellent books Them and The Men Who Stare At Goats, went on a cruise with Sylvia Browne. He tells the story at the Guardian Online, and it\u0026rsquo;s a good read.\nAn excerpt:\nFamous anti-psychics, such as Richard Dawkins, are often criticised for using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Dawkins\u0026rsquo; last television series, The Enemies Of Reason, was roundly condemned for making silly, harmless psychics seem too villainous. This criticism might be true were it not for the fact that, when the likes of Sylvia Browne make pronouncements, the police and desperate parents sometimes spend serious time and money investigating their claims.\nIn 2002, for instance, the parents of missing Holly Krewson turned their lives upside down in response to one of Sylvia\u0026rsquo;s visions. Holly vanished in April 1995. Seven years later her mother, Gwen, went on Montel, where Sylvia told her Holly was alive and well and working as a stripper in a lap-dancing club on Hollywood and Vine. Gwen immediately flew to Los Angeles and frantically scoured the strip clubs, interviewing dancers and club owners and punters, and handing out flyers, and all the while Holly was lying dead and unidentified in San Diego.\nRonson also links to Robert Lancaster\u0026rsquo;s stopsylviabrowne.com.\n(Hat tip to Jeremy Goodenough on the SKEPTIC list.)\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-31):\nI'd like to see some sort of effort directed at Montel Williams to quit putting her on his show (she is a regular feature every Wed.) How can he possibly in good conscience continue to put her on after what she has put families through with her false pronouncements? The thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around is how are these people impressed by her? If you watch her on Montel she barely even seems to be cold reading people. She just makes stuff up and everyone oohs and ahhs.Typical exchanges run something like this:Q:What should I do with my life?Sylvia: You're going to be a writer.There's some good footage of her on YouTube striking out when she does try to cold read.\nolvlzl (2007-10-31):\nMontel Williams still has a show? I thought he was shilling for the pharmas. I've got no problem with exposing someone who is doing this kind of thing. Gives the harmless fortune tellers a bad name. I'll hold my reservations about some of the claims made about \"cold reading\" for another time. Though there are certainly those who do it.\nEinzige (2007-10-31):\nolvlzl,You seem to almost be implying that there's something more to cold reading than simply \"cold reading\". What are you getting at?\nKat Lippard (2007-10-31):\nEinzige, please stop baiting olvlzl!\nolvlzl (2007-11-01):\nKat Lippard, don't worry. I don't fall for bait unless I want to.Einzige, that discussion about \"near death experience\" we had here led me to read some things. \"Cold reading\" is kind of interesting, since it comes up in \"skeptical\" circles so much. I'm wondering if it has ever undergone rigorous testing of the kind that alleged paranormal abilities are, I've yet to see evidence, though I hadn't gotten around to asking yet. Some of the claims made by uber-\"skeptic\" Ray Hyman a number of years ago, that given a year he could learn how to do cold reading without any direct information coming from the mark seem to be absurd and preposterous, even unbelievable. That's as far as I've gotten. Apparently, Hyman too. I've got no problem with \"skepticism\" so long as it's willing to play by the same rules it insists on. As it is, \"cold reading\" seems to be in danger of turning into a standard smokescreen when skepticism fails to come up with an explanation. I've got more problems with a corporate whore for big pharma like Montel Williams having a talk show than I've got with the harmless version of fortune telling. He's in a position to hurt a lot more people than your average palm reader. Though this Browne character seems to have gone past the harmless phase.\nolvlzl (2007-11-01):\nHappy All Saints Day, by the way.\nLippard (2007-11-01):\nThe most comprehensive book on cold reading that I'm aware of is Ian Rowland's _The Full Facts book of Cold Reading_, 3rd edition, from www.ianrowland.com.Also excellent is a work for mentalists by Banachek, called _Psychological Subtleties_.\nolvlzl (2007-11-01):\nJim Lippard, if his website is anything to go by, Rowland's idea of \"Test Conditions Demonstrations\" fall well short of the kind of rigorous testing I had in mind. I'd expect it to be a bit more sophisticated than what is mentioned there. I've seen very little evidence of \"skeptics\" or even real skeptics subjecting themselves to the same level of rigor they insist on for even legitimate scientists who do the kind of research they continually look for ways to debunk. I'd include the tactics of the presumption of cheating being among the requirements for sufficient rigor. Rowland's descriptions of his \"testing\" don't seem to match that one. I know that you will assume I'm calling for a lowering of the level of rigor demanded by \"skeptics\" and even some skeptics but I'm actually asking that they abide by the standards they promote so well for other people.\nEinzige (2007-11-01):\nolvlzl,Isn't the burden of proof on the one who is making the claim that they are doing something outside the realm of known physical laws--i.e., the \"psychic\"?\nLippard (2007-11-01):\nRowland and Banachek's books explain how cold reading methods work and how to use them. Both are professional mentalists, not scientists. They aren't intended to be scientific studies of cold reading.\nolvlzl (2007-11-01):\nIsn't the burden of proof on the one who is making the claim that they are doing something outside the realm of known physical laws--i.e., the \"psychic\"?Einzige, the burden of proof is on anyone making claims of any kind. That includes those who claim that people are guilty of fraud, even when there is no evidence of fraud and those who are increasingly throwing out the term \"cold reading\" as if it explains everything. It is especially on those, such as Ray Hyman, who have said that they could do cold reading in the absence of any signals to read from the mark. I'm in agreement with Marcello Truzzi, that the burden doesn't all fall on the side the \"skeptics\" are skeptical of. That the \"skeptics\" have decided to frame things that way is pretty transparently self-serving.I'm unaware of any \"known physical law\" that would preclude communication with the dead. What is it? Are there equations? I'm skeptical that it happens but I'm not going to pretend that my skepticism is based in science when it isn't. As to the work of people who scientifically study PSI, the habitual \"debunking\" of their work would sink much of experimental science, if it was required to pass the \"skeptic's\" level of rigor. Just about any experimental evidence could conceivably be forged or misinterpreted. I'd like to know if Ray Hyman has subjected the bilge called research in psychology, his own field, to his level of experimental design criticism. If there is a field that regularly publishes rotten science, it's psychology.Jim Lippard, I'm aware that they aren't scientists, it couldn't be clearer. I don't think the \"testing\" described on the website you linked to passes the ground floor of credibility as testing. Do you know of any scientifically conducted testing of the claims made by \"cold readers\"? Shouldn't there be such tests if it is going to be used to \"explain\" so much? Or is it going to be as non-existent as the \"scientific testing\" of PSI done by \"skeptics\"?\nEinzige (2007-11-01):\nLemme make sure I'm understanding what you're getting at, olzlvl...A person claims that they are communicating with the dead or using some other \"psychic\" ability. A mentalist comes along and says, \"I can duplicate everything the 'psychic' is doing using cold reading techniques.\"...and you're saying that the burden of proof is on the cold reader to prove that they're not in fact using psychic abilities?Am I misunderstanding you?\nLippard (2007-11-01):\nEinzige, I think you are misunderstanding him. He's making the claim that the burden of proof falls upon whoever is making a claim of any sort. If you claim \"the psychic is using cold reading,\" the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence to show that. If you claim \"the psychic is using psychic powers,\" the burden of proof is on you to show that.olvlzl: Surely the burden of proof on what constitutes reasonable evidence to support something that is well-known, well-understood, and doesn't multiply entities beyond necessity or violate known laws of physics or logic is going to be significantly lower than for something that is opaque, occult, adds new entities that have no independent evidence for them, or that violates known laws of physics or logic. There is a background of well-supported facts that are used as the basis for any judgment. In that sense the burdens of proof aren't *equal*.\nEinzige (2007-11-01):\nThanks for the clarification, Jim.\nolvlzl (2007-11-02):\nEinzige, duplicating effects isn't necessarily the same thing as proving that the thing imitated has been reproduced. A magician can produce all kinds of effects, the thing that is apparently produced isn't the same thing as what it appears to be. And the exposure of frauds doesn't prove that the genuine effect doesn't exist. Frauds happen in science, it doesn't debunk science that they do. As for cold readers, since they claim that they aren't using some kind of paranormal ability, I take them at their word. What I'm saying is that their claims of what they do haven't been tested. For all I know their claims of success are a fraud or show biz style promotion. Exaggeration is a known feature of show biz hype. I'd like to see some evidence that they can actually produce the effects they claim to with real consistency. Isn't that what you demand from those you claim they can reproduce? Jim Lippard, how can anyone know what the unreasonable multiplication of entities are in cases such as this? You have to have a sufficiently defined question before you can even begin to apply those old saws, Occam's razor or the principle of parsimony. I recall reading something that pointed out that before they were discovered, isotopes would have had to be discounted as \"unnecessary multiplications of entities\". Well, there are many things in the universe that are undiscovered no one can say exactly what is an unnecessary entity in this. And who knows if they would even apply in cases of the paranormal? You have to start out with a prejudice that the \"known laws of science\" are sufficiently comprehensive to allow you to start cutting things out of consideration when there is no evidence that is true. And in these questions you also have to start out with a prejudice that materialism is a fact when it isn't. There is no way to know if these minor tools of logic are applicable to anything except what we understand of the physical universe already. You do know that Occam's razor isn't universally accepted, I believe Kant was unimpressed with it, for example. Though it's been a long day and I could be mixing him up with someone else. You do realize that Occam was not a materialist, don't you? He was a Franciscan. Considering what he must have believed to be a member of that order, including St. Francis' direct apparition of Jesus, your bringing up the razor is too ironic to pass up.\nHume's Ghost (2007-11-02):\nHe actually put known physical law in scare quotes. Amazing. Let me try this out ...I heard this guy say \"that\" he can communicate with rocks. I\"'\"m \"skeptical,\" but \"I\" don't \"know\" of any \"physical laws\" that preclude communicating with \"rocks.\"\nolvlzl (2007-11-02):\nHume's Ghost, I put \"known physical law\" in quotes because that was the phrase used by Einzige. I was using the phrase he used, isn't that the form of quotation you learned in the fourth grade? If that's the best you've got, I must be doing all right in this discussion. So, you need a \"known physical law\" to convince yourself that it's not possible to communicate with rocks? I'm not quite as exigent in that example. Let me know if the rocks start communicating back, that's when it could get interesting. So, where is the \"known physical law\", with the necessary equations, that would be violated by communicating with the dead? I didn't make the claim that those \"laws\" exist so I assume you can produce them.\nolvlzl (2007-11-02):\nOh, I just checked my e-mail. Someone tells me that the Sainted Galileo, himself, as well as Kant was less than a whole-hearted enthusiast of Occam's razor. I guess I should find out where he expressed that opinion and put it on my to-read list.You know that \"the razor\" isn't a foundation of logic but a kind of rule of thumb, don't you? Its status among \"skeptics\" sort of elevates it way past where it belongs. Sorry if those quotes scared you, H.G. Pretty jumpy for a Ghost, aren't you.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/jon-ronson-on-sylvia-browne.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJon Ronson, the author of the excellent books \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThem\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Men Who Stare At Goats\u003c/span\u003e, went on a cruise with Sylvia Browne.  He tells the story \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2198928,00.html\"\u003eat the Guardian Online\u003c/a\u003e, and it\u0026rsquo;s a good read.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn excerpt:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eFamous anti-psychics, such as Richard Dawkins, are often criticised for using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Dawkins\u0026rsquo; last television series, The Enemies Of Reason, was roundly condemned for making silly, harmless psychics seem too villainous. This criticism might be true were it not for the fact that, when the likes of Sylvia Browne make pronouncements, the police and desperate parents sometimes spend serious time and money investigating their claims.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jon Ronson on Sylvia Browne"},{"content":"Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales continued their record pace in October, totaling 3459\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;and finally we\u0026rsquo;re seeing the effects of this downward pressure on the metro Phoenix median home price (data courtesy ARMLS)\u0026hellip;\nI might be persuaded to buy a place again in six months or so.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/back-with-vengeance.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales continued their record\npace in October, totaling \u003cb\u003e3459\u003c/b\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/images/07OctNTR.jpg\"\u003e\n\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/07OctNTR.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127718831843792194\" /\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;and\n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003efinally\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/b\u003e we\u0026rsquo;re seeing the effects of this downward\npressure on the metro Phoenix median home price (\u003ci\u003edata courtesy\nARMLS\u003c/i\u003e)\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/images/median.jpg\"\u003e\n\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/median.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127719450319082834\" /\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003eI might be\npersuaded to buy a place again in six months or so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back With a Vengeance"},{"content":"I appeared on KTVK-TV 3 News last night, as the token skeptic for a story about a photograph of the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe that supposedly weeps. It was FedEx\u0026rsquo;d to St. Anthony\u0026rsquo;s Church in downtown Phoenix. I didn\u0026rsquo;t have all the details when they interviewed me (they reported it as a weeping statue), so I had fairly generic answers and they used only part of one of my sentences. I was filmed in front of our own copy of the Virgin of Guadalupe\u0026ndash;ours is cooler than the original, since it\u0026rsquo;s an Octavio Ocampo metamorphic print (\u0026ldquo;Los Dones de La Virgen\u0026rdquo;). I also put a copy of Joe Nickell\u0026rsquo;s Looking for a Miracle in the background.\nIn the parts they didn\u0026rsquo;t use, I pointed out that weeping icons tend to create large crowds for a church, and then be followed by copycats at other churches, and they tend to exhibit weeping behavior associated with particular individuals (like Rev. James Bruse in Virginia, who had multiple weeping statues). I also said, drawing from Nickell\u0026rsquo;s book, that the usual explanations are condensation, deliberate hoax, illusion, or imagination (the latter referring to cases of pareidolia, a word I knew would be pointless to use in a TV news interview).\nRob (2007-10-28):\n\"And so when you were in the presence of the Virgin Mary, did you feel anything special Marissa?\"\"Er... you know, I don't know.\"What a handover. You can rest in the knowledge that you are the only person in the entire clip who looks even vaguely sane.\nEinzige (2007-10-28):\n\"...as reporters I think we're skeptical by nature...\" Would that that were actually true.\nLippard (2007-10-28):\nRob: Thanks! I'll have to add \"appears vaguely sane\" to my CV.Einzige: At least they put a skeptic in the story...\nolvlzl (2007-10-29):\nMost of the Catholics I know are deeply embarrassed by this kind of thing. What I'd like to know is how many of the people who go to look at these things go away more likely to support housing for the homeless, nutrition programs for the hungry, health care for those without insurance and more humane prison conditions. I suspect few to none. That is almost certainly the most effective refutation, they don't follow the precepts of the religion they are allegedly observing. I also wondered why the BVM, when she appeared in Croatia before the recent Balkan wars didn't include warnings about that along with those that girls were wearing their skirts too short.\nLippard (2007-10-29):\nolvlzl: Oh, thank you for reminding me of another point I made in my interview--I was asked whether I thought there was any harm to such things. My answer was that when people give money to a church because it has a weeping icon, rather than giving to charities that provide food, clothing, and housing to the poor, that's a harm.\nUnknown (2007-10-29):\nso much for 15 minutes of fame, that wasn't even 15 seconds! I hope you get more air time next time. :-)As for the money that people give to a church not going to charity, I'm sure that's not entirely accurate. Back when I was a christian, I was president of the youth group at our church, and as such I was invited to sit on the church board meetings and was able to review the church budget. The contributions of the congregation covered much more than the expenses needed to run the church, and I seem to remember as much as 50% of the total income being donated to charities such as the world hunger fund, habitat for humanity, and other charities. I also remember that the donation envelopes had little checkboxes where you could earmark your funds specifically for one of the charities rather than having it go into the churches general fund.Obviously there is no way to know for sure how money given to that church will be handled, but it may very well make it's way to charities.\nLippard (2007-10-29):\nWhile I'm sure that many churches are responsible with their funds, a study of Catholic dioceses found that 85% of them have had embezzlement in the last five years.And I think churches that exhibit bogus weeping icons are probably more likely to be irresponsible with their funds...(I could also mention that Catholic Churches spend lots of money on maintaining some impressive quantities of real estate, architecture, and art, as well as paying out settlements to victims of child molestation.)\nolvlzl (2007-10-29):\nJim Lippard, there are some Catholic charities that do some pretty impressive work. The Medical Missionaries of Mary, Maryknoll, Catholic Relief Services. When talking about \"The Catholic Church\" it's necessary to give more detail because it isn't any one thing and it covers a lot of different groups. You wouldn't like to be judged by the financial record of \"skeptics\" or atheist organizations unrelated to your activities. One of the worst problems with diocesan administration is that bishops are generally pretty incompetent, especially those put into office under JPII and Ratzinger. They were intent to appoint yes-men who would never oppose them or say anything they didn't want to hear. Under them I'm surprised the figures of financial mismanagement and theft aren't far higher. One of the problems, they hate to pay enough to get competent staff and contractors. Bishops and, to some extent, priests are dead cheap.\nEinzige (2007-10-29):\nolvlzl,Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not a Catholic, and so have a good measure of ignorance in this area), but isn't the Catholic Church one giant hierarchical organization, with the Pope at the top?\nRob (2007-10-29):\nEr, olvlzl, I think you missed the point. Of course some Catholic charities are doing good things. That's what 100% of them are SUPPOSED to be doing in fact. However, if 85% of Catholic charities are embezzling funds, the chances are that the ones with weeping statues are amongst them. You said yourself that it embarrasses your Catholic friends. That's the point Jim was making. He was agreeing with you, and I don't think that it was a gross generalisation. And as it is, bloggers, atheists and skeptics are all judged as groups regularly by Catholics, Americans and Republicans. They're just labels. The ones who do good stand out, they don't blend in to the general crowd and make do. Jim stands out, and stands up, on the tv, and tells it like he sees it. If more people did this, the world might be a more tolerant place.\nolvlzl (2007-10-30):\neinzige, in a word, no. Catholics, in general are not answerable to the Pope, some religious and clergy are but Catholics in general, no. They are answerable to their conscience. In practice large parts of the church, even some organizations run by religious and clergy go for long stretches of time paying very little attention to the pope or his Vatican lackies. Most of the Catholics I've known have more of an attachment to their local parish than they do the Vatican. A lot of Catholics have a more skeptical attitude towards the pope than I've found is generally true of atheists and the current atheist hero of the Best Seller's List. Look at how Christopher Hitchens is held up on atheist blogs as if he isn't a piece of self-serving slime. The last two popes have tried to centralize power in the Vatican after the previous two popes decentralized it. But they haven't had much success except among some of the farthest reaches of conservatives and reactionaries and the American media that makes believe on their behalf. Look at the figures on how many Catholics agree with the pope on issues of sexual morality and abortion. Rob, you think I didn't know that Catholic charities are supposed to be doing good work? Where do you come up with that from what I wrote? Were you guilty of the financial irregularities of the American Atheists? I'd suspect the answer is no, if you weren't responsible for them. Well, why should Catholics in general be answerable for the thefts done by other people? Of their own money? That would include clergy and hierarchy who haven't done anything wrong.\nolvlzl (2007-10-30):\nrob, I suspect you think that these oily statues are in some way an official part of Catholic practice. They aren't. Catholics aren't required to believe in any of the alleged apparitions of Mary or weeping statues or any of that other stuff. It used to be the most typical way for them to be handled by the church by suppressing them. I have the feeling that a lot of you are ex-protestants who carry a lot of the anti-papist mythology into this. As a very ex-Catholic, most of that is horse feathers.\nEinzige (2007-10-30):\nLook at how Christopher Hitchens is held up on atheist blogs as if he isn't a piece of self-serving slime.I'm not a regular reader of atheist blogs (frankly it gets pretty boring fairly quickly), so I'm not familiar with what you're describing. I'm curious, though, if you truly mean that people are holding up the person of Christopher Hitchens. That strikes me as less likely than that they might instead be simply agreeing with something he has said.\nolvlzl (2007-10-30):\nEinzige, having criticized Hitchens on a number of blogs, both atheist and apathetic in such matters on matters both religious and political and having the atheist choir come done on me like a bunch of harpies is an experience that can be frightening. I'd imagine. I'd imagine because I found it to be both interesting and rather fun.If he had never written God is Not Great or Missionary Position I'll bet at least three quarters wouldn't have ever heard of the ex-trot, ex-leftist, and, since his rabid advocacy of Bush War II isn't doing much for his career, soon to be ex-Bushite. The atheist blogs are centers of hero worship. I do agree with you that almost all of them are boring. Atheists who have some kind of life of the mind don't seem to be very interested in them. Still, they are a cultural phenomenon right now, though not as influential as most of the subjects of the check-out tabs. So I look into it. The fad will pass, though it will live on in the minds of the middle-brow consumers of the best sellers, like the meme does.\nEinzige (2007-10-30):\nI first heard of Hitchens when I saw a video of a debate between him and George Galloway back a couple years ago. Although I find his (or anyone's) support of the war dismaying, I have to admit that it's at least the most well reasoned support I've come across (I also think he comes off better than Galloway in that debate, sadly). Because if his war-mongering I never had much interest in reading his books.Recently, I saw this debate between Hitchens and Alister McGrath and I found much to agree with in what Hitchens said (and I think he wiped the floor with McGrath).Having said all that, I wonder if I would qualify as a Hitchens-worshipper, in your mind, olvlzl.The atheist blogs are centers of hero worship.Now, I've known more than a few unthinking atheists in my time, but I strongly suspect that you're engaging in a little bit of hyperbole, here, olvlzl. Hero worship?\nLippard (2007-10-30):\nolvlzl: If you think atheist blogs are all or mostly engaged in hero-worship of Hitchens, your attention is selective. It appears to me that opinions are quite well mixed, and if there's anything close to consensus it's that he speaks well but is often unreliable.Dispatches from the Culture Wars: he's responsible for a misrepresentation of Thomas Jefferson repeated by Dawkins, and a misrepresentation of Ben Franklin, also repeated by Dawkins.Evolving Thoughts (a philosopher): Links to and expresses agreement with a critical review of Hitchens' book.Pharyngula: Hitchens wrong and irrational about the war in Iraq (but also see Chris Hallquist, who argues that there's some misrepresentation here).Smooth Pebbles: Hitchens more like \"a boorish drunk\" on war in Iraq and claim that women aren't funny. BTW, I've posted a comment here about why one might think, on the basis of the availability heuristic, that women don't make good comedians or film directors. It's a lot easier to bring to mind five good well-known male standup comics than five good well-known female standup comics. (Also note Sarah Dasher's comment here.)\nLippard (2007-10-30):\nolvlzl: I think this Hitchens fest would have been more appropriate on this blog post about Hitchens.And note that my post is another counter-example to your \"hero worship\" claim.\nEinzige (2007-10-30):\nAnd note that my post is another counter-example to your \"hero worship\" claim.Jim, even if you had said \"I agree with everything Hitchens says in this clip\" I contend that it still wouldn't constitute \"hero worship.\"To get that far I think you'd have to venture into \"Hitchens' shit doesn't stink\" territory.Olvlzl seems to be saying that \"the atheist bloggers\", wholesale, are engaging in a form of the ad hominem fallacy --\"Hitchens is right because he's Hitchens!!\"Is that not in fact what you are saying, olvlzl? What else could you mean when you say that Hitchens is \"being held up on atheist blogs\"?\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-30):\nI used to have the Hitchens website (links to about everything he writes anywhere) in my blogroll. I removed it because his attrocious mental gymnastics in defending the War On Terror make me question to what extent he has employed such gymnastic in his other writings.Still, I admire a lot of what he has written. Not least of which his biography of Jefferson (the bit with Jefferson's deism is only a minor blip in it) and his book on Orwell. And I look forward to reading his biography of Paine's Rights of Man.Oh, and here's another member of the nefarious Paul Kurtz atheist fundamentalist McCarthyist plot who isn't hero worshipping Hitchens. Incidentally, here's the same member of the Kurtz cult (writer for both Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer) critiquing Dawkins.\nolvlzl (2007-10-31):\nAnd note that my post is another counter-example to your \"hero worship\" claim.Did you think I meant you, Jim Lippard? No. You don't tend to hero worship here. You have found several mentions of Hitchens on a few blogs. Go in disguise and make a substantial criticism of his dishonesty and perfidy on a number of atheist blogs and see what happens. I'd be curious to see if what you find matches my experience. Having recently compared his Vanity Fair spa shots in the almost altogether to \"spotted dick\" I don't think I'd care to fest on him. Einzige, I've been reading Hitchens for decades and have watched his ever morphing positions, ever following some twisted and twisting road to self-aggrandizement. Hume's Ghost, Hitchens was featured in one of the recent sensationalist, tabloid style, come-ons I got from Skeptical Inquirer or Curious Inquirer or one other of the Kurtzian-quirers. Perhaps the old man isn't keeping up with his creations these days. I'll point out that if you wait a while Hitchens eventually turns on the people who thought he was their friend. The guy is a backstabber of the first water.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/very-brief-tv-appearance.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azfamily.com/video/index.html?nvid=187340\u0026amp;shu=1\"\u003eI appeared on KTVK-TV 3 News last night\u003c/a\u003e, as the token skeptic for a story about a photograph of the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe that supposedly weeps.  It was FedEx\u0026rsquo;d to St. Anthony\u0026rsquo;s Church in downtown Phoenix.  I didn\u0026rsquo;t have all the details when they interviewed me (they reported it as a weeping statue), so I had fairly generic answers and they used only part of one of my sentences.  I was filmed in front of our own copy of the Virgin of Guadalupe\u0026ndash;ours is cooler than the original, since it\u0026rsquo;s an Octavio Ocampo metamorphic print (\u0026ldquo;Los Dones de La Virgen\u0026rdquo;).  I also put a copy of Joe Nickell\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLooking for a Miracle\u003c/span\u003e in the background.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the parts they didn\u0026rsquo;t use, I pointed out that weeping icons tend to create large crowds for a church, and then be followed by copycats at other churches, and they tend to exhibit weeping behavior associated with particular individuals (like Rev. James Bruse in Virginia, who had multiple weeping statues).  I also said, drawing from Nickell\u0026rsquo;s book, that the usual explanations are condensation, deliberate hoax, illusion, or imagination (the latter referring to cases of pareidolia, a word I knew would be pointless to use in a TV news interview).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Very brief TV appearance"},{"content":"Young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow John Mark Reynolds has written a pair of articles arguing that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling\u0026rsquo;s outing of her character Dumbledore as gay doesn\u0026rsquo;t make him so, since the text is silent on the issue. I actually think he makes a reasonable argument, except that he heads in a personally dangerous direction when he writes:\nWhat if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters? That too will not matter . . . anymore than I care much about the “Lost Books” (really his notes) that the Tolkien family keeps publishing from the author of Lord of the Rings insofar as it could possibly change the meaning of Tolkien’s main work. The text is fixed and it is as it is. The fact that Tolkien had other ideas about Frodo, Merry, or any other characters is important to discuss how the story came to be, but does not change the meaning of the text, if there is no explicit (or even hint) of the “new” matter.\nThis seems to be at extreme odds with how most Christians view the Old Testament in light of the New (and, as an aside, how Mormons view the Old and New Testaments in light of the Book of Mormon). It\u0026rsquo;s pretty clear that Christians do hold that the words of the Old Testament have different meanings than Jews attribute to them.\n(Via The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.)\ntom (2007-10-27):\n\"This seems to be at extreme odds with how most Christians view the Old Testament in light of the New (and, as an aside, how Mormons view the Old and New Testaments in light of the Book of Mormon). It's pretty clear that Christians do hold that the words of the Old Testament have different meanings than Jews attribute to them.\"Surely that's because they don't take the Bible to be fiction, and thus don't think that the \"rules\" of interpreting fiction that Reynolds advocates here should apply. No?\nLippard (2007-10-27):\nYep. That's what I get for rushing to make a post as I'm trying to leave the house.Though the question could be asked--if the writer of fiction is describing an imagined possible world, why can't there be facts about that possible world beyond what is explicitly described in the fiction? And why shouldn't the author be authoritative as to those facts? Reynolds actually seems to contradict himself at the end of his first article, where he suggests that if Rowling wrote a prequel, she could make Dumbledore a homosexual, even though he said that if she wrote an author's guide to her universe that included that fact, it would not be relevant. I'm not sure I see why that wouldn't work.I still think there's something to my example, but that's because I think there are explicit contradictions between how Jews and Christians view the content of the Old Testament. (And I do think there's quite a bit of fiction involved.)\nolvlzl (2007-10-28):\nI've always had great respect for the Jewish practice of Pilpul, it is clear from this that there isn't any one meaning attributed to the Hebrew scriptures by those who would know if anyone would. That goes for Christians too, some of which approach the Jewish practice for rigor and seriousness, some are pure garbage. John Mark Reynolds is just being silly. What an author says about her inventions is authoritative, by definition. It's not as if she didn't drop hints here and there.\ntom (2007-10-28):\n\"Though the question could be asked--if the writer of fiction is describing an imagined possible world, why can't there be facts about that possible world beyond what is explicitly described in the fiction?\"I think the point behind your question is correct, and Reynolds's point is - as ovlzl put it - silly. I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that one can appreciate a work of art, music, or literature as it is regardless of the author's intentions. But my sympathy only goes so far: one can plausibly have license to insulate the original work and subjectively choose to experience it isolated from any context, but I'm unconvinced by Reynolds's (much stronger) claim that Dumbledore is not \"really\" gay (in whatever maximally objective sense is possible for a work of fiction). A rigorous disagreement with Reynolds (or anyone else) on this issue would ultimately boil down to very empty questions about what it should even mean to say that Dumbledore is or is not homosexual. His first essay (I didn't bother with the second) confirms that: it's a pretty vacuous admixture of truisms and repeated restatements of his own intuitions, with very little actual argument.\ntom (2007-10-28):\nP.S...Jim, I'm interested in the Dec. Infidels event. I've been a reader of Infidels and your blog for a couple of years, and I moved to Scottsdale just over a year ago. Just curious what the event is about: Will there be talks given, or will it be for social \u0026 formal/organizational purposes?Thanks,-tom\nLippard (2007-10-28):\nTom:It's purely a social event at the end of a day-long board meeting. I'm trying to bring together a mix of people from different groups--Internet Infidels supporters, IIDB readers, atheist meetup group members, Phoenix Skeptics, people from the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, and so on. You're very welcome to attend.Also, I'm planning to attend the Phoenix Skeptics meeting at noon on Saturday, November 3 at Jim's Coney Island Cafe at Scottsdale Rd. and McKellips.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/discovery-institute-fellow-dumbledore.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYoung-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow John Mark Reynolds has written a \u003ca href=\"http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/10/23/dumbledore-is-not-gay-taking-stories-more-seriously-than-the-author/\"\u003epair\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/10/24/dumbledore-is-not-hetero-taking-stories-more-seriously-than-the-author-ii/\"\u003earticles\u003c/a\u003e arguing that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling\u0026rsquo;s outing of her character Dumbledore as gay doesn\u0026rsquo;t make him so, since the text is silent on the issue.  I actually think he makes a reasonable argument, except that he heads in a personally dangerous direction when he writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters? \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute Fellow: Dumbledore is NOT gay"},{"content":"Ecuador\u0026rsquo;s president Rafael Correa says that Ecuador will not be renewing the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s lease of the Manta Air Base on his country\u0026rsquo;s Pacific coast when it expires in 2009. U.S. officials say the base is essential for anti-narcotics operations.\nCorrea says he will be happy to reconsider if the U.S. allows him to open an Ecuadoran military base in Miami. \u0026ldquo;If there\u0026rsquo;s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country\u0026rsquo;s soil,\nsurely they\u0026rsquo;ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States,\u0026rdquo; he told a reporter in Italy.\n(Via Distributed Republic.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/sounds-reasonable-to-me.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEcuador\u0026rsquo;s president Rafael Correa says that Ecuador will not be renewing the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s lease of the Manta Air Base on his country\u0026rsquo;s Pacific coast when it expires in 2009.  U.S. officials say the base is essential for anti-narcotics operations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCorrea says he will be happy to reconsider if the U.S. allows him to open an Ecuadoran military base in Miami.   \u0026ldquo;If there\u0026rsquo;s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country\u0026rsquo;s soil,\u003cbr /\u003e surely they\u0026rsquo;ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States,\u0026rdquo; he told a reporter in Italy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2007/10/23/viva-ecuador\"\u003eDistributed Republic\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sounds reasonable to me"},{"content":"\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a blog, Watts Up With That?, that documents with photographs some weather stations that are taking temperature measurements under conditions that violate standards for site locations. There are photos of temperature sensors on concrete, on asphalt parking lots, next to buildings, and close to multiple air conditioners. I was disappointed to see that the University of Arizona, where I went to graduate school, was an offender, with its weather station located in the middle of a parking lot (pictured). Anthony Watts\u0026rsquo; blog describes the rules for siting weather stations, shows pictures of violators and explains why what they\u0026rsquo;re doing is a problem, and shows the data from those stations.\nThere are all sorts of bias-correcting measures applied to temperature measurements, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think they are correcting for sensors that are located in the path of air conditioner exhaust.\nThis might be a reason to prefer satellite data. (NCDC\u0026rsquo;s website has a huge collection of climate-related data from many sources.)\nUPDATE: Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost points out in the comments that bad sites show the same long-term warming trends as good sites, with a link to his blog, The Daily Doubt, on the subject.\nUPDATE (July 31, 2009): Peter Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s Climate Change Crock of the Week has done a video on Anthony Watts\u0026rsquo; claims\u0026ndash;and Watts has misused the DMCA to get the video taken down. But it\u0026rsquo;s back!\nUPDATE (February 5, 2010): The U.S. Climate Reference Network provides further evidence that surface station siting problems are not responsible for anomalous temperatures. The linked-to post at Rabett Run includes a comparison of the University of Arizona COOP station with readings from the Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-10-25):\nLinkThey appear to be doing a good job of correcting for local error, as when the stations identified as good were graphed with those identified as bad the same warming trend was shown.Still, whenever improvements in location can be made I think it should be done.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/garbage-in-on-climate-change.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/Tucson1.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/Tucson1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/\"\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a blog, Watts Up With That?\u003c/a\u003e, that documents with photographs some weather stations that are taking temperature measurements under conditions that violate standards for site locations.  There are photos of temperature sensors on concrete, on asphalt parking lots, next to buildings, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/how_not_to_measure_temperature_24.html\"\u003eclose to multiple air conditioners\u003c/a\u003e.  I was disappointed to see that the University of Arizona, where I went to graduate school, was an offender, with its weather station located in the middle of a parking lot (pictured).  Anthony Watts\u0026rsquo; blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/specs_on_weather_stations.html\"\u003edescribes the rules for siting weather stations\u003c/a\u003e, shows pictures of violators and explains why what they\u0026rsquo;re doing is a problem, and shows the data from those stations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are all sorts of bias-correcting measures applied to temperature measurements, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think they are correcting for sensors that are located in the path of air conditioner exhaust.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis might be a reason to prefer satellite data.  (NCDC\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html\"\u003ewebsite has a huge collection of climate-related data from many sources\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Hume\u0026rsquo;s Ghost points out in the comments that bad sites show the same long-term warming trends as good sites, with \u003ca href=\"http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/09/wrong-again-about-global-warming.html\"\u003ea link to his blog, The Daily Doubt, on the subject\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 31, 2009): Peter Sinclair\u0026rsquo;s Climate Change Crock of the Week \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/anthony_watts_abuse_of_the_dmc.php\"\u003ehas done a video on Anthony Watts\u0026rsquo; claims\u0026ndash;and Watts has misused the DMCA to get the video taken down\u003c/a\u003e.  But it\u0026rsquo;s back!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 5, 2010): The U.S. Climate Reference Network \u003ca href=\"http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/01/toms-trick-and-experimental-design.html\"\u003eprovides further evidence that surface station siting problems are not responsible for anomalous temperatures\u003c/a\u003e.  The linked-to post at Rabett Run includes a comparison of the University of Arizona COOP station with readings from the Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Garbage in on climate change measurement"},{"content":"\nOur Fred is a contestant in the National Pet Idol contest. He needs your help to win! Each vote is only $1 and all proceeds go to AZ Rescue . The first round of voting starts today, October 24th through October 31st.\nClick here to vote for Fred!\nThanks!!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/vote-for-fred.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/fred_contest.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/fred_contest.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124942553009175826\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur Fred is a contestant in the National Pet Idol contest.  He needs your help to win!  Each vote is only $1 and all proceeds go to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eAZ Rescue\u003c/a\u003e .  The first round of voting starts today, October 24th through October 31st.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClick \u003ca href=\"http://azrescue.goidol.com/e/hqh0siFMd\"\u003ehere \u003c/a\u003eto vote for Fred!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks!!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vote for Fred!!!"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars presents some of the evidence that Clinton\u0026rsquo;s presidency differed in degree, not kind, from Bush\u0026rsquo;s:\nIf you despise the Bush administration for weakening constitutional protections, zealously increasing executive authority and weakening the checks and balances inherent in our constitutional scheme, preferring secrecy to accountability, being in the pocket of big business and sending American troops on one foreign military adventure after another, you should recognize that the Clinton administration that preceded this one differed only by degree, not kind, on those matters. And there is little reason to believe that a second Clinton administration would be all that much better.The book All the President\u0026rsquo;s Spin, by the folks who ran the Spinsanity.com blog during Bush\u0026rsquo;s first term, makes a similar point about how Clinton managed the media.\nIt was under Clinton that we got not one but two attempts to censor the Internet with the Communications Decency Act.\nOn the other hand, there were far fewer American lives lost in military action and we did get the export controls on encryption loosened, so that users of PGP didn\u0026rsquo;t become criminal exporters of munitions just by carrying a laptop to another country.\nIn a conversation last week, a friend of mine suggested that Hillary Clinton will win the presidency and will demonstrate her military hawkishness by doing something like invading Syria, and will end up making followers out of the right-wingers who currently hate her, ultimately sending us further down the road towards fascism and complete disregard for the rule of law.\nMichael C. Rush (2007-10-22):\nOf possible relevance: http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/10/19/hillary-clinton-receives-the-largest-number-of-military-donationsfrom-the-defense-industry/\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-23):\nI have to disagree with your friend. There is nothing Hillary Clinton can possibly do that will make the conservative movement or \"right-wingers\" (I use the scare quotes because I hate using the right/left dichotomy) will ever approve of her. There is already an increase in rhetoric from pundits equating \"liberals\" with being fascists or Nazis, and a developing narrative that there is a Hillary/Soros conspiracy to install a fascist/socialist/S-P one world goverment.I think what will lead us further down the road to fascism is this:Authoritarians within the conservative movement are comfortable investing their leaders with vast power beyond the rule of law. But when that power is in the hand of The Enemy (Democrats) they are thrown into a panic that they are living under a nightmare totalitarian regime.If Hillary gets elected I expect the militia movements and survivalists will come back out of the woodward and start arming and training themselves to conquer their \"fascist socialist\" (borrowing pseudo-libertarian Neal Boortz's terminology) president. And I would not be surprised if someone - perhaps one of the returning neo-nazis (that have infiltrated the army) vet comes back and believing he's been stabbed in the back by \"liberals\" decides to take Coulter up on her suggestion and blows up the New York Times.That Democrats continue to attempt to triangulate Republicans contributes to this dynamic. As they shift right (The Economist observed that Clinton's foreign policy would be considered conservative in just about any other western democracy), reactionary movement conservatives shift even further right.This see-sawing I fear is going to stress democracy past a breaking point.\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nThe problem of Democratic triangulation is a direct result of the media being lock-step with Republican-fascism. Any Democrat who speaks up for democracy or anti-militarism will immediately be targeted by the fascist media which is in full control of broadcast and cable. That is the environment that any progressive politician has to live in. It is the reason that Bill Clinton accepted a lot of things that I am certain he wouldn't have if the political world in the United States was better. Ironically, it will will only be if federal laws break up and force diversification of the electronic media that the situation doesn't promote the policies we all deplore. Pretending that \"the media\" exists in the state that print has for the past two-hundred years is willfully unrealistic. Broadcast and cable have overturned that situation, ignoring that fact is the greatest danger to democracy in the United States today. \"The market\" is what has produced the situation governing political reality, it is the problem, not the solution. Hillary Clinton isn't the problem, she's not even a remote danger, Democrats are the last glimmer of hope, faint though that might be.\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nJust as a point of interest, the random character generator just came up with \"jsuyja\". Perhaps it's a sign?\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nSo, olvlzl, your solution to the media being in \"lock-step\" with the government is greater control of the media by that same government? (What else would you call the enforcement of content, which is essentially what you are proposing?)\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nEinzige, this is what I said:Ironically, it will will only be if federal laws break up and force diversification of the electronic media that the situation doesn't promote the policies we all deplore.Where in that do you find any kind of content regulation? Looking at things like this from a preddetermined ideological vantage point results in seeing what you want to or expect to see. I don't believe in the market religion, I am not a free speech absolutist, I believe that \"freedom of the press\" is a right given to corporate entities only for the purpose of them serving democracy through informing the public so they can make informed decisions. If the press doesn't serve the interests of democracy no one will have to take away that right, they have ensured its loss by betraying its guarantors. A press that doesn't serve honesty and the truth has no reason to exist. It is The Market which will always and in every case, when possible, regulate content to its own advantage. It was with the destruction of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan that any diversity in broadcast disappeared. The absolute proof that an unregulated media market will result in a homogenized, biased, dishonest and self-interested \"news\" environment is here to be seen in the United States today.\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nYou're going to have to clarify what you mean when you say \"force diversification of the electronic media\", if that doesn't mean, in effect, some form of prescriptive content regulation. Wasn't the Fairness Doctrine, in essence, regulation of content?Isn't the assertion that \"the press must serve the interests of Democracy\" an explicit declaration that its content must be regulated?It is The Market which will always and in every case, when possible, regulate content to its own advantage.The mistake you're making there is in believing that it's the media that \"regulates\" anything. If we accept the notion that the news media is very often indistinguishable from entertainment (and I'm not one to argue against that) then its content - whether true or false - is entirely the fault of the consuming public. Profits, in a free society, are greatest when you give the people what they want.\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nOne last thing...\"A press that doesn't serve honesty and the truth has no reason to exist.\"Who's \"honesty\"? What truth, olvlzl?My impression of your \"truth\", to the extent that you believe in socialism, is that it is complete lunacy. When we're deciding what goes on the boob tube, then, who gets to be the arbiter between us?Who decides \"the truth\" between Jews and Muslims? How about between Catholics and Protestants? Who? A democratic majority? A Republican Christian president?\nLippard (2007-10-24):\nEinzige: olvlzl means diversification of ownership, not content prescriptions.I think we've had a huge burst of diversification of ownership with the Internet, though we're moving back to consolidation in some areas (e.g., U.S. telecom).\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nDiversification of ownership is no guarantee that they'll suddenly start \"serving the public\" in the sense that olvlzl means.It's certainly no protection against \"a homogenized, biased, dishonest and self-interested\" media, since that's what olvlzl thinks we have today, in spite of the reality that we have much more diverse means of obtaining news today than we did in the Reagan era.\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-24):\nI'm opposed to the Fairness Doctrine but along with public financing of election I consider undoing the deregulation of the media one of the most vital steps we must take to restore democracy.Back in the early 80s about 50 corporations owned the majority of the media. That's down to about four or five. I look at that precipitous decline as being concomitant to the decline and erosion of American democracy. It's tantamount to a re-feudalization of the public sphere.Take NBC for instance. BIll O'Reilly calls them a far left S-P America hating station. That \"S-P\" station is owned by GE. GE makes money off of military contracts. GE makes money when we go to war. Seems like a conflict of interest doesn't it?Here's a resource on media reform.\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nEinzige, the truth, For example, the facts as discovered by a reporter, supported by two independent sources judged by the reporter and their editor to be reliable and truly independent and published after this process is complete. The truth relied on by voters to cast an informed vote is the product of hearing these truths, and in much rarer circumstances today, of reading it. You remember, the kind of thing the media used to do before they were allowed to not serve the public interest.The Fairness Doctrine was not content regulation, it was content neutral except in that a broadcaster couldn't slant their content to a particular side. It didn't matter what side it was. Isn't the assertion that \"the press must serve the interests of Democracy\" an explicit declaration that its content must be regulated?Whatever else it might be, it's a simple matter of fact that an uninformed public or one that is kept from knowing reality will be unable to govern themselves and almost certainly some form of despotism will gladly step into the vacuum. Unless the press serves the interest of democracy it will lose freedom of the press which only exists within the framework of a democracy. If the press lies to the public, they won't be able to print things the despot that results doesn't want them to. Freedom of the press is something you use or you lose. And, in the process, we all do.Jim Lippard, there is media and then there is media. The media that is most effective, that the most people get their \"news\" from is the media that really matters politically. The oligarchs of the United States have been perfecting the art of controlling that media and using it to marginalize other media, ridiculing reality and making it respectable, in effect. It really doesn't have much of a political effect if an under-financed, tiny magazine publishes the truth if it's drowned out by the voices of the corporate state. I'd say TV and right-wing talk radio have had such a damaging effect on the population that it will take a lot of work to fix the damage to democracy. Ideology is no substitute for facing reality. Democracy is about extinct and it is the unregulated media that has killed it. By the way, Einzige, before this goes on much father, you are the first to call names on this thread.\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nWhom did I call what name?\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-24):\nI also would suggest that the profit driven orientation of corporate media contributes to the news as entertainment angle of the news. Last night O'Reilly (can you tell hating him is my hobby-horse?)cited his ratings to \"prove\" NBC hates America.What we need is journalists who are willing to live by these principles and editors/publishers who believe in them and put principle before profit.I can't recommend THe Elements of Journalism highly enough. I think every citizen should read it (it only takes an afternoon.)\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nEinzige, sorry for the imprecision, I had an appointment to call someone at 2:00 my time, 11 on this blog so I was sloppy in my phrasing. I should have said the first to make disparaging, personal remarks.\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nAnd this could read, ridiculing reality and making it un-respectable, in effect.\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nAs near as I can figure it, you are considering my assertion that I think a belief in socialism is complete lunacy to be a disparaging personal remark. Right?Well... um... okay, I guess.\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nSo,you were implying I was a lunatic but you meant it in the nicest possible way. Interesting, as Mr. Spock might have said. Just for your information, the socialism comes from my experience that unregulated capitalism is a danger to democracy. Democracy is the basic value, socialism is just in support of democracy. I'd have to say that anyone who witnessed the last thirty years in the United States and didn't think the situation of relying on markets to provide people with the information they need to cast an informed vote has been out in the moonlight too long. It is sheer silliness to believe that markets, when able won't propagandize people in the direction of their own financial interest. Anyone who had experienced advertising and not realized that probably shouldn't be allowed to handle significant amounts of money.\nEinzige (2007-10-24):\nYou might be interested in my critique of democracy, here.If democracy is the basic value, then should whatever gets decided in a democracy automatically be considered \"just\"?I vehemently disagree that there has been such a thing as \"unregulated capitalism\" in this country in the last 30 years.It is sheer silliness to believe that governments, when able, won't propagandize people in the direction of their own financial interest.Unlike governments, the \"market\" is a pure abstraction. As such, \"it\" doesn't exist in such a way that \"it\" can \"propagandize\" anything. The \"market\" is you and me and everyone else, too.\nLippard (2007-10-24):\nThe media that most people get their news from has changed several times in the last century and I believe it's in the process of changing again.Newspapers-\u003eradio-\u003eBroadcast television-\u003eCable television-\u003eInternetActually, all of these are in the process of merging into Internet-provided media.Don't underestimate peer production of content. I think we're going to start seeing more and more cases of Internet peer-produced media hitting mainstream consumers (bubbling up from thousands/millions of niche audiences along the \"long tail\").\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nIf democracy is the basic value, then should whatever gets decided in a democracy automatically be considered \"just\"?Only if you are the victim of habitual all-or-nothing thinking. In order for democracy to be superior to the alternatives it only has to be better, not perfect. Seems I heard someone say something like that before. What's your alternative?As you can see from my part in this I recognize that democracy depends on an informed citizenry, it also depends on a sense of the common good and of basic justice and equality. I have to say that this exchange has pointed something out to me about which I'm going to be writing at length. It is sheer silliness to believe that governments, when able, won't propagandize people in the direction of their own financial interest.The CBC which is solely funded by the Canadian government is many times more critical of the government than the commercial American media is of Republican governments here. The BBC used to be much more critical, though its performance is more uneven. Many of the European national services do a far better job than the American corporate media do in reporting the news. For crying out loud, before it was ruined under Reagan the VOA did a better job than the commercial media does and its mandate was to promote the United States. Again, it's that all-or-nothing thinking getting in the way of the real world. It's the cost of an ideological way of looking at things. \"The Market\" is in no way pure, even Adam Smith knew that given the chance most capitalists will rig the thing in their favor. I think it wasn't Marx who pointed out that not only would they, the market is bound to reward those who do rig things in their favor and to the loss of most people. Your definition of The Market as all of us is chamber of commerce piety, it's hogwash in reality. The highest profit at the lowest cost, WalMart junk instead of jobs at living wages. Wow, what a deal. The Market doesn't propagandize? You do own a TV, don't you?\nolvlzl (2007-10-24):\nJim Lippard, How many people get their news from the internet? How many from print? Now, compare that to those who get it from TV and radio. And what internet sources are they using? If it's FOX or MSNBC they might as well be getting the lies through their ears. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=282\nLippard (2007-10-25):\nolvlzl: A *growing* number of people get their news from the Internet, especially among younger people. Sources like blogs are more and more frequently breaking stories that are then picked up by the mainstream media.AT\u0026T, Verizon, and Qwest are already offering digital television over the same physical circuits they use for Internet to the home, as are the cable companies.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/how-bill-clinton-set-stage-for-george-w.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/clinton_bush_and_executive_pow.php\"\u003epresents some of the evidence that Clinton\u0026rsquo;s presidency differed in degree, not kind, from Bush\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf you despise the Bush administration for weakening constitutional protections, zealously increasing executive authority and weakening the checks and balances inherent in our constitutional scheme, preferring secrecy to accountability, being in the pocket of big business and sending American troops on one foreign military adventure after another, you should recognize that the Clinton administration that preceded this one differed only by degree, not kind, on those matters. And there is little reason to believe that a second Clinton administration would be all that much better.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAll the President\u0026rsquo;s Spin\u003c/span\u003e, by the folks who ran the Spinsanity.com blog during Bush\u0026rsquo;s first term, makes a similar point about how Clinton managed the media.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was under Clinton that we got not one but two attempts to censor the Internet with the Communications Decency Act.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the other hand, there were far fewer American lives lost in military action and we did get the export controls on encryption loosened, so that users of PGP didn\u0026rsquo;t become criminal exporters of munitions just by carrying a laptop to another country.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn a conversation last week, a friend of mine suggested that Hillary Clinton will win the presidency and will demonstrate her military hawkishness by doing something like invading Syria, and will end up making followers out of the right-wingers who currently hate her, ultimately sending us further down the road towards fascism and complete disregard for the rule of law.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. Bush"},{"content":"Passiveaggressivenotes.com.\nTrott (2007-10-21):\nIt always bugs me, when I go to that blog, that most of the notes are not passive aggressive. They are merely aggressive, which is still plenty entertaining; I just wish people would use phrases/words like passive aggressive, literally, and begs the question appropriately. I guess I'm just a horrible prescriptivist.\nLippard (2007-10-21):\nIs the argument perhaps that the passivity comes into it because it's being communicated through a note?BTW, regarding \"literally,\" there's a blog just for that, which perhaps you've already seen...\nAlisonM (2007-10-29):\nI think it's funny enough to forgive the mistake. I can get pretty nit-picky about language mistakes, but I like to allow some leeway for particularly clever folks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/another-amusing-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://passiveaggressivenotes.com/\"\u003ePassiveaggressivenotes.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eTrott\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt always bugs me, when I go to that blog, that most of the notes are not passive aggressive.  They are merely aggressive, which is still plenty entertaining; I just wish people would use phrases/words like \u003cI\u003epassive aggressive\u003c/I\u003e, \u003cI\u003eliterally\u003c/I\u003e, and \u003cI\u003ebegs the question\u003c/I\u003e appropriately.  I guess I'm just a horrible prescriptivist.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIs the argument perhaps that the passivity comes into it because it's being communicated through a note?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eBTW, regarding \"literally,\" there's \u003cA HREF=\"http://literally.barelyfitz.com/\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ea blog just for that\u003c/A\u003e, which perhaps you've already seen...\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another amusing blog"},{"content":"\nAs we set off to take our dogs for a walk down the Highline Canal this morning, we ran into this hound dog coming towards us in the opposite direction. He has a collar, but no tags. He\u0026rsquo;s friendly and well-fed, and (surprisingly for this neighborhood) a neutered male. We\u0026rsquo;ve put him in our front yard and given him water, and put his photo up on Pets911.com. With any luck, his owners are somewhere nearby. (If they\u0026rsquo;re close enough, they should be hearing his distinctive hound bark\u0026hellip;)\nUPDATE (1:30 p.m.): His owner put a \u0026ldquo;lost dog\u0026rdquo; ad on azcentral.com that we just found, and came and got him. He normally has tags, but they came off when he got out about a week ago.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-10-20):\nCheers for picking up the dog. I always admire such stories, having lost one too many dogs and nobody kind enough to save him.\nLippard (2007-10-20):\nThanks, Dan.BTW, this dog's breed is a \"treeing Walker coonhound.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/yet-another-dog-found.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PA200005.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PA200005.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123499455130446418\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs we set off to take our dogs for a walk down the Highline Canal this morning, we ran into this hound dog coming towards us in the opposite direction.  He has a collar, but no tags.  He\u0026rsquo;s friendly and well-fed, and (surprisingly for this neighborhood) a neutered male. We\u0026rsquo;ve put him in our front yard and given him water, and put his photo up on Pets911.com.  With any luck, his owners are somewhere nearby.  (If they\u0026rsquo;re close enough, they should be hearing his distinctive hound bark\u0026hellip;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (1:30 p.m.):  His owner put a \u0026ldquo;lost dog\u0026rdquo; ad on azcentral.com that we just found, and came and got him.  He normally has tags, but they came off when he got out about a week ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yet another dog found"},{"content":"The Maricopa County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office last night arrested Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, owners of the Phoenix alternative newspaper New Times, for publishing a story under their bylines which revealed the contents of a grand jury subpoena received by the paper. Revealing the contents of a subpoena is a misdemeanor.\nLacey and Larkin, who have long battled with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas, wrote a story about the subpoena because they considered it an attack on the freedom of the press. The subpoena demanded records relating to all visitors to the New Times website over the last four years, including information about what websites they visited prior to the New Times website (i.e., referral URLs)\u0026ndash;essentially, the request is for the complete website logs for the newspaper\u0026rsquo;s website for the last three years. It also demanded reporters\u0026rsquo; notes and any other documents pertaining to stories about Arpaio for the last three years.\nLacey and Larkin wrote that they believed their article to violate the law, but they published it as a form of civil disobedience in order to challenge the unconstitutional abuses of Arpaio, Thomas, and prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik.\nThe trigger for the events which led to the subpoena (and the apparent event of interest given the dates in the subpoena) appears to be a New Times article from July 8, 2004 which commented on Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s commercial real estate investments and ended with Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s home address, but the paper\u0026rsquo;s criticism of Arpaio for mismanagement, inmate deaths, and grandstanding in front of TV cameras goes back many years more.\nSheriff Joe used to have a dialup Internet account with Primenet, my former employer. At one point one of his assistants, Lisa Allen, contacted Primenet to attempt to get information about a subscriber who had left a critical comment on his website, without a subpoena. We declined to provide such information without a subpoena.\nUPDATE (October 19, 2007): County Attorney Andrew Thomas has announced that he has dropped the charges against New Times and dismissed special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik.\nUPDATE (November 13, 2007): New Times ran an October 25 followup story.\nUPDATE (October 28, 2008): It has come out that the order for Lacey and Larkin\u0026rsquo;s arrest was given by Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s chief deputy David Hendershott, whom Arpaio allowed to retire so he could receive a $43,000/year pension, and hired him back as a civilian at his same $120,000/year salary. Hendershott now makes $177,486/year working for Arpaio.\nolvlzl (2007-10-20):\nIt's illegal for someone to reveal the contents of a subpoena issued to themselves? I'd never known that. How come all the media shills who have been subpoenaed, the Hollywood dross, etc. not been prosecuted? It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Arpaio is doing this, the man's made himself famous by what I believe most reasonable people would consider fascistic behavior. Have you ever heard of an honest fascist? Piracy is the morality of the best of them.\nLippard (2007-10-20):\nolvlzl: I don't think it's illegal to reveal the contents of a criminal subpoena if you are the one being charged with the crime.However, in this case it's a grand jury subpoena which must be kept secret. I don't think I emphasized that this was a grand jury subpoena enough in the posting, as you're not the first person to miss it.Civil subpoenas I don't believe have any secrecy requirements. Criminal subpoenas issued to a third party often require that the recipient not disclose the existence of the subpoena except as required to respond to it. National Security Letters (created by the USA PATRIOT Act) are even stricter (though I believe those are currently, again, unconstitutional, as they well should be).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/sheriff-joe-arrests-owners-of-new-times.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Maricopa County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office last night \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1019newtimes1019.html\"\u003earrested Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, owners of the Phoenix alternative newspaper \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, for publishing a story under their bylines which revealed the contents of a grand jury subpoena received by the paper.  Revealing the contents of a subpoena is a misdemeanor.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLacey and Larkin, who have long battled with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas, wrote \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-10-18/news/breathtaking-abuse-of-the-constitution/\"\u003ea story about the subpoena\u003c/a\u003e because they considered it an attack on the freedom of the press.  The subpoena demanded records relating to all visitors to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e website over the last four years, including information about what websites they visited prior to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e website (i.e., referral URLs)\u0026ndash;essentially, the request is for the complete website logs for the newspaper\u0026rsquo;s website for the last three years.  It also demanded reporters\u0026rsquo; notes and any other documents pertaining to stories about Arpaio for the last three years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLacey and Larkin wrote that they believed their article to violate the law, but they published it as a form of civil disobedience in order to challenge the unconstitutional abuses of Arpaio, Thomas, and prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe trigger for the events which led to the subpoena (and the apparent event of interest given the dates in the subpoena) appears to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2004-07-08/news/stick-it-to-em/\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e article from July 8, 2004\u003c/a\u003e which commented on Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s commercial real estate investments and ended with Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s home address, but the paper\u0026rsquo;s criticism of Arpaio for mismanagement, inmate deaths, and grandstanding in front of TV cameras goes back many years more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSheriff Joe used to have a dialup Internet account with Primenet, my former employer.  At one point one of his assistants, Lisa Allen, contacted Primenet to attempt to get information about a subscriber who had left a critical comment on his website, without a subpoena.  We declined to provide such information without a subpoena.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 19, 2007): County Attorney Andrew Thomas \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1019new-times1019-ON-CR.html\"\u003ehas announced that he has dropped the charges against \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e and dismissed special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 13, 2007): \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e ran \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-10-25/news/who-s-sorry-now/\"\u003ean October 25 followup story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 28, 2008): It has come out that \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/10/28/20081028arrests1028.html\"\u003ethe order for Lacey and Larkin\u0026rsquo;s arrest was given by Arpaio\u0026rsquo;s chief deputy David Hendershott\u003c/a\u003e, whom Arpaio allowed to retire so he could receive a $43,000/year pension, and hired him back as a civilian at his same $120,000/year salary.  Hendershott now makes $177,486/year working for Arpaio.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sheriff Joe arrests owners of New Times"},{"content":"Altria Group\u0026rsquo;s moving its headquarters from New York City means that it will cease supporting the arts in New York, to the tune of $7 million a year. Altria funded over 200 groups in the city and was \u0026ldquo;the most reliable source of corporate funds for the city\u0026rsquo;s dance companies, art museums, and theaters for over 40 years, consistently ranking as the top giver each year,\u0026rdquo; according to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, in a blog post titled \u0026ldquo;Arts Groups Addicted to Smoking.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/altrias-departure-from-nyc-means-loss.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAltria Group\u0026rsquo;s moving its headquarters from New York City means that it will cease supporting the arts in New York, to the tune of $7 million a year.  Altria funded over 200 groups in the city and was \u0026ldquo;the most reliable source of corporate funds for the city\u0026rsquo;s dance companies, art museums, and theaters for over 40 years, consistently ranking as the top giver each year,\u0026rdquo; according to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, in \u003ca href=\"http://www.trentstampstake.org/2007/10/arts-groups-addicted-to-smoking.html\"\u003ea blog post titled \u0026ldquo;Arts Groups Addicted to Smoking.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Altria's departure from NYC means loss of arts funding"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;d like to know what happened after this clip ends.\nBambi-Scruffy - The funniest videos clips are here\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/where-deer-and-dog-play.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to know what happened after this clip ends.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/842726/bambi_scruffy.swf\" width=\"400\" height=\"345\" wmode=\"transparent\" pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\"\u003e \u003c/embed\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cfont size = 1\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.metacafe.com/watch/842726/bambi_scruffy/\"\u003eBambi-Scruffy\u003c/a\u003e - \u003ca href=\"http://www.metacafe.com/\"\u003eThe funniest videos clips are here\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/font\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where the deer and the dog play"},{"content":"Pirate attacks are up 14%!\n(Explanation.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/good-news-for-global-warming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/10161015pirateattacks.html\"\u003ePirate attacks are up 14%!\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.venganza.org/2007/06/24/cincinnati-beacon.htm\"\u003eExplanation\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Good news for global warming"},{"content":"At Salon, Steve Paulson interviews Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein about their relationship, their work, and their atheism.\n(Hat tip to Wade Smith on the SKEPTIC list.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-10-16):\nJim,I find much to disagree with in your assessment of Pinker in this post.:-)\nolvlzl (2007-10-16):\nI used Steven Pinker's voice for Professor Lockheart when I read my niece the second Harry Potter book. Other than that he's pretty useless. There, does that satisfy you, Einzige?\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nolvlzl,In the sense that you and your funhouse mirror through a cloudy lens view of the world is endlessly entertaining--yes, I am quite satisfied.\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nOops. I fucked up the verb in that sentence--and just after my English lesson from olvlzl, too.How embarassing!\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-16):\nGreat! Now I remembered that I've been meaning to read her book on Spinoza.\nolvlzl (2007-10-16):\nyour funhouse mirror through a cloudy lens view of the world is endlessly entertaining-Odd, I was under the impression you weren't having any fun. Maybe it's Pinker's hair that put you in the carnival mood. I don't think a charge of distortion or fuzzy thinking is exactly accurate. Though I am rather inclined to acknowledge the limits of human reasoning and knowledge. Perhaps its the insistence on real standards of skepticism instead of a pre-ordained program of attitudes and assumptions, not to mention platitudes, that causes the misunderstanding. You know, I have been accused of being too nit-picky on atheist-skeptic blogs in the past.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/proud-atheists-salon-interview-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Salon, Steve Paulson \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/15/pinker_goldstein/print.html\"\u003einterviews Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein about their relationship, their work, and their atheism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Wade Smith on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eJim,\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI find much to disagree with in your assessment of Pinker in this post.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eolvlzl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI used Steven Pinker's voice for Professor Lockheart when I read my niece the second Harry Potter book.  Other than that he's pretty useless. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThere, does that satisfy you, Einzige?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proud atheists: Salon interview with Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein"},{"content":"Chris Hallquist takes a look at the different versions of Josh McDowell\u0026rsquo;s testimony about being a former atheist who set out to disprove Christianity only to become a Christian, a finds some reasons to doubt its accuracy, as well as the quality of McDowell\u0026rsquo;s research.\nUPDATE (January 2, 2009): Vinny at You Call This Culture? notes that McDowell doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have actually been converted to Christianity on the basis of evidence:\nCommenting on the Hallquist post, self-identified Christian apologist Kevin H said that he had spoken with McDowell about the matter:He\u0026rsquo;s the kind of guy who is amused at all that is said about him. I noticed\nhe was quick to correct falsehoods. For example, he told me that the evidence\nfor Christianity was a \u0026ldquo;foot in the door\u0026rdquo; that kept him from immediately closing\nit. But it was the love of God that drew him. It seems he knows, whether his\nfault or the fault of the swirling influence of his books and speaking tours,\nthat people have the conception that he was forced into faith by irresistable\narguments.\nHis reading made him realize he could not initially write off Christianity from an intellectual standpoint. But it was a verse in Jeremiah that got to him: \u0026ldquo;I have loved you with an everlasting love\u0026rdquo;. (Jer. 31:3). So why would McDowell post statements like he does on his website? There is a big difference between \u0026ldquo;finding so much evidence you can only come to one conclusion\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;realizing you can\u0026rsquo;t initially write off Christianity from an intellectual standpoint.\u0026rdquo; My answer would be that McDowell knows what sells. McDowell knows that the story of an atheist overwhelmed by the evidence sells books and books speaking engagements, and probably most importantly to McDowell, it persuades unbelievers to accept Christ. The story of an atheist who merely gets his foot in the door is not nearly as dramatic. Story tellers tell their stories in the way that produces the desired effect.\nEd Babinski notes in comments on Vinny\u0026rsquo;s blog post that Josh McDowell Ministries has, in response to queries, suggested that McDowell was not an atheist:\nRESPONSE TO SHARON (WHO ASKED A SIMILAR QUESTION) FROM JOSH MCDOWELL MINISTRIES\nDear Sharon, Josh says in his tract, \u0026ldquo;Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Quest,\u0026rdquo; that he was looking for meaning and purpose in life. He had tried religion when he was young but could not find the answers he was searching for. What he did not know until he was in college was that it is a relationship with Jesus Christ, rather than religion, which gives meaning and purpose to life.\nHe does not use the word atheist in the tract, but set out to prove Christianity false. Instead of being able to do that, he came to the following three conclusions: Jesus Christ was who He said He was, there is historic evidence for the reliability of Scripture, and the Resurrection of Christ took place.\nIn His service,\nPenny Woods\nJosh McDowell Ministry\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2007-10-16):\nJudging his accuracy about some of this is possible, though the results seem to be rather open to doubt themselves. He might be lying, embroidering, fudging (as almost everyone does every time), or the victim of some kind of self-deception. All of which might confirm you in your accessment of what he's saying about himself, though it's just about certainly not going to interrupt his success in doing whatever it is he's doing.The big question should be, since he is claiming a conversion to Christianity, which holds that Jesus' teachings have the power of divine commandments, is he living as Jesus said one of his followers had to. Is he forgiving his enemies and praying for them seventy times seven times, is he judging other people, how is he treating the least among us. There are actual standards of conduct that are required and those can be looked at much less ambiguously than the memories lost to time.I'm not entirely in agreement with Bertrand Russell's statement about memories and that emotional content would tend to make them more unreliable. I suspect he got that from the contemporary psychology of his time, which was mostly unscientific garbage. If a desired result was enough to impeach the reliability of something than just about every single scholarly and scientific publication would fall into the same doubt. Is there anything more wished for than a publishable result or finding? I'm not happy to have to say it but I think the rise of psychology has had a remarkably negative effect on people trusting reality with very little evidence to back up its claims. I found this pamphlet interesting. http://www.pendlehill.org/resources/files/free%20downloads%20pages/php046.php\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\n\"All of which might confirm you in your accessment of what he's saying about himself...\"olvlzl, would you mind quoting that part of Jim's post that you consider to be an \"assessment\" of something?\nolvlzl (2007-10-16):\nEinzige, you do realize that in English \"you\" is both singular and plural. Alas, the old Quakers were about the last to use the second person singular form. I'd refer you to the post linked to, especially the end which begins...So maybe McDowell did something stupid and didn't tell anyone about it for a long time. I'm not really convinced--though college students are often naive, and McDowell doesn't come across as the sort of guy who has such an amazing intellect...Jim Lippard says that it found \"some reasons to doubt its accuracy, as well as the quality of McDowell's research\". Doubts are obvious here, though I don't think you are going to clear them up. I also doubt that it will be worth the effort if disrupting his career is your goal. But you can spend your time any old way you want to.\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nSince you're responding to something that is written by someone else and posted on their own blog, perhaps--and note this is simply my humble opinion--if you're interested in having your comments and use of personal pronouns better understood, then it would make far more sense to post those comments at the source author's blog, or else utilize proper nouns in your writing--especially since there's no guarantee that Chris Hallquist will even read your comment here.The phrase of Jim's that you quoted is not an \"assessment\" in any sense I am familiar with, though it may be an \"accessment\". I don't know.\nolvlzl (2007-10-16):\nEinzige, I don't like to spread myself too thin. If the owners of this blog would rather I didn't post here they are free to tell me and I will discontinue without further comment, here or elsewhere.\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nolvlzl,Yet again you infuse meaning into comments far beyond what is called for.I certainly didn't say that I'd rather you didn't post here. Please pay close attention and do not add or subtract anything from/to what I have written or will write. You'll save us all a lot of aggravation, believe me.To reiterate and simplify what I said before: If you are interested in being understood better, then being less vague and more targeted in your comment location is warranted.I think it's fair for readers to assume that comments made on this blog refer to posts made on this blog. Don't you?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/josh-mcdowells-conversion-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Hallquist \u003ca href=\"http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-i-know-about-josh-mcdowell.html\"\u003etakes a look at the different versions of Josh McDowell\u0026rsquo;s testimony about being a former atheist who set out to disprove Christianity only to become a Christian\u003c/a\u003e, a finds some reasons to doubt its accuracy, as well as the quality of McDowell\u0026rsquo;s research.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 2, 2009): Vinny at You Call This Culture? \u003ca href=\"http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-stories-change-or-those-pesky.html\"\u003enotes that McDowell doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have actually been converted to Christianity on the basis of evidence\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCommenting on the \u003ca href=\"http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-i-know-about-josh-mcdowell.html\"\u003eHallquist post\u003c/a\u003e, self-identified Christian apologist Kevin H said that he had spoken with McDowell about the matter:\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s the kind of guy who is amused at all that is said about him. I noticed\u003cbr /\u003ehe was quick to correct falsehoods. For example, he told me that the evidence\u003cbr /\u003efor Christianity was a \u0026ldquo;foot in the door\u0026rdquo; that kept him from immediately closing\u003cbr /\u003eit. But it was the love of God that drew him. It seems he knows, whether his\u003cbr /\u003efault or the fault of the swirling influence of his books and speaking tours,\u003cbr /\u003ethat people have the conception that he was forced into faith by irresistable\u003cbr /\u003earguments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Josh McDowell's conversion to Christianity"},{"content":" When Kat got home from work and let the dogs out, she heard an additional dog barking in the backyard. It turned out to be this puppy, perhaps two months old, which somehow got into our fenced yard.\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nThat's odd! Do you suppose that whoever left it had some idea that you were associated with RESCUE?Is the puppy healthy, at least?He's definitely cute.\nLippard (2007-10-16):\nHe was pretty dirty, but seems healthy and tick-free.We think he might have gotten into our backyard from the canal--there is a place in the fence where a dog that small could fit through.I'd say it's likely he was intentionally dumped, but whether he was put in our yard because we are known as animal rescue people or if he was just dumped by the canal (which wouldn't be the first time), I'm not sure.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/yet-another-puppy-found.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PA150015.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PA150015.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121757197351856706\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e When Kat got home from work and let the dogs out, she heard an additional dog barking in the backyard.  It turned out to be this puppy, perhaps two months old, which somehow got into our fenced yard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PA150011.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PA150011.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121757059912903218\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat's odd! Do you suppose that whoever left it had some idea that you were associated with RESCUE?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIs the puppy healthy, at least?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHe's definitely cute.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yet another puppy found"},{"content":"On Saturday, December 1, the Internet Infidels will be holding their annual face-to-face board meeting in Phoenix. After the board meeting attendees have dinner, there will be a social event at our home. If you\u0026rsquo;re a Phoenix-area supporter of the Internet Infidels or otherwise identify yourself as an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, skeptic, humanist, rationalist, or bright, you\u0026rsquo;re welcome to attend. Please RSVP in order to obtain details and directions, by contacting ii-event at discord.org.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-10-16):\nAlas, I will be in Los Angeles that weekend. I'm sorry to miss it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/internet-infidels-social-event.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Saturday, December 1, the Internet Infidels will be holding their annual face-to-face board meeting in Phoenix.  After the board meeting attendees have dinner, there will be a social event at our home.  If you\u0026rsquo;re a Phoenix-area supporter of the Internet Infidels or otherwise identify yourself as an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, skeptic, humanist, rationalist, or bright, you\u0026rsquo;re welcome to attend.  Please RSVP in order to obtain details and directions, by contacting ii-event at discord.org.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internet Infidels social event"},{"content":"A friend who took his family to the Arizona State Fair noticed a booth from the Arizona Origins Science Association last night, and so pointed me to their website. A featured link on the front page says:\nHave you been taught or indoctrinated?\n- Take a test\n- View the answers\nThe test answers show that this group uncritically accepts bad arguments, such as bogus arguments for a young earth (including making up the nonexistent isotope Po 234), claiming that the extinct pig\u0026rsquo;s tooth of \u0026ldquo;Nebraska man\u0026rdquo; was ever accepted scientific evidence for human evolution, claiming that because Peking Man and Java Man are now classified as Homo erectus that it\u0026rsquo;s purely \u0026ldquo;human\u0026rdquo; and thus not evidence for evolution, claiming that Australopithecus afarensis is no different from a chimpanzee or bonobo, claiming that all radiometric dating methods are based on untestable assumptions while ignoring the internal checks provided by isochron dating and comparisons of multiple methods where their view has no explanation for agreement, claiming that there are no known beneficial mutations, claiming that index fossils and the ages of geologic strata are the only things used to mutually validate each other, and so on.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s as if they\u0026rsquo;ve never seen the talk.origins website or the index of creationist claims.\nThe president of the group, Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Jr., was previously mentioned on this blog as one of the five Darwin-denying doctors in Arizona who has signed on as a supporter of the anti-evolution \u0026ldquo;Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE: Of special interest on the Arizona Origins Science Association website are responses to surveys about creationism that they sent to various Arizona churches. I was quite pleased to see that many local churches have given responses that challenge AZOSA\u0026rsquo;s young-earth creationism.\nFor example, the response from Dale Hallberg, Lead Pastor at Esperanza Lutheran Church, writes a comment on the statement \u0026ldquo;The Earth is relatively young (ten thousand or less years old)\u0026quot; (PDF) after marking it \u0026ldquo;D\u0026rdquo; for disagree: \u0026ldquo;Get serious!\u0026quot;\nFr. William K. Young of St. Christopher\u0026rsquo;s Episcopal Church, in response to the statement \u0026ldquo;A person must accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior to be saved from eternal separation from God,\u0026rdquo; marks it \u0026ldquo;D\u0026rdquo; and comments (PDF) \u0026ldquo;If so, God help us all!\u0026quot;\nDr. Roger Miller, interim pastor at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, added an entire page of comments (PDF) on the survey after he had viewed AZOSA\u0026rsquo;s website, and writes (in part) that \u0026ldquo;Sadly, fundamentalism is, per solid research, a demonstration of limited cognitive complexity capacity. Your work, though spirited and apologetically well intentioned, shows both limited understanding of scripture and archaeology. As an M.D., I would hope you\u0026rsquo;d spend time working for universal healthcare and lower prescription drug costs and leave the theological work to those so trained and the science to those trained in their fields.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/arizona-origins-science-association.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA friend who took his family to the Arizona State Fair noticed a booth from the Arizona Origins Science Association last night, and so pointed me to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/\"\u003etheir website\u003c/a\u003e.  A featured link on the front page says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"\u003e                                 \u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eHave you been\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 255);\"\u003e taught \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:black;\"\u003e            or\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 255);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e                                                 indoctrinated?\u003cbr /\u003e                                         \u003c/span\u003e           \u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:maroon;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e- \u003c/span\u003e                                             \u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/Test.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eTake a test\u003cbr /\u003e                                         \u003c/span\u003e           \u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e- \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/TestAnswers.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eView the answers\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003eThe test answers show that this group uncritically accepts bad arguments, such as bogus arguments for a young earth (including making up the nonexistent isotope Po 234), claiming that the extinct pig\u0026rsquo;s tooth of \u0026ldquo;Nebraska man\u0026rdquo; was ever accepted scientific evidence for human evolution, claiming that because Peking Man and Java Man are now classified as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHomo erectus\u003c/span\u003e that it\u0026rsquo;s purely \u0026ldquo;human\u0026rdquo; and thus not evidence for evolution, claiming that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAustralopithecus afarensis\u003c/span\u003e is no different from a chimpanzee or bonobo, claiming that all radiometric dating methods are based on untestable assumptions while ignoring the internal checks provided by isochron dating and comparisons of multiple methods where their view has no explanation for agreement, claiming that there are no known beneficial mutations, claiming that index fossils and the ages of geologic strata are the only things used to mutually validate each other, and so on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s as if they\u0026rsquo;ve never seen \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003ethe talk.origins website\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/\"\u003ethe index of creationist claims\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe president of the group, Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Jr., \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/arizona-doctors-who-question-evolution.html\"\u003ewas previously mentioned on this blog\u003c/a\u003e as one of the five Darwin-denying doctors in Arizona who has signed on as a supporter of the anti-evolution \u0026ldquo;Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Of special interest on the Arizona Origins Science Association website are responses to surveys about creationism that they sent to various Arizona churches.  I was quite pleased to see that many local churches have given responses that challenge AZOSA\u0026rsquo;s young-earth creationism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor example, the response from Dale Hallberg, Lead Pastor at Esperanza Lutheran Church, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/Surveys%5C85048%20Esperanza%20Lutheran%20Church.pdf\"\u003ewrites a comment on the statement \u0026ldquo;The Earth is relatively young (ten thousand or less years old)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) after marking it \u0026ldquo;D\u0026rdquo; for disagree:  \u0026ldquo;Get serious!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFr. William K. Young of St. Christopher\u0026rsquo;s Episcopal Church, in response to the statement \u0026ldquo;A person must accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior to be saved from eternal separation from God,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/Surveys%5C85351%20St%20Christophers%20Episcopal%20Church.pdf\"\u003emarks it \u0026ldquo;D\u0026rdquo; and comments\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) \u0026ldquo;If so, God help us all!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Roger Miller, interim pastor at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azosa.org/Surveys%5C85281%20First%20Congregational%20Church%20of%20Tempe.pdf\"\u003eadded an entire page of comments\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) on the survey after he had viewed AZOSA\u0026rsquo;s website, and writes (in part) that \u0026ldquo;Sadly, fundamentalism is, per solid research, a demonstration of limited cognitive complexity capacity.  Your work, though spirited and apologetically well intentioned, shows both limited understanding of scripture and archaeology.  As an M.D., I would hope you\u0026rsquo;d spend time working for universal healthcare and lower prescription drug costs and leave the theological work to those so trained and the science to those trained in their fields.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Origins Science Association promotes long-discredited nonsense"},{"content":"Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, found guilty of insider trading in April, is claiming in his appeal that part of the reason Qwest stock dropped in value is that the NSA cancelled some lucrative contracts with the company as punishment for its failure to cooperate in illegal warrantless wiretapping (unlike AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon).\nThe Bush administration is pushing for retroactive immunity to be granted to AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon for its participation in these unconstitutional programs by threatening to veto any surveillance bill that doesn\u0026rsquo;t include such immunity. If the Democrats were smart, they\u0026rsquo;d go ahead and send him a surveillance bill without the immunity, and then criticize him when he vetoes it for taking action that is going to kill Americans.\nHistorical Comments Diocletian Blobb (2007-10-16):\nIf this is really the case, though, then I'd like to see Qwest sue the government for lost revenue. Discovery in that kind of litigation would be very interesting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/nacchio-says-government-punished-qwest.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, found guilty of insider trading in April, is claiming in his appeal that part of the reason Qwest stock dropped in value is that \u003ca href=\"http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/qwest-ex-ceo-says-feds-punished/story.aspx?guid=%7BEA55E07E-79BF-4DBB-BE89-DE832F079DAD%7D\u0026amp;dist=hplatest\"\u003ethe NSA cancelled some lucrative contracts with the company as punishment for its failure to cooperate in illegal warrantless wiretapping\u003c/a\u003e (unlike AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Bush administration is pushing for \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9796284-38.html?part=rss\u0026amp;tag=feed\u0026amp;subj=TheIconoclast\"\u003eretroactive immunity to be granted to AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon\u003c/a\u003e for its participation in these unconstitutional programs by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorist-Surveillance.html?_r=2\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ethreatening to veto any surveillance bill that doesn\u0026rsquo;t include such immunity\u003c/a\u003e.  If the Democrats were smart, they\u0026rsquo;d go ahead and send him a surveillance bill without the immunity, and then criticize him when he vetoes it for \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9795316-38.html?part=rss\u0026amp;tag=feed\u0026amp;subj=TheIconoclast\"\u003etaking action that is going to kill Americans\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nacchio says government punished Qwest for noncooperation on eavesdropping"},{"content":"CIA Director (and former head of the NSA) Gen. Michael Hayden is unhappy with CIA Inspector General John Helgerson\u0026rsquo;s work uncovering abuses at the CIA, so he\u0026rsquo;s ordered his own investigation of the IG, including an examination of the office\u0026rsquo;s confidential files. That\u0026rsquo;s sure to put a chill on employee cooperation with or reporting of abuses to the IG\u0026rsquo;s office.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/cia-head-investigates-cia-inspector.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCIA Director (and former head of the NSA) Gen. Michael Hayden is unhappy with CIA Inspector General John Helgerson\u0026rsquo;s work uncovering abuses at the CIA, so \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004440.php\"\u003ehe\u0026rsquo;s ordered his own investigation of the IG\u003c/a\u003e, including an examination of the office\u0026rsquo;s confidential files.  That\u0026rsquo;s sure to put a chill on employee cooperation with or reporting of abuses to the IG\u0026rsquo;s office.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA head investigates CIA Inspector General"},{"content":"Lynn Brewer is a former Enron employee who claims she was an executive whistleblower, and has turned that into a career as a highly paid motivational speaker and founder of the Integrity Institute. But it turns out that she was never an executive, she worked in a clerical position writing summaries of gas and energy contracts. The document she claims was a memo in which she blew the whistle is a document her boss says she never saw and described an alleged financial transaction which she never would have done any work on. Her former VP, Tony Mends, says that Brewer was sent to the UK to train Enron employees on the use of Factiva, but she never showed up to conduct the training, instead traveling the UK with her fiance. She claims she had to stay outside of London because of a terrorist threat, but nobody else in the Enron office in London was kept from going to work.\nGreg Farrell at USA Today has done a great job of exposing Brewer\u0026rsquo;s claims and how she has capitalized on being confused for Sherron Watkins, who really was an Enron executive whistleblower.\nBrewer\u0026rsquo;s web page at \u0026ldquo;Speaker\u0026rsquo;s Spotlight\u0026rdquo; shows that she bills herself as \u0026ldquo;the\u0026rdquo; Enron whistleblower and is filled with misrepresentations:\nLynn Brewer\u0026rsquo;s notoriety stems from her actions that have dubbed her \u0026ldquo;the Enron Whistleblower\u0026rdquo;. Her accomplishments include: Author of Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblowers Story; Earning a Certification in Business Ethics from Colorado State University; Founder and President of The Integrity Institute, Inc., which assesses and certifies corporate integrity at the request of organizations for the benefit of their stakeholders.\nPrior to joining Enron, Brewer worked in forensic accounting and spent 18 years as a legal professional in private practice, until she joined Ralston Purina, where she worked in Corporate Development for the General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer.\nAs an executive at Enron, Ms. Brewer was responsible for Risk Management in Energy Operations, the e-Commerce initiatives for Enron\u0026rsquo;s water subsidiary, and Competitive Intelligence for Enron Broadband Services. Her responsibilities included financial derivatives and the now infamous \u0026ldquo;off-the-balance sheet\u0026rdquo; partnerships.\nDuring her nearly three-year tenure, she witnessed numerous instances of illegal and corrupt dealings, including bank fraud, espionage, power price manipulation and the gross overstatements to the press, public and financial world. When her attempts to notify those inside Enron of her knowledge failed, she notified the United States government, who refused to return her e-mails and telephone calls.\nSince leaving Enron, Lynn Brewer has become an internationally recognized speaker providing compelling details into Enron\u0026rsquo;s rise and fall, leaving audiences shocked when they realize how vulnerable they are to becoming the next Enron. A past nominee for the “Women of Influence” Award, Brewer was selected in 2006 for inclusion in the 25th Silver Anniversary Edition of Who’s Who of American Women for her contributions to society.Notice that she doesn\u0026rsquo;t give her actual title; her claim of being responsible for risk management as though she headed a risk management group is untrue. Her boss, Mary Solmonson, was a director, not an executive. Another boss, David Gossett, who reported to VP Mends, was also a director, not an executive.\nI suspect we\u0026rsquo;ll see more allegations and stories of deception by Brewer coming to light. I\u0026rsquo;d like to know if there\u0026rsquo;s any substance to her claim to have experience in the field of forensic accounting prior to working at Enron. Her 18 years experience \u0026ldquo;as a legal professional in private practice\u0026rdquo; really means she worked as a paralegal (which was apparently her role at Enron).\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an interview transcript where she misrepresents herself from the get-go, answering the question \u0026ldquo;what was your role at Enron\u0026rdquo; with:\nI was recruited about three years before the implosion of Enron, to head up a risk management group inside the legal department, that would brief, for senior management and the board of directors, these off the balance sheet partnerships at the centre of the scandal.She didn\u0026rsquo;t head up a risk management group. She didn\u0026rsquo;t brief senior management and the board of directors. She didn\u0026rsquo;t report on the off balance sheet partnerships at the center of the scandal, she wrote summaries of gas and energy contracts for managers.\nUPDATE (October 15, 2007): Lynn Brewer was known as EddieLynn Morgan (her maiden name) while she was at Enron, and her name appears in the \u0026ldquo;Enron corpus\u0026rdquo; of emails that were made public after the scandal. Studies of the Enron emails have been done to look at the web of interconnections between recipients, which show that EddieLynn Morgan was a very bit player\u0026ndash;she is the recipient of a total of four emails in the corpus, and the author of none.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-10-13):\nYet more weight for my contention that normative words used in the names of organizations are generally negatively correlated with how one might describe said organization's actual behavior.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/enron-whistleblower-who-wasnt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLynn Brewer is a former Enron employee who claims she was an executive whistleblower, and has turned that into a career as a highly paid motivational speaker and founder of the Integrity Institute.  But it turns out that she was never an executive, she worked in a clerical position writing summaries of gas and energy contracts.  The document she claims was a memo in which she blew the whistle is a document her boss says she never saw and described an alleged financial transaction which she never would have done any work on.  Her former VP, Tony Mends, says that Brewer was sent to the UK to train Enron employees on the use of Factiva, but she never showed up to conduct the training, instead traveling the UK with her fiance.  She claims she had to stay outside of London because of a terrorist threat, but nobody else in the Enron office in London was kept from going to work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGreg Farrell at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2007-10-11-enron-lynn-brewer_N.htm\"\u003ehas done a great job of exposing Brewer\u0026rsquo;s claims\u003c/a\u003e and how she has capitalized on being confused for Sherron Watkins, who really was an Enron executive whistleblower.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrewer\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.speakers.ca/brewer_lynn.aspx\"\u003eweb page at \u0026ldquo;Speaker\u0026rsquo;s Spotlight\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e shows that she bills herself as \u0026ldquo;the\u0026rdquo; Enron whistleblower and is filled with misrepresentations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eLynn Brewer\u0026rsquo;s notoriety stems from her actions that have dubbed her \u0026ldquo;the Enron Whistleblower\u0026rdquo;. Her accomplishments include: Author of \u003ci\u003eConfessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblowers Story\u003c/i\u003e; Earning a Certification in Business Ethics from Colorado State University; Founder and President of The Integrity Institute, Inc., which assesses and certifies corporate integrity at the request of organizations for the benefit of their stakeholders.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrior to joining Enron, Brewer worked in forensic accounting and spent 18 years as a legal professional in private practice, until she joined Ralston Purina, where she worked in Corporate Development for the General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs an executive at Enron, Ms. Brewer was responsible for Risk Management in Energy Operations, the e-Commerce initiatives for Enron\u0026rsquo;s water subsidiary, and Competitive Intelligence for Enron Broadband Services. Her responsibilities included financial derivatives and the now infamous \u0026ldquo;off-the-balance sheet\u0026rdquo; partnerships.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDuring her nearly three-year tenure, she witnessed numerous instances of illegal and corrupt dealings, including bank fraud, espionage, power price manipulation and the gross overstatements to the press, public and financial world. When her attempts to notify those inside Enron of her knowledge failed, she notified the United States government, who refused to return her e-mails and telephone calls.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSince leaving Enron, Lynn Brewer has become an internationally recognized speaker providing compelling details into Enron\u0026rsquo;s rise and fall, leaving audiences shocked when they realize how vulnerable they are to becoming the next Enron. A past nominee for the “Women of Influence” Award, Brewer was selected in 2006 for inclusion in the 25th Silver Anniversary Edition of Who’s Who of American Women for her contributions to society.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNotice that she doesn\u0026rsquo;t give her actual title; her claim of being responsible for risk management as though she headed a risk management group is untrue.  Her boss, Mary Solmonson, was a director, not an executive.  Another boss, David Gossett, who reported to VP Mends, was also a director, not an executive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect we\u0026rsquo;ll see more allegations and stories of deception by Brewer coming to light.  I\u0026rsquo;d like to know if there\u0026rsquo;s any substance to her claim to have experience in the field of forensic accounting prior to working at Enron.  Her 18 years experience \u0026ldquo;as a legal professional in private practice\u0026rdquo; really means she worked as a paralegal (which was apparently her role at Enron).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://media.podtech.net/media/2006/10/PID_001299/Podtech_LynnBrewer_Enron.html\"\u003ean interview transcript where she misrepresents herself from the get-go\u003c/a\u003e, answering the question \u0026ldquo;what was your role at Enron\u0026rdquo; with:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI was recruited about three years before the implosion of Enron, to head up a risk management group inside the legal department, that would brief, for senior management and the board of directors, these off the balance sheet partnerships at the centre of the scandal.\u003c/blockquote\u003eShe didn\u0026rsquo;t head up a risk management group.  She didn\u0026rsquo;t brief senior management and the board of directors.  She didn\u0026rsquo;t report on the off balance sheet partnerships at the center of the scandal, she wrote summaries of gas and energy contracts for managers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 15, 2007):  Lynn Brewer was known as EddieLynn Morgan (her maiden name) while she was at Enron, and \u003ca href=\"http://enron.trampolinesystems.com/focus/11078\"\u003eher name appears in the \u0026ldquo;Enron corpus\u0026rdquo; of emails\u003c/a\u003e that were made public after the scandal.  Studies of the Enron emails have been done to look at the web of interconnections between recipients, which show that EddieLynn Morgan was a very bit player\u0026ndash;she is the recipient of a total of four emails in the corpus, and the author of none.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Enron whistleblower who wasn't"},{"content":"The Goldwater Institute will be giving Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Muslim turned atheist author of the book Infidel, its 2007 Goldwater award at an event in Phoenix later this year. I plan to attend and will report here afterward.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/ayaan-hirsi-ali-to-receive-2007.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Goldwater Institute will be giving \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali\"\u003eAyaan Hirsi Ali\u003c/a\u003e, former Muslim turned atheist author of the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfidel\u003c/span\u003e, its 2007 Goldwater award at an event in Phoenix later this year.  I plan to attend and will report here afterward.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive 2007 Goldwater award"},{"content":"The Carpetbagger Report discusses how many of Rudy Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s friends have been accused of being criminals:\nA prominent Texas Republican has sued Rudy Giuliani’s law firm and a close friend and partner of Giuliani’s, Kenneth Caruso, alleging that Caruso, the firm and others “schemed and conspired to steal $10 million.” J. Virgil Waggoner, a Houston businessman and philanthropist, filed the previously unreported suit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in July. He alleges that Caruso, his former lawyer, conspired with Waggoner’s investment adviser to cover up the disappearance of $10 million Waggoner invested through a Caribbean bank, the British Trade \u0026amp; Commerce Bank. Waggoner claims Caruso “may have also been romantically involved” with the investment adviser. Besides Caruso are at least the following:\n* Giuliani inexplicably backed Bernie Kerik, and made him the city’s police commissioner, after he’d been briefed on Kerik’s organized crime connections. * Thomas Ravenel, the chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign in South Carolina, was indicted on cocaine distribution charges.\n* Arthur Ravenel, the replacement chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign in South Carolina, has characterized the NAACP as the “National Association for Retarded People,” and has an unusual fondness for the Confederate battle flag.\n* Alan Placa was accused by a grand jury report of sexually abusing children, as well as helping cover up the sexual abuse of children by other priests. Giuliani then put Placa, his life-long friend, on the payroll of Giuliani Partners. (Adds Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks suspected priest abuse, “I think Rudy Giuliani has to account for his friendship with a credibly accused child molester.”)\n* Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the family-values conservative caught up in a prostitution ring, was not only Giuliani’s top Senate backer, he was also the regional chairman of Giuliani’s campaign.\n(Via Talking Points Memo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/rudy-giulianis-friends.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Carpetbagger Report \u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13173.html\"\u003ediscusses how many of Rudy Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s friends have been accused of being criminals\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eA prominent Texas Republican has sued Rudy Giuliani’s law firm and a close friend and partner of Giuliani’s, Kenneth Caruso, alleging that Caruso, the firm and others “schemed and conspired to steal $10 million.” \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eJ. Virgil Waggoner, a Houston businessman and philanthropist, filed the previously unreported suit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in July. He alleges that Caruso, his former lawyer, conspired with Waggoner’s investment adviser to cover up the disappearance of $10 million Waggoner invested through a Caribbean bank, the British Trade \u0026amp; Commerce Bank. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rudy Giuliani's friends"},{"content":"Ed Brayton has an entertaining post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about the lawsuit against Oral Roberts University and Oral\u0026rsquo;s son Richard Roberts by several former ORU faculty:\nThe allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school\u0026rsquo;s involvement in a local political race. Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner\u0026rsquo;s bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university\u0026rsquo;s nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.\nThe lawsuit\u0026rsquo;s allegations include:\n• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.\n• Mrs. Roberts \u0026ndash; who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;first lady\u0026rdquo; on the university\u0026rsquo;s Web site \u0026ndash; frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to \u0026ldquo;underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.\u0026quot;\n• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an \u0026ldquo;evangelistic function of the president.\u0026quot;\n• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico\u0026rsquo;s clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, \u0026ldquo;As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off.\u0026rdquo; The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.\n• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.\n• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts\u0026rsquo; home to do the daughters\u0026rsquo; homework.\n• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts\u0026rsquo; children.\n• The Roberts\u0026rsquo; home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.\nSurprise! A televangelist and his family are using a ministry for personal gain.\nUPDATE (October 9, 2007): The above allegations come from a report prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts\u0026rsquo; sister-in-law, which was on a laptop which was being repaired by an ORU student. The student gave a copy to one of the professors, who turned it over to the university board of regents.\nUPDATE (October 10, 2007): CNN reports that Roberts has denied (and in some cases, given explanations for) the allegations. (Thanks, Sphere, for the link to this post from the CNN story.)\nUPDATE (October 14, 2007): The allegations in the lawsuit have become even more lurid.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2007-10-08):\nLike father, like son, it'd seem. From the wikipedia article on the father: From the late 1980's to 1992 [Oral] Roberts maintained a residence in the exclusive St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida. Roberts would commute via private jet from his base in Oklahoma to Boca Raton airport for weekend visits to his golf club retreat.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/oral-roberts-university-scandal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/oral_roberts_corruption_say_it.php\"\u003ean entertaining post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about the lawsuit against Oral Roberts University and Oral\u0026rsquo;s son Richard Roberts by several former ORU faculty\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school\u0026rsquo;s involvement in a local political race. \u003cp\u003eRichard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner\u0026rsquo;s bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university\u0026rsquo;s nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oral Roberts University scandal"},{"content":"Taner Edis at the Secular Outpost comments on a recent article by Jon Haight about the benefits of religion, including its impact on generosity.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve previously offered some comments on evidence that conservatives and the religious are more generous than liberals and the secular and that believers are more generous than atheists. I\u0026rsquo;ll add that I doubt that studies of charitable giving dig deep enough to uncover whether the giving is going to charities like these. Is it really being more generous if your charitable donations aren\u0026rsquo;t being used to actually do good?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/taner-edis-on-generosity-of-religious.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTaner Edis at the Secular Outpost \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/10/are-religious-people-more-generous.html\"\u003ecomments on a recent article by Jon Haight about the benefits of religion, including its impact on generosity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously offered some comments on evidence that \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003econservatives and the religious are more generous than liberals and the secular\u003c/a\u003e and that \u003ca href=\"/2007/06/atheists-weak-on-charitable-giving.html\"\u003ebelievers are more generous than atheists\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ll add that I doubt that studies of charitable giving dig deep enough to uncover whether the giving is going to \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/dirty-politician-katherine-harris.html\"\u003echarities\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/dirty-politician-rick-santorum-again.html\"\u003elike\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/how-to-get-charitable-donation-tax.html\"\u003ethese\u003c/a\u003e.  Is it really being more generous if your charitable donations aren\u0026rsquo;t being used to actually do good?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Taner Edis on the generosity of the religious"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers has written an open letter in response to Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; address to the Atheist Alliance, in which Harris said this:\nSo, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.Myers rightly takes issue with this proposal. This quotation was the first thing I read from Harris\u0026rsquo; address on the SKEPTIC mailing list, and I wrote this in response before I read his entire talk:\nI disagree with everybody who says there\u0026rsquo;s only one way we should all be.\nI have no problem with there being atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, naturalists, skeptics, brights, humanists (secular or otherwise), rationalists, and people in the closet or under the radar.But then, after reading Harris\u0026rsquo; entire speech, I amended this as follows:\nNow that I\u0026rsquo;ve actually read his essay, I do strongly agree with him that \u0026ldquo;atheism is not a worldview.\u0026rdquo; It is a small but significant component of a large set of possible worldviews.\nI went to my first atheist meetup group meeting a couple of weeks ago, curious to see what it would be like. It was the first meeting of a group of people who have different ideas about what they want to do\u0026ndash;some want to be political activists against the religious right. Some want to picket churches. Some want social events with like-minded people. I gave my endorsement for the last of these, and further suggested that they be as inclusive as possible to bring together people from other existing groups in the Phoenix area\u0026ndash;skeptics, humanists, atheists, etc., as an informal network to have events and let people know of what other groups are doing. The megachurches succeed by creating a framework in which there are lots of little subgroups catering to a wide variety of interests, and a secular community should offer the same.\nHarris\u0026rsquo; point that \u0026ldquo;Atheism is not a thing\u0026rdquo; is the same point I made to this group\u0026ndash;it may be that the only thing we have in common is a lack of belief in God. If the group focuses on that, the meetings will be as entertaining as a meeting of people whose only commonality is disinterest in watching spectator sports, who get together to discuss their disinterest in watching spectator sports (or worse yet, watching spectator sports to comment on how stupid it is).I should add to this that in my opinion, the term \u0026ldquo;freethinker\u0026rdquo; includes a subset of theists (I am in agreement with Jeff Lowder on this point, though, unlike Jeff, I believe I have met such people, though perhaps I have confused some kinds of fideists with freethinkers), and I welcome association with them.\nI have a preference for the term \u0026ldquo;skeptic\u0026rdquo; over \u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rdquo; because I like the way it focuses the attention on method\u0026ndash;doubt\u0026ndash;rather than on doctrine\u0026ndash;lack of belief in gods. If I were to find sufficient evidence for the existence of God, I would become a theist, but I would remain a skeptic. One of the most inspiring books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last couple of years was Jennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s Doubt: A History, because she shows that there is a very long tradition of doubters of the dominant religious views, and that even in cases where doubters are driven underground, doubt resurfaces again.\nUPDATE (October 8, 2007): Sam Harris has responded to criticism here, and P.Z. Myers responds to that here. I agree with Myers.\nUPDATE (October 9, 2007): P.Z. Myers comments on Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; references to an atheist \u0026ldquo;cult.\u0026quot; Again, I agree with Myers here\u0026ndash;the attributes of a cult are something like this or this. There can be atheist cults, but they need to exhibit those characteristics to deserve the name.\nUPDATE (October 16, 2007): Chris Hallquist weighs in on the subject at the Internet Infidels website.\nReed (2007-10-06):\nEven 'skepticism' as a label has its problems, as it's often confused with cynicism or the dismissal of even well-grounded claims.UK Psychologist Richard Wiseman rants about this negative image of skeptics on a recent Skepticality podcast interview, saying that his published books are skeptical in theme but cannot mention 'skeptic' on their covers. Publishers won't touch them if that's the case.That said, it's better than any of the rest, principally for the emphasis on tools over doctrine that you mention.Regarding building those social networks, both skeptic meetups and Drinking Skeptically are well-suited to pursue such ends.\nMichael C. Rush (2007-10-06):\nThe idea that non-believers have widely-varying ideas and motivations can be illustrated quickly by perusing any online discussion of religion/atheism. Very quickly you will see non-believers attacking one another for being too soft or too hard, etc. Subtle semantic differences between the different labels aside, I think what is shared is a fundamental worldview which eschews the supernatural. Some go further and seek to actively resist the encroachment of organized religion and irrational belief into the secular realms of law, education, and society, and others fail to embrace this additional task.I agree that Hecht's book is excellent and should be widely read. The idea that atheism and doubt is a 20th century invention is far too prevalent (and those moved by appeals to authority will find much here to ponder).\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nReed E, Richard Wiseman could be the poster boy of those who have ridden the entirely worthy mindset of skepticism into disrepute. If \"skeptics\" and even skeptics want to blame someone for their negative image, he's a good example. Ray Hyman once pointed out that in contrast to parapsychologists, \"skeptics\" tend to be rather nasty and mean spirited. If Hyman said that much it's worth considering.\nLippard (2007-10-06):\nWhy do you say that about Wiseman? Are you basing that on criticisms from Victor Zammit?And does your Hyman quotation refer to Wiseman, or did you simply put an unrelated quotation next to your statement about Wiseman in order to falsely convey that impression?\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nThe Hyman quotation mentioned was from George Hansen's CSICOP And The Skeptics, as I recall I found the link at one of your sites. It didn't refer specifically to Wiseman. My opinion about him is based on what I've read in a number of places, I don't recall if Victor Zammit is among those, though looking at his site it doesn't look remotely familiar. I'm not particularly interested in NDE except as it has been \"studied\" by \"skeptics\". Luckily, I don't buy cable so I don't know if he's gracing the Discovery Channel.\nLippard (2007-10-06):\nSo what have you seen that casts a negative light on Wiseman? I'm not particularly familiar with his work or criticisms thereof (I just came across Zammit via Google, though I have a dim recollection of seeing his charges before).On NDEs, Keith Augustine of the Internet Infidels is a skeptical atheist who has recently published a multi-part article (parts still in press) critical of the inference from NDEs to immortality in the _Journal of Near-Death Studies_. The article is being published with responses from NDE researchers and then Keith's reply to them. I think he gets the better of the argument, in part since several of them leap to contradict their own published claims in popular works, stating that they aren't claiming that there is scientific evidence for survival of death. I'd rather have seen them try to defend it...\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-06):\nEvery year I pick a book of the year that I've read. I picked Hecht's Doubt for 2005.\nReed (2007-10-07):\nolvlzl, wouldn't this negative image of skeptics persist even without Wiseman? We have these problems here in the US where Wiseman is largely unknown.\nolvlzl (2007-10-07):\nReed E, the negative image of self-identified \"skeptics\" that some people hold isn't just the product of one person. James Randi, Penn Jillette, in the pop field, much of the old guard at CSICOP, and their follwers (ironic isn't it the number of \"skeptics who are clearly followers\". Most of them are pretty unpleasant. It all comes down to several attitudes, \"you're stupid and ignorant and I'm smart\", \"we own science and you own superstition\", \"hey, let's get the faith-head\". It's just a development of the bully and his pack mentality that never got left behind. Lost in all of this is that most \"skeptics\" aren't skeptical about anything. They know exactly what you're supposed to believe because they say so. It doesn't have to be that way but it's the way it developed. I've always wondered how the atheist-fundamentalist skeptics handled Martin Gardner's case. Clearly, celebrity trumps orthodoxy. Jim Lippard, you certainly aren't unaware of Wiseman's personality or the controversies he's generated. Why are you asking me to document what you are already familiar with? I don't intend to get into that kind of war of the sources, people who don't know can google easily enough if they're curious enough to not read one side only.\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nolvlzl: \"Jim Lippard, you certainly aren't unaware of Wiseman's personality or the controversies he's generated. Why are you asking me to document what you are already familiar with?\"On the contrary, I have never seen Wiseman in person or on television, I have never heard him speak, and I have read only what he's written in the Skeptical Inquirer. I was simply asking you why you said what you did about him, which you've declined to explain--I'm not asking for a battle of sources and didn't intend to debate you on it, I just wanted some elaboration on your statement. Given your extremely prolific posting of comments, your reticence is surprising.I've found two controversies via Google--his dispute with Sheldrake over the psychic powers of a dog (which I recall reading about in Skeptical Inquirer, which gave Sheldrake space to comment) and Victor Zammit's criticisms about a test of a Russian psychic.You write: \"I've always wondered how the atheist-fundamentalist skeptics handled Martin Gardner's case. Clearly, celebrity trumps orthodoxy.\" Your first sentence is no doubt referring to the fact that Gardner is a theist (a position he defends in his book _The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener_). Gardner is far from alone in that position among organized skeptics--one reason that many local and skeptical groups opposed the relationship of CSI and CSH under the Centers for Inquiry is that they believe untestable religious views should not fall within the scope of what skeptical groups deal with. I co-signed a letter to that effect with leaders of other skeptical groups which appeared in the January/February 1999 Skeptical Inquirer (pp. 62-64). When I moved to Tucson in 1988, I turned over the leadership of the Phoenix Skeptics to a Catholic; one of our most prominent supporters was Andre Kole, a Christian illusionist.What does your second sentence mean?\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nolvlzl: \"James Randi, Penn Jillette, in the pop field, much of the old guard at CSICOP, and their followers (ironic isn't it the number of 'skeptics who are clearly followers'. Most of them are pretty unpleasant. It all comes down to several attitudes, 'you're stupid and ignorant and I'm smart', 'we own science and you own superstition', 'hey, let's get the faith-head'. It's just a development of the bully and his pack mentality that never got left behind.\"It shouldn't surprise you that the majority of members of *any* organization are followers rather than leaders. It does tend to be more ironic in a group labeled as \"skeptics,\" but the problem depicted in Monty Python's \"Life of Brian\" (\"You are all individuals!\" \"We are all individuals!\") is a real one.I don't think Randi or Penn \u0026 Teller are the intellectual leaders of skepticism. Though intelligent, they are in the entertainment business. Randi and Penn tend to shoot from the hip and offer corrections later. I've heard Randi give talks where I cringed at inaccuracies in his off-the-cuff statements, and that's a habit that caused his legal troubles.I've definitely seen bullies and dogmatic skeptics in organized skepticism. I can't say whether they are a majority, but the skeptics I've enjoyed interacting with don't display those traits (and expect to get called on it if they do)--and that includes current and former leaders of skeptical groups. I'm probably in a special position--in virtue of my critiques of organized skepticism, I have learned from other people's reactions to me who finds loyalty to principles more important than loyalty to an organization.\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-07):\nMartin Gardner considers himself a fideist, doesn't he? I only mention this because he's the only person I've ever seen describe himself as such.\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nYes, Gardner describes himself as a fideist--e.g., p. 213 of _The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener_: \"That the leap of faith springs from passionate hope and longing or, to say the same thing, from passionate disrepair and fear, is readily admitted by most fideists, certainly by me and by the fideists I admire. Faith is an expression of feeling, of emotion, not of reason.\"This ties into something I've been thinking about writing about on my blog, how intellectual argument from atheists cannot hope to persuade believers who have had religious or mystical experiences--at least, not unless they are given a means of interpreting them *and obtaining them* in ways that are supportive of atheism.But back to fideism--I had a philosophy professor during my undergraduate career who was also something of a fideist, though I don't think he actually labeled himself that way--rather, he said that he was very sympathetic to the view. I had thought from the content of his lectures that he was likely to be an atheist, until he showed up for class on Ash Wednesday with ash on his forehead. He was one of the best professors I've ever had, a brilliant man with an extremely dry wit who was constantly making hilarious jokes through his lectures that most of the class didn't even recognize as jokes (and that itself made me laugh). (Michael White at Arizona State University, in case anyone reading this has the opportunity to take any of his classes...)\nolvlzl (2007-10-07):\n\"how intellectual argument from atheists cannot hope to persuade believers who have had religious or mystical experiences--at least, not unless they are given a means of interpreting them *and obtaining them* in ways that are supportive of atheism.\"I'd like to see an intellectual argument that can touch someone's genuinely experienced experience. I mean something that wasn't out of analogy or some other intellectual dodge. And why would you want to? It's the greatest arrogance of fundamentalists that they think they know what other people should believe out their own experience.If they are doing something that harms someone else, deal with that, don't waste your time on what they believe. What if you convert them to atheism and find out that their destructive behavior was actually based in their personality instead of their belief? \"Fidesm\" and here poor Harris is in trouble for being unreliable, metaphysicswise. \"I don't think Randi or Penn \u0026 Teller are the intellectual leaders of skepticism. Though intelligent, they are in the entertainment business.\"Like it or not, Jim Lippard, there are many times more \"skeptics\" who could tell you who Randi and Jillette are than could name anyone in the non-CSICOP skeptical world you mentioned. Look at the number of posts at Randi's place. There are a lot of people for whom they are the only face of \"skepticism\", check out how many skeptics list Randi in their blogrolls.I can tell you from personal experience that even referring to how obnoxious either can be will bring the wrath of their adoring fans down on you. Or at least it did me.\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nolvlzl: Are there any comment threads you participate in on any subject where you *don't* find yourself at odds with other people? I think most of what I've seen you post comes across as very adversarial right at the start. My guess is that you value the fight more than the possibility of mutual understanding.\nLippard (2007-10-07):\n\"I'd like to see an intellectual argument that can touch someone's genuinely experienced experience. I mean something that wasn't out of analogy or some other intellectual dodge. And why would you want to? It's the greatest arrogance of fundamentalists that they think they know what other people should believe out their own experience.\"Your last statement is too broad--there are cases where people can recognize that others are mistaken about their interpretation of their experiences, and where it is beneficial to the mistaken person (as well as to others) to educate them. You don't assume that there are no such cases, do you?I'm also not sure why you write off analogy as an \"intellectual dodge.\" If we can be shown (through direct experiential demonstration) that we are subject to certain kinds of cognitive illusions, we can infer that closely similar cases are also illusory. Likewise, if we can, through purely natural mechanisms, generate mystical experiences that closely resemble religious ones, that can provide a case that those given religious interpretation have similarly natural causes.I am skeptical of the claim that individual experience is incorrigible, let alone that the individual is always in the best position to interpret his own individual experience.\nEinzige (2007-10-07):\nI'd like to see an intellectual argument that can touch someone's genuinely experienced experience.How do you define a \"genuinely experienced experience\"?Like it or not, Jim Lippard, there are many times more \"skeptics\" who could tell you who Randi and Jillette are than could name anyone in the non-CSICOP skeptical world you mentioned.Who gives two shits? olvlzl, your tendency to toss around loaded words--often encased in wacky scare-quotes--engage in sweeping generalizations, and name-drop is fucking tedious.Just once I'd like to see you directly address an actual point that someone has made.2 to 1 odds that you won't even offer a definition of a \"genuinely experienced experience\", like I asked you to above--and that's even after I've just mentioned the odds.My prediction of the substance of your \"answer\": \"Einzige, do you expect me to believe that you don't know the definition of something so simple?\"As Jim just pointed out, you don't seem particularly interested in any search for truth. Instead, you seem to thrive on taking a contrary position and arguing it well past the point of absurdity, just to see how annoyed you can make everyone else.I have no doubt that \"fair-minded\" readers of this blog agree with me.\nEinzige (2007-10-07):\nOh, I should mention that my lack of doubt is a \"genuinely experienced experience\"--at least according to my definition.So, olvlzl, it's apparently not subject to intellectual argument.In other words, I'm right: everyone agrees that you're annoying. To disagree would be the \"greatest arrogance.\"\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nolvlzl: BTW, it strikes me as inconsistent that someone who wrote \"you certainly aren't unaware of Wiseman's personality or the controversies he's generated\" also writes \"It's the greatest arrogance of fundamentalists that they think they know what other people should believe out their own experience\" in the same thread. If it's arrogant to tell other people what they *should* believe based on their experience, isn't it even more arrogant to tell them what they *do* believe or have experienced?\nolvlzl (2007-10-07):\nJim Lippard, I assumed you would be familiar with a person as prominent in your movement as Wiseman, though, you are correct, that was presumptuous of me. Though I think there's a great deal of difference between assuming someone knows something and believing that someone should agree with your own preferences. I don't think I've classified you as a fundamentalist, nor do I think I necessarily would. Einzige, the particular point about Randi and Jillette were in direct response to the point \"I don't think Randi or Penn \u0026 Teller are the intellectual leaders of skepticism.\" I had assumed that anyone who read it would realize that I wasn't disagreeing about them being \"intellectual leaders\" but pointing out that, like it or not, and I can understand why someone might not, they are probably the most prominent \"skeptics\" in America. As to being annoying, that title is the fate of those who keep asking questions and investigating. I'd have thought that was the essence of skepticism though not of \"skepticism\". Though I don't refer to myself as a skeptic. Or anything else except a Democrat and a socialist. Well, I do identify myself as an old gay man too, but that's not really relevant. I guess the best way for someone observing someone else to determine if an experience is a genuine experience is to see if there is behavior consistent with any claims made about that experience. For the person who had it, a similar examination of conscience and constant review of behavior would seem to be the best way. That has been a consistently appearing assertion of prominent mystics throughout the literature, asserting an experience wasn't enough. It had to change you for the better.I do find it odd that questioning has such a remarkably strong emotional effect on you.\nolvlzl (2007-10-07):\nIf we can be shown (through direct experiential demonstration) that we are subject to certain kinds of cognitive illusions,Oh, I left this out. Leaving aside my extensive skepticism about \"cognitive science\" as that phrase is usually misappropriated, I don't buy it, especially as applied to what is termed mystical experiences. Those are internal, there is no way to know what is really happening, the best that can be had is some knowledge about electrical and chemical phenomena in the brain but that doesn't really tell you what the experience is. The best information you have about the experience is the testimony of the person who had it. Like it or not, absent some disability, people are the real experts in their own experience. How would even real scientists have any idea of what that was without the person telling them what they experienced? Don't get me started on Pinker.\nEinzige (2007-10-07):\n...the particular point about Randi and Jillette were in direct response to the point \"I don't think Randi or Penn \u0026 Teller are the intellectual leaders of skepticism.\"...which was in response to you bringing them up! How stupid do you think I am?I do find it odd that questioning has such a remarkably strong emotional effect on you.What you're doing is \"questioning\", huh?Why is it, then, that I only counted 2 question marks out of all the sentences you've typed in your four prior comments above? (None of which were in your first response to this thread. I note also that in the other thread, your first two responses there had no question marks, either.)\nEinzige (2007-10-07):\nDon't get me started on Pinker.We promise: we won't mention him at all. In fact, I beg of you to not mention him. Ever.The best information you have about the experience is the testimony of the person who had it.So if I told you that I had just had a genuine experience of flying under my own power to New York and having sex with Kim Catrall then you'd say that the \"best information\" you have about that experience is my testimony?\nolvlzl (2007-10-08):\n...which was in response to you bringing them up! How stupid do you think I am?* If you wanted to bring that up you should have quoted what I said then. How am I supposed to guess that you were referring to an earlier comment when you quoted the later one? Did you expect me to use telepathy to answer you? - So if I told you that I had just had a genuine experience of flying under my own power to New York and having sex with Kim Catrall then you'd say that the \"best information\" you have about that experience is my testimony?* First, I invoke my right as a geezer to not know who Kim Catrall is. Second, the experience you pose isn't a purely internal experience so there would be possible physical evidence outside of MRIs and possible samples of chemical traces of brain activity. I assume that such an experience would be memorable enough for said, Ms. Catrall, unless Kim is a man, so that there would be a witness. Although there are possible witnesses who could testify to the last point, I really don't care to know. You do realize that as meaningful and moving as the experience might be, even in imagination, it really wouldn't match most peoples' definition of a \"mystical\" experience. Though \"mythical\" might well fit. Maybe \"investigation\" would satisfy you more that \"questioning\". I won't, however, use the word \"inquire\" due to connotations and associations, as well as pretensions surrounding to that word that are beyond my control. J.L. my agnostic friend tells me you are doing me the honor of reading my old comments in other places and, I have no doubt, correcting them. Which I don't mind. Please, don't miss my own post on my blog about\"Dr. Brinkley\". Search \"goats\" and you can't miss it. Why am I feeling like Arsene Lupin all of the sudden?\nEinzige (2007-10-08):\nHume's Ghost has the right idea, I think.\nLippard (2007-10-08):\nolvlzl: \"Leaving aside my extensive skepticism about \"cognitive science\" as that phrase is usually misappropriated, I don't buy it, especially as applied to what is termed mystical experiences. Those are internal, there is no way to know what is really happening, the best that can be had is some knowledge about electrical and chemical phenomena in the brain but that doesn't really tell you what the experience is.\"I think this grossly underestimates what we already know, much less what we are in the process of learning about the neurological correlates of experience.\"J.L. my agnostic friend tells me you are doing me the honor of reading my old comments in other places and, I have no doubt, correcting them.\"I've looked up comments elsewhere where you've mentioned my name, and I also looked to see where you talked about Paul Kurtz to see what else you've said about his influence. I've commented on a couple that I found interesting (such as Murray Hogg's post on neo-atheists), but the only place I've offered a correction is on this post at the friendlyatheist blog.The \"Dr. Brinkley\" post is a good one.\nReed (2007-10-08):\nolvlzl: you portray the PR problem of skepticism as the fault of the personalities involved. Isn't there more to it? Isn't there something in the message of skepticism that is threatening and thus contributes to our negative image?\nolvlzl (2007-10-08):\nReed E, I don't know. It's never been the skepticism that bothered me, it was the certainty of those calling themselves \"skeptics\" that did. Though it would be easier to tell if so many people pretending to be skeptics weren't rude, arrogant egoists. It might be too late to salvage the word \"skepticism\". Einzige, I gather you didn't like my last answers to you. All I did was give in to the temptation you provided. I'd have thought giving in to temptation would have been something you approved of, irreligion and all that. You don't provide opportunities like those and I promise I won't take them. I'm about done here anyway. I've seen what I came to see.\nolvlzl (2007-10-11):\nNote to Jim LippardIn a bit of spare time I've had this week I checked to see if your contention that Paul Kurtz isn't particularly influential in the neo-atheist fad, I have to diffeer with you. I think that much of it has direct and active ties to him and his obvious chain of groups and publications. Some of the ties seem to be quite direct, some, the bizarre praise of \"The Jesus Project\" shell game rather amusing. I wonder, where are the non-fundamentalist atheists? I've known a number of them but they don't seem to find commenting or blogging about it to be very interesting. I sort of miss the Murray-O'Hare kind of atheists. She was vulgar and disreputable but she was a lot of fun too.\nKat Lippard (2007-10-11):\nolvlzl-I am one of the non-fundie atheists, my apathy towards others' religious views knows no bounds. I just ask that people keep it to themselves - out of government, schools, etc. And, from the number of posts I've made, you can say that I am not too interested in blogging except as a reader.Jim is away from the computer and the internets for a day or so. I'm sure he'll get back to you then.\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-11):\n\"I wonder, where are the non-fundamentalist atheists?\" My Japanese friend says Olvzl is a bigot. Could not resist.\nEinzige (2007-10-11):\nHe certainly seems to have a - one might say \"pathological\" - compulsion to pigeonhole everyone and everything.\nolvlzl (2007-10-11):\nMy Japanese friend says Olvzl is a bigot. Humes GhostOooh, give details. With direct, accurate and full quotes from me. one might say \"pathological\" - compulsion to pigeonhole everyone and everything. Einzige, I'd ask you to document this in the same way but since I've done that several times and you have failed to come up with even one supporting quote, it would be a waste of time.If you're not familiar with \"The Jesus Project\" and it's amusingly botched beginning, complete with publicly announced and listed \"fellows\", some of whom had never heard of the \"project\" and others who had never been asked, look it up. I can't wait for Prometheus to begin publishing their entirely objective and unpredictable \"findings\".\nLippard (2007-10-13):\nI'm back from Chicago...olvlzl: \"In a bit of spare time I've had this week I checked to see if your contention that Paul Kurtz isn't particularly influential in the neo-atheist fad, I have to diffeer with you. I think that much of it has direct and active ties to him and his obvious chain of groups and publications. Some of the ties seem to be quite direct, some, the bizarre praise of \"The Jesus Project\" shell game rather amusing.\"Please note carefully what I said--that Paul Kurtz is not personally, directly influential. I don't dispute that his organizations have been so, nor that people he has supported and published have been so, especially taken as a whole. In that sense, he has been influential. But his own personal writings, not so much. If his own work were extremely influential, there would be a bunch of people calling themselves eupraxophists.Your mention of the Jesus Project prompted me to search. That sounds like a case of staggering Internet ignorance and bad judgment--you don't select a list of supporters/fellows/participants using an \"opt out\" mechanism. That's idiotic, and R. Joseph Hoffmann has been rightly condemned for it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/sam-harris-and-atheist-label.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/letter_to_a_nonatheist_new_ath.php\"\u003ehas written an open letter in response to Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; address to the Atheist Alliance\u003c/a\u003e, in which Harris said this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSo, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMyers rightly takes issue with this proposal.  This quotation was the first thing I read from Harris\u0026rsquo; address on the SKEPTIC mailing list, and I wrote this in response before I read his entire talk:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI disagree with everybody who says there\u0026rsquo;s only one way we should all be.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have no problem with there being atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, naturalists, skeptics, brights, humanists (secular or otherwise), rationalists, and people in the closet or under the radar.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut then, after reading Harris\u0026rsquo; entire speech, I amended this as follows:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNow that I\u0026rsquo;ve actually read his essay, I do strongly agree with him that \u0026ldquo;atheism is not a worldview.\u0026rdquo;  It is a small but significant component of a large set of possible worldviews.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI went to my first atheist meetup group meeting a couple of weeks ago, curious to see what it would be like.  It was the first meeting of a group of people who have different ideas about what they want to do\u0026ndash;some want to be political activists against the religious right. Some want to picket churches.  Some want social events with like-minded people.  I gave my endorsement for the last of these, and further suggested that they be as inclusive as possible to bring together people from other existing groups in the Phoenix area\u0026ndash;skeptics, humanists, atheists, etc., as an informal network to have events and let people know of what other groups are doing.  The megachurches succeed by creating a framework in which there are lots of little subgroups catering to a wide variety of interests, and a secular community should offer the same.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHarris\u0026rsquo; point that \u0026ldquo;Atheism is not a thing\u0026rdquo; is the same point I made to this group\u0026ndash;it may be that the only thing we have in common is a lack of belief in God.  If the group focuses on that, the meetings will be as entertaining as a meeting of people whose only commonality is disinterest in watching spectator sports, who get together to discuss their disinterest in watching spectator sports (or worse yet, watching spectator sports to comment on how stupid it is).\u003c/blockquote\u003eI should add to this that in my opinion, the term \u0026ldquo;freethinker\u0026rdquo; includes a subset of theists (I am in \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/lowder1.html\"\u003eagreement with Jeff Lowder on this point\u003c/a\u003e, though, unlike Jeff, I believe I have met such people, though perhaps I have confused some kinds of \u003ca href=\"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fideism/\"\u003efideists\u003c/a\u003e with freethinkers), and I welcome association with them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have a preference for the term \u0026ldquo;skeptic\u0026rdquo; over \u0026ldquo;atheist\u0026rdquo; because I like the way it focuses the attention on method\u0026ndash;doubt\u0026ndash;rather than on doctrine\u0026ndash;lack of belief in gods.  If I were to find sufficient evidence for the existence of God, I would become a theist, but I would remain a skeptic.  One of the most inspiring books I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the last couple of years was \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060097957/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eJennifer Michael Hecht\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDoubt: A History\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, because she shows that there is a very long tradition of doubters of the dominant religious views, and that even in cases where doubters are driven underground, doubt resurfaces again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 8, 2007):  Sam Harris has responded to criticism \u003ca href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/article,1723,n,n\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and P.Z. Myers responds to that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/sam_harris_seems_like_a_nice_f.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  I agree with Myers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 9, 2007): P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/cult_is_the_new_fundamentalist.php\"\u003ecomments on Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; references to an atheist \u0026ldquo;cult.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Again, I agree with Myers here\u0026ndash;the attributes of a cult are something like \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/articles/BITE.htm\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.  There can be atheist cults, but they need to exhibit those characteristics to deserve the name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 16, 2007):  Chris Hallquist \u003ca href=\"http://www.secweb.org/index.aspx?action=viewAsset\u0026amp;id=769\"\u003eweighs in on the subject at the Internet Infidels website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sam Harris and the atheist label"},{"content":"Comment for Peter S. Williams\u0026rsquo; blog, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow comments except from the blog owner and team members:\nCharles Manson claimed to levitate a school bus in order to get it to the group\u0026rsquo;s hideout at Barker Ranch in Death Valley in 1968. His followers claim he did it, too.\nWe know the school bus got there, because it was still there until a few years ago. The terrain up Goler Canyon Road is very difficult even for four-wheel drive vehicles.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t believe Manson levitated the bus (or that there was a single tree that bore twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month of the year, at Barker Ranch, as he also claimed). Do you?\nThere are also numerous eyewitness reports of remarkable phenomena, including levitations, occurring at Spiritualist seances. However, the most exhaustively documented ones show that eyewitness testimony is at odds with what actually happened\u0026ndash;a phenomenon that magicians are quite familiar with. If demonic activity results in such things as levitation, why is it not documentable through video recordings or testimony from witnesses trained in illusion and trickery?\nReed (2007-10-06):\nWilliams is concerned that we skeptics have an a priori bias against any evidence for demons and angels, where our assessment of the evidence is colored by our naturalistic views. Perhaps so.However, I wonder if he's prepared to acknowledge that his weak standard of evidence (anecdotes, etc.) is driven by his need to justify his beliefs?\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nHow many of the people who believe Manson levitated a bus could dance on the head of a pin? Do even a half dozen people really believe this?\nLippard (2007-10-06):\nolvlzl: I chose the Manson example intentionally because it parallels the demonic possession examples in that there are very few witnesses, the witnesses there are have a vested interest in the claim, but in this case is a claim that Christians are likely to reject. By what criteria can they accept demonic possession claims and reject the Manson claims? (Or will they accept the Manson claims, attributing the levitation to demons?)\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nJim Lippard, I've known many thousands of Christians and have yet to meet more than a handful who believe in demonic possession. I know a lot of Catholics who don't believe in the devil and who find the presence of \"exorcists\" in the church to be embarrassing. The word \"some\" or even \"a few\" would make your assertion about \"Christians\" more realistic. The question is, if Manson can do that, why can't he get out of jail?\nLippard (2007-10-06):\nolvlzl: I'm addressing the specific Christians whose claims are in the original post, and those who believe them. I suspect they are a minority (but a growing one) of Christians, and a majority of evangelicals and a vast majority of Pentecostals.\nEinzige (2007-10-06):\nThe question is, if Manson can do that, why can't he get out of jail?I have faith that he can. He just doesn't want to, because that would provide definitive evidence for the existence of an unknowable God.We can't have that!\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nI have faith that he can. He just doesn't want to, because that would provide definitive evidence for the existence of an unknowable God.Einzige, ah, but you see, in this case you could have physical evidence that could be observed and analyzed to see if there was a definite result. That makes all the difference in matters of science and empirical evidence. Just a tiny little distinction, apparently, though one that absolutely marks the difference between science and faith.\nEinzige (2007-10-06):\nThat makes all the difference in matters of science and empirical evidence.Does it? Really???[tongue placed firmly in cheek]\nolvlzl (2007-10-06):\nIt's your tongue, put it wherever you like. Just as long as it's only on you or a consenting adult. You see, I think adults get to decide things for themselves as long as they don't impinge on other peoples' rights. Should I remind you that you're ignoring me?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/comment-for-angels-book-authors-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComment for \u003ca href=\"http://idpluspeterswilliams.blogspot.com/2007/08/demons-levitation-and-priori-skepticism.html\"\u003ePeter S. Williams\u0026rsquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow comments except from the blog owner and team members:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCharles Manson claimed to levitate a school bus in order to get it to the group\u0026rsquo;s hideout at Barker Ranch in Death Valley in 1968.  His followers claim he did it, too.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe know the school bus got there, because it was still there until a few years ago.  The terrain up Goler Canyon Road is very difficult even for four-wheel drive vehicles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t believe Manson levitated the bus (or that there was a single tree that bore twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month of the year, at Barker Ranch, as he also claimed).  Do you?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are also numerous eyewitness reports of remarkable phenomena, including levitations, occurring at  Spiritualist seances.  However, the most exhaustively documented ones show that eyewitness testimony is at odds with what actually happened\u0026ndash;a phenomenon that magicians are quite familiar with.  If demonic activity results in such things as levitation, why is it not documentable through video recordings or testimony from witnesses trained in illusion and trickery?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comment for Angels book author's blog"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers comments on a couple of professors defending the literal existence of angels and demons. Intelligent design advocate and Discovery Institute Fellow William Dembski on angels:\nPeter Williams\u0026rsquo; The Case for Angels is about…the theological rift between a Christian intelligentsia that increasingly regards angels only as figurative or literary devices, and the great mass of Christians who thankfully still regard them as real (a fact confirmed by popular polls, as Williams notes in this book). This rift was brought home to me at a conference I helped organize at Baylor University some years back. The conference was entitled \u0026lsquo;The Nature of Nature\u0026rsquo; and focused on whether nature is self-contained or points beyond itself. The activity of angels in the world would clearly constitute on way nature points beyond itself.\nWhy is it important to know about angels? Why is it important to know about rocks and plants and animals? It\u0026rsquo;s important because all of these are aspects of reality that impinge on us. The problem with the secular intelligentsia is that they deny those aspects of reality that are inconvenient to their world-picture. And since the intelligentsia are by definition intelligent (though rarely wise), they are able to rationalize away what they find inconvenient. This is what Bishop Sheen was getting at with the previous quote when he referred to the intelligentsia rationalizing evil, and this what Williams is so successful at unmasking in the intelligentsia\u0026rsquo;s rejection of angels.\nThere exists an invisible world that is more real and weighty than our secular imaginations can fathom. I commend this book as a way of retraining our imaginations about that reality.\nCan Dembski point to any genuine evidence supporting \u0026ldquo;the activity of angels in the world\u0026rdquo;? Does his \u0026ldquo;design inference\u0026rdquo; allow us to distinguish such claims from projection, pareidolia, wishful thinking, and delusion?\nAnd Biola University philosophy professor and Discovery Institute Fellow J.P. Moreland on demons:\nRecently, a hairdresser was arrested for performing cosmetic surgery on several “patients.” When this happens, the results are usually disastrous. Do fraudulent “surgeries” mean there are no legitimate cosmetic surgeries? Of course not.\nRecently, a man and woman were caught trying to exorcise a demon from a little child in Arizona. The police found the three covered in blood inside a barricaded bedroom. The man died upon arrest. Do fraudulent, ignorant “exorcisms” imply that demons aren’t real and all exorcisms are bogus? You do the math.\nA vast literature supports the reality of demons, and three criteria have been developed for distinguishing demonization from mere psychological trauma: (1) the universal presence of certain symptoms, including satisfaction of biblical criteria, along with responsiveness to the name of Jesus, all of which take place uniformly throughout the world, including cultures that know nothing about the Bible or Jesus; (2) the presence of supernatural power evidenced by such phenomena as moving material objects; (3) the revelation by the demon of detailed, private and embarrassing information about the exorcist in front of others that no human could have known.\nThese phenomena occur widely. In fact, in a recent alumni publication of the university at which I teach, the cover story featured faculty members—intellectually sophisticated professors with doctorates from top institutions—who have experienced such demonic phenomena. During an exorcism, one professor saw metal objects fly across the room. Another professor has seen this very sort of phenomena in his own condominium in conjunction with a demonized person moving in next door. During another exorcism, a different professor experienced the sort of embarrassment mentioned above. A demon accused him in front of the entire prayer team of specific sins that were detailed, including time and location. I know of others who have seen the same thing.\nThe fraudulent, crazy exorcisms are the only ones that get reported in the press, but don’t be fooled. The real thing is very different from the bogus ones.\nIt sounds like Moreland is inferring supernatural explanations for a combination of natural phenomena (perhaps a student accusing a professor of specific acts that had been observed, or phony poltergeist phenomena, usually caused by teenagers whose cleverness exceeds the observational skills of the adults they are fooling) and fabricated claims. Can Moreland even provide a reference for the faculty publication he refers to, let alone the \u0026ldquo;vast literature\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;supports the reality of demons\u0026rdquo; or the specifics of the criteria he mentions? His analogy is bogus\u0026ndash;we have ample evidence of real cosmetic surgery, including schools for it and doctors who can perform it on demand (for some cash). There is nothing of the sort for angels or demons, which are somehow resistant to the presence of cameras and skeptics.\nUPDATE (October 5, 2007): The Pharyngula article linked from the J.P. Moreland quote above also links to a Biola University (Moreland\u0026rsquo;s institution) article titled \u0026ldquo;Exorcising Our Demons: Many Evangelicals Are Too Skeptical of the Demonic\u0026rdquo; which includes this paragraph:\nDr. Doug Hayward — a professor of anthropology and intercultural studies at Biola — team-teaches a spiritual warfare class with Arnold (New Testament) and Dr. John Kelley (psychology) — a class that considers theological and psychological explanations for people who believe they are under demonic attack. Over the years, Hayward has prayed with a number of such students. In rare cases, students have growled at him or become violent.\u0026ldquo;People who believe they are under demonic attack\u0026rdquo; sounds like a class of people no different from \u0026ldquo;people who believe they are under the influence of CIA mind control devices\u0026rdquo; like Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien, \u0026ldquo;Brice Taylor\u0026rdquo; (Susan Ford) who are either delusional or simply lying. (I briefly discuss O\u0026rsquo;Brien and Taylor in this blog post on Kola Boof, who has made similarly outrageous claims minus the CIA mind control aspect.) There\u0026rsquo;s a serious lack of skepticism problem here, not a \u0026ldquo;too skeptical\u0026rdquo; problem, and I don\u0026rsquo;t expect we\u0026rsquo;ll see these evangelicals make the slightest attempt to dig deeper or apply scientific methods of investigation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/angels-and-demons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers comments on a couple of professors defending the literal existence of angels and demons.  Intelligent design advocate and Discovery Institute Fellow \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/little_imaginary_beings.php\"\u003eWilliam Dembski on angels\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePeter Williams\u0026rsquo; \u003ci\u003eThe Case for Angels\u003c/i\u003e is about…the theological rift between a Christian intelligentsia that increasingly regards angels only as figurative or literary devices, and the great mass of Christians who thankfully still regard them as real (a fact confirmed by popular polls, as Williams notes in this book). This rift was brought home to me at a conference I helped organize at Baylor University some years back. The conference was entitled \u0026lsquo;The Nature of Nature\u0026rsquo; and focused on whether nature is self-contained or points beyond itself. The activity of angels in the world would clearly constitute on way nature points beyond itself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhy is it important to know about angels? Why is it important to know about rocks and plants and animals? It\u0026rsquo;s important because all of these are aspects of reality that impinge on us. The problem with the secular intelligentsia is that they deny those aspects of reality that are inconvenient to their world-picture. And since the intelligentsia are by definition intelligent (though rarely wise), they are able to rationalize away what they find inconvenient. This is what Bishop Sheen was getting at with the previous quote when he referred to the intelligentsia rationalizing evil, and this what Williams is so successful at unmasking in the intelligentsia\u0026rsquo;s rejection of angels.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Angels and demons"},{"content":"In today\u0026rsquo;s New York Times:\nWhen the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.\nThe new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.\nThe above is just the first few paragraphs of the first of five pages in the Times. The article goes on to point out multiple instances of the White House saying one thing then secretly doing another, including re-opening CIA \u0026ldquo;black sites\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;enhanced interrogation techniques.\u0026rdquo; The article ends with a quote from John D. Hutson, \u0026ldquo;the Navy\u0026rsquo;s top lawyer from 1997 to 2000\u0026rdquo;:\n“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.The White House\u0026rsquo;s tap-dancing response to this Times article can be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/secret-us-endorsement-of-severe.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?_r=2\u0026amp;hp\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003etoday\u0026rsquo;s New York Times\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhen the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.\u003cp\u003eBut soon after \u003ca href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/alberto_r_gonzales/index.html?inline=nyt-per\" title=\"More articles about Alberto R. Gonzales.\"\u003eAlberto R. Gonzales\u003c/a\u003e’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the \u003ca href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org\" title=\"More articles about the Central Intelligence Agency.\"\u003eCentral Intelligence Agency\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations"},{"content":"Bob McCarty, a religious conservative writer, came to my attention for the first time recently when he touted Lauren Green\u0026rsquo;s historical revisionism about the United States, in response to the Kathy Griffin Emmy controversy. When I and others posted comments on his blog pointing out Green\u0026rsquo;s errors, McCarty accused me of \u0026ldquo;anti-Christian revisionist history,\u0026rdquo; cited some quotes from Thomas Jefferson which made reference to \u0026ldquo;God,\u0026rdquo; and stated that \u0026ldquo;I don’t have to read any more books about American history to know that this country was founded on Christian principles and values. Think \u0026lsquo;In God we trust\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;One nation under God.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\nIn response to this latter point, I posted a comment which pointed out that those two phrases don\u0026rsquo;t support McCarty\u0026rsquo;s case regarding the founding of the United States and that Jefferson, while a believer in God, did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. McCarty didn\u0026rsquo;t approve my comment, so I posted again to see if it was intentional:\nBob: You didn\u0026rsquo;t approve/publish my previous comment responding to your Sep. 15 comment. I\u0026rsquo;ll try again.\nYour citation of \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;One Nation Under God\u0026rdquo; as evidence of the U.S. being founded on Christian principles shows your lack of research\u0026ndash;the former did not appear on coins until 1854 and on currency until 1957. The phrase \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; wasn\u0026rsquo;t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954.\nI also suggested you read more of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, including his letter to his nephew Peter Carr on August 10, 1787, in which he wrote \u0026ldquo;Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.\u0026quot;\nOh, and I also recommended that you check out the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was ratified by the Congress and signed by President John Adams, which contains the statement that \u0026ldquo;the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.\u0026quot; Tripoli violated the treaty and a new treaty was negotiated in 1805 without that language, but it is significant that both the Senate and President approved that language.In my first pass at a comment, I also referred to the \u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible,\u0026quot; a version of the gospels which Jefferson produced by (in part) removing all of Jesus\u0026rsquo; miracles.\nOnce again, McCarty didn\u0026rsquo;t approve the comments, demonstrating that he\u0026rsquo;s intentionally suppressing refutation of his ignorant statements. It\u0026rsquo;s his kind of dishonesty that can persuade people to believe that Christianity survives only by hiding from facts and promoting the view that \u0026ldquo;reason is the enemy of faith.\u0026quot;\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-04):\nChristian revisionists (or Liars for Jesus, as Chris Rodda calls them) have developed pseudo-history (see here and here) to counter both the Treaty of Tripoli and Jefferson's Bible.I wasn't surprised to find that in both cases the lies can be traced back to Christian Reconstructionist (or at the least C.R. sympathist) David Barton.\nLippard (2007-10-04):\nThanks for those references--good stuff.\nLippard (2008-12-11):\nSome related posts about Christians suppressing comments they don't like are my post about Bill Muehlenberg and false claims about Nicholas Capaldi's book, _The Art of Deception_ and Norman Doering's post at his blog about other comment suppression.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/bob-mccarty-suppresses-truth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBob McCarty, a religious conservative writer, came to my attention for the first time recently when he touted Lauren Green\u0026rsquo;s historical revisionism about the United States, in response to the \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/kathy-griffins-emmy-jokes-and-lauren.html\"\u003eKathy Griffin Emmy controversy\u003c/a\u003e.  When I and others \u003ca href=\"http://bobmccarty.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/lauren-green-right-on-kathy-griffins-comments\"\u003eposted comments on his blog\u003c/a\u003e pointing out Green\u0026rsquo;s errors, McCarty accused me of \u0026ldquo;anti-Christian revisionist history,\u0026rdquo; cited some quotes from Thomas Jefferson which made reference to \u0026ldquo;God,\u0026rdquo; and stated that \u0026ldquo;I don’t have to read any more books about American history to know that this country was founded on Christian principles and values. Think \u0026lsquo;In God we trust\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;One nation under God.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn response to this latter point, I posted a comment which pointed out that those two phrases don\u0026rsquo;t support McCarty\u0026rsquo;s case regarding the founding of the United States and that Jefferson, while a believer in God, did not believe in the divinity of Jesus.  McCarty didn\u0026rsquo;t approve my comment, so I posted again to see if it was intentional:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBob:  You didn\u0026rsquo;t approve/publish my previous comment responding to your Sep. 15 comment.  I\u0026rsquo;ll try again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYour citation of \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;One Nation Under God\u0026rdquo; as evidence of the U.S. being founded on Christian principles shows your lack of research\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.shtml\"\u003ethe former did not appear on coins until 1854 and on currency until 1957\u003c/a\u003e. The phrase \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance\"\u003ewasn\u0026rsquo;t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also suggested you read more of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, including his \u003ca href=\"http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html\"\u003eletter to his nephew Peter Carr on August 10, 1787\u003c/a\u003e, in which he wrote \u0026ldquo;Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOh, and I also recommended that you check out the 1797 \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli\"\u003eTreaty of Tripoli\u003c/a\u003e, which was ratified by the Congress and signed by President John Adams, which contains the statement that \u003ca href=\"http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm#art11\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Tripoli violated the treaty and a new treaty was negotiated in 1805 without that language, but it is significant that both the Senate and President approved that language.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn my first pass at a comment, I also referred to the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a version of the gospels which Jefferson produced by (in part) removing all of Jesus\u0026rsquo; miracles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnce again, McCarty didn\u0026rsquo;t approve the comments, demonstrating that he\u0026rsquo;s intentionally suppressing refutation of his ignorant statements.  It\u0026rsquo;s his kind of dishonesty that can persuade people to believe that Christianity survives only by hiding from facts and promoting the view that \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/crucifolks-reason-is-enemy-of-faith.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;reason is the enemy of faith.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bob McCarty suppresses the truth"},{"content":"Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and the Arizona Humane Society regularly euthanize animals, not just because they are terminally ill, critically injured beyond the possibility of saving, or displaying uncorrectable aggressive behavior, but to make space for more owner turn-ins. (Another group which regularly engages in euthanasia of healthy animals is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group which is very good at getting free publicity, raising funds, and polarizing opinions, but not particularly good at directly improving the welfare of actual animals. On occasion they indirectly improve the welfare of animals when they successfully stop cases of severe abuse.)\nTuesday\u0026rsquo;s San Francisco Chronicle reports on the content of Nathan Winograd\u0026rsquo;s Redemption: The Myth of Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America, a book which claims that there isn\u0026rsquo;t a dog and cat overpopulation problem or lack of demand for them as pets, but that most animal control and animal shelter operations are simply not taking the most effective steps to care for their animals. Winograd\u0026rsquo;s book and his organization, the No Kill Advocacy Center, argues that by using effective volunteer animal fostering programs and behavior rehabilitation programs, and partnering with local animal rescue groups, there should be no need to euthanize any healthy, adoptable animals. He\u0026rsquo;s not just talking about it, he\u0026rsquo;s successfully done it as director of operations for the San Francisco SPCA and for a rural animal shelter in upstate New York.\nThe No Kill Advocacy Center promotes the \u0026ldquo;No Kill Equation,\u0026quot; a set of ten programs that it identifies as mandatory for any animal control or shelter operation to reduce euthanasia to a minimum:\nI. Feral Cat TNR Program\nII. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter\nIII. Rescue Groups\nIV. Foster Care\nV. Comprehensive Adoption Programs\nVI. Pet Retention\nVII. Medical and Behavior Rehabilitation\nVIII. Public Relations/Community Involvement\nIX. Volunteers\nX. A Compassionate Director\nI recommend reading the SF Chronicle\u0026rsquo;s coverage of Winograd\u0026rsquo;s book. If you\u0026rsquo;re a supporter of your local animal shelters and animal control operations and they engage in euthanasia to make space for new animals, they deserve to be asked pointed questions about what they\u0026rsquo;re doing along the lines of Winograd\u0026rsquo;s recommendations.\nRESCUE, an organization that we volunteer for, is an organization committed to reducing euthanasia of dogs and cats by taking animals from the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control euthanasia lists and keeping them in foster homes or boarding until they can be adopted out to someone who\u0026rsquo;s a good match for the pet based on the pet\u0026rsquo;s behavior and adopter\u0026rsquo;s lifestyle.\n(Hat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list for posting the article about Winograd\u0026rsquo;s book. Thanks, Jack.)\nJeff Hebert (2007-10-05):\nMy wife's very active in dog rescue around Austin, TX and attended his workshop. He's a great speaker, and what he has to say makes a lot of sense. As usual, it's hard to work around entrenched bureaucracies, especially in an area as traditionally neglected as animal control. The good news is that the message is getting out, and it's reaching a lot of volunteer rescuers, who are directly making a difference. My wife's rescue group has placed a couple of hundred dogs over the last two years or so, and they've never had trouble placing them. They're making great use of Craig's List, as well, taking advantage of technology to help place dogs with good owners who might otherwise never set foot in a shelter.I hope more people come to understand that No Kill is not a bleeding-heart liberal slogan, but a sensible and rational approach to solving the needs of both the animal and civic communities. Thanks for bringing attention to this, Jim.\nLippard (2007-10-05):\nThanks for the comment, Jeff. Glad to see you here. I'll have to watch for Winograd to appear here. Phoenix has a large number of rescue groups in operation, but there's still a very large amount of euthanasia.What rescue group does your wife work with?\nJeff Hebert (2007-10-07):\nThanks Jim, I always enjoy your take on things. I think I found you through Ed Brayton's blog.Winograd's well worth seeing according to my wife. What I find most interesting is his approach to getting governments and volunteer groups to work together, he's got some great insights.My wife's group is a relatively small one called Austin Dog Rescue (www.austindog.org). They pull mostly mixed breeds from local shelters, clean them up, spay or neuter them, give them some basic training, and then try to find a good home for them. She's also been active in trying to get local governments (county level) to understand how to run shelters in a more progressive way. Can you believe the shelter in Pflugerville (a little satellite suburb next to Dell Computers) was still gassing its dogs as little as a year ago? You had to have an appointment, a police escort and \"a good reason\" for even being allowed into the holding area for dogs. It was like something out of a bad WWII prison camp movie.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/how-much-animal-euthanization-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaricopa County Animal Care and Control and the Arizona Humane Society regularly euthanize animals, not just because they are terminally ill, critically injured beyond the possibility of saving, or displaying uncorrectable aggressive behavior, but to make space for more owner turn-ins.  (Another group which regularly engages in euthanasia of healthy animals is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group which is very good at getting free publicity, raising funds, and polarizing opinions, but not particularly good at directly improving the welfare of actual animals.  On occasion they indirectly improve the welfare of animals when they successfully stop cases of severe abuse.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTuesday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/02/petscol.DTL\"\u003ereports on the content of Nathan Winograd\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRedemption: The Myth of Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a book which claims that there isn\u0026rsquo;t a dog and cat overpopulation problem or lack of demand for them as pets, but that most animal control and animal shelter operations are simply not taking the most effective steps to care for their animals.  Winograd\u0026rsquo;s book and his organization, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/\"\u003eNo Kill Advocacy Center\u003c/a\u003e, argues that by using effective volunteer animal fostering programs and behavior rehabilitation programs, and partnering with local animal rescue groups, there should be no need to euthanize any healthy, adoptable animals.  He\u0026rsquo;s not just talking about it, he\u0026rsquo;s successfully done it as director of operations for the San Francisco SPCA and for a rural animal shelter in upstate New York.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe No Kill Advocacy Center promotes the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/nokillequation.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;No Kill Equation,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a set of ten programs that it identifies as mandatory for any animal control or shelter operation to reduce euthanasia to a minimum:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How much animal euthanization is unnecessary?"},{"content":"What happens when you rely on the Bible (compounded by even misunderstanding that) instead of oil geology to decide where to drill for oil\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/zion-oil-and-gas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat happens \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/bartholomew_on_zion_oil.php\"\u003ewhen you rely on the Bible (compounded by even misunderstanding that) instead of oil geology to decide where to drill for oil\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zion Oil and Gas"},{"content":"In an interview with Beliefnet, Arizona Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation:\nA recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?\nI would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn\u0026rsquo;t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.Apparently he, like Rep. Ron Paul, missed the fact that the only reference to God in the U.S. Constitution is the reference to the \u0026ldquo;year of our Lord\u0026rdquo; in the date. The Constitutional Convention voted not to open with prayers, Article VI says that \u0026ldquo;no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,\u0026rdquo; and the First Amendment says that \u0026ldquo;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u0026quot;\nThe Constitution establishes a democratic republic with a strong separation of church and state by comparison to other nations. The Bible, by contrast, speaks of theocratic political systems with rule by priests and kings.\nIn 1797, the Senate unanimously ratified and President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 of which began with the words \u0026ldquo;As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.\u0026rdquo; (This treaty was quickly violated by Tripoli, and the renegotiated treaty of 1805 did not contain this article, but the important point is that this language was approved by the entire Senate and the President in 1797.)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-10-03):\nHere's another dandy from McCain\"I think the number one issue people should make [in the]selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?\" Given his past critical comments about Jerry Fallwell and religous right, I can't help but suspect that McCain is trying to butter them up this time around.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/mccain-hasnt-read-constitution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.beliefnet.com/story/220/story_22001_1.html\"\u003ean interview with Beliefnet\u003c/a\u003e, Arizona Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn\u0026rsquo;t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.\u003c/blockquote\u003eApparently he, \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/ron-paul-religious-kook.html\"\u003elike Rep. Ron Paul\u003c/a\u003e, missed the fact that the only reference to God in the U.S. Constitution is the reference to the \u0026ldquo;year of our Lord\u0026rdquo; in the date.  The Constitutional Convention voted not to open with prayers, Article VI says that \u0026ldquo;no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,\u0026rdquo; and the First Amendment says that \u0026ldquo;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Constitution establishes a democratic republic with a strong separation of church and state by comparison to other nations.  The Bible, by contrast, speaks of theocratic political systems with rule by priests and kings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1797, the Senate unanimously ratified and President John Adams signed the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli\"\u003eTreaty of Tripoli\u003c/a\u003e, Article 11 of which began with the words \u0026ldquo;As the Government of the United States of  America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.\u0026rdquo;  (This treaty was quickly violated by Tripoli, and the renegotiated treaty of 1805 did not contain this article, but the important point is that this language was approved by the entire Senate and the President in 1797.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain hasn't read the Constitution?"},{"content":"Higley, Arizona School District director of visual and performing arts Tara Kissane stopped a performance of \u0026ldquo;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)\u0026rdquo; for 6th to 12th graders in mid-performance because she thought the content was \u0026ldquo;inappropriate and not a kind of performance that we want them to see.\u0026quot;\nThe performance, by Windwood Theatricals of New York, was attended by students who chose to pay $5 for a voluntary field trip to see it at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts. Kissane interrupted it 40 minutes in, but declined to identify what specifically she found to be \u0026ldquo;inappropriate.\u0026rdquo; She said that \u0026ldquo;I thought it was great for college-aged students \u0026hellip; I just thought it was over some of our kids\u0026rsquo; heads and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t appropriate for our kids. If I\u0026rsquo;m going to err on the side of anything, I\u0026rsquo;m erring on the side of caution.\u0026quot;\nErring on the side of stupidity, she should have said. So what if it was \u0026ldquo;over some of our kids\u0026rsquo; heads\u0026rdquo;? What about those who were getting something out of it? Why deprive those children on behalf of the lowest common denominator?\nHistorical Comments VGNbici (2007-10-03):\nWell, if the play was \"Titus Andronicus\" perhaps she objected to the rape, murder, incest, dismemberment, and cannibalism. In other words, all those things that make the play a delight to watch - as good as any contemporary action / revenge movie. The sort of stuff kids today are likely to be watching at home and in the cinema.\nUnknown (2007-10-03):\nAs I'm sure you're aware, The Complete Works of William shakespeare (Abridged) is not actually works by Shakespeare. It's a series of short sketches based roughly on the plays. You can read a synopsis here.Some of my friends did this play in high school, and it is definitely bawdy in places, but nothing high school students wouldn't be able to handle\nAnonymous (2007-10-03):\nHamlet, Act III, Scene IIA hall in the castle. Enter HAMLET and Players HAMLET Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines...Unless of course my dear people the word police doth drop the curtain to protect thy innocents from some of the best literature ever written.\nCCM (2007-10-03):\nMy 13-year-old was in the audience. She LOVED the play and was not happy that she didn't get to see the whole thing. The offending words were \"damn, bitch, penis\" and a couple of others. She said the students were all familiar with the words, except for maybe the six graders, who she thought shouldn't have been there anyway. \"Stupid six graders!\" ;-)Anyway, we are smack dab in the middle of Mormon country, so I am not surprised about the outcome. To the theatre troupe: Where can my daughter see the play? She loved it!\nAlexia Vernon (2007-10-03):\nOh, how it pains me to hear educators and administrators confusing protecting young people with denying young people information to make their own decisions about what they like, believe, etc. Any study I've ever read has confirmed that young people are never more likely to engage in a behavior or adopt a thought from encountering it in an educational forum. But rather, through education, a young person gains the intellectual tools necessary to be able to evaluate a message for him/herself rather than relying on piecemeal, biased, or inaccurate arguments and ideas.If only young people had the choice to cut the adults in their lives off when they stopped being useful, intelligent, articulate, or in line with their values!\nThursday (2007-10-04):\nI lost my film version of \"The Cmplt wrks f Wllm Shspr (Abgd)\".Your post has made me sad.Perhaps it was the point where one of the actors has to play a woman (in fact, ALL the women's roles) that the teacher objected to?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/10/higley-school-district-official-stops.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHigley, Arizona School District director of visual and performing arts Tara Kissane \u003ca href=\"http://www.kpho.com/news/14250819/detail.html\"\u003estopped a performance of \u0026ldquo;The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)\u0026rdquo; for 6th to 12th graders in mid-performance\u003c/a\u003e because she thought the content was \u0026ldquo;inappropriate and not a kind of performance that we want them to see.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe performance, by Windwood Theatricals of New York, was attended by students who chose to pay $5 for a voluntary field trip to see it at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts.  Kissane interrupted it 40 minutes in, but declined to identify what specifically she found to be \u0026ldquo;inappropriate.\u0026rdquo;  She said that \u0026ldquo;I thought it was great for college-aged students \u0026hellip; I just thought it was over some of our kids\u0026rsquo; heads and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t appropriate for our kids. If I\u0026rsquo;m going to err on the side of anything, I\u0026rsquo;m erring on the side of caution.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eErring on the side of stupidity, she should have said.  So what if it was \u0026ldquo;over some of our kids\u0026rsquo; heads\u0026rdquo;?  What about those who were getting something out of it?  Why deprive those children on behalf of the lowest common denominator?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Higley school district official stops Shakespearean play in progress"},{"content":"\n(Thanks, Jami!)\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-10-01):\n*blush*My, that is kinda intense. I never noticed the level of profanity in Casino before, maybe I'm too used to Joe Pesci's mobster routine.\nLippard (2007-10-03):\nOr maybe it's the contrast with Bert and Ernie that makes it stand out...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/ernie-and-bert-do-casino.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/EFrLcvGkhMc\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/EFrLcvGkhMc\u0026hl=en\u0026fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Thanks, Jami!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e*blush*\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eMy, that is kinda intense. I never noticed the level of profanity in Casino before, maybe I'm too used to Joe Pesci's mobster routine.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-03)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOr maybe it's the contrast with Bert and Ernie that makes it stand out...\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e","title":"Ernie and Bert do Casino"},{"content":"From the Adult Swim series \u0026ldquo;Moral Orel,\u0026rdquo; a song by the Crucifolks, \u0026ldquo;Reason is the Enemy of Faith\u0026rdquo;:\nReason is the enemy of faith, my friend\nA head that's filled with knowledge\nsoon is too bloated with its own weight\nto fit through heaven's gate\nSo think with your heart\nit's the only organ for salvation\nthink with your heart\ndon't deduce yourself to eternal damnation\nthink with your heart\n'cause you know that the almighty sees us\nthink only with your heart\nwhoever heard of the bleeding brain of Jesus?\nthink only with your heartMore on Moral Orel here.\nUPDATE (October 4, 2007): The comments on this post got way off track from what this song is saying, with olvlzl riding his own hobbyhorses to the extent that I think he completely missed the point. When he says to me, \"If you don't agree with the song lyrics, I'm glad to hear it,\" I can only wonder if he bothered to read them. The lyrics are parody, expressing an extreme Christian anti-intellectualism that sees not only education but reason itself as something evil and in opposition to faith that must be avoided at all costs. Of course I disagree with that, as does anyone who values reason. What makes it funny is the extreme to which it takes the view--but what makes it disturbing is that there are anti-intellectual Christians who see knowledge and attempting to seek it as evil practices. They are the sort who say that all the knowledge they need is in the Bible (and these are often the King James Version only sorts, as well), so there is no need to read anything else.\nolvlzl, by contrast, is looking at the reverse position, that there is no need for faith. But that's not what the song is about, or what \"Moral Orel\" is about. olvlzl (2007-10-03):\nOk, I expect everyone here who holds this belief, and it is a belief, but more about that in a minute - anyway, I expect that all of you rigorous rationalists will hold absolutely no ideas which you have not entirely proven or demonstrated with sufficient rigor so as to be the product of reason. If you do you are guilty of the intellectual crime of faith. No idea of which you have not mastered the proof can be held without it being to a greater or lesser extent the product of faith. That include the faith that scientists, who even as a group have demonstrated their fallibility, have gotten those particular ideas right. And, most of all, I expect you will hold no ideas about which no physical evidence exists since literally any idea you accept about them will be the product of some kind of faith. Atheism is a statement of faith about something which can't be known, at least it is when it asserts as a fact that there not a God or anything supernatural instead of the entirely, rock solid and honest statement \"I don't believe there is a God\". There is no assertion that can be made for or against the idea of a supernatural God which is not the product of reliance on that which can't be known, faith. Every single person who has an active mind relies on ideas held on the basis of faith. If this ditty is correct, then reason doesn't exist, at least not in human beings.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\n[[GROAN]] ...Jesus.I lack the patience for this one, Jim.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nIt's really just an extension of the \"how can anyone know something unless they know it\" discussion about the airport. It's not a particularly difficult concept to grasp that anything you think you know on the basis of less than conclusive proof isn't known, it's merely believed to a greater or lesser extent. It's an entirely reasonable position to face that basic fact of life, though it requires some humility, which can be uncomfortable.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nDon't know what we'd do without you and your spiritual guidance and epistemological expertise, olvlzl.Since you've taken it upon yourself to enlighten us, I have some questions for you:Is it \"faith\" to believe in something for which there is evidence, experience, and argument?Is it a faith position to believe that 1 + 1 = 2?Is it a faith position to believe that the sun is going to rise tomorrow?Is it a faith position to believe that when I let go of something heavy it will fall to the ground?Is it a faith position to believe that playing in traffic is a bad idea?If all of the above beliefs are \"faith based\", then can you provide an example of a belief that is not based on faith?If the answer to the above question is \"No\", then: If all positions are faith positions then what criteria should one use to choose between any two beliefs? How do you know, for example, to believe that Jesus is Lord, and not Vishnu--or neither?Does a lack of definitive and conclusive evidence for or against a particular belief about the world preclude a defeasible acceptance of that belief? Does such a conditional acceptance require \"faith\" as a component?Are there \"degrees\" of faith? Does it perhaps take more faith to believe that there's a heaven than it does to believe that if I drop an egg onto my kitchen floor it's going to break? In other words, do beliefs that are in accord with a wealth of evidence, experience, and logic require as much faith as beliefs for which there is no evidence, contrary evidence, little experience, and/or faulty logic? To put it yet another way, do atheists require just as much faith for their beliefs as the religious folks do for theirs? Explain your answer.If that is what faith is, then what is it that distinguishes matters of faith from other types of belief? If everything is a matter of faith, then isn't \"faith\" a mere triviality? Why is faith so important to Jesus (and Mohammed)?What is the meaning behind, for example, John 20:29: \"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.\"?\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nEinzige, since I wasn't the one who advocated the song asserting that reason and faith are incompatible, which is the subject of this post, I don't know why you're asking me those questions. If that assertion is made then it's only reasonable to really look at what it means and what consequences that pretentious position reasonable requires of those holding it. I've always found that the rude kind of atheist fundamentalists, just about to a person, are unwilling to really consider the logical results of their assertions. As the tone of your responses indicates, it's generally a matter of emotion than reason that governs their consideration of these kinds of questions. But I don't have any problem with the idea that people know some things and that the very same people also hold ideas on the basis of faith. I also realize that what is held to be known and the results of reason in most of life have as much to do with experience as they do with strict empirical evidence, quantification and analysis. I don't pretend that they are strictly a matter of science or that just about all of science, exempting math, is contingent to a greater or lesser degree.I've never pretended to absolute knowledge and haven't made any statements of religious faith here. Can't you argue the points on their merits?\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nJust looked at that comment with greater magnification, I've got my last resort pair of spare glasses on today. Sorry for the lapses.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nYou asserted \"Atheism is a statement of faith...\"That is what I am responding to. Is that a particularly difficult concept to grasp?What exactly is the \"tone\" of my response to you? How do you know that your interpretation of its tone is correct? Does this interpretation of tone involve the use of some humility, which might be uncomfortable?Why is it that you never seem to directly address my questions for you?Are my questions not substantive? Not on point?\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nBy the way, my own intended tone can be characterized as \"good-natured ribbing.\"If it comes across as something else then the fault lies with me.\nLippard (2007-10-03):\nolvlzl: My posting of these lyrics was not to advocate them, but to point out the MP3 and the show \"Moral Orel\" because it's *funny*. The categories of the posting are religion and *parody*.That said, we all have beliefs held on the basis of insufficient evidence. But I disagree that atheism is \"a statement of faith about something which can't be known.\" Your claim that the nonexistence of God cannot be known is agnosticism, which I think is false for the most commonly used meanings of the term \"God.\" (It is possible to construct definitions of God which are impervious to refutation by evidence and logic--I think the notion of God developed in Richard M. Gale's _On the Nature and Existence of God_ is a candidate.)I've written at some length on the claim that it's impossible to prove a negative, and Jeff Lowder and Richard Carrier have applied similar reasoning to specifically address the question of whether a disproof of the existence of God is possible (I have links to their articles from mine).\nLippard (2007-10-03):\nPlease insert the word \"necessarily\" into my sentence that begins \"I disagree that atheism is 'a statement of faith ...'\", after \"atheism is.\" It can be, but needn't be.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nEinzige, my statement about atheism being a statement of faith was conditioned in two ways. First, that the atheist was asserting that it was a fact that there was no god or supernatural and that if the atheist wasn't making that leap beyond what can be known. Asserting that something that can't be known is a fact is the essence of the kind of faith that is practiced by fundamentalists. Many people who are religious aren't so presumptuous, though the current fashion is to lump them into the same bin with the fundamentalists. You can hardly fault me for pointing out that this kind of fundamentalism isn't limited to religious believers but is the essence of the current neo-atheist fad. A second group of atheists, who are out of style these days and often called insulting names by atheist fundamentalists, merely state that they didn't believe that they don't believe in a god, etc. are expressing something they can know beyond a doubt, that they, themselves, don't believe something. I call those atheists \"liberal atheists\" just in the same way that most informed people distinguish between liberal religion and fundamentalism. As to your questions. Those were serious and intended to refute my point? I'll take the most interesting one 1+1=2. The \"proof\" of that statement took Russell and Whitehead pages and pages of rather difficult formal logic to come up with the logical demonstration of that idea, and there are those who hold that it isn't proved even with that. If I could find my old copy of the Principia, the easy stuff not the entire thing I'd tell you which page to look at but it seems to be missing. So, your example backs up my point that the proof of even relatively everyday \"facts\" are taken on experience and faith in that experience instead of reason, logic and formal or scientific proof. Russell was, of course, an atheist, Whitehead was a rather unorthodox religious believer. Odd that Russell would trust a faith head with reasoning that was so important in his career.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nJim Lippard, any assertion that there is a god whois \"invisible, unknowable, indescribable, without beginning and without end, omnipotent, etc.\" effectively puts that god outside of the realm of what can be dealt with by science or logic. Just \"unknowable and indescribable\" would make any statement about such a god entirely unreliable. Given that the majority of religious believers hold that a god is responsible for the entire physical universe it's hardly reasonable to assume that such a god could be comprehended by any or even the entire body of human beings. We do tend to be rather limited in our capacity to understand and perceive things. Belief in such a god can take different forms, some more prone to dispute than others. As in my assertion about the absolute unassailable nature of the \"liberal atheist's\" statement, any religious believer who relies on their experience and persona belief puts themselves beyond dispute. I believe this might be why Harris and Dawkins resort to vicarious blame of religious liberals for the sins of others instead of trying to take them on through discourse. Religious fundamentalists, the targets of opportunity of neo-atheism, make easily refuted assertions not based in their experience. If you don't agree with the song lyrics, I'm glad to hear it.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nBoy, I do wish we could re-edit these things after they're posted.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nolvlzl,It seems that all you're really saying is \"certain knowledge is denied us.\"Who would argue against such a statement? Definitely not a pair of skeptics, like Jim and myself.I object, however, to your conclusion that, therefore \"all belief is faith\".And, yes, my questions were serious. And, no, they were not intended to \"refute\" anything. How can a series of questions accomplish a refutation of anything?I was trying to get a clearer picture of your thought processes. I notice you still haven't answered them (except the first one - and your answer doesn't surprise me, actually).And, btw, defining God as \"unknowable\" and then concluding that we can't claim certain knowledge about God is--aside from being an absurd description for God--just winning the argument by definition.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nStarting with your last point. You can consider knowing that an \"unkowable god\" is unknowable as a pardox or you could consider it as a known statement about your own, experienced limitations. Though, in that case asserting that you know that such a god is unknowable to other people (or possible beings) is an assumption.Belief and faith are listed as synonyms in the several dictionaries I've checked just now. While a lot of atheists don't seem to like that it is the way the words are defined. Though I'd never claim to \"know\" that as an absolute fact, though I intend to rely on it. My thought processes, I just try to stick to the facts in as much detail as I can manage hopefully without prejudice and with a sense of fairness and the experience of human limitations. \"Skepticism\" is where I got into all of this because of a dishonest attack made against me by one of Paul Kurtz' post-adolescent goons. Seems I'd written something too critical of CSICOP and it's associated groupies and frauds. It was in researching my post that I first came across Mr. Lippard's writings, which I respect. I am, however, extremely skeptical about organized skepticism, even of the non-Kurtzian kind. I've met religious believers who are more skeptical than a lot of \"skeptics\". You could nutshell my feelings about \"skepticism\" by saying that I think people are the best judge of their own experience and too many \"skeptics\" arrogantly think they are the best judge of what other people think about it.B\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\n\"People are the best judge of their own experience\"In reference to what?Are paranoid schizophrenics their own best judges?I'm with you as far as my knowledge about whether I like ice cream better than donuts at a particular time. But I'd not trust my personal experience when it comes to an uncontrolled situation in which someone appears to be bending spoons with their will alone. Same goes for things like meeting Jesus.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\nIn reference to what?- Are paranoid schizophrenics their own best judges?* No. Did you think I meant that the severely irrational were? Though I'd think that what they have to say about their own experiences are worth listening to and seeing if some of it is accurate.- But I'd not trust my personal experience when it comes to an uncontrolled situation in which someone appears to be bending spoons with their will alone. * I've never gotten what it is about the spoon bending stuff that has \"skeptics\" all bent out of shape. How many people are being bilked out of large amounts of money by spoon benders, or their neighborhood fortune tellers, for that matter. Now compare that number to lending, insurance and other financial institutions that \"skeptics\" seem to generally take in stride. And don't get me started on evolutionary psychology, Pinker-style congnative \"science\", psychology (with some exceptions) and other forms of serious fraud in the name of science. - Same goes for things like meeting Jesus.* Well, it depends on what they're claiming about meeting Jesus. If it's Oral Roberts and a multi-story Jesus was telling him to build a useless hospital in a city that didn't need it, or that he should shake down the dupes, well, I'd have a problem with that too. If it's some harmless, fairly apolitical Pentecostalist who finds their experience meaningful but doesn't use it to impinge on anyone else's rights, that's entirely their and Jesus' business. You guys need to learn that other people don't need your permission to believe what they believe.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nNow compare that number to lending, insurance and other financial institutions that \"skeptics\" seem to generally take in stride.Perhaps you should read my blog before you say that. :-)If it's some harmless, fairly apolitical Pentecostalist who finds their experience meaningful but doesn't use it to impinge on anyone else's rights, that's entirely their and Jesus' business.Indeed. And I wouldn't argue otherwise. However, I would argue that their subjective experience shouldn't be used, even by them, as a guide to knowledge about God.\nolvlzl (2007-10-03):\n- Indeed. And I wouldn't argue otherwise. However, I would argue that their subjective experience shouldn't be used, even by them, as a guide to knowledge about God.* This is another thing I've never understood about the folly of attempting to use what is mistaken for science to prove or disprove the existence of God. Why would a god who created the entire population, indeed the entire universe, and who regulates its progress through time need anything objective to demonstrate something to anyone? I'd expect that something much more intimate, which would be deemed \"subjective\" would be much more compelling to the individual and so much more meaningful. The \"objective\" is an ideal invented by people who were interested in a specific type of very reliable knowledge, such as in science. That such reliable knowledge is possible only under very specific and often unavailable conditions forces us to deal with most of the universe of experience without such \"objectivity\". It's the folly of scientism that it claims that such special circumstances are available for the entire universe, both of experience and that which can't be experienced, observed, measured, analyzed and reviewed, that catches up so many materialists. If there is a god, one thing that it makes no sense to assume is that the author of the universe is a mere 'object' that can be dealt with on the basis of \"objectivity\". It is both bad science and bad reasoning to expect to use the tools of science, developed BY THE HUMAN IMAGINATION solely to gain \"objective\" knowledge of the physical universe for things defined as being either partially or entirely apart from the physical universe and its limits which make scientific observation possible in some limited circumstances.\nEinzige (2007-10-03):\nIt is both bad science and bad reasoning to expect to use the tools of science...for things defined as being either partially or entirely apart from the physical universe...There you go, winning by definition again.Who would make such an absurd statement?In effect you're claiming that skeptics, scientists, and rationalists are saying something akin to:\"We're going to use the tools of science to study something that, by definition, can't be studied by science.\"No one says that!Various people have made various claims about the nature of God, and most of the time these claims have extended beyond \"that thing which is unknowable.\"Certain types of claims about the world are testable - meaning they can be verified or falsified.Now we're in the realm of science.Even you've defined God as something other than \"unknowable\". You said God is \"entirely apart from the physical universe.\" A fair question for the scientist and skeptic, then, is \"How do you know this?\"\nolvlzl (2007-10-04):\n\"We're going to use the tools of science to study something that, by definition, can't be studied by science.No one says that!\"Well, what do you call it when Dawkins starts gassing on about using probability (math) to determine that God almost certainly doesn't exist. Oddly, the mirror assertion of the Bayesians he has slammed for their attempts. How about his entirely bizarre attempts to fit the non-physical God into a weird faux-evolutionary concept(he's good at coming up with junk science)? How about his faithful side-kick Dennett and his bizarre assertions about religious belief being the byproduct of natural selection and genetics (an idiotic assertion that is guaranteed to please fundamentalists and, especially Calvinists to no end for reasons I'll explain on request.) What do you call it when countless would be scientific atheists have used any number of observations about the physical universe to \"prove\" that God doesn't exist? Einzige, atheist fundamentalism consists of little more than countless assertions that science refutes the existence of the supernatural all on the basis of the misapplication of science to the supernatural? I didn't define God as supernatural, that was done well before I was born and the supernatural definition of God is given as \"proof\" by materialists that God can't exist. Well, these days they've added that vicarious blame so in style these days. And here I'd thought that vicarious guilt was finally put to rest by the late Jewish prophetic tradition, only to have it resurrected by \"rationalists\".\nLippard (2007-10-04):\nWe're going WAY far afield of \"Moral Orel\" here, but I'd just like to say that I see nothing whatsoever wrong with looking for natural explanations (including evolutionary) for religious beliefs and practices. The work that has been done in that area has been quite productive and fruitful, such as Pascal Boyer's _Religion Explained_.\nolvlzl (2007-10-04):\nJim Lippard, I'll take that as a non-invitation to explain what I meant re Dennett.I don't have any problem with taking a scientific look at anything about which real science can be done but it has to be real science and not junk science. Science is actually rather limited in what it can be used for since for a lot of things the necessary accuracy in observation, measurement, etc. can't be achieved. It's a growing practice, especially in so-called sciences such as evolutionary psychology to simply ignore the fact that there isn't any physical evidence and go with self-serving theories and entirely made up stories about the Pleistocene period equally based in nothing but the self-interests of those pretending to do science. While they might hold jobs in universities that allow them to be considered scientists, their work is not science and it does no good in the long run to pretend that it is. Any claims made by religion that can be investigated by science can and should be, those which can't, can't and no one should pretend they can be. There is a mountain of this kind of pretense on both sides.\nEinzige (2007-10-04):\nIsn't it nice, though, that the tools of science (reason... experiment... criticism... argument...) make it self-correcting over the long term?Faith, on the other hand, has no such tools.\nolvlzl (2007-10-04):\nFaith, on the other hand, has no such tools. EinzigeWell, that's a charge that is often made but, well, how about reflection, examination of conscience, shame, guilt, a sense of personal responsibility. You see, faith has its tools of correction too. Just as with the tools that are supposed to get science right, they are only used by people who are honest and conscientious. I know that some, if not all, of these tools of morality are out of fashion and scorned by many they work pretty well when they are used the right way.Now, how about applying the tools of science to that list to those Just-so Stories of evolutionary psychology. That's been going on for decades now and it's getting worse as time goes on.\nLippard (2007-10-05):\nolvlzl: I've updated the post with some commentary about where this discussion has gone. I think you completely missed the point of the song lyrics.\nEinzige (2007-10-05):\nolvlzl,Are you arguing just to argue?Your statements are either patently absurd or else not germane to the topic at hand (neither I nor Jim are advocates of evolutionary psychology, and I daresay we, and very likely much of the scientific community, agree with your assessment of it).Frankly I found you tiresome about 5 comments ago.\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nJim Lippard, since most of my comments were in response to one of the bloggers here I don't think you can blame me for the progress of the discussion, well, not entirely. As for the unwise use of disciplines to look into questions and assertions they can't, I don't think that exactly constitutes a hobby horse, it's rather important. Or I'd have thought anyone with an interest in honesty in thought would think so. I re-read my first comment and think it exactly answers the assertions of the lyrics you posted. Einzige, I know lots of scientists agree that ep is pseudo-science, though there are many who don't. So, why aren't Dawkins and Dennett considered to be discredited when they have based large parts of their intellectual careers on it? Why aren't \"skeptics\" disavowing them for their intellectual sins? Dawkins is the chief star in the Kurtz empire these days. If I've said anything absurd, please list. I'm always interested in where I'm wrong, believing that it's better to change an idea than it is to continue in error.\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nI've decided that I'd like to post this entire exchange on my blog, without alteration. Considering the embarrassing consequences of my having lost my glasses before it started that's a pretty big concession on my part. If you don't object I'll take that as permission.\nLippard (2007-10-05):\nolvlzl: Granted, everyone who participated in the discussion contributed to its direction. Your original comment, if actually tied in to what the song lyrics say, could have been written something like this: \"While this song goes too far in arguing that faith is a replacement for reason, we all have at least some beliefs which are not based on reason.\" And I don't think anybody would have disagreed.\"I know lots of scientists agree that ep is pseudo-science, though there are many who don't. So, why aren't Dawkins and Dennett considered to be discredited when they have based large parts of their intellectual careers on it? Why aren't \"skeptics\" disavowing them for their intellectual sins? Dawkins is the chief star in the Kurtz empire these days.\"I often see arguments that Dawkins is mistaken to argue that evolution discredits religion coming from scientists, skeptics, and bloggers. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the NCSE, makes that argument. It's a very common dispute in the ScienceBlogs arena between people like P.Z. Myers on one side, and John Lynch, Ed Brayton, Rob Knop, Matt Nisbet (former PR Director for CSICOP!), Chris Mooney (regular writer for Skeptical Inquirer), and many others on the other side. A recent Skeptics Society conference I attended at Caltech had several presentations critical of evolutionary psychology (such as one by Roger Bingham), and none in favor.I'm not sure on what basis you say that \"Dawkins is the chief star in the Kurtz empire these days,\" or of what significance that is. From your postings elsewhere, I think you grossly overestimate Kurtz's influence among skeptics.\nLippard (2007-10-05):\nolvlzl: I just noticed that you asked to post this entire exchange on your blog. The Creative Commons license of this blog permits you to do so with attribution--I'd appreciate it if you include a link back here when you do it.\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-05):\nI'm not sure on what basis you say that \"Dawkins is the chief star in the Kurtz empire these days,\" or of what significance that is.He thinks that Paul Kurtz is the atheist version of Pat Robertson and believes he runs his \"empire\" for personal profit and to promote \"atheist fundamentalism.\" In this picture, Dawkins plays a role kind of like Malcom X did for Elijah Muhammed.Or at least that's my understanding of Olvzl.\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nJim Lippard. My problems with Dawkins go back to his “Selfish Genes” days, being an extension of the problems I had with sociobiology before it made its strategic retreat even further from the realms of reification, conflation and wild jumps clear across into the taxonomy into the realms of historical fiction. Those difficulties were entirely scientific and logical, I had no idea that he would turn out to be the figure in atheist fundamentalism he has turned out to be. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed with his last few books, the last one was a scholarly abomination. Dennett’s career as his budget brand Thomas Huxley is, if anything, even more of a logical and scientific disaster. If neo-atheists are content to put their fait... oh, ok, eggs in those baskets they can’t complain when someone points out they’re cracked.If Dawkins and Dennett had never addressed religion, I’d probably still be talking about them. The only interest I’ve got in the religious-atheist strife is in the effect it has on leftist politics here. If it had no demonstrated impact on elections, I’d never touch the stuff. Not even as tempting as the entertaining arguments can be. I had every last one of those that could be had with my brilliant and feisty atheist-Latin teacher. I base my contention that Dawkins is the current holder of the St. Carl Sagan seat of prominence in the Kurtz empire based on the lurid propaganda that they will insist on sending me. I suppose that is the fate of any long-term subscriber to leftie magazines. Kurtz’ position in the neo-atheist manifestation is demonstrated by how many bloggers in the atheist blogosphere list direct ties to groups that have him as their “chairman for life”, on risk of quoting an atheist who is much too colorful for some. I’ve taken Rawlins advice and googled him. He’s all over the place, though for some reason atheist fundamentalists don’t like it when you bring his name up. I will, of course, not reprint without attribution or a link so people can check to make sure I’m not distorting the record. I will, however give a brief explanation of what it is I’m posting. As for the lyrics, I represented them with complete accuracy. They aren’t at all complex and their connotation is far clearer than their rather muddled and cliched denotation.\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nDawkins plays a role kind of like Malcom X did for Elijah Muhammed. Humes GhostWell, I seem to recall Dawkins saying something about Randi having to pay up on his phony challenge, though I don't think that exactly constitutes speaking truth to power.You do realize how ironic it is to associate Dawkins with a minister of religion like Malcom X, don't you? Yes, Humes Ghost is one of those who didn't like me bringing up Kurtz elsewhere. Accusing me of being a neo-astrology cultist in the process.\nHume's Ghost (2007-10-05):\n\"Accusing me of being a neo-astrology cultist in the process.\"My god. You are possibly the most obnoxious individual I've encountered on the internet. The sum of my \"accusation\" consisted of me writing something to the effect of \"neoastrology ... are you kidding me?\" which was in regards to the Starbaby deal. I was in amazement that that was what Olvlzl based his SCI are atheist fundamentalists assertion on.When he retorted that the author was not a neoastrologist I answered taht I never thought he was, although I had briefly considered Olvzl was one before realizing he was just someone who has kook beliefs about \"neo-atheists.\"I knew I should have continued ignoring him.\nEinzige (2007-10-05):\nThe stuff olvlzl says is so out there that, after I've picked my jaw up off the floor, I find it difficult not to respond.Then again, I've noticed in my romantic life a tendency to be attracted to crazy women, so...\nLippard (2007-10-05):\n\"Kurtz’ position in the neo-atheist manifestation is demonstrated by how many bloggers in the atheist blogosphere list direct ties to groups that have him as their 'chairman for life', on risk of quoting an atheist who is much too colorful for some. I’ve taken Rawlins advice and googled him. He’s all over the place, though for some reason atheist fundamentalists don’t like it when you bring his name up.\"I suspect most atheists don't even know who Paul Kurtz is. More skeptics are likely to have heard of him via CSI/CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer/Center for Inquiry, and many humanists are likely to have heard of him through CSH/Free Inquiry/Center for Inquiry. But there are a lot of independent skeptical groups out there these days--especially with the growth of online forums like the sci.skeptic Usenet newsgroup, the SKEPTIC mailing list, and countless blogs--and most of their participants don't even read Skeptical Inquirer.If you look at connections that derive back to Paul Kurtz, there are clearly a lot. He's been influential in that groups he started have had a lot of impact and involved a lot of people, but I don't think he's directly all that influential.As for the claim that he's gotten rich off skepticism--I don't think he's received any direct compensation for his work for his 501(c)(3)s--last time I looked at the Form 990s, I'm pretty sure his compensation was $0 across the board. I'm sure he gets money from Prometheus Books, and I know he's got a nice home in Amherst, NY (which I've visited--but it's in Amherst, NY, where property is cheap).\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nJim Lippard, I was aware of Kurtz back in the 60s, well before \"skepticism\". And he goes back much farther than that. I don't recall making an accusation of him getting rich off of his activities, though I'd really like to know more about the financial side of his and organized \"Humanism's\" history. It's not easy to trace with the resources I've got available but I suspect there's something interesting there. If some atheists aren't more interested in the history of their movement or the still living links they have to it, their lack of curiosity isn't my fault. Perhaps that's what comes of thinking only science can enlighten. I've never been convinced that Kurtz or most of the \"skeptics\" are skeptical about much of anything. I'm more inclined to agree with the late Marcello Truzzi on that count. Hume's Ghost, so you do remember that exchange, though not exactly as I do. Have I committed a breach of etiquette here? If you can't deal with the informal kind of investigation I've done, why should anyone think atheist fundamentalism could stand up to a really rigorous and complete treatment? Einzige, please, I await correction. Isn't a blog supposed to be an educational experience? What other reason is there to write or read one?\nEinzige (2007-10-05):\nolvlzl,It's very boring to argue with you, because you resort to ad hominem, attacks upon straw men, and a copious amount of red herring tossing.In the current context (or almost any other, actually), I really couldn't care less about what Kurtz does or doesn't do with his time and money, what Dawkins and Dennet do or do not say, or any history of any atheist \"movement\".Unless you're willing to start being intellectually honest, and argue about errors and/or ommissions of facts and/or logic on the current topic, without bringing up irrelevancies or throwing around meaningless labels like \"neo-atheist\", then I'm not interested in any more discussions with you.Out of respect for Jim and his wish to keep blog comments at least somewhat relevant to the original post, this is the last comment I'm going to make in this thread.\nolvlzl (2007-10-05):\nIt's very boring to argue with you, because you resort to ad hominem, attacks upon straw men, and a copious amount of red herring tossing. EinzigeExamples in my own words, please. If you hadn't mentioned \"skepticism\" I'd never have mentioned Kurtz' little goon in explanation. Other than that I don't think the \"ad hominem\" charge could possibly be entertained. And telling the relevant truth is always a defense in the charge of ad homiem. If there are any fair minded people following this, please notice who has been making personal comments from just about the beginning. As to red herrings, I've only answered things you've said. You are free to refute any errors I make at any time as I've requested. If you don't like that I can keep answering you, why you keep it up?\nDolly (2008-08-29):\nThanks! I've been looking for that mp3!! Can't get that song out of my head!\nLippard (2008-08-29):\nIt is catchy, isn't it?\nAnonymous (2010-10-11):\nFaith is the belief in the impossibility of reason. Which for proof believers use their belief in such for evidence. Atheism is not a statement of \u0026quot;faith\u0026quot; Atheism is a lack of the belief in the Supernatural. Logic puts the burden of proof on the assertion of the positive i.e. \u0026quot;God exists.\u0026quot; We do not simply deny God exists. We do not even acknowledge the belief. It is the believers assertion. It is their burden to prove. And it is impossible.\nLippard (2010-10-21):\nHanson: For an argument against the \u0026quot;lack of belief\u0026quot; definition of atheism, see this blog post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/crucifolks-reason-is-enemy-of-faith.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the Adult Swim series \u0026ldquo;Moral Orel,\u0026rdquo; a song by the Crucifolks, \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/music/9528151/songs/10570110\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Reason is the Enemy of Faith\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eReason is the enemy of faith, my friend\u003cbr /\u003e\nA head that's filled with knowledge\u003cbr /\u003e\nsoon is too bloated with its own weight\u003cbr /\u003e\nto fit through heaven's gate\u003cbr /\u003e\nSo think with your heart\u003cbr /\u003e\nit's the only organ for salvation\u003cbr /\u003e\nthink with your heart\u003cbr /\u003e\ndon't deduce yourself to eternal damnation\u003cbr /\u003e\nthink with your heart\u003cbr /\u003e\n'cause you know that the almighty sees us\u003cbr /\u003e\nthink only with your heart\u003cbr /\u003e\nwhoever heard of the bleeding brain of Jesus?\u003cbr /\u003e\nthink only with your heart\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore on Moral Orel \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/moral-orel.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 4, 2007):  The comments on this post got way off track from what this song is saying, with olvlzl riding his own hobbyhorses to the extent that I think he completely missed the point.  When he says to me, \"If you don't agree with the song lyrics, I'm glad to hear it,\" I can only wonder if he bothered to read them.  The lyrics are parody, expressing an extreme Christian anti-intellectualism that sees not only education but reason itself as something evil and in opposition to faith that must be avoided at all costs.  Of course I disagree with that, as does anyone who values reason.  What makes it funny is the extreme to which it takes the view--but what makes it disturbing is that there are anti-intellectual Christians who see knowledge and attempting to seek it as evil practices.  They are the sort who say that all the knowledge they need is in the Bible (and these are often the King James Version only sorts, as well), so there is no need to read anything else.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nolvlzl, by contrast, is looking at the reverse position, that there is no need for faith.  But that's not what the song is about, or what \"Moral Orel\" is about.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eolvlzl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-10-03)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOk, I expect everyone here who holds this belief, and it is a belief, but more about that in a minute - anyway, I expect that all of you rigorous rationalists will hold absolutely no ideas which you have not entirely proven or demonstrated with sufficient rigor so as to be the product of reason. If you do you are guilty of the intellectual crime of faith. \u003cBR/\u003eNo idea of which you have not mastered the proof can be held without it being to a greater or lesser extent the product of faith.  That include the faith that scientists,  who even as a group have demonstrated their fallibility, have gotten those particular ideas right.  And, most of all, I expect you will hold no ideas about which no physical evidence exists since literally any idea you accept about them will be the product of some kind of faith. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAtheism is a statement of faith about something which can't be known, at least it is when it asserts as a fact that there not a God or anything supernatural instead of the entirely, rock solid and honest statement \"I don't believe there is a God\".  There is no assertion that can be made for or against the idea of a supernatural God which is not the product of reliance on that which can't be known, faith. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eEvery single person who has an active mind relies on ideas held on the basis of faith.  If this ditty is correct, then reason doesn't exist, at least not in human beings.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Crucifolks, \"Reason is the enemy of faith\""},{"content":"Jeremy Hall, an atheist soldier stationed in Iraq, attempted to form a meeting of his fellow atheists, after receiving permission to do so from an Army chaplain. That meeting occurred on August 7, and was attended by Hall\u0026rsquo;s supervisor, Major Freddy J. Welborn, 44, an evangelical Christian who broke up the meeting and threatened to charge Hall with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as to block Hall\u0026rsquo;s reenlistment if the group continued to meet.\nHall filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Welborn for injunctive relief to prevent such unconstitutional abuses.\nIn response to his lawsuit, Hall has been assaulted by fellow soldiers and threatened on blogs with being killed by friendly fire. (There have been some allegations, not substantiated to my knowledge, that Pat Tillman\u0026rsquo;s death by friendly fire may have been the result of his outspoken atheism.)\nWelborn, who was initially misidentified in the lawsuit as Paul Welbourne, was tracked down via his MySpace page, a visual monstrosity which says that he is a member of the \u0026ldquo;Department of Eternal Affairs,\u0026rdquo; his primary occupation is \u0026ldquo;Bible Study,\u0026rdquo; he has a Bachelor\u0026rsquo;s Degree from Tennessee Temple University with a major in \u0026ldquo;Pers. Evangelism\u0026rdquo; and minor in \u0026ldquo;Biblical Worldview,\u0026rdquo; and he attended Tara High School from 1976 to 1983. (In fairness to Welborn, the heading says that the school information is for \u0026ldquo;MAJ Freddy \u0026amp; HIS Girl,\u0026rdquo; so the dates probably include \u0026ldquo;his girl\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s high school career along with his own, rather than indicating that he took seven years to get through high school.)\nThe U.S. military has had a serious problem with Christian evangelicals who don\u0026rsquo;t understand what freedom of religion means. Earlier this year, the Pentagon Inspector General\u0026rsquo;s office issued a report that officers who appeared in uniform in a recruiting video for Christian Embassy, a group that promotes Bible studies by senior government officials, violated military rules by doing so. Two years ago, evangelical Christians proselytizing at the Air Force Academy led to a review of the Air Force rule for chaplains which says that there can be no proselytizing those of other religious faiths, but it\u0026rsquo;s perfectly acceptable to proselytize to \u0026ldquo;those who are not affiliated.\u0026quot; A lawsuit against this evangelizing was thrown out of court last year, but the rule for chaplains with the double standard was revoked.\nMore on the Hall and Christian Embassy cases may be found at the Questionable Authority blog, as well as the links in this post.\nUPDATE (March 7, 2008): Hall has updated his complaint to include a charge that he has had a promotion blocked because of his unwillingness to \u0026ldquo;put aside his personal convictions and pray with the troops.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (July 10, 2008): The government has filed a motion to dismiss (at the last available moment to do so), arguing that Hall lacks standing to sue and did not take advantage of all available remedies within the military to pursue his complaint before suing.\nUPDATE (April 26, 2008): The New York Times has now covered this story. (About time!)\nUPDATE (April 28, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars asks the question of why Hall had to be transferred out of Iraq for his own safety, rather than the commanding officers telling the troops to leave him alone or be punished.\nUPDATE (October 18, 2008): Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he\u0026rsquo;s out. A second case filed by Dustin Chalker will continue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/onward-christian-soldiers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeremy Hall, an atheist soldier stationed in Iraq, attempted to form a meeting of his fellow atheists, after receiving permission to do so from an Army chaplain.  That meeting occurred on August 7, and was attended by Hall\u0026rsquo;s supervisor, Major Freddy J. Welborn, 44, an evangelical Christian who broke up the meeting and threatened to charge Hall with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as to block Hall\u0026rsquo;s reenlistment if the group continued to meet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHall \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/iraq_soldier_sues_pentagon_for.php\"\u003efiled a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Welborn for injunctive relief to prevent such unconstitutional abuses\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn response to his lawsuit, Hall \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/update_on_military_atheism_law.php\"\u003ehas been assaulted by fellow soldiers and threatened on blogs with being killed by friendly fire\u003c/a\u003e.  (There have been some allegations, not substantiated to my knowledge, that Pat Tillman\u0026rsquo;s death by friendly fire \u003ca href=\"http://minotskepticalsociety.blogspot.com/2007/08/two-new-thoughts-1.html\"\u003emay have been the result of his outspoken atheism\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWelborn, who was initially misidentified in the lawsuit as Paul Welbourne, was \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/welborns_myspace_page.php\"\u003etracked down via his MySpace\u003c/a\u003e page, a visual monstrosity which says that he is a member of the \u0026ldquo;Department of Eternal Affairs,\u0026rdquo; his primary occupation is \u0026ldquo;Bible Study,\u0026rdquo; he has a Bachelor\u0026rsquo;s Degree from Tennessee Temple University with a major in \u0026ldquo;Pers. Evangelism\u0026rdquo; and minor in \u0026ldquo;Biblical Worldview,\u0026rdquo; and he attended Tara High School from 1976 to 1983.  (In fairness to Welborn, the heading says that the school information is for \u0026ldquo;MAJ Freddy \u0026amp; HIS Girl,\u0026rdquo; so the dates probably include \u0026ldquo;his girl\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s high school career along with his own, rather than indicating that he took seven years to get through high school.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe U.S. military has had a serious problem with Christian evangelicals who don\u0026rsquo;t understand what freedom of religion means.  Earlier this year, the Pentagon Inspector General\u0026rsquo;s office issued a report that officers who appeared in uniform in a recruiting video for Christian Embassy, a group that promotes Bible studies by senior government officials, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/officers_guilty_of_ethical_bre.php\"\u003eviolated military rules by doing so\u003c/a\u003e.  Two years ago, evangelical Christians proselytizing at the Air Force Academy led to a review of the Air Force rule for chaplains which says that there can be no proselytizing those of other religious faiths, but \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2005/10/air_force_proselytization_rule.php\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s perfectly acceptable to proselytize to \u0026ldquo;those who are not affiliated.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  A lawsuit against this evangelizing \u003ca href=\"http://chronicle.com/news/article/1198/judge-throws-out-lawsuit-accusing-air-force-of-proselytizing\"\u003ewas thrown out of court last year\u003c/a\u003e, but the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/10/12/835/72403\"\u003erule for chaplains with the double standard was revoked\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore on the Hall and Christian Embassy cases may be found \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/christian_soldiers.php\"\u003eat the Questionable Authority blog\u003c/a\u003e, as well as the links in this post.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 7, 2008):  Hall \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/new_allegation_in_army_religio.php\"\u003ehas updated his complaint to include a charge that he has had a promotion blocked because of his unwillingness to \u0026ldquo;put aside his personal convictions and pray with the troops.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 10, 2008): The government \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/government_moves_to_dismiss_mr.php\"\u003ehas filed a motion to dismiss (at the last available moment to do so), arguing that Hall lacks standing to sue and did not take advantage of all available remedies within the military to pursue his complaint before suing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 26, 2008): \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/26atheist.html\"\u003ehas now covered this story\u003c/a\u003e.  (About time!)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 28, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/cnn_on_jeremy_hall_case.php\"\u003easks the question of why Hall had to be transferred out of Iraq for his own safety\u003c/a\u003e, rather than the commanding officers telling the troops to leave him alone or be punished.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 18, 2008): Hall \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/mrff_withdraws_hall_lawsuit.php\"\u003ehas withdrawn his lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he\u0026rsquo;s out.  A \u003ca href=\"/2008/09/another-military-religious-freedom-case.html\"\u003esecond case filed by Dustin Chalker will continue\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Onward Christian soldiers"},{"content":"Mike Metzger, co-founder of 9/11 Truth UAlbany, has abandoned the 9/11 Truth movement and returned to reality after actually starting to listen to the debunkings and think about the evidence and the methods of argument used. He\u0026rsquo;s posted a letter explaining his change of heart.\nGood for him.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve yet to see a 9/11 Truther actually attempt to systematically address the content of any of the critiques, nor put together a scenario that even attempts to be a comprehensive explanation of the events leading up to and including the 9/11 attacks (such as the actions of Osama bin Laden and the hijackers, described in the 9/11 Commission Report, Gerald Posner\u0026rsquo;s Why America Slept, James Bamford\u0026rsquo;s A Pretext for War, and elsewhere). Instead, their methodology resembles that of creationists and Holocaust deniers\u0026ndash;identifying apparent inconsistencies, and constructing a fantasy around them without any regard for the enormous collection of facts at hand. Their defense then becomes progressively more delusional attempts to explain away the contrary facts that they\u0026rsquo;ve not bothered to address.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Screw Loose Change\u0026rdquo; annotated version of the \u0026ldquo;Loose Change\u0026rdquo; 2nd edition video may be found here.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2007-09-29):\nAccording to various polls , some 36-42% of the population believe there was a cover-up of some sort by the government.I trust that Metzger and the other disillusioned ex-truthers will take responsibility for their misguided advocacy and make an effort to undo the damage they have wrought.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/911-truther-returns-to-reality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Metzger, co-founder of 9/11 Truth UAlbany, has abandoned the 9/11 Truth movement and returned to reality after actually starting to listen to the debunkings and think about the evidence and the methods of argument used.  He\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://extruther.blogspot.com/2007/09/letter-of-resignation.html\"\u003eposted a letter explaining his change of heart\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGood for him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve yet to see a 9/11 Truther actually attempt to systematically address the content of any of the critiques, nor put together a scenario that even attempts to be a comprehensive explanation of the events leading up to and including the 9/11 attacks (such as the actions of Osama bin Laden and the hijackers, described in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e9/11 Commission Report\u003c/span\u003e, Gerald Posner\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy America Slept\u003c/span\u003e, James Bamford\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Pretext for War\u003c/span\u003e, and elsewhere).  Instead, their methodology resembles that of creationists and Holocaust deniers\u0026ndash;identifying apparent inconsistencies, and constructing a fantasy around them without any regard for the enormous collection of facts at hand.  Their defense then becomes progressively more delusional attempts to explain away the contrary facts that they\u0026rsquo;ve not bothered to address.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Screw Loose Change\u0026rdquo; annotated version of the \u0026ldquo;Loose Change\u0026rdquo; 2nd edition video may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 Truther returns to reality"},{"content":"Friedrich Kirschner has built a device to make 3D image scans of objects placed in a small plastic container, using a webcam and a platform built of Legos, and some milk.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/3d-scanner-made-out-of-webcam-legos-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFriedrich Kirschner has \u003ca href=\"http://www.etre.com/blog/2007/06/lego_milk_3d_scanner_friedrich_kirschner/\"\u003ebuilt a device to make 3D image scans of objects placed in a small plastic container, using a webcam and a platform built of Legos, and some milk\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"3D scanner made out of a webcam, Legos, and milk"},{"content":"Finally, we see a break in the past year\u0026rsquo;s almost relentless upward trend in Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustees Sales\u0026hellip;\nSeptember\u0026rsquo;s total was 2836 - well off from last month\u0026rsquo;s high.\nSomething tells me, though, that this is not the start of a new trend downward, just yet.\nOh, I should note that I\u0026rsquo;ve changed the graph this month so that the vertical axis starts at zero instead of 400.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/septembers-fall.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFinally, we see a break in the past year\u0026rsquo;s almost relentless upward trend in Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustees Sales\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/07sepntr.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115492020958492178\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"Click for Full Size\" src=\"/images/07sepntr.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeptember\u0026rsquo;s total was 2836 - well off from \u003ca href=\"/2007/09/this-is-getting-ridiculous.html\"\u003elast month\u0026rsquo;s high\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/04/where-are-we-headed.html\"\u003eSomething tells me\u003c/a\u003e, though, that this is not the start of a new trend downward, just yet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOh, I should note that I\u0026rsquo;ve changed the graph this month so that the vertical axis starts at zero instead of 400.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"September's Fall"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Give me Liberty, or give me Death!\u0026quot;\n\u0026ndash;Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775\n\u0026ldquo;Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ndash;Richard Jackson, motto on title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, 1759 (often attributed to its publisher, Benjamin Franklin)\n\u0026ldquo;And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don\u0026rsquo;t forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that\u0026rsquo;s what we\u0026rsquo;re going to have to do.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ndash;Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate debate, September 5, 2007\n(Also see the Reason blog on \u0026ldquo;Civil Liberties Check-Up.\u0026quot;)\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-09-25):\nHow about Senator Pat Roberts's \"you don't have civil liberties if you're dead.\"That one makes me want to gag.Perhaps we need a modern version of Addison's Cato to inspire America again.\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-26):\nThat might be a bit obscure, now that I think about it.The founders grew up dreaming of being Roman statesmen (much like today's youth might dream of being an astronaut or sports star). One of their biggest heroes was Cato the Younger, and one of the biggest influences and inspiratations to them them was a play by Joseph Addison entitled Cato (A Tragedy in Five Acts)Both the Patrick Henry and Richard Jackson quotes are essentially reworked lines from the play.\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-26):\nOn third thought, I think I may be off about the Jackson quote.I checked wikipedia and they mention the \"I regret I have one life to give for my country\" quote as coming from the play (which I've heard before) but it didn't mention the Jackson one. I hate when I don't write stuff like this down so my memory gets all fuzzy.\nolvlzl (2007-09-26):\nMitt Romney, the man who will say anything and its opposite to get elected. He did in Massachusetts and then went around the country lying about what he said and did there. It should be remembered, as the fundamentalists in the Republican party use his Mormonism against him, that it was in relatively liberal Massachusetts where Mormons are rare as hens teeth that his religion was barely an issue. Other than that, all the Republicans are fascists, the Republican party is a fascist party. That's undeniable after the Bush II years.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/liberty-security-and-death.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Give me Liberty, or give me Death!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty_or_give_me_death\"\u003ePatrick Henry, March 23, 1775\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin\"\u003eRichard Jackson, motto on title page of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAn Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania\u003c/span\u003e, 1759\u003c/a\u003e (often attributed to its publisher, Benjamin Franklin)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don\u0026rsquo;t forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that\u0026rsquo;s what we\u0026rsquo;re going to have to do.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295883,00.html\"\u003eMitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate debate, September 5, 2007\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see the Reason blog on \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122635.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Civil Liberties Check-Up.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Liberty, security, and death"},{"content":"A hacker has found a flaw in Adobe\u0026rsquo;s PDF file format which can be used to exploit Adobe Reader 8.1 on Windows XP.\nDave G. at the Matasano Chargen blog predicts that such attacks\u0026ndash;targeting popular applications\u0026ndash;will become more common. PDF in particular is a likely target due to its ubiquity and its complexity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/hacker-finds-vulnerability-in-adobe.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA hacker \u003ca href=\"http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137456-c,hackers/article.html\"\u003ehas found a flaw in Adobe\u0026rsquo;s PDF file format\u003c/a\u003e which can be used to exploit Adobe Reader 8.1 on Windows XP.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDave G. \u003ca href=\"http://www.matasano.com/log/961/on-the-subject-of-pdf-vulnerabilities-2/\"\u003eat the Matasano Chargen\u003c/a\u003e blog predicts that such attacks\u0026ndash;targeting popular applications\u0026ndash;will become more common.  PDF in particular is a likely target due to its ubiquity and its complexity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hacker finds vulnerability in Adobe Reader"},{"content":"In Red Oak, Iowa:\nA community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.\nSteve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master\u0026rsquo;s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,\u0026rdquo; Bitterman said.\n\u0026hellip;\nBitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a \u0026ldquo;fairy tale\u0026rdquo; in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.Even most Christians on the planet don\u0026rsquo;t think that the Adam and Eve story is literally true, so it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see why this would even be a controversial statement in a western civilization class. The quotes in the article from the school suggest that Bitterman was fired for something else (a \u0026ldquo;personnel issue\u0026rdquo;), but the firing immediately following the class with the student threatening legal action seems to support his account.\nHistorical Comments James F. McGrath (2007-09-25):\nLet me second your post - it is the modern fundamentalists, who have rallied people around claims of taking the whole Bible literally that do not in fact reflect the reality, who have turned the historic Christian viewpoint into something controversial for Christians. http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/09/teaching-genesis-creation-stories.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/instructor-fired-for-saying-adam-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709220333\"\u003eRed Oak, Iowa\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSteve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master\u0026rsquo;s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,\u0026rdquo; Bitterman said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eBitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a \u0026ldquo;fairy tale\u0026rdquo; in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEven most Christians on the planet don\u0026rsquo;t think that the Adam and Eve story is literally true, so it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see why this would even be a controversial statement in a western civilization class.  The quotes in the article from the school suggest that Bitterman was fired for something else (a \u0026ldquo;personnel issue\u0026rdquo;), but the firing immediately following the class with the student threatening legal action seems to support his account.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Instructor fired for saying Adam and Eve story shouldn't be taken literally"},{"content":"There are some hilarious sign photos at the blog of unnecessary quotation marks.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2007-09-22):\nI'd say Noam Chomsky's \"books\" deserves a whole month of \"blogging\" for using unnecessary quotation \"marks.\" ;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/blog-of-unnecessary-quotation-marks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are some hilarious sign photos at the \u003ca href=\"http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/\"\u003eblog of unnecessary quotation marks\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-22)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI'd say Noam Chomsky's \"books\" deserves a whole month of \"blogging\" for using unnecessary quotation \"marks.\" ;)\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Blog of unnecessary quotation marks"},{"content":"I just saw Naomi Wolf on The Colbert Report (Wednesday night\u0026rsquo;s show), discussing her new book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. She only had time to list a few of the ten steps on her list, but I found all ten in an article from the Guardian:\n1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy\n2. Create a gulag\n3. Develop a thug caste\n4. Set up an internal surveillance system\n5. Harass citizens\u0026rsquo; groups\n6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release\n7. Target key individuals\n8. Control the press\n9. Dissent equals treason\n10. Suspend the rule of law\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-22):\nArendt's Origins of Totalitarianism has a number of another warning signs to look out for. Particularly of concern to me is the ability of propaganda to cut the masses off from reality by the creation of parallel institutions (fake journalists, fake science, fake academic bodies, etc)And in regard to #2 on that list, there's this Arendt quote\"The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridicial person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain catergories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal sytem, and by selecting its inmates outsdie the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.\"\"Enemy combatant\" anyone?\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-22):\nThis might be of interest, too.It's the introduction to the book.\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-22):\nArg. Sorry for the triple post ... here's Pt 2 of the intro.\nEinzige (2007-09-22):\nApropos number 8, this from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:\"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a cafe, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.\"...Sounds very familiar. Anyone seen Penguin lately?\nLippard (2007-09-23):\nHume's Ghost: Thanks very much for contributing the additional pointers--I'm glad to have you as a regular reader.\nJames F. McGrath (2007-09-25):\nThanks for sharing this. Of course, without #9 it cannot work, but plenty are accused of lack of patriotism in our day, precisely because they ask whether we've departed from the freedoms America's earliest patriots were devoted to.http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/07/whats-wrong-with-being-right.html\nRS Sukle (2007-11-28):\nThe Ten Steps of the Fascist Shift as interpreted by Naomi Wolf and applied to the Bush administration, could equally apply to Presidents in the 1920’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s. United States history has been through many worse times and survived.While researching the 1920’s for my book “The Ragman’s War,” I learned many dark secrets about the Roaring Twenties hidden in union archives, news articles from that time, and in memories of old men.Applying the 10 steps to the administrations of Wilson, Harding and Coolidge would have made it the 1920’s the worst decade for fascism in US history. Steel and Rail Barons controlled all branches of government and wielded their influence to keep millions of immigrant workers laboring in the mills and mines for little or no wages. Dissidents and union organizers who riled against this serf system of cheap labor that kept the Twenties stock market roaring were branded as anarchists. They were detained, deported, jailed, or murdered.In the mining towns the mine families were forbidden to bear arms, to assemble, to have free ingress and egress to their towns, to sing hymns, and join unions. During the 1927-28 strike in the western Pennsylvania coalfields, they had their property seized and sold at auction and were evicted from their houses even when the rent was paid. Company agents had free access to invade their homes at whim.Constitutional abuses in the bituminous coalfields around Pittsburgh were so bad that members of the US Senate decided to visit the area to evaluate the situation. The ACLU did their own investigation and reported their findings in a booklet titled “The Shame of Pennsylvania.”Don’t believe me then look it up for yourself or read “Bucket of Blood the Ragman’s War,” “The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America’s Largest Labor Uprising,” or “Storming Heavan.” Then there was the Red Scare of 1919, the Palmer Raids, and persecution of the IWW (Wobblies)? What about the Red Scare of the late 1940’s under Truman? How many communists and sympathizers were detained, deported, jailed, or went into hiding? Is Wolf an historian or a just sharp cookie out to sell books and bash Bush? The Ten Steps of the 1928 Fascist Shift:1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Communists, Wobblies, Labor Unions).2. Create a gulag ( Captive Coal Towns, Wobbly Interment Camps, Deportation Centers).3. Develop a thug caste (Coal and Iron Police, Pinkerton Men, American Legion).4. Set up an internal surveillance system (Paid Stool Pigeons, Mail Interception).5. Harass citizens’ groups (Company Sheriffs, State Troopers, County Sheriffs, Constables, Coal and Iron Police, KKK, Jim Crow Laws).6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release (union organizers, black lists, civil rights activists, Wobblies, innocent immigrant workers).7. Target key individuals (scientists, academics, journalists, artists, writers, social activists, movie producers, labor leaders and organizers).8. Control the press (coal, steel, and rail barons, judges, Hearst Syndicate).9. Dissent equals treason (Sedition Laws, Red Scare, Palmer Raids, Anti Union Laws).10. Suspend the rule of law (suspension of Constitutional rights for coal and steel families, Rossitor Injunctions, Coal \u0026 Steel companies rule the towns they own, their appointed agents are the law).OOPS!!! Wolf forgot about suppression of free speech.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/naomi-wolf-on-10-steps-to-fascist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just saw Naomi Wolf on The Colbert Report (Wednesday night\u0026rsquo;s show), discussing her new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot\u003c/span\u003e.  She only had time to list a few of the ten steps on her list, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html\"\u003eI found all ten in an article from the Guardian\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy\u003cbr /\u003e2. Create a gulag\u003cbr /\u003e3. Develop a thug caste\u003cbr /\u003e4. Set up an internal surveillance system\u003cbr /\u003e5. Harass citizens\u0026rsquo; groups\u003cbr /\u003e6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release\u003cbr /\u003e7. Target key individuals\u003cbr /\u003e8. Control the press\u003cbr /\u003e9. Dissent equals treason\u003cbr /\u003e10. Suspend the rule of law\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Naomi Wolf on 10 steps to a fascist America"},{"content":"Boston authorities have filed another set of bogus \u0026ldquo;hoax device\u0026rdquo; charges, against Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student who was wearing a sweatshirt with a homemade electronic nametag stuck to the front of it. The device was made of a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery, and Simpson was also holding \u0026ldquo;a lump of putty\u0026rdquo; in her hands, as she was waiting at Logan airport for a friend\u0026rsquo;s flight to arrive. She explained that she made the device for career day because she wanted to stand out. She was released on $750 bail and will have to appear in court on October 29 on charges of \u0026ldquo;possessing a hoax device.\u0026quot;\nThe Boston Globe\u0026rsquo;s article says:\nOutside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.\n\u0026ldquo;She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,\u0026rdquo; Pare said at a press conference at Logan. \u0026ldquo;There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol \u0026hellip; we may have used deadly force.\u0026quot;\nCatch that last part\u0026ndash;the police might have killed her for wearing an LED nametag.\nAP and Information Week reported the device as a \u0026ldquo;fake bomb.\u0026quot; It doesn\u0026rsquo;t look at all like a fake bomb\u0026ndash;if there was intent to do anything of the sort, I suspect it was to show how ridiculous the Boston authorities still are after the Mooninite scare. Would a jury decide that a reasonable person would think it was a bomb?\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nUPDATE (September 21, 2007): I think this case is less absurd than the Mooninite one, where the devices were clearly professionally made to look like light-up cartoon characters. Questioning her was appropriate, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think charging her was unless there is some evidence of intent to commit a hoax that hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet been reported.\nBruce Schneier has previously reported a list of \u0026ldquo;terrorist dry run\u0026rdquo; items that TSA issued warnings about, in which each case actually had a valid explanation (though we still haven\u0026rsquo;t seen what the explanation was for the \u0026ldquo;wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes and two blocks of cheese\u0026rdquo;).\nOdd, unexplained items are deserving of questioning and scrutiny, I think we can all agree.\nUPDATE: Boing Boing has more details.\nolvlzl (2007-09-21):\nDoes anyone know what an explosive device attached to a person would look like? Under a sweatshirt? I don't see this the same way. A 19-year-old MIT student should know better than to wear something like that to Logan Airport, one of the airports involved in 9-11. She was lucky she didn't get her foolish head blown off. There are enough real incidents to deal with without stupid stuff like this being indulged. Life isn't just irony and wit. The Aqua Teen incident in your old post isn't described completely. In most of the cities the silly things were put in store windows and other places like that. In Boston the dolts put them on bridges. On the day they were first called in to police there was actually a fake pipe bomb incident that was also handled. Until they knew what any of these things were, how were they supposed to know what they were or what they might have been part of? In the discussion of the earlier incident it seemed to me that there was an element of class involved, the largely white collar, college oriented blogosphere snarking about those stupid first responders. Well, until they knew, those could have been anything or part of anything. Would you like to respond to the next copy cat incident not knowing what was behind the litebrite? Would you like it enough to quit your job and become a fireman? Or cop?\nEinzige (2007-09-21):\nThe salient question is: In how many other public places is it going to become acceptable for people with machine guns to threaten to kill us because we are in possession of something \"suspicious\"? How much paranoia and overreaction is justified?olvlzl, your apology for the first responders' behavior is not persuasive.\nUnknown (2007-09-21):\nThis otherwise intelligent MIT student is very lucky that the professionalism of the law enforcement officers kept this situation in check. Do you have any idea how these things play out in countries where national security professionals are not so professional? A lot of Americans seem to think these days that law enforcement and national security is a joke; some sort of scare tactic of the Bush administration they loath. Well, regardless of your political opinions, we live in a place that a small but determined group of extremists wants to destroy. They don't care that you are a conservative or a liberal or even tuned out of politics. They care only that you are not a Muslim, and for that you must die. The professionals a Logan International are prepared to meet that threat, and they don't have the luxury to determine if some hooded person with a \"device\" is holding Play-Doh or something else meant to do harm. Rational people understand this and do not prank airport security for this reason. She is lucky.\nEinzige (2007-09-21):\n\"Kept this situation in check\"???Are you kidding? They precipitated the fucking situation!It sounds very much like you're hoping for the US to start looking more like the USSR, with checkpoints and internal passports and unreasonable searches and seizures--as long as the officials are \"professional\" about it.And that \"small but determined group\" you're talking about? They want to destroy \"us\" not because of our religious beliefs, but because we keep fucking around in their countries. Osama has been repeating this for 20 years, now.\nLippard (2007-09-21):\nA real bomb could be made to look completely innocuous, if there was no need for major destructive power. Someone could strap sticks of dynamite under a shirt. The security mechanism at airports to detect such explosives is the puffer machine.A breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery attached on the outside of a sweatshirt doesn't appear to be a bomb. It would be something to look at and ask about if someone was going through the security line, but not to charge someone with a crime for.The Mooninite situation was more absurd than this one. The proper response there would have been to check them out, and remove them if they're in violation of signage laws. Bridges and overpasses were locations where the light-up signs of cartoon characters could be seen by large numbers of people, which was the point. They were placed on overpasses in NYC and on a MARTA station in Atlanta--Boston was not the only place where they were put in such high-traffic areas. In NYC, NYPD received no complaints. In Seattle, authorities said they were not suspicious. In L.A., the LAPD said they were clearly not a threat. In Portland, police said there was no cause for an investigation. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago authorities thought it was irresponsible.It is absurd to charge someone with a crime for a \"fake bomb\" for anything that has wires and a battery that isn't recognizable as a common object.JRCV: What specifically about this device do you think merited a potential shoot-to-kill response? Should TSA respond similarly to anyone with bottles of more than 3 oz of liquid, which TSA says is a dangerous threat?You write: \"A lot of Americans seem to think these days that law enforcement and national security is a joke; some sort of scare tactic of the Bush administration they loath.\" More accurately, many Americans think that much of what is being done in the name of security against terrorism is security theater--a show of doing something which is ineffectual, pointless, costly, and itself often potentially dangerous to human life, including overreactions to things like this.\nolvlzl (2007-09-22):\nThe issue of first responders is rather important, especially for themselves and their families but also because they will be the ones who have to respond first. In the Aqua Teen incident a lot of people on the blogs couldn't believe that those with the authority to make decisions wouldn't have known about a rather obscure feature of pop culture, though not too many of them would tend to be in the target audience for Aqua Teen. Assuming that a person who might have a bome would do what made sense wouldn't seem to be a very sensible assumption to make. It could be a rather purposeful terroist or it could be a crack pot with technical knowlege and a tool kit. Again, who knows what a person who attaches a bomb to them is going to do, how they are going to do it and what that looks like. From what I saw on TV, complete with a 9v battery attached, anyone might be forgiven for not having a piece of personal adornement be the first thing that came to mind. As for the possibility that the police would have shot her. Well, there is the recent history of Logan airport, its closeness to New York City, it's having been used to launch an attack through unconventional means. If the thing wasn't harmless but was a bomb and they didn't threaten her with guns, we might have a different story to theorize about and discuss before going on to other interesting things. I don't like the world we live in any more than you do, but we live in that world and it's not going to go back the way it was any time soon.MIT students should be expected to have some appreciation for the reality they find when they go to college. Considering what some of them do once they get out, I'd hope they learn that life includes some serious consequences.\nEinzige (2007-09-22):\nHere's another question that I hope gives you some pause:The 19 guys who hijacked the 4 planes on 9/11--had the \"first responders\" been at the airport that day, do you think they'd have spotted them and held them at gunpoint as they were walking into the airport?We are on a very slippery slope, here. There are all kinds of imaginable scenarios in which draconian measures could be employed to improve our \"safety\". How much farther are you willing to go?\nsalasks (2007-09-22):\nThe authorities acted correctly in this case. From the reports by the authorities and the woman behind the airline counter, she was acting fidgety and non-responsive. The authorities should go after people when they act suspicious, as they did in this case, and not stop people based on what race they are or what language they speak. That being said, if she was a person of color she might very well have been shot.\nolvlzl (2007-09-22):\nThe 19 guys who hijacked the 4 planes on 9/11--had the \"first responders\" been at the airport that day, do you think they'd have spotted them and held them at gunpoint as they were walking into the airport? einzigeIf they'd been wearing odd looking electronic devices carrying a substance that at even a fairly close distance looks remarkably like some forms of plastic explosive and if when asked by an airport staffer what it was they just walked away without answering, yes, I'll bet they would have been confronted by security. Which, unfortunately, would have been rather skimpy back then.What does it tell you that this MIT student apparently couldn't figure out what the 9-11 suicide crew did, that something like that was bound to get attention from armed authorities? This one isn't at all hard and it isn't a model case for libertarianism.\nEinzige (2007-09-22):\nSadly, you completely missed my point, which was that the 19 hijackers weren't wearing odd looking electronic devices. Nor was the shoe-bomber. In fact, they looked utterly inocuous - as, no doubt, the next 19 actual terrorists will, whereever they turn up.The basic problem is this: No amount of safety measures, short of 1984- or THX1138-level monitoring (and maybe even beyond that) are going to thwart the sufficiently intelligent terrorist. This means - and this is important, olvlzl - all the paranoia and the withering away of our privacy and civil liberties that you seem so all-too willing to let go is for nothing.The naïveté, or lack thereof, of the MIT student is a red herring. The fact is that her near shooting should not be seen as a sad yet unavoidable consequence of our being made safer. We're not - especially since we seem to have traded the unbelievably remote possibility of ending up on a hijacked aircraft with a much less remote possibility that we'll be shot by our \"protectors\" because they see something \"suspicious.\"\nolvlzl (2007-09-22):\nThe naïveté, or lack thereof, of the MIT student is a red herring.Star Simpson could have completely prevented the situation if she had answered the Information officer's question instead of snubbing her. I'd say that's not a red herring, it's the key to understanding the entire incident. I'd hate you to think that I mistake what is most likely just the kind of attention getting that Simpson's lawyer said was her motive for wearing the thing and carrying what even experts said looks just about exactly like plastic explosives in an airport for an innocent mistake. Since it was intended to get attention, I think she wanted to get attention at Logan Airport by not changing into something a bit more subtle there. I've looked at Boing-boing, it's amazing that there are so many people so much more interested in their coy and ironic sense of techie cuteness than they are in facing the objectively serious world of adulthood. I'm not sorry to say that adults get to run things because they can tell the difference between seriousness and childishness. What in the world do you expect at Logan Airport these days? It was from Logan Airport that 9-11 was launched. If you don't accept that there is going to be heightened security there, you are living in a dream world. If you don't think that Simpson's actions warrant police pointing guns at her, you are willfully unrealistic.\nLippard (2007-09-22):\nIf she really walked away from the information officer without responding to the question of what was on her sweatshirt (as that person and the police report claim), then I think it was right for her to be confronted by police. Her lawyer says that she did respond to the question and said that it was a piece of art.BTW, I don't think machine guns with silencers are the ideal weaponry for airport security to be carrying around if the desire is to be able to take out a criminal (as opposed to appear to be tough).\nolvlzl (2007-09-22):\nJim Lippard, I'd be more inclined to believe the Information officer without more evidence. Why would she have wanted to set off what could have been a major security incident if her question had been answered? On the other hand, I can imagine a distinct motive for Simpson to have remembered giving an answer that was either tacit or unresponsive.You know that these days any irresponsible and dangerous act can be called \"art\". Conceptual art has always puzzled me, since so often the conceptual nature of the \"art\" is no where to be garnered from witnessing the \"art\" project. Maybe the security people had experienced just that kind of \"art\" in the past.\nLippard (2007-09-22):\nFor the purposes of response, it makes sense to give more weight to the information officer's account. For the purposes of criminal prosecution on charges of a \"hoax device,\" they should be treated equally, which means it shouldn't be sufficient for the prosecution to reach the required burden of proof (beyond reasonable doubt).\nEinzige (2007-09-22):\nFor all we know, she could have been preoccupied with her own thoughts and not heard the question. You can't honestly tell me that's never happened to you.In any case, olvlzl, you're still focused too much on the particulars of this incident, when you should be considering the wider implications, instead.Aside from that, you haven't answered my questions. If there's a bombing in a mall next week are you going to be clamoring loudly for a federally managed \"Mall Security Administration\", complete with machine-gun-toting, flack-jacket-wearing officials every 50 feet? Why not in every office building, grocery store, public park, train station, ice skating rink, ball park, and freeway underpass?JRCV sounds like he'd be for it, as long as they are \"professionals\". Whatever.\nolvlzl (2007-09-22):\nEinzige, what I want or don't want in the way of heightened security at Logan Airport, which is what I'm talking about, matters to absolutely no one. I was talking about what was in place there as a matter of fact in response to the experience of September 11th. Surely Star Simpson had heard of that, I'd imagine she arrived in Boston at Logan at least a few times in her college career. It can hardly have been a surprise to her. For all we know, she could have been preoccupied with her own thoughts and not heard the question. You can't honestly tell me that's never happened to you.For heaven's sake, is an adult who is attending MIT not expected to have more presence of mind than that? Clearly if not, then she has no business going out in public unsupervised. I can honestly assure you that something like this has never happened to me, not once. I can also assure you that I'd never do such a stupid thing as Simpson did to begin with.\nCairnarvon (2007-09-23):\n//\"If she really walked away from the information officer without responding to the question of what was on her sweatshirt (as that person and the police report claim), then I think it was right for her to be confronted by police.\"//Why is that? If I'm wearing a LED shirt to the grocery store and the cashier asks me about it and I just don't answer, should I also be arrested at gunpoint?If she refused to answer airport security or tried to get past a security checkpoint, that's a different matter entirely, but she was just walking around in the public area of the airport to pick up a friend.It's one thing to take it for granted people have to submit to harassment by armed thugs if they actually want to travel by plane, but expecting it in any random public place is a different matter entirely.\nolvlzl (2007-09-23):\ncairnarvon, I'd draw the line well before backing up a grocery check-out with armed force. However, that is clearly not what the issue is here. The slippery slope can go both ways, I say we don't take any chances on anyone getting shot by airport security and have no guns held by any kind of security at all. Wouldn't that fix the problem you're concerned about?\nLippard (2007-09-23):\nCairnarvon wrote: \"Why is that? If I'm wearing a LED shirt to the grocery store and the cashier asks me about it and I just don't answer, should I also be arrested at gunpoint?\"No, and I don't think Star Simpson should have been held at gunpoint or arrested--I just think it was reasonable for her to be stopped and asked questions if she was acting suspiciously at the airport.In fact, I think much of the TSA security screening process (like shoe removal and limits on liquids) should be dropped and replaced with random stops on the basis of behavior.\nLippard (2007-09-23):\n\"random stops on the basis of behavior\" should have said \"random stops and stops on the basis of behavior.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/boston-police-arrest-mit-student-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBoston authorities \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html?p1=MEWell_Pos3\"\u003ehave filed another set of bogus \u0026ldquo;hoax device\u0026rdquo; charges\u003c/a\u003e, against Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student who was wearing a sweatshirt with a homemade electronic nametag stuck to the front of it.  The device was made of a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery, and Simpson was also holding \u0026ldquo;a lump of putty\u0026rdquo; in her hands, as she was waiting at Logan airport for a friend\u0026rsquo;s flight to arrive.  She explained that she made the device for career day because she wanted to stand out.  She was released on $750 bail and will have to appear in court on October 29 on charges of \u0026ldquo;possessing a hoax device.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html?p1=MEWell_Pos3\"\u003eBoston Globe\u0026rsquo;s article\u003c/a\u003e says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boston police arrest MIT student for blinking nametag"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s interesting to look back at old blog posts and comments to see who correctly identified that we were in a housing bubble and who inaccurately denied it.\nJane Galt (Megan McArdle) at Asymmetrical Information called it correctly, way back in January 2004.\nI called it in September 2004, suggesting a drop in \u0026ldquo;the next year or two.\u0026rdquo; The peak for Phoenix was in the fourth quarter of 2006, so I was pretty close, but I expected the drop to come a bit earlier than it actually did.\nEconomist Tyler Cowan was still in denial in April 2005.\nIn the June 2005 issue of Business Week, Frank Nothaft of Freddie Mac and James F. Smith of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors said that the housing bubble was bunk and they saw no possibility of national price declines in the future. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research called it a bubble. Mike Englund of Action Economics fell somewhere in between, saying that \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s bubble behavior\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;not clear that the recent price gains in the housing market are a bubble.\u0026quot;\nEconomist Edward Stringham told me he didn\u0026rsquo;t think there was a housing bubble in November 2005.\nEconomist Greg Mankiw hinted that he thought there was a bubble in June 2006.\nIn the Fall 2007 issue of USAA Magazine, just delivered to my home yesterday, an article titled \u0026ldquo;Real (Estate) page turners\u0026rdquo; quotes \u0026ldquo;The Apprentice: Season 3\u0026rdquo; winner Kendra Todd, author of Risk and Grow Rich: How to Make Millions in Real Estate:\nMs. Todd disagrees with those who say there has been a bust for real estate. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s dropped in some areas is market expectations more than market values,\u0026rdquo; she argues.I think Ms. Todd should start working on her manuscript for Risk and Grow Poor: How to Lose Millions in Real Estate. Of course, I doubt she makes most of her income from real estate investing, rather than book sales and her hosting of HGTV\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;My House Is Worth What?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/who-called-housing-bubble-and-who-didnt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to look back at old blog posts and comments to see who correctly identified that we were in a housing bubble and who inaccurately denied it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJane Galt (Megan McArdle) at Asymmetrical Information called it correctly, \u003ca href=\"http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004573.html\"\u003eway back in January 2004\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI called it \u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/az.general/msg/7764f6307702d0cb?dmode=source\"\u003ein September 2004\u003c/a\u003e, suggesting a drop in \u0026ldquo;the next year or two.\u0026rdquo;  The peak for Phoenix was in the fourth quarter of 2006, so I was pretty close, but I expected the drop to come a bit earlier than it actually did.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEconomist Tyler Cowan was \u003ca href=\"http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/04/do_we_live_in_a.html\"\u003estill in denial in April 2005\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2005/nf20050622_9404_db008.htm\"\u003eJune 2005 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBusiness Week\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Frank Nothaft of Freddie Mac and James F. Smith of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors said that the housing bubble was bunk and they saw no possibility of national price declines in the future.  Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research called it a bubble.  Mike Englund of Action Economics fell somewhere in between, saying that \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s bubble behavior\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;not clear that the recent price gains in the housing market are a bubble.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEconomist Edward Stringham told me he didn\u0026rsquo;t think there was a housing bubble \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/freedom-summit-photos-and-blog-entries.html\"\u003ein November 2005\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEconomist Greg Mankiw \u003ca href=\"http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/06/housing-bubble.html\"\u003ehinted that he thought there was a bubble in June 2006\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the Fall 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSAA Magazine\u003c/span\u003e, just delivered to my home yesterday, an article titled \u0026ldquo;Real (Estate) page turners\u0026rdquo; quotes \u0026ldquo;The Apprentice: Season 3\u0026rdquo; winner Kendra Todd, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRisk and Grow Rich: How to Make Millions in Real Estate\u003c/span\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMs. Todd disagrees with those who say there has been a bust for real estate.  \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s dropped in some areas is market expectations more than market values,\u0026rdquo; she argues.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI think Ms. Todd should start working on her manuscript for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRisk and Grow Poor: How to Lose Millions in Real Estate\u003c/span\u003e.  Of course, I doubt she makes most of her income from real estate investing, rather than book sales and her hosting of HGTV\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;My House Is Worth What?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who called the housing bubble and who didn't"},{"content":"The Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, has signed a resolution supporting gay marriage, stating that:\n\u0026ldquo;In order to be consistent with the position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my position.\n\u0026ldquo;The arrival of the resolution \u0026ndash; to sign or veto \u0026ndash; in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search my soul for the right thing to do.\n\u0026ldquo;I have decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious at the moment \u0026ndash; to do what I think is right, and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. The right thing for me to do is sign this resolution.\n\u0026ldquo;For three decades, I have worked to bring enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.\n\u0026ldquo;As I reflected on the choices I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage \u0026ndash; than anyone else \u0026ndash; simply because of their sexual orientation.\n\u0026ldquo;A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.\n\u0026ldquo;I do believe that times have changed. And with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions. I think that\u0026rsquo;s natural, and it\u0026rsquo;s certainly true in my case.\n\u0026ldquo;Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have changed.\n\u0026ldquo;The concept of a \u0026lsquo;separate but equal\u0026rsquo; institution is not something I can support.\n\u0026ldquo;I acknowledge that not all members of our community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.\n\u0026ldquo;All I can offer them is that I am trying to do what I believe is right.\n\u0026ldquo;I have close family members and friends who are a member of the gay and lesbian community. Those folks include my daughter Lisa, as well as members of my personal staff.\n\u0026ldquo;I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones \u0026ndash; for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life\u0026rsquo;s experiences.\n\u0026ldquo;And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law. In the end, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationship \u0026ndash; their very lives \u0026ndash; were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife Rana. Thank you.\u0026quot;(Via Donna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/republican-san-diego-mayor-signs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Republican mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, \u003ca href=\"http://wockner.blogspot.com/2007/09/republican-san-diego-mayor-embraces.html\"\u003ehas signed a resolution supporting gay marriage, stating that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;In order to be consistent with the position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my position.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The arrival of the resolution \u0026ndash; to sign or veto \u0026ndash; in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search my soul for the right thing to do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I have decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious at the moment \u0026ndash; to do what I think is right, and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. The right thing for me to do is sign this resolution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;For three decades, I have worked to bring enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;As I reflected on the choices I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage \u0026ndash; than anyone else \u0026ndash; simply because of their sexual orientation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I do believe that times have changed. And with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions. I think that\u0026rsquo;s natural, and it\u0026rsquo;s certainly true in my case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have changed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The concept of a \u0026lsquo;separate but equal\u0026rsquo; institution is not something I can support.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I acknowledge that not all members of our community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;All I can offer them is that I am trying to do what I believe is right.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I have close family members and friends who are a member of the gay and lesbian community. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThose folks include my daughter Lisa\u003c/span\u003e, as well as members of my personal staff.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones \u0026ndash; for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life\u0026rsquo;s experiences.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law. In the end, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationship \u0026ndash; their very lives \u0026ndash; were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife Rana. Thank you.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.woodka.com/2007/09/19/oh-this-will-blow-san-diego-republicans-minds/\"\u003eDonna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republican San Diego mayor signs resolution for gay marriage"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s becoming a problem for newly popular British bands to tour in the United States, because they are being denied P-1 visas unless they can prove that they have been \u0026ldquo;internationally recognized\u0026rdquo; for a \u0026ldquo;sustained and substantial\u0026rdquo; amount of time.\nRecently the band New Model Army, which has actually been around for decades, were denied visas to perform in San Francisco at the DNA Lounge.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/british-bands-banned-from-us-visits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s becoming a problem for newly popular British bands to tour in the United States, because they are being denied P-1 visas unless they can prove that they have been \u0026ldquo;internationally recognized\u0026rdquo; for a \u0026ldquo;sustained and substantial\u0026rdquo; amount of time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRecently the band New Model Army, which has actually been around for decades, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2007/09.html#19\"\u003ewere denied visas to perform in San Francisco at the DNA Lounge\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"British bands banned from U.S. visits"},{"content":"Municipal wireless has been a failure. The City of Tempe projected 32,000 users, but only had 600 at its last published count, which was back in April 2006. It\u0026rsquo;s also failing in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and Taipei.\n(Also see Technology Liberation Front, which makes the same point.)\nUPDATE (November 8, 2007): Sprint and Clearwire have scrapped a plan to jointly build out their WiMax networks, and it looks like Sprint may scale back its own WiMax plans, as well.\nChristopher Mitchell (2007-09-24):\nMinneapolis has failed? All the others have failed? Some projects are struggling but very few are even close. This is a little premature - unless you have more sources than some poor journalism from USA Today? A friend has written a good article discussing what is actually happening in Mpls.\nLippard (2007-09-24):\nChristopher: The first link in my post is to an article in The Economist.Perhaps metro WiFi for emergency response networks can be effective.What do you mean that \"very few are even close\"? Close to what, being completely built out?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/i-hope-this-doesnt-happen-to-sprints.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMunicipal wireless \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9726651\"\u003ehas been a failure\u003c/a\u003e.  The City of Tempe projected 32,000 users, but only had 600 at its last published count, which was back in April 2006.  It\u0026rsquo;s also failing in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and Taipei.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042806.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e, which makes the same point.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2007):  Sprint and Clearwire \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071109/bs_nm/sprint_clearwire_dc_1\"\u003ehave scrapped a plan to jointly build out their WiMax networks\u003c/a\u003e, and it looks like Sprint may scale back its own WiMax plans, as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I hope this doesn't happen to Sprint's WiMax plans..."},{"content":"Last October, I reported that Moody\u0026rsquo;s was predicting that the Phoenix housing market would see price declines of 9.3% between the first quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008, which I called \u0026ldquo;wildly optimistic.\u0026quot;\nNow Moody\u0026rsquo;s has issued a new report which claims the Phoenix housing market will see price declines of 17.8% between the second quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;ve doubled the percentage of drop for a time period that\u0026rsquo;s three months shorter.\nI\u0026rsquo;m guessing this will be closer to accurate\u0026ndash;but still shy of the mark, unfortunately.\nThe report also predicts a drop of 11.7% for Tucson, lower than October\u0026rsquo;s prediction of a 13.4% drop.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/moodys-revises-its-housing-price.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast October, I \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/housing-bubble-us-and-arizona.html\"\u003ereported that Moody\u0026rsquo;s was predicting that the Phoenix housing market would see price declines of 9.3%\u003c/a\u003e between the first quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008, which I called \u0026ldquo;wildly optimistic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow Moody\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/19/real_estate/steep_home_price_drops_coming/index.htm\"\u003ehas issued a new report which claims the Phoenix housing market will see price declines of 17.8%\u003c/a\u003e between the second quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;ve doubled the percentage of drop for a time period that\u0026rsquo;s three months shorter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m guessing this will be closer to accurate\u0026ndash;but still shy of the mark, unfortunately.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe report also predicts a drop of 11.7% for Tucson, lower than October\u0026rsquo;s prediction of a 13.4% drop.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Moody's revises its housing price predictions"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier brings attention to a 2002 paper by Paul Karger and Roger Schell (PDF) about lessons learned from Multics security that are still relevant today, and Multicians come out of the woodwork in the comments.\nKarger and Schell were part of the Air Force \u0026ldquo;tiger team\u0026rdquo; that ran penetration attacks against Multics in the 1970s. They were successful, which ultimately led to a Multics security enhancement project, the result of which was that Multics was the first commercial operating system to obtain a B2 security rating from the National Computer Security Center. I played a small part in that project, fixing some bugs and helping to run tests of Multics\u0026rsquo; Trusted Computing Base (TCB).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/lessons-for-information-security-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier brings attention to \u003ca href=\"http://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf\"\u003ea 2002 paper by Paul Karger and Roger Schell\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) about lessons learned from Multics security that are still relevant today, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_ope.html\"\u003eMulticians come out of the woodwork in the comments\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKarger and Schell were part of the Air Force \u0026ldquo;tiger team\u0026rdquo; that ran penetration attacks against Multics in the 1970s.  They were successful, which ultimately led to a Multics security enhancement project, the result of which was that Multics was the first commercial operating system to obtain a B2 security rating from the National Computer Security Center.  I played a small part in that project, fixing some bugs and helping to run tests of Multics\u0026rsquo; Trusted Computing Base (TCB).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lessons for information security from Multics"},{"content":"Blogger Will Wilkinson has posted a lengthy critique of George Lakoff\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;framing\u0026rdquo; arguments that the Democrats have lost elections because the Republicans have changed the meanings of words. He cites the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to offer a different conclusion:\nHaidt’s research leads him to posit five psychological foundations of human moral sentiment, each with a distinct evolutionary history and function, which he labels harm, reciprocity, ingroup, hierarchy, and purity. While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like “Show Tunes” will turn down the bass and “Hip Hop” will turn it up, but neither turn it off. Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment, and justification. If you’re a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have purity and ingroup pushed up to eleven. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned ingroup way down and harm way up.Rather than recommend that liberals fake religiosity, he offers a different suggestion:\nDemocrats can try to appeal to religious American voters by giving some ground in the culture wars. But it seems unlikely they will find an effective balance. There is no point conceding stuff too trivial to really matter, such as school prayer, and comically pretending to be moved by the pure and the foul. And there is even less point in nominating religiously convincing candidates who really do believe embryos have the spark of divinity, that gay is gross, etc. Socialized health care isn’t worth it. Democrats should play to their own moral-emotional strengths, not apologize for not having different ones. Haidt’s early research on moralized disgust shows that its cultural manifestations vary. The Japanese apparently find it disgusting to fail their station and its duties. And here at home, formerly “repulsive” practices, such as interracial marriage, have become mere curiosities.\n\u0026hellip;\nDemocrats shouldn’t cater to and reinforce sensibilities that both hurt people and hurt the Democrats’ prospects. Religious doctrine and religious feeling can and have been trimmed and shaped over time to accommodate the full plurality of liberal society. Illiberal patterns of feeling bolstered by religious sentiments, like disgust for homosexuality, can be broken through slow desensitization, or a shift in the way the culture recruits that dimension of the moral sense. In dynamic commercial societies, this happens whether we want it to or not. But we have something to say about how it happens. The culture war is worth fighting, one episode of Will \u0026amp; Grace at a time, if that’s what it takes.\nLiberals must understand the profundity to others of feelings that are weak in them, but shouldn’t pretend to feel what they don’t. They can lead as well as follow. And it remains true that all Americans, conservative and liberal alike, are wide awake to the liberal emotional dimensions of harm and reciprocity. The American culture war is about how thoroughly the liberal sentiments will be allowed to dominate. If a thoroughly liberal society is worth having, liberals will have to spot the points of conflict between the liberal and illiberal dimensions of the moral sense, drive in the wedge, and pull out all the rhetorical stops—including playing on feelings of quasi-religious elevation and indignant moral disgust—to make Americans feel the moral primacy of harm, autonomy, and rights. When the pattern of feeling is in place, the argument is easy to accept.\nI find Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s reasoning to be sounder than Matt Nisbet\u0026rsquo;s and Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s.\nolvlzl (2007-09-20):\nAnyone who comes up with the idea that \"General Betrayus\" (which I agree with entirely but thinks there were probably better ways to do it) and then goes on National Public Radio (Republican Promoting DC based media) to explain the brilliant science behind it is pretty clueless about how the real media works for Move On to be listening to. But then, Move On gave them an interview too. Here's an idea, if you come up with something like this, you don't make the media campaign the story. The Shermer point about Dawkins depends on what outcome you want. If you want to get attention for atheist fundamentalism (and make a lot of enemies) well, he does that. If you want to promote the public understanding of science, look at the numbers of people who accept evolutionary science for the period of his greatest prominence. For people understanding science, the empirical evidence is that the Dawkins way is an abject failure.\nLippard (2007-09-20):\nI don't think the goal of the \"new atheism\" books by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett is to promote the public understanding of science, but rather to promote critical thinking about and scientific investigation of religious belief and religious claims.I'll make the same point I made in the comments on the Matt Nisbet framing article--there's no contradiction in wanting to promote this *and* to promote public understanding of science through the work of religious scientists who claim there is no contradiction between science and religion. I support both approaches. My personal position is that you certainly can hold religious views that do not conflict with science, but I think you have to empty the religious belief of all empirical content that conflicts with science, resulting in a liberal form of belief that has very little resemblance to traditional religious views. And I think that as time goes by, more and more of the religious belief will be similarly forced to give way. Conservative religious believers appear to think the same thing, and so they see liberal religious belief as a greater threat to their way of thinking than atheism.\nolvlzl (2007-09-20):\nI addressed Dawkins specifically in terms of the seat he holds at Oxford, that is certainly within the bounds of fairness. Since he and his close associate, Dennett constantly couch their atheist polemics in terms of the promotion of science - and I'll say in passing, a person could reasonably think that in their case \"science\" means evolutionary psychology - the effect of the period of Dawkins' greatest prominence on the promotion of the public understanding of science is highly relevant. And it's pretty dismal. I'll forgo some ironic points I'd usually make here about the nature of Dawkins and Dennett's own science. In the case of Hitchens you might be able to separate the alleged motive of upholding a scientific view of the universe since that doesn't seem to figure in his diatribes. But I don't think you can in people who make that the basis of their promotion of atheism. Even Harris seems to have the upholding of among his other stated motives, though in his case it is certainly not one that seems to entirely meet with the approval of other atheist fundamentalists of a scientistic bent. His use of stereotypes, vicarious blame and bigotry would seem to be his primary focus. Whether or not the political effects of the promotions of all the above will be an increased acceptance of atheism as a civil rights issue, is far from certain. I take my lessons from the late sixties and the slowing and eventual back slide of progress in civil rights took hold. I have every faith that was due to the success that the enemies of civil rights had in putting a threatening and hostile face on the movement for justice. Often with the help of those whose egos were larger than their ideals. Under the present Supreme Court, the separation of church and state is certainly endangered and the use of public schools to promote creationism is more likely. As science and liberalism has been successfully promoted as the enemy of the religious majority by the enemies of science and liberalism, the job of the reactionaries has been made easier. At least that's how I see it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/wilkinson-critique-of-framing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlogger Will Wilkinson has posted \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2007/09/19/whats-the-frequency-lakoff/\"\u003ea lengthy critique of George Lakoff\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;framing\u0026rdquo; arguments\u003c/a\u003e that the Democrats have lost elections because the Republicans have changed the meanings of words.  He cites the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to offer a different conclusion:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHaidt’s research leads him to posit five psychological foundations of human moral sentiment, each with a distinct evolutionary history and function, which he labels \u003cem\u003eharm\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003ereciprocity\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eingroup\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003ehierarchy\u003c/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003epurity\u003c/em\u003e. While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like “Show Tunes” will turn down the bass and “Hip Hop” will turn it up, but neither turn it off. Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment, and justification. If you’re a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have \u003cem\u003epurity\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eingroup\u003c/em\u003e pushed up to eleven. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned \u003cem\u003eingroup\u003c/em\u003e way down and harm way up.\u003c/blockquote\u003eRather than recommend that liberals fake religiosity, he offers a different suggestion:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDemocrats can try to appeal to religious American voters by giving some ground in the culture wars. But it seems unlikely they will find an effective balance. There is no point conceding stuff too trivial to really matter, such as school prayer, and comically \u003cem\u003epretending\u003c/em\u003e to be moved by the pure and the foul. And there is even less point in nominating religiously convincing candidates who really do believe embryos have the spark of divinity, that gay is gross, etc. Socialized health care isn’t worth it. \u003cp\u003eDemocrats should play to their own moral-emotional strengths, not apologize for not having different ones. Haidt’s early research on moralized disgust shows that its cultural manifestations vary. The Japanese apparently find it \u003cem\u003edisgusting\u003c/em\u003e to fail their station and its duties. And here at home, formerly “repulsive” practices, such as interracial marriage, have become mere curiosities.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wilkinson critique of framing"},{"content":"Daniel Rozin\u0026rsquo;s Weave Mirror uses 768 motorized C-shaped prints in what appears like a basket weave patterned screen, each of which can rotate independently to change its shade, producing a grayscale image of whatever is in front of it.\nPhotos and video at Engadget.\nThis reminds me of Julius Popp\u0026rsquo;s Bitfall, which draws images with falling water drops.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/mirrors-without-glass.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Rozin\u0026rsquo;s Weave Mirror uses 768 motorized C-shaped prints in what appears like a basket weave patterned screen, each of which can rotate independently to change its shade, producing a grayscale image of whatever is in front of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhotos and video at \u003ca href=\"http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/weave-mirror-neglects-glass-stuns-onlookers/\"\u003eEngadget\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis reminds me of \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/bitfall-using-dripping-water-to.html\"\u003eJulius Popp\u0026rsquo;s Bitfall\u003c/a\u003e, which draws images with falling water drops.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mirrors without glass"},{"content":"Ed Brayton has an excellent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, from which I\u0026rsquo;ve borrowed the title of this post, in which he points out that anti-gay bigots like the American Family Association who want to boycott corporations that have gay-friendly policies have their work cut out for them now. The Human Rights Campaign\u0026rsquo;s Corporate Equality Index has been released, and the number of companies scoring a perfect 100 has gone up from 138 companies last year (and a mere 13 in 2002) to 195 this year. Where Donald Wildmon\u0026rsquo;s AFA protested against Ford Motor Company, a perfect scorer on the index, for its advertising its cars in gay magazines, they now have 194 other such companies to boycott.\nEd writes that, if you want to avoid advancing the gay agenda, you have to avoid nearly every major airline and automobile manufacturer, major retailers, most consumer products, major financial institutions, major health insurance providers, most pharmaceuticals, and even most American beer brands. As commenters point out, even some of the exceptions he lists as possible candidates don\u0026rsquo;t work (e.g., Volvo is currently owned by Ford, and K-Mart is owned by Sears, and both Ford and Sears scored 100 on the index). Commenters also point out that the major technology companies that make the Internet possible are high scorers, and that the most common piece of software on mail servers, sendmail, was developed by a gay man.\nRead Ed\u0026rsquo;s piece for his list, and don\u0026rsquo;t miss the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/how-to-avoid-advancing-gay-agenda.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/how_to_avoid_advancing_the_gay.php\"\u003ean excellent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, from which I\u0026rsquo;ve borrowed the title of this post, in which he points out that anti-gay bigots like the American Family Association who want to boycott corporations that have gay-friendly policies have their work cut out for them now.  The Human Rights Campaign\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.hrc.org/documents/HRC_Corporate_Equality_Index_2008.pdf\"\u003eCorporate Equality Index\u003c/a\u003e has been released, and the number of companies scoring a perfect 100 has gone up from 138 companies last year (and a mere 13 in 2002) to 195 this year.  Where Donald Wildmon\u0026rsquo;s AFA protested against Ford Motor Company, a perfect scorer on the index, for its advertising its cars in gay magazines, they now have 194 other such companies to boycott.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd writes that, if you want to avoid advancing the gay agenda, you have to avoid nearly every major airline and automobile manufacturer, major retailers, most consumer products, major financial institutions, major health insurance providers, most pharmaceuticals, and even most American beer brands.  As commenters point out, even some of the exceptions he lists as possible candidates don\u0026rsquo;t work (e.g., Volvo is currently owned by Ford, and K-Mart is owned by Sears, and both Ford and Sears scored 100 on the index).  Commenters also point out that the major technology companies that make the Internet possible are high scorers, and that the most common piece of software on mail servers, sendmail, was developed by a gay man.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/how_to_avoid_advancing_the_gay.php\"\u003eEd\u0026rsquo;s piece\u003c/a\u003e for his list, and don\u0026rsquo;t miss the comments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to avoid advancing the gay agenda"},{"content":"Microsoft has admitted that it has updated nine executable files in XP and Windows on users\u0026rsquo; machines even when they have turned off automatic updates. These files are part of the Windows update feature itself. Corporate users who use SMS rather than Windows update for OS patches are not affected.\nBruce Schneier raises the question of whether this ability to force updates could be exploited by a third party. I would hope that such updates are digitally signed, so that they can only come from Microsoft, but a commenter at Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog notes that even if that is the case there is a potential vulnerability created:\nThere may be an attack vector, even if the updates are signed by Microsoft. The signed updates would always be silently accepted. If Microsoft ever signs an update which later turns out to be vulnerable to some attack (this has happened before with signed activeX components), an attacker could re-push this vulnerable update and introduce a known vulnerability into the target system.Another commenter notes that this feature could be used by law enforcement to install a keylogger on a machine, if Microsoft agreed to do it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/microsoft-updates-windows-xp-and-vista.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMicrosoft \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201806263\"\u003ehas admitted that it has updated nine executable files in XP and Windows on users\u0026rsquo; machines even when they have turned off automatic updates\u003c/a\u003e.  These files are part of the Windows update feature itself.  Corporate users who use SMS rather than Windows update for OS patches are not affected.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/microsoft_updat.html\"\u003eraises the question of whether this ability to force updates could be exploited by a third party\u003c/a\u003e.  I would hope that such updates are digitally signed, so that they can only come from Microsoft, but a commenter at Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog notes that \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/microsoft_updat.html#c202286\"\u003eeven if that is the case there is a potential vulnerability created\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThere may be an attack vector, even if the updates are signed by Microsoft. The signed updates would always be silently accepted. If Microsoft ever signs an update which later turns out to be vulnerable to some attack (this has happened before with signed activeX components), an attacker could re-push this vulnerable update and introduce a known vulnerability into the target system.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnother commenter notes that this feature \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/microsoft_updat.html#c202320\"\u003ecould be used by law enforcement to install a keylogger on a machine\u003c/a\u003e, if Microsoft agreed to do it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Microsoft updates Windows XP and Vista without user permission or notification"},{"content":"MediaDefender, a company that attempts to disrupt the sharing of copyrighted material owned by its clients on peer-to-peer filesharing networks, has suffered an embarassing security breach\u0026ndash;the leaking of 700 MB of emails from senior employees in the company. The leak allegedly occurred because one senior employee was forwarding company email to his Gmail account, and he used the same password for his Gmail account that he used to register for a P2P service of some kind.\nThis breach demonstrates the importance of adhering to corporate policies about use of external mail providers and using good password security\u0026ndash;anything really important should have a unique password, not the same one used for accessing a variety of online websites and services.\nUPDATE: It\u0026rsquo;s now being claimed that MediaDefender\u0026rsquo;s phone systems have also been compromised for the last nine months, and a 25-minute phone call between MediaDefender and the New York Attorney General\u0026rsquo;s office is circulating, as well as a transcript. The transcript indicates that the AG\u0026rsquo;s office was concerned (rightly so, apparently) about a possible mail server compromise at MediaDefender; the MediaDefender representative states at one point that he is speaking over a VoIP connection.\nUPDATE: It seems the record companies are using information about P2P downloads collected by MediaDefender to make marketing decisions. Here\u0026rsquo;s a quote from one of the leaked emails (quoted from SlashDot):\nSubject: Nicole Scherzinger\nDate: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:14:31 -0700\nNicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called \u0026ldquo;whatever u like\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio. A song called \u0026ldquo;Baby Love\u0026rdquo; just leaked (I don\u0026rsquo;t know how long ago). Interscope wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p. They need to make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this song as the single. Please get me a score comparison on Monday for these two tracks. Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly furtado singles as comparisons.UPDATE (September 17, 2007): Ars Technica has a good summary of the breach and what the leaked information shows about what MediaDefender has been up to with its video upload service (apparently designed to encourage the upload of copyrighted content as a sort of sting operation), MiiVi. MediaDefender says it was an \u0026ldquo;internal project\u0026rdquo; that was supposed to be password protected but was inadvertently made public.\nCNet has a story on MediaDefender which notes:\nSome of the tactics employed the movie and music industries in their fight against copyright infringement have come under scrutiny of late. The Motion Picture Assoc. of America acknowledged recently that it paid a hacker $15,000 to obtain private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy, a company accused by the MPAA of encouraging file sharing. The MPAA said it believed the e-mails were legally obtained.\nIn that case, the MPAA obtained the emails from a former TorrentSpy business associate, Robert Anderson, who signed an agreement saying that he obtained the emails legally, telling the MPAA he obtained them from an \u0026ldquo;informant.\u0026rdquo; The CNet article on that controversy says that \u0026ldquo;records show\u0026rdquo; that Anderson \u0026ldquo;allegedly \u0026lsquo;hacked\u0026rsquo; into TorrentSpy\u0026rsquo;s e-mail system and rigged it so that \u0026rsquo;every incoming and outgoing e-mail message would also be copied and forwarded to his anonymous Google e-mail account.\u0026rdquo; In other words, it has some similarities to the MediaDefender case\u0026ndash;likely unauthorized forwarding of email (though Anderson may not have had any authority to see those emails at all), and obtaining the email from a GMail account (though in the MediaDefender case the mail was obtained by someone other than the owner of the account).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/anti-p2p-company-suffers-major-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMediaDefender, a company that attempts to disrupt the sharing of copyrighted material owned by its clients on peer-to-peer filesharing networks, has suffered an embarassing security breach\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/\"\u003ethe leaking of 700 MB of emails from senior employees in the company\u003c/a\u003e.  The leak allegedly occurred because one senior employee was forwarding company email to his Gmail account, and he used the same password for his Gmail account that he used to register for a P2P service of some kind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis breach demonstrates the importance of adhering to corporate policies about use of external mail providers and using good password security\u0026ndash;anything really important should have a unique password, not the same one used for accessing a variety of online websites and services.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  It\u0026rsquo;s now being claimed that MediaDefender\u0026rsquo;s phone systems have also been compromised for the last nine months, and a 25-minute phone call between MediaDefender and the New York Attorney General\u0026rsquo;s office is circulating, as well as a transcript.  The transcript indicates that the AG\u0026rsquo;s office was concerned (rightly so, apparently) about a possible mail server compromise at MediaDefender; the MediaDefender representative states at one point that he is speaking over a VoIP connection.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  It seems the record companies are using information about P2P downloads collected by MediaDefender to make marketing decisions.  Here\u0026rsquo;s a quote from one of the leaked emails (quoted from \u003ca href=\"http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=299011\u0026amp;cid=20620913\"\u003eSlashDot\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSubject: Nicole Scherzinger\u003cbr /\u003eDate: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:14:31 -0700\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called \u0026ldquo;whatever u like\u0026rdquo;.  It\u0026rsquo;s not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio.  A song called \u0026ldquo;Baby Love\u0026rdquo; just leaked (I don\u0026rsquo;t know how long ago).  Interscope wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p.  They need to make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this song as the single.  Please get me a score comparison on Monday for these two tracks.  Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly furtado singles as comparisons.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (September 17, 2007): Ars Technica has \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070916-leaked-media-defender-e-mails-reveal-secret-government-project.html\"\u003ea good summary of the breach and what the leaked information shows about what MediaDefender has been up to with its video upload service\u003c/a\u003e (apparently designed to encourage the upload of copyrighted content as a sort of sting operation), MiiVi.  MediaDefender says it was an \u0026ldquo;internal project\u0026rdquo; that was supposed to be password protected but was inadvertently made public.\u003ca href=\"http://www.dailytech.com/Massive+Email+VOIP+Leak+at+MediaDefender+More+on+the+Way/article8900.htm\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCNet has \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9779459-7.html?tag=nefd.blgs\"\u003ea story on MediaDefender\u003c/a\u003e which notes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-P2P company suffers major security breach"},{"content":"There has been an all-too-predictable Christian uproar about Kathy Griffin\u0026rsquo;s Emmy acceptance speech, in which she said that Jesus had nothing to do with her win, the award was now her god, and \u0026ldquo;Suck it, Jesus!\u0026rdquo; These remarks are apparently being edited from the broadcast to protect Christian sensitivities.\nLauren Green, former Miss America turned religion correspondent for Fox News, wrote an article claiming that Griffin\u0026rsquo;s remarks and her winning of the award were only possible because of Jesus. Some bloggers are jumping to agree with her, without recognizing how off-base her historical argument is.\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out the historical inaccuracies in Green\u0026rsquo;s article, such as this one:\nNinety-four percent of America\u0026rsquo;s founding era documents mention the Bible; 34 percent quote the Bible directly. Ah yes, that old canard, which has been debunked time and time again. The phrase \u0026ldquo;founding era documents\u0026rdquo; is quite slippery; she doesn\u0026rsquo;t bother to say, doubtless because she has never read Lutz\u0026rsquo; study and hasn\u0026rsquo;t a clue what it actually says, is that most of the documents in his study had nothing at all to do with the founding of the country and were in fact reprinted sermons. Small wonder that sermons contained Biblical references.\nIn fact, Lutz\u0026rsquo; study notes that at the time of the drafting and ratification of the constitution, 1787 and 1788, there were precious few references to the Bible or to Christianity and none at all in the public writings of any of the Federalists who were explaining and defending the Constitution to the citizens. Lutz wrote of this period in his study:\nThe Bible\u0026rsquo;s prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible has little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalists\u0026rsquo; inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant. Lutz\u0026rsquo; study clearly argues against the notion that the Bible influenced the Constitution, not for it. If Green had bothered to actually read the study, she would know that. But instead, she credulously repeats religious right talking points. Then again, she does work for Fox News, so this is hardly a surprise.\nThe See for Yourself blog responds to Green by taking her argument a step further:\nIf Jesus really did have everything to do with Kathy Griffin\u0026rsquo;s award, and think Lauren Green has undoubtedly shown that to be true, then that means Jesus had everything to do with Kathy Griffin saying \u0026ldquo;Suck it Jesus! This award is my God now!\u0026rdquo; And since Lauren Green makes it clear that she finds self-effacing humor to be amusing, why is it that Lauren Green is unamused by Kathy Griffin\u0026rsquo;s remarks, which is essentially Jesus\u0026rsquo; own self-effacement? Jesus is Lord of Comedy, but Lauren Green is won\u0026rsquo;t scarf down his tasty communion wafer.\n\u0026hellip;\nNow, I very much believe that Lauren Green and Bill Donahue and Fox News would never have said anything if Kathy Griffin had only disavowed the involvement of a 2,000 year old fictional Jewish zombie. They would have gladly ignored that, and nobody would have censored remarks on the broadcast, and Lauren Green never would have written her well-reasoned column.\nBut why turn the other cheek if you won\u0026rsquo;t accept the inevitable re-slap? Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t Lauren Green have a sense of humor when Jesus uses an irreverent comedian to make a little fun of himself?Ed Brayton concludes his piece with the point that Christians should be offended when people make claims to the media that God or Jesus was responsible for their winning a sports event or prize\u0026ndash;as if God plays favorites in such events\u0026ndash;and that this is what Griffin was making fun of.\nUPDATE (September 27, 2007): Bob McCarty has been claiming that the Founding Fathers made the U.S. a Christian nation at his blog in the comments, and has not approved my comments responding to some of his bogus claims. Here\u0026rsquo;s the text of my second attempts to post a rejoinder:\nBob: You didn\u0026rsquo;t approve/publish my previous comment responding to your Sep. 15 comment. I\u0026rsquo;ll try again.\nYour citation of \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;One Nation Under God\u0026rdquo; as evidence of the U.S. being founded on Christian principles shows your lack of research\u0026ndash;the former did not appear on coins until 1854 and on currency until 1957. The phrase \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; wasn\u0026rsquo;t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954.\nI also suggested you read more of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, including his letter to his nephew Peter Carr on August 10, 1787, in which he wrote \u0026ldquo;Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.\u0026quot;and, in a separate comment, after I remembered that I had also made this point in my first attempt:\nOh, and I also recommended that you check out the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was ratified by the Congress and signed by President John Adams, which contains the statement that \u0026ldquo;the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.\u0026rdquo; Tripoli violated the treaty and a new treaty was negotiated in 1805 without that language, but it is significant that both the Senate and President approved that language.\nAnonymous (2007-09-17):\nI understand completely what she was joking about. Thanks for the post.Much Love Always,Rose Marie Wolfwww.rosemariewolf.com\nAndrew and Carrie (2007-09-28):\nI believe this comment does not harm Christians in the least bit. I do believe that this comment causes great harm to Kathy Griffin. We serve a loving God, who is slow anger and abounding in love. But He is also passionate about His name. He has commanded us not to use His name in vain, that includes comedy. The Hebrew people would not even write the entire name God, because they felt they were unworthy. As a follower of Jesus we believe that at the name of Jesus the sick are healed and the lame walk and the blind see. And at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. I have no hate in my heart for Kathy Griffin, but I do hope that she realizes the consequences of her actions before she stands before God at the day of judgement.\nEinzige (2007-09-28):\nIf I end up standing before Jesus on the day of judgment I'll make sure to hawk a big loogie on his face.There couldn't be a bigger asshole.\nRespect, anyone? (2007-10-16):\neinzige, why would you call Jesus an asshole? Even atheists call him a teacher of his day. I could see you calling him blashemous, as did his doubters, but asshole? He showed nothing but kindness to people, regardless of who we believe him to be. I can't seem to find the sense in that description of him.Also, I was pondering what would happen if Kathy Griffin entered Iraq and aimed her \"suck\" comment at Allah or if she entered India and aimed her \"suck\" comment at Buddha. Fact is, she probably wouldn't. I couldn't even get myself to type that comment to those gods (out of respect for readers of those religions). What if einzige used the asshole description for those two gods in those countries? Fact is, he probably wouldn't. So why the disrespect shown for the God worshipped or the religion claimed by the majority of Americans? The trait of respect is floundering in this country. Just look around (or read more blogs like this one).\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nI freely admit I lack respect for religious belief.My characterization of Jesus as an asshole is based on two things:1. He said that if you don't believe that he is King of kings and Lord of lords then you'll be cast out into outer darkness for all eternity. This, in spite of how you led your life. If you're a mass murdering necrophiliac pedophile you'll still get into heaven as long as you repent your sins and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Use your brain (the one that, presumably, Jesus gave you), on the other hand, and question things that don't make any sense? Doomed to an eternity of unimaginable tortures. Nuff said! Jesus is an asshole.But, there's more...2. Assuming Jesus's claim that he and Yahweh are the same being, then there's the whole Old Testament to contend with. Yahweh was a supreme dick. The Old Testament is filled to the brim with stories of just how awful Jehovah is. If Jesus = Jehovah and Jehovah really sent bears to tear apart children for making fun of Elijah's bald head (for one tiny little example among many), then Jesus = asshole.\nLippard (2007-10-16):\nrespect, anyone?: I was also somewhat taken aback by Einzige's comment, and he offered a similar explanation. (I specifically asked him if he also hated Santa Claus.)Einzige's not responding to the historical Jesus, he's responding to the mythical Christian Jesus.I'm sure he'd similarly respond to the mythical Allah. Buddha, however, doesn't have quite the reputation for condemning people to eternal torture. (BTW, there are a lot more Hindus than Buddhists...)\nEinzige (2007-10-16):\nIn response to Jim's question about Santa I had this to say:I don't hate Santa, but I do hate Lord Voldemort.\nLippard (2007-10-17):\nHere's an angry atheist.\nRespect, anyone? (2007-10-17):\nEinzige, if you are a parent, you know that all children at some point think of their fathers as \"supreme dicks.\" Children don't understand discipline at times, but good parents have good motives in raising their children. They use discpline. That's what God of the Old Testament did a lot. Yes, some of his discipline was remarkably large-scale, and we won't ever get it because we weren't raised in that culture in that day (much more violent situations than the good ole' USA in every culture of that time). Back to your \"Jesus is asshole\" opinion - Jesus had compassion in this whole heavy-handed discpline thing, and that's when he entered the picture. Re-read the New Testament. There is an extremely lopsided bent toward love and good deeds from Jesus, not the hateful condemnation you are referring to. The hateful condemnation came from the religious leaders. Jesus despised their religious \"holier than thou\" mentality. He just loved on people. He got into trouble hanging out with society's rejects. He pointed a convicting finger at those who claimed religion but lived like judgmental idiots and haters. It's not Jesus who condemns man to eternal damnation - man does that to himself. Thankfully, God doesn't hogtie and force his followers into submission. That's an act of choice, of will. I think your angst is more directed at religious bigots, but that was not Jesus. Quite the contrary. Close your ears and eyes to the people making noise around you and read the New Testament with an open mind about the person of Jesus Christ.\nEinzige (2007-10-17):\nRespect,Your parent analogy alludes to a huge subject--the problem of evil, about which a great deal has been written. I can't really add much to what has already been said, but if you're curious, here is a page with a number of thought-provoking essays on the topic. Suffice to say that I am of the opinion that Jehovah would be considered an unfit parent by CPS.Regarding Jesus, I prefer that we refer to his own words as a guide to his single-minded obsession (BTW, it's amazing how many times he felt compelled to remind us he was telling the truth)...JN 5:24I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.JN 3:3In reply Jesus declared, I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.JN 3:18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.JN 6:29Jesus answered, The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.JN 6:38-40For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.JN 6:44No-one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.JN 6:47I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.JN 6:51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.JN 6:53Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.JN 8:12When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.JN 8:24I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.JN 8:51I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.JN 10:27-28My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.JN 11:25-26Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?JN 11:40Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?JN 12:25-26The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.JN 12:44-46Then Jesus cried out, When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no-one who believes in me should stay in darkness.JN 12:48There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.JN 14:6Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.JN 15:6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.\nLippard (2007-10-17):\nrespect, anyone: \"Children don't understand discipline at times, but good parents have good motives in raising their children. They use discpline. That's what God of the Old Testament did a lot. Yes, some of his discipline was remarkably large-scale, and we won't ever get it because we weren't raised in that culture in that day (much more violent situations than the good ole' USA in every culture of that time).\"Do you realize that you are advocating not just moral relativism, but a moral relativism that supports the moral goodness of genocide and slavery? Sorry, I'm not buying what you're selling.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/kathy-griffins-emmy-jokes-and-lauren.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere has been an all-too-predictable Christian uproar about Kathy Griffin\u0026rsquo;s Emmy acceptance speech, in which she said that Jesus had nothing to do with her win, the award was now her god, and \u0026ldquo;Suck it, Jesus!\u0026rdquo;  These remarks \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1144512920070911\"\u003eare apparently being edited from the broadcast\u003c/a\u003e to protect Christian sensitivities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLauren Green, former Miss America turned religion correspondent for Fox News, wrote \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296683,00.html\"\u003ean article claiming that Griffin\u0026rsquo;s remarks and her winning of the award were only possible because of Jesus\u003c/a\u003e.  Some bloggers are \u003ca href=\"http://bobmccarty.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/lauren-green-right-on-kathy-griffins-comments/\"\u003ejumping to agree with her\u003c/a\u003e, without recognizing how off-base her historical argument is.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/fox_news_religion_corresponden.php\"\u003epoints out the historical inaccuracies in Green\u0026rsquo;s article\u003c/a\u003e, such as this one:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNinety-four percent of America\u0026rsquo;s founding era documents mention the Bible; 34 percent quote the Bible directly.\u003c/blockquote\u003e  \u003cp\u003eAh yes, that old canard, which has been \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/04/more_falsehoods_in_ncbcps_curr.php\"\u003edebunked\u003c/a\u003e time and time again. The phrase \u0026ldquo;founding era documents\u0026rdquo; is quite slippery; she doesn\u0026rsquo;t bother to say, doubtless because she has never read Lutz\u0026rsquo; study and hasn\u0026rsquo;t a clue what it actually says, is that most of the documents in his study had nothing at all to do with the founding of the country and were in fact reprinted sermons. Small wonder that sermons contained Biblical references.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kathy Griffin's Emmy jokes and Lauren Green's historical revisionism"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve not read Bjorn Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s new book (nor his previous one), but I have read enough of what he has written to suspect that some of those who are ridiculing one of his arguments don\u0026rsquo;t understand it. For example, Bob Park of the American Physical Society\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s New\u0026rdquo; writes:\nBjorn Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Global Warming\u0026rdquo; is out. Well, yes it is getting warmer he finds, but aside from polar bears, it just means more beach weather. We\u0026rsquo;ve got bigger problems, he says. Instead of spending all that money trying to prevent warming, let\u0026rsquo;s focus on making everyone rich so they can all buy air conditioners.P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula writes:\nHe also has a bad argument about relative spending: he suggests that spending on climate change would reduce spending on other pressing issues, like the fight against malaria. It\u0026rsquo;s a bad choice. Malaria research is already underfunded — it\u0026rsquo;s a third-world disease, don\u0026rsquo;t you know, one that mainly affects those tropical countries, so the wealthy western nations typically don\u0026rsquo;t prioritize it very highly. We don\u0026rsquo;t take our big pots of money and allocate it into aliquots appropriate to the world\u0026rsquo;s needs already, so for an economist to sit there and pretend that climate research is a drain on tropical disease research is comical. Especially since he seems unaware of how one feeds into the other. Hey, if the world warms up, tropical diseases will creep northward into Europe and North America, and then we\u0026rsquo;ll be fighting the economic effects of both direct effects of climate change and new diseases.But as I understand it, Lomborg is making a simple point about opportunity costs\u0026ndash;that money spent on climate change mitigation can\u0026rsquo;t be spent on other things, and that it would be better off spent on things like fighting malaria (which I\u0026rsquo;m sure he would agree with Myers is underfunded, since it\u0026rsquo;s #4 on the Copenhagen Consensus 2004 list of \u0026ldquo;very good projects\u0026rdquo; to spend money on), because the amount of benefit received for each dollar spent is so much greater.\nTo make the same point\u0026ndash;I have looked into putting solar cells on my house, both to reduce my carbon footprint and my long-term energy costs, but I\u0026rsquo;ve decided against it because even with the tax incentives and my power company\u0026rsquo;s willingness to subsidize half the cost, it\u0026rsquo;s still not cost-effective. (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping new solar cell technologies will improve efficiency and lower cost so that I will be able to become less dependent upon the electrical grid). Instead, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent much smaller amounts of money that have had far more bang for the buck, replacing my incandescent lights with CFLs (though LEDs and other new promising technologies are on the way as better sources of light), adding insulation, and improving the efficiency of my air conditioning units through regular maintenance. These things I\u0026rsquo;ve done not only have an impact on my energy use and climate change, they are things which provide me with direct economic benefit as well\u0026ndash;thus these are things that rational people will be doing independently of government regulation and spending.\nLomborg\u0026ndash;or at least the Copenhagen Consensus\u0026ndash;is not saying that climate change deserves no attention. The premise of the Copenhagen Consensus is that if the world spent an additional $50 billion over the next five years to address ten categories of global challenges (one of which is climate change), how would that money best be spent to provide the greatest net benefit. That seems to me to be an entirely worthy effort, and this kind of cost-benefit calculation should be given greater weight in public policy decisions. Instead, however, most politicians like to make arguments based on the assumption that any law, regulation, or government spending that saves even one life (or prevents one child from seeing something offensive) is worth doing, whether or not that generates enormous opportunity costs.\nMy personal behavior\u0026ndash;and I suspect that of those criticizing Lomborg on this point\u0026ndash;demonstrates that I don\u0026rsquo;t consider climate change my number one priority. In my case, I live in a large house that uses a lot of electricity, I travel frequently by plane, I drive a car instead of using public transportation, I eat meat instead of being a vegetarian like my wife. Each of these things causes, directly or indirectly, an increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the alternatives.\nUPDATE (December 16, 2008): I just came across this description of Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s overall behavior with respect to the climate change debate, which I think is likely accurate.\nEinzige (2007-09-15):\nIt always saddens me when otherwise very intelligent people seem to lack an understanding of opportunity costs, as well as the concepts of marginal cost/benefit analysis. True, they're counterintuitive concepts, but we're not talking about dumb people, here.\nEinzige (2007-09-15):\nBy the way, I think you're missing a \"don't\" in there.\nLippard (2007-09-16):\nYes, thanks, I had rewritten that sentence and didn't make all the changes it required.\nLippard (2007-09-19):\nAlexa: My understanding is that Lomborg accepts both global warming and that there is a significant anthropogenic contribution to global warming (link is to a Jonathan Adler review of Lomborg's book at the National Review Online, a conservative magazine that I don't consider particularly reliable, that I just found in a Google search for Lomborg and anthropogenic global warming). Your link claiming otherwise cites two completely different people (Dennis Avery and Fred Singer).There is no question that there are both costs and benefits of temperature increases, and that costs and benefits should be assessed for each possible course of action. It's a huge mistake to look only at the costs of temperature increases, and only the benefits of hugely costly forms of mitigation.\nalex the Gardener (2007-10-16):\nInteresting perspective. I am appalled at how heated some reactions can be and not too sure it's only a matter of understanding the concept of \"opportunity cost\". So I replied on my blog at this page .At the end of my post I also have a link to an intelligent reply to the Copenhagen Consensus.\nLippard (2007-10-16):\nGardener: Thanks for the comment.I think the reply you link to is correct as far as it goes, but it strikes me as sort of a \"Pascal's Wager\" of climate change. I think it's right to look at the worst-case scenario that it describes (and its probability), so long as you also look at the worst-case scenarios of costs (which will include lives and dollars), as well.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-17):\n\"Saving even one life is worth doing\" is of course bunk, precisely because of the far greater opportunity costs. E.g. we could save thousands of road deaths by restricting the speed to 10 mph. But the politicians will say, \"that's ridiculous\". I.e., it is actually not worth saving thousands of lives by this inconvenience (even aside from the lives it would cost by impeding fire engines, ambulances and police).And you certainly shouldn't beat yourself up about your personal behaviour. Just look at Gore's producer Laurie David: she screams abuse at SUV drivers, but travels on her private jet that probably spews more CO2 on one flight than most SUV drivers emit in a year. Gore himself loves to jet around preaching to the rest of us to live in a cave, but his own home guzzles about 20 times the national average.\nKtisophilos (2008-04-17):\nThat Ceravision sounds most intriguing. It's more evidence of what free enterprise can do if the government gets out of the way. A hunder years ago, free enterpriser Henry Ford cleaned up the major pollution problem of his day: horse dung.But Congress is likely to make things worse by its usual blunderbussing interference. How crass to ban incandescent bulbs in favour of mercury-rich fluorescent ones.\nKtisophilos (2009-06-03):\nHere\u0026#39;s a recent piece by Lomborg, The Climate-Industrial Complex: Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green movement, 22 May 2009. He's hardly the first to point out that much government action ostensibly for public good is the result of \u0026quot;do-gooders\u0026quot; inadvertently allied with special interests (Milton Friedman) or a \u0026quot;Baptist–Bootlegger coalition\u0026quot; (Bruce Yandle). I.e. during Prohibition, Baptists wanted to ban alcohol on moral grounds, while the Bootleggers were happy with this ban because it raise prices of their illicit liquor; Joseph Kennedy was one who became extremely rich this way.\nWith this issue, the Baptist and Bootlegger are one and the same.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/lomborg-global-warming-and-opportunity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve not read Bjorn Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s new book (nor his previous one), but I have read enough of what he has written to suspect that some of those who are ridiculing one of his arguments don\u0026rsquo;t understand it.  For example, Bob Park of the American Physical Society\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s New\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn091407.html\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e Bjorn Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Global  Warming\u0026rdquo; is out.  Well, yes it is getting warmer he finds, but aside from  polar bears, it just means more beach weather.  We\u0026rsquo;ve got bigger problems,  he says.  Instead of spending all that money trying to prevent warming,  let\u0026rsquo;s focus on making everyone rich so they can all buy air conditioners.\u003c/blockquote\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/dont_look_to_bjrn_lomborg_thou.php\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe also has a bad argument about relative spending: he suggests that spending on climate change would reduce spending on other pressing issues, like the fight against malaria. It\u0026rsquo;s a bad choice. Malaria research is already underfunded — it\u0026rsquo;s a third-world disease, don\u0026rsquo;t you know, one that mainly affects those tropical countries, so the wealthy western nations typically don\u0026rsquo;t prioritize it very highly. We \u003ci\u003edon\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/i\u003e take our big pots of money and allocate it into aliquots appropriate to the world\u0026rsquo;s needs already, so for an economist to sit there and pretend that climate research is a drain on tropical disease research is comical. Especially since he seems unaware of how one feeds into the other. Hey, if the world warms up, tropical diseases will creep northward into Europe and North America, and \u003ci\u003ethen\u003c/i\u003e we\u0026rsquo;ll be fighting the economic effects of both direct effects of climate change and new diseases.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut as I understand it, Lomborg is making a simple point about \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost\"\u003eopportunity costs\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that money spent on climate change mitigation can\u0026rsquo;t be spent on other things, and that it would be better off spent on things like fighting malaria (which I\u0026rsquo;m sure he would agree with Myers is underfunded, since it\u0026rsquo;s #4 on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=158\"\u003eCopenhagen Consensus 2004 list of \u0026ldquo;very good projects\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to spend money on), because the amount of benefit received for each dollar spent is so much greater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo make the same point\u0026ndash;I have looked into putting solar cells on my house, both to reduce my carbon footprint and my long-term energy costs, but I\u0026rsquo;ve decided against it because even with the tax incentives and my power company\u0026rsquo;s willingness to subsidize half the cost, it\u0026rsquo;s still not cost-effective. (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping new solar cell technologies will improve efficiency and lower cost so that I will be able to become less dependent upon the electrical grid).  Instead, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent much smaller amounts of money that have had far more bang for the buck, replacing my incandescent lights with CFLs (though LEDs and \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=8951908\u0026amp;story_id=9356447\"\u003eother new promising technologies\u003c/a\u003e are on the way as better sources of light), adding insulation, and improving the efficiency of my air conditioning units through regular maintenance. These things I\u0026rsquo;ve done not only have an impact on my energy use and climate change, they are things which provide me with direct economic benefit as well\u0026ndash;thus these are things that rational people will be doing independently of government regulation and spending.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLomborg\u0026ndash;or at least the Copenhagen Consensus\u0026ndash;is not saying that climate change deserves no attention.  The premise of the Copenhagen Consensus is that \u003ca href=\"http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=791\"\u003eif the world spent an additional $50 billion over the next five years to address ten categories of global challenges\u003c/a\u003e (one of which is climate change), how would that money best be spent to provide the greatest net benefit.  That seems to me to be an entirely worthy effort, and this kind of cost-benefit calculation should be given greater weight in public policy decisions.  Instead, however, most politicians like to make arguments based on the assumption that any law, regulation, or government spending that saves even one life (or prevents one child from seeing something offensive) is worth doing, whether or not that generates enormous opportunity costs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy personal behavior\u0026ndash;and I suspect that of those criticizing Lomborg on this point\u0026ndash;demonstrates that I don\u0026rsquo;t consider climate change my number one priority.  In my case, I live in a large house that uses a lot of electricity, I travel frequently by plane, I drive a car instead of using public transportation, I eat meat instead of being a vegetarian like my wife.  Each of these things causes, directly or indirectly, an increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the alternatives.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 16, 2008): I just came across\u003ca href=\"http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/willful-idocy/#comment-46\"\u003e this description of Lomborg\u0026rsquo;s overall behavior with respect to the climate change debate\u003c/a\u003e, which I think is likely accurate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lomborg, global warming, and opportunity costs"},{"content":"Last night, Einzige sent me an email (which I opened this morning) pointing me to a video of a song by Bob Log III called \u0026ldquo;Boob Scotch\u0026rdquo; (NSFW). Bob Log III is a guy who performs wearing a motorcycle helmet, singing through a telephone microphone, and simultaneously drums and plays guitar. The sound was very familiar, reminiscent of a band I saw perform at the University of Arizona Social Sciences Auditorium back in 1994 called Doo Rag. As it turns out, Bob Log III was half of Doo Rag, the guy I remember singing through a vacuum cleaner hose.\nThe other bands who performed at UA that day (April 30, I\u0026rsquo;m a bit obsessive about collecting information) were Formica Bob, A Band Called Moss, Teeth, Click, Cortex Bomb, Irving, The Lonely Trojans, and the Fells. I was there with my friend Pam, who knew people in Irving and The Lonely Trojans, the latter of which included a student, Chris Morrison, from one of my philosophy classes, who\u0026rsquo;s now using the name \u0026ldquo;C.S. Morrison\u0026rdquo; for his music, probably due to the large number of other musical Chris Morrisons.\nPam\u0026rsquo;s two friends in Irving were Greg Petix and Gerard Schumacher who were also in the Lonely Trojans. The two went on to form another band called the Weird Lovemakers, and Gerard still has a band called The Knockout Pills.\nWikipedia seems to have way too much information about Tucson bands\u0026hellip; I just learned that Schumacher was also in The Fells and intends to return to Australia this year, and that Petix formed a band called The Cuntifiers (no albums released yet).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-09-15):\nStir it up!Man, I hope we get to catch him live some time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/boob-scotch.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night, Einzige sent me an email (which I opened this morning) pointing me to a video of \u003ca href=\"http://www.boblog111.com/video-boob-scotch.html\"\u003ea song by Bob Log III called \u0026ldquo;Boob Scotch\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (NSFW).  Bob Log III is a guy who performs wearing a motorcycle helmet, singing through a telephone microphone, and simultaneously drums and plays guitar.  The sound was very familiar, reminiscent of a band I saw perform at the University of Arizona Social Sciences Auditorium back in 1994 called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doo_Rag\"\u003eDoo Rag\u003c/a\u003e.  As it turns out, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Log_III\"\u003eBob Log III\u003c/a\u003e was half of Doo Rag, the guy I remember singing through a vacuum cleaner hose.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe other bands who performed at UA that day (April 30, I\u0026rsquo;m a bit obsessive about collecting information) were Formica Bob, A Band Called Moss, Teeth, Click, Cortex Bomb, Irving, The Lonely Trojans, and the Fells.  I was there with my friend Pam, who knew people in Irving and The Lonely Trojans, the latter of which included a student, Chris Morrison, from one of my philosophy classes, \u003ca href=\"http://www.csmorrison.com/\"\u003ewho\u0026rsquo;s now using the name \u0026ldquo;C.S. Morrison\u0026rdquo; for his music\u003c/a\u003e, probably due to the large number of other musical Chris Morrisons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePam\u0026rsquo;s two friends in Irving were Greg Petix and Gerard Schumacher who were also in the Lonely Trojans.  The two went on to form another band called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weird_Lovemakers\"\u003ethe Weird Lovemakers\u003c/a\u003e, and Gerard still has a band called \u003ca href=\"http://www.knockoutpills.com/\"\u003eThe Knockout Pills\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWikipedia seems to have way too much information about Tucson bands\u0026hellip; I just learned that Schumacher was also in The Fells and intends to return to Australia this year, and that Petix formed a band called The Cuntifiers (no albums released yet).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boob Scotch"},{"content":"Dan Meth\u0026rsquo;s song and animated tribute to virtually every major viral video of the last several years.\nUPDATE (September 30, 2007): Rumors Daily has tracked down links to the videos referenced.\nHistorical Comments Kat Lippard (2007-09-13):\nThat is awesome! Although I only recognize about half.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/internet-people.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDan Meth\u0026rsquo;s song and animated tribute to virtually every major viral video of the last several years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-005320659202560507 visible\" href=\"http://www.channelfrederator.com/embed/player\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-005320659202560507 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.channelfrederator.com/embed/player\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.channelfrederator.com/embed/player\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" flashvars=\"video_file=http://www.channelfrederator.com/embed/play/TMM_20070906\" wmode=\"transparent\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"360\" width=\"450\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 30, 2007):  Rumors Daily has \u003ca href=\"http://www.rumorsdaily.com/2007/09/07/internet-people-who-are-they/\"\u003etracked down links to the videos referenced\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKat Lippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-13)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat is awesome!  Although I only recognize about half.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internet People"},{"content":"Arizona RESCUE has gone through a website redesign, and the new design now features photos of our dog Otto and our former foster dog Ollie. The front page cycles through photos of rescued dogs and cats at the top right; Otto is the black and white dog with the ball in his mouth and Ollie is the bassett hound. Both can be seen simultaneously on any of the other web pages, such as the \u0026ldquo;About RESCUE\u0026rdquo; page, where Otto\u0026rsquo;s second from the left and Ollie is third from the right.\nKat previously blogged about Ollie almost a year ago.\nAlso check out RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s donation page\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/our-dogs-featured-on-rescues-new.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eArizona RESCUE has gone through a website redesign\u003c/a\u003e, and the new design now features photos of our dog Otto and our former foster dog Ollie.  The front page cycles through photos of rescued dogs and cats at the top right; Otto is the black and white dog with the ball in his mouth and Ollie is the bassett hound.  Both can be seen simultaneously on any of the other web pages, such as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/about.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;About RESCUE\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e page, where Otto\u0026rsquo;s second from the left and Ollie is third from the right.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKat previously blogged about Ollie \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/meet-ollie.html\"\u003ealmost a year ago\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso check out RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/servlet/sponsor02?donation=1\"\u003edonation page\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our dogs featured on RESCUE's new website"},{"content":"Eastern Michigan University sociology professor Marcello Truzzi was a co-founder and co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, now just CSI) and the editor of its original magazine, The Zetetic (later renamed Skeptical Inquirer). After he broke with the group over what he perceived as dogmatism and a desire for a more academic than popular approach, he published his own journal on paranormal and fringe science subjects, the Zetetic Scholar.\nGeorge Hansen has now put the first five issues of the Zetetic Scholar online at his website as PDFs, along with the tables of contents of issues six through eleven. (Only one other issue, a larger one identified as a double issue, twelve and thirteen, was published.) Issues 9, 10, and 11 are noteworthy for publishing debate about CSICOP\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Mars Effect\u0026rdquo; controversy. My personal collection includes only issues 9 through 12/13, so I\u0026rsquo;m happy to see the older issues made available.\nTruzzi died of cancer on February 2, 2003. He was a meticulous researcher who was very generous with his time and sources. I corresponded with him on a number of occasions, and had several telephone conversations with him about skepticism and the Mars Effect controversy, about which I\u0026rsquo;ve assembled a very lengthy chronology and bibliography (large RTF file). When I wrote a chapter on \u0026ldquo;Veteran Psychic Detective Bill Ward\u0026rdquo; for Joe Nickell\u0026rsquo;s book Psychic Sleuths, Truzzi provided me with a few newspaper clippings on Ward that he had obtained while researching his own book on psychic detectives, The Blue Sense.\nTruzzi was agnostic to a fault\u0026ndash;he would refrain from coming to conclusions even when evidence was overwhelming.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/marcello-truzzis-zetetic-scholar-online.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEastern Michigan University sociology professor \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Truzzi\"\u003eMarcello Truzzi\u003c/a\u003e was a co-founder and co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, now just CSI) and the editor of its original magazine, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Zetetic\u003c/span\u003e (later renamed \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e).  After he broke with the group over what he perceived as dogmatism and a desire for a more academic than popular approach, he published his own journal on paranormal and fringe science subjects, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eZetetic Scholar\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge Hansen has now put \u003ca href=\"http://tricksterbook.com/truzzi/ZeteticScholars.html\"\u003ethe first five issues of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eZetetic Scholar\u003c/span\u003e online at his website\u003c/a\u003e as PDFs, along with the tables of contents of issues six through eleven.  (Only one other issue, a larger one identified as a double issue, twelve and thirteen, was published.)  Issues 9, 10, and 11 are noteworthy for publishing debate about CSICOP\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Mars Effect\u0026rdquo; controversy.  My personal collection includes only issues 9 through 12/13, so I\u0026rsquo;m happy to see the older issues made available.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTruzzi died of cancer on February 2, 2003.  He was a meticulous researcher who was very generous with his time and sources.  I corresponded with him on a number of occasions, and had several telephone conversations with him about skepticism and the Mars Effect controversy, about which I\u0026rsquo;ve assembled \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/mars-effect-chron.rtf\"\u003ea very lengthy chronology and bibliography\u003c/a\u003e (large RTF file).  When I wrote a chapter on \u0026ldquo;Veteran Psychic Detective Bill Ward\u0026rdquo; for Joe Nickell\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Psychic-Sleuths-Esp-Sensational-Cases/dp/0879758805/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePsychic Sleuths\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Truzzi provided me with a few newspaper clippings on Ward that he had obtained while researching his own book on psychic detectives, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Sense-Psychic-Detectives-Crime/dp/0446400912/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Blue Sense\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTruzzi was agnostic to a fault\u0026ndash;he would refrain from coming to conclusions even when evidence was overwhelming.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Marcello Truzzi's Zetetic Scholar online"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic has an online database of 2007 foreclosures and notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales, searchable by community (mostly cities), region, or zip code. I\u0026rsquo;m sorry to see that my neighborhood (mostly built up in the last 3-4 years) has pretty high rates of 25.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 115.94 notices per 10,000 households. At least I\u0026rsquo;m not in Surprise\u0026rsquo;s 85388 zip code, which has seen 310.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 997.8 notices per 10,000 households. Ouch! That\u0026rsquo;s over 3% of the zip code foreclosed upon already, and another 10% in danger, and we haven\u0026rsquo;t even seen the peak of ARM resets yet.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/maricopa-county-foreclosure-and-notice.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/datacenter/foreclosures.html\"\u003ean online database of 2007 foreclosures and notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales\u003c/a\u003e, searchable by community (mostly cities), region, or zip code.  I\u0026rsquo;m sorry to see that my neighborhood (mostly built up in the last 3-4 years) has pretty high rates of 25.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 115.94 notices per 10,000 households.  At least I\u0026rsquo;m not in Surprise\u0026rsquo;s 85388 zip code, which has seen 310.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 997.8 notices per 10,000 households.  Ouch!  That\u0026rsquo;s over 3% of the zip code foreclosed upon already, and another 10% in danger, and we haven\u0026rsquo;t even seen the peak of ARM resets yet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maricopa County foreclosure and notice rate database"},{"content":"Part two of the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Great Debate\u0026rdquo; project has been posted at the Secular Web, on \u0026ldquo;Evil and Evolution.\u0026rdquo; Draper makes an argument for atheism on the basis of a version of the problem of evil informed by evolution, and Plantinga gives a version of his argument that evolution undermines naturalism. Each offers an objection to the other, followed by a reply.\nReader questions are being solicited for the next couple of months, which the authors will respond to on the site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/draper-vs-plantinga-on-evil-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePart two of the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Great Debate\u0026rdquo; project \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-debate.html#evil\"\u003ehas been posted at the Secular Web\u003c/a\u003e, on \u0026ldquo;Evil and Evolution.\u0026rdquo;  Draper makes an argument for atheism on the basis of a version of the problem of evil informed by evolution, and Plantinga gives a version of his argument that evolution undermines naturalism.  Each offers an objection to the other, followed by a reply.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReader questions are being solicited for the next couple of months, which the authors will respond to on the site.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Draper vs. Plantinga on Evil and Evolution"},{"content":"I have two extra copies of the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education, which contains my article, \u0026ldquo;Trouble in Paradise: Answers in Genesis Splinters,\u0026quot; which I\u0026rsquo;ll send to the first two U.S.-based readers of this blog to request a copy in the comments.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-09-07):\nNo consolation for the first non-US based commenter? Bummer. :p\nLippard (2007-09-07):\nDan, if only you were closer--you'd have a puppy, a T-shirt, and an issue of NCSE Reports!\nSchtacky (2007-09-07):\nJim, Count me in. I will send physical address under separate cover. Thanks!\nLippard (2007-09-07):\nDan, the NCSE informs me they'll be happy to send you a copy. Contact me at lippard-web at discord.org and I'll coordinate.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2007-09-09):\nThanks! I emailed you my address (I used another email cause my main one is acting up). =\\\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/two-free-issues-of-reports-of-ncse.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have two extra copies of the latest issue of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/newsletter.asp\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which contains my article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol26/6646_trouble_in_paradise_answers_i_12_30_1899.asp\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Trouble in Paradise: Answers in Genesis Splinters,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which I\u0026rsquo;ll send to the first two U.S.-based readers of this blog to request a copy in the comments.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eNo consolation for the first non-US based commenter? Bummer. :p\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eDan, if only you were closer--you'd have a puppy, a T-shirt, and an issue of NCSE Reports!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Two free issues of Reports of the NCSE"},{"content":"\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/07AugNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full size\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107270921523980290\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nAugust\u0026rsquo;s total was 3249, beating last month\u0026rsquo;s record high by an additional 746!\nHistorical Comments houseofpain (2007-09-07):\nIt defies gravity, holy moley!!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/this-is-getting-ridiculous.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/07AugNTR.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/07AugNTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full size\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107270921523980290\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAugust\u0026rsquo;s total was 3249, beating \u003ca href=\"/2007/07/words-fail-me.html\"\u003elast month\u0026rsquo;s record high\u003c/a\u003e by an additional 746!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ehouseofpain\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt defies gravity, holy moley!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"This is getting ridiculous"},{"content":"From the Washington Post:\nThe federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;false.\u0026rdquo; Among those identified as false were statements such as \u0026ldquo;The side effects are worse than the flu\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Only older people need flu vaccine.\u0026quot;\nWhen University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.The article suggests that when we hear or read a denial of a statement, we tend to remember the association of the items in the statement but not the fact that the statement was a negation. Thus nonsense tends to persist in the face of refutation.\nHume's Ghost (2007-09-06):\nI have to fix that everytime I blockquote something. Its terribly annoying, and a glitch I've only had to deal with when using my laptop.\nLippard (2007-09-06):\nThanks for pointing it out... it's fixed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/memory-and-persistence-of-falsehood.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933_pf.html\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; or        \u0026ldquo;false.\u0026rdquo; Among those identified as false were statements such as \u0026ldquo;The side effects are worse than the flu\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Only older people need flu vaccine.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had  volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30     minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe article suggests that when we hear or read a denial of a statement, we tend to remember the association of the items in the statement but not the fact that the statement was a negation.  Thus nonsense tends to persist in the face of refutation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Memory and the persistence of falsehood"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an interesting and entertaining article at Esquire about Brad Blanton\u0026rsquo;s Radical Honesty movement, which seems to me to take a good idea\u0026ndash;being honest\u0026ndash;too far into inappropriate sharing or \u0026ldquo;too much information.\u0026rdquo; I think even little white lies (and especially \u0026ldquo;bullshit\u0026rdquo;) can be extremely insidious, and should be avoided, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean removing all filters between thought and speech.\nJames Morrow wrote a 1992 novel called City of Truth in which he described a world where everyone always speaks the truth in a way quite similar to the radical honesty movement, but the main character finds a need to lie in order to save his son\u0026rsquo;s life.\nPlato and Machiavelli would agree with each other that no political leader could survive by adopting the radical honesty approach. I think that\u0026rsquo;s disappointingly true.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Reed (2007-09-06):\nJim, your blog sucks. ;^)Perhaps each of us should start by being 'radically honest' with ourselves before finding empowerment by criticizing others in an anti-social manner?Self-delusion is cheap. Perhaps better to advocate critical thinking?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/radical-honesty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.esquire.com/print-this/honesty0707?x\"\u003ean interesting and entertaining article at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEsquire\u003c/span\u003e about Brad Blanton\u0026rsquo;s Radical Honesty movement\u003c/a\u003e, which seems to me to take a good idea\u0026ndash;being honest\u0026ndash;too far into inappropriate sharing or \u0026ldquo;too much information.\u0026rdquo;  I think even little white lies (and especially \u003ca href=\"/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;bullshit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e) can be extremely insidious, and should be avoided, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean removing all filters between thought and speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJames Morrow wrote \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/City-Truth-Harvest-James-Morrow/dp/0156180421\"\u003ea 1992 novel called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCity of Truth\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e in which he described a world where everyone always speaks the truth in a way quite similar to the radical honesty movement, but the main character finds a need to lie in order to save his son\u0026rsquo;s life.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlato and Machiavelli would agree with each other that no political leader could survive by adopting the radical honesty approach.  I think that\u0026rsquo;s disappointingly true.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/028117.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Radical Honesty"},{"content":"F-Secure announced yesterday that it has found another Sony product that installs a rootkit and hidden directory on Windows machines. Last time it was the copy protection associated with music CDs, this time it\u0026rsquo;s software associated with a fingerprint reader for the Sony MicroVault USM-F memory stick, which Sony says is now no longer for sale. The use of the memory stick causes files to be installed into a hidden directory on your hard drive which is hidden from the operating system, including antivirus scanning. This means that, like the hidden directory created by the CD copy protection scheme, the directory can be used by other malicious software to hide itself.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/another-sony-rootkit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eF-Secure \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070829/bs_nf/54949\"\u003eannounced yesterday that it has found another Sony product that installs a rootkit and hidden directory on Windows machines\u003c/a\u003e.  Last time it was the \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/sonys-drm-not-much-different-from.html\"\u003ecopy protection associated with music CDs\u003c/a\u003e, this time it\u0026rsquo;s software associated with a fingerprint reader for the Sony MicroVault USM-F memory stick, which Sony says is now no longer for sale.  The use of the memory stick causes files to be installed into a hidden directory on your hard drive which is hidden from the operating system, including antivirus scanning.  This means that, like the hidden directory created by the CD copy protection scheme, the directory can be used by other malicious software to hide itself.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another Sony rootkit"},{"content":"\nKat and I returned yesterday from a week-long trip to our nation\u0026rsquo;s capitol to visit friends, family, restaurants, and museums. We apparently just missed the worst of the summer\u0026rsquo;s heat wave and had mostly excellent weather.\nOne of my must-see places for this trip was the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, an extension of the National Air and Space Museum located near Dulles Airport. The second picture above was taken there, and shows one small piece of one wing of the Center, with an Air France Concorde in the center and a Lear Jet 23 above it. The Center also has an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and a huge variety of military and commercial aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft. Two of Paul MacCready\u0026rsquo;s planes are at the Center\u0026ndash;the high-altitude solar-powered Pathfinder and the English Channel-crossing human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor. MacCready\u0026rsquo;s Gossamer Albatross, the first human-powered aircraft capable of sustained flight, is down at the Mall in the main National Air and Space Museum, which we also visited on this trip.\nWe spent much of our last day in D.C. at Arlington Cemetery\u0026ndash;the first picture above shows Pierre L\u0026rsquo;Enfant\u0026rsquo;s grave, overlooking a great view of the city he designed. We visited the usual sites such as JFK\u0026rsquo;s grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and the Custis Lee Mansion. I also tracked down the gravesite of John Wesley Powell (first or possibly second man to travel the length of the Colorado River by boat and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey) and a number of other lesser-visited gravesites (e.g., a number of Supreme Court justices buried near JFK, the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie memorial, and President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft\u0026rsquo;s grave, which although well-marked did not seem to be well-visited).\nWe also visited the Freer and Sackler Galleries\u0026rsquo; exhibition on \u0026ldquo;Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries,\u0026rdquo; saw what was open at the Hirshhorn during some maintenance, made a quick pass through the mammal exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, saw some part of the collection at the National Gallery of Art\u0026rsquo;s West Building, visited the Washington National Cathedral, and spent a day at Mount Vernon.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/09/back-from-dc.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P9030036.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P9030036.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5106767610751982978\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P8290020.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P8290020.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5106767417478454642\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKat and I returned yesterday from a week-long trip to our nation\u0026rsquo;s capitol to visit friends, family, restaurants, and museums.  We apparently just missed the worst of the summer\u0026rsquo;s heat wave and had mostly excellent weather.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of my must-see places for this trip was the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, an extension of the National Air and Space Museum located near Dulles Airport.  The second picture above was taken there, and shows one small piece of one wing of the Center, with an Air France Concorde in the center and a Lear Jet 23 above it.  The Center also has an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and a huge variety of military and commercial aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft.  Two of Paul MacCready\u0026rsquo;s planes are at the Center\u0026ndash;the high-altitude solar-powered \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Pathfinder\"\u003ePathfinder\u003c/a\u003e and the English Channel-crossing human-powered aircraft, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Condor\"\u003eGossamer Condor\u003c/a\u003e.  MacCready\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross\"\u003eGossamer Albatross\u003c/a\u003e, the first human-powered aircraft capable of sustained flight, is down at the Mall in the main National Air and Space Museum, which we also visited on this trip.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe spent much of our last day in D.C. at Arlington Cemetery\u0026ndash;the first picture above shows Pierre L\u0026rsquo;Enfant\u0026rsquo;s grave, overlooking a great view of the city he designed.  We visited the usual sites such as JFK\u0026rsquo;s grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and the Custis Lee Mansion.  I also tracked down the gravesite of John Wesley Powell (first or \u003ca href=\"http://www.gcrg.org/bqr/15-1/p_w.html\"\u003epossibly second man to travel the length of the Colorado River\u003c/a\u003e by boat and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey) and a number of other lesser-visited gravesites (e.g., a number of Supreme Court justices buried near JFK, the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie memorial, and President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft\u0026rsquo;s grave, which although well-marked did not seem to be well-visited).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe also visited the Freer and Sackler Galleries\u0026rsquo; exhibition on \u0026ldquo;Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries,\u0026rdquo; saw what was open at the Hirshhorn during some maintenance, made a quick pass through the mammal exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, saw some part of the collection at the National Gallery of Art\u0026rsquo;s West Building, visited the Washington National Cathedral, and spent a day at Mount Vernon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from D.C."},{"content":"Most of the material pertaining to the dispute between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International has been removed from the web as the groups agreed to meet and work out a settlement arrangement in Hawaii. The meetings, which took place on August 14 and 15, reached a verbal settlement which CMI says they expect to culminate in a written agreement within the next 60 days:\nSTOP PRESS (1)—settlement meetings taking place Posted: c. 1 August 07\nThere has at last been agreement for the Boards (and/or their designated representatives) of both ministries to meet face to face—this will be the first time that we have been permitted this with no restrictions on any of our director’s participation.\nThe meetings will be held in Hawaii on August 14 and 15, 2007, on a confidential basis. The meetings will attempt to: first see if a comprehensive settlement can be achieved or, failing that, to thenattempt to reach agreement on the terms for binding Christian arbitration (given that two previous offers for this were ignored, this is an encouraging sign). The meetings will be facilitated by Mr Peter Reynolds, of Grace Counselling and Conciliation Services in New Zealand, whose services were suggested by Peacemakers Ministries in the USA.\nSTOP PRESS (2) Posted c. 18 August 07 Hopeful breakthrough\nFollowing two days of intensive meeting and discussion in Hawaii, the two ministries were able to reach verbal agreement on all the main points of a confidential basis of settlement. Although time ran out (planes were pre-booked) to turn this into a finalized written agreement, all parties present are extremely hopeful that this can take place within the next 60 days or so at the most. As a gesture in accord with the spirit of mutual goodwill that prevailed at the end, CMI has for now removed access to the details previously on the web, whether chronologies, committee reports, or whatever. We do this in the confident hope that this will never need to be reversed, trusting that ‘handshake’ agreements between those parties present in Hawaii will be reflected in a formal, signed document that will put these serious issues to rest in a God-honouring fashion. Thank you to all who have been praying.\nHistorical Comments Susannah Anderson (2007-08-31):\n\"rusting that ‘handshake’ agreements between those parties present in Hawaii will be reflected in a formal, signed document that will put these serious issues to rest in a God-honouring fashion.\"Some people are so gullible. That's exactly what they did wrong, back at the beginning of the mess.\nAnonymous (2007-08-31):\nSort of like signing a peace treaty only to rip it up when old wounds are open up again and scandals and disputes flare up between them once more. It's good to see people make peace but I won't count on them to last long.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/aigcmi-reach-verbal-settlement.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost of the material pertaining to \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/more-from-behind-scenes-of.html\"\u003ethe dispute between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International\u003c/a\u003e has been removed from the web as the groups agreed to meet and work out a settlement arrangement in Hawaii.  The meetings, which took place on August 14 and 15, reached a verbal settlement which \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/?page=lawsuit_justification\"\u003eCMI says they expect to culminate in a written agreement within the next 60 days\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ch3 style=\"margin-top: -8px;\"\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ch3 style=\"margin-top: -8px;\"\u003eSTOP PRESS (1)—settlement meetings taking place\u003c/h3\u003e      \u003cp\u003ePosted: c. 1 August 07\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AiG/CMI reach verbal settlement"},{"content":"Source and page references are to Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, 2007, Doubleday, pp. 71-167.\n1953-1961\nPresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower\nFebruary 18, 1953: The CIA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Operation Ajax\u0026rdquo; (in conjunction with the British, who call it \u0026ldquo;Operation Boot\u0026rdquo;) begins, with Kim \u0026ldquo;Kermit\u0026rdquo; Roosevelt, Jr. (Teddy Roosevelt\u0026rsquo;s grandson) in charge\u0026ndash;a plan to oust Iran\u0026rsquo;s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, because of his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry (p. 83).\nMarch 5, 1953: Joseph Stalin dies. \u0026ldquo;We have no reliable inside intelligence on thinking inside the Kremlin. Our estimates of Soviet long-range plans and intentions are speculations drawn from inadequate evidence.\u0026rdquo; (p. 73)\nMarch 1953: The CIA and British back Fazlollah Zahedi to overthrow Mossadeq in Iran. April 1953: Zahedi goes into hiding after his supporters are suspected of kidnapping and murdering Iran\u0026rsquo;s national police chief. (p. 85). May 1953: CIA propaganda portrays Mossadeq as an enemy of Islam being supported by the Soviet Union. (p. 86)\nJune 5, 1953: Allen Dulles tells the National Security Council that the CIA cannot give \u0026ldquo;any prior warning through intelligence channels of a Soviet sneak attack\u0026rdquo; (p. 75).\n1953: The CIA guesses that the Soviets will not be able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States until 1969 (p. 75).\nJune 16-17, 1953: \u0026ldquo;Nearly 370,000 East Germans took to the streets\u0026rdquo; to protest against the Soviet Union and East German Communist Party. The CIA does nothing, \u0026ldquo;the uprising was crushed.\u0026rdquo; (p. 76)\nJuly 7, 1953: Iran\u0026rsquo;s Tudeh Party radio \u0026ldquo;warned Iranians that the American government, along with various \u0026lsquo;spies and traitors,\u0026rsquo; including General Zahedi, were working \u0026rsquo;to liquidate the Mossadeq government.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 87). In other words, the CIA and British intelligence plot was blown and made known to the Iranian public even before it began. July 11: President Eisenhower gives approval to the plot.\nAugust 1953: Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb. The CIA \u0026ldquo;had no clue and gave no warning.\u0026rdquo; (p. 75)\n1953: Joint Chiefs of Staff tells Eisenhower, regarding defense against Soviet aggression, that (as reported by Eisenhower) \u0026ldquo;we should do what was necessary even if the result was to change the American way of life. We could lick the whole world \u0026hellip; if we were willing to adopt the system of Adolph Hitler.\u0026rdquo; (p. 75)\n1953: Allen Dulles builds CIA propaganda machinery by building ties with heads of magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, Time (including Henry Luce), Newsweek, CBS News, and Axel Springer in West Germany (p. 77).\nAugust 1953: General Norman Schwarzkopf is brought in by the CIA to try to get the Shah of Iran to support the coup against Mossadeq and appoint Zahedi as prime minister (p. 88). August 16: \u0026ldquo;Hundreds of paid agitators flooded the streets of Tehran, looting, burning, and smashing the symbols of government.\u0026rdquo; (p. 89) August 19: Continued protesting occurs, and at least 100 people are killed on the streets of Tehran and 200 killed when the shah\u0026rsquo;s Imperial Guard attacks Mossadeq\u0026rsquo;s home. August 20: Mossadeq surrenders, spends 3 years in jail and a decade under house arrest before dying. Zahedia becomes prime minister, is paid $1 million by the CIA, and jails thousands of political prisoners. The shah sets up a secret police force, SAVAK, \u0026ldquo;trained and equipped by the CIA,\u0026rdquo; imposes martial law, and exercises dictatorial control over Iran (p. 92). This is considered a great success of the CIA\u0026ndash;at least until 1979. The CIA\u0026rsquo;s internal history of the Iranian operation has been published online, authored by Donald Wilber, who was the main planner of the operation.\nEnd of 1953: An internal poll of the CIA yields a report that describes \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;a rapidly deteriorating situation\u0026rsquo;: widespread frustration, confusion, and purposelessness. \u0026hellip; \u0026rsquo;too many people in responsible positions apparently don\u0026rsquo;t know what they\u0026rsquo;re doing.\u0026rsquo; \u0026hellip; \u0026lsquo;a shocking amount of money\u0026rsquo; going to waste on failed missions overseas.\u0026rdquo; (p. 78) Allen Dulles suppresses the report (p. 79).\n1953: The CIA provides millions of dollars to Japanese gangster Yoshio Kodama, a man who led a group that attempted to assassinate the prime minister in the 1930s, in order to smuggle tungsten from the Japanese military into U.S. hands.\nDecember 1953: Colonel Al Haney sets up shop at an air base in Opa-Locka, Florida for \u0026ldquo;Operation Success,\u0026quot; a plan to overthrow the government of Guatemala that has been discussed by the CIA for the previous three years. (p. 93) The plan is to put Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas of the Guatemala military in command, removing President Jacobo Arbenz. Haney draws out timelines and plans on a 40-foot roll of butcher paper pinned to the wall (p. 96).\n1954: Frank Wisner has doubts about Haney, so sends Tracy Barnes and Richard Bissell to investigate his operation (p. 96). Henry Hecksher is sent to Guatemala City to spend up to $10,000/month on bribes of military officers, including Colonel Elfego Monzon, and CIA HQ sends Haney a list of 58 Guatemalans to be assassinated as part of the coup. The event that prompts the initiation of the coup is the discovery that a freighter named Alfhelm was transporting $4.86 million in Czech arms to Guatemala. The CIA lost the trail, and the arms\u0026ndash;many of which were old WWII weapons with swastikas stamped on them\u0026ndash;were successfully delivered (p. 98). May 1, 1954: Voice of Liberation radio, run by David Atlee Phillips, begins broadcasting propaganda to Guatemala. May 26, 1954: A CIA plane drops leaflets promoting rebellion over the presidential guard\u0026rsquo;s headquarters. June 6, 1954: The propaganda prompts Arbenz to become the dictator he was described to be, as he suspends civil liberties and engages in mass arrests to try to find anyone plotting against him (p. 99). June 18, 1954: Armas launches his assault at Puerto Barrios, but most of his men are killed or captured (p. 100). June 19, 1954: The U.S. ambassador to Guatemala calls for the U.S. to drop bombs. June 22, 1954: A CIA plane drops a bomb that starts an oil tank fire that is put out within 20 minutes. Dulles and businessman William Pawley meet with Eisenhower, who asks if the rebellion will be successful without further assistance. Eisenhower gives approval for the CIA to provide three planes to Nicaragua, funded by Pawley with money transferred through Riggs Bank, which are used by CIA pilots to attack Guatemala City. Armas still fails to gain ground. (p. 102). June 25, 1954: The CIA bombs \u0026ldquo;the parade grounds of the largest military encampment in Guatemala City\u0026rdquo; (p. 103) which prompts officers to switch allegiance to support the coup. June 27, 1954: Arbenz cedes power to Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz, who vows to fight Armas. Diaz is called a \u0026ldquo;Commie agent\u0026rdquo; by Haney and informed by a CIA officer that he is \u0026ldquo;not convenient for American foreign policy\u0026rdquo; (p. 103). There are quickly four successive military juntas, \u0026ldquo;each one increasingly pro-American,\u0026rdquo; and two months later Castillo Armas becomes president and is welcomed at the White House. Weiner writes: \u0026ldquo;Guatemala was at the beginning of forty years of military rulers, death squads, and armed repression.\u0026rdquo; (p. 103)\nMay 1954: WWII war criminal Nobusuke Kishi makes his political debut with CIA support. Kishi befriended former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew by letting him out of detention in Tokyo in 1942 to play a round of golf (p. 117). Grew became the first chairman of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s National Committee for a Free Europe and was a powerful ally of Kishi.\n1954: Joseph McCarthy begins accumulating claims of Communist agents working for the CIA, feeding it disinformation. The claim is true, but the CIA responds not by addressing its own problems but by bugging McCarthy\u0026rsquo;s office and feeding him disinformation in order to discredit him (pp. 105-106).\nMay 1954: Eisenhower receives a six-page letter from Jim Kellis, blowing the whistle on serious problems in the CIA\u0026ndash;the CIA unwittingly funding Communists, being duped in various operations, and Dulles lying to Congress (pp. 107-108). July 1954: Eisenhower asks General Jimmy Doolittle and William Pawley to report on the state of the CIA in response to Kellis\u0026rsquo; letter. October 19, 1954: Doolittle reports back to Eisenhower about serious problems within the CIA, with a written report titled \u0026ldquo;Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.\u0026quot;\nNovember 1954: The U2 spy plane project begins, under a bureaucracy run by Richard Bissell.\n1955: Eisenhower creates the \u0026ldquo;Special Group\u0026rdquo; to oversee covert operations, consisting of representatives of the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. Dulles, however, frequently did not bother reporting covert operations to the group or to the president (pp. 114-115).\nFebruary 1955: A joint U.S.-British project to dig a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin to tap Soviet cables is completed, with the taps put in place in March, and information flow beginning in May, hampered by a lack of sufficient Russian and even German linguists (p. 111). April 1956: The Soviets uncover the tunnel and the information flow stops as the Soviets loudly complain. It subsequently turned out that the Soviets knew about the plan in December 1953, when planning first began, having been informed by George Blake, a British intelligence officer who was a Soviet spy. Much of the intercepted information was likely deliberate misinformation, though the CIA did learn about Soviet and East German security systems (p. 112).\nSpring 1955: The CIA considers assassinating President Sukarno of Indonesia because of fears of communist influence, and because he had declared himself \u0026ldquo;a noncombatant in the cold war\u0026rdquo; (p. 143). Sukarno holds a conference of 29 Asian, African, and Arab chiefs of state in Bandung, Indonesia, to propose \u0026ldquo;a global movement of nations free to chart their own paths, aligned with neither Moscow nor Washington\u0026rdquo; (p. 143). The White House authorizes \u0026ldquo;all feasible covert means\u0026rdquo; to keep Indonesia from going communist. The CIA contributes $1 million to Sukarno\u0026rsquo;s opponents, the Masjumi Party, but Sukarno wins the 1955 parliamentary elections.\nNovember 1955: Nobusuke Kishi sets up the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan with the help of CIA funding; LDP candidates and officials are recruited and approved by (and bribed by) the CIA (p. 119).\n1956: Sukarno visits Moscow and Beijing as well as D.C.\nFebruary 1956: Nikita Krushchev gives a speech denouncing Stalin. March 1956: The CIA hears rumors of the speech and attempts to obtain a copy. April 1956: Israeli spies deliver a copy of the speech to James Angleton. (p. 123)\nEarly 1956: CIA analysts conclude that no Eastern European nations are likely to rebel against the Soviets during the 1950s. June 28, 1956: Polish workers riot against wage reductions and destroy the equipment jamming Radio Free Europe. 53 Poles are killed and hundreds imprisoned (p. 125).\nJuly 1956: Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of Egypt, nationalizes the Suez Canal Company, a British-French joint venture, to the surprise of the CIA. The CIA had supported Nasser with millions of dollars, but as the U.S. did not fulfill promises of military aid, Nasser traded cotton to the Soviet Union for weapons. The British proposed Nasser\u0026rsquo;s assassination, but the U.S. opposed it. The British, French, and Israel plotted Nasser\u0026rsquo;s overthrow and kept the U.S. in the dark; Dulles assured Eisenhower that rumors of such a plot were untrue, relying upon James Angleton who had contacts with Israeli intelligence (which were feeding him disinformation) (pp. 127-128). October 28, 1956: Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula as a pretext for the British and French to demand a cease-fire and move in to protect the Suez canal. The Soviet Union demands British and French withdrawal. The U.S., caught completely by surprise, applies pressure to force the British and French to leave. Israel was also forced to withdraw, though it destroyed infrastructure on the way. A UN Emergency Force occupied the peninsula until 1967. (More information on the 1956 war may be found here.)\nOctober 1956: A CIA-British intelligence plot for a coup in Syria is put on hold due to the Suez fiasco, which pushes Syria closer to the Soviets (p. 138).\nOctober 1956: A popular revolution begins in Hungary. The CIA had a single agent in Budapest, a low-level State Department clerk. The uprising was crushed within two weeks. A CIA history of the uprising says \u0026ldquo;At no time did we have anything that could or should have been mistaken for an intelligence operation.\u0026rdquo; (p. 129) During the brief revolution, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, went on state radio \u0026ldquo;to denounce the \u0026rsquo;terrible mistakes and crimes of these past ten years.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; He stated that the Russians would leave and a new democratic government would be set up. Nagy formed a coalition government, abolished one-party rule, broke with Moscow, declared Hungary neutral, and appealed to the U.S. and UN for assistance. The CIA attacked Nagy on radio broadcasts as a traitor, liar, and murderer, and claimed that he had invited Russian troops into Budapest\u0026ndash;all because he had once been a communist. November 4, 1956: The Soviets sent 200,000 troops and 2,500 tanks and armored vehicles into Hungary to crush the rebellion, killing tens of thousands and sending thousands to Siberian prison camps (pp. 130-131).\nFebruary 1957: Nobusuke Kishi becomes prime minister of Japan. The CIA-influenced Liberal Democratic Party runs the Japanese government to this day (pp. 119ff); Japanese refer to the CIA-supported political system as kozo oshoku or \u0026ldquo;structural corruption\u0026rdquo; (p. 121). (Current Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is Kishi\u0026rsquo;s grandson.)\nApril 1957: Plans for a Syrian coup are revisited; the plan is for the CIA and British SIS to \u0026ldquo;manufacture \u0026rsquo;national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities\u0026rsquo; in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan, and blame them on Syria\u0026rdquo; (p. 138). The Syrians uncover the plot with a sting operation and arrest CIA operative Rocky Stone, publicly identify him as an American spy, and expel him from the country. In return, the U.S. expelled the Syrian ambassador from D.C. Stone\u0026rsquo;s Syrian co-conspirators are sentenced to death, and \u0026ldquo;a purge of every military officer who had ever been associated with the American embassy followed\u0026rdquo; (p. 139). These events permanently poisoned U.S.-Syrian relations.\nSeptember 25, 1957: Eisenhower, convinced by the CIA that Sukarno was going communist, orders the CIA to overthrow his government (p. 147). September 28, 1957: The Indian newsweekly Blitz (controlled by Soviet intelligence) reports \u0026ldquo;AMERICAN PLOT TO OVERTHROW SUKARNO\u0026rdquo; (p. 147). January 8, 1958: The CIA provides weapons to Indonesian army rebels on Sumatra, without any attempt at secrecy. February 10, 1958: A CIA-financed radio station broadcasts demands for \u0026ldquo;a new government and the outlawing of communism within five days\u0026rdquo; (p. 148). February 21, 1958: The Indonesian air force bombs the CIA radio stations. The Indonesian army, led by anticommunists trained in the U.S. who referred to themselves as \u0026ldquo;the sons of Eisenhower,\u0026rdquo; were at war with the CIA (p. 148). April 19, 1958: CIA pilots began bombing and strafing Indonesia\u0026rsquo;s outer islands, killing hundreds of civilians, as well as sinking a British and Panamanian freighter (p. 151). The Indonesians claimed, correctly, that these planes were piloted by Americans, but the president and secretary of state of the United States denied it. May 18, 1958: CIA pilot Al Pope was shot down by the Indonesians. May 19, 1958: The U.S. decides that Sukarno is doing a good job of suppressing communism (p. 153). Sukarno frequently mentioned the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s failed attempts to overthrow his government in public speeches, and the actual communists in Indonesia gained in power and influence.\nJuly 14, 1958: The CIA had been active in Iraq, offering money and weapons for support of anticommunism. On this date a military coup occurred, overthrowing Nuri Said. The General Abdel Karim Qasim regime found proof that the CIA had been paying off the previous government, and an American working for the CIA as a writer for American Friends of the Middle East (a CIA front group) was arrested and disappeared. CIA officials left the country and Qasim began ties with the Soviets. The Ba\u0026rsquo;ath Party attempted to assassinate Qasim, which led to CIA support. (The Ba\u0026rsquo;ath Party later gained control with the help of the CIA, which then led to Saddam Hussein coming to power.) (pp. 140-141)\nJanuary 1, 1959: Richard Bissell becomes chief of the clandestine service.\nApril-May 1959: Fidel Castro visits the U.S. and meets with the CIA, which was supportive.\nDecember 11, 1959: Richard Bissell sends a memo to Allen Dulles asking that \u0026ldquo;thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro.\u0026rdquo; Dulles replaced \u0026ldquo;elimination\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;removal from Cuba.\u0026quot;\n1960: The CIA projected that the Soviet Union would have 500 ICBMs aimed at the U.S. by 1961. In fact, it had four. (p. 158)\nMarch 17, 1960: Dulles and Bissell present plans for an overthrow of Castro to Eisenhower and Nixon, which did not involve an invasion (p. 157).\nApril 9, 1960: The first U-2 flight over the Soviet Union occurs; the Soviets detect it and go on high alert (p. 159).\nMay 1, 1960: A U-2 is shot down by the Soviets over central Russia, and the CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers, is captured. The CIA cover story was that it was a weather plane lost in Turkey, which the White House and State Department insisted was the case for a week before coming clean (pp. 159-160).\nSummer 1960: Richard Bissell arranges with Guatemala\u0026rsquo;s President Manual Ydigoras Fuentes to set up a training camp for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (pp. 160-161).\nAugust 1960: Richard Bissell hires the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro, in hopes the Cuban invasion will be unnecessary. A second assassination plot is developed in-house by the CIA. August 16, 1960: Dulles and Bissell obtain approval from Eisenhower to spend $10.75 million on paramilitary training for five hundred Cubans in Guatemala, the invasion force. Eisenhower approves on the condition that \u0026ldquo;So long as the Joint Chiefs, Defense, State and CIA think we have a good chance of being successful\u0026rdquo; (p. 161).\nSummer 1960: The Congo declares independence from Belgium; Patrice Lumumba is elected prime minister. Lumumba\u0026rsquo;s request for U.S. assistance is ignored, so he seeks help from the Soviet Union. The CIA sends Larry Devlin to head the CIA post in the Congo, and CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb delivers him vials of poison to inject into Lumumba\u0026rsquo;s food, drink, or toothpaste. Devlin asks who the order came from, Gottlieb told him \u0026ldquo;the President.\u0026rdquo; Devlin refused to follow through (pp. 162-163). October-November 1960: The CIA selected Joseph Mobutu to be the new leader of the Congo, and supplied him with $250,000 and weapons. Mobutu successfully captured Lumumba, who was then killed by a Belgian officer. It took five years for Mobutu to gain full control of the Congo, where \u0026ldquo;he ruled for three decades as one of the world\u0026rsquo;s most brutal and corrupt dictators, stealing billions of dollars in revenues from the nation\u0026rsquo;s enormous deposits of diamonds, minerals, and strategic minerals, slaughtering multitudes to preserve his power\u0026rdquo; (p. 163).\nJanuary 5, 1961: The President\u0026rsquo;s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities issues a report which states that \u0026ldquo;We are unable to conclude that, on balance, all of the covert action programs undertaken by CIA up to this time have been worth the risk of the great expenditure of manpower, money, and other resources involved.\u0026rdquo; It urged \u0026ldquo;complete separation\u0026rdquo; of the director of central intelligence from the CIA. Dulles claimed that everything was fine and that he had \u0026ldquo;corrected deficiencies\u0026rdquo;, and Eisenhower gave up in defeat, stating that he was leaving a \u0026ldquo;legacy of ashes\u0026rdquo; for his successor (p. 167).\nHistorical Comments Hume's Ghost (2007-08-30):\nThanks for taking the time to write this outline out. I'm definitely going to want to check this book out.\ntom (2007-09-27):\nThe author is on Hugh Hewitt's show; Podcast available, \u0026 the mp3 should go up tomorrow on his website.Hewitt is a blowhard, but much sharper than the other conservative radio pundits.http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=5\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1953-1961.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSource and page references are to Tim Weiner, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e, 2007, Doubleday, pp. 71-167.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1953-1961\u003cbr /\u003ePresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 18, 1953:  The CIA\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Operation Ajax\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (in conjunction with the British, who call it \u0026ldquo;Operation Boot\u0026rdquo;) begins, with Kim \u0026ldquo;Kermit\u0026rdquo; Roosevelt, Jr. (Teddy Roosevelt\u0026rsquo;s grandson) in charge\u0026ndash;a plan to oust Iran\u0026rsquo;s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, because of his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry (p. 83).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMarch 5, 1953: Joseph Stalin dies.  \u0026ldquo;We have no reliable inside intelligence on thinking inside the Kremlin.  Our estimates of Soviet long-range plans and intentions are speculations drawn from inadequate evidence.\u0026rdquo; (p. 73)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMarch 1953: The CIA and British back Fazlollah Zahedi to overthrow Mossadeq in Iran.  April 1953: Zahedi goes into hiding after his supporters are suspected of kidnapping and murdering Iran\u0026rsquo;s national police chief. (p. 85).  May 1953: CIA propaganda portrays Mossadeq as an enemy of Islam being supported by the Soviet Union.  (p. 86)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJune 5, 1953:  Allen Dulles tells the National Security Council that the CIA cannot give \u0026ldquo;any prior warning through intelligence channels of a Soviet sneak attack\u0026rdquo; (p. 75).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1953:  The CIA guesses that the Soviets will not be able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States until 1969 (p. 75).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJune 16-17, 1953:  \u0026ldquo;Nearly 370,000 East Germans took to the streets\u0026rdquo; to protest against the Soviet Union and East German Communist Party.  The CIA does nothing, \u0026ldquo;the uprising was crushed.\u0026rdquo; (p. 76)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJuly 7, 1953: Iran\u0026rsquo;s Tudeh Party radio \u0026ldquo;warned Iranians that the American government, along with various \u0026lsquo;spies and traitors,\u0026rsquo; including General Zahedi, were working \u0026rsquo;to liquidate the Mossadeq government.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 87).  In other words, the CIA and British intelligence plot was blown and made known to the Iranian public even before it began.  July 11:  President Eisenhower gives approval to the plot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAugust 1953: Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.  The CIA \u0026ldquo;had no clue and gave no warning.\u0026rdquo; (p. 75)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1953:  Joint Chiefs of Staff tells Eisenhower, regarding defense against Soviet aggression, that (as reported by Eisenhower) \u0026ldquo;we should do what was necessary even if the result was to change the American way of life.  We could lick the whole world \u0026hellip; if we were willing to adopt the system of Adolph Hitler.\u0026rdquo; (p. 75)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1953: Allen Dulles builds CIA propaganda machinery by building ties with heads of magazines and newspapers including \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e (including Henry Luce), \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e, CBS News, and Axel Springer in West Germany (p. 77).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAugust 1953:  General Norman Schwarzkopf is brought in by the CIA to try to get the Shah of Iran to support the coup against Mossadeq and appoint Zahedi as prime minister (p. 88).  August 16: \u0026ldquo;Hundreds of paid agitators flooded the streets of Tehran, looting, burning, and smashing the symbols of government.\u0026rdquo; (p. 89)  August 19:  Continued protesting occurs, and at least 100 people are killed on the streets of Tehran and 200 killed when the shah\u0026rsquo;s Imperial Guard attacks Mossadeq\u0026rsquo;s home.  August 20: Mossadeq surrenders, spends 3 years in jail and a decade under house arrest before dying.  Zahedia becomes prime minister, is paid $1 million by the CIA, and jails thousands of political prisoners.  The shah sets up a secret police force, SAVAK, \u0026ldquo;trained and equipped by the CIA,\u0026rdquo; imposes martial law, and exercises dictatorial control over Iran (p. 92).  This is considered a great success of the CIA\u0026ndash;at least until 1979.  The CIA\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://web.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/published/one-main/main.html\"\u003einternal history of the Iranian operation has been published online\u003c/a\u003e, authored by Donald Wilber, who was the main planner of the operation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEnd of 1953:  An internal poll of the CIA yields a report that describes \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;a rapidly deteriorating situation\u0026rsquo;: widespread frustration, confusion, and purposelessness. \u0026hellip; \u0026rsquo;too many people in responsible positions apparently don\u0026rsquo;t know what they\u0026rsquo;re doing.\u0026rsquo; \u0026hellip; \u0026lsquo;a shocking amount of money\u0026rsquo; going to waste on failed missions overseas.\u0026rdquo; (p. 78)  Allen Dulles suppresses the report (p. 79).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1953: The CIA provides millions of dollars to Japanese gangster Yoshio Kodama, a man who led a group that attempted to assassinate the prime minister in the 1930s, in order to smuggle tungsten from the Japanese military into U.S. hands.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDecember 1953:  Colonel Al Haney sets up shop at an air base in Opa-Locka, Florida for \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBSUCCESS\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Operation Success,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a plan to overthrow the government of Guatemala that has been discussed by the CIA for the previous three years. (p. 93)  The plan is to put Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas of the Guatemala military in command, removing President Jacobo Arbenz.  Haney draws out timelines and plans on a 40-foot roll of butcher paper pinned to the wall (p. 96).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1954: Frank Wisner has doubts about Haney, so sends Tracy Barnes and Richard Bissell to investigate his operation (p. 96).  Henry Hecksher is sent to Guatemala City to spend up to $10,000/month on bribes of military officers, including Colonel Elfego Monzon, and CIA HQ sends Haney a list of 58 Guatemalans to be assassinated as part of the coup.  The event that prompts the initiation of the coup is the discovery that a freighter named Alfhelm was transporting $4.86 million in Czech arms to Guatemala.  The CIA lost the trail, and the arms\u0026ndash;many of which were old WWII weapons with swastikas stamped on them\u0026ndash;were successfully delivered (p. 98).  May 1, 1954:  Voice of Liberation radio, run by David Atlee Phillips, begins broadcasting propaganda to Guatemala. May 26, 1954: A CIA plane drops leaflets promoting rebellion over the presidential guard\u0026rsquo;s headquarters.  June 6, 1954: The propaganda prompts Arbenz to become the dictator he was described to be, as he suspends civil liberties and engages in mass arrests to try to find anyone plotting against him (p. 99).  June 18, 1954: Armas launches his assault at Puerto Barrios, but most of his men are killed or captured (p. 100).  June 19, 1954: The U.S. ambassador to Guatemala calls for the U.S. to drop bombs.  June 22, 1954: A CIA plane drops a bomb that starts an oil tank fire that is put out within 20 minutes.  Dulles and businessman William Pawley meet with Eisenhower, who asks if the rebellion will be successful without further assistance.  Eisenhower gives approval for the CIA to provide three planes to Nicaragua, funded by Pawley with money transferred through Riggs Bank, which are used by CIA pilots to attack Guatemala City.  Armas still fails to gain ground.  (p. 102).  June 25, 1954: The CIA bombs \u0026ldquo;the parade grounds of the largest military encampment in Guatemala City\u0026rdquo; (p. 103) which prompts officers to switch allegiance to support the coup.  June 27, 1954: Arbenz cedes power to Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz, who vows to fight Armas.  Diaz is called a \u0026ldquo;Commie agent\u0026rdquo; by Haney and informed by a CIA officer that he is \u0026ldquo;not convenient for American foreign policy\u0026rdquo; (p. 103).  There are quickly four successive military juntas, \u0026ldquo;each one increasingly pro-American,\u0026rdquo; and two months later Castillo Armas becomes president and is welcomed at the White House.  Weiner writes: \u0026ldquo;Guatemala was at the beginning of forty years of military rulers, death squads, and armed repression.\u0026rdquo; (p. 103)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMay 1954: WWII war criminal Nobusuke Kishi makes his political debut with CIA support.  Kishi befriended former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew by letting him out of detention in Tokyo in 1942 to play a round of golf (p. 117).  Grew became the first chairman of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s National Committee for a Free Europe and was a powerful ally of Kishi.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1954: Joseph McCarthy begins accumulating claims of Communist agents working for the CIA, feeding it disinformation.  The claim is true, but the CIA responds not by addressing its own problems but by bugging McCarthy\u0026rsquo;s office and feeding him disinformation in order to discredit him (pp. 105-106).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMay 1954: Eisenhower receives a six-page letter from Jim Kellis, blowing the whistle on serious problems in the CIA\u0026ndash;the CIA unwittingly funding Communists, being duped in various operations, and Dulles lying to Congress (pp. 107-108).  July 1954: Eisenhower asks General Jimmy Doolittle and William Pawley to report on the state of the CIA in response to Kellis\u0026rsquo; letter.  October 19, 1954: Doolittle reports back to Eisenhower about serious problems within the CIA, with a written report titled \u003ca href=\"http://cryptome.org/cia-doolittle/cia-doolittle.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovember 1954: The U2 spy plane project begins, under a bureaucracy run by Richard Bissell.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1955: Eisenhower creates the \u0026ldquo;Special Group\u0026rdquo; to oversee covert operations, consisting of representatives of the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Defense.  Dulles, however, frequently did not bother reporting covert operations to the group or to the president (pp. 114-115).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 1955: A joint U.S.-British project to dig a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin to tap Soviet cables is completed, with the taps put in place in March, and information flow beginning in May, hampered by a lack of sufficient Russian and even German linguists (p. 111).  April 1956: The Soviets uncover the tunnel and the information flow stops as the Soviets loudly complain.  It subsequently turned out that the Soviets knew about the plan in December 1953, when planning first began, having been informed by George Blake, a British intelligence officer who was a Soviet spy.  Much of the intercepted information was likely deliberate misinformation, though the CIA did learn about Soviet and East German security systems (p. 112).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSpring 1955: The CIA considers assassinating President Sukarno of Indonesia because of fears of communist influence, and because he had declared himself \u0026ldquo;a noncombatant in the cold war\u0026rdquo; (p. 143).  Sukarno holds a conference of 29 Asian, African, and Arab chiefs of state in Bandung, Indonesia, to propose \u0026ldquo;a global movement of nations free to chart their own paths, aligned with neither Moscow nor Washington\u0026rdquo; (p. 143).  The White House authorizes \u0026ldquo;all feasible covert means\u0026rdquo; to keep Indonesia from going communist.  The CIA contributes $1 million to Sukarno\u0026rsquo;s opponents, the Masjumi Party, but Sukarno wins the 1955 parliamentary elections.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNovember 1955: Nobusuke Kishi sets up the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan with the help of CIA funding; LDP candidates and officials are recruited and approved by (and bribed by) the CIA (p. 119).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1956: Sukarno visits Moscow and Beijing as well as D.C.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 1956: Nikita Krushchev gives a speech denouncing Stalin.  March 1956: The CIA hears rumors of the speech and attempts to obtain a copy.  April 1956: Israeli spies deliver a copy of the speech to James Angleton. (p. 123)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEarly 1956: CIA analysts conclude that no Eastern European nations are likely to rebel against the Soviets during the 1950s.  June 28, 1956: Polish workers riot against wage reductions and destroy the equipment jamming Radio Free Europe.  53 Poles are killed and hundreds imprisoned (p. 125).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJuly 1956: Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of Egypt, nationalizes the Suez Canal Company, a British-French joint venture, to the surprise of the CIA.  The CIA had supported Nasser with millions of dollars, but as the U.S. did not fulfill promises of military aid, Nasser traded cotton to the Soviet Union for weapons.  The British proposed Nasser\u0026rsquo;s assassination, but the U.S. opposed it.  The British, French, and Israel plotted Nasser\u0026rsquo;s overthrow and kept the U.S. in the dark; Dulles assured Eisenhower that rumors of such a plot were untrue, relying upon James Angleton who had contacts with Israeli intelligence (which were feeding him disinformation) (pp. 127-128).  October 28, 1956: Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula as a pretext for the British and French to demand a cease-fire and move in to protect the Suez canal.  The Soviet Union demands British and French withdrawal.  The U.S., caught completely by surprise, applies pressure to force the British and French to leave.  Israel was also forced to withdraw, though it destroyed infrastructure on the way.  A UN Emergency Force occupied the peninsula until 1967. (More information on the 1956 war may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/egypt2.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOctober 1956: A CIA-British intelligence plot for a coup in Syria is put on hold due to the Suez fiasco, which pushes Syria closer to the Soviets (p. 138).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOctober 1956: A popular revolution begins in Hungary.  The CIA had a single agent in Budapest, a low-level State Department clerk.  The uprising was crushed within two weeks.  A CIA history of the uprising says \u0026ldquo;At no time did we have anything that could or should have been mistaken for an intelligence operation.\u0026rdquo; (p. 129)  During the brief revolution, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, went on state radio \u0026ldquo;to denounce the \u0026rsquo;terrible mistakes and crimes of these past ten years.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  He stated that the Russians would leave and a new democratic government would be set up.  Nagy formed a coalition government, abolished one-party rule, broke with Moscow, declared Hungary neutral, and appealed to the U.S. and UN for assistance.  The CIA attacked Nagy on radio broadcasts as a traitor, liar, and murderer, and claimed that he had invited Russian troops into Budapest\u0026ndash;all because he had once been a communist.  November 4, 1956: The Soviets sent 200,000 troops and 2,500 tanks and armored vehicles into Hungary to crush the rebellion, killing tens of thousands and sending thousands to Siberian prison camps (pp. 130-131).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 1957: Nobusuke Kishi becomes prime minister of Japan.  The CIA-influenced Liberal Democratic Party runs the Japanese government to this day (pp. 119ff); Japanese refer to the CIA-supported political system as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ekozo oshoku\u003c/span\u003e or \u0026ldquo;structural corruption\u0026rdquo; (p. 121).  (Current Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is Kishi\u0026rsquo;s grandson.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApril 1957: Plans for a Syrian coup are revisited; the plan is for the CIA and British SIS to \u0026ldquo;manufacture \u0026rsquo;national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities\u0026rsquo; in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan, and blame them on Syria\u0026rdquo; (p. 138).  The Syrians uncover the plot with a sting operation and arrest CIA operative Rocky Stone, publicly identify him as an American spy, and expel him from the country.  In return, the U.S. expelled the Syrian ambassador from D.C.  Stone\u0026rsquo;s Syrian co-conspirators are sentenced to death, and \u0026ldquo;a purge of every military officer who had ever been associated with the American embassy followed\u0026rdquo; (p. 139).  These events permanently poisoned U.S.-Syrian relations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeptember 25, 1957: Eisenhower, convinced by the CIA that Sukarno was going communist, orders the CIA to overthrow his government (p. 147).  September 28, 1957: The Indian newsweekly \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBlitz\u003c/span\u003e (controlled by Soviet intelligence) reports \u0026ldquo;AMERICAN PLOT TO OVERTHROW SUKARNO\u0026rdquo; (p. 147).  January 8, 1958: The CIA provides weapons to Indonesian army rebels on Sumatra, without any attempt at secrecy.  February 10, 1958: A CIA-financed radio station broadcasts demands for \u0026ldquo;a new government and the outlawing of communism within five days\u0026rdquo; (p. 148).  February 21, 1958: The Indonesian air force bombs the CIA radio stations.  The Indonesian army, led by anticommunists trained in the U.S. who referred to themselves as \u0026ldquo;the sons of Eisenhower,\u0026rdquo; were at war with the CIA (p. 148).   April 19, 1958: CIA pilots began bombing and strafing Indonesia\u0026rsquo;s outer islands, killing hundreds of civilians, as well as sinking a British and Panamanian freighter (p. 151).  The Indonesians claimed, correctly, that these planes were piloted by Americans, but the president and secretary of state of the United States denied it.  May 18, 1958: CIA pilot Al Pope was shot down by the Indonesians.  May 19, 1958: The U.S. decides that Sukarno is doing a good job of suppressing communism (p. 153).  Sukarno frequently mentioned the U.S.\u0026rsquo;s failed attempts to overthrow his government in public speeches, and the actual communists in Indonesia gained in power and influence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJuly 14, 1958: The CIA had been active in Iraq, offering money and weapons for support of anticommunism.  On this date a military coup occurred, overthrowing Nuri Said.  The General Abdel Karim Qasim regime found proof that the CIA had been paying off the previous government, and an American working for the CIA as a writer for American Friends of the Middle East (a CIA front group) was arrested and disappeared.  CIA officials left the country and Qasim began ties with the Soviets.  The Ba\u0026rsquo;ath Party attempted to assassinate Qasim, which led to CIA support.  (The Ba\u0026rsquo;ath Party later gained control with the help of the CIA, which then led to Saddam Hussein coming to power.) (pp. 140-141)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJanuary 1, 1959: Richard Bissell becomes chief of the clandestine service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApril-May 1959: Fidel Castro visits the U.S. and meets with the CIA, which was supportive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDecember 11, 1959: Richard Bissell sends a memo to Allen Dulles asking that \u0026ldquo;thorough consideration be given to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eelimination\u003c/span\u003e of Fidel Castro.\u0026rdquo;  Dulles replaced \u0026ldquo;elimination\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;removal from Cuba.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1960: The CIA projected that the Soviet Union would have 500 ICBMs aimed at the U.S. by 1961.  In fact, it had four.  (p. 158)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMarch 17, 1960: Dulles and Bissell present plans for an overthrow of Castro to Eisenhower and Nixon, which did not involve an invasion (p. 157).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApril 9, 1960: The first U-2 flight over the Soviet Union occurs; the Soviets detect it and go on high alert (p. 159).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMay 1, 1960:  A U-2 is shot down by the Soviets over central Russia, and the CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers, is captured.  The CIA cover story was that it was a weather plane lost in Turkey, which the White House and State Department insisted was the case for a week before coming clean (pp. 159-160).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSummer 1960: Richard Bissell arranges with Guatemala\u0026rsquo;s President Manual Ydigoras Fuentes to set up a training camp for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (pp. 160-161).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAugust 1960: Richard Bissell hires the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro, in hopes the Cuban invasion will be unnecessary.  A second assassination plot is developed in-house by the CIA.  August 16, 1960: Dulles and Bissell obtain approval from Eisenhower to spend $10.75 million on paramilitary training for five hundred Cubans in Guatemala, the invasion force.  Eisenhower approves on the condition that \u0026ldquo;So long as the Joint Chiefs, Defense, State and CIA think we have a good chance of being successful\u0026rdquo; (p. 161).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSummer 1960: The Congo declares independence from Belgium; Patrice Lumumba is elected prime minister.  Lumumba\u0026rsquo;s request for U.S. assistance is ignored, so he seeks help from the Soviet Union.  The CIA sends Larry Devlin to head the CIA post in the Congo, and CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb delivers him vials of poison to inject into Lumumba\u0026rsquo;s food, drink, or toothpaste.  Devlin asks who the order came from, Gottlieb told him \u0026ldquo;the President.\u0026rdquo;  Devlin refused to follow through (pp. 162-163).  October-November 1960: The CIA selected Joseph Mobutu to be the new leader of the Congo, and supplied him with $250,000 and weapons.  Mobutu successfully captured Lumumba, who was then killed by a Belgian officer.  It took five years for Mobutu to gain full control of the Congo, where \u0026ldquo;he ruled for three decades as one of the world\u0026rsquo;s most brutal and corrupt dictators, stealing billions of dollars in revenues from the nation\u0026rsquo;s enormous deposits of diamonds, minerals, and strategic minerals, slaughtering multitudes to preserve his power\u0026rdquo; (p. 163).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJanuary 5, 1961: The President\u0026rsquo;s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities issues a report which states that \u0026ldquo;We are unable to conclude that, on balance, all of the covert action programs undertaken by CIA up to this time have been worth the risk of the great expenditure of manpower, money, and other resources involved.\u0026rdquo;  It urged \u0026ldquo;complete separation\u0026rdquo; of the director of central intelligence from the CIA.  Dulles claimed that everything was fine and that he had \u0026ldquo;corrected deficiencies\u0026rdquo;, and Eisenhower gave up in defeat, stating that he was leaving a \u0026ldquo;legacy of ashes\u0026rdquo; for his successor (p. 167).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a report on how individuals blowing the whistle on corruption in Iraq rebuilding efforts are being treated\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re being fired, demoted, and even imprisoned. Donald Vance reported that the company he was working for, Shield Group Security Co., was selling guns, land mines, and rocket launchers to insurgents, U.S. soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy employees for cash. He didn\u0026rsquo;t know who to trust in Iraq, so he reported it to an FBI agent in Chicago. The result\u0026ndash;he was thrown in to an American military prison outside of Baghdad for 97 days and subjected to harsh interrogations.\nBrayton also reports on how two whistleblowers brought a civil suit regarding corruption by their former employer, Custer Battles, winning a $10 million jury award, only to have it overturned by the federal district judge on the grounds that the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was not part of the U.S. government.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/whistleblowers-in-iraq-fired-demoted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/american_whistleblowers_impris.php\"\u003ehas a report on how individuals blowing the whistle on corruption in Iraq rebuilding efforts are being treated\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re being fired, demoted, and even imprisoned.  Donald Vance reported that the company he was working for, Shield Group Security Co., was selling guns, land mines, and rocket launchers to insurgents, U.S. soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy employees for cash.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t know who to trust in Iraq, so he reported it to an FBI agent in Chicago.  The result\u0026ndash;he was thrown in to an American military prison outside of Baghdad for 97 days and subjected to harsh interrogations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrayton also reports on how two whistleblowers brought a civil suit regarding corruption by their former employer, Custer Battles, winning a $10 million jury award, only to have it overturned by the federal district judge on the grounds that the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was not part of the U.S. government.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Whistleblowers in Iraq fired, demoted, imprisoned"},{"content":"Ted Haggard and his wife are moving to Phoenix, where they will be living and providing counseling at the Phoenix Dream Center, a faith-based halfway house. They will also both be full-time students in psychology and counseling.\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out that they are asking for donations to be sent to them through a Colorado Springs 501(c)(3) called Families With A Mission that no longer exists and was run by a convicted sex offender who has failed to register as such in Colorado.\nP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula points out that Haggard is far from destitute\u0026ndash;his $138,000 annual pastor\u0026rsquo;s salary is still being paid through the end of 2007, and he owns a home in Colorado Springs worth $715,000.\nUPDATE (September 7, 2007): Now, apparently Haggard will not be moving into or working for the Phoenix Dream Center, which is associated with Tommy Barnett\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix First Assembly of God (they don\u0026rsquo;t go by their initials) church.\nHistorical Comments Reed (2007-08-28):\nHe needs the extra money to hire someone to sort his mail -- to filter out all the pr0n that will be on its way.\"Dear Ted, my wife doesn't want these Playgirl magazines any more and thought you'd be interested.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/ted-haggards-coming-to-phoenix-to-live.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTed Haggard and his wife are moving to Phoenix, where they will be living and providing counseling at the Phoenix Dream Center, a faith-based halfway house.  They will also both be full-time students in psychology and counseling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/haggard_needs_money_1.php\"\u003epoints out that they are asking for donations\u003c/a\u003e to be sent to them through a Colorado Springs 501(c)(3) called Families With A Mission that no longer exists and was run by a convicted sex offender who has failed to register as such in Colorado.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/oh_no_poor_ted.php\"\u003epoints out that Haggard is far from destitute\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;his $138,000 annual pastor\u0026rsquo;s salary is still being paid through the end of 2007, and he owns a home in Colorado Springs worth $715,000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 7, 2007): Now, apparently Haggard \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/previously_on_the_ted_haggard.php\"\u003ewill not be moving into or working for the Phoenix Dream Center\u003c/a\u003e, which is associated with Tommy Barnett\u0026rsquo;s Phoenix First Assembly of God (they don\u0026rsquo;t go by their initials) church.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ted Haggard's coming to Phoenix to live"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m in the process of reading Akhil Reed Amar\u0026rsquo;s America\u0026rsquo;s Constitution: A Biography, and just came to the portion about the 16th Amendment, which instituted a federal income tax. I had already known that the tax was a very low percentage, but I hadn\u0026rsquo;t realized that only the top 1% of income earners paid any income tax. It would be a nice model to go back to, but not possible without dramatically reducing federal spending\u0026ndash;the wealthiest Americans wouldn\u0026rsquo;t tolerate an extortionate percentage of taxation that would be required on the current level of spending, and given the huge amounts of money that are now a part of political campaigning, nobody gets elected without the support of at least some of the wealthiest Americans. (And those levels of spending are tied together\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s huge money riding on political campaigns because there\u0026rsquo;s huge money and power in the hands of the federal government. The only way to reduce the former is to reduce the latter.)\nHere are the two paragraphs where Amar describes pre-Civil War and post-16th Amendment income taxes in the United States:\nPrior to the Civil War, at least seven states had adopted income taxes. High exemptions and graduated rates\u0026ndash;the basic features of a progressive tax structure\u0026ndash;were commonplace in these states. Congress followed this pattern when introducing a federal income tax in the 1860s. For instance, the 1865 federal tax code exempted all persons who made less than $600, taxed income between $600 and $5,000 at 5 percent, and subjected all income above $5,000 to a steeper 10 percent rate. Later federal laws tweaked the specifics but preserved the basic structure, under which more than three-quarters of federal revenue came from the seven wealthiest states: New York (which itself generated more than 30 percent of the total national intake), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Under the law struck down in Pollock, incomes over $4,000 were taxed at 2 percent, all others were exempt. According to Treasury Department estimates, less than 1 percent of the population had been subject to this levy.\n\u0026hellip;\nIn the first income-tax statute enacted after the new amendment was in place, Congress once again opted for a progressive tax structure that exempted a large swath of low- and middle-income persons and taxed the rest at a sloping rate, beginning at 1 percent for an individual making $3,000 and topping out at 7 percent for income over $500,000. The $3,000 minimum threshold effectively limited the tax to the top 1 percent of the economic order. In 1916 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the new tax law, expressly rejecting the notion that the \u0026ldquo;progressive feature\u0026rdquo; of the tax somehow rendered it unconstitutional. The American People had spoken and\u0026ndash;this time, at least\u0026ndash;the Court listened.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/early-us-income-tax.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in the process of reading Akhil Reed Amar\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAmerica\u0026rsquo;s Constitution: A Biography\u003c/span\u003e, and just came to the portion about the 16th Amendment, which instituted a federal income tax.  I had already known that the tax was a very low percentage, but I hadn\u0026rsquo;t realized that only the top 1% of income earners paid any income tax.  It would be a nice model to go back to, but not possible without dramatically reducing federal spending\u0026ndash;the wealthiest Americans wouldn\u0026rsquo;t tolerate an extortionate percentage of taxation that would be required on the current level of spending, and given the huge amounts of money that are now a part of political campaigning, nobody gets elected without the support of at least some of the wealthiest Americans.  (And those levels of spending are tied together\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s huge money riding on political campaigns because there\u0026rsquo;s huge money and power in the hands of the federal government.  The only way to reduce the former is to reduce the latter.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are the two paragraphs where Amar describes pre-Civil War and post-16th Amendment income taxes in the United States:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePrior to the Civil War, at least seven states had adopted income taxes.  High exemptions and graduated rates\u0026ndash;the basic features of a progressive tax structure\u0026ndash;were commonplace in these states.  Congress followed this pattern when introducing a federal income tax in the 1860s.  For instance, the 1865 federal tax code exempted all persons who made less than $600, taxed income between $600 and $5,000 at 5 percent, and subjected all income above $5,000 to a steeper 10 percent rate.  Later federal laws tweaked the specifics but preserved the basic structure, under which more than three-quarters of federal revenue came from the seven wealthiest states:  New York (which itself generated more than 30 percent of the total national intake), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  Under the law struck down in Pollock, incomes over $4,000 were taxed at 2 percent, all others were exempt.  According to Treasury Department estimates, less than 1 percent of the population had been subject to this levy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eIn the first income-tax statute enacted after the new amendment was in place, Congress once again opted for a progressive tax structure that exempted a large swath of low- and middle-income persons and taxed the rest at a sloping rate, beginning at 1 percent for an individual making $3,000 and topping out at 7 percent for income over $500,000.  The $3,000 minimum threshold effectively limited the tax to the top 1 percent of the economic order.  In 1916 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the new tax law, expressly rejecting the notion that the \u0026ldquo;progressive feature\u0026rdquo; of the tax somehow rendered it unconstitutional.  The American People had spoken and\u0026ndash;this time, at least\u0026ndash;the Court listened.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Early U.S. income tax"},{"content":"Steve Tucker ended a ten-year federal prison sentence last year. He served his time for selling light bulbs\u0026ndash;specifically grow lights\u0026ndash;that, while themselves legal, were sold to some customers that were using them to grow marijuana. Even though he and his brother asked any customers who so much as mentioned marijuana to leave and refused to sell any products which had any visible references to marijuana, they were successfully prosecuted on conspiracy charges because they had knowledge that some of their customers were using their products to grow marijuana.\nHis brother Gary, who was given a fifteen-year sentence that was reduced to ten after a successful petition to apply a change in policy from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, died of cancer at about the time his sentence was served.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-08-25):\nBut just think how many horrible crimes were prevented by locking these guys up!Why, I can't imagine the carnage that would have ensued, should these dangerous degenerates have retained their freedom!Justice has undoubtedly been served. We're all better off for it.Thank God we have devoted public servants with pure motives and our own best interests at heart, hard at work making the world safe for democracy. I sleep better at night knowing they're out there prosecuting the guilty and protecting the innocent.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/ten-years-in-prison-for-selling-light.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteve Tucker \u003ca href=\"http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A10762\"\u003eended a ten-year federal prison sentence last year\u003c/a\u003e.  He served his time for selling light bulbs\u0026ndash;specifically grow lights\u0026ndash;that, while themselves legal, were sold to some customers that were using them to grow marijuana.  Even though he and his brother asked any customers who so much as mentioned marijuana to leave and refused to sell any products which had any visible references to marijuana, they were successfully prosecuted on conspiracy charges because they had knowledge that some of their customers were using their products to grow marijuana.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis brother Gary, who was given a fifteen-year sentence that was reduced to ten after a successful petition to apply a change in policy from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, died of cancer at about the time his sentence was served.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ten years in prison for selling light bulbs"},{"content":"Rightwing Nuthouse reports that the History Channel\u0026rsquo;s documentary, \u0026ldquo;9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction\u0026rdquo; gives the conspiracy theorists a high-quality debunking. The format is to allow a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to make a claim, and then have experts in the appropriate fields respond to the claim. I\u0026rsquo;ve got the TiVo set up to record this weekend\u0026rsquo;s showing.\nUPDATE (August 26, 2007): I watched the show today, and I thought they did a very good job, though of necessity they were fairly brief in their rebuttals. I was pleased to see that, contrary to some conspiracy theorist claims, they did in fact address conspiracy theorist claims about the collapse of WTC Building 7. I was also quite amused to see that in Alex Jones\u0026rsquo; concluding remarks, he made the classic crackpot self-comparison to Galileo, and did so in such a way to demonstrate his own lack of awareness or concern for factual accuracy by stating that the dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about whether the earth was round or flat.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/history-channel-wipes-floor-with-911.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRightwing Nuthouse \u003ca href=\"http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2007/08/21/911-truthers-gut-punched-by-history-channel/\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail\u0026episodeId=240087\"\u003eHistory Channel\u0026rsquo;s documentary, \u0026ldquo;9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e gives the conspiracy theorists a high-quality debunking.  The format is to allow a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to make a claim, and then have experts in the appropriate fields respond to the claim.  I\u0026rsquo;ve got the TiVo set up to record this weekend\u0026rsquo;s showing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 26, 2007):  I watched the show today, and I thought they did a very good job, though of necessity they were fairly brief in their rebuttals.  I was pleased to see that, contrary to some conspiracy theorist claims, they did in fact address conspiracy theorist claims about the collapse of WTC Building 7.  I was also quite amused to see that in Alex Jones\u0026rsquo; concluding remarks, he made the classic crackpot self-comparison to Galileo, and did so in such a way to demonstrate his own lack of awareness or concern for factual accuracy by stating that the dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about whether the earth was round or flat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"History channel wipes the floor with 9/11 conspiracy theorists"},{"content":"Robert Greenwald\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Fox Attacks: Iran\u0026rdquo; compares Fox News coverage leading up to the war in Iraq with what they\u0026rsquo;re airing today about Iran.\nAnonymous (2007-08-23):\nHere we are once again considering the terrorist nation of Iran. A nation that controls Palestine through Hamas, Lebanon and Syria though Hezbollah, and Iraq through the Mahdi army, untold numbers of insurgency and militant organizations and even Al Qaeda. Iran is closing in quickly on the ability to mass produce nuclear weapons while our politicians are arguing over whether or not they are even a threat to the region, and our own nation. Israel, as I have said before, does not have the luxury of debating this issue until the day it is confirmed that the Iranian nuclear program has in fact produced it's first reliable weapon. Israel has nuclear weapons but will they use them? It is a strongly held belief that only the United States can deliver a conventional strike devastating enough to impact the Iranian nuclear program, however, if the United States does not do that and soon, Israel will be forced to consider the nuclear option as it's only reliable means of ensuring it's continued existence.When considering the possible destruction of your entire population by nuclear assault, the nuclear option does not seem so terrible in light of the consequence of waiting too long, or conducting an inadequate conventional strike. European nations, Russia and China have prevented measures that could have reigned in Iran many times before. Creating a situation whereby the one entity that could have made a difference (United Nations), is instead provoking the inevitable destruction of either Israel or Iran or possibly even the destruction of both nations.Iran has created a reality on the ground throughout the Middle East that provides the ultimate fallback. Iran's arming, training and positioning of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Mahdi Army, and literally hundreds of other militant assets means that at a moments notice Iran could create complete chaos throughout the entire region. Imagine all of these groups being coordinated by Iran's military machine causing the cessation of trade throughout the region, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in countries throughout the Middle East, and the successful overthrow of governments unable to respond quickly enough to such an unconventional enemy.If the United States is unable or unwilling to confront Iran militarily within the next 12 months, world war three is almost a certainty. Because if Iran is able to get all their pieces in place before they are directly attacked, this chess game is over and no country in the world will be safe from the terrorist army they have been building up arming and training for over 30 years. China, Russia, Venezuela and many other countries have already chosen their allies in this struggle by supporting, supplying and defending Iran in it's quest for nuclear weapons and undying support of terrorism in all it's horrific forms and manifestations.\nLippard (2007-08-23):\nIn light of the U.S.'s behavior with respect to North Korea (not to mention its own past actions with respect to Iran), it's no wonder that any nation would want to obtain nuclear weapons as soon as possible.Your claim that Iran controls Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq is nonsense. FYI, Hamas is a Sunni organization, not Shia, though the U.S. State Dept. says it has received funding from Iran--but most Hamas funding comes from U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.The U.S. has done a terrible job of using divide and conquer strategies against Middle East groups that hate each other by labeling them all as radical Muslims of the same stripe, and uniting them all against us.An attack against Iran would be disastrous--it is unlikely that bombing alone would be sufficient to eliminate their nuclear program and prevent it from being quickly rebuilt, and the U.S. doesn't have resources for yet another ground war. Iran, despite its leadership, is a country that is demographically very young (more than two thirds of the population is under 30), highly educated, and quite westernized by Middle East standards.I think Matt McIntosh's commentary about the U.S. and Iran (part 1, strategic background; part 2, baseline expectations for policy; part 3, proposed policy) makes a hell of a lot more sense than yours.I previously summarized and commented on Matt's posts here.\nolvlzl (2007-08-24):\nIt's a mistake to forget the shift of power that the Iraq invasion created, Arab Sunnis were certainly placed at a disadvantage in the area and the clearest potential beneficiary, ironically, was Iran. Quite honestly, I don't for a second doubt that the Iran policy of the Bush family is in service to its business partners in Saudi Arabia more than it is anything else. It seems like a safe bet to make that in the end, with the Bushes, it's all about what's in it for them.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/fox-beats-drum-for-war-with-iran.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Greenwald\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://foxattacks.com/iran\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fox Attacks: Iran\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e compares Fox News coverage leading up to the war in Iraq with what they\u0026rsquo;re airing today about Iran.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-08-23)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHere we are once again considering the terrorist nation of Iran. A nation that controls Palestine through Hamas, Lebanon and Syria though Hezbollah, and Iraq through the Mahdi army, untold numbers of insurgency and militant organizations and even Al Qaeda. Iran is closing in quickly on the ability to mass produce nuclear weapons while our politicians are arguing over whether or not they are even a threat to the region, and our own nation. Israel, as I have said before, does not have the luxury of debating this issue until the day it is confirmed that the Iranian nuclear program has in fact produced it's first reliable weapon. Israel has nuclear weapons but will they use them? It is a strongly held belief that only the United States can deliver a conventional strike devastating enough to impact the Iranian nuclear program, however, if the United States does not do that and soon, Israel will be forced to consider the nuclear option as it's only reliable means of ensuring it's continued existence.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhen considering the possible destruction of your entire population by nuclear assault, the nuclear option does not seem so terrible in light of the consequence of waiting too long, or conducting an inadequate conventional strike. European nations, Russia and China have prevented measures that could have reigned in Iran many times before. Creating a situation whereby the one entity that could have made a difference (United Nations), is instead provoking the inevitable destruction of either Israel or Iran or possibly even the destruction of both nations.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIran has created a reality on the ground throughout the Middle East that provides the ultimate fallback. Iran's arming, training and positioning of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Mahdi Army, and literally hundreds of other militant assets means that at a moments notice Iran could create complete chaos throughout the entire region. Imagine all of these groups being coordinated by Iran's military machine causing the cessation of trade throughout the region, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in countries throughout the Middle East, and the successful overthrow of governments unable to respond quickly enough to such an unconventional enemy.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIf the United States is unable or unwilling to confront Iran militarily within the next 12 months, world war three is almost a certainty. Because if Iran is able to get all their pieces in place before they are directly attacked, this chess game is over and no country in the world will be safe from the terrorist army they have been building up arming and training for over 30 years. China, Russia, Venezuela and many other countries have already chosen their allies in this struggle by supporting, supplying and defending Iran in it's quest for nuclear weapons and undying support of terrorism in all it's horrific forms and manifestations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox beats the drum for war with Iran"},{"content":"[UPDATE (April 15, 2008): See the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo; website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren\u0026rsquo;t showing you.]\nIn February, the movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,\u0026rdquo; starring Ben Stein, will be released. [UPDATE: The release was delayed until April 18, possibly due to copyright infringement worries.] The film apparently argues that intelligent design is being wrongly excluded from public school classrooms, despite the fact that intelligent design is rebranded creationism and is a religious view without scientific support. There is no scientific theory of intelligent design to be taught in schools\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist.\nThe advertising for the film says that P.Z. Myers appears in the film\u0026ndash;but he was not interviewed for a film called \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; but for an apparently fictional project called \u0026ldquo;Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion.\u0026rdquo; Mark Mathis, a producer for Rampant Films, contacted Myers, and he agreed to appear in that film. Now, as it turns out, Mathis is an associate producer on \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\nMyers writes:\nWhy were they so dishonest about it? If Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, \u0026ldquo;bring it on!\u0026rdquo; We would have had a good, pugnacious argument on tape that directly addresses the claims of his movie, and it would have been a better (at least, more honest and more relevant) sequence. He would have also been more likely to get that good ol\u0026rsquo; wild-haired, bulgy-eyed furious John Brown of the Godless vision than the usual mild-mannered professor that he did tape. And I probably would have been more aggressive with a plainly stated disagreement between us.\nI mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest.Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education reports a similar experience\u0026ndash;she also was interviewed for \u0026ldquo;Crossroads.\u0026quot;\nThe producers of this film are sleazeballs. This kind of technique is already at or beyond the ethical edge for a comedy film like Borat, but to do this for a film that purports to take on a serious issue\u0026ndash;and pretends to be on the side of God\u0026ndash;is well past any such boundary. If, as has been suggested, this film is going to argue that belief in God is necessary for moral behavior (a falsehood), the behavior of the producers proves that it is not sufficient.\nThe lesson for the future: Do not sign an agreement to be interviewed for a film if the agreement contains language that says they can use \u0026ldquo;…footage and materials in and in connection with the development, production, distribution and/or exploitation of the feature length documentary tentatively entitled Crossroads…and/or any other production…\u0026rdquo; That \u0026ldquo;and/or any other production\u0026rdquo; is a big loophole that will be exploited.\nUPDATE (August 23, 2007): Ed Brayton observes that two of the alleged controversies that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will cover are bogus claims of persecution\u0026ndash;the denial of tenure for Guillermo Gonzalez and the alleged martyrdom of Richard Sternberg. Ed notes that he has an article coming out in Skeptic magazine in February 2008 which will debunk the Souder report about the travails of Sternberg at the Smithsonian (a subject he has already written extensively about on his blog\u0026ndash;linked to from the articles at my blog under the \u0026ldquo;Richard Sternberg affair\u0026rdquo; category).\nUPDATE (December 18, 2007): Ed Brayton points out that a new argument from the Discovery Institute for why Gonzalez shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been denied tenure actually undermines that claim.\nUPDATE (February 10, 2008): John Lynch has a nice visual diagram of Gonzalez\u0026rsquo;s publication record.\nHistorical Comments AlisonM (2007-08-23):\nThis is not surprising, of course. Since ID cannot support itself with actual science, it depends upon subterfuge, quote mining, and a full range of other lying techniques, from omission to outright. Unfortunately, PZ and the other interviewees are in a \"damned if you do, damned if you don't\" situation. Had they declined, the movie would have used that to support itself. Had they known the nature of the film and spoken anyway, their words or the way they spoke them would be edited and turned around to support the IDiots. This way might turn out to be the best of the three, actually, since everyone was rational rather than strident, and stating a positive rather than an oppositional viewpoint. Any editing to show otherwise will give them more legal ground to protest than they would have with the other two options.\nOlorin (2007-08-24):\nA sadder but wiser Myers will next time read the contract more closely, and will perhaps consult a copyright attorney. Eugenie Scott should have already done so, with her background. Film contracts are prepared by professionals who know all the tricks.As to the film itself, I would predict that it will fall flat as to other than Sunday-evening church audiences. \"Flock of Dodos\" succeeded because it was humorous in getting its message across. If \"Expelled\" is dead serious, it will appeal only to the zealots, and will hardly even rate notice from genral reviewers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/expensive-intelligent-design-movie-uses.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[UPDATE (April 15, 2008):  See the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.expelledexposed.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expelled Exposed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren\u0026rsquo;t showing you.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn February, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/you_have_got_to_be_kidding_me.php\"\u003ethe movie \u0026ldquo;Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,\u0026rdquo; starring Ben Stein, will be released\u003c/a\u003e.  [UPDATE: The release was delayed until April 18, possibly due to \u003ca href=\"/2008/04/david-bolinsky-on-expelled-and-dembskis.html\"\u003ecopyright infringement worries\u003c/a\u003e.]  The film apparently argues that intelligent design is being wrongly excluded from public school classrooms, despite the fact that intelligent design is rebranded creationism and is a religious view without scientific support.  There is no scientific theory of intelligent design to be taught in schools\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe advertising for the film says that P.Z. Myers appears in the film\u0026ndash;but he was not interviewed for a film called \u0026ldquo;Expelled,\u0026rdquo; but for an apparently fictional project called \u0026ldquo;Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion.\u0026rdquo;  Mark Mathis, a producer for Rampant Films, contacted Myers, and he agreed to appear in that film.  Now, as it turns out, Mathis is an associate producer on \u0026ldquo;Expelled.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/im_gonna_be_a_movie_star.php\"\u003eMyers writes\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhy were they so dishonest about it? If Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, \u0026ldquo;bring it on!\u0026rdquo; We would have had a good, pugnacious argument on tape that directly addresses the claims of his movie, and it would have been a better (at least, more honest and more relevant) sequence. He would have also been more likely to get that good ol\u0026rsquo; wild-haired, bulgy-eyed furious John Brown of the Godless vision than the usual mild-mannered professor that he did tape. And I probably would have been more aggressive with a plainly stated disagreement between us.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/08/im_gonna_be_a_m.html#comment-198562\"\u003ereports a similar experience\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;she also was interviewed for \u0026ldquo;Crossroads.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe producers of this film are sleazeballs.  This kind of technique is already \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/fratboy-suing-borat-exposed-by-smoking.html\"\u003eat or beyond the ethical edge for a comedy film like Borat\u003c/a\u003e, but to do this for a film that purports to take on a serious issue\u0026ndash;and pretends to be on the side of God\u0026ndash;is well past any such boundary.  If, as \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/08/im_gonna_be_a_m.html#comment-198600\"\u003ehas been suggested\u003c/a\u003e, this film is going to argue that belief in God is necessary for moral behavior (a falsehood), the behavior of the producers proves that it is not sufficient.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe lesson for the future:  Do not sign an agreement to be interviewed for a film if the agreement contains language that says they can use \u0026ldquo;…footage and materials in and in connection with the development, production, distribution and/or exploitation of the feature length documentary tentatively entitled Crossroads…and/or any other production…\u0026rdquo;  That \u0026ldquo;and/or any other production\u0026rdquo; is a big loophole that will be exploited.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 23, 2007):  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/dishonest_producers_of_id_pers.php\"\u003eobserves that two of the alleged controversies that \u0026ldquo;Expelled\u0026rdquo; will cover are bogus claims of persecution\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/post_2.php\"\u003edenial of tenure for Guillermo Gonzalez\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Sternberg%20affair\"\u003ethe alleged martyrdom of Richard Sternberg\u003c/a\u003e.  Ed notes that he has an article coming out in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine in February 2008 which will debunk the Souder report about the travails of Sternberg at the Smithsonian (a subject he has already written extensively about on his blog\u0026ndash;linked to from the articles at my blog under the \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Sternberg%20affair\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Richard Sternberg affair\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e category).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 18, 2007): Ed Brayton points out that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/di_releases_more_data_damaging.php\"\u003ea new argument from the Discovery Institute for why Gonzalez shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been denied tenure actually undermines that claim\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 10, 2008): John Lynch has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2008/02/gonzalez_loses_di_whines_no_su.php\"\u003ea nice visual diagram of Gonzalez\u0026rsquo;s publication record\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expensive intelligent design movie uses Borat tactics"},{"content":"Michael Donnelly\u0026rsquo;s blog has a chart of mortgage lender failures since April 2006, which reports that we reached 21 lenders going under this month yesterday, on the 21st of the month.\n(Via Distributed Republic.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/mortgage-lenders-failing-at-rate-of-one.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMichael Donnelly\u0026rsquo;s blog has \u003ca href=\"http://pbp.typepad.com/economy/2007/08/mortgage-lender.html\"\u003ea chart of mortgage lender failures since April 2006\u003c/a\u003e, which reports that we reached 21 lenders going under this month yesterday, on the 21st of the month.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2007/08/22/one-each-day\"\u003eDistributed Republic\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mortgage lenders failing at a rate of one per day"},{"content":"Payne Junior High School in Chandler, Arizona has suspended the 13-year-old son of Ben and Paula Mosteller for three days (reduced from five) for drawing a picture of a gun, an action which they characterized as a threat which they compared to the Columbine High School massacre in a discussion with his parents.\nThe Arizona Republic reports that \u0026ldquo;The school did not contact police and did not provide counseling or an evaluate the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat,\u0026rdquo; which suggests to me that they did not really consider it to be a threat.\nThe boy\u0026rsquo;s parents described the picture as a harmless doodle of a fake laser, which did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human.\nIf the school really considered it a threat of an impending massacre, they should have treated it as one. Since they didn\u0026rsquo;t, why is it even worth a suspension? Is there more to the context that we aren\u0026rsquo;t being told, or are school administrators so irrational that they fear drawings of guns?\nAre there any adult males who didn\u0026rsquo;t draw guns along with cars, motorcycles, spaceships, monsters, aliens, and floor plans of secret hideouts when they were around 13?\nHistorical Comments AlisonM (2007-08-23):\n*sigh* Yet another ridiculous zero-tolerance story. If half as much time were spent watching out for and preventing REAL problems, well, we wouldn't have as many problems. Many years back when I was still living up in Northeast NJ, a first grader in Montclair was suspended for pointing his finger and saying \"bang\". Everyone felt so much safer once this violent child was removed from the classroom. Not.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/chandler-school-suspends-student-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePayne Junior High School in Chandler, Arizona has suspended the 13-year-old son of Ben and Paula Mosteller for three days (reduced from five) for drawing a picture of a gun, an action which they characterized as a threat which they compared to the Columbine High School massacre in a discussion with his parents.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0822gunsketch22-on.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;The school did not contact police and did not provide counseling or an evaluate the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat,\u0026rdquo; which suggests to me that they did not really consider it to be a threat.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe boy\u0026rsquo;s parents described the picture as a harmless doodle of a fake laser, which did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf the school really considered it a threat of an impending massacre, they should have treated it as one.  Since they didn\u0026rsquo;t, why is it even worth a suspension?  Is there more to the context that we aren\u0026rsquo;t being told, or are school administrators so irrational that they fear drawings of guns?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre there any adult males who \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003edidn\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/span\u003e draw guns along with cars, motorcycles, spaceships, monsters, aliens, and floor plans of secret hideouts when they were around 13?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chandler school suspends student for drawing picture of gun"},{"content":"Long or Short Capital takes a look at a few investment strategies available to the time traveler, including \u0026ldquo;groundhog maximization,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;terminator option protection,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;alien/squid technology asset allocation.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/time-travel-investment-strategies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong or Short Capital takes a look at a few \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/investment-strategies-in-a-world-where-time-travel-is-possible.htm\"\u003einvestment strategies available to the time traveler\u003c/a\u003e, including \u0026ldquo;groundhog maximization,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;terminator option protection,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;alien/squid technology asset allocation.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time travel investment strategies"},{"content":"Stuart Pivar, an \u0026ldquo;eccentric collector and inventor,\u0026quot; has filed a $15 million libel lawsuit in New York against P.Z. Myers of the Pharyngula blog and Seed Media Group, publisher of Seed magazine and owner of ScienceBlogs, for referring to him as \u0026ldquo;a classic crackpot\u0026rdquo; in reviews of his book Lifecode.\nThe complaint identifies Pivar as \u0026ldquo;an industrialist, inventor, and scientist,\u0026rdquo; the founder and chairman of the board of Chem-tainer Industries, and co-founder (with Andy Warhol) and original funder of the New York Academy of Art, \u0026ldquo;a classical graduate school for painting and sculpture, whose current patron is H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales.\u0026rdquo; It claims that Pivar regularly discussed his book with Stephen Jay Gould, who \u0026ldquo;was working on a refutation of the fundamentalist Darwinian theory of evolution.\u0026quot;\nThe complaint claims that Myers\u0026rsquo; remarks led to Neil de Grasse Tyson withdrawing a review of the book and causing \u0026ldquo;considerable mental and emotional distress,\u0026rdquo; tortious interference with the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s business relationships as a \u0026ldquo;scientist and scientific editor,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;loss of book sales and diminished returns on ten years of funded scientific research in special damages\u0026rdquo; exceeding $5 million.\nThe three claims of the complaint are, first, for declaratory relief in removing defamatory statements from the web and an injunction to prevent further such statements; second, for $5 million in special damages from the \u0026ldquo;tortious interference with business relations\u0026rdquo;; and third, for $10 million in damages for defamation, emotional distress, and loss of reputation.\nSeed Media Group may be able to have itself dismissed as a defendant on the libel claim via the safe harbor on online publication of defamatory statements by a user of a site, which has been successfully used as a defense by America Online (in Zeran v. AOL and Blumenthal v. Drudge and AOL) and ElectriCiti (in Aquino v. ElectriCiti).\nI suspect that Pivar will have a difficult time proving the claimed damages, as well as overcoming the truth defense to a defamation claim, but I\u0026rsquo;m curious to see if any lawyers (Timothy Sandefur?) have an opinion. The complaint looks a little odd and sloppy to me\u0026ndash;it initially refers to \u0026ldquo;tortuous\u0026rdquo; interference rather than \u0026ldquo;tortious,\u0026rdquo; includes the odd paragraph about the Art Academy, and generally doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me to be a well-crafted case\u0026ndash;but I am not a lawyer.\nThe text of the complaint may be found here (PDF).\nP.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; reviews of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book may be found here and here.\nAnother review of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book, authored by his friend Richard Gordon, may be found here.\nPivar\u0026rsquo;s claim that Stephen Jay Gould would not have signed the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Project Steve\u0026rdquo; statement is discussed at CSI\u0026rsquo;s website.\nChristopher Mims has commented on the lawsuit at Scientific American\u0026rsquo;s blog, and Brandon Keim at Wired Science has a good summary of the dispute.\nUPDATE: I\u0026rsquo;ve just read through both of P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; blog post reviews again, and I note that the alleged defamatory reference, \u0026ldquo;a classic crackpot,\u0026rdquo; appears in neither of them. In the earlier post, Myers says of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book: \u0026ldquo;It seems no expense was spared getting it published, which is in contrast to the content, and is unusual for such flagrant crackpottery.\u0026rdquo; The later post does not contain the word \u0026ldquo;crackpot.\u0026rdquo; The post that Pivar is complaining about is another Myers post, titled \u0026ldquo;Pseudoscience by press release\u0026rdquo;, where Pivar himself commented several times, including to write, \u0026ldquo;I will ignore your insulting and intemperate language and concentrate on the substantive issues.\u0026rdquo; Apparently he changed his mind on that point.\nUPDATE (August 21, 2007): Blake Stacey has put together a nice chronological summary of who said what when, along with links to commentators. He points out that the \u0026ldquo;review\u0026rdquo; by Neil de Grasse Tyson which was on Pivar\u0026rsquo;s website was a quote created by taking one piece out of context and fabricating another\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder that Tyson asked for Pivar to remove it.\nAndrea Bottaro summarizes the case with links to more sources about Pivar\u0026rsquo;s Stephen J. Gould claims at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb, and Timothy Sandefur weighs in with an evaluation of the legal issues at Positive Liberty, where he calls Pivar\u0026rsquo;s suit a case of \u0026ldquo;abus[ing] the legal process to try to intimidate and bully people for no good reason\u0026rdquo; and concludes that \u0026ldquo;Myers unquestionably has the right to call Pivar a crackpot, and we have the right to consider this lawsuit as proof of the fact.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (August 22, 2007): Ed Darrell at Millard Fillmore\u0026rsquo;s Bathtub has a nice article about how we determine what a \u0026ldquo;crackpot\u0026rdquo; is. Pivar seems to fit quite well.\nA commenter at Pharyngula has observed that Pivar\u0026rsquo;s attorney was just admitted to the New York Bar in 2005 and went to law school in the UK.\nUPDATE (August 24, 2007): Retired UCSD law professor Peter Irons (well versed in the law as it pertains to intelligent design) has written an excellent letter to Stuart Pivar which strongly recommends that Pivar withdraw his suit rather than quickly lose and become subject to monetary sanctions. Irons also says that he knew Gould from the 1950s until his death, and was his neighbor for many years, and that if Gould were alive today he\u0026rsquo;d probably have a viable defamation action against Pivar.\nUPDATE (August 29, 2007): Pivar has withdrawn his libel suit (see Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Pharyngula). But now his attorney, Michael Little, thinks he has a case against Peter Irons! Kudos to Pivar for doing the right thing.\nUPDATE (September 5, 2007): More entertainment regarding Michael Little may be found at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nJohn Pieret (2007-08-20):\nThe complaint looks a little odd and sloppy to me ... I am a lawyer and it looks less-than-stellar in its execution to me too. Another big hurdle for Pivar may be that his very boasting about being in tight with Gould and Gould's alleged soon-to-be-but-for-dying \"refutation of the fundamentalist Darwinian theory of evolution,\" may count towards making Pivar a \"public figure\" and require a showing of \"actual malice\" on PZ's part, a very hard standard to meet.I have some more to look at but will probably blog on it later tonight.\nReed A. Cartwright (2007-08-20):\nSafe Harbor may not work here because PZ is not a simple user of Seed's site. He has a contract with them, and they pay him as a contractor to write for their website.However, I believe the contracts that Seeds makes their bloggers sign also makes the bloggers solely responsible for such suits.\nLippard (2007-08-20):\nReed: My understanding is that Seed exercises no editorial control over the individual blogs, but merely provides hosting and shares advertising revenue.\nJohn Pieret (2007-08-21):\nI note that the alleged defamatory reference, \"a classic crackpot,\" appears in neither of them. PZ did call Pivar a \"classic crackpot\" in this post: Pseudoscience by press release.Seed can't escape liability by claiming not to have editorial control (which they could exercise by simply refusing to host PZ's blog). If they're smart, however, they will do a joint defense with PZ and pay for it. If they let PZ be bled dry by Pivar's strategic suit, they will lose whatever readership they have.\nLippard (2007-08-21):\nThe safe harbor I had in mind was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, \"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.\" That was successfully used by AOL in Sidney Blumenthal's lawsuit against defamation by Matt Drudge, even though AOL hosted his content and paid him for it. Perhaps some facts of the matter tie Seed and Myers more closely together, e.g., the fact that Seed occasionally suggests content for the bloggers to write about, or that Seed has some standardization of the format of the blog. But the fact that Myers is an independent contractor, rather than employee, would seem to me a point in favor of Seed's ability to use this argument.\nJohn Pieret (2007-08-21):\nI won't pretend to be an expert on that section or web law in general but a quick perusal seems to indicate that an \"interactive computer service\" is meant more in the sense of an ISP or (the old) AOL or an employer who provides access for business purposes other than disseminating opinion and news. Seed, I think, will have trouble showing that sort of detachment. It is even advertizing the recent meeting of the bloggers at their offices. Its relationship with the bloggers isn't simply giving someone access to the web; it selected and sought out people in the science field for its blogs, making it more a \"content provider\" than merely a service provider.I have posted a brief overview of the situation here.\nLippard (2007-08-21):\nJohn: You'd think so, but look at how broadly the safe harbor applied in Barrett v. Rosenthal--it applied to an individual, quoting another individual in a newsgroup posting. The facts there are different than this case--Myers wasn't quoting someone else--but it does show that the law has been held to apply far more broadly than to ISPs.\nBill (2007-08-21):\nI was surprised by the idea that calling someone a \"crackpot\" could be actionable since it seems to be in the nature of an opinion rather than a statement of fact. The complaint does cite a case, from the Mississippi Court of Appeals, in which this epithet was held to be defamatory, but I suspect that it is an isolated ruling, unless it held that calling a physician a \"crackpot\" is different from other cases in being comparable to calling him a \"quack\".\nJohn Pieret (2007-08-21):\nHeh. Lawyers live on making subtle distinctions. The key to these rulings (not that I've looked at them in any depth) is the notion of \"republication.\" Essentially, people who provide forums for others to discuss matters or who merely pass along the (clearly identified?) words of others are protected. Seed hasn't set up a site (like Blogger) where people can just create their own blogs by a free registration. I can't set up a blog on SB. That is control of the content much greater than I've seen in any of the case law I've looked at re the CDA.Interestingly, the comments to blog posts seem to fit the CDA standard much better than the blogs themselves. But all this is my impression based on a quick read of a few sources. It'd take a lot of research to give a really informed opinion. As to the status of \"crackpot\" as opinion, one important fact in the Mississippi case was that the potential defamer (the case merely held that the claim couldn't be dismissed on motion, not that it was actually defamation) was speaking to a person he knew to be a patient of the doctor and, combined with calling the doctor a \"quack\" (a much more specific claim about his competency), was sufficient to send the case to a jury.\nBlake Stacey (2007-08-21):\nNice commentary on the legal questions. Oh, and thanks for the link! :-) I'll be collecting URLs in that post as this matter unfolds, as I did for Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution.\nEd Darrell (2007-08-22):\nJeremy Bernstein, the physicist, wrote a fine article about crackpottery and crank science for The New Yorker some years back. Maybe he could be an expert witness? Or maybe Robert Park, who did a piece on bogus science for one of the education journals about four years ago.\nscott pilutik (2007-08-22):\nI posted some legal analysis on this case here. The suit is patently frivolous.\nNYC Legal (2007-08-22):\nWeb-law is an emerging field and takes it's lead from \"real-world\" law; as such Pivar and his LifeCode book may win in a court fight because PZ \u0026 Seed make no bones about being outrageous commentators if Pivar shows damages he could score big--I wish it was my case. By the way to see part of the theory Pivar promotes check out www.aninconvenienttheory.com\nLippard (2007-08-22):\nNYC Legal: What is the legal significance of P.Z. Myers being an \"outrageous commentator\"? Are you sure you're not Pivar's attorney? (How many NYC attorneys are there promoting/defending Pivar's work?)\nolvlzl (2007-08-23):\nSince I don't particulary like PZ or his cult or the kind of Jr. High discourse it consists of it's tempting to just watch, though I can't see any merit to the claims of libel. I am, however, entirely opposed to the use of this kind of incident to promote laws limiting peoples' right to sue. The greatest proponent of \"tort reform\" are the industries that want to kill, injure and cheat people with impunity. PZ Myers and those who enjoy using gaudy language to insult people having their wings clipped is a small price to pay for the right of the people to enjoy at least those rights reserved by our corrupt legal system for corporations and the ultra-rich.\nLippard (2007-08-23):\nI haven't seen anyone arguing for a limitation on people's right to sue in this case--though shifting to a \"loser pays winner's costs\" model is something I've frequently seen advocated in other contexts. I've also seen arguments from insurance companies for a cap on liability claims, which I agree is a bad idea--but I like the loser pays idea.\nEinzige (2007-08-23):\nPZ has a cult?\nolvlzl (2007-08-23):\nJim Lippard, I have read a number of comments implying that this suit is a waste of the court's time and public funds. While it might be found to be that the phrasing and tenor of the comments sounds like the press promotion of \"tort reform\". Pivar will be told if he has overstepped his rights to bring an action or if he has not proven his case within a preponderance of the evidence. Until then, he's within his rights to file, just as anyone else is. Having read his blog and seen the kind of comments he gets, yes, I'd say there's a PZ cult.\nLippard (2007-09-01):\nLooks like commenter \"NYC Legal\" (above) was Pivar's PR flack Matthew Rich, who was posting comments on blogs criticizing the now-withdrawn Pivar libel suit, linking to that Pivar-promoting site. Rich is the guy who sent out the press release that prompted Myers to re-post his review of Pivar's book and make his \"classic crackpot\" comment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/libel-lawsuit-against-science-blogger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStuart Pivar, an \u003ca href=\"http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2004/Hedberg/exhibition1.asp\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;eccentric collector and inventor,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-nysdce/case_no-1:2007cv07334/case_id-311649/\"\u003ehas filed a $15 million libel lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e in New York against P.Z. Myers of the Pharyngula blog and Seed Media Group, publisher of Seed magazine and owner of ScienceBlogs, for referring to him as \u0026ldquo;a classic crackpot\u0026rdquo; in reviews of his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLifecode\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe complaint identifies Pivar as \u0026ldquo;an industrialist, inventor, and scientist,\u0026rdquo; the founder and chairman of the board of Chem-tainer Industries, and co-founder (with Andy Warhol) and original funder of the New York Academy of Art, \u0026ldquo;a classical graduate school for painting and sculpture, whose current patron is H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales.\u0026rdquo;  It claims that Pivar regularly discussed his book with Stephen Jay Gould, who \u0026ldquo;was working on a refutation of the fundamentalist Darwinian theory of evolution.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe complaint claims that Myers\u0026rsquo; remarks led to Neil de Grasse Tyson withdrawing a review of the book and causing \u0026ldquo;considerable mental and emotional distress,\u0026rdquo; tortious interference with the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s business relationships as a \u0026ldquo;scientist and scientific editor,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;loss of book sales and diminished returns on ten years of funded scientific research in special damages\u0026rdquo; exceeding $5 million.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe three claims of the complaint are, first, for declaratory relief in removing defamatory statements from the web and an injunction to prevent further such statements; second, for $5 million in special damages from the \u0026ldquo;tortious interference with business relations\u0026rdquo;; and third, for $10 million in damages for defamation, emotional distress, and loss of reputation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeed Media Group may be able to have itself dismissed as a defendant on the libel claim via the safe harbor on online publication of defamatory statements by a user of a site, which has been successfully used as a defense by America Online (in Zeran v. AOL and Blumenthal v. Drudge and AOL) and ElectriCiti (in Aquino v. ElectriCiti).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect that Pivar will have a difficult time proving the claimed damages, as well as overcoming the truth defense to a defamation claim, but I\u0026rsquo;m curious to see if any lawyers (Timothy Sandefur?) have an opinion.  The complaint looks a little odd and sloppy to me\u0026ndash;it initially refers to \u0026ldquo;tortuous\u0026rdquo; interference rather than \u0026ldquo;tortious,\u0026rdquo; includes the odd paragraph about the Art Academy, and generally doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me to be a well-crafted case\u0026ndash;but I am not a lawyer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe text of the complaint may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/pivar-v-seed.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; reviews of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book may be found \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/lifecode_from_egg_to_embryo_by.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/lifecode.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother review of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book, authored by his friend Richard Gordon, may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/web/paper.php?doi=052099rg\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePivar\u0026rsquo;s claim that Stephen Jay Gould would not have signed the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Project Steve\u0026rdquo; statement \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/steves.html\"\u003eis discussed at CSI\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChristopher Mims \u003ca href=\"http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=pz_myers_scienceblogs_com_s_lead_blogger\u0026more=1\u0026amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;c=1\u0026tb=1\u0026amp;pb=1\"\u003ehas commented on the lawsuit at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific American\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, and Brandon Keim at Wired Science \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/pseudoscience-n.html\"\u003ehas a good summary of the dispute\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  I\u0026rsquo;ve just read through both of P.Z. Myers\u0026rsquo; blog post reviews again, and I note that the alleged defamatory reference, \u0026ldquo;a classic crackpot,\u0026rdquo; appears in neither of them.  In the earlier post, Myers says of Pivar\u0026rsquo;s book: \u0026ldquo;It seems no expense was spared getting it published, which is in contrast to the content, and is unusual for such flagrant crackpottery.\u0026rdquo;  The later post does not contain the word \u0026ldquo;crackpot.\u0026rdquo;  The post that Pivar is complaining about is another Myers post, titled \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/pseudoscience_by_press_release.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pseudoscience by press release\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e, where Pivar himself commented several times, including to write, \u0026ldquo;I will ignore your insulting and intemperate language and concentrate on the substantive issues.\u0026rdquo;  Apparently he changed his mind on that point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 21, 2007):  Blake Stacey \u003ca href=\"http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=242\"\u003ehas put together a nice chronological summary of who said what when, along with links to commentators\u003c/a\u003e.  He points out that the \u0026ldquo;review\u0026rdquo; by Neil de Grasse Tyson which was on Pivar\u0026rsquo;s website was a quote created by taking one piece out of context and fabricating another\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder that Tyson asked for Pivar to remove it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAndrea Bottaro \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/08/so_sue_me.html\"\u003esummarizes the case with links to more sources about Pivar\u0026rsquo;s Stephen J. Gould claims at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e, and Timothy Sandefur \u003ca href=\"http://positiveliberty.com/2007/08/pivar%e2%80%99s-libel-suit-against-pz-myers.html\"\u003eweighs in with an evaluation of the legal issues at Positive Liberty\u003c/a\u003e, where he calls Pivar\u0026rsquo;s suit a case of \u0026ldquo;abus[ing] the legal process to try to intimidate and bully people for no good reason\u0026rdquo; and concludes that \u0026ldquo;Myers unquestionably has the right to call Pivar a crackpot, and we have the right to consider this lawsuit as proof of the fact.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 22, 2007):  Ed Darrell at Millard Fillmore\u0026rsquo;s Bathtub \u003ca href=\"http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/p-z-myers-sued-for-libel-what-is-crackpot-science/\"\u003ehas a nice article about how we determine what a \u0026ldquo;crackpot\u0026rdquo; is\u003c/a\u003e.  Pivar seems to fit quite well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/no_comment.php#comment-540485\"\u003ecommenter at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e has observed that \u003ca href=\"https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorney/AttorneyDetails?attorneyId=5659096\"\u003ePivar\u0026rsquo;s attorney was just admitted to the New York Bar in 2005 and went to law school in the UK\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 24, 2007):  Retired UCSD law professor Peter Irons (\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/montana-law-review-symposium-on-dover.html\"\u003ewell versed in the law as it pertains to intelligent design\u003c/a\u003e) \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/epic_takedown_of_pivar.php\"\u003ehas written an excellent letter to Stuart Pivar\u003c/a\u003e which strongly recommends that Pivar withdraw his suit rather than quickly lose and become subject to monetary sanctions.  Irons also says that he knew Gould from the 1950s until his death, and was his neighbor for many years, and that if Gould were alive today he\u0026rsquo;d probably have a viable defamation action against Pivar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 29, 2007):  Pivar has withdrawn his libel suit (see \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/pivar_withdraws_lawsuit.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/the_inevitable_has_occurred.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e).  But now his attorney, Michael Little, thinks he has a case against Peter Irons!  Kudos to Pivar for doing the right thing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 5, 2007): More entertainment regarding Michael Little may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/09/littles_latest.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Libel lawsuit against Science Blogger P.Z. Myers"},{"content":"Apparently Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s adoptive father, Louis Rove, an oil geologist, was a gay man who was an avid fan of genital piercing, whose piercings were frequently pictured in Piercing Fans International Quarterly.\n(Via Stan Schwarz on the SKEPTIC list, who also reports that he personally met Louie Rove.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/karl-roves-adoptive-father-and-genital.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eApparently Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s adoptive father, Louis Rove, an oil geologist, was a gay man who was an avid fan of genital piercing, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bmezine.com/news/guest/20070818.html\"\u003ewhose piercings were frequently pictured in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePiercing Fans International Quarterly\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Stan Schwarz on the SKEPTIC list, who also reports that he personally met Louie Rove.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Karl Rove's adoptive father and genital piercing"},{"content":"The Bush administration, commenting on Congress\u0026rsquo; expansion of the Executive branch\u0026rsquo;s warrantless wiretapping powers without needing approval of the FISA Court, says that the legislation is \u0026ldquo;just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do.\u0026quot;\nConstitution? What Constitution?\n(Via Talking Points Memo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/bush-says-fisa-law-change-is-just.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Bush administration, commenting on Congress\u0026rsquo; expansion of the Executive branch\u0026rsquo;s warrantless wiretapping powers without needing approval of the FISA Court, says that the legislation is \u0026ldquo;just advisory.  The president can still do whatever he wants to do.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConstitution?  What Constitution?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/024639.php\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush says FISA law change is just advisory"},{"content":"This is from back in February of 2006, but A Few Things Ill Considered has a nice list of statements from scientific organizations endorsing anthropogenic global warming that includes NASA\u0026rsquo;s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and, perhaps most interestingly, British Petroleum, the Shell Group, and, in the comments, ExxonMobil. A number of the links are broken at this point, but I was able to find numerous statements about the reality of anthropogenic global warming on the Shell web pages with a Google search for \u0026ldquo;global warming site:shell.com\u0026rdquo;.\nScience isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of popular vote, but when a scientific consensus is established it certainly puts the burden of proof on the challenger.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/consensus-for-anthropogenic-global.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is from back in February of 2006, but A Few Things Ill Considered \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/02/global-warming-is-just-hoax.php\"\u003ehas a nice list of statements from scientific organizations endorsing anthropogenic global warming\u003c/a\u003e that includes NASA\u0026rsquo;s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and, perhaps most interestingly, British Petroleum, the Shell Group, and, in the comments, ExxonMobil.  A number of the links are broken at this point, but I was able to find numerous statements about the reality of anthropogenic global warming on the Shell web pages with a Google search for \u0026ldquo;global warming site:shell.com\u0026rdquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScience isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of popular vote, but when a scientific consensus is established it certainly puts the burden of proof on the challenger.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The consensus for anthropogenic global warming"},{"content":"Crooks and Liars has a video clip of Melanie Morgan and Naomi Wolf appearing on Chris Matthews\u0026rsquo; Hardball to discuss Cheney\u0026rsquo;s position of 1994 about why invading and occupying Iraq was a bad idea. Morgan immediately descends into dissembling, claiming that 9/11 changed everything, when in fact it changed nothing about Iraq. Naomi Wolf calls her on it, and correctly describes how the Bush administration has engaged in deception and lies to get us into the war and to seize unconstitutional powers for the Executive branch. Morgan\u0026rsquo;s response to Wolf: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to look super in a burqa.\u0026quot;\nMorgan seems to think that radical Islamic fundamentalists are about to take control of the United States, and that invading Iraq (one of the few countries in the Middle East which actually had a secular government) and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic insurgents is an essential step to prevent it from happening. That\u0026rsquo;s wildly insane.\nThe Cheney of 1994 was exactly right in his predictions of what would happen if we invaded Iraq, and no one has yet explained what changed his mind. September 11 is not an answer to that question. I think part of the answer can be found in James Mann\u0026rsquo;s Rise of the Vulcans\u0026ndash;groupthink from the Project for a New American Century crowd infected him, and he thought he could be at the center of power of a new American empire controlling the Middle East. But they were completely wrong about what would happen.\n(Via Talking Points Memo.)\nJohn Lynch (2007-08-19):\nJim,Agreed.Morgan needs to read Imperial Hubris to gain some insight as to what the so-called \"Islamofascists\" really want. (Hint: It's not an Islamic USA.)\nHume's Ghost (2007-08-19):\nCheney's not the only one who changed his tune.\"A new regime [in Iraq] would have become the United States' responsibility. Conceivably, this would have led the United States into a more or less permanent occupation of a country that could not govern itself, but where the rule of a foreign occupier would be increasingly resented.\" - Paul Wolfowitz, explaining in 1997 why the U.S. did not seek regime change during the Gulf WarThat's also taken from Rise of the Vulcans.\nHume's Ghost (2007-08-19):\nAlso,I'd have to recheck my copy of Rise of the Vulcans, but I suspect that Cheney (and Wolfowitz) were being a bit disengenuous ... I thought I remembered both of them being in favor of going into Baghdad but getting overruled by the military, which is partly what led to Cheney's resentment of Powell. Or something like that ... I don't know, it's been a good while since I read that book.\nshrimplate (2007-08-19):\nMorgan also needs to read The Handmaid's Tale because that's what the PNAC has planned for people without Y-chromosomes.\nLippard (2007-08-19):\ndarwinoid: Thanks for the reference, there's a Wikipedia summary of Imperial Hubris.Hume's Ghost: Powell even opposed military force to take back Kuwait (Mann, pp. 184-184). Cheney and Wolfowitz developed the plan that was used (p. 187). Wolfowitz did endorse the decision not to go into Baghdad *after the fact* (Mann, pp. 190-191), but he opposed it at the time (p. 191). Powell was the main force in stopping at Kuwait, which Cheney did agree with (or at least not object to) at the time (Mann, p. 192). Wolfowitz wanted *at least* a delay in the announcement of a cease-fire, in hopes of causing an internal regime change in Iraq (Mann, p. 192).By 1997, Wolfowitz was hot for invasion of Iraq and was publishing articles calling for Saddam Hussein's overthrow by force (Mann, pp. 235-237). On September 11, 2001, Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby (presumably reflecting Cheney's view) wanted to attack Iraq (Mann, pp. 300-302); I've seen elsewhere (but don't see it in Mann at the moment) that Rumsfeld was calling for an attack of Iraq on September 11 as well.My quick review of Mann's book didn't yield a statement about Cheney resenting Powell and Schwartzkopf stopping the war at Kuwait, though it does say that about Wolfowitz.\nVinny (2007-08-19):\nEven if you buy the idea (which I do not) that the world changed in some profound way such that the risks that were not justified in 1994 had become justified in 2003, it is deeply disturbing that Cheney lied about the existence of those risks in 2003 and failed to plan for any of the eventualities that he had so clearly foreseen a decade earlier.Almost as disturbing is the fact that Melanie Morgan views any American's frustration with such duplicity and incompetence as nothing more than political \"gotcha.\"\nHume's Ghost (2007-08-20):\nI'll browse the book when I get a chance to see if I can find anything about the animosity between Cheney and Powell.I may have been mixing my memory of that discussion from Woodward's books about the Bush administration.Incidentally, I'm fairly certain that Woodward mentions Rumsfield wanting to attack Iraq after 9/11 in Plan of Attack.\nHume's Ghost (2008-01-16):\nI never got around to re-browsing Rise of the Vulcans, but on pg. 182of The Fall of the House of Bush, Craig Unger notes that former Bush 41 speechwriter Victor Gold asserted that Cheney wanted to overthrow Saddam during the Gulf War. The endnote given cites Gold's Invasion of the Party Snatchers which I've been meaning to read.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/melanie-morgan-vs-naomi-wolf.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCrooks and Liars has \u003ca href=\"http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/17/melanie-morgan-youre-going-to-look-super-in-a-burka/\"\u003ea video clip of Melanie Morgan and Naomi Wolf appearing on Chris Matthews\u0026rsquo; Hardball\u003c/a\u003e to discuss \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/dick-cheney-on-why-not-to-invade-iraq.html\"\u003eCheney\u0026rsquo;s position of 1994\u003c/a\u003e about why invading and occupying Iraq was a bad idea.  Morgan immediately descends into dissembling, claiming that 9/11 changed everything, when in fact it changed nothing about Iraq.  Naomi Wolf calls her on it, and correctly describes how the Bush administration has engaged in deception and lies to get us into the war and to seize unconstitutional powers for the Executive branch.  Morgan\u0026rsquo;s response to Wolf:  \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to look super in a burqa.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMorgan seems to think that radical Islamic fundamentalists are about to take control of the United States, and that invading Iraq (one of the few countries in the Middle East which actually had a secular government) and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic insurgents is an essential step to prevent it from happening.  That\u0026rsquo;s wildly insane.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Cheney of 1994 was exactly right in his predictions of what would happen if we invaded Iraq, and no one has yet explained what changed his mind.  September 11 is not an answer to that question.  I think part of the answer can be found in James Mann\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRise of the Vulcans\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;groupthink from the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century\"\u003eProject for a New American Century\u003c/a\u003e crowd infected him, and he thought he could be at the center of power of a new American empire controlling the Middle East.  But they were completely wrong about what would happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016773.php\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Melanie Morgan vs. Naomi Wolf"},{"content":"Julian Sanchez points out the staggering misrepresentation by those arguing that the recent increase in wiretapping power amounts to nothing more than an update of FISA procedures to reflect current technology.\n(Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/lying-at-weekly-standard.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJulian Sanchez \u003ca href=\"http://juliansanchez.com/notes/archives/2007/08/the_fisa_amendment_totally_def.php\"\u003epoints out the staggering misrepresentation\u003c/a\u003e by those arguing that the \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/congress-approves-expansion-of.html\"\u003erecent increase in wiretapping power\u003c/a\u003e amounts to nothing more than an update of FISA procedures to reflect current technology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Tim Lee at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042688.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lying at the Weekly Standard"},{"content":"At Talking Points Memo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/top-six-lies-of-alberto-gonzales.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003920.php\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The top six lies of Alberto Gonzales"},{"content":"Thanks to Wikiscanner, here are a few of the anonymous Wikipedia edits made by people at Answers in Genesis:\nNovember 18, 2005: Changed a sentence in the entry on \u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;according to Biblical myth, there was no death in the Garden of Eden\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;according to the Biblical record, there was no death in the Garden of Eden.\u0026quot;\nDecember 5, 2006: Vandalized the entry on \u0026ldquo;Football\u0026rdquo; to add the words \u0026ldquo;Football sucks\u0026rdquo;.\nDecember 28, 2006: Added an entry for www.articledirect.com to the entry on \u0026ldquo;Free content.\u0026rdquo; Does an AiG employee have another business on the side?\nMay 24, 2007: Modifies a sentence in the entry on \u0026ldquo;Creation Museum\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;This museum portrays the Earth\u0026rsquo;s history interpreting the genesis literally\u0026rdquo; (ick!) to \u0026ldquo;The museum presents the account of man\u0026rsquo;s origins and early history according to the Book of Genesis.\u0026quot;\nThere are several other edits of \u0026ldquo;Creation Museum\u0026rdquo; and I didn\u0026rsquo;t review them all, but most were reasonable improvements to the article, with the occasional biased statement that propounded creationism as true.\nHistorical Comments Sheldon (2007-08-18):\n\"Vandalized the entry on \"Football\" to add the words \"Football sucks\".\"I am confused by this. Why is AiG interested at all in the portrayal of football? This would actually be a fair edit as Wiki editors should supposedly strive for non-partiality.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/answers-in-genesis-wikipedia-edits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks to \u003ca href=\"/2007/08/wikiscanner.html\"\u003eWikiscanner\u003c/a\u003e, here are a few of the anonymous Wikipedia edits made by people at Answers in Genesis:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev\u0026oldid=28699512\"\u003eNovember 18, 2005\u003c/a\u003e:  Changed a sentence in the entry on \u0026ldquo;Answers in Genesis\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;according to Biblical myth, there was no death in the Garden of Eden\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;according to the Biblical record, there was no death in the Garden of Eden.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev\u0026oldid=91375271\"\u003eDecember 5, 2006\u003c/a\u003e:  Vandalized the entry on \u0026ldquo;Football\u0026rdquo; to add the words \u0026ldquo;Football sucks\u0026rdquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev\u0026oldid=96969469\"\u003eDecember 28, 2006\u003c/a\u003e:  Added an entry for \u003ca href=\"https://www.articledirect.com\"\u003ewww.articledirect.com\u003c/a\u003e to the entry on \u0026ldquo;Free content.\u0026rdquo;  Does an AiG employee have another business on the side?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev\u0026oldid=133273822\"\u003eMay 24, 2007\u003c/a\u003e:  Modifies a sentence in the entry on \u0026ldquo;Creation Museum\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;This museum portrays the Earth\u0026rsquo;s history interpreting the genesis literally\u0026rdquo; (ick!) to \u0026ldquo;The museum presents the account of man\u0026rsquo;s origins and early history according to the Book of Genesis.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are several other edits of \u0026ldquo;Creation Museum\u0026rdquo; and I didn\u0026rsquo;t review them all, but most were reasonable improvements to the article, with the occasional biased statement that propounded creationism as true.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis Wikipedia edits"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;Or is it Peruvians? Or perhaps Peruvian Roman Catholics?\nFrom Yahoo News:\nHundreds had gathered in the pews of the San Clemente church on Wednesday — the day Roman Catholics celebrate the Virgin Mary\u0026rsquo;s rise into heaven — for a special Mass marking one month since the death of a Pisco man.\nWith minutes left in the Mass, the church\u0026rsquo;s ceiling began to break apart. The shaking lasted for an agonizing two minutes, burying 200 people, according to the town\u0026rsquo;s mayor. On Thursday, only two stone columns and the church\u0026rsquo;s dome rose from a giant pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/god-hates-roman-catholics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;Or is it Peruvians? Or perhaps Peruvian Roman Catholics?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070817/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/peru_quake\"\u003eYahoo News\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHundreds had gathered in the pews of the San Clemente church on Wednesday — the day Roman Catholics celebrate the Virgin Mary\u0026rsquo;s rise into heaven — for a special Mass marking one month since the death of a Pisco man.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWith minutes left in the Mass, the church\u0026rsquo;s ceiling began to break apart. The shaking lasted for an agonizing two minutes, burying 200 people, according to the town\u0026rsquo;s mayor. On Thursday, only two stone columns and the church\u0026rsquo;s dome rose from a giant pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"God Hates Roman Catholics?"},{"content":"Tonight I attended the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s screening of the HBO documentary \u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative,\u0026quot; a biography of Barry Goldwater produced by his granddaughter, CC Goldwater, who was in attendance along with Barry Goldwater Jr. The audience was a mix of people who still call themselves conservative, libertarians, and even a few liberals. (Gary Peter Klahr sat directly behind me, and his question in the Q\u0026amp;A session was what Goldwater would have thought of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s power grab and war in Iraq. Barry Goldwater Jr.\u0026rsquo;s answer was that his father disliked foreign entanglements and supported the Constitution.)\nThe film features footage and photographs taken by Barry Goldwater himself\u0026ndash;the film notes that he always had a camera in his hand, and at least three books of his photographs have been published. He was born in Arizona prior to its statehood, to a Jewish father and an Episcopalian mother\u0026ndash;which led to one quip from Goldwater reported by Robert MacNeil in the movie: \u0026ldquo;He would say things like, \u0026lsquo;I went to a golf club where they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let Jews play, and I said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m only half Jewish. Can I play nine holes?\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\nThe movie features interviews with people ranging from George Will, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor to Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Al Franken, Julian Bond, and Hillary Clinton. Also featured is the exceedingly evil Jack Valenti.\nThe film covers Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s life in Arizona, including his mother teaching him to shoot guns, his coming home from the University of Arizona to run the family store in Phoenix so his smarter older brother could stay at Stanford, his love of ham radio and flying airplanes (he would hear on the radio of medical emergencies among the Hopi Indians and personally deliver medicine from Phoenix\u0026ndash;and this during his political career). He was a very early runner of the Colorado River (in 1940 using wooden dories\u0026ndash;when fewer than 100 people had run the river; Goldwater was #73). He ran the river with camera equipment, making a film which he traveled about Arizona to show, which made him well-known before running for office. He won his first election to the Phoenix City Council, and went straight from the City Council to the U.S. Senate.\nIn his later life, he was outspoken in his support for a woman\u0026rsquo;s right to abortion, for gays to serve in the military, and for the religious right to stop pushing their religious views into politics. The film reveals that he supported his daughter obtaining an abortion before Roe v. Wade, and that he has a gay grandson. Several of the more liberal interviewees say that they thought Goldwater became liberal later in life (and some in the audience seemed to have a similar view), but Goldwater himself is shown making a statement that preempts this claim, back in 1963\u0026ndash;that he is a conservative, but that at some time in the future people will call his views liberal.\nHe was a supporter of individual liberty who wanted the government\u0026rsquo;s role in private life minimized across the board, on both economic and social issues\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t he who changed, but the political environment that changed.\nI recommend the movie\u0026ndash;it is well done, it fairly points out his foibles and flaws as well as his strengths. It is sad that there are virtually no politicians today who are as forthright, honest, and outspoken about their views\u0026ndash;who are as genuine as he was. We need more people in the public sphere who speak out with integrity and honesty, rather than with dissembling and spin.\nUPDATE (August 17, 2007): I glossed over Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s negatives in my last paragraph, but the film doesn\u0026rsquo;t. It reports on how he lost the 1964 election in the biggest landslide in history, and why\u0026ndash;including his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (though he supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, supported the Arizona NAACP, and helped desegregate the Arizona National Guard), his remarks about the use of atomic weapons for defoliation in Vietnam, and his remark about sawing off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and letting it float away. LBJ\u0026rsquo;s political ad graphically depicting the latter remark and his famous \u0026ldquo;Daisy\u0026rdquo; mushroom cloud ad are shown in the film. Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s reaction to the latter is reported as saying that if he thought that accurately depicted what he would do, \u0026ldquo;I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t vote for me either.\u0026quot;\nA few other points of interest in the film: Goldwater was a friend of John F. Kennedy, and they were looking forward to running against each other in the 1964 election, flying from city to city on the same plane together to campaign against each other face to face. That would have been an interesting match up. (I should note that my opinion of JFK is not as positive as the general public\u0026rsquo;s view, after having read how he made use of the CIA. He was one of the worst abusers of the CIA for interventions in attempt to overthrow the governments of other countries who ever sat in the White House.)\nBarry Goldwater Jr. was a long-time friend of Nixon White House counsel John Dean, and Dean consulted with Goldwater Sr. before testifying in front of the Senate about Watergate. Goldwater told him to go ahead and nail Nixon, because Nixon was a liar.\nDuring Watergate, Goldwater, whose wife had decided to remain in Arizona, spent much of his time in D.C. at the home of Lt. Gen. William W. Quinn and his wife Bette. The Quinn\u0026rsquo;s daughter Sally was a journalist engaged to Ben Bradlee, publisher of the Washington Post. Bradlee reports that Goldwater told him that he thought Nixon was going to resign, but not to publish a story about it because if he did, Nixon was so stubborn that he\u0026rsquo;d then refuse to do it.\nThe Wikipedia page on Goldwater is quite comprehensive.\nUPDATE (August 18, 2007): Apparently the golf story is apocryphal. The discussion page on Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s Wikipedia entry says \u0026ldquo;In his autobiography, \u0026lsquo;Goldwater,\u0026rsquo; BG attributes this joke to his brother Bob, speaking about HIS brother Barry at \u0026lsquo;a golf pro tournament near Los Angeles.\u0026rsquo; B. Goldwater adds, \u0026lsquo;The story got a big laugh, but the incident never occurred.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/mr-conservative.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTonight I attended the Goldwater Institute\u0026rsquo;s screening of the HBO documentary \u003ca href=\"http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/mrconservative/synopsis.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mr. Conservative,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a biography of Barry Goldwater produced by his granddaughter, CC Goldwater, who was in attendance along with Barry Goldwater Jr.  The audience was a mix of people who still call themselves conservative, libertarians, and even a few liberals.  (\u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2002-07-04/news/old-glory/\"\u003eGary Peter Klahr\u003c/a\u003e sat directly behind me, and his question in the Q\u0026amp;A session was what Goldwater would have thought of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s power grab and war in Iraq.  Barry Goldwater Jr.\u0026rsquo;s answer was that his father disliked foreign entanglements and supported the Constitution.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe film features footage and \u003ca href=\"http://www.barrygoldwaterphotographs.com/\"\u003ephotographs taken by Barry Goldwater himself\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;the film notes that he always had a camera in his hand, and at least three books of his photographs have been published.  He was born in Arizona prior to its statehood, to a Jewish father and an Episcopalian mother\u0026ndash;which led to one quip from Goldwater reported by Robert MacNeil in the movie:  \u0026ldquo;He would say things like, \u0026lsquo;I  went to a golf club where they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let Jews play, and I said,  \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m only half Jewish.  Can I play nine holes?\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe movie features interviews with people ranging from George Will, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor to Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Al Franken, Julian Bond, and Hillary Clinton.  Also featured is the exceedingly evil Jack Valenti.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe film covers Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s life in Arizona, including his mother teaching him to shoot guns, his coming home from the University of Arizona to run the family store in Phoenix so his smarter older brother could stay at Stanford, his love of ham radio and flying airplanes (he would hear on the radio of medical emergencies among the Hopi Indians and personally deliver medicine from Phoenix\u0026ndash;and this during his political career).  He was a very early runner of the Colorado River (in 1940 using wooden dories\u0026ndash;when fewer than 100 people had run the river; Goldwater was #73).  He ran the river with camera equipment, making a film which he traveled about Arizona to show, which made him well-known before running for office.  He won his first election to the Phoenix City Council, and went straight from the City Council to the U.S. Senate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn his later life, he was outspoken in his support for a woman\u0026rsquo;s right to abortion, for gays to serve in the military, and for the religious right to stop pushing their religious views into politics.  The film reveals that he supported his daughter obtaining an abortion before \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRoe v. Wade\u003c/span\u003e, and that he has a gay grandson.  Several of the more liberal interviewees say that they thought Goldwater became liberal later in life (and some in the audience seemed to have a similar view), but Goldwater himself is shown making a statement that preempts this claim, back in 1963\u0026ndash;that he is a conservative, but that at some time in the future people will call his views liberal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe was a supporter of individual liberty who wanted the government\u0026rsquo;s role in private life minimized across the board, on both economic and social issues\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t he who changed, but the political environment that changed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recommend the movie\u0026ndash;it is well done, it fairly points out his foibles and flaws as well as his strengths.  It is sad that there are virtually no politicians today who are as forthright, honest, and outspoken about their views\u0026ndash;who are as genuine as he was.  We need more people in the public sphere who speak out with integrity and honesty, rather than with dissembling and spin.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 17, 2007):  I glossed over Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s negatives in my last paragraph, but the film doesn\u0026rsquo;t.  It reports on how he lost the 1964 election in the biggest landslide in history, and why\u0026ndash;including his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (though he supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, supported the Arizona NAACP, and helped desegregate the Arizona National Guard), his remarks about the use of atomic weapons for defoliation in Vietnam, and his remark about sawing off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and letting it float away.  LBJ\u0026rsquo;s political ad graphically depicting the latter remark and his famous \u0026ldquo;Daisy\u0026rdquo; mushroom cloud ad are shown in the film.  Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s reaction to the latter is reported as saying that if he thought that accurately depicted what he would do, \u0026ldquo;I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t vote for me either.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few other points of interest in the film:  Goldwater was a friend of John F. Kennedy, and they were looking forward to running against each other in the 1964 election, flying from city to city on the same plane together to campaign against each other face to face.  That would have been an interesting match up.  (I should note that my opinion of JFK is not as positive as the general public\u0026rsquo;s view, after having read how he made use of the CIA.  He was one of the worst abusers of the CIA for interventions in attempt to overthrow the governments of other countries who ever sat in the White House.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBarry Goldwater Jr. was a long-time friend of Nixon White House counsel John Dean, and Dean consulted with Goldwater Sr. before testifying in front of the Senate about Watergate. Goldwater told him to go ahead and nail Nixon, because Nixon was a liar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDuring Watergate, Goldwater, whose wife had decided to remain in Arizona, spent much of his time in D.C. at the home of Lt. Gen. William W. Quinn and his wife Bette.  The Quinn\u0026rsquo;s daughter Sally was a journalist engaged to Ben Bradlee, publisher of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e.  Bradlee reports that Goldwater told him that he thought Nixon was going to resign, but not to publish a story about it because if he did, Nixon was so stubborn that he\u0026rsquo;d then refuse to do it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Wikipedia page on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater\"\u003eGoldwater\u003c/a\u003e is quite comprehensive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 18, 2007):  Apparently the golf story is apocryphal.  The discussion page on Goldwater\u0026rsquo;s Wikipedia entry says \u0026ldquo;In his autobiography, \u0026lsquo;Goldwater,\u0026rsquo; BG attributes this joke to his brother Bob, speaking about HIS brother Barry at \u0026lsquo;a golf pro tournament near Los Angeles.\u0026rsquo; B. Goldwater adds, \u0026lsquo;The story got a big laugh, but the incident never occurred.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mr. Conservative"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier has posted all five parts of his interview with Transportation Security Administration head Kip Hawley: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/bruce-schneier-interviews-kip-hawley.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier has posted all five parts of his interview with Transportation Security Administration head Kip Hawley:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/conversation_wi_4.html\"\u003ePart 1\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/conversation_wi.html\"\u003ePart 2\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/conversation_wi_5.html\"\u003ePart 3\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/conversation_wi_3.html\"\u003ePart 4\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/conversation_wi_2.html\"\u003ePart 5\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bruce Schneier interviews Kip Hawley"},{"content":"Virgil Griffith has put together a fascinating data-mining tool that compares anonymous Wikipedia edits to WHOIS records for IP addresses, to allow users to examine edits made by people at particular organizations. The tool can be used to examine edits by people at the NSA (Ft. Meade), the CIA, the Church of Scientology, Bob Jones University, the Environmental Protection Agency, Diebold, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Raytheon, The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, the WorldNetDaily, Fox News, the Republican and Democratic Party, the Vatican, among many others. The organizations listed here are all listed on the side of the tool\u0026rsquo;s main search page, but there are many more in the drop-down list of user-submitted organizations, and you can specify organization names and locations.\nWired magazine has assembled a list of some of the more interesting edits, such as someone at Diebold deleting references to security flaws in electronic voting machines and someone at the CIA editing song lyrics from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.\nGriffith, who built Wikiscanner while working at the Santa Fe Institute, begins graduate work in September at Caltech on theoretical neurobiology and artificial life under Christoph Koch and Chris Adami.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s wonderful when data mining can be used for good purposes.\n(Hat tip to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/wikiscanner.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://virgil.gr/\"\u003eVirgil\u003c/a\u003e Griffith \u003ca href=\"http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/\"\u003ehas put together a fascinating data-mining tool\u003c/a\u003e that compares anonymous Wikipedia edits to WHOIS records for IP addresses, to allow users to examine edits made by people at particular organizations.  The tool can be used to examine edits by people at the NSA (Ft. Meade), the CIA, the Church of Scientology, Bob Jones University, the Environmental Protection Agency, Diebold, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Raytheon, The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, the WorldNetDaily, Fox News, the Republican and Democratic Party, the Vatican, among many others.  The organizations listed here are all listed on the side of the tool\u0026rsquo;s main search page, but there are many more in the drop-down list of user-submitted organizations, and you can specify organization names and locations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWired magazine \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker\"\u003ehas assembled a list of some of the more interesting edits\u003c/a\u003e, such as someone at Diebold deleting references to security flaws in electronic voting machines and someone at the CIA editing song lyrics from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGriffith, who built Wikiscanner while working at the Santa Fe Institute, begins graduate work in September at Caltech on theoretical neurobiology and artificial life under Christoph Koch and Chris Adami.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s wonderful when data mining can be used for good purposes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wikiscanner"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on last week\u0026rsquo;s meeting of the American Bar Association, at which there was a panel of judges who have been recipients of threats after controversial unions. In every case, the threats came when decisions were made that upset the religious right.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/religious-right-threatens-judges.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on last week\u0026rsquo;s meeting of the American Bar Association, at which there was a panel of judges who have been recipients of threats after controversial unions.  In every case, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/threats_to_federal_judges.php\"\u003ethe threats came when decisions were made that upset the religious right\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Religious right threatens judges"},{"content":"A major gap in Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s A Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday) is that it contains not a word about the 2002 coup in Venezuela against Hugo Chavez, which lasted 47 hours. The U.S. has denied any involvement, and an Office of the Inspector General investigation started at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd came to the same conclusion. Press reports published in the U.S. about Hugo Chavez\u0026rsquo;s recent referral to the coup as \u0026ldquo;attacks\u0026rdquo; by the U.S. put the word in quotes and gave it no credence. But the foreign press, on the other hand, documents facts which make it sound just like many other events described in Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book where the CIA gave support to coup attempts in Central and South America, and the CIA\u0026rsquo;s own reports in advance of and during the coup are remarkably detailed predictions of what was going to happen.\nThe incidents prior to the coup were growing protests against Chavez\u0026rsquo;s heavy-handed approach to politics (which he has unfortunately continued since regaining power), which culminated in violence and gunfire between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez protestors on April 11, 2002. There are conflicting reports about who was responsible (the pro-Chavez protesters say they were shooting back at snipers who were shooting at them, the anti-Chavez protesters say they were fired upon unprovoked), but the result was that military leaders seized Chavez, threw him in jail, and asked for his resignation on the condition that he would be exiled, otherwise he would be tried for the deaths of the protesters. Chavez said that he would resign only under the condition that his vice president would succeed him and the government would continue. The military leaders publicly proclaimed that Chavez had resigned, and put businessman Pedro Carmona, not Chavez\u0026rsquo;s vice president, in charge. Carmona and other coup leaders had visited the White House on multiple occasions in months and weeks prior to the coup to visit Special Envoy to Latin America Otto Reich, and the U.S. was the only foreign government to immediately recognize the authority of the new leader.\nBut Carmona began his short term of office by abolishing the Venezuelan constitution, dissolving the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, and even changing the name of the country. This did not make the Venezuelan public or the military happy, and Carmona was quickly forced to resign in favor of power being briefly turned over to vice president Diosdado Cabello until Chavez was returned to office a few hours later. The total duration of the alternative government was about 47 hours. Carmona and his team went into exile.\nIt certainly looks like the CIA was involved. Otto Reich founded the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean at the State Department, which engaged in covert propaganda activities before being declared illegal by the U.S. Comptroller General in 1987 for engaging in \u0026ldquo;prohibited, covert propaganda activities, beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities.\u0026rdquo; Reich was also involved with Col. Oliver North during the Iran-contra scandal. Both of these appear to indicate Reich being directly involved with the CIA.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/cia-in-venezuela-in-2002.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA major gap in Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e (2007, Doubleday) is that it contains not a word about the 2002 coup in Venezuela against Hugo Chavez, which lasted 47 hours.  The U.S. has denied any involvement, and an Office of the Inspector General investigation started at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd came to the same conclusion.  \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070811/bs_nm/venezuela_oilprice_dc_1;_ylt=AsIr8ELHTuSGA7ZwdC3Si_YE1vAI\"\u003ePress reports published in the U.S.\u003c/a\u003e about Hugo Chavez\u0026rsquo;s recent referral to the coup as \u0026ldquo;attacks\u0026rdquo; by the U.S. put the word in quotes and gave it no credence.  But the foreign press, on the other hand, \u003ca href=\"http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html\"\u003edocuments facts\u003c/a\u003e which make it sound just like many other events described in Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book where the CIA gave support to coup attempts in Central and South America, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.venezuelafoia.info/english.html\"\u003ethe CIA\u0026rsquo;s own reports in advance of and during the coup\u003c/a\u003e are remarkably detailed predictions of what was going to happen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe incidents prior to the coup were growing protests against Chavez\u0026rsquo;s heavy-handed approach to politics (which he has unfortunately continued since regaining power), which culminated in violence and gunfire between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez protestors on April 11, 2002.  There are conflicting reports about who was responsible (the pro-Chavez protesters say they were shooting back at snipers who were shooting at them, the anti-Chavez protesters say they were fired upon unprovoked), but the result was that military leaders seized Chavez, threw him in jail, and asked for his resignation on the condition that he would be exiled, otherwise he would be tried for the deaths of the protesters.  Chavez said that he would resign only under the condition that his vice president would succeed him and the government would continue.  The military leaders publicly proclaimed that Chavez had resigned, and put businessman Pedro Carmona, not Chavez\u0026rsquo;s vice president, in charge.  Carmona and other coup leaders had visited the White House on multiple occasions in months and weeks prior to the coup to visit Special Envoy to Latin America \u003ca href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/\"\u003eOtto Reich\u003c/a\u003e, and the U.S. was the only foreign government to immediately recognize the authority of the new leader.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut Carmona began his short term of office by abolishing the Venezuelan constitution, dissolving the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, and even changing the name of the country.  This did not make the Venezuelan public or the military happy, and Carmona was quickly forced to resign in favor of power being briefly turned over to vice president Diosdado Cabello until Chavez was returned to office a few hours later.  The total duration of the alternative government was about 47 hours.  Carmona and his team went into exile.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt certainly looks like the CIA was involved.  Otto Reich founded\u003ca href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/\"\u003e the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean at the State Department\u003c/a\u003e, which engaged in covert propaganda activities before being declared illegal by the U.S. Comptroller General in 1987 for engaging in \u0026ldquo;prohibited, covert propaganda activities, beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities.\u0026rdquo;  Reich was also involved with Col. Oliver North during the Iran-contra scandal.  Both of these appear to indicate Reich being directly involved with the CIA.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The CIA in Venezuela in 2002"},{"content":"From Robert Novak (ick, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t change the facts here) via Distributed Republic:\nWith the midnight hour approaching on Saturday, Aug. 4, near the end of a marathon session, Democratic and Republican leaders alike wanted to pass the defense appropriations bill quickly and start their summer recess. But Republican Rep. Jeff Flake\u0026rsquo;s stubborn adherence to principle forced an hour-long delay that revealed unpleasant realities about Congress. Flake insisted on debating the most egregious of the 1,300 earmarks placed in the defense money bill by individual House members that authorize spending in their districts. Defending every such earmark was the chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee: Democratic Rep. John Murtha, unsmiling and unresponsive to questions posed on the House floor by Flake. Murtha is called \u0026ldquo;King Corruption\u0026rdquo; by Republican reformers, but what happened after midnight on Aug. 5 is not a party matter. Democrats and Republicans, as always, locked arms to support every earmark. It makes no difference that at least seven House members are under investigation by the Justice Department. A bipartisan majority insists on sending taxpayers\u0026rsquo; money to companies in their districts without competitive bidding or public review. Claims of newly established transparency were undermined by the late-night follies. Flake, who ran a Phoenix think tank, the Goldwater Institute, before coming to Congress in 2001, is immensely unpopular on both sides of the aisle for forcing votes on his colleagues\u0026rsquo; pork. He burnished that reputation by prolonging the marathon Saturday session and challenging selected earmarks. What ensued showed the sham of earmark \u0026ldquo;reform.\u0026rdquo; With debate on each earmark limited to five minutes per pro and con, and roll calls also pressed into five minutes, the House was mainly interested in finishing up and defeating Flake with huge bipartisan majorities. The mood of annoyance with Flake was personified by the 17-term Murtha, who as subcommittee chairman defended and retained every earmark (including notorious infusions of cash to his Johnstown, Pa., district). Murtha is on CREW\u0026rsquo;s list of the most corrupt Congressmen (as \u0026ldquo;one to watch\u0026rdquo;) and has a history of working with Republicans in order to block fraud investigations and prevent lobbying reform. I observed last November that it looked like the Democrats were off to a poor start on reforming Congress.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-08-14):\nWhere's Penguin to call us a bunch of Liberals, now?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/congressional-earmark-reform-is-sham.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom Robert Novak (ick, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t change the facts here) via \u003ca href=\"http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2007/08/13/more-things-change\"\u003eDistributed Republic\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e \u003cp\u003e With the midnight hour approaching on Saturday, Aug. 4, near the end of a marathon session, Democratic and Republican leaders alike wanted to pass the defense appropriations bill quickly and start their summer recess. But Republican Rep. \u003ca href=\"http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/f000444/\"\u003eJeff Flake\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s stubborn adherence to principle forced an hour-long delay that revealed unpleasant realities about Congress. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Flake insisted on debating the most egregious of the 1,300 earmarks placed in the defense money bill by individual House members that authorize spending in their districts. Defending every such earmark was the chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee: Democratic Rep. \u003ca href=\"http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/m001120/\"\u003eJohn Murtha\u003c/a\u003e, unsmiling and unresponsive to questions posed on the House floor by Flake. Murtha is called \u0026ldquo;King Corruption\u0026rdquo; by Republican reformers, but what happened after midnight on Aug. 5 is not a party matter. Democrats and Republicans, as always, locked arms to support every earmark. It makes no difference that at least seven House members are under investigation by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+Justice?tid=informline\"\u003eJustice Department\u003c/a\u003e. A bipartisan majority insists on sending taxpayers\u0026rsquo; money to companies in their districts without competitive bidding or public review. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congressional earmark reform is a sham"},{"content":"The Dick Cheney of 1994 is pretty persuasive, and his reasons clearly applied just as well in 2003 and today. Too bad he changed his mind and put us into that quagmire.\n(Hat tip: The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/dick-cheney-on-why-not-to-invade-iraq.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Dick Cheney of 1994 is pretty persuasive, and his reasons clearly applied just as well in 2003 and today.  Too bad he changed his mind and put us into that quagmire.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6BEsZMvrq-I\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/6BEsZMvrq-I\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/028034.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dick Cheney on why not to invade Iraq"},{"content":"The latest issue of Skeptic magazine (vol. 13, no. 2, 2007, pp. 28-39) has an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn which supplies a nice list of possible explanations for the answer to the question \u0026ldquo;Why is there something rather than nothing?\u0026rdquo; The article, titled \u0026ldquo;Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations\u0026rdquo; (PDF), briefly sets out descriptions of each explanation, but the meat of the article is found in the footnotes, which provide extensive references for each offered explanation.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the list, minus the footnotes and descriptions:\n1. One Universe Models\n1.1 Meaningless Question\n1.2 Brute Fact\n1.3 Necessary/Only Way\n1.4 Almost Necessary/Limited Ways\n1.5 Temporal Selection\n1.6 Self Explaining\n2. Multiple Universes\n2.1 Multiverse by Disconnected Regions (Spatial)\n2.2 Multiverse by Cycles (Temporal)\n2.3 Multiverse by Sequential Selection (Temporal)\n2.4 Multiverse by String Theory (with Minuscule Extra Dimensions)\n2.5 Multiverse by Large Extra Dimensions\n2.6 Multiverse by Quantum Branching or Selection\n2.7 Multiverse by Mathematics\n2.8 Multiverse by All Possibilities\n3. Nonphysical Causes\n3.1 Theistic Person\n3.2 Ultimate Mind\n3.3 Deistic First Cause\n3.4 Pantheistic Substance\n3.5 Spirit Realms\n3.6 Consciousness as Cause\n3.7 Being and Non-Being as Cause\n3.8 Abstract Objects / Platonic Forms as Cause\n3.9 Principle or Feature of Sufficient Power\n4. Illusions\n4.1 Idealism\n4.2 Simulation in Actual Reality\n4.3 Simulation in Virtual Reality\n4.4 Solipsism\nOne of the most entertaining philosophical books I\u0026rsquo;ve ever read was David Lewis\u0026rsquo; On the plurality of worlds (pretty much everything Lewis wrote was entertaining as well as brilliant), which falls in category 2.8 (Multiverse by All Possibilities), cited by Kahn in note 43. The same category includes another very entertaining philosophy book, Robert Nozick\u0026rsquo;s Philosophical Explanations, which is cited in note 44.\nThis taxonomy shows that there are a lot more possibilities than \u0026ldquo;God did it.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE: Thanks to John Lynch at stranger fruit, who pointed out that the article is available online.\nRamón Sender Barayón (2007-08-13):\nMight check out \"Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality\" by Ervin Laszlo. The author takes his theory, also propounded in his previous book \"Science and the Akashic Field\" one step further, and then invites a group of scholars to write responding essays.\nLippard (2007-08-13):\nWhich category would he fall into? From his Wikipedia page, I'd guess 2.6, but given how talk of \"Akashic records\" seems to come from newagers, perhaps he's in category 3.8.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/why-is-there-something-rather-than.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine (vol. 13, no. 2, 2007, pp. 28-39) has an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn which supplies a nice list of possible explanations for the answer to the question \u0026ldquo;Why is there something rather than nothing?\u0026rdquo;  The article, titled \u003ca href=\"http://skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/skeptic13-2_Kuhn.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), briefly sets out descriptions of each explanation, but the meat of the article is found in the footnotes, which provide extensive references for each offered explanation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the list, minus the footnotes and descriptions:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  One Universe Models\u003cbr /\u003e1.1 Meaningless Question\u003cbr /\u003e1.2 Brute Fact\u003cbr /\u003e1.3 Necessary/Only Way\u003cbr /\u003e1.4 Almost Necessary/Limited Ways\u003cbr /\u003e1.5 Temporal Selection\u003cbr /\u003e1.6 Self Explaining\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. Multiple Universes\u003cbr /\u003e2.1 Multiverse by Disconnected Regions (Spatial)\u003cbr /\u003e2.2 Multiverse by Cycles (Temporal)\u003cbr /\u003e2.3 Multiverse by Sequential Selection (Temporal)\u003cbr /\u003e2.4 Multiverse by String Theory (with Minuscule Extra Dimensions)\u003cbr /\u003e2.5 Multiverse by Large Extra Dimensions\u003cbr /\u003e2.6 Multiverse by Quantum Branching or Selection\u003cbr /\u003e2.7 Multiverse by Mathematics\u003cbr /\u003e2.8 Multiverse by All Possibilities\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3. Nonphysical Causes\u003cbr /\u003e3.1 Theistic Person\u003cbr /\u003e3.2 Ultimate Mind\u003cbr /\u003e3.3 Deistic First Cause\u003cbr /\u003e3.4 Pantheistic Substance\u003cbr /\u003e3.5 Spirit Realms\u003cbr /\u003e3.6 Consciousness as Cause\u003cbr /\u003e3.7 Being and Non-Being as Cause\u003cbr /\u003e3.8 Abstract Objects / Platonic Forms as Cause\u003cbr /\u003e3.9 Principle or Feature of Sufficient Power\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4. Illusions\u003cbr /\u003e4.1 Idealism\u003cbr /\u003e4.2 Simulation in Actual Reality\u003cbr /\u003e4.3 Simulation in Virtual Reality\u003cbr /\u003e4.4 Solipsism\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of the most entertaining philosophical books I\u0026rsquo;ve ever read was David Lewis\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Plurality_of_Worlds\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOn the plurality of worlds\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (pretty much everything Lewis wrote was entertaining as well as brilliant), which falls in category 2.8 (Multiverse by All Possibilities), cited by Kahn in note 43.  The same category includes another very entertaining philosophy book, Robert Nozick\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_explanations\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhilosophical Explanations\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which is cited in note 44.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis taxonomy shows that there are a lot more possibilities than \u0026ldquo;God did it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Thanks to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/why_this_universe.php\"\u003eJohn Lynch at stranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e, who pointed out that the article is available online.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why is there something rather than nothing?"},{"content":"The August 2007 issue of Acts \u0026amp; Facts (PDF, p. 5) reports that the Institute for Creation Research is relocating from Santee, California to Dallas, Texas. Their new location is the Henry M. Morris Center, a four-acre campus with three buildings fifteen minutes\u0026rsquo; drive from DFW Airport.\nThe ICR Graduate School, which now offers most of its courses online, will also relocate. The ICR Creation Museum will remain in Santee \u0026ldquo;for the foreseeable future.\u0026quot;\nThe ICR cites the \u0026ldquo;rising costs of living and working in southern California\u0026rdquo; as a key reason for the relocation. In Texas, its employees will have no state income tax to pay, and the cultural climate will no doubt also be much more receptive to the ICR.\nTexas is a state with a governor who has just appointed a creationist to head the Texas State Board of Education. It\u0026rsquo;s also a state that has introduced a bill to require the blatantly unconstitutional and proselytizing NCBCPS Bible curriculum in public schools, which the ACLU has already filed a lawsuit over in Odessa.\nUPDATE (April 24, 2008): The ICR Graduate School has been denied the right to issue Master of Science degrees in Texas by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The full board will vote on the measure today, which is also expected to deny them the right to issue degrees.\nUPDATE: The full board agreed. ICR is not permitted to issue Master of Science degrees in Texas.\nUPDATE (May 12, 2008): The school board members in Odessa who voted for the unconstitutional NCBCPS Bible curriculum have all been voted out of office, in a repeat of the Dover, PA intelligent design disclaimer.\nHistorical Comments Kenneth Fair (2007-12-20):\nThe Bible curriculum bill did not make it out of committee, so that's dead for now (until, perhaps, the 2009 legislative session).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/institute-for-creation-research.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://static.icr.org/pdf/af/af0708.pdf\"\u003eAugust 2007 issue of Acts \u0026amp; Facts\u003c/a\u003e (PDF, p. 5) reports that the Institute for Creation Research is relocating from Santee, California to Dallas, Texas.  Their new location is the Henry M. Morris Center, a four-acre campus with three buildings fifteen minutes\u0026rsquo; drive from DFW Airport.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ICR Graduate School, which now offers most of its courses online, will also relocate.  The ICR Creation Museum will remain in Santee \u0026ldquo;for the foreseeable future.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ICR cites the \u0026ldquo;rising costs of living and working in southern California\u0026rdquo; as a key reason for the relocation.  In Texas, its employees will have no state income tax to pay, and the cultural climate will no doubt also be much more receptive to the ICR.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTexas is a state with a governor who has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/its_a_texas_tradition.php\"\u003ejust appointed a creationist to head the Texas State Board of Education\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s also a state that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/04/texas_bill_would_require_bible.php\"\u003ehas introduced a bill to require the blatantly unconstitutional and proselytizing NCBCPS Bible curriculum in public schools\u003c/a\u003e, which the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/ncbcps_curriculum_challenged_i_1.php\"\u003eACLU has already filed a lawsuit over in Odessa\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 24, 2008):  The ICR Graduate School \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/good_news_1.php\"\u003ehas been denied the right to issue Master of Science degrees in Texas by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board\u003c/a\u003e.  The full board will vote on the measure today, which is also expected to deny them the right to issue degrees.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: The \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/04/texas_denies_icr_accreditation.php\"\u003efull board agreed\u003c/a\u003e.  ICR is not permitted to issue Master of Science degrees in Texas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 12, 2008): The \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/05/odessa_incumbents_ousted.php\"\u003eschool board members in Odessa who voted for the unconstitutional NCBCPS Bible curriculum have all been voted out of office\u003c/a\u003e, in a repeat of the Dover, PA intelligent design disclaimer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Institute for Creation Research relocates to Dallas"},{"content":"Source and page references are to Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, 2007, Doubleday, pp. 1-70.\n1945-1953\nPresident: Harry S Truman\nSeptember 20, 1945: Office of Strategic Services ordered to disband; General William J. \u0026ldquo;Wild Bill\u0026rdquo; Donovan fired. OSS Intelligence analysts moved to the State Department.\nJanuary 24, 1946: Truman appoints Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers as chief of the \u0026ldquo;Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Director of Centralized Snooping,\u0026rdquo; the Central Intelligence Group. Brigadier General John Magruder interprets this as meaning the group should operate a clandestine service, though Truman has said nothing of this and no legal authority has been given.\nJune 10, 1946: General Hoyt Vandenburg appointed director of central intelligence. He creates an Office of Special Operations and obtains $15 million in Congressional funding. The group uses the money to buy intelligence information in Europe about the Soviets, most of which turns out to be fraudulent.\nJuly 17, 1946: Vandenburg obtains an additional $10 million in funding from the Secretary of War and Secretary of State.\nSeptember-October 1946: The OSO attempts to organize Romania\u0026rsquo;s National Peasant Party into a resistance force. Soviet intelligence and the Romanian secret police detect the plot and imprison the Peasant Party\u0026rsquo;s leaders. The OSO gets the former foreign minister of Romania and \u0026ldquo;five other members of the would-be liberation army into Austria\u0026rdquo; and out to safety on October 5. \u0026ldquo;A brutal dictatorship took control of Romania, its rise to power hastened by the failure of American covert action.\u0026rdquo; (pp. 18-19)\nMay 1, 1947: Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter becomes head of central intelligence.\nJune 27, 1947: A Congressional committee holds secret hearings that lead to formal creation of the CIA on September 18. Dean Acheson writes \u0026ldquo;I had the gravest forebodings about this organization, and warned the President that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.\u0026rdquo; (p. 25) James Forrestal wrote that \u0026ldquo;This office will probably be the greatest cemetery for dead cats in history.\u0026rdquo; (p. 24) The National Security Act says nothing about clandestine operations overseas, only the correlation, evaluation, and dissemination of intelligence information.\nSeptember 1947: CIA counsel Lawrence Houston warns Hillenkoetter that the agency has no legal authority to conduct covert action without Congressional approval.\nDecember 14, 1947: The National Security Council instructs the CIA to engage in \u0026ldquo;covert psychological operations designed to counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities.\u0026rdquo; (p. 26) The CIA\u0026rsquo;s first plan of action is to defeat the communists in the April 1948 Italian elections. The CIA gains access to the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which held $200 million for the reconstruction of Europe. $10 million is distributed to wealthy Americans, many of whom are Italian-Americans, who pass it on to CIA political front groups as \u0026ldquo;charitable donations,\u0026rdquo; and on to Italian politicians in suitcases filled with cash. Italy\u0026rsquo;s Christian Democrats win the election, and the CIA repeats this process in Italy and many other nations for the next 25 years (p. 27).\nMarch 5, 1945: After Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia, General Lucius D. Clay, head of occupation forces in Berlin, cables the Pentagon that he fears Soviet attack. The CIA\u0026rsquo;s Berlin office assures the president that there is no sign of a Soviet attack. Truman warns Congress of an imminent Soviet attack, gaining approval of the Marshall Plan. 5% of Marshall Plan funds are allocated to the CIA ($685 million), used to create front organizations throughout Europe and to create underground political groups that would become a fighting force if needed. This operation was carried out under the Office of Policy Coordination inside the CIA, reporting to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State.\nSeptember 1, 1948: Frank Wisner becomes head of covert operations at the CIA; his organization quickly becomes larger than the rest of the CIA. Wisner recruits spies from Ivy League institutions, obtains a quarter of a billion dollars worth of military equipment in Europe and Asia, and builds a huge organization.\nNovember 1948: Wisner attempts to break communist influence over trade organizations in France and Italy using U.S. labor leaders Jay Lovestone (former head of the American Communist Party) and Irving Brown to deliver cash to \u0026ldquo;labor groups backed by Christian Democrats and the Catholic Church\u0026rdquo; (p. 36). The CIA creates the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Radio Free Europe.\nEarly 1948: James Forrestal asks Allen Dulles to investigate the weaknesses of the CIA. The report\u0026rsquo;s main conclusions are (in Weiner\u0026rsquo;s words) that \u0026ldquo;the CIA was churning out reams of paper containing few if any facts on the communist threat,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;the agency had no spies among the Soviets and their satellites,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Roscoe Hillenkoetter was a failure as director.\u0026rdquo; (p. 37)\nMay 27, 1949: Congress passes the Central Intelligence Act of 1949, giving the CIA power to do pretty much whatever it wanted, except for acting as a secret police force inside the United States. One clause of the act permits the CIA to admit 100 foreigners per year into the U.S., giving them \u0026ldquo;permanent residence without regard to their inadmissibility under the immigration or any other laws.\u0026rdquo; The CIA brings Ukrainian Mikola Lebed into the U.S. under this law, despite the fact that the CIA\u0026rsquo;s files describe Lebed\u0026rsquo;s organization as \u0026ldquo;a terrorist organization.\u0026rdquo; Lebed went to prison for his murder of the Polish interior minister in 1936, escaping when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The Justice Department considered Lebed a war criminal responsible for the slaughter of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, but he was defended by Allen Dulles for his assistance in operations against the Soviets.\nDecember 1948: CIA officer Steve Tanner assesses a band of Ukrainians in Munich, the Supreme Council for the Liberation of the Ukraine, as a group deserving CIA backing. July 26, 1949: CIA special operations chief General Willard G. Wyman approves an operation to drop two Ukrainians from the group into their homeland. Tanner hires \u0026ldquo;a daredevil Hungarian air crew who had hijacked a Hungarian commercial airliner and flown it to Munich a few months earlier\u0026rdquo; (p. 44). The men were dropped on September 5, 1949; a CIA history declassified in 2005 says that \u0026ldquo;The Soviets quickly eliminated the agents.\u0026quot;\nJuly 1949: The CIA took over the Munich-based group run by General Reinhard Gehlen, former leader of Hitler\u0026rsquo;s military intelligence service, the Abwehr. This group turned out to be penetrated by Soviet and East German moles at the highest levels, including Gehlen\u0026rsquo;s chief of counterintelligence.\nSeptember 5, 1949: An air force crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radioactivity in the atmosphere. September 20, 1949: While those radioactive traces were being analyzed, \u0026ldquo;the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.\u0026rdquo; (p. 48) September 23, 1949: Truman informs the world that Stalin has the atomic bomb.\nOctober 1949: Frank Wisner and the British send nine Albanian rebels from Malta into Albania. Three are killed immediately, the rest are captured by secret police. Wisner sends additional recruits via Athens with Polish pilots after training in Munich, each time all are captured or killed. It turns out that the German training camps were infiltrated by Soviet spies, and CIA counterintelligence head James Angleton was sharing information with Kim Philby at MI6, who was also working for the KGB. \u0026ldquo;Angleton gave Philby the precise coordinates for the drop zone for every agent the CIA parachuted into Albania.\u0026rdquo; (p. 46)\n1950s: \u0026ldquo;hundreds of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s foreign agents were sent to their deaths in Russia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic States during the 1950s.\u0026rdquo; (p. 47)\n1945-1949: U.S. signals intelligence intercepts and decrypts messages between the Soviet Union and the Far East. This ends when William Wolf Weisband, a Russian translator and Soviet spy recruited in the 1930s, gives information about broken codes to the Soviets. The loss of intelligence information leads to the creation of the National Security Agency.\nJuly 25, 1950: The Korean War begins with a surprise attack from North Korea.\nOctober 1950: General Walter Bedell Smith becomes head of the CIA.\nOctober 11, 1950: Truman leaves for Wake Island. The CIA assures him that \u0026ldquo;no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea .. barring a Soviet decision for global war.\u0026rdquo; CIA Tokyo station chief George Aurell, however, \u0026ldquo;reported that a Chinese Nationalist officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops near the Korean border.\u0026rdquo; October 18: The CIA \u0026ldquo;reported that \u0026rsquo;the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; October 20: \u0026ldquo;The CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were there to protect hydroelectric power plants.\u0026rdquo; October 28: \u0026ldquo;those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers.\u0026rdquo; October 30: \u0026ldquo;after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was unlikely.\u0026rdquo; November 1: \u0026ldquo;300,000 Chinese troops struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into the sea.\u0026rdquo; (All quotes from p. 52.)\n1950-1960s: Classified CIA histories of the Korean War \u0026ldquo;say the agency\u0026rsquo;s paramilitary operations were \u0026rsquo;not only ineffective but probably morally reprehensible in the number of lives lost.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 54) \u0026ldquo;Bedell Smith repeatedly warned Wisner to watch out for false intelligence fabricated by the enemy. But some of Wisner\u0026rsquo;s officers were fabricators themselves\u0026ndash;including the station chief [Albert R. Haney] and the chief of operations [Hans Tofte] he sent to Korea.\u0026rdquo; (pp. 55-56) Haney\u0026rsquo;s 1952 replacement, John Limond Hart, found that \u0026ldquo;nearly every Korean agent he had inherited had either invented his reports or worked in secret for the communists. Every dispatch the station had sent to CIA headquarters from the front for the past eighteen months was a calculated deception.\u0026rdquo; (p. 57) Similar operations in Taiwan to recruit spies and drop them into mainland China failed. Over $100 million is spent on weapons for a \u0026ldquo;third force\u0026rdquo; of 200,000 guerillas between April 1951 to the end of 1952, but the agency was unable to recruit them.\nJanuary 4, 1951: Allen Dulles appointed CIA deputy director of plans (a cover for his actual position, chief of covert operations) despite not getting along with Bedell Smith. Shortly thereafter, deputy director Bill Jackson resigns, and Dulles is appointed to deputy director and Frank Wisner to chief of covert operations.\nEarly 1951: 1,500 followers of Chinese Nationalist General Li Mi were stranded in northern Burma; the CIA supplied guns, gold, and additional Chinese Nationalist soldiers. Those who crossed into China were killed; Li Mi\u0026rsquo;s radioman in Bangkok was a Chinese communist agent.\nJuly 1952: A four-man Chinese guerilla team is dropped into Manchuria and radios for help four months later, which turns out to be a trap that leads to the death or capture of the rescuers\u0026ndash;with two young CIA agents spending the next 19-20 years in Chinese prisons. \u0026ldquo;Beijing later broadcast a scorecard for Manchuria: the CIA had dropped 212 foreign agents in; 101 were killed and 111 captured.\u0026rdquo; (p. 60) The CIA supplies more guns and ammunition, but Li Mi\u0026rsquo;s men choose not to fight, but instead to settle into the Golden Triangle, harvest opium poppies, and marry local women. Li Mi becomes a heroin kingpin. [Note added 23 November 2014: The CIA film \u0026ldquo;Extraordinary Fidelity\u0026rdquo; tells the story of John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, the two young CIA agents imprisoned in China mentioned here.]\nJuly 1953: After the armistice, the CIA nearly kills South Korean President Syngman Rhee when a yacht he is on sails past Yong-do, an island where the agency trained Korean commandos. The CIA\u0026rsquo;s paramilitary group is given 72 hours to leave the country.\n1950s: Wisner\u0026rsquo;s men are active in Europe, spending Marshall Plan money to prepare for a future war against the Soviets, including \u0026ldquo;dropping gold ingots into lakes and burying caches of weapons for the coming battle\u0026rdquo; (p. 64).\n1948-1950s: Secret prisons set up to interrogate suspected double agents\u0026ndash;in Germany, in Japan, and in the Panama Canal Zone (the largest such prison).\nMay 15, 1952: Dulles and Wisner receive a report on Project Artichoke, a \u0026ldquo;four-year effort to test heroin, amphetamines, sleeping pills, the newly discovered LSD, and other \u0026lsquo;special techniques in CIA interrogations.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 65) Dulles approves Ultra, under which \u0026ldquo;seven prisoners at a federal penitentiary in Kentucky were kept high on LSD for seventy-seven consecutive days\u0026rdquo; and Army civilian employee Frank Olsen is dosed and leaps to his death out the window of a New York hotel. Project Artichoke continues until 1956, but most records of these activities were destroyed.\n1952: The \u0026ldquo;Young Germans\u0026rdquo; (many of which were aging Hitler Youth) are supported by the CIA. The \u0026ldquo;Free Jurists\u0026rsquo; Committee,\u0026rdquo; an underground group in East Germany, was taken over by Frank Wisner, whose men selected one of Gehlen\u0026rsquo;s officers to train them as a fighting force. \u0026ldquo;After Soviet soldiers kidnapped and tortured one of their leaders on the eve of the international conference, every one of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Free Jurists was arrested.\u0026rdquo; (p. 67)\n1952: Wisner supported a Polish liberation group, the Freedom and Independent Movement (known as WIN). They had contacts with \u0026ldquo;WIN outside,\u0026rdquo; emigres in Germany and London, and believed they were supporting thousands of sympathizers of \u0026ldquo;WIN inside\u0026rdquo; in Poland. They dropped $5 million in gold and weapons for \u0026ldquo;WIN inside,\u0026rdquo; but the Polish secret police and the Soviets had wiped out WIN in 1947 and it was all a trap. (p. 67)\nOctober 27, 1952: Gen. Bedell Smith convened a \u0026ldquo;Murder Board\u0026rdquo; to kill off the worst of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s covert operations, but his efforts came to naught when Eisenhower appointed Allen Dulles as head of the CIA.\nNovember 26, 1952: \u0026ldquo;British spy Monty Woodhouse flew to Washington to meet with Walter Bedell Smith and Frank Wisner\u0026rdquo; about how to get rid of Mossadeq in Iran (p. 83).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/brief-history-of-cia-1945-1953-truman.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSource and page references are to Tim Weiner, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e, 2007, Doubleday, pp. 1-70.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1945-1953\u003cbr /\u003e\nPresident: Harry S Truman\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember 20, 1945: Office of Strategic Services ordered to disband; General William J. \u0026ldquo;Wild Bill\u0026rdquo; Donovan fired.  OSS Intelligence analysts moved to the State Department.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 24, 1946:  Truman appoints Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers as chief of the \u0026ldquo;Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Director of Centralized Snooping,\u0026rdquo; the Central Intelligence Group.  Brigadier General John Magruder interprets this as meaning the group should operate a clandestine service, though Truman has said nothing of this and no legal authority has been given.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJune 10, 1946:  General Hoyt Vandenburg appointed director of central intelligence.  He creates an Office of Special Operations and obtains $15 million in Congressional funding.  The group uses the money to buy intelligence information in Europe about the Soviets, most of which turns out to be fraudulent.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 17, 1946: Vandenburg obtains an additional $10 million in funding from the Secretary of War and Secretary of State.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember-October 1946: The OSO attempts to organize Romania\u0026rsquo;s National Peasant Party into a resistance force.  Soviet intelligence and the Romanian secret police detect the plot and imprison the Peasant Party\u0026rsquo;s leaders.  The OSO gets the former foreign minister of Romania and \u0026ldquo;five other members of the would-be liberation army into Austria\u0026rdquo; and out to safety on October 5.  \u0026ldquo;A brutal dictatorship took control of Romania, its rise to power hastened by the failure of American covert action.\u0026rdquo; (pp. 18-19)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMay 1, 1947:  Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter becomes head of central intelligence.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJune 27, 1947: A Congressional committee holds secret hearings that lead to formal creation of the CIA on September 18.  Dean Acheson writes \u0026ldquo;I had the gravest forebodings about this organization, and warned the President that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.\u0026rdquo; (p. 25)  James Forrestal wrote that \u0026ldquo;This office will probably be the greatest cemetery for dead cats in history.\u0026rdquo; (p. 24)  The National Security Act says nothing about clandestine operations overseas, only the correlation, evaluation, and dissemination of intelligence information.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember 1947: CIA counsel Lawrence Houston warns Hillenkoetter that the agency has no legal authority to conduct covert action without Congressional approval.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDecember 14, 1947: The National Security Council instructs the CIA to engage in \u0026ldquo;covert psychological operations designed to counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities.\u0026rdquo; (p. 26)  The CIA\u0026rsquo;s first plan of action is to defeat the communists in the April 1948 Italian elections.  The CIA gains access to the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which held $200 million for the reconstruction of Europe.  $10 million is distributed to wealthy Americans, many of whom are Italian-Americans, who pass it on to CIA political front groups as \u0026ldquo;charitable donations,\u0026rdquo; and on to Italian politicians in suitcases filled with cash.  Italy\u0026rsquo;s Christian Democrats win the election, and the CIA repeats this process in Italy and many other nations for the next 25 years (p. 27).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMarch 5, 1945:  After Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia, General Lucius D. Clay, head of occupation forces in Berlin, cables the Pentagon that he fears Soviet attack.  The CIA\u0026rsquo;s Berlin office assures the president that there is no sign of a Soviet attack.  Truman warns Congress of an imminent Soviet attack, gaining approval of the Marshall Plan.  5% of Marshall Plan funds are allocated to the CIA ($685 million), used to create front organizations throughout Europe and to create underground political groups that would become a fighting force if needed.  This operation was carried out under the Office of Policy Coordination inside the CIA, reporting to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember 1, 1948: Frank Wisner becomes head of covert operations at the CIA; his organization quickly becomes larger than the rest of the CIA.  Wisner recruits spies from Ivy League institutions, obtains a quarter of a billion dollars worth of military equipment in Europe and Asia, and builds a huge organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNovember 1948:  Wisner attempts to break communist influence over trade organizations in France and Italy using U.S. labor leaders Jay Lovestone (former head of the American Communist Party) and Irving Brown to deliver cash to \u0026ldquo;labor groups backed by Christian Democrats and the Catholic Church\u0026rdquo; (p. 36).  The CIA creates the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Radio Free Europe.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEarly 1948:  James Forrestal asks Allen Dulles to investigate the weaknesses of the CIA.  The report\u0026rsquo;s main conclusions are (in Weiner\u0026rsquo;s words) that \u0026ldquo;the CIA was churning out reams of paper containing few if any facts on the communist threat,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;the agency had no spies among the Soviets and their satellites,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Roscoe Hillenkoetter was a failure as director.\u0026rdquo; (p. 37)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMay 27, 1949: Congress passes the Central Intelligence Act of 1949, giving the CIA power to do pretty much whatever it wanted, except for acting as a secret police force inside the United States.  One clause of the act permits the CIA to admit 100 foreigners per year into the U.S., giving them \u0026ldquo;permanent residence without regard to their inadmissibility under the immigration or any other laws.\u0026rdquo;  The CIA brings Ukrainian Mikola Lebed into the U.S. under this law, despite the fact that the CIA\u0026rsquo;s files describe Lebed\u0026rsquo;s organization as \u0026ldquo;a terrorist organization.\u0026rdquo;  Lebed went to prison for his murder of the Polish interior minister in 1936, escaping when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.  The Justice Department considered Lebed a war criminal responsible for the slaughter of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, but he was defended by Allen Dulles for his assistance in operations against the Soviets.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nDecember 1948:  CIA officer Steve Tanner assesses a band of Ukrainians in Munich, the Supreme Council for the Liberation of the Ukraine, as a group deserving CIA backing.  July 26, 1949: CIA special operations chief General Willard G. Wyman approves an operation to drop two Ukrainians from the group into their homeland.  Tanner hires \u0026ldquo;a daredevil Hungarian air crew who had hijacked a Hungarian commercial airliner and flown it to Munich a few months earlier\u0026rdquo; (p. 44).  The men were dropped on September 5, 1949; a CIA history declassified in 2005 says that \u0026ldquo;The Soviets quickly eliminated the agents.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 1949:  The CIA took over the Munich-based group run by General Reinhard Gehlen, former leader of Hitler\u0026rsquo;s military intelligence service, the Abwehr.  This group turned out to be penetrated by Soviet and East German moles at the highest levels, including Gehlen\u0026rsquo;s chief of counterintelligence.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSeptember 5, 1949:  An air force crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radioactivity in the atmosphere.  September 20, 1949: While those radioactive traces were being analyzed, \u0026ldquo;the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.\u0026rdquo; (p. 48)  September 23, 1949: Truman informs the world that Stalin has the atomic bomb.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOctober 1949: Frank Wisner and the British send nine Albanian rebels from Malta into Albania.  Three are killed immediately, the rest are captured by secret police.  Wisner sends additional recruits via Athens with Polish pilots after training in Munich, each time all are captured or killed.  It turns out that the German training camps were infiltrated by Soviet spies, and CIA counterintelligence head James Angleton was sharing information with Kim Philby at MI6, who was also working for the KGB.  \u0026ldquo;Angleton gave Philby the precise coordinates for the drop zone for every agent the CIA parachuted into Albania.\u0026rdquo; (p. 46)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1950s:  \u0026ldquo;hundreds of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s foreign agents were sent to their deaths in Russia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic States during the 1950s.\u0026rdquo; (p. 47)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1945-1949:  U.S. signals intelligence intercepts and decrypts messages between the Soviet Union and the Far East.  This ends when William Wolf Weisband, a Russian translator and Soviet spy recruited in the 1930s, gives information about broken codes to the Soviets.  The loss of intelligence information leads to the creation of the National Security Agency.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 25, 1950: The Korean War begins with a surprise attack from North Korea.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOctober 1950: General Walter Bedell Smith becomes head of the CIA.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOctober 11, 1950:  Truman leaves for Wake Island.  The CIA assures him that \u0026ldquo;no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea .. barring a Soviet decision for global war.\u0026rdquo;  CIA Tokyo station chief George Aurell, however, \u0026ldquo;reported that a Chinese Nationalist officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops near the Korean border.\u0026rdquo;  October 18: The CIA \u0026ldquo;reported that \u0026rsquo;the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; October 20: \u0026ldquo;The CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were there to protect hydroelectric power plants.\u0026rdquo;  October 28: \u0026ldquo;those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers.\u0026rdquo;  October 30: \u0026ldquo;after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was unlikely.\u0026rdquo;  November 1: \u0026ldquo;300,000 Chinese troops struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into the sea.\u0026rdquo; (All quotes from p. 52.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1950-1960s: Classified CIA histories of the Korean War \u0026ldquo;say the agency\u0026rsquo;s paramilitary operations were \u0026rsquo;not only ineffective but probably morally reprehensible in the number of lives lost.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 54)  \u0026ldquo;Bedell Smith repeatedly warned Wisner to watch out for false intelligence fabricated by the enemy.  But some of Wisner\u0026rsquo;s officers were fabricators themselves\u0026ndash;including the station chief [Albert R. Haney] and the chief of operations [Hans Tofte] he sent to Korea.\u0026rdquo; (pp. 55-56)  Haney\u0026rsquo;s 1952 replacement, John Limond Hart, found that \u0026ldquo;nearly every Korean agent he had inherited had either invented his reports or worked in secret for the communists.  Every dispatch the station had sent to CIA headquarters from the front for the past eighteen months was a calculated deception.\u0026rdquo; (p. 57)  Similar operations in Taiwan to recruit spies and drop them into mainland China failed.  Over $100 million is spent on weapons for a \u0026ldquo;third force\u0026rdquo; of 200,000 guerillas between April 1951 to the end of 1952, but the agency was unable to recruit them.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJanuary 4, 1951: Allen Dulles appointed CIA deputy director of plans (a cover for his actual position, chief of covert operations) despite not getting along with Bedell Smith.  Shortly thereafter, deputy director Bill Jackson resigns, and Dulles is appointed to deputy director and Frank Wisner to chief of covert operations.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nEarly 1951:  1,500 followers of Chinese Nationalist General Li Mi were stranded in northern Burma; the CIA supplied guns, gold, and additional Chinese Nationalist soldiers.  Those who crossed into China were killed; Li Mi\u0026rsquo;s radioman in Bangkok was a Chinese communist agent.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 1952: A four-man Chinese guerilla team is dropped into Manchuria and radios for help four months later, which turns out to be a trap that leads to the death or capture of the rescuers\u0026ndash;with two young CIA agents spending the next 19-20 years in Chinese prisons.  \u0026ldquo;Beijing later broadcast a scorecard for Manchuria: the CIA had dropped 212 foreign agents in; 101 were killed and 111 captured.\u0026rdquo; (p. 60)  The CIA supplies more guns and ammunition, but Li Mi\u0026rsquo;s men choose not to fight, but instead to settle into the Golden Triangle, harvest opium poppies, and marry local women.  Li Mi becomes a heroin kingpin. [Note added 23 November 2014: The CIA film \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Mh7EiXRJI\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Extraordinary Fidelity\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e tells the story of John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, the two young CIA agents imprisoned in China mentioned here.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nJuly 1953: After the armistice, the CIA nearly kills South Korean President Syngman Rhee when a yacht he is on sails past Yong-do, an island where the agency trained Korean commandos.  The CIA\u0026rsquo;s paramilitary group is given 72 hours to leave the country.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1950s:  Wisner\u0026rsquo;s men are active in Europe, spending Marshall Plan money to prepare for a future war against the Soviets, including \u0026ldquo;dropping gold ingots into lakes and burying caches of weapons for the coming battle\u0026rdquo; (p. 64).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1948-1950s:  Secret prisons set up to interrogate suspected double agents\u0026ndash;in Germany, in Japan, and in the Panama Canal Zone (the largest such prison).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMay 15, 1952: Dulles and Wisner receive a report on Project Artichoke, a \u0026ldquo;four-year effort to test heroin, amphetamines, sleeping pills, the newly discovered LSD, and other \u0026lsquo;special techniques in CIA interrogations.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (p. 65)  Dulles approves Ultra, under which \u0026ldquo;seven prisoners at a federal penitentiary in Kentucky were kept high on LSD for seventy-seven consecutive days\u0026rdquo; and Army civilian employee Frank Olsen is dosed and leaps to his death out the window of a New York hotel.  Project Artichoke continues until 1956, but most records of these activities were destroyed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1952:  The \u0026ldquo;Young Germans\u0026rdquo; (many of which were aging Hitler Youth) are supported by the CIA.  The \u0026ldquo;Free Jurists\u0026rsquo; Committee,\u0026rdquo; an underground group in East Germany, was taken over by Frank Wisner, whose men selected one of Gehlen\u0026rsquo;s officers to train them as a fighting force.  \u0026ldquo;After Soviet soldiers kidnapped and tortured one of their leaders on the eve of the international conference, every one of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Free Jurists was arrested.\u0026rdquo; (p. 67)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n1952:  Wisner supported a Polish liberation group, the Freedom and Independent Movement (known as WIN).  They had contacts with \u0026ldquo;WIN outside,\u0026rdquo; emigres in Germany and London, and believed they were supporting thousands of sympathizers of \u0026ldquo;WIN inside\u0026rdquo; in Poland.  They dropped $5 million in gold and weapons for \u0026ldquo;WIN inside,\u0026rdquo; but the Polish secret police and the Soviets had wiped out WIN in 1947 and it was all a trap. (p. 67)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nOctober 27, 1952:  Gen. Bedell Smith convened a \u0026ldquo;Murder Board\u0026rdquo; to kill off the worst of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s covert operations, but his efforts came to naught when Eisenhower appointed Allen Dulles as head of the CIA.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNovember 26, 1952:  \u0026ldquo;British spy Monty Woodhouse flew to Washington to meet with Walter Bedell Smith and Frank Wisner\u0026rdquo; about how to get rid of Mossadeq in Iran (p. 83).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)"},{"content":"How corrupt is our Congress? They\u0026rsquo;re not even pretending to follow the Constitution.\nTalking Points Memo reports on how Rep. Don Young (R-AK) inserted an earmark to spend $10 million on a highway interchange in Florida (\u0026ldquo;Coconut Road\u0026rdquo;) to benefit real estate developer Daniel Aranoff, a few days after Aranoff raised $40,000 for Young.\nThe really interesting part is not an Alaskan legislator doing political favors for contributions from a Florida developer, but the fact that the earmark was not in the version of the bill that passed the House or Senate\u0026ndash;it was added to the bill during the enrollment process, after its passage but before being signed by President Bush. This is a process which is only supposed to allow correction of typographical and technical but non-substantive errors.\nHistorical Comments shrimplate (2007-08-10):\nPerhaps the author of the earmark does not consider the amount of $10 million to be substantative.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/dirty-politician-don-young.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow corrupt is our Congress?  They\u0026rsquo;re not even pretending to follow the Constitution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTalking Points Memo \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016427.php\"\u003ereports on how Rep. Don Young (R-AK) inserted an earmark to spend $10 million on a highway interchange in Florida\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;Coconut Road\u0026rdquo;) to benefit real estate developer Daniel Aranoff, a few days after Aranoff raised $40,000 for Young.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe really interesting part is not an Alaskan legislator doing political favors for contributions from a Florida developer, but the fact that the earmark was not in the version of the bill that passed the House or Senate\u0026ndash;it was added to the bill during the enrollment process, after its passage but before being signed by President Bush.  This is a process which is only supposed to allow correction of typographical and technical but non-substantive errors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Don Young"},{"content":"Despite new home builders offering unprecedented incentives, new home sales in Arizona are dismal. 2007 year-to-date sales (through July) were 33,510, compared to 41,835 for the same time period in 2006 and 68,235 for the same period in 2005. And this is while inventories and foreclosures are climbing.\nHistorical Comments shrimplate (2007-08-10):\nOne out of every three dollars generated by the Valley's economy comes from the housing industry. When that sinks, be in a lifeboat. It's gonna suck.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/arizona-home-sales-way-down.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDespite new home builders offering unprecedented incentives, \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=3238\"\u003enew home sales in Arizona are dismal\u003c/a\u003e.  2007 year-to-date sales (through July) were 33,510, compared to 41,835 for the same time period in 2006 and 68,235 for the same period in 2005.  And this is while inventories and foreclosures are climbing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eshrimplate\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-08-10)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOne out of every three dollars generated by the Valley's economy comes from the housing industry. When that sinks, be in a lifeboat. It's gonna suck.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona home sales way down"},{"content":"Jane Mayer has a story in the August 13, 2007 issue of The New Yorker which describes practices in the CIA\u0026rsquo;s secret prisons, whose existence was recently admitted by the president. Some excerpts:\n[Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to keep secret the treatment of the hundred or so “high-value detainees” whom the C.I.A. has confined, at one point or another, since September 11th. The program has been extraordinarily “compartmentalized,” in the nomenclature of the intelligence world. By design, there has been virtually no access for outsiders to the C.I.A.’s prisoners. The utter isolation of these detainees has been described as essential to America’s national security. The Justice Department argued this point explicitly last November, in the case of a Baltimore-area resident named Majid Khan, who was held for more than three years by the C.I.A. Khan, the government said, had to be prohibited from access to a lawyer specifically because he might describe the “alternative interrogation methods” that the agency had used when questioning him. These methods amounted to a state secret, the government argued, and disclosure of them could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” (The case has not yet been decided.)\n\u0026hellip;\nFinally, last year, Red Cross officials were allowed to interview fifteen detainees, after they had been transferred to Guantánamo. One of the prisoners was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What the Red Cross learned has been kept from the public. The committee believes that its continued access to prisoners worldwide is contingent upon confidentiality, and therefore it addresses violations privately with the authorities directly responsible for prisoner treatment and detention. For this reason, Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, said, “The I.C.R.C. does not comment on its findings publicly. Its work is confidential.”The public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report. Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State’s legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report. Confidentiality may be particularly stringent in this case. Congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report said that it harshly criticized the C.I.A.’s practices. One of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act, which Congress passed in 1994. The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.\n\u0026hellip;\nA former C.I.A. officer, who supports the agency’s detention and interrogation policies, said he worried that, if the full story of the C.I.A. program ever surfaced, agency personnel could face criminal prosecution. Within the agency, he said, there is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution” for the interrogation program. If congressional hearings begin, he said, “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus.” He noted that a number of C.I.A. officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe experts were retired military psychologists, and their backgrounds were in training Special Forces soldiers how to survive torture, should they ever be captured by enemy states. The program, known as SERE—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—was created at the end of the Korean War. It subjected trainees to simulated torture, including waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to temperature extremes, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds, and religious and sexual humiliation. The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.’s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. “They were very arrogant, and pro-torture,” a European official knowledgeable about the program said. “They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences.”\n\u0026hellip;\nAccording to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of “learned helplessness.” (Mitchell disputes this characterization.)\nSteve Kleinman, a reserve Air Force colonel and an experienced interrogator who has known Mitchell professionally for years, said that “learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.” Mitchell, he said, “draws a diagram showing what he says is the whole cycle. It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners’ ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence.”\n\u0026hellip;\nA former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout” of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to “sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.” The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.” The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.\n\u0026hellip;\nRamzi Kassem, who teaches at Yale Law School, said that a Yemeni client of his, Sanad al-Kazimi, who is now in Guantánamo, alleged that he had received similar treatment in the Dark Prison, the facility near Kabul. Kazimi claimed to have been suspended by his arms for long periods, causing his legs to swell painfully. “It’s so traumatic, he can barely speak of it,” Kassem said. “He breaks down in tears.” Kazimi also claimed that, while hanging, he was beaten with electric cables.\nAccording to sources familiar with interrogation techniques, the hanging position is designed, in part, to prevent detainees from being able to sleep. The former C.I.A. officer, who is knowledgeable about the interrogation program, explained that “sleep deprivation works. Your electrolyte balance changes. You lose all balance and ability to think rationally. Stuff comes out.” Sleep deprivation has been recognized as an effective form of coercion since the Middle Ages, when it was called tormentum insomniae. It was also recognized for decades in the United States as an illegal form of torture. An American Bar Association report, published in 1930, which was cited in a later U.S. Supreme Court decision, said, “It has been known since 1500 at least that deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture and certain to produce any confession desired.”\nUnder President Bush’s new executive order, C.I.A. detainees must receive the “basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.” Sleep, according to the order, is not among the basic necessities. In addition to keeping a prisoner awake, the simple act of remaining upright can over time cause significant pain. McCoy, the historian, noted that “longtime standing” was a common K.G.B. interrogation technique. In his 2006 book, “A Question of Torture,” he writes that the Soviets found that making a victim stand for eighteen to twenty-four hours can produce “excruciating pain, as ankles double in size, skin becomes tense and intensely painful, blisters erupt oozing watery serum, heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.”\n\u0026hellip;\nSome detainees held by the C.I.A. claimed that their cells were bombarded with deafening sound twenty-fours hours a day for weeks, and even months. One detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who is now in Guantánamo, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that speakers blared music into his cell while he was handcuffed. Detainees recalled the sound as ranging from ghoulish laughter, “like the soundtrack from a horror film,” to ear-splitting rap anthems. Stafford Smith said that his client found the psychological torture more intolerable than the physical abuse that he said he had been previously subjected to in Morocco, where, he said, local intelligence agents had sliced him with a razor blade. “The C.I.A. worked people day and night for months,” Stafford Smith quoted Binyam Mohamed as saying. “Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.”\n\u0026hellip;\nThe inquiry source said that most of the Poland detainees were waterboarded, including Mohammed. According to the sources familiar with the Red Cross report, Mohammed claimed to have been waterboarded five times. Two former C.I.A. officers who are friends with one of Mohammed’s interrogators called this bravado, insisting that he was waterboarded only once. According to one of the officers, Mohammed needed only to be shown the drowning equipment again before he “broke.” “Waterboarding works,” the former officer said. “Drowning is a baseline fear. So is falling. People dream about it. It’s human nature. Suffocation is a very scary thing. When you’re waterboarded, you’re inverted, so it exacerbates the fear. It’s not painful, but it scares the shit out of you.” (The former officer was waterboarded himself in a training course.) Mohammed, he claimed, “didn’t resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick.” He said, “A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable. K.S.M. was just a little doughboy. He couldn’t stand toe to toe and fight it out.”\nThe former officer said that the C.I.A. kept a doctor standing by during interrogations. He insisted that the method was safe and effective, but said that it could cause lasting psychic damage to the interrogators. During interrogations, the former agency official said, officers worked in teams, watching each other behind two-way mirrors. Even with this group support, the friend said, Mohammed’s interrogator “has horrible nightmares.” He went on, “When you cross over that line of darkness, it’s hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but it’s well outside the norm. You can’t go to that dark a place without it changing you.” He said of his friend, “He’s a good guy. It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”\n\u0026hellip;\nWaterboarding, in particular, troubled many officials, from both a moral and a legal perspective. Until 2002, when Bush Administration lawyers asserted that waterboarding was a permissible interrogation technique for “enemy combatants,” it was classified as a form of torture, and treated as a serious criminal offense. American soldiers were court-martialled for waterboarding captives as recently as the Vietnam War.\n\u0026hellip;\nUltimately, however, Mohammed claimed responsibility for so many crimes that his testimony became to seem inherently dubious. In addition to confessing to the Pearl murder, he said that he had hatched plans to assassinate President Clinton, President Carter, and Pope John Paul II. Bruce Riedel, who was a C.I.A. analyst for twenty-nine years, and who now works at the Brookings Institution, said, “It’s difficult to give credence to any particular area of this large a charge sheet that he confessed to, considering the situation he found himself in. K.S.M. has no prospect of ever seeing freedom again, so his only gratification in life is to portray himself as the James Bond of jihadism.”\nI recommend reading the whole article.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-08-11):\nThe CIA has reasons not to treat terrorists at their prisons like guests at a Hilton hotel. And as for hiding it from the public, it can't be hidden if some liberal civilian bumpkin like you can find out about. The government isn't going to give those radical Islams milk and cookies for killing Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors of the United States of America. Next time you post a stupid article you copy and pasted off of some stupid democratic website, think again, because you'll always receive heavy opposition from Penguin.\nEinzige (2007-08-11):\nPenguin, did it ever occur to you that perhaps the reason we have a problem with this is because tomorrow they might decide that the \"terrorist\" is you or me? Or the little old lady down the street with one too many AK-47s in her gun safe?In addition, your presumption that the CIA is only mistreating the guilty is staggeringly naive, given the level of incompetence constantly on display in every branch, level, and office of our government.\nLippard (2007-08-11):\nPenguin: You don't display any sign of having actually read what was posted. You also don't display much sign of understanding logic--your argument is an example of the false dilemma fallacy. There are not just two options--torture or Hilton Hotel guest conditions.Likewise, your argument that this information hasn't been hidden is equally fallacious. The CIA \"black sites\" have been operating for years, but the article I posted excerpts from was just published this month. Your argument amounts to a claim that anything public now was never hidden in the past, which is absurd.You're welcome to post reasoned criticism here, but if your \"heavy opposition\" is going to continue to be this feeble, don't bother wasting your time and ours.\nLippard (2007-08-11):\nBTW, Penguin, here's an example of what would be reasoned criticism of the article--making a case that the methods described actually produce accurate intelligence information (as opposed to fabricated confessions that tell the inquisitors whatever they seem to want to hear), and that they are also necessary in order to gain information needed to prevent major catastrophes. I'd also expect to see some argument that there are appropriate controls to prevent misuse (such as the documented cases of detention and torture of innocent people). But you attempt none of this--you give no argument for the necessity or sufficiency of these practices.\nLippard (2007-08-11):\nOne more addition, Penguin: An example of a \"black site\" which became public in 2005 was the \"Salt Pit\" in Afghanistan, as the result of a lawsuit from Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped from Macedonia and taken there by the CIA because he happened to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list.Do you endorse the kidnapping and torture of innocent people because they happen to have the same name as terrorists? Is that acceptable collateral damage in your book?\nRagin' Cajun (2007-08-18):\nThe CIA doesn't just randomly decide to arrest people they see on the street. They find those who have a bad record in the area of terrorism and those who they have good reason to believe are a threat to this nation's security. If you have a problem with the government keeping this country safe than you might have a few problems. You shouldn't give a damn about how the government treats terrorists, they don't deserve a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the back for killing innocent civilians and American service members.\nEinzige (2007-08-18):\nExactly what percentage of Guantanamo prisoners have \"killed innocent civilians [or] American service members\"?And what about the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who have been wounded and killed? Do their killers and torturers deserve a kiss on the cheek? Should we give a damn about how Iraqis treat them? Should it not concern us that it is turning the tide of the world against the US?\nLippard (2007-08-18):\nPenguin: You didn't answer my question. Do you endorse the kidnapping and torture of innocent people because they happen to have the same name as terrorists? Is that acceptable collateral damage in your book?You fail to distinguish between accused terrorists and actual terrorist. But I disagree with you even about treatment of actual terrorists--if the United States has a policy of engaging in torture, that is morally wrong and likely to produce bad consequences in response. Even more so if it's applied without any safeguards like judicial oversight.You seem to be advocating an anything goes approach for the CIA with respect to anyone who is suspected of being a terrorist or supporter of terrorists, without any safeguards or evidential standards whatsoever. That is what leads to innocent people getting tortured, innocent people being held in prison for life without charge, and provides justification for attacks in response. Your view is morally reprehensible, and likely inconsistent--I suspect you would be outraged if any other country were to engage in similar practices against U.S. citizens, even if it followed exactly the pattern you propose as morally acceptable. Or do you support what Russia does to rebels in Chechnya?To further complicate the picture, what do you think of the fact that the CIA has given monetary and military support to terrorist groups that have attacked other governments? Is that permissible? Or does that make it acceptable for those other governments to kidnap CIA agents, imprison them without charge, and torture them in response?\nEinzige (2007-08-18):\nGame, set, match, Jim.I predict we'll either see no response at all--or the other favorite tactic of all cornered idiots: the retreat to non sequitur.\nLippard (2008-07-01):\nBTW, apparently Khalid El-Masri was kidnapped and tortured because his name is close to that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri.I've just posted more about El-Masri's case.\nLippard (2019-12-20):\nThe Senate Intelligence Committee\u0026#39;s report on torture demonstrates pretty conclusively which side of the above debate was right. See this recent post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/inside-cias-secret-prisons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJane Mayer has \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=1\"\u003ea story in the August 13, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e which describes practices in the CIA\u0026rsquo;s secret prisons, whose existence was recently admitted by the president.  Some excerpts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e[Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eThe Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to keep secret the treatment of the hundred or so “high-value detainees” whom the C.I.A. has confined, at one point or another, since September 11th. The program has been extraordinarily “compartmentalized,” in the nomenclature of the intelligence world. By design, there has been virtually no access for outsiders to the C.I.A.’s prisoners. The utter isolation of these detainees has been described as essential to America’s national security. The Justice Department argued this point explicitly last November, in the case of a Baltimore-area resident named Majid Khan, who was held for more than three years by the C.I.A. Khan, the government said, had to be prohibited from access to a lawyer specifically because he might describe the “alternative interrogation methods” that the agency had used when questioning him. These methods amounted to a state secret, the government argued, and disclosure of them could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” (The case has not yet been decided.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, last year, Red Cross officials were allowed to interview fifteen detainees, after they had been transferred to Guantánamo. One of the prisoners was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What the Red Cross learned has been kept from the public. The committee believes that its continued access to prisoners worldwide is contingent upon confidentiality, and therefore it addresses violations privately with the authorities directly responsible for prisoner treatment and detention. For this reason, Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, said, “The I.C.R.C. does not comment on its findings publicly. Its work is confidential.”\u003cp\u003eThe public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report. Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State’s legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside the CIA's secret prisons"},{"content":"Both houses of Congress have passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists. Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front observes:\nSo let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of two of the president’s subordinates!”Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months. (UPDATE, August 8, 2007: Actually, McCain didn\u0026rsquo;t vote on this bill at all, it\u0026rsquo;s another of his no-shows.)\nKudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this.\n(Hat tip to Technology Liberation Front and Stranger Fruit.)\nUPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on how this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing.\nHistorical Comments James (2007-08-06):\nhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/national/new-secret-search-powers/2007/07/31/1185647903263.htmlHere in .au, our feds are about to get the right to monitor any communications, without a warrant; and to search premises based on a warrant they issue themselves, which they don't have to inform anyone about until 18 months after the fact.At least the US still has some checks and balances.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/congress-approves-expansion-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBoth houses of Congress \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042640.php\"\u003ehave passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner\u003c/a\u003e, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists.  Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.   As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042641.php\"\u003eobserves\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSo let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of \u003ci\u003etwo\u003c/i\u003e of the president’s subordinates!”\u003c/blockquote\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months.  (UPDATE, August 8, 2007:  Actually, McCain didn\u0026rsquo;t vote on this bill at all, it\u0026rsquo;s another of his no-shows.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042641.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/arizona_congressmen_on_fisa.php\"\u003eStranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/08/democrats_cave_on_fisa_amendme.php\"\u003ehow this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congress approves expansion of presidential wiretapping powers"},{"content":"Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity is an organization of Darwin-denying doctors being touted by the Discovery Institute as evidence of growing dissent against evolution. Those on their membership list in Arizona:\nDr. Richard D. Friedman, Internal Medicine, Chandler, Arizona\nDr. Joseph M. Kezele, Emergency Medicine, Cave Creek, Arizona\nDr. William H. Noland, Neurology, Tucson, Arizona\nDr. Joel T. Rohrbough, Orthopaedic Surgery, Flagstaff, Arizona\nDr. Allan T. Sawyer, Obstetrics \u0026amp; Gynecology, Glendale, Arizona\nPersonally, given the new developments in biological science and medicine that are discovered as a result of evolutionary science, I would not want to use a doctor who denies evolution.\nLippard (2007-08-09):\nRyan, I've deleted your post because it's spamming for Brent Conley, a Chandler real estate agent, and has nothing to do with the blog post you're commenting on.I highly recommend NOT patronizing any businesses that spam.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/arizona-doctors-who-question-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePhysicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity is \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/08/stop_it_just_stop_it_di.php\"\u003ean organization of Darwin-denying doctors\u003c/a\u003e being touted by the Discovery Institute as evidence of growing dissent against evolution. Those on their membership list in Arizona:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Richard D. Friedman, Internal Medicine, Chandler, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Joseph M. Kezele, Emergency Medicine, Cave Creek, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003eDr. William H. Noland, Neurology, Tucson, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Joel T. Rohrbough, Orthopaedic Surgery, Flagstaff, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Allan T. Sawyer, Obstetrics \u0026amp; Gynecology, Glendale, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePersonally, given the new developments in biological science and medicine that are discovered as a result of evolutionary science, I would not want to use a doctor who denies evolution.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona doctors who question evolution"},{"content":"Jarrett Maupin II, protege of Al Sharpton, wants to be mayor of Phoenix, but unfortunately for his campaign, incumbent mayor Phil Gordon\u0026rsquo;s challenges to his ballot petitions have disqualified enough signatures to get him off the ballot. It seems that Maupin hired individuals with felony convictions to collect signatures, and a majority of his signatures were from people not registered to vote, leaving him 91 signatures short. Maupin said he was \u0026ldquo;outraged\u0026rdquo; by Gordon\u0026rsquo;s challenge of his petition and insisted that he would be on the ballot.\nMaupin got press by showing up at the mayor\u0026rsquo;s office with a voter registration form, stating that Gordon is a Democrat in name only and should switch his registration to Republican. Ironically, Maupin was head of the Young Republicans at Brophy College Preparatory (though this was before he was of legal voting age).\nI also just came across a news report from 2005, regarding Maupin\u0026rsquo;s father:\nA car carrying the Rev. Al Sharpton led sheriff's deputies on a nine-mile chase at speeds up to 110 mph before state troopers stopped the vehicle and arrested the driver, authorities said.\nChief Deputy Charles Sullins said driver Jarrett B. Maupin, 43, was rushing Sharpton to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after Sharpton visited anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan on Sunday at her camp outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford. Because the 2005 Lincoln was rented to Maupin, of Phoenix, sheriff's deputies impounded the car. Maupin posted a $1,000 bond on charges of evading arrest with a vehicle and reckless driving, authorities said. The car carrying Sharpton and two other passengers was clocked doing 110 mph in a 65 mph zone on the interstate south of Dallas, Sullins said. He said the driver ignored deputies' attempts to stop it and weaved in and out of traffic before state troopers were able to get in front of the car. Maupin Jr. was also present in the vehicle. Sharpton denied the allegations, saying that he was not part of any police chase. He declined an offer from the police to drive him to the airport, and began walking down the road, accepting a ride from a passing vehicle.\nIn 2005, Maupin Jr. ran for Phoenix City Council but was defeated by incumbent Michael Johnson. In 2006, he was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board for a four-year term.\nMaupin, who attended but did not graduate from my alma mater, Brophy College Preparatory (he transferred to St. Mary's after making accusations of racial harassment), was profiled in Phoenix's New Times regarding his politics in an article titled \"Kid Sharpton.\"\nUPDATE (April 28, 2009): Rev. Jarrett Maupin Jr. has resigned from the Phoenix Union High School District Board as part of a plea agreement in U.S. District Court after being arrested for giving false information to the FBI. In exchange for his plea, he will not be prosecuted for other crimes, for which he is paying restitution to victims.\nI hope this means the end of his political career.\nUPDATE (July 9, 2016): It came out in 2015 that the false statements Maupin made were false allegations against Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, accusing him of being a child molester. Maupin claimed he had seen pictures and video, but the charges had been completely fabricated by Gregory Coleman, an aide to City Councilman Michael Nowakowski, as a test of Maupin's ethics. Maupin failed (though I would argue that the same is true of Coleman).\nMaupin was unapologetic for his fabrications and saw himself as the victim of Coleman:\nMaupin told 12 News’ Halloran that Coleman came to him with the information about Gordon and that he simply reported it to authorities. It was, he tells her, a mistake, one for which he's sorry. “I'm not guilty of anything more than Martha Stewart or any number of people making a false statement to a federal entity,” he told her. “And most of us probably do that on our income taxes every year. I think the difference is they had the ability to attempt to politically lynch me. And I am a survivor of an attempted political lynching.” ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/jarrett-maupin-sr-and-jr-controversies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJarrett Maupin II, protege of Al Sharpton, wants to be mayor of Phoenix, but unfortunately for his campaign, incumbent mayor Phil Gordon\u0026rsquo;s challenges to his ballot petitions have disqualified enough signatures to get him off the ballot.  It seems that \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0725maupin0725.html\"\u003eMaupin hired individuals with felony convictions to collect signatures, and a majority of his signatures were from people not registered to vote\u003c/a\u003e, leaving him 91 signatures short.  Maupin said he was \u0026ldquo;outraged\u0026rdquo; by Gordon\u0026rsquo;s challenge of his petition and insisted that he would be on the ballot.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMaupin got press by showing up at the mayor\u0026rsquo;s office with a voter registration form, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2007/06/jarrett_maupin_storms_the_mayo.php\"\u003estating that Gordon is a Democrat in name only and should switch his registration to Republican\u003c/a\u003e.  Ironically, Maupin was head of the Young Republicans at Brophy College Preparatory (though this was before he was of legal voting age).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI also just came across \u003ca href=\"http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8C9O4FG1\u0026amp;show_article=1\"\u003ea news report from 2005, regarding Maupin\u0026rsquo;s father\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jarrett Maupin Sr. and Jr. controversies"},{"content":"Arizona is the #7 state for per-capita preforeclosures:\nTOP 10 PREFORECLOSURE STATES\nState\nFilings\nPer CapitaNevada\n19,044\n2.55 percentFlorida\n111,250\n1.76 percentColorado\n24,045\n1.49 percentIllinois\n52,984\n1.35 percentNew Jersey\n37,250\n1.22 percentCalifornia\n132,101\n1.15 percentArizona\n20,669\n1.09 percentUtah\n5,773\n0.90 percentTexas\n46,595\n0.81 percentGeorgia\n19,382\n0.75 percent\nSOURCE: Foreclosures.com\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what the timeframe is for this data, but it looks like the last twelve months.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/arizonas-7-for-per-capita.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona \u003ca href=\"http://www.lvrj.com/business/8890817.html\"\u003eis the #7 state for per-capita preforeclosures\u003c/a\u003e:\u003ctable\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth\u003eTOP 10 PREFORECLOSURE STATES\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eState\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003eFilings\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003ePer Capita\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eNevada\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e19,044\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e2.55 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eFlorida\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e111,250\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.76 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eColorado\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e24,045\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.49 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIllinois\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e52,984\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.35 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eNew Jersey\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e37,250\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.22 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eCalifornia\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e132,101\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.15 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eArizona\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e20,669\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1.09 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eUtah\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e5,773\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e0.90 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eTexas\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e46,595\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e0.81 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eGeorgia\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e19,382\u003c/td\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctd\u003e0.75 percent\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSOURCE: Foreclosures.com\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what the timeframe is for this data, but it looks like the last twelve months.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona's #7 for per-capita preforeclosures"},{"content":"Charity Navigator has issued a report on salaries of CEOs of charities for 2007. While religious charities have the lowest average CEO compensation of any category (educational charities have the highest), at the top of the religion list is Peter Popoff Ministries, which pays Peter Popoff an annual salary of $628,732. His wife Elizabeth Popoff gets another $203,029.\nNot bad for a phony faith healer who was exposed as a fake on the Tonight Show by James Randi two decades ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/phony-faith-healer-is-top-paid-ceo-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCharity Navigator \u003ca href=\"http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/studies.ceo.htm\"\u003ehas issued a report on salaries of CEOs of charities for 2007\u003c/a\u003e.  While religious charities have the lowest average CEO compensation of any category (educational charities have the highest), at the top of the religion list is \u003ca href=\"http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/5206.htm\"\u003ePeter Popoff Ministries\u003c/a\u003e, which pays Peter Popoff an annual salary of $628,732.  His wife Elizabeth Popoff gets another $203,029.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot bad for a phony faith healer \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y\"\u003ewho was exposed as a fake on the Tonight Show by James Randi two decades ago\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phony faith healer is top-paid CEO of a religious charity"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m currently reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s 20-years-in-the-making history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday). All of Weiner\u0026rsquo;s facts are sourced and on-the-record, including numerous recently declassified sources (some of which the government is attempting to re-classify).\nThis review of the book by Chalmers Johnson, a former outside consultant for the CIA, does a good job of pointing out some of the highlights and arguing at the conclusion for the abolition of the CIA and letting the State Department\u0026rsquo;s Bureau of Intelligence and Research fill in for the foreign intelligence function.\nWeiner\u0026rsquo;s book points out how the CIA has been mismanaged since its creation from the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services, failing to come up with accurate information about major events of significance and leaving a wake of damage from failed covert ops designed to stop the spread of communism even where there was none. And it has regularly deceived presidents, massaged or fabricated intelligence information, and violated the laws of the United States. Johnson writes:\nNothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;clandestine\u0026rdquo; (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing of the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked \u0026ldquo;Why do they hate us?\u0026rdquo; From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, \u0026ldquo;Who does not?\u0026quot;This paragraph understates the case\u0026ndash;Johnson goes on to describe how the CIA provided funding for Japanese and Italian politicians. Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book observes that the CIA helped a convicted war criminal become prime minister of Japan in 1957 and bribed the leading officials of the Liberal Democratic Party, which it helped maintain in power until the 1990s. CIA broadcasts from Radio Free Europe called for uprisings. To their surprise, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, announced on state radio a break with Russia, and within days formed a new coalition government in October 1956, but CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected him because he had been a communist and RFE attacked him. RFE broadcasts as much as promised U.S. assistance to Hungarian rebels, only to leave them to die on their own in November 1956 when the Soviets crushed the rebellion. Tens of thousands of people were killed and thousands shipped off to Siberia. Dulles lied to Eisenhower about the content of the broadcasts, transcripts of which only became available in English in 1996, and claimed the U.S. had done nothing to encourage the Hungarians.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve still got much to read in the book (I\u0026rsquo;m only up to 1958), but so far it is eye-opening and appalling.\nUPDATE (August 11, 2007): The CIA has issued a press release taking issue with Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book for its bias.\nUPDATE (December 16, 2009): The CIA has published a review critiquing the accuracy and reliability of Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book.\nAnonymous (2007-08-27):\nTim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes is a flawed recount of 60 years of CIA history that has been well documented in numerous public sources, other books, the Congressional Record, etc. There is nothing new in the book except the mistakes that the CIA Press Release point out. In my 26 year career in the intelligence business I was involved in some of the \"blunders\" Weiner depicts. Weiner fails to comprehend that Covert Action is not like Game Theory where all the variables are known or can be known and where all possible outcomes can be predicted. It is a messy game and sometimes things beyond our control just happen! All covert action operations are vetted by the president's national security team and approved by the President. Remember, we - the officers of the CIA - are just ordinary people trying to do an extraordinary job under extraordinary circumstances. We are average people, mothers, fathers with families. We go to soccer games, to church, to bars and parties just like everyone else. We have fears and ambitions just like anyone else. We abide by the laws of the land not out of fear but out of a belief in our form of government and a love of our country. To imply that we operate an independent agenda separate from US foreign policy objects and that we lack a method of controls and accountability is just not true. It is sad to see that such a great intellect as Chalmers Johnson has chosen to waste his talents on such trivia as the flawed Legacy of Ashes.\nLippard (2007-08-27):\nUnfortunately, as Weiner's book documents--and is also shown in such documents as the CIA's recently released \"Family Jewels\"--sometimes the CIA does not follow the law of the land, including all of its covert operations for the first 25 years of its existence, which were conducted without Congressional authority.The CIA's history is one which includes numerous cases of lying to presidents and various CIA officers lying to their superiors about what they were up to (again, see the Family Jewels, documents which were collected by CIA Director James Schlesinger from CIA officers who were asked to report on any \"skeletons in the closet\").\nLippard (2007-08-27):\nBTW, thanks for the post, Porter.Porter says on his blog that he is not Porter Goss. He is apparently located in Newark, California, and his blog profile says:\"I have been retired from clandestine service since the mid 1990’s. I served for 26 years as a field intelligence operative, first with US Army Intelligence for three years, then with the CIA for 23 years. Entering the CIA as a very expendable GS-8, I climbed the ranks into the Senior Intelligence Service retiring as a GS-17. I was selected by the agency to be assigned to the deepest of deep cover assignments as a Non-Official Cover Case Officer for 18 years. I served both as an executive for the corporation that provided my cover and as an intelligence operative working in both Asia and Europe. I now live a reclusive life enjoying hiking, biking, fishing and fossil hunting.\"He has a blog titled \"Words from a Company Man.\"\nLippard (2007-08-27):\nPorter: Thinking about your comment overnight, I have to say that it's an awfully glib dismissal of the material.The CIA helped train, arm, and fund Osama bin Laden and his followers--and then pulled out of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, allowing the rise of the Taliban. The CIA backed the Ba'ath party's rise to power in Iraq in 1963, which subsequently led to Saddam Hussein's rule. The CIA put the Shah of Iran in power in 1953 and supported his ruthless and corrupt dictatorship, setting the stage for the 1979 revolution, and then supplied Iran with missiles.You don't seem very apologetic for the role your organization has had in making these disasters. \"It is a messy game and sometimes things beyond our control just happen!\" is a load of crap. The United States simply should not be intervening in the operations of other nations like this at all.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/abolish-cia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m currently reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Tim Weiner\u0026rsquo;s 20-years-in-the-making history of the Central Intelligence Agency, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA\u003c/span\u003e (2007, Doubleday).  All of Weiner\u0026rsquo;s facts are sourced and on-the-record, including numerous recently declassified sources (some of which the government is attempting to re-classify).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174824/chalmers_johnson_agency_of_rogues\"\u003eThis review of the book by Chalmers Johnson\u003c/a\u003e, a former outside consultant for the CIA, does a good job of pointing out some of the highlights and arguing at the conclusion for the abolition of the CIA and letting the State Department\u0026rsquo;s Bureau of Intelligence and Research fill in for the foreign intelligence function.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWeiner\u0026rsquo;s book points out how the CIA has been mismanaged since its creation from the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services, failing to come up with accurate information about major events of significance and leaving a wake of damage from failed covert ops designed to stop the spread of communism even where there was none.  And it has regularly deceived presidents, massaged or fabricated intelligence information, and violated the laws of the United States.  Johnson writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;clandestine\u0026rdquo; (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing of the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked \u0026ldquo;Why do they hate us?\u0026rdquo; From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, \u0026ldquo;Who does not?\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis paragraph understates the case\u0026ndash;Johnson goes on to describe how the CIA provided funding for Japanese and Italian politicians.  Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book observes that the CIA helped a convicted war criminal become prime minister of Japan in 1957 and bribed the leading officials of the Liberal Democratic Party, which it helped maintain in power until the 1990s.  CIA broadcasts from Radio Free Europe called for uprisings.  To their surprise, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, announced on state radio a break with Russia, and within days formed a new coalition government in October 1956, but CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected him because he had been a communist and RFE attacked him.  RFE broadcasts as much as promised U.S. assistance to Hungarian rebels, only to leave them to die on their own in November 1956 when the Soviets crushed the rebellion.  Tens of thousands of people were killed and thousands shipped off to Siberia.  Dulles lied to Eisenhower about the content of the broadcasts, transcripts of which only became available in English in 1996, and claimed the U.S. had done nothing to encourage the Hungarians.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve still got much to read in the book (I\u0026rsquo;m only up to 1958), but so far it is eye-opening and appalling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 11, 2007):  The CIA has issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/legacy-of-ashes.html\"\u003ea press release taking issue with Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book for its bias\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 16, 2009): The CIA \u003ca href=\"https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-cia.html\"\u003ehas published a review critiquing the accuracy and reliability of Weiner\u0026rsquo;s book\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abolish the CIA"},{"content":"The New York Times editorialized that vice president Dick Cheney was the person who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card to the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over.\nLarry King asked Cheney about it, and his response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn\u0026rsquo;t read the New York Times editorial. Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well.\nTalking Points Memo thinks they\u0026rsquo;ve identified a Cheney \u0026ldquo;tell.\u0026quot; (And no, it\u0026rsquo;s not just that his lips are moving\u0026hellip;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/08/did-cheney-send-gonzales-and-card-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e editorialized that \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015946.php\"\u003evice president Dick Cheney was the person\u003c/a\u003e who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card \u003ca href=\"/2007/05/ashcroft-refused-to-reauthorize.html\"\u003eto the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft\u003c/a\u003e to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLarry King asked Cheney about it, and \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016042.php\"\u003ehis response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn\u0026rsquo;t read the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e editorial\u003c/a\u003e.  Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTalking Points Memo \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016066.php\"\u003ethinks they\u0026rsquo;ve identified a Cheney \u0026ldquo;tell.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  (And no, it\u0026rsquo;s not just that his lips are moving\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Did Cheney send Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft's hospital room?"},{"content":"Sen. Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; (R-AK) home was raided today by the FBI. All of Alaska\u0026rsquo;s federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, such as Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; son Ben Stevens, president of the Alaska State Senate.\nUPDATE (August 1, 2007): George W. Bush continued his habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems by hosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; honor back on May 23 of this year.\nUPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens was convicted yesterday on seven charges, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/dirty-politician-ted-stevens.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; (R-AK) home \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015997.php\"\u003ewas raided today by the FBI\u003c/a\u003e.  All of Alaska\u0026rsquo;s federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2384164\u0026amp;CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312\"\u003esuch as Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; son Ben Stevens\u003c/a\u003e, president of the Alaska State Senate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 1, 2007):  George W. Bush continued \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/bush-campaigns-for-racist-and-violent.html\"\u003ehis habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems\u003c/a\u003e by \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016053.php\"\u003ehosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens\u0026rsquo; honor back on May 23 of this year\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-27-stevensverdict_N.htm\"\u003ewas convicted yesterday on seven charges\u003c/a\u003e, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Ted Stevens"},{"content":"July, 2007, saw 2503 Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales in Maricopa County - yet another record. Historical Comments houseofpain (2007-08-01):\nHoly moly, apocalypse!!!\nAnonymous (2007-08-01):\nI agree with house of pain. The pain is coming to the real estate market. I need more popcorn for this double feature.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/words-fail-me.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJuly, 2007, saw \u003cb\u003e2503\u003c/b\u003e Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales in Maricopa County - yet another record. \u003ca href=\"/images/July07NTRs.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/July07NTRs.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5093562250792169458\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ehouseofpain\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-08-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHoly moly, apocalypse!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-08-01)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI agree with house of pain.  The pain is coming to the real estate market. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI need more popcorn for this double feature.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Words Fail Me..."},{"content":"The July 21, 2007 issue of The Economist has an article about a Swiss company that has opened a market for software vulnerabilities:\nSince economics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, a small industry of “security companies” has emerged to exploit the hackers\u0026rsquo; dilemma. These outfits buy bugs from hackers (euphemistically known as “security researchers”). They then either sell them to software companies affected by the flaws, sometimes with a corrective “patch” as a sweetener, or use them for further “research”, such as looking for more significant—and therefore more lucrative—bugs on their own account. Such firms seek to act as third parties that are trusted by hacker and target alike; the idea is that they know the market and thus know the price it will bear. Often, though, neither side trusts them. Hackers complain that, if they go to such companies to try to ascertain what represents a fair price, the value of their information plummets because too many people now know about it. Software companies, meanwhile, reckon such middlemen are offered only uninteresting information. They suspect, perhaps cynically, that the good stuff is going straight to the black market.Last week, therefore, saw the launch of a service intended to make the whole process of selling bugs more transparent while giving greater rewards to hackers who do the right thing. The company behind it, a Swiss firm called WabiSabiLabi, differs from traditional security companies in that it does not buy or sell information in its own right. Instead, it provides a marketplace for such transactions. A bug-hunter can use this marketplace in one of three ways. He can offer his discovery in a straightforward auction, with the highest bidder getting exclusive rights. He can sell the bug at a fixed price to as many buyers as want it. Or he can try to sell the bug at a fixed price exclusively to one company, without going through an auction.\nWabiSabiLabi brings two things to the process besides providing the marketplace. The first is an attempt to ensure that only legitimate traders can buy and sell information. (It does this by a vetting process similar to the one employed by banks to clamp down on money launderers.) The second is that it inspects the goods beforehand to make certain that they live up to the claims being made about them. Herman Zampariolo, the head of WabiSabiLabi, says that hundreds of hackers have registered with the company since the marketplace was set up. So far only four bugs have been offered for sale, and the prices offered for them have been modest, perhaps because buyers are waiting to see how the system will work. A further 200 bugs, however, have been submitted and are currently being scrutinised.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/marketplace-for-software.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe July 21, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9507422\"\u003ehas an article about a Swiss company that has opened a market for software vulnerabilities\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSince economics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, a small industry of “security companies” has emerged to exploit the hackers\u0026rsquo; dilemma. These outfits buy bugs from hackers (euphemistically known as “security researchers”). They then either sell them to software companies affected by the flaws, sometimes with a corrective “patch” as a sweetener, or use them for further “research”, such as looking for more significant—and therefore more lucrative—bugs on their own account. Such firms seek to act as third parties that are trusted by hacker and target alike; the idea is that they know the market and thus know the price it will bear. Often, though, neither side trusts them. Hackers complain that, if they go to such companies to try to ascertain what represents a fair price, the value of their information plummets because too many people now know about it. Software companies, meanwhile, reckon such middlemen are offered only uninteresting information. They suspect, perhaps cynically, that the good stuff is going straight to the black market.Last week, therefore, saw the launch of a service intended to make the whole process of selling bugs more transparent while giving greater rewards to hackers who do the right thing. The company behind it, a Swiss firm called \u003ca target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.wslabi.com/wabisabilabi/home.do?\" title=\" (opens in a new window) \"\u003eWabiSabiLabi\u003c/a\u003e, differs from traditional security companies in that it does not buy or sell information in its own right. Instead, it provides a marketplace for such transactions.          \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eA bug-hunter can use this marketplace in one of three ways. He can offer his discovery in a straightforward auction, with the highest bidder getting exclusive rights. He can sell the bug at a fixed price to as many buyers as want it. Or he can try to sell the bug at a fixed price exclusively to one company, without going through an auction.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A marketplace for software vulnerabilities"},{"content":"A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to pay $101 million to four men who were wrongly imprisoned for more than thirty years on murder convictions when the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence. Two of the four men died in prison. The Department of Justice argued that the federal government had no obligation to share information with state prosecutors even though they knew that the testimony identifying the men as the killers was false.\nThe judge declared that the DoJ\u0026rsquo;s position was \u0026ldquo;absurd\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The FBI\u0026rsquo;s misconduct was clearly the sole cause of this conviction.\u0026quot;\nThe FBI gave bonuses and commendations to its agents who were responsible for these erroneous convictions for the murder of Edward \u0026ldquo;Teddy\u0026rdquo; Deegan.\n(Via The Agitator, who rightly asks why the FBI agents responsible for this travesty of justice are not themselves in jail.)\nUPDATE (July 31, 2007): The Agitator reports on FBI Assistant Director Wayne Murphy\u0026rsquo;s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the use and abuse of confidential drug informants, in which Murphy argues that the FBI should not be required to disclose evidence about wrongdoing by confidential informants to state prosecutors in order to prevent murders or to prevent people from being wrongly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Apparently the FBI considers the war on drugs so important that it is better to allow people to be murdered or people to be wrongly imprisoned than to jeopardize a drug investigation.\nHistorical Comments Leo (2007-07-31):\n...and still we pay for J. Edgar Hoovers excesses...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/judge-awards-101-million-to-men-wrongly.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA federal judge \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/07/26/wrongful.convictions.ap/index.html\"\u003ehas ordered the U.S. government to pay $101 million to four men who were wrongly imprisoned for more than thirty years on murder convictions\u003c/a\u003e when the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence.  Two of the four men died in prison.  The Department of Justice argued that the federal government had no obligation to share information with state prosecutors even though they knew that the testimony identifying the men as the killers was false.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge declared that the DoJ\u0026rsquo;s position was \u0026ldquo;absurd\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The FBI\u0026rsquo;s misconduct was clearly the sole cause of this conviction.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe FBI gave bonuses and commendations to its agents who were responsible for these erroneous convictions for the murder of Edward \u0026ldquo;Teddy\u0026rdquo; Deegan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027982.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, who rightly asks why the FBI agents responsible for this travesty of justice are not themselves in jail.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 31, 2007):  The Agitator \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027998.php\"\u003ereports on FBI Assistant Director Wayne Murphy\u0026rsquo;s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the use and abuse of confidential drug informants\u003c/a\u003e, in which Murphy argues that the FBI should not be required to disclose evidence about wrongdoing by confidential informants to state prosecutors in order to prevent murders or to prevent people from being wrongly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.  Apparently the FBI considers the war on drugs so important that it is better to allow people to be murdered or people to be wrongly imprisoned than to jeopardize a drug investigation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Judge awards $101 million to men wrongly imprisoned for 35 years"},{"content":"Orac at Respectful Insolence points out that a recent Arizona death after liposuction was a case of \u0026ldquo;minor surgery\u0026rdquo; being performed by a homeopath. And Arizona law permits these quacks to perform \u0026ldquo;minor surgery.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (July 28, 2007): Orac has more on what Arizona allows via its regulation of \u0026ldquo;homeopathy.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/arizona-allows-quacks-to-perform.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrac at Respectful Insolence \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/07/what_the_hell_is_homeopathic_surgery.php\"\u003epoints out that a recent Arizona death after liposuction was a case of \u0026ldquo;minor surgery\u0026rdquo; being performed by a homeopath\u003c/a\u003e.  And Arizona law permits these quacks to perform \u0026ldquo;minor surgery.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 28, 2007):  Orac \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/07/more_on_legalized_quackery_in_arizona.php\"\u003ehas more on what Arizona allows via its regulation of \u0026ldquo;homeopathy.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona allows quacks to perform surgery"},{"content":"Outsourcing the Picket Line\nThe picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.\n…\nAlthough their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.\nThey’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.\n“It’s about the cash,” said Tina Shaw, 44, who lives in a House of Ruth women’s shelter and has walked the line at various sites. “We’re against low wages, but I’m here for the cash.”\nVia Long or Short Capital. Historical Comments Sheldon (2007-07-26):\nIts a sad state of affairs that unions are no longer a social movement that mobilizes its own members to picket.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/union-hires-homeless-and-unemployed-at.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOutsourcing the Picket Line\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.\u003cbr /\u003e…\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThey’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Union hires homeless and unemployed at low wages to protest low wages"},{"content":"Many of these, from Radley Balko at The Agitator, are also appropriate for Republicans. A few I especially liked:\nA recent study found that over half the country now derives part or all of its income from the federal government. Three of the richest counties in the country are in the D.C. suburbs, a telling indicator of just how bloated with taxpayer dollars Washington has become. The federal government is today pervasive in our day-to-day lives, from cradle to grave, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. Do you think these trends are healthy? Looking at the premise of this question, would you agree or disagree federal government is getting too large, too influential, and too pervasive? Do you think it\u0026rsquo;s appropriate for drug cops to be making medical policy? What is your philosophical approach to federalism? What issues do you feel are best decided at the national level? What issues should be left to the states? Is there any underlying principle you use in separating one from the other, or would you make such decisions ad hoc? Do you believe the U.S. military should be deployed for humanitarian missions? Do you think an atheist could be president? Do you think an atheist should be? Assuming you generally agreed with an atheist on more issues than the alternatives in a given election, would you vote for one? Name five things you think are none of the federal government\u0026rsquo;s business. What is your view of the pardon power and executive clemency? Should it be used frequently? Should it be use to show mercy and forgiveness or to correct injustices that slip through the cracks? Neither? Both? Is there any type of speech you believe should be criminalized? Do you promise not to claim for yourself any of the executive powers you\u0026rsquo;ve criticized the Bush administration for claiming? What is your position on Kelo vs. New London? Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for a government to seize land from one private party and give it to another? What federal crimes will you instruct the Justice Department to make a priority during your administration? Are there any currently private industries that you believe are \u0026ldquo;too important\u0026rdquo; to be left to the private sector? Oil and gas? Health care? Google? America by far and away has the highest prison population in the world. Does this concern you? Are there any federal crimes you feel should be repealed from the books, or devolved to the states? What\u0026rsquo;s your philosophical approach to risk assessment and the precautionary principle? Do you think government should ban products, treatments, and procedures until they\u0026rsquo;re proven safe, or permit them until they show signs of being unsafe? Do you think it\u0026rsquo;s a legitimate function of government to protect people from making bad decisions or prevent them from developing bad habits? Even if those habit or decisions don\u0026rsquo;t directly affect anyone else? How far should the government in preventing bad habits and bad decisions? In other words, should the government\u0026rsquo;s role be merely advisory, or should it criminalize things like gambling, pornography, drug use, or trans fats? Should members of Congress be required to follow all of the laws that they pass? Should members be required to read each bill before voting on it? Would you support a sunset provision requiring Congress to revisit and re-pass each law after five years?\nThe complete list is here.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-07-26):\nThe list should really be titled \"Questions Politicians Will Never Answer\".\nUnknown (2007-10-19):\nI like your list! I have my own list at http://www.hinkles.us/chuckbo/CurrentEvents/Big_Questions.html but it's not restricted to Democrats or Republicans -- I've got questions there that neither side wants to hear and asks for real answers, not just the \"I'm for making our schools stronger,\" as if there was ever a candidate who wanted to make schools weaker.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/nice-list-of-questions-for-democratic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany of these, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027967.php\"\u003efrom Radley Balko at The Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, are also appropriate for Republicans.  A few I especially liked:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"moz-text-html\" lang=\"x-unicode\"\u003e\u003cli\u003e A recent study found that over half the country now derives part or all of its income from the federal government. Three of the richest counties in the country are in the D.C. suburbs, a telling indicator of just how bloated with taxpayer dollars Washington has become. The federal government is today pervasive in our day-to-day lives, from cradle to grave, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. Do you think these trends are healthy? Looking at the premise of this question, would you agree or disagree federal government is getting too large, too influential, and too pervasive? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Do you think it\u0026rsquo;s appropriate for drug cops to be making medical policy? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e What is your philosophical approach to federalism? What issues do you feel are best decided at the national level? What issues should be left to the states? Is there any underlying principle you use in separating one from the other, or would you make such decisions ad hoc? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Do you believe the U.S. military should be deployed for humanitarian missions? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Do you think an atheist could be president?  Do you think an atheist \u003cem\u003eshould\u003c/em\u003e be? Assuming you generally agreed with an atheist on more issues than the alternatives in a given election, would you vote for one?  \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Name five things you think are none of the federal government\u0026rsquo;s business.  \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e What is your view of the pardon power and executive clemency? Should it be used frequently? Should it be use to show mercy and forgiveness or to correct injustices that slip through the cracks? Neither? Both? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Is there any type of speech you believe should be criminalized? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Do you promise not to claim for yourself any of the executive powers you\u0026rsquo;ve criticized the Bush administration for claiming? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e What is your position on \u003cem\u003eKelo vs. New London\u003c/em\u003e? Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for a government to seize land from one private party and give it to another?   \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e What federal crimes will you instruct the Justice Department to make a priority during your administration? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Are there any currently private industries that you believe are \u0026ldquo;too important\u0026rdquo; to be left to the private sector? Oil and gas? Health care? Google? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e America by far and away has the highest prison population in the world. Does this concern you? Are there any federal crimes you feel should be repealed from the books, or devolved to the states? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e What\u0026rsquo;s your philosophical approach to risk assessment and the precautionary principle? Do you think government should ban products, treatments, and procedures until they\u0026rsquo;re proven safe, or permit them until they show signs of being unsafe? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Do you think it\u0026rsquo;s a legitimate function of government to protect people from making bad decisions or prevent them from developing bad habits? Even if those habit or decisions don\u0026rsquo;t directly affect anyone else? How far should the government in preventing bad habits and bad decisions? In other words, should the government\u0026rsquo;s role be merely advisory, or should it criminalize things like gambling, pornography, drug use, or trans fats? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Should members of Congress be required to follow all of the laws that they pass? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Should members be required to read each bill before voting on it? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Would you support a sunset provision requiring Congress to revisit and re-pass each law after five years?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe complete list is \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027967.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nice list of questions for Democratic presidential candidates"},{"content":"One out of every twenty police officers on the Chicago Police Department has received at least ten official written complaints filed against them in the last five years, but the only reason we know is because of a lawsuit. The Chicago PD is still fighting to prevent the release of these bad cops\u0026rsquo; names\u0026ndash;yet average citizens accused of crimes are identified in newspapers. Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t police be held to a higher standard?\nMore at the Agitator, including links to some specific serious abuses that have come out of the Chicago PD.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/chicago-pd-fights-to-protect-bad-cops.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne out of every twenty police officers on the Chicago Police Department has received at least ten official written complaints filed against them in the last five years, but the only reason we know is because of a lawsuit.  The Chicago PD is still fighting to prevent the release of these bad cops\u0026rsquo; names\u0026ndash;yet average citizens accused of crimes are identified in newspapers.  Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t police be held to a higher standard?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027961.php\"\u003ethe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, including links to some specific serious abuses that have come out of the Chicago PD.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chicago PD fights to protect bad cops"},{"content":"\nI spent most of the last nine days in the Grand Canyon, rafting down the Colorado River on the National Center for Science Education\u0026rsquo;s 2007 trip. I met interesting people and made new friends, ate great food, and saw amazing sights. This was my third trip down the Canyon, but my first in the last two decades (my previous two were in August 1976 and June 1985).\nThis trip included the presentation of both creationist flood geology and real geology, but there was no contest\u0026ndash;when you have hundreds of feet of successive ocean floor beds full of fossils of marine life that has lived and died, and a large variety of completely different kinds of formations that have clearly been deposited in different kinds of events, it\u0026rsquo;s transparently nonsense to claim that it was all laid down in a single year-long flood.\nTop photo: Grand Canyon about 25 miles downstream from Lee\u0026rsquo;s Ferry (mile 0); bottom photo: downstream view of river from Nankoweap Canyon (mile 53).\nUPDATE (August 7, 2007): Here\u0026rsquo;s a blog post about our trip by a member of the crew.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/back-from-grand-canyon.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P7170076.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P7170076.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5091288392122423570\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI spent most of the last nine days in the Grand Canyon, rafting down the Colorado River on the \u003ca href=\"http://ncseweb.org/about/excursions/gc07\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://ncseweb.org/about/excursions/gc07\"\u003e\u0026rsquo;s 2007 trip\u003c/a\u003e.  I met interesting people and made new friends, ate great food, and saw amazing sights.  This was my third trip down the Canyon, but my first in the last two decades (my previous two were in August 1976 and June 1985).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P7190073.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P7190073.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5091342903847344418\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis trip included the presentation of both creationist flood geology and real geology, but there was no contest\u0026ndash;when you have hundreds of feet of successive ocean floor beds full of fossils of marine life that has lived and died, and a large variety of completely different kinds of formations that have clearly been deposited in different kinds of events, it\u0026rsquo;s transparently nonsense to claim that it was all laid down in a single year-long flood.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTop photo: Grand Canyon about 25 miles downstream from Lee\u0026rsquo;s Ferry (mile 0); bottom photo: downstream view of river from Nankoweap Canyon (mile 53).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 7, 2007):  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://fiddley.com/archive/200707/what_i_came_for\"\u003ea blog post about our trip by a member of the crew\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from the Grand Canyon"},{"content":"One of the serious problems I have with our democracy is that politicians are a package deal. When one gets elected we celebrate their good ideas, but we have to endure their idiotic ones. I think this could explain the popularity of the \u0026ldquo;lesser-of-evils\u0026rdquo; argument people often use to persuade others to vote for their pet candidate of the moment. Arguably, all politicians are idiots - to a greater or lesser degree.\nCase in point: Ron Paul. You can love him for his stance on the war in Iraq, but this sort of stuff really makes me wonder about the guy:\nThe notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.WTF??? Isn\u0026rsquo;t Ron Paul supposedly a constitutionalist?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not a big surprise to me to find that the source of the above patent absurdity is an article posted at lewrockwell.com - home of the kookiest of the kooks in the \u0026ldquo;libertarian\u0026rdquo; world.\nThanks to the no god zone, which has more to say on this topic.\nUPDATE by Jim (October 18, 2007): Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s views on religion and government, with lots of data in the comments.\nUPDATE by Jim (December 25, 2007): Ron Paul rejects evolution.\nUnknown (2007-07-21):\n\"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution.\" That is correct: The First Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly forbids the U.S. federal government from enacting any law respecting a religious establishment, and thus forbids either designating an official church for the United States, or interfering with State and local official churches — which were common when the First Amendment was enacted. It did not prevent state governments from establishing official churches. Connecticut continued to do so until it replaced its colonial Charter with the Connecticut Constitution of 1818; Massachusetts did not disestablish its official church until 1833, more than forty years after the ratification of the First Amendment; and local official establishments of religion persisted even later.I'm an atheist leaning agnostic and think the world would be a better place without any god delusions or organized religion.I'm also a passionate Ron Paul supporter. While I don't agree with all his stances on policy, he's the only candid, honest, and trustworthy candidate of the lot with a voting record to prove it.But no one explains Ron Paul Better than himself. If you haven't seen the Google interview, check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCM_wQy4YVgFind out why we Love Ron Paul.\nCairnarvon (2007-07-21):\nYeah, Ron Paul is just another hyperreligious racist gun nut opposed to abortion, stem cell research, and net neutrality.He's trying to pull a maverick campaign in the same way McCain did in 2000, and many idiots on my internets seem to be falling for it hook, line, and sinker.There's more here.Be prepared for a flood of Ronbots, though; they watch Technorati for posts mentioning him, and troll the hell out of any negative posts they can find.\nGary McGath (2007-07-25):\nI really want to like Ron Paul; at his worst, he's still immeasurably better than any other Republican candidate. (I guess that makes me one of the \"idiots on Cairnarvon's internets\" -- oh, well.) But he seems to be out to make his supporters cringe. His postcard thanking me for a contribution listed all the meetings he was planning with anti-abortion groups. Great way to make sure I never contribute again, Ron!\nLippard (2007-07-25):\nIf Ron Paul thinks the U.S. Constitution is \"replete with references to God,\" he should read it again. Here's the only one: \"Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth.\"Madison intended the First Amendment to apply to states as well as the nation, and this was explicitly made the case with the passage of the 14th Amendment. Anyone who thinks that it is constitutional today for a state to have an established religion is deluded.\nRon Chusid (2007-07-25):\nJim,I suspect that by now you've noticed the track back to this post from my post last night at Liberal Values. Apparently my post has attracted more attention from Paul supporters (possibly as I've had a couple of other recent posts on Paul).There's several comments defending Paul's views on religion (including claims that he's right about separation of church and state or that it doesn't matter). You might want to drop by and add another view in defense of separation of church and state.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/ron-paul-religious-kook.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the serious problems I have with our democracy is that politicians are a package deal. When one gets elected we celebrate their good ideas, but we have to endure their idiotic ones. I think this could explain the popularity of the \u0026ldquo;lesser-of-evils\u0026rdquo; argument people often use to persuade others to vote for their pet candidate of the moment. Arguably, all politicians are idiots - to a greater or lesser degree.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCase in point: Ron Paul. You can love him for his stance on the war in Iraq, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html\"\u003ethis sort of stuff\u003c/a\u003e really makes me wonder about the guy:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eWTF???\u003c/b\u003e Isn\u0026rsquo;t Ron Paul supposedly a constitutionalist?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not a big surprise to me to find that the source of the above \u003ci\u003epatent absurdity\u003c/i\u003e is an article posted at lewrockwell.com - home of the kookiest of the kooks in the \u0026ldquo;libertarian\u0026rdquo; world.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks to the \u003ca href=\"http://nogodzone.blogspot.com/2007/06/ron-paul-on-seperation-of-church-and.html\"\u003eno god zone\u003c/a\u003e, which has more to say on this topic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE by Jim (October 18, 2007):  Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/is_ron_paul_a_dominionist.php\"\u003ehas more on Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s views on religion and government, with lots of data in the comments\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE by Jim (December 25, 2007):  Ron Paul \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/12/ron_paul_rejects_evolution.php\"\u003erejects evolution\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ron Paul, Religious Kook"},{"content":"\nBully is about 4 years old, approximately 40-45 pounds. For most of his life, Bully and his caretaker have been homeless. Bully currently is kept outside, behind the store where his caretaker works. He has little shade or other comforts, and does not get the love and attention he deserves. I keep tabs on him and his ‘owner,’ but I’d like to find Bully a better home if possible. We tried to adopt him about 1 ½ years ago, but after two perfect months in our house, he began to attack one of our dogs. Neither dog was ever injured, but we could not trust Bully around our dogs. Other than that, he is a great dog. He loves attention and belly rubs, will come when called, won’t chew inappropriately, and never had an accident in the house. Despite his rather tough life, Bully always has a smile on his face and is happy to see you.\nBully is: affectionate, lap dog, house broken, neutered, eager to please, unknown behavior with children, extremely intelligent, unpredictable aggression towards other dogs.\nIn his ideal home he would be the only pet. As I have never seen him around children, I’d only want him to go to a home where any children are 16 or older. A prospective adopter home inspection is required. No adopters farther than 300-400 miles outside of Phoenix will be considered, as I will be unable to travel to inspect your home on Bully\u0026rsquo;s behalf. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/adopt-bully.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/bully_sofa.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087504325971331986\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;\" alt=\"\" src=\"/images/bully_sofa.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/bully_gracie.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087504325971332002\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;\" alt=\"\" src=\"/images/bully_gracie.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eBully is about 4 years old, approximately 40-45 pounds. For most of his life, Bully and his caretaker have been homeless. Bully currently is kept outside, behind the store where his caretaker works. He has little shade or other comforts, and does not get the love and attention he deserves. I keep tabs on him and his ‘owner,’ but I’d like to find Bully a better home if possible. \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe tried to adopt him about 1 ½ years ago, but after two perfect months in our house, he began to attack one of our dogs. Neither dog was ever injured, but we could not trust Bully around our dogs. Other than that, he is a great dog. He loves attention and belly rubs, will come when called, won’t chew inappropriately, and never had an accident in the house. Despite his rather tough life, Bully always has a smile on his face and is happy to see you.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBully is: affectionate, lap dog, house broken, neutered, eager to please, unknown behavior with children, extremely intelligent, unpredictable aggression towards other dogs.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eIn his ideal home he would be the only pet. As I have never seen him around children, I’d only want him to go to a home where any children are 16 or older. A prospective adopter home inspection is required. No adopters farther than 300-400 miles outside of Phoenix will be considered, as I will be unable to travel to inspect your home on Bully\u0026rsquo;s behalf. \u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adopt Bully!"},{"content":"The fact that color printers print a pattern of yellow dots on all pages that indicate which printer was used, for the purposes of being able to track the identity of who has printed any page, has been known since the EFF decrypted the codes and publicized the information in 2005.\nNow, however, the MIT Media Lab has started a project called \u0026ldquo;Seeing Yellow\u0026rdquo; to encourage printer owners to contact the manufacturers and complain, after it has been found that those who do so get reported to the U.S. Secret Service as subversives. (There is one known case, in which someone called to ask a printer manufacturer if there was a way to turn off the \u0026ldquo;feature.\u0026rdquo;)\n(Via Don Lloyd at Distributed Republic.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/asking-printer-manufacturers-to-stop.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe fact that color printers print a pattern of yellow dots on all pages that indicate which printer was used, for the purposes of being able to track the identity of who has printed any page, has been known since the \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/eff-decrypts-laser-printer-codes.html\"\u003eEFF decrypted the codes and publicized the information in 2005\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, however, the MIT Media Lab \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/12/seeing_yellow_call_y.html\"\u003ehas started a project called \u0026ldquo;Seeing Yellow\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to encourage printer owners to contact the manufacturers and complain, after it has been found that those who do so get reported to the U.S. Secret Service as subversives.  (There is one known case, in which someone called to ask a printer manufacturer if there was a way to turn off the \u0026ldquo;feature.\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Don Lloyd at \u003ca href=\"http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2007/07/14/printer-privacy-invasion\"\u003eDistributed Republic\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Asking printer manufacturers to stop spying results in Secret Service visit?"},{"content":"They plan to get Paul Nelson\u0026rsquo;s Explore Evolution book used in a Tacoma, Washington public high school biology classroom.\nRound 4\u0026rsquo;s strategy is to avoid mentioning creationism or intelligent design, but just present evolution badly, and let the students infer creationism or intelligent design on their own or with the help of materials supplied outside of the classroom.\nThe successful defense this time may not be through the courts, but by refuting the material and getting schools to abandon it (or better, refuse to adopt it) because it contains errors and doesn\u0026rsquo;t meet minimal standards of accuracy or value for the science curriculum.\nHistorical Comments Mark (2007-07-15):\nA lot of responsibility may rest with the teachers. In the case of Dover, the teachers could refuse to support Intelligent Design Creationism, citing an official code of ethics for teachers in Pennsylvania. I hope the teachers in Tacoma also have a strong desire to teach real science and not the crap put out by the Discovery Institute.\nAlisonM (2007-07-15):\nI just always get a chuckle about the part that suggests this book be taught AFTER the AP exams have been taken. \"so, after you've gotten them to take the test, and their placement is secure, you can finally teach them DA TROOOOOOOF!\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/di-promotes-round-4-for-creationism-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThey \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/dont_say_i_didn.html\"\u003eplan to get Paul Nelson\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExplore Evolution\u003c/span\u003e book used in a Tacoma, Washington public high school biology classroom\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRound 4\u0026rsquo;s strategy is to avoid mentioning creationism or intelligent design, but just present evolution badly, and let the students infer creationism or intelligent design on their own or with the help of materials supplied outside of the classroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe successful defense this time may not be through the courts, but by refuting the material and getting schools to abandon it (or better, refuse to adopt it) because it contains errors and doesn\u0026rsquo;t meet minimal standards of accuracy or value for the science curriculum.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DI promotes round 4 for creationism in public schools"},{"content":"While looking through multiple pages of results from a Google query that contained some operators like negations and \u0026ldquo;site:\u0026rdquo; specifications, Google was periodically failing to give results or displaying raw HTML in my browser, then ultimately came back with:\nGoogle Error We\u0026rsquo;re sorry\u0026hellip; \u0026hellip; but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can\u0026rsquo;t process your request right now. We\u0026rsquo;ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we\u0026rsquo;ll see you again on Google. But no, there\u0026rsquo;s no malware doing these queries, it\u0026rsquo;s just me.\nJon Fleming (2007-07-13):\nHaave you seen http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2007/07/reason-behind-were-sorry-message.html?\nLippard (2007-07-14):\nThanks for the pointer, though it didn't really answer the question for me specifically. I suspect my being behind a web proxy with many other users may be part of the issue, but I was getting the error consistently for the one query (at about five pages in to the results), and not for any others.\nJon Fleming (2007-07-16):\nWhen I visited your blog today, I got this popup: http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y10/JonF/?action=view\u0026current=Lippard.png.Have you been hacked?\nMarcin (2007-07-17):\n@Jon: Could it be that you've been hacked? Looking at the url of the popup, it seems like it may be originating from your own computer. I am not getting any popups from Jim's blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/google-thinks-im-malware.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile looking through multiple pages of results from a Google query that contained some operators like negations and \u0026ldquo;site:\u0026rdquo; specifications, Google was periodically failing to give results or displaying raw HTML in my browser, then ultimately came back with:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 57, 182);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003eG\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(196, 18, 0);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003eo\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(243, 197, 24);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003eo\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 57, 182);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003eg\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(48, 167, 47);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003el\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(196, 18, 0);font-family:times;font-size:10;\"  \u003ee\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd style=\"padding-left: 10px;\" valign=\"middle\" width=\"100%\"\u003e \u003ctable style=\"border-top: 1px solid rgb(51, 102, 204); color: rgb(229, 236, 249);\" bg=\"\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eError\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"right\" nowrap=\"nowrap\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e \u003cblockquote\u003e \u003ch1\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re sorry\u0026hellip;\u003c/h1\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip; but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.  To protect our users, we can\u0026rsquo;t process your request right now. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google thinks I'm malware"},{"content":"In France, the penalties for speeding are now so widely seen as unfair that there is now a market for selling and purchasing the deduction of points from your license for traffic offenses.\nEach driver starts with 12 points on their license, and loses points for violations. Exceeding the speed limit by 20 kph or less has a two-point penalty, for example. Once you get to zero, your license is automatically suspended for six months.\nBut if you get a traffic citation, you can pay 300-1500 euros per point to someone who is willing to take the rap for you (either because they don\u0026rsquo;t drive or are sufficiently far from zero that the penalty won\u0026rsquo;t bother them), and they\u0026rsquo;ll incur the points by sending in their information on your ticket. The French Interior Ministry is attempting to investigate means to crack down on this, but the volume of tickets is apparently making it difficult.\nMore at the Reason blog. I think this mechanism could work well for photo radar speeding tickets in the U.S.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/french-market-for-drivers-license.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn France, the penalties for speeding are now so widely seen as unfair that there is now a market for selling and purchasing the deduction of points from your license for traffic offenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEach driver starts with 12 points on their license, and loses points for violations.  Exceeding the speed limit by 20 kph or less has a two-point penalty, for example.  Once you get to zero, your license is automatically suspended for six months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut if you get a traffic citation, you can pay 300-1500 euros per point to someone who is willing to take the rap for you (either because they don\u0026rsquo;t drive or are sufficiently far from zero that the penalty won\u0026rsquo;t bother them), and they\u0026rsquo;ll incur the points by sending in their information on your ticket.  The French Interior Ministry is attempting to investigate means to crack down on this, but the volume of tickets is apparently making it difficult.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/121386.html\"\u003eReason blog\u003c/a\u003e.  I think this mechanism could work well for photo radar speeding tickets in the U.S.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"French market for driver's license points"},{"content":"The Arizona legislature and the governor have passed legislation banning the sale of t-shirts that say \u0026ldquo;Bush Lied/They Died.\u0026rdquo; The Arizona legislature voted unanimously in favor of the ban, which allows for the punishment of a year in jail for using the names of deceased soldiers to sell goods, and gives the families of such soldiers the right to collect civil damages.\nThis is an outrageous violation of the First Amendment to prohibit perfectly legitimate political speech using factual information in the public domain. Similar bans have also been passed in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, and are in the works in Florida.\nIn Arizona, this law also violates the state constitution (Article 2, Sections 1, 2, and 6, in my non-lawyerly opinion).\nSeveral Democrats who voted for the bill have now agreed that they should not have, and made excuses for why they did:\n\u0026ldquo;I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have voted the way I did,\u0026rdquo; House Minority Leader Phil Lopes said. The Tucson Democrat blamed his vote in favor of Senate Bill 1014 on a \u0026ldquo;senior moment.\u0026quot; Rep. Tom Prezelski, D-Tucson, said he thought problems he originally had with the measure had been fixed. He acknowledged not reading the final version. And Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, conceded that she wasn\u0026rsquo;t paying attention and was totally unaware of the contents of the bill on which she voted at least twice—once after a proponent of the measure gave a short floor speech explaining the essence of the bill and why he believed it was necessary.\nOur governor, also a Democrat, has given an equally lame response when asked why she signed such a clearly unconstitutional bill:\n\u0026hellip;gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer said a divided vote would not have resulted in a veto. \u0026ldquo;Her concern is for the families who lost someone,\u0026rdquo; L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer said. Asked if Napolitano, a lawyer, believes the measure is unconstitutional, L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer\u0026rsquo;s only response was, \u0026ldquo;The governor signed the bill.\u0026quot;Napolitano cannot be re-elected, and after this, she clearly should not be. Any legislator who voted for this bill should be given the boot, which means cleaning out the entire Arizona legislature. Toss the bums out!\nThe shirts are being sold by Dan Frazier of Flagstaff, who also offers some different messages on top of the list of names of the fallen soldiers.\nThe Arizona Civil Liberties Union has already filed a lawsuit to overturn the law (PDF).\nIf anyone in Phoenix is interested in purchasing some of these shirts as part of a group purchase (or as my resale at cost to you, so I can work some civil disobedience of an unconstitutional law into it), please let me know.\nUPDATE (August 24, 2007): Dan Frazier has gone to court to get an injunction against the law, but it looks like the legislators wrote the law not only in ignorance of the Constitution, but in ignorance of what Frazier is doing\u0026ndash;the law doesn\u0026rsquo;t ban the sale of items using the names of fallen soldiers, it bans advertising using the names of fallen soldiers. The names are not legible on Frazier\u0026rsquo;s website, so he may not fall afoul of the law. That doesn\u0026rsquo;t change the fact that it\u0026rsquo;s a bad, unconstitutional law, however.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2007-07-13):\nI live halfway across the world (Philippines) but I'd be happy to get a shirt. :)\nMr. McNicky (2007-08-20):\nMan, what a world!http://bushenronhaliburton.blogspot.com/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/arizona-bans-anti-bush-t-shirts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arizona legislature and the governor have passed legislation banning the sale of t-shirts that say \u0026ldquo;Bush Lied/They Died.\u0026rdquo;  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/191419\"\u003eArizona legislature voted unanimously in favor of the ban\u003c/a\u003e, which allows for the punishment of a year in jail for using the names of deceased soldiers to sell goods, and gives the families of such soldiers the right to collect civil damages.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is an outrageous violation of the First Amendment to prohibit perfectly legitimate political speech using factual information in the public domain.  Similar bans have also been passed in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, and are in the works in Florida.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Arizona, this law also violates \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/Constitution.asp\"\u003ethe state constitution\u003c/a\u003e (Article 2, Sections 1, 2, and 6, in my non-lawyerly opinion).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral Democrats who voted for the bill have now agreed that they should not have, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/191419\"\u003emade excuses for why they did\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u0026ldquo;I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have voted the way I did,\u0026rdquo; House Minority Leader Phil Lopes said. The Tucson Democrat blamed his vote in favor of Senate Bill 1014 on a \u0026ldquo;senior moment.\u0026quot;\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eRep. Tom Prezelski, D-Tucson, said he thought problems he originally had with the measure had been fixed. He acknowledged not reading the final version.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eAnd Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, conceded that she wasn\u0026rsquo;t paying attention and was totally unaware of the contents of the bill on which she voted at least twice—once after a proponent of the measure gave a short floor speech explaining the essence of the bill and why he believed it was necessary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eOur governor, also a Democrat, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/191419\"\u003ehas given an equally lame response\u003c/a\u003e when asked why she signed such a clearly unconstitutional bill:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u0026hellip;gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer said a divided vote would not have resulted in a veto.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u0026ldquo;Her concern is for the families who lost someone,\u0026rdquo; L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer said.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eAsked if Napolitano, a lawyer, believes the measure is unconstitutional, L\u0026rsquo;Ecuyer\u0026rsquo;s only response was, \u0026ldquo;The governor signed the bill.\u0026quot;\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c/div\u003eNapolitano cannot be re-elected, and after this, she clearly should not be.  Any legislator who voted for this bill should be given the boot, which means cleaning out the entire Arizona legislature.  Toss the bums out!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe shirts are being sold by \u003ca href=\"http://carryabigsticker.com/bush_lied_shirt.htm\"\u003eDan Frazier of Flagstaff\u003c/a\u003e, who also offers some different messages on top of the list of names of the fallen soldiers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Arizona Civil Liberties Union has \u003ca href=\"http://carryabigsticker.com/images/aclu_frazier_lawsuit.pdf\"\u003ealready filed a lawsuit to overturn the law\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf anyone in Phoenix is interested in purchasing some of these shirts as part of a group purchase (or as my resale at cost to you, so I can work some civil disobedience of an unconstitutional law into it), please let me know.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 24, 2007):  Dan Frazier has gone to court to get an injunction against the law, but it looks like the legislators wrote the law not only in ignorance of the Constitution, but in ignorance of what Frazier is doing\u0026ndash;the law doesn\u0026rsquo;t ban the sale of items using the names of fallen soldiers, it bans advertising using the names of fallen soldiers.  The names are not legible on Frazier\u0026rsquo;s website, so \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0824tshirts0824.html\"\u003ehe may not fall afoul of the law\u003c/a\u003e.  That doesn\u0026rsquo;t change the fact that it\u0026rsquo;s a bad, unconstitutional law, however.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona bans anti-Bush t-shirts"},{"content":"Atheists, who see prayers in Congress as unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity, have fought against them with arguments and lawsuits, observing that the First Amendment prohibits government establishment of religion.\nSome Christians, on the other hand, when they see unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity that they don\u0026rsquo;t believe in, attempt to disrupt and silence the invited speaker doing the praying.\nThese individuals apparently think that there already is an established governmental religion of Christianity. It does seem like we\u0026rsquo;ve moved a long way in that direction under the Bush administration.\nAnd whatever happened to Matthew 6:5-6? Has it been removed from some Christians\u0026rsquo; Bibles?\n\u0026ldquo;And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.\u0026rdquo; (NASB)\n(Also see Pharyngula\u0026rsquo;s take.)\nHistorical Comments Bob Kowalski (2007-07-16):\nMatthew 6:5-6?That's one of the lost verses.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/difference-between-christians-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAtheists, who see prayers in Congress as unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity, have fought against them with arguments and lawsuits, observing that the First Amendment prohibits government establishment of religion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome Christians, on the other hand, when they see unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity that they don\u0026rsquo;t believe in, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/hindu_prayers_and_christian_he_1.php\"\u003eattempt to disrupt and silence the invited speaker doing the praying\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese individuals apparently think that there already is an established governmental religion of Christianity.  It does seem like we\u0026rsquo;ve moved a long way in that direction under the Bush administration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd whatever happened to Matthew 6:5-6?  Has it been removed from some Christians\u0026rsquo; Bibles?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men.  Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.  But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.\u0026rdquo; (NASB)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/good_ol_christian_tolerance.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s take.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A difference between Christians and atheists"},{"content":"Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s New York Times reports that two or three guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad successfully engineered the theft of $282 million in U.S. dollars from the bank. It\u0026rsquo;s not been explained why the bank had that much money in U.S. dollars.\nHistorical Comments Trott (2007-07-14):\nLooks like it wasn't actually anywhere near the amount initially reported. News reports are now saying that the value was in dinars and not dollars as originally reported. If true, it was actually less than a million dollars stolen, which seems a more plausible figure.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/quarter-billion-dollar-bank-robbery-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?_r=1\u0026ref=world\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003ereports that two or three guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad successfully engineered the theft of $282 million in U.S. dollars from the bank\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s not been explained why the bank had that much money in U.S. dollars.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eTrott\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-07-14)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eLooks like it wasn't actually anywhere near the amount initially reported.  News reports are now saying that the value was in dinars and not dollars as originally reported.  If true, it was actually less than a million dollars stolen, which seems a more plausible figure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quarter billion dollar bank robbery--in Iraq"},{"content":"For over a year, an individual has been harassing several evolutionary biologists at the Colorado University at Boulder about their \u0026ldquo;devilutionism,\u0026rdquo; and has now crossed the line into threats. The Discovery Institute claims that whoever is doing this is clearly not a Christian, a creationist, or religious (of course, only atheists are capable of doing anything unethical or crazy, right?), but the identity of this individual is known to the people being harassed.\nThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars have more.\nUPDATE (July 13, 2007): The specific kook responsible has been identified as Michael Korn:\nMenacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver, although he has a North Carolina area code.See Pharyngula for links to Korn\u0026rsquo;s website and other information.\nLeo (2007-07-13):\nPerhaps the Discovery Institute should have stated that this individuals behavior is not compatible with and is in contradiction to the teachings of Christianity as stated in the Bible.\nLippard (2007-07-13):\nI would not have disagreed with them if they had said that. But instead, they've (as they often have) engaged in behavior which meets that same description.\nUnknown (2007-07-25):\nThis guy recently emailed me about my \"apostasy\" from his faith system.I can forward all his emails to you if you'd like.Contact me directly at Canarsie66@aol.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/messianic-jew-issues-death-threats-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor over a year, an individual has been harassing several evolutionary biologists at the Colorado University at Boulder about their \u0026ldquo;devilutionism,\u0026rdquo; and has now crossed the line into threats.  The Discovery Institute claims that whoever is doing this is clearly not a Christian, a creationist, or religious (of course, only atheists are capable of doing anything unethical or crazy, right?), but the identity of this individual is known to the people being harassed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/threats_against_university_of_colorado_biologists.html\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/the_colorado_threats_and_the_d.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/nut_threatens_biologists_in_co_1.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e have more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 13, 2007): The \u003ca href=\"http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/07/12/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt\"\u003especific kook responsible has been identified as Michael Korn\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMenacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver, although he has a North Carolina area code.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSee \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/colorado_kook_identified.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e for links to Korn\u0026rsquo;s website and other information.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Messianic Jew issues death threats to Colorado University biologists"},{"content":"Originally, he said that he would take action if he found that someone on his staff was responsible for leaking the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA covert agent to the press. Then, he said he couldn\u0026rsquo;t comment because an investigation was underway, then, that he couldn\u0026rsquo;t comment because a trial was underway. Now that the trial is over and he can comment, he pretty much comes right out and says he doesn\u0026rsquo;t give a damn.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/bush-doesnt-care-that-his-staff-leaks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOriginally, he said that he would take action if he found that someone on his staff was responsible for leaking the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA covert agent to the press.  Then, he said he couldn\u0026rsquo;t comment because an investigation was underway, then, that he couldn\u0026rsquo;t comment because a trial was underway.  Now that the trial is over and he can comment, he pretty much comes right out and says \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015305.php\"\u003ehe doesn\u0026rsquo;t give a damn\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush doesn't care that his staff leaks the names of CIA agents"},{"content":"From WSVN-TV (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale):\nMiami-Dade Air Rescue transported Hailu Kidane Marian, 40, to Jackson Memorial Hospital Sunday after he was struck by dry lightning while selling religious books. According to one customer, a lightning bolt struck as he walked door-to-door selling books along Northwest 199 Street and 78 Avenue Sunday afternoon. \u0026ldquo;I was buying a book from one of these guys, and there was one thunderstorm and thunder and then the second thunder, which was the lightning,\u0026rdquo; explained Maria Martinez. \u0026ldquo;It was like a gunshot, and, when I turned around, I saw like a cloud of smoke and this one guy jumping, like basically being slammed on his feet. I guess he just fell back.\u0026quot;The man, a Seventh-Day Adventist on a summer missionary trip, went into cardiac arrest but was revived by Miami Dade Fire Rescue. The lightning strike was a case of \u0026ldquo;dry lightning,\u0026rdquo; when lightning strikes when it is not raining.\nThe leader of the missionary group is described in the cited news article as saying \u0026ldquo;the group trusts God to provide a miracle\u0026rdquo; for Hailu Kidane Marian\u0026rsquo;s recovery. (Why do they assume the lightning strike wasn\u0026rsquo;t the miracle? As usual, God is given the credit for anything good, even if it\u0026rsquo;s mere recovery from something bad that he\u0026rsquo;s unaccountably not given any blame for.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/man-on-religious-mission-struck-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI54190/\"\u003eWSVN-TV (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale)\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMiami-Dade Air Rescue transported Hailu Kidane Marian, 40, to Jackson Memorial Hospital Sunday after he was struck by dry lightning while selling religious books. According to one customer, a lightning bolt struck  as he walked door-to-door selling books along Northwest 199 Street and 78 Avenue Sunday afternoon. \u0026ldquo;I was buying a book from one of these guys, and there was one thunderstorm and thunder and then the second thunder, which was the lightning,\u0026rdquo; explained Maria Martinez. \u0026ldquo;It was like a gunshot, and, when I turned around, I saw like a cloud of smoke and this one guy jumping, like basically being slammed on his feet. I guess he just fell back.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe man, a Seventh-Day Adventist on a summer missionary trip, went into cardiac arrest but was revived by Miami Dade Fire Rescue.  The lightning strike was a case of \u0026ldquo;dry lightning,\u0026rdquo; when lightning strikes when it is not raining.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe leader of the missionary group is described in the cited news article as saying \u0026ldquo;the group trusts God to provide a miracle\u0026rdquo; for Hailu Kidane Marian\u0026rsquo;s recovery.  (Why do they assume the lightning strike wasn\u0026rsquo;t the miracle?  As usual, God is given the credit for anything good, even if it\u0026rsquo;s mere recovery from something bad that he\u0026rsquo;s unaccountably not given any blame for.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Man on religious mission struck by lightning"},{"content":"Blogger Jon Swift observes how a number of conservatives have stated that if only we have another successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil, George W. Bush will regain popularity, public support for the war in Iraq will be restored, and all will be right with the world.\nRick Santorum, Michael Fumento, Alexander Cornswalled, Jonah Goldberg, Rudy Giuliani, and Arkansas Republican Party chairman Dennis Milligan are quoted. Milligan\u0026rsquo;s quote:\n\u0026ldquo;At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ],\u0026rdquo; said the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan, last month, \u0026ldquo;and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.\u0026quot;The 29% of Americans who support Bush should apparently pray for terrorist death to be rained down upon us. Perhaps they can all join Fred Phelps\u0026rsquo; Westboro Baptist Church, whose members also believe that God hates America and that terrorist attacks are in support of his will.\n(Via Radley Balko at the Reason Blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/jon-swift-on-how-conservatives-really.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlogger Jon Swift \u003ca href=\"http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2007/07/do-we-need-another-terrorist-attack.html\"\u003eobserves how a number of conservatives have stated that if only we have another successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil\u003c/a\u003e, George W. Bush will regain popularity, public support for the war in Iraq will be restored, and all will be right with the world.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRick Santorum, Michael Fumento, Alexander Cornswalled, Jonah Goldberg, Rudy Giuliani, and Arkansas Republican Party chairman Dennis Milligan are quoted.  Milligan\u0026rsquo;s quote:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ],\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/191942\"\u003esaid\u003c/a\u003e the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, \u003ca href=\"http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=11824\"\u003eDennis Milligan\u003c/a\u003e, last month, \u0026ldquo;and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe 29% of Americans who support Bush should apparently pray for terrorist death to be rained down upon us.  Perhaps they can all join Fred Phelps\u0026rsquo; Westboro Baptist Church, whose members also believe that God hates America and that terrorist attacks are in support of his will.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/121332.html\"\u003eRadley Balko at the Reason Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jon Swift on how conservatives really want another U.S. terrorist attack"},{"content":"Department of Justice civil appellate attorney John S. Koppel has written a scathing editorial in The Denver Post:\nAs a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time. The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis \u0026ldquo;Scooter\u0026rdquo; Libby\u0026rsquo;s sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.\nIn the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor \u0026ldquo;politics as usual,\u0026rdquo; but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses. In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to \u0026ldquo;play ball.\u0026rdquo; Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not \u0026ldquo;performance problems.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nAs usual, the administration has attempted to minimize the significance of its malfeasance and misfeasance, reciting its now-customary \u0026ldquo;mistakes were made\u0026rdquo; mantra, accepting purely abstract responsibility without consequences for its actions, and making hollow vows to do better. However, the DOJ Inspector General\u0026rsquo;s Patriot Act report (which would not even have existed if the administration had not been forced to grudgingly accept a very modest legislative reporting requirement, instead of being allowed to operate in its preferred secrecy), the White House-DOJ e-mails, and now the Libby commutation merely highlight yet again the lawlessness, incompetence and dishonesty of the present executive branch leadership. They also underscore Congress\u0026rsquo; lack of wisdom in blindly trusting the administration, largely rubber-stamping its legislative proposals, and essentially abandoning the congressional oversight function for most of the last six years. These are, after all, the same leaders who brought us the WMD fiasco, the unnecessary and disastrous Iraq war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, warrantless domestic NSA surveillance, the Valerie Wilson leak, the arrest of Brandon Mayfield, and the Katrina response failure. The last thing they deserve is trust.\n\u0026hellip;\nI realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.\nHow long will Mr. Koppel remain at the DoJ before he receives retribution for expressing these opinions?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/doj-attorney-criticizes-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDepartment of Justice civil appellate attorney John S. Koppel has written a scathing editorial in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c/span\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"redesign_default\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time. \u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis \u0026ldquo;Scooter\u0026rdquo; Libby\u0026rsquo;s sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DoJ attorney criticizes Bush administration"},{"content":"The Kentucky Creation Museum is built upon a foundation (literally) that disproves its contents\u0026ndash;alternating layers of limestone and shale filled with fossils of ancient marine creatures. This video gives you a tutorial (and is a demonstration of what Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis don\u0026rsquo;t want people to learn).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/creation-museums-foundation-disproves.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Kentucky Creation Museum is built upon a foundation (literally) that disproves its contents\u0026ndash;alternating layers of limestone and shale filled with fossils of ancient marine creatures.  This video gives you a tutorial (and is a demonstration of what Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis don\u0026rsquo;t want people to learn).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ezQhVjGy6ME\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ezQhVjGy6ME\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creation Museum's foundation disproves its content"},{"content":"Peter Leeson, an economist at West Virginia University, is writing a three-part series on the economics of pirate behavior and institutions. The first two parts are available online.\nPart 1, \u0026ldquo;An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization,\u0026quot; describes how pirates solved the problem of predation by captains that was common among naval and merchant ships by a system of checks and balances involving written constitutions and democratically elected captains and quarter-masters\u0026ndash;in the 1670s, before England and a century before the United States introduced similar political developments.\nPart 2, \u0026ldquo;Pirational Choice: The Economics of Infamous Pirate Practices,\u0026quot; looks at the reasons for the use of the \u0026ldquo;Jolly Roger\u0026rdquo; as a pirate flag and the practices of pirate torture and pirate conscription.\nPart 3 has been promised for the fall of 2007\u0026hellip;\nThese papers are an addition to the literature about non-governmental institutions of law and order that arise within criminal organizations, in the fringes between government jurisdictions, and in areas of governmental neglect. Some other works addressing these topics include Diego Gambetta\u0026rsquo;s excellent book The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, Robert Neuwirth\u0026rsquo;s book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, Ian Lambot and Greg Girard\u0026rsquo;s City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, and the HBO series Deadwood and The Wire.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/economics-of-pirate-practices.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePeter Leeson, an economist at West Virginia University, is writing a three-part series on the economics of pirate behavior and institutions.  The first two parts are available online.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 1, \u003ca href=\"http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/04/pirate_anarrghc.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e describes how pirates solved the problem of predation by captains that was common among naval and merchant ships by a system of checks and balances involving written constitutions and democratically elected captains and quarter-masters\u0026ndash;in the 1670s, before England and a century before the United States introduced similar political developments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 2, \u003ca href=\"http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/06/the_economics_o.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pirational Choice: The Economics of Infamous Pirate Practices,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e looks at the reasons for the use of the \u0026ldquo;Jolly Roger\u0026rdquo; as a pirate flag and the practices of pirate torture and pirate conscription.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 3 has been promised for the fall of 2007\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese papers are an addition to the literature about non-governmental institutions of law and order that arise within criminal organizations, in the fringes between government jurisdictions, and in areas of governmental neglect.  Some other works addressing these topics include Diego Gambetta\u0026rsquo;s excellent book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection\u003c/span\u003e, Robert Neuwirth\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eShadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World\u003c/span\u003e, Ian Lambot and Greg Girard\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCity of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City\u003c/span\u003e, and the HBO series \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDeadwood\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Wire\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The economics of pirate practices"},{"content":"Nathan Zamprogno has put together a nice list of the craziness that Kent Hovind purports to believe.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nHistorical Comments Nathan Zamprogno (2007-07-06):\nThanks. Although I am sure that Hovind could be nailed on a lot of these kooky beliefs himself, I should point out that my analysis is confined largely to what Hovind's entourage believes. Hovind himself was a veritable fountain of nuttiness, as is extensively detailed at sites like http://www.kent-hovind.com/If I had to go into all the woo-woo Hovind spouted over the years, the article would be three times as long.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/crazy-things-kent-hovind-believes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNathan Zamprogno has put together \u003ca href=\"http://baliset.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-you-cant-convince-unreason.html\"\u003ea nice list of the craziness that Kent Hovind purports to believe\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/a_compendium_of_craziness.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eNathan Zamprogno\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-07-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks. Although I am sure that Hovind could be nailed on a lot of these kooky beliefs himself, I should point out that my analysis is confined largely to what Hovind's entourage believes. Hovind himself was a veritable fountain of nuttiness, as is extensively detailed at sites like \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cA HREF=\"http://www.kent-hovind.com/\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ehttp://www.kent-hovind.com/\u003c/A\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIf I had to go into all the woo-woo Hovind spouted over the years, the article would be three times as long.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Crazy things Kent Hovind believes"},{"content":"\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/kent-hovind-music-video.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cEGEl4uHQAU\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cEGEl4uHQAU\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/a_youtube_tribute_to_kent_hovi.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kent Hovind music video"},{"content":"Fred Thompson was minority counsel on the House committee investigating the Watergate break-in. In that role, he regularly leaked information about the investigation to the White House\u0026ndash;in effect, he was Nixon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Deep Throat.\u0026quot;\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nIf you do not have a factual source other than that liberal link you have in your article, I suggest you do not publish kindergarten grade insults to about a man you could not compare yourself to in fear of being embarrassed. You apparently do not have much knowledge of the Watergate scandal due to the fact your source is written by democratic ninnies who spend their life criticizing others while they themselves are nothing more than idols of personal assaults conducted by the liberal section of the media. Your article was written purely out of emotion, no facts. So, the next time you go about on the Internet calling people weasels because your afraid to say it to their face, think again and check facts.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nThere were two links--one to Reason magazine (libertarian) and one to the Boston Globe. The Boston Globe article reported that Scott Armstrong, Democratic party investigator for the committee, charged Thompson with leaking information to the White House.The more I read and hear about Fred Thompson, the more I'm convinced he is unqualified to be president--the same as just about everyone else who's running, unfortunately.It's interesting that you think that the adjective \"liberal\" is sufficient to discredit a source.Your Blogger profile says that you are a student who wants to join the Marines and become a fighter pilot. That probably means that you are younger than I am, and that your knowledge of Watergate is even farther removed from the actual events than mine. I was in fourth grade when Nixon resigned (on August 8, 1974), an event I remember clearly because it was announced while I was with my family at Big Surf. My knowledge of the events of Watergate is, of course, secondhand.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nWell, Mr.Lippard, I respect your correction of my comment and verifying that there were in fact two links. The reason that I do not respect liberals and I find the name discrediting is because the majority of them do not support the war or the republicans, or... the President. They call good men like Fred Thompson names and exaggerate things after a mistake he made in the past. I know for a fact, Mr.Lippard, that you and I also make mistakes. So I just feel obliged to tell you that if you have a problem with someone, say why, don't insult them and call them weasels, I find that very childish. So if you can do that simple thing, I will not make harsh remarks about you or your sources.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nMost Americans--and all of them with any sense--do not support the war in Iraq or George W. Bush, a man who has no respect for the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, or truth.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nMr.Lippard, please provide examples where President Bush has shown disrespect to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the truth.\nKat Lippard (2007-07-06):\nPenguin (if that is your real name...)- At least our mistakes don't lead a country to war or get innocents killed. And, when I make a mistake I can admit it, and try to fix it, unlike GW.\nEinzige (2007-07-06):\nPenguin,I bet you're more \"liberal\" than me - for example, do you want to eliminate the minimum wage? Do you think everyone should own their own bazooka? No? You Pinko Commie! - and yet I think George W. Bush is an utter disgrace to this country.Two words, Penguin: Habeas Corpus.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nPenguin: Do you watch or read the news? Are you familiar with Bush's signing statements, his unconstitutional \"unitary executive\" and \"executive privilege\" arguments, his warrantless wiretapping bypassing the FISA court, his creation of a cherry-picking intelligence group to use bogus information about Iraq WMDs to justify the case for war, the Military Commissions Act and the destruction of habeas corpus? How about Bush's fabricated numbers for the cost of the Medicare drug bill, for the effects of his tax cuts, White House involvement in the Duke Cunningham scandal, the U.S. Attorney scandal (connected to the Cunningham scandal), the suppression and manipulation of data for political ends... The list goes on and on, and this blog has covered a few of them (represented by the links).The site spinsanity.org used to cover in great detail misrepresentations by the Bush administration, which led to the publication of the book, _All the President's Spin_.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nKat, George Bush did not start the war, the terrorists did. They were familiar with what America was like under the Clinton Administration, so they assumed that when they attacked it would be the same under the Bush Administration, but it wasn't. Bush had America strike back with full force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and took down Saddam Hussien's regime along the way. Innocents are being killed, but the terrorists are doing that not the US. George Bush has a few made mistakes, but having our troops defend the people of the Middle East and fighting terrorists and insurgents across the world was not one of them. Bush strives to defend, not to destroy.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nPenguin: 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. The terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both of which are still considered U.S. allies (and neither of which has been fully cooperative in combatting terrorism). The U.S. was right to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan (who were providing support for bin Laden), but they left the job unfinished (and Osama bin Laden uncaptured) in order to divert resources to attack Iraq.Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, resulting in more American deaths than occurred on 9/11 (and many times more Iraqi deaths) and continued U.S. presence there is not helping. Saddam Hussein was not a good guy and his removal was a good thing, but he was also not a threat to the U.S. and it's arguable that the U.S. is far less safe today than it was before Iraq was invaded. The costs of the war have been enormous--in lives lost, in dollars wasted, in moral capital and foreign cooperation lost.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nEinzige,Despite your ramblings and senseless insults of both me and the President I respect the fact that you tried to make up a comment that made any sense at all. I also suggest that you stop talking about national disgraces and stop trying to figure out how to correctly use the word liberal, because you have no idea what you're talking about.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nMr.Lippard I know that Iraq was in no way connected to 9/11, but the Iraqi people had a desire to be free of Saddam and he was becoming a growing threat. Staying in Iraq is necessary because if we leave now everything will fall apart. I had no desire to read the rest of your comment, but I skimmed through it anyways. You are only focused on the negative, and that can not be respected. And as for your other comment, yes I do read and watch the news, but the bs you copied and pasted onto your blog is either a load of lies or an over-exaggerated version of small mistakes.\nEinzige (2007-07-06):\nPenguin,When they were passing out the Kool-Aid, you asked for seconds, huh?Clearly, parsing oblique comments is not your forté. Going forward, I'll be more direct, I promise.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-06):\nYour somewhat less than witty statement does not humor me. I understood your previous comment perfectly, but that does not mean it makes sense. Although, now I understand you and your blog team members and your strategy. When I beat you on one topic you change the subject. And when I beat you that topic, you start personal attacks. If this is how you respond to every reader who does not agree with you than that is just sad. All I did was make a comment about Jim Lippard's post on Fred Thompson and I get all of this. You and your team members don't realize this, but when terrorists see these blogs and comments that talk trash about the President that you guys post, it seems as if you are anti-American terrorist sympathizers. You need to understand that your not always right, and when you're not don't be a jerk about. Learn from your mistakes, be a good sport ,and move on. I leave you with those words.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nPenguin: You're the one who brought in the issue of Bush, with your claim that \"the majority of them [liberals] do not support the war or the republicans, or... the President.\"Your claim that those who dissent from illegal, unpatriotic, anti-liberty, and immoral actions by the Bush administration are supporting terrorism is the reversal of reality.I agree that this discussion has gotten quite far afield of the blog post's topic.\nEinzige (2007-07-06):\nSpare us your red herrings and whiny bullshit, Penguin.You might find your adversaries are more receptive to discussion when you demonstrate you're actually capable of some reflection.\nRagin' Cajun (2007-07-07):\nEinzige,I find it quite odd that you are calling me unreflective, due to the fact that instead of trying to consider my point, you entertain yourself by going off-topic and attacking me personally instead of remarking on my comments. And as for whiny bs and red herrings, you are probably still sitting at home trying to figure out what both terms mean.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/fred-thompson-watergate-weasel.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFred Thompson was minority counsel on the House committee investigating the Watergate break-in.  In that role, \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/121214.html\"\u003ehe regularly leaked information about the investigation to the White House\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;in effect, he was \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/07/04/not_all_would_put_a_heroic_sheen_on_thompsons_watergate_role/\"\u003eNixon\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Deep Throat.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eRagin' Cajun\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-07-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIf you do not have a factual source other than that liberal link you have in your article, I suggest you do not publish kindergarten grade insults to about a man you could not compare yourself to in fear of being embarrassed. You apparently do not have much knowledge of the Watergate scandal due to the fact your source is written by democratic ninnies who spend their life criticizing others while they themselves are nothing more than idols of personal assaults conducted by the liberal section of the media. Your article was written purely out of emotion, no facts. So, the next time you go about on the Internet calling people weasels because your afraid to say it to their face, think again and check facts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fred Thompson: Watergate Weasel"},{"content":"\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-07-07):\n\"The Ambient President\"(-ial candidate)If his videos are any indication of how he plans to run things, he'd clearly be our best president ever. He'd blow Van Buren out of the water!Alas...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/mike-gravel-performance-art-video-2.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lRwizmuCnOw\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lRwizmuCnOw\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-07-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\"The Ambient President\"(-ial candidate)\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIf his videos are any indication of how he plans to run things, he'd clearly be our best president ever. He'd blow Van Buren out of the water!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAlas...\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Mike Gravel performance art video #2: Fire"},{"content":"A piece at the 700 Club describes Jeff Harshbarger\u0026rsquo;s childhood acquisition of a Ouija board, which he convinced himself was being used by demons to communicate with and ultimately possess him:\nJeff: It scared me beyond anything I’d ever experienced but at the same time, it was like a rollercoaster ride. You’re scared to death but you’re thrilled. I began to recognize that there was a presence that began to develop in my house. I would wake up in the middle of the night and literally feel somebody’s watching me. I basically felt like someone was with me. I would wake up and walk through the house in order to experience that because I liked it.Of course, the movement of a Ouija board planchette is well-known to be caused by subconscious ideomotor movements by the people using it, as are similar phenomena like table-tipping. Table tipping was studied by the 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, who demonstrated that the forces applied to the table were coming from the people with their hands upon it.\nBut Harshbarger convinced himself that he was accompanied by a presence that was controlling the planchette, and then that he was freed from demons by the intervention of a woman who led him to Jesus (and who he may have then married\u0026ndash;the story\u0026rsquo;s not clear on that).\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/how-jeff-harshbarger-convinced-himself.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/Amazing/Jeff_Harshbarger032006.aspx\"\u003epiece at the 700 Club describes Jeff Harshbarger\u0026rsquo;s childhood acquisition of a Ouija board\u003c/a\u003e, which he convinced himself was being used by demons to communicate with and ultimately possess him:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJeff:\u003c/strong\u003e It scared me beyond anything I’d ever experienced but at the same time, it was like a rollercoaster ride. You’re scared to death but you’re thrilled. I began to recognize that there was a presence that began to develop in my house. I would wake up in the middle of the night and literally feel somebody’s watching me. I basically felt like someone was with me. I would wake up and walk through the house in order to experience that because I liked it.\u003c/blockquote\u003eOf course, the movement of a Ouija board planchette is well-known to be caused by subconscious ideomotor movements by the people using it, as are similar phenomena like table-tipping.  Table tipping was studied by the 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, \u003ca href=\"http://www.prairieghosts.com/table.html\"\u003ewho demonstrated that the forces applied to the table were coming from the people with their hands upon it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut Harshbarger convinced himself that he was accompanied by a presence that was controlling the planchette, and then that he was freed from demons by the intervention of a woman who led him to Jesus (and who he may have then married\u0026ndash;the story\u0026rsquo;s not clear on that).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027912.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Jeff Harshbarger convinced himself he was possessed by demons"},{"content":"Similar to the woman who took a picture of herself every day for three years and Noah who took a picture of himself every day for six years, Ben did something similar\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/ben-takes-picture-of-himself-every-day.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSimilar to the \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/girl-takes-picture-of-herself-every.html\"\u003ewoman who took a picture of herself every day for three years\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo\"\u003eNoah who took a picture of himself every day for six years\u003c/a\u003e, Ben did something similar\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/m7dnGo_2tZA\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/m7dnGo_2tZA\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ben takes a picture of himself every day"},{"content":"\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/Jun07NTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales, 1993 - 2007\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083422755374284578\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nJune\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales for the Phoenix metro area topped out at 2330, continuing the trend line set a year or so ago. At this point I can\u0026rsquo;t help thinking we\u0026rsquo;ve got nowhere to go but up. Even the scammers are saying that Phoenix is a bad market.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/trend-continues.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/Jun07NTR.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/Jun07NTR.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales, 1993 - 2007\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083422755374284578\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJune\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales for the Phoenix metro area topped out at \u003cb\u003e2330\u003c/b\u003e, continuing the trend line set a year or so ago. At this point I can\u0026rsquo;t help thinking we\u0026rsquo;ve got nowhere to go but up. \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2007/05/nouveau-riche-university.html#comment-4663628761158799269\"\u003eEven the scammers are saying\u003c/a\u003e that Phoenix is a bad market.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Trend Continues..."},{"content":"British Olympic gold medalist Jonathan Edwards, whose faith in Christianity led him to excel in sports, has abandoned his Christianity in his retirement. The Times Online has a very interesting interview with him, in which he says that he didn\u0026rsquo;t take time to consider the philosophical foundations or evidence for Christianity when he was so focused on his sports career, but once he retired from athletics, he found the time to question, which led him to nonbelief:\n“But when I retired, something happened that took me by complete surprise. I quickly realised that athletics was more important to my identity than I believed possible. I was the best in the world at what I did and suddenly that was not true any more. With one facet of my identity stripped away, I began to question the others and, from there, there was no stopping. The foundations of my world were slowly crumbling.”\n\u0026hellip;\n“Once you start asking yourself questions like, ‘How do I really know there is a God?’ you are already on the path to unbelief,” Edwards says. “During my documentary on St Paul, some experts raised the possibility that his spectacular conversion on the road to Damascus might have been caused by an epileptic fit. It made me realise that I had taken things for granted that were taught to me as a child without subjecting them to any kind of analysis. When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God.”Now that he has abandoned his faith, he is not unhappy about it:\nThe upheaval of recent months has not left Edwards emotionally scarred, at least not visibly. “I am not unhappy about the fact that there might not be a God,” he says. “I don’t feel that my life has a big, gaping hole in it. In some ways I feel more human than I ever have. There is more reality in my existence than when I was full-on as a believer. It is a completely different world to the one I inhabited for 37 years, so there are feelings of unfamiliarity.I\u0026rsquo;ve posted some different quotes from the interview at the Secular Outpost.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s my impression that Edwards was a typical Christian in that his faith was not a position he held on the basis of evidence, but one he found himself in because of his upbringing, but never challenged. Once in a position where he began to question, he found he didn\u0026rsquo;t have good reasons for what he believed, and had the integrity to stop believing.\n(Hat tip to Ed Babinski.)\nLeo (2007-07-03):\nI would caution, though, that you do not get too excited – God does not forsake His people; wasn’t that, after all, the meaning of the Prodigal Son Parable? Major life change affects people differently; it may be that Mr. Edwards needs time to reassess his belief system. He may like the prodigal yet return home.\nLippard (2007-07-03):\nLeo:If Jonathan Edwards returns to Christianity after study of the evidence persuades him that's correct, then at least he will be a Christian who knows why he believes what he does.If only everyone would put their worldviews to the test, rather than believing without reason, we'd all be better off.\nDavid (2007-07-05):\nI agree entirely that if all people would put their faith to the test the world would be better off. We must all test the reasons for our belief in any thing. Now, I would like to question how much Mr. Edwards has really thought about this issue when he makes a statement like \"When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God.\"Since when could one rationally say the existence of anything was improbable. And how does one calculate the probability of existence?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/olympic-gold-medalist-abandons-god-has.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBritish Olympic gold medalist Jonathan Edwards, whose faith in Christianity led him to excel in sports, has abandoned his Christianity in his retirement.   The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes Online\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article1991114.ece\"\u003ehas a very interesting interview with him\u003c/a\u003e, in which he says that he didn\u0026rsquo;t take time to consider the philosophical foundations or evidence for Christianity when he was so focused on his sports career, but once he retired from athletics, he found the time to question, which led him to nonbelief:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e “But when I retired, something happened that took me by complete surprise. I quickly realised that athletics was more important to my identity than I believed possible. I was the best in the world at what I did and suddenly that was not true any more. With one facet of my identity stripped away, I began to question the others and, from there, there was no stopping. The foundations of my world were slowly crumbling.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e“Once you start asking yourself questions like, ‘How do I really know there is a God?’ you are already on the path to unbelief,” Edwards says. “During my documentary on St Paul, some experts raised the possibility that his spectacular conversion on the road to Damascus might have been caused by an epileptic fit. It made me realise that I had taken things for granted that were taught to me as a child without subjecting them to any kind of analysis. When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God.”\u003c/blockquote\u003eNow that he has abandoned his faith, he is not unhappy about it:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e The upheaval of recent months has not left Edwards emotionally scarred, at least not visibly. “I am not unhappy about the fact that there might not be a God,” he says. “I don’t feel that my life has a big, gaping hole in it. In some ways I feel more human than I ever have. There is more reality in my existence than when I was full-on as a believer. It is a completely different world to the one I inhabited for 37 years, so there are feelings of unfamiliarity.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve posted some different quotes from the interview \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/07/born-again-british-olympic-gold.html\"\u003eat the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s my impression that Edwards was a typical Christian in that his faith was not a position he held on the basis of evidence, but one he found himself in because of his upbringing, but never challenged. Once in a position where he began to question, he found he didn\u0026rsquo;t have good reasons for what he believed, and had the integrity to stop believing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Ed Babinski.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Olympic gold medalist abandons God, has never been happier"},{"content":"David at Blue Mass Group offers comment on the Boston Globe\u0026rsquo;s story which reveals that Mitt Romney used to strap his dog\u0026rsquo;s carrier to the roof of the car and put the dog in it for 12-hour trips from Boston to Ontario (the specific story takes place in the mid-1980s). In the story, the children are disgusted because the dog, Seamus, has emptied his bowels in his crate, and the animal waste is dripping off the back of the car:\nAs the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;Dad!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; he yelled. \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;Gross!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who\u0026rsquo;d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.David at Blue Mass Group, quoting Ana Marie Cox:\nMassachusetts\u0026rsquo;s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal \u0026ldquo;in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.\u0026rdquo; An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s definitely something I\u0026rsquo;d want to check out.\u0026rdquo; The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it\u0026rsquo;s against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and \u0026ldquo;if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal.\u0026rdquo; And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said \u0026ldquo;even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we\u0026rsquo;d hope that people would use common sense\u0026hellip;Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we\u0026rsquo;d think is inappropriate\u0026hellip;I can\u0026rsquo;t speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation.\u0026quot;In the comments, several people correctly observe that a crate-trained dog won\u0026rsquo;t relieve itself in its own crate unless it absolutely has to or is under extreme stress.\nNot surprising from a man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/mitt-romneys-dog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid at Blue Mass Group \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7788\"\u003eoffers comment\u003c/a\u003e on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part4_main/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBoston Globe\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s story\u003c/a\u003e which reveals that Mitt Romney used to strap his dog\u0026rsquo;s carrier to the roof of the car and put the dog in it for 12-hour trips from Boston to Ontario (the specific story takes place in the mid-1980s).  In the story, the children are disgusted because the dog, Seamus, has emptied his bowels in his crate, and the animal waste is dripping off the back of the car:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAs the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;Dad!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; he yelled. \u0026lsquo;\u0026lsquo;Gross!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who\u0026rsquo;d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/spacer.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"10\" width=\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.\u003c/blockquote\u003eDavid at \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7788\"\u003eBlue Mass Group\u003c/a\u003e, quoting Ana Marie Cox:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMassachusetts\u0026rsquo;s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal \u0026ldquo;in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.\u0026rdquo; An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s definitely something I\u0026rsquo;d want to check out.\u0026rdquo; The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it\u0026rsquo;s against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and \u0026ldquo;if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal.\u0026rdquo; And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said \u0026ldquo;even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we\u0026rsquo;d hope that people would use common sense\u0026hellip;Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we\u0026rsquo;d think is inappropriate\u0026hellip;I can\u0026rsquo;t speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn the comments, several people correctly observe that a crate-trained dog won\u0026rsquo;t relieve itself in its own crate unless it absolutely has to or is under extreme stress.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot surprising from a man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mitt Romney's dog"},{"content":"CNN has updated its website so that stories are accompanied by a set of simplified bullet points, suitable for PowerPoint presentations, even if the stories themselves are only seven sentences long.\nFor example, here are the \u0026ldquo;story highlights\u0026rdquo; for the seven-sentence story, \u0026ldquo;Man pummels \u0026lsquo;vampire\u0026rsquo; peacock\u0026rdquo;:\nA man beat up a peacock that had wandered into a Burger King parking lot\nThe peacock was beaten so badly it had to be euthanized\nWitnesses said the man claimed to be killing a \u0026ldquo;vampire\u0026rdquo;At least there\u0026rsquo;s the benefit that sometimes individual bullet points can be unintentionally amusing, such as this one from a story about Jenna Bush traveling to Africa, which suggests some inappropriate behavior:\n• She lit up when interacting with children, CNN correspondent says\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/07/new-cnn-for-morons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN has updated its website so that stories are accompanied by a set of simplified bullet points, suitable for PowerPoint presentations, even if the stories themselves are only seven sentences long.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor example, here are the \u0026ldquo;story highlights\u0026rdquo; for the seven-sentence story, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/01/vampire.peacock.ap/index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Man pummels \u0026lsquo;vampire\u0026rsquo; peacock\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e A man beat up a peacock that had wandered into a Burger King parking lot\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e The peacock was beaten so badly it had to be euthanized\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e Witnesses said the man claimed to be killing a \u0026ldquo;vampire\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAt least there\u0026rsquo;s the benefit that sometimes individual bullet points can be unintentionally amusing, such as this one from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/28/btsc.malveaux/index.html\"\u003ea story about Jenna Bush traveling to Africa\u003c/a\u003e, which suggests some inappropriate behavior:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e• She lit up when interacting with children, CNN correspondent says\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New: CNN for morons"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been given the OK to pre-announce the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Great Debate\u0026rdquo; project, which will publish four sets of exchanges between prominent philosophers about arguments and evidence for and against naturalism and theism. For the first month each debate is posted, readers will be able to submit questions which will be responded to by the debaters.\nCheck out the announcement I\u0026rsquo;ve posted at the Secular Outpost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/internet-infidels-great-debate-project.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been given the OK to pre-announce the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Great Debate\u0026rdquo; project, which will publish four sets of exchanges between prominent philosophers about arguments and evidence for and against naturalism and theism.  For the first month each debate is posted, readers will be able to submit questions which will be responded to by the debaters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/06/internet-infidels-online-debate-god-or.html\"\u003ethe announcement I\u0026rsquo;ve posted at the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internet Infidels \"Great Debate\" Project"},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;A photo provided by the Zoo Safari and Hollywoodpark Stukenbrock shows the zebra and horse crossbreed \u0026lsquo;Eclyse\u0026rsquo; during its presentation to the public in Schloss Holte, Germany, on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. The father of \u0026lsquo;Eclyse\u0026rsquo; is a horse from Italy, where the crossbreed filly was born in 2006, her mother is a zebra from the Safari park.\u0026rdquo; (Yahoo, via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nAlisonM (2007-07-02):\nOMG. . .is this a new species????It's a lovely little animal. Have they determined if she's sterile, as are mules? I betcha if she can breed, there'll be farms for these animals all over Texas.\nLippard (2007-07-03):\nApparently the proper name is \"zorse\" and there is quite a variety of zebra/equine hybrids or \"zebroids.\" When a zebra is crossed with a horse, it's common for the horse parent's markings to be passed down as striped areas on the hybrid child.\nLippard (2007-07-03):\nOh, and zorses are sterile.\nLippard (2007-07-03):\nMore details on Eclyse can be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/hobra-or-zerse.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070628/capt.bccee8115b684ff8baf4a26cd3a944c6.germany_zebrahorse_fra120.jpg?x=380\u0026y=331\u0026amp;sig=PiodvCX0iz9Dpir6Geq7wQ--\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070628/capt.bccee8115b684ff8baf4a26cd3a944c6.germany_zebrahorse_fra120.jpg?x=380\u0026y=331\u0026amp;sig=PiodvCX0iz9Dpir6Geq7wQ--\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;A photo provided by the Zoo Safari and Hollywoodpark Stukenbrock shows the zebra and horse crossbreed \u0026lsquo;Eclyse\u0026rsquo; during its presentation to the public in Schloss Holte, Germany, on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. The father of \u0026lsquo;Eclyse\u0026rsquo; is a horse from Italy, where the crossbreed filly was born in 2006, her mother is a zebra from the Safari park.\u0026rdquo;  (\u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/1756;_ylt=A0WTUeYWBIdGw_8AkhxpaP0E\"\u003eYahoo\u003c/a\u003e, via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/775569.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hobra or zerse?"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s website has posted a search page for the 2006 salaries of faculty and staff at Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University.\nI took a quick look at UA and ASU\u0026rsquo;s philosophy departments, both of which have several professors making well over $100,000/year, and was struck at the oddness of some of the salaries\u0026ndash;there are some excellent professors who have been teaching for a long time making less money than some who haven\u0026rsquo;t been around nearly as long, and an administrative assistant who makes more than most assistant and associate professors.\nUA has 28 people making over $300,000 (most at the medical school, whose salaries mostly come from non-state funds) and three making over $500,000\u0026ndash;two of which are football and basketball coaches and one who is a professor of surgery at the medical school (only 17.4% of his salary is state-paid). Robert Shelton, president of UA, made $420,000. ASU has twelve people making over $300,000, and four making over $500,000\u0026ndash;all of which are coaches for football and basketball. ASU president Michael Crow made $442,970. NAU has only one employee making over $200,000, which is NAU\u0026rsquo;s president John Haeger, who made $260,000.\nI suspect it\u0026rsquo;s still the case that professors at Arizona universities, on the average, make well above median salaries for Arizona\u0026rsquo;s major cities and occupations. Further, I suspect there may be quite a few ASU professors making six-figure salaries who are among Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s 106,210 millionaire households.\nBut they don\u0026rsquo;t compare to compensation for Arizona-based CEOs of publicly-traded companies, where the search engine options for salaries are \u0026ldquo;any amount,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$1 million or more,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$5 million or more,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;$10 million or more.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/asu-ua-and-nau-salaries.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s website has posted a search page for the 2006 salaries of faculty and staff at \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/datacenter/articles/salaries_asu.html\"\u003eArizona State University\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/datacenter/articles/salaries_ua.html\"\u003eUniversity of Arizona\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/datacenter/articles/salaries_nau.html\"\u003eNorthern Arizona University\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI took a quick look at UA and ASU\u0026rsquo;s philosophy departments, both of which have several professors making well over $100,000/year, and was struck at the oddness of some of the salaries\u0026ndash;there are some excellent professors who have been teaching for a long time making less money than some who haven\u0026rsquo;t been around nearly as long, and an administrative assistant who makes more than most assistant and associate professors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUA has 28 people making over $300,000 (most at the medical school, whose salaries mostly come from non-state funds) and three making over $500,000\u0026ndash;two of which are football and basketball coaches and one who is a professor of surgery at the medical school (only 17.4% of his salary is state-paid).  Robert Shelton, president of UA, made $420,000.  ASU has twelve people making over $300,000, and four making over $500,000\u0026ndash;all of which are coaches for football and basketball.  ASU president Michael Crow made $442,970.  NAU has only one employee making over $200,000, which is NAU\u0026rsquo;s president John Haeger, who made $260,000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suspect it\u0026rsquo;s still the case that \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/asu-professor-salaries-above-average.html\"\u003eprofessors at Arizona universities, on the average, make well above median salaries for Arizona\u0026rsquo;s major cities and occupations\u003c/a\u003e.  Further, I suspect there may be quite a few ASU professors making six-figure salaries who are among \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0330millionaires0330.html\"\u003eMaricopa County\u0026rsquo;s 106,210 millionaire households\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut they don\u0026rsquo;t compare to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/datacenter/articles/executive_pay.html\"\u003ecompensation for Arizona-based CEOs of publicly-traded companies\u003c/a\u003e, where the search engine options for salaries are \u0026ldquo;any amount,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$1 million or more,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$5 million or more,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;$10 million or more.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU, UA, and NAU salaries"},{"content":"Barry Beyerstein, professor of psychology and member of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, a Fellow and member of the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s executive council, author of numerous skeptical articles and books, a contributing editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, member of the advisory board of the Drug Policy Foundation and advocate for decriminalization of drugs, brother of philosopher and skeptic Dale Beyerstein, and father of prominent blogger Lindsey Beyerstein, died on Tuesday at the age of 60.\nHis daughter describes him as \u0026ldquo;among the most ethical people I have ever known\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;also one of the most fulfilled people I\u0026rsquo;ve had occasion to meet.\u0026quot;\nI had the pleasure of meeting him on multiple occasions at CSICOP conferences and found him to be very friendly and generous with his time; he was the only member of the CSICOP executive council who took me seriously regarding an ethical issue I brought up regarding a prominent skeptic who regularly published in the Skeptical Inquirer.\nHis death is a significant loss to skepticism and advocates for sensible drug policies. He is remembered on the front page of the CSI website. CSI Executive Director Barry Karr sent out the following:\nSubject: Barry L. Beyerstein (1946-2007) We all lost a true hero yesterday. I am stunned and saddened and I have been searching the internet for an hour this morning looking for news because I just can't believe it. Barry Beyerstein died. Barry Beyerstein. I don't have enough words to tell you what this loss will mean to the skeptical and rationalist world. Barry was a tireless defender of science. An activist who has been a staple in the media, television, newspapers, public forums for decades. I searched in the Skeptical Inquirer CD-ROM and found 311 mentions of his name. He is scheduled to teach a workshop for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in Oregon later this summer - and represent us at a conference in Ireland in the fall. He traveled and lectured all over the world for us, Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, Italy, and he was part of our delegation to China.\nHe was one of our first people on a number of topics we deal with. Graphology, Psychic Powers, Why People Believe, Near Death Experiences, Critical Thinking, Alternative Medicine, Neuropathology of Spiritual Possession, Brain States, Dowsing, The Sins of Big Pharma, and the list goes on and on. The thing is, he didn't have to do any of this. He was a volunteer, but he worked just as hard for this organization as he did for his full-time faculty job at Simon Fraser University. But he had talents, wisdom and knowledge and he saw the need and he used those talents. And we are far better for that.\nAnd Barry was one of the most charming, wittiest, and nicest people you could ever meet. He was kind and funny, yet strong in his convictions. My heart goes out to his family, his wife and children and brother Dale. and I can't believe that he is gone.\nYou should do a google search on Barry today, just to get an idea as to the kind of person we have lost. Here is a good place to start: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/06/barry-l-beyerst.html\nBarry Karr\nCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry He will be missed.\nUPDATE (July 13, 2007): Drug policy reform advocate Arnold Trebach gives tribute to Barry Beyerstein.\nUPDATE (July 3, 2008): Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic, gives a tribute to Barry Beyerstein at the BC Skeptics' Rational Enquirer blog.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/barry-beyerstein-rip.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBarry Beyerstein, professor of psychology and member of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, a Fellow and member of the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s executive council, author of numerous skeptical articles and books, a contributing editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific Review of Alternative Medicine\u003c/span\u003e, member of the advisory board of the Drug Policy Foundation and advocate for decriminalization of drugs, brother of philosopher and skeptic Dale Beyerstein, and father of prominent blogger Lindsey Beyerstein, died on Tuesday at the age of 60.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis daughter \u003ca href=\"http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/06/barry-l-beyerst.html\"\u003edescribes him\u003c/a\u003e as \u0026ldquo;among the most ethical people I have ever known\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;also one of the most fulfilled people I\u0026rsquo;ve had occasion to meet.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI had the pleasure of meeting him on multiple occasions at CSICOP conferences and found him to be very friendly and generous with his time; he was the only member of the CSICOP executive council who took me seriously regarding an ethical issue I brought up regarding a prominent skeptic who regularly published in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHis death is a significant loss to skepticism and advocates for sensible drug policies.  He is \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/\"\u003eremembered on the front page of the CSI website\u003c/a\u003e.  CSI Executive Director Barry Karr sent out the following:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Barry Beyerstein, RIP"},{"content":"Reed Esau, the originator of the celebrity atheists list, has put together a video introducing SkeptiCamp, an \u0026ldquo;un-conference\u0026rdquo; where all of the attendees provide the content, based on BarCamp. There will be a SkeptiCamp on August 3-4, 2007 in Denver, Colorado.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/skepticamp.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReed Esau, the originator of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Main_Page\"\u003ecelebrity atheists list\u003c/a\u003e, has put together \u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCamp\"\u003ea video introducing SkeptiCamp\u003c/a\u003e, an \u0026ldquo;un-conference\u0026rdquo; where all of the attendees provide the content, based on \u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/\"\u003eBarCamp\u003c/a\u003e.  There will be a SkeptiCamp on \u003ca href=\"http://barcamp.org/SkeptiCampColorado1\"\u003eAugust 3-4, 2007 in Denver, Colorado\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SkeptiCamp"},{"content":"Fingerprint matching has been used as an investigative tool by law enforcement and as a key piece of evidence to convict criminals in courts for over a century, but its accuracy has not actually been scientifically tested until recently. It turns out that claims of its accuracy have been exaggerated, and fingerprint matching is often more art than science.\nIn 2004, the FBI claimed that a fingerprint found on a bag at the sign of a terrorist bombing in Madrid, Spain on March 11 was a match to the left index finger of Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Beaverton, Oregon who converted to Islam and married to a Muslim woman from Egypt. Despite the fact that Spanish police disagreed, claiming that there was no match to Mayfield, the FBI insisted they had a \u0026ldquo;one hundred percent identification\u0026rdquo; with fifteen separate points of agreement between the latent print from Spain and Mayfield\u0026rsquo;s fingerprint, validated by at least three FBI fingerprint examiners. Mayfield was arrested and detained on May 6, 2004. On May 20, Spanish police announced that they had matched the fingerprint to Ouhnane Daoud of Algeria, who\u0026ndash;unlike Mayfield\u0026ndash;had actually been in Spain. Mayfield was released and the FBI ended up apologizing.\nThis case has resulted in scientific scrutiny of fingerprint evidence that has been long overdue. A decade ago, Tucson printer and publisher of the anarchist periodical The Match!, Fred Woodworth, published \u0026ldquo;A Printer Looks at Fingerprints,\u0026quot; in which he pointed out pseudoscientific reasoning in fingerprint matching methodology as described in fingerprint textbooks. Subsequently, Simon Cole authored the book Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (2002, Harvard University Press), and has just authored an article on the subject in the July/August 2007 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, titled \u0026ldquo;The Fingerprint Controversy.\u0026quot;\nIn Cole\u0026rsquo;s Skeptical Inquirer article, he states that \u0026ldquo;The very first study containing accuracy data was finally published just recently, finding very high accuracy rates in a class of trainees on latent prints of unknown difficulty; but the study contains some methodological flaws (Haber and Haver 2006). Moreover, the authors again argue strongly against inferring accuracy rates from their own data (Wertheim, Langenburg, and Moenssens 2006).\u0026quot;\nNo doubt scientific investigation will demonstrate that proper use of fingerprint analysis is a reliable method of identification, but more importantly, it will find its limits and weaknesses so that it does not continue to be pressed beyond its capabilities and result in false judgments of guilt in criminal cases. Unfortunately, law enforcement and prosecutors have a vested interest in the flexibility of techniques that can be used to produce the judgment they want, as demonstrated by the difficulty in getting police departments to modify their procedures of eyewitness identification of suspects to correct for well-known cognitive biases.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/fingerprint-matching-pseudoscience.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFingerprint matching has been used as an investigative tool by law enforcement and as a key piece of evidence to convict criminals in courts for over a century, but its accuracy has not actually been scientifically tested until recently.  It turns out that claims of its accuracy have been exaggerated, and fingerprint matching is often more art than science.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2004, the FBI claimed that a fingerprint found on a bag at the sign of a terrorist bombing in Madrid, Spain on March 11 was a match to the left index finger of Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Beaverton, Oregon who converted to Islam and married to a Muslim woman from Egypt.  Despite the fact that Spanish police disagreed, claiming that there was no match to Mayfield, the FBI insisted they had a \u0026ldquo;one hundred percent identification\u0026rdquo; with fifteen separate points of agreement between the latent print from Spain and Mayfield\u0026rsquo;s fingerprint, validated by at least three FBI fingerprint examiners.  Mayfield was arrested and detained on May 6, 2004.  On May 20, Spanish police announced that they had matched the fingerprint to Ouhnane Daoud of Algeria, who\u0026ndash;unlike Mayfield\u0026ndash;had actually been in Spain.  Mayfield \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001944007_fingerprint01m.html\"\u003ewas released and the FBI ended up apologizing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis case has resulted in scientific scrutiny of fingerprint evidence that has been long overdue.  A decade ago, Tucson printer and publisher of the anarchist periodical \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Match!\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Woodworth\"\u003eFred Woodworth\u003c/a\u003e, published \u003ca href=\"http://www.justicedenied.org/fredwoodwortharticles.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Printer Looks at Fingerprints,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e in which he pointed out pseudoscientific reasoning in fingerprint matching methodology as described in fingerprint textbooks.  Subsequently, Simon Cole authored the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSuspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification\u003c/span\u003e (2002, Harvard University Press), and has just authored an article on the subject in the July/August 2007 issue of \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/online.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, titled \u0026ldquo;The Fingerprint Controversy.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e article, he states that \u0026ldquo;The very first study containing accuracy data was finally published just recently, finding very high accuracy rates in a class of trainees on latent prints of unknown difficulty; but the study contains some methodological flaws (Haber and Haver 2006).  Moreover, the authors again argue strongly against inferring accuracy rates from their own data (Wertheim, Langenburg, and Moenssens 2006).\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nNo doubt scientific investigation will demonstrate that proper use of fingerprint analysis is a reliable method of identification, but more importantly, it will find its limits and weaknesses so that it does not continue to be pressed beyond its capabilities and result in false judgments of guilt in criminal cases.  Unfortunately, law enforcement and prosecutors have a vested interest in the flexibility of techniques that can be used to produce the judgment they want, as demonstrated by the difficulty in getting police departments to \u003ca href=\"http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/NC_Innocence_Commission_Identification.html\"\u003emodify their procedures of eyewitness identification of suspects\u003c/a\u003e to \u003ca href=\"http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/mistakenid.html\"\u003ecorrect for well-known cognitive biases\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fingerprint-matching pseudoscience"},{"content":"Bill Muehlenberg\u0026rsquo;s blog has a review of Robert Morey\u0026rsquo;s 21-year-old book, The New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom, which he applies to \u0026ldquo;atheist storm troopers such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.\u0026rdquo; Muehlenberg characterizes Dawkins and Harris as trying to \u0026ldquo;suppress all religious freedom, not unlike what was attempted in the former Soviet Union.\u0026rdquo; Muehlenberg offers nothing to support this accusation, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the point I\u0026rsquo;d like to respond to.\nIn his review, he makes the following statement:\nHe [Morey] even quotes from a famous atheist debating guide, in which every trick in the book is offered to fellow atheists as they attack theists. Published by Prometheus Books, the main atheist publisher, The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi teaches atheists how to deliberately use deception to refute theists. After reading Moray’s [sic] description of, and quotations from, the book, it occurred to me that all the atheists I have been debating must have well-worn copies of the book. It certainly explains why actually having a rational debate with an atheist is so difficult. All the dirty tricks, ruses, ploys and deception makes any debate with them a one-way affair.Muehlenberg has been deceived by Morey, and is deceiving others with this description. First, Nicholas Capaldi is not an atheist, he is a Catholic who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and has written a number of religious publications from a Catholic perspective (though his central focus is on business ethics). Some of his publications include \u0026ldquo;From the Profane to the Sacred: Why We Need to Retrieve Christian Bioethics\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;A Catholic Perspective on Organ Sales\u0026rdquo; (both in Christian Bioethics).\nSecond, The Art of Deception is not \u0026ldquo;a famous atheist debating guide.\u0026rdquo; The book\u0026rsquo;s content is fairly standard introductory material for a course in informal logic, logical fallacies, and critical thinking, and there is no focus on arguments for or against the existence of God. There are four examples of such arguments in the book (pp. 97-100, 120-121, and 142). The first set of pages includes a circular argument for God\u0026rsquo;s existence from the Bible\u0026rsquo;s say-so and a refutation of the argument from design from David Hume, the second gives the example of an appeal to ignorance to argue for the existence of God from an inability to disprove God\u0026rsquo;s existence, and the third is an example from Paul Tillich of arguing that your opponent really agrees with you, for example from the claim that a respect for logic is \u0026ldquo;a sign of ultimate concern and therefore a proof of God\u0026rsquo;s existence.\u0026rdquo; (Similar arguments are made regularly by presuppositionalists\u0026ndash;that if you use logic you are presupposing the existence of God.) Note that three of these four arguments are deceptive arguments for the existence of God, not against, and the fourth is an example of a refutation of bad use of analogy to argue for the existence of God. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing in Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book which even purports to teach atheists how to use deceptive arguments against theists.\nFinally, Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book was not written with the intent to promote the use of deception. Rather, he wrote the book in a Machiavellian style in order to make it more entertaining. Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s explicitly stated purpose is to enable the reader to recognize and not fall for deceptive arguments from others. He writes in his introduction (pp. 13-14):\n\u0026hellip; I have written this book from the point of view of one who wishes to deceive or mislead others. On the assumption that \u0026ldquo;it takes one to know one,\u0026rdquo; I have found that people are able to detect the misuse or abuse of logic if they are themselves the masters of the art of deception. I ask the reader to contemplate the prospect of a world in which everyone knew, really knew, how to use and thereby detect the misuse of logic.\nTo exemplify this perspective, I wish to use an analogy with writings on politics. There are at least three great books which seek to describe political reality: Aristotle\u0026rsquo;s Politics, Hobbes\u0026rsquo;s Leviathan, and Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s The Prince. Aristotle fails because he is so dull that he is often not read, while Hobbes\u0026rsquo;s perceptiveness is lost in the controversy over the theoretical context in which he embeds his insights. Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s vivid account is the most popular and the most effective. I believe that more readers have learned about politics from reading Machiavelli than anyone else precisely because Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s Prince is presented in a format of active manipulation rather than passive recognition. I hope that my presentation of informal logic will have the same kind of impact as Machiavelli.\nI draw the conclusion from the facts of the matter that either Morey did not carefully read Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book, or he is himself being intentionally deceptive. I hope that Muehlenberg will allow the comment I\u0026rsquo;ve posted at his blog through moderation and refrain from further misrepresentation of Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book.\nAs a side note, one of the commenters on Muehlenberg\u0026rsquo;s blog post is Creation Ministries International staffer Jonathon Sarfati, who writes:\nIt’s hardly surprising that antitheistic authors like Nicholas Capaldi published by antitheistic publishers like Prometheus Books should advocate deception. Under an atheistic world view, where we are just rearranged pond scum, there is nothing wrong with deception. It’s about time that Christians realized the implications of an atheistic evolutionary worldview and stopped being so trusting of evolutionary “science” that can provide no objective basis for the rightness of truthtelling.Sarfati has also been deceived about Capaldi and his book, but goes on to engage in outrageous falsehood himself by claiming that it is an implication of \u0026ldquo;an atheistic worldview\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;there is nothing wrong with deception.\u0026rdquo; This is a lie that Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is also quite fond of repeating. Even most atheists who reject objective morality (which is not a logical consequence of atheism alone) would not agree that there is \u0026ldquo;nothing wrong\u0026rdquo; with deception, but I have never seen a young earth creationist actually engage with any writings or arguments defending nontheistic metaethics (which arguments may in many cases be authored by theistic philosophers). They write things like the above as propaganda against atheism, not as an expression of interest in truth.\nUPDATE: I\u0026rsquo;ve just come across a review of Morey\u0026rsquo;s book by Jon Nelson that shows that Morey has apparently fabricated quotes from Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book, as well:\nAfter complaining that \u0026ldquo;some atheists deliberately use deception to refute theism\u0026rdquo; (pg. 87), Morey cites Nicholas Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book The Art of Deception as \u0026ldquo;proof\u0026rdquo; of atheistic deception. Morey quotes page 117 of Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book thusly: \u0026ldquo;Never admit defeat\u0026hellip; \u0026ldquo;. The only problem is that Capaldi never says this (or anything like it) on this or on any other page. Morey has numerous other false quotes attributed to Capaldi, such as: \u0026ldquo;Refuse to be convinced. Even if you feel that he has a good argument and that your case is weaker, refuse to be convinced of your opponent\u0026rsquo;s case\u0026rdquo;. Nowhere does Capaldi advocate, as Morey accuses him of doing, that atheists should \u0026ldquo;use any invalid or deceptive argument as long as it helps him (to) win his case\u0026rdquo;. Morey concludes this amazing series of lies and defamation of character by noting that his examples provide \u0026ldquo;a small sampling of the \u0026lsquo;dirty tricks\u0026rsquo; methodology that seems to pervade modern atheism\u0026rdquo;, and that, as a consequence, \u0026ldquo;my personal experience has proven this makes rational debate with an atheist very difficult\u0026rdquo;.I also note that the Wikipedia entry on Robert Morey states that Morey has claimed to be a reliable information source to the FBI and Naval Intelligence about Islamic terrorist activity inside the United States, that he gave a speech to a San Diego church stating that he had \u0026ldquo;advised the State Department to blow up the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina if they wanted to win the war on terror quickly,\u0026rdquo; and that he\u0026rsquo;s written an anti-Islam book published by Jack Chick. If these claims are correct, then I\u0026rsquo;d class Morey with Chuck Missler\u0026ndash;a complete huckster who has no qualms about relying on bogus claims or fabricating them himself to promote his \u0026ldquo;ministry.\u0026rdquo; My bullshit detector goes off when somebody claims to be an important intelligence source and have access to secret inside information\u0026ndash;not to mention when they\u0026rsquo;re published by Chick, who has repeatedly published fabricated works by frauds.\nUPDATE 2: It looks like Morey has been involved in a religious schism between his church and another, and there are many websites on the Internet critical of Morey and his claims, in particular about Islam. Morey runs the California Biblical University and Seminary, an unaccredited school, which claims to be pursuing accreditation. Morey has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the unaccredited Louisiana Baptist University.\nUPDATE 3 (June 25, 2007): My comments submitted to Bill Muehlenberg\u0026rsquo;s site never got past moderation. Instead, he allowed through this correction from Jonathan Sarfati:\nI’ve now been informed (by a fair-minded atheist who has taken fellow atheists to task for unfair attacks), then investigated further, that Morey doesn’t seem to have read Capaldi’s book or know much about his background. Checking on Amazon, its full title is The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking : How to : Win an Argument, Defend a Case, Recognize a Fallacy, See Through a Deception, Persuade a Skeptic, Turn Defeat into Victory. It appears to cover introductory logic, critical thinking, seeing through fallacies and contructing powerful arguments. The contents pages on the site and the reviews show that it’s not a how-to-defeat-Christians guide.\nAlso, Capaldi is Distinguished Scholar Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University of New Orleans. So there is a good chance that he is a Catholic, rather than an antitheist. Publishing in an antitheistic press which has a virtual monopoly on the “Jesus never existed” nonsense is hardly encouraging, and this should send up red flags just as “Chick Publications” does for atheists (and informed Christians too). Nor is the fact that many Catholic universities are really CINO (Catholic In Name Only), e.g. teaching higher criticism and inviting pro-abortionist commencement speakers, and Loyola seems to fit the description. But it’s hardly plausible that they would appoint a high-profile atheist to be a chair, if that’s what Morey claims Capaldi is.\nUPDATE (December 29, 2009): Looks like Morey\u0026rsquo;s church shut down earlier this year amidst scandal.\nHistorical Comments AlisonM (2007-07-02):\nWell, this makes sense. If your post had gone through, he'd look stupid and unreasonable. This way, he can put it in his own words and feign umbrage that he was deceived. *sigh*\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/christian-deception-about-art-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBill Muehlenberg\u0026rsquo;s blog has a review of Robert Morey\u0026rsquo;s 21-year-old book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom\u003c/span\u003e, which he applies to \u0026ldquo;atheist storm troopers such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.\u0026rdquo;  Muehlenberg characterizes Dawkins and Harris as trying to \u0026ldquo;suppress all religious freedom, not unlike what was attempted in the former Soviet Union.\u0026rdquo;  Muehlenberg offers nothing to support this accusation, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the point I\u0026rsquo;d like to respond to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn his review, he makes the following statement:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe [Morey] even quotes from a famous atheist debating guide, in which every trick in the book is offered to fellow atheists as they attack theists. Published by Prometheus Books, the main atheist publisher, \u003cem\u003eThe Art of Deception\u003c/em\u003e by Nicholas Capaldi teaches atheists how to deliberately use deception to refute theists. After reading Moray’s [sic] description of, and quotations from, the book, it occurred to me that all the atheists I have been debating must have well-worn copies of the book. It certainly explains why actually having a rational debate with an atheist is so difficult. All the dirty tricks, ruses, ploys and deception makes any debate with them a one-way affair.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMuehlenberg has been deceived by Morey, and is deceiving others with this description.  First, Nicholas Capaldi is not an atheist, he is \u003ca href=\"http://business.loyno.edu/faculty/capaldi\"\u003ea Catholic who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans\u003c/a\u003e and has written a number of religious publications from a Catholic perspective (though his central focus is on business ethics).  Some of his publications include \u0026ldquo;From the Profane to the Sacred: Why We Need to Retrieve Christian Bioethics\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;A Catholic Perspective on Organ Sales\u0026rdquo; (both in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChristian Bioethics\u003c/span\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSecond, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Art of Deception\u003c/span\u003e is not \u0026ldquo;a famous atheist debating guide.\u0026rdquo;  The book\u0026rsquo;s content is fairly standard introductory material for a course in informal logic, logical fallacies, and critical thinking, and there is no focus on arguments for or against the existence of God.  There are four examples of such arguments in the book (pp. 97-100, 120-121, and 142).  The first set of pages includes a circular argument for God\u0026rsquo;s existence from the Bible\u0026rsquo;s say-so and a refutation of the argument from design from David Hume, the second gives the example of an appeal to ignorance to argue for the existence of God from an inability to disprove God\u0026rsquo;s existence, and the third is an example from Paul Tillich of arguing that your opponent really agrees with you, for example from the claim that a respect for logic is \u0026ldquo;a sign of ultimate concern and therefore a proof of God\u0026rsquo;s existence.\u0026rdquo;  (Similar arguments are made regularly by presuppositionalists\u0026ndash;that if you use logic you are presupposing the existence of God.)  Note that three of these four arguments are deceptive arguments \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003efor\u003c/span\u003e the existence of God, not against, and the fourth is an example of a refutation of bad use of analogy to argue for the existence of God.  There\u0026rsquo;s nothing in Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book which even purports to teach atheists how to use deceptive arguments against theists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s book was not written with the intent to promote the use of deception.  Rather, he wrote the book in a Machiavellian style in order to make it more entertaining.  Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s explicitly stated purpose is to enable the reader to recognize and not fall for deceptive arguments from others.  He writes in his introduction (pp. 13-14):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip; I have written this book from the point of view of one who wishes to deceive or mislead others.  On the assumption that \u0026ldquo;it takes one to know one,\u0026rdquo; I have found that people are able to detect the misuse or abuse of logic if they are themselves the masters of the art of deception.  I ask the reader to contemplate the prospect of a world in which everyone knew, really knew, how to use and thereby detect the misuse of logic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo exemplify this perspective, I wish to use an analogy with writings on politics.  There are at least three great books which seek to describe political reality:  Aristotle\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePolitics\u003c/span\u003e, Hobbes\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLeviathan\u003c/span\u003e, and Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Prince\u003c/span\u003e.  Aristotle fails because he is so dull that he is often not read, while Hobbes\u0026rsquo;s perceptiveness is lost in the controversy over the theoretical context in which he embeds his insights.  Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s vivid account is the most popular and the most effective.  I believe that more readers have learned about politics from reading Machiavelli than anyone else precisely because Machiavelli\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePrince\u003c/span\u003e is presented in a format of active manipulation rather than passive recognition.  I hope that my presentation of informal logic will have the same kind of impact as Machiavelli.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian deception about The Art of Deception"},{"content":"The National Center for Science Education has posted a brief report on the Answers in Genesis schism, with links to the coverage by The Australian, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Duae Quartunciae blog, and this blog. In their report, they mention that\nA piece by Lippard on the schism is to appear in a future issue of Reports of the NCSE; in it, Lippard concludes, \u0026ldquo;creationism continues to evolve in fascinating ways.\u0026quot;I encourage you to join the NCSE. The NCSE has long been the major force combatting creationism in the United States, including playing a significant support role for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case decided last year, and it works on a budget that is tiny by comparison to those of Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/ncse-on-answers-in-genesis-schism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Center for Science Education \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2007/KY/170_answers_in_genesis_in_legal_tu_6_21_2007.asp\"\u003ehas posted a brief report on the Answers in Genesis schism\u003c/a\u003e, with links to the coverage by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Australian\u003c/span\u003e, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLexington Herald-Leader\u003c/span\u003e, the Duae Quartunciae blog, and this blog.  In their report, they mention that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA piece by Lippard on the schism is to appear in a future  issue of \u003cem\u003eReports of the NCSE\u003c/em\u003e; in it, Lippard concludes, \u0026ldquo;creationism continues to evolve in fascinating ways.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eI encourage you to \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/membership.asp\"\u003ejoin the NCSE\u003c/a\u003e.  The NCSE has long been the major force combatting creationism in the United States, including playing a significant support role for the plaintiffs in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKitzmiller v. Dover\u003c/span\u003e case decided last year, and it works on a budget that is tiny by comparison to those of Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NCSE on Answers in Genesis schism"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/incarcerex.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TRPxN7DGy5c\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/TRPxN7DGy5c\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Incarcerex"},{"content":"CNN\u0026rsquo;s Money website has a list of the top 500 zip codes for foreclosures. Here are the eleven Arizona entries on the list:PositionZip CodeCity\nStateDefault NoticesAuction NoticesBank RepossessionsTotal Foreclosure Filings140.85242Queen Creek\nAZ123040271183.85323Avondale\nAZ517865248270.85379Surprise\nAZ214563210324.85243Queen Creek\nAZ017225197355.85706Tucson\nAZ016918187395.85086Phoenix\nAZ012554179415.85239Maricopa\nAZ015520175423.85037Phoenix\nAZ113933173445.85338Goodyear\nAZ212441167452.85326Buckeye\nAZ112243166456.85335El Mirage\nAZ212439165\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/top-zip-codes-for-foreclosures.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN\u0026rsquo;s Money website \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/19/real_estate/500_top_foreclosure_zip_codes/index.htm\"\u003ehas a list of the top 500 zip codes for foreclosures\u003c/a\u003e.  Here are the eleven Arizona entries on the list:\u003ctable\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003ePosition\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eZip Code\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eCity\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eState\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eDefault Notices\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAuction Notices\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eBank Repossessions\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eTotal Foreclosure Filings\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e140.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85242\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eQueen Creek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e230\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e40\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e271\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e183.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85323\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAvondale\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e178\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e65\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e248\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e270.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85379\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eSurprise\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e145\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e63\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e210\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e324.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85243\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eQueen Creek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e0\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e172\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e25\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e197\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e355.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85706\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eTucson\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e0\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e169\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e18\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e187\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e395.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85086\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003ePhoenix\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e0\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e125\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e54\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e179\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e415.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85239\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eMaricopa\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e0\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e155\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e20\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e175\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e423.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85037\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003ePhoenix\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e139\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e33\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e173\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e445.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85338\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eGoodyear\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e124\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e41\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e167\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e452.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85326\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eBuckeye\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e122\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e43\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e166\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e456.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e85335\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eEl Mirage\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd style=\"vertical-align: top;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003eAZ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e124\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e39\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:78%;\"\u003e165\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Top zip codes for foreclosures"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Republic features an article titled \u0026ldquo;Mormon tourists travel to key sites of their faith,\u0026quot; about Mormons from Utah and Arizona who are traveling with companies like Book of Mormon Tours, L.D.S. Guided Tours, and Liahona Tours to sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras to be told that Mayan ruins are sites described in the Book of Mormon as belonging to the Nephites and the Jaredites. The different tours are not only contradicted by real archaeologists, but the tour companies contradict each other about what sites correspond to which locations in the Book of Mormon\u0026ndash;a book by a con artist, plagiarized from the Bible, the Apocrypha, Josiah Priest\u0026rsquo;s The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed (1825) and Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s View of the Hebrews (1823) (itself lifting from other books such as James Adair\u0026rsquo;s History of the American Indians (1775) and Elias Boudinot\u0026rsquo;s A Star in the West (1816)), which also drew from Adair), which themselves are works of pseudo-history.\nThese tours are not so different in some respects from tours of some of the locations of alleged religious significance in the Middle East, where there are multiple claimed locations of the tomb of Jesus, the Garden of Gethsemane, and Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark. The difference is that the sites being visited are sites of real significance regarding real historical people who have nothing at all to do with the Book of Mormon.\nFortunately, these tour operators are treated with dismissal even by the Mormon church, as the Republic article points out with a quote from John Clark of the church\u0026rsquo;s New World Archaeological Foundation at Brigham Young University: \u0026ldquo;I just see the tours as entertaining, and I try not to get upset that people are wasting their money doing foolish things.\u0026quot;\nIf he cares about the truth, why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t he get upset? Perhaps because encouraging his fellow Mormons to care about accuracy would be sure to lead to trouble if they ever carefully examined the historical foundations of their own religion, at least for any who were curious enough to look. But most aren\u0026rsquo;t, as the article\u0026rsquo;s quotation from one tour participant shows:\nBut whether the archaeological evidence backs up the Book of Mormon is irrelevant, said tour participant Dawn Frenetti, 28, of Milpitas, Calif. Just seeing such sites is inspiring, she said.\n\u0026ldquo;It definitely helps me stay interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon,\u0026rdquo; she said. \u0026ldquo;But, as far as confirming my faith, my faith has always been there.\u0026quot;If there were a religion based on the works of Mark Twain, a visit to Disneyland\u0026rsquo;s Tom Sawyer island would no doubt be considered a pilgrimage to a holy site.\nUPDATE (June 21, 2007): This Mormon response to plagiarism in the Book of Mormon is quite amusing, in that it completely fails to address the specific evidence of copying from the sources in question. It is no response at all to a plagiarism accusation to point out that there are also differences between the works! A more fair-minded LDS response also argues that the Book of Mormon is not entirely or mostly based on Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s book, but states that \u0026ldquo;My analysis of Persuitte\u0026rsquo;s parallels reveals that, with one exception, no single book in the Book of Mormon received more than 8.09% influence from View of the Hebrews (see chart 1).\u0026rdquo; But that is sufficient to refute Joseph Smith\u0026rsquo;s claim of translating golden plates that predated Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s book!\nMichael C. Rush (2007-06-21):\nWhat I find far more appalling, even, than the details of these dupes' delusions is the mealy-mouthed handling of them by this Chris Hawley who wrote the article.\"Although archaeologists say there is scant evidence to back up such beliefs...\"\"Most Latin American archaeologists say there are no connections between the Mayas, who lived in that area, and the Hebrew tribes of the Middle East.\"As well as abutting these two paragraphs in such a way as to make them seem equally plausible:\"Archaeologists know little about the people who built Teotihuacán, not even the city's original name or what language was spoken there. The city reached its zenith between A.D. 250 and 600.\"and\"The city's builders may have been related to the Jaredites, whom Mormons believe came to the New World at the time of the biblical Tower of Babel, said Mont Woolley, the tour director.\"Makes me wonder if Hawley is himself a Mormon or just fully onboard with the media's typical efforts to lend credibility to the irrational--or at the very least, not to challenge them.\nSheldon (2007-06-24):\nI have often wondered about John Clark. I am an archaeologist (but not a Mesoaamerica specialsts). John Clark is actually a legitimate archaeologist. I am familiar with his work through both mainstream peer reviewed journal articles and edited volumes. There is nothing fishy (i.e. Mormon) in his work. He operates within accepted theoretical parameters of anthropological archaeolgy.I have been meaning to do a little more detailed research on the New World Archaological Foundation. This is what I superficially know at this point. Apparently the NWAF was founded by a Mormon (name?) who hoped to find archaeological evidence in Mesoamerica supporting the Book of Mormon. He allegedly lost his faith when no evidence was found. When I was an undergrad, I used a technical report published by the NWAF for a project. Again, absolutely nothing fishy (i.e. Mormon) about it. I assume John Clark is a Mormon. All this brings up issues of how some religious folk are able to compartementalize their religious beliefs from that of their other rationally founded beliefs.I agree with Rushmc, the journalist's writing is particularly appalling. Archaeologists know lots about Teotihauacan. They know that particular compounds were inhabited by immigrant peoples from Oaxaca and other parts of Mesoamerica. They know that there were various craft specializations. They know that they had political relations with the elites distant areas such as Tikal and Monte Alban etc.. Some types of evidence, such as language, or what people called themselves, are irretreviable from the archaeological record. That does not mean that archaeologist know nothing about a particular archaeological culture.\nLippard (2007-06-26):\nMichael and Sheldon: Thanks for your comments. Your point abut the reporting is a good one--this is the kind of awful journalism that purports to be \"balanced\" but at the expense of giving credence to nonsense and failing to give appropriate respect (or even attention) to the actual facts of the matter.\nbirdchaser (2009-07-08):\nJohn Clark is a real archaeologist, highly respected as an expert on early Mesoamerica. If you want to know what he thinks about the Book of Mormon you can read some of that here: http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=14\u0026amp;num=2\u0026amp;id=376\nLippard (2009-07-09):\nbirdchaser: Looks like he\u0026#39;s a true believer, if he thinks that critiques of the Book of Mormon have \u0026quot;not scratched the book\u0026#39;s credibility.\u0026quot; He apparently hasn\u0026#39;t looked at the evidence of plagiarism from other sources, or he\u0026#39;s one of those people who thinks it somehow confirms its accuracy. Joseph Smith's own personal history is, in my opinion, sufficient reason to cast huge shadows of doubt over the Mormon religion\u0026ndash;the guy was a con artist.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/mormons-impose-their-bogus-beliefs-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e features an article titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0620mormontours0620.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mormon tourists travel to key sites of their faith,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about Mormons from Utah and Arizona who are traveling with companies like Book of Mormon Tours, L.D.S. Guided Tours, and Liahona Tours to sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras to be told that Mayan ruins are sites described in the Book of Mormon as belonging to the Nephites and the Jaredites.  The different tours are not only contradicted by real archaeologists, but the tour companies contradict each other about what sites correspond to which locations in the \u003ca href=\"http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mormon/browse.html\"\u003eBook of Mormon\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;a book by a con artist, plagiarized from the Bible, the Apocrypha,  Josiah Priest\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://olivercowdery.com/texts/prst1826.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (1825) and Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://olivercowdery.com/texts/ethn1823.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eView of the Hebrews\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (1823) (itself lifting from other books such as James Adair\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHistory of the American Indians\u003c/span\u003e (1775) and Elias Boudinot\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://olivercowdery.com/texts/boud1816.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Star in the West\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (1816)), which also drew from Adair), which themselves are works of pseudo-history.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese tours are not so different in some respects from tours of some of the locations of alleged religious significance in the Middle East, where there are multiple claimed locations of the tomb of Jesus, the Garden of Gethsemane, and Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark.  The difference is that the sites being visited are sites of real significance regarding real historical people who have nothing at all to do with the Book of Mormon.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFortunately, these tour operators are treated with dismissal even by the Mormon church, as the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRepublic\u003c/span\u003e article points out with a quote from John Clark of the church\u0026rsquo;s New World Archaeological Foundation at Brigham Young University: \u0026ldquo;I just see the tours as entertaining, and I try not to get upset that people are wasting their money doing foolish things.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf he cares about the truth, why wouldn\u0026rsquo;t he get upset?  Perhaps because encouraging his fellow Mormons to care about accuracy would be sure to lead to trouble if they ever carefully examined the historical foundations of their own religion, at least for any who were curious enough to look.  But most aren\u0026rsquo;t, as the article\u0026rsquo;s quotation from one tour participant shows:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut whether the archaeological evidence backs up the Book of Mormon is irrelevant, said tour participant Dawn Frenetti, 28, of Milpitas, Calif. Just seeing such sites is inspiring, she said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;It definitely helps me stay interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon,\u0026rdquo; she said. \u0026ldquo;But, as far as confirming my faith, my faith has always been there.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eIf there were a religion based on the works of Mark Twain, a visit to Disneyland\u0026rsquo;s Tom Sawyer island would no doubt be considered a pilgrimage to a holy site.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 21, 2007):  This \u003ca href=\"http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/response/qa/bom_plagerize_view.htm\"\u003eMormon response to plagiarism in the Book of Mormon is quite amusing\u003c/a\u003e, in that it completely fails to address the specific evidence of copying from the sources in question.  It is no response at all to a plagiarism accusation to point out that there are also differences between the works!  \u003ca href=\"http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review\u0026amp;id=44\"\u003eA more fair-minded LDS response\u003c/a\u003e also argues that the Book of Mormon is not entirely or mostly based on Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s book, but states that \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"maintext\"\u003eMy analysis of Persuitte\u0026rsquo;s parallels reveals that, with one exception, no single book in the Book of Mormon received more than 8.09% influence from \u003ci\u003eView of the Hebrews\u003c/i\u003e (see chart 1).\u0026rdquo;  But that is sufficient to refute Joseph Smith\u0026rsquo;s claim of translating golden plates that predated Ethan Smith\u0026rsquo;s book!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mormons impose their bogus beliefs on Mexican archaeological sites"},{"content":"Arizona State Senators Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and Karen Johnson (R-Mesa) have killed a proposal to create three K-12 schools with an international focus, including teaching a second language starting at the kindergarten level. The proposal, from Rep. Mark Anderson (R-Mesa), would have created one K-12 school in each of Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff, and created international studies programs at seven high schools. Global businesses and universities promised to provide assistance, so the total cost was $2.3 million for the first year of the program.\nWhy\u0026rsquo;d they kill it? Not because of the cost, but because studying and understanding the rest of the world is evil and un-American. The opposition from some legislators was so strong that the bill was changed to refer to the schools as \u0026ldquo;American competitiveness project schools\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;international schools.\u0026rdquo; Karen Johnson brought in former Minnesota legislator and Bethany Lutheran College professor Allen Quist to testify against the bill on the grounds that \u0026ldquo;International Baccalaureate\u0026rsquo;s links to the United Nations are disturbing and that its sense of right and wrong is ambiguous\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;It teaches students to see the American system of government as one of many, not as the only one that protects universal and God-given rights to property, to bear arms and free speech\u0026rdquo; (to quote the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s paraphrase of his remarks).\nThis kind of blinkered provincialism and ignorance hurts U.S. competitiveness\u0026ndash;if global businesses can\u0026rsquo;t find people with the knowledge and experience needed to run their operations from the U.S., they\u0026rsquo;ll find them elsewhere, like among foreign-born immigrants, or just run their operations from other countries. (Economics and demographics are more powerful than politics, so ultimately this problem will solve itself, and English-only and white-only areas of the U.S. will continue to shrink.)\nMy employer, Global Crossing, just acquired another company in South America, with the result that about a quarter of our employees are now Spanish and Portuguese speakers. This makes multilingual employees extremely valuable. I would have loved to have been taught Spanish as a second language starting in kindergarten.\nPearce and Johnson are politicians whose previous idiocy has been commented on at this blog. Both are Senators who have worked with the Church of Scientology on its anti-psychiatry efforts. Pearce is an anti-immigration activist who has shown poor judgment in what email he forwards to his constituents. Johnson is a senator who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the U.S. Constitution, thinking that as a state legislator she has the power to prevent the federal courts from ruling on separation of church and state cases.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/arizona-senators-kill-international.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona State Senators Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and Karen Johnson (R-Mesa) \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0620international0620.html\"\u003ehave killed a proposal to create three K-12 schools with an international focus\u003c/a\u003e, including teaching a second language starting at the kindergarten level.  The proposal, from Rep. Mark Anderson (R-Mesa), would have created one K-12 school in each of Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff, and created international studies programs at seven high schools.  Global businesses and universities promised to provide assistance, so the total cost was $2.3 million for the first year of the program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy\u0026rsquo;d they kill it?  Not because of the cost, but because studying and understanding the rest of the world is evil and un-American.  The opposition from some legislators was so strong that the bill was changed to refer to the schools as \u0026ldquo;American competitiveness project schools\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;international schools.\u0026rdquo;  Karen Johnson brought in former Minnesota legislator and Bethany Lutheran College professor Allen Quist to testify against the bill on the grounds that \u0026ldquo;International Baccalaureate\u0026rsquo;s links to the United Nations are disturbing and that its sense of right and wrong is ambiguous\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;It teaches students to see the American system of government as one of many, not as the only one that protects universal and God-given rights to property, to bear arms and free speech\u0026rdquo; (to quote the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s paraphrase of his remarks).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis kind of blinkered provincialism and ignorance hurts U.S. competitiveness\u0026ndash;if global businesses can\u0026rsquo;t find people with the knowledge and experience needed to run their operations from the U.S., they\u0026rsquo;ll find them elsewhere, like among foreign-born immigrants, or just run their operations from other countries.  (Economics and demographics are more powerful than politics, so ultimately this problem will solve itself, and English-only and white-only areas of the U.S. will continue to shrink.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy employer, Global Crossing, just acquired another company in South America, with the result that about a quarter of our employees are now Spanish and Portuguese speakers.  This makes multilingual employees extremely valuable.  I would have loved to have been taught Spanish as a second language starting in kindergarten.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePearce and Johnson are politicians whose previous idiocy has been commented on at this blog.  Both are Senators \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003ewho have worked with the Church of Scientology on its anti-psychiatry efforts\u003c/a\u003e.  Pearce is \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/rep-russell-pearce-sends-out-email.html\"\u003ean anti-immigration activist who has shown poor judgment in what email he forwards to his constituents\u003c/a\u003e.  Johnson is a senator who doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the U.S. Constitution, thinking that \u003ca href=\"/2007/02/karen-johnson-trying-to-become-americas.html\"\u003eas a state legislator she has the power to prevent the federal courts from ruling on separation of church and state cases\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Senators kill international studies proposal"},{"content":"Answers in Genesis has announced that it has hired creationist geologist Andrew Snelling, formerly an employee of the Creation Science Foundation, Answers in Genesis-Australia, and Creation Ministries International (the same organization under three names) as well as a contractor for the Institute for Creation Research (they paid him $85,000-$96,000/year to do research for them), to fill their open position.\nThis partially answers the question of how AiG-US will conduct future \u0026ldquo;scientific\u0026rdquo; work, a question which CMI had raised since the Australians were the main contributors to such AiG efforts in the past.\nA question that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been answered is why Snelling stopped working for Creation Ministries International and went to the ICR. The Briese report contains this tantalizing tidbit of information, which I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen anyone publicly comment on to date:\nI clearly remember him saying that Andrew Snelling [a former Australian staff member who was opposed to the notion that a Christian can ever remarry. He was later dismissed by the Australian Board, which at the time included Ken Ham, for matters unconnected to this issue.] had been right about it at the time and that he (Ken) and others had been wrong. But Ken didn\u0026rsquo;t give me any convincing reason as to why he now saw things so differently and why it was now necessary to make an issue of it.This description makes it sound like Snelling\u0026rsquo;s departure from CMI was not voluntary, and that he had issues with Carl Wieland (a Christian who divorced and remarried).\nSnelling is one of the very few young earth creationist geologists on the planet with a Ph.D. from a mainstream academic institution (Steve Austin of the Institute for Creation Research is another). Ronald Numbers\u0026rsquo; book, The Creationists, describes how Henry Morris of the ICR wanted to see a young creationist successfully obtain a Ph.D. in geology from a mainstream institution, only to be faced with failures by Clifford Burdick (who was kicked out of the program at the University of Arizona) and Nicolaas Rupke (who succeeded in obtaining his Ph.D., but rejected young-earth creationism as a result of what he learned in the process).\nKtisophilos (2007-06-23):\nInteresting: that Briese report cites an 10-year-old email by Ken Ham saying that Carl Wieland acted above and beyond the call of duty in his divorce/remarriage issue, and telling people to lay off, already. No wonder KH's explanations of his change of heart were \"unconvincing\". Rather, it looks like the unscrupulous use of any weapon he can find to fire at Wieland.IIRC, the marriage celebrant for Carl Wieland's marriage to Margaret Buchanan was none other than Rev. Robert Ham, Ken Ham's late brother whom he praised as a godly uncompromising Christian in Walking Through Shadows. Can anyone (except perhaps Ozgirl? ;)) seriously believe that Ken Ham has found any evidence so long after the fact that was unknown to him and his brother at the time?\nJames Andrew Cordova (2007-06-29):\nJim,Even though I run a Young Earth creation website and have advocated Young Earth ideas, I've had issues with some of the ways AiG does business.I thank you for your research into what goes on there. I also appreciated your financial analysis of ID and creationist organizations. It was very revealing.One organization I didn't see listed is Loma Linda/GRI. They have published in secular peer-review and they have a medical school. They are quietly the best YEC research center out there.I will reference and advertise some of your analysis on my website. I found it revealing.regards,Salvador\nLippard (2007-06-29):\nSal:One of these days I'll do an update on some additional creationist organizations' financials, as well as updates on the ones I've already reported.The Geoscience Research Institute is part of the \"General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists,\" which is actually multiple organizations in different states (I'm guessing that GRI falls under the one based in California). Those organizations are 501(c)(3) *religious* organizations, which means they do not file Form 990s with the IRS and their financial reports are not available to the general public unless they choose to make them available. I'm certainly willing to ask GRI directly for their financial statements. They tend to be fairly reasonable about such things, I think--the most detailed and effective criticism of phony archaeologist Ron Wyatt's claims came from SDA members Russell and Colin Standish in their book _Holy Relics or Revelation_; there is a Timothy Standish associated with GRI.\nLippard (2007-09-13):\nSal, I read your spin on my financial figures--you argue that they show how poor and underfunded these groups are, but you ignore the fact that several of these groups, including AiG and your pals at the Discovery Institute, are pulling in hefty six-figure salaries even while the groups spend virtually nothing on scientific research. The reason these groups don't fund research isn't that they can't afford to, it's that it's not their mission.\nLippard (2008-05-05):\nFYI, the GRI informed me that they do not have separate financialsfrom the church, but their 2007 budget was $904,000, and they receive modest annual increases with inflation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-hires-andrew.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnswers in Genesis \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/youve_missed_your_chance.php\"\u003ehas announced that it has hired creationist geologist Andrew Snelling\u003c/a\u003e, formerly an employee of the Creation Science Foundation, Answers in Genesis-Australia, and Creation Ministries International (the same organization under three names) as well as a contractor for the Institute for Creation Research (\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creationist-finances-institute-for.html\"\u003ethey paid him $85,000-$96,000/year\u003c/a\u003e to do research for them), to fill their \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/opportunity_for_geologists.php\"\u003eopen position\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis partially answers the question of how AiG-US will conduct future \u0026ldquo;scientific\u0026rdquo; work, a question which CMI had raised since the Australians were the main contributors to such AiG efforts in the past.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA question that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been answered is why Snelling stopped working for Creation Ministries International and went to the ICR.  The Briese report \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/briese2\"\u003econtains this tantalizing tidbit of information\u003c/a\u003e, which I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen anyone publicly comment on to date:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI clearly remember him saying that Andrew Snelling [a former Australian staff member who was opposed to the notion that a Christian can ever remarry. He was later dismissed by the Australian Board, which at the time included Ken Ham, for matters unconnected to this issue.] had been right about it at the time and that he (Ken) and others had been wrong. But Ken didn\u0026rsquo;t give me any convincing reason as to why he now saw things so differently and why it was now necessary to make an issue of it.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis description makes it sound like Snelling\u0026rsquo;s departure from CMI was not voluntary, and that he had issues with Carl Wieland (a Christian who divorced and remarried).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSnelling is one of the very few young earth creationist geologists on the planet with a Ph.D. from a mainstream academic institution (Steve Austin of the Institute for Creation Research is another).  Ronald Numbers\u0026rsquo; book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Creationists\u003c/span\u003e, describes how Henry Morris of the ICR wanted to see a young creationist successfully obtain a Ph.D. in geology from a mainstream institution, only to be faced with failures by Clifford Burdick (who was kicked out of the program at the University of Arizona) and Nicolaas Rupke (who succeeded in obtaining his Ph.D., but rejected young-earth creationism as a result of what he learned in the process).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis hires Andrew Snelling"},{"content":"More content has disappeared from the Answers in Genesis website as a result of its dispute with Creation Ministries International. Now that former magistrate Clarrie Briese has authored a report condemning Answers in Genesis, the existence of numerous web pages on the AiG website praising him for his honesty, integrity, and independence have become embarrassing, and have been replaced with blank pages. Google\u0026rsquo;s cache still has the originals, however.\nThe web pages describe some previous work Briese had done in evaluating Australian geologist Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book, Telling Lies for God, a book which also contains a nice four-page hatchet job on yours truly, along with some unattributed borrowed content from articles in the Creation/Evolution journal (see my review).\nHere are some of the favorable remarks about Briese that were still on the AiG website a week ago:\nThe Chairman was Clarrie Briese, former Chief Magistrate of the State of New South Wales, where he is still a household word for his dogged fight against public corruption which ended the career of a State Chief Magistrate, and an Australian High Court judge and former government minister.(Internet Archive here)\nThese attacks had previously, to ISCAST’s own knowledge, been shown (by an independent committee of enquiry with impeccable Christian credentials led by Clarrie Briese) to be false.(Google Cache here; this one was written by now-CMI staffer Jonathan Sarfati, but was endorsed by AiG-US at the time of its publication)\nAnd the kicker:\nPlease remember: All six men listed who formed the committee have significant public reputations and/or positions, quite independently of CSF. We trust it is obvious that such a group would in no way endanger their own integrity and reputations by saying that they had carefully investigated CSF and found the charges against our ethics were false unless this were utterly true.(Internet Archive here)\nApparently Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s opinion of Clarrie Briese has completely changed now that he\u0026rsquo;s the target of criticism, to the extent that he wishes to repudiate these remarks by deleting them from the AiG website.\nThe contrast between the behavior of CMI and AiG-US continues to make it obvious who\u0026rsquo;s being honest in this dispute. CMI is laying out all their cards on the table, including information that is to its own detriment, while AiG-US has circled the wagons and is editing its own history to hide damaging evidence.\nUPDATE (July 2, 2008): Google cache has expired, I\u0026rsquo;ve replaced the links with links to the Internet Archive where available.\nsylas (2007-06-19):\nNice scoop Jim. Someone else alerted me to this at Duae Quartunciae, and I have put up a comment there, which gives links to these articles as they can still all be found at CMI. See Comment at Duae Quartunciae.\nsylas (2007-06-19):\nJim, in fairness to Ken Ham, there has been no direct link between his name and the text of the removed articles.The articles all refer to events that took place in Australia, after Ken Ham had gone to the USA. His involvement in the events would be indirect; and the articles you are describing are written by folks like Wieland, Sarfati, Armstrong and so on who are based in Australia and remain associated with CMI.The articles relating to Briese that were up at the AiG site are part of the whole corpus of material that was maintained by the combined group before the split.No doubt, of course, Ken Ham himself had no qualm endorsing the comments of Briese in relation to the Plimer brouhahah. But he did not write the articles and he is not quoted in them.There is no inconsistency for Ham in thinking that Briese has been less fair in this CMI dispute. Of course, I think the plain facts of the matter is that Ham has been caught out. But I don't think it is fair to hold up to him articles written by other people; nor do I think it is fair to impute any inconsistency in thinking Briese did well in one case and not in another.It is petty to see these articles being quietly removed while AiG continues to make no public statement on the whole lawsuit. But lets not make too much of it.\nLippard (2007-06-19):\nIn support of your point, Plimer's book was published in 1994 and does not mention \"Answers in Genesis,\" which didn't yet exist. The Australian group, the major focus of Plimer's criticism, was still the Creation Science Foundation. The key third quote comes from a document that still references the CSF, rather than AiG.Thanks for pointing that out.\nKtisophilos (2007-06-19):\nI must disagree with JL and DQ here. Ken Ham was still part of CSF when Plimer wrote. After all according to AiG's own account of their history, he was a director of CSF until 2004, (by then it was called AiG-Au). So he was certainly a CSF director when Plimer's asinine book was published (1994). Also, this history states that CSF loaned Ham out to ICR in 1987, and that he aided CSF against Mackay, (now his new buddy, so he is not mentioned as the cause of the \"major leadership problem\"). Ham later founded what became AiG in 1994, which at the time was CSF's sister ministry.Ham was certainly one of Plimer's targets, both explicitly and implicitly by virtue of the attack on an organization in which he was intimately involved at the time.It is most implausible that KH wouldn't have been very grateful to Briese's Plimer committee findings. Indeed, as a CSF director at the time, Ham surely must have been one of those who asked for this inquiry. So his crass attempt to rewrite history is actually cutting off his own nose as well.\nLippard (2007-06-19):\nktisophilos:I didn't realize Ham continued to have an affiliation with CSF after his departure for the U.S. and prior to the change of name from CSF to AiG. My cursory scan of Plimer's book this morning didn't find any references to Ken Ham, and of course it didn't mention Answers in Genesis since that name wasn't yet in use.\nKtisophilos (2007-06-21):\nJim:Plimer's ... Lies ... savages Ham on P. 141, mentions him again on p. 172, and the bibliography has three Ham articles.\nLippard (2007-06-21):\np. 141: \"Another active director of the Creation Science Foundation is Ken Ham. Although Mr Ham has the basic qualifications to be a school science teacher (Bachelor of Applied Science, Diploma of Education), neither qualification is a science research degree and Mr Ham has no formal recognised theological qualifications. Mr Ham devotes much of his time presenting religious sermons on 'Back to Genesis', sin, death and creation 'science'. \"Ham has specialised in the supposed interrelationship between evolution, abortion, drugs and contraception. Mr Ham commonly writes on sexual perversions, promiscuity and the human body which is somewhat odd as Wieland is the more qualified on mattters medical to write with authority on such subjects. Given that fundamentalist preachers (e.g., Swaggert [sic], Bakker) have been shown to indulge in sexual peccadillos, it is a wonder that Ham hasn't explored a possible link. Ken Ham's writings leave enormous room for speculation. For example: 'Many Christian girls go bra-less and wear clingy T-shirts to show off their breasts and sexual parts' (1983:3). \"It is clear that Mr Ham has finely-tuned observational skills. He spends much of his time preaching in the USA, and one wonders how different Ken Ham is from some of the other celebrated religious fundamentalists and cult leaders in USA? Mr Ham has now established a Kentucky outpost for the Creation Science Foundation.\"p. 172: \"The same issue [October 1991 Prayer News] has an article 'Cult-Busting Ken Ham Video'. However the article had nothing about cults and is advertising for creationist wares. \"The lead article in the November 1991 issue was an article by Ken Ham, 'Why Does the Carrot Move?'. I'm sure that all readers are aware that moving carrots are proof of creation and just the piece of evidence, once and for all, to destroy evolution. Another wonderful Ken Ham article (February 1992) tells us that the reason why some Christians believe in evolution is that they have been indoctrinated by both the media and the school system. Clearly, Christians cannot think for themselves! The bulk of the article (an interview between Ham and Wieland) is devoted to geology, a real case of the blind leading the blind as both are unqualified in geology. ... Ham's codiretor, Carl Wieland, wrote an article entitled 'The God-Haters: What causes the Incredible Hostility to Biblical Creation?' (1992) wherein he informed the willing reader that genuine scientists cannot be Christians because they are critical of the creationist cult.\"And p. 296:\"Ham Ken (1983) 'The relevance of creation. Casebook II'. Ex Nihilo, 3[2], p. 21.--- (1991) 'Why does the carrot move' Prayer News, November 1991, p. 1.--- (1993) 'I have a Bible: What more do I need?' Creation Ex Nihilo 15[2], pp. 28-30.\"\nJoel Duff (2007-06-27):\nI appreciate the work to locate these articles. Interesting stuff. This just follows the trend of AIG to refine its image as it moves from a big tent creationist organization to the vision of a single leader who wants to move in one direction (apologetics with a stick of supposed truth verses being willing to ask question or hypothesize at all). A while back it had been noted that AIG had a article about bad creationists arguments and one about Hovind (Dr.Dino) with specific rebuttals to his teachings. That disappeared off the AIG site around the time of the first cracks between AIG and CMI. As you have noted and others this was a sign of a difference of opinion about how to deal with dissension amongst creationists groups. The authors of that negative article were Wieland and others that are are now part of CMI. I looked at the CMI site and that same article is now back up on their site (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2571/)just another example of different approaches that the two organizations have which is most dramatically seen in how information has been divulged in the present schism. Joel (aka crinoidea)\nKtisophilos (2007-07-04):\nJoel, that Hovind rebuttal lists Ham as one of the co-authors, and another current AiG staffer Dr Jason Lisle strongly applauded it. It's far more likely that politics rather than a change of mind was responsible for removal of these articles on the AiG site.\nefastnet (2007-08-26):\nHi Jim,I've noticed the links to the CMI documents are all being directed to a landing page. Does anyone know where copies can be found.\nLippard (2007-08-27):\nIt looks like a bunch of these have disappeared, while others are still up. I wonder if this means CMI and AiG are reaching a settlement.I'm sure there are still copies floating around.\nKtisophilos (2007-09-24):\nAccording to http://www.creationontheweb.biz/?page=lawsuit_justificationHopeful breakthroughFollowing two days of intensive meeting and discussion in Hawaii, the two ministries were able to reach verbal agreement on all the main points of a confidential basis of settlement. Although time ran out (planes were pre-booked) to turn this into a finalized written agreement, all parties present are extremely hopeful that this can take place within the next 60 days or so at the most. As a gesture in accord with the spirit of mutual goodwill that prevailed at the end, CMI has for now removed access to the details previously on the web, whether chronologies, committee reports, or whatever. We do this in the confident hope that this will never need to be reversed, trusting that ‘handshake’ agreements between those parties present in Hawaii will be reflected in a formal, signed document that will put these serious issues to rest in a God-honouring fashion. Thank you to all who have been praying.\nefastnet (2007-10-07):\njim, I've been trying to locate these documents that have dissapeared without success. I'm just wondering whether anyone here can point me in the right direction? I'm at the start of creating a web site that will be dealing solely with the creation museum and I want to write a history article. The details contained in the \"disapeared\" articles contains some very interesting stuff but I never got to save any of it. Any help would be appreciated.\nLippard (2007-10-07):\nefastnet: Please contact me in email (lippard-web at discord.org).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/more-disappearing-content-from-answers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore content has disappeared from the Answers in Genesis website as a result of its dispute with Creation Ministries International.  Now that former magistrate Clarrie Briese has authored a report condemning Answers in Genesis, the existence of numerous web pages on the AiG website praising him for his honesty, integrity, and independence have become embarrassing, and have been replaced with blank pages.  Google\u0026rsquo;s cache \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=briese+site%3Awww.answersingenesis.org\"\u003estill has the originals\u003c/a\u003e, however.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe web pages describe some previous work Briese had done in evaluating Australian geologist Ian Plimer\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTelling Lies for God\u003c/span\u003e, a book which also contains a nice four-page hatchet job on yours truly, along with some unattributed borrowed content from articles in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation/Evolution\u003c/span\u003e journal (see \u003ca href=\"http://discord.org/%7Elippard/plimer-book.html\"\u003emy review\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are some of the favorable remarks about Briese that were still on the AiG website a week ago:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Chairman was Clarrie Briese, former Chief Magistrate of    the State of New South Wales, where he is still a household word for his dogged    fight against public corruption which ended the career of a State Chief Magistrate,    and an Australian High Court judge and former government minister.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Internet Archive \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20070407122733/http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/177.asp\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThese attacks had previously,          to ISCAST’s own knowledge, been shown (by an \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/182.asp\"\u003eindependent         committee of enquiry\u003c/a\u003e with impeccable Christian credentials led    by Clarrie Briese) to be false.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Google Cache \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:FKRAsjUejk8J:www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3906.asp+by+an+independent+committee+of+enquiry+with+impeccable+Christian+credentials+led+by+Clarrie+Briese\u0026amp;amp;hl=en\u0026amp;ct=clnk\u0026amp;cd=1\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e; this one was written by now-CMI staffer Jonathan Sarfati, but was endorsed by AiG-US at the time of its publication)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the kicker:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePlease remember: All six men listed who          formed the committee have significant public reputations          and/or positions, quite independently of CSF. We trust it is          obvious that such a group would in no way endanger their own          integrity and reputations by saying that they had carefully          investigated CSF and found the charges against our ethics          were false unless this were utterly true.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Internet Archive \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20070406113217/http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/181.asp\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s opinion of Clarrie Briese has completely changed now that he\u0026rsquo;s the target of criticism, to the extent that he wishes to repudiate these remarks by deleting them from the AiG website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe contrast between the behavior of CMI and AiG-US continues to make it obvious who\u0026rsquo;s being honest in this dispute.  CMI is laying out all their cards on the table, including information that is to its own detriment, while AiG-US has circled the wagons and is editing its own history to hide damaging evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 2, 2008): Google cache has expired, I\u0026rsquo;ve replaced the links with links to the Internet Archive where available.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More disappearing content from the Answers in Genesis website"},{"content":"Last night we attended \u0026ldquo;Bat Boy: The Musical\u0026rdquo;(reviewed here by the Arizona Republic). The play is based on a recurring character in fake (but sourced) news stories in the Weekly World News. While it didn\u0026rsquo;t exactly describe the Bat Boy we were familiar with from the WWN (for instance, he didn\u0026rsquo;t fight with U.S. troops in Afghanistan), it was a humorous and entertaining performance at the Phoenix Theater by the Nearly Naked Theatre troupe.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Bat Boy: The Musical\u0026rdquo; play was co-authored by Brian Flemming, the director of the atheist DVD \u0026ldquo;The God Who Wasn\u0026rsquo;t There\u0026rdquo; and the silly \u0026ldquo;Blasphemy Challenge\u0026rdquo; that has prompted many YouTube videos.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/thumbs-up-for-bat-boy-musical.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night we attended \u0026ldquo;Bat Boy: The Musical\u0026rdquo;(reviewed \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/arts/articles/0525batboy0527.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e).  The play is based on a recurring character in fake (but sourced) news stories in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWeekly World News\u003c/span\u003e.  While it didn\u0026rsquo;t exactly describe the Bat Boy we were familiar with from the WWN (for instance, he didn\u0026rsquo;t fight with U.S. troops in Afghanistan), it was a humorous and entertaining performance at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixtheatre.com/?gclid=CMLP4Y2A5IwCFSj0IgodLkrIyg\"\u003ePhoenix Theater\u003c/a\u003e by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nearlynakedtheatre.org/\"\u003eNearly Naked Theatre\u003c/a\u003e troupe.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Bat Boy: The Musical\u0026rdquo; play was co-authored by Brian Flemming, the director of the atheist DVD \u003ca href=\"http://www.thegodmovie.com/dvd.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The God Who Wasn\u0026rsquo;t There\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and the silly \u003ca href=\"http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/002405.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Blasphemy Challenge\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that has prompted many YouTube videos.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thumbs up for Bat Boy: The Musical"},{"content":"[Actually published in August 17, 2007.]\n(I\u0026rsquo;ve had this in draft since June 21, but forgot about it\u0026ndash;I was making an effort to verify that Dahmer was actually raised as a creationist or Christian, but didn\u0026rsquo;t find anything to indicate when Lionel Dahmer became either one. I raised the question in comments at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog, and one commenter, Kristine, replied that Lionel Dahmer says he only became a creationist after his son was arrested. That undermines the specifics of the case below. There have certainly been serial killers raised as Christians (such as Ted Bundy), but I\u0026rsquo;ve not heard of any that have been specifically raised as creationists. I don\u0026rsquo;t think police departments look at Christianity or creationism as a relevant factor in a serial killer profile, the way they look at, say, possession of a copy of the Satanic Bible, except in extreme cases, which is probably as it should be.)\nKen Ham likes to argue that evolution is the cause of a variety of social ills\u0026ndash;teen pregnancy, pornography, drugs, abortion, racism, the Holocaust, etc. His book The Lie: Evolution argues that evolution is responsible for all of these things.\nI just learned (thanks to Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog) that Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer, was raised as a creationist, and his father, Dr. Lionel Dahmer, is listed on the Answers in Genesis website as an analytical chemist who accepts the biblical account of creation.\nIf evolutionists used Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s technique, they would argue that being raised as a creationist causes cannibalism. Answers in Genesis specifically suggests that it was belief in evolution, rather than issues from his upbringing, that caused Jeffrey Dahmer to kill, quoting a 1994 statement from him that \u0026ldquo;If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…\u0026quot;\nThe Wikipedia entry on Dahmer observes that he \u0026ldquo;dissected already dead animals as a child\u0026rdquo; (he collected and sexually interacted with roadkill), began abusing alcohol at 14, had extremely low self-esteem, and his parents divorced after \u0026ldquo;constant fighting\u0026rdquo; when he was 18. His father \u0026ldquo;forced him to enlist\u0026rdquo; in the Army for six years, but he was discharged after two due to excessive drinking. He built an altar of candles and human skulls in the closet of his apartment that was found when he was arrested. In prison, he declared himself a born-again Christian (which he was when he made the above statement), and was beaten to death in prison in 1994.\nPsychiatrist George Palermo testified at Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s trial that he killed his victims because he hated his own homosexuality.\nUPDATE (September 6, 2013): It has been pointed out to me that if Lionel Dahmer claimed to have become a creationist after his son\u0026rsquo;s arrest, this is false\u0026ndash;Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in 1991, but Lionel Dahmer co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, a conference which was held in 1990.\nUPDATE (December 15, 2023): Glenn Branch brought to my attention that Lionel Dahmer died on December 5, 2023, and received an obituary in the New York Times (December 12th) that is as much about his son as him, but makes no mention of the creationism. He also noted that Lionel Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s memoir says that he was inspired to return to Christianity in 1989 via the influence of young-earth creationist Bert Thompson of Apologetics Press. Bert Thompson was subsequently fired from Apologetics Press after allegations of grooming and sexual abuse of teen boys.\nUPDATE (December 27, 2023): Glenn Branch has published an article: \u0026ldquo;Like father, like son: Jeffrey Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s claims about evolution in light of Lionel Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s creationism\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Sheldon (2007-08-18):\nI have seen the Dateline NBC interview with Dahmner and his father. As I recall they claim that they were not religious when Jeffrey was a child.\nJoel (2007-10-22):\nWell, if that's the case, perhaps cannibalism and necrophilia cause Christianity and creationism. Have you really listened to the eucharist?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/jeffrey-dahmer-and-answers-in-genesis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Actually published in August 17, 2007.]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(I\u0026rsquo;ve had this in draft since June 21, but forgot about it\u0026ndash;I was making an effort to verify that Dahmer was actually raised as a creationist or Christian, but didn\u0026rsquo;t find anything to indicate when Lionel Dahmer became either one.  I raised the question in comments at Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog, and one commenter, Kristine, replied that Lionel Dahmer says he only became a creationist after his son was arrested.  That undermines the specifics of the case below.  There have certainly been serial killers raised as Christians (such as Ted Bundy), but I\u0026rsquo;ve not heard of any that have been specifically raised as creationists.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think police departments look at Christianity or creationism as a relevant factor in a serial killer profile, the way they look at, say, possession of a copy of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSatanic Bible\u003c/span\u003e, except in extreme cases, which is probably as it should be.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nKen Ham likes to argue that evolution is the cause of a variety of social ills\u0026ndash;teen pregnancy, pornography, drugs, abortion, racism, the Holocaust, etc.  His book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Lie: Evolution\u003c/span\u003e argues that evolution is responsible for all of these things.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI just learned (thanks to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/06/dumbest_antievolution_screed_e.php\"\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e) that Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer, was raised as a creationist, and his father, Dr. Lionel Dahmer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/\"\u003eis listed on the Answers in Genesis website\u003c/a\u003e as an analytical chemist who accepts the biblical account of creation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf evolutionists used Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s technique, they would argue that being raised as a creationist causes cannibalism.  Answers in Genesis specifically suggests that it was belief in evolution, rather than issues from his upbringing, that caused Jeffrey Dahmer to kill, \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Tools/Quotes/dahmer.asp\"\u003equoting a 1994 statement from him\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable            to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour            to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway.            I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just            came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there            is nothing…\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer\"\u003eWikipedia entry on Dahmer\u003c/a\u003e observes that he \u0026ldquo;dissected already dead animals as a child\u0026rdquo; (he \u003ca href=\"http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/17/lkl.00.html\"\u003ecollected and sexually interacted with roadkill\u003c/a\u003e), began abusing alcohol at 14, had extremely low self-esteem, and his parents divorced after \u0026ldquo;constant fighting\u0026rdquo; when he was 18.  His father \u0026ldquo;forced him to enlist\u0026rdquo; in the Army for six years, but he was discharged after two due to excessive drinking.  He built an altar of candles and human skulls in the closet of his apartment that was found when he was arrested.  In prison, he declared himself a born-again Christian (which he was when he made the above statement), and was beaten to death in prison in 1994.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPsychiatrist George Palermo \u003ca href=\"http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/dahmer.htm\"\u003etestified at Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s trial that he killed his victims because he hated his own homosexuality\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (September 6, 2013): It has been pointed out to me that if Lionel Dahmer claimed to have become a creationist after his son\u0026rsquo;s arrest, this is false\u0026ndash;Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in 1991, but Lionel Dahmer co-authored a paper in the \u003ci\u003eProceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism\u003c/i\u003e, a conference which was held in 1990.\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (December 15, 2023): Glenn Branch brought to my attention that Lionel Dahmer died on December 5, 2023, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/us/lionel-dahmer-dead.html\"\u003ereceived an obituary in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (December 12th) that is as much about his son as him, but makes no mention of the creationism. He also noted that Lionel Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s memoir says that he was inspired to return to Christianity in 1989 via the influence of young-earth creationist Bert Thompson of Apologetics Press.  Bert Thompson \u003ca href=\"https://christianchronicle.org/longtime-director-of-apologetics-press-fired/\"\u003ewas subsequently fired from Apologetics Press after allegations of grooming and sexual abuse of teen boys\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eUPDATE (December 27, 2023): Glenn Branch has published an article:\u003cspan style=\"white-space-collapse: preserve;\"\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://rightingamerica.net/like-father-like-son-jeffrey-dahmers-claims-about-evolution-in-light-of-lionel-dahmers-creationism/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Like father, like son: Jeffrey Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s claims about evolution in light of Lionel Dahmer\u0026rsquo;s creationism\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeffrey Dahmer and Answers in Genesis"},{"content":"The Lexington Herald-Leader has published a story in the Father\u0026rsquo;s Day edition about the Creation Ministries International lawsuit against Answers in Genesis; I was interviewed and quoted in the article as an external, non-creationist viewpoint. I was quoted accurately, though the \u0026ldquo;unseemly\u0026rdquo; quote was followed by a statement that actually, the more salacious charges were relevant to the fact that Ham is now working cooperatively with John Mackay, the man who made those accusations, despite Mackay\u0026rsquo;s failure to apologize and repent for them. The article used my position as a balance to AiG and CMI, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it conveyed the fact that I think CMI clearly has the moral high ground in the dispute.\nFor Herald-Leader readers who are visiting my blog for the first time, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a category of posts that specifically addresses the Creation Ministries International/Answers in Genesis split as well as other categories for Answers in Genesis in general and creationism. But if you\u0026rsquo;d like a well-summarized overview of the whole matter, I must point you to another blog, Duae Quartunciae, that has done a much better job than I have of putting everything into a nicely wrapped package\u0026ndash;it links to my individual articles that go into more detail as appropriate, as well as to other information sources including both CMI and AiG.\nAnother good recent summary of the CMI/AiG dispute is the article \u0026ldquo;Lord of the Ring\u0026rdquo; which appeared in The Australian newspaper on June 5.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/kentucky-newspaper-covers-creationist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLexington Herald-Leader\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/454/story/100183.html\"\u003epublished a story in the Father\u0026rsquo;s Day edition about the Creation Ministries International lawsuit against Answers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e; I was interviewed and quoted in the article as an external, non-creationist viewpoint.  I was quoted accurately, though the \u0026ldquo;unseemly\u0026rdquo; quote was followed by a statement that actually, the more salacious charges were relevant to the fact that Ham is now working cooperatively with \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/john-mackay-and-answers-in-genesis.html\"\u003eJohn Mackay, the man who made those accusations\u003c/a\u003e, despite Mackay\u0026rsquo;s failure to apologize and repent for them.  The article used my position as a balance to AiG and CMI, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it conveyed the fact that I think CMI clearly has the moral high ground in the dispute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHerald-Leader\u003c/span\u003e readers who are visiting my blog for the first time, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a category of posts that specifically addresses \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Answers%20in%20Genesis%20schism\"\u003ethe Creation Ministries International/Answers in Genesis split\u003c/a\u003e as well as other categories for \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Answers%20in%20Genesis\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e in general and \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/creationism\"\u003ecreationism\u003c/a\u003e.  But if you\u0026rsquo;d like a well-summarized overview of the whole matter, I must point you to another blog, \u003ca href=\"http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-lawsuit.html\"\u003eDuae Quartunciae\u003c/a\u003e, that has done a much better job than I have of putting everything into a nicely wrapped package\u0026ndash;it links to my individual articles that go into more detail as appropriate, as well as to other information sources including both CMI and AiG.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother good recent summary of the CMI/AiG dispute is the article \u003ca href=\"http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21848726-28737,00.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lord of the Ring\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which appeared in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Australian\u003c/span\u003e newspaper on June 5.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kentucky newspaper covers creationist lawsuit"},{"content":"Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Deputy Daniel Brock was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his drunk driver arrest record, but now it turns out that many of the people he arrested and testified against were innocent and arrested on the basis of falsified reporting by Brock.\nFrom October 2005-October 2006, Brock arrested 313 people for driving under the influence. In one year (not clear from the report if it\u0026rsquo;s during that same period), he arrested 58 people whose blood-alcohol content was below .08. 43 of those 58, according to an internal affairs investigation, displayed no discernable impairment. In 41 cases, urine samples did not show alcohol over the legal limit. In many cases, videos of sobriety tests showed that Brock made false accusations of losing balance, being unable to correctly recite the alphabet, and slurred speech. Brock also failed to turn on his car\u0026rsquo;s audio and video recorder 40% of the time, instead choosing to fill out his reports on the basis of memory, sometimes days and even weeks after the arrest.\nBrock was fired on May 24.\n(Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-06-26):\nI feel validated after reading this article. I was arrested by the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office in Sept 2004 for DUI. I was not drunk! Alcohol testing confirmed that I was not impaired however the arresting officers proceeded to hold me in the Orient Jail. My arresting officer also failed to record the incident on his video camera. The charges were later dropped. This arrest cost me thousands of dollars, a job and my reputation. It is my hope that internal affairs will review the DUI arrests records of all officers of the County Sheriffs office.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/madd-honored-deputy-falsified-dui.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHillsborough County, Florida Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Deputy Daniel Brock was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his drunk driver arrest record, but now \u003ca href=\"http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/15/Hillsborough/DUI_deputy_may_have_w.shtml\"\u003eit turns out that many of the people he arrested and testified against were innocent and arrested on the basis of falsified reporting by Brock\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom October 2005-October 2006, Brock arrested 313 people for driving under the influence.  In one year (not clear from the report if it\u0026rsquo;s during that same period), he arrested 58 people whose blood-alcohol content was below .08.  43 of those 58, according to an internal affairs investigation, displayed no discernable impairment.  In 41 cases, urine samples did not show alcohol over the legal limit.  In many cases, videos of sobriety tests showed that Brock made false accusations of losing balance, being unable to correctly recite the alphabet, and slurred speech.  Brock also failed to turn on his car\u0026rsquo;s audio and video recorder 40% of the time, instead choosing to fill out his reports on the basis of memory, sometimes days and even weeks after the arrest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrock was fired on May 24.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027864.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MADD-honored deputy falsified DUI arrest reports"},{"content":"The June 9, 2007 issue of The Economist has an interesting article on how crime rates have been dropping in three of America\u0026rsquo;s largest cities\u0026ndash;New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago\u0026ndash;even though those cities have fewer police officers than they did in the late 1990\u0026rsquo;s. In Chicago, at least, the drop in crime has not been the result of putting more people in jail\u0026ndash;Chicago\u0026rsquo;s incarceration rate has dropped since 1999. The secret? Focusing attention on high-crime areas, with local commanders responsible for their particular regions. So why don\u0026rsquo;t all metropolitan police departments do that?\nThe article goes on to mention a demographic cause for crime reduction\u0026ndash;each of these cities has seen property prices skyrocket, with a corresponding decline in the number of residents aged 15-24. Those three cities have lost over 200,000 residents in that age range between 2000 and 2005, as well as a displacement of poor native-born citizens by poor immigrants, the latter of whom tend to be better behaved. (The article suggests a racial factor as well, noting that \u0026ldquo;This trend is symbolised by the disappearance of blacks. Roughly half of America\u0026rsquo;s murder vitims and about the same proportion of suspected murderers are black. In five years America\u0026rsquo;s three biggest cities lost almost a tenth of their black residents, while elsewhere in America their numbers held steady.\u0026rdquo;)\nThe criminologist cited in the article, Wesley Skogan, is the author of a number of books about dealing with crime, including a book on community policing in Chicago (link is to a review of the book by Sawyer Sylvester) and books and articles about race and crime. While searching online for some of his work to see what he has to say about race and crime, I came across an article by John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt (of Freakonomics) titled \u0026ldquo;The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests,\u0026quot; the abstract of which says:\nRace has long been recognized as playing a critical role in policing. In spite of this awareness, there has been little previous research that attempts to quantitatively analyze the impact of officer race on tangible outcomes. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the racial composition of a city\u0026rsquo;s police force and the racial patterns of arrests. Increases in the number of minority police are associated with significant increases in arrests of whites but have little impact on arrests of nonwhites. Similarly, more white police increase the number of arrests of nonwhites but do not systematically affect the number of white arrests. These patterns are particularly striking for minor offenses. Understanding the reasons for this empirical regularity and the consequent impact on crime is an important subject for future research.I also came across an article by Matthew Robinson titled \u0026ldquo;The Construction and Reinforcement of Myths of Race and Crime,\u0026quot; which has this abstract:\nMuch of what we know about crime is myth. Myths are falsehoods that have become accepted as truth because they have been told and retold over time. Many myths of crime revolve around race. This article documents how myths of crime associated with race are created and reinforced through the criminal justice process and the media. The examination begins with the process of lawmaking, demonstrating how American criminal law creates biases against particular groups and benefits others by creating myths about race and crime. The article then analyzes how portrayal of crime in the mass media and activities of law enforcement, courts, and corrections reinforce myths of race and crime. A model of myth creation and reinforcement is presented, and implications of the model for the American criminal justice system and larger society are discussed.I suspect that race is a factor in crime in the same way that technical analysis patterns are a factor in stock price movement\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the social concepts doing the work rather than underlying objective facts, but the consequences are still real.\nLaika (2007-06-17):\n\u003eIn Chicago, at least, the drop in crime has been the result of putting more people in jail--Chicago's incarceration rate has dropped since 1999.Is there a \"not\" missing there somewhere? This sentence contradicts itself...\nLippard (2007-06-17):\nYes, indeed--that's one of those terrible editing errors that accidentally reverses the intended meaning of a sentence! I've corrected it. Thanks, Mark.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/how-to-reduce-crime-in-large-cities.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe June 9, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9302881\"\u003ean interesting article on how crime rates have been dropping in three of America\u0026rsquo;s largest cities\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago\u0026ndash;even though those cities have fewer police officers than they did in the late 1990\u0026rsquo;s.  In Chicago, at least, the drop in crime has not been the result of putting more people in jail\u0026ndash;Chicago\u0026rsquo;s incarceration rate has dropped since 1999.  The secret?  Focusing attention on high-crime areas, with local commanders responsible for their particular regions.  So why don\u0026rsquo;t all metropolitan police departments do that?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe article goes on to mention a demographic cause for crime reduction\u0026ndash;each of these cities has seen property prices skyrocket, with a corresponding decline in the number of residents aged 15-24.  Those three cities have lost over 200,000 residents in that age range between 2000 and 2005, as well as a displacement of poor native-born citizens by poor immigrants, the latter of whom tend to be better behaved.  (The article suggests a racial factor as well, noting that \u0026ldquo;This trend is symbolised by the disappearance of blacks.  Roughly half of America\u0026rsquo;s murder vitims and about the same proportion of suspected murderers are black.  In five years America\u0026rsquo;s three biggest cities lost almost a tenth of their black residents, while elsewhere in America their numbers held steady.\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe criminologist cited in the article, Wesley Skogan, is the author of a number of books about dealing with crime, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/Skogan0507.htm\"\u003ea book on community policing in Chicago\u003c/a\u003e (link is to a review of the book by Sawyer Sylvester) and books and articles about race and crime.  While searching online for some of his work to see what he has to say about race and crime, I came across \u003ca href=\"http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/322810\"\u003ean article by John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt (of Freakonomics) titled \u0026ldquo;The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e the abstract of which says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRace has long been recognized as playing a critical role in policing. In spite of this awareness, there has been little previous research that attempts to quantitatively analyze the impact of officer race on tangible outcomes. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the racial composition of a city\u0026rsquo;s police force and the racial patterns of arrests. Increases in the number of minority police are associated with significant increases in arrests of whites but have little impact on arrests of nonwhites. Similarly, more white police increase the number of arrests of nonwhites but do not systematically affect the number of white arrests. These patterns are particularly striking for minor offenses. Understanding the reasons for this empirical regularity and the consequent impact on crime is an important subject for future research.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI also came across \u003ca href=\"http://ccj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/2/133\"\u003ean article by Matthew Robinson titled \u0026ldquo;The Construction and Reinforcement of Myths of Race and Crime,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which has this abstract:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e     Much of what we know about crime is myth. Myths are falsehoods\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003ethat have become accepted as truth because they have been told\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eand retold over time. Many myths of crime revolve around race.\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eThis article documents how myths of crime associated with race\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eare created and reinforced through the criminal justice process\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eand the media. The examination begins with the process of lawmaking,\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003edemonstrating how American criminal law creates biases against\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eparticular groups and benefits others by creating myths about\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003erace and crime. The article then analyzes how portrayal of crime\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003ein the mass media and activities of law enforcement, courts,\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eand corrections reinforce myths of race and crime. A model of\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003emyth creation and reinforcement is presented, and implications\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003eof the model for the American criminal justice system and larger\u003csup\u003e \u003c/sup\u003esociety are discussed.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI suspect that race is a factor in crime in the same way that technical analysis patterns are a factor in stock price movement\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the social concepts doing the work rather than underlying objective facts, but the consequences are still real.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to reduce crime in large cities"},{"content":"I just came across a wiki devoted to Casey Serin, the failed housing flipper turned blogger whose \u0026ldquo;I am Facing Foreclosure\u0026rdquo; blog documented the details of how he used liar loans to drive himself into $2 million in debt. It\u0026rsquo;s got quite an extensive collection of details about Serin, his deals, his blog, and the people he\u0026rsquo;s burned along the way, as well as appropriately critical articles about various real estate investment \u0026ldquo;gurus\u0026rdquo; like Robert Kiyosaki and descriptions of new natural phenomena and genetic mutants. Some very funny stuff.\nHistorical Comments Cynthia King (2008-04-01):\nI learned of Casey last Saturday at at 7pm....didn't stop reading about him until 3am! Try the Internet Way Back Machine to find the archives of the original Web Page. Interesting, sad, and infuriating all at the same time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/caseypedia-wiki.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across \u003ca href=\"http://www.caseypedia.com/wiki/Main_Page\"\u003ea wiki devoted to Casey Serin\u003c/a\u003e, the failed housing flipper turned blogger whose \u0026ldquo;I am Facing Foreclosure\u0026rdquo; blog documented the details of how he used liar loans to drive himself into $2 million in debt.  It\u0026rsquo;s got quite an extensive collection of details about Serin, his deals, his blog, and the people he\u0026rsquo;s burned along the way, as well as appropriately critical articles about various real estate investment \u0026ldquo;gurus\u0026rdquo; like Robert Kiyosaki and descriptions of \u003ca href=\"http://www.caseypedia.com/wiki/Solar_algae\"\u003enew natural phenomena\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.caseypedia.com/wiki/Bird-dogging\"\u003egenetic mutants\u003c/a\u003e.   Some very funny stuff.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CaseyPedia Wiki"},{"content":"Tim Sandefur at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb explains how Casey Luskin, attorney at the Discovery Institute, misrepresents the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case of Board of Education v. Pico.\nLuskin\u0026rsquo;s misrepresentations of biology can be blamed on incompetency, but as a lawyer, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t he at least know the law? I don\u0026rsquo;t see how his continued misrepresentations\u0026ndash;and failure to correct them\u0026ndash;can be blamed on anything but dishonesty.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/casey-luskin-misrepresents-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTim Sandefur at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb explains how Casey Luskin, attorney at the Discovery Institute, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/06/luskin_once_aga.html\"\u003emisrepresents the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case of Board of Education v. Pico\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLuskin\u0026rsquo;s misrepresentations of biology can be blamed on incompetency, but as a lawyer, shouldn\u0026rsquo;t he at least know the law?  I don\u0026rsquo;t see how his continued misrepresentations\u0026ndash;and failure to correct them\u0026ndash;can be blamed on anything but dishonesty.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Casey Luskin misrepresents the law"},{"content":"A Christian blog reports on a Barna poll of believers and atheists:\nMost atheists and agnostics (56 percent) agree with the idea that radical Christianity is just as threatening in America as is radical Islam. Two-thirds of active-faith Americans (63 percent) perceive that the nation is becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.\nAtheists and agnostics were found to be largely more disengaged in many areas of life than believers. They are less likely to be registered to vote (78 percent) than active-faith Americans (89 percent); to volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit (20 percent vs. 30 percent); to describe themselves as \u0026ldquo;active in the community\u0026rdquo; (41 percent vs. 68 percent); and to personally help or serve a homeless or poor person (41 percent vs. 61 percent).\nAdditionally, when the no-faith group does donate to charitable causes, their donation amount pales in comparison to those active in faith. In 2006, atheists and agnostics donated just $200 while believers contributed $1,500. The amount is still two times higher among believers when subtracting church-based giving.\nThe no-faith group is also more likely to be focused on living a comfortable, balanced lifestyle (12 percent) while only 4 percent of Christians say the same. And no-faith adults are also more focused on acquiring wealth (10 percent) than believers (2 percent). One-quarter of Christians identified their faith as the primary focus of their life.\nStill, one-quarter of atheists and agnostics said \u0026ldquo;deeply spiritual\u0026rdquo; accurately describes them and three-quarters of them said they are clear about the meaning and purpose of their life.\nWhen it came to being \u0026ldquo;at peace,\u0026rdquo; however, researchers saw a significant gap with 67 percent of no-faith adults saying they felt \u0026ldquo;at peace\u0026rdquo; compared to 90 percent of believers. Atheists and agnostics are also less likely to say they are convinced they are right about things in life (38 percent vs. 55 percent) and more likely to feel stressed out (37 percent vs. 26 percent).The results about \u0026ldquo;convinced they are right about things in life\u0026rdquo; is not surprising\u0026ndash;that strikes me as the difference between arrogant dogmatism and open-mindedness and humility, and brings to mind studies which have shown that the highly competent believe themselves to be less competent than the incompetent believe themselves to be.\nThe lack of voter registration could also be a sign that atheists and agnostics don\u0026rsquo;t think their vote makes a difference.\nWhat I find contrary to my own personal experience are the results regarding charitable giving and assistance to the homeless. From my perspective, all of the charitable donation dollar amounts ($200/year for atheists/agnostics, $400/year for believers not counting church giving, $1500/year for believers including church giving) seem quite low.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to see more of the data, and see how income level and political affiliations are correlated with charitable contributions. (I previously commented on another study that found that conservatives were more generous than liberals, which also said that the religious were more generous than the secular.) I\u0026rsquo;ve found significant differences within secular groups when raising funds for RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-a-Rama two years ago (which Kat was a bowler for last year)\u0026ndash;my requests for donations to groups of skeptics yielded absolutely nothing from people who have known me (at least online) for years, while my request to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix yielded well over $1,000 in donations, many from people who didn\u0026rsquo;t know me at all. (My target was to raise $3,500 for the event, which I surpassed.) I\u0026rsquo;ve heard, similarly, that more donations to the Center for Inquiry come from humanists than from skeptics, even though there are more skeptics subscribing to Skeptical Inquirer than there are humanists subscribing to Free Inquiry. HSGP, by the way, is a regular contributor to HomeBase Youth Services, a group that helps homeless youth in Arizona.\nAnother comparison from my own experience that is inconsistent with these results is that Kat and I know a couple of homeless people by name who we periodically help out in various ways (typically not by just giving them money), yet we\u0026rsquo;re unaware of any similar activities by our extended families (who are all born-again Christians on my side). But perhaps the survey answerers were counting giving cash to panhandlers at freeway ramps or on the street, which is something I make a point of not doing, and don\u0026rsquo;t consider to be an effective way of helping the truly needy (though I have, in the past, fallen for the occasional well-told sob story from a con artist about a lost wallet, dead battery, need for bus fare to a job, etc.).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/atheists-weak-on-charitable-giving.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Christian blog \u003ca href=\"http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2007/06/poll-atheists-and-agnostics-are-less.html\"\u003ereports on a Barna poll of believers and atheists\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMost atheists and agnostics (56 percent) agree with the idea that radical Christianity is just as threatening in America as is radical Islam. Two-thirds of active-faith Americans (63 percent) perceive that the nation is becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAtheists and agnostics were found to be largely more disengaged in many areas of life than believers. They are less likely to be registered to vote (78 percent) than active-faith Americans (89 percent); to volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit (20 percent vs. 30 percent); to describe themselves as \u0026ldquo;active in the community\u0026rdquo; (41 percent vs. 68 percent); and to personally help or serve a homeless or poor person (41 percent vs. 61 percent).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdditionally, when the no-faith group does donate to charitable causes, their donation amount pales in comparison to those active in faith. In 2006, atheists and agnostics donated just $200 while believers contributed $1,500. The amount is still two times higher among believers when subtracting church-based giving.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe no-faith group is also more likely to be focused on living a comfortable, balanced lifestyle (12 percent) while only 4 percent of Christians say the same. And no-faith adults are also more focused on acquiring wealth (10 percent) than believers (2 percent). One-quarter of Christians identified their faith as the primary focus of their life.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStill, one-quarter of atheists and agnostics said \u0026ldquo;deeply spiritual\u0026rdquo; accurately describes them and three-quarters of them said they are clear about the meaning and purpose of their life.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen it came to being \u0026ldquo;at peace,\u0026rdquo; however, researchers saw a significant gap with 67 percent of no-faith adults saying they felt \u0026ldquo;at peace\u0026rdquo; compared to 90 percent of believers. Atheists and agnostics are also less likely to say they are convinced they are right about things in life (38 percent vs. 55 percent) and more likely to feel stressed out (37 percent vs. 26 percent).\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe results about \u0026ldquo;convinced they are right about things in life\u0026rdquo; is not surprising\u0026ndash;that strikes me as the difference between arrogant dogmatism and open-mindedness and humility, and brings to mind \u003ca href=\"http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=406\"\u003estudies which have shown that the highly competent believe themselves to be less competent than the incompetent believe themselves to be\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe lack of voter registration could also be a sign that atheists and agnostics don\u0026rsquo;t think their vote makes a difference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat I find contrary to my own personal experience are the results regarding charitable giving and assistance to the homeless.  From my perspective, all of the charitable donation dollar amounts ($200/year for atheists/agnostics, $400/year for believers not counting church giving, $1500/year for believers including church giving) seem quite low.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to see more of the data, and see how income level and political affiliations are correlated with charitable contributions.  (I previously \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html\"\u003ecommented on another study that found that conservatives were more generous than liberals, which also said that the religious were more generous than the secular\u003c/a\u003e.)  I\u0026rsquo;ve found significant differences within secular groups when raising funds for RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s Bowl-a-Rama two years ago (which \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/help-me-help-dogs-and-cats.html\"\u003eKat was a bowler for last year\u003c/a\u003e)\u0026ndash;my requests for donations to groups of skeptics yielded absolutely nothing from people who have known me (at least online) for years, while my request to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hsgp.org/\"\u003eHumanist Society of Greater Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e yielded well over $1,000 in donations, many from people who didn\u0026rsquo;t know me at all.  (My target was to raise $3,500 for the event, which I surpassed.)  I\u0026rsquo;ve heard, similarly, that more donations to the Center for Inquiry come from humanists than from skeptics, even though there are more skeptics subscribing to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e than there are humanists subscribing to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFree Inquiry\u003c/span\u003e.  HSGP, by the way, is a regular contributor to \u003ca href=\"http://www.hbys.org/\"\u003eHomeBase Youth Services\u003c/a\u003e, a group that helps homeless youth in Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother comparison from my own experience that is inconsistent with these results is that Kat and I know a couple of homeless people by name who we periodically help out in various ways (typically not by just giving them money), yet we\u0026rsquo;re unaware of any similar activities by our extended families (who are all born-again Christians on my side).  But perhaps the survey answerers were counting giving cash to panhandlers at freeway ramps or on the street, which is something I make a point of not doing, and don\u0026rsquo;t consider to be an effective way of helping the truly needy (though I have, in the past, fallen for the occasional well-told sob story from a con artist about a lost wallet, dead battery, need for bus fare to a job, etc.).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheists weak on charitable giving"},{"content":"I think this video from former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel puts him well above most of the other presidential candidates.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/mike-gravel-for-president.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI think this video from former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel puts him well above most of the other presidential candidates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/0rZdAB4V_j8\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/0rZdAB4V_j8\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mike Gravel for president"},{"content":"How long before Google adds output from an American Science \u0026amp; Engineering Z Backscatter Van to Google Maps? See the demonstration video here.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/x-ray-street-view.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow long before Google adds output from \u003ca href=\"http://www.as-e.com/products_solutions/zbv.asp\"\u003ean American Science \u0026amp; Engineering Z Backscatter Van\u003c/a\u003e to Google Maps?  See the demonstration video \u003ca href=\"http://steelturman.typepad.com/thesteeldeal/2007/06/forget_google_s.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"X-Ray Street View"},{"content":"One of the subjects which I had intended to make part of my Ph.D. dissertation on social epistemology (pertaining to how most of what we know is known on the basis of testimony) was an examination of how some social groups manage to maintain beliefs that are completely at odds with the facts. This would allow me to incorporate data accumulated from some of my hobbies, like criticizing creationism and Scientology. Unfortunately, I never got past the first chapter of my dissertation, but I still think about such topics, especially as I encounter new examples.\nI recently encountered another example of the strategy of finding an excuse for dismissing claims without examining them, on the blog of a woman who homeschools her children and teaches them young-earth creationism. I posted a comment on her blog contradicting some of her specific claims, and pointing to Christian sources (both old-earth creationist and theistic evolutionist sources) contradicting them. Here\u0026rsquo;s her dismissive response:\nShortly after you initially posted, I formed a point-by-point rxesponse. I posted it, and it got lost in the internet ether. I wrote it out again, this time meaning to copy it onto a document in case it got lost again, but clicked on “Submit Comment” out of habit before I did so, and whaddya know? It disappeared again. Wireless connection problems, or something. I wasn’t really up for writing it a third time, so I backed off, which gave me time to better-consider my answer.\nI’m ready now to respond, but it’ll be in a way in which you’re probably not going to be satisfied.\nReading your post here, and following up a bit by looking into your blog and the site you moderate (www.talkorigins.org), and reading the e-mail you sent to me offline, I was struck with this parallel: You remind me of a pro-choice activist. I have this theory — I’ve had it for so long, I don’t remember if it’s an original thought, or if I gleaned it from someone else — that one of the reasons that many women pro-choice activists are so vehement in their stance is that they have actually had an abortion, and are desperate for someone to not be able to tell them, legally, that it was wrong. They’re desperate to avoid that judgement; they don’t want anyone to tell them that they were wrong in aborting their baby. SO, they take up activism to ensure, to the best of their abilities, that no one will be able to do just that.\nSimilarly, I had a good friend in college who was gay. He startled me by stating that it was well-understood in the gay community that the men who most assertively proclaim their hetero manhood are the ones most likely to be harboring some homosexual tendencies, and by their “super-hetero-manly” actions and/or words, are overcompensating to hide/stuff/avoid such tendencies. Oddly, sadly, ironically, the men who actively are hateful towards the gay are very often “closeted” themselves.\nNot that you are either an abortion activist or gay. My point is that your time spent proliferating the anti-creationism message is EXTREME. You have admittedly “spent over a decade researching the creation/evolution controversy”. You have just about every book on the topic, and have written much on it yourself. You (co-) moderate probably one of the largest anti-creationism websites out there. [This is an error on her part\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m a listed moderator of the talk.origins Usenet newsgroup, not the website, and the newsgroup\u0026rsquo;s actual moderation is completely automated. -jjl] You obviously have such topics on an RSS feed, or are trolling in some other manner for articles/blog posts/etc. on the topic; you found my lowly blog post a little more than 7 hours after I posted it. It appears to me that you are highly preoccupied with what, truly, should be a fairly peripheral topic.\nYour tone in this post (and in your e-mail) is very friendly. However, my suspicion meter is blipping. I think it would be unwise for me to embroil myself in a debate with you. Not because I’m wrong, necessarily, but because you’re better armed. I don’t think you’re really interested in what I think, other than to shoot me down. On the surface, anyways, that’s how I think you’d react. However, I think there’s something deep inside you that really longs for creationism to be right \u0026amp; true, and you’re waiting for it to be “proven” to you. While I think God honors a truly searching heart, I think it’s unlikely that you’ll find what you’re looking for. Not here, anyways. What I believe you truly want, you going to have to ask God to speak to your heart, in a way — language — that you understand; in a way that’s meaningful to you.\nThanks for stopping by, and thank you for compelling me to pray for both yourself and others who may read our posts.\n~Karen\nShe made the issue not about YEC claims, but about me\u0026ndash;an ad hominem argument. She says I \u0026ldquo;seem\u0026rdquo; friendly, but suggests, via remote psychoanalysis, that I\u0026rsquo;m not. Rather, I\u0026rsquo;m an angry atheist who wants to wipe her out in debate, and I\u0026rsquo;m angry because I\u0026rsquo;m searching for God. Therefore, there\u0026rsquo;s no need to consider anything I\u0026rsquo;ve said, and she can continue teaching her children falsehoods from Answers in Genesis.\nI fully understand her desire not to get involved in a debate. While I used to actively debate a variety of subjects online, I don\u0026rsquo;t have time for it anymore. When people try to engage me in an email exchange on subjects like creationism, I\u0026rsquo;m glad to help out those who are inquiring for information, and occasionally will engage in discussion if the other party seems rational and not just a parrot of ridiculous views who\u0026rsquo;s not willing to think. But the parrots are only worth my time to respond to publicly, where somebody else can potentially get some value from it\u0026ndash;the parrot isn\u0026rsquo;t going to get any.\nThe reason I posted on her blog was that in her initial post, which I found while looking for blogs commenting on the Answers in Genesis/Creation Ministries International dispute\u0026ndash;she was raising potential doubts about YEC and the idea of OEC. This led me to believe that she is not just a parrot, and is someone willing to consider other ideas. So I shared my experience with young-earth creationism and pointed to sources I thought she and her readers would find valuable.\nPerhaps if I had not been an atheist, but a Christian advocate of old-earth creationism, she would not have felt the need to be so dismissive. This is why I support non-atheist responses to creationism\u0026ndash;I think that in many cases, OECs have the best chance of communicating with YECs, theistic evolutionists with OECs, and so forth. There are exceptions, however\u0026ndash;sometimes it\u0026rsquo;s the opposite extremes that communicate best with each other, like fundamentalists and activist atheists who see the world in black and white. It\u0026rsquo;s common for new converts/deconverts to swing from one extreme to the other, from evangelizing fundamentalist to evangelizing atheist, with both criticizing the liberal believer who\u0026rsquo;s willing to accept ambiguity and thereby exhibit \u0026ldquo;wishy-washiness.\u0026rdquo;\nPierre Stromberg (2007-06-14):\nSo to recap, Jim Lippard is a gay man who's still harboring guilt over the abortion he had years ago.Watch out public schools, this home schooler's a rocket scientist, and she's coming after you!\nKaren Joy (2007-06-14):\nOh, my goodness. You prove my point. You're obsessed with the peripheral. Thanks for the link, though.If you read my OP, and if you read my responses to others who don't agree with me, you will see that you alone, Mr. Lippard, got a \"dismissive response.\" It's not because, specifically, of your athiesm; it's because of the way you presented your beliefs, *and* because I'm suspicious of your obsession. Deride it an ad hominem argument if you want, but the fruit does speak volumes of the tree.I did not use my post as an attempt at prosyletizing anyone. It is clear, though, that prosyletization *IS* your main goal, and anyone who doesn't bow down to Mr. Lippard's Superior Brain is going to be ridiculed, which, incidentally, is one of my beefs with OECs, and evolutionists in general.I'm not maintaining \"beliefs that are completely at odds with the facts.\" It's my assertion that the evidence for either a YE or an OE can often be interpreted *either* way, but that I happen to find the evidences in support of a YE more compelling.I don't find you angry, btw. I find you coldly calculating. Frankly, I find anger more trustworthy; at least its not veiled.\nPierre Stromberg (2007-06-14):\nKaren I'm sorry to inform you that Jim is taken and happily married.\nKaren Joy (2007-06-14):\nPierre: ~giggle~p.s. Jim ~ The Valley is a huge expanse, and I don't know where in the Phx area you live... but I'd be happy to see you at my church, Vineyard Phoenix, on the NE corner of 51st Ave \u0026 Greenway. I'll be teaching preschool this Sunday the 17th, but come any time after that and introduce yourself. :D\nLippard (2007-06-14):\nKaren: My obsession is for truth and accuracy, which I don't see as peripheral. I don't think I've ridiculed you, nor demanded worship of my intellectual capacities. I would have liked to have seen some engagement with my actual statements and citations, but you've made it clear you have no interest. But apparently you do have interest in coming here to engage in further ad hominem. I'll leave the psychoanalysis of that to the reader.You state that \"the evidence for either a YE or an EO can often be interpreted *either way,\" but in fact there is not a single reliable method of measuring the earth's age that leads to a young earth conclusion, but numerous reliable methods which all lead to an old earth conclusion--there's not a shred of ambiguity about what the empirical evidence supports.\nLippard (2007-06-14):\nKaren: I'm in South Phoenix, and attending church isn't exactly my cup of tea, especially to meet someone who has expressed a disinterest in anything I have to say. I'm not averse to meeting and interacting with people who disagree with me, but I'd like to at least have some hint that there would be some mutual respect and potential for beneficial exchange before driving across the valley on a Sunday morning.BTW, it's quite possible that you may know one or more of my family members (most of whom are born-again, evangelical Christians living in north and central Phoenix), so there may be other opportunities for us to meet.\njackd (2007-06-15):\nKaren, after what you wrote, you think Jim is \"obsessed with the peripheral\"? You claim that \"prosyletization *IS* [Jim's] main goal\", and then invite him to your church?Nothing I write here will change your mind in the least, but you really should know that your descriptions match your own behavior much better than anything Jim has done.\nDon Sheffler (2007-07-28):\nI like the comment that arguments for a young earth are more \"compelling\".Karen, that just means you would rather believe the young earth version.At least, unless you clearly lay out your case, and counter the arguments against it, that's all it really means.ALL reliable scientific methods applied to the question of the Earth's age show it to be an old Earth.Now, if you are only referring to biblical arguments when you say OE and YE arguments could be interpreted either way, you are right. Anything based on scripture could be interpreted in any number of ways. It's not science. And it gives you the luxury of believing whatever version you would prefer to believe. That is not in itself a bad thing. However, if you make a claim and you are then presented with arguments supported by facts which contradict your argument, it's kind of dishonest to not engage because you claim your opponent is \"obsessed\", or that you perceive him to possess some sort of undesirable personality characteristics.Don't you think coming here and continuing to point out his \"obsession\" actually belies your own?? And still NO substantial arguments about your point?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/maintaining-beliefs-in-complete.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the subjects which I had intended to make part of my Ph.D. dissertation on social epistemology (pertaining to how most of what we know is known on the basis of testimony) was an examination of how some social groups manage to maintain beliefs that are completely at odds with the facts.  This would allow me to incorporate data accumulated from some of my hobbies, like criticizing creationism and Scientology.  Unfortunately, I never got past the first chapter of my dissertation, but I still think about such topics, especially as I encounter new examples.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recently encountered another example of the strategy of finding an excuse for dismissing claims without examining them, on the blog of \u003ca href=\"http://onlysometimesclever.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/the-great-divide-jr-or-where-i-stand-on-the-oecyec-debate/#comment-5813\"\u003ea woman who homeschools her children and teaches them young-earth creationism\u003c/a\u003e.  I posted \u003ca href=\"http://onlysometimesclever.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/the-great-divide-jr-or-where-i-stand-on-the-oecyec-debate/#comment-5191\"\u003ea comment on her blog\u003c/a\u003e contradicting some of her specific claims, and pointing to Christian sources (both old-earth creationist and theistic evolutionist sources) contradicting them.  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://onlysometimesclever.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/the-great-divide-jr-or-where-i-stand-on-the-oecyec-debate/#comment-5813\"\u003eher dismissive response\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maintaining beliefs in complete contradiction to fact"},{"content":"Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on the FBI\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Operation Bot Roast,\u0026rdquo; which busted several criminal users of botnets:\n_James C. Brewer, of Arlington, Texas. He was indicted Tuesday on charges of infecting more than 10,000 computers globally, including two Chicago-area hospitals operated by the Bureau of Health Services in Cook County, Ill. The computers at the two hospitals were linked to the health care bureau\u0026rsquo;s mainframe system. They repeatedly froze or rebooted from October to December last year, resulting in delayed medical services, according to the indictment. Brewer was released on a $4,500 bond, court records show.\n_Robert Alan Soloway of Seattle. When he was arrested last month, he was described as one of the world\u0026rsquo;s top spammers for allegedly using botnets to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails since 2003. Soloway continued his activities even after Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and after Robert Brauer [they mean Braver -jjl], the operator of a small Internet service provider in western Oklahoma, won a $10 million judgment. Soloway has pleaded not guilty to all charges in a 35-count indictment.\n_Jason Michael Downey, of Covington, Ky. He was accused in Detroit last month of flooding his botnet-linked computers with spam for an 11-week period in 2004 and causing up to $20,000 in unspecified losses, according to court records.\nThis is just the tip of the iceberg, and follows on the heels of last year\u0026rsquo;s prosecution of Jeanson James Ancheta of Los Angeles, or \u0026ldquo;botmaster,\u0026rdquo; as he called himself. Like Brewer, he was prosecuted for the damage he caused to hospital computers, so botherders and spammers should beware of making use of hospital computers for their botnets.\nSoloway, who was arrested on May 30 in a bust that already got a lot of press, was probably the biggest fish of these so far. His case follows the historically more common pattern\u0026ndash;being tracked down and civilly prosecuted before being criminally charged.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/operation-bot-roast.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061301911.html?nav%3Dhcmodule\u0026sub=new\"\u003ereported on the FBI\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Operation Bot Roast,\u0026rdquo; which busted several criminal users of botnets\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e_James C. Brewer, of Arlington, Texas. He was indicted Tuesday on charges of infecting more than 10,000 computers globally, including two Chicago-area hospitals operated by the Bureau of Health Services in Cook County, Ill. The computers at the two hospitals were linked to the health care bureau\u0026rsquo;s mainframe system. They repeatedly froze or rebooted from October to December last year, resulting in delayed medical services, according to the indictment. Brewer was released on a $4,500 bond, court records show.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Operation Bot Roast"},{"content":"Cog at The Abstract Factory has put together a proposal to replace software patents with a superior system.\n(Hat tip to Tim Lee at The Technology Liberation Front.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/replacing-software-patents-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCog at The Abstract Factory has put together \u003ca href=\"http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2007/06/sft-proposal-for-software-patent-reform.html\"\u003ea proposal to replace software patents with a superior system\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Tim Lee at \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042468.php\"\u003eThe Technology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Replacing software patents with StarCraft battles"},{"content":"In response to Crooks and Liars giving equal time to nonsense, Orac at Respectful Insolence has compiled a list of his posts on the claimed link between mercury/thimerosol and autism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/thimerosolautism-debate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn response to Crooks and Liars giving equal time to nonsense, Orac at Respectful Insolence has compiled \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/06/let_down_by_crooks_and_liars_1.php\"\u003ea list of his posts on the claimed link between mercury/thimerosol and autism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thimerosol/autism debate"},{"content":"I just came across an old post of mine on the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; Discussion Boards:\nFebruary 22, 2004, 05:24 PMI keep seeing this TV commercial from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The commercial shows a girl standing on a dock on a lake, with a life preserver sitting on it, and another drowning in the water as she looks on. The voiceover says something like \u0026ldquo;If you had a friend who was drowning, you\u0026rsquo;d help, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you?\u0026quot;\nEvery time I see it I think it\u0026rsquo;s going to be an argument for the nonexistence of God.\nThe ad is online, though it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be one of the ones the ONDCP put on YouTube, with subsequent ridicule.\nThe ONDCP ad campaign has been studied by the GAO and found to be ineffective, but the government continues to spend over one hundred million dollars per year on it.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-06-13):\nThat ad is ripe for modification in just the way you're imagining.I wish I had the necessary software.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/ondcp-drowning-ad.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across an old post of mine on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u0026rsquo; Discussion Boards\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"date\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"date\"\u003eFebruary 22, 2004, 05:24 PM\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"posttext\"\u003eI keep seeing this TV commercial from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The commercial shows a girl standing on a dock on a lake, with a life preserver sitting on it, and another drowning in the water as she looks on. The voiceover says something like \u0026ldquo;If you had a friend who was drowning, you\u0026rsquo;d help, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEvery time I see it I think it\u0026rsquo;s going to be an argument for the nonexistence of God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe ad \u003ca href=\"http://www.advertolog.com/paedia/reels/2004/2/17/135975/\"\u003eis online\u003c/a\u003e, though it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be one of the ones the ONDCP put on YouTube, \u003ca href=\"http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2007/jun/05/ondcp_we_dont_care_what_you_dork\"\u003ewith subsequent ridicule\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ONDCP ad campaign \u003ca href=\"http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/451/youth_anti-drug_campaign_flops_GAO_reports\"\u003ehas been studied by the GAO and found to be ineffective\u003c/a\u003e, but the government continues to spend over one hundred million dollars per year on it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ONDCP \"Drowning\" ad"},{"content":"Defense contractor BAE is under scrutiny in the British press for paying over a billion pounds through Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, at the rate of 30 million pounds per quarter over the last ten years. This resulted in a British fraud inquiry by its Serious Fraud Office that was stopped last December by attorney general Lord Goldsmith, on grounds that according to the Guardian, \u0026ldquo;British \u0026lsquo;government complicity\u0026rsquo; was in danger of being revealed unless the SFO\u0026rsquo;s corruption inquiries were stopped.\u0026rdquo; Tony Blair said that he accepted \u0026ldquo;full responsibility\u0026rdquo; for stopping the fraud investigation. The OECD has begun its own investigation.\nRiggs Bank, which was used to launder money by the Saudis, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equatorial Guinea, had relationships with the CIA, as did Bandar and Pinochet (through his secret police chief Manuel Contreras, who banked at Riggs).\nRiggs was investigated by the Treasury Department and the Senate, and admitted failure to report suspicious transactions or take actions to prevent money laundering schemes, for which it paid $25 million in fines levied by Treasury in May 2005.\nBandar and BAE claim that there is nothing wrong with their arrangement and that it did not constitute bribes paid to Bandar. The accounts Bandar used belonged to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation, but he spent huge amounts of money on personal expenses such as $17.4 million to build a palace and $400,000 on a luxury car purchase. When Bandar was interviewed by PBS Frontline for a show about terrorism, he made the following statement about corruption in the Saudi government:\nBut the way I answer the corruption charges is this. In the last 30 years, we have implemented a development program that was approximately \u0026hellip; close to $400 billion worth, OK? Now, look at the whole country, where it was, where it is now. And I am confident after you look at it, you could not have done all of that for less than, let\u0026rsquo;s say, $350 billion. If you tell me that building this whole country, and spending $350 billion out of $400 billion, that we misused or got corrupted with $50 billion, I\u0026rsquo;ll tell you, \u0026ldquo;Yes.\u0026rdquo; But I\u0026rsquo;ll take that any time. There are so many countries in the Third World that have oil that are still 30 years behind. But, more important, more important \u0026ndash; who are you to tell me this? \u0026hellip; What I\u0026rsquo;m trying to tell you is, so what? We did not invent corruption, nor did those dissidents, who are so genius, discover it. This happened since Adam and Eve. \u0026hellip; I mean, this is human nature. But we are not as bad as you think. \u0026hellip;\nBandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, is a friend of the Bush family. George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s uncle and major campaign fundraiser, Jonathan J. Bush, was a senior executive at Riggs Bank.\nI suspect there is more scandalous information waiting to be uncovered.\nUPDATE (June 15, 2007): The U.S. Department of Justice is now investigating BAE.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/bae-bandar-and-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDefense contractor BAE is \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2097149,00.html\"\u003eunder scrutiny in the British press\u003c/a\u003e for paying over a billion pounds through Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, at the rate of 30 million pounds per quarter over the last ten years.  This resulted in a British fraud inquiry by its Serious Fraud Office that was stopped last December by attorney general Lord Goldsmith, on grounds that according to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGuardian\u003c/span\u003e, \u0026ldquo;British \u0026lsquo;government complicity\u0026rsquo; was in danger of being revealed unless the SFO\u0026rsquo;s corruption inquiries were stopped.\u0026rdquo;  Tony Blair said that he accepted \u0026ldquo;full responsibility\u0026rdquo; for stopping the fraud investigation.  The OECD has begun its own investigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRiggs Bank, which was used to launder money by the Saudis, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equatorial Guinea, \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2112015/\"\u003ehad relationships with the CIA\u003c/a\u003e, as did Bandar and Pinochet (through his secret police chief Manuel Contreras, who banked at Riggs).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRiggs was investigated by the Treasury Department and the Senate, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28396-2004May14.html\"\u003eadmitted failure to report suspicious transactions or take actions to prevent money laundering schemes\u003c/a\u003e, for which it paid $25 million in fines levied by Treasury in May 2005.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBandar and BAE claim that there is nothing wrong with their arrangement and that it did not constitute bribes paid to Bandar.  The accounts Bandar used belonged to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003416.php\"\u003ebut he spent huge amounts of money on personal expenses\u003c/a\u003e such as $17.4 million to build a palace and $400,000 on a luxury car purchase.  When Bandar was interviewed by PBS Frontline for a show about terrorism, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terrorism/interviews/bandar.html\"\u003ehe made the following statement about corruption in the Saudi government\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"BAE, Bandar, and Bush"},{"content":"Microsoft Research has partnered with Petfinder.com to come up with a new test for determining whether there\u0026rsquo;s a live human behind the keyboard or just a computer program. It\u0026rsquo;s called Asirra, Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access. The method presents twelve photographs of dogs and cats from Petfinder.com (each of which has an \u0026ldquo;adopt me\u0026rdquo; link associated with it) and asks the viewer to select all of the cats.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-06-12):\nI definitely prefer looking at cute pictures to deciphering those frustrating CAPTCHA thingies!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/microsofts-new-turing-test.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMicrosoft Research has partnered with Petfinder.com to come up with a new test for determining whether there\u0026rsquo;s a live human behind the keyboard or just a computer program.  It\u0026rsquo;s called \u003ca href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/\"\u003eAsirra, Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access\u003c/a\u003e.  The method presents twelve photographs of dogs and cats from Petfinder.com (each of which has an \u0026ldquo;adopt me\u0026rdquo; link associated with it) and asks the viewer to select all of the cats.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-06-12)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI definitely prefer looking at cute pictures to deciphering those frustrating CAPTCHA thingies!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Microsoft's new Turing Test"},{"content":"\nWhich Programming Language are You?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/which-programming-language-are-you.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.bbspot.com/News/2006/08/language_quiz.php\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2006/08/language/smalltalk.jpg\" alt=\"You are Smalltalk. You like to treat everyone the same way, but this lack of individuality makes everyone feel like objects.\" border=\"0\" height=\"90\" width=\"300\" /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhich Programming Language are You?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which programming language are you?"},{"content":"In an experiment by Friederike Range of the University of Vienna reported in the Washington Post, a border collie named Guinness would demonstrate to other dogs how to use her paw to push down on a bar to get a treat. Guinness would demonstrate in one of two different conditions\u0026ndash;with a ball in her mouth, and without a ball in her mouth. Dogs prefer to use their mouths to move the bar, and so dogs that saw the demonstration while Guinness had a ball in her mouth inferred that she was only using her paw because her mouth was otherwise occupied, and would use their mouths. Dogs that saw her perform the demonstration without a ball would duplicate her demonstration, using their paws to push on the bar.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/dog-deduction-abilities.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn an experiment by Friederike Range of the University of Vienna \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060300960.html\"\u003ereported in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a border collie named Guinness would demonstrate to other dogs how to use her paw to push down on a bar to get a treat.  Guinness would demonstrate in one of two different conditions\u0026ndash;with a ball in her mouth, and without a ball in her mouth.  Dogs prefer to use their mouths to move the bar, and so dogs that saw the demonstration while Guinness had a ball in her mouth inferred that she was only using her paw because her mouth was otherwise occupied, and would use their mouths.  Dogs that saw her perform the demonstration without a ball would duplicate her demonstration, using their paws to push on the bar.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dog deduction abilities"},{"content":"The Montana Law Review has published an article by three Discovery Institute Fellows, a reply by Peter Irons, and a response by the DI Fellows (DeWolf, West, and Luskin). Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has now published a reply by Irons to the short response from the DI Fellows; you can find all four contributions at his blog. I recommend starting with the first Irons reply, followed by the short DI Fellows response, followed by the Irons reply that Ed has published.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/montana-law-review-symposium-on-dover.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMontana Law Review\u003c/span\u003e has published an article by three Discovery Institute Fellows, a reply by Peter Irons, and a response by the DI Fellows (DeWolf, West, and Luskin).  Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has now published a reply by Irons to the short response from the DI Fellows; you can find \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/06/irons_responds_to_west_luskin.php\"\u003eall four contributions at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.  I recommend starting with the first Irons reply, followed by the short DI Fellows response, followed by the Irons reply that Ed has published.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Montana Law Review symposium on Dover trial"},{"content":"Will Wilkinson makes a nice argument for the morality more open immigration policies, and immorality of more closed immigration policies.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-06-12):\nDamn. I wish I knew what it was like to be that smart.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/nice-argument-for-more-open-immigration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWill Wilkinson makes \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2007/06/07/justifying-the-system-of-states/\"\u003ea nice argument for the morality more open immigration policies, and immorality of more closed immigration policies\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-06-12)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eDamn. I wish I knew what it was like to be that smart.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"A nice argument for more open immigration"},{"content":"The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:\nRegistration records show that Eric Linden, who portrays Adam taking his first breath in a film at the newly opened Creation Museum, owns a graphic Web site called Bedroom Acrobat. He has been pictured there, smiling alongside a drag queen, in a T-shirt brandishing the site’s sexually suggestive logo.\nLinden, a graphic designer, model and actor who grew up in Columbus, also sells clothing for SFX International, whose initials appear on clothing to spell “SEX” from afar and serve as an abbreviation for its mascot, who promotes “free love,” “pleasure” and “Thrillz.”\nThe museum’s operators, informed Thursday by The Associated Press of Linden’s online appearances, acted swiftly to suspend airing of the 40-second video in which he appeared.\n\u0026hellip;\n“We are currently investigating the veracity of these serious claims of his participation in projects that don’t align with the biblical standards and moral code upon which the ministry was founded,” Answers for Genesis spokesman Mark Looy said in an e-mail statement.\nAll publicity is good publicity when you\u0026rsquo;re selling hokum to the general public.\nUPDATE: Wesley Elsberry points out that Linden\u0026rsquo;s claim that the adult website is in his \u0026ldquo;past\u0026rdquo; is a pretty pathetic excuse considering that he still owns the domain and only registered it in January 2006 and just updated it in January of 2007.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/creation-museums-adam-owns-adult.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070607/NEWS0103/305180019\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCincinnati Enquirer\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eRegistration records show that Eric Linden, who portrays Adam taking his first breath in a film at the newly opened Creation Museum, owns a graphic Web site called Bedroom Acrobat. He has been pictured there, smiling alongside a drag queen, in a T-shirt brandishing the site’s sexually suggestive logo.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLinden, a graphic designer, model and actor who grew up in Columbus, also sells clothing for SFX International, whose initials appear on clothing to spell “SEX” from afar and serve as an abbreviation for its mascot, who promotes “free love,” “pleasure” and “Thrillz.”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creation Museum's \"Adam\" owns adult website"},{"content":"From jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog:\nThe Art of Wikigroaning The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called \u0026ldquo;Knight.\u0026quot; Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we\u0026rsquo;ll go with \u0026ldquo;Jedi Knight.\u0026quot; Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (We\u0026rsquo;re calling it Wikigroaning for a reason.) The next step is to find your own article pair and share it with your friends, who will usually look for their own pairs and you end up spending a good hour or two in a groaning arms race. The game ends after that, usually without any clear winners\u0026hellip; but hey, it beats doing work. Modern warfareLightsaber combat LizardsDragons Prime numberOptimus Prime Civil warCivil War (comic book) Gray\u0026rsquo;s AnatomyGrey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy Raphael (archangel)Raphael (ninja turtle) Citizen KaneClerks 2 Vulcan (mythology)Pon Farr John LockeJohn Locke (Lost) Category:American philosphers List of big-bust models and performers Women\u0026rsquo;s suffrage List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs\nA much longer list of entries to compare is at jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/wikigroaning.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/770585.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning.php\"\u003e The Art of Wikigroaning\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote style=\"border-left: 2px solid; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1em;\"\u003e The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Knight.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we\u0026rsquo;ll go with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Knight\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jedi Knight.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (We\u0026rsquo;re calling it Wikigroaning for a reason.) The next step is to find your own article pair and share it with your friends, who will usually look for their own pairs and you end up spending a good hour or two in a groaning arms race. The game ends after that, usually without any clear winners\u0026hellip; but hey, it beats doing work. \u003c/blockquote\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wikigroaning"},{"content":"FCC Kevin Martin has responded to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals\u0026rsquo; decision on \u0026ldquo;fleeting expletives,\u0026quot; which not only went completely against the FCC but suggested that the grounds for the FCC\u0026rsquo;s authority to regulate indecency on the broadcast airwaves may no longer exist. Here\u0026rsquo;s part of what he had to say:\nI completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience. The court even says the Commission is “divorced from reality.” It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word “fuck” does not invoke a sexual connotation.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s Daniel Drezner\u0026rsquo;s response:\n1) Did Martin write this himself or did people with actual training in press relations whip this statement up? 2) By the FCC\u0026rsquo;s interpretation, is Martin is obnoxiously hitting on erveryone who reads his statement? 3) Am I obviously encouraging rape and bestiality when I say, \u0026ldquo;F#$% Kevin Martin and the horse he rode in on?\u0026rdquo; or could I have a different intent in mind? 4) As [Jonathan] Adler asks, \u0026ldquo;Given the Second Circuit\u0026rsquo;s ruling, could a network air Martin\u0026rsquo;s remarks without fear of federal sanction?\u0026quot;\nRead Drezner\u0026rsquo;s full post here.\nUPDATE (April 28, 2009): The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the 2nd Circuit in a 5-4 decision.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/fcc-chairman-kevin-martin-responds-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFCC Kevin Martin has responded to the \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/fcc-indecency-rules.html\"\u003eSecond Circuit Court of Appeals\u0026rsquo; decision on \u0026ldquo;fleeting expletives,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which not only went completely against the FCC but suggested that the grounds for the FCC\u0026rsquo;s authority to regulate indecency on the broadcast airwaves may no longer exist.  Here\u0026rsquo;s part of \u003ca href=\"http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-273602A1.doc\"\u003ewhat he had to say\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"extended\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"extras\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"extras\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.   \u003cp\u003eThe court even says the Commission is “divorced from reality.” It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word “fuck” does not invoke a sexual connotation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FCC Chairman Kevin Martin responds to ruling on \"fleeting expletives\""},{"content":"My two-part appearance on \u0026ldquo;The Security Catalyst\u0026rdquo; podcast last year has resulted in some media coverage of botnets this week at IT World Canada. The article, \u0026ldquo;The botnet menace\u0026ndash;and what you can do about it,\u0026rdquo; by Joaquim P. Menezes, is more detailed than most media coverage of bots has been. He draws on both my Security Catalyst interview and my colleague Bob Hagen\u0026rsquo;s blog post on bots.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/bots-of-summer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy two-part appearance on \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/part-ii-of-botnets-interview.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Security Catalyst\u0026rdquo; podcast last year\u003c/a\u003e has resulted in some media coverage of botnets this week at IT World Canada.  The article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/Communications-Infrastructure/13f663a0-08d7-484b-b0cb-313454547b19.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The botnet menace\u0026ndash;and what you can do about it,\u0026rdquo; by Joaquim P. Menezes\u003c/a\u003e, is more detailed than most media coverage of bots has been.  He draws on both my Security Catalyst interview and my colleague Bob Hagen\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/bob-hagen-on-botnet-evolution.html\"\u003eblog post on bots\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The bots of summer"},{"content":"Casey Carmical, of Casey\u0026rsquo;s Critical Thinking blog, posts about the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum under the headline \u0026ldquo;Evolutionists fear other ideas\u0026rdquo;:\nIf Answers in Genesis is taking facts “out of context,” it should be fairly easy to point out, and if the information that AiG is presenting is, in fact, inaccurate and involves logical fallacies, then what could be a better resource for teaching critical thinking? Students of the university should be taken to the museum in busloads to learn how to think critically. But alas, evolutionists are not concerned for people’s critical thinking skills, they are afraid of people exercising them. Evolution cannot stand up to criticism, and when both theories are presented side by side people can instinctively see which one better fits with the evidence.I posted the following comment, but apparently Casey hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen fit to allow it through moderation, though he\u0026rsquo;s let another comment through since I posted it this morning:\nAnswers in Genesis (U.S.) can’t even be trusted by its former Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian branches–the Australians have just filed a lawsuit against them. See AiG’s response and Creation Ministries International’s commentary.\nI think it’s a bad idea to give money to frauds and liars, so even though the Creation Museum does serve as an example of numerous distortions and fallacies, I disagree with your recommendation that students be sent there. Their errors can be–and have been–refuted online, many times over. Pharyngula just had a Creation Museum Carnival that contains numerous commentaries, pointing out such deception as their completely inaccurate depiction of Archaeopteryx.\nThe final comment is a reference to a critique which may be found at Duas Quartuncias, titled \u0026ldquo;Jurassic Pigeon at the Creation Museum!\u0026quot;\nApparently Casey doesn\u0026rsquo;t want his readers to see this information. Let\u0026rsquo;s see if he\u0026rsquo;ll allow a trackback\u0026hellip;\nCasey (2007-06-06):\nIf you want to post something on-topic, please feel free to do so. (I.e. support for the quoted evolutionist or \"proof\" that creation is a myth.)\nLippard (2007-06-06):\nCasey: I quoted the full text that I posted as a comment on your blog in my post, above. I posted it under my own name and I did not claim that I supported any efforts of AiG--that would have been absurd, as my record as a critic of creationism is all over the Internet going back decades. You're demonstrating your own dishonesty by making that up.A lawsuit against AiG has everything to do with that organization's honesty and reputation, especially if you read the content of that lawsuit and the supporting documentation.Your comments here prove that you do, indeed, fear other ideas--to the point that you make up lies as excuses for suppressing them.\nLippard (2007-06-06):\nBTW, Casey, my comment specifically responded to your argument that examples of poor thinking would still be appropriate to teach critical thinking and provided pointers to a wealth of specific critiques of the Creation Museum's content. To claim that as \"off-topic\" is absurd.\nCasey (2007-06-06):\nJim,First, please note that I started using Wordpress one month ago. I am still new to the blogging thing. Up until then I was using some fairly outdated software that had no comments features or \"trackbacks\" or any of that good stuff. If I'm not following \"blog protocol\" I hope you'll let it slide for now. If you did not claim to support AiG's efforts (at the beginning of your comment) then I must have misread. If so, I apologize. It's hard to say anything now that I deleted the comment, so I'll take your word for it. In the future, perhaps I will allow off-topic comments, but for now I would like to keep things on-topic. You're welcome to post something on-topic, and no, I do not consider the lawsuit on-topic. As the matter is still in progress, I am hopeful that a positive solution will be found. Disagreements are commonplace, even in christendom, so I don't think it has anything to do with the honesty of either party. They both feel that they are right, and hopefully eventually they will settle the disagreement peacefully.\nCasey (2007-06-06):\nI removed my first comment since I am not sure now whether I read your comment correctly.\nEinzige (2007-06-06):\nI just added a comment of my own. Casey took someone to task for attacking a straw man, so I point out that in that very response he does exactly the same thing:Pot, meet Kettle.Here’s a straw man of your own: “[Evolutionary biologists] believe [dogs] came from a rock.”Show me any evolutionary biologist who makes such an absurd claim. You won’t find one.We'll see if he allows it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/who-fears-other-ideas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCasey Carmical, of Casey\u0026rsquo;s Critical Thinking blog, \u003ca href=\"http://www.carmical.net/blog/creation_museum_cincinnati.html\"\u003eposts about the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum under the headline \u0026ldquo;Evolutionists fear other ideas\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf Answers in Genesis is taking facts “out of context,” it should be fairly easy to point out, and if the information that AiG is presenting is, in fact, inaccurate and involves logical fallacies, then what could be a better resource for teaching critical thinking? Students of the university should be taken to the museum in busloads to learn how to think critically. But alas, evolutionists are not concerned for people’s critical thinking skills, they are afraid of people exercising them. Evolution cannot stand up to criticism, and when both theories are presented side by side people can instinctively see which one better fits with the evidence.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI posted the following comment, but apparently Casey hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen fit to allow it through moderation, though he\u0026rsquo;s let another comment through since I posted it this morning:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"comment-content\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who fears other ideas??"},{"content":"Blake Stacey is maintaining a list, at Science after Sunclipse.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/critical-reviews-of-michael-behes-edge.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlake Stacey is maintaining a list, at \u003ca href=\"http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=123\"\u003eScience after Sunclipse\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cspan class=\"on\" style=\"display: block;\" id=\"formatbar_CreateLink\" title=\"Link\" onmouseover=\"ButtonHoverOn(this);\" onmouseout=\"ButtonHoverOff(this);\" onmouseup=\"\" onmousedown=\"CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Critical reviews of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution"},{"content":"Answers in Genesis has sent out an email to supporters about the \u0026ldquo;spiritual attack\u0026rdquo; from Creation Ministries International. Where CMI has always kept AiG informed about how it has been proceeding and giving them a chance to respond and participate in dialogue, AiG didn\u0026rsquo;t send a copy of this to CMI\u0026ndash;but of course they ended up receiving it anyway.\nThis is the version that CMI sent out to its own supporters, with their comments included (as you\u0026rsquo;ll see described at the very beginning). The AiG letter is in bold, the CMI comments are labeled, and I\u0026rsquo;ve inserted a few comments of my own, labeled and in brackets.\nI find this very interesting, because if you dig into the details, the case overwhelmingly supports CMI, at least on ethical grounds. (I\u0026rsquo;m not an expert on the legal matters\u0026ndash;the fact that the previous AiG-Australia board signed the one-sided agreement favoring AiG-US may be a difficult obstacle for CMI to overcome.) But most Christians don\u0026rsquo;t care about digging into the details, they just listen to the pastors and leaders that they trust, which is why con men have such success preying on the religious. Ken Ham has apparently done quite well at getting people to side with him based on his own charisma and persuasiveness, but if you read any of his written work critically, you see that it falls apart.\nUPDATE (June 18, 2007): A similarly commented email from Mark Looy of AiG-US may be found on the CMI website here.\nAnswers in Genesis under Spiritual Attack\nJune 1, 2007\n(With interspersed responses, dated June 4, 2007, from Creation Ministries International. Although large numbers got this sent to them by AiG, CMI was not included. We are filled with dismay at the many distortions of truth and misleading comments in this, as we think will become apparent from our response, sadly. A document like this, which is in effect an \u0026lsquo;accusation against the brethren\u0026rsquo;, cannot be just ignored-truth matters. Perhaps reading this will help those unfortunate enough to have received it to become aware of why we had to, in an effort to be as open and transparent as possible, invite a formal ecclesiastical/judicial committee of enquiry to form under Clarrie Briese, the reports from which, plus other important documentation, can be found at www.creationontheweb.com/briese2 )\nDear Friends of AiG,\nOn behalf of the Board of Directors of Answers in Genesis, we want to invite you to praise the Lord with us in the opening of the Creation Museum (and in the blessing He has poured out on the entire ministry). On the museum\u0026rsquo;s opening day, May 28, over 4,000 visitors attended, with more than 100 news media (over two days) also on hand to give the museum wide coverage all over the world. We enjoyed receiving well wishers from other ministries, such as the Institute for Creation Research (its president and chairman were present at the museum\u0026rsquo;s ribbon-cutting ceremony), the Christian Law Association, and others. We give thanks for the tremendous support from God\u0026rsquo;s people in prayer, gifts, and in museum attendance.\nWe pray and trust that the museum\u0026rsquo;s message will be heard by hundreds of thousands of people each year, and will not only affect the lives of many of God\u0026rsquo;s people, but see many others receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.\nCMI comment: CMI staff had input into the early stages of the museum planning, before we were \u0026lsquo;cut off\u0026rsquo;. As we have said on our web site and in our Infobytes email newsletter, we are pleased that the museum is open and also hope that many will come under conviction and be saved through the museum\u0026rsquo;s message. This has nothing to do with the dispute.\nThe AiG board is committed to honoring the Lord and His Word not only in the museum, but in all the ministries of AiG. Our commitment to financial integrity, for example, is evidenced by our membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) arid by a special designation from MinistryWatch.com as a \u0026ldquo;top 30\u0026rdquo; ministry that people can give to with confidence.\nCMI comment: Nor has this much to do with the dispute, as we don\u0026rsquo;t doubt that AiG-US follows proper audited accounting procedures, as required for a non-profit corporation under US law. However, from our experience of appealing to the ECFA for them to intervene re AiG\u0026rsquo;s switching our Creation magazine subscribers to their new \u0026lsquo;replacement\u0026rsquo; magazine, an effective theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars that involved deceiving subscribers into thinking that our magazine was no longer available in the USA, we doubt that its imprimatur means much in terms of guaranteeing ethical behaviour overall.\n[Lippard comment: Indeed\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s clear that the ECFA doesn\u0026rsquo;t say anything at all about the accuracy of the information purveyed by AiG!]\nIn recent days, we received museum opposition from protestors, some media outlets, and through emails and on the internet. Indeed, AiG finds itself in a continuing spiritual warfare. Yet in all this, we give thanks to our Lord, for the Lord will use it for His glory.\nCMI comment: Such opposition is the common lot of all who will stand for the truth of God\u0026rsquo;s Word. It has nothing to do with the CMI-AiG-US dispute. CMI is also subject to major opposition. However, such opposition does not of itself prove our godliness, righteousness, etc.\n[Lippard comment: AiG\u0026rsquo;s implied argument is: God\u0026rsquo;s people are always under attack when doing his work. We are under attack. Therefore, we are God\u0026rsquo;s people under attack. That\u0026rsquo;s the fallacy of affirming the consequent\u0026ndash;the same erroneous argument used by crackpots who are receiving ridicule when they claim that \u0026ldquo;They laughed at Galileo,\u0026rdquo; as though the mere fact that people laugh at them puts them on a par with Galileo.]\nWhile we have received opposition from the secular world during this time, the most disappointing attack has come from our former sister ministry, Creation Ministries Int\u0026rsquo;l (CMI). On the eve of the opening of the museum, CMI sent letters and used the internet to publicly report on a dispute that is well over a year old. CMI sent us a letter, only 24 hours before the museum ribbon-cuffing ceremony, informing us they were filing a lawsuit against AiG and its president, Ken Ham, in an Australia court. They have now done so. Immediately after the opening of the museum, they sent letters to numerous (perhaps hundreds) of people and used the internet to publicly report the dispute.\nCMI comment: This makes it seem as though CMI timed these events to be as nasty as possible. However, the reality is otherwise. Firstly, legal processes like the serving of writs (lawsuits) cannot be timed like this; such processes are determined by the legal process. Legal proceedings were initiated months ago (we told AiG-US of this, associated with one more offer to meet to resolve the dispute, and that being rejected (ignored), and then another offer of binding Christian arbitration-see below). Secondly, when it looked like the serving of the writ was going to coincide with the opening of the museum, we asked for it to be delayed, if possible. Furthermore, to avoid public embarrassment of a sheriff of the court serving papers in person, we asked if there was another way. We were told that if AiG-US told our lawyers the name of their lawyers for service of the writs, they could be lodged with them rather than in person. Why the communication with AiG-US \u0026lsquo;only 24 hours before the ribbon cutting ceremony\u0026rsquo;? AiG-US was having a board meeting over the weekend of the opening, a rare face-to-face meeting of the directors at which the directors of AiG-UK would also be present. We thought it only fair that the directors had the opportunity to discuss the matter in such a setting, rather than by telephone or email, piecemeal, at a later time. Furthermore, we thought that this would have the maximum likelihood of a change of heart (although from the track record of the last twenty months we thought this was only a remote possibility, our directors wanted to pursue every avenue for resolution).\nOne of CMI\u0026rsquo;s claims is that AiG-USA refuses to meet with its board. To the contrary our board met in person with the legally recognized and appointed board of directors of the Australian ministry (called AiG-Australia at the time) and signed a Memorandum of Agreement in October 2005, which had peacefully resolved the differences at that time (which included an agreement to arbitrate any future dispute).\nCMI comment: This is amazingly deceptive, even astonishing in its brazenness. The refusal to meet that we repeatedly bring up is a refusal to meet with the current Board, the ones in office for nearly 18 months now in this time of major dispute. Whereas the Board to whom AiG refers here is not the legally constituted Board of the ministry, but the previous Board which handed over the company after resigning en masse and seeking indemnity from penalties for their actions signing that \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo;.\nFurthermore, when we talk about a refusal to meet, it is clearly in the context of the present dispute, which only really erupted as a serious legal issue because of and therefore after the signing of the agreement drawn up by AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s lawyers, with all the terrible ramifications for our ministry.\nSo how can reference to a meeting before that time, with people who are no longer part of the ministry, be anything other than a \u0026lsquo;red herring\u0026rsquo; attempt to confuse the public on the very serious matter of their nearly two-year refusal to meet properly face-to-face to sort out the issues, as befits brethren?\nUnfortunately, the management of AiG-Australia later disavowed the agreement and, after an impasse and much frustration with management, the full Australian board resigned.\nCMI comment: This is a reversal of the order of events, giving another deceptively false impression. The management did not have the authority to \u0026lsquo;disavow the agreement\u0026rsquo;, and did not do so. The Australian management tried to meet with the Board to discuss the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo;, which was signed at AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s urging behind the backs of all management here in Australia. (This was contrary to those previous directors\u0026rsquo; commitment to several senior staff before the joint board meeting that they would \u0026rsquo;not sign anything\u0026rsquo; without consultation.) The Australian directors at the time failed to meet, and events culminated in their resignations. Their resignations were due to their own rash actions, not any \u0026lsquo;rebellion\u0026rsquo; as AiG-US spokesmen have told third parties, poisoning the well for CMI. Furthermore, contrary to the impression given in this email from AiG-US, the Board of CMI (not the management) did not formally reject the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo; until 28 February 2006, just before our re-branding as CMI.\nAiG-Australia management then appointed a new board,\nCMI comment: This makes it seem as though the appointment of the new board was somehow improper. This is untrue. The outgoing directors specified that the CEO, Dr Carl Wieland, should be made Managing Director and given responsibility for appointing new directors. They said through their lawyer that if Dr Wieland had been on the board (MD instead of CEO) that the recent catastrophic events would not have transpired. In consultation with senior staff and scientists, Dr Wieland chose directors with a proven track record of hands-on involvement with creation ministry. For the details of what happened, see A brief chronology of events www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf (scroll down to Oct 2005). CMI Board has also instituted another level of accountability for the board; an extra-board membership that outnumbers the directors, which now appoints directors and holds the board accountable at an annual meeting. \u0026lsquo;There is safety in a multitude of counselors\u0026rsquo; (Prov. 11:14).\nand changed its name to CMI.\nCMI comment: AiG-Australia was forced to change its name when AiG-US told us to do our own web site. AiG-Australia was given this directive in response to our earliest pleas to AiG-US for peace talks, to find a way forward together, in mid-November 2005. This of course forced us to re-brand, since one cannot have two totally separate organisations using the same brand on two separate global websites-a recipe for total confusion, especially for our Australian supporters.\nCMI continues to refuse to follow the directives of its former board (as contained in the October agreement), and the restoration of harmony so hoped for in October 2005 was derailed.\nCMI comment: It is a strange way to bring \u0026lsquo;restoration of harmony\u0026rsquo;, to damage, plunder and pillage the other party, which is what the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo; did. For a summary of the way that the agreement damaged CMI, please see What\u0026rsquo;s our concern with the situation?\n(www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4770)\nFurthermore, by what reasoning should a lawfully constituted current Board feel itself bound to continue to \u0026lsquo;follow the directives\u0026rsquo; of a Board which has abdicated en masse, especially when their actions have led to so much damage for the ministry?\nIn subsequent months, CMI continued to deny our requests for the new CMI board and AiG-USA board to meet. At one stage, the AiG board offered to meet with the CMI board at a mutually convenient location for a day or two to get to know each other, and then have the CEOs of both ministries join the boards to try to resolve the issues. To this end, we offered to fly the entire CMI board and its CEO to the U.S., at our expense. But CMI refused this and all other invitations.\nCMI comment: This is bizarre in the extreme, a reversal of reality. See Mr Clarrie Briese\u0026rsquo;s summary of the attempts CMI has made to find resolution, which were all rejected or ignored (mainly the latter) by AiG-US: look for the section titled Documents showing Genuine Efforts to Reconcile/Settle the Dispute\n(www.creationontheweb.biz/chairmans_report.html ) and following.\nThe truth is that there was NEVER an offer to meet with the entire Australian Board, face to face, all at once, up front. Note how this is covered over by cleverly referring to the Australian Board \u0026lsquo;and its CEO\u0026rsquo;. AiG knows full well that ever since the old Board\u0026rsquo;s abdication, our ministry has not had a CEO. It insists on using such terminology, because otherwise it becomes a lie to say that it agreed to meet with the Board, because Carl Wieland is and was then a member of that Board. And all of their three (really 2 BD) offers were completely neutralized by coupling them with the following conditions:\na) Not wanting to meet with Carl present, or excluding him for the first two days (Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s brother later stated that this was so that Ken\u0026rsquo;s Board could persuade the new Australian directors \u0026lsquo;why Carl could not be trusted\u0026rsquo;) AND/OR\nb) Insisting that the meeting was not permitted to discuss the very issues at stake, namely the \u0026lsquo;agreements\u0026rsquo; signed which plunged the ministries into crisis. We would counter by asking that they drop such preconditions, but to no avail.\nIt is obviously quite misleading to talk about \u0026lsquo;inviting the Board\u0026rsquo;, when one is actually refusing to include one member of that Board. But even more importantly, Carl Wieland was the only director who had first-hand knowledge of the events leading up to November 2005. The exclusion was clearly tactical.\nCMI offered to arbitrate the disputes between the ministries, but they insisted on their own set of strict terms and pre-conditions.\nCMI comment: No. CMI offered to submit to an arbitration process (CMI was not the arbitrator!), along with AiG-US. The proposal by CMI was never responded to by AiG-US to indicate which \u0026rsquo;terms and pre-conditions\u0026rsquo; were not suitable to them. There was no statement by CMI that the conditions were not negotiable, only that if they were accepted the proposal \u0026lsquo;as is\u0026rsquo;, then CMI would be immediately bound to the process (i.e., CMI could not back out). This was the first of two \u0026lsquo;binding arbitration offers\u0026rsquo; refused/ignored by AiG-US. They did not even bother to discuss the conditions.\nInstead of relying upon a neutral and recognized arbitration body, CMI proposed its own unique arbitration method and insisted that it be conducted in Australia, under Australian law, and by Australian attorneys or judges. Frankly, CMI\u0026rsquo;s proposal did not comport with normal and accepted rules for arbitration.\nCMI comment: Which arbitration offer is being referred to here? CMI made two offers (August 2006 and March 2007), both of which were completely ignored by AiG-US (no response whatsoever). The second proposal was formulated under the guidance of a Christian barrister at law (senior counsel in the USA) and as the proposal stated, it would have been under the jurisdiction of the Commercial Arbitration Act 1990 (Queensland), which sets out the procedures in detail. So it is completely wrong for AiG-US to claim that \u0026lsquo;CMI\u0026rsquo;s proposal did not comport with normal and accepted rules for arbitration\u0026rsquo;. This is yet another example of a baseless claim by AiG-US, and they have been informed otherwise some time ago in writing. This is amazingly prejudicial and misleading statement that has no basis in fact. You can read the proposal at www.creationontheweb.biz/offer-binding_christian_arbitration.pdf and see that it is absolutely fair, with AiG-US choosing three possible arbitrators and CMI having to choose one of those three; what could be fairer? It is in effect saying, \u0026lsquo;Pick your own Christian judge\u0026rsquo;. But having completely rejected all such things, though trying to shift the goalposts at the last minute, they are now able to cloak themselves in the mantle of \u0026lsquo;godly persecution\u0026rsquo; and amazingly, make it look as if AiG has wanted binding arbitration all along!\nMore importantly, as a ministry in Kentucky, USA, we do not believe the law of Australia is even appropriate in this case.\nCMI comment: The arbitration proposal above, reproduced in full on the web, sets out clearly why the arbitration should most definitely be in Australia. This is not some minor issue, and if one is only concerned with a fair verdict, why not use a formal process that involves the very jurisdiction (Australia) which one\u0026rsquo;s own documents have stipulated?\nAt the least, this is an issue that a neutral arbiter should be allowed to determine.\nCMI comment: How would an arbitrator chosen as per the procedure proposed above not be neutral? If anything he/she could be biased in favour of AiG-US, since they would choose all three options!\nHaving reached an impasse with CMI on numerous issues, we asked the independent, internationally recognized Christian conciliation organization, Peacemaker Ministries (which also has conciliators in Australia), to moderate and resolve the dispute.\nCMI comment: This again is highly misleading. It makes it sound as if AiG-US was interested in mediation all along. However, as the Briese Chairman\u0026rsquo;s report documents, it not only ignored such efforts, it formally cut us off with a widely distributed letter containing serious innuendo and libel/slander, which it refused to withdraw when we pleaded with them to do so. The sudden Damascus-road-like conversion to mediation was only after we said we would hold them accountable at law, failing an urgent meeting to settle the issues (which they again refused/ignored).\nUnder Peacemaker\u0026rsquo;s direction, AiG will meet anywhere to resolve these disputes with CMI and under any arbiter or arbiters that Peacemaker Ministries finds appropriate. CMI refused three offers to settle the issues through Peacemaker Ministries-reusing Christian mediation and binding arbitration (and CMI even rebuffed Peacemaker Ministries directly). We are saddened that CMI rejects neutral Christian arbitration and conciliation, and instead opts to publicly try the dispute in the secular courts.\nCMI comment: Once again this is a bizarre twist on what happened. After 18 months of our pleadings being ignored we told AiG-US that we had no choice but to hold them accountable at law. Suddenly AiG-US got interested in Peacemakers mediation, but at that stage, they were not suggesting going straight to arbitration. This is a very important distinction, as will become clear. (And we are only aware of one such formal proposal, not three.) They said that the process might lead to arbitration, but there was no formal proposal for binding arbitration. (See later re the informal phone call at the very, very last minute, when they had our lawsuit wording in their hands, about binding arbitration after all.)\n[Lippard comment: In other words, AiG is willing to talk about arbitration to derail and delay a legal process, but not willing to commit to making that arbitration binding. So if they like the result of the arbitration, they\u0026rsquo;ll commit, but otherwise, walk away or engage in further delay to avoid any results they don\u0026rsquo;t like.]\nFurthermore, the statement: \u0026lsquo;CMI even rebuffed Peacemaker Ministries directly\u0026rsquo; is clearly and misleadingly designed to make us sound evil by innuendo. The truth is that we gave AiG-US our carefully-considered reasons why we could not take part in a process of mediation prior to binding judgment, because of the delays their intransigence had caused, which would permit them to drag things on past the point of our rights to redress expiring. Nevertheless, we gave them the last offer of binding arbitration, making it clear that because they had used Australian law (paying Australian lawyers, specifying the legal jurisdiction as Australia) to tie us in legal knots, all would have to be settled under Australian law, as it would be if we chose not to be merciful and proceeded to hold them accountable. However, instead of coming back to us, or even discussing our arbitration offers, AiG-US had Peacemakers approach us. So, our courteous response was of course to Peacemakers, who seemed to be acting as a proxy for AiG-US. As CMI said at the time, we would be happy to engage Peacemakers in a mediation process leading to reconciliation, after the legal noose is removed from CMI\u0026rsquo;s neck. Since AiG-US would not willingly agree to such noose-removal, it could only be achieved by arbitration or, failing AiG-US agreeing to that, court action. Engaging in mediation before resolving the legal issues could well have jeopardized our ability to later find redress for the legal matters, as even Peacemakers\u0026rsquo; own information points out. At the very last minute, (everything was already in train. They had our lawsuit wording in their hands and had seen the Briese report) AiG-US finally indicated, via a third party phone call, that they would be now willing to go to binding arbitration but only via this same organization, and still rejected arbitration under Australian law. But without ever once saying to us why our proposal was unacceptable. This was literally only DAYS before AiG wrote this document to which we are responding, so it is highly misleading to give the impression as if all along they were willing to have binding arbitration. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to say things, but it\u0026rsquo;s documents that speak for themselves; which is why Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s report, analyzing the documents, turns out to be so vital.\nWe are grieved that CMI chose to make this matter public world-wide via the web and an email campaign;\nCMI comment: AiG-US engaged in an email campaign by innuendo against CMI (CMI has a \u0026lsquo;spiritual problem\u0026rsquo;; \u0026lsquo;contact us for more details\u0026rsquo;). We don\u0026rsquo;t know who received such emails or what they were told by AiG-US when they made contact. CMI\u0026rsquo;s efforts are aimed at bringing resolution. If the only way this can happen, it seems, is to bring things into the light, then so be it. Scripture says that things whispered in secret will be shouted from housetops (Luke 12:3). If people do nothing wrong in secret then there is nothing to fear from public exposure.\nin this manner, so many distortions and untruths have been scattered abroad.\nCMI comment: No distortions or untruths have been pointed out by AiG-US. This is yet another example of AiG-US making grand claims without substance (Mr Briese also documents such tactics by AiG-US regarding emails by Dr Sarfati. When asked to produce evidence in the light of day, nothing happens).\nOne of the links they provided connects to something called the \u0026ldquo;Briese report.\u0026rdquo; This report was issued by a group of people \u0026ndash; selected by CMI itself \u0026ndash; to conduct an \u0026ldquo;investigation.\u0026rdquo; Because of concerns over the perceived bias of this panel (since it was selected by CMI and headed by a \u0026ldquo;member\u0026rdquo; of the CMI organization, and since CMI itself set the \u0026ldquo;objectives\u0026rdquo; of this panel), AiG and others associated or familiar with this dispute declined to be involved.\nCMI comment: Please read the credentials of the committee members at: www.creationontheweb.biz/briese_committee_menu.html . All have independent reputations that they would not risk to rubber stamp some subterfuge of CMI or anyone else. This charge by AiG-US is astonishing in its brazenness. Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s reputation as a corruption fighter is unblemished (you could have read about Mr Briese on AiG\u0026rsquo;s web site, except they recently removed the Creation article about him). You can read it at: www.creationontheweb.com/Briese . This was published well before any of the current troubles erupted. Yes, Mr Briese is one of the wider members of CMI, mentioned by us above, one of the body that holds the Board accountable at an annual meeting (that\u0026rsquo;s all; he is not on the payroll, etc.). Also, Mr Briese chased the paper trail, which is a legal procedure that uncovers documents that have been not divulged (deliberately or inadvertently).\nIndeed, it is shocking that CMI, which is a Christian organization, would employ such tactics\nCMI comment: Tactics? This is a \u0026lsquo;smear statement\u0026rsquo;, with no substance. In desperation, we asked this eminent committee to form, to try to once again avoid the legal road. We not only invited AiG to participate, but said that if they did, we would also participate with a similar committee of their choosing, provided only that the rules of total openness were followed. The same Clarrie Briese, incidentally, helped save this ministry with a similar enquiry from damaging libel by a renowned humanist opponent, something for which Ken Ham, as a director at the time, was very grateful for.\nand then publicize this report as fact, when it is filled with half-truths and blatant advocacy of the CMI position.\nCMI comment: Once again, AiG-US makes unsubstantiated accusations. What half-truths? Mr Briese would certainly like to hear about them! Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s findings are backed by extensive quotes from AiG-US documents and some 700 pages of documentation are indexed to his report. Yes, Mr Briese certainly arrived at a point of supporting CMI\u0026rsquo;s contentions, because that is where the evidence led. But he also added, of his own volition, his own observations, which only strengthened the gravity of the matters. If AiG had evidence to the contrary, and had provided it as invited, the Briese committee would have certainly wanted to follow the evidence wherever it led. In fact, Clarrie Briese\u0026rsquo;s membership of the company is precisely to be in a role of watchdog, to hold the directors accountable.\nUp to this point, our Board had chosen to remain silent and was trying to resolve this matter privately.\nCMI comment: Yes, the silence even extended to completely ignoring almost every request that CMI made to meet to resolve the difficulties. But it has not extended to silence on the telephone to other parties, or the whispering campaign against CMI personnel, as documented by Mr Briese. As we have shown in www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf and as Mr Briese also independently documented, AiG-US have resisted every effort to settle this dispute.\nCMI has now made this dispute public, and we are now compelled to provide information to you to clarify this matter.\nCMI comment: It would be fine if it was accurate and not disinformation, as most of this is.\nUnfortunately, we live in a time when even Christians have become highly litigious and are increasingly eager to use a secular court system to settle matters,\n[Lippard comment: AiG-US is all-too-willing to rely on (or at least threaten to use) the \u0026ldquo;secular court system\u0026rdquo; to settle matters when it suits them. Check out this cease and desist notice that they issued to the Internet Infidels when I was president of that organization regarding cartoon parodies posted by users of our message boards. (This was ultimately resolved without legal action\u0026ndash;we asked those who made the cartoon parodies to change the names on them and remove all references to the trademarks, then only removed those which failed to comply.) Also see below, where CMI mentions that they have documentation of a legal threat against them by AiG-US.]\nCMI comment: It is with tears that CMI has embarked on legal action. It is a total misrepresentation of the directors\u0026rsquo; attitude to suggest that they were \u0026rsquo;eager\u0026rsquo; to use the secular court system. AiG-US has no basis whatsoever for such a grave smear. Any reasonable person would see that we have gone the third, fourth and fifth mile in trying to resolve these matters privately, and then proposing Christian arbitration. All efforts rejected. Court action was the last resort, having tried all else. Their last-minute shift, \u0026lsquo;dragged kicking and screaming\u0026rsquo; to the position of themselves informally proposing going straight to binding arbitration, should not be portrayed as a keenness for resolution. We asked them to explain what was wrong with our proposal (you can check that proposal for yourself). We cannot help but think that they are fearful of jointly submitting to arbitration under Australian law (despite having invoked Australian law themselves) perhaps because they know that there are issues of breach of Australian company law, etc. Should we permit those engaging in the breaches to choose their own jurisdiction, but let them knock back a much fairer, cleaner and more straightforward offer, using established rules of long standing? The other thing about Australian arbitration is that it is governed under law, which means that if the Christian judge makes an error of law in favour of CMI, e.g., then AiG could appeal it on those grounds. In short, if they were serious about peaceful resolution, they would have been able to choose their own Christian judge, and the whole matter would never have reached the public eye. The incredible distortions in this document give strong support to Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s sober judge\u0026rsquo;s analysis of what is driving this whole thing and the need for it to be dealt with.\neven trying to justify such actions by declaring that somehow Romans 13:1 overrides I Corinthians 6.\nCMI comment: So is this saying that the CMI Board should allow CMI\u0026rsquo;s supporters and staff to be defrauded by AiG-US? (How about 1 Cor. 6:8?) This would be an option for an individual, but not necessarily for a corporation governed by the laws of the state. To say otherwise is close to the same sort of reasoning that has led some Christians to think that a president of a country should never defend its citizens, because the Bible says individual believers should turn the other cheek.\nBut we totally agree that it is a shame for Christians to have to use secular authorities - as Paul said, they should be able to sort things out ecclesiastically. That should be something they agreed to ages ago, not just after it\u0026rsquo;s clear that we will be taking them to court.\nWe are deeply concerned that a para-church ministry would refuse Christian arbitration and then decide to sue brothers in Christ with a lawsuit, thus disobeying the Spirit of God\u0026rsquo;s instructions in I Corinthians 6.\nAiG encourages people to be like the Bereans in the Book of Acts and read these two passages for themselves.\nCMI comment: As part of this process, the whole counsel of God should be considered. As part of this, please consider: Why CMI-Australia is holding AiG-US legally accountable for its actions (www.creationontheweb.biz/lawsuit_justification.html ) Note that we have documentation of a written legal threat by AiG-US against us, so this position that it is always under any circumstances \u0026lsquo;disobeying the Spirit of God\u0026rsquo; appears to be a position of current convenience. (Obviously, every Christian corporation potentially relies on the power of the law when it goes into any sort of contract, or registers a trademark, or gives a copyright warning on its work, for example. The point is the desire to sort it out between brethren if at all possible, and this is where the problem has been, as the Briese documentation makes clear.)\nOur heart is particularly sad for the churches and pastors, and even book distributors, in Australia who have also been warned or threatened with legal action by CMI for their affiliation with AiG-USA. Notwithstanding the myriad of details about the issues involved, this legal threat by CMI against churches and others constitutes a serious disobedience to our God.\nCMI comment: Note: \u0026rsquo;notwithstanding the myriad of details about the issues involved\u0026rsquo;. In other words, if the reader were apprised of these it would not be as AiG-US insinuates. AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s attempts to act deceptively in Australia by passing themselves off as Answers in Genesis in Australia when many (most?) still think of CMI as \u0026lsquo;AiG\u0026rsquo; here, will be resisted, with good justification to avoid confusion (trademark law protects against such deception / trading off confusion). If AiG-US would walk in the light, it would not be trying to further undermine CMI-Australia by ruthless commercial actions, on top of what it has already done. This whole matter being raised by AiG-US to paint us in a bad light is also addressed in the Briese report. This judicial analysis is based on the documents, most of them exchanges between CMI and AiG-US, not on hearsay, emotive rhetoric or \u0026lsquo;spin\u0026rsquo;.\nAiG is committed to honoring God and His Word. We covet your prayers during these trying days. Yet, the Lord be praised.\nCMI comment: It would bring a real, tangible blessing to us if AiG-US would really honour the whole of God\u0026rsquo;s Word, including such strong admonitions as Micah 6:8 (God calls us to do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with God).\nIf you have questions concerning the basics of this issue, please call Mark Looy, AiG\u0026rsquo;s chief communications officer, at (859) 727-2222, ext. 450 (please note that AiG is in the eastern time zone). If you have theological questions concerning our understanding of the Scriptures as they relate to this issue, please contact our board chairman, Pastor Don Landis (through Mark, who will pass it on to Pastor Landis).\n[Lippard comment: Note that Landis is the man who, in a letter to Carl Wieland, asked him if he had any undisclosed sins that might be causing this dispute, such as taking too many medications or being involved with pornography (quoted in the Briese report). That\u0026rsquo;s a tactic that reminds me of the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;sec check\u0026rdquo; procedure!]\nCMI comment: If you contact Mr Looy, or Mr Landis, could you please get them to put their comments in writing (print) so that what is said can be tested to ascertain that you are being told the truth, or given accurate exegesis? Proverbs 18:17. Sadly, many have been just too willing to believe what they are told without checking it out (be good Bereans as AiG-US has said!). In fact, one of the tragedies in all of this has been that AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s standard pattern has been to ask people to \u0026lsquo;contact us and you\u0026rsquo;ll get the facts\u0026rsquo;-but always declining if asked if a CMI person could be there to give the other side of the story. And/or people are sworn to secrecy not to reveal to CMI what they are told. Which is why it was so important to have the open (Briese) enquiry at last, where evidence could be presented, and tested at cross-examination.\nWe plead with you to help us inhibit this unbiblical internet gossip and rumor mill by contacting us directly and/or simply committing it in prayer to the Lord. Thank you.\nCMI comment: What CMI has put on the Internet is not gossip or rumor. No one has demonstrated any factual error in what we have made available, and as we have said, if anyone will demonstrate such error we will correct anything we have written and we are sure Mr Briese would also. It is \u0026lsquo;whispering\u0026rsquo; in telephone calls, swearing people to secrecy, as has been the pattern, that is gossip by definition, and that generates dark deeds and poisons relationships. So people are being urged to avoid gossip by partaking of gossip! We have with tears pleaded and pleaded for even the courtesy of open meeting for resolution, yet now we see this document that claims the very opposite, as if black is white, and good evil. Enough! If we had had the chance to talk all together in the open, even once, then maybe AiG\u0026rsquo;s Board, or at least some of them, might have come to see how seriously \u0026lsquo;filtered\u0026rsquo; their understanding of events is. Sadly, this was never once permitted.\nSincerely,\nBoard of Directors\nAnswers in Genesis -USA\nPastor Don Landis, Chairman\nDan Chin, Vice Chairman\nDr. Mark Jackson\nDan Manthei\nTim Dudley\nWith sadness, but resolved to see righteousness reign,\nThe Board of Directors,\nCreation Ministries International (Australia)\nKerry Boettcher, Chairman\nDr David Christie\nRev. Dr. Don Hardgrave\nCarolyn McPherson\nDr Carl Wieland\nNick (Matzke) (2007-06-06):\nWow. That's amazing. And I think AiG-USA is in serious legal trouble.\nMichael Patrick Leahy (2007-06-07):\nJim,Nice coverage of the Creation Ministries International Lawsuit against Answers in Genesis.You'll see that we have quoted your blog in our story titled \"Young Earth Creation Wars Heat Up\".Check it out at http://www.christianfaithandreason.com/june_lawsuit_AIGresponse.html\nLippard (2007-06-07):\nThanks, Michael.I note that on that page you say \"... as are allegations by Creation Ministries International that Answers in Genesis is behaving like Scientologists.\"As far as I know, I'm the only one who has made that comparison, in the above blog post when I compared AiG-US chairman Don Landis' questions to Wieland about possible undisclosed sins to Scientology's \"sec check\" procedure.See this blog post for my past experiences as a critic of Scientology.\nsylas (2007-06-08):\nHey Jim: I have tried to put together a summary of what information is available on this. I've linked to your pages and cited you as the best blog for following the matter further. My article is up at Answers in Genesis lawsuit.\nLippard (2007-06-08):\nGreat summary!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/answers-in-genesis-responds-to-cmi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnswers in Genesis has sent out an email to supporters about the \u0026ldquo;spiritual attack\u0026rdquo; from Creation Ministries International.  Where CMI has always kept AiG informed about how it has been proceeding and giving them a chance to respond and participate in dialogue, AiG didn\u0026rsquo;t send a copy of this to CMI\u0026ndash;but of course they ended up receiving it anyway.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is the version that CMI sent out to its own supporters, with their comments included (as you\u0026rsquo;ll see described at the very beginning).  The AiG letter is in bold, the CMI comments are labeled, and I\u0026rsquo;ve inserted a few comments of my own, labeled and in brackets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find this very interesting, because if you dig into the details, the case overwhelmingly supports CMI, at least on ethical grounds.  (I\u0026rsquo;m not an expert on the legal matters\u0026ndash;the fact that the previous AiG-Australia board signed the one-sided agreement favoring AiG-US may be a difficult obstacle for CMI to overcome.)  But most Christians don\u0026rsquo;t care about digging into the details, they just listen to the pastors and leaders that they trust, which is why \u003ca href=\"http://http//secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/08/religious-fraud-increasing.html\"\u003econ men have such success preying on the religious\u003c/a\u003e.  Ken Ham has apparently done quite well at getting people to side with him based on his own charisma and persuasiveness, but if you read any of his written work critically, you see that it falls apart.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 18, 2007):  A similarly commented email from Mark Looy of AiG-US may be found on the CMI website \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4497/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis under Spiritual Attack\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJune 1, 2007\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(With interspersed responses, dated June 4, 2007, from Creation Ministries International.  Although large numbers got this sent to them by AiG, CMI was not included.  We are filled with dismay at the many distortions of truth and misleading comments in this, as we think will become apparent from our response, sadly.  A document like this, which is in effect an \u0026lsquo;accusation against the brethren\u0026rsquo;, cannot be just ignored-truth matters.  Perhaps reading this will help those unfortunate enough to have received it to become aware of why we had to, in an effort to be as open and transparent as possible, invite a formal ecclesiastical/judicial committee of enquiry to form under Clarrie Briese, the reports from which, plus other important documentation, can be found at \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/briese2\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.com/briese2\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.com/briese2\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e )\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDear Friends of AiG,\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOn behalf of the Board of Directors of Answers in Genesis, we want to invite you to praise the Lord with us in the opening of the Creation Museum (and in the blessing He has poured out on the entire ministry). On the museum\u0026rsquo;s opening day, May 28, over 4,000 visitors attended, with more than 100 news media (over two days) also on hand to give the museum wide coverage all over the world. We enjoyed receiving well wishers from other ministries, such as the Institute for Creation Research (its president and chairman were present at the museum\u0026rsquo;s ribbon-cutting ceremony), the Christian Law Association, and others. We give thanks for the tremendous support from God\u0026rsquo;s people in prayer, gifts, and in museum attendance.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWe pray and trust that the museum\u0026rsquo;s message will be heard by hundreds of thousands of people each year, and will not only affect the lives of many of God\u0026rsquo;s people, but see many others receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: CMI staff had input into the early stages of the museum planning, before we were \u0026lsquo;cut off\u0026rsquo;.  As we have said on our web site and in our Infobytes email newsletter, we are pleased that the museum is open and also hope that many will come under conviction and be saved through the museum\u0026rsquo;s message.  This has nothing to do with the dispute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe AiG board is committed to honoring the Lord and His Word not only in the museum, but in all the ministries of AiG. Our commitment to financial integrity, for example, is evidenced by our membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) arid by a special designation from MinistryWatch.com as a \u0026ldquo;top 30\u0026rdquo; ministry that people can give to with confidence.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Nor has this much to do with the dispute, as we don\u0026rsquo;t doubt that AiG-US follows proper audited accounting procedures, as required for a non-profit corporation under US law.  However, from our experience of appealing to the ECFA for them to intervene re AiG\u0026rsquo;s switching our Creation magazine subscribers to their new \u0026lsquo;replacement\u0026rsquo; magazine, an effective theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars that involved deceiving subscribers into thinking that our magazine was no longer available in the USA, we doubt that its imprimatur means much in terms of guaranteeing ethical behaviour overall.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Lippard comment:  Indeed\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s clear that the ECFA doesn\u0026rsquo;t say anything at all about the accuracy of the information purveyed by AiG!]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIn recent days, we received museum opposition from protestors, some media outlets, and through emails and on the internet. Indeed, AiG finds itself in a continuing spiritual warfare. Yet in all this, we give thanks to our Lord, for the Lord will use it for His glory.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Such opposition is the common lot of all who will stand for the truth of God\u0026rsquo;s Word.  It has nothing to do with the CMI-AiG-US dispute.  CMI is also subject to major opposition.  However, such opposition does not of itself prove our godliness, righteousness, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Lippard comment:  AiG\u0026rsquo;s implied argument is:  God\u0026rsquo;s people are always under attack when doing his work.  We are under attack.  Therefore, we are God\u0026rsquo;s people under attack.  That\u0026rsquo;s the fallacy of affirming the consequent\u0026ndash;the same erroneous argument used by crackpots who are receiving ridicule when they claim that \u0026ldquo;They laughed at Galileo,\u0026rdquo; as though the mere fact that people laugh at them puts them on a par with Galileo.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWhile we have received opposition from the secular world during this time, the most disappointing attack has come from our former sister ministry, Creation Ministries Int\u0026rsquo;l (CMI). On the eve of the opening of the museum, CMI sent letters and used the internet to publicly report on a dispute that is well over a year old. CMI sent us a letter, only 24 hours before the museum ribbon-cuffing ceremony, informing us they were filing a lawsuit against AiG and its president, Ken Ham, in an Australia court. They have now done so. Immediately after the opening of the museum, they sent letters to numerous (perhaps hundreds) of people and used the internet to publicly report the dispute.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: This makes it seem as though CMI timed these events to be as nasty as possible.  However, the reality is otherwise.  Firstly, legal processes like the serving of writs (lawsuits) cannot be timed like this; such processes are determined by the legal process.  Legal proceedings were initiated months ago (we told AiG-US of this, associated with one more offer to meet to resolve the dispute, and that being rejected (ignored), and then another offer of binding Christian arbitration-see below). Secondly, when it looked like the serving of the writ was going to coincide with the opening of the museum, we asked for it to be delayed, if possible.  Furthermore, to avoid public embarrassment of a sheriff of the court serving papers in person, we asked if there was another way.  We were told that if AiG-US told our lawyers the name of their lawyers for service of the writs, they could be lodged with them rather than in person. Why the communication with AiG-US \u0026lsquo;only 24 hours before the ribbon cutting ceremony\u0026rsquo;?  AiG-US was having a board meeting over the weekend of the opening, a rare face-to-face meeting of the directors at which the directors of AiG-UK would also be present.  We thought it only fair that the directors had the opportunity to discuss the matter in such a setting, rather than by telephone or email, piecemeal, at a later time.  Furthermore, we thought that this would have the maximum likelihood of a change of heart (although from the track record of the last twenty months we thought this was only a remote possibility, our directors wanted to pursue every avenue for resolution).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOne of CMI\u0026rsquo;s claims is that AiG-USA refuses to meet with its board. To the contrary our board met in person with the legally recognized and appointed board of directors of the Australian ministry (called AiG-Australia at the time) and signed a Memorandum of Agreement in October 2005, which had peacefully resolved the differences at that time (which included an agreement to arbitrate any future dispute).\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: This is amazingly deceptive, even astonishing in its brazenness.   The refusal to meet that we repeatedly bring up is a refusal to meet with the current Board, the ones in office for nearly 18 months now in this time of major dispute.  Whereas the Board to whom AiG refers here is not the legally constituted Board of the ministry, but the previous Board which handed over the company after resigning en masse and seeking indemnity from penalties for their actions signing that \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurthermore, when we talk about a refusal to meet, it is clearly in the context of the present dispute, which only really erupted as a serious legal issue because of and therefore after the signing of the agreement drawn up by AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s lawyers, with all the terrible ramifications for our ministry.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo how can reference to a meeting before that time, with people who are no longer part of the ministry, be anything other than a \u0026lsquo;red herring\u0026rsquo; attempt to confuse the public on the very serious matter of their nearly two-year refusal to meet properly face-to-face to sort out the issues, as befits brethren?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnfortunately, the management of AiG-Australia later disavowed the agreement and, after an impasse and much frustration with management, the full Australian board resigned.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: This is a reversal of the order of events, giving another deceptively false impression.  The management did not have the authority to \u0026lsquo;disavow the agreement\u0026rsquo;, and did not do so. The Australian management tried to meet with the Board to discuss the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo;, which was signed at AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s urging behind the backs of all management here in Australia. (This was contrary to those previous directors\u0026rsquo; commitment to several senior staff before the joint board meeting that they would \u0026rsquo;not sign anything\u0026rsquo; without consultation.)  The Australian directors at the time failed to meet, and events culminated in their resignations.  Their resignations were due to their own rash actions, not any \u0026lsquo;rebellion\u0026rsquo; as AiG-US spokesmen have told third parties, poisoning the well for CMI.  Furthermore, contrary to the impression given in this email from AiG-US, the Board of CMI (not the management) did not formally reject the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo; until 28 February 2006, just before our re-branding as CMI.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAiG-Australia management then appointed a new board,\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: This makes it seem as though the appointment of the new board was somehow improper.  This is untrue.  The outgoing directors specified that the CEO, Dr Carl Wieland, should be made Managing Director and given responsibility for appointing new directors. They said through their lawyer that if Dr Wieland had been on the board (MD instead of CEO) that the recent catastrophic events would not have transpired.  In consultation with senior staff and scientists, Dr Wieland chose directors with a proven track record of hands-on involvement with creation ministry.  For the details of what happened, see A brief chronology of events  \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  (scroll down to Oct 2005).  CMI Board has also instituted another level of accountability for the board; an extra-board membership that outnumbers the directors, which now appoints directors and holds the board accountable at an annual meeting.  \u0026lsquo;There is safety in a multitude of counselors\u0026rsquo; (Prov. 11:14).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eand changed its name to CMI.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:  AiG-Australia was forced to change its name when AiG-US told us to do our own web site.  AiG-Australia was given this directive in response to our earliest pleas to AiG-US for peace talks, to find a way forward together, in mid-November 2005.  This of course forced us to re-brand, since one cannot have two totally separate organisations using the same brand on two separate global websites-a recipe for total confusion, especially for our Australian supporters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCMI continues to refuse to follow the directives of its former board (as contained in the October agreement), and the restoration of harmony so hoped for in October 2005 was derailed.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: It is a strange way to bring \u0026lsquo;restoration of harmony\u0026rsquo;, to damage, plunder and pillage the other party, which is what the \u0026lsquo;agreement\u0026rsquo; did.  For a summary of the way that the agreement damaged CMI, please see What\u0026rsquo;s our concern with the situation?\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4770\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4770\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4770\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurthermore, by what reasoning should a lawfully constituted current Board feel itself bound to continue to \u0026lsquo;follow the directives\u0026rsquo; of a Board which has abdicated en masse, especially when their actions have led to so much damage for the ministry?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIn subsequent months, CMI continued to deny our requests for the new CMI board and AiG-USA board to meet. At one stage, the AiG board offered to meet with the CMI board at a mutually convenient location for a day or two to get to know each other, and then have the CEOs of both ministries join the boards to try to resolve the issues. To this end, we offered to fly the entire CMI board and its CEO to the U.S., at our expense. But CMI refused this and all other invitations.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:  This is bizarre in the extreme, a reversal of reality.  See Mr Clarrie Briese\u0026rsquo;s summary of the attempts CMI has made to find resolution, which were all rejected or ignored (mainly the latter) by AiG-US: look for the section titled Documents showing Genuine Efforts to Reconcile/Settle the Dispute\u003cbr /\u003e(\u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/chairmans_report.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.biz/chairmans_report.html\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.biz/chairmans_report.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e ) and following.\u003cbr /\u003eThe truth is that there was NEVER an offer to meet with the entire Australian Board, face to face, all at once, up front.  Note how this is covered over by cleverly referring to the Australian Board \u0026lsquo;and its CEO\u0026rsquo;.  AiG knows full well that ever since the old Board\u0026rsquo;s abdication, our ministry has not had a CEO.  It insists on using such terminology, because otherwise it becomes a lie to say that it agreed to meet with the Board, because Carl Wieland is and was then a member of that Board.  And all of their three (really 2 BD) offers were completely neutralized by coupling them with the following conditions:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ea)      Not wanting to meet with Carl present, or excluding him for the first two days (Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s brother later stated that this was so that Ken\u0026rsquo;s Board could persuade the new Australian directors \u0026lsquo;why Carl could not be trusted\u0026rsquo;)  AND/OR\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eb)      Insisting that the meeting was not permitted to discuss the very issues at stake, namely the \u0026lsquo;agreements\u0026rsquo; signed which plunged the ministries into crisis.  We would counter by asking that they drop such preconditions, but to no avail.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is obviously quite misleading to talk about \u0026lsquo;inviting the Board\u0026rsquo;, when one is actually refusing to include one member of that Board.  But even more importantly, Carl Wieland was the only director who had first-hand knowledge of the events leading up to November 2005.  The exclusion was clearly tactical.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCMI offered to arbitrate the disputes between the ministries, but they insisted on their own set of strict terms and pre-conditions.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:  No.  CMI offered to submit to an arbitration process (CMI was not the arbitrator!), along with AiG-US.  The proposal by CMI was never responded to by AiG-US to indicate which \u0026rsquo;terms and pre-conditions\u0026rsquo; were not suitable to them.  There was no statement by CMI that the conditions were not negotiable, only that if they were accepted the proposal \u0026lsquo;as is\u0026rsquo;, then CMI would be immediately bound to the process (i.e., CMI could not back out).  This was the first of two \u0026lsquo;binding arbitration offers\u0026rsquo; refused/ignored by AiG-US.  They did not even bother to discuss the conditions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eInstead of relying upon a neutral and recognized arbitration body, CMI proposed its own unique arbitration method and insisted that it be conducted in Australia, under Australian law, and by Australian attorneys or judges. Frankly, CMI\u0026rsquo;s proposal did not comport with normal and accepted rules for arbitration.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:  Which arbitration offer is being referred to here?  CMI made two offers (August 2006 and March 2007), both of which were completely ignored by AiG-US (no response whatsoever).  The second proposal was formulated under the guidance of a Christian barrister at law (senior counsel in the USA) and as the proposal stated, it would have been under the jurisdiction of the Commercial Arbitration Act 1990 (Queensland), which sets out the procedures in detail.  So it is completely wrong for AiG-US to claim that \u0026lsquo;CMI\u0026rsquo;s proposal did not comport with normal and accepted rules for arbitration\u0026rsquo;.  This is yet another example of a baseless claim by AiG-US, and they have been informed otherwise some time ago in writing.  This is amazingly prejudicial and misleading statement that has no basis in fact.  You can read the proposal at \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/offer-binding_christian_arbitration.pdf\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.biz/offer-binding_christian_arbitration.pdf\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.biz/offer-binding_christian_arbitration.pdf\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and see that it is absolutely fair, with AiG-US choosing three possible arbitrators and CMI having to choose one of those three; what could be fairer?  It is in effect saying, \u0026lsquo;Pick your own Christian judge\u0026rsquo;.  But having completely rejected all such things, though trying to shift the goalposts at the last minute, they are now able to cloak themselves in the mantle of \u0026lsquo;godly persecution\u0026rsquo; and amazingly, make it look as if AiG has wanted binding arbitration all along!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMore importantly, as a ministry in Kentucky, USA, we do not believe the law of Australia is even appropriate in this case.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: The arbitration proposal above, reproduced in full on the web, sets out clearly why the arbitration should most definitely be in Australia.  This is not some minor issue, and if one is only concerned with a fair verdict, why not use a formal process that involves the very jurisdiction (Australia) which one\u0026rsquo;s own documents have stipulated?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAt the least, this is an issue that a neutral arbiter should be allowed to determine.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: How would an arbitrator chosen as per the procedure proposed above not be neutral?  If anything he/she could be biased in favour of AiG-US, since they would choose all three options!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eHaving reached an impasse with CMI on numerous issues, we asked the independent, internationally recognized Christian conciliation organization, Peacemaker Ministries (which also has conciliators in Australia), to moderate and resolve the dispute.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: This again is highly misleading.  It makes it sound as if AiG-US was interested in mediation all along.  However, as the Briese Chairman\u0026rsquo;s report documents, it not only ignored such efforts, it formally cut us off with a widely distributed letter containing serious innuendo and libel/slander, which it refused to withdraw when we pleaded with them to do so.  The sudden Damascus-road-like conversion to mediation was only after we said we would hold them accountable at law, failing an urgent meeting to settle the issues (which they again refused/ignored).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnder Peacemaker\u0026rsquo;s direction, AiG will meet anywhere to resolve these disputes with CMI and under any arbiter or arbiters that Peacemaker Ministries finds appropriate. CMI refused three offers to settle the issues through Peacemaker Ministries-reusing Christian mediation and binding arbitration (and CMI even rebuffed Peacemaker Ministries directly). We are saddened that CMI rejects neutral Christian arbitration and conciliation, and instead opts to publicly try the dispute in the secular courts.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Once again this is a bizarre twist on what happened.  After 18 months of our pleadings being ignored we told AiG-US that we had no choice but to hold them accountable at law.  Suddenly AiG-US got interested in Peacemakers mediation, but at that stage, they were not suggesting going straight to arbitration.  This is a very important distinction, as will become clear. (And we are only aware of one such formal proposal, not three.) They said that the process might lead to arbitration, but there was no formal proposal for binding arbitration.  (See later re the informal phone call at the very, very last minute, when they had our lawsuit wording in their hands, about binding arbitration after all.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Lippard comment:  In other words, AiG is willing to talk about arbitration to derail and delay a legal process, but not willing to commit to making that arbitration binding.  So if they like the result of the arbitration, they\u0026rsquo;ll commit, but otherwise, walk away or engage in further delay to avoid any results they don\u0026rsquo;t like.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurthermore, the statement: \u0026lsquo;CMI even rebuffed Peacemaker Ministries directly\u0026rsquo; is clearly and misleadingly designed to make us sound evil by innuendo.  The truth is that we gave AiG-US our carefully-considered reasons why we could not take part in a process of mediation prior to binding judgment, because of the delays their intransigence had caused, which would permit them to drag things on past the point of our rights to redress expiring.  Nevertheless, we gave them the last offer of binding arbitration, making it clear that because they had used Australian law (paying Australian lawyers, specifying the legal jurisdiction as Australia) to tie us in legal knots, all would have to be settled under Australian law, as it would be if we chose not to be merciful and proceeded to hold them accountable.  However, instead of coming back to us, or even discussing our arbitration offers, AiG-US had Peacemakers approach us.  So, our courteous response was of course to Peacemakers, who seemed to be acting as a proxy for AiG-US.  As CMI said at the time, we would be happy to engage Peacemakers in a mediation process leading to reconciliation, after the legal noose is removed from CMI\u0026rsquo;s neck.  Since AiG-US would not willingly agree to such noose-removal, it could only be achieved by arbitration or, failing AiG-US agreeing to that, court action.  Engaging in mediation before resolving the legal issues could well have jeopardized our ability to later find redress for the legal matters, as even Peacemakers\u0026rsquo; own information points out.  At the very last minute, (everything was already in train. They had our lawsuit wording in their hands and had seen the Briese report) AiG-US finally indicated, via a third party phone call, that they would be now willing to go to binding arbitration but only via this same organization, and still rejected arbitration under Australian law.  But without ever once saying to us why our proposal was unacceptable.  This was literally only DAYS before AiG wrote this document to which we are responding, so it is highly misleading to give the impression as if all along they were willing to have binding arbitration.  It\u0026rsquo;s easy to say things, but it\u0026rsquo;s documents that speak for themselves; which is why Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s report, analyzing the documents, turns out to be so vital.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWe are grieved that CMI chose to make this matter public world-wide via the web and an email campaign;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: AiG-US engaged in an email campaign by innuendo against CMI  (CMI has a \u0026lsquo;spiritual problem\u0026rsquo;; \u0026lsquo;contact us for more details\u0026rsquo;).  We don\u0026rsquo;t know who received such emails or what they were told by AiG-US when they made contact.  CMI\u0026rsquo;s efforts are aimed at bringing resolution.  If the only way this can happen, it seems, is to bring things into the light, then so be it. Scripture says that things whispered in secret will be shouted from housetops (Luke 12:3).  If people do nothing wrong in secret then there is nothing to fear from public exposure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ein this manner, so many distortions and untruths have been scattered abroad.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: No distortions or untruths have been pointed out by AiG-US. This is yet another example of AiG-US making grand claims without substance (Mr Briese also documents such tactics by AiG-US regarding emails by Dr Sarfati.  When asked to produce evidence in the light of day, nothing happens).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOne of the links they provided connects to something called the \u0026ldquo;Briese report.\u0026rdquo; This report was issued by a group of people \u0026ndash; selected by CMI itself \u0026ndash; to conduct an \u0026ldquo;investigation.\u0026rdquo; Because of concerns over the perceived bias of this panel (since it was selected by CMI and headed by a \u0026ldquo;member\u0026rdquo; of the CMI organization, and since CMI itself set the \u0026ldquo;objectives\u0026rdquo; of this panel), AiG and others associated or familiar with this dispute declined to be involved.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Please read the credentials of the committee members at: \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/briese_committee_menu.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.biz/briese_committee_menu.html\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.biz/briese_committee_menu.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  .   All have independent reputations that they would not risk to rubber stamp some subterfuge of CMI or anyone else.  This charge by AiG-US is astonishing in its brazenness.  Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s reputation as a corruption fighter is unblemished (you could have read about Mr Briese on AiG\u0026rsquo;s web site, except they recently removed the Creation article about him).  You can read it at: \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/Briese\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.com/Briese\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.com/Briese\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  .  This was published well before any of the current troubles erupted.  Yes, Mr Briese is one of the wider members of CMI, mentioned by us above, one of the body that holds the Board accountable at an annual meeting (that\u0026rsquo;s all; he is not on the payroll, etc.).  Also, Mr Briese chased the paper trail, which is a legal procedure that uncovers documents that have been not divulged (deliberately or inadvertently).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIndeed, it is shocking that CMI, which is a Christian organization, would employ such tactics\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Tactics? This is a \u0026lsquo;smear statement\u0026rsquo;, with no substance. In desperation, we asked this eminent committee to form, to try to once again avoid the legal road.  We not only invited AiG to participate, but said that if they did, we would also participate with a similar committee of their choosing, provided only that the rules of total openness were followed.   The same Clarrie Briese, incidentally, helped save this ministry with a similar enquiry from damaging libel by a renowned humanist opponent, something for which Ken Ham, as a director at the time, was very grateful for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eand then publicize this report as fact, when it is filled with half-truths and blatant advocacy of the CMI position.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Once again, AiG-US makes unsubstantiated accusations.  What half-truths?  Mr Briese would certainly like to hear about them!  Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s findings are backed by extensive quotes from AiG-US documents and some 700 pages of documentation are indexed to his report.  Yes, Mr Briese certainly arrived at a point of supporting CMI\u0026rsquo;s contentions, because that is where the evidence led.  But he also added, of his own volition, his own observations, which only strengthened the gravity of the matters.  If AiG had evidence to the contrary, and had provided it as invited, the Briese committee would have certainly wanted to follow the evidence wherever it led.  In fact, Clarrie Briese\u0026rsquo;s membership of the company is precisely to be in a role of watchdog, to hold the directors accountable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUp to this point, our Board had chosen to remain silent and was trying to resolve this matter privately.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:  Yes, the silence even extended to completely ignoring almost every request that CMI made to meet to resolve the difficulties.  But it has not extended to silence on the telephone to other parties, or the whispering campaign against CMI personnel, as documented by Mr Briese.  As we have shown in \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/chronological_ordershort.pdf\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and as Mr Briese also independently documented, AiG-US have resisted every effort to settle this dispute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eCMI has now made this dispute public, and we are now compelled to provide information to you to clarify this matter.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: It would be fine if it was accurate and not disinformation, as most of this is.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUnfortunately, we live in a time when even Christians have become highly litigious and are increasingly eager to use a secular court system to settle matters,\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Lippard comment:  AiG-US is all-too-willing to rely on (or at least threaten to use) the \u0026ldquo;secular court system\u0026rdquo; to settle matters when it suits them.  Check out \u003ca href=\"http://http//www.chillingeffects.org/protest/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1069\"\u003ethis cease and desist notice\u003c/a\u003e that they issued to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e when I was president of that organization regarding cartoon parodies posted by users of \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/\"\u003eour message boards\u003c/a\u003e.  (This was ultimately resolved without legal action\u0026ndash;we asked those who made the cartoon parodies to change the names on them and remove all references to the trademarks, then only removed those which failed to comply.)  Also see below, where CMI mentions that they have documentation of a legal threat against them by AiG-US.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: It is with tears that CMI has embarked on legal action.  It is a total misrepresentation of the directors\u0026rsquo; attitude to suggest that they were \u0026rsquo;eager\u0026rsquo; to use the secular court system.  AiG-US has no basis whatsoever for such a grave smear.  Any reasonable person would see that we have gone the third, fourth and fifth mile in trying to resolve these matters privately, and then proposing Christian arbitration.  All efforts rejected.  Court action was the last resort, having tried all else.  Their last-minute shift, \u0026lsquo;dragged kicking and screaming\u0026rsquo; to the position of themselves informally proposing going straight to binding arbitration, should not be portrayed as a keenness for resolution.  We asked them to explain what was wrong with our proposal (you can check that proposal for yourself).  We cannot help but think that they are fearful of jointly submitting to arbitration under Australian law (despite having invoked Australian law themselves) perhaps because they know that there are issues of breach of Australian company law, etc.  Should we permit those engaging in the breaches to choose their own jurisdiction, but let them knock back a much fairer, cleaner and more straightforward offer, using established rules of long standing?  The other thing about Australian arbitration is that it is governed under law, which means that if the Christian judge makes an error of law in favour of CMI, e.g., then AiG could appeal it on those grounds.  In short, if they were serious about peaceful resolution, they would have been able to choose their own Christian judge, and the whole matter would never have reached the public eye.  The incredible distortions in this document give strong support to Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s sober judge\u0026rsquo;s analysis of what is driving this whole thing and the need for it to be dealt with.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eeven trying to justify such actions by declaring that somehow Romans \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e13:1 overrides I Corinthians 6.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: So is this saying that the CMI Board should allow CMI\u0026rsquo;s supporters and staff to be defrauded by AiG-US?  (How about 1 Cor. 6:8?) This would be an option for an individual, but not necessarily for a corporation governed by the laws of the state.  To say otherwise is close to the same sort of reasoning that has led some Christians to think that a president of a country should never defend its citizens, because the Bible says individual believers should turn the other cheek.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut we totally agree that it is a shame for Christians to have to use secular authorities - as Paul said, they should be able to sort things out ecclesiastically.  That should be something they agreed to ages ago, not just after it\u0026rsquo;s clear that we will be taking them to court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWe are deeply concerned that a para-church ministry would refuse Christian arbitration and then decide to sue brothers in Christ with a lawsuit, thus disobeying the Spirit of God\u0026rsquo;s instructions in I Corinthians 6.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAiG encourages people to be like the Bereans in the Book of Acts and read these two passages for themselves.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: As part of this process, the whole counsel of God should be considered.  As part of this, please consider: Why CMI-Australia is holding AiG-US legally accountable for its actions (\u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.biz/lawsuit_justification.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.creationontheweb.biz/lawsuit_justification.html\"\u003ewww.creationontheweb.biz/lawsuit_justification.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e )  Note that we have documentation of a written legal threat by AiG-US against us, so this position that it is always under any circumstances \u0026lsquo;disobeying the Spirit of God\u0026rsquo; appears to be a position of current convenience.  (Obviously, every Christian corporation potentially relies on the power of the law when it goes into any sort of contract, or registers a trademark, or gives a copyright warning on its work, for example.  The point is the desire to sort it out between brethren if at all possible, and this is where the problem has been, as the Briese documentation makes clear.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eOur heart is particularly sad for the churches and pastors, and even book distributors, in Australia who have also been warned or threatened with legal action by CMI for their affiliation with AiG-USA. Notwithstanding the myriad of details about the issues involved, this legal threat by CMI against churches and others constitutes a serious disobedience to our God.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: Note: \u0026rsquo;notwithstanding the myriad of details about the issues involved\u0026rsquo;.  In other words, if the reader were apprised of these it would not be as AiG-US insinuates.  AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s attempts to act deceptively in Australia by passing themselves off as Answers in Genesis in Australia when many (most?) still think of CMI as \u0026lsquo;AiG\u0026rsquo; here, will be resisted, with good justification to avoid confusion (trademark law protects against such deception / trading off confusion).  If AiG-US would walk in the light, it would not be trying to further undermine CMI-Australia by ruthless commercial actions, on top of what it has already done.  This whole matter being raised by AiG-US to paint us in a bad light is also addressed in the Briese report.  This judicial analysis is based on the documents, most of them exchanges between CMI and AiG-US, not on hearsay, emotive rhetoric or \u0026lsquo;spin\u0026rsquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAiG is committed to honoring God and His Word. We covet your prayers during these trying days. Yet, the Lord be praised.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: It would bring a real, tangible blessing to us if AiG-US would really honour the whole of God\u0026rsquo;s Word, including such strong admonitions as Micah 6:8 (God calls us to do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with God).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eIf you have questions concerning the basics of this issue, please call Mark Looy, AiG\u0026rsquo;s chief communications officer, at (859) 727-2222, ext. 450 (please note that AiG is in the eastern time zone). If you have theological questions concerning our understanding of the Scriptures as they relate to this issue, please contact our board chairman, Pastor Don Landis (through Mark, who will pass it on to Pastor Landis).\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Lippard comment:  Note that Landis is the man who, in a letter to Carl Wieland, asked him if he had any undisclosed sins that might be causing this dispute, such as taking too many medications or being involved with pornography (quoted in the Briese report).  That\u0026rsquo;s a tactic that reminds me of the Church of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;sec check\u0026rdquo; procedure!]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment: If you contact Mr Looy, or Mr Landis, could you please get them to put their comments in writing (print) so that what is said can be tested to ascertain that you are being told the truth, or given accurate exegesis?  Proverbs 18:17.  Sadly, many have been just too willing to believe what they are told without checking it out (be good Bereans as AiG-US has said!).   In fact, one of the tragedies in all of this has been that AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s standard pattern has been to ask people to \u0026lsquo;contact us and you\u0026rsquo;ll get the facts\u0026rsquo;-but always declining if asked if a CMI person could be there to give the other side of the story.  And/or people are sworn to secrecy not to reveal to CMI what they are told.  Which is why it was so important to have the open (Briese) enquiry at last, where evidence could be presented, and tested at cross-examination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWe plead with you to help us inhibit this unbiblical internet gossip and rumor mill by contacting us directly and/or simply committing it in prayer to the Lord. Thank you.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCMI comment:   What CMI has put on the Internet is not gossip or rumor.  No one has demonstrated any factual error in what we have made available, and as we have said, if anyone will demonstrate such error we will correct anything we have written and we are sure Mr Briese would also.  It is \u0026lsquo;whispering\u0026rsquo; in telephone calls, swearing people to secrecy, as has been the pattern, that is gossip by definition, and that generates dark deeds and poisons relationships.   So people are being urged to avoid gossip by partaking of gossip!  We have with tears pleaded and pleaded for even the courtesy of open meeting for resolution, yet now we see this document that claims the very opposite, as if black is white, and good evil.  Enough!  If we had had the chance to talk all together in the open, even once, then maybe AiG\u0026rsquo;s Board, or at least some of them, might have come to see how seriously \u0026lsquo;filtered\u0026rsquo; their understanding of events is.  Sadly, this was never once permitted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSincerely,\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBoard of Directors\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis -USA\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePastor Don Landis, Chairman\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDan Chin, Vice Chairman\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDr. Mark Jackson\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDan Manthei\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTim Dudley\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWith sadness, but resolved to see righteousness reign,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Board of Directors,\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Ministries International (Australia)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKerry Boettcher, Chairman\u003cbr /\u003eDr David Christie\u003cbr /\u003eRev. Dr. Don Hardgrave\u003cbr /\u003eCarolyn McPherson\u003cbr /\u003eDr Carl Wieland\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis responds to CMI"},{"content":"From Newsweek:\nConsider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t lost blood. All that\u0026rsquo;s happened is his heart has stopped beating \u0026ndash; the definition of \u0026ldquo;clinical death\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? \u0026ldquo;After one hour, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we\u0026rsquo;d done something wrong.\u0026rdquo; In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later. But if the cells are still alive, why can\u0026rsquo;t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body\u0026rsquo;s primary defense against cancer. \u0026ldquo;It looks to us,\u0026rdquo; says Becker, \u0026ldquo;as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die.\u0026rdquo; With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. [\u0026hellip;] \u0026ldquo;We give them oxygen,\u0026rdquo; Becker says. \u0026ldquo;We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it\u0026rsquo;s taking up more oxygen.\u0026rdquo; Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion. A study at four hospitals showed a remarkable rate of success in treating sudden cardiac arrest with an approach that involved, among other things, a \u0026ldquo;cardioplegic\u0026rdquo; blood infusion to keep the heart in a state of suspended animation. The study involved just 34 patients, but 80 percent of them were discharged from the hospital alive. In one study of traditional methods, the figure was about 15 percent.\n(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-06-06):\nI believe the significance of this discovery cannot be overstated.We'll probably be forced to redefine \"death\".\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/hospitals-have-been-treating-cardiac.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eConsider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t lost blood. All that\u0026rsquo;s happened is his heart has stopped beating \u0026ndash; the definition of \u0026ldquo;clinical death\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? \u0026ldquo;After one hour, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we\u0026rsquo;d done something wrong.\u0026rdquo; In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later. \u003cp\u003e But if the cells are still alive, why can\u0026rsquo;t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hospitals have been treating cardiac arrest wrong?"},{"content":"These guys are good. (Hat tip to Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/night-at-creation-museum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThese guys are good.  (Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/night_at_the_creation_museum.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xR8MGAsidFI\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xR8MGAsidFI\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Night at the Creation Museum"},{"content":"Until yesterday, I\u0026rsquo;d only attended funerals or memorial services for four people I\u0026rsquo;ve known; three of those have been in the last three years. All were at least nominally religious or spiritual funerals, and all (except the first, which I was too young to fully understand) struck a deep emotional chord in me. They were celebrations of the lives of these people, combined with grief for the loss of their presence. I wondered if a non-religious funeral would have the same emotional content.\nYesterday, I flew up to Las Vegas for Clark Adams\u0026rsquo; memorial service. Mel Lipman of HALVASON was the officiant\u0026ndash;he said it was about the 50th such service he had done, but was the first for someone that he had been such a close friend to. He was followed by remarks from Clark\u0026rsquo;s friends Rob and Raul, who shared personal memories of Clark and what he meant to them. Clark\u0026rsquo;s mother was represented by a beautiful letter that closed with \u0026ldquo;THOUGHTfully yours, Clark\u0026rsquo;s mom.\u0026rdquo; There were photos and video of Clark. We laughed, we shed tears, we hugged. We shared memories of Clark and we made new friends. At dinner afterward, several people gave homage to Clark by ordering Diet Cokes with no ice (even though Matt said \u0026ldquo;I hate Diet Coke\u0026rdquo; and Brandon said \u0026ldquo;and I love ice!\u0026rdquo;).\nThe emotional content was the same\u0026ndash;a mix of joy for the positive contributions Clark made to all of our lives and sadness that he\u0026rsquo;s gone. But I found it a better experience than the religious ceremonies in this regard, in that these are people like me, that I can genuinely connect with on a deeper and more honest way, despite the fact that I don\u0026rsquo;t know many of them very well. We know that Clark is gone, and that our lives here are all we have, making every moment more precious.\nEamon Knight (2007-06-04):\nI've given (ie. arranged for and delivered the eulogy, but with a UU chaplain actually MCing the event) exactly two non-religious memorials services: for my parents. Yes: you celebrate the life of the deceased, you recall all the things you loved about them, you begin to assess their legacy to you.As it happens, it wasn't that much different from many of the United Church funerals I went to, back in the day: they were usually billed as \"A Celebration of the Life of....\", and there was more talk about the person than there was about Heaven and God. So not all religious funerals are the same.Be that as it may, my sympathies on the loss of your friend.\nLippard (2007-06-05):\nEamon: Thanks for sharing your experience and for your sympathy.I'm enjoying reading your blog, \"Thinking for Free,\" as well--I'm glad you stopped by to comment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/clark-adams-memorial-service.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUntil yesterday, I\u0026rsquo;d only attended funerals or memorial services for four people I\u0026rsquo;ve known; three of those have been in the last three years.  All were at least nominally religious or spiritual funerals, and all (except the first, which I was too young to fully understand) struck a deep emotional chord in me.  They were celebrations of the lives of these people, combined with grief for the loss of their presence.  I wondered if a non-religious funeral would have the same emotional content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYesterday, I flew up to Las Vegas for Clark Adams\u0026rsquo; memorial service.  Mel Lipman of HALVASON was the officiant\u0026ndash;he said it was about the 50th such service he had done, but was the first for someone that he had been such a close friend to.  He was followed by remarks from Clark\u0026rsquo;s friends Rob and Raul, who shared personal memories of Clark and what he meant to them.   Clark\u0026rsquo;s mother was represented by a beautiful letter that closed with \u0026ldquo;THOUGHTfully yours, Clark\u0026rsquo;s mom.\u0026rdquo;  There were photos and video of Clark.  We laughed, we shed tears, we hugged.  We shared memories of Clark and we made new friends.  At dinner afterward, several people gave homage to Clark by ordering Diet Cokes with no ice (even though Matt said \u0026ldquo;I hate Diet Coke\u0026rdquo; and Brandon said \u0026ldquo;and I love ice!\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe emotional content was the same\u0026ndash;a mix of joy for the positive contributions Clark made to all of our lives and sadness that he\u0026rsquo;s gone.  But I found it a better experience than the religious ceremonies in this regard, in that these are people like me, that I can genuinely connect with on a deeper and more honest way, despite the fact that I don\u0026rsquo;t know many of them very well.  We know that Clark is gone, and that our lives here are all we have, making every moment more precious.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Clark Adams' memorial service"},{"content":"Creation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit against Answers in Genesis in Australia.\nFrom The Australian:\nA week after former Queensland science teacher Ken Ham opened the world\u0026rsquo;s first Creation Museum - a $33 million facility in Petersburg, Kentucky - he is being sued by the Australian evangelical organisation he helped to set up and which served as a springboard for his leap into the US evangelical movement two decades ago.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe suit focuses on a dispute over the Australian organisation\u0026rsquo;s production of a creationist magazine, sold in the US to more than 35,000 subscribers, and has led to revelations about the three-year battle between the two ministries. A 40-page report, written by Mr Briese and obtained by The Australian, reveals a bitter power struggle across the Pacific that began with a challenge to the power Mr Ham allegedly wielded over the ministries.\n\u0026hellip;\nA magistrate between 1982 and 90, Mr Briese found in his report that Mr Ham and his US organisation had launched a campaign after his leadership was challenged by his US deputy, Brandon Vallorani, who was then sacked, and Australian leader Carl Wieland, who was later allegedly the subject of innuendo about his private life. According to Mr Briese\u0026rsquo;s report, the campaign last year also involved John Mackay, a former associate of Mr Ham in Queensland, who was excommunicated in the 1980s after making allegations of witchcraft and necrophilia against a fellow member of the ministry. The joint Australian-US push for reforms came amid concerns over Mr Ham\u0026rsquo;s domination of the ministries, the amount of money being spent on his fellow executives and a shift away from delivering the creationist message to raising donations. In his report, Mr Briese said Mr Ham and the US organisation responded with sackings, bullying and, in some instances, \u0026ldquo;unbiblical/unethical/unlawful behaviour\u0026rdquo; towards the Australian ministry that he suspected was intended to send it into bankruptcy. \u0026ldquo;The report recommends that if CMI is to fulfil its fiduciary responsibilities to protect and safeguard the Australian ministry, CMI, and have a recalcitrant Answers in Genesis-USA brought to account for the serious wrongs it has committed,\u0026rdquo; he said, \u0026ldquo;CMI has no option left except to bring AiG-USA before the secular courts, the \u0026lsquo;powers that be ordained by God\u0026rsquo; under Romans 13.\u0026quot;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve previously reported on the details of CMI\u0026rsquo;s complaints here, on the John McKay witchcraft and necrophilia accusations here, and on the CMI/AiG schism here.\nUPDATE (June 4, 2007): P.Z. Myers gives his take, as does Bartholomew\u0026rsquo;s notes on religion blog.\nThe Clarrie Briese report and related documents, including the text of the legal complaint, is online at the Creation Ministries International website.\nUPDATE (June 5, 2007): Answers in Genesis has responded to the lawsuit with an email to supporters, and Creation Ministries International has commented on that email\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve got the full text on my blog, with some color commentary of my own.\nsylas (2007-06-04):\nHey Jim; do you know that a suit has definitely been filed? I am keen to find some confirmation of this from somewhere.I was struck that this newspaper report was pretty thin on details, and mostly spoke about a 40 page report by Clarence Briese that recommended a lawsuit. Briese was also heavily involved in fights between Aussie Skeptics and CSF that you covered so well at the time. The report does say that a suit was filed; I'd just like to confirm it. I'll be trying some more myself as well.Thanks -- Chris\nLippard (2007-06-04):\nChris:I've only got the newspaper's statement that one was filed--like you, I'm trying to obtain confirmation, including the venue. It is interesting that the newspaper article focuses on the report and not on the complaint.I'll post an update when I find out more.\nsylas (2007-06-04):\nOK Jim, I can confirm on my own behalf. I have just been talking to a very helpful person in the Queensland Courts who showed me how to use their systems.You can search for recent filings at Queensland eCourts search page.The point in question here is a claim that was filed on May 31. Here's a link File Summary.In brief, the case is listed as follows: 4690/07 Creation Ministries International Ltd \u0026 another -V- Answers In Genesis Of Kentucky, Inc \u0026 anotherThe parties are as follows:Plaintiffs:Creation Ministries International LtdAnswers In Genesis International Pty Ltdboth represented By Hopgood Ganim LawyersDefendants:Answers In Genesis Of Kentucky, Inc Ham, Kenneth Alfred\nLippard (2007-06-05):\nThanks, Chris!BTW, I'm enjoying reading your blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/creation-ministries-international-sues.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit against Answers in Genesis in Australia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20070610120854/https://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21843706-2702,00.html?from=public_rss\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Australian\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA week after former Queensland science teacher Ken Ham opened the world\u0026rsquo;s first Creation Museum - a $33 million facility in Petersburg, Kentucky - he is being sued by the Australian evangelical organisation he helped to set up and which served as a springboard for his leap into the US evangelical movement two decades ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe suit focuses on a dispute over the Australian organisation\u0026rsquo;s production of a creationist magazine, sold in the US to more than 35,000 subscribers, and has led to revelations about the three-year battle between the two ministries. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creation Ministries International sues Answers in Genesis"},{"content":"The Open Government Act, a bill which would require the government to provide justifications for refusal to answer Freedom of Information Act requests, has been blocked in the Senate by an anonymous, secret hold placed by one Senator. This is the same process by which Sen. Ted Stevens placed a secret hold last year on a bill to create a publicly searchable database of earmarks.\nAfter the Society for Professional Journalists began a search for the responsible Senator who wants the government to continue to be able to stonewall FOIA requests without justification, he came forward\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Senator Jon Kyl.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/06/sen-jon-kyl-responsible-for-secret-hold.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Open Government Act, a bill which would require the government to provide justifications for refusal to answer Freedom of Information Act requests, has been blocked in the Senate by an anonymous, secret hold placed by one Senator.  This is the same process by which Sen. Ted Stevens placed a secret hold last year on a bill to create a publicly searchable database of earmarks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the Society for Professional Journalists began a search for the responsible Senator who wants the government to continue to be able to stonewall FOIA requests without justification, he came forward\u0026ndash;and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/06/anonymous_hold_revealed_jon_ky.php\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Senator Jon Kyl\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sen. Jon Kyl responsible for \"secret hold\" on Open Government Act"},{"content":"May\u0026rsquo;s total was 2009. The graph needs little comment this month, I think.\nM.C. N/TR Descriptive StatsMean939.6912752Median822Mode746Standard Deviation323.391527Range1527Minimum482Maximum2009Sum140014Count149\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/maricopa-county-trustees-sale-notices.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMay\u0026rsquo;s total was 2009. The graph needs little comment this month, I think.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/mayNTRs.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070889934877132754\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"/images/mayNTRs.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth\u003e\u003cb\u003eM.C. N/TR Descriptive Stats\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMean\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e939.6912752\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMedian\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e822\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMode\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e746\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eStandard Deviation\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e323.391527\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eRange\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1527\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMinimum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e482\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMaximum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e2009\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e140014\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eCount\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e149\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maricopa County Trustee's Sale Notices for May 2007"},{"content":"Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on how gay parents have relied on the development of new methods to ensure their ability to adopt and serve as guardians of children. Second-parent adoption and visitation rights to adopted children by non-custodial parents (the two examples Ed provides) are also available to unmarried straights. The result is that unmarried couples who previously married solely to obtain such legal protections don\u0026rsquo;t need to do so.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/how-conservative-opposition-to-gay.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/why_gay_marriage_is_good_for_s.php\"\u003ereports on how gay parents have relied on the development of new methods to ensure their ability to adopt and serve as guardians of children.\u003c/a\u003e Second-parent adoption and visitation rights to adopted children by non-custodial parents (the two examples Ed provides) are also available to unmarried straights.  The result is that unmarried couples who previously married solely to obtain such legal protections don\u0026rsquo;t need to do so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How conservative opposition to gay marriage has undermined straight marriage"},{"content":"Andrew Sullivan reports on the origin of the term \u0026ldquo;enhanced interrogation techniques,\u0026quot; as well as justification for their use that directly parallels those of the Bush administration.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/origin-of-term-enhanced-interrogation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAndrew Sullivan \u003ca href=\"http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html\"\u003ereports on the origin of the term \u0026ldquo;enhanced interrogation techniques,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e as well as justification for their use that directly parallels those of the Bush administration.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Origin of the term \"enhanced interrogation techniques\""},{"content":"P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has put together a carnival of blog responses to the Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum, which includes a photographic tour of the museum. The museum\u0026rsquo;s content is as bad as you might expect.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/answers-in-genesis-creationism-museum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has put together \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/the_creation_museum.php\"\u003ea carnival of blog responses to the Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum\u003c/a\u003e, which includes a photographic tour of the museum.  The museum\u0026rsquo;s content is as bad as you might expect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum"},{"content":"When I wrote my tribute to Clark Adams, I included this paragraph:\nSuicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark\u0026rsquo;s activism in support of atheism, I won\u0026rsquo;t be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark\u0026rsquo;s atheism was why he killed himself, but there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence to support that.Patrick Trotter has now commented on Clark\u0026rsquo;s death, exemplifying exactly what I was referring to, under the heading \u0026ldquo;When One has no Hope\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;:\nThis is what happens when someone has no hope or faith. Nothing to Believe in\u0026hellip;Nothing or No one to turn to. It\u0026rsquo;s a shame that a life this young was wasted. It\u0026rsquo;s also a shame that he spent his whole life, dedicated to waging war against God.\nI hope he found peace and salvation before he went\u0026hellip;..but with his resume, I doubt it.Patrick, who I\u0026rsquo;m sure never met Clark, is making a number of erroneous assumptions\u0026ndash;that Clark believed in nothing, that Clark had no support, that his life was \u0026ldquo;wasted,\u0026rdquo; and that he was \u0026ldquo;waging war against God.\u0026rdquo; He\u0026rsquo;s made no attempt to find out anything about Clark, what his life was like, what he thought, what he did, or the effects he\u0026rsquo;s had on other people. Patrick Trotter here demonstrates the offensiveness of a religious bigot who has no interest in understanding, and who can\u0026rsquo;t resist making the suggestion that Clark is now burning in hell for his disbelief, an argumentum ad baculum to try to keep his fellow believers in line.\nClark believed in many things\u0026ndash;he was a fan of science, of magic, of comedy, of music, of a good argument and a good joke. He was a funny man who had many friends. He lived a productive life that had positive impact on everyone around him. And he didn\u0026rsquo;t believe God existed\u0026ndash;he no more waged war on God than on Santa Claus. He opposed religion and didn\u0026rsquo;t care for religious ritual (even in secular form)\u0026ndash;his statement that has been most repeatedly quoted is \u0026ldquo;If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.\u0026quot;\nA contrasting Christian commentary on Clark\u0026rsquo;s death comes from Anne Jackson, who ponders the extent to which Christian stigmatization of atheists helps reinforce their negative impressions of Christianity:\nAside from the extreme “turn or burn” preachers in our day, we “modern, contemporary” Christians probably do an equal part of stigmatizing those of different (or no) faiths. The “unchurched”…the “lost souls we must save!!”…I have far too often encountered the almost immediate and disapproving looks and attitude that so many of us habitually carry around when discussing someone who is a “wayward child” or “bless his heart, he’s just so lost.” I am ashamed that I have not made it a bigger priority in my own life to be more sensitive and less prideful in my faith. And as the title of this post says, I pray for mercy and forgiveness because we know not what we do.\nThe only thing is…we should.\nWe should know. And we should love.\nAnne shows herself to be a more thoughtful and open-minded person than Patrick\u0026ndash;somebody that an atheist could possibly even productively interact with, to gain mutual understanding.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/contrasting-christian-responses-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I wrote \u003ca href=\"/2007/05/clark-adams-rip.html\"\u003emy tribute to Clark Adams\u003c/a\u003e, I included this paragraph:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSuicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark\u0026rsquo;s activism in support of atheism, I won\u0026rsquo;t be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark\u0026rsquo;s atheism was why he killed himself, but there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence to support that.\u003c/blockquote\u003ePatrick Trotter has now commented on Clark\u0026rsquo;s death, exemplifying exactly what I was referring to, \u003ca href=\"http://bygtex.vox.com/library/post/when-one-has-no-hope.html\"\u003eunder the heading \u0026ldquo;When One has no Hope\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis is what happens when someone has no hope or faith. Nothing to Believe in\u0026hellip;Nothing or No one to turn to. It\u0026rsquo;s a shame that a life this young was wasted. It\u0026rsquo;s also a shame that he spent his whole life, dedicated to waging war against God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI hope he found peace and salvation before he went\u0026hellip;..but with his resume, I doubt it.\u003c/blockquote\u003ePatrick, who I\u0026rsquo;m sure never met Clark, is making a number of erroneous assumptions\u0026ndash;that Clark believed in nothing, that Clark had no support, that his life was \u0026ldquo;wasted,\u0026rdquo; and that he was \u0026ldquo;waging war against God.\u0026rdquo;  He\u0026rsquo;s made no attempt to find out anything about Clark, what his life was like, what he thought, what he did, or the effects he\u0026rsquo;s had on other people.  Patrick Trotter here demonstrates the offensiveness of a religious bigot who has no interest in understanding, and who can\u0026rsquo;t resist making the suggestion that Clark is now burning in hell for his disbelief, an \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eargumentum ad baculum\u003c/span\u003e to try to keep his fellow believers in line.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClark believed in many things\u0026ndash;he was a fan of science, of magic, of comedy, of music, of a good argument and a good joke.  He was a funny man who had many friends.  He lived a productive life that had positive impact on everyone around him.  And he didn\u0026rsquo;t believe God existed\u0026ndash;he no more waged war on God than on Santa Claus.  He opposed religion and didn\u0026rsquo;t care for religious ritual (even in secular form)\u0026ndash;his statement that has been most repeatedly quoted is \u0026ldquo;If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA contrasting Christian commentary on Clark\u0026rsquo;s death comes from Anne Jackson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.flowerdust.net/?p=402\"\u003ewho ponders the extent to which Christian stigmatization of atheists helps reinforce their negative impressions of Christianity\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAside from the extreme “turn or burn” preachers in our day, we “modern, contemporary” Christians probably do an equal part of stigmatizing those of different (or no) faiths. The “unchurched”…the “lost souls we must save!!”…I have far too often encountered the almost immediate and disapproving looks and attitude that so many of us habitually carry around when discussing someone who is a “wayward child” or “bless his heart, he’s just so lost.” \u003cp\u003eI am ashamed that I have not made it a bigger priority in my own life to be more sensitive and less prideful in my faith. And as the title of this post says, I pray for mercy and forgiveness because we know not what we do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Contrasting Christian responses to Clark Adams' death"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s not often that an event right in my neighborhood makes the front page of CNN\u0026rsquo;s website, but it did today when a foul smell at Sierra Vista Elementary School in Phoenix turned out to be a dead body in the cafeteria air conditioning ductwork. Classes were dismissed for the day.\nApparently the guy was trying to break into the school and became trapped and died (presumably of thirst).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this one to Fortean Times, which regularly prints accounts of stupid criminals and strange deaths.\nThe Arizona Republic covered the story earlier today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/foul-smell-at-elementary-school-turns.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not often that an event right in my neighborhood makes \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/25/school.body.ap/index.html\"\u003ethe front page of CNN\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e, but it did today when a foul smell at Sierra Vista Elementary School in Phoenix turned out to be a dead body in the cafeteria air conditioning ductwork.  Classes were dismissed for the day.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently the guy was trying to break into the school and became trapped and died (presumably of thirst).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this one to \u003ca href=\"http://www.forteantimes.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which regularly prints accounts of stupid criminals and strange deaths.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/0525duct0525-ON-CP.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e covered the story\u003c/a\u003e earlier today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foul smell at elementary school turns out to be dead body in air duct"},{"content":"\nYou scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.\nScientific Atheist\n75% Apathetic Atheist\n50% Militant Atheist\n33% Spiritual Atheist\n33% Agnostic\n25% Angry Atheist\n8% Theist\n8% What kind of atheist are you?\ncreated with QuizFarm.com Historical Comments Kat Lippard (2007-05-26):\nMy results, big surprise:Apathetic Atheist 83%Scientific Atheist 75%Spiritual Atheist 67%Angry Atheist 67%Agnostic 58%Theist 33%Militant Atheist 8%\nSchtacky (2007-05-30):\nNo real surprise here, either: Scientific Atheist - 83% Militant Atheist - 67% Spiritual Atheist - 58% Agnostic - 42% Angry Atheist - 25% Apathetic Atheist - 17% Theist - 17%\ndoughrama (2007-06-20):\nScientific Atheist 83%Spiritual Atheist 75%Agnostic 67%Apathetic Atheis t42%Militant Atheist 33%Angry Atheist 25%Theist 0%\nMichael C. Rush (2007-06-20):\nAngry Atheist - 75%Scientific Atheist - 75%Militant Atheist - 58%Agnostic - 42%Apathetic Atheist - 42%Spiritual Atheist - 42%Theist - 17%You guys are much better at not being \"angry\" than I am...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/what-kind-of-atheist-are-you.html/","summary":"\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"5\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"400\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eYou scored as \u003cb\u003eScientific Atheist\u003c/b\u003e, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"300\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:78%;\"  \u003eScientific Atheist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003ctable bgcolor=\"#dddddd\" border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"75\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:78%;\"  \u003e75%\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:78%;\"  \u003eApathetic Atheist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What kind of atheist are you?"},{"content":"Bill Maher criticizes the Republican presidential debate and does an excellent job of re-contextualizing Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s position on Iraq and doesn\u0026rsquo;t let the idiotic politician he\u0026rsquo;s speaking with continue to misunderstand:\nHe wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying that we were \u0026ldquo;asking for it.\u0026rdquo; What he was saying was, \u0026ldquo;We should listen to our enemies and maybe the reason they\u0026rsquo;re mad at us is because we\u0026rsquo;ve been meddling in the middle East.\u0026rdquo; We were in Saudi Arabia. That\u0026rsquo;s what Bin Laden was mad at us for. Now we\u0026rsquo;re in Iraq and we\u0026rsquo;re screwing up that country. Maybe if we listened to them instead of saying, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re always the good people\u0026rdquo; we would actually make ourselves safer.It\u0026rsquo;s nice to see this position finally getting some serious consideration. Better late than never, I suppose\u0026ndash;but dammit if the libertarians haven\u0026rsquo;t been saying this crap all along!\nPBH (2007-05-25):\n5 reasons Ron Paul was right on the origins of 9/11\nLippard (2007-05-25):\nNice list of reasons--thanks for providing the link.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/ron-paul-is-bill-mahers-new-hero.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBill Maher criticizes the Republican presidential debate and does an excellent job of re-contextualizing Ron Paul\u0026rsquo;s position on Iraq and doesn\u0026rsquo;t let the idiotic politician he\u0026rsquo;s speaking with continue to misunderstand:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying that we were \u0026ldquo;asking for it.\u0026rdquo; What he was saying was, \u0026ldquo;We should listen to our enemies and maybe the reason they\u0026rsquo;re mad at us is because we\u0026rsquo;ve been meddling in the middle East.\u0026rdquo; We were in Saudi Arabia. That\u0026rsquo;s what Bin Laden was mad at us for. Now we\u0026rsquo;re in Iraq and we\u0026rsquo;re screwing up that country. Maybe if we listened to them instead of saying, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re always the good people\u0026rdquo; we would actually make ourselves safer.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s nice to see this position finally getting some serious consideration. Better late than never, I suppose\u0026ndash;but dammit if the libertarians haven\u0026rsquo;t been saying this crap \u003ci\u003eall along\u003c/i\u003e!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/5OeeevXtlDY\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/5OeeevXtlDY\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ron Paul is Bill Maher's \"New Hero\""},{"content":"Salon.com has an interesting article about how the American Center for Voting Rights, which was front-and-center in convicted felon ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)\u0026rsquo;s congressional committee hearings on alleged voter fraud, has disappeared.\nThe Republicans were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in locations that had high Democratic voter turnout, despite the fact that no prosecutable cases of such fraud have turned up. The American Center for Voting Rights was an apparent think tank (which formed right before the hearings started) which offered sound bites and alleged research documenting the putative problem.\nSeveral of the fired U.S. Attorneys were individuals who had refused to go after weak voter fraud cases against Democratic candidates in locations where the Republicans and ACVR were also trying to make it more difficult to vote and reduce Democratic voter turnout.\nCheck out the Salon.com article.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/bogus-voter-fraud-complaints-from-bogus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSalon.com has \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2166589?nav=ais\"\u003ean interesting article\u003c/a\u003e about how the American Center for Voting Rights, which was front-and-center in convicted felon ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)\u0026rsquo;s congressional committee hearings on alleged voter fraud, has disappeared.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Republicans were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in locations that had high Democratic voter turnout, despite the fact that no prosecutable cases of such fraud have turned up.  The American Center for Voting Rights was an apparent think tank (which formed right before the hearings started) which offered sound bites and alleged research documenting the putative problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral of the fired U.S. Attorneys were individuals who had refused to go after weak voter fraud cases against Democratic candidates in locations where the Republicans and ACVR were also trying to make it more difficult to vote and reduce Democratic voter turnout.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2166589?nav=ais\"\u003ethe Salon.com article\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bogus voter fraud complaints from a bogus voter fraud think tank"},{"content":"Last week was National Police Week in Washington, D.C., which prompted D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to attempt to prevent problems (as reported in the Washington Post):\nD.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other \u0026ldquo;unacceptable behavior.\u0026rdquo; Lanier ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.\nThis did not, however, prevent some abuses from occurring:\nI am actually the citizen, who filmed 48 hours of misconduct out my window during police week.\nThe visiting officers did not have any problem drinking in public, howling, screaming, yelling and playing bagpipes until 2, 3 and 4 am below our window. They were taking open conatiners of beer into the Irish Channel. They were urinating on the church steps across the street and left behind half empties for the homeless, when they staggered back to the hotels.\nI also have video, which has not been released, of DC MPD sitting in their cars, standing by their cars, while these guys started a bagpipe parade at 12:45 AM on Tuesday morning. For them, I have close ups of the car numbers and the officer\u0026rsquo;s faces as much as my camera would allow.\nI called a total of 9 times, which I documented with times and which officer answered the phone and sent an email to the Mayor, the City Council Members, Chief Lanier and NBC 4.\nChief Lanier showed up at my door 4 hours later and has thus far, at least tried to show some interest in making positive changes.\nIn fact, I have been asked to meet with Commander Burke, Commander Groomes, representatives from DCRA (permits), ABRA (Alcohol Regulations) and EMA this week to further address the problem.\nI had the video posted on youtube.com. My account was hacked after I received threats from a self identified \u0026ldquo;DC police Officer\u0026rdquo; warning me about the size of the \u0026ldquo;Brotherhood and airing dirty laundry.\u0026quot;\nI have started trying to get the video back up and should have it put together again by tomorrow.\nI ask that if you have specific complaints about National Police Week, you please forward them to me. I have set up an anonymous e-mail to collect those complaints. As of today, I have 57 pages of comments, complaints and threats.\nI have not had much support and in fact do fear for my safety. I signed my name to the complaint to the Chief, and am not 100% certain that information will stay confidential.\nAny input, help, support or even a few kind words at this point, would be appreciated.\nYou can look up the videos on youtube.com by searching Inthepubliceye. The e-mail account is a gmail account using the same name.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one of the videos, which shows a number of laws being violated\u0026ndash;drinking alcohol/having open containers on the public street, operating a Segway on the street while drinking alcohol, leaving empty bottles on church steps, and so forth.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/national-police-week-rampage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast week was National Police Week in Washington, D.C., which prompted D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027822.php\"\u003eattempt to prevent problems\u003c/a\u003e (as reported in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eD.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other \u0026ldquo;unacceptable behavior.\u0026rdquo;   \u003cp\u003eLanier ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"National Police Week rampage"},{"content":"I received the unfortunate news this morning that Clark Adams has died, and that he took his own life.\nClark was a long-time board member of the Internet Infidels (and for many years its public relations director) and a frequent speaker and attendee at atheist, freethought, humanist, and skeptical events. He was a jovial, funny man whose talks about atheism in popular culture were always crowd-pleasers. He was not particular about what label to put on his nonbelief, and was supportive of all groups that promoted rationality and critical thinking, including the \u0026ldquo;brights\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;though he did not care for what he called \u0026ldquo;religion without the god stuff.\u0026quot;\nIn a recent posting in which he gave his opinion of last month\u0026rsquo;s celebration of 30 years of Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard University, he described himself as a \u0026ldquo;conference junkie,\u0026rdquo; noting that he attended \u0026ldquo;upwards of a half dozen atheist, humanist, skeptic and freethought conventions a year.\u0026rdquo; He frequently spoke to freethought and atheist groups on college campuses, and was an active promoter of student freethought groups like the Secular Student Alliance and the Campus Freethought Alliance. He was one of the founders of the Secular Coalition of America and regularly helped organize the annual July gathering at Lake Hypatia, which is where I first met him. The frequency of his speaking schedule can be seen in an April 2006 posting on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, which showed him giving six talks in April, June, and July, which included talks on \u0026ldquo;How to Prevent Your Freethought Group From Looking Like a Funeral\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Godless Role Models.\u0026quot;\nSuicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark\u0026rsquo;s activism in support of atheism, I won\u0026rsquo;t be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark\u0026rsquo;s atheism was why he killed himself, but there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence to support that.\nHe attended a performance by his favorite comedian, Doug Stanhope, on Sunday evening, and was found by a friend and his ex-wife in his apartment after the friend did not receive her expected daily call from him. She announced Clark\u0026rsquo;s death on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, where his friends have left their condolences.\nClark has left a mark on the world in the lives of people he\u0026rsquo;s met at these conferences, and communicated with online. He\u0026rsquo;s left an extensive record of postings, which he usually closed with \u0026ldquo;THOUGHTfully Yours, Clark,\u0026rdquo; which includes the story of his deconversion to atheism in the south.\nIf anyone has a video record of any of his presentations, it would be great to see them made available online.\nClark will be missed.\nUPDATE: Cathe Jones has put up a tribute to Clark, with some links to some of his writings. She has put up a more extensive blog entry now, as well.\nUPDATE: Friends are also leaving tributes on Clark\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page, and there are blog tributes from Friendly Atheist and Mark Vuletic.\nUPDATE (May 24, 2007): The American Humanist Association has issued a tribute to Clark.\nUPDATE (May 25, 2007): Information about a memorial service for Clark will be posted at the Las Vegas Freethought Society website. His ashes will likely be scattered at Lake Hypatia at the June 30-July 2 event he was scheduled to emcee.\nUPDATE (May 27, 2007): Raul Martinez has put up a story about an amusing experience with Clark a few months ago.\nUPDATE (May 31, 2007): There will be a memorial service for Clark from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd. There will also be a memorial service at the Lake Hypatia event mentioned above, at 12 noon on Monday, July 2.\nUPDATE (June 7, 2007): Eric Pepke has put up a tribute to Clark.\nUPDATE (May 25, 2008): Clark\u0026rsquo;s MySpace account has been deleted, but this story in the Las Vegas Weekly reports what happened after Doug Stanhope heard about Clark\u0026rsquo;s death:\n\u0026mdash;\nA few days later, he receives word that longtime fan Clark Adams killed himself the night after the Tommy Rocker’s performance. Not that it pushes him over the edge; more apparently, it provided a high note upon which to take his leave. In Adams’ MySpace “Heroes” box, he’d included Doug Stanhope under the heading, “People I Admire that I’ve Had the Honor of Meeting.”\nThere’s a bit on 2002’s Die Laughing: “Life is like animal porn. It’s not for everybody. \u0026hellip; Life is like a movie, if you’ve sat through more than half of it and it’s sucked every second so far, chances are it’s not gonna get great right at the very end and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early.”\nAnd there’s a new entry in Adams’ Comments box from one Doug Stanhope:\nI don’t believe in Heaven but I have a strong faith that there is MySpace in the afterlife and we will all be checking our comments.\nMay your eternity be free of Macy’s gift-card spam.\nRun amok, dear sir.\nlife is like animal porn ...Even if he’s not the best man for the job of deregulating their lives, Stanhope clearly empathizes with those regular people he speaks for, if not always with. He may be solely in it for him, baby, but whether he’s flitting from Vegas to Bisbee or Edinburgh to the Oval Office, he’s pushing the physical and mental and comedic boundaries for all those Joe Schmoes out there who can’t. No drunken goof about it.---At a show in Indianapolis, Stanhope started to talk about Clark Adams (at 4:26), but got distracted and didn't come back to it (at least in the first three of twelve parts on YouTube). Unknown (2007-05-23):\nWowit's rare for me to find other Stanhope fans.I always found Clark entertaining on the board-Vince\nLippard (2007-05-23):\nVince: Clark wasn't the only one--I'm also a fan of his work.Clark was entertaining in person, as well. He was an enjoyable person to be around.\nAnonymous (2007-05-26):\nthank you for your comment over on my site...although a lot of christians might disagree with my thoughts on the topic, i do think clark's death was tragic and i know i attempt to lead a life respectful of anyone who doesn't share the same beliefs I do. i feel awful for any contribution those who are supposed to live a life of love might have had in his depression and death...\nTemy (2007-07-03):\nI was shocked and saddened today to learn of the death of Clark Adams. I always liked Clark a lot and much enjoyed his company when at Lake Hypatia. His warmth, intellect and humor will be missed. I am very pleased that his remains will reside at Lake Hypatia.Temy R. Beal\nGajo Filosofal (2009-12-04):\nI just listened the new stanhop cd, and Clark got immortalized on it. Now he will live on for one thousand years.\nLippard (2009-12-05):\nAwesome! Time to buy and download...\nfrushtrated (2009-12-29):\nWith regard to the Clark Adams mention on the Stanhope CD, he does a very cool bit about it and says \u0026quot;Goodbye, Clark Adams\u0026quot; at the end. On the credits on the cover of the CD version he concludes the thanks yous with: \u0026quot;But mostly - Thank You, Clark Adams. There is a little of you in every show that I do, even on the nights where it is just me\u0026quot;. It is highlighted in yellow. I didn\u0026#39;t even know Mr. Adams, but found the tribute to be pretty damn touching.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/clark-adams-rip.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI received the unfortunate news this morning that Clark Adams has died, and that he took his own life.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nClark was a long-time board member of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e (and for many years its public relations director) and a frequent speaker and attendee at atheist, freethought, humanist, and skeptical events.  He was a jovial, funny man whose talks about atheism in popular culture were always crowd-pleasers.  He was not particular about what label to put on his nonbelief, and was supportive of all groups that promoted rationality and critical thinking, including the \u0026ldquo;brights\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;though he did not care for what he called \u0026ldquo;religion without the god stuff.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=4387999\"\u003ea recent posting in which he gave his opinion of last month\u0026rsquo;s celebration of 30 years of Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard University\u003c/a\u003e, he described himself as a \u0026ldquo;conference junkie,\u0026rdquo; noting that he attended \u0026ldquo;upwards of a half dozen atheist, humanist, skeptic and freethought conventions a year.\u0026rdquo;  He frequently spoke to freethought and atheist groups on college campuses, and was an active promoter of student freethought groups like the \u003ca href=\"http://www.secularstudents.org/\"\u003eSecular Student Alliance\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.campusfreethought.org/\"\u003eCampus Freethought Alliance\u003c/a\u003e.  He was one of the founders of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.secular.org/\"\u003eSecular Coalition of America\u003c/a\u003e and regularly helped organize the annual July gathering at Lake Hypatia, which is where I first met him.  The frequency of his speaking schedule can be seen in \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3300768#post3300768\"\u003ean April 2006 posting on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards\u003c/a\u003e, which showed him giving six talks in April, June, and July, which included talks on \u0026ldquo;How to Prevent Your Freethought Group From Looking Like a Funeral\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Godless Role Models.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSuicide always provokes questions about the cause.  Given Clark\u0026rsquo;s activism in support of atheism, I won\u0026rsquo;t be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark\u0026rsquo;s atheism was why he killed himself, but there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence to support that.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHe attended a performance by his favorite comedian, Doug Stanhope, on Sunday evening, and was found by a friend and his ex-wife in his apartment after the friend did not receive her expected daily call from him.  She \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=4477489\"\u003eannounced Clark\u0026rsquo;s death on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards\u003c/a\u003e, where his friends have left their condolences.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nClark has left a mark on the world in the lives of people he\u0026rsquo;s met at these conferences, and communicated with online.  He\u0026rsquo;s left an extensive record of postings, which he usually closed with \u0026ldquo;THOUGHTfully Yours, Clark,\u0026rdquo;  which includes \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/electronic/email/ex-tian/Clark_Davis_Adams.html\"\u003ethe story of his deconversion to atheism in the south\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIf anyone has a video record of any of his presentations, it would be great to see them made available online.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nClark will be missed.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE:  Cathe Jones has put up \u003ca href=\"http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view\u0026amp;friendID=151979435\u0026amp;blogID=267822266\"\u003ea tribute to Clark, with some links to some of his writings\u003c/a\u003e.  She has put up \u003ca href=\"http://godlessgrief.blogspot.com/2007/05/clark-adams-and-suicide-my-eulogy-to-my.html\"\u003ea more extensive blog entry now\u003c/a\u003e, as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE: Friends are also leaving tributes on \u003ca href=\"http://myspace.com/godlessclark\"\u003eClark\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page\u003c/a\u003e, and there are blog tributes from \u003ca href=\"http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/05/23/bye-clark/\"\u003eFriendly Atheist\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://atheologian.blogspot.com/2007/05/in-memoriam-clark-adams.html\"\u003eMark Vuletic\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 24, 2007):  The American Humanist Association \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/ClarkAdams.php\"\u003ehas issued a tribute to Clark\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 25, 2007):  Information about a memorial service for Clark \u003ca href=\"http://www.lvfs.org/clarkadams/\"\u003ewill be posted at the Las Vegas Freethought Society website\u003c/a\u003e.  His ashes will likely be scattered \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/lakehypatia/\"\u003eat Lake Hypatia at the June 30-July 2 event he was scheduled to emcee\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 27, 2007):  Raul Martinez \u003ca href=\"http://www.lvfs.org/clarkadams/my_friend_clark_adams.html\"\u003ehas put up a story about an amusing experience with Clark a few months ago\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 31, 2007):  There will be a memorial service for Clark from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.uuclv.org/\"\u003eUnitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas\u003c/a\u003e, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd.  There will also be a memorial service at the Lake Hypatia event mentioned above, at 12 noon on Monday, July 2.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (June 7, 2007):  Eric Pepke \u003ca href=\"http://www.lvfs.org/clarkadams/a_tribute_to_clark_adams.html\"\u003ehas put up a tribute to Clark\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 25, 2008): Clark\u0026rsquo;s MySpace account has been deleted, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/jun/02/fear-and-loathing-off-the-campaign-trail/\"\u003ethis story in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLas Vegas Weekly\u003c/span\u003e reports what happened after Doug Stanhope heard about Clark\u0026rsquo;s death\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u0026mdash;\u003cbr /\u003e\nA few days later, he receives word that longtime fan Clark Adams killed himself the night after the Tommy Rocker’s performance. Not that it pushes him over the edge; more apparently, it provided a high note upon which to take his leave. In Adams’ MySpace “Heroes” box, he’d included Doug Stanhope under the heading, “People I Admire that I’ve Had the Honor of Meeting.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThere’s a bit on 2002’s \u003ci\u003eDie Laughing\u003c/i\u003e: “Life is like animal porn. It’s not for everybody. \u0026hellip; Life is like a movie, if you’ve sat through more than half of it and it’s sucked every second so far, chances are it’s not gonna get great right at the very end and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early.”\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAnd there’s a new entry in Adams’ Comments box from one Doug Stanhope:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Clark Adams, RIP"},{"content":"\nThe Ahwatukee Foothills News is sponsoring an \u0026ldquo;Ahwatukee Pet Idol\u0026rdquo; contest, all proceeds of which will go to the animal rescue group that Kat and I volunteer for, Arizona R.E.S.C.U.E.\nOur dog Otto is a contestant and could use your vote\u0026hellip;\nUPDATE (June 23, 2007): Otto has made it through the first two rounds of cuts and is one of the 25 finalists in the last round of voting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/ahwatukee-pet-idol.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/OttowithBall.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/OttowithBall.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5067776359894417874\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Ahwatukee Foothills News is sponsoring an \u003ca href=\"http://petidol.ahwatukee.com/?c=api\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ahwatukee Pet Idol\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e contest, all proceeds of which will go to the animal rescue group that Kat and I volunteer for, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eArizona R.E.S.C.U.E.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur dog Otto is a contestant and could use your vote\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 23, 2007):  Otto has made it through the first two rounds of cuts and is one of the 25 finalists in the last round of voting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ahwatukee Pet Idol"},{"content":"\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/bill-mahers-eulogy-for-jerry-falwell.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/yz5T1EEo8ws\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/yz5T1EEo8ws\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/mahers_eulogy_for_falwell.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill Maher's eulogy for Jerry Falwell"},{"content":"Someone should tell John McCain that pandering to the religious right and dropping f-bombs don\u0026rsquo;t really go together.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/john-mccains-f-bomb-habit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomeone should tell John McCain that pandering to the religious right and \u003ca href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/159137.php\"\u003edropping f-bombs\u003c/a\u003e don\u0026rsquo;t really go together.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John McCain's f-bomb habit"},{"content":"As reported at the Reason blog:\nGIBSON: According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement has already infected people like Rosie O\u0026rsquo;Donnell and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul. With me now is FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.\nSo, Michelle, this stuns me. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have stunned me had it come up in the Democratic debate, but it\u0026rsquo;s a jaw-dropper to see it in the Republican debate.\nMICHELLE MALKIN: It is and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t belong here. And I\u0026rsquo;m glad that this moment provided great TV for FOX News — it was a very instructive exchange — but Ron Paul really has no business being on stage as a legitimate representative of Republicans, because the 9/11 truth virus is something that infects only a very small proportion of people that would identify themselves as conservative or Republican. And as you say, John, this is far more prevalent, this strain of 9/11 truth virus, on the left, and in much of the mainstream of the Democratic Party as that Rasmussen poll showed.\n\u0026hellip;\nYou know, I try not to spend too much time in these cesspools, but it is worth taking a visit to places like, you know, these WTC7 sites and Students and Scholars for Truth, and I note that Ron Paul has basically allied himself with these people. He appears with Students for Truth on campus and he\u0026rsquo;s appeared on radio shows like 9/11 conspiracy nut Alex Jones.\nIf Ron Paul has ever said anything in support of the \u0026ldquo;9/11 truth\u0026rdquo; nutcases, I\u0026rsquo;ve not heard of it and would condemn it. He certainly didn\u0026rsquo;t in the debates\u0026ndash;rather, he said, correctly, that \u0026ldquo;blowback\u0026rdquo; is a significant cause of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and U.S. interests. That doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that Americans have \u0026ldquo;invited\u0026rdquo; attacks, nor that Bush planned 9/11. The fact that conservatives are completely misrepresenting Ron Paul in order to discredit him and avoid addressing his arguments shows their moral and intellectual bankruptcy.\nMalkin\u0026rsquo;s claim that Ron Paul has \u0026ldquo;allied himself\u0026rdquo; with 9/11 conspiracy theorists and \u0026ldquo;appears with Students for Truth on campus\u0026rdquo; is a fabrication\u0026ndash;the factoid behind the latter is that a student member of a 9/11 conspiracy group (Justin Martell \u0026ldquo;Students Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo;) was in the audience at a Ron Paul campus appearance, and asked Paul\u0026rsquo;s opinion about 9/11 (there\u0026rsquo;s video at the Reason blog).\nRon Paul has appeared on Alex Jones\u0026rsquo; show (to criticize Bush, advocate the gold standard, and oppose plans for a North American Union), and I think that does show a sign of poor judgment on his part\u0026ndash;he does have some wacky and wrong-headed ideas.\nMalkin has, for once, admitted her mistake:\nLast week, on John Gibson\u0026rsquo;s Fox News Channel show, \u0026ldquo;The Big Story,\u0026rdquo; I was asked to comment on 9/11 conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul. Here\u0026rsquo;s the video. In the segment, I referred to \u0026ldquo;Students and Scholars for Truth.\u0026rdquo; The accurate name of the group I was referring to is \u0026ldquo;Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth.\u0026rdquo; (There\u0026rsquo;s a separate group called \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth,\u0026rdquo; which I\u0026rsquo;ve blogged about previously.) I also stated that Paul appeared on campus with Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. This is incorrect. The incident I was referring to was an exchange that took place at a campaign house party, not during an on-campus joint appearance, as I mistakenly stated. I regret the errors and am forwarding this post to The Big Story producers so that they can air these corrections if they wish to do so.Correcting mistakes doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be her usual practice, but it should be encouraged when it happens\u0026hellip;\nEinzige (2007-05-19):\nBut Malkin's retraction still seems to fall short of a complete reversal of her claim that RP has \"allied himself\" with the WTC conspiracy kooks. Don't you think?\nLippard (2007-05-19):\nYep, you're right... she goes on to make further suggestions to that effect.\nEinzige (2007-05-20):\nIn fact, aside from labeling RP \"Bircher-esque\", she goes on to basically call The Lippard Blog a \"fever swamp\" and us his \"hysterical minions\" (Well, maybe just you, since I didn't contribute to his campaign, nor do I plan to vote for him come election time--However, I am still completely offended by the remark)!That doesn't really seem like much of a retraction at all.Maybe it's time to pull out the big guns and show that idiotic Malkin cheerleading video again?\nGW (2008-01-11):\nDid she forget the same people she's in lockstep with probably had her family in Japanese concentration camps during ww2? I guess she's an escapee who obviously needs to be apprehended.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/michelle-malkin-slanders-rep-ron-paul.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs reported at the \u003ca href=\"http://reason.com/blog/show/120288.html\"\u003eReason blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGIBSON:\u003c/strong\u003e According to a recent \u003cstrong\u003eRasmussen Report\u003c/strong\u003e poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called \u003cstrong\u003e9/11 Truth Movement\u003c/strong\u003e has already infected people like \u003cstrong\u003eRosie O\u0026rsquo;Donnell\u003c/strong\u003e and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul. With me now is FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, Michelle, this stuns me. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have stunned me had it come up in the Democratic debate, but it\u0026rsquo;s a jaw-dropper to see it in the Republican debate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Michelle Malkin slanders Rep. Ron Paul on Fox News"},{"content":"An excellent John Hodgman appearance on The Daily Show.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the context of the final Bush quotation:\nI like the idea of people running for office. There\u0026rsquo;s a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if that will be their platform or not. But it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ndash; I don\u0026rsquo;t think so. I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table. And so \u0026ndash; but Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remain on the terrorist list for a reason. Our position has not changed on Hezbollah.Crazy.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/bushs-body-language.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn excellent \u003ca href=\"http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/18/daily-show-reading-bushs-body-language/\"\u003eJohn Hodgman appearance on The Daily Show\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050316-3.html\"\u003econtext of the final Bush quotation\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e I like the idea of people running for office.  There\u0026rsquo;s a positive effect when you run for office.  Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if that will be their platform or not.  But it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ndash; I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.  I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.  And so \u0026ndash; but Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remain on the terrorist list for a reason.  Our position has not changed on Hezbollah.\u003c/blockquote\u003eCrazy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's body language"},{"content":"It looks like underground Paris is even more interesting than underground London:\nThe Paris underground, often referred to as the catacombs, has been luring curious visitors for centuries. The City of Lights is built atop a vast realm of darkness: enormous gypsum and limestone quarries that were mined beginning in the 12th century for the construction of Notre Dame, the Louvre, and other edifices. Burrowed haphazardly beneath the surface city, these quarries became increasingly unstable over time. When a street collapsed in 1774, Parisian authorities investigated the galleries and reinforced weak areas. As they did, the investigators marked the tunnel walls with the names of the corresponding ground-level streets. These two-century-old signs are still used for navigation.\nThe freshly mapped underworld would soon have many uses. From 1785 until the 1880s, the quarries received bones from Paris\u0026rsquo;s overflowing cemeteries—the public Les Catacombes museum, housed deep inside a blocked-off section of the quarries, alone contains the bones of some six million citizens. During World War II, the passages were occupied not only by the French resistance but also by Germans, who left their traces in a military installation called the Bunker Allemand. Since then, artists, performers, graffitists, and others have added to the catacombs\u0026rsquo; multilayered history. \u0026ldquo;Regardless of where your research takes you, there are always new things to discover about subterranean Paris,\u0026rdquo; says Ingmar Arnold, a Berlin-based underground historian. \u0026ldquo;Wherever you walk, you can never be sure you\u0026rsquo;re not passing across something mysterious—behind every corner there could be a great secret.\u0026quot;\nOne of these secrets was unexpectedly revealed in September 2004 when the Paris police discovered an illegal cinema beneath the Palais de Chaillot. Patrolling officers had stumbled across the hidden amphitheater, fully equipped for movie screenings. For an illegal setup, it was remarkably sophisticated: Next to a screen and projector sat a bar and restaurant outfitted with several telephones and Internet access. The complex was protected by a closed-circuit-TV security system that set off a recording of barking dogs whenever an intruder passed by.\n\u0026hellip;\nWe crawled through a narrow corridor that dripped with mold and entered the heart of this ossuary. There, a central room, filled with stacks of bones, opened onto small tunnels on every side. The entire area was saturated by an ocean of broken skeletons. It was impossible to move without crawling over piles of bones several feet deep—they crackled beneath our weight. In one eerie chamber, a sculpture made of femurs rose from the scattered heaps. Only John and I climbed into that central room; turning off our lights, we crouched on bones in utter darkness, each paying respect in our own way. The article refers to Carolyn Archer\u0026rsquo;s book Paris Underground, which contains photographs of some of the underground locations. The underground movie theater is described in a 2004 article in The Guardian.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/underground-paris.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/travel/paris.html\"\u003eunderground Paris\u003c/a\u003e is even more interesting than \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/underground-london.html\"\u003eunderground London\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"MainBody\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Paris underground, often referred to as the catacombs, has been luring curious visitors for centuries. The City of Lights is built atop a vast realm of darkness: enormous gypsum and limestone quarries that were mined beginning in the 12th century for the construction of Notre Dame, the Louvre, and other edifices. Burrowed haphazardly beneath the surface city, these quarries became increasingly unstable over time. When a street collapsed in 1774, Parisian authorities investigated the galleries and reinforced weak areas. As they did, the investigators marked the tunnel walls with the names of the corresponding ground-level streets. These two-century-old signs are still used for navigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe freshly mapped underworld would soon have many uses. From 1785 until the 1880s, the quarries received bones from Paris\u0026rsquo;s overflowing cemeteries—the public Les Catacombes museum, housed deep inside a blocked-off section of the quarries, alone contains the bones of some six million citizens. During World War II, the passages were occupied not only by the French resistance but also by Germans, who left their traces in a military installation called the Bunker Allemand. Since then, artists, performers, graffitists, and others have added to the catacombs\u0026rsquo; multilayered history. \u0026ldquo;Regardless of where your research takes you, there are always new things to discover about subterranean Paris,\u0026rdquo; says Ingmar Arnold, a Berlin-based underground historian. \u0026ldquo;Wherever you walk, you can never be sure you\u0026rsquo;re not passing across something mysterious—behind every corner there could be a great secret.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of these secrets was unexpectedly revealed in September 2004 when the Paris police discovered an illegal cinema beneath the Palais de Chaillot. Patrolling officers had stumbled across the hidden amphitheater, fully equipped for movie screenings. For an illegal setup, it was remarkably sophisticated: Next to a screen and projector sat a bar and restaurant outfitted with several telephones and Internet access. The complex was protected by a closed-circuit-TV security system that set off a recording of barking dogs whenever an intruder passed by.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"MainBody\"\u003eWe crawled through a narrow corridor that dripped with mold and entered the heart of this ossuary. There, a central room, filled with stacks of bones, opened onto small tunnels on every side. The entire area was saturated by an ocean of broken skeletons. It was impossible to move without crawling over piles of bones several feet deep—they crackled beneath our weight. In one eerie chamber, a sculpture made of femurs rose from the scattered heaps. Only John and I climbed into that central room; turning off our lights, we crouched on bones in utter darkness, each paying respect in our own way. \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe article refers to Carolyn Archer\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Underground-Caroline-Archer/dp/0972424075/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eParis Underground\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which contains photographs of some of the underground locations.  The underground movie theater \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1299444,00.html\"\u003eis described in a 2004 article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Underground Paris"},{"content":"Anthony Sciubba, a student at Higley High School, was featured in a profile in the school yearbook. That profile edited out some of the statement he submitted\u0026ndash;specifically removing a statement where he gave credit to God for his accomplishments. He was told in advance that his bio would contain no references to God.\nThe school and yearbook editors have failed to understand that voluntary, student-initiated speech attributed to no one but the student does not violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. There was no establishment clause violation prevented by this censorship; the school was wrong to prohibit it.\nMore detail and mostly uninformed commentary on this issue may be found at the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s website. One commenter appealed to an Illinois federal court case in defense of the school\u0026ndash;De La Rosa v. Rock Island School District, where a student\u0026rsquo;s cover artwork included the phrase \u0026ldquo;God Bless America.\u0026rdquo; The difference is that in that case, the expression was on the cover of the yearbook, implying that the school endorsed the expression.\nEd Brayton points out that a similar case in Michigan was resolved in favor of the student with the help of the ACLU.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/bogus-separation-of-church-and-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnthony Sciubba, a student at Higley High School, was featured in a profile in the school yearbook.  That profile edited out some of the statement he submitted\u0026ndash;specifically removing a statement where he gave credit to God for his accomplishments.  He was told in advance that his bio would contain no references to God.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe school and yearbook editors have failed to understand that voluntary, student-initiated speech attributed to no one but the student does not violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.  There was no establishment clause violation prevented by this censorship; the school was wrong to prohibit it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore detail and mostly uninformed commentary on this issue \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/0516gr-yearbook0516-ON.html\"\u003emay be found at the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.  One commenter appealed to an Illinois federal court case in defense of the school\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.splc.org/newsflash_archives.asp?id=414\u0026year=2002\"\u003eDe La Rosa v. Rock Island School District\u003c/a\u003e, where a student\u0026rsquo;s cover artwork included the phrase \u0026ldquo;God Bless America.\u0026rdquo;  The difference is that in that case, the expression was on the cover of the yearbook, implying that the school endorsed the expression.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton points out that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/absurd_churchstate_case.php\"\u003ea similar case in Michigan was resolved in favor of the student with the help of the ACLU\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bogus separation of church and state case in Arizona"},{"content":"Who is responsible for each quote below, Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler?\n1. My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.\n2. This \u0026rsquo;turn the other cheek\u0026rsquo; business is all well and good but it\u0026rsquo;s not what Jesus fought and died for.\n3. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith\u0026hellip;. We need believing people.\n4. I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won\u0026rsquo;t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!\n5. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.\n6. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.\n7. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.\n8. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our people. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection\u0026hellip;.May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our people.\n9. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.\n10. We\u0026rsquo;re fighting against humanism, we\u0026rsquo;re fighting against liberalism \u0026hellip; we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today.Answers may be found here.\n(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/falwell-or-hitler.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWho is responsible for each quote below, Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e1. My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. This \u0026rsquo;turn the other cheek\u0026rsquo; business is all well and good but it\u0026rsquo;s not what Jesus fought and died for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith\u0026hellip;. We need believing people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4. I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won\u0026rsquo;t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e7. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e8. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our people. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection\u0026hellip;.May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e9. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10. We\u0026rsquo;re fighting against humanism, we\u0026rsquo;re fighting against liberalism \u0026hellip; we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnswers may be found \u003ca href=\"http://nom-de-grr.livejournal.com/51142.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Falwell or Hitler?"},{"content":"General Motors sold off 51% of its interest in the General Motors Acceptance Corporation last year, its financial arm. Yet that remaining 49% interest in GMAC proved to be a big problem for GM\u0026rsquo;s first quarter 2007 financial results. It seems GMAC got into the mortgage business, and had a first-quarter loss of $305 million, causing GM\u0026rsquo;s overall results to go from $602 million in profit in the first quarter of 2006 to $62 million in the first quarter of 2007. GM\u0026rsquo;s 49% stake in GMAC caused it $115 million in loss\u0026ndash;and Toyota passed GM for the first time to become the #1 auto manufacturer in the world.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t really imagine a $305 million loss. But even more staggering is that this is only about six hundredths of one percent (.061%) of the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s spending on the war and occupation in Iraq, which is about to exceed $500 billion. (Thanks to Einzige for suggesting the comparison.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/staggeringly-large-numbers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeneral Motors sold off 51% of its interest in the General Motors Acceptance Corporation last year, its financial arm.  Yet that remaining 49% interest in GMAC proved to be \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070503/bs_nm/gm_results_dc_2\"\u003ea big problem for GM\u0026rsquo;s first quarter 2007 financial results\u003c/a\u003e.  It seems GMAC got into the mortgage business, and had a first-quarter loss of $305 million, causing GM\u0026rsquo;s overall results to go from $602 million in profit in the first quarter of 2006 to $62 million in the first quarter of 2007.  GM\u0026rsquo;s 49% stake in GMAC caused it $115 million in loss\u0026ndash;and Toyota passed GM for the first time to become the #1 auto manufacturer in the world.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t really imagine a $305 million loss.  But even more staggering is that this is only about six hundredths of one percent (.061%) of the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s spending on the war and occupation in Iraq, \u003ca href=\"http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17158768.htm?source=rss\u0026channel=krwashington_nation\"\u003ewhich is about to exceed $500 billion\u003c/a\u003e.  (Thanks to Einzige for suggesting the comparison.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Staggeringly large numbers"},{"content":"My buyer\u0026rsquo;s remorse about contributing to his campaign has been greatly reduced, if not eliminated.\nMR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as \u0026ndash; almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?\nREP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.\nSenator Robert Taft didn\u0026rsquo;t even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy \u0026ndash; no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There\u0026rsquo;s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.\nJust think of the tremendous improvement \u0026ndash; relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.\nAnd my argument is that we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don\u0026rsquo;t end.\nMR. GOLER: Congressman, you don\u0026rsquo;t think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?\nREP. PAUL: What changed?\nMR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.\nREP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we\u0026rsquo;ve been over there; we\u0026rsquo;ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We\u0026rsquo;ve been in the Middle East \u0026ndash; I think Reagan was right.\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we\u0026rsquo;re building an embassy in Iraq that\u0026rsquo;s bigger than the Vatican. We\u0026rsquo;re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)\nMR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?\nREP. PAUL: I\u0026rsquo;m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we\u0026rsquo;re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, \u0026ldquo;I am glad you\u0026rsquo;re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.\u0026rdquo; They have already now since that time \u0026ndash; (bell rings) \u0026ndash; have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think it was necessary.\nMR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That\u0026rsquo;s really an extraordinary statement. That\u0026rsquo;s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve heard that before, and I\u0026rsquo;ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)\nAnd I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn\u0026rsquo;t really mean that. (Applause.)\nMR. GOLER: Congressman?\nREP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t come here to attack us because we\u0026rsquo;re rich and we\u0026rsquo;re free. They come and they attack us because we\u0026rsquo;re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were \u0026ndash; if other foreign countries were doing that to us?\nNotice that Giuliani misrepresented Paul\u0026rsquo;s statement by quoting Goler\u0026rsquo;s phrase about \u0026ldquo;inviting\u0026rdquo; the attacks of 9/11, and is lying when he says he\u0026rsquo;s never heard the idea that the U.S. was attacked by al-Qaeda because of U.S. actions in the Middle East, such as having troops in Islam\u0026rsquo;s holy cities. Paul later clarified on The Situation Room that he\u0026rsquo;s not defending a position any different from that in the 9/11 Commission Report, that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is a significant factor in why the terrorists have attacked us. That\u0026rsquo;s not blaming the American public or saying that they \u0026ldquo;invited\u0026rdquo; the attacks\u0026ndash;leave that argument to Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza and George W. Bush, who say they attacked us because they \u0026ldquo;hate our freedom,\u0026rdquo; therefore let\u0026rsquo;s do everything we can to take away that freedom.\n(Transcript from Sheldon Richman\u0026rsquo;s blog. More sophisticated analysis of Paul\u0026rsquo;s position may be found from Tim Lee and Brian Moore at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Jeff\u0026rsquo;s Thoughts blog, and Andrew Sullivan\u0026ndash;who also points out that Ron Paul and John McCain were the only two GOP candidates to condemn torture.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/ron-paul-in-last-nights-gop-debate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/ron-paul-in-phoenix.html\"\u003ebuyer\u0026rsquo;s remorse\u003c/a\u003e about contributing to his campaign has been greatly reduced, if not eliminated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eMR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as \u0026ndash; almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ron Paul in last night's GOP debate"},{"content":"Susan Ralston, who was personal assistant to Jack Abramoff before she was special assistant to the president reporting to Karl Rove, is seeking immunity in order to testify before Rep. Henry Waxman\u0026rsquo;s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.\nWith any luck, this will be sufficient to tie Rove to the Abramoff scandal and result in criminal charges against him.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/rove-and-abramoffs-former-assistant.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSusan Ralston, who was personal assistant to Jack Abramoff before she was special assistant to the president reporting to Karl Rove, is seeking immunity \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014182\"\u003ein order to testify before Rep. Henry Waxman\u0026rsquo;s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWith any luck, this will be sufficient to tie Rove to the Abramoff scandal and result in criminal charges against him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rove and Abramoff's former assistant seeking immunity to testify"},{"content":"The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb has dug up some writings by creationist zoologist William J. Tinkle (b. 1892, d. 1981), who was a co-founder and secretary of the Creation Research Society, which show his support for eugenics (references are to works cited in the PT article):\nIt is an excellent plan to keep defective people in institutions for here they are not permitted to marry and bear children.[8, p. 131]\n[Scientists who are working at the task of improving the human race] would like to increase the birth rate of families having good heredity, while those people having poor heredity should not marry at all.[8, p. 131]\nA careful reading of eugenic literature reveals that it may inculcate less respect for human life. In this way it runs counter to democracy, which stresses the worth and rights of the individual. The Bible teaches that life comes from God and that it is wrong to take that which one can not give. Unfortunately there are other programs also which destroy the idea of the sacredness of life. We refer to murder on the screen, war, and the teaching that man originated from, and still is, an animal. [emphasis PT\u0026rsquo;s]\nWe mention these unfortunate results [i.e. Nazism and “misapplied” sterilization] as dangers only; not as objections to attempting to improve our race by application of known genetics principles. [11, p.143]\nThe fact that Tinkle, a creationist, advocated eugenics is another data point showing that eugenics cannot be blamed on evolution\u0026ndash;people will find whatever excuses are available to endorse bigotry and racism.\nRichard Trott, Tom McIver, and I have made the same point with other data in the Creationism and Racism FAQs at the Talk Origins website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/creationism-racism-and-eugenics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/05/dr_west_meet_dr.html\"\u003ehas dug up some writings by creationist zoologist William J. Tinkle (b. 1892, d. 1981)\u003c/a\u003e, who was a co-founder and secretary of the \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html\"\u003eCreation Research Society\u003c/a\u003e, which show his support for eugenics (references are to works cited in the PT article):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt is an excellent plan to keep defective people in institutions for here they are not permitted to marry and bear children.[8, p. 131]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[Scientists who are working at the task of improving the human race] would like to increase the birth rate of families having good heredity, while those people having poor heredity should not marry at all.[8, p. 131]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA careful reading of eugenic literature reveals that it may inculcate less respect for human life. In this way it runs counter to democracy, which stresses the worth and rights of the individual. The Bible teaches that life comes from God and that it is wrong to take that which one can not give. Unfortunately there are other programs also which destroy the idea of the sacredness of life. We refer to murder on the screen, war, and \u003cstrong\u003ethe teaching that man originated from, and still is, an animal\u003c/strong\u003e. [emphasis PT\u0026rsquo;s]\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationism, racism, and eugenics"},{"content":"I agree with most of what Hitchens says, though not the part about Falwell being a conscious fraud. Though Falwell has clearly lied from time to time, I\u0026rsquo;m not personally aware of evidence to support the claim that he was a thoroughly fraudulent charlatan.\n(Via Pharyngula and Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nBTW, a must-read is Jerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s cat-killing story about his father.\nUPDATE (May 18. 2007): More examples of Falwell lying may be found at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/hitchens-on-falwell.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI agree with most of what Hitchens says, though not the part about Falwell being a conscious fraud. Though Falwell \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/a_few_choice_falwell_quotes.php\"\u003ehas clearly lied\u003c/a\u003e from time to time, I\u0026rsquo;m not personally aware of evidence to support the claim that he was a thoroughly fraudulent charlatan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YkAPaEMwyKU\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YkAPaEMwyKU\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/hitchens_on_falwell.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/hitchens_on_falwell.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, a must-read is \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/jerry-falwells-cat-killing-story.html\"\u003eJerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s cat-killing story about his father\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 18. 2007): More examples of Falwell lying may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/more_falwell_lies_1.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hitchens on Falwell"},{"content":"The Senate Judiciary committee subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appear before them yesterday at 2 p.m. EDT with copies of all of Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s emails regarding the U.S. Attorney scandal.\nHe didn\u0026rsquo;t show up.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the letter from chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter to Gonzales, which includes this paragraph:\nYou ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance. Your action today is in defiance of the Committee’s subpoena without explanation of any legal basis for doing so.Hasn\u0026rsquo;t the Bush administration already made it abundantly clear that it does not consider itself bound by the rule of law?\nUPDATE: The Department of Justice has responded to the subpoena by producing a single Karl Rove email sent on February 28, 2007.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/attorney-general-blows-off.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Senate Judiciary committee subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appear before them yesterday at 2 p.m. EDT with copies of all of Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s emails regarding the U.S. Attorney scandal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe didn\u0026rsquo;t show up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/leahy-gonzales-subpoena/\"\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e the letter from chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter to Gonzales, which includes this paragraph:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eYou ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance.  Your action today is in defiance of the Committee’s subpoena without explanation of any legal basis for doing so.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHasn\u0026rsquo;t the Bush administration already made it abundantly clear that it does not consider itself bound by the rule of law?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The Department of Justice has responded to the subpoena by producing \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003235.php\"\u003ea single Karl Rove email sent on February 28, 2007\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Attorney General blows off Congressional subpoena"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s now much discussion in the blogosphere about former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey\u0026rsquo;s testimony before Congress. Comey related that in 2004, the warrantless wiretapping program had come up for reauthorization\u0026ndash;the previous authorization was due to expire the following day. Comey, filling in for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery, refused to sign Bush\u0026rsquo;s order for reauthorization. Bush secretly sent his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft\u0026rsquo;s hospital bedside to get his signature, but an aide to Ashcroft tipped off Comey. Comey rushed to the hospital, and obtained from FBI Director Robert Mueller a directive to Ashcroft\u0026rsquo;s security staff to not remove Comey even if Gonzales and Card insisted upon it.\nAt the hospital, Ashcroft also refused to sign the reauthorization directive. Comey related that the entire senior staff of the Department of Justice, including himself and FBI Director Mueller, were prepared to resign over the issue. Had that happened\u0026ndash;in an election year, no less\u0026ndash;perhaps the outcome of that election would have been different.\nBush consulted directly with Comey and Mueller, and gave them assurances that the program would be modified to comply with Department of Justice recommendations, and Comey signed the reauthorization several weeks later. It\u0026rsquo;s not clear whether it continued to operate without authorization for that period of weeks.\nA Talking Points Memo reader comments:\nWhen the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don\u0026rsquo;t know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it. In fact, Comey reveals, the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn\u0026rsquo;t required. They just didn\u0026rsquo;t want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.\nThis wasn\u0026rsquo;t an emergency program; more than two years had elapsed, ample time to correct any initial deficiencies. It wasn’t a last minute crisis; Ashcroft and Comey had both been saying, for weeks, that they would withhold\napproval. But at the eleventh hour, the President made one final push, dispatching his most senior aides to try to secure approval for a continuation of the program, unaltered.\n\u0026hellip;\nI think it’s safe to assume that whatever they were fighting over, it was a matter of substance. When John Ashcroft is prepared to resign, and risk bringing down a Republican administration in the process, he’s not doing it for kicks. Similarly, when the President sends his aides to coerce a signature out of a desperately ill man, and only backs down when the senior leadership of a cabinet department threatens to depart en masse, he’s not just being stubborn. It’s time that the Democrats in Congress blew the lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program. Whatever form it took for those years was blatantly illegal; so egregious that by 2004, not even the administration’s most partisan members could stomach it any longer. We have a right to know what went on then. We publicize the rules under which the government can obtain physical search warrants, and don’t consider revealing those rules to endanger security; there’s no reason we can’t do the same for electronic searches. The late-night drama makes for an interesting news story, but it’s really beside the point. The punchline here is that the President of the United States engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, until senior members of his own administration forced him to stop. That’s the Congressional investigation that we ought to be having.\nJacob Sullum at Reason observes that Tony Snow\u0026rsquo;s response to Comey\u0026rsquo;s testimony (quoted in the New York Times) amounts to \u0026ldquo;the administration\u0026rsquo;s position is that the program was always legal, became a little more legal after the changes demanded by Ashcroft, and is even more legal now.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (May 17, 2007): The DOJ says Gonzales has no desire to modify or retract his statement in Congressional testimony that the warrantless wiretap program raised no controversy within the Bush administration, even though that is clearly contradicted by the above account.\nFURTHER UPDATE (May 17): TPM Muckraker has gotten to the bottom of why this came to a head on March 10, 2004. The program had to be reauthorized by the Attorney General every 45 days, which Ashcroft had been signing off on. In June 2003, John Yoo left his position as Deputy Director of the Office of Legal Counsel. On October 3, 2003, Jack L. Goldsmith was confirmed by the Senate as the Assistant Attorney General for the OLC, and on December 11, 2003, James Comey was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. Comey was authorized to have access to information about the warrantless wiretap program, and he put Goldsmith to work reviewing \u0026ldquo;what [Goldsmith] considered shaky legal reasoning in several crucial opinions, including some drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo,\u0026rdquo; to quote The New York Times. Comey brought his evidence to Ashcroft a week before the reauthorization date, and they both agreed that it could not continue as it had been. Now that the been reviewed by lawyers in the DOJ for the first time, it was found to be severely problematic, and neither was willing to reauthorize it.\nBush reauthorized it on March 11, 2004 without Attorney General approval, which led to threatened resignations from Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller, and others, at which point parts of the program were suspended and a DOJ audit of the program commenced.\nAs TPM Muckraker summarizes:\nThe warantless wiretap surveillance program stank. For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected. When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.\nSo what were they fighting over? Who knows. But there’s certainly evidence to suggest that the underlying issue was was whether constitutional or statutory protections of civil liberties ought to be binding on the president in a time of war. The entire fight, in other words, was driven by the expansive notion of executive power embraced by Cheney and Addington. And here\u0026rsquo;s the kicker - it certainly sounds as if the program was fairly easily adjusted to comply with the law. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t illegal because it had to be; it was illegal because the White House believed itself above the law.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-05-17):\nI love it. It was \"always legal\" and yet it then became \"a little more legal\".Clearly the finest minds...\nms. liss (2007-05-19):\nYeah, kind of like all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.this administration continues to disgust and amaze me on a daily basis\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/ashcroft-refused-to-reauthorize.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s now much discussion in the blogosphere about \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16nsa.html?_r=1\u0026hp\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003eformer Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey\u0026rsquo;s testimony before Congress\u003c/a\u003e.  Comey related that in 2004, the warrantless wiretapping program had come up for reauthorization\u0026ndash;the previous authorization was due to expire the following day.  Comey, filling in for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery, refused to sign Bush\u0026rsquo;s order for reauthorization.  Bush secretly sent his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft\u0026rsquo;s hospital bedside to get his signature, but an aide to Ashcroft tipped off Comey.  Comey rushed to the hospital, and obtained from FBI Director Robert Mueller a directive to Ashcroft\u0026rsquo;s security staff to not remove Comey even if Gonzales and Card insisted upon it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the hospital, Ashcroft also refused to sign the reauthorization directive.  Comey related that the entire senior staff of the Department of Justice, including himself and FBI Director Mueller, were prepared to resign over the issue.  Had that happened\u0026ndash;in an election year, no less\u0026ndash;perhaps the outcome of that election would have been different.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBush consulted directly with Comey and Mueller, and gave them assurances that the program would be modified to comply with Department of Justice recommendations, and Comey signed the reauthorization several weeks later.  It\u0026rsquo;s not clear whether it continued to operate without authorization for that period of weeks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003232.php\"\u003eTalking Points Memo reader comments\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ashcroft refused to reauthorize warrantless wiretapping program"},{"content":"Kearny board of education member Paul Castelli has apparently decided that the town hasn\u0026rsquo;t had enough controversy over history teacher David Paskiewicz\u0026rsquo;s misuse of the classroom as an evangelizing pulpit, and has gone public with a denunciation of the board\u0026rsquo;s conciliatory statement from last week. The Observer reports:\n“Matthew LaClair is absolutely not a hero,” Castelli said, referring to a statement the Board made last week that praised Matthew for standing up for his rights. “His parents are opportunists and it’s a combination of both Matthew and his parents. Though I leave it up to the people to decide for themselves, it’s pretty obvious that he (Matt’s father, Paul) did just as much speaking as his son did.”\nIn addition to seeing Matt as far from a hero, Castelli also said he was not convinced the Anti-Defamation League’s curriculum was what was needed. The ADL will soon be instructing students and teachers on the parameters involved in the separation of church and state.\n“I would have been more comfortable if there had been more specifics as to what they would be teaching the students and teachers,” Castelli said. “It was really unclear what they were actually going to do.”\nHe also says the Board was never given a clear resolution to a Board-directed investigation into suspected harassment against Matthew.\nMatthew claimed to have been harassed numerous times by classmates, including a death threat on his Myspace Web page — an incident that was investigated by the Kearny Police Department.\nFinally, Castelli says that despite suspected closure in the matter with the agreement, he still feels the Board is susceptible to being named in a lawsuit, should someone (he didn’t mention anyone or entity specifically) decide to sue the LaClairs.Who, and on what grounds, would someone sue the LaClairs? They\u0026rsquo;ve done nothing wrong\u0026ndash;all they\u0026rsquo;ve done is insist that the board of education do the right thing about improper classroom behavior by a teacher whose initial defense was to deny what he had been recorded doing.\nCastelli is also quoted at the Observer saying that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel sorry for Matthew LaClair for receiving taunts and threats from classmates, stating (incorrectly) that \u0026ldquo;Throughout the ordeal, he was asked to identify the kids who had done these things to him, and not once did he identify anyone. How could anyone be expected to take action if they didn’t know whom they were taking action against? It wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t possible to feel sorry for someone unless they were willing to give up the information we needed to ensure a proper investigation took place.\u0026rdquo; As the Observer points out, \u0026ldquo;Matthew has said it was impossible to identify possible threat makers because often, taunts would be hurled from within a large group of kids. Additionally, Matthew did identify, for police, the student who made the Myspace death threat against him several months ago.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/kearny-board-of-education-member-hasnt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKearny board of education member Paul Castelli has apparently decided that the town hasn\u0026rsquo;t had enough controversy over history teacher David Paskiewicz\u0026rsquo;s misuse of the classroom as an evangelizing pulpit, and has \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/05/castelli-breaks-ranks-makes-statements.html\"\u003egone public with a denunciation of the board\u0026rsquo;s conciliatory statement from last week\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eObserver\u003c/span\u003e reports:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“Matthew LaClair is absolutely not a hero,” Castelli said, referring to a statement the Board made last week that praised Matthew for standing up for his rights. “His parents are opportunists and it’s a combination of both Matthew and his parents. Though I leave it up to the people to decide for themselves, it’s pretty obvious that he (Matt’s father, Paul) did just as much speaking as his son did.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn addition to seeing Matt as far from a hero, Castelli also said he was not convinced the Anti-Defamation League’s curriculum was what was needed. The ADL will soon be instructing students and teachers on the parameters involved in the separation of church and state.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“I would have been more comfortable if there had been more specifics as to what they would be teaching the students and teachers,” Castelli said. “It was really unclear what they were actually going to do.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also says the Board was never given a clear resolution to a Board-directed investigation into suspected harassment against Matthew.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMatthew claimed to have been harassed numerous times by classmates, including a death threat on his Myspace Web page — an incident that was investigated by the Kearny Police Department.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, Castelli says that despite suspected closure in the matter with the agreement, he still feels the Board is susceptible to being named in a lawsuit, should someone (he didn’t mention anyone or entity specifically) decide to sue the LaClairs.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWho, and on what grounds, would someone sue the LaClairs?  They\u0026rsquo;ve done nothing wrong\u0026ndash;all they\u0026rsquo;ve done is insist that the board of education do the right thing about improper classroom behavior by a teacher whose initial defense was to deny what he had been recorded doing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCastelli is also quoted at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eObserver\u003c/span\u003e saying that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel sorry for Matthew LaClair for receiving taunts and threats from classmates, stating (incorrectly) that \u0026ldquo;Throughout the ordeal, he was asked to identify the kids who had done these things to him, and not once did he identify anyone. How could anyone be expected to take action if they didn’t know whom they were taking action against? It wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t possible to feel sorry for someone unless they were willing to give up the information we needed to ensure a proper investigation took place.\u0026rdquo;  As the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eObserver\u003c/span\u003e points out, \u0026ldquo;Matthew has said it was impossible to identify possible threat makers because often, taunts would be hurled from within a large group of kids. Additionally, Matthew did identify, for police, the student who made the Myspace death threat against him several months ago.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kearny board of education member hasn't had enough controversy"},{"content":"Tomorrow night on PBS\u0026rsquo;s Frontline is \u0026ldquo;Spying on the Homefront\u0026rdquo;:\nFRONTLINE addresses an issue of major consequence for all Americans: Is the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s domestic war on terrorism jeopardizing our civil liberties? Reporter Hedrick Smith presents new material on how the National Security Agency\u0026rsquo;s domestic surveillance program works and examines clashing viewpoints on whether the president has violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and infringed on constitutional protections. In another dramatic story, the program shows how the FBI vacuumed up records on 250,000 ordinary Americans who chose Las Vegas as the destination for their Christmas-New Year\u0026rsquo;s holiday, and the subsequent revelation that the FBI has misused National Security Letters to gather information. Probing such projects as Total Information Awareness, and its little known successors, Smith discloses that even former government intelligence officials now worry that the combination of new security threats, advances in communications technologies, and radical interpretations of presidential authority may be threatening the privacy of Americans.(Via the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/spying-on-homefront.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTomorrow night on PBS\u0026rsquo;s Frontline is \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spying on the Homefront\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFRONTLINE addresses an issue of major consequence for all Americans: Is the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s domestic war on terrorism jeopardizing our civil liberties? Reporter Hedrick Smith presents new material on how the National Security Agency\u0026rsquo;s domestic surveillance program works and examines clashing viewpoints on whether the president has violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and infringed on constitutional protections. In another dramatic story, the program shows how the FBI vacuumed up records on 250,000 ordinary Americans who chose Las Vegas as the destination for their Christmas-New Year\u0026rsquo;s holiday, and the subsequent revelation that the FBI has misused National Security Letters to gather information. Probing such projects as Total Information Awareness, and its little known successors, Smith discloses that even former government intelligence officials now worry that the combination of new security threats, advances in communications technologies, and radical interpretations of presidential authority may be threatening the privacy of Americans.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via the \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005252.php\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spying on the Homefront"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s the day that providers of VoIP and broadband Internet in the United States must comply with CALEA, mandating that they supply a way for law enforcement to eavesdrop on any communications carried over those mechanisms. I suspect many VoIP providers are in compliance but that fewer broadband Internet providers are, since the draft standard for CALEA for data over broadband Internet only came out in March. (And if you\u0026rsquo;d like to read the standard, it will cost you $164 for the PDF or $185 for a paper copy.)\nBob Hagen at the Global Crossing blog points out some free tools that can be used to protect your privacy.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/calea-compliance-day.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s the day that providers of VoIP and broadband Internet in the United States must comply with CALEA, mandating that they supply a way for law enforcement to eavesdrop on any communications carried over those mechanisms.  I suspect many VoIP providers are in compliance but that fewer broadband Internet providers are, since the draft standard for CALEA for data over broadband Internet only came out in March.  (And if \u003ca href=\"https://www.atis.org/docstore/product.aspx?id=22665\"\u003eyou\u0026rsquo;d like to read the standard\u003c/a\u003e, it will cost you $164 for the PDF or $185 for a paper copy.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBob Hagen at the Global Crossing blog \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/336\"\u003epoints out some free tools that can be used to protect your privacy\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CALEA compliance day"},{"content":"The fire which raged across 4,200 acres of Catalina Island began near a radio tower for Christian talk radio station KBRT-AM. Three contractors working for the station were cutting steel antenna cable with a gas-powered circular saw, which ignited dry brush and quickly grew out of control.\nRadio talk show host Tom Leykis, an atheist, observed on his show that this fire was started by men working for a Christian radio station, which he considered ironic. His first caller suggested that the contractors might have been atheists\u0026ndash;as if that would have been a sufficient cause for a supernatural explanation of the fire.\nThe correct inference is that the laws of nature don\u0026rsquo;t care about your religious beliefs\u0026ndash;lightning rods protect whorehouses as well as churches (or better, when churches choose not to use them because it\u0026rsquo;s interfering with God\u0026rsquo;s will).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/christian-radio-stations-part-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe fire which raged across 4,200 acres of Catalina Island began near a radio tower for Christian talk radio station KBRT-AM.  Three contractors working for the station were \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18601767/\"\u003ecutting steel antenna cable with a gas-powered circular saw\u003c/a\u003e, which ignited dry brush and quickly grew out of control.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRadio talk show host Tom Leykis, an atheist, observed on his show that this fire was started by men working for a Christian radio station, which he considered ironic.  His first caller suggested that the contractors might have been atheists\u0026ndash;as if that would have been a sufficient cause for a supernatural explanation of the fire.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe correct inference is that the laws of nature don\u0026rsquo;t care about your religious beliefs\u0026ndash;lightning rods protect whorehouses as well as churches (or better, when churches choose not to use them because it\u0026rsquo;s interfering with God\u0026rsquo;s will).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian radio station's part in Catalina Island fire"},{"content":"The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service just released their ARMLS Economic and Market Watch Report for the first quarter of 2007.\nThe report says that the current market in Maricopa County (MC) for residential real estate is neither a buyer\u0026rsquo;s nor a seller\u0026rsquo;s market - it\u0026rsquo;s right in the middle. As I have argued elsewhere, to call the current Phoenix market anything other than a seller\u0026rsquo;s market is absurd. If you buy right now you lose, in my humble opinion.\nIn spite of the fact that MC housing inventory grew from 43,164 homes (at the end of Q4 \u0026lsquo;06) to 52,055 on March 31st, and that the number of homes sold fell by 910, the report has the audacity to claim that \u0026ldquo;[c]ombined with historically low mortgage rates, home sales should continue at a steady pace\u0026rdquo;, and that Q2\u0026rsquo;s average sales price will be higher than Q1\u0026rsquo;s $350,400 (I\u0026rsquo;m not a big fan of using the average price as a gauge of anything. Its value is too easily influenced by outliers on the high end).\nIn the section on \u0026ldquo;Trends\u0026rdquo;, Ken Fears says the following:\n\u0026hellip;there were 26,135 sub-prime loans issued in 2005 [sic - I think that should be 2004] for the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area, which represent 15.4% of the total population of loans for this area. In 2005, the percentage of sub-prime loans in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area rose to 31.5% for a total of 69,997 sub-prime loans issued. This figure was higher than the nation as a whole where 28% of loans in 2005 were sub-prime compared to 14% in 2004.\nSo what does this mean for local Realtors®? There is no doubt that the rules for making sub-prime loans have been to [sic] lax. Furthermore, defaults will rise as mortgage rates rise and employment begins to falter with the waning economy. However, banks learned an important lesson in the last two mortgage banking crisis [sic]. It is much better to help the holders of sub-prime loans to meet their monthly payment than it is for the bank to write off the loan as a loss; a small bite to profits is better than a total loss. So banks will be much more inclined to re-work loan agreements. In addition, sub-prime loans make up a small percentage of the total number and dollar volume of existing mortgages. These factors help to mitigate the notion that there is a large overhang of defaults about to splash on the market, bringing down home prices and sales and the overall economy with it.\nDavid Lereah\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Commentary\u0026rdquo; had this to say:\nOn balance, I expect about 10 to 25 percent of subprime households to be unable to secure a mortgage loan because of today’s stricter lending standards. However, many of these households will probably, over time, purchase a home when they have attained the financial capacity to do so (e.g., saving for a down payment, growing their income). So the long-term health of the housing market will probably stay in tact. In the near-term, I would expect home sales to fall by 100,000 to 250,000 annually during the next two years due to tighter underwriting practices, slowing the nation’s housing recovery.\nAs for the over 8 million adjustable-rate loans (25 percent of which were sub-prime) originated during the past three years, First American Corelogic estimates that about 1.1 million of them totaling about $326 billion are likely to end up in fore-closure. A bit over $300 billion of subprime adjustable mortgage loans are due to re-set by October 1st of this year. Most lenders will attempt to work out problem loans by refinancing borrowers into other mortgages. A disproportionate share of these foreclosures will occur in high cost regions, like California. Certainly, a rise in foreclosures results in an upward blip in housing inventories, depressing home values. But the good news is that these foreclosures will occur in relatively healthy local markets that boast decent levels of economic activity and job creation, improving the prospects of selling the foreclosed properties in a reasonable amount of time. Foreclosures will create temporary inventory problems, but inventories will be eventually worked out.\u0026ldquo;Inventories will eventually be worked out,\u0026rdquo; which will be \u0026ldquo;depressing home values\u0026rdquo; - but, nonetheless, Q2 in MC will see a \u0026ldquo;steady pace\u0026rdquo; in home sales and a higher average sale price? Hmmmmm\u0026hellip;\nDr. Lawrence Yun, in his \u0026ldquo;Forecast\u0026rdquo; section, says that in the last year Phoenix jobs grew by 89,000 and that this may increase the number of potential homebuyers. Yun acknowledges that Phoenix has seen a fall in home sales, but he says that rental rates have, as a result, been \u0026ldquo;climbing fast.\u0026rdquo; He asserts that, \u0026ldquo;very soon, the squeezed renters will begin to search for a home purchase.\u0026quot;\nRents in the area are definitely rising, as you would expect, but they\u0026rsquo;ll have to rise a long way to catch up with area home prices!\nForecasting the impact of the subprime fallout, Yun presents this analysis:\nConsider, the subprime loans comprised about 13% of the overall mortgage market, and 20% of mortgage originations since 2005(though there are divergent figures depending upon the source). The recent overall rise in default rates is primarily associated with the subprime loans rather than with the predominant prime loans. The delinquency rate on prime loans was only 2.8% by comparison with the foreclosure rate running at 0.5%. Both delinquencies and foreclosures for prime loans have been steady with very little movement. Therefore, a 14.3% delinquency on 13% of the loan market means subprime problems are impacting close to 2% of all loans. Factor in the fact that one-third of all homeowners own their home free-and-clear, the subprime problems are associated with about 1.4% of all homes. History says that less than half of these homes with delinquent mortgage payments ever move into actual foreclosure. So roughly speaking, 0.7% of all homes will at most run into eventual foreclosure from recent meltdown in the subprime sector.\nSomething tells me that Yun\u0026rsquo;s numbers are overly rosy. Using his 1.4% figure only gives us an average of 1459 Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices per month in Maricopa County. Since we\u0026rsquo;re already seeing numbers higher than that, and there\u0026rsquo;s no indication that things are going to be slowing down, Yun appears to be missing a piece of the puzzle. To be fair, Yun\u0026rsquo;s numbers refer strictly to subprime loans - so one could argue that the additional numbers seen in the real world are delinquencies in alt-A and prime mortgages. In any case, the next few months should prove very interesting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/armls-marketwatch-report-q1-07.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.armls.com/\"\u003eArizona Regional Multiple Listing Service\u003c/a\u003e just released their \u003ca href=\"http://www.armls.com/pdfs/ARMLS1Q07.pdf\"\u003eARMLS Economic and Market Watch Report\u003c/a\u003e for the first quarter of 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe report says that the current market in Maricopa County (MC) for residential real estate is neither a buyer\u0026rsquo;s nor a seller\u0026rsquo;s market - it\u0026rsquo;s right in the middle. As I have argued \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-own-when-you-can-rent.html\"\u003eelsewhere\u003c/a\u003e, to call the current Phoenix market anything other than a seller\u0026rsquo;s market is absurd. If you buy right now you lose, in my humble opinion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn spite of the fact that MC housing inventory grew from 43,164 homes (at the end of Q4 \u0026lsquo;06) to 52,055 on March 31st, and that the number of homes sold fell by 910, the report has the audacity to claim that \u0026ldquo;[c]ombined with historically low mortgage rates, home sales should continue at a steady pace\u0026rdquo;, \u003ci\u003eand\u003c/i\u003e that Q2\u0026rsquo;s average sales price will be \u003ci\u003ehigher\u003c/i\u003e than Q1\u0026rsquo;s $350,400 (I\u0026rsquo;m not a big fan of using the average price as a gauge of anything. Its value is too easily influenced by outliers on the high end).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the section on \u0026ldquo;Trends\u0026rdquo;, Ken Fears says the following:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#000099;\"\u003e\u0026hellip;there were 26,135 sub-prime loans issued in 2005 \u003cspan style=\"color:#000000;\"\u003e[sic - I think that should be 2004]\u003c/span\u003e for the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area, which represent 15.4% of the total population of loans for this area. In 2005, the percentage of sub-prime loans in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area rose to 31.5% for a total of 69,997 sub-prime loans issued. This figure was higher than the nation as a whole where 28% of loans in 2005 were sub-prime compared to 14% in 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo what does this mean for local Realtors®? There is no doubt that the rules for making sub-prime loans have been to \u003cspan style=\"color:#000000;\"\u003e[sic]\u003c/span\u003e lax. Furthermore, defaults will rise as mortgage rates rise and employment begins to falter with the waning economy. However, banks learned an important lesson in the last two mortgage banking crisis \u003cspan style=\"color:#000000;\"\u003e[sic]\u003c/span\u003e. It is much better to help the holders of sub-prime loans to meet their monthly payment than it is for the bank to write off the loan as a loss; a small bite to profits is better than a total loss. So banks will be much more inclined to re-work loan agreements. In addition, sub-prime loans make up a small percentage of the total number and dollar volume of existing mortgages. These factors help to mitigate the notion that there is a large overhang of defaults about to splash on the market, bringing down home prices and sales and the overall economy with it.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Lereah\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Commentary\u0026rdquo; had this to say:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#000099;\"\u003eOn balance, I expect about 10 to 25 percent of subprime households to be unable to secure a mortgage loan because of today’s stricter lending standards. However, many of these households will probably, over time, purchase a home when they have attained the financial capacity to do so (e.g., saving for a down payment, growing their income). So the long-term health of the housing market will probably stay in tact. In the near-term, I would expect home sales to fall by 100,000 to 250,000 annually during the next two years due to tighter underwriting practices, slowing the nation’s housing recovery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs for the over 8 million adjustable-rate loans (25 percent of which were sub-prime) originated during the past three years, First American Corelogic estimates that about 1.1 million of them totaling about $326 billion are likely to end up in fore-closure. A bit over $300 billion of subprime adjustable mortgage loans are due to re-set by October 1st of this year. Most lenders will attempt to work out problem loans by refinancing borrowers into other mortgages. A disproportionate share of these foreclosures will occur in high cost regions, like California. Certainly, a rise in foreclosures results in an upward blip in housing inventories, depressing home values. But the good news is that these foreclosures will occur in relatively healthy local markets that boast decent levels of economic activity and job creation, improving the prospects of selling the foreclosed properties in a reasonable amount of time. Foreclosures will create temporary inventory problems, but inventories will be eventually worked out.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Inventories will eventually be worked out,\u0026rdquo; which will be \u0026ldquo;depressing home values\u0026rdquo; - but, nonetheless, Q2 in MC will see a \u0026ldquo;steady pace\u0026rdquo; in home sales and a higher average sale price? Hmmmmm\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Lawrence Yun, in his \u0026ldquo;Forecast\u0026rdquo; section, says that in the last year Phoenix jobs grew by 89,000 and that this may increase the number of potential homebuyers. Yun acknowledges that Phoenix has seen a fall in home sales, but he says that rental rates have, as a result, been \u0026ldquo;climbing fast.\u0026rdquo; He asserts that, \u0026ldquo;very soon, the squeezed renters will begin to search for a home purchase.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRents in the area are definitely rising, as you would expect, but they\u0026rsquo;ll have to rise a long way to catch up with area home prices!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eForecasting the impact of the subprime fallout, Yun presents this analysis:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#000099;\"\u003eConsider, the subprime loans comprised about 13% of the overall mortgage market, and 20% of mortgage originations since 2005(though there are divergent figures depending upon the source). The recent overall rise in default rates is primarily associated with the subprime loans rather than with the predominant prime loans. The delinquency rate on prime loans was only 2.8% by comparison with the foreclosure rate running at 0.5%. Both delinquencies and foreclosures for prime loans have been steady with very little movement. Therefore, a 14.3% delinquency on 13% of the loan market means subprime problems are impacting close to 2% of all loans. Factor in the fact that one-third of all homeowners own their home free-and-clear, the subprime problems are associated with about 1.4% of all homes. History says that less than half of these homes with delinquent mortgage payments ever move into actual foreclosure. So roughly speaking, 0.7% of all homes will at most run into eventual foreclosure from recent meltdown in the subprime sector.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eSomething tells me that Yun\u0026rsquo;s numbers are overly rosy. Using his 1.4% figure only gives us an average of 1459 Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices per month in Maricopa County. Since we\u0026rsquo;re \u003ca href=\"/2007/04/where-are-we-headed.html\"\u003ealready seeing numbers higher than that\u003c/a\u003e, and there\u0026rsquo;s no indication that things are going to be slowing down, Yun appears to be missing a piece of the puzzle. To be fair, Yun\u0026rsquo;s numbers refer strictly to subprime loans - so one could argue that the additional numbers seen in the real world are delinquencies in alt-A and prime mortgages. In any case, the next few months should prove very interesting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ARMLS Marketwatch Report, Q1 '07"},{"content":"The LaClair family and the Kearny Board of Education have settled their dispute regarding David Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s proselytization in U.S. history class, as reported in the New York Times:\nThe Kearny Board of Education in New Jersey and the parents of Matthew LaClair, a 17-year-old junior at Kearny High School, settled their dispute on Tuesday night about a teacher who proselytized in class.\nThe settlement will include training for teachers and students about the separation of church and state and a public statement by the board praising Matthew for bringing the matter to its attention.\n\u0026hellip;\nAs part of the settlement, in which neither side admits wrongdoing, the New Jersey regional office of the Anti-Defamation League will start training teachers and students in September about keeping church and state separate in public schools, and about “the distinction between the scientific theory of evolution and the religious doctrine of creationism.” Another part of the deal says the board will make a public statement commending Matthew for his “courage and integrity,” and the LaClairs will issue a statement commending the board.\nThe settlement does not address the status of Mr. Paszkiewicz, 39, who has remained a history teacher at the high school. Mr. Paszkiewicz, who is also a Baptist youth pastor, had his classes switched in the middle of the school year so as not to have Matthew as a student. The board endorsed the settlement in a 6-1 vote last night.\nHistorical Comments olvlzl (2007-05-13):\nThank you for the link at Orac's blog. It's something that will provide a lot of intersting reading.olvlzl\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/kearny-board-of-education-and-laclairs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe LaClair family and the Kearny Board of Education have settled their dispute regarding David Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s proselytization in U.S. history class, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/nyregion/10kearny.html?_r=2\u0026oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003eas reported in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Kearny Board of Education in \u003ca href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/newjersey/index.html?inline=nyt-geo\" title=\"More news and information about New Jersey.\"\u003eNew Jersey\u003c/a\u003e and the parents of Matthew LaClair, a 17-year-old junior at Kearny High School, settled their dispute on Tuesday night about a teacher who proselytized in class.\u003c/p\u003e      \u003cp\u003e The settlement will include training for teachers and students about the separation of church and state and a public statement by the board praising Matthew for bringing the matter to its attention.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kearny Board of Education and LaClairs settle case"},{"content":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit yesterday against Uri Geller and his company Explorogist Ltd. for filing a DMCA takedown notice against a YouTube video posted by the Rational Response Squad. The video depicted an excerpt from the Nova program \u0026ldquo;Secrets of the Psychics\u0026rdquo; which featured James Randi showing how some of Geller\u0026rsquo;s feats could have been done with magic tricks. The video includes about three seconds of footage owned by Geller, which clearly falls under fair use guidelines.\nTo quote from the EFF\u0026rsquo;s press release: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ve seen a rash of people abusing the DMCA lately, attempting to take down legitimate criticism and commentary online,\u0026rdquo; said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. \u0026ldquo;To allow thin-skinned public figures like Uri Geller to abuse this system forces critics to remain silent and creates unfair hurdles for free speech to thrive online.\u0026quot;\nThe filings in the case may be found at the EFF\u0026rsquo;s website. Here\u0026rsquo;s the video, and a bonus video.\nUPDATE (August 6, 2008): This lawsuit has been settled. There was a monetary settlement and Geller\u0026rsquo;s company has agreed to license the footage for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/eff-sues-uri-geller-for-misusing-dmca.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit yesterday against Uri Geller and his company Explorogist Ltd. for filing a DMCA takedown notice against a YouTube video posted by the Rational Response Squad.  The video depicted an excerpt from the Nova program \u0026ldquo;Secrets of the Psychics\u0026rdquo; which featured James Randi showing how some of Geller\u0026rsquo;s feats could have been done with magic tricks.  The video includes about three seconds of footage owned by Geller, which clearly falls under fair use guidelines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo quote from \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_05.php#005244\"\u003ethe EFF\u0026rsquo;s press release\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ve seen a rash of people abusing the DMCA lately, attempting to take down legitimate criticism and commentary online,\u0026rdquo; said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. \u0026ldquo;To allow thin-skinned public figures like Uri Geller to abuse this system forces critics to remain silent and creates unfair hurdles for free speech to thrive online.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe filings in the case may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/sapient_v_geller/\"\u003eat the EFF\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the video, and a bonus video.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-02600936124809564 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/M9w7jHYriFo\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-02600936124809564 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/M9w7jHYriFo\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/M9w7jHYriFo\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/M9w7jHYriFo\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 0px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-02600936124809564 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V1Y7QR314xA\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca style=\"left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;\" title=\"Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus\" class=\"abp-objtab-02600936124809564 visible ontop\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V1Y7QR314xA\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V1Y7QR314xA\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/V1Y7QR314xA\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 6, 2008):  This lawsuit \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/sapient-and-explorologist-settle-lawsuit\"\u003ehas been settled\u003c/a\u003e.  There was a monetary settlement and Geller\u0026rsquo;s company has agreed to license the footage for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"EFF sues Uri Geller for misusing DMCA"},{"content":" 70 D0 87 F2 02 2E 37 96 EB 84 B3 1B B5 92 10 E7\nThis 128-bit integer was used to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and all rights to decrypt that haiku with this integer have been given to me. You may not use this 128-bit integer for any purpose; if you distribute it or publish it you are in violation of the DMCA's restrictions on circumvention.\n(Actually, I've probably blown it by publishing this number--but there are others which are mine and which you also may not obtain or distribute. And that goes for you, too, AACS LA.)\nYou can get your own 128-bit integer and read the haiku for yourself at Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog. Einzige (2007-05-08):\nIs only the hexidecimal version yours, or do the base 10 and base 3 (and base x) versions also belong only to you?\nEinzige (2007-05-08):\nAnd what constitutes \"use\"?Would it be wrong for me to, say, multiply it by 5?\nLippard (2007-05-08):\nI lay claim to the number, no matter what base it is expressed in. And, for clarity, you are correct that the version published was hexadecimal (and not some base greater than 16).If you would like to use it for purposes of multiplication, please contact me about licensing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/this-integer-is-mine-you-may-not-use-it.html/","summary":"\u003ch5\u003e 70 D0 87 F2 02 2E 37 96 EB 84 B3 1B B5 92 10 E7\u003c/h5\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis 128-bit integer was used to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and all rights to decrypt that haiku with this integer have been given to me.  You may not use this 128-bit integer for any purpose; if you distribute it or publish it you are in violation of the DMCA's restrictions on circumvention.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Actually, I've probably blown it by publishing this number--but there are others which are mine and which you also may not obtain or distribute.  And that goes for you, too, AACS LA.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can get your own 128-bit integer and read the haiku for yourself \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155\"\u003eat Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog\u003c/a\u003e.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-05-08)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIs only the hexidecimal version yours, or do the base 10 and base 3 (and base x) versions also belong only to you?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"This integer is mine, you may not use it"},{"content":"Long or Short Capital gives some historical detail on Cinco de Mayo that\u0026rsquo;s generally lacking from most descriptions (with a little bit of exaggeration and humor). It\u0026rsquo;s not a celebration of Mexican independence, but of a successful victory by Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragozea Seguin against French occupation forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.\nThe Mexican government owed money to the English, the Spanish, and the French, and was late on debt payments. All three creditors sent armed representatives to Mexico. The English and Spanish were successfully negotiated with, but the French decided to obtain repayment by taking possession of Mexico, and sent a large military force. General Zaragoza led a force of Mexicans and Indians and were victorious.\nanonymous (2007-05-06):\nHmmm, I was unaware of the financial aspect. I did learn somewhere that Maximilian was installed by the French as Emperor. I also didn't realize this battle was so early on relative to final defeat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_I_of_Mexico\nLippard (2009-10-01):\nI recently (a few months ago) saw the movie \u0026quot;Juarez\u0026quot; (1939) which covers this period of Mexican history, and recommend it. You're right\u0026ndash;this battle took place in 1862, an initial victory that was followed by setbacks for Juarez's forces in 1863, pushing them to the north. Maximilian was installed in 1864 and didn't ultimately fall until early 1867.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/cinco-de-mayo-celebration-of-kicking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong or Short Capital \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/cinco-de-mayo-a-celebration-of-kicking-a-french-debt-collectors-ass.htm\"\u003egives some historical detail on Cinco de Mayo\u003c/a\u003e that\u0026rsquo;s generally lacking from most descriptions (with a little bit of exaggeration and humor).  It\u0026rsquo;s not a celebration of Mexican independence, but of a successful victory by Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragozea Seguin against French occupation forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Mexican government owed money to the English, the Spanish, and the French, and was late on debt payments.  All three creditors sent armed representatives to Mexico.  The English and Spanish were successfully negotiated with, but the French decided to obtain repayment by taking possession of Mexico, and sent a large military force.  General Zaragoza led a force of Mexicans and Indians and were victorious.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cinco de Mayo: Celebration of kicking a French bill collector's ass"},{"content":"AACS keys are used to encrypt the content of HD-DVDs (this is an oversimplification; see Ed Felten\u0026rsquo;s Freedom-to-Tinker blog for more detail). A particular \u0026ldquo;processing key\u0026rdquo; for AACS has recently been distributed on the Internet, with the AACS Licensing Authority issuing cease and desist orders to try to stop it. This has led to new and creative ways of distributing this 128-bit number, just as occurred with the DeCSS code for decrypting DVDs. When a cease-and-desist order went to digg, digg\u0026rsquo;s users proceeded to give diggs to many different sites, at one point leading to the entire front page of digg being full of nothing but links to pages with the AACS key.\nA couple of the more interesting methods include making the number into a song and displaying it with satellite photos of buildings that resemble hex digits. One individual appears to have had it tattooed on his chest.\nThis is exactly what we saw with DeCSS, which is memorialized in Dave Touretzky\u0026rsquo;s Gallery of CSS Descramblers.\nThis case is even more absurd, in that AACS LA is claiming ownership of a number\u0026ndash;and a relatively short one\u0026ndash;not because it encodes any content or algorithm, but because it\u0026rsquo;s one of potentially millions of keys assigned for use with its system.\nUPDATE (May 11, 2007): As this t-shirt makes clear, trying to protect against the distribution of a 128-bit number is futile when knowledge of the number can be easily distributed without using the number itself. I\u0026rsquo;d love to see AACS LA try to make a case against the marketing and sale of this shirt.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/banning-distribution-of-aacs-keys-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAACS keys are used to encrypt the content of HD-DVDs (this is an oversimplification; see Ed Felten\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1111\"\u003eFreedom-to-Tinker blog\u003c/a\u003e for more detail).  A particular \u0026ldquo;processing key\u0026rdquo; for AACS has recently been distributed on the Internet, with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1152\"\u003eAACS Licensing Authority issuing cease and desist orders to try to stop it\u003c/a\u003e.  This has led to new and creative ways of distributing this 128-bit number, just as occurred with the DeCSS code for decrypting DVDs.  When a cease-and-desist order went to digg, digg\u0026rsquo;s users proceeded to give diggs to many different sites, \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1153\"\u003eat one point leading to the entire front page of digg being full of nothing but links to pages with the AACS key\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA couple of the more interesting methods include \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042332.php\"\u003emaking the number into a song\u003c/a\u003e and displaying it with \u003ca href=\"http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?zl1erV5i+mReSdx7+nTAh$$M+ohilV14+xq_G\"\u003esatellite photos of buildings that resemble hex digits\u003c/a\u003e.  One individual appears to have \u003ca href=\"http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/takedownthis.jpg\"\u003ehad it tattooed on his chest\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is exactly what we saw with DeCSS, which is memorialized in \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html\"\u003eDave Touretzky\u0026rsquo;s Gallery of CSS Descramblers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis case is even more absurd, in that AACS LA \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1154\"\u003eis claiming ownership of a number\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and a relatively short one\u0026ndash;not because it encodes any content or algorithm, but because it\u0026rsquo;s one of potentially millions of keys assigned for use with its system.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 11, 2007):  As \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042359.php\"\u003ethis t-shirt makes clear\u003c/a\u003e, trying to protect against the distribution of a 128-bit number is futile when knowledge of the number can be easily distributed without using the number itself.  I\u0026rsquo;d love to see AACS LA try to make a case against the marketing and sale of this shirt.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Banning the distribution of AACS keys is futile"},{"content":"Bush has vetoed the second bill of his presidency, the bill to continue funding the war on Iraq and specify a timetable for withdrawal. Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review points out that he signed the bill with a pen given to him by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2005:\nBush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House.David Weigel at Reason magazine asks why Bush didn\u0026rsquo;t go all out:\nAt first you think \u0026ldquo;that\u0026rsquo;s a little bit much, four years to the day after he appropriated different military imagery and it blew up in his face.\u0026rdquo; And then you think - just a pen? Why not do it up proper? Drive up the road to Dover AFB, lean over a flag-draped coffin, and sign the bill with the Pen of Martyrs as 24 white doves are released into the air. Get Col. Bud Day to give color commentary. Set the whole tableau to the ringing tones of Dennis Madalone.And Weigel also offers this interesting addendum:\nThen there\u0026rsquo;s this:Derga asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. On Tuesday, Derga contacted the White House to remind Bush to use the pen, and so he did.\nHe had to be reminded?\nHistorical Comments Gary McGath (2007-05-03):\nIt's still within Congress's power to stop the war. They don't need to get a funding bill with restrictions passed; they simply need to do nothing -- to not give Bush any money for his war.But that would require actual courage.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/05/bushs-iraq-funding-veto.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBush has vetoed the second bill of his presidency, the bill to continue funding the war on Iraq and specify a timetable for withdrawal. Kathryn Jean Lopez at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Review\u003c/span\u003e points out that he signed the bill with a pen given to him by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2005:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House.\u003c/blockquote\u003eDavid Weigel at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119966.html\"\u003easks why Bush didn\u0026rsquo;t go all out\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt first you think \u0026ldquo;that\u0026rsquo;s a little bit much, four years to the day after he appropriated different military imagery and it blew up in his face.\u0026rdquo; And then you think - just a pen? Why not do it up proper? Drive up the road to Dover AFB, lean over a flag-draped coffin, and sign the bill with the Pen of Martyrs as 24 white doves are released into the air. Get Col. Bud Day to give color commentary. Set the whole tableau to the ringing tones of \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmGFVLZC3os\"\u003eDennis Madalone.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmGFVLZC3os\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eAnd Weigel also offers this interesting addendum:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThen there\u0026rsquo;s this:\u003cblockquote\u003eDerga asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. On Tuesday, Derga contacted the White House to remind Bush to use the pen, and so he did.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe had to be reminded?\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's Iraq funding veto"},{"content":" Given the explosive growth Maricopa County's Trustee Sale Notices saw in the second half of 2006, the numbers for the first four months of 2007 have seemed somewhat like a plateau. April’s total was 11 below March’s 1720, leading me to seriously wonder what the future holds.\nFrom a recent Reuters article:\nSubprime mortgages to less creditworthy borrowers comprised only 13.7 percent of outstanding U.S. mortgage debt in the fourth quarter of 2006, and their delinquency rate was 13.3 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.\nIf, like the article, you believe that the woes of the subprime mortgage market are “well contained,” then perhaps we have a hint of what the remainder of 2007 has in store.\nAssume, for (extreme) simplicity’s sake, that...\n1) All 1,250,231 houses in Maricopa County have a mortgage, and\n2) The percentages quoted above remain the same for all of 2007, and\n3) No one who does not have a subprime loan will become delinquent,\n... then that means the average number of Phoenix-area trustee sale notices per month should come to 1898. I’m inclined to take it as a good sign that we’ve only seen a peak of 1720 so far, in spite of Mish’s contention, over at his Global Economic Trend Analysis, that containment is spreading.\nHowever, the graph below, far more than Mish’s falling sky pronouncements, gives me pause:\nTrustee’s Sale Notices are a lagging indicator, since they don't happen until the borrower has been in big trouble for several months. That fact, in conjunction with the data behind the Credit Suisse graph, leads me to believe that late 2007 through early 2008 (and beyond) is when we should be expecting the big wave to hit. How big? Who can say? Anonymous (2007-09-10):\nIs this ARM reset schedule just for Arizona??\nLippard (2007-09-10):\nMatthew: No, this is for the entire U.S.\nAnonymous (2007-09-12):\nJim, Thank you so much!I was wondering if you knew where I could locate hostorical foreclosure rates by quarter for the last year or two?\nLippard (2007-09-12):\nMatthew: I'll defer to Einzige on that one, since he knows where to get historical preforeclosure rates--perhaps the actual foreclosure rates are also available.I usually find my stats with Google search, and in response to your question I found this 2003 Arizona Republic report on foreclosures, which reports \"The number of people across greater Phoenix at least three months behind on their mortgages and in danger of losing their homes climbed a staggering 50 percent during the past two years, hitting a record 14,178 in 2002. The foreclosure rate is rising so rapidly that it's outpacing record increases in home sales and prices. So far this year, home foreclosures climbed an additional 10 percent.\"That rate is an average of 1181.5 foreclosures per month. Based on what we're seeing now for preforeclosures (notices of trustee's sales), we will likely break that record in 2007 or 2008 (or both).\nMichole Mattix (2007-09-16):\nI was wondering if there is an easier way to get the raw numbers of how many Notice of Foreclosure were recorded with Maricopa County each month besides searching the Recorded Docs section of the county site as this takes a long time. Do you have the raw data that was used to create your chart? I would really appreciate it. Please email me at mattixcm@gmail.com.\nEinzige (2007-09-29):\nSorry I've been lax in responding to comments, here.Actual foreclosure data I don't really know about. I'm sure there's someplace somewhere that tracks it, but once a house actually goes up for auction, unless you're the one buying it, from an investment standpoint, who really cares? Try someone at ASU.Chris,I feel for ya, man. Pulling that historical raw data off the Recorder's office web page was a time-consuming, mind-numbing exercise. Why do you think I water-marked the resultant graph? lol.They recently improved the page, somewhat, but it's still mostly a pain.Ask me again later. Perhaps I'll be in a more charitable mood at that point.\nJ (2008-02-08):\nThis is interesting. I just pulled the numbers for Pinal County. NOT's were 819 for January '08. That compares to 290 in Jan. '07 - that's a 282% increase. Not a good sign for the market.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/where-are-we-headed.html/","summary":"\u003ca href=\"/images/apr07ntr.jpg\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center; cursor:pointer;\" src=\"/images/apr07ntr.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Click Image for Full Size\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5062895232159905490\" /\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"/images/avg407.jpg\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5059441898065295010\" style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; cursor:pointer; text-align:center;\" alt=\"Click Image for Full Size\" src=\"/images/avg407.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003eGiven the explosive growth Maricopa County's Trustee Sale Notices saw in the second half of 2006, the numbers for the first four months of 2007 have seemed somewhat like a plateau. April’s total was 11 below \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/latest-real-estate-market-info-for.html\"\u003eMarch’s 1720\u003c/a\u003e, leading me to seriously wonder what the future holds.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom a \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1159729020070411?src=041207_0735_INVESTING_comment_n_analysis\"\u003erecent Reuters article\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#000099;\"\u003eSubprime mortgages to less creditworthy borrowers comprised only 13.7 percent of outstanding U.S. mortgage debt in the fourth quarter of 2006, and their delinquency rate was 13.3 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf, like the article, you believe that the woes of the subprime mortgage market are “well contained,” then perhaps we have a hint of what the remainder of 2007 has in store.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAssume, for (extreme) simplicity’s sake, that...\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1) All 1,250,231 houses in Maricopa County have a mortgage, and\u003cbr /\u003e2) The percentages quoted above remain the same for all of 2007, and\u003cbr /\u003e3) No one who does not have a subprime loan will become delinquent,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e... then that means the average number of Phoenix-area trustee sale notices per month should come to 1898. I’m inclined to take it as a good sign that we’ve only seen a peak of 1720 so far, in spite of Mish’s contention, over at his \u003ca href=\"http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com\"\u003eGlobal Economic Trend Analysis\u003c/a\u003e, that \u003ca href=\"http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/04/containment-is-spreading.html\"\u003econtainment is spreading\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowever, the graph below, far more than Mish’s falling sky pronouncements, gives me pause:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/reset_schedule.png\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5059442568080193202\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"Click to Enlarge this Graph\" src=\"/images/reset_schedule.png\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTrustee’s Sale Notices are a lagging indicator, since they don't happen until the borrower has been in big trouble for several months. That fact, in conjunction with the data behind the Credit Suisse graph, leads me to believe that late 2007 through early 2008 (and beyond) is when we should be expecting the big wave to hit. How big? Who can say?\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-09-10)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIs this ARM reset schedule just for Arizona??\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where Are We Headed?"},{"content":"The Cynical-C Blog is keeping a running tab, and are up to a list of 72 items so far\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/whos-to-blame-for-virginia-tech.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Cynical-C Blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.cynical-c.com/?p=7191\"\u003eis keeping a running tab\u003c/a\u003e, and are up to a list of 72 items so far\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's to blame for the Virginia Tech shootings"},{"content":"Classically Liberal reports on multiple school shooting incidents which have been successfully stopped by private individuals with handguns\u0026ndash;though the media has mostly failed to report that the individuals apprehending the gunmen were armed, so these examples aren\u0026rsquo;t widely known.\nPatri Friedman at Catallarchy observes:\nAnyway, I am not claiming that any one story (or in this case, four stories) prove anything about the overall tradeoffs. But these stories are in direct contrast to explicit statements some of you have made about how you think the world works. So please realize that you were wrong, and that guns are demonstrably capable of stopping massacres short. Doesn’t mean we should have them, but it is directly relevant to yesterday’s incident. We don’t know what the distribution of death reductions would have been if the massacre hadn’t been in a gun free zone, but it surely has a non-zero mean, and quite possibly a significant one. After all, this was an extremely bad massacre, which means more people involved and more time to get armed.\nBut of course, probabilistic lives saved by guns are vastly less visceral than actual lives ended by them, hence much more difficult for us to view as real.\nHistorical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-06-03):\nShame that Australian Prime Minister John Howard didn\u0026#39;t realise this simple fact before his draconian gun ban, a knee-jerk reaction to a tragic massacre.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/individual-armed-resistance-can-bring.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eClassically Liberal \u003ca href=\"http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-mass-killers-meet-armed-resistance.html\"\u003ereports on multiple school shooting incidents which have been successfully stopped by private individuals with handguns\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;though the media has mostly failed to report that the individuals apprehending the gunmen were armed, so these examples aren\u0026rsquo;t widely known.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePatri Friedman at Catallarchy \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2007/04/17/guns-have-stopped-massacres-early/\"\u003eobserves\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I am not claiming that any one story (or in this case, four stories) prove anything about the overall tradeoffs. But these stories are in direct contrast to explicit statements some of you have made about how you think the world works. So please realize that you were wrong, and that guns are demonstrably capable of stopping massacres short. Doesn’t mean we should have them, but it is directly relevant to yesterday’s incident. We don’t know what the distribution of death reductions would have been if the massacre hadn’t been in a gun free zone, but it surely has a non-zero mean, and quite possibly a significant one. After all, this was an extremely bad massacre, which means more people involved and more time to get armed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Individual armed resistance can bring school shootings to a halt"},{"content":"Einzige has a great post at his blog titled \u0026ldquo;Making Fortunes* in Foreclosures (* Once you\u0026rsquo;ve discarded your ethical compass)\u0026quot; which describes the details of how some sleazy real estate gurus make money off of gullible homeowners in distress.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-04-28):\nThanks, Jim!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/how-sleazy-real-estate-gurus-make-money.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEinzige has a great post at his blog titled \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2007/04/making-fortunes-in-foreclosures.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Making Fortunes* in Foreclosures (* Once you\u0026rsquo;ve discarded your ethical compass)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which describes the details of how some sleazy real estate gurus make money off of gullible homeowners in distress.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-04-28)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks, Jim!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"How sleazy real estate gurus make money"},{"content":"\nWe are back from a trip to London (with side trips to Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and a couple days in Cambridge). Although we didn\u0026rsquo;t plan it, we happened to see a number of interesting things on St. George\u0026rsquo;s Day\u0026ndash;the immediate aftermath of the attempted suicide jumper rescue at Millennium Bridge (my own photos are much less interesting than the Daily Mail\u0026rsquo;s) and the Guinness Record attempt (successful, I believe) for largest coconut orchestra at Trafalgar Square (with Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and the cast of Spamalot in attendance, singing \u0026ldquo;Always Look on the Bright Side of Life\u0026rdquo;). We got to see both Oxford and Cambridge\u0026rsquo;s respective Bridges of Sighs (Cambridge says theirs is better because it\u0026rsquo;s over water; Oxford\u0026rsquo;s is really named Hertford Bridge), had lunches at the Eagle Pub and at The Orchard.\nThe photo is me in a doorway at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Unfortunately, we did not make it to Logic Lane.\nLaika (2007-04-29):\nJust stumbled across this video of the coconut thing:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW9d4okTCww\nLippard (2007-04-29):\nMark: Thanks for the video link!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/back-from-uk.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P4200167.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P4200167.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5057541657475361682\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe are back from a trip to London (with side trips to Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and a couple days in Cambridge).  Although we didn\u0026rsquo;t plan it, we happened to see a number of interesting things on St. George\u0026rsquo;s Day\u0026ndash;the immediate aftermath of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=450371\u0026in_page_id=1770\u0026amp;ito=1490\"\u003eattempted suicide jumper rescue at Millennium Bridge\u003c/a\u003e (my own photos are much less interesting than the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDaily Mail\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s) and the Guinness Record attempt (successful, I believe) for \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6537023.stm\"\u003elargest coconut orchestra at Trafalgar Square\u003c/a\u003e (with Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and the cast of Spamalot in attendance, singing \u0026ldquo;Always Look on the Bright Side of Life\u0026rdquo;).  We got to see both Oxford and Cambridge\u0026rsquo;s respective Bridges of Sighs (Cambridge says \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Sighs_%28Cambridge%29\"\u003etheirs is better\u003c/a\u003e because it\u0026rsquo;s over water; Oxford\u0026rsquo;s is \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Sighs_%28Oxford%29\"\u003ereally named Hertford Bridge\u003c/a\u003e), had lunches at the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eagle_Pub\"\u003eEagle Pub\u003c/a\u003e and at \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orchard\"\u003eThe Orchard\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe photo is me in a doorway at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/\"\u003eBodleian Library\u003c/a\u003e at Oxford University.  Unfortunately, we did not make it to \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Lane\"\u003eLogic Lane\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from the UK"},{"content":"Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out that there are millions of emails missing from the White House servers (the official ones, not the Republican National Committee ones):\nCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has released a report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal. In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel\u0026rsquo;s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.\nMelanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent? The ever changing excuses offered by the administration \u0026ndash; that they didn\u0026rsquo;t want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn\u0026rsquo;t clear on the law \u0026ndash; are patently ridiculous. Very convenient that embarrassing \u0026ndash; and potentially incriminating \u0026ndash; emails have gone missing. It\u0026rsquo;s the Nixon White House all over again.\u0026quot;\nWITHOUT A TRACE covers the following areas:\nPresidential Records Act (PRA): Enacted in 1978, requires the president to preserve all presidential records, which are defined as those records relating to the \u0026ldquo;activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of [the president\u0026rsquo;s] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nClinton Administration Policy: In 1993, then-Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary John Podesta sent a memo to all presidential staff explaining that the PRA required all staff members to maintain all records, including emails. Podesta stated that the use of external email networks was prohibited because records would not be saved as required. The 1997 White House Manual and a 2000 memo issued by Mark Lindsay, then Assistant to the President for Management and Administration echoed this policy, requiring staff to use only the White House email system for official communications.\nBush Administration Policy: The Bush Administration has refused to make public its record-keeping policy. A confidential source provided CREW with a 2002 document indicating the use of \u0026ldquo;non-EOP messaging-enabled mechanisms should not be used for official business.\u0026quot;\nBush Administration Practice: In the wake of the scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff and the fired U.S. Attorneys, emails were released showing that top White House staffers routinely used Republican National Committee (RNC) email accounts to conduct official business. For example, J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, used an RNC account to communicate with the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales regarding the appointments of new U.S. Attorneys. Similarly, Susan Ralston, a former aide to Karl Rove, used RNC email accounts to communicate with Abramoff about appointments to the Department of the Interior.\nPRA Violations: 1) The administration failed to implement adequate record-keeping systems to archive presidential email records; 2) two confidential sources independently informed CREW that the administration abandoned a plan to recover more than five million missing emails; 3) White House staff used outside email accounts to conduct presidential business, ensuring that emails were not adequately preserved. In fact, former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring said in an email to Abramoff that Ralston had told him not to send emails to her official White House account \u0026ldquo;because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.\u0026quot;\nHatch Act Excuse: The administration has claimed that Rove, Jennings and other staffers use RNC accounts to avoid violating the Hatch Act. This is untrue. The Hatch Act prohibits White House staff from using official resources for purely \u0026ldquo;political\u0026rdquo; purposes. \u0026ldquo;Political\u0026rdquo; refers to the president\u0026rsquo;s role as either a candidate for office or as the leader of his party. Email communications regarding presidential appointments for U.S. Attorney and Interior Department positions clearly fall within the PRA as making appointment is an official presidential function and does not relate to the president\u0026rsquo;s role as party leader.\nI ask once again, can we impeach Bush now?\nUPDATE (January 19, 2009): The Washington Post reports that some 14 million emails have been found and will be transferred to the National Archives.\nUPDATE (December 15, 2009): Looks like 22 million \u0026ldquo;missing emails\u0026rdquo; have been located.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/crew-points-out-there-are-millions-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington \u003ca href=\"http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/27607\"\u003epoints out that there are millions of emails missing from the White House servers\u003c/a\u003e (the official ones, not the Republican National Committee ones):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has released a report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal.   \u003cp\u003eIn a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel\u0026rsquo;s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CREW points out there are millions of missing White House emails"},{"content":"With the FBI being directed to focus its attention on counterterrorism, its investigations of fraud, identity theft, civil rights violations, and crime in general have plummeted:\n\u0026ndash; Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 \u0026ndash; a 34 percent drop. \u0026ndash; White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases \u0026ndash; a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000\u0026hellip;.\n\u0026ndash; Civil rights investigations, which include hate crimes and police abuse, have continued a steady decline since the late 1990s. FBI agents pursued 65 percent fewer cases in 2005 than they did in 2000.\n\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s a niche of fraudsters that are floating around unprosecuted,\u0026rdquo; said one recently retired top FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. \u0026ldquo;They are not going to jail. There is no law enforcement solution in sight.\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip; By the time the bureau started putting together its fiscal 2007 budget in mid-2005, \u0026ldquo;we realized we were going to have to pull out of some areas \u0026ndash; bank fraud, investment fraud, ID theft \u0026ndash; cases that protect the financial infrastructure of the country,\u0026rdquo; [Dale Watson, who left in 2002 as the FBI\u0026rsquo;s executive assistant director over counterterrorism programs] said\u0026hellip;\n[FBI Assistant Director Chip Burrus] acknowledges that the bureau has reduced its efforts to fight fraud. He likened the FBI\u0026rsquo;s current fraud-enforcement policies \u0026ndash; in which losses below $150,000 have little chance of being addressed \u0026ndash; to \u0026ldquo;triage.\u0026rdquo; Even cases with losses approaching $500,000 are much less likely to be accepted for investigation than before 9/11, he said.\nThere is \u0026ldquo;no question\u0026rdquo; that America\u0026rsquo;s financial losses from frauds below $150,000 amount to billions a year, Burrus said. The top security official for a major American bank agreed, saying unprosecuted fraud losses easily total \u0026ldquo;multibillions.\u0026quot;\nIs America safer?\n(Via TPM Muckraker.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/fbi-focus-on-counterterrorism-leads-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith the FBI being directed to focus its attention on counterterrorism, \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/311046_fbiterror11.html\"\u003eits investigations of fraud, identity theft, civil rights violations, and crime in general have plummeted\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ndash; Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 \u0026ndash; a 34 percent drop. \u003cp\u003e\u0026ndash; White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases \u0026ndash; a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI focus on counterterrorism leads to increase in unprosecuted fraud and identity theft"},{"content":"One of the facts that has come out of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal is that the White House has been using email accounts set up by the Republican National Committee to avoid official records being kept in the White House email systems. This also, however, has undermined White House attempts to claim that these are privileged internal communications.\nNow, however, the RNC says that it has accidentally lost \u0026ldquo;an undetermined number of emails concerning White House business.\u0026quot; Oops.\n(Via Talking Points Memo.)\nUPDATE (April 12, 2007): Dan Froomkin points out how the White House staff must have known that they were violating federal law and White House policy by using RNC email accounts and deleting emails.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/rnc-accidentally-loses-white-house.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the facts that has come out of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal is that the White House has been using email accounts set up by the Republican National Committee to avoid official records being kept in the White House email systems.  This also, however, has undermined White House attempts to claim that these are privileged internal communications.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, however, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/17062173.htm\"\u003eRNC says that it has accidentally lost \u0026ldquo;an undetermined number of emails concerning White House business.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Oops.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_04_08.php#013579\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 12, 2007): Dan Froomkin \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/04/12/BL2007041200941.html\"\u003epoints out how the White House staff must have known that they were violating federal law and White House policy by using RNC email accounts and deleting emails\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RNC accidentally loses White House aides' email about attorney purge"},{"content":"Bruce Flamm points out that another reason to doubt the authors of the dubious Journal of Reproductive Medicine prayer study has surfaced, with one of them being charged with plagiarism:\nIn summary, the man who designed and supposedly conducted the prayer study resides in federal prison, and the man originally listed as lead author admits he knows nothing about the alleged research. The only remaining author has now been charged with plagiarism. . . This may be the first time in history that all three authors of a randomized, controlled study have been found guilty of fraud, deception, and/or plagiarism. Even more remarkable is the fact that the JRM has steadfastly refused to retract its physics-defying paper.Taner Edis has more at the Secular Outpost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/plagiarism-deception-and-fraud-jrm.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Flamm points out that another reason to doubt the authors of the dubious \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Reproductive Medicine\u003c/span\u003e prayer study has surfaced, with one of them being charged with plagiarism:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn summary, the man who designed and supposedly conducted the prayer study resides in federal prison, and the man originally listed as lead author admits he knows nothing about the alleged research. The only remaining author has now been charged with plagiarism. . . This may be the first time in history that all three authors of a randomized, controlled study have been found guilty of fraud, deception, and/or plagiarism. Even more remarkable is the fact that the JRM has steadfastly refused to retract its physics-defying paper.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTaner Edis \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/04/study-without-prayer.html\"\u003ehas more at the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Plagiarism, deception, and fraud: The JRM prayer study"},{"content":"Scott Adams\u0026rsquo; lame arguments for copyright are taken apart by Kevin Carson at the Mutualist Blog. There are good arguments to be made for some form of copyright protection, but Adams doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them.\nI guess it\u0026rsquo;s not just the subject of evolution where Adams goes off the rails.\nHistorical Comments Kevin Carson (2007-04-11):\nThanks, Jim.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/scott-adams-lame-arguments-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScott Adams\u0026rsquo; lame arguments for copyright \u003ca href=\"http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/04/scott-adams-cognitive-dissonance.html\"\u003eare taken apart by Kevin Carson at the Mutualist Blog\u003c/a\u003e.  There are good arguments to be made for some form of copyright protection, but Adams doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI guess it\u0026rsquo;s not just the subject of evolution where Adams goes \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/scott_adams_reads_newsweek_uho.php\"\u003eoff\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/02/scott_adams_is_a_pointy_haired.php\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/03/scott_adams_intellectual_disho.php\"\u003erails\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eKevin Carson\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-04-11)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks, Jim.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Scott Adams' lame arguments for copyright"},{"content":"This video shows U.S. inflation-adjusted home prices from 1890 to present, as a roller coaster ride. Gee, I wonder what the next piece of the ride will look like?\n(Via Catallarchy.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/inflation-adjusted-home-prices-as.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis video shows U.S. inflation-adjusted home prices from 1890 to present, as a roller coaster ride.  Gee, I wonder what the next piece of the ride will look like?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/kUldGc06S3U\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/kUldGc06S3U\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2007/04/11/one-hell-of-a-toboggan-ride/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inflation-adjusted home prices as a roller coaster ride"},{"content":"The series \u0026ldquo;America at a Crossroads\u0026rdquo; commissioned a series of films about Islam in America that will air next week. One of the films, \u0026ldquo;Islam v. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center,\u0026rdquo; by Martyn Burke, will not be shown.\nBurke, who was previously the producer of \u0026ldquo;Pirates of Silicon Valley\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Hollywood Ten,\u0026rdquo; says that his film was dropped for political reasons (including the fact that two of his co-producers, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev, are neoconservatives from the Center for Security Policy) after \u0026ldquo;tampering\u0026rdquo; by PBS and managers from WETA Washington D.C. He listed these examples of tampering:\n• A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish \u0026ldquo;parallel societies\u0026rdquo; in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts.\n• After grants were issued, Crossroads managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with Islam vs. Islamists and competed for the same interview subjects.\n• WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an \u0026ldquo;unparalleled breach of ethics,\u0026rdquo; Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.PBS claims that Burke\u0026rsquo;s film was not completed on time, had \u0026ldquo;serious structural problems\u0026rdquo; and was \u0026ldquo;irresponsible\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;alarmist, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t fair.\u0026quot;\nBurke\u0026rsquo;s film featured Phoenix medical doctor Zuhdi Jasser, head of the Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit that advocates \u0026ldquo;patriotism, constitutional democracy, and a separation of church and state.\u0026rdquo; Jasser, a staunch Republican and former U.S. Navy physician, was an internist at the Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol in the late nineties.\nThere are more details and a short clip of Jasser from the film at the Arizona Republic (from which the above bulleted points are quoted).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-04-19):\nZuhdi talked briefly about this at the EDG last night.It's very hard to be enthusiastic about his cause, given that it seems akin to taking a position on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. That, and the fact that he is wholeheartedly behind the U.S. invasion of the middle east.Put those two things together and I can barely restrain myself from constantly telling him to go fuck himself.\nMitch (2007-04-20):\nWe are always told that the vast majority of Muslims in the US are ordinary law-abiding citizens who are not interested in the radical Islamic message that is being preached around the world.Well, I have rarely seen or heard one. We as non-Muslims, need to see this documentary.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/pbs-drops-islam-vs-islamists.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe series \u0026ldquo;America at a Crossroads\u0026rdquo; commissioned a series of films about Islam in America that will air next week.  One of the films, \u0026ldquo;Islam v. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center,\u0026rdquo; by Martyn Burke, will not be shown.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBurke, who was previously the producer of \u0026ldquo;Pirates of Silicon Valley\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Hollywood Ten,\u0026rdquo; says that his film was dropped for political reasons (including the fact that two of his co-producers, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev, are neoconservatives from the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Security_Policy\"\u003eCenter for Security Policy\u003c/a\u003e)  after \u0026ldquo;tampering\u0026rdquo; by PBS and managers from WETA Washington D.C.  He listed these examples of tampering:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e• A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish \u0026ldquo;parallel societies\u0026rdquo; in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e• After grants were issued, \u003ci\u003eCrossroads\u003c/i\u003e managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with \u003ci\u003eIslam vs. Islamists\u003c/i\u003e and competed for the same interview subjects.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e• WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an \u0026ldquo;unparalleled breach of ethics,\u0026rdquo; Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.\u003c/blockquote\u003ePBS claims that Burke\u0026rsquo;s film was not completed on time, had \u0026ldquo;serious structural problems\u0026rdquo; and was \u0026ldquo;irresponsible\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;alarmist, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t fair.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBurke\u0026rsquo;s film featured Phoenix medical doctor \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special19/articles/0404jasser-ON.html\"\u003eZuhdi Jasser\u003c/a\u003e, head of the Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit that advocates \u0026ldquo;patriotism, constitutional democracy, and a separation of church and state.\u0026rdquo;  Jasser, a staunch Republican and former U.S. Navy physician, was an internist at the Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol in the late nineties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are more details and a short clip of Jasser from the film \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0410crossroads0410.html\"\u003eat the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (from which the above bulleted points are quoted).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"PBS drops \"Islam vs. Islamists\""},{"content":"Via Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, here\u0026rsquo;s video of Geraldo Rivera arguing with Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly about illegal immigration. Geraldo does a great job of actually getting his points out on O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s show, though he has to raise his voice to do it. I agree with Geraldo, pointing out that this move of attacking illegal immigration because of some other problem (in this case, drunk driving) is a deceptive way of arguing against illegal immigration, unless there is some evidence that illegal immigrants as a group create more of the problem than other people.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/geraldo-takes-on-oreilly.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.angryblog.org/?p=760\"\u003eSinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog\u003c/a\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s video of Geraldo Rivera arguing with Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly about illegal immigration.  Geraldo does a great job of actually getting his points out on O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s show, though he has to raise his voice to do it.  I agree with Geraldo, pointing out that this move of attacking illegal immigration because of some other problem (in this case, drunk driving) is a deceptive way of arguing against illegal immigration, unless there is some evidence that illegal immigrants as a group create more of the problem than other people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/u0Gwz-2qB7o\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/u0Gwz-2qB7o\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Geraldo takes on O'Reilly"},{"content":"See the persuasive video, \u0026ldquo;Unfastened Coins,\u0026rdquo; at the Official Website of the Titanic Truth Movement.\n(Hat tip: Andrew Ramsey.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/truth-about-sinking-of-titanic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSee the persuasive video, \u0026ldquo;Unfastened Coins,\u0026rdquo; at \u003ca href=\"http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=af07\"\u003ethe Official Website of the Titanic Truth Movement\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: Andrew Ramsey.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The truth about the sinking of the Titanic"},{"content":"\nOn Sunday morning I received a phone call from my father informing me that my grandmother had died. By Monday morning, the funeral arrangements had been made, and my sisters and I booked our flights to Indianapolis.\nMy grandmother\u0026rsquo;s obituary in the Indianapolis Star reported some facts and statistics of her life\u0026ndash;born April 19, 1919 in Indianapolis (not, as I had always thought, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where her older sister had been born), died April 1, 2007. She had worked in the Neurology Department at Indiana University Medical Center. She had been an active member of Clermont Christian Church since the mid-1940s, and married to my grandfather, who survives her, for nearly 69 years. Her brother Ernie, a Pearl Harbor survivor, also survives her.\nWhat the obituary didn\u0026rsquo;t express was the love that she had for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and how, as my cousin Aaron said at the funeral service, she always focused her attention on others and made us feel special.\nThe visitation at the funeral home and the funeral service was attended by hundreds of people, including many relatives I didn\u0026rsquo;t even know I had. What was a time of loss also became a reunion of family members from across the country, that I\u0026rsquo;m sure my grandmother would have been overjoyed to see.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll all miss her.\nJohn Lynch (2007-04-09):\nJim,Sorry for your loss. -john\nJohn Lynch (2007-04-09):\n(that's -john as in John Lynch ... I thought Blogger remembered who I am. bah!)\nSchtacky (2007-04-09):\nJim,Boy, she lived a long life! It's always too soon when our relatives leave us, though. Kristen's and my thoughts are with you.Take care,Joe\nLippard (2007-04-09):\nJohn, Joe: Thanks very much.Joe: Yes, she did have a long and full life--she very nearly made it to 88. My grandfather will be 89 later this month, and he's doing well.\nKevin Carson (2007-04-13):\nMy condolences. All of my grandparents are gone now, and I still dream of them often.\nLippard (2007-04-13):\nThanks, Kevin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/04/rip-grandma-lippard.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P9180003.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P9180003.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5051218018460584162\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Sunday morning I received a phone call from my father informing me that my grandmother had died.  By Monday morning, the funeral arrangements had been made, and my sisters and I booked our flights to Indianapolis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy \u003ca href=\"http://www2.indystar.com/cgi-bin/obituaries/index.php?action=show\u0026id=75596\"\u003egrandmother\u0026rsquo;s obituary in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIndianapolis Star\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e reported some facts and statistics of her life\u0026ndash;born April 19, 1919 in Indianapolis (not, as I had always thought, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where her older sister had been born), died April 1, 2007.  She had worked in the Neurology Department at Indiana University Medical Center.  She had been an active member of Clermont Christian Church since the mid-1940s, and married to my grandfather, who survives her, for nearly 69 years.  Her brother Ernie, a Pearl Harbor survivor, also survives her.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat the obituary didn\u0026rsquo;t express was the love that she had for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and how, as my cousin Aaron said at the funeral service, she always focused her attention on others and made us feel special.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe visitation at the funeral home and the funeral service was attended by hundreds of people, including many relatives I didn\u0026rsquo;t even know I had.  What was a time of loss also became a reunion of family members from across the country, that I\u0026rsquo;m sure my grandmother would have been overjoyed to see.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll all miss her.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP, Grandma Lippard"},{"content":"In the July/August 1988 issue of The Arizona Skeptic, I wrote an article called \u0026ldquo;A Visit to the \u0026lsquo;Psychic Showcase.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; This article was about my visit in April 1988 to a psychic fair put on by \u0026ldquo;Truth Investigations Unlimited\u0026rdquo; at the Biltmore Commerce Center in Phoenix. In that article, I reported on a demonstration of \u0026ldquo;mind transference techniques\u0026rdquo; by Phoenix magician Lee Earle (who began by stating \u0026ldquo;I have been accused of being a fake, a fraud, a phony, and a cheat\u0026rdquo;), channeling of \u0026ldquo;Equinox\u0026rdquo; by Joan Scibienski, a UFO lecture by Brian Myers and Tina Choate of the Center for UFO Research, and a talk by Jerry Wills.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the portion of the article about Jerry Wills:\nAs a special bonus, we were given a chance to hear from an actual UFO contactee named Jerry Wills. Wills claimed that his contacts began in 1965 in the woods of Kentucky and lasted about five years. He was contacted at least once a week, sometimes two or three times a week. He spent from an hour to a day in telepathic communication with aliens, and they gave him their theology, astrophysics, biology, physics, chemistry, sociology, and so on. Unfortunately, the only piece of alien technology he shared with us was a light-up crystal (called \"The Guardian\") that was for sale at a nearby table. Although Wills claimed aliens taught him how to make these crystals, literature on the table where they were being sold claimed that Wills was himself the inventor.\nWills gave a similar talk the second day, but this time he spoke of contacts with extraterrestrials taking place around 1971-1972. He also added new features, such as claiming that some of his friends were also contacted by extraterrestrials, and that the aliens gave him a ring. When asked where this ring was, he said he had traded it for an arrowhead and the ring was destroyed in a fire. He claimed that the aliens had given him information which he used to design a 3-D (television?) system for Toshiba and a Claymore mine detonator.\nI should note that I met Wills at the \"Focus on You\" expo on December 5, 1987, at which time he was selling the lighted crystals (Jim Lowell of TUSKS was interested in purchasing one until he was told the price). At that time, he stated that he made no paranormal claims for his crystals. Now, however, the literature promoting these crystals states that \"You can learn to use it to heal yourself and others as well as creating a sense of peace and well-being about the person wearing it\" and \"The Guardian is used like any crystal in healing, however, the light when it touches the skin has great healing effects.\" Further, it is claimed that The Guardian \"is meant to be used by all who are to raise the consciousness of the planet.\" In a later issue of the Arizona Skeptic (vol. 6, no. 3, November/December 1992), I gave an update on Jerry Wills from Saucer Smear:\nJim Moseley, \"Beckley Does It Again!\" Saucer Smear (November 1, 1992):3. Reports on Tim Beckley's \"National New Age \u0026amp; Alien Agenda Conference\" held in Phoenix, at which Jerry Wills played guitar in an impromptu rock session. Wills, whose story as a UFO abductee was reported in the pages of this newsletter (AS, July/August 1988, p. 3), now claims to have been one of the aliens who crashed and died at Roswell, New Mexico, but was reincarnated as a human. (See also Robert Sheaffer's \"Psychic Vibrations\" column in the Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1991, p. 33.) A photo of this rock jam session may be found online here.\nJerry Wills now has a website with an \"About Jerry Wills\" page which tells a different set of stories:\nI have always been able to feel the flow of life, or the life force essence, around and within living things. From an early age I have had the ability to join and experience life from different perspectives because of this intuitiveness. In the beginning I didn't know everyone wasn't capable of this. Innocently, I engaged the flow of life energy from everything around me. Growing up on a remote farm in Kentucky provided many years of isolation from the rest of the world. During my teen years I started to better understand how energy moves through all living things - plant, animal and human. Eventually my abilities progressed to where I was able to help myself and others.\nDuring the spring of 1973, I was exploring my belief system and those of others. It was quickly evident I had a gift for healing and was soon providing this as a ministry. I learned a valuable lesson about God and my association with the Creator. My gift only ask me to love, and be true to myself.\nOn November 11th at 11am 1981, I experienced a \"near death\" incident after falling from the top of an airplane hanger. During the experience I was shown and told by \"someone\" what my potential role in helping others would be, if I allowed my gift to fully mature. Thanks to another healer who had a similar gift, I was encouraged to help others.\nIn 1999 I became known to the public. This was quite by accident. A news story was brought to public attention after FOX TV aired a segment about my assistance to a near dead comatose man during the winter of 1998. The medical community had completely exhausted their attempts to help this man. According to their records there was no hope he would ever regain consciousness. To complicate matters, there were serious infections which had further deteriorated his condition. His medical benefits exhausted, it was suggested his life support be terminated. Desperate for a miracle, his wife contacted me through a mutual friend. Until this time it was the only way I could be contacted - referrals from those who knew me... When I arrived to the hospice I found this man lying on his back, tubes and monitors attached to various areas of the body and head. Entering my state (that's what I call it...) I found him asleep, deep within his body. Tired and afraid, he had gone deeply into a coma not wanting to be aware of the activity around him. Placing my hands upon him I saw the problems and how to repair them - this is always how the process occurs. After spending about 50 minutes doing my work, he awoke from this terminal coma. Weeks later I visited him again to finish my work. Now he's doing really well - and is quite alive.\nI enjoy this work. My greatest rewards come from seeing the faces of clients and their families once they realize the problem (or symptoms) have vanished. To date I have assisted in what many consider miracles. The blind have been brought from darkness, the near dead have returned to health and the terminally ill have recovered their lives. I have seen those with cancer, AID's and long lists of medical conditions with terms only doctors understand. These to me are miracles, a validation God exists. ...\nIn 2004 EarthWays was formed. It is my hope this organization will help educate those who are interested to advance their skills and be a source of hope for any who need it. What has happened to \"The Guardian\" and the extraterrestrials? How come he wasn't making claims about a near-death experience in 1987, if it had happened just six years previously?\nAuthor Rod Haberer has a forthcoming book titled \"Healer: The Jerry Wills Story.\" Perhaps it will shed some light on these questions. I've emailed Rod Haberer to ask: \"When will the Jerry Wills books be available? Does his story include any references to UFOs, aliens, or \"The Guardian\"?\"\nUPDATE (December 6, 2007): Rod Haberer never replied, which is perhaps not surprising considering that he has long been a purveyer of nonsense. In 1998, Haberer was the producer of the \"10-Files\" segment on Phoenix's Channel 10 News which promoted Jim Dilettoso's bogus pseudoscientific analysis of video footage of the \"Phoenix Lights\" UFO. In the New Times story \"The Hack and the Quack\" appeared the following regarding Haberer:\nRod Haberer, producer of the \"10-Files\" piece, says that he's \"comfortable with what we put on the air.\" But when he's asked what software the station used to match and scale the daytime and nighttime shots, he admits that they didn't use a computer at all. Channel 10 simply laid one image from Krzyston's video atop another in a digital editing machine. Haberer appears to be a guy who doesn't want critical examination of facts to get in the way of making a buck.\nUPDATE (July 11, 2016): In the comments, Rod Haberer said the book was coming soon, but it didn't arrive until years later, in 2013--and he ended up going with Amazon's CreateSpace vanity press for print-on-demand and e-books rather than a regular publisher. The book reviews there appear to be mostly friends or fake (mostly five-star, with a few four-star reviews). Historical Comments AlisonM (2007-04-02):\nMaybe the aliens came back and wiped his brain? Or maybe his accountant just told him he should try a more profitable line of work. moral vengeance (2009-02-07):\nHi Jim - Rod Haberer responding to your comments. Thanks for the hack job - I haven't responded to you about the date of publication because I don't have one yet. I am currently working with an agent on some refinements before publication.The quote from the New Times was a particularly low blow which I appreciate. The New Times did a hatchet job on anyone associated with the Phoenix Lights - and was completely uninterested in exploring the truth about anything. The fact is, you don't need a computer program to overlay two photos - any idiot who has ever worked in film or photography knows that. We used AVID computer editing system to compare video taken on the night the Phoenix Lights were sighted with video we shot from the exact same location. It was a perfectly valid comparison of video that the New Times chose to ignore to support their own theories. As opposed to your writing, and that of the New Times, I've been trained as a journalist to keep an open mind about all things. And that includes what I've seen with my own eyes, and what people have told me about their interactions with Jerry Wills. I don't pretend to know where he came from, or who he really is. I only know from dozens of interviews and my own observations that this person has a unique gift. The book will lay out what I've seen and what others have experienced - and allow the reader to decide for himself. Unlike you, I don't allow prejudices to interfere with my job as a journalist. If you want to play the role of super-skeptic to get your own self-serving publicity that's fine with me. I'm happy to work on something I find rather fascinating - and for the record have not profited one penny by my endeavors. Jim - there are two sides to every story. Every real journalist knows that - a concept bloggers like you never seem to grasp.If you want to discuss what I have done - with an open mind - I am free to discuss it with you anytime. Rod Haberer Lippard (2009-02-09):\nRod:I was unable to determine from your complete lack of response for nearly two years that this meant that you don't have a publication date yet for the book that has been advertised on your website for that entire time. Perhaps replying that you don't have a publication date yet might have clued me in.Tony Ortega's piece in the New Times, contrary to your statement, was actually the best piece of journalism on the subject, that actually bothered trying to find a genuine explanation for what was actually two distinct events at two different times on March 13, 1997, planes from 8:15-8:45 p.m., and military flares at 10 p.m.. The \"10 Files\" piece you produced, by contrast, ignored significant evidence (like the testimony of Mitch Stanley) and credulously promoted the accounts of credential-free bullshit artists, while purporting to give \"both sides\" of the story. It would be nice if your story were made available online, so that readers of this blog could compare Ortega's work to yours for themselves.Ortega's story specifically critiques the details of the \"10 Files\" test, and your response here offers no rebuttal. Your test didn't bother to match the scale of the shots, while Ortega got a Ph.D. astronomer to review your test and repeat it more accurately--and he found a match on the ridge visible in both shots, meaning that the lights really did disappear behind the ridge of the mountain, as would be expected if they were the dropped flares.Perhaps you should read Ortega's story again, if you want to offer a genuine critique.(BTW, Tony Ortega was a winner of the Virg Hill Arizona Journalist of the Year award, the Los Angeles Press Club award for best news story, the 2002 Unity award, and the 2005 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies award for best column, and is currently editor-in-chief at the Village Voice.)Any real journalist knows that the \"two sides\" myth is responsible for some of the worst faux journalism ever purveyed, of the sort that was standard fare on the segment you produced. Science and pseudoscience are not \"two sides\" of a story that deserve equal treatment. You wouldn't produce a story on the Holocaust ending with \"Did it happen or not? You decide!\", yet you regularly did that with stories where the \"other side\" you were sensationalizing had as much evidential merit.The \"two sides\" myth is not only responsible for poor journalism on matters of science by elevating crackpottery to equal status with scientific evidence, it's also responsible for poor journalism on public policy and other matters where there are *more* than two positions, producing a false polarization between two views that may both be incorrect.The fact that you've spent years on a book on Jerry Wills and still today state that you \"don't pretend to know where he came from, or who he really is\" suggests to me that you are as poor a biographer as you are a journalist.I'm surprised to learn that Fox News doesn't pay its producers, and that you've \"not profited one penny by [your] endeavors.\" moral vengeance (2009-02-11):\nHi Jim - Sorry to play tit-for-tat with you - and I actually enjoy your blog very much.But a couple of more points I would like to make. The \"Not making one penny\" comment actually referred to the book on Jerry Wills - not my work at FOX for which I am paid, of course. Sorry for the confusion.And I wish the New Times and you would take a look at the full body of work we have done on the Phoenix lights, not the one story we produced concerning the Flare sightings later that night.We have several times pointed out the \"two\" events - pointing to the second event as a likely flare drop by US Air Force A-10's staging out of Davis-Monthan AFB. We even did a story with the Air Force as they dropped flares in the same area to demonstrate what flares look like from a distance. My problem with the New Times story was its one-sided tone toward our reporting, and its inaccurate portrayal of our story. I have no qualms with the credentials of New Times staff, in fact I believe they do some of the finest investigative reporting in the state. It was just that I spent about two minutes on the phone with their reporter, and his mind seemed made up before even asking me a question. I felt that our efforts to cover this story, which have been much more comprehensive than any TV station in Phoenix, was unfairly portrayed in that one piece...mostly because our story did not include a computer analysis similar to what the one cable channel did - at the time, we just did not have the equipment for that kind of analysis. We simply did the best we could with the equipment we had - but that did not seem to satisfy anyone. (And if you'd like to compare our lists of awards and Journalism credentials, I can provide that anytime,)As far as the book about Jerry, I freely admit that I may have been premature posting the book about Jerry Wills on my website before publication - and I freely admit it has been a hard sell. I approached the project with an open mind and the realization that it may never be published - and it may never be. But I remain hopeful. And by the way - I don't consider it a Biography as much as a piece on healing - using Jerry's personal story as a news \"peg\" to explore the history and science behind this growing phenomenon... including fraud and scientific studies on the subjectAs far as your comment about Jerry, I was only admitting that I remain very unsure about his origins or intentions - As I said, the book I've produced so far focuses on his efforts as a healer. There is much more to this man, be it fact or fiction, that I have not yet explored. I only believed that going into other aspects of his life beyond healing may be too much to include in one book. I may be wrong about that too, but only time will tell.Your point about two sides to every story is well taken - there are often multiple angles and mysteries that can't always be rationally explained. Although your Holocaust comparison is a bit of a low blow. I hope you believe I would never take the concept to those kinds of extremes. But when it comes to the Phoenix Lights, there is a lot of passion and \"truth\" as both sides see it - and any stand we take to one side or the other is sure to stir passions that we must take into account. We're just trying to be fair. Thank you again for this exchange, and for allowing me to clarify a few things - I would be happy to talk with you about it some more, because we obviously share a passion for this and other subjects not normally part of mainstream news. And I never intentionally ignored your request for information - in fact it was so long ago, I don't even remember it. My focus for the last several months has been on trying to refine and publish the book. And at FOX-10 News, I have had a lot on my plate. Please call and we can discuss this or anything else - This blogging thing is still new to me - I'm still admittedly \"old school\" but I'm trying.Thanks,Rod Rod Haberer (2009-12-01):\nHi Jim - just trying to keep you updated so you don\u0026#39;t get so pissed off again. Still have not published the Jerry Wills book but my agent is still trying. We are still hoping for a deal sometime early next year, but the publishing market is very tight right now. If you\u0026#39;d like to know more, please e-mail me at rhaberer99@yahoo.com. Thanks, Rod None (2018-12-04):\nI tell different stories from my life, it depends on who I\u0026#39;m speaking with, what I happen to remember at the time of telling and the context of my speaking. Just because someone changes their story does not mean they are lying. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/jerry-wills-ufo-contactee-turned.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the July/August 1988 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Arizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, I wrote an article called \u0026ldquo;A Visit to the \u0026lsquo;Psychic Showcase.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  This article was about my visit in April 1988 to a psychic fair put on by \u0026ldquo;Truth Investigations Unlimited\u0026rdquo; at the Biltmore Commerce Center in Phoenix.  In that article, I reported on a demonstration of \u0026ldquo;mind transference techniques\u0026rdquo; by Phoenix magician Lee Earle (who began by stating \u0026ldquo;I have been accused of being a fake, a fraud, a phony, and a cheat\u0026rdquo;), channeling of \u0026ldquo;Equinox\u0026rdquo; by Joan Scibienski, a UFO lecture by Brian Myers and Tina Choate of the Center for UFO Research, and a talk by Jerry Wills.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the portion of the article about Jerry Wills:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jerry Wills:  UFO contactee turned psychic healer"},{"content":"The count for March\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales in Maricopa County was 1720. Not a record beater, but certainly within sight of the summit.\nMC Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices (1995-Present)Mean929.5Median819Mode746Standard Deviation306.2041743Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum135705Count146\nThe daily average in March (78.18 Notices recorded per day) was also not a record beater.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/DailyAvgMar07.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full-sized image\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048174691379040498\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting chart I threw together based on sales data I pulled from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. The take-away from it is that, clearly, the inventory of unsold homes in the Phoenix area has been increasing for quite a while, now. The words \u0026ldquo;downward pressure\u0026rdquo; come to mind.\n\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/listingsales.jpg\u0026rdquo; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048176301991776514\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2007-04-01):\n\"not a record beater\" --So F'ing what?It's coming, dude!\nEinzige (2007-04-01):\nDamn!Calm down, mofo. I wasn't saying it to be snide. I was just pointing it out.For the record, I tend to agree that the numbers will continue to rise--though I would say that I lack the confidence in this prediction that you seem to possess.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/latest-real-estate-market-info-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe count for March\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales in Maricopa County was \u003cb\u003e1720\u003c/b\u003e. Not a record beater, but certainly within sight of the summit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/Mar07NTRS.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048173574687543522\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"Click to view full size\" src=\"/images/Mar07NTRS.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth\u003e\u003cb\u003eMC Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices (1995-Present)\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMean\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e929.5\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMedian\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e819\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMode\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e746\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eStandard Deviation\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e306.2041743\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eRange\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1256\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMinimum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e482\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMaximum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1738\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e135705\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eCount\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e146\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe daily average in March (78.18 Notices recorded per day) was also not a record beater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/DailyAvgMar07.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/DailyAvgMar07.jpg\u0026quot; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;Click for full-sized image\u0026quot;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048174691379040498\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting chart I threw together based on sales data I pulled from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. The take-away from it is that, clearly, the inventory of unsold homes in the Phoenix area has been increasing for quite a while, now. The words \u0026ldquo;downward pressure\u0026rdquo; come to mind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/listingsales.jpg\"\u003e\u0026lt;img style=\u0026ldquo;display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\u0026rdquo; src=\u0026quot;/images/listingsales.jpg\u0026rdquo; border=\u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; alt=\u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;id=\u0026ldquo;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048176301991776514\u0026rdquo; /\u0026gt;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Latest Real Estate Market Info for Maricopa County"},{"content":"\nLast night I attended a small event where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke about his candidacy for president as a Republican. I found it a bit of a disappointment. On the plus side, he is making opposition to both the drug war and the war in Iraq a major part of his campaign. He also opposes warrantless wiretapping, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Military Commissions Act. And in response to a question from one of several atheists present, he indicated his support for the separation of church and state (and opposition to Bush\u0026rsquo;s faith-based initiatives). On the minus side, his stance on illegal immigration is to \u0026ldquo;secure the border,\u0026rdquo; deny benefits to illegal immigrants, and eliminate birthright citizenship. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson\u0026rsquo;s stance on illegal immigration (double Border Patrol officers, implement a guest worker program, and provide a mechanism for illegal immigrants to pay a fine and become legal residents) makes a whole lot more sense than that. Also on the minus side, as Sameer Parekh has pointed out at his blog, his stance on free trade is to oppose anything that he sees as a compromise on free trade (like major free trade agreements), which makes him look like he\u0026rsquo;s pandering to protectionists\u0026ndash;his web page makes no indication that he support free trade, which strikes me as dishonest.\nNutjob Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson was there, and she asked a question about Bush\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;stealth campaign\u0026rdquo; to establish a North American Union; Paul responded that he opposes creation of such an entity and a common currency for such an economic area (the \u0026ldquo;amero\u0026rdquo;). This is going into WorldNetDaily and Alex Jones conspiracy theorist territory, conflating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (a meeting between the three heads of state to increase economic cooperation) with the ideas of Robert Pastor, a professor at American University, about creating a political union. If the EU can\u0026rsquo;t approve a Constitution (with France and the Netherlands rejecting it) and still has holdouts on the euro (Britain and Norway), how likely is it that countries as different as the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would combine into a single political entity?\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad Ron Paul has provided a consistent voice in Congress against the war in Iraq and erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the global war on terror, but I\u0026rsquo;m afraid he probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make a very good president (though I did make a small contribution to his campaign which I\u0026rsquo;m feeling some buyer\u0026rsquo;s remorse for this morning). My preference is to see a Democratic president and split control of Congress\u0026ndash;gridlock seems to be the most effective way of achieving economic growth and slowing the erosion of our civil liberties.\nUPDATE (April 12, 2007): The argument that Paul makes about illegal immigration\u0026ndash;that we should stop it because of the impact on welfare\u0026ndash;is aptly turned on its head in this post from last year at David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s blog.\nUPDATE (February 11, 2008): Here\u0026rsquo;s a debunking of a number of Ron Paul claims, including the NAFTA superhighway.\nJoseph L. (2007-04-04):\nAbsolutely. Paul brings out the nutjobs and conspiracy theorists. Also, he does use free trade absolutism to make himself appeal to protectionists and xenophobes, and his position on immigration is horrible. That said, he does oppose the war and the PATRIOT act, and those aren't bad qualities. Still the best we can hope for is a divided government at this point, and maybe pray that the democrats roll back bush administration excesses. That won't likely happen, however.\nGigaplex (2007-04-06):\nRon Paul is the only candidate that I have ever actually been genuinely excited about, lol. The reason is because he believes that the constitution should not be violated. It's a unique idea that I believe would benefit the country. There aren't any other candidates that are doing this so his lack of competition may give him a good chance.The democrats are in power now and they are not doing much to reverse the damage done. They don't have the balls to impeach the president. They are also quite corrupted. Neither the democrats nor the republicans have been anywhere close to following the constitution.Oh and I should mention, I remember him talking about the immigration thing and his motives are interesting. He was talking about how Mexicans could come in and get free money (welfare or some other socialized program) and that we need to stop the free lunch. He is extremely concerned about the country's financial condition and doesn't think we can afford to be this generous.He feels that the fastest most effective way for him to fix this free lunch problem would be to secure the borders since that is something he could do immediately and is within his constitutional powers.\nLippard (2007-04-07):\nGigaplex: If the problem is \"the free lunch\" of welfare, why does it matter whether the recipients are new immigrants or people already living here? If welfare is the problem, why not address the problem--why should some people be treated differently just because they were born in a different geographic location?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/ron-paul-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/IMG_1460.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/IMG_1460.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068624804913938914\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLast night I attended a small event where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke about his candidacy for president as a Republican.  I found it a bit of a disappointment.  On the plus side, he is making opposition to both the drug war and the war in Iraq a major part of his campaign.  He also opposes warrantless wiretapping, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Military Commissions Act.  And in response to a question from one of several atheists present, he indicated his support for the separation of church and state (and opposition to Bush\u0026rsquo;s faith-based initiatives). On the minus side, his stance on illegal immigration is to \u0026ldquo;secure the border,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.creativedestruction.com/archives/000712.html\"\u003edeny benefits to illegal immigrants, and eliminate birthright citizenship\u003c/a\u003e.  New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://richardsonforpresident.com/issues/issues_immigration/\"\u003estance on illegal immigration\u003c/a\u003e (double Border Patrol officers, implement a guest worker program, and provide a mechanism for illegal immigrants to pay a fine and become legal residents) makes a whole lot more sense than that.  Also on the minus side, as Sameer Parekh has pointed \u003ca href=\"http://www.creativedestruction.com/archives/000712.html\"\u003eout\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.creativedestruction.com/archives/000712.html\"\u003e at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, his stance on free trade is to oppose anything that he sees as a compromise on free trade (like major free trade agreements), which makes him look like he\u0026rsquo;s pandering to protectionists\u0026ndash;his web page makes no indication that he support free trade, which strikes me as dishonest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/karen-johnson-trying-to-become-americas.html\"\u003eNutjob Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson\u003c/a\u003e was there, and she asked a question about Bush\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;stealth campaign\u0026rdquo; to establish a North American Union; Paul responded that he opposes creation of such an entity and a common currency for such an economic area (the \u0026ldquo;amero\u0026rdquo;).  This is going into \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53378\"\u003eWorldNetDaily\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.infowars.com/articles/nwo/north_american_union_already_starting_replace_usa.htm\"\u003eAlex Jones conspiracy theorist territory\u003c/a\u003e, conflating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (a meeting between the three heads of state to increase economic cooperation) with the ideas of Robert Pastor, a professor at American University, about creating a political union.  If the EU can\u0026rsquo;t approve a Constitution (with France and the Netherlands rejecting it) and still has holdouts on the euro (Britain and Norway), how likely is it that countries as different as the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would combine into a single political entity?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m glad Ron Paul has provided a consistent voice in Congress against the war in Iraq and erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the global war on terror, but I\u0026rsquo;m afraid he probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make a very good president (though I did make a small contribution to his campaign which I\u0026rsquo;m feeling some buyer\u0026rsquo;s remorse for this morning).  My preference is to see a Democratic president and split control of Congress\u0026ndash;gridlock seems to be the most effective way of achieving economic growth and slowing the erosion of our civil liberties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 12, 2007):  The argument that Paul makes about illegal immigration\u0026ndash;that we should stop it because of the impact on welfare\u0026ndash;is aptly turned on its head \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/04/welfare-and-immigration-flip-side-of.html\"\u003ein this post from last year at David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 11, 2008):  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/wrong_paul.html\"\u003ea debunking of a number of Ron Paul claims, including the NAFTA superhighway\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ron Paul in Phoenix"},{"content":"Arizona\u0026rsquo;s recent increase in the minimum wage to $6.75/hour put a bunch of developmentally disabled people out of work. The result\u0026ndash;now the state Industrial Commission is proposing to call these people \u0026ldquo;trainees\u0026rdquo; and exempt them from the minimum wage so that they can go back to work.\n(Via Creative Destruction.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/arizona-minimum-wage-increase-put.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special12//articles/0318minwage0318.html\"\u003erecent increase in the minimum wage to $6.75/hour put a bunch of developmentally disabled people out of work\u003c/a\u003e.  The result\u0026ndash;now the state Industrial Commission is proposing to call these people \u0026ldquo;trainees\u0026rdquo; and exempt them from the minimum wage so that they can go back to work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.creativedestruction.com/archives/000704.html\"\u003eCreative Destruction\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona minimum wage increase put developmentally disabled out of work"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just learned that I missed the \u0026ldquo;9/11 Accountability: Strategies and Solutions Conference\u0026rdquo; that was held in February in Chandler. The guest list is filled with the expected kooks like James Fetzer, Steven Jones, and Col. Robert Bowman from \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; (Jones apparently has withdrawn from co-chair of that group and started another of his own with a similar name after clashing with Fetzer), and Jim Marrs, among many others.\nIf there was any doubt that this is a collection of people with no concerns about their credibility, I was quite amused to see this entry on the speakers list:\nMichael and Aurora Ellegion Michael and Aurora Ellegion, have been investigative reporters for over 25 years. They have insight into the powerful mind control aspect that 9-11 was utilized to create. They have appeared on numerous television programs, the BBC TV and Armed Forces Radio, newspapers and magazines. The Ellegions are also futurists and deeply desire to enlighten mankind, feeling that we must each play a part in directing our government. Michael and Aurora have spoke at cutting-edge conferences worldwide and at the Press Clubs throughout the U.S. on numerous social and political issues.This description is remarkable for what it omits. I\u0026rsquo;m familiar with this couple under the name \u0026ldquo;El-Legion\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;Ellegion,\u0026rdquo; from meeting them at a psychic fair in Phoenix around 1987 when I was head of the Phoenix Skeptics. There, they presented themselves as channelers of Lord Ashtar and other discarnate extraterrestrial entities from the Pleiades, along with the occasional Archangel. The website I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, \u0026ldquo;channelforthemasters.com,\u0026rdquo; seems to indicate that they are still in that business. Hopefully they\u0026rsquo;ve discontinued their side business of selling stolen telephone card numbers in Hawaii, for which they were arrested in 1987.\nAdmission to the psychic fair gave me a ticket for a reading from the psychic of my choice. I chose Michael El-Legion, thinking his reading would be the most likely to provide entertainment, and he did not disappoint. He told me I was an \u0026ldquo;Eagle Commander\u0026rdquo; of the Star People and a person of great cosmic importance. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure I still have an audio tape of that reading somewhere.\nI wrote up my encounter with Michael El-Legion in the Arizona Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 1 (July/August 1988), which unfortunately I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to find my copies of.\nUPDATE (March 31, 2007): Found my copies of the Arizona Skeptic. Turns out I misremembered writing it up, and misread grep output from my search of the online index. The only reference to the El-Legions was in vol. 3, no. 3 (April 1990), in Mike Stackpole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Editorial Blathering\u0026rdquo; column. The psychic fair I reported on in vol. 2, no. 1 didn\u0026rsquo;t include anything about the El-Legions, though I did converse with a man who claimed to be an alien contactee, who now is claiming online to have had a near-death experience that have given him healing powers.\nHistorical Comments Timothy B. Lee (2007-03-30):\nCan't you read? As the website says, it's \"the most cutting edge and relevant information of our time.\" You're obviously just not open-minded enough.\ncowmix (2007-03-31):\nThis might be a sad commentary on who I am hanging around with these days but I have two sets of friends that went or considered going to this conference.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/911-conspiracy-nutball-convention-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just learned that I missed the \u003ca href=\"http://911accountability.org/accountability/index.php?page=program_agenda\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;9/11 Accountability: Strategies and Solutions Conference\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that was held in February in Chandler.  The guest list is filled with the expected kooks like James Fetzer, Steven Jones, and Col. Robert Bowman from \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/scholars-for-911-truth.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (Jones apparently has withdrawn from co-chair of that group and started another of his own with a similar name after clashing with Fetzer), and Jim Marrs, among many others.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf there was any doubt that this is a collection of people with no concerns about their credibility, I was quite amused to see this entry on the speakers list:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMichael and Aurora Ellegion\u003c/strong\u003e   Michael and Aurora Ellegion, have been investigative reporters for over 25 years. They have insight into the powerful mind control aspect that 9-11 was utilized to create. They have appeared on numerous television programs, the BBC TV and Armed Forces Radio, newspapers and magazines. The Ellegions are also futurists and deeply desire to enlighten mankind, feeling that we must each play a part in directing our government. Michael and Aurora have spoke at cutting-edge conferences worldwide and at the Press Clubs throughout the U.S. on numerous social and political issues.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis description is remarkable for what it omits.  I\u0026rsquo;m familiar with this couple under the name \u0026ldquo;El-Legion\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;Ellegion,\u0026rdquo; from meeting them at a psychic fair in Phoenix around 1987 when I was head of the Phoenix Skeptics.  There, they presented themselves as \u003ca href=\"http://www.channelforthemasters.com/\"\u003echannelers of Lord Ashtar and other discarnate extraterrestrial entities from the Pleiades, along with the occasional Archangel\u003c/a\u003e.   The website I\u0026rsquo;ve linked to, \u0026ldquo;channelforthemasters.com,\u0026rdquo; seems to indicate that they are still in that business.  Hopefully they\u0026rsquo;ve discontinued their side business of selling stolen telephone card numbers in Hawaii, for which they were arrested in 1987.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdmission to the psychic fair gave me a ticket for a reading from the psychic of my choice.  I chose Michael El-Legion, thinking his reading would be the most likely to provide entertainment, and he did not disappoint.  He told me I was an \u0026ldquo;Eagle Commander\u0026rdquo; of the Star People and a person of great cosmic importance.  I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure I still have an audio tape of that reading somewhere.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wrote up my encounter with Michael El-Legion in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e, vol. 2, no. 1 (July/August 1988), which unfortunately I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to find my copies of.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 31, 2007):  Found my copies of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e.  Turns out I misremembered writing it up, and misread grep output from my search of the online index.  The only reference to the El-Legions was in vol. 3, no. 3 (April 1990), in Mike Stackpole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Editorial Blathering\u0026rdquo; column.  The psychic fair I reported on in vol. 2, no. 1 didn\u0026rsquo;t include anything about the El-Legions, though I did converse with \u003ca href=\"/2007/03/jerry-wills-ufo-contactee-turned.html\"\u003ea man who claimed to be an alien contactee\u003c/a\u003e, who now is claiming online to have had a near-death experience that have given him healing powers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 Conspiracy Nutball Convention in Chandler"},{"content":"Various newspapers (including the Arizona Republic) are covering the story of Cosimo Cavallaro\u0026rsquo;s life-sized statue of Jesus made out of 200 pounds of milk chocolate. All are giving prime coverage to the typical over-the-top rantings of William Donohue of the Catholic League, claiming that \u0026ldquo;this is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.\u0026quot;\nThis Jesus, titled \u0026ldquo;My Sweet Lord\u0026rdquo; and hanging in a crucifixion position, is sans cross or loin cloth. For this reason newspapers are only showing it photographed from behind, so you can\u0026rsquo;t see how anatomically accurate it is. A photograph of the work from the front can be found at the artist\u0026rsquo;s website.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-04-04):\nDo you suppose the real reason that people are pissed is because Cosimo didn't give Jesus a big enough package?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/my-sweet-lord.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVarious newspapers (including the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0329odd-jesus29.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) are covering the story of Cosimo Cavallaro\u0026rsquo;s life-sized statue of Jesus made out of 200 pounds of milk chocolate.  All are giving prime coverage to the typical over-the-top rantings of William Donohue of the Catholic League, claiming that \u0026ldquo;this is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis Jesus, titled \u0026ldquo;My Sweet Lord\u0026rdquo; and hanging in a crucifixion position, is sans cross or loin cloth.  For this reason newspapers are only showing it photographed from behind, so you can\u0026rsquo;t see how anatomically accurate it is.  A photograph of the work from the front can be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.cosimocavallaro.com/\"\u003eat the artist\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Sweet Lord"},{"content":"At Alexander Kjerulf\u0026rsquo;s Chief Happiness Officer blog is a list of the top five reasons why \u0026ldquo;the customer is always right\u0026rdquo; is bad for business:\n1. It makes employees unhappy.\n2. It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage.\n3. Some customers are bad for business.\n4. It results in worse customer service.\n5. Some customers are just plain wrong.\nI think these reasons hit the nail right on the head (and he includes some fun examples).\n(Via a comment at Behind the Counter, a blog that often includes examples of the Florida Wal-Mart where its author works getting ripped off by horrible customers.)\nA variant of \u0026ldquo;the customer is always right\u0026rdquo; that also drives companies in the wrong direction for some of the same reasons is \u0026ldquo;the executives are always right.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/why-customer-is-always-right-is-wrong.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Alexander Kjerulf\u0026rsquo;s Chief Happiness Officer blog is \u003ca href=\"http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service\"\u003ea list of the top five reasons why \u0026ldquo;the customer is always right\u0026rdquo; is bad for business\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. It makes employees unhappy.\u003cbr /\u003e2. It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage.\u003cbr /\u003e3. Some customers are bad for business.\u003cbr /\u003e4. It results in worse customer service.\u003cbr /\u003e5. Some customers are just plain wrong.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think these reasons hit the nail right on the head (and he includes some fun examples).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://bbcamerican.blogspot.com/2007/03/pharmaceuticals-in-vain.html\"\u003ea comment at Behind the Counter\u003c/a\u003e, a blog that often includes examples of the Florida Wal-Mart where its author works getting ripped off by horrible customers.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA variant of \u0026ldquo;the customer is always right\u0026rdquo; that also drives companies in the wrong direction for some of the same reasons is \u0026ldquo;the executives are always right.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why \"the customer is always right\" is wrong"},{"content":"Whoever maintains John McCain\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page borrowed the template from another MySpace user without giving credit. That template included an image in the \u0026ldquo;Contacting \u0026rdquo; section, which was being pulled from the original user\u0026rsquo;s page and had a list of menu items to click on.\nThe original user, upset at his template being used without credit, changed the image, so that it said: \u0026ldquo;Dear Supporters, Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage\u0026hellip; particularly marriage between passionate females. John\u0026rdquo;\nMcCain\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page has subsequently been fixed.\nBTW, the Republican candidate for president with the most MySpace friends is libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, who has for some reason been removed from multiple online polls about candidate preferences (including Pajamas Media and Slate\u0026rsquo;s reporting of the online idea futures).\nUPDATE (March 30, 2007): Pajamas Media has re-listed Ron Paul and added Fred Thompson this week; Fred Thompson is leading and Ron Paul is in second for the Republicans; Bill Richardson is leading for the Democrats. Not that online, self-selected polling has any reflection on how an actual vote would go\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/mccains-myspace-page.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhoever maintains John McCain\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page borrowed the template from another MySpace user without giving credit.  That template included an image in the \u0026ldquo;Contacting \u003cuser\u003e\u0026rdquo; section, which was being pulled from the original user\u0026rsquo;s page and had a list of menu items to click on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe original user, upset at his template being used without credit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/\"\u003echanged the image, so that it said\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Dear Supporters, Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage\u0026hellip; particularly marriage between passionate females.  John\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain\"\u003eMcCain\u0026rsquo;s MySpace page\u003c/a\u003e has subsequently been fixed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, the Republican candidate for president with the most MySpace friends is libertarian \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/congressmanronpaul\"\u003eRep. Ron Paul\u003c/a\u003e, who has for some reason been \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118760.html\"\u003eremoved from multiple online polls about candidate preferences\u003c/a\u003e (including Pajamas Media and \u003ca href=\"http://specials.slate.com/futures/2008/republican-presidential-nominee/\"\u003eSlate\u0026rsquo;s reporting of the online idea futures\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 30, 2007):  Pajamas Media has re-listed Ron Paul and added Fred Thompson this week; Fred Thompson is leading and Ron Paul is in second for the Republicans; Bill Richardson is leading for the Democrats.  Not that online, self-selected polling has any reflection on how an actual vote would go\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/user\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain's MySpace page"},{"content":"Brad Duke, who managed 5 Gold\u0026rsquo;s Gyms in Idaho, won a $220 million Powerball jackpot in 2005, which translated to an $85 million lump sum payment after taxes. He assembled a team of financial advisors before claiming the prize, and set a goal of turning that $85 million into $1 billion in the next 15 years. Here\u0026rsquo;s what he\u0026rsquo;s done with the money so far:\nInvestments:\n$45 million in low-risk investments such as municipal bonds.\n$35 million in aggressive, high-risk investments such as real estate, oil, and gas.\nDonations:\n$1.3 million creating a family foundation.\nDebt retirement:\n$125,000 to pay off his mortgage (on a 1,400 sf house he still lives in)\n$18,000 to pay off student loans\nPurchases:\n$65,000 on bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike\n$14,500 on a used VW Jetta\nGifts:\n$12,000 annual gift to each member of his immediate family\nSplurge:\n$63,000 on a trip to Tahiti with 17 friends\nThe result so far\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s turned $85 million into $128-$130 million.\nanonymous (2007-03-31):\nThe article says $1.3 million for family foundation. What does the foundation do?Anyhow, it is nice to see he is not blowing his money on strippers, drugs, or charity since he is focused on his goal of getting to $1 billion.\nLippard (2007-03-31):\nThanks for the correction.My guess is that he just set up a foundation to give charitable gifts to causes he and his family support, to get the tax deduction up front without actually giving away all that money immediately.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/lottery-winner-whos-not-blowing-his.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrad Duke, who managed 5 Gold\u0026rsquo;s Gyms in Idaho, won a $220 million Powerball jackpot in 2005, which translated to an $85 million lump sum payment after taxes.  He assembled a team of financial advisors before claiming the prize, and set a goal of turning that $85 million into $1 billion in the next 15 years.  Here\u0026rsquo;s what he\u0026rsquo;s done with the money so far:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInvestments:\u003cbr /\u003e$45 million in low-risk investments such as municipal bonds.\u003cbr /\u003e$35 million in aggressive, high-risk investments such as real estate, oil, and gas.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDonations:\u003cbr /\u003e$1.3 million creating a family foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDebt retirement:\u003cbr /\u003e$125,000 to pay off his mortgage (on a 1,400 sf house he still lives in)\u003cbr /\u003e$18,000 to pay off student loans\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePurchases:\u003cbr /\u003e$65,000 on bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike\u003cbr /\u003e$14,500 on a used VW Jetta\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGifts:\u003cbr /\u003e$12,000 annual gift to each member of his immediate family\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSplurge:\u003cbr /\u003e$63,000 on a trip to Tahiti with 17 friends\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe result so far\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://money.aol.com/fortune/general/canvas3/_a/taking-home-the-jackpot/20070301102009990001\"\u003ehe\u0026rsquo;s turned $85 million into $128-$130 million\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A lottery winner who's not blowing his money on strippers"},{"content":"EFF filed a lawsuit against Viacom for abusing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to cause the takedown of a YouTube video clip called \u0026ldquo;Stop the Falsiness\u0026rdquo; which used video from The Colbert Report within the boundaries of fair use.\nViacom has issued a pretty solid response (PDF)\u0026ndash;that they issued no such DMCA notice, and if they had, YouTube should have notified the user who submitted the clip and given them a chance to file a counter-notice. Viacom further stated that they found the clip elsewhere, reviewed it, and agree that it constitutes fair use of their content and should be put back up. (YouTube has put the clip back up.)\nThis is not good news for YouTube\u0026ndash;this is further evidence that they are taking down content without receiving DMCA notices, which means that they are exercising editorial control over their content, which places them at greater risk of failing to successfully defend their claim to be protected by the DMCA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;safe harbor\u0026rdquo; protections.\nOther such evidence comes from Mark Cuban, who has been issuing DMCA subpoenas to YouTube users who have used his content (movies produced by his companies such as HDNet). He has also issued takedown notices for some such content, while explicitly choosing not to issue takedown notices for others\u0026ndash;because he wants the promotion from YouTube, just not wholesale theft of his content. Yet YouTube has taken down clips that he has specifically chosen not to issue takedown notices for.\nThis looks like a misstep for the EFF.\nUPDATE (March 28, 2007): As noted by commenter Jamie, there apparently was a DMCA notice issued by BayTSP, which was hired by Viacom to send out DMCA notices on its behalf, so Viacom may not be in the clear.\nHistorical Comments Jamie Anderson (2007-03-28):\nTechdirt ran an article on this a few days ago. (See [techdirt.com] for more info.)Viacom are technically correct that they didn't send the DMCA notice. The notice was sent from BayTSP, a company who specialize in online copyright enforcement. And one of the companies that has hired BayTSP is... you guessed it, Viacom.So while it wasn't Viacom themselves who sent the notice, it was an agent who was hired by and acting on behalf of Viacom. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the court case, and we can only hope that the judge is smart enough to punish Viacom/BayTSP for sending out spurious takedown notices.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/viacom-responds-to-effmoveon-lawsuit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEFF filed a lawsuit against Viacom for abusing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to cause the takedown of a YouTube video clip called \u0026ldquo;Stop the Falsiness\u0026rdquo; which used video from The Colbert Report within the boundaries of fair use.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eViacom has issued \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/moveon_v_viacom/viacom_response_letter.pdf\"\u003ea pretty solid response\u003c/a\u003e (PDF)\u0026ndash;that they issued no such DMCA notice, and if they had, YouTube should have notified the user who submitted the clip and given them a chance to file a counter-notice.  Viacom further stated that they found the clip elsewhere, reviewed it, and agree that it constitutes fair use of their content and should be put back up.  (YouTube has put \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8\"\u003ethe clip\u003c/a\u003e back up.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not good news for YouTube\u0026ndash;this is further evidence that they are taking down content without receiving DMCA notices, which means that they are exercising editorial control over their content, which places them at greater risk of failing to successfully defend their claim to be protected by the DMCA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;safe harbor\u0026rdquo; protections.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOther such evidence comes from Mark Cuban, \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/03/08/supoenas-and-gootube/\"\u003ewho has been issuing DMCA subpoenas to YouTube users who have used his content\u003c/a\u003e (movies produced by his companies such as HDNet).  He has also issued takedown notices for some such content, while explicitly choosing not to issue takedown notices for others\u0026ndash;because he wants the promotion from YouTube, just not wholesale theft of his content.  Yet YouTube has taken down clips that he has specifically chosen not to issue takedown notices for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis looks like a misstep for the EFF.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 28, 2007):  As noted by commenter Jamie, \u003ca href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070322/200545.shtml\"\u003ethere apparently was a DMCA notice issued by BayTSP\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070323-viacom-dmca-driftnet-whos-driving-this-thing.html\"\u003ewas hired by Viacom to send out DMCA notices on its behalf\u003c/a\u003e, so Viacom may not be in the clear.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Viacom responds to EFF/MoveOn lawsuit"},{"content":"Talking Points Memo has been discussing the fact that the very first contract that Mitchell Wade\u0026rsquo;s MZM, Inc. got with the federal government, back in July 2002, was with the Executive Office of the President, allegedly for office furniture.\nIt now turns out that it was actually to screen mail for anthrax.\nHow did MZM, Inc., which had no record or experience, get such an important contract? Who did Mitchell Wade bribe to get that one?\nRep. Henry Waxman is asking for answers.\nAnd remember, the Cunningham/MZM scandal is what San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was investigating when she was asked to resign, the day after she announced that she was going after \u0026ldquo;Dusty\u0026rdquo; Foggo, then #3 at the CIA.\nMore at Talking Points Memo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/white-house-involvement-in-duke.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalking Points Memo has been discussing the fact that the very first contract that Mitchell Wade\u0026rsquo;s MZM, Inc. got with the federal government, back in July 2002, was with the Executive Office of the President, allegedly for office furniture.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt now turns out that it was actually to screen mail for anthrax.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow did MZM, Inc., which had no record or experience, get such an important contract?  Who did Mitchell Wade bribe to get that one?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Henry Waxman is \u003ca href=\"http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1227\"\u003easking for answers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd remember, the Cunningham/MZM scandal is what San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was investigating when \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/cia-and-white-house-block-cunningham.html\"\u003eshe was asked to resign\u003c/a\u003e, the day after she announced that she was going after \u0026ldquo;Dusty\u0026rdquo; Foggo, then #3 at the CIA.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_03_25.php#013285\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"White House involvement in Duke Cunningham scandal"},{"content":"Sgt. Derek Hale, returned from two tours of duty in Iraq, was in Wilmington, Delaware for a \u0026ldquo;Toys for Tots\u0026rdquo; campaign in November of last year sponsored by the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which he had recently joined. He was house-sitting for a friend, sitting on the steps outside the house, when the friend\u0026rsquo;s ex-wife showed up with her two kids. An unmarked police car and black SUV also showed up, and Hale, clad in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, was told to take his hands out of his pockets. He was tasered less than a second later, which dropped him to the ground, with his right hand out of the pocket and spasming involuntarily. He was again asked to remove his hands from his pockets, and tasered again, causing him to roll onto his side and vomit. Howard Mixon, a contractor working nearby, shouted that this was \u0026ldquo;overkill,\u0026rdquo; to which a black-clad officer responded, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll f*****g show you overkill!\u0026quot;\nLt. William Brown of the Wilmington Police Department proceeded to do just that\u0026ndash;as Hale was being tasered a third time, and attempting unsuccessfully to extricate his left hand from his pocket as his body convulsed from the tasering, Brown shot Hale three times in the chest, killing him.\nThere were no drugs found, nor any evidence of a crime. There was no warrant for Hale\u0026rsquo;s arrest\u0026ndash;he was a \u0026ldquo;person of interest\u0026rdquo; in a drug investigation of his motorcycle club.\nWilmington police claim that Hale was killed because Lt. Brown \u0026ldquo;feared for the safety of his fellow officers and believed that the suspect was in a position to pose an imminent threat.\u0026rdquo; Police say they recovered pepper spray and a switchblade from Hale\u0026rsquo;s body, though Hale\u0026rsquo;s stepbrother says he never carried a knife other than a Swiss Army knife.\nSeveral Wilmington police falsely claimed that Hale had been charged with drug trafficking two days before he was killed, which was used by Virginia police to obtain a warrant to search Hale\u0026rsquo;s home in Manassas, which found nothing incriminating.\nDerek Hale\u0026rsquo;s widow and parents have now filed a lawsuit against several Delaware police officers, with the support of the Rutherford Institute and a private lawfirm.\nIf the above details are accurate, why isn\u0026rsquo;t Lt. William Brown on trial for murder?\n(Details from Pro Libertate by way of The Agitator, the latter of which seems to have multiple stories like this every week. The comments of the former include some observations that the Pagan Motorcycle Club is heavily involved in criminal activity, which should be taken into consideration but still wouldn\u0026rsquo;t justify a killing in cold blood.)\nHistorical Comments Raphael511 (2008-12-28):\nDerek Hale was my friend and fellow Pagans MC member at the time of his murder. I want to make this clear to all who may be interested in what sort of person gets murdered by Police in Delaware. Derek didn't even drink beer. He drank Dr Pepper and kept a sixpack in his car. it was almost embarrassing to be in a bar or restaraunt with Derek and he would order Root Beer. He wouldn't have known what drugs were if you set them in his lap. He DEFINATELY wouldn't have known a graham from an eightball. He joined the Pagans to find the sort of close brotherhood he had known in Iraq with his fellow Marines. the Pagans are not boy scouts for sure, and perhaps Derek would have left the club later on upon reflection. But he will never have that choice now. He will never make another decision about his life. That was taken from him by Lt \"Billy\" Browne and Superintendant MacLeish of the Delaware State Police and Wilmington Police. They Murdered Derek for no reason except their own cowardice and in broad daylight. And they got away with it. The State Police Superintendant MacLeish rules the cowardly Atty General; \"baby beau\" Biden with intimidation. And the Atty General has exhonorated all 14 of these cowards who carry badges in Delaware.The atty general's reward...He gets to sit in his daddy's US Senate Seat now that daddy is the VP. THIS is Delaware.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/returned-soldier-killed-by-police-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSgt. Derek Hale, returned from two tours of duty in Iraq, was in Wilmington, Delaware for a \u0026ldquo;Toys for Tots\u0026rdquo; campaign in November of last year sponsored by the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which he had recently joined.  He was house-sitting for a friend, sitting on the steps outside the house, when the friend\u0026rsquo;s ex-wife showed up with her two kids.  An unmarked police car and black SUV also showed up, and Hale, clad in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, was told to take his hands out of his pockets.  He was tasered less than a second later, which dropped him to the ground, with his right hand out of the pocket and spasming involuntarily.  He was again asked to remove his hands from his pockets, and tasered again, causing him to roll onto his side and vomit.  Howard Mixon, a contractor working nearby, shouted that this was \u0026ldquo;overkill,\u0026rdquo; to which a black-clad officer responded, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll f*****g show you overkill!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLt. William Brown of the Wilmington Police Department proceeded to do just that\u0026ndash;as Hale was being tasered a third time, and attempting unsuccessfully to extricate his left hand from his pocket as his body convulsed from the tasering, Brown shot Hale three times in the chest, killing him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere were no drugs found, nor any evidence of a crime.  There was no warrant for Hale\u0026rsquo;s arrest\u0026ndash;he was a \u0026ldquo;person of interest\u0026rdquo; in a drug investigation of his motorcycle club.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWilmington police claim that Hale was killed because Lt. Brown \u0026ldquo;feared for the safety of his fellow officers and believed that the suspect was in a position to pose an imminent threat.\u0026rdquo;  Police say they recovered pepper spray and a switchblade from Hale\u0026rsquo;s body, though Hale\u0026rsquo;s stepbrother says he never carried a knife other than a Swiss Army knife.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral Wilmington police falsely claimed that Hale had been charged with drug trafficking two days before he was killed, which was used by Virginia police to obtain a warrant to search Hale\u0026rsquo;s home in Manassas, which found nothing incriminating.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDerek Hale\u0026rsquo;s widow and parents have now filed a lawsuit against several Delaware police officers, with the support of the Rutherford Institute and a private lawfirm.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf the above details are accurate, why isn\u0026rsquo;t Lt. William Brown on trial for murder?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Details from \u003ca href=\"http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/03/death-squad-in-delaware-case-of.html\"\u003ePro Libertate\u003c/a\u003e by way of \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027624.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e, the latter of which seems to have multiple stories like this every week.  The comments of the former include some observations that the Pagan Motorcycle Club is heavily involved in criminal activity, which should be taken into consideration but still wouldn\u0026rsquo;t justify a killing in cold blood.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Returned soldier killed by police in Delaware"},{"content":"An anti-Mormon Christian ministry, \u0026ldquo;Concerned Christians,\u0026rdquo; has distributed 18,000 DVDs to homes across Arizona, mainly targeting areas with high Mormon populations such as Mesa and Snowflake. 15,000 DVDs were distributed to homes in Mesa, Tempe, and Gilbert, 2,000 in Snowflake, and 1,000 in Tucson.\nThe DVD, titled \u0026ldquo;Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith,\u0026rdquo; argues against the latter but not the former. The DVD was apparently produced by and distributed nationally by Living Hope Ministries of Brigham City, Utah, a Christian church that criticizes the Mormon religion. [UPDATE (July 6, 2007): My cousin and his wife inform me in the comments that this is not correct, contrary to the statement from the Arizona distributor in the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s report, and that this was produced and distributed by TriGrace Ministries and GoodnewsfortheLDS.com.]\nThat name was familiar to me\u0026ndash;I suspected, and verified, that this is the same church that previously produced a DVD about how DNA evidence disproved Mormon claims about Native Americans being descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. In 2001, the pastor of Living Hope Ministries was Joel Kramer, who was the officiant at the wedding of my cousin Aaron Lippard, which I attended at their storefront church in Brigham City.\nKramer, a former Tucson resident, has authored a book, Beyond Fear, which tells the story of how Kramer and my cousin Aaron traveled across Papua New Guinea solely under their own power. I read the book after seeing my cousin present a slide presentation about his harrowing trip (and show off his septum piercing, which was pierced by a New Guinea aborigine with a bird bone, by sticking a meat thermometer through it). I found the book enjoyable, though preachy and annoying in spots. Kramer\u0026rsquo;s voice as a writer struck me as arrogant and condescending towards my cousin, portraying himself as a Christian real-man and my cousin as an inexperienced, naive fellow who had much to learn about becoming a mature Christian male.\nA film Kramer has produced is called The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon, which is reviewed here by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. This review makes a point that I\u0026rsquo;ve made about Living Hope\u0026rsquo;s Mormons \u0026amp; DNA DVD and about Richard Abanes\u0026rsquo; One Nation Under Gods\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t seem to apply the same standard of criticism to Christianity that they apply to Mormonism.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure the same is true of \u0026ldquo;Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith.\u0026rdquo;\nAaron and Ivy (2007-07-06):\nHi Mr. Lippard!I just thought you should know that you are mistaken in giving Living Hope and Joel the credit for the Joseph Smith movie. Living Hope actually had nothing to do with the making,(GoodnewsfortheLDS.com and TriGrace ministries in Southern Utah are the people who did one.) nor the distribution of this!Although I also feel the need to tell you Joel is over in Jerusalem LIVING now with his family to investigate and \"put to the test\" the Bible as well!\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nHi, Aaron and Ivy!The Republic article quoted the local distributor crediting Living Hope: \"Utah-based Living Hope Ministries coordinated the nationwide distribution of the DVDs, Robertson said.\"Thanks for the correction.I hope Joel's methodology of testing is sounder than (for example) Ron Wyatt's!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/anti-mormon-dvds-distributed-to-home.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn anti-Mormon Christian ministry, \u0026ldquo;Concerned Christians,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/0326mormondvd0327.html\"\u003ehas distributed 18,000 DVDs to homes across Arizona\u003c/a\u003e, mainly targeting areas with high Mormon populations such as Mesa and Snowflake.  15,000 DVDs were distributed to homes in Mesa, Tempe, and Gilbert, 2,000 in Snowflake, and 1,000 in Tucson.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe DVD, titled \u0026ldquo;Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith,\u0026rdquo; argues against the latter but not the former.  The DVD was apparently produced by and distributed nationally by Living Hope Ministries of Brigham City, Utah, a Christian church that criticizes the Mormon religion.  [UPDATE (July 6, 2007):  My cousin and his wife inform me in the comments that this is not correct, contrary to the statement from the Arizona distributor in the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s report, and that this was produced and distributed by TriGrace Ministries and GoodnewsfortheLDS.com.]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat name was familiar to me\u0026ndash;I suspected, and verified, that this is the same church that previously produced a DVD about how DNA evidence disproved Mormon claims about Native Americans being descendants of the lost tribe of Israel.  In 2001, the pastor of Living Hope Ministries was Joel Kramer, who was the officiant at the wedding of my cousin Aaron Lippard, which I attended at their storefront church in Brigham City.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKramer, a former Tucson resident, has authored a book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBeyond Fear\u003c/span\u003e, which tells the story of how Kramer and my cousin Aaron traveled across Papua New Guinea solely under their own power.  I read the book after seeing my cousin present a slide presentation about his harrowing trip (and show off his septum piercing, which was pierced by a New Guinea aborigine with a bird bone, by sticking a meat thermometer through it).  I found the book enjoyable, though preachy and annoying in spots.  Kramer\u0026rsquo;s voice as a writer struck me as arrogant and condescending towards my cousin, portraying himself as a Christian real-man and my cousin as an inexperienced, naive fellow who had much to learn about becoming a mature Christian male.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA film Kramer has produced is called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bible vs. the Book of Mormon\u003c/span\u003e, which is reviewed \u003ca href=\"http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=review\u0026id=581\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.  This review makes a point that I\u0026rsquo;ve made about Living Hope\u0026rsquo;s Mormons \u0026amp; DNA DVD and about Richard Abanes\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-Gods-History/dp/1568582838/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOne Nation Under Gods\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t seem to apply the same standard of criticism to Christianity that they apply to Mormonism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sure the same is true of \u0026ldquo;Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-Mormon DVDs distributed to home across Arizona"},{"content":"You aren\u0026rsquo;t allowed to say if you\u0026rsquo;ve received a National Security Letter. But there\u0026rsquo;s no law that says you can\u0026rsquo;t say that you haven\u0026rsquo;t received one.\nThus, rsync.net has a \u0026ldquo;warrant canary\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they periodically post a cryptographically signed statement that they have not, to date, received any PATRIOT Act warrants or had any searches and seizures. If they stop updating the statement, then you can draw your own conclusions.\nThe second of these library signs uses the same principle: \u0026ldquo;The FBI has not been here [watch closely for removal of this sign].\u0026quot;\n(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog, where some commenters question whether the recent Washington Post piece by the recipient of a National Security Letter is truthful. Note that the ACLU has a lawsuit going on about this case, which I previously noted back in 2005.)\nEinzige (2007-03-27):\nI take it we should then read between the lines with respect to you and your employer, then.\nMark Lindsey (2008-12-15):\nIt's interesting now that the \"weekly\" warrant canary is now two full weeks old.Does anybody know how reliable rsync.net is about updating the warrant canary weekly?\nLippard (2008-12-15):\nJust checked it, and it's current for today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/rsyncnet-warrant-canary.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou aren\u0026rsquo;t allowed to say if you\u0026rsquo;ve received a National Security Letter.  But there\u0026rsquo;s no law that says you can\u0026rsquo;t say that you haven\u0026rsquo;t received one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThus, rsync.net has \u003ca href=\"http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt\"\u003ea \u0026ldquo;warrant canary\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;they periodically post a cryptographically signed statement that they have not, to date, received any PATRIOT Act warrants or had any searches and seizures.  If they stop updating the statement, then you can draw your own conclusions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe second of \u003ca href=\"http://www.librarian.net/technicality.html\"\u003ethese library signs\u003c/a\u003e uses the same principle:  \u0026ldquo;The FBI has not been here [watch closely for removal of this sign].\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/745986.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, where some commenters question whether the recent \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e piece by the recipient of a National Security Letter is truthful.  Note that the ACLU has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/index.html\"\u003elawsuit going on about this case\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/and-some-good-news-patriot-act.html\"\u003eI previously noted back in 2005\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The rsync.net warrant canary"},{"content":"The National Institute of Standards and Technology\u0026rsquo;s Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster has produced a FAQ about the causes of the WTC building collapses (along with other FAQs and factsheets):\nNIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, http://wtc.nist.gov. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers. Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse. Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence—as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse—support this sequence for each tower.\nTheir study doesn\u0026rsquo;t support the \u0026ldquo;pancake\u0026rdquo; hypothesis of floor-by-floor collapse:\nNIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system—that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns—consisted of a grid of steel “trusses” integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.\nAnd the FAQ responds to \u0026ldquo;controlled demolition\u0026rdquo; claims:\nNIST’s findings also do not support the “controlled demolition” theory since there is conclusive evidence that:\nthe collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else, and;\nthe time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by (1) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and (2) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors. Video evidence also showed unambiguously that the collapse progressed from the top to the bottom, and there was no evidence (collected by NIST, or by the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors as the top building sections (including and above the 98th floor in WTC 1 and the 82nd floor in WTC 2) began their downward movement upon collapse initiation. In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s lots more in the NIST FAQs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/nists-911-investigation-faq.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Institute of Standards and Technology\u0026rsquo;s Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster has produced \u003ca href=\"http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm\"\u003ea FAQ about the causes of the WTC building collapses\u003c/a\u003e (along with \u003ca href=\"http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/\"\u003eother FAQs and factsheets\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eNIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, \u003ca href=\"http://wtc.nist.gov\"\u003ehttp://wtc.nist.gov\u003c/a\u003e. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"NIST's 9/11 Investigation FAQ"},{"content":"Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post prints a first-hand anonymous account from the head of a small ISP who received a National Security Letter from the FBI, which was an apparent abuse of authority:\nThree years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand \u0026ndash; a context that the FBI still won\u0026rsquo;t let me discuss publicly \u0026ndash; I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.\nRather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn\u0026rsquo;t abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.\nLiving under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case \u0026ndash; including the mere fact that I received an NSL \u0026ndash; from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.\nI resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.More at the Washington Post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/my-national-security-letter-gag-order.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e prints \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html\"\u003ea first-hand anonymous account from the head of a small ISP who received a National Security Letter from the FBI\u003c/a\u003e, which was an apparent abuse of authority:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThree years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand \u0026ndash; a context that the FBI still won\u0026rsquo;t let me discuss publicly \u0026ndash; I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn\u0026rsquo;t abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLiving under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case \u0026ndash; including the mere fact that I received an NSL \u0026ndash; from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My National Security Letter Gag Order"},{"content":"Although I\u0026rsquo;m not generally a fan of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-District 2), I have to give him compliments for his stance on this issue. He\u0026rsquo;s one of only two Congressmen who has reached out to the Egyptian ambassador to the United States on behalf of Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman (also known as Kareem Amer), who was arrested, beaten, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing his government in his blog. As the other Congressman is Massachusetts\u0026rsquo; Rep. Barney Frank (D-District 4), this is about as bipartisan as it gets.\nKudos to Franks and Frank.\n(Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/trent-franks-defends-egyptian-blogger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough I\u0026rsquo;m not generally a fan of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-District 2), I have to give him compliments for his stance on this issue.  He\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nypost.com/seven/03232007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/free_egypts_blogger_opedcolumnists_constantino_diaz_duran.htm\"\u003eone of only two Congressmen who has reached out to the Egyptian ambassador to the United States on behalf of Egyptian blogger \u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nypost.com/seven/03232007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/free_egypts_blogger_opedcolumnists_constantino_diaz_duran.htm\"\u003eAbdul Kareem Nabil Soliman\u003c/a\u003e (also known as Kareem Amer), who was arrested, beaten, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing his government in his blog.  As the other Congressman is Massachusetts\u0026rsquo; Rep. Barney Frank (D-District 4), this is about as bipartisan as it gets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKudos to Franks and Frank.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Tim Lee at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042204.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trent Franks defends Egyptian blogger"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s Demetri Martin on the Daily Show commenting on the Viacom lawsuit against Google. This is one that\u0026rsquo;s better to watch on YouTube than on Comedy Central\u0026hellip;\n(Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2007-03-24):\n\"This video is no longer available.\"he he he\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/daily-show-on-viacom-v-google-lawsuit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s Demetri Martin on the Daily Show commenting on the Viacom lawsuit against Google.  This is one that\u0026rsquo;s better to watch on YouTube than on Comedy Central\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/w9CRD1COCAY\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/w9CRD1COCAY\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Tim Lee at the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042203.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/A\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ecowmix\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-03-24)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\"This video is no longer available.\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ehe he he\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Daily Show on Viacom v. Google lawsuit"},{"content":"In a CNN interview, former Arizona governor and current pastry chef Fife Symington says he saw the \u0026ldquo;Phoenix lights\u0026rdquo; in 1997 and believes that the cause was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.\nThe CNN coverage fails to offer any alternative explanations (see the \u0026ldquo;Skepticism\u0026rdquo; section of the Wikipedia entry on the Phoenix lights and Tony Ortega\u0026rsquo;s 1998 New Times story), or to note that Symington was the second Arizona Republican governor of the 1980s to be indicted on criminal charges, impeached, and removed from office.\nAlso see the Arizona Republic\u0026rsquo;s coverage.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/former-arizona-governor-endorses.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/tech/2007/03/22/tuchman.ufo.phoenix.lights.ktvk\"\u003ea CNN interview\u003c/a\u003e, former Arizona governor and current pastry chef Fife Symington says he saw the \u0026ldquo;Phoenix lights\u0026rdquo; in 1997 and believes that the cause was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe CNN coverage fails to offer any alternative explanations (see the \u0026ldquo;Skepticism\u0026rdquo; section of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights\"\u003eWikipedia entry on the Phoenix lights\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1998-03-05/news/the-hack-and-the-quack/\"\u003eTony Ortega\u0026rsquo;s 1998 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e story\u003c/a\u003e), or to note that Symington was the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/US/9606/14/symington.indicted/\"\u003esecond Arizona Republican governor of the 1980s to be indicted on criminal charges, impeached, and removed from office\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/columns/articles/0321biz-buzz0321.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s coverage\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Former Arizona governor endorses extraterrestrial spacecraft hypothesis"},{"content":"This morning on the Howard Stern Show, there was some discussion of Timothy English\u0026rsquo;s book, Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll, along with playing some pairs of songs that had very strong resemblances. I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize that Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo; was a derivative work, with the main guitar line closely resembling that in Spirit\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Taurus\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and Spirit used to open for Led Zeppelin. (Apparently a lot of Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s songs are derivative works.)\nAn example of this kind of borrowing that I recognized myself was when Nirvana\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Come As You Are\u0026rdquo; first started getting airplay\u0026ndash;I immediately thought that the main guitar riff sounded almost exactly like that in Killing Joke\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Eighties.\u0026quot;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear which of these borrowings are intentional and which are accidental, but as English\u0026rsquo;s book makes clear, this is an extremely common occurrence. Some of these have led to successful copyright infringement lawsuits, but most haven\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;at least in the past. The Dr. Demento Show, which I used to listen to every week back in high school, used to have a regular feature called \u0026ldquo;Damaskas\u0026rsquo; Copycat Game\u0026rdquo; which would play short bits of songs in sequence, demonstrating their similarity.\nSpider Robinson wrote a short story in 1983 called \u0026ldquo;Melancholy Elephants\u0026rdquo; which is a story about a woman who tries to persuade a Senator to oppose an extension of the term of copyright into perpetuity on the grounds that there are finite permutations of notes that are perceived as distinct musical melodies, and thus that the bill would result in an end to creation of new works. In the story, she succeeds in persuading him to kill the bill, while in reality, the equivalent bill\u0026ndash;the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998\u0026ndash;passed, and Larry Lessig and Eric Eldred failed to overturn it at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 (Eldred v. Ashcroft). While this didn\u0026rsquo;t extend copyright to \u0026ldquo;in perpetuity,\u0026rdquo; it has an economic effect virtually indistinguishable from copyright of infinite duration (as Justice Breyer\u0026rsquo;s dissent recognized).\nIn 2005, arguments over the practice of sampling music came to a head, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that no sampling could take place without a license\u0026ndash;not even for a 1.5-second, three-note guitar riff that N.W.A.\u0026rsquo;s 1990 song \u0026ldquo;100 Miles and Runnin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; sampled from Funkadelic\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Get Off Your Ass and Jam.\u0026rdquo; This decision led to a protest in the form of a collection of songs composed solely of that sample. [The Downhill Battle organization\u0026rsquo;s website has been down since November 2007, but can be found on the Internet Archive. -jjl, 6 Jan 2009.]\n(Related: An excellent short video documentary about the use of a six-second drum sample from The Winstons\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Amen Brother.\u0026quot;)\nUPDATE (December 27, 2011): The Economist, Dec. 17-30, 2011 year-end issue features an excellent article, \u0026ldquo;Seven seconds of fire,\u0026quot; about the Amen break.\nUPDATE (May 18, 2014): The estate of Randy California, of Spirit, is suing Led Zeppelin over \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo; being a derivative work of \u0026ldquo;Taurus.\u0026quot;\nThe site whosampled.com has a list of songs which have sampled \u0026ldquo;Amen, Brother.\u0026quot;\nI should have noticed that the Killing Joke/Nirvana riff is also very close to an earlier (1982) riff in The Damned\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Life Goes On\u0026rdquo; (I certainly listened to the album \u0026ldquo;Strawberries\u0026rdquo; enough times\u0026hellip;).\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-21):\nI'm astonished at the close scrutiny of tiny samples, when artists clearly lift entire songs - pop hits from the last decade - to make 'new' pop hits and no one seems to notice. For example, the Black Eyed Peas \"Where is the Love\" happens to be Natalie Imbruglia's \"Torn\" with different words. I made a video mashup of the two to prove the point, and was astonished to find that both songs used the same chords, same key, and even same tempo. In terms of 'mashing' there was nothing to do but simply lay the one over top of the other!\nAnonymous (2009-02-03):\nI'm not saying that Natalie Imbruglia (sounds like some kind of subversive plot!) \"derived\" this song (I'm sure her album gave credit where credit was due), but the author of the comment regarding \"Where is the Love\" and its similarity to \"Torn\" has derived the song for Imbruglia, because this is an old song by Ednaswap, and the fantastic lyrics were written by members of that band. \"Natalie Imbruglia's rendition of the song, 'Torn'\" would have been the preferred way to refer to this song.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/derivative-musical-works-and-copyright.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning on the Howard Stern Show, there was some discussion of Timothy English\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll\u003c/span\u003e, along with playing some pairs of songs that had very strong resemblances.  I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize that Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo; was a derivative work, with the main guitar line closely resembling that in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Spirit/dp/B000002AEA\"\u003eSpirit\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Taurus\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and Spirit used to open for Led Zeppelin. (Apparently a lot of Led Zeppelin\u0026rsquo;s songs \u003ca href=\"http://www.warr.org/zep.html#Thieves\"\u003eare derivative works\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAn example of this kind of borrowing that I recognized myself was when Nirvana\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_as_You_Are\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Come As You Are\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e first started getting airplay\u0026ndash;I immediately thought that the main guitar riff sounded almost exactly like that in Killing Joke\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Eighties.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear which of these borrowings are intentional and which are accidental, but as English\u0026rsquo;s book makes clear, this is an extremely common occurrence.  Some of these have led to successful copyright infringement lawsuits, but most haven\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;at least in the past.  The Dr. Demento Show, which I used to listen to every week back in high school, used to have a regular feature called \u0026ldquo;Damaskas\u0026rsquo; Copycat Game\u0026rdquo; which would play short bits of songs in sequence, demonstrating their similarity.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSpider Robinson wrote a short story in 1983 called \u003ca href=\"http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Melancholy Elephants\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which is a story about a woman who tries to persuade a Senator to oppose an extension of the term of copyright into perpetuity on the grounds that there are finite permutations of notes that are perceived as distinct musical melodies, and thus that the bill would result in an end to creation of new works.  In the story, she succeeds in persuading him to kill the bill, while in reality, the equivalent bill\u0026ndash;the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act\"\u003eSonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act\u003c/a\u003e of 1998\u0026ndash;passed, and Larry Lessig and Eric Eldred failed to overturn it at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 (\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft\"\u003eEldred v. Ashcroft\u003c/a\u003e).  While this didn\u0026rsquo;t extend copyright to \u0026ldquo;in perpetuity,\u0026rdquo; it has \u003ca href=\"http://www.winterspeak.com/columns/022002.html\"\u003ean economic effect virtually indistinguishable from copyright of infinite duration\u003c/a\u003e (as \u003ca href=\"http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-618.ZD1.html\"\u003eJustice Breyer\u0026rsquo;s dissent\u003c/a\u003e recognized).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn 2005, arguments over the practice of sampling music came to a head, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that \u003ca href=\"http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1490830/20040908/index.jhtml?headlines=true\"\u003eno sampling could take place without a license\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;not even for a 1.5-second, three-note guitar riff that N.W.A.\u0026rsquo;s 1990 song \u0026ldquo;100 Miles and Runnin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; sampled from Funkadelic\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Get Off Your Ass and Jam.\u0026rdquo;  This decision led to a protest in the form of a \u003ca href=\"http://downhillbattle.org/3notes/\"\u003ecollection of songs composed solely of that sample\u003c/a\u003e.  [The Downhill Battle organization\u0026rsquo;s website has been down since November 2007, but can be found on the \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20050406014550/downhillbattle.org/3notes/\"\u003eInternet Archive\u003c/a\u003e. -jjl, 6 Jan 2009.]\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Related:  An excellent \u003ca href=\"http://techliberation.com/2007/03/05/amen-brother-and-other-funky-breaks/\"\u003eshort video documentary about the use of a six-second drum sample from The Winstons\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Amen Brother.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (December 27, 2011): \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c/i\u003e, Dec. 17-30, 2011 year-end issue features an excellent article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21541707\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Seven seconds of fire,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about the Amen break.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (May 18, 2014): The estate of Randy California, of Spirit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-vs-dot-spirits-taurus-a-reckoning/\"\u003eis suing Led Zeppelin over \u0026ldquo;Stairway to Heaven\u0026rdquo; being a derivative work of \u0026ldquo;Taurus.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe site \u003ca href=\"http://www.whosampled.com/The-Winstons/Amen,-Brother/\"\u003ewhosampled.com has a list of songs which have sampled \u0026ldquo;Amen, Brother.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI should have noticed that the Killing Joke/Nirvana riff is also very close to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4J2aU6glt0\u0026amp;feature=kp\"\u003ean earlier (1982) riff in The Damned\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Life Goes On\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (I certainly listened to the album \u0026ldquo;Strawberries\u0026rdquo; enough times\u0026hellip;).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Derivative musical works and copyright"},{"content":"Arizona has risen from #23 for reported mortgage fraud in 2005 to #7 in 2006, based on number of fraud cases out of the total number of home loans in the state:\nThe top 10 states for 2006:\n1. Utah\n2. Florida\n3. California\n4. New York\n5. Idaho\n6. Michigan\n7. Arizona\n8. Georgia\n9. Minnesota\n10. Illinois\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/arizona-rises-to-7-in-nation-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona has risen from #23 for reported mortgage fraud in 2005 to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0320fraudstats0320.html\"\u003e#7 in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, based on number of fraud cases out of the total number of home loans in the state:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe top 10 states for 2006:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  1. Utah\u003cbr /\u003e  2. Florida\u003cbr /\u003e  3. California\u003cbr /\u003e  4. New York\u003cbr /\u003e  5. Idaho\u003cbr /\u003e  6. Michigan\u003cbr /\u003e  7. Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e  8. Georgia\u003cbr /\u003e  9. Minnesota\u003cbr /\u003e  10. Illinois\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona rises to #7 in the nation for mortgage fraud"},{"content":"Edwin A. Abbott\u0026rsquo;s classic story has been turned into a movie, and it\u0026rsquo;s received a rave, 5-star review from Film Threat.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s going to be available this spring on a DVD which includes the original text (though you can also find that online, as it\u0026rsquo;s in the public domain). This animated film features the voices of Martin Sheen as Arthur Square, Kristen Bell as Hex, Tony Hale from Arrested Development as the King of Pointland, and Michael York as Spherius. Joe Estevez, Martin Sheen\u0026rsquo;s brother, is Abbott Square\u0026ndash;although he\u0026rsquo;s been doing tons of movies (IMDB shows 160 titles, 22 of which are dated 2006 or 2007), I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen any since MST3K covered 1990\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Soultaker.\u0026quot;\nIf you check out the movie website, you can register for a discount on the DVD when it becomes available.\nUPDATE (March 20, 2007): Thanks to Gourami118, who points out in the comments that there are two Flatland movies. The five-star Film Threat review is of this movie by Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., which completed in January and is already available on DVD in a limited run of 1,000 copies. Call this one \u0026ldquo;Flatland: The Film\u0026rdquo; (based on its website), while the Martin Sheen one is \u0026ldquo;Flatland: The Movie.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-20):\nThere are actually 2 different Flatland adaptations. The one Film Threat refers to isn't the Martin Sheen one, it's the one by an independent film maker, which is already out.http://www.flatlandthefilm.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/flatland-movie.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEdwin A. Abbott\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/eaa/FL.HTM\"\u003eclassic story\u003c/a\u003e has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/\"\u003eturned into a movie\u003c/a\u003e, and it\u0026rsquo;s received \u003ca href=\"http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews\u0026Id=9709\"\u003ea rave, 5-star review from Film Threat\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s going to be available this spring on a DVD which includes the original text (though you can also find that online, as it\u0026rsquo;s in the public domain).  This animated film features the voices of Martin Sheen as Arthur Square, Kristen Bell as Hex, Tony Hale from Arrested Development as the King of Pointland, and Michael York as Spherius.  Joe Estevez, Martin Sheen\u0026rsquo;s brother, is Abbott Square\u0026ndash;although he\u0026rsquo;s been doing tons of movies (IMDB shows 160 titles, 22 of which are dated 2006 or 2007), I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen any since MST3K covered 1990\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Soultaker.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you check out the movie website, you can register for a discount on the DVD when it becomes available.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 20, 2007): Thanks to Gourami118, who points out in the comments that there are two Flatland movies.  The five-star Film Threat review is of \u003ca href=\"http://www.flatlandthefilm.com/\"\u003ethis movie\u003c/a\u003e by Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., which completed in January and is already available on DVD in a limited run of 1,000 copies.  Call this one \u0026ldquo;Flatland: The Film\u0026rdquo; (based on its website), while the Martin Sheen one is \u0026ldquo;Flatland: The Movie.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Flatland: The Movie"},{"content":"Radley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona.\nThe only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana. This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues.\nBut it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department. The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;porn czar,\u0026rdquo; Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled \u0026ldquo;Obscenity Cases\u0026rdquo; which said:\nWe have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG\u0026rsquo;s [Attorney General\u0026rsquo;s] comments at the NAC to \u0026lsquo;kick butt and take names\u0026rsquo;, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations.\u0026quot;Adult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a \u0026ldquo;good case.\u0026rdquo; It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling. The reason the second chain wasn\u0026rsquo;t also prosecuted? It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government. And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store.\nMore details and links at The Agitator.\nAnd there\u0026rsquo;s more on the other attorney firings at TPM Muckraker.\nUPDATE (March 26, 2007): Balko has further comments on Charlton\u0026rsquo;s firing based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ. Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway. Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn\u0026rsquo;t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations.\nUPDATE (April 27, 2007): The New York Times editorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton\u0026rsquo;s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi:\nCongressman Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, was locked in a close re-election battle last fall when the local United States attorney, Paul Charlton, was investigating him for corruption. The investigation appears to have been slowed before Election Day, Mr. Renzi retained his seat, and Mr. Charlton ended up out of a job — one of eight prosecutors purged by the White House and the Justice Department.\nThe Arizona case adds a disturbing new chapter to that scandal. Congress needs to determine whether Mr. Charlton was fired for any reason other than threatening the Republican Party’s hold on a Congressional seat.\nMr. Renzi was fighting for his political life when the local press reported that he was facing indictment for a suspect land deal. According to The Wall Street Journal, federal investigators met unexpected resistance from the Justice Department in getting approval to proceed and, perhaps as a result, the investigation was pushed past the election.\nTPM Muckraker reports that Renzi failed to disclose a $200,000 payment he received, in violation of House ethics rules. This is in addition to his other issues, previously reported here.\ncowmix (2007-03-19):\nI have nothing against pot or porn, but the AZ firing seems to have the MOST justification compared to most of the other seven cases.I the AZ case, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to stall an ongoing investigation into something that might incriminate the GOP or I don't see anything that is pushing for a 'timely' indictment of DEMs.. In the AZ case, it just appears like the administration wasn't happy with the types of cases the USA was pursuing.To sum up.. I think the reason for being fired is very insane.. but its the strongest case I have seen for the administration so far.\nLippard (2007-03-20):\nThat's a good point--in the case of San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, they're just lying when they say she wasn't prosecuting immigration cases. It looks like they manufactured that as an excuse later, and the real reason Kyle Sampson wrote that there was \"a real problem we have right now with Carol Lam\" on May 11, 2006 was that she had just publicly announced she was going after the #3 guy in the CIA, Dusty Foggo, a day before.\nLippard (2007-03-23):\ncowmix: Charlton was investigating Rep. Rick Renzi...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/political-reasons-behind-firing-of-us.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana.  This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department.  The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;porn czar,\u0026rdquo; Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled \u0026ldquo;Obscenity Cases\u0026rdquo; which said:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWe have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG\u0026rsquo;s [Attorney General\u0026rsquo;s] comments at the NAC to \u0026lsquo;kick butt and take names\u0026rsquo;, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eAdult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a \u0026ldquo;good case.\u0026rdquo;  It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling.  The reason the second chain wasn\u0026rsquo;t also prosecuted?  It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government.  And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details and links at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027593.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd there\u0026rsquo;s more on the other attorney firings at \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002795.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 26, 2007):  Balko has \u003ca href=\"http://reason.com/news/show/119324.html\"\u003efurther comments on Charlton\u0026rsquo;s firing\u003c/a\u003e based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ.  Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway.  Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn\u0026rsquo;t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 27, 2007):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/opinion/26thu1.html?_r=1\u0026oref=slogin\"\u003eeditorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton\u0026rsquo;s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The political reasons behind the firing of the U.S. Attorney from Arizona"},{"content":"That\u0026rsquo;s the title of an opinion piece in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s Los Angeles Times, which I borrowed for a comment of my own at the Secular Outpost. Check it out.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/we-live-in-land-of-biblical-idiots.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s the title of an opinion piece in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e, which I borrowed for \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-live-in-land-of-biblical-idiots.html\"\u003ea comment of my own at the Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.  Check it out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We live in the land of biblical idiots"},{"content":"Over at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Tim Lee points us to a dogpile of conservative criticism of Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book, The Enemy at Home. Some choice quotes:\nD’Souza has written a very bad book. If one were to take his NRO apologia seriously, his dishonesty would appear to be an issue secondary to his grandiosity. But he is not to be taken seriously and his dishonesty is the primary issue. Thus in his apologia D’Souza fails to address the thesis that frames his book. His thesis, let it be remembered, is this: “The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11.” It is a thesis, he states in the very first sentence of the book, “that will seem startling at the outset.” It is startling because he is the first writer commenting on 9/11 to have tumbled to its cause. [Scott Johnson]and\n“When in doubt, change the subject.” I don’t really blame Dinesh D’Souza for following that cynical bit of debater’s advice. Had I written The Enemy at Home, I would be tempted to try it, too. Alas, I fear that his 6,800-word effort to stimulate, er, “civil discussion” has failed. Why? It has nothing to do with “heresy,” as D’Souza suggests. He comes much closer when he mentions “massive errors of fact or logic.” The problem with The Enemy at Home is . . . well, everything. (I put this more politely in my original review.) What I mean is that it’s not a matter of this or that argument going astray. It’s rather that D’Souza’s major premise—that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”—is wildly at odds with reality. Starting out from that mistake, D’Souza takes readers on a fantastical voyage in which white is black, day is night, and a dozen jihadists plowed jetliners into skyscrapers because of Britney Spears—or maybe it was because of Hillary Clinton, America’s high divorce-rate, or its lamentable practice of tolerating homosexuals instead of stoning them to death. [Roger Kimball]More at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, including a link to the full set of criticisms.\nWild Blue (2007-03-17):\nNot related to your blog, but to your post on another..I highly doubt that Southwest Airlines, a very large publicly traded company would never even THINK of having a executive listening in on a conversation that an employee would have with a reporter. Why? Because Southwest hires excellent people, treats its employees fairly and has trust that the employee will tell the truth - and that truth is that Southwest is a good employer. I highly doubt a regular Walmart worker would have positive things to say about Walmart. Thus the executive has to listen in...\nLippard (2007-03-17):\nWild Blue:I've responded to you on The Writing on the Wall blog, where this discussion belongs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/conservatives-pile-on-dinesh-dsouza.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver at \u003ca href=\"http://www.angryblog.org/?p=729\"\u003eSinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog\u003c/a\u003e, Tim Lee points us to a dogpile of conservative criticism of Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Enemy at Home\u003c/span\u003e.  Some choice quotes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eD’Souza has written a very bad book. If one were to take his NRO apologia seriously, his dishonesty would appear to be an issue secondary to his grandiosity. But he is not to be taken seriously and his dishonesty is the primary issue. Thus in his apologia D’Souza fails to address the thesis that frames his book. His thesis, let it be remembered, is this: “The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11.” It is a thesis, he states in the very first sentence of the book, “that will seem startling at the outset.” It is startling because he is the first writer commenting on 9/11 to have tumbled to its cause. [Scott Johnson]\u003c/blockquote\u003eand\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“When in doubt, change the subject.” I don’t really blame Dinesh D’Souza for following that cynical bit of debater’s advice. Had I written The Enemy at Home, I would be tempted to try it, too. Alas, I fear that his 6,800-word effort to stimulate, er, “civil discussion” has failed. Why? It has nothing to do with “heresy,” as D’Souza suggests. He comes much closer when he mentions “massive errors of fact or logic.” The problem with The Enemy at Home is . . . well, everything. (I put this more politely in my original review.) What I mean is that it’s not a matter of this or that argument going astray. It’s rather that D’Souza’s major premise—that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”—is wildly at odds with reality. Starting out from that mistake, D’Souza takes readers on a fantastical voyage in which white is black, day is night, and a dozen jihadists plowed jetliners into skyscrapers because of Britney Spears—or maybe it was because of Hillary Clinton, America’s high divorce-rate, or its lamentable practice of tolerating homosexuals instead of stoning them to death. [Roger Kimball]\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.angryblog.org/?p=729\"\u003eSinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog\u003c/a\u003e, including a link to the full set of criticisms.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Conservatives pile on Dinesh D'Souza"},{"content":"David Friedman has put up a few thoughtful posts about global warming on his own blog, as well as engaged in some discussions in the comments at another blog. He summarizes his own position as:\nglobal warming is probably real, is probably but not certainly anthropogenic, is probably not going to have large effects on size and frequency of hurricanes and is probably not going to have large effects on sea level. It is a real problem but not, on current evidence, an impending catastrophe.The posts at his own blog are:\n\u0026ldquo;Global Warming, Nanotech, and Who to Believe\u0026rdquo;\u0026ldquo;Global Warming, Carbon Taxes, and Public Choice\u0026rdquo;\u0026ldquo;Physics, Economics, Hurricanes, and Mistakes\u0026rdquo;\nand the two discussions in comments on the Backseat Driving blog are:\n\u0026ldquo;Responding to the \u0026rsquo;no big deal\u0026rsquo; denialists\u0026rdquo;\u0026ldquo;The Duke lacrosse controversy and attitudes to global warming\u0026rdquo;Brian at Backseat Driving says on the first post that \u0026ldquo;Friedman responds in the comments to this post. The people replying to him in the follow-up comments do a far better job of it than I would.\u0026rdquo; In my opinion, Friedman completely wipes the floor with those who replied to him.\nOn a related subject, Chris Mooney gives his take on William Broad\u0026rsquo;s article in the New York Times about criticism of Al Gore\u0026rsquo;s movie:\nLet me be clear: I have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and I found it almost entirely accurate. Gore has done a tremendous job of drawing attention to this issue and he gets the science right by and large. But my question as a point of strategy has always been: Why include the 1 to 5 percent of more questionable stuff, and so leave onself open to this kind of attack? Given how incredibly smart and talented Al Gore is, didn\u0026rsquo;t he see this coming?He points out some specific areas where Gore got it wrong (which Chris also pointed out to me in conversation at last summer\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference\u0026ndash;this is no change of position for him).\nJohn Horgan picks up on the same Broad story, and notes that:\nWhat fascinates me about Broad’s stories is that they seemed to at least implicitly contradict the view of global warming purveyed by his Times colleague Andrew Revkin, who spoke about global warming at Stevens in December 2005. Blogging on Broad’s article last fall, I wondered, “Is there dissension at the New York Times on the issue of global warming”? I’m still wondering. Maybe I should try to get Broad and Revkin to visit Stevens again and hash this out. Brian would love that.And goes on in a subsequent post to quote from and refer to Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s blog post.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-19):\nRecently I saw a documentary on television about research into the Gulf Stream. One possibility is that Global warming will halt the circulation of the Stream, shutting it down and causing a much colder climate in Europe.This effect is caused by the melting of the ice cap which introduces massive amounts of fresh water into the northern Atlantic. I have not seen any comment about this in the usual places.http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1083419,00.htmlhttp://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9986It is easy to find more, but it just doesn't seem to be mentioned much in climate commentaries.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/david-friedman-on-global-warming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Friedman has put up a few thoughtful posts about global warming on his own blog, as well as engaged in some discussions in the comments at another blog.  He summarizes his own position as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eglobal warming is probably real, is probably but not certainly anthropogenic, is probably not going to have large effects on size and frequency of hurricanes and is probably not going to have large effects on sea level. It is a real problem but not, on current evidence, an impending catastrophe.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe posts at his own blog are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-warming-nanotech-and-who-to.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Global Warming, Nanotech, and Who to Believe\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/03/global-warming-carbon-taxes-and-public.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Global Warming, Carbon Taxes, and Public Choice\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/03/physics-economics-hurricanes-and.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Physics, Economics, Hurricanes, and Mistakes\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eand the two discussions in comments on the Backseat Driving blog are:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/03/responding-to-no-big-deal-denialists.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Responding to the \u0026rsquo;no big deal\u0026rsquo; denialists\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/03/duke-lacrosse-controversy-and-attitudes.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Duke lacrosse controversy and attitudes to global warming\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003eBrian at Backseat Driving says on the first post that \u0026ldquo;Friedman responds in the comments to this post. The people replying to him in the follow-up comments do a far better job of it than I would.\u0026rdquo;  In my opinion, Friedman completely wipes the floor with those who replied to him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn a related subject, Chris Mooney \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/03/new_york_times_slams_gore.php\"\u003egives his take on William Broad\u0026rsquo;s article in the New York Times about criticism of Al Gore\u0026rsquo;s movie\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eLet me be clear: I have seen \u003ci\u003eAn Inconvenient Truth\u003c/i\u003e, and I found it \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c/i\u003e entirely accurate. Gore has done a tremendous job of drawing attention to this issue and he gets the science right by and large. But my question as a point of strategy has always been: Why include the 1 to 5 percent of more questionable stuff, and so leave onself open to this kind of attack? Given how incredibly smart and talented Al Gore is, didn\u0026rsquo;t he see this coming?\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe points out some specific areas where Gore got it wrong (which Chris also pointed out to me in conversation at last summer\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference\u0026ndash;this is no change of position for him).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Horgan \u003ca href=\"http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=13\"\u003epicks up on the same Broad story\u003c/a\u003e, and notes that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhat fascinates me about Broad’s stories is that they seemed to at least implicitly contradict the view of global warming purveyed by his Times colleague Andrew Revkin, who spoke about global warming at Stevens in December 2005. \u003ca href=\"http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/horganism/?p=37\" _base_href=\"http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=13\"\u003eBlogging on Broad’s article last fall\u003c/a\u003e, I wondered, “Is there dissension at the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c/em\u003e on the issue of global warming”? I’m still wondering. Maybe I should try to get Broad and Revkin to visit Stevens again and hash this out. Brian would love that.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd goes on in \u003ca href=\"http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=14\"\u003ea subsequent post\u003c/a\u003e to quote from and refer to Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s blog post.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Friedman on global warming"},{"content":"Via Will Wilkinson, the February 12, 2007 issue of The New Yorker has a nice profile of the Churchlands (PDF) which discusses their history and views on mind and brain (without once mentioning the term \u0026ldquo;eliminative materialism\u0026rdquo;):\nOne afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven my car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.’”Wilkinson points out that he has adopted similar use of scientific language about physical states to describe his mental states, and agrees with the Churchlands that this enhances the ability to describe what he\u0026rsquo;s feeling:\nI think that once one gets a subjective grasp of the difference between the effects of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, glucocorticoids, prolactin, testosterone, etc., monistic conceptions of pleasure and happiness become almost self-evidently false, and a kind of pluralism comes to seem almost inevitable as the trade-offs between different kinds of physical/qualitative states become apparent. Wilkinson\u0026rsquo;s blog post on the subject is here.\nI was also interested to see that the Churchlands are advocates of using the evidence from neuroscience in ethical and legal contexts, which brings to mind Jeffrey Rosen\u0026rsquo;s recent article in the New York Times (March 11, 2007) on \u0026ldquo;The Brain on the Stand.\u0026quot;\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-03-16):\nI know exactly what a serotonin deficit feels like, as well as an excess of adrenaline (and, having once been a teenaged boy, testosterone), but I wouldn't know the first thing about the subjective effects of any of the others listed.Too bad Will didn't offer any pointers to resources for learning to tell differentiate between them.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/paul-and-pat-churchland-on-folk.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia Will Wilkinson, the February 12, 2007 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://dah.ucsd.edu/news/churchlands.pdf\"\u003ea nice profile of the Churchlands\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) which discusses their history and views on mind and brain (without once mentioning the term \u0026ldquo;eliminative materialism\u0026rdquo;):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOne afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven my car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.’”\u003c/blockquote\u003eWilkinson points out that he has adopted similar use of scientific language about physical states to describe his mental states, and agrees with the Churchlands that this enhances the ability to describe what he\u0026rsquo;s feeling:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI think that once one gets a subjective grasp of the difference between the effects of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, glucocorticoids, prolactin, testosterone, etc., monistic conceptions of pleasure and happiness become almost self-evidently false, and a kind of pluralism comes to seem almost inevitable as the trade-offs between different kinds of physical/qualitative states become apparent. \u003c/blockquote\u003eWilkinson\u0026rsquo;s blog post on the subject is \u003ca href=\"http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2007/03/15/feeling-scientifically/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was also interested to see that the Churchlands are advocates of using the evidence from neuroscience in ethical and legal contexts, which brings to mind Jeffrey Rosen\u0026rsquo;s recent article in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e (March 11, 2007) on \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11Neurolaw.t.html?_r=1\u0026pagewanted=1\u0026amp;bl\u0026ei=5087%0A\u0026amp;en=e7382ca5209af6ce\u0026ex=1173931200\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Brain on the Stand.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paul and Pat Churchland on folk psychology"},{"content":"Mr. Juggles at Long or Short Capital takes on Robert Kiyosaki:\nRobert Kiyosaki is a maroon.\n\u0026hellip;\nThis is idiotic. In fact, this article is so terrible, I find it difficult to even know how to properly form an argument against it. It doesn’t even make sense.\nBut here is more evidence to unback-up the truck on Rich Dad Poor Dad guy.\n\u0026hellip;\nWhile he is effectively mananaging his intelligence, and I applaud that, what exactly does this leave people to do with their money? He advocates against cash, stocks, bonds, saving money, buying things, the US, real estate, etc etc. What is left? Brine shrimp futures? Short or long positions in abstract ideas like Perf?Go to Long or Short Capital to see the nonsense they\u0026rsquo;re criticizing.\nEinzige (2007-03-16):\nI have high hopes that Kiyosaki's demise is imminent.It would seem that the zeitgeist may finally be starting to turn against him, though it's probably too late for it to matter to Kiyosaki.\nLippard (2010-02-21):\nThe following comment was posted on another blog entry, but belongs here. It was posted in response to a comment I posted on an azcentral.com story about Kiyosaki in June 2008, where I wrote, followed with a link to this blog post: \u0026quot;Kiyosaki is a BS artist, and if Lechter co-authored Rich Dad, Poor Dad and helped with his company, so is she. This is a rare instance where the more money is funneled off to their respective attorneys, the more just an outcome it is.\u0026quot;\nKingPong said\u0026hellip;\nHey there Jim. Just so I can settle all your blogger-style objections before I begin, this comment has nothing to do with this post. I didn\u0026amp;#39;t even bother reading it. I just wanted to drop in and let you know what a sad excuse you are for a PR guy for your just-as-sad blog. Loved how you comment spammed on AZ Central\u0026amp;#39;s article regarding the Rich Dad team split-up. Obviously you don\u0026amp;#39;t know either party personally, hence you making an ass of yourself in your comment on that particular article. I really get a laugh out of people calling other people \u0026amp;quot;BS artists\u0026amp;quot; when they proved they\u0026amp;#39;re a BS artist themself by writing such an ignorant comment. Would love to hear some actual facts (not ego-blogger rhetoric) about what makes Robert a BS artist. I mean obviously you\u0026amp;#39;ve met him, had personal conversations with him, read all or even some of his books, been to the Rich Dad offices, know employees who have been with the company for 8 years, and attended at least one of his $5,000 events. No wait let me guess - his $5,000 a seat events are a scam right? Silly me, I must\u0026amp;#39;ve gotten suckered in huh. Bummer. No wait - I didn\u0026amp;#39;t! BUT in the unlikely event I did, at least I wasn\u0026amp;#39;t the only one. I mean it wasn\u0026amp;#39;t like there was a guy in the room who has done 300 million dollars in real estate transactions, someone who owned their own hedge fund, or someone who had 8 alcohol and addiction treatment centers. I guess Robert must be a really good BS artist to fool these experienced players right? Sounds like someone needs a reality check. Moron. February 21, 2010 3:46 PM\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; Lippard (2010-02-21):\nKingPong: I reject your premise that anyone who gets wealthy people to attend $5,000/person events is necessarily not a bullshit artist, or that wealthy people can\u0026#39;t be suckered by bullshit. Look at Bernie Madoff, for a counterexample. I've never met Kiyosaki or attended any of his events, but I've read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and a few of his op-ed pieces. My opinion is backed up by the posts under the \u0026quot;Robert Kiyosaki\u0026quot; label on this blog and the corresponding links. One fairly comprehensive source is John T. Reed's analysis of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.\nAnother piece of evidence against Kiyosaki is that he has supporters who make blustery, arrogant, ad hominem-laden arguments that are virtually substance-free, and seem to think they've thereby made a good case in his defense\u0026ndash;yet supporters who make calm, rational arguments that support his views seem to be nonexistent.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/rich-writer-poor-thinker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMr. Juggles at \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/rich-writer-poor-thinker.htm\"\u003eLong or Short Capital takes on Robert Kiyosaki\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRobert Kiyosaki is a maroon.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is idiotic. In fact, this article is so terrible, I find it difficult to even know how to properly form an argument against it. It doesn’t even make sense.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBut here is more evidence to unback-up the truck on Rich Dad Poor Dad guy.\u003c/p\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eWhile he is effectively \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/managing-your-intelligence-step-1.htm\" _base_href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/rich-writer-poor-thinker.htm\"\u003emananaging his intelligence\u003c/a\u003e, and I applaud that, what exactly does this leave people to do with their money? He advocates against cash, stocks, bonds, saving money, buying things, the US, real estate, etc etc. What is left? Brine shrimp futures? Short or long positions in abstract ideas like \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/perf.htm\" _base_href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/rich-writer-poor-thinker.htm\"\u003ePerf\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/blockquote\u003eGo to \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/rich-writer-poor-thinker.htm\"\u003eLong or Short Capital\u003c/a\u003e to see the nonsense they\u0026rsquo;re criticizing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rich Writer, Poor Thinker"},{"content":"Check it out here. I\u0026rsquo;m not on the list, but my 13-year-old nephew is, due to his common last name.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s Blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/are-you-on-tsa-no-fly-list.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck it out \u003ca href=\"http://nofly.s3.com/index.jsp\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m not on the list, but my 13-year-old nephew is, due to his common last name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/03/find_out_if_you.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Are you on the TSA no-fly list?"},{"content":"Sen. Charles Schumer has provided a nice list of how the Bush administration has lied to Congress so far about the U.S. Attorney purge:\nSchumer: Here are some of the falsehoods we\u0026rsquo;ve been told that are now unraveling. First, we were told that the seven of the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons.\nIt now turns out this was a falsehood, as the glowing performance evaluations attest.\nSecond, we were told by the attorney general that he would, quote, \u0026ldquo;never, ever make a change for political reasons.\u0026quot;\nIt now turns out that this was a falsehood, as all the evidence makes clear that this purge was based purely on politics, to punish prosecutors who were perceived to be too light on Democrats or too tough on Republicans.\nThird, we were told by the attorney general that this was just an overblown personnel matter.\nIt now turns out that far from being a low-level personnel matter, this was a longstanding plan to exact political vendettas or to make political pay-offs.\nFourth, we were told that the White House was not really involved in the plan to fire U.S. attorneys. This, too, turns out to be false.\nHarriet Miers was one of the masterminds of this plan, as demonstrated by numerous e-mails made public today. She communicated extensively with Kyle Sampson about the firings of the U.S. attorneys. In fact, she originally wanted to fire and replace the top prosecutors in all 93 districts across the country.\nFifth, we were told that Karl Rove had no involvement in getting his protege appointed U.S. attorney in Arkansas.\nIn fact, here is a letter from the Department of Justice. Quote: \u0026ldquo;The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.\u0026quot;\nIt now turns out that this was a falsehood, as demonstrated by Mr. Sampson\u0026rsquo;s own e-mail. Quote: \u0026ldquo;Getting him, Griffin, appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, et cetera.\nSixth, we were told to change the Patriot Act was an innocent attempt to fix a legal loophole, not a cynical strategy to bypass the Senate\u0026rsquo;s role in serving as a check and balance.\nIt was Senator Feinstein who discovered that issue. She\u0026rsquo;ll talk more about it.\nSo there has been misleading statement after misleading statement \u0026ndash; deliberate misleading statements. And we haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten to the bottom of this yet, but believe me, we will pursue it.\nAttorney General Alberto Gonzales has committed a felony by lying to Congress and needs to be removed from office immediately. And can we please get to the impeachment proceedings before Bush leaves office?\nBTW, kudos is due to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo for his continued digging and coverage of this story, which has demonstrated that his early intuitions were right on the money. He\u0026rsquo;ll be on Keith Olbermann\u0026rsquo;s Countdown tonight.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/rundown-of-bush-administration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. Charles Schumer has provided \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002746.php\"\u003ea nice list of how the Bush administration has lied to Congress so far about the U.S. Attorney purge\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSchumer: Here are some of the falsehoods we\u0026rsquo;ve been told that are now unraveling.  \u003cp\u003eFirst, we were told that the seven of the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eIt now turns out this was a falsehood, as the glowing performance evaluations attest.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eSecond, we were told by the attorney general that he would, quote, \u0026ldquo;never, ever make a change for political reasons.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rundown of Bush administration falsehoods in the U.S. Attorney purge scandal"},{"content":"Glen Whitman has assembled \u0026ldquo;a taxonomy of all the questions that ought to affect our choices about dealing with global warming.\u0026rdquo; His list so far includes:\n1. The existence of global warming. (He assigns a 95%+ confidence level to this.)\n2. Human contribution to global warming. (He assigns 90% confidence to this, but is uncertain about how much of the effect is due to human activity, though he references David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s point that this doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much difference to whether or not we should do anything about it.)\n3. Magnitude of the warming effect.\n4. Net harms or benefits due to warming. (He observes that the latter is often ignored.)\n5. Extent of decentralized response. (How much will be done in the form of individual activity, changes in land prices, etc. to reduce negative impacts?)\n6. Marginal impact of collective abatement efforts. (If all nations cooperated, how much of the negative effects could be abated or mitigated?)\n7. Marginal impact of unilateral abatement efforts. (What can the United States do on its own, or at least without the assistance of emerging economies not likely to cooperate, and how much effect could that have?)\nTo which he adds that there are many more questions about specific proposed responses, their marginal efficacy, and costs.\nIf you have further suggestions for his list, post comments at Agoraphilia.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/taxonomy-of-questions-about-global.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGlen Whitman has assembled \u0026ldquo;a taxonomy of all the questions that ought to affect our choices about dealing with global warming.\u0026rdquo;  His \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/03/global-warming-taxonomy-of-questions.html\"\u003elist so far\u003c/a\u003e includes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  The existence of global warming.  (He assigns a 95%+ confidence level to this.)\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Human contribution to global warming.  (He assigns 90% confidence to this, but is uncertain about how much of the effect is due to human activity, though he references David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s point that this doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much difference to whether or not we should do anything about it.)\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Magnitude of the warming effect.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Net harms or benefits due to warming.  (He observes that the latter is often ignored.)\u003cbr /\u003e5.  Extent of decentralized response.  (How much will be done in the form of individual activity, changes in land prices, etc. to reduce negative impacts?)\u003cbr /\u003e6.  Marginal impact of collective abatement efforts.  (If all nations cooperated, how much of the negative effects could be abated or mitigated?)\u003cbr /\u003e7.  Marginal impact of unilateral abatement efforts.  (What can the United States do on its own, or at least without the assistance of emerging economies not likely to cooperate, and how much effect could that have?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo which he adds that there are many more questions about specific proposed responses, their marginal efficacy, and costs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you have further suggestions for his list, post comments at \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/03/global-warming-taxonomy-of-questions.html\"\u003eAgoraphilia\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Taxonomy of questions about global warming"},{"content":"Talking Points Memo has a list of reasons Giuliani shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be president based on his association with and continued giving of high-profile jobs to Bernie Kerik:\nThey seem to be stipulating to their knowing about and being untroubled by a) Kerik\u0026rsquo;s long-standing ties to an allegedly mobbed-up Jersey construction company (see yesterday\u0026rsquo;s piece in the Daily News and tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s in the Times), sub-a) that Kerik received numerous unreported cash gifts from Lawrence Ray, an executive at said Jersey construction company (Ray was later indicted along with Edward Garafola, Sammy \u0026ldquo;The Bull\u0026rdquo; Gravano\u0026rsquo;s brother-in-law, and Daniel Persico, nephew of Colombo Family Godfather Carmine \u0026ldquo;The Snake\u0026rdquo; Persico and others on unrelated federal charges tied to what the Daily News called a \u0026ldquo;$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle.\u0026rdquo; b) that Riker\u0026rsquo;s Island prison became a hotbed of political corruption and cronyism on his watch, c) that he is accused by nine employees of the hospital he worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss, d) that a warrant for his arrest (albeit in a civil case) was issued in New Jersey as recently as six years ago, e) that as recently as last week he was forced to testify in a civil suit in a case covering the period in which he was New York City correction commissioner, in which the plaintiff, \u0026ldquo;former deputy warden Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman [Kerik was allegedly having an affair with], Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero,\u0026rdquo; or f) his rapid and unexplained departure from Baghdad.\n\u0026hellip;\nPretty much the most generous interpretation of all this is that Giuliani was guilty of amazingly poor judgment in giving Kerik all these plum assignments. And it strongly points to a tendency on Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s part of bad judgment with a strong penchant for surrounding himself with cronies and yes-men.\n\u0026hellip;\nTPM Reader RR notes that the list above is by no means exhaustive. And he\u0026rsquo;s definitely right. This was just the most convenient catalog of sins and ridiculousness that I found with the TPM search function. For instance it doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the Judith Regan/Luv Shack scandal that broke I think the day after post above ran. This was the case in which an apartment near ground zero \u0026ndash; made available by a New York real estate developer \u0026ndash; for off-duty cops to relax while taking a break from clean up duties ended up being commandered by Kerik so he could use it as his off the books bachelor pad for doing the wild thing with celebrity book editor Judith Regan.To add to that list, The Smoking Gun obtained a copy of the April 8, 1993 \u0026ldquo;Rudolph W. Giuliani Vulnerability Study\u0026rdquo; which was commissioned by Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s NYC mayoral campaign, all copies of which were supposed to be destroyed. The Smoking Gun comments:\nHe surely could not have been pleased to read that his \u0026ldquo;personal life raises questions about a \u0026lsquo;weirdness factor.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials. \u0026ldquo;When asked about his personal life, Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers,\u0026rdquo; the campaign report stated. \u0026ldquo;All of this brings the soundness of his judgement into question\u0026ndash;and the veracity of his answers.\u0026rdquo; The internal study also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam draft and was a \u0026ldquo;man without convictions\u0026rdquo; because of his transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice Department appointee. \u0026ldquo;In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political contradiction\u0026hellip;He doesn\u0026rsquo;t really fit with the Republicans. Too liberal. Giuliani has troubles with the Democrats, too.\u0026quot;Also at The Smoking Gun is a summary of some of the revelations in Wayne Barrett\u0026rsquo;s biography of Giuliani.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/few-reasons-rudy-giuliani-shouldnt-be.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalking Points Memo h\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_03_11.php#012977\"\u003eas a list of reasons Giuliani shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be president\u003c/a\u003e based on his association with and continued giving of high-profile jobs to Bernie Kerik:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThey seem to be stipulating to their knowing about and being untroubled by a) Kerik\u0026rsquo;s long-standing ties to an allegedly mobbed-up Jersey construction company (see yesterday\u0026rsquo;s piece in the Daily News and tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s in the Times), sub-a) that Kerik received numerous unreported cash gifts from Lawrence Ray, an executive at said Jersey construction company (Ray was later indicted along with Edward Garafola, Sammy \u0026ldquo;The Bull\u0026rdquo; Gravano\u0026rsquo;s brother-in-law, and Daniel Persico, nephew of Colombo Family Godfather Carmine \u0026ldquo;The Snake\u0026rdquo; Persico and others on unrelated federal charges tied to what the Daily News called a \u0026ldquo;$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle.\u0026rdquo; b) that Riker\u0026rsquo;s Island prison became a hotbed of political corruption and cronyism on his watch, c) that he is accused by nine employees of the hospital he worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss, d) that a warrant for his arrest (albeit in a civil case) was issued in New Jersey as recently as six years ago, e) that as recently as last week he was forced to testify in a civil suit in a case covering the period in which he was New York City correction commissioner, in which the plaintiff, \u0026ldquo;former deputy warden Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman [Kerik was allegedly having an affair with], Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero,\u0026rdquo; or f) his rapid and unexplained departure from Baghdad.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003ePretty much the most generous interpretation of all this is that Giuliani was guilty of amazingly poor judgment in giving Kerik all these plum assignments. And it strongly points to a tendency on Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s part of bad judgment with a strong penchant for surrounding himself with cronies and yes-men.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eTPM Reader \u003cem\u003eRR\u003c/em\u003e notes that the list above is by no means exhaustive. And he\u0026rsquo;s definitely right. This was just the most convenient catalog of sins and ridiculousness that I found with the TPM search function. For instance it doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004218.php\"\u003eJudith Regan/Luv Shack scandal\u003c/a\u003e that broke I think the day after post above ran. This was the case in which an apartment near ground zero \u0026ndash; made available by a New York real estate developer \u0026ndash; for off-duty cops to relax while taking a break from clean up duties ended up being commandered by Kerik so he could use it as his off the books bachelor pad for doing the wild thing with celebrity book editor Judith Regan.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo add to that list, The Smoking Gun obtained \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0212072giuliani1.html\"\u003ea copy of the April 8, 1993 \u0026ldquo;Rudolph W. Giuliani Vulnerability Study\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which was commissioned by Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s NYC mayoral campaign, all copies of which were supposed to be destroyed.  The Smoking Gun comments:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe surely could not have been pleased to read that his \u0026ldquo;personal life raises questions about a \u0026lsquo;weirdness factor.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani\u0026rsquo;s 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials. \u0026ldquo;When asked about his personal life, Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers,\u0026rdquo; the campaign report stated. \u0026ldquo;All of this brings the soundness of his judgement into question\u0026ndash;and the veracity of his answers.\u0026rdquo; The internal study also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam draft and was a \u0026ldquo;man without convictions\u0026rdquo; because of his transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice Department appointee. \u0026ldquo;In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political contradiction\u0026hellip;He doesn\u0026rsquo;t really fit with the Republicans. Too liberal. Giuliani has troubles with the Democrats, too.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eAlso at The Smoking Gun is \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/rudy/rudy.html\"\u003ea summary of some of the revelations in Wayne Barrett\u0026rsquo;s biography of Giuliani\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A few reasons Rudy Giuliani shouldn't be president"},{"content":"The Secular Coalition of America is throwing its support behind the one member of Congress who has expressed a willingness to be identified as not having a belief in God or gods.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Pete Stark (D-California, District 13, which covers the east Bay\u0026ndash;Oakland, Fremont, Alameda, Union City, etc.).\nStark, born in 1931, was first elected to Congress in 1973. He earned a B.S. in general engineering from MIT in 1953 and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1960. Prior to entering politics, he served in the Air Force and was a bank executive.\nHe is currently a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of the Health subcommittee.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s pro-choice, anti-war, he opposed making the USA PATRIOT Act permanent, he supports medical marijuana, opposes the death penalty, and opposes Internet gambling bans.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s unfortunately also a big advocate of regulation, opposes free trade, advocates gun control, supports network neutrality, and appears to oppose both legal and tax reform.\nA list of his positions on issues as of 2000 may be found here.\nHis Wikipedia entry gives the following ratings that he\u0026rsquo;s received from various groups on the basis of his voting record, from Project Vote Smart:\nAmerican Civil Liberties Union-100% for 2003-2004.Americans for Democratic Action-90% for 2004 and 2005.AFL-CIO-93% in 2005.Drum Major Institute-100% for 2003-2005League of Conservation Voters-100% for 2005.NARAL Pro-Choice America-100% for 2003-2005.National Education Association-100% for 2005.National Journal-Composite liberal score of 98% for 2005 and 91% for 2003.National Organization for Women-100% for 2005.Population Connection-100% for 2000-2005.Republican Liberty Caucus-41% for 2005.The Center for Public Integrity\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Well Connected\u0026rdquo; project has a record of contributions Stark has received from media companies.\n(Via Pharyngula.)\nUPDATE: Wonkette offers snarky comment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/one-member-of-congress-willing-to-admit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.secular.org/\"\u003eSecular Coalition of America\u003c/a\u003e is throwing its support behind the one member of Congress who has expressed a willingness to be identified as not having a belief in God or gods.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Pete Stark (D-California, District 13, which covers the east Bay\u0026ndash;Oakland, Fremont, Alameda, Union City, etc.).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStark, born in 1931, was first elected to Congress in 1973.  He earned a B.S. in general engineering from MIT in 1953 and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1960.  Prior to entering politics, he served in the Air Force and was a bank executive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe is currently a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of the Health subcommittee.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s pro-choice, anti-war, he opposed making the USA PATRIOT Act permanent, he supports medical marijuana, opposes the death penalty, and opposes Internet gambling bans.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s unfortunately also a big advocate of regulation, opposes free trade, advocates gun control, supports network neutrality, and appears to oppose both legal and tax reform.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA list of his positions on issues as of 2000 may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.issues2000.org/CA/Pete_Stark.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Stark\"\u003eWikipedia entry\u003c/a\u003e gives the following ratings that he\u0026rsquo;s received from various groups on the basis of his voting record, from Project Vote Smart:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union\" title=\"American Civil Liberties Union\"\u003eAmerican Civil Liberties Union\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2003-2004.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Democratic_Action\" title=\"Americans for Democratic Action\"\u003eAmericans for Democratic Action\u003c/a\u003e-90% for 2004 and 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO\" title=\"AFL-CIO\"\u003eAFL-CIO\u003c/a\u003e-93% in 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_Major_Institute\" title=\"Drum Major Institute\"\u003eDrum Major Institute\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2003-2005\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Conservation_Voters\" title=\"League of Conservation Voters\"\u003eLeague of Conservation Voters\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NARAL_Pro-Choice_America\" title=\"NARAL Pro-Choice America\"\u003eNARAL Pro-Choice America\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2003-2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association\" title=\"National Education Association\"\u003eNational Education Association\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Journal\" title=\"National Journal\"\u003eNational Journal\u003c/a\u003e-Composite liberal score of 98% for 2005 and 91% for 2003.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Organization_for_Women\" title=\"National Organization for Women\"\u003eNational Organization for Women\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Connection\" title=\"Population Connection\"\u003ePopulation Connection\u003c/a\u003e-100% for 2000-2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Liberty_Caucus\" title=\"Republican Liberty Caucus\"\u003eRepublican Liberty Caucus\u003c/a\u003e-41% for 2005.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThe Center for Public Integrity\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Well Connected\u0026rdquo; project \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/search/person.aspx?id=2429\"\u003ehas a record of contributions Stark has received from media companies\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/should_we_be_happy_about_this.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Wonkette \u003ca href=\"http://wonkette.com/politics/jesus/goddamned-atheist-snuck-into-congress-in-1973-243623.php\"\u003eoffers snarky comment\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The one member of Congress willing to admit nonbelief"},{"content":"Check out this hilarious compilation of David Caruso one-liner clips from CSI: Miami. (Caruso aspires to fill Shatner\u0026rsquo;s shoes, as Kat likes to point out.)\nNext, this Warren Ellis commentary on the role of sunglasses in CSI: Miami.\nThen, this review of tonight\u0026rsquo;s Battlestar Galactica (which contains spoilers, and if you\u0026rsquo;ve already seen it, pay close attention to the remarks about the opening credit survivor count).\nAnd Warren Ellis\u0026rsquo;s response.\n(Via Wolven\u0026rsquo;s LiveJournal.)\nKat Lippard (2007-03-16):\nSweetheart, you stole my Caruso is the new Shatner line... You should give me credit for that one.\nLippard (2007-03-16):\nI've updated it so that you get the appropriate credit...\nEinzige (2007-03-16):\nYou guys really think he's up to that level?I mean, Shatner's got some big shoes to fill!\nLippard (2007-03-17):\nCaruso has the bad acting and delivery down, as well as the sense of self-importance, but he doesn't seem like he has the sense of humor. I can't see him doing a \"three Carusos\" performance of \"Rocket Man.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/battlestar-galactica-csi-miami-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sarYH0z948\"\u003ethis hilarious compilation of David Caruso one-liner clips from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCSI: Miami\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  (Caruso aspires to fill Shatner\u0026rsquo;s shoes, as Kat likes to point out.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, \u003ca href=\"http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=3316\"\u003ethis Warren Ellis commentary on the role of sunglasses in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCSI: Miami\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20014661,00.html\"\u003ethis review of tonight\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBattlestar Galactica\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (which contains spoilers, and if you\u0026rsquo;ve already seen it, pay close attention to the remarks about the opening credit survivor count).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd \u003ca href=\"http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=3893\"\u003eWarren Ellis\u0026rsquo;s response\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://wolven.livejournal.com/1154008.html\"\u003eWolven\u0026rsquo;s LiveJournal\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Battlestar Galactica, CSI: Miami, and the semiotics of shades"},{"content":"The meme is to bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve read\u0026hellip;.\nThe Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien\nThe Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov\nDune, Frank Herbert\nStranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein\nA Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin\nNeuromancer, William Gibson\nChildhood\u0026rsquo;s End, Arthur C. Clarke\nDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick\nThe Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley\nFahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury\nThe Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe\nA Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.\nThe Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov\nChildren of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras\nCities in Flight, James Blish\nThe Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett\nDangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison\nDeathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison\nThe Demolished Man, Alfred Bester\nDhalgren, Samuel R. Delany\nDragonflight, Anne McCaffrey\nEnder\u0026rsquo;s Game, Orson Scott Card\nThe First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson\nThe Forever War, Joe Haldeman\nGateway, Frederik Pohl\nHarry Potter and the Philosopher\u0026rsquo;s Stone, J.K. Rowling\nThe Hitchhiker\u0026rsquo;s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams\nI Am Legend, Richard Matheson\nInterview with the Vampire, Anne Rice\nThe Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin\nLittle, Big, John Crowley\nLord of Light, Roger Zelazny\nThe Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick\nMission of Gravity, Hal Clement\nMore Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon\nThe Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith\nOn the Beach, Nevil Shute\nRendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke\nRingworld, Larry Niven\nRogue Moon, Algis Budrys\nThe Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien\nSlaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut\nSnow Crash, Neal Stephenson\nStand on Zanzibar, John Brunner\nThe Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester\nStarship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein\nStormbringer, Michael Moorcock\nThe Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks (like P.Z. Myers, I started this one and found it unreadable)\nTimescape, Gregory Benford\nTo Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer\nSome missing: John Brunner The Shockwave Rider, Heinlein\u0026rsquo;s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Harry Harrison\u0026rsquo;s Stainless Steel Rat books, Stanislaw Lem\u0026rsquo;s The Cyberiad or Solaris, Rudy Rucker\u0026rsquo;s work, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson\u0026rsquo;s Illuminatus!, D.F. Jones\u0026rsquo; Colossus, Pierre Boulle\u0026rsquo;s Planet of the Apes, H.G. Wells\u0026rsquo; War of the Worlds, Zelazny\u0026rsquo;s Jack of Shadows, Cory Doctorow\u0026rsquo;s work, Fritz Leiber\u0026rsquo;s work, LeGuin\u0026rsquo;s The Lathe of Heaven, John Varley\u0026rsquo;s work, etc. For younger readers, notably missing are Madeleine L\u0026rsquo;Engle\u0026rsquo;s A Wrinkle in Time, Eleanor Cameron\u0026rsquo;s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Alexander Key\u0026rsquo;s The Forgotten Door, and a book which I have only a vague memory of involving encoded messages in seashells, chess, and unicorns (sorry, no author, title, or further details come to mind).\n(Via Pharyngula, Respectful Insolence, Evolving Thoughts, A Blog Around the Clock, etc.)\nUPDATE: And Stranger Fruit, Good Math, Bad Math, and Afarensis\u0026hellip;\nLooks like Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math has gone to the most trouble of annotating his list, as well as having read more of these books than anyone else.\nAnonymous (2007-03-11):\nDahlgren? Dahlgren is considered a classic?!\nLippard (2007-03-11):\nIt's fun to compare online reviews of Dahlgren.E.g., here's a very negative one, and here's a very positive one.I tend to agree with the negative review.\nAnonymous (2007-03-16):\nWhy doesn't the list contain George R. Stewart's \"Earth Abides\"? That book is not only a classic, it had a major, major influence on subsequent post-apocalyptic themes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/which-sf-classics-have-you-read.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe meme is to bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve read\u0026hellip;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Dune, Frank Herbert\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Neuromancer, William Gibson\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChildhood\u0026rsquo;s End, Arthur C. Clarke\u003cbr /\u003eDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick\u003cbr /\u003eThe Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov\u003cbr /\u003eChildren of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras\u003cbr /\u003eCities in Flight, James Blish\u003cbr /\u003eThe Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Demolished Man, Alfred Bester\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Ender\u0026rsquo;s Game, Orson Scott Card\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e The Forever War, Joe Haldeman\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Gateway, Frederik Pohl\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHarry Potter and the Philosopher\u0026rsquo;s Stone, J.K. Rowling\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e The Hitchhiker\u0026rsquo;s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI Am Legend, Richard Matheson\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin\u003cbr /\u003eLittle, Big, John Crowley\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMission of Gravity, Hal Clement\u003cbr /\u003eMore Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon\u003cbr /\u003eThe Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith\u003cbr /\u003eOn the Beach, Nevil Shute\u003cbr /\u003eRendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Ringworld, Larry Niven\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStand on Zanzibar, John Brunner\u003cbr /\u003eThe Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester\u003cbr /\u003eStarship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks  (like P.Z. Myers, I started this one and found it unreadable)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTimescape, Gregory Benford\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which SF classics have you read?"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Oprah\u0026rsquo;s ugly secret\u0026rdquo; at Salon.com.\n\u0026ldquo;There Is No \u0026lsquo;Secret\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; at The Simple Dollar.\n\u0026ldquo;The Secret Behind The Secret\u0026quot; at eSKEPTIC.\n\u0026ldquo;Shame on Oprah\u0026rdquo; at Pharyngula.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a quote from the Salon story, which pulls no punches on this nonsense:\nWorse than \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular \u0026ldquo;secret\u0026rdquo; of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that \u0026ldquo;like attracts like\u0026rdquo; and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite \u0026ndash; positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles \u0026ndash; and the rest of \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; has a similar relationship to the truth.Unfortunately, the author made somewhat of a hash of his statement about magnets. He should have said either that like magnetic poles repel and opposite magnetic poles attract or that like-charged particles repel each other and oppositely-charged particles attract. The effect of magnets on charged particles is the same regardless of charge (and it\u0026rsquo;s not attraction or repulsion\u0026ndash;remember the mnemonic device of making a fist with your right hand, with your thumb pointing up, representing the direction of the current from positive to negative and the other fingers showing the direction of the magnetic field?).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/secretthe-law-of-attraction-critiqued.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/03/05/the_secret/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Oprah\u0026rsquo;s ugly secret\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e at Salon.com.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/03/07/there-is-no-secret-why-feel-good-thinking-isnt-enough-to-get-ahead-financially/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;There Is No \u0026lsquo;Secret\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e at The Simple Dollar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-03-07.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Secret Behind \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Secret\u003c/span\u003e\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e at eSKEPTIC.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/shame_on_oprah.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Shame on Oprah\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e at Pharyngula.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a quote from the Salon story, which pulls no punches on this nonsense:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWorse than \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular \u0026ldquo;secret\u0026rdquo; of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that \u0026ldquo;like attracts like\u0026rdquo; and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite \u0026ndash; positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles \u0026ndash; and the rest of \u0026ldquo;The Secret\u0026rdquo; has a similar relationship to the truth.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUnfortunately, the author made somewhat of a hash of his statement about magnets.  He should have said either that like magnetic poles repel and opposite magnetic poles attract or that like-charged particles repel each other and oppositely-charged particles attract.  The effect of magnets on charged particles is the same regardless of charge (and it\u0026rsquo;s not attraction or repulsion\u0026ndash;remember the mnemonic device of making a fist with your right hand, with your thumb pointing up, representing the direction of the current from positive to negative and the other fingers showing the direction of the magnetic field?).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Secret/The Law of Attraction critiqued"},{"content":"Under the headline \u0026ldquo;Sienna Miller\u0026rsquo;s rabbit sex\u0026rdquo; on the azcentral.com website appeared the following expurgated story, which seems dirtier to me than the unexpurgated one:\nSienna Miller enjoys watching rabbits have sex.\n\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;At least we got a (expletive)[1] bunny out of it.\u0026quot;\nMeanwhile, Sienna has revealed her motto for 2007 is to be a (expletive)[2].\n\u0026hellip;\nSienna said: \u0026ldquo;Apparently, I\u0026rsquo;ve (expletive)[3] half of Hollywood. And it\u0026rsquo;s not true. This year is the Year of the (expletive)[4] Spread \u0026rsquo;em! That\u0026rsquo;s my motto for 2007.I mentally filled those blanks with words more extreme than what she actually said\u0026ndash;I only got the first one right. The Guardian published the unexpurgated and boring details, under the less titillating headline \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I always end up putting my big fat foot in it\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;:\n[1] fucking (I got this one right)\n[2] slut\n[3] shagged\n[4] slut\nSo which newspaper is pandering more to prurient interests?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/arizona-republics-editors-are.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnder the headline \u0026ldquo;Sienna Miller\u0026rsquo;s rabbit sex\u0026rdquo; on the azcentral.com website \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/0310miller.html\"\u003eappeared the following expurgated story\u003c/a\u003e, which seems dirtier to me than the unexpurgated one:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e  Sienna Miller enjoys watching rabbits have sex.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e   \u0026ldquo;At least we got a (expletive)[1] bunny out of it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e   Meanwhile, Sienna has revealed her motto for 2007 is to be a (expletive)[2].\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eSienna said: \u0026ldquo;Apparently, I\u0026rsquo;ve (expletive)[3] half of Hollywood. And it\u0026rsquo;s not true. This year is the Year of the (expletive)[4] Spread \u0026rsquo;em! That\u0026rsquo;s my motto for 2007.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI mentally filled those blanks with words more extreme than what she actually said\u0026ndash;I only got the first one right.  The Guardian \u003ca href=\"http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2025133,00.html\"\u003epublished the unexpurgated and boring details\u003c/a\u003e, under the less titillating headline \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I always end up putting my big fat foot in it\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e[1] fucking (I got this one right)\u003cbr /\u003e[2] slut\u003cbr /\u003e[3] shagged\u003cbr /\u003e[4] slut\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo which newspaper is pandering more to prurient interests?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Arizona Republic's editors are (expletives)"},{"content":"Bob Hagen has put up a post on the evolution of botnets at the Global Crossing blog.\n(BTW, I\u0026rsquo;m hoping to have future opportunity to use titles like \u0026ldquo;Where the bots are\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;The bots from Brazil\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;The bots of summer\u0026rdquo;.)\nUPDATE (August 27, 2009): I\u0026rsquo;ve replaced the above link with one to the Internet Archive, since the blog post is no longer present at its original location.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/bob-hagen-on-botnet-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBob Hagen has \u003ca href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20070309134149/http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/306\"\u003eput up a post on the evolution of botnets at the Global Crossing blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(BTW, I\u0026rsquo;m hoping to have future opportunity to use titles like \u0026ldquo;Where the bots are\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;The bots from Brazil\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;The bots of summer\u0026rdquo;.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (August 27, 2009): I\u0026rsquo;ve replaced the above link with one to the Internet Archive, since the blog post is no longer present at its original location.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bob Hagen on botnet evolution"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic has a story on why Arizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t go on daylight savings time\u0026ndash;it was attempted in 1967 and reversed by the state legislature in 1968, when Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor was Senate Majority Leader. The feds gave Arizona an exemption from daylight savings time on January 4, 1974, two days before a mandate for states to go on daylight savings time.\nAs I like to say, Arizona has so much daylight we don\u0026rsquo;t bother to save any.\nOne positive side-effect\u0026ndash;no issues over this year\u0026rsquo;s DST changes in Arizona (except for companies that operate across multiple states).\nUPDATE (March 13, 2007): Long or Short Capital offers some funny additional speculation on why Arizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t go on Daylight Savings Time.\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2007-03-10):\nYeah.. I love the fact that we don't do daylight savings except when I have meetings with people outside of the state. I end up being late (or early) to those said meetings for a few days after the change.\nchipmunk (2008-03-09):\nDaylight savings time why do we have to mess with father time? I would rather stay on standard so all the usa is on the same time.Chipmunk\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/why-arizona-doesnt-go-on-daylight.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0309az-time-change09-ON.html\"\u003ea story on why Arizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t go on daylight savings time\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;it was attempted in 1967 and reversed by the state legislature in 1968, when Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor was Senate Majority Leader.  The feds gave Arizona an exemption from daylight savings time on January 4, 1974, two days before a mandate for states to go on daylight savings time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs I like to say, Arizona has so much daylight we don\u0026rsquo;t bother to save any.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne positive side-effect\u0026ndash;no issues over this year\u0026rsquo;s DST changes in Arizona (except for companies that operate across multiple states).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 13, 2007):  Long or Short Capital \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/contrarian-investing-on-daylight-savings.htm\"\u003eoffers some funny additional speculation on why Arizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t go on Daylight Savings Time\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why Arizona doesn't go on daylight savings time"},{"content":"This YouTube video is of a talk by Daniel Dennett at the TED conference in 2006, following (and commenting on) Pastor Rick Warren.\njpbenney (2007-07-08):\nThe idea that religion is a natural phenomenon is very reminiscent, oddly, of Jared Diamond in books like Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, as well as Phillip Longman. The idea of subjecting religion to serious social study, too, is nothing new. Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet versus the Goddess is a flawed if highly enthralling example.Daniel does seem an interesting person, I must say. He is very articulate and lively, so one imagine him to be a very convincing speaker.\nLippard (2007-07-08):\nJulien: Dennett's a very engaging speaker, and his books are well written and entertaining as well.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/daniel-dennett-on-religion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis YouTube video is of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=d_dennett\"\u003ea talk by Daniel Dennett at the TED conference in 2006\u003c/a\u003e, following (and commenting on) Pastor Rick Warren.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9w036xAbSEs\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/9w036xAbSEs\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ejpbenney\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-07-08)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe idea that religion is a natural phenomenon is very reminiscent, oddly, of Jared Diamond in books like \u003cB\u003eGuns, Germs and Steel\u003c/B\u003e and \u003cB\u003eCollapse\u003c/B\u003e, as well as Phillip Longman. The idea of subjecting religion to serious social study, too, is nothing new. Leonard Shlain's \u003cB\u003eThe Alphabet versus the Goddess\u003c/B\u003e is a flawed if highly enthralling example.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDaniel does seem an interesting person, I must say. He \u003cI\u003eis\u003c/I\u003e very articulate and lively, so one imagine him to be a very convincing speaker.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daniel Dennett on religion"},{"content":"Mark Vuletic points out that the March 11 New York Times hardcover bestseller list includes five books of interest to infidels in the top 25:\n7. Ayaan Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s Infidel\n12. Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; The God Delusion\n13. Chris Hedges\u0026rsquo; American Fascists\n21. Victor Stenger\u0026rsquo;s God: The Failed Hypothesis\n24. Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; Letter to a Christian Nation\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/books-for-infidels-at-top-of-nyt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Vuletic \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/03/good-week-for-infidels-in-book-world.html\"\u003epoints out that the March 11 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e hardcover bestseller list includes five books of interest to infidels in the top 25\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e7.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfidel\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e12.  Richard Dawkins\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe God Delusion\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e13.  Chris Hedges\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAmerican Fascists\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e21.  Victor Stenger\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGod: The Failed Hypothesis\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e24.  Sam Harris\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLetter to a Christian Nation\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books for infidels at top of NYT bestseller lists"},{"content":"A Justice Department review of 293 National Security Letters issued by the FBI found 22 instances (7.5%) of apparent violations of FBI and Justice Department regulations. The FBI issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters in 2005.\nUPDATE: This story has now hit CNN, which has more details. The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s inspector general says the FBI is guilty of \u0026ldquo;serious misuse\u0026rdquo; of National Security Letters and that use of them may be underreported by as much as 20%. The audit found that more than half of NSLs were used to get information about U.S. citizens.\nCNN reports 26 violations, of which 22 were the FBI\u0026rsquo;s fault and 4 were caused by errors by the recipients of the National Security Letters.\nUPDATE (March 10, 2007): FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have acknowledged that the FBI broke the law, apologized, and promised to stop further such intrusions. Gonzales left open the possibility of criminal prosecutions against FBI agents or lawyers who misused their PATRIOT Act powers.\nUPDATE (June 14, 2007): An audit has discovered that the above-reported 26 violations were the tip of the iceberg. 10% of National Security Letters have been reviewed, and the total number of violations is now over 1,000.\nUPDATE (March 7, 2008): This year\u0026rsquo;s audit has shown that the NSL abuses continued through 2006 and that the FBI underreported to Congress the number of NSLs by more than 4,600.\nUPDATE (January 20, 2010): Yet further evidence of FBI abuses in collecting telephone records has been uncovered.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/fbi-breaking-law-with-national-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002716.php\"\u003eJustice Department review of 293 National Security Letters issued by the FBI found 22 instances (7.5%) of apparent violations of FBI and Justice Department regulations\u003c/a\u003e.  The FBI issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters in 2005.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  This \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/09/security.letters/index.html\"\u003estory has now hit CNN, which has more details\u003c/a\u003e.  The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s inspector general says the FBI is guilty of \u0026ldquo;serious misuse\u0026rdquo; of National Security Letters and that use of them may be underreported by as much as 20%.  The audit found that more than half of NSLs were used to get information about U.S. citizens.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCNN reports 26 violations, of which 22 were the FBI\u0026rsquo;s fault and 4 were caused by errors by the recipients of the National Security Letters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 10, 2007):  \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0310FBI10.html\"\u003eFBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have acknowledged that the FBI broke the law\u003c/a\u003e, apologized, and promised to stop further such intrusions.  Gonzales left open the possibility of criminal prosecutions against FBI agents or lawyers who misused their PATRIOT Act powers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 14, 2007):  An audit has discovered that the above-reported 26 violations were the tip of the iceberg.  10% of National Security Letters have been reviewed, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003430.php\"\u003ethe total number of violations is now over 1,000\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 7, 2008):  This year\u0026rsquo;s audit \u003ca href=\"http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxSQM-Pj5GvDDx_r9HNZvtF6JAGgD8V7R6S01\"\u003ehas shown that the NSL abuses continued through 2006\u003c/a\u003e and that the FBI underreported to Congress the number of NSLs by more than 4,600.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 20, 2010): Yet \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/report-confirms-fbi-misuse-authority\"\u003efurther evidence of FBI abuses in collecting telephone records has been uncovered\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI breaking the law with National Security Letters?"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/windows-mac-and-bsd-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gFAJDbV9Vfs\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gFAJDbV9Vfs\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Windows, Mac, and BSD security"},{"content":"Alberto Santos, the mayor of Kearny, New Jersey, has spoken out on the David Paszkiewicz affair, with a cogent statement.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-03-09):\nI note with some dismay (but no real surprise) that the Mayor's recommendations don't seem to include any sort of disciplinary action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/kearnys-mayor-speaks-out.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlberto Santos, the mayor of Kearny, New Jersey, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theobserver.com/currentissue/mayor.shtml\"\u003ehas spoken out on the David Paszkiewicz affair, with a cogent statement\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-03-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI note with some dismay (but no real surprise) that the Mayor's recommendations don't seem to include any sort of disciplinary action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Kearny's mayor speaks out"},{"content":"Websurdity asks some uncomfortable questions\u0026hellip;\n(Via An Information Security Place.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/was-death-star-attack-inside-job.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWebsurdity \u003ca href=\"http://www.websurdity.com.nyud.net:8080/2007/02/28/uncomfortable-questions-was-the-death-star-attack-an-inside-job/\"\u003easks some uncomfortable questions\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://infosecplace.com/blog/2007/03/05/death-star-conspiracy-theory/\"\u003eAn Information Security Place\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Was the Death Star attack an inside job?"},{"content":"Barbara Peterson took a job as a TSA screener and has written an interesting description of her experience for Conde Nast Traveler. She blames TSA\u0026rsquo;s incompetence not on the individual screeners (who are generally doing as well as they could be hoped to under the demands of the job) but on Congress.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/inside-tsa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBarbara Peterson took a job as a TSA screener and \u003ca href=\"http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/detail?articleId=10624\u0026pageNumber=1\"\u003ehas written an interesting description of her experience for Conde Nast Traveler\u003c/a\u003e.  She blames TSA\u0026rsquo;s incompetence not on the individual screeners (who are generally doing as well as they could be hoped to under the demands of the job) but on Congress.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside the TSA"},{"content":"Glendale Community College philosophy professor Victor Reppert posted at his blog, Dangerous Idea, about whether there is a secular argument against homosexuality. He concluded that there doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a plausible case (at least, not based merely on evolution), which prompted this comment from ex-Jehovah\u0026rsquo;s Witness Derek Barefoot:\nI agree with you partly. However, people who defend homosexuality from a naturalist perspective almost without exception also see nothing perverse about transsexulaity. That one is baffling. It is one thing to dislike some feature of one\u0026rsquo;s body that falls short of a societal ideal. A person with an unusual nose may want a usual one. A shorter than average person may understandably wish they were taller. But for someone to feel that he or she has literally been \u0026ldquo;born into the wrong body,\u0026rdquo; as transsexuals often put it, is naturalistically unfathomable. Perhaps a wasp has by mistake been born into the body of a mouse. Perhaps the tomato plant yearns in some inarticulate vegetative fashion to be an oak. Transexuality is literally a rebellion against nature, yet somehow it is included (commonly) with homosexuality. So perhaps the argument that homosexuality is just an expression of nature is called into question by the related phenomenon of transsexuality.The problem with this response is that Barefoot is making erroneous assumptions about sex in nature. There are not always well-defined boundaries between male and female. I responded in the comments:\nI think that Darek Barefoot\u0026rsquo;s analogies of tomato/oak and wasp/mouse are inapt\u0026ndash;sexual differences within a species are commonly smaller than genetic and morphological differences across species. There are human individuals whose genetic makeup puts them into categories which are outside of or span the normal male/female boundaries. For example, those with XXY chromosomes may visibly appear to be male or female, and there are those who have both male and female genitalia. Further, there is far more variety to the sexes than mere duality within the animal kingdom. I recommend Olivia Judson\u0026rsquo;s book, Dr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation for an entertaining look at some of that variety.\nTranssexuality, like homosexuality, is evidence against an oversimplified view of sex in nature, not against naturalism itself.And I followed that up with another comment:\nI was looking for but unable to find a set of online forum postings I came across a year or two ago from an intersexed individual who was a Christian, and honestly had no idea what was appropriate dating for her. I believe the church she was involved with took the position that she was not permitted to date or have sex with anyone. It seems to me that most Christians have a real problem with the existence of such individuals, and have a very poor record of inhumane response to them.\nI did find this post from an individual raising the question of how religious views can make sense of such individuals. It\u0026rsquo;s an excellent and interesting question. Here\u0026rsquo;s a brief quote from that post (rest of this comment is quoted from it):\nThe english language has no gender terms we can use for intersex people, instead why try to force them into either female or male which may not be appropriate.\nHere is a run down of only some intersex conditions:\nCongenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)\nXX (female) fetus ovaries produce a masculising hormone that results in ambigious external genitals . normally the ovaries do not produce hormones as the female is the default sex, none are needed to create a female fetus. the addition of the masculising hormone therefor creates a female with some male charactistics\nTestosterone Biosynthetic Defects\nan XY(male) fetus does not produce testosterone, therefor,as female is the default setting it is born with full female parts, or parts rudimentary malformed female parts, despite being genetically male.\nAndrogen sensivity syndrome\nTestes in the abdomen, external female parts.\nthey also grow brests but do not have cycles (note: im trying to avoid using catch words here, as im not sure what is allowed and what isnt!)\nKlinefelter Syndrome\nGenically 47 chromosomes XXY and classed as men. They are males with a female chromosome attatched, small male parts, my develop female characteristics in teenage years.\nTurner Syndrome\n45 chromosomes, XO. Turner women have female external parts but illformed ovaries and no estrogen.\n\u0026ldquo;Hermaphroditism\u0026rdquo;\ncan be EXACTLY one ovary, one teste a small penis AND a female genitalia. Their genetic makeup can be a mosaic of XY and XX genes, they truly are not male or female, but both.\nRoughly one in a thousand births is an intersex child. so it isnt that rare.\nThe issue this presents to religion is that here we have a group of people who are neither here nor there and will grow up with issues to do with their sexual aurientation. What is the view of religions on say an XXY male, who looks mostly male but wishes to date other men? What is the view on a XY female who feels she is a lesbian (after all she is genitcally male) These are issues many people with intersex come up agaisnt. often their parents assign them a gender at birth and corrective surgery is given to make them into a gender (usually female) This quite often results in the girl growing up feeling male and later on reqesting a sex change.\nIts a tricky issue. Many Intersex people wish they had not been assigned a gender and feel their body is their right and they should have been left to choose a gender when they were older.\nBut anyway, To me,(I am theist, not religious and very firmly rooted in science) it shows how our gentically evolved bodies can and do go wrong, for a religious person I think it presents an issue worth thinking about. I dont know of any biblical reference to intersex, nor what the christian take is on people who are not male or female but are a bit of this a bit of that, netiehr here nor there or exactly half of each gender. What is their take on how these people should \u0026ldquo;morally\u0026rdquo; behave?\nHeres what I think it boils down to.\n1 God doesnt exist\n2 God exists but is fallable and makes mistakes\n3 god exists and does not make mistakes, therefor, he wishes intersex conditions to exist , but condemns them to hell if they choose the wrong aurientation later in life to what they look like externally\n4. He wishes intersex to exist, either because he has no issues with gender and sexuality .\n\u0026hellip;.feel free to add more\u0026hellip;There are some further comments at Victor\u0026rsquo;s blog.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-09):\n\"Animals do it\" isn't a real good argument.My dog likes to eat cat turds.Sharks practice intrauterine cannibalism.Monkeys like to fling poo. Rats eat their babies.Do we really want to look to the animal kingdom to guide what is normal about human behavior? There is more that differentiates us besides walking upright and having opposing thumbs.\nEinzige (2007-03-09):\nPardon me, but where in the above post is the argument that \"animals do it\", exactly?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/religion-and-sex.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGlendale Community College philosophy professor Victor Reppert \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/10/intended-purpose-darwinian-purpose-and.html\"\u003eposted at his blog, Dangerous Idea, about whether there is a secular argument against homosexuality\u003c/a\u003e.  He concluded that there doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a plausible case (at least, not based merely on evolution), which prompted this comment from ex-Jehovah\u0026rsquo;s Witness Derek Barefoot:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI agree with you partly. However, people who defend homosexuality from a naturalist perspective almost without exception also see nothing perverse about transsexulaity. That one is baffling. It is one thing to dislike some feature of one\u0026rsquo;s body that falls short of a societal ideal. A person with an unusual nose may want a usual one. A shorter than average person may understandably wish they were taller. But for someone to feel that he or she has literally been \u0026ldquo;born into the wrong body,\u0026rdquo; as transsexuals often put it, is naturalistically unfathomable. Perhaps a wasp has by mistake been born into the body of a mouse. Perhaps the tomato plant yearns in some inarticulate vegetative fashion to be an oak. Transexuality is literally a rebellion against nature, yet somehow it is included (commonly) with homosexuality. So perhaps the argument that homosexuality is just an expression of nature is called into question by the related phenomenon of transsexuality.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe problem with this response is that Barefoot is making erroneous assumptions about sex in nature.  There are not always well-defined boundaries between male and female.  I responded in the comments:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI think that Darek Barefoot\u0026rsquo;s analogies of tomato/oak and wasp/mouse are inapt\u0026ndash;sexual differences within a species are commonly smaller than genetic and morphological differences across species. There are human individuals whose genetic makeup puts them into categories which are outside of or span the normal male/female boundaries. For example, those with XXY chromosomes may visibly appear to be male or female, and there are those who have both male and female genitalia. Further, there is far more variety to the sexes than mere duality within the animal kingdom. I recommend Olivia Judson\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation\u003c/span\u003e for an entertaining look at some of that variety.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTranssexuality, like homosexuality, is evidence against an oversimplified view of sex in nature, not against naturalism itself.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd I followed that up with another comment:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI was looking for but unable to find a set of online forum postings I came across a year or two ago from an intersexed individual who was a Christian, and honestly had no idea what was appropriate dating for her. I believe the church she was involved with took the position that she was not permitted to date or have sex with anyone. It seems to me that most Christians have a real problem with the existence of such individuals, and have a very poor record of inhumane response to them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI did find \u003ca href=\"http://community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/69460501/m/6680098493/p/1\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003ethis post\u003c/a\u003e from an individual raising the question of how religious views can make sense of such individuals. It\u0026rsquo;s an excellent and interesting question. Here\u0026rsquo;s a brief quote from that post (rest of this comment is quoted from it):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe english language has no gender terms we can use for intersex people, instead why try to force them into either female or male which may not be appropriate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere is a run down of only some intersex conditions:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)\u003cbr /\u003eXX (female) fetus ovaries produce a masculising hormone that results in ambigious external genitals . normally the ovaries do not produce hormones as the female is the default sex, none are needed to create a female fetus. the addition of the masculising hormone therefor creates a female with some male charactistics\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTestosterone Biosynthetic Defects\u003cbr /\u003ean XY(male) fetus does not produce testosterone, therefor,as female is the \u003ccode\u003edefault setting\u003c/code\u003e it is born with full female parts, or parts rudimentary malformed female parts, despite being genetically male.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAndrogen sensivity syndrome\u003cbr /\u003eTestes in the abdomen, external female parts.\u003cbr /\u003ethey also grow brests but do not have cycles (note: im trying to avoid using catch words here, as im not sure what is allowed and what isnt!)\u003cbr /\u003eKlinefelter Syndrome\u003cbr /\u003eGenically 47 chromosomes XXY and classed as men. They are males with a female chromosome attatched, small male parts, my develop female characteristics in teenage years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTurner Syndrome\u003cbr /\u003e45 chromosomes, XO. Turner women have female external parts but illformed ovaries and no estrogen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hermaphroditism\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr /\u003ecan be EXACTLY one ovary, one teste a small penis AND a female genitalia. Their genetic makeup can be a mosaic of XY and XX genes, they truly are not male or female, but both.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRoughly one in a thousand births is an intersex child. so it isnt that rare.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe issue this presents to religion is that here we have a group of people who are neither here nor there and will grow up with issues to do with their sexual aurientation. What is the view of religions on say an XXY male, who looks mostly male but wishes to date other men? What is the view on a XY female who feels she is a lesbian (after all she is genitcally male) These are issues many people with intersex come up agaisnt. often their parents assign them a gender at birth and corrective surgery is given to \u003ccode\u003emake\u003c/code\u003e them into a gender (usually female) This quite often results in the girl growing up feeling male and later on reqesting a sex change.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIts a tricky issue. Many Intersex people wish they had not been assigned a gender and feel their body is their right and they should have been left to choose a gender when they were older.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut anyway, To me,(I am theist, not religious and very firmly rooted in science) it shows how our gentically evolved bodies can and do go wrong, for a religious person I think it presents an issue worth thinking about. I dont know of any biblical reference to intersex, nor what the christian take is on people who are not male or female but are a bit of this a bit of that, netiehr here nor there or exactly half of each gender. What is their take on how these people should \u0026ldquo;morally\u0026rdquo; behave?\u003cbr /\u003eHeres what I think it boils down to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1 God doesnt exist\u003cbr /\u003e2 God exists but is fallable and makes mistakes\u003cbr /\u003e3 god exists and does not make mistakes, therefor, he wishes intersex conditions to exist , but condemns them to hell if they choose the wrong aurientation later in life to what they look like externally\u003cbr /\u003e4. He wishes intersex to exist, either because he has no issues with gender and sexuality .\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;.feel free to add more\u0026hellip;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere are some further comments \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/10/intended-purpose-darwinian-purpose-and.html\"\u003eat Victor\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Religion and sex"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Republic reports that \u0026ldquo;Big lenders and Wall Street investors are going after Arizona mortgage brokers, appraisers, real estate agents, title firms, and home buyers for fraud\u0026rdquo;:\nDozens of civil lawsuits alleging the gamut of mortgage fraud, from cash-back deals to lying about income on loan documents, have been filed against Valley firms and individuals during the past few months.\nFraud experts and regulators say the lawsuits are only the beginning as the fallout from mortgage fraud starts to hit the Valley. Cash-back scams involve getting a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money. The deals inflate home values and leave lenders with losses from loans worth far more than the house itself.A few specific suits mentioned:\nPhoenix\u0026rsquo;s Biltmore Bank is suing Security Title, appraiser Kittelman \u0026amp; Associates, and Tucson resident and house flipper Frank Padilla (who already was indicted and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering) over a $1.3 million loan for $800,000 property.\nA Lehman Brothers investment trust and Aurora Loan Services are suing the parent company of First National Bank of Arizona for 38 home loans which misrepresented home values and income, debt, and employment of borrowers. The plaintiffs bought the loans and want the bank to buy them back.\nTransnational Financial Network is suing Lending House Financial and a Scottsdale investor \u0026ldquo;who purchased 22 homes within days of each other last spring\u0026rdquo; for failure to disclose debt level or the fact that the investor was purchasing multiple homes (which were all foreclosed upon).\nTucson mortgage lender First Magnus is suing its former Phoenix-based loan officer, Tyson Rondeau, for fraud and negligence, saying that bad loans are costing it $1 million. That lender itself has been investigated by the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions for misrepresentations and failure to disclose facts, and has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine.\nThe article quotes attorney Michael Manning, who is working for some of the above plaintiffs, saying that \u0026ldquo;This is the tip of the iceberg, but I think regulators got on top of it faster than in the mid-1980s.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how fast they got on top of the S\u0026amp;L issues in the eighties, but they\u0026rsquo;re at least three and a half years late to the party this time around\u0026ndash;when these fraudulent deals were working, the regulators were uninterested. Now that they\u0026rsquo;re failing and the house of cards is collapsing, suddenly they gain an interest. This is because all of these players\u0026ndash;the plaintiffs and the defendants\u0026ndash;knew what was going on. They were all profiting from it.\nThe regulators and lawsuits are just a way for the larger players to cover their asses after the fact and avoid paying the full price for what they must have known was bound to ultimately happen.\nHistorical Comments Ed Dickson (2007-03-05):\nThis has become a huge problem that we are all going to pay for.A record amount of loans are going bad.\nUnknown (2007-03-26):\nFirst National Bank of Arizona is being investigated for taking \"trust\" funds from a companies account to repay corporate loans. They gave the company 2 days notice and no notice they were taking trust funds. Regulators are investigating!!\ndifferentflags (2008-01-30):\n40 Capital Square SWAtlanta, GA 30334-1310Dear Mr. Baker, I am writing to you now, though I believe I should have written earlier. Once I bought a condo in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta and I was a victim of what is called mortgage fraud. I arrived in Atlanta in late May of 2002. I liked the city very much and started to look at condos. I hooked up with a real estate broker named La Shawn Tucker(Buckhead Real Estate) and she hooked me up with a mortgage broker named Steffon. Ms. Tucker showed me a condo at 3660 Peachtree Road, J8, that I liked very much. It was a 2-bedrrom condo in a nice part of Buckhead. Ms. Tucker said that if I ever decided to rent it out, I could use something called the roomamate plan and rent it out for about $1,600 a month. Later I found out differently. The most I could get for the rental of the condo was around $800 or $900, but at that time, I believed and trusted her. This man Steffon got me a loan with Novastar Mortgage company in Kansas City, Missouri. There were two mortgages instead of one—the first mortgage at an intesrest rate of 9.75% and the other at 13%. I had a very good credit score (around 754). The price of the condo was $170,000 and the seller’s real estate company was Harry Norman. The closing was scheduled for July 26, 2002. A few days earlier, while driving around Buckhead with Ms. Tucker, she told me that Steffon had paid someone to say that my yearly income was $120,000. My real income was nowhere near that amount. I was shocked, but I also thought that we had gone too far to turn back and that we had to close. I had no one in Atlanta that I could turn to or confide in. And I was spending too much money on hotels. I decided that I would fulfill my financial obligations once the condo was mine, just like I had done up to that time.A month or two later, I called Harry Norman. It had dawned on me that the interest rates were too high for my very good credit score and that the best thing to do would be to sell. The Harry Norman real estate agent who had acted on behalf of the sellers told me that the best price I could get for the condo was $150,000—$155,000. I could not believe it and called other real estate agents. They all confirmed what she had said. Then I called La Shaunda Tucker and left a message but her office never returned my calls. I also called Steffon at 770-912-1504 and never heard from him. I got in touch with Novastar´s office in Atlanta, but they didn´t know who he was. I decided to try to refinance. The mortgage brokers I spoke with told me that yes, the rates were very high, but that I had to wait a year to refi. In the meantime, I began to use my savings of about $40,000 to pay the monthly mortgages and maintenance bills while I looked for a job as a translator and/or Spanish teacher. I had a hard time finding a job, even though I had been a freelance translator in California and New York City. As you can imagine, this situation stressed me out. I looked for an agent to help me rent out the place. Several tried hard, with no success. They told me that Atlanta had overbuilt and that the market was saturated. Lawyers were not helpful, either. Then, I went to New York and worked as a maid so that I wouldn´t max out my credit cards too soon. My life became an even bigger nightmare. I loved that condo in spite of everything and I knew that foreclosure meant a 7-year stain on my up to recently nearly spotless score. I wanted to save it. I tried everything, sought help from HUD in Atlanta, among other places, (like the Credit Bureau of GA),but it was no use. The condo foreclosed on November 1, 2005. I have proof of all I did to save it. It was put up for sale last year, but there were no takers, not even at $145,000.While in NY, I read an article in the Sunday real estate section of The New York Times (October 17, 2004) called Losing Your Dream Home. In it, a woman (Margaret Wragg) in one of the NY boroughs had an experience similar to mine. She also depleted her savings, and got two mortgages instead of one only to be left practically homeless. I was too overwhelmed then to think of writing you and asking you for help, Mr. Baker. All I could think of was that I could not lose my condo in GA.This year I filed a complaint against Novastar with the Department of Finances in GA. The name of the person handling my complaint was Jenny Neville. The answer she got from Novastar was that they thought I had promoted Steffon. In other words, they said I had asked him to pay somebody to lie about my income. That is not true. I liked the condo, but I would never do that. It wouldn´t have been worth it and it would totally be out of character. I am not that type of person and I never was.I am asking you to do whatever you can to help me. If I was at fault, it was because I was new to Atlanta and I trusted the real estate and mortgage brokers. I was naive. I have already paid for this by having my credit score go from very good to bad and by having to become a maid when I have a disability due to childhood paralysis on the right side of my body.I would like to see these two people. La Shawn Tucker and Steffon, brought to justice. Maybe what happened to me has happened to other people they´ve dealt with. And, I would like to get the money that I have lost back. I still think about the condo and I miss it very much. I can´t get it back, I know, but for the sake of all I did to save it, I would like to have the law punish them. I´m willing to take a lie detector test if necessary. Thank you. Sincerely,Eugenia Maria Renskoff\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/lawsuits-against-mortgage-fraud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0304mortgagefraud-civilsuits.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;Big lenders and Wall Street investors are going after Arizona mortgage brokers, appraisers, real estate agents, title firms, and home buyers for fraud\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDozens of civil lawsuits alleging the gamut of mortgage fraud, from cash-back deals to lying about income on loan documents, have been filed against Valley firms and individuals during the past few months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFraud experts and regulators say the lawsuits are only the beginning as the fallout from mortgage fraud starts to hit the Valley. Cash-back scams involve getting a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money. The deals inflate home values and leave lenders with losses from loans worth far more than the house itself.\u003c/blockquote\u003eA few specific suits mentioned:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix\u0026rsquo;s Biltmore Bank is suing Security Title, appraiser Kittelman \u0026amp; Associates, and Tucson resident and house flipper Frank Padilla (who already was indicted and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering) over a $1.3 million loan for $800,000 property.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Lehman Brothers investment trust and Aurora Loan Services are suing the parent company of First National Bank of Arizona for 38 home loans which misrepresented home values and income, debt, and employment of borrowers.  The plaintiffs bought the loans and want the bank to buy them back.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTransnational Financial Network is suing Lending House Financial and a Scottsdale investor \u0026ldquo;who purchased 22 homes within days of each other last spring\u0026rdquo; for failure to disclose debt level or the fact that the investor was purchasing multiple homes (which were all foreclosed upon).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTucson mortgage lender First Magnus is suing its former Phoenix-based loan officer, Tyson Rondeau, for fraud and negligence, saying that bad loans are costing it $1 million.  That lender itself has been investigated by the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions for misrepresentations and failure to disclose facts, and has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe article quotes attorney Michael Manning, who is working for some of the above plaintiffs, saying that \u0026ldquo;This is the tip of the iceberg, but I think regulators got on top of it faster than in the mid-1980s.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how fast they got on top of the S\u0026amp;L issues in the eighties, but they\u0026rsquo;re at least three and a half years late to the party this time around\u0026ndash;when these fraudulent deals were working, the regulators were uninterested.  Now that they\u0026rsquo;re failing and the house of cards is collapsing, suddenly they gain an interest.  This is because all of these players\u0026ndash;the plaintiffs and the defendants\u0026ndash;knew what was going on.  They were all profiting from it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe regulators and lawsuits are just a way for the larger players to cover their asses after the fact and avoid paying the full price for what they must have known was bound to ultimately happen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lawsuits against mortgage fraud"},{"content":"What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.\nAccording to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.(From the Arizona Republic.)","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/switzerland-invades-liechtenstein.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003eWhat began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccording to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(From \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0302swiss-invade02-ON.html\"\u003ethe Arizona Republic\u003c/a\u003e.)","title":"Switzerland invades Liechtenstein"},{"content":"Richard Bennett has an interesting post about Wikipedia and the decentralization of knowledge collection titled \u0026ldquo;Teaching the hive mind to discriminate.\u0026quot; He argues that while Wikipedia is good at accumulating the knowledge of a large number of individuals, it also collects their \u0026ldquo;prejudice, mistaken beliefs, wishful thinking, and conformance to tradition.\u0026rdquo; It is unrealistic to expect that these erroneous beliefs will automatically be weeded out because \u0026ldquo;expertise is not as widely dispersed as participation\u0026rdquo;:\nSo the real question about information and group scaling is this: are there procedures for separating good information from false information (”discrimination”) that are effective enough to allow groups to be scaled indefinitely without a loss of information quality? It’s an article of faith in the Wikipedia “community” that such procedures exist, and that they’re essentially self-operative. That’s the mythos of “emergence”, that systems, including human systems, automatically self-organize in such a way as to reward good behavior and information and purge bad information. This seems to be based on the underlying assumption that people being basically good, the good will always prevail in any group.Readers of this blog know that I would argue that many religious and political beliefs are examples that support Bennett\u0026rsquo;s position.\nOn a related point, Ed Felten has a recent post about how reputation systems on the Internet can be manipulated, referencing a pair of articles at Wired by Annalee Newitz. A common flaw is that the reputations of the raters themselves is either not taken into account or is easily manipulated. If there were a way of reliably weighting expertise of raters within appropriate knowledge domains, that could provide a method of discrimination to sort out the good from the bad information.\nThis is a subject that my planned (but never completed) Ph.D. dissertation in epistemology (on social epistemology, specifically on obtaining knowledge based on the knowledge of others) at the University of Arizona should have touched upon.\nOne philosopher who had touched on this subject at the time I was working on my Ph.D. (back in the early 1990s) was Philip Kitcher, whose book The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions (1993, Oxford University Press) contains a chapter titled \u0026ldquo;The Organization of Cognitive Labor\u0026rdquo; (originally published as \u0026ldquo;The Division of Cognitive Labor\u0026rdquo; in the Journal of Philosophy, 87(1990):5-21).\nLippard (2007-03-04):\nTim:Sorry about the Google account requirement, but there don't seem to be any other good options for Blogger that help stem the tide of comment spam.I don't think I agree that no original research + NPOV constitute sufficient filters, at least on subjects that require considerable expertise (like science). The former filter still allows items published by non-expert general sources like newspapers, and the latter filter requires a failure to discriminate between positions even when one side is well-supported and the other isn't. There are many areas where there are disputes about what the facts are, even when the facts are overwhelmingly supported to the satisfaction of the relevant experts.\nLippard (2007-03-05):\nTim: I didn't realize that combination was available--I'm giving it a try (word verification minus Google account requirement). Let's see what happens.I agree that it's worth knowing that dissent exists--I guess I wasn't considering that NPOV allows you to state the level of acceptance (and who accepts it).To what extent is the content of particular Wikipedia entries biased towards the views of the editors who are most active/motivated to edit them? I know I've seen creationism entries that appear to have been authored primarily by creationists, minimizing relevant critical information, though the Duane Gish entry's current form is a counterexample (and the discussion page shows creationists complaining about an unfair Wikipedia bias against them).\nAnonymous (2007-03-05):\nThat's a good point: people who are fans of obscure/crackpot theories are the most likely to write entries about them. The ones that are prominent enough will probably have people come along and add information about criticism of them, but the ones that are really obscure will be somewhat biased in favor of the views in question. However, the only real alternative is to have no information on those subjects at all. I think having a sympathetic description of a group's beliefs--even if those beliefs are crazy--is better than having no information at all. If the group ever becomes prominent enough to have a real impact, its critics will find the page and add information about opposing viewpoints.Thanks for enabling anonymous commenting!\nAnonymous (2007-03-16):\nJim, I think you've hit the key point: the content of Wikipedia entries is ultimately determined by the views of the editors who spend the most time writing, and the rules are really beside the point. And the fact is that the most dedicated editors are either paid shills or insane. Wikipedia editors have contempt for the views of experts, the Original Research ban means nothing, and the NPOV rule is only as good as the people who enforce it. The Net Neutrality and Internet history articles are dominated by people who believe in urban legends and conspiracy theories. That's not at all surprising as the common man lives and dies by conspiracy theories, which are so much easier to apply than evidence-driven hypotheses.At the end of the day, peer production is only as good as the peers who produce it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/where-wisdom-of-crowds-fails.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Bennett has \u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2007/03/02/teaching-the-hive-mind-to-discriminate/\"\u003ean interesting post about Wikipedia and the decentralization of knowledge collection titled \u0026ldquo;Teaching the hive mind to discriminate.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  He argues that while Wikipedia is good at accumulating the knowledge of a large number of individuals, it also collects their \u0026ldquo;prejudice, mistaken beliefs, wishful thinking, and conformance to tradition.\u0026rdquo; It is unrealistic to expect that these erroneous beliefs will automatically be weeded out because \u0026ldquo;expertise is not as widely dispersed as participation\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSo the real question about information and group scaling is this: are there procedures for separating good information from false information (”discrimination”) that are effective enough to allow groups to be scaled indefinitely without a loss of information quality? It’s an article of faith in the Wikipedia “community” that such procedures exist, and that they’re essentially self-operative. That’s the mythos of “emergence”, that systems, including human systems, automatically self-organize in such a way as to reward good behavior and information and purge bad information. This seems to be based on the underlying assumption that people being basically good, the good will always prevail in any group.\u003c/blockquote\u003eReaders of this blog know that I would argue that many religious and political beliefs are examples that support Bennett\u0026rsquo;s position.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn a related point, Ed Felten has \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1127\"\u003ea recent post about how reputation systems on the Internet can be manipulated\u003c/a\u003e, referencing a pair of articles at Wired by Annalee Newitz.  A common flaw is that the reputations of the raters themselves is either not taken into account or is easily manipulated.  If there were a way of reliably weighting expertise of raters within appropriate knowledge domains, that could provide a method of discrimination to sort out the good from the bad information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a subject that my planned (but never completed) Ph.D. dissertation in epistemology (on social epistemology, specifically on obtaining knowledge based on the knowledge of others) at the University of Arizona should have touched upon.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne philosopher who had touched on this subject at the time I was working on my Ph.D. (back in the early 1990s) was Philip Kitcher, whose book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions\u003c/span\u003e (1993, Oxford University Press) contains a chapter titled \u0026ldquo;The Organization of Cognitive Labor\u0026rdquo; (originally published as \u0026ldquo;The Division of Cognitive Labor\u0026rdquo; in the Journal of Philosophy, 87(1990):5-21).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where the wisdom of crowds fails"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/number-24.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/jR1_epbmI2g\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/jR1_epbmI2g\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Number 24"},{"content":"Ed Babinski, in a lengthy post at Debunking Christianity, points out that several early abolitionists were denounced as atheists and infidels because of their attacks on the slave trade, that William Lloyd Garrison\u0026rsquo;s first anti-slavery speech in Boston was in \u0026ldquo;the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland \u0026hellip; who had been sent to jail for blasphemy\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;every Christian sect had in turn refused \u0026hellip; Garrison the use of [their] buildings,\u0026rdquo; and that Pastor John Newton, the author of the song \u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace,\u0026rdquo; was a slave trader for years after his conversion to Christianity, contrary to the story Arlo Guthrie has told on stage:\n\u0026ldquo;Editor\u0026rsquo;s Bookshelf: Amazing Myths, How Strange the Sound: An interview with Steve Turner, the author of Amazing Grace: The Story of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Beloved Song\u0026rdquo; by David Neff, Christianity Today, March 31, 2003)\nJohn Newton was a pastor and author of \u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;\nINTERVIEWER: What mythology did you yourself hold that you discovered was wrong when you did your research?\nTURNER: I think I just knew the basic skeleton of this story. I knew Newton was a slave trader, I knew that he had been in a storm, and I knew he\u0026rsquo;d written a song. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really know the sequence in which that happened. Arlo Guthrie tells the story on stage that Newton was transporting slaves and the storm hit the boat, he was converted on the spot, changed his mind about slavery, took the slaves back to Africa, released them, came back to England, and wrote the song. That would be nice. That would be the way we\u0026rsquo;d like to write the story. But the fact is that he took years and years before he came to the abolition position. And he never captained a slave ship until after he became a Christian. All his life as a slave captain was actually post-conversion.\nThe majority of Christians were in favor of the slave trade. The ship owner that he worked for had a pew in the church in Liverpool. It was not uncommon at all for prominent Anglicans to also be involved in the slave trade. And it made me wonder, what things are we involved in that we think are fine but in centuries to come people will think, How could they possibly have done that? [\u0026hellip;]\nNewton\u0026rsquo;s tender ship captain\u0026rsquo;s letters that he sent home to his beloved Mary showed complete lack of concern for the African families he was breaking up. A telling passage from one letter cites \u0026ldquo;the three greatest blessings of which human nature is capable\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;religion, liberty, and love.\u0026rdquo; But referring to those he had helped to enslave, he wrote, \u0026ldquo;I believe\u0026hellip; that they have no words among them expressive of these engaging ideas: from\nwhence I infer that the ideas themselves have no place in their minds.\u0026quot;\nWhen it came to denouncing the slave trade, Newton would not commit himself publicly until the mid-1780s—nearly 30 years after the issue was first broached in Parliament, 20 years after the Countess of Huntingdon began campaigning for equal treatment of the races, and 14 years after John Wesley wrote his Thoughts on Slavery.Ed has much more at Debunking Christianity.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-03-02):\nHere is the text from a book from 1856 that makes a persuasive and convincing case thatthe institution of slavery has received, in the first place, 1st. The sanction of the Almighty in the Patriarchal age. 2d. That it was incorporated into the only National Constitution which ever emanated from God. 3d. That its legality was recognized, and its relative duties regulated, by Jesus Christ in his kingdom; and 4th. That it is full of mercy.Yet another reason not to be a Christian.\nMark Plus (2007-03-03):\nConservative economist and historian Thomas Sowell credits the spread of a \"humanistic philosophy\" during the Enlightenment for the change in Western opinion about slavery. Those unnamed humanistic philosophers, with their emphasis on making life better in this world instead of worrying about getting into heaven, led people to see the disutilitarian aspects of slavery and motivated them to work towards its abolition.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/amazing-grace-christians-and-slavery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Babinski, \u003ca href=\"http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/02/rational-response-to-film-amazing-grace.html\"\u003ein a lengthy post at Debunking Christianity\u003c/a\u003e, points out that several early abolitionists were denounced as atheists and infidels because of their attacks on the slave trade, that William Lloyd Garrison\u0026rsquo;s first anti-slavery speech in Boston was in \u0026ldquo;the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland \u0026hellip; who had been sent to jail for blasphemy\u0026rdquo; because \u0026ldquo;every Christian sect had in turn refused \u0026hellip; Garrison the use of [their] buildings,\u0026rdquo; and that Pastor John Newton, the author of the song \u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace,\u0026rdquo; was a slave trader for years after his conversion to Christianity, contrary to the story Arlo Guthrie has told on stage:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Editor\u0026rsquo;s Bookshelf: Amazing Myths, How Strange the Sound: An interview with Steve Turner, the author of Amazing Grace: The Story of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Beloved Song\u0026rdquo; by David Neff, Christianity Today, March 31, 2003)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Newton was a pastor and author of \u0026ldquo;Amazing Grace\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eINTERVIEWER: What mythology did you yourself hold that you discovered was wrong when you did your research?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTURNER: I think I just knew the basic skeleton of this story. I knew Newton was a slave trader, I knew that he had been in a storm, and I knew he\u0026rsquo;d written a song. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really know the sequence in which that happened. Arlo Guthrie tells the story on stage that Newton was transporting slaves and the storm hit the boat, he was converted on the spot, changed his mind about slavery, took the slaves back to Africa, released them, came back to England, and wrote the song. That would be nice. That would be the way we\u0026rsquo;d like to write the story. But the fact is that he took years and years before he came to the abolition position. And he never captained a slave ship until after he became a Christian. All his life as a slave captain was actually post-conversion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe majority of Christians were in favor of the slave trade. The ship owner that he worked for had a pew in the church in Liverpool. It was not uncommon at all for prominent Anglicans to also be involved in the slave trade. And it made me wonder, what things are we involved in that we think are fine but in centuries to come people will think, How could they possibly have done that? [\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNewton\u0026rsquo;s tender ship captain\u0026rsquo;s letters that he sent home to his beloved Mary showed complete lack of concern for the African families he was breaking up. A telling passage from one letter cites \u0026ldquo;the three greatest blessings of which human nature is capable\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;religion, liberty, and love.\u0026rdquo; But referring to those he had helped to enslave, he wrote, \u0026ldquo;I believe\u0026hellip; that they have no words among them expressive of these engaging ideas: from\u003cbr /\u003ewhence I infer that the ideas themselves have no place in their minds.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen it came to denouncing the slave trade, Newton would not commit himself publicly until the mid-1780s—nearly 30 years after the issue was first broached in Parliament, 20 years after the Countess of Huntingdon began campaigning for equal treatment of the races, and 14 years after John Wesley wrote his Thoughts on Slavery.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEd has much more at \u003ca href=\"http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/02/rational-response-to-film-amazing-grace.html\"\u003eDebunking Christianity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazing Grace, Christians, and slavery"},{"content":"As someone who skews heavily Extropian, I tend to be very optimistic about the future. This, in spite of being brought up by a paranoid (though otherwise intelligent) guy who always seemed convinced that a catastrophic economic collapse was imminent. In the '80s it was hyperinflation and thermonuclear war. In the '90s it was Bankruptcy 1995, followed by Y2k. Nowadays it's global warming (somehow we've managed to skirt around the issue of Peak Oil). All the parental paranoia helped to cultivate in me a healthy skepticism (though it got to me just enough to unfortunately keep me out of the stock market for far longer than I should have been).\nSo, my optimistic/skeptical attitude has been keeping me up-beat about the real estate market in Phoenix - at least until recently. Given the way things have been going - neatly summarized by the two graphs on the right - a combination of factors now have me a little worried about the next year or so, at least. As I have argued elsewhere, Phoenix housing prices are too high. There's no reason to buy houses when you can rent them for a lot cheaper (and you thus can't make any money with them as investment properties, either). As you can see from the Appreciation graph above, even though houses are overpriced, as of the last data point on the graph we were still seeing a 10% appreciation over last year. Even the quarter-over-quarter line is still in the positive. I have to believe that we're going to be seeing a strong reversal of that trend in the coming months--or else we'll see whatever drove that crazy spike (in the second graph above) manifesting itself in some other area of the economy.\nThen there are those pesky notices of foreclosure [in the graph below, the blue line is monthly notices, while the orange line is the yearly moving average].\nIn spite of the fact that, according to some analysts, we haven't seen most of the interest-only ARMs kick into their higher payments, yet, we're already seeing an alarming uptick in notices of foreclosure (an indicator of people who've already been in serious financial difficulty for at least 5-6 months). February saw a total of 1577 trustee sale notices filed. That's off a bit from January's 1623, but when you consider that January had 21 business days for recording documents, against only 19 for February, there really was no slow down at all.\nIn fact, as you can see from this graph,\nFebruary 2007 had the highest average daily recordings (83/day) of all months for which I have data. It beat out January of '03 by 0.24 recordings/day. If the trend continues then this month should see over 1900! This may be good news for all the mythical short sale foreclosure investors, but it's bad news for pretty much everybody else. Historical Comments Einzige (2007-03-15):\nWe're at the halfway point of the month and our current tally is 794.It would seem that 1588 trustee sale notices for March would be a safe bet. Not a record, but certainly an outlier.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/03/phoenix-foreclosure-update.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv\u003eAs someone who skews heavily Extropian, I tend to be very optimistic about the future. This, in spite of being brought up by a paranoid (though otherwise intelligent) guy who always seemed convinced that a catastrophic economic collapse was imminent. In the '80s it was hyperinflation and thermonuclear war. In the '90s it was \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Bankruptcy-1995-Coming-Collapse-America/dp/0316282065/sr=8-1/qid=1172792120\"\u003eBankruptcy 1995\u003c/a\u003e, followed by Y2k. Nowadays it's global warming (somehow we've managed to skirt around the issue of Peak Oil). All the parental paranoia helped to cultivate in me a healthy skepticism (though it got to me just enough to unfortunately keep me out of the stock market for far longer than I should have been).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/hpi207.bmp\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5037116415339254642\" style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"Click to enlarge\" src=\"/images/hpi207.bmp\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eSo, my optimistic/skeptical attitude has been keeping me up-beat about the real estate market in Phoenix - at least until recently. Given the way things have been going - neatly summarized by the two graphs on the right - a combination of factors now have me a little worried about \u003c/div\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/yoy207.bmp\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5037117768253952898\" style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"Click to enlarge\" src=\"/images/yoy207.bmp\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cdiv\u003ethe next year or so, at least.  \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs I \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-own-when-you-can-rent.html\"\u003ehave argued elsewhere\u003c/a\u003e, Phoenix housing prices are too high. There's no reason to buy houses when you can rent them for a lot cheaper (and you thus can't make any money with them as investment properties, either). As you can see from the Appreciation graph above, even though houses are overpriced, as of the last data point on the graph we were still seeing a 10% appreciation over last year. Even the quarter-over-quarter line is still in the positive. I have to believe that we're going to be seeing a strong reversal of that trend in the coming months--or else we'll see whatever drove that crazy spike (in the second graph above) manifesting itself in some other area of the economy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThen there are those pesky notices of foreclosure [in the graph below, the blue line is monthly notices, while the orange line is the yearly moving average].\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/feb7notice.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/feb7notice.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Click for larger view\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5037119022384403346\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn spite of the fact that, according to some analysts, we haven't seen most of the interest-only ARMs kick into their higher payments, yet, we're already seeing an alarming uptick in notices of foreclosure (an indicator of people who've already been in serious financial difficulty for at least 5-6 months). February saw a total of 1577 trustee sale notices filed. That's off a bit from January's 1623, but when you consider that January had 21 business days for recording documents, against only 19 for February, there really was no slow down at all.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn fact, as you can see from this graph,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/average.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"/images/average.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Click to enlarge\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5037119615089890210\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFebruary 2007 had the highest average daily recordings (83/day) of all months for which I have data. It beat out January of '03 by 0.24 recordings/day. If the trend continues then this month should see over 1900! This may be good news for all the mythical short sale foreclosure investors, but it's bad news for pretty much everybody else.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-03-15)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWe're at the halfway point of the month and our current tally is 794.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIt would seem that 1588 trustee sale notices for March would be a safe bet. Not a record, but certainly an outlier.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix Foreclosure Update"},{"content":"Behind the Counter is a blog of entertaining horror stories from an experienced customer service rep at Wal-Mart. If you\u0026rsquo;ve enjoyed similar IT or ISP tech support stories of bad customers, you\u0026rsquo;ll enjoy this blog as well.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/life-behind-customer-service-counter-at.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://bbcamerican.blogspot.com/\"\u003eBehind the Counter\u003c/a\u003e is a blog of entertaining horror stories from an experienced customer service rep at Wal-Mart.  If you\u0026rsquo;ve enjoyed similar IT or ISP tech support stories of bad customers, you\u0026rsquo;ll enjoy this blog as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Life behind the customer service counter at Wal-Mart"},{"content":"The Answers in Genesis Museum is asking the governor of Kentucky to grant it special police powers so that \u0026ldquo;their 10- to 20-person security team can gain access to better training and equipment to ensure they can handle the crowds and traffic anticipated when the facility opens May 28\u0026rdquo; according to the Cincinatti Post.\n\u0026ldquo;The goal is not to become an armed encampment or anything like that,\u0026rdquo; says AiG Museum Security Director Jeffrey Hawkins.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/aig-museum-asks-for-special-police.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Answers in Genesis Museum is asking the governor of Kentucky to grant it special police powers so that \u0026ldquo;their 10- to 20-person security team can gain access to better training and equipment to ensure they can handle the crowds and traffic anticipated when the facility \u003cbr /\u003eopens May 28\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070223/NEWS01/702230373\"\u003eaccording to the Cincinatti Post\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The goal is not to become an armed  encampment or anything like that,\u0026rdquo; says AiG Museum Security Director Jeffrey Hawkins.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AiG Museum asks for special police powers"},{"content":"On Time magazine\u0026rsquo;s Middle East blog, it\u0026rsquo;s reported that James Cameron is producing a documentary directed by Simcha Jacobovici which \u0026ldquo;make[s] the start[l]ing claim that Jesus wasn\u0026rsquo;t resurrected \u0026ndash;the cornerstone of Christian faith\u0026ndash; and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.\u0026quot;\nThe blog claims that 27 years ago, while a new industrial park was being built in Jerusalem, a 2,000-year-old cave with ten caskets was discovered, and the names on the ten tombs included \u0026ldquo;Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.\u0026quot;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear how DNA evidence could show anything about remains belonging to Jesus (as opposed to relationship between the individual remains), but the comments on the Time blog entry make it clear that we are in for some entertainment in the form of hysterical reactions to the documentary.\nUPDATE (February 25, 2007): There\u0026rsquo;s a bit more information at YNetNews.\nUPDATE (February 27, 2007): And better coverage at CNN, where experts point out these claims were previously made back in 1996.\nUPDATE (March 6, 2007): The Jacobovici/Cameron documentary claims that the James ossuary with the faked \u0026ldquo;brother of Jesus\u0026rdquo; inscription was the missing 10th ossuary from the site they claim to be the Jesus tomb. This, however, is definitely not the case, since the person who catalogued the ossuaries at the time of the original find says that the 10th ossuary was a plain, blank ossuary with no inscription at all.\nAlso, P.Z. Myers watched the documentary so that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to\u0026hellip;\nUPDATE (April 12, 2007): The Jerusalem Post reports that scholars in the documentary are backing away from their statements made therein\u0026hellip;\nThe Uncredible Hallq (2007-02-25):\nVery amusing. If these guys turn out to be full of shit--and very likely they are full of shit--Christians have a right to say so. However, the counterarguments being given by Christians in the comments are patently silly.\nLippard (2007-02-25):\nI fully agree on both counts, Chris.\nLippard (2007-03-03):\nActually, where Cameron went wrong on his last documentary is taking the Exodus story seriously at all--there's no archaeological evidence that such an event ever happened, and it's better treated as myth than history (in contrast to the Babylonian captivity).But thanks for the reminder.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/james-cameron-backing-documentary-that.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn \u003ca href=\"http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2007/02/jesus_tales_from_the_crypt.html#comments\"\u003eTime magazine\u0026rsquo;s Middle East blog\u003c/a\u003e, it\u0026rsquo;s reported that James Cameron is producing a documentary directed by Simcha Jacobovici which \u0026ldquo;make[s] the start[l]ing claim that Jesus wasn\u0026rsquo;t resurrected \u0026ndash;the cornerstone of Christian faith\u0026ndash; and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe blog claims that 27 years ago, while a new industrial park was being built in Jerusalem, a 2,000-year-old cave with ten caskets was discovered, and the names on the ten tombs included \u0026ldquo;Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear how DNA evidence could show anything about remains belonging to Jesus (as opposed to relationship between the individual remains), but \u003ca href=\"http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2007/02/jesus_tales_from_the_crypt.html#comments\"\u003ethe comments on the Time blog entry\u003c/a\u003e make it clear that we are in for some entertainment in the form of hysterical reactions to the documentary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 25, 2007): There\u0026rsquo;s a bit more information \u003ca href=\"http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3368731,00.html\"\u003eat YNetNews\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 27, 2007):  And \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/26/jesus.sburial.ap/index.html\"\u003ebetter coverage at CNN\u003c/a\u003e, where experts point out these claims were previously made back in 1996.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 6, 2007):  The Jacobovici/Cameron documentary claims that the James ossuary with the faked \u0026ldquo;brother of Jesus\u0026rdquo; inscription was the missing 10th ossuary from the site they claim to be the Jesus tomb.  This, however, is definitely not the case, since \u003ca href=\"http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/03/smoking-gun-tenth-talpiot-ossuary_9874.html\"\u003ethe person who catalogued the ossuaries at the time of the original find says that the 10th ossuary was a plain, blank ossuary with no inscription at all\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso, P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/lost_tomb_of_jesus.php\"\u003ewatched the documentary so that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to\u0026hellip;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 12, 2007): The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJerusalem Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152766396\u0026amp;pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull\"\u003ereports that scholars in the documentary are backing away from their statements made therein\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"James Cameron backing documentary that claims remains of Jesus found"},{"content":"When Matt LaClair spoke before the Kearny board of education earlier this week, he gave the board a CD recording of his initial meeting with David Paszkiewicz and Kearny High School principal Al Somma, in which Paszkiewicz denied making the statements that LaClair attributed to him. LaClair had also recorded those, and proved to Somma that Paszkiewicz had lied when he denied making the statements.\nThis recording now proves to everyone other than LaClair, Somma, and Paszkiewicz that Paszkiewicz actually made the denials.\nThe recording of the meeting is available via the website of The Observer editor Kevin Canessa.\nCanessa also has photos of the board meeting, where Paszkiewicz supporters in the audience held up signs to prevent camera crews from recording the statement made by Paul LaClair, Matthew\u0026rsquo;s father.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/recording-proves-paszkiewicz-denied.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Matt LaClair spoke before the Kearny board of education earlier this week, he gave the board a CD recording of his initial meeting with David Paszkiewicz and Kearny High School principal Al Somma, in which Paszkiewicz denied making the statements that LaClair attributed to him.  LaClair had also recorded those, and proved to Somma that Paszkiewicz had lied when he denied making the statements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis recording now proves to everyone other than LaClair, Somma, and Paszkiewicz that Paszkiewicz actually made the denials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe recording of the meeting is available via \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/02/recording-reveals-paszkiewicz-first.html\"\u003ethe website of The Observer editor Kevin Canessa\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCanessa also \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/02/images-from-tuesdays-board-of-education.html\"\u003ehas photos of the board meeting\u003c/a\u003e, where Paszkiewicz supporters in the audience held up signs to prevent camera crews from recording the statement made by Paul LaClair, Matthew\u0026rsquo;s father.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Recording proves Paszkiewicz denied making comments"},{"content":"The Phoenix Lights have returned, appearing on February 6 and 22. Oddly enough, both times happened to coincide with Air Force training with flares.\nUPDATE (February 25, 2007):\nThe Arizona Republic continues to present the Phoenix lights as something mysterious, with extraterrestrial visitors being given equal weight to the flare explanation. Commenters on this news story are touting \u0026ldquo;image expert\u0026rdquo; Jim Dilettoso in an attempt to discount flares.\nThe Phoenix New Times, by contrast, has been more skeptical, and exposed Dilettoso\u0026rsquo;s lack of qualifications.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/return-of-phoenix-lights.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Phoenix Lights have returned, appearing on February 6 and 22.  Oddly enough, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/lightintheskyparttwo0222-CR.html\"\u003eboth times happened to coincide with Air Force training with flares\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 25, 2007):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0225phxlights0225.html\"\u003eThe Arizona Republic continues to present the Phoenix lights as something mysterious\u003c/a\u003e, with extraterrestrial visitors being given equal weight to the flare explanation.  Commenters on this news story are touting \u0026ldquo;image expert\u0026rdquo; Jim Dilettoso in an attempt to discount flares.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Phoenix New Times, by contrast, \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1998-03-05/news/the-hack-and-the-quack/\"\u003ehas been more skeptical\u003c/a\u003e, and exposed Dilettoso\u0026rsquo;s lack of qualifications.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Return of the Phoenix Lights"},{"content":"Congratulations to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and to eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania who refused to read the anti-evolution disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board that was the subject of last year\u0026rsquo;s Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial: Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor.\nThey are the 2006 recipients of the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/2006-aaas-award-for-scientific-freedom.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCongratulations to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e, and to eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania who refused to read the anti-evolution disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board that was the subject of last year\u0026rsquo;s Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial:  Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey are \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/02/eugenie_c_scott.html\"\u003ethe 2006 recipients of the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2006 AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility"},{"content":"The blogosphere has been making fun of absurdities at Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly\u0026rsquo;s attempt to create a conservative-oriented version of Wikipedia. Orac points out that Conservapeia promotes the anti-vaccination Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (Schlafly is their legal counsel). Mark Chu-Carroll points out that even math has a liberal bias, according to Conservapedia. P.Z. Myers looks at some of Conservapedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of evolution.\nPerhaps most entertaining is Jon Swift\u0026rsquo;s coverage of Conservapedia, which contains links to many of the Science Bloggers\u0026rsquo; commentaries.\nHistorical Comments Academic Dr. Stalin (2007-04-08):\nViery horosho! Tovarisch, it is so sad that there were so little of you back in the day. You would be awarded Lenin prize rightr away!We would never lost the cold war. It would be just glorious. Nuh, this stupid Reagan fella - he screw us badly. But there is hope as I can see - as more folks like you will grow up. We can turn things around! Just have a sex with the woman from time to time would, yea? I know f..ing trees more glamourous. But we need more geniuses like you. Propagate, PLEEESE.We love you and folks like yea -dear useful idiots!With communist's greeting!Academic Stalin - a true scientist\nEinzige (2007-04-08):\nPropaganda is okay, I guess, as long as it's used in the service of \"anti-communism\". Truth is incidental to the issue--and never really all that important, in any case.That's what I gather, anyway, from your comment, academicstalin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/conservapedia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe blogosphere has been making fun of absurdities at Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly\u0026rsquo;s attempt to create a conservative-oriented version of Wikipedia.  Orac \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/02/conservapedia.php\"\u003epoints out that Conservapeia promotes the anti-vaccination Association of American Physicians and Surgeons\u003c/a\u003e (Schlafly is their legal counsel).  Mark Chu-Carroll \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/02/conservapedia_and_math_1.php\"\u003epoints out that even math has a liberal bias, according to Conservapedia\u003c/a\u003e.  P.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/im_assuming_many_conservatives.php\"\u003elooks at some of Conservapedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of evolution\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps most entertaining is \u003ca href=\"http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2007/02/conservapedia.html\"\u003eJon Swift\u0026rsquo;s coverage of Conservapedia\u003c/a\u003e, which contains links to many of the Science Bloggers\u0026rsquo; commentaries.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Conservapedia"},{"content":"Matthew LaClair will appear tonight on Anderson Cooper\u0026rsquo;s show on CNN, 10 p.m. EST.\nUPDATE: Unfortunately, Matthew was bumped from the show.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/matthew-laclair-on-anderson-cooper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew LaClair will appear tonight on Anderson Cooper\u0026rsquo;s show on CNN, 10 p.m. EST.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Unfortunately, Matthew was bumped from the show.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matthew LaClair on Anderson Cooper tonight"},{"content":"Ed Brayton points out Jesselyn Radack\u0026rsquo;s account of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s dishonest and sleazy retaliation against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s deception in the so-called \u0026ldquo;American Taliban\u0026rdquo; case of John Walker Lindh. Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present. She pointed out that Lindh\u0026rsquo;s father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present. The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution. She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh\u0026rsquo;s rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack\u0026rsquo;s correspondence. She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation. As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public.\nThe DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack\u0026rsquo;s law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting. The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she\u0026rsquo;s still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she\u0026rsquo;s still on it). She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years.\nHer story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government. Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/jesselyn-radack-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/right_to_counsel_whats_that.php\"\u003epoints out Jesselyn Radack\u0026rsquo;s account of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s dishonest and sleazy retaliation\u003c/a\u003e against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s deception in the so-called \u0026ldquo;American Taliban\u0026rdquo; case of John Walker Lindh.  Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present.  She pointed out that Lindh\u0026rsquo;s father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present.  The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution.  She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh\u0026rsquo;s rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack\u0026rsquo;s correspondence.  She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation.  As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack\u0026rsquo;s law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting.  The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she\u0026rsquo;s still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she\u0026rsquo;s still on it).  She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHer story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government.  Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Jesselyn Radack Case"},{"content":"A web page on the TSA\u0026rsquo;s website for travelers \u0026ldquo;who were told you are on a Federal Government Watch List\u0026rdquo; displays evidence of being a phishing site\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s probably not, it\u0026rsquo;s just so badly done that it looks like a hacked web site that\u0026rsquo;s submitting its details to an unrelated third party.\nTSA responded that \u0026ldquo;We are aware there was an issue and replaced the site. The issue has been fully addressed. We take IT responsibilities seriously. There never a vulnerability; just a small glitch.\u0026quot;\nThe full story may be found at Wired Blogs, which points out fifteen features that make the TSA form submission site look dangerous.\nAlso check out this comment at Christopher Soghoian\u0026rsquo;s blog:\nThis may be surprising to hear: I am an employee at a major airline and I just recieved an e-mail that said we now have access to the TSA no-fly list, selectee list, and cleared list. I just accessed it and found it to contain thousands of names, DOB, SSN#s, drivers licesense #\u0026rsquo;s, military ID #\u0026rsquo;s, addresses, and even home phone #\u0026rsquo;s. The TSA just made this list and all of this information readily available to thousands of employees at my airline (and probably others). I think that previously this list was only available to ticket agents, but now it is available to every employee.\nI find it quite disturbing that any airline employee has access to this information, and that many of the ppl on the cleared list have to give up there SSN# and other information.Nice.\n(Hat tip to Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/tsa-continues-to-demonstrate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA web page on the TSA\u0026rsquo;s website for travelers \u0026ldquo;who were told you are on a Federal Government Watch List\u0026rdquo; displays evidence of being a phishing site\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s probably not, it\u0026rsquo;s just so badly done that it looks like a hacked web site that\u0026rsquo;s submitting its details to an unrelated third party.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTSA responded that \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"mood\"\u003eWe are aware there was an issue and replaced the site. The issue has been fully addressed. We take IT responsibilities seriously.  There never a vulnerability; just a small glitch.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full story may be found \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/02/homeland_securi.html\"\u003eat Wired Blogs\u003c/a\u003e, which points out fifteen features that make the TSA form submission site look dangerous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso check out \u003ca href=\"http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2007/02/tsa-has-outsourced-tsa-traveler.html#comment-7509969709022152947\"\u003ethis comment\u003c/a\u003e at \u003ca href=\"http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2007/02/tsa-has-outsourced-tsa-traveler.html\"\u003eChristopher Soghoian\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis may be surprising to hear: I am an employee at a major airline and I just recieved an e-mail that said we now have access to the TSA no-fly list, selectee list, and cleared list. I just accessed it and found it to contain thousands of names, DOB, SSN#s, drivers licesense #\u0026rsquo;s, military ID #\u0026rsquo;s, addresses, and even home phone #\u0026rsquo;s. The TSA just made this list and all of this information readily available to thousands of employees at my airline (and probably others). I think that previously this list was only available to ticket agents, but now it is available to every employee.\u003cbr /\u003eI find it quite disturbing that any airline employee has access to this information, and that many of the ppl on the cleared list have to give up there SSN# and other information.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/tsa_website_hac.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TSA continues to demonstrate incompetence"},{"content":"Radley Balko points out a passage from an article about DEA training for raids on drug labs:\nThe instructor knocks on the front door, shouting, \u0026ldquo;DEA! Police! We have a search warrant!\u0026rdquo; The next thing you know you\u0026rsquo;re inside, clearing rooms like a SWAT team on COPS, firing only at targets with odd numbers. The even-numbered targets could be the good guys, even children. Everyone shoots at the dog. It\u0026rsquo;s covered with paint-ball splatters.\nBalko quotes his basketball coach: \u0026ldquo;You play the way you practice.\u0026quot;\nAnd provides this link that proves it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/dea-training-everyone-shoots-dog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027534.php\"\u003epoints out a passage from an article about DEA training for raids on drug labs\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe instructor knocks on the front door, shouting, \u0026ldquo;DEA! Police! We have a search warrant!\u0026rdquo;  \u003cp\u003eThe next thing you know you\u0026rsquo;re inside, clearing rooms like a SWAT team on COPS, firing only at targets with odd numbers. The even-numbered targets could be the good guys, even children. Everyone shoots at the dog. It\u0026rsquo;s covered with paint-ball splatters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DEA training:  everyone shoots the dog"},{"content":"In a candidate for worst analogy ever, Washington Post lifestyle reporter Laura Sessions Step writes in her new book that\n\u0026ldquo;Your body is your property,\u0026rdquo; she warns girls, \u0026ldquo;Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?\u0026quot;The blogosphere is generating lots of handy corrolaries:\nWe all know it is the husband who is supposed to throw rocks through the windows of your home. This should be done frequently, and ONLY through the same window - never through the back door or other windows.\n* * Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You want to have a big party and invite all your friends over.\n* Your body is your property \u0026hellip; Think about the first home you hope to own. If you ever get in trouble with money, you can always rent it out for use by strangers.\n* Your body is your property \u0026hellip; Think about the first home you hope to own. You want the carpet to match the drapes.\n* *\nYour body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. Odds are it\u0026rsquo;s going to be a fixer-upper and will need some major improvements to make it attractive. A larger front porch, for example.(Via Framed: Discourse and Democracy and Matthew Yglesias.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/having-sex-is-like-throwing-rocks-at.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a candidate for worst analogy ever, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e lifestyle reporter Laura Sessions Step writes in her new book that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Your body is your property,\u0026rdquo; she warns girls, \u0026ldquo;Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe blogosphere is generating lots of handy corrolaries:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWe all know it is the husband who is supposed to throw rocks through the windows of your home. This should be done frequently, and ONLY through the same window - never through the back door or other windows.\u003cbr /\u003e*  *  \u003cem\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYour body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You want to have a big party and invite all your friends over.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/em\u003e  *  \u003cem\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYour body is your property \u0026hellip; Think about the first home you hope to own. If you ever get in trouble with money, you can always rent it out for use by strangers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/em\u003e  *  \u003cem\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYour body is your property \u0026hellip; Think about the first home you hope to own.  You want the carpet to match the drapes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/em\u003e  *  *\u003cbr /\u003eYour body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. Odds are it\u0026rsquo;s going to be a fixer-upper and will need some major improvements to make it attractive. A larger front porch, for example.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://framed.typepad.com/framed/2007/02/rocks.html\"\u003eFramed: Discourse and Democracy\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/02/worth_the_wait/\"\u003eMatthew Yglesias\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Having sex is like throwing rocks at windows?"},{"content":"A heckler took on Mitt Romney for not \u0026ldquo;stand[ing] for the Lord Jesus Christ\u0026rdquo; because he\u0026rsquo;s a Mormon (video clip). This resulted in boos from the audience. Romney replied by saying that \u0026ldquo;one of the great things about this great land is that we have people of different faiths and different persuasions, and I\u0026rsquo;m convinced that the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.\u0026rdquo; This led to audience applause and a standing ovation.\nRadley Balko observes: \u0026ldquo;Romney and his supporters have already deflected as religious bigotry (correctly, in my view) the idea (supported by polls) that America isn\u0026rsquo;t ready for a Mormon in the White House. But Romney has no problem declaring that America isn\u0026rsquo;t ready for an atheist or agnostic in the White House. Frankly, that\u0026rsquo;s offensive.\u0026quot;\nI agree, but also note this comment from the above video link:\nAs a Mormon, here are some more of Mitt\u0026rsquo;s specific covenants:\n1. God was once a man. He is currently living on a planet near the star Kolob with his wives. 2. Jesus and Lucifer were once spirit brothers. 3. In the afterlife Mormon men will live as kings their own planets and rule over all their heirs. 4. The Book of Mormon was written on gold tablets revealed to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni. These tablets are now lost. Joseph Smith translated the tablets by putting a magic rock in his hat and sticking in face in it. 5. American Indians are the lost tribe of Israel. Jesus ministered to them in his trips to America. 6. Donny and Marie Osmond were great musicians.\nBut seriously folks, all you people who are trying to pretend Mormonism is just another branch of Christianity, like being a Presbyterian or a Baptist, are fooling yourselves. Someday maybe Republicans will be making excuses for a Scientologist candidate - they\u0026rsquo;re even more nuts than Mormons, but only slightly. Hail Xenu!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not religious bigotry to point out the facts about religions.\nAlisonM (2007-02-21):\nBut when you're talking about religions, you're not talking about facts, anyway.I just don't think I could vote for someone whom I pictured wearing magic underwear every time I saw him. How can you take that seriously?\nDizzlettium (2007-02-23):\nYou should do your homework on the Mormon faith before posting Mitt Romney's \"covenants.\" I am a Mormon and half of the items on this list are not even close to our doctrine.\nLippard (2007-02-23):\nActually, perhaps you should do your homework on the history of your own religion. Like Christians in general, most Mormons are ignorant of the actual history of the formation of their religion.Since you are a Mormon, I recommend that you start with a book by a Mormon historian, Grant H. Palmer's _An Insider's View of Mormon Origins_.\nDizzlettium (2007-02-26):\nMr. Lippard, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound snappy in my last comment. What I should have said is that the list of covenants posted have some factual base, but none of them are as simple and straightforward as they sound here (except for the one about Donny and Marie). I just got a little worked up over it because I (like probably everyone else in their own religion) want people to understand the history and details behind our beliefs before they are written off as strange and radical.\nEinzige (2007-02-26):\nD,I, myself, have many mormon family members and have studied mormonism a fair amount. In looking over the above list, I find little to quibble with about it.I suggest you start getting more specific with your complaints, if you want to make any headway towards improving our understanding of Mormonism.1. God isn't living near Kolob?2. Jesus and Lucifer weren't once spirit brothers?3. Good Mormon men won't have their own planets when they die?4. The book of Mormon wasn't written on gold tablets? It wasn't revealed to Joseph Smith? They're not now lost? JS didn't translate them while looking in a hat?5. The Hopi aren't the lost tribe?What's up?\nLippard (2007-02-26):\nDizzlettium: I will certainly grant you that Mormons have quite a bit more to say about each of those items than what is expressed in the sentence, just as Christians have quite a bit more to say about the Bible's claims about talking snakes and donkeys, God commanding genocide and human sacrifice, and so forth. I'm also sure that there are liberal versions of Mormon theology that back away from literal interpretations of original doctrines--this seems to happen as religions mature.But I don't think such revisions make religions any more plausible unless they actually start discarding the unsubstantiated or refuted claims completely.\nDizzlettium (2007-03-01):\nDo you guys really want me to go in depth on these items? I would love to try to explain these beliefs to you, but I'm just making sure.\nEinzige (2007-03-01):\nPerhaps the appropriate next step would be for you to make it your blog's first post. Then you could come back here and let us know that it's done.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/mitt-romney-defends-mormons-slams.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/cache/drudge/151254.html\"\u003eheckler took on Mitt Romney for not \u0026ldquo;stand[ing] for the Lord Jesus Christ\u0026rdquo; because he\u0026rsquo;s a Mormon\u003c/a\u003e (video clip).   This resulted in boos from the audience.  Romney replied by saying that \u0026ldquo;one of the great things about this great land is that we have people of different faiths and different persuasions, and I\u0026rsquo;m convinced that the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.\u0026rdquo;  This led to audience applause and a standing ovation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027533.php\"\u003eRadley Balko observes\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Romney and his supporters have already deflected as religious bigotry (correctly, in my view) the idea (supported by polls) that America isn\u0026rsquo;t ready for a Mormon in the White House.  But Romney has no problem declaring that America isn\u0026rsquo;t ready for an atheist or agnostic in the White House.  Frankly, that\u0026rsquo;s offensive.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI agree, but also note this comment from the above video link:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"comment_body\"\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mitt Romney defends Mormons, slams atheists"},{"content":"The ACLU and People for the American Way held a press conference today regarding the David Paszkiewicz situation at Kearny High School.\nOn Tuesday, February 13, a tort claims notice was filed with the federal court to preserve the LaClair\u0026rsquo;s right to file a civil suit should the district not resolve their complaints.\nPredictably, Kearny education board president Bernadette McDonald was quoted as saying, \u0026ldquo;It is unfortunate that public dollars will be spent in defending our school district when this matter is already being addressed through dialogue and action.\u0026rdquo; Those actions included banning taping in the classroom without the teacher\u0026rsquo;s permission (which would have prevented Paszkiewicz from being caught lying about what he said in the classroom) and switching Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s U.S. History class with another (so that he no longer has Matthew LaClair in his classroom).\nMore information at the Jersey Journal and 1010 WINS web pages. The Jersey Journal story emphasizes the education board\u0026rsquo;s position, while the 1010 WINS story emphasizes Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s.\nUPDATE (February 20, 2007): The audio of the ACLU/PFAW/LaClair press conference and the text of the Kearny education board\u0026rsquo;s response may be found at Kevin Canessa\u0026rsquo;s Corner at The Observer blog.\nUPDATE (February 21, 2007): Looks like CNN picked up the story yesterday.\nHistorical Comments AlisonM (2007-02-21):\nKearny has taken every action they possibly could to remedy this situation except disciplining Paszkiewicz and protecting LaClair from death threats. What a great town.\nKristine (2007-02-21):\nWhat a great town.Same all over, though. I had a history teacher who said that the establishment of Israel in 1948 fulfilled the promise of Christ's return.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/aclu-pfaw-give-notice-of-possible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe ACLU and People for the American Way held a press conference today regarding \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003ethe David Paszkiewicz situation\u003c/a\u003e at Kearny High School.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Tuesday, February 13, a tort claims notice was filed with the federal court to preserve the LaClair\u0026rsquo;s right to file a civil suit should the district not resolve their complaints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePredictably, Kearny education board president Bernadette McDonald was quoted as saying, \u0026ldquo;It is unfortunate that public dollars will be spent in defending our school district when this matter is already being addressed through dialogue and action.\u0026rdquo;  Those actions included banning taping in the classroom without the teacher\u0026rsquo;s permission (which would have prevented Paszkiewicz from being caught lying about what he said in the classroom) and switching Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s U.S. History class with another (so that he no longer has Matthew LaClair in his classroom).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore information at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/newslogs/jjournal/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_jjupdate/archives/2007_02.html\"\u003eJersey Journal\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NJ_TAPED_TEACHER_NJOL-?SITE=1010WINS\u0026SECTION=HOME\u0026amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT\"\u003e1010 WINS\u003c/a\u003e web pages.  The Jersey Journal story emphasizes the education board\u0026rsquo;s position, while the 1010 WINS story emphasizes Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 20, 2007):  The audio of the ACLU/PFAW/LaClair press conference and the text of the Kearny education board\u0026rsquo;s response \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/02/aclu-to-sue-kearny-school-district.html\"\u003emay be found at Kevin Canessa\u0026rsquo;s Corner at The Observer blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 21, 2007):  Looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/02/20/taped.teach.ap/index.html\"\u003eCNN picked up the story\u003c/a\u003e yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ACLU, PFAW give notice of possible lawsuit against Kearny public schools district"},{"content":"Computer Associates CEO John Swainson, the keynote speaker at last week\u0026rsquo;s CA Expo \u0026lsquo;07 conference in Sydney, Australia, spoke about how the deployment of IPv6 will bring unavoidable and unknown security threats. He was quoted in SC Magazine:\n“I don’t know what they will be but I can predict with a high degree of probability that it will happen,” he said.\n\u0026ldquo;This is not something you can test in the lab, it’s something that emerges through practice.”\nSwainson’s comments on IPv6 were part of a broader theme addressing the emerging complexities in IT infrastructure and their more complex insecurities.\n“We’re talking about new complexities on top of existing complexities. As networks expand to include remote device types and additional applications [they] produce a wide variety of security threats,” he said.The new Apple AirPort Extreme for 802.11n wireless networks demonstrates Swainson\u0026rsquo;s point quite vividly. The device supports IPv6, and the default setting is for the device to set up an IPv6 tunnel over the IPv4 Internet and to provide IPv6 addresses to hosts on the local network with IPv6 enabled. For those using the device as their local firewall (which I\u0026rsquo;d argue is not a great idea\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not really adequate to the task), while it will reject most incoming IPv4 connections, it will allow all IPv6 connections through. For those not using it as a firewall, if their actual firewall allows the IPv6 tunnel (and most firewalls allow all inbound connections out, which would allow the tunnel to be established), the tunnel then becomes a path through the firewall.\nThat is, if you put this device on your network in its default configuration, you\u0026rsquo;ve just completely opened up your internal systems to connections from any IPv6 host\u0026ndash;your firewall may as well not be there, from an IPv6 perspective.\nThere is no \u0026ldquo;disable IPv6\u0026rdquo; option, but if you set the device to \u0026ldquo;Link Local\u0026rdquo; mode instead of \u0026ldquo;Tunnel\u0026rdquo; mode, it will only talk IPv6 to your internal network, not to the outside world.\nMy own home network runs IPv4 and IPv6, including wirelessly, but I have my wireless network as a separate network off my firewall, and have IPv6 firewall rules in place. It\u0026rsquo;s my firewall that provides the tunnel to the IPv6 Internet. This means that any machines connected to my wireless network that want to communicate with machines on my wired network (like servers) need to pass traffic through the firewall to get to them. Also, as my firewall is an OpenBSD machine, it will not route (for security reasons) the 6to4 packets the Apple AirPort is using to create automatic IPv6 tunneling (though this makes IPv4-to-v6 migration even more difficult).\nNote that in the comments on the Apple AirPort article at Ars Technica, one commenter says \u0026ldquo;The primary reason why the situation is so bad with IPv4, is that almost the entire address space is populated. Worms and virii can easily guess neighboring addresses, and since most of those are windows machines, they make great targets.\u0026rdquo; This gives a false sense of safety to IPv6, as security researchers have already pointed out numerous ways in which worms can locate other IPv6 hosts despite the sparsely populated IP space (PDF).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/how-ipv6-is-already-creating-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComputer Associates CEO John Swainson, the keynote speaker at last week\u0026rsquo;s CA Expo \u0026lsquo;07 conference in Sydney, Australia, spoke about how the deployment of IPv6 will bring unavoidable and unknown security threats.  He was quoted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.scmagazine.com.au/news/46039,ca-ceo-ipv6-will-be-insecure.aspx\"\u003eSC Magazine\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“I don’t know what they will be but I can predict with a high degree of probability that it will happen,” he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is not something you can test in the lab, it’s something that emerges through practice.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSwainson’s comments on IPv6 were part of a broader theme addressing the emerging complexities in IT infrastructure and their more complex insecurities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“We’re talking about new complexities on top of existing complexities. As networks expand to include remote device types and additional applications [they] produce a wide variety of security threats,” he said.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe new \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/2/14/7063\"\u003eApple AirPort Extreme for 802.11n wireless networks demonstrates Swainson\u0026rsquo;s point quite vividly\u003c/a\u003e.  The device supports IPv6, and the default setting is for the device to set up an IPv6 tunnel over the IPv4 Internet and to provide IPv6 addresses to hosts on the local network with IPv6 enabled.  For those using the device as their local firewall (which I\u0026rsquo;d argue is not a great idea\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not really adequate to the task), while it will reject most incoming IPv4 connections, it will allow all IPv6 connections through.  For those not using it as a firewall, if their actual firewall allows the IPv6 tunnel (and most firewalls allow all inbound connections out, which would allow the tunnel to be established), the tunnel then becomes a path through the firewall.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat is, if you put this device on your network in its default configuration, you\u0026rsquo;ve just completely opened up your internal systems to connections from any IPv6 host\u0026ndash;your firewall may as well not be there, from an IPv6 perspective.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is no \u0026ldquo;disable IPv6\u0026rdquo; option, but if you set the device to \u0026ldquo;Link Local\u0026rdquo; mode instead of \u0026ldquo;Tunnel\u0026rdquo; mode, it will only talk IPv6 to your internal network, not to the outside world.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy own home network runs IPv4 and IPv6, including wirelessly, but I have my wireless network as a separate network off my firewall, and have IPv6 firewall rules in place.  It\u0026rsquo;s my firewall that provides the tunnel to the IPv6 Internet.  This means that any machines connected to my wireless network that want to communicate with machines on my wired network (like servers) need to pass traffic through the firewall to get to them.  Also, as my firewall is an \u003ca href=\"http://www.openbsd.org/\"\u003eOpenBSD\u003c/a\u003e machine, it will not route (for security reasons) the 6to4 packets the Apple AirPort is using to create automatic IPv6 tunneling (though this makes IPv4-to-v6 migration even \u003ca href=\"http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html\"\u003emore\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2006/03/bashing_ipv6_at_telecomnext.shtml\"\u003edifficult\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote that \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/2/14/7063\"\u003ein the comments on the Apple AirPort article at Ars Technica\u003c/a\u003e, one commenter says \u0026ldquo;The primary reason why the situation is so bad with IPv4, is that almost the entire address space is populated. Worms and virii can easily guess neighboring addresses, and since most of those are windows machines, they make great targets.\u0026rdquo;  This gives a false sense of safety to IPv6, as security researchers \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.columbia.edu/%7Esmb/papers/v6worms.pdf\"\u003ehave already pointed out numerous ways in which worms can locate other IPv6 hosts despite the sparsely populated IP space\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How IPv6 is already creating security problems"},{"content":"Comedian Carlos Mencia has had a video removed from YouTube on the grounds of copyright infringement. The video shows a confrontation between Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia in which Rogan accuses Mencia of stealing other comedians\u0026rsquo; material\u0026ndash;supported by clips of Mencia doing the same jokes as other comedians, and footage of multiple comedians agreeing that Mencia has stolen material.\nRogan and Mencia had the same agent, who dropped Rogan over this dispute.\nThe video is still on Google Video, and Joe Rogan gives an overview at his website. The Wikipedia entry on Carlos Mencia also describes this dispute.\n(Via The Superficial.)\nUPDATE (February 21, 2007): Ed Brayton (who himself has worked as a stand-up comic) offers his thoughts on this.\nLippard (2007-02-20):\nThat was entertaining. I like most of the comedians on his list of good ones (and he should have added Doug Stanhope to that list, rather than just calling attention to his work on the Man Show with Joe Rogan).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/carlos-mencia-abuses-copyright-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComedian Carlos Mencia has had a video removed from YouTube on the grounds of copyright infringement.  The video shows a confrontation between Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia in which Rogan accuses Mencia of stealing other comedians\u0026rsquo; material\u0026ndash;supported by clips of Mencia doing the same jokes as other comedians, and footage of multiple comedians agreeing that Mencia has stolen material.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRogan and Mencia had the same agent, who dropped Rogan over this dispute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe video \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7841918711943453918\u0026hl=en\"\u003eis still on Google Video\u003c/a\u003e, and Joe Rogan \u003ca href=\"http://www.joerogan.net/main.php?archives=1\u0026amp;article=44170\"\u003egives an overview at his website\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Mencia\"\u003eWikipedia entry on Carlos Mencia\u003c/a\u003e also describes this dispute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://thesuperficial.com/2007/02/joe_rogan_and_carlos_mencia_ge.html\"\u003eThe Superficial\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 21, 2007):  Ed Brayton (who himself has worked as a stand-up comic) \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/comics_stealing_and_the_politi_1.php\"\u003eoffers his thoughts on this\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carlos Mencia abuses copyright to suppress criticism"},{"content":"The broadcast of the Super Bowl contained this announcement: \u0026ldquo;This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL\u0026rsquo;s consent, is prohibited.\u0026quot;\nBrooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer, who founded the Chilling Effects clearinghouse of DMCA abuse, posted this piece of the Super Bowl broadcast as an example of a copyright holder exaggerating its rights\u0026ndash;clearly the NFL does not own all pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the Super Bowl game.\nThe response\u0026ndash;the NFL issued a DMCA takedown notice against her site for the posting, demonstrating that they not only exaggerate their rights, but are willing to abuse the law.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/nfl-abuses-digital-millennium-copyright.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe broadcast of the Super Bowl contained this announcement:  \u0026ldquo;This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL\u0026rsquo;s consent, is prohibited.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer, who founded the \u003ca href=\"http://techdirt.com/articles/20070214/154327.shtml\"\u003eChilling Effects clearinghouse\u003c/a\u003e of DMCA abuse, posted this piece of the Super Bowl broadcast as an example of a copyright holder exaggerating its rights\u0026ndash;clearly the NFL does not own all pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the Super Bowl game.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe response\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://techdirt.com/articles/20070214/154327.shtml\"\u003ethe NFL issued a DMCA takedown notice against her site for the posting\u003c/a\u003e, demonstrating that they not only exaggerate their rights, but are willing to abuse the law.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NFL abuses Digital Millennium Copyright Act"},{"content":"Arizona Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) is at it again, with a bill that prohibits any public school or college instructor from advocating or opposing a political candidate or issue. This is the same legislator who last year proposed a bill that would have required colleges and universities to \u0026ldquo;provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive\u0026rdquo; where \u0026ldquo;a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.\u0026quot;\nWhile it is appropriate to define limits on partisan advocacy in public primary and secondary schools (where state educational standards define the curriculum and individual school districts set policy on appropriate classroom behavior), it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense to do it at the college level, where professors have much broader freedom to create their own course curricula.\nVerschoor was also one of several legislators accepting gifts from the Church of Scientology and sponsoring legislation for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights last year.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/thayer-verschoors-latest-attempt-at.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) is at it again, with \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0216teach-opinions0216.html\"\u003ea bill that prohibits any public school or college instructor from advocating or opposing a political candidate or issue\u003c/a\u003e.  This is the same legislator who \u003ca href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2006/02/17/how-a-stupid-bill-becomes-a-law/\"\u003elast year proposed a bill that would have required colleges and universities\u003c/a\u003e to \u0026ldquo;provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive\u0026rdquo; where \u0026ldquo;a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile it is appropriate to define limits on partisan advocacy in public primary and secondary schools (where state educational standards define the curriculum and individual school districts set policy on appropriate classroom behavior), it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense to do it at the college level, where professors have much broader freedom to create their own course curricula.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVerschoor was also one of \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003eseveral legislators accepting gifts from the Church of Scientology and sponsoring legislation for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights\u003c/a\u003e last year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thayer Verschoor's latest attempt at censoring academia"},{"content":"Are neo-conservatives really this humor-impaired?\nThis show comes off like something Kevin Trudeau should be involved with, somehow.\nLippard (2007-02-17):\nHow bit, with Rush Limbaugh as president of the United States and Anne Coulter as vice president?\nLippard (2007-02-17):\nThat was supposed to say \"how about this bit.\"\nEinzige (2007-02-17):\nNeo-Conservatives ARE humor-impaired!How is Anne Coulture saying what she actually believes (or at least purports to believe) made funny in any way by imagining her saying it as vice president?\nLaika (2007-02-18):\nA neo-con acquaintance of mine post this video on his blog. Spectacularly unfunny -- it has all the dressings of humor, with none of the actual wit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/painfully-unfunny.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAre neo-conservatives really this humor-impaired?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis show comes off like something \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau\"\u003eKevin Trudeau\u003c/a\u003e should be involved with, somehow.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YjIfaMwIFxU\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YjIfaMwIFxU\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHow \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/politics/2007/02/15/rush/index.html\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003e bit\u003c/A\u003e, with Rush Limbaugh as president of the United States and Anne Coulter as vice president?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat was supposed to say \"how about this bit.\"\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-17)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eNeo-Conservatives ARE humor-impaired!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHow is Anne Coulture saying what she actually believes (or at least purports to believe) made funny in any way by imagining her saying it as vice president?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Painfully Unfunny"},{"content":"Jack Cashill has produced an error-ridden column at WorldNetDaily on the Sternberg affair, which Ed Brayton has ably debunked. I predict Cashill will not correct himself, and may even continue to repeat the same errors.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/ed-brayton-fisks-jack-cashill-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJack Cashill has produced an error-ridden column at WorldNetDaily on \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/richard-sternberg-false-martyr-for.html\"\u003ethe Sternberg affair\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/worldnutdaily_flogs_dead_stern.php\"\u003eEd Brayton has ably debunked\u003c/a\u003e.  I predict Cashill will not correct himself, and may even continue to repeat the same errors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton fisks Jack Cashill on the Sternberg Affair"},{"content":"A Freedom of Information Act request has yielded a 2002 plan from U.S. Central Command about the invasion of Iraq.\nA planning group convened by Gen. Tommy Franks under the coded compartment POLO STEP (a coded compartment created under Clinton for counter-terrorism plans including the targeting of Osama bin Laden) produced this PowerPoint of briefing slides.\nThe slides show that \u0026ldquo;key planning assumptions\u0026rdquo; included that \u0026ldquo;a broad-based, credible provisional government\u0026rdquo; would be in place \u0026ldquo;prior to D-Day,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;Iraqi regime has WMD capability,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;co-opted Iraqi units will occupy garrisons and not fight either U.S. forces or other Iraqi units,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;Operations in Afghanistan transition to phase III (minimal air support over Afghanistan.\u0026quot;\nAccording to the plan, there would only be 5,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq as of December 2006.\n(Hat tip to Jacob Sullum at the Reason Blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/how-invasion-of-iraq-was-supposed-to-go.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Freedom of Information Act request has y\u003ca href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm\"\u003eielded a 2002 plan from U.S. Central Command about the invasion of Iraq\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA planning group convened by Gen. Tommy Franks under the coded compartment POLO STEP (a coded compartment created under Clinton for counter-terrorism plans including the targeting of Osama bin Laden) produced \u003ca href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm#docs\"\u003ethis PowerPoint of briefing slides\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe slides show that \u0026ldquo;key planning assumptions\u0026rdquo; included that \u0026ldquo;a broad-based, credible provisional government\u0026rdquo; would be in place \u0026ldquo;prior to D-Day,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;Iraqi regime has WMD capability,\u0026rdquo; that \u0026ldquo;co-opted Iraqi units will occupy garrisons and not fight either U.S. forces or other Iraqi units,\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;Operations in Afghanistan transition to phase III (minimal air support over Afghanistan.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccording to the plan, there would only be 5,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq as of December 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118710.html\"\u003eJacob Sullum at the Reason Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the invasion of Iraq was supposed to go"},{"content":"The Bush administration is trying to use innuendo and statements carefully crafted to imply falsehoods (or at least, things not known to be true) in order to justify war against Iran. Where the Department of Defense presented evidence that explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) used in Iraq were manufactured in Iran, Bush has made statements designed to imply, without explicitly stating, that the Iranian government is behind them. Reporters are also being told that the U.S. government has some solid evidence, but that it cannot be shared.\nFor specific details and criticisms, see:\nTalking Points Memo (February 14, 2007)\nTPM Muckraker (February 14, 2007)\nOutside the Beltway (February 12, 2007)\nThe Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s briefing PowerPoint on the EFPs can be found here. Interesting that the labels on the weapons shown in photographs include English wording, but that\u0026rsquo;s not a sign that they weren\u0026rsquo;t made in Iran, but only a consequence of the fact that English is the lingua franca of the arms trade.\nUPDATE (February 27, 2007): A factory producing EFPs has been captured in Southern Iraq\u0026ndash;and the parts that have identifiable origins did not come from Iran.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/bush-attempting-to-mislead-on-iran.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Bush administration is trying to use innuendo and statements carefully crafted to imply falsehoods (or at least, things not known to be true) in order to justify war against Iran.  Where the Department of Defense presented evidence that explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) used in Iraq were manufactured in Iran, Bush has made statements designed to imply, without explicitly stating, that the Iranian government is behind them.  Reporters are also being told that the U.S. government has some solid evidence, but that it cannot be shared.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor specific details and criticisms, see:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_02_11.php#012479\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e (February 14, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002572.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e (February 14, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/02/iran_supplying_efps_to_shiites_the_evidence/\"\u003eOutside the Beltway\u003c/a\u003e (February 12, 2007)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s briefing PowerPoint on the EFPs can be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/iran-in-iraq/?resultpage=1\u0026\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Interesting that the labels on the weapons shown in photographs include English wording, but that\u0026rsquo;s not a sign that they weren\u0026rsquo;t made in Iran, but only \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002556.php\"\u003ea consequence of the fact that English is the lingua franca of the arms trade\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 27, 2007):  \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002629.php\"\u003eA factory producing EFPs has been captured in Southern Iraq\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and the parts that have identifiable origins did not come from Iran.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush attempting to mislead on Iran"},{"content":"Jeff Han (who gave a very interesting demo at the TED conference last year) has formed a company called Perceptive Pixel which makes even larger touch screens. This video is a demo of some of the interesting user interfaces that multitouch provides.\nLippard (2007-02-18):\nFixed. Either the default settings for BrightCove include \"autostart=true\" or I copied the HTML from a source that was set that way. That was annoying.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/jeff-han-multitouch-demo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Han (who gave \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JcSu7h-I40\u0026eurl\"\u003ea very interesting demo at the TED conference last year\u003c/a\u003e) has formed a company called Perceptive Pixel which makes even larger touch screens.  This video is a demo of some of the interesting user interfaces that multitouch provides.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271543545\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" flashvars=\"videoId=422563006\u0026amp;playerId=271543545\u0026viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://services.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway\u0026amp;servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services\u0026cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com\u0026amp;domain=embed\u0026autoStart=false\u0026amp;\" base=\"http://admin.brightcove.com\" name=\"flashObj\" seamlesstabbing=\"false\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" swliveconnect=\"true\" pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\" height=\"412\" width=\"486\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-18)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eFixed.  Either the default settings for BrightCove include \"autostart=true\" or I copied the HTML from a source that was set that way.  That was annoying.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeff Han multitouch demo"},{"content":"Sex offender wins $14 million in lottery (Jensen Beach, Florida).\nMan with year to live wins $50,000 a year (Rochester, New York).\nBill would refuse lottery wins for sex offenders (Jefferson City, Missouri).\nAnd Jamie Zawinski suggests a fourth:\nBill would refuse lottery wins for cancer victims.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/three-lottery-stories.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/16586892.htm\"\u003eSex offender wins $14 million in lottery\u003c/a\u003e (Jensen Beach, Florida).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070213/NEWS01/702130328/1002/NEWS\"\u003eMan with year to live wins $50,000 a year\u003c/a\u003e (Rochester, New York).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070209/NEWS06/702090418/1007/NEWS01\"\u003eBill would refuse lottery wins for sex offenders\u003c/a\u003e (Jefferson City, Missouri).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd Jamie Zawinski suggests a fourth:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/738602.html\"\u003eBill would refuse lottery wins for cancer victims\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Three lottery stories"},{"content":"Ross Anderson and Tyler Moore have published a nice paper that gives an overview of recent research in the economics of information security and some open questions (PDF). The paper begins with an overview of the relevance of economic factors to information security and a discussion of \u0026ldquo;foundational concepts.\u0026rdquo; The concept of misaligned incentives is described with the now-standard example of how UK and U.S. regulations took opposite positions on liability for ATM fraud is given\u0026ndash;the UK held customers liable for loss, while the U.S. held banks liable for loss. This led to U.S. banks having incentives to make their systems secure, while UK banks had no such incentives (and the UK has now reversed its position after this led to \u0026ldquo;an epidemic of fraud\u0026rdquo;). other examples are given involving anti-virus deployment (where individuals may not have incentives to purchase software if the major benefit is preventing denial of service attacks on corporations), LoJack systems (where auto theft plummets after a threshold number of auto owners in a locality install the system), and the use of peer-to-peer networks for censorship resistance.\nThe authors examine the economics of vulnerabilities, of privacy, of the deployment of security mechanisms including digital rights management, how regulation and certification can affect system security (and sometimes have counterintuitive adverse effects, such as Ben Edelman\u0026rsquo;s finding that TRUSTe certified sites are more likely to contain malicious content than websites as a whole).\nThey end the paper with some open issues\u0026ndash;attempts to develop network protocols that are \u0026ldquo;strategy-proof\u0026rdquo; to prevent cheating/free-riding/bad behavior, how network topologies have different abilities to withstand different types of attacks (and differing vulnerabilities), and how the software development process has a very high failure rate for large projects, especially in public-sector organizations (e.g., as many as 30% are death-march projects).\nThere are lots of interesting tidbits in this paper\u0026ndash;insurance for vulnerabilities, vulnerability markets, the efficacy of spam on stock touting, the negligible effect of music downloads on music sales, and how DRM has moved power from record labels to platform owners (with Apple being the most notable beneficiary), to name a few.\n(Hat tip to Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog, where you can find links to a slide presentation that covers the highlights of this paper.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/economics-of-information-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRoss Anderson and Tyler Moore have published \u003ca href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/Papers/toulouse-summary.pdf\"\u003ea nice paper that gives an overview of recent research in the economics of information security and some open questions\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  The paper begins with an overview of the relevance of economic factors to information security and a discussion of \u0026ldquo;foundational concepts.\u0026rdquo;  The concept of misaligned incentives is described with the now-standard example of how UK and U.S. regulations took opposite positions on liability for ATM fraud is given\u0026ndash;the UK held customers liable for loss, while the U.S. held banks liable for loss.  This led to U.S. banks having incentives to make their systems secure, while UK banks had no such incentives (and the UK has now reversed its position after this led to \u0026ldquo;an epidemic of fraud\u0026rdquo;).  other examples are given involving anti-virus deployment (where individuals may not have incentives to purchase software if the major benefit is preventing denial of service attacks on corporations), LoJack systems (where auto theft plummets after a threshold number of auto owners in a locality install the system), and the use of peer-to-peer networks for censorship resistance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe authors examine the economics of vulnerabilities, of privacy, of the deployment of security mechanisms including digital rights management, how regulation and certification can affect system security (and sometimes have counterintuitive adverse effects, such as \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/ineffectiveness-of-truste.html\"\u003eBen Edelman\u0026rsquo;s finding that TRUSTe certified sites are more likely to contain malicious content than websites as a whole\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey end the paper with some open issues\u0026ndash;attempts to develop network protocols that are \u0026ldquo;strategy-proof\u0026rdquo; to prevent cheating/free-riding/bad behavior, how network topologies have different abilities to withstand different types of attacks (and differing vulnerabilities), and how the software development process has a very high failure rate for large projects, especially in public-sector organizations (e.g., as many as 30% are death-march projects).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are lots of interesting tidbits in this paper\u0026ndash;insurance for vulnerabilities, vulnerability markets, the efficacy of spam on stock touting, the negligible effect of music downloads on music sales, and how DRM has moved power from record labels to platform owners (with Apple being the most notable beneficiary), to name a few.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/survey_paper_on.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, where you can find links to a slide presentation that covers the highlights of this paper.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The economics of information security"},{"content":"\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been awarded a Thinking Blogger award, courtesy of Larry Moran at Sandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist. Thanks, Larry!\nAs per the rules of this award-meme, I must tag five other blogs that make me think:\n1. Glen Whitman and Tom W. Bell at Agoraphilia\n2. The Technology Liberation Front\n3. Martin Geddes at Telepocalypse\n4. Ed Felten at Freedom-to-Tinker\n5. Kevin Carson at the Mutualist blog\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/ive-won-thinking-blogger-award.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/thinkingblogger.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"/images/thinkingblogger.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been awarded a \u003ca href=\"http://ilkeryoldas.blogspot.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-awards_11.html\"\u003eThinking Blogger award\u003c/a\u003e, courtesy of Larry Moran at \u003ca href=\"http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-award.html\"\u003eSandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist\u003c/a\u003e.  Thanks, Larry!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs per the \u003ca href=\"http://ilkeryoldas.blogspot.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-awards_11.html\"\u003erules of this award-meme\u003c/a\u003e, I must tag five other blogs that make me think:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Glen Whitman and Tom W. Bell at \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/\"\u003eAgoraphilia\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Martin Geddes at \u003ca href=\"http://www.telepocalypse.net/\"\u003eTelepocalypse\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4. Ed Felten at \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/\"\u003eFreedom-to-Tinker\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5. Kevin Carson at the \u003ca href=\"http://mutualist.blogspot.com/\"\u003eMutualist blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I've won a Thinking Blogger award!"},{"content":"In November, Arizonans voted to increase the state minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $6.75/hour, and there is now some anecdotal evidence of job loss for teen workers in South and Central Phoenix.\nPepi\u0026rsquo;s Pizza in South Phoenix is laying off three of its 25 workers and Mary Coyle\u0026rsquo;s Ice Cream Parlor has cut back on hours and not replaced two workers who quit (despite the fact that its owner, Tom Kelly, voted for the increase). Kelly notes that he also increased the wages of those who were already making above minimum wage, with the net effect being an additional $2,000/month in expenses.\nThe Arizona Republic article notes that the majority of the state\u0026rsquo;s 124,067 workers aged 16-19 already made well above minimum wage before the change, 30.1% of workers making minimum wage fall in that age range, and 30.4% of minimum wage workers live with a parent or parents.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/arizona-minimum-wage-increase-leads-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn November, Arizonans voted to increase the state minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $6.75/hour, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0210biz-teenwork0210.html\"\u003ethere is now some anecdotal evidence of job loss for teen workers\u003c/a\u003e in South and Central Phoenix.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePepi\u0026rsquo;s Pizza in South Phoenix is laying off three of its 25 workers and Mary Coyle\u0026rsquo;s Ice Cream Parlor has cut back on hours and not replaced two workers who quit (despite the fact that its owner, Tom Kelly, voted for the increase).  Kelly notes that he also increased the wages of those who were already making above minimum wage, with the net effect being an additional $2,000/month in expenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0210biz-teenwork0210.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e notes that the majority of the state\u0026rsquo;s 124,067 workers aged 16-19 already made well above minimum wage before the change, 30.1% of workers making minimum wage fall in that age range, and 30.4% of minimum wage workers live with a parent or parents.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona minimum wage increase leads to job cuts and reduced hours"},{"content":"The Florida state appeals court ruled that a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy in Tallahassee who took digital photos of themselves having sex were guilty of violating child pornography laws. The appeals court panel rules 2-3 that the Florida Constitution\u0026rsquo;s right to privacy did not protect them. Judge James Wolf, in the majority opinion, wrote that they could sell the photos to child pornographers, and \u0026ldquo;if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors\u0026rsquo; careers or personal lives.\u0026rdquo; Apparently he\u0026rsquo;s not concerned about the damage he\u0026rsquo;s doing to them by causing them to become convicted child pornographers for taking pictures of themselves. Judge Philip Padovano, in his dissent, wrote that the law was intended to prevent children from being abused by others, not to punish them for their own mistakes.\nMore details in Declan McCullagh\u0026rsquo;s story at News.com.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-02-10):\nThey'll be labeled \"sex offenders\" for the rest of their lives, too, and thus subject to all that entails.Very sad.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/teens-can-legally-have-sex-but-if-they.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Florida state appeals court ruled that a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy in Tallahassee who took digital photos of themselves having sex were guilty of violating child pornography laws.  The appeals court panel rules 2-3 that the Florida Constitution\u0026rsquo;s right to privacy did not protect them.  Judge James Wolf, in the majority opinion, wrote that they could sell the photos to child pornographers, and \u0026ldquo;if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors\u0026rsquo; careers or personal lives.\u0026rdquo;  Apparently he\u0026rsquo;s not concerned about the damage he\u0026rsquo;s doing to them by causing them to become convicted child pornographers for taking pictures of themselves.  Judge Philip Padovano, in his dissent, wrote that the law was intended to prevent children from being abused by others, not to punish them for their own mistakes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details in \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+Teens+prosecuted+for+racy+photos/2100-1030_3-6157857.html\"\u003eDeclan McCullagh\u0026rsquo;s story at News.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Teens can legally have sex, but if they take pictures, they're child pornographers"},{"content":"The Simple Dollar blog is offline, and its author is looking for a way to get back online.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading Trent\u0026rsquo;s The Simple Dollar blog since mid-December. It\u0026rsquo;s a very well-written, professional-looking blog that gets a lot of traffic, but I was surprised to learn that he only started it about a month before I started reading it.\nToday, I noticed a lot of Google searches for \u0026ldquo;The Simple Dollar\u0026rdquo; were hitting my blog, all coming to my post about Robert Kiyosaki that linked to Trent\u0026rsquo;s blog. I clicked on the link to re-read his post, only to get a \u0026ldquo;Forbidden\u0026rdquo; message from his webserver. I contacted Trent to see if the problem was a legal issue, perhaps a threat from Kiyosaki, but it turns out his entire blog has been taken offline by Dreamhost, his webhosting provider.\nIt seems that today The Simple Dollar\u0026ndash;already in the top 2800 at Technorati\u0026ndash;got prominent links from both digg.com and reddit.com. This generated so much traffic to the shared server hosting the blog that Dreamhost disabled the account and denied access to the blog. Not only have they denied web access, they\u0026rsquo;ve denied Trent FTP access. He does have a backup from a few days ago, but is currently looking for a way to get back online with a dedicated server.\nYou can read his own account of his predicament at Metafilter.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve offered a few suggestions for possible webhosting providers, but he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think he can afford a dedicated server right now. That\u0026rsquo;s in part because, despite his huge traffic, his blog has grown in popularity so fast that he hadn\u0026rsquo;t yet acquired any major advertisers. He\u0026rsquo;s been the victim of his own too-rapid success.\nAre there any advertisers out there who would be willing to help finance the blog\u0026rsquo;s return on a dedicated server with sufficient bandwidth to handle the traffic?\nUPDATE (February 10, 2007): The Simple Dollar (or at least most of its content) is back!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/whats-happened-to-simple-dollar.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Simple Dollar blog is offline, and its author is looking for a way to get back online.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading Trent\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesimpledollar.com/\"\u003eThe Simple Dollar\u003c/a\u003e blog since mid-December.  It\u0026rsquo;s a very well-written, professional-looking blog that gets a lot of traffic, but I was surprised to learn that he only started it about a month before I started reading it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday, I noticed a lot of Google searches for \u0026ldquo;The Simple Dollar\u0026rdquo; were hitting my blog, all coming to \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/simple-dollar-on-robert-kiyosaki.html\"\u003emy post about Robert Kiyosaki\u003c/a\u003e that linked to Trent\u0026rsquo;s blog.  I clicked on the link to re-read his post, only to get a \u0026ldquo;Forbidden\u0026rdquo; message from his webserver.  I contacted Trent to see if the problem was a legal issue, perhaps a threat from Kiyosaki, but it turns out his entire blog has been taken offline by Dreamhost, his webhosting provider.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems that today The Simple Dollar\u0026ndash;already in the top 2800 at Technorati\u0026ndash;got prominent links from both digg.com and reddit.com.  This generated so much traffic to the shared server hosting the blog that Dreamhost disabled the account and denied access to the blog.  Not only have they denied web access, they\u0026rsquo;ve denied Trent FTP access.  He does have a backup from a few days ago, but is currently looking for a way to get back online with a dedicated server.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can read \u003ca href=\"http://ask.metafilter.com/56704/Cant-deal-with-blogs-explosive-growth\"\u003ehis own account of his predicament at Metafilter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve offered a few suggestions for possible webhosting providers, but he doesn\u0026rsquo;t think he can afford a dedicated server right now.  That\u0026rsquo;s in part because, despite his huge traffic, his blog has grown in popularity so fast that he hadn\u0026rsquo;t yet acquired any major advertisers.  He\u0026rsquo;s been the victim of his own too-rapid success.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre there any advertisers out there who would be willing to help finance the blog\u0026rsquo;s return on a dedicated server with sufficient bandwidth to handle the traffic?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 10, 2007):  The Simple Dollar (or at least most of its content) \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/02/10/please-bear-with-me/\"\u003eis back\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What's happened to The Simple Dollar?"},{"content":"And Ken Ham is not amused:\nChristian publisher Ken Ham said Maher showed up unannounced this week to videotape an interview with him at Ham\u0026rsquo;s Creation Museum, which is just south of Cincinnati. The $25 million facility, due to open in the spring, tells visitors that the earth is just a few thousand years old and that Adam and Eve lived among the dinosaurs.\nHam said a camera crew arranged a Monday visit to the museum, but he was not told that it was connected with Maher, host of HBO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;They sneaked Bill Maher into the building while I was waiting for an interview,\u0026rdquo; Ham wrote in a blog he maintains on the Web site of his publishing company, Answers in Genesis.\nMaher visited the museum for a documentary he\u0026rsquo;s been filming on religion, his publicist, Sarah Fuller, said Friday. She said he\u0026rsquo;s traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe for the project.\n\u0026ldquo;He\u0026rsquo;s been all over the place,\u0026rdquo; she said. Fuller said she wasn\u0026rsquo;t familiar with how the interview with Ham was conducted.\nHam called Maher\u0026rsquo;s visit an \u0026ldquo;elaborate deception.\u0026rdquo; He said the film crew asked for a one-on-one interview with Ham after a tour of the museum. After the tour, crew members asked for permission to bring some camera equipment in through the back of the building. Ham wrote that the crew drove to the rear, then distracted an employee as Maher ducked into the building.\nHam said he was shocked, but agreed to the interview.\n\u0026ldquo;Bill Maher did interview me; though respectful in one sense, most of his questions were just mocking attacks on God\u0026rsquo;s word,\u0026rdquo; Ham wrote in the blog on Wednesday.\nHam declined on Friday to comment further on Maher\u0026rsquo;s visit.\nBut AiG\u0026rsquo;s Mark Looy says \u0026ldquo;Ken is not upset.\u0026rdquo;\nLippard (2007-04-01):\nThat's a lot of name-calling, D.J. Do you have any actual evidence or argument to back it up?Do you actually think that Ken Ham is an honest or reliable person? Have you actually read anything he's written (like his book _The Lie: Evolution_)?\nMitch (2007-04-05):\nSorry, the churches deserve what it gets from Bill Maher and then some! Somewhere in our history some people began believe the bizarre is more reasonable than considering language as man has done with stories over the centuries. Thank God for genuine scholars like Dr. Barbara Thieirng who always handles her critics easily with logic. Her web site is www.pesherofchrist.infinitesoulutions.comNote: Pseudoscience does not progress. “. . .within a given topic, no progress is made. Little or no new information or uncovered. New theories are seldom proposed, and old concepts are rarely modified or discarded in light of new \"discoveries,\" since pseudoscience rarely makes new \"discoveries.\" The older the idea, the more respect it receives. . . (Reference:www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html) While religion typically doesn’t purvey itself to be a form of ‘science’ , at least by those who are reasonable, the way in which it perpetuates itself is none-the-less following Pseudoscientific principles. I ask the reader to ask him/herself a question. What topic or subject matter exists in which Man’s knowledge does not alter or change and/or grow in some way over time? The essential thrust of Dr Barbara Thiering’s research has been to show that the gospels themselves are supplying natural explanations of the “miracles”. The apparent miracles were deliberately composed for the “babes in Christ”. But each miracle story is actually recording a significant event in the career of Jesus, who was no more than a human figure, a great political leader in his time. Each \"miracle\" will contain a short form of the real history.Also, one may be invited to join the discussion forum:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qumran_origin/\nAnonymous (2007-04-05):\nDJ is absolutley correct. Bill Maher is nothing more than a quick-witted comedian, who will mock The Creator-God as well ridicule the lone source of morality in this world, just to entertain those unfortunate people who actually find Maher amusing.His actions are often dispicable.I do believe that Ken Ham has come to many scientific conclusions, supported by physical evidence, that make a logical argument for a widely unpopular scientific belief.But lets not be confused or tricked into thinking that the theory of evolution is undisputable, or that it isn't a belief system who's underlying principles require an enormous leap of faith.I urge all bloggers to pick up the book Total Truth, by Nancy Pearcy. It will open your eyes.\nLippard (2007-04-07):\nGreg:You say that \"Bill Maher is nothing more than a quick-witted comedian\"--does this mean that you know him personally, that you can make such a judgment?\"who will mock The Creator-God as well ridicule the lone source of morality in this world\"If the Christian God were really \"the lone source of morality in this world,\" I'd expect to see some moral difference between the behavior of Christians and non-Christians, but the only significant differences that I've seen reported have gone the opposite way (e.g., atheists have a lower divorce rate than Baptists).\"His actions are often dispicable [sic].\" Again, this would seem to be a conclusion based on personal knowledge--what are you referring to?\"I do believe that Ken Ham has come to many scientific conclusions, supported by physical evidence, that make a logical argument for a widely unpopular scientific belief.\" Well, if you believe this, then I think you're completely out of touch with reality. Ham is one of the worst of the young-earth creationists--he has done no scientific work, and constantly misrepresents science in order to argue for his views.\"But lets not be confused or tricked into thinking that the theory of evolution is undisputable, or that it isn't a belief system who's underlying principles require an enormous leap of faith.\" Can you briefly state for us what the theory of evolution is, and spell out some of these underlying principles that require an enormous leap of faith? In my experience, most people who make this claim don't understand evolution at all--their concept is a coloring book version that they've learned from the creationists who also don't understand evolution.\nFatFiles (2007-04-21):\nGreg said... \"DJ is absolutley correct. Bill Maher is nothing more than a quick-witted comedian, who will mock The Creator-God...\"You can't mock that which does not exist.\nUnknown (2007-04-25):\nA scientific theory is the best explanation we have for a natural process. Scientific theories, no matter how overwhelming the evidence, will never become laws. But evolution, observable in the lab and even used in developing many medications to fight mutating viruses, is not only a theory (as is gravity), it is FACT! A god hypothesis to answer questions is an ancient and ignorant practice that doesn't belong in our modern world.\nThe JUGList Team (2008-12-08):\n\"If the Christian God were really \"the lone source of morality in this world,\" I'd expect to see some moral difference between the behavior of Christians and non-Christians, but the only significant differences that I've seen reported have gone the opposite way (e.g., atheists have a lower divorce rate than Baptists).\"Of course you see that. Your'e talking about atheists who have grown up in a thoroughly Christianity soaked culture. This is the same logical falacy the God Out group makes. The reasoning is \"Look how nice these atheists are; see, atheism doesn't make people bad.\" Sure it doesn't; yet. Once the liberals have driven Christianity out of the culture, and have erased God's moral law from the minds of young people through the public education system, then we will see the atheistic inhuman monsters that atheism covets. Then will see the iron-fisted dictators who decree that to kill people is no different than mowing grass. Right now we have a government and judicial system that is based upon God's moral law. One day that will change. Then atheists won't be coerced into playing the \"nice guy\" game. Then we will see atheism as it is.I've seen it already. It isn't pretty.\nLippard (2008-12-08):\nJUGList Team: Your hypothesis appears to be falsified by the fact that the U.S. has higher rates of abortion, incarceration, homicide, poverty, teen pregnancy, etc. than far more secular countries in Europe.Your hypothesis also doesn't explain the data point I offered, that the Barna Group's data shows that U.S. atheists have a lower divorce rate than U.S. Baptists, nor that there are fewer atheists than Christians in U.S. prisons (per-capita).\nLippard (2008-12-08):\nBTW, JUGList team--if you're thinking of the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc. as your examples of atheist governments, you're making the mistake of confusing atheism with Marxism and communism.\nDez Crawford (2010-04-23):\nIf the museum is open to the public, why should any media commentator, comedian or otherwise, have to \u0026quot;sneak\u0026quot; in? Why can\u0026#39;t a commentator show up unannounced (aside from the obvious convenience of scheduling). Is the museum only open to people who agree with it? The whole thing smells like a rat to me, but then it\u0026#39;s non-science to begin with. I don\u0026#39;t understand the born-again desire to use psuedo-science to \u0026quot;prove\u0026quot; anything about God. Faith is faith. Believers will believe and bogus science doesn\u0026#39;t convince those who don\u0026#39;t.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/bill-maher-makes-fun-of-creationist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/16664438.htm\"\u003eKen Ham is not amused\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eChristian publisher Ken Ham said Maher showed up unannounced this week to videotape an interview with him at Ham\u0026rsquo;s Creation Museum, which is just south of Cincinnati. The $25 million facility, due to open in the spring, tells visitors that the earth is just a few thousand years old and that Adam and Eve lived among the dinosaurs.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHam said a camera crew arranged a Monday visit to the museum, but he was not told that it was connected with Maher, host of HBO\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Real Time with Bill Maher.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill Maher makes fun of creationist museum"},{"content":"The latest news from Kearny High School, via Kevin Canessa at the Observer, is that David Paszkiewicz has removed what he sees as the source of his problems from his classroom by switching classes with another teacher. Now, Debbie Vartan teaches Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s class and vice versa. Principal Alfred Somma confirms that Paszkiewicz requested the switch.\nApparently the ban on classroom recordings wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough\u0026ndash;Paszkiewicz must realize that Matthew LaClair has more credibility than he does with the mainstream media, and his presence in the classroom was cramping his style.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s hoping that there\u0026rsquo;s someone who was in Debbie Vartan\u0026rsquo;s class who\u0026rsquo;s got as much integrity and brains as Matthew LaClair, and who will keep the public informed of any further misrepresentations or Establishment clause violations in Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classroom.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/paszkiewicz-has-matthew-laclair-removed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest news from Kearny High School, \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/02/big-switch-at-khs.html\"\u003evia Kevin Canessa at the Observer\u003c/a\u003e, is that David Paszkiewicz has removed what he sees as the source of his problems from his classroom by switching classes with another teacher.  Now, Debbie Vartan teaches Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s class and vice versa.  Principal Alfred Somma confirms that Paszkiewicz requested the switch.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently the ban on classroom recordings wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough\u0026ndash;Paszkiewicz must realize that Matthew LaClair has more credibility than he does with the mainstream media, and his presence in the classroom was cramping his style.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s hoping that there\u0026rsquo;s someone who was in Debbie Vartan\u0026rsquo;s class who\u0026rsquo;s got as much integrity and brains as Matthew LaClair, and who will keep the public informed of any further misrepresentations or Establishment clause violations in Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classroom.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paszkiewicz has Matthew LaClair removed from his class"},{"content":"After Steve Jobs said that he\u0026rsquo;d prefer to have the iTunes store sell DRM-free music, but is forced into DRM by the music labels, Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music said that his company will have nothing to do with DRM-free music:\n\u0026ldquo;We advocate the continued use of DRM,\u0026rdquo; Bronfman said, adding that music deserves the same anti-piracy protections as software, TV broadcasts, video games and other forms of intellectual property. \u0026ldquo;We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers.\u0026quot;This quote appeared in an article reporting Warner\u0026rsquo;s dismal results:\nits fiscal first-quarter profit fell 74% because of fewer album releases and soft domestic and European sales. Its shares fell nearly 6%.\nThe New York-based recording company said net income for the period that ended Dec. 31 declined to $18 million, or 12 cents a share, from $69 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier. Revenue fell 11% to $928 million.The competition at EMI, however, feels differently:\nMusic label EMI Group is in talks to release a large portion of its music catalog for Web sales without technological protections against piracy that are included in most music bought over the Internet now, sources said on Thursday.\n\u0026hellip;\nOne source familiar with the matter said that EMI was in talks to release a large amount of its music in an unprotected MP3 format to various online retailers.EMI\u0026rsquo;s plans apparently include talks with Shawn Fanning\u0026rsquo;s SnoCap about releasing MP3-format music through MySpace.\nWhich company is more likely to still be in business under the same management ten years from now?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/warner-music-wed-rather-go-out-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1117\"\u003eSteve Jobs said that he\u0026rsquo;d prefer to have the iTunes store sell DRM-free music\u003c/a\u003e, but is forced into DRM by the music labels, Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music said that \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070209/wr_nm/emi_web_dc_2\"\u003ehis company will have nothing to do with DRM-free music\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;We advocate the continued use of DRM,\u0026rdquo; Bronfman said, adding that music deserves the same anti-piracy protections as software, TV broadcasts, video games and other forms of intellectual property. \u0026ldquo;We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis quote appeared in an article reporting Warner\u0026rsquo;s dismal results:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eits fiscal first-quarter profit fell 74% because of fewer album releases and soft domestic and European sales. Its shares fell nearly 6%.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe New York-based recording company said net income for the period that ended Dec. 31 declined to $18 million, or 12 cents a share, from $69 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier. Revenue fell 11% to $928 million.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe competition at \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070209/wr_nm/emi_web_dc_2\"\u003eEMI, however, feels differently\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMusic label EMI Group is in talks to release a large portion of its music catalog for Web sales without technological protections against piracy that are included in most music bought over the Internet now, sources said on Thursday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eOne source familiar with the matter said that EMI was in talks to release a large amount of its music in an unprotected MP3 format to various online retailers.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEMI\u0026rsquo;s plans apparently include talks with Shawn Fanning\u0026rsquo;s SnoCap about releasing MP3-format music through MySpace.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhich company is more likely to still be in business under the same management ten years from now?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Warner Music: we'd rather go out of business than give customers what they want"},{"content":"You are 100% atheist! Hooray you are an atheist with respect to most or all gods. Good work. Hope you aren't disbelieving in the wrong one...\nAm I An Atheist\nCreate a Quiz\nHistorical Comments nolandda (2007-06-11):\nI'm with Ed on this one. There really is a teapot orbiting the sun. There is one at my house doing it right now.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/100-atheist.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv style=\"border: 1px solid gray; padding: 6px; width: 320px; font-family: arial,verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: black; background-color: white;\"\u003e\u003cb style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; margin-bottom: 8px;\"\u003eYou are 100% atheist!\u003c/b\u003e \u003cdiv style=\"border: 1px solid black; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 200px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"background: red none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 100%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; font-size: 8px; line-height: 8px;\"\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp style=\"border: medium none ; margin: 10px; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; color: black;\"\u003eHooray you are an atheist with respect to most or all gods.  Good work.  Hope you aren't disbelieving in the wrong one...\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.gotoquiz.com/am_i_an_atheist\" style=\"color: blue;\"\u003eAm I An Atheist\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.gotoquiz.com/\" style=\"color: blue;\"\u003eCreate a Quiz\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"100% atheist"},{"content":"The Recording Industry Association of America has a web page arguing that we\u0026rsquo;re all getting a fantastic deal on compact discs because, if they had gone up in price along with the Consumer Price Index, they\u0026rsquo;d be over $33 each. As Ben Woods points out, by that same argument Texas Instruments calculators that cost $20 in the mid-1980s should have cost over $300.\nIn fact, the recording labels engaged in price fixing, by setting \u0026ldquo;minimum advertised pricing\u0026rdquo; on CD retailers, which caused prices to stop their downward trend in 1996\u0026ndash;and causing a decline in sales as prices increased.\nIf you want to sell more CDs, lower the price.\n(Via Techdirt.)\nUPDATE (February 9, 2007): This post at kuro5hin from January 2003 on \u0026ldquo;RIAA vs. MP3 vs. Adam Smith\u0026rdquo; addresses compact disc pricing and demand.\nUPDATE (February 10, 2007): And this post at Techdirt reports on a study that shows no measurable effect on CD sales from online downloads (as opposed to, say, CD prices).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/riaa-doesnt-understand-economics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Recording Industry Association of America has \u003ca href=\"http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/cost.asp\"\u003ea web page arguing that we\u0026rsquo;re all getting a fantastic deal on compact discs\u003c/a\u003e because, if they had gone up in price along with the Consumer Price Index, they\u0026rsquo;d be over $33 each.  As \u003ca href=\"http://www.whas11.com/news/woods/stories/WHAS11_OUTOFTHEWOODS_020207b.44a095ba.html\"\u003eBen Woods points out\u003c/a\u003e, by that same argument Texas Instruments calculators that cost $20 in the mid-1980s should have cost over $300.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn fact, \u003ca href=\"http://scriban.com/movabletype/2002_04_12.html\"\u003ethe recording labels engaged in price fixing\u003c/a\u003e, by setting \u0026ldquo;minimum advertised pricing\u0026rdquo; on CD retailers, which caused prices to stop their downward trend in 1996\u0026ndash;and causing a decline in sales as prices increased.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you want to sell more CDs, lower the price.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://techdirt.com/articles/20070205/011102.shtml\"\u003eTechdirt\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 9, 2007):  This\u003ca href=\"http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/29/12540/2722\"\u003e post at kuro5hin from January 2003 on \u0026ldquo;RIAA vs. MP3 vs. Adam Smith\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e addresses compact disc pricing and demand.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 10, 2007):  And this \u003ca href=\"http://techdirt.com/articles/20070209/082603.shtml\"\u003epost at Techdirt reports on a study that shows no measurable effect on CD sales from online downloads\u003c/a\u003e (as opposed to, say, CD prices).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The RIAA doesn't understand economics"},{"content":"Long or Short Capital reports that:\n[Conceptual] artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone… is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them.Given the duration of the ringtone, Keats should expect to get sued by the estate of John Cage for copyright infringement.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/selling-nothing-for-something.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong or Short Capital \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/selling-nothing-for-profit.htm\"\u003ereports that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e[Conceptual] artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone… is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them.\u003c/blockquote\u003eGiven the duration of the ringtone, Keats should \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2133426.stm\"\u003eexpect to get sued by the estate of John Cage for copyright infringement\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Selling nothing for something"},{"content":"Declan McCullagh at News.com reports that Sen. John McCain is preparing to hold a press conference with John Walsh of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Wanted and Miss America 2007 to announce a bill that will create a new mandate for Internet Service Providers to eavesdrop on all of their customers email and web traffic in search of child porn images. The act apparently requires ISPs to implement new technology to compare all images transmitted or received by their customers to a federal database of images (presumably via some one-way hash function, so that the database is not itself distributing child pornography), and to report any that are detected to John Walsh\u0026rsquo;s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that operates as a clearinghouse/proxy for federal and state law enforcement with Congressional mandate and federal funding.\nThe new bill is known as the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online or SAFE Act, and is not to be confused with the 2003 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured), the 1997 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom through Encryption), or the 1998 SAFE Act (Safety Advancement For Employees).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/mccain-proposes-unfunded-mandate-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDeclan McCullagh at News.com\u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Senator+to+propose+surveillance+of+illegal+images/2100-1028_3-6156976.html?tag=nefd.lede\"\u003e reports that Sen. John McCain is preparing to hold a press conference\u003c/a\u003e with John Walsh of America\u0026rsquo;s Most Wanted and Miss America 2007 to announce a bill that will create a new mandate for Internet Service Providers to eavesdrop on all of their customers email and web traffic in search of child porn images.  The act apparently requires ISPs to implement new technology to compare all images transmitted or received by their customers to a federal database of images (presumably via some one-way hash function, so that the database is not itself distributing child pornography), and to report any that are detected to John Walsh\u0026rsquo;s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that operates as a clearinghouse/proxy for federal and state law enforcement with Congressional mandate and federal funding.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe new bill is known as the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online or SAFE Act, and is not to be confused with the 2003 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured), the 1997 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom through Encryption), or the 1998 SAFE Act (Safety Advancement For Employees).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain proposes an unfunded mandate for ISPs"},{"content":"\nToday is our dog Shelby\u0026rsquo;s 10th birthday (that\u0026rsquo;s 70 to you and me). She\u0026rsquo;s a Queensland Heeler/Border Collie/Chow/who knows what.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-02-08):\nI'll wish her a very happy birthday, even though she doesn't like me much. :-)\nMichael (2007-02-08):\nShe's beautiful. Happy birthday Shelby. Peep into my blog on birthday e- cards for some beautiful e-greeting cards and other interesting info.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/happy-10th-birthday-shelby.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/PA040008.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/PA040008.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5028599740086001378\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday is our dog Shelby\u0026rsquo;s 10th birthday (that\u0026rsquo;s 70 to you and me).  She\u0026rsquo;s a Queensland Heeler/Border Collie/Chow/who knows what.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-08)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI'll wish her a very happy birthday, even though she doesn't like me much.\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMichael\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-08)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eShe's beautiful. Happy birthday Shelby. \u003cBR/\u003ePeep into my blog on \u003cA HREF=\"http://birthdayecards.blogspot.com\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003e birthday e- cards\u003c/A\u003e for some beautiful e-greeting cards and other interesting info.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy 10th birthday, Shelby"},{"content":"As the result of a lawsuit in Michigan based on its 2004 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that domestic partnership benefits in negotiated contracts with public employee\u0026rsquo;s unions are null and void.\nThe 2004 amendment was written by Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, who wrote in a pamphlet at the time that:\nProposal 2 is Only about marriage. Marriage is a union between husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their lives. This has to do with family, children and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is-for families today and future generations.The Alliance Defense Fund, which backed the similar constitutional amendment here in Arizona, has made similar statements.\nYet it was Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center who wrote the amendment for CfPM, and he was also behind the lawsuit that eliminated partnership benefits.\nClearly, these people cannot be trusted, and Arizona was wise to reject the similar constitutional amendment here.\nUPDATE (May 14, 2008): The Michigan Supreme Court has upheld the denial of domestic partnership benefits as a result of their 2004 constitutional amendment.\nUPDATE (November 16, 2008): Patrick Gillen was also lead counsel for the Dover Area School District in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which he defended the failed attempt to inject intelligent design into the public schools.\nHistorical Comments The Flamingo (2007-02-08):\nThe problem with allowing states to decide these things on their own is that it allows groups like this to have far more sway than they should. Unfortunately, until people in Washington are willing to stand up for the rights of people, this will continue to happen.\nTo me it shows a blatent disregard for the Constitution, and most likely for the founders who fought for it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/unmarried-partnership-benefits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the result of a lawsuit in Michigan based on its 2004 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the Michigan Court of Appeals \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/michigan_appeals_court_voids_p.php\"\u003ehas ruled that domestic partnership benefits in negotiated contracts with public employee\u0026rsquo;s unions are null and void\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe 2004 amendment was written by Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, who wrote in a pamphlet at the time that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eProposal 2 is \u003cem\u003eOnly\u003c/em\u003e about marriage. Marriage is a union between husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. \u003cem\u003eThis is not about rights or benefits\u003c/em\u003e or how people choose to live their lives. This has to do with family, children and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is-for families today and future generations.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe Alliance Defense Fund, which backed the similar constitutional amendment here in Arizona,\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/adf-lies-about-marriage-protection.html\"\u003e has made similar statements\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet it was Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center who wrote the amendment for CfPM, and he was also behind the lawsuit that eliminated partnership benefits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClearly, these people cannot be trusted, and \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003eArizona was wise to reject the similar constitutional amendment here\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 14, 2008): The Michigan Supreme Court \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1738291,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics\u0026amp;iref=werecommend\"\u003ehas upheld the denial of domestic partnership benefits as a result of their 2004 constitutional amendment\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 16, 2008): Patrick Gillen was also lead counsel for the Dover Area School District in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which he defended \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/ht/qt/3416_04.html\"\u003ethe failed attempt to inject intelligent design into the public schools\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Unmarried partnership benefits overturned in Michigan"},{"content":"Arizona R.E.S.C.U.E. had its annual awards picnic on Saturday at Kiwanis Park in Tempe, at which Karen Currie was named volunteer of the year. Kat and I received Cornerstone Awards for our volunteer work in dog fostering and caretaking roles, which was unexpected but gratifying. R.E.S.C.U.E. is always looking for additional volunteers to assist with a variety of activities for the support of both dogs and cats.\nNext Saturday, we\u0026rsquo;ll be attending the Arizona Humane Society\u0026rsquo;s annual donor recognition brunch. We\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to hearing what AHS has planned for the coming year. Where R.E.S.C.U.E. has been around for twelve years and operates on a tiny budget and emphasizes quality adoptions over quantity, AHS turns 50 this year, has a multi-million dollar annual budget, two impressive large facilities in Phoenix, and is able to perform a wide variety of services including mobile emergency animal medical services (which can be seen on television on Animal Planet\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Animal Planet Heroes Phoenix\u0026rdquo; series).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/animal-rescue-awards-and-recognition.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eArizona R.E.S.C.U.E.\u003c/a\u003e had its annual awards picnic on Saturday at Kiwanis Park in Tempe, at which Karen Currie was named volunteer of the year.  Kat and I received Cornerstone Awards for our volunteer work in dog fostering and caretaking roles, which was unexpected but gratifying.  R.E.S.C.U.E. is always looking for additional volunteers to assist with a variety of activities for the support of both dogs and cats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext Saturday, we\u0026rsquo;ll be attending the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/\"\u003eArizona Humane Society\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s annual donor recognition brunch.  We\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to hearing what AHS has planned for the coming year.  Where R.E.S.C.U.E. has been around for twelve years and operates on a tiny budget and emphasizes quality adoptions over quantity, AHS turns 50 this year, has a multi-million dollar annual budget, two impressive large facilities in Phoenix, and is able to perform a wide variety of services including \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/artimgr/publish/article_500.shtml\"\u003emobile emergency animal medical services\u003c/a\u003e (which can be seen on television on Animal Planet\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/artimgr/publish/article_500.shtml\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Animal Planet Heroes Phoenix\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e series).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Animal rescue awards and recognition events"},{"content":"Scientology critic Keith Henson was arrested on Friday evening in Prescott, Arizona. Henson had been a fugitive since his conviction in Riverside County, California on April 26, 2001, on charges of interfering with a religion for his picketing of Scientology in Hemet, California and online jokes about a \u0026ldquo;[Tom] Cruise missile.\u0026rdquo; Henson was sentenced to six months in prison, but he fled to Ontario, Canada, where he unsuccessfully sought asylum as a victim of religious persecution. His application for refugee status was rejected in 2004, and he voluntarily left the country in September 2005, and has apparently been living in Arizona.\nHenson\u0026rsquo;s arrest has also been covered by the 10 Zen Monkeys blog and Sentient Developments blog.\nUPDATE (February 7, 2007): Declan McCullagh has reported more details at News.com. Henson\u0026rsquo;s bond was raised from $7,500 to $500,000 at the request of prosecutors, then reduced back to $5,000. He was released from jail Monday night, and must appear for an extradition hearing on March 5. He is being defended by a local libertarian of my acquaintance, Michael Kielsky.\nUPDATE (February 9, 2007): For a deeper look at exactly what caused Keith Henson to be convicted on a misdemeanor charge, see this ex-Scientologist\u0026rsquo;s web page of postings from Henson and Scientology critic Diane Richardson. Diane Richardson is a meticulously accurate critic who has come under fire from fellow critics for negative posts about critics rather than restricting her focus to Scientology. While I\u0026rsquo;ve disagreed with her from time to time, when it comes to facts she is quite reliable. She is, as am I, a skeptic of claims of \u0026ldquo;cult mind control.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (March 27, 2008): I\u0026rsquo;m quite remiss in updating this. Keith Henson was extradited to Riverside, California, after his hearings were delayed into May 2007, where he was jailed on August 11. He was subsequently released from jail in September and is now a free man.\nUPDATE (July 7, 2008): Keith served four months of a 180-day (six-month) sentence, and is currently on probation. The Riverside County Superior Court website lists the terms of his probation:\nCase HEM014371 Defendant 547981 HENSON, KEITH\nProbation Type: SUMMARY Granted: 05/30/2007 Expire: 05/29/2010 SUMMARY PROBATION GRANTED FOR A PERIOD OF 36 MONTHS, UNDER THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS: 1) OBEY ALL LAWS, ORDINANCES, AND COURT ORDERS. 2) BE COMMITTED TO THE CUSTODY OF THE RIVERSIDE COUNTY SHERIFF FOR 180 DAYS; 3) PAY A FINE AND ASSESSMENT IN THE TOTAL OF $346.00, PAYABLE TO THE COURT, AS DIRECTED BY FINANCIAL SERVICES. 4) PAY VICTIM RESTITUTION, TO BE DETERMINED BY FINANCIAL SERVICES; ANY DISPUTE TO BE RESOLVED IN A COURT HEARING. PAY RESTITUTION (VICTIM) IN AN AMOUNT DETERMINED BY AND PAYABLE TO THE COURT, AS DIRECTED BY FINANCIAL SVCS; ANY DISPUTE TO BE RESOLVED IN A COURT HRG 5) NOT HAVE ANY NEGATIVE CONTACT WITH ANY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. 6) ADDED TERM: DONT KNOWINGLY COME WITHIN 1000FT OF ANY 7) ADDED TERM: DONT ANNOY OR HARASS ANY MEMBER OF CHURCH OF\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/keith-henson-arrested-in-prescott.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScientology critic \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson\"\u003eKeith Henson\u003c/a\u003e was arrested on Friday evening in Prescott, Arizona.  Henson had been a fugitive since \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43420,00.html\"\u003ehis conviction in Riverside County, California on April 26, 2001\u003c/a\u003e, on charges of interfering with a religion for his picketing of Scientology in Hemet, California and online jokes about a \u0026ldquo;[Tom] Cruise missile.\u0026rdquo;  Henson was sentenced to six months in prison, but he fled to Ontario, Canada, where he unsuccessfully sought asylum as a victim of religious persecution.  His application for refugee status was rejected in 2004, and he voluntarily left the country in September 2005, and has apparently been living in Arizona.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHenson\u0026rsquo;s arrest has also been covered by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/02/04/scientology-fugitive-arrested/\"\u003e10 Zen Monkeys blog\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com/2007/02/anti-scientology-activist-keith-henson.html\"\u003eSentient Developments blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 7, 2007):  Declan McCullagh has \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6156516.html\"\u003ereported more details at News.com\u003c/a\u003e.  Henson\u0026rsquo;s bond was raised from $7,500 to $500,000 at the request of prosecutors, then reduced back to $5,000.  He was released from jail Monday night, and must appear for an extradition hearing on March 5.  He is being defended by a local libertarian of my acquaintance, Michael Kielsky.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 9, 2007):  For a deeper look at exactly what caused Keith Henson to be convicted on a misdemeanor charge, see \u003ca href=\"http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/keith_henson.htm\"\u003ethis ex-Scientologist\u0026rsquo;s web page of postings from Henson and Scientology critic Diane Richardson\u003c/a\u003e.  Diane Richardson is a meticulously accurate critic who has come under fire from fellow critics for negative posts about critics rather than restricting her focus to Scientology.  While I\u0026rsquo;ve disagreed with her from time to time, when it comes to facts she is quite reliable.  She is, as am I, a skeptic of claims of \u0026ldquo;cult mind control.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 27, 2008):  I\u0026rsquo;m quite remiss in updating this.  Keith Henson was extradited to Riverside, California, after his hearings were delayed into May 2007, where he was jailed on August 11.  He was subsequently released from jail in September and is now a free man.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 7, 2008): Keith served four months of a 180-day (six-month) sentence, and is currently on probation.  The Riverside County Superior Court website lists the terms of his probation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;color:#660000;\"\u003e Case HEM014371 Defendant 547981 HENSON, KEITH\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable border=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e\u003cem\u003eProbation Type: \u003c/em\u003e\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eSUMMARY   \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e    \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e\u003cem\u003eGranted: \u003c/em\u003e\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e05/30/2007   \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e    \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e\u003cem\u003eExpire: \u003c/em\u003e\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e05/29/2010  \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e  \u003cbr /\u003e     \u003ctable border=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e     \u003ctd colspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eSUMMARY PROBATION GRANTED FOR A PERIOD OF 36 MONTHS, UNDER THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS:   \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e       \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e1)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eOBEY ALL LAWS, ORDINANCES, AND COURT ORDERS. \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e2)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eBE COMMITTED TO THE CUSTODY OF THE RIVERSIDE COUNTY SHERIFF FOR 180 DAYS; \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e3)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003ePAY A FINE AND ASSESSMENT IN THE TOTAL OF $346.00, PAYABLE TO THE COURT, AS DIRECTED BY FINANCIAL SERVICES. \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e4)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003ePAY VICTIM RESTITUTION, TO BE DETERMINED BY FINANCIAL SERVICES; ANY DISPUTE TO BE RESOLVED IN A COURT HEARING. PAY RESTITUTION (VICTIM) IN AN AMOUNT DETERMINED BY AND PAYABLE TO THE COURT, AS DIRECTED BY FINANCIAL SVCS; ANY DISPUTE TO BE RESOLVED IN A COURT HRG \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e5)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eNOT HAVE ANY NEGATIVE CONTACT WITH ANY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e6)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eADDED TERM: DONT KNOWINGLY COME WITHIN 1000FT OF ANY \u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003e7)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"20\"\u003e \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003csmall\u003eADDED TERM: DONT ANNOY OR HARASS ANY MEMBER OF CHURCH OF\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Keith Henson arrested in Prescott, Arizona"},{"content":"Connecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for \u0026ldquo;risk of injury to a minor or impairing the morals of a child\u0026rdquo; because a seventh-grade classroom computer was infected with malware. While browsing the web for information about hair styles, the browser hit a website that caused pop-ups ads for pornographic sites to pop up.\nBecause Amero\u0026rsquo;s attorney failed to raise the issue of malware, most of a defense expert witness\u0026rsquo;s testimony was excluded from presentation to the jury, which unanimously voted for conviction.\nThere are so many things wrong here:\n* The school district had let its filtering software expire, so the machine didn\u0026rsquo;t have adequate protection (and was likely unpatched for major vulnerabilities).\n* The police did an incompetent investigation, failing to check for malware.\n* The police testified, falsely, that Amero would have had to physically click on a pornographic link to get those sites to pop up.\n* Amero\u0026rsquo;s attorney did an incompetent job of defending her, by failing to bring up the critically important issue of malware.\n* And the law itself is absurd\u0026ndash;Amero shouldn\u0026rsquo;t get 40 years in prison even if she had intentionally shown pornography to seventh graders.\nLindsay Beyerstein has a good summary of the case at the Huffington Post, including links to the expert testimony that shows conclusively that malware, not Amero, was at fault. P.Z. Myers criticizes the \u0026ldquo;insane anti-porn hysteria\u0026rdquo; aspect of the case at Pharyngula.\nUPDATE (June 7, 2007): Julie Amero has been granted a retrial! She will get a new trial sometime in 2007.\nUPDATE (November 26, 2008): The state of Connecticut has finally decided to drop the charges against Amero.\nUPDATE (December 4, 2008): But Amero still loses her teacher\u0026rsquo;s license!\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2007-02-04):\nAt the Catholic parish I went to when I was growing up in Phoenix, Arizona (Saint Jerome's) many priests did much, much, much worse than what this teacher is accused of (not to mention what I believe actually happened.) I keep hoping this case is a joke or a hoax but unfortunately it appears to be all too real.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/schoolteacher-convicted-on-bogus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConnecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lindsay-beyerstein/connecticut-teacher-facin_b_39384.html\"\u003efaces up to 40 years in prison for \u0026ldquo;risk of injury to a minor or impairing the morals of a child\u0026rdquo; because a seventh-grade classroom computer was infected with malware\u003c/a\u003e.  While browsing the web for information about hair styles, the browser hit a website that caused pop-ups ads for pornographic sites to pop up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBecause Amero\u0026rsquo;s attorney failed to raise the issue of malware, most of a defense expert witness\u0026rsquo;s testimony was excluded from presentation to the jury, which unanimously voted for conviction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are so many things wrong here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* The school district had let its filtering software expire, so the machine didn\u0026rsquo;t have adequate protection (and was likely unpatched for major vulnerabilities).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* The police did an incompetent investigation, failing to check for malware.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* The police testified, falsely, that Amero would have had to physically click on a pornographic link to get those sites to pop up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* Amero\u0026rsquo;s attorney did an incompetent job of defending her, by failing to bring up the critically important issue of malware.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* And the law itself is absurd\u0026ndash;Amero shouldn\u0026rsquo;t get 40 years in prison even if she had intentionally shown pornography to seventh graders.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLindsay Beyerstein \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lindsay-beyerstein/connecticut-teacher-facin_b_39384.html\"\u003ehas a good summary of the case at the Huffington Post\u003c/a\u003e, including links to the expert testimony that shows conclusively that malware, not Amero, was at fault.  P.Z. Myers criticizes \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/julie_amero_convicted_are_you.php\"\u003ethe \u0026ldquo;insane anti-porn hysteria\u0026rdquo; aspect of the case at Pharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 7, 2007):  Julie Amero \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120613.html\"\u003ehas been granted a retrial\u003c/a\u003e!  She will get a new trial sometime in 2007.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 26, 2008): The state of Connecticut \u003ca href=\"http://techdirt.com/articles/20081123/1804192931.shtml\"\u003ehas finally decided to drop the charges against Amero\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 4, 2008): But \u003ca href=\"http://www.betanews.com/article/Teacher_must_still_surrender_license_in_bizarre_exposure_to_porn_suit/1227916161\"\u003eAmero still loses her teacher\u0026rsquo;s license\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Schoolteacher convicted on bogus charges due to malware"},{"content":"Wired looks at the law under which Peter Beredovsky was charged regarding the Boston Mooninite lights:\nWhoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.Note the requirement of intent, which should be impossible to prove\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s clear the intent was to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, not to cause panic. But this law also requires that the object being planted be a \u0026ldquo;hoax device,\u0026rdquo; which is defined as:\nFor the purposes of this section, the term “hoax device” shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term “infernal machine” shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words “hoax substance” shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both.That\u0026rsquo;s a nice term, \u0026ldquo;infernal machine\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it sounds like something demonic, perhaps appropriate for a state that still has blasphemy laws on the books. Here again, the law is clearly in Beredovsky\u0026rsquo;s favor. There is no way that a person would reasonably believe that the magnetic lights depicting Mooninite characters were \u0026ldquo;infernal machines\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;devices designed to ignite or explode.\nI predict the authorities will drop the charges rather than go through the further embarrassment of a trial.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/hoax-devices-and-infernal-machines.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWired looks at \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/02/did_peter_bered.html\"\u003ethe law under which Peter Beredovsky was charged regarding the Boston Mooninite lights\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mood\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/span\u003eNote the requirement of intent, which should be impossible to prove\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s clear the intent was to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, not to cause panic.  But this law also requires that the object being planted be a \u0026ldquo;hoax device,\u0026rdquo; which is defined as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mood\"\u003eFor the purposes of this section, the term “hoax device” shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term “infernal machine” shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words “hoax substance” shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mood\"\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a nice term, \u0026ldquo;infernal machine\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it sounds like something demonic, perhaps appropriate for \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/is_pharyngula_banned_in_boston.php\"\u003ea state that still has blasphemy laws on the books\u003c/a\u003e.  Here again, the law is clearly in Beredovsky\u0026rsquo;s favor.  There is no way that a person would reasonably believe that the magnetic lights depicting Mooninite characters were \u0026ldquo;infernal machines\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;devices designed to ignite or explode.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI predict the authorities will drop the charges rather than go through the further embarrassment of a trial.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hoax devices and infernal machines"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve occasionally remarked that I don\u0026rsquo;t care so much what people believe as I do how they act. The people I enjoy spending time with are not always those who share my beliefs, but are those who demonstrate integrity, respect, honesty, and other virtues. These virtues are associated with not just holding beliefs in the sense of a mere tendency to agree with a statement, but a deeper belief that actually has consequences for one\u0026rsquo;s behavior. When I was a born-again Christian, I heard many sermons to the effect that many Christians were Christian in name only, paying only lip service to the doctrines while not living their lives in accordance with them. Clearly, there are a lot of such people out there.\n(Read the rest, where I recycle an argument I originally wrote in a pamphlet called \u0026ldquo;Three Reductio Ad Absurdum Arguments Against Evangelical Christianity,\u0026rdquo; at the Secular Outpost.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/belief-behavior-and-bumper-sticker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve occasionally remarked that I don\u0026rsquo;t care so much what people believe as I do how they act. The people I enjoy spending time with are not always those who share my beliefs, but are those who demonstrate integrity, respect, honesty, and other virtues. These virtues are associated with not just holding beliefs in the sense of a mere tendency to agree with a statement, but a deeper belief that actually has consequences for one\u0026rsquo;s behavior. When I was a born-again Christian, I heard many sermons to the effect that many Christians were Christian in name only, paying only lip service to the doctrines while not living their lives in accordance with them. Clearly, there are a lot of such people out there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Read the rest, where I recycle an argument I originally wrote in a pamphlet called \u0026ldquo;Three Reductio Ad Absurdum Arguments Against Evangelical Christianity,\u0026rdquo; at \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/02/belief-behavior-and-bumper-sticker.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Belief, behavior, and bumper sticker religion"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier has commented on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force nonsense in Boston:\nNow the police look stupid, but they\u0026rsquo;re trying really not hard not to act humiliated:\nGovernor Deval Patrick told the Associated Press: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a hoax \u0026ndash; and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny.\u0026quot; Unfortunately, it is funny. What isn\u0026rsquo;t funny is now the Boston government is trying to prosecute the artist and the network instead of owning up to their own stupidity. The police now claim that they were \u0026ldquo;hoax\u0026rdquo; explosive devices. I don\u0026rsquo;t think you can claim they are hoax explosive devices unless they were intended to look like explosive devices, which merely a cursory look at any of them shows that they weren\u0026rsquo;t.\nBut it\u0026rsquo;s much easier to blame others than to admit that you were wrong:\n\u0026ldquo;It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme,\u0026rdquo; Mayor Thomas Menino said. \u0026ldquo;I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred.\u0026quot; And:\nRep. Ed Markey, a Boston-area congressman, said, \u0026ldquo;Whoever thought this up needs to find another job.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Scaring an entire region, tying up the T and major roadways, and forcing first responders to spend 12 hours chasing down trinkets instead of terrorists is marketing run amok,\u0026rdquo; Markey, a Democrat, said in a written statement. \u0026ldquo;It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt.\u0026quot;\nAnd:\n\u0026ldquo;It had a very sinister appearance,\u0026rdquo; [Massachusetts Attorney General Martha] Coakley told reporters. \u0026ldquo;It had a battery behind it, and wires.\u0026quot; For heavens sake, don\u0026rsquo;t let her inside a Radio Shack.\nAnd so has Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front:\nOh my God! Wires! And a battery! My question is: doesn\u0026rsquo;t the city of Boston have any bomb experts on staff? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s not crazy for a layman to see an unidentified electronic device and imagine it could be a bomb. But wouldn\u0026rsquo;t the first step be to call in a bomb squad to examine the device? And wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be obvious to anyone that knew anything about electronics that it\u0026rsquo;s highly unlikely that a terrorist would put dozens of gratuitous LEDs on the front of a bomb?\nTerrorism is a serious problem, and we should take prudent steps to to deal with it. But we also have to remember that terrorists\u0026rsquo; goal is to produce terror and get attention. When we\u0026rsquo;re this panicky, we do the terrorists\u0026rsquo; job for them. Yesterday Osama bin Laden succeeded in snarling traffic and producing an avalanche of news coverage without lifting a finger.\nAgreed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/more-comments-on-boston-lite-brite.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/nonterrorist_em.html\"\u003ehas commented on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force nonsense in Boston\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow the police look stupid, but they\u0026rsquo;re trying really not hard not to \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/01/suspicious_obje_1.html\"\u003eact humiliated\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cblockquote\u003eGovernor Deval Patrick told the Associated Press: \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a hoax \u0026ndash; and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003e  \u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, it is funny.  What isn\u0026rsquo;t funny is now the Boston government is trying to \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/01/artist_arrested.html\"\u003eprosecute\u003c/a\u003e the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_re_us/suspicious_devices\"\u003ethe network\u003c/a\u003e instead of owning up to their own stupidity. The police now claim that they were \u0026ldquo;hoax\u0026rdquo; explosive devices. I don\u0026rsquo;t think you can claim they are hoax explosive devices unless they were intended to look like explosive devices, which merely a cursory \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070201/480/ny20402010027\u0026g=events/us/013107bostondevices;_ylt=A0WTUdWaBcJFl7AAAypH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-\"\u003elook\u003c/a\u003e at any of them shows that they weren\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More comments on Boston lite brite fiasco"},{"content":"Rather than increase the Earned Income Tax Credit or reduce payroll taxes, Congress is moving forward with an increase in the minimum wage. Gary Becker and Richard Posner have written a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled \u0026ldquo;How To Make the Poor Poorer\u0026rdquo; which describes the likely consequences of this feel-good legislation:\nAlthough some workers benefit -- those who were paid the old minimum wage but are worth the new one to the employers -- others are pushed into unemployment, the underground economy or crime:\nThe losers are therefore likely to lose more than the gainers gain; they are also likely to be poorer people. And poor families are disproportionately hurt by the rise in the price of fast foods and other goods produced with low-skilled labor because these families spend a relatively large fraction of their incomes on such goods. Because most increases in the minimum wage have been slight, their effects are difficult to disentangle from other factors that affect employment:\nBut a 40 percent increase would be too large to have no employment effect; about a tenth of the work force makes less than $7.25 an hour. Even defenders of minimum-wage laws must believe that beyond some point a higher minimum would cause unemployment, otherwise why don't they propose $10, or $15, or an even higher figure? Good intentions don't make for good legislation.\nUPDATE (February 9, 2007): Glen Whitman writes about how the minimum wage debate is largely symbolic on both sides, though this time it could be different.\nUPDATE (September 6, 2007): I just came across this interesting post at the Coyote Blog about how minimum wage changes affect his specific business.\nUPDATE (October 10, 2007): Here's a nice summary of U.S. minimum wage worker statistics, including:\nAccording to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median annual income of a U.S. worker is $32,140. Federal minimum wage is currently $5.85 an hour, or about $11,500 per year — just above the poverty line. Of the 76.5 million people paid by the hour in the United States in 2006, 2.2% make minimum wage or less. Here are some generalizations we can make about minimum wage workers:\nMost minimum wage earners are young. While 2.2% of all hourly workers earn minimum wage or less, just 1.4% of workers over the age of 25 are paid at or below the Federal minimum wage. More than half (51.2%) of minimum wage workers are between 16 and 24 years old. Another 21.2% are between 25 and 34. Most minimum wage earners work in food service. Nearly two-thirds of those paid minimum wage (or less) are food service workers. Many of these people receive supplemental income in the form of tips, which the government does not track. Most minimum wage earners never attended college. Just 1.2% of college graduates are paid the minimum wage. If you only have a high school degree, you’re more likely (1.9%) to be paid minimum wage. Those without a high school degree are nearly three times as likely (3.7%) to earn minimum wage. 59.8% of all minimum wage workers have no advanced education. Finally, as you might expect, part-time workers are five times more likely to be paid the minimum wage than full-time workers. UPDATE (November 25, 2012): There has been an accumulation of evidence that a moderate minimum wage is a net benefit, improving both wages and employment in some cases\u0026nbsp;(reference to The Economist, Nov. 24, 2012, p. 82, \"Free exchange: The argument in the floor\").\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-02-03):\nEconomics Professor Russel Roberts, over at Cafe Hayek, recently posted a brief survey of the empirical evidence on the effects of the minimum wage. Like the story of the broken window, it\u0026rsquo;s a lot easier to point to the benefits of a minimum wage than to the costs, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make the costs any less real.\nAs Heinlein was fond of saying, TANSTAAFL\nKtisophilos (2009-06-01):\nBut what\u0026#39;s the excuse? Economists for decades have pointed out the obvious: price ceilings lead to shortages as surely as night follows day, and price floors lead to gluts — and a glut in labour is usually called unemployment. But politicians care about being elected, so they push what feels good not what is good. More people should take note of the economist Dr Thomas Sowell:\nQ: If you could knock a little something into the heads of young liberals, what would it be?\nA: I'd like to get them to think in terms of incentives and empirical evidence, and not in terms of goals and hopes. Over the years, I've reached the point where I can hardly bear to read the preamble of proposed legislation. I don't care what you think this thing is going to do. What I care about is: What are you rewarding, and what are you punishing? Because you're going to get more of what you're rewarding and less of what you're punishing.\nBTW Einzige, Frédéric's Bastist entire essay whence the broken window parable comes is available, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. It's tragic that politicians are pushing \u0026quot;economic stimulus spending\u0026quot; and protectionism that Bastiat demolished 160 years ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/minimum-wage-increase-how-to-make-poor.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRather than increase the Earned Income Tax Credit or reduce payroll taxes, Congress is moving forward with an increase in the minimum wage.  Gary Becker and Richard Posner have written a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e op-ed titled \u0026ldquo;How To Make the Poor Poorer\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?page=article\u0026amp;Article_ID=14117\"\u003ewhich describes the likely consequences of this feel-good legislation\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\nAlthough some workers benefit -- those who were paid the old minimum wage but are worth the new one to the employers -- others are pushed into unemployment, the underground economy or crime:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe losers are therefore likely to lose more than the gainers gain; they are also likely to be poorer people. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnd poor families are disproportionately hurt by the rise in the price of fast foods and other goods produced with low-skilled labor because these families spend a relatively large fraction of their incomes on such goods.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nBecause most increases in the minimum wage have been slight, their effects are difficult to disentangle from other factors that affect employment:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBut a 40 percent increase would be too large to have no employment effect; about a tenth of the work force makes less than $7.25 an hour. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEven defenders of minimum-wage laws must believe that beyond some point a higher minimum would cause unemployment, otherwise why don't they propose $10, or $15, or an even higher figure?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nGood intentions don't make for good legislation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (February 9, 2007):  Glen Whitman \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/02/minimum-wage-symbolism.html\"\u003ewrites about how the minimum wage debate is largely symbolic on both sides\u003c/a\u003e, though this time it could be different.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (September 6, 2007): I just came across this interesting post at the Coyote Blog about \u003ca href=\"http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/03/case_studies_on.html\"\u003ehow minimum wage changes affect his specific business\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (October 10, 2007):  Here's \u003ca href=\"http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/10/09/who-earns-the-minimum-wage/\"\u003ea nice summary of U.S. minimum wage worker statistics\u003c/a\u003e, including:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2006.htm\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2006.htm\"\u003eAccording to the U.S. Department of Labor\u003c/a\u003e, the median annual income of a U.S. worker is $32,140. Federal minimum wage is currently $5.85 an hour, or about $11,500 per year — just above the poverty line. Of the 76.5 million people paid by the hour in the United States in 2006, 2.2% make minimum wage or less. Here are some generalizations we can make about minimum wage workers:\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eMost minimum wage earners are young.\u003c/b\u003e While 2.2% of all hourly workers earn minimum wage or less, just 1.4% of workers over the age of 25 are paid at or below the Federal minimum wage. More than half (51.2%) of minimum wage workers are between 16 and 24 years old. Another 21.2% are between 25 and 34.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eMost minimum wage earners work in food service.\u003c/b\u003e Nearly two-thirds of those paid minimum wage (or less) are food service workers. Many of these people receive supplemental income in the form of tips, which the government does not track.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eMost minimum wage earners never attended college.\u003c/b\u003e Just 1.2% of college graduates are paid the minimum wage. If you only have a high school degree, you’re more likely (1.9%) to be paid minimum wage. Those without a high school degree are nearly three times as likely (3.7%) to earn minimum wage. 59.8% of all minimum wage workers have no advanced education.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFinally, as you might expect, part-time workers are five times more likely to be paid the minimum wage than full-time workers.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nUPDATE (November 25, 2012): There has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21567072-evidence-mounting-moderate-minimum-wages-can-do-more-good-harm\"\u003ean accumulation of evidence that a moderate minimum wage is a net benefit, improving both wages and employment in some cases\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;(reference to The Economist, Nov. 24, 2012, p. 82, \"Free exchange: The argument in the floor\").\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-02-03)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eEconomics Professor Russel Roberts, over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafehayek.com\"\u003eCafe Hayek\u003c/a\u003e, recently posted a \u003ca href=\"http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2007/01/the_empirical_l.html\"\u003ebrief survey of the empirical evidence\u003c/a\u003e on the effects of the minimum wage.\n\u003cp\u003eLike the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window\"\u003estory of the broken window\u003c/a\u003e, it\u0026rsquo;s a lot easier to point to the benefits of a minimum wage than to the costs, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make the costs any less real.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Minimum wage increase: how to make the poor poorer"},{"content":"The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that had its release postponed until after the election is now out, and it seems to indicate that Bush\u0026rsquo;s plan for a surge is doomed to failure:\n\u0026hellip;even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.The NIE also says that Iran and Syria are \u0026ldquo;not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq\u0026rsquo;s internal sectarian dynamics.\u0026quot;\nMore at TPM Muckraker.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/national-intelligence-estimate-on-iraq.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that had its release postponed until after the election is now out, and it seems to indicate that Bush\u0026rsquo;s plan for a surge is doomed to failure:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u0026hellip;even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003eThe NIE also says that Iran and Syria are \u0026ldquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003enot likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq\u0026rsquo;s internal sectarian dynamics.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002469.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq"},{"content":"Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza, who blames liberals for exercising their freedom in ways that cause Muslim radicals to hate and attack the U.S., gets a nice takedown at World-o-Crap.\nAlso see Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s commentaries on D\u0026rsquo;Souza from last year:\n\u0026ldquo;The Inanity of Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rdquo; (September 2006)\n\u0026ldquo;Walcott on D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s New Book\u0026rdquo; (October 2006)\n\u0026ldquo;More on D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s Ridiculous Book\u0026rdquo; (October 2006)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/nice-takedown-of-dinesh-dsouza.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza, who blames liberals for exercising their freedom in ways that cause Muslim radicals to hate and attack the U.S., \u003ca href=\"http://world-o-crap.com/blog/?p=364\"\u003egets a nice takedown at World-o-Crap\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s commentaries on D\u0026rsquo;Souza from last year:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/the_inanity_of_dinesh_dsouza.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Inanity of Dinesh D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 2006)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/walcott_on_dsouzas_new_book.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Walcott on D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s New Book\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 2006)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/more_on_dsouzas_ridiculous_boo.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;More on D\u0026rsquo;Souza\u0026rsquo;s Ridiculous Book\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 2006)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nice takedown of Dinesh D'Souza"},{"content":"Last week in class David Paszkiewicz was discussing Adolf Hitler and the \u0026ldquo;Big Lie\u0026rdquo; propaganda technique. His example of a \u0026ldquo;Big Lie\u0026rdquo; being spread today: global warming. In Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s backwards world, it\u0026rsquo;s not global warming denial that\u0026rsquo;s a big lie, it\u0026rsquo;s the scientific evidence supporting it.\nKearny High School has taken action regarding Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s continuing embarrassment of the school\u0026ndash;by banning classroom taping without permission of the instructor. (They have also planned mandatory training for teachers on \u0026ldquo;how to interpret the Constitution’s separation of church and state and how it should apply to classroom discussions,\u0026rdquo; as I reported last month.)\nThe New York Times has the story.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-02-02):\nDoes no one else take issue with the fact that this dumb motherfucker is still teaching?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/david-paszkiewicz-on-global-warming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast week in class David Paszkiewicz was discussing Adolf Hitler and the \u0026ldquo;Big Lie\u0026rdquo; propaganda technique.  His example of a \u0026ldquo;Big Lie\u0026rdquo; being spread today:  global warming.  In Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s backwards world, it\u0026rsquo;s not global warming denial that\u0026rsquo;s a big lie, it\u0026rsquo;s the scientific evidence supporting it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKearny High School has taken action regarding Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s continuing embarrassment of the school\u0026ndash;by banning classroom taping without permission of the instructor.  (They have also planned mandatory training for teachers on \u0026ldquo;how to interpret the Constitution’s separation of church and state and how it should apply to classroom discussions,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/kearny-board-of-education-releases-memo.html\"\u003eas I reported last month\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/nyregion/01tape.html?_r=2\u0026oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e has the story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Paszkiewicz on global warming; Kearny High School bans recording"},{"content":"Boston authorities have now escalated their response to the \u0026ldquo;Aqua Teen Hunger Force\u0026rdquo; movie publicity campaign, by arresting two of the men who put up magnetic lights showing the Mooninite characters Ignignokt and Err, on charges of \u0026ldquo;placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic.\u0026quot;\nBut this is absurd\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;hoax device\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they were lighted pictures of characters from a movie. It was not designed to look like anything remotely dangerous.\nMassachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said, \u0026ldquo;It had a very sinister appearance. \u0026hellip; It had a battery behind it, and wires.\u0026rdquo; So anything with a battery and wires (like, say, an iPod) is now a threatening, sinister appearing device?\nMassachusetts is trying to cover its stupidity with more stupidity. Nine other cities didn\u0026rsquo;t find this remotely threatening, and nobody saw the ones in Boston as threatening for the first 2-3 weeks they were up.\n(For photos and my initial report, see here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/boston-completely-losing-it-on-aqua.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBoston authorities\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/01/boston.bombscare/index.html\"\u003e have now escalated their response to the \u0026ldquo;Aqua Teen Hunger Force\u0026rdquo; movie publicity campaign\u003c/a\u003e, by arresting two of the men who put up magnetic lights showing the Mooninite characters Ignignokt and Err, on charges of \u0026ldquo;placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut this is absurd\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;hoax device\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they were lighted pictures of characters from a movie.  It was not designed to look like anything remotely dangerous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMassachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said, \u0026ldquo;It had a very sinister appearance. \u0026hellip; It had a battery behind it, and wires.\u0026rdquo;  So anything with a battery and wires (like, say, an iPod) is now a threatening, sinister appearing device?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMassachusetts is trying to cover its stupidity with more stupidity.  Nine other cities didn\u0026rsquo;t find this remotely threatening, and nobody saw the ones in Boston as threatening for the first 2-3 weeks they were up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(For photos and my initial report, see \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/marketing-campaign-for-aqua-teen-hunger.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boston completely losing it on Aqua Teen marketing campaign"},{"content":"Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson (R, District 18-Mesa) is no stranger to stupidity. She was one of a number of legislators who got in bed with the Church of Scientology last year, accepting invitations to Scientology events and sponsoring anti-psychiatric legislation pushed by Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) front organization.\nNow she\u0026rsquo;s behind SCR 1026, a proposal to amend the Arizona Constitution to prevent courts from the ability to address violations of the separation of church and state:\nHer proposal, SCR 1026, would specifically bar courts from being able to grant any injunctions or other legal relief if the question involves \u0026ldquo;the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government.\u0026rdquo; And that bar would remain in place whether the action were brought against the government as a whole or any state or local official.She goes on to demonstrate that she doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause:\nJohnson said she is unhappy that judges in other states have ruled that the words \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; have to come out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and that a monument of the Ten Commandments had to be removed from an Alabama courthouse. \u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t want that,\u0026rdquo; she said.\nJohnson said she believes her measure would also bar challenges to prayer in school.\nand:\nJohnson said it is not the function of the courts to decide when government officials have crossed the line between church and state. In fact, she said, there is no law separating the two. \u0026ldquo;In the (federal) Constitution, what it means is that there is to be no state religion,\u0026rdquo; she said.\n\u0026ldquo;But we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to have religion in everything \u0026ndash; the opportunity to have religion in everything,\u0026rdquo; Johnson continued. \u0026ldquo;I want religion in government, I want my government to have a faith-based perspective.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;The courts do their own thing,\u0026rdquo; Johnson said. \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re making up law out of how they feel about things. They\u0026rsquo;re not following the Constitution.\u0026quot;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear whether she even understands that she has no ability or authority to affect federal courts on this issue, though she could affect state courts. All of her comments are about federal issues, and she doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be cognizant of Article 2, Section 12 in the Arizona Constitution, which contains even stricter constraints on separation of church and state than in the U.S. Constitution:\nThe liberty of conscience secured by the provisions of this constitution shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state. No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment. No religious qualification shall be required for any public office or employment, nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror in consequence of his opinion on matters of religion, nor be questioned touching his religious belief in any court of justice to affect the weight of his testimony.(Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nUPDATE: The Zelph blog, an Arizona blog which focuses on Mormons and their influence on the state legislature, has an interview with Karen Johnson from New Times in 2005, and observes that she is such a big supporter of marriage that she\u0026rsquo;s been married five times.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/karen-johnson-trying-to-become-americas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona State Senator Karen Johnson (R, District 18-Mesa) is no stranger to stupidity.  She was \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003eone of a number of legislators who got in bed with the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e last year, accepting invitations to Scientology events and sponsoring anti-psychiatric legislation pushed by Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) front organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow she\u0026rsquo;s behind SCR 1026, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/166998\"\u003ea proposal to amend the Arizona Constitution to prevent courts from the ability to address violations of the separation of church and state\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHer proposal, SCR 1026, would specifically bar courts from being able to grant any injunctions or other legal relief if the question involves \u0026ldquo;the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government.\u0026rdquo; And that bar would remain in place whether the action were brought against the government as a whole or any state or local official.\u003c/blockquote\u003eShe goes on to demonstrate that she doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eJohnson said she is unhappy that judges in other states have ruled that the words \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; have to come out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and that a monument of the Ten Commandments had to be removed from an Alabama courthouse. \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t want that,\u0026rdquo; she said.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Karen Johnson trying to become America's dumbest legislator"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice flash game that requires you to screen airport passengers on the basis of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/02/nice-takedown-of-dinesh-dsouza.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.addictinggames.com/airportsecurity.html\"\u003ea nice flash game\u003c/a\u003e that requires you to screen airport passengers on the basis of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/airport_securit_6.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nice airport security game"},{"content":"\nThe strange objects that set off a scare in Boston and caused at least one of them to be blown up were magnetic lights set up by Turner Broadcasting to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. They had been in place for weeks before being mistaken for something dangerous and causing authorities to shut down bridges and access into the Charles River.\nAqua Teen Hunger Force is a usually entertaining short cartoon that appears on the Cartoon Network\u0026rsquo;s adult swim.\nThis isn\u0026rsquo;t the first time that a movie marketing campaign has resulted in this kind of hysterical over-reaction. In April of last year, a device that played the \u0026ldquo;Mission: Impossible\u0026rdquo; theme was placed into Los Angeles Times newspaper vending machines. One of the devices in Santa Clarita had exposed wires, was mistaken for a bomb, and the L.A. County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office arson squad blew it up.\nUPDATE: CNN has a photo of one of the Aqua Teen light boards, which depicts the Mooninite named Err (the smaller one), extending his middle finger. (Correction\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the bigger one, Ignignokt, in the picture above, though there are some of Err as well.)\nUPDATE (February 1, 2007): Here\u0026rsquo;s how an Associated Press story in the Arizona Republic described these devices: \u0026ldquo;The exact nature of the objects was not disclosed. But authorities said some looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them.\u0026quot;\nThat sounds a lot scarier than the reality, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it? It conveniently omits the fact that there\u0026rsquo;s a clear pattern of lights depicting a cartoon character. That article goes on to say \u0026ldquo;At least some of the devices resemble one of the villains on \u0026ldquo;Aqua Teen,\u0026rdquo; part of Cartoon Network\u0026rsquo;s late-night Adult Swim lineup.\u0026rdquo; Is there any evidence that any of them did not?\nNine of ten cities where these devices were put in place did not have a panicked overreaction, and the one that did waited two to three weeks before jumping into a panic. Had they been actual malicious devices, their reaction would have been too late.\nOne word of advice for future marketeers: put a label on your devices with a phone number that can be called so you can explain what you\u0026rsquo;re doing before the authorities blow up your equipment.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another picture of one of the devices in place.\nHistorical Comments RAD ACT PHOTO (2007-02-01):\nCall the Police… Or homeland Security…. Call Somebody!!!!. There is a Bar on the Corner of 5th and Lexington with a Neon Beer sign in the window. It could be a bomb. After all it is all lit up, and has wires sticking out of it, and it glows. It could be dangerous. I hope my sarcasm is extremely apparent\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/marketing-campaign-for-aqua-teen-hunger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/story.cartoon.adultswim.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/story.cartoon.adultswim.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070131/ts_nm/security_boston_dc_7\"\u003estrange objects that set off a scare in Boston\u003c/a\u003e and caused at least one of them to be blown up were magnetic lights set up by Turner Broadcasting to promote \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455326/\"\u003ethe Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie\u003c/a\u003e.  They had been in place for weeks before being mistaken for something dangerous and causing authorities to shut down bridges and access into the Charles River.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.adultswim.com/shows/athf/\"\u003eAqua Teen Hunger Force\u003c/a\u003e is a usually entertaining short cartoon that appears on the Cartoon Network\u0026rsquo;s adult swim.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis isn\u0026rsquo;t the first time that a movie marketing campaign has resulted in this kind of hysterical over-reaction.  In April of last year, a device that played the \u0026ldquo;Mission: Impossible\u0026rdquo; theme was placed into \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e newspaper vending machines.  One of the devices in Santa Clarita had exposed wires, was mistaken for a bomb, and the L.A. County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Office arson squad blew it up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html\"\u003eCNN has a photo of one of the Aqua Teen light boards\u003c/a\u003e, which depicts the Mooninite named Err (the smaller one), extending his middle finger.  (Correction\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the bigger one, Ignignokt, in the picture above, though there are some of Err as well.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 1, 2007):  Here\u0026rsquo;s how \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0131SuspiciousDevices31.html\"\u003ean Associated Press story in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e described these devices:  \u0026ldquo;The exact nature of the objects was not disclosed. But authorities said some looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat sounds a lot scarier than the reality, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?  It conveniently omits the fact that there\u0026rsquo;s a clear pattern of lights depicting a cartoon character.  That article goes on to say \u0026ldquo;At least some of the devices resemble one of the villains on \u0026ldquo;Aqua Teen,\u0026rdquo; part of Cartoon Network\u0026rsquo;s late-night Adult Swim lineup.\u0026rdquo;  Is there any evidence that any of them did not?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNine of ten cities where these devices were put in place did not have a panicked overreaction, and the one that did waited two to three weeks before jumping into a panic.  Had they been actual malicious devices, their reaction would have been too late.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne word of advice for future marketeers:  put a label on your devices with a phone number that can be called so you can explain what you\u0026rsquo;re doing before the authorities blow up your equipment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rekha6/365208141/\"\u003eanother picture of one of the devices in place\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force causes security scare"},{"content":"This video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage. Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like he actually contradicted himself to me.\nHat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-01-31):\nI wouldn't call his gay marriage comments contradictory, but I would call his first version a classic waffling.\ntom (2007-02-05):\n\"Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn't look like he actually contradicted himself to me.\" Without the context that is left out of the video, I am equally suspicious of his alleged self-contradiction on Iraq. If he was predicting that the victory over Hussein would be \u0026ldquo;easy\u0026rdquo;, and that the Iraqi regime would topple \u0026ldquo;quickly\u0026rdquo;, etc., he was absolutely right.\nThis is of course very different from saying that it would be easy to maintain order and security, and bring some sort of stable democracy to Iraq.\nI am fairly certain that McCain publicly held both of these two (mutually consistent) positions, but the video does nothing to help establish whether he is guitly of holding others.\ntom (2007-02-10):\nNot sure if anyone will be looking at these comments again, but in case they do, I thought I'd note my careless wording: by \"both\" of the \"mutually consistent\" positions, I of course meant:a. Victory over the Iraq regime would be easy.b. Creating stable democracy in Iraq would not.My wording regarding 'b.' indicated its own opposite.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/john-mccain-inconsistent-flip-flopper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage.  Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like he actually contradicted himself to me.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ioy90nF2anI\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/ioy90nF2anI\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003cA HREF = \"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/john_mccains_doubletalk.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John McCain the inconsistent flip-flopper"},{"content":"\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been two months since my last update of Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s Notices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales.\nJanuary\u0026rsquo;s 1623 notices didn\u0026rsquo;t beat the past 145 months\u0026rsquo; record high of 1738, like I initially thought they would. However, before you go shouting such fantastic news from the rooftops, you should know that 1623 is the second highest number.\nHere are the latest descriptive statistics:\nTrustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices Mean917.2Median811Mode746Standard Deviation296.35814Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum132994Count145\nSince I started compiling this data I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed a sharp uptick in real estate gurus trying to sell info on the latest real estate investment fad: the \u0026ldquo;Short Sale\u0026rdquo; - a technique designed to get around the problem that most of the defaulting mortgages behind these sad numbers are less than 2 years old, and thus are tied to properties with zero equity.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll probably write a little more about this technique at some point over at Die Eigenheit. I promise to update this post as necessary.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/update-on-maricopa-county-trustee-sale.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/images/jan07notice.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5026399681992063010\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"Click this image to view full size\" src=\"/images/jan07notice.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been two months since my \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/steep-cliff-phoenix-notices-of-trustees.html\"\u003elast update\u003c/a\u003e of Maricopa County\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/33/00808.htm\"\u003eNotices of Trustee\u0026rsquo;s Sales\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJanuary\u0026rsquo;s 1623 notices didn\u0026rsquo;t beat the past 145 months\u0026rsquo; record high of 1738, like I initially thought they would. However, before you go shouting such fantastic news from the rooftops, you should know that 1623 \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e the second highest number.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere are the latest descriptive statistics:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrustee\u0026rsquo;s Sale Notices\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMean\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e917.2\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMedian\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e811\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMode\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e746\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eStandard Deviation\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e296.35814\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eRange\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1256\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMinimum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e482\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eMaximum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e1738\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSum\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e132994\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eCount\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e145\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSince I started compiling this data I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed a sharp uptick in real estate gurus trying to sell info on the latest real estate investment fad: the \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=short+sale+foreclosure\"\u003eShort Sale\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; - a technique designed to get around the problem that most of the defaulting mortgages behind these sad numbers are less than 2 years old, and thus are tied to properties with zero equity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll probably write a little more about this technique at some point over at \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com\"\u003eDie Eigenheit\u003c/a\u003e. I promise to update this post as necessary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update on Maricopa County Trustee Sale Notices"},{"content":"Todd Underwood offers a fascinating look at how various natural disasters have caused outages in parts of the Internet. He begins with the recent earthquakes that damaged seven subsea cables in east Asia (the cables built by Global Crossing which now belong to Hutchison Global Communications and Asia Netcom were among the very few that were unaffected). He also looks at the effects on the network from the 2003 northeast U.S. power outages and Hurricane Katrina.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one vote for him to post an offered followup that shows which providers gained and lost transit customers and network capacity in the outages.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/shape-of-disaster-on-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTodd Underwood \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2007/01/the_shape_of_disaster_on_the_n.shtml\"\u003eoffers a fascinating look at how various natural disasters have caused outages in parts of the Internet\u003c/a\u003e.  He begins with the recent earthquakes that damaged seven subsea cables in east Asia (the cables built by Global Crossing which now belong to Hutchison Global Communications and Asia Netcom were among the very few that were unaffected).  He also looks at the effects on the network from the 2003 northeast U.S. power outages and Hurricane Katrina.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s one vote for him to post an offered followup that shows which providers gained and lost transit customers and network capacity in the outages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The shape of disaster on the net"},{"content":"Trent at The Simple Dollar writes about Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s bogus financial wizard, Robert Kiyosaki, and gets a bunch of loonies appearing in the comments, including Amway advocates.\nTrent gets it right, though probably doesn\u0026rsquo;t even go quite far enough in condemning Kiyosaki. I recommend John T. Reed\u0026rsquo;s overview of Kiyosaki, and Einzige\u0026rsquo;s extensive series on John Burley (who has occasionally teamed up with Kiyosaki).\nUPDATE (January 30, 2007): Mike Linksvayer has been prompted to comment on Kiyosaki, and his remarks are well worth reading.\nEinzige (2007-01-30):\nI agree that Trent seems to have taken on Kiyosaki with kid gloves.\nstarleads (2007-03-27):\nYou must have some reason to criticize anything . Would like to know what are your opinions on it rather than pointing to someone else's misinterpretations.\nLippard (2007-03-27):\nGagan: What \"misinterpretations\"? Be specific.I read _Rich Dad, Poor Dad_, and my opinion is similar to Trent's and John T. Reed's. Kiyosaki strikes me as a huckster who makes his money from selling his platitudes, not from doing what he claims others can do. It's very similar to how many of the wealthiest Amway distributors made their money--from selling \"tools\" to their downlines, rather than through the Amway business.\nLippard (2007-03-27):\nGagan, your blog points to this letter from Kiyosaki in response to Reed. That letter doesn't really respond to any of the specific criticisms Reed makes--for example, it doesn't respond to Reed's point about Kiyosaki's false tax claims, or that \"rich dad\" is a fictional character.\nEinzige (2007-03-27):\nSomething tells me that gagan won't be back.Based on his blog, he's the worst sort of true believer - on a par with my favorite über-Burleyist, Robyn Grinter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/simple-dollar-on-robert-kiyosaki.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTrent at The Simple Dollar \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/26/deconstructing-robert-kiyosaki/#comment-4425\"\u003ewrites about Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s bogus financial wizard, Robert Kiyosaki\u003c/a\u003e, and gets a bunch of loonies appearing in the comments, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/amway/\"\u003eAmway\u003c/a\u003e advocates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTrent gets it right, though probably doesn\u0026rsquo;t even go quite far enough in condemning Kiyosaki.  I recommend \u003ca href=\"http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html\"\u003eJohn T. Reed\u0026rsquo;s overview of Kiyosaki\u003c/a\u003e, and Einzige\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/07/index-to-my-john-burley-posts.html\"\u003eextensive series on John Burley\u003c/a\u003e (who has occasionally teamed up with Kiyosaki).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 30, 2007):  Mike Linksvayer has been prompted to comment on Kiyosaki, and \u003ca href=\"http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2007/01/29/kiyosaki/\"\u003ehis remarks are well worth reading\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Simple Dollar on Robert Kiyosaki"},{"content":"Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator points out that, rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay, each of whom played fast and loose with the rules on nonprofits, prominent Democrats in Congress are doing the same.\nNancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Evan Bayh are each officers in their family charities; their failure to disclose this makes them guilty of felonies. Pelosi calls her failure an \u0026ldquo;oversight\u0026rdquo; and promises to file amended annual disclosure statements.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/democrats-in-congress-guilty-of-abuse.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTrent Stamp of Charity Navigator points out that, rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay, each of whom played fast and loose with the rules on nonprofits, \u003ca href=\"http://trentstamp.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-boss-same-as-old-boss.html\"\u003eprominent Democrats in Congress are doing the same\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Evan Bayh are each officers in their family charities; their failure to disclose this makes them guilty of felonies.  Pelosi \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-28-pelosi_x.htm\"\u003ecalls her failure an \u0026ldquo;oversight\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and promises to file amended annual disclosure statements.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Democrats in Congress guilty of abuse of nonprofits"},{"content":"Today I received the following email from John Martin of Phoenix (whose email address begins with \u0026ldquo;satguys01\u0026rdquo;), who was apparently set off by my web page reporting my record of lawsuits against telemarketers, which he came across about 30 minutes earlier while doing a Google search for \u0026ldquo;arizona telemarketing attorney\u0026rdquo; (could he be in need of one?):\nDate: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST)\nFrom: John Martin\nSubject: Get a life\nYou are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you.\nJust like a scummy attorney that profits from filing\nfrivolous lawsuits. You raise the cost of doing business\nfor companies, raise taxes by overburdening the courts,\nand therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the\nmarketplace.\nWhat do you care? You made a dollar.\nTelemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The\nwheels would stop turning if there were no phones or business\nconducted on them.\nThe Federal and State do no call list is just another angle\nfor the Fed and State to make a buck.\nJust ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact\nand harass millions of citizens with automated messages and\ncall people on the so called do not call list? So its OK for\nthem to fund raise and get re elected (profit) using\nunscrupulous methods. But a legitimate business offering\nlegit goods or services is restricted.\nAre there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like\nany other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit\ngoods and services.\nDoes your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch\ncommercials on TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue\nthem? Junk Mail does more damage to the environment than\nanything else. But the US post service make money on it so\nthat will never stop.\nScreen you calls, that\u0026rsquo;s what caller id is for, hangup on\nautomated messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame\nlawsuits. Do you really suffer any damages by listening to a\nmessage or having a dialer hang up on you? Or are you just an\nother greedy opportunist like you EVIL telemarketing\ncounterparts just out for a quick buck?\nI sent the following reply:\nFrom: \u0026ldquo;James J. Lippard\u0026rdquo; [my email addr]\nTo: John Martin\nSubject: Re: Get a life\nIn-Reply-To: 400549.50780.qm@web62015.mail.re1.yahoo.com\nThe difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating\nthe law, and I\u0026rsquo;m not. None of my lawsuits have been\nfrivolous, which is why I have a 100% record of success.\nI\u0026rsquo;m only raising the cost of business for companies that are\nblatantly breaking the law; my impact on the courts is\nnegligible\u0026ndash;I always offer to settle out of court for the\nminimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I\nalways file in small claims which minimizes the paperwork.\nThe money I collect is specified as damages in the statutes,\nand serves not only to compensate me for the violations but\nto act as a deterrent to further violations. It has worked\npretty well\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t get many such calls any more.\nIf you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed.\nBut if you violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email\nto someone you don\u0026rsquo;t know? From your email address, I would\nguess that you\u0026rsquo;re in the satellite dish resale business,\nwhich is well known for its sleazy violations of\ntelemarketing law.\nAre you a regular violator of the TCPA, John?\nBTW, I have a nice life. What kind of life do you have that\nyou seek enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?For the record, I don\u0026rsquo;t watch television commercials (thanks, TiVo!) and I\u0026rsquo;m also very opposed to spam (and much of my professional life in the Internet industry has been devoted to combatting it). We also don\u0026rsquo;t go to see movies in the theater anymore except on rare occasion; we rent DVDs. I\u0026rsquo;m an advocate of permission-based marketing to individuals, not indiscriminate broadcast advertising.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/hate-mail-from-defender-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday I received the following email from John Martin of Phoenix (whose email address begins with \u0026ldquo;satguys01\u0026rdquo;), who was apparently set off by \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/lawsuits.html\"\u003emy web page reporting my record of lawsuits against telemarketers\u003c/a\u003e, which he came across about 30 minutes earlier while doing a Google search for \u0026ldquo;arizona telemarketing attorney\u0026rdquo; (could he be in need of one?):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003eDate: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST)\u003cbr /\u003eFrom: John Martin\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Get a life\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you.\u003cbr /\u003eJust like a scummy attorney that profits from filing\u003cbr /\u003efrivolous lawsuits. You raise the cost of doing business\u003cbr /\u003efor companies, raise taxes by overburdening the courts,\u003cbr /\u003eand therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the\u003cbr /\u003emarketplace.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat do you care? You made a dollar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTelemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The\u003cbr /\u003ewheels would stop turning if there were no phones or business\u003cbr /\u003econducted on them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Federal and State do no call list is just another angle\u003cbr /\u003efor the Fed and State to make a buck.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact\u003cbr /\u003eand harass millions of citizens with automated messages and\u003cbr /\u003ecall people on the so called do not call list? So its OK for\u003cbr /\u003ethem to fund raise and get re elected (profit) using\u003cbr /\u003eunscrupulous methods. But a legitimate business offering\u003cbr /\u003elegit goods or services is restricted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like\u003cbr /\u003eany other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit\u003cbr /\u003egoods and services.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoes your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch\u003cbr /\u003ecommercials on TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue\u003cbr /\u003ethem? Junk Mail does more damage to the environment than\u003cbr /\u003eanything else. But the US post service make money on it so\u003cbr /\u003ethat will never stop.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScreen you calls, that\u0026rsquo;s what caller id is for, hangup on\u003cbr /\u003eautomated messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame\u003cbr /\u003elawsuits.  Do you really suffer any damages by listening to a\u003cbr /\u003emessage or having a dialer hang up on you? Or are you just an\u003cbr /\u003eother greedy opportunist like you EVIL telemarketing\u003cbr /\u003ecounterparts just out for a quick buck?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/pre\u003eI sent the following reply:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003eFrom: \u0026ldquo;James J. Lippard\u0026rdquo; [my email addr]\u003cbr /\u003eTo: John Martin\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Re: Get a life\u003cbr /\u003eIn-Reply-To: \u003ca href=\"mailto:400549.50780.qm@web62015.mail.re1.yahoo.com\"\u003e400549.50780.qm@web62015.mail.re1.yahoo.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating\u003cbr /\u003ethe law, and I\u0026rsquo;m not.  None of my lawsuits have been\u003cbr /\u003efrivolous, which is why I have a 100% record of success.\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m only raising the cost of business for companies that are\u003cbr /\u003eblatantly breaking the law; my impact on the courts is\u003cbr /\u003enegligible\u0026ndash;I always offer to settle out of court for the\u003cbr /\u003eminimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I\u003cbr /\u003ealways file in small claims which minimizes the paperwork.\u003cbr /\u003eThe money I collect is specified as damages in the statutes,\u003cbr /\u003eand serves not only to compensate me for the violations but\u003cbr /\u003eto act as a deterrent to further violations.  It has worked\u003cbr /\u003epretty well\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t get many such calls any more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed.\u003cbr /\u003eBut if you violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email\u003cbr /\u003eto someone you don\u0026rsquo;t know?  From your email address, I would\u003cbr /\u003eguess that you\u0026rsquo;re in the satellite dish resale business,\u003cbr /\u003ewhich is well known for its sleazy violations of\u003cbr /\u003etelemarketing law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre you a regular violator of the TCPA, John?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, I have a nice life.  What kind of life do you have that\u003cbr /\u003eyou seek enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?\u003c/pre\u003eFor the record, I don\u0026rsquo;t watch television commercials (thanks, TiVo!) and I\u0026rsquo;m also very opposed to spam (and much of my professional life in the Internet industry has been devoted to combatting it).  We also don\u0026rsquo;t go to see movies in the theater anymore except on rare occasion; we rent DVDs.  I\u0026rsquo;m an advocate of permission-based marketing to individuals, not indiscriminate broadcast advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hate mail from a defender of telemarketing"},{"content":"Arizona State Representative Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) was one of several legislators who accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology and helped promote bills for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights.\nShe is also on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute, publisher of Environmental \u0026amp; Climate News, a publication that is still, as of its February 2007 issue, arguing that global warming is mythical. This issue contains articles such as \u0026ldquo;Greenland Coldest in 60 Years\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Little Ice Age May Return Soon,\u0026rdquo; and contains a set of graphs of global satellite temperatures on p. 7 that attributes 1998\u0026rsquo;s high temperatures to El Nino. The Heartland Institute\u0026rsquo;s past articles have included titles like \u0026ldquo;Eight Reasons Why \u0026lsquo;Global Warming\u0026rsquo; is a Scam\u0026rdquo; (2003), \u0026ldquo;National Geographic Promotes Global Warming Myths\u0026rdquo; (2004), and \u0026ldquo;Michael Crichton is Right!\u0026quot; (2005)\n(Rep. Gorman\u0026rsquo;s Blogger profile lists \u0026ldquo;Anthem Shrugged\u0026rdquo; as one of her favorite books. Ayn Rand wrote books called Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, but it appears Rep. Gorman has combined them. She has apparently been too busy to blog much; she posted twice in January 2006 and has only posted again this month.)\nLaika (2007-01-28):\nYou missed that she is listed as hailing from Anthem, Arizona, so that's probably where she picked up \"Anthem\", having probably just typed it seconds before. Not sure what relevance her liking of Ayn Rand would have to the rest of this post, though, except that Objectivism seems to be a cult as well\u0026hellip;\nLippard (2007-01-28):\nMark: I did notice that (I mentioned that she's in legislative district 6, Anthem), but you're right, it could be that she had Anthem on the brain when she wrote the title. I\u0026rsquo;m also in agreement that Objectivism seems to be a cult.\nAnonymous (2007-02-08):\nSo this state legislator supported Scientology and also supports global warming denial. Okay.... so what?Any legislator anywhere supports all kinds of things, and often self-contradictory ones. So what?And yes, ok, Ayn Rand. So what?The whole post seems to stack non-sequiturs on top of non-sequiturs and without a punchline. One might just as easily posit that a legislator who supported a pro-Catholic bill also supports gun control. So what?It's easy for conspiracy-minded sorts to collect and point out disparate points of information and tie them together, but it helps to have a logical reason to do so.http://stabledatum.blogspot.com/\nLippard (2007-02-08):\nThe unstated punchline is something like \"Hey, look, another idiot in the Arizona legislature.\"I thought it was obvious. From now on I'll try to be more clear by including that point in the subject, as I did for Sen. Karen Johnson.\nLippard (2007-02-08):\nAh, Wax-Q, I just looked at your blog and I see why you didn't get it. You think L. Ron Hubbard is a genius.It must be hard being a Scientologist in Indianapolis.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/state-legislator-who-supported.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona State Representative Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) was \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003eone of several legislators who accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology and helped promote bills for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe is \u003ca href=\"http://pamelagorman.blogspot.com/2005/10/representative-gorman-joins-heartland.html\"\u003ealso on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute\u003c/a\u003e, publisher of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEnvironmental \u0026amp; Climate News\u003c/span\u003e, a publication that is still, as of its February 2007 issue, arguing that global warming is mythical.  This issue contains articles such as \u0026ldquo;Greenland Coldest in 60 Years\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Little Ice Age May Return Soon,\u0026rdquo; and contains a set of graphs of global satellite temperatures on p. 7 that attributes 1998\u0026rsquo;s high temperatures to El Nino.  The Heartland Institute\u0026rsquo;s past articles have included titles like \u003ca href=\"http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11548\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Eight Reasons Why \u0026lsquo;Global Warming\u0026rsquo; is a Scam\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (2003), \u003ca href=\"http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15726\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;National Geographic Promotes Global Warming Myths\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (2004), and \u003ca href=\"http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16260\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Michael Crichton is Right!\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (2005)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Rep. Gorman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/profile/6973881\"\u003eBlogger profile\u003c/a\u003e lists \u0026ldquo;Anthem Shrugged\u0026rdquo; as one of her favorite books.  Ayn Rand wrote books called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAnthem\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAtlas Shrugged\u003c/span\u003e, but it appears Rep. Gorman has combined them.  She has apparently been too busy to blog much; she posted twice in January 2006 and has only posted again this month.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"State legislator who supported Scientology also supports global warming denial"},{"content":"The YesButNoButYes blog has a list of the top ten Christian tourist traps, with photos. Their list includes the Institute for Creation Research\u0026rsquo;s museum, but not Hovind\u0026rsquo;s Dinosaur Adventure Land. My favorites on the list (based on the photos) are Golgotha Mini Golf in Cave City, Kentucky (I especially like the propane tank that appears to be connected to Jesus at the 18th Hole\u0026ndash;does he also function as a space heater?) and the decaying Holy Land USA in Waterbury, Connecticut. I\u0026rsquo;ve not visited any of the places on the YesButNoButYes list, though I\u0026rsquo;ve visited similar places, such as the Garden of Gethsemane park in Tucson (a blatant establishment clause and Arizona Constitution violation on municipal property at 602 W. Congress).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/top-ten-christian-tourist-traps.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe YesButNoButYes blog \u003ca href=\"http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2006/12/top_10_christia_1.html\"\u003ehas a list of the top ten Christian tourist traps, with photos\u003c/a\u003e.  Their list includes the Institute for Creation Research\u0026rsquo;s museum, but not Hovind\u0026rsquo;s Dinosaur Adventure Land.   My favorites on the list (based on the photos) are Golgotha Mini Golf in Cave City, Kentucky (I especially like the propane tank that appears to be connected to Jesus at the 18th Hole\u0026ndash;does he also function as a space heater?) and the decaying Holy Land USA in Waterbury, Connecticut.  I\u0026rsquo;ve not visited any of the places on the YesButNoButYes list, though I\u0026rsquo;ve visited similar places, such as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azstarnet.com/clips/felixluceropark.html\"\u003eGarden of Gethsemane park in Tucson\u003c/a\u003e (a blatant establishment clause and Arizona Constitution violation on municipal property at 602 W. Congress).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Top Ten Christian Tourist Traps"},{"content":"These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a \u0026ldquo;Christian-based telephone company,\u0026rdquo; with a \u0026ldquo;Faith, Family, and Freedom\u0026rdquo; campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage.\nMirman really gets them going\u0026ndash;they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example.\nThese calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal.\nUnited American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from \u0026ldquo;Faith, Family, and Freedom,\u0026rdquo; a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma\u0026rsquo;s Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s entry on United American Technologies.\n(Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.)\nAlisonM (2007-01-28):\nFunny, though, that your calls would still be carried by physical facilities already owned by AT\u0026T and MCI, all you're doing is adding another layer of billing. Then this company pays a portion of its revenue to the aforementioned companies - how does it then prevent that money from being used to support gay marriage? Hmmm. . .\nLippard (2007-01-28):\nAlison: That\u0026rsquo;s not necessarily correct. UAT may have its own network, or it may operate as a reseller for another long distance carrier\u0026ndash;they are most likely not reselling long distance for the carriers they are criticizing.\nNow that AT\u0026amp;T includes SBC and BellSouth, the local portion of the connection for SBC and BellSouth territories is under AT\u0026amp;T and they would continue to get some revenue in those regions, but not the bulk of the long distance charges. (Likewise for Verizon and MCI.)\nBut even if UAT was directly reselling long distance for one of these providers, it would still reduce the dollars going to them, since UAT would charge retail prices to the consumer but only pay wholesale carrier rates to their carriers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/telecoms-behind-gay-marriage-and-uat.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThese recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman \u003ca href=\"http://www.eugenemirman.com/showandtell.html\"\u003ereceived calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage\u003c/a\u003e.  United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a \u0026ldquo;Christian-based telephone company,\u0026rdquo; with a \u0026ldquo;Faith, Family, and Freedom\u0026rdquo; campaign.  Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMirman really gets them going\u0026ndash;they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT.  Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnited American Technologies is based in Oklahoma.  The calls came from \u0026ldquo;Faith, Family, and Freedom,\u0026rdquo; a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now \u003ca href=\"http://www.okhouse.gov/okhousemedia/pressroom.aspx?NewsID=922\"\u003eOklahoma\u0026rsquo;s Speaker of the House\u003c/a\u003e.  There are more details about these calls in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_American_Technologies\"\u003eWikipedia\u0026rsquo;s entry on United American Technologies\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.twopercentco.com/rants/archives/popups/popup_151.html\"\u003eThe Two Percent Company\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Telecoms behind gay marriage--and UAT can help stop them"},{"content":"Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey:\nStan Schwartz also received some creative directions:\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/bad-google-directions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnson Kennedy got \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/40992254@N00/367970482/\"\u003ethis wonderful set of directions\u003c/a\u003e on how to get to a location in New Jersey:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/367970482_63f724e448.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/367970482_63f724e448.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eStan Schwartz \u003ca href=\"http://www.1134.org/blog/2006/12/30/wtf/\"\u003ealso received some creative directions\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.1134.org/blog/images2006/wtf.tn.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.1134.org/blog/images2006/wtf.tn.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad Google directions"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve got a couple of websites of hierarchically organized links that I\u0026rsquo;ve maintained for quite some time, though I haven\u0026rsquo;t really worked on them much lately. I currently get more spam link submissions than genuine link submissions to each, so I\u0026rsquo;d like to request contributions of legitimate entries.\nOne is my skeptical links site, which is fairly extensive, especially on a few topics such as Scientology, creationism, the websites of skeptical groups, and critiques of organized skepticism.\nThe other is my security links site, which is much less extensive, but still has some useful links, mostly on security and hacking tools and security standards.\nContributions are welcome\u0026ndash;just go to the appropriate area and click the \u0026ldquo;add a site\u0026rdquo; link at the top of the page.\nHistorical Comments nolandda (2007-01-24):\nCSICOP keeps a list of skeptical organizations. http://www.csicop.org/resources/organizations.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/skeptical-information-and-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve got a couple of websites of hierarchically organized links that I\u0026rsquo;ve maintained for quite some time, though I haven\u0026rsquo;t really worked on them much lately.  I currently get more spam link submissions than genuine link submissions to each, so I\u0026rsquo;d like to request contributions of legitimate entries.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne is my \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/\"\u003eskeptical links site\u003c/a\u003e, which is fairly extensive, especially on a few topics such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Cults_and_Religions/Scientology/\"\u003eScientology\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Creationism_and_Evolution/\"\u003ecreationism\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Organizations/\"\u003ewebsites of skeptical groups\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Critiques/\"\u003ecritiques of organized skepticism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe other is my \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/security/\"\u003esecurity links site\u003c/a\u003e, which is much less extensive, but still has some useful links, mostly on \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/security/Security_and_Hacking_Tools/\"\u003esecurity and hacking tools\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/security/Security_Policies_and_Standards/\"\u003esecurity standards\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eContributions are welcome\u0026ndash;just go to the appropriate area and click the \u0026ldquo;add a site\u0026rdquo; link at the top of the page.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptical information and security information links sites"},{"content":"Chirag Mehta has created \u0026ldquo;tag clouds\u0026rdquo; for a bunch of presidential speeches (including State of the Union addresses), with a slider so you can see how the topics have changed over time.\nChris Mooney points out that George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s State of the Union addresses have used \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rdquo; and synonyms twelve times, and \u0026ldquo;climate change\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;global warming\u0026rdquo; zero times.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/presidential-speeches-tag-cloud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChirag Mehta \u003ca href=\"http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/\"\u003ehas created \u0026ldquo;tag clouds\u0026rdquo; for a bunch of presidential speeches\u003c/a\u003e (including State of the Union addresses), with a slider so you can see how the topics have changed over time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChris Mooney \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/01/god_the_sotu_and_climate_chang.php\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e that George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s State of the Union addresses have used \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rdquo; and synonyms twelve times, and \u0026ldquo;climate change\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;global warming\u0026rdquo; zero times.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Presidential speeches tag cloud"},{"content":"The Kearny Board of Education released a memo and statement last week regarding \u0026ldquo;the expression of personal religious beliefs by professional staff in the classroom.\u0026quot; They have indicated that they will be hiring an outside professional to provide training to its teachers about \u0026ldquo;Constitutional parameters\u0026rdquo; and will institute a formal policy \u0026ldquo;expressing its strong commitment to the principle that personal religious beliefs of our institutional staff have no place in our classrooms.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/kearny-board-of-education-releases-memo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Kearny Board of Education \u003ca href=\"http://www.theobserver.com/currentissue/kboe.shtml\"\u003ereleased a memo and statement last week\u003c/a\u003e regarding \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"text0\"\u003ethe expression of                  personal religious beliefs by professional staff in the                  classroom.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e  They have indicated that they will be hiring an outside professional to provide training to its teachers about \u0026ldquo;Constitutional parameters\u0026rdquo; and will institute a formal policy \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"text0\"\u003eexpressing its strong commitment to the principle                  that personal religious beliefs of our institutional staff have                  no place in our classrooms.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kearny Board of Education releases memo and statement"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers pointed out the beginnings of a backlash against \u0026ldquo;the new atheism\u0026rdquo; in the Wall Street Journal on January 5, now on January 16 Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis has joined in:\nWe’ve warned you about them before on our website—but now they’re on a much more aggressive march all across America. No longer are they just staying in their classrooms or writing books and articles in the comfort of their offices. They are “the new atheists,” and they are aggressively going after your children, your liberties, and your faith!\n\u0026hellip;\nThese atheists are not just publicity seekers. They are very serious about their mission. Dawkins, from England, was recently crusading across America to proclaim his atheism to newspapers, websites, and at public meetings.\nAccording to Ham, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are coming for your children, and the best way to stop them is to give money to AiG so that they can complete their museum.\nHistorical Comments mizlee (2007-02-16):\nI am an atheist, and have always been one, and if I can keep a child from being indoctrinated into the viciousness and worthlessness of religion, I will consider my life well lived.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/fear-new-atheists.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/the_backlash_is_winding_up.php\"\u003epointed out the beginnings of a backlash against \u0026ldquo;the new atheism\u0026rdquo; in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e on January 5\u003c/a\u003e, now on January 16 Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2007/0116letter.asp\"\u003ehas joined in\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWe’ve  warned you about them \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/1102dawkins.asp\"\u003ebefore\u003c/a\u003e on our website—but now they’re on a much more aggressive march all across America. No longer are they just staying in their classrooms or writing books and articles in the comfort of their offices. They are “the new atheists,” and they are aggressively going after your children, your liberties, and your faith!\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e These atheists are  not just publicity seekers. They are \u003ci\u003every\u003c/i\u003e serious about their mission. Dawkins, from England, was recently crusading across America to proclaim his atheism to newspapers, websites, and at public meetings.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fear the \"new atheists\""},{"content":"Anderson Cooper gives Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s bogus claims the kind of media treatment they deserve.\nAt about the midpoint, Cooper gives statistics for U.S. belief in psychics: 13% of the population, 8% of men and 18% of women. Those who\u0026rsquo;ve consulted a psychic, by region: South: 8%, West: 13%, Midwest: 11%, East: 19%. The latter numbers probably reflect Christianity acting as a deterrent to consulting a psychic.\n(Hat tip to Respectful Insolence.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/anderson-cooper-on-sylvia-browne.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnderson Cooper gives Sylvia Browne\u0026rsquo;s bogus claims the kind of media treatment they deserve.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/dw_7sMKR8jo\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/dw_7sMKR8jo\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt about the midpoint, Cooper gives statistics for U.S. belief in psychics:  13% of the population, 8% of men and 18% of women.  Those who\u0026rsquo;ve consulted a psychic, by region:  South: 8%, West: 13%, Midwest: 11%, East: 19%.  The latter numbers probably reflect Christianity acting as a deterrent to consulting a psychic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/01/sylvia_browne_slapped_down_over_her_erro.php\"\u003eRespectful Insolence\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anderson Cooper on Sylvia Browne"},{"content":"During my long plane flights this week, I used some of my time to catch up on reading back issues of The Economist. Here were a few of the stories I found particularly interesting in the January 6-12, 2007 issue:\n\u0026ldquo;Medicine at the Top of the World\u0026rdquo; (p. 65):\nLYING in an intensive-care ward is a world away from climbing Everest, but a connection will be drawn this spring when 45 scientists and 208 volunteers tackle the mountain to bring back information about oxygen deprivation. The reason they are going is that hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in cells, which can lead to death) is the one thing that links practically all patients in intensive-care wards—and there is no better place to study it than in the thin air of the world\u0026rsquo;s highest mountain.The story describes the Xtreme Everest expedition, which will take 250 people up Mount Everest, setting up mobile labs at various elevations to study hypoxia. The volunteers will climb up to 5,300 meters, and 16 climber-scientists will ascend to the summit to become the first to have blood drawn at the top of the world\u0026rsquo;s tallest mountain.\nThe research will be used to try to identify the genetic basis of people\u0026rsquo;s ability to handle hypoxia, which couldn\u0026rsquo;t be easily be conducted on patients in intensive care due to not having enough of them in one place at the right time.\n\u0026ldquo;The logic of privacy\u0026rdquo; (pp. 65-66):\nA group of computer scientists at Stanford University, led by John Mitchell, has started to address the problem in a novel way. Instead of relying on rigid (and easily programmable) codes of what is and is not acceptable, Dr Mitchell and his colleagues Adam Barth and Anupam Datta have turned to a philosophical theory called contextual integrity. This theory acknowledges that people do not require complete privacy. They will happily share information with others as long as certain social norms are met. Only when these norms are contravened—for example, when your psychiatrist tells the personnel department all about your consultation—has your privacy been invaded. The team think contextual integrity can be used to express the conventions and laws surrounding privacy in the formal vernacular of a computer language.\nContextual integrity, which was developed by Helen Nissenbaum of New York University, relies on four classes of variable. These are the context of a flow of information, the capacities in which the individuals sending and receiving the information are acting, the types of information involved, and what she calls the “principle of transmission”. I\u0026rsquo;m always interested in the intersection of philosophy and information security, since the former was my field of undergraduate and graduate study, while the latter is my profession. The article briefly describes how Adam Barth is attempting to apply linear temporal logic to codify conditions of information transmission into rules that can be used by computers.\n\u0026ldquo;In praise of mess\u0026rdquo; (p. 69):\nThis is a book review of Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman\u0026rsquo;s book, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder\u0026ndash;How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place. The Economist reviewer admits to the bias of having \u0026ldquo;easily the most untidy\u0026rdquo; office at the magazine, and I have a similar bias. The book argues for the benefits of disorder and procrastination, and the reviewer notes that the authors \u0026ldquo;are witheringly contemptuous of the bogus equation of tidiness and morality\u0026ndash;for example in corporate \u0026lsquo;clean desk\u0026rsquo; policies.\u0026rdquo; Yet the reviewer notes that the book overstates its case (\u0026ldquo;the case for tidiness in some environments\u0026ndash;surgery, a dinner table or income tax returns\u0026ndash;is really overwhelming\u0026rdquo;) and suffers from repetition and disorganization that reduce the pleasure of reading the book. The reviewer concludes: \u0026ldquo;Even readers who love mess in their own lives don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily like it in others.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/tidbits-from-economist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDuring my long plane flights this week, I used some of my time to catch up on reading back issues of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e.  Here were a few of the stories I found particularly interesting in the January 6-12, 2007 issue:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8486088\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Medicine at the Top of the World\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (p. 65):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eLYING in an intensive-care ward is a world away from climbing Everest, but a connection will be drawn this spring when 45 scientists and 208 volunteers tackle the mountain to bring back information about oxygen deprivation. The reason they are going is that hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in cells, which can lead to death) is the one thing that links practically all patients in intensive-care wards—and there is no better place to study it than in the thin air of the world\u0026rsquo;s highest mountain.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe story describes the Xtreme Everest expedition, which will take 250 people up Mount Everest, setting up mobile labs at various elevations to study hypoxia.  The volunteers will climb up to 5,300 meters, and 16 climber-scientists will ascend to the summit to become the first to have blood drawn at the top of the world\u0026rsquo;s tallest mountain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: justify;\"\u003eThe research will be used to try to identify the genetic basis of people\u0026rsquo;s ability to handle hypoxia, which couldn\u0026rsquo;t be easily be conducted on patients in intensive care due to not having enough of them in one place at the right time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8486072\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The logic of privacy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (pp. 65-66):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tidbits from the Economist"},{"content":"The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the \u0026ldquo;Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007\u0026rdquo; would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government.\nSlashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue.\nSpecifically, Section 220 required \u0026ldquo;paid grassroots lobbying firms\u0026rdquo; to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that \u0026ldquo;is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.\u0026quot;\nThe Captain\u0026rsquo;s Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my \u0026ldquo;Fundamentalism is Nonsense\u0026rdquo; pamphlet (6th edition, 1986):\nRichard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan\u0026rsquo;s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman\u0026rsquo;s 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America\u0026rsquo;s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday).\nViguerie\u0026rsquo;s efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20.\nJosh \u0026 Kimber Abbott (2007-01-22):\nJim, Good afternoon. It was actually not misinformation provided in Mr. Viguerie\u0026rsquo;s release and the subsequent concerns regarding S.1 220. Please refer to www.grassrootsfreedom.com at the following link to see a retort of Professor Bainbridge by Mark Fitzgibbons, Esq. proving that the legislation would have applied to bloggers and the dangers of the bill. This was and is not a left/right issue.\nhttp://www.grassrootsfreedom.com/gw3/articles-news/articles.php?action=view\u0026amp;CMSArticleID=591\u0026amp;CMSCategoryID=23\nRegards,\nKimber\nLippard (2007-01-22):\nKimber: Thanks, but I think Fitzgibbons\u0026rsquo; analysis is questionable for the reasons Stephen Bainbridge has pointed out.\nIn any case, the language is currently not in the bill, and if it comes back I agree that we should be vigilant to make sure that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the consequences Fitzgibbons claims, whether intended or unintended.\nAnonymous (2007-03-16):\nThe press release did not say bloggers with 500 readers would need to report.Read the press release, not what was reported about it. Bloggers would have been subject to the lobbying registration and its criminal penalty provisions.My legal analysis of the bill is correct. I agree that the \"intent\" was probably not to regulate bloggers, but the language of the bill would have allowed them to. I work with lots of \"disclosure\" laws. Those who later enforce those laws don't care about the \"intent\" of some legislative staffer who wrote the bill, but use those laws to target unpopular speakers. Check with ACLU's opposition to the bill. Mark Fitzgibbons\nLippard (2007-03-16):\nMark:I read the press release, the bill, Bainbridge's critique, your response, and Bainbridge's response to you. I think Bainbridge had the better case, though of course I worry about government actions beyond what the law says or intends, especially since we have a current government that doesn't even seem to care what the law says. Do you have a further response to Bainbridge? Did you read the other comments here before you just posted?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/misinformation-about-blogger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie.  This press release claimed that this section of the \u0026ldquo;Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007\u0026rdquo; would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSlashdot \u003ca href=\"http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/17/2030229\"\u003epromoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy\u003c/a\u003e, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said.  In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid.  And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter.  And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSpecifically, Section 220 required \u0026ldquo;paid grassroots lobbying firms\u0026rdquo; to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that \u0026ldquo;is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008962.php\"\u003eCaptain\u0026rsquo;s Quarters blog\u003c/a\u003e was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie.  Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my \u0026ldquo;Fundamentalism is Nonsense\u0026rdquo; pamphlet (6th edition, 1986):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRichard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country.  He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan\u0026rsquo;s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX).  Viguerie also publishes the magazine \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eConservative Digest\u003c/span\u003e [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman\u0026rsquo;s 1982 book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHoly Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America\u0026rsquo;s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives\u003c/span\u003e (Doubleday).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eViguerie\u0026rsquo;s efforts were successful, and Section 220 \u003ca href=\"http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110\u0026session=1\u0026amp;vote=00017\"\u003ewas removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Misinformation about blogger registration"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic has just caught on to the fact that there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of mortgage fraud going on in Phoenix:\nA wave of mortgage fraud is rippling through pockets of the Valley, inflating home values through scams called cash-back deals.\nLeft unchecked, cash-back deals cost homeowners and lenders millions of dollars and could erode confidence and values in Arizona\u0026rsquo;s real estate market.\nThe fraud involves obtaining a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money in cash. Neighbors may then discover home values in the area are exaggerated. Homeowners stuck with overpriced mortgages may never recover the difference. And lenders end up with bad loans that, in the long run, could hurt the Arizona real estate market, the largest segment of the state economy.\nWhile the extent of the fraud is unclear, an Arizona Republic investigation into these cash-back deals found organized groups of speculators have bought multiple homes this way, leaving whole neighborhoods with inflated values. Add to these the individual deals done by amateurs who hear others talk about the easy money they made from cash-back sales.\nState investigators and real estate industry leaders want more enforcement and greater public awareness to stop the spread of cash-back deals before the damage mounts.\n\u0026ldquo;Mortgage fraud in the Valley has become so prevalent people think it\u0026rsquo;s a normal business practice,\u0026rdquo; said Amy Swaney, a mortgage banker with Premier Financial Services and past president of the Arizona Mortgage Lenders Association.\nUnder federal law it is illegal to misrepresent the value of a home to a lender. Everyone who is a party to the deal is subject to prosecution.\nFelecia Rotellini is a Notre Dame law school graduate and former assistant attorney general who is now superintendent of the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions. Her agency regulates mortgage lenders, state banks and credit unions in the state. Alarmed by what she was hearing from lenders and real estate agents, she has just pulled together state and federal regulators to form an Arizona mortgage fraud task force.\n\u0026ldquo;People need to understand these cash-back deals are illegal and stop,\u0026rdquo; she said. \u0026ldquo;We are going after mortgage fraud.\u0026quot;\nI think this is likely to be too little, too late. When I was actively suing telemarketers using illegal prerecorded calls to residences in 2003, the worst offenders were mortgage brokers. In the process of going after some of them, I found signs that some of them were engaged in other illegal activities as well, such as defrauding other lenders, defrauding their customers, defrauding the IRS and Arizona Department of Revenue, and transferring assets between entities prior to filing bankruptcy to evade creditors. I found the Arizona State Department of Banking (now known as the Arizona State Department of Financial Institutions), which regulates mortgage brokers, to be completely uninterested in investigating\u0026ndash;though they did send some warning letters after I won judgments against brokers, which prompted some of them to pay their judgments. They said that they did not have resources to investigate my claims of violations, even though I offered up specific areas of the law that they are supposed to enforce (they don\u0026rsquo;t enforce the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or FCC regulations).\nThere\u0026rsquo;s more on this subject at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog.\nUPDATE (January 22, 2007): Arizona Senator Jay Tibshraeny has introduced a bill making mortgage fraud a felony. But it\u0026rsquo;s already criminal activity covered under current laws\u0026ndash;adding more laws against it doesn\u0026rsquo;t do anything to cause those laws to be enforced.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/phoenix-mortgage-fraud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0120mortgagefraud0121.html\"\u003ehas just caught on to the fact that there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of mortgage fraud going on in Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA wave of mortgage fraud is rippling through pockets of the Valley, inflating home values through scams called cash-back deals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLeft unchecked, cash-back deals cost homeowners and lenders millions of dollars and could erode confidence and values in Arizona\u0026rsquo;s real estate market.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe fraud involves obtaining a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money in cash. Neighbors may then discover home values in the area are exaggerated. Homeowners stuck with overpriced mortgages may never recover the difference. And lenders end up with bad loans that, in the long run, could hurt the Arizona real estate market, the largest segment of the state economy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile the extent of the fraud is unclear, an \u003ci\u003eArizona Republic \u003c/i\u003einvestigation into these cash-back deals found organized groups of speculators have bought multiple homes this way, leaving whole neighborhoods with inflated values. Add to these the individual deals done by amateurs who hear others talk about the easy money they made from cash-back sales.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eState investigators and real estate industry leaders want more enforcement and greater public awareness to stop the spread of cash-back deals before the damage mounts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mortgage fraud in the Valley has become so prevalent people think it\u0026rsquo;s a normal business practice,\u0026rdquo; said Amy Swaney, a mortgage banker with Premier Financial Services and past president of the Arizona Mortgage Lenders Association.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnder federal law it is illegal to misrepresent the value of a home to a lender. Everyone who is a party to the deal is subject to prosecution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFelecia Rotellini is a Notre Dame law school graduate and former assistant attorney general who is now superintendent of the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions. Her agency regulates mortgage lenders, state banks and credit unions in the state. Alarmed by what she was hearing from lenders and real estate agents, she has just pulled together state and federal regulators to form an Arizona mortgage fraud task force.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u0026ldquo;People need to understand these cash-back deals are illegal and stop,\u0026rdquo; she said. \u0026ldquo;We are going after mortgage fraud.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eI think this is likely to be too little, too late.  When I was \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/lawsuits.html\"\u003eactively suing telemarketers using illegal prerecorded calls to residences in 2003\u003c/a\u003e, the worst offenders were mortgage brokers.  In the process of going after some of them, I found signs that some of them were engaged in other illegal activities as well, such as defrauding other lenders, defrauding their customers, defrauding the IRS and Arizona Department of Revenue, and transferring assets between entities prior to filing bankruptcy to evade creditors.  I found the Arizona State Department of Banking (now known as the Arizona State Department of Financial Institutions), which regulates mortgage brokers, to be completely uninterested in investigating\u0026ndash;though they did send some warning letters after I won judgments against brokers, which prompted some of them to pay their judgments.  They said that they did not have resources to investigate my claims of violations, even though I offered up specific areas of the law that they are supposed to enforce (they don\u0026rsquo;t enforce the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or FCC regulations).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s more on this subject at \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=2213\"\u003eBen Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 22, 2007): Arizona Senator Jay Tibshraeny \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0122mortgagefraudonline.html\"\u003ehas introduced a bill making mortgage fraud a felony\u003c/a\u003e.  But it\u0026rsquo;s already criminal activity covered under current laws\u0026ndash;adding more laws against it doesn\u0026rsquo;t do anything to cause those laws to be enforced.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix mortgage fraud"},{"content":"My letter to the editor in response to David Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s letter in the Observer was too late for the print edition, but was published on the newspaper\u0026rsquo;s blog. Here\u0026rsquo;s the letter with a couple typos corrected (\u0026ldquo;nor\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;not\u0026rdquo; and an extraneous possessive):\nDavid Paszkiewicz quotes from Thomas Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s April 21, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush in support of his argument that the Founding Fathers would have agreed with his bringing his religious views into the public school classroom. The original letter, in Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s handwriting, can be found on the Internet at the Library of Congress:\nhttp://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06-2.html\nWhat Jefferson actually wrote in this letter was \u0026ldquo;To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; \u0026amp; believing he never claimed any other.\u0026rdquo; In other words, Jefferson rejected the divinity and miracles attributed to Jesus. His \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth\u0026rdquo; (also known as the \u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible\u0026rdquo;) was composed by removing miracles and claims of godhood from the gospels.\nPaszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s quote comes from a letter from Jefferson to Charles Thomson on January 9, 1816, regarding his \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,\u0026rdquo; stating that he is \u0026ldquo;a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus\u0026rdquo; in that work. This letter may be found online here:\nhttp://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm\u0026amp;amp;images=images/modeng\u0026amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed\u0026amp;amp;amp;tag=public∂=2\n37\u0026amp;division=div1\nPaszkiewicz also misquotes George Washington\u0026rsquo;s May 12, 1789 address to the Delaware Indians\u0026ndash;what Washington said was \u0026ldquo;You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.\u0026rdquo; He said nothing about teaching this in schools nor that he believed it; he was giving the Indians advice for cultural assimilation.\nPaszkiewicz argues that because the words \u0026ldquo;separation of church and state\u0026rdquo; are not in the Constitution (a document that contains no reference to God), the concept is not there, either. But neither are the words \u0026ldquo;checks and balances,\u0026rdquo; and the New Testament contains no use\nof the word \u0026ldquo;trinity,\u0026rdquo; for that matter\u0026ndash;the concepts are expressed using other words. The arguments over the wording of the First Amendment make it clear that the Founding Fathers were very concerned about religious control of government resulting in persecution of those with different beliefs, as had already occurred with established religions in the colonies, such as persecutions by the Puritans in Massachusetts.\nJim Lippard\nPhoenix, Arizona\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/letters-to-editor-about-david.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy letter to the editor in response to \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/david-paszkiewicz-publicly-displays-his.html\"\u003eDavid Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s letter in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eObserver\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e was too late for the print edition, but was \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2007/01/was-paszkiewiczs-quoting-flawed.html\"\u003epublished on the newspaper\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the letter with a couple typos corrected (\u0026ldquo;nor\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;not\u0026rdquo; and an extraneous possessive):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Paszkiewicz quotes from Thomas Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s April 21, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush in support of his argument that the Founding Fathers would have agreed with his bringing his religious views into the public school classroom.  The original letter, in Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s handwriting, can be found on the Internet at the Library of Congress:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06-2.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06-2.html\"\u003ehttp://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06-2.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat Jefferson actually wrote in this letter was \u0026ldquo;To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.  I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; \u0026amp; believing he never claimed any other.\u0026rdquo;  In other words, Jefferson rejected the divinity and miracles attributed to Jesus.  His \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth\u0026rdquo; (also known as the \u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible\u0026rdquo;) was composed by removing miracles and claims of godhood from the gospels.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s quote comes from a letter from Jefferson to Charles Thomson on January 9, 1816, regarding his \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,\u0026rdquo; stating that he is \u0026ldquo;a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus\u0026rdquo; in that work. This letter may be found online here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm\u0026amp;images=images/modeng\u0026data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed\u0026amp;tag=public\u0026part=2\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm\u0026amp;amp;images=images/modeng\u0026amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed\u0026amp;amp;amp;tag=public\"\u003ehttp://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm\u0026amp;amp;images=images/modeng\u0026amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed\u0026amp;amp;amp;tag=public\u003c/a\u003e∂=2\u003cbr /\u003e37\u0026amp;division=div1\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaszkiewicz also misquotes George Washington\u0026rsquo;s May 12, 1789 address to the Delaware Indians\u0026ndash;what Washington said was \u0026ldquo;You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.\u0026rdquo;  He said nothing about teaching this in schools nor that he believed it; he was giving the Indians advice for cultural assimilation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaszkiewicz argues that because the words \u0026ldquo;separation of church and state\u0026rdquo; are not in the Constitution (a document that contains no reference to God), the concept is not there, either.  But neither are the words \u0026ldquo;checks and balances,\u0026rdquo; and the New Testament contains no use\u003cbr /\u003eof the word \u0026ldquo;trinity,\u0026rdquo; for that matter\u0026ndash;the concepts are expressed using other words.  The arguments over the wording of the First Amendment make it clear that the Founding Fathers were very concerned about religious control of government resulting in persecution of      those with different beliefs, as had already occurred with established religions in the colonies, such as persecutions by the Puritans in Massachusetts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim Lippard\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix, Arizona\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Letters to the editor about David Paszkiewicz"},{"content":"At Slate, Jack Shafer argues for the abolition of the FCC, drawing heavily from Peter Huber\u0026rsquo;s book, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace.\nFor a critique of Huber, see Tom W. Bell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Common Law in Cyberspace\u0026rdquo; from the Michigan Law Review (1999, vol. 97, pp. 1746ff).\n(Hat tip to Jesse Walker at the Reason blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/jack-shafer-on-case-for-abolishing-fcc.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Slate, Jack Shafer \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2157734/\"\u003eargues for the abolition of the FCC\u003c/a\u003e, drawing heavily from Peter Huber\u0026rsquo;s book,\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e Law and Disorder in Cyberspace\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor a critique of Huber, see Tom W. Bell\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tomwbell.com/writings/CLnCyb.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Common Law in Cyberspace\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMichigan Law Review\u003c/span\u003e (1999, vol. 97, pp. 1746ff).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Jesse Walker at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118071.html\"\u003eReason blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jack Shafer on the case for abolishing the FCC"},{"content":"Those of you who read this previous blog entry about Gapminder may be interested to see that Google has collaborated with Gapminder to produce this tool.\n(Hat tip to Radley Balko.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/google-and-gapminder-collaboration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThose of you who read \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/visual-representation-of-global-data.html\"\u003ethis previous blog entry about Gapminder\u003c/a\u003e may be interested to see that Google has collaborated with Gapminder to produce \u003ca href=\"http://tools.google.com/gapminder/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti=2004$zpv;v=1$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=SP.DYN.LE00.IN;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=20;iid=SP.POP.TOTL;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=1004;iid=SP.POP.DPND;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=466;dataMax=64299$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=24;dataMax=82$map_s;sma=50;smi=1.2$inds=\"\u003ethis tool\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118051.html\"\u003eRadley Balko\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google and Gapminder collaboration"},{"content":"From the Pensacola News Journal:\nPensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.\nAfter a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:\n\u0026ndash; Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.\n\u0026ndash; Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.\n\u0026ndash; Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.\nHovind’s wife, Jo Hovind, also was scheduled to be sentenced. Rodgers postponed her sentencing until March 1 to allow her defense attorney an opportunity to argue possible discrepancies in sentencing guidelines. I\u0026rsquo;ve added a label for Kent Hovind.\nUPDATE (January 21, 2007): Ed Brayton points out that Hovind, at his sentencing, suddenly adopted a newly-found meekness:\nBefore his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind compared his situation to that of the lion and the mouse in Aesop\u0026rsquo;s Fables. \u0026ldquo;I feel like the mouse,\u0026rdquo; Hovind told U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. \u0026ldquo;I stand here in great fear of the power of this court. Your decision can destroy my life, my ministry and my grandchildren.\u0026quot;\nThis contrasted with his earlier bluster in telephone calls from jail:\nIn a recording of one of the telephone conversations played in court Friday, Hovind said the Internal Revenue Service, presiding judge and prosecutor broke the law by going after him, and there were things he could do \u0026ldquo;to make their lives miserable.\u0026quot;\nComparing himself to a buffalo in a lion fight, Hovind\u0026rsquo;s voice was heard saying \u0026ldquo;As long as I have some horns, I\u0026rsquo;m going to swing. As long as I have some hoofs, I\u0026rsquo;m going to kick. As long as I have some teeth, I\u0026rsquo;m going to fight. The lion\u0026rsquo;s going to know he\u0026rsquo;s been in a fight.\u0026quot;\nKtisophilos (2009-02-08):\nSo Hovind was sentenced almost as long as the gangster Al Capone, likewise for tax evasion. Instead of this hugely expensive prosecution and imprisonment, the IRS probably would have got Hovind to repay if only Obama had nominated him for a cabinet post :P Indeed, maybe Hovind instead of fellow tax cheat Geithner could even be put in oversight of the IRS itself!\nLippard (2009-02-09):\nNot sure you are actually making any kind of argument there... surely you don't mean to defend Hovind.Hovind was clearly a tax cheat who was guilty as charged. His tax evasion was clearly willful.He wasn't charged with anything with respect to his creationism, but the guy was one of the most dishonest people on the young-earth creationist lecture circuit. He regularly made use of arguments that your organization has identified as arguments that creationists should not use.\nKtisophilos (2009-02-09):\nNo, I certainly don't defend Hovind's tax evasion. And I think Hovind was letting down the creation cause by getting so embroiled in this, even if he were right.CMI was critical of some of his arguments, while for some reason, AiG has removed that page—as well as commendation of that page from one of their own scientists.This doesn't mean that I can't criticize the sentence, almost as long as Capone's and longer than some violent criminals', as wildly excessive, and point out the double standards given all Obama's tax cheats. And as an Australian, I wonder why Americans celebrate every 4 July a revolution against paying a mere 2.5% tax ;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/kent-hovind-sentenced-to-10-years-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070119/NEWS01/701190332/1006\"\u003ethe Pensacola News Journal\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003e  Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in  prison on charges of tax fraud.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash; Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash; Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ndash; Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHovind’s wife, Jo Hovind, also was scheduled to be sentenced. Rodgers postponed her sentencing until March 1 to allow her defense attorney an opportunity to argue possible discrepancies in sentencing guidelines.  \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve added a label for Kent Hovind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 21, 2007):  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/more_on_hovind.php\"\u003epoints out that Hovind, at his sentencing, suddenly adopted a newly-found meekness\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBefore his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind compared his situation to that of the lion and the mouse in Aesop\u0026rsquo;s Fables.  \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I feel like the mouse,\u0026rdquo; Hovind told U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. \u0026ldquo;I stand here in great fear of the power of this court. Your decision can destroy my life, my ministry and my grandchildren.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kent Hovind sentenced to 10 years in prison"},{"content":"I got back this morning from a few days in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a business trip. It was a beautiful country, with great summer weather. The people were very friendly (and patient with my attempts to use a few Spanish words and phrases, as I\u0026rsquo;m just a beginner at the language), and the food was excellent. I hope to return for a longer time in the future, and hopefully to get some Spanish tutoring while I\u0026rsquo;m there.\nBuenos Aires is a huge modern city (population around 15 million) undergoing a lot of construction, especially in the Puerto Madero neighborhood, where this picture was taken. This was an old port that ceased being used in the 1960s, but is now the location of many restaurants, hotels, and businesses.\nAlthough a website about Argentina business warned me that subjects not to discuss were the Perons and the Falkland Islands, both subjects were brought up by Argentinians I conversed with, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a problem.\nThis was one of those rare trips where I returned home to Phoenix to find the weather much colder and wetter than it had been in the place I was visiting.\nUPDATE (January 26, 2007): CNN Money recommends travel to Buenos Aires, and specifically offers this dining suggestion:\nTip: Cabana las Lilas in the Puerto Madero section of Buenos Aires is often cited as the best spot for grilled beef.\nBut Robin Goldstein, a writer for Fodor\u0026rsquo;s travel guides, says you\u0026rsquo;ll find a more authentic dining experience at half the cost just next door at La Caballeriza (address: Alicia Moreau de Justo 580).I didn\u0026rsquo;t visit Cabana las Lilas, but did eat at La Caballeriza with a large group of locals, and it was excellent (even the blood sausage wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/back-from-buenos-aires.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"/images/P1160018.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"/images/P1160018.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021880455717877986\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eI got back this morning from a few days in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a business trip.  It was a beautiful country, with great summer weather.  The people were very friendly (and patient with my attempts to use a few Spanish words and phrases, as I\u0026rsquo;m just a beginner at the language), and the food was excellent.  I hope to return for a longer time in the future, and hopefully to get some Spanish tutoring while I\u0026rsquo;m there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBuenos Aires is a huge modern city (population around 15 million) undergoing a lot of construction, especially in the Puerto Madero neighborhood, where this picture was taken.  This was an old port that ceased being used in the 1960s, but is now the location of many restaurants, hotels, and businesses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough a website about Argentina business warned me that subjects not to discuss were the Perons and the Falkland Islands, both subjects were brought up by Argentinians I conversed with, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was one of those rare trips where I returned home to Phoenix to find the weather much colder and wetter than it had been in the place I was visiting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 26, 2007):  CNN Money \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/moneymag/0701/gallery.travel_south/\"\u003erecommends travel to Buenos Aires\u003c/a\u003e, and specifically offers this dining suggestion:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eTip: \u003c/b\u003eCabana las Lilas in the Puerto Madero section of Buenos Aires is often cited as the best spot for grilled beef.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut Robin Goldstein, a writer for Fodor\u0026rsquo;s travel guides, says you\u0026rsquo;ll find a more authentic dining experience at half the cost just next door at La Caballeriza (address: Alicia Moreau de Justo 580).\u003c/blockquote\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t visit Cabana las Lilas, but did eat at La Caballeriza with a large group of locals, and it was excellent (even the blood sausage wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from Buenos Aires"},{"content":"Guy Kawasaki interviews Jon Winokur, whose books of curmudgeonly quotations are prized possessions of mine. It was Winokur\u0026rsquo;s The Portable Curmudgeon which inspired me to track down and read the very entertaining autobiography of Oscar Levant.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a short excerpt, chosen because it makes a point that is part of Paul Krassner\u0026rsquo;s standup act:\nQuestion: What are you working on now? Answer: The Big Curmudgeon, an omnibus edition of previous curmudgeon books plus new material, and The Big Book of Irony, a small-format hardcover in which I try to share my delight in the many facets of irony and clear up some misconceptions, because irony is widely misunderstood. It drives me crazy when people say “ironic” when they mean “coincidental.” The classic example is Morissettian Irony, which I define in the book as “irony based on a misapprehension of irony, i.e., no irony at all.” It’s named for the pop singer Alanis Morissette, whose hit single, “Ironic” mislabels coincidence and inconvenience as irony. In the song, situations purporting to be ironic are merely sad, random, or annoying (“It's a traffic jam when you're already late/It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break”). In other words, “Ironic” is an un-ironic song about irony. Which, of course, is ironic in itself. But wait, there’s more, a “bonus irony” if you will: “Ironic” has been cited as an example of how Americans don’t get irony, despite the fact that Alanis Morissette is Canadian! By the way, here's a rewrite of lines from Morissette's song to actually make them ironic. Historical Comments Ed Brayton (2007-01-16):\nAh, I am also one who treasures Winokur's books, which I've been collecting for a long time. Great stuff.\nSteve Neumann (2007-01-17):\nJim - This has nothing to do with the current post, but I wanted to let you know that I sent a letter to the editor of The Observer in Kearny regarding Paszkiewicz and LeClair. I know you had posted about the scandal previously.\nHere is a link to my blog post: Controversy in Kearny\nBest, Juno\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/interview-with-jon-winokur.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGuy Kawasaki \u003ca href=\"http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/09/ten_questions_w.html\"\u003einterviews Jon Winokur\u003c/a\u003e, whose books of curmudgeonly quotations are prized possessions of mine.  It was Winokur\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Portable Curmudgeon\u003c/span\u003e which inspired me to track down and read the very entertaining autobiography of Oscar Levant.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a short excerpt, chosen because it makes a point that is part of Paul Krassner\u0026rsquo;s standup act:\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eQuestion: What are you working on now?\u003c/b\u003e             \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnswer:\u003c/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Big Curmudgeon\u003c/i\u003e, an omnibus edition of previous curmudgeon books plus new material, and \u003ci\u003eThe Big Book of Irony\u003c/i\u003e, a small-format hardcover in which I try to share my delight in the many facets of irony and clear up some misconceptions, because irony is widely misunderstood.             \u003cbr /\u003e\nIt drives me crazy when people say “ironic” when they mean “coincidental.” The classic example is Morissettian Irony, which I define in the book as “irony based on a misapprehension of irony, i.e., no irony at all.” It’s named for the pop singer Alanis Morissette, whose hit single, “Ironic” mislabels coincidence and inconvenience as irony. \u003cbr /\u003e\nIn the song, situations purporting to be ironic are merely sad, random, or annoying (“It's a traffic jam when you're already late/It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break”). In other words, “Ironic” is an un-ironic song about irony. Which, of course, is ironic in itself. But wait, there’s more, a “bonus irony” if you will: “Ironic” has been cited as an example of how Americans don’t get irony, despite the fact that Alanis Morissette is Canadian!\u003c/blockquote\u003e\nBy the way, \u003ca href=\"http://www.collegehumor.com/post/229130/lines-from-alanis-morissettes-ironic-modified-to-actually-make-them-ironic\"\u003ehere's a rewrite of lines from Morissette's song\u003c/a\u003e to actually make them ironic.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEd Brayton\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-01-16)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAh, I am also one who treasures Winokur's books, which I've been collecting for a long time. Great stuff.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Interview with Jon Winokur"},{"content":"Judge Jones\u0026rsquo; ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case found the Dover Area School District\u0026rsquo;s policy on intelligent design a violation of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause on two grounds. First, on the ground that it had a specifically religious purpose, and second, that intelligent design is not science but religion, and so the policy was an endorsement of religion. These are two of the three prongs of the \u0026ldquo;Lemon Test\u0026rdquo; for whether a state action violates the establishment clause.\nThe Discovery Institute has argued that Jones\u0026rsquo; ruling should only have used the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; test and not the \u0026ldquo;endorsement\u0026rdquo; test.\nEd Brayton points out that this position is contrary to the position that creationists and intelligent design advocates have argued for the last three decades\u0026ndash;that the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; prong of the Lemon Test for violations of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause is unfair and should be abandoned. Ed observes that at least four DI personnel\u0026ndash;Casey Luskin, Frank Beckwith, Mark Ryland, and David DeWolf\u0026ndash;have all argued this way in the past.\nHis post also responds in some detail to the specific arguments made by Philip Italiano, a law student at Rutgers Law School, who is the latest to argue that Jones should only have used the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; test.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/more-discovery-institute-hypocrisy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJudge Jones\u0026rsquo; ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case found the Dover Area School District\u0026rsquo;s policy on intelligent design a violation of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause on two grounds.  First, on the ground that it had a specifically religious purpose, and second, that intelligent design is not science but religion, and so the policy was an endorsement of religion.  These are two of the three prongs of the \u0026ldquo;Lemon Test\u0026rdquo; for whether a state action violates the establishment clause.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Discovery Institute has argued that Jones\u0026rsquo; ruling should only have used the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; test and not the \u0026ldquo;endorsement\u0026rdquo; test.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/id_and_the_purpose_prong_hypoc.php\"\u003epoints out that this position is contrary to the position that creationists and intelligent design advocates have argued for the last three decades\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; prong of the Lemon Test for violations of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause is unfair and should be abandoned.   Ed observes that at least four DI personnel\u0026ndash;Casey Luskin, Frank Beckwith, Mark Ryland, and David DeWolf\u0026ndash;have all argued this way in the past.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis post also responds in some detail to the specific arguments made by Philip Italiano, a law student at Rutgers Law School, who is the latest to argue that Jones should only have used the \u0026ldquo;purpose\u0026rdquo; test.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More Discovery Institute hypocrisy about Dover"},{"content":"Jack Whittaker, the trouble-plagued winner of what was then the largest Powerball jackpot, $315 million (a $113 million lump sum after taxes), now says that it\u0026rsquo;s all gone.\nUPDATE (January 15, 2007): Apparently Whittaker claims that thieves cashed checks at multiple branches of City National Bank to steal his money\u0026ndash;and this is why he can\u0026rsquo;t pay a settlement to a woman who sued him for assaulting her at the Tri-City Racetrack and Gaming Center near Charleston, WV. But the bank just says that they are investigating \u0026ldquo;small discrepancies\u0026rdquo; in his accounts\u0026ndash;which doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound like it\u0026rsquo;s all gone.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/w-virginia-record-powerball-winner-says.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJack Whittaker, \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/lottery-winner-tragedies-continue.html\"\u003ethe trouble-plagued winner of what was then the largest Powerball jackpot\u003c/a\u003e,  $315 million (a $113 million lump sum after taxes), now says that \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16599742/\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s all gone\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 15, 2007):  Apparently Whittaker claims that \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0112powerball-winner12-ON.html\"\u003ethieves cashed checks at multiple branches of City National Bank to steal his money\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and this is why he can\u0026rsquo;t pay a settlement to a woman who sued him for assaulting her at the Tri-City Racetrack and Gaming Center near Charleston, WV.  But the bank just says that they are investigating \u0026ldquo;small discrepancies\u0026rdquo; in his accounts\u0026ndash;which doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound like it\u0026rsquo;s all gone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"W. Virginia record Powerball winner says his money is all gone"},{"content":"At long last, Kearny, NJ U.S. History teacher and Baptist youth minister David Paszkiewicz has spoken out publicly about his teaching (in a letter to his local newspaper), and has publicly displayed his incompetence on early U.S. history in the process.\nPaszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s letter shows that his knowledge of the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment comes from crackpot pseudo-historian David Barton. He misrepresents the views of Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin using out-of-context and fabricated quotations, makes the bogus argument that because the words \u0026ldquo;separation of church and state\u0026rdquo; aren\u0026rsquo;t in the U.S. Constitution that the concept isn\u0026rsquo;t there either, and generally shows that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the subject matter he teaches.\nKennesaw State University history professor David Parker shows that Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s alleged Jefferson quotation from an April 21, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush is not found in that letter. (There\u0026rsquo;s something somewhat similar, but Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s version changes the meaning by dishonestly adding and removing words from what Jefferson actually wrote.) Paszkiewicz misrepresents Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s religious views, failing to recognize that Jefferson did not believe in the divinity or miracles of Jesus, and edited the gospels into \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth\u0026rdquo; (sometimes known as the \u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible\u0026rdquo;) by removing all of the miracles.\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars addresses Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s claims in more detail, showing that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the role of the U.S. judicial system.\nMr. Paszkiewicz, already considered a fool, has spoken and removed all doubt.\n(Hat tip to Pharyngula.)\nUPDATE (January 15, 2007): I\u0026rsquo;ve removed the statement that Ed Brayton has shown that Paszkiewicz used a fabricated Washington quotation, though it appears Washington didn\u0026rsquo;t mean what Paszkiewicz thought he did, and Paszkiewicz didn\u0026rsquo;t quote it correctly. The correct quotation, part of Washington\u0026rsquo;s advice for assimilation, is \u0026ldquo;You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.\u0026rdquo; He didn\u0026rsquo;t say he believed it, he said to learn it.\nAn interesting and lengthy examination of the history of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause can be found in Noah Feldman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Intellectual Origins of the Establishment Clause\u0026rdquo; (PDF) from the May 2002 New York University Law Review (vol. 77, pp. 346-428).\nHistorical Comments shrimplate (2007-01-15):\nFrom Article VI: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\nNo Religious Tests.\nThis was one of the most controversial phrases in the entire Constitution back in the day, and it was argued widely. The secularists won.\nPersonally I find this Article at least as important as anything found in the Bill of Rights. And it clearly excludes religion from government.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/david-paszkiewicz-publicly-displays-his.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt long last, Kearny, NJ U.S. History teacher and Baptist youth minister \u003ca href=\"http://www.theobserver.com/currentissue/letters.shtml\"\u003eDavid Paszkiewicz has spoken out publicly about his teaching (in a letter to his local newspaper)\u003c/a\u003e, and has publicly displayed his incompetence on early U.S. history in the process.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s letter shows that his knowledge of the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment comes from crackpot pseudo-historian David Barton.  He misrepresents the views of Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin using out-of-context and fabricated quotations, makes the bogus argument that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/nathan_bradfields_churchstate.php\"\u003ebecause the words \u0026ldquo;separation of church and state\u0026rdquo; aren\u0026rsquo;t in the U.S. Constitution that the concept isn\u0026rsquo;t there either\u003c/a\u003e, and generally shows that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the subject matter he teaches.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKennesaw State University history professor David Parker shows that \u003ca href=\"http://anotherhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/paszkiewicz-on-jefferson-on-jesus.html\"\u003ePaszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s alleged Jefferson quotation from an April 21, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush is not found in that letter\u003c/a\u003e. (There\u0026rsquo;s something somewhat similar, but Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s version changes the meaning by dishonestly adding and removing words from what Jefferson actually wrote.) Paszkiewicz misrepresents Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s religious views, failing to recognize that Jefferson did not believe in the divinity or miracles of Jesus, and edited the gospels into \u0026ldquo;Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth\u0026rdquo; (sometimes known as the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jefferson Bible\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e) by removing all of the miracles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/nj_history_teacher_displays_hi.php\"\u003eaddresses Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s claims in more detail\u003c/a\u003e, showing that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the role of the U.S. judicial system.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMr. Paszkiewicz, already considered a fool, has spoken and removed all doubt.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/david_paszkiewicz_speaks_out.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 15, 2007): I\u0026rsquo;ve removed the statement that Ed Brayton has shown that Paszkiewicz used a fabricated Washington quotation, though it appears \u003ca href=\"http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2006/08/kerby-anderson-engages-in-historical.html\"\u003eWashington didn\u0026rsquo;t mean what Paszkiewicz thought he did\u003c/a\u003e, and Paszkiewicz didn\u0026rsquo;t quote it correctly.  The correct quotation, part of Washington\u0026rsquo;s advice for assimilation, is \u0026ldquo;You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.\u0026rdquo;  He didn\u0026rsquo;t say he believed it, he said to learn it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn interesting and lengthy examination of the history of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause can be found in Noah Feldman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.undergodprocon.org/pdf/feldman.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Intellectual Origins of the Establishment Clause\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) from the May 2002 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York University Law Review\u003c/span\u003e (vol. 77, pp. 346-428).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Paszkiewicz publicly displays his incompetence"},{"content":"The Duke Cunningham scandal, which reaches into the Central Intelligence Agency due to contracts awarded for intelligence-related contracts, has been stalled due to CIA refusal to cooperate with DoJ prosecutors.\nAnd now the White House has asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam to resign.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s still a lot of federal corruption that needs to be cleaned up, but it looks like the big fish are being protected from the top.\nWikipedia has some good entries on Dusty Foggo of the CIA, his pal and contractor/Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes, California Rep. Jerry Lewis, and former CIA Director Porter Goss.\nUPDATE (January 17, 2007): San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam has resigned. And, due to a provision in the USA PATRIOT Act (inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter), the Attorney General has the right to appoint replacement U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. Previously the AG could only appoint interim U.S. Attorneys that had to be confirmed within 120 days or be subject to replacement by the relevant federal district court.\nUPDATE (February 13, 2007): Foggo and Wilkes were both indicted today on charges of money laundering and \u0026ldquo;honest services wire fraud.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/cia-and-white-house-block-cunningham.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Duke Cunningham scandal, which reaches into the Central Intelligence Agency due to contracts awarded for intelligence-related contracts, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002305.php\"\u003ehas been stalled due to CIA refusal to cooperate with DoJ prosecutors\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd now the White House \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002329.php\"\u003ehas asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam to resign\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s still a lot of federal corruption that needs to be cleaned up, but it looks like the big fish are being protected from the top.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWikipedia has some good entries on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_%22Dusty%22_Foggo\"\u003eDusty Foggo\u003c/a\u003e of the CIA, his pal and contractor/Cunningham briber \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Wilkes\"\u003eBrent Wilkes\u003c/a\u003e, California \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lewis_-_Lowery_lobbying_firm_controversy\"\u003eRep. Jerry Lewis\u003c/a\u003e, and former CIA Director \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss\"\u003ePorter Goss\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 17, 2007):  San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam \u003ca href=\"http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/17/news/top_stories/1_00_991_16_07.txt\"\u003ehas resigned\u003c/a\u003e.  And, due to a provision in the USA PATRIOT Act (inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter), the Attorney General has the right \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002354.php\"\u003eto appoint replacement U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval\u003c/a\u003e.  Previously the AG could only appoint interim U.S. Attorneys that had to be confirmed within 120 days or be subject to replacement by the relevant federal district court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 13, 2007):  Foggo and Wilkes were both \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/wilkes-foggo/\"\u003eindicted today on charges of money laundering and \u0026ldquo;honest services wire fraud.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA and White House block Cunningham investigation"},{"content":"The second clue in Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Vanishing Point\u0026rdquo; puzzle to launch Microsoft Vista will be unveiled at 4 p.m. Saturday in Phoenix, which they say was chosen for \u0026ldquo;high visibility and clear skies.\u0026rdquo; Promised is \u0026ldquo;a stunt that everyone in the Valley [will] be talking about by Saturday night.\u0026quot;\nPerhaps a UFO flying over South Mountain with the Microsoft logo on it?\nUPDATE (January 13, 2007): It was supposed to be simultaneous sky-writing in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sydney, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if it happened in Phoenix as scheduled\u0026ndash;today was a very overcast and cold day.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/microsoft-ufo-to-fly-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe second clue in Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Vanishing Point\u0026rdquo; puzzle to launch Microsoft Vista \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0111biz-vista11-ON.html\"\u003ewill be unveiled at 4 p.m. Saturday in Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, which they say was chosen for \u0026ldquo;high visibility and clear skies.\u0026rdquo;  Promised is \u0026ldquo;a stunt that everyone in the Valley [will] be talking about by Saturday night.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps a UFO flying over South Mountain with the Microsoft logo on it?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 13, 2007):  It was \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/01/look_up_in_the_.html\"\u003esupposed to be simultaneous sky-writing in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sydney\u003c/a\u003e, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if it happened in Phoenix as scheduled\u0026ndash;today was a very overcast and cold day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Microsoft UFO to fly in Phoenix?"},{"content":"It looks like Missouri has followed the lead of Arizona lawmakers in helping out Scientology\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;ve allowed Scientology to set up an \u0026ldquo;Industry of Death\u0026rdquo; exhibit attacking psychiatry in the Capitol Rotunda:\nThe \u0026ldquo;Industry of Death\u0026rdquo; exhibit is sponsored by the Church of Scientology and makes a host of outrageous claims about the field of psychiatry. Twenty-five percent of psychiatrists sexually abuse their patients. \u0026hellip; And for the big surprise, psychiatrists were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - guilty by association, at least, since psychiatrists are responsible for the existence of terrorists and suicide bombers.Crazy.\nMark (2007-01-12):\nWho cares if it's Scientologists, at least someone's getting out the truth about these quack p$ychiatrists colluding with drug companies and making billions $$$ by labeling and drugging our children.\nLippard (2007-01-12):\nOur previous commenter hails from Clearwater, Florida, home of Scientology's \"Sea Org.\" Welcome, Mark--I take it from your comment that you are a Scientologist, opposed to Xenu's intergalactic psychiatric conspiracy? Domain Name rr.com ? (Commercial) IP Address 68.200.122.# (Road Runner) ISP ROADRUNNER-SOUTHWEST Location\nContinent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Florida City : Clearwater Lat/Long : 27.9617, -82.7368 (Map) Distance : 1,773 miles Language English (United States) en-us Operating System Microsoft Win2000 Browser Firefox 2.0 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1 Javascript version 1.5 Monitor\nResolution : 1280 x 1024 Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Jan 12 2007 1:20:45 pm Last Page View Jan 12 2007 1:24:45 pm Visit Length 4 minutes Page Views 2\nAlisonM (2007-01-14):\nYep, those darned psychiatrists. If it weren't for them, I'd have been able to off myself by now. Then I'd be home with Xenu!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/scientology-industry-of-death-exhibit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like Missouri has followed the lead of \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003eArizona lawmakers in helping out Scientology\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.columbiatribune.com/2007/Jan/20070109Comm001.asp\"\u003ethey\u0026rsquo;ve allowed Scientology to set up an \u0026ldquo;Industry of Death\u0026rdquo; exhibit attacking psychiatry in the Capitol Rotunda\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Industry of Death\u0026rdquo; exhibit is sponsored by the Church of Scientology and makes a host of outrageous claims about the field of psychiatry. Twenty-five percent of psychiatrists sexually abuse their patients. \u0026hellip; And for the big surprise, psychiatrists were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - guilty by association, at least, since psychiatrists are responsible for the existence of terrorists and suicide bombers.\u003c/blockquote\u003eCrazy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology \"Industry of Death\" exhibit in Missouri capitol"},{"content":"RBH describes how a Christian neuroscientist was banned from William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s Uncommon Descent blog. Lots more similar examples of banning may be found in the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/how-william-dembskis-blog-handles.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRBH describes how \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/01/dissent_out_of.html\"\u003ea Christian neuroscientist was banned from William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s Uncommon Descent blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Lots more similar examples of banning may be found in the comments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How William Dembski's blog handles dissent"},{"content":"George W. Bush on sending more troops to Iraq:\nSome Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders.That was on June 28, 2005. Video at Think Progress.\nNow Bush wants to push a \u0026ldquo;surge\u0026rdquo; of troops over the objections of his military leaders.\n(Via Donna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-01-09):\nDo people really believe it when Bush says \"we intend to leave Iraq\"? I mean, \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; have yet to leave Japan, Germany, or South Korea, so why should Iraq be any different?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/bush-on-sending-more-troops-to-iraq.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge W. Bush on sending more troops to Iraq:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSome Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThat was on June 28, 2005.  Video at \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/08/bush-more-troops/\"\u003eThink Progress\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow Bush wants to push a \u0026ldquo;surge\u0026rdquo; of troops over \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/15/abizaid-mccain-iraq/\"\u003ethe objections of his military leaders\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.woodka.com/2007/01/08/sending-more-troops-to-iraq-would-%e2%80%98undermine-our-strategy%e2%80%99/\"\u003eDonna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush on sending more troops to Iraq"},{"content":"This is a treasure trove of mind-bogglingly idiotic statements.\nSome examples:\n#2: \u0026ldquo;No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest \u0026ldquo;cover\u0026rdquo; of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.\u0026quot;\n#3 (I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this one before): \u0026ldquo;One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn\u0026rsquo;t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]\u0026rdquo; (FSTDT! Post of the Year for 2005)\n#4: \u0026ldquo;I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s ready to date yet. What\u0026rsquo;s worse is that he\u0026rsquo;s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Occam\u0026rsquo;s Razor Disagrees\u0026rdquo; Award winner)\n#9: \u0026ldquo;There are a lot of things I have concluded to be wrong, without studying them in-depth. Evolution is one of them. The fact that I don\u0026rsquo;t know that much about it does not bother me in the least.\u0026rdquo; (Fundamentalism in a Nutshell Award winner)\n(Via Beth Wolzson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nHistorical Comments Radix2 (2007-01-09):\nYes. It is always great fun - but don't just stop by the top 100. Plenty get posted everyday. There is some real ignorance out there...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/fundies-say-darndest-things.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.fstdt.com/top100.asp\"\u003eThis\u003c/a\u003e is a treasure trove of mind-bogglingly idiotic statements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome examples:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#2: \u0026ldquo;No, everyone is \u003ci\u003eborn\u003c/i\u003e Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest \u0026ldquo;cover\u0026rdquo; of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#3 (I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this one before): \u0026ldquo;One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn\u0026rsquo;t possible: \u003cb\u003eUNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy\u003c/b\u003e. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]\u0026rdquo; (FSTDT! Post of the Year for 2005)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#4: \u0026ldquo;I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;s ready to date yet. What\u0026rsquo;s worse is that he\u0026rsquo;s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Occam\u0026rsquo;s Razor Disagrees\u0026rdquo; Award winner)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e#9: \u0026ldquo;There are a lot of things I have concluded to be wrong, without studying them in-depth. Evolution is one of them. The fact that I don\u0026rsquo;t know that much about it does not bother me in the least.\u0026rdquo; (Fundamentalism in a Nutshell Award winner)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Beth Wolzson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fundies say the darndest things!"},{"content":"This post is a followup to my series of ten posts about the finances of creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and, though not reported in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article, I also looked at Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation.\nAs Nick Matzke pointed out in a comment on the last of these, there are other creationist organizations out there of some significance, such as the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (publisher of the creationist/intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People), Probe Ministries (Ray Bohlin\u0026rsquo;s group in Texas which authored the annotated bibliography of Josh McDowell\u0026rsquo;s book Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity\u0026ndash;the anti-evolution sections of which were ghost authored by an individual who now supports evolution), and Hugh Ross\u0026rsquo;s old-earth creationist group, Reasons To Believe. There are also five groups that were listed in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article which I did not cover\u0026ndash;these were the five smallest groups, the Creation Education Society of Tennessee, the Creation Resource Foundation of El Dorado, California, the Creation Science Association for Mid-America of Kansas City, Missouri (originators of the \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; argument), the Creation-Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, and the Genesis Institute of Mead, Washington. And there are still others out there, like the Twin Cities Creation Science Association of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s organization (which didn\u0026rsquo;t file anything with the IRS, which is part of why he\u0026rsquo;s in jail right now), and various online creationist ministries.\nI may, as Nick suggested, take a look at some of these others in the future.\nAt this point, however, I wanted to see if any conclusions can be drawn from the data in the Form 990s of the groups I\u0026rsquo;ve covered so far. I took a look at one section of each of the Form 990s which gives income data for previous years, and totaled those amounts up for each year across all the groups for which I had data. In some cases, I had to use other sources which were not quite comparable (such as the revenue figures from John Cole\u0026rsquo;s article), but are probably good enough for approximation to look at the size of the creationist market each year. (The main difference between the income figures I used versus the revenue figures is that the income figures show money coming in for purchases without subtracting the cost of goods sold, while the revenue numbers deduct the cost of goods sold.) The Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s totals were used, even though the DI does more than creationism, so that may have contributed to an overestimate, while the omission of all of the other groups above would have contributed to an underestimate. Since the DI brings in considerably more revenue than the other groups, it would take quite a few creationist groups making less than $100,000 a year to make up the difference. So this can\u0026rsquo;t be considered definitive.\nGiven this total size of the creationist market for each year, I then looked at each group\u0026rsquo;s percentage of that marketplace, and how it has changed over time. Here are the numbers, rounded to the closest $1 million:\n1998:\n$13 million market\nInstitute for Creation Research: 45%\nAnswers in Genesis: 28%\nDiscovery Institute: 15%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\nCreation Moments: 2%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 3%\nCreation Research Society: no data\nAll others: less than 1% each\n1999:\n$13 million market\nInstitute for Creation Research: 41%\nAnswers in Genesis: 30%\nDiscovery Institute: 13%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 7%\nCreation Moments: 2%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\nCreation Research Society: 2%\nAll others: less than 1% each\n2000:\n$16 million market\nAnswers in Genesis: 46%\nInstitute for Creation Research: 34%\nDiscovery Institute: 10%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 4%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\nCreation Moments: 1%\nCreation Research Society: 1%\nAll others: less than 1% each\n2001:\n$20 million market\nAnswers in Genesis: 46%\nInstitute for Creation Research: 30%\nDiscovery Institute: 15%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\nCreation Research Society: 1%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 1%\nCreation Moments: 1%\nAll others: less than 1% each\n2002:\n$19 million market\nAnswers in Genesis: 49%\nInstitute for Creation Research: 31%\nDiscovery Institute: 12%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\nCreation Research Society: 2%\nCreation Moments: 1%\nAll others: less than 1% each\n2003:\n$21 million market\nAnswers in Genesis: 52%\nInstitute for Creation Research: 28%\nDiscovery Institute: 15%\nCreation Evidence Museum: 2%\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\nCreation Moments: 1%\nCreation Research Society: 1%\nAll others: less than 1% each\n2004:\n$22 million market\nAnswers in Genesis: 59%\nInstitute for Creation Research: 20%\nDiscovery Institute: 16%\nCreation Research Society: 1%\nCreation Moments: 1%\nCreation Evidence Museum: no data\nCreation Illustrated Ministries: no data\nEven with these approximations and limitations, there are a few things that stand out clearly:\n1. The marketplace for creationism has been growing.\n2. Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo; market share has grown and dominates the market.\n3. The Institute for Creation Research has had a declining market share.\n4. The Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s Center for Science and Culture has had a fairly static market share (overrepresented here, as well, since their numbers include other branches of the DI).\n5. Other creationist groups have tended to lose market share in the face of Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo;s dominance, even if their overall revenue has grown.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-some-conclusions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis post is a followup to my series of ten posts about the finances of creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole:  \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/answers-in-genesis-revenue-declines-by.html\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creationist-finances-institute-for.html\"\u003eInstitute for Creation Research\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creationist-finances-access-research.html\"\u003eAccess Research Network\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-evidence.html\"\u003eCreation Evidence Museum\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation.html\"\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries,\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-moments.html\"\u003eCreation Moments\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html\"\u003eCreation Research Society\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-worldview.html\"\u003eCreation Worldview Ministries\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-discovery.html\"\u003eDiscovery Institute\u003c/a\u003e, and, though not reported in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article, I also looked at Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-discovery.html\"\u003eCenter for Scientific Creation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Nick Matzke pointed out in a comment on the last of these, there are other creationist organizations out there of some significance, such as the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (publisher of the creationist/intelligent design textbook, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e), Probe Ministries (Ray Bohlin\u0026rsquo;s group in Texas which authored the annotated bibliography of Josh McDowell\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;the anti-evolution sections of which were ghost authored by an individual who now supports evolution), and Hugh Ross\u0026rsquo;s old-earth creationist group, Reasons To Believe.  There are also five groups that were listed in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article which I did not cover\u0026ndash;these were the five smallest groups, the Creation Education Society of Tennessee, the Creation Resource Foundation of El Dorado, California, the Creation Science Association for Mid-America of Kansas City, Missouri (originators of the \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; argument), the Creation-Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, and the Genesis Institute of Mead, Washington.  And there are still others out there, like the Twin Cities Creation Science Association of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s organization (which didn\u0026rsquo;t file anything with the IRS, which is part of why he\u0026rsquo;s in jail right now), and various online creationist ministries.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI may, as Nick suggested, take a look at some of these others in the future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point, however, I wanted to see if any conclusions can be drawn from the data in the Form 990s of the groups I\u0026rsquo;ve covered so far.  I took a look at one section of each of the Form 990s which gives income data for previous years, and totaled those amounts up for each year across all the groups for which I had data.  In some cases, I had to use other sources which were not quite comparable (such as the revenue figures from John Cole\u0026rsquo;s article), but are probably good enough for approximation to look at the size of the creationist market each year.  (The main difference between the income figures I used versus the revenue figures is that the income figures show money coming in for purchases without subtracting the cost of goods sold, while the revenue numbers deduct the cost of goods sold.) The Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s totals were used, even though the DI does more than creationism, so that may have contributed to an overestimate, while the omission of all of the other groups above would have contributed to an underestimate.  Since the DI brings in considerably more revenue than the other groups, it would take quite a few creationist groups making less than $100,000 a year to make up the difference.  So this can\u0026rsquo;t be considered definitive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGiven this total size of the creationist market for each year, I then looked at each group\u0026rsquo;s percentage of that marketplace, and how it has changed over time.  Here are the numbers, rounded to the closest $1 million:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1998:\u003cbr /\u003e$13 million market\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 45%\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 28%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 15%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 3%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: no data\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1999:\u003cbr /\u003e$13 million market\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 41%\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 30%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 13%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 7%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2000:\u003cbr /\u003e$16 million market\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 46%\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 34%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 10%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 4%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2001:\u003cbr /\u003e$20 million market\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 46%\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 30%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 15%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2002:\u003cbr /\u003e$19 million market\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 49%\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 31%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 12%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 3%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2003:\u003cbr /\u003e$21 million market\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 52%\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 28%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 15%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: 2%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eAll others: less than 1% each\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2004:\u003cbr /\u003e$22 million market\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis: 59%\u003cbr /\u003eInstitute for Creation Research: 20%\u003cbr /\u003eDiscovery Institute: 16%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Research Society: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Moments: 1%\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Evidence Museum: no data\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries: no data\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEven with these approximations and limitations, there are a few things that stand out clearly:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  The marketplace for creationism has been growing.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo; market share has grown and dominates the market.\u003cbr /\u003e3.  The Institute for Creation Research has had a declining market share.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  The Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s Center for Science and Culture has had a fairly static market share (overrepresented here, as well, since their numbers include other branches of the DI).\u003cbr /\u003e5.  Other creationist groups have tended to lose market share in the face of Answers in Genesis\u0026rsquo;s dominance, even if their overall revenue has grown.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: some conclusions"},{"content":"This is the tenth and final in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and now we finally reach Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to complete the series. Although Brown\u0026rsquo;s organization was not included in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article, I include this one because it is a Phoenix-based organization and one that I\u0026rsquo;ve personally interacted with.\nWalter Brown holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT. He is a retired Air Force colonel who has taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a hotbed of Christian evangelism. He bills himself as a life-long evolutionist who converted to creationism after extensive scientific study. He has worked as a creationism evangelist, mainly teaching seminars in churches, since his retirement from the Air Force in 1980. He is the author of a book listing specific arguments for a young earth and against evolution titled In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, which he now makes available online on his website, creationscience.com. Part of his book is an argument for his specific theory of flood geology called hydroplate theory (which Robert Schadewald referred to as a theory of \u0026ldquo;continental zip\u0026rdquo;), which is not taken seriously by most of his fellow young-earth creationists. Brown hasn\u0026rsquo;t submitted his theory for peer-reviewed publication, even though there are creationist journals open to him, such as the Creation Research Society Quarterly and the Journal of Creation (formerly the Ex Nihilo Technical Journal). Brown has advocated a number of very bad arguments for a young earth which have been refuted even by his own fellow creationists, including the moon dust argument, the shrinking sun argument, and an argument from missing time based on a misunderstanding of leap seconds, which Brown ended up removing from later editions of his book. Brown has made the erroneous arguments that Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint was found away from the rest of the skeleton and that Archaeopteryx is a hoax. His book\u0026rsquo;s assessment of human evolution has been critiqued in detail by Jim Foley on the talkorigins.org website.\nBrown is well-known for his debate challenge, in which he asks for a Ph.D.-credentialed evolutionist to engage him in a written debate. I engaged in a written debate with Brown in the pages of the Creation/Evolution journal, which appeared in three successive issues in 1989-1990.\nIn 1998, Walter Brown was appointed to the committee to review Arizona\u0026rsquo;s state science standards by a creationist member of the state Board of Education, but he was unable to have any significant influence. Other members of the committee included ASU philosophy of science professor Jane Maienschein (appointed by ASU President Lattie Coor) and ASU biology professor Steve Rissing (appointed by Arizona State Superintendent of Public Education Lisa Graham Keegan). The final standards produced by the group were strongly supportive of teaching evolutionary science and were approved by the Board of Education in a 6-3 vote.\nBrown apparently originally moved to Phoenix to study geology with ASU geology professor Robert S. Dietz (b. 1914, d. 1995), who was a major figure in the development of the theory of seafloor spreading and continental drift. Dietz was a strong opponent of creationism (and was the faculty advisor to the Phoenix Skeptics group which I initially created as a student organization at ASU). Unfortunately, Dietz engaged in some ill-considered public debates late in his life in which he performed rather poorly, including a public debate with Brown at ASU. Although Brown and Dietz disagreed with each other on science and religion, they apparently considered each other to be friends.\nThe financial data for the Center for Scientific Creation from GuideStar.org:\n2003: Revenue: $61,020.23 ($12,915.95 donations, $47,052.66 from goods sold) Expenses: $116,996.55 Net assets at end of year: $108,858.55 Salaries: $97,500 Dr. Walter T. Brown, Jr., president and director: $55,000 Mrs. Margaret H. Brown, secretary and treasurer: $35,000\n2004: Revenue: $57,274.67 ($15,216.01 donations, $41,846.93 from goods sold) Expenses: $69,671.71 Net assets at end of year: $96,461.51 Salaries: $52,500 Dr. Walter T. Brown, Jr., president and director: $32,083 Mrs. Margaret H. Brown, secretary and treasurer: $20,417\n2005: Revenue: $61,152.11 ($16,554.36 in donations, $44,427.29 from goods sold) Expenses: $101,505.78 Net assets at end of year: $56,107.84 Salaries: $82,500 Dr. Walter T. Brown, Jr., president and director: $50,417 Mrs. Margaret H. Brown, secretary and treasurer: $32,083\nEarlier year donations and gross merchandise sales (i.e., not profit, from 2003 Form 990\u0026ndash;the CSC cost of goods sold appears to generally be about 1/3 of the sales price): 1999: Donations: $11,208.30 Merchandise sales: $74,053.17 2000: Donations: $10,842.00 Merchandise sales: $38,195.67 2001: Donations: $52,709.18 Merchandise sales: $103,724.03 2002: Donations: $11,437.15 Merchandise sales: $94,476.13\nCSC\u0026rsquo;s merchandise sales bring more of its revenue than donations. Those appear to have peaked in 2001, and may be continuing a decline in recent years (though 2005 was better than 2004). The organization has spent more than it has taken in for the last three years of available reports, with its net assets dropping by almost half from 2003 to 2005, from $108,858.55 to $56,107.84.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not clear whether CSC has any plans for succession after Brown is gone. I\u0026rsquo;ve been told that Brown\u0026rsquo;s son rejects creationism and his father\u0026rsquo;s religious views.\nYou can find CSC\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here.\nHistorical Comments Nick (Matzke) (2007-01-08):\nHey Jim, Great posts. Not that you need to spend your life doing this, but three other groups you should check out if you get the chance:\nFoundation for Thought and Ethics Probe Ministries Reasons to Believe\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the tenth and final in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole:  \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/answers-in-genesis-revenue-declines-by.html\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creationist-finances-institute-for.html\"\u003eInstitute for Creation Research\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/creationist-finances-access-research.html\"\u003eAccess Research Network\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-evidence.html\"\u003eCreation Evidence Museum\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation.html\"\u003eCreation Illustrated Ministries,\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-moments.html\"\u003eCreation Moments\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html\"\u003eCreation Research Society\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-worldview.html\"\u003eCreation Worldview Ministries\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"/2007/01/creationist-finances-discovery.html\"\u003eDiscovery Institute\u003c/a\u003e, and now we finally reach Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to complete the series.  Although Brown\u0026rsquo;s organization was not included in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article, I include this one because it is a Phoenix-based organization and one that I\u0026rsquo;ve personally interacted with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Center for Scientific Creation"},{"content":"This is the ninth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, and Creation Worldview Ministries. Now, the Discovery Institute.\nThe Discovery Institute is a Seattle-based think tank founded by Bruce Chapman, former secretary of state for the State of Washington and former deputy assistant to Ronald Reagan. He founded DI in 1990, initially focused on regional issues such as transportation and communication. The DI\u0026rsquo;s transportation arm, called the Cascadia Project, received several million dollars in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 1996, Chapman and political scientist John G. West secured funding from C. Davis Weyerhauser\u0026rsquo;s Stewardship Foundation, Howard Ahmanson, and others to create an organization within DI called the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture \u0026ldquo;seek[ing] nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies\u0026rdquo; and promoting \u0026ldquo;intelligent design.\u0026rdquo; The initial DI research fellows were Steven Meyer, William Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and Paul Nelson, with Meyer and West as co-directors of CRSC and Phillip Johnson as an advisor. The name of the center was subsequently shortened to the Center for Science and Culture (CSC).\nIn 1999 the DI\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Wedge document\u0026rdquo; was leaked to the public, the circumstances of which became known in a 2006 story in the Seattle Weekly. You can find much more about the Discovery Institute at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb blog.\nThe financial figures below are for the Discovery Institute as a whole, not the CSC specifically.\nAs usual, the baseline financial information (1997) is from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1997: Revenue: $1,832,398 Expenses: $1,323,899\nAnd the last three years available through GuideStar.org:\n2002: Revenue: $2,386,072 ($2,293,047 donations, $13,277 from goods sold) Expenses: $2,404,242 Net expenses at end of year: $1,819,294 Salaries: $238,035 executives/directors, $756,659 other salaries Individual salaries not listed, Form 990 states they are \u0026ldquo;available at office.\u0026rdquo;\n2003: Revenue: $4,233,814 ($4,141,679 donations, $10,466 from goods sold) Expenses: $2,499,077 Net assets at end of year: $3,554,031 Salaries: $338,977 executives/directors, $627,285 other salaries Executives/directors: Douglas Bilderback, treasurer: $23,397 Steven Buri, executive director: $72,621 Bruce Chapman, president: $131,696 Eric Garcia, treasurer: $16,430 Jay Richards, vice president: $56,750 Marshall Sana, secretary: $38,083 Employees: Bruce Agnew: $92,500 Steven Meyer: $90,000 John Drescher: $75,000 Teresa Gonzales: $55,000\n2004: Revenue: $3,504,062 ($3,260,859 in donations, $18,572 from goods sold) Expenses: $3,539,228 Net assets at end of year: $3,518,865 Salaries: $354,000 executives/directors, $947,479 other salaries Steven Buri, executive director: $80,000 Bruce Chapman, president: $132,000 Eric Garcia, treasurer: $39,000 Jay Richards, vice president: $63,000 Marshall Sana, secretary: $40,000 Steven Meyer, vice president: $102,500 Employees: Bruce Agnew, program policy director: $105,000 Tom Till, program director: $105,000 John Drescher, program director: $85,000 Teresa Gonzales, program manager: $60,000\nThe Discovery Institute is an organization with considerable revenue, allowing it to pay extremely lucrative salaries to its senior management and employees. It has shown growth over the years, though revenue dipped in 2004. It has been influential in media coverage of intelligent design, though it has yet to fulfill its promises of scientific research supporting intelligent design and has suffered major defeats in the legal arena. Despite its high revenue, it is still smaller than Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research, which appear to me to continue to have better grassroots support than the Discovery Institute.\nYou can find DI\u0026rsquo;s 2002 Form 990 here, 2003 Form 990 here, and their 2004 Form 990 here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-discovery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the ninth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: the Discovery Institute"},{"content":"This is the eighth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, and the Creation Research Society. Next up, Creation Worldview Ministries.\nCreation Worldview Ministries is \u0026ldquo;an educational missionary organization\u0026rdquo; run by Grady McMurtry of Orlando, Florida. McMurtry holds a doctorate in theology from the School of Theology of Columbus, Georgia. He gives sermons and lectures promotion creationism, publishes a monthly newsletter, and sells books, CDs, DVDs, and other products through the Creation Worldview Ministries website.\nAs usual, the baseline financial information (1998) is from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1998: Revenue: $114,604 Expenses: $93,076\nAnd the last three years available through GuideStar.org:\n2003: Revenue: $139,827 ($95,049 donations, $43,759 from goods sold) Expenses: $135,636 Net assets at end of year: $122,154 Salary: Grady McMurtry, president/director: $48,500\n2004: Revenue: $143,008 ($92,178 in donations, $42,880 from goods sold) Expenses: $172,977 Net assets at end of year: $92,185 Salary: Grady McMurtry, president/director: $56,000\n2005: Revenue: $141,857 ($95,571 in donations, $43,486 from goods sold) Expenses: $140,968 Net assets at end of year: $93,074 Salary: Grady McMurtry, president/director: $57,500\nEarlier year donations (from 2003 Form 990): 1999: $95,642 2000: $81,793 2001: $93,996 2002: $88,082\nYou can find CWM\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here.\nUnknown (2010-05-23):\nGET A REAL JOB!\nLippard (2010-05-23):\nWayne: Are you addressing me, or Grady McMurtry?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-worldview.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the eighth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Creation Worldview Ministries"},{"content":"This is the seventh in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, and Creation Moments. Now for an Arizona-based organization, the Creation Research Society.\nThe Creation Research Society (CRS) was organized in 1963 by geneticist Walter Lammerts (b. 1904, d. 1996) and biologist William J. Tinkle (b. 1892, d. 1981) as an alternative to the American Scientific Affiliation and replacement to the defunct Deluge Geology Society. The CRS, originally called the Creation Research Advisory Committee, began with invitations to join an anti-evolution group within the ASA, which were sent to Henry M. Morris, Frank Lewis Marsh, Molleurus Couperus, Edwin Y. Monsma, R. Laird Harris, Duane T. Gish, Philip V. Livdahl, and Edward L. Kessel. Of these, Kessel, a theistic evolutionist, did not join, and Livdahl did not respond. It was Henry Morris who suggested creating a separate society. (The founding of the CRS is described in Ronald Numbers\u0026rsquo; The Creationists, pp. 247-257). The ASA was considered unacceptable because it permitted evolutionists as members; membership in the CRS required assent to a four-point statement of belief:\n1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.\n2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation Week have accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.\n3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect.\n4. We are an organization of Christian men and women of science who accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of the special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman and their subsequent fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the necessity of a Savior for all mankind. Therefore, salvation can come only through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior.\nThe Creation Research Society has published a peer-reviewed journal, the Creation Research Society Quarterly, since 1964, and a bimonthly newsletter for a more popular audience, Creation Matters, since 1996. Voting membership in CRS requires at least a master's degree in some scientific field; there are non-voting memberships for other interested people, but all must agree with the above statement of belief. CRS also operates the Van Andel Creation Research Center just north of Chino Valley, Arizona, which was named after Jay Van Andel (b. 1924, d. 2004), one of the two co-founders (with Rich DeVos) of Amway (both of whom are financial supporters of creationism).\nAs usual, the baseline financial information (1997 in this case) is from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1997: Revenue: $263,391 Expenses: ? (not given in Cole\u0026rsquo;s article)\nAnd the last three years available through GuideStar.org:\n2003: Revenue: $245,867 ($153,356 donations, $44,590 in dues, $27,225 from goods sold) Expenses: $300,589 Net assets at end of year: $1,109,742 Salary: John Meyer, lab director: $38,042\n2004: Revenue: $324,942 ($236,244 in donations, $5,732 in program service revenue, $38,387 in dues, $13,981 from goods sold) Expenses: $330,803 Net assets at end of year: $1,102,797 Salary: Kevin Anderson, director: $39,598\nIn 2005, the CRS switched to a July-June fiscal year, so their 2005 Form 990 is for six months only (and is on a 2004 form).\n2005 (January-June only): Revenue: $110,967 ($49,347 in donations, $2,663 in program service revenue, $28,348 in dues, $13,983 from goods sold) Expenses: $153,841 Net assets at end of year: $1,052,000 Salary: Kevin Anderson, director: $23,175\n2005 numbers doubled for an estimate of full-year (which doesn\u0026rsquo;t account for seasonal variation): Revenue: $221,934 ($98,694 in donations, $5,326 in program service revenue, $56,696 in dues, $27,996 from goods sold) Expenses: $307,682 Would would leave net assets of: $1,009,126 Salary: Kevin Anderson, director: $46,350\nCRS has had more expenses than revenues over the last three years reported at GuideStar.org. Unless their revenue is large in the second half of the year, it looks like 2005 shows a dip in revenue; it appears that they likely receive most membership dues in the first half of the year (unless they saw substantial growth in 2005 after a decline from 2003 to 2004). CRS has a little over half a million dollars worth of investments to draw upon to cover these annual deficits.\nYou can find CRS\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here.\nKristine (2009-03-07):\nWow, Jim, I haven't been to your blog for a while, and I stumbled upon this gem while exploring a question (provoked by some readings for grad school) as to where the personal papers of creationists, and the administrative/business papers of creationist societies, end up, if in archives or the trash bin. And here you've done all this work!My readings for class talked of the mandate for archivists \"giving voice to the voiceless\" of those not archived, and spoke of archives as \"power. It's my belief that silence can be power too, particularly in the creationist movement. When the public is not aware that each \"new\" creationist idea is just repackaged superstition, they are going to be more credulous than if they had the means to place modern-day intelligent design in context with Duane Gish's creation science and the Institute for Creation Research, Henry Morris's Deluge science and the Creation Research Science Center, and so on.Creationism, not being a real science, does not build upon its past \"scholarship\" but relies on the short memories of Americans to forget its past \"achievements.\" Thanks for contributing to the long memory. I'm going to have to check out your other posts on the other organizations.\nLippard (2009-03-11):\nKristine: I think you're right--dropping things down the memory hole is advantageous if you're going to be repeating the same mistakes over and over, or if the history of your position undermines it, which I think are both the case for creationism. Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism_ is a great compilation of the history of young-earth creationism, and is fun to read alongside Henry M. Morris's _A History of Modern Creationism_.\nKtisophilos (2009-03-12):\nNumbers' book implies that YEC began with Seventh Day Adventists like G.M. Price, ignoring that it was almost unanimous among the Church Fathers including Basil the Great and Augustine, medieval Church Doctors including Thomas Aquinas, and the Reformers, as well as the early 19th-century Scriptural Geologists.\nTim H (2009-03-13):\n\"Numbers' book implies that YEC began with Seventh Day Adventists like G.M. Price, ignoring that it was almost unanimous among the Church Fathers including Basil the Great and Augustine, medieval Church Doctors including Thomas Aquinas, and the Reformers, as well as the early 19th-century Scriptural Geologists.\"That is true, but by the end of the 19th century, almost all well-known Christian apologists had accepted that the earth was old and adhered to either the gap or day age theories. YEC had very low visibility. It was Price and subsequent followers such as Morris that revived YEC and its attendant flood geology.\nTim H (2009-03-13):\nBy the way Jim, are you aware of this latest controversy with AiG:http://www.beyondcreationscience.com/index.php?pr=Why_Doesnt_Answers_in_Genesis_Tell_You_the_TruthBTW - how about an update on creationist ministry finances - loved your last one!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-research.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the seventh in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Creation Research Society"},{"content":"I got a call from the fraud department of my bank this morning, asking me whether I had used my debit card this morning at The Sports Basement in San Francisco for a $71.00 charge. I said that I hadn\u0026rsquo;t, and they said there was a debit prenotification, which they\u0026rsquo;ve seen as a prelude to withdrawals from around the globe using cloned cards or electronic access to accounts. They had already blocked further use of my card information, and under my banking agreement I would not be liable for any loss in any case.\nWhen I asked how my information got out, they indicated that they believe the miscreants are just using brute force\u0026ndash;changing numbers based on a known card to find new valid card numbers. The only alternative I could see based on my card habits would be if I inadvertently used an ATM with a skimmer attached to the front of it somewhere or fell victim to an ATM with a tapped phone line connection. I rarely use ATMs these days; this may provide me with some incentive to do so even less frequently.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/my-bank-is-on-ball.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI got a call from the fraud department of my bank this morning, asking me whether I had used my debit card this morning at The Sports Basement in San Francisco for a $71.00 charge.  I said that I hadn\u0026rsquo;t, and they said there was a debit prenotification, which they\u0026rsquo;ve seen as a prelude to withdrawals from around the globe using cloned cards or electronic access to accounts.  They had already blocked further use of my card information, and under my banking agreement I would not be liable for any loss in any case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen I asked how my information got out, they indicated that they believe the miscreants are just using brute force\u0026ndash;changing numbers based on a known card to find new valid card numbers.  The only alternative I could see based on my card habits would be if I inadvertently used \u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org/it/04/02/24/0034234.shtml\"\u003ean ATM with a skimmer attached to the front of it\u003c/a\u003e somewhere or fell victim to an \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/atm_eavesdroppi_1.html\"\u003eATM with a tapped phone line connection\u003c/a\u003e.  I rarely use ATMs these days; this may provide me with some incentive to do so even less frequently.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My bank is on the ball"},{"content":"This is the sixth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, and Creation Illustrated Ministries. Next up, Creation Moments.\nCreation Moments was originally the Bible-Science Association, founded in 1963 by Pastor Walter Lang (not to be confused with the director of \u0026ldquo;The King and I\u0026rdquo;). \u0026ldquo;Creation Moments\u0026rdquo; was a short radio program and a column in the Bible-Science Newsletter, a monthly periodical published on newsprint that was home to some of the wackier claims of young-earth creationism, which often made for entertaining reading. One regular contributor was Nancy Pearcey, who was played a significant role in the development of \u0026ldquo;intelligent design,\u0026rdquo; including contributing material previously published in the Bible-Science Newsletter to the book Of Pandas and People. Pandas played a major role in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, as it was over successive drafts of that book that the words \u0026ldquo;creationism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;creation science\u0026rdquo; transformed into \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; in later revisions.\nBible-Science Newsletter editor Pastor Paul A. Bartz was Lang\u0026rsquo;s successor, and as \u0026ldquo;Creation Moments\u0026rdquo; became more popular than the newsletter, the organization\u0026rsquo;s name was changed accordingly. The Bible-Science Newsletter ceased publication in 1998, but the \u0026ldquo;Creation Moments\u0026rdquo; radio program is syndicated on multiple Christian radio networks and is broadcast in both English and Spanish, where it appears daily. Each year the daily scripts are combined into an annual volume of devotionals which the organization sells along with other books and items like calendars and Christmas cards.\nThe organization is now under the management of Lu Ann Strombeck, its Chief Operating Officer. Canadian creationist Ian T. Taylor, author of \u0026ldquo;In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order\u0026rdquo; is on its board of directors and his organization, TFE Publishing, is occasionally paid by the organization to edit scripts. Taylor is perhaps best known for claiming (along with Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingh) that Archaeopteryx is a hoaxed fossil created by putting feathers on a true reptile, while other creationists (such as Answers in Genesis) claim that it is a true bird and not a reptile.\nCreation Moments, Inc. refers to itself as \u0026ldquo;CMI,\u0026rdquo; which is the same label used by Creation Ministries International, the organization composed of the Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada groups that split off from Answers in Genesis. Creation Moments is based in Foley, Minnesota.\nAs usual, the 1998 information from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1998: Revenue: $292,318 Expenses: $284,846\nAnd the last three years available through GuideStar.org:\n2003 (July 2003-June 2004): Revenue: $308,506 ($218,240 donations, $49,327 program service revenue which is $48,877 in book sales and $450 in seminar income) Expenses: $228,679 Net assets at end of year: $120,440 Salary: Lu Ann Strombeck, COO: $30,900\n2004 (July 2004-June 2005): Revenue: $269,996 ($229,007 in donations, $40,645 in program service revenue which is $40,145 in book sales and $500 in seminar income) Expenses: $241,860 Net assets at end of year: $149,233 Salary: Lu Ann Strombeck, COO: $32,471\n2005 (July 2005-June 2006): Revenue: $268,966 ($217,492 in donations, $51,050 in program service revenue which is entirely from book sales) Expenses: $256,358 Net assets at end of year: $161,184 Salary: Lu Ann Strombeck, COO: $34,590\nCreation Moments has its own building for its offices, and as of June 2006 owes $21,501 on its mortgage, paying $550/mo. The original mortgage was only $35,000; they apparently paid $44,400 for land and $96,166,71 for the building.\nTheir donations and revenue have grown over the last few years, except for a dip in book sales in 2004.\nYou can find CM\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-moments.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the sixth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Creation Moments"},{"content":"After being embarrassed in the Jack Abramoff scandal by records of Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s visits to the White House in Secret Service records, the White House signed an agreement with Secret Service that the visitor records they collect count as White House property, not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Talking Points Memo has the memorandum of understanding here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/bush-doesnt-want-public-to-know-who.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter being embarrassed in the Jack Abramoff scandal by records of Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s visits to the White House in Secret Service records, the White House \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002290.php\"\u003esigned an agreement with Secret Service that the visitor records they collect count as White House property\u003c/a\u003e, not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.  Talking Points Memo has the memorandum of understanding \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/admin-secret-service-mou/?resultpage=1\u0026\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush doesn't want the public to know who visits"},{"content":"A photo of John Kerry eating breakfast \u0026ldquo;alone\u0026rdquo; in the U.S. Embassy mess hall in Baghdad was circulating in the right-wing blogosphere, touted as evidence that he was shunned by the troops. The left-wing blogosphere\u0026rsquo;s initial response was to question the authenticity of the photo due to the erroneous date/time stamp on the photo (caused by the photographer failing to set the date on the camera) and the presence of the flags of Britain and Portugal in the background (which other photos and personnel on site have confirmed are really there\u0026ndash;and the Portugal one will be removed since Portugal no longer has personnel in Iraq).\nMichelle Malkin supplied evidence of the authenticity of the photo (but failed to recognize that it disproved her claim of Kerry being snubbed) by locating another photograph with Kerry, wearing the same shirt, sitting and eating with the troops. She then harshly criticized those who argued that the photograph was a fake, throwing out charges of \u0026ldquo;hysterics\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;moonbattery.\u0026quot;\nBut now Greg Sargent at TPM Muckraker has tracked down the details of what Kerry was doing sitting with at least one person in a suit (visible in the photo\u0026ndash;Kerry was clearly not alone)\u0026ndash;he was intentionally sitting away from everyone else in order to have an off-the-record conversation with two reporters, Marc Santora of The New York Times and Mark Danner of The New York Review and The New Yorker. They confirm that Kerry was not being snubbed by the troops, and in fact soldiers stopped by during their conversation to ask for photographs with Kerry:\n\u0026ldquo;Santora was to my right,\u0026rdquo; Danner also said. \u0026ldquo;It was very early in the morning at about 8:30, in the green zone. The reason that people weren\u0026rsquo;t sitting directly around us was that we were having a private conversation.\u0026rdquo; Asked if the troops showed animosity to Kerry, Danner said: \u0026ldquo;Not in any way that I noticed. A number of soldiers came up and asked to have their photograph taken with him.\u0026quot;This is typical of Malkin\u0026ndash;right on a specific detail (the photo was genuine) but completely wrong in the overall argument (that Kerry was being snubbed by the troops). Will she or the other conservative bloggers who have made the claim that Kerry was eating alone because he was snubbed by the troops admit their error?\nUPDATE (February 1, 2007): Snopes also has coverage of this Malkin claim.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/kerry-and-troops-photo-shows-michelle.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA photo of John Kerry eating breakfast \u0026ldquo;alone\u0026rdquo; in the U.S. Embassy mess hall in Baghdad was circulating in the right-wing blogosphere, \u003ca href=\"http://www.areavoices.com/hottalk/?blog=5053\"\u003etouted as evidence that he was shunned by the troops\u003c/a\u003e.  The left-wing blogosphere\u0026rsquo;s initial response was to question the authenticity of the photo due to the erroneous date/time stamp on the photo (caused by the photographer failing to set the date on the camera) and the presence of the flags of Britain and Portugal in the background (which other photos and personnel on site have confirmed are really there\u0026ndash;and the Portugal one will be removed since Portugal no longer has personnel in Iraq).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichelle Malkin supplied evidence of the authenticity of the photo (but failed to recognize that it disproved her claim of Kerry being snubbed) by \u003ca href=\"http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006613.htm\"\u003elocating another photograph with Kerry, wearing the same shirt, sitting and eating with the troops\u003c/a\u003e.  She then harshly criticized those who argued that the photograph was a fake, throwing out charges of \u0026ldquo;hysterics\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;moonbattery.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut now Greg Sargent at TPM Muckraker \u003ca href=\"http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jan/05/the_wingnut_lonely_kerry_story_is_bogus_according_to_witnesses\"\u003ehas tracked down the details of what Kerry was doing sitting with at least one person in a suit\u003c/a\u003e (visible in the photo\u0026ndash;Kerry was clearly not alone)\u0026ndash;he was intentionally sitting away from everyone else in order to have an off-the-record conversation with two reporters, Marc Santora of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e and Mark Danner of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Review\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e.  They confirm that Kerry was not being snubbed by the troops, and in fact soldiers stopped by during their conversation to ask for photographs with Kerry:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Santora was to my right,\u0026rdquo; Danner also said. \u0026ldquo;It was very early in the morning at about 8:30, in the green zone. The reason that people weren\u0026rsquo;t sitting directly around us was that we were having a private conversation.\u0026rdquo; Asked if the troops showed animosity to Kerry, Danner said: \u0026ldquo;Not in any way that I noticed. A number of soldiers came up and asked to have their photograph taken with him.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is typical of Malkin\u0026ndash;right on a specific detail (the photo was genuine) but completely wrong in the overall argument (that Kerry was being snubbed by the troops).  Will she or the other conservative bloggers who have made the claim that Kerry was eating alone because he was snubbed by the troops admit their error?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 1, 2007):  Snopes \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/iraqsnub.asp\"\u003ealso has coverage of this Malkin claim\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kerry and the troops photo shows Michelle Malkin's unreliability"},{"content":"Glen Whitman at Agoraphilia points out how the common example of cognitive bias that \u0026ldquo;80% of us believe that our driving skills are better than average\u0026rdquo; can be a correct description of reality, when the median is greater than the mean. By example, the mean time to conception for women trying to get pregnant is 7 months, but 50% of such women are pregnant within 4 months and 75% pregnant within 6 months, so 75% of such women do \u0026ldquo;better than average.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments Unknown (2007-01-05):\nI don't think is a particularly good example. When respondents to the question \"Are you a better driver than average?\" answer in the affirmative, they almost certainly mean that, in a group of 100 random drivers, they'd be in the top 50 (and not that their driving skill is greater than M, the mean driving skill of the group). So, I think it remains as a good example of cognitive bias. Brian\nSB (2013-02-24):\nA few bad drivers - say 20% - can result in the average loss being very high. So, the 80% may have a \u0026quot;better than average\u0026quot; loss ratio. In fact, that is the case for motor insurance claims. For the statistically minded, loss ratios follow a Poisson-distribution, hence the average loss is higher than the average person's loss.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/more-than-50-can-be-above-average.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGlen Whitman at Agoraphilia \u003ca href=\"http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/01/more-than-50-percent-can-be-above.html\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e how the common example of cognitive bias that \u0026ldquo;80% of us believe that our driving skills are better than average\u0026rdquo; can be a correct description of reality, when the median is greater than the mean.  By example, the mean time to conception for women trying to get pregnant is 7 months, but 50% of such women are pregnant within 4 months and 75% pregnant within 6 months, so 75% of such women do \u0026ldquo;better than average.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More than 50% can be above average"},{"content":"This is the fifth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, and the Creation Evidence Museum. This time out, I\u0026rsquo;ll look at Creation Illustrated Ministries.\nCreation Illustrated Ministries began in 1993, producing a magazine called Creation Illustrated. The magazine is published by a homeschooling couple, Tom and Jennifer Ish of Auburn, California, who describe how they got started here.\nAs usual, the 1998 information from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1998: Revenue: $202,950 Expenses: $198,414\nAnd the last three years available through GuideStar.org:\n2001 (July 2001-June 2002): Revenue: $232,381 ($52,154 donations, $179,961 program service revenue) Expenses: $241,795 Net assets at end of year: -$66,079 Salaries (18.3% of revenue): Thomas M. Ish, president: $24,000 (plus $7,947 in expenses) Jennifer L. Ish, secretary: $10,500\n2002 (July 2002-June 2003): Revenue: $307,582 ($109,715 in donations, $197,700 in program service revenue which is $167,095 from subscriptions, $4,095 from book and video sales, $26,510 from advertising) Expenses: $285,364 Net assets at end of year: -$43,861 Salaries (11.0% of revenue): Thomas M. Ish, president: $15,000 (plus $6,706 in expenses) Jennifer L. Ish, secretary: $12,000\n2003 (July 2003-June 2004): Revenue: $357,600 ($96,782 in donations, $259,339 in program service revenue which is $170,815 from subscriptions, $26,005 from book and video sales, $62,519 from advertising) Expenses: $363,742 Net assets at end of year: -$50,003 Salaries (19.8% of revenue): Thomas M. Ish, president: $39,000 (plus $12,205 in expenses) Jennifer L. Ish, secretary: $19,500\nCreation Illustrated Ministries is apparently run as a home-based business, with the organization leasing office space from the Ish family, but not actually paying for it. The Ish family have also run up mileage for the nonprofit which they have not been reimbursed for, bringing the total amount the organization owes them up to $305,180.\nAs an organization, CIM is running up debt to its founders/officers, the Ish family, which is the main cause of its negative net assets. It is seeing revenue growth from year to year, but two of the last three years of reports above show expenses exceeding revenue. It looks like it is working well enough to keep going and continue making a living for its founders, but I would expect a business running for over a decade to be able to start reducing its debt as revenue grows. Their website indicates that Jennifer Ish\u0026rsquo;s responsibilities for circulation and fulfillment have been outsourced to \u0026ldquo;a magazine fulfillment company in Southern California,\u0026rdquo; which may have led to improved efficiency.\nYou can find CIM\u0026rsquo;s 2001 Form 990 here, 2002 Form 990 here, and their 2003 Form 990 here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the fifth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Creation Illustrated Ministries"},{"content":"This is the fourth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, and Access Research Network.\nThe Creation Evidence Museum (formerly Creation Evidences Museum) of Glen Rose, Texas is run by Rev. Carl Baugh, one of the most unreliable young-earth creationists still around. Baugh, born in 1936, was the Kent Hovind of his day, and boasts a CV that includes promoting Paluxy River dinosaur footprints as human footprints, diploma mill degrees, and running a diploma mill. Baugh is one of the creationists who has been called out by name in criticism by Creation Ministries International.\nOne of Baugh\u0026rsquo;s claims is that a 19th-century miner\u0026rsquo;s hammer he found in a concretion in Ordovician or Silurian rock is an \u0026ldquo;out-of-place\u0026rdquo; fossil proving that the earth is young. Baugh has refused to allow the handle of this hammer to be radiocarbon dated. In a written debate I had with Walter Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation, Brown raised this hammer as a problem for evolution, and stated that it had not been dated because of Baugh\u0026rsquo;s three \u0026ldquo;understandable\u0026rdquo; conditions for dating it, one of which was that someone else pay for it. Glen Kuban has an up-to-date summary of the claims regarding this hammer.\nAnd now, the financial data\u0026ndash;first, the 1998 information from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1998: Revenue: $420,460 Expenses: $365,816\nAnd the last three years:\n2002 (Aug 2002-July 2003): Revenue: $610,693.35 Expenses: $565,340.58 Net assets at end of year: $1,178,851.97 Salary: Carl Baugh, president and director: $63,780.72\nThe 2002-2003 Form 990 is printed by hand.\n2003 (August 2003-July 2004): Revenue: $493,797.03 Expenses: $498,214.66 Net assets at end of year: $1,174,434.34 Salary: Carl Baugh, president and director: $66,717.50\n2004 (August 2004-July 2005): Revenue: $494,361.26 Expenses: $466,491.23 Net assets at end of year: $1,202,304.37 Salary: Carl Baugh, president and director: $68,639.80\nThe Creation Evidence Museum is another small and not terribly influential organization. About half of its annual expenses go to running the museum, much of the rest to salaries and benefits, with a few thousand dollars a year spent on various forms of \u0026ldquo;research.\u0026rdquo; Its income is about $300,000 a year in donations, $170,000-$200,000 in receipts from admissions, merchandise sold, etc.\nThe good news is that gross receipts from admissions and merchandise sold have declined, not hitting $200,000 since 2001. It also looks like revenue may have peaked in 2003. The decline is attributable to a decline in sales of \u0026ldquo;educational products,\u0026rdquo; as museum entrance fees and lecture fees have increased:\nMuseum entrance fees and lectures: 2002: $24,055 2003: $23,295 2004: $27,961\nSales of \u0026ldquo;educational products\u0026rdquo;: 2002: $151,454.55 2003: $144,242.14 2004: $139,375.02\nMost of the museum\u0026rsquo;s assets are in buildings, equipment, five vehicles, and the museum collection of artifacts. At the end of July 2005, it had less than $20,000 in cash on hand, and $61,000 in investments. This is not a museum sitting on a large endowment that will continue to operate if the cash flow were to stop.\nYou can find CEM\u0026rsquo;s 2002 Form 990 here, their 2003 Form 990 here, and their 2004 Form 990 here.\nEd Darrell (2007-01-07):\nAbout three years ago I attended a \"kick-off\" fund raising lecture in Glen Rose with Baugh and Duane Gish. They were embarking on a national tour to raise money for a new museum structure, to be built (inexplicably) in the shape of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. I'd have to consult my notes, but I think they needed about $36 million to get it off the ground. Without going in to too many details of that presentation (\u0026ldquo;Mr. Woodpecker,\u0026rdquo; one of Gish\u0026rsquo;s favorite cartoon characters, played a prominent role in the Gish part), I just want to say that I was under the impression that they hoped to get the money raised to break ground by now. The 200 or so people in the audience included about 198 who greeted this news enthusiastically, and I recall several checks being written on the spot.\nFrom your analysis, do you think there is activity in this group, particularly with the failure to complete these various museum fund-raising projects, that might raise the interest of the Texas attorney general? Can non-profits raise money under one pretense, then spend it under another?\nLippard (2007-01-07):\nEd: I believe that raising funds for a specific purpose and then not using them for that purpose would constitute fraud, but without a complaining victim it is not likely that anything will be done about it. It may be that the donations were collected under the understanding that if not enough was raised for the new museum, it would go into general funds, and it may also be that donors were later notified that the project was not going to happen and offering the possibility of refund\u0026ndash;in my opinion that would be the only ethical course of action.\nIn my experience, there is not a lot of oversight on nonprofits and it takes extreme malfeasance and complaints from victims to get any enforcement action to occur. For example, for many years tax-exempt nonprofit \u0026ldquo;credit counseling\u0026rdquo; services have been used in conjunction with telemarketing companies to engage in fairly blatant scams, but the IRS only took action last year to revoke the tax-exempt status of a number of these scammers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/creationist-finances-creation-evidence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the fourth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: the Creation Evidence Museum"},{"content":"Radley Balko of The Agitator paid a visit to David Ruttenberg\u0026rsquo;s bar in Manassas Park, Virginia, and witnessed firsthand the police harassment.\n(Also see previous coverage.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2007/01/radley-balko-visits-rack-and-roll.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko of The Agitator \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027369.php\"\u003epaid a visit to David Ruttenberg\u0026rsquo;s bar in Manassas Park, Virginia, and witnessed firsthand the police harassment\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/outrageous-manassas-park-law.html\"\u003eprevious coverage\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Radley Balko visits Rack and Roll Billiards"},{"content":"Dahlia Lithwick gives a rundown.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/10-most-outrageous-civil-liberties.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDahlia Lithwick \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2156397/fr/rss/\"\u003egives a rundown\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006"},{"content":"I read the following books in 2006. These are the ones I\u0026rsquo;ve finished\u0026ndash;looks like I didn\u0026rsquo;t do nearly as well as last year.\nThe links are to Amazon.com, where I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed most of these.\nJames Bovard, The Bush Betrayal Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness John Grogan, Marley \u0026amp; Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog Jim Harper, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and MisunderstoodJohn Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A HistoryNick Hornby, A Long Way Down Paul Krassner, One Hand Jerking: Reports from an investigative satirist Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier, Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding \u0026amp; Correcting Common Dog Problems John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the AfterlifeRudy Rucker, Saucer Wisdom Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire MindNeil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists Martha Stout, Ph.D., The Sociopath Next Door Nick Webb, Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas AdamsAnd these are the ones I haven't finished yet--some (Amar, Numbers, Zimmer) I just started, others have been hanging around for a while and I should probably give up on (some of these were started but uncompleted this time last year). The Girard and Lambot book is a beautiful, interesting, and quite expensive book that can be read one short biography at a time. Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A BiographyDiego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private ProtectionGreg Girard and Ian Lambot, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling BrainOlivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent DesignKevin Mandia, Chris Prosise, and Matt Pepe, Incident Response and Computer Forensics, Second EditionKevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of BushCarl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network EconomySpammer-X, Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark SideRobert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, Pump \u0026amp; Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New EconomyJohn Viega and Gary McGraw, Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right WayVernor Vinge, The Collected Stories of Vernor VingeAndrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, WI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless HackingCarl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea(Previously:\u0026nbsp;2005.)","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI read the following books in 2006.  These are the ones I\u0026rsquo;ve finished\u0026ndash;looks like I didn\u0026rsquo;t do nearly as well as \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003elast year\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe links are to Amazon.com, where I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed most of these.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames Bovard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403968519/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDaniel Gilbert, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400042666/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eStumbling on Happiness\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Grogan, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060817089/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMarley \u0026amp; Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJim Harper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1930865856/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eIdentity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Hodgman, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594482225/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Areas of My Expertise\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJennifer Michael Hecht, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060097957/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDoubt: A History\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNick Hornby, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594481948/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Long Way Down\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Krassner, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583226966/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eOne Hand Jerking: Reports from an investigative satirist\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eLawrence Lessig, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143034650/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFree Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307337332/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding \u0026amp; Correcting Common Dog Problems\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Allen Paulos, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038548254X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Mathematician Reads the Newspaper\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Perkins, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452287081/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eConfessions of an Economic Hit Man\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGerald Posner, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375508791/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhy America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eV.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., and Sandra Blakeslee, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0688152473/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMary Roach, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393329127/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpook: Science Tackles the Afterlife\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRudy Rucker, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312868847/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSaucer Wisdom\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas J. Stanley, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0740718584/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Millionaire Mind\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNeil Strauss, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060554738/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMartha Stout, Ph.D., \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076791581X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Sociopath Next Door\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eNick Webb, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345476514/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAnd these are the ones I haven't finished yet--some (Amar, Numbers, Zimmer) I just started, others have been hanging around for a while and I should probably give up on (some of these were started but uncompleted this time \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\"\u003elast year\u003c/a\u003e).  The Girard and Lambot book is a beautiful, interesting, and quite expensive book that can be read one short biography at a time.\n\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAkhil Reed Amar, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812972724/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmerica's Constitution: A Biography\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDiego Gambetta, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674807421/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eGreg Girard and Ian Lambot, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1873200137/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCity of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAntonio Damasio, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156028719/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eLooking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOlivia Judson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805063315/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRonald Numbers, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674023390/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin Mandia, Chris Prosise, and Matt Pepe, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/007222696X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eIncident Response and Computer Forensics, Second Edition\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin Phillips, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143034316/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmerican Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCarl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/087584863X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eInformation Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSpammer-X, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932266860/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eInside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRobert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813536804/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePump \u0026amp; Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Viega and Gary McGraw, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020172152X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuilding Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eVernor Vinge, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312875843/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAndrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321202171/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCarl Zimmer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061138401/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eEvolution: The Triumph of an Idea\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;\"\u003e(Previously:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html\" style=\"background-color: white; color: #5588aa; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-line: none;\"\u003e2005\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;\"\u003e.)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2006"},{"content":"This is the third in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research.\nAccess Research Network was originally known as Students for Origins Research, which published a periodical on newsprint called Origins Research, a publication I subscribed to for a number of years and enjoyed reading. The periodical promoted an open-minded approach, avoided ad hominem, and was a cut above most other creationist publications. They printed two letters from me, one about Donald Johansen and Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint in 1989 (vol. 12, no. 2, p. 12) and one titled \u0026ldquo;Science Education\u0026rdquo; (I forget the specific subject matter) in 1992 (vol. 14, no. 2, p. 9). Origins Research began publication in 1978 and ceased publication in 1996, replaced by a quarterly journal called Origins \u0026amp; Design. Origins \u0026amp; Design suspended publication in 2001 and was supposed to resume publication online, but has not rematerialized. According to the expanded 2006 edition of Ronald Numbers\u0026rsquo; The Creationists (p. 550, note 21), C. Davis Weyerhauser of the Weyerhauser paper fortune was the primary benefactor who made Origins \u0026amp; Design possible; after he died in April 1999 the funds dried up. I don\u0026rsquo;t see that reflected in a difference between the 1998 financial data (though I do not have a copy of the Form 990, only the revenue and expense numbers) and the last three years of data.\nAccess Research Network has covered other areas besides the creation/evolution debate, involving science, technology, and society. Their website lists \u0026ldquo;genetic engineering, euthanasia, computer technology, environmental issues, creation/evolution, fetal tissue research, AIDS, and so on\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;controversial topics\u0026rdquo; of interest. They\u0026rsquo;ve been heavily involved in promoting \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; and have published and promoted the work of ID advocates such as Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski. The ARN board of directors is Dennis Wagner, Mark Hartwig, Steve Meyer, and Paul Nelson.\nARN is a small nonprofit organization headquartered in Colorado Springs with no paid staff.\nOn to the financial data\u0026ndash;first, the 1998 information from John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65:\n1998: Revenue: $59,311 Expenses: $82,548\nAnd the last three years:\n2003: Revenue: $46,674 Expenses: $56,874 Net assets at end of year: $14,624\n2004: Revenue: $136,238 Expenses: $121,828 Net assets at end of year: $29,034\n2005: Revenue: $78,855 Expenses: $82,306 Net assets at end of year: $25,583\nARN is a small organization, so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t take much to result in large fluctuations (on a percentage basis) in revenue and expenses. Their expenses don\u0026rsquo;t include any salaries, and are thus fairly easy to keep low. A few large donations or a popular book or DVD to sell can make a huge difference in annual revenue. In 2005, they made $28,397 of their revenue by selling items such as books and DVDs, $49,211 in donations, and the remainder from interest and book royalties. The largest categories of expense were $36,315 for Internet services (e.g., webhosting), $14,397 for postage and shipping, $12,155 for accounting fees, and $7,300 for office expenses.\nYou can find ARN\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, their 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here.\nTheir website, www.arn.org, is currently ranked 375,303 on alexa.com. By contrast, the Internet Infidels website is ranked 68,915, despite having comparable revenue. (Consider an end-of-year donation at the Internet Infidels website.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/creationist-finances-access-research.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the third in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I\u0026rsquo;ll add Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation to the list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances: Access Research Network"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s New York Times contains an editorial criticizing the \u0026ldquo;strange silence in Kearny\u0026rdquo; in response to David Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s proselytizing in his U.S. History classroom:\nThe vast majority of Americans deplore such proselytizing in public classrooms. But the truly disturbing aspect of all this, described earlier this month by Times reporter Tina Kelley, is not that one teacher so blatantly crossed the church-state boundary but that so few school officials and community residents seemed bothered by his behavior.The editorial points out the bravery of Matthew LaClair:\nThe only reason anyone knows about Mr. Paskiewicz’s behavior is that one student, Matthew LaClair, 16, had the courage to speak up in September. Before doing so, he taped Mr. Paszkiewicz for eight classes because he feared officials would not believe him. He has since received one death threat, lost many friends, and says he can “feel the glares” when he goes to school.The editorial concludes:\nIn recent years, the divide between religion and the classroom has been narrowed as conservative courts have ruled in favor of tuition vouchers for religious schools, ruled that religion clubs can meet in public schools and allowed federal money to be spent on computers and other instructional equipment for parochial schools. But even groups like the Rutherford Institute, which provides legal help in religious freedom cases, says that Mr. Paszkiewicz appears to have crossed the line against outright preaching in the public schools. That he did. While he certainly has the right like anyone in this country to voice and practice his beliefs, he doesn’t have the right to do so while standing in front of a captive audience of students to whom his assertions carry the ring of authority.\nThe silence among senior school officials is disheartening. Instead of ducking, they should be writing guidelines making it clear that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated in public classrooms.\nUntil Kearny High School administrators take some real action, this issue won\u0026rsquo;t just go away.\nUPDATE: Paul LaClair lays it all out at the KearnyontheWeb forum:\nThe New York Times quotes me today as saying that we will consider litigation in the proselytizing teacher matter unless Kearny High\u0026rsquo;s students are properly educated regarding Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s anti-scientific mis-statements and the Constitutional separation between church and state. I am opening this topic to explain to the community why we believe this is important.\nI hope we all agree in principle that the schools, both public and private, exist to educate our young people. That means teaching them science and enough law so they can function positively as citizens in a democracy. When a teacher mis-states and distorts science and law to such an extent as David Paszkiewicz did (and I suspect has done for quite some time), corrections are mandatory if the school system is to fulfill its educational purposes.\nThis is especially true when the teacher is popular, as appears to be the case here. The worst possible scenario educationally is that a popular teacher convinces young people that his twisted views of science and the law are true. That also appears to have happened here, judging from student reaction and from the absence of any correction in the past. All the rationalizations aside, the real reason Paszkiewicz is being defended is that some people think his ignorance and his bigotry are acceptable.\nI am personally disgusted as a taxpayer, a parent and a citizen that the adminisration in the Kearny school district seems not to care. It is unacceptable that these remarks go uncorrected, especially when so many members of the community and even a fellow teacher (anonymously quoted in The New York Times on December 18) see absolutely nothing wrong with what Paszkiewicz has been doing. This is intellectual poison, I can give it no less strong a term. The only thing worse than no information is misinformation, and this was misinformation.\nIt is not acceptable that our schools in Kearny are training our young people to be \u0026ldquo;ignorant and scientifically illiterate,\u0026rdquo; as Dr. Tyson, the astrophysicist who heads the Hayden Planetarium, put it in a letter to The New York Times. That is why Kearny is in the Times again today, and remains in the news. While I truly am reluctant to use the word \u0026ldquo;stupid,\u0026rdquo; it does come to mind.\nMust we really fight with the school board and the administration to ensure that the students receive an education in science, instead of the 2006 equivalent of flat-earth science? Must we have a legal team straighten out the mess Paszkiewicz has made of the students\u0026rsquo; understanding of the Constitution? This is insanity.\nI understand that some people think the issue is resolved, and don\u0026rsquo;t like our continuing to press it. There is a very simple solution, and I address this to the board, the administration and the teacher: admit your mistakes, make appropriate corrections, and let\u0026rsquo;s move on. We\u0026rsquo;ve been asking for that for nearly three months now, and obviously these parties have no intention of doing that.\nOK, so we\u0026rsquo;ll do this the hard way. We would never have imagined that we would have to fight a bitter battle with this school system to force it to do its job, but apparently that is what will be necessary. I invite concerned citizens to speak up, or to contact us to try to resolve this in an appropriate way, so that the world can say the citizens of Kearny spoke up and demanded a proper resolution.\nThis post has resulted in the following posted threat, apparently from a Kearny resident who supports Paszkiewicz:\nPAUL I NEVER SAY THIS TO ANYBODY ON THIS SITE \u0026ldquo;BUT FOR YOU I WILL {YOU ARE SCUM AND KEARNY WILL BE SORRY FOR THE DAY YOUR WERE BORN} I HOPE THE NJ BAR SEES THIS FOR WHAT IT REALY IS AND DISBARRS YOU! ALSO YOUR SON WILL PAY THE PRICE FOR YOUR SCAM! HISTORY PROVES ME RIGHT ON THIS JUST ASK THE ****** KIDS!!! ALSO YOU FORGET YOUR IN KEARNY YOU BETTER THINK HARD ABOUT IT IM TALKING ABOUT THE TOWNS HISTORY WITH TROUBLE MAKERS LIKE YOU!!!Nice. And that\u0026rsquo;s the version that the KearnyontheWeb moderators \u0026ldquo;edited for content\u0026rdquo;!\nIs there any question who\u0026rsquo;s got the moral high ground in this dispute?\nAnonymous (2007-01-01):\nVery, very painful. Looks like it's time for a Federal human rights investigation in this Kearny place.\nEinzige (2007-01-02):\nAgain, I predict this Paskiewicz idiot is still going to be actively teaching high school a year from now.\nAlisonM (2007-01-04):\nI'm wondering if anyone is tracing some of these people back to their ISPs and charging them with terroristic threats? Normally on the Internet, there's enough anonymity to make these things bluff and bluster, but I think it's different when threats are being made against someone whose name and address are well-known and could be carried out. I'd love to see some of these violence promoters called out in public for these posts.\nbaby boo (2007-01-10):\nhaha . this paskiweicz idiot? wow . i bet your some grown person calling him an idiot . paskiweicz is a great teacher , aside from his religious beliefs but when he brings it up he always asks if everyone is comfortable. so the uncomfortable student (LaClaire) is the idiot here.\nLippard (2007-01-10):\nBaby Boo: Add yourself to the list of Paszkiewicz's students whose ability to write and argue cast serious doubt on the claim that Paszkiewicz is \"a great teacher.\"\nDon Sheffler (2007-07-06):\nJudging by baby boo's comment, David Paszkiewicz is popular because he refuses to correct bad spelling, grammar, or punctuation.And he's right with God!A U.S. History teacher with zero understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Amazing.\ndrummer4468 (2008-09-11):\nOkay, the media has definitely blown this topic WAY out of proportion, never mind context. As a student at Kearny High School, I can vouch for the fact that Mr. Paszkiewics is an excellent man and teacher. While he may have blurred the boundaries between church and state, he refuses to bring religion, and specifically his beliefs, into any conversation unless all parties involves are comfortable with the subject matter. Because of this, Paszkiewics always verbally confirms that his students are okay with him voicing his beliefs. This by no means implies that he ever pushed the topic. What the media likes to keep quiet is the fact that Matt LaClair was strategically starting and stopping the recorder while asking pointed questions, eliminating the portions where he (LaClair) was speaking, making it seem like it was Paszkiewics delivering an unwanted sermon to his students. Of course, LaClair's daddy is a lawyer, and is taking advantage of that fact accordingly. (By the way, I am personally a firm atheist. I know that has nothing to do with the argument itself, but I dont want people thinking I'm just partial to the religious corner of this boxing ring)\nLippard (2008-09-11):\ndrummer4468: Why are you posting this in September 2008?I've heard the recordings of Paszkiewicz, and he's an awful teacher and an ignoramus. I didn't notice any unusual breaks in the sound, either, so I think you're wrong about the recording being strategically turned on and off.You also fail to mention that Paszkiewicz lied about what happened in the classroom when LaClair brought his complaint to the principal, until he realized he had been caught on the recording. He also lied about lying about what happened, but LaClair had that recorded, too.You say that Paszkiewicz always had student consent to talk about religion. But student consent isn't sufficient to give him the right to proselytize in the public school classroom. He can proselytize all he wants in the public square and in his Sunday School class, but not in the public school classroom.\nLippard (2008-09-11):\nI'd guess that drummer4468 is also \"ilovedave.\" at Dispatches from the Culture Wars who posted this comment there on November 17, 2006:\"I would just like to let everyone know that this situation has actually been blown way out of proportion and Mr. Paszkiewicz is one of the most admirable men I have ever met. Coming from Kearny, NJ and spending my high school years with him were more rewarding than anything else. And, no, I am not Christian in any sense of the word. He respected me just as much as any Christian, Atheist, Jew, etc. Kids in class would always be interested in what he believed in since he is so devout and would induce him to speak about it in class. I would think that sparking discussion is a good thing, don't you?\"Wouldn't surprise me if this were Paszkiewicz himself. It's clearly somebody with a grudge against Matthew LaClair.Another comment at that Dispatches post from Matthew's father Paul points out:\"This is Matthew's dad. I have heard the audio several times. Paszkiewicz initiated nearly every topic in this 40-minute class session, except as otherwise noted. The topics, in order of appearance are:(1) He does not want his children dressing certain ways on Halloween;(2) He home schooled his children until recently.(3) Kearny is a good town (student initiated)(4) Criticism of public education, e.g., cannot read from the Bible(5) He believes in sin and man's fall(6) His children must follow his religion until age 18(7) Purposes of public school (student initiated and quickly disposed of by Paszkiewicz)(8) The Christian scriptures are not religion(9) Evolution is not science(10) The Big Bang could not have happened(11) Faith (student initiated)(12) A being created the universe{At this point, for the first time, Paszkiewicz asks, \"Is this bothering anyone?\"}(13) Christian faith is proved by Biblical prophecies, which have \"come true to the letter and verified\"(14) God told Moses what he had done before there were people to observe it, that's how Moses knew what to write(15) Suppose you were God. God gives choice(16) My son's reply: I wouldn't send my children to hell for eternity.That is what \"elicited\" the comment about belonging in hell.What happened is that Matthew challenged his theology, and Paskiewicz responded accordingly. Draw your own conclusions.\"Nothing in that list has anything to do with what Paszkiewicz was supposed to be teaching--U.S. History.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/kearny-high-school-and-david.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/opinion/nyregionopinions/NJteacher.html?_r=1\u0026ref=nyregionopinions\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003econtains an editorial criticizing the \u0026ldquo;strange silence in Kearny\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in response to David Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s proselytizing in his U.S. History classroom:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe vast majority of Americans deplore such proselytizing in public classrooms. But the truly disturbing aspect of all this, \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/david-paszkiewicz-makes-new-york-times.html\"\u003edescribed earlier this month\u003c/a\u003e by Times reporter Tina Kelley, is not that one teacher so blatantly crossed the church-state boundary but that so few school officials and community residents seemed bothered by his behavior.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe editorial points out the bravery of Matthew LaClair:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe only reason anyone knows about Mr. Paskiewicz’s behavior is that one student, Matthew LaClair, 16, had the courage to speak up in September. Before doing so, he taped Mr. Paszkiewicz for eight classes because he feared officials would not believe him. He has since received one death threat, lost many friends, and says he can “feel the glares” when he goes to school.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe editorial concludes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kearny High School and David Paszkiewicz make the NY Times again"},{"content":"After looking at Answers in Genesis of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s financial results for 2005, several people have asked whether their decline is unique. (Though, due to my error in reading their 2005 Form 990, we now know that they have not seen a decline.) What I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to do in order to answer that question is to make a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute. For good measure, I\u0026rsquo;ll throw in Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation. I\u0026rsquo;ll then sum up in a final post. I\u0026rsquo;ve already posted about Answers in Genesis, and I\u0026rsquo;ll begin with the Institute for Creation Research since I\u0026rsquo;ve already got the numbers handy.\nThe Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has been around since 1970, when it was founded by Henry Morris and Duane Gish with financial support from Tim LaHaye, through his Christian Heritage College. The ICR became independent from CHC in 1981. It operates a creationism museum and a graduate school in Santee, California, and produces the small monthly publication \u0026ldquo;Acts \u0026amp; Facts\u0026rdquo; (among others). The ICR was once the dominant young-earth creationist organization in the United States, but has been overshadowed for years by Answers in Genesis. Founder Henry Morris turned over the reins to his son John in 1995, and Henry Morris died in February of this year. Duane Gish, the noted creationist debater, has greatly reduced his public appearances in his old age (he\u0026rsquo;s nearly 86). John Morris has never been the enthusiastic creationist superstar that his father or Gish were.\nThe ICR\u0026rsquo;s revenues have remained fairly flat for years\u0026ndash;which means they\u0026rsquo;ve declined in real terms, after inflation. In John R. Cole\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Money Floods Anti-Evolutionists\u0026rsquo; Coffers\u0026rdquo; in Reports of the National Center for Science Education 20(1-2, 2000):64-65, he reported that the ICR\u0026rsquo;s 1998 revenue was $4,167,547 and expenses were $3,997,419.\nThe last three years of ICR Form 990s at GuideStar.org show little change from 1998:\n2003: Revenue: $4,478,918 Expenses: $4,545,220 Net assets at end of year: $5,285,382 Salaries: $1,973,712 (44.1% of revenue) ($226,854 directors/execs, $1,746,858 other salaries)\n2004: Revenue: $4,245,441 Expenses: $4,453,622 Net assets at end of year: $5,091,069 Salaries: $2,090,231 (49.2% of revenue) ($232,053 directors/execs, $1,858,178 other salaries)\n2005: Revenue: $4,341,000 Expenses: $4,231,885 Net assets at end of year: $5,228,062 Salaries: $2,003,648 (46.2% of revenue) ($306,346 directors/execs, $1,697,302 other salaries)\nThe ICR seems to be doing OK financially, but they clearly need to keep an eye on their salary expenses. John Morris took a small pay cut in 2005, but the other directors and staff with salaries over $50,000 have been getting regular annual pay raises. Despite Gish\u0026rsquo;s reduced public appearances, his salary has continued to climb, from $78,198 in 2003 to $80,544 in 2004 to $84,969 in 2005.\nHere are the specifics of other salaries reported in the Form 990\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve included two contractors, geologist Andrew Snelling (formerly associated with AiG-Australia) and tour leader Mike Riddle, who has worked for ICR, AiG, and other young-earth creationist groups. He appears to have disappeared from the ICR payroll in 2005, which may just mean they paid him less than $50,000.\n2003: Executives/Directors: John Morris, president: $79,671 Duane Gish, vice president: $78,198 Donald Rohrer, treasurer: $68,985 Employees making $50K or more: Kenneth Cumming, dean of grad school: $73,049 Larry Vardiman, head physics dept: $66,843 Russell Humphreys, research scientist: $66,414 Donald Barber, systems admin: $75,000 Henry Morris III, strategic ministry: $74,984 Contractors (not counted in above salary totals): Andrew Snelling, geology research: $96,960 Mike Riddle, tours: $67,468\n2004: Executives/Directors: John Morris, president: $82,524 Duane Gish, vice president: $80,544 Donald Rohrer, treasurer: $68,985 Employees making $50K or more: Kenneth Cumming, dean of grad school: $75,240 Larry Vardiman, head physics dept: $68,847 Russell Humphreys, research scientist: $68,407\nDonald Barber, systems admin: $77,250 Henry Morris III, strategic ministry: $77,234 Contractors (not counted in above salary totals): Andrew Snelling, geology research: $98,587 Mike Riddle, tours: $79,686\n2005: Executives/Directors: John Morris, president: $74,915 Duane Gish, vice president: $84,969 Donald Rohrer, treasurer: $71,055 Larry Vardiman, COO: $75,407 Employees making $50K or more: Donald Barber, systems admin: $79,567 Henry Morris III, strategic ministry: $79,551 Kenneth Cumming, dean of grad school: $77,497 Patricia Nason, professor: $72,100 Russell Humphreys, research scientist: $70,459 Contractors: Andrew Snelling, science research: $85,527\nLarry Vardiman\u0026rsquo;s ascent to the COO position suggests to me that he\u0026rsquo;s the likely successor to John Morris to run the show.\nTo sum up the ICR\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re not particularly hurting for cash, but they aren\u0026rsquo;t growing, and appear to be stagnating. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, they\u0026rsquo;re not doing as well as they were a decade ago, and they\u0026rsquo;re clearly not the force for creation evangelism they used to be. It appears to me that they are in a long-term decline.\n[UPDATE (4 March 2023): John D. Morris\u0026rsquo; position as president of ICR ended in 2020; his brother Henry Morris III was CEO until 2020 when he retired. The president and COO chosen by the board in 2020 was Dr. Randy Guliuzza (M.D., with engineering and theology bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degrees and a Harvard Master\u0026rsquo;s of Public Health).]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/creationist-finances-institute-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter looking at \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/answers-in-genesis-revenue-declines-by.html\"\u003eAnswers in Genesis of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s financial results for 2005\u003c/a\u003e, several people have asked whether their decline is unique.  (Though, due to my error in reading their 2005 Form 990, we now know that they have not seen a decline.)  What I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to do in order to answer that question is to make a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e in 2000 in an article by John Cole:  the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute.  For good measure, I\u0026rsquo;ll throw in Walter Brown\u0026rsquo;s Center for Scientific Creation.  I\u0026rsquo;ll then sum up in a final post.  I\u0026rsquo;ve already posted about Answers in Genesis, and I\u0026rsquo;ll begin with the Institute for Creation Research since I\u0026rsquo;ve already got the numbers handy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creationist finances:  Institute for Creation Research"},{"content":"A link on the front page of the Creation Ministries International website under the heading \u0026ldquo;Affiliated sites\u0026rdquo; says \u0026ldquo;Alien Intrusion.\u0026rdquo; If you click on it, you are taken to alienintrusion.com, a site promoting a book by Gary Bates titled Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection.\nThe material on the website is extremely uninformative about what arguments and positions Bates takes in the book. A \u0026ldquo;Q\u0026amp;A\u0026rdquo; with Gary Bates begs off on supplying any answers on the grounds that \u0026ldquo;a one-line answer will not be satisfying because lots of people have already made their minds up without really looking at the evidence,\u0026rdquo; but the promise is made that \u0026ldquo;The truth is most certainly out there, and it is revealed in my book, but it is probably not what most people think.\u0026rdquo; I translate this as \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not going to reveal my position, so that I can get as many UFO believers as possible to buy this book thinking that it will confirm their views.\u0026quot;\nThe reviewers on Amazon.com are more forthcoming\u0026ndash;apparently the book is about 75% debunking of the sort that would please skeptics like Philip Klass, Robert Sheaffer, or James Oberg, while the remaining 25% advocates a view that would be more pleasing to Norman Geisler\u0026ndash;that UFO phenomena are a product of Satan and demonic influence. In short, Gary Bates seems to be following the path of Clifford Wilson, a Christian (and young-earth creationist) who wrote an excellent debunking of Erich von Daniken\u0026rsquo;s Chariots of the Gods? titled Crash Go the Chariots, which was flawed by its inclusion of religious advocacy. Wilson also did his credibility no good by associating with the most inept of creationists, Rev. Carl Baugh, with whom he participated in running some diploma mills.\nIf this is the direction that CMI intends to branch out in order to grow its ministries, I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of their long-term success. UFOlogy has been in decline for decades, with UFO magazines and conferences falling on hard times, as can be seen in Jim Moseley\u0026rsquo;s Saucer Smear newsletter, an amusing gossip rag of the UFO field read by and contributed to by both believers and skeptics.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/creation-ministries-international-gets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA link on the front page of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/\"\u003eCreation Ministries International website\u003c/a\u003e under the heading \u0026ldquo;Affiliated sites\u0026rdquo; says \u0026ldquo;Alien Intrusion.\u0026rdquo;  If you click on it, you are taken to alienintrusion.com, a site promoting a book by Gary Bates titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAlien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe material on the website is extremely uninformative about what arguments and positions Bates takes in the book.  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.alienintrusion.com/downloads/interview.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Q\u0026amp;A\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e with Gary Bates begs off on supplying any answers on the grounds that \u0026ldquo;a one-line answer will not be satisfying because lots of people have already made their minds up without really looking at the evidence,\u0026rdquo; but the promise is made that \u0026ldquo;The truth is most certainly out there, and it is revealed in my book, but it is probably not what most people think.\u0026rdquo;  I translate this as \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not going to reveal my position, so that I can get as many UFO believers as possible to buy this book thinking that it will confirm their views.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Intrusion-Gary-Bates/dp/0890514356/\"\u003ereviewers on Amazon.com\u003c/a\u003e are more forthcoming\u0026ndash;apparently the book is about 75% debunking of the sort that would please skeptics like Philip Klass, Robert Sheaffer, or James Oberg, while the remaining 25% advocates a view that would be more pleasing to \u003ca href=\"http://www.alienintrusion.com/downloads/interview.html\"\u003eNorman Geisler\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that UFO phenomena are a product of Satan and demonic influence.  In short, Gary Bates seems to be following the path of Clifford Wilson, a Christian (and young-earth creationist) who wrote an excellent debunking of Erich von Daniken\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChariots of the Gods?\u003c/span\u003e titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCrash Go the Chariots\u003c/span\u003e, which was flawed by its inclusion of religious advocacy.  Wilson also did his credibility no good by associating with the most inept of creationists, Rev. Carl Baugh, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/degrees.html\"\u003ewith whom he participated in running some diploma mills\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf this is the direction that CMI intends to branch out in order to grow its ministries, I\u0026rsquo;m skeptical of their long-term success.  UFOlogy has been in decline for decades, with UFO magazines and conferences falling on hard times, as can be seen in \u003ca href=\"http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/\"\u003eJim Moseley\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSaucer Smear\u003c/span\u003e newsletter\u003c/a\u003e, an amusing gossip rag of the UFO field read by and contributed to by both believers and skeptics.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Creation Ministries International gets into the UFO business"},{"content":"UPDATE (December 30, 2006): Please note that the 2005 Form 990 filing only covers January-June 2005 (as AiG changed to a July-June fiscal year in 2005), so the heading on this post is inaccurate. I\u0026rsquo;ve made an embarrassing mistake by failing to notice those dates on the very top of the first page of the Form 990, and I take responsibility for it. I apologize for the error. If you multiply each of the 2005 figures by two, you will get an approximation to the full-year numbers. While this still yields a decline in revenue from seminars, it shows an increase in overall revenue and donations\u0026ndash;and an increase in many salaries, as well.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve just been reviewing the 2005 Form 990 filing from Answers in Genesis of Kentucky, the first one filed since its split from Creation Ministries International in October 2005. (I\u0026rsquo;ve previously commented on their 2003 and 2004 Form 990\u0026rsquo;s.) They have seen a huge drop in revenue, which appears to be largely due to a drop in overall donations from the public and decreased attendance at their seminars. They\u0026rsquo;ve been spending a lot of money on their creationism museum, and it looks like they are counting on it to be a growing, if not the primary, source of their future revenue. In response to this revenue decline, the senior staff have all taken significant cuts in pay. This drop in revenue is likely not attributable to the CMI split, since that didn\u0026rsquo;t become public knowledge until the end of February 2006.\nOn to the details\u0026hellip;\nIn 2004, Answers in Genesis of Kentucky (AiG-US) saw $10,423,222 in revenue.\nIn 2005, their revenue dropped to $5,429,923\u0026ndash;a nearly 50% decline.\nThe specific revenue numbers show that donations dropped from $7,754,247 in 2004 to $3,978,239 in 2005, program service revenue (from seminars and \u0026ldquo;charter memberships\u0026rdquo; in their creationism museum) dropped from $629,644 in 2003 to $270,350 in 2004, and gross profits from sales of inventory (sales minus cost of goods sold) dropped from $2,025,619 in 2004 to $1,124,438. This suggests a decline in interest in what Answers in Genesis is selling. The only positive changes in their revenue picture were in sales of non-inventory assets (including securities), where they went from a $12,683 loss in 2004 to an $822 gain in 2005, and in \u0026ldquo;other revenue,\u0026rdquo; where they went from $12,683 in 2004 to $13,798 in 2005.\nTo get more specific, AiG-US saw $414,265 in event registrations, $116,403 in \u0026ldquo;royalties and other revenue,\u0026rdquo; and $98,976 in museum memberships in 2004, and $122,317 in \u0026ldquo;seminars\u0026rdquo; (apparently the same as event registrations) and $148,033 in \u0026ldquo;charter memberships\u0026rdquo; in 2005, so they have seen an increase in museum membership revenue. In 2005 \u0026ldquo;royalties\u0026rdquo; were listed as a separate income item, producing $39,119 in revenue, but it\u0026rsquo;s not clear if that\u0026rsquo;s an increase or a decline without knowing what \u0026ldquo;other revenue\u0026rdquo; contributed to the 2004 figure.\nThis is a reversal from years of growth\u0026ndash;revenue from donations in earlier years was $5,189,344 in 2001, $6,066,719 in 2002, $7,240,646 in 2003, and $7,698,294 in 2004 (this is the number reported in the 2005 Form 990; it is $55,953 lower than the above number from the 2004 Form 990).\nOn the spending side of the ledger, total functional expenses went from $8,320,926 in 2004 to $5,038,225 in 2005. They have, wisely, considerably cut their salary expenses, from $926,837 for officers and directors and $2,852,301 for other salaries in 2004 to $369,068 for officers and directors and $1,918,300 for other salaries in 2005. Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $121,764 in 2004 to $60,000 in 2005; CFO James Hatton\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $81,000 to $42,500; General Counsel John Pence\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $93,115 to $46,500; VP of Museum Operations Mike Zovath\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $90,201 to $42,500; VP of Administration Kathy Ellis\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $86,068 to $39,500; VP of Marketing and Media Dale Mason\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $115,621 to $55,000; VP of Events Outreach Mark Looy\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $85,615 to $42,500; and VP of Ministry Relations Carl Kerby\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $65,112 to $40,568. COO Brandon Vallorani left the organization in September 2004 in events apparently related to the AiG/CMI split (about which I\u0026rsquo;ll write more at a later time), so his 2004 salary of $90,344 did not reappear in 2005\u0026rsquo;s expenses.\nDespite this substantial decline in revenue, AiG-US still had an increase in net assets. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything close to the $2,102,296 surplus they saw in 2004, but they still took in $391,698 more than they spent, bringing them to $11,673,847 in net assets (assets minus liabilities). They ended 2005 with $17,656,767 in assets (of which $14,311,948 is buildings and land) and $5,982,920 in liabilities. They have a cushion of $1,664,682 in cash and $2,602 in savings at the end of 2005, versus the $2,502,777 in cash and $10,104 in savings at the beginning of the year. Their inventories for sale have increased from $1,165,982 to $1,223,151, so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like they\u0026rsquo;re accumulating a huge backlog of unsold items. Their building is funded by a $3,500,000 mortgage from Fifth Third Bank, payable in three annual payments in 2005, 2006, and 2007; they made the first payment in 2005 and had a balance of $2,360,000 at the end of the year.\nOne person associated with AiG-US who seems to have done better in 2005 than in 2004 is board member and audit review committee member Tim Dudley. In statement 11 in the 2005 Form 990, it\u0026rsquo;s reported that AiG-US purchased $485,565 in books and literature from New Leaf Publishing, the president of which is Tim Dudley.\nYou can find AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 here, their 2004 Form 990 here, and their 2005 Form 990 here. Anyone who finds anything else interesting in these, I welcome your comments.\nThey still make a whole lot more money than the National Center for Science Education, to which I urge readers to make a financial contribution.\nbizbroker (2006-12-30):\nUh ... Mr. Lippard might want to actually READ the Form 990 before publishing his gleeful, foam-at-the-mouth conclusions about AiG. If he actually would take this unprecedented-for-a-typical-skeptic step, he would have noticed this little phrase at the top of the Form 990 \u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;For the calendar year 2005, or tax year beginning Jan 1, 2005 and ending Jun 30, 2005.\u0026rdquo;\nIT\u0026rsquo;S A SIX MONTH REPORT, YOU ROCKET SCIENTISTS!\nNo wonder you guys have swallowed the Grand ToE Fairy Tale. You can\u0026rsquo;t even read a report.\nThis is so blatant, I will be creating a blog post of my own at airdave.blogspot.com to give the Lippard blog a little publicity.\nI will also be commenting on this at Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb (After the Bar Closes) where I have been shining a spotlight on ToE Nonsense for many months under the name \u0026ldquo;afdave\u0026rdquo;.\nLippard (2006-12-30):\nDave: I am embarrassed at my error, and you are correct.\nI was looking for technicalities such as a separation of the museum resources into a separate legal entity, but I failed to notice at the top of the report that it is only a report for the first six months of 2005 rather than a full-year report. I\u0026rsquo;m not an accountant, and I\u0026rsquo;ve not previously seen a six-month Form 990 (though I have seen non-calendar-year Form 990s).\nI will proceed to do what creationists almost never do, and apologize for and post a correction to my error.\nEinzige (2006-12-30):\nThat's a pretty easy mistake to make, when you consider that Guidestar only lists one form 990 for 2005, and all the prior years' forms are for full tax years. By the way, Dave, can you point to any creationists who are willing to admit to mistakes they\u0026rsquo;ve made?\nBlasher (2010-10-04):\n@ Einzige . . . I\u0026#39;d like to know what mistakes Creationists have made. Please point me to any. Thanks!\nLippard (2010-10-09):\nBlasher: You are either joking or you haven\u0026#39;t investigated. See the TalkOrigins Archive (and in particular Mark Isaak\u0026#39;s Index of Creationist Claims) or the online archives of the Creation/Evolution journal, for example. Honest creationists acknowledge that there have been numerous creationist errors.\nMany appear to be, if not blatantly deliberate, at least willfully repeated without any attempt at correction.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/answers-in-genesis-revenue-declines-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eUPDATE (December 30, 2006):  Please note that the 2005 Form 990 filing only covers January-June 2005 (as AiG changed to a July-June fiscal year in 2005), so the heading on this post is inaccurate.  I\u0026rsquo;ve made an embarrassing mistake by failing to notice those dates on the very top of the first page of the Form 990, and I take responsibility for it.  I apologize for the error.  If you multiply each of the 2005 figures by two, you will get an approximation to the full-year numbers.  While this still yields a decline in revenue from seminars, it shows an increase in overall revenue and donations\u0026ndash;and an increase in many salaries, as well.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just been reviewing the 2005 Form 990 filing from Answers in Genesis of Kentucky, the first one filed since its split from Creation Ministries International in October 2005.  (I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html\"\u003epreviously commented on their 2003 and 2004 Form 990\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e.)  They have seen a huge drop in revenue, which appears to be largely due to a drop in overall donations from the public and decreased attendance at their seminars.  They\u0026rsquo;ve been spending a lot of money on their creationism museum, and it looks like they are counting on it to be a growing, if not the primary, source of their future revenue.  In response to this revenue decline, the senior staff have all taken significant cuts in pay.  This drop in revenue is likely \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003enot\u003c/span\u003e attributable to the CMI split, since that didn\u0026rsquo;t become public knowledge until the end of February 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn to the details\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2004, Answers in Genesis of Kentucky (AiG-US) saw $10,423,222 in revenue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2005, their revenue dropped to $5,429,923\u0026ndash;a nearly 50% decline.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe specific revenue numbers show that donations dropped from $7,754,247 in 2004 to $3,978,239 in 2005, program service revenue (from seminars and \u0026ldquo;charter memberships\u0026rdquo; in their creationism museum) dropped from $629,644 in 2003 to $270,350 in 2004, and gross profits from sales of inventory (sales minus cost of goods sold) dropped from $2,025,619 in 2004 to $1,124,438.  This suggests a decline in interest in what Answers in Genesis is selling.  The only positive changes in their revenue picture were in sales of non-inventory assets (including securities), where they went from a $12,683 loss in 2004 to an $822 gain in 2005, and in \u0026ldquo;other revenue,\u0026rdquo; where they went from $12,683 in 2004 to $13,798 in 2005.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo get more specific, AiG-US saw $414,265 in event registrations, $116,403 in \u0026ldquo;royalties and other revenue,\u0026rdquo; and $98,976 in museum memberships in 2004, and $122,317 in \u0026ldquo;seminars\u0026rdquo; (apparently the same as event registrations) and $148,033 in \u0026ldquo;charter memberships\u0026rdquo; in 2005, so they have seen an increase in museum membership revenue.  In 2005 \u0026ldquo;royalties\u0026rdquo; were listed as a separate income item, producing $39,119 in revenue, but it\u0026rsquo;s not clear if that\u0026rsquo;s an increase or a decline without knowing what \u0026ldquo;other revenue\u0026rdquo; contributed to the 2004 figure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a reversal from years of growth\u0026ndash;revenue from donations in earlier years was $5,189,344 in 2001, $6,066,719 in 2002, $7,240,646 in 2003, and $7,698,294 in 2004 (this is the number reported in the 2005 Form 990; it is $55,953 lower than the above number from the 2004 Form 990).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the spending side of the ledger, total functional expenses went from $8,320,926 in 2004 to $5,038,225 in 2005.  They have, wisely, considerably cut their salary expenses, from $926,837 for officers and directors and $2,852,301 for other salaries  in 2004 to $369,068 for officers and directors and $1,918,300 for other salaries in 2005.  Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $121,764 in 2004 to $60,000 in 2005; CFO James Hatton\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $81,000 to $42,500; General Counsel John Pence\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $93,115 to $46,500; VP of Museum Operations Mike Zovath\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $90,201 to $42,500; VP of Administration Kathy Ellis\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $86,068 to $39,500; VP of Marketing and Media Dale Mason\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $115,621 to $55,000; VP of Events Outreach Mark Looy\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $85,615 to $42,500; and VP of Ministry Relations Carl Kerby\u0026rsquo;s salary went from $65,112 to $40,568.  COO Brandon Vallorani left the organization in September 2004 in events apparently related to the AiG/CMI split (about which I\u0026rsquo;ll write more at a later time), so his 2004 salary of $90,344 did not reappear in 2005\u0026rsquo;s expenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDespite this substantial decline in revenue, AiG-US still had an increase in net assets.  It wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything close to the $2,102,296 surplus they saw in 2004, but they still took in $391,698 more than they spent, bringing them to $11,673,847 in net assets (assets minus liabilities).  They ended 2005 with $17,656,767 in assets (of which $14,311,948 is buildings and land) and $5,982,920 in liabilities.  They have a cushion of $1,664,682 in cash and $2,602 in savings at the end of 2005, versus the $2,502,777 in cash and $10,104 in savings at the beginning of the year.  Their inventories for sale have increased from $1,165,982 to $1,223,151, so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like they\u0026rsquo;re accumulating a huge backlog of unsold items.  Their building is funded by a $3,500,000 mortgage from Fifth Third Bank, payable in three annual payments in 2005, 2006, and 2007; they made the first payment in 2005 and had a balance of $2,360,000 at the end of the year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne person associated with AiG-US who seems to have done better in 2005 than in 2004 is board member and audit review committee member Tim Dudley.  In statement 11 in the 2005 Form 990, it\u0026rsquo;s reported that AiG-US purchased $485,565 in books and literature from New Leaf Publishing, the president of which is Tim Dudley.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find AiG-US\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Form 990 \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/AIG-2003-Form990.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, their 2004 Form 990 \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/AIG-2004-Form990.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and their 2005 Form 990 \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/AIG-2005-Form990.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Anyone who finds anything else interesting in these, I welcome your comments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey still make a whole lot more money than the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e, to which I urge readers to make a financial contribution.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis revenue declines by 50% in 2005"},{"content":"The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) is holding its annual conference in downtown Phoenix next week, from January 3-7 at the Phoenix Convention Center and Hyatt Regency. The conference will include topics of interest to readers of this blog, including the session \u0026ldquo;Evolution Town Meeting: A Year After the Dover Decision\u0026rdquo; on the afternoon of Friday, January 5, and the session \u0026ldquo;Media Workshop: Hey, Wanna Read My Blog?\u0026rdquo; on Thursday, January 4, which will feature ScienceBloggers P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula), Grrl Scientist (Living the Scientific Life), and John Lynch (stranger fruit).\nOn the evening of Saturday, January 6, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. (during the SICB business meeting and prior to the SICB evening social event), Kat and I would like to invite readers of this blog and of Science Blogs to a social event at our home, which is near South Mountain, about 15 minutes from downtown. We would like to keep the event somewhat small (Kat has asked me to keep it to about 20 people), so RSVPs are required in order to get directions and specifics. To RSVP, please send an email to sicb at discord.org. If you will be attending the SICB conference, please let me know if you will need a ride or would be able to give others a ride.\nUPDATE (January 7, 2007): Several attendees have reported on the event, with photos: Brent Rasmussen, P.Z. Myers, and John Lynch; Grrl Scientist, you\u0026rsquo;re very welcome. Thanks to everyone who attended for the enjoyable company and conversation!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/social-event-during-sicb-conference.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) is \u003ca href=\"http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2007/index.php3\"\u003eholding its annual conference in downtown Phoenix next week\u003c/a\u003e, from January 3-7 at the Phoenix Convention Center and Hyatt Regency.  The conference will include topics of interest to readers of this blog, including the session \u0026ldquo;Evolution Town Meeting: A Year After the Dover Decision\u0026rdquo; on the afternoon of Friday, January 5, and the session \u0026ldquo;Media Workshop: Hey, Wanna Read My Blog?\u0026rdquo; on Thursday, January 4, which will feature ScienceBloggers P.Z. Myers (\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e), Grrl Scientist (\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/\"\u003eLiving the Scientific Life\u003c/a\u003e), and John Lynch (\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/\"\u003estranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the evening of Saturday, January 6, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. (during the SICB business meeting and prior to the SICB evening social event), Kat and I would like to invite readers of this blog and of Science Blogs to a social event at our home, which is near South Mountain, about 15 minutes from downtown.  We would like to keep the event somewhat small (Kat has asked me to keep it to about 20 people), so RSVPs are required in order to get directions and specifics.  To RSVP, please send an email to sicb at discord.org.  If you will be attending the SICB conference, please let me know if you will need a ride or would be able to give others a ride.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 7, 2007):  Several attendees have reported on the event, with photos:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.brentrasmussen.com/log/node/1104\"\u003eBrent Rasmussen\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/the_great_phoenix_blogger_gett.php\"\u003eP.Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/01/the_grand_sicb_roundup.php\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e; \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/01/last_day_at_sicb.php\"\u003eGrrl Scientist\u003c/a\u003e, you\u0026rsquo;re very welcome.  Thanks to everyone who attended for the enjoyable company and conversation!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Social event during SICB conference"},{"content":"Talking Points Memo has been collecting examples of information (website content, reports, studies, etc.) that the Bush administration has suppressed because they were somehow contrary to the administration\u0026rsquo;s positions.\nThe list has become fairly lengthy. Here\u0026rsquo;s what they\u0026rsquo;ve got so far:\n* In March, the administration announced it would no longer produce the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also tracking health insurance coverage and child support. * In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.\n* After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.\n* When an annual report called “Budget Information for States” showed the federal government shortchanging states in the midst of fiscal crises, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget announced it was discontinuing the report, which some said was the only source for comprehensive data on state funding from the federal government.\n* When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.\n* The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has to date failed to produce a congressionally-mandated report on climate change that was due in 2004. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has called the failure an \u0026ldquo;obfuscation.\u0026quot;\n* The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced plans to close several libraries which were used by researchers and scientists. The agency called its decision a cost-cutting measure, but a 2004 report showed that the facilities actually brought the EPA a $7.5 million surplus annually. (Thanks to Mark B. below.)\n* On November 1st, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public\u0026rsquo;s access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush\u0026rsquo;s order prevented the release of \u0026ldquo;68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers,\u0026rdquo; some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration. More here. (Thanks to Roger A. and nitpicker below.) Update: TPMm Reader JP writes in to point out that Bush did the same thing with his papers from the Texas governorship.\n* A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be given to \u0026ldquo;findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.\u0026rdquo; The scientists at the USGS cover such controversial topics as global warming. Before, studies were released after an anonymous peer review of the research. (Thanks to Alison below.)\n* A new policy at the The U.S. Forest Service means the agency no longer will generate environmental impact statements for \u0026ldquo;its long-term plans for America\u0026rsquo;s national forests and grasslands.\u0026rdquo; It also \u0026ldquo;no longer will allow the public to appeal on long-term plans for those forests, but instead will invite participation in planning from the outset.\u0026rdquo; (Thanks to libra below.)\n* In March 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services took down a six-year-old Web site devoted to substance abuse and treatment information for gays and lesbians, after members of the conservative Family Research Council complained.\n* In 2002, HHS removed information from its Web site pertaining to risky sexual behavior among adolescents, condom use and HIV.\n* Also in 2002, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission removed from its Web site a document showing that officials found large gaps in a portion of an aging Montana dam. A FERC official said the deletion was for \u0026ldquo;national security.\u0026quot;\n* In 2004, the FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.\n* In October 2003, the Bush administration banned photographs depicting servicemembers\u0026rsquo; coffins returning from overseas.\n* In December 2002, the administration curtailed funding to the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program, which released monthly data on the number and size of layoffs by U.S. companies. His father attempted to kill the same program in 1992, but Clinton revived it when he assumed the presidency.\n* In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service stopped providing data demonstrating the level of its job performance. In 2006, a judge forced the IRS to provide the information.\n* Also in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission blocked access to a once-public database of network outages affecting telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it would \u0026ldquo;jeopardize national security efforts.\u0026rdquo; Experts ridiculed that notion.\n* In 2002, Bush officials intervened to derail the publication of an EPA report on mercury and children\u0026rsquo;s health, which contradicted the administration\u0026rsquo;s position on lowering regulations on certain power plants. The report was eventually leaked by a \u0026ldquo;frustrated EPA official.\u0026quot;\n* In 2003, the EPA bowed to White House pressure and deleted the global warming section in its annual \u0026ldquo;Report on the Environment.\u0026rdquo; The move drew condemnations from Democrats and Republicans alike. * Also in 2003, the EPA withheld for months key findings from an air pollution report that undercut the White House\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Clear Skies\u0026rdquo; initiative. Leaked copies were reported in the Washington Post.\n* For more than a year, the Interior Department refused to release a 2005 study showing a government subsidy for oil companies was not effective.\n* The White House Office of National Drug Policy paid for a 5-year, $43 million study which concluded their anti-drug ad campaigns did not work \u0026ndash; but it refused to release those findings to Congress. (Thanks to skeptic below.)\n* In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission ordered destroyed all copies of an unreleased 2004 draft report concluding that media consolidation hurt local TV news coverage, which runs counter to the administration\u0026rsquo;s pro-consolidation stance. (Thanks to Jim Tobias below.)\n* After Bush assumed power in 2001, the Department of Labor removed from its Web site \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t Work in the Dark \u0026ndash; Know Your Rights,\u0026rdquo; a publication informing women of their workplace rights. (via the National Council for Research on Women)\n* The Department of Labor also removed from its Web site roughly two dozen fact sheets on women\u0026rsquo;s workplace issues such as women in management, earning differences between men and women, child care concerns, and minority women in the workplace. (via the National Council for Research on Women)\n* In February 2004, the appointed head of the Office of Special Counsel \u0026ndash; created to protect government employees\u0026rsquo; rights \u0026ndash; ordered removed from a government Web site information on the rights of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals in the public workplace. (via the National Council for Research on Women)\n* In early 2001, the Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class. (via the Tax Policy Center, from Paul Krugman)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/bush-administrations-suppression-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalking Points Memo \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002175.php\"\u003ehas been collecting examples of information (website content, reports, studies, etc.) that the Bush administration has suppressed\u003c/a\u003e because they were somehow contrary to the administration\u0026rsquo;s positions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002175.php\"\u003elist\u003c/a\u003e has become fairly lengthy.  Here\u0026rsquo;s what they\u0026rsquo;ve got so far:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e* In March, the administration announced it would \u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/6757.html\"\u003eno longer produce\u003c/a\u003e the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also tracking health insurance coverage and child support. \u003cp\u003e* In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63182-2005Apr18.html\"\u003estop publishing its annual report on international terrorism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush administration's suppression of information it didn't like"},{"content":"Trump Mortgage started business this April, with alleged seasoned pro E.J. Ridings appointed to head the organization. Ridings claimed that honesty was one of the differentiators for Trump Mortgage, but it turns out he\u0026rsquo;s misrepresented his experience.\nHe claimed to be \u0026ldquo;a top executive at one of Wall Street\u0026rsquo;s most prestigious investment banks,\u0026rdquo; when in fact he was a retail stock broker for Morgan Stanley\u0026rsquo;s Dean Witter Reynolds subsidiary for less than three months, and was only a registered broker for six days of that period. Ridings said he was an \u0026ldquo;established leader\u0026rdquo; at a leading New York mortgage boutique, but was only \u0026ldquo;a relatively minor player\u0026rdquo; at GuardHill Financial from June 2003 to April 2005, working as an entry-level mortgage originator. Ridings also claimed 15 years of experience in the financial industry, but all that anyone can dig up besides his Dean Witter time (that began in 1998) and his GuardHill position are in documents from the NY State Banking Commission which say he was also a day trader for two years and worked for a year at subprime lender Equity Funding prior to GuardHill. That\u0026rsquo;s a total of less than six years of financial experience.\nRidings claims he also had financial experience in his earlier jobs\u0026ndash;running a company that sold nutritional supplements and health drinks, and a cleaning service.\nTrump Mortgage has lost six residential mortgage professionals in the last six months, and may not reach $1 billion in residential mortgage originations, despite Ridings predicting that they would hit $3 billion in 2006.\nThe mortgage business is not a business I\u0026rsquo;d want to be in right now, as the U.S. housing bubble deflates.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/trump-mortgage-off-to-bad-start.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTrump Mortgage started business this April, with alleged seasoned pro E.J. Ridings appointed to head the organization.  Ridings claimed that honesty was one of the differentiators for Trump Mortgage, but it turns out \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/26/magazines/moneymag/trumpmortgage.moneymag/index.htm?cnn=yes\"\u003ehe\u0026rsquo;s misrepresented his experience\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe claimed to be \u0026ldquo;a top executive at one of Wall Street\u0026rsquo;s most prestigious investment banks,\u0026rdquo; when in fact he was a retail stock broker for Morgan Stanley\u0026rsquo;s Dean Witter Reynolds subsidiary for less than three months, and was only a registered broker for six days of that period.  Ridings said he was an \u0026ldquo;established leader\u0026rdquo; at a leading New York mortgage boutique, but was only \u0026ldquo;a relatively minor player\u0026rdquo; at GuardHill Financial from June 2003 to April 2005, working as an entry-level mortgage originator.  Ridings also claimed 15 years of experience in the financial industry, but all that anyone can dig up besides his Dean Witter time (that began in 1998) and his GuardHill position are in documents from the NY State Banking Commission which say he was also a day trader for two years and worked for a year at subprime lender Equity Funding prior to GuardHill.  That\u0026rsquo;s a total of less than six years of financial experience.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRidings claims he also had financial experience in his earlier jobs\u0026ndash;running a company that sold nutritional supplements and health drinks, and a cleaning service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTrump Mortgage has lost six residential mortgage professionals in the last six months, and may not reach $1 billion in residential mortgage originations, despite Ridings predicting that they would hit $3 billion in 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe mortgage business is not a business I\u0026rsquo;d want to be in right now, as the U.S. housing bubble deflates.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trump Mortgage off to a bad start"},{"content":"Matt S. at The Only Republican in San Francisco quotes from a Scientific American column by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society to argue that conservatives are more generous than liberals:\nSyracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks argues in Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006) that when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, numerous quantitative measures debunk the myth of \u0026ldquo;bleeding heart liberals\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;heartless conservatives.\u0026rdquo; Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals (even when controlled for income), give more blood and log more volunteer hours. In general, religious people are more than three times more generous than secularists to all charities, 14 percent more munificent to nonreligious charities and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person. In terms of societal health, charitable givers are 43 percent more likely to say they are \u0026ldquo;very happy\u0026rdquo; than nongivers and 25 percent more likely than nongivers to say their health is excellent or very good.Matt says that, even though he\u0026rsquo;s not religious, he admires people of faith because of their morals, their value for community, and that \u0026ldquo;they walk the talk when it comes to generosity and tolerance.\u0026rdquo; Further, he concludes, \u0026ldquo;Faith, ultimately, is about optimism. Perhaps this is why I think it\u0026rsquo;s worth defending.\u0026quot;\nHe\u0026rsquo;s got a point, but Shermer\u0026rsquo;s piece is somewhat more equivocal about the evidence, observing that \u0026ldquo;Religious social capital leads to charitable generosity and group membership but does comparatively worse than secular social capital for such ills as homicides, STDs, abortions and teen pregnancies.\u0026quot;\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any disputing the value of community and mutual aid, nor that the secular have had a harder time promoting those values, in part due to the fact that we are fewer in number and widely dispersed. But the nonreligious have made some very dramatic philanthropic contributions which are likely to have a much greater beneficial effect than any church tithing will ever have.\nLarry Moran (2006-12-28):\nCan we addres this rationally by asking which societies achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people? If we compare a socialist society like Sweden with a conservative capitalist society like America, which one has the fewest people who need charity? Which one is more likely to have families that are bankrupt because of serious illness? Which one has inner city ghettos where the jobless rate is \u0026gt;25%?\nMany liberal societies have much higher tax rates in order to support their social safety net. Since these are democracies, it follows that the high tax rates are supported by the people. Should we count this as a form of \u0026ldquo;charitable giving?\u0026quot;\nLippard (2006-12-28):\nGiving other people's money is not as generous as giving your own, though there's a sense in which that is a form of \"charitable giving\" (or at least \"charitable taking\"). I put up a post earlier this year reporting on a measure of the \u0026ldquo;most generous countries,\u0026rdquo; which looked at contributions from wealthier nations to poorer ones, which accounted for the degree to which those contributions came as a result of tax breaks. While Norway came in at #1, the other Scandinavian countries fell below the United States. I didn\u0026rsquo;t see any clear correlation to religiosity levels.\nWhile the questions you ask are worth asking and those comparisons should be made, there are confounding factors when comparing diverse countries like the United States (where there is huge variability between states) and Sweden.\nA group that has done a good job of collecting data and trying to construct useful visual ways of depicting that data is Gapminder.org, which is based in Sweden. I put up a post about them this summer, which includes a link to a presentation they made at Google.\nEinzige (2006-12-29):\nThat gapminder presentation is well worth watching all the way through.\nGadfly (2011-11-27):\nThe Volokh Conspiracy shoots down Brooks\u0026#39; methodology. Brooks may still be right, but the research he supports doesn\u0026#39;t prove that. http://volokh.com/posts/1212183794.shtml\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt S. \u003ca href=\"http://www.onlyrepublican.com/orinsf/2006/12/conservatives_a.html\"\u003eat The Only Republican in San Francisco\u003c/a\u003e quotes from a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific American\u003c/span\u003e column by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society to argue that conservatives are more generous than liberals:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSyracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks argues in \u003ci\u003eWho Really Cares\u003c/i\u003e (Basic Books, 2006) that when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, numerous quantitative measures debunk the myth of \u0026ldquo;bleeding heart liberals\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;heartless conservatives.\u0026rdquo; Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals (even when controlled for income), give more blood and log more volunteer hours. In general, religious people are more than three times more generous than secularists to all charities, 14 percent more munificent to nonreligious charities and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person. In terms of societal health, charitable givers are 43 percent more likely to say they are \u0026ldquo;very happy\u0026rdquo; than nongivers and 25 percent more likely than nongivers to say their health is excellent or very good.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMatt says that, even though he\u0026rsquo;s not religious, he admires people of faith because of their morals, their value for community, and that \u0026ldquo;they walk the talk when it comes to generosity and tolerance.\u0026rdquo;  Further, he concludes, \u0026ldquo;Faith, ultimately, is about optimism. Perhaps this is why I think it\u0026rsquo;s worth defending.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s got a point, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=D27BB754-E7F2-99DF-3E2F8A28942743F5\"\u003eShermer\u0026rsquo;s piece\u003c/a\u003e is somewhat more equivocal about the evidence, observing that \u0026ldquo;Religious social capital leads to charitable generosity and group membership but does comparatively worse than secular social capital for such ills as homicides, STDs, abortions and teen pregnancies.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any disputing the value of community and mutual aid, nor that the secular have had a harder time promoting those values, in part due to the fact that we are fewer in number and widely dispersed.  But the nonreligious \u003ca href=\"http://humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=252\u0026amp;article=0\"\u003ehave made some very dramatic philanthropic contributions\u003c/a\u003e which are likely to have a much greater beneficial effect than any church tithing will ever have.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Charitable giving: conservatives vs. liberals, religious vs. secular"},{"content":"From the Jimmy Kimmel Show.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/best-of-george-w-bush-2006.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://www.devilducky.com/media/55489/\"\u003eJimmy Kimmel Show\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Best of George W. Bush, 2006"},{"content":"Remember this Dana Carvey bit on Saturday Night Live from 1996?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/gerald-ford-dead-today-at-age-of-93.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember \u003ca href=\"http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/12/gerald_ford_dea.html\"\u003ethis Dana Carvey bit on Saturday Night Live\u003c/a\u003e from 1996?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gerald Ford dead today at the age of 93"},{"content":"Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s detailed dissection of the Sternberg affair (see Ed\u0026rsquo;s post here and Steve Reuland\u0026rsquo;s here) has been responded to by Krauze at the Telic Thoughts intelligent design blog, including a response by Richard Sternberg.\nEd Brayton responds quite ably.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/ed-brayton-responds-to-krauze-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s detailed dissection of the Sternberg affair (see Ed\u0026rsquo;s post \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/richard-sternberg-false-martyr-for.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and Steve Reuland\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/how-office-of-special-counsel-got.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e) has been responded to by Krauze at the Telic Thoughts intelligent design blog, including a response by Richard Sternberg.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/answering_krauze_and_sternberg_1.php\"\u003eresponds quite ably\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton responds to Krauze and Sternberg"},{"content":"This was allegedly an internal Kodak video that was so popular with employees it has been \u0026ldquo;released for external viewing.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m sure I have some Rochester, NY readers who can confirm.\nIt definitely shows a company willing to acknowledge and poke fun at its past mistakes.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/kodak-winds-of-change.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis was allegedly an internal Kodak video that was so popular with employees it has been \u0026ldquo;released for external viewing.\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m sure I have some Rochester, NY readers who can confirm.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt definitely shows a company willing to acknowledge and poke fun at its past mistakes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Sz6XjXu-oT8\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Sz6XjXu-oT8\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kodak: Winds of Change"},{"content":"This looks like it might actually be a fun game.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/war-on-terror-board-game.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/\"\u003eit might actually be a fun game\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/war_on_terror_t.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"War on Terror: The Board Game"},{"content":"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.\n(From mlaw.org.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/seasons-greetings.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlease accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Seasons Greetings!"},{"content":"Washington Post, Sunday, December 24, 2006; B06\nThe largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.\nIf this announcement related to a private company, the news would have been on the front page of major newspapers. Unfortunately, such was not the case -- even though the entity is the U.S. government.\nTo put the figures in perspective, $50 trillion is $440,000 per American household and is more than nine times as much as the median household income.\nThe only way elected officials will be able to make the tough choices necessary to put our nation on a more prudent and sustainable long-term fiscal path is if opinion leaders state the facts and speak the truth to the American people.\nThe Government Accountability Office is working with the Concord Coalition, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation and others to help educate the public about the facts in a professional, nonpartisan way. We hope the media and other opinion leaders do their part to save the future for our children and grandchildren.\nDAVID M. WALKER\nComptroller General of the United States\nGovernment Accountability Office\nWashington\n(Hat tip to Sheldon Richman.)\nUPDATE: At Cafe Hayek, Robert Cote observes in a comment:\n\"Total liabilities is a red herring. While I share a deep concern for accounting and deficit, your totalling liabilities without also anticipating revenues is misleading. Besides, a huge component of those liabilities are entitlements; medical and retirement that I know for sure I'll never see. If I'm not going to see any then they aren't ruly liabilities now are they?\"\nUPDATE (January 17, 2006): Ed Brayton has chimed on on this subject.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/american-financial-scandal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/23/AR2006122300653.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Sunday, December 24, 2006; B06\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"American financial scandal"},{"content":"\nWhich Historical Lunatic Are You?\nFrom the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.\nLike John Wilkins and Afarensis, I got matched with Joshua Norton.\nI was glad to make this match, since I\u0026rsquo;ve actually been interested enough in him as a historical figure to read his biography (and you can find some references to him on my discord.org web page).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/which-historical-lunatic-are-you.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/lunatics/\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/images/lunatics/n.jpg\" title=\"I'm Joshua Abraham Norton, the first and only Emperor of the United States of America!\" alt=\"I'm Joshua Abraham Norton, the first and only Emperor of the United States of America!\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/lunatics/\"\u003eWhich Historical Lunatic Are You?\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003csmall\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://rumandmonkey.com/\"\u003eFrom the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLike \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/12/now_this_is_a_lunatic_worth_be.php\"\u003eJohn Wilkins\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2006/12/13/im_a_historical_lunatic/\"\u003eAfarensis\u003c/a\u003e, I got matched with Joshua Norton.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was glad to make this match, since I\u0026rsquo;ve actually been interested enough in him as a historical figure to \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0396085091/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eread his biography\u003c/a\u003e (and you can find some references to him on my \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/\"\u003ediscord.org web page\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which historical lunatic are you?"},{"content":"By Einzige\u0026hellip;\n- Grab the nearest book\u0026hellip;\n- Name the book and the author\u0026hellip;\nFlorence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (I just finished reading it a few days ago).\n- Turn to page 123\u0026hellip;\n- Go to the fifth sentence on the page\u0026hellip;\n- Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog\u0026hellip;\nI might have been attending an expensive private academy instead of a public school; there were only eight of us in the class\u0026ndash;the minimum for forming a class\u0026ndash;and all of us were girls. We began each class with a pep rally. \u0026ldquo;Mesdemoiselles, levez-vous!\u0026rdquo; the teacher would say, and we would rise and sing \u0026ldquo;La Marseillaise\u0026rdquo;.[I\u0026rsquo;ve dropped the \u0026ldquo;tag three more folks\u0026rdquo; part\u0026hellip;]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/tagged-with-meme.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBy \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-caught-virus.html\"\u003eEinzige\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e- \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\"\u003eGrab the nearest book\u003c/span\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e- \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\"\u003eName the book and the author\u003c/span\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFlorence King, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eConfessions of a Failed Southern Lady\u003c/span\u003e (I just finished reading it a few days ago).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e- \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\"\u003eTurn to page 123\u003c/span\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e- \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\"\u003eGo to the fifth sentence on the page\u003c/span\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e- \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\"\u003eCopy out the next three sentences and post to your blog\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI might have been attending an expensive private academy instead of a public school; there were only eight of us in the class\u0026ndash;the minimum for forming a class\u0026ndash;and all of us were girls.  We began each class with a pep rally.  \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMesdemoiselles, levez-vous!\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rdquo; the teacher would say, and we would rise and sing \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLa Marseillaise\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/blockquote\u003e[I\u0026rsquo;ve dropped the \u0026ldquo;tag three more folks\u0026rdquo; part\u0026hellip;]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tagged with a meme"},{"content":"Looks like the FCC had a hard day before the U.S. Court of Appeals defending its arbitrary indecency standards, and Susan Crawford points out an example of just how absurd those standards have become in the era of YouTube.\nUPDATE (June 4, 2007): The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its decision in Fox Television Stations v. the FCC, and the FCC has decisively lost. Adam Thierer points out how the case could pave the way for completely removing the FCC\u0026rsquo;s authority to regulate content for indecency. Susan Crawford reports on the content of the decision in the form of a letter to the FCC.\nUPDATE (April 28, 2009): The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the 2nd Circuit in a 5-4 ruling.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/fcc-indecency-rules.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like the FCC had \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/041527.php\"\u003ea hard day before the U.S. Court of Appeals defending its arbitrary indecency standards\u003c/a\u003e, and Susan Crawford points out \u003ca href=\"http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/12/21/2589576.html\"\u003ean example of just how absurd those standards have become in the era of YouTube\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 4, 2007):  The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its decision in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFox Television Stations v. the FCC\u003c/span\u003e, and the FCC has decisively lost.  Adam Thierer \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/042428.php\"\u003epoints out how the case could pave the way for completely removing the FCC\u0026rsquo;s authority to regulate content for indecency\u003c/a\u003e.  Susan Crawford \u003ca href=\"http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/4/2998821.html\"\u003ereports on the content of the decision in the form of a letter to the FCC\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 28, 2009): The U.S. Supreme Court \u003ca href=\"/2009/04/fleeting-expletives-fcc-rule-upheld.html\"\u003ehas reversed the 2nd Circuit in a 5-4 ruling\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FCC Indecency Rules"},{"content":"Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog:\nHistorical Comments AlisonM (2006-12-23):\nFunny, and yet scary at the same time. . .\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/more-reasons-why-checking-ids-doesnt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/not_paying_atte.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/_jOFf_KB3lI\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/_jOFf_KB3lI\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/owvO640ODwA\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/owvO640ODwA\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAlisonM\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-23)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eFunny, and yet scary at the same time. . .\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"More reasons why checking IDs doesn't enhance airport security"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/is-this-why-chavez-called-bush-el.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20061220/capt.whre11812202042.aptopix_bush_whre118.jpg?x=337\u0026y=345\u0026amp;sig=y_j51CgaXvFQYOmet0Gmcw--\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20061220/capt.whre11812202042.aptopix_bush_whre118.jpg?x=337\u0026y=345\u0026amp;sig=y_j51CgaXvFQYOmet0Gmcw--\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is this why Chavez called Bush El Diablo?"},{"content":"Sheldon Richman has a nice three-part series criticizing the legal reasoning of tax protesters who claim they don\u0026rsquo;t have to pay U.S. income tax titled \u0026ldquo;Beware Income-Tax Casuistry.\u0026quot; With any luck, somebody tempted by such nonsense will read it and avoid jail or fines.\nUPDATE (December 28, 2006): Sheldon Richman also points out this excellent GWU law professor\u0026rsquo;s website on tax protestor claims.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/critique-of-tax-protester-legal-claims.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSheldon Richman has \u003ca href=\"http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/12/beware-income-tax-casuistry.html\"\u003ea nice three-part series\u003c/a\u003e criticizing the legal reasoning of tax protesters who claim they don\u0026rsquo;t have to pay U.S. income tax titled \u003ca href=\"http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/12/beware-income-tax-casuistry.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Beware Income-Tax Casuistry.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  With any luck, somebody tempted by such nonsense will read it and avoid jail or fines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 28, 2006):  \u003ca href=\"http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/12/excellent-income-tax-information.html\"\u003eSheldon Richman\u003c/a\u003e also points out \u003ca href=\"http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/jsiegel/Personal/taxes/IncomeTax.htm\"\u003ethis excellent GWU law professor\u0026rsquo;s website on tax protestor claims\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Critique of tax protester legal claims"},{"content":"Todd Shriber, communications director for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), tried to hire hackers at attrition.org to change his college GPA for him. He corresponded in email with \u0026ldquo;Lyger\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Jericho\u0026rdquo; (former Phoenix resident Brian Martin, who runs attrition.org), who strung him along and then published the entire email correspondence on their site. To keep things entertaining, they made some odd requests:\nFrom: security curmudgeon (jericho@attrition.org)\nTo: Todd Shriber (nascar24_08530@yahoo.com)\nDate: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 17:30:44 -0400 (EDT)\nSubject: Re: Question for you or other Attrition members\n: Wow, I feel dumb now. I honestly cannot rember if there were pigeons on\n: campus or not. A lot of crazy squirrels, but I can\u0026rsquo;t remember pigeons.\n: Just for my own edification, why do you need to know that? I\u0026rsquo;ll find out\n: for you.\nHey, squirrels work fine. First, let\u0026rsquo;s be clear. You are soliciting me to\nbreak the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a\nfederal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can\u0026rsquo;t trust anyone and\neveryone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right?\nSo, I need three things to make this happen:\n1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one\nwith background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you\nare standing on the campus.\n2. The information I mentioned so I can find the records once I get into\nthe database.\n3. Some idea of what I get for all my trouble.\nWhen he replied that he no longer lives near his campus (he\u0026rsquo;s in D.C., and attended Texas Christian University), they told him that any old photo of a squirrel would do\u0026ndash;and he sent them one.\nThey ended their trolling by claiming that they had been caught, and that Shriber shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even visit their website anymore:\nFrom: lyger (lyger@attrition.org)\nTo: Todd Shriber (nascar24_08530@yahoo.com)\nBcc: security curmudgeon (jericho@attrition.org)\nDate: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:15:31 -0400 (EDT)\nSubject: Re: the squirrels are nice here\u0026hellip;\nOn Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Todd Shriber wrote:\n\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; I\u0026rsquo;ll take a quick look on Saturday and get the changes\n\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; to you immediately following that. Let me know if it\u0026rsquo;s\n\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; OK for me to log into that site.\ntodd\u0026hellip; no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK\neverything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute\nback to one of the hosts we had set up after that, straight DOWNHILL.\ni\u0026rsquo;ve already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity,\nsome other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they\nhave everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me\naccess all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD\ntheyre prob gonna end up calling you since they have your info just duck\nand run if you can, i\u0026rsquo;m going deep underground if they ask about me or\nattrition we don\u0026rsquo;t know each other you know youre just as guilty and\nliable so when they come knocking dont say anything without a lawyer and\nwhen you ask them to put the gun down say it nice because that shit isnt\nfun\nman dont even visit attrition.org again theyre trying to check web logs\none last email should be ok but we\u0026rsquo;re so fucked sorry\nPaul McNamara has covered the story at Network World, and it\u0026rsquo;s summarized at Talking Points Memo. The full email correspondence is up at attrition.org, but their server is having some trouble handling the traffic they\u0026rsquo;re now receiving on this.\nUPDATE: Welcome to Todd and/or his colleagues at the U.S. House of Representatives!\nDomain Name\nhouse.gov ? (United States Government)IP Address\n143.231.249.# (Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives)ISP\nInformation Systems, U.S. House of RepresentativesLocation\nContinent : North AmericaCountry : United States (Facts)State : District of ColumbiaCity : WashingtonLat/Long : 38.8933, -77.0146 (Map)Distance : 1,975 milesLanguage\nEnglish (United States)\nen-usOperating System\nMicrosoft WinXPBrowser\nInternet Explorer 6.0\nMozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)Javascript\nversion 1.3Monitor\nResolution : 1024 x 768Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Dec 22 2006 8:55:54 amLast Page View\nDec 22 2006 8:55:54 amVisit Length\n0 secondsPage Views 1Referring URL\nhttp://blogsearch.go\u0026hellip;Todd Shriber\u0026amp;ie=UTF8Search Engine\nblogsearch.google.comSearch Words\ntodd shriberVisit Entry Page\nhttp://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.htmlVisit Exit Page\nhttp://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html\nUPDATE: Todd Shriber has been fired.\nHistorical Comments garth2 (2006-12-23):\nso very funny\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTodd Shriber, communications director for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), tried to hire hackers at attrition.org to change his college GPA for him.  He corresponded in email with \u0026ldquo;Lyger\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Jericho\u0026rdquo; (former Phoenix resident Brian Martin, who runs attrition.org), who strung him along and then published the entire email correspondence on their site.  To keep things entertaining, they made some odd requests:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"emailstaff\"\u003e\u003cpre\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom: security curmudgeon (\u003ca href=\"mailto:jericho@attrition.org\"\u003ejericho@attrition.org\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003eTo: Todd Shriber (\u003ca href=\"mailto:nascar24_08530@yahoo.com\"\u003enascar24_08530@yahoo.com\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003eDate: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 17:30:44 -0400 (EDT)\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Re: Question for you or other Attrition members\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e: Wow, I feel dumb now. I honestly cannot rember if there were pigeons on\u003cbr /\u003e: campus or not. A lot of crazy squirrels, but I can\u0026rsquo;t remember pigeons.\u003cbr /\u003e: Just for my own edification, why do you need to know that? I\u0026rsquo;ll find out\u003cbr /\u003e: for you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHey, squirrels work fine. First, let\u0026rsquo;s be clear. You are soliciting me to\u003cbr /\u003ebreak the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a\u003cbr /\u003efederal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can\u0026rsquo;t trust anyone and\u003cbr /\u003eeveryone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo, I need three things to make this happen:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one\u003cbr /\u003ewith background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you\u003cbr /\u003eare standing on the campus.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. The information I mentioned so I can find the records once I get into\u003cbr /\u003ethe database.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3. Some idea of what I get for all my trouble.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen he replied that he no longer lives near his campus (he\u0026rsquo;s in D.C., and attended Texas Christian University), they told him that any old photo of a squirrel would do\u0026ndash;and he sent them one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey ended their trolling by claiming that they had been caught, and that Shriber shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even visit their website anymore:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom: lyger (\u003ca href=\"mailto:lyger@attrition.org\"\u003elyger@attrition.org\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003eTo: Todd Shriber (\u003ca href=\"mailto:nascar24_08530@yahoo.com\"\u003enascar24_08530@yahoo.com\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003eBcc: security curmudgeon (\u003ca href=\"mailto:jericho@attrition.org\"\u003ejericho@attrition.org\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr /\u003eDate: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:15:31 -0400 (EDT)\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Re: the squirrels are nice here\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Todd Shriber wrote:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; I\u0026rsquo;ll take a quick look on Saturday and get the changes\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; to you immediately following that. Let me know if it\u0026rsquo;s\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026quot;: \u0026quot; OK for me to log into that site.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003etodd\u0026hellip; no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK\u003cbr /\u003eeverything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute\u003cbr /\u003eback to one of the hosts we had set up  after that, straight DOWNHILL.\u003cbr /\u003ei\u0026rsquo;ve already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity,\u003cbr /\u003esome other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they\u003cbr /\u003ehave everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me\u003cbr /\u003eaccess all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003etheyre prob gonna end up calling you since they have your info just duck\u003cbr /\u003eand run if you can, i\u0026rsquo;m going deep underground if they ask about me or\u003cbr /\u003eattrition we don\u0026rsquo;t know each other you know youre just as guilty and\u003cbr /\u003eliable so when they come knocking dont say anything without a lawyer and\u003cbr /\u003ewhen you ask them to put the gun down say it nice because that shit isnt\u003cbr /\u003efun\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eman dont even visit attrition.org again theyre trying to check web logs\u003cbr /\u003eone last email should be ok but we\u0026rsquo;re so fucked sorry\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaul McNamara \u003ca href=\"http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9999\"\u003ehas covered the story at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNetwork World\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, and it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_12_17.php#011674\"\u003esummarized at Talking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.attrition.org/postal/z/033/0871.html\"\u003efull email correspondence is up at attrition.org\u003c/a\u003e, but their server is having some trouble handling the traffic they\u0026rsquo;re now receiving on this.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Welcome to Todd and/or his colleagues at the U.S. House of Representatives!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" cellspacing=\"1\" width=\"450\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" width=\"150\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eDomain Name\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\" width=\"10\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"290\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ca href=\"http://house.gov/\"\u003e\u003cspan id=\"ipDomainName\"\u003ehouse.gov\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats\u0026s=s23lippardblog\u0026amp;amp;amp;r=34\u0026vlr=11\u0026amp;pg=1\u0026v=24\"\u003e\u003csup\u003e?\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (United States Government)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eIP Address\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003cspan id=\"ipAddress\"\u003e143.231.249.#\u003c/span\u003e (Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eISP\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eInformation Systems, U.S. House of Representatives\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eLocation\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003ctable cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eContinent\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eNorth America\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eCountry\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd valign=\"top\"\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats\u0026s=s23lippardblog\u0026amp;v=24\u0026country=US\u0026amp;amp;amp;vlr=11\u0026pg=1\u0026amp;r=76\"\u003eUnited States\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats\u0026s=s23lippardblog\u0026amp;v=24\u0026country=US\u0026amp;amp;amp;vlr=11\u0026pg=1\u0026amp;r=77\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/images/flags/US.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"12\" width=\"18\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats\u0026s=s23lippardblog\u0026amp;v=24\u0026country=US\u0026amp;amp;amp;vlr=11\u0026pg=1\u0026amp;r=78\"\u003e(Facts)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eState\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eDistrict of Columbia\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eCity\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eWashington\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eLat/Long\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e38.8933, -77.0146 \u003ca href=\"http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats\u0026s=s23lippardblog\u0026amp;amp;amp;r=75\u0026pg=1\u0026amp;vlr=11\u0026v=24\"\u003e(Map)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eDistance\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e : \u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e1,975 miles\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eLanguage\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eEnglish (United States)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003csmall\u003een-us\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eOperating System\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eMicrosoft WinXP\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eBrowser\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eInternet Explorer 6.0\u003cbr /\u003e\u003csmall\u003eMozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)\u003c/small\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eJavascript\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eversion 1.3\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eMonitor\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ctable cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eResolution\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e : \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e1024 x 768\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eColor Depth\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e : \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e32 bits \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eTime of Visit\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003cspan title=\"Dec 22 2006  8:55:54\"\u003eDec 22 2006 8:55:54 am\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eLast Page View\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003cspan title=\"Dec 22 2006  8:55:54\"\u003eDec 22 2006 8:55:54 am\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eVisit Length\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e0 seconds\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003ePage Views\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e1\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eReferring URL\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en\u0026client=news\u0026amp;q=Todd%20Shriber\u0026ie=UTF8\" title=\"http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en\u0026amp;client=news\u0026q=Todd Shriber\u0026amp;ie=UTF8\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogsearch.go\"\u003ehttp://blogsearch.go\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;Todd Shriber\u0026amp;ie=UTF8\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eSearch Engine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eblogsearch.google.com\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eSearch Words\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003etodd shriber\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(245, 245, 226);\"\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eVisit Entry Page\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html\" title=\"/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"right\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;\"\u003eVisit Exit Page\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html\" title=\"/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Todd Shriber \u003ca href=\"http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/10015\"\u003ehas been fired\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Staffer for Congressman tries to hire hackers to change grades"},{"content":"As an undergraduate, I read Victor Marchetti and John Marks\u0026rsquo; book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Marchetti, a former CIA officer, was forced to redact large portions of the book, and the publisher decided to print the book with a bunch of blank spaces to show where the redactions occurred. This led to a fun game of trying to fill in the blanks. (The only section I tried to fill in\u0026ndash;successfully, as this was years after the book was published\u0026ndash;was about CIA-operated air transportation companies operating out of Pinal Air Park in Arizona near Marana.)\nNow the New York Times has printed an op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann about Iran using the same strategy\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s filled with black marks indicating the CIA-demanded redactions. This op-ed actually contained no classified information, but the Bush administration applied pressure to the CIA to get them to demand redactions. Leverett and Mann write, in an explanatory preface:\nAgency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House. Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.\nThese aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board.\nLeverett and Mann provide citations to other published material which describes the redacted sections, allowing the blanks to be filled in.\nThe Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s behavior here is simply insane.\nUPDATE: The Onion addressed this issue back in 2005.\nHistorical Comments webshadows (2006-12-28):\nTruly incredible... well done to the New York Times for effectively revealing this seedy behaviour.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/redacted-iran-op-ed-shows-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs an undergraduate, I read Victor Marchetti and John Marks\u0026rsquo; book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe CIA and the Cult of Intelligence\u003c/span\u003e.  Marchetti, a former CIA officer, was forced to redact large portions of the book, and the publisher decided to print the book with a bunch of blank spaces to show where the redactions occurred.  This led to a fun game of trying to fill in the blanks.  (The only section I tried to fill in\u0026ndash;successfully, as this was years after the book was published\u0026ndash;was about CIA-operated air transportation companies operating out of Pinal Air Park in Arizona near Marana.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow the New York Times \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22leverett.html?_r=1\u0026oref=slogin\"\u003ehas printed an op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann about Iran using the same strategy\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s filled with black marks indicating the CIA-demanded redactions.  This op-ed actually contained no classified information, but the Bush administration applied pressure to the CIA to get them to demand redactions.  Leverett and Mann \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22precede.html\"\u003ewrite, in an explanatory preface\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAgency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.\u003cp\u003e Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Redacted Iran op-ed shows Bush administration insanity"},{"content":"Jeffrey Sachs argues that higher taxes and social safety nets produce better results than laissez-faire capitalism.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-21):\nStefan Karlsson, Swede and undoubtedly one of the horrible \"ideologues\" that Sachs is attacking, responds here.\nEinzige (2006-12-21):\nAnother ideologue responds, as well as linking to yet another ideologue's ideological response.\nLeo (2006-12-21):\nOh, my, is Milton Friedman even buried yet? Shouldn't there be a 90 day moratorium on such articles in memory of? Seriously, this is an interesting article. I wonder how the poverty spending numbers are affected by charitable giving, supposing there is some relevancy, that is, between a nations poverty spending and charitable giving.\nI wonder too if the climate in the Nordic countries is some incentive for people to work.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/sachs-hayek-was-wrong.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeffrey Sachs argues that \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF3D5-6DC9-152E-A9F183414B7F0000\"\u003ehigher taxes and social safety nets produce better results than laissez-faire capitalism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eStefan Karlsson, Swede and undoubtedly one of the horrible \"ideologues\" that Sachs is attacking, \u003ca href=\"http://stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com/2006/10/jeffrey-sachs-on-nordic-countries.html\"\u003eresponds here\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2006/10/was_hayek_wrong.html\"\u003eAnother ideologue responds\u003c/a\u003e, as well as linking to yet another ideologue's \u003ca href=\"http://stationarybandit.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/10/did_sachs_prove.html\"\u003eideological response\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLeo\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-21)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOh, my, is Milton Friedman even buried yet?  Shouldn't there be a 90 day moratorium on such articles in memory of?\n\u003cp\u003eSeriously, this is an interesting article.  I wonder how the poverty spending numbers are affected by charitable giving, supposing there is some relevancy, that is, between a nations poverty spending and charitable giving.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sachs:  Hayek was wrong"},{"content":"Steve Reuland at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb points out how egregiously bad the OSC has become under Special Counsel Scott Bloch, and how that led to its poor handling of the Sternberg affair:\nBloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe. Upon taking office Bloch immediately removed references to sexual orientation discrimination from the OSC website. Bloch has indicated that he will not protect gays from discrimination in contradiction of White House policy. Bloch is alleged to have used the OSC for partisan political purposes by ignoring claims made against Republicans while vigorously pursuing complaints lodged against Democrats. Bloch doubled the number of political appointees in the OSC, giving high paying salaries to many of his friends and fellow right-wing activists who have no relevant experience. He has simultaneously eviscerated the OSC’s professional staff, much of whom has either been fired for not relocating on short notice or resigned in frustration. James McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work. Many hundreds of meritorious cases, which by all accounts should have been investigated, were dismissed without investigation by Bloch’s office. Meanwhile, matters over which OSC has no jurisdiction have been pursued rigorously. (Sound familiar?) According to the OSC’s own polling, Federal employees are extremely dissatisfied with the work being done by the OSC, and effectively no whistleblowers have received relief as a result of the complaints they filed. When complaints were made about Bloch’s behavior and mistreatment of the staff, Bloch not only dismissed the complaints, he allegedly retaliated against the people who made them and issued a gag order preventing the OSC staff from speaking to anyone outside of the agency. Ironically, it is precisely this type of retaliation and intimidation of whistleblowers that the OSC is tasked with investigating. As a result of OSC failing to discharge its duties and taking revenge on aggrieved staff, former staff members and numerous whistleblower protection groups have filed a complaint with the Office of Personnel Management, which has launched an investigation (still on-going, as far as I can tell). Additionally, two Senate committees were forced to hold hearings concerning Bloch’s behavior. It almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison.\nThis explains how the OSC managed to produce an preliminary investigation on the Sternberg affair that is so completely divorced from reality. Put simply, it was a political hatchet job, yet another in a long line of abuses that the OSC has become infamous for. What’s perhaps most telling about all of this is that in spite of having a major backlog in cases, in spite of trying to pare down this backlog by dismissing meritorious cases without investigation, the OSC somehow found the time to investigate a case for which they knew they had no jurisdiction. Amazing, isn’t it? If you are a whistleblower who needs protection, or a gay federal worker who’s been discriminated against, the OSC simply doesn’t have time for you. They’re too busy pursuing cases outside of their jurisdiction in service of the Culture Wars.\nConsidering that Sternberg should have known that the OSC lacked jurisdiction, it is my belief that the Discovery Institute referred him to Bloch’s office knowing that even though the case was outside the OSC’s purview, even though there were more appropriate venues for handling a legitimate grievance of this kind, Bloch and McVay would dutifully issue a preliminary report that would serve the propaganda purposes of the DI. One even wonders if the DI wrote the report for them.\nReuland has more at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\n(The Sternberg affair is described here, here, and here.)\nUPDATE (May 7, 2008): The FBI raided Scott Bloch\u0026rsquo;s home and offices yesterday, Tuesday, May 6, 2008, seizing computers and shutting down email service as part of a Justice Department probe.\nUPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.\nRichardcarstone (2006-12-28):\nYou are publishing falsehood. Defamation, to be more precise. There is no evidence presented that Bloch is guilty of any wrongdoing. I have been to the OSC website, and they have a letter from Congress oversight committee showing a bipartisan group of investigators looked into his files, spoke to staff and went through hundreds of files. They found nothing, in fact they said he was doing a great job for whistleblowers. On the website they have a button for successful case summaries, another button for OSC Success, with graphs and charts showing big improvements for OSC, and many many cases listed their press releases that show they have been doing gonzo aggressive work for federal employees and whistleblowers.\nWhat do you show? What evidence, what actual numbers of real cases other than arguing from numbers you have misinterpreted and misrepresented to the public. Reprinting someone else\u0026rsquo;s falsehood as if they are truth is one of the lowest forms of sliminess known to the human race. It is pure viciousness without any justification.\nI have seen other crap like this defamation coming from an idiot named Ruch with a nothing organization called PEER (who comes up with these loser names anyway?), who may be the same person under a pseudonym as this idiot writing here. PEER is a joke in the federal community. It\u0026rsquo;s just a form of character assassination by accusation. Zero evidence.\nThey only reason you and PEER are trying to assassinate Bloch\u0026rsquo;s character is because he interpreted the law as not providing specific protections for gays. From what I can tell, it may be perfectly defensible position that has nothing to do with bigotry or personal agendas. Or, For all I know he is a bad guy, but innuendo and accusation are no evidence in America or any liberal democracy. You pro-gay bigots are all too common among these website blogs.\nBecause I knew you must be blowing falsehoods, I have read up on Sternberg, and it looks from the actual evidence now on a House government reform committee website from Cong. Souder, that he was badly mistreated. They reprint all the e mails and data showing the campaign to unfairly discredit and character assassinate Sternberg and drive him from scientific communities, simply because he allowed a peer reviewed article critical of Darwinian explanations for evolution to be published in Smithsonian\u0026rsquo;s magazine. If it weren\u0026rsquo;t for the hot button evolution issue, this idiot from Panda Thumb would be outraged at the discrimination and bigotry used against Mr. Sternberg who appears to be a very qualified, credentialed scientist who merely questioned Darwinian politically correct notions of the specific mechanism for evolutionary development of life.\nI think this Panda Thumb should be called Thumb Screw for its bigoted and totally defamatory bent, never once bothering with actual evidence or rational argumentation, but slandering people right and left (usually right, since they appear to be so ideologically knee-jerk, unreasoning left).\nYou pandas are more like panderers, and you need to get a life and try on some decency and submission to standards of evidence before you condemn people you find disagreeable or wrong. You are not reasonable, you are not liberal. You are probably homosexual activists who don\u0026rsquo;t care about assassinating people with whom you disagree. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen too much of this from you bullying gays and union activists. You think ends justify unfair and unlawful means. Your actions are reckless and reprehensible.\nLippard (2006-12-28):\nRichard: You\u0026rsquo;ve not supplied any evidence to support your view, and your position regarding the Sternberg affair is completely refuted by the evidence, as Ed Brayton has spelled out in great detail.\nLippard (2006-12-28):\nRichard (probably not your real name, \"Richard Carstone\" is a character in Bleak House, but you're an AOL user who connects through Verizon in Washington, D.C.--do you have any insider knowledge of the OSC?): Some of the same information Steve Reuland posted about Scott Bloch and the OSC may be found in this Boston Phoenix article from 2005.\nNote that one of Bloch\u0026rsquo;s outspoken defenders in that piece is William Donohue of the Catholic League. If that\u0026rsquo;s the sort of person defending Bloch, I\u0026rsquo;d say that tends to support the case against him. Donohue is a fanatical nutball (do a search for posts about William Donohue at scienceblogs.com for a few gems).\nBTW, I don\u0026rsquo;t know who Ruch is or who PEER are, and I post under my real name.\nLippard (2006-12-28):\nAh, here's who Ruch and PEER are. I hope that Richard Carstone will return and be specific about what claims he thinks are false regarding Sternberg or Bloch.\nUnknown (2006-12-29):\nJim, I have a few problems with your post. -“Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe.” Is this assertion based on anything prior to the couple years he’s been at OSC? From his bio he worked at the Justice Department’s Faith-Based Office for a few years and before that he was a respected, uncontroversial lawyer in Kansas for a couple decades. Checking on Google I don’t see much else, but maybe I’m missing something.\nUsually if a guy gets accused of extremist crackpottery, you can go back to his many years with the John Birch Society, or as a hatchet man for Richard Nixon or Jesse Helms, or as a grand wizard for the KKK, or some wild stuff like that. Does Bloch really merit such a label?\n-“[Bloch will contradict Bush WH policy on protecting gays from discrimination.]” Please forgive the summary. First of all, OSC doesn’t have any connection with WH policy – it’s independent. For instance, Bloch’s Clinton-appointed predecessor, Elaine Kaplan, served until 2003. The very idea of the office is to have no connection with WH policy – obviously there might be overlap between appointer and appointee, but it certainly shouldn’t be enforced! That turns on its head the idea of having an independent, watchdog agency.\nIn any event, OSC is supposed to be governed by statutes (or laws) that tell it what to do. These are not “policies” to be changed on a whim when a different political party takes the White House – this includes executive orders issued and changed unilaterally by Presidents. The law says that OSC is required to protect people based on discrimination for race, sex, religion, and a couple other things. It’s a list of items in the Prohibited Personnel Practices law. The list doesn’t include sexual orientation, period. Progressives and other folks favoring the protections have tried a few times to push them through Congress, but it hasn’t succeeded. Until that day, much like with Hate Crimes legislation, it just isn’t covered.\nMore later.\n-Red Rabbit\nLippard (2006-12-29):\nRed: First, please note that I am quoting from a post by Scott Reuland that is background information relevant to the OSC\u0026rsquo;s investigation of the Sternberg affair, which we know was completely screwed up by the OSC.\nSecond, I personally don\u0026rsquo;t think \u0026ldquo;homophobe\u0026rdquo; is a synonym for \u0026ldquo;anti-gay\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;opposed to gay rights.\u0026rdquo; In the case of Bloch, it appears that his actions support the latter label. Under Bloch, the OSC has gone from an agency that did address discrimination claims on the basis of sexual orientation to one that does not. His position appears to be that he has done this because the OSC statute (which includes the Prohibited Personnel Practices you mention) does not support such actions and to help reduce the OSC backlog, though he also says that only \u0026ldquo;three to five\u0026rdquo; such complaints are received per year.\nYou and he are clearly correct that \u0026ldquo;sexual orientation\u0026rdquo; is not included as a protected category or mentioned in that statute. However, item 10 on the list is a general prohibition on \u0026ldquo;discriminate based on personal conduct which is not adverse to the on-the-job performance of an employee, applicant, or others.\u0026rdquo;\nRegarding Bloch\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;far-right\u0026rdquo; status, I think the only specific evidence I\u0026rsquo;ve seen (beyond the fact that he was appointed by George W. Bush, who is well-known for applying political litmus tests beyond the point of absurdity, to the exclusion of qualifications or competence) is that he was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute (in 2002), which allegedly opposes gay rights (and if so would support the application of the description \u0026ldquo;opposed to gay rights\u0026rdquo; to him). That is only a fellowship to attend a one-week seminar at the Claremont Institute, so that seems to me to be extremely weak evidence\u0026ndash;and I note another Lincoln Fellow at that same year\u0026rsquo;s seminar was Timothy Sandefur, who is definitely not \u0026ldquo;far-right.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2006-12-29):\nA couple of interesting Washington Post articles about Scott Bloch: He cancelled an award presentation for the OSC Public Servant of the Year at the last minute and lied about the reason.\nHe published an inappropriate set of dress code recommendations in the OSC employee newsletter, which turned out to be plagiarized from student web sites at two universities.\nSteve Reuland (2007-01-03):\n\"You are publishing falsehood. Defamation, to be more precise. There is no evidence presented that Bloch is guilty of any wrongdoing.\" Actually, I presented lots of evidence. In addition to those links provided that Jim reproduced, I provided links to seven additional articles, most of which have numerous links embedded within them. And they\u0026rsquo;re are all from different sources, including mainstream media sources. That\u0026rsquo;s about as much evidence as one could possibly provide.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not the least bit surprised that when a Republican dominated committee looked into Bloch\u0026rsquo;s machinations, in a Congress that was notorious for not exercising proper oversight, they chose to find nothing wrong. It would be shocking if it were otherwise. However, the claim that Bloch\u0026rsquo;s office has done \u0026ldquo;a great job for whistleblowers\u0026rdquo; is belied by the fact whistleblower protection groups are the very ones complaining about Bloch. Like the OSC report on Sternberg, the conclusions just don\u0026rsquo;t fit the publically available facts.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s possible of course that these numerous complaints and allegations are without merit. But we\u0026rsquo;re not talking about one or two disgruntled employees here, we\u0026rsquo;re talking about dozens of non-partisan watchdog groups and a significant fraction of the current and previous staff. Even the guy who Bloch was giving \u0026ldquo;the whistleblower of the year\u0026rdquo; award to turned critic. We are also talking about a pattern of behavior that is not in dispute \u0026ndash; a gag order against employees, relocating large amounts of staff, hiring only conservative Catholics, etc. \u0026ndash; that fits in perfectly with these allegations as well. Where there\u0026rsquo;s smoke, there\u0026rsquo;s usually fire.\nSteve Reuland (2007-01-03):\nRed Rabbit wrote: -\u0026ldquo;Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe.” Is this assertion based on anything prior to the couple years he’s been at OSC?\u0026quot;\nYes, you can find plenty of evidence for this in the many sources I provided. In addition I have communicated with someone who knows (or knew) Bloch personally and can attest to the fact that he is a hard-core culture warrior and a homophobe.\n\u0026ldquo;Usually if a guy gets accused of extremist crackpottery, you can go back to his many years with the John Birch Society\u0026hellip; Does Bloch really merit such a label?\u0026quot;\nNo, he does not, which is why I didn\u0026rsquo;t use that label. I simply said he is a far-right activist. I think the evidence backs that up. Check out the people he hired for example. One doesn\u0026rsquo;t do that sort of thing if one is not an activist. (Although I suppose the fact that he hires only right-wing Catholics could be chalked up to cronyism, but, you know, birds of a feather\u0026hellip;)\n\u0026ldquo;First of all, OSC doesn’t have any connection with WH policy – it’s independent. \u0026hellip;\nIn any event, OSC is supposed to be governed by statutes (or laws) that tell it what to do.\u0026quot;\nThis is true, but the fact is that gays were protected from discrimination by the previous Special Counsel. Bloch reversed this without any particular cause. When the White House was asked for its opinion, the Bush administration said that gays should in fact be protected under the law as it stands.\nMy apologies if I gave the impression that Bloch is somehow required to follow the President\u0026rsquo;s wishes. The point is simply that Bloch is extreme to the point of being to the right of the President on gay rights issues. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty bad.\nOne could accept the possibility that the statute simply cannot be interpreted to cover sexual orientation, and for some strange reason Bloch has his hands tied whereas his predecessor did not, but that sounds pretty unlikely to me. More likely that he deliberately excluded gays because of his prejudice.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/how-office-of-special-counsel-got.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteve Reuland at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/12/the_office_of_s.html\"\u003epoints out how egregiously bad the OSC has become under Special Counsel Scott Bloch\u003c/a\u003e, and how that led to its poor handling of the Sternberg affair:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003col class=\"kw_list\" style=\"list-style-type: disc;\"\u003e\u003cli\u003eBloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe.  \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eUpon taking office Bloch immediately removed references to sexual orientation discrimination from the OSC website.  Bloch has \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/24/AR2005052401496.html\" rel=\"external\"\u003eindicated\u003c/a\u003e that he will not protect gays from discrimination in contradiction of White House policy.  \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBloch is alleged to have used the OSC for \u003ca href=\"http://www.pogo.org/p/government/ga-050306-osc.html\" rel=\"external\"\u003epartisan political purposes\u003c/a\u003e by ignoring claims made against Republicans while vigorously pursuing complaints lodged against Democrats.  \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBloch doubled the number of political appointees in the OSC, giving high paying salaries to many of his friends and fellow right-wing activists who have no relevant experience. He has simultaneously eviscerated the OSC’s professional staff, much of whom has either been fired for not \u003ca href=\"http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1384\" rel=\"external\"\u003erelocating\u003c/a\u003e on short notice or resigned in frustration.  \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work. \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMany hundreds of meritorious cases, which by all accounts should have been investigated, were dismissed without investigation by Bloch’s office. Meanwhile, matters over which OSC has no jurisdiction have been pursued rigorously. (Sound familiar?) \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAccording to the OSC’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=779\" rel=\"external\"\u003eown polling\u003c/a\u003e, Federal employees are extremely dissatisfied with the work being done by the OSC, and effectively no whistleblowers have received relief as a result of the complaints they filed. \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhen complaints were made about Bloch’s behavior and mistreatment of the staff, Bloch not only dismissed the complaints, he allegedly retaliated against the people who made them and issued a \u003ca href=\"http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=354\" rel=\"external\"\u003egag order\u003c/a\u003e preventing the OSC staff from speaking to anyone outside of the agency. Ironically, it is precisely this type of retaliation and intimidation of whistleblowers that the OSC is tasked with investigating. \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAs a result of OSC failing to discharge its duties and taking revenge on aggrieved staff, former staff members and numerous whistleblower protection groups have filed a complaint with the Office of Personnel Management, which has launched an \u003ca href=\"http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1005/101905p1.htm\" rel=\"external\"\u003einvestigation\u003c/a\u003e (still on-going, as far as I can tell).  Additionally, two Senate committees were forced to hold \u003ca href=\"http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail\u0026amp;HearingID=238\" rel=\"external\"\u003ehearings\u003c/a\u003e concerning Bloch’s behavior.  \u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e  \u003cp\u003eIt almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the Office of Special Counsel got the Sternberg issue so wrong"},{"content":"The December 17 New York Times has a great article on airport security, with quotes from Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze. A few key paragraphs:\nThe root problem, as some experts see it, is the T.S.A.’s reliance on IDs that are so easily obtained under false pretenses. “It would be wonderful if Osama bin Laden carried a photo ID that listed his occupation of ‘Evildoer,’ ” permitting the authorities to pluck him from a line, Mr. Schneier said. “The problem is, we try to pretend that identity maps to intentionality. But it doesn’t.”\n\u0026hellip;\nWHEN I asked Mr. Schneier of BT Counterpane what he would do if he were appointed leader of the T.S.A., he said he would return to the basic procedures for passenger screening used before the 2001 terrorist attacks, which was designed to do nothing more ambitious than “catch the sloppy and the stupid.” He said he would also ensure that passengers’ bags fly only if the passenger does, improve emergency response capabilities and do away entirely with ID checks and secret databases and no-fly and selectee lists. He added that he would shift funds into basic investigation and intelligence work, which he believes produces results like the arrests of the London bomb suspects. “Put smart, trained officers in plainclothes, wandering in airports — that is by far the best thing the T.S.A. could do,” he said.\nHat tip: Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/ny-times-theater-of-absurd-at-tsa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe December 17 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/yourmoney/17digi.html?_r=1\u0026adxnnl=1\u0026amp;oref=login\u0026adxnnlx=1166634073-IPVG26e4hvfub9AFt5O0kQ\"\u003ea great article on airport security\u003c/a\u003e, with quotes from Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze.  A few key paragraphs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe root problem, as some experts see it, is the T.S.A.’s reliance on IDs that are so easily obtained under false pretenses. “It would be wonderful if \u003ca href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html?inline=nyt-per\" title=\"More articles about Osama bin Laden.\"\u003eOsama bin Laden\u003c/a\u003e carried a photo ID that listed his occupation of ‘Evildoer,’ ” permitting the authorities to pluck him from a line, Mr. Schneier said. “The problem is, we try to pretend that identity maps to intentionality. But it doesn’t.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eWHEN I asked Mr. Schneier of BT Counterpane what he would do if he were appointed leader of the T.S.A., he said he would return to the basic procedures for passenger screening used before the 2001 terrorist attacks, which was designed to do nothing more ambitious than “catch the sloppy and the stupid.” \u003c/p\u003e","title":"NY Times: Theater of the Absurd at the TSA"},{"content":"John Lynch has a summary of the Intelligent Design movement\u0026rsquo;s achievements for 2006, along with a short list of things they failed to achieve in 2006.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/year-for-intelligent-design.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Lynch has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2006/12/the_year_in_id.php\"\u003ea summary of the Intelligent Design movement\u0026rsquo;s achievements for 2006\u003c/a\u003e, along with a short list of things they failed to achieve in 2006.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Year for Intelligent Design"},{"content":"Ed Brayton reviews the new report to Rep. Mark Souder which argues that Richard Sternberg of the Smithsonian Institution, former editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was a victim of persecution. The evidence in the report itself fails to support that conclusion, which appears to be politically motivated.\nBrayton finds that:\n1. What little ill-treatment Sternberg may have gotten (in fact, all of the comments expressing distrust and anger at Sternberg and urging his dismissal were made not to his face, but in private emails that he never saw) was largely self-inflicted, the result not only of his violation of procedures in regard to the Meyer paper, but in regard to several other instances of professional malfeasance and prior examples of poor judgement as PBSW editor. 2. The evidence does not support the conclusion that Sternberg was discriminated against in any material way. At absolute worst, he was greeted with professional mistrust and anger on the part of some of his colleagues, who were upset that his actions in regard to the Meyer paper brought disrepute to the Smithsonian and to them as associates. Disapproval and criticism, of course, are not the same thing as discrimination nor are they a violation of his civil rights.\n3. Sternberg has grossly exaggerated several alleged instances of \u0026ldquo;retaliation\u0026rdquo; in the early days of the scandal. In particular, he claimed that he had his keys taken away, his access to the Smithsonian\u0026rsquo;s collections taken away, and lost his office space. In reality, the keys and office space were exchanged as part of larger museum changes and he retains the same access today that all others in his position have.\n4. The accusations, in particular, against the National Center for Science Education - that they conspired with Smithsonian officials to \u0026ldquo;publicly smear and discredit\u0026rdquo; Sternberg - are not only not supported by the evidence in the appendix, they are completely disproven by the emails contained therein.\n5. All of that leads to the only possible conclusion: that this is a trumped-up report orchestrated by political allies of the Discovery Institute, particularly Rep. Mark Souder and former (I love saying that) Sen. Rick Santorum. They have put out a report that simply is not supported by the evidence and was designed, intelligently or otherwise, to support the disingenuous PR campaign that includes the attempt to position themselves as victims of discrimination.\nRead the details at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. By my reading, the Smithsonian would have been well within its rights to give Sternberg the boot on the basis of his violations of policy and failure to take proper care of museum specimens which he had taken from the collections and was keeping in his office.\nUPDATE: An earlier description of the Sternberg affair may be found here and here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/richard-sternberg-false-martyr-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/creating_a_martyr_the_sternber.php\"\u003ereviews the new report to Rep. Mark Souder\u003c/a\u003e which argues that Richard Sternberg of the Smithsonian Institution, former editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eProceedings of the Biological Society of Washington\u003c/span\u003e, was a victim of persecution.  The evidence in the report itself fails to support that conclusion, which appears to be politically motivated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrayton finds that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e1. What little ill-treatment Sternberg may have gotten (in fact, all of the comments expressing distrust and anger at Sternberg and urging his dismissal were made not to his face, but in private emails that he never saw) was largely self-inflicted, the result not only of his violation of procedures in regard to the Meyer paper, but in regard to several other instances of professional malfeasance and prior examples of poor judgement as PBSW editor. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Sternberg, false martyr for intelligent design"},{"content":"Cobb County\u0026rsquo;s school officials have settled the lawsuit with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and will not place anti-evolution disclaimers on textbooks used in their science classes. It appears that they\u0026rsquo;ve chosen to settle rather than suffer a Dover-like defeat in the courtroom.\nMore at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/cobb-county-ga-evolution-disclaimer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCobb County\u0026rsquo;s school officials have settled the lawsuit with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and will not place anti-evolution disclaimers on textbooks used in their science classes.  It appears that they\u0026rsquo;ve chosen to settle rather than suffer a Dover-like defeat in the courtroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/news_flash_cobb_county_case_se.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cobb County, GA evolution disclaimer case settled"},{"content":"Radley Balko describes an outrageous case of eminent domain extortion in Port Chester, NY:\nWith the blessing of officials from the Village of Port Chester, the Village\u0026rsquo;s chosen developer approached [entrepreneur Bart] Didden and his partner with an offer they couldn\u0026rsquo;t refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property\u0026ndash;land the developer coveted for a Walgreens\u0026ndash;the developer demanded $800,000 from Didden to make him \u0026ldquo;go away\u0026rdquo; or ordered Didden to give him an unearned 50 percent stake in the CVS development. If Didden refused, the developer would have the Village of Port Chester condemn the land for his private use. Didden rejected the bold-faced extortion. The very next day the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden\u0026rsquo;s property through eminent domain so it could hand it over to the developer who made the threat.\nThe 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this extortion under last year\u0026rsquo;s Kelo eminent domain decision. The court ruled that because this is taking place in a \u0026ldquo;redevelopment zone\u0026rdquo; they couldn\u0026rsquo;t stop what the Village is doing.\nThe case will be considered for review by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 5, 2007, and Didden\u0026rsquo;s side is being supported by the Institute for Justice.\nBy the way, if you are considering any last minute end-of-year charitable donations, I highly recommend giving support to the Institute for Justice. They have received 4-star ratings from Charity Navigator for five years straight, they regularly win critical civil liberties cases in the courts, they do a great job of keeping donors informed of what is being done with their money, they don\u0026rsquo;t continually pester you for more, and they have a strong record of acting in a principled manner. IJ holds regular entrepreneurship workshops, and operates state chapters in Arizona (the first IJ state chapter), Minnesota, and Washington.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/eminent-domain-extortion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027333.php\"\u003edescribes an outrageous case of eminent domain extortion in Port Chester, NY\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith the blessing of officials from the Village of Port Chester, the Village\u0026rsquo;s chosen developer approached [entrepreneur Bart] Didden and his partner with an offer they couldn\u0026rsquo;t refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property\u0026ndash;land the developer coveted for a Walgreens\u0026ndash;the developer demanded $800,000 from Didden to make him \u0026ldquo;go away\u0026rdquo; or ordered Didden to give him an unearned 50 percent stake in the CVS development. If Didden refused, the developer would have the Village of Port Chester condemn the land for his private use. Didden rejected the bold-faced extortion. The very next day the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden\u0026rsquo;s property through eminent domain so it could hand it over to the developer who made the threat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eminent domain extortion"},{"content":"This time it\u0026rsquo;s Christopher Beard, an executive staff member at Ted Haggard\u0026rsquo;s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, voluntarily resigning for a past incident of \u0026ldquo;sexual misconduct.\u0026quot;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no word on whether this is another gay incident, but it apparently does not involve Haggard or a minor.\nThe two previous incidents involved Paul Barnes, head of Grace Chapel in Denver, and, of course, Ted Haggard.\n(Hat tip: Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/third-colorado-evangelical-quits-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis time it\u0026rsquo;s Christopher Beard, an executive staff member at Ted Haggard\u0026rsquo;s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, \u003ca href=\"http://pandagon.net/2006/12/18/another-colorado-fundie-is-busted-over-sexual-misconduct/\"\u003evoluntarily resigning for a past incident of \u0026ldquo;sexual misconduct.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no word on whether this is another gay incident, but it apparently does not involve Haggard or a minor.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe two previous incidents involved \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/another-closeted-gay-evangelical-leader.html\"\u003ePaul Barnes, head of Grace Chapel in Denver\u003c/a\u003e, and, of course, \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/ted-haggard-resigns-as-head-of-nae.html\"\u003eTed Haggard\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/third_time_is_the_proof.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Third Colorado evangelical quits for sexual misconduct"},{"content":"I just came across this letter from Paul LaClair at the Observer (Kearny\u0026rsquo;s newspaper) editor\u0026rsquo;s blog site, which corrects some misconceptions that have occurred in some of the reporting and commentary on this issue, as well as point out some additional details about Paszkiewicz and the school administrators\u0026rsquo; response that have not been reported elsewhere, such as:\n* After receiving a reprimand on September 25 in response to Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s initial complaint, Paszkiewicz made a statement in class that implied that the student who complained had misrepresented his words. (I.e., he lied.) At this point, Matthew LaClair requested a meeting with administrators and produced the recordings.\n* Subsequent to this, the LaClairs have asked for further corrective action, but none has been forthcoming.\n* The school\u0026rsquo;s attorney has been evasive and even suggested that the LaClair\u0026rsquo;s go ahead and sue.\nThe letter is well worth reading in its entirety. You can find it here.\nAlisonM (2006-12-21):\nMr. Lippard, I hope you do not mind that I have linked to your posts about the Paszkiewicz/LaClair issue from my own blog. I feel very strongly about the insidious creep of religion into our schools and law, and being a New Jersey resident formerly from the northeast area, this incident in particular raises my hackles. Thank you for the thorough coverage you've given this, and keep up the good work!\nLippard (2006-12-22):\nAlison: You\u0026rsquo;re more than welcome to link to my posts\u0026ndash;I appreciate the support!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair-about-david.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just came across \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair.html\"\u003ethis letter from Paul LaClair at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eObserver\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (Kearny\u0026rsquo;s newspaper) editor\u0026rsquo;s blog site, which corrects some misconceptions that have occurred in some of the reporting and commentary on this issue, as well as point out some additional details about Paszkiewicz and the school administrators\u0026rsquo; response that have not been reported elsewhere, such as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* After receiving a reprimand on September 25 in response to Matthew LaClair\u0026rsquo;s initial complaint, Paszkiewicz made a statement in class that implied that the student who complained had misrepresented his words.  (I.e., he lied.)  At this point, Matthew LaClair requested a meeting with administrators and produced the recordings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* Subsequent to this, the LaClairs have asked for further corrective action, but none has been forthcoming.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* The school\u0026rsquo;s attorney has been evasive and even suggested that the LaClair\u0026rsquo;s go ahead and sue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe letter is well worth reading in its entirety.  You can find it \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Letter from Paul LaClair about David Paszkiewicz"},{"content":"David Paszkiewicz, the U.S. history teacher at Kearny High School in New Jersey who has been using his classroom to spread his religious views and has been defended by his students and fellow residents of Kearny, has now made the New York Times.\nThe principal is quoted as saying that he is unaware of any previous problems, but there have been comments left at my blog stating that Paszkiewicz has been doing this for many years.\nThe principal also claims that corrective action was taken\u0026ndash;a reprimand was supposedly given back on September 25\u0026ndash;but Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classroom style doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have changed much in later classroom recordings (I have heard some samples from September 26, 27, 29, and October 3 and 4).\nThe New York Times article makes it clear how bad Paszkiewicz has been\u0026ndash;even conservative legal groups have no interest in defending him:\nEven some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.\n“It’s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. “You can’t step across the line and proselytize, and that’s what he’s done here.”\nThe article notes that the LaClairs are considering legal action.\n(Also see Pharyngula and Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2006-12-18):\nthey wont defend him, because if they have listened to the tapes, they will know that he is a piss poor teacher. If he preached but was a great teacher, they would be running to his aid.\nBut how are you gonna defend someone who bases his hisory course on facts gleaned from faux news?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/david-paszkiewicz-makes-new-york-times.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Paszkiewicz, the U.S. history teacher at Kearny High School in New Jersey \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003ewho has been using his classroom to spread his religious views\u003c/a\u003e and has been \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/kearny-high-school-students-defend.html\"\u003edefended by his students\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/embarrassingly-bad-arguments-in.html\"\u003efellow residents of Kearny\u003c/a\u003e, has now made \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/nyregion/18kearny.html?_r=1\u0026oref=slogin\u0026amp;pagewanted=all\"\u003e the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe principal is quoted as saying that he is unaware of any previous problems, but there have been comments left at my blog stating that Paszkiewicz has been doing this for many years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe principal also claims that corrective action was taken\u0026ndash;a reprimand was supposedly given back on September 25\u0026ndash;but Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classroom style doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to have changed much in later classroom recordings (I have heard some samples from September 26, 27, 29, and October 3 and 4).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e article makes it clear how bad Paszkiewicz has been\u0026ndash;even conservative legal groups have no interest in defending him:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Paszkiewicz makes the New York Times"},{"content":"The Discovery Institute has been trying to criticize last year\u0026rsquo;s Dover decision on the grounds that Judge Jones followed common judicial practice by copying text from the winning side\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in setting out the facts of the case in his opinion.\nNow, it turns out that the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s David DeWolf, John West, and Casey Luskin (the first two of which are the authors of the critique of Judge Jones just referred to) submitted a paper to the Montana Law Review about the Dover case that was virtually identical to content in the DI\u0026rsquo;s book, Traipsing Into Evolution, published in March 2006. This violated the journal\u0026rsquo;s requirement that all submissions be original content, not previously published elsewhere, and the authors were forced to rewrite and resubmit\u0026ndash;after this was brought to the journal\u0026rsquo;s attention by a third party. The DI authors intentionally concealed this information.\nMore details at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nUPDATE (December 20, 2006): The editor of the Montana Law Review has responded, pointing out facts that absolve the DI folks of any deception.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/discovery-institutes-incredible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Discovery Institute \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/discovery-institutes-latest-attack-on.html\"\u003ehas been trying to criticize last year\u0026rsquo;s Dover decision\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds that Judge Jones followed common judicial practice by copying text from the winning side\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in setting out the facts of the case in his opinion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, it turns out that the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s David DeWolf, John West, and Casey Luskin (the first two of which are the authors of the critique of Judge Jones just referred to) submitted a paper to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMontana Law Review\u003c/span\u003e about the Dover case that was virtually identical to content in the DI\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTraipsing Into Evolution\u003c/span\u003e, published in March 2006.  This violated the journal\u0026rsquo;s requirement that all submissions be original content, not previously published elsewhere, and the authors were forced to rewrite and resubmit\u0026ndash;after this was brought to the journal\u0026rsquo;s attention by a third party.  The DI authors intentionally concealed this information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/study_shows_discovery_institut.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 20, 2006):  The \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/mlr_editor_responds.php\"\u003eeditor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMontana Law Review\u003c/span\u003e has responded\u003c/a\u003e, pointing out facts that absolve the DI folks of any deception.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute's incredible hypocrisy knows no bounds"},{"content":"Einzige has posted the latest graph for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Phoenix, and concludes:\nIt would seem, now, that the question is no longer \u0026ldquo;Is there a housing bubble?\u0026rdquo;, but \u0026ldquo;How big is the pop going to be?\u0026quot;\nCheck it out here.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2007-01-06):\nA bit of an update, in lieu of putting up a whole new graph (which I will do in February): December saw a slight dip in the numbers, with the total getting to \u0026ldquo;only\u0026rdquo; 1407 notices recorded\u0026ndash;79 less than November.\nHowever, January 2nd saw an astounding 98 notices filed that day. If the past week\u0026rsquo;s pace keeps up, this month\u0026rsquo;s total is likely to beat the 11-year high (1738, set in January of \u0026lsquo;03). If it weren\u0026rsquo;t for the MLK holiday, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t rule out the possibility of surpassing 2000!\nStay tuned.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/steep-cliff-phoenix-notices-of-trustees.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEinzige has posted \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/12/steep-cliff.html\"\u003ethe latest graph for notices of trustee\u0026rsquo;s sales in Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, and concludes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt would seem, now, that the question is no longer \u0026ldquo;Is there a housing bubble?\u0026rdquo;, but \u0026ldquo;How big is the pop going to be?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eCheck it out \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/12/steep-cliff.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-01-06)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eA bit of an update, in lieu of putting up a whole new graph (which I will do in February):\n\u003cp\u003eDecember saw a slight dip in the numbers, with the total getting to \u0026ldquo;only\u0026rdquo; 1407 notices recorded\u0026ndash;79 less than November.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Steep Cliff--Phoenix Notices of Trustee's Sales"},{"content":"From the December 2, 2006 issue of The Economist (subscription required for full article):\nGay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. (Massachusetts).\nGays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont).\nGays have civil unions or partnerships with lesser rights than heterosexual marriage in Argentina (1 state), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3 states), Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United States (Hawaii, Maine).\nUPDATE (December 18, 2006): Stephen Frug has pointed out that even in U.S. states which have legal gay marriage or legal gay civil unions, they are still not equivalent to marriage, in part because of the U.S. federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of a provision in this law, the spouse of former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay federal lawmaker, has been denied his pension benefits.\nUPDATE (December 19, 2006): The December 9 issue of The Economist (p. 66) points out that the inclusion of Hong Kong on the list of countries with gay civil unions is a mistake. Hong Kong \u0026ldquo;is reviewing its laws in this area,\u0026rdquo; but doesn\u0026rsquo;t currently allow them.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/global-state-of-gay-marriage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RPVGPQG\"\u003eDecember 2, 2006 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (subscription required for full article):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. (Massachusetts).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGays have civil unions or partnerships with lesser rights than heterosexual marriage in Argentina (1 state), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3 states), Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United States (Hawaii, Maine).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 18, 2006):  Stephen Frug \u003ca href=\"http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2006/12/civil-unions-are-not-equivalent-to.html\"\u003ehas pointed out\u003c/a\u003e that even in U.S. states which have legal gay marriage or legal gay civil unions, they are still not equivalent to marriage, in part because of the U.S. federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by Bill Clinton.  As a result of a provision in this law, the spouse of former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay federal lawmaker, has been denied his pension benefits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 19, 2006):  The December 9 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e (p. 66) points out that the inclusion of Hong Kong on the list of countries with gay civil unions is a mistake.  Hong Kong \u0026ldquo;is reviewing its laws in this area,\u0026rdquo; but doesn\u0026rsquo;t currently allow them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Global state of gay marriage"},{"content":"From a Richard Cheese email bulletin:\nI hope you will please tell your friends in Chicago to listen TONIGHT (Thursday 12/14) to WLUP 97.9 FM\u0026rsquo;s Jonathon Brandmeier radio marathon show\u0026hellip;my Richard Cheese \u0026amp; Lounge Against The Machine band will be performing LIVE VIA SATELLITE on The Loop from 9PM-10PM.\nAnd Friday night (tomorrow), our \u0026ldquo;Christmas In Las Vegas\u0026rdquo; holiday song will be featured on NBC-TV\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;LAS VEGAS\u0026rdquo; series! Be sure to tune in early at 8:59PM (7:59PM Central) or you\u0026rsquo;ll miss it! It\u0026rsquo;s on during the first five minutes!!!More Richard Cheese information at www.richardcheese.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/richard-cheese-news.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom a Richard Cheese email bulletin:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI hope you will please tell your friends in Chicago to listen TONIGHT    (Thursday 12/14) to WLUP 97.9 FM\u0026rsquo;s Jonathon Brandmeier radio marathon show\u0026hellip;my Richard Cheese \u0026amp; Lounge Against The Machine band will be performing LIVE VIA SATELLITE on The Loop from 9PM-10PM.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd Friday night (tomorrow), our \u0026ldquo;Christmas In Las Vegas\u0026rdquo; holiday song will be featured on NBC-TV\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;LAS VEGAS\u0026rdquo; series!  Be sure to        tune in early at 8:59PM (7:59PM Central) or you\u0026rsquo;ll miss it!  It\u0026rsquo;s on     during the first five minutes!!!\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore Richard Cheese information at \u003ca href=\"http://www.richardcheese.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.richardcheese.com\"\u003ewww.richardcheese.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Cheese news"},{"content":"I figured as much from his performance at this year\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference, where he refused to defend the scientific claims in his book State of Fear, but here\u0026rsquo;s how he\u0026rsquo;s responded to Washington journalist Michael Crowley\u0026rsquo;s critique in The New Republic\u0026ndash;by putting Crowley as a character into his most recent novel, as a child rapist with a small penis:\nAlex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. \u0026hellip; It turned out Crowley\u0026rsquo;s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]\u0026ndash;as was his custom\u0026ndash;tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child\u0026rsquo;s mother as \u0026ldquo;fantasizing feminist fundamentalists\u0026rdquo; who had made up the whole thing from \u0026ldquo;their sick, twisted imaginations.\u0026rdquo; This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley\u0026rsquo;s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler\u0026rsquo;s rectum.)\nThis appears to me (a non-lawyer) like libel per se and atrocious writing, but Crowley looks like he\u0026rsquo;s only going to point out Crichton\u0026rsquo;s assholishness rather than sue.\nUPDATE (November 5, 2008): Many people are visiting this page today after the announcement of Crichton\u0026rsquo;s death. A number are searching with the keywords \u0026ldquo;Michael Crichton atheist.\u0026rdquo; Michael Crichton was an atheist according to a number of sites online (but not the Celebrity Atheists wiki), but that has nothing to do with his behavior described above.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2008-11-06):\nNow he's a dead asshole!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/michael-crichton-is-asshole.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI figured as much from \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/skeptics-society-conference.html\"\u003ehis performance at this year\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society conference\u003c/a\u003e, where he refused to defend the scientific claims in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState of Fear\u003c/span\u003e, but here\u0026rsquo;s how he\u0026rsquo;s responded to Washington journalist Michael Crowley\u0026rsquo;s critique in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002156.php\"\u003eby putting Crowley as a character into his most recent novel, as a child rapist with a small penis\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAlex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. \u0026hellip; \u003cp\u003eIt turned out Crowley\u0026rsquo;s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]\u0026ndash;as was his custom\u0026ndash;tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child\u0026rsquo;s mother as \u0026ldquo;fantasizing feminist fundamentalists\u0026rdquo; who had made up the whole thing from \u0026ldquo;their sick, twisted imaginations.\u0026rdquo; This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley\u0026rsquo;s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler\u0026rsquo;s rectum.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Michael Crichton is an asshole"},{"content":"As I suggested might be a consequence, the DefCon campaign against the \u0026ldquo;Left Behind\u0026rdquo; game has generated media attention, which may cause the sale of more copies than would otherwise have occurred. Which is a pity, considering that it is such a bad game on every level.\nPersonally, I don\u0026rsquo;t see why simulated religious violence is inherently worse than any other kind of simulated violence, and find DefCon\u0026rsquo;s campaign misguided and not remotely connected to their stated purpose of defending the U.S. Constitution.\nUPDATE (November 23, 2007): DefCon has announced that its funding has run out, as pointed out by vjack at Atheist Revolution.\nLeftBehindGames (2006-12-23):\nA statement from Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon: Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Women of Faith, Outreach Magazine, National Network of Youth Ministers and Promise Keepers are just some of the organizations that support LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces, a PC game. Read below to find out why…\nThis is the world’s first high-quality inspirational game which intends to model positive behavior by discouraging physical warfare. Our game is the first game ever to encourage the use of prayer and worship as the most effective means to resolve conflict. Physical warfare is discouraged as the least effective means for resolving conflict…and a gamer loses points for using a gun.\nIn the past several days, numerous people have been and continue to spread misinformation about the game.\nOur game does not encourage killing. Our game is not anti anything … it’s simply pro-Christian. The ultimate bad guy is the antichrist who wants to eliminate all faiths and all religions, except his. He is deceiving the entire world.\nOur game does not teach the pre-tribulation theology of the book series, except that this worldview is utilized as a fictional backdrop of the game.\nIn an industry which creates so much gratuitous violence and gore, LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces presents a healthy alternative. We need your help to get the word out!\nPLAY THE GAME and find out for yourself that this game is about the battle of good versus evil.\nHere is what some are saying about the game:\nThe Anti-Defamation League, although they speak out against the book theology, says “Conversion to Christianity in the game is not depicted as forcible in nature, and violence is not rewarded in the game.”\nAOL says it is a “Positive Moral Message.”\nFocus on the Family says “The kind of game Mom and Dad can play with Junior.”\nConcerned Women for America says “A game we can wholeheartedly recommend!”\nWired Magazine, “Few are as ambitious and polished as this PC title.”\nArsTechnica.com, “This is a game that Christian parents can buy their kids, and one that Christian kids can play themselves without any guilt about \u0026ldquo;questionable content.\u0026rdquo;\nWomen of Faith says that in an industry that is full of destruction with no hope, the LEFT BEHIND game provides a healthy alternative.\nClint Thomas from Chaos Theory says, “For years we’ve been telling kids what to run from and not what to run to, until now!”\nShould you have any concerns about this game, please go to the contact us page on our website at www.leftbehindgames.com and we’ll do our best to connect with you.\nSincerely, Troy Lyndon Co-founder, CEO Left Behind Games Inc.\nLippard (2006-12-23):\nTroy: It\u0026rsquo;s a lousy game, promoting a bogus worldview, with lousy theology. And its inspired by authors who wrote crappy books (see Slacktivist\u0026rsquo;s commentary) and who are hypocrites about violent games.\nNobody should buy this piece of crap\u0026ndash;but not because Wal-Mart caves in to pressure groups, rather just because it sucks on so many levels.\nTroy Lyndon (2007-01-04):\nThis statement is posted from an employee of Left Behind Games on behalf of Troy Lyndon, our Chief Executive Officer. There has been in incredible amount of MISINFORMATION published in the media and in online blogs here and elsewhere.\nPacifist Christians and other groups are taking the game material out of context to support their own causes. There is NO “killing in the name of God” and NO “convert or die”. There are NO “negative portrayals of Muslims” and there are NO “points for killing”.\nPlease play the game demo for yourself (to at least level 5 of 40) to get an accurate perspective, or listen to what CREDIBLE unbiased experts are saying after reviewing the game at www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/controversy.htm\nThen, we’d love to hear your feedback as an informed player.\nThe reality is that we’re receiving reports everyday of how this game is positively affecting lives by all who play it.\nThank you for taking the time to be a responsible blogger.\nLippard (2007-01-08):\nTroy: I've deleted your duplicate comment, which you've posted three times at this blog (twice on this post and once on another). I\u0026rsquo;d appreciate it if you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t use blog comment spam to get your point across. Further, I\u0026rsquo;d rather keep the comments relatively free of monologues.\nLippard (2007-01-08):\nI just read the Ars Technica review, and was interested to see that the Left Behind includes bad arguments against evolution among the \"essays\" between levels. Not surprising, considering that \"Left Behind\" co-author Tim LaHaye funded the start of the Institute for Creation Research.\nAlex G. (2007-01-18):\nJim, I wrote the C.E.O. a letter concerning this spam. At first I thought it was a neat comment until I did a search and found out over 9k of people got the same comment!\nNYC (2007-02-05):\nHey, with so many people having an opinion about this game, how many have actually played it? And what credibility do they have? Focus on the Family has publications which can set the record straight for everyone…at http://www.pluggedinonline.com/thisweekonly/a0002989.cfm\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/defcons-campaign-against-left-behind.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"/2006/12/defcon-goes-off-deep-end-about-left.html\"\u003eI suggested might be a consequence\u003c/a\u003e, the DefCon campaign against the \u0026ldquo;Left Behind\u0026rdquo; game \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061213/tc_nm/videogames_christianity_dc_1\"\u003ehas generated media attention\u003c/a\u003e, which may cause the sale of more copies than would otherwise have occurred.  Which is a pity, considering that it is such a bad game on every level.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePersonally, I don\u0026rsquo;t see why simulated religious violence is inherently worse than any other kind of simulated violence, and find DefCon\u0026rsquo;s campaign misguided and not remotely connected to their stated purpose of defending the U.S. Constitution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 23, 2007): DefCon has \u003ca href=\"http://defconblog.org/2007/11/taking-a-break/\"\u003eannounced that its funding has run out\u003c/a\u003e, as pointed out by vjack at \u003ca href=\"http://atheistrevolution.blogspot.com/2007/11/defcon-blog-closing.html\"\u003eAtheist Revolution\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DefCon's campaign against \"Left Behind\" game gives it more publicity"},{"content":"After a year of careful analysis of Judge Jones\u0026rsquo; decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the Discovery Institute has determined that the Judge made considerable use of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law when writing the section on intelligent design as science in his decision for the plaintiff. Somehow, they think that this common practice of using the Proposed Findings of Fact from the winning side in crafting a decision makes Judge Jones a puppet of the ACLU, even though he\u0026rsquo;s a conservative justice appointed by George W. Bush.\nThe Discovery Institute has issued a press release touting their findings as though it discredits the decision\u0026rsquo;s reasoning. This press release demonstrates that they are still smarting over the loss in Dover, still spending their time doing things that have nothing to do with scientific research, and that they have as much credibility on legal matters as they do on scientific matters.\nMore by attorney Timothy Sandefur at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb. This press release by the DI was telegraphed by a talk given by Michael Behe earlier this month in Kansas.\nUPDATE (December 13, 2006): Ed Brayton analyzes the DI report in more detail, including responding to its claims that Judge Jones incorporated \u0026ldquo;errors\u0026rdquo; from the ACLU into the decision.\nUPDATE (December 14, 2006): More responses:\nTimothy Sandefur, \u0026ldquo;Is John West Dishonest or Just Ignorant?\u0026quot; and \u0026ldquo;Casey Luskin\u0026ndash;Not Too Bright\u0026rdquo; at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\nUPDATE (December 20, 2006): Wesley Elsberry has looked at how much of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law was actually used in Jones\u0026rsquo; decision (and how much of that section of the decision came directly from the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s filing). Ed Brayton summarizes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nCasey Luskin has attempted to respond with a defense, but as Ed Brayton shows, he just keeps digging a deeper hole.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/discovery-institutes-latest-attack-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a year of careful analysis of Judge Jones\u0026rsquo; decision in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District\u003c/span\u003e, the Discovery Institute has determined that the Judge made considerable use of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law when writing the section on intelligent design as science in his decision for the plaintiff.  Somehow, they think that this common practice of using the Proposed Findings of Fact from the winning side in crafting a decision makes Judge Jones a puppet of the ACLU, even though he\u0026rsquo;s a conservative justice appointed by George W. Bush.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Discovery Institute has issued a press release touting their findings as though it discredits the decision\u0026rsquo;s reasoning.  This press release demonstrates that they are still smarting over the loss in Dover, still spending their time doing things that have nothing to do with scientific research, and that they have as much credibility on legal matters as they do on scientific matters.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore by \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/12/12/a-hunting-we-will-go/\"\u003eattorney Timothy Sandefur at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.  This press release by the DI was telegraphed by \u003ca href=\"http://reasonablekansans.blogspot.com/2006/12/behe-lecture_07.html\"\u003ea talk given by Michael Behe earlier this month in Kansas\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 13, 2006):  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/fisking_the_dis_study_on_the_d.php\"\u003eanalyzes the DI report in more detail\u003c/a\u003e, including responding to its claims that Judge Jones incorporated \u0026ldquo;errors\u0026rdquo; from the ACLU into the decision.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 14, 2006):  More responses:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTimothy Sandefur, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/12/is_john_west_di.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is John West Dishonest or Just Ignorant?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/12/casey_luskinnot.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Casey Luskin\u0026ndash;Not Too Bright\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 20, 2006):  Wesley Elsberry has looked at how much of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law was actually used in Jones\u0026rsquo; decision (and how much of that section of the decision came directly from the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s filing).  Ed Brayton summarizes at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/elsberry_does_the_math.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCasey Luskin has attempted to respond with a defense, but as Ed Brayton shows, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/answering_luskin_again.php\"\u003ehe just keeps digging a deeper hole\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute's latest attack on Dover decision"},{"content":"A school in Virginia was threatened with a lawsuit by the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel if they didn\u0026rsquo;t permit a Baptist church to send home flyers with students. The school permitted this to happen, and in order to comply with the First Amendment, they permitted other religious groups to do the same. Now that a local Unitarian Church has sent home a flyer advertising a look at the history of December traditions (apparently including the contributions of Christianity, Judaism, and pagan religions) and \u0026ldquo;a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule,\u0026rdquo; there is outrage.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s hypocrisy to suggest that gays who seek to be able to marry and not to be fired because of their sexual orientation are demanding \u0026ldquo;special rights,\u0026rdquo; while actually demanding that one religion be given special privileges that others must be denied. That hypocrisy is on display at the WorldNetDaily.\nThere are two reasonable, constitutional policies for the school\u0026ndash;permit all religious groups to submit flyers for distribution, or not permit any of them to do so. (In my opinion, schools shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be sending home anything with students that isn\u0026rsquo;t from the school itself.)\nMore at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/special-rights-for-religions.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA school in Virginia was threatened with a lawsuit by the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel if they didn\u0026rsquo;t permit a Baptist church to send home flyers with students.  The school permitted this to happen, and in order to comply with the First Amendment, they permitted other religious groups to do the same.  Now that a local Unitarian Church has sent home a flyer advertising a look at the history of December traditions (apparently including the contributions of Christianity, Judaism, and pagan religions) and \u0026ldquo;a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule,\u0026rdquo; there is outrage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s hypocrisy to suggest that gays who seek to be able to marry and not to be fired because of their sexual orientation are demanding \u0026ldquo;special rights,\u0026rdquo; while actually demanding that one religion be given special privileges that others must be denied.  That hypocrisy is \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53250\"\u003eon display at the WorldNetDaily\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are two reasonable, constitutional policies for the school\u0026ndash;permit all religious groups to submit flyers for distribution, or not permit any of them to do so.  (In my opinion, schools shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be sending home anything with students that isn\u0026rsquo;t from the school itself.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/worldnutdaily_hypocrisy_on_gra.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Special rights for religions"},{"content":"\n(Via Bitchasaurus.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/kids-say-darndest-things.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/k8x14cLGh5o\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/k8x14cLGh5o\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://ladymonchhichi.blogspot.com/2006/12/kids-say-darndist-things.html\"\u003eBitchasaurus\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kids say the darndest things"},{"content":"The Republicans dumped the job of straightening out the government\u0026rsquo;s remaining spending bills for 2006 on the Democrats, who have responded by declaring that they will remove all of the earmarks from them:\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;There will be no congressional earmarks,\u0026rsquo; Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Monday in a statement announcing their plans, which were quickly endorsed by incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.\u0026quot;Looks like the Democrats are, for the moment, going to be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans. Not hard, given how the Republicans have spent money while they\u0026rsquo;ve been in power, but this is great news.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/democrats-plan-to-remove-earmarks-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Republicans dumped the job of straightening out the government\u0026rsquo;s remaining spending bills for 2006 on the Democrats, who have responded by \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002126.php\"\u003edeclaring that they will remove all of the earmarks from them\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;There will be no congressional earmarks,\u0026rsquo; Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Monday in a statement announcing their plans, which were quickly endorsed by incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eLooks like the Democrats are, for the moment, going to be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans.  Not hard, given how the Republicans have spent money while they\u0026rsquo;ve been in power, but this is great news.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Democrats plan to remove earmarks from spending bills"},{"content":"Paul Barnes, founding paster of Grace Chapel in Denver, resigned on Sunday in a videotaped confession shown to members of the church. Grace Chapel has about 2,100 members.\n(Hat tip to Talking Points Memo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/another-closeted-gay-evangelical-leader.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Barnes, founding paster of Grace Chapel in Denver, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/us/12evangelical.html?hp\u0026ex=1165899600\u0026amp;en=f8678a1c328a2998\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;partner=homepage\"\u003eresigned on Sunday in a videotaped confession shown to members of the church\u003c/a\u003e.  Grace Chapel has about 2,100 members.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_12_10.php#011509\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another closeted gay evangelical leader in Colorado resigns"},{"content":"Over at Respectful Insolence, Orac has followed up a post about those who believe that the Towers were taken down by missiles disguised as planes by flying hologram generators with one in which he identifies the real cause of the building collapses\u0026ndash;loose trains. The evidence is at least as compelling.\n(But seriously, if you\u0026rsquo;re curious about 9/11 conspiracy theories, read this, and check out the further sources at the bottom. Also check out Popular Science\u0026rsquo;s book on the subject, and Skeptic magazine\u0026rsquo;s vol. 12, no. 4 (2006) issue.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/orac-uncovers-real-cause-of-wtc-tower.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver at Respectful Insolence, Orac has followed up \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/12/your_friday_dose_of_woo_and_now_for_some.php\"\u003ea post about those who believe that the Towers were taken down by missiles disguised as planes by flying hologram generators\u003c/a\u003e with one in which \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/12/the_real_cause_of_911.php\"\u003ehe identifies the real cause of the building collapses\u0026ndash;loose trains\u003c/a\u003e.  The evidence is at least as compelling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(But seriously, if you\u0026rsquo;re curious about 9/11 conspiracy theories, read \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/matt-taibbi-takes-on-911-conspiracy_20.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e, and check out the further sources at the bottom.  Also check out Popular Science\u0026rsquo;s book on the subject, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s vol. 12, no. 4 (2006) issue.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Orac uncovers the real cause of the WTC tower collapses on 9/11"},{"content":"A former House page who was sent an instant message by Mark Foley asking him his penis size forwarded it to Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe back in 2001. When the scandal broke, that former page called Kolbe and asked him what he should do. He says Kolbe told him that \u0026ldquo;it is best that you don\u0026rsquo;t even bring this up with anybody\u0026hellip;. There is no good that can come from it if you actually talk about this. The man has resigned anyway.\u0026quot;\nThe House ethics committee found out about it anyway, prompting Kolbe to call the former page and leave a message saying, \u0026ldquo;it looks like you did some talking.\u0026quot;\nMore detail and excerpts from the House ethics committee report at TPM Muckraker.\nUPDATE (December 9, 2006): Here\u0026rsquo;s Kolbe\u0026rsquo;s response.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/kolbe-suggested-former-page-not-reveal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA former House page who was sent an instant message by Mark Foley asking him his penis size forwarded it to Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe back in 2001.  When the scandal broke, that former page called Kolbe and asked him what he should do.  He says Kolbe told him that \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003eit is best that you don\u0026rsquo;t even bring this up with anybody\u0026hellip;. There is no good that can come from it if you actually talk about this. The man has resigned anyway.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe House ethics committee found out about it anyway, prompting Kolbe to call the former page and leave a message saying, \u0026ldquo;it looks like you did some talking.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore detail and excerpts from the House ethics committee report \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002106.php\"\u003eat TPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 9, 2006): Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002113.php\"\u003eKolbe\u0026rsquo;s response\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kolbe suggested former page not reveal incriminating information about Mark Foley"},{"content":"For the second time this year, Microsoft has issued a notice of a remote code execution vulnerability in Word for which there is no patch. Their suggested workaround is \u0026ldquo;Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources. This vulnerability could be exploited when a user opens a specially crafted Word file.\u0026rdquo; If you rely on exchanging Word documents for your business, this means shut down your business or risk infection with zero-day malware that can compromise your systems.\nSecunia has rated this as \u0026ldquo;extremely critical,\u0026quot; their most serious vulnerability rating.\nThe last time this happened was in May, and it took Microsoft 26 days to come up with a patch, during which time there were attacks on various enterprises from systems in China.\nThis problem affects Word 2000, 2002, and 2003 for Windows, Microsoft Works 2004, 2005, and 2006, Word Viewer 2003, and Word 2004 for Macintosh.\nI recommend switching to OpenOffice and Macintosh. If you must use Windows in a business environment, this presents a strong argument for not giving users administrative rights on their own machines (or at least not on the user they login as to use Word) in order to limit what damage can occur from the exploitation of a vulnerability like this.\nUPDATE (December 15, 2006): There have now been three such Word vulnerabilities discovered in the last two weeks!\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nThe iWork suite for a Mac, including Pages and Keynote is fantastic. Pages also exports flawlessly to multiple forms (including PDF and Word).I just think everyone should be switching to Apple products though.\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\nWell, NASA is taking this seriously: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16095705/from/RS.2/Guess they don't want their shuttle getting sick on orbit.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nJen,Do you think that Apple is invulnerable to malicious software, and that's why we should switch?My office uses WordPerfect, which has a few features that I like, compared with MS Word, but truthfully it has many other \"features\" that I find incredibly frustrating.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMac OS X is definitely not invulnerable--it has had serious security issues in the past, including 9 (10%) still unpatched. It has a few design advantages (e.g., the way administrative privileges are handled by default, such as the root account being disabled), the advantage of being a less attractive target for hackers due to there being fewer instances out there, and the advantage of the Darwin component of the OS being open source.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/time-to-stop-using-microsoft-word.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor the second time this year, Microsoft \u003ca href=\"http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/929433.mspx\"\u003ehas issued a notice of a remote code execution vulnerability in Word\u003c/a\u003e for which there is no patch.  Their suggested workaround is \u0026ldquo;Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that  you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources. This vulnerability could be  exploited when a user opens a specially crafted Word file.\u0026rdquo;  If you rely on exchanging Word documents for your business, this means shut down your business or risk infection with zero-day malware that can compromise your systems.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSecunia \u003ca href=\"http://secunia.com/advisories/23232/\"\u003ehas rated this as \u0026ldquo;extremely critical,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e their most serious vulnerability rating.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe last time this happened was in May, and it took \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602038\u0026subSection=All+Stories\"\u003eMicrosoft 26 days to come up with a patch\u003c/a\u003e, during which time there were attacks on various enterprises from systems in China.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis problem affects Word 2000, 2002, and 2003 for Windows, Microsoft Works 2004, 2005, and 2006, Word Viewer 2003, and Word 2004 for Macintosh.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recommend switching to \u003ca href=\"http://www.openoffice.org/\"\u003eOpenOffice\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.apple.com/getamac/\"\u003eMacintosh\u003c/a\u003e.  If you must use Windows in a business environment, this presents a strong argument for not giving users administrative rights on their own machines (or at least not on the user they login as to use Word) in order to limit what damage can occur from the exploitation of a vulnerability like this.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 15, 2006):  There have \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6143853.html?part=rss\u0026tag=2547-1_3-0-20\u0026amp;subj=news\"\u003enow been three such Word vulnerabilities\u003c/a\u003e discovered in the last two weeks!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time to stop using Microsoft Word"},{"content":"The \u0026ldquo;Campaign to Defend the Constitution,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;DefCon,\u0026rdquo; describes itself as \u0026ldquo;an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs.\u0026quot;\nThey just sent out a mailing calling for people to ask Wal-Mart to stop selling the game \u0026ldquo;Left Behind: Eternal Forces.\u0026quot;\nWhat Wal-Mart sells in its stores is irrelevant to defending the U.S. Constitution. The fact is, this is a crappy game that won\u0026rsquo;t sell well, despite some initial media attention due to its absurd premise. As GameSpot reviewer Brett Todd observes (in a review that rates the game 3.4\u0026ndash;bad\u0026ndash;on a scale of 10), \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t mock Left Behind: Eternal Forces because it\u0026rsquo;s a Christian game. Mock it because it\u0026rsquo;s a very bad game.\u0026quot;\nLet the market handle this one, DefCon, and stick to issues that actually have relevance to your mission. Giving it more attention and treating it as a threat is likely only to sell more copies.\nUPDATE (December 13, 2006): DefCon\u0026rsquo;s campaign has successfully created more media coverage for this game.\nUPDATE (March 21, 2007): Looks like the market has spoken. Left Behind Games\u0026rsquo; stock peaked at $7.44 in November and closed today at $0.31 (up from $0.18 yesterday). Their financial auditors\u0026rsquo; 2006 report questioned their \u0026ldquo;ability to continue as a going concern.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (October 9, 2007): Left Behind Games is now sending out cease and desist letters to bloggers who have given the game negative reviews. (And their stock closed today at $0.11.)\nLippard (2007-01-08):\nI've deleted the previous comment because the same comment has already been posted two times on the other DefCon post--you can find its content there.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/defcon-goes-off-deep-end-about-left.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Campaign to Defend the Constitution,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;DefCon,\u0026rdquo; describes itself as \u0026ldquo;an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right.  We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey just sent out a mailing \u003ca href=\"http://ga3.org/campaign/tell_wal_mart\"\u003ecalling for people to ask Wal-Mart to stop selling the game \u0026ldquo;Left Behind: Eternal Forces.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat Wal-Mart sells in its stores is irrelevant to defending the U.S. Constitution.  The fact is, this is \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/leftbehindeternalforces/review.html\"\u003ea crappy game\u003c/a\u003e that won\u0026rsquo;t sell well, despite some initial media attention due to its absurd premise.  As GameSpot reviewer Brett Todd observes (in \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/leftbehindeternalforces/review.html\"\u003ea review that rates the game 3.4\u0026ndash;bad\u0026ndash;on a scale of 10\u003c/a\u003e), \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t mock Left Behind: Eternal Forces because it\u0026rsquo;s a Christian game. Mock it because it\u0026rsquo;s a very bad game.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLet the market handle this one, DefCon, and stick to issues that actually have relevance to your mission.  Giving it more attention and treating it as a threat is likely only to sell more copies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 13, 2006):  DefCon\u0026rsquo;s campaign has \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061213/tc_nm/videogames_christianity_dc_1\"\u003esuccessfully created more media coverage for this game\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 21, 2007):  Looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/22/72240/2608\"\u003ethe market has spoken\u003c/a\u003e.  Left Behind Games\u0026rsquo; stock peaked at $7.44 in November and closed today at $0.31 (up from $0.18 yesterday).  Their financial auditors\u0026rsquo; 2006 report questioned their \u0026ldquo;ability to continue as a going concern.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 9, 2007):  Left Behind Games is now \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/giving_a_bad_review_is_getting.php\"\u003esending out cease and desist letters to bloggers who have given the game negative reviews\u003c/a\u003e.  (And their stock closed today at $0.11.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DefCon goes off the deep end about Left Behind game"},{"content":"Mike Newdow, the atheist doctor/lawyer who has been working a new case regarding the Pledge of Allegiance up to the Supreme Court since the Court sidestepped the key issue in the case last time around, has put together a song and video about the presidential oath of office and \u0026ldquo;so help me God\u0026rdquo; being appended to the end of it. He\u0026rsquo;s also recently had an article printed at WorldNetDaily responding to former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore about whether \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; on money violates the First Amendment (hat tip to Ed Brayton). Here\u0026rsquo;s the video:\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/mike-newdow-pledge-and-presidential.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Newdow, the atheist doctor/lawyer who has been working \u003ca href=\"http://www.restorethepledge.com/\"\u003ea new case regarding the Pledge of Allegiance\u003c/a\u003e up to the Supreme Court since the Court sidestepped the key issue in the case last time around, has put together a song and video about the presidential oath of office and \u0026ldquo;so help me God\u0026rdquo; being appended to the end of it.  He\u0026rsquo;s also recently had \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53200\"\u003ean article printed at WorldNetDaily responding to former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore\u003c/a\u003e about whether \u0026ldquo;In God We Trust\u0026rdquo; on money violates the First Amendment (hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/newdow_v_moore.php\"\u003eEd Brayton\u003c/a\u003e).  Here\u0026rsquo;s the video:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gFw18Yw2zhw\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/gFw18Yw2zhw\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mike Newdow, the pledge, and the presidential oath"},{"content":"Declan McCullagh reports on the FBI using remote activation of cell phone microphones to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. He comments on a few models that are particularly vulnerable to exploitation:\nNextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. \u0026ldquo;They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;You can do that without having physical access to the phone.\u0026quot;Nextel says that they didn\u0026rsquo;t participate in the eavesdropping on a couple of mobsters who were allegedly listened in on using this technique\u0026ndash;both using Nextel cell phones.\nThe same story reports that a 2003 lawsuit revealed similar monitoring of conversations occurring in cars featuring OnStar.\nUPDATE (December 5, 2006): Bruce Schneier has commented on this story, and his readers have some interesting comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/12/fbi-eavesdropping-via-cell-phones-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDeclan McCullagh \u003ca href=\"http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6140191.html\"\u003ereports on the FBI using remote activation of cell phone microphones to eavesdrop on nearby conversations\u003c/a\u003e.  He comments on a few models that are particularly vulnerable to exploitation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said \u003ca target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tscm.com%2Fbiojma.html\u0026siteId=22\u0026amp;amp;oId=2100-1035-6140191\u0026ontId=1035\u0026amp;lop=nl.ex\"\u003eJames Atkinson\u003c/a\u003e, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. \u0026ldquo;They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;You can do that without having physical access to the phone.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eNextel says that they didn\u0026rsquo;t participate in the eavesdropping on a couple of mobsters who were allegedly listened in on using this technique\u0026ndash;both using Nextel cell phones.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe same story reports that a 2003 lawsuit revealed similar monitoring of conversations occurring in cars featuring OnStar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 5, 2006): Bruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remotely_eavesd.html\"\u003ehas commented on this story\u003c/a\u003e, and his readers have some interesting comments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FBI eavesdropping via cell phones and OnStar"},{"content":"The San Francisco-based Landmark Education, an offshoot of Werner Erhard\u0026rsquo;s est, has been misusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to threaten online video providers and cause the removal of material critical of the organization. They\u0026rsquo;ve specifically targeted a film that was broadcast on French television titled \u0026ldquo;Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous\u0026rdquo;) which was posted on Google Video, YouTube, and the Internet Archive. This film included footage shot undercover at Landmark events.\nIn addition to demanding removal of the film under the DMCA on the bogus ground that their copyright in the \u0026ldquo;Landmark forum leaders manual\u0026rdquo; is being infringed, they have issued subpoenas to try to identify the individuals who have uploaded the video.\nThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has acted to support the Internet Archive and Google in actions to fight the subpoenas; YouTube has notified its user and given them an opportunity to quash the subpoena. The EFF\u0026rsquo;s website documents their activities and the status of the case.\nThese three videos include part of the content that Landmark Education is trying to suppress. The first begins with some references to Scientology and a quote from Christian anti-cultist Walter Martin (the late \u0026ldquo;Bible Answer Man,\u0026rdquo; whose successor was discredited creationist Hank Hanegraaf), followed by video footage of Anthony Rapp from \u0026ldquo;Rent\u0026rdquo; talking about Landmark Education. It then goes into \u0026ldquo;Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous\u0026rdquo; beginning at about 3 minutes in, which is French with English subtitles. Unfortunately, this is not the complete show, though it does show some interesting undercover footage of Alain Roth of Landmark Education verbally abusing a woman at a Landmark seminar.\nLandmark Education Part 1\nLandmark Education Part 2\nLandmark Education Part 3\nUPDATE (December 10, 2006): Landmark Forum has withdrawn its subpoena of Google.\nGuruTruth (2006-12-09):\nIndeed a very interesting chronology of events, from the 2004 broadcast of the video in France to 1.5 million people, to Landmark's pulling out of France, to Landmark now attempting to suppress Freedom of Speech on the internet. More on this at Landmark Education wants to make French news report a “forbidden video” on the Net and also at Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus. It is quite striking how more respected educational institutions like colleges, universities and the like have full accountability and openness about their training programs, whereas Large Group Awareness Training organizations will go to such tremendous lengths to hide from the truth.More on this at our blog:The Truth about Human Potential Seminars\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nHi Jim,This isn't related to Lmdmark, but I also had some youtube vids removed and I'd like to challenge the removals.But of a long story, but briefly, I have in my possession 80 hours of recent video speeches given by a cult leader wanted for rape by Interpol, I've examined the free use sections of copyright, and I've absolutely no doubt my use is fair,Here is a link to one of the removed vids:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6401087507234493870\u0026hl=enThe removal was a part of the cult's efforts to remove critical info from the web following research by the UC San Diegi student newspaper that led to this article:http://ucsdguardian.org/viewarticle.php?story=news03\u0026year=2006\u0026month=11\u0026day=13My website: www.jungmyungseok.comThat is a mirror of my free discussion board that was deleted a week before the vids were removedThe cult leader's wiki page, the guy who updated it this week recieved threats from a cult member:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung_myung_seokRick Ross's collection of articles:http://www.rickross.com/groups/gacp.htmlI'd apprecite any advice you may have,..ThanksPeter\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCaptPorridge: If your excerpts from the 80 hours do not include commentary or some other form of transformation of the original content, it might not be fair use. There are four factors that determine whether a given use of a copyrighted work is fair use (purpose and character, nature of the work, amount and substantiality of the portion used, and effect of the use on the potential market for the work). The rules for what constitutes fair use are not written in stone and have in fact eroded substantially over the years in various court decisions--e.g., sampling as used in music is almost completely gone as fair use.Your best bet is to contact an attorney who deals with copyright law. If your posted video is your own material commenting on and excerpting from the 80 hours of video, you should be in good shape and in a position to challenge any removal--though when you're using the services of an online provider like YouTube, you need to present a case that is palatable to them (and consistent with their terms of service) as well, as they are under no obligation to help you fight. If you can present a clear-cut case that they can handle under the DMCA safe harbor rules, then you will be more likely to win on that front.\nGuruTruth (2006-12-09):\nLooks like more parts of the video are back up on YouTube as well, you might want to check it out.The Truth about Human Potential Seminars\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/landmark-forum-abuses-copyright-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe San Francisco-based \u003ca href=\"http://skepdic.com/landmark.html\"\u003eLandmark Education\u003c/a\u003e, an offshoot of Werner Erhard\u0026rsquo;s est, has been misusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to threaten online video providers and cause the removal of material critical of the organization.  They\u0026rsquo;ve specifically targeted a film that was broadcast on French television titled \u0026ldquo;Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous\u0026rdquo;) which was posted on Google Video, YouTube, and the Internet Archive.  This film included footage shot undercover at Landmark events.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIn addition to demanding removal of the film under the DMCA on the bogus ground that their copyright in the \u0026ldquo;Landmark forum leaders manual\u0026rdquo; is being infringed, they have issued subpoenas to try to identify the individuals who have uploaded the video.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has acted to support the Internet Archive and Google in actions to fight the subpoenas; YouTube has notified its user and given them an opportunity to quash the subpoena.  The EFF\u0026rsquo;s website \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/search/site/Landmark?f[0]=field_related_cases%3A948\"\u003edocuments their activities and the status of the case\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThese three videos include part of the content that Landmark Education is trying to suppress.  The first begins with some references to Scientology and a quote from Christian anti-cultist Walter Martin (the late \u0026ldquo;Bible Answer Man,\u0026rdquo; whose successor was \u003ca href=\"http://www.waltermartin.org/cri.html\"\u003ediscredited creationist Hank Hanegraaf\u003c/a\u003e), followed by video footage of Anthony Rapp from \u0026ldquo;Rent\u0026rdquo; talking about Landmark Education.  It then goes into \u0026ldquo;Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous\u0026rdquo; beginning at about 3 minutes in, which is French with English subtitles.  Unfortunately, this is not the complete show, though it does show some interesting undercover footage of Alain Roth of Landmark Education verbally abusing a woman at a Landmark seminar.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLandmark Education Part 1\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YYKXcpSjk8A\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YYKXcpSjk8A\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLandmark Education Part 2\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-s7f8PyP9uQ\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/-s7f8PyP9uQ\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nLandmark Education Part 3\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/fzLcrOT7M_c\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/fzLcrOT7M_c\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nUPDATE (December 10, 2006): Landmark Forum \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_11.php#005029\"\u003ehas withdrawn its subpoena of Google\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Landmark Forum abuses copyright to suppress criticism"},{"content":"The link regarding information about John Mackay wasn\u0026rsquo;t working when I first posted information about the split between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, but it can now be seen here. This links to a set of web pages which makes some devastating charges about the circumstances under which Mackay left the Australian organization in 1987.\nCreation Ministries International is composed of all of the non-U.S. groups which were formerly part of Answers in Genesis, based in the countries of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada; the U.S. group is the only one which continues to use the name Answers in Genesis.\nThe Creation Science Foundation came into existence in 1980 as the merger between Dr. Carl Wieland\u0026rsquo;s Creation Science Association (which had a magazine called Ex Nihilo) and Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s Creation Science Supplies and Creation Science Educational Media Services. Ken Ham ran the CSF, and John Mackay became editor of its magazine, then called Creation Ex Nihilo.\nIn 1987, Mackay left the CSF and started another creationist organization called Creation Research, and Wieland took a leadership role as Ken Ham began spending more time in the United States. This history is recounted in the CreationWiki article on the Creation Science Foundation.\nAccording to the information assembled on the CMI webpage, which was originally assembled in 1986-87:\nThe pack was originally prepared in response to the aftermath of a horrific attack (February, 1986) on our ministry (then called Creation Science Foundation) by Mr Mackay. The mechanism of attack involved a monstrous series of allegations without evidence—the basis was alleged ‘spiritual discernment’, involving ‘black cats’ and similar. These slanderous allegations concerned Margaret Buchanan, at the time a well-regarded Christian widow working for the ministry as Ken Ham’s personal secretary. John said she had been ‘specially sent by Satan’ to undermine him and the ministry, involved in covens, attending séances, etc.—never was there any eyewitness testimony or other evidence, merely ‘discernment’.\nWhen his attempt to sack her and take over the ministry failed, due to the Board’s refusal to violate biblical principle, Mr Mackay resigned. This was followed by a campaign of widespread innuendo and slander, involving actual fabrications which if accepted would tend to bolster his claim of ‘demonic infiltration’ of our ministry and thus would tend to undermine public confidence in our ministry. This included the bizarre and incredibly offensive claim that Margaret had claimed to have had intercourse with the corpse of her late husband (!).\nSadly, these horrific sins have never been repented of, nor forgiveness sought, nor restitution offered—despite a Baptist church excommunicating Mr Mackay and urging people to respect this decision in the Lord. When Ken Ham left ICR in about 1996, the rumour mill from this source again swung into action; the story this time was that Margaret was to blame for this ‘split’, somehow using demonic ‘powers’ to damage another creation ministry. Again, the real ‘target’ of the rumours was clearly public confidence in our ministry; if it could be undermined, it would be more likely to leave the Australian ‘creation public’ diverting the support in other directions. It might also be seen as a ‘vindication’ of the original offensive actions.\nCurrently, the issue has surfaced again in the context of the recent tensions between the Australian ministry and AiG-USA, with John Mackay’s newsletter suddenly urging supporters to pray for the ‘attack’ the US ministry is allegedly under.\nIn fact, it appears that new alliances are being forged, and talk of ‘reconciliation’ is being used to rehabilitate Mr Mackay in creationist circles—again the aim appears to be to undermine the Australian ministry, only from a different angle. Reconciliation is a wonderful and most desirable thing, but can never occur except on a biblical basis; the original slander must be withdrawn, and there must be a repentance and forgiveness sought from the main victim, Margaret, for a start.\nNo one likes to keep things alive that are best forgotten, but to cover up serious sin or attempt to sweep it under the carpet can never earn God’s approval. There is a cost to taking a strong stand in defence of truth and integrity, not the least being that it can easily be misrepresented. However, we will quietly but persistently maintain our stand, especially as the ugly stain of these rumours is encouraged to resurface to once again undermine the ministry—until and unless these seriously sinful actions are dealt with under the cross, not whitewashed for ‘political’ convenience or excused on the basis of any ‘personalities’ involved. Anything less would not only dishonour God, it would ultimately be running away from our responsibility of Christian love to the perpetrator himself. The web page with this text contains two documents\u0026ndash;one with the text of an account of these attacks titled Salem Revisited (PDF, 59 pp.), by Margaret Buchanan, and the other additional supporting documentation (PDF, 63 pp.).\nBuchanan, who was a widow at the time, is now the wife of CMI managing director Carl Wieland.\nMackay\u0026rsquo;s charges seem a lot like the fabricated charges of Laurel Willson, a deeply disturbed woman better known as Lauren Stratford (pseudonym), author of Satan\u0026rsquo;s Underground. Her account of being a victim of Satanic ritual abuse was debunked by Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott, who were also instrumental in exposing the fake claims of \u0026ldquo;Satanist turned Christian comedian\u0026rdquo; Mike Warnke.\nUPDATE (June 10, 2007): CMI\u0026rsquo;s main point about Mackay is that (a) he made these charges and never apologized for them, (b) Ken Ham agreed that Mackay was in the wrong, and that he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be associated with until he retracted these charges, but (c) Ken Ham and AiG-US have been associating with Mackay despite his failure to retract, in order to use him as a conduit to supporters in Australia.\nThe CMI position on (c) is supported by the fact that when Mackay sent out the AiG \u0026ldquo;spiritual attack\u0026rdquo; email to his supporters, he left attached this email from Ken Ham:\nFrom: Ken Ham Sent: Saturday, 2 June 2007 1:13 PM\nTo: John Mackay\nSubject: Letter: AiG under Spiritual Attac\nJohn-the attachment is the letter you are free to send to your entire\nmailing list and anyone else you want to send it to. Also send to\npastors etc.\nKen\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRoger:I agree that an attempted coup by Mackay makes no sense--I think the best explanation is not one which attributes rational reasons to Mackay, but that he really does suffer from the kind of delusions about demonic activity that have led to numerous cases of false accusation of Satanic ritual abuse, along the lines of my comparison to Lauren Stratford.I believe the reason CMI brings it up is because of Mackay sent out the AiG-US email to his Australian supporters, and CMI is attacking the messenger--but also attacking Ham for his apparent willingness to reconcile with Mackay, knowing full well of his past. The wording of the email referenced by CMI suggests that Mackay sent it out after interacting with Ham. Mackay's web site also suggests continuing dialogue with Ham: \"KEN HAM has also been in the UK and reported to John Mackay 'Some of the media who interviewed me also asked about you-the Telegraph thought we had planned a blitz through the country with you and us'.\" And apparently Mackay has visited AiG-US and been photographed with Ham.As a result of this schism, CMI has to rebuild in the U.S. and AiG-US has to rebuild in Australia, and they are in competition in those locations. It appears that AiG-US is willing to entertain dealings with Mackay as a way to gaining supporters in Australia, and CMI is attacking them for that.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nThe papers show that Ham (and his father) attested to Mackay doing those crazy things. If we presume the existance of the documents mean that Mackay never repented, it makes sense that CMI would be against Ham teaming up with Mackay again. Christians are supposed to forgive someone only after repentance. Looks like Ham is buddying up with Mackay both as a doorway into Australia and to rub Wieland's nose in the crap.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nFrom page 27 of the supporting documentation:\"I must totally dissociate myself from John, because of what he has done and because of aspects of his theology that would not be accepted by evangelical Christians, I cannot afford anymore to be connected with John. My Christian reputation is important and must not be associated with such bizarre actions.\"Guess his vendetta became more important than his reputation.\nsylas (2007-06-11):\nJim, can you please give a bit more detail as to how you obtained the attachment from Ken Ham on the copy of the \"Spiritual Attack\" letter sent to John MacKay? Did MackKay put that as part of his newsletter? Is it online anywhere?\nLippard (2007-06-12):\nI received it from someone who received it from a recipient--it was apparently sent by Mackay to a list of his supporters.CMI now has it, so it may show up on their site.The message was an email from Mackay, that was a forward of this email from Ham, which was a forward of the AiG \"spiritual attack\" email, which was sent out by AiG-US chairman Don Landis to AiG-US supporters.\nBDM (2007-11-03):\nReading this sad saga to date of the conflict between all the parties, I see unmistakenly the hand of 'Old smutty face'! But it also reminded me of the story of Admiral Nelson coming on deck on an occasion to find his immediate subordinates engaged in a furious argument, to which he declared: \"Gentlemen, the battle is out there\" ---- pointing to the enemy fleet! Come on, all of you, demonstrate our saviour's grace and mercy and in repentance be restored to each other and to Him.\nAnonymous (2009-05-05):\nDave Powell Brian you have hit the nail on the head. \"The battle is out there...\" however some do try and bring it \"in here\". I see in comments the call for John repent. Do you think there is the possibility that he has nothing to repent of?\nI \u0026ldquo;use\u0026rdquo; his ministry as much as I can and am never disappointed. Great ministry we had with John at the Warwick 09 Easter convention(Aus).\nLay your swords down fellas.\nDave\nLippard (2009-05-07):\nDave: If bearing false witness is a sin in your view, then I'd say he has something to repent of simply for continuing to make bogus young-earth creationist arguments, let alone the unfounded charges of witchcraft and \"demonic infiltration.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/john-mackay-and-answers-in-genesis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe link regarding information about John Mackay wasn\u0026rsquo;t working when I first posted information about the split between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, but it can now be seen \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4261/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  This links to a set of web pages which makes some devastating charges about the circumstances under which Mackay left the Australian organization in 1987.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Ministries International is composed of all of the non-U.S. groups which were formerly part of Answers in Genesis, based in the countries of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada; the U.S. group is the only one which continues to use the name Answers in Genesis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Creation Science Foundation came into existence in 1980 as the merger between Dr. Carl Wieland\u0026rsquo;s Creation Science Association (which had a magazine called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEx Nihilo\u003c/span\u003e) and Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s Creation Science Supplies and Creation Science Educational Media Services.  Ken Ham ran the CSF, and John Mackay became editor of its magazine, then called \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation Ex Nihilo\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1987, Mackay left the CSF and started another creationist organization called Creation Research, and Wieland took a leadership role as Ken Ham began spending more time in the United States. This history is recounted in the \u003ca href=\"http://creationwiki.org/Creation_Science_Foundation\"\u003eCreationWiki article on the Creation Science Foundation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccording to the information assembled on the CMI webpage, which was originally assembled in 1986-87:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Mackay and Answers in Genesis"},{"content":"In five parts:\nPart 1\nPart 2\nPart 3\nPart 4\nPart 5\nAlso see these resources and Matt Taibbi on 9/11 conspiracy theorists.\nqwertyxyz (2007-01-15):\nThe guys from popular mechanics kicked their asses! If i was one of the guys from loose change i would be ashamed of myself from that ass kicking. Their only defense was by cutting into what the popular mechanics guys where saying with stupid \"oh yeahs\" and shit like that. They are a couple of guys from who the hell knows where vs some of the smartest people in America. 8====D----- All over loose change!\nSeeking (2007-01-28):\nI disagree. I think the Pop Mech guys came off stammering, superior and made the Loose Change guys look more valid. I'm not really into the 911 conspiracy thing but the debate seemed to give equal credibility to both sides. I didn't feel there was a \"win\" for either and I had checked this out expecting to see Loose Change debunked!\nLippard (2007-02-06):\nIf you compare the content of Loose Change to the content of the Popular Mechanics issue (or better yet, their book), there's no question who has supporting facts and evidence and who is constructing fantasies out of half-truths and misinformation. I was disappointed with this video in that they showed clips from Loose Change but never showed any visual or graphic evidence debunking Loose Change (like this computer-animated analysis of the Pentagon light poles), but I question your critical thinking ability if you thought this \u0026ldquo;made the Loose Change guys look more valid.\u0026quot;\nSpooky (2007-12-29):\nThe Popular Mechanics guys were better debaters and talked the most but the information they presented was weak. I don't think Loose Change is a good doc but to say they got their asses kicked is naive.The Loose Change guys presented quotes from newspapers from a coroner and the PM debunked it by saying they talked to this guy. They argued that the day he examined flight 93 was so chaotic that these documented quotes were not valid. But PM's assertion BASED ON NOTHING is true and they should be ashamed. The coroner reported this to newspapers -if this isn't credible, changing his story years later certainly isn't. If he did not see body part the day of the event how could he remember them later? The PM guys exhibit very poor debating skills here and go for the low blow -not reason.Then the topic eventually changes to tower 7 which the magazine's report does not adequately debunk and their tactic of equating the boys with holocaust deniers comes out.The Loose Change reps got slammed but from a purely critical analysis of the facts presented -not dirty debating techniques, there is no clear winner and it only goes to strengthen the case for a new independent investigation.\nLippard (2007-12-29):\nI'm sorry, but I'm not even sure what you're arguing. Are you claiming that there were no body parts at the Flight 93 crash site, even though specific dead people (34 of the 44 on board) were identified as a result of those body parts and DNA?I don't know what you're talking about when you say that the coroner changed his story \"years later\"--on September 24, he had identified 11 bodies *without* having to resort to DNA.There's no question that the bodies of the people on that flight were badly destroyed in that crash, because they weren't trying to make a crash landing, they flew it intentionally into the ground.So what are you claiming?\nLippard (2007-12-29):\nBTW, \"9/11 truthers\" are just like Holocaust deniers, in the following way: they glom on to what they see as anomalies, and construct a huge edifice of conspiracy designed to explain those anomalies, while disregarding most of the evidence. A rational explanation takes account of as much evidence as possible, while recognizing that in such a huge complex set of events there are bound to be some minor discrepancies here and there. You can't explain the discrepancies by discarding most of the evidence and events (like the known history of the hijackers leading up to the events!).\nSpooky (2007-12-29):\n\"BTW, \"9/11 truthers\" are just like Holocaust deniers\"I shouldn't argue points with someone who thinks this way. You say \"just like\" and then go on to explain how these groups are vaguely similar.I'm just being critical of arguments stated. I'm certainly not agreeing with the Loose Change guys about anything. If those newspaper quotes are bogus then they should site it. I think you are too quick to defend an explanation because it comes from an authority. If those body parts were found then the newspaper quotes must be false. Of course you'll make up your mind before anything is researched because you've already made up your mind. I on the other hand am open to other ideas.Granted most of the alternatives are far fetched -there certainly has been no explanation for molten steel found under the WTC buildings a week after 911. I'm not checking back on this post anymore so have fun not questioning anything.\nLippard (2007-12-29):\nThe similarity of methodology is rather precise.I think it is completely rational to obtain information from *relevant* authorities--for example, about the characteristics of building demolition from engineers who do it, from how steel structural failures occur from structural engineers, about plane crashes from those who investigate them for a living. That doesn't mean those people can't make mistakes--they can and do. But I don't see *any* relevant experts supporting the \"9/11 truth\" movement.It's funny that you close by saying that you won't be coming back and listening to anything further, yet you accuse me of being the one who's close-minded. I'm perfectly willing to hear you make an argument and address your evidence directly, if I can, or to say I don't know. Why aren't you willing to do the same?I'm not aware of any evidence supporting the claim that there was molten steel at Ground Zero. It appears to be a misunderstanding based on a quotation erroneously attributed to Leslie Robertson, a structural engineer who helped design the WTC.\nEinzige (2007-12-30):\nI shouldn't argue points with someone who thinks this way.What an ironic comment, seeing as it was followed by so many logical fallacies!\nAnonymous (2008-05-15):\nThere's something you have to consider here. A conspiracy of this magnitude is too risky to pull off. The coordination to plant explosives in those building unnoticed would take hundreds of people. I'm an expert with high explosives, I served in the bomb squad for 4 years. It would take thousands of pounds of explosives to take down WTC7 alone. If you watch controlled demos you'll actually see blasts occuring on each floor in rapid succession, even in daylight. Furthermore they wouldn't have had the opportunity to weaken the structure, which is necessary to use the minimum amount of explosives, since that involves removing tons upon tons of concrete to expose the steel structure inside. I'm not saying there isn't something weird about the whole event, I do think there's something weird about it, but to let your brain wonder and come to conclusions without having evidence or any proof isn't fair either. I think at worst someone heard about it and decided to keep it secret. Other than that I seriously, and that's a big seriously, doubt that anyone actually took actions themselves to aid in the event. The risk of collaberation is far too great for the benefits. The general population would literally call for the people involved to be killed.\nDavid H. Willis (2008-10-02):\nI\u0026#39;m late to this party but thanks for posting these. I have a \u0026quot;truther\u0026quot; hanging around my blog like a stray cat that someone fed... \u0026amp; he just keeps coming back. Thanks again for the logical and rational comments.\nLippard (2008-10-02):\nDavid: Glad you've found it useful!\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-02):\nIm the truther that is \"hanging around his blog\" and what david Willis fails to mention is that we actually went to Bible college together and ever since I went on his blog and told him I have changed views about God, he took it personally and now he attacks the views I have about 9-11 (something he knew about LONG before I began posting the 9-11 stuff on his blog), but since I have hurt his feelings about religion and make fun of him for teaching people about talking snakes, talking donkeys, the sun standing still and one 500 year old man putting two of every animal on a big boat (that he built \"himself\"--[oh brother]), Dave has thrown a bit of a tantrum and now is spouting off ad hominem attacks on his blog and after REPEATED invitations by me for him to debate me on this, he IGNORES every invitation, ignores all the facts I post and spins his ASS off worse than Bill O Reilly--just like he span that I was just \"some truther\" hanging out on his blog when we went to college together. He studies NOTHING, researches NOTHING and even when he DOES post videos and links for me to check out---I end up telling HIM the backgrounds of the sources he's sent me. I know the backgrounds of his sources better than HE does. He openly admit he reads NOTHING on this subject and I constantly school him on this subject. I offended him about God, so now he cries like a little school girl and has even had one of his buddies call my house and threaten me. Im thinking about calling his church and telling them he [minister boy] advocates calling people and threatening them. He's a FOX News blowhard who only wants to hear ONE side of the story and quotes yellow journalism assholes like Jim Meigs (a man who just 4 years ago wrote movie reviews)----and NOW he suddenly knows all about engineering?? Dave has also NEVER EVER refuted one thing I have posted---he IGNORES nearly everything I post by his own admittance.\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-02):\ni didnt mean to post that twice\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-02):\nhey Jim Lippard---one question about Flight 93......where was the wreckage of the plane after it crashed? all we ever saw is a big hole. Can you think of ANY other plane crash in history where we saw the images of the crash site and huge chunks of the planes werent laying there smoldering? But Flight 93----nope---nothing but a hole!Why did the 9-11 commission NOT answer over 115 questions as researched by David Ray Griffin? Why are there so many things covered up? Why did Hamilton and Kean ADMIT at the start of the investigation that they werent there to see how 9-11 happened--but only to make sure it doesnt happen again? How can they achieve the latter without finding out the former???\nEinzige (2008-10-02):\nWhile I don't have a citation for you, my understanding is that when a plane crashes directly into the ground going more than 400 MPH there's not much that isn't completely obliterated.\nEinzige (2008-10-02):\n\"Directly\" -- meaning going straight toward the ground.\nLippard (2008-10-03):\nAs Einzige says, this was a plane flown intentionally almost straight down into the ground, which is quite different from most plane crashes.That said, there were still bodies identifiable without the use of DNA, as well as wreckage in primary, secondary, and tertiary debris fields, as described here. (Note: This is a site that argues that Flight 93 was shot down or otherwise broke up prior to hitting the ground, based on the distribution of debris. I'm not endorsing that theory, but he cites contemporary reports about wreckage recovery.)\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-03):\nWhen it goes directly into the ground, it's obliterated? So, it vaporizes? And they call MY version of 9-11 nutty? First of all, name ONE other example of a plane completely disappearing. second, how do you even KNOW the plane went \"straight down\"? Do you have video footage of it? Isnt your assessment of the plane going straight down a theory too??Preponderance of evidence is what this is all about? Planes dont crash and disappear----ever. There's way more evidence the plane was shot down. That's not a theory----that's based on visual evidence.\nEinzige (2008-10-03):\nUSAir Flight 427, traveling at \"only\" 260 knots when it struck the ground at an 80 degree angle, was described as \"severely fragmented\". Not the same as \"obliterated\", but 260 knots is not 400 mph.It doesn't require much imagination to realize that a relatively thin sheet of aluminum, traveling at high speed and impacting what amounts to an immovable object, is not going to retain much of its original shape. Have you not seen those high-speed camera studies of fighter jets being flown into concrete walls? They basically become clouds of dust.\nEinzige (2008-10-03):\nPlanes don't crash and disappearStraw-man and red herring. Did either of us claim that the plane \"disappeared\"? I recall Jim just mentioning debris fields and identifiable human remains.\nEinzige (2008-10-03):\n...and here is the exact video I was thinking about.Enjoy!\nLippard (2008-10-03):\nNobody *except* the 9/11 Truthers claim the plane \"disappeared\" or never existed or went to Cleveland. Everybody else says it crashed into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where all of the wreckage and human remains were recovered and identified.What's your point, Real Truth Online? At first it looked like you were claiming that there was no wreckage at Shanksville, which is certainly not correct. Now, it looks like you're saying that Flight 93 may have been shot down, which wouldn't provide any support for the claim that 9/11 involved controlled demolitions, drone planes, faked cell phone calls, didn't involve Osama bin Laden, or any other claim made in \"Loose Change\" (which is the topic of the blog post we're commenting on here).\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-03):\nJim, first of all, the links bewteen Flight 93 being shot down goes along with the demolitions in one way. Of course, since the planes are destroyed and there was no REAL investigation of 9-11, then all we can do is theorize about this one aspect---and I hate theorizing.In my studies I learned that of the 4 planes involved in 9-11, Flight 93 was the ONLY plane that did not HAVE to be shot down, but yet was. (I believe it was anyway)The other 3 planes actually hit targets. If youre going to believe it was an inside job like I do, you have to believe there were reasons for the particular flights doing what they did. All 3 flights (not counting 93) had already hit their targets long before 93 crashed. The closest flight to the 93 crash time to hit their target was the Pentagon strike which hit at 9:38am----Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 or 10:06 (thats disputed). 25 or 28 minutes is STILL an incredibly enough time for a fighter jet to find out the 4th plane is still in the air and shoot it down. Now, here's my point: The first 3 planes were in the air a VERY long time and NOT shot down---they could have easily been shot down. The FAA and NORAD knew about these flights in the air a LONG time before the crashed into their targets. This is EXACTLY why the FAA, NORAD and the military's time lines are all DIFFERENT. They had no choice but to cook the books----because it was NOT incompetence---it was a stand down. The first 3 planes were ALLOWED to hit their targets because they had to create the \"attack\" inflicted. The 4th plane did not have to be shot down because I TOO believe the passengers took the plane over----in FACT, MY belief makes those passengers MORE heroic than the official story does because there 2 pilots on this plane as passengers. I FULLY believe that not only did the passengers take over this flight, I believe they wre FLYING it. I believe that when it was discovered that the plane was actually being FLOWN by the passengers (pilots who were passengers), they got an order to shoot it down for (and here's where we have to theorize, because the plane crashed and everyones dead) whatever reason. The reason I believe it was shot down is this: (and I know you will call me nutty---thats ok) I believe these hijackers had some connection to our CIA or FBI. Some of the hijackers lived with FBI agents on military bases prior to 9-11---this is all mainstream news. The hijackers, whoever they were, were not what we have been told. They had connections and protection from our government. I fully believe that plane was being flown by the passengers and since it was going to land safely with these \"mysterious\" hijackers who were connected with our own government---they couldnt survive it. Whoever was involved in our governemnt would be exposed if these hijackers survived a safe landing. The plane did NOT have to be shot down---but yet it was. The other 3 planes could have EASILY been shot down, but weren't.Lippard, just one question: If Bin Laden was responsible for 9-11, why hasnt he been indicted for it? Go to www.fbi.gov and look at his profile----9-11 isnt mentioned as one of his crimes, why? The FBI even ADMITS theres no hard evidence against Osama! So, if the FBI says there isnt, why did we launch TWO wars, change our foreign policy and why does everyone think he's involved? Can you answer that? Why did Bush say on several occasions about Bin Laden----\"Im not that worried about him, he's not a priority\"? and why did Bush CLOSE the Bin Laden unit (in charge of finding him) at the CIA?Oh and another thing Jim----I hate logging into my google account and my site to post on here. Can you make it easier and less time consuming to post here?\nLippard (2008-10-03):\nI've experimented with not requiring Google accounts here, and it results in a major spam problem that I don't care to deal with.You're making a lot of unsubstantiated claims, many of which are demonstrably false--including that there was no real investigation, that there are unreconciled timelines, that the hijackers were connected to the U.S. government (though there is evidence of connections to the Saudi royal family and Pakistan's intelligence service), that the other planes could have been easily shot down (the NORAD tapes have been released), and that Flight 93 was under the control of the passengers (the cockpit recording provides no evidence for that).Check out my post about \"Zeitgeist: The Movie\", my post about the real 9/11 conspiracy, and my post about the release of the NORAD tapes.The FBI \"Usama bin Laden\" \"most wanted\" poster hasn't been updated since November 2001; it doesn't mention 9/11 specifically but 9/11 is clearly implied in the statement that he \"is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.\" If you look at this November 2003 page, there is mention of the 9/11 attacks specifically.\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-03):\nJim, read the story on this link:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13664.htmAs far as the cockpit recording of Flight 93, this is why I said the times of the crash are disputed. One being 10:03 (official story) and 10:06, which is the time MANY witnesses heard the explosion (as well as saw debris in the SKY [indicating shoot down]) it is believed (because we will never know) that those remaining 3 minutes were kept from the families and that those 3 minutes may have contained evidence that the flight was in control of the passengers.As far as the 9/11 commission not being a REAL investigation---youre kidding right? I can actually post 115 lies, omissions and distortions that the 9/11 commission didnt even bother to address or ask---including NO mention WHATSOEVER of WTC 7's collapse. No mention of it--at all---why? The 9/11 commission even said the twin towers were made of a hallow core---LIE. The WTC towers had 47 steel beams in its core. That was a blatant lie. Jim, are you trying to tell me that the use of drones or the planned use of painted aircraft is NOT something our own government does? I can give you examples that they DO. One being very recent.I saw your links----all you do on the Zeitgeist story is tell that is IS flawed and you dont offer ANY specific examples. When you mention the income tax, you say \"That argument is made in William J. Benson and Martin J. Beckman's book The Law That Never Was, which documents errors in the ratification documents, such as typos, alternate capitalization, alternate pluralization, etc. Courts have ruled that Benson's argument doesn't work and that his selling his book as part of a tax evasion defense package constitutes fraud, and he's served time in jail for tax evasion.”You give NO examples of the typos, alternate capitalization, etc.. Serving time in jail for tax evasion is evidence that the income tax law is a fraud? That was spin just thrown in there to discredit his character. You were in essence saying “He’s a lawbreaker so of course he’s going to lie”---all spin to advance your agenda. Your argument for the Fed not being private is that the President appoints its head and governors? Do you think MOST or all people in Washington CARE about the Constitution? You act as if the President would always do the legal, moral thing! Look what our current one is doing! Spies, tortures, starts illegal wars-----ALL against the Constitution! And youre trying to argue that the President wouldn’t be involved in corruption? That’s funny! Your posts just SAY that our facts are wrong and don’t actually provide PROOF we are wrong. You SAYING something doesn’t make it right----PROVE it. By the way, I didn’t say the timelines were unreconciled, I said they were all DIFFERENT from each other. FAA, NORAD, military and the 9/11 commissions timelines----all different. Don’t you think theyd all be the SAME if there’s nothing to cover up? If there’s only ONE story and it’s the truth, they should all match.\nLippard (2008-10-03):\nYour first link is regarding matters of legal procedure for criminal court, which are different standards than for knowledge. O.J. was found not guilty in a court of criminal law, but we all know he did it.The 9/11 Commission report, despite its flaws, is more comprehensive and detailed than anything any 9/11 truthers have ever put together. (The same is true of the Warren Commission report--it had some flaws, but it was more comprehensive and accurate than anything that the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists have put together. Vincent Bugliosi's book, Reclaiming History, is probably now the most definitive account that corrects those flaws.)You're correct that there's no mention of the WTC 7 collapse in the 9/11 Commission report, and that that's a flaw in the report. That flaw is rectified by NIST's report on the Building 7 collapse.p. 558 of the 9/11 Commission report says that \"The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped.\" That's an accurate description, yet you claim that it's a \"lie,\" i.e., an intentional falsehood. I have no doubt that it contains falsehoods and omissions, as any report of a complex set of events is bound to do so.The government uses drones, but that provides no evidence that drones were used to fake an attack on the WTC. If you think that the real planes disappeared and were replaced by drones, then you're off in loon territory.I don't know why you're discussion income tax in comments on this post, but note that I provided links to supporting evidence rather than presenting detailed analysis of each claim. A friend of mine had a copy of Benson and Beckman's book and I spent an hour or so looking at it to get the basic gist of the argument, and it's as I described. One of the most common problems they describe is that many states failed to capitalize the word \"States\" in the version of the 16th Amendment they ratified. Illinois had a typo of \"remuneration\" for \"emuneration,\" Missouri said \"levy\" instead of \"lay,\" and Washington said \"income\" instead of \"incomes.\"\"Serving time in jail for tax evasion is evidence that the income tax law is a fraud?\" No, serving time in jail for tax evasion is evidence of a rather conclusive sort that his argument doesn't hold up in court.\"all spin to advance your agenda ... Do you think MOST or all people in Washington CARE about the Constitution? You act as if the President would always do the legal, moral thing! Look what our current one is doing! Spies, tortures, starts illegal wars-----ALL against the Constitution!\" You clearly have no idea what my agenda is, since you think I'm a mindless defender of the idea that the government can do no wrong. Try reading any of my posts on politics, law, police abuse and corruption, and other controversies in the labels on this blog and you'll quickly be disabused of that ignorant misconception.\"Your argument for the Fed not being private is that the President appoints its head and governors?\" That's one piece, but a pretty significant one. The Fed was created by government statute, it's run by people appointed by the president, it engages in regulatory functions, etc. Did you miss the fact that I provided a citation and link to an article that describes the Fed in detail?\"Your posts just SAY that our facts are wrong and don’t actually provide PROOF we are wrong.\" If you think that, then I think you have a serious reading comprehension problem. I do often cite other sources as evidence rather than repeating everything those sources say, but that doesn't mean the evidence hasn't been provided.\nReal Truth Online (2008-10-04):\nJim, Id love to keep debating, but just like my \"buddy\" David H. Willis (who has banned me from his site, because he hates facts), you dont seem to research ALL sides of the matter---i DO research all sides. have you ever read David Ray Griffin's books on 9-11? ALL excellent. I LOVE how you call MAJOR omissions in the 9-11 report \"flaws\"---and that NIST report is a joke. Do you know what they called the collapse of WTC 7? They called it a \"NEW phenomenon\" because it has NEVER happened before (that a steel framed building collapsed due to fire)---\"NEW phenomenon????\" are you kidding me? And Im the kook?? How did the media, policemen, and ground zero workers know in ADVANCE that WTC 7 was coming down? There was reports from the BBC and even CNN that announced the collapse of the building and while they were announcing it, it was STILL STANDING in the background behind them! Obviously they received the reports from other sources----but what sources? How could they KNOW in advance if it was a \"NEW phenomenon???\" Care to answer that?? Im sure you will ignore that.Heres links of the stories of the announcement of the collapse in ADVANCE:http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/bbc_reported_wtc_7_collapsed_20_min_before_it_fell.htmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejjySUVOGKAHere is the story on the flawed NIST report that calls WTC 7 a \"NEW phenomenon\":http://www.prisonplanet.com/nist-wtc-7-report-shameful-embarrassing-and-completely-flawed.htmlFunny how I read the posts on some of these blogs and they say \"so what they announced the collapse before it actually collapsed---what does that mean?\"----total morons.Im not going to go in depth about the Fed---because I know it's a fraud, even Ron Paul admits its a fraud so there blows your theory that its just a made up theory we invented just to hate the government more.I will address you saying this: \"No, serving time in jail for tax evasion is evidence of a rather conclusive sort that his argument doesn't hold up in court.\"----but yet you fail to mention the numerous court cases that income tax evaders have WON.http://www.lvrj.com/news/9893062.htmlhttp://questforfairtrialinconcordnh.blogspot.com/2007/01/3-marcella-brooks-talk.htmlhttp://www.konformist.com/2000/whitey-harrell.htmRead G. Edward Griffin's book \"Creature from Jekyll Island\"--all about the formation of the Fed. It was ALL done in SECRET. No politicians involved, ALL bankers. Watch this clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX-03Sf1wDoYou said, \"No, serving time in jail for tax evasion is evidence of a rather conclusive sort that his argument doesn't hold up in court.\"----it all depends upon whether you have an informed jury who knows the law!You said, \"If you think that the real planes disappeared and were replaced by drones, then you're off in loon territory.\"----i believe a drone was used at the Pentagon because an actual plane would have completely obliterated that portion of the Pentagon, rather than just the little damage it did. PLUS, they knew THAT very section of the Pentagon was under construction and knew the damge would be minimal---PLUS, why didnt the hijackers hit the other side of the Pentagon (the west side)? Thats where the top military brass offices were. Why wouldnt the hijackers want to kill the top brass? INSTEAD the hit the very part of the Pentagon that has the LEAST people in it (because of the construction). Boy, these were compassionate terrorists!The towers were hit by planes because the damge was meant to be massive there---they wanted the towers gone. We will differ, but at least we actually DEBATE. Not like that Willis guy that just ignores everything I say. He believes in talking snakes, 500 year old men building giant boats and men parting seas with a rod----so his credility is shot to hell.I may not be continuing to post here because I REALLY hate logging into my account just to post. I never get spam on my site. You can post at my site if you want---its easier.\nLippard (2008-10-06):\n\"Real Truth\": The BBC comment on WTC 7 was explained by the BBC reporter in question, Jane Standley, as I reported here in July when the BBC's \"The Third Tower\" came out.\"but yet you fail to mention the numerous court cases that income tax evaders have WON\": It wouldn't surprise me if a few have won a few cases at the trial court level, but you appear to be changing the subject from Benson's book.Re: the Pentagon--it was definitely a plane, as proven by the light pole damage. (BTW, if it was a drone, where did American Airlines Flight 77 go?)\nFearSpreads (2009-11-01):\nClose your eyes. Imagine that you\u0026#39;re a rather large jet flying at 400-500 MPH. feel the air drag against you, the push of the jets, the laws of physics that are at work. You start to descend, your flaps go down, causing force from the air to push against the flaps and point you towards the ground. Remember, you weigh 100-some tons\u0026hellip; you're not exactly balanced right\u0026hellip; It takes a while for you to change your trajectory in any direction without stalling\u0026hellip;\nNow, imagine you've crashed. You're huge, you're made out of really strong material so your relatively thin wings can hold the weight of your gargantuan body against the force of gravity. Your tail is incredibly sturdy so it can stabilize your entire enormous mass. These are parts that take immense pressures, frictions, and forces during every flight. Your engines have enough pressure and air in them to rocket your full weight and size at incredibly high speeds\u0026hellip;\nIn every other crash with a comparable jet, large chunks of debris are present all around. The force it would take to destroy every piece of outwardly visible debris would cause much more damage than that shown in pictures of the pentagon.\nA boeing cannot, I repeat, CANNOT reach a direct, nose down, full force 90 deg. impact with the ground. And it is impossible, under real world conditions, to engineer even a 65-75 deg. direction to the ground and still hit a target the size of the pentagon\u0026hellip; the himalayas, maybe, but not the Pentagon. In fact, a terrorist cannot possibly engineer a plane crash in any way other than to aim it at a target. They cannot crash it 'better' or 'more direct' as some people insinuate they have\u0026hellip; An average crash is really no different than a hijacking could ever be\u0026hellip; There are laws governing the aerodynamics of large bodies being propelled at high speeds. changes in direction are slow (very slow) and any attempt to make them faster would debilitate the hijacker's achievement of hitting the target.\nflight simulators and real time experience shows me that something is up with the crash. I have, myself, purposefully ran hundreds of simulations to attempt to recreate the kind of angle that would be needed to vaporize a boeing\u0026hellip; and I've never been able to.\nAnd, to be the devil's advocate in a different capacity, you must try to think like a terrorist\u0026hellip; THE MOST DAMAGE ONE PLANE CAN CAUSE WOULD BE BROUGHT ABOUT BY COMING IN LOW TO THE GROUND AND FLYING THROUGH THE PENTAGON, AT THE SAME ANGLE AS THE JETS THAT CRASHED INTO THE TWIN TOWERS.\neven coming in at a nice 35-50 deg. angle would do more damage than the ridiculously high angle it would take to 'vaporize' the major pieces of a jet.\nThese guys supposedly succeeded in hijacking a plane with a small weapon, convincing every passenger to keep seated\u0026hellip; That's some kind of Jame's Bond move, right there. They were supposedly planning the hit for a while\u0026hellip; with experts of their own. Are we to think that they did not want to cause as much damage as they could?\nThat being said\u0026hellip; Both parties in this video were stammering, interruptive, and argumentative\u0026hellip; The loose change boys, being young and passionate have an excuse; that being that they are young and passionate. The popular mechanics crew seemed rather unimpressive as they cited photos and video that they didn't back up. They credited experts that are directly tied to the government and publicly owned sources\u0026hellip; Which are directly implicated by loose change. Of course those reports are going to contradict. Which, of course, makes most complacent people feel comforted that their big protective government has all the answers and would never\u0026hellip; ever lie to them.\nAuthority is untrustworthy as authority has a tendency to actively decide what they feel should be true or false\u0026hellip; Winners write the history books.\nWelcome to the new America. Mind the planes, and watch out for H1N1, cause that's what they want.\nLippard (2009-11-02):\nFearSpreads: There was lots of wreckage and damage at the Pentagon. What\u0026#39;s your evidence that there \u0026quot;wasn\u0026#39;t enough\u0026quot;? Where do you think AA Flight 77 went, if not into the Pentagon? If it wasn't AA Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon (and knocked down the light poles within its wing's breadth), what was it?\nEinzige (2009-11-08):\nWhere is there anyone (not in the \u0026quot;truth\u0026quot; camp, that is) who claims that the plane that hit the Pentagon did it from a greater than 65-degree angle? Clearly it was flying nearly horizontally prior to impact.\npsikeyhackr (2009-12-30):\nLet’s just face a few simple facts. Skyscrapers MUST hold themselves up. They must also sway in the wind. The people who design skyscrapers MUST figure out how much steel and how much concrete they are going to put on every level before they even dig the hole for the foundation.\nAfter EIGHT YEARS why don’t we have a table specifying the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE that were on every level of WTCs 1\u0026amp;2? The NIST report does not even specify the TOTAL for the concrete. The total for the steel is in three places. So even if the planes did it that 10,000 page report is CRAP!\nConspiracies are irrelevant. The Truth Movement should be marching on all of the engineering schools in the country.\nWatch that Purdue simulation. If a 150 ton airliner crashes near the top of a skyscraper at 440 mph isn’t the building going to sway? Didn’t the survivors report the building “moving like a wave”? So why do the core columns in the Purdue video remain perfectly still as the plane comes in?\nThat is the trouble with computer simulations. If they are good, they are very good. But if they have a defect either accidental or deliberate they can be REALLY STUPID once you figure out the flaws.\nThe distributions of steel and concrete are going to affect the sway of a skyscraper whether it is from the wind or an airliner.\nHow much does one complete floor assembly weigh?\nYou know those square donut floor slabs? They were 205 ft square with a rectangular hole for the core. There was a steel rebar mesh embedded in the concrete which was poured onto corrugated steel pans which were supported by 35 and 60 foot trusses. There has been talk about those things pancaking on each other for years.\nBut has anyone ever said what the whole thing weighed? Why haven't we seen that A LOT in EIGHT YEARS? The concrete alone is easy to compute, about 601 tons. But the concrete could not be separated from the entire assembly, the upper knuckles of the trusses were embedded into the concrete. So what did the whole thing weigh and why haven't the EXPERTS been mentioning that A LOT in EIGHT YEARS?\nSo why hasn't Richard Gage and his buddies produced a table with the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE that were on every level of the WTC? How much computing power do they have now, compared to the early 1960s when the buildings were designed? I asked Gage about that in May of 2008 at Chicago Circle Campus and he got a surprised look on his face and gave me this LAME excuse about the NIST not releasing accurate blueprints. Gravity hasn't changed since the 1960s. They should be able to come up with some reasonable numbers.\nLippard (2009-12-30):\npsikeyhackr: I\u0026#39;m sorry, but what\u0026#39;s your argument? It looks like you\u0026#39;re saying that there is no single table in the NIST NCSTAR WTC reports that gives the total weight of concrete and steel in the buildings. And from that you conclude, what?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/loose-change-vs-popular-mechanics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn five parts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 1\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/stVmEmJ666M\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/stVmEmJ666M\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 2\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/1d0XEHahJ2Q\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/1d0XEHahJ2Q\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 3\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/T_Fm3Zc7D8I\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/T_Fm3Zc7D8I\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 4\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lpckijMVe3I\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/lpckijMVe3I\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePart 5\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/fEg6XEP-Cig\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/fEg6XEP-Cig\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see \u003cA HREF = \"/2006/08/911-myths-debunked.html\"\u003ethese resources\u003c/A\u003e and \u003cA HREF = \"/2006/10/matt-taibbi-takes-on-911-conspiracy_20.html\"\u003eMatt Taibbi on 9/11 conspiracy theorists\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eqwertyxyz\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-01-15)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe guys from popular mechanics kicked their asses! If i was one of the guys from loose change i would be ashamed of myself from that ass kicking. Their only defense was by cutting into what the popular mechanics guys where saying with stupid \"oh yeahs\" and shit like that. They are a couple of guys from who the hell knows where vs some of the smartest people in America. 8====D----- All over loose change!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Loose Change vs. Popular Mechanics: The Debate"},{"content":"More information has just come out about the split between the Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis and the Australia-based Creation Ministries International. (UPDATED for clarification: CMI is composed of organizations from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada which were all formerly united with the Kentucky group under the Answers in Genesis name. The Australian group was the Creation Science Foundation prior to the association of the groups under the Answers in Genesis name.) CMI has published a number of documents on its web site about the split. These documents, which I\u0026rsquo;ll describe below, make the case that the U.S. group has acted in bad faith to appropriate for itself many of the resources of the Australian group, as well as to put it into an untenable position of being potentially liable for certain actions of the U.S. group without getting any financial benefits. These documents, on a website headed with tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s date (today in Australia, where it\u0026rsquo;s currently afternoon), were pointed out in comments on my blog post by \u0026ldquo;JaneD\u0026rdquo; (presumably the D is for \u0026ldquo;Doe\u0026rdquo;), who appears to have set up a new blogger account to bring the information to public attention.\nThis split, which I pointed out on my blog back in March 2006, along with some financial data about the U.S. group and some speculation about the causes, occurred in late 2005. In that post, I noted that certain information critical of other creationists (and convicted tax evader Kent Hovind in particular) had been removed from the U.S. group\u0026rsquo;s site. A brochure from the CMI suggested that a difference of approach, including ethical considerations, was the primary reason for the split:\nThe AiG website was developed in the US and hosted there. It was largely dependent for its intellectual content on the scientists and thinkers in the parent corporation, in particular such as Dr Don Batten, Dr Jonathan Sarfati, and Dr Carl Wieland. These and other writers were heavily contributing to the site until late 2005/early 2006, when the US ministry withdrew themselves from the international ministry group (with the exception of the UK) with an expressed desire to operate autonomously, without e.g. website content being subject to an international representative system of checks/balances/peer review involving all the other offices bearing the same \u0026lsquo;brand name\u0026rsquo;.\nAt that time, in the midst of discussions about this and other differences in operating philosophy (not involving the statement of faith or similar), the Australian office was formally invited to form its own website. This required a new name to avoid confusion.\nThe four national ministries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) which were committed to continuing their focus and operational ^Qteam^R philosophy, and to continuing to forge and strengthen a representative international ministry alliance structure (based on Proverbs 11:14), then rebranded as Creation Ministries International (CMI).The Australian group has long had a policy of publishing material critical of bad creationist work, and its journals have occasionally published some excellent debunkings of standard creationist arguments, such as the shrinking sun and moon dust arguments for a young earth. This apparently was considered by the U.S. group to be bad for business. (UPDATE: This was indeed a major issue in the dispute which led to the split. The Australian organization wanted more international control over the content of material to be distributed internationally, in the form of an international committee with votes weighted based on the size and seniority of the organization. The U.S. organization rejected this proposal, reserving most of the power to itself.)\nRoger Stanyard has proposed that the Australian methodology was not actually peer review, but a form of shakedown against creationist authors who didn\u0026rsquo;t toe the group\u0026rsquo;s party line. He attributes the breakdown to the handling of Dennis Petersen\u0026rsquo;s book, Unlocking the Mysteries, which was making money for Answers in Genesis but was criticized by the Australians. While I agree that the Australians\u0026rsquo; peer review was less-than-stellar (in what it let pass through uncritically), my interactions with the leadership of that group lead me to believe that they are honest and ethical in their behavior (though wrong in their beliefs). (UPDATE: The removal of material criticizing the Petersen book from the Answers in Genesis website occurred after the split. Stanyard appears to base his account on John Mackay, a source of highly dubious quality.)\nThe new information on CMI\u0026rsquo;s website consists of the following:\n1. A letter dated November 15, 2006 (PDF), from CMI to Answers in Genesis setting forth their complaint about a November 1, 2006 letter from Answers in Genesis to the general public, which CMI considers defamatory.\n2. An email of November 21, 2006, alerting a number of people to the previous item, which had so far been ignored.\n3. A summary of an October 2005 memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the Australian and U.S. groups setting forth the conditions of their separation, explaining how it disadvantages the Australian group and why the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s management attempted to reject and renegotiate it.\n4. A section of the \u0026ldquo;Deed of Copyright License\u0026rdquo; (PDF) signed by the directors of both groups, with comments pointing out its unreasonable terms.\n5. A PDF document setting forth a chronology of the relevant events.\n6. The text of a letter from senior staff of the Australian group to their board of directors (PDF) prior to their trip to meet with the U.S. board, setting out their desired reforms.\nAs near as I can tell, the documents on the website suggest that the directors of the Australian group were induced to fly to the United States and sign the memorandum of agreement setting forth the terms of the separation of the groups without the knowledge of the management of the Australian group (e.g., Carl Wieland and the Australian staff). The MOA, drafted by the U.S. group\u0026rsquo;s attorneys, set terms for the separation that were entirely favorable to the U.S. group. The Australian group\u0026rsquo;s directors who signed the document then resigned en masse, under the condition that they be given indemnity for their actions\u0026ndash;the letter suggests that they were in breach of their fiduciary duties to the Australian group for signing the agreements. (UPDATE: These Australian directors\u0026ndash;John Thallon, Greg Peacock, Jim Kitson, and David Denner\u0026ndash;asked for indemnity for their actions in return for their resignations after consulting with an attorney. Thallon then moved to Kentucky and is on the board of the U.S. group.)\nThe description of the MOA states that it gives perpetual license for all articles published by the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s magazine and journal to the U.S. group, including the right to modify the articles and change the names of the authors, including a false statement that the authors had given permission for this. If anyone sues the U.S. group for copyright infringement, the Australian group agrees to pay all costs. All fees and costs for items are set unilaterally by the U.S. group, which the U.S. group has used to increase fees charged to the Australian group for materials (such as DVDs) by up to three times. The domain name answersingenesis.com, an asset of the Australian group, was transferred to the U.S. group, apparently without compensation.\nUpon learning of these onerous terms, the Australian management attempted to reject the MOA and requested renegotiation of terms, to no avail; the U.S. group has refused to allow the participation of Carl Wieland in any negotiation.\nIn short, it looks like this was a struggle over money and control, with the Australian group out-maneuvered by the U.S. group. If the information in these documents is accurate\u0026ndash;and I am inclined to believe that it is\u0026ndash;it shows that Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s Answers in Genesis is as sleazy in its business dealings as it is in its misrepresentations of science.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be digging further into this story\u0026hellip; watch this blog for updates.\nUPDATE (November 21, 2006): I\u0026rsquo;ve been informed by Carl Wieland that the page of documents on the website was not supposed to have been made available through the website, but only as individual items for recipients of the email referenced above as item 2 (and given below). The main page and several of the other items are no longer at the locations I had linked to, but I\u0026rsquo;ve updated the links based on the below email. Wieland has declined to comment on the actions or motivation of AiG, and expressed a desire to avoid anything that would be used \u0026ldquo;to smear all creation ministry in general.\u0026quot;\nThe following is the text of that email:\nClarification re innuendo about CMI in email/letter from AiG-USA.\nSent 21 November 2006\nFrom: the Board of Creation Ministries International (CMI)-publishers of Creation magazine (still available in the USA) and the Journal of Creation (formerly TJ) in Brisbane, Australia.\nDear colleague in creation outreach\nWe write this with considerable sadness. You are likely aware that there are some tensions between the ministries of CMI and AiG that go back some two years or so. We had hoped to be able to settle these peacefully, despite our ministry having suffered significant tangible losses at AiG\u0026rsquo;s hands. We have repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to get AiG to meet openly with all of us, or failing that, to have both our ministries submit to binding Christian arbitration to see things done justly.\nWe believe we have acted with considerable restraint in our public comments thus far, despite seriously provocative actions. These include substantial commercial ruthlessness against our ministry as part of what increasingly has the hallmarks of some sort of vendetta. Nevertheless, we have kept the details very quiet for a very long time, not wishing to cause harm or escalation, and hoping for \u0026lsquo;peace with honour\u0026rsquo;.\nA most unfortunate and unfair email\nUnfortunately, a number of people have contacted us just now, saying they have received a brief email from AiG-USA\u0026rsquo;s chairman (which we have seen) that casts serious slurs against our ministry. In effect, it engages in widespread public slander.\nThe email alleges that we have engaged in \u0026lsquo;unbiblical\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;factious\u0026rsquo; behaviour (a word applied in the NT to those who introduce doctrines contrary to the Gospel, and translated as \u0026lsquo;heretic\u0026rsquo; in the KJV). This is an immensely serious and damaging allegation against an evangelical ministry and one that has not been substantiated, and is totally without foundation; our ministry\u0026rsquo;s doctrine has not changed one iota, either in word or in practice.\nThe email also hints darkly at a \u0026lsquo;spiritual problem\u0026rsquo; as a justification for their breaking off discussions with us. It also refers to a letter the AiG-Board sent us on November 1 to that effect, saying that that letter is available to enquirers upon request. That letter was essentially an expansion of their shorter email; it repeatedly affirmed their own righteousness, and that they were breaking off negotiations until we resolved our \u0026lsquo;spiritual problems\u0026rsquo;. These \u0026lsquo;problems\u0026rsquo; are not specified, which darkens the innuendo (\u0026lsquo;What? Who?\u0026rsquo;).\nDismayed by this turn of events, we prepared a detailed response that was emailed to each of the Directors on AiG-USA\u0026rsquo;s Board, on 15 November 2006. It outlined and clarified the issues in detail. In it we also pleaded for AiG to urgently withdraw from this action, giving them three days to respond-i.e. to contact us, to make some move to draw back from this abyss, to avoid us making our response public. We have received no response or acknowledgement from AiG, even to this date, some six days later.\nWorldwide libel distribution\nThe same AiG email defaming our ministry has also been sent out by an Australian creationist running his own ministry, who had split with Ken Ham in 1986 (this man had been excommunicated by an Australian church, a still unresolved issue-see www.CreationOnTheWeb.com/mackay for Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s own words about the seriousness of these actions against our ministry and an individual at that time). So this defamation has been sent to a substantial worldwide email mailing list, which would include overlap with many of our own supporters. This AiG email was clearly sent to that \u0026lsquo;distribution source\u0026rsquo; by AiG; the covering comments state that \u0026lsquo;Ken Ham advises\u0026rsquo;, and refer to AiG\u0026rsquo;s permission for the recipient to spread it still further.\n(The aim appears to be to encourage as many people as possible to lose confidence in our ministry, and of course AiG will have a commercial \u0026lsquo;bonus\u0026rsquo; in that the more that are encouraged to \u0026rsquo;enquire\u0026rsquo;, the more email addresses they will have, making it easier to further undermine CMI ministry in this country.)\nWe deeply regret that AiG/Ken Ham have seen fit to engage in this most serious escalation. Even in the face of this defamation, our overwhelming preference would have been to have had AiG respond to our urgent letter, to continue talks in openness and light as the Scriptures enjoin us to do rather than for us to have to publically stand against the libel.\nIn the absence of any evidence of remorse or willingness to undo this most recent and grave public attempt to damage us, we solemnly, before the Lord, believe we now have no choice but to protect the public reputation of the ministry organisation that has been entrusted to us, in as dignified and God-honoring a way as we can.\nSo we have chosen in the first instance to provide, within this email, a website link (below) to the full text of our formal 15 November response to AiG, which should substantially clarify CMI\u0026rsquo;s position.\nOf course, we do not know who all the many folk to whom AiG\u0026rsquo;s defamatory comments have been emailed are, or how many times it has multiplied on the internet. So we are sending this email you are reading to the following:\n1) To any who actually enquire of us.\n2) To our corporation\u0026rsquo;s members (an outer layer of protection which holds the directors accountable), our staff and our volunteer workers/speakers, local reps, etc.\n3) To the management of our four national affiliates (CMI offices in Canada, NZ, US and South Africa, as well as affiliates in the UK) for providing to their staff, so that they will be able to answer these allegations as they inevitably spread. Sadly, some mud always sticks, especially when it comes from a \u0026lsquo;big name\u0026rsquo;.\n4) To those we know of who are involved in creation outreach of any sort, since we are aware that at least some of these have been targeted with this AiG email and previous ones.\n5) To any (including those within AiG itself) that we have reason to believe have been contacted by AiG with similar intent and have likely received similarly misleading statements and views.\nThe link\nOur letter of response to AiG is reproduced at this link on our site, www.CreationOnTheWeb.com/dispute\nIf you did not receive the AiG email, we ask for your compassionate understanding of the dilemma we were facing; we know from those who have already contacted us that it went out widely to creationists, but do not know exactly who did and didn\u0026rsquo;t receive it.\nThis sorry development will bring shame on the Name of our Lord and Saviour, and give cause for the enemies of God to gloat. Would you please consider committing these matters, which also have the potential do damage to creation ministry in general (even more than has already occurred), to prayer.\nYours very sincerely in Christ,\nThe Board of Creation Ministries International Ltd. (Australia)\nMr. Kerry Boettcher (Chairman)\nMrs. Carolyn McPherson (Vice-Chairman)\nDr. Carl Wieland, M.B., B.S. (Managing Director)\nDr. Dave Christie, B.Com, M.Admin, Ph.D., FAICD, FIMC (Director)\nMr. Fang, Chang Sha B.Sc (hons), M.Sc. (Director)\nRev. Dr. Don Hardgrave, B.D, M.A., D.B.S., Dip. Theol, Dip. R.E. (Director)\nUPDATE (November 21, 2006): I have inserted a number of minor clarifications and updates throughout the above text.\nCreation Ministries International has a USA branch now, in Atlanta, Georgia, to ensure distribution of its materials in the United States. This means that they will be competing for dollars with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky.\nUPDATE: The link above regarding defamatory material from John Mackay and background information about Mackay was a broken link that has now been corrected, and I\u0026rsquo;ve devoted a separate post to this issue. The information there shows why Mackay left the Creation Science Foundation in 1987, and raises concern about Mackay\u0026rsquo;s image being rehabilitated without having retracted the charges that he brought in the past. Mackay has now been attacking Creation Ministries International and siding with Ham and Answers in Genesis in the dispute\u0026ndash;Answers in Genesis must be questioning whether having Mackay as a friend is a benefit.\nUPDATE (December 29, 2006): I\u0026rsquo;ve added a new item to the list of materials now available on the AiG website, which is the text of a letter from the staff of the Australian group to their own board of directors listing the items of reform that they wanted from the international organization (and AiG-U.S.). This letter was sent to the Australian board members a few days before their flight to the U.S. in October 2005, which resulted in the separation agreement.\nThe letter specifically called for the creation of a class of non-director membership for the non-profit, composed of eight people to be chosen from a list of 20 suggestions, independent of each other and not employees of the organization, to provide better oversight and to adjudicate disputes between the board and the CEO. This group of people is intended to be analogous to the shareholders of a public company. This mechanism has now been put in place at CMI in the wake of their split from AiG-U.S.\nsteviepinhead (2006-12-09):\nGloat!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\ndeadman: When I initially wrote this post, I wasn't sure I understood the circumstance of the indemnification--whether it was offered or requested. I've added a clarification. It seems that after consulting with an attorney, those directors asked for indemnification from the Australian group in return for their immediate resignations, and that was accepted.Whether their motivation in making such a one-sided deal was a result of being duped by the Americans, being given some other kind of incentive by the Americans, or some other reason is not clear to me. What is clear is that the management and staff of the Australian organization felt completely betrayed by the deal, and with good reason.\nNathan Zamprogno (2006-12-09):\nRarely has a post, on any topic, in any forum, caused me more unalloyed pleasure than this one. CMI's demise (as it certainly is- CMI without the resource of AiG is a fading shadow), is as unsurprising as it is satisfying. Carl Weiland and his crew have poisoned the faith of thousands of Christians and seekers with their self-serving lies. I can just imagine Wieland and Sarfati et al slaving over their nine-page flail for days, knowing in their hearts that Ham has signed the Australian operation's death warrant.I will have more to say on AiG/CMI at another time (much more). Here's what I've written in the past.I just wanted to note that the explanations offered by each side could not be more at odds. CMI's plaintive letter makes repeated complaints that the boards or staff of the two organisations were NOT meeting and SHOULD have met to resolve it. In contrast, see this extract from the \"History\" section of AiG-US's own site:\"At the same time, differences in philosophy and operation were becoming more apparent between the U.S. ministry and AiG–Australia (which were two separate, autonomous organizations with separate boards—yet had a common statement of faith). For example, the U.S. ministry had a decentralized leadership structure (i.e., where a “leadership team” runs the ministry’s day-to-day operation, with only general oversight by the president, Ken Ham). This was a different approach than that employed by the Australian organization.As differences involving organizational and philosophical issues grew, the two boards met on many occasions to try to deal with these matters. Meanwhile, the Australian board met with its own CEO and senior staff numerous times about these matters.Eventually, it was realized that the issues between the two leadership teams could not be resolved, and so it was mutually decided by both boards in 2005 that AiG–U.S. and AiG–Australia (now called CMI) had to totally separate and instead move on to have a formal, business relationship (yet to work cooperatively on joint projects). In October 2005, the Australian board cordially met with the U.S. board in northern Kentucky to work out the formal arrangements.\"Interestingly, there are shades of the other criticism the CMI letter makes in the preening Ham makes of himself. The same article ends with:\"Meanwhile, the eight-person leadership team of AiG–U.S. (including the CEO/president) has received the full, unqualified support of the U.S. board of directors, and has been complimented by the board for the vision, leadership and performance of the fast-growing ministry.\"It's worth going to the AiG site and reading the entire bit- it's obviously been updated with the current events in mind.Can we get our hands on the AiG letter to its supporters that make the allegations about CMI? Wieland's implication is that it was being widely circulated. Where can we see it? Jim?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNathan:Thanks for your comments and useful references. I have not yet obtained either the AiG-US email or the John Mackay email.I would be interested in communicating with you further in email. You can reach me as lippard-web at discord.org.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nJim, you do realise that Nathan Zamprogno is a great fan of Ian Plimer and Barry Price, right? He wrote gushingly to the Skeptics saying: ‘It has proven to be an invaluable resource since in the many discussions I have had with my peers since [sic]. Thank you!’ And there should be something suspicious in the claim: \"Meanwhile, the Australian board met with its own CEO and senior staff numerous times about these matters.\" How on earth people in America know what the Australian board did, apart from what they were told? Carl Wieland (which Nathan can't even spell) claims that the old board went behind their backs to sign that copyright agreement. And the incredibly one-sided nature of that agreement supports Wieland, not AiG-US. And why would the old board ask for indemnity if they had done nothing wrong?\nNathan Zamprogno (2006-12-09):\nWow. You can use Google. Yes, I read and met with Plimer during the Roberts/ Fasold \"ark\" trial some years ago in Sydney. His was the only resource I had in my hand at that time. I acknowledge the shortcomings of his methods and conclusions but regard his aims as broadly defensible. Keep in mind that was nearly 15 years ago.\nNathan Zamprogno (2006-12-09):\nAnd yes, I did mis-spell Wieland's name (although in my defence it is spelled incorrectly once and correctly twice.) Mea Culpa. My argument lays in ruins!\nNathan Zamprogno (2006-12-09):\nI am happy to accept that if Plimer advanced an argument that was deficient in fact, then those elements of his arguments should no longer be used, whilst continuing to accept those of his objections which remain true. As far as how not to argue with creationists, I take the view that Atheistic prosecutors of Young Earth Creationism, although entitled to their view, ignore their allies in Christendom who are equally opposed to Young Earth Creationism. My preferred text on the debate, should you wish to pigeonhole me, is Ken Miller's \"Finding Darwin's God\".As to whether my antipathy towards Creationists clouds my impartiality: I say no. \"Bitter hatred\" is entirely the wrong term and I deny it. To be sure, I am angry and disappointed that these people purport to speak for me as a Christian, because I believe their simplistic, reality-denying, arrogant worldview is entirely at odds with the Gospel, and indeed, have caused many to reject it.lastly, dear Lei, blogger without a blog, I do not suggest that the old CMI board signed their onerous agreement with the consent of the CMI writing staff. I merely draw your attention to the fact that Ken Ham says they did. Ken Ham and Carl Wieland are both such adept liars I would not dare claim to know who is lying here.\nNathan Zamprogno (2006-12-09):\nThe pagehttp://www.creationontheweb.com/dispute/has gone down if you try to go there. All content and links have been saved to my hard drive. I wonder why it's gone down?\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nIt's not down. You incorrectly used the filename as a directory.http://www.creationontheweb.com/dispute\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nIronically, the history section at AiG doesn't state -when- the management met with the board. I'll bet they are playing dirty with the timeline.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nJim, Where did you find that Thallon moved to KY? He's still listed on whitepages.com.au as living in Australia. (He's probably just a long-distance board member.)Interesting that you found he joined the US board after CMI says he (and the others) asked for indemnity for illegal actions with the Australian ministry. But Ham seems to have a penchant for climbing into bed with the nutters (Hovind, Baugh, Mackay).\nAnonymous (2007-03-22):\nFYI, the info critical of Dennis Petersen's book is still onthe AiG-US website as of 03/21/07http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0113peterson.asp\nOz girl (2007-06-06):\nOh what gullible people we have become since the advent of the internet, blogs, etc!Do you actually believe all that has been posted on CMI's website?! Come on, of course they're going to paint themselves as the 'good' guys who have been left with no choice but to sue! Anyone can post anything on their site, give it a spin, and we all lap it up like it must be the truth cause it's now on the internet.Who are these 12 witnesses in the Briese report - clearly CMI people? Who is Briese clearly affiliated with, and has been before the investigative committee was established? CMI! Who would have guessed? Who has made all the gracious gestures to resolve the situation in the last 2 years? Shock, horror, CMI again!Doesn't it make you suspicious how holier than thou they come across? How do we know that the timeline of events, what was said and written, which they have presented is actually true? We don't, because we're not insiders, we're not eye witnesses, and I suspect most of you don't know eye witnesses!Just because we may want the 'big bad US goliath' to be at fault doesn't necessarily mean what 'poor little David' is claiming to be true!Stop making foolish rash judgments before ALL the facts have come to light.\nLippard (2007-06-06):\nOz girl: CMI has posted a lot of documentary evidence to support their claims. In the past, I've investigated issues involving CMI (when they were the Creation Science Foundation), and they provided me with volumes of documentary evidence to support their accounts. In my experience, Carl Wieland is honest and sincere, though he holds many erroneous beliefs about evolution.AiG, on the other hand, has demonstrably made false claims in this controversy and has not been forthcoming with evidence to support their claims.Now, perhaps I'm biased against AiG because they're promoting nonsense in my own country (they've got the largest share of creationist dollars and the most influence, as my series of blog entries on creationist finances demonstrated) and in favor of CMI because of my interactions with them. But you've offered absolutely nothing in the way of counter-evidence. Is it your thesis that all of the documents and timelines CMI has put up were specifically fabricated to support their claims, and yet AiG has not bothered to refute them by rejecting their authenticity?Note that CMI and AiG agree that the October 2005 memorandum was signed by the old CMI (AiG-Australia) board--that is a fact that goes *against* CMI's case , legally, yet they are quite open about it.In my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that AiG is run with power firmly consolidated in the hands of Ken Ham with little in the way of independent oversight by his board, and that the Australian group's attempt to reduce his power resulted in Machiavellian maneuvers by Ham to eliminate what he saw the cause of the challenge--Carl Wieland.\nLippard (2007-06-06):\nBTW, oz girl, perhaps you haven't seen the blog post which includes AiG's response to supporters about the lawsuit?\nOz girl (2007-06-07):\nMr Lippard: You suggest my thesis is: \"that all of the documents and timelines CMI has put up were specifically fabricated to support their claims.\"Hmmm, I wouldn't necessarily say entirely fabricated (though many, yes), but definitely massaged to their advantage. The supposed recommendations Carl made to \"reform\" the structures of AIG-US, were in fact attempts by him to take over the whole show - he attempted a coup, was found out, and therefore disciplined. His claims about this in the Reports and 'documents' on the CMI site are false.As to the claim that AIG's refusal to reject their (the documents and timelines) authenticity seeming therefore to support their veracity - perhaps AIG is remaining silent at this stage a) Because there is now a lawsuit filed against them b) They have integrity and want to settle the dispute in private rather than publishing their version of events on the web and letting the peanut gallery rub their hands with glee, and c) You all wouldn't believe them if they did refute them! So pardon me if I take their silence as dignified rather than a sign of guilt.As to counter-evidence, let me just say I know a lot of people intimately connected with all involved. And they would hardly testify to Carl being \"honest and sincere\". For example, Carl and several of his henchmen have threatened Christian book distributors in Australia, and other individuals, to stop selling AIG material and using the AIG brand, or they will be sued - hardly ethical I would think?As to the reasons for the former AIG-Aust board seeking legal indeminification - your insinuations that it was because they were in the wrong are false; it is because they were (and are) seriously afraid of reprisals from said Carl W.I know Carl W personally - he is as slippery a snake as I have ever come across, and will use any means, and anyone, to his advantage. And the sad thing is, he's taking many people down with him...\nLippard (2007-06-07):\nOz girl: If Wieland attempted a coup to reduce Ham's power, why did he also offer to similarly have his own power reduced at the same time? What is your explanation for the dismissal of Brandon Vallorani, that he was part of Wieland's coup attempt?The legal threats against bookstores in Australia selling \"AiG\"-labeled material from AiG-US are necessary to defend CMI's ownership of the AiG trademark in Australia--if you don't defend your trademark, you lose it.\nOz girl (2007-06-07):\nI don't believe Mr Wieland would ever present a proposal which would see a reduction in his power - note the fact that he is now the Managing Director, CEO AND on the board of CMI? Not to mention that all present members of the CMI board were hand-picked by him.As to Mr Vallorini's dismissal, maybe you're closer to the mark than you think... And to your last remark about defending their trademarks, I should have added that it was not simply AIG materials that these book distributors were told to stop stocking, but other creationist materials that do not bare the AIG brand. THIS is not a fabrication, and to me, is neither ethically right, nor an action you would expect from self-proclaimed Christians.\nLippard (2007-06-07):\nOzgirl: Can you name these book distributors? I would like to contact them to compare your account to CMI's.What kind of reprisals did the board fear from Wieland? Keep in mind that they had actually already put John Thallon in charge and fired Wieland and many of the staff prior to the en masse resignations. Only after facing protest from the staff and consulting with an attorney did they resign and turn the organization back over to Wieland.On your account, what is the explanation for the clearly one-sided agreement that the board signed, turning over all rights (including rights they didn't have!) to the Australian-produced content to the U.S. organization and getting nothing to speak of in return?\nOz girl (2007-06-07):\nSorry, Jim, but I am not at liberty to discuss further the last 2 questions of your post.However, I can reveal that the two Christian book distributors who were threatened were Word and Koorong, the 2 largest in Australia.Can I just say, from my posts, all I am trying to do is open people's minds to the fact that perhaps we're not getting the full picture here, and we really need to wait until ALL evidence has been heard - including a possible soon to be released statement/report from a very bipartisan third party...\nLippard (2007-06-08):\nOz girl: Thanks for the bookstore names--I have contacted both of them in email with a series of questions about the matter and will post about the results.Please be sure to post a comment here if the \"bipartisan third party\" report/statement is issued, as I'd very much like to see it.\nKtisophilos (2007-06-19):\nOzgirl's charges against Carl Wieland are absurd even on the face of it. CMI in Australia is in no way \"Carl Wieland Ministries\", but it is certainly very easy to gain the impression that AiG is \"Ken Ham Ministries\".CMI seems genuinely to be a team effort, with Dr Wieland in no way hogging the limelight. And although Dr Wieland was the founder of Creation magazine, most readers would not know that given that a team now edits it. Conversely, I happened to see the first issue of AiG's new magazine (i.e. the one foisted on Americans who had subscribed to Creation), and Ken Ham's picture was splashed all over it.So I think KH's charge that CW wanted to take control is a classic case of projection.The copyright \"agreement\" indeed seems to contain a falsehood. Does Ozgirl seriously think that authors would have consented to have their articles falsely attributed, as the agreement claims? Does she think it's fair that CMI would bear the costs if a disgruntled author sues AiG for something AiG did? Can she support AiG's claim that this agreement is \"godly\", despite containing a falsehood and causing CMI to be liable for AiG's actions?Could it be that the old board fears \"reprisals\" because they know that their betrayal of their company they were meant to be protecting was contrary to Australian company law? Why would they seek indemnity unless they had something to be indemnified from?\nLippard (2007-06-19):\nktisophilos: Good points, all. The example of projection you cite is far from the only one--it seems to occur again and again. For example, the claim that Wieland was trying to stage a coup against AiG-US, when in fact it was Ham who attempted to take control of the Australian organization by trying to persuade the resigning directors to hand over control to members of his family and their supporters.It's also been pointed out to me that AiG-US has removed favorable references to Briese from the AiG website, replacing them with blank pages, which you can still find via Google's cache (http://www.google.com/search?q=briese+site%3Awww.answersingenesis.org). These pages strongly defended the reliability, integrity, and independence of Briese, yet now those defenses are inconvenient for AiG-US since Briese has condemned their actions.I have sent emails to both of the Australian Christian bookstore chains Ozgirl mentioned, but neither has responded to me. It has been pointed out to me that CMI actually still displays and sells AiG-US materials, so I think the best explanation is that their actions with respect to the bookstores are strictly to protect their Australian trademarks, unless someone can prove that CMI tried to suppress AiG-US material that did not use the Answers in Genesis name.Ozgirl's \"statement/report from a very bipartisan third party\" may refer to a Baptist Church in Brisbane that has members of Ham's family (including Ken Ham, who joined subsequent to the start of the dispute) and CMI staffers as members which has set up a three-person panel of laymen (i.e., not lawyers or pastors) to specifically address the effect the AiG-US/CMI dispute has had on relationships within the church. If that's what Ozgirl is referring to, it is misleading to portray that panel as offering an evaluation of the legal issues of the dispute.\nLippard (2007-06-19):\nIf you have trouble with the Google cache link I gave in the last post, use the clickable link here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/more-from-behind-scenes-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore information \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4769/\"\u003ehas just come out about the split between the Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis and the Australia-based Creation Ministries International\u003c/a\u003e.  (UPDATED for clarification:  CMI is composed of organizations from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada which were all formerly united with the Kentucky group under the Answers in Genesis name.  The Australian group was the Creation Science Foundation prior to the association of the groups under the Answers in Genesis name.)  CMI has published a number of documents on its web site about the split.  These documents, which I\u0026rsquo;ll describe below, make the case that the U.S. group has acted in bad faith to appropriate for itself many of the resources of the Australian group, as well as to put it into an untenable position of being potentially liable for certain actions of the U.S. group without getting any financial benefits.  These documents, \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4769/\"\u003eon a website headed with tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s date\u003c/a\u003e (today in Australia, where it\u0026rsquo;s currently afternoon), were pointed out in comments on my blog post by \u0026ldquo;JaneD\u0026rdquo; (presumably the D is for \u0026ldquo;Doe\u0026rdquo;), who appears to have set up a new blogger account to bring the information to public attention.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis split, which I \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html\"\u003epointed out on my blog back in March 2006\u003c/a\u003e, along with some financial data about the U.S. group and some speculation about the causes, occurred in late 2005.  In that post, I noted that certain information critical of other creationists (and \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/dr-dino-guilty-of-tax-fraud.html\"\u003econvicted tax evader Kent Hovind\u003c/a\u003e in particular) had been \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html\"\u003eremoved from the U.S. group\u0026rsquo;s site\u003c/a\u003e.  A brochure from the CMI suggested that a difference of approach, including ethical considerations, was the primary reason for the split:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe AiG website was developed in the US and hosted there. It was largely dependent for its intellectual content on the scientists and thinkers in the parent corporation, in particular such as Dr Don Batten, Dr Jonathan Sarfati, and Dr Carl Wieland. These and other writers were heavily contributing to the site until late 2005/early 2006, when the US ministry withdrew themselves from the international ministry group (with the exception of the UK) with an expressed desire to operate autonomously, without e.g. website content being subject to an international representative system of checks/balances/peer review involving all the other offices bearing the same \u0026lsquo;brand name\u0026rsquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt that time, in the midst of discussions about this and other differences in operating philosophy (not involving the statement of faith or similar), the Australian office was formally invited to form its own website. This required a new name to avoid confusion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe four national ministries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) which were committed to continuing their focus and operational ^Qteam^R philosophy, and to continuing to forge and strengthen a representative international ministry alliance structure (based on Proverbs 11:14), then rebranded as Creation Ministries International (CMI).\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe Australian group has long had a policy of publishing material critical of bad creationist work, and its journals have occasionally published some excellent debunkings of standard creationist arguments, such as the shrinking sun and moon dust arguments for a young earth.  This apparently was considered by the U.S. group to be bad for business.  (UPDATE:  This was indeed a major issue in the dispute which led to the split.  The Australian organization wanted more international control over the content of material to be distributed internationally, in the form of an international committee with votes weighted based on the size and seniority of the organization.  The U.S. organization rejected this proposal, reserving most of the power to itself.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRoger Stanyard \u003ca href=\"http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-679QwMkib6enGIsUE2Z09ARZQczZ?l=36\u0026u=40\u0026amp;mx=46\u0026lmt=5\"\u003ehas proposed that the Australian methodology was not actually peer review\u003c/a\u003e, but a form of shakedown against creationist authors who didn\u0026rsquo;t toe the group\u0026rsquo;s party line.  He attributes the breakdown to the handling of Dennis Petersen\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUnlocking the Mysteries\u003c/span\u003e, which was making money for Answers in Genesis but was criticized by the Australians.  While I agree that the Australians\u0026rsquo; peer review was less-than-stellar (in what it let pass through uncritically), my interactions with the leadership of that group lead me to believe that they are honest and ethical in their behavior (though wrong in their beliefs).  (UPDATE:  The removal of material criticizing the Petersen book from the Answers in Genesis website occurred after the split.  Stanyard appears to \u003ca href=\"http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/aig_inherit_windbags.htm\"\u003ebase his account on John Mackay\u003c/a\u003e, a source of \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/john-mackay-and-answers-in-genesis.html\"\u003ehighly dubious quality\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe new information on CMI\u0026rsquo;s website consists of the following:\u003cbr /\u003e1.  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/response.pdf\"\u003eletter dated November 15, 2006\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), from CMI to Answers in Genesis setting forth their complaint about a November 1, 2006 letter from Answers in Genesis to the general public, which CMI considers defamatory.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  An \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4771\"\u003eemail of November 21, 2006\u003c/a\u003e, alerting a number of people to the previous item, which had so far been ignored.\u003cbr /\u003e3.  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4770\"\u003esummary of an October 2005 memorandum of agreement (MOA)\u003c/a\u003e between the Australian and U.S. groups setting forth the conditions of their separation, explaining how it disadvantages the Australian group and why the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s management attempted to reject and renegotiate it.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/largebluefont.pdf\"\u003esection of the \u0026ldquo;Deed of Copyright License\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) signed by the directors of both groups, with comments pointing out its unreasonable terms.\u003cbr /\u003e5.  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/Chronological_orderSHORT.pdf\"\u003ePDF document\u003c/a\u003e setting forth a chronology of the relevant events.\u003cbr /\u003e6.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/StaffReformLetter.pdf\"\u003etext of a letter from senior staff of the Australian group to their board of directors\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) prior to their trip to meet with the U.S. board, setting out their desired reforms.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs near as I can tell, the documents on the website suggest that the directors of the Australian group were induced to fly to the United States and sign the memorandum of agreement setting forth the terms of the separation of the groups without the knowledge of the management of the Australian group (e.g., Carl Wieland and the Australian staff).  The MOA, drafted by the U.S. group\u0026rsquo;s attorneys, set terms for the separation that were entirely favorable to the U.S. group.  The Australian group\u0026rsquo;s directors who signed the document then resigned en masse, under the condition that they be given indemnity for their actions\u0026ndash;the letter suggests that they were in breach of their fiduciary duties to the Australian group for signing the agreements.  (UPDATE:  These Australian directors\u0026ndash;John Thallon, Greg Peacock, Jim Kitson, and David Denner\u0026ndash;asked for indemnity for their actions in return for their resignations after consulting with an attorney.  Thallon then moved to Kentucky and is on the board of the U.S. group.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe description of the MOA states that it gives perpetual license for all articles published by the Australian group\u0026rsquo;s magazine and journal to the U.S. group, including the right to modify the articles and change the names of the authors, including a false statement that the authors had given permission for this.  If anyone sues the U.S. group for copyright infringement, the Australian group agrees to pay all costs.  All fees and costs for items are set unilaterally by the U.S. group, which the U.S. group has used to increase fees charged to the Australian group for materials (such as DVDs) by up to three times.  The domain name answersingenesis.com, an asset of the Australian group, was transferred to the U.S. group, apparently without compensation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUpon learning of these onerous terms, the Australian management attempted to reject the MOA and requested renegotiation of terms, to no avail; the U.S. group has refused to allow the participation of Carl Wieland in any negotiation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn short, it looks like this was a struggle over money and control, with the Australian group out-maneuvered by the U.S. group.  If the information in these documents is accurate\u0026ndash;and I am inclined to believe that it is\u0026ndash;it shows that Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s Answers in Genesis is as sleazy in its business dealings as it is in its misrepresentations of science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be digging further into this story\u0026hellip; watch this blog for updates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 21, 2006):  I\u0026rsquo;ve been informed by Carl Wieland that the page of documents on the website was not supposed to have been made available through the website, but only as individual items for recipients of the email referenced above as item 2 (and given below).  The main page and several of the other items are no longer at the locations I had linked to, but I\u0026rsquo;ve updated the links based on the below email.   Wieland has declined to comment on the actions or motivation of AiG, and expressed a desire to avoid anything that would be used \u0026ldquo;to smear all creation ministry in general.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe following is the text of that email:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eClarification re innuendo about CMI in email/letter from AiG-USA.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSent 21 November 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom: the Board of Creation Ministries International (CMI)-publishers of Creation magazine (still available in the USA) and the Journal of Creation (formerly TJ) in Brisbane, Australia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDear colleague in creation outreach\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe write this with considerable sadness.  You are likely aware that there are some tensions between the ministries of CMI and AiG that go back some two years or so.  We had hoped to be able to settle these peacefully, despite our ministry having suffered significant tangible losses at AiG\u0026rsquo;s hands.  We have repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to get AiG to meet openly with all of us, or failing that, to have both our ministries submit to binding Christian arbitration to see things done justly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe believe we have acted with considerable restraint in our public comments thus far, despite seriously provocative actions.  These include substantial commercial ruthlessness against our ministry as part of what increasingly has the hallmarks of some sort of vendetta.  Nevertheless, we have kept the details very quiet for a very long time, not wishing to cause harm or escalation, and hoping for \u0026lsquo;peace with honour\u0026rsquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA most unfortunate and unfair email\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, a number of people have contacted us just now, saying  they have received a brief email from AiG-USA\u0026rsquo;s chairman (which we have seen) that casts serious slurs against our ministry.  In effect, it engages in widespread public slander.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe email alleges that we have engaged in \u0026lsquo;unbiblical\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;factious\u0026rsquo; behaviour (a word applied in the NT to those who introduce doctrines contrary to the Gospel, and translated as \u0026lsquo;heretic\u0026rsquo; in the KJV).  This is an immensely serious and damaging allegation against an evangelical ministry  and one that has not been substantiated, and is totally without foundation; our ministry\u0026rsquo;s doctrine has not changed one iota, either in word or in practice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe email also hints darkly at a \u0026lsquo;spiritual problem\u0026rsquo; as a justification for their breaking off discussions with us.  It also refers to a letter the AiG-Board sent us on November 1 to that effect, saying that that letter is available to enquirers upon request. That letter was essentially an expansion of their shorter email; it repeatedly affirmed their own righteousness, and that they were breaking off negotiations until we resolved our \u0026lsquo;spiritual problems\u0026rsquo;.  These \u0026lsquo;problems\u0026rsquo; are not specified, which darkens the innuendo (\u0026lsquo;What?  Who?\u0026rsquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDismayed by this turn of events, we prepared a detailed response that was emailed to each of the Directors on AiG-USA\u0026rsquo;s Board, on 15 November 2006.  It outlined and clarified the issues in detail.  In it we also pleaded for AiG to urgently withdraw from this action, giving them three days to respond-i.e. to contact us, to make some move to draw back from this abyss, to avoid us making our response public.  We have received no response or acknowledgement from AiG, even to this date, some six days  later.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWorldwide libel distribution\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe same AiG email defaming our ministry has also been sent out by an Australian creationist running his own ministry, who had split with Ken Ham in 1986 (this man had been excommunicated by an Australian church, a still unresolved issue-see\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.CreationOnTheWeb.com/mackay\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.CreationOnTheWeb.com/mackay\"\u003ewww.CreationOnTheWeb.com/mackay\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e for Ken Ham\u0026rsquo;s own words about the seriousness of these actions against our ministry and an individual at that time).  So this defamation has been sent to a substantial worldwide email mailing list, which would include overlap with many of our own supporters.  This AiG email was clearly sent to    that \u0026lsquo;distribution source\u0026rsquo; by AiG; the covering comments state that \u0026lsquo;Ken Ham advises\u0026rsquo;, and refer to AiG\u0026rsquo;s permission for the recipient to spread  it still further.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(The aim appears to be to encourage as many people as possible to lose confidence in our ministry, and of course AiG will have a commercial \u0026lsquo;bonus\u0026rsquo; in that the more that are encouraged to \u0026rsquo;enquire\u0026rsquo;, the more email addresses they will have, making it easier to further undermine CMI ministry in this country.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe deeply regret that AiG/Ken Ham have seen fit to engage in this most serious escalation.  Even in the face of this defamation, our overwhelming preference would have been to have had AiG respond to our urgent letter, to continue talks in openness and light as the Scriptures enjoin us to do rather than for us to have to publically stand against the libel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the absence of any evidence of remorse or willingness to undo this most recent and grave public attempt to damage us, we solemnly, before  the Lord, believe we now have no choice but to protect the public reputation of the ministry organisation that has been entrusted to us, in as dignified and God-honoring a way as we can.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo we have chosen in the first instance to provide, within this email, a website link (below) to the full text of our formal 15 November response to AiG, which should substantially clarify CMI\u0026rsquo;s position.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf course, we do not know who all the many folk to whom AiG\u0026rsquo;s defamatory comments have been emailed are, or how many times it has multiplied on the internet.  So we are sending this email you are reading to the  following:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1)      To any who actually enquire of us.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2)      To our corporation\u0026rsquo;s members (an outer layer of protection which holds the directors accountable), our staff and our volunteer workers/speakers, local reps, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3)      To the management of our four national affiliates (CMI offices in Canada, NZ, US and South Africa, as well as affiliates in the UK) for providing to their staff, so that they will be able to answer these allegations as they inevitably spread.  Sadly, some mud always sticks, especially when it comes from a \u0026lsquo;big name\u0026rsquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4)      To those we know of who are involved in creation outreach of any sort, since we are aware that at least some of these have been targeted with this AiG email and previous ones.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5)      To any (including those within AiG itself) that we have reason  to believe have been contacted by AiG with similar intent and have likely received similarly misleading statements and views.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe link\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur letter of response to AiG is reproduced at this link on our site, \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/dispute\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.CreationOnTheWeb.com/dispute\"\u003ewww.CreationOnTheWeb.com/dispute\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you did not receive the AiG email, we ask for your compassionate understanding of the dilemma we were facing; we know from those who have already contacted us that it went out widely to creationists, but do not know exactly who did and didn\u0026rsquo;t receive it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis sorry development will bring shame on the Name of our Lord and Saviour, and give cause for the enemies of God to gloat.  Would you please consider committing these matters, which also have the potential do damage to creation ministry in general (even more than has already occurred), to prayer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYours very sincerely in Christ,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Board of Creation Ministries International Ltd. (Australia)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMr. Kerry Boettcher (Chairman)\u003cbr /\u003eMrs. Carolyn McPherson (Vice-Chairman)\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Carl Wieland, M.B., B.S. (Managing Director)\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Dave Christie,  B.Com, M.Admin, Ph.D., FAICD, FIMC (Director)\u003cbr /\u003eMr. Fang, Chang Sha   B.Sc (hons), M.Sc. (Director)\u003cbr /\u003eRev. Dr. Don Hardgrave,  B.D, M.A., D.B.S., Dip. Theol, Dip. R.E. (Director)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 21, 2006):  I have inserted a number of minor clarifications and updates throughout the above text.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCreation Ministries International \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/42/\"\u003ehas a USA branch now, in Atlanta, Georgia\u003c/a\u003e, to ensure distribution of its materials in the United States.  This means that they will be competing for dollars with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The link above regarding defamatory material from John Mackay and background information about Mackay was a broken link that has now been corrected, and I\u0026rsquo;ve devoted \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/john-mackay-and-answers-in-genesis.html\"\u003ea separate post to this issue\u003c/a\u003e.  The information there shows why Mackay left the Creation Science Foundation in 1987, and raises concern about Mackay\u0026rsquo;s image being rehabilitated without having retracted the charges that he brought in the past.  Mackay has now been attacking Creation Ministries International and siding with Ham and Answers in Genesis in the dispute\u0026ndash;Answers in Genesis must be questioning whether having Mackay as a friend is a benefit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 29, 2006):  I\u0026rsquo;ve added a new item to the list of materials now available on the AiG website, which is the text of a letter from the staff of the Australian group to their own board of directors listing the items of reform that they wanted from the international organization (and AiG-U.S.).  This letter was sent to the Australian board members a few days before their flight to the U.S. in October 2005, which resulted in the separation agreement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe letter specifically called for the creation of a class of non-director membership for the non-profit, composed of eight people to be chosen from a list of 20 suggestions, independent of each other and not employees of the organization, to provide better oversight and to adjudicate disputes between the board and the CEO.  This group of people is intended to be analogous to the shareholders of a public company.  This mechanism has now been put in place at CMI in the wake of their split from AiG-U.S.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More from behind the scenes of the Australian/U.S. creationism schism at Answers in Genesis"},{"content":"Part of the Australian series \u0026ldquo;John Safran vs. God,\u0026rdquo; this video shows Safran ranting about Mormon missionaries bashing on his door before noon on Saturday, then him and his director seeking revenge by flying to Salt Lake City, putting on matching white shirts and \u0026ldquo;ATHEIST\u0026rdquo; badges, carrying some atheist tracts and a copy of Origin of Species, and going door to door.\n(Hat tip to Pharyngula.)\nHistorical Comments beepbeepitsme (2006-12-09):\nyeah, I remember watching this on TV when it came out. It is hilarious :)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/atheist-missionaries.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePart of the Australian series \u0026ldquo;John Safran vs. God,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/11/tolerance_2.html\"\u003ethis video\u003c/a\u003e shows Safran ranting about Mormon missionaries bashing on his door before noon on Saturday, then him and his director seeking revenge by flying to Salt Lake City, putting on matching white shirts and \u0026ldquo;ATHEIST\u0026rdquo; badges, carrying some atheist tracts and a copy of Origin of Species, and going door to door.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/have_you_ever_considered_athei.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ebeepbeepitsme\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eyeah, I remember watching this on TV when it came out.  It is hilarious :)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheist missionaries"},{"content":"The website KearnyontheWeb.com is an online forum for people in Kearny, New Jersey, where U.S. History teacher and Baptist youth pastor David Paszkiewicz has used his Kearny High School classroom (apparently for years) to evangelize students with his own brand of Christianity and conservative politics. I\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on how some Kearny High School students have made a poor case defending Paszkiewicz, now I\u0026rsquo;m afraid the adults of Kearny are no better.\nThe adults posting at KearnyontheWeb.com are noteworthy (just like the students) for a complete failure to address the issues raised by Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s actions\u0026ndash;they ignore the content of what he\u0026rsquo;s been teaching, they ignore the fact that he lied about what he had done until confronted with the recordings, and they ignore the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Instead, they accuse Matthew LaClair of having set the teacher up, invent new \u0026ldquo;crimes\u0026rdquo; like \u0026ldquo;premeditated entrapment\u0026rdquo; that they accuse LaClair of having committed by recording the class, and say that he should have been suspended, expelled, or jailed for creating this issue and \u0026ldquo;embarrassing the town.\u0026rdquo; They say that LaClair, by protesting the Bush administration by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, \u0026ldquo;practically spits on our \u0026lsquo;Pledge of Allegiance\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;is free to leave this country if he does not agree with what we stand for!\u0026rdquo; They claim that Paszkiewicz is \u0026ldquo;the best teacher to hit town in years\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;A PROUD AMERICAN [who] IS 100% RIGHT!\u0026quot;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve posted there to point out the issues they aren\u0026rsquo;t addressing, to which the only response has not been any attempt to address those issues but to claim that there is no evidence that Paszkiewicz lied and to express doubt that I\u0026rsquo;ve actually listened to any of the recordings. (You can find a cleaned-up version of the first online recording here, some more recordings here, and a partial transcripts here and here and here. The November 22 issue of the Kearny Observer will include numerous transcripts from Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classes based on LaClair\u0026rsquo;s recordings. Also note that Kearny Observer editor Kevin Canessa has an online poll up on his blog about whether you support Paszkiewicz, LaClair, or neither. At the moment the results are 7 supporting Paszkiewicz, 8 supporting LaClair, 0 don\u0026rsquo;t care and 0 don\u0026rsquo;t know enough about the situation.)\nArthur_Vandelay (2006-12-09):\nFrom the forum:Yes it the right, but it's wrong, I stand for evrything this country is about, you must be one of those Canada people, who instead of protecting and serving our country you decided it was \"Your Right \" not to be an American.Should Canadians be worried by this kind of rhetoric . . . The \" Pledge \"as you call it, is an oath, and it is every Americans duty to stand when taking an oath of allegiance.. . . or should Americans?\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nAs a recent graduate from Kearny High School, I would like to comment on the state of the community which you all seem to be unaware of. Just outside the Ironbound of Newark, Kearny has somewhat recently turned into an immigrant town due to the spillover. In the younger generation (those in high school now at least) it is primarily a Brazilian, Portuguese, and various Hispanic blend. There are gangs, drugs, and little interest in education. Those who grow up in Kearny tend to stay in Kearny, Newark, or Jersey City for the rest of their lives. It's kind of hard to get out of. I consider myself an exception. Their comments are not a surprise to me since I grew up with it and their defensive arguments are based on gut feelings rather than factual knowledge of the constitution or principles of our country. I was lucky enough to find intellectual culture elsewhere, but I'm glad I grew up there. It gave me dirtier upbringing you wouldn't find in a classic New Jersey suburb. Now, I'm not saying they're right, and I'm not saying that Paszkiewicz was right, but I know how they feel and that they don't know how to express themselves. I am a big supporter of Dave Paszkiewicz (or \"Packy\" as those close to him like to say) and that is because I love the man. He really is a great person and an inspiration to me (I'm not Christian in any sense of the word). So if you're wondering why he has so much support, it's not because so many people believe what he's saying, but because he's a good person. I feel like sometimes you have to take things on a case-by-case basis and realize that some minor infractions aren't worth ruining a good thing. peace\nArthur_Vandelay (2006-12-09):\nSo if you're wondering why he has so much support, it's not because so many people believe what he's saying, but because he's a good person.I don't think this incident should spell the end of his teaching career.I do think he should own up to his error, and accept that what he did in his classroom was wrong. However fervently religious he might be, it is not his role, as a public school teacher, to proselytise to his students. If he's the good person you say he is, he'll be able to do this gracefully and not play the burning martyr.\nAnonymous (2006-12-18):\nI'm seeing a lot of people saying that the student made an \"illegal\" recordings of the other students/teacher. It is my understanding that Public schools are paid for by Public funds and, therefore, Public Places. It is my understanding that \"hidden\" recordings (be they audio OR video) are *not* illegal in Public Places. If I\u0026rsquo;m wrong, I\u0026rsquo;d love to see some law/part of our Country founding documents that prove me wrong.\nLippard (2006-12-19):\nMichrech: It\u0026rsquo;s been pointed out to me in email (and I agree) that public school classrooms are not \u0026ldquo;public forums.\u0026rdquo; The rest of this comment is quoted from that email (thanks, Dean):\nClassrooms are not public forums, despite our intuitive, even reasonable sense that they ought to be. Take this: \u0026ldquo;Classrooms are not public forums; but the school authorities and the teachers, not the courts, decide whether classroom instruction shall include works by blasphemers\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; That appears in Linnemeir v. Board of Trustees of Purdue University, a Seventh Circuit ruling from 2001. Or: \u0026ldquo;There is no dispute that the pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade public school classrooms where the alleged constitutional violations transpired are non-public forums, in which school officials can reasonably restrict the speech of students and teachers.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s from a New Jersey(!) district court opinion, Walz ex rel. Walz v. Egg Harbor Tp. Bd. of Educ. And so forth. There are plenty of contrary holdings that prove the rule, too. For example, \u0026ldquo;University facilities opened for meetings of registered student organizations qualify as a designated public forum \u0026hellip; as do public school classrooms that are available to the general public outside of school hours for limited purposes\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; That appears in Church on the Rock v. City of Albuquerque, a Tenth Circuit decision from 1996.\nTattaglia (2007-02-20):\nBravo for Matthew LaClair, who has the intelligence to differ from a pastor in a PUBLIC SCHOOL. I hope that he has really support from intelligent people.\nRoj (2007-03-08):\nDavid Paszkiewicz seems to be a Dominionist, who teach that lieing is ok, if you are dong the Lords work.I think the Kearny BOE should consider firing David Paszkiewicz, at the very least a temporary suspension of David Paszkiewicz.David Paszkiewicz is smart \u0026 intelligent, \u0026 has likely knowingly broken the law. For god sakes get the man out of public school, he's a fruitcake, next thing ya know he'll be teaching that the universe revolves around the Earth.\nTruth (2016-09-22):\nMr Paszkiewicz is only telling the truth....the truth of JESUS CHRIST, which obviously makes the many blinded attack and very afraid, that\u0026#39;s why the use the \u0026quot;law\u0026quot; \u0026quot;system\u0026quot; to prosecute, just like JESÚS suffered, but one day you will all get on your knees and realize what\u0026#39;s truth!! THE TRUTH!! ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/embarrassingly-bad-arguments-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe website \u003ca href=\"http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php?showtopic=2898\u0026st=0\"\u003eKearnyontheWeb.com\u003c/a\u003e is an online forum for people in Kearny, New Jersey, where U.S. History teacher and Baptist youth pastor David Paszkiewicz \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003ehas used his Kearny High School classroom (apparently for years) to evangelize students with his own brand of Christianity\u003c/a\u003e and conservative politics.  I\u0026rsquo;ve already commented on how \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/kearny-high-school-students-defend.html\"\u003esome Kearny High School students have made a poor case defending Paszkiewicz\u003c/a\u003e, now I\u0026rsquo;m afraid the adults of Kearny \u003ca href=\"http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php?showtopic=2898\u0026amp;st=0\"\u003eare no better\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe adults posting at KearnyontheWeb.com are noteworthy (just like the students) for a complete failure to address the issues raised by Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s actions\u0026ndash;they ignore the content of what he\u0026rsquo;s been teaching, they ignore the fact that he lied about what he had done until confronted with the recordings, and they ignore the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  Instead, they accuse Matthew LaClair of having set the teacher up, invent new \u0026ldquo;crimes\u0026rdquo; like \u0026ldquo;premeditated entrapment\u0026rdquo; that they accuse LaClair of having committed by recording the class, and say that he should have been suspended, expelled, or jailed for creating this issue and \u0026ldquo;embarrassing the town.\u0026rdquo;  They say that LaClair, by protesting the Bush administration by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, \u0026ldquo;practically spits on our \u0026lsquo;Pledge of Allegiance\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;is free to leave this country if he does not agree with what we stand for!\u0026rdquo;  They claim that Paszkiewicz is \u0026ldquo;the best teacher to hit town in years\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;A PROUD AMERICAN [who] IS 100% RIGHT!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve posted there to point out the issues they aren\u0026rsquo;t addressing, to which the only response has not been any attempt to address those issues but to claim that there is no evidence that Paszkiewicz lied and to express doubt that I\u0026rsquo;ve actually listened to any of the recordings.  (You can find a cleaned-up version of the first online recording \u003ca href=\"http://www.davidkowalski.com/teachpreach.mp3\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, some more recordings \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/11/classroom-recordings.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and a partial transcripts \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2006/11/fire_him_right_now.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://rationalrant.blogspot.com/2006/11/thank-god-for-matthew-laclair.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://atheism.about.com/b/a/258518.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The November 22 issue of the Kearny Observer \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/11/preacher-teacher-went-overboard-with.html\"\u003ewill include numerous transcripts from Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s classes\u003c/a\u003e based on LaClair\u0026rsquo;s recordings.  Also note that Kearny Observer editor Kevin Canessa has \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/\"\u003ean online poll up on his blog\u003c/a\u003e about whether you support Paszkiewicz, LaClair, or neither.  At the moment the results are 7 supporting Paszkiewicz, 8 supporting LaClair, 0 don\u0026rsquo;t care and 0 don\u0026rsquo;t know enough about the situation.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Embarrassingly bad arguments in support of David Paszkiewicz"},{"content":"News.com has a nice article about how Global Crossing (my employer) has criticized the extension of CALEA wiretapping rules to VoIP and broadband:\nPaul Kouroupas, vice president of regulatory affairs for Global Crossing, strongly criticized the Federal Communications Commission\u0026rsquo;s broadening of a 1994 law\u0026ndash;originally intended to cover telephone providers\u0026ndash;as disproportionately costly, complex, and riddled with privacy concerns. His company is one of the world\u0026rsquo;s largest Internet backbone providers. \u0026ldquo;Our customers are large Fortune 500 companies\u0026ndash;not too many of those companies are conducting drug deals or terrorist activities out of Merrill Lynch\u0026rsquo;s offices or using their phones in that way,\u0026rdquo; Kouroupas said at an event here sponsored by the DC Bar Association. \u0026ldquo;By and large we don\u0026rsquo;t get wiretap requests, yet we\u0026rsquo;re faced with the costs to come into compliance,\u0026rdquo; which he estimated at $1 million.\nI think that\u0026rsquo;s a conservative estimate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/global-crossing-criticizes-wiretapping.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNews.com \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Networking+exec+blasts+wiretapping+rules/2100-1036_3-6136344.html\"\u003ehas a nice article about how Global Crossing (my employer) has criticized the extension of CALEA wiretapping rules to VoIP and broadband\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e Paul Kouroupas, vice president of regulatory affairs for Global Crossing, strongly criticized the Federal Communications Commission\u0026rsquo;s broadening of \u003ca href=\"http://www.askcalea.net/\"\u003ea 1994 law\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;originally intended to cover telephone providers\u0026ndash;as disproportionately costly, complex, and riddled with privacy concerns. His company is one of the world\u0026rsquo;s largest Internet backbone providers. \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Our customers are large Fortune 500 companies\u0026ndash;not too many of those companies are conducting drug deals or terrorist activities out of Merrill Lynch\u0026rsquo;s offices or using their phones in that way,\u0026rdquo; Kouroupas said at \u003ca href=\"http://www.dcbar.org/for_lawyers/events/event_Detail.cfm?itemID=2090\"\u003ean event here\u003c/a\u003e sponsored by the DC Bar Association. \u0026ldquo;By and large we don\u0026rsquo;t get wiretap requests, yet we\u0026rsquo;re faced with the costs to come into compliance,\u0026rdquo; which he estimated at $1 million.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Global Crossing criticizes wiretapping rules"},{"content":"Famed economist and champion of freedom Milton Friedman has died.\nSome nice obituaries:\nThe New York Times.\nThe Financial Times.\nCatallarchy: \u0026ldquo;RIP: Milton Friedman (1912-2006)\u0026quot; and \u0026ldquo;Milton Friedman Video\u0026rdquo; (the latter posted by his grandson, Patri Friedman)\nLong or Short Capital: \u0026ldquo;Long Milton Friedman.\u0026quot;\nDavid Friedman\u0026rsquo;s Blog. (Milton Friedman\u0026rsquo;s son)\nThe Agitator: \u0026ldquo;Milton Friedman, RIP\u0026rdquo;\nTechnology Liberation Front: \u0026ldquo;RIP Milton Friedman\u0026rdquo;\nThe Only Republican in San Francisco: \u0026ldquo;Friedman passes away\u0026rdquo;\nUPDATE (November 27, 2006):\nCatallarchy has produced a series of postings on various aspects of Milton Friedman\u0026rsquo;s life and work from different perspectives as a tribute.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/milton-friedman-dead-at-94-1912-2006.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFamed economist and champion of freedom Milton Friedman has died.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome nice obituaries:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/business/17friedmancnd.html?hp\u0026ex=1163739600\u0026amp;amp;amp;en=b22d188423a336e8\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;partner=homepage\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cb74eef8-7599-11db-aea1-0000779e2340.html\"\u003eThe Financial Times\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003eCatallarchy: \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/11/16/rip-milton-friedman-1912-2006/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;RIP: Milton Friedman (1912-2006)\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/11/16/milton-friedman-video/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Milton Friedman Video\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (the latter posted by his grandson, Patri Friedman)\u003cbr /\u003eLong or Short Capital:  \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/long-milton-friedman.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Long Milton Friedman.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/11/mf.html\"\u003eDavid Friedman\u0026rsquo;s Blog\u003c/a\u003e. (Milton Friedman\u0026rsquo;s son)\u003cbr /\u003eThe Agitator: \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027236.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Milton Friedman, RIP\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTechnology Liberation Front: \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/041215.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;RIP Milton Friedman\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Only Republican in San Francisco: \u003ca href=\"http://www.onlyrepublican.com/orinsf/2006/11/friedman_passes.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Friedman passes away\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 27, 2006):\u003cbr /\u003eCatallarchy \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/11/27/a-tribute-to-milton-friedman/\"\u003ehas produced a series of postings on various aspects of Milton Friedman\u0026rsquo;s life and work from different perspectives as a tribute\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Milton Friedman dead at 94 (1912-2006)"},{"content":"A number of commenters who say they are students at Kearny High School have stopped by to offer support for their teacher, David Paszkiewicz. Unfortunately, they are making a strong case that instead of saying to his students \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell,\u0026rdquo; Paszkiewicz should have said, \u0026ldquo;you belong in remedial English.\u0026quot;\nneo1123 writes:\nDude this is a fucking joke\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip; first off why the fuck would you want so much attention over stupid shit\u0026hellip; and second\u0026hellip; i know this teacher personally and know he is a good person and diddnt mean to offend ne one\u0026hellip; and fuck the little bitch ass who recorded this shiit\u0026hellip; im a senior @ khs and this just adds to all the fucking drama in this school.. so u know wat fuck all u bitch asses who want to see action taken\u0026hellip; u r a sad sad person and need to fucking get a fucking life so ya im done here\u0026hellip;.. u wanna talk shit tell me @ neo1123@gmail.comJ.Cora writes:\nI believe this is the most stupidiest thing ever. That kid is just trying to find attetntion for himself. I\u0026rsquo;ve had this teacher and he is one of the best teachers. He taught history the way it was and in group discussions he would view both points without no religion remarks. So who ever reads this, don\u0026rsquo;t be ignorants and know the facts first. The kid who claimed this is the type of kid no one likes and wants to drive attention to hiself. I say to the father to drop it because that teacher is loved by many and going against it will cause much problems.Both of these commenters seem to have missed a few key points here, such as:\n(a) Paszkiewicz is the authority in the classroom, and is responsible for teaching what\u0026rsquo;s in the curriculum.\n(b) It is a violation of the U.S. Constitution\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause for a teacher in a public school classroom to endorse a particular religious viewpoint.\n(c) Satan, the Big Bang, evolution, and Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark have nothing to do with U.S. history.\n(d) Paszkiewicz lied when he told administrators he wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying these things in the classroom.\nIt is irrelevant to any of these points whether Matthew LaClair wanted attention or isn\u0026rsquo;t liked by his fellow students, or that he asked questions of Paszkiewicz which provoked some of his absurd statements (a point brought up by neo1123 in an email to me). The fact is that it was Paskiewicz\u0026rsquo;s actions which were irresponsible and inappropriate\u0026ndash;which he clearly recognized since he initially denied saying these things\u0026ndash;and it is he who is responsible for the attention that is now being brought on Kearny High School.\nOn another note, now that some of the audio of Paszkiewicz is available online, you can find some additional commentary on the content of his teaching at Pharyngula. (A cleaned up version of the audio file may be found here. Thanks, Dave.)\nEd Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars has also weighed in on this controversy, and you can find some more comments on the issue from Garden Staters at Blue Jersey.\nAnd there are also now numerous comments at Metafilter.\nUPDATE (November 16, 2006): If you can stand to listen to the audio all the way through, you will find that Paszkiewicz runs his classroom in a very disorganized manner, allowing multiple students to carry on conversations simultaneously and apparently without any kind of lesson plan. He also speaks authoritatively and confidently on a wide variety of subjects about which he is apparently ignorant, as Oolon Coluphid has pointed out in comments. And most of those subjects have little or nothing to do with the topic of U.S. History that he is supposedly teaching. Mr. Paskiewicz says in the class that he homeschools his own children, yet it is his teaching that exemplifies the worst of public school teaching\u0026ndash;and there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt his children do no better.\nUPDATE: Mike Dunford at the Questionable Authority has transcribed a few pieces of the recording.\nUPDATE (December 6, 2006): There is a complete transcript of the September 14 class at Stephen Dranger\u0026rsquo;s site.\nHistorical Comments King Aardvark (2006-12-09):\nWow, you can really see how highschools are slipping in terms of teaching kids how to communicate ideas effectively. Simple proof reading seems beyond their grasp, though I do appreciate the over-the-top excessive profanity.\nJulie (2006-12-09):\nThese kids are frighteningly illiterate. Do they ever read?\nJan Aquarius (2006-12-09):\nThe two emails noted in the original post are such glorious examples of what is wrong with the high schools of the United States today! But then, the quality (more precisely, the lack thereof) of these students who have come out in support of their weird teacher is quite telling, don't you think? Go, Nut-cases for Paszkiewicz!!\nHannah (2006-12-09):\nIt's not just high schools - it's the entire system. My boyfriend attended public school for the first five grades or so, and when he switched to homeschooling through Calvert's curriculum he had to learn how to write an essay. I'm not sure what they're teaching kids these days, but if Paskiewicz is any indication, it's not what they're supposed to be learning.\ndogscratcher (2006-12-09):\nThe fundamental illogic displayed in the arguments proposed in these emails (which you have so graciously illustrated), should act as a clarion call to the administration at Kearney High that they need to pay more attention to critical thinking skills.\nnsfl (2006-12-09):\nMy favorite line:I say to the father to drop it because that teacher is loved by many and going against it will cause much problems.Right. It doesn't matter if the guy did something wrong, since that's incontrovertible at this point. All that matters is people like him.Also, note the tacit little hint of a threat...If the teacher was an atheist telling the kids that the idea of God was stupid and giving them classical atheological arguments, what do you want to bet me he'd have been fired by now?\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\nDave over on Pharyngula says that he has cleaned up the audio. I have not listened yet...http://www.davidkowalski.com/teachpreach.mp3\nswithy (2006-12-09):\nI am a graduate of KHS, and had \"US History\" with David Paszkiewicz in 1998-1999. Everything Matthew LaClair is saying is absolutely true. Paszkiewicz constantly deviated from the curriculum to give us his views on religion. The very first week of class, he said he could prove the existence of god to us. I am a gay non-Christian, and was outspokenly so when I was in high school. At least once a week I'd leave that class sick to my stomach or red with frustration, because of discussions that Paszkiewicz initiated, in which anti-gay, Bible-thumping conservatives could have their say, while we in the, dare I say, counterculture, were shot down at every turn, belitted, and dismissed. On the occasions that I tried to bring up my concerns to Paszkiewicz directly, asking him to keep his personal commentary out of our classroom, he'd twist my words, and intimidate me into thinking I was wrong to bring it up. David Paszkiewicz fostered an environment of intolerance for young people who are still learning who they are. I, luckily, came out stronger for it, but I wonder how many other gay kids retreated further into the closet because David Paszkiewicz damned them to hell during school hours.\nStephen (2006-12-09):\nThere's a complete transcript of 9/14 on on my website.\nStephen (2006-12-09):\nThere is a full transcript of 9/14 at my website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/kearny-high-school-students-defend.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA number of commenters who say they are students at Kearny High School \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html\"\u003ehave stopped by to offer support for their teacher, David Paszkiewicz\u003c/a\u003e.  Unfortunately, they are making a strong case that instead of saying to his students \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell,\u0026rdquo; Paszkiewicz should have said, \u0026ldquo;you belong in remedial English.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eneo1123 writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDude this is a fucking joke\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip; first off why the fuck would you want so much attention over stupid shit\u0026hellip; and second\u0026hellip; i know this teacher personally and know he is a good person and diddnt mean to offend ne one\u0026hellip; and fuck the little bitch ass who recorded this shiit\u0026hellip; im a senior @ khs and this just adds to all the fucking drama in this school.. so u know wat fuck all u bitch asses who want to see action taken\u0026hellip; u r a sad sad person and need to fucking get a fucking life so ya im done here\u0026hellip;.. u wanna talk shit tell me @ \u003ca href=\"mailto:neo1123@gmail.com\"\u003eneo1123@gmail.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eJ.Cora writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI believe this is the most stupidiest thing ever. That kid is just trying to find attetntion for himself. I\u0026rsquo;ve had this teacher and he is one of the best teachers. He taught history the way it was and in group discussions he would view both points without no religion remarks. So who ever reads this, don\u0026rsquo;t be ignorants and know the facts first. The kid who claimed this is the type of kid no one likes and wants to drive attention to hiself. I say to the father to drop it because that teacher is loved by many and going against it will cause much problems.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBoth of these commenters seem to have missed a few key points here, such as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(a) Paszkiewicz is the authority in the classroom, and is responsible for teaching what\u0026rsquo;s in the curriculum.\u003cbr /\u003e(b) It is a violation of the U.S. Constitution\u0026rsquo;s Establishment Clause for a teacher in a public school classroom to endorse a particular religious viewpoint.\u003cbr /\u003e(c) Satan, the Big Bang, evolution, and Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark have nothing to do with U.S. history.\u003cbr /\u003e(d) Paszkiewicz lied when he told administrators he wasn\u0026rsquo;t saying these things in the classroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is irrelevant to any of these points whether Matthew LaClair wanted attention or isn\u0026rsquo;t liked by his fellow students, or that he asked questions of Paszkiewicz which provoked some of his absurd statements (a point brought up by neo1123 in an email to me).  The fact is that it was Paskiewicz\u0026rsquo;s actions which were irresponsible and inappropriate\u0026ndash;which he clearly recognized since he initially denied saying these things\u0026ndash;and it is he who is responsible for the attention that is now being brought on Kearny High School.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn another note, now that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/cgi-bin/prxy/xmedia/nph-cache.cgi/cache=300;/njo/njo/classaudio.mp3\"\u003esome of the audio of Paszkiewicz is available online\u003c/a\u003e, you can find some additional commentary on the content of his teaching at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/the_voice_of_david_paszkiewicz.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.  (A cleaned up version of the audio file may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.davidkowalski.com/teachpreach.mp3\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Thanks, Dave.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/history_teacher_proselytizing_1.php\"\u003ehas also weighed in on this controversy\u003c/a\u003e, and you can find some more comments on the issue from Garden Staters at \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3210\"\u003eBlue Jersey\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd there are also now numerous comments at \u003ca href=\"http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/56322\"\u003eMetafilter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 16, 2006):  If you can stand to listen to the audio all the way through, you will find that Paszkiewicz runs his classroom in a very disorganized manner, allowing multiple students to carry on conversations simultaneously and apparently without any kind of lesson plan.  He also speaks authoritatively and confidently on a wide variety of subjects about which he is apparently ignorant, as \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html#116372669742555440\"\u003eOolon Coluphid has pointed out in comments\u003c/a\u003e.  And most of those subjects have little or nothing to do with the topic of U.S. History that he is supposedly teaching.  Mr. Paskiewicz says in the class that he homeschools his own children, yet it is his teaching that exemplifies the worst of public school teaching\u0026ndash;and there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt his children do no better.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Mike Dunford at the Questionable Authority \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2006/11/fire_him_right_now.php\"\u003ehas transcribed a few pieces of the recording\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 6, 2006): There is \u003ca href=\"http://www.dranger.com/classtranscript.html\"\u003ea complete transcript of the September 14 class\u003c/a\u003e at Stephen Dranger\u0026rsquo;s site.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kearny High School students defend their teacher"},{"content":"Justin Seay, one of the two \u0026ldquo;John Does\u0026rdquo; suing Sacha Baron Cohen and the producers of \u0026ldquo;Borat\u0026rdquo; for getting him and his pals drunk and inducing them to engage in \u0026ldquo;behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in\u0026rdquo; has been tracked down by The Smoking Gun.\nAs The Smoking Gun puts it, Seay \u0026ldquo;does not seem like an amateur when it comes to partying.\u0026rdquo; They found his MySpace page, which contains numerous photographs in which Seay is either carousing in a bar or has a clearly visible drink in his hand (which are helpfully pointed out with red arrows). His MySpace page has \u0026ldquo;gettin\u0026rsquo; drunk and having a good time\u0026rdquo; as one of his interests, and friends\u0026rsquo; comments include greetings like \u0026ldquo;Hi Drunk Friend!!!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Hey Hey Justin Seay, Drinks like a fish everyday!\u0026quot;\nThe Smoking Gun provides pages from the lawsuit and photos from his MySpace page for handy comparison.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nUPDATE: Radley Balko makes some reasonable criticisms of the Borat movie (which I\u0026rsquo;ve not seen).\nUPDATE: You can find more Borat backstory here. The deceit used to make this film strikes me as quite unethical, though I have little sympathy for Mr. Seay, described above.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-12):\nI watched BORAT for the first time over the weekend. I admit it: it was funny (in spots) and I laughed. But the next morning I realized that it wasn't that funny--that the film not only blurs the line between reality and fiction, but it takes advantage of the people who appear in the film, by putting them in situations where, on film, they are rather like monkeys playing with balls in a cage, for our enjoyment, ridicule and sense of superiority.What the producers did on BORAT to innocent people reminds me a bit of what has recently happened to me with the NPR radio show Fair Game.The producer asserts that I wasn't actually deceived, because he was \"upfront about the fact that he was not going to be completely upfront.\" The show is clever, and no harm was really done to me, but I did experience the feeling that when you go out into the public arena, the media can twist what you do like a pretzel, with very little, actually sometimes NO ramifications to them, but potential damage to YOU.Be careful out there, all you folks hoping for \"exposure.\" There are plenty of producers who will sense your lust for it, then give you just what you wanted, but not the way you wanted it!Not sure what that means, but here's my post: http://www.advicesisters.net/advicesistersblog\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/fratboy-suing-borat-exposed-by-smoking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJustin Seay, one of the two \u0026ldquo;John Does\u0026rdquo; suing Sacha Baron Cohen and the producers of \u0026ldquo;Borat\u0026rdquo; for getting him and his pals drunk and inducing them to engage in \u0026ldquo;behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1113061borat1.html\"\u003ehas been tracked down by The Smoking Gun\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1113061borat1.html\"\u003eThe Smoking Gun puts it\u003c/a\u003e, Seay \u0026ldquo;does not seem like an amateur when it comes to partying.\u0026rdquo;  They found his MySpace page, which contains numerous photographs in which Seay is either carousing in a bar or has a clearly visible drink in his hand (which are helpfully pointed out with red arrows).  His MySpace page has \u0026ldquo;gettin\u0026rsquo; drunk and having a good time\u0026rdquo; as one of his interests, and friends\u0026rsquo; comments include greetings like \u0026ldquo;Hi Drunk Friend!!!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Hey Hey Justin Seay, Drinks like a fish everyday!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Smoking Gun \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1113061borat1.html\"\u003eprovides pages from the lawsuit and photos from his MySpace page\u003c/a\u003e for handy comparison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Radley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027227.php\"\u003emakes some reasonable criticisms of the Borat movie\u003c/a\u003e (which I\u0026rsquo;ve not seen).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: You can find more Borat backstory \u003ca href=\"http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/061113.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The deceit used to make this film strikes me as quite unethical, though I have little sympathy for Mr. Seay, described above.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fratboy suing Borat exposed by The Smoking Gun"},{"content":"Opponents of same-sex marriage claim that it will somehow destroy the institution of marriage and cause damage to heterosexual married couples. But a book that examines the data from Scandinavian countries that have had legal same-sex marriage for the last 17 years suggests otherwise\u0026ndash;rather than destroying heterosexual marriage, those countries have seen higher heterosexual marriage rates, lower divorce rates, lower rates of out-of-wedlock births, lower rates of sexually transmitted disease, and more monogamy among gay couples.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/effects-of-same-sex-marriage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOpponents of same-sex marriage claim that it will somehow destroy the institution of marriage and cause damage to heterosexual married couples.  But \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_10_29-2006_11_04.shtml#1162396316\"\u003ea book that examines the data from Scandinavian countries that have had legal same-sex marriage for the last 17 years suggests otherwise\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;rather than destroying heterosexual marriage, those countries have seen higher heterosexual marriage rates, lower divorce rates, lower rates of out-of-wedlock births, lower rates of sexually transmitted disease, and more monogamy among gay couples.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The effects of same-sex marriage"},{"content":"Chad Conrad Castagana, 39, was arrested in Los Angeles for sending more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Keith Olbermann. Some letters included phrases such as \u0026ldquo;Death to Demagogues.\u0026quot;\nCastagana was an active commenter on conservative blogs such as The Free Republic who described himself as \u0026ldquo;a lifelong Conservative Republican\u0026rdquo; who thinks that \u0026ldquo;Ann Coulter is a Goddess\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;worship[s] Laura Ingraham and Michele [sic] Malkin.\u0026quot;\n(Via Peek at Alternet.)\nUPDATE (November 14, 2006): There\u0026rsquo;s more at Raw Story.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/christian-conservative-arrested-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChad Conrad Castagana, 39, \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061113/ap_on_re_us/threatening_letters_arrest\"\u003ewas arrested in Los Angeles for sending more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder\u003c/a\u003e to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Keith Olbermann.  Some letters included phrases such as \u0026ldquo;Death to Demagogues.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCastagana \u003ca href=\"http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/11/other-kind-of-terror.html\"\u003ewas an active commenter on conservative blogs\u003c/a\u003e such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all\u0026amp;address=364x2701099\"\u003eThe Free Republic\u003c/a\u003e who described himself as \u0026ldquo;a lifelong Conservative Republican\u0026rdquo; who thinks that \u0026ldquo;Ann Coulter is a Goddess\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;worship[s] Laura Ingraham and Michele [sic] Malkin.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/44231/\"\u003ePeek at Alternet\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 14, 2006): There\u0026rsquo;s more at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Fake_anthrax_hoax_by_conservative_blogger_1113.html\"\u003eRaw Story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian conservative arrested for sending threat letters and fake anthrax"},{"content":"Nancy Pelosi is backing John Murtha for House Majority Leader, despite the fact that he is on the \u0026ldquo;dishonorable mention list\u0026rdquo; of CREW\u0026rsquo;s most corrupt Congressmen and has actively worked with Republicans to block fraud investigations and prevent lobbying reform.\nLooks like we\u0026rsquo;ll need to kick out some more incumbents in 2008. (Was there ever any doubt?)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/democrats-prepare-to-squander-their.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNancy Pelosi is backing John Murtha for House Majority Leader, despite the fact that he is \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/murtha.php\"\u003eon the \u0026ldquo;dishonorable mention list\u0026rdquo; of CREW\u0026rsquo;s most corrupt Congressmen\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001984.php\"\u003ehas actively worked with Republicans to block fraud investigations and prevent lobbying reform\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like we\u0026rsquo;ll need to kick out some more incumbents in 2008.  (Was there ever any doubt?)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Democrats prepare to squander their opportunity to reform Congress"},{"content":"Ann Coulter\u0026rsquo;s column last week was titled \u0026ldquo;Historic victory for Diebold!\u0026quot; She claims that \u0026ldquo;For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated.\u0026quot;\nJust because the election wasn\u0026rsquo;t clearly rigged doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that Diebold has been remotely vindicated, and the 2006 election continued to produce evidence that Diebold e-voting machines should not be used.\nAs Brad Friedman points out at the Huffington Post, there were major problems with electronic voting machines in Denver, as well as problems opening the polls on time in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio. Problems with early voting using electronic voting machines occurred in Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and California. The Electronic Frontier Foundation received about 17,000 complaints by 8 p.m. on election day; Common Cause received 14,000 by 4 p.m. John Gideon of VotersUnite.org put together a searchable database of reported election problems.\nBruce Schneier also gives a recap of electronic voting machine problems at his blog, with Florida\u0026rsquo;s 13th District presenting the biggest issues, where 18,000 votes apparently disappeared in a race where a difference of 386 votes decided the outcome (described in a separate post).\nThe outcome of the election doesn\u0026rsquo;t change any of the existing data about the problems with Diebold voting machines.\nAs usual, Coulter gets it all wrong. When it comes to voting, she should worry more about her own problems than comment on a controversy where she\u0026rsquo;s clearly completely ignorant.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/ann-coulter-misleads-on-diebold.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnn Coulter\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2006/11/08/historic_victory_for_diebold%21\"\u003ecolumn last week was titled \u0026ldquo;Historic victory for Diebold!\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  She claims that \u0026ldquo;For the first time in four   election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp.   the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting   machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust because the election wasn\u0026rsquo;t clearly rigged doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that Diebold has been remotely vindicated, and the 2006 election continued to produce evidence that Diebold e-voting machines should not be used.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/never-mind-the-results_b_33854.html\"\u003eBrad Friedman points out at the Huffington Post\u003c/a\u003e, there were major problems with electronic voting machines in Denver, as well as problems opening the polls on time in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio.  Problems with early voting using electronic voting machines occurred in Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and California.   The Electronic Frontier Foundation received about 17,000 complaints by 8 p.m. on election day; Common Cause received 14,000 by 4 p.m.  John Gideon of VotersUnite.org put together \u003ca href=\"http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2006/11/08/historic_victory_for_diebold%21\"\u003ea searchable database of reported election problems\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBruce Schneier also gives \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/more_on_electro.html\"\u003ea recap of electronic voting machine problems at his blog\u003c/a\u003e, with \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/voting_technolo.html\"\u003eFlorida\u0026rsquo;s 13th District presenting the biggest issues\u003c/a\u003e, where 18,000 votes apparently disappeared in a race where a difference of 386 votes decided the outcome (described in a separate post).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe outcome of the election doesn\u0026rsquo;t change any of \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/two-faces-of-diebold.html\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/ed-felten-responds-to-diebold.html\"\u003eexisting\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/more-on-diebold-voting-machine.html\"\u003edata\u003c/a\u003e about \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/hotel-minibar-keys-open-diebold-voting.html\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/major-flaw-in-diebold-voting-machines.html\"\u003eproblems\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/even-more-serious-diebold-voting.html\"\u003ewith\u003c/a\u003e Diebold voting machines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs usual, Coulter gets it all wrong.  When it comes to voting, she should \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/politics/main2143882.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2143882\"\u003eworry more about her own problems\u003c/a\u003e than comment on a controversy where she\u0026rsquo;s clearly completely ignorant.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ann Coulter misleads on Diebold"},{"content":"The following is from Paul L. LaClair, a NYC attorney who lives in Kearny, New Jersey, and is posted with his permission. David Paszkiewicz, the teacher described here engaging in incompetent teaching and dishonesty, is apparently a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church in addition to being a public school teacher. LaClair\u0026rsquo;s son Matthew has previously garnered attention for protesting Bush administration activities by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. He seems to be a principled and courageous young man who has caught a really bad teacher:\nKearny, New Jersey\nNovember 10, 2006\nA history teacher at the local public high school here may have bitten off more than he cares to chew this fall. Self-described conservative Baptist David Paszkiewicz used his history class to proselytize biblical fundamentalism over the course of several days at the beginning of this school year.\nAmong his remarks in open class were statements that a being must have created the universe, that the Christian Bible is the word of God, and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah\u0026rsquo;s ark. If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell.\u0026rdquo; Referring to a Muslim student who had been mentioned by name, he lamented what he saw as her inevitable fate should she not convert. In an attempt to promote biblical creationism, he also dismissed evolution and the Big Bang as non-scientific, arguing by contrast that the Bible is supported by what he calls confirmed biblical prophecies.\nAfter taking the matter to the school administration, one of Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s students, junior Matthew LaClair, requested a meeting with the teacher and the school principal. LaClair, a non-Christian, was requesting an apology and correction of false and anti-scientific statements. After two weeks, a meeting took place in the principal\u0026rsquo;s office, wherein Paszkiewicz denied making many of these comments, claiming that LaClair had taken his remarks out of context. Paszkiewicz specifically denied using the phrase, \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell.\u0026rdquo; He also asserted that he did nothing different in this class than he has been doing in fifteen years of teaching.\nAt the end of the meeting, LaClair revealed that he had recorded the remarks, and presented the principal with two compact discs. The teacher then declined to comment further without his union representative. However, he fired one last shot at the student, saying, \u0026ldquo;You got the big fish \u0026hellip; you got the big Christian guy who is a teacher\u0026hellip;!\u0026quot;\nCommenting on the situation, LaClair\u0026rsquo;s father, attorney Paul LaClair said, \u0026ldquo;In a few short weeks, this teacher has displayed bigotry, hypocrisy, arrogance and an appalling ignorance of science. The school\u0026rsquo;s administrators seem not to appreciate the damage this man is doing to young minds. He has some real abilities as a teacher, but this conduct is the intellectual equivalent of the school cafeteria serving sawdust.\u0026quot;\nThe student and his parents have requested that the teacher\u0026rsquo;s anti-scientific remarks be corrected in open class, and that the school develop quality control procedures to ensure that future classes are not proselytized and misinformed. They have also referred the matter for disciplinary action. No apology has been forthcoming from the teacher or from the school. The parents state that because of the administration\u0026rsquo;s inaction, they have taken the matter to the school board this week, from whom they are awaiting a response.Some local press from this story is expected this week; the blogosphere may generate more attention.\n(This came to my attention from a post on the SKEPTIC list by Paul Harrison\u0026ndash;thanks, Paul.)\nUPDATE (November 15, 2006): This story has now been reported in the Newark Star-Ledger.\nUPDATE: The Jersey Journal has picked up the story and put some of the audio online. The story is also being picked up by NYC-area radio and television\u0026ndash;the LaClairs have been interviewed by or have scheduled interviews with WCBS radio, 1010 WINS radio, Fox 5 News, and NBC 4 News.\nUPDATE (November 22, 2006): The Observer (the weekly newspaper for Kearny, NJ) has published some quotes from the recordings and a few letters to the editor.\nThe Flamingo (2006-12-09):\nThis guy is a history teacher? Judging from the account of what he told the class, he believes the earth is about 6,000 years old. That view ignores somewhere around 95,000 years of human history.I feel bad for those students. The kids he had been teaching for 15 years are the ones who really lost in this situation.\nThe Flamingo (2006-12-09):\nBy the way, I linked to your blog from mine. Come check it out if you wish.The Honorable Flamingo\nOrac (2006-12-09):\nThat's way, way too close to home for comfort for me.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIf this article from John Stossel has any truth to it, then I predict that this guy will still be a teacher a year from now.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\n(and, yes, I recognize that the teacher was in New Jersey and not New York)\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nAre you sure this story isnt totally full of shit? I looked, and looked, and looked for ANY kind of verification to this, and came up with NOTHING, other than that David Paszkiewicz is a world class Rubik's cube puzzle solver (or a name on a church webpage.) There isnt even any local news to support this claim. *Sometimes i worry about the power bloggers have... \u0026lt;sigh\u0026gt;*\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nsmtr: I exchanged emails with Paul LaClair about it. He says he expects some local newspaper coverage this week; the local paper there comes out on Thursdays. I've also asked to be able to listen to some of the audio clips; he's said OK, but so far has said that they've had some technical issues and I've not yet heard anything.I have verified that David Paszkiewicz is a U.S. History teacher at Kearny High School; he's also head coach of the women's crew team.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nDude this is a fucking joke...... first off why the fuck would you want so much attention over stupid shit... and second... i know this teacher personally and know he is a good person and diddnt mean to offend ne one... and fuck the little bitch ass who recorded this shiit... im a senior @ khs and this just adds to all the fucking drama in this school.. so u know wat fuck all u bitch asses who want to see action taken... u r a sad sad person and need to fucking get a fucking life so ya im done here..... u wanna talk shit tell me @ neo1123@gmail.com\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nneo1123: It's not a joke, it's a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause by a teacher who is using his position of authority in a public school to push his religion on students, as well as to purvey misinformation about science--and has then lied about it to the principal when called on it. The teacher has broken the law, demonstrated incompetence as a teacher, and shown himself to be dishonest. That's three items that argue for his permanent removal from the classroom.If your comment here is an indication of your reading comprehension skills, your writing skills, and your critical thinking skills, I don't think you should be receiving a high school diploma.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nneo1123: How good a person he is has no bearing on the issue of whether or not a public school classroom is the right forum for proselytizing.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI believe this is the most stupidiest thing ever. That kid is just trying to find attetntion for himself. I've had this teacher and he is one of the best teachers. He taught history the way it was and in group discussions he would view both points without no religion remarks. So who ever reads this, don't be ignorants and know the facts first. The kid who claimed this is the type of kid no one likes and wants to drive attention to hiself. I say to the father to drop it because that teacher is loved by many and going against it will cause much problems.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nNeo1123We 'pay attention over stupid shit' because your teacher was doing something very wrong to the students in his charge.Look at it this way, if the school ignores one religious teacher's words, then they might also ignore another religious teacher's words. Would you have been so willing to come to the defense of someone who professed that all Christians were going to hell because they had the wrong religion?Perhaps you would be uncomfortable with a teacher who claimed that his religion \"just knew\" that Blacks were inferior to the White Race.Both beliefs have a lot of supporters in this world - and although human culture is a great topic for a High School class, teaching these beliefs as truth is as wrong as what the History teacher did.Lastly, you're a senior in High School, and this is how you communicate? Perhaps your school has failed you. If this teacher is any indication of the quality of your school, I'd be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI am a graduate from KHS and have been in this teacher's history class. In no way does he preach or push on his religious views. No students in his class, when I was there, had problems with his behavior. In turn, we we're mature and debated with him. Students who disagreed with his MENTIONS to the Bible--not preaching--debated the teacher and we actually enjoyed the intellectual debates with him. Paszkiewicz does not say you must be Christian, he just expresses his point of view. From my experience in his class, students are the ones who initiate a religious discussion: They would ask him what he thought of gay marriage and why. He would respond with his view and back it up with HIS VIEWS--as would a Muslim with his, as would a biologist with his, and as would a Jew with his. If students want to know what this man's views are toward a particular issue or even his views about the Civil War or about Kennedy's assassination, he will answer them. Why should he lie and/or alter his views toward historical issues. If he feels Kennedy's life was up because God was calling him, then the teacher ought to express that since the student's ask HIM--they asked for his views. If the teacher's views about a historical event contain religious backing and the questions from students ask for an opinion, then he should give his honest opinion. I had class with Mr. Paszkiewicz and for 15 years no students took such measures--not because of fear--but because we enjoyed debating him. I know for a fact, that if you ask any other student at KHS, they will tell you that they support the teacher--and NOT the student. It's unfortunate that the teacher's reputation has been tarnished because he is one of the best history teachers at KHS and has one of the most interesting and student engaging teaching methods--via official debates. Before, you all accept LaClair's atheist views--which he has said they are, consider and listen to OTHER students who admire this man. Thank you.\nNullifidian (2006-12-09):\n\"Former Student\",Unless Paszkiewicz has gone off his meds since you allegedly took a class from him, I highly doubt your characterization of things, since part of the recordings have been made available online.Can you tell us the precise pedagogical reason for telling a class \"You all belong in hell.\"?Listening to the tapes, if this man is the best history teacher you have there, then the whole school is a dead loss.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nam a sister of a fellow classmate in this kids class.If you did not hear the recording correctly, it clearly states that Mr.P says\"Does anyone have a problem that we are talking about religion and not populism (the topic)\"? If that kid Matt had a problem, right then and there he should of said,\"Yes\" But yet, he insisted on being dificult.Also,in this particular recording if you did not hear correctly it also said that Matt started the hole thing with religion. He is simply not proving anything.He is playing the victim when he is infact the bully.From what my sister tells me he infact is an amazing teacher. He didn't do anything wrong and I don't think he would ever want to intensionally offend someone. I honestly think that this case went overboard,if he had a problem he should have switched his teacher or told the teacher he disagreed with talking about religion.So in conclusion,I think that Matt took this way overboard and he lost the case because you have to hear what the recording says clearly.Lastly, i'd like to say that if everyone else in his class says they love the teacher and would never harm or affend a thing then why would only one student think that? It could of simply been delt with if he would switch his teacher or have a conference.But instead he wants to get everyone's attention when there are more important things to deal with in life.P.S. I know i don't have the best english grammar. =)\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nFirst off, I am a recent graduate fro KHS, so I am very in touch with how the class was run.Second, If any non-Christian asked me if they were going to hell, I would answer, \"There is a strong possibly that yes you are, unless God wants to save you from eternal damnation.\"Also, the quote was taken completely out of context. Anyone, with any common sense, can determine that. Furthermore, there is no need to target the school and its curriculum. You cannot disagree with my statement that he is one of the best history teachers, until you have taken his course. Also, are you from Kearny? Do you know the environment in my town? Are you aware of anything that has to do with the school itself? If not, then anything you say is mere speculation and assumption based on one source--Matt's quotes and recording.Also, the the previous speaker said, the teacher did indeed ask if everyone was OK with the path the lecture took. The class enthusiastically said yes. Matt planned the whole event, the questions, recording, and initiating the topic. The teacher did not walk in and say, OK instead of populism we will talk about God. The student and students initiated and prolonged the discussion. The teacher was confronted about the issue in September and no longer mentions God in the classrrom. There is no need for prosecution since the teacher no longer acts as he did before. This clearly shows the student's ongoing appetite for attention and attempt to tarnish the teacher's reputation. This is the same kid who refuses to stand to the Flag Salute because it says Under God and because he hates Bush. This is not the first act of defiance by this young man. So please, all I ask, is that you hear all sides of the story and hear the students/alumni views before making any judgments about a man and kid that none or most of you have not met.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nFormer Student: You, like the other students posting here, are failing to address or even recognize the actual issue here.You should ask yourself this question: Would it have been OK for this teacher to have injected his personal religious views into the classroom if he was a Muslim, a Scientologist, or an atheist? If your answer is yes, then at least you are advocating a consistent position. If your answer is no, then you are only supporting the teacher because his religious views are the same as yours, and you don't understand what the U.S. Constitution requires of a teacher in a public school--which in turn means that you've not gotten the education about U.S. government that you should have gotten from your high school.I also haven't seen any of you address the fact that the teacher *lied* when confronted about what he had done, denying that he had said the things that he had. Don't you agree that's wrong? Or is lying also acceptable in Kearny, as long as you're a Christian?\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI am a 28 year old female resident of Kearny. I attended KHS from 1992-1996. I also had David Paszkiewicz as a history teacher while I attended KHS. ALSO, when I was younger, I had David Paszkiewicz as a Sunday School teacher at the then named church, Gospel Light Baptist Church. It is located behind West Hudson Hospital. David Paszkiewicz used to preach about the usual \"no sex before marriage\" but while on a church Memorial Day outing to New Life Island, I caught David Paszkiewicz having sex with his then girlfriend in the woods. That is part of the reason I lost interest in religion, granted not all of it.As far as David Paszkiewicz interjecting his personal religious beliefs and his religious version of history in the classroom, I've also witnessed that first hand. In fact, any of my other friends that had him all said the same thing. How he would tell the students back when I attended how he had this archeologic friend who would follow real archeologist and \"disprove\" whatever findings they came across to disprove evolution or the existance of dinosaurs. We *were* supposed to be learning about WWII. As far as the statement made by the person who stated that David Paszkiewicz would ask the class if anyone had a problem with discussing religion, here is something not considered. As a PUBLIC SCHOOL teacher he shouldn't have asked the question to begin with. If David Paszkiewicz wanted to teach history with a religious twist perhaps he should go teach at Queen of Peace. No matter what, David Paszkiewicz should know better than to even entertain the idea of discussing religion in class like that. I've had other history teachers while I attended KHS, Mr. Muro for example, and when asked a question even remotely resembling religion Mr. Muro would say how he couldn't discuss it. I do not feel bad for \"Dave\", as we used to call him in youth group meetings at church, he is a grown man who should know better than to even entertain a religious topic in a public school.I'm glad someone finally had the nerve to say something about David Paszkiewicz's religious history being taught at KHS and was smart enough to record it. I'm going to cover this topic on myspace today. I bet my friends will feel the same way. Thank you Matthew LaClair for doing what no one has had the guts to do since 1992. If you need someone to testify stating that this has been going on for years, let me know.\nHannah (2006-12-09):\nTo \"former student\": Second, If any non-Christian asked me if they were going to hell, I would answer, \"There is a strong possibly that yes you are, unless God wants to save you from eternal damnation.\"God does want to save us from eternal damnation. That's why He sent Jesus.He also told Christians not to judge those that don't share our beliefs. So if any non-Christians ask you whether they're going to Hell, the correct answer is \"I don't know.\" That is, of course, unless you are God. Oh, and as for the Flag Salute, if I disagree with the way a country is run and the reasons it goes to war, I'm not going to pledge allegiance to it.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nPaul LaClair has pointed out at Ed Brayton's blog that the claim that Paszkiewicz was \"set up\" or instigated into his remarks by his son Matthew is absurd. He provides this summary of the 40-minute class:\"Paszkiewicz initiated nearly every topic in this 40-minute class session, except as otherwise noted. The topics, in order of appearance are:(1) He does not want his children dressing certain ways on Halloween;(2) He home schooled his children until recently.(3) Kearny is a good town (student initiated)(4) Criticism of public education, e.g., cannot read from the Bible(5) He believes in sin and man's fall(6) His children must follow his religion until age 18(7) Purposes of public school (student initiated and quickly disposed of by Paszkiewicz)(8) The Christian scriptures are not religion(9) Evolution is not science(10) The Big Bang could not have happened(11) Faith (student initiated)(12) A being created the universe{At this point, for the first time, Paszkiewicz asks, \"Is this bothering anyone?\"}(13) Christian faith is proved by Biblical prophecies, which have \"come true to the letter and verified\"(14) God told Moses what he had done before there were people to observe it, that's how Moses knew what to write(15) Suppose you were God. God gives choice(16) My son's reply: I wouldn't send my children to hell for eternity.That is what \"elicited\" the comment about belonging in hell.What happened is that Matthew challenged his theology, and Paskiewicz responded accordingly. Draw your own conclusions.\"\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCFF1226: Could you please provide a way that you can be contacted? You can email me at lippard-web at discord.org.\nNullifidian (2006-12-09):\nFirst off, I am a recent graduate fro KHS, so I am very in touch with how the class was run.Second, If any non-Christian asked me if they were going to hell, I would answer, \"There is a strong possibly that yes you are, unless God wants to save you from eternal damnation.\"Well, according to your mythology, not only does God want to save people from eternal damnation, hence the substitutive sacrifice, but also is the only arbiter of who is saved and who isn't.Also, the quote was taken completely out of context. Anyone, with any common sense, can determine that.Well, I asked you to put it in context for me by telling me the precise pedagogical reason for telling a classroom that they all belong in hell. You didn't answer that question.Furthermore, there is no need to target the school and its curriculum.I'm not targeting the curriculum; I am however saying that I am strongly inclined to believe that telling a class that they belong in hell is not in the curriculum.You cannot disagree with my statement that he is one of the best history teachers, until you have taken his course.Even if the rest of his course was nothing short of perfection, the recorded comments would completely remove him from even being in the running for \"one of the best history teachers\". History classes are not places to be talking theology--period.Furthermore, I can determine from what he said that he doesn't have a good grasp of history.For example: \"Scriptures aren't religion, they are the foundation of all of the world's major religions.\"Does that include Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc.? Or do religions with hundreds of thousands of faithful not constitute a \"major religion\"?\"Religion's a set way of doing things, like for example if you take christian faith, right you have main varieties, there's Roman Catholicism, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Baptists.\"When your sole idea of the major sects of Christianity is the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Baptists, then you do not have the historical knowledge to even be expounding on your religion's history, much less the history at large. What about the Greek and Russian Orthodox, the Coptic Christians, the Lutherans (as in Martin 95-Theses-nailed-to-a-church-door Luther), the Calvinists, the Anabaptists, etc.?Here's another doozy:\"But that's the generation [\"prior to 1962\"] that did not have terrorism did not have race agression and all of that.\"Yes, Nat Turner's rebellion, the Indian Wars, lynchings, slavery, race riots all over, including Tulsa where 300 were killed, etc. simply never happened!To say nothing of terrorism. I mean that wasn't a tool ever used by anyone, was it? The FLN (in a war started by the pieds noirs, French colonialists, bombing the Casbah), John Brown, the Wall Street Bombing, the burning of the port of Ostia, numerous assassinations and bombings of government heads and government offices, etc. None of those existed either! \"But if my kid is aged 12 and he's kinda like dad, i appreciate what you've taught me but i've decided in my 12 years of religion that i'm gonna stop going to church, after i break his backside, we're gonna have a little attitude adjustment and i'm gonna say you're gonna get in the car with the rest of the family and go to church. you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're gonna do what i tell you to.\"And that just screams that this man should have a perpetual restraining order on him, keeping him five hundred feet from any children at any time (especially his own).Also, are you from Kearny? Do you know the environment in my town? Are you aware of anything that has to do with the school itself? If not, then anything you say is mere speculation and assumption based on one source--Matt's quotes and recording.Bwahahahahahah!Basically that statement boils down to \"What are you going to believe? What you hear or what I tell you?\"Also, the the previous speaker said, the teacher did indeed ask if everyone was OK with the path the lecture took.It doesn't matter. It's not appropriate for him to be taking up class time with his private religious views. Even if he asked at the outset (he didn't), there should have been nothing to ask about.The fact is that he knew this, which is why he lied to the principal until he was confronted with the recordings, then he shut up (a rare moment for him, apparently) and asked for his union rep.The class enthusiastically said yes. Matt planned the whole event, the questions, recording, and initiating the topic. The teacher did not walk in and say, OK instead of populism we will talk about God.Really? You chide me for not knowing about your city, and yet you are prepared to stake a claim to clairvoyance, claiming you \"know\" what Matt did? Furthermore, again, it doesn't matter. Even if he set it up with the questions, a claim I doubt seriously, the teacher did not have to blissfully babble on about his private religious beliefs in a public school classroom when he should have been teaching history.The student and students initiated and prolonged the discussion.Irrelevant.The teacher was confronted about the issue in September and no longer mentions God in the classrrom.Well, if he were confronted about it, then his preaching in lieu of teaching couldn't have been as uniformly popular as you're attempting to claim. You can't have it both ways.Furthermore, there were plenty of \"god\" references and religious talk in the recordings, so obviously he's failing to teach properly even after he's been notified of complaints. He should be summarily fired for that.There is no need for prosecution since the teacher no longer acts as he did before.Who's talking about prosecution? You can't be prosecuted for this. He should, however, be sacked.This clearly shows the student's ongoing appetite for attention and attempt to tarnish the teacher's reputation. This is the same kid who refuses to stand to the Flag Salute because it says Under God and because he hates Bush.Oh! Horrors!The right not to salute the flag has been one's own since the ruling in Barnette v. West Virginia. Obviously he understands that, so maybe he should be teaching the class, since he seems to have a better grasp of history than you or your former teacher.This is not the first act of defiance by this young man.This sort of irrelevant tripe being taught as fact in a history classroom should be defied.So please, all I ask, is that you hear all sides of the story and hear the students/alumni views before making any judgments about a man and kid that none or most of you have not met.Well, I've heard your side, and my opinion remains unchanged. The teacher should be fired for negligence and gross incompetence.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI graduated from Kearny high and i have to say that even though Mr.P brought up such references in class, he never brought it up unless he was provoked into it, or someone asked him a question on the issue. My guess is that this kid provoked him into discussing this because i know personally that he does not teach everyday about god or church, and only when something was brought up would he do it. This kid is also his own hypocrite in that on tv he said he does not want a big thing to happen with this and just wants him to stop talking about church in a public school, but if this kid did not want such a bit issue about it, why would he call the star ledger, channel four, and cn8 about this issue unless he wanted such attention. I have said to this teacher before i dont feel that we should talk about religious issues at this point and he respected my wishes, now if this kid felt so uncomfortable in class why did he not say something, rather he got a bunch of recording equipment and provoked him into talking about it. I do feel religion should not be taught in public schools but to make such a huge fuss by calling in media who will blow up every little thing about this teacher is ridiculous.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI have a question, as I am also a recent graduate of Kearny High School. What is the difference between a teacher saying his views on religion when it is common knowledge that he is a minister, and any teacher preaching the glory of liberalism. If Mr. Paszkiewicz is wrong shouldn't forcing politcal views on students also be wrong?\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nOolon Colluphid said... \"Well, according to your mythology, not only does God want to save people from eternal damnation, hence the substitutive sacrifice, but also is the only arbiter of who is saved and who isn't.\" You shouldn't question God with such pittiful quetions. Unless you are a zombi, I don't think you have a clue of what will happen after death, or God's plan in that matter. God gives you the choice to belive in him or not. He sent Jesus to die on the cross for you and I. The Bible is the most printed book in history and is known all around the world. Durring one's life time, I believe God gives you many chances to give him a chance. You shouldn't assume that God makes people knowing who is going to go to hell and who isn't. Who are you to ask?\"Even if he set it up with the questions, a claim I doubt seriously, the teacher did not have to blissfully babble on about his private religious beliefs in a public school classroom when he should have been teaching history.\"Mr. Paszkiewicz was in no way prattling on about his beliefs, and it is very ignorant of you to make that comment. You yourself weren't there either. In the beginging of the school year, no books were available, leaving teachers with open class discussions. In that case, the discussion led to religion, which is unfortunate to Matt LaClair. Now many people dislike him for what he has done, and he himself brought more religion into the school. I've never seen so many people standing up for Jesus on school grounds. Therefore, thank you, Matt LaClair, I pray for your own salvation. Though I pitty Matt LaClair, I oppose him and what he has done, but you could say my opinion is biased, being I'm Christian myself. It seems to me that Matt LaClair did indeed premeditate his actions. People have blown the First Amendment out of its original meaning. \"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting hte free exercise therof; or abridging hte freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.\"\"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...\" Mr. Paszkiewicz did not force anyone to believe in what he does. \"or prohibithing the free exercise therof\".... Seems to me people against Mr. Paszkiewicz's right of speech are the ones that are going against the Constitution..\"or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..\" I think Mr. Paszkiewicz is the real victim here. Athiests have no more fight in them and are resorting to pathetically trying to shut them up. Our founding fathers set this country up with God in mind. How can something such as religeon which is so huge be ignored? Especially in history class. If athiests want to ignore religeon, I want to ignore all the worldly junk that is being funneled into my mind, as well as everyone elseses, daily. Athiests like Matt LaClair have been pushing this line back further and further. When are we going to stop them? Music so vulgar and disgusting was never allowed.... They pushed that line back as far as it could possibly go. Worldy music is so disgusting and vulgar now a days that the only thing censored are very strong curse words. Athiests just don't want any one to be influenced by the Word of God. They have gone far enough. When are we, believers going to stand up for what is really right and start pushing back? Everything worldy is what we should be worrying about. THAT is what is truly influential. Everywhere you go, music, advertisements, television, etc. they are just getting more and more influential to everyone. But that is the least attacked subject. Instead, people would much rather attack someone who died for them on a cross. Women and men used to have respect for themselves. Now, sex before marriage is as common as ghanaria. The divorce rate is soaring higher and higher as marriages separate like highschool break-ups. This issue is getting sickening by the day! Last Christmas, everything pertaining to Christ was taken out of Christmas songs. Again the athiests are pushing that line farther back. The most secular things could be heard on the radio, but when a classic song has Christ's name in it, immediate action is taken. \"Schools used to be able to open the Bible and read it as if it were a history book\" I believe I heard these words from Mr. Paszkiewicz. Since athiests removed this, along with prayer in school, America has been rolling in a dirty mud pile of secular confusion. I think we should learn from Matt LaClair. Us belivers should be fighting for Christ stronger than him. Instead, athiests like Matt make movements because the believers don't open their mouths. Matt LaClair doesn't pledge the allegiance because it says \"In God we trust.\" I wonder if he refuses to spend American dollars as well. We have to stop this before they uncapitalize the word God on the dollar. Before they take the word God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Before America loses every foundation it was built on. Another thing I would like to bring up is how horrible the people in school are to Matt LaClair. Because he is against God, they shoot him down for it. If you are for God, you should want Matt LaClair to be saved as well. Cursing him, and befriending him is the opposite of what could save him. Be an example to him, don't show him hatred. All day today at school, I heard remarks, such as, \"I hate that kid,\" etc. People think they are doing the right thing standing up for Jesus' word, but are contradict their point when they attack him. God doesn't want people to believe in the Saviour out of fear or neglection. Jesus was sent for us to understand how God is. We should be an example of Jesus Christ to everyone, ESPECIALLY those who don't believe. Mr. Paszkiewicz is my first period teacher (The best teacher to start off my day, if I may add) and I know that if he denied some things he said, it was by accident, and not intentional. Its not his fault that he didn't record the discussion and listen to it over and over. That would be the only way he would remember such remarks. Thank you.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nJoelle, you win the prize for the most non sequiturs in a single comment.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nKHS graduate wrote: \"I have a question, as I am also a recent graduate of Kearny High School. What is the difference between a teacher saying his views on religion when it is common knowledge that he is a minister, and any teacher preaching the glory of liberalism. If Mr. Paszkiewicz is wrong shouldn't forcing politcal views on students also be wrong?\"The difference is that political views don't constitute an \"establishment of religion.\" However, it could well be inappropriate for a teacher to advocate a particular political view, depending on how it's done--that's what caused Jay Bennish in Colorado to get suspended for a week from his teaching position earlier this year in a case that was in some ways similar to this one.While the Bennish case was actually less serious a violation (at least he was talking about subjects that directly pertained to the course he was teaching!), he got a more severe punishment.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI'm not sure which is more disturbing, the poor judgment displayed by a high school teacher or the poor education displayed by the high school students posting here. Obviously there is a causal relationship between the two, which is why this teacher should be fired.(Hey, Jim, ltns...I'm glad this incident led me to your blog!)\nDoogman (2006-12-09):\nFunny how nearly every supportive post also mentions their relationship to the teacher via their church.Good grief people, you're making the argument FOR firing him. Shut up already.sheesh\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nPublic schools are for education with facts NOT religous beleifs. This guy is a wacko... He is a baptist pastor! Educated by the cult leader Falwell himself! Some people just have to fight for what they believe in even when it is wrong. Eventually scientifical facts will be accepted by the masses of the ignorant whom have fallen in the darkness of the bible. Honestly there are a lot of morons who think he is a good person. A christian pastor is far from that and this guy's actions are what infect their faith. 90% of Americans beleive in a higher being and 90% of people eat at the Olive Garden. That doesn't mean the Olive Garden has good food! More instances like this need to happen so America can stand up and fight against these sick people and their beleifs.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nHmm religious nuts suck. I think this teacher should be sacked and banned from teaching history and stick to being a religious educator/propagandist. Definitely, so long as this one --\u003ehttp://www.myspace.com/mshoover is being sacked for posing nude for art photographs. (She WAS an art teacher, until a more prurient teacher with a grudge decided to use fear of the naked body (ooh its a disgusting unnatural thing that is going to inflame our sordid desires and corrupt us etc etc) to see her removed from the teaching staff.\nmutterhals (2006-12-09):\nWhatever this man did or did not say, talking about one's religion in public school is usually not allowed. He should have enough sense to not interject his personal opinion into the lesson.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nJoelle Perry said... \"Our founding fathers set this country up with God in mind.\"Obviously your history teacher isn't teaching any actual history. While I agree that most of the founding fathers believed in God and were Christians, they certainly did not believe that they were founding a Christian nation or that religion and government should mix. Please read The Treaty of Tripoli which was passed by the Senate and signed by one of our founding fathers, President John Adams, in 1797. Here is Article 11:\"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of emnity against the law, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered ......\" you can read the rest here:http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp\u0026fileName=002/llsp002.db\u0026recNum=23\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nI advise school districts on how NOT to get sued. That's my day job.I am going to use this as a case study on how NOT to deal with this situation. The administrators did not exercise due diligence and have made the district - and themselves personally - vulnerable to litigation.It is apparent that this is not an isolated occurrence with this teacher, as former students are coming forward and saying he did it in their classes too.Obviously the administrators and teachers in this school district need REMEDIAL classes on religion in schools. They obviously have no clue what they are doing.\nAnonymous (2006-12-19):\nI just heard about the story and just wanted the teacher to know that i fully support the guy and his beliefs and make sure he understands there are NO such laws against teaching creation. What's so bad about EDUCATING students with both views rather INDOCTRINATING them with the RELIGION of evolution that has absolutely no empirical evidence!\nEinzige (2006-12-19):\nJoey, We are indeed fortunate to have a one such as you - so well versed in law and biology. Thanks for clearing the issue up for all of us.\nLippard (2006-12-19):\nJoey, you must be a troll. This isn\u0026rsquo;t specifically a creationism case, but creationism is religion, not science (as per the U.S. Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard), and may not be taught in public school science classrooms without violating the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s prohibition on establishment of religion.\nAnonymous (2006-12-19):\nWill this teacher be fired?? How can we support the LaClair family in this fight?? I thought young LaClair handled himself with great aplomb on CNN this eveing.\nCN\nAnonymous (2006-12-19):\nThank you Jim for the wonderful complement but before you use Edward vs. Aguillard agains't creation, READ IT! All it did was determine that states could not mandate that creation be taught in the science classes of their public school. You can't force a teacher to teach it. He still can. That does not mean it cannot be taught! Before you define science, let's define it. SCIENCE:thestudy of the natural world, things you can test and know; knowledge!If what you consider science is the Theory of Evolution, lets define the SIX meanings of EVOLUTION: (1) Cosmic, i.ei the big bang (2) Chemical, (hydrogen evolving into other elements, (3) stellar and planetary (4) organic (life coming from non-life!) (5) macro (animals producing DIFFERENT kinds of animals and (6) micro evolution (variations within kinds. you'll never get a dog to produce a non-dog, they produce after their kind! just what the bible says.) You see jim, for you to consider evolution science, you must take a HUGE leap of faith for your religion because only one of those definitions is scientific, the last one. The rest are all pure imagination. If you wanna believe we came from a ROCK 4.6 billion years ago, thats fine but DON'T call it science. It's a religion. You see, both are religions about ORIGINS. Why should children be INDOCTRINATED with one religious view on origin. Why not EDUCATE them with BOTH views! And yes Jim their are laws against pushing one's religion upon students but there is NO SUCH law against discussing creation science. So stop lying and start thinking. Thank you einzige for that. Hopefully, this excites you too.\nLippard (2006-12-19):\nJoey: Edwards v. Aguillard found that creationism is religion. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits establishment of religion, including the endorsement of creationism by public school teachers. The Kitzmiller v. Dover decision extended that from creationism to intelligent design.\nFurther, teachers in elementary and secondary schools do not have the freedom to teach whatever they want\u0026ndash;they need to stick to the curriculum and comply with state educational standards.\nThere are no doubt ways in which creation science can be discussed in public school classrooms without falling afoul of the First Amendment\u0026ndash;e.g., in a world religions class, in a critical thinking class as a source of examples of fallacious reasoning, etc.\nYour discussion of science and evolution is a bit less than precise or accurate. \u0026ldquo;Evolution\u0026rdquo; is sometimes used in a broader sense than referring to biological evolution, but that\u0026rsquo;s not what the creation/evolution dispute is about. Biological evolution is about how life changes and diversifies, and it\u0026rsquo;s well established science.\nArtoo45 (2006-12-19):\nThose students offering defense of Mr. Paskiewicz seem almost incapable of constructing cogent sentences in English. Your right to swing your Jesus (or Mohammed or Xenu or Buddha) ends where my (or anyone else's) face begins. Any other solution will end up in endless conflict. It would be a shame to bring our species to an end arguing over things that don't exist.\nAnonymous (2007-01-02):\nArtoo, The evidence of a Designer is shown through the design of His creation. Research the stars, the constants, the extremely fine-tuned universe. Laws rule our universe. Did they evolve from nothing? are they still evolving? They are set to the precise numbers needed for earth to be habitable. If changed, even a fraction, life wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to flourish. Study the position of Earth from the sun. One inch closer or further would cause us to burn or freeze. The fact that we\u0026rsquo;re in a safe zone of our galaxy is positive evidence for a Designer.\nThe DNA code itself is overwhelmingly complex. If all the DNA in your body were placed end-to-end, it would stretch from here to the Moon more than 500,000 times! In book form, that information would completely fill the Grand Canyon more than 75 times! Yet,if one set of DNA (one cell\u0026rsquo;s worth) from every person who ever lived were placed in a pile, the final pile would weigh less than an aspirin!\nThe evidence for design cries out for a Designer. I know Him personally and i know He loves you greatly and would love for you to seek Him.\nGot questions? E-mail me at godboy7@aol.com\nAnonymous (2007-01-02):\nAs far as what the LAW says, JIM,\nIt has never been illegal to teach Creation in public schools. Evolution is what came later but creation has never been made illegal. It\u0026rsquo;s only illegal to forcefully try and convert one\u0026rsquo;s religious beliefs on students but it is perfectly fine to teach about creation.\nThe evolutionist Steven Jay Gould said,\n\u0026ldquo;no statute exists in any state to bar instruction in \u0026lsquo;creation science.\u0026rsquo; It could be taught before, and it can be taught now\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;THE VERDICT ON CREATIONISM, New York Times July 19, 1987, p.34\nEvolutionary biologist Micheal Zimmerman said,\n\u0026ldquo;The Supreme Court ruling DID NOT, in any way outlaw the teaching of \u0026lsquo;creation science\u0026rsquo; in public school classrooms. Quite simply it ruled that, in the form taken by the Louisiana law, it is unconstitutional to demand equal time for this particular subject. \u0026lsquo;Creation science\u0026rsquo; can still be brought into science classrooms if and when teachers and administrators feel that it is appropriate. Numerous surveys have shown that teachers and administrators favor just this route. And, in fact, \u0026lsquo;creation science\u0026rsquo; is being taught in science courses throughout the country.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Keep Guard Up After Evolution Victory.\u0026rdquo; BioScience 37 (9, October 1987):636\nPresident of NCSE, Eugenie Scott said,\n\u0026ldquo;The Supreme Court says only that the Louisiana law violates the constitutional seperation of church and state: IT DOES NOT SAY that no one can teach scientific creationism\u0026ndash;and unfortunately many individuals do. Some school districts even require \u0026rsquo;equal time\u0026rsquo; for creation and evolution.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;National Center for Science Education, Nature 329 (1987):282.\nWlliam B. Provine(evolutionist) said,\n\u0026ldquo;Teachers and school boards in public schools are already FREE under the Constitution of the USA to teach about supernatural origins if they wish in their science classes. Laws can be passed in most countries of the world requiring discussion of supernatural origins in science classes, and still satisfy national legal requirements. And i have a suggestion for evolutionists. INCLUDE discussion of supernatural origins in your classes, and promote discussion of them in public and other schools. Come off your high horse about having only evolution taught in science classes. The exclusionism you promote is painfully self-serving and smacks of elitism. Why are you afraid of confronting the supernatural creationism believed by the majority of persons in the USA and perhaps worldwide? Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t students be encouraged to express their beliefs about origins in a class discussing origins by evolution?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;Biology and Philosophy 8(1993):124\nNow lets see what some of the cases actually say.\nIn the landmark ruling of School District of Abington Towship v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225,(1963)the court held that,\n\u0026ldquo;it certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may be effected consistently with the First Amendment.\nIn 1980 The Supreme Court said,\n\u0026ldquo;the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 42(1980)\nIn 1987,\n\u0026ldquo;Teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of mankind to school children might be done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction. Teachers already possess the flexibility to present a \u0026lsquo;VARIETY of scientific theories about the origins of humankind\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;and are \u0026lsquo;FREE TO TEACH ANY AND ALL FACETS OF THIS SUBJECT.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ndash;Edwards vs. Aguiliard, 482 U.S. 96(1987) p.14\nAs for Kitzmiller v. Dover,\n“to preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment … , we will enter an order permanently enjoining defendants from maintaining the ID policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.”\nSimply put, in that case the court ruled against requiring teachers to teach the faults in evolution. It also ruled against REQUIRING the teaching of creation. That DOES NOT mean it cannot be taught as my very detailed summary of the law shows.\nFor anyone who is reading this, please see the law as it is. I hope Mr. Paskiewicz gets a hold of this. I\u0026rsquo;m finished.\nEinzige (2007-01-02):\nJoey, Your \u0026ldquo;design\u0026rdquo; argument supports the idea that God loves black holes and hard vacuum far more than \u0026ldquo;He\u0026rdquo; does life. And, anyway, how do you get from that to the idea that Jesus Christ is Lord?\nQuite a gap of logic, there, it seems to me!\nNext, all your court decision and other quotes strike me as red herrings. Paszkiewicz wasn\u0026rsquo;t teaching a science class, nor was he engaged in \u0026ldquo;appropriate study\u0026rdquo; of anything \u0026ldquo;presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.\u0026rdquo; He wasn\u0026rsquo;t even teaching \u0026ldquo;scientific creationism.\u0026rdquo; He was spouting off endless personal opinions and absurdities.\nWhy do you think such a moron is worthy of defending?\nLippard (2007-01-02):\nJoey: Einzige has it exactly right\u0026ndash;your response has nothing to do with what Paszkiewicz was doing in his U.S. History class, which was proselytizing so blatantly that the Rutherford Institute agrees he was in the wrong. And he wasn\u0026rsquo;t even teaching creation science or intelligent design, as Einzige notes. Teachers in primary and secondary schools do not have complete freedom of what to teach; they need to follow the curriculum (and, in a science class, the state science standards).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already agreed that there are ways \u0026ldquo;creation science\u0026rdquo; can be taught in the classroom without violating the Constitution, so you\u0026rsquo;re beating a dead horse on that point. How about addressing the subject at hand? This blog post is not about possible circumstances under which creationism can be taught in schools, it\u0026rsquo;s about what David Paszkiewicz did. If you want to argue about whether creationism is science and how it can be legally taught, go do that at an appropriate thread on The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb (www.pandasthumb.org) or in the Internet Infidels\u0026rsquo; Discussion Forums (www.iidb.org), not on this one.\nIf you return here, please address the subject at hand. What, if anything, do you have to say in defense of what David Paszkiewicz did (and is still doing) in his classroom? Would you support an atheist, a Muslim, or a Scientologist similarly injecting their own religious beliefs on a daily basis into public school classrooms, or are you supporting Paszkiewicz as special pleading for the Christian religion, without regard for principle?\nAnonymous (2007-01-02):\nI have come to the conclusion that God doesn't believe in Athiests but He still loves them and is more than willing to forgive anyone's sin if they are willing to accept Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the cross. I BELONG IN HELL ! -And i\u0026rsquo;m a Christian.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be the first one to say it. I have done nothing worthy of God\u0026rsquo;s love but i\u0026rsquo;ve accepted HIM TAKING MY PLACE on the cross. God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Just like a mother may love her son but does not love his misbehavior.\nThe reason Atheists can\u0026rsquo;t find God is the same reason thiefs can\u0026rsquo;t find the police.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also come to the conclusion that everyone dies\u0026hellip;duh. And everyone will be dead much longer than they\u0026rsquo;ve lived. Atheists better be absolutly sure God doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist cause when WE ALL face Him that day we\u0026rsquo;ll be without excuse.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not trying to start another dialogue. I just want to see people in heaven just like God does. If i\u0026rsquo;m wrong about the afterlife then fine, no problem, we\u0026rsquo;ll all return the earth and become trees. If atheists are wrong then\u0026hellip;uh oh. We\u0026rsquo;ll all face God and have tell him why we didn\u0026rsquo;t accept His FREE gift of salvation.\nSo to anyone reading this blog site, realize its about much more than whats being done in the classroom. It\u0026rsquo;s about what happens when we die. I want you in heaven, God wants you there too. (Satan hates you and DOESN\u0026rsquo;T want you there.) Accept His grace and forgiveness and build your relationship with Him.\nJim, God bless you man.\nEinzige (2007-01-02):\nLet's dub Joey's response the \"retreat to non sequitur,\" shall we? For some reason I never cease to be amazed at the depths of people\u0026rsquo;s stupidity.\nTruly a sight to behold.\nAnonymous (2007-01-17):\nYou know what Einzige You call christianity stupidity but acording to you, you believe when you die you go in the ground and become a tree. And you know what i hope you do, because when you do im going to cut you down make you into paper and print the bible on you.\nJesus loves you,\nJoseph\nEinzige (2007-01-17):\nActually, quickkid, if you'll notice, I wasn't calling Christianity stupid (though, in point of fact, I do believe that to be the case), I was calling Joey stupid, based on his apparent inability to articulate a coherent argument. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure where you got the idea that I believe in reincarnation, though. As far as I can tell, when I die I\u0026rsquo;ll simply cease to exist. What you\u0026ndash;or the billions of bacteria who will undoubtedly have me for lunch\u0026ndash;do with my remains at that point is none of my concern.\nAnonymous (2007-01-24):\nwhy do you think that christianity is stupid???\nEinzige (2007-01-24):\nquickkid, Have you actually read the Bible?\nPlease don\u0026rsquo;t misinterpret the tone of the above question. You appear to have asked yours in earnest, so I am responding earnestly, as well. I have read a lot of the bible and have found it very difficult to take seriously at all. In fact, a lot of it is nothing short of utterly reprehensible.\nFlip to virtually any page and you\u0026rsquo;re bound to find something that is, on its face, patently absurd. Take a look at these, for a start.\nAnonymous (2007-01-25):\nTrue i can admit that the bible is a little confusing but you must remember the bible was inspired by God but written by men. what they wrote was simply their interpertation of what God was saying. please check out this site it explains a lot about how the bible is proven to be true not only through a christian stand point but a scientific stand point as well http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t003.html I think what people like to get caught up in is tring to find mistakes and contradictions in the bible and they totally miss the great messege that the bible is tring to give.\nthink about it.. if christanity is wrong then whats the big deal if you believed in jesus christ and his teachings. its not going to count agianst you. But if your wrong then you will have an eternaty in hell regreting that you rejected God and his teachings. thiers really no thought needed.. why not play it safe and believe in Jesus Christ and the bible. its a win win situation. either you die and go to heaven or you die and become dirt and nothing more. But why risk going to hell by simply not believing in nothing. theirs no point.\nThink about it thats all i ask.. oh and tell me what you think about that site.\nUnknown (2007-01-25):\nquickkid wrote: \u0026ldquo;think about it.. if christanity is wrong then whats the big deal if you believed in jesus christ and his teachings. its not going to count agianst you. But if your wrong then you will have an eternaty in hell regreting that you rejected God and his teachings. thiers really no thought needed.. why not play it safe and believe in Jesus Christ and the bible. its a win win situation. either you die and go to heaven or you die and become dirt and nothing more. But why risk going to hell by simply not believing in nothing. theirs no point.\u0026rdquo;\nYou just evoked Pascal\u0026rsquo;s Wager. Do you really think that the God you believe in would reward you for your belief if the basis of that belief is merely \u0026ldquo;Just in case God exists. If not, oh well.\u0026rdquo;? Really?\nAlso, there remains the problem of whether you are picking the right diety to believe in the first place. There are many more \u0026ldquo;gods\u0026rdquo; other than the Christian God that require a belief in him/her/it/them to avoid going to the \u0026ldquo;bad place\u0026rdquo; in the afterlife. How would you go about covering your butt on the off chance that one those other gods really exist?\nAnonymous (2007-01-25):\nTo Monika, so you fill that it would be better to believe in nothing then? Insted of \u0026ldquo;chancing\u0026rdquo; that you might have believed in the right religion you would rather just give up completly and lose any chance you had at going to heaven?\nDo you have any real proof that Christanity is a wrong religion or are you just simply basing your argument off of personal opinion\nEinzige (2007-01-26):\nQuickkid, The main problem (and there are several to choose from) I have with Pascal\u0026rsquo;s Wager is that it recommends belief in pretty much anything for which there is a potential payoff and virtually no cost. Along with Christianity, Quickkid, do you also believe in leprauchans and Djinnis? If not, why not? Isn\u0026rsquo;t it better to believe in them than not?\nRegarding your web site recommendation, I\u0026rsquo;m checking it out and will definitely have more to say on it later.\nRe your latest argument to Monika: The burden of proof is on the Christian to demonstrate the validity of his claims. Non-belief is the default position and, given the paucity of evidence for the virgin birth and the resurrection, etc., I\u0026rsquo;d say you\u0026rsquo;ve got quite a burden yet.\nAnonymous (2007-01-26):\ntrue i did use a bad example i was simply trying to say that its better to believe in something then nothing. And no, im not saying that, that is the reason that i believe in christianity (simply as a safe gaurd) I believe in it because i truely believe it is the true religion. i must admit i did make it sound like i only believed in christianty just to be safe but thats not the reason at all. oh and no i do not believe in lepercons and djinnis because there is no proof that those things exist. as where in the bible it numerously gives accout and even prophecies historical events that did come to pass. so why exactly are you an atheist\ni would just like to see your views\nEinzige (2007-01-26):\n\"oh and no i do not believe in lepercons and djinnis because there is no proof that those things exist.\" Think about it\u0026hellip; if leprauchans and Djinnis don\u0026rsquo;t exist then what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with believing in them? It\u0026rsquo;s not going to count against you. But if you\u0026rsquo;re wrong then you will have missed out on the possibility of finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or that lamp to rub for the 3 wishes.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s really no thought needed\u0026hellip; Why not play it safe and believe in Leprauchans and Djinnis? It is a win-win situation. Why risk missing out on a pot of gold when it\u0026rsquo;s better to believe in something rather than nothing\u0026hellip; Hmmmmmm?????\nGive the strongest example of a fulfilled prophecy that you can think of.\nI am an atheist because I can\u0026rsquo;t bring myself to believe in things without reason (and I mean a better reason than simply \u0026ldquo;playing it safe\u0026rdquo;). Why are you a Christian, quickkid?\nEinzige (2007-01-26):\n...you must remember the bible was inspired by God but written by men. what they wrote was simply their interpertation of what God was saying. So then how can the Bible be helpful at all in understanding God and what He wants for us? And why would God leave such an important job to people he must have known would corrupt his word? Doesn\u0026rsquo;t that seem just a little strange to you?\n\u0026hellip;and they totally miss the great messege that the bible is tring to give.\nWhat message is that? Why would a loving, caring, all-knowing God, who certainly ought to be capable of writing compellingly and persuasively, churn out the confusing mess that is the Bible? You would think that it would be literally impossible for anyone to misinterpret it! The fact that people do demands an explanation! (Personally I think the simplest\u0026ndash;and most likely\u0026ndash;one is this: The Bible is not divinely inspired)\noh and tell me what you think about that site.\nIn a word: unconvincing.\nBryan White (2007-01-26):\nJim, What is the source of the material you apparently quoted in the original blog post (in italics)?\nI\u0026rsquo;ve followed the URLs you provided in the text without satisfaction, and the author isn\u0026rsquo;t identified, either.\nIt wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a bad idea for you to provide clear identification of the source you used. It\u0026rsquo;s an issue of credibility.\nBryan White (2007-01-26):\nNevermind. I see you attributed it to Paul (LaClair) up at the top. Paul would not admit having authored it in a fairly recent message board conversation. For whatever reason (perhaps on the advice of his lawyer in light of impending litigation). Thanks for making it sufficiently clear. Cheers!\nBryan White (2007-01-26):\nBlogger is giving me an error message when I try to eliminate the near-duplicate post. This new Blogger interface still seems to have some problems. Apologies for any inconvenience (but I blame Blogger!).\nLippard (2007-01-26):\nBryan: You are mistaken.\nThe source is identified in the first sentence of the blog post: \u0026ldquo;The following is from Paul L. LaClair, a NYC attorney who lives in Kearny, New Jersey, and is posted with his permission.\u0026rdquo; I came across this text posted to the SKEPTIC mailing list (by someone other than LaClair, who had seen it on another mailing list), then tracked down Paul LaClair to verify that he had written it, and obtained his permission to post it on my blog. I also obtained a copy of the recordings from the LaClairs.\nUnknown (2007-01-27):\nquickkid wrote: \u0026ldquo;so you fill that it would be better to believe in nothing then? Insted of \u0026ldquo;chancing\u0026rdquo; that you might have believed in the right religion you would rather just give up completly and lose any chance you had at going to heaven?\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m not saying that it would be better for you or I to believe in nothing instead of your God. I\u0026rsquo;m just pointing out how weak that particular argument of yours is. Even you say that self-preservation is not the reason you believe in your God. At least, it\u0026rsquo;s not the primary reason. You didn\u0026rsquo;t directly say so, but I\u0026rsquo;m guessing you agree that your God wouldn\u0026rsquo;t appreciate self-preservation to be the main reason for someone believing in Him. Correct me if I\u0026rsquo;m wrong, but wouldn\u0026rsquo;t that level of reasoning actually be an insult to your God? The threat of hell/punishment is sufficient for small children, but we tend to want better justification for our beliefs as we mature. So, my advice is for you to just stop using Pascal\u0026rsquo;s Wager in your arguments, since it\u0026rsquo;ll only weaken your position, not strengthen.\nOn a related note, you may have noticed that I kept using \u0026ldquo;your God\u0026rdquo; instead of just \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rdquo; in the above paragraph. This is because not only are there several other \u0026ldquo;gods\u0026rdquo; of the non-Christian type that can potentially be worshiped, but there are also several different versions of the Christian God that can by believed in, too. Just look at how many different Christian sects are out there. These sects differ not only in what meanings (literal, metaphorical, broad definition of words, narrow definition of words, unfortunate mistranslation, no longer applies to modern society, etc.) they inferred from God\u0026rsquo;s Word (Bible), but also in which version of the Bible they are inferring from. It sometimes even depends upon the individual preacher who happens to be leading a particular group within a larger sect.\nTo say that all of these sects worship the same God would lead you into quite a snag if you are confronted with a sect that interprets God\u0026rsquo;s Word so differently from your interpretation that you blurt out, \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re not true Christians. That\u0026rsquo;s not what God meant at all.\u0026rdquo; In other words, the people in that sect do not believe in the same God as yours. (Do those people go to hell for their misinterpretations?)\nThis leads to the question of what a \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; Christian is, or, specifically, which version of the Christian God is the correct one. Obviously, you believe that your particular sect knows which God is the real deal (just like all the other people in their own particular sects believe that their version of God is the real deal). You might answer me that your God would take into consideration the fallible nature of mankind and give brownie points for effort, as long as they get the very basics of Christianity down. But what are the basics? Again, this varies from sect to sect.\nGiven this, unless you start specifying to us what version of the Bible you subscribe to (don\u0026rsquo;t forget to include the edition number and publishing company!), what your sect\u0026rsquo;s interpretations on several areas of that Bible are, etc., we would have no idea of what we are being asked by you to believe in.\nYou asked me,\n\u0026ldquo;Do you have any real proof that Christanity is a wrong religion or are you just simply basing your argument off of personal opinion\u0026rdquo;\nWell, as I pointed out above, the term \u0026ldquo;Christianity\u0026rdquo; includes in its meaning very diverse and often-contradicting sets of beliefs. It\u0026rsquo;s necessary for you to specify which set of beliefs you are basing your arguments on in the first place so that we can all avoid using what you would consider strawmen versions of your particular stripe of Christianity.\nAnonymous (2007-01-31):\n(Do those people go to hell for their misinterpretations?) Like i said in one of my previous comments is that people like to get caught up on the little things.\nfor instance:\nsome christans believe that the rapture will happen before the tribulation times others believe that it will happen during the tribulation times and others believe that it will happen at the end.\nThe bible does not give an exact date so no one can be sure, but that doesnt matter. whether you believe it will happen at the begining or the end is not important. thats not going to keep you from going to heaven.\nwhat you need to believe is that Jesus Christ is the one true God, that He died one the cross for our sins, he rose from the dead on the third day, and that He is comming back for us again.\nEinzige (2007-01-31):\nQuickkid, According to Jesus himself, we need to do quite a bit more than simply believe in him.\nIn Luke Chapter 18 Jesus says we must sell everything and follow him\u0026hellip;\nIn Luke Chapter 14 Jesus says we have to hate our families and ourselves and give up everything\u0026hellip;\nIn Matthew 5 he says we need to be more righteous than the Pharisees\u0026hellip;\nIn Matthew 18 he says we have to become like little children (and what the hell is that supposed to mean?)\u0026hellip;\nIn John 3 he says we need to be born again (again, WTF?)\u0026hellip;\nIf we don\u0026rsquo;t do all those things then we\u0026rsquo;re still going to hell. Jesus says it!\nHave you sold everything? Are you following the Mitzvot?\nI\u0026rsquo;ll see you in Hell!\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nso you believe in hell?\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nin responce to Luke Chapter 18 More important is the man\u0026rsquo;s question. \u0026ldquo;What must I do to inherit eternal life?\u0026rdquo; He wants to know how he can be sure he will share in the life to come. Jesus\u0026rsquo; reply focuses on the standard of righteousness as represented in portions of the Ten Commandments. Avoiding adultery, murder, stealing and lying, as well as the positive call to honor one\u0026rsquo;s parents, are specifically noted. The spirit of Jesus\u0026rsquo; reply fits with what was said in 10:25-28, where the commandment to love God and others was cited more generally. In this context the reply is significant, because the issue of money, which will surface shortly, can make us view others as means to an end, rather than as people. So Jesus concentrates here on commandments dealing with how we relate to others. Jesus wishes to check this confidence with a further demand that will reveal two things:\n(1) how generous the man is and\n(2) whether he will listen to Jesus. He still lacks something. Here\nJESUS IS NOT ASKING THE MAN TO DO SOMETHING HE ASKS EVERYONE TO DO, SINCE HE WILL COMMEND ZACCHAEUS\u0026rsquo;S GENEROSITY IN 19:1-10\nwithout asking him to sell all. What Jesus does is test the man\u0026rsquo;s heart and attachments. Is God placed ahead of worldly possessions in this man\u0026rsquo;s life? Does the man really love God and others? So Jesus tells him that he lacks one thing: he must sell all his possessions.\nBut to stop here is to miss the point. Jesus goes on to promise the man treasure in heaven if he will follow Jesus. The need to come to Jesus, to trust him, is not absent from the passage. It is merely defined by reference to the obstacle that stands between the man and God: his security in his wealth.\nThe man\u0026rsquo;s response says it all. He is very sad. The choice is a painful one, and he refuses to consider it. Grieved at the options, he chooses his wealth.\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nin responce to luke 14 26 So Jesus calls for a follower who will hate his mother and father, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters\u0026ndash;yes, even his own life. The point of the list is that no other relationship is first for a disciple. \u0026ldquo;Hate\u0026rdquo; is used figuratively and suggests a priority of relationship. Jesus is first. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus, not anyone or anything else. A disciple is a learner, and the primary teacher in life is Jesus. This total loyalty is crucial, given the rejection and persecution that lie ahead. If his followers care more about family than about Jesus, when families are divided under pressure of persecution, they will choose against Jesus. This is what lies behind Jesus\u0026rsquo; remarks. Discipleship is not possible if Jesus is not the teacher.\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nin responce to matt 5:20 As if Jesus\u0026rsquo; words in 5:3-16 were not strong enough, he presents even more stringent demands of the kingdom in these verses. While various groups of Christians today may differ concerning exactly how Jesus intended his disciples to interpret the law, one point is clear: Jesus was not an antinomian. He expected his followers to understand and apply the moral principles already revealed in Scripture.\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nin responce to matt 18 Here Jesus begins the fourth discourse in Matthew, addressing relationships in the church, the community of the kingdom (18:1-35). Relations with the state (17:24-27), with one\u0026rsquo;s spouse (19:1-9) and with children (19:13-16) surround this section. Yet Jesus\u0026rsquo; teaching on relationships here especially addresses relationships among disciples. As God\u0026rsquo;s community, they are to watch out for one another, expressing patience toward the spiritually young as well as seeking to restore the straying, gently disciplining the erring and forgiving the repentant.\nAnonymous (2007-02-01):\nThus, in his response to Nicodemus, Jesus is giving Nicodemus the opportunity to recognize who it is that stands before him. But Nicodemus gets confused. When Jesus says one must be born from above (anothen), Nicodemus takes it as being born again (cf. NIV text and note). Jesus is speaking of the spiritual realm, but Nicodemus thinks he is referring to the physical. Such a mistake need not be an absolute barrier to understanding Jesus. The Samaritan woman will have the same problem, and yet Jesus will use her misunderstandings to reveal himself to her (4:1-26). But Nicodemus is unable to pick up on the additional clues Jesus gives. Jesus explains being born from above in terms of being born of water and the Spirit (3:5). The water of baptism and the coming of the Spirit have already been associated in this Gospel (1:31-33), and cleansing by water and new life from the Spirit were already associated with one another in the Old Testament, especially in Ezekiel 36:25-28:\nTHANKS FOR THE INVITATION BUT I’LL BE IN HEAVEN.\nEinzige (2007-02-01):\nSo you believe in hell? No. I do not. I was joking.\nThanks for your explanations of the various things Jesus said.\nSo Jesus was making a special case for that one rich guy, used the word \u0026ldquo;hate\u0026rdquo; when he didn\u0026rsquo;t really mean it, apparently really meant it when he said we should follow the Mitzvot (including the animal sacrifices?), and the rest I confess to not understanding at all. Is that a good summary of your points?\nLippard (2007-02-01):\nquickkid: This is all getting rather far afield of the topic of this blog post. May I recommend the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards (http://www.iidb.org/)?\nUnknown (2007-02-02):\nThis will be my last post to quickkid. quickkid wrote: Like i said in one of my previous comments is that people like to get caught up on the little things.\nYou may recall my following statement:\nYou might answer me that your God would take into consideration the fallible nature of mankind and give brownie points for effort, as long as they get the very basics of Christianity down. But what are the basics? Again, this varies from sect to sect.\nIn your sect, the following is apparently the basics:\nwhat you need to believe is that Jesus Christ is the one true God, that He died one the cross for our sins, he rose from the dead on the third day, and that He is comming back for us again.\nOkay, that\u0026rsquo;s fair. I\u0026rsquo;m guessing there\u0026rsquo;s a bit more than the basics you outlined that didn\u0026rsquo;t occur to you to type out at the time, which is understandable. Just make sure to not assume that just because someone is following the basics you gave above, then that someone also believes in many of the other things that you believe in, too. Some things you believe in may seem obvious to you, given the basics, but not everyone shares your assumptions or follows the same logic.\nI am very glad you took my advice of explaining your beliefs in more detail, as can be seen in some of your responses to Einzige\u0026rsquo;s questioning. I\u0026rsquo;m nowhere even close to knowing what the Bible says, and an attempt by me to read (starting from page 1) a Mormon Bible I got from a hotel room didn\u0026rsquo;t last. The bile that made its way up my throat as I read the first 30 pages or so was enough to fling the book to the pits of dust-dom. No, I\u0026rsquo;m not going to skip ahead to the New Testament, so don\u0026rsquo;t even try to reason with me on this.\nahem Anyway, whatever my horribly biased opinions, at least you are now making slightly more persuasive arguments for Jesus rather than just flinging his name around. Keep up with the details! \u0026hellip;in the other forum that Jim Lippard suggested, of course.\nAnonymous (2007-02-05):\nMonica, Thank you for the advice it was very helpful. it made me look deeper and find out exactly what i believe as a christian. in talking to you and Einzige you two haved helped me by challenging me to really look into the christan faith and find out the core belief which makes christianity different then all the other religions out there today\nbut if i could give you a suggestion\nyou said earlier that you attemped to see what the bible says by reading the morman bible\ni would suggest that you read the book of Romans in a Christian bible and not a morman bible.\nMormons are not Christans and have a totally different belief system then christians do. I do not agree with the morman bible and according to what i believe mormans are not going to heaven.\nthanks again,\nJoseph aka(quickkid)\nUnknown (2007-02-22):\nHi Jim,I'd like to clarify an earlier comment by \"anonymous.\"+++I looked, and looked, and looked for ANY kind of verification to this, and came up with NOTHING, other than that David Paszkiewicz is a world class Rubik's cube puzzle solver (or a name on a church webpage.)+++I am David Paszkiewicz. But I'm not the guy everyone's been talking about. I'm the guy who's producing a documentary on the Rubik's Cube, and for a while, I thought I had a unique name. I know you've been covering this story for a while, and I'm sure a lot of people read this blog, so I just want to avoid being lumped in with the East Coast teacher-preacher. My mom is going crazy worrying about the bad rap that I'm getting over all this. For the record, I don't proselytize, and I'm also not a world-class Rubik's Cuber. But I know a guy who is. David Paszkiewicz, not David Paszkiewicz\nLippard (2007-02-22):\nDavid: howmanyofme.com says there are 9 people named David Paszkiewicz in the United States.\nDon Sheffler (2007-07-07):\n\"Study the position of Earth from the sun. One inch closer or further would cause us to burn or freeze.\"Couldn't stop laughing when I read that.To the point of the article, I don't think I've ever seen a U.S. History teacher so tragically misunderstand the U.S. Constitution.And yes, one of the most telling points in the entire episode is when the teacher completely denied saying any of the things the student claimed. He's a liar willing to sacrifice an honest student to get away with his actions. Very Christianlike of him.\nUnknown (2009-09-15):\nProvoking discussion on controversial issues is fine, but acting like there is such a thing as neutrality in pedagogy is another thing entirely. Science instructors, for example, are hypocrites if they think that they can teach from their own perspective without being religious themselves, since every statement of right and wrong is fundamentally religious in nature, and they\u0026#39;re saying Darwinism is right, aren\u0026#39;t they? By making fun of Creationism, for instance, they are saying that theirs is a better religion than the one they're making fun of, because they're claiming to be right and the other side to be wrong. Again, the moral fundamental of all religions. They just won't name theirs, of course, because that's part of their religious beliefs to do.\nAll this is the same old same old religion in public schools. The best thing to do is do away with public school entirely. It serves Liberty best.\nLippard (2009-09-15):\nI\u0026#39;m not arguing for neutrality in pedagogy. I am arguing for lack of establishment clause violations.\nYou're right that there's a tension between the establishment and free exercise clauses, but I don't think this is a problematic case.\noop_master (2011-06-02):\nquickkid, Mormons use a King James Version of the Bible, the only difference being the choice of references in the foot notes, and occasional offering of the original Hebrew/Greek words that were replaced for italicized words in the body. Mormons hail back to a more pre-Nicean, less Hellanized interpretation of Christianity, and they believe prophets and apostles are on the earth today preparing them for the second coming of Christ.\nWith that said, King James Version or not, whatever you have read in the Bible was not likely written by any apostle or prophet of the Christian faith as there is strong evidence that none of the gospels were written by them, and all epistles and handed-down-by-word writings and traditions from the Christian faith are several generations removed and severely tampered with.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/public-school-teacher-tells-class-you.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe following is from Paul L. LaClair, a NYC attorney who lives in Kearny, New Jersey, and is posted with his permission.  David Paszkiewicz, the teacher described here engaging in incompetent teaching and dishonesty, \u003ca href=\"http://www.kbaptistchurch.org/e/about/\"\u003eis apparently a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church\u003c/a\u003e in addition to being a public school teacher.  LaClair\u0026rsquo;s son Matthew has previously garnered attention for \u003ca href=\"http://barnson.org/node/640\"\u003eprotesting Bush administration activities by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance\u003c/a\u003e.  He seems to be a principled and courageous young man who has caught a really bad teacher:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eKearny, New Jersey\u003cbr /\u003eNovember 10, 2006\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA history teacher at the local public high school here may have bitten off more than he cares to chew this fall. Self-described conservative Baptist David Paszkiewicz used his history class to proselytize biblical fundamentalism over the course of several days at the beginning of this school year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAmong his remarks in open class were statements that a being must have created the universe, that the Christian Bible is the word of God, and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah\u0026rsquo;s ark. If you do not accept Jesus, he flatly proclaimed to his class, \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell.\u0026rdquo; Referring to a Muslim student who had been mentioned by name, he lamented what he saw as her inevitable fate should she not convert. In an attempt to promote biblical creationism, he also dismissed evolution and the Big Bang as non-scientific, arguing by contrast that the Bible is supported by what he calls confirmed biblical prophecies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter taking the matter to the school administration, one of Paszkiewicz\u0026rsquo;s students, junior Matthew LaClair, requested a meeting with the teacher and the school principal. LaClair, a non-Christian, was requesting an apology and correction of false and anti-scientific statements. After two weeks, a meeting took place in the principal\u0026rsquo;s office, wherein Paszkiewicz denied making many of these comments, claiming that LaClair had taken his remarks out of context. Paszkiewicz specifically denied using the phrase, \u0026ldquo;you belong in hell.\u0026rdquo; He also asserted that he did nothing different in this class  than he has been doing in fifteen years of teaching.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the end of the meeting, LaClair revealed that he had recorded the remarks, and presented the principal with two compact discs. The teacher then declined to comment further without his union representative. However, he fired one last shot at the student, saying, \u0026ldquo;You got the big fish \u0026hellip; you got the big Christian guy who is a teacher\u0026hellip;!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCommenting on the situation, LaClair\u0026rsquo;s father, attorney Paul LaClair said, \u0026ldquo;In a few short weeks, this teacher has displayed bigotry,  hypocrisy, arrogance and an appalling ignorance of science. The school\u0026rsquo;s administrators seem not to appreciate the damage this man is doing to young minds. He has some real abilities as a teacher, but this conduct is the intellectual equivalent of the school cafeteria serving sawdust.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe student and his parents have requested that the teacher\u0026rsquo;s anti-scientific remarks be corrected in open class, and that the school develop quality control procedures to ensure that future  classes are not proselytized and misinformed. They have also referred the matter for disciplinary action. No apology has been forthcoming from the teacher or from the school. The parents state that because of the administration\u0026rsquo;s inaction, they have taken the matter to the school board this week, from whom they are awaiting a response.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSome local press from this story is expected this week; the blogosphere may generate more attention.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(This came to my attention from a post on the SKEPTIC list by Paul Harrison\u0026ndash;thanks, Paul.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 15, 2006):  This story \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1163571262150640.xml\u0026coll=1\"\u003ehas now been reported in the Newark Star-Ledger\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1163573821277990.xml\u0026amp;coll=3\"\u003eThe Jersey Journal has picked up the story\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/cgi-bin/prxy/xmedia/nph-cache.cgi/cache=300;/njo/njo/classaudio.mp3\"\u003eput some of the audio online\u003c/a\u003e.  The story is also being picked up by NYC-area radio and television\u0026ndash;the LaClairs have been interviewed by or have scheduled interviews with WCBS radio, 1010 WINS radio, Fox 5 News, and NBC 4 News.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 22, 2006):  The Observer (the weekly newspaper for Kearny, NJ) has published \u003ca href=\"http://www.theobserver.com/currentissue/transcript.shtml\"\u003esome quotes from the recordings\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/11/letters-for-against-paszkiewicz.html\"\u003ea few letters to the editor\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Public school teacher tells class: \"You belong in hell\""},{"content":"The Republicans, like the Democrats, are off to a lousy start in dealing with corruption in response to the mid-term election results. One of the worst Republican sleazy tricks in this election (along with the harassing robocalls designed to appear like they were coming from the Democrats, mailers designed to look like sex offender notices, mailers from fake \u0026ldquo;progressive\u0026rdquo; organizations, calling Democrats and telling them that their polling places had changed, and other deceptive calls and vote suppression tactics) was Michael Steele\u0026rsquo;s hiring homeless people from Philadelphia to hand out flyers to voters in Maryland, telling them that Steele was the Democratic candidate. This was a repeat of a tactic Steele also used in the 2002 election.\nIt didn\u0026rsquo;t work, but the Republicans thought highly enough of it to ask him to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee.\nThe Republicans need to stop being so quick to forgive their own for moral failings and corruption and start showing some accountability and principle. A good start would be getting rid of Karl Rove, who has been right in the middle of the sleaziest of the sleaze.\nUPDATE (November 13, 2006): Looks like Steele will not be the next RNC chairman after all\u0026ndash;it will go to Rep. Mel Martinez of Florida instead. But the point still holds, as Martinez is connected to Jack Abramoff via former Rep. Bob Ney (who resigned after pleading guilty to corruption charges in the Abramoff scandal) and is in the middle of his own campaign finance scandal.\nSeven Star Hand (2006-12-09):\nGood post Jim,Now comes the truly important work of preventing the last six years from ever happening again. As long as people cling to money, religion, and politics, these seemingly never-ending cycles of evil scoundrels, war, great struggles, and repeated injustices will never end.These scoundrels need to be taught a lesson about truth and justice that humanity will take to heart, once and for all.Did it ever dawn on you that money, religion, and politics are the prime sources of human struggle and continuing to beat a dead horse (or donkey, or elephant) will never solve our seemingly never-ending cycles of calamities? One good lesson to take from this election is that politics is a cycle that will always produce greedy scoundrels who must later be defeated or else. Why beat your heads against the same old wall when the door has been sighted and waiting for you to open your eyes and \"see the light?\" Truth, Wisdom, and Justice are non-political, non-religious, and non-monetary.Here is Wisdom !!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI think it comes down to money and power--the root of the problem here is that the U.S. federal government is dealing with such huge sums of money and power that corruption is bound to follow. The best way to solve that is to restrict it on both counts.Richard Carrier offers some suggestions, and I've added a few more in comments on his post.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDavid Brin has a number of specific concrete suggestions for what the Democrats can do to clean up the House of Representatives.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/republicans-off-to-lousy-start-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Republicans, \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/democrats-off-to-lousy-start-in.html\"\u003elike the Democrats\u003c/a\u003e, are off to a lousy start in dealing with corruption in response to the mid-term election results.  One of the worst Republican sleazy tricks in this election (along with the \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/deceptive-and-harassing-republican-pre.html\"\u003eharassing robocalls designed to appear like they were coming from the Democrats\u003c/a\u003e, mailers \u003ca href=\"http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/nov/01/co_07_odonnell_sends_out_flyer_that_looks_like_official_warning_about_sex_offender\"\u003edesigned to look like sex offender notices\u003c/a\u003e, mailers from \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/rick_santorum/\"\u003efake \u0026ldquo;progressive\u0026rdquo; organizations\u003c/a\u003e, calling Democrats and \u003ca href=\"/2006/11/republican-dirty-tricks-in-new-mexico.html\"\u003etelling them that their polling places had changed\u003c/a\u003e, and other \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/sleazy-republican-attack-ad-may-be.html\"\u003edeceptive calls\u003c/a\u003e and vote suppression tactics) was Michael Steele\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001979.php\"\u003ehiring homeless people from Philadelphia to hand out flyers to voters in Maryland\u003c/a\u003e, telling them that Steele was the Democratic candidate.  This was a repeat of \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001977.php\"\u003ea tactic Steele also used in the 2002 election\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt didn\u0026rsquo;t work, but the Republicans thought highly enough of it to \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061110-121131-5518r.htm\"\u003eask him to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Republicans need to stop being \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/bush-campaigns-for-racist-and-violent.html\"\u003eso quick to forgive their own\u003c/a\u003e for moral failings and corruption and start showing some accountability and principle.  A good start would be getting rid of \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_05.php#011059\"\u003eKarl Rove, who has been right in the middle of the sleaziest of the sleaze\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 13, 2006):  Looks like Steele will not be the next RNC chairman after all\u0026ndash;it will go to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2006/11/martinez-to-become-new-rnc-chief.html\"\u003eRep. Mel Martinez of Florida instead\u003c/a\u003e.  But the point still holds, as \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001539.php\"\u003eMartinez is connected to Jack Abramoff via former Rep. Bob Ney\u003c/a\u003e (who resigned after pleading guilty to corruption charges in the Abramoff scandal) and is \u003ca href=\"http://www.campaignmoney.org/blog/2006/11/13/sen-mel-martinez-r-fl-to-head-rnc\"\u003ein the middle of his own campaign finance scandal\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republicans off to a lousy start in dealing with corruption"},{"content":"What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland \"You have a Midland accent\" is just another way of saying \"you don't have an accent.\" You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.\nBoston The West North Central The Northeast Philadelphia The Inland North The South What American accent do you have?\nTake More Quizzes","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/what-american-accent-do-you-have.html/","summary":"\u003ctable style=\"width: 320px; border: 1px solid gray; font: normal 12px arial, verdana, sans-serif; background-color: white;\"\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"background: white; color: black; padding: 5px;\"\u003e\u003cb style=\"font: bold 20px 'Times New Roman', serif; display: block; margin-bottom: 8px;\"\u003eWhat American accent do you have?\u003c/b\u003e \u003cdiv style=\"font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 4px;\"\u003eYour Result: \u003cb\u003eThe Midland\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"width: 200px; background: white; border: 1px solid black;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"width: 85%; background: red; font-size: 8px; line-height: 8px;\"\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp style=\"margin: 10px; border: none; background: white; color: black;\"\u003e\"You have a Midland accent\" is just another way of saying \"you don't have an accent.\"  You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas.  You have a good voice for TV and radio.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What American accent do you have?"},{"content":"A Superior Court judge in Worcester, Massachusetts has issued a legal ruling that a burrito is not a sandwich. I think that\u0026rsquo;s pretty sound legal judgment\u0026ndash;a sandwich has at least one piece of bread, and a tortilla, while having some bread-like properties and functions, is not bread.\nThe ruling occurred because Panera Bread Co. was trying to prevent the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from leasing space to Qdoba Mexican Grill. Panera Bread\u0026rsquo;s lease agreement stated that White City Shopping Center would not lease space to any other sandwich shop.\nThe legal ruling stated that \u0026ldquo;A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans.\u0026quot;\nExpert witness Chris Schlesinger stated in an affidavit that \u0026ldquo;I know of no chef or culinary historian who would call a burrito a sandwich. Indeed, the notion would be absurd to any credible chef or culinary historian.\u0026quot;\nIndeed.\nUPDATE (November 13, 2006): The commenters at Jamie Zawinski\u0026rsquo;s blog take the discussion much further.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/legal-ruling-burrito-is-not-sandwich.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Superior Court judge in Worcester, Massachusetts \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1110burrito-sandwich10-ON.html\"\u003ehas issued a legal ruling that a burrito is not a sandwich\u003c/a\u003e.  I think that\u0026rsquo;s pretty sound legal judgment\u0026ndash;a sandwich has at least one piece of bread, and a tortilla, while having some bread-like properties and functions, is not bread.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe ruling occurred because Panera Bread Co. was trying to prevent the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from leasing space to Qdoba Mexican Grill.  Panera Bread\u0026rsquo;s lease agreement stated that White City Shopping Center would not lease space to any other sandwich shop.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe legal ruling stated that \u0026ldquo;A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eExpert witness Chris Schlesinger stated in an affidavit that \u0026ldquo;I know of no chef or culinary historian who would call a burrito a sandwich. Indeed, the notion would be absurd to any credible chef or culinary historian.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIndeed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 13, 2006): The \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/713524.html\"\u003ecommenters at Jamie Zawinski\u0026rsquo;s blog take the discussion much further\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Legal ruling: A burrito is not a sandwich"},{"content":"It looks like the Democrats are all set to put some of the most corrupt Democrats in Congress into leadership positions in the House.\nRep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), one of CREW\u0026rsquo;s top 20 most corrupt Congressmen, is set to become leader of the House Appropriations committee. His sleazy deals and earmarks have already caused him to be a target of an FBI investigation.\nRep. John Murtha (D-PA), another of CREW\u0026rsquo;s top 20 most corrupt Congressmen, is set to become leader of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. He was caught on tape in Abscam explaining how he works scams.\nRep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) will chair the House Permanent Standing Committee on Intelligence, despite no intelligence background, charges of accepting bribes while a judge, and being the sixth federal judge to be removed from office by Congress on charges of perjury and conspiracy to obtain a bribe.\nRep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) may become the House Majority Leader. He actively seeks funds from K Street lobbyists, and voted for last year\u0026rsquo;s bankruptcy bill.\nThis is ridiculous\u0026ndash;the major campaign issue in the mid-term election this week was corruption, and the Democrats are already doing their best to put their worst offenders in control.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/democrats-off-to-lousy-start-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like the Democrats are \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001981.php\"\u003eall set to put some of the most corrupt Democrats in Congress into leadership positions in the House\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), one of CREW\u0026rsquo;s top 20 most corrupt Congressmen, is set to become leader of the House Appropriations committee.  His sleazy deals and earmarks have already caused him to be a target of an FBI investigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. John Murtha (D-PA), another of CREW\u0026rsquo;s top 20 most corrupt Congressmen, is set to become leader of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee.  He was \u003ca href=\"http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10427\"\u003ecaught on tape in Abscam explaining how he works scams\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) will chair the House Permanent Standing Committee on Intelligence, despite no intelligence background, charges of accepting bribes while a judge, and being the sixth federal judge to be removed from office by Congress on charges of perjury and conspiracy to obtain a bribe.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) may become the House Majority Leader.  He actively seeks funds from K Street lobbyists, and voted for last year\u0026rsquo;s bankruptcy bill.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is ridiculous\u0026ndash;the major campaign issue in the mid-term election this week was corruption, and the Democrats are already doing their best to put their worst offenders in control.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Democrats off to a lousy start in dealing with Congressional corruption"},{"content":"The most recent issue of The Economist, which arrived last weekend, correctly called the outcome of the U.S. elections and the reasons (corruption, incompetence, Iraq). In the special report on the U.S. mid-term elections appears this box of data taken from Stephen Slivinski\u0026rsquo;s book Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government, which shows the benefit of having control of the executive and legislative branches of the government in the hands of different parties:\nDivide and save\nAnnual growth in federal spending per head under recent administrations\nUnified government* Growth, %\nLyndon Johnson 4.6\nGeorge Bush junior 3.1**\nJimmy Carter 2.9\nDivided government Growth, %\nRichard Nixon/Gerald Ford 1.9\nRonald Reagan 1.7\nGeorge Bush senior 0.6\nBill Clinton 0.3\n* President\u0026rsquo;s party controlled House and Senate during most of term.\n** First five years.\nI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to some gridlock.\nHistorical Comments BLAZER PROPHET (2006-12-09):\nYou might be surprised. Many of the dems elected to the House are very conservative dems that aren't necessarily going to be party clones. Also, Bush has the power of veto. It might not be as bad as some think.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/gridlock-helps-slow-government-growth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe most recent issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, which arrived last weekend, correctly called the outcome of the U.S. elections and the reasons (corruption, incompetence, Iraq).  In the special report on the U.S. mid-term elections appears this box of data taken from Stephen Slivinski\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBuck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government\u003c/span\u003e, which shows the benefit of having control of the executive and legislative branches of the government in the hands of different parties:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDivide and save\u003cbr /\u003eAnnual growth in federal spending per head under recent administrations\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnified government*            Growth, %\u003cbr /\u003eLyndon Johnson                    4.6\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge Bush junior               3.1**\u003cbr /\u003eJimmy Carter                        2.9\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDivided government            Growth, %\u003cbr /\u003eRichard Nixon/Gerald Ford 1.9\u003cbr /\u003eRonald Reagan                        1.7\u003cbr /\u003eGeorge Bush senior                0.6\u003cbr /\u003eBill Clinton                               0.3\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* President\u0026rsquo;s party controlled House and Senate during most of term.\u003cbr /\u003e** First five years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to some gridlock.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gridlock helps slow government growth"},{"content":"The Center for Public Integrity has set up a \u0026ldquo;Media Tracker\u0026rdquo; based on FCC data by zip code which allows you to see how well-connected your zip code is. For each zip code, it will list the number of broadband providers and the number of owners of various media resources in your area (newspapers, radio and television stations. My zip code comes up as \u0026ldquo;well connected\u0026rdquo; with 18 broadband providers (a few more than the ones I identified in my survey of Phoenix-area broadband providers).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/how-well-connected-is-your-zip-code.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/\"\u003eCenter for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e has set up a \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Media Tracker\u0026rdquo; based on FCC data by zip code\u003c/a\u003e which allows you to see how well-connected your zip code is.  For each zip code, it will list the number of broadband providers and the number of owners of various media resources in your area (newspapers, radio and television stations.  My zip code comes up as \u0026ldquo;well connected\u0026rdquo; with 18 broadband providers (a few more than \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/more-on-last-mile-options-in-phoenix.html\"\u003ethe ones I identified in my survey of Phoenix-area broadband providers\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How well connected is your zip code?"},{"content":"You can watch it at Google Video. Everyone should be aware of the issues raised in this documentary.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/hbo-hacking-democracy-documentary.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou can watch it \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7236791207107726851\u0026sourceid=docidfeed\u0026amp;hl=en-CA\"\u003eat Google Video\u003c/a\u003e.  Everyone should be aware of the issues raised in this documentary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"HBO \"Hacking Democracy\" documentary online"},{"content":"An unexpected bonus for today.\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\nAnd in another nice bonus, SD has rejected its abortion ban: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15613198/\nWilliam Zeranski (2006-12-09):\nRumsfeld stepped down? There must be a right-wing conspiracy some where! Better now than BEFORE the election--the move would’ve helped the Republicans!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRumsfeld should have been fired years ago, and that would have helped the Republicans, the United States, and the situation in Iraq.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/rumsfeld-stepping-down.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/rumsfeld.ap/index.html\"\u003eunexpected bonus\u003c/a\u003e for today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSchtacky\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAnd in another nice bonus, SD has rejected its abortion ban: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15613198/\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eWilliam  Zeranski\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eRumsfeld stepped down?  There must be a right-wing conspiracy some where!  Better now than BEFORE the election--the move would’ve helped the Republicans!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eRumsfeld \u003cA HREF=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/rumsfeld_resigns_1.php\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eshould have been fired years ago\u003c/A\u003e, and that would have helped the Republicans, the United States, and the situation in Iraq.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rumsfeld stepping down"},{"content":"Of CREW\u0026rsquo;s list of the twenty most corrupt politicians in Congress, seven or eight will no longer be in office next term. While it is extremely disappointing that so many sleazy politicians get re-elected, it is at least gratifying that the re-election rate for incumbents on this list is significantly lower than average.\nSen. Conrad Burns\u0026rsquo; (R-MT) race against Jon Tester is still too close to call, but Tester has a slight lead.\nSen. Bill Frist (R-TN) has retired, and will be replaced by Bob Corker (R).\nSen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Bob Casey, Jr. (D).\nRep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) was re-elected.\nRep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) was re-elected.\nRep. John Doolittle (R-CA) was re-elected.\nRep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) was re-elected.\nRep. Katharine Harris (R-FL) failed in her attempt to win a position in the Senate, defeated by Bill Nelson (D).\nRep. William Jefferson (D-LA) was re-elected.\nRep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) was re-elected.\nRep. Gary Miller (R-CA) was re-elected (and unopposed in the general election).\nRep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) was re-elected.\nRep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) was re-elected.\nRep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Jerry McNerny (D).\nRep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) was re-elected.\nRep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) was re-elected.\nRep. John Sweeney (R-NY) was voted out, and will be replaced by Kirsten Gillibrand (D).\nRep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) was voted out, and will be replaced by Joseph Shuler (D).\nRep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was re-elected.\nRep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Joe Sestak (D).\nCREW\u0026rsquo;s dishonorable mentions also saw two removals from a list of five:\nRep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) was re-elected.\nRep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was re-elected.\nRep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) was voted out, and will be replaced by Harry Mitchell (D).\nRep. John Murtha (D-PA) was re-elected.\nRep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Carney (D).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/few-from-crews-list-of-corrupt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOf CREW\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/node/96\"\u003elist of the twenty most corrupt politicians in Congress\u003c/a\u003e, seven or eight will no longer be in office next term.  While it is extremely disappointing that so many sleazy politicians get re-elected, it is at least gratifying that the re-election rate for incumbents on this list is significantly lower than average.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSen. Conrad Burns\u0026rsquo; (R-MT) race against Jon Tester is still too close to call, but Tester has a slight lead.\u003cbr /\u003eSen. Bill Frist (R-TN) has retired, and will be replaced by Bob Corker (R).\u003cbr /\u003eSen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Bob Casey, Jr. (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. John Doolittle (R-CA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Katharine Harris (R-FL) failed in her attempt to win a position in the Senate, defeated by Bill Nelson (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. William Jefferson (D-LA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Gary Miller (R-CA) was re-elected (and unopposed in the general election).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Jerry McNerny (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. John Sweeney (R-NY) was voted out, and will be replaced by Kirsten Gillibrand (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) was voted out, and will be replaced by Joseph Shuler (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Joe Sestak (D).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCREW\u0026rsquo;s dishonorable mentions also saw two removals from a list of five:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) was voted out, and will be replaced by Harry Mitchell (D).\u003cbr /\u003eRep. John Murtha (D-PA) was re-elected.\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) was voted out, and will be replaced by Carney (D).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A few from CREW's list of corrupt politicians given the boot"},{"content":"The good news: Arizona did not elect aspiring theocrat Len Munsil (who was soundly defeated by incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano), got rid of corrupt Congressman J.D. Hayworth (replacing him with former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell), narrowly voted down an amendment to the state Constitution to ban gay marriage and anything \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; it, and voted in favor of greater protections against eminent domain abuse.\nThe bad news: Arizona re-elected Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Rick Renzi, approved the creation of a new bureaucracy to continually raise the minimum wage (the main effect of which is to reduce teen employment; it has negligible positive effects for low wage earners, versus something that would genuinely be effective like reducing payroll taxes), passed the worse of the two anti-smoking measures, banned probation for methamphetamine abuse offenses, and passed all of the anti-illegal immigration measures (declaring English the official language, prohibiting illegal immigrants from posting bail or being awarded certain kinds of damages in court, and limiting educational services to illegal immigrants).\nTeenager Jarrett Maupin (Al Sharpton, Jr.) was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board in Ward 2. Maupin, who was a member of the Republican club at Brophy College Prep before switching schools to St. Mary\u0026rsquo;s and becoming a Democrat and protege of Sharpton, charged that Brophy students demonstrated their racism by referring to \u0026ldquo;blackboards.\u0026rdquo;\nRichie Rich (2006-12-09):\nsorry to tell you, but the JD Hayworth race isn't over yet - somehow the Arizona election officials missed 250K votes in Maricopa county.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThere are 250,000 early ballots that were *not returned*, and that's across the whole county, not just District 5. It seems to me that early ballots should have to be delivered no later than election day.Of those 250,000 early ballots that haven't been returned, 48 percent were requested by Republicans and 34 percent by Democrats, which leaves another 18 percent from other parties and independents.I'm pretty sure the Hayworth race is over. Of 140,819 votes cast, Mitchell got 71,077, Hayworth got 65,122, and Severin got 4,620. If 25% of the 250,000 ballots are returned and are for District 5, match the above percentages for party distribution, all Republicans vote for Hayworth, all Democrats vote for Mitchell, and 1/3 of the independents vote for Hayworth (which is generous) and 2/3 for Mitchell, that closes the gap by 5,000 votes--almost a thousand too few.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNow today's Republic says that there actually are 258,500 ballots left to be counted (that they have in their possession), but says that includes 63,000 early ballots dropped off at polls and 37,000 provisional ballots given out at the polls. They are counting about 25,000 of them per day. The result of yesterday's counting was that Hayworth closed the gap by 23 votes. If that pattern continues over the 10 or 11 days it will take them to count the leftovers, he'll clearly lose.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAfter six days of counting (and with perhaps five more to go), Hayworth has closed the nearly-6,000 vote gap with Mitchell by fewer than 500 votes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/arizona-election-results.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe good news:  Arizona did not elect aspiring theocrat Len Munsil (who was soundly defeated by incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano), got rid of corrupt Congressman J.D. Hayworth (replacing him with former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell), narrowly voted down an amendment to the state Constitution to ban gay marriage and anything \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; it, and voted in favor of greater protections against eminent domain abuse.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe bad news:  Arizona re-elected Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Rick Renzi, approved the creation of a new bureaucracy to continually raise the minimum wage (the main effect of which is to reduce teen employment; it has negligible positive effects for low wage earners, versus something that would genuinely be effective like reducing payroll taxes), passed the worse of the two anti-smoking measures, banned probation for methamphetamine abuse offenses, and passed all of the anti-illegal immigration measures (declaring English the official language, prohibiting illegal immigrants from posting bail or being awarded certain kinds of damages in court, and limiting educational services to illegal immigrants).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTeenager \u003ca href=\"/2005/09/phoenix-city-council-election.html\"\u003eJarrett Maupin\u003c/a\u003e (Al Sharpton, Jr.) was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board in Ward 2.  Maupin, who was a member of the Republican club at Brophy College Prep before switching schools to St. Mary\u0026rsquo;s and becoming a Democrat and protege of Sharpton, charged that Brophy students demonstrated their racism by referring to \u0026ldquo;blackboards.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona election results"},{"content":"La Trobe, Pennsylvania\u0026rsquo;s Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s water company, run by Republican and aspiring evangelical leader Gregory Podlucky, was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy by creditors after it\u0026rsquo;s turned out the CEO was engaged in major fraud. Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s reported $275 million in revenue when it only had $35 million in revenue. The company kept two sets of books, and has less than $1 million in cash and over $750 million in bank and bond debt, lease obligations, and other liabilities. Two safes at the company headquarters were found to contain about $1 million in gold watches and jewelry.\nPodlucky is accused of falsifying board minutes and defrauding a lender in a lawsuit filed against him by two private equity firms that are minority shareholders. Podlucky was being defended by Albert Manwaring of Pepper Hamilton\u0026rsquo;s Wilmington, Delaware office, but he withdrew from the case on November 1.\n$440,000 of the company\u0026rsquo;s money was donated to the Missy\u0026rsquo;s Place Foundation, named after Podlucky\u0026rsquo;s deceased daughter Melissa, and that Foundation purchased land for Podlucky\u0026rsquo;s proposed Grace Community Church of the Valley in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.\nMore details at the Wall Street Journal\u0026rsquo;s Law Blog, Long or Short Capital, and at MIT student Jay Silver\u0026rsquo;s website, who reviewed Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s water only to be harassed by someone apparently associated with the company.\nLe Nature\u0026rsquo;s is closing its Phoenix plant and laying off 85 workers.\nUnknown (2007-06-21):\nwillwin2008What really happened at the small beverage producer located in the small, rural community of Latrobe, Pennsylvania? Aside from the chatter of understandably disgruntled (yet misinformed) employees and wannabe rebels against Corporate America who have very little knowledge of what they are getting involved in (hello, Jay Silver) through various weblogs, I believe a greater truth must be realized. At the root of the deception being concocted in the media and other struggling entities we find the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The massive assault against Le-Nature's—actually more so against Chairman and CEO Gregory J. Podlucky—began with an article titled Naughty by LeNature's. The article, circulated in the Sunday edition on August 20, 2006, would set the stage for a great production of false allegations, greed, and jealousy. Since that article, many other fine works—all authored by a questionable character in his own right (Richard Gazarik)—have been published. However, no matter how poor his journalism skills may be, Gazarik does make a few key discoveries that piece together this mess.1. Preferred Shareholders—The group of people responsible for triggering the implosion of the Company. Originally, the lawsuits filed in Delaware claimed “breach of contract, wasting corporate assets, fraud and negligence.” Such claims stem from an alleged document that “proves” all of this. I would really like to see such a document. One document (supposedly containing a forged signature) that proves all of the aforementioned allegations? I find it insulting they would have us believe such nonsense!What really happened? Any person who has ever built a business from scratch understands that growth requires some form of debt. Le-Nature's obtained such funding from private entities who would in turn receive a return on investment. In this case, Le-Nature's received approximately $25 million in funding (the real number remains a mystery due to the varying numbers published by Gazarik). At the time of the August 20th article, Le-Nature's had offered close to $300 million to buy the shareholder's equity of the Company. We ran a series of complex calculations and determined that the shareholders would have received a measly (gasp) 12 times return on investment—all in a matter of a few years. Now I do not spend a whole lot of time researching the stock market, nor do I claim to be an expert, but I would fare to say that no stock or investment option would yield that kind of return. For the sake of simple comparison, you would be fortunate to find an investment fund that offered a 12 percent return. The kind of return we are talking about here is 1,200 percent. Where am I going with all of these facts? I will tell you simply: greed. The preferred shareholders saw an opportunity to exploit what they viewed as a “small player” in the beverage community that was growing rapidly; seemingly under the radar of “big players” such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. They figured they could use loopholes in the legal system to steal the shares of the Company they did not already own, turn around and sell to somebody who was offering even more money (remember hearing about that magical $1.2 billion). Eyes got bigger than stomachs! In closing, let's just say the preferred shareholders lost—big time. Not only did they forfeit the $300 million they could have had free and clear, they basically threw $25 million out the window because they will never see a dime of the initial investment. I’ll bet whoever ends up with the Latrobe bottling facility (shout out to Giant Eagle) at bargain basement pricing will be thankful! Lesson number one: greed is a blinding evil that kills those who become entrapped in its grasp.Unfortunately, this does not end here. The next group I will analyze is the custodian that was hired as a crisis management team.2. Kroll Zolfo Cooper—We need to determine the function this group played in the demise of Le-Nature’s. Let’s review the facts. Kroll was appointed as the custodian and they infiltrated the facility on Friday, October 27, 2006 after business had concluded for the day. It should also be noted, contrary to Gazarik’s fine reporting that Gregory Podlucky, his brother Jonathan, Andrew Murin, Jr., and Robert Lynn were escorted out of the office, the four were not even in the building at noon—six hours before Kroll’s “crisis management team” showed up. I just wanted to point out one of the many discrepancies found in Gazarik’s work. So now we have Steve Panagos, Sal LoBiondo, and many other “professionals” in place. Le-Nature’s employees are told their jobs are secure and that its “business as usual.” Monday, October 30, 2006 rolls around and reports are already coming out of Latrobe via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that 2005 revenues have been overstated by $200 million. Now let me get this straight, you’ve set up shop for less than a full business day and already you conclude that revenues were overstated by 725 percent? I could have sworn there was a huge factor missing from this equation, oh yeah, the 2005 financial statements were audited by BDO Seidman! Now you’re saying “wait a minute, Layne, they could have been fooled by Le-Nature’s.” Yes, they could have been fooled by Le-Nature’s, it’s been done before (i.e. Enron) However, don’t you think it would take a little bit longer for Kroll, who is NOT an auditing firm, to realize such a gross overstatement if a large accounting firm scrutinized the financial statements using strict accounting guidelines for several weeks? Common sense tells me ‘yes.’ Okay, so a few days go by and now a witch hunt has begun by the United States Federal Government to track down “missing assets” and what do you know, a secret room is found within the building containing two safes filled with precious gems and large quantities of fine jewelry. Now we have fraud. Wrong! First, let’s keep in mind that Le-Nature’s, while it does have outside investors and outside board members, is NOT a publicly traded company. It is a private organization whose majority shareholder is Gregory J. Podlucky. If he decides he has some assets that he wants to store in a building that he owns a majority of, where is the crime? I hear all this nonsense that “if it were legitimate, why the need for a secret room?” Hmm, let’s see, I have a large collection that is very high in value, maybe I should keep it out in the open so it is a target for thieves. Or better yet, why do banks “hide” their money in safes that cannot be seen by account holders who go to the counter to cash their paycheck on Friday? Open your eyes, people! If you want to trash talk people because they have and you do not have, that is your freedom as an American, but do not slander people by saying that they are criminals when they do things any intelligent person would also do. Let’s continue to assess Kroll. So now we have overstated revenues and secret rooms filled with gems (oh yeah, I forgot to mention sex toys were found too, way to make the story believable Rich). It is hard to believe that so much has happened in one week. I wonder what happened the other 15 weeks Kroll was at Le-Nature’s? Well that’s a good question. The Company was forced into bankruptcy so they were obviously pretty busy with that. Then there was that little issue of money (they demanded $5 million to render such “professional” services) which is odd considering the Company could not even pay the creditors who legitimately had a right to be paid. And my personal favorite is the holiday shindig at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. According to an employee of the airport, employees of both Kroll and Le-Nature’s drove two leased Mercedes-Benz SUVs to the restaurant and were drinking merlot, vodka martinis, and White Russians. Their tab was in excess of $1,000 before they drove the vehicles back to Le-Nature’s. How do I know all of this? Let’s just say Layne knows a lot of people and leave it at that! Funny fact concerning the Mercedes-Benz SUVs used that night—Kroll had been using the vehicles as personal accommodations during the entire time they were in Latrobe even though the lease payments were long past due (sixth one down).More to come…\nLippard (2007-06-21):\nWhat is your involvement in this? Are you Mr. Podlucky or a senior executive of Le-Nature's?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/le-natures-water-company-used-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLa Trobe, Pennsylvania\u0026rsquo;s Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s water company, run by Republican and aspiring evangelical leader Gregory Podlucky, was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy by creditors after it\u0026rsquo;s turned out the CEO was engaged in major fraud.  Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s reported $275 million in revenue when it only had $35 million in revenue.  The company kept two sets of books, and has less than $1 million in cash and over $750 million in bank and bond debt, lease obligations, and other liabilities.  Two safes at the company headquarters were found to contain about $1 million in gold watches and jewelry.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePodlucky is accused of falsifying board minutes and defrauding a lender in a lawsuit filed against him by two private equity firms that are minority shareholders.  Podlucky was being defended by Albert Manwaring of Pepper Hamilton\u0026rsquo;s Wilmington, Delaware office, but he withdrew from the case on November 1.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e$440,000 of the company\u0026rsquo;s money was donated to the Missy\u0026rsquo;s Place Foundation, named after Podlucky\u0026rsquo;s deceased daughter Melissa, and that Foundation purchased land for Podlucky\u0026rsquo;s proposed Grace Community Church of the Valley in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details at the \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/11/02/le-natures-in-hot-water/\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u0026rsquo;s Law Blog\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://longorshortcapital.com/le-natures-disaster.htm\"\u003eLong or Short Capital\u003c/a\u003e, and at \u003ca href=\"http://www.mit.edu/%7Esil/lenatures/jaysilver/lenatures.htm\"\u003eMIT student Jay Silver\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e, who reviewed Le Nature\u0026rsquo;s water only to be harassed by someone apparently associated with the company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLe Nature\u0026rsquo;s is \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1106az-le-nature06-ON.html\"\u003eclosing its Phoenix plant and laying off 85 workers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Le Nature's water company used for a Christian Republican's scam"},{"content":"In New Mexico, the state Republican Party has been calling registered Democrats and telling them that their polling places have changed, giving them incorrect information. The NM Republican Party head says it was just one instance, but the Democratic Party has identified at least five, and is seeking an injunction.\nUPDATE: This has now been reported to have occurred in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York in addition to New Mexico.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/republican-dirty-tricks-in-new-mexico.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn New Mexico, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001938.php\"\u003ethe state Republican Party has been calling registered Democrats and telling them that their polling places have changed\u003c/a\u003e, giving them incorrect information.  The NM Republican Party head says it was just one instance, but the Democratic Party has identified at least five, and is seeking an injunction.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  This \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_05.php#010870\"\u003ehas now been reported to have occurred in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York in addition to New Mexico\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republican dirty tricks in New Mexico"},{"content":"In 1999, a set of secret U.S. war games conducted as part of a simulation called Desert Crossing showed that more than 400,000 troops would be needed for an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq to prevent it from falling into chaos. That number is three times the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.\nYet Donald Rumsfeld refused to even listen to any of his subordinates who thought a plan was needed for post-invasion Iraq.\nWilliam Zeranski (2006-12-09):\nThe INVASION of Europe included 176,000 soldier--and this a CONTINENT. In regard to land mass Iraq is smaller than-- Morocco. FRANCE is larger than Iraq! Oh, and did you actually READ the article you linked to? Thomas Blanton, the archive's director, said. \"But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a FAILED STATE EVEN WITH 400,000 troops on the ground.\"What you support 250,000 MORE troops? Make up your mind!Now remember from that article: “A change in regimes does not guarantee stability,\" so the Democrats better get a PLAN of some kind because bitching and complaining isn’t a plan.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNo, I don't support 250,000 more troops and opposed the invasion in the first place.The invasion of Europe in WWII isn't an apt comparison, as that truly was a liberation of people from an occupying foreign force.I don't have high hopes for the Democrats coming up with a good plan for Iraq--I'm not sure it's possible at this point to have a good plan. But you're quite right that a plan is necessary, as the Bush administration has so clearly demonstrated through its incompetence. Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone who said a plan for occupation was necessary.BTW, if you're going to be a comment troll on my blog, it would be appreciated if you would put a little more thought into your arguments.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAlso, William, you're making the same mistake with your WWII comparison that others have made with a comparison of Iraq to the U.S. Civil War--both the U.S. Civil War and WWII were military vs. military battles, not guerilla warfare.You might find better comparisons in history if you look at occupational governments and guerilla warfare involving empires and colonies.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/1999-us-war-games-showed-at-least.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1999, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/04/war.games.ap/index.html\"\u003ea set of secret U.S. war games conducted as part of a simulation called Desert Crossing showed that more than 400,000 troops would be needed for an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq\u003c/a\u003e to prevent it from falling into chaos.  That number is three times the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet Donald Rumsfeld \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/rumsfeld-ill-fire-next-person-who.html\"\u003erefused to even listen to any of his subordinates who thought a plan was needed for post-invasion Iraq\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"1999 U.S. war games showed at least 400,000 troops needed in Iraq"},{"content":"Military recruiters lying to recruits is not a new problem, but this is pretty extreme. ABC News sent students with hidden cameras to 10 Army recruiting offices in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The students were told that no one is going over to Iraq any more, that the soldiers are being brought back. One recruiter told students that if they didn\u0026rsquo;t like the Army, they could just quit.\nHistorical Comments oop_master (2011-06-02):\nYeah, you can quit if you authentically worry your superiors that you may commit suicide, or kiss a same gendered sergeant on the lips. Sometimes you go to jail instead, but not always.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/army-recruiters-telling-kids-war-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMilitary recruiters lying to recruits is not a new problem, but this is pretty extreme.  \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=2626032\"\u003eABC News sent students with hidden cameras to 10 Army recruiting offices in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut\u003c/a\u003e.  The students were told that no one is going over to Iraq any more, that the soldiers are being brought back.  One recruiter told students that if they didn\u0026rsquo;t like the Army, they could just quit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eoop_master\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2011-06-02)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYeah, you can quit if you authentically worry your superiors that you may commit suicide, or kiss a same gendered sergeant on the lips. Sometimes you go to jail instead, but not always.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Army recruiters telling kids the war in Iraq is over"},{"content":"The Republicans have been hitting voters over the last week or so with repeated pre-recorded political calls beginning with the phrase, \u0026ldquo;Hi, I\u0026rsquo;m calling with information about ,\u0026rdquo; which have fooled many recipients into thinking that they are being harassed by the campaign of that Democratic candidate. Some recipients have received dozens of repeated calls or more.\nThese campaigns are paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and have occurred in at least Illinois, New York, and New Hampshire. They\u0026rsquo;ve been partially stopped in New Hampshire after intervention by the state Attorney General\u0026ndash;but only by discontinuing calls to voters on the national Do Not Call list.\nOne of the New York calls can be heard here (WAV file).\nUPDATE: Here\u0026rsquo;s a list of the twenty districts where these calls are occurring and which Democrats they are attacking. They\u0026rsquo;re in California, Illinois, Florida, New York, Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.\nUPDATE: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent the National Republican Congressional Committee a cease and desist letter.\nUPDATE (November 7, 2006): The New York Times and the Washington Post have covered the story. Michigan Representatives Conyers and Dingell have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate the issue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/deceptive-and-harassing-republican-pre.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Republicans \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_05.php#010846\"\u003ehave been hitting voters over the last week or so with repeated pre-recorded political calls\u003c/a\u003e beginning with the phrase, \u0026ldquo;Hi, I\u0026rsquo;m calling with information about \u003cdemocratic\u003e,\u0026rdquo; which have fooled many recipients into thinking that they are being harassed by the campaign of that Democratic candidate.  Some recipients have received dozens of repeated calls or more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese campaigns are paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and have occurred in at least Illinois, New York, and New Hampshire.  They\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_05.php#010847\"\u003ebeen partially stopped in New Hampshire after intervention by the state Attorney General\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;but only by discontinuing calls to voters on the national Do Not Call list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne of the New York calls can be heard \u003ca href=\"http://ia331306.us.archive.org/1/items/NRCC_robo_attack_call2/NRCC_anti_Hall_ad.wav\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (WAV file).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Here\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001940.php\"\u003ea list of the twenty districts\u003c/a\u003e where these calls are occurring and which Democrats they are attacking.  They\u0026rsquo;re in California, Illinois, Florida, New York, Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/nrcc-cease-and-desist/\"\u003ehas sent the National Republican Congressional Committee a cease and desist letter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 7, 2006):  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/us/politics/07robo.html?hp\u0026ex=1162875600\u0026amp;en=030161bac2f47ae8\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;partner=homepage\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110601103.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e have covered the story.  Michigan Representatives Conyers and Dingell \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001949.php\"\u003ehave asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate\u003c/a\u003e the issue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/democratic\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deceptive and harassing Republican pre-recorded political calls"},{"content":"SAIC was commissioned to perform a study on security issues in Diebold voting machines by the State of Maryland. One of the conditions Diebold set on the report in return for allowing access to their machines for the study was the right to redact whatever they wanted from the public version of the report.\nThe public version of the report (PDF) was 38 pages. The unredacted version was 152 pages plus 41 pages of appendices.\nThe private version of the report has now been leaked, and Rebecca Abrahams writes about the differences.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/two-faces-of-diebold.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSAIC was commissioned to perform a study on security issues in Diebold voting machines by the State of Maryland.  One of the conditions Diebold set on the report in return for allowing access to their machines for the study was the right to redact whatever they wanted from the public version of the report.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.verifiedvoting.org/downloads/votingsystemreportfinal.pdf\"\u003epublic version of the report\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) was 38 pages.  The unredacted version was 152 pages plus 41 pages of appendices.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe private version of the report has now been leaked, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-abrahams/the-two-faces-of-diebold_b_33138.html\"\u003eRebecca Abrahams writes about the differences\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Two Faces of Diebold"},{"content":"Adrienne Shelly, an actress who starred in Hal Hartley\u0026rsquo;s films The Unbelievable Trust and Truth, was found dead in her NYC office by her husband. She was 40.\nShelly, an agnostic, was a writer and director of independent films as well as an actress.\nUPDATE (November 7, 2006): A 19-year-old worker, Diego Pillco, who was helping renovate the Manhattan apartment that was Shelly\u0026rsquo;s office, has confessed to killing her and hanging her from the shower rod in the apartment bathroom.\nVery sad.\nUPDATE (February 18, 2007): Adrienne Shelly\u0026rsquo;s murder has now been fictionalized into an episode of Law \u0026amp; Order that aired last week, titled \u0026ldquo;Melting Pot.\u0026rdquo; The episode is really a mix of Adrienne Shelly\u0026rsquo;s murder and Theo van Gogh\u0026rsquo;s murder after making the film \u0026ldquo;Submission\u0026rdquo; with Ayaan Hirsi Ali\u0026ndash;the character Erin Garrett is a combination of Shelly and Hirsi Ali. She is found hanged in her film office, and to have recently made a documentary film called \u0026ldquo;Fire Under the Veil.\u0026rdquo; (Shelly and Hirsi Ali are both known for being atheists, but atheism doesn\u0026rsquo;t factor in the Law \u0026amp; Order episode.)\nThis may be the first time when the murder of someone who appeared on Law \u0026amp; Order was fictionalized in an episode of the show. She appeared in the episode \u0026ldquo;High \u0026amp; Low\u0026rdquo; in 2000.\nWilliam Zeranski (2006-12-09):\nDon't forget to add that Diego Pillco is an illegal. She'd be alive if . . . well, who cares . . .\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nGo ahead, what's the argument you want to make?There is no question that some illegal immigrants (and some legal immigrants, and some native-born U.S. citizens) commit crimes. It's also the case that greater border enforcement could reduce, but never eliminate, illegal immigration (it's as impossible to stop as any other illegal activity such as drug trafficking), and that there will ultimately be diminishing returns in trying to more strictly control it.And it's also the case that devoting resources to prevent illegal immigration has costs (including opportunity costs) as well as benefits, and that those who immigrate illegally provide benefits as well as costs.I don't believe this murder, in and of itself, makes a case either way, because you have to weigh all of the costs and benefits of whatever proposal you want to make.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/adrienne-shelly-died.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdrienne Shelly, an actress who starred in Hal Hartley\u0026rsquo;s films The Unbelievable Trust and Truth, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/03/actressfounddead.ap/index.html\"\u003ewas found dead in her NYC office\u003c/a\u003e by her husband.  She was 40.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShelly, an \u003ca href=\"http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Adrienne_Shelly\"\u003eagnostic\u003c/a\u003e, was \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0791248/\"\u003ea writer and director of independent films\u003c/a\u003e as well as an actress.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 7, 2006):  A 19-year-old worker, Diego Pillco, who was helping renovate the Manhattan apartment that was Shelly\u0026rsquo;s office, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/06/actressfounddead.ap/index.html\"\u003ehas confessed to killing her\u003c/a\u003e and hanging her from the shower rod in the apartment bathroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVery sad.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 18, 2007):  Adrienne Shelly\u0026rsquo;s murder has now been fictionalized into an episode of Law \u0026amp; Order that aired last week, titled \u0026ldquo;Melting Pot.\u0026rdquo;  The episode is really a mix of Adrienne Shelly\u0026rsquo;s murder and Theo van Gogh\u0026rsquo;s murder after making the film \u0026ldquo;Submission\u0026rdquo; with Ayaan Hirsi Ali\u0026ndash;the character Erin Garrett is a combination of Shelly and Hirsi Ali.  She is found hanged in her film office, and to have recently made a documentary film called \u0026ldquo;Fire Under the Veil.\u0026rdquo;  (Shelly and Hirsi Ali are both known for being atheists, but atheism doesn\u0026rsquo;t factor in the Law \u0026amp; Order episode.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis may be the first time when the murder of someone who appeared on Law \u0026amp; Order was fictionalized in an episode of the show.  She appeared in the episode \u0026ldquo;High \u0026amp; Low\u0026rdquo; in 2000.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adrienne Shelly died"},{"content":"Amway president and creationist Dick DeVos told a story about his high school football coach giving him an inspiring talk as he started him as quarterback. The football coach says it never happened, DeVos was never a starting quarterback on the varsity squad, and that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t a star on the field.\nDisclosure: It\u0026rsquo;s my opinion that Amway is a sleazy company run by dishonest and paranoid people. I was served with a subpoena in a lawsuit Amway filed against Proctor \u0026amp; Gamble which was trying to claim that P\u0026amp;G was involved in a conspiracy against Amway\u0026rsquo;s business by paying people to post Amway-critical information on the Internet. That subpoena was part of a fishing expedition and intimidation campaign; Amway tried to get access to the complete contents of my computer hard drives. The case was eventually thrown out of court. I spent a few thousand dollars to protect my rights; Amway spent a whole lot more.\nUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm defeated DeVos in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s election.\nHistorical Comments gandergardener (2006-12-09):\nWow, that's crazy. But completely believable.For anyone reading this who might be in Michigan, it's critically important to get out the vote over the next few days. The polls look good for Jennifer Granholm, but polls aren't enough.Call your friendly neighborhood Democratic headquarters and see if they can use your help. I'm sure they can!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/amway-president-and-michigan.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmway president and creationist Dick DeVos told a story about his high school football coach giving him an inspiring talk as he started him as quarterback.  The \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/devos_caught_lying.php\"\u003efootball coach says it never happened\u003c/a\u003e, DeVos was never a starting quarterback on the varsity squad, and that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t a star on the field.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDisclosure:  It\u0026rsquo;s my opinion that Amway \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/Amway/\"\u003eis a sleazy company run by dishonest and paranoid people\u003c/a\u003e.  I \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/amway/\"\u003ewas served with a subpoena\u003c/a\u003e in a lawsuit Amway filed against Proctor \u0026amp; Gamble which was trying to claim that P\u0026amp;G was involved in a conspiracy against Amway\u0026rsquo;s business by paying people to post Amway-critical information on the Internet.  That subpoena was part of a fishing expedition and intimidation campaign; Amway tried to get access to the complete contents of my computer hard drives.  The case was eventually thrown out of court.  I spent a few thousand dollars to protect my rights; Amway spent a whole lot more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm defeated DeVos in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s election.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amway president and Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos caught lying"},{"content":"ID advocates Tim McGrew and Sal Cordova have accused P.Z. Myers of misrepresenting Jonathan Wells when he pointed out that Wells had selectively edited a quote from a paper by William Ballard in BioScience. McGrew wrote that \u0026ldquo;Myers is lying through his teeth\u0026rdquo; about the quotation appearing on p. 35 of Wells\u0026rsquo; Politically Incorrect Guide to Intelligent Design.\nMyers points out that McGrew and Cordova have failed to see what\u0026rsquo;s right in front of them, and adds some red arrows to a scan of the page to help them see.\nWill either of them apologize for their IDiocy?\nUPDATE: They\u0026rsquo;ve admitted they were wrong about the quotation on p. 35, but argue that the text on the earlier pages is not guilty of the misrepresentation that Myers claimed with regard to the p. 35 quote.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/idiots.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eID advocates Tim McGrew and Sal Cordova \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/pz_myers_is_such_a_liar.php\"\u003ehave accused P.Z. Myers of misrepresenting Jonathan Wells\u003c/a\u003e when he pointed out that Wells had selectively edited a quote from a paper by William Ballard in BioScience.  McGrew wrote that \u0026ldquo;Myers is lying through his teeth\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/the_politically_3.html\"\u003eabout the quotation appearing on p. 35 of Wells\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePolitically Incorrect Guide to Intelligent Design\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMyers points out that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/pz_myers_is_such_a_liar.php\"\u003eMcGrew and Cordova have failed to see what\u0026rsquo;s right in front of them, and adds some red arrows to a scan of the page to help them see\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWill either of them apologize for their IDiocy?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  They\u0026rsquo;ve admitted they were wrong about the quotation on p. 35, but argue that the text on the earlier pages is not guilty of the misrepresentation that Myers claimed with regard to the p. 35 quote.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"IDiots"},{"content":"I received an email from the ACLU yesterday, informing me that they\u0026rsquo;ve jumped in on the net neutrality debate. Unfortunately, they badly misrepresent the facts:\nFREE THE NET: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY\nThe keys to the Internet have always been safely in public hands - until last year, when the FCC suddenly repealed longstanding Internet principles of \u0026ldquo;neutrality\u0026rdquo; and non-discrimination.The ACLU is going to make the erroneous claim that I\u0026rsquo;ve debunked repeatedly on my blog (see the Net Neutrality Index)\u0026ndash;that the common carriage requirements on telcos constitute \u0026ldquo;net neutrality.\u0026rdquo; They will ignore the fact that cable companies\u0026ndash;the main providers of consumer broadband Internet access in the U.S.\u0026ndash;have never been common carriers and have never been bound by these requirements.\nWith the blessing of the Supreme Court, a handful of profit-driven telecoms and cable companies now could effectively shut down the 21st Century marketplace of ideas by screening Internet e-mail traffic, blocking what they deem to be undesirable content, or pricing users out of the marketplace.\nThe ACLU is going to argue that we need to create a new bureaucratic regulatory apparatus, giving sweeping new powers to the FCC to interfere with freedom of Internet providers to enter into voluntary contracts with each other and manage their own networks, and specifically prohibiting differential pricing on tiered levels of service and the ability for providers to enter into arrangements with content providers to subsidize consumer bandwidth.\nHistorically, Net Neutrality protections filled the free speech gap. Since those protections were removed last year, nothing prevents network providers from discriminating against Internet users and application and service providers in terms of content, quality of access, and choice of equipment.This is doubly false\u0026ndash;the common carriage requirements applied only to the last-mile consumer network connections, not to the ability of ISPs to filter; and it is false that \u0026ldquo;nothing prevents\u0026rdquo; ISPs from taking actions which would cause them to lose customers.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re like many people using the Internet, you don\u0026rsquo;t think about whether your Internet Service Provider is intentionally slowing down or speeding up your access to Yahoo! versus Google. Without Net Neutrality, your ISP could do just that.\nImagine if your phone company was allowed to own restaurants and then provided good service and clear signals to customers who called Dominos and static and frequent busy signals for those calling Pizza Hut.\nIt sounds outrageous, but it would be entirely possible if the telephone system wasn\u0026rsquo;t regulated under the \u0026ldquo;common carrier\u0026rdquo; framework. The telecoms and cable companies that provide Internet network services, including AT\u0026amp;T, BellSouth, Comcast, Qwest, Sprint, Time-Warner/AOL, and Verizon, have spent over $100 million lobbying Congress and the FCC to eliminate established Net Neutrality protections.Remember, cable companies have never been common carriers, yet this hasn\u0026rsquo;t been a problem. Why create new regulations and give more power to a government agency that has a history of not only working on behalf of the big incumbents (rather than promoting competition, which is what is needed) but of engaging in actions designed to cause discrimination against certain forms of content through censorship? It makes no sense.\nThe assault on Internet freedom will only get worse. The FCC imposed Net Neutrality protections in merger agreements for certain network providers such as SBC/AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon/MCI, but those protections expire in 2007. And in July 2006, the FCC declined to include any Net Neutrality protections in Comcast and Time-Warner\u0026rsquo;s acquisition of Adelphia Cable. The pattern of the FCC opposing Net Neutrality is expected to continue, as network providers continue to consolidate into an even smaller pool of Internet gatekeepers.\nWithout the vigorous non-discrimination principles in place before 2005, a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet. Net Neutrality is needed, and it is needed now.The above argument is a mish-mash of fear-mongering about things that haven\u0026rsquo;t been an issue, misrepresentation of what regulations have been in place, wild unsubstantiated claims (\u0026ldquo;a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet\u0026rdquo;?), and a failure to look at the actual substantive issues in the network neutrality debate.\nTheir website contains further misinformation:\nMassive innovation on the Internet since its creation is in part the result of pre-2005 Net Neutrality protections. Starting nearly forty years ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concluded that under Title II of the Communications Act, telephone companies and network owners were prohibited from interfering with or discriminating against \u0026ldquo;telecommunications services\u0026rdquo; offering computer network access. The availability of common carrier telephone networks to independent equipment manufacturers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) led to the Internet\u0026rsquo;s birth. Entrepreneurs freely developed pioneering services and products resulting in a technological revolution driving our Nation\u0026rsquo;s economic growth in the last decade.\nAgain, Title II has never applied to cable companies (or to ISPs that aren\u0026rsquo;t telcos). All of those protections were suddenly lost last year after the Supreme Court\u0026rsquo;s decision in NCTA v. Brand X. Since 2002, the FCC attempted to reverse decades of applying Title II\u0026rsquo;s nondiscrimination principles to net providers by reclassifying cable modem services as unregulated \u0026ldquo;information services.\u0026quot; ISPs and cable companies have never been Title II common carriers.\nFederal courts initially rejected the FCC\u0026rsquo;s efforts to strip long-standing Net Neutrality protections. In mid-2005, the Supreme Court abruptly reversed course in Brand X by concluding that the FCC had that discretion, notwithstanding well-established consumer protections.\nFollowing that ruling, network owners began taking steps to stifle innovation and freedom on the Internet.\nNo examples are provided. Actual cases of discrimination are very few and far between, and have been quickly resolved. They have stated their intent to establish tollbooths on the Information Superhighway by restricting fast lanes to those willing and able to pay high premiums. It has always been the case that you have to pay more for more bandwidth and to put your content closer to your users, and that will not change with network neutrality regulations. This description fails to present the point of tiered services, which are necessary to deploy new kinds of services on the network (such as those dependent on near-real-time packet delivery) without allowing them to be disrupted by services which don\u0026rsquo;t have such dependencies. By prohibiting tiered services, you prohibit the development and innovation that they can bring, and will doom us to VoIP telephony that is inferior to old-fashioned telephone service.\nSome network owners, such as Time Warner\u0026rsquo;s AOL and BellSouth, have already blocked user content.The AOL case was an inadvertent blocking of email from a particular domain that was quickly corrected; I don\u0026rsquo;t know what BellSouth instance is referred to. Probably most, if not all ISPs and content providers have blocked access to some user content at some point, due to that content being illegal (e.g., copyright infringement, child porn).\nInternet discrimination will only increase after the 2007 expiration of Net Neutrality restrictions in merger agreements for other network owners such as SBC/AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon/MCI. Why? Any provider that blocks content that its customers want to access puts itself at a competitive disadvantage. S. 2917, the Snowe-Dorgan \u0026ldquo;Internet Freedom Preservation Act,\u0026rdquo; restores longstanding Net Neutrality protections missing from S. 2686.\nIn its current form, S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer\u0026rsquo;s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006, permits Net discrimination to continue unabated. The bill provides no protection for Internet users and entrepreneurs. Instead, it merely includes a toothless requirement that the FCC study the Internet market for five years and file annual reports to Congress on the activities of network owners.\nThis is not true\u0026ndash;it contains the FCC \u0026ldquo;four freedoms\u0026rdquo; including nondiscrimination, and provides for fines for providers who discriminate. What it doesn\u0026rsquo;t do that the Snowe-Dorgan bill does is prohibit tiered classes of service. In sharp contrast, S. 2917, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act offered by Senators Snowe and Dorgan, restores Network Neutrality protections in place before June 2005.\nThis is inaccurate\u0026ndash;it does not reverse Brand X (which would amount to a new requirement\u0026ndash;that has never previously been in effect\u0026ndash;for cable companies to allow any ISP to sell Internet service through their networks). It creates new restrictions on broadband Internet that have never previously existed, affecting non-telco ISPs as well as cable providers.\nIt requires that any content, application, or service offered through the Internet be provided on a basis that is \u0026ldquo;reasonable and non-discriminatory\u0026rdquo; and equivalent to the access, speed, quality of service, and bandwidth of services offered by network owners. It further prohibits network providers from blocking or degrading lawful Internet content. Finally, it leaves the choice for attaching legal devices to networks squarely in the hands of consumers, where it rightfully belongs.\nIf it only prohibited providers from blocking or degrading lawful content, I\u0026rsquo;d have no problem with it\u0026ndash;but it goes far beyond that.\nIt is disappointing to see the ACLU get this issue so wrong.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/aclu-incompetence-and-misinformation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI received an email from the ACLU yesterday, informing me that they\u0026rsquo;ve jumped in on the net neutrality debate.  Unfortunately, they badly misrepresent the facts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFREE THE NET: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe keys to the Internet have always been safely in public hands - until last year, when the FCC suddenly repealed longstanding Internet principles of \u0026ldquo;neutrality\u0026rdquo; and non-discrimination.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe ACLU is going to make the erroneous claim that I\u0026rsquo;ve debunked repeatedly on my blog (see the Net Neutrality Index)\u0026ndash;that the common carriage requirements on telcos constitute \u0026ldquo;net neutrality.\u0026rdquo;  They will ignore the fact that cable companies\u0026ndash;the main providers of consumer broadband Internet access in the U.S.\u0026ndash;have never been common carriers and have never been bound by these requirements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWith the blessing of the Supreme Court, a handful of profit-driven telecoms and cable companies now could effectively shut down the 21st Century marketplace of ideas by screening Internet e-mail traffic, blocking what they deem to be undesirable content, or pricing users out of the marketplace.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe ACLU is going to argue that we need to create a new bureaucratic regulatory apparatus, giving sweeping new powers to the FCC to interfere with freedom of Internet providers to enter into voluntary contracts with each other and manage their own networks, and specifically prohibiting differential pricing on tiered levels of service and the ability for providers to enter into arrangements with content providers to subsidize consumer bandwidth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHistorically, Net Neutrality protections filled the free speech gap. Since those protections were removed last year, nothing prevents network providers from discriminating against Internet users and application and service providers in terms of content, quality of access, and choice of equipment.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is doubly false\u0026ndash;the common carriage requirements applied only to the last-mile consumer network connections, not to the ability of ISPs to filter; and it is false that \u0026ldquo;nothing prevents\u0026rdquo; ISPs from taking actions which would cause them to lose customers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re like many people using the Internet, you don\u0026rsquo;t think about whether your Internet Service Provider is intentionally slowing down or speeding up your access to Yahoo! versus Google. Without Net Neutrality, your ISP could do just that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eImagine if your phone company was allowed to own restaurants and then provided good service and clear signals to customers who called Dominos and static and frequent busy signals for those calling Pizza Hut.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt sounds outrageous, but it would be entirely possible if the telephone system wasn\u0026rsquo;t regulated under the \u0026ldquo;common carrier\u0026rdquo; framework.  The telecoms and cable companies that provide Internet network services, including AT\u0026amp;T, BellSouth, Comcast, Qwest, Sprint, Time-Warner/AOL, and Verizon, have spent over $100 million lobbying Congress and the FCC to eliminate established Net Neutrality protections.\u003c/blockquote\u003eRemember, cable companies have never been common carriers, yet this hasn\u0026rsquo;t been a problem.  Why create new regulations and give more power to a government agency that has a history of not only working on behalf of the big incumbents (rather than promoting competition, which is what is needed) but of engaging in actions designed to cause discrimination against certain forms of content through censorship?  It makes no sense.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe assault on Internet freedom will only get worse. The FCC imposed Net Neutrality protections in merger agreements for certain network providers such as SBC/AT\u0026amp;T and Verizon/MCI, but those protections expire in 2007. And in July 2006, the FCC declined to include any Net Neutrality protections in Comcast and Time-Warner\u0026rsquo;s acquisition of Adelphia Cable. The pattern of the FCC opposing Net Neutrality is expected to continue, as network providers continue to consolidate into an even smaller pool of Internet gatekeepers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWithout the vigorous non-discrimination principles in place before 2005, a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet. Net Neutrality is needed, and it is needed now.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe above argument is a mish-mash of fear-mongering about things that haven\u0026rsquo;t been an issue, misrepresentation of what regulations have been in place, wild unsubstantiated claims (\u0026ldquo;a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet\u0026rdquo;?), and a failure to look at the actual substantive issues in the network neutrality debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheir \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/internet/26828res20060922.html\"\u003ewebsite contains further misinformation\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ACLU incompetence and misinformation on net neutrality"},{"content":"Ted Haggard, head of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, has resigned as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals over accusations that he paid for gay sex and methamphetamines. He denies the allegations, but says he is stepping aside to maintain the integrity of the organization while an investigation occurs. Ross Parsley, the acting senior pastor at New Life Church, says that Haggard has admitted that some of the allegations are true. \u0026ldquo;I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt,\u0026rdquo; Parsley told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs.\nHaggard and his church have been outspoken in opposition to gay marriage.\nAs Radley Balko points out, this provides further evidence for the thesis that the loudest of the anti-gay crowd are fighting their own urges.\nUPDATE: It appears that he has confessed to buying methamphetamine, but not the gay sex.\nUPDATE (November 3, 2006): The accuser has failed a polygraph test (not that that actually means much more than if he had failed a tea-leaf reading or astrological horoscope). Haggard has admitted to buying, but not using meth. Which raises the question\u0026ndash;who was he buying meth for, if not for his own use?\nUPDATE: Haggard is clearly lying about not using the meth he bought (his voice message says he\u0026rsquo;s buying more), and his claim that he only bought a massage rather than engaged in sex is implausible based on the ad he answered. He claims he bought the meth for his own use out of curiosity, but threw it away.\nUPDATE (November 4, 2006): Haggard has been dismissed from his church for \u0026ldquo;sexual immorality.\u0026quot; Looks like either his church\u0026rsquo;s leaders don\u0026rsquo;t buy his denials of gay sex or consider a massage to be sexual immorality.\nUPDATE (November 5, 2006): Haggard has admitted that he\u0026rsquo;s a liar and a deceiver, though still claims that \u0026ldquo;not all\u0026rdquo; of the accusations against him are true, \u0026ldquo;but enough of them are that I was appropriately removed from [his] church leadership position.\u0026rdquo; He admitted to being \u0026ldquo;guilty of sexual immorality.\u0026quot;\nUPDATE (December 28, 2006): Haggard\u0026rsquo;s dope dealer and masseuse, Mike Jones, has signed a book deal. It will be published by Seven Stories Press.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/ted-haggard-resigns-as-head-of-nae.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTed Haggard, head of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Haggard_Sex_Allegations.html\"\u003ehas resigned as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals over accusations that he paid for gay sex and methamphetamines\u003c/a\u003e.  He denies the allegations, but says he is stepping aside to maintain the integrity of the organization while an investigation occurs.  Ross Parsley, the acting senior pastor at New Life Church, says that Haggard has admitted that some of the allegations are true.  \u0026ldquo;I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt,\u0026rdquo; Parsley told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHaggard and his church have been outspoken in opposition to gay marriage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027199.php\"\u003eRadley Balko points out\u003c/a\u003e, this provides further evidence for the thesis that the loudest of the anti-gay crowd are fighting their own urges.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  It \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/another_gay_fundie_1.php\"\u003eappears that he has confessed to buying methamphetamine\u003c/a\u003e, but not the gay sex.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 3, 2006): The accuser \u003ca href=\"http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4597552\"\u003ehas failed a polygraph test\u003c/a\u003e (not that that actually means much more than if he had failed a tea-leaf reading or astrological horoscope).  Haggard has admitted to buying, but not using meth.  Which raises the question\u0026ndash;who was he buying meth for, if not for his own use?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Haggard \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/haggard_caught_in_obvious_lies.php\"\u003eis clearly lying\u003c/a\u003e about not using the meth he bought (his voice message says he\u0026rsquo;s buying more), and his claim that he only bought a massage rather than engaged in sex is implausible based on the ad he answered.  He claims he bought the meth for his own use out of curiosity, but threw it away.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 4, 2006): Haggard \u003ca href=\"http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HAGGARD_SEX_ALLEGATIONS?SITE=AZPHG\u0026SECTION=HOME\u0026amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT\u0026CTIME=2006-11-04-17-17-03\"\u003ehas been dismissed from his church for \u0026ldquo;sexual immorality.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Looks like either his church\u0026rsquo;s leaders don\u0026rsquo;t buy his denials of gay sex or consider a massage to be sexual immorality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 5, 2006):  Haggard \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1105evangelist-ON-CR.html\"\u003ehas admitted that he\u0026rsquo;s a liar and a deceiver\u003c/a\u003e, though still claims that \u0026ldquo;not all\u0026rdquo; of the accusations against him are true, \u0026ldquo;but enough of them are that I was appropriately removed from [his] church leadership position.\u0026rdquo;  He admitted to being \u0026ldquo;guilty of sexual immorality.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 28, 2006):  Haggard\u0026rsquo;s dope dealer and masseuse, Mike Jones, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16240486.htm\"\u003esigned a book deal\u003c/a\u003e.  It will be published by Seven Stories Press.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ted Haggard resigns as head of NAE over gay prostitution claims"},{"content":"Sen. Jon Kyl, a strong supporter of banning Internet gambling, is a target of online poker players upset at the sleazy way the recent law prohibiting banks from engaging in financial transactions with online gaming sites was passed. That law was snuck into a port security bill in the night by Bill Frist, with no opportunity to vote on the amendment. The effect of that law has been to cause all of the largest legitimate online gaming sites (such as those publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange) to decline to permit Americans to use their sites, while those that are on the shadier side continue to take American business. In other words, the effect has been to make online gaming more dangerous for Americans, and to have less accountability about where the profits go.\nKyl has seen his lead in the polls over Jim Pederson decline, though he is still, unfortunately, likely to win.\nHistorical Comments donna (2006-12-09):\nKyl will probably win this time, but I think Pedersen learned a lot. There are quite a few nasty targets for the next few election cycles yet. We're in for a long haul to change things.Hey, I'm stuck with Duncan Hunter as my representative - ew.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/sen-jon-kyl-target-after-internet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. Jon Kyl, a strong supporter of banning Internet gambling, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027200.php\"\u003eis a target of online poker players\u003c/a\u003e upset at the sleazy way the recent law prohibiting banks from engaging in financial transactions with online gaming sites was passed.  That law was snuck into a port security bill in the night by Bill Frist, with no opportunity to vote on the amendment.  The effect of that law has been to cause all of the largest legitimate online gaming sites (such as those publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange) to decline to permit Americans to use their sites, while those that are on the shadier side continue to take American business.  In other words, the effect has been to make online gaming more dangerous for Americans, and to have less accountability about where the profits go.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKyl has seen his lead in the polls over Jim Pederson decline, though he is still, unfortunately, likely to win.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sen. Jon Kyl a target after Internet gambling ban"},{"content":"Creationist huckster Kent Hovind and his wife Jo have been found guilty of tax fraud in Florida, and each face over 200 years in prison.\nFor more reactions to the verdict:\nDispatches from the Culture Wars\nPharyngula\nThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\nMore on the trial may be found here.\nHovind\u0026rsquo;s appearance on the Ali G Show may be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/dr-dino-guilty-of-tax-fraud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreationist huckster \u003ca href=\"http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061102/NEWS01/611020330/1006\"\u003eKent Hovind and his wife Jo have been found guilty of tax fraud\u003c/a\u003e in Florida, and each face over 200 years in prison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more reactions to the verdict:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/11/hovind_found_guilty.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/guilty_guilty_guilty.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/11/pensacola_newsj.html\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore on the trial may be found \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/kent-hovind-on-trial.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHovind\u0026rsquo;s appearance on the Ali G Show may be found \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/kent-hovind-and-ali-g.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Dino guilty of tax fraud"},{"content":"Former Internet Infidels President Richard Carrier now has a blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/richard-carrier-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e President Richard Carrier \u003ca href=\"http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/\"\u003enow has a blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Carrier blog"},{"content":"The third woman to die in Iraq, Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, from Flagstaff, Arizona, was reported as having died from a \u0026ldquo;non-hostile weapons discharge.\u0026rdquo; A reporter who dug further, Kevin Elston, found that she committed suicide on September 15, 2003, after becoming distraught from working in an interrogation unit known as \u0026ldquo;the cage.\u0026rdquo; Peterson, a devout Mormon who was working as an Arabic translator, was upset by the methods of interrogation being used on Iraqi prisoners. After two days in the unit, she refused to participate further, was reassigned, and was sent to suicide prevention training.\nArmy spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques that Peterson objected to, and say that all records of them have been destroyed.\nWilliam Zeranski (2006-12-09):\nShe committed suicide, so she a smart soldier or one of the dumb ones? Go ask John Kerry--the genius (ha). The tragedy is she was a 27 year old woman who wasn’t even committed to her own life or her Mormon faith.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nFailure to be committed to Mormon faith is no tragedy, but it's not fair to say that anyone who commits suicide is not committed to their faith. There are few, if any, people who are entirely consistent in following the doctrines of their faith.Do you not think that there might have been something wrong with the interrogation techniques and the leadership who was demanding that they be used (and then destroying the evidence of what they were)?\njbenjaminwhite, m.s., m.a., phd (2007-07-29):\nwilliam, your comment is ridiculous. perhaps it was the tension between honoring the tenets of faith and the duty to nation which led to an irreconcilable inner turmoil from which suicide presented a sole escape? perhaps, in those moments, hours, days, what she witnessed, and indeed became complicit in, shattered any delusion of integrity in either her religion or her nation's evangelical leader? perhaps she was the wise one, and folks who sneer at suffering, her own, and others, the fools from whom suicide presented itself as her only escape.frankly, john kerry is proven a brave man, who fought the good fight, and lost to dishonest fear-mongering sneer-artists. perhaps you have been fooled on this one, too? the wise man is always vulnerable to the clever man, as the wise man looks far ahead, and the clever man is distracted by daily glitter and gold. but, the wise man is the better leader, and as clever men betray them, we are left as we are now, led by bigots and cons.this soldier's suicide is a symptom of the sickness that pervades our culture, the rot of which fumes from your malignant remark.\nGoogleSUCKS (2007-07-29):\nAs I recall she 'committed suicide' by a bullet to the back of the head. The military put 'suicide'as cause of death, but it was actually murder. Hey they murdered Tillman too and covered that up with another BS story. It happens everyday in our ponerized military. The merchants of death value no human lives. Not even of their own co-workers. Besides the fact they claim to 'fight for freedom' with their lips as they work for corperate greed and false liberty. Occupation is not 'democracy'. Everything the powers that be tell you are deceptions.Including false suicides. Fact is this woman had a conscience and was murdered for doing the right thing. No one suicides themselves by a bullet to the back of the head.\nLippard (2007-07-29):\nWhere did you obtain evidence that she was shot in the back of the head? Kevin Elston, the reporter who uncovered her suicide (the government had claimed it was an accidental weapons discharge), reported that she shot herself with her own service rifle.Your words \"As I recall\" suggest that you do not have a source to support your claim.It's also not yet been established that Pat Tillman was murdered (as opposed to accidentally killed)--there is some contradictory testimony and evidence about the circumstances of his death. I don't think it's been ruled out, and it may well be that his outspoken atheist views contributed to his being murdered, but it hasn't been demonstrated yet.It has, however, been demonstrated that the government is happy to lie and cover up embarrassing information in both of these cases.\nDave Holmes (2007-07-29):\nWhat always disturbs me the most about any subject shedding light on what's wrong in America right now is met by stupid uninformed comments from brainwashed ignorant people. How anyone could support bush and his war, let alone his burning of the Constitution just baffles me. Maybe people, being tribal and sheep-like, just don't want to see reality. This worked for Hitler and it's working for Bush. (If you choose to be offended by this, don't be. Just reasearch and inform yourself). I'm astounded by the masses sitting on their hands doing nothing. The only ones that can stop Bush is Americans, what the hell are we waiting for? IMPEACH THIS ADMINISTRATION!!!\nAlbert Krauss (2007-07-29):\nBravo, Webmaster, re the sheep etc. Now, let's jam Sicko down the dumbed out brains of the American \"masses\" and wake them to the possibility of real revolution, as in mass actions to default on hospital bills, picket HMO offices, and completely stomp out Republican political life, and vote for guys like Kucinich, and not Demo corporate clones. Rouse the rabble, and they shall become enlightened in the process. I'd love to see Cheney's body dragged through the streets as was Mussolini's. He'd have to be legally hanged, of course, after being found guilty of treason, war crimes, and whatever else the laundry list will surely provide.\nUnknown (2007-07-30):\nHa ha ha ...As usual your funny \"American-intellectual\" debate has missed the point by a mile again!Fact: For a religious person to commit suicide (i.e. commit one of the biggest sins) something extremly bad must have happened.Fact: This \"extremly bad event\" was done in YOUR name by YOUR employees (i.e. YOUR military).Fact: Well done to publish the story, but you are debating the non-facts (is she committed? who is she? etc etc.) To summarize: Reading the story and the following debate, I can understand why your goverment can get away with stuff that would have given Hitler a stiffy! Stop this nonsence! and more importantly STOP YOUR GOVERNMENT before they kill us all! PLEASE!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/11/female-soldier-committed-suicide-over.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe third woman to die in Iraq, Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, from Flagstaff, Arizona, was reported as having died from a \u0026ldquo;non-hostile weapons discharge.\u0026rdquo;  A reporter who dug further, Kevin Elston, \u003ca href=\"http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003345862\"\u003efound that she committed suicide on September 15, 2003\u003c/a\u003e, after becoming distraught from working in an interrogation unit known as \u0026ldquo;the cage.\u0026rdquo;  Peterson, a devout Mormon who was working as an Arabic translator, was upset by the methods of interrogation being used on Iraqi prisoners.  After two days in the unit, she refused to participate further, was reassigned, and was sent to suicide prevention training.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArmy spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques that Peterson objected to, and say that all records of them have been destroyed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Female soldier committed suicide over interrogation techniques in Iraq"},{"content":"Voting machines in Florida being used for early voting have unaccountably been registering votes for Democratic candidates as votes for Republicans at the review screen. The cases that have been noticed have been corrected with the assistance of poll workers. But how many haven\u0026rsquo;t been noticed?\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/electronic-voting-machines-in-florida.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVoting machines in Florida being used for early voting \u003ca href=\"http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/15869924.htm\"\u003ehave unaccountably been registering votes for Democratic candidates as votes for Republicans at the review screen\u003c/a\u003e.  The cases that have been noticed have been corrected with the assistance of poll workers.  But how many haven\u0026rsquo;t been noticed?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/more_computer_voting_problems.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Electronic voting machines in Florida having problems in early voting"},{"content":"The TSA badly failed a recent set of tests at Newark\u0026rsquo;s Liberty Airport. TSA screeners missed 90% of the guns and explosives that testers put through the system. TSA\u0026rsquo;s response? Immediate action to try to find out who leaked the results.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/tsa-fails-screening-tests-looks-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe TSA badly failed a recent set of tests at Newark\u0026rsquo;s Liberty Airport.   TSA screeners missed 90% of the guns and explosives that testers put through the system.  TSA\u0026rsquo;s response?  \u003ca href=\"http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-5/116227669134640.xml\u0026amp;coll=1,\"\u003eImmediate action to try to find out who leaked the results\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/airport_screene_1.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TSA Fails Screening Tests, Looks for Who Leaked the Results"},{"content":"Keith Olbermann shows the video of Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s attack on Michael J. Fox, which more vividly illustrates Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s depravity. (Also see Media Matters on Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s fake apology.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/olbermann-on-limbaughs-attack-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKeith Olbermann shows the video of Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s attack on Michael J. Fox, which more vividly illustrates Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s depravity.  (Also see \u003ca href=\"http://mediamatters.org/items/200610250014\"\u003eMedia Matters on Limbaugh\u0026rsquo;s fake apology\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/10MThGwtnqk\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/10MThGwtnqk\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Olbermann on Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox"},{"content":"Security researcher Chris Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University\u0026rsquo;s School for Informatics and an intern at Google, set up a website that functions as a boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines. The site contained a form that allowed you to fill in name, flight number, destination, and all of the other information on a boarding pass, and would display a boarding pass that would be indistinguishable from the real thing at the TSA security checkpoints.\nHe pointed out that the identity check at the TSA checkpoint amounts to nothing more than a comparison between the name on a picture ID and the name on a boarding pass, and that this provides no security whatsoever. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what threat this check is even supposed to be trying to mitigate. At best, it is an attempt to piggy-back on the check against the no-fly list (which is itself a complete joke) that is performed by the airlines when you purchase a ticket, but clearly that fails as his boarding pass generator is one of several ways to create a boarding pass in a name other than your own\u0026ndash;including modifying the displayed text generated by any airline\u0026rsquo;s online site or even purchasing a ticket in any name you choose. The latter was displayed vividly by a couple of guys who purchased tickets in the names of \u0026ldquo;Al Kyder\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Terry Wrist\u0026rdquo; (link includes video).\nIn my opinion, the only actual purpose served by checking for a valid boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint is to reduce the number of people passing through the checkpoint in order to most efficiently make use of security resources. It does not otherwise have any effect on security; it provides no deterrent to an attacker. It is not effective in screening out those with malicious intent, and it is not even effective in verifying identity.\nCongressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has called for Chris Soghoian to be arrested. He was visited and interrogated by the FBI, then went to stay at his parents\u0026rsquo; house. Friday night, the FBI broke their way into his apartment, seized his computers, and generally trashed his place.\nLesson: Point out U.S. security weaknesses, and you will be punished. Those responsible for the weaknesses and idiocy of U.S. \u0026ldquo;security theater,\u0026rdquo; however, will not be held accountable.\nThis is one of the rare times when Michelle Malkin actually says something correct.\nOther coverage: Jim Harper, author of the excellent book Identity Crisis, at the Technology Liberation Front and at Cato@Liberty (this post does a good job of pointing out the problems with the TSA identity check). Bruce Schneier, at his blog. And there\u0026rsquo;s some rather good coverage in multiple posts at BoingBoing.\nThe problem that Soghoian pointed out was previously described in February 2005 on Slate.com by Andy Bowers, and in 2003 by Bruce Schneier in his Crypt-o-Gram newsletter.\nSo yes, Kip Hawley is still an idiot.\nUPDATE (November 2, 2006): Bruce Schneier has written a detailed description of the flaw in the security design of the TSA identity check, and makes the same point that even if the flaw is corrected it doesn\u0026rsquo;t add any real security because it\u0026rsquo;s just a check of the no-fly list.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/point-out-obvious-get-raided-by-fbi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSecurity researcher Chris Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University\u0026rsquo;s School for Informatics and an intern at Google, set up \u003ca href=\"http://www.dubfire.net/boarding_pass/\"\u003ea website that functions as a boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines\u003c/a\u003e.  The site contained a form that allowed you to fill in name, flight number, destination, and all of the other information on a boarding pass, and would display a boarding pass that would be indistinguishable from the real thing at the TSA security checkpoints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe pointed out that the identity check at the TSA checkpoint amounts to nothing more than a comparison between the name on a picture ID and the name on a boarding pass, and that this provides no security whatsoever.  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what threat this check is even supposed to be trying to mitigate.  At best, it is an attempt to piggy-back on the check against the no-fly list (which \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/us-no-fly-list-is-joke.html\"\u003eis itself a complete joke\u003c/a\u003e) that is performed by the airlines when you purchase a ticket, but clearly that fails as his boarding pass generator is one of several ways to create a boarding pass in a name other than your own\u0026ndash;including modifying the displayed text generated by any airline\u0026rsquo;s online site or even purchasing a ticket in any name you choose.  The latter \u003ca href=\"http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/10/27/fake-boarding-passes-clear-airport-security/\"\u003ewas displayed vividly by a couple of guys who purchased tickets in the names of \u0026ldquo;Al Kyder\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Terry Wrist\u0026rdquo; (link includes video)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn my opinion, the only actual purpose served by checking for a valid boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint is to reduce the number of people passing through the checkpoint in order to most efficiently make use of security resources.  It does not otherwise have any effect on security; it provides no deterrent to an attacker.  It is not effective in screening out those with malicious intent, and it is not even effective in verifying identity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCongressman Ed Markey (D-MA) \u003ca href=\"http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/10/congressman_ed_.html\"\u003ehas called for Chris Soghoian to be arrested\u003c/a\u003e.  He was visited and interrogated by the FBI, then went to stay at his parents\u0026rsquo; house.  Friday night, \u003ca href=\"http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/10/fbi-visit-2.html\"\u003ethe FBI broke their way into his apartment, seized his computers, and generally trashed his place\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLesson:  Point out U.S. security weaknesses, and you will be punished.  Those responsible for the weaknesses and idiocy of U.S. \u0026ldquo;security theater,\u0026rdquo; however, will not be held accountable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is one of the rare times when \u003ca href=\"http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006217.htm\"\u003eMichelle Malkin actually says something correct\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOther coverage:  Jim Harper, author of the excellent book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIdentity Crisis\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/041035.php\"\u003eat the Technology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e and at \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/10/27/fake-boarding-pass-generator-underscores-id-woes/\"\u003eCato@Liberty\u003c/a\u003e (this post does a good job of pointing out the problems with the TSA identity check).  Bruce Schneier, \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/create_your_own.html\"\u003eat his blog\u003c/a\u003e.  And there\u0026rsquo;s some rather good coverage in multiple posts at \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/27/fake_boarding_pass_g.html\"\u003eBoingBoing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe problem that Soghoian pointed out was previously described \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2113157/\"\u003ein February 2005 on Slate.com by Andy Bowers\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0308.html#6\"\u003ein 2003 by Bruce Schneier in his Crypt-o-Gram newsletter\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo yes, \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/kip-hawley-is-idiot.html\"\u003eKip Hawley is still an idiot\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 2, 2006):  Bruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_own.html\"\u003ehas written a detailed description of the flaw in the security design of the TSA identity check\u003c/a\u003e, and makes the same point that even if the flaw is corrected it doesn\u0026rsquo;t add any real security because it\u0026rsquo;s just a check of the no-fly list.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Point out the obvious, get raided by the FBI"},{"content":"Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, AZ-District 1) is now under investigation by the feds, for some deals involving San Pedro River water and land nearby which a friend of his made millions from.\nRenzi is on CREW\u0026rsquo;s list of the top 20 most corrupt Congressmen.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/dirty-politician-rick-renzi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Rick Renzi (Republican, AZ-District 1) is \u003ca href=\"http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/15839667.htm\"\u003enow under investigation by the feds\u003c/a\u003e, for \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001873.php\"\u003esome deals involving San Pedro River water and land nearby which a friend of his made millions from\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRenzi is on \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/rick-renzi-jd-hayworth-make-list-of.html\"\u003eCREW\u0026rsquo;s list of the top 20 most corrupt Congressmen\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Rick Renzi"},{"content":"I guess it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been surprising to find that the Bush administration appointed people to key positions in post-invasion Iraq on the basis of their loyalty to George W. Bush rather than their possession of any relevant skills or experience, as we saw with Michael Brown\u0026rsquo;s appointment to head FEMA and George Deutsch\u0026rsquo;s appointment as a press officer at NASA. But I didn\u0026rsquo;t imagine that things were actually as bad as they were. An article in the Washington Post derived from Rajiv Chandrasekaran\u0026rsquo;s new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, describes the application process for jobs with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq:\nOne former CPA employee who had an office near O\u0026rsquo;Beirne\u0026rsquo;s wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: \u0026ldquo;I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to \u0026rsquo;the President\u0026rsquo;s vision for Iraq\u0026rsquo; (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was \u0026lsquo;uncertain.\u0026rsquo; I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors.\u0026quot;\nLoyalists with dubious experience also replaced highly competent and experienced people who were already in place:\nHaveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.\nHaveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.\nHaveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master\u0026rsquo;s degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.\nHe had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the \u0026ldquo;single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government.\u0026quot;\nBut a week after Baghdad\u0026rsquo;s liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a \u0026ldquo;loyalist\u0026rdquo; in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn\u0026rsquo;t have a picture with the president.\nFurther quotes and commentary can be found at Dispatches from the Culture Wars and The Agitator.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/bush-administration-incompetence-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI guess it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been surprising to find that the Bush administration appointed people to key positions in post-invasion Iraq on the basis of their loyalty to George W. Bush rather than their possession of any relevant skills or experience, as we saw with Michael Brown\u0026rsquo;s appointment to head FEMA and \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/collected-works-of-george-deutsch.html\"\u003eGeorge Deutsch\u0026rsquo;s appointment as a press officer at NASA\u003c/a\u003e.  But I didn\u0026rsquo;t imagine that things were actually as bad as they were.  An \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html\"\u003earticle in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e derived from Rajiv Chandrasekaran\u0026rsquo;s new book\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eImperial Life in the Emerald City\u003c/span\u003e, describes the application process for jobs with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOne former CPA employee who had an office near O\u0026rsquo;Beirne\u0026rsquo;s wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: \u0026ldquo;I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to \u0026rsquo;the President\u0026rsquo;s vision for Iraq\u0026rsquo; (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was \u0026lsquo;uncertain.\u0026rsquo; I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eLoyalists with dubious experience also replaced highly competent and experienced people who were already in place:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush administration incompetence in Iraq"},{"content":"Republican Vernon Robinson is running for the House of Representatives against Democrat Brad Miller with unbelievably sleazy tactics, such as accusing Miller of being gay because he is middle-aged and has no children. Miller responded by pointing out that he is married, but his wife is unable to have children due to a hysterectomy and she suffers from endometreiosis.\nThe topper is Robinson\u0026rsquo;s attack ad (which has been recycled by Republican Paul Nelson against Democrat Ron Kind in Wisconsin\u0026rsquo;s third district). This ad accuses the Democrat (Miller or Kind) of spending \u0026ldquo;your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;to study the masturbation habits of old men,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes.\u0026quot;\nOf course, there was no vote by either of these Democrats for any such thing. Rather, they voted against taking action to cancel five specific research studies by the National Institutes of Health, on the grounds that it is not Congress\u0026rsquo; place to make specific decisions about what research the NIH funds. The first study referenced in the advertisement, regarding teenage girls and pornographic movies, is apparently designated by an incorrect grant number in the ad. The second study, NIH grant R03HD039206, was titled \u0026ldquo;Longitudinal Trends in the Sexual Behavior of Older Men,\u0026rdquo; which examined quality of life effects in older men\u0026ndash;it was not specifically a study of the \u0026ldquo;masturbation habits of old men.\u0026rdquo; This grant was perhaps $50,000 per year over two years, out of the NIH\u0026rsquo;s $30 billion annual budget. The third study, NIH grant R01MH065871, was a proposed study of mental health risks in response to an announced program to do research on particular risk groups that have thus far not received attention from investigators.\nYou can see both ads and read comments on them (some of the above is derived from comments by Phil T. Bastid) here. A response by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania which recounts the specifics of each of the studies in question may be found here.\nUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Both of these sleazy politicians, Vernon Robinson and Paul Nelson, got defeated by about a 2-to-1 margin.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/vernon-robinsonpaul-nelson-recycled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRepublican Vernon Robinson \u003ca href=\"http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/09/27/awesomest-congressional-campaign-ever-vernon-robinson-nc/\"\u003eis running for the House of Representatives against Democrat Brad Miller with unbelievably sleazy tactics\u003c/a\u003e, such as accusing Miller of being gay because he is middle-aged and has no children.  Miller responded by pointing out that he is married, but his wife is unable to have children due to a hysterectomy and she suffers from endometreiosis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe topper is Robinson\u0026rsquo;s attack ad (which \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/06/wi_03_goper_recycles_ad_from_vernon_robinson\"\u003ehas been recycled by Republican Paul Nelson against Democrat Ron Kind\u003c/a\u003e in Wisconsin\u0026rsquo;s third district).  This ad accuses the Democrat (Miller or Kind) of spending \u0026ldquo;your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;to study the masturbation habits of old men,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf course, there was no vote by either of these Democrats for any such thing.  Rather, they voted against taking action to cancel five specific research studies by the National Institutes of Health, on the grounds that it is not Congress\u0026rsquo; place to make specific decisions about what research the NIH funds.  The first study referenced in the advertisement, regarding teenage girls and pornographic movies, is apparently designated by an incorrect grant number in the ad.  The second study, NIH grant R03HD039206, was titled \u0026ldquo;Longitudinal Trends in the Sexual Behavior of Older Men,\u0026rdquo; which examined quality of life effects in older men\u0026ndash;it was not specifically a study of the \u0026ldquo;masturbation habits of old men.\u0026rdquo;  This grant was perhaps $50,000 per year over two years, out of the NIH\u0026rsquo;s $30 billion annual budget.  The third study, NIH grant R01MH065871, was a proposed study of mental health risks in response to an announced program to do research on particular risk groups that have thus far not received attention from investigators.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can see both ads and read comments on them (some of the above is derived from comments by Phil T. Bastid) \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/06/wi_03_goper_recycles_ad_from_vernon_robinson\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. A response by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania which recounts the specifics of each of the studies in question may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/09/27/awesomest-congressional-campaign-ever-vernon-robinson-nc/#comment-104\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Both of these sleazy politicians, Vernon Robinson and Paul Nelson, got defeated by about a 2-to-1 margin.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vernon Robinson/Paul Nelson recycled sleazy attack ads"},{"content":"The Republican National Committee paid for this attack ad on Harold Ford (D-TN), which has prompted Ford\u0026rsquo;s opponent, Bob Corker, to call on the RNC to pull the ad.\nUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Corker defeated Ford, which isn\u0026rsquo;t terribly disappointing given Ford\u0026rsquo;s positions on the issues (he supported the invasion of Iraq, voted for the Military Commissions Act, and supported federal and state bans of same-sex marriage, while posing as a religious man but attending parties at the Playboy mansion). It was really a lose-lose race.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/another-sleazy-republican-ad-during.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Republican National Committee paid for this attack ad on Harold Ford (D-TN), \u003ca href=\"http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/election/article/0,1406,KNS_630_5082809,00.html\"\u003ewhich has prompted Ford\u0026rsquo;s opponent, Bob Corker, to call on the RNC to pull the ad\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Corker defeated Ford, which isn\u0026rsquo;t terribly disappointing given Ford\u0026rsquo;s positions on the issues (he supported the invasion of Iraq, voted for the Military Commissions Act, and supported federal and state bans of same-sex marriage, while posing as a religious man but attending parties at the Playboy mansion).  It was really a lose-lose race.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/cWkrwENN5CQ\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" height=\"265\" width=\"300\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another sleazy Republican ad during National Character Counts week"},{"content":"The National Republican Congressional Committee is standing behind its ad attacking Democrat Michael Arcuri, who is running against Republican Ray Meier to replace retiring Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert in upstate New York.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the content of the ad:\nWoman\u0026rsquo;s sultry voice: \u0026ldquo;Hi sexy. You\u0026rsquo;ve reached the live one-on-one fantasy line.\u0026rdquo; (Soft music plays in the background.)\nAnnouncer: \u0026ldquo;A phone number to an adult fantasy hot line appeared on Michael Arcuri\u0026rsquo;s New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business. And the call was charged to Oneida County taxpayers. Arcuri has denied it, but the facts are there. Who calls a fantasy hot line and then bills taxpayers? Michael Arcuri.\u0026quot;\nWoman\u0026rsquo;s sultry voice: \u0026ldquo;Bad call.\u0026quot;The facts of the matter are that an Arcuri aide made a call to the number in question for less than a minute, which was in error. He then called a number with a different area code (instead of a toll-free number) but the rest of the digits the same, which is the number of the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. Arcuri is the district attorney in Oneida County.\nAt least seven television stations have refused to run the GOP\u0026rsquo;s ad, for good reason\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s unbelievably misleading.\nThe NRCC, fully aware of the dishonesty of this advertisement, insists that their account is \u0026ldquo;totally true\u0026rdquo; (yes, but it uses true but incomplete information in a way specifically intended to mislead, which is a form of lying) and they say that they stand behind the message.\nUpstate New York newspapers have been doing a good job of exposing the facts.\nUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Arcuri defeated Meier in the election and will be the next Rep. from NY\u0026rsquo;s 24th District.\nHistorical Comments NoMoreArcuri (2006-12-09):\nI don't think the NRCC is doing themslves any favors. I can't understand why, with so much to point out about Mike Arcuri's dubious past, and bad record as a DA, they bothered to puff up a mistake into this negative ad.There's so many true \"Arcurious\" activities that this distortion is silly.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/sleazy-republican-attack-ad-may-be.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Republican Congressional Committee \u003ca href=\"http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003286540\"\u003eis standing behind its ad attacking Democrat Michael Arcuri\u003c/a\u003e, who is running against Republican Ray Meier to replace retiring Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert in upstate New York.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the content of the ad:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"text\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWoman\u0026rsquo;s sultry voice: \u0026ldquo;Hi sexy. You\u0026rsquo;ve reached the live one-on-one fantasy line.\u0026rdquo; (Soft music plays in the background.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnnouncer: \u0026ldquo;A phone number to an adult fantasy hot line appeared on Michael Arcuri\u0026rsquo;s New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business. And the call was charged to Oneida County taxpayers. Arcuri has denied it, but the facts are there. Who calls a fantasy hot line and then bills taxpayers? Michael Arcuri.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWoman\u0026rsquo;s sultry voice: \u0026ldquo;Bad call.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe facts of the matter are that an Arcuri aide made a call to the number in question for less than a minute, which was in error.  He then called a number with a different area code (instead of a toll-free number) but the rest of the digits the same, which is the number of the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.  Arcuri is the district attorney in Oneida County.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt least seven television stations have refused to run the GOP\u0026rsquo;s ad, for good reason\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s unbelievably misleading.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe NRCC, fully aware of the dishonesty of this advertisement, insists that their account is \u0026ldquo;totally true\u0026rdquo; (yes, but it uses true but incomplete information in a way specifically intended to mislead, which is a form of lying) and they say that they stand behind the message.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUpstate New York newspapers have been doing a good job of exposing the facts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2006): Arcuri defeated Meier in the election and will be the next Rep. from NY\u0026rsquo;s 24th District.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sleazy Republican attack ad may be backfiring"},{"content":"Kevin Tillman, the brother of Pat Tillman, who fought with him in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, has spoken out about the Bush administration, the war on terror, and the war in Iraq, in a piece titled \u0026ldquo;After Pat\u0026rsquo;s Birthday.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/kevin-tillman-speaks-out.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKevin Tillman, the brother of Pat Tillman, who fought with him in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, has spoken out about the Bush administration, the war on terror, and the war in Iraq, \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/\"\u003ein a piece titled \u0026ldquo;After Pat\u0026rsquo;s Birthday.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kevin Tillman speaks out"},{"content":"Creationist Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s trial for tax evasion is proving to be quite a hoot. Some highlights from the Pensacola News-Journal\u0026rsquo;s coverage:\nHovind attempted to manipulate funds from the start of his ministry, she said. In 1996, he filed for bankruptcy, a move Heldmeyer said Hovind designed to prevent the IRS from collecting taxes. The IRS later determined Hovind filed under an \u0026ldquo;evil purpose,\u0026rdquo; Heldmeyer said. She called Hovind a \u0026ldquo;very loud and vocal tax protester,\u0026rdquo; recalling a number of lawsuits he filed against the IRS over the past decade. Each was deemed frivolous and was thrown out, she said. And on April 13, 2004, when IRS officials issued a search warrant for Hovind\u0026rsquo;s property, he resisted.Hovind has some interesting theories about corporate liability and government action:\nPopp testified that Hovind warned employees not to accept mail addressed to \u0026ldquo;KENT HOVIND.\u0026rdquo; He said Hovind told the workers the government created a corporation in his \u0026ldquo;all-caps name.\u0026rdquo; Hovind said if he accepted the mail, he would be accepting the responsibilities associated with that corporation, Popp testified.Hovind uses Scientology-style tactics against the IRS (though without their success\u0026ndash;apparently 50 separate lawsuits against agents from a large criminal cult has more effect):\nHovind tried several bullying tactics against her, Powe testified. A recording that Hovind made of a phone conversation was then played. In the phone conversation, Hovind tried to make an appointment with Powe by 10 a.m. that day. When Powe said she couldn\u0026rsquo;t meet him because she had a staff meeting, Hovind threatened to sue her, which he did. \u0026ldquo;Dr. Hovind sued me three times, maybe more,\u0026rdquo; Powe testified. \u0026ldquo;It just seemed to be something he did often.\u0026rdquo; She testified that the cases were dismissed.Blog Coverage:\nPanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb: Dr. Dino in the Dock (October 18)\nPanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb: Workers testify in \u0026lsquo;Dr. Dino\u0026rsquo; trial (October 19)\nPharyngula: Pensacola Hilarity (October 20)\nPharyngula: Hovind saga continues (October 21)\nDispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial Begins (October 18)\nDispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 2 (October 20)\nDispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 3 (October 21)\nDispatches from the Culture Wars: Hovind Trial, Day 4 (October 23)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/kent-hovind-on-trial.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreationist Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/dr-dino-busted.html\"\u003etrial for tax evasion\u003c/a\u003e is proving to be quite a hoot.  Some highlights from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePensacola News-Journal\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s coverage:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHovind attempted to manipulate funds from the start of his ministry, she said. In 1996, he filed for bankruptcy, a move Heldmeyer said Hovind designed to prevent the IRS from collecting taxes. The IRS later determined Hovind filed under an \u0026ldquo;evil purpose,\u0026rdquo; Heldmeyer said. She called Hovind a \u0026ldquo;very loud and vocal tax protester,\u0026rdquo; recalling a number of lawsuits he filed against the IRS over the past decade. Each was deemed frivolous and was thrown out, she said. And on April 13, 2004, when IRS officials issued a search warrant for Hovind\u0026rsquo;s property, he resisted.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHovind has some interesting theories about corporate liability and government action:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePopp testified that Hovind warned employees not to accept mail addressed to \u0026ldquo;KENT HOVIND.\u0026rdquo; He said Hovind told the workers the government created a corporation in his \u0026ldquo;all-caps name.\u0026rdquo; Hovind said if he accepted the mail, he would be accepting the responsibilities associated with that corporation, Popp testified.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHovind uses Scientology-style tactics against the IRS (though without their success\u0026ndash;apparently 50 separate lawsuits against agents from a large criminal cult has more effect):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHovind tried several bullying tactics against her, Powe testified. A recording that Hovind made of a phone conversation was then played. In the phone conversation, Hovind tried to make an appointment with Powe by 10 a.m. that day. When Powe said she couldn\u0026rsquo;t meet him because she had a staff meeting, Hovind threatened to sue her, which he did. \u0026ldquo;Dr. Hovind sued me three times, maybe more,\u0026rdquo; Powe testified. \u0026ldquo;It just seemed to be something he did often.\u0026rdquo; She testified that the cases were dismissed.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBlog Coverage:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb: \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/10/dr_dino_in_the_1.html\"\u003eDr. Dino in the Dock\u003c/a\u003e (October 18)\u003cbr /\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb: \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/10/workers_testify.html\"\u003eWorkers testify in \u0026lsquo;Dr. Dino\u0026rsquo; trial\u003c/a\u003e (October 19)\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/10/pensacola_hilarity.php\"\u003ePensacola Hilarity\u003c/a\u003e (October 20)\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/10/hovind_saga_continues.php\"\u003eHovind saga continues\u003c/a\u003e (October 21)\u003cbr /\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/hovind_trial_begins.php\"\u003eHovind Trial Begins\u003c/a\u003e (October 18)\u003cbr /\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/hovind_trial_day_2.php\"\u003eHovind Trial, Day 2\u003c/a\u003e (October 20)\u003cbr /\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/hovind_trial_day_3.php\"\u003eHovind Trial, Day 3\u003c/a\u003e (October 21)\u003cbr /\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/hovind_trial_day_4.php\"\u003eHovind Trial, Day 4\u003c/a\u003e (October 23)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kent Hovind on trial"},{"content":"I like the \u0026ldquo;existential threat\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;cognitive hazard\u0026rdquo; signs. See the collection here.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/warning-signs-of-future.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI like the \u0026ldquo;existential threat\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;cognitive hazard\u0026rdquo; signs.  See the collection \u003ca href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/10/warning_signs_for_tomorrow.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/warning_signs_f.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Warning signs of the future"},{"content":"The above headline is justified to the same extent as Stop the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s headline, \u0026ldquo;Jailed Terror Suspect Helped ACLU Draft School Religion Rules,\u0026quot; as the rules in question were drafted jointly and agreed to by 35 organizations which included the National Association of Evangelicals, the ACLU, the Christian Legal Society, the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, and numerous other religious groups.\nThe \u0026ldquo;jailed terror suspect\u0026rdquo; in question was a member of the American Muslim Council, one of the 35 groups involved in creating these rules for the Department of Education under Clinton. This led another conservative blogger to headline this story with the even more deceptively dishonest \u0026ldquo;Terrorist Wrote Clinton\u0026rsquo;s School Religion Guidelines.\u0026quot;\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where Ed Brayton has been repeatedly responding to this same absurd charge for years.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/jailed-terror-suspect-helped-national_20.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe above headline is justified to the same extent as Stop the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s headline, \u003ca href=\"http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2006/10/19/jailed-terror-suspect-helped-aclu-draft-school-religion-rules/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jailed Terror Suspect Helped ACLU Draft School Religion Rules,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/religion/schools/16146leg19950412.html\"\u003erules in question\u003c/a\u003e were drafted jointly and agreed to by 35 organizations which included the National Association of Evangelicals, the ACLU, the Christian Legal Society, the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, and numerous other religious groups.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;jailed terror suspect\u0026rdquo; in question was a member of the American Muslim Council, one of the 35 groups involved in creating these rules for the Department of Education under Clinton.  This led another conservative blogger to headline this story with the even more deceptively dishonest \u003ca href=\"http://nathanbradfield.blogspot.com/2006/10/terrorist-wrote-clintons-school.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Terrorist Wrote Clinton\u0026rsquo;s School Religion Guidelines.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/the_dumbest_thing_worldnutdail_1.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, where Ed Brayton has been repeatedly responding to this same absurd \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/the_dumbest_thing_worldnutdail_1.php\"\u003echarge\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2004/08/terrorists_are_writing_our_sch.php\"\u003efor\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2004/01/oh_my_god_the_aclu_are_terrori_1.php\"\u003eyears\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jailed terror suspect helped National Association of Evangelicals draft school religion rules"},{"content":"House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA), under federal investigation himself, abruptly fired 60 contract investigators working for the Appropriations Committee to identify government fraud and waste. This stalls out all of the investigations, which have been saving billions of dollars and identified numerous instances of malfeasance.\nLewis spokesman John Scofield says \u0026ldquo;there is nothing sinister going on.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/dirty-politician-rep-jerry-lewis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHouse Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA), under federal investigation himself, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001845.php\"\u003eabruptly fired 60 contract investigators working for the Appropriations Committee to identify government fraud and waste\u003c/a\u003e.  This stalls out all of the investigations, which have been saving billions of dollars and identified numerous instances of malfeasance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLewis spokesman John Scofield says \u0026ldquo;there is nothing sinister going on.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician:  Rep. Jerry Lewis"},{"content":"Gun rights advocate and \u0026ldquo;uninvited ombudsman\u0026rdquo; Alan Korwin has sent out a checklist of his recommendations on the Arizona ballot propositions. I disagree with him on several of the propositions, perhaps most significantly on his recommendation of a yes vote to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and any legal arrangements that are \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; marriage. Here\u0026rsquo;s his argument for 107:\n107 YES Protect marriage amendment. If people want gay unions, polygamy, bestiality or whatever, I say let them, but not under government sanction and funding. I\u0026rsquo;d like to see us return to \u0026ldquo;holy matrimony\u0026rdquo; without any government involvement. Getting married for tax breaks is so wrong.But this argument presumes the effect of 107 is to get the government out of the marriage business, which it isn\u0026rsquo;t. Rather, 107 has the effect of enshrining existing statutory prohibitions on a form (or multiple forms) of legal contract between consenting adults into the Constitution, and going further to restrict any such arrangement \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; marriage. It isn\u0026rsquo;t pro-liberty, it\u0026rsquo;s anti-liberty. It isn\u0026rsquo;t eliminating special privileges, it is adding them to the Arizona Constitution.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s perfectly reasonable to argue that nobody should have tax breaks or special privileges under the law, but it\u0026rsquo;s not reasonable to say that because such privileges are wrong we should restrict them to a particular set of people. That\u0026rsquo;s not only unfair, it\u0026rsquo;s unconstitutional\u0026ndash;a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. It\u0026rsquo;s like arguing that the government shouldn\u0026rsquo;t confer support on religion, so we should vote yes on an amendment that limits government support to the Christian religion, and keep it from supporting Islam or other religions. (No doubt there are many Americans who would, quite wrongly, support such a law.)\nNow, some advocates of Proposition 107 have argued that there is no violation of the equal protection clause because a gay man has the same right to marry a woman as a heterosexual man does. But this is just like arguing that a prohibition on interracial marriage doesn\u0026rsquo;t violate the equal protection clause because a black man has the same right to marry a black woman as a white man has to marry a white woman\u0026ndash;the description of the right is being crafted to exclude the category of person who is being discriminated against.\nAs Ed Brayton has pointed out on numerous occasions, the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on same-sex marriage are of the same form as the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on miscegenation, just replacing \u0026ldquo;different race\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;same sex.\u0026rdquo; If you think that the Supreme Court ruled correctly in Loving v. Virginia, you should also think that Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Proposition 107 violates the U.S. Constitution for the same reasons.\nSee also my previous post on the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment. You may also find David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s economic analysis of marriage arrangements to be of interest.\nUPDATE (October 21, 2006): Just to make it clear, THeath has enumerated some specific examples of what opponents of gay marriage are actually endorsing (there are several more if you follow the link)\u0026ndash;these aren\u0026rsquo;t hypotheticals, these are real people:\nThere was the friend I wrote about recently who was turned away from from the emergency room, where his partner had been taken after suddenly collapsing at work, and told he could not be given any information because he was not next of kin. He had to leave the hospital and retrieve their legal documents before he could gain admittance to see his partner when a married spouse would have been waved through without question.\nMy friend was luckier than Bill Flanigan. When his partner Robert Daniel was hospitalized in Baltimore, the couple had their legal documents with them, including durable power of attorney and documentation that they were registered as domestic partners in California. But those documents were ignored by hospital staff and Flanigan was kept from seeing his partner until Daniel’s mother and sister arrived and by then Daniel was unconscious, with his eyes taped shut and hooked to a breathing tube; something Daniel had not wanted.\nEven having a will didn’t help Sam Beaumont when his partner of 23 years, Earl, died. Oklahoma requires a will to have two witnesses, but Earl didn’t know that and his will leaving everything to Sam had only one. So Earl\u0026rsquo;s cousins, who disapproved of his relationship and most of whom never spoke to the couple or even came to Earl’s funeral, successfully sued to take away the home and ranch Sam an Earl had shared for 23 years. A married spouse, even in the event of a will lacking enough witnesses, would’ve had the right to automatically inherit at least some of the estate.\nFurther Update (October 22, 2006): Ed Brayton takes apart the Alliance Defense Fund\u0026rsquo;s white paper on these marriage amendments here.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nYou've quoted my words, but you do not appear to have understood my point.The comparison is apt. Blacks who wanted to marry whites (or vice versa) were told that they were perfectly free to marry the partner of their choice, provided that partner was of the same race. Likewise, you are telling homosexuals that they are perfectly free to marry the partner of their choice, provided that partner is of the opposite sex. The fact that sexual orientation is not explicitly referenced doesn't change the effect (or the explicit intent) of the law. Heterosexuals are permitted to marry the partner of their choice, and homosexuals are prohibited from doing so. That *is* the law treating people differently because of their sexual preferences (and their sex, for that matter).I don't understand why you sympathize with the plight of the people in the update, yet you support an amendment to the Arizona constitution which is specifically designed to exacerbate the problem for the people in that circumstance, by not only prohibiting same-sex marriage, but prohibiting any other kind of legal arrangement \"similar to\" marriage that might help remediate such situations. I don't believe your sympathy or desire for reform in light of what you are advocating. There's an inconsistency in your stated position, and your actions speak louder than your words.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, just to make the point even clearer--your argument that there is no violation of equal protection says, \"You, Mr. Gay Male, are just as free to marry any woman as I am. You have the same rights that I do. There is no violation of equal protection.\" The defender of miscegenation laws says, \"You, Mr. Black Male, are just as free to marry any woman of your own race as I am. You have the same rights that I do. There is no violation of equal protection.\"The difference you are observing is that the racial restriction is a within-category restriction while the sex restriction is an across-category restriction. But if there were a law that said people on the east side of town could only marry people on the west side of town, and vice versa, that would be an example of an across-category restriction. If there were such a restriction, it would be disingenuous for you to argue that a west sider who wants to marry another west sider has exactly the same rights to marry a person from the opposite side of town that you do.The underlying right is to associate, live with, and enter into a permanent relationship (with particular legal status) with the person of your choice. You want that right to be restricted to couples of one male and one female, and prohibit homosexuals from having any such legal status.You say this is \"to radically redefine our most fundamental, universal unit of society,\" but what makes it so radical and what are the negative consequences that you foresee? It will have *zero* effect on heterosexual marriages. The only real motivation here, so far as I can see, is an opposition to gay relationships. But opposing gay marriage won't stop gay relationships, it will only cause the kinds of negative consequences that I pointed out in my update to this post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/bad-argument-in-support-of-protect_20.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGun rights advocate and \u003ca href=\"http://gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;uninvited ombudsman\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e Alan Korwin has sent out a checklist of his recommendations on the Arizona ballot propositions.  I disagree with him on several of the propositions, perhaps most significantly on his recommendation of a yes vote to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and any legal arrangements that are \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; marriage.  Here\u0026rsquo;s his argument for 107:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e107     YES     Protect marriage amendment. If people want gay unions, polygamy, bestiality or whatever, I say let them, but not under government sanction and funding. I\u0026rsquo;d like to see us return to \u0026ldquo;holy matrimony\u0026rdquo; without any government involvement. Getting married for tax breaks is so wrong.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut this argument presumes the effect of 107 is to get the government out of the marriage business, which it isn\u0026rsquo;t.  Rather, 107 has the effect of enshrining existing statutory prohibitions on a form (or multiple forms) of legal contract between consenting adults into the Constitution, and going further to restrict any such arrangement \u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; marriage.  It isn\u0026rsquo;t pro-liberty, it\u0026rsquo;s anti-liberty.  It isn\u0026rsquo;t eliminating special privileges, it is adding them to the Arizona Constitution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s perfectly reasonable to argue that nobody should have tax breaks or special privileges under the law, but it\u0026rsquo;s not reasonable to say that because such privileges are wrong we should restrict them to a particular set of people.  That\u0026rsquo;s not only unfair, it\u0026rsquo;s unconstitutional\u0026ndash;a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.  It\u0026rsquo;s like arguing that the government shouldn\u0026rsquo;t confer support on religion, so we should vote yes on an amendment that limits government support to the Christian religion, and keep it from supporting Islam or other religions.  (No doubt there are many Americans who would, quite wrongly, support such a law.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, some advocates of Proposition 107 have argued that there is no violation of the equal protection clause because a gay man has the same right to marry a woman as a heterosexual man does.  But this is just like arguing that a prohibition on interracial marriage doesn\u0026rsquo;t violate the equal protection clause because a black man has the same right to marry a black woman as a white man has to marry a white woman\u0026ndash;the description of the right is being crafted to exclude the category of person who is being discriminated against.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Ed Brayton has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/answering_gay_marriage_argumen.php\"\u003epointed out\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/asking_the_right_question.php\"\u003enumerous\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/judge_wilkinson_on_gay_marriag_1.php\"\u003eoccasions\u003c/a\u003e, the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on same-sex marriage \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/scalia_on_loving_v_virginia_1.php\"\u003eare of the same form\u003c/a\u003e as the arguments for the unconstitutionality of a ban on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation\"\u003emiscegenation\u003c/a\u003e, just replacing \u0026ldquo;different race\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;same sex.\u0026rdquo;  If you think that the Supreme Court ruled correctly in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLoving v. Virginia\u003c/span\u003e, you should also think that Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Proposition 107 violates the U.S. Constitution for the same reasons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSee also \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003emy previous post on the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment\u003c/a\u003e.  You may also find David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_21/PThy_Chap_21.html\"\u003eeconomic analysis of marriage arrangements\u003c/a\u003e to be of interest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 21, 2006):  Just to make it clear, THeath \u003ca href=\"http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2006/10/john-mccain-swings-both-ways.html\"\u003ehas enumerated some specific examples of what opponents of gay marriage are actually endorsing (there are several more if you follow the link)\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;these aren\u0026rsquo;t hypotheticals, these are real people:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003eThere was the friend I wrote about recently who was \u003ca href=\"http://www.republicoft.com/2006/06/21/not-next-of-kin/\"\u003eturned away from from the emergency room,\u003c/a\u003e where his partner had been taken after suddenly collapsing at work, and told he could not be given any information because he was not next of kin. He had to leave the hospital and retrieve their legal documents before he could gain admittance to see his partner when a married spouse would have been waved through without question.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003eMy friend was luckier than\u003ca href=\"http://www.lambdalegal.org/cgi-bin/iowa/documents/record2.html?record=1104\"\u003e Bill Flanigan\u003c/a\u003e. When his partner Robert Daniel was hospitalized in Baltimore, the couple had their legal documents with them, including durable power of attorney and documentation that they were registered as domestic partners in California. But those documents were ignored by hospital staff and Flanigan was kept from seeing his partner until Daniel’s mother and sister arrived and by then Daniel was unconscious, with his eyes taped shut and hooked to a breathing tube; something Daniel had not wanted.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:100%;\"\u003eEven having a will didn’t help \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/23927res20060125.html\"\u003eSam Beaumont\u003c/a\u003e when his partner of 23 years, Earl, died. Oklahoma requires a will to have two witnesses, but Earl didn’t know that and his will leaving everything to Sam had only one. So Earl\u0026rsquo;s cousins, who disapproved of his relationship and most of whom never spoke to the couple or even came to Earl’s funeral, successfully sued to take away the home and ranch Sam an Earl had shared for 23 years. A married spouse, even in the event of a will lacking enough witnesses, would’ve had the right to automatically inherit at least some of the estate.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurther Update (October 22, 2006): Ed Brayton takes apart the Alliance Defense Fund\u0026rsquo;s white paper on these marriage amendments \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/adfs_latest_on_gay_marriage_an.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A bad argument in support of the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment"},{"content":"Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has an excellent article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, pointing out the absurdity of their claims in the form of a dialogue among the plotters:\nBUSH: So, what\u0026rsquo;s the plan again?\nCHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we\u0026rsquo;ve decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they\u0026rsquo;re real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we\u0026rsquo;ll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.\nRUMSFELD: Right! And we\u0026rsquo;ll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we\u0026rsquo;ll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.\nCHENEY: No, Dick, we won\u0026rsquo;t.\nRUMSFELD: We won\u0026rsquo;t?\nCHENEY: No, that\u0026rsquo;s too obvious. We\u0026rsquo;ll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.\nRUMSFELD: But if we\u0026rsquo;re just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam\u0026rsquo;s fingerprints on the attack?\nCHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Dick. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we\u0026rsquo;re not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.\nBUSH: I\u0026rsquo;m a total idiot who can barely read, so I\u0026rsquo;ll buy that. But I\u0026rsquo;ve got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don\u0026rsquo;t we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?\nRUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don\u0026rsquo;t understand. It\u0026rsquo;s much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!\nCHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism \u0026ndash; and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of fucking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.\nRUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of fucking nowhere.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s lots more dialogue in the article\u0026hellip; Taibbi summarizes:\nNone of this stuff makes any sense at all. If you just need an excuse to assume authoritarian powers, why fake a plane crash in Shanksville? What the hell does that accomplish? If you\u0026rsquo;re using bombs, why fake a hijacking, why use remote-control planes? If the entire government apparatus is in on the scam, then why bother going to all this murderous trouble at all \u0026ndash; only to go to war a year later with a country no one even bothered to falsely blame for the attacks? You won\u0026rsquo;t see any of this explored in 9/11 Truth lore, because the \u0026ldquo;conspiracy\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;re describing is impossible everywhere outside a Zucker brothers movie \u0026ndash; unbelievably stupid in its conception, pointlessly baroque and excessive in its particulars, but flawless in its execution, with no concrete evidence left behind and tens of thousands keeping their roles a secret forever.\nCheck it out\u0026ndash;highly recommended, along with these other 9/11 conspiracy debunking sites.\nthumperings (2006-12-09):\nThis blathering does nothing but allow you to slep better at night. Any asshole could do what you just did from their perspective and make it work. When you can explain building 7 you snide goof, then I'll listen to you. Explain the molton steel in the basements 1000 degrees hotter than kerosene burns. explain the towers dropping at freefall speed, the seismic proof of bombs, and the admission of demolition by silverstein . and the fact that no steel structures have ever fallen by fire (and never will) get a clue\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThumperings: You'd have more credibility if your list of problems to be explained hadn't already all been explained in detail (or refuted, like the \"admission of demolition by Silverstein\").The sites I've linked to in previous posts on the subject of 9/11 on this blog address everything you've brought up.I particularly recommend the 9/11 Myths site's treatment of Building 7 myths.\nKenric (2010-10-30):\nYou are obviously not aware of the other possible motives that actually DID require demolishing the buildings: WTC owner Larry Silverstein just prior to 9/11 added a clause to his insurance specifically for terrorist attacks and he made a huge bundle from that.\nThe fireproofing throughout the buildings was due for replacement by law and that would have cost millions of dollars.\nThere were allegedly many files for criminal investigations that were destroyed in the towers.\nThere may have also been gold stolen from the towers.\nFurthermore, even if there were NO known motives, this line of \u0026quot;debunking\u0026quot; totally ignores the mountain of evidence, particularly five months of molten steel and the detection of nanothermite explosives as reported in a PEER-REVIEWED scientific journal and recently independently verified by a chemical engineer, that at the very least demand a real investigation, so we can figure out what those motives were.\nKenric (2010-10-30):\nThe debunker site\u0026#39;s claim that there are only three sources re: molten steel is completely ridiculous. See here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=142980022410\nAnd you are referencing debunk sites that themselves have already been debunked. For example:\nhttp://www.911popularmechanics.com/\nLippard (2010-10-30):\nKenric: Your bullet points are not inconsistent at all with what we know happened--i.e., 19 terrorists flew planes into the WTC, Pentagon, and the ground in Pennsylvania. There is no remotely plausible conspiracy theory in which the events of 9/11 took place because Silverstein wanted the insurance money. The molten steel quotes do nothing to demonstrate that any observed metal in a liquid state was steel (itself an alloy, not an element) to the exclusion of all other metals\u0026ndash;such as aluminum, which was observed at the 80th floor of WTC 2, according to the NIST investigation. Nor, even if it was steel, that there was some other cause\u0026ndash;as NIST notes, \u0026quot;Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.\u0026quot;\nSee the answers to questions 11 and 13 in that FAQ.\nYou've posted a bunch of other comments to this post which go off on wild tangents, which I'll consider publishing later.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/matt-taibbi-takes-on-911-conspiracy_20.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt Taibbi at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRolling Stone\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11818067/the_low_post_the_hopeless_stupidity_of_911_conspiracies\"\u003ehas an excellent article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, pointing out the absurdity of their claims in the form of a dialogue among the plotters\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBUSH:\u003c/strong\u003e So, what\u0026rsquo;s the plan again?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCHENEY:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we\u0026rsquo;ve decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they\u0026rsquo;re real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we\u0026rsquo;ll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt Taibbi takes on 9/11 conspiracy theorists"},{"content":"The Village Voice has an excerpt from the book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Rendition Flights, which is fascinating reading. The hobby of planespotting\u0026ndash;watching and recording information about planes that take off and land\u0026ndash;led a few individuals to deduce that planes spotted at \u0026ldquo;Base Camp\u0026rdquo; in Nevada were being used by the CIA to transport prisoners to locations in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Individuals correlating data with each other over the Internet and comparing to flight logs and testimony from released prisoners yielded very specific results. Civil Air Landing Permit data was used to identify obscure companies with clearance to land anywhere they want, including restricted military bases\u0026ndash;such as One Leasing, Richmor Aviation, Stevens Express Leasing, Tepper Aviation, Path Corporation, Rapid Air Trans, Aviation Specialties, Devon Holding and Leasing, Crowell Aviation, and Premier Executive Transport Services. The planes owned by some of these companies were found to be visiting military bases, Guantanamo Bay, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, and Iraq.\nJon Sifton of Human Rights Watch has conducted analysis of the resulting flight data to determine which stops were merely for refueling and which were for destinations\u0026ndash;acute angles for inbound and outbound flights from a stop are indicative of a destination rather than a refueling stop, for example.\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2006-12-09):\nA \"Fresh Air\" interview with an author that wrote a book on the same subject:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6330296\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/how-planespotting-uncovered-cia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0642,torturetaxi,74732,2.html\"\u003ean excerpt from the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTorture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Rendition Flights\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which is fascinating reading.  The hobby of planespotting\u0026ndash;watching and recording information about planes that take off and land\u0026ndash;led a few individuals to deduce that planes spotted at \u0026ldquo;Base Camp\u0026rdquo; in Nevada were being used by the CIA to transport prisoners to locations in eastern Europe and the Middle East.  Individuals correlating data with each other over the Internet and comparing to flight logs and testimony from released prisoners yielded very specific results.  Civil Air Landing Permit data was used to identify obscure companies with clearance to land anywhere they want, including restricted military bases\u0026ndash;such as One Leasing, Richmor Aviation, Stevens Express Leasing, Tepper Aviation, Path Corporation, Rapid Air Trans, Aviation Specialties, Devon Holding and Leasing, Crowell Aviation, and Premier Executive Transport Services.  The planes owned by some of these companies were found to be visiting military bases, Guantanamo Bay, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, and Iraq.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJon Sifton of Human Rights Watch has conducted analysis of the resulting flight data to determine which stops were merely for refueling and which were for destinations\u0026ndash;acute angles for inbound and outbound flights from a stop are indicative of a destination rather than a refueling stop, for example.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights"},{"content":"George W. Bush is on the campaign trail for racist Virginia Senator George Allen and for Pennsylvania Representative Don Sherwood\u0026ndash;just in case you had any doubts about where Bush stands on moral issues.\nAllen is the Senator who referred to an Indian representative of his opponent\u0026rsquo;s campaign as a \u0026ldquo;macaca,\u0026quot; a racial slur common in French North Africa, where his mother grew up. He also used to keep a noose hanging in his office, and several people who knew him in his college days have reported that he used to make common use of the epithet \u0026ldquo;nigger\u0026rdquo; (but not the word \u0026ldquo;epithet\u0026rdquo;), and two sources say that he once put the severed head of a deer in the mailbox of a black family.\nSherwood has admitted to having a lengthy (five-year) adulterous affair, and he settled a lawsuit which accused him of choking his mistress. His wife has referred to his affair as \u0026ldquo;a mistake.\u0026quot;\nBush\u0026rsquo;s press secretary Tony Snow addressed the president\u0026rsquo;s support of Sherwood by observing that we are all sinners and deserve forgiveness. Forgiveness, perhaps. A seat in Congress, no.\nUPDATE (October 20, 2006): Bush chose to campaign for these people of poor character during the same week that he has proclaimed \u0026ldquo;National Character Counts Week, 2006,\u0026quot; a proclamation which begins:\nAmerica\u0026rsquo;s strength is found in the spirit and character of our people. During National Character Counts Week, we renew our commitment to instilling values in our young people and to encouraging all Americans to remember the importance of good character.UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Don Sherwood lost, and it looks like George Allen will also lose.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/bush-campaigns-for-racist-and-violent.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge W. Bush is \u003ca href=\"http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=5559646\u0026amp;nav=0s3d\"\u003eon the campaign trail for racist Virginia Senator George Allen and for Pennsylvania Representative Don Sherwood\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;just in case you had any doubts about where Bush stands on moral issues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAllen is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/08/george_allen_in.html\"\u003eSenator who referred to an Indian representative of his opponent\u0026rsquo;s campaign as a \u0026ldquo;macaca,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a racial slur common in French North Africa, where his mother grew up.  He also used to keep a noose hanging in his office, and several people who knew him in his college days have reported that he used to make common use of the epithet \u0026ldquo;nigger\u0026rdquo; (but not the word \u0026ldquo;epithet\u0026rdquo;), and two sources say that \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/27/11324/8362\"\u003ehe once put the severed head of a deer in the mailbox of a black family\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSherwood has admitted to having a lengthy (five-year) adulterous affair, and he settled a lawsuit which accused him of choking his mistress.  His wife has referred to his affair as \u003ca href=\"http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/17/pa_10_letter_from_carol_sherwood_admonishes_carney_campaign_for_ads_about_affair#comment-173116\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;a mistake.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBush\u0026rsquo;s press secretary Tony Snow addressed the president\u0026rsquo;s support of Sherwood by observing that we are all sinners and deserve forgiveness.  Forgiveness, perhaps.  A seat in Congress, no.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 20, 2006):  Bush chose to campaign for these people of poor character during \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061013-17.html\"\u003ethe same week that he has proclaimed \u0026ldquo;National Character Counts Week, 2006,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e a proclamation which begins:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e America\u0026rsquo;s strength is found in the spirit and character of our people.  During National Character Counts Week, we renew our commitment to instilling values in our young people and to encouraging all Americans to remember the importance of good character.\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE (November 8, 2006):  Don Sherwood lost, and it looks like George Allen will also lose.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush campaigns for a racist and an violent adulterer"},{"content":"Maher Arar, a Canadian (born in Syria) who was arrested by the U.S. and sent to Syria where he was tortured as a result of the RCMP\u0026rsquo;s erroneous labeling of him as someone associated with al Qaeda, was unable to receive a human rights award in Washington, D.C. because his name is still on the TSA no-fly list. Arar currently has a lawsuit pending in Canada against the RCMP.\n(Also see the Wikipedia entry on Arar.)\nThis is further evidence of the TSA\u0026rsquo;s failure to competently maintain the no-fly list.\nUPDATE (October 20, 2006): Ed Brayton has discussed this story today.\nUPDATE (January 23, 2007): The U.S. Attorney General and head of Homeland Security are both insisting that Arar remain on the no-fly list for reasons which they have disclosed only to officials in Canada. The Canadians don\u0026rsquo;t think those reasons make any sense. My guess is that they think somebody they sent off to be tortured might have a beef with the people who did it to him.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/innocent-torture-victim-still-on-no.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaher Arar, a Canadian (born in Syria) \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/index.html\"\u003ewho was arrested by the U.S. and sent to Syria where he was tortured\u003c/a\u003e as a result of the RCMP\u0026rsquo;s erroneous labeling of him as someone associated with al Qaeda, was unable to receive a human rights award in Washington, D.C. \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001835.php\"\u003ebecause his name is still on the TSA no-fly list\u003c/a\u003e.  Arar currently has a lawsuit pending in Canada against the RCMP.\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar\"\u003eWikipedia entry on Arar\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is further evidence of the \u003ca href=\"/2006/10/us-no-fly-list-is-joke.html\"\u003eTSA\u0026rsquo;s failure to competently maintain the no-fly list\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 20, 2006): Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/tortured_canadian_on_no_fly_li.php\"\u003ehas discussed this story today\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 23, 2007):  The U.S. Attorney General and head of Homeland Security \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002388.php\"\u003eare both insisting that Arar remain on the no-fly list for reasons which they have disclosed only to officials in Canada\u003c/a\u003e.  The Canadians don\u0026rsquo;t think those reasons make any sense.  My guess is that they think somebody they sent off to be tortured might have a beef with the people who did it to him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Innocent torture victim still on no-fly list"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an excellent article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi called \u0026ldquo;The Worst Congress Ever.\u0026quot;\nWhen the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress, I hope they will not be following the Republican rulebook for payback, but will try to return some dignity, honesty, integrity, and accountability to the legislative branch of our government.\nOne exception, though\u0026ndash;they should follow the Republican lead from 1995 and not require minority party approval for issuing subpoenas to the White House as they clean house. It\u0026rsquo;s high time that Congress started actually providing some oversight of the executive branch again.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/worst-congress-ever.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an excellent \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12055360/cover_story_time_to_go_inside_the_worst_congress_ever/1\"\u003earticle in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRolling Stone\u003c/span\u003e by Matt Taibbi called \u0026ldquo;The Worst Congress Ever.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress, I hope they will not be following the Republican rulebook for payback, but will try to return some dignity, honesty, integrity, and accountability to the legislative branch of our government.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne exception, though\u0026ndash;they should follow the Republican lead from 1995 and not require minority party approval for issuing subpoenas to the White House as they clean house.  It\u0026rsquo;s high time that Congress started actually providing some oversight of the executive branch again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Worst Congress Ever"},{"content":"Independent filmmaker Brett Hanover made a very nice little one-hour film called \u0026ldquo;The Bridge,\u0026quot; about the Church of Scientology, which he put out on Google Video and YouTube about a month ago. Scientology came after him, and he buckled, withdrawing the film and saying that he no longer supports it. Google and YouTube took it down.\nBut it\u0026rsquo;s still out there. Watch it, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty well done.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/bridge-attacked-by-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIndependent filmmaker Brett Hanover made \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenutv.com/thebridge.htm\"\u003ea very nice little one-hour film called \u0026ldquo;The Bridge,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e about the Church of Scientology, which he put out on Google Video and YouTube about a month ago.  Scientology came after him, and he buckled, \u003ca href=\"http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?p=231237\u0026sid=e2c59dffbed12937c086f329245cac5b\"\u003ewithdrawing the film and saying that he no longer supports it\u003c/a\u003e.  Google and YouTube took it down.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=8809393662634963976\"\u003estill out there\u003c/a\u003e.  Watch it, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty well done.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Bridge: Attacked by Scientology"},{"content":"From \u0026ldquo;PT,\u0026rdquo; a reader of Talking Points Memo:\n5 stages of Republican scandal:\n1. “I have not been informed of any investigation or that I am a target”\n2. “I am cooperating fully, but this whole thing is a political ploy by the Democrats”\n3. “I’m SHOCKED by the mistakes made by my subordinates”\n4. “I’m deeply sorry for letting down my friends and family. I now recognize that I am an alcoholic. I will be entering rehab immediately, so I have no time for questions”\n5. “Can I serve my time at Eglin Federal Penitentiary (aka Club Fed)?”I\u0026rsquo;m sure these work just as well in a bipartisan manner (with minor rewording), but today it is most fitting as written.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/five-stages-of-republican-scandal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u0026ldquo;PT,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_10_15.php#010397\"\u003ea reader of Talking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e 5 stages of Republican scandal:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  “I have not been informed of any investigation or that I am a target”\u003cbr /\u003e2.  “I am cooperating fully, but this whole thing is a political ploy by the Democrats”\u003cbr /\u003e3.  “I’m SHOCKED by the mistakes made by my subordinates”\u003cbr /\u003e4. “I’m deeply sorry for letting down my friends and family. I now recognize that I am an alcoholic. I will be entering rehab immediately, so I have no time for questions”\u003cbr /\u003e5.  “Can I serve my time at Eglin Federal Penitentiary (aka Club Fed)?”\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sure these work just as well in a bipartisan manner (with minor rewording), but today it is most fitting as written.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Five Stages of Republican Scandal"},{"content":"An archivist at the Arizona Historical Foundation, Linda Whitaker, found a 25-min 16mm film canister last fall while preparing an exhibition on World War II Japanese internment camps. The film can was labeled \u0026ldquo;Poston Color Dupe.\u0026rdquo; The film turned out to be footage of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Poston internment camp, which was located in La Paz county, 12 miles south of Parker. The film had a magnetic strip for sound, but it had deteriorated, so what is left is a color silent film. It has been converted to DVD format and is for sale for $40 from the Arizona Historical Foundation.\nPoston was one of two sets of Japanese internment camps in Arizona, and was also known as the Colorado River Relocation Center. It was composed of three camps, called Poston I, II, and III, on reservation land of the Colorado Indians. It operated from April 1942 to March 1946, and at its peak housed 18,000 people. The other was the Gila River Relocation Center about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, which housed 13,000 people at its peak, and operated from May 1942 to February 1946. It was composed of two camps, Butte Camp and Canal Camp, which were built over the objections of the Gila River Indian tribe, on whose land they were built.\nThe Japanese-Americans who were taken from their homes in California and Arizona and forced to live in these prison camps were mostly U.S. citizens (about 2/3). The Poston and Gila River camps were, at the time, the third and fourth largest \u0026ldquo;cities\u0026rdquo; in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson.\nThe Poston camp was built by Del Webb, best known as a homebuilder of planned communities in the southwest (such as Sun City and Anthem).\nThe discovery of this film serves to remind us how a country can get so caught up in wartime fear that it disregards its own Constitution and tramples the rights of individuals.\nHistorical Comments Sandy Kinnee (2012-02-18):\nSeeing your blog about Poston made me think you might be interested in this: http://musepail.blogspot.com/2012/02/isamu-noguchi-and-his-nisei-muse.html\nNick Hentoff (2012-08-03):\nHistory Held Hostage If Whitaker believes that the film is of such historical importance why are they limiting distribution of the film to those who can afford $40 to view it. They should have it streaming from their website.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/poston-internment-camp-film.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn archivist at the Arizona Historical Foundation, Linda Whitaker, \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-08-17/film/poston-prison-blues/\"\u003efound a 25-min 16mm film canister last fall\u003c/a\u003e while preparing an exhibition on World War II Japanese internment camps.  The film can was labeled \u0026ldquo;Poston Color Dupe.\u0026rdquo;  The film turned out to be footage of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Poston internment camp, which was located in La Paz county, 12 miles south of Parker.  The film had a magnetic strip for sound, but it had deteriorated, so what is left is a color silent film.  It has been converted to DVD format and is for sale for $40 from the Arizona Historical Foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.postonproject.org/\"\u003ePoston\u003c/a\u003e was one of two sets of Japanese internment camps in Arizona, and was also known as the Colorado River Relocation Center.  It was composed of three camps, called Poston I, II, and III, on reservation land of the Colorado Indians.  It operated from April 1942 to March 1946, and at its peak housed 18,000 people.  The other was the \u003ca href=\"http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/wracamps/\"\u003eGila River Relocation Center\u003c/a\u003e about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, which housed 13,000 people at its peak, and operated from May 1942 to February 1946.  It was composed of two camps, Butte Camp and Canal Camp, which were built over the objections of the Gila River Indian tribe, on whose land they were built.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Japanese-Americans who were taken from their homes in California and Arizona and forced to live in these prison camps were mostly U.S. citizens (about 2/3).  The Poston and Gila River camps were, at the time, the third and fourth largest \u0026ldquo;cities\u0026rdquo; in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe Poston camp was built by Del Webb, best known as a homebuilder of planned communities in the southwest (such as Sun City and Anthem).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe discovery of this film serves to remind us how a country can get so caught up in wartime fear that it disregards its own Constitution and tramples the rights of individuals.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Poston internment camp film"},{"content":"Rep. Jim Kolbe is under investigation by the Justice Department regarding a 1996 Colorado river rafting trip he took with two 17-year-old former pages (as well as several staffers and National Park Service employees). His press secretary, Korenna Cline, \u0026ldquo;abruptly resigned\u0026rdquo; yesterday in order \u0026ldquo;to pursue another job opportunity.\u0026rdquo;\nHistorical Comments dogscratcher (2006-12-09):\nI hope they aren't making mountain out of a molehill here simply because he is gay. Not all gay men go after 17 year old boys any more than all hetero guys go after 17 year old girls. Kolbe's knowledge of Foley's transgressions... That is another matter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/kolbe-river-trip-with-former-pages.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Jim Kolbe is \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1013congress-kolbe13-ON.html\"\u003eunder investigation by the Justice Department regarding a 1996 Colorado river rafting trip he took with two 17-year-old former pages\u003c/a\u003e (as well as several staffers and National Park Service employees).  His press secretary, Korenna Cline, \u0026ldquo;abruptly resigned\u0026rdquo; yesterday in order \u0026ldquo;to pursue another job opportunity.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003edogscratcher\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI hope they aren't making mountain out of a molehill here simply because he is gay.  Not all gay men go after 17 year old boys any more than all hetero guys go after 17 year old girls.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eKolbe's knowledge of Foley's transgressions... That is another matter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kolbe river trip with former pages under investigation, press secretary resigns"},{"content":"Recent amendments and proposed amendments to state constitutions like Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Proposition 107, which \u0026ldquo;preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage,\u0026rdquo; have been backed by the Alliance Defense Fund. These constitutional amendments will not just be used to block same-sex marriage (already prohibited by multiple Arizona statutes, as I\u0026rsquo;ve pointed out here), but to prevent things like domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners. In response to these claims, the ADF denies it, calling this a \u0026ldquo;false argument\u0026rdquo; used to \u0026ldquo;confuse\u0026rdquo;:\nPreying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex \u0026ldquo;marriage\u0026rdquo; argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people\u0026hellip; Same-sex \u0026ldquo;marriage\u0026rdquo; advocates argue that eliminating domestic partnerships or other counterfeit marital institutions is hateful and mean spirited, because it will undermine benefits granted to unmarried people. Unfortunately, many people (including some so-called \u0026ldquo;conservative\u0026rdquo; politicians) have bought into this fallacious argument.\nBut the ADF is just lying. They themselves, once such amendments have been passed, have been leading the legal efforts to do exactly that, as they have in Wisconsin (and other similar groups have done in Michigan and Ohio):\nConservative lawmakers in Wisconsin also are seeking to block gay state employees from winning the right to employee partnership benefits. That state\u0026rsquo;s Legislature last month approved sending a constitutional amendment to a statewide vote in November that says \u0026ldquo;a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip; The Wisconsin amendment passed partly in response to a lawsuit filed by several gay state university employees seeking health insurance for their partners. The Legislature also has retained the services of a conservative evangelical law firm, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), in an attempt to intervene in the workers\u0026rsquo; lawsuit\u0026hellip;\nI suspect what the ADF really meant to say in their blog entry quoted above is that they are OK with domestic partnership benefits for unmarried persons of the opposite sex, but not if they are the same sex.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/adf-lies-about-marriage-protection.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecent amendments and proposed amendments to state constitutions like \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s Proposition 107\u003c/a\u003e, which \u0026ldquo;preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage,\u0026rdquo; have been backed by the Alliance Defense Fund.  These constitutional amendments will not just be used to block same-sex marriage (already prohibited by multiple Arizona statutes, as I\u0026rsquo;ve pointed out \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e), but to prevent things like domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners.  In response to these claims, \u003ca href=\"http://www.constitutionallycorrect.com/archive/2006/10/13/168.aspx\"\u003ethe ADF denies it, calling this a \u0026ldquo;false argument\u0026rdquo; used to \u0026ldquo;confuse\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePreying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex \u0026ldquo;marriage\u0026rdquo; argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people\u0026hellip; \u003cp\u003eSame-sex \u0026ldquo;marriage\u0026rdquo; advocates argue that eliminating domestic partnerships or other counterfeit marital institutions is hateful and mean spirited, because it will undermine benefits granted to unmarried people. Unfortunately, many people (including some so-called \u0026ldquo;conservative\u0026rdquo; politicians) have bought into this fallacious argument.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ADF lies about \"marriage protection\" amendments"},{"content":"On Tuesday of this week (October 10), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert met with evangelist K.A. Paul, without first consulting with his advisors. He now says that he was \u0026ldquo;duped\u0026rdquo; into the meeting, in which Paul performed a \u0026ldquo;laying on of hands\u0026rdquo; on Hastert and asked him to resign. Paul says Hastert said that he would.\nPaul is a full-blown kook, whose record includes (according to a June 2006 Houston Press story):\n- claiming another minister\u0026rsquo;s leper colony as his own, and videotaping said lepers for a promotional video - transporting children in an airplane one former crew member called a \u0026ldquo;flying death trap\u0026rdquo;\n- leaving a trail of unpaid bills for the plane\u0026rsquo;s fuel and maintenance\n- interfering with a murder investigation in India, earning the wrath of that country\u0026rsquo;s National Council of Churches\n- fleeing to the United States from India after nine of his American volunteers were arrested and thrown in prison\n- abandoning an 11-year-old girl after checking her into a hospital Hastert should resign simply for showing such bad judgment.\nUPDATE: I should say kook and con artist, after reading the full Houston Press article.\nMr. Anand Kilari (K.A. Paul) has defrauded a lot of people, and been supported by Evander Holyfield, PromiseKeepers founder Bill McCartney, Carl Lindner, Jr., Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others. Of those mentioned in the article, the only ones with enough integrity to publicly warn others rather than remaining silent and refusing to comment were Houston millionaire Jim McIngvale and Colorado Springs businessman Ted Beckett and his wife Audrey. Those Christians who have supported this fraudster and remained silent are as guilty of deception as Paul is, and should be ashamed of themselves. As the Houston Press article points out:\nFrom the start, his ministry has depended solely on the wealthiest evangelicals in America. With such a tenuous infrastructure, it would have shattered Kilari\u0026rsquo;s ministry if any one of these Christian men had publicly criticized him. Fortunately for Kilari, none ever has, which is why the unairworthy Global Peace One is still in Kilari\u0026rsquo;s possession, patiently awaiting the day when it can carry another group of orphans across the ocean.\nHistorical Comments beepbeepitsme (2006-12-09):\nThe insanity seems to never end.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/hastert-meets-with-religious-kook-says.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Tuesday of this week (October 10), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert met with evangelist K.A. Paul, without first consulting with his advisors.  He \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001776.php\"\u003enow says that he was \u0026ldquo;duped\u0026rdquo; into the meeting\u003c/a\u003e, in which Paul performed a \u0026ldquo;laying on of hands\u0026rdquo; on Hastert and asked him to resign.  Paul says Hastert said that he would.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaul is \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001768.php\"\u003ea full-blown kook\u003c/a\u003e, whose record includes (according to a \u003ca href=\"http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2006-06-08/news/feature2_1.html\"\u003eJune 2006 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHouston Press\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e story):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e- claiming another minister\u0026rsquo;s leper colony as his own, and videotaping said lepers for a promotional video  \u003cp\u003e- transporting children in an airplane one former crew member called a \u0026ldquo;flying death trap\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hastert meets with religious kook, says he was duped"},{"content":"MSNBC has the story, about David Kuo\u0026rsquo;s new book, Tempting Faith:\nMore than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.The office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book.\n\u0026hellip;\nHe says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.” “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.\nMore seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.\nHat tip to stranger fruit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/bush-just-using-christians-says-former.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMSNBC \u003ca href=\"http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15228489/\"\u003ehas the story, about David Kuo\u0026rsquo;s new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTempting Faith\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMore than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.\u003cp class=\"textBodyBlack\"\u003e\u003cspan id=\"byLine\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eThe office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush just using Christians, says former faith office leader"},{"content":"Sen. John McCain has attempted to blame President Clinton for North Korea\u0026rsquo;s development of nuclear weapons:\n\u0026ldquo;I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s policies that the framework agreement her husband\u0026rsquo;s administration negotiated was a failure,\u0026rdquo; McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.\n\u0026ldquo;The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They\u0026rsquo;ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nBut McCain is wrong. In 1994, the North Koreans were producing weapons-grade plutonium. The Clinton Administration negotiated the Agreed Framework, under which they halted their program and allowed inspections of the plutonium they had produced. The North Korean plutonium program remained halted until 2002. In 2000, George W. Bush came into office wanting to terminate the agreement over plutonium, and in 2002 he did so on the basis of evidence that the North Koreans were trying to enrich uranium. As a result of U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, the North Koreans again began producing weapons-grade plutonium, which was used in their bomb test.\nThe evidence is that the Clinton Administration agreement kept North Korea from developing plutonium-based nuclear weapons from 1994 to 2002, and that the Bush Administration\u0026rsquo;s withdrawal from that agreement and failure to replace it led to North Korea detonating a plutonium-based nuclear weapon on October 9, 2006.\nNow, of course I place the blame for developing a nuclear weapon on North Korea rather than the United States\u0026ndash;but if we\u0026rsquo;re looking for who in the United States is most responsible for allowing them to do so, I don\u0026rsquo;t see anyone with greater responsibility than President George W. Bush. McCain\u0026rsquo;s attempt to divert blame to Clinton is ridiculous.\nIf Clinton\u0026rsquo;s posture is criticized as all carrots but no sticks (which is itself in error, since war was threatened to get North Korea to the bargaining table in 1994), the accurate criticism of Bush\u0026rsquo;s posture is no carrots and no sticks.\nUPDATE: Condi Rice has made the same criticism as McCain.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/mccain-wrong-about-north-korea.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. John McCain \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/10/mccain.clinton.ap/index.html\"\u003ehas attempted to blame President Clinton for North Korea\u0026rsquo;s development of nuclear weapons\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s policies that the framework agreement her husband\u0026rsquo;s administration negotiated was a failure,\u0026rdquo; McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They\u0026rsquo;ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,\u0026rdquo; he said.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain wrong about North Korea"},{"content":"State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), one of the most vocal opponents of illegal immigration in the Arizona legislature, sent an email out to supporters that contained an article from the National Alliance\u0026rsquo;s website. The article, titled \u0026ldquo;Who Rules America? The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken,\u0026rdquo; criticized the media for promotion multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting \u0026ldquo;any racially conscious White Person\u0026rdquo; as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.\nPearce says he does not agree with the article, but forwarded it after reading the first few paragraphs, which he agreed with. Once he realized the nature of the article, he sent out an apology to supporters and asked them to delete the original email and not forward it further.\nThe Arizona Republic quotes a Pearce apology, beginning with a quote that sounds like he\u0026rsquo;s been taking grammar lessons from Yoda:\n\u0026ldquo;Ugly the words contained in it really are. \u0026hellip; They are not mine and I disavow them completely. Worse still, the website links to a group whose politics are the ugliest imaginable. I am saddened and embarrassed that this went out with my name on it and I am also saddened at the loss of the friend who sent this to me. His heart is dark and I am unable to get him to see that what drives him is ugly and evil at its core.\u0026quot;This comes after Pearce has been under fire for his comments in support of a 1954 federal deportation program called \u0026ldquo;Operation Wetback.\u0026quot; Pearce has defended himself by observing that this was, in fact, what the program was called. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if he prefaced his references to it by pointing out that he recognizes that the name is offensive, but if he did so he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been criticized for the use of the name. His support of the program, however, is certainly subject to criticism.\nI wonder if Pearce also thinks the Jerome Deportation or Bisbee Deportation (both of 1917) were good ideas\u0026ndash;both involved numerous Mexican workers (as well as European immigrants), though they were deported by train to New Mexico at the behest of vigilantes working for the mining companies, with the assistance of the local authorities.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/rep-russell-pearce-sends-out-email.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eState Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), one of the most vocal opponents of illegal immigration in the Arizona legislature, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/1010pearce-ON.html\"\u003esent an email out to supporters that contained an article from the National Alliance\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.  The article, titled \u0026ldquo;Who Rules America? The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken,\u0026rdquo; criticized the media for promotion multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting \u0026ldquo;any racially conscious White Person\u0026rdquo; as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePearce says he does not agree with the article, but forwarded it after reading the first few paragraphs, which he agreed with.  Once he realized the nature of the article, he sent out an apology to supporters and asked them to delete the original email and not forward it further.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e quotes a Pearce apology, beginning with a quote that sounds like he\u0026rsquo;s been taking grammar lessons from Yoda:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ugly the words contained in it really are. \u0026hellip; They are not mine and I disavow them completely. Worse still, the website links to a group whose politics are the ugliest imaginable. I am saddened and embarrassed that this went out with my name on it and I am also saddened at the loss of the friend who sent this to me. His heart is dark and I am unable to get him to see that what drives him is ugly and evil at its core.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis comes after Pearce has been under fire for his comments in support of a 1954 federal deportation program called \u003ca href=\"http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/OO/pqo1.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Operation Wetback.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Pearce has defended himself by observing that this was, in fact, what the program was called.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know if he prefaced his references to it by pointing out that he recognizes that the name is offensive, but if he did so he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been criticized for the use of the name.  His support of the program, however, is certainly subject to criticism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wonder if Pearce also thinks the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azjerome.com/pages/jerome/wobblies.htm\"\u003eJerome Deportation\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/bisbee/index.html\"\u003eBisbee Deportation\u003c/a\u003e (both of 1917) were good ideas\u0026ndash;both involved numerous Mexican workers (as well as European immigrants), though they were deported by train to New Mexico at the behest of vigilantes working for the mining companies, with the assistance of the local authorities.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rep. Russell Pearce sends out email article from white separatist website"},{"content":"Hot on the heels of his \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; album, \u0026ldquo;The Sunny Side of the Moon,\u0026quot; which came out at the beginning of this year, is a new holiday album from Richard Cheese, \u0026ldquo;Silent Nightclub.\u0026quot; The festive tracks:\n1. Holiday in Cambodia (originally by The Dead Kennedys)\n2. Like a Virgin (originally by Madonna)\n3. Christmas in Las Vegas (an original song by Richard Cheese)\n4. Jingle Bells (originally by The Barking Dogs)\n5. Ice Ice Baby (originally by Vanilla Ice)\n6. Do They Know It\u0026rsquo;s Christmas (originally by Band-Aid)\n7. Personal Jesus (originally by Depeche Mode)\n8. Imagine (originally by John Lennon)\n9. Last Xmas (bonus track)\n10. Naughty Girl (originally by Beyonce)\n11. Christmastime is Here (originally from A Charlie Brown Christmas)\n12. The Trees (originally by Rush)\n13. I Melt With You (originally by Modern English)\n14. Silent Night\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/another-new-richard-cheese-album.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHot on the heels of his \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; album, \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/new-richard-cheese-album.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Sunny Side of the Moon,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e which came out at the beginning of this year, is a new holiday album from Richard Cheese, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Nightclub-Richard-Lounge-Against-Machine/dp/B000HDRB20/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Silent Nightclub.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  The festive tracks:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Holiday in Cambodia (originally by The Dead Kennedys)\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Like a Virgin (originally by Madonna)\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Christmas in Las Vegas (an original song by Richard Cheese)\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Jingle Bells (originally by The Barking Dogs)\u003cbr /\u003e5.  Ice Ice Baby (originally by Vanilla Ice)\u003cbr /\u003e6.  Do They Know It\u0026rsquo;s Christmas (originally by Band-Aid)\u003cbr /\u003e7.  Personal Jesus (originally by Depeche Mode)\u003cbr /\u003e8.  Imagine (originally by John Lennon)\u003cbr /\u003e9.  Last Xmas (bonus track)\u003cbr /\u003e10. Naughty Girl (originally by Beyonce)\u003cbr /\u003e11. Christmastime is Here (originally from A Charlie Brown Christmas)\u003cbr /\u003e12. The Trees (originally by Rush)\u003cbr /\u003e13. I Melt With You (originally by Modern English)\u003cbr /\u003e14. Silent Night\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another new Richard Cheese album: Silent Nightclub"},{"content":"For the first time in the last decade, year-over-year median home prices in the metropolitan Phoenix area have dropped, from $263,000 to $256,900, down from the peak of $267,000 in June 2006.\nFormer housing bull Jay Q. Butler of the Arizona Real Estate Center at ASU says:\nEven though mortgage interest rates have been declining for the last few months, limited home appreciation and household income continues to raise concern about the ability of some homeowners to maintain their homes. \u0026hellip; This may be especially evident for those that have used some of the more creative financing instruments, such as option payment plans and initially low interest rate adjustable mortgages.Florida is seeing growing foreclosures, especially among those with Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) with negative amortization options. There are $200 billion in ARMs resetting their rates in 2006 and another $1 trillion plus will be resetting in 2007, expected to lead to more foreclosures. This will apply further downward pressure on prices, and we should expect to see some of the same here (an increase has already been seen in Maricopa County notices of trustee sales), though I think Arizona has had a lower percentage of ARMs, interest-only, and negative amortization option loans than other parts of the country.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/phoenix-home-prices-fall-for-first.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor the first time in the last decade, \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1605\"\u003eyear-over-year median home prices in the metropolitan Phoenix area have dropped\u003c/a\u003e, from $263,000 to $256,900, down from the peak of $267,000 in June 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFormer housing bull Jay Q. Butler of the Arizona Real Estate Center at ASU says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eEven though mortgage interest rates have been declining for the last few months, limited home appreciation and household income continues to raise concern about the ability of some homeowners to maintain their homes. \u0026hellip; This may be especially evident for those that have used some of the more creative financing instruments, such as option payment plans and initially low interest rate adjustable mortgages.\u003c/blockquote\u003eFlorida \u003ca href=\"http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2006/10/09/daily10.html\"\u003eis seeing growing foreclosures\u003c/a\u003e, especially among those with Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) with negative amortization options.  There are $200 billion in ARMs resetting their rates in 2006 and another $1 trillion plus will be resetting in 2007, expected to lead to more foreclosures.  This will apply further downward pressure on prices, and we should expect to see some of the same here (an increase \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/maricopa-countys-trustee-sale-notices.html\"\u003ehas already been seen in Maricopa County notices of trustee sales\u003c/a\u003e), though I think Arizona has had a lower percentage of ARMs, interest-only, and negative amortization option loans than other parts of the country.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix home prices fall for first time in ten years"},{"content":"It just keeps getting pushed back farther and farther.\nArizona Representative Jim Kolbe (R-District 8) has informed the Washington Post that he knew of inappropriate Foley emails back in 2000, which he confronted Foley about and brought to the attention of clerk of the House Karen Haas. Another source claims those emails were sexually explicit, but Kolbe press secretary Korenna Cline disagreed with that description, saying that the emails had only made the former page who received them uncomfortable.\nKolbe, one of three openly gay Congressmen (the other two are Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)), was identified by multiple pages interviewed by the Post as one of the only members of Congress to take interest in them.\nUPDATE (October 10, 2006): Kolbe now disagrees with his press secretary about some details\u0026ndash;he says he didn\u0026rsquo;t see the emails, didn\u0026rsquo;t directly confront Foley, and didn\u0026rsquo;t personally pass on the complaint to the clerk of the House, but simply recommended to the page with the complaint that it be done.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/kolbe-knew-of-inappropriate-foley.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt just keeps getting pushed back farther and farther.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona Representative Jim Kolbe (R-District 8) \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1009kolbe-foley1009.html\"\u003ehas informed the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e that he knew of inappropriate Foley emails back in 2000\u003c/a\u003e, which he confronted Foley about and brought to the attention of clerk of the House Karen Haas.  Another source claims those emails were sexually explicit, but Kolbe press secretary Korenna Cline disagreed with that description, saying that the emails had only made the former page who received them uncomfortable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKolbe, one of three openly gay Congressmen (the other two are Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)), was identified by multiple pages interviewed by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePost\u003c/span\u003e as one of the only members of Congress to take interest in them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 10, 2006):  Kolbe \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001763.php\"\u003enow disagrees with his press secretary about some details\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;he says he didn\u0026rsquo;t see the emails, didn\u0026rsquo;t directly confront Foley, and didn\u0026rsquo;t personally pass on the complaint to the clerk of the House, but simply recommended to the page with the complaint that it be done.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kolbe knew of inappropriate Foley emails in 2000"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice chart from Yale economist Robert Shiller showing U.S. housing prices back to 1890. What will the regression to the mean look like over the next few years?\nOn Wednesday Moody\u0026rsquo;s issued a widely-covered report on housing prices with predicted price declines by region. Here are their predictions for Arizona cities:\nPeak-to-Trough Peak Trough\n% House Price Decline Year/Quarter Year/Quarter\nTucson, AZ -13.4 06:1 08:2\nPhoenix, AZ -9.3 06:1 08:2\nPrescott, AZ -2.0 06:1 08:2\nI think that their predicted 9.3% decline between first quarter of 2006 and second quarter of 2008 for Phoenix is wildly optimistic\u0026ndash;it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if we saw that level of decline by the end of this year or first quarter of next year. It depends on whether Phoenix continues to have rapid population growth, which in turn depends on job growth (especially outside of real estate-related jobs, which will be declining).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/housing-bubble-us-and-arizona.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/26/weekinreview/27leon_graph2.large.gif\"\u003enice chart from Yale economist Robert Shiller\u003c/a\u003e showing U.S. housing prices back to 1890. What will the regression to the mean look like over the next few years?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Wednesday Moody\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104\u0026STORY=/www/story/10-04-2006/0004445206\u0026amp;EDATE=\"\u003eissued a widely-covered report on housing prices\u003c/a\u003e with predicted price declines by region.  Here are their predictions for Arizona cities:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre class=\"release\"\u003e                            Peak-to-Trough              Peak            Trough\u003cbr /\u003e                   % House Price Decline      Year/Quarter      Year/Quarter\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  Tucson, AZ                      -13.4               06:1              08:2\u003cbr /\u003e  Phoenix, AZ                      -9.3               06:1              08:2\u003cbr /\u003e  Prescott, AZ                     -2.0               06:1              08:2\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/pre\u003eI think that their predicted 9.3% decline between first quarter of 2006 and second quarter of 2008 for Phoenix is wildly optimistic\u0026ndash;it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if we saw that level of decline by the end of this year or first quarter of next year.  It depends on whether Phoenix continues to have rapid population growth, which in turn depends on job growth (especially outside of real estate-related jobs, which will be declining).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Housing bubble, U.S. and Arizona"},{"content":"Glenn Greenwald:\nBut for so many reasons \u0026ndash; its relative simplicity, its crystal clarity, the involvement of emotionally-charged issues, the salacious sex aspects \u0026ndash; this Foley scandal circumvents that whole dynamic. People are paying attention on their own. They don\u0026rsquo;t need pundits or journalists to tell them what to think about it because they are able to form deeply held opinions on their own. None of the standard obfuscation tactics used for so long by Bush followers are working here. To the contrary, their attempted use of those tactics is making things much worse for them, because people can see that Bush followers are attempting \u0026ndash; through the use of patently dishonest and corrupt tactics \u0026ndash; to excuse the inexcusable. And seeing that, it gives great credence to all of the accusations voiced over the last five years that this is how the Bush movement operates in every area, because people can now see it for themselves.\nIn that regard, this scandal is like the Cliffs\u0026rsquo; Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:\nThe absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM\u0026rsquo;d with Foley as a \u0026ldquo;hoax\u0026rdquo;, and on and on. There has been a virtual carousel \u0026ndash; as there always is \u0026ndash; of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working.Read the rest. Greenwald suggests that this scandal almost appears to have been divinely inspired.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foley-scandal-cliffs-notes-version-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/10/does-foley-scandal-prove-existence-of.html\"\u003eGlenn Greenwald\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut for so many reasons \u0026ndash; its relative simplicity, its crystal clarity, the involvement of emotionally-charged issues, the salacious sex aspects \u0026ndash; this Foley scandal circumvents that whole dynamic. People are paying attention on their own. They don\u0026rsquo;t need pundits or journalists to tell them what to think about it because they are able to form deeply held opinions on their own. None of the standard obfuscation tactics used for so long by Bush followers are working here. To the contrary, their attempted use of those tactics is making things much worse for them, because people can see that Bush followers are attempting \u0026ndash; through the use of patently dishonest and corrupt tactics \u0026ndash; to excuse the inexcusable. And seeing that, it gives great credence to all of the accusations voiced over the last five years that this is how the Bush movement operates in every area, because people can now \u003cem\u003esee it for themselves\u003c/em\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn that regard, this scandal is like the Cliffs\u0026rsquo; Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM\u0026rsquo;d with Foley as a \u0026ldquo;hoax\u0026rdquo;, and on and on. There has been a virtual carousel \u0026ndash; as there always is \u0026ndash; of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that \u003cem\u003eeveryone\u003c/em\u003e can see it, and so nothing is working.\u003c/blockquote\u003eRead the \u003ca href=\"http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/10/does-foley-scandal-prove-existence-of.html\"\u003erest\u003c/a\u003e.  Greenwald suggests that this scandal almost appears to have been divinely inspired.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley scandal a Cliff's Notes version of how Bush administration operates"},{"content":"Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy (which was the inspiration for my domain name and computer naming scheme on my home network), is now bedridden and under 24-hour care. Some fans on the Internet have helped him raise funds for his continuing care, and you can buy a Robert Anton Wilson T-shirt to help out.\nUPDATE (January 11, 2007): Robert Anton Wilson died this morning at 4:50 a.m., PST.\nJesse Walker reports on his final blog post, and Brian Doherty offers some interesting reflections.\nThough my only published writing about Robert Anton Wilson was rather critical, I greatly enjoyed and own most of his published work.\nUPDATE (January 12, 2007): And there\u0026rsquo;s more from Nick Gillespie here.\nAnonymous (2007-02-22):\nAs a fan of Robert Anton Wilson and particularly of The New Inquisition, I greatly enjoyed and appreciated your critical review of this book. I don't have time to look up all the sources he cites, so I'm happy someone has made an effort. I enjoyed The New Inquisition not for its criticism of CSICOP, but for Wilson's brilliant synthesis of modern insights into epistemology, and his suggestions about how to 'internalize' the lessons of epistemology and apply them to our everyday thinking (a point usually untouched by academic philosophy). When evaluating a work like The New Inquisition, it is important to keep in mind that Wilson's goal is not to urge the reader to embrace a belief system so much as to use \"guerilla ontology\" to attack our tendency to cling to belief systems, to engage the reader in what he called \"operation mindfuck.\" In The Illuminati Papers, Wilson defines guerilla ontology as:\"The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'\"In light of Wilson's own description of his method, it's fair to ask how much of TNI should be dismissed as sloppy scholarship and how much can be accounted for as Wilson intentionally pulling the reader's leg. One of his persistent mottoes was \"Think for yourself, schmuck!\" and Wilson was keenly aware that anyone who accepts what he says at face value is not thinking for themselves.\nLippard (2007-02-22):\nGeoff:Thanks for the comment.Something that I found after writing that review was that almost all of the sloppy scholarship I referred to actually came from Charles Fort--Wilson was simply re-reporting items straight out of Fort's books. My guess is that he didn't look them up for himself.I think Wilson was a big picture thinker who didn't didn't get bogged down in (or take the time to delve into) the details.Although from his writing I thought Wilson would have an excellent sense of humor and would not take my review personally, when I interacted with him in Saucer Smear he came across to me as very defensive and unable to admit that he might be wrong--which strikes me as completely inconsistent with his published views.\nAnonymous (2007-02-23):\nJim, thanks for the further info about Wilson getting is misinformation from Fort. I agree that Wilson was a big-picture thinker, and that's part of his appeal, at least for me. It's too bad he didn't have more of a sense of humor about your criticisms. He struck me as overly paranoid about organized skepticism (in his vocabulary we might say it activated his emotional-territorial programs) and he may have seen you as a representative of that group. Maybe he was embarrassed because he had been duped by Fort, or maybe he was just having a bad day. It would certainly be nice if we could all be at our best all the time. Model agnosticism is a great way to look at epistemology, but psychologically speaking, quite difficult to stick to in daily life.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/robert-anton-wilson-nears-end-of-his.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Anton Wilson, co-author of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIlluminatus!\u003c/span\u003e trilogy (which was the inspiration for my domain name and computer naming scheme on my home network), \u003ca href=\"http://www.playboy.com/go/blog/magazine/Books/2006/10/06/A-Friend-Indeed.html\"\u003eis now bedridden and under 24-hour care\u003c/a\u003e.  Some fans on the Internet have helped him raise funds for his continuing care, and you can buy a Robert Anton Wilson T-shirt to help out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 11, 2007):  Robert Anton Wilson died this morning at 4:50 a.m., PST.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJesse Walker \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117838.html\"\u003ereports on his final blog post\u003c/a\u003e, and Brian Doherty \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117840.html\"\u003eoffers some interesting reflections\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThough my only published writing about Robert Anton Wilson \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/wilson-review.html\"\u003ewas rather critical\u003c/a\u003e, I greatly enjoyed and own most of his published work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 12, 2007): And there\u0026rsquo;s more from Nick Gillespie \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117848.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Robert Anton Wilson nears the end of his life"},{"content":"What happens when you randomly pair a Family Circus cartoon with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche?\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nYou finally get a cartoon that is actually funny!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/nietzsche-family-circus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat happens \u003ca href=\"http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=75\u0026q=7\"\u003ewhen you randomly pair a Family Circus cartoon with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYou finally get a cartoon that is actually funny!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Nietzsche Family Circus"},{"content":"A very interesting documentary about white Southern Baptists in Texas converting to Islam\u0026ndash;apparently because they don\u0026rsquo;t find Christianity conservative enough. The speculation from Mark Plus in the comments is also interesting\u0026ndash;that perhaps the constant propagandizing against radical Islam has caused some to switch allegiances through something like Stockholm Syndrome\u0026ndash;but the one subject, Eric, converted 14 years ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/turning-muslim-in-texas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/10/turning-muslim-in-texas.html\"\u003every interesting documentary about white Southern Baptists in Texas converting to Islam\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;apparently because they don\u0026rsquo;t find Christianity conservative enough.  The speculation from Mark Plus in the comments is also interesting\u0026ndash;that perhaps the constant propagandizing against radical Islam has caused some to switch allegiances through something like Stockholm Syndrome\u0026ndash;but the one subject, Eric, converted 14 years ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Turning Muslim in Texas"},{"content":"At Crooks and Liars, which has video. Here\u0026rsquo;s the full transcript:\nYesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona Congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, \u0026ldquo;177 of the opposition party said \u0026lsquo;You know, we don\u0026rsquo;t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.\u0026rdquo; The hell they did.\n177 Democrats opposed the President\u0026rsquo;s seizure of another part of the Constitution*.\nNot even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.\nPresident Bush hears… what he wants.\nTuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said \u0026ldquo;Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we\u0026rsquo;re attacked again before we respond.\u0026quot;\nMr. Bush fabricated that, too.\nAnd evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind-reader.\n\u0026ldquo;If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,\u0026rdquo; the President said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, \u0026ldquo;it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we\u0026rsquo;re attacked again.\u0026quot;\nThe President doesn\u0026rsquo;t just hear what he wants. He hears things, that only he can hear.\nIt defies belief that this President and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.\nYet they do.\nIt is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any President of this nation.\nRhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders; Democrats; the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies — of treason.\nBut it is the context that truly makes the head spin.\nJust 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, quote, \u0026ldquo;we must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.\u0026quot;\nMr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.\nIf your commitment to \u0026ldquo;put aside differences and work together\u0026rdquo; is replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they\u0026rsquo;ve said, then the questions your critics need to be asking, are no longer about your policies.\nThey are, instead — solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.\nNo Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that the best means of self-defense is to \u0026ldquo;wait until we\u0026rsquo;re attacked again.\u0026quot;\nNo critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate, has ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on Wednesday… nor whatever is next.\nYou have dishonored your party, sir — you have dishonored your supporters — you have dishonored yourself.\nBut tonight the stark question we must face is - why?\nWhy has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats, now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?\nWhy have you chosen to go down in history as the President who made things up?\nIn less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity, to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.\nIf this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.\nWe have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size, and party.\nWe will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.\nBut the premise of a President who comes across as a compulsive liar — is nothing less than terrifying.\nA President who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward\u0026rsquo;s most recent account — evidently has never listened.\nA President who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans, that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.\nA President who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack. Attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy is.\nBut if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this:\nThis President — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies are — they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak, called the Constitution of the United States of America.\nHow often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?\nI tonight quote, not Jefferson nor Voltaire — but \u0026ldquo;Cigar Aficionado Magazine.\u0026quot;\nOn September 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks — at that point, just retired from his post as Commander-In-Chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.\nAnd amid his quaint defenses of the-then nagging absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama Bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.\nHe spoke of \u0026ldquo;the worst thing that can happen\u0026rdquo; to this country:\nFirst, quoting, a \u0026ldquo;massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America.\u0026quot;\nThen, the general continued, \u0026ldquo;the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we\u0026rsquo;ve seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy.\u0026quot;\nIt was this super-patriotic warrior\u0026rsquo;s fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — \u0026ldquo;that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.\u0026quot;\nAnd here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled anyway.\nHabeus Corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a President stifling all critics by every means available and when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.\nAnd all this, even without the dreaded attack.\nGeneral Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity. He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.\nHe has, perhaps been as naive as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity, from within:\nSecretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counter-terrorism officials before 9/11.\nThen within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question.\nThen she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.\nMr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence, of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the \u0026lsquo;generals in the field.\u0026rsquo;\nBut dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.\nAnd, of course, inherent in the Pentagon\u0026rsquo;s war-making functions, is the regulation of Presidential war-lust. Enacting that regulation should include everything up to, symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.\nYet — and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this — evidently Mr. Rumsfeld\u0026rsquo;s strongest check on Mr. Bush\u0026rsquo;s ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase \u0026ldquo;Mission Accomplished\u0026rdquo; out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003 - even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President\u0026rsquo;s shoulder.\nAnd the Vice President is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party\u0026rsquo;s leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.\nThere were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.\nBut he still says so.\nThere was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.\nBut he still says so.\nAnd thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance and spreads — around him and before him — darkness… like some contagion of fear.\nThey are never wrong, and they never regret. Admirable in a French torch singer. Cataclysmic in an American leader.\nThus the sickening attempt to blame the Foley Scandal on the negligence of others or \u0026ldquo;The Clinton Era\u0026rdquo; — even though the Foley Scandal began before the Lewinsky Scandal.\nThus last month\u0026rsquo;s enraged attacks on this Administration\u0026rsquo;s predecessors, about Osama Bin Laden — a projection of their own negligence in the immediate months before 9/11.\nThus the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our freedom — the Constitution — a triumph for Al-Qaeda, for which the terrorists could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11\u0026rsquo;s.\nAnd thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the conversations of terrorists.\nIt is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you re-direct at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with counsel.\nIt is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush, that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings of Oliver Cromwell: \u0026ldquo;I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.\u0026quot;\nIt is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear, sir.\nIt is your own — before 9/11 - (and you alone know this), perhaps afterwards.\nMr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.\nIt is not our freedom, nor our country — your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.\nYou want to preserve a political party\u0026rsquo;s power. And obviously you\u0026rsquo;ll sell this country out, to do it.\nThese are lies about the Democrats piled atop lies about Iraq which were piled atop lies about your preparations for Al-Qaeda.\nTo you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries.\nAs crushing. As immovable.\nThey are not.\nIf you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.\nBut if you stop — if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same — you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.\nPlease, sir, do not throw this country\u0026rsquo;s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.\n—\nGood night, and good luck.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/keith-olbermann-calls-bush-on-his-lies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/05/olbermanns-special-comment-it-is-not-the-democrats-whose-inaction-in-the-face-of-the-enemy-you-fear/\"\u003eCrooks and Liars\u003c/a\u003e, which has video. Here\u0026rsquo;s the full transcript:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona Congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, \u0026ldquo;177 of the opposition party said \u0026lsquo;You know, we don\u0026rsquo;t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.\u0026rdquo; \u003cp\u003eThe hell they did.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e177 Democrats opposed the President\u0026rsquo;s seizure of another part of the Constitution*.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNot even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Keith Olbermann calls Bush on his lies"},{"content":"Susan Ralston has resigned as Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s personal aide due to an ethics investigation which showed that she accepted thousands of dollars worth of gifts from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff in violation of White House policy. Ralston has worked for Rove since 2001, and \u0026ldquo;Abramoff reportedly bragged to others that [she] was his \u0026lsquo;implant\u0026rsquo; at the White House.\u0026quot;\nHow can anyone avoid coming to the conclusion that the George W. Bush administration and the Republican leadership is riddled with corruption?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/former-abramoff-assistant-resigns-as.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSusan Ralston \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001747.php\"\u003ehas resigned as Karl Rove\u0026rsquo;s personal aide due to an ethics investigation\u003c/a\u003e which showed that she accepted thousands of dollars worth of gifts from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff in violation of White House policy.  Ralston has worked for Rove since 2001, and \u0026ldquo;Abramoff reportedly bragged to others that [she] was his \u0026lsquo;implant\u0026rsquo; at the White House.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow can anyone avoid coming to the conclusion that the George W. Bush administration and the Republican leadership is riddled with corruption?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Former Abramoff assistant resigns as Karl Rove's aide"},{"content":"From the Associated Press:\nGuards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press. The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.\n(Via stranger fruit.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/guards-at-guantanamo-bay-brag-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_re_us/guantanamo_alleged_abuse\"\u003ethe Associated Press\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eGuards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press. \u003cp\u003eThe two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2006/10/it_just_gets_better.php\"\u003estranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guards at Guantanamo Bay brag of inflicting beatings on detainees"},{"content":"Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes has obtained a copy of the no-fly list being used for airline passenger screening.\nThe list includes people who are not a threat (like Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, Saddam Hussein, and 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers). It includes numerous common names that are useless for screening purposes\u0026ndash;Gary Smith, John Williams, and Robert Johnson are on the list. Kroft spoke with 12 Robert Johnsons, and all of them said they are detained almost every time they try to fly.\nWorse yet, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists:\nThe 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year.\nThe name of David Belfor who now goes by Dahud Sala Hudine, is not on the list, even though he assassinated someone in Washington, D.C., for former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. This is because the accuracy of the list meant to uphold security takes a back seat to overarching security needs: it could get into the wrong hands. \u0026ldquo;The government doesn\u0026rsquo;t want that information outside the government,\u0026rdquo; says Cathy Berrick, director of Homeland Security investigations for the General Accounting Office.I\u0026rsquo;d say that particular name is well known outside of the government now, Ms. Berrick.\nThe TSA has allegedly been trying to fix the list for three years, spending $144 million to do so, but there is \u0026ldquo;nothing tangible yet.\u0026quot;\nThis is staggering incompetence. Kip Hawley is still an idiot.\nUPDATE (October 5, 2006): I second Tim Lee\u0026rsquo;s recommendation of Jim Harper\u0026rsquo;s commentary on what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with watch lists.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/us-no-fly-list-is-joke.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteve Kroft of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e60 Minutes\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/05/60minutes/main2066624.shtml\"\u003ehas obtained a copy of the no-fly list being used for airline passenger screening\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe list includes people who are not a threat (like Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, Saddam Hussein, and 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers).  It includes numerous common names that are useless for screening purposes\u0026ndash;Gary Smith, John Williams, and Robert Johnson are on the list.  Kroft spoke with 12 Robert Johnsons, and all of them said they are detained almost every time they try to fly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWorse yet, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t include the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe name of David Belfor who now goes by Dahud Sala Hudine, is not on the list, even though he assassinated someone in Washington, D.C., for former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. This is because the accuracy of the list meant to uphold security takes a back seat to overarching security needs: it could get into the wrong hands. \u0026ldquo;The government doesn\u0026rsquo;t want that information outside the government,\u0026rdquo; says Cathy Berrick, director of Homeland Security investigations for the General Accounting Office.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d say that particular name is well known outside of the government now, Ms. Berrick.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe TSA has allegedly been trying to fix the list for three years, spending $144 million to do so, but there is \u0026ldquo;nothing tangible yet.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is staggering incompetence.  \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/kip-hawley-is-idiot.html\"\u003eKip Hawley is still an idiot\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 5, 2006):  I second \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040826.php\"\u003eTim Lee\u0026rsquo;s recommendation of Jim Harper\u0026rsquo;s commentary on what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with watch lists\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The U.S. no-fly list is a joke"},{"content":"On July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black gave a briefing to Condoleezza Rice warning that al Qaeda was preparing for an imminent attack on the U.S. In Bob Woodward\u0026rsquo;s new book, State of Fear, he writes that they felt like they got \u0026ldquo;the brush-off\u0026rdquo; from Rice.\nBut she asked that the same briefing be given to John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, and they received it on July 17, 2001, as confirmed by Rice\u0026rsquo;s spokesman Sean McCormack.\nThese briefings were not reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, and 9/11 Commission counsel Peter Rundlet has accused the White House of hiding the July 10th briefing from the Commission. But George Tenet specifically told the 9/11 Commission about these briefings, yet they didn\u0026rsquo;t include it in the Report:\nFormer CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel\u0026rsquo;s executive director and the principal author of its report, who\u0026rsquo;s now Rice\u0026rsquo;s top adviser.Ashcroft has claimed that he didn\u0026rsquo;t receive a briefing from Tenet, saying through a spokesman that he does not recall a July 17, 2001 briefing. A Pentagon spokesman had \u0026ldquo;no information\u0026rdquo; about whether Rumsfeld received such a briefing.\nOn August 6, 2001, the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Presidential Daily Briefing was titled \u0026ldquo;Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.\u0026quot;\nRice said this to the 9/11 Commission:\n\u0026ldquo;Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I\u0026rsquo;ve asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack.\u0026quot;Some of the above is covered in this truthout.org piece by William Rivers Pitt, but it mistakenly says that the 9/11 Commission was not informed of the Tenet/Rice briefing. The question is not only why Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld didn\u0026rsquo;t take action in response to these briefings from the CIA, and not only why Rice didn\u0026rsquo;t report it to the 9/11 Commission, but why the 9/11 Commission didn\u0026rsquo;t put it in their report.\nUPDATE (October 7, 2006): Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines and started flying only on private planes shortly after July 17, 2001, as reported by CBS News on July 26, 2001. This was allegedly due to an FBI \u0026ldquo;threat assessment\u0026rdquo; which had advised him to only fly by private plane for the rest of his term of office.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/cia-warned-rice-ashcroft-and-rumsfeld.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black \u003ca href=\"http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/15662785.htm\"\u003egave a briefing to Condoleezza Rice warning that al Qaeda was preparing for an imminent attack on the U.S.\u003c/a\u003e  In Bob Woodward\u0026rsquo;s new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState of Fear\u003c/span\u003e, he writes that they felt like they got \u0026ldquo;the brush-off\u0026rdquo; from Rice.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut she asked that the same briefing be given to John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, and they received it on July 17, 2001, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/03ricecnd.html?_r=1\u0026oref=slogin\"\u003eas confirmed by Rice\u0026rsquo;s spokesman Sean McCormack\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese briefings were not reported in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e9/11 Commission Report\u003c/span\u003e, and 9/11 Commission counsel Peter Rundlet has accused the White House of hiding the July 10th briefing from the Commission.  But George Tenet \u003ca href=\"http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/15662785.htm\"\u003especifically told the 9/11 Commission about these briefings, yet they didn\u0026rsquo;t include it in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReport\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFormer CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel\u0026rsquo;s executive director and the principal author of its report, who\u0026rsquo;s now Rice\u0026rsquo;s top adviser.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAshcroft has claimed that he didn\u0026rsquo;t receive a briefing from Tenet, saying through a spokesman that he does not recall a July 17, 2001 briefing.  A Pentagon spokesman had \u0026ldquo;no information\u0026rdquo; about whether Rumsfeld received such a briefing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn August 6, 2001, the CIA\u0026rsquo;s Presidential Daily Briefing was titled \u003ca href=\"http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/80601pdb.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRice said this to the 9/11 Commission:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I\u0026rsquo;ve asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try  and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eSome of the above is covered in \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100206X.shtml\"\u003ethis truthout.org piece by William Rivers Pitt\u003c/a\u003e, but it mistakenly says that the 9/11 Commission was not informed of the Tenet/Rice briefing.  The question is not only why Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld didn\u0026rsquo;t take action in response to these briefings from the CIA, and not only why Rice didn\u0026rsquo;t report it to the 9/11 Commission, but why the 9/11 Commission didn\u0026rsquo;t put it in their report.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 7, 2006):  Ashcroft \u003ca href=\"http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/911_widows_blast_Bush_Administration_over_1006.html\"\u003estopped flying on commercial airlines and started flying only on private planes shortly after July 17, 2001\u003c/a\u003e, as reported by CBS News on July 26, 2001.  This was allegedly due to an FBI \u0026ldquo;threat assessment\u0026rdquo; which had advised him to only fly by private plane for the rest of his term of office.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA warned Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld of probable al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. before 9/11"},{"content":"Rep. Tom Reynolds\u0026rsquo; chief of staff (and Mark Foley\u0026rsquo;s former chief of staff) Kirk Fordham has resigned (or been fired). There are at least two stories\u0026ndash;one says Fordham successfully kept the information about Foley from being provided to the full House Page Board (which has a Democratic Party member on it and has now resigned; another says that Fordham raised the issue repeatedly with Dennis Hastert to no avail and has now been fired and made into a scapegoat to protect Hastert. TPM Muckraker has more.\nArizona Representative Trent Franks says he thinks it was the Democratic leadership that knew about the issue but has kept it quiet, and he supports Hastert.\nUPDATE: Fordham now says he told Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office about Foley\u0026rsquo;s problem in 2004, and is now ready to tell the FBI all about it.\nUPDATE: Make that 2003. Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer denies Fordham\u0026rsquo;s statement.\nDavid Corn suggests that the Republicans will now place the blame for concealment of Foley\u0026rsquo;s issues on a conspiracy of gay Republican staff, including Fordham (who is openly gay).\nUPDATE (October 7, 2006): The Washington Post reports that another staffer has come forward to support Fordham\u0026rsquo;s account over Palmer\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;that Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office was informed of the Foley issue in 2003.\nUPDATE (October 8, 2006): In 2002 or 2003, House clerk Jeff Trandahl informed then-Foley chief of staff Fordham that Foley had showed up drunk at the page\u0026rsquo;s dorm and was refused admittance. This prompted Fordham to meet with Scott Palmer to discuss Foley\u0026rsquo;s issues, though Fordham did not mention that particular event.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foley-fordham-and-franks-and-hastert.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Tom Reynolds\u0026rsquo; chief of staff (and Mark Foley\u0026rsquo;s former chief of staff) Kirk Fordham has resigned (or been fired).  There are at least two stories\u0026ndash;one says Fordham successfully kept the information about Foley from being provided to the full House Page Board (which has a Democratic Party member on it and has now resigned; another says that Fordham raised the issue repeatedly with Dennis Hastert to no avail and has now been fired and made into a scapegoat to protect Hastert.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001695.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker has more\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona Representative Trent Franks \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_10_01.php#010178\"\u003esays he thinks it was the Democratic leadership that knew about the issue but has kept it quiet\u003c/a\u003e, and he supports Hastert.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Fordham \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/04/reynolds_adviser_says_he_told_hasterts_office_of_foley_two_years_ago\"\u003enow says he told Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office about Foley\u0026rsquo;s problem in 2004, and is now ready to tell the FBI all about it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Make that \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2527764\u0026page=1\"\u003e2003\u003c/a\u003e.  Hastert \u003ca href=\"http://tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/04/hasterts_chief_of_staff_denies_fordham_allegation\"\u003echief of staff Scott Palmer denies Fordham\u0026rsquo;s statement\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Corn \u003ca href=\"http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/10/the_list_of_gay.php\"\u003esuggests that the Republicans will now place the blame for concealment of Foley\u0026rsquo;s issues on a conspiracy of gay Republican staff\u003c/a\u003e, including Fordham (who is openly gay).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 7, 2006):  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601888.html\"\u003ereports that another staffer has come forward to support Fordham\u0026rsquo;s account over Palmer\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office was informed of the Foley issue in 2003.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (October 8, 2006):  In 2002 or 2003, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001754.php\"\u003eHouse clerk Jeff Trandahl informed then-Foley chief of staff Fordham that Foley had showed up drunk at the page\u0026rsquo;s dorm and was refused admittance\u003c/a\u003e.  This prompted Fordham to meet with Scott Palmer to discuss Foley\u0026rsquo;s issues, though Fordham did not mention that particular event.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley, Fordham, and Franks (and Hastert)"},{"content":"Steven Howards of Golden, CO was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson at Beaver Creek Resort when he saw Vice President Dick Cheney. He walked up to him and said \u0026ldquo;I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;words to that effect\u0026rdquo;) and walked off to drop off his son. When he returned through the area about ten minutes later, he was arrested by U.S. Secret Service Agent Virgil D. Reichle, Jr. He was told that he would be charged with assault on the vice president, and held in jail for about three hours before being released on $500 bond. He was, instead, charged with misdemeanor harassment, but the charges were dropped at the request of the District Attorney about three weeks later.\nHowards is now suing the U.S. Secret Service, making this the third lawsuit accusing the Secret Service or White House staff of breaking the law to keep people with opposing political views away from the President and Vice President.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/man-arrested-for-criticizing-cheney.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteven Howards of Golden, CO was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson at Beaver Creek Resort when he saw Vice President Dick Cheney.  He walked up to him and said \u0026ldquo;I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible\u0026rdquo; (or \u0026ldquo;words to that effect\u0026rdquo;) and walked off to drop off his son.  When he returned through the area about ten minutes later, he was arrested by U.S. Secret Service Agent Virgil D. Reichle, Jr.  He was told that he would be charged with assault on the vice president, and held in jail for about three hours before being released on $500 bond.  He was, instead, charged with misdemeanor harassment, but the charges were dropped at the request of the District Attorney about three weeks later.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowards \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04cheney.html?_r=3\u0026oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\u0026amp;oref=slogin\"\u003eis now suing the U.S. Secret Service\u003c/a\u003e, making this the third lawsuit accusing the Secret Service or White House staff of breaking the law to keep people with opposing political views away from the President and Vice President.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Man arrested for criticizing Cheney sues Secret Service"},{"content":"Fox labeled former Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat three times during the O\u0026rsquo;Reilly Factor last night. When they re-ran the clips later last night, they removed the incorrect party affiliation, but didn\u0026rsquo;t mention that he was a Republican.\nFair and balanced.\nUPDATE: Associated Press has done the same thing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/fox-labels-foley-democrat-on-oreilly.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFox \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/fox_turns_foley_into_a_democra.php\"\u003elabeled former Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat three times\u003c/a\u003e during the O\u0026rsquo;Reilly Factor last night.  When they re-ran the clips later last night, they removed the incorrect party affiliation, but didn\u0026rsquo;t mention that he was a Republican.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFair and balanced.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_10_01.php#010172\"\u003eAssociated Press has done the same thing\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox labels Foley a Democrat on O'Reilly Factor"},{"content":"\nOllie is our foster dog. Check him out on the RESCUE site. He\u0026rsquo;s great fun and very loving. And available for adoption in the Phoenix area.\nUPDATE (December 10, 2006): Ollie was adopted last night by a family with another bassett hound and a shar pei.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nOllie is a great dog. If we didn't already have three and want to continue to keep a fourth slot open for further fostering, we'd adopt him. I think his ideal home would be one where he got lots of attention and had another dog to play with.\ndonna (2006-12-09):\nAw, so cute....I want a ranch full of rescued golden retrievers myself...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/meet-ollie.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/796/1440/1600/ollie.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/796/1440/320/ollie.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOllie is our foster dog.  Check him out on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/servlet/barksearch?view=1\u0026id=1025149395\"\u003eRESCUE \u003c/a\u003esite.    He\u0026rsquo;s great fun and very loving.  And available for adoption in the Phoenix area.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 10, 2006):  Ollie was adopted last night by a family with another bassett hound and a shar pei.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOllie is a great dog.  If we didn't already have three and want to continue to keep a fourth slot open for further fostering, we'd adopt him.    I think his ideal home would be one where he got lots of attention and had another dog to play with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meet Ollie"},{"content":"Foley\u0026rsquo;s attraction to young male pages was well known, with at least one page being warned over a decade ago.\nTPM Muckraker:\n\u0026ldquo;Almost the first day I got there I was warned,\u0026rdquo; said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. \u0026ldquo;It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages,\u0026rdquo; said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.Halfway There:\n“My daughter was in the capital page program.”\nI had forgotten. JM went on.\n“She had dinner with the congressman.”\nThis did not compute.\n“With Foley? Really?”\n“Yeah. He invited two pages to have dinner with him and they invited my daughter and another girl to go with them.”\n“These pages were boys?”\n“Yeah, but they were too smart to go by themselves, so they took the girls to their dinner with Foley.” It\u0026rsquo;s not plausible that the Republican Leadership was unaware.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foleys-attraction-to-young-males-was.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFoley\u0026rsquo;s attraction to young male pages was well known, with at least one page being warned over a decade ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001673.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;Almost the first day I got there I was warned,\u0026rdquo; said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. \u0026ldquo;It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages,\u0026rdquo; said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2006/10/foley-follies-roadshow.html\"\u003eHalfway There\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“My daughter was in the capital page program.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI had forgotten. JM went on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“She had dinner with the congressman.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis did not compute.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“With Foley? Really?”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“Yeah. He invited two pages to have dinner with him and they invited my daughter and another girl to go with them.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“These pages were boys?”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“Yeah, but they were too smart to go by themselves, so they took the girls to their dinner with Foley.”\u003c/blockquote\u003e It\u0026rsquo;s not plausible that the Republican Leadership was unaware.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley's attraction to young males was well known on Capitol Hill"},{"content":"Skeptic Michael Shermer is speaking about his new book, Why Darwin Matters, at noon on October 12 at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. The Cato Institute is then showcasing a commentary on Shermer by \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design proponent Jonathan Wells,\u0026rdquo; whose dishonest books Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism, have been shredded at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\nWells, a follower of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, entered a Ph.D. program at the behest of Moon. Wells wrote: \u0026ldquo;Father\u0026rsquo;s [Moon\u0026rsquo;s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.\u0026quot;\nRev. Moon, who was crowned in a bizarre ceremony on Capitol Hill thanks to the support of a number of Congressmen, has also been supported by a variety of evangelical Christians who would ordinarily oppose cult groups whose leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, such as Left Behind co-author Timothy LaHaye, his wife and head of Concerned Women for America Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, Pat Boone, and Christian Coalition leader and Jack Abramoff pal Ralph Reed. Also involved with Moon have been former president George H.W. Bush and his son and President George W. Bush. (More on Moon and his connections to Christian and Republican leaders here and here.)\nWhy is the Cato Institute giving a forum to a purveyor of pseudoscience and an advocate of Moon\u0026rsquo;s cult?\nPerhaps it has something to do with the fact that Richard W. Rahn, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and writes for Moon\u0026rsquo;s Washington Times?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/cato-institute-provides-forum-to-id.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSkeptic Michael Shermer \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=3184\u0026print=Y\"\u003eis speaking about his new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy Darwin Matters\u003c/span\u003e, at noon on October 12 at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C.  \u003c/a\u003eThe Cato Institute is then showcasing a commentary on Shermer by \u0026ldquo;Intelligent Design proponent Jonathan Wells,\u0026rdquo; whose dishonest books \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIcons of Evolution\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/the_politically.html\"\u003ehave been shredded at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWells, a follower of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, entered a Ph.D. program at the behest of Moon.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm\"\u003eWells wrote\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Father\u0026rsquo;s [Moon\u0026rsquo;s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRev. Moon, who was crowned in a bizarre ceremony on Capitol Hill thanks to the support of a number of Congressmen, has also been supported by a variety of evangelical Christians who would ordinarily oppose cult groups whose leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, such as \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLeft Behind\u003c/span\u003e co-author Timothy LaHaye, his wife and head of Concerned Women for America Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, Pat Boone, and Christian Coalition leader and Jack Abramoff pal Ralph Reed.  Also involved with Moon have been former president George H.W. Bush and his son and President George W. Bush.  (More on Moon and his connections to Christian and Republican leaders \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/gorenfelds_video_blog_on_rev_m.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/rev_moon/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy is the Cato Institute giving a forum to a purveyor of pseudoscience and an advocate of Moon\u0026rsquo;s cult?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps it has something to do with the fact that Richard W. Rahn, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view\u0026program=Technology%20and%20Democracy\u0026amp;id=2000\"\u003ean adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and writes for Moon\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cato Institute provides forum to ID crackpot cult member Jonathan Wells"},{"content":"A shirt with a picture of Thomas Jefferson and the words \u0026ldquo;enemy combatant,\u0026rdquo; a shirt that says \u0026ldquo;I am not a terrorist\u0026rdquo; in Arabic, and a shirt that just says \u0026ldquo;enemy combatant\u0026rdquo; (same link as the Arabic shirt). I like the first two better than the third.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI got me one!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/some-nice-t-shirts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/something_to_wear/\"\u003eshirt with a picture of Thomas Jefferson\u003c/a\u003e and the words \u0026ldquo;enemy combatant,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://itsnotallbad.com/iamnotaterrorist/\"\u003ea shirt that says \u0026ldquo;I am not a terrorist\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in Arabic, and a shirt that just says \u0026ldquo;enemy combatant\u0026rdquo; (same link as the Arabic shirt).  I like the first two better than the third.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI got me one!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Some nice t-shirts"},{"content":"Focus on the Family\u0026rsquo;s James Dobson blames society and the Internet for Foley\u0026rsquo;s problems. Bill Clinton, by contrast, was personally responsible for his failings.\nWhy isn\u0026rsquo;t Mark Foley personally responsible for his own failings?\n(BTW, I recommend reading the book James Dobson\u0026rsquo;s War on America.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/james-dobsons-hypocrisy-on-foley.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFocus on the Family\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/oct/02/dobson_statement_on_foleygate_no_mention_of_house_gopleadership\"\u003eJames Dobson blames society and the Internet for Foley\u0026rsquo;s problems\u003c/a\u003e.  Bill Clinton, by contrast, was personally responsible for his failings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy isn\u0026rsquo;t Mark Foley personally responsible for his own failings?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(BTW, I recommend reading the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/James-Dobsons-War-America-Alexander-Moegerle/dp/157392122X/jimlippardswebpaa\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJames Dobson\u0026rsquo;s War on America\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"James Dobson's hypocrisy on Foley"},{"content":"It looks like ex-Congressman Foley has been a Scientology-friendly U.S. Representative, attending Scientology events at Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater and having Clearwater Scientologists raise funds for him. Wonkette asks whether there are any non-Scientology-run rehabilitation centers in Clearwater, Florida, which appears to be where Foley is getting treatment.\nClearwater is the home of Narconon, Scientology\u0026rsquo;s pseudo-scientific drug treatment program.\nThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily mean that Foley is a Scientologist or has taken any Scientology courses, but it does demonstrate that he\u0026rsquo;s shown poor judgment in multiple areas of his life. I\u0026rsquo;ve previously reported on a number of Arizona state legislators who have likewise shown poor judgment in accepting gifts from and sponsoring legislation from Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-03-26):\nScientology may be a topic of debate because of its set of beliefs but we shouldn't judge them because they have the freedom to believe what they want to believe. As for the Narconon, I hear it's a good Florida alcohol rehab. As for the gifts, I agree with you Jim that officials should not receive any kind of bribe from any group. I think it is very unprofessional of them and that kind of act might lead to biased decisions.Nice post by the way! -kat\nEinzige (2007-03-26):\nI presume, then, that you also feel we shouldn't \"judge\" Nazis or white supremacists, either, since they also \"have the freedom to believe what they want to believe\"?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/scientology-friendly-foley-in-rehab-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.wonkette.com/politics/scientology/battlefield-foley-204681.php\"\u003eex-Congressman Foley has been a Scientology-friendly U.S. Representative\u003c/a\u003e, attending Scientology events at Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater and having Clearwater Scientologists raise funds for him.  Wonkette \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001666.php\"\u003easks whether there are any non-Scientology-run rehabilitation centers in Clearwater, Florida\u003c/a\u003e, which appears to be where Foley is getting treatment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eClearwater is the home of Narconon, Scientology\u0026rsquo;s pseudo-scientific drug treatment program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily mean that Foley is a Scientologist or has taken any Scientology courses, but it does demonstrate that he\u0026rsquo;s shown poor judgment in multiple areas of his life.  I\u0026rsquo;ve previously reported on \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003ea number of Arizona state legislators who have likewise shown poor judgment in accepting gifts from and sponsoring legislation from Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology-friendly Foley in rehab in Clearwater, Florida"},{"content":"Cliff Schecter of AMERICAblog clearly has the better of the argument here with Cleta Mitchell of Foley \u0026amp; Lardner, but he\u0026rsquo;s gotta admit William Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s corrupt. Cleta Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s comments are completely out of touch with reality, though\u0026ndash;doesn\u0026rsquo;t she remember how Clinton got bashed?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/trading-lists-of-corrupt-congressmen.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCliff Schecter of AMERICAblog \u003ca href=\"http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_atrios_archive.html#115980728436414019\"\u003eclearly has the better of the argument here\u003c/a\u003e with Cleta Mitchell of Foley \u0026amp; Lardner, but he\u0026rsquo;s gotta admit William Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s corrupt.  Cleta Mitchell\u0026rsquo;s comments are completely out of touch with reality, though\u0026ndash;doesn\u0026rsquo;t she remember how Clinton got bashed?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trading lists of corrupt Congressmen"},{"content":"The pages involved were all 16 years of age or older, and thus above the age of consent in Washington, D.C. and most states. If Foley had actually had sex with them, it would not have been a crime.\nBut under the \u0026ldquo;Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006\u0026rdquo; which Foley helped write, discussing sexual acts or soliciting sex from anyone under the age of 18 is a criminal offense.\nThese laws should be made consistent one way or the other. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t make Foley\u0026rsquo;s actions any more appropriate given his position of trust and power in the House (or provide any excuse for the House leadership\u0026rsquo;s lack of response), but if 16 is a sensible age of consent, then the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 should use the same age as its limit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foley-scandal-and-legal-inconsistency.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe pages involved were all 16 years of age or older, and thus above the age of consent in Washington, D.C. and most states.  If Foley \u003ca href=\"http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/gop-house-leadership-and-mark-foley.html\"\u003ehad actually had sex with them, it would not have been a crime\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut under the \u0026ldquo;Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006\u0026rdquo; which Foley helped write, discussing sexual acts or soliciting sex from anyone under the age of 18 is a criminal offense.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese laws should be made consistent one way or the other.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t make Foley\u0026rsquo;s actions any more appropriate given his position of trust and power in the House (or provide any excuse for the House leadership\u0026rsquo;s lack of response), but if 16 is a sensible age of consent, then the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 should use the same age as its limit.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Foley scandal and legal inconsistency"},{"content":"Via Patri Friedman at Catallarchy:\n“As best as they can tell Badr Zamen Badr and his brother were imprisoned in Guantanamo for three years for telling a joke. Actually, for telling two jokes. They ran a satire magazine in Pakistan that poked fun at corrupt clerics, sort of the Pashtu edition of the Onion. The first joke that got them in trouble was when they published a poem about a politician…He called them up, he threatened them, and as best as they can tell, he told authorities they were involved with al-Quaeda.”In other words, political leaders in other countries have used the United States to get rid of their critics, by using false claims of involvement with terrorism. When you accept hearsay evidence, don\u0026rsquo;t conduct an investigation, and don\u0026rsquo;t allow a trial, the process unsurprisingly gets abused, and people get imprisoned for years not because they\u0026rsquo;ve done anything wrong, but because they\u0026rsquo;ve criticized the people in power.\nAnd now, with the Military Commissions Act, we\u0026rsquo;ve set ourselves up for similar abuses inside the United States by removing protections that have existed since Magna Carta.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/imprisoned-in-guantanamo-bay-for-three.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/10/01/interviews-with-guantanamo-detainees/\"\u003ePatri Friedman at Catallarchy\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“As best as they can tell Badr Zamen Badr and his brother were imprisoned in Guantanamo for three years for telling a joke. Actually, for telling two jokes. They ran a satire magazine in Pakistan that poked fun at corrupt clerics, sort of the Pashtu edition of the Onion. The first joke that got them in trouble was when they published a poem about a politician…He called them up, he threatened them, and as best as they can tell, he told authorities they were involved with al-Quaeda.”\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/i\u003eIn other words, political leaders in other countries have used the United States to get rid of their critics, by using false claims of involvement with terrorism.  When you accept hearsay evidence, don\u0026rsquo;t conduct an investigation, and don\u0026rsquo;t allow a trial, the process unsurprisingly gets abused, and people get imprisoned for years not because they\u0026rsquo;ve done anything wrong, but because they\u0026rsquo;ve criticized the people in power.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd now, with the \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/congress-grants-president-right-to.html\"\u003eMilitary Commissions Act\u003c/a\u003e, we\u0026rsquo;ve set ourselves up for similar abuses inside the United States by removing \u003ca href=\"http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0928-20.htm\"\u003eprotections that have existed since Magna Carta\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for three years for telling a joke"},{"content":"As the Republican leadership is scrambling to look responsible about this issue that they have ignored since last August or September, they keep contradicting each other and the evidence about what they knew and did. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in particular looks like he has serious trouble with the truth, according to Talking Points Memo:\nJust consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn\u0026rsquo;t know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership \u0026ndash; Boehner and Reynolds \u0026ndash; say no, they warned him about it months ago. Hastert got Boehner to recant; Reynolds is sticking to his guns. Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker\u0026rsquo;s office. And Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office tonight put out the results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership \u0026ndash; not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk \u0026ndash; had actually laid eyes on the emails in question.\nOnly Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t touch base with Rep. Shimkus, since as Hastert\u0026rsquo;s crew was writing out their statement, Shimkus was offer giving an interview to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which he described how he and the Clerk had read the emails. (ed.note: 2:19 AM, 10/1/06 \u0026hellip; What makes this even more comical is that, according to the AP \u0026ldquo;Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker Dennis Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office.\u0026rdquo; Didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to help.)\nSo the centerpiece point of the Hastert statement this evening appears to have been a fabrication. It stood up for maybe three or four hours. At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We\u0026rsquo;re supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him.\nWhile Shimkus is saying he saw the emails, his spokesman is denying it.\nNote that there seems to be agreement that the relatively more innocuous emails were known to some people in 2005, the far more incriminating instant messages apparently weren\u0026rsquo;t seen until recently. But there seems to be evidence that many people were aware that Rep. Foley\u0026rsquo;s behavior was, at the very least, \u0026ldquo;gregarious and \u0026lsquo;flaky\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;, with quite an interest in the House pages, for quite some time.\nUPDATE (October 7, 2006): It\u0026rsquo;s now long since come out that not only did Shimkus see the emails, but Foley\u0026rsquo;s former chief of staff (and until a few days ago Rep. Reynolds\u0026rsquo; chief of staff), Kirk Fordham, brought this to the attention of Hastert\u0026rsquo;s office years ago. See the more recent posts on my blog, including this one.\nHistorical Comments libhom (2006-12-09):\nHastert should resign from Congress.Contact his campaign office now!Hastert for Congress CommitteePhone 630-879-1988e-mail: info@hastertforcongress.org\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foley-scandal-and-republican.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the Republican leadership is scrambling to look responsible about this issue that they have ignored since last August or September, they keep contradicting each other and the evidence about what they knew and did.  Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in particular looks like \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_10_01.php#010079\"\u003ehe has serious trouble with the truth\u003c/a\u003e, according to Talking Points Memo:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eJust consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn\u0026rsquo;t know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership \u0026ndash; Boehner and Reynolds \u0026ndash; say no, they warned him about it months ago. Hastert got Boehner to recant; Reynolds is sticking to his guns. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley scandal and the Republican leadership"},{"content":"\"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.\"\n--Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), commenting on President Clinton, following release of the Starr Report, September 12, 1998.\n(From Talking Points Memo.)\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\nHello, Pot. Meet my friend, kettle.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLooks like Foley had a habit of making such hypocritical remarks (follow the link for video!):Foley: \"If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail.\"Rep. Mark Foley and America's Most Wanted's John Walsh discuss Foley's new anti-child predator legislation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/10/foley-scandal-and-legal-inconsistency.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003e\"It's vile. It's\u003c/span\u003e more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.\"\u003cbr /\u003e--Rep. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sptimes.com/Worldandnation/91298/Congress_sees_through.html\"\u003eMark Foley\u003c/a\u003e (R-FL), \u003cem\u003ecommenting on President Clinton, following release of the Starr Report, September 12, 1998.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(From \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010069\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSchtacky\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHello, Pot.  Meet my friend, kettle.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eLooks like Foley had \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_10_01.php#010081\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ea habit of making such hypocritical remarks\u003c/A\u003e (follow the link for video!):\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eFoley: \"If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail.\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eRep. Mark Foley and America's Most Wanted's John Walsh discuss Foley's new anti-child predator legislation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley on Clinton"},{"content":"Ryan Bird wrote \u0026ldquo;Kip Hawley is an idiot\u0026rdquo; on his clear plastic bag of toiletries that he was carrying through a TSA security checkpoint at Milwaukee\u0026rsquo;s General Mitchell International Airport. Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration.\nBird writes:\nAt the MKE \u0026ldquo;E\u0026rdquo; checkpoint I placed my laptop in one bin, and my shoes, cell phone and quart bag in a second bin. The TSA guy who was pushing bags and bins into the X-ray machine took a good hard look, and then as the bag when though the X-ray I think he told the X-ray operator to call for a bag check/explosive swab on my roller bag to slow me down. He went strait to the TSA Supervisor on duty and boy did he come marching over to the checkpoint with fire in his eyes!\nHe grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know \u0026ldquo;What is this supposed to mean?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t write things like this\u0026rdquo; he said, \u0026ldquo;You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn\u0026rsquo;t apply here?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response.\u0026quot;\nAt this point I chuckled, just looking at him wondering if he just realized how foolish that comment was, but I think my laugh pushed him over the edge as he got really angry at this point. A Milwaukee County Sheriffs deputy was summoned - I would have left at this point, but he had my quart bag with my toothpaste and hair gel.\nWhen the deputy got over the TSA supervisor showed him the bag and told him what had happened to that point. After he had finished I started to remind him he had left out his statement that my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t apply \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rdquo; but was cut off by the deputy who demanding my ID. I asked if I was under arrest, and his response was \u0026ldquo;Right now you are not under arrest, you are being detained.\u0026rdquo; I produced my passport and he walked off with it and called in my name to see if I had any outstanding warrants, etc. The TSA supervisor picked up the phone about 20 feet away and called someone? At this point two more officers were near by and I struck up a conversation with the female officer who was making sure I kept put. I explained to her who Kip Hawley was, why I though he was an idiot, and my surprise that the TSA Supervisor felt my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rsquo; apply at the TSA checkpoint. She didn\u0026rsquo;t say much.\nAfter he was assured I didn\u0026rsquo;t have any warrants out the first office came back and I had my first chance to really speak, I explained that I was just expressing my opinion and my writing should be protected my by First Amendment rights. When he didn\u0026rsquo;t respond, I then repeated that the TSA Supervisor stated my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t apply at the TSA check point and I asked if he (the deputy) agreed that was the case. He responded by saying \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t yell fire in a crowed theater, there are limits to your rights.\nAt this point I chucked again.\nI asked how this was even remotely like shouting \u0026ldquo;Fire\u0026rdquo; in a crowd, and his answer was \u0026ldquo;Perhaps your comments made them feel threatened.\u0026quot;\nAt about this point the TSA Supervisor finished up his phone call, and summoned the officer back over. They talked for about 2 minutes, and then both came back over. The officer pulled out his pad and asked for my address and I asked why he needed it. \u0026ldquo;For the report I have to file since I was summoned here\u0026rdquo; I started to give it, when I noticed the TSA Supervisor was writing it down as well, so I stopped and asked why he needed it. He said he needed to file an incident report too, and I took the opportunity to ask what the resolution of the incident was, did I do anything wrong? Are you going to ask the officer to arrest me? He said no, I was free to go, but he was going to confiscate my bag. I asked \u0026ldquo;If I did nothing wrong, why would you take my bag\u0026rdquo; He pointed to a posted sign that said something about reusing plastic bags (the MKE TSA was providing quart sized zipper bags to pax today) I let him know that I had brought my bag from home and would not be letting him take it. He then asked for permission of photograph it, which I agreed too.\nWhile he walked away to get the camera I finished giving my address to the deputy, and he told my \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re free to go\u0026rdquo; Total time, about 25 minutes.Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.\nCNN\u0026rsquo;s given coverage to the story. Also see kiphawleyisanidiot.com.\nJohn Stone (2006-12-09):\nI linked this on my blog, along with a photo. I know a Jim Lippard from another newslist ... same????\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the link, John!If the Jim Lippard on the other list is a skeptic living in Phoenix, Arizona, then it's me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/kip-hawley-is-idiot.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRyan Bird wrote \u0026ldquo;Kip Hawley is an idiot\u0026rdquo; on his clear plastic bag of toiletries that he was carrying through a TSA security checkpoint at Milwaukee\u0026rsquo;s General Mitchell International Airport.  Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBird \u003ca href=\"http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=606142\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt the MKE \u0026ldquo;E\u0026rdquo; checkpoint I placed my laptop in one bin, and my shoes, cell phone and quart bag in a second bin. The TSA guy who was pushing bags and bins into the X-ray machine took a good hard look, and then as the bag when though the X-ray I think he told the X-ray operator to call for a bag check/explosive swab on my roller bag to slow me down. He went strait to the TSA Supervisor on duty and boy did he come marching over to the checkpoint with fire in his eyes!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know \u0026ldquo;What is this supposed to mean?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t write things like this\u0026rdquo; he said, \u0026ldquo;You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn\u0026rsquo;t apply here?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point I chuckled, just looking at him wondering if he just realized how foolish that comment was, but I think my laugh pushed him over the edge as he got really angry at this point. A Milwaukee County Sheriffs deputy was summoned - I would have left at this point, but he had my quart bag with my toothpaste and hair gel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen the deputy got over the TSA supervisor showed him the bag and told him what had happened to that point. After he had finished I started to remind him he had left out his statement that my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t apply \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rdquo; but was cut off by the deputy who demanding my ID. I asked if I was under arrest, and his response was \u0026ldquo;Right now you are not under arrest, you are being detained.\u0026rdquo; I produced my passport and he walked off with it and called in my name to see if I had any outstanding warrants, etc. The TSA supervisor picked up the phone about 20 feet away and called someone? At this point two more officers were near by and I struck up a conversation with the female officer who was making sure I kept put. I explained to her who Kip Hawley was, why I though he was an idiot, and my surprise that the TSA Supervisor felt my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rsquo; apply at the TSA checkpoint. She didn\u0026rsquo;t say much.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter he was assured I didn\u0026rsquo;t have any warrants out the first office came back and I had my first chance to really speak, I explained that I was just expressing my opinion and my writing should be protected my by First Amendment rights. When he didn\u0026rsquo;t respond, I then repeated that the TSA Supervisor stated my First Amendment rights didn\u0026rsquo;t apply at the TSA check point and I asked if he (the deputy) agreed that was the case. He responded by saying \u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t yell fire in a crowed theater, there are limits to your rights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt this point I chucked again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI asked how this was even remotely like shouting \u0026ldquo;Fire\u0026rdquo; in a crowd, and his answer was \u0026ldquo;Perhaps your comments made them feel threatened.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt about this point the TSA Supervisor finished up his phone call, and summoned the officer back over. They talked for about 2 minutes, and then both came back over. The officer pulled out his pad and asked for my address and I asked why he needed it. \u0026ldquo;For the report I have to file since I was summoned here\u0026rdquo; I started to give it, when I noticed the TSA Supervisor was writing it down as well, so I stopped and asked why he needed it. He said he needed to file an incident report too, and I took the opportunity to ask what the resolution of the incident was, did I do anything wrong? Are you going to ask the officer to arrest me? He said no, I was free to go, but he was going to confiscate my bag. I asked \u0026ldquo;If I did nothing wrong, why would you take my bag\u0026rdquo; He pointed to a posted sign that said something about reusing plastic bags (the MKE TSA was providing quart sized zipper bags to pax today) I let him know that I had brought my bag from home and would not be letting him take it. He then asked for permission of photograph it, which I agreed too.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile he walked away to get the camera I finished giving my address to the deputy, and he told my \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re free to go\u0026rdquo; Total time, about 25 minutes.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040771.php\"\u003eTim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCNN\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/28/idiot.baggie/index.html\"\u003egiven coverage to the story\u003c/a\u003e.  Also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com/\"\u003ekiphawleyisanidiot.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kip Hawley is an idiot"},{"content":"A bit of an update from my post in May where I asked “Is there really a housing bubble?” Although I wasn’t completely convinced then, I think it’s getting a lot more difficult to question the evidence now.\nThe graph below chronicles Maricopa County’s Trustee Sale Notices over the past 11 years. The blue line is the monthly count. As you can see, this number is pretty variable from month to month, so I’ve included the orange line, which is a 1-year moving average. Presumably it’s a better indicator of trends.\nHere are some descriptive statistics for the numbers in the graph:\nMean902.382979Median799Mode746Standard Deviation285.972168Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum127236Count141\nGiven that the past decade saw the bursting of the tech bubble, I think the mean is being skewed high, and thus the median and the mode are probably better indicators of a “normal” month in Maricopa County.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nOctober is on track to top 1200\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/maricopa-countys-trustee-sale-notices.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA bit of an update from my post in May where I asked “\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/is-there-really-housing-bubble.html\"\u003eIs there really a housing bubble?\u003c/a\u003e” \u003cp\u003eAlthough I wasn’t \u003ci\u003ecompletely\u003c/i\u003e convinced then, I think it’s getting a lot more difficult to question the evidence now.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe graph below chronicles Maricopa County’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/33/00808.htm\"\u003eTrustee Sale Notices\u003c/a\u003e over the past 11 years. The blue line is the monthly count. As you can see, this number is pretty variable from month to month, so I’ve included the orange line, which is a 1-year moving average. Presumably it’s a better indicator of trends.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maricopa County's Trustee Sale Notices"},{"content":"Old, but still quite appropriate\u0026hellip; narration by Stephen Colbert.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nDamn, that's good stuff!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/all-presidents-words.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOld, but still quite appropriate\u0026hellip; narration by Stephen Colbert.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cembed allowscriptaccess=\"never\" src=\"http://www.ifilm.com/efp\" quality=\"high\" bgcolor=\"000000\" name=\"efp\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer\" flashvars=\"flvbaseclip=2761045\" align=\"middle\" height=\"365\" width=\"448\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eDamn, that's good stuff!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"All the President's Words"},{"content":"One of the pages who received inappropriate messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana). Alexander was notified of the problem, and he brought it to the attention of the House leadership (Dennis Hastert and either Tom Delay or Roy Blunt) 10-11 months ago.\nAnd they did nothing about it.\nUPDATE September 30, 2006: Alexander notified Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois), who says \u0026ldquo;We ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.\u0026rdquo; Also informed was Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who blocked a vote yesterday on a resolution from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calling for a preliminary investigation into the matter and the Republican leadership\u0026rsquo;s response to it by the House Ethics Committee. Boehner nixed the latter part, and a motion was passed to investigate Foley\u0026rsquo;s conduct but not the Republican leadership\u0026rsquo;s handling of the matter.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also now been verified that Dennis Hastert was told about this issue \u0026ldquo;months ago\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/foley-sex-scandal-may-get-bigger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the pages who received inappropriate messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana).  Alexander was notified of the problem, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010054\"\u003ehe brought it to the attention of the House leadership (Dennis Hastert and either Tom Delay or Roy Blunt) 10-11 months ago\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd they did nothing about it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE September 30, 2006:  Alexander \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/30/foley.quits/index.html\"\u003enotified Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois)\u003c/a\u003e, who says \u0026ldquo;We ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.\u0026rdquo;  Also informed was Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who blocked a vote yesterday on a resolution from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calling for a preliminary investigation into the matter and the Republican leadership\u0026rsquo;s response to it by the House Ethics Committee.  Boehner nixed the latter part, and a motion was passed to investigate Foley\u0026rsquo;s conduct but not the Republican leadership\u0026rsquo;s handling of the matter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s also now been verified that \u003ca href=\"http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FOLEY_REYNOLDS?SITE=AZPHG\u0026amp;SECTION=HOME\"\u003eDennis Hastert was told about this issue \u0026ldquo;months ago\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Foley sex scandal may get bigger"},{"content":"That was quick. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), whose emails to a former Congressional page asking him for a photograph and his birthday were made public yesterday, has offered his resignation today. It seems there were also a lot of sexually oriented instant messages from \u0026ldquo;Maf54.\u0026quot;\nThis guy was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. It looks like he may be prosecuted under laws he helped pass.\nThe timing of this resignation is such that the Republicans will probably not be able to replace Foley\u0026rsquo;s name on the ballot. (For more details, see here.)\nAnother dirty Republican politician down, a bunch more to go.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/dirty-politician-rep-mark-foley.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThat was quick.  Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), whose emails to a former Congressional page asking him for a photograph and his birthday were made public yesterday, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001641.php\"\u003ehas offered his resignation today\u003c/a\u003e.  It seems there were also a lot of sexually oriented instant messages from \u0026ldquo;Maf54.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis guy was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.  It looks like \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/exclusive_the_s.html\"\u003ehe may be prosecuted under laws he helped pass\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe timing of this resignation is such that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001642.php\"\u003eRepublicans will probably not be able to replace Foley\u0026rsquo;s name on the ballot\u003c/a\u003e.  (For more details, see \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010052\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother dirty Republican politician down, a bunch more to go.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Rep. Mark Foley resigns"},{"content":"Both Arlen Specter and John McCain have publicly stated that they thought there were unconstitutional provisions in the Military Commissions Act which they voted for.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s an admission of acting contrary to their oath of office. Neither of these men is fit to serve.\n(A previous post on the Military Commissions Act and Arizona Representatives\u0026rsquo; votes on it is here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/specter-and-mccain-voted-for-bill-they.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001637.php\"\u003eBoth Arlen Specter and John McCain have publicly stated that they thought there were unconstitutional provisions in the Military Commissions Act\u003c/a\u003e which they voted for.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s an admission of acting contrary to their oath of office.  Neither of these men is fit to serve.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(A previous post on the Military Commissions Act and Arizona Representatives\u0026rsquo; votes on it is \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/congress-grants-president-right-to.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Specter and McCain voted for a bill they believed to be unconstitutional"},{"content":"Ken Mehlman arranged for a $16 million contract to be granted to the Mississippi Choctaw tribe (an Abramoff client) in exchange for their donations to the Republican Party.\nRalph Reed contacted Karl Rove on behalf of Jack Abramoff to kill the nomination of Angela Williams to a post at the Department of the Interior which would have had oversight over Abramoff client the Northern Mariana Islands.\nMehlman, Reed, and Rove belong in jail with Abramoff.\n(See also this previous account of Mehlman and Rove ties to Abramoff.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/more-white-house-involvement-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKen Mehlman \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001635.php\"\u003earranged for a $16 million contract to be granted to the Mississippi Choctaw tribe (an Abramoff client) in exchange for their donations to the Republican Party\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRalph Reed contacted Karl Rove \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001636.php\"\u003eon behalf of Jack Abramoff to kill the nomination of Angela Williams to a post at the Department of the Interior which would have had oversight over Abramoff client the Northern Mariana Islands\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMehlman, Reed, and Rove belong in jail with Abramoff.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(See also \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/white-house-had-more-contact-with.html\"\u003ethis previous account of Mehlman and Rove ties to Abramoff\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More White House involvement in Abramoff corruption"},{"content":"The TRUSTe program is supposed to certify that a website has a reasonable privacy policy. But Ben Edelman has cross-referenced TRUSTe certifications with SiteAdvisor ratings, and found that sites with TRUSTe certifications are twice as likely as those without to be listed as \u0026ldquo;untrustworthy\u0026rdquo; in SiteAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s database\u0026ndash;meaning that they send out spam, distribute spyware, etc.\nEdelman calls out four particularly notorious sites that have or have had TRUSTe certification: Direct-Revenue.com, Funwebproducts.com, Maxmoolah.com, and Webhancer.com. All four are heavily involved with spyware. Direct Revenue and Maxmoolah have had their TRUSTe certifications revoked, but should never have been certified in the first place if TRUSTe was doing the validation they should have been doing.\nTRUSTe has long been criticized by anti-spammers for giving certifications to organizations that don\u0026rsquo;t deserve them.\nRyan Singel has raised similar questions about TRUSTe\u0026rsquo;s reliability.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nJohn, thanks for the comment. The Firefox extension you referenced looks interesting--my only worry about collecting votes from users is that my standards aren't the same as everybody else's. If the concept were expanded to let me rate how good I think other users' ratings are (and weight them correspondingly), then that could work really well. Otherwise, it's going to be a lowest common denominator ranking (especially in the \"safe destination for children\" category). The advantage of a single group doing the ratings is that they can publish a defined standard and follow it--and SiteAdvisor has constructed their ratings in a pretty objectively measurable manner (e.g., site generates more than N emails per week; joining site causes emails to be sent from other sites).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the pointer, Kevin. The specific blog entry in question is here, which is worth reading along with the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/ineffectiveness-of-truste.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe TRUSTe program is supposed to certify that a website has a reasonable privacy policy.  But \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/092506-1.html\"\u003eBen Edelman has cross-referenced TRUSTe certifications with SiteAdvisor ratings\u003c/a\u003e, and found that sites with TRUSTe certifications are twice as likely as those without to be listed as \u0026ldquo;untrustworthy\u0026rdquo; in SiteAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s database\u0026ndash;meaning that they send out spam, distribute spyware, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEdelman calls out four particularly notorious sites that have or have had TRUSTe certification:  Direct-Revenue.com, Funwebproducts.com, Maxmoolah.com, and Webhancer.com.  All four are heavily involved with spyware.  Direct Revenue and Maxmoolah have had their TRUSTe certifications revoked, but should never have been certified in the first place if TRUSTe was doing the validation they should have been doing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTRUSTe has long been criticized by anti-spammers for giving certifications to organizations that don\u0026rsquo;t deserve them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRyan Singel has \u003ca href=\"http://www.secondaryscreening.net/static/archives/2006/03/truste_trusty_a.html\"\u003eraised similar questions about TRUSTe\u0026rsquo;s reliability\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The ineffectiveness of TRUSTe"},{"content":"From TPM Muckraker:\nHundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates \u0026ldquo;raise serious questions about the legality and actions\u0026rdquo; of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee. The 95-page report, which White House officials reviewed Wednesday evening but has yet to be formally approved by the panel, singled out two of President Bush¹s top lieutenants, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as having been offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates.\nIn total, the committee was able to document 485 contacts between White House officials and Abramoff and his lobbying team at the firm Greenberg Traurig from January 2001 to March 2004, with 82 of those contacts occuring in Rove\u0026rsquo;s office, including 10 with Rove personally. The panel also said that Abramoff billed his clients nearly $25,000 for meals and drinks with these officials during that period.\nUPDATE September 29, 2006: The New York Times has picked up the story with more details, some of which are also reported in TPM Muckraker.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/white-house-had-more-contact-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001631.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates \u0026ldquo;raise serious questions about the legality and actions\u0026rdquo; of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee. \u003cp\u003eThe 95-page report, which White House officials reviewed Wednesday evening but has yet to be formally approved by the panel, singled out two of President Bush¹s top lieutenants, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as having been offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"White House had more contact with Abramoff than previously disclosed"},{"content":"Today the Senate, following the House, voted to legalize the right for the government to engage in physical interrogation techniques that most people would consider to be torture and to detain individuals permanently without criminal charges by designating them \u0026ldquo;unlawful enemy combatants,\u0026rdquo; even if they are U.S. citizens who have never left the country. As Glenn Greenwald puts it, Congress has legalized tyranny.\nBoth of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl) voted for the bill, S. 3930.\nArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voted as follows on the detainment bill, H.R. 6166 (the Senate bill is S. 3930):\nIn favor:\nJeff Flake (R-District 6)\nTrent Franks (R-District 2)\nJ.D. Hayworth (R-District 5)\nJim Kolbe (R-District 8)\nRick Renzi (R-District 1)\nJohn Shadegg (R-District 3)\nAgainst:\nRaul Grijalva (D-District 7)\nEd Pastor (D-District 4)\nOnce again, a completely partisan vote in which the Republicans demonstrate their disregard for this constitutional republic. You can find the complete House vote results here.\nUPDATE September 29, 2006: Ed Brayton has more at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nThe founders of this country would have found this grounds for revolution.\nUPDATE October 1, 2006: I fully expect the courts to overturn this, since the U.S. Constitution allows only two conditions for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus in Article I, Section 9 (\u0026ldquo;when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it\u0026rdquo;).\nIt is also worth noting that there is some simplification, above. The designation of \u0026ldquo;unlawful enemy combatant\u0026rdquo; (UEC) in the bill is made by \u0026ldquo;a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.\u0026quot;\nAlso see Richard Epstein\u0026rsquo;s testimony to the Senate (PDF) urging them to kill this bill, which they disregarded.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/congress-grants-president-right-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday the Senate, following the House, \u003ca href=\"http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/legalization-of-torture-an_115945829460324274.html#links\"\u003evoted to legalize the right for the government to engage in physical interrogation techniques that most people would consider to be torture and to detain individuals permanently without criminal charges\u003c/a\u003e by designating them \u0026ldquo;unlawful enemy combatants,\u0026rdquo; even if they are U.S. citizens who have never left the country.  As Glenn Greenwald puts it, Congress has legalized tyranny.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoth of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl) voted for the bill, S. 3930.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voted as follows on the detainment bill, H.R. 6166 (the Senate bill is S. 3930):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn favor:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeff Flake (R-District 6)\u003cbr /\u003eTrent Franks (R-District 2)\u003cbr /\u003eJ.D. Hayworth (R-District 5)\u003cbr /\u003eJim Kolbe (R-District 8)\u003cbr /\u003eRick Renzi (R-District 1)\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Shadegg (R-District 3)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAgainst:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRaul Grijalva (D-District 7)\u003cbr /\u003eEd Pastor (D-District 4)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnce again, a completely partisan vote in which the Republicans demonstrate their disregard for this constitutional republic.  You can find the complete House vote results \u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll491.xml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE September 29, 2006:  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/the_tragedy_of_the_detainee_tr.php\"\u003ehas more at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe founders of this country would have found this grounds for revolution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE October 1, 2006:  I fully expect the courts to overturn this, since the U.S. Constitution allows only two conditions for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus in Article I, Section 9 (\u0026ldquo;when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is also worth noting that there is some simplification, above.  The designation of \u0026ldquo;unlawful enemy combatant\u0026rdquo; (UEC) in the bill is made by \u0026ldquo;a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see \u003ca href=\"http://www.constitutionproject.org/pdf/Richard_Epstein_Statement_at_Senate_Hearing.pdf\"\u003eRichard Epstein\u0026rsquo;s testimony to the Senate\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) urging them to kill this bill, which they disregarded.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congress grants president the right to torture, indefinitely detain"},{"content":"The small town of Martinsville, Virginia (population 14,925) now has many residents named as defendants in a massive civil suit from Countrywide Home Loans regarding a $40 million mortgage scam. The New York Times reports:\nIn a tightknit neighborhood, where people’s social lives often revolve around their churches, Beulah Penn and her daughter, Sharon, were well-connected and trusted. Beulah Penn was a lay minister in a local church; her daughter, Sharon Penn, dressed hair. Using these connections, according to a recent lawsuit, the two women and another relative in Indianapolis perpetrated one of the largest mortgage frauds in American history, victimizing dozens of local residents and, according to sources with knowledge of the accusations, at least $40 million in fraudulent loans — perhaps even twice that amount.\n“Looking back, maybe it sounded too good to be true, but everyone knew them, and my friends went to church with them, people I been knowing for 10 years,” said Timothy Jacobs, a 29-year-old worker in a fiber-optics factory who discovered recently that he owed $200,000 on two houses in Indiana. “They said they’d be responsible for everything. Now everyone’s probably going to end up filing for bankruptcy.”\nThe Penns persuaded friends and members of their church to join an \u0026ldquo;investment club\u0026rdquo; to purchase homes in Indiana. They were told they didn\u0026rsquo;t have to contribute any money, but would be paid $2,000. The scammers arranged to purchase homes at market rates, get bogus inflated appraisals and mortgages at the higher amount, then pay the market rate for the home and divert the rest of the funds to themselves.\nOne of those who joined the \u0026ldquo;investment club\u0026rdquo; found out about how the scam worked when he was turned down for a $1,000 loan from his credit union to buy Christmas presents\u0026ndash;he discovered he owned five homes in Indiana with mortgages adding up to nearly $1 million, all of which were in default.\nI expect a lot more cases like this will make the news as the housing market continues to decline.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/martinsville-va-mortgage-scam.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe small town of Martinsville, Virginia (population 14,925) now has many residents named as defendants in a massive civil suit from Countrywide Home Loans regarding a $40 million mortgage scam.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/us/28martinsville.html?pagewanted=1\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;en=1f71a480b049e52c\u0026hp\u0026amp;ex=1159502400\u0026partner=homepage\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn a tightknit neighborhood, where people’s social lives often revolve around their churches, Beulah Penn and her daughter, Sharon, were well-connected and trusted. Beulah Penn was a lay minister in a local church; her daughter, Sharon Penn, dressed hair.   \u003ca name=\"secondParagraph\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  \u003cp\u003eUsing these connections, according to a recent lawsuit, the two women and another relative in Indianapolis perpetrated one of the largest mortgage frauds in American history, victimizing dozens of local residents and, according to sources with knowledge of the accusations, at least $40 million in fraudulent loans — perhaps even twice that amount.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Martinsville, VA mortgage scam"},{"content":"From a letter to me dated August 11, 2006, in response to a letter I sent him criticizing his vote:\nThank you for expressing your views about the issue of flag desecration. I share your concern in this matter.\nI believe we have an inviolable duty to protect the right of free speech\u0026ndash;one of our most precious inalienable rights and the linchpin of a healthy democracy. I do not believe, however, that guaranteeing respect for our national symbol by prohibiting \u0026ldquo;acts\u0026rdquo; of desecration impinges on political \u0026ldquo;speech.\u0026quot;\nAs long as citizens are free to speak out on any matter and from whatever point of view they wish, as our forefathers intended, it does not seem burdensome to me that we accord some modicum of respect to the symbol of those precious freedoms for which so many of our countrymen have laid down their lives.\nSome view these efforts to protect the flag as political demogoguery or empty symbolism, unworthy of the attention it receives. I see the issue differently. The flag represents each and every one of us, regardless of race, religion or political point of view. It is a point of unity in the midst of our great diversity. Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation\u0026ndash;the ramifications of which are far more profound than mere symbolism.\nFor these reasons, I have support [sic] a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. I voted for such language in previous Congresses, but unfortunately, the tally has always fallen short of the 67 affirmative votes necessary for approval. Additionally, I have cosponsored legislation to statutorily provide protection for the flag in a manner that will be upheld by the Supreme Court.\nAgain, thank you for your interest in this important issue. I hope you will continue to share your views with me on this or any other matter of concern to you and our nation.\nSincerely,\n/s/\nJohn McCain\nUnited States SenatorSenator McCain states that \u0026ldquo;Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation.\u0026rdquo; But this completely ignores the fact that it is not only possible but certain that voices will loudly speak out in criticism of flag desecration\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s not silent acquiescence, that\u0026rsquo;s fighting bad speech with good speech, which is the whole point of the First Amendment.\nMcCain explicitly recognizes that the flag is a symbol. It\u0026rsquo;s a symbol that can be represented in art, language, binary data, and a Penn and Teller illusion. (Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s illusion raises the question of whether the symbolic desecration of a symbol is any different from an actual desecration of a symbol.) To place limits on the contexts that symbol can be placed in or on transformations of that symbol is to place limits on free expression, and to place limits on the principle of freedom of speech that lies behind the First Amendment.\nBy his willingness to make a special exception for this symbol, McCain is doing damage to a constitutional principle. His position on this issue is just as wrong as his position on trying to protect government from the consequences of violating the First Amendment in his vote for the PERA Act, and just as contrary to his oath of office.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThe main question I have for people who share McCain's perspective is this:Just how does restricting people's freedom (as banning flag desecration certainly does) \"guarantee respect\" for a symbol of freedom?It seems to me that such a ban is a far far worse example of desecration than anything that could be done to, e.g., a piece of colored cloth.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat's an excellent question. Of course it doesn't \"guarantee respect,\" it just criminalizes certain displays of disrespect.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/john-mccains-reason-for-voting-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom a letter to me dated August 11, 2006, in response to a letter I sent him criticizing his vote:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThank you for expressing your views about the issue of flag desecration.  I share your concern in this matter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI believe we have an inviolable duty to protect the right of free speech\u0026ndash;one of our most precious inalienable rights and the linchpin of a healthy democracy.  I do not believe, however, that guaranteeing respect for our national symbol by prohibiting \u0026ldquo;acts\u0026rdquo; of desecration impinges on political \u0026ldquo;speech.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs long as citizens are free to speak out on any matter and from whatever point of view they wish, as our forefathers intended, it does not seem burdensome to me that we accord some modicum of respect to the symbol of those precious freedoms for which so many of our countrymen have laid down their lives.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome view these efforts to protect the flag as political demogoguery or empty symbolism, unworthy of the attention it receives.  I see the issue differently.  The flag represents each and every one of us, regardless of race, religion or political point of view.  It is a point of unity in the midst of our great diversity.  Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation\u0026ndash;the ramifications of which are far more profound than mere symbolism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor these reasons, I have support [sic] a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.  I voted for such language in previous Congresses, but unfortunately, the tally has always fallen short of the 67 affirmative votes necessary for approval.  Additionally, I have cosponsored legislation to statutorily provide protection for the flag in a manner that will be upheld by the Supreme Court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAgain, thank you for your interest in this important issue.   I hope you will continue to share your views with me on this or any other matter of concern to you and our nation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e/s/\u003cbr /\u003eJohn McCain\u003cbr /\u003eUnited States Senator\u003c/blockquote\u003eSenator McCain states that \u0026ldquo;Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation.\u0026rdquo;  But this completely ignores the fact that it is not only possible but certain that voices will loudly speak out in criticism of flag desecration\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s not silent acquiescence, that\u0026rsquo;s fighting bad speech with good speech, which is the whole point of the First Amendment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMcCain explicitly recognizes that the flag is a symbol.  It\u0026rsquo;s a symbol that can be represented in art, language, binary data, and \u003ca href=\"http://westwing.bewarne.com/whowhatwhere/how.html\"\u003ea Penn and Teller illusion\u003c/a\u003e.  (Penn \u0026amp; Teller\u0026rsquo;s illusion raises the question of whether the symbolic desecration of a symbol is any different from an actual desecration of a symbol.)  To place limits on the contexts that symbol can be placed in or on transformations of that symbol is to place limits on free expression, and to place limits on the principle of freedom of speech that lies behind the First Amendment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy his willingness to make a special exception for this symbol, McCain is doing damage to a constitutional principle.  His position on this issue is just as wrong as \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/arizona-representatives-votes-on-pera.html\"\u003ehis position on trying to protect government from the consequences of violating the First Amendment in his vote for the PERA Act\u003c/a\u003e, and just as contrary to his oath of office.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John McCain's reason for voting for a flag desecration amendment"},{"content":"The latest Skeptics\u0026rsquo; Circle, #44, is hosted at Salto sobrius.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/latest-skeptics-circle-44.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest Skeptics\u0026rsquo; Circle, #44, is \u003ca href=\"http://saltosobrius.blogspot.com/2006/09/skeptics-circle-44.html\"\u003ehosted at Salto sobrius\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Latest Skeptics' Circle, #44"},{"content":"The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 2679, the \u0026ldquo;Public Expression of Religion Act,\u0026rdquo; which denies plaintiffs the ability to recover legal costs in a challenge against government violation of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause. The effect of this bill is to make it more difficult for anyone to fight cases where the government violates the U.S. Constitution by instituting mandatory religious practices, by making those legal cases different from all others. In other words, any Representative voting in favor of this is implicitly advocating that governments be able to engage in unconstitutional religious activity and avoid the consequences and penalties that currently can result when they do. It seems to me that a Congressman who supports a bill to make it easier for government to get away with violations of the Constitution is a Congressman who is acting contrary to their oath of office.\nArizona Representatives who voted for reducing penalties and deterrence for unconstitutional theocracy by voting for the PERA Bill:\nJeff Flake (R-District 6)\nTrent Franks (R-District 2)\nJ.D. Hayworth (R-District 5)\nJim Kolbe (R-District 8)\nRick Renzi (R-District 1)\nJohn Shadegg (R-District 3)\nThose who voted consistently with their oaths of office by voting against the PERA Bill:\nRaul Grijalva (D-District 7)\nEd Pastor (D-District 4)\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a partisan vote, and the Republicans continue to express their disregard for the U.S. Constitution and religious liberty.\nYou can find the full House roll call here.\nFor further information on this bill, see Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s commentary at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/arizona-representatives-votes-on-pera.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 2679, the \u0026ldquo;Public Expression of Religion Act,\u0026rdquo; which denies plaintiffs the ability to recover legal costs in a challenge against government violation of the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s establishment clause.  The effect of this bill is to make it more difficult for anyone to fight cases where the government violates the U.S. Constitution by instituting mandatory religious practices, by making those legal cases different from all others.  In other words, any Representative voting in favor of this is implicitly advocating that governments be able to engage in unconstitutional religious activity and avoid the consequences and penalties that currently can result when they do.  It seems to me that a Congressman who supports a bill to make it easier for government to get away with violations of the Constitution is a Congressman who is acting contrary to their oath of office.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona Representatives who voted for reducing penalties and deterrence for unconstitutional theocracy by voting for the PERA Bill:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJeff Flake (R-District 6)\u003cbr /\u003eTrent Franks (R-District 2)\u003cbr /\u003eJ.D. Hayworth (R-District 5)\u003cbr /\u003eJim Kolbe (R-District 8)\u003cbr /\u003eRick Renzi (R-District 1)\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Shadegg (R-District 3)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThose who voted consistently with their oaths of office by voting against the PERA Bill:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRaul Grijalva (D-District 7)\u003cbr /\u003eEd Pastor (D-District 4)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a partisan vote, and the Republicans continue to express their disregard for the U.S. Constitution and religious liberty.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find the full House roll call \u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll480.xml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor further information on this bill, see \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/hr_2679_passes_the_house.php\"\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s commentary at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Representatives' Votes on the PERA Bill"},{"content":"Proposition 107, the \u0026ldquo;Protect Marriage Arizona Act,\u0026rdquo; is billed by supporters as an act designed to protect the institution of marriage in Arizona. The supporters\u0026rsquo; website says:\nThis proposed amendment to the Arizona Constitution preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage. Arizona statutes already prohibit gay marriage, several times over. ARS 25-101 (C) says \u0026ldquo;Marriage between persons of the same sex is void and prohibited.\u0026rdquo; ARS 25-112 says that marriages in other states are valid in Arizona, except for those that violate ARS 25-101\u0026ndash;so Arizona refuses to recognize gay marriages from Massachusetts, for example. ARS 25-125 (A) says \u0026ldquo;A valid marriage is contracted by a male person and a female person with a proper marriage license who participate in a ceremony conducted by and in the presence of a person who is authorized to solemnize marriages and at which at least two witnesses who are at least eighteen years of age participate.\u0026quot;\nNow, I think it\u0026rsquo;s absurd to argue that gay marriage harms marriage, but let\u0026rsquo;s leave that claim aside. Look at the latter part of this proposed constitutional amendment\u0026ndash;it says that \u0026ldquo;NO LEGAL STATUS FOR UNMARRIED PERSONS SHALL BE CREATED OR RECOGNIZED BY THIS STATE OR ITS POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS THAT IS SIMILAR TO THAT OF MARRIAGE.\u0026rdquo; This is a very vague and potentially very broad statement\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; is a comparative, it comes in degrees. But no degree of similarity (even supposing that it came in easily measurable units) is defined here. The advocates of this kind of legislation have already demonstrated elsewhere that they mean to include civil unions and domestic partnerships in this, whether they involve same-sex couples or heterosexual couples. They could also use this wording to fight against benefits for domestic partnerships, custody contracts, wills, guardianship agreements, and so forth, where unmarried couples are involved. And no doubt they will\u0026ndash;this amendment is backed by people like nutty theocrat Len Munsil (his organization drafted it), who opposed the 2001 repeal of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s law that prohibited unmarried couples of the opposite sex from living in the same house or apartment, even if only as roommates.\nThe exact same battle is occurring in Virginia.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nWhat about state or local governments that are providing domestic partnership benefits to employees and their unmarried partners, such as health insurance? What about such partners who have adopted children, have formalized domestic partnership agreements, and given each other durable general powers of attorney and health care powers of attorney?Do you think it implausible that in the event one person involved in such a relationship was incapacitated that family members such as parents who disapproved of that relationship might not appeal to this amendment, if passed, to try to nullify those agreements and obtain guardianship?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, it wasn't that the courts you mention \"decided that the law needed to be changed\"--it's that they found the law to be in conflict with constitutional precedent. In the case of Massachusetts, the ruling in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health found that the prohibition in the Massachusetts Constitution violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.You no doubt disagree with the court's reasoning in that case, but I believe the reasoning is exactly parallel to that in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, which overturned a law prohibiting marriage between people of different races. The burden is on those opposing same-sex marriage to identify an objective and rational difference between those cases--a subjective distaste or appeal to religious dogma is not sufficient.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/proposition-107-protect-marriage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProposition 107, the \u0026ldquo;Protect Marriage Arizona Act,\u0026rdquo; is \u003ca href=\"http://www.protectmarriageaz.com/\"\u003ebilled by supporters\u003c/a\u003e as an act designed to protect the institution of marriage in Arizona.  The supporters\u0026rsquo; website says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis proposed amendment to the Arizona Constitution preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage. \u003c/blockquote\u003eArizona statutes already prohibit gay marriage, several times over.  ARS 25-101 (C) says \u0026ldquo;Marriage between persons of the same sex is void and prohibited.\u0026rdquo;  ARS 25-112 says that marriages in other states are valid in Arizona, except for those that violate ARS 25-101\u0026ndash;so Arizona refuses to recognize gay marriages from Massachusetts, for example.  ARS 25-125 (A) says \u0026ldquo;A valid marriage is contracted by a male person and a female person with a  proper marriage license who participate in a ceremony conducted by and in the presence of  a person who is authorized to solemnize marriages and at which at least two witnesses who  are at least eighteen years of age participate.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, I think it\u0026rsquo;s absurd to argue that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/antigay_marriage_nonsense_at_v.php\"\u003egay marriage harms marriage\u003c/a\u003e, but let\u0026rsquo;s leave that claim aside.  Look at the latter part of this proposed constitutional amendment\u0026ndash;it says that \u0026ldquo;NO LEGAL STATUS FOR UNMARRIED PERSONS SHALL BE CREATED OR RECOGNIZED BY THIS STATE OR ITS POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS THAT IS SIMILAR TO THAT OF MARRIAGE.\u0026rdquo;  This is a very vague and potentially very broad statement\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;similar to\u0026rdquo; is a comparative, it comes in degrees.  But no degree of similarity (even supposing that it came in easily measurable units) is defined here.  The advocates of this kind of legislation have already demonstrated elsewhere that they mean to include civil unions and domestic partnerships in this, whether they involve same-sex couples or heterosexual couples.  They could also use this wording to fight against benefits for domestic partnerships, custody contracts, wills, guardianship agreements, and so forth, where unmarried couples are involved.  And no doubt they will\u0026ndash;this amendment is backed by people like nutty theocrat Len Munsil (his organization drafted it), who opposed the 2001 repeal of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s law that prohibited unmarried couples of the opposite sex from living in the same house or apartment, even if only as roommates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe exact same battle \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027070.php\"\u003eis occurring in Virginia\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proposition 107: Protect Marriage Arizona Act"},{"content":"Scottsdale\u0026rsquo;s City Council passed a zoning ordinance prohibiting private helipads in residential neighborhoods, forcing wealthy helicopter owners to fight street traffic like everyone else.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/scottsdale-formalizes-ban-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScottsdale\u0026rsquo;s City Council \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/0927nehelipad0927.html\"\u003epassed a zoning ordinance prohibiting private helipads in residential neighborhoods\u003c/a\u003e, forcing wealthy helicopter owners to fight street traffic like everyone else.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scottsdale formalizes ban on helicopter commuting from residences"},{"content":"Len Munsil\u0026rsquo;s Center for Arizona Policy (you can find their Form 990s on Guidestar under \u0026ldquo;Arizona Family Research Institute Center for Arizona Policy Inc.\u0026rdquo;), though a tax-exempt nonprofit, has been personally quite profitable for him (and a few other people).\nIn 2004, the group\u0026rsquo;s Form 990 shows $1,441,177 in revenue and $1,380,839 in expenses. Of that, Munsil, as president, received $209,250 in salary, $30,430 in benefits, and $7,450 in expenses. Executive VP Gary Paisley received $82,060 in salary and $6,660 (interesting amount!) in benefits. Director of Policy Cathi Herrod received $100,986 in compensation and $1,680 to benefit plans/deferred compensation. Director of Research David B. Frese received $59,380 in compensation and $16,848 to benefit plans/deferred compensation, and Legal Counsel Peter Gentala received $50,000 in compensation and $18,528 to benefit plans/deferred compensation. The Form 990s are only required to list compensation over $50,000, but the above adds up to $583,272, or over 40% of the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue (and over 42% of expenses) for the year. Munsil alone received over 17% of the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue (and nearly 18% of its total expenses).\nIn 2003, the Form 990 shows $1,127,825 in revenue and $1,085,812 in expenses. Munsil received $181,925 in salary (which means he got a hefty 15% salary increase from 2003 to 2004), $25,942 in benefits, and $3,817 in expenses. Paisley received $80,486 in salary, $5,988 in benefits. Herrod received $87,448 in compensation and $1,548 in deferred benefits. Frese received $52,250 in compensation and $14,472 in deferred benefits. The total here is $453,876, or just over 40% of revenue (and almost 42% of expenses), with Munsil receiving nearly 19% of the revenue (and over 19% of the expenses).\nIn 2002, it was $1,067,417 in revenue and $1,001,277 in expenses, of which Munsil collected $156,402 in salary (which means he got a 16% raise from 2002 to 2003), $22,708 in benefits, and $4,500 in expenses. Paisley got $77,000 in salary and $5,296 in benefits. Cathi Herrod got $62,090 in compensation and $1,116 in deferred benefits, and \u0026ldquo;Lit Counsel\u0026rdquo; Gary McCaleb got $63,083 in compensation and $9,764 in deferred benefits. That\u0026rsquo;s $401,959, or just over 36% of revenue (40% of expenses), with Munsil taking over 17% (over 18% of expenses).\nThe Len Munsil Facts website points out that in 1997, the group\u0026rsquo;s first year, Munsil\u0026rsquo;s salary was more than half of its revenue. I don\u0026rsquo;t have easy Internet access to the 1997-2001 Form 990s without paying a fee, but I suspect that\u0026rsquo;s because the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue was much lower. In any case, it is clear that Munsil has collected a hefty salary and generous annual raises from his nonprofit group. No doubt he now makes more as an attorney at Mueller \u0026amp; Drury, a firm specializing in divorce and personal injury cases, a firm which Munsil worked with to successfully appeal a ruling that permitted state funding for medically necessary abortions in the face of a statute that prohibited it (Munsil\u0026rsquo;s group and Mueller \u0026amp; Drury were attorneys for members of the state legislature who filed amici curiae briefs in the case, Simat Corp et al. v. AHCCS).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/munsils-lucrative-501c3.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLen Munsil\u0026rsquo;s Center for Arizona Policy (you can find their Form 990s on Guidestar under \u0026ldquo;Arizona Family Research Institute Center for Arizona Policy Inc.\u0026rdquo;), though a tax-exempt nonprofit, has been personally quite profitable for him (and a few other people).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2004, the group\u0026rsquo;s Form 990 shows $1,441,177 in revenue and $1,380,839 in expenses.  Of that, Munsil, as president, received $209,250 in salary, $30,430 in benefits, and $7,450 in expenses.  Executive VP Gary Paisley received $82,060 in salary and $6,660 (interesting amount!) in benefits.  Director of Policy Cathi Herrod received $100,986 in compensation and $1,680 to benefit plans/deferred compensation.  Director of Research David B. Frese received $59,380 in compensation and $16,848 to benefit plans/deferred compensation, and Legal Counsel Peter Gentala received $50,000 in compensation and $18,528 to benefit plans/deferred compensation.  The Form 990s are only required to list compensation over $50,000, but the above adds up to $583,272, or over 40% of the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue (and over 42% of expenses) for the year.  Munsil alone received over 17% of the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue (and nearly 18% of its total expenses).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2003, the Form 990 shows $1,127,825 in revenue and $1,085,812 in expenses.  Munsil received $181,925 in salary (which means he got a hefty 15% salary increase from 2003 to 2004), $25,942 in benefits, and $3,817 in expenses.  Paisley received $80,486 in salary, $5,988 in benefits.  Herrod received $87,448 in compensation and $1,548 in deferred benefits.  Frese received $52,250 in compensation and $14,472 in deferred benefits.  The total here is $453,876, or just over 40% of revenue (and almost 42% of expenses), with Munsil receiving nearly 19% of the revenue (and over 19% of the expenses).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2002, it was $1,067,417 in revenue and $1,001,277 in expenses, of which Munsil collected $156,402 in salary (which means he got a 16% raise from 2002 to 2003), $22,708 in benefits, and $4,500 in expenses.  Paisley got $77,000 in salary and $5,296 in benefits.  Cathi Herrod got $62,090 in compensation and $1,116 in deferred benefits, and \u0026ldquo;Lit Counsel\u0026rdquo; Gary McCaleb got $63,083 in compensation and $9,764 in deferred benefits.  That\u0026rsquo;s $401,959, or just over 36% of revenue (40% of expenses), with Munsil taking over 17% (over 18% of expenses).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.lenmunsilfacts.com/display.asp?mediaType=story\u0026mediaID=13\"\u003eLen Munsil Facts website points out\u003c/a\u003e that in 1997, the group\u0026rsquo;s first year, Munsil\u0026rsquo;s salary was more than half of its revenue.  I don\u0026rsquo;t have easy Internet access to the 1997-2001 Form 990s without paying a fee, but I suspect that\u0026rsquo;s because the group\u0026rsquo;s revenue was much lower.  In any case, it is clear that Munsil has collected a hefty salary and generous annual raises from his nonprofit group.  No doubt he now makes more as an attorney at Mueller \u0026amp; Drury, a firm specializing in divorce and personal injury cases, a firm which Munsil worked with to \u003ca href=\"http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/arizonastatecases/app1/cv/cv000334.pdf#search=%22Munsil%20Mueller%20Drury%22\"\u003esuccessfully appeal a ruling that permitted state funding for medically necessary abortions in the face of a statute that prohibited it\u003c/a\u003e (Munsil\u0026rsquo;s group and Mueller \u0026amp; Drury were attorneys for members of the state legislature who filed amici curiae briefs in the case, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSimat Corp et al. v. AHCCS\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Munsil's lucrative 501(c)(3)"},{"content":"The chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party has admitted that the party gave $100,000 to the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Values Coalition\u0026rdquo; which funded the anti-Len Munsil website previously reported here. This comes after a denial by party spokesman Bart Graves on September 18. The site, which cost $1,250, has resulted in a payment of that amount to Munsil\u0026rsquo;s campaign from the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.\nLook, Democrats\u0026ndash;use accurate information about Munsil to discredit him (of the sort that\u0026rsquo;s on the Len Munsil Facts website), and do so openly, rather than using deceptively-named groups like the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust.\u0026rdquo; If Munsil manages to come from far behind and win this election, the Democratic Party\u0026rsquo;s actions will be partly to blame.\nThe Arizona Conservative Trust also paid for anti-Munsil pre-recorded telemarketing calls before the September 12 primaries.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/arizona-democratic-party-funded-anti.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0927munsil-democrats0927.html\"\u003ehas admitted that the party gave $100,000\u003c/a\u003e to the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Values Coalition\u0026rdquo; which funded \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/len-munsil-facts-website.html\"\u003ethe anti-Len Munsil website previously reported here\u003c/a\u003e.  This comes after a denial by party spokesman Bart Graves on September 18.  The site, which cost $1,250, has resulted in a payment of that amount to Munsil\u0026rsquo;s campaign from the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLook, Democrats\u0026ndash;use accurate information about Munsil to discredit him (of the sort that\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.lenmunsilfacts.com/\"\u003eon the Len Munsil Facts website\u003c/a\u003e), and do so openly, rather than using deceptively-named groups like the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust.\u0026rdquo;  If Munsil manages to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0927elex-poll0927.html\"\u003ecome from far behind\u003c/a\u003e and win this election, the Democratic Party\u0026rsquo;s actions will be partly to blame.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Arizona Conservative Trust also paid for anti-Munsil pre-recorded telemarketing calls before the September 12 primaries.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Democratic Party funded anti-Munsil website"},{"content":"The stuff you\u0026rsquo;re looking for is here (though looks like the Clearwater searcher, who may or may not be a Scientologist but certainly lives among them, found it already).\nScientology visits:\nDomain Name (Unknown)\nIP Address 205.227.165.# (Church of Scientology International)\nISP Level 3 Communications\nLocation Continent : North America\nCountry : United States (Facts)\nState : California\nCity : Los Angeles\nLat/Long : 34.1281, -118.2893 (Map)\nDistance : 363 miles\nLanguage English\nen\nOperating System Microsoft WinXP\nBrowser Opera 9.01\nOpera/9.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)\nJavascript version 1.4\nMonitor Resolution : 1024 x 768\nColor Depth : 32 bits\nTime of Visit Sep 21 2006 3:49:33 pm\nLast Page View Sep 21 2006 3:49:33 pm\nVisit Length 0 seconds\nPage Views 1\nReferring URL http://www.google.co...d\u0026amp;btnG=Google Search\nSearch Engine google.com\nSearch Words jim lippard\nVisit Entry Page http://lippard.blogspot.com/\nVisit Exit Page http://lippard.blogspot.com/\nOut Click Time Zone UTC-8:00\nVisitor\u0026rsquo;s Time Sep 21 2006 2:49:33 pm\nVisit Number 32,144\nDomain Name rr.com ? (Commercial)\nIP Address 68.200.46.# (Road Runner)\nISP ROADRUNNER-SOUTHWEST\nLocation Continent : North America\nCountry : United States (Facts)\nState : Florida\nCity : Clearwater\nLat/Long : 27.9617, -82.7368 (Map)\nDistance : 1,773 miles\nLanguage English\nen\nOperating System Macintosh MacOSX\nBrowser Safari 1.3\nMozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312\nJavascript version 1.5\nMonitor Resolution : 1440 x 900\nColor Depth : 32 bits\nTime of Visit Sep 21 2006 1:39:58 pm\nLast Page View Sep 21 2006 1:39:58 pm\nVisit Length 0 seconds\nPage Views 1\nReferring URL http://www.google.co...gy\u0026amp;ie=UTF-8\u0026amp;oe=UTF-8\nSearch Engine google.com\nSearch Words blog, scientology\nVisit Entry Page http://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\nVisit Exit Page http://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\nOut Click Time Zone UTC-5:00\nVisitor\u0026rsquo;s Time Sep 21 2006 3:39:58 pm\nVisit Number 32,125\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/welcome-church-of-scientology-visitors.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe stuff you\u0026rsquo;re looking for is \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (though looks like the Clearwater searcher, who may or may not be a Scientologist but certainly lives among them, found it already).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientology visits:\u003cbr /\u003eDomain Name              (Unknown)\u003cbr /\u003eIP Address              205.227.165.# (Church of Scientology International)\u003cbr /\u003eISP             Level 3 Communications\u003cbr /\u003eLocation               \u003cbr /\u003eContinent        :      North America\u003cbr /\u003eCountry  :      United States  (Facts)\u003cbr /\u003eState    :      California\u003cbr /\u003eCity     :      Los Angeles\u003cbr /\u003eLat/Long         :      34.1281, -118.2893 (Map)\u003cbr /\u003eDistance         :      363 miles\u003cbr /\u003eLanguage                English\u003cbr /\u003een\u003cbr /\u003eOperating System                Microsoft WinXP\u003cbr /\u003eBrowser         Opera 9.01\u003cbr /\u003eOpera/9.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)\u003cbr /\u003eJavascript              version 1.4\u003cbr /\u003eMonitor        \u003cbr /\u003eResolution       :      1024 x 768\u003cbr /\u003eColor Depth      :      32 bits\u003cbr /\u003eTime of Visit           Sep 21 2006 3:49:33 pm\u003cbr /\u003eLast Page View          Sep 21 2006 3:49:33 pm\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Length            0 seconds\u003cbr /\u003ePage Views              1\u003cbr /\u003eReferring URL           \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.co...d\"\u003ehttp://www.google.co...d\u003c/a\u003e\u0026amp;btnG=Google Search\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Engine           google.com\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Words            jim lippard\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Entry Page                \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Exit Page         \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOut Click               \u003cbr /\u003eTime Zone               UTC-8:00\u003cbr /\u003eVisitor\u0026rsquo;s Time          Sep 21 2006 2:49:33 pm\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Number            32,144\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDomain Name             rr.com ? (Commercial)\u003cbr /\u003eIP Address              68.200.46.# (Road Runner)\u003cbr /\u003eISP             ROADRUNNER-SOUTHWEST\u003cbr /\u003eLocation               \u003cbr /\u003eContinent        :      North America\u003cbr /\u003eCountry  :      United States  (Facts)\u003cbr /\u003eState    :      Florida\u003cbr /\u003eCity     :      Clearwater\u003cbr /\u003eLat/Long         :      27.9617, -82.7368 (Map)\u003cbr /\u003eDistance         :      1,773 miles\u003cbr /\u003eLanguage                English\u003cbr /\u003een\u003cbr /\u003eOperating System                Macintosh MacOSX\u003cbr /\u003eBrowser         Safari 1.3\u003cbr /\u003eMozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312\u003cbr /\u003eJavascript              version 1.5\u003cbr /\u003eMonitor        \u003cbr /\u003eResolution       :      1440 x 900\u003cbr /\u003eColor Depth      :      32 bits\u003cbr /\u003eTime of Visit           Sep 21 2006 1:39:58 pm\u003cbr /\u003eLast Page View          Sep 21 2006 1:39:58 pm\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Length            0 seconds\u003cbr /\u003ePage Views              1\u003cbr /\u003eReferring URL           \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.co...gy\"\u003ehttp://www.google.co...gy\u003c/a\u003e\u0026amp;ie=UTF-8\u0026amp;oe=UTF-8\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Engine           google.com\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Words            blog, scientology\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Entry Page                \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Exit Page         \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...ntology-sampler.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOut Click               \u003cbr /\u003eTime Zone               UTC-5:00\u003cbr /\u003eVisitor\u0026rsquo;s Time          Sep 21 2006 3:39:58 pm\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Number            32,125\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Welcome, Church of Scientology visitors!"},{"content":"\nThe Mars Express orbiter has taken some new images of the so-called \u0026ldquo;Face on Mars\u0026rdquo; which were released to the public yesterday. Not surprisingly, they don\u0026rsquo;t provide any support for the claim that this feature of Mars is an artifact.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list for the link.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/new-face-on-mars-images.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.space.com/images/060921_mars_faceB_02.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.space.com/images/060921_mars_faceB_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Mars Express orbiter has \u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060921_mars_images.html\"\u003etaken some new images\u003c/a\u003e of the so-called \u0026ldquo;Face on Mars\u0026rdquo; which were released to the public yesterday.  Not surprisingly, they don\u0026rsquo;t provide any support for the claim that this feature of Mars is an artifact.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list for the link.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Face on Mars images"},{"content":"Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has a petition on her website to send to President Bush to ask him to ask Congress to take legislative action to mandate lower gasoline prices. This makes no sense. The best way to reduce dependence on gasoline and oil is for the prices to go up, not down. We\u0026rsquo;re taxing imports of Brazilian ethanol from sugar in order to promote corn-based products raised in the U.S., at the behest of companies like corporate welfare pig Archer Daniels Midland\u0026ndash;how about stopping that? The Economist has frequently argued (most recently in its issue this month on climate change) that the U.S. should follow Europe\u0026rsquo;s lead by increasing taxes on gasoline as well as providing incentives to shift to alternative energy.\nEllen Simon, a Democratic Party candidate from Sedona running against corrupt politician Rick Renzi in Arizona\u0026rsquo;s District 1, has \u0026ldquo;protecting the environment\u0026rdquo; on her list of issues, but she\u0026rsquo;s also pushing Napolitano\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;lower gas prices\u0026rdquo; petition. Why, Ellen? (BTW, thanks for the link to my Renzi/Hayworth post.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNow that's also a pathetically bad argument, as bad than the argument that recreational drug users are supporting terrorists.Can you provide evidence to support the claim that \"the terrorists [sic] main source of funding is oil revenue\"?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/mandating-lower-fuel-prices-is-neither.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona Governor Janet Napolitano \u003ca href=\"http://www.azgovernor.gov/lowerfuelprices/\"\u003ehas a petition on her website\u003c/a\u003e to send to President Bush to ask him to ask Congress to take legislative action to mandate lower gasoline prices.  This makes no sense.  The best way to reduce dependence on gasoline and oil is for the prices to go up, not down.  We\u0026rsquo;re \u003ca href=\"http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/9661/78/\"\u003etaxing imports of Brazilian ethanol from sugar\u003c/a\u003e in order to promote corn-based products raised in the U.S., at the behest of companies like \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html\"\u003ecorporate welfare pig Archer Daniels Midland\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;how about stopping that?  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=2155717\"\u003ehas\u003c/a\u003e frequently \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3960775\"\u003eargued\u003c/a\u003e (most recently in its issue this month on climate change) that the U.S. should follow Europe\u0026rsquo;s lead by increasing taxes on gasoline as well as providing incentives to shift to alternative energy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEllen Simon, a Democratic Party candidate from Sedona running against \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/rick-renzi-jd-hayworth-make-list-of.html\"\u003ecorrupt politician Rick Renzi\u003c/a\u003e in Arizona\u0026rsquo;s District 1, has \u0026ldquo;protecting the environment\u0026rdquo; on her list of issues, but she\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://ellensimonforcongress.com/ontheissues4.html\"\u003ealso pushing Napolitano\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;lower gas prices\u0026rdquo; petition\u003c/a\u003e.  Why, Ellen?  (BTW, thanks for the link to my Renzi/Hayworth post.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mandating lower fuel prices is neither environmentally nor economically sound"},{"content":"University of Arizona professor Elif Shafak, who was tried in Turkey for \u0026ldquo;denigrating Turkish national identity\u0026rdquo; in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, was acquitted. The EU has \u0026ldquo;welcomed\u0026rdquo; the verdict while expressing the opinion that Turkey should scrap these \u0026ldquo;insult\u0026rdquo; laws. I agree\u0026ndash;and the EU member countries which have similar laws should do the same.\nHat tip to stranger fruit.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/elif-shafak-acquitted-of-denigrating.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUniversity of Arizona professor Elif Shafak, who was tried in Turkey for \u0026ldquo;denigrating Turkish national identity\u0026rdquo; in her novel \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5366446.stm\"\u003ewas acquitted\u003c/a\u003e.  The EU has \u0026ldquo;welcomed\u0026rdquo; the verdict while expressing the opinion that Turkey should scrap these \u0026ldquo;insult\u0026rdquo; laws.  I agree\u0026ndash;and the EU member countries which have similar laws should do the same.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2006/09/good_news_from_turkey.php\"\u003estranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Elif Shafak acquitted of \"denigrating Turkish national identity\""},{"content":"Judge Michael Eubanks has ruled that Cory Maye\u0026rsquo;s defense attorney was incompetent at sentencing, which means he\u0026rsquo;ll get a new sentencing trial. He ruled that she was competent for the trial. There are a number of other defense motions which have not yet been ruled on.\nRadley Balko reports that he feels like he\u0026rsquo;s been watching a movie attending the hearings\u0026ndash;no doubt this story will become a book or a movie.\nAlso check out Balko\u0026rsquo;s update on the informant whose testimony caused Maye\u0026rsquo;s duplex to be raided by police in the first place.\nHistorical Comments supercat (2006-12-09):\nI've read the transcripts of the hearing. It seems there are a few key issues that should clinch things, but the way the legal system works it's necessary to put forth all legal theories that might work, even if many of them are less relevant than others.One thing that really bugged me in the initial affidavits for the warrants is that the only statement that was actually sworn to is that there was unusual traffic at the duplex. Since I am unware of any evidence that the Confidential Informant was sworn in before making his statements, his statments should not have played any role in the issuance of the warrant (the Constitution explicitly requires that warrants only be issued upon oath or affirmation). Allowing hearsay of statements not made under oath to be used as evidence for warrants would totally gut the oath or affirmation requirement.Such argument would probably have had to have been made at the suppression hearing, though it might have been possible to make it at last week's hearing by asking the confidential informant if he was sworn in by Officer Jones. If he said that he was not, that would have opened up the door to reject the validity of his statments in the issuance of the warrant.As for the other parts of the hearing, I felt it might have been good for the defense to make the point more often that its goal is to rebut the state's theory of the case. To establish reasonable doubt, it isn't necessary to prove via other evidence that things did happen as Cory Maye claims, but merely to prove that they could have happened that way; as it happens, the evidence shows Maye's version to be not only plausible, but far moreso than the state's version.I do think the defense attorneys did well, though, to remind everyone that the prosecution's claim that the ballistic evidence contradicted Maye's story was central to its closing argument. It would be hard to argue that a jury's decision to convict someone after hearing such claims gives reason to believe that the jury would have convicted even without such claims. Indeed, if such claims weren't necessary for the prosecution, why did he say they were the cornerstone of the case?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/cory-maye-off-death-row.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJudge Michael Eubanks \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027053.php\"\u003ehas ruled that Cory Maye\u0026rsquo;s defense attorney was incompetent at sentencing\u003c/a\u003e, which means he\u0026rsquo;ll get a new sentencing trial.  He ruled that she was competent for the trial.  There are a number of other defense motions which have not yet been ruled on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027053.php\"\u003ereports that he feels like he\u0026rsquo;s been watching a movie attending the hearings\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;no doubt this story will become a book or a movie.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso check out Balko\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027052.php\"\u003eupdate on the informant whose testimony caused Maye\u0026rsquo;s duplex to be raided by police in the first place\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye off death row"},{"content":"This guy solves a 3x3x3 Rubik\u0026rsquo;s cube with one hand in just over 20 seconds. I think my best time back when I still knew all the moves (and I had somebody show me some good moves for solving the third layer) was about 45 seconds with both hands\u0026hellip;\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI wonder if that guy can parlay that skill into getting chicks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/one-handed-rubiks-cube-solver.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis guy solves a 3x3x3 Rubik\u0026rsquo;s cube with one hand in just over 20 seconds.  I think my best time back when I still knew all the moves (and I had somebody show me some good moves for solving the third layer) was about 45 seconds with both hands\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NJz02Nh99Cs\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/NJz02Nh99Cs\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI wonder if that guy can parlay that skill into getting chicks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"One-handed Rubik's cube solver"},{"content":"Nature reports on a remarkably complete 3.3 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton that has been found in Ethiopia. The skeleton, of a 3-year-old female, is being called Lucy\u0026rsquo;s little sister, and will shed more light on A. afarensis anatomy.\nMore detail and photos at Pharyngula.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/new-afarensis-child-skeleton-found.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060918/full/060918-5.html\"\u003ereports on a remarkably complete 3.3 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton\u003c/a\u003e that has been found in Ethiopia.  The skeleton, of a 3-year-old female, is being called Lucy\u0026rsquo;s little sister, and will shed more light on A. afarensis anatomy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore detail and photos at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/33_million_years_old_3_years_o.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New A. afarensis child skeleton found"},{"content":"The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has placed anti-drug PSAs on YouTube. You know, those same ads that have been shown to increase drug use? Perhaps they hope that the video replies which YouTube users generate in response will similarly have an effect opposite to their intent?\n(Via CNN.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/ondcp-places-anti-drug-psas-on-youtube.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe White House Office of National Drug Control Policy \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ONDCPstaff\"\u003ehas placed anti-drug PSAs on YouTube\u003c/a\u003e.  You know, those \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/anti-drug-ads-have-effect-of.html\"\u003esame ads that have been shown to increase drug use\u003c/a\u003e?  Perhaps they hope that the video replies which \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDQ87axEx8I\"\u003eYouTube users generate in response\u003c/a\u003e will similarly have an effect opposite to their intent?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/09/19/youtube.drug.policy.ap/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ONDCP places anti-drug PSAs on YouTube"},{"content":"A Len Munsil-critical website has appeared. It states that it is \u0026ldquo;paid for by the Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; and has received funding from the Arizona Values Coalition.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve gone back to some of Munsil\u0026rsquo;s State Press editorials to find Munsil railing against student protests against apartheid in South Africa, calling it a \u0026ldquo;madness \u0026hellip; afflicting college students around the nation.\u0026quot;\nSo far, they are missing Munsil\u0026rsquo;s position opposing the decriminalization of cohabitation and oral sex in Arizona.\nUPDATE: Munsil has complained about the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; to the Clean Elections Commission, and his campaign is questioning who the donors are supporting it. An Arizona Republic article quotes Republican sleazebag and Munsil campaign consultant Nathan Sproul saying, \u0026ldquo;Who are the donors who are funding this thing? \u0026hellip; They are engaging in a pretty offensive money-laundering operation.\u0026quot;\nSproul, former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition, runs Sproul \u0026amp; Associates, which engaged in voter registration scams in multiple states prior to the 2004 election. Sproul set up groups that would represent themselves as nonpartisan \u0026ldquo;get out the vote\u0026rdquo; organizations in order to get Republicans registered to vote and discard or deter Democratic voter registrations. In addition to supporting Munsil, he also has worked on campaigns for U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, a former Arizona legislator who was a single-issue (anti-abortion) candidate. Sproul has received significant funding from the Republican National Committee to engage in dirty tricks.\nI agree with the Munsil campaign\u0026rsquo;s statement that the name \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; is misleading and deceptive, especially if (as seems likely) there are Democratic Party members behind the effort. I also condemn the prerecord telemarketing pseudo-surveys that have been done (\u0026ldquo;push polls\u0026rdquo;) regarding Munsil\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a sleazy tactic.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/len-munsil-facts-website.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.lenmunsilfacts.com/\"\u003eLen Munsil-critical website\u003c/a\u003e has appeared.  It states that it is \u0026ldquo;paid for by the Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; and has received funding from the Arizona Values Coalition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey\u0026rsquo;ve gone back to some of Munsil\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e editorials to find Munsil railing against student protests against apartheid in South Africa, calling it a \u0026ldquo;madness \u0026hellip; afflicting college students around the nation.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo far, they are missing Munsil\u0026rsquo;s position \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/best-argument-for-supporting-goldwater.html\"\u003eopposing the decriminalization of cohabitation and oral sex in Arizona\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Munsil has \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=85\u0026title=munsil_campaign_complains_to_clean_elect\u0026amp;amp;more=1\u0026c=1\u0026amp;tb=1\u0026pb=1\u0026amp;blogtype=Pluggedin\"\u003ecomplained about the \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; to the Clean Elections Commission\u003c/a\u003e, and his campaign is questioning who the donors are supporting it.  An \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e article \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0920meetmunsil0920.html\"\u003equotes Republican sleazebag and Munsil campaign consultant Nathan Sproul\u003c/a\u003e saying, \u0026ldquo;Who are the donors who are funding this thing? \u0026hellip; They are engaging in a pretty offensive money-laundering operation.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSproul, former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition, runs Sproul \u0026amp; Associates, which \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0920meetmunsil0920.html\"\u003eengaged in voter registration scams in multiple states\u003c/a\u003e prior to the 2004 election.  Sproul set up groups that would represent themselves as nonpartisan \u0026ldquo;get out the vote\u0026rdquo; organizations in order to get Republicans registered to vote and discard or deter Democratic voter registrations.  In addition to supporting Munsil, he also has worked on campaigns for U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, a former Arizona legislator who was a single-issue (anti-abortion) candidate.  Sproul has received \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071405B.shtml\"\u003esignificant funding from the Republican National Committee to engage in dirty tricks\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI agree with the Munsil campaign\u0026rsquo;s statement that the name \u0026ldquo;Arizona Conservative Trust\u0026rdquo; is misleading and deceptive, especially if (as seems likely) there are Democratic Party members behind the effort.  I also condemn the prerecord telemarketing pseudo-surveys that have been done (\u0026ldquo;push polls\u0026rdquo;) regarding Munsil\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a sleazy tactic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Len Munsil Facts website"},{"content":"Chris Hallquist has written a nice summary and evaluation of the theism-naturalism debate between Jeff Lowder of the Internet Infidels and Phil Fernandes, which is now available on Google Video. He agrees with the consensus that it\u0026rsquo;s a very strong win for Lowder, while also offering some specific criticisms.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/chris-hallquist-on-lowder-fernandes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Hallquist \u003ca href=\"http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2006/09/lowder-fernandes-debate.html\"\u003ehas written a nice summary and evaluation\u003c/a\u003e of the theism-naturalism debate between Jeff Lowder of the Internet Infidels and Phil Fernandes, which \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.pl/videoplay?docid=7385355182363346492\"\u003eis now available on Google Video\u003c/a\u003e.  He agrees with the consensus that it\u0026rsquo;s a very strong win for Lowder, while also offering some specific criticisms.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chris Hallquist on the Lowder-Fernandes debate"},{"content":"The Discovery Institute has quote-mined an article co-authored by the National Center for Science Education\u0026rsquo;s Nick Matzke 16 days before it was officially published in print (it had early publication online). Nick Matzke explains how the quote, pulled from its context, was used to misrepresent the state of the debate about evolution of the flagellum.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/efficient-creationist-quote-mining.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Discovery Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/alert_alack_i_h.html\"\u003ehas quote-mined an article\u003c/a\u003e co-authored by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s Nick Matzke 16 days before it was officially published in print (it had early publication online).  Nick Matzke \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/alert_alack_i_h.html\"\u003eexplains how the quote, pulled from its context, was used to misrepresent the state of the debate\u003c/a\u003e about evolution of the flagellum.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Efficient creationist quote-mining"},{"content":"Ed Brayton rightly criticizes the Arizona Civil Liberties Union\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit to try to prevent Arizona from giving corporate tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school tuition for students from low-income families. The AzCLU has previously failed in two lawsuits to eliminate the state income tax credit for individual donations to private school tuition organizations. There is no reason to believe this third lawsuit will be anything but a waste of money.\nAs Ed points out, this is not a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution (or the Arizona Constitution\u0026rsquo;s prohibition on state funds being used to promote religion) because no state funds are going directly to any religious organization.\nI support the Institute for Justice on this issue, and this is a reason I\u0026rsquo;ve never given funds to the AzCLU (though I support the ACLU Foundation).\nI am a beneficiary of the individual state tax credit\u0026ndash;I annually make the maximum qualifying contribution to the Arizona School Choice Trust, which is the single most efficient charity I donate to (100% of donations are distributed as tuition payments for students from low-income families; salaries for employees and administrative overhead are paid by another private organization).\nUPDATE (June 7, 2007): Judge Janet Barton granted the Institute for Justice\u0026rsquo;s motion to dismiss this case, back in March.\nUPDATE (March 12, 2009): The Institute for Justice won this case again today in the Arizona Court of Appeals.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/azclu-wrong-on-school-choice.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/aclu_wrong_in_arizona.php\"\u003erightly criticizes the Arizona Civil Liberties Union\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e to try to prevent Arizona from giving corporate tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school tuition for students from low-income families.  The AzCLU has previously failed in two lawsuits to eliminate the state income tax credit for individual donations to private school tuition organizations.  There is no reason to believe this third lawsuit will be anything but a waste of money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Ed points out, this is not a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution (or the Arizona Constitution\u0026rsquo;s prohibition on state funds being used to promote religion) because no state funds are going directly to any religious organization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI support the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/schoolchoice/az_taxcredits3/index.html\"\u003eInstitute for Justice on this issue\u003c/a\u003e, and this is a reason I\u0026rsquo;ve never given funds to the AzCLU (though I support the ACLU Foundation).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI am a beneficiary of the individual state tax credit\u0026ndash;I annually make the maximum qualifying contribution to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.asct.org/\"\u003eArizona School Choice Trust\u003c/a\u003e, which is the single most efficient charity I donate to (100% of donations are distributed as tuition payments for students from low-income families; salaries for employees and administrative overhead are paid by another private organization).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 7, 2007):  Judge Janet Barton \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/schoolchoice/az_taxcredits3/3_7_07pr.html\"\u003egranted the Institute for Justice\u0026rsquo;s motion to dismiss this case\u003c/a\u003e, back in March.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 12, 2009): The Institute for Justice won this case again today in the Arizona Court of Appeals.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AzCLU wrong on school choice"},{"content":"Diebold has published a response to Ed Felten\u0026rsquo;s paper pointing out security flaws in their voting machines. Felten responds, point by point.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/ed-felten-responds-to-diebold.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDiebold has published a response to \u003ca href=\"/2006/09/more-on-diebold-voting-machine.html\"\u003eEd Felten\u0026rsquo;s paper pointing out security flaws in their voting machines\u003c/a\u003e.  Felten \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1065\"\u003eresponds\u003c/a\u003e, point by point.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Felten responds to Diebold"},{"content":"Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, Arizona District 1) has made the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington\u0026rsquo;s list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress. Renzi has engaged in self-dealing, sponsoring legislation that has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to his father\u0026rsquo;s business, ManTech International of Fairfax, VA. His father is an executive vice president at ManTech, which also has offices in Sierra Vista, AZ. A more detailed report on Renzi\u0026rsquo;s ethical lapses may be found here (PDF).\nThe other Congressmen on the list, with links to more information:\nSen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)Rep. J.D. Hayworth (Republican, Arizona District 5) makes a \u0026ldquo;dishonorable mention\u0026rdquo; for his Jack Abramoff connections and payment of $145,212 to his wife through his PAC. Hayworth\u0026rsquo;s report may be found here (PDF).\nRep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA)\nHat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/rick-renzi-jd-hayworth-make-list-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Rick Renzi (Republican, Arizona District 1) has made \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/node/96\"\u003ethe Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington\u0026rsquo;s list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress\u003c/a\u003e.  Renzi has engaged in self-dealing, sponsoring legislation that has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to his father\u0026rsquo;s business, ManTech International of Fairfax, VA.  His father is an executive vice president at ManTech, which also has offices in Sierra Vista, AZ.  A more detailed report on Renzi\u0026rsquo;s ethical lapses may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/files/Renzi.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe other Congressmen on the list, with links to more information:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/burns.php\"\u003eSen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/frist.php\"\u003eSen. Bill Frist (R-TN)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/santorum.php\"\u003eSen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/blunt.php\"\u003eRep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/calvert.php\"\u003eRep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/doolittle.php\"\u003eRep. John Doolittle (R-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/feeney.php\"\u003eRep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/harris.php\"\u003eRep. Katherine Harris (R-FL)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/jefferson.php\"\u003eRep. William Jefferson (D-LA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/lewis.php\"\u003eRep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/miller.php\"\u003eRep. Gary Miller (R-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/mollohan.php\"\u003eRep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/musgrave.php\"\u003eRep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/pombo.php\"\u003eRep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/node/94\"\u003eRep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/sessions.php\"\u003eRep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/sweeney.php\"\u003eRep. John Sweeney (R-NY)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/taylor.php\"\u003eRep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/waters.php\"\u003eRep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/node/15\"\u003eRep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eRep. J.D. Hayworth (Republican, Arizona District 5) makes a \u0026ldquo;dishonorable mention\u0026rdquo; for his Jack Abramoff connections and payment of $145,212 to his wife through his PAC.  Hayworth\u0026rsquo;s report may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/files/Hayworth.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/cannon.php\"\u003eRep. Chris Cannon (R-UT)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/hastert.php\"\u003eRep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/hayworth.php\"\u003eRep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/murtha.php\"\u003eRep. John Murtha (D-PA)\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/sherwood.php\"\u003eRep. Don Sherwood (R-PA)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/most_corrupt_congresscritters_1.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rick Renzi, J.D. Hayworth make list of most corrupt Congressmen"},{"content":"Former Arizona State University student president Yaser Alamoodi, still a student at ASU, was arrested at 6 a.m. on September 6 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They took him to Eloy (about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson), where he sits in a detention center.\nThe 29-year-old Tempe resident came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 1996 under a student visa. He describes himself as \u0026ldquo;extremely secular. I was the president of my university. I have a commitment to everything America stands for, women\u0026rsquo;s rights to civil rights.\u0026rdquo; But because he married a U.S. citizen and they agreed to divorce in August, the divorce process invalidated his pending green card application.\nAnd because his passport and citizenship are from Yemen, the country where his father was born but which he\u0026rsquo;s never been in, that\u0026rsquo;s where he will be deported to. His attorney says he can stay in detention in Eloy and fight the deportation for six months to \u0026ldquo;years,\u0026rdquo; he can allow himself to be deported to Yemen and try to get a student visa to return to finish his degree, or if his wife stops the divorce process he would be allowed to stay.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/asu-student-in-immigration-nightmare.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Arizona State University student president Yaser Alamoodi, still a student at ASU, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0920deport0920.html\"\u003ewas arrested at 6 a.m. on September 6 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers\u003c/a\u003e.  They took him to Eloy (about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson), where he sits in a detention center.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe 29-year-old Tempe resident came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 1996 under a student visa.  He describes himself as \u0026ldquo;extremely secular. I was the president of my university. I have a commitment to everything America stands for, women\u0026rsquo;s rights to civil rights.\u0026rdquo;  But because he married a U.S. citizen and they agreed to divorce in August, the divorce process invalidated his pending green card application.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd because his passport and citizenship are from Yemen, the country where his father was born but which he\u0026rsquo;s never been in, that\u0026rsquo;s where he will be deported to.  His attorney says he can stay in detention in Eloy and fight the deportation for six months to \u0026ldquo;years,\u0026rdquo; he can allow himself to be deported to Yemen and try to get a student visa to return to finish his degree, or if his wife stops the divorce process he would be allowed to stay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU student in immigration nightmare"},{"content":"Pharyngula summarizes and augments a list of characteristics from the Give Up Blog common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena.\nKey features:\n1. Conspiracy\n2. Selectivity\n3. The fake expert\n4. Impossible expectations\n5. The metaphor\n6. The quote mine\n7. Appeal to consequences\nI recommend reading both the Give Up Blog\u0026rsquo;s original list and descriptions and Pharyngula\u0026rsquo;s extended list.\nWakefield Tolbert (2009-02-26):\nAll too true.Sorta like the \"ecosophers\" who praised crocodilians as superior to humans (John Muir) and the latter day apostles (Stephen Schneider) who proclaim (speaking of selective speaking extracts and media missives) that \"we\" (the environmental movement) need to make simple statements, propose wild and scary scenarios for (global warming) and decide how best to calculate the overall effect and weigh this against the hard evidences about AGW?\nLippard (2009-02-26):\nSee \"Lomborg, global warming, and opportunity costs\" and \"Taxonomy of questions about global warming\" at this blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/key-characteristics-of-denialism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/the_denialists.php\"\u003esummarizes and augments a list of characteristics\u003c/a\u003e from \u003ca href=\"http://www.giveupblog.com/2006/09/denialists.html\"\u003ethe Give Up Blog\u003c/a\u003e common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKey features:\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Conspiracy\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Selectivity\u003cbr /\u003e3.  The fake expert\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Impossible expectations\u003cbr /\u003e5.  The metaphor\u003cbr /\u003e6.  The quote mine\u003cbr /\u003e7.  Appeal to consequences\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recommend reading both the \u003ca href=\"http://www.giveupblog.com/2006/09/denialists.html\"\u003eGive Up Blog\u0026rsquo;s original list\u003c/a\u003e and descriptions and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/the_denialists.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u0026rsquo;s extended list\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Key characteristics of denialism"},{"content":"\nCan you identify our approximate location from this sign (extra points for identifying the actual municipality)? It\u0026rsquo;s not San Francisco (which has a Lippard Ave. in the Glen Park neighborhood). The answer will come after we return to Phoenix in a couple days. (And if anyone in SF has a photo of a Lippard Ave. sign, I\u0026rsquo;d like to have one of those\u0026hellip;)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYou are in Clermont Indiana!!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCongratulations! (We're actually not staying in Clermont, but we've very close by.)The street is named after my great-grand-uncle, Robert Lippard, who was a homebuilder.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIt's not aligned with the center, but it does intersect it and has parts on the left and right sides of the center...\nMike Linksvayer (2009-06-10):\nSomehow I remembered this post when walking in Glen Park. Lousy photo, but here you go -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlinksva/3613205432/\nLippard (2009-06-18):\nThanks, Mike! I\u0026#39;ve come across that street before, but I\u0026#39;m not sure who it\u0026#39;s named after.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/greetings-from-another-part-of-united.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/P9170030.med.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/P9170030.med.JPG\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCan you identify our approximate location from this sign (extra points for identifying the actual municipality)?  It\u0026rsquo;s not San Francisco (which has a Lippard Ave. in the Glen Park neighborhood).  The answer will come after we return to Phoenix in a couple days.  (And if anyone in SF has a photo of a Lippard Ave. sign, I\u0026rsquo;d like to have one of those\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Greetings from another part of the United States!"},{"content":"Ed Felten points out that Diebold voting machines use a standard, commonly used key that is used for things like hotel minibars, office furniture, jukeboxes, and electronic equipment.\nUPDATE (January 23, 2007): Diebold helpfully displays a photograph of the key on their website\u0026ndash;which is sufficient to make a duplicate that works.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/hotel-minibar-keys-open-diebold-voting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Felten \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064\"\u003epoints out that Diebold voting machines use a standard, commonly used key\u003c/a\u003e that is used for things like hotel minibars, office furniture, jukeboxes, and electronic equipment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 23, 2007):  Diebold \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1113\"\u003ehelpfully displays a photograph of the key on their website\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;which is sufficient to make a duplicate that works.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hotel minibar keys open Diebold voting machines"},{"content":"Ed Felten announces the release of his paper and an accompanying video about major security issues with Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machines.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/more-on-diebold-voting-machine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Felten \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1063\"\u003eannounces\u003c/a\u003e the release of \u003ca href=\"http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/\"\u003ehis paper and an accompanying video\u003c/a\u003e about major security issues with Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machines.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on Diebold voting machine insecurity"},{"content":"The Covington \u0026amp; Burling defense team has tracked down (via private investigator) the anonymous informant who caused the police raid on the duplex Cory Maye lived in. The account he gave the PI is significantly different than the account he gave officer Ron Jones which prompted the raid, and the informant appears to be an angry bigot.\nCory Maye is a black man in Missouri whose door was kicked in in the middle of the night in a no-knock raid, who killed Officer Jones in the raid. Maye was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the prosecution\u0026rsquo;s account contained inconsistencies, there was no legitimate reason for Maye\u0026rsquo;s apartment in the duplex to be raided, and Maye says he did not know the person breaking into his apartment was a police officer\u0026ndash;he thought he was defending himself and his young daughter. There have been many posts on this blog, mostly referring to the excellent work by Radley Balko, who first brought this case to public attention. Wikipedia now has a pretty good entry on Cory Maye, and there is a website, www.mayeisinnocent.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/significant-new-information-in-cory.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Covington \u0026amp; Burling defense team has tracked down (via private investigator) \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027025.php\"\u003ethe anonymous informant who caused the police raid on the duplex Cory Maye lived in\u003c/a\u003e.  The account he gave the PI is significantly different than the account he gave officer Ron Jones which prompted the raid, and the informant appears to be an angry bigot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCory Maye is a black man in Missouri whose door was kicked in in the middle of the night in a no-knock raid, who killed Officer Jones in the raid.  Maye was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the prosecution\u0026rsquo;s account contained inconsistencies, there was no legitimate reason for Maye\u0026rsquo;s apartment in the duplex to be raided, and Maye says he did not know the person breaking into his apartment was a police officer\u0026ndash;he thought he was defending himself and his young daughter.  There have been \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/latest-summary-of-cory-maye-case.html\"\u003emany posts on this blog\u003c/a\u003e, mostly referring to the excellent work by Radley Balko, who first brought this case to public attention.  Wikipedia now has \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye\"\u003ea pretty good entry on Cory Maye\u003c/a\u003e, and there is a website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mayeisinnocent.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.mayeisinnocent.com\"\u003ewww.mayeisinnocent.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Significant new information in the Cory Maye case"},{"content":"British comic Robert Newman presents a very entertaining and interesting 45-minute performance about oil in the Middle East (at Google Video), including an interpretation of World War I as an invasion of Iraq and a discussion of peak oil.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThought-provoking.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/robert-newmans-history-of-oil.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBritish comic Robert Newman presents \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7374585792978336967\"\u003ea very entertaining and interesting 45-minute performance about oil in the Middle East\u003c/a\u003e (at Google Video), including an interpretation of World War I as an invasion of Iraq and a discussion of peak oil.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThought-provoking.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Robert Newman's History of Oil"},{"content":"The caption on this U.S. Air Force photo: \u0026ldquo;The United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III Military Transport with the 14th Airlift Squadron located at Charleston Air Force Base in\nSouth Carolina has flown away after releasing flares over the Atlantic Ocean. Smoke from the flare salvo reveals a crisp, dramatic, startling, and\nbeautiful visual of the turbulent air – including two vortices each with an \u0026ldquo;eye\u0026rdquo; – created by the C-17 Globemaster III as it flies through the air.\nMay 16, 2006, Over the Atlantic Ocean Near Charleston, State of South Carolina, USA.\u0026quot;\n(Hat tip: Jerry Goodenough on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/flying-spaghetti-monster-appears-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/060516-F-9712C-956.JPG\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/060516-F-9712C-956.JPG\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe caption on \u003ca href=\"http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/060516-F-9712C-956.JPG\"\u003ethis U.S. Air Force photo\u003c/a\u003e:  \u0026ldquo;\u003csmall\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III Military Transport with the 14th Airlift Squadron located at Charleston Air Force Base in\u003cbr /\u003e\nSouth Carolina has flown away after releasing flares over the Atlantic Ocean. Smoke from the flare salvo reveals a crisp, dramatic, startling, and\u003cbr /\u003e\nbeautiful visual of the turbulent air – including two vortices each with an \u0026ldquo;eye\u0026rdquo; – created by the C-17 Globemaster III as it flies through the air.\u003cbr /\u003e\nMay 16, 2006, Over the Atlantic Ocean Near Charleston, State of South Carolina, USA.\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/small\u003e\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(Hat tip: Jerry Goodenough on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Flying Spaghetti Monster appears in smoke"},{"content":"The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) contracted the firm Westat to perform a study on the effectiveness of advertisements designed to discourage drug use among teens. Westat collected data from November 1999 to June 2004, and found that \u0026ldquo;greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others smoke marijuana.\u0026rdquo; Those exposed to the ads in some groups, including 14- to 16-year-olds and white children, had higher rates of first-time drug use than those not exposed to the ads.\nThe government spent $42.7 million on this study, but the results were not what was wanted, so it ignored them, spending another $220 million on anti-marijuana advertisements in 2005 and 2006. Although the report was delivered to the government in February 2005, NIDA claimed it was delivered in June 2006. The General Accountability Office, in attempting to review the study, met resistance from NIDA and the White House. News of the study and its conclusions became public in August, and the government responded that it was no longer valid because it was old data. More details in Ryan Grim\u0026rsquo;s article at Slate.\nThe results of this study are quite similar to the results of studies of the federal DARE program, which has also been well-established to have either no measurable effect or be somewhat counter-productive. It continues because it creates the appearance of doing something to address a problem, not because it does anything actually beneficial. It\u0026rsquo;s make-believe federal make-work, yet another theater performance that wastes tax dollars while providing the illusion of benefits.\nHat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list.\nUPDATE 19 September 2006: Ed Brayton has picked up this story at his blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/anti-drug-ads-have-effect-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) contracted the firm Westat to perform a study on the effectiveness of advertisements designed to discourage drug use among teens.  Westat collected data from November 1999 to June 2004, and found that \u0026ldquo;greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others smoke marijuana.\u0026rdquo;  Those exposed to the ads in some groups, including 14- to 16-year-olds and white children, had higher rates of first-time drug use than those not exposed to the ads.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe government spent $42.7 million on this study, but the results were not what was wanted, so it ignored them, spending another $220 million on anti-marijuana advertisements in 2005 and 2006.  Although the report was delivered to the government in February 2005, NIDA claimed it was delivered in June 2006.  The General Accountability Office, in attempting to review the study, met resistance from NIDA and the White House.  News of the study and its conclusions became public in August, and the government responded that it was no longer valid because it was old data.  More details in \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2148999/\"\u003eRyan Grim\u0026rsquo;s article at Slate\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe results of this study are quite similar to the results of studies of the federal DARE program, which has also been well-established to have either no measurable effect or be somewhat counter-productive.  It continues because it creates the appearance of doing something to address a problem, not because it does anything actually beneficial.  It\u0026rsquo;s make-believe federal make-work, yet another theater performance that wastes tax dollars while providing the illusion of benefits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE 19 September 2006:  Ed Brayton has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/antidrug_ads_increase_drug_use.php\"\u003epicked up this story at his blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-drug ads have the effect of increasing drug use"},{"content":"From NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws):\nMore than 98 percent of all of the marijuana plants seized by law enforcement in the United States is feral hemp not cultivated cannabis, according to newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration\u0026rsquo;s (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.\nAccording to the data, available online at: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf, of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as \u0026ldquo;ditchweed,\u0026rdquo; a term the agency uses to define \u0026ldquo;wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending.\u0026rdquo; Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.\nPrevious DEA reports have indicated that between 98 and 99 percent of all the marijuana plants eradicated by US law enforcement is ditchweed.A single recent example from Prescott, Arizona was where two seniors watering an \u0026ldquo;attractive weed\u0026rdquo; between their residences were surprised to learn from a Yavapai County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Deputy that they were cultivating marijuana.\n(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list, who offers the comment that it looks like the War on Drugs is going about as well as the War on Terror.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/98-of-all-eradicated-us-marijuana-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7033\"\u003eNORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws)\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003eMore than 98 percent of all of the marijuana plants seized by law enforcement in the United States is feral hemp not cultivated cannabis, according to newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration\u0026rsquo;s (DEA) \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca class=\"\" href=\"http://www.dea.gov/programs/marijuana.htm\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003eDomestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eSourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics\u003c/em\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccording to the data, available online at: \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca class=\"\" href=\"http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf\"\u003ehttp://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003e, of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as \u0026ldquo;ditchweed,\u0026rdquo; a term the agency uses to define \u0026ldquo;wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending.\u0026rdquo; Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca class=\"\" href=\"http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6220\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003ePrevious DEA reports\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003e have indicated that between 98 and 99 percent of all the marijuana plants eradicated by US law enforcement is ditchweed.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Verdana;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003eA single recent example from Prescott, Arizona was where two seniors watering an \u0026ldquo;attractive weed\u0026rdquo; between their residences were surprised to learn from a Yavapai County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Deputy that \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/08/23/national/a152058D27.DTL\u0026amp;feed=rss.news\"\u003ethey were cultivating marijuana\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list, who offers the comment that it looks like the War on Drugs is going about as well as the War on Terror.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"98% of all eradicated U.S. marijuana is ditchweed"},{"content":"According to Army Brigadier General Mark Scheid, Donald Rumsfeld refused to listen to anyone who suggested that a plan was needed for what to do in Iraq after invasion, and even threatened to fire the next person who brought up the subject:\nMonths before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.\nIn fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said \u0026ldquo;he would fire the next person\u0026rdquo; who talked about the need for a post-war plan.Rumsfeld should be held accountable for the thousands of deaths this choice has caused.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/rumsfeld-ill-fire-next-person-who.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccording to Army Brigadier General Mark Scheid, Donald Rumsfeld refused to listen to anyone who suggested that a plan was needed for what to do in Iraq after invasion, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-21075sy0sep08,0,2264542.story?page=1\u0026amp;coll=dp-widget-news\"\u003eeven threatened to fire the next person who brought up the subject\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMonths before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said \u0026ldquo;he would fire the next person\u0026rdquo; who talked about the need for a post-war plan.\u003c/blockquote\u003eRumsfeld should be held accountable for the thousands of deaths this choice has caused.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rumsfeld: I'll fire the next person who talks about the need for a post-war plan"},{"content":"Science writer John Horgan (author of the excellent book Rational Mysticism) weighs in on Jerry Adler\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The New Naysayers\u0026rdquo; in Newsweek, an article about Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris:\nAs I expected—can it be otherwise for a mass-market essayist?–he panders to his audience, which is after all predominantly religious. (Adler notes that a recent Newsweek poll found that 92 percent of Americans believe in God and only 37 would vote for an atheist for President.) He does a fair job of summarizing the “highly inflammatory” arguments of Dennett/Dawkins/Harris, namely, that religions make false and contradictory claims and spur people to commit destructive acts. But Adler not-so-subtly distances himself from the skeptics’ viewpoints.\n\u0026hellip;\nAnd what is Adler really saying here? Just this: we must give a pass to delusional beliefs that are held sincerely by millions of people, especially if they are Newsweek subscribers. I have my differences with Dawkins et al, but I admire their courage, especially compared to the cowardice that afflicts pop-culture intellectuals like Adler when they write about religion.P.Z. Myers has are more detailed critique of the Newsweek piece here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/john-horgan-criticizes-adlers-newsweek.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScience writer John Horgan (author of the excellent book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRational Mysticism\u003c/span\u003e) \u003ca href=\"http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/scientific_curmudgeon/?p=56\"\u003eweighs in on Jerry Adler\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The New Naysayers\u0026rdquo; in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, an article about Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAs I expected—can it be otherwise for a mass-market essayist?–he panders to his audience, which is after all predominantly religious. (Adler notes that a recent Newsweek poll found that 92 percent of Americans believe in God and only 37 would vote for an atheist for President.) He does a fair job of summarizing the “highly inflammatory” arguments of Dennett/Dawkins/Harris, namely, that religions make false and contradictory claims and spur people to commit destructive acts. But Adler not-so-subtly distances himself from the skeptics’ viewpoints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eAnd what is Adler really saying here? Just this: we must give a pass to delusional beliefs that are held sincerely by millions of people, especially if they are Newsweek subscribers.  I have my differences with Dawkins et al, but I admire their courage, especially compared to the cowardice that afflicts pop-culture intellectuals like Adler when they write about religion.\u003c/blockquote\u003eP.Z. Myers has are more detailed critique of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNewsweek\u003c/span\u003e piece \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/infidels.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Horgan criticizes Adler's Newsweek piece on \"The New Naysayers\""},{"content":"John McCain continues his pandering to the religious right by endorsing Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, Len Munsil. Munsil, who attended Arizona State University at the same time I did, was editor of the ASU newspaper, the State Press. Now he runs an extremist religious right policy organization, the Center for Arizona Policy, which opposed the removal of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s laws banning cohabitation and oral sex. (They were removed anyway, by a moderate female Republican Governor, Jane Dee Hull.) Munsil drafted Arizona\u0026rsquo;s law on marriage (which defines marriage to preclude gay marriage) and is behind Proposition 107, the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment, which amends the Arizona Constitution to prohibit the creation of civil unions or the granting of any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to marriage.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about Munsil here, where I describe how he refused to print a letter to the editor I wrote criticizing factual errors in an editorial he wrote in the State Press.\nYou can find out more about Munsil and his supporters and detractors at this Arizona Republic blog entry, \u0026ldquo;Munsil: I\u0026rsquo;m a Reagan, Kyl-style Republican.\u0026quot; I\u0026rsquo;ve left a number of comments there.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2006-12-09):\nI was kind of shocked (maybe I'm just out of the loop on this one) to learn that John McCain is either a neocon himself and/or is in bed with them. Shocked! SHOCKED I am!http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/?p=592http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15790605/site/newsweek/Do you think ANY neocon candidate has a chance of winning the GOP primary, the White house?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/mccain-endorses-religious-right.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn McCain \u003ca href=\"http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/09/04/daily22.html\"\u003econtinues his pandering to the religious right by endorsing Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, Len Munsil\u003c/a\u003e.  Munsil, who attended Arizona State University at the same time I did, was editor of the ASU newspaper, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e.  Now he runs an extremist religious right policy organization, the Center for Arizona Policy, which opposed the removal of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s laws banning cohabitation and oral sex.  (They were removed anyway, by a moderate female Republican Governor, Jane Dee Hull.)  Munsil drafted Arizona\u0026rsquo;s law on marriage (which defines marriage to preclude gay marriage) and is behind Proposition 107, the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment, which amends the Arizona Constitution to prohibit the creation of civil unions or the granting of any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to marriage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve previously written about Munsil \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/best-argument-for-supporting-goldwater.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, where I describe how he refused to print a letter to the editor I wrote criticizing factual errors in an editorial he wrote in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can find out more about Munsil and his supporters and detractors at \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=85\u0026c=1\u0026amp;amp;page=1\u0026more=1\u0026amp;title=munsil_i_m_a_reagan_kyl_style_republican\u0026tb=1\u0026amp;pb=1\u0026disp=single\"\u003ethis \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e blog entry, \u0026ldquo;Munsil: I\u0026rsquo;m a Reagan, Kyl-style Republican.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  I\u0026rsquo;ve left a number of comments there.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"McCain endorses religious right theocrat candidate Len Munsil"},{"content":"Rep. Jim Kolbe (R, AZ District 8) is not running for re-election, so there are five Republicans seeking the nomination. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, in a meeting with four of those five and a representative of the fifth in Tucson on March 30, told them that the RNC would not intervene in the primaries, but rather would devote its funds to assisting the campaigns of whoever the local Republicans of District 8 selected to represent them. The RNC changed its mind, however, and spent $122,000 on advertising for candidate Steve Huffman, its preferred candidate.\nRandy Graf, who is the current front-runner for the nomination, issued a joint press release with the other Republican candidates (minus Huffman) condemning Mehlman and the RNC for their dishonesty and broken promise.\nHuffman has criticized Graf for being slow to fire a campaign manager who had a conviction for \u0026ldquo;corrupting young girls\u0026rdquo; but has in turn been embarrassed by allegations that his own campaign treasurer, Bill Arnold, took photos through the windows of the home of Huffman\u0026rsquo;s ex-wife, state senator Toni Hellon. The photos were used to create a website apparently designed to discredit her if Huffman were to have run against her for her state legislative position. Hellon has sued Arnold for invasion of privacy, but apparently supports her ex-husband\u0026rsquo;s nomination.\nGraf is also a member of the Minuteman Project.\nDistrict 8 is fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, with the former having about a 5% advantage. Looks like it will be a dirty race.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/arizona-republicans-accuse-rnc.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Jim Kolbe (R, AZ District 8) is not running for re-election, so there are five Republicans seeking the nomination.  Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, in a meeting with four of those five and a representative of the fifth in Tucson on March 30, told them that the RNC would not intervene in the primaries, but rather would devote its funds to assisting the campaigns of whoever the local Republicans of District 8 selected to represent them.  The RNC changed its mind, however, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0906district8-disarray0906.html\"\u003espent $122,000 on advertising for candidate Steve Huffman, its preferred candidate\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRandy Graf, who is the current front-runner for the nomination, issued a joint press release with the other Republican candidates (minus Huffman) \u003ca href=\"http://www.votegraf.com/randygraf/pr/2006-09_05_joint_statement.php\"\u003econdemning Mehlman and the RNC for their dishonesty and broken promise\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHuffman has criticized Graf for being slow to fire a campaign manager who had a conviction for \u0026ldquo;corrupting young girls\u0026rdquo; but has in turn been embarrassed by allegations that his own campaign treasurer, Bill Arnold, took photos through the windows of the home of Huffman\u0026rsquo;s ex-wife, state senator Toni Hellon.  The photos were used to create a website apparently designed to discredit her if Huffman were to have run against her for her state legislative position.  Hellon has sued Arnold for invasion of privacy, but apparently supports her ex-husband\u0026rsquo;s nomination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGraf is also a member of the Minuteman Project.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDistrict 8 is fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, with the former having about a 5% advantage.  Looks like it will be a dirty race.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Republicans accuse RNC chairman Ken Mehlman of lying"},{"content":"KTLA (Los Angeles) reporter John Mattes was attacked by Assad \u0026ldquo;Sam\u0026rdquo; Suleiman and his wife, Rosa Amelia Barraza, while attempting to interview Brian Phillips about Suleiman\u0026rsquo;s violence directed at Phillips. Suleiman had been the subject of a July story by Mattes, showing that he had forged documents to purchase homes with the identities of other people, and was renting or leasing them out. Mattes ends up with a bloodied face and cuts to his eye from Suleiman attempting to gouge his eyes out.\nBarraza keeps up a nearly continuous stream of verbal abuse after pouring a bottle of water on the camera, hitting Mattes in the face with it, stealing a microphone from the cameraman, and threatening to get a gun and to send Mattes to Tijuana or Ensenada.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/investigative-reporter-attacked-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKTLA (Los Angeles) reporter John Mattes \u003ca href=\"http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-reporterattacked,0,1477488.story?coll=ktla-news-1\"\u003ewas attacked by Assad \u0026ldquo;Sam\u0026rdquo; Suleiman and his wife, Rosa Amelia Barraza\u003c/a\u003e, while attempting to interview Brian Phillips about Suleiman\u0026rsquo;s violence directed at Phillips.  Suleiman had been the subject of a July story by Mattes, showing that he had forged documents to purchase homes with the identities of other people, and was renting or leasing them out.  Mattes ends up with a bloodied face and cuts to his eye from Suleiman attempting to gouge his eyes out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBarraza keeps up a nearly continuous stream of verbal abuse after pouring a bottle of water on the camera, hitting Mattes in the face with it, stealing a microphone from the cameraman, and threatening to get a gun and to send Mattes to Tijuana or Ensenada.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Investigative reporter attacked by real estate scammers"},{"content":"It was just a matter of time, but the \u0026ldquo;Crocodile Hunter\u0026rdquo; Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, not a crocodile or a poisonous snake. While filming his show at Batt Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, he swam up too close on a stingray and the poisonous barb at the end of its tail penetrated his chest and heart. CPR was administered by crew members, but Irwin was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was 44 years old.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nDidn't he do a skit in some movie or something where he pretended to die after being bitten by a snake?Talk about life imitating art.\nDanny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nI remember Steve in a cameo for the movie Dr. Doolittle with Eddie Murphy. He was attacked by an animal there.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/crocodile-hunter-steve-irwin-killed-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was just a matter of time, but the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14663786/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Crocodile Hunter\u0026rdquo; Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray\u003c/A\u003e, not a crocodile or a poisonous snake.  While filming his show at Batt Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, he swam up too close on a stingray and the poisonous barb at the end of its tail penetrated his chest and heart.  CPR was administered by crew members, but Irwin was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.  He was 44 years old.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Crocodile Hunter\" Steve Irwin killed by wild animal"},{"content":"Orac at Respectful Insolence recently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers. In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet\u0026rsquo;s alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith\u0026rsquo;s organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States. I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims. As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the Scientology-supported \u0026ldquo;random poetry\u0026rdquo; bots, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable. (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian\u0026rsquo;s account of the spamming of Usenet.)\nThis posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me\u0026ndash;his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them. I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below. I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information.\nFrom:\nJames J. Lippard\nDate:\nFri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am Email: lipp\u0026hellip;@discord.org (James J. Lippard)\nGroups: sci.skeptic, alt.revisionism I first encountered claims that the Holocaust never happened sometime during my undergraduate years in college. At that time, I had recently abandoned the religious faith of my family, and I had gone from being a somewhat gullible believer to a somewhat militant atheist. I felt that I had been betrayed by authority figures in my life, and I set out to find the facts for myself. I was prepared to find that \u0026ldquo;everything I know is wrong.\u0026quot;\nFortunately, my first exposure to Holocaust deniers was on the GEnie online service, where there were some extremely well-informed people responding to the Holocaust deniers with facts. For me, the sometimes emotional appeals were the kinds of argumentative techniques I had come to distrust, and those who clearly had facts at their disposal were the ones to be relied upon. While the Holocaust deniers tried to present themselves as being cool, dispassionate observers presenting the hard facts, it quickly became obvious that their collection of facts was similar to the collection of facts of creationists which I had been fooled by earlier in my life.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never spent a whole lot of effort on examining the history of the Holocaust, primarily because I was devoting my effort to other things, and because I saw that people like Ken McVay, Jamie McCarthy, and Danny Keren on alt.revisionism seemed to have things well in hand. (My big \u0026ldquo;bogus\u0026rdquo; issues which I\u0026rsquo;ve done a large amount of research on are creationism and Scientology; the patterns of delusion and deception seem to be pretty much the same.)\nWhat has prompted me to write this is that I fear that there may be others here who are in a situation like I was when I first encountered this stuff. This present discussion seems to be dominated by emotional responses and namecalling, by claims that Holocaust deniers are Nazis, that they should be silenced, driven off, or even thrown in jail. I suspect that I would have taken the Holocaust deniers much more seriously in my younger days if that had been the nature of the responses to them on the GEnie service. Those of you are responding in that manner, please give this some thought. If you don\u0026rsquo;t have the facts at your disposal to respond to the actual claims being made, then maybe you should leave the bulk of the responding to those who do. I\u0026rsquo;m not saying there is no place for the emotional response, or for pointing out what you see as the ultimate consequences of the views being expressed, or the motivations behind them\u0026ndash;but just keep in mind who may be in the audience and how they may react to what you are saying. You may be accomplishing exactly the opposite of what you want.\n\u0026ndash;\nJim Lippard lipp\u0026hellip;@discord.org http://www.discord.org/\nUnsolicited bulk email charge: $500/message. Don\u0026rsquo;t send me any.\nPGP Fingerprint: 0C1F FE18 D311 1792 5EA8 43C8 7AD2 B485 DE75 841C\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/responding-to-holocaust-deniers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOrac at Respectful Insolence \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/08/how_i_discovered_holocaust_denial.php\"\u003erecently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers\u003c/a\u003e.  In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet\u0026rsquo;s alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith\u0026rsquo;s organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States.  I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims.  As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the \u003ca href=\"http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/10675/Attack_of_the_Robotic_Poets_pg2.html\"\u003eScientology-supported \u0026ldquo;random poetry\u0026rdquo; bots\u003c/a\u003e, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable.  (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.lermanet.com/cos/toryonosa.htm\"\u003eaccount of the spamming of Usenet\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me\u0026ndash;his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them.  I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below.  I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable id=\"hdropened3f511fb422037e9f\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr valign=\"top\"\u003e\u003ctd width=\"25\"\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003cb class=\"msghk\"\u003eFrom:\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"2\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003ctd colspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"msghv\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan class=\"inheritcolor\" style=\"color: rgb(0, 104, 28);\"\u003e James J. Lippard\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=iSKPKRMAAAAhuBroADAyoOsl6Xt9gr7_CrTwKYbraL2wE_wkV0bY1A\u0026amp;hl=en\" target=\"_top\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003c/tr\u003e   \u003ctr valign=\"top\"\u003e   \u003ctd width=\"25\"\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003cb class=\"msghk\"\u003eDate:\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"2\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"msghv\"\u003eFri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003c/tr\u003e   \u003ctr style=\"display: table-row;\" class=\"scripthide\" id=\"htr1_3f511fb422037e9f\" valign=\"top\"\u003e   \u003ctd width=\"25\"\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003cb class=\"msghk\"\u003eEmail: \u003c/b\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"2\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"msghv\"\u003elipp\u003ca target=\"_parent\" href=\"http://groups.google.com/groups/unlock?msg=3f511fb422037e9f\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;_done=/group/alt.revisionism/browse_thread/thread/3e7a6a6518ffaeb/76802801b26188ce%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3D%26rnum%3D1%26hl%3Den\"\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/a\u003e@discord.org (James J. Lippard)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003c/tr\u003e   \u003ctr style=\"display: table-row;\" class=\"scripthide\" id=\"htr2_3f511fb422037e9f\" valign=\"top\"\u003e   \u003ctd width=\"25\"\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003cb class=\"msghk\"\u003eGroups: \u003c/b\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"2\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"msghv\"\u003esci.skeptic, alt.revisionism\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003c/tr\u003e   \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e      \u003cdiv id=\"ratings3f511fb422037e9f\" style=\"float: right; padding-left: 2px;\"\u003e   \u003ctable style=\"width: 124px; height: 22px;\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"1\"\u003e   \u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr valign=\"top\"\u003e   \u003ctd\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd width=\"120\"\u003e  \u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e   \u003ctr\u003e   \u003ctd colspan=\"3\" nowrap=\"nowrap\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e   \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e   \u003c/div\u003e      \u003cdiv style=\"display: block;\" id=\"h3f511fb422037e9f\" class=\"scripthide\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"fontsize2\"\u003e\u003cnobr\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://groups.google.com/groups/search?enc_author=iSKPKRMAAAAhuBroADAyoOsl6Xt9gr7_CrTwKYbraL2wE_wkV0bY1A\u0026amp;scoring=d\u0026amp;hl=en\" target=\"_top\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/nobr\u003e   \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e   \u003c/tr\u003e   \u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e   \u003c/div\u003e            \u003cp\u003e   \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Responding to Holocaust Deniers"},{"content":"I guess the skeptics were wrong on this one. Turns out the aliens were in Hangar 1083, not Hangar 18.\n(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/immigration-and-customs-enforcement.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI guess the skeptics were \u003ca href=\"http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/060829roswell.htm\"\u003ewrong on this one\u003c/a\u003e.  Turns out the aliens were in Hangar 1083, not Hangar 18.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/685355.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor"},{"content":"In 2000, an article about \u0026ldquo;The Secret FISA Court: Rubber Stamping Our Rights\u0026rdquo; created outrage and prompted comments like this:\nThis is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find.\nThis does not bode well for continued freedom. Franz Kafka would have judged this too wild to fictionalize. But for us - it’s real.\nand this:\nAny chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face.But today, when there\u0026rsquo;s warrantless NSA surveillance that makes the FISA Court look like significant judicial oversight, the comments are like this:\nPrivacy is a false argument and has been for some time. Your insurance company and the credit bureaus have more on you than the feds do and you can do nothing about it. I would rather be secure knowing that the feds were looking over my shoulder and keeping me safe. I have nothing to hide, and in times of war, these steps are necessary.So when Clinton engages in eavesdropping (rubber stamped by the FISA Court), it\u0026rsquo;s a threat to the republic, but when Bush does it (without any judicial oversight), it\u0026rsquo;s no problem.\nHat tip to Gene Healy at Cato, by way of The Agitator.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-10):\nI think you'll appreciate this link.\nLippard (2008-08-10):\nThose people should all be embarrassed not for making those arguments during Clinton's administration, but for failing to continue to make them during Bush's.Of course, they'll all defend themselves by saying that 9/11 changed everything.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-10):\nThat's the thing. So many of those folks attack, say, the ACLU for being a partisan \"leftist\" organization that is out to get Republicans and what not, but the ACLU protested Clinton's use of the NSA Echelon program. I actually got into an extended argument with someone who tried to tell me that concerns over Bush's domestic surveillance were purely partisan because Echelon under Clinton was worse (i.e. Clinton spied on \"everyone\") than what Bush is doing. I wanted to bang my head against a wall, because the guy would not acknowledge that Bush is using the same frickin' program! (plus the bit about authorizing the circumvention of FISA.)They'll say 9/11 changed everything, but many people in those links or their colleagues don't have a problem with what Nixon was doing in the first place.\nHume's Ghost (2008-08-10):\nI assume you'll know what I meant in the comment above, but just to be clear, I'm not implying Nixon is exclusively the only other president to violate civil liberties, but just that those folks are particularly ok with Nixon having done so.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/09/hypocrisy-of-freerepubliccom-crowd.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 2000, an article about \u003ca href=\"http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a27337612f5.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Secret FISA Court: Rubber Stamping Our Rights\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e created outrage and prompted comments like this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis does not bode well for continued freedom. Franz Kafka would have judged this too wild to fictionalize. But for us - it’s real.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e and this:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAny chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut today, when there\u0026rsquo;s warrantless NSA surveillance that makes the FISA Court look like significant judicial oversight, \u003ca href=\"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1685870/posts\"\u003ethe comments are like this\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePrivacy is a false argument and has been for some time. Your insurance company and the credit bureaus have more on you than the feds do and you can do nothing about it. I would rather be secure knowing that the feds were looking over my shoulder and keeping me safe. I have nothing to hide, and in times of war, these steps are necessary.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo when Clinton engages in eavesdropping (rubber stamped by the FISA Court), it\u0026rsquo;s a threat to the republic, but when Bush does it (without any judicial oversight), it\u0026rsquo;s no problem.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/08/31/the-right-that-was/\"\u003eGene Healy at Cato\u003c/a\u003e, by way of \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027000.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The hypocrisy of the FreeRepublic.com crowd"},{"content":"The Technology Liberation Front is a blog I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading for a few months for its quality contributions on issues involving technology, regulation, copyright, digital rights management (DRM), network neutrality, and so on. It covers a lot of the same topics as Ed Felten\u0026rsquo;s excellent Freedom-to-Tinker blog, with a strong libertarian bent.\nWhat a disappointment it was to see that the newest contributor, Hance Haney, comes from the Technology \u0026amp; Democracy Project at the Discovery Institute. While Haney is in Washington D.C. and is not affiliated with the intelligent design wing (the Center for Science and Culture), crackpot George Gilder is a senior fellow of the TDP.\nI commented to this effect at the Technology Liberation Front, which prompted a response from Lewis Baumstark:\nAs I have no previous knowledge of Hance or the Discovery Institute, I prefer to allow him to live or die here on the merits of his debate and analysis, not on his link to a pro-ID institution.Lewis should remedy his ignorance of the Discovery Institute before coming to a conclusion about whether such an association taints Hance\u0026rsquo;s reputation and credibility\u0026ndash;surely he would not have said the same if Hance was a representative of the (in some ways more honest) Institute for Creation Research or International Flat Earth Society. As readers of this blog know well, the Discovery Institute has a long history of dishonest and deceptive public statements and attempts to influence public opinion, public policy, and educational standards. Do a Google search for \u0026ldquo;Discovery Institute site:lippard.blogspot.com\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Dembski site:lippard.blogspot.com\u0026rdquo; for numerous examples at this blog; many more can be found at scienceblogs.com (especially Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Pharyngula) or The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\nJim Harper of TLF responded to Lewis\u0026rsquo;s comment by writing \u0026ldquo;And the winner is . . . Lewis Baumstark! Curious. Courteous. Way to go, Lewis!\u0026rdquo; How odd that he would declare Lewis the \u0026ldquo;winner\u0026rdquo; when Lewis claimed ignorance of the Discovery Institute, or call him \u0026ldquo;curious\u0026rdquo; when his comment betrayed no interest in rectifying that ignorance. \u0026ldquo;Courteous,\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ll grant.\nI agree with the comment at TLF from Cog (of the Abstract Factory blog):\nThe Discovery Institute ought to be shunned by all right-thinking people, simply as punishment for so shamelessly polluting our public discourse about science. Everybody associated with the Discovery Institute should know, and never be permitted to forget, that their affiliation with that institution tars their name and calls their integrity into question.\nThis isn\u0026rsquo;t to say that we should pre-emptively dismiss everything Hance says, but that he should never forget the cost that this affiliation will have for his professional reputation and all the views that he professes to hold. The suspicion of Lippard and others (myself included) is entirely rational, and promotes the proper working of the information ecosystem, just an investor\u0026rsquo;s skepticism about former Enron executives would be rational and promote the proper working of the market.\nPrecisely so\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not that Hance can\u0026rsquo;t make valid or useful contributions, it\u0026rsquo;s that anything he says needs to be given extra scrutiny because he willingly associates with and is employed by an organization with an established and continuing record for deception and dishonesty. \u0026ldquo;Guilt by association\u0026rdquo; is fallacious for evaluating the validity of an argument, but the company you keep is often a good indicator of your character and can create prima facie evidence about your reliability that your own words and actions may then confirm or refute.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve experienced this myself\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m employed by a company with a financial scandal in its past (Global Crossing). I continue to work there because I believe that the scandals are in the past and those responsible for them are no longer associated with the company, though my resume will likely always be somewhat tainted by the association and give me an extra hurdle to overcome. I consider myself fortunate that not only has the company cleaned up its act (the financial filings under the current CFO have been praised by former critics of the company for their completeness and transparency) but that my area of employment was quite distant from the scandal and has received public praise.\nUPDATE August 28, 2006: Julian Sanchez comments on this subject here. Adam Thierer has responded to the controversy at the Technology Liberation Front, but he does not even attempt to address the issue raised by the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s regular practice of deception and dishonesty.\nUPDATE August 30, 2006: Tim Lee has responded to the controversy head on at TLF.\nAndrew Staroscik (2006-12-09):\nI have never given any thought to the non ID branches of the DI. Are they involved in any other controversies in which their tactics have been called into question?Andrew\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nGeorge Gilder (Senior Fellow of the Technology \u0026 Democracy Project) has been personally involved in controversies (he gave some very bad investment advice prior to the dot com meltdown, including continuing to recommend investment in my employer, Global Crossing, as its stock crashed--it became the largest telecom bankruptcy in U.S. history until Worldcom broke the record a few months later).There's the Cascadia project, which is involved in transportation issues and has received about $9 million in funding from Bill Gates.There's a Bioethics program, which overlaps heavily with the intelligent design folks--they oppose embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, and animal rights.There's an Economics program, which has Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow (and the web page for that program also touts Gilder).There's a Law and Justice program that argues for tort reform, an Environmental program that appears to be critical of the Endangered Species Act, a \"Religion, Liberty and Public Life\" program, a \"C.S. Lewis and Public Life\" program, and an Education program that argues for home schooling and school choice. This last set is relegated to an \"Other Programs\" page on the DI website.So there's certainly potential for other controversies.\nAndrew Staroscik (2006-12-09):\nthanks for the info Jim\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/tech-liberation-front-brings-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e is a blog I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading for a few months for its quality contributions on issues involving technology, regulation, copyright, digital rights management (DRM), network neutrality, and so on.  It covers a lot of the same topics as Ed Felten\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/\"\u003eFreedom-to-Tinker blog\u003c/a\u003e, with a strong libertarian bent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat a disappointment it was to see that the newest contributor, Hance Haney, \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040504.php\"\u003ecomes from the Technology \u0026amp; Democracy Project at the Discovery Institute\u003c/a\u003e.  While Haney is in Washington D.C. and is not affiliated with the intelligent design wing (the Center for Science and Culture), \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/07/the_bad_math_of_gilders_new_sc.php\"\u003ecrackpot\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/the_sanctimonious_bombast_of_george_gilder/\"\u003eGeorge\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/07/derbyshire_on_gilder_and_the_s.php\"\u003eGilder\u003c/a\u003e is a senior fellow of the TDP.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI commented \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040504.php#comments\"\u003eto this effect\u003c/a\u003e at the Technology Liberation Front, which prompted a response from Lewis Baumstark:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAs I have no previous knowledge of Hance or the Discovery Institute, I prefer to allow him to live or die here on the merits of his debate and analysis, not on his link to a pro-ID institution.\u003c/blockquote\u003eLewis should remedy his ignorance of the Discovery Institute before coming to a conclusion about whether such an association taints Hance\u0026rsquo;s reputation and credibility\u0026ndash;surely he would not have said the same if Hance was a representative of the (in some ways more honest) Institute for Creation Research or International Flat Earth Society.  As readers of this blog know well, the Discovery Institute has a long history of dishonest and deceptive public statements and attempts to influence public opinion, public policy, and educational standards.  Do a Google search for \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alippard.blogspot.com+Discovery%20Institute\u0026amp;btnG=Search\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Discovery Institute site:lippard.blogspot.com\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alippard.blogspot.com+Dembski\u0026btnG=Search\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dembski site:lippard.blogspot.com\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e for numerous examples at this blog; many more can be found at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/\"\u003escienceblogs.com\u003c/a\u003e (especially \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e) or \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim Harper of TLF responded to Lewis\u0026rsquo;s comment by writing \u0026ldquo;And the winner is . . . Lewis Baumstark!  Curious.  Courteous.  Way to go, Lewis!\u0026rdquo;  How odd that he would declare Lewis the \u0026ldquo;winner\u0026rdquo; when Lewis claimed ignorance of the Discovery Institute, or call him \u0026ldquo;curious\u0026rdquo; when his comment betrayed no interest in rectifying that ignorance.  \u0026ldquo;Courteous,\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ll grant.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI agree with the comment at TLF from Cog (of the \u003ca href=\"http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/\"\u003eAbstract Factory blog\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tech Liberation Front brings on a Discovery Institute representative"},{"content":"At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has an excellent fisking of Seth Cooper, former attorney for the Discovery Institute. Cooper tries to argue that Judge Jones (of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case) displayed bias and hostility towards Jon Buell of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics both in his behavior and by refusing to allow the FTE to intervene in the case.\nBrayton points out that there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence of any hostility in the questioning of Buell and that the facts and legal precedent strongly supported the refusal of FTE intervening one month before the end of discovery. He points out dishonesty by Buell, who falsely stated that \u0026ldquo;Neither \u0026ldquo;Creationism\u0026rdquo; nor its synonym, \u0026ldquo;Creation Science\u0026rdquo; was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged.\u0026quot;\nThe post is a pleasure to read, go see it here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/ed-brayton-fisks-seth-cooper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/elsberry_fisks_cooper.php\"\u003ehas an excellent fisking of Seth Cooper\u003c/a\u003e, former attorney for the Discovery Institute.  Cooper  tries to argue that Judge Jones (of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case) displayed bias and hostility towards Jon Buell of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics both in his behavior and by refusing to allow the FTE to intervene in the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrayton points out that there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence of any hostility in the questioning of Buell and that the facts and legal precedent strongly supported the refusal of FTE intervening one month before the end of discovery.  He points out dishonesty by Buell, who falsely stated that \u0026ldquo;Neither \u0026ldquo;Creationism\u0026rdquo; nor its synonym, \u0026ldquo;Creation Science\u0026rdquo; was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe post is a pleasure to read, go see it \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/elsberry_fisks_cooper.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton fisks Seth Cooper"},{"content":"In the September/October 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, OSU professor John Mueller has an article titled \u0026ldquo;Is there still a terrorist threat?\u0026quot; He argues that the best explanation for the lack of terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the failure of authorities to uncover and prosecute any terrorist cells in the U.S. is that there are \u0026ldquo;almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.\u0026quot;\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to minimize the threat just as it is to exaggerate it, but I think he makes a strong case that the threat has been greatly exaggerated.\nAlso see Mueller\u0026rsquo;s related Fall 2004 article in Regulation, \u0026ldquo;A False Sense of Insecurity? How does the risk of terrorism measure up against everyday dangers\u0026rdquo; (PDF), which I referred to in this blog post.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/john-mueller-is-there-still-terrorist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the September/October 2006 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eForeign Affairs\u003c/span\u003e, OSU professor John Mueller has \u003ca href=\"http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060901facomment85501/john-mueller/is-there-still-a-terrorist-threat.html\"\u003ean article titled \u0026ldquo;Is there still a terrorist threat?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  He argues that the best explanation for the lack of terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the failure of authorities to uncover and prosecute any terrorist cells in the U.S. is that there are \u0026ldquo;almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake to minimize the threat just as it is to exaggerate it, but I think he makes a strong case that the threat has been greatly exaggerated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso see Mueller\u0026rsquo;s related \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n3/v27n3-5.pdf\"\u003eFall 2004 article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRegulation\u003c/span\u003e, \u0026ldquo;A False Sense of Insecurity? How does the risk of terrorism measure up against everyday dangers\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), which I referred to in \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/zefrank-on-london-liquid-explosive.html\"\u003ethis blog post\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Mueller: Is there still a terrorist threat?"},{"content":"This is complete absurdity. This bureaucratic overreaction (in Canada) should never have happened.\nSome of the more interesting questions from the interrogations:\nWhat do you think about 9/11?\nWhat are your views on the Iran issue?\nDo you think government is too big, too powerful?\nDo you connect to the Internet on this laptop?\nHave you downloaded any images?\nDo you have any pornography?\nVia Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/accidentally-drop-ipod-in-airplane.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is \u003ca href=\"http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166\u0026amp;pageNo=1\"\u003ecomplete absurdity\u003c/a\u003e.   This bureaucratic overreaction (in Canada) should never have happened.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the more interesting questions from the interrogations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e   What do you think about 9/11?\u003cbr /\u003e  What are your views on the Iran issue?\u003cbr /\u003e  Do you think government is too big, too powerful?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e   Do you connect to the Internet on this laptop?\u003cbr /\u003e  Have you downloaded any images?\u003cbr /\u003e  Do you have any pornography?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/dropped_ipod_le.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Accidentally drop iPod in airplane toilet, get caught in a Kafkaesque mess"},{"content":"Phoenix made the list of Forbes magazine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;drunkest cities\u0026rdquo; in America, coming in at #22. 35 cities for which the appropriate data were available were ranked on levels of alcoholism (actually, based on number of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the city), number of binge drinkers (from CDC survey data), per-capita drinkers (from CDC survey data), per-capita heavy drinkers (from CDC survey data), and state laws about alcohol (with least restrictive laws counting towards \u0026ldquo;drunkest\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between this measure and the others). The specific ranking measurements are described here.\nThe full list:\n1. Milwaukee\n2. Minneapolis-St. Paul\n3. Columbus\n4. Boston\n5. Austin\n6. Chicago\n7. Cleveland\n8. Pittsburgh\n9. Philadelphia (tie)\n9. Providence (tie)\n11. St. Louis\n12. San Antonio (tie)\n12. Seattle (tie)\n14. Las Vegas\n15. Denver/Boulder\n16. Kansas City (tie)\n16. Cincinnati (tie)\n18. Houston\n19. Portland\n20. San Francisco-Oakland (tie)\n20. Washington-Baltimore (tie)\n22. Phoenix\n23. Los Angeles\n24. New Orleans (tie)\n24. Tampa (tie)\n26. Norfolk\n27. Dallas-Fort Worth\n28. Atlanta (tie)\n28. Detroit (tie)\n30. Indianapolis\n31. Orlando\n32. New York\n33. Miami\n34. Charlotte\n35. Nashville\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/phoenix-comes-in-at-22-in-forbes-list.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePhoenix made \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2006/08/22/nightlife-cities-drunk_cx_de_nightlife06_0822intro.html?boxes=popstories\u0026boxes=custom\"\u003ethe list of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eForbes\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;drunkest cities\u0026rdquo; in America\u003c/a\u003e, coming in at #22.  35 cities for which the appropriate data were available were ranked on levels of alcoholism (actually, based on number of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the city), number of binge drinkers (from CDC survey data), per-capita drinkers (from CDC survey data), per-capita heavy drinkers (from CDC survey data), and state laws about alcohol (with least restrictive laws counting towards \u0026ldquo;drunkest\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between this measure and the others).  The specific ranking measurements are described \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/22/nightlife-cities-drunk_cx_de_nightlife06_0822method.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full list:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1. Milwaukee\u003cbr /\u003e2. Minneapolis-St. Paul\u003cbr /\u003e3. Columbus\u003cbr /\u003e4. Boston\u003cbr /\u003e5. Austin\u003cbr /\u003e6. Chicago\u003cbr /\u003e7. Cleveland\u003cbr /\u003e8. Pittsburgh\u003cbr /\u003e9. Philadelphia (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e9. Providence (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e11. St. Louis\u003cbr /\u003e12. San Antonio (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e12. Seattle (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e14. Las Vegas\u003cbr /\u003e15. Denver/Boulder\u003cbr /\u003e16. Kansas City (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e16. Cincinnati (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e18. Houston\u003cbr /\u003e19. Portland\u003cbr /\u003e20. San Francisco-Oakland (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e20. Washington-Baltimore (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e22. Phoenix\u003cbr /\u003e23. Los Angeles\u003cbr /\u003e24. New Orleans (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e24. Tampa (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e26. Norfolk\u003cbr /\u003e27. Dallas-Fort Worth\u003cbr /\u003e28. Atlanta (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e28. Detroit (tie)\u003cbr /\u003e30. Indianapolis\u003cbr /\u003e31. Orlando\u003cbr /\u003e32. New York\u003cbr /\u003e33. Miami\u003cbr /\u003e34. Charlotte\u003cbr /\u003e35. Nashville\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix comes in at #22 in Forbes list of drunkest cities"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula reviews chapter 3 of Jonathan Wells\u0026rsquo; new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, as part of a series of critiques of the book which will appear at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb. The chapter, titled \u0026ldquo;Why you didn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026rsquo;evolve\u0026rsquo; in your mother\u0026rsquo;s womb,\u0026rdquo; includes quote mining of this sort:\nThis is the heart of Wells\u0026rsquo; strategy: pick comments by developmental biologists referring to different stages, which say very different things about the similarity of embryos, and conflate them. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to make it sound like scientists are willfully lying about the state of our knowledge when you can pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word \u0026ldquo;gastrula,\u0026rdquo; and pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.As background, it\u0026rsquo;s important to note that the \u0026ldquo;developmental hourglass\u0026rdquo; (Myers provides a couple of diagrams to illustrate) is a summary of a century and a half of observations showing that organisms tend to be diverse in form in the earliest stages of development (blastula, gastrula, and neurula), converge on a similar form at the pharyngula stage (from which Myers\u0026rsquo; blog gets its name), and then diverge again into a diversity of adult forms. Thus, if a creationist engages in the above tactic, they will take a quote about differences at an early stage and make it look like a denial of similarity at the pharyngula stage.\nMyers points out a specific example where Wells does exactly this with a quote from developmental biologist William Ballard. Wells writes, quoting Ballard:\nIt is \u0026ldquo;only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,\u0026rdquo; by \u0026ldquo;bending the facts of nature,\u0026rdquo; that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates \u0026ldquo;are more alike than their adults.\u0026quot;As Myers points out, multiple quotes stitched together in a sentence like this are a red flag in the writings of creationists and intelligent design advocates. The full passage Wells is quoting says:\nBefore the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that \u0026ldquo;gastrulas\u0026rdquo; of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults.Ballard did not mean to assert that these \u0026ldquo;semantic tricks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;subjective selection of evidence\u0026rdquo; are used to claim that there is similarity at the pharyngula stage, as he also writes:\nAll then arrive at the pharyngula stage, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum, consisting of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged (though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and food supply). After the standardized pharyngula stage, the maturing of the structures of organs and tissues takes place on diverging line, each line characteristic of the class and further diverging into lines characteristic of the orders, families, and so on.This is a clear case of deceptive writing by Jonathan Wells.\nRead the rest, which includes further examples of dishonesty by Wells, at Pharyngula.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/deception-from-jonathan-wells.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/the_politically_incorrect_guid.php\"\u003ereviews chapter 3 of Jonathan Wells\u0026rsquo; new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, as part of a series of critiques of the book which will appear at \u003ca href=\"http://pandasthumb.org/\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.  The chapter, titled \u0026ldquo;Why you didn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026rsquo;evolve\u0026rsquo; in your mother\u0026rsquo;s womb,\u0026rdquo; includes quote mining of this sort:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis is the heart of Wells\u0026rsquo; strategy: pick comments by developmental biologists referring to different stages, which say very different things about the similarity of embryos, and conflate them. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to make it sound like scientists are willfully lying about the state of our knowledge when you can pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word \u0026ldquo;gastrula,\u0026rdquo; and pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs background, it\u0026rsquo;s important to note that the \u0026ldquo;developmental hourglass\u0026rdquo; (Myers provides a couple of diagrams to illustrate) is a summary of a century and a half of observations showing that organisms tend to be diverse in form in the earliest stages of development (blastula, gastrula, and neurula), converge on a similar form at the pharyngula stage (from which Myers\u0026rsquo; blog gets its name), and then diverge again into a diversity of adult forms.  Thus, if a creationist engages in the above tactic, they will take a quote about differences at an early stage and make it look like a denial of similarity at the pharyngula stage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMyers points out a specific example where Wells does exactly this with a quote from developmental biologist William Ballard.  Wells writes, quoting Ballard:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt is \u0026ldquo;only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,\u0026rdquo; by \u0026ldquo;bending the facts of nature,\u0026rdquo; that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates \u0026ldquo;are more alike than their adults.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs Myers points out, multiple quotes stitched together in a sentence like this are a red flag in the writings of creationists and intelligent design advocates.  The full passage Wells is quoting says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBefore the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that \u0026ldquo;gastrulas\u0026rdquo; of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBallard did not mean to assert that these \u0026ldquo;semantic tricks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;subjective selection of evidence\u0026rdquo; are used to claim that there is similarity at the pharyngula stage, as he also writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAll then arrive at \u003ci\u003ethe pharyngula stage, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum,\u003c/i\u003e consisting of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged (though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and food supply). After the standardized pharyngula stage, the maturing of the structures of organs and tissues takes place on diverging line, each line characteristic of the class and further diverging into lines characteristic of the orders, families, and so on.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is a clear case of deceptive writing by Jonathan Wells.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRead the rest, which includes further examples of dishonesty by Wells, at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/the_politically_incorrect_guid.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deception from Jonathan Wells"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a market for books by women who claim to have been the sex slaves of the famous. In Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien\u0026rsquo;s book, Trance Formation of America, she claims to have been raised to be a mind-controlled sex slave for presidents and celebrities on behalf of the CIA. The book is filled with completely absurd claims and unbelievable scenarios, and written in such a way as to be simultaneously titillating gossip about famous people and condemnation of such immoral acts. In short, it\u0026rsquo;s pornography for gullible prudes, much like the Meese Commission Report on Pornography that was sold by Focus on the Family (with the nastiest parts edited out). \u0026ldquo;Brice Taylor\u0026rdquo; (Susan Ford) was another mind control sex slave claimant, whose book Thanks for the Memories is similar in content to O\u0026rsquo;Brien\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;she tells of being the sex slave to both Henry Kissinger and Bob Hope.\nKola Boof, a Sudanese-American raised in Washington, D.C. who has written for the soap opera \u0026ldquo;Days of Our Lives,\u0026rdquo; claims that she was Osama bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s mistress in Morocco in 1996. (A time when Bin Laden was in Sudan.) In addition to claiming that Osama bin Laden was interested in Whitney Houston and liked to listen to the B-52\u0026rsquo;s, she says she was forced to have sex with other al Qaeda members, including two terrorists who were long dead at the time she describes.\nThe publisher of Boof\u0026rsquo;s book has been contacting bloggers who refer to Boof as a \u0026ldquo;sex slave,\u0026rdquo; stating that she was bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s mistress. Wonkette has an appropriate response.\nBoof may not be as crazy as Ford and O\u0026rsquo;Brien, but it sounds like her book may fall into the same genre.\n911truthnc (2007-03-01):\nfilled with completely absurd claimsWell think. Who do you shill for?\nLippard (2007-03-01):\nSorry, what's your point?I speak for and think for myself. I recommend it over parroting conspiracy theory claims that don't meet minimal standards of coherence or credibility, claiming that they represent the \"real truth.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/soap-writer-kola-boof-joins-bogus-sex.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a market for books by women who claim to have been the sex slaves of the famous.  In Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTrance Formation of America\u003c/span\u003e, she claims to have been raised to be a mind-controlled sex slave for presidents and celebrities on behalf of the CIA.  The book is filled with completely absurd claims and unbelievable scenarios, and written in such a way as to be simultaneously titillating gossip about famous people and condemnation of such immoral acts.  In short, it\u0026rsquo;s pornography for gullible prudes, much like the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMeese Commission Report on Pornography\u003c/span\u003e that was sold by Focus on the Family (with the nastiest parts edited out).  \u0026ldquo;Brice Taylor\u0026rdquo; (Susan Ford) was another mind control sex slave claimant, whose book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThanks for the Memories\u003c/span\u003e is similar in content to O\u0026rsquo;Brien\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;she tells of being the sex slave to both Henry Kissinger and Bob Hope.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKola Boof, a Sudanese-American raised in Washington, D.C. who has written for the soap opera \u0026ldquo;Days of Our Lives,\u0026rdquo; claims that she was Osama bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s mistress in Morocco in 1996.  (A time when Bin Laden was in Sudan.)  In addition to claiming that Osama bin Laden was interested in Whitney Houston and liked to listen to the B-52\u0026rsquo;s, she says she was forced to have sex with other al Qaeda members, \u003ca href=\"http://www.peterbergen.com/bergen/articles/details.aspx?id=268\"\u003eincluding two terrorists who were long dead at the time\u003c/a\u003e she describes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe publisher of Boof\u0026rsquo;s book has been contacting bloggers who refer to Boof as a \u0026ldquo;sex slave,\u0026rdquo; stating that she was bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s mistress.  Wonkette has \u003ca href=\"http://www.wonkette.com/politics/osama-bin-laden/breaking-woman-forced-to-live-sleep-with-osama-bin-laden-not-sex-slave-196484.php\"\u003ean appropriate response\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoof may not be as crazy as Ford and O\u0026rsquo;Brien, but it sounds like \u003ca href=\"http://www.harpers.org/HisPrerogative.html\"\u003eher book may fall into the same genre\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Soap writer Kola Boof joins the bogus sex slave claim party"},{"content":"The New York Times reports that the Department of Education has dropped evolutionary biology from the list of majors eligible for federal grant money. A DoE spokesperson stated that this was a \u0026ldquo;clerical error\u0026rdquo; that will be corrected.\nThe list of eligible majors is online here (PDF), and still has a blank space at 26.1303, where the major of evolutionary biology used to be listed.\nMore at the Secular Outpost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/evolutionary-biology-dropped-from-dept.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24evo.html?ref=science\"\u003ereports that the Department of Education has dropped evolutionary biology from the list of majors eligible for federal grant money\u003c/a\u003e.  A DoE spokesperson stated that this was a \u0026ldquo;clerical error\u0026rdquo; that will be corrected.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe list of eligible majors is online \u003ca href=\"http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), and still has a blank space at 26.1303, where the major of evolutionary biology used to be listed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at the \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/08/evolutionary-biology-major-dropped.html\"\u003eSecular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evolutionary biology dropped from Dept. of Education list of majors eligible for grants"},{"content":"In the Arizona Republic:\n\u0026ldquo;As GOP stalwarts try to distance themselves from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Trent Franks has remained by his side.\n\u0026ldquo;The embattled DeLay spoke at a Franks fund-raiser on Capitol Hill in December. Franks gave $4,200 to DeLay\u0026rsquo;s re-election committee in March, nearly six months after the then-Texas congressman was indicted by a grand jury on money-laundering and conspiracy charges. . . .\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Congressman Trent Franks isn\u0026rsquo;t going to cut and run from a friend when the going gets tough,\u0026rsquo; said [Franks spokesman Sydney] Hay, a former 2002 congressional candidate.\u0026quot;\nWhen DeLay gets convicted, I suggest Franks offers a sympathy resignation.\n(Hat tip to Talking Points Memo\u0026rsquo;s Daily Muck.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/arizona-rep-trent-franks-wont-cut-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0824dis2-delay0824.html\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u0026ldquo;As GOP stalwarts try to distance themselves from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Rep. Trent Franks has remained by his side.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The embattled DeLay spoke at a Franks fund-raiser on Capitol Hill in December. Franks gave $4,200 to DeLay\u0026rsquo;s re-election committee in March, nearly six months after the then-Texas congressman was indicted by a grand jury on money-laundering and conspiracy charges. . . .\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Rep. Trent Franks won't cut and run from his friend Tom DeLay"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier has an article at his blog that also appeared on Wired.com.\nThe point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.\nAnd we\u0026rsquo;re doing exactly what the terrorists want.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.\nIn truth, it\u0026rsquo;s doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn\u0026rsquo;t even have passports.\n\u0026hellip;\nOur politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we\u0026rsquo;re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists\u0026rsquo; actions, and increase the effects of their terror.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/what-terrorists-want.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier has \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/what_the_terror.html\"\u003ean article at his blog\u003c/a\u003e that also appeared on \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71642-0.html\"\u003eWired.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What the Terrorists Want"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports today that Barry Goldwater, Jr., son of the famed Arizona Senator and himself a former California Congressman, is a director of a company that sells \u0026ldquo;non-monetary\u0026rdquo; commemorative coins. Goldwater is a director at National Collector\u0026rsquo;s Mint, Inc., and allows his name and likeness to be used to promote their coins.\nLast year, the company paid over $2 million in restitution to customers who purchased its \u0026ldquo;Freedom Tower Silver Dollar,\u0026rdquo; after being sued by NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. They also paid $370,000 in civil penalties. The company had claimed that it was a \u0026ldquo;government issued\u0026rdquo; silver dollar and a \u0026ldquo;U.S. territorial minting\u0026rdquo; from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The islands use U.S. currency and are not authorized to mint their own. Perhaps not by coincidence, these islands were a client of Jack Abramoff which brought out Tom Delay on junkets to play golf. Congressman George Miller (D-CA) has said this about the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands:\n“Let’s remember what they paid for: a protection racket that sheltered a sweatshop industry that systematically exploited tens of thousands of impoverished foreign workers \u0026ndash; mostly Asian women \u0026ndash; who were little better than indentured servants; a sweatshop industry that earned some of the heaviest fines in U.S. history for violating labor laws; an industry repeatedly cited by the Departments of Justice, Interior and other federal agencies. They were defending a corrupt immigration system that regularly approved visas for non-existent jobs, resulting in hundreds of women being forced into the sex trade, including prostitution. “They killed my reform bills year after year. And even when an immigration reform by Senator Frank Murkowski, a Republican, was approved by the full Senate, they blocked it repeatedly in the House. Abramoff took credit and was paid handsomely for that, too. “This corrupt system existed because the CNMI slipped under federal labor and immigration laws. Abramoff, his lobbying colleagues, and some powerful friends in Congress are proud they prevented bipartisan reforms from being implemented. “The outstanding investigations by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Associated Press and others confirm the depravity of this protection racquet: the sweatshop industry, past CNMI administrations, Washington lobbyists and House Republican leaders who washed each others’ hands. “Everyone seems to have made a lot of money, except the poor and disenfranchised women who toiled in the sweatshops and the brothels. These people have so much to be ‘proud’ of. “And still, no congressional committee is investigating this aspect of Abramoff’s work, even though information indicates that Congress played a pivotal role in this protection scheme. This operation is beginning to look more and more like criminal activity and Congress must immediately launch a thorough investigation of this issue. The House Committee on Resources has jurisdiction over the Mariana Islands and I have already called on the Chairman, Representative Richard Pombo, to investigate this matter.\u0026quot; The Arizona Republic fails to comment on these other scandals related to the Mariana Islands and the Republican Party.\nIt does, however, go on to challenge some of the company\u0026rsquo;s claims about their coins. Their new \u0026ldquo;Fifth Anniversary World Trade Center Commemorative\u0026rdquo; coin, which sells for $29.95, is advertised as \u0026ldquo;non-monetary\u0026rdquo; (wording likely chosen for its likelihood to not be understood) and claims to be made from silver from \u0026ldquo;a bank vault found under tons of debris at ground zero.\u0026rdquo; The Republic points out that the company claims it can verify this claim, but would not provide any evidence to support it.\nThe coin is made out of 15 mg of 24-karat gold (worth 33 cents yesterday) and being 0.999 pure silver (worth 1/6 of a cent yesterday). The Republic quotes Michael Higdon of the American Bullion \u0026amp; Coin Co. in Flagstaff: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s not enough silver or gold in it to make it valuable, and it never will be valuable. Ever.\u0026quot;\nThe National Collector\u0026rsquo;s Mint claims to have given more than $1 million of proceeds from its 9/11-related coin sales to charity (including $5 from each sale of the \u0026ldquo;Fifth Anniversary\u0026rdquo; coins), of which the Republic was able to confirm $30,000 given to Tuesday\u0026rsquo;s Children, one of the charities named.\nIf they\u0026rsquo;re giving away $5 of each sale, the materials are worth 34 cents, and the manufacturing, shipping, and overhead costs another $5 per coin, they\u0026rsquo;re still pulling in $19.61 in profit per sale. If they\u0026rsquo;ve given away $1 million to charity, then at $5 per coin they\u0026rsquo;ve sold 200,000 coins, which would generate $3.9 million in profit.\nGoldwater says he believes the company is complying with the law, and that \u0026ldquo;the people involved are very good people, and they\u0026rsquo;re solid citizens who are out there working hard to make a living and provide a product and a service.\u0026quot;\nSeems to me a lot closer to a scam than a service.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/barry-goldwaters-son-defends.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0824biz-goldwater0824.html\"\u003ereports today\u003c/a\u003e that Barry Goldwater, Jr., son of the famed Arizona Senator and himself a former California Congressman, is a director of a company that sells  \u0026ldquo;non-monetary\u0026rdquo; commemorative coins.  Goldwater is a director at National Collector\u0026rsquo;s Mint, Inc., and allows his name and likeness to be used to promote their coins.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLast year, the company paid over $2 million in restitution to customers who purchased its \u0026ldquo;Freedom Tower Silver Dollar,\u0026rdquo; after being sued by NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.  They also paid $370,000 in civil penalties.  The company had claimed that it was a \u0026ldquo;government issued\u0026rdquo; silver dollar and a \u0026ldquo;U.S. territorial minting\u0026rdquo; from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.  The islands use U.S. currency and are not authorized to mint their own.  Perhaps not by coincidence, these islands were a client of Jack Abramoff which brought out Tom Delay on junkets to play golf.  Congressman George Miller (D-CA) has \u003ca href=\"http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/marianasupdate.html\"\u003esaid this about the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;\"\u003e“Let’s remember what they paid for: a protection racket that sheltered a sweatshop industry that systematically exploited tens of thousands of impoverished foreign workers \u0026ndash; mostly Asian women \u0026ndash; who were little better than indentured servants; a sweatshop industry that earned some of the heaviest fines in U.S. history for violating labor laws; an industry repeatedly cited by the Departments of Justice, Interior and other federal agencies. They were defending a corrupt immigration system that regularly approved visas for non-existent jobs, resulting in hundreds of women being forced into the sex trade, including prostitution. \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Barry Goldwater's son defends commemorative coin ripoffs"},{"content":"AT\u0026amp;T has filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed data brokers for using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; to obtain customer call data records. These data brokers would pose as the legitimate customers in order to obtain billing records for third parties for a fee. Data brokers selling this data over the Internet got some negative public attention last summer and in January of this year, but Congress has not made pretexting illegal for phone records the way it is for financial records. It came out in June of this year that law enforcement and federal agencies were active customers of these data brokers, using them to obtain data without having to go through the process of getting warrants.\nThe Electronic Privacy Information Center already filed an FTC complaint against one data broker, Bestpeoplesearch.com.\nHistorical Comments Anonymous (2007-08-29):\nHi,I have been using a phone record service being mentioned in the website www.fonerecords.com and it is working well so far.Ray\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/att-sues-data-brokers-selling-phone.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAT\u0026amp;T has \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060823/wr_nm/telecoms_att_dc_2\"\u003efiled a lawsuit against 25 unnamed data brokers\u003c/a\u003e for using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; to obtain customer call data records.  These data brokers would pose as the legitimate customers in order to obtain billing records for third parties for a fee.  Data brokers selling this data over the Internet got some negative public attention \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/cell-phone-call-records-available.html\"\u003elast summer and in January of this year\u003c/a\u003e, but Congress has not made pretexting illegal for phone records the way it is for financial records.   It came out in June of this year that \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/whos-been-using-pretexting-to-get-your.html\"\u003elaw enforcement and federal agencies were active customers of these data brokers\u003c/a\u003e, using them to obtain data without having to go through the process of getting warrants.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Electronic Privacy Information Center already \u003ca href=\"http://www.epic.org/privacy/iei/\"\u003efiled an FTC complaint\u003c/a\u003e against one data broker, Bestpeoplesearch.com.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AT\u0026T sues data brokers selling phone call records"},{"content":"A 10-inch rattlesnake was found in a hallway at the AMC Desert Ridge 18 theaters at Tatum and Loop 101 in Scottsdale on Friday. This led to a rumor that \u0026ldquo;rattlesnakes were let loose during a showing of Snakes on a Plane.\u0026quot;\nA security guard swept the snake outside and trapped it in a Tupperware container until the Arizona Herpetological Association could come and get it.\nApparently the theater had earlier called about a rattlesnake outside the building.\nThis led to the wildly exaggerated claim that:\nTwo live rattlesnakes were released in an Arizona theater during a showing\nof the new film, \u0026lsquo;Snakes on a Plane.\u0026rsquo; The snakes were released after the\nfilm began rolling in the dark theater at the AMC Desert Ridge multi-plex\nat Tatum and the 101 in north Phoenix.Good story, but it\u0026rsquo;s not true.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/snakes-in-theater.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA 10-inch rattlesnake \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0822talker-ON.html\"\u003ewas found in a hallway at the AMC Desert Ridge 18 theaters\u003c/a\u003e at Tatum and Loop 101 in Scottsdale on Friday.  This led to a rumor that \u0026ldquo;rattlesnakes were let loose during a showing of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSnakes on a Plane\u003c/span\u003e.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA security guard swept the snake outside and trapped it in a Tupperware container until the Arizona Herpetological Association could come and get it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently the theater had earlier called about a rattlesnake outside the building.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis led to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27267863.shtml\"\u003ewildly exaggerated claim that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTwo live rattlesnakes were released in an Arizona theater during a showing\u003cbr /\u003eof the new film, \u0026lsquo;Snakes on a Plane.\u0026rsquo;  The snakes were released after the\u003cbr /\u003efilm began rolling in the dark theater at the AMC Desert Ridge multi-plex\u003cbr /\u003eat Tatum and the 101 in north Phoenix.\u003c/blockquote\u003eGood story, but it\u0026rsquo;s not true.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Snakes in a theater"},{"content":"Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s inventory of homes for sale continues to rise (continuing from where we left off on June 16). My first report, in October 2005, showed an inventory of 10,748 homes on July 20, 2005, rising to 19,254 on October 2. (Data comes from ziprealty.com, via posts to Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog.)\n6/17/2006 49402\n6/18/2006 49546\n6/19/2006 49504\n6/20/2006 49432\n6/21/2006 49453\n6/22/2006 49867\n6/23/2006 50296\n6/24/2006 50599\n6/25/2006 50526\n6/26/2006 50413\n6/27/2006 50295\n6/28/2006 50395\n6/29/2006 50878\n6/30/2006 50347\n7/1/2006 50492\n7/2/2006 50404\n7/3/2006 50264\n7/4/2006 50511\n7/5/2006 50284\n7/6/2006 50227\n7/7/2006 50667\n7/8/2006 50944\n7/9/2006 50638\n7/10/2006 50167\n7/11/2006 51396\n7/12/2006 51124\n7/13/2006 50995\n7/14/2006 51302\n7/15/2006 51478\n7/16/2006 51642\n7/17/2006 51698\n7/18/2006 51704\n7/19/2006 51682\n7/20/2006 51557\n7/21/2006 51758\n7/22/2006 52110\n7/23/2006 52363\n7/24/2006 52137\n7/25/2006 52019\n7/26/2006 52540\n7/27/2006 52228\n7/28/2006 52595\n7/29/2006 52413\n7/30/2006 52482\n7/31/2006 52535\n8/1/2006 52230\n8/2/2006 52396\n8/3/2006 52337\n8/4/2006 52600\n8/5/2006 52802\n8/6/2006 52845\n8/7/2006 52953\n8/8/2006 52560\n8/9/2006 52513\n8/10/2006 52681\n8/11/2006 52417\n8/12/2006 52895\n8/13/2006 53126\n8/14/2006 52757\n8/15/2006 52793\n8/16/2006 52693\n8/17/2006 53102\n8/18/2006 52855\n8/19/2006 53014\n8/20/2006 53350\n10,748 on July 20, 2005 to 53,350 on August 20, 2006\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s a 496% increase in inventory in 13 months.\nEinzige\u0026ndash;how about an update on trustee sales?\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nAt last check, Maricopa County Notices of Trustee's Sales were averaging more than 40 per (business) day for August. That puts us on target for over 950 for the month, which is over 100 more than July. The last time the number was higher was in March of 2005.I think the real interesting numbers are still a few months away. We've still got a ways to go before the numbers start matching those of the tech bubble. I'll post an update to my graph in November, I think.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAugust's total overshot my estimate by 81!There were a total of 1031 Notices of Trustee Sale.Let's put that number in perspective. Looking at the last 140 months, the mean number of N/TRs is 900, and the standard deviation for that data set is 286.So, 1031, while it's nearly 200 higher than July's number, is still fairly representative, and is well off January 2003's high of 1738.Of course the past 140 months may be somewhat atypical, given that they contain the tech bubble numbers, which certainly have skewed the data upwards.If September's number is higher than 1100 then I'll post an updated graph.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/phoenix-housing-bubble-deflation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePhoenix\u0026rsquo;s inventory of homes for sale continues to rise (continuing from \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/phoenix-housing-bubble-update.html\"\u003ewhere we left off on June 16\u003c/a\u003e).  My \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/housing-bubble-losing-volume-in.html\"\u003efirst report, in October 2005\u003c/a\u003e, showed an inventory of 10,748 homes on July 20, 2005, rising to 19,254 on October 2.  (Data comes from ziprealty.com, via posts to Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/\"\u003eHousing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6/17/2006 49402\u003cbr /\u003e6/18/2006 49546\u003cbr /\u003e6/19/2006 49504\u003cbr /\u003e6/20/2006 49432\u003cbr /\u003e6/21/2006 49453\u003cbr /\u003e6/22/2006 49867\u003cbr /\u003e6/23/2006 50296\u003cbr /\u003e6/24/2006 50599\u003cbr /\u003e6/25/2006 50526\u003cbr /\u003e6/26/2006 50413\u003cbr /\u003e6/27/2006 50295\u003cbr /\u003e6/28/2006 50395\u003cbr /\u003e6/29/2006 50878\u003cbr /\u003e6/30/2006 50347\u003cbr /\u003e7/1/2006 50492\u003cbr /\u003e7/2/2006 50404\u003cbr /\u003e7/3/2006 50264\u003cbr /\u003e7/4/2006 50511\u003cbr /\u003e7/5/2006 50284\u003cbr /\u003e7/6/2006 50227\u003cbr /\u003e7/7/2006 50667\u003cbr /\u003e7/8/2006 50944\u003cbr /\u003e7/9/2006 50638\u003cbr /\u003e7/10/2006 50167\u003cbr /\u003e7/11/2006 51396\u003cbr /\u003e7/12/2006 51124\u003cbr /\u003e7/13/2006 50995\u003cbr /\u003e7/14/2006 51302\u003cbr /\u003e7/15/2006 51478\u003cbr /\u003e7/16/2006 51642\u003cbr /\u003e7/17/2006 51698\u003cbr /\u003e7/18/2006 51704\u003cbr /\u003e7/19/2006 51682\u003cbr /\u003e7/20/2006 51557\u003cbr /\u003e7/21/2006 51758\u003cbr /\u003e7/22/2006 52110\u003cbr /\u003e7/23/2006 52363\u003cbr /\u003e7/24/2006 52137\u003cbr /\u003e7/25/2006 52019\u003cbr /\u003e7/26/2006 52540\u003cbr /\u003e7/27/2006 52228\u003cbr /\u003e7/28/2006 52595\u003cbr /\u003e7/29/2006 52413\u003cbr /\u003e7/30/2006 52482\u003cbr /\u003e7/31/2006 52535\u003cbr /\u003e8/1/2006 52230\u003cbr /\u003e8/2/2006 52396\u003cbr /\u003e8/3/2006 52337\u003cbr /\u003e8/4/2006 52600\u003cbr /\u003e8/5/2006 52802\u003cbr /\u003e8/6/2006 52845\u003cbr /\u003e8/7/2006 52953\u003cbr /\u003e8/8/2006 52560\u003cbr /\u003e8/9/2006 52513\u003cbr /\u003e8/10/2006 52681\u003cbr /\u003e8/11/2006 52417\u003cbr /\u003e8/12/2006 52895\u003cbr /\u003e8/13/2006 53126\u003cbr /\u003e8/14/2006 52757\u003cbr /\u003e8/15/2006 52793\u003cbr /\u003e8/16/2006 52693\u003cbr /\u003e8/17/2006 53102\u003cbr /\u003e8/18/2006 52855\u003cbr /\u003e8/19/2006 53014\u003cbr /\u003e8/20/2006 53350\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10,748 on July 20, 2005 to 53,350 on August 20, 2006\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s a 496% increase in inventory in 13 months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEinzige\u0026ndash;how about an update on trustee sales?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix housing bubble deflation update"},{"content":"The U.S. Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit, ruled last week that if you are driving around with large amounts of cash, the government may presume that you are guilty of drug trafficking and seize that cash.\nThe case in question was United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency (forfeiture cases name the seized items as the defendant). Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez was pulled over for speeding in Nebraska in 2003 while driving a rented Ford Taurus. In the car was a cooler with $124,700 in cash, which was seized on suspicion of a drug crime. A drug-sniffing dog barked at the car and the cooler, which was taken as evidence.\nFriends of Gonzolez testified that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck in order to start a produce business. Gonzalez was sent on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy the truck, but it had already sold. He had no credit card, so had a third party rent a car for him. He says he hid the money in a cooler to prevent it from being stolen.\nThe District Court had found for Gonzolez, saying that there was no evidence of drug activity. The Appeals court disagreed, with a strong dissent by Judge Donald Lay.\nForfeiture laws have long been heavily abused in the name of the war on drugs. In 1991, the Pittsburgh Press ran a six-part series on forfeiture abuse called Presumed Guilty: The Law\u0026rsquo;s Victims in the War on Drugs which can be found in various places online.\nUPDATE: Ed Brayton has also commented on this story at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThis may not be as bad as it appears, for the reasons Ted Frank points out in a comment at Overlawyered.\nAnonymous (2007-11-08):\nWhen one playes god and money is they only evendence the court has then they have nothin. I for one can not respect any court that breacks there own rulse, how is by catching them driveing while talking on cell phone or shaveing or even puting lipstick on while driveing. They to breack laws and not cought. so you might have the weaght but there are reasonable people and honest people who will always have the power to continue to carrie any amount they chose. For there are some thing that are understandable but when you diside sombudys fat becouse of some measeley money for a truck or some leginoment reason and without proof. then what right do you have by playing god, you had no proof that he and he alone was buying, selling or give any druge for any reason you had no proof period. it is therefor that you have volidated humens rights you (the high court)had brocke the law to you are no diffrent then any buddy eles. guilty by playing god!!!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/drive-with-cash-youre-presumed-guilty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/12/1296.asp\"\u003eruled last week\u003c/a\u003e that if you are driving around with large amounts of cash, the government may presume that you are guilty of drug trafficking and seize that cash.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe case in question was \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUnited States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency\u003c/span\u003e (forfeiture cases name the seized items as the defendant).  Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez was pulled over for speeding in Nebraska in 2003 while driving a rented Ford Taurus.  In the car was a cooler with $124,700 in cash, which was seized on suspicion of a drug crime.  A drug-sniffing dog barked at the car and the cooler, which was taken as evidence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFriends of Gonzolez testified that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck in order to start a produce business.  Gonzalez was sent on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy the truck, but it had already sold.  He had no credit card, so had a third party rent a car for him.  He says he hid the money in a cooler to prevent it from being stolen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe District Court had found for Gonzolez, saying that there was no evidence of drug activity.  The Appeals court disagreed, with a strong dissent by Judge Donald Lay.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eForfeiture laws have long been heavily abused in the name of the war on drugs.  In 1991, the Pittsburgh Press ran a six-part series on forfeiture abuse called \u003ca href=\"http://256.com/gray/presume/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePresumed Guilty: The Law\u0026rsquo;s Victims in the War on Drugs\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e which can be found in various places online.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Ed Brayton has also commented on this story at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/have_cash_go_to_jail.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Drive with cash, you're presumed guilty"},{"content":"ABC News:\n\u0026ldquo;The lady in the red dress,\u0026rdquo; Kallman says on the tape, to cheers and laughter. \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know who got her, but it went right through the sign and hit her smack dab in the middle of the head.\u0026quot;\nAnother officer can be heard off-camera, asking, \u0026ldquo;Do I get a piece of her red dress?\u0026quot;Sgt. Kallman, rather than reprimand officers who shot Miami protester Elizabeth Ritter four times with rubber bullets on November 20, 2003, including once in the face (through her sign, which read \u0026ldquo;Fear Totalitarianism\u0026rdquo;), complimented them.\nA public apology was made by the department only after the videotape of officers laughing at the day\u0026rsquo;s events became public.\nAs Ritter asks, \u0026ldquo;What type of training leads people to laugh about shooting an unarmed citizen for merely holding up a sign that says \u0026lsquo;Fear Totalitarianism\u0026rsquo;?\u0026quot;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the video:\nHat tip to Radley Balko at The Agitator.\nAnonymous (2007-11-14):\nThe elite's government FEARS you!!!!!!Their fear is manifested in the laws they pass. Here is a law banning what MANY of the Founders wrote is a RIGHT of citizens when a government no longer represents them:Section 2385. Advocating overthrow of GovernmentWhoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, orteaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety ofoverthrowing or destroying the government of the United States orthe government of any State, Territory, District or Possessionthereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, byforce or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of anysuch government; orWhoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of anysuch government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates,sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printedmatter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity,desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying anygovernment in the United States by force or violence, or attemptsto do so; orWhoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society,group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage theoverthrow or destruction of any such government by force orviolence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, anysuch society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposesthereof -Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more thantwenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment bythe United States or any department or agency thereof, for the fiveyears next following his conviction.If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named inthis section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisonednot more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible foremployment by the United States or any department or agencythereof, for the five years next following his conviction.As used in this section, the terms ''organizes'' and''organize'', with respect to any society, group, or assembly ofpersons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of newunits, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes,and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.The federal government is allowing MILLIONS of illegals to invade our country. Corporate America is becoming increasingly more powerful and influential. Yet, according to the government of for and by the elites YOU, a citizen, have to accept whatever the government does with NO recourse other than voting...... and there is sufficient proof that shows to me voting is worthless since the entrenched power structure ensures that the emplaced elite class can not be removed.Several Founders specifically wrote of the people's right to abolish a government when it no longer represents them.We are forced to live under an elite's TYRANNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\nLippard (2007-11-14):\nI don't see any problem with that law, considering the qualification \"by force or violence.\" Violent revolution is always going to be considered illegal by any rational form of government.I don't know what illegal immigration has to do with the issue, but I draw exactly the opposite conclusion from you on that subject.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/police-laugh-about-shooting-protester.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2296783\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003eABC News\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;The lady in the red dress,\u0026rdquo; Kallman says on the tape, to cheers and laughter. \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know who got her, but it went right through the sign and hit her smack dab in the middle of the head.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother officer can be heard off-camera, asking, \u0026ldquo;Do I get a piece of her red dress?\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eSgt. Kallman, rather than reprimand officers who shot Miami protester Elizabeth Ritter four times with rubber bullets on November 20, 2003, including once in the face (through her sign, which read \u0026ldquo;Fear Totalitarianism\u0026rdquo;), complimented them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA public apology was made by the department only after the videotape of officers laughing at the day\u0026rsquo;s events became public.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Ritter asks, \u0026ldquo;What type of training leads people to laugh about shooting an unarmed citizen for merely holding up a sign that says \u0026lsquo;Fear Totalitarianism\u0026rsquo;?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the video:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Slaw1tYDPFc\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Slaw1tYDPFc\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to Radley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026944.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Police laugh about shooting protester in the face"},{"content":"In February, I commented on an undercover investigation in South Florida about what happens when you try to obtain a complaint form to file a complaint against a police officer. Many locations were aggressively uncooperative.\nThings are much, much worse in Independence, Missouri.\nHat tip: Radley Balko at The Agitator.\nUPDATE (January 8, 2007): Greg Slate, the individual in Missouri who had his head slammed into a plexiglass window for asking for a complaint form, was found not guilty of inciting a riot on November 8, 2006. The officer was not disciplined. (Via The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Mike P. (2007-01-23):\nYou can post your complaints about Durham-in-Wonderland on this sites to be seen by wide audience All Consumer and Product reviews http://www.pissedconsumer.com/all-reviews/index.html\nAutomobile and car reviews with real consumer opinions http://www.pissedconsumer.com/auto/index.html\nCons and Con-artist stories http://www.pissedconsumer.com/cons/index.html\nConsumer reviews and opinions and products and services http://www.pissedconsumer.com/cons/index.html\nConsumer reviews and opinions about service delivery http://www.pissedconsumer.com/delivery/index.html\nFinance Opinions and Complaints http://www.pissedconsumer.com/finance/index.html\nFood Opinions and Complaints by real consumers http://www.pissedconsumer.com/food/index.html\nOpinions by real consumers about health/medical organizations http://www.pissedconsumer.com/health/index.html\nMiscelaneous Consumer Reviews http://www.pissedconsumer.com/misc/index.html\nOther Consumer Reviews and Opinions http://www.pissedconsumer.com/other/index.html\nConsumer Service Complaints http://www.pissedconsumer.com/services/index.html\nConsumer Travel Reviews http://www.pissedconsumer.com/travel/index.html\nYou can also visit us at http://pissedconsumer.blogspot.com\nRegards\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/trying-to-file-complaint-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn February, I commented on an undercover investigation in South Florida about what happens when you \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/trying-to-file-complaint-against.html\"\u003etry to obtain a complaint form to file a complaint against a police officer\u003c/a\u003e.  Many locations were aggressively uncooperative.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThings are much, much worse in Independence, Missouri.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/p53ky3RIjfU\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/p53ky3RIjfU\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip:  Radley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026947.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 8, 2007):  Greg Slate, the individual in Missouri who had his head slammed into a plexiglass window for asking for a complaint form, \u003ca href=\"http://www.policeabuse.org/acquitted-in-independance-mo-of-bogus-riot-charge/\"\u003ewas found not guilty of inciting a riot on November 8, 2006\u003c/a\u003e.  The officer was not disciplined.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027382.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying to file a complaint against a police officer in Missouri"},{"content":"I live in a heavily Democratic district of Arizona, in South Phoenix. Last election, the Republicans didn\u0026rsquo;t even bother to field candidates. This year, however, Daniel Coleman of Laveen is seeking one of the two House seats as a Republican.\nIn 1997, Coleman was arrested for DUI and convicted. In 2003, he was living in the very tiny southeastern town of Portal, Arizona (the location of Crystal Cave\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve camped and done some spelunking there). He went with his date Gail Chalker, her two sisters Annette and Carol, and Annette\u0026rsquo;s fiance, Colby Rawson to the nearby town of Rodeo, New Mexico, for an evening of drinking at the Rodeo Tavern. Annette and Gail got into an argument over an air compressor that Annette wanted to borrow. Coleman and Gail and Carol Chalker returned to Portal at 10:30 p.m., and Rawson and Annette Chalker and her two children drove up to Coleman\u0026rsquo;s home shortly before midnight to pick up the air compressor that was kept on the porch. She opened the door and called to her sister, and when the screen door slammed shut, Coleman and Gail Chalker were awakened. Coleman grabbed his .38 pistol, and the two of them left the bedroom and saw Annette Chalker in the entryway. Gail Chalker says that Annette charged them and was trying to grab her by the throat, and Coleman\u0026rsquo;s gun fired, shooting a bullet into Annette\u0026rsquo;s face below her left eye, killing her. Coleman said it was an accident, and Gail Chalker corroborated his story.\nColeman was indicted on charges of first-degree murder but was never prosecuted for lack of evidence. He was sued by the Chalker family for wrongful death, which was settled.\nWhen asked about Coleman, Arizona Republican Party chairman Matt Salmon said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve never met the guy. This is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve even heard about this guy. \u0026hellip; The Republican Party did not recruit him to run. \u0026hellip; I\u0026rsquo;m very discouraged about anybody who has a DUI in their background.\u0026quot;\nColeman is a 1993 Rutgers University graduate who has worked in the Phoenix area since 1997 as a computer contractor for the state Department of Economic Security. He runs a consulting company called Candia Systems Associates. He grew up in Cochise County, where his family had a ranch. His stepfather was Wyatt Earp researcher Glenn Boyer, an amateur historian who has been charged with fabricating material in the book I Married Wyatt Earp, which billed Josephine Earp as the author and Boyer as the editor. That scandal first came to public view as a result of investigation by Tony Ortega, then of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s weekly New Times. Ortega went on to work at the Los Angeles New Times (now defunct) and has written several in-depth investigative pieces about the Church of Scientology.\nColeman\u0026rsquo;s mother (and Boyer\u0026rsquo;s wife) is Western novelist Jane Candia Coleman.\n(Most of the above is from the Arizona Republic story on Coleman.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/killer-runs-for-state-legislature.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI live in a heavily Democratic district of Arizona, in South Phoenix.  Last election, the Republicans didn\u0026rsquo;t even bother to field candidates.  This year, however, Daniel Coleman of Laveen is seeking one of the two House seats as a Republican.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1997, Coleman was arrested for DUI and convicted.  In 2003, he was living in the very tiny southeastern town of Portal, Arizona (the location of Crystal Cave\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve camped and done some spelunking there).  He went with his date Gail Chalker, her two sisters Annette and Carol, and Annette\u0026rsquo;s fiance, Colby Rawson to the nearby town of Rodeo, New Mexico, for an evening of drinking at the Rodeo Tavern.  Annette and Gail got into an argument over an air compressor that Annette wanted to borrow.  Coleman and Gail and Carol Chalker returned to Portal at 10:30 p.m., and Rawson and Annette Chalker and her two children drove up to Coleman\u0026rsquo;s home shortly before midnight to pick up the air compressor that was kept on the porch.  She opened the door and called to her sister, and when the screen door slammed shut, Coleman and Gail Chalker were awakened.  Coleman grabbed his .38 pistol, and the two of them left the bedroom and saw Annette Chalker in the entryway.  Gail Chalker says that Annette charged them and was trying to grab her by the throat, and Coleman\u0026rsquo;s gun fired, shooting a bullet into Annette\u0026rsquo;s face below her left eye, killing her.  Coleman said it was an accident, and Gail Chalker corroborated his story.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eColeman was indicted on charges of first-degree murder but was never prosecuted for lack of evidence.  He was sued by the Chalker family for wrongful death, which was settled.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen asked about Coleman, Arizona Republican Party chairman Matt Salmon said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve never met the guy. This is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve even heard about this guy. \u0026hellip; The Republican Party did not recruit him to run. \u0026hellip; I\u0026rsquo;m very discouraged about anybody who has a DUI in their background.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eColeman is a 1993 Rutgers University graduate who has worked in the Phoenix area since 1997 as a computer contractor for the state Department of Economic Security.  He runs a consulting company called Candia Systems Associates.  He grew up in Cochise County, where his family had a ranch.  His stepfather was Wyatt Earp researcher Glenn Boyer, an amateur historian who \u003ca href=\"http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/08/earp/print.html\"\u003ehas been charged with fabricating material in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI Married Wyatt Earp\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which billed Josephine Earp as the author and Boyer as the editor.  That scandal first came to public view as a result of \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/1998-12-24/news/feature4.html\"\u003einvestigation by Tony Ortega\u003c/a\u003e, then of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s weekly \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e.  Ortega went on to work at the Los Angeles \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e (now defunct) and has written several in-depth investigative pieces about the Church of Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eColeman\u0026rsquo;s mother (and Boyer\u0026rsquo;s wife) is Western novelist Jane Candia Coleman.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Most of the above is from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0819coleman0819.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e story on Coleman\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Killer runs for state legislature"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just come across the 9/11 Myths site, which debunks a lot of the bogus claims made on the Internet by conspiracy theorists. It\u0026rsquo;s well worth checking out along with the Popular Mechanics website and \u0026ldquo;Loose Change\u0026rdquo; debunking website referenced in this posting on the conspiracy-mongering Scholars for 9/11 Truth.\nAlso check out the Nyctohylophobia blog debunking 9/11 conspiracy claims, run by a bright Catholic high school student.\nUPDATE September 1, 2006: The Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories site is also a good resource.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/911-myths-debunked.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just come across the \u003ca href=\"http://www.911myths.com/\"\u003e9/11 Myths site\u003c/a\u003e, which debunks a lot of the bogus claims made on the Internet by conspiracy theorists.  It\u0026rsquo;s well worth checking out along with the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePopular Mechanics\u003c/span\u003e website and \u0026ldquo;Loose Change\u0026rdquo; debunking website referenced in \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/scholars-for-911-truth.html\"\u003ethis posting on the conspiracy-mongering Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso check out the \u003ca href=\"http://nyctohylophobia.blogspot.com/\"\u003eNyctohylophobia blog\u003c/a\u003e debunking 9/11 conspiracy claims, run by a bright Catholic high school student.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE September 1, 2006:  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.debunking911.com/\"\u003eDebunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories\u003c/a\u003e site is also a good resource.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 Myths debunked"},{"content":"Timken High School in Canton, Ohio has had an abstinence-only sex education program for the last 18 years. The program has not been updated during that time. In the last year, 65 of the 490 female students in the high school became pregnant. The school board has now voted to update the program and include safe sex information in the curriculum, while continuing to promote abstinence.\nMore at Salon.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/abstinence-only-sex-education-13-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTimken High School in Canton, Ohio has had an abstinence-only sex education program for the last 18 years.  The program has not been updated during that time.  In the last year, 65 of the 490 female students in the high school became pregnant.  The school board has now voted to update the program and include safe sex information in the curriculum, while continuing to promote abstinence.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/08/17/Ohio/index.html\"\u003eSalon.com\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abstinence-only sex education = 13% of female students pregnant in one year"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier points out a problem at Yosemite National Park\u0026ndash;how to make garbage cans that resist the ability of bears to get into them, yet are not so complicated that tourists can\u0026rsquo;t figure out how to put their trash into them. Best quote, from a park ranger: \u0026ldquo;There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.\u0026quot;\nThere are some great comments on the thread\u0026ndash;e.g., Saxon:\nHow long before the bears start lurking near the cans, waiting for a human to open one so the bear can \u0026ldquo;mug\u0026rdquo; the human and get at the contents (rather like an ATM mugger)? Based on my experiences with the black bears in New England, this would not be beyond a bear\u0026rsquo;s reasoning capacity.and Mike Sherwood:\nThe party putting stuff into the trash is willing to spend about 10 seconds on the activity, whereas the party getting stuff out has no time limit. In order to cater to the lazy and stupid, someone has to do more work. The configuration given doesn\u0026rsquo;t work because it has the traditional open and closed configurations, while making the switch between those configurations needlessly complex. In this case, they need a recepticle that fails secure.\nA mailbox like solution seems pretty obvious and rational to me. A cylinder with a horizontal axis has to be rotated to a position where it is accessable only from the outside in order to put trash in, then it rolls back to the position where the contents drop into a storage bin. A simple lock on the bin would keep everyone but the trash collector out of the bin, but allow everyone to deposit their trash in a designated location.\nHowever, the trash can design could have been someone\u0026rsquo;s thesis paper to prove that bears are pretty smart and a lot of humans are dumber than paste.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/bears-and-conveniencesecurity-tradeoff.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html\"\u003epoints out a problem at Yosemite National Park\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;how to make garbage cans that resist the ability of bears to get into them, yet are not so complicated that tourists can\u0026rsquo;t figure out how to put their trash into them.  Best quote, from a park ranger:  \u0026ldquo;There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are some great comments on the thread\u0026ndash;e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html#c107655\"\u003eSaxon\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHow long before the bears start lurking near the cans, waiting for a human to open one so the bear can \u0026ldquo;mug\u0026rdquo; the human and get at the contents (rather like an ATM mugger)? Based on my experiences with the black bears in New England, this would not be beyond a bear\u0026rsquo;s reasoning capacity.\u003c/blockquote\u003eand \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html#c107660\"\u003eMike Sherwood\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe party putting stuff into the trash is willing to spend about 10 seconds on the activity, whereas the party getting stuff out has no time limit. In order to cater to the lazy and stupid, someone has to do more work.\u003cdiv id=\"c107660\"\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe configuration given doesn\u0026rsquo;t work because it has the traditional open and closed configurations, while making the switch between those configurations needlessly complex. In this case, they need a recepticle that fails secure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bears and the convenience/security tradeoff"},{"content":"Ed Felten raises some very interesting points about the recent terrorist threat against planes and our response:\nJust as interesting as the attackers’ plans is the government response of beefing up airport security. The immediate security changes made sense in the short run, on the theory that the situation was uncertain and the arrests might trigger immediate attacks by unarrested co-conspirators. But it seems likely that at least some of the new restrictions will continue indefinitely, even though they’re mostly just security theater.\nWhich suggests another reason the bad guys wanted to attack planes: perhaps it was because planes are so intensively secured; perhaps they wanted to send the message that nowhere is safe. Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that this speculation is right, and that visible security measures actually invite attacks. If this is right, then we’re playing a very unusual security game. Should we reduce airport security theater, on the theory that it may be making air travel riskier? Or should we beef it up even more, to draw attacks away from more vulnerable points? Fortunately (for me) I don’t have space here to suggest answers to these questions. (And don’t get me started on the flaws in our current airport screening system.)\nThe bad guys’ decision to attack planes tells us something interesting about them. And our decision to exhaustively defend planes tells us something interesting about ourselves.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/attacks-on-plane.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Felten \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1054\"\u003eraises some very interesting points about the recent terrorist threat against planes and our response\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eJust as interesting as the attackers’ plans is the government response of beefing up airport security. The immediate security changes made sense in the short run, on the theory that the situation was uncertain and the arrests might trigger immediate attacks by unarrested co-conspirators. But it seems likely that at least some of the new restrictions will continue indefinitely, even though they’re mostly just \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater\" _base_href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1054\"\u003esecurity theater\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Attacks on a plane"},{"content":"Paul Pechonis was arrested at his home for allegedly threatening the life of a police officer on his website. This was a police officer who allegedly threatened to hold a gun to the head of his son. That arrest was videotaped with the consent of all parties except the police, by a camera in Pechonis\u0026rsquo; home. The video was placed online by Mary Jean, who has been threatened with felony charges for posting it. A federal judge issued an injunction supporting Jean, which the Attorney General has appealed. Jean has the support of the ACLU of Massachusetts and the lawfirm of Choate, Hall \u0026amp; Stewart.\nJean is the webmaster of conte2006.com, a website critical of Worcester County district attorney John Conte, which is where the video is hosted.\nYou can also find the video on YouTube. Although the video has been described by some as showing an \u0026ldquo;invasive search\u0026rdquo; without a warrant, the officers say they are just checking the home to see if anyone else is present. They are not shown moving or opening anything on camera, and the search is very brief (just a few minutes)\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t see any evidence of an \u0026ldquo;invasive search.\u0026quot;\nNow prosecutors have threatened Pechonis, issuing a cease and desist order for merely linking to the video of his arrest from his own website.\nGood job, prosecutors\u0026ndash;you\u0026rsquo;ve just ensured that there will be much more attention to this video and Pechonis\u0026rsquo; case.\n(Hat tip to The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/massachusetts-state-police-man-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Pechonis \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1829\"\u003ewas arrested at his home for allegedly threatening the life of a police officer\u003c/a\u003e on his website.  This was a police officer who allegedly threatened to hold a gun to the head of his son.  That arrest was videotaped with the consent of all parties except the police, by a camera in Pechonis\u0026rsquo; home.  The video was placed online by Mary Jean, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3209\"\u003ewho has been threatened with felony charges for posting it\u003c/a\u003e.  A federal judge issued an injunction supporting Jean, which the Attorney General has appealed.  Jean has the support of the ACLU of Massachusetts and the lawfirm of Choate, Hall \u0026amp; Stewart.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJean is the webmaster of \u003ca href=\"http://conte2006.com/\"\u003econte2006.com\u003c/a\u003e, a website critical of Worcester County district attorney John Conte, which is where the video is hosted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou can also find the video on \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8sxupvQAo\"\u003eYouTube\u003c/a\u003e. Although the video has been described by some as showing an \u0026ldquo;invasive search\u0026rdquo; without a warrant, the officers say they are just checking the home to see if anyone else is present.  They are not shown moving or opening anything on camera, and the search is very brief (just a few minutes)\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t see any evidence of an \u0026ldquo;invasive search.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow prosecutors have threatened Pechonis, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showComment.do?commentId=6179\"\u003eissuing a cease and desist order for merely linking to the video of his arrest from his own website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGood job, prosecutors\u0026ndash;you\u0026rsquo;ve just ensured that there will be much more attention to \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8sxupvQAo\"\u003ethis video\u003c/a\u003e and Pechonis\u0026rsquo; case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026938.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Massachusetts State Police arrest man for linking website to arrest video"},{"content":"Gadi Evron has now suggested, following Paul Vixie, that it\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time to fight botnets by shutting down botnet controllers. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I wrote to some colleagues when I read Vixie\u0026rsquo;s statement that stomping out botnets is not only a waste of time, but counter-productive because it causes botherders to change their behavior and find new malicious techniques:\n1. If you don\u0026rsquo;t stomp them they are still going to develop new ways of doing things as a result of internal competition. It may happen more slowly, but it will still happen. There\u0026rsquo;s no getting around an arms race. Even taking his analogy seriously, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t recommend that we stop using antibiotics.\n2. Waiting on law enforcement to start effectively prosecuting will take a long time, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll be happy with what it will take for them to do it (I\u0026rsquo;m already unhappy with the new CALEA draft bill that\u0026rsquo;s circulating). Criminal prosecution will likely never target more than a minority of offenders\u0026ndash;mostly the high-profile cases.\n3. Taking action raises their costs, which applies more broadly the same economic effect as prosecution does in a narrower and stronger manner. Again, if we take the antibiotic analogy seriously, a diversity of approaches is better than relying on a single approach.\n4. Our experience seems to indicate a drop in botnet controller activity when we hit them consistently. If the bulk of miscreants follow the path of least resistance, putting up a fight will tend to push them to environs where people aren\u0026rsquo;t putting up a fight.Shutting down botnet controllers does have positive effects\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s much quicker and reliable than law enforcement prosecution. I think a diversity of defensive actions is important, and we need to continue developing more of them\u0026ndash;as I said above, it is a continuing arms race.\nRichard Bejtlich has also commented on this subject at his TaoSecurity blog, and there\u0026rsquo;s some good discussion in the comments. David Bianco has offered a suggestion at the InfoSecPotpourri blog. Bianco\u0026rsquo;s suggestion is to modify the botnet C\u0026amp;C traffic, which in order to be most effective would have to occur at either large consumer ISPs (where 99+% of the bots are located) or at a small number of high-volume, low-cost webhosting companies (where 75+% of the botnet controllers are located).\nThere are a number of approaches that are being developed, which I won\u0026rsquo;t describe in any detail here, but I agree that new approaches need to go more strongly after the bots themselves rather than just the botnet controllers. Those approaches need to use Netflow, and they need to use DNS. We also need to provide incentives for consumers with old, unpatched, vulnerable systems to protect themselves and to be protected by their ISPs\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s where the biggest bang for the buck will occur.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/is-it-worth-shutting-down-botnet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGadi Evron \u003ca href=\"http://www.irbs.net/internet/nanog/0607/0367.html\"\u003ehas now suggested\u003c/a\u003e, following \u003ca href=\"http://fm.vix.com/internet/security/superbugs.html\"\u003ePaul Vixie\u003c/a\u003e, that it\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time to fight botnets by shutting down botnet controllers.  Here\u0026rsquo;s what I wrote to some colleagues when I read Vixie\u0026rsquo;s statement that stomping out botnets is not only a waste of time, but counter-productive because it causes botherders to change their behavior and find new malicious techniques:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e1.  If you don\u0026rsquo;t stomp them they are \u003cem\u003estill\u003c/em\u003e going to develop new ways of doing things as a result of internal competition.  It may happen more slowly, but it will still happen.  There\u0026rsquo;s no getting around an arms race.  Even taking his analogy seriously, he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t recommend that we stop using antibiotics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Waiting on law enforcement to start effectively prosecuting will take a long time, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll be happy with what it will take for them to do it (I\u0026rsquo;m already unhappy with the new CALEA draft bill that\u0026rsquo;s circulating).  Criminal prosecution will likely never target more than a minority of offenders\u0026ndash;mostly the high-profile cases.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Taking action raises their costs, which applies more broadly the same economic effect as prosecution does in a narrower and stronger manner.  Again, if we take the antibiotic analogy seriously, a diversity of approaches is better than relying on a single approach.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Our experience seems to indicate a drop in botnet controller activity when we hit them consistently.  If the bulk of miscreants follow the path of least resistance, putting up a fight will tend to push them to environs where people aren\u0026rsquo;t putting up a fight.\u003c/blockquote\u003eShutting down botnet controllers does have positive effects\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s much quicker and reliable than law enforcement prosecution.  I think a diversity of defensive actions is important, and we need to continue developing more of them\u0026ndash;as I said above, it is a continuing arms race.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRichard Bejtlich has \u003ca href=\"http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2006/08/gadi-evron-on-botnet-command-and.html\"\u003ealso commented on this subject\u003c/a\u003e at his TaoSecurity blog, and there\u0026rsquo;s some good discussion in the comments.  David Bianco has \u003ca href=\"http://infosecpotpourri.blogspot.com/2006/08/crazy-botnet-idea.html\"\u003eoffered a suggestion at the InfoSecPotpourri blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Bianco\u0026rsquo;s suggestion is to modify the botnet C\u0026amp;C traffic, which in order to be most effective would have to occur at either large consumer ISPs (where 99+% of the bots are located) or at a small number of high-volume, low-cost webhosting companies (where 75+% of the botnet controllers are located).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are a number of approaches that are being developed, which I won\u0026rsquo;t describe in any detail here, but I agree that new approaches need to go more strongly after the bots themselves rather than just the botnet controllers.  Those approaches need to use Netflow, and they need to use DNS.  We also need to provide incentives for consumers with old, unpatched, vulnerable systems to protect themselves and to be protected by their ISPs\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s where the biggest bang for the buck will occur.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is it worth shutting down botnet controllers?"},{"content":"Yesterday there were numerous news reports about a woman\u0026rsquo;s water bottle testing positive, twice, for explosive residue and being identified as problematic by a bomb-sniffing dog. She was allegedly taken for questioning by the FBI. Today, there seems to be little followup about the fact that it was actually makeup that triggered false positives.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/w-virginia-water-bottles-explosive.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday there were numerous news reports about \u003ca href=\"http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004569891\"\u003ea woman\u0026rsquo;s water bottle testing positive\u003c/a\u003e, twice, for explosive residue and being identified as problematic by a bomb-sniffing dog.  She was allegedly taken for questioning by the FBI.  Today, there seems to be little followup about the fact that \u003ca href=\"http://www.kxma.com/getARticle.asp?ArticleId=35223\"\u003eit was actually makeup\u003c/a\u003e that triggered false positives.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"W. Virginia water bottle's explosive residue turns out to be makeup"},{"content":"Nick Carr writes of the blogosphere:\nWhat we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it\u0026rsquo;s open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.What\u0026rsquo;s the fraud? Carr claims that the top-ranked blogs have established a hierarchy of control over the entire blogosphere:\nThe best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite.But Carr is not only ignoring the facts of a comparison between the blogosphere and the mass media (the point of his initial comparison), he\u0026rsquo;s ignoring mobility of rank and the specifics of the audiences of lower-ranked blogs. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen my blog get visits from all sorts of interesting places, by people I would not ordinarily be able to speak to.\nJohn Koetsier at bizhack (who I\u0026rsquo;ve only come across because of this topic) says it very well when he points out the role of luck in getting a mass audience:\nThis is real life\nThis isn’t the movies. And this isn’t the crazy-stupid-brilliant flash-in-the-pan that you hear about from time to time, and wonder why you didn’t think of. Anything worth doing is hard. Doing anything well is hard. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes talent. It takes skill.\nBut sorry, that’s not enough.\nThe L factor\nHere’s the hardest part for any of us to accept: It takes luck.\nWe’d have it a lot easier if there was a clear-cut algorithm for success. Do X amount of work for Y number of days with Z degree of skill, and you’ll be successful.\nSorry. I wish it was true. But it’s not.\nSome weird magic happens in the world. Some wacked-out left-field idea like Snakes on a Plane just comes out of nowhere and hits a home run. Some odd idea like getting people to write secrets on postcards and send them to you so you can post them on a website results in a top ten blog and a successful book. Some 18-year-old kid creates a piece of software that others start contributing to that turns out to be really good and amazingly popular. Some slightly-shady entrepreneurs take an old idea and a lousy site and sell it for over half a billion. Some crazy geniuses create the best hardware/software combination the market has ever seen and spend decades struggling to get to 5% market share. Some other crazy geniuses with duct-taped glasses buy a piece of junk software, land a distribution deal with a clueless giant, and become the most profitable company in the world.\nHe goes on to point out some numbers:\nThe reality is, the blogosphere is a big place. Lots happens. Conversations abound. Blogs proliferate. Attention is limited. Blogs shoot up, blogs tumble down. Enough churn occurs to make me believe that success is still possible.\nBut you are already more successful thank you know. Think about it: there are now 52 million blogs. 52 million!\nLet’s say your blog is ranked 39,756 (coincidentally, just like the one you’re reading right now.) How lucky are you?\nLet’s break it down:\nIf you’re in the top 5 million, you’re 1 out of 10 If in the top 500,000, you’re 1 out of 100 In the top 50,000, you’re 1 out of 1000 just for fun, let’s continue … Top 5000? 1 out of 10,000 Top 500? 1 out of 100,000 And top 50? 1 out of 1,000,000 See the point? Even being in the top 100,000 is an accomplishment! (Of course, for all of us who are serious about this blogging journey, it may not be enough. It may not satisfy.)\nHe\u0026rsquo;s spot on.\nTim Lee at the Technological Liberation Front makes some of the same points, first about rankings and quality of who you get to interact with:\nSeth gives the impression that he toils in obscurity, with maybe 20 or 30 people reading what he writes on a good day. Yet Alexa ranks Seth’s site #84,819 among all web sites, with a “reach” of 24 readers per million web users. In contrast, TLF is ranked #295,434, and we have a “reach” of 4 per million. Technorati tells a similar story: TLF is ranked #7076 among all blogs with inbound links from 294 sites. Seth’s blog is ranked #5443, with inbound links from 365 blogs.\nNow, TLF obviously isn’t an “A List” blog. We’re probably not even a “B List” blog. But if our traffic stats are to be believed, about 1500 unique individuals visit our site (or at least download our content to their RSS aggregators) each day. Extrapolating, I think it’s safe to say that Seth gets at least a few hundred, and probably several thousand, daily readers. Even if we assume that many of those are people who never actually read the sites their aggregators download, it’s safe to say that Seth gets more than “a few dozen” daily readers.\nPersonally, I think TLF’s readership—even if it’s only a couple hundred people—is fantastic. I feel extraordinarily fortunate that I get to write about whatever strikes my fancy and have several hundred people read it and give me feedback. A decade ago, it would have been extraordinarily difficult to achieve that without getting a job as a full-time journalist.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe far more important motivation is that I enjoy discussing ideas. I think it’s fantastic that I sometimes get to interact with prominent tech policy experts like Ed Felten and Randy Picker. I love the fact that I can post half-baked policy arguments and get virtually instantaneous feedback from people who possess much deeper technical knowledge than me. And most fundamentally, I enjoy the process of writing itself, when it’s about a subject I’m currently interested in. I think the intellectual questions related to technology policy are fascinating, and I find writing to be a form of intellectual exploration: sometimes I’ll finish a post (or series of them) in a different place than I expected to be when I started.\nAnd about mobility within the rankings:\nCarr is equally wrong to portray the elites of the blogosphere as some kind of closed, self-perpetuating club. The blogosphere is only about 5 years old. Even if it were true that the same bloggers have dominated the elite ranks since the blogosphere’s inception, that wouldn’t prove very much—the elite newspapers have dominated the national debate for decades. But Carr’s caricature isn’t even accurate. As just one exampleompare Instapundit, which ruled the blogospheric roost in 2002-04 to Daily Kos, a site that was obscure at the start of 2003, surpassed Instapundit in mid-2004, and today (according to Alexa) gets more than double the traffic. Sure doesn’t look like a closed elite to me.So, good job to Carr for getting the attention of some new people through this topic\u0026ndash;but perhaps he\u0026rsquo;s done so with the strategy of saying something obviously false or outrageous designed to stir up the blogosphere and thereby increase his rank? It seems to be a relatively common and effective tactic\u0026ndash;we could call it the Ann Coulter method. When pro-life blogger Pete wrote a post about an article in The Onion as though it were factual, he not only got hundreds of blog comments, links, and trackbacks, he got written about in a feature story on Salon.com!\nHistorical Comments Ron Chusid (2006-12-09):\nSure, many of us are smaller than the A list blogs, but we're all smaller than Time Magazine or virtually any network television show. That doesn't mean that our blogs don't let us get our writing out to a meaningful degree. I've been quoted in the web sites of publications ranging from the National Journal to CBS News. Often readers of articles or editorials in the New York Times or the Washington Post will also see a link to my blog comments. Sites like Memeorandum and the Daou Report frequently link to myself and other B and C list bloggers.There's so much to say about this that it is turning into a full blog post of my own. As it is getting late (and I have to finish up on my Sci Fi Friday feature for the Liberal Values Blog for this week) I'll have to delay it until tomorrow or Saturday.\ngloria (2011-05-27):\nHI, check out what Nicholas G. Carr has to say on Cloud in the New Normal; Efficiency to Innovation\u0026hellip; http://bit.ly/iuxK88\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/nick-carrs-bogus-criticism-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNick Carr \u003ca href=\"http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_great_unrea.php\"\u003ewrites of the blogosphere\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhat we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it\u0026rsquo;s open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s the fraud?  Carr claims that the top-ranked blogs have established a hierarchy of control over the entire blogosphere:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut Carr is not only ignoring the facts of a comparison between the blogosphere and the mass media (the point of his initial comparison), he\u0026rsquo;s ignoring mobility of rank and the specifics of the audiences of lower-ranked blogs.  I\u0026rsquo;ve seen my blog get visits from all sorts of interesting places, by people I would not ordinarily be able to speak to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Koetsier at bizhack (who I\u0026rsquo;ve only come across because of this topic) \u003ca href=\"http://www.sparkplug9.com/bizhack/index.php/2006/08/16/a-lister-conspiracy-theories-and-dreams-of-easy-success/\"\u003esays it very well\u003c/a\u003e when he points out the role of luck in getting a mass audience:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nick Carr's bogus criticism of the blogosphere"},{"content":"The 41st Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Circle is now out at Interverbal, in the form of an Awards Night presentation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/41st-skeptics-circle.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 41st Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Circle is now out at Interverbal, in the \u003ca href=\"http://interverbal.blogspot.com/2006/08/awards-night-41st-skeptics-circle.html\"\u003eform of an Awards Night presentation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"41st Skeptic's Circle"},{"content":"Although the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T in Illinois was thrown out, a separate case in Michigan filed on January 17 of this year against the NSA for warrantless wiretapping without approval of the FISA Court has resulted in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the practice is unconstitutional and must stop immediately. This is not the final decision in the case, but the granting of an injunction for the plaintiff.\nThe Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T also continues.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/judge-grants-injunction-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough the \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/judge-throws-out-aclu-lawsuit-against.html\"\u003eACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T in Illinois was thrown out\u003c/a\u003e, a separate case in Michigan \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/index.html\"\u003efiled on January 17 of this year against the NSA\u003c/a\u003e for warrantless wiretapping without approval of the FISA Court has resulted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit.ap/index.html\"\u003ea ruling by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the practice is unconstitutional and must stop immediately\u003c/a\u003e.  This is not the final decision in the case, but the granting of an injunction for the plaintiff.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T\u003c/a\u003e also continues.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Judge grants injunction against warrantless wiretapping"},{"content":"Phoenix cracked the top ten for the first time in Forbes magazine\u0026rsquo;s best metropolitan areas for business (at #6); Arizona is down at #15 in the list of best states for business. Tucson ranks #77.\nPhoenix scored high for colleges, cost of doing business, culture and leisure, job growth, and net migration; it scored poorly for cost of living, and crime rate, and was somewhere in the middle on educational attainment, cost of doing business, and income growth. Tucson scores better than Phoenix on educational attainment and income growth, but is worse on every other measure.\nArizona was ranked highly for labor costs (#7), economic climate (#1), and growth prospects (#13), poorly for regulatory environment (#36) and quality of life (#43), and in the middle for business costs (#24).\nArizona has four billionaires\u0026ndash;John Sperling and his son Peter of the Apollo Group (and University of Phoenix and Kronos Group), Campbell Soup heir Bennett Dorrance, and Arturo Moreno of Outdoor Systems.\nAn interesting point in the summary is that the United States now has the highest corporate taxes of any OECD nation.\nUPDATE (March 9, 2007): Forbes has updated its billionaire list for 2007, and there are no changes for Arizona\u0026ndash;the same four Arizonans are billionaires, with none dropping off the list and no new ones showing up. Bennett Dorrance is at #432, Arturo Moreno, John Sperling, and Peter Sperling are all tied at #799. Last year the list was much smaller\u0026ndash;Bennett Dorrance was at #153, John and Peter Sperling were tied at #297, and Arturo Moreno was at #354.\nHistorical Comments nolandda (2007-03-09):\nIndianapolis made the top ten as well. Very nice.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/forbes-best-places-for-business.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/1/2801.html\"\u003ePhoenix\u003c/a\u003e cracked the top ten for the first time in Forbes magazine\u0026rsquo;s best metropolitan areas for business (at #6); \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/9/06beststates_Arizona_090015.html\"\u003eArizona\u003c/a\u003e is down at #15 in the list of \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/15/best-states-business_cz_kb_0815beststates.html\"\u003ebest states for business\u003c/a\u003e.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/1/2827.html\"\u003eTucson\u003c/a\u003e ranks #77.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix scored high for colleges, cost of doing business, culture and leisure, job growth, and net migration; it scored poorly for cost of living, and crime rate, and was somewhere in the middle on educational attainment, cost of doing business, and income growth.  Tucson scores better than Phoenix on educational attainment and income growth, but is worse on every other measure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona was ranked highly for labor costs (#7), economic climate (#1), and growth prospects (#13), poorly for regulatory environment (#36) and quality of life (#43), and in the middle for business costs (#24).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona has four billionaires\u0026ndash;John Sperling and his son Peter of the Apollo Group (and University of Phoenix and Kronos Group), Campbell Soup heir Bennett Dorrance, and Arturo Moreno of Outdoor Systems.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn interesting point in the summary is that the United States now has the highest corporate taxes of any OECD nation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 9, 2007):  Forbes \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/07/billionaires-worlds-richest_07billionaires_cz_lk_af_0308billie_land.html\"\u003ehas updated its billionaire list for 2007\u003c/a\u003e, and there are no changes for Arizona\u0026ndash;the same four Arizonans are billionaires, with none dropping off the list and no new ones showing up.  Bennett Dorrance is at #432, Arturo Moreno, John Sperling, and Peter Sperling are all tied at #799.  Last year the list was much smaller\u0026ndash;Bennett Dorrance was at #153, John and Peter Sperling were tied at #297, and Arturo Moreno was at #354.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Forbes' Best Places for Business"},{"content":"Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray raises some questions about the UK liquid bomb plot. Bruce Schneier points to a similarly critical discussion by Perry Metzger on Dave Farber\u0026rsquo;s interesting people list.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/skepticism-about-uk-liquid-bomb-plot.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray \u003ca href=\"http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html\"\u003eraises some questions about the UK liquid bomb plot\u003c/a\u003e.  Bruce Schneier points to \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/on_the_implausi.html\"\u003ea similarly critical discussion by Perry Metzger on Dave Farber\u0026rsquo;s interesting people list\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skepticism about the UK liquid bomb plot"},{"content":"The Sunlight Foundation (along with Porkbusters, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, and the Examiner Newspapers) is attempting to identify the sources of over 1,800 earmarks in the 2007 appropriations bill for the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. They\u0026rsquo;ve got a Google Map showing the locations of each recipient. There are a number of them in Arizona; a cursory look suggests that most of them are in the districts of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Democratic Representatives, Grijalva and Pastor.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/help-expose-earmarks.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Sunlight Foundation (along with Porkbusters, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, and the Examiner Newspapers) is \u003ca href=\"http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/1043\"\u003eattempting to identify the sources of over 1,800 earmarks in the 2007 appropriations bill\u003c/a\u003e for the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.  They\u0026rsquo;ve got a \u003ca href=\"http://sunlightlabs.com/earmarks/\"\u003eGoogle Map showing the locations of each recipient\u003c/a\u003e.  There are a number of them in Arizona; a cursory look suggests that most of them are in the districts of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Democratic Representatives, Grijalva and Pastor.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Help expose earmarks"},{"content":"The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General has issued a report on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol activities at U.S. ports of entry that \u0026ldquo;indicates a significant decrease over the past few years in the interception of narcotics and the identification of fraudulent immigration documents, especially at airports.\u0026rdquo; The problem is that when people are stopped whose names resemble those of individuals on the terrorist watch list, they have limited discretion about how to proceed, which causes them to spend a large amount of time dealing with each such case. Spending time on those cases detracts from their ability to do anything else, and the accumulated information collected in such incidents doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be put to effective use:\nWhen a watchlisted or targeted individual is encountered at a POE, CBP generates several reports summarizing the incident. Each of these reports provides a different level of detail, and is distributed to a different readership. It is unclear, however, how details of the encounter and the information obtained from the suspected terrorist are disseminated for analysis. This inconsistent reporting is preventing DHS from developing independent intelligence assessments and may be preventing important information from inclusion in national strategic intelligence analyses.The report advises giving more discretion to supervisors at ports of entry, giving security clearances to port of entry counterterrorism personnel, establishing consistent reporting standards, and reviewing port of entry staffing models. It also advises that port of entry personnel collect biometric data from persons entering the country \u0026ldquo;who would not normally provide this information when entering the United States.\u0026quot;\nMore at Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/how-terrorist-watch-list-decreases.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General \u003ca href=\"http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/OIG-06-43_June06.pdf\"\u003ehas issued a report on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol activities at U.S. ports of entry\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;indicates a significant decrease over the past few years in the interception of narcotics and the identification of fraudulent immigration documents, especially at airports.\u0026rdquo;  The problem is that when people are stopped whose names resemble those of individuals on the terrorist watch list, they have limited discretion about how to proceed, which causes them to spend a large amount of time dealing with each such case.  Spending time on those cases detracts from their ability to do anything else, and the accumulated information collected in such incidents doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to be put to effective use:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhen a watchlisted or targeted individual is encountered at a POE, CBP generates several reports summarizing the incident. Each of these reports provides a different level of detail, and is distributed to a different readership. It is unclear, however, how details of the encounter and the information obtained from the suspected terrorist are disseminated for analysis. This inconsistent reporting is preventing DHS from developing independent intelligence assessments and may be preventing important information from inclusion in national strategic intelligence analyses.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe report advises giving more discretion to supervisors at ports of entry,  giving security clearances to port of entry counterterrorism personnel, establishing consistent reporting standards, and reviewing port of entry staffing models.  It also advises that port of entry personnel collect biometric data from persons entering the country \u0026ldquo;who would not normally provide this information when entering the United States.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/review_of_us_cu.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the terrorist watch list decreases border security"},{"content":"In Stephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s discussion of the liquids he takes with him while traveling (on YouTube), he asked whether custard is a liquid. A USA Today \u0026ldquo;Today in the Sky\u0026rdquo; blog entry on \u0026ldquo;Putting TSA to the viscosity test\u0026rdquo; reported on the author\u0026rsquo;s experiment to see what she would be forced to discard. She carried a number of items in her bag to the screening area at the Baltimore airport for a flight to St. Louis on Friday night. The items were a container of Silk soy milk, Edge shaving gel, Ban deodorant, a small container of yogurt, a sealed two-pack of Advil capsules (gel caps), some makeup items, and a packet of mustard (see photo).\nShe was only required to discard the soy milk, one of the makeup items, and one other item (the mustard?).\nI don\u0026rsquo;t remember the details and cannot verify them because USA Today has removed the blog post, probably on the grounds that it encourages readers to test the limits of security screening. But shouldn\u0026rsquo;t the rules about what is permitted be clear?\nIs water in a frozen state permitted?\nAre there any beverages or food items which have the properties of being thixotropic (solid until shaken) or rheopectic (temporarily solid after being shaken)? There\u0026rsquo;s now (at least temporarily) a market\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/travel-with-liquids-viscosity-test.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn Stephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s discussion of the liquids he takes with him while traveling (on \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoWBM5_3c5c\"\u003eYouTube\u003c/a\u003e), he asked whether custard is a liquid.  A \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e \u0026ldquo;Today in the Sky\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/2006/08/putting_tsa_to_.html\"\u003eblog entry on \u0026ldquo;Putting TSA to the viscosity test\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e reported on the author\u0026rsquo;s experiment to see what she would be forced to discard.  She carried a number of items in her bag to the screening area at the Baltimore airport for a flight to St. Louis on Friday night.  The items were a container of Silk soy milk, Edge shaving gel, Ban deodorant, a small container of yogurt, a sealed two-pack of Advil capsules (gel caps), some makeup items, and a packet of mustard (see photo).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/tsa%20test.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/tsa%20test.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe was only required to discard the soy milk, one of the makeup items, and one other item (the mustard?).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t remember the details and cannot verify them because \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e has removed the blog post, probably on the grounds that it encourages readers to test the limits of security screening.  But shouldn\u0026rsquo;t the rules about what is permitted be clear?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIs water in a frozen state permitted?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAre there any beverages or food items which have the properties of being \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thixotropic\"\u003ethixotropic\u003c/a\u003e (solid until shaken) or \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheopecty\"\u003erheopectic\u003c/a\u003e (temporarily solid after being shaken)?  There\u0026rsquo;s now (at least temporarily) a market\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Travel with liquids--the viscosity test"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier writes about last week\u0026rsquo;s terrorism arrests:\nHours-long waits in the security line. Ridiculous prohibitions on what you can carry onboard. Last week\u0026rsquo;s foiling of a major terrorist plot and the subsequent airport security graphically illustrates the difference between effective security and security theater.\nNone of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 \u0026ndash; no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews \u0026ndash; had anything to do with last week\u0026rsquo;s arrests. And they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have made a difference, either.\nInstead, the arrests are a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and investigation. Details are still secret, but police in at least two countries were watching the terrorists for a long time. They followed leads, figured out who was talking to whom, and slowly pieced together both the network and the plot.\nThe new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved. It\u0026rsquo;s reasonable to assume that a few lone plotters, knowing their compatriots are in jail and fearing their own arrest, would try to finish the job on their own. The authorities are not being public with the details \u0026ndash; much of the \u0026ldquo;explosive liquid\u0026rdquo; story doesn\u0026rsquo;t hang together \u0026ndash; but the excessive security measures seem prudent.\nBut only temporarily. Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won\u0026rsquo;t make us safer, either. It\u0026rsquo;s not just that there are ways around the rules, it\u0026rsquo;s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it\u0026rsquo;s shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we\u0026rsquo;ve wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we\u0026rsquo;ve wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets \u0026ndash; stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security \u0026ndash; and too many ways to kill people.\nMore at Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/schneier-on-security-theater.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/terrorism_secur.html\"\u003ewrites about last week\u0026rsquo;s terrorism arrests\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHours-long waits in the security line. Ridiculous prohibitions on what you can carry onboard. Last week\u0026rsquo;s foiling of a major terrorist plot and the subsequent airport security graphically illustrates the difference between effective security and security theater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eNone of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 \u0026ndash; no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews \u0026ndash; had anything to do with last week\u0026rsquo;s arrests. And they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have made a difference, either.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Schneier on security theater"},{"content":"CNN:\nTisha Presley, bound for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, hurriedly sipped from her bottled water before going through security at the Atlanta airport.\n\u0026ldquo;I assume before too long we\u0026rsquo;ll be naked on the plane \u0026ndash; and that\u0026rsquo;s fine with me,\u0026rdquo; she said.My wife Kat jokingly suggests that TSA require passengers to change into TSA-provided unitards, returned for cleaning and reuse upon arrival at the destination.\nOf course, the real question is whether air travel continues to be economically viable under high levels of travel restrictions without completely transforming the industry\u0026rsquo;s business model.\nOne thing for sure\u0026ndash;the level of restrictions currently imposed in the UK will provide incentives for telecommuting and audio and video conferencing, which are services provided by the company which employs me, Global Crossing.\nHistorical Comments Taliahad (2006-12-09):\nWell, with that new \"nude\" scanner they've been showing us in Yahoo, hopefully it won't come down to wearing rented clothing.I think I'm even less thrilled about standing in front of an x-ray so someone can look at me without my clothes on though.Ugh.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/naked-air-travel.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/08/11/terror.passengers.ap/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTisha Presley, bound for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, hurriedly sipped from her bottled water before going through security at the Atlanta airport.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I assume before too long we\u0026rsquo;ll be naked on the plane \u0026ndash; and that\u0026rsquo;s fine with me,\u0026rdquo; she said.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMy wife Kat jokingly suggests that TSA require passengers to change into TSA-provided unitards, returned for cleaning and reuse upon arrival at the destination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf course, the real question is whether air travel continues to be economically viable under high levels of travel restrictions without completely transforming the industry\u0026rsquo;s business model.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne thing for sure\u0026ndash;the level of restrictions currently imposed in the UK will provide incentives for telecommuting and audio and video conferencing, which are services provided by the company which employs me, Global Crossing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Naked air travel"},{"content":"Comedy Central is still showing this commercial, which weakly foreshadowed the restriction on liquids put in place on Thursday. This restriction occurred months after the UK and U.S. governments were aware of this recent plot and eleven years after they were aware of the existence of terrorist plots involving liquid explosives (and twelve years after such a device was successfully tested\u0026ndash;it killed one passenger and injured between five and ten).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/sierra-mist-commercial-and-liquid.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComedy Central is still showing this commercial, which weakly foreshadowed the restriction on liquids put in place on Thursday.  This restriction occurred \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001654.html\"\u003emonths after the UK and U.S. governments were aware of this recent plot\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/11/MNGL2KGOOB1.DTL\"\u003eeleven years after they were aware of the existence of terrorist plots involving liquid explosives\u003c/a\u003e (and twelve years after such a device was successfully tested\u0026ndash;it killed one passenger and injured between five and \u003ca href=\"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060811.BOMBPLOT11/TPStory/TPInternational/Europe/\"\u003eten\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/U3BMDPKtnNQ\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/U3BMDPKtnNQ\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sierra Mist commercial and the liquid explosives plot"},{"content":"The Brits caught some douchebags who were going to blow up some planes.\nNow, the way I see it, you can't have terrorism without terror. The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk.\nAirline industry stocks plummetted today, while the industry braced for a rash of cancellations. This, despite the fact that even with the risk of airplane bombings it's still more dangerous to drive your car. Or smoke cigarettes.\nAs long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.\nLondon's police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was \"intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.\" No, it is imaginable: between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life.\nBush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation.\nToday the President said, \"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation.\" Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.Video here. (Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nAlong similar lines is John Mueller of Ohio State University's \"A False Sense of Insecurity? How does the risk of terrorism measure up against everyday dangers?\" (PDF), published in the Cato Institute's Regulation, Fall 2004.\nThe additional security measures, which are creating long queues of people waiting to go through security checkpoints, are actually creating greater risks of terrorism--against those people waiting to get through the checkpoints. But that risk pales in comparison to every day risks which we accept (or allow others to accept) as a matter of course: falling off ladders, driving in automobiles, eating fast food, smoking. If a terrorist act on the scale of 9/11 occurred every month in the United States, it would only begin to approach the number of Americans killed every year in automobile accidents, and would still be far short of the number who die as a result of smoking.\nResponsive actions like unreasonable and inefficient security screening measures increase rather than decrease the costs of terrorism. Historical Comments OutOfContext (2006-12-09):\n\"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\" Just think how much more popular and useful our President would have been by calming us all down and giving us perspective. But it's not just him, nobody with any national platform has come close. It almost seems like politicians are as insecure and afraid as the rest of us. I live in the heartland, a place where fear and distance make strange bedfellows. I guess it is easier to fear the sensational and exotic danger than to come to terms with the real social and economic insecurities in our everyday lives. It reminds me a little of a Bill Hicks monologue about CNN in which he complains that news channels show war, destruction, famine, and pestilence 24 hours a day, yet you stick your head out the window and...(the sound of crickets).\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWell, you have to keep the underlying incentives in mind. What good does it do the president if we're not all fearing for our lives? Without such fear, do you think it likely that we'd put up with the shit he and the rest of the incompetent assholes in his administration have been doing the past 5 years?My cynical side suspects that Bush loves terror almost as much as the terrorists.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/zefrank-on-london-liquid-explosive.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Brits caught some douchebags who were going to blow up some planes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, the way I see it, you can't have terrorism without terror. The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill  fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAirline industry stocks plummetted today, while the industry braced for a rash of cancellations. This, despite the fact that even with the risk of airplane bombings it's still more dangerous to drive your car. Or smoke cigarettes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a  large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLondon's police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was \"intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.\" No, it is imaginable: between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday the President said, \"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation.\" Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.\u003c/blockquote\u003eVideo \u003ca href=\"http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/08/081006.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlong similar lines is John Mueller of Ohio State University's \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n3/v27n3-5.pdf\"\u003e\"A False Sense of Insecurity?  How does the risk of terrorism measure up against everyday dangers?\"\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), published in the Cato Institute's \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRegulation\u003c/span\u003e, Fall 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe additional security measures, which are creating long queues of people waiting to go through security checkpoints, are actually creating greater risks of terrorism--against those people waiting to get through the checkpoints.  But that risk pales in comparison to every day risks which we accept (or allow others to accept) as a matter of course: falling off ladders, driving in automobiles, eating fast food, smoking.  If a terrorist act on the scale of 9/11 occurred every month in the United States, it would only begin to approach the number of Americans killed every year in automobile accidents, and would still be far short of the number who die as a result of smoking.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eResponsive actions like unreasonable and inefficient security screening measures increase rather than decrease the costs of terrorism.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eOutOfContext\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\" Just think how much more popular and useful our President would have been by calming us all down and giving us perspective.  But it's not just him, nobody with any national platform has come close.  It almost seems like politicians are as insecure and afraid as the rest of us. \u003cBR/\u003eI live in the heartland, a place where fear and distance make strange bedfellows.  I guess it is easier to fear the sensational and exotic danger than to come to terms with the real social and economic insecurities in our everyday lives.  \u003cBR/\u003eIt reminds me a little of a Bill Hicks monologue about CNN in which he complains that news channels show war, destruction, famine, and pestilence 24 hours a day, yet you stick your head out the window and...(the sound of crickets).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ZeFrank on London liquid explosive terror plot"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a website, www.jesusisaliberal.org, which suggests that Jesus was a liberal. (I\u0026rsquo;d go further and suggest that Jesus offered some views which were close to communism.) This site has provoked some interesting hate mail which seems somewhat at odds with what Jesus would do.\nHistorical Comments JesusLiberalPaul (2006-12-09):\nThanks for noticing our site. I also like to ask what I call Jesus Koans: \"Who would Jesus Bomb?\" and \"Who would Jesus Torture?\" and \"What animals would Jesus exterminate and make extinct?\" and \"What kind of Automatic Weapon would Jesus own?\" and \"Would Jesus Kill first and let his Father sort them out?\"The reactions can be fairly amazing. We've also had death threats - some implied, some very direct. It is stunning how much hate is espoused in the name of Jesus, Mohammed, etc.Dave, the t-shirts only came after we had enough requests for put in an order. In the past 2 years we've sold only about 475. The bumper stickers are far, far more popular. Bottom line, it's all about re-framing Jesus in His original light and intention. Spread the word. Thanks for visiting. Peace.PaulJesus Is A Liberal.org\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI wonder how much hate mail we'd generate if we started the sitewww.JesusWasAWhackJob.orgI submit that the case for that is much stronger than that he was a liberal.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/hate-mail-from-suggestion-that-jesus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.jesusisaliberal.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.jesusisaliberal.org\"\u003ewww.jesusisaliberal.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which suggests that Jesus was a liberal.  (I\u0026rsquo;d go further and suggest that Jesus offered some views which were close to communism.)  This site has provoked \u003ca href=\"http://www.jesusisaliberal.org/hate_mail.html\"\u003esome interesting hate mail\u003c/a\u003e which seems somewhat at odds with what Jesus would do.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eJesusLiberalPaul\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThanks for noticing our site. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI also like to ask what I call Jesus Koans: \"Who would Jesus Bomb?\" and \"Who would Jesus Torture?\" and \"What animals would Jesus exterminate and make extinct?\" and \"What kind of Automatic Weapon would Jesus own?\" and \"Would Jesus Kill first and let his Father sort them out?\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThe reactions can be fairly amazing.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWe've also had death threats - some implied, some very direct.  It is stunning how much hate is espoused in the name of Jesus, Mohammed, etc.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDave, the t-shirts only came after we had enough requests for put in an order.   In the past 2 years we've sold only about 475. The bumper stickers are far, far more popular.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eBottom line, it's all about re-framing Jesus in His original light and intention.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eSpread the word.  Thanks for visiting.  \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ePeace.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ePaul\u003cBR/\u003eJesus Is A Liberal.org\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hate mail from suggestion that Jesus was a liberal"},{"content":"The Leavitt family gave $443,500 to the Dixie and Anne Leavitt Foundation, which gave it to the Southern Utah Foundation, which gave the money to Southern Utah University (along with another $135,000 from Leavitt Land and Investment), which gave the money to students in the form of scholarships that could only be used for housing at apartments owned by the Leavitt family. The Leavitt\u0026rsquo;s Cedar Development Company got $578,000 from the student rent payments.\nThe Leavitts specifically asked the Southern Utah Foundation (whose board member Steven Bennion was also president of Southern Utah University) for the arrangement.\nThe really interesting part? One member of the Leavitt family involved in these decisions is Mike Leavitt, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration (and former Governor of Utah).\nThe Leavitt Foundation had already been under scrutiny because the Leavitt family had made large donations but the Foundation had paid out little to charity until last year.\nThe IRS is investigating. The Leavitts, the foundation administrators, and the university say they see nothing wrong with the arrangement, and a Leavitt spokeswoman says that the Senate Finance Committee reviewed this arrangement as part of Leavitt\u0026rsquo;s confirmation last year.\nThis kind of arrangement is not surprising to me given what I\u0026rsquo;ve heard about other Mormon business arrangements, which commonly use family-owned companies and partnerships to do business with each other in order to gain tax advantages.\n(Hat tip to Trent Stamp at Charity Navigator.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThe Church of Scientology has something to aspire to!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/how-to-get-charitable-donation-tax.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4129167\"\u003eLeavitt family gave $443,500 to the Dixie and Anne Leavitt Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, which gave it to the Southern Utah Foundation, which gave the money to Southern Utah University (along with another $135,000 from Leavitt Land and Investment), which gave the money to students in the form of scholarships that could only be used for housing at apartments owned by the Leavitt family.  The Leavitt\u0026rsquo;s Cedar Development Company got $578,000 from the student rent payments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Leavitts specifically asked the Southern Utah Foundation (whose board member Steven Bennion was also president of Southern Utah University) for the arrangement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe really interesting part?  One member of the Leavitt family involved in these decisions is Mike Leavitt, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration (and former Governor of Utah).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Leavitt Foundation had already been under scrutiny because the Leavitt family had made large donations but the Foundation had paid out little to charity until last year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_4149644\"\u003eIRS is investigating\u003c/a\u003e.  The Leavitts, the foundation administrators, and the university say they see nothing wrong with the arrangement, and a Leavitt spokeswoman says that the Senate Finance Committee reviewed this arrangement as part of Leavitt\u0026rsquo;s confirmation last year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis kind of arrangement is not surprising to me given what I\u0026rsquo;ve heard about other Mormon business arrangements, which commonly use family-owned companies and partnerships to do business with each other in order to gain tax advantages.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://trentstamp.blogspot.com/2006/08/dont-feds-call-this-money-laundering.html\"\u003eTrent Stamp at Charity Navigator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to get a charitable donation tax deduction and get the money back"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a gadget Harold Edgerton would have appreciated\u0026ndash;Nate True built a little device that pumps dyed water through a tube, drops at a time, with strobe lights that illuminate individual drops as they fall. You can adjust the frequency of the strobe lights so that the drops appear to change in speed, freeze in place, or move backwards. He calls it a \u0026ldquo;time fountain.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/time-fountain.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a gadget \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton\"\u003eHarold Edgerton\u003c/a\u003e would have appreciated\u0026ndash;Nate True built a little device that pumps dyed water through a tube, drops at a time, with strobe lights that illuminate individual drops as they fall.  You can adjust the frequency of the strobe lights so that the drops appear to change in speed, freeze in place, or move backwards.  He calls it a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/08/08/the-time-fountain-will-turn-back-time\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;time fountain.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time fountain"},{"content":"This is an interesting video\u0026ndash;though it will be more interesting if she continues the project, so that she visibly ages. (Looks like this is 2001-2003.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/girl-takes-picture-of-herself-every.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is an interesting video\u0026ndash;though it will be more interesting if she continues the project, so that she visibly ages.  (Looks like this is 2001-2003.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/55YYaJIrmzo\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cparam name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/55YYaJIrmzo\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Girl takes picture of herself every day for three years"},{"content":"In a short Eugenie Scott co-authored study published in Science, the United States had the 33rd lowest acceptance of evolution out of 34 countries polled; only Turkey had lower acceptance. No doubt Harun Yahya had something to do with that.\nThe measurement was whether one thought the following statement was true or false: \u0026ldquo;Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.\u0026rdquo; Answers were multiple choice: true, false, not sure or does not know.\nThe full ranking:\n(Via stranger fruit, where commenters have noted a possible correlation with rankings of levels of happiness. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like much of a correlation\u0026ndash;the happiness rankings were 1. Denmark, 2. Switzerland, 3. Austria, 4. Iceland, 5. Bahamas, 23. United States, 35. Germany, 41. Britain, 62. France, 82. China, 90. Japan, 125. India. There\u0026rsquo;s a slightly better correlation with rankings of percentage of atheists: 1. Sweden, 3. Denmark, 4. Norway, 6. Czech Republic, 7. Finland, 8. France, 10. Estonia, 11. Germany, 13. Hungary, 14. Netherlands, 15. Britain, 16. Belgium, 17. Bulgaria, 18. Slovenia, 21. Latvia, 22. Slovakia, 23. Switzerland, 24. Austria, 27. Spain, 28. Iceland, 32. Greece, 34. Italy, 37. Lithuania, 42. Portugal, 43. United States. Turkey and Cyprus didn\u0026rsquo;t make the top 50 for percentage of atheists.)\nUPDATE (February 20, 2009): It is interesting that western democracies without a strong history of church and state are those where religion is weakest and acceptance of evolution is highest. Turkey, the only OECD country with lower acceptance of evolution than the United States, is a Muslim democracy with a strongly enforced separation of church and state. Iceland and Denmark, the top two, are Lutheran, and Sweden, at #3, was officially Lutheran until it began introducing the separation of church and state in 1995. France and Japan, at #4 and #5, are perhaps counter-examples, both rounding out the bottom of the top five and having fairly strong separation of church and state, though Japan\u0026rsquo;s was first imposed by the U.S. occupation after WWII. The UK, at #6, is Anglican; Norway, at #7, is Lutheran but expected to remove the official religion clause from its Constitution by 2012; Belgium, at #8, is officially Catholic and also funds other religions; Spain, at #9, is officially Catholic; Germany, at #10, guarantees freedom of religion but the state funds both Catholic and Protestant churches via \u0026ldquo;church tax\u0026rdquo;; Italy, at #11, is Catholic; the Netherlands, at #12, has constitutional freedom of religion but funds religions.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/us-acceptance-of-evolution-ranks-us-33.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a short Eugenie Scott co-authored study published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScience\u003c/span\u003e, the United States had the 33rd lowest acceptance of evolution out of 34 countries polled; only Turkey had lower acceptance.  No doubt \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Oktar\"\u003eHarun Yahya\u003c/a\u003e had something to do with that.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe measurement was whether one thought the following statement was true or false:  \u0026ldquo;Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.\u0026rdquo;  Answers were multiple choice: true, false, not sure or does not know.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full ranking:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/upload/figure.gif\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/upload/figure.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2006/08/go_usa_were_2_kind_of.php\"\u003estranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e, where commenters have noted a possible correlation with \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2006/07/nothings_rotten_in_denmark.php\"\u003erankings of levels of happiness\u003c/a\u003e.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like much of a correlation\u0026ndash;the happiness rankings were 1. Denmark, 2. Switzerland, 3. Austria, 4. Iceland, 5. Bahamas, 23. United States, 35. Germany, 41. Britain, 62. France, 82. China, 90. Japan, 125. India.  There\u0026rsquo;s a slightly better correlation with \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/atheists-and-nonbelievers-by-country.html\"\u003erankings of percentage of atheists\u003c/a\u003e:  1. Sweden, 3. Denmark, 4. Norway, 6. Czech Republic, 7. Finland, 8. France, 10. Estonia, 11. Germany, 13. Hungary, 14. Netherlands, 15. Britain, 16. Belgium, 17. Bulgaria, 18. Slovenia, 21. Latvia, 22. Slovakia, 23. Switzerland, 24. Austria, 27. Spain, 28. Iceland, 32. Greece, 34. Italy, 37. Lithuania, 42. Portugal, 43. United States.  Turkey and Cyprus didn\u0026rsquo;t make the top 50 for percentage of atheists.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 20, 2009):   It is interesting that western democracies without a strong history of church and state are those where religion is weakest and acceptance of evolution is highest.  Turkey, the only OECD country with lower acceptance of evolution than the United States, is a Muslim democracy with a strongly enforced separation of church and state.   Iceland and Denmark, the top two, are Lutheran, and Sweden, at #3, was officially Lutheran until \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E3D71239F932A05751C1A963958260\"\u003eit began introducing the separation of church and state in 1995\u003c/a\u003e.  France and Japan, at #4 and #5, are perhaps counter-examples, both rounding out the bottom of the top five and having fairly strong separation of church and state, though Japan\u0026rsquo;s was first imposed by the U.S. occupation after WWII.  The UK, at #6, is Anglican; Norway, at #7, is \u003ca href=\"http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2008/04/norway-will-end-evangelical-lutheran.html\"\u003eLutheran but expected to remove the official religion clause from its Constitution by 2012\u003c/a\u003e; Belgium, at #8, is officially Catholic and also funds other religions; Spain, at #9, is officially Catholic; Germany, at #10, guarantees freedom of religion but the state funds both Catholic and Protestant churches via \u0026ldquo;church tax\u0026rdquo;; Italy, at #11, is Catholic; the Netherlands, at #12, has constitutional freedom of religion but funds religions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"U.S. acceptance of evolution ranks us 33 out of 34 countries polled"},{"content":"The AOL user identified as 4417749 in the recently released three months of AOL search data has been found by the New York Times. She\u0026rsquo;s Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow in Georgia who has often done searches about medical conditions for her friends, as well as about such things as how to deal with her dog\u0026rsquo;s urination problem. The article includes a photo of her diaper-wearing dog, Dudley.\nThe article points out both how the search results can be used to identify the real-world user as well as how they can be misleading.\nShe says at the end of the article that she plans to cancel her account.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/aol-user-identified-by-searches-plans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe AOL user identified as 4417749 in the \u003ca href=\"/2006/08/aol-releases-user-search-data-tied-to.html\"\u003erecently released three months of AOL search data\u003c/a\u003e has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?pagewanted=2\u0026_r=1\"\u003efound by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  She\u0026rsquo;s Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow in Georgia who has often done searches about medical conditions for her friends, as well as about such things as how to deal with her dog\u0026rsquo;s urination problem.  The article includes a photo of her diaper-wearing dog, Dudley.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe article points out both how the search results can be used to identify the real-world user as well as how they can be misleading.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe says at the end of the article that she plans to cancel her account.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AOL user identified by searches, plans to cancel account"},{"content":"The Goldwater Institute sent out an email today titled \u0026ldquo;Some Like It Hot\u0026rdquo; by Robert C. Balling, Jr., a global warming skeptic who is a climatology professor at Arizona State University (and a Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow). It\u0026rsquo;s short, so I\u0026rsquo;ll quote it in full:\nThis summer treated us to the films \u0026ldquo;Too Hot Not To Handle\u0026rdquo; and Al Gore\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;An Inconvenient Truth,\u0026rdquo; as well as news that the Supreme Court will decide whether carbon dioxide (CO2) should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.\nReinforcing the idea that CO2 is a pollutant, Gore and others often speak of \u0026ldquo;CO2 pollution.\u0026rdquo; Before you train yourself to add the \u0026ldquo;p\u0026rdquo; word to your vocabulary, consider that CO2 comes from the Earth itself and its levels have fluctuated greatly throughout history.\nAt one point, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped drastically and came perilously close to suffocating the global ecosystem. If someone is concerned about dangerous levels of atmospheric CO2, too low is far more dangerous than too high.\nExperiments show that when CO2 levels increase, plants grow faster and bigger. In order to make CO2 more sinister, claims are made that ragweed and poison ivy will grow more vigorously in the future, and indeed they will. But so will every tree in the forest.\nThere is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that when elevated will act to warm the Earth. However, its levels have fluctuated enormously over the history of the Earth, and the ecosystems of the planet have adjusted to cope with these variations. The Supreme Court ruling will be interesting, but Mother Earth has clearly ruled that CO2 is not a pollutant.\nDr. Robert C. Balling Jr. is a Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow and is a professor in the climatology program at Arizona State University, specializing in climate change and the greenhouse effect. A longer version of this article originally appeared on TCSDaily.com.The big problem with this piece is a very critical omission. The last paragraph admits that CO2 elevation causes global warming, but says that its levels have \u0026ldquo;fluctuated enormously\u0026rdquo; over the history of the earth. But it fails to tell us what the record of CO2 fluctuation shows and where we stand today in comparison to the existing past record, leaving the reader with the false impression that the current levels are within normal historical fluctuations. CO2 levels today are much higher than they have been in the last 400,000 years (which I believe has now been extended to 600,000 years), as documented by CO2 levels in Antarctic ice cores.\nTo quote Steve Albers at NOAA:\nThe reason I would be most concerned is not what has happened so far, but what can very possibly happen if we stay on the present course. Carbon dioxide (CO2) mainly from fossil fuel burning is being released into the atmosphere faster than natural processes can remove it, thus increasing atmospheric concentrations. The rate of rise in CO2 concentration has been increasing as well, from about 1.3 parts per million per year several decades ago to about 2.2 ppm/yr in 2005. The natural background is about 280ppm and current CO2 concentrations are about 380ppm. A linear extrapolation of the 2005 trend would yield a doubling of CO2 over natural values by around 2080. It is often suggested that short of that, values of just 450ppm would represent a threshold of unacceptable changes in the environment. These values are potentially just a few decades away. If we wait until things get obviously worse before we take action it could be too late for reasonably quick action to restore our familiar climate. One reason is because the ocean reservior of CO2 might be filling up and it would then take hundreds of years or more to reverse the CO2 back to its \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo; level to undo the warming effect. Another aspect of the carbon cycle is that even if the global emission rate is held constant, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would continue to rise for quite some time (e.g. one or more centuries) and reach levels several times what it is at present. Alternatively, to hold the CO2 concentration at current levels, the emission rate would have to be cut by roughly one-half (without considering the effect of the ocean reservoirs filling up). To hold the currently elevated temperature constant the emission rate would need about a two-thirds cut. Even if we magically turned off all emissions at once, it would probably take 100-300 years for CO2 levels to come down close to the natural background levels. The corresponding \u0026ldquo;half-life\u0026rdquo; would be something on the order of 50 years, subject to changes in the various CO2 sinks.\nSince carbon emissions are continuing to grow (primarily because the major method of electricity production around the globe is burning coal), the levels are continuing to rise (graphs are from Wikipedia).\nFor whatever faults one might find in Al Gore\u0026rsquo;s presentation in \u0026ldquo;An Inconvenient Truth,\u0026rdquo; at least he presents the data to support what he says\u0026ndash;and I recommend that everyone see that movie.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI found this op-ed to be an interesting read.The author makes what I think is a very important point:\"The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade...\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/deceptive-goldwater-institute-article.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Goldwater Institute sent out an email today titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php?/1082.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Some Like It Hot\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e by Robert C. Balling, Jr., a global warming skeptic who is a climatology professor at Arizona State University (and a Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow).  It\u0026rsquo;s short, so I\u0026rsquo;ll quote it in full:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThis summer treated us to the films \u0026ldquo;Too Hot Not To Handle\u0026rdquo; and Al Gore\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;An Inconvenient Truth,\u0026rdquo; as well as news that the Supreme Court will decide whether carbon dioxide (CO2) should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReinforcing the idea that CO2 is a pollutant, Gore and others often speak of \u0026ldquo;CO2 pollution.\u0026rdquo; Before you train yourself to add the \u0026ldquo;p\u0026rdquo; word to your vocabulary, consider that CO2 comes from the Earth itself and its levels have fluctuated greatly throughout history.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt one point, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped drastically and came perilously close to suffocating the global ecosystem. If someone is concerned about dangerous levels of atmospheric CO2, too low is far more dangerous than too high.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eExperiments show that when CO2 levels increase, plants grow faster and bigger. In order to  make CO2 more sinister, claims are made that  ragweed and poison ivy will grow more vigorously in  the future, and indeed they will. But so will every tree in the forest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that when elevated will act to warm the Earth. However, its levels have fluctuated enormously over the history of the Earth, and the ecosystems of the planet have adjusted to cope with these variations. The Supreme Court ruling will be interesting, but Mother Earth has clearly ruled that CO2 is not a pollutant.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDr. Robert C. Balling Jr. is a Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow and is a professor in the climatology program at Arizona State University, specializing in climate change and the greenhouse effect. A longer version of this article originally appeared on TCSDaily.com.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe big problem with this piece is a very critical omission.  The last paragraph admits that CO2 elevation causes global warming, but says that its levels have \u0026ldquo;fluctuated enormously\u0026rdquo; over the history of the earth.  But it fails to tell us what the record of CO2 fluctuation shows and where we stand today in comparison to the existing past record, leaving the reader with the false impression that the current levels are within normal historical fluctuations.  CO2 levels today are much higher than they have been in the last 400,000 years (which I believe has now been extended to 600,000 years), as documented by \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html\"\u003eCO2 levels in Antarctic ice cores\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo quote \u003ca href=\"http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/las/globalwarming.html\"\u003eSteve Albers at NOAA\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e          The reason I would be most concerned is not what has happened so    far, but what can very possibly happen if we stay on the present course.    Carbon dioxide (CO2) mainly from fossil fuel burning     is being released into the atmosphere faster than natural processes can    remove it, thus increasing atmospheric concentrations.    The rate of rise in CO2 concentration has been increasing as well, from     about 1.3 parts per million per year several decades ago to about     2.2 ppm/yr in 2005. The natural background is about 280ppm and current    CO2 concentrations are about 380ppm. A linear extrapolation of the 2005     trend would yield a doubling of CO2 over natural values by around 2080.    It is often suggested that short of that, values of just 450ppm would     represent a threshold of unacceptable changes in the environment. These    values are potentially just a few decades away. \u003cp\u003e    If we wait until things get obviously worse before we take     action it could be too late for reasonably quick action to restore    our familiar climate. One reason is because the ocean reservior of CO2     might be filling up and it would then take hundreds of years or more to     reverse the CO2 back to its \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo; level to undo the warming effect.    Another aspect of the carbon cycle is that even if the global emission     rate is held constant, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would     continue to rise for quite some time (e.g. one or more centuries) and     reach levels several times what it is at present. Alternatively, to hold     the CO2 concentration at current levels, the emission rate would have to     be cut by roughly one-half (without considering the effect of the ocean    reservoirs filling up). To hold the currently elevated temperature    constant the emission rate would need about a two-thirds cut. Even if    we magically turned off all emissions at once, it would probably take    100-300 years for CO2 levels to come down close to the natural background    levels. The corresponding \u0026ldquo;half-life\u0026rdquo; would be something on the order of    50 years, subject to changes in the various CO2 sinks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deceptive Goldwater Institute article on CO2 and global warming"},{"content":"A California man has seen the face of Jesus on a shrimp tail. Heidi Hamilton and Frosty Stilwell nearly simultaneously dubbed it a \u0026ldquo;Christacean\u0026rdquo; when reporting this on their syndicated radio show today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/jesus-shrimp.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA California man \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc11.com/news/9631509/detail.html\"\u003ehas seen the face of Jesus on a shrimp tail\u003c/a\u003e.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.fhfshow.com/\"\u003eHeidi Hamilton and Frosty Stilwell\u003c/a\u003e nearly simultaneously dubbed it a \u0026ldquo;Christacean\u0026rdquo; when reporting this on their syndicated radio show today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jesus shrimp"},{"content":"An entertaining YouTube video, I\u0026rsquo;ve embedded it in a posting at The Secular Web.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/eight-things-you-must-do-to-get-into.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn entertaining YouTube video, I\u0026rsquo;ve embedded it in \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/08/eight-things-you-must-do-to-get-into.html\"\u003ea posting at The Secular Web\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The eight things you must do to get into heaven"},{"content":"Since Crown Publishing Group responded to the charges of plagiarism against Ann Coulter\u0026rsquo;s latest book, Godless, in part by appealing to the support provided by its 35 pages of footnotes, Media Matters decided to analyze the footnotes. It turns out they provide further evidence of her irresponsibility and disregard for accuracy (as if the existing evidence isn\u0026rsquo;t enough). One example:\nOn Page 248, Coulter wrote: In an article in the New York Times on intelligent design, the design proponents quoted in the article keep rattling off serious, scientific arguments \u0026ndash; from [Michael J.] Behe\u0026rsquo;s examples in molecular biology to [William] Dembski\u0026rsquo;s mathematical formulas and statistical models. The Times reporter, who was clearly not trying to make the evolutionists sound retarded, was forced to keep describing the evolutionists\u0026rsquo; entire retort to these arguments as: Others disagree.2 That\u0026rsquo;s it. No explanation, no specifics, just \u0026ldquo;others disagree.\u0026quot; The high priests of evolution have not only forgotten how to do science, they\u0026rsquo;ve lost the ability to formulate a coherent counterargument.\nThe New York Times article Coulter cited \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;In Explaining Life\u0026rsquo;s Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; appeared on August 22, 2005, as Part 2 of a three-part series on the debate over the teaching of evolution. Coulter\u0026rsquo;s claim that the article\u0026rsquo;s author, reporter Kenneth Chang, offered \u0026ldquo;[n]o explanations\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;no specifics\u0026rdquo; from the proponents of evolution is flat-out false. Chang offered detailed explanations of how evolutionary mechanisms gave rise to blood-clotting systems, modern whales, and speciation among birds on the Galapagos Islands (\u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s finches\u0026rdquo;). Chang also noted: \u0026ldquo;Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory \u0026hellip; has over the last century yielded so many solid findings that no mainstream biologist today doubts its basic tenets, though they may argue about particulars.\u0026rdquo; Finally, and most egregiously, the phrase \u0026ldquo;others disagree\u0026rdquo; appears nowhere in the article.\nHat tip to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nHistorical Comments Kevin Carson (2006-12-09):\nUh, isn't Ann Coulter a rather unlikely advocate for traditionalism in religion? Unless there's a Bob Guccione, Jr. chapter of Opus Dei I haven't heard of.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/coulters-godless-has-fake-footnotes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince Crown Publishing Group responded to the \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/coulters-book-godless-on-evolution.html\"\u003echarges of plagiarism\u003c/a\u003e against Ann Coulter\u0026rsquo;s latest book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGodless\u003c/span\u003e, in part by appealing to the support provided by its 35 pages of footnotes, \u003ca href=\"http://mediamatters.org/items/200608070002\"\u003eMedia Matters decided to analyze the footnotes\u003c/a\u003e.  It turns out they provide further evidence of her irresponsibility and disregard for accuracy (as if the \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/coulters-book-godless-on-evolution.html\"\u003eexisting\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/ann-coulter-on-no-evidence-for.html\"\u003eevidence\u003c/a\u003e isn\u0026rsquo;t enough).  One example:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOn Page 248, Coulter wrote:\u003cblockquote\u003e  \u003cp\u003eIn an article in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c/i\u003e on intelligent design, the design proponents quoted in the article keep rattling off serious, scientific arguments \u0026ndash; from [Michael J.] Behe\u0026rsquo;s examples in molecular biology to [William] Dembski\u0026rsquo;s mathematical formulas and statistical models. \u003cb\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eTimes\u003c/i\u003e reporter, who was clearly not trying to make the evolutionists sound retarded, was forced to keep describing the evolutionists\u0026rsquo; entire retort to these arguments as: \u003ci\u003eOthers disagree\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/b\u003e\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coulter's Godless has fake footnotes, too"},{"content":"AOL has published logs showing web activity data for 650,000 users\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s 20 million searches in about 800MB. Although the AOL screen names were converted to random numbers, the numbers are consistent across an individual user\u0026rsquo;s activity and in many cases is no doubt sufficient to identify the individual based on ego surfing and other activity.\nAs Tech Crunch points out:\nThe most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net. Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with “buy ecstasy” and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless.The Paradigm Shift blog notes an instance of an AOL user who appears to be plotting to kill his wife (though there are, of course, possible innocent explanations). Commenters note that over 100 users used search terms which included references to child porn. There is no doubt that this will be used to argue for greater release of data to the government with fewer safeguards against misuse; commenters have already made the claim that \u0026ldquo;if you don’t do anything wrong, then you have nothing to be afraid of - even if people can view your search history.\u0026rdquo; Commenter Robert follows up with a good response:\nDo you ever search for your SSN#, phone number and/or name on line to see if it was posted without your consent? Do you ever worry your day care provider might be a child molester so you search for child molestation and the care takers name or their business name? Do you ever want to find ways to explain sex to your teen age daughter? Gee I wonder what those search terms might look like? Are you famous? Imagine if you type in the name of restaurant you want to go to and the word paparazzi to see if they are known to hang there. Let’s hope they do not see that? Oh, do you have a rare disease or maybe you are pregnant and are looking for clinic in your area so you type in your zip code? In a rural areas that might leave oh 1-30 people it could be? Oh, maybe you think your son is gay? I wonder what you would search for then? Do you have any fetishes or other unusual hobby that might be embarrassing for people to know about but is not illegal. Remember that rural issue again? Getting it yet, because I could go on and on. This is an personal invasion at its most basic level. Not only does it expose personal details of peoples lives, but it is open to wild misinterpretations. Take the wife killing search. Has anyone thought they were simply looking for news they had heard of on the topic, looking for a good book they had heard about with that topic whose title they could not remember, were a wife worried their husband was thinking about this, or maybe that it was exactly what they were looking for but it was only a private fantasy that let them cool off one day after an angry argument? Without context any term can seem scandalous or even criminal. Finally, there is the greater issue. When you start taking away more and more privacy. Each time you chip away at the greater fundamental concept that you deserve this right at all.Releasing this data to the general public was sheer idiocy on AOL\u0026rsquo;s part (and apparently a mistake), and demonstrates that an AOL account is not a good idea even when it\u0026rsquo;s free.\nThe data has been downloaded hundreds of times and is now being redistributed on other websites.\nUPDATE August 8, 2006: AOL has admitted and apologized for its mistake. News.com has an article which gives some more examples of the kind of information that can be gleaned from the search records.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nFunny!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/aol-releases-user-search-data-tied-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAOL has published logs showing web activity data for 650,000 users\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s 20 million searches in about 800MB.  Although the AOL screen names were converted to random numbers, the numbers are consistent across an individual user\u0026rsquo;s activity and in many cases is no doubt sufficient to identify the individual based on ego surfing and other activity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/06/aol-proudly-releases-massive-amounts-of-user-search-data/\"\u003eTech Crunch points out\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net. Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with “buy ecstasy” and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe Paradigm Shift blog notes an instance of \u003ca href=\"http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-planning-to-commit-murder/\"\u003ean AOL user who appears to be plotting to kill his wife\u003c/a\u003e (though there are, of course, possible innocent explanations).  Commenters note that over 100 users used search terms which included references to child porn.  There is no doubt that this will be used to argue for greater release of data to the government with fewer safeguards against misuse; commenters have \u003ca href=\"http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-planning-to-commit-murder/#comment-1116\"\u003ealready made the claim\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;if you don’t do anything wrong, then you have nothing to be afraid of - even if people can view your search history.\u0026rdquo;  Commenter Robert \u003ca href=\"http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-planning-to-commit-murder/#comment-1162\"\u003efollows up with a good response\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDo you ever search for your SSN#, phone number and/or name on line to see if it was posted without your consent? Do you ever worry your day care provider might be a child molester so you search for child molestation and the care takers name or their business name? Do you ever want to find ways to explain sex to your teen age daughter? Gee I wonder what those search terms might look like? Are you famous? Imagine if you type in the name of restaurant you want to go to and the word paparazzi to see if they are known to hang there. Let’s hope they do not see that? Oh, do you have a rare disease or maybe you are pregnant and are looking for clinic in your area so you type in your zip code? In a rural areas that might leave oh 1-30 people it could be? Oh, maybe you think your son is gay? I wonder what you would search for then? Do you have any fetishes or other unusual hobby that might be embarrassing for people to know about but is not illegal. Remember that rural issue again? Getting it yet, because I could go on and on. This is an personal invasion at its most basic level. Not only does it expose personal details of peoples lives, but it is open to wild misinterpretations. Take the wife killing search. Has anyone thought they were simply looking for news they had heard of on the topic, looking for a good book they had heard about with that topic whose title they could not remember, were a wife worried their husband was thinking about this, or maybe that it was exactly what they were looking for but it was only a private fantasy that let them cool off one day after an angry argument? Without context any term can seem scandalous or even criminal. Finally, there is the greater issue. When you start taking away more and more privacy. Each time you chip away at the greater fundamental concept that you deserve this right at all.\u003c/blockquote\u003eReleasing this data to the general public was sheer idiocy on AOL\u0026rsquo;s part (and apparently a mistake), and demonstrates that an AOL account is not a good idea \u003ca href=\"http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6099072.html\"\u003eeven when it\u0026rsquo;s free\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe data has been downloaded hundreds of times and is now being redistributed on other websites.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE August 8, 2006:  AOL has admitted and apologized for its mistake.  News.com has \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/AOL+offers+glimpse+into+users+lives/2100-1030_3-6103098.html\"\u003ean article which gives some more examples of the kind of information that can be gleaned from the search records\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AOL releases user search data, tied to individual users"},{"content":"The group \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; has just gotten considerable press via CNN\u0026rsquo;s website, which attempts to portray them as serious scholars with genuine academic credentials.\nBut the list of their members shows a few that are well beyond the pale, such as:\nPaul Andrew Mitchell (AM) Federal witness; Criminal investigator; Private attorney generalThis associate member is known for filing absurd lawsuits over copyright infringement for his work \u0026ldquo;The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue,\u0026rdquo; which appears to be a crackpot tax evasion guide. He once named Primenet (my employer at the time) as defendant in one of these lawsuits, because we rebuffed his demand that we remove a link to a nonexistent document on the website of one of our users. Primenet was never properly served, and one of the other defendants got the entire case thrown out. Another website on Mitchell that includes the text of some of his lawsuit documents is www.paulandrewmitchell.com. You can see a page of one of his complaints that includes Primenet as a defendant here (line 50). This one is dated August 1, 2001\u0026ndash;Primenet had ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1997.\nAmong the full members are\nJim Marrs (FM) Author, Researcher, 9/11, JFK, moreMarrs is a well-known JFK conspiracy theorist whose book Crossfire was used as part of the basis for Oliver Stone\u0026rsquo;s movie, JFK. One of his arguments for JFK conspiracy is a list of mysterious deaths, examined further here.\nJames H. Fetzer (FM) Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of S9/11TFetzer is another JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, who claims that the Zapruder film was fabricated by the conspiracy. (Some critiques are here and here.) Fetzer has complained about Wikipedia reverting his changes to pages about September 11. Fetzer also thinks the Apollo moon landings may be fake.\nRobert M. Bowman (FM) Former Director of the U.S. \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo; Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missionsBowman is also, according to Wikipedia, the \u0026ldquo;founder and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church, an \u0026ldquo;independent Catholic fellowship\u0026rdquo; created in 1996 and held to be connected through apostolic succession to the Old Catholic Church.\u0026rdquo; He attempted to gain the Reform Party nomination for president in 2000, but it went to Pat Buchanan [not John Hagelin, this has been corrected]. (I wonder if he is the father of Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical Christian apologist who is critical of cults?)\nOn Bowman\u0026rsquo;s political campaign website, he gives this resume:\nDr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the “Star Wars” programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers\u0026rsquo; ROTC Award of Merit (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Bob was an independent candidate for President of the US in 2000, beating Pat Buchanan in Iowa, Illinois, and California. He has resided on the Space Coast for 16 years.\u0026ldquo;lechrus2\u0026rdquo; has commented on his findings about some of the claims on Bowman\u0026rsquo;s resume, and others have pointed out similar problems in comments at DailyKos. Apparently Bowman claimed to have twice won the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal, but the list of all such winners since 1926 does not list his name; the list now says \u0026ldquo;ROTC Award of Merit\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;Gold Medal.\u0026rdquo; He claims to be a recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, but the list of recipients of the American Assembly\u0026rsquo;s Eisenhower Medal does not include him. There is a Milton Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service to Johns Hopkins University, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t found a list of recipients. He claims that he (secretly?) headed the \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo; program during the Ford and Carter administrations, even though the program was initiated under Reagan in 1983. No one has yet been able to verify the existence of a \u0026ldquo;George F. Kennan Peace Prize.\u0026rdquo; The Millennium III Corporation has a website with a front page and a bunch of bad links. The domain is registered to a John Gantt, 1623 33rd St., Washington, D.C. 20007, with a hotmail.com contact address and a phone number which is listed to David H. Barron at that same address. The address is missing a \u0026ldquo;NW,\u0026rdquo; but is in Georgetown. (A David H. Barron was chairman of the Young Republicans from 1981-1983, but this David H. Barron appears to be involved with the World Wildlife Fund and/or the International Conservation Partnership.) If John Gantt is John B. Gantt, there are D.C. listings for him at two different addresses, one of which is an office building at 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and the other of which is an office building at 1401 H. St. NW. Anyone want to investigate Bowman\u0026rsquo;s claimed military rank and Vietnam missions, his Caltech degree, or Millennium III?\nThe other co-chair of the group is Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones, who has argued that the World Trade Center building collapses must have involved controlled demolition. Former Scientific American columnist A.K. Dewdney is also a member; he has argued that it was impossible for cell phones to have been used from the hijacked planes, and therefore they must have been faked.\nUPDATE August 8, 2006: Maddox addresses some 9/11 conspiracy theories.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a detailed critique of \u0026ldquo;Loose Change.\u0026quot;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the Popular Mechanics article on 9/11 conspiracy theories.\nUPDATE August 9, 2006: Correction to the above\u0026ndash;Pat Buchanan was the Reform Party candidate, not former Natural Law Party candidate, physicist, and TM practitioner John Hagelin (though he also tried for the nomination).\nUPDATE August 16, 2006: By way of comparison to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, here\u0026rsquo;s a list of the individuals who consulted on the Popular Mechanics article referenced just above.\nUPDATE August 19, 2006: Also check out the 9/11 Myths website.\nPat (2006-12-09):\nGood post, I will link at Screw Loose Change. One correction: the Reform Party Candidate for President in 2000 was Pat Buchanan. Hagelin was the nominee of a rump faction of the party which walked out of the convention, but Buchanan got the matching funds and the spot on the ballot.\nScott (2006-12-09):\nMy favorite Steven Jones, BYU link is to the paper he wrote about Christ's visit to ancient America. He analyzes a bunch of Mayan ruins. Chairiots of the Gods, anyone...LINK\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nPat: Thanks for the correction, I've updated the post.Nathan: I didn't go into Jones' belief in the Mormon religion--I think anyone who examines it and still believes it has questionable critical thinking skills, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was an unexamined religious belief. Your citation shows otherwise. I've previously posted about the Mormon religion here and in my review of Richard Abanes' book, One Nation Under Gods, which is at Amazon.com and here.Tempestuous: So anybody who doesn't buy a conspiracy nonsense is a \"911goosestepper\"? There's no point in a formal public debate with lunatics, but there is plenty of material online to refute them with, and some online forums where debates can occur with appropriate scientific and critical scrutiny (e.g., the JREF Forum).\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYou're a god-damned goose stepper, Jim.ROTFLMAOThat's a good one.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI deleted the comment from ewing2001 not to censor his content but because he's already posted exactly the same comment on this blog post. In other words, his latest comment is spam, which I won't tolerate here.ewing2001: You're welcome to make substantive comments here, but please don't post any more advertisements for your website and petition. People can reach your blog by clicking on your name.\nJames B. (2006-12-09):\nGood post. I did a couple of posts on Bowman on Screw Loose Change. He claimed the Srebrenica massacre never happened, and average wages are 1/3 what they were in the 1950s. I did a search of business databases for his companies (I am an MBA student so I have access to the really expensive ones) His Institute for Space Studies (I don't remember the exact name) consists of a total of one person Millenium III does not exist at all.\ntechnician (2006-12-09):\nThis is a video I've been editing after thinking about what we have been doing 20 years ago to deserve the massive mind control we’re just witnessing.It’s an attempt to link the new age gurus of the end of the 70s to the actual new world order lords.VIDEO IS HERE\nbelieveyourowneyes.com (2007-04-23):\nCognitive dissonance - Wikipedia “the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where \"cognition\" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.”I know you guys want to stick to what you think you already know, and that you seek out information that creates an easy feeling of adherence to your preconceived beliefs about 911. We where sold a public myth, and that myth is so much easier than what these 911 Truth people are showing you.But; ask yourself if the ease of sticking to the myth is what being a real American is really all about. Are we the land of the 'well it is so much more comfortable to believe a myth' or are we the 'land of the brave'?The myth is: A boogie man did it. We have no evidence against him, but he did it. The buildings were destroyed by the terribleness of their hate toward us.The truth is: Criminals did it. They blew up the buildings with explosives, which is the only scientific explanation.These are two drastically different cognitions. No sane person can believe them both at the same time. Research Cognitive Dissonance and ask yourself if your resolving the mutually exclusive sets of information by seeking out info that tells you what you want to hear, or are you believing your own eyes?believeyourowneyes.com\nEinzige (2007-04-23):\nSo our only choices are either \"The Boogieman did it\" or it was done with explosives?We can't instead conclude that a group of islamic radicals hijacked planes and flew them into the buildings?That choice is out?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/scholars-for-911-truth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe group \u0026ldquo;Scholars for 9/11 Truth\u0026rdquo; has just gotten \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/08/06/sept11.theories.ap/index.html\"\u003econsiderable press via CNN\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e, which attempts to portray them as serious scholars with genuine academic credentials.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut the \u003ca href=\"http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/WhoAreWe.html\"\u003elist of their members\u003c/a\u003e shows a few that are well beyond the pale, such as:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePaul Andrew Mitchell (AM) \u003cblockquote\u003eFederal witness; Criminal investigator; Private attorney general\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis associate member is known for \u003ca href=\"http://www.etext.org/lawsuit/\"\u003efiling absurd lawsuits\u003c/a\u003e over copyright infringement for his work \u0026ldquo;The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue,\u0026rdquo; which appears to be a crackpot tax evasion guide.  He once named Primenet (my employer at the time) as defendant in one of these lawsuits, because we rebuffed his demand that we remove a link to a nonexistent document on the website of one of our users.  Primenet was never properly served, and one of the other defendants got the entire case thrown out.  Another website on Mitchell that includes the text of some of his lawsuit documents is \u003ca href=\"http://www.paulandrewmitchell.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.paulandrewmitchell.com\"\u003ewww.paulandrewmitchell.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  You can see a page of one of his complaints that includes Primenet as a defendant \u003ca href=\"http://www.paulandrewmitchell.com/COMPLAINT/.m/2001.08.01.097.vc.jpg\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (line 50).  This one is dated August 1, 2001\u0026ndash;Primenet had ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1997.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAmong the full members are\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eJim Marrs (FM) \u003cblockquote\u003eAuthor, Researcher, 9/11, JFK, more\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eMarrs is a well-known JFK conspiracy theorist whose book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCrossfire\u003c/span\u003e was used as part of the basis for Oliver Stone\u0026rsquo;s movie, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJFK\u003c/span\u003e.  One of his arguments for JFK conspiracy is a list of mysterious deaths, examined further \u003ca href=\"http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/deaths.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eJames H. Fetzer (FM) \u003cblockquote\u003eDistinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of S9/11T\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eFetzer is another JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, who claims that the Zapruder film was fabricated by the conspiracy.  (Some critiques are \u003ca href=\"http://www.jfk-info.com/040101a.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.jfk-info.com/moot1.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)  Fetzer has \u003ca href=\"http://www.flexwiki.com/default.aspx/FlexWiki/Is%20Wikipedia%20Stifling%209%2011%20Truth.html\"\u003ecomplained about Wikipedia reverting his changes to pages about September 11\u003c/a\u003e.  Fetzer \u003ca href=\"http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/logic.htm#fetzer\"\u003ealso thinks the Apollo moon landings may be fake\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eRobert M. Bowman (FM) \u003cblockquote\u003eFormer Director of the U.S. \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo; Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eBowman is also, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Bowman\"\u003eaccording to Wikipedia\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;founder and Presiding Archbishop of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_Catholic_Church\u0026amp;action=edit\" class=\"new\" title=\"United Catholic Church\"\u003eUnited Catholic Church\u003c/a\u003e, an \u0026ldquo;independent Catholic fellowship\u0026rdquo; created in 1996 and held to be connected through \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Succession\" title=\"Apostolic Succession\"\u003eapostolic succession\u003c/a\u003e to the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Catholic_Church\" title=\"Old Catholic Church\"\u003eOld Catholic Church\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026rdquo;  He attempted to gain the Reform Party nomination for president in 2000, but it went to Pat Buchanan [not John Hagelin, this has been corrected]. (I wonder if he is the father of Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical Christian apologist who is critical of cults?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Bowman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://bowman2006.com/about.htm\"\u003epolitical campaign website\u003c/a\u003e, he gives this resume:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for  Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III  Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He flew 101  combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the “Star Wars” programs under  Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the  George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the  Society of Military Engineers\u0026rsquo; ROTC Award of Merit (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of  other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering  from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the  country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Bob was an independent  candidate for President of the US in 2000, beating Pat Buchanan in Iowa,  Illinois, and California. He has resided on the Space Coast for 16 years.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;lechrus2\u0026rdquo; has \u003ca href=\"http://www.kffl.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=176167\"\u003ecommented on his findings about some of the claims on Bowman\u0026rsquo;s resume\u003c/a\u003e, and others \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/25/171742/031\"\u003ehave pointed out similar problems in comments at DailyKos\u003c/a\u003e. Apparently Bowman claimed to have twice won the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal, but the \u003ca href=\"http://www.same.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3583\"\u003elist of all such winners since 1926\u003c/a\u003e does not list his name; the list now says \u0026ldquo;ROTC Award of Merit\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;Gold Medal.\u0026rdquo;  He claims to be a recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, but the \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanassembly.org/esda.dir/esda_past_honorees.php\"\u003elist of recipients of the American Assembly\u0026rsquo;s Eisenhower Medal does not include him\u003c/a\u003e.  There is a Milton Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service to Johns Hopkins University, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t found a list of recipients.  He claims that he (secretly?) headed the \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo; program during the Ford and Carter administrations, even though the program \u003ca href=\"http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/milestone.htm\"\u003ewas initiated under Reagan in 1983\u003c/a\u003e.  No one has yet been able to verify the existence of a \u0026ldquo;George F. Kennan Peace Prize.\u0026rdquo;  The Millennium III Corporation has a \u003ca href=\"http://millenniumiii.com/\"\u003ewebsite with a front page and a bunch of bad links\u003c/a\u003e.  The domain is registered to a John Gantt, 1623 33rd St., Washington, D.C. 20007, with a hotmail.com contact address and a phone number which is listed to David H. Barron at that same address.  The address is missing a \u0026ldquo;NW,\u0026rdquo; but is in Georgetown.  (A David H. Barron was \u003ca href=\"http://www.yrnf.com/index.cfm?\u0026amp;fuseaction=AboutUs.Main\"\u003echairman of the Young Republicans from 1981-1983\u003c/a\u003e, but this David H. Barron \u003ca href=\"http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/news/index.cfm?uNewsID=72440\"\u003eappears to be involved with the World Wildlife Fund\u003c/a\u003e and/or the \u003ca href=\"http://www.conservationpartnership.com/\"\u003eInternational Conservation Partnership\u003c/a\u003e.)  If John Gantt is John B. Gantt, there are D.C. listings for him at two different addresses, one of which is an office building at 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and the other of which is an office building at 1401 H. St. NW. Anyone want to investigate Bowman\u0026rsquo;s claimed military rank and Vietnam missions, his Caltech degree, or Millennium III?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe other co-chair of the group is Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones, who has \u003ca href=\"http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html\"\u003eargued that the World Trade Center building collapses must have involved controlled demolition\u003c/a\u003e.  Former \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific American\u003c/span\u003e columnist A.K. Dewdney is also a member; he has argued that \u003ca href=\"http://physics911.net/cellphoneflight93.htm\"\u003eit was impossible for cell phones to have been used from the hijacked planes\u003c/a\u003e, and therefore \u003ca href=\"http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/phonecalls.html\"\u003ethey must have been faked\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE August 8, 2006:  Maddox addresses some \u003ca href=\"http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons\"\u003e9/11 conspiracy theories\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ccdominoes.com/lc/LooseChangeGuide.html\"\u003edetailed critique of \u0026ldquo;Loose Change.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the \u003ca href=\"http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePopular Mechanics\u003c/span\u003e article on 9/11 conspiracy theories\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE August 9, 2006:  Correction to the above\u0026ndash;Pat Buchanan was the Reform Party candidate, not former Natural Law Party candidate, physicist, and TM practitioner John Hagelin (though he also tried for the nomination).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE August 16, 2006:  By way of comparison to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, \u003ca href=\"http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=9\u0026amp;c=y\"\u003ehere\u0026rsquo;s a list of the individuals who consulted on the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePopular Mechanics\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e referenced just above.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE August 19, 2006:  Also check out the \u003ca href=\"http://www.911myths.com/\"\u003e9/11 Myths website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scholars for 9/11 Truth"},{"content":"A 91-page document describing the Republican strategy for the 2006 elections has been leaked and is available online (PDF). The document was obtained by The Raw Story website, which has published a summary:\nThe document, signed by Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), reveals plans to focus Republican Senatorial campaigns on three themes. Next week, Republicans will tout efforts to \u0026ldquo;secure America\u0026rsquo;s prosperity\u0026rdquo; through a variety of programs. Plans for small business health insurance pooling, spending reductions, increased domestic oil drilling, and \u0026ldquo;permanent death tax reform\u0026rdquo; are all to be pushed at the state level. Mid-month, Republicans are expected to shift gears, focusing voter\u0026rsquo;s attention instead on a variety of values-based initiatives. \u0026ldquo;Democrats oppose preserving a clear definition of marriage, are blocking child custody protections, and have obstructed the confirmation of fair judges,\u0026rdquo; the document reads. \u0026ldquo;Republicans are committed to protecting these traditional values by fostering a culture of life, protecting children, banning internet gambling and upholding the rule of law.\u0026quot;\nStem cell bills, though vetoed by President Bush are also to be championed by Republicans, even as they promote a law preventing \u0026ldquo;fetus farming,\u0026rdquo; a practice lawmakers believe could one day result from stem cell research. Strangely, a section touting various types of stem cell funding set to be promoted by Republicans is followed by another section, headlined, \u0026ldquo;Setting The Record Straight: President Bush\u0026rsquo;s Stem Cell Policy Is Working.\u0026quot;\nAlso included in the Republican values push will be the Child Custody Protection Act, which would make \u0026ldquo;it a federal crime to circumvent state parental involvement laws by taking a minor across state lines for an abortion.\u0026quot;\nRepublicans then plan to spend the month\u0026rsquo;s remaining two weeks promoting the party\u0026rsquo;s efforts in regard to homeland security. Approval of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales\u0026rsquo; plan for new, court-martial-like trials for terror detainees seems to be a priority, as are funding for the US-Mexico border fence, employee background checks for port security workers and improvement of the national emergency alert system.\nThe section seems more concerned, however, with defending the Republican record on security, promoting positive statements by the Iraqi Prime Minister, and combating Democratic criticism. For instance, terror suspect surveillance is listed as a priority, and \u0026ldquo;liberal newspaper\u0026rdquo; reports about NSA wiretap programs are criticised, but future programs are not listed among other proposed laws.\nHat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC mailing list.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/republican-playbook-for-2006-elections.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA 91-page document describing the Republican strategy for the 2006 elections has been leaked and is \u003ca href=\"http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/GOPAugust.pdf\"\u003eavailable online\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  The document was obtained by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Raw Story\u003c/span\u003e website, which \u003ca href=\"http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Raw_Story_acquires_91page_Republican_playbook_0804.html\"\u003ehas published a summary\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe document, signed by Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), reveals plans to focus Republican Senatorial campaigns on three themes. \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eNext week, Republicans will tout efforts to \u0026ldquo;secure America\u0026rsquo;s prosperity\u0026rdquo; through a variety of programs. Plans for small business health insurance pooling, spending reductions, increased domestic oil drilling, and \u0026ldquo;permanent death tax reform\u0026rdquo; are all to be pushed at the state level. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Republican playbook for 2006 elections leaked"},{"content":"Jon Ronson (author of the excellent books Them: Adventures with Extremists and Men Who Stare at Goats) has a column at the Guardian Unlimited website on indigo children:\nEight-year-old Oliver Banks thinks he sees dead people. Recently he thought he saw a little girl with black hair climb over their garden fence in Harrow, Middlesex. Then, as he watched, she vanished. When Oliver was three he was at a friend\u0026rsquo;s house, on top of the climbing frame, when he suddenly started yelling \u0026ldquo;Train!\u0026rdquo; He was pointing over the fence to the adjacent field. It turned out that, generations earlier, a railway line had passed through the field, exactly where he was pointing.\n\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Well, then,\u0026rdquo; Simone replied, \u0026ldquo;do you think Oliver has ADHD?\u0026quot;\nDr Munchie said no. She said it sounded very much like Oliver was in fact a highly evolved Indigo child - a divine being with enormously heightened spiritual wisdom and psychic powers. Oliver couldn\u0026rsquo;t concentrate, she explained, because he was being distracted by genuine psychic experiences. She said Indigo children were springing up all over the world, all at once, unconnected to one another. There were tens of thousands of them, in every country. And their parents weren\u0026rsquo;t all new age hippies. They were perfectly ordinary families who were realising how super-evolved and psychic their children were. This was a global phenomenon. Soon the Indigo children would rise up and heal the planet.\nRonson treats the insufferable indigos with the appropriate level of respect. I hope that this nonsense fades away soon (despite the support of Jenny McCarthy). If it doesn\u0026rsquo;t, I\u0026rsquo;ll have to join in the fun\u0026ndash;I think our dogs show some signs of being indigo animals\u0026hellip;\n(Hat tip to Terry Colvin on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/jon-ronson-on-indigo-children.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.jonronson.com/\"\u003eJon Ronson\u003c/a\u003e (author of the excellent books \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThem: Adventures with Extremists\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMen Who Stare at Goats\u003c/span\u003e) has \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,1837295,00.html\"\u003ea column at the Guardian Unlimited website on indigo children\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eEight-year-old Oliver Banks thinks he sees dead people. Recently he thought he saw a little girl with black hair climb over their garden fence in Harrow, Middlesex. Then, as he watched, she vanished. When Oliver was three he was at a friend\u0026rsquo;s house, on top of the climbing frame, when he suddenly started yelling \u0026ldquo;Train!\u0026rdquo; He was pointing over the fence to the adjacent field. It turned out that, generations earlier, a railway line had passed through the field, exactly where he was pointing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Well, then,\u0026rdquo; Simone replied, \u0026ldquo;do you think Oliver has ADHD?\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jon Ronson on Indigo Children"},{"content":"This is a very funny video of Siskel and Ebert shooting promos for their movie review show (\u0026ldquo;Siskel and Ebert and the Movies\u0026rdquo;) in 1987, between which they good naturedly diss each other and then go after Protestants, who \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t get enough shit.\u0026rdquo; They start ripping on each other at about 5:36, and on Protestants at about 9:00. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThat video is great.It's good to see Gene Siskel looking well. His final few shows were painful to watch and really robbed him of his dignity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/siskel-and-ebert-making-promos-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a very funny video of Siskel and Ebert shooting promos for their movie review show (\u0026ldquo;Siskel and Ebert and the Movies\u0026rdquo;) in 1987, between which they good naturedly diss each other and then go after Protestants, who \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t get enough shit.\u0026rdquo;  They start ripping on each other at about 5:36, and on Protestants at about 9:00.  (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cobject height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/kRta0o5-N8s\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/kRta0o5-N8s\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Siskel and Ebert making promos and dissing Protestants"},{"content":"A series of photographs of cocoon-encased trees and bicycles from Sweden, via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/caterpillar-invasion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA series of \u003ca href=\"http://user.it.uu.se/%7Esvens/larverna/normal.html\"\u003ephotographs of cocoon-encased trees and bicycles\u003c/a\u003e from Sweden, via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/671145.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Caterpillar invasion!"},{"content":"The United States Senate has, after a three-year delay, ratified the Convention on Cybercrime. This treaty requires United States law enforcement to help other countries enforce their cybercrime laws against offenders in the United States\u0026ndash;even if the actions are not illegal in the United States.\nThere was an option for the Senate to attach an amendment to the treaty that said the FBI would only aid in cases where the crime in the foreign country was also a crime here (\u0026ldquo;dual criminality\u0026rdquo;), but they did not take that option, at the behest of the Bush Administration and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The result is that other countries that have ratified the treaty can force U.S. law enforcement to conduct searches, seizures, and surveillance on U.S. citizens who are doing things that are legal in the U.S., but illegal in those countries, which is the main concern that has been raised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Technology Liberation Front, Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and Declan McCullagh in his discussion of the treaty at ZDNet.\nA list of current signatories can be found at the Council of Europe\u0026rsquo;s website.\nLooking at the actual content of the treaty, I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s as bad as the critics have made it sound. The treaty targets specific crimes in chapter II, section 1, Titles 1-5, and I don\u0026rsquo;t see how it could be expanded to cover things like the Internet sale of or discussion of products that are illegal in other countries.\nTitle 1 covers crimes which involve \u0026ldquo;Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems,\u0026rdquo; which include illegal access to computers, illegal interception of data traffic, data interference (intentional damage or destruction of data), system interference (e.g., denial of service), and misuse of devices. The last item seems to be the most potentially problematic, but it is qualified to say that the signatories need not enforce that one, and that it only applies to devices intended to be used for the other offenses (i.e., it carves out an exception for security testing).\nTitle 2 covers computer-related forgery and computer-related fraud.\nTitle 3 covers child pornography.\nTitle 4 covers copyright, which imposes nothing worse than is already in place in the United States.\nTitle 5 covers ancillary liability\u0026ndash;aiding and abetting the aforementioned offenses, and corporate liability for participation in such offenses.\nThe problematic provisions are in chapter III, on international cooperation. Title 3 on mutual assistance provides for the possibility of requiring dual criminality\u0026ndash;which I agree is the way the Senate should have gone. But it appears to me that the wording is such that it only mandates mutual assistance for the offenses listed in titles 1-5 (articles 1-11 within those titles).\nIf this really mandated the U.S. to go after people in the U.S. who are doing things like selling Nazi memorabilia in violation of French law, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t other countries be worried about the U.S. ratification on the grounds that they could go after online gambling in their countries?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/enforcing-worlds-internet-laws-in-us.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe United States Senate has, after a three-year delay, \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004864.php\"\u003eratified the Convention on Cybercrime\u003c/a\u003e.  This treaty requires United States law enforcement to help other countries enforce their cybercrime laws against offenders in the United States\u0026ndash;even if the actions are not illegal in the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere was an option for the Senate to attach an amendment to the treaty that said the FBI would only aid in cases where the crime in the foreign country was also a crime here (\u0026ldquo;dual criminality\u0026rdquo;), but they did not take that option, at the behest of the Bush Administration and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  The result is that other countries that have ratified the treaty can force U.S. law enforcement to conduct searches, seizures, and surveillance on U.S. citizens who are doing things that are legal in the U.S., but illegal in those countries, which is the main concern that has been raised by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004864.php\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040353.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e, Ed Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/more_government_control_of_the.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, and Declan McCullagh \u003ca href=\"http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5973735.html\"\u003ein his discussion of the treaty at ZDNet\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA list of current signatories can be found at \u003ca href=\"http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=185\u0026CM=8\u0026amp;amp;DF=8/4/2006\u0026amp;CL=ENG\"\u003ethe Council of Europe\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooking at the \u003ca href=\"http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/185.htm\"\u003eactual content of the treaty\u003c/a\u003e, I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s as bad as the critics have made it sound.  The treaty targets specific crimes in chapter II, section 1, Titles 1-5, and I don\u0026rsquo;t see how it could be expanded to cover things like the Internet sale of or discussion of products that are illegal in other countries.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTitle 1 covers crimes which involve \u0026ldquo;Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems,\u0026rdquo; which include illegal access to computers, illegal interception of data traffic, data interference (intentional damage or destruction of data), system interference (e.g., denial of service), and misuse of devices.  The last item seems to be the most potentially problematic, but it is qualified to say that the signatories need not enforce that one, and that it only applies to devices intended to be used for the other offenses (i.e., it carves out an exception for security testing).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTitle 2 covers computer-related forgery and computer-related fraud.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTitle 3 covers child pornography.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTitle 4 covers copyright, which imposes nothing worse than is already in place in the United States.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTitle 5 covers ancillary liability\u0026ndash;aiding and abetting the aforementioned offenses, and corporate liability for participation in such offenses.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe problematic provisions are in chapter III, on international cooperation.  Title 3 on mutual assistance provides for the possibility of requiring dual criminality\u0026ndash;which I agree is the way the Senate should have gone.  But it appears to me that the wording is such that it only mandates mutual assistance for the offenses listed in titles 1-5 (articles 1-11 within those titles).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf this really mandated the U.S. to go after people in the U.S. who are doing things like selling Nazi memorabilia in violation of French law, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t other countries be worried about the U.S. ratification on the grounds that they could go after online gambling in their countries?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Enforcing the world's Internet laws in the U.S."},{"content":"This is a pretty well-edited mashup\u0026hellip; the original Star Trek cast sings Monty Python\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Knights of the Round Table.\u0026rdquo; Hat tip to Ed Babinski, and I see Alex Palazzo at \u0026ldquo;The Daily Transcript\u0026rdquo; at Science Blogs has also already pointed people to this.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/star-trek-sings-knights-of-round-table.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a pretty well-edited mashup\u0026hellip; the original \u003ca href=\"http://www.devilducky.com/media/48608/\"\u003eStar Trek cast sings Monty Python\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Knights of the Round Table.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to Ed Babinski, and I see Alex Palazzo at \u0026ldquo;The Daily Transcript\u0026rdquo; at Science Blogs has \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2006/07/star_trekmonty_python.php\"\u003ealso already pointed people to this\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Star Trek Sings Knights of the Round Table"},{"content":"Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ District 6) proposed 19 amendments in order to force yes-or-no votes on earmarks in a bloated appropriations bills. They were all defeated by a wide margin, but the result produced a scoring of members of the House of Representatives who support earmarks and those who don\u0026rsquo;t. (Each amendment proposed removing funding for a particular earmark, so a YES vote on each amendment is an anti-pork, anti-earmark vote; a NO vote is to keep the earmark.)\nThe specific earmarks were:\nHouse Vote 190 - Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)\nHouse Vote 191 - Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)\nHouse Vote 192 - National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)\nHouse Vote 204 - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)\nHouse Vote 205 - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)\nHouse Vote 277 - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)\nHouse Vote 278 - “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)\nHouse Vote 279 - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)\nHouse Vote 280 - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)\nHouse Vote 298 - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)\nHouse Vote 299 - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)\nHouse Vote 302 - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)\nHouse Vote 303 - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)\nHouse Vote 304 - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)\nHouse Vote 334 - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)\nHouse Vote 335 - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)\nHouse Vote 336 - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)\nHouse Vote 337 - Fairmont State University ($900,000)\nHouse Vote 338 - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives fared:\n19 out of 19 NO (anti-earmark):\nFlake (R, AZ District 6)\nFranks (R, AZ District 2)\nHayworth (R, AZ District 5)\nShadegg (R, AZ District 3)\n0 out of 19 NO (pro-earmark):\nGrijalva (D, AZ District 7)\nKolbe (R, AZ District 8)\nPastor (D, AZ District 4)\nRenzi (R, AZ District 1)\nI\u0026rsquo;m sorry to see that my representative, Ed Pastor, voted in full support of these earmarks, though it does seem to me that both all YES and all NO votes are suggestive of a failure to judge them on individual merit. I do find an all YES (anti-earmark) vote more principled, as the practice of inserting earmarks has been an \u0026ldquo;invitation to corruption\u0026rdquo; (as Talking Point Memo puts it).\nFlake plans to continue challenging every earmark that does not include the name of a sponsor, and posts an \u0026ldquo;egregious earmark of the week\u0026rdquo; on his website under the \u0026ldquo;earmark reform\u0026rdquo; category.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/jeff-flakes-anti-earmark-pork-fighting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCongressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ District 6) \u003ca href=\"http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2006/07/435_districts_435_blogs_agains.php\"\u003eproposed 19 amendments in order to force yes-or-no votes on earmarks in a bloated appropriations bills\u003c/a\u003e.  They were all defeated by a wide margin, but the result produced a scoring of members of the House of Representatives who support earmarks and those who don\u0026rsquo;t.  (Each amendment proposed removing funding for a particular earmark, so a YES vote on each amendment is an anti-pork, anti-earmark vote; a NO vote is to keep the earmark.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe specific earmarks were:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll190.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 190\u003c/a\u003e - Dairy education in Iowa ($229,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll191.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 191\u003c/a\u003e - Hydroponic tomato production in Ohio ($180,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll192.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 192\u003c/a\u003e - National Grape and Wine Initiative ($100,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll204.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 204\u003c/a\u003e - Virginia Science Museum ($250,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll205.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 205\u003c/a\u003e - Juniata Locomotive Demonstration ($1,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll277.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 277\u003c/a\u003e - Swimming pool in Banning, CA ($500,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll278.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 278\u003c/a\u003e - “Facilities” in Weirton, West Virginia ($100,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll279.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 279\u003c/a\u003e - Multipurpose facility in Yucaipa, California ($500,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll280.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 280\u003c/a\u003e - Strand Theater Arts Center in Plattsburgh, New York ($250,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll298.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 298\u003c/a\u003e - Mystic Aquarium in New London, Conn. ($1,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll299.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 299\u003c/a\u003e - The Jason Foundation in Ashburn, VA ($1,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll302.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 302\u003c/a\u003e - Northwest Manufacturing Initiative ($2,500,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll303.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 303\u003c/a\u003e - Lewis Center for Education Research ($4,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll304.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 304\u003c/a\u003e - Leonard Wood Research Institute ($20,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll334.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 334\u003c/a\u003e - Arthur Avenue Retail Market ($150,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll335.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 335\u003c/a\u003e - Bronx Council for the Arts in Bronx, N.Y. ($300,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll336.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 336\u003c/a\u003e - Johnstown Area Regional Industries ($800,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll337.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 337\u003c/a\u003e - Fairmont State University ($900,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll338.xml\"\u003eHouse Vote 338\u003c/a\u003e - Tourism Development Association in Kentucky ($1,000,000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s how Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives fared:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e19 out of 19 NO (anti-earmark):\u003cbr /\u003eFlake (R, AZ District 6)\u003cbr /\u003eFranks (R, AZ District 2)\u003cbr /\u003eHayworth (R, AZ District 5)\u003cbr /\u003eShadegg (R, AZ District 3)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e0 out of 19 NO (pro-earmark):\u003cbr /\u003eGrijalva (D, AZ District 7)\u003cbr /\u003eKolbe (R, AZ District 8)\u003cbr /\u003ePastor (D, AZ District 4)\u003cbr /\u003eRenzi (R, AZ District 1)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sorry to see that my representative, Ed Pastor, voted in full support of these earmarks, though it does seem to me that both all YES and all NO votes are suggestive of a failure to judge them on individual merit.  I do find an all YES (anti-earmark) vote more principled, as the practice of inserting earmarks has been an \u0026ldquo;invitation to corruption\u0026rdquo; (as \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007168.php\"\u003eTalking Point Memo puts it\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFlake plans to continue \u003ca href=\"http://flake.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=46480\"\u003echallenging every earmark that does not include the name of a sponsor\u003c/a\u003e, and posts an \u0026ldquo;egregious earmark of the week\u0026rdquo; on his website under the \u003ca href=\"http://flake.house.gov/News/DocumentQuery.aspx?CatagoryID=1766\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;earmark reform\u0026rdquo; category\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeff Flake's anti-earmark pork-fighting amendments"},{"content":"Via Deep Thoughts, here\u0026rsquo;s a short (six minutes or so) animated film about Mormon theology as made in the 1970s by a Christian group designed to debunk the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.\nI find the South Park episode more entertaining (on YouTube in three parts: one two three). There\u0026rsquo;s a description of this episode (712, \u0026ldquo;All About the Mormons\u0026rdquo;) at the website Rethinking Mormonism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/mormon-theology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003cA HREF = \"http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2006/08/what-mormon-theology-is-really-all.html\"\u003eDeep Thoughts\u003c/A\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.americanfilms.com/play.cfm?clipid=531\"\u003ea short (six minutes or so) animated film\u003c/A\u003e about Mormon theology as made in the 1970s by a Christian group designed to debunk the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find the South Park episode more entertaining (on YouTube in three parts: \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OIzZwX0zOk\u0026search=South%20Park%20Mormon\"\u003eone\u003c/A\u003e \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB3RSFrDvmw\u0026search=South%20Park%20Mormon\"\u003etwo\u003c/A\u003e \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG_K_dEXkgM\u0026search=South%20Park%20Mormon\"\u003ethree\u003c/A\u003e).  There\u0026rsquo;s a description of this episode (712, \u0026ldquo;All About the Mormons\u0026rdquo;) at the website \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.i4m.com/think/southpark/\"\u003eRethinking Mormonism\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mormon theology"},{"content":"How hot has it been this week? Hot enough for the lions at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston to be fed frozen blood:\nIn Boston, animals at the Franklin Park Zoo were kept cool with sprinklers and frozen treats. The African wild dogs and lions got frozen blood; the primates received frozen fruit juice.(Hat tip to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/hot-enough-for-blood-popsicles.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow hot has it been this week?  Hot enough for the lions at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/08/03/heat.wave.ap/index.html\"\u003efed frozen blood\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn Boston, animals at the Franklin Park Zoo were kept cool with sprinklers and frozen treats. The African wild dogs and lions got frozen blood; the primates received frozen fruit juice.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://trentstamp.blogspot.com/2006/08/charity-wrap.html\"\u003eTrent Stamp of Charity Navigator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hot enough for blood popsicles"},{"content":"Pharyngula points out David Byrne\u0026rsquo;s review of a documentary film called \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp\u0026rdquo; and contrasts it with Camp Quest. First, Byrne on \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp\u0026rdquo;:\nSaw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)And Pharyngula on Camp Quest:\nWhich leads me to mention Camp Quest, where I spoke last week. It\u0026rsquo;s the diametric opposite of Jesus Camp. Kids are taught the tools of skeptical thought—I saw that they were learning a little probability theory and the scientific method, and were learning how to test claims about dowsing—and they go out of their way to expose the kids to the diversity of religious thought (a tactic which may be even more effective than insulating them from all religious thought). Right after my session, they had a pair of pagans give a talk on their belief system, and they were more than a little loopy…but nobody had to tell the kids that, everyone was nice and polite, and you could tell that no one was fooled.\nMy own talk was a bit about the scientific method, a short overview of some creationist claims, and some easy ways to refute them (the index to creationist claims is the instrument of choice there). I also taught them the most useful question they can apply anywhere: \u0026ldquo;How do you know that?\u0026rdquo; I told them that they should apply it to teachers and scientists as well as creationists…I noticed that one clever fellow applied it to the pagans that followed me.\nThe discussion of these camps reminds me of a childhood Christian camp I attended, Eagle Lake Camp in Colorado, run by the Navigators. It was not at all like the \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp\u0026rdquo; is described above. We slept in teepees and did the usual camp things, with a variety of mandatory and elective activities that included working with leather, canoeing, archery, shooting .22 rifles, hiking, morning exercises, and great food. Added to this was a generous dose of Bible study and discussion of Christian topics. On one evening, we were all victims of a mock kidnapping, taken out into the woods, and asked to recant our faith by fake anti-Christian captors who demanded that we give reasons to support what we believed in.\nIt was odder in hindsight than it seemed at the time. I suspect there was a bit of adrenaline rush, but I don\u0026rsquo;t recall feeling threatened or in danger. The exercise we were required to perform seems to me one that should be encouraged. In my case, questioning why I believe what I believe resulted in atheism. I\u0026rsquo;ve never attributed the cause to Eagle Lake Camp, but now that I think back to it, it may have played a small part.\nBTW, Camp Quest people\u0026ndash;check out the Eagle Lake Camp link above. It looks like they are very experienced at producing fun and exciting camp activities, and have gone well beyond what they offered when I was there (which was about 25 years ago).\nHistorical Comments MrRed2020 (2006-12-09):\nJust watched the Jesus Camp trailer on the movies homepage. You can find it here: jesuscampthemovie.com/ It is scary to know that there are people out there who claim to be religious and love god while they are dressing their children up in camouflage like they are getting ready for war.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/jesus-camp-camp-quest-and-eagle-lake.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/open_minds_rather_than_sealing.php\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e David Byrne\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/08/american_madras.html\"\u003ereview of a documentary film called \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and contrasts it with Camp Quest.  First, Byrne on \u0026ldquo;Jesus Camp\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSaw a screening of a documentary called \u003ca href=\"http://lokifilms.com/site/jesuscamp.html\" target=\"blank\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eJesus Camp\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd Pharyngula on \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/open_minds_rather_than_sealing.php\"\u003eCamp Quest\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jesus Camp, Camp Quest, and Eagle Lake Camp"},{"content":"After Paul Nelson was misquoted in the Guardian, this was discovered by Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education and pointed out at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb blog. Here\u0026rsquo;s how Robert Crowther at the Discovery Institute reports the misquotation and Nelson\u0026rsquo;s letter and blog post thanking Matzke for pointing out the misquotation:\nToday there is another urban myth building up a head of steam, and being helped along by Darwinists, about Discovery Fellow Paul Nelson. Gaurdian [sic] reporter Karen Armstrong reports: \u0026lsquo;Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth,\u0026rsquo; says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, \u0026lsquo;but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God\u0026rsquo;s power and light.\u0026rsquo; And yet this is pure rubbish because Nelson never said anything like this, and it turns out that Armstrong never even interviewed him. Nelson points this out in his letter to the Guardian demanding a correction. (Note to Paul: don’t hold your breath) Emphasis added.\nI can think of numerous examples of nonsense, misquotes, bad arguments, and urban legends that are spread around by the creationists (there are many in Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s index to creationist claims, including the \u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; issue that I tried for years to stop creationists from spreading), but real examples of urban myths \u0026ldquo;being helped along by Darwinists\u0026rdquo; are much harder to come by. Crowther supplies no evidence that this spurious Paul Nelson quote has been \u0026ldquo;helped along by Darwinists\u0026rdquo;; the evidence I have shows that evolutionists were the first to try to stamp it out.\n(Hat tip: Dave Thomas at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/discovery-institute-repays-kindness.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter Paul Nelson was misquoted in the Guardian, this was discovered by Nick Matzke of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/07/whaaaaa_spuriou.html\"\u003epointed out at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s how Robert Crowther at the Discovery Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/the_evolution_of_urban_myths_o.html\"\u003ereports the misquotation\u003c/a\u003e and Nelson\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.idthefuture.com/2006/08/letter_to_the_guardian.html\"\u003eletter and blog post\u003c/a\u003e thanking Matzke for pointing out the misquotation:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eToday there is another urban myth building up a head of steam, and being \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ehelped along by Darwinists\u003c/span\u003e, about Discovery Fellow Paul Nelson. Gaurdian [sic] reporter Karen Armstrong reports: \u0026lsquo;Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth,\u0026rsquo; says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, \u0026lsquo;but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God\u0026rsquo;s power and light.\u0026rsquo; And yet this is pure rubbish because Nelson never said anything like this, and it turns out that Armstrong never even interviewed him. \u003ca href=\"http://www.idthefuture.com/2006/08/letter_to_the_guardian.html\"\u003eNelson points this out in his letter\u003c/a\u003e to the Guardian demanding a correction. (Note to Paul: don’t hold your breath)\u003c/blockquote\u003e Emphasis added.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI can think of numerous examples of nonsense, misquotes, bad arguments, and urban legends that are spread around by the creationists (there are many in Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html\"\u003eindex to creationist claims\u003c/a\u003e, including the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u0026rdquo; issue\u003c/a\u003e that I tried for years to stop creationists from spreading), but real examples of urban myths \u0026ldquo;being helped along by Darwinists\u0026rdquo; are much harder to come by.  Crowther supplies no evidence that this spurious Paul Nelson quote has been \u0026ldquo;helped along by Darwinists\u0026rdquo;; the evidence I have shows that evolutionists were the first to try to stamp it out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wherein_the_di.html\"\u003eDave Thomas at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute repays kindness with slap in the face"},{"content":"Vanity Fair\u0026rsquo;s website has published \u0026ldquo;United 93\u0026rdquo; producer Michael Bronner\u0026rsquo;s article, \u0026ldquo;9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,\u0026quot; including audio excerpts. Bronner was given three CDs containing the Northeast Air Defense Sector audio files for September 11, which he summarizes in his very interesting article.\nIt turns out that there was some inaccurate and misleading testimony to the 9/11 Commission:\nIn the chronology presented to the 9/11 commission, Colonel Scott put the time NORAD was first notified about United 93 at 9:16 a.m., from which time, he said, commanders tracked the flight closely. (It crashed at 10:03 a.m.) If it had indeed been necessary to \u0026ldquo;take lives in the air\u0026rdquo; with United 93, or any incoming flight to Washington, the two armed fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia would have been the ones called upon to carry out the shootdown. In Colonel Scott\u0026rsquo;s account, those jets were given the order to launch at 9:24, within seconds of NEADS\u0026rsquo;s receiving the F.A.A.\u0026rsquo;s report of the possible hijacking of American 77, the plane that would ultimately hit the Pentagon. This time line suggests the system was starting to work: the F.A.A. reports a hijacking, and the military reacts instantaneously. Launching after the report of American 77 would, in theory, have put the fighters in the air and in position over Washington in plenty of time to react to United 93.\nIn testimony a few minutes later, however, General Arnold added an unexpected twist: \u0026ldquo;We launched the aircraft out of Langley to put them over top of Washington, D.C., not in response to American Airlines 77, but really to put them in position in case United 93 were to head that way.\u0026quot;\nHow strange, John Azzarello, a former prosecutor and one of the commission\u0026rsquo;s staff members, thought. \u0026ldquo;I remember being at the hearing in \u0026lsquo;03 and wondering why they didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have their stories straight. That struck me as odd.\u0026quot;\nBut the facts are not supportive of conspiracy theories\u0026ndash;rather, the facts indicate that the misleading testimony was an attempt to make a simpler story out of what actually happened:\nAs the tapes reveal in stark detail, parts of Scott\u0026rsquo;s and Arnold\u0026rsquo;s testimony were misleading, and others simply false. At 9:16 a.m., when Arnold and Marr had supposedly begun their tracking of United 93, the plane had not yet been hijacked. In fact, NEADS wouldn\u0026rsquo;t get word about United 93 for another 51 minutes. And while NORAD commanders did, indeed, order the Langley fighters to scramble at 9:24, as Scott and Arnold testified, it was not in response to the hijacking of American 77 or United 93. Rather, they were chasing a ghost. NEADS was entering the most chaotic period of the morning.There was a lot of confusion about which planes had gone where due to lack of radar or electronic transponder data\u0026ndash;although American 11 had already hit the World Trade Center, it was that plane that they thought they were tracking.\nThe release of this information presents a wealth of data that is inconsistent with the popular 9/11 conspiracy theories. If history is any guide, conspiracy theorists will scour it for any data points that they can fit into a conspiracy theory while ignoring the rest. Rather than collecting all of the best data and using it to construct the big picture and best explanation, they collect lots of individual data points that strike them as somehow salient, and build fanciful theories that are at odds with most of the actual data.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe claim that there were no planes involved in 9/11 is a lunatic claim completely inconsistent with the evidence. The four hijacked planes were real planes with real passengers; they crashed, there were thousands of eyewitnesses including independent eyewitnesses who caught the WTC crashes on videotape, parts (including body parts) were recovered and identified. If you deny that planes were involved, you're not even trying to maintain contact with reality or the evidence.Loose Change is a very poorly done documentary which makes numerous outlandish or demonstrably false claims. (Also see the analysis of the Pentagon light pole damage here.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe 911tvfakery blog vividly demonstrates the point I made in my post that the evidences from the NORAD tapes would have a small bit taken out of context by the conspiracy theorists and the rest would be ignored.In a post on 8/02, ewing2001 writes: \"Hidden in the typical spin about negligence, new NORAD/NEADS transcripts in the latest Vanity Fair article also revealed, that the \"Flight11\" Tailnumber didn't match and it was suggested that \"Flight175\" was \"part of an Input\", which means a a reference to a simulation exercise\"But that's not at all what happened--rather, they were not sure that it was American Flight 11 that had hit the WTC, until American Airlines confirmed it several hours later. Colin Scuggins, civilian manager at Boston Center, said \"disregard the tail number\" because it had not been confirmed, not because it and been verified not to match.There were comments throughout the day about whether this was real or an exercise--initially because of genuine confusion, but later as a form of gallows humor because the events of the day were so extreme. This is quite clear in the Vanity Fair article.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIn my last comment, \"not because it and been verified not to match.\" should have said \"not because it had been verified not to match.\"That is, it was that they weren't sure that it did match, not that they were sure that it didn't.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/911-live-norad-tapes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVanity Fair\u0026rsquo;s website has published \u0026ldquo;United 93\u0026rdquo; producer Michael Bronner\u0026rsquo;s article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e including audio excerpts.   Bronner was given three CDs containing the Northeast Air Defense Sector audio files for September 11, which he summarizes in his very interesting article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt turns out that there was some inaccurate and misleading testimony to the 9/11 Commission:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the chronology presented to the 9/11 commission, Colonel Scott put the time NORAD was first notified about United 93 at 9:16 a.m., from which time, he said, commanders tracked the flight closely. (It crashed at 10:03 a.m.) If it had indeed been necessary to \u0026ldquo;take lives in the air\u0026rdquo; with United 93, or any incoming flight to Washington, the two armed fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia would have been the ones called upon to carry out the shootdown. In Colonel Scott\u0026rsquo;s account, those jets were given the order to launch at 9:24, within seconds of NEADS\u0026rsquo;s receiving the F.A.A.\u0026rsquo;s report of the possible hijacking of American 77, the plane that would ultimately hit the Pentagon. This time line suggests the system was starting to work: the F.A.A. reports a hijacking, and the military reacts instantaneously. Launching after the report of American 77 would, in theory, have put the fighters in the air and in position over Washington in plenty of time to react to United 93.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes"},{"content":"This nice video from Scott Fraser via Rocketboom shows a large number of starlings landing on a tree that can barely support their weight. One viewer comments:\nit is a sign in the form of a angel. 08-01-2006by bpsolka@verizon.net the family who filmed this show were meant to see this and show us.if you notice the branches bent into angel shape wings. I don,t know what sign it is.but it must be gods way of showing himself through the birds.and have the birds done this again after this video was shot.\nHistorical Comments OutOfContext (2006-12-09):\nI wish nature would keep it's legs together, there's too much of it already.\nMark (2006-12-09):\nI think the starling should replace the eagle as our national bird.--It came from Europe--It displaced a lot of natives--It defecates all over the place.\nKrystalline Apostate (2006-12-09):\nYou all do know that starlings were once considered psychopomps, don't you?\nmathyoo (2006-12-09):\nI wouldn't say that the trees were shaped like \"angel wings\". I'd say they were shaped like bird wings-duh...maybe the starlings were trying to tell Christians something-like maybe God is really a bird...\nkai (2006-12-09):\nGod was giving them the bird?\nAnonymous (2008-10-26):\nMy guess is that the birds were feeding on the berries on the tree\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/08/flock-of-starlings-land-on-tree-that.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis nice video from Scott Fraser via Rocketboom shows a large number of starlings landing on a tree that can barely support their weight.  One viewer comments:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ch5\u003e\nit is a sign in the form of a angel.\u003c/h5\u003e\n\u003cimg alt=\"5/5 stars\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/ls/gr/read_star_5.gif\" /\u003e08-01-2006\u003cspan class=\"sep\"\u003eby \u003ca href=\"http://video.yahoo.com/video/profile?yid=bpsolka@verizon.net\"\u003ebpsolka@verizon.net\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\nthe family who filmed this show were meant to see this and show us.if you notice the branches bent into angel shape wings. I don,t know what sign it is.but it must be gods way of showing himself through the birds.and have the birds done this again after this video was shot.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ciframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/vap4MBEmO_M\" width=\"420\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eOutOfContext\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI wish nature would keep it's legs together, there's too much of it already.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Flock of starlings land on tree that can barely support their weight"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic prints a story on some housing speculators now being burned:\nTwo houses on the same north Valley street, similar in size and age, are for sale. One lists for $749,000 and the other for $775,000. A third house came on the market on the same street a few doors from the other two. The new listing was similar to the others in size and age but priced at $659,000.\nReaction: outrage.\n\u0026ldquo;The neighbors were really mad,\u0026rdquo; said Thomas Stornelli, principal of Global Network of Homes in Scottsdale. \u0026ldquo;They knocked on the door and asked, \u0026lsquo;What are you thinking?\u0026rsquo; For a lot of people, their home equity is their bank. It\u0026rsquo;s like taking money out of someone\u0026rsquo;s bank, their retirement account. People (future buyers) are going to use that house as a comp, even if it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the same upgrades. It\u0026rsquo;s going to leave a mark.\u0026quot;\nThe owners of the least- expensive home were equally upset. They were in the midst of a corporate relocation and wanted to sell quickly. Suddenly, angry neighbors were confronting them. One night, someone tore down their for-sale sign.\nStornelli is the listing agent for one of the higher-priced homes. His approach is to try for the higher prices, which he believes are justified in Scottsdale.\n\u0026ldquo;Whenever you mix emotion and finance, there\u0026rsquo;s going to be stress,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;As a Realtor, we deal with that every day.\u0026quot;\nThe market has proven everyone wrong. None of the houses had sold as of the third week of this month.Another account in the same story:\nA woman walked into Barry\u0026rsquo;s Realty Executives office about nine weeks ago, sat down and began crying. She said she bought two houses last year, fixed them up and quickly sold them, making a $50,000 profit on each.\nShe was a novice investor, but it all looked easy. She took her profits, threw in some extra money and bought five more houses. She spent money fixing them up, but when she put the houses on the market, she realized she had bought at the peak, Barry said.\n\u0026ldquo;Her eyes just started to well up, and she just started bawling,\u0026rdquo; Barry said. \u0026ldquo;She said she couldn\u0026rsquo;t sell them for what she bought them for. She said her monthly payments were about $20,000.\u0026quot;\nBarry suggested turning them into rentals. She told him she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get enough rent to make it worthwhile.\n\u0026ldquo;She was expecting to flip them,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;The market flipped her. She was devastated. People have forgotten that houses are not a liquid asset. They never were meant to be.\u0026quot;There are a few others in the report. I expect we\u0026rsquo;ll see more stories like this over the next couple of years as ARMs reset on people who are unable to sell or refinance.\nAlso check out the comments on this story at The Housing Bubble Blog.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThe problem with these speculators, clearly, was that they were money repellants instead of money attractants.They didn't have the right attitude about investing.If only they had realized that investing is 95% in your head. If you think you can, you are right. If you think you can't... you're still right.I'll be a real estate guru yet!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/some-screwed-housing-speculators-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0730emotional0730.html\"\u003eprints a story on some housing speculators now being burned\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e Two houses on the same north Valley street, similar in size and age, are for sale. One lists for $749,000 and the other for $775,000. A third house came on the market on the same street a few doors from the other two. The new listing was similar to the others in size and age but priced at $659,000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    Reaction: outrage.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The neighbors were really mad,\u0026rdquo; said Thomas Stornelli, principal of Global Network of Homes in Scottsdale. \u0026ldquo;They knocked on the door and asked, \u0026lsquo;What are you thinking?\u0026rsquo; For a lot of people, their home equity is their bank. It\u0026rsquo;s like taking money out of someone\u0026rsquo;s bank, their retirement account. People (future buyers) are going to use that house as a comp, even if it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the same upgrades. It\u0026rsquo;s going to leave a mark.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe owners of the least- expensive home were equally upset. They were in the midst of a corporate relocation and wanted to sell quickly. Suddenly, angry neighbors were confronting them. One night, someone tore down their for-sale sign.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStornelli is the listing agent for one of the higher-priced homes. His approach is to try for the higher prices, which he believes are justified in Scottsdale.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    \u0026ldquo;Whenever you mix emotion and finance, there\u0026rsquo;s going to be stress,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;As a Realtor, we deal with that every day.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    The market has proven everyone wrong. None of the houses had sold as of the third week of this  month.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnother account in the same story:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA woman walked into Barry\u0026rsquo;s Realty Executives office about nine weeks ago, sat down and began crying. She said she bought two houses last year, fixed them up and quickly sold them, making a $50,000 profit on each.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe was a novice investor, but it all looked easy. She took her profits, threw in some extra money and bought five more houses. She spent money fixing them up, but when she put the houses on the market, she realized she had bought at the peak, Barry said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Her eyes just started to well up, and she just started bawling,\u0026rdquo; Barry said. \u0026ldquo;She said she couldn\u0026rsquo;t sell them for what she bought them for. She said her monthly payments were about $20,000.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e    Barry suggested turning them into rentals. She told him she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get enough rent to make it worthwhile.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;She was expecting to flip them,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;The market flipped her. She was devastated. People have forgotten that houses are not a liquid asset. They never were meant to be.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere are a few others in the report.  I expect we\u0026rsquo;ll see more stories like this over the next couple of years as ARMs reset on people who are unable to sell or refinance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso check out the comments on this story at \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1154\"\u003eThe Housing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some screwed housing speculators in Phoenix"},{"content":"CNN reports that Mel Gibson has released a statement about his DUI arrest in which he says:\nI acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said, and I apologize to anyone who I have offended.But they don\u0026rsquo;t tell us what these things are. TMZ.com, however, has published a very plausible account of the full police report (including images of report pages):\nThe actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, \u0026ldquo;My life is fd.\u0026rdquo; Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not going to get in your car,\u0026rdquo; and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.\n\u0026hellip;\nOnce inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, \u0026ldquo;You mother fr. I\u0026rsquo;m going to f*** you.\u0026rdquo; The report also says \u0026ldquo;Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he \u0026lsquo;owns Malibu\u0026rsquo; and will spend all of his money to \u0026lsquo;get even\u0026rsquo; with me.\u0026rdquo; The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: \u0026ldquo;F*****g Jews\u0026hellip; The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.\u0026rdquo; Gibson then asked the deputy, \u0026ldquo;Are you a Jew?\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nA law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, \u0026ldquo;What do you think you\u0026rsquo;re looking at, sugar tits?\u0026quot;\nWe\u0026rsquo;re told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how \u0026ldquo;f*d\u0026rdquo; he was and how he was going to \u0026ldquo;f\u0026rdquo; Deputy Mee. Gibson was put in a cell with handcuffs on. He said he needed to urinate, and after a few minutes tried manipulating his hands to unzip his pants. Sources say Deputy Mee thought Gibson was going to urinate on the floor of the booking cell and asked someone to take Gibson to the bathroom.\nAnd there\u0026rsquo;s plenty more at TMZ.com, which claims that L.A. County Sheriff\u0026rsquo;s Deputy James Mee was forced to rewrite his report to make it less \u0026ldquo;inflammatory\u0026rdquo; given the current situation in Israel.\nAgain, this all seems quite consistent with Mel Gibson\u0026rsquo;s prior behavior and attitudes about women and other subjects.\nHat tip to Talking Points Memo.\nUPDATE July 30, 2006: The L.A. Times also has coverage of this which confirms the TMZ.com account.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/mel-gibson-dui-arrest-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/07/29/gibson.statement/index.html\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e that Mel Gibson has released a statement about \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/mel-gibson-arrested-for-dui.html\"\u003ehis DUI arrest\u003c/a\u003e in which he says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said, and I apologize to anyone who I have offended.\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut they don\u0026rsquo;t tell us what these things are.  TMZ.com, however, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/28/gibsons-anti-semitic-tirade-alleged-cover-up/\"\u003epublished a very plausible account of the full police report\u003c/a\u003e (including \u003ca href=\"http://cdn.digitalcity.com/tmz_documents/gibson_wm_docs_072806.pdf\"\u003eimages of report pages\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, \u0026ldquo;My life is f\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ed.\u0026rdquo; Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not going to get in your car,\u0026rdquo; and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eOnce inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, \u0026ldquo;You mother f\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003er. I\u0026rsquo;m going to f*** you.\u0026rdquo; The report also says \u0026ldquo;Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he \u0026lsquo;owns Malibu\u0026rsquo; and will spend all of his money to \u0026lsquo;get even\u0026rsquo; with me.\u0026rdquo; \u003cp\u003eThe report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: \u0026ldquo;F*****g Jews\u0026hellip; The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.\u0026rdquo; Gibson then asked the deputy, \u0026ldquo;Are you a Jew?\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mel Gibson DUI arrest update"},{"content":"Odyssey Truett, a Springer Spaniel, comments on the Bible\u0026rsquo;s negativity about dogs.\n(Hat tip to Ed Babinski.)\nAnonymous (2007-11-07):\nI dont like that link and i think the writer of that \"blog\" is a complete ignoramus and doesnt understand dogs himself. True that there arent many nice things in the Bible about dogs. Most of the references i've read about them were comparing them to bad things.. dogs eating scraps in the street or the dead people who are sinners unworthy of burial. aka Pariah dogs, living on the fringes of society and not really doing much good for anyone but themselves. However in a lot places in the world this is still true today. the homeless dogs are thieves, scavengers, carriers of vermin and disease, and not very well liked among the locals.Being cast out among the dogs in the Bible was never a good thing for that reason because there is no one to care for you and you are scorned.. and one that i see again and again proven true by people i know personally is in Proverbs 26:11 \"As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly\". Yes dogs can regurgitate FOOD but there is a clear distinction of FOOD and VOMIT. When you vomit its because there is something wrong with the food. wouldnt you think you should probably not eat it....? If you barf up steak and eggs are you going to scrape it off the floor and put it back on your plate for a second chance? There are usually good medical reasons why a dog returns to its vomit.. they would rather re-eat tainted food than starve to death because thats the only option a pariah dog has. One way or the other he is going to die.... but at least he can die with a full belly even if its poison rather than dying a slow death by starvation. I dont believe the Bible is saying ALL dogs are bad. i believe it speaks mostly about street dogs. and if you've ever lived in a place where stray dogs were a danger or destroyed your property then you would understand why the comparison fits with sinners and thieves.\nLippard (2007-11-07):\nStreet dogs' condition is entirely the fault of human beings, not the dogs themselves. Why doesn't the Bible put the blame where it belongs? Instead, it seems to take for granted that such dogs are part of the natural condition. Kind of like the Bible's position on slavery.And regarding dogs eating vomit, the Bible also speaks of rabbits chewing their cud, or rumination (Leviticus 11:6). In fact, they eat some of their own droppings (cecotropes) in order to re-digest them and obtain nutrients they need, a process called refection. The Bible gets it wrong.The Bible's not a reliable guide to morals or science.Thanks for stopping by and expressing your opinion.\nAnonymous (2007-11-07):\nI also want to point and CORRECT their context in Matthew 15:21. infact this person should probably read the entire chapter... Jesus said \"I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel\" and the chapter goes on to say \"The woman came and knelt before him 'Lord help!' she said. He answered 'It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs.\" 'Yes Lord' she said, 'but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table.' Then Jesus answered, 'Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.\" And her daughter was healed from that very hour.\"What does that all mean? She wasnt a Christian but she was willing to accept the master. She was a lost soul, a stray, a dog without a home... and yet she had sense enough to seek help from the right master and was rewarded for her blind faith and trust.... also a common trait in dogs. Its all very easy to follow if people will actually read the entire chapter and attempt to see past their own prejudices and uneducated judgments. Whether or not you believe in the Bible... its pure and simple \"reading and comprehension\" .. stuff they used to teach in grade school..\nAnonymous (2007-11-07):\nI agree that the street dogs condition is the fault of humans... but what sort of idiot wants to breed animals with no purpose? obviously someone who hasnt got very good morals in life or a sense of \"cause and effect\" a dog with a purpose is one that works. he hunts, he guards, he herds.... in those times there was no use for a common man to have a pet. a pet dog was useless and used up resources and did nothing in return. What good is a comforting companion when you are giving it your food and starving your family to death? Again i refer to the \"giving the children's bread to the dogs\" If you have never hit hard times and been broke and not know where your next pay check is going to come from then you may never understand my POV. having a pet at such a time is insane.. especially if you have children. You've got a weird set of priorities if you insist on bringing a dog home when you have no money to care for it AND your children.And there is STILL a difference in chewing cud, vomiting and regurgitation. cud is regurgitation... only for one's own personal benefit. regurgitating food for young is obviously helping the young to survive and thrive and prepare them to eat real food. vomit is still vomit. it doesnt belong. the food is bad. Rabbits eat droppings but in the same sense that a cow burps up its dinner. the rabbit doesnt just take a dump then turn around and eat it. I own rabbits and i know what i'm talking about. Rabbits dont normally chew their cud until late in the evening. A lot of old timers refer to those \"Special\" pellets as Night Droppings. its different than usual pellets they drop all day long. Rabbits CANT control where they poop but they can control where they pee.. because they mark their territory with urine. They poop as they hop along. The easiest way to litter box train a rabbit is to determine where he hangs out the most and keep litter pans in the path. But that is beside the point.\nAnonymous (2007-11-07):\nand in parting... i want to point out the differences between the OLD Testament and the NEW Testament.. which makes a point in telling the people to eat what they want as long as they bless it. it also denounces circumcision telling Gentiles not to conform to that trend and the Jews to stick to their own traditions. There is plenty of scientific fact in the Bible. but you must remember... this is all coming from people using ONLY common sense... Pigs eat all kinds of nasty, disgusting things... including their own kind AND people. Certain types of shell fish and muscles can kill you if they become tainted. Crabs and shrimp also eat all kinds of rotting dead things. And these people are living by the saying \"You are what you eat\" ... and who wants to be fish crap? But once again... in Matthew it talks about cleanliness... not just about dogs.Anyway... good day.\nponch78 (2009-08-20):\n\u0026quot;... but what sort of idiot wants to breed animals with no purpose?\u0026quot; Answer: can you spell -- g-o-d?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/dogs-and-bible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOdyssey Truett, a Springer Spaniel,  \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/Why-Doesnt-The-Bible-Like-Me/\"\u003ecomments on the Bible\u0026rsquo;s negativity about dogs\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to Ed Babinski.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAnonymous\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2007-11-07)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI dont like that link and i think the writer of that \"blog\" is a complete ignoramus and doesnt understand dogs himself. \u003cBR/\u003e True that there arent many nice things in the Bible about dogs. Most of the references i've read about them were comparing them to bad things.. dogs eating scraps in the street or the dead people who are sinners unworthy of burial. aka Pariah dogs, living on the fringes of society and not really doing much good for anyone but themselves. However in a lot places in the world this is still true today. the homeless dogs are thieves, scavengers, carriers of vermin and disease, and not very well liked among the locals.\u003cBR/\u003eBeing cast out among the dogs in the Bible was never a good thing for that reason because there is no one to care for you and you are scorned..  and one that i see again and again proven true by people i know personally is in Proverbs 26:11 \"As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly\". Yes dogs can regurgitate FOOD but there is a clear distinction of FOOD and VOMIT. When you vomit its because there is something wrong with the food. wouldnt you think you should probably not eat it....? If you barf up steak and eggs are you going to scrape it off the floor and put it back on your plate for a second chance? There are usually good medical reasons why a dog returns to its vomit.. they would rather re-eat tainted food than starve to death because thats the only option a pariah dog has. One way or the other he is going to die.... but at least he can die with a full belly even if its poison rather than dying a slow death by starvation. \u003cBR/\u003eI dont believe the Bible is saying ALL dogs are bad. i believe it speaks mostly about street dogs. and if you've ever lived in a place where stray dogs were a danger or destroyed your property then you would understand why the comparison fits with sinners and thieves.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dogs and the Bible"},{"content":"Mel Gibson, whose idiotic views on evolution and the role of women resulted in more hits to this blog than any other post, was arrested in Malibu on suspicion of driving under the influence.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI wonder if he went crazy and started rubbing his own feces all over himself like he did in South Park Colorado that one time.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/mel-gibson-arrested-for-dui.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMel Gibson, whose \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/mel-gibson-on-evolution-women-and.html\"\u003eidiotic views on evolution and the role of women\u003c/a\u003e resulted in more hits to this blog than any other post, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/28/gibson.dui/index.html\"\u003ewas arrested in Malibu on suspicion of driving under the influence\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI wonder if he went crazy and started rubbing his own feces all over himself like he did in South Park Colorado that one time.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Mel Gibson arrested for DUI"},{"content":"Casey Luskin, responding to a point in a book review by John Derbyshire, argues that Judge Jones was incorrect in his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover when he wrote that Intelligent Design is not supported by any peer-reviewed publications.\nAs Wesley Elsberry shows, Luskin\u0026rsquo;s argument is not with Jones but with the defense in the Dover case, and in particular with the testimony of Michael Behe, who agreed in cross-examination that \u0026ldquo;there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred.\u0026quot;\nQ. [Rothschild] Now you have never argued for intelligent design in a peer reviewed scientific journal, correct?\nA. [Behe] No, I argued for it in my book.\nQ. Not in a peer reviewed scientific journal?\nA. That’s correct.\nQ. And, in fact, there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred, is that correct?\nA. That is correct, yes. Jones had to make his decision on the basis of the evidence presented in his court, not on the basis of Luskin\u0026rsquo;s list of publications. Of the documents Luskin lists in refutation of Jones\u0026rsquo; statements, one of them, a paper by Behe and Snoke, was addressed specifically in the case, and it did not support intelligent design. As Ed Brayton and others have pointed out, in cross-examination in the Dover trial it came out that the Behe and Snoke paper actually is strong evidence against the existence of irreducible complexity. (The Ed Brayton post may also now be found at scienceblogs.com.)\nLuskin\u0026rsquo;s list of alleged peer-reviewed publications supporting intelligent design hasn\u0026rsquo;t undergone cross-examination in court (except for Behe and Snoke, the treatment of which in the trial Luskin fails to address). Were the publications introduced into the trial, there is little doubt that they would similarly have been torn apart due to lack of proper peer review, lack of original research, and lack of support for intelligent design, as has already occurred at the TalkOrigins site which Luskin links to (but fails to engage with).\nelbogz (2006-12-09):\nDr. Behe's most remarkable comment was that astrology is a scientific theroy!Q But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?A Yes, that's correct. And let me explain under my definition of the word \"theory,\" it is --**SNIP**\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDave:That was indeed an illuminating remark, much like how Norman Geisler caused a stir during the McLean v. Arkansas creationism trial when he discussed the nature of UFOs (he thinks they're sent by the devil to attack the earth). (BTW, the McLean project looks likely to get the defense transcripts in the forseeable future, which includes Geisler's full remarks.)Did you happen to catch the temporary promotion of Saddam Hussein's astrologer at Dembski's blog?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/luskin-vs-judge-jones-on-peer-reviewed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCasey Luskin, responding to \u003ca href=\"http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2Q5YzZlMWE5ZGM3OGU1Zjk5NTFlMDQ2ZTk1ZGNiZWI=\"\u003ea point in a book review by John Derbyshire\u003c/a\u003e, argues that Judge Jones was incorrect in his decision in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eKitzmiller v. Dover\u003c/span\u003e when he wrote that Intelligent Design is not supported by any peer-reviewed publications.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://austringer.net/wp/?p=348\"\u003eWesley Elsberry shows\u003c/a\u003e, Luskin\u0026rsquo;s argument is not with Jones but with the defense in the Dover case, and in particular with the testimony of Michael Behe, who agreed in cross-examination that \u0026ldquo;there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Q. [Rothschild]  Now you have never argued for intelligent design in a peer reviewed scientific journal, correct?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Luskin vs. Judge Jones on peer-reviewed publications supporting ID"},{"content":"The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that border police have the right to conduct random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops\u0026ndash;including full forensic disk examination.\nI recommend using full-disk encryption.\nHat tip to The Agitator.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/9th-circuit-approves-random.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 9th Circuit Court of Appeals \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Police%2BBlotter%2BLaptop%2Bborder%2Bsearches%2BOKd/2100-1030_3-6098939.html\"\u003ehas ruled that border police have the right to conduct random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;including full forensic disk examination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recommend using full-disk encryption.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026860.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9th Circuit approves random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops"},{"content":"A study by Brix Networks, which runs TestYourVoip.com, shows that the quality of VoIP calls has degraded over the last 18 months. Their tests of VoIP connections show that 20 percent of calls have unacceptable quality, up from 15% 18 months ago. Brix\u0026rsquo;s CTO says that the cause is competition for network resources\u0026ndash;i.e., congestion.\nThe solution is, of course, prioritization\u0026ndash;putting voice and other latency and jitter-sensitive traffic in a higher class of service with QoS (quality of service).\nThanks to Matt Sherman for the link.\nFurther comments on the subject may be found at Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog and by James Gattuso at the Technology Liberation Front.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/voip-quality-degradation-shows-need.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA study by Brix Networks, which runs TestYourVoip.com, \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Study+Net+telephony+quality+worsening/2100-7352_3-6097912.html\"\u003eshows that the quality of VoIP calls has degraded over the last 18 months\u003c/a\u003e.  Their tests of VoIP connections show that 20 percent of calls have unacceptable quality, up from 15% 18 months ago.  Brix\u0026rsquo;s CTO says that the cause is competition for network resources\u0026ndash;i.e., congestion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe solution is, of course, prioritization\u0026ndash;putting voice and other latency and jitter-sensitive traffic in a higher class of service \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/george-ou-explains-qos-to-russell-shaw.html\"\u003ewith QoS (quality of service)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThanks to \u003ca href=\"http://www.onlyrepublican.com/orinsf/\"\u003eMatt Sherman\u003c/a\u003e for the link.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFurther comments on the subject may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/07/25/voip-going-downhill/\"\u003eRichard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog\u003c/a\u003e and by James Gattuso at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040298.php\"\u003eTechnology Liberation Front\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VoIP quality degradation shows need for prioritization"},{"content":"Tucson made Forbes\u0026rsquo; list of the top 10 most overpriced cities in the United States for 2006 at #7. The list is based on the largest 112 metro areas in Forbes\u0026rsquo; 2006 list of best places for business and careers, ranking them based on job growth, cost of living, housing affordability, and salaries. The ten most overpriced locations have the highest costs of living, lowest housing affordability, least job growth, and lowest salaries.\n1. Essex County, Massachusetts\n2. San Francisco, California\n3. San Jose, California\n4. Honolulu, Hawaii\n5. Cambridge, Massachusetts\n6. New York City, New York\n7. Tucson, Arizona\n8. Oakland, California\n9. Boston, Massachusetts\n10. Los Angeles, California\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/tucson-7-most-overpriced-city-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTucson made \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/realestate/2006/07/10/high-priced-metros_cx_lr_0711feat.html\"\u003eForbes\u0026rsquo; list of the top 10 most overpriced cities in the United States\u003c/a\u003e for 2006 at #7.  The list is based on the largest 112 metro areas in Forbes\u0026rsquo; 2006 list of best places for business and careers, ranking them based on job growth, cost of living, housing affordability, and salaries.  The ten most overpriced locations have the highest costs of living, lowest housing affordability, least job growth, and lowest salaries.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Essex County, Massachusetts\u003cbr /\u003e2.  San Francisco, California\u003cbr /\u003e3.  San Jose, California\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Honolulu, Hawaii\u003cbr /\u003e5.  Cambridge, Massachusetts\u003cbr /\u003e6.  New York City, New York\u003cbr /\u003e7.  Tucson, Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e8.  Oakland, California\u003cbr /\u003e9.  Boston, Massachusetts\u003cbr /\u003e10. Los Angeles, California\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tucson #7 most overpriced city on Forbes list"},{"content":"While the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T continues, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly today threw out the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the National Security Agency for collecting call detail records from AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and other providers (though not, apparently, from Verizon or BellSouth).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCorrection: This ACLU lawsuit that was thrown out was against AT\u0026T. The ACLU lawsuit against the NSA in Michigan was a victory today for the ACLU.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nActually, the case isn't over, the judge just granted an injunction and ordered the warrantless wiretapping to stop immediately.\nLippard (2007-07-06):\nBut now it's over, the case has been thrown out on the grounds of lack of standing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/judge-throws-out-aclu-lawsuit-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"/2006/07/court-rejects-governments-state.html\"\u003elawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T continues\u003c/a\u003e, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly today \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8J37TP00.htm?sub=apn_tech_down\u0026amp;chan=tc\"\u003ethrew out the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the National Security Agency\u003c/a\u003e for collecting call detail records from AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and other providers (though \u003ca href=\"http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/060630/1310204.html?.v=1\"\u003enot, apparently, from Verizon or BellSouth\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eCorrection:  This ACLU lawsuit that was thrown out was against AT\u0026T.  The ACLU lawsuit against the NSA in Michigan was a victory today for the ACLU.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Judge throws out ACLU lawsuit against NSA"},{"content":"This is a very interesting presentation at Google by the folks at Gapminder, a Swedish nonprofit that is trying to provide better, visual ways of representing information about the state of the world. These are the same people who put together this set of excellent animated interactive presentations on human development trends (income levels, life expectancy, etc.) for the United Nations Development Program.\n(Via Patri Friedman at Catallarchy.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nFascinating!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/visual-representation-of-global-data.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677\u0026q=gapminder\"\u003ea very interesting presentation at Google\u003c/a\u003e by the folks at \u003ca href=\"http://www.gapminder.org/\"\u003eGapminder\u003c/a\u003e, a Swedish nonprofit that is trying to provide better, visual ways of representing information about the state of the world.  These are the same people who put together this \u003ca href=\"http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/animation.cfm\"\u003eset of excellent animated interactive presentations on human development trends\u003c/a\u003e (income levels, life expectancy, etc.) for the United Nations Development Program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Patri Friedman at \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/07/21/gapminder-rules/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eFascinating!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Visual representation of global data"},{"content":"On Google Earth or at The Register. (Via Anson Kennedy on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThey've clearly got a lot more work to do: the colors are all wrong!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/scale-model-of-disputed-chinese-indian.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Google Earth or at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/huangyangtan_mystery/\"\u003eThe Register\u003c/a\u003e.  (Via Anson Kennedy on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThey've clearly got a lot more work to do: the colors are \u003cB\u003eall wrong\u003c/B\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Scale model of disputed Chinese-Indian mountain range in China"},{"content":"Today Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California ruled on the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s motions for dismissal or summary judgment in the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T on grounds of \u0026ldquo;state secrets.\u0026rdquo; The motions were denied, with the possibility of a later dismissal or summary judgment on state secrets grounds. However, the judge noted the limits of state secrets privilege with respect to the infringement of individual rights, and stated that \u0026ldquo;dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security\u0026rdquo; (p. 36 of the ruling).\nThe judge noted that you can\u0026rsquo;t claim that something is a \u0026ldquo;state secret\u0026rdquo; if it\u0026rsquo;s not secret, citing not only news stories about interception but public statements by George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.\nAlso denied were AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s motions for dismiss for lack of standing, for lack of plaintiff demonstration that AT\u0026amp;T lack\u0026rsquo;s appropriate government certification for its actions (though the judge indicates he could be persuaded otherwise on this one later), due to AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s claim of common law immunity from civil liability for conducting government surveillance (in part because AT\u0026amp;T has argued that its cooperation has been voluntary, not mandatory), and due to AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s claim of qualified immunity.\nThe judge proposes appointing a qualified, appropriately security-cleared expert to assist the court in reviewing classified material and determining what may be disclosed and to whom.\nThe next hearing is a case management hearing on August 8.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/court-rejects-governments-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004831.php\"\u003eruled on the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s motions for dismissal or summary judgment\u003c/a\u003e in the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T on grounds of \u0026ldquo;state secrets.\u0026rdquo;  The motions were denied, with the possibility of a later dismissal or summary judgment on state secrets grounds.  However, the judge noted the limits of state secrets privilege with respect to the infringement of individual rights, and stated that \u0026ldquo;dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security\u0026rdquo; (p. 36 of the ruling).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge noted that you can\u0026rsquo;t claim that something is a \u0026ldquo;state secret\u0026rdquo; if it\u0026rsquo;s not secret, citing not only news stories about interception but public statements by George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso denied were AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s motions for dismiss for lack of standing, for lack of plaintiff demonstration that AT\u0026amp;T lack\u0026rsquo;s appropriate government certification for its actions (though the judge indicates he could be persuaded otherwise on this one later), due to AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s claim of common law immunity from civil liability for conducting government surveillance (in part because AT\u0026amp;T has argued that its cooperation has been voluntary, not mandatory), and due to AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s claim of qualified immunity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe judge proposes appointing a qualified, appropriately security-cleared expert to assist the court in reviewing classified material and determining what may be disclosed and to whom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next hearing is a case management hearing on August 8.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Court rejects government's \"state secrets\" argument in AT\u0026T case"},{"content":"As everyone knows, Bush\u0026rsquo;s first veto ever was of H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, to authorize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, on the ridiculous basis that this research involves killing \u0026ldquo;boys and girls.\u0026quot;\nAs Scott Rosenberg points out at Salon:\nHere is why Bush\u0026rsquo;s position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded. If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn. But of course they\u0026rsquo;ll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his \u0026ldquo;base.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;\nIf Bush believes destroying embryos is murder, let him take a real stand against it. If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t make it harder for the thousands of embryos that are being discarded anyway to be used for a valuable purpose that could improve real lives. That\u0026rsquo;s why Bush\u0026rsquo;s stem cell position isn\u0026rsquo;t Solomonic \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s craven. His upcoming veto is an act not of moral leadership but of hypocrisy. And the cost of this hypocrisy, assuming Congress can\u0026rsquo;t muster the votes for an override, will be borne by everyone who dreams of new cures for awful illnesses.\nThe House vote to override the veto failed by 51 votes, 235-193. Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives did not follow partisan lines on this\u0026ndash;voting to override the veto were Flake (R), Grijalva (D), Kolbe (R), and Pastor (D). Voting against were Franks (R), Hayworth (R), Renzi (R), and Shadegg (R).\nBack in May of last year when the House passed the bill, Grijalva, Kolbe, and Pastor voted for it, while Flake, Franks, Hayworth, Renzi, and Shadegg voted against it as the Eagle Forum insisted.\nIn the Senate, where it passed yesterday on a vote after sitting there for over a year, Kyl voted against the bill and McCain voted for it. No surprise there.\n(Thanks to John Lynch at stranger fruit for the voting info and the reference to Rosenberg.)\nUPDATE July 19, 2006: I\u0026rsquo;ve corrected the above to put Franks\u0026rsquo; vote back on the expected side and remove my comments of surprise about his vote. I\u0026rsquo;m still surprised by Flake\u0026rsquo;s vote to override the veto.\nHistorical Comments John Lynch (2006-12-09):\nJim,Turns out I screwed up and mixed up my \"Franks\". AZ-Franks voted as one would expect.My bad-john\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/bushs-veto-of-stem-cell-bill.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs everyone knows, Bush\u0026rsquo;s first veto ever was of H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, to authorize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, on the ridiculous basis that this research involves killing \u0026ldquo;boys and girls.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Scott Rosenberg \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2006/07/19.html#a1068\"\u003epoints out at Salon\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHere is why Bush\u0026rsquo;s position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded. If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn. But of course they\u0026rsquo;ll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his \u0026ldquo;base.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e If Bush believes destroying embryos is murder, let him take a real stand against it. If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t make it harder for the thousands of embryos that are being discarded anyway to be used for a valuable purpose that could improve real lives. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's veto of the stem cell bill"},{"content":"Yahoo headlined this story \u0026ldquo;House votes to keep \u0026lsquo;under God\u0026rsquo; in pledge,\u0026rdquo; but that\u0026rsquo;s not accurate. The House passed a bill (H.R. 2389, the \u0026ldquo;Pledge Protection Act of 2005,\u0026rdquo; on a vote of 260-167) which prohibits the courts from hearing challenges to the presence of \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; in the pledge of allegiance, which strikes me as an unconstitutional action by the Congress. (Congress does have the power in Article I, Section 8 \u0026ldquo;To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,\u0026rdquo; which gives them at least some powers of regulation (to the extent that it is \u0026ldquo;necessary and proper\u0026rdquo;) over the courts. But circumscribing the topics which the Supreme Court can address would seem to me to be something only the Constitution can do. Any constitutional scholars care to comment?\nMissouri Rep. Todd Akin is quoted in the story saying, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re creating a fence. The fence goes around the federal judiciary. We\u0026rsquo;re doing that because we don\u0026rsquo;t trust them.\u0026quot;\nYet it\u0026rsquo;s Congress, more than the courts, that can\u0026rsquo;t be trusted to be remotely responsible, rational, respectful of the Constitution, or of the people. We\u0026rsquo;d be much better off putting a fence around the Congress, such as by ending the First Amendment after the fifth word.\n\u0026ldquo;Under God\u0026rdquo; was added to the pledge of allegiance by act of Congress in 1954 for explicitly religious reasons (to distinguish the U.S. from the godless communists in the Soviet Union), and the U.S. Supreme Court avoided making a ruling on the issue in Michael Newdow\u0026rsquo;s case by throwing the case out on a technicality\u0026ndash;the issue of standing, since he didn\u0026rsquo;t have custody of his daughter. He\u0026rsquo;s currently pursuing the case through the courts again with other plaintiffs.\nAll but one of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Republican Representatives signed on as sponsors of the House bill: Trent Franks, Jeff Flake, J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi, John Shadegg. The one Republican exception was Jim Kolbe (R); the two Arizona Democrats, Raul Grijalva and Ed Pastor, did not. I suspect their voting went along these same lines.\nThe Senate version of this bill is S. 1046, introduced by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. While the House bill attracted 197 sponsors, the Senate bill has only attracted 16 and Senator John McCain is not among them. The Senate bill is stalled out in the Judiciary Committee.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/us-house-votes-to-place-limits-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060719/pl_nm/congress_flag_dc_1\"\u003eYahoo headlined this story\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;House votes to keep \u0026lsquo;under God\u0026rsquo; in pledge,\u0026rdquo; but that\u0026rsquo;s not accurate.  The House passed a bill (\u003ca href=\"http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2389\"\u003eH.R. 2389\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;Pledge Protection Act of 2005,\u0026rdquo; on a vote of 260-167) which prohibits the courts from hearing challenges to the presence of \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; in the pledge of allegiance, which strikes me as an unconstitutional action by the Congress.  (Congress does have the power in Article I, Section 8 \u0026ldquo;To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,\u0026rdquo; which gives them at least some powers of regulation (to the extent that it is \u0026ldquo;necessary and proper\u0026rdquo;) over the courts.  But circumscribing the topics which the Supreme Court can address would seem to me to be something only the Constitution can do.  Any constitutional scholars care to comment?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMissouri Rep. Todd Akin is quoted in the story saying, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re creating a fence.  The fence goes around the federal judiciary.  We\u0026rsquo;re doing that because we don\u0026rsquo;t trust them.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet it\u0026rsquo;s Congress, more than the courts, that can\u0026rsquo;t be trusted to be remotely responsible, rational, respectful of the Constitution, or of the people.  We\u0026rsquo;d be much better off putting a fence around the Congress, such as by ending the First Amendment after the fifth word.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Under God\u0026rdquo; was added to the pledge of allegiance by act of Congress in 1954 for explicitly religious reasons (to distinguish the U.S. from the godless communists in the Soviet Union), and the U.S. Supreme Court avoided making a ruling on the issue in Michael Newdow\u0026rsquo;s case by \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40279-2004Jun14.html\"\u003ethrowing the case out on a technicality\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;the issue of standing, since he didn\u0026rsquo;t have custody of his daughter.  He\u0026rsquo;s currently pursuing the case through the courts again with other plaintiffs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll but one of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Republican Representatives signed on as sponsors of the House bill: Trent Franks, Jeff Flake, J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi, John Shadegg.  The one Republican exception was Jim Kolbe (R); the two Arizona Democrats, Raul Grijalva and Ed Pastor, did not.  I suspect their voting went along these same lines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Senate version of this bill is \u003ca href=\"http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-1046\"\u003eS. 1046\u003c/a\u003e, introduced by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl.  While the House bill attracted 197 sponsors, the Senate bill has only attracted 16 and Senator John McCain is not among them.  The Senate bill is stalled out in the Judiciary Committee.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"U.S. House votes to place limits on judiciary"},{"content":"Seth Godin has pointed out a new Anti-Astroturfing Wiki, for exposing those who are creating fake grassroots efforts by actions like coordinating letters to the editor or blog comment posts which don\u0026rsquo;t mention the coordinating body\u0026ndash;a practice engaged in by both advocates for and against net neutrality regulations.\nThe current Wikipedia definition: \u0026ldquo;In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals.\u0026quot;\nThe Anti-Astroturfing Wiki and campaign has been set up as part of TheNewPR Wiki by Paull Young and Trevor Cook in response to the PR Institute of Australia\u0026rsquo;s promotion of a \u0026ldquo;how-to\u0026rdquo; seminar on astroturfing even though the practice violates the PRIA Code of Ethics. Young has issued an anti-astroturfing statement:\nWe oppose the practice of astroturfing, defined above, in any form. The practice should never be a part of a public relations campaign as it is anti-democratic, unethical, immoral and often illegal. We will attempt to raise awareness of this practice, expose it for what it is, and encourage our fellow communicators to join us in opposition. We call for all professional communication bodies to strongly, publicly and actively oppose astroturfing; alongside PR agencies, individual practitioners and bloggers.I endorse this, along with the InOpinion list exposing astroturfing which I posted about back in May. (For those who want to deny that providing prewritten letters on a website without mentioning the name of the organizing group supplying them is astroturfing, I recommend this rebuttal from the InOpinion blog.)\nI wrote about an Arizona astroturfing effort by beverage distributors to stop direct wine shipments here. The fact that these astroturfers weren\u0026rsquo;t really concerned about underage purchases of wine by mail was demonstrated by their agreement to a compromise based on the size of the winery\u0026ndash;their principle was making sure that they remained in the middle for most wine purchases, not whether or not underage drinking occurs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/anti-astroturfing-wiki.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/07/if_you_cant_mak.html\"\u003eSeth Godin has pointed out\u003c/a\u003e a new \u003ca href=\"http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=AntiAstroturfing.HomePage\"\u003eAnti-Astroturfing Wiki\u003c/a\u003e, for exposing those who are creating fake grassroots efforts by actions like coordinating letters to the editor or blog comment posts \u003ca href=\"http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=707\"\u003ewhich don\u0026rsquo;t mention the coordinating body\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;a practice engaged in by both \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/save-internet-fighting-astroturf-with_26.html\"\u003eadvocates for\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2006/05/anti-network-neutrality-astroturfing.html\"\u003eagainst\u003c/a\u003e net neutrality regulations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe current \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing\"\u003eWikipedia definition\u003c/a\u003e:  \u0026ldquo;In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Anti-Astroturfing Wiki and campaign has been set up as part of \u003ca href=\"http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php\"\u003eTheNewPR Wiki\u003c/a\u003e by Paull Young and Trevor Cook in response to the PR Institute of Australia\u0026rsquo;s promotion of a \u0026ldquo;how-to\u0026rdquo; seminar on astroturfing even though the practice violates the PRIA Code of Ethics.  Young has issued \u003ca href=\"http://youngie.prblogs.org/2006/07/16/join-the-anti-astroturfing-campaign/\"\u003ean anti-astroturfing statement\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-Astroturfing Wiki"},{"content":"Paul Kouroupas has written an interesting series of posts about the state of telecommunications regulation around the world. He postulates a hypothetical company, CoolCo, that is an ISP that wants to sell Internet access, voice over IP, email, instant messaging, and web hosting to residential customers, while not owning any of its own transmission facilities. CoolCo wants to expand its services to include dedicated circuits for business customers, and is majority owned by U.S. investors with a Thai investor who owns 15% of the company.\nKouroupas then looks at how CoolCo would fare in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the United States with respect to licensing requirements, license fees and other fees, foreign ownership restrictions, tariff, contract and pricing rules, interconnection rights and obligations, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the regulatory process.\nHe begins with Europe\u0026ndash;licensing requirements are nonexistent; operators must simply \u0026ldquo;register and abide by a set of basic consumer protection obligations and regulations.\u0026rdquo; License fees are nominal and consistent across the entire EU. There are no universal service fees or foreign ownership restrictions. There are no tariff requirements, no contract requirements beyond \u0026ldquo;conformity to basic legal precedence,\u0026rdquo; no pricing rules \u0026ldquo;other than basic non-discrimination requirements.\u0026rdquo; No regulator approval is required to set prices. Interconnection is mandatory, some states require unbundling of services by the incumbents. The regulatory process is relatively efficient and does not consume the bulk of CoolCo\u0026rsquo;s resources.\nIn Latin America, Kouroupas looks at Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, the countries where Global Crossing operates, and shows that there is a large amount of variation between countries, with Argentina, Brazil, and Chile being more open and adaptable, and Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela having more heavy-handed regulation. All have licensing requirements, with the less-regulated three and Peru requiring only a single license for CoolCo\u0026rsquo;s offerings, while Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela require separate licenses for each service offered. All have license fees as a percentage of revenue, ranging from 0.5% to 3%. Universal service fees fall in the same range. Only Mexico has foreign ownership restrictions. Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela heavily regulate prices, tariffs, and form of contracts. Most countries require some form of interconnection, but in Mexico the incumbent (Carlos Slim\u0026rsquo;s Telmex, which was privatized in the worst possible way) has been the recipient of multiple complaints for taking steps to avoid or delay the implementation of interconnection. In most countries the incumbent telco is the largest employer in the country and has considerable influence over the regulatory process, which often fails to complete by the legal time limits, leaving competitive telcos in legal limbo for months or years.\nKouroupas then turns to Asia, looking specifically at Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, with a brief look also at China and India. The former countries, unsurprisingly, are more open than the latter two, though the level of bureaucracy is also high in Japan and Taiwan. China, India, and South Korea have foreign ownership restrictions, at least for facilities-based operators.\nFinally, he looks at the United States, which is hampered by a lack of consistency and coherent regulations, especially with respect to VoIP. Licenses are not required at the moment, but the FCC appears to have opened the door for it, and there are some specific requirements that now apply such as CALEA and E911. VoIP providers will have to contribute to the universal service fund by assuming that 64.9% of their traffic is interstate, which means paying 10.5% of 64.9% of their revenue. Foreign ownership restrictions exist, but CoolCo should not hit them at the moment due to its foreign ownership of less than 25% and its not requiring licensing, but this could change. There are no tariff, contract, or pricing rules that apply. For VoIP there are currently no interconnection rights and unbundling is limited. The regulatory process exists at both the federal (FCC) and state (public utility commissions) level. At the federal level, regulation is incredibly inefficient; at the state level it varies considerably from state to state but is generally more efficient than at the federal level and has promoted competition. The overall picture is one of uncertainty about the future.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve only touched on the highlights of the detail in Kouroupas\u0026rsquo; posts, but it\u0026rsquo;s clear that CoolCo will find Europe to be the easiest region to establish business in today. Check them out.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/telecom-regulation-around-world.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Kouroupas has written an interesting series of posts about the state of telecommunications regulation around the world.  He postulates a hypothetical company, CoolCo, that is an ISP that wants to sell Internet access, voice over IP, email, instant messaging, and web hosting to residential customers, while not owning any of its own transmission facilities.  CoolCo wants to expand its services to include dedicated circuits for business customers, and is majority owned by U.S. investors with a Thai investor who owns 15% of the company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKouroupas then looks at how CoolCo would fare in \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/165\"\u003eEurope\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/167\"\u003eLatin America\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/176\"\u003eAsia\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/180\"\u003eUnited States\u003c/a\u003e with respect to licensing requirements, license fees and other fees, foreign ownership restrictions, tariff, contract and pricing rules, interconnection rights and obligations, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the regulatory process.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe begins with \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/165\"\u003eEurope\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;licensing requirements are nonexistent; operators must simply \u0026ldquo;register and abide by a set of basic consumer protection obligations and regulations.\u0026rdquo;  License fees are nominal and consistent across the entire EU.  There are no universal service fees or foreign ownership restrictions.  There are no tariff requirements, no contract requirements beyond \u0026ldquo;conformity to basic legal precedence,\u0026rdquo; no pricing rules \u0026ldquo;other than basic non-discrimination requirements.\u0026rdquo;  No regulator approval is required to set prices.  Interconnection is mandatory, some states require unbundling of services by the incumbents.  The regulatory process is relatively efficient and does not consume the bulk of CoolCo\u0026rsquo;s resources.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/167\"\u003eLatin America\u003c/a\u003e, Kouroupas looks at Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, the countries where Global Crossing operates, and shows that there is a large amount of variation between countries, with Argentina, Brazil, and Chile being more open and adaptable, and Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela having more heavy-handed regulation.  All have licensing requirements, with the less-regulated three and Peru requiring only a single license for CoolCo\u0026rsquo;s offerings, while Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela require separate licenses for each service offered.  All have license fees as a percentage of revenue, ranging from 0.5% to 3%.  Universal service fees fall in the same range. Only Mexico has foreign ownership restrictions.  Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela heavily regulate prices, tariffs, and form of contracts.  Most countries require some form of interconnection, but in Mexico the incumbent (Carlos Slim\u0026rsquo;s Telmex, which was privatized in the worst possible way) has been the recipient of multiple complaints for taking steps to avoid or delay the implementation of interconnection.  In most countries the incumbent telco is the largest employer in the country and has considerable influence over the regulatory process, which often fails to complete by the legal time limits, leaving competitive telcos in legal limbo for months or years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKouroupas then turns to \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/176\"\u003eAsia\u003c/a\u003e, looking specifically at Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, with a brief look also at China and India.  The former countries, unsurprisingly, are more open than the latter two, though the level of bureaucracy is also high in Japan and Taiwan.  China, India, and South Korea have foreign ownership restrictions, at least for facilities-based operators.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, he looks at the \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/180\"\u003eUnited States\u003c/a\u003e, which is hampered by a lack of consistency and coherent regulations, especially with respect to VoIP.  Licenses are not required at the moment, but the FCC appears to have opened the door for it, and there are some specific requirements that now apply such as CALEA and E911.  VoIP providers will have to contribute to the universal service fund by assuming that 64.9% of their traffic is interstate, which means paying 10.5% of 64.9% of their revenue.  Foreign ownership restrictions exist, but CoolCo should not hit them at the moment due to its foreign ownership of less than 25% and its not requiring licensing, but this could change.  There are no tariff, contract, or pricing rules that apply.  For VoIP there are currently no interconnection rights and unbundling is limited.  The regulatory process exists at both the federal (FCC) and state (public utility commissions) level.  At the federal level, regulation is incredibly inefficient; at the state level it varies considerably from state to state but is generally more efficient than at the federal level and has promoted competition.  The overall picture is one of uncertainty about the future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve only touched on the highlights of the detail in Kouroupas\u0026rsquo; posts, but it\u0026rsquo;s clear that CoolCo will find Europe to be the easiest region to establish business in today.  Check them out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Telecom regulation around the world"},{"content":"The Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s National Asset Database has come under fire recently for the absurdity of some of the more than 77,000 items on the list, most of which were added in 2005\u0026ndash;there were fewer than 32,000 items in 2004. Indiana leads the nation as the state with the most entries on the list, with 8,951 (up from 322 in 2004), including Amish Country Popcorn near Berne, Indiana. New York has 5,687 (up from 1,634 in 2004) and California has only 3,212. Washington state has 3,650, which includes 65 \u0026ldquo;national monuments and icons\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;more than Washington, D.C. Arizona has a mere 675 entries on the list, up from 597 in 2004.\nAbsurd entries on the list include a petting zoo in Huntsville, Alabama, the Columbia, Tennessee Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market near Knoxville, Tennessee, and items like \u0026ldquo;Beach at End of a Street,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Nix\u0026rsquo;s Check Cashing,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Mall at Sears,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Ice Cream Parlor,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Tackle Shop,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Donut Shop,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Anti-Cruelty Society,\u0026rdquo; and Arkansas\u0026rsquo; Bean Fest.\nIn Seattle, the list includes Auburn\u0026rsquo;s SuperMall (which received a $50,000 DHS grant). There are 1,305 casinos on the list, 234 restaurants, and 700 mortuaries. Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat has called for reader submissions of their own items, \u0026ldquo;as absurd as you want\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;No way can it top the spectacle going on at homeland security.\u0026quot;\nNot included on the list: Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, or the Brooklyn Bridge.\nThe list has made the press because auditors at the DHS Inspector General\u0026rsquo;s office have questioned the value of \u0026ldquo;unusual or out-of-place sites \u0026hellip; whose criticality is not readily apparent.\u0026rdquo; But the DHS is unapologetic: \u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t find it embarassing \u0026hellip; The list is a valuable tool,\u0026rdquo; says DHS deputy press secretary Jarrod Agen. Agen claims that the list is not used for funding decisions, but the DHS budget for Arizona was cut in half for 2006.\nThe committees in Congress responsible for oversight of the DHS are the House Judiciary Committee (which includes two Arizonans, Rep. Jeff Flake and Rep. Trent Franks) and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs (no Arizonans).\nHow about setting some reasonable standards for what submissions from states get put on the list?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/dhs-national-asset-database.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Department of Homeland Security\u0026rsquo;s National Asset Database has come under fire recently for the absurdity of some of the more than 77,000 items on the list, most of which were added in 2005\u0026ndash;there were fewer than 32,000 items in 2004.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/12/MNGVIJTL5J1.DTL\"\u003eIndiana leads the nation as the state with the most entries on the list\u003c/a\u003e, with 8,951 (up from 322 in 2004), including Amish Country Popcorn near Berne, Indiana.  New York has 5,687 (up from 1,634 in 2004) and California has only 3,212.  Washington state has 3,650, which includes 65 \u0026ldquo;national monuments and icons\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;more than Washington, D.C.  Arizona has a mere 675 entries on the list, up from 597 in 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAbsurd entries on the list include a petting zoo in Huntsville, Alabama, the Columbia, Tennessee Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market near Knoxville, Tennessee, and items like \u0026ldquo;Beach at End of a Street,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Nix\u0026rsquo;s Check Cashing,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Mall at Sears,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Ice Cream Parlor,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Tackle Shop,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Donut Shop,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Anti-Cruelty Society,\u0026rdquo; and Arkansas\u0026rsquo; Bean Fest.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003123566_danny13.html\"\u003eIn Seattle, the list includes\u003c/a\u003e Auburn\u0026rsquo;s SuperMall (which received a $50,000 DHS grant).  There are 1,305 casinos on the list, 234 restaurants, and 700 mortuaries.  Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat has called for reader submissions of their own items, \u0026ldquo;as absurd as you want\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;No way can it top the spectacle going on at homeland security.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/12/security.grants.ap/index.html?section=cnn_allpolitics\"\u003eNot included\u003c/a\u003e on the list:  Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, or the Brooklyn Bridge.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe list has made the press because auditors at the DHS Inspector General\u0026rsquo;s office have questioned the value of \u0026ldquo;unusual or out-of-place sites \u0026hellip; whose criticality is not readily apparent.\u0026rdquo;  But the DHS is unapologetic:  \u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t find it embarassing \u0026hellip; The list is a valuable tool,\u0026rdquo; says DHS deputy press secretary Jarrod Agen.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=5149076\"\u003eAgen claims that the list is not used for funding decisions\u003c/a\u003e, but the DHS budget for Arizona was cut in half for 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe committees in Congress responsible for oversight of the DHS are the \u003ca href=\"http://judiciary.house.gov/\"\u003eHouse Judiciary Committee\u003c/a\u003e (which includes two Arizonans, Rep. Jeff Flake and Rep. Trent Franks) and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.senate.gov/%7Egov_affairs/index.cfm\"\u003eSenate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs\u003c/a\u003e (no Arizonans).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow about setting some reasonable standards for what submissions from states get put on the list?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The DHS National Asset Database"},{"content":"Radley Balko\u0026rsquo;s paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, has been released by the Cato Institute today. It is available for download (PDF) and is accompanied by an online interactive map of incidents. The executive summary:\nAmericans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home. These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects. This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.\nYou can hear Balko talking about his paper here (MP3 podcast).\nVia The Agitator.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/radley-balko-paramilitary-police-paper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko\u0026rsquo;s paper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOverkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, has been released by the Cato Institute today.  It is available for download (PDF) and is accompanied by an \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/raidmap/index.php?type=1\"\u003eonline interactive map of incidents\u003c/a\u003e.  The executive summary:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Radley Balko paramilitary police paper"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports on the story of Shefik Tallmadge, who won $6.7 million in the Arizona Lottery in 1988 at the age of 29. He was the biggest Pick winner at the time, taking the payment as 20 years of $335,000 payments. He quit his job, bought a Porsche, took his family around the world, completed a political science degree, and married a pharmacist. He cashed in on the remainder of his lottery winnings in 1998 to get a large lump sum, which he used to buy an expensive house and four gas stations. Last year he filed for bankruptcy and continues to play the same numbers he won with on the Florida Lottery.\nThis seems to be a not-uncommon story for lottery winners.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/another-lottery-casualty.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0716lottery-tallmadge.html\"\u003ereports on the story of Shefik Tallmadge\u003c/a\u003e, who won $6.7 million in the Arizona Lottery in 1988 at the age of 29.  He was the biggest Pick winner at the time, taking the payment as 20 years of $335,000 payments.  He quit his job, bought a Porsche, took his family around the world, completed a political science degree, and married a pharmacist.  He cashed in on the remainder of his lottery winnings in 1998 to get a large lump sum, which he used to buy an expensive house and four gas stations.  Last year he filed for bankruptcy and continues to play the same numbers he won with on the Florida Lottery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis seems to be \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/lottery-winner-tragedies-continue.html\"\u003ea not-uncommon story for lottery winners\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another lottery casualty"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/kent-hovind-and-ali-g.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject height=\"247\" width=\"300\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/JLdjp_j5eHk\"\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/JLdjp_j5eHk\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"247\" width=\"300\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kent Hovind and Ali G"},{"content":"Under the headline \u0026ldquo;The end of the high road,\u0026rdquo; The Economist reviews Joseph Margulies\u0026rsquo; new book, Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power. The review begins:\nIN HIS new book on the American jail at Guantánamo Bay, Joseph Margulies recounts the story of a prisoner who told his interrogators of plans to use bacteriological weapons. The man named many others involved, and before long his interrogators had confessions from 35 further prisoners, “page upon page of chilling, meticulously detailed admissions”. The problem is that the prisoners he is writing about here were not suspected members of al-Qaeda, but American soldiers. The questioning took place 50 years ago and the interrogators were North Korean. The confessions were false and had been extracted after the Americans were subjected to extreme psychological torture. Mr Margulies, a lawyer who has represented some of the men at Guantánamo, describes what happened in Korea to illustrate how, in its eagerness to prosecute the “war on terror”, the current American administration has borrowed from some of its most ruthless past enemies, abandoning practices that had allowed it for decades to take the high road in the conduct of war and international affairs.\nRead the rest of the review here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/guantanamo-and-abuse-of-presidential.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnder the headline \u0026ldquo;The end of the high road,\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7109129\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e reviews Joseph Margulies\u0026rsquo; new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGuantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  The review begins:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eIN HIS new book on the American jail at Guantánamo Bay, Joseph Margulies recounts the story of a prisoner who told his interrogators of plans to use bacteriological weapons. The man named many others involved, and before long his interrogators had confessions from 35 further prisoners, “page upon page of chilling, meticulously detailed admissions”. The problem is that the prisoners he is writing about here were not suspected members of al-Qaeda, but American soldiers. The questioning took place 50 years ago and the interrogators were North Korean. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/monty-python-international-philosophy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cobject width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xrShK-NVMIU\"\u003e\u003c/param\u003e\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xrShK-NVMIU\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"\u003e\u003c/embed\u003e\u003c/object\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monty Python: International Philosophy competition"},{"content":"Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-CO), running for Governor of Colorado, had a fundraising reception at the Paramount Theater in Denver with Ann Coulter as the guest. Beauprez himself did not attend, being busy in D.C., but his wife was present. The event didn\u0026rsquo;t attract any donors, leaving Mrs. Beauprez and Coulter to chat with each other, a dozen campaign volunteers, and a few radio station listeners who had won free tickets to hear Coulter speak. Funds raised: $0.\nZeno (2006-12-09):\nWith so few people present, Coulter might have been pleasant and low key. I hear she doesn't turn on her cock-throppled bitch persona unless there's a real audience. Her schtick is nastiness for profit.\nFrank Staheli (2006-12-09):\nHer approach is not nastiness, but the truth about the world, mixed with a bit of sarcasm. To paraphrase a famous statement \"The [wrong] take the [sarcasm] to be hard.\"\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nZeno:That's a great word (and great little passage at your blog). Thanks for the reference.Frank:You are badly out of touch with reality if you think that Ann Coulter tells \"the truth about the world.\" Her writing is characterized by a complete disregard for factual accuracy, with the evolution sections of Godless being some of the most clear-cut examples of nonsense.Pharyngula put forth a challenge for Coulter supporters to find just one paragraph in the evolution section that is defensible as factually accurate, but there have been no takers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/coulter-fundraising-reception-raises.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Bob Beauprez (R-CO), running for Governor of Colorado, \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=28\"\u003ehad a fundraising reception at the Paramount Theater in Denver with Ann Coulter as the guest\u003c/A\u003e.  Beauprez himself did not attend, being busy in D.C., but his wife was present.  The event didn\u0026rsquo;t attract any donors, leaving Mrs. Beauprez and Coulter to chat with each other, a dozen campaign volunteers, and a few radio station listeners who had won free tickets to hear Coulter speak.  Funds raised:  $0.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coulter fundraising reception raises no money"},{"content":"The erroneous claim that Cox was blocking Craigslist turned out to be a combination of a bug in a firewall driver from Authentium and the fact that Craigslist was using a TCP window size of 0 in the initial TCP handshake. Authentium took full responsibility for the issue, but no one was ever able to get Craig Newmark to answer why Craigslist was using a TCP window size of 0. My speculation was that this was being done as a way of avoiding congestion, possibly by a load-balancing switch in front of the web servers. Although Craig politely responded to some private emails from me, I never got an answer to whether my speculation was correct.\nNow Craigslist has stopped using a TCP window size of 0 in the initial handshake, which indicates that it was always within Craigslist\u0026rsquo;s power to fix the problem. Here are some packets I captured a couple of days ago (66.150.243.20 is www.craigslist.org); see the first link above for a more detailed explanation of what the TCP window size means and what caused the problem:\nTCP SYN from my machine to craigslist, window size 16384:\n15:13:18.469829 [my IP].50845 \u0026gt; 66.150.243.20.80: S 4043800370:4043800370(0) win 16384 (DF)\nTCP SYN-ACK from craigslist.org, window size 4380 (this was the one that used to have a window size of 0):\n15:13:18.504234 66.150.243.20.80 \u0026gt; [my IP].50845: S 1583028840:1583028840(0) ack 4043800371 win 4380 (DF) [tos 0x80]\nTCP ACK from my machine, completing the three-way handshake, window size 16384:\n15:13:18.504640 [my IP].50845 \u0026gt; 66.150.243.20.80: . ack 1 win 16384 \u0026lt;nop,nop,timestamp\u0026gt; (DF)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/craigslist-no-longer-uses-tcp-window.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/update-on-cox-blocking-of-craigslist.html\"\u003eerroneous claim that Cox was blocking Craigslist\u003c/a\u003e turned out to be a combination of a bug in a firewall driver from Authentium and the fact that Craigslist was using a TCP window size of 0 in the initial TCP handshake.  Authentium took full responsibility for the issue, but no one was ever able to get Craig Newmark to answer why Craigslist was using a TCP window size of 0.  My speculation was that this was being done as a way of avoiding congestion, possibly by a load-balancing switch in front of the web servers.  Although Craig politely responded to some private emails from me, I never got an answer to whether my speculation was correct.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=269\"\u003eCraigslist has stopped using a TCP window size of 0\u003c/a\u003e in the initial handshake, which indicates that it was always within Craigslist\u0026rsquo;s power to fix the problem.  Here are some packets I captured a couple of days ago (66.150.243.20 is \u003ca href=\"https://www.craigslist.org\"\u003ewww.craigslist.org\u003c/a\u003e); see the first link above for a more detailed explanation of what the TCP window size means and what caused the problem:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTCP SYN from my machine to craigslist, window size 16384:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e15:13:18.469829 [my IP].50845 \u0026gt; 66.150.243.20.80: S 4043800370:4043800370(0) win 16384 \u003cmss\u003e (DF)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTCP SYN-ACK from craigslist.org, window size 4380 (this was the one that used to have a window size of 0):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e15:13:18.504234 66.150.243.20.80 \u0026gt; [my IP].50845: S 1583028840:1583028840(0) ack 4043800371 win 4380 \u003cmss\u003e (DF) [tos 0x80]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTCP ACK from my machine, completing the three-way handshake, window size 16384:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e15:13:18.504640 [my IP].50845 \u0026gt; 66.150.243.20.80: . ack 1 win 16384 \u0026lt;nop,nop,timestamp\u0026gt; (DF)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Craigslist no longer uses TCP window size of 0"},{"content":"The Pensacola News Journal reports that the law has finally caught up with tax-evading creationist Kent Hovind:\nA Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola was arrested Thursday on 58 federal charges, including failing to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes and making threats against investigators.\nOf the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.\nAt the couple\u0026rsquo;s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted. Some 20 supporters were in the courtroom.\n\u0026ldquo;I still don\u0026rsquo;t understand what I\u0026rsquo;m being charged for and who is charging me,\u0026rdquo; he said.\nKent Hovind, who often calls himself \u0026ldquo;Dr. Dino,\u0026rdquo; has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.\n\u0026ldquo;The debtor apparently maintains that as a minister of God, everything he owns belongs to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on money he receives for doing God\u0026rsquo;s work,\u0026rdquo; U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lewis Killian Jr. wrote when he dismissed a claim from Hovind in 1996.\n\u0026hellip;\nIn the indictment unsealed Thursday, a grand jury alleges that Kent Hovind failed to pay $473,818 in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes on employees at his Creation Science Evangelism/Ministry between March 31, 2001, and Jan. 31, 2004.\n\u0026hellip;\nThe indictment alleges Kent Hovind paid his employees in cash and labeled them \u0026ldquo;missionaries\u0026rdquo; to avoid payroll tax and FICA requirements.\nOn Thursday, a message on the Dinosaur Adventure Land telephone welcomed visitors to the place \u0026ldquo;where dinosaurs and the Bible meet\u0026rdquo; and stated that the museum and science center were closed temporarily.\nThe indictment also says the Hovinds\u0026rsquo; made cash withdrawals from AmSouth Bank in a manner that evaded federal requirements for reporting cash transactions.\nThe withdrawals were for $9,500 or $9,600, just below the $10,000 starting point for reporting cash transactions.\nMost of the withdrawals were days apart. For example, the indictment shows three withdrawals of $9,500 each on July 20, July 23 and July 26 in 2001.\n\u0026hellip;\nOver Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s protests, the judge took away his passport and guns Hovind claimed belonged to his church.\nHovind argued that he needs his passport to continue his evangelism work. He said \u0026ldquo;thousands and thousands\u0026rdquo; are waiting to hear him preach in South Africa next month.There\u0026rsquo;s more (and comments) at Pharyngula and the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/dr-dino-busted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePensacola News Journal\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060714/NEWS01/607140333/1006\"\u003ereports that the law has finally caught up with tax-evading creationist Kent Hovind\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003e A Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola was arrested Thursday on 58 federal charges, including failing to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes and making threats against investigators.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the couple\u0026rsquo;s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted. Some 20 supporters were in the courtroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;I still don\u0026rsquo;t understand what I\u0026rsquo;m being charged for and who is charging me,\u0026rdquo; he said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKent Hovind, who often calls himself \u0026ldquo;Dr. Dino,\u0026rdquo; has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The debtor apparently maintains that as a minister of God, everything he owns belongs to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on money he receives for doing God\u0026rsquo;s work,\u0026rdquo; U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lewis Killian Jr. wrote when he dismissed a claim from Hovind in 1996.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003eIn the indictment unsealed Thursday, a grand jury alleges that Kent Hovind failed to pay $473,818 in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes on employees at his Creation Science Evangelism/Ministry between March 31, 2001, and Jan. 31, 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003eThe indictment alleges Kent Hovind paid his employees in cash and labeled them \u0026ldquo;missionaries\u0026rdquo; to avoid payroll tax and FICA requirements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Thursday, a message on the Dinosaur Adventure Land telephone welcomed visitors to the place \u0026ldquo;where dinosaurs and the Bible meet\u0026rdquo; and stated that the museum and science center were closed temporarily.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe indictment also says the Hovinds\u0026rsquo; made cash withdrawals from AmSouth Bank in a manner that evaded federal requirements for reporting cash transactions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe withdrawals were for $9,500 or $9,600, just below the $10,000 starting point for reporting cash transactions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMost of the withdrawals were days apart. For example, the indictment shows three withdrawals of $9,500 each on July 20, July 23 and July 26 in 2001.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003eOver Kent Hovind\u0026rsquo;s protests, the judge took away his passport and guns Hovind claimed belonged to his church.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHovind argued that he needs his passport to continue his evangelism work. He said \u0026ldquo;thousands and thousands\u0026rdquo; are waiting to hear him preach in South Africa next month.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s more (and comments) at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/07/more_details_on_hovinds_arrest.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/07/dr_dino_in_the.html\"\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlebody\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Dino Busted"},{"content":"I posted this review of Larry Lessig\u0026rsquo;s book Free Culture to Amazon.com:\nLessig has written a very clear and entertaining book about copyright, piracy, and culture, filled with lots of real-world examples to make his points. The book covers major events in the history of copyright in the United States (from its beginnings in English common law and the UK Statute of Anne) in order to show how its meaning has changed, and how those who are making accusations of piracy today were the pirates of yesterday. (Jessica Littman\u0026rsquo;s book, Digital Copyright, is a nice complement to this book, covering the history of copyright in greater depth.) Lessig makes a strong case that the direction of copyright, giving greater control over content to a very small number of owners than has ever existed, is eroding the freedom that we\u0026rsquo;ve historically had to preserve and transform the elements of our culture.\nLessig begins by describing how the notion of a real property right for land extending into the sky to \u0026ldquo;an indefinite extent, upwards\u0026rdquo; became a real rather than theoretical issue with the invention of the airplane. In 1945, the Causbys, a family of North Carolina farmers, filed a suit against the government for trespassing with its low-flying planes, and the Supreme Court declared the airways to be public space. This example shows how the scope of property rights can change with changes of technology, in this particular case resulting in an uncompensated taking from private property owners, yet leading to enormous innovation and the development of a new industry and form of transportation. He follows this with the example of the development of FM radio, which was intentionally back-burnered by RCA and then hobbled by government regulation at RCA\u0026rsquo;s behest in order to protect its existing investment in AM radio. This example shows how powerful interests can stifle technological change through its ownership of intellectual property (in this case, the patents regarding FM radio).\nHe then discusses how intellectual property laws have developed in the U.S., pointing out that Walt Disney\u0026rsquo;s Mickey Mouse made his talking picture debut in the movie \u0026ldquo;Steamboat Willie\u0026rdquo; (he had earlier appeared in a silent cartoon, \u0026ldquo;Plane Crazy\u0026rdquo;), which was a parody of Buster Keaton\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Steamboat Bill.\u0026rdquo; Many of Disney\u0026rsquo;s characters and stories were taken directly from the previous work of others, such as the Brothers Grimm\u0026ndash;works in the public domain, freely available for such copying. As new forms of media have been created, they have borrowed from previous forms. Today, however, the creators of content who have borrowed from their predecessors have successfully changed the rules so that their successors cannot borrow from them, both by extending the term and scope of copyright protection and by developing technologies that have greatly reduced the ability of successors to borrow or re-use content. The specific rules are completely inconsistent, based on the political power of the relevant parties at the time the laws were changed. When Edison developed the ability to record sounds, including recording music written by others, copyright law was changed to provide for compulsory licensing for a fee paid to the composer. With radio broadcasting, the fee still goes to the composer, but not to the recording artist. But put that same radio broadcast on the Internet, and now fees must be paid to both the composer and the recording artist.\nWhere there used to be a sea of unregulated uses of copyrighted material containing a small island of restricted uses (with shores of fair use), there is now a vast continent of restricted uses, a stark cliff of fair use, and a tiny channel of unregulated uses. Lessig shows a table on pp. 170-171 showing commercial and noncommercial uses and the rights to publish and transform for each. In 1790, copyright only governed publication rights for commercial uses, the other three cells of the table being free. At the end of the 19th century, publication and transformation for commercial use was governed by copyright, while noncommercial use was free. The law was changed to govern copies, including much noncommercial use. Today, all four cells of the table are governed by copyright.\nLessig discusses Eric Eldred\u0026rsquo;s attempt to defend the right to transform public domain works into electronic versions by fighting Congress\u0026rsquo;s continuing extensions of the term of copyright in the face of the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s restriction to \u0026ldquo;limited Times,\u0026rdquo; and how the case was lost at the U.S. Supreme Court to inconsistent reasoning from the conservative justices who failed to even address the commerce clause argument and the precedent they set in Lopez v. Morrison case. This is a wonderfully written, persuasive, entertaining, and dismaying book. It deserves to be widely read and understood, so that ultimately intellectual property law in the U.S. will be reformed.\nThis book is available online at no charge. http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\nLisa Kerr (2006-12-09):\nSomething you said in your email had me thinking for days: \"There's a very clear inverse correlation between education level and religiosity, as well as between being a scientist and religiosity.\" While I mostly agree with that statement, what's most important to me is not what side people stand on when it comes to faith, but that each person is allowed to think and reason for themselves! I'd like to invite you to read my blog and tell me what you think: www.reasonstobelieve.blogspot.comThanks,Lisa\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDoh! Thanks, Mike. I knew that when I read the book and wrote the review, but I looked at the URL when I added my initial sentence and engaged my fingers without processing. Will fix.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/todays-content-owners-are-yesterdays.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI posted this review of Larry Lessig\u0026rsquo;s book \u003ca href=\"http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFree Culture\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e to \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AOL7V6D4AL3KO/ref=cm_rna_own_review_more/104-9698366-6339929#R2SD3ATTJCYP6T\"\u003eAmazon.com\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLessig has written a very clear and entertaining book about copyright, piracy, and culture, filled with lots of real-world examples to make his points. The book covers major events in the history of copyright in the United States (from its beginnings in English common law and the UK Statute of Anne) in order to show how its meaning has changed, and how those who are making accusations of piracy today were the pirates of yesterday. (Jessica Littman\u0026rsquo;s book, Digital Copyright, is a nice complement to this book, covering the history of copyright in greater depth.) Lessig makes a strong case that the direction of copyright, giving greater control over content to a very small number of owners than has ever existed, is eroding the freedom that we\u0026rsquo;ve historically had to preserve and transform the elements of our culture.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLessig begins by describing how the notion of a real property right for land extending into the sky to \u0026ldquo;an indefinite extent, upwards\u0026rdquo; became a real rather than theoretical issue with the invention of the airplane. In 1945, the Causbys, a family of North Carolina farmers, filed a suit against the government for trespassing with its low-flying planes, and the Supreme Court declared the airways to be public space. This example shows how the scope of property rights can change with changes of technology, in this particular case resulting in an uncompensated taking from private property owners, yet leading to enormous innovation and the development of a new industry and form of transportation. He follows this with the example of the development of FM radio, which was intentionally back-burnered by RCA and then hobbled by government regulation at RCA\u0026rsquo;s behest in order to protect its existing investment in AM radio. This example shows how powerful interests can stifle technological change through its ownership of intellectual property (in this case, the patents regarding FM radio).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then discusses how intellectual property laws have developed in the U.S., pointing out that Walt Disney\u0026rsquo;s Mickey Mouse made his talking picture debut in the movie \u0026ldquo;Steamboat Willie\u0026rdquo; (he had earlier appeared in a silent cartoon, \u0026ldquo;Plane Crazy\u0026rdquo;), which was a parody of Buster Keaton\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Steamboat Bill.\u0026rdquo; Many of Disney\u0026rsquo;s characters and stories were taken directly from the previous work of others, such as the Brothers Grimm\u0026ndash;works in the public domain, freely available for such copying. As new forms of media have been created, they have borrowed from previous forms. Today, however, the creators of content who have borrowed from their predecessors have successfully changed the rules so that their successors cannot borrow from them, both by extending the term and scope of copyright protection and by developing technologies that have greatly reduced the ability of successors to borrow or re-use content. The specific rules are completely inconsistent, based on the political power of the relevant parties at the time the laws were changed. When Edison developed the ability to record sounds, including recording music written by others, copyright law was changed to provide for compulsory licensing for a fee paid to the composer. With radio broadcasting, the fee still goes to the composer, but not to the recording artist. But put that same radio broadcast on the Internet, and now fees must be paid to both the composer and the recording artist.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhere there used to be a sea of unregulated uses of copyrighted material containing a small island of restricted uses (with shores of fair use), there is now a vast continent of restricted uses, a stark cliff of fair use, and a tiny channel of unregulated uses. Lessig shows a table on pp. 170-171 showing commercial and noncommercial uses and the rights to publish and transform for each. In 1790, copyright only governed publication rights for commercial uses, the other three cells of the table being free. At the end of the 19th century, publication and transformation for commercial use was governed by copyright, while noncommercial use was free. The law was changed to govern copies, including much noncommercial use. Today, all four cells of the table are governed by copyright.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLessig discusses Eric Eldred\u0026rsquo;s attempt to defend the right to transform public domain works into electronic versions by fighting Congress\u0026rsquo;s continuing extensions of the term of copyright in the face of the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s restriction to \u0026ldquo;limited Times,\u0026rdquo; and how the case was lost at the U.S. Supreme Court to inconsistent reasoning from the conservative justices who failed to even address the commerce clause argument and the precedent they set in Lopez v. Morrison case. This is a wonderfully written, persuasive, entertaining, and dismaying book. It deserves to be widely read and understood, so that ultimately intellectual property law in the U.S. will be reformed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis book is available online at no charge. \u003ca href=\"http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\"\u003ehttp://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Today's content owners are yesterday's pirates"},{"content":"An amusing set of coincidences: On Saturday, July 8, Respectful Insolence posted a great video of William Shatner\u0026rsquo;s 1978 performance of Elton John\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Rocket Man\u0026rdquo; at the Science Fiction Film Awards. On Sunday, an episode of Cold Case (\u0026ldquo;Honor,\u0026rdquo; a repeat from last November) began by playing Elton John\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Rocket Man.\u0026rdquo; On Monday, the July 8-14 issue of The Economist showed up, with Kim Jong Il on the cover, launching into the air with a trail of smoke below him, with the caption \u0026ldquo;Rocket man.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/three-days-three-appearances-of-rocket.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn amusing set of coincidences:  On Saturday, July 8, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/07/one_more_reason_why_shatner_is_god_1.php\"\u003eRespectful Insolence posted\u003c/a\u003e a great video of William Shatner\u0026rsquo;s 1978 performance of Elton John\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Rocket Man\u0026rdquo; at the Science Fiction Film Awards.  On Sunday, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tv.com/cold-case/honor/episode/511604/summary.html\"\u003ean episode of Cold Case (\u0026ldquo;Honor,\u0026rdquo; a repeat from last November)\u003c/a\u003e began by playing Elton John\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Rocket Man.\u0026rdquo;  On Monday, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7141256\"\u003ethe July 8-14 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e showed up\u003c/a\u003e, with Kim Jong Il on the cover, launching into the air with a trail of smoke below him, with the caption \u0026ldquo;Rocket man.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Three days, three appearances of Rocket Man"},{"content":"Talking Points Memo writes:\nPresident Bush is out saying that his tax cuts are responsible for the deficit this year being lower than his economists predicted earlier this year and slightly lower than the actual deficit last year. But is someone going to mention that the tax cuts are the prime reason we have record deficits to begin with? President Bush came into office with surpluses. He ran up the deficits, structural deficits created by his tax cuts. Or have we forgotten that?The tax cuts are the prime reason? As if the wasteful out-of-control spending has no part in the equation?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIt's definitely annoying that almost no one mentions the spending side of things.\nGeorge (2006-12-09):\nThe point being made is that the Bush (as with JFK and Reagan) tax cuts have resulted in increased revenues. The budget was neutral in the late 90s because of the massive dotcom boom. When it ended in the last 6 months of Clinton's term, it had a massively negative effect on revenue and it's nearly impossible to get the Government to ever lower spending. You also have to factor in 9/11 and the cost of the war on terror for a huge increase in spending.Yes there is too much spending, but the Republicans were brutally slammed by the left and the main stream media last year for trying to decrease the rate of increase in spending. No Democrat has ever produced a smaller budget than the Republicans.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI don't think that's correct, George. I think that historically, the periods of lowest increase in spending (and debt) have been with a Democrat executive and Republican control of one or both houses of the legislature. When one party is in control of both the executive and legislative branches, they go nuts spending on their favored areas and nobody applies the brakes. Further, Democratic presidents have been in power in periods of greater economic growth (as I found to my surprise a few years ago reviewing NBER data, which I posted on the az.general newsgroup). This site has some nice collections of data on these and other points.What the Republicans say and what they do are completely different.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/dont-worry-about-debt-just-earn-more.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalking Points Memo \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#009004\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003ePresident Bush is\u003c/span\u003e out saying that his tax cuts are responsible for the deficit this year being lower than his economists predicted earlier this year and slightly lower than the \u003cem\u003eactual\u003c/em\u003e deficit last year. But is someone going to mention that the tax cuts are the prime reason we have record deficits to begin with? President Bush came into office with surpluses. \u003cem\u003eHe\u003c/em\u003e ran up the deficits, \u003cem\u003estructural\u003c/em\u003e deficits created by \u003cem\u003ehis\u003c/em\u003e tax cuts.  Or have we forgotten that?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe tax cuts are \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ethe\u003c/span\u003e prime reason?  As if the wasteful out-of-control spending has no part in the equation?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Don't worry about debt, just earn more money..."},{"content":"Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s Office of Legal Counsel, questioned yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee:\nLEAHY: The president has said very specifically, and he’s said it to our European allies, he’s waiting for the Supreme Court decision to tell him whether or not he was supposed to close Guantanamo or not. After, he said it upheld his position on Guantanamo, and in fact it said neither. Where did he get that impression? The President’s not a lawyer, you are, the Justice Department advised him. Did you give him such a cockamamie idea or what? BRADBURY: Well, I try not to give anybody cockamamie ideas.\nLEAHY: Well, where’d he get the idea? BRADBURY: The Hamdan decision, senator, does implicitly recognize we’re in a war, that the President’s war powers were triggered by the attacks on the country, and that law of war paradigm applies. That’s what the whole case — LEAHY: I don’t think the President was talking about the nuances of the law of war paradigm, he was saying this was going to tell him that he could keep Guantanamo open or not, after it said he could. BRADBURY: Well, it’s not — LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong? BRABURY: It’s under the law of war –\nLEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?\nBRADBURY: The President is always right.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/president-is-always-right.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s Office of Legal Counsel, \u003ca href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/12/president-always-right/\"\u003equestioned yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eLEAHY: The president has said very specifically, and he’s said it to our European allies, he’s waiting for the Supreme Court decision to tell him whether or not he was supposed to close Guantanamo or not. After, he said it upheld his position on Guantanamo, and in fact it said neither. Where did he get that impression? The President’s not a lawyer, you are, the Justice Department advised him. Did you give him such a cockamamie idea or what? \u003c/p\u003e","title":"The President is Always Right"},{"content":"The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to ban Internet gambling (HR 4411) by imposing new requirements on banks and credit card processors to prohibit them from transferring money to offshore online gambling companies. This will drive up their costs, which they will pass along to consumers. The online gambling companies will set up shell companies to accept the payments, and it will be a never-ending arms race that will not stop online gambling.\nThe bill that passed was not consistent from a moral basis for banning gambling, as it carved out exceptions for horse racing and state lotteries. In other words\u0026ndash;this was a bill that Jack Abramoff would have loved.\nArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voting in favor of the ban: Trent Franks, J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi, John Shadegg (all Republicans).\nArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voting against the ban: Jeff Flake (R), Raul Grijalva (D), Jim Kolbe (R), Ed Pastor (D).\n(Hat tip to The Agitator. I second his question about why the heck the Washington Post gives a vote breakdown by Representative\u0026rsquo;s astrological sign.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/arizonas-representatives-on-banning.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. House of Representatives has \u003ca href=\"http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/109/house/2/votes/363/\"\u003evoted to ban Internet gambling\u003c/a\u003e (HR 4411) by imposing new requirements on banks and credit card processors to prohibit them from transferring money to offshore online gambling companies.  This will drive up their costs, which they will pass along to consumers.  The online gambling companies will set up shell companies to accept the payments, and it will be a never-ending arms race that will not stop online gambling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe bill that passed was not consistent from a moral basis for banning gambling, as it carved out exceptions for horse racing and state lotteries.  In other words\u0026ndash;this was a bill that Jack Abramoff would have loved.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voting in favor of the ban:  Trent Franks, J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi, John Shadegg (all Republicans).\u003cbr /\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voting against the ban:  Jeff Flake (R), Raul Grijalva (D), Jim Kolbe (R), Ed Pastor (D).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026791.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.  I second his question about why the heck the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e gives a vote breakdown by Representative\u0026rsquo;s astrological sign.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona's Representatives on banning Internet gambling"},{"content":"Time Lee at The Technology Liberation Front writes about a book by Jim Harper that sounds like a must-read:\nHarper’s book does three things. In parts 1 and 2 he presents a theory of identification that classifies identification into four categories (something you are, something you are assigned, something you know, and something you have) and then identifies the relationships among identification, risk, and accountability. He particularly makes the point that the need for identification is intimately connected with the type of transaction being considered: the ID you need to check out a library book is much different than the ID you need to get a mortgage or access to a nuclear reactor. He also stresses the diversity of identification: we use many different forms of identification in our daily lives (library cards, credit cards, passwords, drivers licenses) and that’s a feature, not a bug.\nIn part 3 he digs into the details of identification cards: how they’re created, how they’re used, and how they can be misused. Finally parts 4 and 5 lays out his vision for an enlightened identification policy of the future: one that protects civil liberties by expanding the diversity of identifiers we use in our day-to-day life.\nThe book had two points that I found particularly insightful. Harper stresses the role incentives play on the security of identification. The likelihood a particular form of ID will be hacked is directly related to the rewards for doing so. That means that the more uses we pile onto a single national ID card (which is what your driver’s license is rapidly becoming) the more resources criminals will spend to corrupt the ID-granting process. In contrast, if we have many different IDs for different purposes, the rewards for corrupting any given card will be much lower.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/identity-crisis-how-identification-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTime Lee at The Technology Liberation Front \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040002.php\"\u003ewrites about a book by Jim Harper that sounds like a must-read\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eHarper’s book does three things. In parts 1 and 2 he presents a theory of identification that classifies identification into four categories (something you are, something you are assigned, something you know, and something you have) and then identifies the relationships among identification, risk, and accountability. He particularly makes the point that the need for identification is intimately connected with the type of transaction being considered: the \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eID\u003c/span\u003e you need to check out a library book is much different than the \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eID\u003c/span\u003e you need to get a mortgage or access to a nuclear reactor. He also stresses the diversity of identification: we use many different forms of identification in our daily lives (library cards, credit cards, passwords, drivers licenses) and that’s a feature, not a bug.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood"},{"content":"Mike Ferner was arrested for \u0026ldquo;protesting\u0026rdquo; (he was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt) while sitting, having a cup of coffee in the Jesse Brown V.A. medical facility in Chicago. Ferner, a Vietnam veteran, was told to leave or be arrested, and he chose the latter. He intends to contest the $275 fine in court.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/arrested-for-wearing-peace-t-shirt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Ferner \u003ca href=\"http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner07012006.html\"\u003ewas arrested for \u0026ldquo;protesting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (he was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt) while sitting, having a cup of coffee in the Jesse Brown V.A. medical facility in Chicago.  Ferner, a Vietnam veteran, was told to leave or be arrested, and he chose the latter.  He intends to contest the $275 fine in court.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026766.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arrested for wearing a peace T-shirt"},{"content":"\nI was going to put up something about the mythical story of the Liberty Bell being rung on July 4, 1776 (a story invented in the mid-19th century by George Lippard of Philadelphia\u0026ndash;the name \u0026ldquo;Liberty Bell\u0026rdquo; is actually a Civil War-era name regarding the abolition of slavery, not American independence), but I was unable to find my copy of Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History. Instead, here are links to a few other sites that have put up some nice Independence Day postings:\nRadley Balko at The Agitator asks:\nif forced to put the people who crow loudest about patriotism today on one side or the other in 1776, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you think most of them would have been defending empire, tradition, and the glory of the crown? I can almost read the National Review editorial now, inveighing against the radical, Godless-deist separatists! Here\u0026rsquo;s another: Would the founders \u0026ndash; whom our government celebrates today \u0026ndash; have tolerated the government we have now? As Cowen notes, we rose up and revolted against a government that was far less intrusive, invasive, and \u0026ndash; at risk of hyperbole \u0026ndash; tyrannical than the one we have now. My guess is that alcohol prohibition alone would\u0026rsquo;ve been enough have Payne [sic] or Jefferson calling for arms. Never mind the New Deal, the Great Society, or today\u0026rsquo;s encroaching police state.\nCatallarchy supplies six July 4th posts:\nPatri Friedman repeats last year\u0026rsquo;s post about flag burning, still applicable today.\nBrian Doss provides the key historical documents through a series of five posts:\nA key passage from Magna Carta which he thinks may have been a seed for the American Revolution:\nAnd if we shall not have corrected the transgression (or, in the event of our being out of the realm, if our justiciar shall not have corrected it) within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been intimated to us (or to our justiciar, if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall refer that matter to the rest of the five and twenty barons, and those five and twenty barons shall, together with the community of the whole realm, distrain and distress us in all possible ways, namely, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other way they can, until redress has been obtained as they deem fit, saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our queen and children; and when redress has been obtained, they shall resume their old relations towards us.King George\u0026rsquo;s Proclamation of Rebellion.\nA quote from and link to Thomas Paine\u0026rsquo;s Common Sense.\nAnother post with the text of a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence.\nThe final text of the Declaration of Independence.\nSheldon Richman quotes the Declaration, and asks whether it\u0026rsquo;s time for another one\u0026hellip;\nKevin Carson points out the irony of \u0026ldquo;the lapdog press praising an imperial war machine as the source of our liberties, given that we won our freedom and independence fighting a war against our own governments\u0026rdquo; and supplies a series of \u0026ldquo;real patriotic, freedom-loving quotes, in honor of the anti-authoritarian hell-raisers who really founded this country.\u0026quot;\nEd Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars describes a bit of the history around the Declaration of Independence, and the coincidence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both dying on the 50th anniversary of its signing, and ends with a statement of commitment to the principles of liberty rather than to government:\nThe 4th of July, for me, has very little to do with patriotism or nationalism, feelings that seem to affect me far less than most men. My allegiance is not to the nation, it is to the set of principles upon which the nation was founded. When the government upholds those principles, I offer it praise; when it violates them, I offer my anger and my opposition. Those principles of individual liberty and equality before the law are, in my mind, sacred and inviolable. They are the cornerstone of my view of human civilization; whatever advances them has my support, whatever impedes them my opposition.The photos above are of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives in Washington D.C. on May 5, 2006, and of the monument at John Hancock\u0026rsquo;s grave in the Granary Burying Ground, Boston (where two other Declaration signers, Samuel Adams and Robert Treat Paine, are also buried), on the afternoon of June 29, 2006.\nHistorical Comments Kevin Carson (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the link, Jim. I especially like that Balko quote.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/happy-independence-day.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P5050005.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P5050005.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P6290054.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P6290054.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was going to put up something about the mythical story of the Liberty Bell being rung on July 4, 1776 (a story invented in the mid-19th century by George Lippard of Philadelphia\u0026ndash;the name \u0026ldquo;Liberty Bell\u0026rdquo; is actually a Civil War-era name regarding the abolition of slavery, not American independence), but I was unable to find my copy of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLegends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History\u003c/span\u003e.  Instead, here are links to a few other sites that have put up some nice Independence Day postings:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRadley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026765.php\"\u003eThe Agitator asks\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e if forced to put the people who crow loudest about patriotism today on one side or the other in 1776, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you think most of them would have been defending empire, tradition, and the glory of the crown? I can almost read the \u003cem\u003eNational Review\u003c/em\u003e editorial now, inveighing against the radical, Godless-deist separatists! \u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s another: Would the founders \u0026ndash; whom our government celebrates today \u0026ndash; have tolerated the government we have now? As Cowen notes, we rose up and revolted against a government that was far less intrusive, invasive, and \u0026ndash; at risk of hyperbole \u0026ndash; tyrannical than the one we have now. My guess is that alcohol prohibition alone would\u0026rsquo;ve been enough have Payne [sic] or Jefferson calling for arms. Never mind the New Deal, the Great Society, or today\u0026rsquo;s encroaching police state.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy Independence Day!"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this review of The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. (2001, Andrews McMeel Publishing) to Amazon.com:\nThis is a deeply flawed book. It purports to be a description of the characteristics and attitudes that make wealthy people wealthy, but it is based mostly on their self-assessments without comparison to a control group. I suspect that this heavily underplays the role of random chance in success, and attributes causation where there is only correlation. Further, the author display clear biases on a number of topics, which leads him to engage in ad hoc interpretation of his data, sometimes to argue for conclusions that are contrary to the clear implications of the data\u0026ndash;such as his arguments for the importance of religion in the lives of millionaires.\nOn pp. 33-35, the author looks at success factors, and compares to the role of luck on pp. 82-85, which he downplays in favor of discipline. While he touches on the importance of having the right connections (and the genetic contributions to intelligence), on p. 85 he asks \u0026ldquo;what does luck have to do with graduating from medical school? What does luck have to do with successfully running a medical practice? Very little, according to these physicians.\u0026rdquo; But what does luck have to do with being born into a family and in a country where one has a chance to reach adulthood, let alone be able to attend a medical school? Quite a bit.\nUnlike its predecessor, which looked at prodigious accumulators of wealth (PAWs) vs. under-accumulators of wealth (UAWs), this book focuses on millionaires (PAWs) and decamillionaires (a tiny subset of PAWs, those with net worth $10M or greater). The lack of comparison to the general public serves to limit the book\u0026rsquo;s value.\nA misleading comparison between businessmen and stockbrokers on pp. 76ff makes the point. Stanley states that the former is an occupation more likely to have higher net worth. But this comparison is misleading because he\u0026rsquo;s only looking at the millionaire-plus sample; he is excluding more of the total business owner population from his sample than stockbrokers. The average and median income and net worth for business owners are likely lower than for stockbrokers. If he made the same comparison with actors or musicians to stockbrokers, for example, the problem is more obvious\u0026ndash;by excluding all those who aren\u0026rsquo;t worth $1M or more up front, you exclude the vast majority, and pull up the average. With stockbrokers, on the other hand, a higher percentage of them are in the top income earners and wealthy.\nOn p. 110, after having pages about the importance of ethics and advising \u0026ldquo;Never lie. Never tell one lie.\u0026rdquo; (p. 55), he passes right over his example, Mr. Warren, lying about being a college graduate in order to get a job, without comment, and without noticing the hypocrisy.\nOn pp. 173-174, the author wants to make the point that prayer is important for millionaires dealing with stress, despite the fact that the majority of his surveyed population do not regularly pray. (He repeats this again on p. 370, saying \u0026ldquo;nearly one-half of the millionaires (47 percent) engaged in prayer. \u0026hellip; for a significant percentage of millionaires, their religious faith is a major force in their lives.\u0026rdquo;)\nIn trying to emphasize the point (p. 174), he splits his sample into \u0026ldquo;religious millionaires\u0026rdquo; (RM) and \u0026ldquo;other millionaires\u0026rdquo; (OM), observes that 75% of RM engage in prayer while only 8% of OM do, and points out that this is \u0026ldquo;a ratio of more than nine to one.\u0026rdquo; This is a meaningless comparison, however\u0026ndash;RM make up only 37% of his total population of millionaires, so his \u0026ldquo;more than nine to one\u0026rdquo; ratio is really nothing more than saying, of those millionaires who are religious, three-fourths hold religious practices which involve regular prayer (and 8% of those who do not consider themselves religious pray anyway). Since the OM population is much larger than the RM population, in absolute numbers that\u0026rsquo;s not a nine-to-one ratio\u0026ndash;his numbers show that about 28% of his total sample are RM who pray, while 5% of his total sample are OM who pray\u0026ndash;closer to a six-to-one ratio.\nBut more importantly, the author glosses over the fact that not only are the majority of millionaires not religious, even a quarter of those who are don\u0026rsquo;t engage in regular prayer! Given that the U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the world, the fact that such a low percentage of millionaires are religious is quite interesting and worthy of further exploration as to the cause, but for Stanley, religion and prayer are an important foundation of the \u0026ldquo;millionaire mind,\u0026rdquo; and he completely misses the opportunity to find an explanation for why millionaires are so much less religious than the general population.\nIn a later table in the book on p. 366, he shows activities engaged in by a sample of 733 millionaires during the preceding 30 days. The table includes 52% attending religious services, 47% praying, 37% attending religious events, 22% Bible/devotional reading. These numbers don\u0026rsquo;t quite match up with the RM/OM data from pp. 173-174, which seem to show even lower levels of religious activity, but these are still lower than they are for the nonmillionaire population\u0026ndash;and weekly church attendance is notoriously over-reported in surveys. Work by Mark Chaves, C. Kirk Hardaway, and P.L. Marler in the 1990s found the actual percentage of attendance about half of what surveys show. This actually could mean that millionaires attend more often, if Stanley\u0026rsquo;s survey results don\u0026rsquo;t have similar over-reporting.\nThe author\u0026rsquo;s religious bias further leads him to recommend to a student going through a divorce that she, despite not being a church attendee, search for a mate by joining a church group (p. 268) because she \u0026ldquo;believed in marriage and the traditional family concept.\u0026rdquo; He writes that \u0026ldquo;I believe that one is likely to find better prospects in a church setting than in singles bars. Of course, there are no guarantees, but people with a religious orientation are more prone to respect the principles espoused in the Good Book.\u0026rdquo; But why is he just guessing on this? Hasn\u0026rsquo;t he asked his population of millionaires\u0026ndash;the ones who are 63% non-religious\u0026ndash;how they met their mates? He did this, very usefully, regarding how millionaires purchase their homes (pp. 315-326)\u0026ndash;yet isn\u0026rsquo;t picking a partner even more important?\nThis book has some interesting data, and is at its best when giving comparative results between populations (e.g., the house-purchasing characteristics of economically productive millionaires vs. non-economically productive millionaires in chapter 7). But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t stand up well in comparison to The Millionaire Next Door, which is a much better book.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nInteresting stuff!The statement that, \"for a significant percentage of millionaires, their religious faith is a major force in their lives\" is utterly meaningless.For a \"significant\" percentage of arbitrary group X, religious faith is \"a major force in their lives.\"Whoopty-freakin'-doo! And so what???Funny that his own data suggests the contrary interpretation (which, by the way, would probably also be entirely meaningless, without \"significant\" further clarification).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/review-of-millionaire-mind_02.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve submitted this review of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Millionaire Mind\u003c/span\u003e by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. (2001, Andrews McMeel Publishing) to Amazon.com:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a deeply flawed book.  It purports to be a description of the characteristics and attitudes that make wealthy people wealthy, but it is based mostly on their self-assessments without comparison to a control group.  I suspect that this heavily underplays the role of random chance in success, and attributes causation where there is only correlation.  Further, the author display  clear biases on a number of topics, which leads him to engage in ad hoc interpretation of his data, sometimes to argue for conclusions that are contrary to the clear implications of the data\u0026ndash;such as his arguments for the importance of religion in the lives of millionaires.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn pp. 33-35, the author looks at success factors, and compares to the role of luck on pp. 82-85, which he downplays in favor of discipline.  While he touches on the importance of having the right connections (and the genetic contributions to intelligence), on p. 85 he asks \u0026ldquo;what does luck have to do with graduating from medical school?  What does luck have to do with successfully running a medical practice?  Very little, according to these physicians.\u0026rdquo;  But what does luck have to do with being born into a family and in a country where one has a chance to reach adulthood, let alone be able to attend a medical school?  Quite a bit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review of The Millionaire Mind"},{"content":"Karl Pflock, the author of Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe and co-author with Jim Moseley of Shockingly Close to the Truth, died at age 63 on June 5. Pflock had been a contributing editor to Moseley\u0026rsquo;s Saucer Smear, but had stopped contributing regularly after being diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig\u0026rsquo;s Disease). Pflock was an entertaining writer and a fair-minded skeptic (he was a believer in UFOs, but his book on Roswell is the best skeptical treatment of the topic). The June 30, 2006 issue of Saucer Smear contains an obituary of Pflock by Jim Moseley.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/karl-pflock-dies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKarl Pflock, the author of \u003ca href=\"http://atheism.about.com/od/ufosaliens/fr/Roswell.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRoswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and co-author with Jim Moseley of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eShockingly Close to the Truth\u003c/span\u003e, died at age 63 on June 5.  Pflock had been a contributing editor to Moseley\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSaucer Smear\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, but had stopped contributing regularly after being diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig\u0026rsquo;s Disease).  Pflock was an entertaining writer and a fair-minded skeptic (he was a believer in UFOs, but his book on Roswell is the best skeptical treatment of the topic).  The June 30, 2006 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSaucer Smear\u003c/span\u003e contains an obituary of Pflock by Jim Moseley.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Karl Pflock dies"},{"content":"Ed Brayton calls out both the NY Times and those accusing the Times of treason for reporting that the U.S. government is data mining in financial data from SWIFT. He points out that the Times is criticizing the U.S. government for doing what the Times itself editorialized in favor of the government doing, and also points out that it hasn\u0026rsquo;t really revealed anything of significance that the Bush administration hadn\u0026rsquo;t already publicly said it was doing. Further, the only actually new thing reported\u0026ndash;that the government is accessing large amounts of data with broad subpoenas, rather than specific transactions\u0026ndash;was also reported by the Wall Street Journal, but without it being hit with the same criticisms as the Times.\nThis is a significant outbreak of inconsistency.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/ny-times-and-swift.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/the_times_treason_and_politica.php\"\u003ecalls out both the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNY Times\u003c/span\u003e and those accusing the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes\u003c/span\u003e of treason for reporting that the U.S. government is data mining in financial data from SWIFT\u003c/a\u003e.  He points out that the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes\u003c/span\u003e is criticizing the U.S. government for doing what the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes\u003c/span\u003e itself editorialized in favor of the government doing, and also points out that it hasn\u0026rsquo;t really revealed anything of significance that the Bush administration hadn\u0026rsquo;t already publicly said it was doing.  Further, the only actually new thing reported\u0026ndash;that the government is accessing large amounts of data with broad subpoenas, rather than specific transactions\u0026ndash;was also reported by the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e, but without it being hit with the same criticisms as the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTimes\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a significant outbreak of inconsistency.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NY Times and SWIFT"},{"content":"\nKat and I are back from a short trip to Boston, a mix of business and pleasure. I participated in a panel discussion Wednesday at the Silicon Valley Bank in Newton on carrier IP security and met with a customer on Thursday, but most of the rest of the time was available for sightseeing. The photos are from the Museum of Science and the Charlestown Navy Yard (where the U.S.S. Constitution is docked), respectively. We walked the Freedom Trail, saw numerous art cows, and spent some time with friends. We came back before the big Boston Pops concert/fireworks show on the Charles River, but we did get to see the fully-loaded fireworks barge being pushed into place.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/07/back-from-boston.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P6300007.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P6300007.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P6300058.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P6300058.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eKat and I are back from a short trip to Boston, a mix of business and pleasure.  I participated in \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/network-security-panel-in-boston-area.html\"\u003ea panel discussion Wednesday\u003c/a\u003e at the Silicon Valley Bank in Newton on carrier IP security and met with a customer on Thursday, but most of the rest of the time was available for sightseeing.  The photos are from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mos.org/\"\u003eMuseum of Science\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nps.gov/bost/Charlestown_Navy_Yard.htm\"\u003eCharlestown Navy Yard\u003c/a\u003e (where the U.S.S. Constitution is docked), respectively.  We walked the Freedom Trail, saw numerous art cows, and spent some time with friends.  We came back before the big Boston Pops concert/fireworks show on the Charles River, but we did get to see the fully-loaded fireworks barge being pushed into place.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back from Boston"},{"content":"Both John McCain and Jon Kyl voted in favor of the desecration of the Constitution, but it failed by just one vote.\nWe have an opportunity this year to get rid of Kyl. We should take it.\n(Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voted much more honorably.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/arizona-senators-on-flag-desecration.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBoth John McCain and Jon Kyl \u003ca href=\"http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109\u0026session=2\u0026amp;vote=00189#state\"\u003evoted in favor of the desecration of the Constitution\u003c/a\u003e, but it failed by just one vote.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe have an opportunity this year to get rid of Kyl.  We should take it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/arizona-representatives-on-flag.html\"\u003evoted much more honorably\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Senators on the Flag Desecration Amendment"},{"content":"Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of House Joint Resolution 10 to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the scope of the First Amendment by banning the desecration of the flag. The resolution passed, 286-130, with 18 not voting. The voting went more-or-less along party lines, with Republicans going 209-12-10, Democrats 77-117-8, and Independents 0-1-0. The Senate has yet to vote on it.\nTo their credit, three of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Republican Representatives showed a willingness to buck the party line, accounting for a quarter of the Republicans who opposed the measure. Their votes went as follows:\nIn favor: Franks (R), Hayworth (R), Renzi (R)\nOpposed: Flake (R), Grijalva (D), Kolbe (R), Pastor (D), Shadegg (R).\nIn a recent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton quoted from and commented on an essay from Jonathan Alter:\nI inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew 33 harrowing missions over Nazi Germany during World War II. My father is not just a veteran who by all odds should not have survived. He is a true patriot. His litmus test is the proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning, which will come up for a vote next week in the U.S. Senate. For dad\u0026ndash;and me\u0026ndash;any member of Congress who supports amending the Bill of Rights for the first time in the history of this country for a nonproblem like flag burning is showing serious disrespect for our Constitution and for the values for which brave Americans gave their lives. Such disrespect is a much more serious threat than the random idiots who once every decade or so try (often unsuccessfully) to burn a flag. I\u0026rsquo;ll go even further than that. Hell, I\u0026rsquo;ll go a lot further than that. If you\u0026rsquo;re the kind of person who supports a ban on flag burning, that fact alone is enough to brand you, in my view, as either a demagogue or someone weak-minded enough to be led by demagogues who play on your most shallow and childish emotional responses. Like the flag itself, the flag burning amendment is purely symbolic. And anyone who would throw away free speech rights for symbolic achievement has no business being in any political office in this country.\nI second Brayton\u0026rsquo;s sentiment. Let\u0026rsquo;s get rid of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s demogagues, Franks, Hayworth, and Renzi.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nIt's interesting to contrast the behavior of these fucking idiots with that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - two admirable people who are spending their time and energy tackling real fucking problems (and doing it with their own money).How do these asshole legislators sleep at night?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/arizona-representatives-on-flag.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of House Joint Resolution 10 to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the scope of the First Amendment by banning the desecration of the flag.  The resolution passed, 286-130, with 18 not voting.  The voting went more-or-less along party lines, with Republicans going 209-12-10, Democrats 77-117-8, and Independents 0-1-0.  The Senate has yet to vote on it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo their credit, three of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Republican Representatives showed a willingness to buck the party line,  accounting for a quarter of the Republicans who opposed the measure.  Their votes went as follows:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn favor:  Franks (R), Hayworth (R), Renzi (R)\u003cbr /\u003eOpposed:  Flake (R), Grijalva (D), Kolbe (R), Pastor (D), Shadegg (R).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/alter_on_flag_burning_amendmen.php\"\u003ea recent post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, Ed Brayton quoted from and commented on \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13487935/site/newsweek/\"\u003ean essay from Jonathan Alter\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew 33 harrowing missions over Nazi Germany during World War II. My father is not just a veteran who by all odds should not have survived. He is a true patriot. His litmus test is the proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning, which will come up for a vote next week in the U.S. Senate. For dad\u0026ndash;and me\u0026ndash;any member of Congress who supports amending the Bill of Rights for the first time in the history of this country for a nonproblem like flag burning is showing serious disrespect for our Constitution and for the values for which brave Americans gave their lives. Such disrespect is a much more serious threat than the random idiots who once every decade or so try (often unsuccessfully) to burn a flag.\u003c/blockquote\u003e  \u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll go even further than that. Hell, I\u0026rsquo;ll go a lot further than that. If you\u0026rsquo;re the kind of person who supports a ban on flag burning, that fact alone is enough to brand you, in my view, as either a demagogue or someone weak-minded enough to be led by demagogues who play on your most shallow and childish emotional responses. Like the flag itself, the flag burning amendment is purely symbolic. And anyone who would throw away free speech rights for symbolic achievement has no business being in any political office in this country.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Representatives on the Flag Desecration Amendment"},{"content":"Jim and I have been volunteering with RESCUE (Reducing Euthanasia at Shelters through Commitment and Underlying Education) since January 2002. Two of our dogs, Otto and Fred, came from RESCUE. We believe it is a worthy cause and I am asking for you help. I am participating in the Fourth Annual Bowl-A-Rama which raises money for animal organizations in Arizona. I am on Team Tango, representing RESCUE.\nAll pledges raised by RESCUE will go directly to their mission of providing a second chance at life for dogs and cats who, through no fault of their own, are spending their final days at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. Thes money goes toward medical treatment, boarding, etc. while the animals are in RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s care. The passion that began RESCUE has resulted in a volunteer-driven non-profit corporation with over 300 dedicated volunteers who have helped care for and place over 8,000 wonderful cats and dogs.\nIf you can spare $10, $20 or more, please go to http://bowl.azrescue.org and make a pledge to Team Tango.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/help-me-help-dogs-and-cats.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJim and I have been volunteering with RESCUE (Reducing Euthanasia at Shelters through Commitment and Underlying Education) since January 2002. Two of our dogs, Otto and Fred, came from RESCUE. We believe it is a worthy cause and I am asking for you help. I am  participating in the Fourth Annual Bowl-A-Rama which raises money for animal organizations in Arizona.  I am on \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTeam Tango\u003c/span\u003e, representing RESCUE.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll pledges raised by RESCUE will go directly to their mission of providing a second chance at life for dogs and cats who, through no fault of their own, are spending their final days at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. Thes money goes toward medical treatment, boarding, etc. while the animals are in RESCUE\u0026rsquo;s care. The passion that began RESCUE has resulted in a volunteer-driven non-profit corporation with over 300 dedicated volunteers who have helped care for and place over 8,000 wonderful cats and dogs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you can spare $10, $20 or more, please go to \u003ca href=\"http://bowl.azrescue.org/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://bowl.azrescue.org\"\u003ehttp://bowl.azrescue.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and make a pledge to \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTeam Tang\u003c/span\u003eo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Help me help dogs and cats"},{"content":"In an attempt to offer something constructive, here\u0026rsquo;s a version of network neutrality\u0026ndash;let\u0026rsquo;s call it Lippard Network Neutrality\u0026ndash;that seems to me to be reasonable, providing me with what I want as a consumer of Internet services and what I would want if I were managing security for the provider of those services:\n1. Nondiscrimination\nCompanies that provide facilities-based wireline broadband (i.e., those who own the last-mile wires) to residences must provide unrestricted Internet access to their customers who wish to purchase Internet access, allowing the use of any Internet service or application that does not violate any laws or cause degradation or disruption to the service or other customers. The provider may engage in filtering for consumer-grade service in order to prevent the spread of malware and the sending of spam, including (for example) SMTP filtering or redirection to the provider\u0026rsquo;s mail services, but must allow the purchase of business-grade service under which customers may operate their own mail servers. The provider retains the right to suspend service or quarantine users that send spam, become compromised with malware, or engage in illegal activity or activity that disrupts the service.\n2. Unbundling\nProviders must unbundle Internet access from other services sold over the same connection, so that a customer may use the entire capacity of the circuit for Internet access.\nThese two requirements would give me what I want as a customer, as well as give the provider the ability to recover their costs, provide services that use QoS, provide additional filtering to protect their network and the rest of their customer base from malware, and so on. I think it\u0026rsquo;s quite reasonable for a basic consumer Internet service to do port 25 filtering, force the use of the provider\u0026rsquo;s mail servers, and to do network-based filtering of malware\u0026ndash;but I would like the ability to pay extra for completely unfiltered Internet service and take steps to protect myself. And in fact, that\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;m currently paying Cox for today\u0026ndash;I pay for business-grade service to my home in order to run my own servers here, though I could put those servers into a colo facility and get the same effect, which is what I would do if Cox decided to discontinue offering business-class service to residences. Because that option exists, it would not be necessary to mandate that providers must provide business class service as I described above, but I\u0026rsquo;d still want to be able to ensure that I could access my remotely hosted services from home.\nHow this differs from what many network neutrality advocates are arguing for:\n1. I don\u0026rsquo;t prohibit QoS or tiering, as that is a genuinely useful network feature where I expect to see future innovation of services that depend on it.\n2. The nondiscrimination provision is written to allow some kind of less-than-full-Internet walled garden service at low cost\u0026ndash;so long as customers can still purchase real Internet service. (I think such a service would be under competitive pressure to allow access to the full Internet, for the same reason AOL ended up allowing full Internet access\u0026ndash;otherwise the service wouldn\u0026rsquo;t attract enough users to be a successful product offering.)\n3. I don\u0026rsquo;t prohibit differential pricing for different services and classes of service.\n4. I don\u0026rsquo;t set any restrictions on contractual arrangements (apart from these two restrictions), including interconnection agreements or who pays. I think that should be left to private negotiation and competition.\n5. I don\u0026rsquo;t extend these requirements to other types of Internet providers such as backbone providers or those providing business services, as those are areas with plenty of competition.\n6. I don\u0026rsquo;t extend these requirements to wireless providers, because I think that with sensible market-based allocation of spectrum, there could be plenty of independent competition with much less capital expenditure than for wireline deployment.\nI could possibly be persuaded that there is a place for common carriage requirements, especially for access circuits to businesses, which is where the last-mile providers could really engage in anti-competitive behavior against backbone providers that don\u0026rsquo;t own a lot of last-mile wires (e.g., Level 3, Global Crossing, Sprint), now that the major telco last-mile providers have each merged with a major backbone provider themselves (Qwest/U.S. West, AT\u0026amp;T/SBC/BellSouth, Verizon/MCI). This requirement currently exists in the law for telcos, and unlike the common carriage requirement for DSL, is not planned to go away next year.\nI would not put the above into the purview of the FCC, at least not with their current dispute resolution procedures which favor the telcos. Paul Kouroupas at Global Crossing (also my employer) has been arguing for \u0026ldquo;baseball-style\u0026rdquo; or final arbitration dispute resolution, where each side submits their best and final offer to an arbitrator, who chooses the best. This provides incentive for each side to try to reach the best agreement up front, as well as a process that can proceed quickly, without any government involvement or expense. This suggestion is the second point of Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s proposed REFORM legislative agenda. (Unbundling and common carriage of bottlenecks such as last-mile access circuits are the sixth point.)\nComments, criticisms? I should add that I believe what I\u0026rsquo;ve spelled out above is pretty close to what I\u0026rsquo;ve heard is in Sen. Stevens\u0026rsquo; telecom reform bill, though I haven\u0026rsquo;t read it and I suspect he applies the nondiscrimination and unbundling requirements more widely than to residential broadband.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nTom: Good question. Given the way I've written it, a provider could offer a plan such as you describe (pay for 10 Mbps, get an extra 5 mbps dedicated to MSN services)--but you would also still be able to pay for 15 Mbps of full Internet. You'd have to pay for that extra 5 Mbps in that case, though.Thinking about it overnight, I'm not sure I wrote out my nondiscrimination provision with enough appropriate qualifications to permit the kind of anti-spam activity that I think providers need to be able to perform. Specifically, it needs to permit providers to ban spam-support services which may not directly cause disruption or degradation, but which are part of the supply chain for spam services. I would include in that providing DNS for spammers, web pages for spammed-for content, and distribution and sale of spamming tools the use of which is intended to violate the spam provisions of the AUP. (See the Global Crossing acceptable use policy for what I think a good AUP looks like.)Further, I think a consumer ISP should be able to set restrictions on content hosted by their users which are more restrictive than just what's illegal, if they choose--this has no real anti-free speech effect since users will typically host web content at a web provider.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI don't understand the concern about the Shaw offering. They are offering to allow you to get better-than-best effort service for third-party VoIP service for a fee. If you want to continue to use a third-party VoIP service on best-effort Internet, there's no charge--their offering in no way impacts the service that was previously available, but the offering gives the customer a way to ensure that their voice traffic packets will be the last to be dropped in circumstances of congestion within Shaw's network, which, given a lot of cable modem customers, is bound to occur from time to time. There are literally millions of compromised systems churning out spam, engaging in scan and sploit activity, and launching denial of service attacks, and better than 99% of them are sitting in people's homes, on consumer broadband connections.What possible reason could there be to ban Shaw's offering (which strikes me as insane) or prevent them from charging for it? If you force them to allow anybody to put whatever traffic they want at a higher class of service, with no additional charge, then you've broken the QoS offering--everybody will just put all of their traffic at that level, rather than limiting it to traffic that actually has *need* to be there due to latency/jittery requirements.There's a reason that toll-roads work, and congestion pricing works in downtown London. It causes those who don't really have the time constraints to defer their use to other times or places.As for the bundled service offering, of course it can be offered cheaper--there's going to be a subsidy to the Internet component from the non-Internet component, just like advertising-subsidized content. If you want the advertising-free service, you're going to have to pay a premium.As for the example in the link about the Internet component being ratcheted down to 1% of the bandwidth--I think that example is unrealistic because it won't offer consumers what they demonstrably want (see AOL), there's sufficient competition to prevent it, and if it were possible for providers to collude into pushing such a thing as the only option, it's quite obvious there would be a huge outcry, petitions to Congress, and lawsuits over it. No provider would want to deal with that.I'm quite confident that best-effort Internet services are not going to become slower than today, even if they end up becoming a smaller percentage of the total pipe, unless actually interest in Internet declines. Given the history of communications, I think interest in services between individuals will continue to increase, not decrease, and providers who fail to cater to that will lose customers.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nClarification: It's not Shaw's offering that strikes me as insane, it's the idea of prohibiting it.I'll also note that my impression of Shaw's offering is that it is engineered the same way Global Crossng engineers QoS on its network for our VoIP traffic. See my posting on Dave Siegel and QoS in my net neutrality index for more detail on that.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMitch:AOL didn't own the pipes, but neither did its competitors who drove it to open up full Internet access, the ISPs and Internet backbones. (BTW, AOL did own its own backbone, ANS. It traded ANS to Worldcom in exchange for the service and subscribers of CompuServe, and ended up rebuilding its own IP backbone, the AOL Transit Data Network, ATDN.) The last-mile telcos were pretty late to the game here, and have picked up the bulk of their Internet assets through acquisition and developing DSL, where they're still playing catch-up to cable (though they are catching up). Cable has a firm hold on higher-income customers, probably because they were the early adopters.I think talk of \"duopoly\" exaggerates cooperation between cable and telco (they are fiercely competitive) and overlooks the growing role of wireless to create further competitive pressure.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMitch and Tom:I think we already have some approximations to that model today. For example, there are content distributors like Akamai and Limelight who have relationships with the eyeball customer providers, as well as content providers who already have private peering arrangements with the eyeball customer providers. Those who use Akamai or have private peering with the telcos and cable companies do already have an advantage above those who do not, and Akamai and Limelight provide a method for small players to get the equivalent of a lot more interconnections at a lower cost than negotiating all of those interconnections themselves.I think that we will see this model extend to VPN-like services through inter-provider VPNs and inter-provider QoS. There will be mutual benefit in large providers doing settlement-free peering for higher classes of service, which will also provide competition for content providers to choose which large providers to connect to.Mitch: The eyeball customers get to choose what to look at, but the content providers' spending (on number and location of server resources, and quantity and diversity of bandwidth) determines how many of them can look at one time. That's always going to be the case and will always give those with more money and resources the ability to have greater reach. The trick for the little guy has always been to find ways to piggy back on the bigger guys or work together with other little guys. This has always been true of every medium, from Internet to television to the printed page to the spoken word.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMitch, re your 2:06 p.m. post:Do you see a possibility or likelihood of institution of a walled garden in the consumer broadband space? How would you see that happening? It seems to me that the moment one guy does it, they're going to severely alienate a huge percentage of their customer base and drive them to the competition, unless the competition does it at the same time. And if they both do it at the same time, the customers of both will raise holy hell through the courts.Personally, given the choice between a 15 Mbps walled garden cable connection for free and a $200/mo business T1 with full Internet (that was the approximate local loop cost to my house about six or seven years ago), I'd take the latter.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRob: \"Cox enters into a franchise agreement with the local municipality, but they use my property, not the city's, and I am not a party to those negotiations and have no right to refuse (nor am I compensated)\"This should not be the case. The city should only be able to grant CATV access to *public* rights of way and easements, not private property. If access to your private property is granted, then this should constitute a 5th amendment \"taking\" and be compensated as per Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.I agree that eminent domain should be restricted to genuine public use--I think that removing special privileges granted to telcos is desirable, as well as agree with you that it provides justification for treating them differently (i.e., regulate them) than if they came to hold those assets without government assistance.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/version-of-net-neutrality-i-can.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn an attempt to offer something constructive, here\u0026rsquo;s a version of network neutrality\u0026ndash;let\u0026rsquo;s call it Lippard Network Neutrality\u0026ndash;that seems to me to be reasonable, providing me with what I want as a consumer of Internet services and what I would want if I were managing security for the provider of those services:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Nondiscrimination\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCompanies that provide facilities-based wireline broadband (i.e., those who own the last-mile wires) to residences must provide unrestricted Internet access to their customers who wish to purchase Internet access, allowing the use of any Internet service or application that does not violate any laws or cause degradation or disruption to the service or other customers.  The provider may engage in filtering for consumer-grade service in order to prevent the spread of malware and the sending of spam, including (for example) SMTP filtering or redirection to the provider\u0026rsquo;s mail services, but must allow the purchase of business-grade service under which customers may operate their own mail servers.  The provider retains the right to suspend service or quarantine users that send spam, become compromised with malware, or engage in illegal activity or activity that disrupts the service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Unbundling\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProviders must unbundle Internet access from other services sold over the same connection, so that a customer may use the entire capacity of the circuit for Internet access.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese two requirements would give me what I want as a customer, as well as give the provider the ability to recover their costs, provide services that use QoS, provide additional filtering to protect their network and the rest of their customer base from malware, and so on.  I think it\u0026rsquo;s quite reasonable for a basic consumer Internet service to do port 25 filtering, force the use of the provider\u0026rsquo;s mail servers, and to do network-based filtering of malware\u0026ndash;but I would like the ability to pay extra for completely unfiltered Internet service and take steps to protect myself.  And in fact, that\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;m currently paying Cox for today\u0026ndash;I pay for business-grade service to my home in order to run my own servers here, though I could put those servers into a colo facility and get the same effect, which is what I would do if Cox decided to discontinue offering business-class service to residences.  Because that option exists, it would not be necessary to mandate that providers must provide business class service as I described above, but I\u0026rsquo;d still want to be able to ensure that I could access my remotely hosted services from home.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow this differs from what many network neutrality advocates are arguing for:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  I don\u0026rsquo;t prohibit QoS or tiering, as that is a genuinely useful network feature where I expect to see future innovation of services that depend on it.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  The nondiscrimination provision is written to allow some kind of less-than-full-Internet walled garden service at low cost\u0026ndash;so long as customers can still purchase real Internet service.  (I think such a service would be under competitive pressure to allow access to the full Internet, for the same reason AOL ended up allowing full Internet access\u0026ndash;otherwise the service wouldn\u0026rsquo;t attract enough users to be a successful product offering.)\u003cbr /\u003e3.  I don\u0026rsquo;t prohibit differential pricing for different services and classes of service.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  I don\u0026rsquo;t set any restrictions on contractual arrangements (apart from these two restrictions), including interconnection agreements or who pays.  I think that should be left to private negotiation and competition.\u003cbr /\u003e5.  I don\u0026rsquo;t extend these requirements to other types of Internet providers such as backbone providers or those providing business services, as those are areas with plenty of competition.\u003cbr /\u003e6.  I don\u0026rsquo;t extend these requirements to wireless providers, because I think that with sensible market-based allocation of spectrum, there could be plenty of independent competition with much less capital expenditure than for wireline deployment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI could possibly be persuaded that there is a place for common carriage requirements, especially for access circuits to businesses, which is where the last-mile providers could really engage in anti-competitive behavior against backbone providers that don\u0026rsquo;t own a lot of last-mile wires (e.g., Level 3, Global Crossing, Sprint), now that the major telco last-mile providers have each merged with a major backbone provider themselves (Qwest/U.S. West, AT\u0026amp;T/SBC/BellSouth, Verizon/MCI).  This requirement currently exists in the law for telcos, and unlike the common carriage requirement for DSL, is not planned to go away next year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI would not put the above into the purview of the FCC, at least not with their current dispute resolution procedures which favor the telcos.  Paul Kouroupas at Global Crossing (also my employer) \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/162\"\u003ehas been arguing for \u0026ldquo;baseball-style\u0026rdquo; or final arbitration dispute resolution\u003c/a\u003e, where each side submits their best and final offer to an arbitrator, who chooses the best.  This provides incentive for each side to try to reach the best agreement up front, as well as a process that can proceed quickly, without any government involvement or expense.  This suggestion is the second point of Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/147\"\u003eproposed REFORM legislative agenda\u003c/a\u003e.  (Unbundling and common carriage of bottlenecks such as last-mile access circuits are the sixth point.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eComments, criticisms?  I should add that I believe what I\u0026rsquo;ve spelled out above is pretty close to what I\u0026rsquo;ve heard is in Sen. Stevens\u0026rsquo; telecom reform bill, though I haven\u0026rsquo;t read it and I suspect he applies the nondiscrimination and unbundling requirements more widely than to residential broadband.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A version of net neutrality I can endorse"},{"content":"The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) has issued a report on “Security Implications of Applying the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act to Voice over IP” (21-page PDF) by Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Ernest Brickell, Clinton Brooks, Vinton Cerf, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Jon Peterson, and John Treichler. This report comes at a time when the FCC and courts have already ruled that VoIP and facilities-based broadband providers must provide lawful interception capabilities under CALEA for VoIP services that are “interconnected” with the publicly-switched telephone network (PSTN).\nThe report effectively argues that in order to extend CALEA compliance to VoIP, “it is necessary either to eliminate the flexibility that Internet communications allow—thus making VoIP essentially a copy of the PSTN—or else introduce serious security risks to domestic VoIP implementations. The former would have significant negative effects on U.S. ability to innovate, while the latter is simply dangerous.”\nThe report gives a good basic explanation of VoIP (which comes in a variety of possible flavors), an explanation of pre-CALEA wiretapping and current CALEA wiretapping (including cellular telephone wiretapping and roving wiretaps), and then describes the similarities and differences between the Internet and the PSTN.\nIt then describes the issues of security raised by applying CALEA to VoIP and the risks to innovation created by applying CALEA to VoIP.\nTwo of the key problems for applying CALEA to VoIP are:\nVoIP mobility. A VoIP phone can be plugged in anywhere on the Internet, for non-facilities-based VoIP providers like Vonage. The network that connects the VoIP phone to the Internet—which is the one in a position to intercept the call data--need not be the network of the VoIP provider, or have any relationship with the VoIP provider.VoIP identity agility. A VoIP user can have multiple VoIP providers and easily switch between them from moment to moment. The owner of the Internet access network is not in a position to know who a VoIP user is purchasing VoIP services from. They are in a position to be able to intercept and detect what VoIP providers the user connects to directly, but not if the VoIP user is using encrypted traffic through proxies. Further problems are caused by the fact that the communications between two VoIP phones is peer-to-peer, and the routing of a call at the IP layer can change in mid-call. Because of the former issue, the call contents may not traverse the VoIP provider's network, and thus it will not be in a position to intercept (unless it behaves like the PSTN, forcing the call contents to also come through its network, using SIP proxies/RTP relays). In order to truly be able to intercept all VoIP calls using VoIP as it is designed, there would have to be cooperation between the VoIP user’s access provider of the moment (which could be any Internet provider—a WiFi hotspot, a friend’s ISP, a hotel’s Internet connection) and the VoIP provider being used—but law enforcement may not be in a position to know either of these. The kind of cooperation required would have to be very rapid, with interception equipment and systems already in place and able to eavesdrop wherever the voice traffic may flow, upon appropriate request. This would require extensive coordination across every VoIP and Internet provider in the United States of a sort that doesn’t exist today. It would require extremely careful design and implementation to avoid creating vulnerabilities that would allow this incredibly complex infrastructure to be exploited by unauthorized users--but with so many parties involved, I think that's a pipe dream. This incident with cellular telephony in Greece shows what can already happen today with unauthorized parties exploiting CALEA technology.\nAnd the FCC has ordered that it be in place by May 14, 2007. There’s no way that’s remotely possible--note that the FCC gave ordinary wireline telephone companies over a decade to implement CALEA in the PSTN, and it has been an extremely difficult and expensive process. At best, by the deadline facilities-based VoIP providers will be able to provide interception for call traffic that goes across their own networks, and apparently be forced to do that for all traffic (or else there would be a way to distinguish calls being rerouted for interception from all other calls). And if that's the only kind of VoIP that is permitted, VoIP innovation is stifled.\nOne company that has been pushing hard for these extensions of CALEA is Verisign. They have been doing so because they want to act as the one-stop-shop for U.S. law enforcement, setting up their own infrastructure to interconnect with all Internet and VoIP providers to provide everything from subpoena handling to wiretapping services under contract to the providers. This would effectively hand off wiretapping capability to a third party, working on behalf of the government, over which the individual providers would have little oversight.\nFor more on CALEA, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's CALEA website. For more on the history and politics of wiretapping, see Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau's excellent book, Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption.\nUPDATE July 7, 2006: I've updated the above text in light of Charles' comment, to make it more accurate about interception by forcing VoIP calls to route through the VoIP provider's network. Lippard (2006-12-09):\nCharles:I didn't accurately represent the choice described in the paper--the choice between making calls interceptable but emulating the PSTN, or using the new technology and making it very difficult to intercept calls.You are correct that a VoIP provider can use SIP proxies/RTP relays to force all of the actual call traffic through their network, and that's probably what will be forced to happen. But that loses the efficiency benefits of peer-to-peer communications and prevents it from working the way it was designed to work.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nYou're right that the VoIP provider knows about every call, since the signalling information for the call setup and tear-down always goes through the VoIP provider (that's what makes them the VoIP provider). Collecting call detail records--who calls who when and for how long--are no problem. It's the actual call content interception that's more problematic.One of the requirements of CALEA is that the interception be done in such a way that the act of interception doesn't tip off the person whose calls are being intercepted. The specific wording (from the FCC's 1999 CALEA Report and Order) is:(4) facilitating authorized communications interceptions and access to call-identifying information unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with any subscriber's telecommunications service and in a manner that protects--(A) the privacy and security of communications and call-identifying information not authorized to be intercepted; and(B) information regarding the government's interception of communications and access to call-identifying information.The clause (B) has been interpreted to not only prevent the person who's call is being intercepted from knowing, but to keep the number of people with knowledge of the intercept at the carrier to a minimum.BTW, the FCC's documents on CALEA are here.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLooks like the FBI is now pushing a bill that will effectively create the \"wiretapping everywhere\" scenario.It actually sounds rather similar to what has already been done in the Netherlands.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/extending-calea-to-voip-bad-idea.html/","summary":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) \u003ca href=\"http://www.itaa.org/news/docs/CALEAVOIPreport.pdf\"\u003ehas issued a report on “Security Implications of Applying the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act to Voice over IP”\u003c/a\u003e (21-page PDF) by Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Ernest Brickell, Clinton Brooks, Vinton Cerf, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Jon Peterson, and John Treichler.\u003cspan style=\"\"\u003e  \u003c/span\u003eThis report comes at a time when the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cybertelecom.org/voip/fcccalea.htm\"\u003eFCC and courts have already ruled that VoIP and facilities-based broadband providers must provide lawful interception capabilities under CALEA\u003c/a\u003e for VoIP services that are “interconnected” with the publicly-switched telephone network (PSTN).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Extending CALEA to VoIP: a bad idea"},{"content":"Two Michigan legislators have proposed a bill requiring all foundations operating in the state of Michigan to give at least 50% of their giving in any three-year period to charities based in Michigan.\nThis is an example of a ridiculously short-sighted piece of legislation that will have an unintended consequence precisely the opposite of its intended purpose\u0026ndash;it will cause foundations to move out of Michigan and discourage new ones from being created there. This bill is directed specifically at the Ford Foundation, which does seem to have some real issues, but this misguided cure is worse than the disease.\nHat tip to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, who calls it \u0026ldquo;about the silliest thing I\u0026rsquo;ve ever heard.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/how-to-cause-charitable-organizations.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo Michigan legislators \u003ca href=\"http://philanthropy.com/free/update/2006/06/2006061401.htm\"\u003ehave proposed a bill\u003c/a\u003e requiring all foundations operating in the state of Michigan to give at least 50% of their giving in any three-year period to charities based in Michigan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is an example of a ridiculously short-sighted piece of legislation that will have an unintended consequence precisely the opposite of its intended purpose\u0026ndash;it will cause foundations to move out of Michigan and discourage new ones from being created there.  This bill is directed specifically at the Ford Foundation, which does seem to have some real issues, but this misguided cure is worse than the disease.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://trentstamp.blogspot.com/2006/06/political-posturing-at-its-most.html\"\u003eTrent Stamp of Charity Navigator\u003c/a\u003e, who calls it \u0026ldquo;about the silliest thing I\u0026rsquo;ve ever heard.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to cause charitable organizations to depart your state"},{"content":"The Interacademy Panel on International Issues has issued a statement in support of the scientific evidence for evolution (PDF), urging the teaching of the facts and evidence. The statement is endorsed by 67 national academies of science and the executive board of the International Council for Science.\nThe statement says that:\nWe agree that the following evidence-based facts about the origins and evolution of the Earth and of life on this planet have been established by numerous observations and independently derived experimental results from a multitude of scientific disciplines. Even if there are still many open questions about the precise details of evolutionary change, scientific evidence has never contradicted these results:\n1. In a universe that has evolved towards its present configuration for some 11 to 15 billion years, our Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago.\n2. Since its formation, the Earth - its geology and its environments - has changed under the effect of numerous physical and chemical forces and continues to do so.\n3. Life appeared on Earth at least 2.5 billion years ago. The evolution, soon after, of photosynthetic organisms enabled, from at least 2 billion years ago, the slow transformation of the atmosphere to one containing substantial quantities of oxygen. In addition to the release of the oxygen we breathe, the process of photosynthesis is the ultimate source of fixed energy and food upon which human life on the planet depends.\n4. Since its first appearance on Earth, life has taken many forms, all of which continue to evolve, in ways which paleontology and the modern biological and biochemical sciences are describing and independently confirming with increasing precision. Commonalities in the structure of the genetic code of all organisms living today, including humans, clearly indicate their common primordial origin.It goes on to give a statement about the nature of science.\nFor those who would like to see some of the supporting evidence for each of these four statements, I highly recommend the TalkOrigins website. For the fourth statement in particular, I recommend Douglas Theobald\u0026rsquo;s article at the TalkOrigins site, \u0026ldquo;29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.\u0026quot;\n(Hat tip to Pharyngula)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/67-national-academies-of-science.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Interacademy Panel on International Issues has issued \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20_06_06_iap_evolution.pdf\"\u003ea statement in support of the scientific evidence for evolution\u003c/a\u003e (PDF), urging the teaching of the facts and evidence.  The statement is endorsed by 67 national academies of science and the executive board of the International Council for Science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe statement says that:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWe agree that the following \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eevidence-based\u003c/span\u003e facts about the origins and evolution of the Earth and of life on this planet have been established by numerous observations and independently derived experimental results from a multitude of scientific disciplines.  Even if there are still many open questions about the precise details of evolutionary change, scientific evidence has never contradicted these results:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  In a universe that has evolved towards its present configuration for some 11 to 15 billion years, our Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Since its formation, the Earth - its geology and its environments - has changed under the effect of numerous physical and chemical forces and continues to do so.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Life appeared on Earth at least 2.5 billion years ago.  The evolution, soon after, of photosynthetic organisms enabled, from at least 2 billion years ago, the slow transformation of the atmosphere to one containing substantial quantities of oxygen.  In addition to the release of the oxygen we breathe, the process of photosynthesis is the ultimate source of fixed energy and food upon which human life on the planet depends.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Since its first appearance on Earth, life has taken many forms, all of which continue to evolve, in ways which paleontology and the modern biological and biochemical sciences are describing and independently confirming with increasing precision.  Commonalities in the structure of the genetic code of all organisms living today, including humans, clearly indicate their common primordial origin.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt goes on to give a statement about the nature of science.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor those who would like to see some of the supporting evidence for each of these four statements, I highly recommend the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003eTalkOrigins website\u003c/a\u003e.  For the fourth statement in particular, I recommend \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/\"\u003eDouglas Theobald\u0026rsquo;s article at the TalkOrigins site, \u0026ldquo;29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/science_academies_working_in_c.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"67 national academies of science support evolution"},{"content":"The recording and movie industries want to force a \u0026ldquo;broadcast flag\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;audio flag\u0026rdquo; into TV and radio transmissions, and require all electronic manufacturers to enforce these flags to prohibit unauthorized copying and redistribution of such content. These flags have been entered into Sen. Stevens\u0026rsquo; telecom reform bill, and Sen. Sununu has a proposed amendment to take them out. This issue is being discussed in committee today, so if you\u0026rsquo;ve got a Senator on this list, call them today and ask them to support the Sununu amendment to remove both flags from the bill (there\u0026rsquo;s a separate Sununu amendment that only removes the audio flag):\nChairman Ted Stevens (AK), (202) 224-3004 John McCain (AZ), (202) 224-2235 Conrad Burns (MT), Main: 202-224-2644 Trent Lott (MS), (202) 224-6253 Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), (202) 224-5922 Gordon H. Smith (OR), (202) 224 3753\nJohn Ensign (NV), (202) 224-6244 George Allen (VA), (202) 224-4024 John E. Sununu (NH), (202) 224-2841 Jim DeMint (SC), (202) 224-6121 David Vitter (LA),(202) 224-4623 Co-Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (HI), (202) 224-3934 John D. Rockefeller (WV), (202) 224-6472 John F. Kerry (MA), (202) 224-2742 Barbara Boxer (CA), (202) 224-3553 Bill Nelson (FL), (202) 224-5274 Maria Cantwell (WA), (202) 224-3441 Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ), (202) 224-3224 E. Benjamin Nelson (NE), (202) 224-6551 Mark Pryor (AR), (202) 224-2353The Consumer Electronics Association has a new advertisement out that shows the lunacy of the arguments for these flags based on the past record of these industries crying wolf about the dangers of new technology:\n“I forsee a marked deterioration in American music…and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines…” -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)“The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials.” -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925)\n“But now we are faced with a new and very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder.” -MPAA on the VCR (1982)\n“When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home…not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape [but] the innocent public will be made an accessory to the destruction of four industries.” -ASCAP on the Cassette Tape (1982)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/broadcast-and-audio-flags-learn-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe recording and movie industries \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004759.php\"\u003ewant to force a \u0026ldquo;broadcast flag\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;audio flag\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e into TV and radio transmissions, and require all electronic manufacturers to enforce these flags to prohibit unauthorized copying and redistribution of such content.  These flags have been entered into Sen. Stevens\u0026rsquo; telecom reform bill, and Sen. Sununu has a proposed amendment to take them out.  This issue is being discussed in committee today, so if you\u0026rsquo;ve got a Senator on this list, call them today and ask them to support the Sununu amendment to remove both flags from the bill (there\u0026rsquo;s a separate Sununu amendment that only removes the audio flag):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003eChairman Ted Stevens (AK), (202) 224-3004                                \u003cbr /\u003eJohn McCain (AZ), (202) 224-2235                                         \u003cbr /\u003eConrad Burns (MT), Main: 202-224-2644                                    \u003cbr /\u003eTrent Lott (MS), (202) 224-6253                                          \u003cbr /\u003eKay Bailey Hutchison (TX), (202) 224-5922                                \u003cbr /\u003eGordon H. Smith (OR), (202) 224 3753\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Ensign (NV), (202) 224-6244                                         \u003cbr /\u003eGeorge Allen (VA), (202) 224-4024                                        \u003cbr /\u003eJohn E. Sununu (NH), (202) 224-2841                                      \u003cbr /\u003eJim DeMint (SC), (202) 224-6121                                          \u003cbr /\u003eDavid Vitter (LA),(202) 224-4623                                         \u003cbr /\u003eCo-Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (HI), (202) 224-3934                        \u003cbr /\u003eJohn D. Rockefeller (WV), (202) 224-6472                                 \u003cbr /\u003eJohn F. Kerry (MA), (202) 224-2742                                       \u003cbr /\u003eBarbara Boxer (CA), (202) 224-3553                                       \u003cbr /\u003eBill Nelson (FL), (202) 224-5274                                         \u003cbr /\u003eMaria Cantwell (WA), (202) 224-3441                                      \u003cbr /\u003eFrank R. Lautenberg (NJ), (202) 224-3224                                 \u003cbr /\u003eE. Benjamin Nelson (NE), (202) 224-6551                                  \u003cbr /\u003eMark Pryor (AR), (202) 224-2353\u003c/pre\u003eThe Consumer Electronics Association \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/039746.php\"\u003ehas a new advertisement out\u003c/a\u003e that shows the lunacy of the arguments for these flags based on the past record of these industries crying wolf about the dangers of new technology:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e“I forsee a marked deterioration in American music…and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines…” -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)\u003cp\u003e“The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials.” -Record Label Executive on \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eFM \u003c/span\u003eRadio (1925)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Broadcast and audio flags, learn from history"},{"content":"Matt Stoller at MyDD wrote a blog post titled \u0026ldquo;Please lie to me about Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; in which he repeated Tom Foremski\u0026rsquo;s statement about Cox blocking Craigslist with a \u0026ldquo;blacklist,\u0026rdquo; even though he was already aware that the issue had nothing to do with a blacklist. Now that the facts are well-known and accepted (including by Craig Newmark), he now insists that he never said anything to imply that Cox was intentionally blocking Craigslist, contrary to the written record, and accuses George Ou and David Berling at ZDNet of being \u0026ldquo;lying liars.\u0026quot;\nLook, Matt\u0026ndash;why don\u0026rsquo;t you just show some integrity and admit that you were mistaken to continue to repeat Foremski\u0026rsquo;s statement after you knew there was no blacklist, and mistaken to claim that this issue has something to do with the kind of discrimination that network neutrality regulations intend to prohibit. When caught uttering falsehoods that you should have known were falsehoods, you should come clean and apologize, rather than engage in ad hominem arguments against those who point it out. Your continued demonization of your adversaries damages your credibility.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/matt-stoller-refuses-to-come-clean.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt Stoller at MyDD \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/matt-stoller-lies-about-site-blocking.html\"\u003ewrote a blog post titled \u0026ldquo;Please lie to me about Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in which he repeated Tom Foremski\u0026rsquo;s statement about Cox blocking Craigslist with a \u0026ldquo;blacklist,\u0026rdquo; even though he was already aware that the issue had nothing to do with a blacklist.  Now that \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/update-on-cox-blocking-of-craigslist.html\"\u003ethe facts are well-known and accepted (including by Craig Newmark)\u003c/a\u003e, he now \u003ca href=\"http://mydd.com/story/2006/6/21/234718/411\"\u003einsists that he never said anything to imply that Cox was intentionally blocking Craigslist\u003c/a\u003e, contrary to the written record, and accuses George Ou and David Berling at ZDNet of \u003ca href=\"http://mydd.com/story/2006/6/21/234718/411\"\u003ebeing \u0026ldquo;lying liars.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLook, Matt\u0026ndash;why don\u0026rsquo;t you just show some integrity and admit that you were mistaken to continue to repeat Foremski\u0026rsquo;s statement after you knew there was no blacklist, and mistaken to claim that this issue has something to do with the kind of discrimination that network neutrality regulations intend to prohibit.  When caught uttering falsehoods that you should have known were falsehoods, you should come clean and apologize, rather than engage in ad hominem arguments against those who point it out.  Your \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/demonization-of-adversaries-is-wrong.html\"\u003econtinued demonization of your adversaries\u003c/a\u003e damages your credibility.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt Stoller refuses to come clean"},{"content":"Telco 2.0 has a nice list of types of connectivity options from a business and pricing model standpoint:\nNameTechnical relationship of service and connectivityFinancial relationship of service and connectivityExamplesvertically integrated interactive serviceIntegratedIntegratedPSTN, mobile voice, SMSvertically integrated broadcast serviceIntegratedIntegratedFM radio, DVB-Hstand-alone best-effort connectivitySeparateSeparatedial-up, today\u0026rsquo;s broadbandQoS and billing enhanced connectivityApplication-aware; session/control plane integratedIntegratedIMSservice-funded connectivityApplication-aware; no technical integrationIntegratedSkype Zonesuser- or community-built free connectivitySeparateSeparateOpen Wi-Fi, basic muni service, meshlocal unrouted connectivityVariesNo monetary exchangeBluetooth, Family Radio Serviceother connectivityApplication-agnosticTieredParis Metro pricing\nThey go on to give projections of the relative significance of each of these options from today through 2016\u0026ndash;they foresee huge declines in the vertically integrated interactive service model and expansion of all of the others, with the greatest growth in the stand-alone best-effort connectivity model. That much is a pretty easy prediction based on the replacement of the PSTN with IP.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s notable, though, is that there are other models besides stand-alone best-effort connectivity which they also see growing substantially, with QoS and billing enhanced connectivity the largest of those, through next-gen telco services like IMS.\nThose who advocate network neutrality regulations should be careful not to endorse rules which would prohibit or impair the possibility of innovations using business models other than stand-alone best-effort connectivity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/future-of-connectivity-options.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTelco 2.0 \u003ca href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2006/06/a_new_diversity_of_connectivit.html\"\u003ehas a nice list of types of connectivity options\u003c/a\u003e from a business and pricing model standpoint:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eName\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTechnical relationship of service and connectivity\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFinancial relationship of service and connectivity\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExamples\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003evertically integrated interactive service\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003ePSTN, \u003c/span\u003emobile voice, \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eSMS\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003evertically integrated broadcast service\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eFM radio, \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eDVB\u003c/span\u003e-H\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003estand-alone best-effort connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSeparate\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSeparate\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003edial-up, today\u0026rsquo;s broadband\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eQoS and billing enhanced connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eApplication-aware; session/control plane integrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eIMS\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eservice-funded connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eApplication-aware; no technical integration\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eIntegrated\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSkype Zones\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003euser- or community-built free connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSeparate\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eSeparate\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eOpen Wi-Fi, basic muni service, mesh\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003elocal unrouted connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eVaries\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eNo monetary exchange\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eBluetooth, Family Radio Service\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003eother connectivity\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eApplication-agnostic\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eTiered\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd\u003eParis Metro pricing\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey go on to give projections of the relative significance of each of these options from today through 2016\u0026ndash;they foresee huge declines in the vertically integrated interactive service model and expansion of all of the others, with the greatest growth in the stand-alone best-effort connectivity model.  That much is a pretty easy prediction based on the replacement of the PSTN with IP.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s notable, though, is that there are other models besides stand-alone best-effort connectivity which they also see growing substantially, with QoS and billing enhanced connectivity the largest of those, through next-gen telco services like \u003ca href=\"http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=70174\"\u003eIMS\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThose who advocate network neutrality regulations should be careful not to endorse rules which would prohibit or impair the possibility of innovations using business models other than stand-alone best-effort connectivity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The future of connectivity options"},{"content":"Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R-KY), embroiled in scandal, has had the state block access to blogs reporting on the scandal, including the BlueGrassReport. The blocking was apparently put into place the day after the New York Times mentioned the BlueGrassReport blog. The list of blogs known to be blocked:\nBlueGrassRoots\nhttp://www.bluegrassroots.org/ The Compassionate eCommunity (Jonathan Miller)\nhttp://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/ Kentucky Progress (David Adams)\nhttp://kyprogress.blogspot.com/ Kentucky Republican Voice\nhttp://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/ The Kentucky Democrat (Daniel Solzman)\nhttp://kydem.blogspot.com/\nFletcher\u0026rsquo;s administration is currently facing 15 indictments, including three misdemeanor charges against Fletcher himself for his role in a patronage scheme, forcing Democrats out of state civil service jobs and giving the jobs to his cronies. In the process he\u0026rsquo;s lost 6 of his 9 cabinet members and is on his sixth press secretary since his 2003 election.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/kentucky-governor-blocks-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGov. Ernie Fletcher (R-KY), embroiled \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2006/06/governors_troub.html\"\u003ein scandal\u003c/a\u003e, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000955.php\"\u003ehad the state block access to blogs\u003c/a\u003e reporting on the scandal, including the \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2006/06/bluegrassreport.html\"\u003eBlueGrassReport\u003c/a\u003e.  The blocking was apparently put into place the day after the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/us/20kentucky.html?hp\u0026ex=1150776000\u0026amp;amp;en=dcf24c8321e75068\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;partner=homepage\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e mentioned the BlueGrassReport blog\u003c/a\u003e.  The list of blogs known to be blocked:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlueGrassRoots\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.bluegrassroots.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.bluegrassroots.org/\"\u003ehttp://www.bluegrassroots.org/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe Compassionate eCommunity (Jonathan Miller)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eKentucky Progress (David Adams)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kyprogress.blogspot.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kyprogress.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://kyprogress.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eKentucky Republican Voice\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe Kentucky Democrat (Daniel Solzman)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kydem.blogspot.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://kydem.blogspot.com/\"\u003ehttp://kydem.blogspot.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003eFletcher\u0026rsquo;s administration is currently facing 15 indictments, including three misdemeanor charges against Fletcher himself for his role in a patronage scheme, forcing Democrats out of state civil service jobs and giving the jobs to his cronies.  In the process he\u0026rsquo;s lost 6 of his 9 cabinet members and is on his sixth press secretary since his 2003 election.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kentucky Governor blocks state employee access to critical blogs"},{"content":"George Ou points out a case where the content provider is already offering content only to the ISPs who enter into agreements with the content provider, rather than an ISP only allowing connectivity to content providers who enter into agreements with the ISP. While there are lots of examples of content providers making arrangements with individual users, it has been relatively rare that the arrangements are made on the part of an entire ISP. This is extremely common, however, in the cable industry, where there have frequently been disputes between content providers and cable companies which have led to content providers denying the use of certain popular channels unless the cable companies agreed to per-user fees or to carry other additional channels. A similar dust-up occurred in March 2004 in the direct broadcast satellite business, when Viacom and EchoStar (Dish Network) could not reach an agreement to carry some additional Viacom channels. So Viacom pulled local CBS channels it owned, MTV, Comedy Central, Nick at Night, BET, and other channels, until EchoStar budged.\nIn this case ESPN360 only makes its video content available to selected ISPs (including Adelphia and Verizon) but not to others (such as Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, and SBC). ESPN has regularly behaved similarly with respect to cable companies.\nProposed network neutrality regulations have had nothing to say about the inability of users to obtain content because content providers block their ISPs, or surcharges on ISPs by content providers for their users to have access to premium content. And this is even though there are often real monopolies on content (only a single provider owns it, and may completely control who has access to it, at least until it gets out to P2P networks), while there aren\u0026rsquo;t any real monopolies on Internet access (though some network neutrality advocates have endorsed nationalization of \u0026ldquo;backbone,\u0026rdquo; which would create a government monopoly).\nI think that in general, the ISP does have more overall power and influence than the content provider, but there are exceptional cases where content providers like ESPN360 may have a stronger hand against ISPs. Overall, there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more money spent on communications than there is on content (as Andrew Odlyzko\u0026rsquo;s 2001 \u0026ldquo;Content is Not King\u0026rdquo; essay explained), and the real drivers of that spending are business and peer-to-peer communications, not content providers.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCould be--but isn't the trend on the Internet towards paying less for content (and lots of advertising-sponsored content), rather than more?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/content-providers-and-isps-who-really.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Ou \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=251\"\u003epoints out a case\u003c/a\u003e where the content provider is already offering content only to the ISPs who enter into agreements with the content provider, rather than an ISP only allowing connectivity to content providers who enter into agreements with the ISP.  While there are lots of examples of content providers making arrangements with individual users, it has been relatively rare that the arrangements are made on the part of an entire ISP.  This is extremely common, however, in the cable industry, where there have frequently been disputes between content providers and cable companies which have led to content providers denying the use of certain popular channels unless the cable companies agreed to per-user fees or to carry other additional channels.  A \u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1078792897.html\"\u003esimilar dust-up occurred in March 2004\u003c/a\u003e in the direct broadcast satellite business, when Viacom and EchoStar (Dish Network) could not reach an agreement to carry some additional Viacom channels.  So Viacom pulled local CBS channels it owned, MTV, Comedy Central, Nick at Night, BET, and other channels, until EchoStar budged.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn this case ESPN360 only makes its video content available to selected ISPs (including Adelphia and Verizon) but not to others (such as Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, and SBC).  ESPN has regularly behaved similarly with respect to cable companies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eProposed network neutrality regulations have had nothing to say about the inability of users to obtain content because content providers block their ISPs, or surcharges on ISPs by content providers for their users to have access to premium content.  And this is even though there are often real monopolies on content (only a single provider owns it, and may completely control who has access to it, at least until it gets out to P2P networks), while there aren\u0026rsquo;t any real monopolies on Internet access (though some network neutrality advocates have endorsed nationalization of \u0026ldquo;backbone,\u0026rdquo; which would create a government monopoly).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think that in general, the ISP does have more overall power and influence than the content provider, but there are exceptional cases where content providers like ESPN360 may have a stronger hand against ISPs.  Overall, there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more money spent on communications than there is on content (as Andrew Odlyzko\u0026rsquo;s 2001 \u003ca href=\"http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Content is Not King\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e essay explained), and the real drivers of that spending are business and peer-to-peer communications, not content providers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Content providers and ISPs: who really has the stronger hand?"},{"content":"Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with a technology for preventing video cameras from working. The setup uses sensors to detect cameras from the reflectivity and shape of CCD sensors (or is it actually detecting the lens?), then directs a beam of light (potentially a laser) at the CCDs to prevent it from recording images. The prospective uses they suggest include prevention of piracy in movie theaters and as a countermeasure against espionage. Their small-area technology is apparently close to ready for commercialization, but the large-area version still has a ways to go.\nThe camera-neutralization technology \u0026ldquo;may never work against single-lens reflex cameras.\u0026quot;\nLet\u0026rsquo;s hope it doesn\u0026rsquo;t become a technology used to prevent the documentation of abuses, governmental or otherwise.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/digital-camera-blocking-technology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eResearchers at Georgia Tech have \u003ca href=\"http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/521339/#imagetop\"\u003ecome up with a technology for preventing video cameras from working\u003c/a\u003e.  The setup uses sensors to detect cameras from the reflectivity and shape of CCD sensors (or is it actually detecting the lens?), then directs a beam of light (potentially a laser) at the CCDs to prevent it from recording images.  The prospective uses they suggest include prevention of piracy in movie theaters and as a countermeasure against espionage.  Their small-area technology is apparently close to ready for commercialization, but the large-area version still has a ways to go.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe camera-neutralization technology \u0026ldquo;may never work against single-lens reflex cameras.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s hope it doesn\u0026rsquo;t become a technology used to prevent the documentation of abuses, governmental or otherwise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Digital camera blocking technology"},{"content":"Salon.com has a new article on a room in an AT\u0026amp;T facility in Bridgeton, MO (a St. Louis suburb) that may be an NSA interception facility. The room is protected by a man trap and biometric security, and the AT\u0026amp;T employees who are permitted to enter it had to get Top Secret security clearances. The work orders for setting up a similar room in a San Francisco AT\u0026amp;T office, reported by former AT\u0026amp;T worker Mark Klein, came from Bridgeton.\nThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has an ongoing class-action lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T over its involvement in illegal NSA wiretapping.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/more-details-on-apparent-nsa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSalon.com has \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/21/att_nsa/\"\u003ea new article on a room in an AT\u0026amp;T facility in Bridgeton, MO\u003c/a\u003e (a St. Louis suburb) that may be an NSA interception facility.  The room is protected by a man trap and biometric security, and the AT\u0026amp;T employees who are permitted to enter it had to get Top Secret security clearances.  The work orders for setting up a similar room in a San Francisco AT\u0026amp;T office, reported by former AT\u0026amp;T worker Mark Klein, came from Bridgeton.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Electronic Frontier Foundation \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/\"\u003ehas an ongoing class-action lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T\u003c/a\u003e over its involvement in illegal NSA wiretapping.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More details on apparent NSA interception at AT\u0026T"},{"content":"Back on January 8, I wrote a posting titled \u0026ldquo;Cell phone call records available online.\u0026quot; In that post, I wrote about sites on the Internet where you can pay a fee and get the calling records for cell phones and long distance call records for land lines. The companies providing these services are typically private investigators who use \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;pretending to be the legitimate owner of the phone\u0026ndash;in order to con phone companies into turning over the data. Some also used social engineering or exploited server security flaws to gain access to phone provider online web portals.\nSubsequent to the publicity around that story, there was a brief attempt to pass a law making \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; illegal for telephone records as it already is for financial records. Frankly, I think unauthorized use of someone\u0026rsquo;s phone provider web portal account should already be illegal under most state computer crime statutes, and obtaining phone records through misrepresentation should constitute theft by deception or violation of identity theft statutes, but I am not a lawyer.\nNow, we are learning who some of the major users of these services are: various offices of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, including the FBI; police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Utah, and most likely hundreds of other police departments. These agencies are bypassing legal processes to obtain private phone records without warrants from private companies engaged in highly unethical if not illegal activity.\nHat tip: Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/whos-been-using-pretexting-to-get-your.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack on January 8, I wrote a posting titled \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/cell-phone-call-records-available.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Cell phone call records available online.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  In that post, I wrote about sites on the Internet where you can pay a fee and get the calling records for cell phones and long distance call records for land lines.  The companies providing these services are typically private investigators who use \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;pretending to be the legitimate owner of the phone\u0026ndash;in order to con phone companies into turning over the data.  Some also used social engineering or exploited server security flaws to gain access to phone provider online web portals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSubsequent to the publicity around that story, there was a brief attempt to pass a law making \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; illegal for telephone records as it already is for financial records.  Frankly, I think unauthorized use of someone\u0026rsquo;s phone provider web portal account should already be illegal under most state computer crime statutes, and obtaining phone records through misrepresentation should constitute theft by deception or violation of identity theft statutes, but I am not a lawyer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, we are learning \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060620/ap_on_bi_ge/police_phone_data\"\u003ewho some of the major users of these services are\u003c/a\u003e:  various offices of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, including the FBI; police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Utah, and most likely hundreds of other police departments.  These agencies are bypassing legal processes to obtain private phone records without warrants from private companies engaged in highly unethical if not illegal activity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip: Ed Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/still_trust_your_government.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's been using \"pretexting\" to get your phone records?"},{"content":"The original claim of a Cox \u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo; originated from a statement by Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher. Foremski originally wrote:\nBack on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn\u0026rsquo;t fixed the problem, more than three months later. That\u0026rsquo;s a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist.Now, he says (quoted by George Ou at ZDNet):\nI assumed there was a blacklist - I have no idea how Craigslist is being blockedIn fact, we know now that it\u0026rsquo;s a combination of a bug in a firewall driver produced by Authentium software and unusual (but not incorrect) behavior by the Craigslist webserver setting the initial TCP window size to 0. The facts of the problem came out (at least between Craigslist, Cox, and Authentium) at the time the problem was first reported, was fixed in a beta release within weeks, and has only affected Cox customers who use Authentium\u0026rsquo;s security suite.\nBTW, I disagree with Richard Bennett and George Ou\u0026rsquo;s remarks which attribute the problem entirely or largely to Craigslist\u0026ndash;the behavior of the server is not contrary to the RFC. The initial SYN packet from the client to Craigslist is responded to by Craigslist with a SYN-ACK packet with window size of zero, which means don\u0026rsquo;t send me any data, only an ACK. The client then sends an ACK (completing the three-way TCP handshake), at which point Craigslist sends an ACK packet with a larger window size which the pre-fix version of the Authentium software fails to process. The initial response of the Authentium software to slow down is a reasonable and apparently desired response by Craigslist\u0026ndash;they want new clients to hold off transmitting data (an HTTP request) until they give the OK. Authentium took full responsibility for the problem, and they were right to do so.\nThe story from Foremski was uncritically repeated by Matt Stoller at MyDD, Timothy Karr at Save the Internet (and a couple of other blogs), and now in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a lapse from his normally good judgment about Internet-related matters (e.g., the Cox/Wyden Internet Freedom Act of 1995 and the Cox/Wyden Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998).\nStoller and Karr went on to repeat the \u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo; claim even after having the full story, and I don\u0026rsquo;t believe either of them has retracted the claim that this issue is relevant to the network neutrality debate.\nCraig Newmark complains that he didn\u0026rsquo;t get good responsiveness from Authentium, which Authentium disputes, but he has indicated satisfaction with Cox.\nThe story has been picked up by George Ou at ZDNet (here and here) and by Glenn Harlan Reynolds at Instapundit (here, here, and here).\nThis issue was a user software application issue that had no more to do with network neutrality than a browser incompatibility issue, a webserver disk failure, or a fiber cut. Each of these things can prevent a user from reaching some specific content, but none is imposed by the network provider or remedied by act of Congress or the FCC. Those who continue to treat it otherwise even after knowing the details are demonstrating questionable judgment and integrity.\nUPDATE: Craig Newmark has now stated that there was no deliberate blocking here and the Authentium explanation is correct. I\u0026rsquo;ve exchanged a few emails with him asking whether the behavior of the Craigslist.org webserver is specifically intended to regulate the rate of new HTTP connections (and whether the behavior is coming from something like an application-layer switch negotiating the TCP handshake); he said he\u0026rsquo;s passed that on to his technical team and I\u0026rsquo;ll report here if I get confirmation or refutation on that point.\nOne puzzling paragraph of his latest blog post is this one:\nOne good outcome of this is that we flushed out a swiftboater (in the generic sense), and this helps me understand the way disinformation gangs operate. Unfortunately, in some blogs, a good guy has been linked with the swiftboater, which isn\u0026rsquo;t fair, and hopefully, we can do something about that.I\u0026rsquo;m not sure who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a swiftboater, who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a good guy, and who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a disinformation gang. So far as I can see, the disinformation gang in this incident has been the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; crowd, who still have yet to admit the clear facts of the matter. I asked for clarification, but Craig declined to identify who he\u0026rsquo;s referring to (except that he\u0026rsquo;s not referring to Matt Stoller or Timothy Karr).\nUPDATE: July 12, 2006: The Craigslist.org webserver has changed its behavior and no longer sends a SYN-ACK packet with a window size of 0; it now gives a window size of 4380. This change by Craigslist.org works as a fix to the Authentium issue. I wonder why they only made the change now.\nHistorical Comments George (2006-12-09):\n\"BTW, I disagree with Richard Bennett and George Ou's remarks which attribute the problem entirely or largely to Craigslist\"Note that I said that it was equal fault, one that could be much more easily fixed on Craigslist's side.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/update-on-cox-blocking-of-craigslist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe original claim of a Cox \u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo; originated from a statement by Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher.  Foremski \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Foremski/index.php?p=86\"\u003eoriginally wrote\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBack on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn\u0026rsquo;t fixed the problem, more than three months later. That\u0026rsquo;s a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNow, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=250\"\u003ehe says\u003c/a\u003e (quoted by George Ou at ZDNet):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI assumed there was a blacklist - I have no idea how Craigslist is being blocked\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn fact, we know now that it\u0026rsquo;s a combination of a bug in a firewall driver produced by Authentium software and unusual (but not incorrect) behavior by the Craigslist webserver setting the initial TCP window size to 0.  The facts of the problem came out (at least between Craigslist, Cox, and Authentium) at the time the problem was first reported, was fixed in a beta release within weeks, and has only affected Cox customers who use Authentium\u0026rsquo;s security suite.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, I disagree with Richard Bennett and George Ou\u0026rsquo;s remarks which attribute the problem entirely or largely to Craigslist\u0026ndash;the behavior of the server is not contrary to the RFC.  The initial SYN packet from the client to Craigslist is responded to by Craigslist with a SYN-ACK packet with window size of zero, which means don\u0026rsquo;t send me any data, only an ACK.  The client then sends an ACK (completing the three-way TCP handshake), at which point Craigslist sends an ACK packet with a larger window size which the pre-fix version of the Authentium software fails to process. The initial response of the Authentium software to slow down is a reasonable and apparently desired response by Craigslist\u0026ndash;they want new clients to hold off transmitting data (an HTTP request) until they give the OK.  Authentium took full responsibility for the problem, and they were right to do so.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe story from Foremski \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/matt-stoller-lies-about-site-blocking.html\"\u003ewas uncritically repeated\u003c/a\u003e by Matt Stoller at MyDD, Timothy Karr at Save the Internet (and a couple of other blogs), and now in \u003ca href=\"http://www.onlyrepublican.com/orinsf/2006/06/sen_wyden_gets_.html\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e op-ed piece by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)\u003c/a\u003e, in a lapse from his normally good judgment about Internet-related matters (e.g., the Cox/Wyden Internet Freedom Act of 1995 and the Cox/Wyden Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStoller and Karr went on to \u003ca href=\"http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/06/14/discrimination-in-disguise/\"\u003erepeat\u003c/a\u003e the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/6/14/214831/479\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e claim even after having the full story, and I don\u0026rsquo;t believe either of them has retracted the claim that this issue is relevant to the network neutrality debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCraig Newmark \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnewmark.com/archives/000623.html\"\u003ecomplains that he didn\u0026rsquo;t get good responsiveness from Authentium\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"http://www.zdnet.com/5208-12517-0.html?forumID=1\u0026threadID=22215\u0026amp;messageID=422699\"\u003eAuthentium disputes\u003c/a\u003e, but he \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnewmark.com/archives/000624.html\"\u003ehas indicated satisfaction with Cox\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe story has been picked up by George Ou at ZDNet (\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=249\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=250\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e) and by Glenn Harlan Reynolds at Instapundit (\u003ca href=\"http://instapundit.com/archives/030952.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://instapundit.com/archives/030975.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://instapundit.com/archives/030987.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis issue was a user software application issue that had no more to do with network neutrality than a browser incompatibility issue, a webserver disk failure, or a fiber cut.  Each of these things can prevent a user from reaching some specific content, but none is imposed by the network provider or remedied by act of Congress or the FCC.  Those who continue to treat it otherwise even after knowing the details are demonstrating questionable judgment and integrity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Craig Newmark has \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnewmark.com/archives/000625.html\"\u003enow stated\u003c/a\u003e that there was no deliberate blocking here and the Authentium explanation is correct.  I\u0026rsquo;ve exchanged a few emails with him asking whether the behavior of the Craigslist.org webserver is specifically intended to regulate the rate of new HTTP connections (and whether the behavior is coming from something like an application-layer switch negotiating the TCP handshake); he said he\u0026rsquo;s passed that on to his technical team and I\u0026rsquo;ll report here if I get confirmation or refutation on that point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne puzzling paragraph of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnewmark.com/archives/000625.html\"\u003ehis latest blog post\u003c/a\u003e is this one:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOne good outcome of this is that we flushed out a swiftboater (in the generic sense), and this helps me understand the way disinformation gangs operate. Unfortunately, in some blogs, a good guy has been linked with the swiftboater, which isn\u0026rsquo;t fair, and hopefully, we can do something about that.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not sure who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a swiftboater, who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a good guy, and who he\u0026rsquo;s calling a disinformation gang.  So far as I can see, the disinformation gang in this incident has been the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; crowd, who still have yet to admit the clear facts of the matter.  I asked for clarification, but Craig declined to identify who he\u0026rsquo;s referring to (except that he\u0026rsquo;s not referring to Matt Stoller or Timothy Karr).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  July 12, 2006:  The Craigslist.org webserver has changed its behavior and no longer sends a SYN-ACK packet with a window size of 0; it now gives a window size of 4380.  This change by Craigslist.org works as a fix to the Authentium issue.  I wonder why they only made the change now.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update on Cox blocking of Craigslist"},{"content":"BLDGBLOG has some photos and information about China\u0026rsquo;s mobile execution chambers, used to bring state lethal injection capability to poor localities that can\u0026rsquo;t afford to build their own execution facilities. Amnesty International says they have evidence that Chinese police, courts, and hospitals are engaged in the organ trade, and suggest that the mobile death vans may be involved.\nBLDBLOG cites USA Today reporting that there are 68 different crimes punishable by death in China, more than half of which are non-violent offenses such as tax evasion and drug smuggling. All executions are recorded on audio and video, and shown live to the local law enforcement authorities.\nThe only other country which had mobile death vans that I\u0026rsquo;m aware of was Germany under Adolf Hitler. The Einsatzgruppen\u0026rsquo;s mobile killing units were known as \u0026ldquo;death vans,\u0026rdquo; which used carbon monoxide gas for execution.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/chinas-mobile-death-vans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBLDGBLOG has \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/chinese-death-vans.html\"\u003esome photos and information about China\u0026rsquo;s mobile execution chambers\u003c/a\u003e, used to bring state lethal injection capability to poor localities that can\u0026rsquo;t afford to build their own execution facilities.  Amnesty International says they have evidence that Chinese police, courts, and hospitals are engaged in the organ trade, and suggest that the mobile death vans may be involved.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBLDBLOG cites \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-death-van_x.htm\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e reporting\u003c/a\u003e that there are 68 different crimes punishable by death in China, more than half of which are non-violent offenses such as tax evasion and drug smuggling.  All executions are recorded on audio and video, and shown live to the local law enforcement authorities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe only other country which had mobile death vans that I\u0026rsquo;m aware of was Germany under Adolf Hitler.  The Einsatzgruppen\u0026rsquo;s mobile killing units were known as \u0026ldquo;death vans,\u0026rdquo; which used carbon monoxide gas for execution.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"China's mobile death vans"},{"content":"P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has put together an excellent starting point for anyone who would like to see the overwhelming evidence that supports evolution, contrary to Ann Coulter\u0026rsquo;s claim in her new book, Godless, that there is no evidence to support it. 20 science journal articles published per day, a new book published every other day, statements from scientific societies, online tutorials, blogs by scientists, and more.\nHe also requests that if you can find a single paragraph anywhere in chapters 8-11 of her book that is at all competent or accurate in its description of science, to send it to him.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/ann-coulter-on-no-evidence-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eP.Z. Myers at Pharyngula \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/ann_coulter_no_evidence_for_ev.php\"\u003ehas put together an excellent starting point\u003c/a\u003e for anyone who would like to see the overwhelming evidence that supports evolution, contrary to Ann Coulter\u0026rsquo;s claim in her new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGodless\u003c/span\u003e, that there is no evidence to support it.  20 science journal articles published per day, a new book published every other day, statements from scientific societies, online tutorials, blogs by scientists, and more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also requests that if you can find a single paragraph anywhere in chapters 8-11 of her book that is at all competent or accurate in its description of science, to send it to him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ann Coulter on no evidence for evolution, refuted"},{"content":"Matt Stoller has a post up at MyDD dated June 14 titled (with ironic accuracy) \u0026ldquo;Please lie to me about Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; in which he gives the following as an example of unwarranted site blocking that shows the need for net neutrality regulations:\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a pervasive myth that there has been no discrimination on the internet against content companies. That is simply untrue. For one, Craigslist has been blocked for three months from Cox customers because of security software malfunctions.\nBack on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn\u0026rsquo;t fixed the problem, more than three months later. That\u0026rsquo;s a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist. And this company also supplies security software to other large ISPs. Without net neutrality protections, cable and telecom companies will have no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. Already, it\u0026rsquo;s quite difficult to even know that this is happening because they are quite easy to disguise. However, Ray Dickenson, the VP of Product Management at Authentium, the company which makes Cox\u0026rsquo;s software firewall, had already explained this problem in a post on MyDD back on June 9 when Stoller first brought this up, and it has nothing to do with a software \u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo;:\nI\u0026rsquo;m SVP Product Management at Authentium, Inc. We make the branded security suites that many Internet Service Providers, including Cox Communications, offer to their subscribers. I\u0026rsquo;d like to take this opportunity to set the story straight on the Craigslist issue that some Cox subscribers have experienced.\nIn February, we started receiving support calls from users of our branded ESP security suite at ISPs like Cox Communications and Patriot Media. These users had problems accessing the Craigslist.org web site.\nOur engineers investigated the issue and found a glitch in our firewall driver that made the Craigslist site very slow to load, or not load at all. (Technical details below)\nWe contacted Craigslist to learn why only the Craigslist web site was affected and also had our engineers fix the firewall driver. The fixed driver is in QA and will be part of a new release this summer. Our support team has been offering the beta firewall driver to customers who call in and are willing to try it. The support team also assists users uninstalling the software if necessary.\nAuthentium is dedicated to providing the best possible Internet experience for all users of our security suite, which appears under many brand names. We applaud the efforts of ISPs that go the extra mile to provide free security software to their subscribers and will continue our efforts to make the Internet experience safer and easier.\nTechnical details:\nWe found that the Craigslist.org web site sends a TCP packet with a zero-length window. A zero-length window indicates the server is experiencing congestion and cannot handle more data. Our firewall driver responds by sending data only one byte at a time, even after the server increases the TCP window size. This is the glitch we have fixed and are QA testing. Any changes to network drivers must be made carefully, tested thoroughly, and certified before general release.Authentium\u0026rsquo;s initial response to the Craigslist.org webserver is exactly as specified by RFC 793 (which describes TCP) about the proper behavior when a host to which you initiate a TCP connection specifies a window size of 0, as others have pointed out at the Save the Internet blog:\nFlow Control: TCP provides a means for the receiver to govern the amount of data sent by the sender. This is achieved by returning a “window” with every ACK indicating a range of acceptable sequence numbers beyond the last segment successfully received. The window indicates an allowed number of octets that the sender may transmit before receiving further permission.The bug here is that when the Craigslist.org host later attempts to increase the window size, the Authentium software fails to do so.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a bug in Authentium, but it\u0026rsquo;s also arguably a bug in Craigslist.org, which also had the capability of offering a fix but has failed to do so. To characterize this as an example of discriminatory website blocking by Cox is dishonest, and to repeat the claim that this was caused by \u0026ldquo;text\u0026rdquo; in their \u0026ldquo;blacklist\u0026rdquo; after being informed otherwise is a lie.\nComing on the heel\u0026rsquo;s of Stoller\u0026rsquo;s YearlyKos admission of not understanding the issues and calling for personal vilification of his opponents, this makes a solid case that he\u0026rsquo;s in way over his head and should not be relied upon as a source of information in the net neutrality debate.\nUPDATE: Timothy Karr of Save the Internet has jumped on this bogus bandwagon on his Media Citizen blog as well as on the Save the Internet blog (already linked above with the \u0026ldquo;others have pointed out\u0026rdquo; text) and at the Free Press Action HQ blog. At the last source, Karr was clearly already informed of the cause of the issue, as he links to this fairly clear explanation from Authentium, in which the Authentium CEO, John Sharp, says that they immediately contacted Craigslist.org and made a beta fix available to their customers (including Cox customers) within a couple of weeks. For no reason I can see, Karr describes this by saying that \u0026ldquo;The CEO at the \u0026lsquo;security software\u0026rsquo; company in question is equally opaque about the Craigslist blocking.\u0026rdquo; What\u0026rsquo;s opaque about the explanation, and why does he put \u0026ldquo;security software\u0026rdquo; in quotes\u0026ndash;to suggest that this is malicious blocking?\nHistorical Comments George (2006-12-09):\nhttp://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=250Looks like Stoller's source made it all up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/matt-stoller-lies-about-site-blocking.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt Stoller has \u003ca href=\"http://mydd.com/story/2006/6/14/214831/479\"\u003ea post up at MyDD dated June 14\u003c/a\u003e titled (with ironic accuracy) \u0026ldquo;Please lie to me about Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; in which he gives the following as an example of unwarranted site blocking that shows the need for net neutrality regulations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a pervasive myth that there has been no discrimination on the internet against content companies.  That is simply untrue.  For one, Craigslist has been blocked for three months from Cox customers because of \u003ca href=\"http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/6/8/144357/7525\"\u003esecurity software malfunctions.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt Stoller lies about site blocking"},{"content":"I plugged all the previous data into Excel and generated this graph:\nI wonder what happened in December and early January. The trend is amazingly linear, otherwise.\nWhen do we start considering Phoenix a buyer\u0026rsquo;s market? Now? When inventory hits 6oK? When the trend shows clear signs it has reversed? As I said in the comments to the previous housing inventory post, I think I want to start making lowball offers when I get back there!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/graph-of-phoenix-housing-inventory.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI plugged all the previous data into Excel and generated this graph:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/1600/phxinv.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"Click to Enlarge\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/320/phxinv.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wonder what happened in December and early January. The trend is amazingly linear, otherwise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen do we start considering Phoenix a buyer\u0026rsquo;s market? Now? When inventory hits 6oK? When the trend shows clear signs it has reversed? As I said in the comments to the \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/phoenix-housing-bubble-update.html\"\u003eprevious housing inventory post\u003c/a\u003e, I think I want to start making lowball offers when I get back there!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Graph of Phoenix Housing Inventory"},{"content":"Yet another rock formation has been misidentified as Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark by evangelical Christian explorers (\u0026ldquo;Arkeologists\u0026rdquo;). They apparently forgot to bring a geologist or archaeologist with them, but they did bring \u0026ldquo;some of America’s leading businessmen, an attorney who has argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and two leading apologists\u0026rdquo; and take some incredibly unimpressive photographs. The expedition was led by former Costa Mesa, CA police officer turned \u0026ldquo;international explorer and author,\u0026rdquo; Bob Cornuke, who runs something called the BASE (Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration) Institute. I hope his ethics are better than those of former nurse-anesthetist turned international explorer and author Ron Wyatt, who found a profitable career by claiming to find virtually every possible biblical site and artifact. (Wyatt, a Seventh-Day Adventist, was best debunked in a book by his fellow SDA members Russell R. Standish and Colin D. Standish, Holy Relics or Revelation, a book I highly recommend.)\nEd Brayton has done a good job of dissecting the claims in the announcement article. As he notes, this is far from the first such claimed discovery of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark. This one is in Iran rather than the usual location of Agri Dagi in Turkey. I actually give them credit for not looking on Agri Dagi (Mt. Ararat), since the Bible only says that the Ark landed in a region called Ararat, not a mountain of that name (2 Kings 19:37, Jeremiah 51:27).\nFor a review of some previous claimed Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark sightings, see my 1993-1994 articles from Skeptic magazine, \u0026ldquo;Sun Goes Down in Flames: The Jammal Ark Hoax\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Update on the Ark Hoax\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/josh-mcdowell-helps-discover-noahs-ark.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYet another rock formation \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldviewweekend.com/secure/cwnetwork/article.php?\u0026ArticleID=813\"\u003ehas been misidentified as Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark\u003c/a\u003e by evangelical Christian explorers (\u0026ldquo;Arkeologists\u0026rdquo;).  They apparently forgot to bring a geologist or archaeologist with them, but they did bring \u0026ldquo;some of America’s leading businessmen, an attorney who has argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and two leading apologists\u0026rdquo; and take some incredibly unimpressive photographs.  The expedition was led by former Costa Mesa, CA police officer turned \u0026ldquo;international explorer and author,\u0026rdquo; Bob Cornuke, who runs something called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.baseinstitute.org/\"\u003eBASE (Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration) Institute\u003c/a\u003e.  I hope his ethics are better than those of former nurse-anesthetist turned international explorer and author \u003ca href=\"http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/\"\u003eRon Wyatt\u003c/a\u003e, who found a profitable career by claiming to find virtually every possible biblical site and artifact.  (Wyatt, a Seventh-Day Adventist, was best debunked in a book by his fellow SDA members Russell R. Standish and Colin D. Standish, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHoly Relics or Revelation\u003c/span\u003e, a book I highly recommend.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton has done \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/noahs_ark_found_again.php\"\u003ea good job of dissecting the claims in the announcement article\u003c/a\u003e.  As he notes, this is far from the first such claimed discovery of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark.  This one is in Iran rather than the usual location of Agri Dagi in Turkey.  I actually give them credit for not looking on Agri Dagi (Mt. Ararat), since the Bible only says that the Ark landed in a region called Ararat, not a mountain of that name (2 Kings 19:37, Jeremiah 51:27).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor a review of some previous claimed Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark sightings, see my 1993-1994 articles from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/jammal.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sun Goes Down in Flames: The Jammal Ark Hoax\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/02.4.lippard-ark-hoax.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Update on the Ark Hoax\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Josh McDowell helps discover Noah's Ark"},{"content":"USA Today technology columnist Andrew Kantor has changed his mind, and no longer supports net neutrality regulations:\nNot too long ago, I was very much on their side. \u0026ldquo;Imagine you make a phone call to a friend,\u0026rdquo; I wrote then, \u0026ldquo;but instead of hearing it ring, you get a recording: We\u0026rsquo;re sorry, but the person you are calling has not paid Verizon to carry his or her conversations.\nBut I was wrong. I did what\u0026rsquo;s easy to do: I blew things out of proportion and borrowed trouble. As I learn more, I realize that Net neutrality — at least the way it\u0026rsquo;s being touted today — is a bad idea.\nIt pains me to say it, because many organizations I respect are fighting for a law. But I\u0026rsquo;m not.\nKantor now says that net neutrality doesn\u0026rsquo;t force Internet traffic into the slow lane, it prevents the building of a fast lane, and that there is little risk of telcos blocking competing services or content because of the principles in the FCC\u0026rsquo;s August 2005 policy statement (the \u0026ldquo;four freedoms\u0026rdquo;). He concludes that\nThe most a Net neutrality law should say is that A) network providers must carry any legal data regardless of the content or who it comes from, and B) network providers must offer the same services at the same prices to any customer — i.e., they couldn\u0026rsquo;t charge YouTube more for a connection than they charge Disney.Hat tip to Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/andrew-kantor-changes-his-mind-on-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e technology columnist Andrew Kantor has changed his mind, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-06-15-net-neutrality-revisited_x.htm\"\u003eno longer supports net neutrality regulations\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp class=\"inside-copy\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp class=\"inside-copy\"\u003eNot too long ago, \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-02-02-congress-open-pipes_x.htm\" onclick=\"\" target=\"_new\"\u003eI was very much on their side\u003c/a\u003e. \u0026ldquo;Imagine you make a phone call to a friend,\u0026rdquo; I wrote then, \u0026ldquo;but instead of hearing it ring, you get a recording: \u003ci\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re sorry, but the person you are calling has not paid Verizon to carry his or her conversations.\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp class=\"inside-copy\"\u003eBut I was wrong. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Andrew Kantor changes his mind on net neutrality"},{"content":"Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars has an excerpt from an article in Christianity Today by Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter, a well-known black Christian conservative who authored the book Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby. In the article, Carter is arguing against the common demonization of the ACLU by Christians, pointing out that while he disagrees with the ACLU on the establishment clause, they are also a big defender of the free exercise clause and have consistently supported Christians in free exercise court cases:\nMore to the point, the ACLU is often right about the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s free exercise clause, taking on fights that others refuse. It might surprise some critics that the ACLU defends the free speech and free exercise rights of, well, Christians.The larger point of the article, however, is to condemn the mode of argument that characterizes those who disagree as irrational, dishonest, or evil simply in virtue of that disagreement:\nI am more concerned about a habit of mind that seems to be growing among my fellow Christians, both political liberals and conservatives. That is, we seem to mimic the secular world\u0026rsquo;s conflation of disagreement with wickedness, as if not sharing my worldview places my critic outside the realm of rational discourse\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve seen similar habits expressed by people on both sides of the net neutrality debate. For example, in Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the YearlyKos convention, he admits that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the relevant technical issues (and proceeds to demonstrate it by suggesting that \u0026ldquo;non-neutrality\u0026rdquo; will cause dropped calls, when in fact it\u0026rsquo;s non-neutral QoS that will prevent them). He asserts that it is fun to beat up on \u0026ldquo;these bad people\u0026rdquo; and that it is very important that Mike McCurry be personally vilified. That\u0026rsquo;s explicit endorsement of irrationality, of emotional demogoguery over fact and reason, and should be condemned by everyone in this debate.\nEd Brayton concludes:\nBut rational people, people who care about truth and accuracy, must fight this tendency. We must try and evaluate every claim using the same criteria. Does the evidence support it? Are the conclusions drawn from the evidence logical? Any claim that fails to meet those criteria should be rejected, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. Likewise, any claim that withstands that scrutiny should be accepted as valid, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. None of us will ever be Mr. Spock, but we should strive to evaluate all arguments as though we have no stake in the outcome. Some, like the STACLU crowd, make no attempt at all to do so; we should not emulate them.I agree.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/demonization-of-adversaries-is-wrong.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/stephen_carter_on_the_aclu.php\"\u003ehas an excerpt from an article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChristianity Today\u003c/span\u003e by Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter\u003c/a\u003e, a well-known black Christian conservative who authored the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eConfessions of an Affirmative Action Baby\u003c/span\u003e.  In the article, Carter is arguing against the common demonization of the ACLU by Christians, pointing out that while he disagrees with the ACLU on the establishment clause, they are also a big defender of the free exercise clause and have consistently supported Christians in free exercise court cases:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMore to the point, the ACLU is often right about the First Amendment\u0026rsquo;s free exercise clause, taking on fights that others refuse. It might surprise some critics that the ACLU defends the free speech and free exercise rights of, well, Christians.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe larger point of the article, however, is to condemn the mode of argument that characterizes those who disagree as irrational, dishonest, or evil simply in virtue of that disagreement:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI am more concerned about a habit of mind that seems to be growing among my fellow Christians, both political liberals and conservatives. That is, we seem to mimic the secular world\u0026rsquo;s conflation of disagreement with wickedness, as if not sharing my worldview places my critic outside the realm of rational discourse\u0026hellip;\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve seen similar habits expressed by people on both sides of the net neutrality debate.  For example, in \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5121272605131093307\"\u003eMatt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the YearlyKos convention\u003c/a\u003e, he admits that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the relevant technical issues (and proceeds to demonstrate it by suggesting that \u0026ldquo;non-neutrality\u0026rdquo; will cause dropped calls, when in fact it\u0026rsquo;s non-neutral QoS that will prevent them).  He asserts that it is fun to beat up on \u0026ldquo;these bad people\u0026rdquo; and that it is very important that Mike McCurry be personally vilified.  That\u0026rsquo;s explicit endorsement of irrationality, of emotional demogoguery over fact and reason, and should be condemned by everyone in this debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton concludes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut rational people, people who care about truth and accuracy, must fight this tendency. We must try and evaluate every claim using the same criteria. Does the evidence support it? Are the conclusions drawn from the evidence logical? Any claim that fails to meet those criteria should be rejected, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. Likewise, any claim that withstands that scrutiny should be accepted as valid, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. None of us will ever be Mr. Spock, but we should strive to evaluate all arguments as though we have no stake in the outcome. Some, like the STACLU crowd, make no attempt at all to do so; we should not emulate them.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI agree.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Demonization of adversaries is wrong, Matt Stoller"},{"content":"For those looking for a series of arguments in favor of network neutrality, blogger Douglas Ross has put together an index like mine of his postings on the subject. I\u0026rsquo;ve not read all of them, and have disagreed with most of the ones I have read (e.g., Ross thinks it\u0026rsquo;s OK to ban QoS because it can\u0026rsquo;t possibly work, even though it does work and is in use in major Internet backbones like Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s; we had an extended exchange in response to my list of Phoenix-area broadband options).\nSo check out his writings, and think critically. If you think he\u0026rsquo;s got some good arguments for imposing net neutrality regulations, let me know.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/douglas-rosss-network-neutrality-index.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor those looking for a series of arguments in favor of network neutrality, blogger Douglas Ross has put together an index \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/net-neutrality-index.html\"\u003elike mine\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/06/net-neutrality-index-herein-one-may.html\"\u003ehis postings on the subject\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ve not read all of them, and have disagreed with most of the ones I have read (e.g., Ross thinks it\u0026rsquo;s OK to ban QoS \u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/05/net-neutrality-is-tiering-reasonable.html\"\u003ebecause it can\u0026rsquo;t possibly work\u003c/a\u003e, even though it \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/dave-siegel-on-qos-and-net-neutrality.html\"\u003edoes work and is in use in major Internet backbones like Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e; we had \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003ean\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003eextended\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/more-on-last-mile-options-in-phoenix.html\"\u003eexchange\u003c/a\u003e in response to my list of Phoenix-area broadband options).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo check out \u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/06/net-neutrality-index-herein-one-may.html\"\u003ehis writings\u003c/a\u003e, and think critically.  If you think he\u0026rsquo;s got some good arguments for imposing net neutrality regulations, let me know.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Douglas Ross's Network Neutrality Index"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a while since I gave an update on the number of homes for sale in Phoenix\u0026ndash;the inventory has continued to balloon since the last report on March 10:\n3/7/2006 36953\n3/8/2006 37487\n3/9/2006 37626\n3/10/2006 37531\n3/11/2006 38011\n3/12/2006 38184\n3/13/2006 38169\n3/14/2006 38003\n3/15/2006 38197\n3/16/2006 38574\n3/17/2006 38602\n3/18/2006 39074\n3/19/2006 38972\n3/20/2006 38822\n3/21/2006 39159\n3/22/2006 38982\n3/23/2006 39043\n3/24/2006 39271\n3/25/2006 39381\n3/26/2006 39504\n3/27/2006 39817\n3/28/2006 39784\n3/29/2006 39765\n3/30/2006 39948\n3/31/2006 40192\n4/1/2006 40177\n4/2/2006 40182\n4/3/2006 40012\n4/4/2006 40050\n4/5/2006 40332\n4/6/2006 40739\n4/7/2006 40612\n4/8/2006 41124\n4/9/2006 41393\n4/10/2006 41018\n4/11/2006 42266\n4/12/2006 42327\n4/13/2006 42257\n4/14/2006 42561\n4/15/2006 42592\n4/16/2006 42775\n4/17/2006 42874\n4/18/2006 42523\n4/19/2006 42840\n4/20/2006 43017\n4/21/2006 43236\n4/22/2006 43385\n4/23/2006 43502\n4/24/2006 43697\n4/25/2006 43344\n4/26/2006 43427\n4/27/2006 44024\n4/28/2006 43886\n4/29/2006 44022\n4/30/2006 44290\n5/1/2006 44229\n5/2/2006 43900\n5/3/2006 43966\n5/4/2006 44162\n5/5/2006 44422\n5/6/2006 44094\n5/7/2006 44575\n5/8/2006 44777\n5/9/2006 44609\n5/10/2006 44898\n5/11/2006 45097\n5/12/2006 45356\n5/13/2006 45502\n5/14/2006 45619\n5/15/2006 45697\n5/16/2006 45705\n5/17/2006 45675\n5/18/2006 46064\n5/19/2006 46189\n5/20/2006 46049\n5/21/2006 46734\n5/22/2006 46753\n5/23/2006 46965\n5/24/2006 46856\n5/25/2006 47133\n5/26/2006 47225\n5/27/2006 47582\n5/28/2006 47591\n5/29/2006 47633\n5/30/2006 47722\n5/31/2006 47542\n6/1/2006 47187\n6/2/2006 47191\n6/3/2006 47848\n6/4/2006 47877\n6/5/2006 47979\n6/6/2006 48218\n6/7/2006 48106\n6/8/2006 48365\n6/9/2006 48579\n6/10/2006 48870\n6/11/2006 48889\n6/12/2006 49040\n6/13/2006 49132\n6/14/2006 49237\n6/15/2006 49052\n6/16/2006 49435\nMy first report, last October, showed an increase in inventory from 10,748 homes on July 20, 2005 to 19,254 on October 2. We\u0026rsquo;re now at a 459% increase in inventory in the just under 11 months.\n(But see Einzige\u0026rsquo;s comment on what counts as evidence of a housing bubble\u0026hellip;)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nDo I detect a bit of a tease, here, Jim?The big question to me is this: when d'yah think is the right time to start making lots of really lowball offers asking for seller financing on all these houses, hoping one or two will stick? Right now, or when we start seeing the numbers shrinking again?Maybe I ought to take all your data and make us a graph of it. What do you think?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/phoenix-housing-bubble-update.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a while since I gave an update on the number of homes for sale in Phoenix\u0026ndash;the inventory has continued to balloon \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/phoenix-housing-bubble-deflation.html\"\u003esince the last report on March 10\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3/7/2006 36953\u003cbr /\u003e3/8/2006 37487\u003cbr /\u003e3/9/2006 37626\u003cbr /\u003e3/10/2006 37531\u003cbr /\u003e3/11/2006 38011\u003cbr /\u003e3/12/2006 38184\u003cbr /\u003e3/13/2006 38169\u003cbr /\u003e3/14/2006 38003\u003cbr /\u003e3/15/2006 38197\u003cbr /\u003e3/16/2006 38574\u003cbr /\u003e3/17/2006 38602\u003cbr /\u003e3/18/2006 39074\u003cbr /\u003e3/19/2006 38972\u003cbr /\u003e3/20/2006 38822\u003cbr /\u003e3/21/2006 39159\u003cbr /\u003e3/22/2006 38982\u003cbr /\u003e3/23/2006 39043\u003cbr /\u003e3/24/2006 39271\u003cbr /\u003e3/25/2006 39381\u003cbr /\u003e3/26/2006 39504\u003cbr /\u003e3/27/2006 39817\u003cbr /\u003e3/28/2006 39784\u003cbr /\u003e3/29/2006 39765\u003cbr /\u003e3/30/2006 39948\u003cbr /\u003e3/31/2006 40192\u003cbr /\u003e4/1/2006 40177\u003cbr /\u003e4/2/2006 40182\u003cbr /\u003e4/3/2006 40012\u003cbr /\u003e4/4/2006 40050\u003cbr /\u003e4/5/2006 40332\u003cbr /\u003e4/6/2006 40739\u003cbr /\u003e4/7/2006 40612\u003cbr /\u003e4/8/2006 41124\u003cbr /\u003e4/9/2006 41393\u003cbr /\u003e4/10/2006 41018\u003cbr /\u003e4/11/2006 42266\u003cbr /\u003e4/12/2006 42327\u003cbr /\u003e4/13/2006 42257\u003cbr /\u003e4/14/2006 42561\u003cbr /\u003e4/15/2006 42592\u003cbr /\u003e4/16/2006 42775\u003cbr /\u003e4/17/2006 42874\u003cbr /\u003e4/18/2006 42523\u003cbr /\u003e4/19/2006 42840\u003cbr /\u003e4/20/2006 43017\u003cbr /\u003e4/21/2006 43236\u003cbr /\u003e4/22/2006 43385\u003cbr /\u003e4/23/2006 43502\u003cbr /\u003e4/24/2006 43697\u003cbr /\u003e4/25/2006 43344\u003cbr /\u003e4/26/2006 43427\u003cbr /\u003e4/27/2006 44024\u003cbr /\u003e4/28/2006 43886\u003cbr /\u003e4/29/2006 44022\u003cbr /\u003e4/30/2006 44290\u003cbr /\u003e5/1/2006 44229\u003cbr /\u003e5/2/2006 43900\u003cbr /\u003e5/3/2006 43966\u003cbr /\u003e5/4/2006 44162\u003cbr /\u003e5/5/2006 44422\u003cbr /\u003e5/6/2006 44094\u003cbr /\u003e5/7/2006 44575\u003cbr /\u003e5/8/2006 44777\u003cbr /\u003e5/9/2006 44609\u003cbr /\u003e5/10/2006 44898\u003cbr /\u003e5/11/2006 45097\u003cbr /\u003e5/12/2006 45356\u003cbr /\u003e5/13/2006 45502\u003cbr /\u003e5/14/2006 45619\u003cbr /\u003e5/15/2006 45697\u003cbr /\u003e5/16/2006 45705\u003cbr /\u003e5/17/2006 45675\u003cbr /\u003e5/18/2006 46064\u003cbr /\u003e5/19/2006 46189\u003cbr /\u003e5/20/2006 46049\u003cbr /\u003e5/21/2006 46734\u003cbr /\u003e5/22/2006 46753\u003cbr /\u003e5/23/2006 46965\u003cbr /\u003e5/24/2006 46856\u003cbr /\u003e5/25/2006 47133\u003cbr /\u003e5/26/2006 47225\u003cbr /\u003e5/27/2006 47582\u003cbr /\u003e5/28/2006 47591\u003cbr /\u003e5/29/2006 47633\u003cbr /\u003e5/30/2006 47722\u003cbr /\u003e5/31/2006 47542\u003cbr /\u003e6/1/2006 47187\u003cbr /\u003e6/2/2006 47191\u003cbr /\u003e6/3/2006 47848\u003cbr /\u003e6/4/2006 47877\u003cbr /\u003e6/5/2006 47979\u003cbr /\u003e6/6/2006 48218\u003cbr /\u003e6/7/2006 48106\u003cbr /\u003e6/8/2006 48365\u003cbr /\u003e6/9/2006 48579\u003cbr /\u003e6/10/2006 48870\u003cbr /\u003e6/11/2006 48889\u003cbr /\u003e6/12/2006 49040\u003cbr /\u003e6/13/2006 49132\u003cbr /\u003e6/14/2006 49237\u003cbr /\u003e6/15/2006 49052\u003cbr /\u003e6/16/2006 49435\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy first report, \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/housing-bubble-losing-volume-in.html\"\u003elast October\u003c/a\u003e, showed an increase in inventory from 10,748 homes on July 20, 2005 to 19,254 on October 2.  We\u0026rsquo;re now at a 459% increase in inventory in the just under 11 months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(But see Einzige\u0026rsquo;s comment on \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/is-there-really-housing-bubble.html\"\u003ewhat counts as evidence of a housing bubble\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix housing bubble update"},{"content":"Bush has signed the legislation raising fines on broadcast \u0026ldquo;indecency.\u0026rdquo; Adam Thierer gives the scorecard for First Amendment protections on various forms of media:\nMEDIA PLATFORM / FIRST AMENDMENT STATUS\nNewspapers = Full First Amendment protection\nMagazine = Full First Amendment protection\nCable TV = Full First Amendment protection\nSatellite TV = Full First Amendment protection\nMovies = Full First Amendment protection\nDVDs = Full First Amendment protection\nCDs = Full First Amendment protection\nSatellite Radio = Full First Amendment protection\nInternet = Full First Amendment protection\nBlogging = Full First Amendment protection\ni-Pods = Full First Amendment protection\nPodcasts = Full First Amendment protection\nVideo Games = Full First Amendment protection\n… and then…\nBroadcast TV \u0026amp; Radio = Second Class Citizenship Rights in Terms of the First Amendment\nIt\u0026rsquo;s high time to remove the FCC\u0026rsquo;s ability to regulate content on the grounds that somebody might find it offensive\u0026ndash;it has become increasingly irrelevant. (Actually, I think Peter Huber makes a strong case for doing away with the FCC completely.)\nRep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, would like to go the other direction, and give the FTC the power to regulate video games for content.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/new-indecency-fines-signed-into-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBush has signed the legislation raising fines on broadcast \u0026ldquo;indecency.\u0026rdquo;   Adam Thierer \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/039650.php\"\u003egives the scorecard for First Amendment protections on various forms of media\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eMEDIA PLATFORM  \u003c/span\u003e/   \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eFIRST AMENDMENT STATUS\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNewspapers = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eMagazine = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eCable \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eTV \u003c/span\u003e= Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eSatellite \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eTV \u003c/span\u003e= Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eMovies = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eDVDs = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eCDs = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eSatellite Radio = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eInternet = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eBlogging = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003ei-Pods = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003ePodcasts = Full First Amendment protection\u003cbr /\u003eVideo Games = Full First Amendment protection\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New indecency fines signed into law"},{"content":"The New Republic\u0026rsquo;s editors have come out in favor of net neutrality. As is all-too-common, their reasoning is based, at least in part, on a factual error:\nUnder the original rules put in place in 1934, telecommunications companies can\u0026rsquo;t give preferential treatment to one set of outgoing calls over another by, say, offering static-free calling to one company\u0026rsquo;s telemarketers but not another\u0026rsquo;s. The same rules initially applied to the Internet. Telecom companies couldn\u0026rsquo;t charge website proprietors to have their content sent to consumers more expeditiously. But, last August, George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) exempted telecoms that provide Internet connections from these restrictions, dealing a blow to both entrepreneurship and political discourse.I\u0026rsquo;ve italicized the false statement. TNR has, like many others, wrongly inferred that rules which applied solely to telco telephony and last-mile networks have also applied to the Internet and Internet Service Providers, when in fact ISPs and backbone providers have been under no such constraints.\nIf net neutrality proposals were limited to maintaining Title II requirements for unbundling and interconnection for common carriers (which is part of the REFORM proposal advocated by Global Crossing, which includes other points which are far more important than net neutrality for fostering competition in telecommunications), or even adding cable providers into that category, I might support them.\nUPDATE: I should point out that some Internet backbones have been or are owned by entities which are common carriers in virtue of the fact that they have owned and operated long-distance telephone networks. This includes MCI, Sprint, and Global Crossing (more accurately, Global Crossing Telecommunications, Inc.). However, the FCC has always held that common carriage requirements do not apply to Internet interconnection.\nEli M. Noam\u0026rsquo;s 1994 paper, \u0026ldquo;Beyond Liberalization II: The Impending Doom of Common Carriage,\u0026quot; appears to have been rather prescient. He argues that common carriage is not sustainable in a competitive environment, and looks at possible hybrid approaches that mix common carriage and contract carriage (I kind of like his \u0026ldquo;common carrier rights of way\u0026rdquo; approach, which advocates of open source will find similar to the GPL). He regretfully concludes that common carriage will go away and that the hybrid approaches are not sustainable.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/new-republic-supports-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Republic\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s editors \u003ca href=\"http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=oy4NRC5%2Bfnu%2Fm585FtGwlC%3D%3D\"\u003ehave come out in favor of net neutrality\u003c/a\u003e.  As is all-too-common, their reasoning is based, at least in part, on a factual error:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"articlecontent\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eUnder the original rules put in place in 1934, telecommunications companies can\u0026rsquo;t give preferential treatment to one set of outgoing calls over another by, say, offering static-free calling to one company\u0026rsquo;s telemarketers but not another\u0026rsquo;s. \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe same rules initially applied to the Internet.\u003c/span\u003e Telecom companies couldn\u0026rsquo;t charge website proprietors to have their content sent to consumers more expeditiously. But, last August, George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) exempted telecoms that provide Internet connections from these restrictions, dealing a blow to both entrepreneurship and political discourse.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve italicized the false statement.  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTNR\u003c/span\u003e has, \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-in-defense-of-net.html\"\u003elike\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-from-save-internet.html\"\u003emany\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/kevin-drum-gets-it-wrong-on-net.html\"\u003eothers\u003c/a\u003e, wrongly inferred that rules which applied solely to telco telephony and last-mile networks have also applied to the Internet and Internet Service Providers, when in fact ISPs and backbone providers have been under no such constraints.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf net neutrality proposals were limited to maintaining Title II requirements for unbundling and interconnection for common carriers (which is \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/node/147\"\u003epart of the REFORM proposal advocated by Global Crossing\u003c/a\u003e, which includes other points which are far more important than net neutrality for fostering competition in telecommunications), or even adding cable providers into that category, I might support them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  I should point out that some Internet backbones have been or are owned by entities which are common carriers in virtue of the fact that they have owned and operated long-distance telephone networks.  This includes MCI, Sprint, and Global Crossing (more accurately, Global Crossing Telecommunications, Inc.).  However, the FCC has always held that common carriage requirements do not apply to Internet interconnection.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEli M. Noam\u0026rsquo;s 1994 paper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Beyond Liberalization II: The Impending Doom of Common Carriage,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e appears to have been rather prescient.  He argues that common carriage is not sustainable in a competitive environment, and looks at possible hybrid approaches that mix common carriage and contract carriage (I kind of like his \u0026ldquo;common carrier rights of way\u0026rdquo; approach, which advocates of open source will find similar to the GPL).  He regretfully concludes that common carriage will go away and that the hybrid approaches are not sustainable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The New Republic supports net neutrality, based on error"},{"content":"Unsurprisingly (she used William Dembski as a consultant), her book\u0026rsquo;s coverage of evolution is crap:\nIt contains the usual stock creationist crap presented at a rapid pace, full of the usual bald assertions of outright lies, intentional misinterpretations, and lots and lots of quote mining. Seriously, it looks like every paragraph contains multiple falsehoods or screwy manglings of science. She claims Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory is \u0026ldquo;one step above Scientology in scientific rigor\u0026rdquo;, that it is a \u0026ldquo;tautology\u0026rdquo;, that there is \u0026ldquo;no proof in the scientist\u0026rsquo;s laboratory or the fossil record\u0026rdquo;, and the only reason it\u0026rsquo;s still around is that \u0026ldquo;liberals think evolution disproves God.\u0026quot;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s all in the first paragraph of chapter 8, which focuses on evolution. Go ahead and follow the links up there; each one is to a short, simple refutation of Coulter\u0026rsquo;s claim.\nNow picture a whole 27 page chapter packed with the same nonsense. I could do a sentence by sentence dissection of this abomination, but I\u0026rsquo;d have to write nothing but Coulter exposés for the next month. Forgive me if I pass on that.\nNot only is it wrong through and through, but Coulter is a plagiarist. This is the book that William Dembski thinks \u0026ldquo;will propel [their] issues in the public consciousness like nothing to date\u0026quot;—well, yeah. Let\u0026rsquo;s propel the idea that creationists are dishonest and stupid right into everyone\u0026rsquo;s consciousness.\n(From Pharyngula.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat's a very common creationist debate strategy. It's been called the \"Gish Gallop.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/coulters-book-godless-on-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnsurprisingly (she used William Dembski as a consultant), \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/coulters_godless_as_bad_as_you.php\"\u003eher book\u0026rsquo;s coverage of evolution is crap\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt contains the usual stock creationist crap presented at a rapid pace, full of the usual bald assertions of outright lies, intentional misinterpretations, and lots and lots of quote mining. Seriously, it looks like \u003ci\u003eevery paragraph\u003c/i\u003e contains multiple falsehoods or screwy manglings of science.  \u003cp\u003eShe claims Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory is \u0026ldquo;one step above Scientology in \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/\"\u003escientific rigor\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo;, that it is a \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html\"\u003etautology\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo;, that there is \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA202.html\"\u003eno proof\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html\"\u003escientist\u0026rsquo;s laboratory\u003c/a\u003e or the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html\"\u003efossil record\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo;, and the only reason it\u0026rsquo;s still around is that \u0026ldquo;liberals think \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA602.html\"\u003eevolution disproves God\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coulter's book, Godless, on evolution"},{"content":"On June 9, the Hands Off the Internet blog posted an entry (http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/) about one of my posts, but it was deleted by June 10. I wonder if they noticed my Creative Commons license, considered their use to be commercial, and decided not to risk a violation? In my opinion, their excerpt would be fine under fair use. Here\u0026rsquo;s the post, from Google cache.\nTurf Battle June 9, 2006 at 9:21 am - Tiered Service, Net Neutrality, Debate, Internet Legislation, Consumer Benefit As we’ve noted in previous posts, our critics like to call us an “astroturf” organization, which would imply that we’re hiding the identities of the companies and organizations that are among our members, only to turn around and slam us for not even being very good astroturfers because our website lists the companies and organizations that are among our members.\nWell, you can’t be friends with everybody. But the accusations of astroturfing overlook the fact that there are some unique and persuasive individuals who oppose new “neutrality” legislation. One of them is Jim Lippard, a blogger in Phoenix who works in the telecom field, and has an impressive grasp of the facts.\nIt so happens that he recently defended our recent Flash animation from misleading attacks by the Save The Internet campaign:\nIn what follows, I’ll quote directly from the “Save the Internet” response (including the quotes from the “Hands Off” cartoon they are responding to) and then respond to each point.\nThe big telecom companies say: “Is the Internet in Danger? Does the Internet need saving? It keeps getting faster. We keep getting more choices.”The truth: Right now AT\u0026amp;T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online. They’re on their best behavior while trying to convince Congress to hand over the Internet. But if their high-priced lobbyists get their way in Washington, the Internet as we know it will be gone. Network Neutrality has always curbed the control of the network owners, invited competition and encouraged innovators. It’s what made it possible for entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to prosper online. None of the big ideas that made the Internet the innovative engine it is today came from the cable or telephone companies. Notice that there’s no evidence supplied to support the claim that “AT\u0026amp;T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online.” What the telcos want to do is build new last-mile consumer services by installing a new fiber-to-the-home infrastructure, over which they can offer services in addition to and distinct from the public Internet, just as they currently offer voice telephony as a service separate and distinct from the public Internet.\nSpecifically, they want to offer digital television services and potentially new services which they control, following the model of the cable industry. The telcos’ real desire is to compete with the cable industry and be regulated in much the same way. They further want to be able to charge content providers to be able to provide services over this new fiber, because they know that consumer fees alone are not sufficient to recover their costs in rolling out this new infrastructure.\nHe goes point by point, and does an excellent job of bringing their spin to a halt.\nAnd if you still haven’t seen the Flash animation being discussed, you can see it right here: dontregulate.org. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/hands-off-internet-writes-about-me.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn June 9, the Hands Off the Internet blog posted an entry (\u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/\"\u003ehttp://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/\u003c/a\u003e) about one of my posts, but it was deleted by June 10.  I wonder if they noticed my Creative Commons license, considered their use to be commercial, and decided not to risk a violation?  In my opinion, their excerpt would be fine under fair use.  Here\u0026rsquo;s the post, from Google cache.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"post\" id=\"post-13\"\u003e   \u003ch2 class=\"postTitle\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/\" title=\"Turf Battle\" rel=\"bookmark\"\u003eTurf Battle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/h2\u003e         \u003cp class=\"underTitle\"\u003eJune 9, 2006 at 9:21 am -    \u003cspan class=\"categories\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/category/tiered-service/\" title=\"View all posts in Tiered Service\" rel=\"category tag\"\u003eTiered Service\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/category/net-neutrality/\" title=\"View all posts in Net Neutrality\" rel=\"category tag\"\u003eNet Neutrality\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/category/debate/\" title=\"View all posts in Debate\" rel=\"category tag\"\u003eDebate\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/category/internet-legislation/\" title=\"View all posts in Internet Legislation\" rel=\"category tag\"\u003eInternet Legislation\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://handsoff.org/category/consumer-benefit/\" title=\"View all posts in Consumer Benefit\" rel=\"category tag\"\u003eConsumer Benefit\u003c/a\u003e    \u003c/span\u003e   \u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Hands Off the Internet\" writes about me, then thinks better of it"},{"content":"The FCC levied a record-breaking $3.3 million fine against 103 CBS affiliates for airing a repeat episode of \u0026ldquo;Without a Trace\u0026rdquo; on December 31, 2004, before 10 p.m. which involved \u0026ldquo;a simulated group sex scene at a high school party.\u0026rdquo; CBS has protested on the grounds that all 4,211 complaints were submitted via the Parents Television Council and American Family Affiliation websites, and only two complaints referred to actually seeing the offending scene.\n(Remember, the FCC is the organization net neutrality advocates want to give the power to regulate content. The power to mandate content will no doubt bring along the power to prohibit content.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/cbs-protests-33-million-fcc-fine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FCC \u003ca href=\"http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-withoutatrace-fccfine,0,3825541.story\"\u003elevied a record-breaking $3.3 million fine\u003c/a\u003e against 103 CBS affiliates for airing a repeat episode of \u0026ldquo;Without a Trace\u0026rdquo; on December 31, 2004, before 10 p.m. which involved \u0026ldquo;a simulated group sex scene at a high school party.\u0026rdquo;  CBS has protested on the grounds that all 4,211 complaints were submitted via the Parents Television Council and American Family Affiliation websites, and only two complaints referred to actually seeing the offending scene.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Remember, the FCC is the organization net neutrality advocates want to give the power to regulate content.  The power to mandate content will no doubt bring along the power to prohibit content.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CBS protests $3.3 million FCC fine against \"Without a Trace\""},{"content":"\nAstronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station was the first to witness the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian island chain erupting three weeks ago, and took this nice photo.\nHat tip: The Two Percent Company.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/volcano-seen-erupting-from-space.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/volcanoplume_iss.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/volcanoplume_iss.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAstronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station \u003ca href=\"http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060607.html\"\u003ewas the first to witness the Cleveland Volcano\u003c/a\u003e in the Aleutian island chain erupting three weeks ago, and took this nice photo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHat tip:  \u003ca href=\"http://www.twopercentco.com/rants/archives/2006/06/spacewalker_sna.html\"\u003eThe Two Percent Company\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Volcano seen erupting from space"},{"content":"\nMare Nostrum computer at the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, housed in a 1920s cathedral.\n(Via BLDGBLOG.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/church-of-computer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/400/MareNostrumchurch.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/400/MareNostrumchurch.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMare Nostrum computer at the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, housed in a 1920s cathedral.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/rooms-of-algebraic-theology.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Church of the Computer"},{"content":"Richard Bennett at the Original Blog has criticized Free Press\u0026rsquo;s list of network neutrality facts, arguing that most of them are fictions, e.g.:\nPSEUDO-FACT #1: Network Neutrality protections have existed for the entire history of the Internet.\nREAL FACT: Actually, there is no legal precedent at all for the anti-QoS provision of the Neutrality regulations, and many commercial Internet customers use QoS today. Even the Internet2 Abilene network tried to use it.\nThis pseudo-fact is one I\u0026rsquo;ve repeatedly criticized network neutrality advocates for falsely asserting. The Free Press folks are the people managing the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; campaign.\nThe whole list is well worth reading, as are a couple of other recent posts at Bennett\u0026rsquo;s blog. One is a note he wrote to Senator Barbara Boxer, which includes this bit:\nThe Snowe-Dorgan and Markey Amendments contain a poison pill that will stifle the evolution of the Internet, in the form of a prohibition against a Quality of Service surcharge:\nIf a broadband network provider prioritizes or offers enhanced quality of service to data of a particular type, it must prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of that type (regardless of the origin or ownership of such data) without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhanced quality of service.\nThe argument in favor of this provision says that it’s needed in order to prevent the formation of a two-tier Internet, where one tier has Quality of Service and the other doesn’t, and this is somehow bad for Daily Kos and Google.\nThis is a false claim, because the engineering math behind Quality of Service says it can’t be applied to every stream from every user. In Lake Woebegon all the children are above average, but on the Internet all the packets can’t be above average.\nAnother is his comment on tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s Senate hearing where Ben Scott of the Free Press will be representing the \u0026ldquo;pro-regulation side of the neutrality debate\u0026rdquo; which he suggests is \u0026ldquo;a good choice\u0026rdquo; because he\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;easily confused.\u0026rdquo; In the same post, he reports on Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s (of MyDD) presentation at the Yearly Kos event, in which Stoller \u0026ldquo;had to admit that he knows nothing about the issue of Telecom policy, which was interesting because the regulations he proposes don’t actually relate to telecom policy. They’re a new and unprecedented intervention into Internet routing and service plan regulation, a totally virgin territory for government regulators. Stoller admitted that it’s just a good guys vs. bad guys issue for him, one that’s lots of “fun”.\u0026quot;\nBennett asks, \u0026ldquo;So my question is this: “should the US Congress take advice on virgin regulatory territory from someone who admits to knowing nothing about the subject matter?”\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/bennett-on-free-press-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/06/12/facts-vs-fictions/\"\u003eRichard Bennett at the Original Blog has criticized\u003c/a\u003e Free Press\u0026rsquo;s list of network neutrality facts, arguing that most of them are fictions, e.g.:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003ePSEUDO-FACT #1: Network Neutrality protections have existed for the entire history of the Internet.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eREAL FACT: Actually, there is no legal precedent at all for the anti-QoS provision of the Neutrality regulations, and many commercial Internet customers use QoS today. Even the Internet2 Abilene network tried to use it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bennett on Free Press net neutrality \"facts\""},{"content":"Declan McCullagh interviews Verizon\u0026rsquo;s Thomas Tauke on net neutrality. A key Q\u0026amp;A:\nWhat do you think of the tone of the debate, and the appearance of pro-Net neutrality spokespeople like \u0026lt;news:link id=\u0026ldquo;6074096\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Moby\u0026lt;/news:link\u0026gt; and Alyssa Milano?\nTauke: I think it\u0026rsquo;s one of the stranger debates I\u0026rsquo;ve ever been involved in. It\u0026rsquo;s almost like we\u0026rsquo;re debating what is beauty and how do we define it and regulate it? The problem is that everyone has a different definition of Net neutrality. If you look at the four major companies that are supporting the Net neutrality arguments, there are three distinct definitions of what Net neutrality should mean. The question becomes which way do you think the market will better develop? If government sets policy today that dictates how the market develops? We think it should develop in the free market space, and government regulation should come in when a problem becomes apparent.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s right on the money here. Most net neutrality advocates don\u0026rsquo;t even seem to know what they are advocating, let alone understand the current legal or technological structure of the Internet in the U.S. (or elsewhere). They just think the telcos are somehow trying to take control of the Internet, block their access to websites, redirect them to different sites than they request, and intentionally degrade their service to make things slow, and they need to be stopped.\nHat tip: Matt S., the Only Republican in San Francisco.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/verizons-thomas-tauke-on-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDeclan McCullagh \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Net+neutrality+Meet+the+winner/2008-1028_3-6082444.html?tag=nefd.lede\"\u003einterviews Verizon\u0026rsquo;s Thomas Tauke on net neutrality\u003c/a\u003e.  A key Q\u0026amp;A:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat do you think of the tone of the debate, and the appearance  of  pro-Net neutrality spokespeople like \u0026lt;news:link id=\u0026ldquo;6074096\u0026rdquo;\u0026gt;Moby\u0026lt;/news:link\u0026gt; and Alyssa Milano?\u003c/b\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e Tauke: I think it\u0026rsquo;s one of the stranger debates I\u0026rsquo;ve ever been involved in.  It\u0026rsquo;s almost like we\u0026rsquo;re debating what is beauty and how do we define it  and regulate it? The problem is that everyone has a different  definition  of Net neutrality. If you look at the four major companies that are  supporting the Net neutrality arguments, there are three distinct  definitions of what Net neutrality should mean. \u003cp\u003e  The question becomes which way do you think the market will better  develop? If government sets policy today that dictates how the market  develops? We think it should develop in the free market space, and  government regulation should come in when a problem becomes apparent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Verizon's Thomas Tauke on net neutrality"},{"content":"Martin Geddes has written a very interesting post at his Telepocalypse blog titled \u0026ldquo;You won\u0026rsquo;t like this, not one bit,\u0026quot; but I do like it, very much. He links to his past statements on network neutrality, and then asserts that \u0026ldquo;over time, the architecture of the telecom system will resemble the political system around it.\u0026rdquo; He compares the U.S. government to the EU, and the irony that the planned federalism of the U.S. (where the states would run things their own way, competing with each other and evolving better rules in the process) has been supplanted by much stronger federal government setting most of the rules at a national level, while the EU, composed of nations of a much more collectivist/statist variety, has evolved into a collection of \u0026ldquo;competing regulatory regimes and voluntary cross-border cooperation compared to the centrally planned US communications economy.\u0026quot;\nFor good measure, he throws in a comparison to networks: \u0026ldquo;That means the EU constitution is “edge-based”, and the US one doesn’t scale. Oops. Hey, just skip a generation and move straight to anarchism: peer-to-peer contracts, and a state whose only function is to enforce them.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/martin-geddes-on-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMartin Geddes has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000957.html\"\u003ea very interesting post at his Telepocalypse blog titled \u0026ldquo;You won\u0026rsquo;t like this, not one bit,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e but I do like it, very much.  He links to his past statements on network neutrality, and then asserts that \u0026ldquo;over time, the architecture of the telecom system will resemble the political system around it.\u0026rdquo;  He compares the U.S. government to the EU, and the irony that the planned federalism of the U.S. (where the states would run things their own way, competing with each other and evolving better rules in the process) has been supplanted by much stronger federal government setting most of the rules at a national level, while the EU, composed of nations of a much more collectivist/statist variety, has evolved into a collection of \u0026ldquo;competing regulatory regimes and voluntary cross-border cooperation compared to the centrally planned US communications economy.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor good measure, he throws in a comparison to networks:  \u0026ldquo;That means the EU constitution is “edge-based”, and the US one doesn’t scale. Oops. Hey, just skip a generation and move straight to anarchism: peer-to-peer contracts, and a state whose only function is to enforce them.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Martin Geddes on net neutrality, federalism, and U.S. vs. EU"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll be on a breakfast panel for MassNetComms on June 28 in Newton, MA, on this subject:\nSecure Carrier Infrastructure in the IP Network\nWhen customers talk to the suppliers of network services, whether VoIP, or broadband, or wireless, their most important requirements are associated with network security. Breaches in network security impact reliability and availability, with devastating revenue and competitive consequences. Service providers who demonstrate cost-effective security at all layers of the network and applications will be able to differentiate their services in an increasingly competitive market. The need for security is creating more demand for outsourced managed services, and thus a business opportunity for the carrier. Are carriers recognizing that security is integral to the value proposition? As the major carriers continue to invest in infrastructure, how does the architecture support network security?More information about this event at the MassNetComms site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/network-security-panel-in-boston-area.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be on a breakfast panel for MassNetComms on June 28 in Newton, MA, on this subject:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSecure Carrier Infrastructure in the IP Network\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen customers talk to the suppliers of network services, whether VoIP, or broadband, or wireless, their most important requirements are associated with network security. Breaches in network security impact reliability and availability, with devastating revenue and competitive consequences. Service providers who demonstrate cost-effective security at all layers of the network and applications will be able to differentiate their services in an increasingly competitive market. The need for security is creating more demand for outsourced managed services, and thus a business opportunity for the carrier. Are carriers recognizing that security is integral to the value proposition? As the major carriers continue to invest in infrastructure, how does the architecture support network security?\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore information about this event \u003ca href=\"http://www.massnetcomms.org/event_detail.asp?iEventID=92\"\u003eat the MassNetComms site\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Network security panel in Boston area"},{"content":"While thinking about Jonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the Skeptics Society conference, it occurred to me that the problem of botnets is, in effect, a tragedy of the commons. The private personal computers of consumers which are connected full-time to the Internet and are not kept up-to-date on patches have, in effect, become a commons to be exploited by the botherders. The owners of the computers are generally not aware of what\u0026rsquo;s going on, as the bots generally try to minimize obtrusiveness in order to continue to operate. The actual damages to each individual are typically quite small (with some notable exceptions\u0026ndash;botherders can steal and make use of any data on the machine, including personal identity information and confidential documents), and the individual consumer doesn\u0026rsquo;t have sufficient incentive to prevent the problem (say, by spending additional money on security software or taking the time to maintain the system).\nSimilarly, the typical entry-level casual blogger may not have incentives to keep their blogs free of spam comments. Neither, for that matter, does commons-advocate Larry Lessig, whose blog\u0026rsquo;s comments are full of spam, making them less useful than they otherwise would be\u0026ndash;I think this is an amusing irony about Lessig\u0026rsquo;s position in his book Code. He argues that we need to have some subsidized public space on the Internet, but it seems to me private companies have already created it largely without public subsidy, and I think Declan McCullagh has the better case in his exchange with Lessig. (By contrast, Blogger does have incentive to prevent spam blogs, which consume large amounts of its resources and make its service less useful\u0026ndash;and so it takes sometimes heavy-handed automated actions to try to shut it down.)\nBruce Schneier has argued that the right way to resolve this particular problem is by setting liability rules to shift incentives to players who can address the issue\u0026ndash;e.g., software companies, ISPs, and banks (for phishing, but see this rebuttal). I agree with Schneier on this general point and with the broader point that economics has a lot to teach information security.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/when-private-property-becomes-commons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile thinking about \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/adler-on-federal-environmental.html\"\u003eJonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the Skeptics Society conference\u003c/a\u003e, it occurred to me that the \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/part-ii-of-botnets-interview.html\"\u003eproblem of botnets\u003c/a\u003e is, in effect, a tragedy of the commons.  The private personal computers of consumers which are connected full-time to the Internet and are not kept up-to-date on patches have, in effect, become a commons to be exploited by the botherders.  The owners of the computers are generally not aware of what\u0026rsquo;s going on, as the bots generally try to minimize obtrusiveness in order to continue to operate.  The actual damages to each individual are typically quite small (with some notable exceptions\u0026ndash;botherders can steal and make use of any data on the machine, including personal identity information and confidential documents), and the individual consumer doesn\u0026rsquo;t have sufficient incentive to prevent the problem (say, by spending additional money on security software or taking the time to maintain the system).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSimilarly, the typical entry-level casual blogger may not have incentives to keep their blogs free of spam comments.  Neither, for that matter, does commons-advocate Larry Lessig, \u003ca href=\"http://www.lessig.org/blog/\"\u003ewhose blog\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s comments are full of spam, making them less useful than they otherwise would be\u0026ndash;I think this is an amusing irony about Lessig\u0026rsquo;s position in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCode\u003c/span\u003e.  He argues that we need to have some subsidized public space on the Internet, but it seems to me private companies have already created it largely without public subsidy, and I think \u003ca href=\"http://wired.lycos.com/news/politics/0,1283,31591,00.html\"\u003eDeclan McCullagh has the better case\u003c/a\u003e in his exchange with Lessig.  (By contrast, Blogger does have incentive to prevent spam blogs, which consume large amounts of its resources and make its service less useful\u0026ndash;and so it takes \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/bloggers-spam-prevention-robots-are.html\"\u003esometimes heavy-handed automated actions\u003c/a\u003e to try to shut it down.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBruce Schneier has argued that the right way to resolve this particular problem is by \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/essay-040.html\"\u003esetting liability rules to shift incentives\u003c/a\u003e to players who can address the issue\u0026ndash;e.g., \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/computer_securi.html\"\u003esoftware companies\u003c/a\u003e, ISPs, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/phishing_1.html\"\u003ebanks\u003c/a\u003e (for phishing, but see \u003ca href=\"http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000560.html\"\u003ethis rebuttal\u003c/a\u003e).  I agree with Schneier on this general point and with the broader point that \u003ca href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/econsec.html\"\u003eeconomics has a lot to teach information security\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"When private property becomes the commons"},{"content":"Ben Edelman continues his valuable research with an exposure of Hula Direct\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;banner farms\u0026rdquo; which are being used to display banner ads through popups, driven by spyware installations:\nHula cannot write off its spyware-sourced traffic as a mere anomaly or glitch. I have received Hula popups from multiple spyware programs over many months. Throughout that period, I have never arrived at any Hula site in any way other than from spyware \u0026ndash; never as a popup or popunder served on any bona fide web site, in my personal casual web surfing or in my professional examination of web sites and advertising practices. From these facts, I can only conclude that spyware popups are a substantial source of traffic to Hula\u0026rsquo;s sites.Edelman also notes that most of Hula\u0026rsquo;s ads include JavaScript code or HTML refresh meta tags to automatically reload the ads fairly quickly. The effect is to display more ads, and to show the ads for a shorter time than the advertisers are expecting.\nHula doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a direct relationship with its advertisers (Edelman notes the relationships of cash and traffic flow), but they are being complacent and allowing it to happen. Some of the advertisers: Vonage, Verizon, Circuit City.\nFinally, Edelman notes that some of the ad networks being used by Hula have taken notice and started to take action. One ad network, Red McCombs Media, refused to pay a $200,000+ bill from Hula and has been sued by them for breach of contract.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNo, shame on you for signing up for a Blogger account for the sole purpose of posting comments to blogs without connecting them to your actual identity, failing to actually refute anything that I reported or that Ben Edelman described from his research. Edelman very carefully documents his claims and backs them up with direct evidence.If you want to defend Hula, how about backing up your statements with facts and evidence, and providing specific refutation of whatever you claim is untruth?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/banner-farms-and-spyware_115012668233363470.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBen Edelman \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/061206-1.html\"\u003econtinues his valuable research with an exposure of Hula Direct\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;banner farms\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which are being used to display banner ads through popups, driven by spyware installations:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHula cannot write off its spyware-sourced traffic as a mere anomaly or glitch. I have received Hula popups from multiple spyware programs over many months. Throughout that period, I have never arrived at any Hula site in any way other than from spyware \u0026ndash; never as a popup or popunder served on any bona fide web site, in my personal casual web surfing or in my professional examination of web sites and advertising practices. From these facts, I can only conclude that spyware popups are a substantial source of traffic to Hula\u0026rsquo;s sites.\u003c/blockquote\u003eEdelman also notes that most of Hula\u0026rsquo;s ads include JavaScript code or HTML refresh meta tags to automatically reload the ads fairly quickly.  The effect is to display more ads, and to show the ads for a shorter time than the advertisers are expecting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHula doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a direct relationship with its advertisers (Edelman notes the relationships of cash and traffic flow), but they are being complacent and allowing it to happen.  Some of the advertisers:  Vonage, Verizon, Circuit City.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, Edelman notes that some of the ad networks being used by Hula have taken notice and started to take action.  One ad network, Red McCombs Media, refused to pay a $200,000+ bill from Hula and has been sued by them for breach of contract.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Banner farms\" and spyware"},{"content":"At the Skeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot; Jonathan Adler gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Fables of Federal Environmental Regulation.\u0026quot; Adler\u0026rsquo;s talk made several points, the main ones among them being:\n* Federal regulations tend to come late to the game, after state and local regulations or private actions have already begun addressing the problems. The recurring pattern is that there is an initial recognition of a problem, there\u0026rsquo;s state and local regulation and private action to address it, and then there\u0026rsquo;s federalization. I can add to Adler\u0026rsquo;s examples the development of the cellular telephone industry, where private actors stepped in to allocate licenses through the \u0026ldquo;Big Monopoly Game\u0026rdquo; (a story told in the book Wireless Nation) when the FCC proved incompetent to do so itself; federal anti-spam legislation, which came only after many states passed anti-spam laws; and federal law to require notification of customers whose personal information has been exposed by system compromise (which still doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist, though almost half the states now have some kind of hacking notification law). (In a related point, industries regularly develop products that completely sidestep federal regulations, such as the SUV, interstate banking, credit cards, money market accounts, and discount brokerages. The development of the latter financial products is a story told in Joseph Nocera\u0026rsquo;s A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class.)\n* The causes of federal regulations are not necessarily the problems themselves, but are often rent-seeking by involved entities, which can create a barrier to other alternative solutions. Adler listed four causes of federal environmental regulations: increased environmental awareness (by the voters and the feds), increasingly nationalized politics (political action at a national level), distrust of states and federalism, and rent-seeking. He gave examples to illustrate.\n* We don\u0026rsquo;t see (I\u0026rsquo;d say \u0026ldquo;we tend not to see\u0026rdquo;) environmental problems where we have well-defined property rights; the environmental problems occur in the commons (cf. Garrett Hardin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Tragedy of the Commons\u0026rdquo;). I disagree with making this an absolute statement since there are bad actors who disregard even well-established property rights (or liability rules).\nAdler\u0026rsquo;s intent was to raise skepticism about federal regulation on environmental matters on the basis of several points:\n* History shows the problem already being addressed effectively in a more decentralized manner.\n* Federal regulation tends to preempt state regulation, creating a uniform approach that doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow us the benefits of seeing how different approaches might work\u0026ndash;we can miss out on better ways of dealing with the issue.\n* The rent-seeking behavior can produce unintended consequences that can make things worse or impose other costs.\nWhile I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I agree with the implied conclusion that federal regulation is never helpful, I agree that these are good reasons to be skeptical.\nThe preemption issue in particular is a big one. The federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM, was pushed through after years of failure to pass federal regulations against spam after California passed a tough mandatory opt-in law. The federal law was passed largely through efforts by Microsoft and AOL (whose lawyers helped write it) and preempted state laws which mandated opt-in or any requirements contrary to the federal law. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s cynical to believe that preventing the California law from taking effect\u0026ndash;which would potentially have affected online marketing efforts by Microsoft and AOL\u0026ndash;was a major cause of the federal legislation passing.\nThe benefit of preemption is that it creates a level playing field across the entire nation, which reduces the costs of compliance for those who operate across multiple states. But it also reduces the likelihood of innovation in law through experimentation with different approaches, and reduces the advantages of local entities in competition with multi-state entities. It also prevents a state with more stringent requirements from affecting the behavior of a multi-state provider operating in that state, when the requirements get dropped to a federal lowest common denominator. As regulation almost always has unintended consequences, a diversity of approaches provides a way to discover those consequences and make more informed choices.\nAnother issue is that many federal regulations provide little in the way of enforcement, and the more federal regulations are created, the less likely that any particular one will have enforcement resources devoted to it. If you look at the FCC\u0026rsquo;s enforcement of laws against illegal telemarketing activity (such as the prohibition on prerecorded solicitations to residential telephones, and the prohibition on telemarketing to cell phones), it\u0026rsquo;s virtually nonexistent. They occasionally issue a citation, and very rarely issue fines to telemarketers who are blatantly violating the law on a daily basis. In this particular case, the law creates a private right of action so that the recipient of such an illegal call can file a civil case, and this model is one I\u0026rsquo;d like to endorse. I\u0026rsquo;ve personally had far more effect on most of the specific telemarketers who have made illegal calls to my residence than the FCC has. Federal laws and regulations can be effective when they are applicable to a small number of large players who can be adequately policed by a federal agency (but in such cases those large players tend to also be large players in Washington, D.C., and have huge influence over what rules get set) or when the enforcement is pushed down to state, local, or even private levels (e.g., using property or liability rules rather than agency-based regulation). Otherwise, they tend to be largely symbolic, with enforcement actions only occurring against major offenders while most violations are left unpunished.\nThe most effective solutions are those which place the incentives on involved parties to voluntarily come to agreements that address the issues, and I think these are possible in most circumstances with the appropriate set of property and liability rules. A good discussion of this subject may be found in David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s book, Law\u0026rsquo;s Order: What Economics Has to Do With Law and Why It Matters.\nThere seems to be a widespread illusion on the part of many people that many problems can be solved merely by passing the federal legislation, without regard for the actual empirical consequences of such legislation (or the actual process of how it\u0026rsquo;s determined what gets put into such legislation!). From intellectual property law, to environmental law, to telecommunications law (e.g., net neutrality), good intentions can easily lead to bad consequences by those who don\u0026rsquo;t concern themselves with such details. Friedman\u0026rsquo;s book is a good start as an antidote to such thinking.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/adler-on-federal-environmental.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/skeptics-society-conference.html\"\u003eSkeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Jonathan Adler gave a talk on \u003ca href=\"http://commonsblog.org/archives/000683.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fables of Federal Environmental Regulation.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  Adler\u0026rsquo;s talk made several points, the main ones among them being:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* Federal regulations tend to come late to the game, after state and local regulations or private actions have already begun addressing the problems.  The recurring pattern is that there is an initial recognition of a problem, there\u0026rsquo;s state and local regulation and private action to address it, and then there\u0026rsquo;s federalization.  I can add to Adler\u0026rsquo;s examples the development of the cellular telephone industry, where private actors stepped in to allocate licenses through the \u003ca href=\"http://www.contextmag.com/setFrameRedirect.asp?src=/archives/200112/BookExcerpt.asp\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Big Monopoly Game\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (a story told in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWireless Nation\u003c/span\u003e) when the FCC proved incompetent to do so itself; federal anti-spam legislation, which came only after many states passed anti-spam laws; and federal law to require notification of customers whose personal information has been exposed by system compromise (which still doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist, though almost half the states now have some kind of hacking notification law).  (In a related point, industries regularly develop products that completely sidestep federal regulations, such as the SUV, interstate banking, credit cards, money market accounts, and discount brokerages.  The development of the latter financial products is a story told in Joseph Nocera\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* The causes of federal regulations are not necessarily the problems themselves, but are often rent-seeking by involved entities, which can create a barrier to other alternative solutions.  Adler listed four causes of federal environmental regulations: increased environmental awareness (by the voters and the feds), increasingly nationalized politics (political action at a national level), distrust of states and federalism, and rent-seeking.  He gave examples to illustrate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* We don\u0026rsquo;t see (I\u0026rsquo;d say \u0026ldquo;we tend not to see\u0026rdquo;) environmental problems where we have well-defined property rights; the environmental problems occur in the commons (cf. Garrett Hardin\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://dieoff.org/page95.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Tragedy of the Commons\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e).  I disagree with making this an absolute statement since there are bad actors who disregard even well-established property rights (or liability rules).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdler\u0026rsquo;s intent was to raise skepticism about federal regulation on environmental matters on the basis of several points:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* History shows the problem already being addressed effectively in a more decentralized manner.\u003cbr /\u003e* Federal regulation tends to preempt state regulation, creating a uniform approach that doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow us the benefits of seeing how different approaches might work\u0026ndash;we can miss out on better ways of dealing with the issue.\u003cbr /\u003e* The rent-seeking behavior can produce unintended consequences that can make things worse or impose other costs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I agree with the implied conclusion that federal regulation is never helpful, I agree that these are good reasons to be skeptical.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe preemption issue in particular is a big one.  The federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM, was pushed through after years of failure to pass federal regulations against spam after California passed a tough mandatory opt-in law.  The federal law was passed largely through efforts by Microsoft and AOL (whose lawyers helped write it) and preempted state laws which mandated opt-in or any requirements contrary to the federal law.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s cynical to believe that preventing the California law from taking effect\u0026ndash;which would potentially have affected online marketing efforts by Microsoft and AOL\u0026ndash;was a major cause of the federal legislation passing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe benefit of preemption is that it creates a level playing field across the entire nation, which reduces the costs of compliance for those who operate across multiple states.  But it also reduces the likelihood of innovation in law through experimentation with different approaches, and reduces the advantages of local entities in competition with multi-state entities.  It also prevents a state with more stringent requirements from affecting the behavior of a multi-state provider operating in that state, when the requirements get dropped to a federal lowest common denominator.  As regulation almost always has unintended consequences, a diversity of approaches provides a way to discover those consequences and make more informed choices.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother issue is that many federal regulations provide little in the way of enforcement, and the more federal regulations are created, the less likely that any particular one will have enforcement resources devoted to it.  If you look at the FCC\u0026rsquo;s enforcement of laws against illegal telemarketing activity (such as the prohibition on prerecorded solicitations to residential telephones, and the prohibition on telemarketing to cell phones), it\u0026rsquo;s virtually nonexistent.  They occasionally issue a citation, and very rarely issue fines to telemarketers who are blatantly violating the law on a daily basis.  In this particular case, the law creates a private right of action so that the recipient of such an illegal call can file a civil case, and this model is one I\u0026rsquo;d like to endorse.  I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/lawsuits.html\"\u003epersonally had far more effect on most of the specific telemarketers\u003c/a\u003e who have made illegal calls to my residence than the FCC has.  Federal laws and regulations can be effective when they are applicable to a small number of large players who can be adequately policed by a federal agency (but in such cases those large players tend to also be large players in Washington, D.C., and have huge influence over what rules get set) or when the enforcement is pushed down to state, local, or even private levels (e.g., using property or liability rules rather than agency-based regulation).  Otherwise, they tend to be largely symbolic, with enforcement actions only occurring against major offenders while most violations are left unpunished.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe most effective solutions are those which place the incentives on involved parties to voluntarily come to agreements that address the issues, and I think these are possible in most circumstances with the appropriate set of property and liability rules.  A good discussion of this subject may be found in David Friedman\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.daviddfriedman.com/laws_order/index.shtml\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLaw\u0026rsquo;s Order: What Economics Has to Do With Law and Why It Matters\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere seems to be a widespread illusion on the part of many people that many problems can be solved merely by passing the federal legislation, without regard for the actual empirical consequences of such legislation (or the actual process of how it\u0026rsquo;s determined what gets put into such legislation!).  From intellectual property law, to environmental law, to telecommunications law (e.g., net neutrality), good intentions can easily lead to bad consequences by those who don\u0026rsquo;t concern themselves with such details.  Friedman\u0026rsquo;s book is a good start as an antidote to such thinking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adler on federal environmental regulation"},{"content":"In an exchange on ZDNet, George Ou gives a simple explanation of the benefits of QoS for VoIP traffic and why any form of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that prohibits it or requires it to be offered without premium charges is a bad idea:\nI’ll say this loud and clear; QoS is a reordering of packets that is an essential part of network traffic engineering. Take the following example where A represents VoIP packets and b represents webpage packets.\nNo enhanced QoS policy\nAbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbAbAbbbbbbAbA\nWith enhanced QoS policy\nAbbbbbbbbbAbbbbbbbbbbAbbbbbbbbbbAbbbbbbbbbbA\nNow note that there are only 5 A packets in the entire stream for either scenario and you still get the exact same throughput for the b packets with or without prioritization for the VoIP A packets. The difference is that the A packets are now a lot more uniform which makes sound quality go up and the webpage b packets don’t really care about uniformity since all they care is that they get there at all intact. With this QoS example, you can improve VoIP without affecting the average throughput of web surfing. More precisely, QoS has ZERO throughput effect on non-prioritized when there is zero congestion on the pipe. If it had been a congested network, then QoS will have minimal effect on non-prioritized traffic.\nHat tip to Richard Bennett at the Original Blog.\nAlso see Dave Siegel on QoS and net neutrality.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/george-ou-explains-qos-to-russell-shaw.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn an exchange on ZDNet, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=244\"\u003eGeorge Ou gives a simple explanation of the benefits of QoS\u003c/a\u003e for VoIP traffic and why any form of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that prohibits it or requires it to be offered without premium charges is a bad idea:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e I’ll say this loud and clear; QoS is a reordering of packets that is an essential part of network traffic engineering. Take the following example where A represents VoIP packets and b represents webpage packets.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"George Ou explains QoS to Russell Shaw"},{"content":"This post is an index to posts at The Lippard Blog on the subject of information security. This is probably not a complete list; I\u0026rsquo;ve tended to exclude posts labeled \u0026ldquo;security\u0026rdquo; that don\u0026rsquo;t specifically touch on information security and may have over-excluded.\n\u0026ldquo;Richard Bejtlich reviews Extreme Exploits\u0026rdquo; (August 16, 2005) Link to Richard Bejtlich review of Extreme Exploits, a book I was the technical editor on.\n\u0026ldquo;Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM\u0026ndash;not much different from criminal hacking\u0026rdquo; (November 2, 2005) Summary and link to Mark Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s exposure of the Sony rootkit DRM.\n\u0026ldquo;Defending Against Botnets\u0026rdquo; (November 3, 2005) Link to my presentation on this subject at Arizona State University.\n\u0026ldquo;Sony DRM class action lawsuits\u0026rdquo; (November 10, 2005) Comment on the Sony rootkit class action lawsuits.\n\u0026ldquo;Another Botnet Talk\u0026rdquo; (December 11, 2005) Comment on my December botnet talk for Phoenix InfraGard, with links to past botnet presentations.\n\u0026ldquo;Major flaw in Diebold voting machines\u0026rdquo; (December 23, 2005) A flaw that allows preloading votes on a memory card for Diebold voting machines in an undetectible way.\n\u0026ldquo;The Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit\u0026rdquo; (January 3, 2006) Description of an at-the-time unresolved Windows vulnerability.\n\u0026ldquo;New Internet consumer protection tool\u0026ndash;SiteAdvisor.com\u0026rdquo; (January 25, 2006) Report on SiteAdvisor.com tool (now a McAfee product).\n\u0026ldquo;Pushing Spyware through Search\u0026rdquo; (January 28, 2006) Ben Edelman\u0026rsquo;s work on how Google is connected to spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it.\n\u0026ldquo;Database error causes unbalanced budget\u0026rdquo; (February 17, 2006) How a house in Indiana was incorrectly valued at $400 million due to a single-keystroke error, leading to wrongly increased budgets and distribution of funds on the expectation of property tax revenue.\n\u0026ldquo;The Security Catalyst podcast\u0026rdquo; (February 18, 2006) Announcement of Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s security podcast.\n\u0026ldquo;Controversial hacker publishes cover story in Skeptical Inquirer\u0026rdquo; (February 19, 2006) Critique of Carolyn Meinel\u0026rsquo;s article about information warfare.\n\u0026ldquo;Even more serious Diebold voting machine flaws\u0026rdquo; (May 14, 2006) Hurst report on new major flaws found in Diebold voting machines.\n\u0026ldquo;Botnet interview on the Security Catalyst podcast\u0026rdquo; (May 23, 2006) Link to part I of my interview on botnets with Michael Santarcangelo.\n\u0026ldquo;Part II of Botnets Interview\u0026rdquo; (June 4, 2006) Link to part II of my botnets interview.\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Banner farms\u0026rsquo; and spyware\u0026quot; (June 12, 2006) Ben Edelman\u0026rsquo;s exposure of Hula Direct\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;banner farms\u0026rdquo; used to deliver ads via spyware.\n\u0026ldquo;When private property becomes the commons\u0026rdquo; (June 12, 2006) Consumer PCs as Internet \u0026ldquo;commons,\u0026rdquo; economics and information security.\n\u0026ldquo;Network security panel in Boston area\u0026rdquo; (June 12, 2006) Announcement of a public speaking gig.\n\u0026ldquo;Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood\u0026rdquo; (July 6, 2006) Quotation from Tim Lee review of book by Jim Harper with this title.\n\u0026ldquo;9th Circuit approves random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops\u0026rdquo; (July 28, 2006) Bad decision granting border police the right to perform full forensic examination of the hard drives of laptops carried by people wanting to cross the U.S. border.\n\u0026ldquo;Is it worth shutting down botnet controllers?\u0026quot; (August 18, 2006) A response to remarks by Gadi Evron and Paul Vixie that it is no longer worth shutting down botnet controllers.\n\u0026ldquo;The ineffectiveness of TRUSTe\u0026rdquo; (September 29, 2006) A larger proportion of sites with TRUSTe certification are marked as untrustworthy in SiteAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s database than of those that don\u0026rsquo;t have TRUSTe certification.\n\u0026ldquo;The U.S. no-fly list is a joke\u0026rdquo; (October 5, 2006) The no-fly list has major flaws, listing people who aren\u0026rsquo;t a threat and not listing people who are\u0026ndash;and presuming that terrorists will be identifiable by their names.\n\u0026ldquo;How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights\u0026rdquo; (October 20, 2006) How an unusual hobby allowed for traffic analysis to uncover CIA torture flights.\n\u0026ldquo;Point out the obvious, get raided by the FBI\u0026rdquo; (October 29, 2006) Chris Soghoian gets raided by the FBI after putting up a web page that allows generation of Northwest Airlines boarding passes.\n\u0026ldquo;Electronic voting machines in Florida having problems in early voting\u0026rdquo; (October 31, 2006) A report on voting machines registering votes for the wrong candidate due to touch screen calibration issues.\n\u0026ldquo;The Two Faces of Diebold\u0026rdquo; (November 5, 2006) The difference between the public and private versions of SAIC\u0026rsquo;s report on Diebold voting machine vulnerabilities.\n\u0026ldquo;FBI eavesdropping via cell phones and OnStar\u0026rdquo; (December 4, 2006) Reports of vulnerabilities in newer cell phones that allow them to be used as listening devices even when powered off.\n\u0026ldquo;Time to Stop Using Microsoft Word\u0026rdquo; (December 7, 2006) New unpatched malicious code execution vulnerability in most versions of Word.\n\u0026ldquo;Staffer for Congressman tries to hire hacker to change grades\u0026rdquo; (December 22, 2006) Todd Shriber\u0026rsquo;s failed attempt to retroactively improve his college career.\n\u0026ldquo;My bank is on the ball\u0026rdquo; (January 6, 2007) My bank prevents theft of my money.\n\u0026ldquo;Skeptical information and security information links\u0026rdquo; (January 23, 2007) Promotion of my security links and skeptical links sites.\n\u0026ldquo;Schoolteacher convicted on bogus charges due to malware\u0026rdquo; (February 4, 2007) Connecticut teacher Julie Amero successfully prosecuted for showing porn to kids, when in fact it was the result of malware on a machine the school district refused to pay for antivirus software on.\n\u0026ldquo;McCain proposes an unfunded mandate for ISPs\u0026rdquo; (February 7, 2007) McCain sponsors a bill to force ISPs to scan all traffic for and report child porn images they find.\n\u0026ldquo;Warner Music: We\u0026rsquo;d rather go out of business than give customers what they want\u0026rdquo; (February 9, 2007) Warner Music says no way to DRM-free music.\n\u0026ldquo;The economics of information security\u0026rdquo; (February 13, 2007) Ross Anderson and Tyler Moore paper on the economics of infosec.\n\u0026ldquo;How IPv6 is already creating security problems\u0026rdquo; (February 19, 2007) Apple AirPort allows bypass of firewall rules via IPv6.\n\u0026ldquo;Windows, Mac, and BSD Security\u0026rdquo; (March 8, 2007) Amusing video parody comparing the OSes.\n\u0026ldquo;Bob Hagen on botnet evolution\u0026rdquo; (March 9, 2007) My former colleague on trends in botnets.\n\u0026ldquo;The rsync.net warrant canary\u0026rdquo; (March 25, 2007) How rsync.net will communicate whether it receives a National Security Letter without breaking the law.\n\u0026ldquo;FBI focus on counterterrorism leads to increase in unprosecuted fraud and identity theft\u0026rdquo; (April 11, 2007) The law of unintended consequences strikes again.\n\u0026ldquo;Banning the distribution of AACS keys is futile\u0026rdquo; (May 3, 2007) You can\u0026rsquo;t stop the communication of a 128-bit number as though it\u0026rsquo;s proprietary.\n\u0026ldquo;CALEA compliance day\u0026rdquo; (May 14, 2007) Commemoration of the day that VoIP providers have to be CALEA-compliant.\n\u0026ldquo;Spying on the homefront\u0026rdquo; (May 14, 2007) PBS Frontline on FBI misuse of National Security Letters and NSA eavesdropping.\n\u0026ldquo;The bots of summer\u0026rdquo; (June 6, 2007) Report on some media coverage of my botnet interview with the Security Catalyst from 2006.\n\u0026ldquo;Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s new Turing Test\u0026rdquo; (June 12, 2007) It\u0026rsquo;s not often I get to combine animal rescue and information security topics, but this is one\u0026ndash;using animal pictures to authenticate.\n\u0026ldquo;Operation Bot Roast\u0026rdquo; (June 14, 2007) FBI prosecution of some botnet people.\n\u0026ldquo;Google thinks I\u0026rsquo;m malware\u0026rdquo; (July 13, 2007) Google stops returning results to me in some cases because my behavior looks like malware activity.\n\u0026ldquo;Asking printer manufacturers to stop spying results in Secret Service visit?\u0026quot; (July 14, 2007) MIT Media Lab project to get people to complain to printer manufacturers about their secret coding of serial numbers, which got one person a visit from the USSS.\n\u0026ldquo;A marketplace for software vulnerabilities\u0026rdquo; (July 29, 2007) WabiSabiLabi\u0026rsquo;s abortive attempt to create a market for the sale and purchase of vulnerability information.\n\u0026ldquo;Another Sony rootkit\u0026rdquo; (September 5, 2007) F-Secure finds another Sony product that installs a rootkit\u0026ndash;the Sony MicroVault USM-F memory stick (now off the market).\n\u0026ldquo;Anti-P2P company suffers major security breach\u0026rdquo; (September 16, 2007) Media Defender gets hacked.\n\u0026ldquo;Microsoft updates Windows XP and Vista without user permission or notification\u0026rdquo; (September 17, 2007) Nine executables get pushed to everybody even if Windows update is turned off\u0026ndash;except for corporate SMS users.\n\u0026ldquo;Lessons for information security from Multics\u0026rdquo; (September 19, 2007) Paul Karger and Roger Schell\u0026rsquo;s paper on Multics gets attention from Bruce Schneier.\n\u0026ldquo;Hacker finds vulnerability in Adobe Reader\u0026rdquo; (September 24, 2007) The era of attacks on applications rather than OS\u0026rsquo;s gets a boost.\n\u0026ldquo;Break-in at CI Host colo facility\u0026rdquo; (November 4, 2007) The role of physical security for websites.\n\u0026ldquo;Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul\u0026rdquo; (November 6, 2007) Botnets used to send spam promoting Ron Paul.\n\u0026ldquo;Macintosh security lags behind Windows and BSD\u0026rdquo; (November 8, 2007) Rundown on new Mac security features, some of which are negative in effect.\n\u0026ldquo;Multics source code released\u0026rdquo; (November 13, 2007) Multics becomes open source.\n\u0026ldquo;Untraceable looks unwatchable\u0026rdquo; (December 18, 2007) A post that generated a huge amount of response, about the Diane Lane movie that flopped at the box office, before it came out.\n\u0026ldquo;Notorious major spammer indicted\u0026rdquo; (January 3, 2008) Alan Ralsky may actually get what he deserves.\n\u0026ldquo;Boeing 787 potentially vulnerable to passenger software-based hijacking\u0026rdquo; (January 8, 2008) Passenger Internet access for the Boeing 787 is physically connected to the network for communication and navigation.\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Anonymous\u0026rsquo; launches \u0026lsquo;war\u0026rsquo; against Scientology\u0026rdquo; (January 22, 2008) Denial of service attacks and other pranks against Scientology.\n\u0026ldquo;Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard\u0026rdquo; (February 8, 2008) Response to Matt Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s article in The Progressive claiming that InfraGard members have the right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; when martial law is declared.\n\u0026ldquo;FBI responds to \u0026lsquo;shoot to kill\u0026rsquo; claims about InfraGard\u0026rdquo; (February 15, 2008) Commentary and link to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s response to Rothschild.\n\u0026ldquo;Malware in digital photo frames\u0026rdquo; (February 17, 2008) Viruses in unusual digital storage locations.\n\u0026ldquo;Canada busts 17 in botnet ring\u0026rdquo; (February 21, 2008) News about law enforcement action against criminals in Canada.\n\u0026ldquo;More InfraGard FUD and misinformation\u0026rdquo; (February 23, 2008) Response to Gary Barnett\u0026rsquo;s InfraGard article at the Future of Freedom Foundation website.\n\u0026ldquo;New Mexico InfraGard conference\u0026rdquo; (February 24, 2008) Summary of the New Mexico InfraGard\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dollar-Gard 2008\u0026rdquo; conference.\n\u0026ldquo;Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return\u0026rdquo; (February 25, 2008) Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s events of political and/or religious censorship gone awry in Pakistan.\n\u0026ldquo;Jeremy Jaynes loses appeal on spamming case\u0026rdquo; (March 1, 2008) The Virginia Supreme Court upholds Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law.\n\u0026ldquo;Software awards scam\u0026rdquo; (March 25, 2008) Many software download sites give out bogus awards.\n\u0026ldquo;Scammers scamming scammers\u0026rdquo; (April 7, 2008) Marco Cova looks at what some phishing kits really do.\n\u0026ldquo;Bad military botnet proposal\u0026rdquo; (May 13, 2008) A response to Col. Charles Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal to build a military botnet.\n\u0026ldquo;MediaDefender launches denial of service attack against Revision3\u0026rdquo; (May 29, 2008) Anti-P2P piracy firm crosses the line and attacks a legitimate company.\n\u0026ldquo;San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s city network held hostage\u0026rdquo; (July 19, 2008) Some actual facts behind the hyped charges against the city\u0026rsquo;s network administrator.\n\u0026ldquo;Did Diebold tamper with Georgia\u0026rsquo;s 2002 elections?\u0026quot; (July 20, 2008) Some troubling information about Diebold\u0026rsquo;s last-minute patching on Georgia election machines.\n\u0026ldquo;Expert tells China visitors to encrypt data as U.S. announces policy of laptop seizure\u0026rdquo; (August 1, 2008) Concerns about privacy in both China and the U.S.\n\u0026ldquo;Military botnets article\u0026rdquo; (August 28, 2008) Peter Buxbaum\u0026rsquo;s article on \u0026ldquo;Battling Botnets\u0026rdquo; in Military Information Technology magazine.\n\u0026ldquo;Virginia Supreme Court strikes down anti-spam law\u0026rdquo; (September 12, 2008) Julian Jaynes goes free as Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law goes away.\n\u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s Yahoo account hacked\u0026rdquo; (September 17, 2008) Palin\u0026rsquo;s Yahoo account is hacked, and the contents published.\n\u0026ldquo;TSA airport security is a waste of time and money\u0026rdquo; (October 18, 2008) Link to Jeffrey Goldberg\u0026rsquo;s article in The Atlantic.\n\u0026ldquo;Behind the scenes during the election process\u0026rdquo; (November 6, 2008) Both major party presidential nominees suffered computer compromises.\n\u0026ldquo;White House may be forced to recover \u0026rsquo;lost\u0026rsquo; emails\u0026rdquo; (November 14, 2008) Lawsuit may require recovery from backups.\n\u0026ldquo;Criminal activity by air marshals\u0026rdquo; (November 14, 2008) Multiple cases.\n\u0026ldquo;PATRIOT Act NSL gag order unconstitutional\u0026rdquo; (December 19, 2008) Recipients of National Security Letters now can\u0026rsquo;t be gagged without court order.\n\u0026ldquo;The U.S. Nazi dirty bomb plot\u0026rdquo; (March 15, 2009) A little-covered story about a real terrorist plot.\n\u0026ldquo;The Cybersecurity Act of 2009\u0026rdquo; (April 4, 2009) It\u0026rsquo;s not as bad as it appears.\n\u0026ldquo;Tracking cyberspies through the web wilderness\u0026rdquo; (May 12, 2009) How University of Toronto researchers have tracked online spying activity.\n\u0026ldquo;Bad military botnet proposal still being pushed\u0026rdquo; (June 26, 2009) Col. Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal to build an offensive U.S. military botnet is still being promoted by him.\n\u0026ldquo;DHS still a mess, five years on\u0026rdquo; (July 16, 2009) Center for Public Integrity review of DHS.\n\u0026ldquo;How Twitter got compromised\u0026rdquo; (July 23, 2009) TechCrunch gives the anatomy of the attack on Twitter.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/information-security-index.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis post is an index to posts at The Lippard Blog on the subject of information security.  This is probably not a complete list; I\u0026rsquo;ve tended to exclude posts labeled \u0026ldquo;security\u0026rdquo; that don\u0026rsquo;t specifically touch on information security and may have over-excluded.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/08/richard-bejtlich-reviews-extreme.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Richard Bejtlich reviews Extreme Exploits\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (August 16, 2005) Link to Richard Bejtlich review of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExtreme Exploits\u003c/span\u003e, a book I was the technical editor on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/sonys-drm-not-much-different-from.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM\u0026ndash;not much different from criminal hacking\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 2, 2005) Summary and link to Mark Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s exposure of the Sony rootkit DRM.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/defending-against-botnets.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Defending Against Botnets\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 3, 2005) Link to my presentation on this subject at Arizona State University.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/sony-drm-class-action-lawsuits.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sony DRM class action lawsuits\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 10, 2005) Comment on the Sony rootkit class action lawsuits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/12/another-botnet-talk.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Another Botnet Talk\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 11, 2005) Comment on my December botnet talk for Phoenix InfraGard, with links to past botnet presentations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/12/major-flaw-in-diebold-voting-machines.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Major flaw in Diebold voting machines\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 23, 2005) A flaw that allows preloading votes on a memory card for Diebold voting machines in an undetectible way.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/windows-meta-file-wmf-exploit.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 3, 2006) Description of an at-the-time unresolved Windows vulnerability.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/new-internet-consumer-protection-tool.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;New Internet consumer protection tool\u0026ndash;SiteAdvisor.com\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 25, 2006) Report on SiteAdvisor.com tool (now a McAfee product).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/01/pushing-spyware-through-search.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pushing Spyware through Search\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 28, 2006) Ben Edelman\u0026rsquo;s work on how Google is connected to spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/02/database-error-causes-unbalanced.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Database error causes unbalanced budget\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 17, 2006) How a house in Indiana was incorrectly valued at $400 million due to a single-keystroke error, leading to wrongly increased budgets and distribution of funds on the expectation of property tax revenue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/02/security-catalyst-podcast.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Security Catalyst podcast\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 18, 2006) Announcement of Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s security podcast.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/02/controversial-hacker-publishes-cover.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Controversial hacker publishes cover story in Skeptical Inquirer\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 19, 2006) Critique of Carolyn Meinel\u0026rsquo;s article about information warfare.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/even-more-serious-diebold-voting.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Even more serious Diebold voting machine flaws\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 14, 2006) Hurst report on new major flaws found in Diebold voting machines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/botnet-interview-on-security-catalyst.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Botnet interview on the Security Catalyst podcast\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 23, 2006) Link to part I of my interview on botnets with Michael Santarcangelo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/part-ii-of-botnets-interview.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Part II of Botnets Interview\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 4, 2006) Link to part II of my botnets interview.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/banner-farms-and-spyware_115012668233363470.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Banner farms\u0026rsquo; and spyware\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Ben Edelman\u0026rsquo;s exposure of Hula Direct\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;banner farms\u0026rdquo; used to deliver ads via spyware.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/when-private-property-becomes-commons.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;When private property becomes the commons\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Consumer PCs as Internet \u0026ldquo;commons,\u0026rdquo; economics and information security.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/network-security-panel-in-boston-area.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Network security panel in Boston area\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Announcement of a public speaking gig.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/07/identity-crisis-how-identification-is.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 6, 2006) Quotation from Tim Lee review of book by Jim Harper with this title.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/07/9th-circuit-approves-random.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;9th Circuit approves random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 28, 2006) Bad decision granting border police the right to perform full forensic examination of the hard drives of laptops carried by people wanting to cross the U.S. border.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/08/is-it-worth-shutting-down-botnet.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is it worth shutting down botnet controllers?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (August 18, 2006) A response to remarks by Gadi Evron and Paul Vixie that it is no longer worth shutting down botnet controllers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/09/ineffectiveness-of-truste.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The ineffectiveness of TRUSTe\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 29, 2006) A larger proportion of sites with TRUSTe certification are marked as untrustworthy in SiteAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s database than of those that don\u0026rsquo;t have TRUSTe certification.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/us-no-fly-list-is-joke.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The U.S. no-fly list is a joke\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 5, 2006) The no-fly list has major flaws, listing people who aren\u0026rsquo;t a threat and not listing people who are\u0026ndash;and presuming that terrorists will be identifiable by their names.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/how-planespotting-uncovered-cia.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 20, 2006) How an unusual hobby allowed for traffic analysis to uncover CIA torture flights.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/point-out-obvious-get-raided-by-fbi.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Point out the obvious, get raided by the FBI\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 29, 2006) Chris Soghoian gets raided by the FBI after putting up a web page that allows generation of Northwest Airlines boarding passes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/10/electronic-voting-machines-in-florida.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Electronic voting machines in Florida having problems in early voting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 31, 2006) A report on voting machines registering votes for the wrong candidate due to touch screen calibration issues.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/two-faces-of-diebold.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Two Faces of Diebold\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003e(November 5, 2006) The difference between the public and private versions of SAIC\u0026rsquo;s report on Diebold voting machine vulnerabilities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/fbi-eavesdropping-via-cell-phones-and.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;FBI eavesdropping via cell phones and OnStar\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 4, 2006) Reports of vulnerabilities in newer cell phones that allow them to be used as listening devices even when powered off.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/time-to-stop-using-microsoft-word.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Time to Stop Using Microsoft Word\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 7, 2006) New unpatched malicious code execution vulnerability in most versions of Word.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/12/staffer-for-congressman-tries-to-hire.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Staffer for Congressman tries to hire hacker to change grades\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 22, 2006) Todd Shriber\u0026rsquo;s failed attempt to retroactively improve his college career.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/my-bank-is-on-ball.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;My bank is on the ball\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 6, 2007) My bank prevents theft of my money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/01/skeptical-information-and-security.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Skeptical information and security information links\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 23, 2007) Promotion of my security links and skeptical links sites.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/schoolteacher-convicted-on-bogus.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Schoolteacher convicted on bogus charges due to malware\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 4, 2007) Connecticut teacher Julie Amero successfully prosecuted for showing porn to kids, when in fact it was the result of malware on a machine the school district refused to pay for antivirus software on.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/mccain-proposes-unfunded-mandate-for.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;McCain proposes an unfunded mandate for ISPs\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 7, 2007) McCain sponsors a bill to force ISPs to scan all traffic for and report child porn images they find.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/warner-music-wed-rather-go-out-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Warner Music: We\u0026rsquo;d rather go out of business than give customers what they want\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 9, 2007) Warner Music says no way to DRM-free music.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/economics-of-information-security.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The economics of information security\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 13, 2007) Ross Anderson and Tyler Moore paper on the economics of infosec.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/02/how-ipv6-is-already-creating-security.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How IPv6 is already creating security problems\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 19, 2007) Apple AirPort allows bypass of firewall rules via IPv6.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/windows-mac-and-bsd-security.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Windows, Mac, and BSD Security\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 8, 2007) Amusing video parody comparing the OSes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/bob-hagen-on-botnet-evolution.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bob Hagen on botnet evolution\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 9, 2007) My former colleague on trends in botnets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/03/rsyncnet-warrant-canary.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The rsync.net warrant canary\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 25, 2007) How rsync.net will communicate whether it receives a National Security Letter without breaking the law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/04/fbi-focus-on-counterterrorism-leads-to.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;FBI focus on counterterrorism leads to increase in unprosecuted fraud and identity theft\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (April 11, 2007) The law of unintended consequences strikes again.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/banning-distribution-of-aacs-keys-is.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Banning the distribution of AACS keys is futile\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 3, 2007) You can\u0026rsquo;t stop the communication of a 128-bit number as though it\u0026rsquo;s proprietary.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/calea-compliance-day.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;CALEA compliance day\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 14, 2007) Commemoration of the day that VoIP providers have to be CALEA-compliant.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/05/spying-on-homefront.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spying on the homefront\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 14, 2007) PBS Frontline on FBI misuse of National Security Letters and NSA eavesdropping.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/bots-of-summer.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The bots of summer\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 6, 2007) Report on some media coverage of my botnet interview with the Security Catalyst from 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/microsofts-new-turing-test.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s new Turing Test\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2007) It\u0026rsquo;s not often I get to combine animal rescue and information security topics, but this is one\u0026ndash;using animal pictures to authenticate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/06/operation-bot-roast.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Operation Bot Roast\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 14, 2007) FBI prosecution of some botnet people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/07/google-thinks-im-malware.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Google thinks I\u0026rsquo;m malware\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 13, 2007) Google stops returning results to me in some cases because my behavior looks like malware activity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/07/asking-printer-manufacturers-to-stop.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Asking printer manufacturers to stop spying results in Secret Service visit?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (July 14, 2007) MIT Media Lab project to get people to complain to printer manufacturers about their secret coding of serial numbers, which got one person a visit from the USSS.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/07/marketplace-for-software.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A marketplace for software vulnerabilities\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 29, 2007) WabiSabiLabi\u0026rsquo;s abortive attempt to create a market for the sale and purchase of vulnerability information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/another-sony-rootkit.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Another Sony rootkit\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 5, 2007) F-Secure finds another Sony product that installs a rootkit\u0026ndash;the Sony MicroVault USM-F memory stick (now off the market).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/anti-p2p-company-suffers-major-security.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Anti-P2P company suffers major security breach\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 16, 2007) Media Defender gets hacked.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/microsoft-updates-windows-xp-and-vista.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Microsoft updates Windows XP and Vista without user permission or notification\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 17, 2007) Nine executables get pushed to everybody even if Windows update is turned off\u0026ndash;except for corporate SMS users.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/lessons-for-information-security-from.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lessons for information security from Multics\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 19, 2007) Paul Karger and Roger Schell\u0026rsquo;s paper on Multics gets attention from Bruce Schneier.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/09/hacker-finds-vulnerability-in-adobe.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hacker finds vulnerability in Adobe Reader\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 24, 2007) The era of attacks on applications rather than OS\u0026rsquo;s gets a boost.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/break-in-at-ci-host-colo-facility.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Break-in at CI Host colo facility\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 4, 2007) The role of physical security for websites.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/spammers-and-criminals-for-ron-paul.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 6, 2007) Botnets used to send spam promoting Ron Paul.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/macintosh-security-lags-behind-windows.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Macintosh security lags behind Windows and BSD\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 8, 2007) Rundown on new Mac security features, some of which are negative in effect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/11/multics-source-code-released.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Multics source code released\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 13, 2007) Multics becomes open source.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2007/12/untraceable-looks-unwatchable.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Untraceable looks unwatchable\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 18, 2007) A post that generated a huge amount of response, about the Diane Lane movie that flopped at the box office, before it came out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/notorious-major-spammer-indicted.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Notorious major spammer indicted\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 3, 2008)  Alan Ralsky may actually get what he deserves.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/boeing-787-potentially-vulnerable-to.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Boeing 787 potentially vulnerable to passenger software-based hijacking\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 8, 2008) Passenger Internet access for the Boeing 787 is physically connected to the network for communication and navigation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/01/anonymous-launches-war-against.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Anonymous\u0026rsquo; launches \u0026lsquo;war\u0026rsquo; against Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (January 22, 2008) Denial of service attacks and other pranks against Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/tinfoil-hat-brigade-generates-fear.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 8, 2008) Response to Matt Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Progressive\u003c/span\u003e claiming that InfraGard members have the right to \u0026ldquo;shoot to kill\u0026rdquo; when martial law is declared.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/fbi-responds-to-shoot-to-kill-claims.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;FBI responds to \u0026lsquo;shoot to kill\u0026rsquo; claims about InfraGard\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 15, 2008) Commentary and link to the FBI\u0026rsquo;s response to Rothschild.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/malware-in-digital-photo-frames.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Malware in digital photo frames\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 17, 2008) Viruses in unusual digital storage locations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/canada-busts-17-in-botnet-ring.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Canada busts 17 in botnet ring\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 21, 2008) News about law enforcement action against criminals in Canada.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/more-infragard-fud-and-misinformation.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;More InfraGard FUD and misinformation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 23, 2008) Response to Gary Barnett\u0026rsquo;s InfraGard article at the Future of Freedom Foundation website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/new-mexico-infragard-conference.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;New Mexico InfraGard conference\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 24, 2008) Summary of the New Mexico InfraGard\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Dollar-Gard 2008\u0026rdquo; conference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/02/pakistan-takes-out-youtube-gets-taken.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 25, 2008) Yesterday\u0026rsquo;s events of political and/or religious censorship gone awry in Pakistan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/julian-jaynes-loses-appeal-on-spamming.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jeremy Jaynes loses appeal on spamming case\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 1, 2008) The Virginia Supreme Court upholds Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/03/software-awards-scam.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Software awards scam\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 25, 2008) Many software download sites give out bogus awards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/04/scammers-scamming-scammers.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scammers scamming scammers\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (April 7, 2008) Marco Cova looks at what some phishing kits really do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/bad-military-botnet-proposal.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bad military botnet proposal\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 13, 2008) A response to Col. Charles Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal to build a military botnet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/05/mediadefender-launches-denial-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;MediaDefender launches denial of service attack against Revision3\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 29, 2008) Anti-P2P piracy firm crosses the line and attacks a legitimate company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/san-franciscos-city-network-held.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;San Francisco\u0026rsquo;s city network held hostage\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 19, 2008) Some actual facts behind the hyped charges against the city\u0026rsquo;s network administrator.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/did-diebold-tamper-with-georgias-2002.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Did Diebold tamper with Georgia\u0026rsquo;s 2002 elections?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (July 20, 2008) Some troubling information about Diebold\u0026rsquo;s last-minute patching on Georgia election machines.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/expert-tells-china-visitors-to-encrypt.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Expert tells China visitors to encrypt data as U.S. announces policy of laptop seizure\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (August 1, 2008) Concerns about privacy in both China and the U.S.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/08/military-botnets-article.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Military botnets article\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (August 28, 2008) Peter Buxbaum\u0026rsquo;s article on \u0026ldquo;Battling Botnets\u0026rdquo; in Military Information Technology magazine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/09/virginia-supreme-court-strikes-down.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Virginia Supreme Court strikes down anti-spam law\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 12, 2008) Julian Jaynes goes free as Virginia\u0026rsquo;s anti-spam law goes away.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/09/sarah-palins-yahoo-account-hacked.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sarah Palin\u0026rsquo;s Yahoo account hacked\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (September 17, 2008) Palin\u0026rsquo;s Yahoo account is hacked, and the contents published.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/10/tsa-airport-security-is-waste-of-time.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;TSA airport security is a waste of time and money\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (October 18, 2008) Link to Jeffrey Goldberg\u0026rsquo;s article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/11/behind-scenes-during-election-process.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Behind the scenes during the election process\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 6, 2008) Both major party presidential nominees suffered computer compromises.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/11/white-house-may-be-forced-to-recover.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;White House may be forced to recover \u0026rsquo;lost\u0026rsquo; emails\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 14, 2008) Lawsuit may require recovery from backups.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/11/criminal-activity-by-air-marshals.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Criminal activity by air marshals\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 14, 2008) Multiple cases.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/12/patriot-act-nsl-gag-order.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;PATRIOT Act NSL gag order unconstitutional\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (December 19, 2008) Recipients of National Security Letters now can\u0026rsquo;t be gagged without court order.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/03/us-nazi-dirty-bomb-plot.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The U.S. Nazi dirty bomb plot\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (March 15, 2009) A little-covered story about a real terrorist plot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/04/cybersecurity-act-of-2009.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Cybersecurity Act of 2009\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (April 4, 2009) It\u0026rsquo;s not as bad as it appears.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/05/tracking-cyberspies-through-web.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tracking cyberspies through the web wilderness\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 12, 2009) How University of Toronto researchers have tracked online spying activity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/06/bad-military-botnet-proposal-still.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bad military botnet proposal still being pushed\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 26, 2009) Col. Williamson\u0026rsquo;s proposal to build an offensive U.S. military botnet is still being promoted by him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/dhs-still-mess-five-years-on.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;DHS still a mess, five years on\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 16, 2009) Center for Public Integrity review of DHS.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/07/how-twitter-got-compromised.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;How Twitter got compromised\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 23, 2009) TechCrunch gives the anatomy of the attack on Twitter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Information Security Index"},{"content":"This post serves as an index to the net neutrality posts on The Lippard Blog. I\u0026rsquo;ll update this post with any future posts on the subject.\n\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; (February 12, 2006) Critique of Bill Thompson\u0026rsquo;s argument for net neutrality.\n\u0026ldquo;Geddes on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (February 14, 2006) Comment on and link to good Martin Geddes blog post on net neutrality.\n\u0026ldquo;Commoncause.org: Spamming for \u0026rsquo;net neutrality\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; (March 9, 2006) How Common Cause deluged Mark Cuban with spam after depicting him with devil horns for not backing net neutrality.\n\u0026ldquo;Talking Points Memo gets it completely wrong on COPE Act\u0026rdquo; (April 22, 2006) Critique of Josh Marshall and Art Brodsky\u0026rsquo;s bogus claim that the bill transfers control of the Internet to the telcos (who have a much smaller percentage of consumer Internet customers in the U.S. than the cable companies).\n\u0026ldquo;Misinformation in defense of net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (May 7, 2006) Critique of Adam Green and Matt Stoller who repeat the common misconception that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet, which is the basis of their calling Mike McCurry a liar.\n\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and Last-Mile Connectivity: An Analogy\u0026rdquo; (May 8, 2006) An analogy about net neutrality and last-mile connectivity in terms of taxicabs, in an attempt to elucidate some of the major points and misconceptions.\n\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and the Pace of Innovation\u0026rdquo; (May 17, 2006) A look at the pace of innovation in the Bell System under monopoly in light of calls for nationalization of \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; (as though there is one such thing) by net neutrality advocates.\n\u0026ldquo;Misinformation from \u0026lsquo;Save the Internet\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; (May 19, 2006) A critique of \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s critique of the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; flash animation cartoon, which seems to repeat the common confusion that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet.\n\u0026ldquo;Bad unintended consequences of HR 5417\u0026rdquo; (May 19, 2006) A criticism of the Sensenbrenner net neutrality bill.\n\u0026ldquo;Yglesias on McCurry\u0026rdquo; (May 19, 2006) Critique of Matthew Yglesias on net neutrality guest blogging at Talking Points Memo.\n\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and Fair Use\u0026rdquo; (May 22, 2006) Disagreement with Larry Lessig about an analogy between net neutrality and fair use. (I tend to agree with Lessig on intellectual property issues, at least about the dangers of ever-extending copyright terms, lack of registration requirements, and DRM.)\n\u0026ldquo;Hillary Clinton and Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; (May 23, 2006) The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton\u0026rsquo;s support of net neutrality on the grounds of protecting free speech (as pointed out by Adam Thierer).\n\u0026ldquo;Consumer broadband last-mile competition in the Phoenix metropolitan area\u0026rdquo; (May 24, 2006) A summary of actual broadband options in the Phoenix area, listing eight separate providers.\n\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality expands to absurdity\u0026rdquo; (May 24, 2006) Critique of net neutrality advocate Jim Durbin, who thinks corporate web filters are a violation (which presumably he thinks should be made illegal). Also comment on Glenn Harlan Reynolds on pirate WiFi in the enterprise.\n\u0026ldquo;Newmark vs. McCurry on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (May 24, 2006) Comment on Craig Newmark\u0026rsquo;s debate with Mike McCurry in the Wall Street Journal, in which Newmark is mightily confused about the technical facts.\n\u0026ldquo;Dave Siegel on QoS and net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (May 26, 2006) Link to Dave Siegel blog post that summarizes how QoS is used in Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network, and to a presentation by Xiao Xipeng on the same topic.\n\u0026ldquo;Save the Internet: Fighting astroturf with astroturf\u0026rdquo; (May 26, 2006) How \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; has generated astroturfed letters-to-the-editor while condemning astroturf from the telcos. I condemn both.\n\u0026ldquo;More on last-mile options in Phoenix\u0026rdquo; (May 27, 2006) A response to criticisms of my list Phoenix-area broadband options from Douglas Ross.\n\u0026ldquo;The Abstract Factory on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (May 31, 2006) A link to a good commentary on net neutrality and astroturfing telco shills.\n\u0026ldquo;Kevin Drum gets it wrong on net neutrality and common carriage\u0026rdquo; (June 1, 2006) Kevin Drum repeats the common misconception that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet.\n\u0026ldquo;Worst net neutrality analogy ever?\u0026quot; (June 1, 2006) A critique of Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s horrible sidewalk analogy.\n\u0026ldquo;George Ou explains QoS to Russell Shaw\u0026rdquo; (June 10, 2006) In a ZDnet debate, George Ou gives a good simple explanation of QoS to someone who wants to regulate something he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand.\n\u0026ldquo;Martin Geddes on net neutrality, federalism, and U.S. vs. EU\u0026rdquo; (June 12, 2006) Link to a nice piece on Geddes\u0026rsquo; Telepocalypse blog where he provides links to his past positions on network neutrality and compares the U.S. to EU, and their respective regulatory regimes to networks.\n\u0026ldquo;Verizon\u0026rsquo;s Thomas Tauke on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (June 12, 2006) Quote from and link to a Declan McCullagh interview with Thomas Tauke of Verizon about net neutrality.\n\u0026ldquo;Bennett on Free Press net neutrality \u0026lsquo;facts\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot; (June 12, 2006) Richard Bennett shows that the Free Press\u0026rsquo;s network neutrality facts are mostly fiction, argues against the anti-QoS provision of Snowe-Dorgan and Markey in a note to Sen. Boxer, comments on tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s Senate hearing, and on Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s acting as a spokesman for admitted ignorance.\n\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rsquo; writes about me, then thinks better of it\u0026rdquo; (June 15, 2006) A post from the HOTI blog about me, recovered from Google cache. (Most of the content is actually excerpted from my own blog, with a bit of HOTI commentary.)\n\u0026ldquo;The New Republic supports net neutrality, based on error\u0026rdquo; (June 15, 2006) The editors of The New Republic join the crowds of net neutrality supporters who incorrectly think that common carriage requirements have applied to ISPs and the Internet.\n\u0026ldquo;Douglas Ross\u0026rsquo;s Network Neutrality Index\u0026rdquo; (June 16, 2006) A link to an index of blog posts by an advocate of net neutrality regulation.\n\u0026ldquo;Demonization of adversaries is wrong, Matt Stoller\u0026rdquo; (June 16, 2006) A criticism of part of Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s presentation at YearlyKos.\n\u0026ldquo;Andrew Kantor changes his mind on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (June 16, 2006) The USA Today technology columnist no longer supports net neutrality regulations.\n\u0026ldquo;Matt Stoller lies about site blocking\u0026rdquo; (June 18, 2006) Matt Stoller falsely attributes a problem between Craigslist.org and Cox\u0026rsquo;s PC firewall software to the kind of discriminatory site blocking he thinks net neutrality regulations are needed to prevent\u0026ndash;after already being informed of the real cause.\n\u0026ldquo;Update on Cox blocking of Craigslist\u0026rdquo; (June 20, 2006) Update on who\u0026rsquo;s said what, and a bit more detail on the underlying problem in which I disagree with placing blame on Craigslist.\n\u0026ldquo;Content providers and ISPs: who really has the stronger hand?\u0026quot; (June 21, 2006) A look at a case of \u0026ldquo;reverse network neutrality\u0026rdquo; involving ESPN360 blocking access to ISPs.\n\u0026ldquo;The future of connectivity options\u0026rdquo; (June 22, 2006) Telco 2.0 looks at a variety of business models for different types of connectivity and projections for how they will change in significance over the next decade. It would be a bad idea to impose regulations which stifle innovation by prohibiting some business models.\n\u0026ldquo;Matt Stoller refuses to come clean\u0026rdquo; (June 22, 2006) Matt Stoller, caught in falsehood, tries to avoid responsibility for his statements and instead accuses others of being \u0026ldquo;lying liars.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;A version of network neutrality I can endorse\u0026rdquo; (June 22, 2006) I attempt to put forth a minimal, non-FCC-regulated version of \u0026ldquo;Lippard Network Neutrality\u0026rdquo; that I think is reasonable, and explain how it differs from what many network neutrality advocates are supporting.\n\u0026ldquo;Craigslist no longer uses TCP window size of 0\u0026rdquo; (July 14, 2006) Update on the Craigslist/Cox issue.\n\u0026ldquo;VoIP quality degradation shows need for prioritization\u0026rdquo; (July 27, 2006) Brix Networks study shows quality of VoIP calls has declined over the last 18 months due to competition for network resources.\n\u0026ldquo;ACLU incompetence and misinformation on net neutrality\u0026rdquo; (November 3, 2006) The ACLU comes out in support of network neutrality, making many of the same erroneous arguments which have been debunked here before, such as confusing common carriage with IP-layer nondiscrimination.\n\u0026ldquo;Netroots and telecom\u0026rdquo; (July 19, 2008) Discussion about the description of the Netroots Nation \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom\u0026rdquo; panel and an Art Brodsky column about it.\n\u0026ldquo;New Markey/Eshoo net neutrality bill\u0026rdquo; (August 3, 2009) Brief comments on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nTom, thanks for the reference. Pretty good article, though I have an aversion to the eminent domain strategy... I agree with him about the difficulty in backing the telco side--they have been rent-seeking monopolists who have been extremely poor at innovation, but I think nationalizing them would make that problem even worse.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/net-neutrality-index.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis post serves as an index to the net neutrality posts on The Lippard Blog.  I\u0026rsquo;ll update this post with any future posts on the subject.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/02/net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 12, 2006) Critique of Bill Thompson\u0026rsquo;s argument for net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/02/geddes-on-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Geddes on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (February 14, 2006) Comment on and link to good Martin Geddes blog post on net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/commoncauseorg-spamming-for-net.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Commoncause.org: Spamming for \u0026rsquo;net neutrality\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (March 9, 2006) How Common Cause deluged Mark Cuban with spam after depicting him with devil horns for not backing net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/04/talking-points-memo-gets-it-completely.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Talking Points Memo gets it completely wrong on COPE Act\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003e(April 22, 2006) Critique of Josh Marshall and Art Brodsky\u0026rsquo;s bogus claim that the bill transfers control of the Internet to the telcos (who have a much smaller percentage of consumer Internet customers in the U.S. than the cable companies).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-in-defense-of-net.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Misinformation in defense of net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 7, 2006) Critique of Adam Green and Matt Stoller who repeat the common misconception that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet, which is the basis of their calling Mike McCurry a liar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-last-mile.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and Last-Mile Connectivity: An Analogy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 8, 2006) An analogy about net neutrality and last-mile connectivity in terms of taxicabs, in an attempt to elucidate some of the major points and misconceptions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-pace-of-innovation.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and the Pace of Innovation\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 17, 2006) A look at the pace of innovation in the Bell System under monopoly in light of calls for nationalization of \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; (as though there is one such thing) by net neutrality advocates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-from-save-internet.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Misinformation from \u0026lsquo;Save the Internet\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (May 19, 2006) A critique of \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s critique of the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; flash animation cartoon, which seems to repeat the common confusion that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/bad-unintended-consequences-of-hr-5417.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bad unintended consequences of HR 5417\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 19, 2006) A criticism of the Sensenbrenner net neutrality bill.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/yglesias-on-mccurry.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yglesias on McCurry\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 19, 2006) Critique of Matthew Yglesias on net neutrality guest blogging at Talking Points Memo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-fair-use.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality and Fair Use\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 22, 2006) Disagreement with Larry Lessig about an analogy between net neutrality and fair use.  (I tend to agree with Lessig on intellectual property issues, at least about the dangers of ever-extending copyright terms, lack of registration requirements, and DRM.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/hillary-clinton-and-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hillary Clinton and Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 23, 2006) The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton\u0026rsquo;s support of net neutrality on the grounds of protecting free speech (as pointed out by Adam Thierer).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Consumer broadband last-mile competition in the Phoenix metropolitan area\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 24, 2006) A summary of actual broadband options in the Phoenix area, listing eight separate providers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-expands-to-absurdity.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality expands to absurdity\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 24, 2006) Critique of net neutrality advocate Jim Durbin, who thinks corporate web filters are a violation (which presumably he thinks should be made illegal). Also comment on Glenn Harlan Reynolds on pirate WiFi in the enterprise.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/newmark-vs-mccurry-on-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Newmark vs. McCurry on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 24, 2006) Comment on Craig Newmark\u0026rsquo;s debate with Mike McCurry in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e, in which Newmark is mightily confused about the technical facts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/dave-siegel-on-qos-and-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dave Siegel on QoS and net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 26, 2006) Link to Dave Siegel blog post that summarizes how QoS is used in Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network, and to a presentation by Xiao Xipeng on the same topic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/save-internet-fighting-astroturf-with_26.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Save the Internet: Fighting astroturf with astroturf\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 26, 2006) How \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; has generated astroturfed letters-to-the-editor while condemning astroturf from the telcos.  I condemn both.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/more-on-last-mile-options-in-phoenix.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;More on last-mile options in Phoenix\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 27, 2006) A response to criticisms of my list Phoenix-area broadband options from Douglas Ross.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/abstract-factory-on-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Abstract Factory on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (May 31, 2006) A link to a good commentary on net neutrality and astroturfing telco shills.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/kevin-drum-gets-it-wrong-on-net.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Kevin Drum gets it wrong on net neutrality and common carriage\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 1, 2006) Kevin Drum repeats the common misconception that common carriage requirements have applied to the Internet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/worst-net-neutrality-analogy-ever.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Worst net neutrality analogy ever?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  (June 1, 2006) A critique of Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s horrible sidewalk analogy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/george-ou-explains-qos-to-russell-shaw.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;George Ou explains QoS to Russell Shaw\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 10, 2006) In a ZDnet debate, George Ou gives a good simple explanation of QoS to someone who wants to regulate something he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/martin-geddes-on-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Martin Geddes on net neutrality, federalism, and U.S. vs. EU\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Link to a nice piece on Geddes\u0026rsquo; Telepocalypse blog where he provides links to his past positions on network neutrality and compares the U.S. to EU, and their respective regulatory regimes to networks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/verizons-thomas-tauke-on-net.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Verizon\u0026rsquo;s Thomas Tauke on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Quote from and link to a Declan McCullagh interview with Thomas Tauke of Verizon about net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/bennett-on-free-press-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bennett on Free Press net neutrality \u0026lsquo;facts\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (June 12, 2006) Richard Bennett shows that the Free Press\u0026rsquo;s network neutrality facts are mostly fiction, argues against the anti-QoS provision of Snowe-Dorgan and Markey in a note to Sen. Boxer, comments on tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s Senate hearing, and on Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s acting as a spokesman for admitted ignorance.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/hands-off-internet-writes-about-me.html\"\u003e\u0026quot;\u0026lsquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rsquo; writes about me, then thinks better of it\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 15, 2006) A post from the HOTI blog about me, recovered from Google cache.  (Most of the content is actually excerpted from my own blog, with a bit of HOTI commentary.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/new-republic-supports-net-neutrality.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The New Republic supports net neutrality, based on error\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 15, 2006) The editors of The New Republic join the crowds of net neutrality supporters who incorrectly think that common carriage requirements have applied to ISPs and the Internet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/douglas-rosss-network-neutrality-index.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Douglas Ross\u0026rsquo;s Network Neutrality Index\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 16, 2006) A link to an index of blog posts by an advocate of net neutrality regulation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/demonization-of-adversaries-is-wrong.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Demonization of adversaries is wrong, Matt Stoller\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 16, 2006) A criticism of part of Matt Stoller\u0026rsquo;s presentation at YearlyKos.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/andrew-kantor-changes-his-mind-on-net.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Andrew Kantor changes his mind on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 16, 2006) The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eUSA Today\u003c/span\u003e technology columnist no longer supports net neutrality regulations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/matt-stoller-lies-about-site-blocking.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Matt Stoller lies about site blocking\u0026rdquo; \u003c/a\u003e(June 18, 2006) Matt Stoller falsely attributes a problem between Craigslist.org and Cox\u0026rsquo;s PC firewall software to the kind of discriminatory site blocking he thinks net neutrality regulations are needed to prevent\u0026ndash;after already being informed of the real cause.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/update-on-cox-blocking-of-craigslist_20.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Update on Cox blocking of Craigslist\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 20, 2006) Update on who\u0026rsquo;s said what, and a bit more detail on the underlying problem in which I disagree with placing blame on Craigslist.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/content-providers-and-isps-who-really.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Content providers and ISPs: who really has the stronger hand?\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e (June 21, 2006) A look at a case of \u0026ldquo;reverse network neutrality\u0026rdquo; involving ESPN360 blocking access to ISPs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/future-of-connectivity-options.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The future of connectivity options\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 22, 2006) Telco 2.0 looks at a variety of business models for different types of connectivity and projections for how they will change in significance over the next decade.  It would be a bad idea to impose regulations which stifle innovation by prohibiting some business models.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/matt-stoller-refuses-to-come-clean.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Matt Stoller refuses to come clean\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 22, 2006) Matt Stoller, caught in falsehood, tries to avoid responsibility for his statements and instead accuses others of being \u0026ldquo;lying liars.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/06/version-of-net-neutrality-i-can.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;A version of network neutrality I can endorse\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (June 22, 2006) I attempt to put forth a minimal, non-FCC-regulated version of \u0026ldquo;Lippard Network Neutrality\u0026rdquo; that I think is reasonable, and explain how it differs from what many network neutrality advocates are supporting.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/07/craigslist-no-longer-uses-tcp-window.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Craigslist no longer uses TCP window size of 0\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 14, 2006) Update on the Craigslist/Cox issue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/07/voip-quality-degradation-shows-need.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;VoIP quality degradation shows need for prioritization\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 27, 2006) Brix Networks study shows quality of VoIP calls has declined over the last 18 months due to competition for network resources.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2006/11/aclu-incompetence-and-misinformation.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;ACLU incompetence and misinformation on net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (November 3, 2006) The ACLU comes out in support of network neutrality, making many of the same erroneous arguments which have been debunked here before, such as confusing common carriage with IP-layer nondiscrimination.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2008/07/netroots-and-telecom.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Netroots and telecom\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (July 19, 2008) Discussion about the description of the Netroots Nation \u0026ldquo;Big Telecom\u0026rdquo; panel and an Art Brodsky column about it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2009/08/new-markeyeshoo-net-neutrality-bill.html\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;New Markey/Eshoo net neutrality bill\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (August 3, 2009) Brief comments on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Net Neutrality Index"},{"content":"Radley Balko at The Agitator reports on some examples of innocent people murdered by police (and for some reason they almost never get prosecuted), along with his current research tally:\nThe tally thus far from my research: 42 innocent people killed in paramilitary raids. 57 if you include police officers. Another 20 were nonviolent offenders (recreational pot smokers, gamblers, etc.) shot and killed either by accident or because they mistook raiding police for criminal intruders and were killed when they attempted to defend themselves, their homes, and/or their families.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/42-innocent-people-killed-by-police.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026661.php\"\u003eRadley Balko at The Agitator reports\u003c/a\u003e on some examples of innocent people murdered by police (and for some reason they almost never get prosecuted), along with his current research tally:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe tally thus far from my research: 42 innocent people killed in paramilitary raids. 57 if you include police officers. Another 20 were nonviolent offenders (recreational pot smokers, gamblers, etc.) shot and killed either by accident or because they mistook raiding police for criminal intruders and were killed when they attempted to defend themselves, their homes, and/or their families.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"42 innocent people killed by police paramilitary raids"},{"content":"Two studies reported in The Economist (pay content) show that income mobility\u0026ndash;the ability for children to be more economically successful than their parents\u0026ndash;is much greater in Scandanavian countries and the UK than it is in the United States:\nThe authors rank countries on a scale from one to zero, with one meaning no mobility at all (ie, a child\u0026rsquo;s income is identical to its parents\u0026rsquo;) and zero meaning perfect mobility (ie, a child\u0026rsquo;s income bears no relation to its parents\u0026rsquo;). The Nordic countries score around 0.2 for sons, Britain scores 0.36, and America 0.54 (meaning that a son\u0026rsquo;s earnings are more closely related to his father\u0026rsquo;s in America). These figures are roughly in line with the conclusions of other studies, though they have the advantage of using standardised data, thereby minimising problems of definition that usually bedevil cross-country comparisons.\nThe biggest finding of the studies is not, however, about overall social mobility, but about mobility at the bottom. This is the most distinctive feature of Nordic societies, and it is also perhaps the most significant difference with America. Around three-quarters of sons born into the poorest fifth of the population in Nordic countries in the late 1950s had moved out of that category by the time they were in their early 40s. In contrast, only just over half of American men born at the bottom later moved up. This is another respect in which Britain is more like the Nordics than like America: some 70% of its poorest sons escaped from poverty within a generation. The Nordic countries are distinctive in one further way: the sons born at the bottom (into the poorest fifth) earn roughly the same as those born a rung above them (the second-poorest fifth). In other words, Nordic countries have almost completely snapped the link between the earnings of parents and children at and near the bottom. That is not at all true of America. The effect is attributed to two things\u0026ndash;welfare programs and education. If the consequences of U.S. policies include not only growing income inequality but declining income mobility, the latter undermines a standard argument for the former, and provides a motivation for changing policies.\n(The studies are “Non-linearities in Inter-generational Earnings Mobility” (Royal Economics Society, London) and “American Exceptionalism in a New Light” (Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn). Both are by Bernt Bratsberg, Knut Roed, Oddbjorn Raaum, Robin Naylor, Markus Jantti, Tor Eriksson, Eva Osterbacka and Anders Bjorklund. The Economist also criticized the U.S. for declining income mobility in 2005, in an article that is available in full without a subscription.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI wonder if The Economist will print the following letter to the Editor, from Professor Don Boudreaux:29 May 2006The Editor, The Economist25 St James's StreetLondon SW1A 1HGUnited KingdomSIR:Scandinavians do move more readily than Americans from one income quintile to another (Charlemagne, May 27). This fact, however, provides less support than you suppose for the conclusion that Scandinavians enjoy more income mobility than do Americans.One important reason for Scandinavians' greater mobility among income quintiles is the fact that these quintiles are smaller and more compressed than in America. For example, while in Sweden top quintile earners earn approximately 3.3 times what bottom quintile earners earn, in America top-quintile earners' income is 7.3 times larger than the income of bottom-quintile earners. America's greater span of incomes means that the same change in income that moves a Swede to a different income quintile is less likely to move an American to a different quintile.Sincerely,Donald J. BoudreauxChairman, Department of EconomicsGeorge Mason UniversityFairfax, VA 22030dboudrea@gmu.eduwww.cafehayek.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/conditions-of-income-mobility.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo studies \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_GJSNQRG\"\u003ereported in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e (pay content)\u003c/a\u003e show that income mobility\u0026ndash;the ability for children to be more economically successful than their parents\u0026ndash;is much greater in Scandanavian countries and the UK than it is in the United States:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe authors rank countries on a scale from one to zero, with one meaning no mobility at all (ie, a child\u0026rsquo;s income is identical to its parents\u0026rsquo;) and zero meaning perfect mobility (ie, a child\u0026rsquo;s income bears no relation to its parents\u0026rsquo;). The Nordic countries score around 0.2 for sons, Britain scores 0.36, and America 0.54 (meaning that a son\u0026rsquo;s earnings are more closely related to his father\u0026rsquo;s in America). These figures are roughly in line with the conclusions of other studies, though they have the advantage of using standardised data, thereby minimising problems of definition that usually bedevil cross-country comparisons.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e The biggest finding of the studies is not, however, about overall social mobility, but about mobility at the bottom. This is the most distinctive feature of Nordic societies, and it is also perhaps the most significant difference with America. Around three-quarters of sons born into the poorest fifth of the population in Nordic countries in the late 1950s had moved out of that category by the time they were in their early 40s. In contrast, only just over half of American men born at the bottom later moved up. This is another respect in which Britain is more like the Nordics than like America: some 70% of its poorest sons escaped from poverty within a generation. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Conditions of income mobility"},{"content":"How is it that a 1999 high school graduate, \u0026ldquo;GOP Babe Val,\u0026quot; who recently worked as an administrative assistant for Arizona Right-to-Life had over $10,000 to donate [SEE CORRECTION BELOW] to the Nevada Republican Party between July and November 2004 (also see here) while working as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney \u0026lsquo;04 Inc. of Las Vegas? In a May 31 Arizona Republic website feature of restaurant reviews from readers, Pachulski is the contributor and mentions that she has \u0026ldquo;moved to D.C.\u0026quot;\nAnother Arizona donor of over $9000 to the Nevada Republican Party in 2004 [SEE CORRECTION BELOW], Gabi Plumlee, works for the Republican National Committee in D.C.\nUPDATE July 8, 2006: As pointed out in the comments by \u0026ldquo;Kellen Rose\u0026rdquo;, the Center for Public Integrity website I linked to for \u0026ldquo;over $10,000 to donate\u0026rdquo; has things exactly backwards\u0026ndash;this isn\u0026rsquo;t a record of donations (though CPI has extensive databases of donations to politicians and political campaigns), but a record of expenditures by the Nevada GOP to out-of-state entities. That is, Pachulski and Plumlee were on the GOP payroll, not making contributions. I failed to see what was staring me in the face on that website.\nAccordingly, I apologize to Ms. Pachulski and Ms. Plumlee for my inaccurate statements and the suggestion that there was something unusual going on here. I\u0026rsquo;ll leave this post as a historical record of my error and the correction. It was a stupid mistake.\nUPDATE (September 24, 2007): Valerie Pachulski points out that she was not an administrative assistant at Arizona Right to Life, but the Director of Events.\nMichael Bryan (2006-12-09):\nAre you suggesting that these people are acting as a conduit to conceal contributions to the Nevada GOP?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat appears to be a plausible explanation consistent with contribution-laundering activities by other Republicans. It's also possible, however, that they have big trust funds and enough inherited wealth to throw around without getting so much as a tax deduction for it.\nlovelygirl (2006-12-09):\nIt could also be possible that they have a life and you don't. I'm suggesting that you save your cash and support something you believe in, as well!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLisa, the difference is that I have an occupation and salary which would not make a large cash donation mysterious. I do, as a matter of fact, save my cash and support things I believe in--there's a list of organizations my wife and I support on my web page, though political campaigns are not on the agenda. As for whether I have a life, that could be subject to debate, but I'm pretty happy with it.Are you commenting because these women are friends of yours? If so, can you explain where their donated money came from?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nKellen, you're absolutely right--I was thrown off by the CPI website, since I was expecting to see donor lists (they have extensive databases of campaign donations), and I didn't see the obvious staring me right in the face. The money flows listed are going in exactly the opposite direction to what I suggested.I owe an apology to Pachulski and Plumlee, and will update the post accordingly.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/valerie-pachulski-and-gabi-plumlees.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow is it that a \u003ca href=\"http://static.namesdatabase.com/schools/AZ/ParadiseValley/ParadiseValleyHighSchool.html\"\u003e1999 high school graduate\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3UBONTRRIC0QD\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;GOP Babe Val,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e who recently worked as an \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrtl.org/about/Anderson.htm\"\u003eadministrative assistant\u003c/a\u003e for \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=15453937\" posts=\"\"\u003eArizona Right-to-Life\u003c/a\u003e had \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/partylines/committee_search.aspx?act=commte\u0026amp;sub=7\u0026amp;commid=NV108\u0026amp;cycle=2004\u0026amp;linkid=AZ\"\u003eover $10,000 to donate\u003c/a\u003e [SEE CORRECTION BELOW] to the Nevada Republican Party between July and November 2004 (also see \u003ca href=\"http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/expend.asp?txtName=p\u0026amp;Cmte=RPC\u0026amp;amp;amp;amp;cycle=2004\u0026amp;sort=name\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e) while working as a \u003ca href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/%7Eaction/2004/bush/bushorgnv.html\"\u003evolunteer for Bush-Cheney \u0026lsquo;04 Inc. of Las Vegas\u003c/a\u003e? \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn a May 31 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e website feature of restaurant reviews from readers, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dining/articles/0531bigmouth.html\"\u003ePachulski is the contributor\u003c/a\u003e and mentions that she has \u0026ldquo;moved to D.C.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/partylines/committee_search.aspx?act=commte\u0026amp;sub=7\u0026amp;commid=NV108\u0026amp;cycle=2004\u0026amp;linkid=AZ\"\u003eArizona donor of over $9000 to the Nevada Republican Party in 2004\u003c/a\u003e [SEE CORRECTION BELOW], Gabi Plumlee, \u003ca href=\"http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00003418/203075/sb/21B/3\"\u003eworks\u003c/a\u003e for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.wonkette.com/politics/funny-pictures/monday-monday-monday-with-the-r-n-c-157797.php\"\u003eRepublican National Committee\u003c/a\u003e in D.C.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE July 8, 2006:  As pointed out in the comments by \u0026ldquo;Kellen Rose\u0026rdquo;, the Center for Public Integrity website I linked to for \u0026ldquo;over $10,000 to donate\u0026rdquo; has things exactly backwards\u0026ndash;this isn\u0026rsquo;t a record of donations (though CPI has extensive databases of donations to politicians and political campaigns), but a record of expenditures by the Nevada GOP to out-of-state entities.  That is, Pachulski and Plumlee were on the GOP payroll, not making contributions.  I failed to see what was staring me in the face on that website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAccordingly, I apologize to Ms. Pachulski and Ms. Plumlee for my inaccurate statements and the suggestion that there was something unusual going on here.  I\u0026rsquo;ll leave this post as a historical record of my error and the correction.  It was a stupid mistake.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 24, 2007):  Valerie Pachulski points out that she was not an administrative assistant at Arizona Right to Life, but the Director of Events.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Valerie Pachulski and Gabi Plumlee's 2004 GOP contributions"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve returned from the Skeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot; and there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much warring between speakers, though there were some debates among audience members between sessions. The most controversial speaker was John Stossel, who was the only person to proclaim himself a global warming skeptic (and did so without having witnessed any of the day\u0026rsquo;s presentations, which made it abundantly clear that (a) there is global warming and (b) it is caused by human activity). Michael Crichton managed to avoid the global warming subject in his talk, though in the Q\u0026amp;A he agreed that (a) there is no debate that the globe is warming (contrary to the position in State of Fear that it\u0026rsquo;s an artifact of city \u0026ldquo;heat islands\u0026rdquo;), (b) there is no debate that CO2 has increased as a result of human activity, and (c) there\u0026rsquo;s no debate about the greenhouse effect.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll comment more later on at least some of the talks, but for now I\u0026rsquo;ll refer you to conference presenter Jonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s live-blogged descriptions of the talks and Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s summary of his initial debate presentation.\nUPDATE June 7, 2006: Also check out desmogblog\u0026rsquo;s coverage of the conference.\nUPDATE (July 18, 2009): Looks like my only further comment was on Jonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s talk on federal environmental regulation, though I did post this on the JREF Forums on June 30, 2008:\nI very much enjoyed the Skeptics Society \u0026ldquo;Environmental Wars\u0026rdquo; conference. I thought it was a good mix of long-term history on climate change (Prothero), current scientific evidence on climate change (Schneider), what to do about it from an economic perspective (Arnold), what doesn\u0026rsquo;t work from a regulatory perspective (Adler), what wild and crazy mitigation techniques might be available and what they\u0026rsquo;ll cost (Benford), and a little debate on politicization of science (Mooney vs. Bailey), and a couple of climate change skeptics who didn\u0026rsquo;t really address any of the science presented during the conference (Crichton and Stossel). It was also a chance to see one of Paul MacCready\u0026rsquo;s last public appearances before he died.\nMichael Crichton and John Stossel were no Mike Reiss (Simpsons writer who gave a hilarious talk in 2005), but I still thought they provided entertainment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/skeptics-society-conference.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve returned from the Skeptics Society \u003ca href=\"http://www.environmentalwars.org/\"\u003econference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e and there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much warring between speakers, though there were some debates among audience members between sessions.  The most controversial speaker was John Stossel, who was the only person to proclaim himself a global warming skeptic (and did so without having witnessed any of the day\u0026rsquo;s presentations, which made it abundantly clear that (a) there is global warming and (b) it is caused by human activity).  Michael Crichton managed to avoid the global warming subject in his talk, though in the Q\u0026amp;A he agreed that (a) there is no debate that the globe is warming (contrary to the position in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState of Fear\u003c/span\u003e that it\u0026rsquo;s an artifact of city \u0026ldquo;heat islands\u0026rdquo;), (b) there is no debate that CO2 has increased as a result of human activity, and (c) there\u0026rsquo;s no debate about the greenhouse effect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll comment more later on at least some of the talks, but for now I\u0026rsquo;ll refer you to conference presenter Jonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://commonsblog.org/archives/000688.php\"\u003elive-blogged descriptions of the talks\u003c/a\u003e and Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/06/my_debate_comments.php\"\u003esummary of his initial debate presentation\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE June 7, 2006:  Also check out \u003ca href=\"http://www.desmogblog.com/Skeptics-Conference\"\u003edesmogblog\u0026rsquo;s coverage of the conference\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 18, 2009): Looks like my only further comment was on \u003ca href=\"/2006/06/adler-on-federal-environmental.html\"\u003eJonathan Adler\u0026rsquo;s talk on federal environmental regulation\u003c/a\u003e, though I did post \u003ca href=\"http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3821567\u0026amp;postcount=129\"\u003ethis on the JREF Forums on June 30, 2008\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI very much enjoyed the Skeptics Society \u0026ldquo;Environmental Wars\u0026rdquo; conference. I thought it was a good mix of long-term history on climate change (Prothero), current scientific evidence on climate change (Schneider), what to do about it from an economic perspective (Arnold), what doesn\u0026rsquo;t work from a regulatory perspective (Adler), what wild and crazy mitigation techniques might be available and what they\u0026rsquo;ll cost (Benford), and a little debate on politicization of science (Mooney vs. Bailey), and a couple of climate change skeptics who didn\u0026rsquo;t really address any of the science presented during the conference (Crichton and Stossel). It was also a chance to see one of Paul MacCready\u0026rsquo;s last public appearances before he died.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael Crichton and John Stossel were no Mike Reiss (Simpsons writer who gave a hilarious talk in 2005), but I still thought they provided entertainment.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics Society conference"},{"content":"Part II of my interview on Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s Security Catalyst podcast is now available.\n(Part I is here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/part-ii-of-botnets-interview.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePart II of my interview on Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s Security Catalyst podcast is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/TSC-Botnet2.mp3\"\u003enow available\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Part I is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/~lippard/TSC-Botnet1.mp3\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Part II of Botnets Interview"},{"content":"Kevin Drum writes:\nThe 1996 Telecommunications Act defined two different types of service, information services (IS) and telecommunications services (TS), and cable companies were originally classified as IS and telephone companies as TS.Right so far, except that Internet service is classified as an information service, not a telecommunications service. Keep that in mind as you read his next two sentences:\nAlthough both cable companies and telcos provide local internet access, the backbone of the internet is carried exclusively by telcos, which were regulated as common carriers under the tighter TS rules. The common carrier rules effectively enforced the principles of net neutrality on the internet backbone.This is just wrong. Common carriage rules require telcos to allow third parties to connect to their telephony networks or to use their networks for private line connections between two points. Common carriage does not require interconnection to anybody\u0026rsquo;s Internet network. There is not and there has never been a legal requirement that any Internet service provider or backbone allow all comers to connect to their Internet services\u0026ndash;and thank goodness, because that means ISPs and NSPs can deny services to spammers or other entities that don\u0026rsquo;t agree to their terms of service/acceptable use policies. ISPs qua ISPs and NSPs qua NSPs are not common carriers!\nWhile there are Internet backbone links that use telco networks, these were typically the networks of long-distance telcos (AT\u0026amp;T, Sprint, MCI) or next-generation fiber telcos (Qwest, Global Crossing, Level 3) rather than the last-mile telcos (such as the Regional Bell Operating Companies). Now AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and Qwest have been acquired by or acquired last-mile telcos (SBC, Verizon, and U.S. West, respectively), but the last-mile telcos subject to common carriage didn\u0026rsquo;t build the backbones.\nWhy do net neutrality advocates continue to get this wrong, even after being corrected repeatedly?\nUPDATE: BTW, I should note that Harold Feld (who has commented here) has specifically agreed that he\u0026rsquo;d like to impose common carriage requirements on broadband providers (meaning that last-mile telcos and cable companies would have to allow others to provide services over their access networks, so you could buy Earthlink, AOL, Yahoo, or Panix Internet service from your local cable company or telco\u0026ndash;the situation would be like it used to be with DSL providers and local telcos). I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what other elements he would advocate\u0026ndash;whether he\u0026rsquo;d apply similar requirements to wireless providers (requiring them to let anybody be a mobile virtual network operator), ban QoS, ban anything less than full Internet service over any medium, count non-residential services as broadband, etc. (And Harold, if you read this, I\u0026rsquo;m still waiting to hear responses from you here (on your own blog) and here (on mine, about HR 5417).)\nBy contrast, Timothy Karr at Save the Internet has explicitly denied that he\u0026rsquo;s equating net neutrality and common carriage, but hasn\u0026rsquo;t said what he does mean. (And Tim, you haven\u0026rsquo;t responded to my final comment here on your own blog, either.)\nUPDATE June 11, 2006: Tim Lee rightly questions Drum on this point as well, asking whether Internet backbones have really been under such regulations, which leads to some further information about peering agreements. I\u0026rsquo;ve pointed him to this post from last November about peering (see in particular the linked Geoff Huston paper).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/kevin-drum-gets-it-wrong-on-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKevin Drum \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_05/008884.php\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe 1996 Telecommunications Act defined two different types of service, information services (IS) and telecommunications services (TS), and cable companies were originally classified as IS and telephone companies as TS.\u003c/blockquote\u003eRight so far, except that Internet service is classified as an information service, not a telecommunications service.  Keep that in mind as you read his next two sentences:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAlthough both cable companies and telcos provide local internet access, the backbone of the internet is carried exclusively by telcos, which were regulated as common carriers under the tighter TS rules. The common carrier rules effectively enforced the principles of net neutrality on the internet backbone.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is just wrong.  Common carriage rules require telcos to allow third parties to connect to their \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003etelephony\u003c/span\u003e networks or to use their networks for private line connections between two points.  Common carriage does \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003enot\u003c/span\u003e require interconnection to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eanybody\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/span\u003e Internet network.  There is not and there has never been a legal requirement that any Internet service provider or backbone allow all comers to connect to their Internet services\u0026ndash;and thank goodness, because that means ISPs and NSPs can deny services to spammers or other entities that don\u0026rsquo;t agree to their terms of service/acceptable use policies.  ISPs qua ISPs and NSPs qua NSPs are \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003enot common carriers\u003c/span\u003e!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile there are Internet backbone links that use telco networks, these were typically the networks of long-distance telcos (AT\u0026amp;T, Sprint, MCI) or next-generation fiber telcos (Qwest, Global Crossing, Level 3) rather than the last-mile telcos (such as the Regional Bell Operating Companies).  Now AT\u0026amp;T, MCI, and Qwest have been acquired by or acquired last-mile telcos (SBC, Verizon, and U.S. West, respectively), but the last-mile telcos subject to common carriage didn\u0026rsquo;t build the backbones.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy do net neutrality advocates continue to get this wrong, even after being corrected repeatedly?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  BTW, I should note that Harold Feld (who has commented here) has specifically agreed \u003ca href=\"http://blog.pff.org/archives/2006/03/print/002721.html\"\u003ethat he\u0026rsquo;d like to impose common carriage requirements on broadband providers\u003c/a\u003e (meaning that last-mile telcos and cable companies would have to allow others to provide services over their access networks, so you could buy Earthlink, AOL, Yahoo, or Panix Internet service from your local cable company or telco\u0026ndash;the situation would be like it used to be with DSL providers and local telcos).  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what other elements he would advocate\u0026ndash;whether he\u0026rsquo;d apply similar requirements to wireless providers (requiring them to let anybody be a mobile virtual network operator), ban QoS, ban anything less than full Internet service over any medium, count non-residential services as broadband, etc.  (And Harold, if you read this, I\u0026rsquo;m still waiting to hear responses from you \u003ca href=\"http://www.wetmachine.com/item/500\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (on your own blog) and \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/bad-unintended-consequences-of-hr-5417.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (on mine, about HR 5417).)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy contrast, Timothy Karr at \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/misinformation-from-save-internet.html\"\u003eSave the Internet\u003c/a\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/05/save_the_intern.html#comment-17522510\"\u003eexplicitly denied that he\u0026rsquo;s equating net neutrality and common carriage\u003c/a\u003e, but hasn\u0026rsquo;t said what he does mean.  (And Tim, you haven\u0026rsquo;t responded to my final comment \u003ca href=\"http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/05/18/see-moby-talk-about-internet-freedom/#comments\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e on your own blog, either.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE June 11, 2006:  Tim Lee \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/039164.php\"\u003erightly questions Drum on this point\u003c/a\u003e as well, asking whether Internet backbones have really been under such regulations, which leads to some further information about peering agreements.  I\u0026rsquo;ve pointed him to \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/level-3-depeers-cogent.html\"\u003ethis post from last November about peering\u003c/a\u003e (see in particular the linked Geoff Huston paper).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kevin Drum gets it wrong on net neutrality and common carriage"},{"content":"Einzige and I will both be at the Skeptics Society conference in Pasadena tomorrow and Saturday and would welcome greetings from any blog readers, assuming the intersection of our readership and the conference attendees is non-null. At least I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to say hello to Chris Mooney, whose blog I read regularly\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/environmental-wars-skeptics-society.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEinzige and I will both be at the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.environmentalwars.org/index.php\"\u003eSkeptics Society conference\u003c/A\u003e in Pasadena tomorrow and Saturday and would welcome greetings from any blog readers, assuming the intersection of our readership and the conference attendees is non-null.  At least I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to say hello to Chris Mooney, \u003cA HREF = \"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/05/the_environmental_wars_part_ii.php\"\u003ewhose blog\u003c/A\u003e I read regularly\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"The Environmental Wars\" Skeptics Society conference"},{"content":"From Susan Crawford:\nThink of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk. The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along. The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn\u0026rsquo;t get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call \u0026ndash; they\u0026rsquo;re just providing a neutral pipe.If you\u0026rsquo;re going to use a sidewalk as an analogy for a communications pipeline, then the users of the sidewalk need to stand for the communications traffic. Then the question becomes, should users of different types have to pay different rates for the use of the sidewalk to those who build and maintain it (not to the sidewalk itself!). Further, the sidewalk has to keep being made bigger to support all the traffic being carried, and some of the users are in a bigger hurry and are likely to collide with those who aren\u0026rsquo;t, and some of the latter are holding big gatherings between their residences, like a block party in the neighborhoods. Should those guys get to do that for free, or at the same cost as their neighbors who aren\u0026rsquo;t interested in a block party?\nUPDATE: I had issued a trackback ping to Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s blog post which was accepted, but apparently she decided to delete it. That\u0026rsquo;s rather ironic\u0026ndash;she supports net neutrality, but blocks critical trackbacks to her blog. I guess her support of net neutrality isn\u0026rsquo;t based on any principle of fairness or free speech.\nUPDATE (June 8, 2006): Susan Crawford responded to a query about this, and attributed the deletion to automatic anti-spam defenses, and invited me to re-issue a trackback, which I will shortly do. I retract the last two sentences of the above update, and apologize to her for my erroneous inference.\nUPDATE (March 13, 2008): Actually, I never regained the ability to issue trackbacks or even to reference this blog\u0026rsquo;s URL in comments posted on Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s Blogware blog, so all of my comments there refer to my discord.org website instead. She moved her blog in late 2007, but I\u0026rsquo;ve not commented or issued any trackbacks to the new one.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/06/worst-net-neutrality-analogy-ever.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/31/1998151.html\"\u003eSusan Crawford\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThink of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk.  The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along.  The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn\u0026rsquo;t get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call \u0026ndash; they\u0026rsquo;re just providing a neutral pipe.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re going to use a sidewalk as an analogy for a communications pipeline, then the users of the sidewalk need to stand for the communications traffic.  Then the question becomes, should users of different types have to pay different rates for the use of the sidewalk to those who build and maintain it (not to the sidewalk itself!).   Further, the sidewalk has to keep being made bigger to support all the traffic being carried, and some of the users are in a bigger hurry and are likely to collide with those who aren\u0026rsquo;t, and some of the latter are holding big gatherings between their residences, like a block party in the neighborhoods.  Should those guys get to do that for free, or at the same cost as their neighbors who aren\u0026rsquo;t interested in a block party?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  I had issued a trackback ping to Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s blog post which was accepted, but apparently she decided to delete it.  That\u0026rsquo;s rather ironic\u0026ndash;she supports net neutrality, but blocks critical trackbacks to her blog.  I guess her support of net neutrality isn\u0026rsquo;t based on any principle of fairness or free speech.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (June 8, 2006):  Susan Crawford responded to a query about this, and attributed the deletion to automatic anti-spam defenses, and invited me to re-issue a trackback, which I will shortly do.  I retract the last two sentences of the above update, and apologize to her for my erroneous inference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 13, 2008):  Actually, I never regained the ability to issue trackbacks or even to reference this blog\u0026rsquo;s URL in comments posted on Susan Crawford\u0026rsquo;s Blogware blog, so all of my comments there refer to my discord.org website instead.  She moved her blog in late 2007, but I\u0026rsquo;ve not commented or issued any trackbacks to the new one.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Worst net neutrality analogy ever?"},{"content":"No, that\u0026rsquo;s not an imperative, it\u0026rsquo;s a description of a new area of law explored in a recent law journal article.\n(Hat tip to John Lynch at stranger fruit.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/fuck-jurisprudence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo, that\u0026rsquo;s not an imperative, it\u0026rsquo;s a description of \u003ca href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=896790\"\u003ea new area of law\u003c/a\u003e explored in a recent law journal article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to John Lynch at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2006/05/probably_the_best_title_ever.php\"\u003estranger fruit\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fuck jurisprudence"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Cog\u0026rdquo; at The Abstract Factory has a good, thoughtful post on net neutrality\u0026ndash;and gets hit by astroturfing shills in the comments who almost seem to be trying to change his mind. (He comments further on the shills, a few of which have appeared in the comments at this blog, here.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/abstract-factory-on-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Cog\u0026rdquo; at The Abstract Factory \u003ca href=\"http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2006/05/notes-on-network-neutrality.html\"\u003ehas a good, thoughtful post on net neutrality\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and gets hit by astroturfing shills in the comments who almost seem to be trying to change his mind.  (He comments further on the shills, a few of which have appeared in the comments at this blog, \u003ca href=\"http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2006/05/anti-network-neutrality-astroturfing.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Abstract Factory on net neutrality"},{"content":"As I noted in my \u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo; post on March 4, my web sites still get periodic visits from Church of Scientology IP addresses, at that time most recently on January 1. They just came by again on May 22, attempting to look at my online copy of Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s biography of L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, as well as the article I co-authored with Jeff Jacobsen, \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet,\u0026rdquo; and my skeptical links pages on Scientology. Here\u0026rsquo;s an example web log entry:\n[Mon May 22 11:42:00 2006] [error] [client 205.227.165.11] client denied by server configuration: path deleted/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html, referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en\u0026amp;lr=\u0026amp;amp;rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-09%2CGGLD%3Aen\u0026amp;q=Jim+Lippard+Scientology\nThen, yesterday afternoon, this blog got a visit and a comment (from a brand-new Blogger account) on my post on Arizona legislators accepting trips from the Church of Scientology in return for sponsoring bills for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s front group the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. This poster, asking why I don\u0026rsquo;t support Scientology\u0026rsquo;s mental health efforts, came across the entry by Googling for \u0026ldquo;CCHR\u0026rdquo;:\nTime of Visit May 29 2006 4:49:43 pm\nLast Page View May 29 2006 4:59:42 pm\nVisit Length 9 minutes 59 seconds\nPage Views 4\nReferring URL http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg\u0026amp;amp;q=cchr\nSearch Engine search.blogger.com\nSearch Words cchr\nVisit Entry Page http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\nVisit Exit Page http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\nOut Click a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills\nhttp://www.azcentral...cientologists11.html\nTime Zone UTC-6:00\nThis individual\u0026rsquo;s source IP, however, is an Ameritech/SBC IP out of Springfield, Illinois (not a big Scientology stronghold like Los Angeles or Clearwater, FL). Illinois is, however, the location where Scientology won a battle to get an exhibit that compares psychiatry to Nazis put back on public property in the Thompson Center\u0026ndash;so it looks like the CCHR Chicago has a bit of pull.\nAnyway, this is a good opportunity to recommend reading Janet Reitman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Inside Scientology\u0026rdquo; from Rolling Stone magazine from February, an excellent overview and introduction to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s beliefs and history.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/scientologists-pay-another-web-visit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I noted in my \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology Sampler\u0026rdquo; post\u003c/a\u003e on March 4, my web sites still get periodic visits from Church of Scientology IP addresses, at that time most recently on January 1.  They just came by again on May 22, attempting to look at my online copy of Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/bfm/\"\u003ebiography of L. Ron Hubbard, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBare-Faced Messiah\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003ethe article I co-authored with Jeff Jacobsen\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet,\u0026rdquo; and my \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Cults_and_Religions/Scientology/\"\u003eskeptical links pages on Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s an example web log entry:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003e[Mon May 22 11:42:00 2006] [error] [client 205.227.165.11] client denied by server configuration: path deleted/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html, referer: \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en\u0026amp;lr=\u0026amp;amp;rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-09%2CGGLD%3Aen\u0026amp;q=Jim+Lippard+Scientology\"\u003ehttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en\u0026amp;lr=\u0026amp;amp;rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-09%2CGGLD%3Aen\u0026amp;q=Jim+Lippard+Scientology\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/pre\u003eThen, yesterday afternoon, this blog got a visit and a comment (from a brand-new Blogger account) on \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html\"\u003emy post on Arizona legislators accepting trips from the Church of Scientology\u003c/a\u003e in return for sponsoring bills for Scientology\u0026rsquo;s front group the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.  This poster, asking why I don\u0026rsquo;t support Scientology\u0026rsquo;s mental health efforts, came across the entry by Googling for \u0026ldquo;CCHR\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cpre\u003eTime of Visit           May 29 2006 4:49:43 pm\u003cbr /\u003eLast Page View          May 29 2006 4:59:42 pm\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Length            9 minutes 59 seconds\u003cbr /\u003ePage Views              4\u003cbr /\u003eReferring URL           \u003ca href=\"http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg\u0026amp;amp;q=cchr\"\u003ehttp://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg\u0026amp;amp;q=cchr\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Engine           search.blogger.com\u003cbr /\u003eSearch Words            cchr\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Entry Page                \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVisit Exit Page         \u003ca href=\"http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\"\u003ehttp://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOut Click               a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral...cientologists11.html\"\u003ehttp://www.azcentral...cientologists11.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTime Zone               UTC-6:00\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/pre\u003eThis individual\u0026rsquo;s source IP, however, is an Ameritech/SBC IP out of Springfield, Illinois (not a big Scientology stronghold like Los Angeles or Clearwater, FL).  Illinois is, however, the location where Scientology \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientologywatch.org/postnuke/modules.php?op=modload\u0026name=News\u0026amp;file=article\u0026sid=86\u0026amp;amp;mode=thread\u0026order=0\u0026amp;thold=0\"\u003ewon a battle to get an exhibit that compares psychiatry to Nazis put back on public property in the Thompson Center\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;so it looks like the CCHR Chicago has a bit of pull.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnyway, this is a good opportunity to recommend reading Janet Reitman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9363363/inside_scientology\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Inside Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eRolling Stone\u003c/span\u003e magazine from February, an excellent overview and introduction to Scientology\u0026rsquo;s beliefs and history.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientologists pay another web visit"},{"content":"The London Independent reported yesterday that more than 60 detainees at Guantanamo Bay were under 18 at their time of capture, including some boys as young as 14. One child prisoner, Mohamed el Gharani, was accused of involvement in a 1998 al Qaeda plot in London, even though he was 12 years old at the time and living with his parents in Saudi Arabia.\nBritish officials say the UK had been assured that juveniles would be held in a special facility called \u0026ldquo;Camp Iguana,\u0026rdquo; but only three juveniles were treated as children.\nA senior Pentagon spokesman says that no one being held now at Guantanamo Bay is a juvenile, though London lawyers say there are at least 10 still being held who were 14 or 15 when captured. (Those statements are not contradictory.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/children-detained-at-guantanamo-bay.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe London \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIndependent\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article620704.ece\"\u003ereported yesterday\u003c/a\u003e that more than 60 detainees at Guantanamo Bay were under 18 at their time of capture, including some boys as young as 14.  One child prisoner, Mohamed el Gharani, was accused of involvement in a 1998 al Qaeda plot in London, even though he was 12 years old at the time and living with his parents in Saudi Arabia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBritish officials say the UK had been assured that  juveniles would be held in a special facility called \u0026ldquo;Camp Iguana,\u0026rdquo; but only three juveniles were treated as children.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA senior Pentagon spokesman says that no one being held now at Guantanamo Bay is a juvenile, though London lawyers say there are at least 10 still being held who were 14 or 15 when captured.  (Those statements are not contradictory.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Children detained at Guantanamo Bay"},{"content":"Paul Nelson, who has usually been known as one of the few honest major advocates of intelligent design at the otherwise disreputable Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, has fallen temptation to make his case stronger by being deceptive about what one of his opponents said in a debate. Ed Brayton gives the full account.\nUPDATE (May 30, 2006): The discussion continues, with Paul Nelson\u0026rsquo;s involvement in the comments, here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/dishonesty-from-paul-nelson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Nelson, who has usually been known as one of the few honest major advocates of intelligent design at the otherwise disreputable Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, has fallen temptation to make his case stronger by being deceptive about what one of his opponents said in a debate.  Ed Brayton gives \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/paul_nelsons_outrageous_lie.php\"\u003ethe full account\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 30, 2006):  The discussion continues, with Paul Nelson\u0026rsquo;s involvement in the comments, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/paul_nelsons_continued_lie_1.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dishonesty from Paul Nelson"},{"content":"Despite the attempted astro-turfing by beverage distributors, Arizona Senate Bill 1276 has passed. Actually, the wholesalers agreed to a compromise\u0026ndash;the bill only allows shipping by wineries that produce less then 20,000 gallons of wine per year (and which obtain an Arizona domestic farm winery license and pay state taxes). The fact that the wholesalers agreed to a compromise based on wine production shows that they didn\u0026rsquo;t really believe their own arguments that this created a new risk of underage drinking.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/wine-shipping-in-arizona-to-become.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDespite the attempted \u003ca href=\"/2006/04/protect-21-arizona-astroturfing.html\"\u003eastro-turfing by beverage distributors\u003c/a\u003e, Arizona Senate Bill 1276 \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0528wine-bill0528.html\"\u003ehas passed\u003c/a\u003e.  Actually, the wholesalers agreed to a compromise\u0026ndash;the bill only allows shipping by wineries that produce less then 20,000 gallons of wine per year (and which obtain an Arizona domestic farm winery license and pay state taxes).  The fact that the wholesalers agreed to a compromise based on wine production shows that they didn\u0026rsquo;t really believe their own arguments that this created a new risk of underage drinking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wine shipping in Arizona to become legal"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve posted this as an update on the original post, but it\u0026rsquo;s also worth bringing out as a separate posting. I\u0026rsquo;ve made a few minor changes here (e.g., to insert the point about Cable America that is made elsewhere in the original post).\nDouglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list \u0026ldquo;bogus\u0026rdquo; and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He rightly dismisses Cable America from the list on the grounds that Cox entered into an agreement to acquire them in January of this year\u0026ndash;I grant his point and that reduces the number of broadband providers by one.\nHe dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists.\nDoug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon\u0026rsquo;s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn\u0026rsquo;t viable doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are two different services\u0026ndash;he doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband.\nHe says he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why I put the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s municipal WiFi network in the list\u0026ndash;I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler\u0026rsquo;s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.)\nFinally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality.\nDoug\u0026rsquo;s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use. But it\u0026rsquo;s important to note that the net neutrality bills in Congress do count all these options and place regulations on them\u0026ndash;they count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction, whether wired or wireless. I don\u0026rsquo;t see Doug volunteering to exempt things he doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as valid broadband options from broadband net neutrality restrictions.\nIt appears to me that Doug\u0026rsquo;s position is that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service.\n(UPDATE: I was just looking at Doug\u0026rsquo;s blogroll, and he\u0026rsquo;s pretty strong evidence that net neutrality positions don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily correlate with political positions. Doug\u0026rsquo;s political blog links include Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and the dishonest nutcases at \u0026ldquo;Stop the ACLU.\u0026rdquo;)\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\n\u003e\u003e\u003e Why doesn't Covad count?Jim, their last-mile service is simple a re-branded RBOC offering. And, unless I see evidence to the contrary, my contention is that the RBOC's ground rules will still apply to Covad on that loop. Ground rules that include blocking, filtering, impeding and other acts of \"network protection\".Your post specifically mentioned last-mile alternatives and not backbones, so let's stay within that scope for this discussion.Regarding cable resellers/Brand-X, actually I never said I would count them as additional last-mile providers. I simply wanted to call attention (for those unfamiliar with the case) to the fact that even Covad-style reselling arrangements had been blown out of the water. What I'm trying to call out is the read lack of separate choices for last-mile connectivity.\u003e\u003e\u003e I also think your reasons for dismissing EVDO are bogus--if you were consistent in your net neutrality position, you would say that they *do* count as competition, but need to be forced to allow all traffic.Of course they do! But that's not what your post was about! We're talking about the present, right? You described EVDO as a legitimate alternative to fiber and I'm saying (for reasons good or bad) that it's not. You can't run jack squat on EVDO based upon those TOS. Fighting wireless providers on their TOSes is a separate issue altogether, so let's not confuse the two.\u003e\u003e\u003e You don't seem to *have* a consistent position.Sure I do, but I'm not discussing how me might fight EVDO's TOS right now. I'm pwning your list of \"nine\" last-mile providers.\u003e\u003e\u003e Tempe is right smack in the middle of the metropolitan Phoenix area...Well, I'm not counting it because the linked article from the Phoenix media (dated May 9, 2006) specifically notes that muni-wideband isn't available except at the airport and a couple of other locations. Maybe you could correct your local media first. And that doesn't even delve into whether we can run streaming media, P2P, applications, etc. over that connection. My guess is... no, but I'd be happy to evaluate evidence to the contrary.\u003e\u003e\u003e SRP Telecom has also found a different way to deploy metro fiber--above ground, above their 64Kv power lines.That sounds promising - and when that's widely deployed and available, I'll gladly count that as #3...\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCovad's service used *Covad's* Internet network. If you buy their service, you don't see any Qwest layer 3 equipment. Your contention that RBOC rules about blocking, filtering, etc. will apply has never been the case to date.My list is a list of broadband options, irrespective of capabilities or terms of service. Your complaint about EVDO TOS and satellite capabilities don't change that they are broadband. You still haven't answered why, if they don't count as broadband, you don't give them a pass on net neutrality requirements.You still miss the point on Tempe. The City of Phoenix has free WiFi at the airport, but no muni WiFi. Tempe has (or will soon have) border-to-border muni WiFi. (Tempe's western border is just east of the Phoenix airport.) The article you reference is exclusively about the City of Phoenix; my post was about the entire Phoenix metropolitan area, which includes Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, and Gilbert--areas between which people regularly commute for work and recreation.By the HR 5417 definition of broadband, there are at least 8 broadband providers in the Phoenix metro area. That was my point, and your reduction of the list to two doesn't mean there are only two broadband providers, it means there are only two broadband providers that you would consider purchasing service from if you lived here.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMy first sentence in that last comment was supposed to say \"uses,\" not \"used.\"\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\nIn your original post, you noted that Covad has exited the residential/consumer DSL business. I'm not sure why you're counting them, especially if Qwest would disallow business-service to residences.Again, on EVDO, you claim it's an option. Ignoring net neutrality requirements for the moment... it's not an option! I can't stream video, audio, share files, run a server, etc. Put simply - it doesn't count unless it can let us run the apps -- today -- that a real fiber connection does.I don't know the Phoenix area enough (never had the pleasure of visiting) to comment on whether Tempe is part of metro Phoenix. Suffice it to say that when most of the city proper isn't covered, I'd hardly consider that a viable option for most folks.I'm unsure why you keep bringing up 5417. That's one of a dozen or so bills in play and it wasn't even mentioned in your original post. That's kind of an arbitrary definition of broadband, compared with some of the other writings out there.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\n\"In your original post, you noted that Covad has exited the residential/consumer DSL business. I'm not sure why you're counting them, especially if Qwest would disallow business-service to residences.\"By shifting to a completely different argument to discount Covad and ignoring my response on the other, are you conceding on the other argument? The reason I listed it even though they are not in the consumer broadband business is because they will provide business service to a residence, and I verified specifically that they can provide service to my home.\"Again, on EVDO, you claim it's an option. Ignoring net neutrality requirements for the moment... it's not an option! I can't stream video, audio, share files, run a server, etc. Put simply - it doesn't count unless it can let us run the apps -- today -- that a real fiber connection does.\"Your argument is about something more specific than broadband, then. Why not be straightforward and specific about your argument rather than vague and constantly shifting? If your argument is specifically about \"a real fiber connection,\" then argue for \"net neutrality for fiber to the home.\" Again, I listed these because they are broadband services available to me at my home.\"I don't know the Phoenix area enough (never had the pleasure of visiting) to comment on whether Tempe is part of metro Phoenix. Suffice it to say that when most of the city proper isn't covered, I'd hardly consider that a viable option for most folks.\"There are a multitude of mapping programs available on the Internet. You can also verify the claim by searching for terms like \"Phoenix Tempe metro\" and seeing results like \"Phoenix Area Movie Theaters\" with addresses in Tempe. City of Tempe and City of Chandler WiFi are not options for people who don't live in those areas, of course. But they *will* have effect on competition in the Phoenix area. (Tempe has a huge student population and Chandler has a huge population of young technology workers and their families. These are both groups that have influence on technology in the area.)\"I'm unsure why you keep bringing up 5417. That's one of a dozen or so bills in play and it wasn't even mentioned in your original post. That's kind of an arbitrary definition of broadband, compared with some of the other writings out there.\"I've referred to HR 5417 because it is an example of a broadband bill that you have specifically supported and it's the one that's passed committee. Its definition of broadband is virtually the same as several of the others--they set the 200 kbps bandwidth in one direction as the primary criterion. I haven't seen one that restricts it to wired service. 5417 didn't even appear to restrict it to residential services (perhaps the latest manager's amendment fixes that defect), but my list didn't include providers who can bring \"broadband\" under that definition to colo spaces and carrier hotels. That list would be several times longer but not relevant to what services I can actually get at my home.What do you think is a better definition of broadband, and wouldn't you rather see HR 5417 changed to use it?\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nEVDO Update NOV 06...Yes, Verizon has horrible \"unlimited\" TOS, but Sprint does not. I work directly with both carriers, and sell a lot of the KR1 mobile routers, which Verizon does not like. Sprint promotes router usage...they sell one themselves! Additionally, Sprint is now rolling out the Rev A network. This will allow Voip, and all the other apps of true broadband, all for $59.99 a month. Quite a deal.As far as the Muni Wifi goes, in my experiece so far, it is a joke. Yes, it will certainly be usable for a portion of the users, but if you really need to be \"Mobile\" forget it. The coverage is like swiss cheese. EVDO is solid...I run my entire business off my EVDO card and never have issues. Thanks, Steve www.MoreMobileInternet.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/more-on-last-mile-options-in-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve posted this as an update on the \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003eoriginal post\u003c/a\u003e, but it\u0026rsquo;s also worth bringing out as a separate posting.  I\u0026rsquo;ve made a few minor changes here (e.g., to insert the point about Cable America that is made elsewhere in the original post).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003eDouglas Ross (directorblue)\u003c/a\u003e has called \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html\"\u003ethis list\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;bogus\u0026rdquo; and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count.  He rightly dismisses Cable America from the list on the grounds that Cox entered into an agreement to acquire them in January of this year\u0026ndash;I grant his point and that reduces the number of broadband providers by one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest.  My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon\u0026rsquo;s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn\u0026rsquo;t viable doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are \u003cem\u003etwo different services\u003c/em\u003e\u0026ndash;he doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe says he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why I put the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s municipal WiFi network in the list\u0026ndash;I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler\u0026rsquo;s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoug\u0026rsquo;s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use.  But it\u0026rsquo;s important to note that the net neutrality bills in Congress \u003cem\u003edo\u003c/em\u003e count all these options and place regulations on them\u0026ndash;they count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction, whether wired or wireless.  I don\u0026rsquo;t see Doug volunteering to exempt things he doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as valid broadband options from broadband net neutrality restrictions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt appears to me that Doug\u0026rsquo;s position is that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(UPDATE:  I was just looking at Doug\u0026rsquo;s blogroll, and he\u0026rsquo;s pretty strong evidence that net neutrality positions don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily correlate with political positions.  Doug\u0026rsquo;s political blog links include Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/more_fallacious_antiaclu_rheto.php\"\u003edishonest\u003c/A\u003e \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/08/volokh_on_stopt.php\"\u003enutcases\u003c/A\u003e at \u0026ldquo;Stop the ACLU.\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on last-mile options in Phoenix"},{"content":"Dave Siegel has given a very brief introduction to QoS (with some specifics about how it\u0026rsquo;s engineered into Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network today) and chimed in on the net neutrality debate.\nA bit more detail about how QoS has been a problem in some networks but successfully engineered into Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network can be found in this presentation by Dr. Xiao Xipeng of Alcatel, \u0026ldquo;The Elusive QoS\u0026rdquo; (PDF). Xiao Xipeng was one of the designers of QoS for Global Crossing and is the author or co-author of numerous IETF standards for QoS.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/dave-siegel-on-qos-and-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDave Siegel has \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/tiered-peering\"\u003egiven a very brief introduction to QoS\u003c/a\u003e (with some specifics about how it\u0026rsquo;s engineered into Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network today) and chimed in on the net neutrality debate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA bit more detail about how QoS has been a problem in some networks but successfully engineered into Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s network can be found in this presentation by Dr. Xiao Xipeng of Alcatel, \u003ca href=\"http://www.eurongi2006.upv.es/download/Xiao_Xipeng_NGI2006.pdf\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Elusive QoS\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  Xiao Xipeng was one of the designers of QoS for Global Crossing and is the author or co-author of numerous IETF standards for QoS.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dave Siegel on QoS and net neutrality"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m about a month late in linking to this, but Mark Chu-Carroll has done a good job of debunking the Dembski\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress.\u0026rdquo; He shows that Dembski\u0026rsquo;s use of the NFL theorems is dishonest and inappropriate (even after he\u0026rsquo;s repeatedly been told that, even by the discoverer, David Wolpert), involves jargon-filled misdirection, and proves nothing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/good-math-bad-math-blog-on-dembskis.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m about a month late in linking to this, but Mark Chu-Carroll \u003ca href=\"http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/04/dembski-and-displacement.html\"\u003ehas done a good job of debunking\u003c/a\u003e the Dembski\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress.\u0026rdquo;   He shows that Dembski\u0026rsquo;s use of the NFL theorems is dishonest and inappropriate (even after he\u0026rsquo;s repeatedly been told that, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm\"\u003eeven by the discoverer, David Wolpert\u003c/a\u003e), involves jargon-filled misdirection, and proves nothing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Good Math, Bad Math blog on Dembski's \"Searching Large Spaces\""},{"content":"As the InOpinion blog has pointed out, Save the Internet-generated form letters have been published as letters to the editor here, here, and here. This is ironic given their complaints about astroturf by \u0026ldquo;Hands Off The Internet.\u0026quot;\nInOpinion has a project to identify astroturf where it appears, which appears to be nonpartisan.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/save-internet-fighting-astroturf-with_26.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the \u003ca href=\"http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=698\"\u003eInOpinion blog\u003c/a\u003e has pointed out, \u003ca href=\"http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/fp/editor.jsp?letter_KEY=443\u0026t=STITemplate.dwt\u0026amp;person_media_ID=1397\"\u003eSave the Internet-generated form letters\u003c/a\u003e have been published as letters to the editor \u003ca href=\"http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060516/OPINION03/605160302/1014/OPINION\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory\u0026story_id=138102\u0026amp;format=html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/letters_to_the_editor/article/0,,TCP_24461_4698888,00.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  This is ironic given their complaints about astroturf by \u0026ldquo;Hands Off The Internet.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eInOpinion has \u003ca href=\"http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=675\"\u003ea project to identify astroturf\u003c/a\u003e where it appears, which appears to be nonpartisan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Save the Internet: Fighting astroturf with astroturf"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been a bit lax on reporting blog carnivals\u0026hellip; the 35th Skeptics Circle is up at Skeptico\u0026rsquo;s blog, and includes a contribution from Einzige.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/35th-skeptics-circle.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been a bit lax on reporting blog carnivals\u0026hellip; the 35th Skeptics Circle is up at \u003ca href=\"http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2006/05/35th_skeptics_c.html\"\u003eSkeptico\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, and includes a contribution from \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/\"\u003eEinzige\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"35th Skeptics Circle"},{"content":"Net neutrality advocates claim that telcos (meaning the local telco providers) have a \u0026ldquo;virtual monopoly\u0026rdquo; on consumer broadband, or that they have a duopoly with the cable companies. In many regions, this is true, or nearly so (thus the \u0026ldquo;virtual\u0026rdquo; qualifier). (Note, however, that the statement becomes transparently false if it\u0026rsquo;s not restricted to consumer broadband. There are far more options for Internet service for businesses, especially businesses that can put equipment into colo facilities.)\nBut if you look at the metropolitan Phoenix area, there are quite a few competing consumer broadband providers, e.g.:\n* Qwest, the Regional Bell Operating Company formerly known as U.S. West, provides DSL services (as well as higher bandwidth wired connections from fractional T1 and up, and I think they still offer ISDN). This is one of the evil telcos that is enemy number one for many net neutrality advocates.\n* Covad, a DSL provider that uses Qwest\u0026rsquo;s last-mile network in Phoenix. In 2003 Covad acquired all of Qwest\u0026rsquo;s business DSL customers, and it appears that they will or have exited the consumer broadband market\u0026ndash;however, they can provide business-class DSL service to my residence (which is interesting because Qwest says they can\u0026rsquo;t). Covad is also actively pursuing WiBro (wireless broadband, a Korean standard) and WiMax (wireless broadband, an Intel standard that will now be compatible with WiBro).\n* Cox Communications, a cable company, provides cable modem services. (They also have higher speed connections for businesses.) Cox has done very well in recent years in taking away customers from Qwest for voice telephone services, as well as out-competing Qwest\u0026rsquo;s DSL offering for consumer Internet access. I currently use Cox Business Services to my home.\n* Cable America, a competing cable company, provides cable modem services in parts of the east Valley. (UPDATE May 27, 2006: As Douglas Ross (directorblue) has pointed out, Cox entered into an agreement to acquire Cable America in January 2006, so this doesn\u0026rsquo;t really count as an independent broadband provider.)\n* Sprint Broadband, a long distance and wireless provider, offers a point-to-point wireless broadband service (previously People\u0026rsquo;s Choice, which Sprint acquired). Sprint also offers EV-DO mobile wireless service.\n* Alltel, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO mobile wireless service (which is actually using Sprint\u0026rsquo;s EV-DO network).\n* Verizon Wireless, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO (3G) mobile wireless service.\n* HughesNet, a satellite-based wireless provider (previously DirecWay, and DirecPC before that), offers satellite connectivity (with high latency as a drawback imposed by the laws of physics).\n* City of Tempe municipal wireless service, provided and managed by NeoReach. Similar service is being deployed to the City of Chandler, also by NeoReach.\nThere are no doubt others I\u0026rsquo;ve missed\u0026ndash;if you\u0026rsquo;re willing to pay for business service, many providers can get that service to your home, which includes services like a T1 connection (where your provider, if not Qwest, will have to pay monthly local loop charges to Qwest and pass that along in your bill) and may include other sources of wireless service. When I had a Global Crossing T1 to my home, the local loop costs were slightly over $200/mo\u0026ndash;consumer broadband, by contrast, costs substantially less for more bandwidth, at least in the downstream direction, when delivered to a residence. On the other hand, bandwidth costs in a colo facility can be as low as $10/Mbit/mo, in quantity, i.e., $1000/mo for a 100Mbps Ethernet port. You pay more per Mbit to get data to your residence because of the costs of getting the data out to all those residences and the overhead of dealing with a lot more customers whose individual bills are much smaller than those of a business, and who, on the average, need a lot more hand-holding and support.\nSalt River Project, a power generation and transmission company (and a water delivery/irrigation company) that operates in Phoenix, also has about 1,000 route-miles of fiber throughout the city. It resells its excess capacity to businesses (including Qwest) from the entity SRP Telecom. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if they would ever consider using their network to provide consumer services themselves, but there\u0026rsquo;s clearly the potential for a consumer broadband provider to purchase capacity on their network in order to move data around the city.\nIn Phoenix, if one provider decided to start blocking access to or degrading certain kinds of services that their customers want, there are multiple alternative options. Any provider that engaged in such behavior would see an increase in churn, to the benefit of its competition.\nUPDATE (May 27, 2006): Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list \u0026ldquo;bogus\u0026rdquo; and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists. Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon\u0026rsquo;s EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn\u0026rsquo;t viable doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are two different services\u0026ndash;he doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband. He says he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why I put the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s municipal WiFi network in the list\u0026ndash;I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler\u0026rsquo;s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.) Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality.\nDoug\u0026rsquo;s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use (even though the proposed net neutrality bills count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t restrict it to wireline services), and that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThank you, Mike. I appreciate the compliment and the link.Unfortunately, buytelco.net doesn't like my phone number or service address--it tells me I need to supply *more* info (after I already did), filling in my phone number with all 9's.Ah--found the problem--buytelco.net is using an out-of-date zip code directory. My home changed zip codes to a new zipcode back in 2001, but I frequently find systems that barf on the new zipcode, and only work with the old one.Buytelco only identifies NetZero (dialup) and HughesNet for my home for residential providers, but seems to indicate that a number of business broadband solutions are available (letting me choose Home Office DSL, Small Business SDSL, T1, and T3).Qwest has actually told me I now qualify for their home VDSL service with digital TV, but I want the ability to have static IPs and run services (so I can do things like connect to the IPv6 Internet).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIf the telco slow tier is faster than anybody else's fast tier, then what exactly is the complaint about \"degrading\" service by putting it in the slow tier?Surely the complaint of net neutrality advocates is not that telcos are going to provide better best-effort Internet service than the competition, and therefore must be stopped.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, I'm paying $89/mo for 1.5Mbps down/384 Mbps up... I'd love to have subsidized fiber to the home.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMike: I'm looking into BPL for you. I know that there was a field trial in 2004 in Cottonwood, Arizona (near Prescott) by Electric Broadband LLC with Arizona Public Service and Mountain Telecommunications (a CLEC), which led to a lot of complaints from ham radio operators about interference problems. I'll let you know what I find out.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRedbank:How is that scenario any different from the \"unfairness\" of having different access speeds to competing content providers, one of whom is paying extra to put their content closer to their customers through Akamai, and one of whom has everything in a single colo space with a cheap GigE link from a tier 2 provider?If Verizon is providing iTunes speeds higher than anybody else, but Napster speeds even faster, I don't see that Apple or the Verizon customer has anything at all to complain about. BTW, I think you can improve your case slightly by changing the example to something involving traffic highly sensitive to latency and jitter that requires large amounts of bandwidth--HDTV is the realistic paradigm case.But then the question becomes if Fox and CBS are willing to pay for access to provide HDTV over telco facilities and YouTube is not, how is that unfair? The cable companies have pretty much this model today--you don't get YouTube videos as a cable TV channel, it only comes over the Internet portion of the service. Should that be *illegal*? Net neutrality advocates seem to say yes, it should, and everybody should have access to run their own cable TV channel, over that reserved cable bandwidth, without having to pay the cable companies for it.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDon't tell Akamai they're not in the content delivery business, their marketing team won't be happy to hear that. (Likewise for Phoenix-based Limelight Networks.) Point taken, though--they aren't providing the pipes to the consumer. But they *are* paying many consumer providers for bandwidth! You won't find Ed Whitacre using Akamai as an example of somebody not paying AT\u0026T for the use of their network; unlike Google, Akamai connects directly to AT\u0026T. (I must add that I think Whitacre's comment was ridiculous--Google is not free-riding on AT\u0026T's network. If he wants Google's content to stop traversing his network it's easy enough for him to have it blocked by nullrouting Google's IPs on his network. But of course his customers would rightly be infuriated.)How is Verizon acting as a \"gatekeeper\" if they're not blocking anything? They're offering differentiation, not discrimination (see Mark Goldberg on that distinction).Why shouldn't they be allowed to build new infrastructure and reserve part of it for those who are willing to pay to provide services on it? Suppose a cell phone company creates a new service that allows you to download TV shows. All of those that exist today are partnerships between the cell provider and specific owners of content, not open-ended Internet access. Should that be illegal?You modified my cable example--there's an equivalence between downloading ABC content over the Internet and downloading YouTube content over the Internet via a cable modem in *exactly* the same way there would be an equivalence between downloading ABC content and downloading YouTube content over the \"public Internet\" component of fiber to the home. But the HD cable channels are coming over reserved bandwidth alongside your Internet. Can you characterize a distinction between the mechanisms involved in my cell example, my cable example, and the Verizon fiber example that explains why they should be treated differently from a regulatory standpoint? (I don't think there's a *functional* reason, but there may be a historical one--namely, that the telcos got free access to public right of ways, get a share of universal service fees, and had the benefit of decades of regional monopoly status. But I think the right change to make there is to fix those aspects of the telco model so they aren't getting subsidies and free rides, which seems to be the way things are going.)Would it be satisfactory to you if Verizon was required to *unbundle* any digital television or other service offering so that you had a choice of using the entire available bandwidth on the fiber for Internet access only?BTW, I really appreciate your thoughtful discussion here--getting into these details is *essential* for any valid discussion of net neutrality issues, where most of what's occurring in the blogosphere is the emotional exchange of catch-phrases.\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\n\u003e\u003e How is Verizon acting as a \"gatekeeper\" if they're not blocking anything? I'll pick apart your list later, but try running VoIP or any streaming service over EVDO -- or any wi-max offering for that matter.Can't do it. Violates the TOS. It's blocked.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\ndirectorblue:These guys seem to disagree with you about whether it's doable.Are you saying that *every* EV-DO provider and WiMax provider's terms of service prohibits streaming audio and video? If so, please provide supporting evidence. BTW, I agree that EV-DO is on the low end for bandwidth among those I listed (but it is fast enough to qualify as broadband under the proposed \"net neutrality\" bills), and I pointed out the latency issues with satellite. As RedbankTV pointed out, fiber to the home is faster than all of the others today.When you \"pick apart\" my list, please be specific about your facts, the conclusions you infer from them regarding what regulations you think need to be in place and how they will actually do what you want. Thanks.\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\nVerizon's terms of service for EVDO:\"Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess:Subject to VZAccess Acceptable Use Policy, available on www.verizonwireless.com. NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess data sessions may be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force and field service automation). Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess services cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, or (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess is for individual use only and is not for resale. We reserve right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred, deny or terminate service, without notice, to anyone we believe is using NationalAccess or BroadbandAccess in any manner prohibited above or whose usage adversely impacts our network or service levels. Verizon Wireless reserves the right to protect its network from harm, which may impact legitimate data flows. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of Customer Agreement term.\"This type of TOS agreement is typical. And it will only get worse when there just two remaining telcos.\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\nAnd no one's saying it's not possible. I'm saying VZ is blocking plenty of services today.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDoug (directorblue): You've proved your point on the Verizon EVDO TOS. Do you think they might have a reason for those terms on the basis of (for example) capacity? Is it your position that Verizon should be prohibited from having that clause in its TOS, even if the result would be P2P users causing network disruption for other customers? (BTW, I find the idea of using a cell phone to provide a data link to a computer for use as a soft phone to be a little convoluted--I think fixed-mobile convergence and WiFi phones makes more sense.)Tom (RedbankTV):It sounds like your underlying position is similar to mine in terms of what we want, and a willingness to examine the empirical evidence to determine what's most likely to get us there. I don't have much to disagree with, except that I question your statement that \"In theory there would be few barriers to entry if I wanted to build my own cell network and sell tv shows over it.\" The biggest barrier is obtaining spectrum licenses. I favor more of a market approach (which, if you read the book \"Wireless Nation,\" is what actually happened independently of the FCC to get cellular networks off the ground, in something the players called \"the Big Monopoly game\").\ndirectorblue (2006-12-09):\nI've critiqued your list here using everything but brass knuckles and a two-by-four. Your list is, in fact, stark evidence that no last-mile competition exists and net neutrality provisions must be in place until real competition is in place.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIt's been noted that I omitted Cingular's EVDO service (256kbps).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/consumer-broadband-last-mile.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNet neutrality advocates claim that telcos (meaning the local telco providers) have a \u0026ldquo;virtual monopoly\u0026rdquo; on consumer broadband, or that they have a duopoly with the cable companies.  In many regions, this is true, or nearly so (thus the \u0026ldquo;virtual\u0026rdquo; qualifier).  (Note, however, that the statement becomes transparently false if it\u0026rsquo;s not restricted to consumer broadband.  There are far more options for Internet service for businesses, especially businesses that can put equipment into colo facilities.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut if you look at the metropolitan Phoenix area, there are quite a few competing consumer broadband providers, e.g.:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.qwest.com/index.html\"\u003eQwest\u003c/a\u003e, the Regional Bell Operating Company formerly known as U.S. West, provides DSL  services (as well as higher bandwidth wired connections from fractional T1 and up, and I think they still offer ISDN).  This is one of the evil telcos that is enemy number one for many net neutrality advocates.\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.covad.com/\"\u003eCovad\u003c/a\u003e, a DSL provider that uses Qwest\u0026rsquo;s last-mile network in Phoenix.  In 2003 Covad acquired all of Qwest\u0026rsquo;s business DSL customers, and it appears that they will or have exited the consumer broadband market\u0026ndash;however, they can provide business-class DSL service to my residence (which is interesting because Qwest says they can\u0026rsquo;t).  Covad is also actively pursuing WiBro (wireless broadband, a Korean standard) and WiMax (wireless broadband, an Intel standard that will now be compatible with WiBro).\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.cox.com/\"\u003eCox Communications\u003c/a\u003e, a cable company, provides cable modem services.  (They also have higher speed connections for businesses.)  Cox has done very well in recent years in taking away customers from Qwest for voice telephone services, as well as out-competing Qwest\u0026rsquo;s DSL offering for consumer Internet access.  I currently use Cox Business Services to my home.\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.cableaz.com/\"\u003eCable America\u003c/a\u003e, a competing cable company, provides cable modem services in parts of the east Valley.  (UPDATE May 27, 2006:  As Douglas Ross (directorblue) has pointed out, Cox entered into an agreement to acquire Cable America in January 2006, so this doesn\u0026rsquo;t really count as an independent broadband provider.)\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.sprintbroadband.com/\"\u003eSprint Broadband\u003c/a\u003e, a long distance and wireless provider, offers a point-to-point wireless broadband service (previously People\u0026rsquo;s Choice, which Sprint acquired).  Sprint also offers EV-DO mobile wireless service.\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.alltel.com/\"\u003eAlltel\u003c/a\u003e, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO mobile wireless service (which is actually using Sprint\u0026rsquo;s EV-DO network).\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://estore.vzwshop.com/overview/wirelessinternetaccess/\"\u003eVerizon Wireless\u003c/a\u003e, a wireless provider, offers EV-DO (3G) mobile wireless service.\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://go.gethughesnet.com/HUGHES/Rooms/DisplayPages/layoutInitial?Container=com.webridge.entity.Entity%5BOID%5B91908CBE85AD4C428CCD8D5CDB016B51%5D%5D\"\u003eHughesNet\u003c/a\u003e, a satellite-based wireless provider (previously DirecWay, and DirecPC before that), offers satellite connectivity (with high latency as a drawback imposed by the laws of physics).\u003cbr /\u003e* \u003ca href=\"http://www.tempe.gov/business/wifi/\"\u003eCity of Tempe\u003c/a\u003e municipal wireless service, provided and managed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.neoreach.com/\"\u003eNeoReach\u003c/a\u003e.  Similar service is being deployed to the City of Chandler, also by NeoReach.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are no doubt others I\u0026rsquo;ve missed\u0026ndash;if you\u0026rsquo;re willing to pay for business service, many providers can get that service to your home, which includes services like a T1 connection (where your provider, if not Qwest, will have to pay monthly local loop charges to Qwest and pass that along in your bill) and may include other sources of wireless service.  When I had a Global Crossing T1 to my home, the local loop costs were slightly over $200/mo\u0026ndash;consumer broadband, by contrast, costs substantially less for more bandwidth, at least in the downstream direction, when delivered to a residence.  On the other hand, bandwidth costs in a colo facility can be as low as $10/Mbit/mo, in quantity, i.e., $1000/mo for a 100Mbps Ethernet port.  You pay more per Mbit to get data to your residence because of the costs of getting the data out to all those residences and the overhead of dealing with a lot more customers whose individual bills are much smaller than those of a business, and who, on the average, need a lot more hand-holding and support.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSalt River Project, a power generation and transmission company (and a water delivery/irrigation company) that operates in Phoenix, also has about 1,000 route-miles of fiber throughout the city.  It resells its excess capacity to businesses (including Qwest) from the entity \u003ca href=\"http://www.srpnet.com/telecom/default.aspx\"\u003eSRP Telecom\u003c/a\u003e.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know if they would ever consider using their network to provide consumer services themselves, but there\u0026rsquo;s clearly the potential for a consumer broadband provider to purchase capacity on their network in order to move data around the city.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Phoenix, if one provider decided to start blocking access to or degrading certain kinds of services that their customers want, there are multiple alternative options.  Any provider that engaged in such behavior would see an increase in churn, to the benefit of its competition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 27, 2006): Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list \u0026ldquo;bogus\u0026rdquo; and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count.  He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest.  My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter whether it\u0026rsquo;s government-mandated, it matters whether it exists.  Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon\u0026rsquo;s EVDO terms-of-service.  (His section about why WiMax isn\u0026rsquo;t viable doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.)  He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are \u003cem\u003etwo different services\u003c/em\u003e\u0026ndash;he doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband.  He says he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand why I put the City of Tempe\u0026rsquo;s municipal WiFi network in the list\u0026ndash;I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler\u0026rsquo;s metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason).  These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service.  (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.)  Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P.  At least he doesn\u0026rsquo;t say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoug\u0026rsquo;s position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use (even though the proposed net neutrality bills count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t restrict it to wireline services), and that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties.  But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Consumer broadband last-mile competition in the Phoenix metropolitan area"},{"content":"Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Mike McCurry of \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; debate \u0026ldquo;Should the Net Be Neutral?\u0026rdquo; at the Wall Street Journal. I\u0026rsquo;m struck by a number of things that Newmark says:\nDo you believe Yahoo should be allowed to outbid Google to slow down Google on people\u0026rsquo;s computers? That\u0026rsquo;s the kind of thing that the big guys are proposing.In fact, nobody has proposed slowing down anything\u0026ndash;the consumer broadband telcos have proposed adding new, higher-bandwidth physical circuits (fiber to the home) which contain virtual circuits dedicated to content with requirements for higher bandwidth and low latency and jitter, for which the primary application they have in mind is IP television. And they want to charge content providers to use those virtual circuits. Now, one can argue that dedicating bandwidth to new applications that content providers have to pay for will have a future consequence that Internet bandwidth will be consumed and not upgraded, leading to degradation for best-effort Internet services, but that requires argument to support the likelihood of that outcome in the face of competition from cable companies and wireless providers.\nWith all that empty fiber, bandwidth is not an issue. A bigger issue is that we\u0026rsquo;re running out of [Internet protocol] addresses. The new net protocols, IPv6, address that, but the big telecoms are already very late implementing that. (Hey, I\u0026rsquo;m an engineer, and their engineers talk to me.)Newmark is confusing Internet backbone bandwidth with last-mile consumer broadband bandwidth. I\u0026rsquo;ve addressed this confusion at length. BTW, IPv6 is rife with difficulties and not quite ready (or useful) for the average consumer, but my employer, Global Crossing, has been one of the first to make it widely available to its customers. (I run IPv6 on my home network via a tunnel to Global Crossing.)\nNo one\u0026rsquo;s talking about \u0026ldquo;government lawyers and regulators engineer[ing] the future of the Internet,\u0026rdquo; except, well, you, Mike. We\u0026rsquo;re trying to prevent that, and trying to get Congress to maintain the level playing field we have right now, that the FCC just tried to ruin. We\u0026rsquo;re just asking everyone to play fair.\n\u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;m being completely straight: no one\u0026rsquo;s interested in regulation in the sense you\u0026rsquo;re thinking, we just want the existing level playing field to continue… Beyond that, we\u0026rsquo;re not interested in mandating performance criteria, none of that stuff.\n\u0026hellip;\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re looking for is just fairness, a level playing field, no regulation or stuff like that. In America we believe that if you play fair and work hard, you get ahead. We don\u0026rsquo;t want the government to give special privileges to the big guys, particularly not at the expense of small business and consumers. We don\u0026rsquo;t want more regulation and we don\u0026rsquo;t need lawyers involved where the free market functions well. I guess we\u0026rsquo;re for capitalism.\nHere, Newmark is simply failing to recognize what\u0026rsquo;s in the actual network neutrality bills in Congress, which have unintended consequences about how networks are engineered, what can be in acceptable use policies, what kinds of contracts network providers are permitted to enter into with their customers, and how they can charge for access to different services\u0026ndash;rules that to date have not existed for Internet services.\nToday, many Internet providers have acceptable use policies that prohibit spam, going beyond the requirements of the relatively weak federal CAN-SPAM law. Under all of the net neutrality bills I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, providers must permit customers to send or receive any \u0026ldquo;lawful content,\u0026rdquo; which forces them to reduce their AUPs to the lowest common denominator of whatever is prohibited by law in the jurisdictions where they provide service. These bills prohibit providers in the United States from setting the conditions of contract with their customers regarding activities they consider abusive which are not codified in law. The \u0026ldquo;pink contract\u0026rdquo; would thus become a government mandate.\nUPDATE: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas back up McCurry\u0026rsquo;s statement in this debate that the FCC already has authority under Title I to prevent anti-competitive discrimination without the need for new statutory powers from Congress.\nMcCurry at the WSJ:\nAnd doesn\u0026rsquo;t the FCC have authority already (under Title I) to step in and act if necessary?Copps:\nThe Federal Communications Commission has authority under current law to ensure that broadband-access providers \u0026ndash; currently mainly cable and phone companies \u0026ndash; do not discriminate against Web-based providers of content, search services and applications, FCC commissioner Michael Copps said Tuesday.Thomas:\n“The [FCC] remains free to impose special regulatory duties on facilities-based [Internet-service providers] under its Title I ancillary jurisdiction,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in National Cable \u0026amp; Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services.This means net neutrality advocates who support the bills in Congress don\u0026rsquo;t think this is enough, and owe an explanation of specifically what powers they want to add to the FCC, what rules they want the FCC to make, and how those rules will be enforced.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/newmark-vs-mccurry-on-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCraig Newmark of Craigslist and Mike McCurry of \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114839410026160648-l8Cd7lakn_8givyNOVIeReUDNLw_20070523.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top\"\u003edebate \u0026ldquo;Should the Net Be Neutral?\u0026rdquo; at the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m struck by a number of things that Newmark says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDo you believe Yahoo should be allowed to outbid Google to slow down Google on people\u0026rsquo;s computers? That\u0026rsquo;s the kind of thing that the big guys are proposing.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn fact, nobody has proposed slowing down anything\u0026ndash;the consumer broadband telcos have proposed adding new, higher-bandwidth physical circuits (fiber to the home) which contain virtual circuits dedicated to content with requirements for higher bandwidth and low latency and jitter, for which the primary application they have in mind is IP television. And they want to charge content providers to use those virtual circuits. Now, one can argue that dedicating bandwidth to new applications that content providers have to pay for will have a future consequence that Internet bandwidth will be consumed and not upgraded, leading to degradation for best-effort Internet services, but that requires argument to support the likelihood of that outcome in the face of competition from cable companies and wireless providers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWith all that empty fiber, bandwidth is not an issue. A bigger issue is that we\u0026rsquo;re running out of [Internet protocol] addresses. The new net protocols, IPv6, address that, but the big telecoms are already very late implementing that. (Hey, I\u0026rsquo;m an engineer, and their engineers talk to me.)\u003c/blockquote\u003eNewmark is confusing Internet backbone bandwidth with last-mile consumer broadband bandwidth.  I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-last-mile.html\"\u003eaddressed this confusion at length\u003c/a\u003e. BTW, IPv6 is rife with difficulties and not quite ready (or useful) for the average consumer, but my employer, Global Crossing, has been one of the first to make it widely available to its customers. (I run IPv6 on my home network via a tunnel to Global Crossing.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNo one\u0026rsquo;s talking about \u0026ldquo;government lawyers and regulators engineer[ing] the future of the Internet,\u0026rdquo; except, well, you, Mike. We\u0026rsquo;re trying to prevent that, and trying to get Congress to maintain the level playing field we have right now, that the FCC just tried to ruin. We\u0026rsquo;re just asking everyone to play fair.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m being completely straight: no one\u0026rsquo;s interested in regulation in the sense you\u0026rsquo;re thinking, we just want the existing level playing field to continue… Beyond that, we\u0026rsquo;re not interested in mandating performance criteria, none of that stuff.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eWhat we\u0026rsquo;re looking for is just fairness, a level playing field, no regulation or stuff like that. In America we believe that if you play fair and work hard, you get ahead. We don\u0026rsquo;t want the government to give special privileges to the big guys, particularly not at the expense of small business and consumers. We don\u0026rsquo;t want more regulation and we don\u0026rsquo;t need lawyers involved where the free market functions well. I guess we\u0026rsquo;re for capitalism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eHere, Newmark is simply failing to recognize \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/bad-unintended-consequences-of-hr-5417.html\"\u003ewhat\u0026rsquo;s in the actual network neutrality bills in Congress\u003c/a\u003e, which have unintended consequences about how networks are engineered, what can be in acceptable use policies, what kinds of contracts network providers are permitted to enter into with their customers, and how they can charge for access to different services\u0026ndash;rules that to date have not existed for Internet services.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday, many Internet providers have acceptable use policies that prohibit spam, going beyond the requirements of the relatively weak federal CAN-SPAM law. Under all of the net neutrality bills I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, providers must permit customers to send or receive any \u0026ldquo;lawful content,\u0026rdquo; which forces them to reduce their AUPs to the lowest common denominator of whatever is prohibited by law in the jurisdictions where they provide service. These bills prohibit providers in the United States from setting the conditions of contract with their customers regarding activities they consider abusive which are not codified in law. The \u0026ldquo;pink contract\u0026rdquo; would thus become a government mandate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas \u003ca href=\"http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6337396.html?display=Breaking%20News\u0026referral=SUPP\u0026amp;nid=2226\"\u003eback up McCurry\u0026rsquo;s statement\u003c/a\u003e in this debate that the FCC already has authority under Title I to prevent anti-competitive discrimination without the need for new statutory powers from Congress.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114839410026160648-l8Cd7lakn_8givyNOVIeReUDNLw_20070523.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top\"\u003eMcCurry at the WSJ\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAnd doesn\u0026rsquo;t the FCC have authority already (under Title I) to step in and act if necessary?\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6337396.html?display=Breaking%20News\u0026referral=SUPP\u0026amp;nid=2226\"\u003eCopps\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Federal Communications Commission has authority under current law to ensure that broadband-access providers \u0026ndash; currently mainly cable and phone companies \u0026ndash; do not discriminate against Web-based providers of content, search services and applications, FCC commissioner Michael Copps said Tuesday.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6337396.html?display=Breaking%20News\u0026referral=SUPP\u0026amp;nid=2226\"\u003eThomas\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e“The [FCC] remains free to impose special regulatory duties on facilities-based [Internet-service providers] under its Title I ancillary jurisdiction,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in \u003ci\u003eNational Cable \u0026amp; Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis means net neutrality advocates who support the bills in Congress don\u0026rsquo;t think this is enough, and owe an explanation of specifically what powers they want to add to the FCC, what rules they want the FCC to make, and how those rules will be enforced.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Newmark vs. McCurry on net neutrality"},{"content":"Jim Durbin writes that he supports net neutrality because of fears about companies blocking access to certain websites at the enterprise. In his opinion, apparently, net neutrality not only means that ISPs can\u0026rsquo;t block access to lawful content, neither can employers. No net neutrality bills would take away the ability of enterprises to restrict corporate Internet access to business-related content and use products like web proxies, but it\u0026rsquo;s a symptom of the fuzziness of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that Mr. Durbin thinks this is a reason to advocate it. What\u0026rsquo;s next, a claim that the use of firewalls is contrary to net neutrality principles?\nDurbin approvingly links to an article by Glenn Harlan Reynolds about employees using pirate WiFi or resorting to bringing in personal equipment with EVDO cards in order to get their Internet or blogging fix at the workplace. Reynolds and Durbin both seem to think that companies should have no right\u0026ndash;or at least no ability\u0026ndash;to ban such things from the workplace unless they have \u0026ldquo;big trade-secret issues\u0026rdquo; or involve national security. Now, there\u0026rsquo;s a big distinction between pirate WiFi (connecting an unauthorized device to a company\u0026rsquo;s internal network, most likely exposing its internals to the outside world) and using your own equipment over a wireless connection to a provider that you pay for yourself. In the former case, it\u0026rsquo;s making unauthorized changes to the company\u0026rsquo;s own network and security mechanisms, while in the latter the issue is more an issue of whether you\u0026rsquo;re doing the job you\u0026rsquo;re being paid to do. But none of this should have anything to do with the \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; debate.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/net-neutrality-expands-to-absurdity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJim Durbin \u003ca href=\"http://www.recruiting.com/recruiting/2006/05/blocking_intern.html\"\u003ewrites that he supports net neutrality\u003c/a\u003e because of fears about companies blocking access to certain websites at the enterprise.  In his opinion, apparently, net neutrality not only means that ISPs can\u0026rsquo;t block access to lawful content, neither can employers.  No net neutrality bills would take away the ability of enterprises to restrict corporate Internet access to business-related content and use products like web proxies, but it\u0026rsquo;s a symptom of the fuzziness of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that Mr. Durbin thinks this is a reason to advocate it.  What\u0026rsquo;s next, a claim that the use of firewalls is contrary to net neutrality principles?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDurbin approvingly links to \u003ca href=\"http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052206E\"\u003ean article by Glenn Harlan Reynolds\u003c/a\u003e about employees using pirate WiFi or resorting to bringing in personal equipment with EVDO cards in order to get their Internet or blogging fix at the workplace.  Reynolds and Durbin both seem to think that companies should have no right\u0026ndash;or at least no ability\u0026ndash;to ban such things from the workplace unless they have \u0026ldquo;big trade-secret issues\u0026rdquo; or involve national security.  Now, there\u0026rsquo;s a big distinction between pirate WiFi (connecting an unauthorized device to a company\u0026rsquo;s internal network, most likely exposing its internals to the outside world) and using your own equipment over a wireless connection to a provider that you pay for yourself.  In the former case, it\u0026rsquo;s making unauthorized changes to the company\u0026rsquo;s own network and security mechanisms, while in the latter the issue is more an issue of whether you\u0026rsquo;re doing the job you\u0026rsquo;re being paid to do.  But none of this should have anything to do with the \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; debate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Net Neutrality\" expands to absurdity"},{"content":"Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute expresses his bafflement over why people have such faith that instituting government regulations to enforce net neutrality will result in beneficial protection for free speech, when historically Congress has shown little support for the principle. He points out the irony of Hillary Clinton calling for net neutrality in the name of protecting free speech, when she has on multiple occasions called for and supported government restrictions on free speech, including on the Internet. She supported the Communications Decency Act, most of which was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional. She supports regulation of video game content. She pushed the V-chip.\nDoes anyone really believe that the regulated Internet Hillary Clinton wants to see won\u0026rsquo;t ultimately result in any new restrictions on freedom of speech? Especially since the net neutrality bills propose giving regulatory authority over the Internet to the FCC, the same agency that is more aggressive at fining broadcasters for \u0026ldquo;indecent\u0026rdquo; content than addressing telemarketing fraud?\nHistorical Comments voiploser (2006-12-09):\nJim - The thing that I try to remember when reading about politicians jumping into matters that they don't have any idea about, and yet speak definitely anyways is this....It's an election year. This is all about politics, not logic.Adam \"voiploser\" Uzelac\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/hillary-clinton-and-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdam Thierer of the Cato Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.techliberation.com/archives/039067.php\"\u003eexpresses his bafflement\u003c/a\u003e over why people have such faith that instituting government regulations to enforce net neutrality will result in beneficial protection for free speech, when historically Congress has shown little support for the principle.  He points out the irony of Hillary Clinton calling for net neutrality in the name of protecting free speech, when she has on multiple occasions called for and supported government restrictions on free speech, including on the Internet.  She supported the Communications Decency Act, most of which was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional.  She supports regulation of video game content.  She pushed the V-chip.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoes anyone really believe that the regulated Internet Hillary Clinton wants to see won\u0026rsquo;t ultimately result in any new restrictions on freedom of speech?  Especially since the net neutrality bills propose giving regulatory authority over the Internet to the FCC, the same agency that is more aggressive at fining broadcasters for \u0026ldquo;indecent\u0026rdquo; content than addressing telemarketing fraud?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hillary Clinton and Net Neutrality"},{"content":"Martin Geddes has interviewed my co-worker Dave Siegel, and the results are up at his blog, Telepocalypse.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/david-siegel-global-crossing-telco.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMartin Geddes has interviewed my co-worker Dave Siegel, and the results are up at \u003ca href=\"http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000940.html\"\u003ehis blog, Telepocalypse\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Siegel, Global Crossing: telco blog pioneer"},{"content":"I did an interview over the weekend with Michael Santarcangelo of the Security Catalyst about botnets. Part I of that interview is available now as a podcast (you can subscribe via Yahoo or iTunes).\nUPDATE: Part two is here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/botnet-interview-on-security-catalyst.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI did an interview over the weekend with Michael Santarcangelo of the Security Catalyst about botnets.  Part I of that interview \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/TSC-Botnet1.mp3\"\u003eis available now\u003c/a\u003e as a podcast (you can subscribe via Yahoo or iTunes).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: Part two is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/TSC-Botnet2.mp3\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Botnet interview on the Security Catalyst podcast"},{"content":"Ed Brayton points out a paragraph from an AP story that says:\nThe Bush administration has urged a judge to dismiss a similar case, saying it threatens to divulge state secrets and jeopardize national security. The government argued in briefs that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president\u0026rsquo;s asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.As Ed observes,\nIf the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of such programs, then we might as well not have a constitution or courts at all.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/bush-administration-on-nsa-suit-courts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/bush_and_the_first_amendment.php\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e a paragraph \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060523/ap_on_bi_ge/phone_records_lawsuit;_ylt=Aqat.Ik2Me21o9zseegjc52s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--\"\u003efrom an AP story that says\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Bush administration has urged a judge to dismiss a similar case, saying it threatens to divulge state secrets and jeopardize national security. The government argued in briefs that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president\u0026rsquo;s asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs Ed \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/bush_and_the_first_amendment.php\"\u003eobserves\u003c/a\u003e,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of such programs, then we might as well not have a constitution or courts at all.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush administration on NSA suit:  Courts have no right to address the issue"},{"content":"Larry Lessig has posted an interesting blog article comparing net neutrality to fair use, and asking whether there\u0026rsquo;s a problem in consistency on the part of those who favor one but not the other. As someone who more strongly supports laws recognizing fair use than regulated net neutrality, I agree with the reasons given by several of the posters (including Kevin Farnham, Jeremy, Cory Doctorow, three blind mice, and poptones). It seems that some of the better reasons to question creating a regulatory regime for net neutrality are present in these comments\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m pleasantly surprised to see that the comments appear to be dominated by net neutrality skeptics.\nSome of the highlights:\n* Fair use is a limitation on rights pertaining to intellectual property, while net neutrality is a limitation on rights pertaining to physical property\u0026ndash;Lessig\u0026rsquo;s own excellent book Free Culture points out that intellectual or creative property is different from physical property in significant ways.\n* The burden of proof on a fair use claim is on the person claiming fair use, not the copyright owner; in net neutrality the burden is on the property owner.\n* Fair use is really a limitation on a government regulation (copyright), while net neutrality is a regulation that\u0026rsquo;s a limit on business models, contracts, and technology.\n* Net neutrality advocates have not been clear about what they would require and prohibit, how violations will be detected/measured, and what the enforcement mechanisms will be. (I don\u0026rsquo;t trust Congress to tell network engineers how to do their jobs.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-fair-use.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLarry Lessig has \u003ca href=\"http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003410.shtml\"\u003eposted an interesting blog article\u003c/a\u003e comparing net neutrality to fair use, and asking whether there\u0026rsquo;s a problem in consistency on the part of those who favor one but not the other.  As someone who more strongly supports laws recognizing fair use than regulated net neutrality, I agree with the reasons given by several of the posters (including Kevin Farnham, Jeremy, Cory Doctorow, three blind mice, and poptones).  It seems that some of the better reasons to question creating a regulatory regime for net neutrality are present in these comments\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m pleasantly surprised to see that the comments appear to be dominated by net neutrality skeptics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the highlights:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* Fair use is a limitation on rights pertaining to intellectual property, while net neutrality is a limitation on rights pertaining to physical property\u0026ndash;Lessig\u0026rsquo;s own excellent book \u003ca href=\"http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFree Culture\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e points out that intellectual or creative property is different from physical property in significant ways.\u003cbr /\u003e* The burden of proof on a fair use claim is on the person claiming fair use, not the copyright owner; in net neutrality the burden is on the property owner.\u003cbr /\u003e* Fair use is really a limitation on a government regulation (copyright), while net neutrality is a regulation that\u0026rsquo;s a limit on business models, contracts, and technology.\u003cbr /\u003e* Net neutrality advocates have not been clear about what they would require and prohibit, how violations will be detected/measured, and what the enforcement mechanisms will be.  (I don\u0026rsquo;t trust Congress to tell network engineers how to do their jobs.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Net Neutrality and Fair Use"},{"content":"Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)\u0026rsquo;s Washington office was raided last night, and the FBI has disclosed portions of recorded conversations last year between Jefferson and an informant. The informant had paid Jefferson $100,000 in $100 bills (caught on videotape by the FBI) to be delivered to an official in Nigeria. In a telephone conversation on August 1 which the FBI has partially disclosed, Jefferson and the informant spoke to each other in code about the bribe money, which was recovered from Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s freezer during a police search on August 3. In that conversation, the informant asked about the status of \u0026ldquo;the package.\u0026rdquo; Jefferson replied that \u0026ldquo;I gave him the African art that you gave me and he was very pleased.\u0026quot;\nJefferson apparently had the objective of getting work in Africa for a communications company, and getting his children a cut of that deal.\nVia Talking Points Memo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/dirty-politician-william-jefferson.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. William Jefferson (D-LA)\u0026rsquo;s Washington office was raided last night, and the FBI has disclosed portions of recorded conversations last year between Jefferson and an informant.   The informant had paid Jefferson $100,000 in $100 bills (caught on videotape by the FBI) to be delivered to an official in Nigeria.  In a telephone conversation on August 1 which the FBI has partially disclosed, Jefferson and the informant spoke to each other in code about the bribe money, which was recovered from Jefferson\u0026rsquo;s freezer during a police search on August 3.  In that conversation, the informant asked about the status of \u0026ldquo;the package.\u0026rdquo;  Jefferson replied that \u0026ldquo;I gave him the African art that you gave me and he was very pleased.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJefferson apparently had the objective of getting work in Africa for a communications company, and getting his children a cut of that deal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000701.php\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: William Jefferson"},{"content":"Matthew Yglesias, covering for Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo, writes of Mike McCurry\u0026rsquo;s battle with bloggers over net neutrality:\nPeople disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so mad at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who know a lot about the internet and could handle a grown-up argument (see a non-flimsy, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you\u0026rsquo;re interested).\nOne of the most neglected aspects of the blogosphere, in my opinion, is that precisely because it\u0026rsquo;s (mostly) composed of people who aren\u0026rsquo;t professional journalists, it\u0026rsquo;s composed of people who are professional doers of something else and know a great deal about what it is they \u0026ldquo;really\u0026rdquo; do. Consequently, the overall network of blogs contains a great deal of embedded knowledge. The consensus that emerges from that process can, of course, be mistaken but even though the most prominent people expressing that consensus may not be experts in the subject at hand (the most prominent bloggers tend to be generalists), the consensus will almost always be grounded in some kind of well-informed opinions. If you want to push back on that, in other words, you\u0026rsquo;d better know what you\u0026rsquo;re talking about and not treat your audience like a pack of mewling children.\nWhile I agree that McCurry was occasionally patronizing in what he posted, at least he hasn\u0026rsquo;t gotten his facts as wrong as Matt Stoller at MyDD, Adam Green at the Huffington Post, the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; Coalition, or Art Brodsky at Talking Points Memo. These guys don\u0026rsquo;t know the difference between net neutrality and common carriage, don\u0026rsquo;t understand who or what common carriage applies to, don\u0026rsquo;t understand how or why network service providers interconnect, don\u0026rsquo;t understand the utility and current uses by providers of QoS, don\u0026rsquo;t understand the unintended negative consequences of bills like HR 5417, and have a naive faith that the FCC will act only as a force for freedom and goodness.\nThe fact is that most of the material being posted by bloggers in favor of net neutrality regulation is by people who are not experts in how the Internet works\u0026ndash;while there are certainly advocates of net neutrality among those who operate Internet networks (and I myself am supportive, with qualifications, of the four principles in the FCC policy statement), my perception is that most of them favor keeping government out of it as much as possible and agree with the additional six principles advocated by McCurry\u0026rsquo;s organization, \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/yglesias-on-mccurry.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew Yglesias, covering for Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_05_14.php#008516\"\u003ewrites of Mike McCurry\u0026rsquo;s battle with bloggers over net neutrality\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003ePeople disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so \u003ci\u003emad\u003c/i\u003e at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who \u003ci\u003eknow a lot about the internet\u003c/i\u003e and could handle a grown-up argument (see a \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/links/links041006.shtml\"\u003enon-flimsy\u003c/a\u003e, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you\u0026rsquo;re interested).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yglesias on McCurry"},{"content":"(I should preface this by saying that I am not a lawyer, only a relatively well-informed layman who has demonstrated the ability to win lawsuits against telemarketers without using an attorney.)\nSome network neutrality advocates are promoting James Sensenbrenner and John Conyers\u0026rsquo; HR 5417 as a step in the right direction for putting network neutrality into law. But HR 5417 is a badly written bill with some serious negative implications. (There are a bunch of other network neutrality bills in the works, which I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet examined.)\nFirst, it turns all NSPs and ISPs into \u0026ldquo;broadband network providers\u0026rdquo; even if they don\u0026rsquo;t provide any residential consumer services. All that matters is whether you provide two-way Internet at speeds of 200 kbps or greater.\nSecond, it prohibits preventing anyone from sending or receiving traffic that is legal. This means ISPs cannot have acceptable use policies against spammers that go beyond what is required by the federal CAN-SPAM law except in states which have stricter laws, and they have to sell service to known spammers who comply with CAN-SPAM, and you can\u0026rsquo;t kick adware companies off your network until and unless the specific abusive actions they are taking are made illegal.\nThird, it says that if you provide a custom service like IP Video or VOIP interconnection at a higher class of service, you must allow your customers to connect to that \u0026ldquo;type\u0026rdquo; of service to any other provider of IP Video or VOIP, regardless of location, whether those providers are customers of yours or not. But if you don\u0026rsquo;t provide those services over the Internet, who is supposed to bear the costs of interconnection to providers who aren\u0026rsquo;t customers?\nFourth, it prohibits all restrictions on what devices users can connect to the network except on grounds of physical harm or degrading the service of others. But what if you offer a specialized service that only supports some vendors\u0026rsquo; equipment, and has to have a particular configuration to function properly? This seems to say that you have to let customers configure unsupported or incorrectly configured equipment to the network.\nThis bill is a nice example of bad unintended consequences.\n(Also see Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHarold--that's tantalizing but not very satisfying. Can you say more (here or at your own blog) about why you disagree (on all points?), maybe with a reference to the manager's amendment (it doesn't seem to be on Thomas at this moment)?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/bad-unintended-consequences-of-hr-5417.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(I should preface this by saying that I am not a lawyer, only a relatively well-informed layman who has demonstrated the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/lawsuits.html\"\u003eability to win lawsuits against telemarketers\u003c/a\u003e without using an attorney.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/30006\"\u003enetwork neutrality advocates\u003c/a\u003e are \u003ca href=\"http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/05/hr-5417-enforcing-net-neutrality-with.html\"\u003epromoting\u003c/a\u003e James Sensenbrenner and John Conyers\u0026rsquo; HR 5417 as a step in the right direction for putting network neutrality into law.  But \u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/pitchers/hr5417109.pdf\"\u003eHR 5417\u003c/a\u003e is a badly written bill with some serious negative implications.  (There are \u003ca href=\"http://463.blogs.com/the_463/2006/05/cant_tell_a_nn_.html\"\u003ea bunch of other network neutrality bills\u003c/a\u003e in the works, which I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet examined.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst, it turns all NSPs and ISPs into \u0026ldquo;broadband network providers\u0026rdquo; even if they don\u0026rsquo;t provide any residential consumer services. All that matters is whether you provide two-way Internet at speeds of 200 kbps or greater.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSecond, it prohibits preventing anyone from sending or receiving traffic that is legal. This means ISPs cannot have acceptable use policies against spammers that go beyond what is required by the federal CAN-SPAM law except in states which have stricter laws, and they have to sell service to known spammers who comply with CAN-SPAM, and you can\u0026rsquo;t kick adware companies off your network until and unless the specific abusive actions they are taking are made illegal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThird, it says that if you provide a custom service like IP Video or VOIP interconnection at a higher class of service, you must allow your customers to connect to that \u0026ldquo;type\u0026rdquo; of service to any other provider of IP Video or VOIP, regardless of location, whether those providers are customers of yours or not. But if you don\u0026rsquo;t provide those services over the Internet, who is supposed to bear the costs of interconnection to providers who aren\u0026rsquo;t customers?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFourth, it prohibits all restrictions on what devices users can connect to the network except on grounds of physical harm or degrading the service of others. But what if you offer a specialized service that only supports some vendors\u0026rsquo; equipment, and has to have a particular configuration to function properly? This seems to say that you have to let customers configure unsupported or incorrectly configured equipment to the network.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis bill is a nice example of bad unintended consequences.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Also see Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/05/19/the-poison-pill-bill/\"\u003eOriginal Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad unintended consequences of HR 5417"},{"content":"The little cartoon movie from \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; (an organization funded by member organizations that include major telcos and equipment vendors) has led to a response from \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; (advocates of net neutrality funded by MoveOn.org and others).\n\u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; claims that the cartoon is \u0026ldquo;a clever piece of industry propaganda that is riddled with half-truths and outright lies.\u0026rdquo; It then quotes a few passages from the cartoon and offers responses. Unfortunately, it is \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s response that contains misinformation, and it fails to point out any alleged lies.\nIn what follows, I\u0026rsquo;ll quote directly from the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; response (including the quotes from the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off\u0026rdquo; cartoon they are responding to) and then respond to each point.\nThe big telecom companies say: \u0026ldquo;Is the Internet in Danger? Does the Internet need saving? It keeps getting faster. We keep getting more choices.\u0026quot; The truth: Right now AT\u0026amp;T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online. They\u0026rsquo;re on their best behavior while trying to convince Congress to hand over the Internet. But if their high-priced lobbyists get their way in Washington, the Internet as we know it will be gone. Network Neutrality has always curbed the control of the network owners, invited competition and encouraged innovators. It\u0026rsquo;s what made it possible for entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to prosper online. None of the big ideas that made the Internet the innovative engine it is today came from the cable or telephone companies.\nNotice that there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence supplied to support the claim that \u0026ldquo;AT\u0026amp;T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online.\u0026rdquo; What the telcos want to do is build new last-mile consumer services by installing a new fiber-to-the-home infrastructure, over which they can offer services in addition to and distinct from the public Internet, just as they currently offer voice telephony as a service separate and distinct from the public Internet. Specifically, they want to offer digital television services and potentially new services which they control, following the model of the cable industry. The telcos\u0026rsquo; real desire is to compete with the cable industry and be regulated in much the same way. They further want to be able to charge content providers to be able to provide services over this new fiber, because they know that consumer fees alone are not sufficient to recover their costs in rolling out this new infrastructure. (BTW, my opinion is that just as the cable companies lost leverage over content providers as a result of competition from direct broadcast satellite, telcos will lose or fail to gain leverage over content providers using new services over fiber-to-the-home, as a result of competition from wireless broadband providers, as well as from cable companies.)\nThe big telecom companies say: \u0026ldquo;Building the next generation of the Internet is going to take a lot of work and cost a lot of money. And some big corporations can\u0026rsquo;t wait to use it\u0026hellip;. They\u0026rsquo;re going to make billions. But they don\u0026rsquo;t want to pay anything. Instead they want to stick consumers with the whole bill.\u0026quot; The truth: Nobody is getting a free ride on the Internet. Any Web site or service you use on the Internet has already paid these providers to reach you \u0026ndash; just like you pay to send e-mail and download files. In fact, total expenses from major content and service providers to expand network capacity totaled about $10 billion last year. But the cable and phone companies want even more \u0026ndash; forcing content providers to pay protection money to get a spot in the fast lane. Who do you think will pay that bill? You will … big time. The costs will be passed directly to consumers. If Net Neutrality is so bad for consumers, why do ALL the major consumer groups support it and ALL the major phone companies oppose it? Who do you trust more to defend your Internet rights? Without meaningful protections of Net Neutrality, there will be less choice on the Internet and higher prices, at a time we\u0026rsquo;re already falling far behind the rest of the world.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s true that content providers are paying Internet providers today to reach the \u0026ldquo;eyeball customers\u0026rdquo; of the telcos and cable companies. But they are reaching them over today\u0026rsquo;s best-effort Internet, not over the new infrastructure they want to build out. Now, here there is a real issue, but it\u0026rsquo;s one that advocates of net neutrality have tended to obscure rather than illuminate, and that is that today, telcos are required to allow other Internet providers to provide service over their last-mile consumer broadband (DSL) circuits, and the courts recently ruled that this will no longer be required, putting the telcos on the same footing as the cable companies, which have never been required to share their networks. The difference between the two is that the telcos were given free rights-of-way to build their networks, were given monopoly status for local telephony status, and received huge tax breaks and subsidies in the form of universal service fees collected from long distance providers; this form of public funding justified the common carriage requirements that made them allow their networks to be used by other players that compete with them. The cable companies, by contrast, got none of these benefits and have to pay a portion of their revenues to local municipalities as part of their franchise agreement in an area. The cable model actually seems to be a better model and to be more competitive, though I think both are far from ideal. In any case, the empirical evidence is that the more competition there is for broadband Internet services, the lower the costs to consumers and the more innovation we see.\nThe big telecom companies say: \u0026ldquo;These corporations are asking Congress to create volumes of new regulations to control how content is delivered over the Internet. Should politicians and bureaucrats replace network administrators? It will be the first major government regulation of the Internet and it will fundamentally change how the Internet works. These big corporations and the SavetheInternet campaign want the government to take control of the Internet.\u0026quot;\nThe truth: There\u0026rsquo;s nothing new about Net Neutrality. It has been a fundamental part of the Internet since its inception. As a tenet of communications policy, it goes back some 70 years. Only last year did the Supreme Court uphold a bad decision by the Federal Communications Commission to do away with the rules that forced cable and phone companies to open up their networks to competitors. Those rules protected Internet freedom by ensuring lots of competition (think of all the choices you\u0026rsquo;ve had for long distance service or dial-up Web access). In fact, these rules still protect the Internet under a temporary FCC ruling. All a Net Neutrality law would do is maintain the even playing field we\u0026rsquo;ve always enjoyed \u0026ndash; by preventing big cable and telephone corporations from taking over as gatekeepers. Now here\u0026rsquo;s where \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; goes completely off the rails. Net Neutrality has not been \u0026ldquo;part of the Internet since its inception\u0026rdquo; nor does it go back 70 years. This is a confusion about common carriage requirements on telco\u0026rsquo;s networks vs. Internet services. When other DSL services use telco last-mile circuits to reach their customers, they are providing their own Internet services, not the telcos. They aren\u0026rsquo;t using the telco\u0026rsquo;s Internet networks at all. ISPs have never been classified as \u0026ldquo;common carriers\u0026rdquo; or required to connect anyone to their networks. Rather, they\u0026rsquo;ve been classified as information services or enhanced services, and exempted from common carriage requirements. Internet interconnection is governed by peering arrangements which are arranged either privately between two ISPs or network service providers, or by connecting to a public peering point and governed by the rules of the organization managing that peering point (itself a private, not government, organization).\nThe sentence about the Supreme Court upholding a bad FCC decision \u0026ldquo;to do away with the rules that forced cable and phone companies to open up their networks to competitors\u0026rdquo; is just mistaken in its inclusion of cable companies. Cable companies have never been required to open up their networks to competitors.\n(UPDATE May 21, 2006: Timothy Karr of Save the Internet says that the \u0026ldquo;goes back some 70 years\u0026rdquo; remark does not refer to common carriage, but he hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet told me what it is referring to. I\u0026rsquo;ll update this entry when he does.)\nThe big telecom companies say: \u0026ldquo;The net neutrality issue is a fundamental question about who should control the Internet: The people or the government? And it\u0026rsquo;s a fight about who\u0026rsquo;s going to pay: multi-billion dollar corporations or you?\u0026quot; The truth: Who should control the Internet? Now that\u0026rsquo;s a good question. But the real choice we face is whether we\u0026rsquo;re going to keep the good government policy that has protected Internet freedom, created a truly free market in content and services, and encouraged free speech to flourish online \u0026ndash; or let predatory companies like AT\u0026amp;T and Comcast rewrite our telecommunications law and place their chokehold on online content and services. For the entire history of the Internet, Web sites and online ideas have succeeded or failed on their own merit based on decisions now made collectively by millions of users. Getting rid of Net Neutrality will hand these decisions over to a cartel of broadband barons. Do we really want Ma Bell and the Cable Guy picking the next generation of winners and losers on the Internet? This repeats the false claim that net neutrality has been a government policy in force all along, when in fact what \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; is advocating is the introduction of new laws which give the FCC the power to regulate the Internet. What \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; fails to recognize is that the telcos are an extremely powerful lobbying force in Washington, D.C., and that giving the FCC this power will not change that. Further, the FCC is run by commissioners who want to do more to regulate content for \u0026ldquo;indecency,\u0026rdquo; and, if given the power to regulate the Internet, that would likely not be far behind. If they have the power to say that ISPs must allow service to X, they\u0026rsquo;re probably also going to have the power to say that ISPs must not allow service to Y. But those are decisions that should be left in the hands of the ISPs, in a competitive environment where the consumer has the power to switch ISPs.\n\u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; tends to avoid spelling out specifically what they are asking for, which is the biggest problem with \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; advocates. The term seems to mean different things to different people, and a lot of people interpret it to mean prohibition on certain kinds of contractual arrangements and services between providers of network services and their customers that are already common and extremely useful today (e.g., paying for different classes of service).\nIf you want a better understanding of the issues in the \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; debate, I can\u0026rsquo;t recommend a better source than the Stifel/Nicolaus analysis, \u0026ldquo;Value Chain Tug of War\u0026rdquo; (PDF). Read it, and whichever position you argue for will be better served.\n(UPDATE May 20, 2006: Here\u0026rsquo;s a much better commentary on the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off\u0026rdquo; cartoon from a net neutrality advocate, Harold Feld, though he also gets some facts wrong. For example, he says that at the time of \u0026ldquo;Computer Proceedings I\u0026rdquo; (1971) AT\u0026amp;T was \u0026ldquo;the only telephone company.\u0026rdquo; It was by far the major player and had attempted earlier to acquire the rest, but this was put to a stop in 1913 via anti-trust action when it tried to acquire Western Union. It was required to allow the remaining independent local telco players to interconnect. These included Rochester Telephone in NY (which was my employer when it was called Frontier). In 1971 AT\u0026amp;T had 100 million subscribers and the independents had 25 million.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks, but I can't quite agree that we should want to \"stop net neutrality.\" I think that, as general principles, the four elements of \"net neutrality\" in the FCC's policy statement are reasonable ideals--an open and free (in the liberty sense, not the dollar sense) Internet is something I want. But what I'm very skeptical of is giving the FCC the power to regulate the Internet.We do need to keep in mind that the telcos have been given lots of special favors from the government for their last-mile networks, which they use in their favor--I think there are real issues there that we need to keep an eye on, though I'm hopeful that between cable companies and wireless providers there will be sufficient competition to prevent anti-competitive activity by the telcos.My bet is that wireless will be the biggest winner of consumer Internet access dollars in the long term.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAs much as I appreciate the positive remarks (and I think both of the last commenters make good points), it makes me nervous to see comments from accounts that have just been set up and which have no associated blogs.I'm also seeing an apparent attempt by somebody from a Covad connection in Silver Spring, MD to bring my \"Net Neutrality and Fair Use\" posting up in Google Blog Search rankings by repeatedly searching for \"net neutrality\" and then clicking on the link to that post. They've done it about 8 times so far.Whoever that is is using coming from an IP beginning with 67.101.62. and the following browser info:Language English enOperating System Macintosh MacOSXBrowser Netscape 5.0 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko)Javascript version 1.4Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 800Color Depth : 32 bits\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHarold:Thanks for the comment, I appreciate your expertise (and anybody who was an attorney at Covington \u0026 Burling is bound to be sharp).I object to the equivalence drawn between common carriage and net neutrality, because the proposals in Congress are going far beyond common carriage for last-mile telcos in attempting to set a common carriage-style standard not just for bit transport over public right of ways but for Internet services themselves.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nFor more on the \"Net Chick\" commenter, see Abstract Factory.\nKeunwoo Lee (Cog) (2006-12-09):\nJim, I'm reasonably certain that Luv2Box, watcher, and SoCal619 are all shills too. Just FYI.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCog: I agree.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/misinformation-from-save-internet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.dontregulate.org/\"\u003elittle cartoon movie\u003c/a\u003e from \u0026ldquo;Hands Off the Internet\u0026rdquo; (an organization funded by member organizations that include major telcos and equipment vendors) has \u003ca href=\"http://www.savetheinternet.com/=lie\"\u003eled to a response\u003c/a\u003e from \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; (advocates of net neutrality funded by MoveOn.org and others).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; claims that the cartoon is \u0026ldquo;a clever piece of industry propaganda that is riddled with half-truths and outright lies.\u0026rdquo;  It then quotes a few passages from the cartoon and offers responses.  Unfortunately, it is \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s response that contains misinformation, and it fails to point out any alleged lies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn what follows, I\u0026rsquo;ll quote directly from the \u0026ldquo;Save the Internet\u0026rdquo; response (including the quotes from the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off\u0026rdquo; cartoon they are responding to) and then respond to each point.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe big telecom companies say:\u003c/b\u003e \u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is the Internet in Danger? Does the Internet need saving? It keeps getting faster. We keep getting more choices.\u0026quot;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cp\u003e   \u003cb\u003eThe truth:\u003c/b\u003e Right now AT\u0026amp;T and others want to take away your choices and control what you can do and watch online. They\u0026rsquo;re on their best behavior while trying to convince Congress to hand over the Internet. But if their high-priced lobbyists get their way in Washington, the Internet as we know it will be gone. Network Neutrality has always curbed the control of the network owners, invited competition and encouraged innovators. It\u0026rsquo;s what made it possible for entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to prosper online. None of the big ideas that made the Internet the innovative engine it is today came from the cable or telephone companies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Misinformation from \"Save the Internet\""},{"content":"The Baltimore Sun has reported on a shelved 1990s NSA program to collect and analyze phone records which had the following features:\nUsed more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and e-mail data to identify suspect communications. Identified U.S. phone numbers and other communications data and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy.\n* Employed an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information, in order to prevent misuse and improve efficiency.\n* Analyzed the data to identify relationships between callers and chronicle their contacts. Only when evidence of a potential threat had been developed would analysts be able to request decryption of the records.\nPerhaps this program was brought back after 9/11? If such records were maintained with phone number and caller information encrypted until needed, and decrypted only with appropriate legal authorization, would that enable Verizon and BellSouth to truthfully deny having supplied the records to the NSA? I don\u0026rsquo;t think so, unless the system was in the possession of the phone companies and didn\u0026rsquo;t release data to the NSA until legal authorization was obtained. But would such a system be objectionable? So long as the controls genuinely prevented abuse and legal authorizations were really obtained for each use, I don\u0026rsquo;t think it would be. (Via Talking Points Memo.)\nBTW, in a New York Times story in which Verizon denied turning over records to the NSA (which BellSouth has also denied), Tony Rutkowski of Verisign is quoted suggesting that the NSA may have collected long-distance phone records rather than local calls. The article notes that Verizon\u0026rsquo;s denial seems to leave the door open to the possibility that MCI, which Verizon recently acquired, had turned over data. Verisign, it should be noted, has been attempting to develop a business where it acts as a third-party manager for subpoenas and wiretapping for phone companies. While the telcos have strongly attempted to block attempts by the government to expand its wiretapping capabilities into the VOIP and Internet arenas (in part on the grounds that the CALEA statutes do not cover them, and also because the infrastructure expense is placed entirely on the telcos), Verisign has supported the government\u0026rsquo;s efforts, as these filed comments with the FCC make clear (red means support for expanded government wiretapping capability, blue means opposition).\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll note that Verisign is uniformly supportive of the government, and of the three telcos that have come under fire for giving data to the NSA, two are uniformly opposed (BellSouth and SBC (now AT\u0026amp;T)) and one is partly opposed and partly supportive (Verizon). I\u0026rsquo;m happy to note that my employer, Global Crossing, is not only on record as opposed, but filed comments which addressed more of the issues than most of the other filers.\n(UPDATE May 19, 2006: Apparently the 1990s program was called ThinThread.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/late-1990s-nsa-program.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-nsa517,0,5970724.story?coll=bal-home-headlines\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBaltimore Sun\u003c/span\u003e has reported\u003c/a\u003e on a shelved 1990s NSA program to collect and analyze phone records which had the following features:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e \u003cem\u003eUsed more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and e-mail data to identify suspect communications.  \u003cp\u003e\u003c/em\u003e Identified U.S. phone numbers and other communications data and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e* Employed an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information, in order to prevent misuse and improve efficiency.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Late 1990s NSA program"},{"content":"Radley Balko at The Agitator is on top of it:\nIf you’ve read anything at all about this case, I’d urge you to take a look at the brief. I realize that a brief’s legal effectiveness is a very different thing than its general pursuasiveness, particularly briefs filed in almost perfunctory post-trial motions like this one. Since I’m not really qualified to comment on its legal merits, I’ll keep my comments limited to its general pursuasiveness.\nTo that end, it’s devastating. The difference between the top-notch legal representation Cory Maye has now and the minimal representation he had at trial is striking (and frightening, given the stakes). I can’t see anyone reading this thing through and still believing that Maye is the slightest bit guilty, much less that he should be executed. At worst, you could perhaps make the case that Maye acted recklessly, and might have been tried for manslaughter. I wouldn’t agree. But I probably wouln’t be making trips to Mississippi to investigate, or blathering endlessly on my blog, either. Of course, I still think the guy should not only be released from prison, but compensated.The brief, from Bob Evans, Orin Kerr, and attorneys at D.C. firm Covington and Burling, is here (PDF). There\u0026rsquo;s also a forensics review here (Word doc), and a review of the autopsy report of Officer Jones here (PDF).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had the pleasure of meeting and briefly working with some Covington and Burling attorneys in the past (though none of the ones who worked on this brief), and found them to be incredibly bright and professional people. They also won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fax.com, which makes them good guys in my book.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/cory-mayes-new-attorneys-file-legal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026574.php#026574\"\u003eThe Agitator is on top of it\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIf you’ve read anything at all about this case, I’d urge you to take a look at the brief. I realize that a brief’s legal effectiveness is a very different thing than its general pursuasiveness, particularly briefs filed in almost perfunctory post-trial motions like this one. Since I’m not really qualified to comment on its legal merits, I’ll keep my comments limited to its general pursuasiveness.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo that end, it’s devastating. The difference between the top-notch legal representation Cory Maye has now and the minimal representation he had at trial is striking (and frightening, given the stakes). I can’t see anyone reading this thing through and still believing that Maye is the slightest bit guilty, much less that he should be executed. At worst, you could perhaps make the case that Maye acted recklessly, and might have been tried for manslaughter. I wouldn’t agree. But I probably wouln’t be making trips to Mississippi to investigate, or blathering endlessly on my blog, either. Of course, I still think the guy should not only be released from prison, but compensated.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe brief, from Bob Evans, Orin Kerr, and attorneys at D.C. firm Covington and Burling, is \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/MayeFinalBrief.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).  There\u0026rsquo;s also a forensics review \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/ExhibitTwo.doc\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (Word doc), and a review of the autopsy report of Officer Jones \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/ExhibitOne.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve had the pleasure of meeting and briefly working with some Covington and Burling attorneys in the past (though none of the ones who worked on this brief), and found them to be incredibly bright and professional people.  They also won \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/20/cz_sl_0120faxes.html\"\u003ea multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fax.com\u003c/a\u003e, which makes them good guys in my book.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye's new attorneys file legal brief"},{"content":"Some advocates of net neutrality have advocated nationalization of \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; (see, for example, the comments of Paul and Frank at Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog). The idea that there is such a thing as \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; is itself a confusion about what telcos contribute to the Internet, but what was the pace of innovation when telephony was a highly regulated government monopoly in the United States?\nTouch-Tone was developed in the late 1950\u0026rsquo;s.\nIt was promoted at the Bell System Pavilion at the 1962 Seattle World\u0026rsquo;s Fair, as can be seen in this fascinating short film, \u0026ldquo;21st Century Calling\u0026rdquo; (a bonus feature on the DVD of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, \u0026ldquo;The Killer Shrews\u0026rdquo;). Other features promoted in the film include call forwarding and three-way calling.\nBell Labs officially announced Touch-Tone as a feature (PDF) in 1964.\nTouch-Tone was rolled out to consumers in the 1980s as a feature which consumers had to pay extra for, even though it cost nothing more to provide. The SS7 electronic switching infrastructure costs were covered by consumer fees such as the monthly fee for Touch-Tone service, and then used to roll out new services to businesses, subsidized by consumers.\nTime from innovation to deployment: over two decades.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-pace-of-innovation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome advocates of net neutrality have advocated nationalization of \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; (see, for example, the \u003ca href=\"http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/05/02/the-senate-takes-a-stand-for-freedom/#comments\"\u003ecomments of Paul and Frank\u003c/a\u003e at Richard Bennett\u0026rsquo;s Original Blog).  The idea that there is such a thing as \u0026ldquo;the Internet backbone\u0026rdquo; is \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-last-mile.html\"\u003eitself a confusion about what telcos contribute to the Internet\u003c/a\u003e, but what was the pace of innovation when telephony was a highly regulated government monopoly in the United States?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTouch-Tone was \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_tone\"\u003edeveloped in the late 1950\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was promoted at the Bell System Pavilion at the 1962 Seattle World\u0026rsquo;s Fair, as can be seen in \u003ca href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/Century21964\"\u003ethis fascinating short film, \u0026ldquo;21st Century Calling\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (a bonus feature on the DVD of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, \u0026ldquo;The Killer Shrews\u0026rdquo;).  Other features promoted in the film include call forwarding and three-way calling.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBell Labs \u003ca href=\"http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/pdf/thetouchtonedial.pdf\"\u003eofficially announced Touch-Tone as a feature\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) in 1964.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTouch-Tone was rolled out to consumers in the 1980s as a feature which consumers had to pay extra for, even though it cost nothing more to provide.  The SS7 electronic switching infrastructure costs were covered by consumer fees such as the monthly fee for Touch-Tone service, and then used to roll out new services to businesses, subsidized by consumers.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTime from innovation to deployment:  over two decades.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Net Neutrality and the Pace of Innovation"},{"content":"Mark Vuletic at the Secular Outpost reports on the Freedom From Religion Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the Department of Veteran\u0026rsquo;s Affairs for conducting \u0026ldquo;basic spiritual assessments\u0026rdquo; as part of admissions procedures. The \u0026ldquo;spiritual assessments\u0026rdquo; are used to determine whether patients require treatment for \u0026ldquo;spiritual injury or sickness.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/va-hospital-spiritual-assessments.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Vuletic at \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/05/ffrf-sues-over-integration-of.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost reports\u003c/a\u003e on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/news/2006/VAlawsuit.php\"\u003eFreedom From Religion Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e against the Department of Veteran\u0026rsquo;s Affairs for conducting \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/news/2006/VAspiritual.php\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;basic spiritual assessments\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e as part of admissions procedures.  The \u0026ldquo;spiritual assessments\u0026rdquo;  are used to determine whether patients require treatment for \u0026ldquo;spiritual injury or sickness.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VA Hospital Spiritual Assessments"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post reports (via Donna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog):\nNew federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves \u0026ndash; and to be treated by the health care system \u0026ndash; as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.\nAmong other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.\nAnd, as Stephen Colbert pointed out on last night\u0026rsquo;s Colbert Report, Fox News\u0026rsquo; John Gibson on May 11 advised his viewers to get busy making more babies:\nMake more babies. That\u0026rsquo;s the lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple days. First, a story Wednesday that half the kids under 5 years old in this country are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic.\nKnow what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority population is Hispanic.\nWhy is that? Hispanics are having more kids and others, notably the ones Hispanics call gabachos — white people — are having fewer.\nNow in this country, European ancestry people — white people — are having kids at a rate that sustains the population, even grows it a bit.\nThat compares to Europe where the birthrate is in the negative zone. They\u0026rsquo;re not having enough babies to sustain the population.\n\u0026hellip;\nTo put it bluntly: We need more babies. Forget that zero population growth stuff of my poor, misled generation.\nWhy is this important? Because civilizations need populations to survive.\nSo far we\u0026rsquo;re doing our part here in America, but Hispanics can\u0026rsquo;t carry the whole load.\nThe rest of you: Get busy. Make babies.\nOr put another way, a slogan for our times: Procreation not recreation.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s My Word.\n(Note that the full context of his remarks is not blatantly racist, as it appeared on The Colbert Report.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/forever-pregnant-start-making-more.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500875.html?referrer=emailarticle/page.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e (via \u003ca href=\"http://www.woodka.com/2006/05/16/forever-pregnant/\"\u003eDonna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eNew federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves \u0026ndash; and to be treated by the health care system \u0026ndash; as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmong other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Forever Pregnant / Start Making More Babies"},{"content":"Harri Hursti of Black Box Voting has released a report (PDF) on yet more flaws (on top of others reported back in December) in Diebold TSx and TS6 Direct-Recording Electronic (or DRE) voting machines. Having a few minutes of physical access to a machine makes it possible to install software, using simple, easily available tools, which will completely compromise the machine in such a way that it will be impossible to tell whether future software updates are successful or not.\nEd Felten and Avi Rubin give more detail at Felten\u0026rsquo;s blog, Freedom to Tinker, and question whether it makes sense to build voting machines based on commodity hardware and operating systems due to these risks. This certainly seems like an application where you\u0026rsquo;d want hardware-enforced verification of a stripped-down trusted computing platform.\nHursti\u0026rsquo;s report says that there are three layers of software in the Diebold machines: a boot loader, an operating system (customized Windows CE), and an application program (the voting software). Each of the three layers has backdoors which allow bypassing security controls. The report states that \u0026ldquo;Different files on the system carry various subsets of the following features: Signature check, mode check, and integrity check. None of these can be considered security features against tampering. For example, the integrity check is [redacted]. This check can be equated to a very crude spell-checker. It is effective against accidental typing errors but not deliberate attacks.\u0026quot;\nThe redacted portion, based on the description, is apparently a weak checksum such as CRC (cyclic redundancy check), rather than a cryptographically stronger checksum like MD5 or SHA1 (both of which have weaknesses of their own).\nThe Hursti report describes how an attacker could exploit the weaknesses at multiple levels to prevent the removal of malicious code. One such flaw (the details of which are redacted from the report) is that inserting a standard PCMCIA memory card into the machine containing a file with the appropriate name will cause the boot loader to reflash itself, installing the code in that file as the new boot loader on the system. As Hursti points out, \u0026ldquo;Due to the fact that the boot loader is the primary mechanism for its own reprogramming, if the boot loader is compromised with a deep attack, using the boot loader itself to install a known clean version of a boot loader is no longer a viable option as a recovery path to clean the system.\u0026quot;\nThe report goes on to show similar flaws in replacing the operating system image, and points out a voter-accessible hidden button (labeled \u0026ldquo;battery test\u0026rdquo;) that could be exploited by malicious code as a trigger for an attack.\nThe recommended defense against attacks is to physically protect the machines\u0026ndash;as a machine can be compromised with less than five minutes of physical access, chain of custody evidence must be maintained from the machines\u0026rsquo; origin to final use, with no unsupervised access.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/even-more-serious-diebold-voting.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHarri Hursti of Black Box Voting has released \u003ca href=\"http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf\"\u003ea report\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) on yet more flaws (on top of \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/major-flaw-in-diebold-voting-machines.html\"\u003eothers reported back in December\u003c/a\u003e) in Diebold TSx and TS6 Direct-Recording Electronic (or DRE) voting machines.  Having a few minutes of physical access to a machine makes it possible to install software, using simple, easily available tools, which will completely compromise the machine in such a way that it will be impossible to tell whether future software updates are successful or not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Felten and Avi Rubin give \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1014\"\u003emore detail at Felten\u0026rsquo;s blog, Freedom to Tinker\u003c/a\u003e, and question whether it makes sense to build voting machines based on commodity hardware and operating systems due to these risks.  This certainly seems like an application where you\u0026rsquo;d want hardware-enforced verification of a stripped-down trusted computing platform.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHursti\u0026rsquo;s report says that there are three layers of software in the Diebold machines: a boot loader, an operating system (customized Windows CE), and an application program (the voting software).  Each of the three layers has backdoors which allow bypassing security controls.  The report states that \u0026ldquo;Different files on the system carry various subsets of the following features: Signature check, mode check, and integrity check.  None of these can be considered security features against tampering.  For example, the integrity check is [redacted].  This check can be equated to a very crude spell-checker.  It is effective against accidental typing errors but not deliberate attacks.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe redacted portion, based on the description, is apparently a weak checksum such as CRC (cyclic redundancy check), rather than a cryptographically stronger checksum like MD5 or SHA1 (both of which have \u003ca href=\"http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,95343,00.html\"\u003eweaknesses of their own\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Hursti report describes how an attacker could exploit the weaknesses at multiple levels to prevent the removal of malicious code.  One such flaw (the details of which are redacted from the report) is that inserting a standard PCMCIA memory card into the machine containing a file with the appropriate name will cause the boot loader to reflash itself, installing the code in that file as the new boot loader on the system.  As Hursti points out, \u0026ldquo;Due to the fact that the boot loader is the primary mechanism for its own reprogramming, if the boot loader is compromised with a deep attack, using the boot loader itself to install a known clean version of a boot loader is no longer a viable option as a recovery path to clean the system.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe report goes on to show similar flaws in replacing the operating system image, and points out a voter-accessible hidden button (labeled \u0026ldquo;battery test\u0026rdquo;) that could be exploited by malicious code as a trigger for an attack.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe recommended defense against attacks is to physically protect the machines\u0026ndash;as a machine can be compromised with less than five minutes of physical access, chain of custody evidence must be maintained from the machines\u0026rsquo; origin to final use, with no unsupervised access.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Even more serious Diebold voting machine flaws"},{"content":"Two New Jersey attorneys, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, have filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York City against Verizon regarding its sharing of call-detail records with the NSA without a subpoena. The lawsuit charges that Verizon has violated a number of federal laws, including the 1986 Stored Communications Act (28 USC 2701), which provides for $1,000 in statutory damages for each violation. Some reports have quoted a $50 billion figure based the potential of one violation regarding the information of each of 50 million people, but the suit as filed asks for $1,000 per violation, or $5 billion if certified as a class action.\nThe Stored Communications Act is a confusingly-written piece of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that covers both content records (such as email) as well as non-content records (such as log information and subscriber information). One of the exceptions in the law for when a provider can supply non-content information to a governmental entity without a subpoena is if (quoting from a commentary by law professor Orin Kerr) \u0026ldquo;the provider reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person justifies disclosure of the information.\u0026rdquo; This seems like a defense that Verizon will be likely to use to justify a program that\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be used to identify and stop terrorists.\nVerizon claims that it \u0026ldquo;does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition.\u0026quot;\nRCN, a telecom and Internet provider (its assets include the former Erols Internet) based in Herndon, VA, has issued a press release stating that it, like Qwest, has not disclosed customer information except when required by legal process.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/5-billion-lawsuit-filed-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060512/ap_on_bi_ge/nsa_records_verizon\"\u003eTwo New Jersey attorneys\u003c/a\u003e, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3860849.html\"\u003ehave filed a lawsuit in federal court\u003c/a\u003e in New York City against Verizon regarding its sharing of call-detail records with the NSA without a subpoena.  The lawsuit charges that Verizon has violated a number of federal laws, including the 1986 Stored Communications Act (28 USC 2701), which provides for $1,000 in statutory damages for each violation. Some reports have quoted a $50 billion figure based the potential of one violation regarding the information of each of 50 million people, but the suit as filed asks for $1,000 per violation, or $5 billion if certified as a class action.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=421860\"\u003eStored Communications Act\u003c/a\u003e is a confusingly-written piece of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that covers both content records (such as email) as well as non-content records (such as log information and subscriber information).  One of the exceptions in the law for when a provider can supply non-content information to a governmental entity without a subpoena is if (quoting from \u003ca href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=421860\"\u003ea commentary by law professor Orin Kerr\u003c/a\u003e) \u0026ldquo;the provider reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person justifies disclosure of the information.\u0026rdquo;  This seems like a defense that Verizon will be likely to use to justify a program that\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be used to identify and stop terrorists.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eVerizon \u003ca href=\"http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=ousiv\u0026amp;storyID=2006-05-12T223619Z_01_N12175119_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-SECURITY-USA-VERIZON-DC.XML\"\u003eclaims that it\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRCN, a telecom and Internet provider (its assets include the former Erols Internet) based in Herndon, VA, \u003ca href=\"http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060512/20060512005534.html?.v=1\"\u003ehas issued a press release\u003c/a\u003e stating that it, like Qwest, has not disclosed customer information except when required by legal process.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"$5 billion lawsuit filed against Verizon"},{"content":"USA Today has reported that the NSA has been collecting a database of call detail records from data provided by AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon, and BellSouth (no word on whether SBC or other ILECs and CLECs have participated). Qwest is noteworthy for having refused to participate in the program.\nThe collected CDRs include records of calls which both originate and terminate within the United States (i.e., completely domestic calls).\nThe NSA\u0026rsquo;s goal was allegedly \u0026ldquo;\u0026rsquo;to create a database of every call ever made\u0026rsquo; within U.S. borders,\u0026rdquo; which is out of scope for the NSA\u0026rsquo;s mission.\nArlen Specter of the Senate Judiciary Committee says that the telcos will be questioned about their participation.\nIn other news today, the NSA managed to kill an investigation by the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Justice Department attorneys violated ethical rules with regard to the NSA\u0026rsquo;s domestic spying. They did this by denying requested security clearances to OPR investigators.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/nsa-call-monitoring-details-revealed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUSA Today \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060511/pl_nm/security_usa_phonecalls1_dc_1\"\u003ehas reported that\u003c/a\u003e the NSA has been collecting a database of call detail records from data provided by AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon, and BellSouth (no word on whether SBC or other ILECs and CLECs have participated).  Qwest is noteworthy for having refused to participate in the program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe collected CDRs include records of calls which both originate and terminate within the United States (i.e., completely domestic calls).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe NSA\u0026rsquo;s goal was allegedly \u0026ldquo;\u0026rsquo;to create a database of every call ever made\u0026rsquo; within U.S. borders,\u0026rdquo; which is out of scope for the NSA\u0026rsquo;s mission.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArlen Specter of the Senate Judiciary Committee \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060511/pl_nm/security_usa_phonecalls_senate_dc_1\"\u003esays that\u003c/a\u003e the telcos will be questioned about their participation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn other news today, the NSA \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002987431_webnsa11.html\"\u003emanaged to kill an investigation\u003c/a\u003e by the Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Justice Department attorneys violated ethical rules with regard to the NSA\u0026rsquo;s domestic spying.  They did this by denying requested security clearances to OPR investigators.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NSA call monitoring details revealed, blocks Justice Department investigation"},{"content":"Judicial Watch obtained records of Jack Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s visits to the White House from the U.S. Secret Service, but they are demonstrably incomplete. At least three other visits known to have occurred were not included, as presaged by Scott McClellan\u0026rsquo;s statement that the records were incomplete. The released documents record two visits, one on January 20, 2004 (from 10:42:20 to 11:29:34) and another on March 6, 2001 (from 16:23:35 to 16:49:50), in a format that differs from the format of White House visit records Judicial Watch previously obtained from the Clinton administration, which gave more information such as the name of the individual being visited. These records appear to be reports pulled directly from a badge access control system. (Via TPM Muckraker.)\nThe documents can be found here (PDF).\nUPDATE (May 17, 2006): These logs are the only ones the U.S. Secret Service has\u0026ndash;the logs that are needed for a complete record are in the possession of the White House.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/abramoffs-visits-to-white-house.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000610.php\"\u003eJudicial Watch obtained records\u003c/a\u003e of Jack Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s visits to the White House from the U.S. Secret Service, but they are demonstrably incomplete.  At least \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000611.php\"\u003ethree other visits\u003c/a\u003e known to have occurred were not included, as presaged by Scott McClellan\u0026rsquo;s statement that the records were incomplete.  The released documents record two visits, one on January 20, 2004 (from 10:42:20 to 11:29:34) and another on March 6, 2001 (from 16:23:35 to 16:49:50), in a format that differs from the format of White House visit records Judicial Watch previously obtained from the Clinton administration, which gave more information such as the name of the individual being visited.  These records appear to be reports pulled directly from a badge access control system.  (Via TPM Muckraker.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe documents can be found \u003ca href=\"http://judicialwatch.org/archive/2006/abramoff-wh-logs.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 17, 2006):  These logs are the only ones the U.S. Secret Service has\u0026ndash;the logs that are needed for a complete record are \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000674.php\"\u003ein the possession of the White House\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abramoff's visits to the White House"},{"content":"Suppose we live in a world with no private automobiles. There are still airports, bus stations, and sea ports, and these are places with diverse carriers and services, giving you many options for traveling long distances to other locations. But to get from your home to these travel hubs, your options are limited to between one and three cab companies; most people have access to two, RBOC Cab and Cable Cab. Both cab companies own all of their own cabs, but RBOC Cab has been legally required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs. Those independent operators have been permitted to repaint the cabs, furnish the interiors differently, and offer additional services to customers within the content of the cabs, but the cabs are owned by RBOC Cab and are of the same size, and the radios are standard equipment owned and maintained by RBOC Cab. Cable Cab, by contrast, has never been required to allow independent operators to use its cabs, and has never done so. (UPDATE 11 May 2006: This is because Cable Cab pays 5% of revenue to local governments as part of their franchise agreement, while RBOC Cab, by contrast, has had government monopoly protection until 1996, has free access to rights of way, and receives government funding via \u0026ldquo;universal service\u0026rdquo; fees in order to provide service to rural areas. While Cable Cab funded its own purchasing of cabs and infrastructure, RBOC Cab built its infrastructure without risk as a result of the government support.) They initially didn\u0026rsquo;t come with radios at all, but have recently furnished their cabs with radios.\nThe rules have recently been changed so that RBOC Cab will no longer be required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs. They\u0026rsquo;ve stopped allowing new independent operators to rent cabs, or existing independent operators to take on new customers, and have announced that they will be ending all of the independent operator contracts.\nRBOC Cab has also announced that they intend to build larger cabs, in which some of the additional space will be used to provide new services, such as a fully stocked bar, refrigerator, and high-definition television. They will supply all of the contents of the bar and refrigerator, as well as what is shown on the TV, by entering into arrangements with suppliers, whom they intend to charge a fee for the privilege of using the facilities to reach their passengers. Passengers will not be permitted to use the refrigerators to store items that they\u0026rsquo;ve supplied, though they will still be allowed to bring along their own cooler, snacks, or video equipment, provided that it fits in the remaining space in the cab (which will be more space than in previous cabs).\nBoth cab companies reserve the right to deny transportation for certain kinds of items that they consider harmful or dangerous, or which impact their ability to function\u0026ndash;items that stink up the cab, that could catch fire or explode, etc.\nCab Neutrality advocates argue that the Department of Transportation needs to create additional regulations which require the cab companies to allow passengers to carry whatever items they want, to use the radios to listen to whatever stations they want (whether the driver likes it or not), to put their own items in the refrigerator, and to allow all snack, beverage, and video providers to make use of the new equipment that RBOC Cabs plans to put into their cabs. They also want to require that the cab companies send cabs at the same speed to every travel hub, regardless of the hub\u0026rsquo;s size or amount of demand for its services (or what the passengers want), and that all costs should be borne by the cab company, not the hub. RBOC Cabs responds by saying that in order to fund the building of the new cabs, they need to be able to charge the snack, beverage, and video providers to use the new equipment (in addition to the fee charged to the passengers, which is not enough to cover the actual cost), but that passengers are still free to bring their own snacks. Cab Neutrality advocates worry that unless they are allowed to bring whatever items they want, they might be prohibited from bringing their own snacks, beverages, and videos. RBOC Cabs have also claimed that they need to be able to build these larger cabs in order to travel longer distances, and suggested that their ability to carry snacks, beverages, and videos over long distances is part of the costs they need to recoup (when, in fact, the long distance transportation of even their snacks, beverages, and videos is provided in the highly competitive environment of the multiple transportation hubs, where there are no issues of capacity and costs per mile are significantly lower).\nThis is not a precise analogy, but I think it captures the highlights. To make it more precise, I\u0026rsquo;d need to actually talk about the roads, perhaps making the last mile owned by HOAs that are analogous to RBOCs and cable companies, with the HOAs placing restrictions on the size and type of vehicles that can move on those roads and creating new lanes for their own vehicles, which they want to rent out to third parties or make available for higher priority services that might need them for emergencies.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s right about \u0026ldquo;Cab Neutrality\u0026rdquo; is that passengers want to be able to get to every travel hub and they want to be able to choose what food, beverages, and entertainment they get on the way. But the specific proposals they make are too specific, go beyond these basics, and create limitations in what new services and business arrangements can be developed.\nAs I see it, the biggest problem here is limited competition among cab companies\u0026ndash;a situation which was alleviated to a large extent by the requirement that RBOC Cab lease out cabs to independent operators\u0026ndash;a requirement that should have applied to Cable Cab as well. (If we had a way to purchase or rent our own vehicles from competitive sources, all of the worries about what the cab companies might do would be eliminated.)\nA requirement on the cab companies that requires passengers to be able to carry whatever they want would have the unintended consequence that some malicious or unthinking passengers would carry items that the cab companies want to prohibit for good reason\u0026ndash;harmful and dangerous materials, materials which disrupt service for other passengers. (E.g., spam, malware, denial of service attacks.)\nA requirement that all cabs must travel at the same speed means that if I have an emergency where I want to be able to pay more to get to my travel hub faster, I can\u0026rsquo;t do it. Passengers carrying organs for transplant surgery don\u0026rsquo;t get to travel any faster than passengers going on vacation.\nA requirement that all costs must be borne by the cab companies (both for transportation to the hubs and for the new cabs and equipment within them) limits the possibilities of new business arrangements between third parties and the cab companies. There might be a possible business model where a travel hub pays a fee to get more frequent cab services, with a lower cost to the cab passengers, subsidized by the long-haul transportation services. Or where video providers can supply services at different costs, with lower-cost services subsidized by advertising revenue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/net-neutrality-and-last-mile.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSuppose we live in a world with no private automobiles.  There are still airports, bus stations, and sea ports, and these are places with diverse carriers and services, giving you many options for traveling long distances to other locations.  But to get from your home to these travel hubs, your options are limited to between one and three cab companies; most people have access to two, RBOC Cab and Cable Cab.  Both cab companies own all of their own cabs, but RBOC Cab has been legally required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs.  Those independent operators have been permitted to repaint the cabs, furnish the interiors differently, and offer additional services to customers within the content of the cabs, but the cabs are owned by RBOC Cab and are of the same size, and the radios are standard equipment owned and maintained by RBOC Cab.  Cable Cab, by contrast, has never been required to allow independent operators to use its cabs, and has never done so.  (UPDATE 11 May 2006:  This is because Cable Cab pays 5% of revenue to local governments as part of their franchise agreement, while RBOC Cab, by contrast, has had government monopoly protection until 1996, has free access to rights of way, and receives government funding via \u0026ldquo;universal service\u0026rdquo; fees in order to provide service to rural areas.  While Cable Cab funded its own purchasing of cabs and infrastructure, RBOC Cab built its infrastructure without risk as a result of the government support.)  They initially didn\u0026rsquo;t come with radios at all, but have recently furnished their cabs with radios.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe rules have recently been changed so that RBOC Cab will no longer be required to allow independent operators to rent their cabs.  They\u0026rsquo;ve stopped allowing new independent operators to rent cabs, or existing independent operators to take on new customers, and have announced that they will be ending all of the independent operator contracts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRBOC Cab has also announced that they intend to build larger cabs, in which some of the additional space will be used to provide new services, such as a fully stocked bar, refrigerator, and high-definition television.  They will supply all of the contents of the bar and refrigerator, as well as what is shown on the TV, by entering into arrangements with suppliers, whom they intend to charge a fee for the privilege of using the facilities to reach their passengers.  Passengers will not be permitted to use the refrigerators to store items that they\u0026rsquo;ve supplied, though they will still be allowed to bring along their own cooler, snacks, or video equipment, provided that it fits in the remaining space in the cab (which will be more space than in previous cabs).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoth cab companies reserve the right to deny transportation for certain kinds of items that they consider harmful or dangerous, or which impact their ability to function\u0026ndash;items that stink up the cab, that could catch fire or explode, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCab Neutrality advocates argue that the Department of Transportation needs to create additional regulations which require the cab companies to allow passengers to carry whatever items they want, to use the radios to listen to whatever stations they want (whether the driver likes it or not), to put their own items in the refrigerator, and to allow all snack, beverage, and video providers to make use of the new equipment that RBOC Cabs plans to put into their cabs.  They also want to require that the cab companies send cabs at the same speed to every travel hub, regardless of the hub\u0026rsquo;s size or amount of demand for its services (or what the passengers want), and that all costs should be borne by the cab company, not the hub.  RBOC Cabs responds by saying that in order to fund the building of the new cabs, they need to be able to charge the snack, beverage, and video providers to use the new equipment (in addition to the fee charged to the passengers, which is not enough to cover the actual cost), but that passengers are still free to bring their own snacks.  Cab Neutrality advocates worry that unless they are allowed to bring whatever items they want, they might be prohibited from bringing their own snacks, beverages, and videos.  RBOC Cabs have also claimed that they need to be able to build these larger cabs in order to travel longer distances, and suggested that their ability to carry snacks, beverages, and videos over long distances is part of the costs they need to recoup (when, in fact, the long distance transportation of even their snacks, beverages, and videos is provided in the highly competitive environment of the multiple transportation hubs, where there are no issues of capacity and costs per mile are significantly lower).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is not a precise analogy, but I think it captures the highlights.  To make it more precise, I\u0026rsquo;d need to actually talk about the roads, perhaps making the last mile owned by HOAs that are analogous to RBOCs and cable companies, with the HOAs placing restrictions on the size and type of vehicles that can move on those roads and creating new lanes for their own vehicles, which they want to rent out to third parties or make available for higher priority services that might need them for emergencies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s right about \u0026ldquo;Cab Neutrality\u0026rdquo; is that passengers want to be able to get to every travel hub and they want to be able to choose what food, beverages, and entertainment they get on the way.  But the specific proposals they make are too specific, go beyond these basics, and create limitations in what new services and business arrangements can be developed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs I see it, the biggest problem here is limited competition among cab companies\u0026ndash;a situation which was alleviated to a large extent by the requirement that RBOC Cab lease out cabs to independent operators\u0026ndash;a requirement that should have applied to Cable Cab as well.  (If we had a way to purchase or rent our own vehicles from competitive sources, all of the worries about what the cab companies might do would be eliminated.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA requirement on the cab companies that requires passengers to be able to carry whatever they want would have the unintended consequence that some malicious or unthinking passengers would carry items that the cab companies want to prohibit for good reason\u0026ndash;harmful and dangerous materials, materials which disrupt service for other passengers.  (E.g., spam, malware, denial of service attacks.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA requirement that all cabs must travel at the same speed means that if I have an emergency where I want to be able to pay more to get to my travel hub faster, I can\u0026rsquo;t do it.  Passengers carrying organs for transplant surgery don\u0026rsquo;t get to travel any faster than passengers going on vacation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA requirement that all costs must be borne by the cab companies (both for transportation to the hubs and for the new cabs and equipment within them) limits the possibilities of new business arrangements between third parties and the cab companies.  There might be a possible business model where a travel hub pays a fee to get more frequent cab services, with a lower cost to the cab passengers, subsidized by the long-haul transportation services.  Or where video providers can supply services at different costs, with lower-cost services subsidized by advertising revenue.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Net Neutrality and Last-Mile Connectivity: An Analogy"},{"content":"Adam Green, responding to Mike McCurry, writes (following Matt Stoller at MyDD) that:\nLie #1: McCurry knows the Internet is not \u0026ldquo;absent regulation\u0026rdquo; yet he\u0026rsquo;s willing to deceive the public if it helps his clients. As Matt Stoller points out on MyDD:\nWhat McCurry did not tell the public was that during the Clinton years, the FCC actively enforced net neutrality \u0026ndash; the Internet\u0026rsquo;s First Amendment \u0026ndash; against his telecom clients. Common carrier statutes have in fact been a bedrock principle of telecommunications law since 1934, and in 1996 Congress ratified that with a commitment to network neutrality.\nMike McCurry has a moral obligation to everyone who has ever respected him and looked up to him to answer this question: Do you stand by your statement that the Internet is \u0026ldquo;absent regulation?\u0026rdquo; Or do you admit that, like so many parts of our American economy, the Internet does have rules?\nThis is deceptive\u0026ndash;ISPs are not common carriers and Internet services offered by telecoms are not bound by common carriage regulations. Internet services have been classified as information services or enhanced services, and thus don\u0026rsquo;t have to collect fees for universal service or take anyone who comes along as customers. Common carrier means you have to accept everyone as a customer and not discriminate about what traffic that is carried (so long as it\u0026rsquo;s legal), but ISPs can, do, and should set standards beyond what the law requires in order to (for example) keep spammers off their networks. Common carrier status has only an indirect relationship to the Internet and net neutrality\u0026ndash;it is about physical interconnection, not about Internet interconnection.\nStoller goes on to describe the FCC regulatory change regarding DSL networks:\nYet less than a year ago, in August, 2005, the Clinton -Gingrich policy of enforced network neutrality was radically upended by the FCC: The FCC said that phone companies such as Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, Qwest and other local telcos will no longer be regulated by traditional telephone rules when it comes to their DSL broadband services. The FCC agreed unanimously to classify DSL broadband as an \u0026ldquo;information service\u0026rdquo; rather than a telephone service. Phone companies will no longer be required open their broadband networks to access by third-party ISPs. After a one-year transition period, the phone companies can arbitrarily end any agreements they were forced to make with independent ISPs. During the transition year, the ISPs can attempt to negotiate new deals, but the cards are all in the hands of the telcos.\nIn other words, you know all that nice Clinton-Gingrich policy that made the internet work? Yeah, after a one year transition period, that\u0026rsquo;s gone, as a sort of sunset provision for the free internet sets. This is incredibly sneaky. What McCurry is doing is couching a radical change to the internet in the guise of the status quo.\nStoller makes it sound like this change has something to do with RBOCs\u0026rsquo; Internet services, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t. It has to do with other ISPs using RBOCs\u0026rsquo; last-mile networks to connect consumers to their own Internet services\u0026ndash;those ISPs typically don\u0026rsquo;t connect to the RBOCs\u0026rsquo; Internet services, but rather purchase IP transit from multiple backbone providers.\nContrary to Stoller and Green, there was no \u0026ldquo;Clinton-Gingrich policy of enforced network neutrality\u0026rdquo; that required any kind of interconnection between providers of Internet services\u0026ndash;rather, there was a requirement that telcos provide the use of their last-mile networks to ISPs to use to carry their own Internet services.\nThat requirement seems to have been a good one for creating competition among Internet services, but it\u0026rsquo;s important to be clear that we\u0026rsquo;re talking about the last-mile telco networks and not their Internet services or their backbones, though the telcos have continued to try to present that as the issue and many net neutrality defenders have wrongly accepted that as the issue.\nLast mile competition, unlike net neutrality, is a real issue, especially for consumer Internet access. It\u0026rsquo;s less of a problem for businesses since there is wider competition available via colocation services, metro fiber networks, and wireless. In my opinion, the best long-term defense against a telco/cable duopoly will be wireless access solutions, though there will no doubt be some others like broadband over power lines.\nIt is distressing to see net neutrality advocates continue to get basic facts wrong in defense of their poorly thought-out positions. If you don\u0026rsquo;t understand how the Internet works today (technologically, politically, and legally), then you are not in a position to be making proposals about how it should be regulated that are not going to have significant (and likely very bad) unintended consequences.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/misinformation-in-defense-of-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdam Green, responding to Mike McCurry, \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-green/mike-mccurry-hurting-t_b_20216.html\"\u003ewrites (following Matt Stoller at MyDD) that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eLie #1: McCurry knows the Internet is not \u0026ldquo;absent regulation\u0026rdquo; yet he\u0026rsquo;s willing to deceive the public if it helps his clients. As Matt Stoller \u003ca href=\"http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1696\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e on MyDD:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px;\"\u003e\u003cblockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px;\"\u003e  \u003cp\u003eWhat McCurry did not tell the public was that during the Clinton years, the FCC actively enforced net neutrality \u0026ndash; the Internet\u0026rsquo;s First Amendment \u0026ndash; against his telecom clients. \u003ca href=\"http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1646\"\u003eCommon carrier\u003c/a\u003e statutes have in fact been a bedrock principle of telecommunications law since 1934, and in 1996 Congress ratified that with a commitment to network neutrality.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Misinformation in defense of net neutrality"},{"content":"To many, the housing bubble seems a foregone conclusion. Uncountable blogs devoted to the bubble give the impression that you must be crazy or stupid to not see it. In spite of this, I remain unconvinced. I’m not even sure I know what the “housing bubble” is.\nHere is a working definition:\n…that housing prices have been pushed well beyond any semblance of reasonableness and the dictates of healthy market fundamentals due to excessive liquidity, extremely relaxed lending standards, a speculative mania, and the increasingly irresponsible \u0026ldquo;cheerleading\u0026rdquo; of vested interests.Endless scary graphs, like this one, which shows Phoenix appreciation rates over the past 30 years, seem to bear this out. Nonetheless, I am left with questions.\nFor example, who decides what price is “reasonable”? What standard should we use? Value is entirely subjective. Price, being a function of value plus ability to pay, can seem “unreasonable” to some, but “very reasonable” to others. The only one that matters, though, is the person who actually buys—and who, in so doing, reveals his opinion that the price is “reasonable.”\nWhere is the evidence of a “speculative mania”? You can’t simply point to the recent rapid appreciation rates and say, “See?”, because that’s assuming what you’re trying to prove. What evidence I’ve seen for this has been sparse and unconvincing, so far. Of course I could be wrong, and we could be on the precipice of the largest housing price decline in history. Unfortunately we’ll only know in retrospect.\nThe charge of “excessive liquidity” and “relaxed lending standards” also rings hollow to me. Now, it seems certain that the amount of borrowing taking place has increased significantly, but that could be caused by any number of things. Why does this automatically mean that lenders have become “extremely relaxed” with their money—which I presume means they’ve suddenly become willing to lend to any fiscally irresponsible idiot, as long as he has a heartbeat? This seems a testable hypothesis to me. If such an explanation were true, wouldn’t you expect to see foreclosure actions increase over time, as the bad debtors began defaulting on their loans?\nWhen debtors default on their loans, lenders need to provide public notice of the impending sale of the property. These notices get recorded at the county recorders office, usually in the form of a Notice of Trustee’s Sale. In order for a lender to record a Notice of Trustee’s Sale, a borrower has to be at least 90 days late on her mortgage payments. Luckily, Maricopa County makes these records easy to obtain.\nThis graph shows data I’ve compiled from the Maricopa County Recorders office. The blue line is the number of Notices of Trustee’s Sales per month, over the past 11 years. The dotted red line is a 3-month moving average. What does this graph tell us? My first impression is that it’s easy to see evidence of the 2001 tech bubble, but, if anything, Maricopa County seems to have recovered from that, as the average number of notices has returned to 1996ish levels.\nAdmittedly this one graph is hardly a death-blow to the idea of the bubble, but I believe it’s important to take note of it, if for nothing else, then at least as a caution against our tendency to succumb to Chicken-Littleism and confirmation bias.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe Economist has been declaring the existence of a housing bubble in the U.S. for several years primarily on the basis of comparisons of monthly mortgage to equivalent rent (a comparison where the Washington Post just reported yesterday that Phoenix isn't particularly out of whack).The signs of speculation in Phoenix have been investors buying new home contracts and flipping them, which seems to have mostly died out, with a huge growth in inventory, much of which is vacant. I've reported those numbers here. Home builders are reporting slowdowns in purchases as well as an increase in contract breaking due to inability to sell existing homes. They're also offering interesting creative incentives to attempt to sell homes without dropping prices (which would upset holders of existing contracts waiting for their homes to be built).The percentage of homes sold with option ARMs (and with features like negative amortization options and no documentation of income required) has grown (I believe I saw a statistic that 25% of Phoenix new home purchases have been with option ARMs, with much higher percentages in California), though I think the use of them has declined as interest rates have gone up.I think you're correct that most of the discussion on blogs seems to be based on anecdote rather than hard evidence, but there are certainly a number of measures that support claims of a housing bubble, at least in particular regions. (BTW, the decline in the stocks of homebuilders could be viewed as another indicator, as well as down-sizing in the mortgage industry.)Phoenix has the advantage of lots of people moving here, but like California, has the disadvantage of a high percentage of jobs being real-estate related.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI, of course, grant all that you're saying.But what if the driver of all of this is, say, a huge expansion in the money supply, instead of some weird mass irrational exuberance? How might we tell the difference?5 years from now, how are we going to know for sure that this was a \"bubble\"? Years of doublt-digit negative appreciation rates? A large drop in new construction? Tighter lending policies? Some combination of all those things and more?What if appreciation rates drop back down to a \"normal\" 4%-10%, and stay there? What if the number of Trustee's Sale Notices in Maricopa county stay at an average of 800/month for the next several years?I make no claim to know which is the likelier scenario, but both of them leave me thinking, \"What the hell just happened?\"\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI should point out that the \"increase in the money supply\" hypothesis - which undoubtedly raises many questions of its own - at least helps explain the weak dollar, the current high price of gold, and oil at $75/barrel.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI think that if you don't see price declines and reversion to the mean on some of these measures, then there must not have been a bubble.\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nDidn't Bernanke get almost famous for saying there was an excess of capital world-wide? You don't need an excess in physical money supply, only in the spendable (loanable) amount, which is a different beast, and international.Housing prices have been on the rise everywhere else in the West as well, btw. I think Britain's little bubble just got pricked, but I don't pay too much attention to it all these days.BTW2: I hope it's all a bubble in Norway as well, since I am not among the landed aristocracy these days.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI feel ya, Solan. Although my 4 investment properties were a huge albatross around my neck, at least when I had them I could say that I had a positive net worth. Now, on the other hand, I'm a veritable pauper by comparison.Jim, in a purely self-serving way, I do hope that it is a bubble and we do end up seeing some regression, because, as a current non-owner of real estate, the alternative is disconcerting.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHere's some possible evidence that the underlying issue is a declining dollar: many asset classes that used to move out of sync are now correlated, with the notable exceptions being Treasury bills and bonds.\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nThat should serve to explain why there is a housing bubble (or \"price hike\") in Europe as well. Does that mean it's going to be permanent?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIf it is, then I hope I get a pay raise soon!\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nYou won't. Those guys overseas working their shirts off will get theirs, though. Or something like that. I am (as always) convinced that times are going to get tough.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSo, you're siding with the guys over at the reckoning, huh?\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nThe Daily Reckoning rubs me the right way, but reading them too often gets tedious. Plus: You have to consider how long they've been wrong. Just like Marx over 150 years ago when he said \"The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer\" - a mantra that has been repeated by his followers every year for the last 150 years. Wouldn't the world have looked somewhat different if they had been right each of those 150 years? Game: Ask them which years that was, or ask them why not all kids are David Copperfields these days.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/is-there-really-housing-bubble.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/\"\u003emany\u003c/a\u003e, the housing bubble seems a \u003ca href=\"http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/\"\u003eforegone conclusion\u003c/a\u003e. \u003ca href=\"http://www.enaghbeg.com/Housing_crash/bubbletown_news.html\"\u003eUncountable\u003c/a\u003e blogs devoted to the bubble give the impression that you must be crazy or stupid to not see it. In spite of this, I remain unconvinced. I’m not even sure I know what the “housing bubble” \u003cem\u003eis\u003c/em\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://marinrealestatebubble.blogspot.com/2005/12/letter-to-editor_18.html\"\u003eHere\u003c/a\u003e is a working definition:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;color:#000099;\"\u003e…that housing prices have been pushed well beyond any semblance of reasonableness and the dictates of healthy market fundamentals due to excessive liquidity, extremely relaxed lending standards, a speculative mania, and the increasingly irresponsible \u0026ldquo;cheerleading\u0026rdquo; of vested interests.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eEndless scary graphs,\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/1600/phxappreciation.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"Click to enlarge\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/200/phxappreciation.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e like this one, which shows Phoenix appreciation rates over the past 30 years, seem to bear this out. Nonetheless, I am left with questions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor example, who decides what price is “reasonable”? What standard should we use? Value is entirely subjective. Price, being a function of value plus ability to pay, can seem “unreasonable” to some, but “very reasonable” to others. The only one that matters, though, is the person who actually buys—and who, in so doing, reveals his opinion that the price \u003cem\u003eis \u003c/em\u003e“reasonable.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhere is the evidence of a “speculative mania”? You can’t simply point to the recent rapid appreciation rates and say, “See?”, because that’s assuming what you’re trying to prove. What evidence I’ve seen for this has been sparse and unconvincing, so far. Of course I could be wrong, and we could be on the precipice of the largest housing price decline in history. Unfortunately we’ll only know in retrospect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe charge of “excessive liquidity” and “relaxed lending standards” also rings hollow to me. Now, it seems certain that the amount of borrowing taking place has increased significantly, but that could be caused by any number of things. Why does this automatically mean that lenders have become “extremely relaxed” with their money—which I presume means they’ve suddenly become willing to lend to any fiscally irresponsible idiot, as long as he has a heartbeat? This seems a testable hypothesis to me. If such an explanation were true, wouldn’t you expect to see foreclosure actions increase over time, as the bad debtors began defaulting on their loans?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen debtors default on their loans, lenders need to provide public notice of the impending sale of the property. These notices get recorded at the county recorders office, usually in the form of a Notice of Trustee’s Sale. In order for a lender to record a Notice of Trustee’s Sale, a borrower has to be at least 90 days late on her mortgage payments. Luckily, Maricopa County makes these records easy to obtain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis graph shows data I’ve compiled \u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/1600/trsales.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"Click to enlarge\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/200/trsales.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003efrom the Maricopa County Recorders office. The blue line is the number of Notices of Trustee’s Sales per month, over the past 11 years. The dotted red line is a 3-month moving average. What does this graph tell us? My first impression is that it’s easy to see evidence of the 2001 tech bubble, but, if anything, Maricopa County seems to have recovered from that, as the average number of notices has returned to 1996ish levels.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdmittedly this one graph is hardly a death-blow to the idea of the bubble, but I believe it’s important to take note of it, if for nothing else, then at least as a caution against our tendency to succumb to Chicken-Littleism and \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/01/confirmation-bias.html\"\u003econfirmation bias\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is There Really a Housing Bubble?"},{"content":"\nI went by the west lawn of the Capitol yesterday to see the set up for the National Day of Prayer event. There were a series of rotating speakers reading from the Bible to an audience of empty chairs (though I\u0026rsquo;m sure they filled them for their 5 p.m. event). We then had a scheduled private tour at the Supreme Court, and got to see the Justice House of Prayer/Bound4Life cult members praying in front of the steps\u0026ndash;these are the \u0026ldquo;interns\u0026rdquo; who pay $500/mo or so (the fee details seem to have disappeared from their website, but it was $1500 for a 3-mo internship when I commented on them in December) for the privilege of praying the same 22-word prayer over and over in hopes that the Supreme Court will reverse Roe v. Wade. (I almost think such strategies should be encouraged. These interns aren\u0026rsquo;t hurting anything with their \u0026ldquo;silent sieges,\u0026rdquo; and it\u0026rsquo;s keeping them out of other kinds of trouble they could be getting into or causing.)\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t make it back to the Capitol until later in the evening, instead choosing to eat an excellent meal in Chinatown with some friends.\n(Previously.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer-ii.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P5040004.med.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P5040004.med.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P5040005.med.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P5040005.med.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P5040014.med.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P5040014.med.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nI went by the west lawn of the Capitol yesterday to see the set up for the National Day of Prayer event.  There were a series of rotating speakers reading from the Bible to an audience of empty chairs (though I\u0026rsquo;m sure they filled them for their 5 p.m. event).  We then had a scheduled private tour at the Supreme Court, and got to see the Justice House of Prayer/Bound4Life cult members praying in front of the steps\u0026ndash;these are the \u0026ldquo;interns\u0026rdquo; who pay $500/mo or so (the fee details seem to have disappeared from their website, but it was $1500 for a 3-mo internship when \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/magical-thinking-in-nations-capital.html\"\u003eI commented on them in December\u003c/a\u003e) for the privilege of praying the same 22-word prayer over and over in hopes that the Supreme Court will reverse Roe v. Wade.  (I almost think such strategies should be encouraged.  These interns aren\u0026rsquo;t hurting anything with their \u0026ldquo;silent sieges,\u0026rdquo; and it\u0026rsquo;s keeping them out of other kinds of trouble they could be getting into or causing.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t make it back to the Capitol until later in the evening, instead choosing to eat an excellent meal in Chinatown with some friends.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer.html\"\u003ePreviously\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"National Day of Prayer II"},{"content":"The new law (which Fox has now declined to sign, and has asked for one that appears more anti-drug) would have the following effects:\n1. Allow local police as well as federal police to pursue drug-related crime. This is a strengthening of anti-drug laws.\n2. Codify the specifics for amounts of drugs which, if possessed, do not result in criminal prosecution, but diversion to treatment programs. Currently, this is at the judge\u0026rsquo;s discretion, requires some kind of evidence of being an addict, and is apparently a source of corruption (pay a bribe, get the charges dropped). This change seems to be relatively neutral.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me likely that these changes would have much effect on the availability or acceptability of illegal drugs in Mexico.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/facts-about-mexicos-drug.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe new law (which Fox has now declined to sign, and has asked for one that appears more anti-drug) \u003ca href=\"http://www.samefacts.com/archives/drug_policy_/2006/05/radio_of_the_absurd.php\"\u003ewould have the following effects\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Allow local police as well as federal police to pursue drug-related crime.  This is a strengthening of anti-drug laws.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Codify the specifics for amounts of drugs which, if possessed, do not result in criminal prosecution, but diversion to treatment programs.  Currently, this is at the judge\u0026rsquo;s discretion, requires some kind of evidence of being an addict, and is apparently a source of corruption (pay a bribe, get the charges dropped).  This change seems to be relatively neutral.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear to me likely that these changes would have much effect on the availability or acceptability of illegal drugs in Mexico.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Facts about Mexico's drug decriminalization"},{"content":"Today is the National Day of Prayer, an event made permanent (on the first Thursday in May) by Congress and signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1988, six years after the National Prayer Committee started pushing for it. Presidents had previously been able to declare National Days of Prayer whenever they saw fit, a tradition that became annual starting around 1951. Presidents can still augment this with additional National Days of Prayer, as Bush added a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance on September 14, 2001.\nAs I happen to be in Washington, D.C., very near the Capitol building, I\u0026rsquo;d like to check out the event on the west lawn of the Capitol tonight (unfortunately a previous dinner commitment overlaps with the event) and see whether the participants are able to reconcile their activities with the Bible, let alone empirical evidence for the ineffectiveness of prayer. In Matthew 6:5-7, Jesus condemns the false piety of \u0026ldquo;hypocrites\u0026rdquo; who pray in public, and advises that his followers pray secretly in their closets and not engage in \u0026ldquo;vain repetitions\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s one of the most ignored verses in the Bible.\nAs the Freedom From Religion Foundation has pointed out for years, \u0026ldquo;nothing fails like prayer.\u0026quot;\n(Subsequently.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.christiannewstoday.com/CWN_900.html\"\u003eNational Day of Prayer\u003c/a\u003e, an event made permanent (on the first Thursday in May) by Congress and signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1988, six years after the National Prayer Committee started pushing for it.  Presidents had previously been able to declare National Days of Prayer whenever they saw fit, a tradition that became annual starting around 1951.  Presidents can still augment this with additional National Days of Prayer, as Bush added a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance on September 14, 2001.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs I happen to be in Washington, D.C., very near the Capitol building, I\u0026rsquo;d like to check out the event on the west lawn of the Capitol tonight (unfortunately a previous dinner commitment overlaps with the event) and see whether the participants are able to reconcile their activities with the Bible, let alone \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2006/03/study_challenges_prayers_for_t.html\"\u003eempirical evidence for the ineffectiveness of prayer\u003c/a\u003e.  In Matthew 6:5-7, Jesus condemns the false piety of \u0026ldquo;hypocrites\u0026rdquo; who pray in public, and advises that his followers pray secretly in their closets and not engage in \u0026ldquo;vain repetitions\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s one of the most ignored verses in the Bible.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nAs the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ffrf.org/\"\u003eFreedom From Religion Foundation\u003c/a\u003e has pointed out for years, \u0026ldquo;nothing fails like prayer.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(\u003ca href=\"/2006/05/national-day-of-prayer-ii.html\"\u003eSubsequently\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"National Day of Prayer"},{"content":"Tuesday\u0026rsquo;s Examiner (a free daily in Washington, D.C.) has a column by Karen Feld (\u0026ldquo;The Buzz,\u0026rdquo; a gossip column) that reports on Stephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the White House Correspondent\u0026rsquo;s Dinner:\nPresident Bush\u0026rsquo;s clever presentation with Steve Bridges as his \u0026ldquo;id\u0026rdquo; was a tough act to follow for faux talk show host Stephen Colbert. Many, including the president, thought the comedian\u0026rsquo;s jokes were too edgy and in bad taste.I thought they were hilarious, deservedly harsh, and the dumbfounded silence of the audience was itself quite amusing. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s funny, because it\u0026rsquo;s true.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s too bad that it takes comedians to say what needs to be said right to the president\u0026rsquo;s face.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI predict that, 30 years from now, Colbert's speech will be revered in the same way Carlin's 7 dirty words are today.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/negative-review-of-colbert.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTuesday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExaminer\u003c/span\u003e (a free daily in Washington, D.C.) has a column by Karen Feld (\u0026ldquo;The Buzz,\u0026rdquo; a gossip column) that reports on \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/loyalty-day.html\"\u003eStephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s presentation\u003c/a\u003e at the White House Correspondent\u0026rsquo;s Dinner:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePresident Bush\u0026rsquo;s clever presentation with Steve Bridges as his \u0026ldquo;id\u0026rdquo; was a tough act to follow for faux talk show host Stephen Colbert.  Many, including the president, thought the comedian\u0026rsquo;s jokes were too edgy and in bad taste.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI thought they were hilarious, deservedly harsh, and the dumbfounded silence of the audience was itself quite amusing.  \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s funny, because it\u0026rsquo;s true.\u0026rdquo;  It\u0026rsquo;s too bad that it takes comedians to say what needs to be said right to the president\u0026rsquo;s face.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Negative review of Colbert"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve seen several people forward or cite Charlie Savage\u0026rsquo;s Boston Globe article, which starts:\nPresident Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, \u0026ldquo;whistle-blower\u0026rdquo; protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush\u0026rsquo;s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty \u0026ldquo;to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.\u0026rdquo; Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to \u0026ldquo;execute\u0026rdquo; a law he believes is unconstitutional. Sheldon Richman points out the Savage article and also a Cato Institute publication titled \u0026ldquo;Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush\u0026rdquo; which says:\nUnfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes\n* a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech \u0026ndash; and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;\n* a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;\n* a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as \u0026ldquo;enemy combatants,\u0026rdquo; strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror \u0026ndash; in other words, perhaps forever; and\n* a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.\nPresident Bush\u0026rsquo;s constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.Good readings for the week of \u0026ldquo;Loyalty Day.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/unitary-executive-doctrine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve seen several people forward or cite \u003ca href=\"http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/30/america/web.0430bush.php\"\u003eCharlie Savage\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBoston Globe\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e, which starts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.\u003cdiv style=\"visibility: hidden;\"\u003e \u003c/div\u003e Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, \u0026ldquo;whistle-blower\u0026rdquo; protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.\u003cdiv style=\"visibility: hidden;\"\u003e \u003c/div\u003e Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush\u0026rsquo;s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty \u0026ldquo;to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.\u0026rdquo; Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to \u0026ldquo;execute\u0026rdquo; a law he believes is unconstitutional.\u003c/blockquote\u003e Sheldon Richman \u003ca href=\"http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/05/frightening-unitary-executive-doctrine.html\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e the Savage article and also a Cato Institute publication titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6330\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eUnfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e* a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech \u0026ndash; and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;\u003cbr /\u003e* a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;\u003cbr /\u003e* a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as \u0026ldquo;enemy combatants,\u0026rdquo; strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror \u0026ndash; in other words, perhaps forever; and\u003cbr /\u003e* a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePresident Bush\u0026rsquo;s constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.\u003c/blockquote\u003eGood readings for the week of \u003ca href=\"/2006/05/loyalty-day.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Loyalty Day.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Unitary Executive Doctrine"},{"content":"This morning, while reading a thread about Stephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s wonderful performance at the White House Correspondent\u0026rsquo;s Dinner, I learned that yesterday (and every May 1 going forward) has been officially proclaimed \u0026ldquo;Loyalty Day\u0026rdquo;:\nLoyalty Day is also a time for us to reflect on our responsibilities to our country as we work to show the world the meaning and promise of liberty. The right to vote is one of our most cherished rights and voting is one of our most fundamental duties. By making a commitment to be good citizens, flying the American flag, or taking the time to learn about our Nation\u0026rsquo;s history, we show our gratitude for the blessings of freedom.\nI spent most of my day yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. I\u0026rsquo;m happy to proclaim loyalty to principles of liberty, but that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be confused with blind loyalty to political leaders or governments.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLooks like it goes back to 1958 under the name \"Loyalty Day,\" proclaimed by Eisenhower, and was intended as an anticommunist counterweight to May Day.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\n...because, as everyone knows, fascism is the only alternative to communism.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/loyalty-day.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning, while reading \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/636050.html\"\u003ea thread about Stephen Colbert\u0026rsquo;s wonderful performance at the White House Correspondent\u0026rsquo;s Dinner\u003c/a\u003e, I learned that yesterday (and every May 1 going forward) has been officially proclaimed \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060428-10.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Loyalty Day\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:arial,helvetica,sans serif;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eLoyalty Day is also a time for us to reflect on our responsibilities to our country as we work to show the world the meaning and promise of liberty. The right to vote is one of our most cherished rights and voting is one of our most fundamental duties. By making a commitment to be good citizens, flying the American flag, or taking the time to learn about our Nation\u0026rsquo;s history, we show our gratitude for the blessings of freedom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003eI spent most of my day yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I\u0026rsquo;m happy to proclaim loyalty to principles of liberty, but that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be confused with blind loyalty to political leaders or governments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Loyalty Day"},{"content":"The powersquid. (Seen in an advertisement in a recent in-flight magazine.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nLooking at that makes me go, \"Why didn't someone think of that 30 years ago???!!!\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/05/breakthrough-cephalopod-design-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://powersquid.net/\"\u003epowersquid\u003c/a\u003e.  (Seen in an advertisement in a recent in-flight magazine.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eLooking at that makes me go, \"Why didn't someone think of that 30 years ago???!!!\"\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Breakthrough cephalopod design in power strips"},{"content":"Tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post reports that:\nFederal authorities are investigating allegations that a California defense contractor arranged for a Washington area limousine company to provide prostitutes to convicted former congressman Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-Calif.) and possibly other lawmakers, sources familiar with the probe said yesterday.\nIn recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts, said one source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nThe Cunningham investigation\u0026rsquo;s latest twist came after Mitchell J. Wade, a defense contractor who has admitted bribing the former congressman, told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with Shirlington Limousine, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington, the source said.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s more info and speculation at the Daily Kos.\nthe Judge's Urn (2007-12-19):\nThe Brandy Britton case and Ed Norris are connected; He ran the hookers using Baltimore city poslice rainy day funds and his execuitve secuirty to tansport te hookers to Ehrlich and O'Malley and other Vip's for the Dc Madam and this exposes' the underbelly of Dc's corruption by using sex for contratcs and also bribes to manipulate the legislative branch of our Us govt. Talk about compromising positions\nLippard (2007-12-19):\nSome links of interest:Brandy Britton and her black bookEd NorrisD.C. Madam and Cunningham scandal\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/duke-cunningham-bribery-scandal-may.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTomorrow\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042802345.html\"\u003ereports that\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eFederal authorities are investigating allegations that a California defense contractor arranged for a Washington area limousine company to provide prostitutes to convicted former congressman Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-Calif.) and possibly other lawmakers, sources familiar with the probe said yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts, said one source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Duke Cunningham bribery scandal may also become a lobbyist prostitution scandal"},{"content":"President Vicente Fox says he will sign it.\nLooks like we\u0026rsquo;ll get a chance to see how well decriminalization works a bit closer to home than the Netherlands. The laws will still be slightly more strict than the Netherlands in some regards (e.g., drug sales will not be decriminalized), less strict in others (the Netherlands is tougher on cocaine and heroin).\nThe bill says criminal charges will no longer be brought for possession of up to 25 milligrams of heroin, five grams of marijuana — about one-fifth of an ounce, or about four joints — and half a gram of cocaine — about half the standard street-size quantity, which is enough for several lines of the drug.\n\u0026ldquo;No charges will be brought against \u0026hellip; addicts or consumers who are found in possession of any narcotic for personal use,\u0026rdquo; the Senate bill reads. It also lays out allowable quantities for a large array of other drugs, including LSD, MDA, ecstasy — about two pills\u0026rsquo; worth — and amphetamines.\n(Via Radley Balko at The Agitator.)\nBy contrast, the U.S. uses SWAT teams to go after nonviolent offenders and engages in significant abuses (see the numerous examples of abuse at Balko\u0026rsquo;s blog, including the Lester Siler case and the Cory Maye case), and does things like this, which seems like a misapplication of law enforcement resources to me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/mexicos-congress-passes-bill-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePresident Vicente Fox \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193616,00.html\"\u003esays he will sign it\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like we\u0026rsquo;ll get a chance to see how well decriminalization works a bit closer to home than the Netherlands.  The laws will still be slightly more strict than the Netherlands in some regards (e.g., drug sales will not be decriminalized), less strict in others (the Netherlands is tougher on cocaine and heroin).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe bill says criminal charges will no longer be brought for possession of up to 25 milligrams of heroin, five grams of marijuana — about one-fifth of an ounce, or about four joints — and half a gram of cocaine — about half the standard street-size quantity, which is enough for several lines of the drug.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mexico's Congress passes bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, and heroin for personal use"},{"content":"Radley Balko reports on the torture of Lester Eugene Siler, an illiterate man, by five sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputies in Campbell County, Tennessee, trying to get him to consent to search warrant without telling him what it said. The deputies denied nearly beating him to death, hooking electrodes to his testicles and shocking him, and threatening to kill him and go after his family, but his wife was present and got it on audio tape, which is available online.\nAfter the story was picked up by Andrew Sullivan, who wonders about whether this became possible as a result of the climate created by the Bush administration, which right wing bloggers have mocked by mischaracterizing his position, as described in a followup by Balko.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/torture-and-drug-war.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026505.php\"\u003ereports on\u003c/a\u003e the torture of Lester Eugene Siler, an illiterate man, by five sheriff\u0026rsquo;s deputies in Campbell County, Tennessee, trying to get him to consent to search warrant without telling him what it said.  The deputies denied nearly beating him to death, hooking electrodes to his testicles and shocking him, and threatening to kill him and go after his family, but his wife was present and got it on audio tape, which is available online.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the story was picked up by Andrew Sullivan, who wonders about whether this became possible as a result of the climate created by the Bush administration, which right wing bloggers have mocked by mischaracterizing his position, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026510.php\"\u003eas described in a followup by Balko\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Torture and the drug war"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a nifty little device that sits on your tongue and electrically stimulates it via 144 microelectrodes. Your brain figures out how to \u0026ldquo;see\u0026rdquo; patterns on the surface of this device, and:\nIn testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/brainport.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/631052.html\"\u003ea nifty little device that sits on your tongue\u003c/a\u003e and electrically stimulates it via 144 microelectrodes.  Your brain figures out how to \u0026ldquo;see\u0026rdquo; patterns on the surface of this device, and:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics. \u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Brainport"},{"content":"Looks like there\u0026rsquo;s some evidence that Bush\u0026rsquo;s new press secretary, Tony Snow, is an advocate of intelligent design.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/tony-snow-and-creationism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like there\u0026rsquo;s some evidence that Bush\u0026rsquo;s new press secretary, Tony Snow, is \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/my_encounter_wi.html\"\u003ean advocate of intelligent design\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tony Snow and creationism"},{"content":"Ed Brayton has written an excellent article describing how many major intelligent design arguments come directly from the creationist literature. A similar earlier article by Jason Rosenhouse may be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/intelligent-design-arguments-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton has written an excellent article describing how many major intelligent design arguments \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/id_arguments_from_creationist_1.php\"\u003ecome directly from the creationist literature\u003c/a\u003e.  A similar earlier article by Jason Rosenhouse may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/differences.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Intelligent Design Arguments from the Creationist Literature"},{"content":"Author Lewis Perdue wrote a book titled The Da Vinci Legacy which was first published in 1983. That book really does seem to have some very close parallels to Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s The Da Vinci Code. Perdue has a couple of blogs where he has written about his legal case (that began when Random House sued him over his postings on the Internet about the similarities between Brown\u0026rsquo;s book and his). He\u0026rsquo;s pointed out a number of apparent misrepresentations by Brown about his life, as well as another case where a work of Brown\u0026rsquo;s is unaccountably identical with the work of another author.\nAn overview of Perdue\u0026rsquo;s case is here.\nUnlike the Baigent and Leigh lawsuit over Holy Blood, Holy Grail (which purported to be a work of nonfiction), Perdue doesn\u0026rsquo;t allege plagiarism of the general idea, but over a large number of very specific elements that are identical between the books.\nPerdue says that anything he wins in court will be donated to charity, and so it\u0026rsquo;s not about the money.\nThe oddest thing on Perdue\u0026rsquo;s blog is talk about postings from somebody named Ahamedd Saaddoodeen, who Perdue says he\u0026rsquo;s traced to Blythe Brown, Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s wife.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/serious-da-vinci-code-plagiarism-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAuthor Lewis Perdue wrote a book titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Da Vinci Legacy\u003c/span\u003e which was first published in 1983.  That book really does seem to have some very close parallels to Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Da Vinci Code\u003c/span\u003e.  Perdue has a \u003ca href=\"http://davincicrock.blogspot.com/\"\u003ecouple\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://writopia.blogspot.com/\"\u003eblogs\u003c/a\u003e where he has written about his legal case (that began when Random House sued him over his postings on the Internet about the similarities between Brown\u0026rsquo;s book and his).  He\u0026rsquo;s pointed out a \u003ca href=\"http://writopia.blogspot.com/2005/05/no-affidavits-too-many-indiscretions.html\"\u003enumber of apparent misrepresentations\u003c/a\u003e by Brown about his life, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://writopia.blogspot.com/2005/05/portland-vs-exeter-who-is-plagiarizing_20.html\"\u003eanother case where a work of Brown\u0026rsquo;s is unaccountably identical with the work of another author\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn overview of Perdue\u0026rsquo;s case is \u003ca href=\"http://www.davincilegacy.com/Infringement/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnlike the Baigent and Leigh lawsuit over \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHoly Blood, Holy Grail\u003c/span\u003e (which purported to be a work of nonfiction), Perdue doesn\u0026rsquo;t allege plagiarism of the general idea, but over a large number of very specific elements that are identical between the books.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerdue says that anything he wins in court will be donated to charity, and so it\u0026rsquo;s not about the money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe oddest thing on Perdue\u0026rsquo;s blog is talk about postings from somebody named Ahamedd Saaddoodeen, who Perdue \u003ca href=\"http://writopia.blogspot.com/2005/05/saaddoodeen-is-stranger-than-i.html\"\u003esays he\u0026rsquo;s traced to Blythe Brown\u003c/a\u003e, Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s wife.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A serious Da Vinci Code plagiarism case"},{"content":"Josh Marshall writes:\nThe grand ole daddy of special interest giveaways \u0026ndash; Congress to give away the Internet. This is serious. Find out more here.Sounds like he\u0026rsquo;s saying that Congress is transferring the authority the Department of Commerce currently has over ICANN somewhere, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it? But he links to Art Brodsky on TPM\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Special Guests Blog,\u0026rdquo; who writes:\nCongress is going to hand the operation of the Internet over to AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon and Comcast. Democrats are helping. It\u0026rsquo;s a shame.\nDon’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it. What\u0026rsquo;s he talking about? He\u0026rsquo;s talking about the COPE Act, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, which just passed the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and its failure to include provisions mandating \u0026ldquo;net neutrality.\u0026quot;\nThis doesn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;give away the Internet\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;we have no laws mandating \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; today. This bill doesn\u0026rsquo;t change the ownership or regulation of the Internet. It does make changes to how cable companies operate (permitting national franchising in addition to local franchising), it mandates that VOIP providers must supply E911 service, and it guarantees the right of municipalities to offer wireless broadband access.\nBrodsky and Marshall have grossly misrepresented the effect of this bill in claiming that it \u0026ldquo;gives away the Internet.\u0026rdquo; What it does do with respect to the FCC\u0026rsquo;s policy statement (PDF) on \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; is give the FCC the ability to enforce that policy statement with fines of up to $500,000, while denying the FCC the authority to \u0026ldquo;adopt or implement rules or regulations regarding enforcement of the broadband policy statement and the principles incorporated therein, with the sole exception of the authority to adopt procedures for the adjudication of complaints.\u0026quot;\nCommon Cause, an advocate of codifying specific \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; rules, opposes the bill (see their reasons and analysis here). But the problem with Common Cause\u0026rsquo;s position is that there are no well-defined notions for how \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; should operate that would ensure that the result isn\u0026rsquo;t just to freeze the Internet in its current state and stifle new innovations and developments. (Common Cause apparently doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand the Internet well enough to know that spam is bad.)\nCommon Cause overestimates the ability of the telcos to use their existing networks to control how the Internet will work, and is, I believe, mistaken in its fears of classes of service. The existing broadband policy statement is sufficient to prevent telcos from blocking Google, or (more realistically) blocking access to competing VOIP providers without getting FCC fines. Further, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make the slightest bit of business sense for a DSL or cable modem provider to block access to services like the most popular search engine in the world.\nFor more on the subject of net neutrality, the single best analysis to date is the Stifel/Nicolaus report, \u0026ldquo;Value Chain Tug of War\u0026rdquo; (PDF). Also see my previous posts on this blog here (for my thoughts), and here (for a good analysis by Martin Geddes of the Telepocalypse blog), along with Geddes\u0026rsquo; speech at Freedom to Connect here, and Paul Kouroupas of Global Crossing\u0026rsquo;s posts here, here, and here. (Disclosure: Global Crossing is my employer; I manage its network security. Global Crossing would be at risk if the RBOCs and cable companies were able to use their control of last-mile networks within the U.S. in an anti-competitive manner, so my position on this issue isn\u0026rsquo;t based on any loyalty or bias towards those companies\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;d like to see more competition in broadband, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think giving the FCC greater regulatory power over the Internet would have any beneficial effects in that regard.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/talking-points-memo-gets-it-completely.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJosh Marshall \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_16.php#008280\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003eThe grand ole\u003c/span\u003e daddy of special interest giveaways \u0026ndash; Congress to give away the Internet.  This is serious.  Find out more \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29086\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSounds like he\u0026rsquo;s saying that Congress is transferring the authority the Department of Commerce currently has over ICANN somewhere, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?  But he links to Art Brodsky on TPM\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Special Guests Blog,\u0026rdquo; who writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eCongress is going to hand the operation of the Internet over to AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon and Comcast. Democrats are helping. It\u0026rsquo;s a shame.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Talking Points Memo gets it completely wrong on COPE Act"},{"content":"I received a mailing today from the \u0026ldquo;Protect 21 Coalition\u0026rdquo; asking me to contact my legislators to tell them to oppose Senate Bill 1276, which it describes as \u0026ldquo;alcohol deregulation.\u0026rdquo; The bill actually legalizes Internet-based sale of wine by Arizona wineries in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Granholm v. Heald (which was combined with two other cases, including the Institute for Justice\u0026rsquo;s case from NY, Swedenburg v. Kelly), which held that state regulation of Internet-based wine sales must be the same for in-state and out-of-state wineries. A 1982 Arizona law permits only in-state wineries to ship wine to restaurants and retail stores, and so is unconstitutional under that decision.\nThe Protect 21 website argues for a three-tier model of alcohol distribution (manufacturers, distributors, and retail sales) on the grounds that it is somehow better able to protect communities and prevent underage drinking. Actually, this model is an anti-competitive model held in place by regulations which benefit the middleman, whose role would otherwise disappear.\nTheir main argument is that allowing wine sales over the Internet will lead to underage drinking, despite the fact that purchases require credit cards and deliveries require a signature and ID verification, same as a retail store purchase. (For more on this argument and discussion, see this Jacob Sullum post at Reason magazine\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nAnd who would you guess is behind the Protect 21 Coalition?\nThe two people who testified against Senate Bill 1276 on February 15 were Howard Romm, the president of Republic Beverage Company, and Marcus Osborn, the \u0026ldquo;Manager of Governmental and Public Affairs\u0026rdquo; of the Protect 21 Coalition. Actually, Osborn\u0026rsquo;s title is for his position at the Phoenix office of R\u0026amp;R Partners, a Las Vegas-based advertising and lobbying firm. Osborn is a busy lobbyist, who also testified on behalf of the \u0026ldquo;PACE Coalition\u0026rdquo; in favor of H.B. 2383, a bill for a \u0026ldquo;Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly\u0026rdquo; at taxpayer expense, on the same day. He\u0026rsquo;s also lobbied the Arizona legislature for Jack-in-the-Box restaurants and YUM brands. You can see Osborn\u0026rsquo;s lobbyist record with the state of Arizona here.\nThe protect21.org domain was registered by R\u0026amp;R Partners, and the group\u0026rsquo;s mailing address listed on its website is a commercial postal mailbox at a branch of The UPS Store in downtown Phoenix.\nAnd who is a client of R\u0026amp;R Partners (though not listed on their website)?\nRepublic Beverage Company, of course.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re in Arizona, contact your legislators and let them know that you\u0026rsquo;d rather not have your tax money spent to funnel money into the pockets of middlemen through archaic regulations, especially not to middlemen who hire lobbying firms to create fake grassroots efforts to promote their positions to the legislature.\nIn 2004, expenditures by lobbyists had grown by 30% from 2003 to over $3 million, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/protect-21-arizona-astroturfing.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI received a mailing today from the \u0026ldquo;Protect 21 Coalition\u0026rdquo; asking me to contact my legislators to tell them to oppose Senate Bill 1276, which it describes as \u0026ldquo;alcohol deregulation.\u0026rdquo;  The bill \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0421azwine0421.html\"\u003eactually legalizes Internet-based sale of wine by Arizona wineries\u003c/a\u003e in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Granholm v. Heald (which was combined with two other cases, including the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/economic_liberty/ny_wine/index.html\"\u003eInstitute for Justice\u0026rsquo;s case from NY, Swedenburg v.  Kelly\u003c/a\u003e), which held that state regulation of Internet-based wine sales must be the same for in-state and out-of-state wineries.  A 1982 Arizona law permits only in-state wineries to ship wine to restaurants and retail stores, and so is unconstitutional under that decision.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Protect 21 website argues for a three-tier model of alcohol distribution (manufacturers, distributors, and retail sales) on the grounds that it is somehow better able to protect communities and prevent underage drinking.  Actually, this model is an anti-competitive model held in place by regulations which benefit the middleman, whose role would otherwise disappear.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheir main argument is that allowing wine sales over the Internet will lead to underage drinking, despite the fact that purchases require credit cards and deliveries require a signature and ID verification, same as a retail store purchase.  (For more on this argument and discussion, see \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/03/cut_it_out_midd.shtml\"\u003ethis Jacob Sullum post\u003c/a\u003e at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd who would you guess is behind the \u003ca href=\"http://www.protect21.org/\"\u003eProtect 21 Coalition\u003c/a\u003e?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe two people \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/47leg/2R/comm_min/Senate/021506+CED.DOC.htm\"\u003ewho testified against Senate Bill 1276 on February 15\u003c/a\u003e were Howard Romm, the president of Republic Beverage Company, and Marcus Osborn, the \u0026ldquo;Manager of Governmental and Public Affairs\u0026rdquo; of the Protect 21 Coalition.  Actually, Osborn\u0026rsquo;s title is for \u003ca href=\"http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/03/06/daily60.html\"\u003ehis position at the Phoenix office of R\u0026amp;R Partners\u003c/a\u003e, a Las Vegas-based advertising and lobbying firm.  Osborn is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.azlobbyists.com/lobbyist.cfm?id=333\"\u003ebusy lobbyist\u003c/a\u003e, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/47leg/2R/comm_min/House/02+15+HEALTH.DOC.htm\"\u003ealso testified on behalf of the \u0026ldquo;PACE Coalition\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in favor of H.B. 2383, a bill for a \u0026ldquo;Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly\u0026rdquo; at taxpayer expense, on the same day.  He\u0026rsquo;s also lobbied the Arizona legislature for \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsrx.com/newsletters/Obesity-and-Diabetes-Week/2004-04-12/0412200433341OD.html\"\u003eJack-in-the-Box restaurants and YUM brands\u003c/a\u003e. You can see Osborn\u0026rsquo;s lobbyist record with the state of Arizona \u003ca href=\"http://www.azsos.gov/scripts/Lobbyist_Search.dll/ZoomLOB?LOB_ID=3104677\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe protect21.org domain was registered by R\u0026amp;R Partners, and the group\u0026rsquo;s mailing address listed on its website is a commercial postal mailbox at a branch of The UPS Store in downtown Phoenix.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd who is \u003ca href=\"http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/03/06/daily60.html\"\u003ea client of R\u0026amp;R Partners\u003c/a\u003e (though not listed on their website)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRepublic Beverage Company, of course.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re in Arizona, contact your legislators and let them know that you\u0026rsquo;d rather not have your tax money spent to funnel money into the pockets of middlemen through archaic regulations, especially not to middlemen who hire lobbying firms to create fake grassroots efforts to promote their positions to the legislature.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2004, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special12/articles/0912lobbyist12.html\"\u003eexpenditures by lobbyists had grown by 30%\u003c/a\u003e from 2003 to over $3 million, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/hiredguns/nationwide.aspx?st=AZ\u0026amp;Display=DrStateNumbers\"\u003ea study by the Center for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Protect 21:  Arizona astroturfing"},{"content":"Apparently she had some staffers leave because she lied about whether Mitchell Wade (the briber in the Duke Cunningham scandal) had bought her a very expensive ($2,800) dinner at a fancy restaurant. She ended an interview last week when the subject came up, after saying that her campaign had \u0026ldquo;reimbursed\u0026rdquo; the restaurant (which makes no sense, since Wade paid the bill). Her spokesman called the reporter and asked that the subject not be published. The following day, her campaign released a statement saying that \u0026ldquo;I have donated to a local Florida charity $100 which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer.\u0026quot;\nIt turns out that the \u0026ldquo;local Florida charity\u0026rdquo; is Global Dominion Impact Ministries, a Charismatic Christian group run by Bishop Lewes and Pastor Sandra Jones. The group\u0026rsquo;s website says:\n\u0026ldquo;Pastor Sandra has an inspiring testimony of her deliverance from being sold to devils as an infant. She also shares her miraculous healing from her breast cancer as well as being raised from the dead.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/dirty-politician-katherine-harris.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eApparently she had some staffers leave because she lied about whether Mitchell Wade (the briber in the Duke Cunningham scandal) had bought her a very expensive ($2,800) dinner at a fancy restaurant.  She ended an interview last week when the subject came up, after saying that her campaign had \u0026ldquo;reimbursed\u0026rdquo; the restaurant (which makes no sense, since Wade paid the bill).  Her spokesman called the reporter and asked that the subject not be published.  The following day, her campaign \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_16.php#008271\"\u003ereleased a statement saying that\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;I have donated to a local Florida charity $100 which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_16.php#008272\"\u003eturns out that\u003c/a\u003e the \u0026ldquo;local Florida charity\u0026rdquo; is Global Dominion Impact Ministries, a Charismatic Christian group run by Bishop Lewes and Pastor Sandra Jones.  The group\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.globaldominionministries.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=FaithHighway/10000/4000/490GL/staff1\"\u003ewebsite says\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Pastor Sandra has an inspiring testimony of her deliverance from being sold to devils as an infant. She also shares her miraculous healing from her breast cancer as well as being raised from the dead.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: The Katherine Harris campaign implosion"},{"content":"What is it with people running for office using bogus photos on their websites? First Howard Kaloogian, running for Duke Cunningham\u0026rsquo;s seat, used a photo from Istanbul as a stand-in for Baghdad to support his claim that things are going well in Iraq. (He also lied about endorsements he had received\u0026ndash;and came in fourth in the primary.)\nNow Kimberly Williamson Butler, running for mayor of New Orleans, has a photo of herself in front of the French Quarter at Disneyland. When Disney\u0026rsquo;s attorneys objected, her response was not to replace it with a photo of herself in the real New Orleans, but to modify the photo to remove the Disneyland garbage can.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/another-wannabe-politician-with-bogus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat is it with people running for office using bogus photos on their websites?  First Howard Kaloogian, running for Duke Cunningham\u0026rsquo;s seat, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000213.php\"\u003eused a photo from Istanbul as a stand-in for Baghdad\u003c/a\u003e to support his claim that things are going well in Iraq.  (He also \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000244.php\"\u003elied about endorsements he had received\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;and \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000349.php\"\u003ecame in fourth in the primary\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow Kimberly Williamson Butler, running for mayor of New Orleans, has a photo of herself in front of the French Quarter at Disneyland.  When Disney\u0026rsquo;s attorneys objected, her response was not to replace it with a photo of herself in the real New Orleans, but to \u003ca href=\"http://www.wonkette.com/politics/new-orleans/kimberly-williamson-butler-continues-to-astound-us-167923.php\"\u003emodify the photo to remove the Disneyland garbage can\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another wannabe politician with a bogus photo"},{"content":"Arizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t look so bad\u0026hellip; (from Pharyngula).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nNice to see both Fairfax and Maricopa counties well represented!!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/us-counties-by-percentage-of-religious.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/04/adherents.gif\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/04/adherents.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eArizona doesn\u0026rsquo;t look so bad\u0026hellip;  (from \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/im_surrounded_by.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eNice to see both Fairfax and Maricopa counties well represented!!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"U.S. counties by percentage of religious adherents"},{"content":"Torin Nelson, who was working as an Army interrogator when he helped document abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004, has been blacklisted from further work in that role, for fear that he might \u0026ldquo;cause an adverse circumstance at some point in the future.\u0026rdquo; (More at TPM Muckraker.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/abu-ghraib-whistleblower-blacklisted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTorin Nelson, who was working as an Army interrogator when he helped document abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004, has been blacklisted from further work in that role, for fear that he might \u0026ldquo;cause an adverse circumstance at some point in the future.\u0026rdquo;  (More at \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000402.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abu Ghraib whistleblower blacklisted from military contracts"},{"content":"Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu al-Hakim have been held at Guantánamo Bay for nearly a year since a military panel ruled that they were noncombatants, not terrorists, and no threat to the United States. They are being held because they are members of the Uighur minority from western China, a religious and ethnic group that has been the subject of abuses by the Chinese government. If they were to be sent home, they could be abused and tortured.\nBut they cannot be allowed to enter the United States, either, because that would set a bad legal precedent. A U.S. federal court judge \u0026ldquo;ruled that they were being held illegally, but he said he was powerless to order their release.\u0026quot; The Supreme Court has declined to hear the detainees\u0026rsquo; appeal, but on May 8 an appeals court panel will determine whether federal judges have any power to intervene.\nSo they remain imprisoned indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay.\n(More detail at Sheldon Richman\u0026rsquo;s Free Association blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/two-noncombatants-held-at-guantnamo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAbu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu al-Hakim \u003ca href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0418/p02s02-usju.html\"\u003ehave been held at Guantánamo Bay for nearly a year\u003c/a\u003e since a military panel ruled that they were noncombatants, not terrorists, and no threat to the United States.  They are being held because they are members of the Uighur minority from western China, a religious and ethnic group that has been the subject of abuses by the Chinese government.  If they were to be sent home, they could be abused and tortured.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut they cannot be allowed to enter the United States, either, because that would set a bad legal precedent.  A U.S. federal court judge \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"text\"\u003eruled that they were being held illegally, but he said he was powerless to order their release.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e  The Supreme Court has declined to hear the detainees\u0026rsquo; appeal, but on May 8 an appeals court panel will determine whether federal judges have any power to intervene.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo they remain imprisoned indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(More detail at Sheldon Richman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-holds-acknowledged-noncombatants-at.html\"\u003eFree Association blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Two noncombatants held at Guantánamo Bay for their own good"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice Flash-animated timeline of the earth\u0026rsquo;s history, with sliders you can move back and forth to see continental drift and animals appear and disappear. (Via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/timeline-of-earth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a nice \u003ca href=\"http://dl.xferla.net/mirror/ovelho.com/evolution.swf\"\u003eFlash-animated timeline of the earth\u0026rsquo;s history\u003c/a\u003e, with sliders you can move back and forth to see continental drift and animals appear and disappear.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/another_timeline.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Timeline of the earth"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Arizona Republic has a story reporting that the large supply of cheap parking downtown may hurt the light rail project, as people would prefer to drive their cars than use mass transit.\nThe real irony here is that it was deception by the City of Phoenix that allowed it to build a massive parking garage across the street from Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Stadium). By falsely claiming that the 3,000-space parking garage was necessary for the Arizona Science Center and the Civic Plaza, the city effectively gave a $40 million gift to Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo. The ballpark did not have sufficient parking for itself, but because it would require voter approval for any additional spending under Proposition 200, the city hired Kaku Associates to conduct a study to determine the need for spaces for the Arizona Science Center, and jiggered the assumptions of the study until they got the result they wanted for the ballpark. The February 1994 draft report from Kaku stated that \u0026ldquo;If the baseball stadium is not built, it would be difficult to justify a parking garage of any size within the study area in general.\u0026rdquo; The City then told Kaku to change its assumptions, by disregarding existing parking spaces outside a two-block radius from the Science Center, assuming that crowds to the Civic Plaza convention center would double, and pretending that the city would also build a downtown aquarium. Adding these assumptions led to the conclusion in June 1995\u0026ndash;in the seventh draft of the study\u0026ndash;that there would be 1,300-1,600 space parking deficit, and therefore the city could go ahead and build a parking garage without voter approval.\nOh, but there was one more catch\u0026ndash;the land where they wanted to build the garage was the site of the Greyhound bus terminal, on land owned by the Dial (now Viad) Corporation. The city condemned the Greyhound site and passed a zoning change to prevent Greyhound from relocating to another site downtown. In Greyhound\u0026rsquo;s legal response, they pointed out the obvious fact that the city was cheating in its argument for the parking garage, stating \u0026ldquo;The city\u0026rsquo;s arrogance in proceeding to do whatever it damn well pleases by pretending that the garage is for the Civic Plaza and not the baseball stadium ought to offend the sensibilities of any honest thinking individual.\u0026rdquo; They further pointed out that the city\u0026rsquo;s action was a violation of Proposition 200 whether the parking garage was for the ballpark or for the convention center\u0026ndash;to which the city responded that the Civic Plaza and Convention Center is not actually a convention center, because only 5.8% of attendance at Civic Plaza events between 1988 and 1995 was related to conventions.\nIn the end, the city offered Greyhound a settlement that it accepted, and got its parking garage on the site, which loses an average of $283,000 a month, paid for by the city (and indirectly by its residents).\nThe city has continued to engage in deals which largely supply private benefits directly to Jerry Colangelo, most recently with a similar deal for the city to spend millions to build a hotel downtown\u0026ndash;even though similar projects in other cities have lost money.\nPhoenix City Manager Frank Fairbanks and former Deputy City Manager Sheryl Scully (now City Manager of San Antonio, Texas) are two of the main people to thank for these boondoggles.\n(Most of the above is derived from the excellent reporting of John Dougherty of Phoenix\u0026rsquo;s New Times weekly newspaper. For some reason, the Arizona Republic can almost never be counted on to dig up and provide such information.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/cheap-parking-may-hurt-lig_114528523621606921.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0417parking0417.html\"\u003ehas a story reporting\u003c/a\u003e that the large supply of cheap parking downtown may hurt the light rail project, as people would prefer to drive their cars than use mass transit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe real irony here is that it was \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/1996-04-25/news/news.html\"\u003edeception by the City of Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e that allowed it to build a massive parking garage across the street from Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Stadium).  By falsely claiming that the 3,000-space parking garage was necessary for the Arizona Science Center and the Civic Plaza, the city effectively gave a $40 million gift to Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo.  The ballpark did not have sufficient parking for itself, but because it would require voter approval for any additional spending under Proposition 200, the city hired Kaku Associates to conduct a study to determine the need for spaces for the Arizona Science Center, and jiggered the assumptions of the study until they got the result they wanted for the ballpark.  The February 1994 draft report from Kaku stated that \u0026ldquo;If the baseball stadium is not built, it would be difficult to justify a parking garage of any size within the study area in general.\u0026rdquo;  The City then told Kaku to change its assumptions, by disregarding existing parking spaces outside a two-block radius from the Science Center, assuming that crowds to the Civic Plaza convention center would double, and pretending that the city would also build a downtown aquarium.  Adding these assumptions led to the conclusion in June 1995\u0026ndash;in the seventh draft of the study\u0026ndash;that there would be 1,300-1,600 space parking deficit, and therefore the city could go ahead and build a parking garage without voter approval.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOh, but there was one more catch\u0026ndash;the land where they wanted to build the garage was the site of the Greyhound bus terminal, on land owned by the Dial (now Viad) Corporation.  The city condemned the Greyhound site and passed a zoning change to prevent Greyhound from relocating to another site downtown.  In Greyhound\u0026rsquo;s legal response, they pointed out the obvious fact that the city was cheating in its argument for the parking garage, stating \u0026ldquo;The city\u0026rsquo;s arrogance in proceeding to do whatever it damn well pleases by pretending that the garage is for the Civic Plaza and not the baseball stadium ought to offend the sensibilities of any honest thinking individual.\u0026rdquo;  They further pointed out that the city\u0026rsquo;s action was a violation of Proposition 200 whether the parking garage was for the ballpark or for the convention center\u0026ndash;to which the city responded that the Civic Plaza and Convention Center is not actually a convention center, because only 5.8% of attendance at Civic Plaza events between 1988 and 1995 was related to conventions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the end, the city offered Greyhound a settlement that it accepted, and got its parking garage on the site, \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2004-03-18/news/dougherty_full.html\"\u003ewhich loses an average of $283,000 a month\u003c/a\u003e, paid for by the city (and indirectly by its residents).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe city has \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2004-03-18/news/dougherty_full.html\"\u003econtinued to engage in deals\u003c/a\u003e which largely supply private benefits directly to Jerry Colangelo, most recently with a similar deal for the city to spend millions \u003ca href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07E4D9133DF933A15751C1A96E958260\u0026fta=y\"\u003eto build a hotel downtown\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;even though similar projects in other cities have lost money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePhoenix City Manager \u003ca href=\"http://phoenix.gov/EMAIL/emff.html\"\u003eFrank Fairbanks\u003c/a\u003e and former Deputy City Manager \u003ca href=\"http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/1997/may/m11-009.shtml\"\u003eSheryl Scully\u003c/a\u003e (now City Manager of San Antonio, Texas) are two of the main people to thank for these boondoggles.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Most of the above is derived from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/1996-04-25/news/news.html\"\u003eexcellent reporting\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2004-03-18/news/dougherty_full.html\"\u003eJohn Dougherty\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2004-02-19/news/news.html\"\u003ePhoenix\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e weekly newspaper.  For some reason, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e can almost never be counted on to dig up and provide such information.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cheap parking may hurt light rail--the story behind the story"},{"content":"A proposal to build a library out of the discarded fuselages of Boeing 727 and 737s in Guadalajara, via BLDGBLOG.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/library-of-airplanes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA proposal to build a library out of the discarded fuselages of Boeing 727 and 737s in Guadalajara, \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/library-of-airplanes.html\"\u003evia BLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The library of airplanes"},{"content":"Alonzo Fyfe has a parable on \u0026ldquo;The Meaning of Life\u0026rdquo; at the Atheist Ethicist. (Via the Carnival of the Godless #38.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/story-about-eggs-suitable-for-easter.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlonzo Fyfe has \u003ca href=\"http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2005/11/meaning-of-life.html\"\u003ea parable on \u0026ldquo;The Meaning of Life\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e at the Atheist Ethicist.   (Via the \u003ca href=\"http://nonsequitur2.blogspot.com/2006/04/38th-carnival-of-godless.html\"\u003eCarnival of the Godless #38\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A story about eggs suitable for Easter"},{"content":"Carl Zimmer writes about how retroviruses have inserted themselves into the human genome:\nScientists can identify viruses lurking in our genome (known as endogenous retroviruses) by their distinctive DNA. A fully-functioning retrovirus sequence contains three genes\u0026ndash;one for copying DNA, one for a shell, and one for escaping and invading cells. These genes are flanked by a series of repeating DNA, which allow viruses to be inserted or snipped out of their host\u0026rsquo;s genome. The human genome carries full-fledged retroviruses, as well as viruses in various state of decay. Scientists have identified 98,000 of these viruses, along with about 150,000 fragments of defunct viruses. All told, they make up 8 percent of the human genome. In many cases, the virus genes have disappeared altogether, leaving behind flanking repeats, which have been duplicated to millions of copies that take up about 40 percent of the genome. As a point of comparison, our \u0026ldquo;own\u0026rdquo; genes\u0026ndash;in other words, those that encode proteins that make up our bodies and allow our bodies live\u0026ndash;make up only about one percent of the genome.\nSome of these endogenous retroviruses are only found in some people and not others. They must have invaded someone\u0026rsquo;s genome and then spread to his or her descendants, but have not yet spread throug our entire species. Others appear to be ubiquitous\u0026ndash;meaning that they are ancient passengers that had already spread throughout an ancestral population.The viruses themselves can change over time, leading to different variants in different individuals that can be compared to reconstruct the lineage of the virus, and reconstruct the older versions of the virus (as was done with the 1918 influenza virus).\nUnfortunately for creationists, this also works across species\u0026ndash;and human beings share retroviruses in their genome with chimpanzees, macaques, and other primates. Zimmer again:\nIt turns out that most of the viruses we carry can also be found in these other species. Our retroviruses can be grouped into families. They carry the same families. Our retroviruses usually appear in the same position in the genome, no matter whose genome you look at. Many of theirs are in the same place. These are all the sorts of evidence you\u0026rsquo;d expect if retroviruses had been carried down from distant primate ancestors. A particular retrovirus is not identical from one host primate to the next, but you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect that. Once each host lineage branched off, the viruses could acquire mutations. But the different versions of these retroviruses are still similar enough that scientists can reconstruct the DNA of original virus that infected some long-gone primate.I recommend reading Zimmer\u0026rsquo;s entire article, \u0026ldquo;The Sixty-Million-Year Virus,\u0026rdquo; as well as Doug Theobald\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent\u0026rdquo; FAQ at the talkorigins.org website (the evidence of endogenous retroviruses is item #5 in Part 4 of the FAQ).\nAnybody who denies common ancestry of life on this planet does so only by disregarding the evidence.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/virus-dna-as-evidence-for-common.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCarl Zimmer \u003ca href=\"http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/03/13/the_sixtymillionyear_virus.php\"\u003ewrites about how retroviruses have inserted themselves into the human genome\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eScientists can identify viruses lurking in our genome (known as endogenous retroviruses) by their distinctive DNA. A fully-functioning retrovirus sequence contains three genes\u0026ndash;one for copying DNA, one for a shell, and one for escaping and invading cells. These genes are flanked by a series of repeating DNA, which allow viruses to be inserted or snipped out of their host\u0026rsquo;s genome. The human genome carries full-fledged retroviruses, as well as viruses in various state of decay. Scientists have identified 98,000 of these viruses, along with about 150,000 fragments of defunct viruses. All told, they make up 8 percent of the human genome. In many cases, the virus genes have disappeared altogether, leaving behind flanking repeats, which have been duplicated to millions of copies that take up about 40 percent of the genome. As a point of comparison, our \u0026ldquo;own\u0026rdquo; genes\u0026ndash;in other words, those that encode proteins that make up our bodies and allow our bodies live\u0026ndash;make up only about one percent of the genome.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of these endogenous retroviruses are only found in some people and not others. They must have invaded someone\u0026rsquo;s genome and then spread to his or her descendants, but have not yet spread throug our entire species. Others appear to be ubiquitous\u0026ndash;meaning that they are ancient passengers that had already spread throughout an ancestral population.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe viruses themselves can change over time, leading to different variants in different individuals that can be compared to reconstruct the lineage of the virus, and reconstruct the older versions of the virus (as \u003ca href=\"http://aetiology.blogspot.com/2005/10/pandemic-influenza-awareness-week-day_06.html\"\u003ewas done with the 1918 influenza virus\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately for creationists, this also works across species\u0026ndash;and human beings share retroviruses in their genome with chimpanzees, macaques, and other primates.  \u003ca href=\"http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/03/13/the_sixtymillionyear_virus.php\"\u003eZimmer again\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext\u0026file=CGR20051101_4448\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext\u0026amp;file=CGR20051101_4448\"\u003eIt turns out\u003c/a\u003e that most of the viruses we carry can also be found in these other species. Our retroviruses can be grouped into families. They carry the same families. Our retroviruses usually appear in the same position in the genome, no matter whose genome you look at. Many of theirs are in the same place. These are all the sorts of evidence you\u0026rsquo;d expect if retroviruses had been carried down from distant primate ancestors. A particular retrovirus is not identical from one host primate to the next, but you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect that. Once each host lineage branched off, the viruses could acquire mutations. But the different versions of these retroviruses are still similar enough that scientists can \u003ca href=\"http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/78/16/8788?view=long\u0026amp;pmid=15280487\"\u003ereconstruct\u003c/a\u003e the DNA of original virus that infected some long-gone primate.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI recommend reading \u003ca href=\"http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/03/13/the_sixtymillionyear_virus.php\"\u003eZimmer\u0026rsquo;s entire article\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;The Sixty-Million-Year Virus,\u0026rdquo; as well as Doug Theobald\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent\u0026rdquo; FAQ\u003c/a\u003e at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/\"\u003etalkorigins.org website\u003c/a\u003e (the evidence of \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#retroviruses\"\u003eendogenous retroviruses\u003c/a\u003e is item #5 in Part 4 of the FAQ).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnybody who denies common ancestry of life on this planet does so only by disregarding the evidence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Virus DNA as evidence for common ancestry"},{"content":"On April 3, the Goldwater Institute released a short opinion piece by former state senator Tom Patterson titled \u0026ldquo;Same Old Story,\u0026rdquo; in which he claims that \u0026ldquo;A new report shatters the \u0026rsquo;tax cuts for the wealthy\u0026rsquo; myth.\u0026rdquo; But the figures he gives do not shatter any such myth, and the facts are that Bush\u0026rsquo;s tax cuts have gone overwhelmingly to the top 1% of income earners.\nPatterson writes:\nAccording to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2003 the share of income taxes paid by the highest earning 20 percent of Americans jumped from 65 percent to 85 percent. The top 10 percent of income earners in 2003 paid 70 percent of the income tax. The infamous top one percent shouldered 35 percent of total income taxes paid. Meanwhile, the proportion of income tax paid by the lowest two quintiles has dropped to minus two percent. And, according to Office of Management and Budget figures, anti-poverty programs in 2004 consumed 16 percent of federal spending, an all-time high. The first thing to notice about these figures is that the only comparison between two time periods for share of income taxes is for the top 20% of Americans (their share went from 65% to 85% between 1979 and 2003). All of the other figures are for 2003 (except for the 2004 OMB figures on federal spending, which I won't address--I'm just interested in the tax question here).\nThese figures don't even attempt to refute the claim that the Bush tax cuts primarily went to the wealthiest Americans--this data in no way \"shatters the myth.\" A look at the facts shows that this is no myth.\nI sent the following email to Tom Patterson on April 3:\nTom:\nThis data doesn't seem consistent with other reports of more recent CBO data, e.g.:\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61178-2004Aug12.html It also doesn't seem consistent with the data in David Cay Johnston's book, Perfectly Legal.\nDoes Riedl look at tax as a percentage of income, as well as just percentage of the tax burden?\nMy understanding is that tax as a percentage of income has increased on the middle class and bottom of the upper class, while it has significantly decreased for the richest of the rich. I then included the text of my Amazon.com review of Johnston's book (which I've moved to the bottom of this post). I was mistaken that the facts \"aren't consistent\" with the other sources--those facts are indeed consistent, but conceals the point that the per-dollar burden on the top 20% has declined. The top 20% is paying a greater share of income tax because they are taking home a greater share of the total income, and being taxed less per dollar of income--and most of that is occurring within the top 10%.\nAs Johnston's book shows (p. 31), the top 10% of American taxpayers saw their average income rise 88.6% between 1970 to 2000, from $119,249 to $224,877 (inflation-adjusted); their percentage of the total U.S. income increased from 33% to 48%. The bottom 90% of American taxpayers saw their average income go from $27,060 in 1970 to $27,035 in 2000, and their percentage of total U.S. income dropped from 67% to 52%. Within the top 10%, those at the 90-95th percentile saw a 29.6% increase in income between 1970 and 2006, those from the 95th to 99th percentile saw a 54.2% increase in income during that period, those from the 99th to 99.5th percentile saw an 89.5% increase in income, and those in the 99.5th to 99.9th percentile saw a 144.8% increase in income (p. 34). Those in the 100th percentile saw a 558.3% increase in income from 1970 to 2000 (p. 36).\nThe result of Bush's 2001, 2002, and 2003 tax cuts by 2010 will be an increase in the share of taxes paid by the bottom 95% of taxpayers by 3.8%, and decrease the share of taxes paid by the top 5% by 3.8%. The top 1% will see a decrease in their share by 2.7% (p. 94).\nLooking at it another way, the percentage of income paid as taxes by the top 20% of taxpayers in 2001 was 19%; the percentage of income paid as taxes by the bottom 20% of taxpayers was 18% (also p. 94). That's practically a flat tax today, yet the relative burden on the poorest is much greater than on the richest, since a smaller percentage of their income is discretionary.\nDr. Patterson kindly replied to my email:\nMr. Lippard, I appreciate your reply. You bring up a number of interesting considerations, but my column was only a rebuttal of the \"Bush tax cuts for the rich hurt the poor\" mantra. I think the numbers, while always debatable, are reasonably authoritative and on point, or at least on the point I was trying to make. Tom If that was what he was rebutting, I didn't get that from the wording--the specific claim made is that the claim that Bush's tax cuts went primarily to the rich is a \"myth,\" and that's just not so.\nOn April 5, the New York Times reported that:\n* Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.\n* These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.\n...\nBecause of the tax cuts, even the merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, are falling behind the very wealthiest, particularly because another provision, the alternative minimum tax, now costs many of them thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars a year in lost deductions. And on April 14, Paul Krugman pointed out how the Bush administration has tried to falsely imply that the poor and middle class gained the most from his tax cuts by not being forthright about the actual numbers:\nThe Treasury Department has put out an exercise in spin called the \"Tax Relief Kit,\" which tries to create the impression that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income families. Conspicuously missing from the document are any actual numbers about how the tax cuts were distributed among different income classes. Yet Treasury analysts have calculated those numbers, and there's enough information in the \"kit\" to figure out what they discovered.\nAn explanation of how to extract the administration's estimates of the distribution of tax cuts from the \"Tax Relief Kit\" is here. Here's the bottom line: about 32 percent of the tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people whose income this year will be at least $341,773. About 53 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population. Remember, these are the administration's own numbers--numbers that it refuses to release to the public. Now, it is a simple consequence of mathematics that a government that consumes the amount of tax revenue that the United States does has no choice but to generate most of those revenues from the non-poor, and conversely that the non-poor will get most of the benefits of any tax cuts since they pay the most in taxes. But what the above facts show (and what Johnston's book in particular shows in numerous outrageous details) is that the tax system has been set up in ways that allow the very richest of the rich to benefit even out of proportion to their income, and that the Bush administration has been deceptive about that.\nIt's high time for real tax reform that greatly simplifies the system, eliminates most deductions and loopholes, doesn't give special breaks for particular corporations owned by friends of people in government, and eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax. Reducing taxes on dividends and eliminating the estate tax are changes that only benefit the extremely wealthy and don't produce benefits that are likely to create jobs or otherwise benefit most of the population. Reducing taxes on payroll and on small businesses (along with regulatory burdens on them) and eliminating corporate welfare would bring us closer to an actually free market that benefits everyone.\nHere's my Amazon.com review of Johnston's book:\nWhile I found much to dismay and horrify me within this book, I suspect I also often did not interpret things in the way the author intended. The author seems to hold a viewpoint in which if you avoid paying a tax--even legally--you have gained income, rather than merely avoided an expense. The author seems to hold the view there is a fixed amount of tax that is the right amount to [be] collected, and if one person or entity reduces its tax burden, it thereby increases the burden on everyone else, cheating them. This is a judgment without any regard to the other side of the coin, government spending. While I agree that at the extremes (many of which are portrayed in this book), there is clear-cut cheating and not paying a fair share by any reasonable standard, I would not agree that all or even most legal tax avoidance falls into that category. Those who favor limited government and balanced budgets are likely to have a similar reaction to much of what the author writes.\nThat said, however, he makes a very strong case that the U.S. tax system is unfair and corrupt, that the IRS is limited in its ability to go after tax cheats who are breaking the law, and that the net effect is to give tremendous benefits to the richest of the rich, while the burden on everyone else (regardless of whether those taxes are being collected for legitimate or frivolous purposes) has increased.\nHe has chapters on how the alternative minimum tax (AMT) is completely broken and is now impacting a growing number of the middle class, how tax-exempt insurance companies are being exploited as a mechanism for storing hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and avoiding taxes on the gains, on those who simply refuse to file or pay income taxes at all, on the effects of Reagan-era payroll tax increases, on tax-evading partnership schemes and the IRS's complete inability to devote any resources to detecting them, on American companies moving their headquarters to Bermuda to avoid taxes, and on the destruction of pensions at many large companies. All are fascinating reading.\nI agree with the author that something should be done, and that something should include a complete overhaul and simplification of the U.S. tax code, to make it fair and enforceable. But I am not optimistic that anything will be done--I think the level of corruption in the federal government is so high, and that because the behavior of bureaucrats and legislators is more accurately described by public choice theory than by political science, that it is unlikely we'll see radical change in a positive direction. ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/misleading-commentary-on-taxes-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn April 3, the Goldwater Institute released \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/940.html\"\u003ea short opinion piece\u003c/a\u003e by former state senator Tom Patterson titled \u0026ldquo;Same Old Story,\u0026rdquo; in which he claims that \u0026ldquo;A new report shatters the \u0026rsquo;tax cuts for the wealthy\u0026rsquo; myth.\u0026rdquo;  But the figures he gives do not shatter any such myth, and the facts are that Bush\u0026rsquo;s tax cuts have gone overwhelmingly to the top 1% of income earners.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPatterson writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Misleading commentary on taxes from the Goldwater Institute"},{"content":"From New Scientist:\nOther tissue engineers have tried printing 3D structures, using modified ink-jet printers which spray cells suspended in liquid. Now Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster. Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. \u0026ldquo;After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner,\u0026rdquo; says Forgacs. Most tissue engineers trying to build 3D structures start with a scaffold of the desired shape, which they seed with cells and grow for weeks in the lab. This is how Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University and his colleagues grew the bladders which he successfully implanted into seven people. But if tissue engineering goes mainstream, faster and cheaper methods will be a boon. \u0026ldquo;Bioprinting is the way to go,\u0026rdquo; says Vladimir Mironov, a tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. (Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/bioprinting-inkjet-printers-that-build.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025474.300-print-me-a-heart-and-a-set-of-arteries.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Scientist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOther tissue engineers have tried printing 3D structures, using modified ink-jet printers which spray cells suspended in liquid. Now Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster. \u003cp\u003e Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. \u0026ldquo;After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner,\u0026rdquo; says Forgacs. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Bioprinting\":  Inkjet printers that build tissue"},{"content":"Some of the children who were browbeaten into making admissions of bogus Satanic ritual abuse claims, now adults, are seeking compensation from the government agencies which took them from their families. It\u0026rsquo;s too bad they aren\u0026rsquo;t also going after some of the fakes whose stories inspired the witchhunts (Mike Warnke, \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Rebecca Brown\u0026rdquo;) and their publishers and promoters (Jack Chick, Hal Lindsey, Johanna Michaelsen).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/some-of-real-victims-of-phony-satanic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome of the children who were browbeaten into making admissions of bogus Satanic ritual abuse claims, now adults, \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/2006/01/09.html\"\u003eare seeking compensation from the government agencies\u003c/a\u003e which took them from their families.  It\u0026rsquo;s too bad they aren\u0026rsquo;t also going after some of the fakes whose stories inspired the witchhunts (Mike Warnke, \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Rebecca Brown\u0026rdquo;) and their publishers and promoters (Jack Chick, Hal Lindsey, Johanna Michaelsen).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some of the real victims of phony Satanic ritual abuse claims are now seeking compensation"},{"content":"Scott McClellan maintains that when Bush presented discredited information about mobile bioweapons laboratories in Iraq, he had no choice because the discrediting data was classified and it would be inappropriate to make use of it to modify a set of talking points to make sure that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t full of falsehoods and misrepresentations to present to the American public:\nI think the CIA will tell you \u0026ndash; and I spoke to them earlier today \u0026ndash; that a finished product like this, a white paper like this, takes coordination, it takes debating, it takes vetting, and it\u0026rsquo;s not something that they will tell you turns on a dime. It\u0026rsquo;s a complex intelligence white paper and it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026hellip; one derived from highly classified information takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate and to run through a declassification process. And they will tell you this. And the intelligence comes in many different forms \u0026ndash; human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source \u0026ndash; and it\u0026rsquo;s not a trickle, it\u0026rsquo;s a constant flood, is what they told me this morning. And weighing and assessing it is something that takes a lot of time and is a technology-intensive process. So you\u0026rsquo;re making an assumption that something is immediately taken and assessed by your comments.Yet at the same time, the Bush administration takes such a cavalier view of the declassification process (or rather, such a strong view of the power of the President to act upon the whims of the moment) that he can approve leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent in order to get revenge on a U.S. Ambassador who is criticizing the administrations falsehoods about Iraq attempting to purchase uranium in Niger.\nMeanwhile, Alberto Gonzales says that the President could legally intercept domestic communications without FISA Court approval as a result of the AUMF (authorization for the use of military force in Iraq), in addition to being able to unilaterally declare U.S. citizens to be enemy combatants and hold them indefinitely without trial and engage in torture.\nIt is growing more and more clear that the current administration thinks the President\u0026rsquo;s powers are unlimited, and Bush\u0026rsquo;s December 18, 2000 comment that \u0026ldquo;if this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier\u0026ndash;so long as I\u0026rsquo;m the dictator\u0026rdquo; and his July 30, 2001 Business Week comment that \u0026ldquo;A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there\u0026rsquo;s no question about it\u0026rdquo; weren\u0026rsquo;t really jokes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/bushs-imperial-powers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScott McClellan maintains that when Bush presented discredited information about mobile bioweapons laboratories in Iraq, \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_09.php#008208\"\u003ehe had no choice\u003c/a\u003e because the discrediting data was classified and it would be inappropriate to make use of it to modify a set of talking points to make sure that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t full of falsehoods and misrepresentations to present to the American public:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI think the CIA will tell you \u0026ndash; and I spoke to them earlier today \u0026ndash; that a finished product like this, a white paper like this, takes coordination, it takes debating, it takes vetting, and it\u0026rsquo;s not something that they will tell you turns on a dime. \u003cem\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a complex intelligence white paper and it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026hellip; one derived from highly classified information takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate and to run through a declassification process\u003c/em\u003e. And they will tell you this. And the intelligence comes in many different forms \u0026ndash; human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source \u0026ndash; and it\u0026rsquo;s not a trickle, it\u0026rsquo;s a constant flood, is what they told me this morning. And weighing and assessing it is something that takes a lot of time and is a technology-intensive process. So you\u0026rsquo;re making an assumption that something is immediately taken and assessed by your comments.\u003c/blockquote\u003eYet at the same time, the Bush administration takes such a cavalier view of the declassification process (or rather, such a strong view of the power of the President to act upon the whims of the moment) that \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000338.php\"\u003ehe can approve leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent in order to get revenge\u003c/a\u003e on a U.S. Ambassador who is criticizing the administrations falsehoods about Iraq attempting to purchase uranium in Niger.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMeanwhile, Alberto Gonzales \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040600764.html\"\u003esays that the President could legally intercept domestic communications\u003c/a\u003e without FISA Court approval as a result of the AUMF (authorization for the use of military force in Iraq), in addition to being able to unilaterally declare U.S. citizens to be enemy combatants and hold them indefinitely without trial and engage in torture.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is growing more and more clear that the current administration thinks the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/bushs_unlimited_powers.php\"\u003ePresident\u0026rsquo;s powers are unlimited\u003c/a\u003e, and Bush\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsgateway.ca/bush_dictator.htm\"\u003eDecember 18, 2000 comment\u003c/a\u003e that \u0026ldquo;if this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier\u0026ndash;so long as I\u0026rsquo;m the dictator\u0026rdquo; and his July 30, 2001 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBusiness Week\u003c/span\u003e comment that \u0026ldquo;A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there\u0026rsquo;s no question about it\u0026rdquo; weren\u0026rsquo;t really jokes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's imperial powers"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports on a tragic situation with a humorously ambiguous headline. This will likely show up in a future issue of Fortean Times.\nHistorical Comments steve (2006-12-09):\nHi Jim,In case you're interested, here's a belated reply to your comments:http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/04/lippardian-philippics.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/brit-accused-of-killing-wife-baby.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/AZCentral.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/AZCentral.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0411MotherBabyDead11-ON.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports on a tragic situation\u003c/a\u003e with a humorously ambiguous headline.  This will likely show up in a future issue of \u003ca href=\"http://www.forteantimes.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFortean Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003esteve\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHi Jim,\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIn case you're interested, here's a belated reply to your comments:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/04/lippardian-philippics.html\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Brit accused of killing wife, baby pleads not guilty"},{"content":"An Associated Press story:\nKey figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show. The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down. The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was \u0026ldquo;preposterous\u0026rdquo; to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.\nThe scheme involved repeated hang-up calls from a telemarketing firm to the Democratic get-out-the-vote headquarters. The owner of the firm is under indictment for the scheme. Apart from Tobin, there have already been two other convictions in the case.\nUPDATE: TPM Muckraker has more details on the calling records that show calls to the White House.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/new-hampshire-election-phone-jamming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060410/ap_on_go_pr_wh/election_phone_jamming\"\u003eAssociated Press story\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eKey figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.                                             \u003cbr /\u003e                                                                              \u003cbr /\u003eThe records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.      \u003cbr /\u003e                                                                              \u003cbr /\u003eThe national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was \u0026ldquo;preposterous\u0026rdquo; to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe scheme involved repeated hang-up calls from a telemarketing firm to the Democratic get-out-the-vote headquarters.  The owner of the firm is under indictment for the scheme.  Apart from Tobin, there have already been two other convictions in the case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  TPM Muckraker \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000344.php\"\u003ehas more details\u003c/a\u003e on the calling records that show calls to the White House.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Hampshire election phone-jamming tied to White House and Republican Party"},{"content":"Details of AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s cooperation with the National Security Agency are beginning to emerge as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T, as described by Wired:\nAT\u0026amp;T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers\u0026rsquo; phone calls, and shunted its customers\u0026rsquo; internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT\u0026amp;T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the company.\nMark Klein, a retired AT\u0026amp;T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT\u0026amp;T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT\u0026amp;T customers without warrants.\nOn Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT\u0026amp;T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT\u0026amp;T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.\nAccording to a statement released by Klein\u0026rsquo;s attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.\nThe account says that AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s Internet peering traffic, as well as voice traffic, is being intercepted:\n\u0026ldquo;While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal,\u0026rdquo; Klein wrote.\nThe split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT\u0026amp;T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein\u0026rsquo;s statement.\nThe secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, \u0026ldquo;known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets,\u0026rdquo; according to Klein\u0026rsquo;s statement.\nThis information goes well beyond what had already been determined about AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s gigantic call detail record (CDR) database, Daytona, that preserves a record of decades of telephone calls. That database included only the phone numbers and dates and times, not the actual content of the calls. This new information, by contrast, suggests the ability to actually intercept the content of voice calls and Internet data transmission.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/details-of-att-cooperation-with-nsa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDetails of AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s cooperation with the National Security Agency are beginning to emerge as a result of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T\u003c/a\u003e, as described by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWired\u003c/span\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eAT\u0026amp;T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers\u0026rsquo; phone calls, and shunted its customers\u0026rsquo; internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT\u0026amp;T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against the company.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Details of AT\u0026T cooperation with the NSA emerge"},{"content":"The NY AG\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against Direct Revenue has produced a bunch of interesting internal documents. The documents include complaints, internal emails, a listing of company names used by Direct Revenue, information about Direct Revenue hiring a private investigator to track down an anti-spyware researcher, payments received from Yahoo ($600,000 between April-June 2005), and revenue numbers (the adware business is extremely profitable). Ben Edelman has them up at his site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/direct-revenue-exposed.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe NY AG\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit against Direct Revenue has produced a bunch of interesting internal documents.  The documents include complaints, internal emails, a listing of company names used by Direct Revenue, information about Direct Revenue hiring a private investigator to track down an anti-spyware researcher, payments received from Yahoo ($600,000 between April-June 2005), and revenue numbers (the adware business is extremely profitable).  Ben Edelman has \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/040706-1.html\"\u003ethem up at his site\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Direct Revenue exposed"},{"content":"The Discovery Institute wants to argue that Tiktaalik roseae is not a transitional fossil (images here). Nick Matzke dissects the DI\u0026rsquo;s claims at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/tiktaalik-roseae-and-discovery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Discovery Institute wants to argue that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTiktaalik roseae\u003c/span\u003e is not a transitional fossil (images \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/trollart_on_tik.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).  Nick Matzke dissects the DI\u0026rsquo;s claims at \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/post_10.html\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tiktaalik roseae and the Discovery Institute"},{"content":"You Belong in Amsterdam\nA little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam.\nWhether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).What European City Do You Belong In? Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI scored there, too--though unfortunately I've never actually scored there, since I've never been. Perhaps someday...\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nKat came up with Barcelona. Something about dancing...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/what-european-city-do-you-belong-in.html/","summary":"\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"350\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd bg=\"\" style=\"color: rgb(221, 221, 221);\" align=\"center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eYou Belong in Amsterdam\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd bgcolor=\"#eeeeee\"\u003e\u003ccenter\u003e\u003cimg src=\"http://images.blogthings.com/whateuropeancitydoyoubelonginquiz/amsterdam.jpg\" height=\"100\" width=\"100\" /\u003e\u003c/center\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam.\u003cbr /\u003eWhether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"center\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.blogthings.com/whateuropeancitydoyoubelonginquiz/\"\u003eWhat European City Do You Belong In?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI scored there, too--though unfortunately I've never actually \u003cI\u003escored\u003c/I\u003e there, since I've never been.  Perhaps someday...\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What European city do you belong in?"},{"content":"Al Franken had a debate with Ann Coulter at the University of Judaism; Franken\u0026rsquo;s initial presentation is here, and is quite good. There\u0026rsquo;s a bit more background here\u0026ndash;has anyone seen Coulter\u0026rsquo;s response transcribed?\nAt one point, Franken says:\nYou can’t have good government without the truth. During the crafting and passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill, the chief actuary of Medicare was told to withhold from Congress the true cost of the bill. He’d be fired if he told the truth.\nThe bill costs so much, in large part, because the bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies on the price of drugs. As a result, seniors now pay on average 44% more than veterans getting the same drugs through the VA which is allowed to use its size to negotiate with the drug companies. To get the bill passed, the vote was held open for three hours. Tom DeLay was later admonished by Republicans on the ethics committee for attempting to bribe, and then extort, Republican Nick Smith of Michigan to get him to change his vote. The chairman of the Commerce Committee Billy Tauzin who ushered the legislation through, soon left Congress for a two million dollar a year job as the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. Obviously, a complete coincidence.\nThis is a series of events that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be forgotten; the details are spelled out in James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s The Bush Betrayal (2004, Palgrave Macmillan) in the chapter \u0026ldquo;Spending as Caring,\u0026rdquo; pp. 121-128. Some highlights:\nBush constantly portrayed the issue of new handouts in the loftiest moral terms. In a Florida speech on November 13, 2003, Bush declared, \u0026ldquo;The Medicare program is a basic trust that must be upheld throughout the generations.\u0026rdquo; And because it was an issue of trust, the Bush team was entitled to use deceit and any means necessary to ram the law through Congress.\nThe Republican leadership thought they could score victory in the House when the bill was brought to the floor on the evening of November 2, 2003. However, when the initial vote occurred at 3 a.m., the Bush proposal lost by two votes. The Republican leadership violated House rules, which limit votes to a half hour or less, and proceeded to carry out the longest floor vote in House history\u0026ndash;dragging out the tally until 6 a.m., when two Republicans switched their \u0026ldquo;nays\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;yeas\u0026rdquo; and the bill passed.\nRep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), a veteran congressman in his final term, caught intense heat for opposing the bill. Efforts to sway Smith\u0026rsquo;s vote focused on his son, who was running for the congressional seat his father held. Columnist Robert Novak reported: \u0026ldquo;On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father\u0026rsquo;s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.\u0026rdquo; Smith complained widely about the threats and bribes in the days after the vote. The House Ethics Committee eventually grudgingly launched a bribery investigation.\nBarely a month after Bush signed the bill, Bush\u0026rsquo;s budget director, Josh Bolton, informed Congress that the estimated cost had jumped to $540 billion for the first decade, instead of the advertised $400 billion ticket price. The revision infuriated conservative Republican congressmen, but the congressional leadership tried to brush it off as a non-issue. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) declared, \u0026ldquo;In truth, nobody has any idea what the real figure will be at the end of the day, because we don\u0026rsquo;t know what those assumptions should be as we go further.\u0026rdquo; If Frist actually believed no one had any idea of what the legislation would cost, then he and other supporters were grossly negligent or deceptive in the claims they made to the American people when Congress considered the bill. \u0026hellip;\nThe Bush administration intentionally deceived Congress over the estimated cost of the bill. Thirteen conservative House members had vowed to vote against any bill costing more than $400 billion. Richard S. Foster, the top actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, privately estimated in June 2003\u0026ndash;5 months before the final vote\u0026ndash;that the bill would actually cost $550 billion. Foster was contacted by Democratic stafers seeking estimates on the cost of the Bush proposal. By law, Foster was obliged to provide them the information. Thomas Scully, the chief Medicare administrator, reportedly threatened to fire Foster if he provided the information. Foster later commented that \u0026ldquo;there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes.\u0026rdquo; The much higher estimate of the cost of the Medicare bill was apparently known by top officials at the White House. Eighteen Democratic senators requested the GAO to investigate the potential violation of a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay the salary of any official who \u0026ldquo;prohibits or prevents, or threatens to prohibit or prevent\u0026rdquo; another employee from communicating with Congress. On April 1, House Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to summon Scully and White House aide Doug Badget to testify before a congressional committee.\nOn May 3, the Congressional Research service released a legal analysis which concluded that \u0026ldquo;such \u0026lsquo;gag orders\u0026rsquo; have been expressly prohibited by federal law since 1912.\u0026rdquo; The Supreme Court, in a 1927 ruling on the 1912 law, declared that a \u0026ldquo;legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information regarding conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change.\u0026rdquo; But the Bush administration was too astute to fall for such radical notions.Bovard\u0026rsquo;s account goes on to describe how the Medicare prescription plan gives the bulk of its benefits to non-needy seniors\u0026ndash;75% of recipients already have prescription drug coverage through insurance, and the National Center for Policy Analysis \u0026ldquo;estimated that only 6 to 7 percent of the expenditures in the Medicare reform bill will pay for additional drugs for the elderly.\u0026rdquo; The beneficiaries are non-needy elderly, insurance companies, corporations (\u0026ldquo;the Congressional Budget Office forecast that \u0026lsquo;at least one-third of all private companies will dump their retirees into the Medicare system as a result of the new bill\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;), and, of course, the pharmaceutical companies, since there is no price negotiation under the bill.\nHistorical Comments Danny Haszard (2006-12-09):\nAppreciate your blog,mental health consumers are the least capable of self advocacy,my doctors made me take zyprexa for 4 years which was ineffective for my symptoms.I now have a victims support page against Eli Lilly for it's Zyprexa product causing my diabetes.--Daniel Haszard www.zyprexa-victims.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/al-franken-debates-ann-coulter.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAl Franken had a debate with Ann Coulter at the University of Judaism; Franken\u0026rsquo;s initial presentation is \u003ca href=\"http://midwestvaluespac.org/blog/156/an-evening-with-ann-coulter-with-full-speech\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and is quite good.  There\u0026rsquo;s a bit more background \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/an-evening-with-ann-coult_b_18529.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;has anyone seen Coulter\u0026rsquo;s response transcribed?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt one point, Franken says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eYou can’t have good government without the truth. During the crafting and passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill, the chief actuary of Medicare was told to withhold from Congress the true cost of the bill. He’d be fired if he told the truth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Al Franken Debates Ann Coulter"},{"content":"This story got some coverage a little over a year ago when Ian Frazier quoted this passage from Jerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s autobiography in a humor piece in The New Yorker and Jonathan Schwarz covered it in his blog. I found it so twisted that I had to validate its reality by purchasing a used copy of Falwell\u0026rsquo;s book on Amazon.com Marketplace (for about $0.50). I think it\u0026rsquo;s worth bringing up again now that Sen. John McCain has agreed to give a commencement address at Falwell\u0026rsquo;s Liberty University (\u0026quot;crazy base world\u0026quot;), since it shows Falwell\u0026rsquo;s lack of empathy\u0026ndash;I think the attribute \u0026ldquo;bordered on\u0026rdquo; here is not cruelty but sociopathy.\nFrom Strength for the Journey: An Autobiography by Jerry Falwell (1987, Simon and Schuster), pp. 49-50:\nThere were times that Dad\u0026rsquo;s pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed \u0026ldquo;Crip\u0026rdquo; Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip\u0026rsquo;s co-workers got tired of the old man\u0026rsquo;s bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip\u0026rsquo;s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad\u0026rsquo;s little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it \u0026ldquo;the toughest squirrel meat\u0026rdquo; he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.This story immediately follows another story in which Falwell invites his young friend William from the neighborhood, who is afraid of his father, into the house for milk and cookies, after telling his father that William is afraid (p. 49):\nWilliam hesitated at the door. He knew my father carried a gun, and there were too many stories circulating about that gun to leave William feeling easy about entering our home. Quickly I pushed my friend inside and closed the door behind us. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. Suddenly he looked directly at us and shouted.\n\u0026ldquo;Both of you, stop!\u0026rdquo; William froze in his tracks, and I leaned forward eagerly to see what Dad was up to. William\u0026rsquo;s eyes opened wide as Dad drew his gun and pointed it at the floor just in front of my friend\u0026rsquo;s trembling legs.\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t move,\u0026rdquo; he said quietly. Then he took careful aim and pulled the trigger. The shot from the .38 Remington pistol blew a fairly impressive hole in the kitchen floor. Calmly, Dad blew smoke from the barrel and placed the pistol back on the table.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to get that fly all day,\u0026rdquo; he said, looking back down at his paper. \u0026ldquo;And finally I got it.\u0026quot;\nThere was a moment of silence. Then, with a gasp, William bolted out the door. I never got him back inside our house again, and the legend about my father continued to spread throughout the neighborhood. Later Dad and I laughed ourselves hoarse just remembering William\u0026rsquo;s startled look and sudden exit.For additional context, Falwell reports that his father killed his own brother with a shotgun (in self-defense, pp. 22-24), and attributes part of his father\u0026rsquo;s problem to the fact that \u0026ldquo;After all, Dad grew up in the home of an atheist\u0026rdquo; (p. 17), even though he had a Christian mother. His book says that his father had a deathbed conversion to Christianity (p. 83).\nHistorical Comments James Foard (2010-09-29):\nFalwell\u0026#39;s dad was an atheist, just like you, Lippard\nLippard (2010-10-09):\nFalwell\u0026#39;s dad may have been an atheist (though I see no evidence to support the claim--Falwell doesn\u0026#39;t say that, he only says that his father was raised in a mixed atheist/Christian household), but he wasn\u0026#39;t \u0026quot;just like [me]\u0026quot; in any discernible way even if he was. You, on the other hand, have provided direct evidence of your own character and intellect, independent of whatever your religious views may be.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/jerry-falwells-cat-killing-story.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis story got some coverage a little over a year ago when Ian Frazier quoted this passage from Jerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s autobiography in a humor piece in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e and Jonathan Schwarz covered it \u003ca href=\"http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000403.html\"\u003ein his blog\u003c/a\u003e.  I found it so twisted that I had to validate its reality by purchasing a used copy of Falwell\u0026rsquo;s book on Amazon.com Marketplace (for about $0.50).  I think it\u0026rsquo;s worth bringing up again now that Sen. John McCain has agreed to give a commencement address at Falwell\u0026rsquo;s Liberty University (\u0026quot;\u003ca href=\"http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/05.html\"\u003ecrazy base world\u003c/a\u003e\u0026quot;), since it shows Falwell\u0026rsquo;s lack of empathy\u0026ndash;I think the attribute \u0026ldquo;bordered on\u0026rdquo; here is not cruelty but sociopathy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrom \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStrength for the Journey: An Autobiography\u003c/span\u003e by Jerry Falwell (1987, Simon and Schuster), pp. 49-50:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThere were times that Dad\u0026rsquo;s pranks bordered on cruelty.  One of his oil company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed \u0026ldquo;Crip\u0026rdquo; Smith, complained about everything.  Dad and Crip\u0026rsquo;s co-workers got tired of the old man\u0026rsquo;s bellyaching and decided to take revenge.  One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee.  Dad and his chums caught Crip\u0026rsquo;s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad\u0026rsquo;s little restaurants.  They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray.  When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal.  They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it \u0026ldquo;the toughest squirrel meat\u0026rdquo; he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis story immediately follows another story in which Falwell invites his young friend William from the neighborhood, who is afraid of his father, into the house for milk and cookies, after telling his father that William is afraid (p. 49):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWilliam hesitated at the door.  He knew my father carried a gun, and there were too many stories circulating about that gun to leave William feeling easy about entering our home.  Quickly I pushed my friend inside and closed the door behind us.  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper.  Suddenly he looked directly at us and shouted.\u003cbr /\u003e  \u0026ldquo;Both of you, stop!\u0026rdquo;  William froze in his tracks, and I leaned forward eagerly to see what Dad was up to.  William\u0026rsquo;s eyes opened wide as Dad drew his gun and pointed it at the floor just in front of my friend\u0026rsquo;s trembling legs.\u003cbr /\u003e  \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t move,\u0026rdquo; he said quietly.  Then he took careful aim and pulled the trigger.  The shot from the .38 Remington pistol blew a fairly impressive hole in the kitchen floor.  Calmly, Dad blew smoke from the barrel and placed the pistol back on the table.\u003cbr /\u003e  \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to get that fly all day,\u0026rdquo; he said, looking back down at his paper.  \u0026ldquo;And finally I got it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e  There was a moment of silence.  Then, with a gasp, William bolted out the door.  I never got him back inside our house again, and the legend about my father continued to spread throughout the neighborhood.  Later Dad and I laughed ourselves hoarse just remembering William\u0026rsquo;s startled look and sudden exit.\u003c/blockquote\u003eFor additional context, Falwell reports that his father killed his own brother with a shotgun (in self-defense, pp. 22-24), and attributes part of his father\u0026rsquo;s problem to the fact that \u0026ldquo;After all, Dad grew up in the home of an atheist\u0026rdquo; (p. 17), even though he had a Christian mother.  His book says that his father had a deathbed conversion to Christianity (p. 83).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jerry Falwell's cat-killing story"},{"content":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has teamed up with Verified Voting to try to get members of the U.S. House of Representatives to sign up as co-sponsors of HR 550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, which was re-introduced in the House in February. This bill would require that electronic voting include a paper receipt and the capacity for manual recounts, ensure that disabled and those who don\u0026rsquo;t speak English as their native tongue are capable of voting, and enhances security requirements for electronic voting systems. The latter requirements include disclosure and certification of source code, prohibition of the use of wireless connections, and a number of other provisions which appear to me to be reasonable requirements for security. The bill authorizes expenditure of $150M for fiscal year 2006 to enable states to meet these requirements.\nArizona Reps. Grijalva and Pastor have already signed on as co-sponsors. Hayworth, Flake, Kolbe, Renzi, Shadegg, and Franks have not.\nTo send a request to your Representative to support his bill, you can use the EFF\u0026rsquo;s support site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/verified-voting-bill-in-house-hr-550.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e has teamed up with \u003ca href=\"http://www.verifiedvoting.org/\"\u003eVerified Voting\u003c/a\u003e to try to get members of the U.S. House of Representatives to sign up as co-sponsors of \u003ca href=\"http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00550:\"\u003eHR 550\u003c/a\u003e, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, which was re-introduced in the House in February.  This bill would require that electronic voting include a paper receipt and the capacity for manual recounts, ensure that disabled and those who don\u0026rsquo;t speak English as their native tongue are capable of voting, and enhances security requirements for electronic voting systems.  The latter requirements include disclosure and certification of source code, prohibition of the use of wireless connections, and a number of other provisions which appear to me to be reasonable requirements for security.  The bill authorizes expenditure of $150M for fiscal year 2006 to enable states to meet these requirements.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona Reps. Grijalva and Pastor have already signed on as co-sponsors.  Hayworth, Flake, Kolbe, Renzi, Shadegg, and Franks have not.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTo send a request to your Representative to support his bill, you can use the \u003ca href=\"https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?page=UserAction\u0026cmd=display\u0026amp;id=109\"\u003eEFF\u0026rsquo;s support site\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Verified Voting Bill in the House (HR 550)"},{"content":"Pharyngula has a nice, simple explanation of how Plan B emergency contraception works, and how it can\u0026rsquo;t remotely be construed as a form of abortion (unlike the use of RU-486, which is an abortifacient). The use of Plan B prevents ovulation\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t do anything to an already fertilized egg. It thereby prevents the need for abortions when it\u0026rsquo;s used effectively. Yet this timeline of events shows how the Republicans have been preventing it from being made available as an over-the-counter medicine.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/how-plan-b-works.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePharyngula has a nice, simple explanation of \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/why_the_wingnuts_hate_plan_b.php\"\u003ehow Plan B emergency contraception works\u003c/a\u003e, and how it can\u0026rsquo;t remotely be construed as a form of abortion (unlike the use of RU-486, which is an abortifacient).  The use of Plan B prevents ovulation\u0026ndash;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t do anything to an already fertilized egg.  It thereby \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/263463_paynt20.html\"\u003eprevents the need for abortions\u003c/a\u003e when it\u0026rsquo;s used effectively.  Yet \u003ca href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/11/planb_timeline.html\"\u003ethis timeline of events\u003c/a\u003e shows how the Republicans have been preventing it from being made available as an over-the-counter medicine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Plan B works"},{"content":"At the New York Sun:\nA former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded \u0026ldquo;National Intelligence Estimate\u0026rdquo; on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case. The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.Via Talking Points Memo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/libby-says-bush-gave-him-permission-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http://nysun.com/timesleak.php\"\u003eNew York Sun\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded \u0026ldquo;National Intelligence Estimate\u0026rdquo; on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case. The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.\u003c/blockquote\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_02.php#008133\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Libby says Bush gave him permission to out Plame"},{"content":"From BLDGBLOG\u0026ndash;I would have thought I\u0026rsquo;d see this first somewhere like Catallarchy\u0026ndash;is a report of a San Diego-based company called SeaCode. The company has the idea of mooring a cruise ship in international waters off the coast of L.A. to host offshore computer programmers from Russia and India, paying them about $1,800 a month in take-home pay, with a four-months-on, two-months-off work cycle. That compares to $500 a month for a programmer in India.\nThe idea\u0026rsquo;s been condemned by right (\u0026ldquo;an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws\u0026rdquo;) and left (calling it an idea for \u0026ldquo;sweat ships\u0026rdquo;), which is a sign of either a really good or really bad idea\u0026ndash;I think it could be a good one. Since this was reported originally back in April of 2005, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like it\u0026rsquo;s gotten anywhere.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThe fact that the \"rightist\" argument consists of complaints about the circumventing of labor laws shows just how far leftward this sad nation of \"ours\" has drifted - and how vacuous the notion of \"conservative\" has become (as I have noted before).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThis is NewsMax, where xenophobia rules--so I think when they say \"circumventing of labor laws\" they're complaining about the employment of noncitizens.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nGood point.I've been thinking about this idea and have come to the conclusion that it's so impractical it's not likely to be profitable, unfortunately. When you add up all the costs associated with the boat, the boat's location, etc., I'm not even sure it could be made profitable if the programmers all worked for free.This probably goes a long way toward explaining why no obvious progress has been made on the idea since the original report.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/literal-offshoring.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/of-ships-and-archipelagos.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;I would have thought I\u0026rsquo;d see this first somewhere like \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;is a report of a San Diego-based company called \u003ca href=\"http://www.sea-code.com/\"\u003eSeaCode\u003c/a\u003e.  The company has the idea of mooring a cruise ship in international waters off the coast of L.A. to host offshore computer programmers from Russia and India, paying them about $1,800 a month in take-home pay, with a four-months-on, two-months-off work cycle.  That compares to $500 a month for a programmer in India.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe idea\u0026rsquo;s been condemned by \u003ca href=\"http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/4/28/170632.shtml\"\u003eright\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws\u0026rdquo;) and \u003ca href=\"http://lavoice.org/modules.php?op=modload\u0026name=News\u0026amp;file=article\u0026sid=694\"\u003eleft\u003c/a\u003e (calling it an idea for \u0026ldquo;sweat ships\u0026rdquo;), which is a sign of either a really good or really bad idea\u0026ndash;I think it could be a good one.  Since this was reported originally back in April of 2005, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like it\u0026rsquo;s gotten anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Literal offshoring"},{"content":"Now the Discovery Institute is claiming (via Michael Francisco, on the DI\u0026rsquo;s EvolutionNews blog, reporting on an American Enterprise Institute article co-authored by former DI policy analyst, attorney Seth Cooper) that the newly elected Dover Area School Board intentionally cost the school district $1 million in legal fees by refusing to rescind the illegal policy in December, after the trial was over and before Judge Jones had issued his ruling. This is at odds with the fact that their rescinding the policy would not have changed the outcome of the trial or the awarding of legal fees, which is why they didn\u0026rsquo;t do it until after the ruling came.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s worse, they have attributed malice and conflict of interest (now retracted, to the original source\u0026rsquo;s partial credit) to one of the new board members who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit regarding this decision, even though he was not yet on the board at the time of the December discussion (there was no vote) on changing the policy due to a runoff election.\nAnd further worse\u0026ndash;on William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s blog, someone who pointed out the facts had their comment deleted.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s nowhere to place the blame for the $1 million in legal fees except on the original board who put the policy in place over the warnings and objections at the time that their action was unconstitutional\u0026ndash;and perhaps to some extent on the Discovery Institute advisor who they initially spoke with about what policy to adopt, Seth Cooper.\nUPDATE (April 5, 2006): Michael Francisco has revised the wording of his blog post, probably to make it less actionable under defamation laws. Ed Brayton points out the specifics of his revisions.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/di-continues-to-lie-about-dover-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/the_overwhelming_idiocy_of_mic.php\"\u003ethe Discovery Institute is claiming\u003c/a\u003e (via Michael Francisco, on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/what_nice_guys_the_are_at_the.html\"\u003eDI\u0026rsquo;s EvolutionNews blog\u003c/a\u003e, reporting on \u003ca href=\"http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19100/article_detail.asp\"\u003ean American Enterprise Institute article\u003c/a\u003e co-authored by former DI policy analyst, attorney Seth Cooper) that the newly elected Dover Area School Board intentionally cost the school district $1 million in legal fees by refusing to rescind the illegal policy in December, after the trial was over and before Judge Jones had issued his ruling.  This is at odds with the fact that their rescinding the policy would not have changed the outcome of the trial or the awarding of legal fees, which is why they didn\u0026rsquo;t do it until after the ruling came.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s worse, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/di_makes_a_real_whopper.php\"\u003ethey have attributed malice and conflict of interest\u003c/a\u003e (now retracted, to the original source\u0026rsquo;s partial credit) to one of the new board members who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit regarding this decision, even though he was not yet on the board at the time of the December discussion (there was no vote) on changing the policy due to a runoff election.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd further worse\u0026ndash;on William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s blog, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/the_new_antievo.html#comment-94459\"\u003esomeone who pointed out the facts\u003c/a\u003e had their comment deleted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s nowhere to place the blame for the $1 million in legal fees except on the original board who put the policy in place over the warnings and objections at the time that their action was unconstitutional\u0026ndash;and perhaps to some extent on the Discovery Institute advisor \u003ca href=\"http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/cooper-protests-too-much.html\"\u003ewho they initially spoke with about what policy to adopt\u003c/a\u003e, Seth Cooper.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (April 5, 2006):  Michael Francisco has revised the wording of his blog post, probably to make it less actionable under defamation laws.  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/04/francisco_discovers_weasel_wor.php\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e the specifics of his revisions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DI continues to lie about the Dover case"},{"content":"This is really cool, I hope the Quicktime videos come back soon. (Via BLDGBLOG.)\nUPDATE (September 18, 2007): Julius Popp\u0026rsquo;s website (the first link) appears to be undergoing renovations\u0026hellip; the BLDGBLOG link still has Bitfall pictures and description.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThat has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.Mind-numbingly awesome.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/bitfall-using-dripping-water-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sphericalrobots.org/\"\u003eThis is really cool\u003c/a\u003e, I hope the Quicktime videos come back soon.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/liquid-films-and-water-signs-landscape.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 18, 2007):  Julius Popp\u0026rsquo;s website (the first link) appears to be undergoing renovations\u0026hellip; the BLDGBLOG link still has Bitfall pictures and description.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eMind-numbingly awesome.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Bitfall: using dripping water to display images"},{"content":"A hidden-camera investigation earlier this year that showed South Florida police departments engaging in aggressive tactics to prevent people from filing complaints against police officers has resulted in retaliation by the grossly misnamed Broward County Police Benevolent Association. WFOR CBS-4 investigative reporter Mike Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s personal information\u0026ndash;his address, birthdate, and driver\u0026rsquo;s license number\u0026ndash;was posted by Broward County PBA president Dick Brickman on the police union\u0026rsquo;s website as a \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;be on the lookout.\u0026rdquo; Also posted was information about Gregory Slate of The Police Complaint Center, which assisted with Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s report. Alan Rosenthal, attorney for CBS-4, demanded that the union remove the \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; as a violation of laws prohibiting disclosure of \u0026ldquo;personal identifying information contained in motor vehicle records.\u0026rdquo; (Via Declan McCullagh\u0026rsquo;s Politech mailing list.)\nKirsch\u0026rsquo;s address and date of birth was apparently removed from the BCPBA website on March 17, but Slate\u0026rsquo;s address, cell phone, and date of birth are still there.\nThe \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; focuses not on the complaint report investigation, but a related racial profiling investigation, where either a white man (Kirsch or Slate) or a black man (identified on the \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; as Dorian Gibson, age 21) would be driving a red Mustang convertible (its information is also given in the document). In the investigation results, the white driver was never pulled over but the black driver was. According the BCPBA description, the white driver would first drive around, then the black driver in the same car. For a proper study, they should reverse the ordering so that the issue isn\u0026rsquo;t that the police first see one driver, then a completely different driver for the same car, which could produce an inference of a stolen vehicle regardless of the race of the respective drivers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/south-florida-police-expose-personal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA hidden-camera investigation earlier this year that showed South Florida police departments \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/trying-to-file-complaint-against.html\"\u003eengaging in aggressive tactics to prevent people from filing complaints against police officers\u003c/a\u003e has resulted in retaliation by the grossly misnamed Broward County Police Benevolent Association.  WFOR CBS-4 investigative reporter Mike Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s personal information\u0026ndash;his address, birthdate, and driver\u0026rsquo;s license number\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/14218941.htm\"\u003ewas posted by Broward County PBA president Dick Brickman on the police union\u0026rsquo;s website as a \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;be on the lookout.\u0026rdquo;  Also posted was information about Gregory Slate of \u003ca href=\"http://www.policeabuse.org/\"\u003eThe Police Complaint Center\u003c/a\u003e, which assisted with Kirsch\u0026rsquo;s report. Alan Rosenthal, attorney for CBS-4, demanded that the union remove the \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; as a violation of laws prohibiting disclosure of \u0026ldquo;personal identifying information contained in motor vehicle records.\u0026rdquo;  (Via Declan McCullagh\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.politechbot.com/2006/04/03/police-in-florida/\"\u003ePolitech mailing list\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKirsch\u0026rsquo;s address and date of birth was apparently removed from \u003ca href=\"http://www.bcpba.org/\"\u003ethe BCPBA website\u003c/a\u003e on March 17, but Slate\u0026rsquo;s address, cell phone, and date of birth are still there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; focuses not on the complaint report investigation, but a related racial profiling investigation, where either a white man (Kirsch or Slate) or a black man (identified on the \u0026ldquo;BOLO\u0026rdquo; as Dorian Gibson, age 21) would be driving a red Mustang convertible (its information is also given in the document).  In the investigation results, the white driver was never pulled over but the black driver was.  According the BCPBA description, the white driver would first drive around, then the black driver in the same car.  For a proper study, they should reverse the ordering so that the issue isn\u0026rsquo;t that the police first see one driver, then a completely different driver for the same car, which could produce an inference of a stolen vehicle regardless of the race of the respective drivers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"South Florida police expose personal information of reporter who criticized them"},{"content":"New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has filed a suit against Direct Revenue for secretly installing spyware on users\u0026rsquo; computers, seeking a restraining order to prevent it.\nDirect Revenue was recently chastised by researcher Ben Edelman, who pointed out many large or well-known companies that have been paying them for their services\u0026ndash;companies like Citibank, Netflix, Sprint, United Airlines, Blockbuster, Chase, Travelocity, and more.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/ny-ag-sues-direct-revenue-for-spyware.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNew York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/wr_nm/spitzer_spyware_dc_2\"\u003ehas filed a suit against Direct Revenue\u003c/a\u003e for secretly installing spyware on users\u0026rsquo; computers, seeking a restraining order to prevent it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDirect Revenue was recently chastised by researcher Ben Edelman, \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/big-companies-funding-adware-netflix.html\"\u003ewho pointed out many large or well-known companies\u003c/a\u003e that have been paying them for their services\u0026ndash;companies like Citibank, Netflix, Sprint, United Airlines, Blockbuster, Chase, Travelocity, and more.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NY AG sues Direct Revenue for spyware"},{"content":"Coyote Carnival #2, devoted to Arizona blogs, is up. Apparently my submission got lost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/coyote-carnival-2.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCoyote Carnival #2, \u003cA HREF = \"http://arizona.typepad.com/coyote_carnival/2006/04/coyote_carnival.html\"\u003edevoted to Arizona blogs\u003c/A\u003e, is up.  Apparently my submission got lost.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coyote Carnival #2"},{"content":"Tom DeLay has announced that he will not be seeking re-election and in fact will be resigning in the near future. As Talking Points Memo points out, he needs to spend his time trying to make sure he doesn\u0026rsquo;t spend the rest of his life in prison, as the corruption scandal around him takes down his former staff one by one, most recently with a guilty plea from his former Deputy Chief of Staff turned Jack Abramoff co-worker Tony Rudy.\nAnd the Abramoff scandal all got exposed thanks to Michael Scanlon\u0026rsquo;s jilted fiancee\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/tom-delays-out.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom DeLay has announced that \u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1179853,00.html\"\u003ehe will not be seeking re-election\u003c/a\u003e and in fact will be resigning in the near future.  As \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_04_02.php#008100\"\u003eTalking Points Memo points out\u003c/a\u003e, he needs to spend his time trying to make sure he doesn\u0026rsquo;t spend the rest of his life in prison, as the corruption scandal around him takes down his former staff one by one, most recently with \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/rudy-factual-basis/\"\u003ea guilty plea from his former Deputy Chief of Staff\u003c/a\u003e turned Jack Abramoff co-worker Tony Rudy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd the Abramoff scandal all got exposed thanks to \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000233.php\"\u003eMichael Scanlon\u0026rsquo;s jilted fiancee\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tom DeLay's out!"},{"content":"The last few years have seen a lot of creative financing to purchase homes as prices rose out of control, with a huge increase in the percentage of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) used by first-time home buyers in order to stretch the limits of what they could afford to buy. About 25% of all current mortgages in the U.S. are ARMs. Unfortunately, many of those who got them did not understand what they were signing up for, and one in five subprime ARM homeowners in West Virginia, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, and Tennessee was more than 30 days late with a payment at the end of last year. The peak of ARM interest-rate resets will occur in 2007-2008, which leads one researcher to predict that up to 1 million of 7.7 million homeowners who took out ARMs in the last two years will end up losing their homes to foreclosure in the next five years, with banking losses of up to $100 billion\u0026ndash;painful, but less than the S\u0026amp;L crisis.\nThe last time interest-only ARMs were popular was in the 1920\u0026rsquo;s, when the fall of home prices caused many of those who had them to lose their homes. In the last few years, they\u0026rsquo;ve been pushed hard by sleazy mortgage lenders with things like illegal telemarketing calls and deceptive direct mail pieces that look like they\u0026rsquo;re something important from your current lender, a refund check, or something else highly desirable or urgent in order to get you to open it.\nMore at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/arm-ticking-time-bomb.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe last few years have seen a lot of creative financing to purchase homes as prices rose out of control, with a huge increase in the percentage of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) used by first-time home buyers in order to stretch the limits of what they could afford to buy.  About 25% of all current mortgages in the U.S. are ARMs.  Unfortunately, \u003ca href=\"http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/Homefinancing/P118084.asp\"\u003emany of those who got them did not understand what they were signing up for\u003c/a\u003e, and one in five subprime ARM homeowners in West Virginia, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, and Tennessee was more than 30 days late with a payment at the end of last year.  The peak of ARM interest-rate resets will occur in 2007-2008, which leads one researcher to predict that up to 1 million of 7.7 million homeowners who took out ARMs in the last two years will end up losing their homes to foreclosure in the next five years, with banking losses of up to $100 billion\u0026ndash;painful, but less than the S\u0026amp;L crisis.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe last time interest-only ARMs were popular was in the 1920\u0026rsquo;s, when the fall of home prices caused many of those who had them to lose their homes.   In the last few years, they\u0026rsquo;ve been pushed hard by sleazy mortgage lenders with things like illegal telemarketing calls and deceptive direct mail pieces that look like they\u0026rsquo;re something important from your current lender, a refund check, or something else highly desirable or urgent in order to get you to open it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=412\"\u003eBen Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The ARM ticking time bomb"},{"content":"Clifton Bennett, 18, son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett (one of the many Mormons that exercise control over the Arizona Republican Party) and Kyle Wheeler, 19, were counselors at a Student Council camp last summer in Prescott. At the camp, Bennett and Wheeler assaulted more than a dozen boys\u0026ndash;Wheeler by choking them to the point of unconsciousness, and both by pushing broom handles, flashlights, or canes against the camper\u0026rsquo;s clothed bodies until the objects penetrated them anally. (The clothing in at least a couple cases was only underwear or gym shorts.) Although Bennett and Wheeler were arrested in January, it now appears that Bennett will get no jail time under a plea agreement that drops all but one assault charge.\nAfter all, what\u0026rsquo;s a dozen cases of anal rape for a legislator\u0026rsquo;s son? Practice for a future career as a legislator? Or maybe as an interrogator in Iraq or Gitmo?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/different-rules-for-children-of-state.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eClifton Bennett, 18, son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett (one of the many Mormons that exercise control over the Arizona Republican Party) and Kyle Wheeler, 19, were counselors at a Student Council camp last summer in Prescott.  At the camp, \u003ca href=\"http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=57710\"\u003eBennett and Wheeler assaulted more than a dozen boys\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;Wheeler by choking them to the point of unconsciousness, and both by pushing broom handles, flashlights, or canes against the camper\u0026rsquo;s clothed bodies until the objects penetrated them anally.  (The clothing in at least a couple cases was only underwear or gym shorts.)  Although Bennett and Wheeler were arrested in January, it \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0402bennett02.html\"\u003enow appears that Bennett will get no jail time\u003c/a\u003e under a plea agreement that drops all but one assault charge.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter all, what\u0026rsquo;s a dozen cases of anal rape for a legislator\u0026rsquo;s son?  Practice for a future career as a legislator?  Or maybe as an interrogator in Iraq or Gitmo?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Different rules for children of state legislators in Arizona"},{"content":"Carnival of the Godless #37 is up at the Neural Gourmet.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/carnival-of-godless-37.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCarnival of the Godless #37 \u003ca href=\"http://www.neuralgourmet.com/cotg37\"\u003eis up at the Neural Gourmet\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carnival of the Godless #37"},{"content":"The March 4-10, 2006 issue of The Economist gives a table of private donations to poor countries by country, as a percentage of GDP (for 2003). The data comes from the OECD, which tracks 22 countries\u0026rsquo; aid (but only 21 of which are listed). The graph supplied shows the percentage of the giving attributed to tax breaks, which appears to be close to half for the top 14 countries. The top percentage of GDP is 0.20%, for Norway, where somewhere between a fourth and a third is attributed to tax breaks.\nThe 21 countries, from most to least generous:\n1. Norway (0.20%)\n2. Ireland\n3. Switzerland (just under 0.10%)\n4. Netherlands\n5. Canada\n6. Australia\n7. United States (just over 0.05%)\n8. Belgium (about 0.05%)\n9. Germany\n10. Austria\n11. Britain (just under 0.025%)\n12. Spain\n13. France\n14. New Zealand\n15. Denmark\n16. Sweden\n17. Finland\n18. Japan\n19. Portugal (no visible bar on the graph)\n20. Greece\n21. Italy\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, I don't see any immediately obvious religiosity correlations here, though the top country is one of the least religious and the bottom is one of the most religious. Ireland, the U.S., Portugal, and Italy are the most religious countries on the list; Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Japan are the least religious.The list of countries from highest to lowest percentage of nonbelievers is Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Britain, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Spain, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, Portugal, United States, Ireland (compare to http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/atheists-and-nonbelievers-by-country.html).\nAnonymous (2008-11-25):\nPut a dollar amount to those percentages then add the amount from private donations and you'll see the top 9 don't even come close to the first.\nLippard (2008-11-25):\nI'm not sure what you're suggesting--the table is specifically private donations.If we look at just Norway and the United States:Norway GDP (2006 est. via CIA World Factbook): $213.6 billion.0.20% of that is $427.2M.U.S. GDP (2006 est., same source): $13.13 trillion. 0.05% of that is $6.56 billion.If you're claiming that the countries ranked 2-9 don't give as much as #1 in absolute terms, that's incorrect. The U.S. alone gives many times what Norway does.\nsunkler.c (2009-12-18):\nIts correct, but the population of Norway is only 4,6 M against US 306 M. And the main part of US donations are religious.\nLippard (2009-12-18):\nsunkler.c: Those are both good points. On a per capita basis, using your population numbers and the absolute dollar numbers from my prior comment, that comes to $92.87 per person per year for Norway and $21.44 per person per year for the U.S. (both averages appear quite pathetic on a per-person basis!). I'm not sure how strong the religious point is since this is specifically private aid to poor countries, but you're probably right that more of that is going to Bibles from the U.S. dollars than from Norway.\nKen Weaver (2009-12-19):\nWhat you leave out of this equation is the fact that, the US government takes so much from our citizens, and gives it away as foreign aid that, we don\u0026#39;t think we need to give much more! I dare you to come up with figures for combined foreign aid and private donations.\nLippard (2009-12-20):\nKen: This blog post from more than three years ago was really about generosity of individuals in these countries, rather than of their governments. That\u0026#39;s why it was limited to private donations, and why the tax break incentive was also accounted for in the graph of the article I referred to. The fact that the U.S. level of taxation on individuals is significantly lower than the other countries on the list gives some reason to think your speculation is likely to be incorrect, and an examination of per-capita foreign aid by country shows that you are mistaken. While the U.S. is the top provider of foreign aid in absolute numbers, it's nowhere close to number one on a per-capita basis. The InfoPlease website's data for 2002 shows a similar pattern to the private donation list. The per-capita top-to-bottom ordering is Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, France, Finland, United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Canada, United States, Italy, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, Greece, Japan, Australia.\nOnce again, the Scandinavians, Dutch, and Swiss are at the top.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/most-generous-countries.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 4-10, 2006 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e gives a table of private donations to poor countries by country, as a percentage of GDP (for 2003).  The data comes from the OECD, which tracks 22 countries\u0026rsquo; aid (but only 21 of which are listed).  The graph supplied shows the percentage of the giving attributed to tax breaks, which appears to be close to half for the top 14 countries.  The top percentage of GDP is 0.20%, for Norway, where somewhere between a fourth and a third is attributed to tax breaks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe 21 countries, from most to least generous:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  Norway (0.20%)\u003cbr /\u003e2.  Ireland\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Switzerland (just under 0.10%)\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Netherlands\u003cbr /\u003e5.  Canada\u003cbr /\u003e6.  Australia\u003cbr /\u003e7.  United States (just over 0.05%)\u003cbr /\u003e8.  Belgium (about 0.05%)\u003cbr /\u003e9.  Germany\u003cbr /\u003e10.  Austria\u003cbr /\u003e11.  Britain (just under 0.025%)\u003cbr /\u003e12.  Spain\u003cbr /\u003e13.  France\u003cbr /\u003e14.  New Zealand\u003cbr /\u003e15.  Denmark\u003cbr /\u003e16.  Sweden\u003cbr /\u003e17.  Finland\u003cbr /\u003e18.  Japan\u003cbr /\u003e19.  Portugal (no visible bar on the graph)\u003cbr /\u003e20.  Greece\u003cbr /\u003e21.  Italy\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Most generous countries"},{"content":"After services at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sunday, March 26, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked by a reporter for the Boston Herald, Laurel J. Sweet, how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality based on his worship. His response was to say, \u0026ldquo;To my critics, I say \u0026lsquo;Vaffanculo,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and made a gesture flicking his hand from under his chin. This gesture was caught by photographer Peter Smith, an assistant professor of photojournalism at Boston University.\nThe translation of \u0026ldquo;Vaffanculo\u0026rdquo; and the Sicilian gesture is loosely \u0026ldquo;fuck you,\u0026rdquo; but more specifically the language suggests that the recipient of the gesture \u0026ldquo;take it up the ass.\u0026quot;\nThe photographer released the photo for publication and was promptly fired from his ten-year position as a freelancer for The Pilot, a weekly Catholic newspaper.\nThe verbal response was apparently not heard by Sweet, only by Smith. Scalia\u0026rsquo;s initial response was to say that he had not made an obscene gesture, and a spokesperson for the Judge released a letter saying that he explained the gesture to Sweet (which Sweet and Smith deny), describing a rather different gesture meaning \u0026ldquo;I couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less.\u0026quot;\n(Via Donna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Changing Places\u0026rdquo; blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/scalias-obscene-gesture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.woodka.com/wp-content/stuff/scaliagesture03302006.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.woodka.com/wp-content/stuff/scaliagesture03302006.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eAfter services at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sunday, March 26, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia \u003ca href=\"http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132848\"\u003ewas asked by a reporter\u003c/a\u003e for the Boston Herald, Laurel J. Sweet, how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality based on his worship.  His response was to say, \u0026ldquo;To my critics, I say \u0026lsquo;Vaffanculo,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; and made a gesture flicking his hand from under his chin.  This gesture was caught by photographer Peter Smith, an assistant professor of photojournalism at Boston University.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe translation of \u0026ldquo;Vaffanculo\u0026rdquo; and the Sicilian gesture is loosely \u0026ldquo;fuck you,\u0026rdquo; but more specifically the language suggests that the recipient of the gesture \u0026ldquo;take it up the ass.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe photographer released the photo for publication and \u003ca href=\"http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132932\u0026format=\u0026amp;page=2\"\u003ewas promptly fired\u003c/a\u003e from his ten-year position as a freelancer for The Pilot, a weekly Catholic newspaper.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe verbal response was apparently not heard by Sweet, only by Smith.  Scalia\u0026rsquo;s initial response was to say that he had not made an obscene gesture, and a spokesperson for the Judge released a letter \u003ca href=\"http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132848\"\u003esaying that he explained the gesture\u003c/a\u003e to Sweet (which Sweet and Smith deny), describing a rather different gesture meaning \u0026ldquo;I couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via Donna Woodka\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.woodka.com/2006/03/30/scalia-update-the-photo/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Changing Places\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scalia's obscene gesture"},{"content":"In Liberty, Missouri, from CNN:\nA youth minister was charged with assault for allegedly knocking down a 16-year-old boy and kicking him in the groin after taking a head shot from the teen in a dodgeball game.David M. Boudreaux, 27, was charged Wednesday with one count of third-degree assault. According to court documents, the incident happened in February at Crescent Lake Christian Academy.\nAuthorities said the teen missed Boudreaux with one throw but then knocked the youth minister\u0026rsquo;s glasses off with the next.\nThe boy apologized, authorities said, but Boudreaux pushed him backward, and when the teen got up again Boudreaux kicked him in the groin and left.\nThe teen suffered whiplash and post-concussion syndrome and had blood in his urine after being kicked, according to court records.\nBoudreaux later apologized, prosecutors said.\nJeanne D. Hewitt, administrator of Crescent Lake Christian Academy, said Boudreaux had been placed on administrative leave.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/04/youth-minister-smites-dodgeball.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn Liberty, Missouri, from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/31/dodgeball.assault.ap/index.html\"\u003eCNN\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003eA youth minister was charged with assault for allegedly knocking down a 16-year-old boy and kicking him in the groin after taking a head shot from the teen in a dodgeball game.\u003c/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eDavid M. Boudreaux, 27, was charged Wednesday with one count of third-degree assault. According to court documents, the incident happened in February at Crescent Lake Christian Academy.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAuthorities said the teen missed Boudreaux with one throw but then knocked the youth minister\u0026rsquo;s glasses off with the next.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Youth minister smites dodgeball opponent"},{"content":"The number of homes for sale has gone over 40,000 (at last check it was 37,217 on March 6). Home builders are offering incentives like a free car or free upgrades (like granite counters, flooring, and cabinets) in order to avoid reducing prices, but price reductions are inevitable. And when price reductions occur, those who\u0026rsquo;ve already signed contracts at higher prices will be more likely to walk away\u0026hellip; the rational response when an asset class you want to buy is deflating in price is to wait as long as possible, because the deals will only get better. (That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m content to live with year-or-more-old computer technology; my last upgrade for a home system was to buy somebody else\u0026rsquo;s used system.)\nMore at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/phoenix-housing-bubble-deflation_30.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe number of homes for sale has gone over 40,000 (\u003ca href=\"/2006/03/phoenix-housing-bubble-deflation.html\"\u003eat last check\u003c/a\u003e it was 37,217 on March 6).  Home builders are \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0330biz-incentives0330.html\"\u003eoffering incentives like a free car or free upgrades\u003c/a\u003e (like granite counters, flooring, and cabinets) in order to avoid reducing prices, but price reductions are inevitable.  And when price reductions occur, those who\u0026rsquo;ve already signed contracts at higher prices will be more likely to walk away\u0026hellip; the rational response when an asset class you want to buy is deflating in price is to wait as long as possible, because the deals will only get better.  (That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m content to live with year-or-more-old computer technology; my last upgrade for a home system was to buy somebody else\u0026rsquo;s used system.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=384\"\u003eHousing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix housing bubble deflation update"},{"content":"Ben Edelman has a report on some big or well-known companies that are funding adware on the Internet, this time through the company Direct Revenue. They include Citibank, HSBC, True.com, United Airlines, Sprint, United Online (NetZero), People PC, Sage Software (maker of Act! contact manager software), T-Mobile, and Vonage. They include Cheap Tickets, Howard Johnson, and Super 8 (all Cendant properties). They include Travelocity, eHarmony, Blockbuster, BMG, CarsDirect, Chase, and Netflix.\nOn Ben\u0026rsquo;s previous report, he listed advertisers paying for adware through 180solutions, which has now also been reported by the Center for Democracy and Technology (PDF). Some of the companies reported there were Altrec, Club Med Americas, eHarmony, GreetingCards.com, LetsTalk.com, Netflix, NetZero, PeoplePC, PerfectMatch, ProFlowers, True.com, uBid, and Waterfront Media.\nBen also notes that the Interactive Travel Services Association has actually come out with a policy promoting the use of adware! ITSA members include Cendant, CheapTickets, Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline.com, Sabre, Travelocity, and Vegas.com.\nIf you are a customer of any of these companies, let them know that you don\u0026rsquo;t appreciate their paying for advertising through adware and demand that they stop.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/big-companies-funding-adware-netflix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBen Edelman has a report on some big or well-known companies that are funding adware on the Internet, this time through the company \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/033106-1.html\"\u003eDirect Revenue\u003c/a\u003e.  They include Citibank, HSBC, True.com, United Airlines, Sprint, United Online (NetZero), People PC, Sage Software (maker of Act! contact manager software), T-Mobile, and Vonage.  They include Cheap Tickets, Howard Johnson, and Super 8 (all Cendant properties).  They include Travelocity, eHarmony, Blockbuster, BMG, CarsDirect, Chase, and Netflix.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn Ben\u0026rsquo;s previous report, he listed advertisers paying for adware through \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/032006-1.html\"\u003e180solutions\u003c/a\u003e, which has now also been reported by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20060320adware.pdf\"\u003eCenter for Democracy and Technology (PDF)\u003c/a\u003e.  Some of the companies reported there were Altrec, Club Med Americas, eHarmony, GreetingCards.com, LetsTalk.com, Netflix, NetZero, PeoplePC, PerfectMatch, ProFlowers, True.com, uBid, and Waterfront Media.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBen also notes that the Interactive Travel Services Association has actually come out with a \u003ca href=\"http://www.interactivetravel.org/Attachments/ITSAAdwarerevised5.pdf\"\u003epolicy promoting the use of adware\u003c/a\u003e!  \u003ca href=\"http://www.interactivetravel.org/about/members.cfm\"\u003eITSA members\u003c/a\u003e include Cendant, CheapTickets, Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline.com, Sabre, Travelocity, and Vegas.com.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you are a customer of any of these companies, let them know that you don\u0026rsquo;t appreciate their paying for advertising through adware and demand that they stop.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Big companies funding adware: Netflix, eHarmony, etc."},{"content":"The 31st Skeptics Circle is hosted at Terra Sigillata.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/31st-skeptics-circle.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 31st Skeptics Circle \u003ca href=\"http://terrasig.blogspot.com/2006/03/31st-meeting-of-skeptics-circle.html\"\u003eis hosted at Terra Sigillata\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 31st Skeptics Circle"},{"content":"The most recent budget which passed the House and the Senate and was signed into law by George W. Bush has a little constitutional problem. The problem is that S. 1932 differed from the House version of the bill. A small difference in text (the Senate version had a 13-month limitation on rental of medical equipment for Medicare patients; this was erroneously changed to 36 months by a Senate clerk before sending the bill to the House) led to a huge difference in effect ($2 billion more for the House version). Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert modified the House version of the bill to be identical to the Senate version without putting it to another vote, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist concurred that this was sufficient. Unfortunately, this means that the text of the bill Bush signed was never passed by the House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution.\nConsidering that Congress often doesn\u0026rsquo;t read what they\u0026rsquo;re voting on anyway, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure this is such a big deal compared to, say, the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act which were passed without being read\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s a bad precedent nonetheless if allowed to stand.\nPublic Citizen has filed a lawsuit over the issue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/constitution-schmonstitution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe most recent budget which passed the House and the Senate and was signed into law by George W. Bush has \u003ca href=\"http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24057/pub_detail.asp\"\u003ea little constitutional problem\u003c/a\u003e.  The problem is that S. 1932 differed from the House version of the bill.  A small difference in text (the Senate version had a 13-month limitation on rental of medical equipment for Medicare patients; this was erroneously changed to 36 months by a Senate clerk before sending the bill to the House) led to a huge difference in effect ($2 billion more for the House version).  Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert modified the House version of the bill to be identical to the Senate version without putting it to another vote, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist concurred that this was sufficient.  Unfortunately, this means that the text of the bill Bush signed was never passed by the House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eConsidering that Congress often doesn\u0026rsquo;t read what they\u0026rsquo;re voting on anyway, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure this is such a big deal compared to, say, the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act which were passed without being read\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s a bad precedent nonetheless if allowed to stand.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePublic Citizen \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101763.html\"\u003ehas filed a lawsuit over the issue\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Constitution, schmonstitution"},{"content":"A CBS series called \u0026ldquo;Orpheus\u0026rdquo; sounds like it involves a fictional cult based on Scientology. In the pilot script, a group called GD or \u0026ldquo;Grand Design\u0026rdquo; is based on a popular \u0026ldquo;quasi-philosophical\u0026rdquo; book that resembles Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s Dianetics. Members of the group are ranked, with a level called \u0026ldquo;Galatean\u0026rdquo; that may be equivalent to an Operating Thetan (OT) level. A CBS Paramount spokesperson said that \u0026ldquo;The cult is an amalgamation of all cults throughout history.\u0026rdquo; The show stars Nicholas D\u0026rsquo;Agosto and Mena Suvari, and is being produced by Nicholas Meyer.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s hope Tom Cruise doesn\u0026rsquo;t cause this to be killed\u0026ndash;it is another Paramount property, like Mission Impossible 3, so the possibility is certainly there.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/cbs-series-pilot-based-on-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA CBS series called \u0026ldquo;Orpheus\u0026rdquo; sounds like \u003ca href=\"http://hollywoodhotline.typepad.com/watcher/2006/03/is_cbs_cult_pil.html\"\u003eit involves a fictional cult based on Scientology\u003c/a\u003e.  In the pilot script, a group called GD or \u0026ldquo;Grand Design\u0026rdquo; is based on a popular \u0026ldquo;quasi-philosophical\u0026rdquo; book that resembles Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s Dianetics.  Members of the group are ranked, with a level called \u0026ldquo;Galatean\u0026rdquo; that may be equivalent to an Operating Thetan (OT) level.  A CBS Paramount spokesperson said that \u0026ldquo;The cult is an amalgamation of all cults throughout history.\u0026rdquo;  The show stars Nicholas D\u0026rsquo;Agosto and Mena Suvari, and is being produced by Nicholas Meyer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s hope Tom Cruise doesn\u0026rsquo;t cause this to be killed\u0026ndash;it is another Paramount property, like Mission Impossible 3, so the possibility is certainly there.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CBS series pilot based on Scientology?"},{"content":"Back in December, I wrote about criticisms of Wikipedia in Communications of the ACM and a study published by Nature which found that Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of scientific subjects was about as accurate as that of the Encyclopedia Britannica.\nNow Britannica has demanded a retraction of the Nature study on the grounds that its \u0026ldquo;research [is] invalid, its study poorly carried out, and its findings [are] \u0026lsquo;so error-laden that it was completely without merit.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (Inside quote is from Britannica\u0026rsquo;s response, outside quote from Seattle Times coverage.)\nBritannica\u0026rsquo;s website has a 20-page PDF (7 pages of response, 13 pages of supporting information in two appendixes) that is a response to the Nature study, titled \u0026ldquo;Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature.\u0026rdquo; This response states that \u0026ldquo;Nature\u0026rsquo;s research was invalid. As we demonstrate below, almost everything about the journal\u0026rsquo;s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading. Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not inaccuracies at all, and a number of articles Nature examined were not even in the Encyclopedia Britannica.\u0026quot;\nThe initial criticism of the response is that, while the Nature study headline claimed that \u0026ldquo;Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries,\u0026rdquo; the actual study showed that Wikipedia had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica.\nThe next criticism is that as they reviewed the alleged inaccuracies, they \u0026ldquo;discovered in Nature\u0026rsquo;s work a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results.\u0026rdquo; Nature refused to supply the complete reviewer reports comparing Britannica to Wikipedia articles, so Britannica reviewed the truncated reviewer reports that had been posted to the web, along with the articles which were supplied by Nature.\nSeveral of the Britannica articles reviewed were not from the Encyclopedia, but from editions of the Britannica Book of the Year. Britannica notes that \u0026ldquo;Yearbook authors are often given greater latitude to express personal views than writers of encyclopedia articles.\u0026rdquo; In one instance, a sentence in an article on Steven Wolfram \u0026ldquo;in which point of view figured significantly\u0026rdquo; was counted as an inaccuracy. In one case, an article on ethanol, the source of the article was from the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, \u0026ldquo;a more basic work for younger readers.\u0026quot;\nA more significant flaw was that in some cases, reviewers criticized articles for omissions when they were only sent excerpts from the articles. The report notes that the reviewer of an article on lipids was sent only a 350-word introduction rather than the full 6,000-word article, which covered the items marked as omissions on the basis of the introduction alone. Similarly, what was delivered to reviewers as articles on kin selection and punctuated equilibrium were actually only sections from a longer article on the theory of evolution, and what was identified as an article on field-effect transistors was a section of the entry on integrated circuits. In another case, an article on aldol reaction was composed of selections taken from two separate Britannica articles, connected together with language apparently authored by Nature\u0026rsquo;s editors.\nAnother flaw in the Nature study was that Nature did not require reviewers to document their assertions; where they disagreed with articles being reviewed, the reviewers were taken to be authoritative. The Britannica response supplies two examples where the reviewers were incorrect.\nFinally, Nature failed to distinguish minor from major errors, treating all as equal even though Wikipedia had more significant issues, and counted as omissions cases where Britannica made editorial judgments to cover specific information in either a different way than the reviewer preferred or in other articles in the encyclopedia.\nI think Britannica makes their case\u0026ndash;the study shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as evidence that Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of science is as good as the Encyclopedia Britannica.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/britannica-asks-nature-for-retraction.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in December, I \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/wikipedia-and-encyclopedia-britannica.html\"\u003ewrote about criticisms of Wikipedia in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCommunications of the ACM\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and a study published by Nature which found that Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of scientific subjects was about as accurate as that of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEncyclopedia Britannica\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow Britannica \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002885605_encyclofight24.html\"\u003ehas demanded a retraction of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e study\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds that its \u0026ldquo;research [is] invalid, its study poorly carried out, and its findings [are] \u0026lsquo;so error-laden that it was completely without merit.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; (Inside quote is from Britannica\u0026rsquo;s response, outside quote from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSeattle Times\u003c/span\u003e coverage.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBritannica\u0026rsquo;s website has \u003ca href=\"http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf\"\u003ea 20-page PDF\u003c/a\u003e (7 pages of response, 13 pages of supporting information in two appendixes) that is a response to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e study, titled \u0026ldquo;Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e.\u0026rdquo;  This response states that \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s research was invalid.  As we demonstrate below, almost everything about the journal\u0026rsquo;s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading.  Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBritannica\u003c/span\u003e were not inaccuracies at all, and a number of articles \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e examined were not even in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEncyclopedia Britannica\u003c/span\u003e.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe initial criticism of the response is that, while the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e study headline claimed that \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/span\u003e comes close to \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBritannica\u003c/span\u003e in terms of the accuracy of its science entries,\u0026rdquo; the actual study showed that Wikipedia had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe next criticism is that as they reviewed the alleged inaccuracies, they \u0026ldquo;discovered in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s work a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results.\u0026rdquo;  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e refused to supply the complete reviewer reports comparing Britannica to Wikipedia articles, so Britannica reviewed the truncated reviewer reports that had been posted to the web, along with the articles which were supplied by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSeveral of the Britannica articles reviewed were not from the Encyclopedia, but from editions of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBritannica Book of the Year\u003c/span\u003e.  Britannica notes that \u0026ldquo;Yearbook authors are often given greater latitude to express personal views than writers of encyclopedia articles.\u0026rdquo;  In one instance, a sentence in an article on Steven Wolfram \u0026ldquo;in which point of view figured significantly\u0026rdquo; was counted as an inaccuracy.  In one case, an article on ethanol, the source of the article was from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBritannica Student Encyclopedia\u003c/span\u003e, \u0026ldquo;a more basic work for younger readers.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA more significant flaw was that in some cases, reviewers criticized articles for omissions when they were only sent excerpts from the articles.  The report notes that the reviewer of an article on lipids was sent only a 350-word introduction rather than the full 6,000-word article, which covered the items marked as omissions on the basis of the introduction alone.  Similarly, what was delivered to reviewers as articles on kin selection and punctuated equilibrium were actually only sections from a longer article on the theory of evolution, and what was identified as an article on field-effect transistors was a section of the entry on integrated circuits.  In another case, an article on aldol reaction was composed of selections taken from two separate Britannica articles, connected together with language apparently authored by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s editors.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother flaw in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e study was that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e did not require reviewers to document their assertions; where they disagreed with articles being reviewed, the reviewers were taken to be authoritative.  The Britannica response supplies two examples where the reviewers were incorrect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e failed to distinguish minor from major errors, treating all as equal even though Wikipedia had more significant issues, and counted as omissions cases where Britannica made editorial judgments to cover specific information in either a different way than the reviewer preferred or in other articles in the encyclopedia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think Britannica makes their case\u0026ndash;the study shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be relied upon as evidence that Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s coverage of science is as good as the Encyclopedia Britannica.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Britannica asks Nature for retraction on Wikipedia comparison"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ve now completed our second weekend event attempting to get all the oranges picked from our trees\u0026ndash;an annual struggle, as we have many (see photo, which shows most of the backyard trees). A few weeks ago, United Food Bank sent out volunteers to try to fill four large bins which each hold 1,000 pounds of oranges. We filled one and part of another one in the course of the day\u0026ndash;the volunteers were four families and their children, who picked oranges for several hours along with us. This week, we had signs out advertising free oranges, all you care to pick, and also advertised it on Craig\u0026rsquo;s List. We put out the two remaining United Food Bank bins to be filled with oranges we picked ourselves, and for any donations others cared to drop in. Unfortunately, a woman who spoke only Spanish came by while we were inside and took all of the fruit out of the bins, so when the Food Bank comes to pick them up on Tuesday they\u0026rsquo;ll only get whatever Kat and I pick between now and then.\nWe had quite a few people come by and pick bags full of oranges, but the trees still appear to be as full as ever.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re in or near South Phoenix and would like to pick some oranges and take them home (or to donate to a food bank), let me know. If you\u0026rsquo;re from somewhere other than Phoenix and ever plan to be here in March, April, or May, those are the months these Valencia oranges are ready for picking.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/anybody-need-any-oranges.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P3250002.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P3250002.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve now completed our second weekend event attempting to get all the oranges picked from our trees\u0026ndash;an annual struggle, as we have many (see photo, which shows most of the backyard trees).  A few weeks ago, United Food Bank sent out volunteers to try to fill four large bins which each hold 1,000 pounds of oranges.  We filled one and part of another one in the course of the day\u0026ndash;the volunteers were four families and their children, who picked oranges for several hours along with us.  This week, we had signs out advertising free oranges, all you care to pick, and also advertised it on Craig\u0026rsquo;s List.  We put out the two remaining United Food Bank bins to be filled with oranges we picked ourselves, and for any donations others cared to drop in.  Unfortunately, a woman who spoke only Spanish came by while we were inside and took all of the fruit out of the bins, so when the Food Bank comes to pick them up on Tuesday they\u0026rsquo;ll only get whatever Kat and I pick between now and then.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe had quite a few people come by and pick bags full of oranges, but the trees still appear to be as full as ever.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re in or near South Phoenix and would like to pick some oranges and take them home (or to donate to a food bank), let me know.  If you\u0026rsquo;re from somewhere other than Phoenix and ever plan to be here in March, April, or May, those are the months these Valencia oranges are ready for picking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anybody need any oranges?"},{"content":"Over at the Secular Outpost, I\u0026rsquo;ve directed readers to some recent posts by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about slavery and the Bible (here, here, here, and here).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to me how many members of the religious right, while usually trying to take the moral high ground and arguing positions on the basis of absolute moral values, suddenly shift to more relativistic, situational, and utilitarian positions on subjects like slavery, torture, war, executive power, and deception by national leaders.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/ed-brayton-on-slavery-and-bible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver at \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/slavery-and-bible.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;ve directed readers to some recent posts by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about slavery and the Bible (\u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/slavery_and_the_bible.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/slavery_and_the_bible_take_2.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/mark_olson_on_slavery_and_the.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/neufeld_on_slavery_and_the_bib.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to me how many members of the religious right, while usually trying to take the moral high ground and arguing positions on the basis of absolute moral values, suddenly shift to more relativistic, situational, and utilitarian positions on subjects like slavery, torture, war, executive power, and deception by national leaders.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ed Brayton on Slavery and the Bible"},{"content":"Tom Gilson has posted some thoughts on the \u0026ldquo;self-undermining\u0026rdquo; arguments about rationality and naturalism that have been made by C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, J.R. Lucas, Richard Taylor, Alvin Plantinga, and others. The basic argument is that if our thoughts are the product of natural causes, then we have no reason to trust that the inferences we make are rational. There are many variations on the argument, and I think this basic line of argument goes back to ancient arguments about determinism.\nI offered my thoughts in the comments on Vic Reppert\u0026rsquo;s blog, and repeat them here:\nThe conclusion that rationality is undermined doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow\u0026ndash;at best the conclusion is that the connection between the physical causes and the rational inferences is at best a contingent one that is in need of explanation, which I think is a valid conclusion. But it\u0026rsquo;s one that is in the process of being answered as we learn about how the brain and perceptual systems work, how language develops, and how the mind evolved.\nIf the fact that the brain operates in accordance with physical law undermined rationality, then the fact that computers operate in accordance with physical law would undermine their ability to perform logical inferences and computations.\nThe real question is how brains came to be able to engage in rational inferences in virtue of the way that they physically operate, not whether they do. Gilson (and Victor) argue that they could only have this ability by being divinely designed to do so\u0026ndash;a thesis that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be particularly fruitful for scientific exploration.Naturalists and supernaturalists agree that we do engage in rational inferences. The supernaturalists think we do so using magical non-physical properties; many of them think that our minds are completely independent of our brains, though I think this is a position that is untenable in the face of empirical evidence from neuroscience (evidence which I have yet to see a substance dualist even attempt to address). In the face of arguments about the fact that computers are physical devices which engage in computation and inference, they respond that this is not real computation and inference, but only a derived computation and inference that is fully dependent upon human computation and inference.\nNaturalists, by contrast, think that our abilities to engage in rational inference and language have evolved, and that they are both dependent on natural causes and productive in generating additional natural causes of reasoning and action. They are far from perfect\u0026ndash;we can identify systematic failures of reasoning that occur (e.g., examples of the sort in Kahneman \u0026amp; Tversky\u0026rsquo;s classic Judgment Under Uncertainty). And our understanding of our own abilities is far from complete\u0026ndash;but is growing rapidly.\nScientific examination of our cognitive capabilities has been extremely productive, while the supernatural thesis has been moribund.\nHistorical Comments Victor Reppert (2006-12-09):\nI posted a partial response to this here: http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/03/some-responses-to-lippard.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/minds-brains-and-rationality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTom Gilson has \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkingchristian.net/C228303755/E20060307124325/index.html\"\u003eposted some thoughts\u003c/a\u003e on the \u0026ldquo;self-undermining\u0026rdquo; arguments about rationality and naturalism that have been made by C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, J.R. Lucas, Richard Taylor, Alvin Plantinga, and others.  The basic argument is that if our thoughts are the product of natural causes, then we have no reason to trust that the inferences we make are rational.  There are many variations on the argument, and I think this basic line of argument goes back to ancient arguments about determinism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI offered my thoughts in the comments on \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/03/tom-gilson-on-mind.html\"\u003eVic Reppert\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e, and repeat them here:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe conclusion that rationality is \u003cem\u003eundermined\u003c/em\u003e doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow\u0026ndash;at best the conclusion is that the connection between the physical causes and the rational inferences is at best a contingent one that is in need of explanation, which I think is a valid conclusion. But it\u0026rsquo;s one that is in the process of being answered as we learn about how the brain and perceptual systems work, how language develops, and how the mind evolved.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf the fact that the brain operates in accordance with physical law undermined rationality, then the fact that computers operate in accordance with physical law would undermine their ability to perform logical inferences and computations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe real question is \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e brains came to be able to engage in rational inferences in virtue of the way that they physically operate, not \u003cem\u003ewhether\u003c/em\u003e they do. Gilson (and Victor) argue that they could only have this ability by being divinely designed to do so\u0026ndash;a thesis that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be particularly fruitful for scientific exploration.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNaturalists and supernaturalists agree that we do engage in rational inferences.  The supernaturalists think we do so using magical non-physical properties; many of them think that our minds are completely independent of our brains, though I think this is a position that is untenable in the face of empirical evidence from neuroscience (evidence which I have yet to see a substance dualist even attempt to address).  In the face of arguments about the fact that computers are physical devices which engage in computation and inference, they respond that this is not real computation and inference, but only a derived computation and inference that is fully dependent upon human computation and inference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNaturalists, by contrast, think that our abilities to engage in rational inference and language have evolved, and that they are both dependent on natural causes and productive in generating additional natural causes of reasoning and action.  They are far from perfect\u0026ndash;we can identify systematic failures of reasoning that occur (e.g., examples of the sort in Kahneman \u0026amp; Tversky\u0026rsquo;s classic \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJudgment Under Uncertainty\u003c/span\u003e).  And our understanding of our own abilities is far from complete\u0026ndash;but is growing rapidly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eScientific examination of our cognitive capabilities has been extremely productive, while the supernatural thesis has been moribund.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Minds, brains, and rationality"},{"content":"An October 2005 Pew poll shows that American Christians (and Catholics in particular) have remarkably strong support for the use of torture, while secular Americans more strongly oppose it. This is another piece of evidence against the common claim that morality requires religion, or that religious people are more moral than nonreligious people.\nMore details at the Secular Outpost.\nUPDATE (March 25, 2006): Steve Hays at Triablogue has chimed in with some highly critical comments on my post, mostly based on incorrect inferences about what I was arguing. (I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually spell out an argument in any detail, so I\u0026rsquo;ll accept some of the blame for that\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s funny to see positions attributed to me that I don\u0026rsquo;t hold.) I\u0026rsquo;ve posted comments in response to him on his blog, and spelled out an actual argument in the comments at the Secular Outpost:\n1. Torture is prima facie wrong; it is only justifiable, if ever, in rare circumstances.\n2. Those who advocate widespread, common use of torture against suspected terrorists are less moral than those who oppose most or all use of torture against suspected terrorists. (I could also insert here some premises about the use of the word \u0026ldquo;suspected\u0026rdquo; here\u0026ndash;I believe the intent of the use of the term is to make the point that we don\u0026rsquo;t know that these are terrorists and probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have sufficient grounds to convict them in a court of law\u0026ndash;e.g., like many of those being held in Guantanamo Bay).\n3. Those who describe themselves as secular are more likely to oppose torture than those who describe themselves as Christians.\n4. Those self-descriptions are mostly accurate.\n5. Therefore, with respect to the subject of torture of suspected terrorists, those who are secular tend to be more moral than those who are Christian.\n6. This is a point of evidence against the thesis that those who are Christian are more moral than those who are secular.\nSteve\u0026rsquo;s main three points of criticism on my original post were these (he has more to say at his blog):\ni) Notice how he assumes, without benefit of argument, that “torture” is always wrong. That’s the nice part of being a secular rationalist. You don’t have to give reasons for your rationalism. [\u0026hellip;]\nii) He also doesn’t bring any critical thinking skills to bear on whether we should frame the issue of interrogation in terms of torture. Surely there’s a continuum here, is there not? There are many degrees and kinds of coercion.\nIn addition, if we capture a high-level terrorist, and he doesn’t want to talk, should we do absolutely nothing to extract actionable information from him?\nIf that’s the position of secular humanism, then secular humanism is one of those useless ideologies like pacifism which is incapable of meeting the challenges of a real world situation.\niii) Then there’s his position that belief in use of “torture” under any circumstances makes you a worse person than someone who rejects the use of “torture” under any circumstances.To which I responded in comments on the post:\nSteve:\nYour post is a bit heavy on the ad hominem and you have drawn inferences about my position and circumstances that aren\u0026rsquo;t based on what I actually wrote. If you read the comments on my original post at the Secular Outpost, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that my own answer to the survey question is \u0026ldquo;rarely\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;never.\u0026quot;\nSo, to address your points in order, your claim in (i) that I assume without argument that torture is always wrong is mistaken. I neither said nor implied that\u0026ndash;the most you can infer from what I wrote is that leaning in favor of widespread use of torture is less moral than opposition to most use of torture. For the record, I do think that torture is prima facie wrong, and as a public policy matter should be prohibited across the board. There are possible circumstances where the use of torture to obtain information may be the best possible course of action on utilitarian grounds, just as there are possible circumstances where murder or cannibalism may be the best possible course of action\u0026ndash;but I don\u0026rsquo;t think that calls for a revision of public policy to have anything other than an absolute prohibition on them. There is always the necessity defense in a court of law. I happen to think that the U.S. should abide by the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) which the U.S. Senate ratified in 1994. What do you think?\nIn response to (ii), I agree that there are interrogation techniques that fall short of torture, which also have the added benefit of being more reliable\u0026ndash;recipients of torture tend to say what they think their torturers want to hear. You say I don\u0026rsquo;t bring my critical thinking skills to bear on a topic that I didn\u0026rsquo;t even discuss.\nIn response to (iii), again you\u0026rsquo;ve fabricated a position for me to disagree with (i.e., you\u0026rsquo;ve engaged in the straw man fallacy). My actual position is that those who fall on the end of the spectrum of endorsing widespread use of torture are less moral than those who fall on the end of the spectrum of opposing most or all uses of torture. Likewise for murder. and:\nTo bring home a more specific example\u0026ndash;Bush administration advisor John Yoo (who, along with Alberto Gonzales, was the primary architect of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s position on torture) has said that the president has the authority to order that the child of a terrorist be tortured, by crushing his testicles, in order to get the terrorist to talk.\nDo you think that such an action could be moral? I don\u0026rsquo;t, and I think it not only should be [illegal] but is illegal as well (I strongly disagree with the \u0026ldquo;unitary executive\u0026rdquo; arguments for expansive presidential powers that seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that the judiciary and legislature are supposed to have equal weight to the executive branch).\nAlso, you stated as a premise in your argument to the erroneous conclusion that I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;intellectually isolated\u0026rdquo; in the sense of not having any non-like-minded friends that I have posted \u0026ldquo;many ill-informed or ill-reasoned posts.\u0026rdquo; Which posts are you referring to, can you point out a few of the many, and possibly explain why you characterize them as such?\nFinally, why didn\u0026rsquo;t you link to the post on the Secular Outpost you are responding to? That reduced the likelihood that I (or other Secular Outpost readers) would see your comment. Fortunately, Sean Choi pointed it out, encouraging some cross-blog and cross-worldview interaction, which I welcome.Steve made reference to some other posts he made on the topic of torture and coercive interrogation, including this one, where he debates someone named Shamgar in the comments. I think Shamgar, who has the last word, has the better argument.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nJM: Thanks for the post, glad to see you here!The biggest problem with polling an equal number of each category is that it would be difficult to find as many of the \"secular\" category; if the sample size is large enough and the random selection is done effectively, that should control for the kind of skewing of results you suggest. Since the researchers said that approximately 3% of the population fall into the \"secular\" category, we can infer that about 60 of the 2,006 sample were \"secular.\"BTW, you might want to check out the Steve Hays post I've now linked to.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/christian-support-of-torture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn October 2005 Pew poll shows that American Christians (and Catholics in particular) have remarkably strong support for the use of torture, while secular Americans more strongly oppose it.  This is another piece of evidence against the common claim that morality requires religion, or that religious people are more moral than nonreligious people.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore details at \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/secular-oppose-torture-more-than.html\"\u003ethe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 25, 2006):  Steve Hays at \u003ca href=\"http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/tortured-logic.html\"\u003eTriablogue\u003c/a\u003e has chimed in with some highly critical comments on my post, mostly based on incorrect inferences about what I was arguing.  (I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually spell out an argument in any detail, so I\u0026rsquo;ll accept some of the blame for that\u0026ndash;but it\u0026rsquo;s funny to see positions attributed to me that I don\u0026rsquo;t hold.)  I\u0026rsquo;ve posted comments in response to him on his blog, and spelled out an actual argument in the comments at the Secular Outpost:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e1.  Torture is prima facie wrong; it is only justifiable, if ever, in rare circumstances.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. Those who advocate widespread, common use of torture against suspected terrorists are less moral than those who oppose most or all use of torture against suspected terrorists. (I could also insert here some premises about the use of the word \u0026ldquo;suspected\u0026rdquo; here\u0026ndash;I believe the intent of the use of the term is to make the point that we don\u0026rsquo;t know that these are terrorists and probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have sufficient grounds to convict them in a court of law\u0026ndash;e.g., like many of those being held in Guantanamo Bay).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  Those who describe themselves as secular are more likely to oppose torture than those who describe themselves as Christians.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4.  Those self-descriptions are mostly accurate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e5. Therefore, with respect to the subject of torture of suspected terrorists, those who are secular tend to be more moral than those who are Christian.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e6.  This is a point of evidence against the thesis that those who are Christian are more moral than those who are secular.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eSteve\u0026rsquo;s main three points of criticism on my original post were these (he has more to say at his blog):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ei) Notice how he assumes, without benefit of argument, that “torture” is always wrong. That’s the nice part of being a secular rationalist. You don’t have to give reasons for your rationalism.  [\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eii) He also doesn’t bring any critical thinking skills to bear on whether we should frame the issue of interrogation in terms of torture. Surely there’s a continuum here, is there not? There are many degrees and kinds of coercion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn addition, if we capture a high-level terrorist, and he doesn’t want to talk, should we do absolutely nothing to extract actionable information from him?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf that’s the position of secular humanism, then secular humanism is one of those useless ideologies like pacifism which is incapable of meeting the challenges of a real world situation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eiii) Then there’s his position that belief in use of “torture” under any circumstances makes you a worse person than someone who rejects the use of “torture” under any circumstances.\u003c/blockquote\u003eTo which I responded in comments on the post:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian support of torture"},{"content":"John McCain hired Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Nelson was deeply involved in Tom DeLay\u0026rsquo;s money laundering of corporate contributions scandal, but the mainstream media was lax about even asking McCain questions about this issue until after a Seattle radio show caller asked him about it:\nCALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I\u0026rsquo;m kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Here\u0026rsquo;s a guy who was actually in the indictment of DeLay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from DeLay\u0026rsquo;s PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races. And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor of James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote lines in New England a couple years ago.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;m curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?\nMCCAIN: None of those charges are true.\nCALLER: You don\u0026rsquo;t believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?\nMCCAIN: No.\nCARLSON: All right.\n[nervous laughter]\nMCCAIN: I will check it out. But I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard of them before.\nIf McCain had heard of this, he\u0026rsquo;s a liar. If he really hadn\u0026rsquo;t heard of it, he hasn\u0026rsquo;t been properly backgrounding people he hires. Contrary to McCain\u0026rsquo;s claim that none of the charges are true, the caller had it right (also see here).\nIf McCain doesn\u0026rsquo;t fire Nelson, it\u0026rsquo;s clear that he\u0026rsquo;s a dirty politician.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-john-mccain.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn McCain hired Terry Nelson as a senior advisor.  Nelson was deeply involved in Tom DeLay\u0026rsquo;s money laundering of corporate contributions scandal, but the mainstream media was lax about even asking McCain questions about this issue until after \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_19.php#007973\"\u003ea Seattle radio show caller asked him about it\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I\u0026rsquo;m kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Here\u0026rsquo;s a guy who was actually in the indictment of DeLay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from DeLay\u0026rsquo;s PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races. \u003cp\u003eAnd he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor of James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote lines in New England a couple years ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: John McCain"},{"content":"Matt McIntosh at Catallarchy has been making an interesting series of posts about Iran and the United States. In part 1, he points out that U.S. policy with respect to Iran has been completely irrational and counterproductive:\nConsider: the United States military takes down two governments to the East and West of Iran, both of whom the Iranians had longstanding feuds with, leaving Iran the only regional power left standing. Rather than working with Iran from the get-go on both of these operations, which would have been the natural Machiavellian thing to do, the Bush administration chooses instead to antagonize them and continues to do so even now. The Iranians shrug and play right along, allowing al Qaeda members to stay in their “custody” and meddling in Iraq, since there’s nothing in it for them to do otherwise – and every reason for them to keep the US bogged down and busy, since Bush has already telegraphed a big fat “YOU’RE NEXT” message to them.\nIf you’re the Iranian Supreme Leader, what do you do in this situation? Pretty much what they’re doing now: jerk everyone around and eat the clock, all the while reaching for the Bomb as an anti-invasion insurance policy as fast as you can get it. All you have to do is get one functioning nuclear missile and you’re set, and the odds of anyone being both able and willing to stop you are slim. The Iranians are not stupid; they know full well that there’s currently no political will in the US for yet another war, and that starting one would be political death for the already beleaguered Republicans.In Part 2, he sets out and argues for some basic assumptions about dealings with Iran:\n1) Iran is not going to give up the quest for nukes voluntarily.\n2) Democratic revolution is not going to happen.\n3) Ahmadinejad does not matter unless people let him.\n4) The Iranian regime is deterrable.\nHe further argues that, based on these assumptions, covert or overt U.S. support of dissident groups within Iran is likely to be counter-productive, causing those groups to be treated with more suspicion within Iran.\nNow, in Part 3, he points out some things the people of Iran want and that we should find desirable for them to have\u0026ndash;economic freedom at the top of the list. He suggests that we effectively offer a bribe\u0026ndash;removal of sanctions and reopening of diplomatic relations in return for their cooperation in ending violence in Iraq; unfreezing billions of assets if they turn over al Qaeda leaders they supposedly have under arrest. Combined with this, he suggests that we let them continue with their nuclear program so long as they are transparent about it and understand that any nuclear explosion in a populated area will be blamed on untrustworthy nuclear nations (North Korea, Iran, Pakistan) and will result in nuclear retaliation.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not particularly happy with that last suggestion\u0026ndash;but McIntosh\u0026rsquo;s suggestions seem more credible overall than current U.S. policy. On the nuclear issue, the current U.S. plan seems to be to try to get Iran to agree to stop its nuclear program completely and allow them to purchase non-military nuclear technology that is less likely to be usable for military applications, perhaps years in the future. Specifically, the U.S. is devoting resources (through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) to develop fast-burning reactors which can be used in developing countries, loaning them fuel and then taking spent fuel back for recycling and burning down, so that those countries have no need for enrichment or extraction technologies. If Iran could be persuaded to enter into such an arrangement, that would be far preferable to them having possession of military nuclear capability.\nHistorical Comments Matt McIntosh (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the comments, Jim. I agree that your last scenario would certainly be preferable to them getting functional nuclear weapons, I'm just not at all sanguine about the possibility of that happening. It'd be a mistake not to try to bargain for it first, but I doubt they'd go for it.Believe me, I'm no happier than you are at the thought of actually using nuclear weapons, but there's no doubt in my mind that I'd push the button if the appropriate warnings were given and a nuclear attack still occurred. I take that stand to save lives: you make the threats credibly so you don't have to actually carry them out.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/matt-mcintosh-on-iran.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt McIntosh at Catallarchy has been making an interesting series of posts about Iran and the United States.  In \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/03/21/whizzing-into-the-persian-wind-part-i/\"\u003epart 1\u003c/a\u003e,  he points out that U.S. policy with respect to Iran has been completely irrational and counterproductive:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eConsider: the United States military takes down two governments to the East and West of Iran, both of whom the Iranians had longstanding feuds with, leaving Iran the only regional power left standing. Rather than working \u003cem\u003ewith\u003c/em\u003e Iran from the get-go on both of these operations, which would have been the natural Machiavellian thing to do, the Bush administration chooses instead to antagonize them and continues to do so even now. The Iranians shrug and play right along, allowing al Qaeda members to stay in their “custody” and meddling in Iraq, since there’s nothing in it for them to do otherwise – and every reason for them to keep the US bogged down and busy, since Bush has already telegraphed a big fat “YOU’RE \u003cspan class=\"caps\"\u003eNEXT\u003c/span\u003e” message to them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt McIntosh on Iran"},{"content":"A new study published in the Journal of Research Into Personality by a UC Berkeley professor, Jack Block, who followed 95 children for 20 years. Those who were whiny, paranoid, and complaining as children turned out to be conservatives. Those who were confident and self-reliant turned out to be liberals. This is supporting evidence for similar work by John T. Jost at Stanford, but Block\u0026rsquo;s work is labeled as \u0026ldquo;biased, shoddy work\u0026rdquo; by Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona. (Link is to coverage in the Toronto Star.)\nUPDATE: There are some good criticisms of the Block study by Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here).\nHistorical Comments Kat Lippard (2006-12-09):\nI was whiny and PARANOID(but not so much of a complainer) as a child - by no means self confident - but I'm almost as liberal as you can get, as you know. And I've never been a conservative.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/how-to-spot-baby-conservative.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1\u0026call_pageid=971358637177\u0026amp;c=Article\u0026cid=1142722231554\"\u003enew study published in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Research Into Personality\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e by a UC Berkeley professor, Jack Block, who followed 95 children for 20 years.  Those who were whiny, paranoid, and complaining as children turned out to be conservatives.  Those who were confident and self-reliant turned out to be liberals.  This is supporting evidence for similar work by John T. Jost at Stanford, but Block\u0026rsquo;s work is labeled as \u0026ldquo;biased, shoddy work\u0026rdquo; by Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona.  (Link is to coverage in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eToronto Star\u003c/span\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  There are some good criticisms of the Block study by Jim Lindgren \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_03_19-2006_03_25.shtml#1143164311\"\u003eat the Volokh Conspiracy\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_03_19-2006_03_25.shtml#1143139928\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_03_19-2006_03_25.shtml#1143164311\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to spot a baby conservative"},{"content":"Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was named Speaker of the House to replace Tom DeLay. It\u0026rsquo;s already been pointed out that he lives in a D.C. apartment that belongs to a lobbyist. The Center for Public Integrity has looked further at his record, and found that he\nhas taken dozens of trips on private jets owned by corporations that have legislative interests before Congresshas accepted scores of privately sponsored trips (often categorized as having fact-finding or educational purposes) to some of the world\u0026rsquo;s premier golf spots and foreign localeshas hosted many high-end fund-raisers to wine and dine potential donors and Republican colleagueshas donated millions of dollars to election campaigns of fellow Republicans.All legal, but the first two items are equivalent to receiving substantial gifts from special interests, and the second two are equivalent to passing some of them on and seeking more.\nThe CPI\u0026rsquo;s website also has a Google Map of Boehner\u0026rsquo;s trips and expenses for 2005 which includes a Scottsdale, Arizona connection\u0026ndash;he spent thousands of dollars at the Talking Stick Golf Club at 9998 E. Indian Bend Rd:\nDateAmount02/13/2004$3805.1302/13/2004$469.1302/13/2004$938.2603/07/2005$7488.67\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-john-boehner.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. John Boehner (R-OH) was named Speaker of the House to replace \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/dirty-politician-tom-delay.html\"\u003eTom DeLay\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s already been pointed out that \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020701913.html\"\u003ehe lives in a D.C. apartment that belongs to a lobbyist\u003c/a\u003e.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/\"\u003eCenter for Public Integrity\u003c/a\u003e has looked further at his record, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=789\"\u003efound that he\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003ehas taken dozens of trips on private jets owned by corporations that have legislative interests before Congress\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ehas accepted scores of privately sponsored trips (often categorized as having fact-finding or educational purposes) to some of the world\u0026rsquo;s premier golf spots and foreign locales\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ehas hosted many high-end fund-raisers to wine and dine potential donors and Republican colleagues\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ehas donated millions of dollars to election campaigns of fellow Republicans.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eAll legal, but the first two items are equivalent to receiving substantial gifts from special interests, and the second two are equivalent to passing some of them on and seeking more.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe CPI\u0026rsquo;s website also has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=789#top\"\u003eGoogle Map of Boehner\u0026rsquo;s trips and expenses\u003c/a\u003e for 2005 which includes a Scottsdale, Arizona connection\u0026ndash;he spent thousands of dollars at the Talking Stick Golf Club at 9998 E. Indian Bend Rd:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable style=\"background: rgb(188, 188, 188) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"1\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth\u003eDate\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth\u003eAmount\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\"\u003e02/13/2004\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\" align=\"right\"\u003e$3805.13\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\"\u003e02/13/2004\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\" align=\"right\"\u003e$469.13\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\"\u003e02/13/2004\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\" align=\"right\"\u003e$938.26\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\"\u003e03/07/2005\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;\" align=\"right\"\u003e$7488.67\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: John Boehner"},{"content":"Roger Friedman at Fox News reports:\nIsaac Hayes did not quit \u0026ldquo;South Park.\u0026rdquo; My sources say that someone quit it for him.\nI can tell you that Hayes is in no position to have quit anything. Contrary to news reports, the great writer, singer and musician suffered a stroke on Jan. 17. At the time it was said that he was hospitalized and suffering from exhaustion.\nHe goes on to quote Hayes defending the show\u0026ndash;including the Scientology episode specifically\u0026ndash;on The Onion\u0026rsquo;s AV Club:\nAV Club: They did just do an episode that made fun of your religion, Scientology. Did that bother you?\nHayes: Well, I talked to Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] about that. They didn\u0026rsquo;t let me know until it was done. I said, \u0026lsquo;Guys, you have it all wrong. We\u0026rsquo;re not like that. I know that\u0026rsquo;s your thing, but get your information correct, because somebody might believe that [expletive], you know?\u0026rsquo; But I understand what they\u0026rsquo;re doing. I told them to take a couple of Scientology courses and understand what we do. [Laughs.]\nIf Friedman is right, this wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be the first time that Scientology spoke inaccurately on behalf of a member.\nUPDATE (March 22, 2006): Next week\u0026rsquo;s new episode is titled \u0026ldquo;The Return of Chef.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/fox-news-isaac-hayes-did-not-quit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRoger Friedman at \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,188463,00.html\"\u003eFox News reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIsaac Hayes\u003c/strong\u003e did not quit \u0026ldquo;South Park.\u0026rdquo; My sources say that someone quit it for him.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eI can tell you that Hayes is in no position to have quit anything. Contrary to news reports, the great writer, singer and musician suffered a stroke on Jan. 17. At the time it was said that he was hospitalized and suffering from exhaustion.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003eHe goes on to quote Hayes defending the show\u0026ndash;including the Scientology episode specifically\u0026ndash;on \u003ca href=\"http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44132/2\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s AV Club\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fox News: Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park"},{"content":"A story on CNN reports that, according to unnamed \u0026ldquo;industry sources,\u0026rdquo; Tom Cruise refused to participate in Mission Impossible 3 publicity for Paramount unless the Scientology episode of \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; was pulled from reruns on Comedy Central. Comedy Central and Paramount are both owned by Viacom. This appears to be confirmation of the rumor that had already been reported on numerous blogs.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/industry-sources-confirm-cruise-role.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA story on \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/20/leisure.southpark.reut/index.html\"\u003eCNN reports\u003c/a\u003e that, according to unnamed \u0026ldquo;industry sources,\u0026rdquo; Tom Cruise refused to participate in Mission Impossible 3 publicity for Paramount unless the Scientology episode of \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; was pulled from reruns on Comedy Central.  Comedy Central and Paramount are both owned by Viacom.  This appears to be confirmation of the rumor that \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/comedy-central-pulls-scientology.html\"\u003ehad already been reported\u003c/a\u003e on numerous blogs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Industry sources\" confirm Cruise role in \"South Park\" controversy"},{"content":"The 36th Carnival of the Godless is at Daniel Morgan\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/carnival-of-godless-36.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 36th Carnival of the Godless is at \u003ca href=\"http://danielmorgan.blogspot.com/2006/03/carnival-of-godless-36.html\"\u003eDaniel Morgan\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carnival of the Godless #36"},{"content":"The Liberty University debate team continues to get undeserved press for their highly misleading way of claiming to be #1, when in fact they can\u0026rsquo;t remotely compete against the best debate teams in the country. (Latest story, in the New York Times Magazine.) Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars exposes the truth, yet again. Mainstream media: Pay attention, and stop spreading misleading information.\n[Link updated 6 June 2013 to point to a more recent Ed Brayton overview.]\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/liberty-university-debate-team-theyre.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Liberty University debate team continues to get undeserved press for their highly misleading way of claiming to be #1, when in fact they can\u0026rsquo;t remotely compete against the best debate teams in the country.  (Latest story, in the New York Times Magazine.)  Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars \u003ca href=\"http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/02/03/more-nonsense-about-the-liberty-u-debate-team/\"\u003eexposes the truth\u003c/a\u003e, yet again.  Mainstream media:  Pay attention, and stop spreading misleading information.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Link updated 6 June 2013 to point to a more recent Ed Brayton overview.]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Liberty University debate team:  They're not really #1"},{"content":"Investigators for the General Accountability Office conducted tests at 21 airports to test screeners\u0026rsquo; ability to detect bomb components powerful enough to blow up the trunk of a car. They successfully got the parts past security screening at all 21 airports.\nThe TSA responded by saying that the tests \u0026ldquo;failed to consider the full array of air travel security measures.\u0026rdquo; That response doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be to the point\u0026ndash;the parts were successfully smuggled past security checkpoints, meaning that there was no effective countermeasure in place.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/21-airports-fail-bomb-screening-test.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eInvestigators for the General Accountability Office \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11863165/\"\u003econducted tests at 21 airports\u003c/a\u003e to test screeners\u0026rsquo; ability to detect bomb components powerful enough to blow up the trunk of a car.  They successfully got the parts past security screening at all 21 airports.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11878391/\"\u003eTSA responded\u003c/a\u003e by saying that the tests \u0026ldquo;failed to consider the full array of air travel security measures.\u0026rdquo;  That response doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be to the point\u0026ndash;the parts were successfully smuggled past security checkpoints, meaning that there was no effective countermeasure in place.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"21 airports fail bomb screening test"},{"content":"Jeff Lowder reports on a new lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force for religious discrimination:\nThe 12-page court filing says guest speakers at conventions of Air Force recruiters in 2003 and 2005 told Burleigh and other recruiters that \u0026ldquo;they needed to accept Jesus Christ in order to perform their job duties\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to use faith in Jesus Christ while recruiting.\u0026quot;When the plaintiff resisted his superiors\u0026rsquo; efforts at proselytizing, he became the target of lower performance ratings than peers who attended religious activities such as prayer groups and church.This is following a previous lawsuit last October by Mikey Weinstein against the U.S. Air Force regarding institutionalized Christianity at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs:\nOver the past decade or more, the suit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the First Amendment.\nWeinstein claims that evangelical Christians at the school have coerced attendance at religious services and prayers at official events, among other things. Lowder\u0026rsquo;s blog post also reports on the creation of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to combat these unconstitutional practices in the military. This foundation was started by the same Mikey Weinstein who filed the October 2005 lawsuit. On the advisory board is Pedro L. Irigonegaray, who did an excellent job cross-examining witnesses who promoted intelligent design at the Kansas Kangaroo court hearings last May.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/us-air-forces-institutionalized.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Lowder \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/is-us-air-force-christian-air-force.html\"\u003ereports on a new lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e against the U.S. Air Force for religious discrimination:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe 12-page court filing says guest speakers at conventions of Air Force recruiters in 2003 and 2005 told Burleigh and other recruiters that \u0026ldquo;they needed to accept Jesus Christ in order to perform their job duties\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;to use faith in Jesus Christ while recruiting.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhen the plaintiff resisted his superiors\u0026rsquo; efforts at proselytizing, he became the target of lower performance ratings than peers who attended religious activities such as prayer groups and church.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis is following a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/06/national/main919947.shtml\"\u003eprevious lawsuit last October\u003c/a\u003e by Mikey Weinstein against the U.S. Air Force regarding institutionalized Christianity at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOver the past decade or more, the suit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the First Amendment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWeinstein claims that evangelical Christians at the school have coerced attendance at religious services and prayers at official events, among other things. \u003c/blockquote\u003eLowder\u0026rsquo;s blog post also reports on the creation of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/index.html\"\u003eMilitary Religious Freedom Foundation\u003c/a\u003e to combat these unconstitutional practices in the military.  This foundation was started by the same Mikey Weinstein who filed the October 2005 lawsuit.  On the advisory board is \u003ca href=\"http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2005/05/pedro-luis-irigonegaraycounsel-for.html\"\u003ePedro L. Irigonegaray\u003c/a\u003e, who did an excellent job cross-examining witnesses who promoted intelligent design at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kansas/kangaroo.html\"\u003eKansas Kangaroo court hearings\u003c/a\u003e last May.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The U.S. Air Force's institutionalized Christianity"},{"content":"Radley Balko has visited Prentiss, Mississippi, and has returned with photos of the duplex (inside and out) where the raid occurred, some interesting information about what happened to the drug dealer, Jamie Smith, who was the target of the original raid, and details about the firing of Bob Evans, the public defender. He also interviewed one of the two black jurors, and finds that she wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure Maye was guilty and didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have much understanding of her responsibility as a juror. The more facts come out, the worse it looks for Prentiss officials and law enforcement.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/cory-maye-update-radley-balko-visits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko has visited Prentiss, Mississippi, and has returned with \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026391.php\"\u003ephotos of the duplex\u003c/a\u003e (inside and out) where the raid occurred, \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026385.php\"\u003esome interesting information about what happened to the drug dealer\u003c/a\u003e, Jamie Smith, who was the target of the original raid, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026384.php\"\u003edetails about the firing of Bob Evans\u003c/a\u003e, the public defender.   He also \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026392.php\"\u003einterviewed one of the two black jurors\u003c/a\u003e, and finds that she wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure Maye was guilty and didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have much understanding of her responsibility as a juror.  The more facts come out, the worse it looks for Prentiss officials and law enforcement.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye Update: Radley Balko visits Mississippi"},{"content":"Jeff Shallit reports on Nancy Pearcey, a young-earth creationist who used to be a regular contributor to the Bible-Science Newsletter (and some of those pieces became part of the intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People, published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics). Jeff checked out her 1994 book, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, co-authored with Charles Thaxton (who was also the co-author of The Mystery of Life\u0026rsquo;s Origin, the first book from the FTE). He shows how her book gives a simple, short, clear, and straight-forward description of information theory, which suffers only from being completely wrong.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/creationists-miss-information-nancy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Shallit \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2006/03/nancy-pearcey-creationists-miss.html\"\u003ereports on  Nancy Pearcey\u003c/a\u003e, a young-earth creationist who used to be a regular contributor to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBible-Science Newsletter\u003c/span\u003e (and some of those pieces became part of the intelligent design textbook, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e, published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics).  Jeff checked out her 1994 book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy\u003c/span\u003e, co-authored with Charles Thaxton (who was also the co-author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Mystery of Life\u0026rsquo;s Origin\u003c/span\u003e, the first book from the FTE).  He shows how her book gives a simple, short, clear, and straight-forward description of information theory, which suffers only from being completely wrong.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Creationists' Miss Information: Nancy Pearcey"},{"content":"Comedy Central has pulled the \u0026ldquo;Trapped in the Closet\u0026rdquo; episode, which criticizes and exposes Scientology, from reruns. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise threatened not to do publicity for the movie \u0026ldquo;Mission Impossible 3,\u0026rdquo; which will be released this summer, unless it was pulled. As Paramount, the distributor of the Cruise film, and Comedy Central are both owned by Viacom, this has some plausibility.\nA Cruise representative denied the rumor, phrased in a way that may have been crafted to be literally true but misleading (a method frequently used by George W. Bush, as documented in the book All the President\u0026rsquo;s Spin).\n(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nUPDATE (March 18, 2006): Trey Parker and Matt Stone have declared war on Scientology:\nMatt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the schedule Wednesday - with Internet rumors it was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure.\n\u0026ldquo;So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; creators said in a statement Friday in Daily Variety. \u0026ldquo;Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies\u0026hellip; You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!\u0026rdquo; ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/comedy-central-pulls-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComedy Central \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060317/ap_on_en_tv/tv_south_park;_ylt=AraCZIuVQQpSm9EE57hflzms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-\"\u003ehas pulled the \u0026ldquo;Trapped in the Closet\u0026rdquo; episode\u003c/a\u003e, which criticizes and exposes \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003eScientology\u003c/a\u003e, from reruns.  Rumor has it that Tom Cruise threatened not to do publicity for the movie \u0026ldquo;Mission Impossible 3,\u0026rdquo; which will be released this summer, unless it was pulled.  As Paramount, the distributor of the Cruise film, and Comedy Central are both owned by Viacom, this has some plausibility.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA Cruise representative denied the rumor, phrased in a way that \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/scientology_vs_south_park.php\"\u003emay have been crafted to be literally true\u003c/a\u003e but misleading (a method frequently used by George W. Bush, as documented in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAll the President\u0026rsquo;s Spin\u003c/span\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/scientology_vs_south_park.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 18, 2006):  Trey Parker and Matt Stone \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/0317southpark17-ON.html\"\u003ehave declared war on Scientology\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMatt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the schedule Wednesday - with Internet rumors it was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c!-- BOXAD TABLE --\u003e \u0026ldquo;So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; creators said in a statement Friday in Daily Variety. \u0026ldquo;Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies\u0026hellip; You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!\u0026rdquo; \u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comedy Central pulls Scientology episode from reruns"},{"content":"Matt McIntosh at Catallarchy points out that the effective U.S. tariff rates on imports are significantly higher on the poorest countries. For example, Bangladesh paid about the same amount in tariffs on exports to the U.S. as France ($331 million vs. $330 million), despite only exporting $2.53 billion in goods to France\u0026rsquo;s $30.023 billion. That\u0026rsquo;s a 14.1% tariff on Bangladesh, where the per-capita GDP is $370, versus a 1.1% tariff on France, where the per-capita GDP is $24,170.\nBy abolishing tariffs, we could instantly provide significant benefits to the poorest countries, as well as to U.S. poor, by reducing the cost of goods like clothing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/punishing-poor.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt McIntosh at \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e points out that \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/03/17/punishing-the-poor/\"\u003ethe effective U.S. tariff rates on imports are significantly higher on the poorest countries\u003c/a\u003e.  For example, Bangladesh paid about the same amount in tariffs on exports to the U.S. as France ($331 million vs. $330 million), despite only exporting $2.53 billion in goods to France\u0026rsquo;s $30.023 billion.  That\u0026rsquo;s a 14.1% tariff on Bangladesh, where the per-capita GDP is $370, versus a 1.1% tariff on France, where the per-capita GDP is $24,170.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy abolishing tariffs, we could instantly provide significant benefits to the poorest countries, as well as to U.S. poor, by reducing the cost of goods like clothing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Punishing the Poor"},{"content":"Over at Multipolarity Memes there’s a post about a short (though large), 3D-rendered, animation of a hypothetical nanofactory.\nNow, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert at this stuff, but I did take some intermediate chemistry and physics classes in college, so the animation immediately raises a number of questions in my mind; viz.:\nAt that size, can they realistically assume that the envisioned structures will be as rigid as they make them out to be? What about Brownian motion? What about transfer of heat—especially given that there are, presumably, chemical reactions taking place, and these reactions will involve energy transfers? What type of bonding is happening at the transfer points? Chemical reactions don\u0026rsquo;t happen magically—and they don\u0026rsquo;t happen without some energy input or energy release—neither of which are being obviously represented in the video. It\u0026rsquo;s a pretty fantasy, but how realistic is it, really? ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/hypothetical-nanofactory-animation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver at \u003ca href=\"http://singularitynews.blogspot.com\"\u003eMultipolarity Memes\u003c/a\u003e there’s a post about a short (though large), 3D-rendered, \u003ca href=\"http://singularitynews.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_singularitynews_archive.html#114245797084185438\"\u003eanimation of a hypothetical nanofactory\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert at this stuff, but I did take some intermediate chemistry and physics classes in college, so the animation immediately raises a number of questions in my mind; viz.:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eAt that size, can they realistically assume that the envisioned structures will be as rigid as they make them out to be? \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat about Brownian motion? \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat about transfer of heat—especially given that there are, presumably, chemical reactions taking place, and these reactions will involve energy transfers? \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eWhat type of bonding is happening at the transfer points? Chemical reactions don\u0026rsquo;t happen magically—and they don\u0026rsquo;t happen without some energy input or energy release—neither of which are being obviously represented in the video. \u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a pretty fantasy, but how realistic is it, really? \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hypothetical Nanofactory Animation"},{"content":"For the third year in a row, DHS gets an F for protecting its computer systems:\nMost federal agencies that play key roles in the war on terror are doing a dismal job of protecting their computers and information networks from hackers and viruses, according to portions of a report to be released by a key congressional oversight committee Thursday.\nThe Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with setting the government\u0026rsquo;s cyber security agenda, earned a grade of F for the third straight year from the House Government Reform Committee. Other agencies whose failing marks went unchanged from 2004 include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.\nThe House Government Reform Committee is expected to award the federal government an overall grade of D-plus for computer security in 2005, a score that remains virtually unchanged from 2004.\nSeveral agencies saw a considerable drop in their scores. The Department of Justice went from a B-minus in 2004 to a \u0026ldquo;D\u0026rdquo; in 2005, while Interior earned failing marks after getting a C-plus in 2004.\nThe scores are \u0026ldquo;unacceptably low,\u0026rdquo; committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) said in a statement. \u0026ldquo;DHS must have its house in order and should become a security leader among agencies. What\u0026rsquo;s holding them up?\u0026quot;\nThe annual report bases the grades on the agencies\u0026rsquo; internal assessments and information they are required to submit annually to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The letter grades depended on how well agencies met the requirements set out in the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).\nThe FISMA program is based on compliance with NIST computer security standards.\nHistorical Comments Secular Outpost (2006-12-09):\nIt doesn't surprise me that the Department of Homeland Security got an F in computer security, but then it wouldn't surprise me if many companies also got an F in computer security. Unlike the government, however, companies aren't always subjected to audits where the audit reports are made available to the general public. (This isn't intended to be an excuse for the government's poor performance, but just an observation about how widespread poor computer security truly is.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWell, forgive me for pointing out the obvious: We're not talking about McDonald's, here. We're talking about the Department of Homeland Security. An organization who's sole reason for existence is - need I say it again? - security. Not only that, but I imagine they probably spend more money than \"many\" companies on, um, \"security\" - money that is appropriated (to put it euphemistically) rather than actually earned via provision of a valued service.It's not unreasonable, then, to hold them to a slightly higher standard than, say, Petco.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/department-of-homeland-security-gets-f.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor the third year in a row, \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/15/AR2006031501589_pf.html\"\u003eDHS gets an F for protecting its computer systems\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost federal agencies that play key roles in the war on terror are doing a dismal job of protecting their computers and information networks from hackers and viruses, according to portions of a report to be released by a key congressional oversight committee Thursday.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with setting the government\u0026rsquo;s cyber security agenda, earned a grade of F for the third straight year from the House Government Reform Committee. Other agencies whose failing marks went unchanged from 2004 include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Department of Homeland Security gets an F in computer security"},{"content":"BLDGblog has some great photos of the rifts opening up in the ground in central Ethiopia, where parts of the Afar triangle have already sunk to more than 100 meters below sea level. What\u0026rsquo;s now a 37-mile-long fissure will apparently take a million years to reach full ocean status.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/formation-of-arbonian-sea.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/return-to-arbonia.html\"\u003eBLDGblog has some great photos\u003c/a\u003e of the rifts opening up in the ground in central Ethiopia, where parts of the Afar triangle have already sunk to more than 100 meters below sea level.  What\u0026rsquo;s now a 37-mile-long fissure will apparently \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/09/international/i164014S06.DTL\"\u003etake a million years to reach full ocean status\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Formation of the Arbonian sea"},{"content":"The 30th meeting of the Skeptics Circle is up at Paige\u0026rsquo;s Page.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/skeptics-circle-30.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 30th meeting of the Skeptics Circle is up at \u003ca href=\"http://paiges-page.net/2006_03_01_archive.html#114246735118295231\"\u003ePaige\u0026rsquo;s Page\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics Circle #30"},{"content":"Worried about biological weapons that can be specifically targeted to, say, disable the ability to store memories, cause the autoimmune system to attack myelin (i.e., mimic multiple sclerosis), or target specific ethnic groups? If not, you might be after you read this article from Technology Review. Unfortunately, some of these things may even be feasible to produce with old technology that is easily available\u0026ndash;and if they aren\u0026rsquo;t now, they will be.\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/targeted-bioweapons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWorried about biological weapons that can be specifically targeted to, say, disable the ability to store memories, cause the autoimmune system to attack myelin (i.e., mimic multiple sclerosis), or target specific ethnic groups?  If not, you might be after you read \u003ca href=\"http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16485,306,p1.html\"\u003ethis article\u003c/a\u003e from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTechnology Review\u003c/span\u003e.  Unfortunately, some of these things may even be feasible to produce with old technology that is easily available\u0026ndash;and if they aren\u0026rsquo;t now, they will be.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/bioterrorism.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Targeted bioweapons"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know how they got my email address\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve never been (and never will be) a registered Republican.\nFrom: \u0026ldquo;Chairman Matt Salmon\u0026rdquo; volunteer@azgop.org To: [my email address]\nSubject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600\nAttention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to\nevents@azgop.org\nIn This Issue:\nChairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett\nCapitol Update\nKyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward\n\u0026hellip;\nPaid for by the Arizona Republican Party\n(602) 957-7770\nNot authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.\n\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;-\nThis email was sent by:\nRepublican Party of Arizona\n3501 N 24th Street\nPhoenix, AZ, 85016, USA/volunteer@azgop.orgThe actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose anti-spam policy says:\nAnti-SPAM at ExactTarget ExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) via our system.\nMembers Agreement Our clients agree not to use our system to send unsolicited e-mail. For any opt-in list of e-mail addresses used in ExactTarget\u0026rsquo;s system, clients agree to provide us with the source of the e-mail addresses, the method used to capture the data, and verification of the consent to receive e-mails from such client. We also encourage our members to respect their customers\u0026rsquo; time and attention by controlling the frequency of mailings to individual e-mail addresses.\nOur clients certify that they will not use rented or purchased lists, e-mail append lists, or any other list that contains e-mail addresses captured in any other method than opt-in. The use of opt-out lists is prohibited in our system. ExactTarget retains the right to review client lists and e-mails to verify that clients are abiding by the privacy and permission policies set forth herein. However, our clients are ultimately responsible for compliance with our policies.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s any way my email address would have ended up on their list except by email appending.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve complained to them and to ExactTarget\u0026rsquo;s abuse address, asking both for an explanation and what they\u0026rsquo;re going to do to rectify the situation. My guess is that they will continue to spam for the Republicans\u0026ndash;in which case they deserve to be added to anti-spam blocking lists.\nBTW, for anti-spammers, the originating MTA was mta.emailgop.com (207.67.38.104), on Time Warner Telecom\u0026rsquo;s network. The IP block is SWIP\u0026rsquo;d to TW Telecom, and TW Telecom\u0026rsquo;s rwhois shows it assigned to Exact Target. The company has had a few previous incidents with spamming, but the blog of Chip House, their VP of Privacy and Deliverability, endorses decent principles.\nUPDATE: \u0026ldquo;Nate Romance\u0026rdquo; of Exact Target responded to my complaint, stating that:\nAt ExactTarget we take these complaints very seriously and we work hard to ensure that our clients send mail only to people who have asked to receive mail. Clients who do not adhere to our policies face an escalating series of penalties, including but not limited to: chargeback fees, mailing restrictions, and termination. Our Privacy Policy located here:\nhttp://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_privacypolicy.asp and our Anti-SPAM policy located here:\nhttp://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_antispam.asp will provide you with additional information and should answer any questions you might have.\nAdditionally, we will investigate this issue with our client, and determine what we can do to ensure that it does not persist. In the meantime, I have added your email address ([address deleted]) to our \u0026ldquo;Master Unsubscribe List\u0026rdquo; which will ensure that you do not receive email from the Arizona Republican Party or any other client of ExactTarget.\nThanks for bringing this matter to our attention and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.\nPlease let me know if there are additional items I can assist you with.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/spammed-by-arizona-republican-party.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know how they got my email address\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve never been (and never will be) a registered Republican.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e From: \u0026ldquo;Chairman Matt Salmon\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"mailto:volunteer@azgop.org\"\u003evolunteer@azgop.org\u003c/a\u003e                                                                               \u003cbr /\u003eTo: [my email address]\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006                                                                       \u003cbr /\u003eDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAttention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"mailto:events@azgop.org\"\u003eevents@azgop.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn This Issue:\u003cbr /\u003eChairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett\u003cbr /\u003eCapitol Update\u003cbr /\u003eKyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaid for by the Arizona Republican Party\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(602) 957-7770\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNot authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;-\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e      This email was sent by:\u003cbr /\u003e      Republican Party of Arizona\u003cbr /\u003e      3501 N 24th Street\u003cbr /\u003e      Phoenix, AZ, 85016, USA\u003ca href=\"mailto:/volunteer@azgop.org\"\u003e/volunteer@azgop.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose \u003ca href=\"http://email.exacttarget.com/company-anti-sp-policy.asp\"\u003eanti-spam policy\u003c/a\u003e says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ch4\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAnti-SPAM at ExactTarget\u003c/h4\u003e          \u003cp\u003eExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only         permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only         to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to         receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam)         via our system.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spammed by the Arizona Republican Party"},{"content":"Ed Felten writes about a new paper that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus. The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed. By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags. If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags.\nBTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and developed Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.\nRieback gave a talk at last year\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;What the Hack\u0026rdquo; hacker conference in Amsterdam on \u0026ldquo;Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/virus-propagation-via-rfid-tag.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Felten \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=990\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e about \u003ca href=\"http://www.rfidvirus.org/papers/percom.06.pdf\"\u003ea new paper\u003c/a\u003e that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus.  The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed.  By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags.  If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOperating Systems: Design and Implementation\u003c/span\u003e and developed \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix\"\u003eMinix\u003c/a\u003e, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRieback gave \u003ca href=\"http://program.whatthehack.org/event/159.en.html\"\u003ea talk\u003c/a\u003e at last year\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;What the Hack\u0026rdquo; hacker conference in Amsterdam on \u0026ldquo;Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Virus propagation via RFID tag"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier reports on a case of \u0026ldquo;police department privilege escalation,\u0026quot; where, because California allows transit companies to create their own police departments, Yosef Maiwandi was able to do so. He created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, a nonprofit operating out of an auto repair shop that gives bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. He then created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department, and made Stefan Eriksson a deputy police commissioner of their anti-terrorism division, and gave him business cards.\nEriksson is the guy who went drunk driving in a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo that crashed into a telephone pole in Malibu\u0026ndash;he claims he was the passenger, but no other driver has been found.\nUPDATE (March 19, 2006): There\u0026rsquo;s now video that shows Eriksson and another person\u0026ndash;Trevor Karney\u0026ndash;in the Ferrari.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/create-your-own-police-department.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/police_departme.html\"\u003ereports on a case of \u0026ldquo;police department privilege escalation,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e where, because California allows transit companies to create their own police departments, Yosef Maiwandi was able to do so.  He created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, a nonprofit operating out of an auto repair shop that gives bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens.  He then \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ferrari8mar08,0,3717162.story\"\u003ecreated the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department\u003c/a\u003e, and made Stefan Eriksson a deputy police commissioner of their anti-terrorism division, and gave him business cards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEriksson is \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ferrari28feb28,0,3986184.story?coll=la-home-headlines\"\u003ethe guy who went drunk driving in a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo \u003c/a\u003ethat crashed into a telephone pole in Malibu\u0026ndash;he claims he was the passenger, but no other driver has been found.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 19, 2006):  There\u0026rsquo;s now \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0318ferrari0318.html\"\u003evideo that shows Eriksson and another person\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;Trevor Karney\u0026ndash;in the Ferrari.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Create your own police department"},{"content":"NASA\u0026rsquo;s 2009 Mission to Mars will carry the Mars Science Laboratory, which includes a cell-phone-sized device capable of identifying minerals in the Martian soil. The device, designed by Robert Downs at the University of Arizona, shoots a laser at materials to be identified, causing its atoms to vibrate at different frequencies and generate a detectible signal. The process, known as Raman spectroscopy, is a quantum mechanical process that earned its discoverer, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, the Nobel prize in physics in 1930.\nExcerpts from an interview with Downs:\nI know that Miami Police Department has about 220,000 spectra of all the illicit drugs that are out there in the world. You just take these things; you can shoot them and ten second later you know what they’re holding: is it baby powder, is it cocaine? Really easy to tell. This little white powder that came in envelopes that the post office was getting. Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet.\n\u0026hellip;\nThere is about just over 4000 mineral species that are known and we’ve shot about 700 of them so far; so, one fifth of the way. I think it will be about a six-year project to complete everything we know found on Earth. And we’re also looking at the meteorites as well with the NASA people.(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/pocket-sized-spectrometer-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNASA\u0026rsquo;s 2009 Mission to Mars \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1581469.htm\"\u003ewill carry the Mars Science Laboratory\u003c/a\u003e, which includes a cell-phone-sized device capable of identifying minerals in the Martian soil.  The device, designed by Robert Downs at the University of Arizona, shoots a laser at materials to be identified, causing its atoms to vibrate at different frequencies and generate a detectible signal.  The process, known as Raman spectroscopy, is a quantum mechanical process that earned its discoverer, \u003ca href=\"http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1930/\"\u003eSir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman\u003c/a\u003e, the Nobel prize in physics in 1930.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eExcerpts from an \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1581469.htm\"\u003einterview with Downs\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003eI know that Miami Police Department has about 220,000 spectra of all the illicit drugs that are out there in the world. You just take these things; you can shoot them and ten second later you know what they’re holding: is it baby powder, is it cocaine? Really easy to tell. This little white powder that came in envelopes that the post office was getting. Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c/strong\u003eThere is about just over 4000 mineral species that are known and we’ve shot about 700 of them so far; so, one fifth of the way. I think it will be about a six-year project to complete everything we know found on Earth. And we’re also looking at the meteorites as well with the NASA people.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/610142.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pocket-sized spectrometer from the University of Arizona"},{"content":"Isaac Hayes has quit \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;no more appearances from Chef, at least not with Hayes\u0026rsquo; voice. His reason, however, is bogus:\n\u0026ldquo;There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,\u0026rdquo; the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.\n\u0026ldquo;Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored,\u0026rdquo; he continued. \u0026ldquo;As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; has been bashing religious views other than Scientology since began in 1997. Hayes is only upset now because his religion, Scientology, was targeted last season in the \u0026ldquo;Trapped in the Closet\u0026rdquo; episode, which correctly described some of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s crazy cosmology.\n\u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; co-creator Matt Stone calls him on his hypocrisy:\n\u0026ldquo;This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology\u0026hellip; He has no problem — and he\u0026rsquo;s cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians.\u0026rdquo; \u0026hellip; Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker \u0026ldquo;never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin.\u0026quot;\nParker stated that they intentionally avoided the subject of Scientology\u0026ndash;while taking on Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism and Islam\u0026ndash;because of Hayes. \u0026ldquo;We knew he is a Scientologist and he\u0026rsquo;s an awesome guy. We were like, \u0026lsquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s just avoid that for now.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo; creators Stone and Parker also created a spoof of the Scientology-related film \u0026ldquo;Battlefield Earth\u0026rdquo; in 2000 for the MTV Awards, which Isaac Hayes did not play a role in.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/matt-stone-calls-isaac-hayes-on-his.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIsaac Hayes \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060313/ap_en_tv/people_isaac_hayes\"\u003ehas quit \u0026ldquo;South Park\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;no more appearances from Chef, at least not with Hayes\u0026rsquo; voice.  His reason, however, is bogus:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,\u0026rdquo; the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored,\u0026rdquo; he continued. \u0026ldquo;As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matt Stone calls Isaac Hayes on his double standard"},{"content":"The Chicago Tribune has reported that it was able to identify 2,653 employees of the CIA, including covert agents, from online data providers who charge for access to public records. The Tribune reports that it identified agents through telephone listings, real estate transactions, voting records, property tax records, and other documents, and that they were able to identify internal CIA phone numbers, covert mailing addresses, and two dozen CIA facilities. One facility, \u0026ldquo;The Farm\u0026rdquo; at Camp Peary, VA, was looked up via ordinary Internet searches, which yielded the names of 26 people who work there. (John Young\u0026rsquo;s cryptome site features this May 31, 2005 New York Times story on Camp Peary.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nBut, on the other hand, Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, and the moon landing was faked.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/cia-employee-identities-discoverable.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-060311ciamain-story,1,123362.story?coll=chi-news-hed\u0026ctrack=1\u0026amp;cset=true\"\u003ehas reported\u003c/a\u003e that it was able to identify 2,653 employees of the CIA, including covert agents, from online data providers who charge for access to public records.  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTribune\u003c/span\u003e reports that it identified agents through telephone listings, real estate transactions, voting records, property tax records, and other documents, and that they were able to identify internal CIA phone numbers, covert mailing addresses, and two dozen CIA facilities.  One facility, \u0026ldquo;The Farm\u0026rdquo; at Camp Peary, VA, was looked up via ordinary Internet searches, which yielded the names of 26 people who work there.  (John Young\u0026rsquo;s cryptome site features \u003ca href=\"http://cryptome.org/peary-eyeball.htm\"\u003ethis May 31, 2005 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e story\u003c/a\u003e on Camp Peary.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CIA employee identities discoverable via web searches"},{"content":"It appears that Amazon.com has removed all customer reviews from their website, and has introduced a new beta feature called \u0026ldquo;Customer Discussions\u0026rdquo; for each product.\nThere are still customer rankings (the \u0026ldquo;Rate it\u0026rdquo; feature) and editorial reviews, but all the customer reviews are gone, the reviewer ranking is gone, and the helpful/unhelpful votes are gone.\nA pity, as I was hoping to someday make the ranks of the top 1000 reviewers\u0026ndash;my best rank was 2,171 in late February of this year.\nThis move seems to be really poor judgment on Amazon.com\u0026rsquo;s part. I heavily relied upon customer reviews when making purchasing decisions, and I considered the reliability of individual\u0026rsquo;s reviews by comparing them to other reviews by the same person. Now, that feature of Amazon.com is unavailable, as the huge existing database of commentary has been removed. Perhaps the \u0026ldquo;Customer Discussions\u0026rdquo; will replace it, but if the purpose is for people to go back-and-forth debating specifics of the content, rather than giving an overview and opinion of the work as a whole, it won\u0026rsquo;t be the same.\nIt was also rather rude of Amazon.com to delete, without notice, the substantial contributions of its top reviewers. I was ranked only 2,171, but I reviewed 113 books to get there\u0026ndash;and there were several million Amazon.com reviewers. Top reviewers reviewed thousands of books. That\u0026rsquo;s an enormous amount of customer contribution to just throw away without notice or acknowledgment.\nUPDATE (12:35 p.m. MST Sunday): As cowmix pointed out, the reviews are back. I spoke with a friend who works at Amazon.com, and he said that it is common for Amazon.com to make changes like this which are only visible to a test population of users, for a short period of time that\u0026rsquo;s long enough to obtain information about how it affects customer behavior.\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2006-12-09):\nHmm.. I don't care how 'great' their new system might turn out to be... not keeping some way to access legacy comments is stupid. Amazon reviews are a part of the past 10+ years of Internet history. If they don't recognize that, they have definitely hopped off the 'clue train'.BTW.. your post here reminds me of this classic 'The Onion' article:http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28477\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nUpdate: The reviews are back.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/amazoncom-removes-all-customer-reviews.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt appears that Amazon.com has removed all customer reviews from their website, and has introduced a new beta feature called  \u0026ldquo;Customer Discussions\u0026rdquo; for each product.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are still customer rankings (the \u0026ldquo;Rate it\u0026rdquo; feature) and editorial reviews, but all the customer reviews are gone, the reviewer ranking is gone, and the helpful/unhelpful votes are gone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA pity, as I was hoping to someday make the ranks of the top 1000 reviewers\u0026ndash;my best rank was 2,171 in late February of this year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis move seems to be really poor judgment on Amazon.com\u0026rsquo;s part.  I heavily relied upon customer reviews when making purchasing decisions, and I considered the reliability of individual\u0026rsquo;s reviews by comparing them to other reviews by the same person.  Now, that feature of Amazon.com is unavailable, as the huge existing database of commentary has been removed.  Perhaps the \u0026ldquo;Customer Discussions\u0026rdquo; will replace it, but if the purpose is for people to go back-and-forth debating specifics of the content, rather than giving an overview and opinion of the work as a whole, it won\u0026rsquo;t be the same.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was also rather rude of Amazon.com to delete, without notice, the substantial contributions of its top reviewers.  I was ranked only 2,171, but I reviewed 113 books to get there\u0026ndash;and there were several \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003emillion\u003c/span\u003e Amazon.com reviewers.  Top reviewers reviewed thousands of books.  That\u0026rsquo;s an enormous amount of customer contribution to just throw away without notice or acknowledgment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (12:35 p.m. MST Sunday):  As cowmix pointed out, the reviews are back.  I spoke with a friend who works at Amazon.com, and he said that it is common for Amazon.com to make changes like this which are only visible to a test population of users, for a short period of time that\u0026rsquo;s long enough to obtain information about how it affects customer behavior.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazon.com removes all customer reviews"},{"content":"Last week Global Crossing, my employer, unveiled a corporate blog site. The current bloggers there are David Siegel, writing on the future of the Internet (and most recently on the IPTV World Forum), Adam Uzelac, writing on VOIP technology, Norm Schilacci, writing to clarify new technologies and concepts for the layman, and Paul Kouroupas, writing on public policy issues and regulatory matters (most recently on net neutrality, in which he recommends an excellent paper by Blair Levin, Rebecca Arbogast, and David Kaut of Stifel/Nicolaus, \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality: Value Chain Tug of War\u0026rdquo;).\nIn conjunction with this blog site, Global Crossing has defined a fairly open blogging policy for employees to comment publicly about the company. The policy contains most of the core and common policies described at the CorporateBlogging Blog.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve tended (with a few exceptions) to avoid blogging specifically about my employer here, and this is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve specifically named the company on my blog. That\u0026rsquo;s a tendency I plan to continue here, though I expect to comment from time to time on the company blog site. (You can find a couple comments of mine in the DRM thread on Siegel\u0026rsquo;s blog.) Lest there be any doubt, any opinions I express on this blog (or on the company blog) are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/global-crossing-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast week \u003ca href=\"http://www.globalcrossing.com/\"\u003eGlobal Crossing\u003c/a\u003e, my employer, unveiled \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/\"\u003ea corporate blog site\u003c/a\u003e.  The current bloggers there are David Siegel, writing on the \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/dsiegel/\"\u003efuture of the Internet\u003c/a\u003e (and most recently on the \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/node/33\"\u003eIPTV World Forum\u003c/a\u003e), Adam Uzelac, writing on \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/voiploser\"\u003eVOIP technology\u003c/a\u003e, Norm Schilacci, writing to \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/norm/\"\u003eclarify new technologies and concepts for the layman\u003c/a\u003e, and Paul Kouroupas, writing on \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/paulk/\"\u003epublic policy issues\u003c/a\u003e and regulatory matters (most recently on \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/node/41\"\u003enet neutrality\u003c/a\u003e, in which he recommends an excellent paper by Blair Levin, Rebecca Arbogast, and David Kaut of Stifel/Nicolaus, \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality: Value Chain Tug of War\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn conjunction with this blog site, Global Crossing has defined a fairly open blogging policy for employees to comment publicly about the company.  The policy contains most of the core and common policies described at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.corporateblogging.info/2005/06/policies-compared-todays-corporate.asp\"\u003eCorporateBlogging Blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve tended (with a few exceptions) to avoid blogging specifically about my employer here, and this is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve specifically named the company on my blog.  That\u0026rsquo;s a tendency I plan to continue here, though I expect to comment from time to time on the company blog site.  (You can find a couple comments of mine in the \u003ca href=\"http://blogspot.globalcrossing.com/node/36\"\u003eDRM thread\u003c/a\u003e on Siegel\u0026rsquo;s blog.)  Lest there be any doubt, any opinions I express on this blog (or on the company blog) are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Global Crossing blog"},{"content":"Lest anyone think that Flew\u0026rsquo;s only lapse of judgment has been his off-again, on-again (PDF), off-again support for intelligent design and theism, it seems that he has also lent his name to the advisory board of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s anti-psychiatry front group, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which opposes the use of drugs to treat mental illnesses.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/antony-flew-on-advisory-board-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLest anyone think that \u003ca href=\"http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/lexicon/#F\"\u003eFlew\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s only lapse of judgment has been his \u003ca href=\"http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=138\"\u003eoff\u003c/a\u003e-again, \u003ca href=\"http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/flew-interview.pdf\"\u003eon\u003c/a\u003e-again (PDF), \u003ca href=\"http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369\"\u003eoff\u003c/a\u003e-again support for intelligent design and theism, it seems that he has also lent his name to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/7075\"\u003eadvisory board\u003c/a\u003e of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s anti-psychiatry front group, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCHR\"\u003eCitizens Commission on Human Rights\u003c/a\u003e, which opposes the use of drugs to treat mental illnesses.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Antony Flew on advisory board of Scientology front group"},{"content":"Kelly Jolkowski is the mother of a child who has been missing for nearly five years. She has begun authoring a series of blog posts about psychics and the search for missing people from her perspective\u0026ndash;and she characterizes them as \u0026ldquo;Advantage Takers\u0026rdquo; who are exploiting people at their most vulnerable. (Hat tip: Respectful Insolence.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/psychics-and-missing-persons.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKelly Jolkowski is the mother of a child who has been missing for nearly five years.  She has begun authoring \u003ca href=\"http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2006/03/30606-pmp-introduction-to-psychics-and.html\"\u003ea series of blog posts about psychics and the search for missing people\u003c/a\u003e from her perspective\u0026ndash;and she characterizes them as \u0026ldquo;Advantage Takers\u0026rdquo; who are exploiting people at their most vulnerable.  (Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/project_jason_psychics_and_mis_1.php\"\u003eRespectful Insolence\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Psychics and missing persons"},{"content":"Claude Allen, who was up February 9 the White House domestic policy advisor, advocating abstinence education, school prayer, and opposition to abortion, was arrested this week in Maryland for a retail fraud scheme. Allen, who was previously a deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, would purchase items at Target or Hecht\u0026rsquo;s, take them out to his car, return with the receipts and take an identical item off the shelf and \u0026ldquo;return\u0026rdquo; it for a credit back to his credit card. He apparently did this more than 25 times between October 29, 2005 and January 2, 2006, defrauding the stores of more than $5,000. This from a guy who was making $160,000 a year. His attorney says it\u0026rsquo;s just a misunderstanding.\n(From Talking Points Memo.)\nUPDATE (March 14, 2006): Claude Allen has an evil twin. No, really!\nUPDATE 2 (March 14, 2006): But the twin wasn\u0026rsquo;t the one who admitted the scam.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/former-white-house-domestic-policy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eClaude Allen, who was up February 9 the White House domestic policy advisor, advocating abstinence education, school prayer, and opposition to abortion, \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002328.html\"\u003ewas arrested this week in Maryland for a retail fraud scheme\u003c/a\u003e.  Allen, who was previously a deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, would purchase items at Target or Hecht\u0026rsquo;s, take them out to his car, return with the receipts and take an identical item off the shelf and \u0026ldquo;return\u0026rdquo; it for a credit back to his credit card.  He apparently did this more than 25 times between October 29, 2005 and January 2, 2006, defrauding the stores of more than $5,000.  This from a guy who was making $160,000 a year.  His attorney says it\u0026rsquo;s just a misunderstanding.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(From \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_05.php#007866\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 14, 2006):  Claude Allen has \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_12.php#007891\"\u003ean evil twin\u003c/a\u003e.  No, really!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE 2 (March 14, 2006):  But the twin wasn\u0026rsquo;t the \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000100.php\"\u003eone who admitted the scam\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Former White House domestic policy advisor arrested for retail fraud scheme"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports today that a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills on behalf of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an anti-psychiatry group. Several of them have taken trips to Scientology events at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles to meet with John Travolta.\nThe CCHR and Scientology have a religiously-based opposition to psychiatry and medicine pertaining to mental health. This derives from L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s own opposition to psychiatry and his development of Dianetics as an alternative to psychological therapy. When he created Scientology (after having temporarily lost control of his Dianetics organization to his partner Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas), he adopted the trappings of religion and invented a cosmology involving evil intergalactic psychiatrists who assisted the warlord Xenu in order to eliminate those who opposed him. They did this by injecting billions of people with alcohol and glycol, loading them onto space planes that looked just like DC-8s, and flying them to planet Teegeeack (Earth), where they were dumped into volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls (or \u0026ldquo;thetans\u0026rdquo;) departed their bodies and are still here, attached to our own souls and causing all manner of psychological ills for us. Psychiatry and psychology, according to Scientology, are bogus methods which do nothing to address the real problems caused by these \u0026ldquo;body thetans\u0026rdquo; attached to us\u0026ndash;only the Scientology process of auditing with an e-meter can free us from them.\n(You can find more details about Scientology\u0026rsquo;s cosmology at Wikipedia, which has a very comprehensive set of articles about the religion, as well as at Operation Clambake. I also highly recommend Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s book about L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, which is online in its entirety.)\nSo who are the Arizona legislators working with CCHR and attending Scientology functions?\nSen. Karen Johnson (R-District 18, Mesa). Karen Johnson is on the Family Services, Finance, Appropriations, and K-12 Education committees. She is one of the nuttier fundamentalists in the legislature, a member of Concerned Women for America and in tight with James Dobson\u0026rsquo;s Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer\u0026rsquo;s Family Research Council. Johnson has gone so far as to lend her name to the CCHR\u0026rsquo;s Advisory Board.\nSen. Linda Gray (R-Glendale, District 10), who is on the K-12 Education, Higher Education, Government, and Family Services committees and is a big supporter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She has degrees in recreation administration and sociology.\nSen. Carolyn Allen (R-District 8, Scottsdale), who is on the Commerce and Economic Development, Health, and Transportation committees.\nSen. Marilyn Jarrett (R-District 19, Mesa). She just died on Friday after having a stroke in her office on Thursday.\nSen. Albert Hale (D-District 2, Window Rock). Former president of the Navajo Nation, on the Government Accountability and Reform, Government, and Higher Education committees.\nRep. Tom Prezelski (D-District 29, Tucson). On the Counties, Municipalities, and Military Affairs, Federal Mandates and Property Rights, and Transportation committees.\nRep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem). A member of \u0026ldquo;Pure Heart Christian Fellowship,\u0026rdquo; the Arizona Women\u0026rsquo;s Shooting Association (she holds a concealed carry permit), and Concerned Women for America. She\u0026rsquo;s on the Appropriations, Transportation, and Ways and Means committees.\nRep. Russell Pearce (R-District 18, Mesa). A pro-lifer and strong advocate of English-only and against illegal immigration.\nSen. Thayer Verschoor (R-District 22, Gilbert). On the Family Services, Government Accountability and Reform, Higher Education, and Transportation committees. Verschoor is the guy who introduced a bill to require state universities to \u0026ldquo;provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive\u0026rdquo; where \u0026ldquo;a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.\u0026rdquo; He didn\u0026rsquo;t introduce this over the issue of evolution, but because of the book The Ice Storm, which features a 1970s \u0026ldquo;key party.\u0026rdquo; He missed the point that it was not portrayed in a favorable way.\nRep. Lucy Mason (R, District 1, Prescott). She\u0026rsquo;s on the Appropriations, Natural Resources and Agriculture, and Universities, Community Colleges and Technology committees.\nKudos to Sen. Robert Cannell (D-District 24, Yuma), the only M.D. in the state legislature, for calling them on this. Any legislator dumb enough enough to promote bills based on Scientology advocacy and pseudoscience is unfit for public office and should be voted out at the earliest opportunity. (By the way, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that every position the CCHR advocates is wrong\u0026ndash;but when they\u0026rsquo;re right it\u0026rsquo;s generally not for the right reasons, and they are completely unreliable on the science.)\n(My previous blog entry on Scientology recounted my experiences interacting with the church when it decided to declare war on the Internet, and an earlier one reported on the updated \u0026ldquo;Space opera in Scientology\u0026rdquo; Wikipedia entry.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThere's nothing that says I can't criticize the criminal cult of Scientology *and* play a part in cleaning up the mental health industry. The biggest problem with the mental health industry is that it's plagued with providers who are ignorant of what's scientifically supported and what isn't, as Robyn Dawes' excellent book _House of Cards_ demonstrated. Scientology is an extreme example of what's bad, unscientific, and potentially harmful in the field of mental health.Criticizing Scientology is itself part of cleaning up the mental health field.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWe should stop pointing out all the bad stuff Scientology does because Scientology points out that other organizations also do bad stuff?That's rich!\nLippard (2008-07-01):\nI've deleted a comment from Blogger user gin which said:\"What is to become of us if we keep pointing out the bad side of Scientology?we'll have bad mental health.---------------------------Gin DavisAddiction Recovery Arizona\"The last three words were a link to www.addictionrecovery.net/arizona, which is a domain registered to somebody using DomainDiscover's Whois Domain Privacy service. My wild guess--a Scientology front group promoting the Scientology Narconon program.Gin: Your statement appears to be a non sequitur.\nLippard (2008-07-01):\nYep, addictionrecovery.net promotes Scientology's Narconon program.\nLippard (2008-07-01):\nGin's in the search engine optimization business, and has a blog called \"traffic\" with a single post that says:\"internet traffic,guess its more welcome than road traffic!!..........................................................gin davisNeed traffic? Need SEO and backlinks?http://www.widecircles.com\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/arizona-legislators-sponsoring-bills.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports today that \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0311scientologists11.html\"\u003ea number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills\u003c/a\u003e on behalf of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCHR\"\u003eCitizens Commission on Human Rights\u003c/a\u003e (CCHR), an anti-psychiatry group.  Several of them have taken trips to Scientology events at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles to meet with John Travolta.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe CCHR and Scientology have a religiously-based opposition to psychiatry and medicine pertaining to mental health.  This derives from L. Ron Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s own opposition to psychiatry and his development of Dianetics as an alternative to psychological therapy.  When he created Scientology (after having temporarily lost control of his Dianetics organization to his partner Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas), he adopted the trappings of religion and invented a cosmology involving evil intergalactic psychiatrists who assisted the warlord Xenu in order to eliminate those who opposed him.  They did this by injecting billions of people with alcohol and glycol, loading them onto space planes that looked just like DC-8s, and flying them to planet Teegeeack (Earth), where they were dumped into volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs.  Their souls (or \u0026ldquo;thetans\u0026rdquo;) departed their bodies and are still here, attached to our own souls and causing all manner of psychological ills for us.  Psychiatry and psychology, according to Scientology, are bogus methods which do nothing to address the real problems caused by these \u0026ldquo;body thetans\u0026rdquo; attached to us\u0026ndash;only the Scientology process of auditing with an e-meter can free us from them.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(You can find more details about Scientology\u0026rsquo;s cosmology at \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e, which has a very comprehensive set of articles about the religion, as well as at \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/\"\u003eOperation Clambake\u003c/a\u003e.  I also highly recommend Russell Miller\u0026rsquo;s book about L. Ron Hubbard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/bfm/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBare-Faced Messiah\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which is online in its entirety.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSo who are the Arizona legislators working with CCHR and attending Scientology functions?\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Karen Johnson (R-District 18, Mesa). Karen Johnson is on the Family Services, Finance, Appropriations, and K-12 Education committees. She is one of the nuttier fundamentalists in the legislature, a member of Concerned Women for America and in tight with James Dobson\u0026rsquo;s Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer\u0026rsquo;s Family Research Council.  Johnson has gone so far as to lend her name to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/7075\"\u003eCCHR\u0026rsquo;s Advisory Board\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Linda Gray (R-Glendale, District 10), who is on the K-12 Education, Higher Education, Government, and Family Services committees and is a big supporter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  She has degrees in recreation administration and sociology.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Carolyn Allen (R-District 8, Scottsdale), who is on the Commerce and Economic Development, Health, and Transportation committees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Marilyn Jarrett (R-District 19, Mesa).  She just died on Friday after having a stroke in her office on Thursday.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Albert Hale (D-District 2, Window Rock).  Former president of the Navajo Nation, on the Government Accountability and Reform, Government, and Higher Education committees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRep. Tom Prezelski (D-District 29, Tucson).  On the Counties, Municipalities, and Military Affairs, Federal Mandates and Property Rights, and Transportation committees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem).  A member of \u0026ldquo;Pure Heart Christian Fellowship,\u0026rdquo; the Arizona Women\u0026rsquo;s Shooting Association (she holds a concealed carry permit), and Concerned Women for America.  She\u0026rsquo;s on the Appropriations, Transportation, and Ways and Means committees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRep. Russell Pearce (R-District 18, Mesa).  A pro-lifer and strong advocate of English-only and against illegal immigration.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nSen. Thayer Verschoor (R-District 22, Gilbert).  On the Family Services, Government Accountability and Reform, Higher Education, and Transportation committees.  Verschoor is the guy who \u003ca href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2006/02/17/how-a-stupid-bill-becomes-a-law/\"\u003eintroduced a bill\u003c/a\u003e to require state universities to \u0026ldquo;provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive\u0026rdquo; where \u0026ldquo;a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.\u0026rdquo;  He didn\u0026rsquo;t introduce this over the issue of evolution, but because of the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Ice Storm\u003c/span\u003e, which features a 1970s \u0026ldquo;key party.\u0026rdquo;  He missed the point that it was not portrayed in a favorable way.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nRep. Lucy Mason (R, District 1, Prescott).  She\u0026rsquo;s on the Appropriations, Natural Resources and Agriculture, and Universities, Community Colleges and Technology committees.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"sidebar\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\nKudos to Sen. Robert Cannell (D-District 24, Yuma), the only M.D. in the state legislature, for calling them on this.  Any legislator dumb enough enough to promote bills based on Scientology advocacy and pseudoscience is unfit for public office and should be voted out at the earliest opportunity.  (By the way, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that every position the CCHR advocates is wrong\u0026ndash;but when they\u0026rsquo;re right it\u0026rsquo;s generally not for the right reasons, and they are completely unreliable on the science.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n(My \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html\"\u003eprevious blog entry on Scientology\u003c/a\u003e recounted my experiences interacting with the church when it decided to declare war on the Internet, and an earlier one reported on the updated \u003ca href=\"/2005/09/space-opera-in-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Space opera in Scientology\u0026rdquo; Wikipedia entry\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona legislators sponsoring bills for Scientology front group"},{"content":"It finally started raining last night, ending a five-month drought in Phoenix. It last rained on October 18, 2005, which was while I was having my house hooked up to the city sewer system (I have an older home that had two cesspools).\nDespite this long drought, the area\u0026rsquo;s lakes and water reservoirs have still been filled to greater capacity than they had been for the last several years, which had caused Salt River Project to reduce irrigation deliveries an unprecedented two years in a row, returning to a normal schedule in February 2005.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/rain-at-long-last.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P3110003.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P3110003.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eIt finally started raining last night, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0311Rain-ON.html\"\u003eending a five-month drought in Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e.  It last rained on October 18, 2005, which was while I was having my house hooked up to the city sewer system (I have an older home that had two cesspools).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDespite this long drought, the area\u0026rsquo;s lakes and water reservoirs have still been filled to greater capacity than they had been for the last several years, which had caused Salt River Project to reduce irrigation deliveries an unprecedented two years in a row, \u003ca href=\"http://www.srpnet.com/water/allocation.aspx\"\u003ereturning to a normal schedule\u003c/a\u003e in February 2005.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rain, at long last..."},{"content":"Not only are there 33,270 homes for sale in Phoenix, 14,601 of them are currently vacant. Many speculators purchased homes and never lived in them so that they could be resold in \u0026ldquo;new\u0026rdquo; condition.\nThe average price of homes listed for sale is $484,594. The number of pending sales is 8,125. The average price of the pending sale homes is $378,573.\n(From Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble Blog.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nForgot to link to previous #'s:/2006/01/phoenix-housing-inventories-for-sale.htmlAnd the ziprealty numbers for Phoenix listings are higher (continuing from where the previous left off):1/31/2006 32,5632/1/2006 32,6842/2/2006 33,0872/3/2006 33,1452/4/2006 32,9532/5/2006 33,3682/6/2006 33,5762/7/2006 33,5502/8/2006 33,6842/9/2006 33,8442/10/2006 34,2342/11/2006 34,5882/12/2006 34,7532/13/2006 34,8152/14/2006 34,8152/15/2006 34,8162/16/2006 34,8162/17/2006 35,1442/18/2006 35,4272/19/2006 36,2602/20/2006 35,4432/21/2006 35,6422/22/2006 35,5032/23/2006 35,3242/24/2006 35,1782/25/2006 36,3882/26/2006 36,5242/27/2006 36,6392/28/2006 36,1743/1/2006 36,3893/2/2006 36,2833/3/2006 36,8113/4/2006 36,9003/5/2006 37,0643/6/2006 37,217\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/phoenix-housing-bubble-deflation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNot only are there 33,270 homes for sale in Phoenix,  14,601 of them are currently vacant.   Many speculators purchased homes and never lived in them so that they could be resold in \u0026ldquo;new\u0026rdquo; condition.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe average price of homes listed for sale is $484,594.  The number of pending sales is 8,125.  The average price of the pending sale homes is $378,573.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(From Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=256\"\u003eHousing Bubble Blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eForgot to link to previous #'s:\u003cBR/\u003e/2006/01/phoenix-housing-inventories-for-sale.html\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAnd the ziprealty numbers for Phoenix listings are higher (continuing from where the previous left off):\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e1/31/2006 32,563\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e2/1/2006 32,684\u003cBR/\u003e2/2/2006 33,087\u003cBR/\u003e2/3/2006 33,145\u003cBR/\u003e2/4/2006 32,953\u003cBR/\u003e2/5/2006 33,368\u003cBR/\u003e2/6/2006 33,576\u003cBR/\u003e2/7/2006 33,550\u003cBR/\u003e2/8/2006 33,684\u003cBR/\u003e2/9/2006 33,844\u003cBR/\u003e2/10/2006 34,234\u003cBR/\u003e2/11/2006 34,588\u003cBR/\u003e2/12/2006 34,753\u003cBR/\u003e2/13/2006 34,815\u003cBR/\u003e2/14/2006 34,815\u003cBR/\u003e2/15/2006 34,816\u003cBR/\u003e2/16/2006 34,816\u003cBR/\u003e2/17/2006 35,144\u003cBR/\u003e2/18/2006 35,427\u003cBR/\u003e2/19/2006 36,260\u003cBR/\u003e2/20/2006 35,443\u003cBR/\u003e2/21/2006 35,642\u003cBR/\u003e2/22/2006 35,503\u003cBR/\u003e2/23/2006 35,324\u003cBR/\u003e2/24/2006 35,178\u003cBR/\u003e2/25/2006 36,388\u003cBR/\u003e2/26/2006 36,524\u003cBR/\u003e2/27/2006 36,639\u003cBR/\u003e2/28/2006 36,174\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e3/1/2006 36,389\u003cBR/\u003e3/2/2006 36,283\u003cBR/\u003e3/3/2006 36,811\u003cBR/\u003e3/4/2006 36,900\u003cBR/\u003e3/5/2006 37,064\u003cBR/\u003e3/6/2006 37,217\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix housing bubble deflation update"},{"content":"From TPM Muckraker:\nThe Bush administration has appointed 28-year-old Douglas Hoelscher to be executive director for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, an amalgam of 20 panels of outside experts and officials who advise the administration on homeland security matters.\nHoelscher is said to have no management experience. He came to the White House in 2001 as a $30,000-a-year scheduler.\nAnd more at Effect Measure:\nSuppose you are a young 28 year old with no management experience but, according to your Friendster.com profile a good listener and someone whose favorite books include William Bennett\u0026rsquo;s The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. You aren\u0026rsquo;t entirely inexperienced. In 2001 you were a $30,000 a year low level White House staffer who arranged presidential travel. Not enough for you? How about a top level job in the Department of Homeland Security? That can be arranged.\nWelcome Douglas Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Commitees (plural). Hoelscher is now\nthe \u0026ldquo;primary representative\u0026rdquo; of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger. (Shane Harris in the National Journal)(Via Tara Smith at Aetiology.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/inexperienced-28-year-old-named.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000072.php\"\u003eTPM Muckraker\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Bush administration has appointed 28-year-old Douglas Hoelscher to be executive director for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, an amalgam of 20 panels of outside experts and officials who advise the administration on homeland security matters.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eHoelscher is said to have no management experience. He came to the White House in 2001 as a $30,000-a-year scheduler.\u003c/p\u003eAnd more at \u003ca href=\"http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2006/03/alls-well-at-homeland-security.html\"\u003eEffect Measure\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSuppose you are a young 28 year old with no management experience but, according to your Friendster.com profile a good listener and someone whose favorite books include William Bennett\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals\u003c/span\u003e. You aren\u0026rsquo;t entirely inexperienced. In 2001 you were a $30,000 a year low level White House staffer who arranged presidential travel. Not enough for you? How about a top level job in the Department of Homeland Security? That can be arranged.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWelcome Douglas Hoelscher, the  new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Commitees (plural). Hoelscher is now\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003ethe \u0026ldquo;primary representative\u0026rdquo; of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger. (Shane Harris in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0306/030706nj1.htm\"\u003eNational Journal\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via Tara Smith at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/03/think_the_administration_learned_anything_from_deutsch.php\"\u003eAetiology\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inexperienced 28-year-old named executive director of Homeland Security Advisory Committees"},{"content":"Back on March 4, the story broke from an American traveling in Canada that something had gone wrong at Citibank, causing it to shut off access from the ATM networks of Canada, Russia, and the UK. Bruce Schneier picked it up on March 6, and now it\u0026rsquo;s hit the mainstream media with more details, with some attributing the problem to OfficeMax.\nThe symptoms from a bank customer\u0026rsquo;s perspective are debit cards being replaced by the banks (which Citibank, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual have been doing since at least last month) and an inability to make withdrawals with current cards from ATMs in Canada, Russia, or the UK. At least some of the banks have now admitted to ATM fraud occurring, with Citibank admitting to \u0026ldquo;several hundred transactions\u0026rdquo; in three countries, while some western Massachusetts institutions have seen fraud in Spain, Pakistan, and Romania. The attribution to OfficeMax comes from investigations in Massachusetts.\nTech Web News\u0026rsquo; report is the most detailed to date:\nThe unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs \u0026ldquo;the worst consumer scam to date.\u0026rdquo; Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K. But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam \u0026ndash; and scandal \u0026ndash; has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks, including ones in Oregon, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have re-issued debit cards in recent weeks. \u0026ldquo;This is the worst hack ever,\u0026rdquo; Litan maintained. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s significant because not only is it a really wide-spread breach, but it affects debit cards, which everyone thought were immune to these kinds of things.\u0026quot;\n[\u0026hellip;]\nLitan\u0026rsquo;s sources in the financial industry have told her that thieves hacked into a as-yet-unknown system, and made off with data stored on debit cards\u0026rsquo; magnetic stripes, the associated \u0026ldquo;PIN blocks,\u0026rdquo; or encrypted PIN data, and the key for that encrypted data.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/atm-pin-security-breach-citibank-bank.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack on March 4, \u003ca href=\"http://ioerror.livejournal.com/301520.html\"\u003ethe story broke \u003c/a\u003efrom an American traveling in Canada that something had gone wrong at Citibank, causing it to shut off access from the ATM networks of Canada, Russia, and the UK.  Bruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/class_break_of.html\"\u003epicked it up on March 6\u003c/a\u003e, and now \u003ca href=\"http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=181502672\"\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s hit the mainstream media\u003c/a\u003e with more details, with some \u003ca href=\"http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39157043,00.htm\"\u003eattributing the problem to OfficeMax\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe symptoms from a bank customer\u0026rsquo;s perspective are debit cards being replaced by the banks (which Citibank, Bank of America, and Washington Mutual have been doing since at least last month) and an inability to make withdrawals with current cards from ATMs in Canada, Russia, or the UK.  At least some of the banks have now admitted to ATM fraud occurring, with Citibank admitting to \u0026ldquo;several hundred transactions\u0026rdquo; in three countries, while some western Massachusetts institutions have seen fraud in Spain, Pakistan, and Romania.  The attribution to OfficeMax comes from investigations in Massachusetts.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=181502672\"\u003eTech Web News\u0026rsquo; report\u003c/a\u003e is the most detailed to date:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:85%;\"\u003e The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs \u0026ldquo;the worst consumer scam to date.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/span\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:85%;\"\u003eWednesday, \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=181502068\"\u003eCitibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud\u003c/a\u003e had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K. \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ATM PIN security breach--Citibank, Bank of America, etc."},{"content":"The San Francisco Bay Hydrological Model is a 1.5-acre model of the San Francisco Bay built in 1957 and used until 2000 \u0026ldquo;to evaluate circulation and flow characteristics of the water within the estuary system\u0026rdquo; by the Army Corps of Engineers. Nice photos and story at BLDGBLOG.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/san-francisco-bay-hydrological-model.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/san-francisco-bay-hydrological-model_09.html\"\u003eSan Francisco Bay Hydrological Model\u003c/a\u003e is a 1.5-acre model of the San Francisco Bay built in 1957 and used until 2000 \u0026ldquo;to evaluate circulation and flow characteristics of the water within the estuary system\u0026rdquo; by the Army Corps of Engineers.  Nice photos and story at \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/san-francisco-bay-hydrological-model_09.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The San Francisco Bay Hydrological Model"},{"content":"CHICAGO - Hemant Mehta, a 23-year-old Atheist from Chicago, asked eBay bidders last month to send him to church.\nThe winning bid of $504 came from Off-the-Map, a Christian organization with the mission of \u0026ldquo;normalizing evangelism for ordinary Christians.\u0026rdquo; Off The Map\u0026rsquo;s slogan is \u0026ldquo;Helping Christians be normal.\u0026quot;\nMore at the Secular Outpost. (The above two paragraphs are from the Secular Student Association\u0026rsquo;s blog. Mehta is chairman of the Secular Student Alliance.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/atheist-sells-chance-to-save-soul-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCHICAGO - Hemant Mehta, a  23-year-old Atheist from Chicago, asked eBay bidders last month to \u003ca href=\"http://www.secularstudents.org/node/356\"\u003esend him to  church\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe winning bid of $504 came from Off-the-Map, a Christian organization with the mission of \u0026ldquo;normalizing evangelism for ordinary Christians.\u0026rdquo; Off The Map\u0026rsquo;s slogan is \u0026ldquo;Helping Christians be normal.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at the \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/03/atheist-sells-chance-to-save-soul-on.html\"\u003eSecular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.  (The above two paragraphs are from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.secularstudents.org/node/392\"\u003eSecular Student Association\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.  Mehta is chairman of the Secular Student Alliance.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Atheist sells chance to save soul on eBay"},{"content":"I had the privilege of viewing this film, \u0026ldquo;One Got Fat,\u0026rdquo; two or three times in grade school in the early-to-mid seventies. It\u0026rsquo;s the story of Filbert, Nel, Stan, Mossby, Rooty, Floog, Orv and their friends\u0026ndash;all creepy monkey-faced humans\u0026ndash;who bicycle ride to a park nine blocks away, all but one coming to an unpleasant end. (Hat tip: Radley Balko at The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/bizarre-bicycle-safety-film-from-1963.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had the privilege of viewing \u003ca href=\"http://www.fazed.org/video/embed/?id=79\"\u003ethis film\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;One Got Fat,\u0026rdquo; two or three times in grade school in the early-to-mid seventies.  It\u0026rsquo;s the story of Filbert, Nel, Stan, Mossby, Rooty, Floog, Orv and their friends\u0026ndash;all creepy monkey-faced humans\u0026ndash;who bicycle ride to a park nine blocks away, all but one coming to an unpleasant end.  (Hat tip: Radley Balko at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026362.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bizarre bicycle safety film from 1963"},{"content":"Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was previously pointed out exchanging donations to his charity for government contracts, now denies that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his. Sure, he founded it, but he says (in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) that he\u0026rsquo;s had nothing to do with it since then:\nI do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board \u0026ndash; a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat \u0026ndash; and lending my name to fund-raising events. That\u0026rsquo;s it.Attytood shows, with quotes and photos, that Santorum\u0026rsquo;s a liar.\nAlso in today\u0026rsquo;s news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-CA), has resigned from the D.C. law firm of Williams \u0026amp; Jensen and from her post as treasurer of dirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo (R-CA)\u0026rsquo;s political action committee. Her lawfirm bio says \u0026ldquo;She also advises the firm\u0026rsquo;s clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act.\u0026rdquo; She was treasurer of Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity, Operation Good Neighbor.\nMeanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists:\nAfter saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.(Via Talking Points Memo and TPM\u0026rsquo;s Daily Muck.)\nUPDATE: At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity\u0026ndash;in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum\u0026rsquo;s PAC and re-election campaign, works for the charity. And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings. Santorum\u0026rsquo;s response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-rick-santorum-again.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/dirty-politician-rick-santorum.html\"\u003epreviously pointed out exchanging donations\u003c/a\u003e to his charity for government contracts, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000067.php\"\u003enow denies\u003c/a\u003e that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his.  Sure, he founded it, but he says (in \u003ca href=\"http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06065/665687.stm\"\u003ea letter to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) that  he\u0026rsquo;s had nothing to do with it since then:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board \u0026ndash; a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat \u0026ndash; and lending my name to fund-raising events. That\u0026rsquo;s it.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002892.html\"\u003eAttytood shows\u003c/a\u003e, with quotes and photos, that Santorum\u0026rsquo;s a liar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlso in today\u0026rsquo;s news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-CA), \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000069.php\"\u003ehas resigned\u003c/a\u003e from the D.C. law firm of Williams \u0026amp; Jensen and from her post as treasurer of \u003ca href=\"http://progressive11th.blogspot.com/2006/02/dirty-dick-pombo.html\"\u003edirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo\u003c/a\u003e (R-CA)\u0026rsquo;s political action committee.  Her lawfirm bio says \u0026ldquo;\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003eShe also advises the firm\u0026rsquo;s clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act.\u0026rdquo;  She was treasurer of Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity, Operation Good Neighbor.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMeanwhile, the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802449.html\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAfter saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_05.php#007847\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e and TPM\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000067.php\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDaily Muck\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity\u0026ndash;in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum\u0026rsquo;s PAC and re-election campaign, \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000072.php\"\u003eworks for the charity\u003c/a\u003e.  And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings.  Santorum\u0026rsquo;s response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician:  Rick Santorum, again"},{"content":"This morning I received nine emails from The Economist with the subject \u0026ldquo;Address confirmation.\u0026rdquo; Each message was identical, and stated:\nDear JAMES LIPPARD:\nThank you for amending your address details.\nWe have updated our records accordingly and will deliver your copies of The Economist to the amended address shortly.\nIf you encounter any problems with the delivery of The Economist, please call Customer Service on 1-800-456-xxxx.\nSincerely,\nCustomer Service.Since I hadn\u0026rsquo;t amended my address details, I called the Customer Service line (after I had only received three copies of the email)\u0026ndash;and it was busy. After a few tries, I got through and waited on hold for quite some time, and then reached a human being. She informed me that this was an \u0026ldquo;error\u0026rdquo; and that the entire subscriber base had received these emails, which was the cause of the difficulty getting through on the phone.\nThis will no doubt be an expensive \u0026ldquo;error\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;but my fear is that this may have been caused by an intrusion, resulting in the exposure of my information. Since there are no doubt numerous California subscribers affected, if this is the result of a hacker compromise they\u0026rsquo;ll be required to issue notifications under California\u0026rsquo;s SB 1386.\nUPDATE: An email from the publisher says it was a technical error and not a security issue:\nFrom: \u0026ldquo;Paul Rossi, Publisher of The Economist\u0026rdquo; [comcast email address omitted]\nSubject: Apology from The Economist Date: 09 Mar 2006 23:31:01 GMT\nDear Reader,\nI am writing to apologise for any e-mails you may have received today from The Economist.\nI sent an e-mail this morning asking you to confirm your address details. I understand that in error, we may have sent further e-mails confirming a change to your address.\nThis was caused by a technical error on our part and I am very sorry for the inconvenience and irritation that this may have caused you.\nI want to reassure you that your address and all of your personal details have at all times been secure and will remain so.\nIf you did not change your details, we will continue to deliver your copies of The Economist to the usual address.\nWe are aware of the problem and are dealing with it. In the meantime, if you wish to contact me regarding this please e-mail [email address at economist.com omitted].\nYours sincerely,\nPaul Rossi\nPublisher, North AmericaI never received an email asking me to confirm address details as described in this email.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/computer-issue-at-economist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning I received nine emails from The Economist with the subject \u0026ldquo;Address confirmation.\u0026rdquo;  Each message was identical, and stated:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDear JAMES LIPPARD:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThank you for amending your address details.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe have updated our records accordingly and will deliver your copies of The Economist to the amended address shortly.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you encounter any problems with the delivery of The Economist, please call Customer Service on 1-800-456-xxxx.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCustomer Service.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSince I hadn\u0026rsquo;t amended my address details, I called the Customer Service line (after I had only received three copies of the email)\u0026ndash;and it was busy.  After a few tries, I got through and waited on hold for quite some time, and then reached a human being.  She informed me that this was an \u0026ldquo;error\u0026rdquo; and that the entire subscriber base had received these emails, which was the cause of the difficulty getting through on the phone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis will no doubt be an expensive \u0026ldquo;error\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;but my fear is that this may have been caused by an intrusion, resulting in the exposure of my information.  Since there are no doubt numerous California subscribers affected, if this is the result of a hacker compromise they\u0026rsquo;ll be required to issue notifications under California\u0026rsquo;s SB 1386.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  An email from the publisher says it was a technical error and not a security issue:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom: \u0026ldquo;Paul Rossi, Publisher of The Economist\u0026rdquo; [comcast email address omitted]\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: Apology from The Economist                                                                                               \u003cbr /\u003eDate: 09 Mar 2006 23:31:01 GMT\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDear Reader,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI am writing to apologise for any e-mails you may have received today from The Economist.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI sent an e-mail this morning asking you to confirm your address details. I understand that in error, we may have sent further e-mails confirming a change to your address.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was caused by a technical error on our part and I am very sorry for the inconvenience and irritation that this may have caused you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI want to reassure you that your address and all of your personal details have at all times been secure and will remain so.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf you did not change your details, we will continue to deliver your copies of The Economist to the usual address.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe are aware of the problem and are dealing with it. In the meantime, if you wish to contact me regarding this please e-mail [email address at economist.com omitted].\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYours sincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaul Rossi\u003cbr /\u003ePublisher, North America\u003c/blockquote\u003eI never received an email asking me to confirm address details as described in this email.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Computer issue at The Economist"},{"content":"Mark Cuban reports that he\u0026rsquo;s been deluged with form letter spam from Commoncause.org, which has mistakenly identified him as a telco (depicting him with devil horns), just because he wrote a blog post saying that he thought there could be value to tiered levels of service.\nIf this is now the nature of the debate, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; advocates have reason on their side. (My previous remarks on \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; are here and here.)\nThe Spam Kings blog points out deficiencies in the email subscription process used by Kintera, the provider for Commoncause.org.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/commoncauseorg-spamming-for-net.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Cuban reports that he\u0026rsquo;s been \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000893073577/\"\u003edeluged with form letter spam\u003c/a\u003e from Commoncause.org, which has mistakenly identified him as a telco (\u003ca href=\"http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG\u0026b=1372975\u0026amp;amp;action=5382\u0026amp;template=x.ascx\"\u003edepicting him with devil horns\u003c/a\u003e), just because he wrote a blog post saying that he thought there could be value to tiered levels of service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf this is now the nature of the debate, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; advocates have reason on their side.  (My previous remarks on \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; are \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/net-neutrality.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/geddes-on-net-neutrality.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Spam Kings blog \u003ca href=\"http://spamkings.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/kintera_cuban_and_common_cause.html\"\u003epoints out deficiencies in the email subscription process\u003c/a\u003e used by Kintera, the provider for Commoncause.org.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Commoncause.org: Spamming for \"net neutrality\""},{"content":"This one, a six-legged robot from Carnegie Mellon University, climbs trees and walls using claws, micro-claws, or sticky material, as appropriate for the surface. Again, there\u0026rsquo;s video. (Again, via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nPrevious robot, \u0026ldquo;Big Dog\u0026rdquo; the robotic pack mule, here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/another-creepy-robot.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/607689.html\"\u003eThis one\u003c/a\u003e, a six-legged robot from Carnegie Mellon University, climbs trees and walls using claws, micro-claws, or sticky material, as appropriate for the surface.  Again, there\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzfP0Ig7eVQ\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e.  (Again, via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/607689.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePrevious robot, \u0026ldquo;Big Dog\u0026rdquo; the robotic pack mule, \u003ca href=\"/2006/03/big-dog-robotic-pack-mule.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another creepy robot"},{"content":"Mark Chu-Carroll (who I remember as an active participant of the talk.origins newsgroup back when I was also active there) has started a blog on \u0026ldquo;Good Math, Bad Math.\u0026rdquo; His first postings include a discussion of a study linking autism and thimerosol (bad math) and cellular automata (more bad math).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/good-math-bad-math-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Chu-Carroll (who I remember as an active participant of the talk.origins newsgroup back when I was also active there) has started \u003ca href=\"http://goodmath.blogspot.com/\"\u003ea blog\u003c/a\u003e on \u0026ldquo;Good Math, Bad Math.\u0026rdquo;  His first postings include \u003ca href=\"http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-slop-autism-and-mercury.html\"\u003ea discussion of a study linking autism and thimerosol\u003c/a\u003e (bad math) and \u003ca href=\"http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/cellular-automata-key-to-physics.html\"\u003ecellular automata\u003c/a\u003e (more bad math).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Good Math, Bad Math Blog"},{"content":"George W. Bush has issued an executive order creating \u0026ldquo;a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.\u0026rdquo; The Center will be run by a Director appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The original Director of WHOFBCI, John DiIulio, who blasted the Bush administration in Esquire magazine in 2002 and then quickly attempted to retract his criticisms.\nOnce again, reality matches The Onion.\n(UPDATE: This is apparently primarily focused on disaster recovery efforts\u0026ndash;but it still seems quite wrong for the government to engage religious organizations via contract or grant to aid in disaster recovery efforts, when these are voluntary charitable organizations. It not only involves taking from the general public to support a particular religious viewpoint, it turns a voluntary charity into a taxpayer-supported service.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/faith-based-homeland-security.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge W. Bush has issued \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060307-5.html\"\u003ean executive order\u003c/a\u003e creating \u0026ldquo;a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.\u0026rdquo;  The Center will be run by a Director appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.  The original Director of WHOFBCI, John DiIulio, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/DiIulio.html\"\u003eblasted the Bush administration in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEsquire\u003c/span\u003e magazine in 2002\u003c/a\u003e and then quickly \u003ca href=\"http://newsmine.org/archive/cabal-elite/w-administration/dissent/bush-aid-critical.txt\"\u003eattempted to retract his criticisms\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnce again, reality matches \u003ca href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33011\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Onion\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(UPDATE:  This is apparently primarily focused on disaster recovery efforts\u0026ndash;but it still seems quite wrong for the government to engage religious organizations via contract or grant to aid in disaster recovery efforts, when these are voluntary charitable organizations.  It not only involves taking from the general public to support a particular religious viewpoint, it turns a voluntary charity into a taxpayer-supported service.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Faith-Based Homeland Security"},{"content":" WARNING This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts. Save your post as a draft or click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.\nClicking there yielded:\nYour blog is locked Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than a business day. If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within 10 days. Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs. That's what I saw Wednesday morning... afternoon Thursday, it's still locked.\nHello,\nYour blog has been reviewed, verified, and whitelisted so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.\nSincerely,\nBlogger SupportAnd it's back, apparently since shortly after I last checked and found it locked, based on the timestamp on this email.\nUSC Center of Management Communication (2006-12-09):\nYou are a lucky one.For approximately 2 days, I am unable to publish or post on my blog because Blogger.com locked my blog. It is not a spam blog but a blog that I use as for an Independent Study that I am conducting at USC. The blog was locked when I decided to open a discussion about Internet2. Is locking my blog a form of censorship on the issue?I received an email from Blogger.com saying that my blog is unlocked - it is not. And in 8 days - according to the message on my blog since time is ticking away - Blogger.com will delete my blog. My question is: Is this a filter problem or a censorship one?\nthe best of the best of everything (2006-12-09):\nWELL I AM A REALTOR AND PUBLISH A DAILY BOG ON THE REAL ESTATE MARKET AND THE AREA of SOUTH BAY. MY BLOG COULD NOT BE MORE \"milk toast\" IF YOU TRIED AND IT HAS BEEN BLOCKED FOR 8 DAYS! Has nothing to do with content it has to do I went to adsense and tried their program. I just didn't get it and how it worked so I stopped it and one day later my blog was locked.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLooks like Fiona's was blocked from March 8-10. Mine was blocked from March 8-9. You last posted on March 21, which was four days ago... if yours hasn't been unlocked yet, it seems like it's taking a bit longer with yours.\nUSC Center of Management Communication (2006-12-09):\nTo \"The best of the best of everything\"Did you blog-lock issue get resolved? I have never used AdSense, so I don't think that was necessarily the problem. Perhaps the Blogger engine was under maintenance or something during that period.Just wondered if your problem was solved.\nZennie Abraham (2007-05-13):\nThis ridiculous development happened to me as well, and I've been raising hell about it at the Blogger Help Group, here: Blogger Help Group Complaint About Blogger Zennie Abraham (2007-05-13):\nThe Blogger bot should be redesigned to take into account multiple authors on a blog -- those are not spam blogs by definition. Also, it should be able to detect photos, which are put up by humans.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/bloggers-spam-prevention-robots-are.html/","summary":"\u003cdiv id=\"statusmsg\"\u003e \u003ch3 class=\"error\"\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ch3 class=\"error\"\u003eWARNING\u003c/h3\u003e \u003cp\u003e This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e  Save your post as a draft or  \u003ca href=\"unlock-blog.g?blogID=15453937\u0026amp;popup=true\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e click here\u003c/a\u003e for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eClicking there yielded:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ch1\u003e  Your blog is \u003cstrong\u003elocked\u003c/strong\u003e  \u003c/h1\u003e \u003cp\u003e  Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (\u003ca href=\"http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1260#whatsasplog\"\u003eWhat's a spam blog?\u003c/a\u003e) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blogger's spam-prevention robots are defective"},{"content":"Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says that Jack Abramoff never influenced him, but Abramoff says in Vanity Fair that he got everything he ever asked for from Burns:\n\u0026ldquo;Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns\u0026rsquo; committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures [Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s restaurant] as their cafeteria.\u0026quot;Burns\u0026rsquo; former staffers have also made millions from going to work for telecom and tech firms that have received funding from Burns earmarks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-conrad-burns.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says that Jack Abramoff never influenced him, but Abramoff says in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eVanity Fair\u003c/span\u003e that \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000057.php\"\u003ehe got everything he ever asked for\u003c/a\u003e from Burns:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns\u0026rsquo; committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures [Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s restaurant] as their cafeteria.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"entry_body\"\u003eBurns\u0026rsquo; former staffers have also made millions from going to work for telecom and tech firms that have \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000056.php\"\u003ereceived funding from Burns earmarks\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Conrad Burns"},{"content":"Mel Gibson missed the chance for this tie-in promotion\u0026hellip;. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/mcpassion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMel Gibson missed the chance for \u003ca href=\"http://www.themcpassion.com/\"\u003ethis tie-in promotion\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;.  (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The McPassion"},{"content":"Google plans to hire about 600 people in the Phoenix area, and they\u0026rsquo;ve chosen Tempe for a temporary facility of about 100,000 square feet. It looks like their permanent facility will either be in Tempe or South Scottsdale (at ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;SkySong\u0026rdquo; business park, which used to be the site of Los Arcos mall).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI just might apply!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/googles-phoenix-area-location-tempe-or.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGoogle plans to hire about 600 people in the Phoenix area, and \u003ca href=\"http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/03/06/story1.html\"\u003ethey\u0026rsquo;ve chosen Tempe for a temporary facility\u003c/a\u003e of about 100,000 square feet.  It looks like their permanent facility will either be in Tempe or South Scottsdale (at ASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.skysongcenter.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;SkySong\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e business park, which used to be the site of Los Arcos mall).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI just might apply!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Google's Phoenix-area location: Tempe or Scottsdale"},{"content":"The 35th Carnival of the Godless is here.\nHistorical Comments Solan (2006-12-09):\nhttp://infinitewall.blogspot.com/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/carnival-of-godless-35.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 35th Carnival of the Godless is \u003ca href=\"http://www.nakedwriting.com/archives/2006/03/hey_belch_excus.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSolan\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003ehttp://infinitewall.blogspot.com/\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Carnival of the Godless #35"},{"content":"Now that AT\u0026amp;T has announced that it is acquiring BellSouth, the only original RBOC left today, it\u0026rsquo;s worth reviewing the history of AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s divestiture and the subsequent recombinations which will leave us with AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon, and Qwest as the three major players for local telephone service (at least, as local analog wireline telephone service continues to exist, which is probably not for very much longer).\nIn 1984, U.S. District Judge Harold Greene issued a decision that led to the divestiture of local telco properties from AT\u0026amp;T and the creation of the seven \u0026ldquo;Regional Bell Operating Companies\u0026rdquo; from 22 Bell operating companies. The seven RBOCs and the original Bell companies which made them up were:\nPacific Telesis (PacTel): Pacific Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company, Bell Telephone Company of Nevada.\nAmeritech: Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Michigan Bell Telephone Company, The Ohio Bell Telephone Company, Wisconsin Telephone Company.\nNynex: The New York Telephone Company, New England Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company.\nBell Atlantic: New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia, The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania.\nSouthwestern Bell: Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.\nBellSouth: South Central Bell Telephone Company, Southern Bell Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company.\nU.S. West: Mountain States Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company, Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, Diamond State Telephone Company.\nNynex merged with Bell Atlantic in 1997.\nBell Atlantic merged with GTE in 2000 to become Verizon (spinning off its Internet business\u0026ndash;the former Genuity and BBN Planet\u0026ndash;as Genuity).\nSouthwestern Bell acquired PacTel in 1997 and started using the name SBC, and then acquired Ameritech in 1999.\nU.S. West was acquired by Qwest in 2000.\nSBC acquired AT\u0026amp;T in 2005, and took on its name.\nMost of this history is recounted in more detail, with maps and logos, here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/re-formation-of-att.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that AT\u0026amp;T \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/05/att.bellsouth.ap/index.html\"\u003ehas announced that it is acquiring BellSouth\u003c/a\u003e, the only original RBOC left today, it\u0026rsquo;s worth reviewing the history of AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s divestiture and the subsequent recombinations which will leave us with AT\u0026amp;T, Verizon, and Qwest as the three major players for local telephone service (at least, as local analog wireline telephone service continues to exist, which is probably not for very much longer).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1984, U.S. District Judge Harold Greene issued a decision that led to the divestiture of local telco properties from AT\u0026amp;T and the creation of the seven \u0026ldquo;Regional Bell Operating Companies\u0026rdquo; from 22 Bell operating companies.  The seven RBOCs and the original Bell companies which made them up were:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePacific Telesis (PacTel)\u003c/span\u003e:  Pacific Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company, Bell Telephone Company of Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAmeritech\u003c/span\u003e: Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Michigan Bell Telephone Company, The Ohio Bell Telephone Company, Wisconsin Telephone Company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eNynex\u003c/span\u003e:  The New York Telephone Company, New England Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBell Atlantic\u003c/span\u003e:  New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia, Chesapeake \u0026amp; Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia, The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSouthwestern Bell\u003c/span\u003e:  Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBellSouth\u003c/span\u003e:  South Central Bell Telephone Company, Southern Bell Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eU.S. West\u003c/span\u003e:  Mountain States Telephone \u0026amp; Telegraph Company, Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, Diamond State Telephone Company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNynex merged with Bell Atlantic in 1997.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBell Atlantic merged with GTE in 2000 to become Verizon (spinning off its Internet business\u0026ndash;the former Genuity and BBN Planet\u0026ndash;as Genuity).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSouthwestern Bell acquired PacTel in 1997 and started using the name SBC, and then acquired Ameritech in 1999.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eU.S. West was acquired by Qwest in 2000.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSBC acquired AT\u0026amp;T in 2005, and took on its name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMost of this history is recounted in more detail, with maps and logos, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/bellopercomp.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The re-formation of AT\u0026T"},{"content":"See if you can spot the pit bull on this web page. This is from http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/, a great site to learn more about the American Pit Bull breed. I know a lot about dog breeds, and I only got it right on my third try. (Yes, there are many breeds pictured that are not popular in the U.S.) While many cities/insurance companies are considering breed-specific ordinances/restrictions that penalize pit bulls and their guardians, this web site highlights the fact that most people cannot recognize a pit bull when they see one.\nI believe any dog breed can be aggressive and a danger to society at large. Breed-specific legislation targets the dogs, not the people who are really the problem.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThose \"sad reality\" photos (one of the links on the referenced page) are in some ways more disturbing than most of the stuff you find on rotten.com or ogrish.com. They're disturbing in the way pictures of abused children are disturbing.\nLippard (2011-06-16):\nA rebuttal which shows that the \u0026quot;Find the Pit Bull\u0026quot; images are rather deceptive is here: http://thetruthaboutpitbulls.blogspot.com/2011/04/find-pit-bull.html.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/find-pit-bull.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSee if you can spot the pit bull on \u003ca href=\"http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html\"\u003ethis web page\u003c/a\u003e. This is from \u003ca href=\"http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/\"\u003ehttp://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a great site to learn more about the American Pit Bull breed.  I know a lot about dog breeds, and I only got it right on my third try. (Yes, there are many breeds pictured that are not popular in the U.S.) While many cities/insurance companies are considering breed-specific ordinances/restrictions that penalize pit bulls and their guardians, this web site highlights the fact that most people cannot recognize a pit bull when they see one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI believe any dog breed can be aggressive and a danger to society at large.  Breed-specific legislation targets the dogs, not the people who are really the problem.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Find the Pit Bull"},{"content":"Everybody seems to be doing this one\u0026hellip; Kat and I independently ended up with identical top results: the Moya from Farscape as our #1 (both with 88%) and Serenity from Firefly and the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars tied for #2 (both of us with 81% for those). We\u0026rsquo;ve never seen Farscape, but we suspect our answers about having a \u0026ldquo;furry friend\u0026rdquo; (our dogs, not \u0026ldquo;furries\u0026rdquo;), willingness to be around eccentric aliens, and reluctance to kill put it above Serenity.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI scored 100% on Serenity, 81% on the Falcon, and 75% on the Moya.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/which-sci-fi-crew-do-you-fit-in-with.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEverybody seems to be doing \u003ca href=\"http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=111863\"\u003ethis one\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;  Kat and I independently ended up with identical top results: the Moya from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFarscape\u003c/span\u003e as our #1 (both with 88%) and Serenity from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFirefly\u003c/span\u003e and the Millennium Falcon from \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eStar Wars\u003c/span\u003e tied for #2 (both of us with 81% for those).  We\u0026rsquo;ve never seen \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFarscape\u003c/span\u003e, but we suspect our answers about having a \u0026ldquo;furry friend\u0026rdquo; (our dogs, not \u0026ldquo;furries\u0026rdquo;), willingness to be around eccentric aliens, and reluctance to kill put it above Serenity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which sci-fi crew do you fit in with?"},{"content":"\nBoston Dynamics is building this four-legged robot for the U.S. military (DARPA):\nA nimble, four-legged robot is so surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick. The machine, which moves like a cross between a goat and a pantomime horse, is being developed as a robotic pack mule for the US military.In this amusing or perhaps creepy video (28MB Windows media file), the robot walks over different types of terrain\u0026ndash;including mud, rocky ground, and snow\u0026ndash;and is given a few kicks to show how it stabilizes itself. Unlike the photo at left, in the video it looks like a pantomime horse with both people facing each other\u0026ndash;sort of the opposite of a pushmipullyu.\n(Via jwz\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThere must be something to that leg configuration, since that's the way dog and cat legs work, too (except that they've also got a couple extra joints at the extremeties)....and if you think about it, if we get down on all fours like that our elbows and our knees are pointing at each other...But definitely a creepy video!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/big-dog-robotic-pack-mule.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn8802/dn8802-1_250.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn8802/dn8802-1_250.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBoston Dynamics \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn8802.html\"\u003eis building this four-legged robot for the U.S. military (DARPA)\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eA nimble, four-legged robot is so surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick. The machine, which moves like a cross between a goat and a pantomime horse, is being developed as a robotic pack mule for the US military.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn this amusing or perhaps creepy \u003ca href=\"http://www.bostondynamics.com/dist/BigDog_Feb-26-2006.wmv\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e (28MB Windows media file), the robot walks over different types of terrain\u0026ndash;including mud, rocky ground, and snow\u0026ndash;and is given a few kicks to show how it stabilizes itself.  Unlike the photo at left, in the video it looks like a pantomime horse with both people facing each other\u0026ndash;sort of the opposite of a pushmipullyu.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/605726.html\"\u003ejwz\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Big Dog\" the robotic pack mule"},{"content":"That\u0026rsquo;s a picture of me on September 9, 1995 in front of the Church of Scientology in Mesa, Arizona, picketing about the \u0026ldquo;Cancel poodle\u0026rdquo; (better known as the \u0026ldquo;Cancel Bunny\u0026rdquo;). This was about two years into Scientology\u0026rsquo;s war on the Internet, which, despite a few Pyrrhic victories in court, was characterized by huge losses on the part of Scientology in the court of public opinion.\nShortly after this, Jeff Jacobsen and I published an article on the subject in Skeptic magazine, titled \u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet,\u0026quot; for which I received the Skeptics Society\u0026rsquo;s Martin Gardner award for \u0026ldquo;Best Skeptical Critic\u0026rdquo; in 1996. This article was one of the few published that went into detail about the Tom Klemesrud/\u0026ldquo;Miss Blood\u0026rdquo; affair and its relation to why Scientology was so insistent to compromise the anonymity of a user of Julf Helsingius\u0026rsquo; Penet anonymizing remailer service in Finland. Some of these facts which are still not widely known, as seen by the Wikipedia entry on Penet. Scientology\u0026rsquo;s search for the user seemed to have stopped at Caltech, but they did find that the account holder was a Caltech alumnus who had been working for Scientology, and had accurately leaked Scientology internal documents in his own attempt to support Scientology\u0026rsquo;s position on the Klemesrud case.\nThis article was responded to in the pages of Skeptic by Leisa Goodman, which the Skeptics Society decided was a good place to stop the discussion. My response to Goodman, available only on my website, updates the story to early 1996. This article is much less known than the original. Skeptic also published a letter from Linda Woolard.\nIn May 1995, I put up a web page about Scientology\u0026rsquo;s private investigators. Initially this was to document photos of private investigators which Scientology had hired and sent from Los Angeles to Phoenix to take photographs of those of us who were picketing the Mesa Church of Scientology. It later was expanded to document some of the activities of former LAPD officer Eugene Ingram, who was a very active and sleazy PI for Scientology at the time. He was kicked off the force after allegations of his involvement with drug dealers and a prostitution ring, and was compensated very well by Scientology to intimidate critics. Jeff Jacobsen dug up some outstanding warrants for his arrest in Florida and Oklahoma (for impersonating a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, respectively) which led to his Arizona PI license not being renewed. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have been active in recent years. I then added some photos of some California PIs who were hired to follow a German TV producer who was doing a program critical of Scientology.\nIn 1999, I received two Digital Millenium Copyright Act notices from Scientology\u0026ndash;one was regarding a customer of Frontier GlobalCenter, the company I worked for at the time, and the other was regarding my own website. The first was a website run by \u0026ldquo;xenubat\u0026rdquo; (Susan Mullaney) which contained some great audio file samples of L. Ron Hubbard speeches, saying absurd things. Under the DMCA we disabled public access to those files, but she filed a counter-notice, and we re-enabled access. I don\u0026rsquo;t believe Scientology ever sued her, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think the files are still online. This event led to a story about DMCA abuse in Salon in July 1999. My own DMCA notice was regarding the fact that I had configured my home web server to proxy an image of Scientology head David Miscavige from their website, as a proof of concept to demonstrate that their attempts to prevent people from inline links to that image were ineffective. I submitted my own counter-notice, but because I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want to be sued, I modified my web server configuration so that the link pointed to part of the text of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s OT III (Operating Thetan III) document in Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s own handwriting (hosted on Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Dave Touretzky\u0026rsquo;s web page).\nIn those days I gave quite a few public talks about Scientology, including one for the Phoenix Skeptics which the local Church of Scientology kindly provided an OT VIII to give a mild rebuttal. (I don\u0026rsquo;t remember his last name, but his first name was also Jim and he was a Scientology \u0026ldquo;public\u0026rdquo; member, meaning one who has paid his way through the courses without actually working for a Scientology organization. He seemed like a nice guy, he remained calm and non-confrontational.)\nI never really received any noticeable harassment from Scientology, unlike other locals such as Jeff Jacobsen and Bruce Pettycrew. Jeff was harassed and picketed at his work place claiming he was a pornographer, Gene Ingram showed up at his house and his sister\u0026rsquo;s house, PIs went through his garbage, he was deposed by Kendrick Moxon in one of the Scientology lawsuits, and was loudly threatened at that deposition that he would also be sued (which I was privileged to witness). Bruce had a temporary restraining order filed against him by Scientology Office of Special Affairs (OSA) Director Leslie Francis Duhrman, who falsely claimed that he was shouting and \u0026ldquo;disrupting church services.\u0026rdquo; The judge was fooled by her testimony into thinking that Scientology actually has Sunday services, but the TRO on Bruce\u0026rsquo;s picketing was lifted except for a restriction on making noise. Bruce also ended up having flyers attacking him distributed in his neighborhood by Scientology.\nFor my part, I was invited to lunch in March 1996 with OSA Director Ginny Leason (Scientology paid), where I was asked what could be done to stop my criticism and picketing. My response was that they could stop attacking and lying about Internet critics. Ginny Leason, who seemed like a nice woman caught up in a bad organization, ended up being replaced as OSA Director shortly thereafter by Leslie Duhrman, who was a nasty piece of work.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a photo of her on February 28, 1998, pointing and shouting at me that I can\u0026rsquo;t stop in the driveway (I didn\u0026rsquo;t), right after taking my picture.\nAnother Scientology-related piece I wrote was a very brief web page pointing out the presence of a Scientologist on Libertarian candidate for president Harry Browne\u0026rsquo;s finance committee, as well as L. Ron Hubbard-inspired nonsense being touted in Liberty magazine by another Browne election campaigner and prominent libertarian, investment newsletter publisher Douglas Casey (apparently a Scientologist himself).\nThe only continuing interest from Scientology that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in me is that they still visit my website periodically from Scientology-owned IP blocks (most recently from 205.227.165.11 on January 1, 2006). On May 14, 2005, they hit my page after doing a search on \u0026ldquo;The Onion Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;no doubt they were looking for this story on \u0026ldquo;Scientology Losing Ground to New Fictionology.\u0026quot;\nI was never a member of Scientology, but I\u0026rsquo;ve had an interest in the subject since reading Eugene Methvin\u0026rsquo;s October 1981 Reader\u0026rsquo;s Digest article, and after taking their test in Los Angeles and reading Norman Spinrad\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Mind Game\u0026rdquo; in 1992. During my editorship of the Arizona Skeptic (July 1991-March 1993) I published several articles by Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology. I took notice when the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup was first created in 1991 (and was a home for the \u0026ldquo;Free Zone\u0026rdquo;), and then started reading and participating regularly in 1994 when Dennis Erlich started posting there and Scientology decided to respond by trying to remove the entire newsgroup.\nFor more information on Scientology, a great place to start is Operation Clambake. I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fairly extensive list of Scientology-related links on my Skeptical Information site, and the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup is still quite active.\nGot questions or comments about Scientology? Ask here, and I\u0026rsquo;ll answer or point you in the right direction\u0026hellip;\nLebatron (2006-12-09):\nThat's awsome.Check out my blog. I've just recently published an article on Scientology, which is both entertaining and factual. I think you'll find it a good read. Don't forget to leave a comment if you want.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\n\"Lebatron\" even sounds like a spam-bot--but one that's cool enough that you can't bring yourself to hate him.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHis blog bio quotes from \"Fight Club,\" and the content of the blog looks entertaining.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe \"Stupidity ought to be painful\" subtitle on his Scientology piece comes from a statement by Anton LaVey... great quote.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/mypic.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/mypic.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a picture of me on September 9, 1995 in front of the Church of Scientology in Mesa, Arizona, \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/bunny-release.html\"\u003epicketing about the \u0026ldquo;Cancel poodle\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (better known as the \u0026ldquo;Cancel Bunny\u0026rdquo;).  This was about two years into Scientology\u0026rsquo;s war on the Internet, which, despite a few Pyrrhic victories in court, was characterized by huge losses on the part of Scientology in the court of public opinion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShortly after this, Jeff Jacobsen and I published an article on the subject in \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e, titled \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Scientology v. the Internet,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e for which I received the Skeptics Society\u0026rsquo;s Martin Gardner award for \u0026ldquo;Best Skeptical Critic\u0026rdquo; in 1996.  This article was one of the few published that went into detail about the Tom Klemesrud/\u0026ldquo;Miss Blood\u0026rdquo; affair and its relation to why Scientology was so insistent to compromise the anonymity of a user of Julf Helsingius\u0026rsquo; Penet anonymizing remailer service in Finland.  Some of these facts which are still not widely known, as seen by the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer\"\u003eWikipedia entry on Penet\u003c/a\u003e.  Scientology\u0026rsquo;s search for the user seemed to have \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazing.com/scientology/penet-caltech.html\"\u003estopped at Caltech\u003c/a\u003e, but they did find that the account holder was a Caltech alumnus who had been working for Scientology, and had accurately leaked Scientology internal documents in his own attempt to support Scientology\u0026rsquo;s position on the Klemesrud case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis article was responded to in the pages of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e by Leisa Goodman, which the Skeptics Society decided was a good place to stop the discussion.  My \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/goodman-response.html\"\u003eresponse to Goodman\u003c/a\u003e, available only on my website, updates the story to early 1996.  This article is much less known than the original.  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e also published a letter from Linda Woolard.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn May 1995, I put up a web page about \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/pis.html\"\u003eScientology\u0026rsquo;s private investigators\u003c/a\u003e.  Initially this was to document photos of private investigators which Scientology had hired and sent from Los Angeles to Phoenix to take photographs of those of us who were \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/protest.txt\"\u003epicketing the Mesa Church of Scientology.\u003c/a\u003e  It later was expanded to document some of the activities of former LAPD officer Eugene Ingram, who was a very active and sleazy PI for Scientology at the time.  He was kicked off the force after allegations of his involvement with drug dealers and a prostitution ring, and was compensated very well by Scientology to intimidate critics.  Jeff Jacobsen dug up some outstanding warrants for his arrest in Florida and Oklahoma (for impersonating a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, respectively) which led to his Arizona PI license not being renewed.  He doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have been active in recent years.  I then added some photos of some California PIs who were hired to follow a German TV producer who was doing a program critical of Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 1999, I received two Digital Millenium Copyright Act notices from Scientology\u0026ndash;one was regarding a customer of Frontier GlobalCenter, the company I worked for at the time, and the other was regarding my own website.  The first was a website run by \u0026ldquo;xenubat\u0026rdquo; (Susan Mullaney) which contained some great audio file samples of L. Ron Hubbard speeches, saying absurd things.  Under the DMCA we disabled public access to those files, but she filed a counter-notice, and we re-enabled access.  I don\u0026rsquo;t believe Scientology ever sued her, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think the files are still online.  This event led to \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/07/22/scientology/index.html\"\u003ea story about DMCA abuse in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSalon\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e in July 1999.  My own DMCA notice was regarding the fact that I had configured my home web server to proxy \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientology.org/cgi-bin/img1.pl\"\u003ean image of Scientology head David Miscavige\u003c/a\u003e from their website, as a proof of concept to demonstrate that their attempts to prevent people from inline links to that image were ineffective.  I submitted \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/counter.txt\"\u003emy own counter-notice\u003c/a\u003e, but because I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want to be sued, I \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/img1.pl\"\u003emodified my web server configuration\u003c/a\u003e so that the link pointed to part of the text of Scientology\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/OTIII/\"\u003eOT III (Operating Thetan III) document in Hubbard\u0026rsquo;s own handwriting\u003c/a\u003e (hosted on Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Dave Touretzky\u0026rsquo;s web page).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn those days I gave quite a few public talks about Scientology, including one for the Phoenix Skeptics which the local Church of Scientology kindly provided an OT VIII to give a mild rebuttal.  (I don\u0026rsquo;t remember his last name, but his first name was also Jim and he was a Scientology \u0026ldquo;public\u0026rdquo; member, meaning one who has paid his way through the courses without actually working for a Scientology organization.   He seemed like a nice guy, he remained calm and non-confrontational.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI never really received any noticeable harassment from Scientology, unlike other locals such as Jeff Jacobsen and Bruce Pettycrew.  Jeff was harassed and picketed at his work place claiming he was a pornographer, Gene Ingram showed up at his house and his sister\u0026rsquo;s house, PIs went through his garbage, he was deposed by Kendrick Moxon in one of the Scientology lawsuits, and was loudly threatened at that deposition that he would also be sued (which I was privileged to witness).  Bruce had a temporary restraining order filed against him by Scientology Office of Special Affairs (OSA) Director Leslie Francis Duhrman, who falsely claimed that he was shouting and \u0026ldquo;disrupting church services.\u0026rdquo;  The judge was fooled by her testimony into thinking that Scientology actually has Sunday services, but the TRO on Bruce\u0026rsquo;s picketing was lifted except for a restriction on making noise.  Bruce also ended up having \u003ca href=\"http://www.lermanet.com/cos/otcommitees.htm\"\u003eflyers attacking him distributed\u003c/a\u003e in his neighborhood by Scientology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor my part, I was invited to lunch in March 1996 with OSA Director Ginny Leason (Scientology paid), where I was asked what could be done to stop my criticism and picketing.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/letter-to-leason.html\"\u003eMy response\u003c/a\u003e was that they could stop attacking and lying about Internet critics.  Ginny Leason, who seemed like a nice woman caught up in a bad organization, ended up being replaced as OSA Director shortly thereafter by Leslie Duhrman, who was a nasty piece of work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/Picket4.med.0.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/Picket4.med.0.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  Here\u0026rsquo;s a photo of her on February 28, 1998, pointing and shouting at me that I can\u0026rsquo;t stop in the driveway (I didn\u0026rsquo;t), right after taking my picture.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother Scientology-related piece I wrote was \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/casey.html\"\u003ea very brief web page\u003c/a\u003e pointing out the presence of a Scientologist on Libertarian candidate for president Harry Browne\u0026rsquo;s finance committee, as well as L. Ron Hubbard-inspired nonsense being touted in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLiberty\u003c/span\u003e magazine by another Browne election campaigner and prominent libertarian, investment newsletter publisher Douglas Casey (apparently a Scientologist himself).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe only continuing interest from Scientology that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in me is that they still visit my website periodically from Scientology-owned IP blocks (most recently from 205.227.165.11 on January 1, 2006).  On May 14, 2005, they hit my page after doing a search on \u0026ldquo;The Onion Scientology\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;no doubt they were looking for \u003ca href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31006\"\u003ethis story\u003c/a\u003e on \u0026ldquo;Scientology Losing Ground to New Fictionology.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was never a member of Scientology, but I\u0026rsquo;ve had an interest in the subject since reading Eugene Methvin\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/ReadersDigest2.htm\"\u003eOctober 1981 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReader\u0026rsquo;s Digest\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e, and after taking their test in Los Angeles and \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/mindgame.html\"\u003ereading Norman Spinrad\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Mind Game\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in 1992.   During my editorship of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/Arizona_Skeptic/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Skeptic\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (July 1991-March 1993) I published several articles by Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology. I took notice when the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup was first created in 1991 (and was a home for the \u0026ldquo;Free Zone\u0026rdquo;), and then started reading and participating regularly in 1994 when Dennis Erlich started posting there and Scientology decided to respond by trying to remove the entire newsgroup.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor more information on Scientology, a great place to start is \u003ca href=\"http://www.xenu.net/\"\u003eOperation Clambake\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fairly extensive list of \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Cults_and_Religions/Scientology/\"\u003eScientology-related links\u003c/a\u003e on my \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/skeptical/\"\u003eSkeptical Information site\u003c/a\u003e, and the \u003ca href=\"news://alt.religion.scientology\"\u003ealt.religion.scientology\u003c/a\u003e newsgroup is still quite active.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGot questions or comments about Scientology?  Ask here, and I\u0026rsquo;ll answer or point you in the right direction\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scientology sampler"},{"content":"Answers in Genesis had been an international organization, with the U.S. branch under Ken Ham based in Kentucky, and an Australian branch under Carl Wieland in Queensland (which was formerly known as the Creation Science Foundation). Now the Australian group (along with ministries in Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa) has changed its name to Creation Ministries International, explaining in a recent brochure that the U.S. group did not want to be \u0026ldquo;subject to an international representative system of checks/balances/peer review involving all the other offices bearing the same \u0026lsquo;brand name\u0026rsquo;.\u0026quot;\nThis explains why an article critical of bad creationist arguments (and specifically Kent Hovind) disappeared from the Answers in Genesis site, but is found on the new Creation Ministries International site. (UPDATE (March 6, 2006): This statement was not quite accurate, but the linked-to page gets it right. The article listing arguments not to use is still present on the Answers in Genesis site, but it no longer links to the separate \u0026ldquo;maintaining creationist integrity\u0026rdquo; page and response to Kent Hovind which is present on the Creation Ministries International site.)\nWieland\u0026rsquo;s group has made a point of publishing material critical of bad creationist arguments, on its website and in its technical journal. Ken Ham, on the other hand, has made a point of publishing and presenting bad creationist arguments.\nThe U.S. group, known for spending millions on a creationist museum, has interesting Form 990s filed with the IRS. Some highlights from 2003 and 2004:\nRevenue: $9,016,228 (2003), $10,423,222 (2004).\nExpenses: $6,894,456 (2003), $8,320,926 (2004).\nAssets: $10,778,086 (2003), $17,368,759 (2004).\nLiabilities: $1,693,035 (2003), $6,086,610 (2004).\nOfficer/Director compensation: $313,960 (2003), $926,837 (2004).\nOther salaries/wages: $2,938,288 (2003), $2,852,351 (2004).\nPension plan contributions: $87,819 (2003), $0 (2004).\nOther employee benefits: $317,802 (2003), $399,482 (2004).\nPayroll taxes: $223,636 (2003), $307,267 (2004).\nEmployees with salaries over $50,000:\nKevin Markesbery, Construction Manager, $87,000 plus $8,778 to benefit plans/deferred income and $1,375 expense account (2003). $88,678 plus $6,850 to benefit plans, $4,076 expense account (2004).\nJohn Pence, Dir. of Planned Giving/Legal Counsel, $87,539 plus $7,728 to benefit plans/deferred income (2003). (Became a director in 2004, see below).\nPatrick Marsh, Director, $73,713 plus $5,202 to benefit plans (2004).\nJames Hatton, Controller, $70,763 plus $8,609 to benefit plans/deferred income.\nKathy Ellis, Dir. Administration, $68,519 plus $7,078 to benefit plans/deferred income.\nMark Looy, VP Ministry Relations, $68,417 plus $8,460 to benefit plans/deferred income and $2,232 expense account. (Became a director in 2004, see below.)\nTony Ramsek, Systems Mgr., $62,720 plus $6,821 to benefit plans (2004).\nDan Zordel, Director, $57,724 plus $6,816 to benefit plans and $839 expense account (2004).\nCharles Tilton, Director, $56,828 plus $3,109 to benefit plans and $112 expense account (2004).\nDirectors:\nCarl Wieland, Board Member, $0 (2003).\nKen Ham, President, $125,739 salary, $11,033 benefits, $44,478 expenses (2003). $121,764 salary, $6,887 benefits, $63,808 expenses (2004).\nBill Wise, CFO, $121,418 salary, $8,845 benefits, $2,535 expenses (2003).\nJohn Pence, General Counsel, $93,115 salary, $3,148 benefits (2004).\nKathy Ellis, Vice President, $86,068 salary, $5,261 benefits (2004).\nMark Looy, Vice President, $85,615 salary, $6,820 benefits, $3,518 expenses (2004).\nJames Hatton, CFO, $81,000 salary, $6,831 benefits (2004).\nMike Zovath, VP, $74,798 salary, $8,707 benefits, $2,267 expenses (2003). $90,201 salary, $6,830 benefits, $1,115 expenses (2004).\nBrandon Vallorani, $74,432 salary, $8,313 benefits, $1,368 expenses (2003). COO, $90,344 salary, $6,223 benefits, $2,316 expenses (2004).\nDon Landis, Chairman, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\nDan Chin, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\nMark Jackson, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\nCarl Kerby, Board Member, $6,538 salary (20hrs/week), $1,650 benefits, $22,462 expenses (2003). Vice President, $65,112 salary, $4,225 benefits, $27,240 expenses (2004).\nDan Manthei, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\nPeter Strong, Board Member, $0 (2003).\nGreg Peacock, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\nPaul Salmon, Board Member, $0 (2003).\nDavid Denner, Board Member, $0 (2004).\nDale Mason, Vice President, $115,621 salary, $4,828 benefits (2004).\nJohn Thallon, Board Member, $0 (2004).\nTim Dudley, Board Member, $0 (2004).\nThey paid their top building contractors in 2003:\nplumbing and HVAC: $829,979\nconcrete: $310,252\nsteel erection: $279,428\nbuilding electric: $249,450\nconcrete foundations: $195,872\nIn 2003 they sold or gave away several old computers, and gave a 2002 Toyota Camry to CFO Bill Wise (who also got a free Compaq laptop).\nThe full AiG 2004 Form 990 may be found here (PDF).\nKen Ham earns a pretty good salary for someone who spouts misrepresentations of and about evolution for a living and resides in a state where the median household income in 2002-2003 was $37,270.\nAnswers in Genesis of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s unwillingness to undergo even the peer review of fellow creationist organizations indicates to me a lack of ethics and integrity.\nUPDATE: I didn\u0026rsquo;t explicitly note above that this schism must have actually taken place back in 2005, since Carl Wieland and the other Australians (Greg Peacock and Paul Salmon) disappeared from the AiG Kentucky board in the 2004 Form 990 (signed on August 10, 2005, apparently an update since the original was due by May 15). Also of note is that John Thallon, an Australian who helped lose the Creation Science Foundation thousands of dollars in a bogus investment (he was also a victim, not a party to the fraud\u0026ndash;see the \u0026ldquo;Loss of Funds\u0026rdquo; section of my article \u0026ldquo;How Not To Argue With Creationists\u0026rdquo;), has moved to Kentucky and is on the board as of 2004.\nOne other thing worthy of note is that as Answers in Genesis of Kentucky has grown, it has pulled support away from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which Henry Morris\u0026rsquo; son John Morris has never really had his heart in running. The ICR\u0026rsquo;s 2004 revenue was $4,341,000, with expenses of $4,231,885. They had assets of $5,628,352 and liabilities of $537,283\u0026ndash;so they\u0026rsquo;re not exactly hurting, but they\u0026rsquo;re not doing AiG-sized business, either. (2004 Form 990 for the ICR is here (PDF).) It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if AiG ultimately completely displaced (or perhaps acquired) the ICR.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIt's not a Ken Ham quote. It's a quote from a brochure mailed by the newly-named Australian group, Creation Ministries International.A fuller quote:The AiG website was developed in the US and hosted there. It was largely dependent for its intellectual content on the scientists andthinkers in the parent corporation, in particular such as Dr Don Batten,Dr Jonathan Sarfati, and Dr Carl Wieland. These and other writers were heavily contributing to the site until late 2005/early 2006, when the US ministry withdrew themselves from the international ministry group (with the exception of the UK) with an expressed desire to operate autonomously, without e.g. website content being subject to an international representative system of checks/balances/peer review involving all the other offices bearing the same 'brand name'.At that time, in the midst of discussions about this and other differences in operating philosophy (not involving the statement offaith or similar), the Australian office was formally invited to formits own website. This required a new name to avoid confusion.The four national ministries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) which were committed to continuing their focus and operational ^Qteam^R philosophy, and to continuing to forge and strengthen a representative international ministry alliance structure (based on Proverbs 11:14), then rebranded as Creation Ministries International (CMI).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMy description was not quite accurate, but the facts are accurate at the source I linked to--it's the \"maintaining creationist integrity\" page which has disappeared from the AiG site (but is on the CMI site).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, I've added an update in the post to correct the error.peddler8111 apparently created a new Blogger account just to post this comment, with a (currently nonexistent) blog titled \"Are Evolutionist's Honest?\"Since I've corrected my mistake, the answer for this advocate of evolution is yes--a contrast to folks like Ham who continues to utter the same falsehoods over and over even after being corrected. If you've ever looked at his book _The Lie: Evolution_, you know it is one of the worst, most dishonest creationist books out there.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nSome good reasoning, but not quite on the mark. The story has been published here: www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4767\nAnonymous (2007-03-18):\nre: the remark that Ken Ham doesn't want to be accountable to anyone, well, I believe he knows exactly to whom he is accountable, and that \"Whom\" is the only one we will all be accountable when we stand before Him on That Day. The ones who don't want to be accountable to anyone, incl. God, are all the atheist evolutionist humanist anti-God and -Christ people. I'm so heartbroken for everyone of them, who will, unless they repent and open their \"eyes\" and hearts to their Creator, and accept, by faith, the Loving Gift of forgiveness and Eternal Life, bought for them with the blood of His own Son, Jesus Christ, on that Roman cross of torture and death. They have a day of reckoning ahead, believe it or not. \"The fool has said in his heart 'there is no God'.\"\nAnonymous (2007-03-23):\nHaving reviewed the Creation/Evolution debate for some time now it has left me with one overall impression. For me the debate is marked by an obvious propensity on the part of evolutionists to go for the man and not the ball. The issue touches on and exposes the very deepest, most visceral part of who we are. Given the nature of the dispute I find it strange to see intelligent men and women slugging it out with an almost inane devotion to,and total belief in, the thrust and parry of debate as if they can with the power of words alone, argue God into or out of existence.The fact is that atheists cannot use 'science' to prove anything with regard to the existence or non existence of God. They cannot progress, with anything 'known' to mankind beyond the inexplicable existence of the first matter.They do not have an identity for the First Cause. Those who believe in God simply are stating that the First Cause is God the Creator.I have heard theevolutionists banging on in the public sector wothout challenge for years. I have never swallowed it. It is, for all the hype, an hypothesis that only works in the minds of men who want to believe in it. The more I hear them present their arguements and diatribes,the more convinced I am that the reasons that people advocate and promote evolution are nothing to do with fact or truth. It is simply carried by the need for a backdrop onto which they can paint their world view.For Christians this means that they can make Christ change to fit their own theology. To say that any Christian who believes totally in a literal understanding of the Bible should be regarded as a crank or an enemy of Christ is to completely deny the very foundational nature of Christ Himself. He came to bring the fulfilment of the Law and the prophets not to render them irrelevant. He lived as an Torah observant Jewish man. Not a Greek philosopher.His words demonstrated that He believed entirely in the scriptures as historical fact. As the disciple John wrote; In the beginning was the word, and later that Jesus IS the word.When He was challenged by Satan in the desert Jesus remained true to Himself as the Living Word. Satan used twisted versions of scripture to attack Him. In response Jesus recited the uncorrupted,true meaning of scripture to destroy the subtle twisting lies that were given to tempt Him.For Christians I believe the Evolution debate galvanizes us into showing just how much or how little we are prepared to let Jesus tell us who HE is. So many are so busy trying to reinvent the One who is unchanging that they end up creating someone almost entirely of their own invention.For atheists the basis of their stance is pretty much the same only in their case the god they want is entirely materialistic.In the end what richard koury says is the ultimate reply to the whole arguement. Mankind can either face up to it or not. I my part I would hate to be the one to stand before the Lord and try to explain why I thought the Bible is mostly and excercise in political spin or man made allegorical rhetoric.He has said to us clearly. If we do not know Him, He will not know us.\nEinzige (2007-03-23):\nThey do not have an identity for the First Cause. Those who believe in God simply are stating that the First Cause is God the Creator.Sorry. Wrong on two counts. Thanks for playing.1) If the \"first cause\" is \"God the creator\" then what caused God? Nothing? How can something not have a cause?2) Christians/Jews/Muslims who make the deeply unsatisfying and generally incoherent claim above are also saying a lot more than \"simply\" that God was the \"first cause.\" They then make an additional enormous logical leap with \"first cause\"=\"God of Abraham\" and expect everyone to be so dazzled by the skill and slight-of-hand they exhibit while making their first (absurd) argument that they don't notice this (equally assinine) second argument, which, as you can see from your own comment, is usually not explicitly stated.\nLippard (2007-03-23):\nAnonymous: \"For me the debate is marked by an obvious propensity on the part of evolutionists to go for the man and not the ball.\"Where on earth are you going for your information about evolution, then? Perhaps you should take a look at www.talkorigins.org, or works actually published in fields relating to evolution.If you look only at the points of clash (say, if you get all of your information from blogs), you're definitely going to see exasperated evolutionists who are tired of refuting the same bad arguments over and over, and concluding that there must be something wrong with the people who make them and refuse to engage with the evidence. (Though I'm not sure why you fail to see ad hominems and other fallacious arguments from the creationists!)Evolution has an enormous and growing amount of evidential support published in thousands of journals. Creationism's pretty much got nothing.\ncitrite (2007-04-10):\n--\"Evolution has an enormous and growing amount of evidential support published in thousands of journals. Creationism's pretty much got nothing.\"--And how often do these \"journals\" need to be revised as man increases his knowledge of the world around him? Perhaps you would care to elaborate on how symmetry evolved? Or tell us why the evolutionists are having such a hard time finding all of the missing links in the fossil record? Or maybe you can take a minute to explain the fundamental inaccuracies inherent in the carbon-dating method? \"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: \"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.\"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. --1 Corinthians (1:18-25)\nEinzige (2007-04-10):\n\"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.\"Hmmmm...That explains a lot, actually.\nLippard (2007-04-10):\ncitrite: You answered your own question about journal revisions--we're always learning more and filling in additional details, improving accuracy, and correcting mistakes. (Religion, by contrast, enshrines its mistakes and refuses to correct them.)If you really want to understand symmetry in biological organisms, I suggest you try reading about it--your question would be better asked at the Pharyngula blog.Your claim that \"the evolutionists are having such a hard time finding all of the missing links in the fossil record\" is bogus (unless you really mean \"all,\" and argue that every transitional form found results in a gap on either side to be filled). You're in the position of having to refuse to look at the fossil evidence for the human lineage, for whale and horse transitions, for reptile to mammal, and so on.And your reference to \"fundamental inaccuracies inherent in the carbon-dating method\" shows that you don't know what you're talking about. Radiocarbon dating is extremely accurate and has been successfully validated against tree-ring data for more than 10,000 years of history, as even the Institute for Creation Research admits. It is not a method used to date the earth or anything more than a few tens of thousands of years old. For that, other radiometric methods are used, and they can be used to calibrate each other; isochron methods provide an internal self-check of accuracy. If you reject that, you're not only rejecting modern biology, you're rejecting modern physics.You're a believer in nonsense. Don't try to pass it off as science or somehow better supported than science, because it's not.\nLippard (2007-04-10):\nThese flowcharts for science and faith make explicit the difference that citrite was pointing out and trying to argue is an advantage of faith.I think he has his virtues and vices confused.\nHermit (2007-04-24):\nEinzige said... \u003e\"They do not have an identity for the First Cause. Those who believe in God simply are stating that the First Cause is God the Creator.\"\"Sorry. Wrong on two counts. Thanks for playing.1) If the \"first cause\" is \"God the creator\" then what caused God? Nothing? How can something not have a cause?\"Sorry, Einzige, wrong. We are ourselves finite beings in a finite universe. We believe that everything must have a cause that is outside of that thing and greater than that thing, i.e., capable of bring that thing into existance.Therefore, it is logically required that behind everything that is finite must be a cause that is greater and capable of bringing everything finite into existance.This, therefore, is the *infinite*. Being, of its nature infinite, it is not contained within the finite or limited by the finite. Time, being a finite limit on us, is not limiting on the infinite First Cause.Obviously, time must have come into existance through One who is outside of time. Meet God, the Infinite, who existing before and outside of time, has no beginning and no end.Whilst you say that everything finite must have come from nothing, my position is that everything finite has come from God the infinite, the All-in-All.\nAnonymous (2007-04-26):\nAccording to the law of causality, things that have a beginning need a cause, and the universe had a beginning (Genesis 1:1), therefore it must have had a cause, a Creator.Space, matter, and time are inextricably bound up with each other. For example the famous equation e = mc^2 links time (c is a speed, and any speed is a distance per a unit of time) and matter. Thus time as we experience it is something intrinsic to this physical universe. But God the Creator already existed independent of the physical universe He created (Colossians 1:17) and His existence is not limited to the universe (2 Chronicles 2:6; 6:18). We can think of this realm as eternity. There is no reason to suppose that the laws of physics (thermodynamics, causality, etc.) have any relevance outside of this universe, in eternity. God is eternal, without beginning, and not subject to the laws of the physical universe He created. God therefore needs no cause.\nEinzige (2007-04-26):\nDariux, your presuppositionalism is boring and not worth discussing. Come back when you're no longer assuming what it is you're arguing for.hermit_au:We believe that everything must have a cause that is outside of that thing and greater than that thing, i.e., capable of bring that thing into existance.Speak for yourself. Plenty of things have causes that are not \"greater\" (a vague word, at best) than themselves. I'm sure you've heard the expression, \"For want of a nail the kingdom was lost\"?You and I were both \"caused\" by the joining of two microscopic haploid cells, for example.So, I reject this premise, which causes the remainder of your argument's shaky edifice to crumble.This, therefore, is the *infinite*.Do you have any evidence for this infinite being, aside from your faulty logic?Either there was a first cause or there was not. If there was a first cause then how do what other properties this \"thing\" possessed, beyond the property of its being the first cause? Why is it important to call it \"God\"? What does that do for you?\nEinzige (2007-04-26):\nOops, missed a couple words toward the end: \"...then how do you know what other properties...\"\nAnonymous (2007-04-30):\nEveryone starts with presuppositions Einzige, even you. Typical secular presuppositions include materialism (i.e. no God, no supernatural) and uniformitarianism. If you want to demonstrate that you are not a close-minded dogmatist blindly committed to your presuppositions, then try giving a considered substantive answer to this hypothetical question: If the world was created and there was a global flood, then what evidence would you expect to see?\nEinzige (2007-04-30):\nDariux,You're the one making the claim (that the Bible is true and, further, is a source of scientific truths), so you have the burden of proof.If I were to claim that I have a leprauchan and one of the parts of my \"proof\" for it was, \"I have a leprauchan,\" then you would (rightly) call \"foul\" - would you not? I wouldn't then get to ask you, \"But what if I did have a leprauchan? What evidence would you expect to see?\"Given that this discussion is inappropriate for the topic at hand, let me suggest that you take your arguments over to the discussion forum at infidels.org.You'll find plenty of people there willing to debate you.\nLippard (2007-04-30):\nDariux:Go talk to a geologist about what evidence for flooding looks like, and whether there is any evidence for a global flood. There isn't.This is really not the place for an extended discussion of the details of young-earth creationism--this is a blog post about the split between Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International. Take it to the talk.origins newsgroup or, as Einzige suggested, the Internet Infidels discussion boards, where there is a Creation/Evolution debate forum.\nAnonymous (2007-05-06):\nEinzige,Can a presupposition be observed in the theory of evolution?In other words can a leap of faith or a leap in logic be observed in the theory of evolution?If yes, why are you not allowing Dariux the same charity?I am a layman and this is one of the reasons I find it difficult to trust evolusionists...\nEinzige (2007-05-06):\nMr. TB,It may be true that presuppositions form the basis for any system of knowledge (e.g., how can you justify rational thought without an appeal to rationality?), but there is a distinct difference in the case of Biblical presuppositionalism versus evolutionary theory.Unlike the Biblical presuppositionalists and their Bible, the evolutionary biologist doesn't start with the premise \"Evolution is true\" and then go from there.As Jim and I have said before, this is a discussion best moved to other, more appropriate fora.\nis_that_the_best_ya_got (2007-11-10):\n[Einzige said:Unlike the Biblical presuppositionalists and their Bible, the evolutionary biologist doesn't start with the premise \"Evolution is true\" and then go from there.]OH PLEASE!!! Get REAL!!! Evolutionsts theories and arguments are FULLLLLLL of presuppositions, and YES,it most certainly DOES start with that exact belief, or at least that \"there is no god\". Every piece of evidence that you look at, is the EXACT same piece of evidence that creation scientists see and examine, and we use just as real and accurate \"science\" as you do. However, we both come to completely different conclusions, and the reason for that is that we both start with different FAITHS, and different presuppositions. That's right, evolution is a FAITH, just as much as christianity, even though you don't like to admit it. It requires a belief in something which HAS to be assumed or presupposed. There is MUCH evidence which STRONGLY favors creation, a flood, etc, and there is evidence which would appear to favor evolution, at least on the surface, and there is evidence which can be equally well explained by EITHER, but each side ALWAYS interprets it based on his own presuppositions. You are a blind fool if you cannot see this and have deceived your own self, as the Bible states. One TINY example, contrary to what you attempted to persuade us of, there are HUGE problems with carbon dating, as well as every other form of dating, (even when they are used to \"calibrate each other\" Nothing like taking one flawed method to validate another one. Kinda like the blind leading the blind), and every one of those methods ABSOLUTELY, BY DEFINTION requires MANY presuppostitions, in and of themselves. To deny this would prove what little you actually understand about the science involved. However, when one examines the experiments and tests that have been done for decades with things such as carbon dating, more often than not they come up with MANY DIFFERENT dates, and they often keep testing until they find a date that matches, ...... wait for it, ...... THEIR PRESUPPOSITIONS!!!!! Their final results become biased by their foundational beliefs. If they were dating something that in their evolutionary viewpoint they \"knew\" was very old, and they got a range of dates, guess whihc one would get published??? Are you so naive you have not figured this out? And guess how many pieces of evidence they come across that supports creation and which hurts their own theories that \"disappear\" and never get published or get swept under the carpet. THey continuously and regularly \"date\" things which are KNOWN to be modern and recent, as being very old. OOPS, well, we'll just discard that one and try again. Aaaahhhh, there's one that looks more like what we expected, that must be the RIGHT one!WAKE UP!!!Look at the many many PROVEN hoaxes and erroneous evidences that STILL exist in museums and in textbooks, LONG AFTER they are proven and admitted to be wrong, and why do you suppose that is??? Oh, I'm sure It's just because they are busy and haven't had time to get it out yet. Yeah, right!! If it were anything that went AGAINST their viewpoint, they would be up in arms about it and demand that it be corrected. No, dating methods are NOT consistent or reliable as they have duped you into believing, and if they do not get an answer/result they like initially when dating something, they will explain it away or presume some kind of error and keep trying till they get an answer that agrees with what they actually \"knew\" or expected all along. Hardly what one would call \"letting the evidence speak for itself\". No, far from. Any discussion or study of origins and dating methods and such, always involves biases and presuppositions. We as christians are at least open and honest about it, and admit it forthrightly. Evolutionists on the other hand, try to hide behind some facade of \"scientific objectivity\", and deny the fact that they too follow a religion, the religion of humanISM and atheISM and evolutionISM. Be honest with yourselves and everyone else, and call it what it is. [Einzige said: As Jim and I have said before, this is a discussion best moved to other, more appropriate fora.]Oh, but of course! When your brain starts to hurt and you come face to face with the reality of your own ignorance, you're quick to dodge the subject and arrogantly pass it off as \"not appropriate\" for this forum.Yeah, whatever. Go bury your head in the sand. You will be judged by your own willing ignorance one day. And at the name of Jesus, EVERY KNEE will bow, even yours.Have a nice life, one day soon you will remember the time you wasted defending such utter nonsense and wish for all eternity you had been willing to truly SEE the truth instead of spending so much tiime and effort trying to hide from it.\nLippard (2007-11-10):\n\"OH PLEASE!!! Get REAL!!! Evolutionsts theories and arguments are FULLLLLLL of presuppositions, and YES,it most certainly DOES start with that exact belief, or at least that 'there is no god'. Every piece of evidence that you look at, is the EXACT same piece of evidence that creation scientists see and examine, and we use just as real and accurate \"science\" as you do.\"You're delusional--your claim is at odds with the fact that most Christians in the world have no problem with evolution, and many evolutionary scientists are Christians. Evolutionary biology no more starts with the assumption that there is no God than auto mechanics start with the assumption that there is no God by searching for mechanical causes of failures.I suspect that you cannot even accurately describe the most basic elements of the theory of evolution, let alone the nonexistent scientific theory of creationism. I challenge you to make your way over to the IIDB Creation/Evolution discussion forum (www.iidb.org) and prove me wrong.If you post further off-topic crap in the comments here, it will be deleted, with the exception of a pointer to your post at IIDB demonstrating that you have a basic understanding of evolution.\nSchtacky (2007-11-13):\nJim, Einzige and \"friends\",Everyone knows that Sean Connery is the best James Bond of them all. If you disagree, you're wrong because I said so and that's all the reason that anyone should need. Oh, wait, that's off-topic, too.You're probably aware of this, but if not, check out PBS's latest NOVA special: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/.I can only hope that they will do a nice job pointing out much of the unreason with the seemingly defunct ID movement that many of your blog comment posters, sadly, seem to share.I apologize for the off-topic post, but this exchange seemed a good place for it.Joe\nolvlzl (2007-11-14):\nUh, sorry, but David Niven was the greatest James Bond of them all.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/answers-in-genesis-schism-us-group.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnswers in Genesis had been an international organization, with the U.S. branch under Ken Ham based in Kentucky, and an Australian branch under Carl Wieland in Queensland (which was formerly known as the Creation Science Foundation).  Now the Australian group (along with ministries in Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa) has changed its name to Creation Ministries International, explaining in a recent brochure that the U.S. group did not want to be \u0026ldquo;subject to an international representative system of checks/balances/peer review involving all the other offices bearing the same \u0026lsquo;brand name\u0026rsquo;.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis explains why an article critical of bad creationist arguments (and specifically Kent Hovind) \u003ca href=\"http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/aig_integrity_slipping.htm\"\u003edisappeared\u003c/a\u003e from the Answers in Genesis site, but is \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2571/\"\u003efound on the new Creation Ministries International site\u003c/a\u003e.  (UPDATE (March 6, 2006):  This statement was not quite accurate, but the \u003ca href=\"http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/aig_integrity_slipping.htm\"\u003elinked-to page\u003c/a\u003e gets it right.  The article listing arguments not to use is \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp\"\u003estill present on the Answers in Genesis site\u003c/a\u003e, but it no longer links to the separate \u0026ldquo;maintaining creationist integrity\u0026rdquo; page and response to Kent Hovind which is \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2571/\"\u003epresent on the Creation Ministries International site\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWieland\u0026rsquo;s group has made a point of publishing material critical of bad creationist arguments, on its website and in its technical journal.  Ken Ham, on the other hand, has made a point of publishing and presenting bad creationist arguments.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe U.S. group, known for spending millions on a creationist museum, has interesting Form 990s filed with the IRS.  Some highlights from 2003 and 2004:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRevenue: $9,016,228 (2003), $10,423,222 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eExpenses: $6,894,456 (2003), $8,320,926 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eAssets: $10,778,086 (2003), $17,368,759 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eLiabilities: $1,693,035 (2003), $6,086,610 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOfficer/Director compensation: $313,960 (2003), $926,837 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eOther salaries/wages: $2,938,288 (2003), $2,852,351 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003ePension plan contributions: $87,819 (2003), $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eOther employee benefits: $317,802 (2003), $399,482 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003ePayroll taxes: $223,636 (2003), $307,267 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEmployees with salaries over $50,000:\u003cbr /\u003eKevin Markesbery, Construction Manager, $87,000 plus $8,778 to benefit plans/deferred income and $1,375 expense account (2003).  $88,678 plus $6,850 to benefit plans, $4,076 expense account (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Pence, Dir. of Planned Giving/Legal Counsel, $87,539 plus $7,728 to benefit plans/deferred income (2003).  (Became a director in 2004, see below).\u003cbr /\u003ePatrick Marsh, Director, $73,713 plus $5,202 to benefit plans (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eJames Hatton, Controller, $70,763 plus $8,609 to benefit plans/deferred income.\u003cbr /\u003eKathy Ellis, Dir. Administration, $68,519 plus $7,078 to benefit plans/deferred income.\u003cbr /\u003eMark Looy, VP Ministry Relations, $68,417 plus $8,460 to benefit plans/deferred income and $2,232 expense account.  (Became a director in 2004, see below.)\u003cbr /\u003eTony Ramsek, Systems Mgr., $62,720 plus $6,821 to benefit plans (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eDan Zordel, Director, $57,724 plus $6,816 to benefit plans and $839 expense account (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eCharles Tilton, Director, $56,828 plus $3,109 to benefit plans and $112 expense account (2004).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDirectors:\u003cbr /\u003eCarl Wieland, Board Member, $0 (2003).\u003cbr /\u003eKen Ham, President, $125,739 salary, $11,033 benefits, $44,478 expenses (2003).  $121,764 salary, $6,887 benefits, $63,808 expenses (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eBill Wise, CFO, $121,418 salary, $8,845 benefits, $2,535 expenses (2003).\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Pence, General Counsel, $93,115 salary, $3,148 benefits (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eKathy Ellis, Vice President, $86,068 salary, $5,261 benefits (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eMark Looy, Vice President, $85,615 salary, $6,820 benefits, $3,518 expenses (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eJames Hatton, CFO, $81,000 salary, $6,831 benefits (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eMike Zovath, VP, $74,798 salary, $8,707 benefits, $2,267 expenses (2003).  $90,201 salary, $6,830 benefits, $1,115 expenses (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eBrandon Vallorani, $74,432 salary, $8,313 benefits, $1,368 expenses (2003).  COO, $90,344 salary, $6,223 benefits, $2,316 expenses (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eDon Landis, Chairman, $0 (2003).  $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eDan Chin, Board Member, $0 (2003).  $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eMark Jackson, Board Member, $0 (2003).  $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eCarl Kerby, Board Member, $6,538 salary (20hrs/week), $1,650 benefits, $22,462 expenses (2003).  Vice President, $65,112 salary, $4,225 benefits, $27,240 expenses (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eDan Manthei, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003ePeter Strong, Board Member, $0 (2003).\u003cbr /\u003eGreg Peacock, Board Member, $0 (2003). $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003ePaul Salmon, Board Member, $0 (2003).\u003cbr /\u003eDavid Denner, Board Member, $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eDale Mason, Vice President, $115,621 salary, $4,828 benefits (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eJohn Thallon, Board Member, $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003eTim Dudley, Board Member, $0 (2004).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey paid their top building contractors in 2003:\u003cbr /\u003eplumbing and HVAC: $829,979\u003cbr /\u003econcrete:  $310,252\u003cbr /\u003esteel erection: $279,428\u003cbr /\u003ebuilding electric: $249,450\u003cbr /\u003econcrete foundations: $195,872\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn 2003 they sold or gave away several old computers, and gave a 2002 Toyota Camry to CFO Bill Wise (who also got a free Compaq laptop).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full AiG 2004 Form 990 may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/AIG-2004-Form990.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKen Ham earns a pretty good salary for someone who spouts misrepresentations of and about evolution for a living and resides in a state where the \u003ca href=\"http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h08a.html\"\u003emedian household income\u003c/a\u003e in 2002-2003 was $37,270.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnswers in Genesis of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s unwillingness to undergo even the peer review of fellow creationist organizations indicates to me a lack of ethics and integrity.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  I didn\u0026rsquo;t explicitly note above that this schism must have actually taken place back in 2005, since Carl Wieland and the other Australians (Greg Peacock and Paul Salmon) disappeared from the AiG Kentucky board in the 2004 Form 990 (signed on August 10, 2005, apparently an update since the original was due by May 15).  Also of note is that John Thallon, an Australian who helped lose the Creation Science Foundation thousands of dollars in a bogus investment (he was also a victim, not a party to the fraud\u0026ndash;see the \u0026ldquo;Loss of Funds\u0026rdquo; section of \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/how-not-to-argue.html\"\u003emy article \u0026ldquo;How Not To Argue With Creationists\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e), has moved to Kentucky and is on the board as of 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne other thing worthy of note is that as Answers in Genesis of Kentucky has grown, it has pulled support away from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which Henry Morris\u0026rsquo; son John Morris has never really had his heart in running.  The ICR\u0026rsquo;s 2004 revenue was $4,341,000, with expenses of $4,231,885.  They had assets of $5,628,352 and liabilities of $537,283\u0026ndash;so they\u0026rsquo;re not exactly hurting, but they\u0026rsquo;re not doing AiG-sized business, either.  (2004 Form 990 for the ICR is \u003ca href=\"http://www.discord.org/%7Elippard/ICR-2004-Form990.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).)  It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if AiG ultimately completely displaced (or perhaps acquired) the ICR.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Answers in Genesis schism: U.S. group goes solo"},{"content":"\nCarl Zimmer\u0026rsquo;s blog, The Loom, features this image with better resolution. It comes from biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, who have published in Science the most thorough tree of life based on sequencing 31 universal genes selected from 191 species of animals, plants, fungi, protozoans, bacteria, and archaea.\nZimmer explains the diagram:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a quick tour of the tree. Start at middle of the circle. The central point represents the last common ancestor of all living things on Earth. The tree sprouts three deep branches, which between them contain all the species the scientists studied. These deep branches first came to light in the 1970s, and are known as domains. We belong to the red domain of Eukaryota, along with plants, fungi, and protozoans. Bacteria (blue) and Archaea (green) make up the other two domains.\nThese lineages probably split very early in the history of life. Fossils of bacteria that look much like living bacteria turn up at least 3.4 billion years ago. Just a few lineages became multicellular much later, with some algae getting macroscopic about two billion years ago.\nThe length of the branches on this tree represent so-called genetic distance. The longer the branch, the more substitutions have accumulated in its genes. Since these genomes all come from living species, the branches all span the same period of time. The fact that some branches are long and some are short means that some lineages have evolved more than others. Many forces can stretch out genetic distance. A species may reproduce fast, or it may have a life that makes it prone to acquiring more mutations. The slash in the Bacteria branch represents a segment that the scientists left out to make the full tree easier to see.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s amazing how small the animal kingdom is in the picture\u0026ndash;if \u0026ldquo;speciesism\u0026rdquo; is a real problem, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are apparently guilty of it by focusing only on animals.\nAndrew Staroscik (2006-12-09):\nHi Jim,This paper is a great contribution and it is good to see this tree getting some press because people are too often exposed to one like this but the dominance of bacteria is a function of the number of fully sequenced genomes in this domain. I can't resist putting my critics hat on for a moment:As impressive as this effort is, it is constrained by the limits of available data. The tree does not actually contain much of the true diversity present in either the bacterial or archaeal branches as so few organisms from either of these domains have been cultured, let alone sequenced. My guess is that if it could be representative of the true diversity (and kept constrained to the 360 degrees available in a circular tree) the bacteria would shrink a little as would the eukaryota and there would be a significant increase in the archaea. Forcing the tree topology into a circle can really distort things so I am not sure it is the best way to represent this data. Also, the relationship between the three domains is fairly controversial and the pattern shown in this tree is strongly influenced but the choice of genes used. Of course there is always this tree to fall back on.Andrew\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAndrew:Thanks for the comment, I appreciate the grains of critical salt to keep in mind!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/current-tree-of-life.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://loom.corante.com/img/Bork%20tree%20750.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://loom.corante.com/img/Bork%20tree%20750.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarl Zimmer\u0026rsquo;s blog, \u003ca href=\"http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/03/03/tree_of_life_c_2006.php\"\u003eThe Loom\u003c/a\u003e, features this image with better resolution.  It comes from biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, who have published in Science the most thorough tree of life based on sequencing 31 universal genes selected from 191 species of animals, plants, fungi, protozoans, bacteria, and archaea.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eZimmer explains the diagram:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The current tree of life"},{"content":"Former Rep. Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to 8 years, 4 months in federal prison and will be required to pay $1.8 million in restitution. This is the longest sentence ever for a member of Congress. This case is just the tip of the iceberg\u0026ndash;Congress full of similar corrupt politicians, some of whom are in similar trouble and others of whom will only be exposed later.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a nice collection of Cunningham data at Talking Points Memo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-duke-cunningham-gets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Rep. Randy \u0026ldquo;Duke\u0026rdquo; Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to 8 years,  4 months in federal prison and will be required to pay $1.8 million in restitution.  This is the longest sentence ever for a member of Congress.  This case is just the tip of the iceberg\u0026ndash;Congress full of similar corrupt politicians, some of whom are in similar trouble and others of whom will only be exposed later.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a nice collection of Cunningham data at \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_02_26.php#007796\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician:  \"Duke\" Cunningham gets 8 years, 4 months"},{"content":"John Markoff has a story in the New York Times about AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Daytona\u0026rdquo; database, which has a record of 1.9 trillion calls from over the last several decades. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has filed a lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T for cooperating with the NSA\u0026rsquo;s warrantless interception program, asserts that this database has been used by the NSA for data mining.\n\u0026ldquo;Checking every phone call ever made is an example of old think,\u0026rdquo; he said. He was alluding to databases maintained at an AT\u0026amp;T data center in Kansas, which now contain electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls, going back decades. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group, has asserted in a lawsuit that the AT\u0026amp;T Daytona system, a giant storehouse of calling records and Internet message routing information, was the foundation of the N.S.A.\u0026rsquo;s effort to mine telephone records without a warrant. An AT\u0026amp;T spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the claim, or generally on matters of national security or customer privacy.\nBut the mining of the databases in other law enforcement investigations is well established, with documented results. One application of the database technology, called Security Call Analysis and Monitoring Platform, or Scamp, offers access to about nine weeks of calling information. It currently handles about 70,000 queries a month from fraud and law enforcement investigators, according to AT\u0026amp;T documents.\nA former AT\u0026amp;T official who had detailed knowledge of the call-record database said the Daytona system takes great care to make certain that anyone using the database — whether AT\u0026amp;T employee or law enforcement official with a subpoena — sees only information he or she is authorized to see, and that an audit trail keeps track of all users. Such information is frequently used to build models of suspects\u0026rsquo; social networks.\nThe official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive corporate matters, said every telephone call generated a record: number called, time of call, duration of call, billing category and other details. While the database does not contain such billing data as names, addresses and credit card numbers, those records are in a linked database that can be tapped by authorized users.\nNew calls are entered into the database immediately after they end, the official said, adding, \u0026ldquo;I would characterize it as near real time.\u0026quot;\n(Via Bruce Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/atts-19-trillion-call-database.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Markoff has \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/technology/25data.html?_r=1\u0026oref=slogin\"\u003ea story in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about AT\u0026amp;T\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Daytona\u0026rdquo; database, which has a record of 1.9 trillion calls from over the last several decades.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e, which has \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/\"\u003efiled a lawsuit against AT\u0026amp;T\u003c/a\u003e for cooperating with the NSA\u0026rsquo;s warrantless interception program, asserts that this database has been used by the NSA for data mining.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Checking every phone call ever made is an example of old think,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"AT\u0026T's 1.9-trillion-call database"},{"content":"After months of wrangling, Congress has approved the renewal the 16 expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act by making 14 of them permanent and extending the other two by four years. The renewal also includes things like fighting methamphetamine abuse. This version of the bill is the last one passed by the House on December 14 of last year, so none of the delay accomplished anything to improve it.\nA few reforms were included\u0026ndash;libraries can\u0026rsquo;t be subpoenaed without a court approval, recipients of subpoenas don\u0026rsquo;t have to provide the names of their attorneys, and individuals subject to gag orders can challenge the orders\u0026ndash;after waiting a year.\nThe Senate is considering passing an additional requirement that targets of \u0026ldquo;sneak-and-peek\u0026rdquo; searches be notified within seven days.\nThe bill, HR 3199, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, was passed by an 89-10 vote in the Senate. Both of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Senators, Kyl and McCain, voted in favor of it. The ten no votes were from Sens. Akaka (D-HI), Bingaman (D-NM), Byrd (D-WV), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA), Jeffords (I-VT), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Murray (D-WA), and Wyden (D-WA). Sen. Inouye (D-HI) did not vote.\nThe House passed the bill on December 14, 2005 with a 251-174 vote, the details of which are here. Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voted along party lines: For: Flake (R-6th), Franks (R-2nd), Hayworth (R-5th), Kolbe (R-8th), Renzi (R-1st), Shadegg (R-3rd), Against: Grijalva (D-7th), Pastor (D-4th).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/congress-approves-renewal-of-expiring.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter months of wrangling, \u003cA HREF = \"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060302/pl_nm/security_patriot_dc\"\u003eCongress has approved the renewal the 16 expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act\u003c/A\u003e by making 14 of them permanent and extending the other two by four years.  The renewal also includes things like fighting methamphetamine abuse.  This version of the bill is the last one passed by the House on December 14 of last year, so none of the delay accomplished anything to improve it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA few reforms were included\u0026ndash;libraries can\u0026rsquo;t be subpoenaed without a court approval, recipients of subpoenas don\u0026rsquo;t have to provide the names of their attorneys, and individuals subject to gag orders can challenge the orders\u0026ndash;after waiting a year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Senate is considering passing an additional requirement that targets of \u0026ldquo;sneak-and-peek\u0026rdquo; searches be notified within seven days.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe bill, HR 3199, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, was passed by an 89-10 vote in the Senate.  Both of Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Senators, Kyl and McCain, voted in favor of it.  The ten no votes were from Sens. Akaka (D-HI), Bingaman (D-NM), Byrd (D-WV), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA), Jeffords (I-VT), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Murray (D-WA), and Wyden (D-WA).  Sen. Inouye (D-HI) did not vote.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe House passed the bill on December 14, 2005 with a 251-174 vote, the details of which are \u003cA HREF = \"http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2005\u0026rollnumber=627\"\u003ehere\u003c/A\u003e.  Arizona\u0026rsquo;s Representatives voted along party lines:  For:  Flake (R-6th), Franks (R-2nd), Hayworth (R-5th), Kolbe (R-8th), Renzi (R-1st), Shadegg (R-3rd), Against: Grijalva (D-7th), Pastor (D-4th).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congress approves renewal of expiring PATRIOT Act provisions"},{"content":"After the Dover decision came down in December 2005, Sen. Rick Santorum resigned as a director of the Thomas More Law Center (which defended the Dover school board) and publicly stated that \u0026ldquo;I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did.\u0026quot;\nThis was his first flip-flop, as he had earlier in 2005 written an op-ed which supported the Dover school board.\nNow he\u0026rsquo;s flip-flopped again, writing a forward to a new book about Philip Johnson, Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Nemesis. (Hat tip: Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/santorum-flip-flops-on-intelligent.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter the Dover decision came down in December 2005, Sen. Rick Santorum resigned as a director of the Thomas More Law Center (which defended the Dover school board) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179507,00.html\"\u003epublicly stated\u003c/a\u003e that \u003cspan id=\"intelliTXT\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis was his first \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/12/santorum_drops.html\"\u003eflip-flop\u003c/a\u003e, as he had earlier in 2005 \u003ca href=\"http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view\u0026program=CSC%20-%20Views%20and%20News\u0026amp;id=2396\"\u003ewritten an op-ed\u003c/a\u003e which supported the Dover school board.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow he\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/santorum_flipflop.php\"\u003eflip-flopped\u003c/a\u003e again, \u003ca href=\"http://santorumexposed.com/serendipity/archives/143-Santorum-and-Intelligent-Designs-Daddy.html\"\u003ewriting a forward to a new book\u003c/a\u003e about Philip Johnson, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Nemesis\u003c/span\u003e.  (Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/santorum_flipflop.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Santorum flip-flops on Intelligent Design--again"},{"content":"This Wall Street Journal article describes the UAW Jobs Bank program, under which American auto manufacturers pay some 15,000 unneeded employees wages and benefits which can exceed $100,000 a year, with a total cost of over $1.4 billion per year. GM has the most workers in the program\u0026ndash;between this and the pensions, it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder GM is not competitive.\nWhile many of the workers in the program do community service or participate in educational programs, some of the latter seem rather dubious (studying crossword puzzles?). Other employees spend their time in the \u0026ldquo;rubber room\u0026rdquo; engaging in creative loafing.\n(Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/united-auto-workers-jobs-bank-program.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB114118143005186163-lMyQjAxMDE2NDAxMTEwODExWj.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e describes the UAW Jobs Bank program, under which American auto manufacturers pay some 15,000 unneeded employees wages and benefits which can exceed $100,000 a year, with a total cost of over $1.4 billion per year.  GM has the most workers in the program\u0026ndash;between this and the pensions, it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder GM is not competitive.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile many of the workers in the program do community service or participate in educational programs, some of the latter seem rather dubious (studying crossword puzzles?).  Other employees spend their time in the \u0026ldquo;rubber room\u0026rdquo; engaging in creative loafing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026334.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"United Auto Workers' Jobs Bank program"},{"content":"The 29th Skeptics\u0026rsquo; Circle is hosted at the Huge Entity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/skeptics-circle-29.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 29th Skeptics\u0026rsquo; Circle is hosted at \u003ca href=\"http://www.huge-entity.com/2006/03/29th-meeting-of-sceptics-circle.html\"\u003ethe Huge Entity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics Circle #29"},{"content":"The Phoenix New Times, one of the country\u0026rsquo;s oldest free \u0026ldquo;alternative\u0026rdquo; weekly newspapers which has won numerous awards for its investigative reporting, has published the Mohammed cartoons that have stirred up so many protests. The cartoons appear in conjunction with an article titled \u0026ldquo;The Chosen One,\u0026rdquo; about local feminist Muslim Deedra Abboud, the director of the Arizona chapter of the Muslim American Society\u0026rsquo;s Freedom Foundation, a civil rights group headquartered in D.C., and former director of the Arizona chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). She left CAIR after growing tired of responding to Ann Coulter, whom she feels doesn\u0026rsquo;t deserve the attention. (I agree.)\nAbboud is a recent Muslim convert, a former Southern Baptist business major at the University of Arkansas. She converted after a period of arguing against Muslims, then reading the Koran. Apparently she found Islam more sensible than Christianity, as she questioned the Trinity and how the notion of Jesus dying for the sins of mankind could possibly make any sense. It\u0026rsquo;s too bad she jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, dropping one bogus religion only to adopt another.\nRegarding the cartoon controversy, she is quoted saying\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think Americans have been given the full context of those cartoons,\u0026rdquo; Abboud tells Uncle Nasty, her voice becoming louder as she tries to speak over the one on the other end of the phone. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not defending the violence. But the editor of the Danish paper wasn\u0026rsquo;t trying to make a point; he was clearly trying to offend people.\u0026quot;Actually, the editor of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, solicited the cartoons because Danish author Kare Bluitgen had written a children\u0026rsquo;s book about Mohammed and was unable to find an illustrator. The editor wanted to see if there was really such a chilling effect against artists that they were afraid to illustrate the book, and solicited artists\u0026rsquo; renditions of Mohammed, without specifying that they take any particular position. The instruction was to \u0026ldquo;draw the Prophet as they saw him.\u0026quot;\nThat children\u0026rsquo;s book, The Koran and the Life of Mohammed, is now a best-seller in Denmark, by the way\u0026ndash;though its illustrator remains anonymous.\nThe controversy arose four months after the Danish paper published the cartoons, and was heightened by Muslim imams who circulated the cartoons along with other, more offensive cartoons which were not published by the paper. Abboud claims she has been following the controversy since the original publication, and is aware of these other cartoons not being published by the Danish paper.\nZuhdi Jasser, another prominent local Muslim (a politically conservative doctor who previously worked as a doctor at the U.S. Capitol and often writes op-ed pieces in the Arizona Republic) is described in the New Times piece as not trusting Abboud or the organizations she represents. Jasser organized a \u0026ldquo;Muslims Against Terrorism\u0026rdquo; rally at which CAIR representatives were not permitted to speak, because of what Jasser describes as their promotion of victimhood within the Muslim-American community.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/phoenix-weekly-paper-new-times.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Phoenix \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e, one of the country\u0026rsquo;s oldest free \u0026ldquo;alternative\u0026rdquo; weekly newspapers which has won numerous awards for its investigative reporting, \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2006-03-02/news/feature.html\"\u003ehas published the Mohammed cartoons\u003c/a\u003e that have stirred up so many protests.  The cartoons appear in conjunction with an article titled \u0026ldquo;The Chosen One,\u0026rdquo; about local feminist Muslim Deedra Abboud, the director of the Arizona chapter of the Muslim American Society\u0026rsquo;s Freedom Foundation, a civil rights group headquartered in D.C., and former director of the Arizona chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).  She left CAIR after growing tired of responding to Ann Coulter, whom she feels doesn\u0026rsquo;t deserve the attention.  (I agree.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAbboud is a recent Muslim convert, a former Southern Baptist business major at the University of Arkansas.  She converted after a period of arguing against Muslims, then reading the Koran.  Apparently she found Islam more sensible than Christianity, as she questioned the Trinity and how the notion of Jesus dying for the sins of mankind \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/idiocy-that-is-john-316.html\"\u003ecould possibly make any sense\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s too bad she jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, dropping one bogus religion only to adopt another.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRegarding the cartoon controversy, she is quoted saying\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think Americans have been given the full context of those cartoons,\u0026rdquo; Abboud tells Uncle Nasty, her voice becoming louder as she tries to speak over the one on the other end of the phone. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not defending the violence. But the editor of the Danish paper wasn\u0026rsquo;t trying to make a point; he was clearly trying to offend people.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eActually, the editor of the Danish paper, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJyllands-Posten\u003c/span\u003e,\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e \u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4693292.stm\"\u003esolicited the cartoons\u003c/a\u003e because Danish author Kare Bluitgen had written a children\u0026rsquo;s book about Mohammed and was unable to find an illustrator.  The editor wanted to see if there was really such a chilling effect against artists that they were afraid to illustrate the book, and solicited artists\u0026rsquo; renditions of Mohammed, without specifying that they take any particular position.  The instruction was to \u0026ldquo;draw the Prophet as they saw him.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat children\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Koran and the Life of Mohammed\u003c/span\u003e, is \u003ca href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2030122,00.html\"\u003enow a best-seller in Denmark\u003c/a\u003e, by the way\u0026ndash;though its illustrator remains anonymous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe controversy arose four months after the Danish paper published the cartoons, and was heightened by Muslim imams who circulated the cartoons along with other, more offensive cartoons which were not published by the paper.  Abboud claims she has been following the controversy since the original publication, and is aware of these other cartoons not being published by the Danish paper.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eZuhdi Jasser, another prominent local Muslim (a politically conservative doctor who previously worked as a doctor at the U.S. Capitol and often writes op-ed pieces in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e) is described in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e piece as not trusting Abboud or the organizations she represents.  Jasser organized a \u0026ldquo;Muslims Against Terrorism\u0026rdquo; rally at which CAIR representatives were not permitted to speak, because of what Jasser describes as their promotion of victimhood within the Muslim-American community.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix weekly paper New Times publishes Mohammed cartoons"},{"content":"Jack Abramoff paid for a 2000 DeLay junket to Scotland, see his American Express statement here. (Via Talking Points Memo.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-tom-delay.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJack Abramoff paid for a 2000 DeLay junket to Scotland, see his American Express statement \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/delay-scotland-trip-subpoena/?resultpage=3\u0026\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_02_26.php#007777\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Tom DeLay"},{"content":"It turns out Katherine Harris has been lying about not knowing what defense contractor MZM wanted from her in return for bundles of $2,000 donations from its employees, which were actually laundered donations from MZM owner Mitchell Wade, who bribed Duke Cunningham. MZM wanted help with a defense appropriation, and Harris attempted to get the money for MZM, though she was ultimately unsuccessful.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-tom-delay.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt turns out Katherine Harris \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27380\"\u003ehas been lying\u003c/a\u003e about not knowing what defense contractor MZM wanted from her in return for bundles of $2,000 donations from its employees, which were actually laundered donations from MZM owner Mitchell Wade, who bribed \u003ca href=\"http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27329\"\u003eDuke Cunningham\u003c/a\u003e.  MZM wanted help with a defense appropriation, and Harris attempted to get the money for MZM, though she was ultimately unsuccessful.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Katherine Harris"},{"content":"The largest known donor to Rick Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity, The Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, is Preferred Real Estate, Inc., which donated $25,000 in 2002. Preferred Real Estate officers and spouses also donated $22,350 to Santorum\u0026rsquo;s re-election campaign and $6,000 to his Political Action Committee, America\u0026rsquo;s Foundation.\nPreferred Real Estate is the developer of the Wharf at Rivertown project in Chester, PA, the site of a former Peco Energy plant, which it bought for $1. Santorum\u0026rsquo;s campaign web site boasts of winning $8.5 million in federal funding for the Preferred Real Estate riverfront project, in the form of a HUD grant. He also obtained another $6 million in highway development earmarks to build access to the riverfront project from Interstate 95 and U.S. 322.\nMore at the Philadelphia Daily News (via Talking Points Memo).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/dirty-politician-rick-santorum.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe largest known donor to Rick Santorum\u0026rsquo;s charity, The Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, is Preferred Real Estate, Inc., which donated $25,000 in 2002.  Preferred Real Estate officers and spouses also donated $22,350 to Santorum\u0026rsquo;s re-election campaign and $6,000 to his Political Action Committee, America\u0026rsquo;s Foundation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePreferred Real Estate is the developer of the Wharf at Rivertown project in Chester, PA, the site of a former Peco Energy plant, which it bought for $1.  Santorum\u0026rsquo;s campaign web site boasts of winning $8.5 million in federal funding for the Preferred Real Estate riverfront project, in the form of a HUD grant.  He also obtained another $6 million in highway development earmarks to build access to the riverfront project from Interstate 95 and U.S. 322.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002854.html\"\u003ePhiladelphia Daily News\u003c/a\u003e (via \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_02_26.php#007780\"\u003eTalking Points Memo\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dirty Politician: Rick Santorum"},{"content":"On September 1, 2005, George W. Bush said, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we\u0026rsquo;re having to deal with it and will.\u0026quot;\nHe was lying. He was specifically warned in no uncertain terms of this possibility, in advance. And the videotaped proof has now been made public:\nIn dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans\u0026rsquo; Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings. Bush didn\u0026rsquo;t ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: \u0026ldquo;We are fully prepared.\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip; the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,\u0026rdquo; National Hurricane Center\u0026rsquo;s Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.\nVia Talking Points Memo.\nUPDATE (March 5, 2006):\nAssociated Press has issued this \u0026ldquo;clarification\u0026rdquo;:\nWASHINGTON - In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President George W. Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.\nThe Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about flood waters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.\nThe day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/bush-was-warned-about-new-orleans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn September 1, 2005, George W. Bush \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4204754.stm\"\u003esaid\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we\u0026rsquo;re having to deal with it and will.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe was lying.  He was specifically warned in no uncertain terms of this possibility, in advance.  And the \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1675984\"\u003evideotaped proof\u003c/a\u003e has now been made public:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans\u0026rsquo; Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings.  \u003cp\u003eBush didn\u0026rsquo;t ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: \u0026ldquo;We are fully prepared.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush was warned about New Orleans levee break"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier reports on the technical details of how about 100 Greek politicians and offices, including the U.S. Embassy in Athens and the Greek prime minister, were illictly tapped. What was originally referred to as \u0026ldquo;malicious code\u0026rdquo; turned out to be eavesdropping code in Vodafone\u0026rsquo;s mobile phone software that was present for law enforcement interception. The same kind of code is present in U.S. phone switches as required by CALEA. As Schneier points out, \u0026ldquo;when you build surveillance mechanisms into communication systems, you invite the bad guys to use those mechanisms for their own purposes.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/illicit-wiretapping-of-greek.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/more_on_greek_w.html\"\u003ereports\u003c/a\u003e on the technical details of how about 100 Greek politicians and offices, including the U.S. Embassy in Athens and the Greek prime minister, were illictly tapped.  What was originally referred to as \u0026ldquo;malicious code\u0026rdquo; turned out to be eavesdropping code in Vodafone\u0026rsquo;s mobile phone software that was present for law enforcement interception.  The same kind of code is present in U.S. phone switches as required by \u003ca href=\"http://www.askcalea.net/\"\u003eCALEA\u003c/a\u003e.  As Schneier points out, \u0026ldquo;when you build surveillance mechanisms into communication systems, you invite the bad guys to use those mechanisms for their own purposes.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Illicit wiretapping of Greek politicians was done through legitimate code"},{"content":"Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has proposed a bill, the \u0026ldquo;Internet Gambling Prohibition Act,\u0026rdquo; to make Internet gambling illegal. The provisions of this act do not require online providers to monitor for violations, but do require them to take action after a court grants an injunction. When the online provider is not directly providing the online gambling service, but a customer is providing it or using it, the online provider is required to remove or disable access to the provider of the gambling service, or remove any hypertext links from its servers to providers of such service, if those links are on servers it controls.\nSo if Google, for example, has advertising links to an online gambling site that was prosecuted under this law, the judge would be able to order Google to remove all links to that site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/03/internet-gambling-prohibition-act.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026327.php\"\u003ehas proposed a bill\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;Internet Gambling Prohibition Act,\u0026rdquo; to make Internet gambling illegal.  The provisions of this act do not require online providers to monitor for violations, but do require them to take action after a court grants an injunction.  When the online provider is not directly providing the online gambling service, but a customer is providing it or using it, the online provider is required to remove or disable access to the provider of the gambling service, or remove any hypertext links from its servers to providers of such service, if those links are on servers it controls.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo if Google, for example, has advertising links to an online gambling site that was prosecuted under this law, the judge would be able to order Google to remove all links to that site.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internet Gambling Prohibition Act allows court-ordered removal of links to violators"},{"content":"ASU\u0026rsquo;s Secular Devils are sponsoring two showings this weekend of Neil Abramson\u0026rsquo;s documentary, \u0026ldquo;Bob Smith, USA\u0026rdquo;:\nBob Smith, USA is a hilarious documentary film that provides a view into American culture through the eyes of seven men named Bob Smith. One of the seven Bob Smiths will be attending the screenings and will discuss the film afterwards.\nThe filmmakers traveled across the United States documenting the lives of the Bob Smiths. Despite their common names, the men vary greatly - from septic tank repairman to yoga instructor; from twenty eight to eighty-eight years old; from Evangelical Christian to Evangelical Atheist. As each man\u0026rsquo;s story unfolds in their own words, intimate portraits are drawn; creating a poetic, non-judgmental and highly entertaining document of American life.The showings are on Friday, March 3 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, March 4 at 2 p.m. in ASU\u0026rsquo;s Life Sciences building, room 191. (Map here.) The screenings are free and open to the public, and there will be a party for Bob Smith on Saturday night, details to be provided at both showings.\nSince the Secular Devils\u0026rsquo; event page says that \u0026ldquo;Normal Bob Smith and his Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls invade downtown Tempe\u0026rdquo; following the Friday night screening, it\u0026rsquo;s a safe bet that the Bob Smith who will be appearing to discuss the film is Normal Bob Smith, who has some entertaining games and pamphlets on his website.\nUPDATE (March 28, 2007): Normal Bob Smith\u0026rsquo;s ASU visit happened to coincide with a Brother Jed preaching tour\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/special-screening-of-bob-smith-usa.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eASU\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clubs/secular/index.html\"\u003eSecular Devils\u003c/a\u003e are sponsoring two showings this weekend of Neil Abramson\u0026rsquo;s documentary, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bobsmithmovie.com/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Bob Smith, USA\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBob Smith, USA is a hilarious documentary film that provides a view into American culture through the eyes of seven men named Bob Smith. One of the seven Bob Smiths will be attending the screenings and will discuss the film afterwards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe filmmakers traveled across the United States documenting the lives of the Bob Smiths. Despite their common names, the men vary greatly - from septic tank repairman to yoga instructor; from twenty eight to eighty-eight years old; from Evangelical Christian to Evangelical Atheist. As each man\u0026rsquo;s story unfolds in their own words, intimate portraits are drawn; creating a poetic, non-judgmental and highly entertaining document of American life.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe showings are on Friday, March 3 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, March 4 at 2 p.m. in ASU\u0026rsquo;s Life Sciences building, room 191.  (Map \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/map/b2.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)  The screenings are free and open to the public, and there will be a party for Bob Smith on Saturday night, details to be provided at both showings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSince the Secular Devils\u0026rsquo; event page says that \u0026ldquo;Normal Bob Smith and his Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls invade downtown Tempe\u0026rdquo; following the Friday night screening, it\u0026rsquo;s a safe bet that the Bob Smith who will be appearing to discuss the film is \u003ca href=\"http://www.normalbobsmith.com/\"\u003eNormal Bob Smith\u003c/a\u003e, who has some entertaining games and pamphlets on his website.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 28, 2007): Normal Bob Smith\u0026rsquo;s ASU visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.normalbobsmith.com/godatemyballs/god9.html\"\u003ehappened to coincide with a Brother Jed preaching tour\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A special screening of \"Bob Smith, USA\""},{"content":"If the online trailer is any guide, then Special looks like it will be a pretty good\u0026ndash;though cringe-inducing\u0026ndash;film. I can\u0026rsquo;t find a release date anywhere, though.\nUPDATE by Jim Lippard (August 2, 2009): Looks like it never saw theatrical release, but I just watched it on Netflix-on-Demand via TiVo HD. It was pretty good\u0026ndash;not fantastic, and indeed occasionally cringe-inducing, but far better than many films that make it to the theaters.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/specioprin-hydrochloride.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf the online trailer is any guide, then \u003ca href=\"http://www.specialthemovie.com/index.html\"\u003eSpecial\u003c/a\u003e looks like it will be a pretty good\u0026ndash;though cringe-inducing\u0026ndash;film.  I can\u0026rsquo;t find a release date anywhere, though.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE by Jim Lippard (August 2, 2009): Looks like it never saw theatrical release, but I just watched it on Netflix-on-Demand via TiVo HD.  It was pretty good\u0026ndash;not fantastic, and indeed occasionally cringe-inducing, but far better than many films that make it to the theaters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Specioprin Hydrochloride"},{"content":"Jane Mayer has written a moving article in The New Yorker about how Albert J. Mora, former general counsel of the U.S. Navy and David Brant, former head of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, took a stand against torture and cruelty in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, but were mostly thwarted by \u0026ldquo;a small group of lawyers closely aligned with Vice President Cheney\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;Cheney\u0026rsquo;s chief of staff David Addington, Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II, Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, and John Yoo.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/those-who-stand-up-against-torture.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJane Mayer has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060227fa_fact\"\u003ea moving article in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about how Albert J. Mora, former general counsel of the U.S. Navy and David Brant, former head of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, took a stand against torture and cruelty in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, but were mostly thwarted by \u0026ldquo;a small group of lawyers closely aligned with Vice President Cheney\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;Cheney\u0026rsquo;s chief of staff David Addington, Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II, Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, and John Yoo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Those who stand up against torture"},{"content":" A scientist walks into a bar. More than 100 people are there, eager to hear all that she has to say and ask a lot of questions. No joke. That's what happens at the Wynkoop Brewing Company here every month when Cafe Scientifique is held.\nMore at News.com. Here's a strategy Randy Olsen might like...\nUPDATE: The international website for Cafe Scientifique is here. There's not one here in Phoenix yet; the closest is in San Diego, which apparently broadcasts live on the Internet.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/scientist-walks-into-bar.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e   \u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA scientist walks into a bar. More than 100 people are there, eager to hear all that she has to say and ask a lot of questions. No joke.\u003c/b\u003e  \u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat's what happens at the Wynkoop Brewing Company here every month when Cafe Scientifique is held.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Science+comes+to+the+masses/2100-11395_3-6043170.html?tag=nefd.lede\"\u003eNews.com\u003c/a\u003e.  Here's a strategy \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/the_image_of_scientists.php\"\u003eRandy Olsen\u003c/a\u003e might like...\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  The international website for Cafe Scientifique is \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafescientifique.org/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  There's not one here in Phoenix yet; the closest is in \u003ca href=\"http://live.helloworld.com/rslive/f_index.jsp?b=don\"\u003eSan Diego\u003c/a\u003e, which apparently broadcasts live on the Internet.","title":"A scientist walks into a bar..."},{"content":"Matt McIntosh has an interesting article on how, if we want different results from our political institutions, we need to change the institutions, not just the players and which party is in power. Requiring spending items to be unbundled and holding individual Congressmen responsible for each item and term limits are two specific suggestions. (Via Catallarchy.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/real-political-reform.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMatt McIntosh has \u003ca href=\"http://www.neolibertarian.net/articles/mcintosh_20060118.aspx\"\u003ean interesting article\u003c/a\u003e on how, if we want different results from our political institutions, we need to change the institutions, not just the players and which party is in power.  Requiring spending items to be unbundled and holding individual Congressmen responsible for each item and term limits are two specific suggestions.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/02/24/structural-changes-strike-at-the-root/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Real political reform"},{"content":"Michelle Malkin argues that the CFIUS process is a \u0026ldquo;rubber stamp\u0026rdquo; and complains about the fact that financing for the Dubai Ports World acquisition of P\u0026amp;O was underwritten by Barclay\u0026rsquo;s and Dubai Islamic Bank, which were \u0026ldquo;both cited as probable conduits for bin Laden money.\u0026quot;\nThis latter point, at least with regard to Barclay\u0026rsquo;s, is about as meaningful as claiming that Verizon Wireless is linked to terrorism because a terrorist used a Verizon Wireless phone, and arguing on that basis that Verizon should not be allowed to conduct business in the United States. Barclay\u0026rsquo;s is a global banking and investment company headquartered in London\u0026rsquo;s Docklands, operating the fourth largest bank in the UK.\nOn the former point, the CFIUS investigation I am most familiar with involved a fairly extensive review, the rejection of one potential acquirer (the application was withdrawn and resubmitted without that acquirer, so doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as a CFIUS rejection), and the implementation of significant and ongoing security restrictions and review prior to approval. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a rubber stamp, though it did seem clear that most of the government agencies involved were pretty clueless about the technical details (with the exception of the representatives from the NSA and some from the DOD, who were very sharp), and the government ended up outsourcing most of the ongoing oversight of the deal to a D.C.-area private contractor after the acquisition was completed.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/malkin-on-ports-and-cfius.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004627.htm\"\u003eMichelle Malkin argues\u003c/a\u003e that the CFIUS process is a \u0026ldquo;rubber stamp\u0026rdquo; and complains about the fact that financing for the \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/ports-acquisition-issue.html\"\u003eDubai Ports World acquisition of P\u0026amp;O\u003c/a\u003e was underwritten by Barclay\u0026rsquo;s and Dubai Islamic Bank, which were \u0026ldquo;both cited as probable conduits for bin Laden money.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis latter point, at least with regard to Barclay\u0026rsquo;s, is about as meaningful as claiming that Verizon Wireless is linked to terrorism because a terrorist used a Verizon Wireless phone, and arguing on that basis that Verizon should not be allowed to conduct business in the United States.  Barclay\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays_Bank\"\u003eis a global banking and investment company\u003c/a\u003e headquartered in London\u0026rsquo;s Docklands, operating the fourth largest bank in the UK.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the former point, the CFIUS investigation I am most familiar with involved a fairly extensive review, the rejection of one potential acquirer (the application was withdrawn and resubmitted without that acquirer, so doesn\u0026rsquo;t count as a CFIUS rejection), and the implementation of significant and ongoing security restrictions and review prior to approval.  It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a rubber stamp, though it did seem clear that most of the government agencies involved were pretty clueless about the technical details (with the exception of the representatives from the NSA and some from the DOD, who were very sharp), and the government ended up outsourcing most of the ongoing oversight of the deal to a D.C.-area private contractor after the acquisition was completed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Malkin on the ports and CFIUS"},{"content":"This is an eye-opening hidden camera investigation showing South Florida police officers\u0026rsquo; completely inappropriate responses to requests for a complaint form. They clearly do not see their role as \u0026ldquo;to protect and to serve\u0026rdquo; the general public. Again and again, the response is \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;ve gotta go through me first,\u0026rdquo; followed by accusations that the person requesting the form is being unreasonable by not wanting to discuss the issue with the front-line officer, and occasionally graduating to threats, insults, or demands to leave. Tallahassee PD, at the beginning, shows the right way to handle the process. (Via The Agitator.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/trying-to-file-complaint-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is an eye-opening \u003ca href=\"http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_033170755.html\"\u003ehidden camera investigation\u003c/a\u003e showing South Florida police officers\u0026rsquo; completely inappropriate responses to requests for a complaint form.  They clearly do not see their role as \u0026ldquo;to protect and to serve\u0026rdquo; the general public.  Again and again, the response is \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;ve gotta go through me first,\u0026rdquo; followed by accusations that the person requesting the form is being unreasonable by not wanting to discuss the issue with the front-line officer, and occasionally graduating to threats, insults, or demands to leave.  Tallahassee PD, at the beginning, shows the right way to handle the process.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026308.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying to file a complaint against a police officer in South Florida"},{"content":"Last weekend, our foster dog Nellie was adopted. We fostered her for the past five months, a little longer than our average foster time of three months per dog since we started fostering dogs in October 2003 for R.E.S.C.U.E.\nNellie was an owner turn-in to Maricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control. She\u0026rsquo;s a very shy dog who did not do well in the noisy kennel environment and was on her way to euthanization. While in our care she did not fully overcome her shyness and skittishness, but she got much better and was very happy in our house. Our house is quieter without her and we miss her, but she found a great home.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nHow do you determine what animal you're going foster?\nKat Lippard (2006-12-09):\nThere are a couple of ways to get a foster through RESCUE. Our first few fosters were dogs we saw on their web site that we liked and thought would fit into our family. Other times, we'd get a call about a dog that had to get into a foster home due to illness (such as kennel cough) and had to leave the boarding facility. Or, the boarding facility was full and a dog needed a foster home. Nellie was with another foster, but was not getting along with one of the resident dogs, so we took her in. We have a few preferences when taking in a new foster - must be dog-friendly and get along with our Shelby - you know she can be picky sometimes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/nellie-adopted.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/796/1440/1600/PB200008.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/796/1440/320/PB200008.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eLast weekend, our foster dog Nellie was adopted.  We fostered her for the past five months, a little longer than our average foster time of three months per dog since we started fostering dogs in October 2003 for \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eR.E.S.C.U.E.\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNellie was an owner turn-in to \u003ca href=\"http://www.maricopa.gov/pets/\"\u003eMaricopa County Animal Care \u0026amp; Control\u003c/a\u003e.  She\u0026rsquo;s a very shy dog who did not do well in the noisy kennel environment and was on her way to euthanization.  While in our care she did not fully overcome her shyness and skittishness, but she got much better and was very happy in our house.  Our house is quieter without her and we miss her, but she found a great home.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nellie adopted"},{"content":"The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (\u0026quot;(ISC)2\u0026quot;)\u0026rsquo;s CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification is the best known information security certification. According to \u0026ldquo;(ISC)2\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s website, all CISSPs \u0026ldquo;are required to commit to fully support\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;(ISC)2\u0026rdquo; Code of Ethics. This code of ethics includes four mandatory canons:\nProtect society, the commonwealth, and the infrastructure. Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally. Provide diligent and competent service to principals. Advance and protect the profession.The second of these canons is spelled out in more detail with a set of bullet points, the first of which is:\nTell the truth; make all stakeholders aware of your actions on a timely basis.Clearly, honesty is a key requirement of this code of ethics.\nAn up-and-coming certificate for information security managers is the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification from the Information Systems Audit and Compliance Association (ISACA). ISACA also has a Code of Professional Ethics, which states that all ISACA certificate holders will comply with seven statements, the third of which is:\n3. Serve in the interest of stakeholders in a lawful and honest manner, while maintaining high standards of conduct and character, and not engage in acts discreditable to the profession.Again, honesty is clearly a key requirement.\nI recently learned that these requirements are not met by a prominent information security professional who frequently speaks at high-profile security conferences, has held the Chief Security Officer position at Exodus, Cable \u0026amp; Wireless, and Savvis, has been Chairman of the Internet Security Alliance, and is Chairman of the FCC\u0026rsquo;s NRIC Homeland Security focus group on cyber security.\n\u0026ldquo;Dr.\u0026rdquo; Bill Hancock has degrees from a diploma mill, has repeatedly told false stories about being a Vietnam war veteran, a Navy SEAL, and a prisoner of war, and has lied about his martial arts expertise.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/cissp-and-cism-code-of-ethics-and-dr.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.isc2.org/\"\u003eInternational Information Systems Security Certification Consortium\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026quot;(ISC)2\u0026quot;)\u0026rsquo;s CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification is the best known information security certification.  According to \u0026ldquo;(ISC)2\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s website, all CISSPs \u0026ldquo;are required to commit to fully support\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;(ISC)2\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/content.cgi?category=12\"\u003eCode of Ethics\u003c/a\u003e.  This code of ethics includes four mandatory canons:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eProtect society, the commonwealth, and the infrastructure.   \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAct honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally.   \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eProvide diligent and competent service to principals.   \u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAdvance and protect the profession.\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eThe second of these canons is spelled out in more detail with a set of bullet points, the first of which is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eTell the truth; make all stakeholders aware of your actions on a timely basis.\u003c/blockquote\u003eClearly, honesty is a key requirement of this code of ethics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn up-and-coming certificate for information security managers is the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.isaca.org/\"\u003eInformation Systems Audit and Compliance Association\u003c/a\u003e (ISACA).  ISACA also has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm?Section=Code_of_Ethics1\u0026Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm\u0026amp;TPLID=14\u0026ContentID=4951\"\u003eCode of Professional Ethics\u003c/a\u003e, which states that all ISACA certificate holders will comply with seven statements, the third of which is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e3. Serve in the interest of stakeholders in a lawful and honest manner, while maintaining high standards of conduct and character, and not engage in acts discreditable to the profession.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAgain, honesty is clearly a key requirement.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI recently learned that these requirements are not met by a prominent information security professional who frequently speaks at high-profile security conferences, has held the Chief Security Officer position at Exodus, Cable \u0026amp; Wireless, and Savvis, has been Chairman of the Internet Security Alliance, and is Chairman of the FCC\u0026rsquo;s NRIC Homeland Security focus group on cyber security.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Dr.\u0026rdquo; Bill Hancock has degrees from a diploma mill, has repeatedly told false stories about being a Vietnam war veteran, a Navy SEAL, and a prisoner of war, and has lied about his martial arts expertise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CISSP and CISM code of ethics and \"Dr.\" Bill Hancock"},{"content":"As someone who has seen the CFIUS process first-hand, I agree with Kevin Drum on the ports issue. This isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of the existing company, the London-based P\u0026amp;O (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.), being replaced by a Dubai company, Dubai Ports World, it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of acquisition. This will likely legally involve the transfer of the assets to a new corporate entity to replace the existing top-level structure of P\u0026amp;O, with a new board of directors, but if it\u0026rsquo;s like the process I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, there may be restrictions on the composition of that board to make sure that U.S. interests are protected. There will probably be few changes in the staff actually performing jobs at the ports, and there will likely be screening requirements for employees as part of the security requirements that the acquirer has agreed to through the CFIUS process. If any of the agreement documents that came out of the CFIUS process are a public record (as was the case when the company I work for was acquired by a Singapore company), we\u0026rsquo;ll be able to see some of the specific requirements that will have to be put in place, which will most likely be greater than the requirements that P\u0026amp;O has today.\nSean Lynch at Catallarchy calls this a win for free trade, which is disputed by The Modulator on the grounds that the acquiring company is owned by a government\u0026ndash;the United Arab Emirates. The alternative acquirer, PSA International of Singapore, is also owned by a government (the Republic of Singapore), through Temasek Holdings. It\u0026rsquo;s clearly not \u0026ldquo;free trade\u0026rdquo; in the sense of a normal voluntary transaction between two private entities both in light of the government ownership and the whole CFIUS process and mandated agreements imposed by the U.S. government.\nUPDATE: Ed Brayton argues against the deal at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and I\u0026rsquo;ve offered some comments there, including this paragraph that I think Sean Lynch would agree with:\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I see what the big deal is about P\u0026amp;O being owned by Dubai Ports World being owned by the Dubai government (the Hong Kong of the United Arab Emirates), vs. P\u0026amp;O being owned by PSA International being owned by Temasek Holdings being owned by the Republic of Singapore\u0026ndash;apart from a general objection to government-owned businesses. I also don\u0026rsquo;t see a big deal in Haier (Chinese company) making Maytag washing machines, or Lenovo making IBM ThinkPads. It seems to me that the more economic interests that cross national boundaries, the less likely we are to have wars.\nUPDATE 2: At least some provisions of the agreement (presumably negotiated as part of the CFIUS process) have come out, and while the DHS described the terms as \u0026ldquo;unprecedented among maritime companies,\u0026rdquo; they sound lax by comparison to the terms that have been used in such agreements for foreign acquisitions of U.S. telecommunications companies. Apparently the Bush administration is more concerned about the flow of information than the movement of physical materials.\nMichael Bains (2006-12-09):\nApparently the Bush administration is more concerned about the flow of information than the movement of physical materials.I think the last 5 years supply plenty of evidence to support that supposition.There is a major political difference between Singapore and Dubai though. It is essential because of the nature of Dubai's Islamist govenment -v- Singapore quasi-socialistic regime: Socialists - at least of the Singaporan variety - are not known as being amongst the world's current leaders in anti-western terrorism. The fact that Dubai is one of America's closest middle-eastern allies in the battle against such doesn't change the political assumptions of extreme anti-islamist Americans though. That little factoid is easily dismissed when fear overrides reason.This observation is from a person who sees much to warrant extra concern when dealing with Islamic governments.I've just seen a story where the Admin is asking Dubai for non-standard assurances in order to let the deal proceed. I'm sure you're aware of the latest developments in this regard, so will just say thanks for providing an alternate view.A little balance in one's POV helps make any decision more coherent and relevant to the issue at hand.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMichael, thanks for your post. I agree with you that the last five years supply plenty of evidence to support the supposition...I'm not entirely clear on the structure of the government in Dubai--I've read that in the UAE, if the federal courts provide no solution then Sharia courts are invoked, but also that Dubai is not part of the UAE federal court system, but operates independently. One website says:\"Laws are issued in the following ways. First consideration is given to federal law, if no solution is provided then to the provisions of Dubai's relevant laws, if still no solution was found, then Sharia law is applied. Though in normal cases only inheritance and family issues are subject to Sharia.\"http://www.dhcc.ae/en/Default.aspx?type=1\u0026id=36\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, TPM recently wrote (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007733.php):\"See the problem here? They aren't just hoisted on their own petard here; the petard is engaging them in an unnatural act, presumably pre-detonation. The White House's whole premise seems to be that the DPW just isn't involved in the security side of port management. Since that's the case, the whole security argument is bogus.But if they need to pledge to cooperate and assist with security and counter-terrorism then clearly they are involved in port security.\"Mr. Marshall is assuming that there are no security considerations for a company that isn't directly involved in the providing of security services, but that's just a mistake. There are security implications in *any* business. P\u0026O is not responsible for providing security to the ports, but the mere fact that the company is operating at the ports means that it has its own internal security to be concerned about. It's not as black-and-white as Mr. Marshall's comment suggests.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSheldon Richman over at Free Association makes a couple salient points here and here, and here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/ports-acquisition-issue.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs someone who has seen the CFIUS process first-hand, I agree with \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_02/008272.php\"\u003eKevin Drum on the ports issue\u003c/a\u003e.  This isn\u0026rsquo;t a matter of the existing company, the London-based \u003ca href=\"http://portal.pohub.com/portal/page?_pageid=71,207172\u0026_dad=pogprtl\u0026amp;_schema=POGPRTL\"\u003eP\u0026amp;O\u003c/a\u003e (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.), being \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ereplaced\u003c/span\u003e by a Dubai company, Dubai Ports World, it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eacquisition\u003c/span\u003e.  This will likely legally involve the transfer of the assets to a new corporate entity to replace the existing top-level structure of P\u0026amp;O, with a new board of directors, but if it\u0026rsquo;s like the process I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, there may be restrictions on the composition of that board to make sure that U.S. interests are protected.  There will probably be few changes in the staff actually performing jobs at the ports, and there will likely be screening requirements for employees as part of the security requirements that the acquirer has agreed to through the CFIUS process.  If any of the agreement documents that came out of the CFIUS process are a public record (as was the case when the company I work for was acquired by a Singapore company), we\u0026rsquo;ll be able to see some of the specific requirements that will have to be put in place, which will most likely be greater than the requirements that P\u0026amp;O has today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSean Lynch at Catallarchy \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/02/21/bush-supports-free-trade-nation-dies-of-shock/\"\u003ecalls this a win for free trade\u003c/a\u003e, which is disputed by \u003ca href=\"http://themodulator.org/archives/002269.html\"\u003eThe Modulator\u003c/a\u003e on the grounds that the acquiring company is owned by a government\u0026ndash;the United Arab Emirates.  The alternative acquirer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.internationalpsa.com/home/default.html\"\u003ePSA International\u003c/a\u003e of Singapore, is also owned by a government (the Republic of Singapore), through Temasek Holdings.  It\u0026rsquo;s clearly not \u0026ldquo;free trade\u0026rdquo; in the sense of a normal voluntary transaction between two private entities both in light of the government ownership and the whole CFIUS process and mandated agreements imposed by the U.S. government.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Ed Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/02/what_am_i_missing.php\"\u003eargues against the deal\u003c/a\u003e at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and I\u0026rsquo;ve offered some comments there, including this paragraph that I think Sean Lynch would agree with:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I see what the big deal is about P\u0026amp;O being owned by Dubai Ports World being owned by the Dubai government (the Hong Kong of the United Arab Emirates), vs. P\u0026amp;O being owned by PSA International being owned by Temasek Holdings being owned by the Republic of Singapore\u0026ndash;apart from a general objection to government-owned businesses. I also don\u0026rsquo;t see a big deal in Haier (Chinese company) making Maytag washing machines, or Lenovo making IBM ThinkPads. It seems to me that the more economic interests that cross national boundaries, the less likely we are to have wars.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eUPDATE 2:  At least some provisions of the agreement (presumably negotiated as part of the CFIUS process) \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5640688,00.html\"\u003ehave come out\u003c/a\u003e, and while the DHS described the terms as \u0026ldquo;unprecedented among maritime companies,\u0026rdquo; they sound lax by comparison to the terms that have been used in such agreements for foreign acquisitions of U.S. telecommunications companies.  Apparently the Bush administration is more concerned about the flow of information than the movement of physical materials.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ports acquisition issue"},{"content":"From the Agitator:\nOn June 2, 2004, police in the the Washington, D.C. exurb of Manassas Park, Virginia brought in a multi-jurisdictional narcotics tax force and officers from several surrounding cities and counties to conduct a massive, 70-90 officer SWAT raid on the Rack n\u0026rsquo; Roll Billiards Club. The raid took place on Ladies\u0026rsquo; Night, a Wednesday. Though the intent of the raid was to collect evidence of drug use and drug distribution by David Ruttenberg, the club\u0026rsquo;s manager, it was conducted under the auspices of an Alcohol Beverage Control inspection. Because ABC is primarily a regulatory agency, the guise of an ABC inspection enabled the raid to take place without a search warrant.\nAfter hours of scouring the club, searching every nook and cranny, and generally turning the place upside down, the only charges to follow against Ruttenberg were for two bottles of beer a distributor had left for sampling that weren\u0026rsquo;t clearly marked \u0026ldquo;SAMPLE.\u0026rdquo; The bar would later be charged with a few other minor offenses: one incident of serving alcohol to a minor, and with several incidents of flashing from customers during Mardi Gras.\nThe account at The Agitator goes on to describe continued police harassment of Ruttenberg. Radley Balko suggests that this all began because David Ruttenberg and a Manassas Park police officer (who is now head of the narcotics task force) had a romantic interest in the same woman, and that the continued harassment is an attempt to find a post facto reason to justify the original outrageous raid. If that\u0026rsquo;s correct, the law enforcement officials responsible for this should not only be fired, they should be jailed.\nUPDATE (December 19, 2006): Things are not looking good for Ruttenberg, as Radley Balko has described. And it looks like there\u0026rsquo;s serious corruption in Manassas Park.\nUPDATE (December 23, 2006): Balko presents evidence that the harrassment of David Ruttenberg has to do with the fact that he\u0026rsquo;s sitting on the prime location for off-track betting in Manassas Park, which could potentially bring in tens of millions of dollars of revenue for the city. The harassment began four months before a referendum on the matter, which was defeated.\nUPDATE (December 31, 2006): Here\u0026rsquo;s video footage that depicts two men openly using cocaine in Ruttenberg\u0026rsquo;s bar. He calls police, who refuse to take witness statements, escort the men outside, and let them go. (More info at The Agitator.)\nUPDATE (January 8, 2007): And here\u0026rsquo;s a link to some more video of harassment.\nUPDATE (January 11, 2007): And here\u0026rsquo;s some more background information on the harassment of David Ruttenberg, where a violent incident at another pool hall across town was added to a report about Rack and Roll.\nUPDATE (September 11, 2007): Radley Balko reports that the appropriately-titled vice mayor of Manassas Park, who also worked as a DJ at Rack and Roll, was encouraging lewd behavior and nudity in the club which he photographed, and which ended up in a file in the possession of the city which was used to motivate officials to go after the club. At the same time, however, the city denied the existence of the file when Ruttenberg inquired after it, and Ruttenberg, to the extent he was aware of the activities in question, attempted to prevent them from happening.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/outrageous-manassas-park-law.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"date\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"extras\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026298.php\"\u003ethe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn June 2, 2004, police in the the Washington, D.C. exurb of Manassas Park, Virginia brought in a multi-jurisdictional narcotics tax force and officers from several surrounding cities and counties to conduct a massive, 70-90 officer SWAT raid on the Rack n\u0026rsquo; Roll Billiards Club. \u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe raid took place on Ladies\u0026rsquo; Night, a Wednesday. Though the intent of the raid was to collect evidence of drug use and drug distribution by David Ruttenberg, the club\u0026rsquo;s manager, it was conducted under the auspices of an Alcohol Beverage Control inspection. Because ABC is primarily a regulatory agency, the guise of an ABC inspection enabled the raid to take place without a search warrant.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Outrageous Manassas Park law enforcement raid on Rack n' Roll Billiards Club"},{"content":"Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, has written an strongly negative review of Daniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s new book, Breaking the Spell. Wieseltier maintains that religion is beyond the scope of scientific examination, and so takes issue with a key aspect of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s project.\nWieseltier\u0026rsquo;s review has been critiqued by Brian Leiter (at Leiter Reports, here), P.Z. Myers (at Pharyngula, here), Taner Edis (at the Secular Outpost, here), and Michael Bains (at Silly Humans, here). I disagree with Bains about the term \u0026ldquo;scientism,\u0026rdquo; even though I am quite sympathetic to \u0026ldquo;naturalized epistemology\u0026rdquo; and giving science a major role in philosophical questions. There is clearly quite a lot of room for disagreement about the idea that science should be the primary mechanism of inquiry in all domains\u0026ndash;most scientists regularly argue that science draws no moral or ethical conclusions, which means they leave that area to philosophy or (a mistake, in my opinion) religion.\nThere is a key passage of Wieseltier\u0026rsquo;s review that I partly agree with:\nIt will be plain that Dennett\u0026rsquo;s approach to religion is contrived to evade religion\u0026rsquo;s substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason.In general, the origin of a belief is irrelevant to its truth or falsity. However, if Dennett\u0026rsquo;s mission is like Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s, to give an account of why people believe in religion in general, rather than to prove that religion is false, then this is not an objection to what Dennett is doing. Further, if the explanation produced is the best explanation around, then that is good reason to believe that explanation (over an explanation that says religion is divinely inspired).\nThe fact is that there are lots of different religious beliefs that people hold, and they contradict each other. We know from the outset that all religions cannot be true\u0026ndash;in fact, the mere existence of the contradictions is sufficient to show that much of the content of most religions must be false. Why people continue to believe it is something that requires explanation.\nIf the best such explanation is a naturalistic one, and that explanation fits the evidence for all religious belief better than supernatural explanations, then that is good reason to favor the naturalistic explanation over the supernatural explanations.\nWieseltier seems to reject \u0026ldquo;inference to the best explanation\u0026rdquo; as a form of reason.\nUPDATE: Dennett has responded with a letter to the New York Times, and Wieseltier responds immediately following.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/leon-wieseltiers-negative-review-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLeon Wieseltier, literary editor of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Republic\u003c/span\u003e, has written \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/books/review/19wieseltier.html?incamp=article_popular_3\"\u003ean strongly negative review\u003c/a\u003e of Daniel Dennett\u0026rsquo;s new book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBreaking the Spell\u003c/span\u003e.  Wieseltier maintains that religion is beyond the scope of  scientific examination, and so takes issue with a key aspect of Dennett\u0026rsquo;s project.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWieseltier\u0026rsquo;s review has been critiqued by Brian Leiter (at Leiter Reports, \u003ca href=\"http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/02/why_review_a_bo.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e), P.Z. Myers (at Pharyngula, \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/give_me_creaturely_over_preach.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e), Taner Edis (at the Secular Outpost, \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/02/dennett-review-in-nyt.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e), and Michael Bains (at Silly Humans, \u003ca href=\"http://sillyhumans.blogspot.com/2006/02/daniel-c-dennett-breaking-spell.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).  I disagree with Bains about the term \u0026ldquo;scientism,\u0026rdquo; even though I am quite sympathetic to \u0026ldquo;naturalized epistemology\u0026rdquo; and giving science a major role in philosophical questions.  There is clearly quite a lot of room for disagreement about the idea that science should be the primary mechanism of inquiry in all domains\u0026ndash;most scientists regularly argue that science draws no moral or ethical conclusions, which means they leave that area to philosophy or (a mistake, in my opinion) religion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere is a key passage of Wieseltier\u0026rsquo;s review that I partly agree with:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt will be plain that Dennett\u0026rsquo;s approach to religion is contrived to evade religion\u0026rsquo;s substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn general, the origin of a belief is irrelevant to its truth or falsity.  However, if Dennett\u0026rsquo;s mission is like Pascal Boyer\u0026rsquo;s, to give an account of why people believe in religion in general, rather than to prove that religion is false, then this is not an objection to what Dennett is doing.  Further, if the explanation produced is the best explanation around, then that is good reason to believe that explanation (over an explanation that says religion is divinely inspired).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe fact is that there are lots of different religious beliefs that people hold, and they contradict each other.  We know from the outset that all religions cannot be true\u0026ndash;in fact, the mere existence of the contradictions is sufficient to show that much of the content of most religions must be false.  Why people continue to believe it is something that requires explanation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf the best such explanation is a naturalistic one, and that explanation fits the evidence for all religious belief better than supernatural explanations, then that is good reason to favor the naturalistic explanation over the supernatural explanations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWieseltier seems to reject \u0026ldquo;inference to the best explanation\u0026rdquo; as a form of reason.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Dennett has responded with \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/books/review/05mail.html\"\u003ea letter to the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, and Wieseltier responds immediately following.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Leon Wieseltier's negative review of Dennett's new book"},{"content":"Talking Points Memo points out that Cheney sent out three surrogates to assign blame to the victim (who then apologized publicly to Cheney!), contrary to Mary Matalin\u0026rsquo;s claim on \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;even though she was surrogate #3!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/moral-cowardice-of-dick-cheney.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_02_19.php#007711\"\u003eTalking Points Memo points out\u003c/a\u003e that Cheney sent out three surrogates to assign blame to the victim (who then apologized publicly to Cheney!), contrary to Mary Matalin\u0026rsquo;s claim on \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;even though she was surrogate #3!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The moral cowardice of Dick Cheney"},{"content":"The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2006) features an article titled \u0026ldquo;Hoaxers, Hackers, and Policymakers: How Junk Science Persuaded the FBI to Divert Terrorism Funding to Fight Hackers\u0026rdquo; by Carolyn Meinel. The descriptive text on the first page (between the article title, subtitle, and author\u0026rsquo;s name) says \u0026ldquo;Hoaxers warned of an imminent and deadly electronic Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the FBI diverted resources and attention away from terrorism and toward fighting hackers. This may have contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Use of critical inquiry and the scientific method could have avoided this misdirection.\u0026quot;\nWhile most of the article appears to me to be accurate and its conclusion about treating claims from self-proclaimed computer security experts with scrutiny is sound, the article itself contains unsubstantiated arguments (in particular the arguments of the title and subheading) and comes from a self-proclaimed hacking expert of questionable credibility.\nMeinel\u0026rsquo;s article is in three sections\u0026ndash;an introductory section about the title, a section about specific claims made by two hackers, and a section on \u0026ldquo;critical analysis of e-terrorism.\u0026rdquo; I find little to criticize in the latter two sections, except for its implication that Peter Neumann\u0026rsquo;s testimony before Congress was unfounded (Neumann is a highly respected expert on computer risks, the editor of the RISKS Digest, and author of the book Computer-Related Risks, 1995, The ACM Press).\nMeinel begins by describing Fred J. Villella bringing hackers \u0026ldquo;Dr. Mudge\u0026rdquo; (Pieter Zatko, though Meinel never mentions his name) and \u0026ldquo;Se7en\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Christian Valor\u0026rdquo;, who was indeed exposed as a chronic fabricator as Meinel claims in the second part of her article) to meetings of federal policymakers where they warned of \u0026ldquo;a looming electronic Pearl Harbor.\u0026rdquo; The most notable such meeting was testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998, where the above-mentioned Neumann testimony took place, and where Mudge testified that he could make the Internet unusable with less than thirty minutes of effort.\nMeinel argues that this testimony \u0026ldquo;may have contributed to an entrapment scheme\u0026rdquo; by the FBI against hacker \u0026ldquo;Chameleon\u0026rdquo; (Marc Maiffret, now \u0026ldquo;Chief Hacking Officer\u0026rdquo; of eEye Digital Security) as a way to show that \u0026ldquo;hackers were actually collaborating with enemies of the U.S.\u0026rdquo; But she provides no evidence of a connection between the testimony and the action.\nShe falsely states that \u0026ldquo;books (Penenberg 2000; Mitnick 2005) hyped the raid [on Maiffret] to say that hackers were in league with al Qaeda.\u0026rdquo; Neither of these two books says that. Adam Penenberg, in his book Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America (with Marc Barry, 2001, Perseus Books), writes that \u0026ldquo;Hackers are always on red alert for the FBI. In fact, when Maiffret was contacted over the Internet by the alleged terrorist Khalid Ibrahim, a member of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant Indian separatist group on the State Department\u0026rsquo;s list of the thirty most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, he assumed Ibrahim worked for the feds.\u0026rdquo; Kevin Mitnick, in his book The Art of Intrusion (2005, Wiley, pp. 32-34), raises the possibility that Khalid Ibrahim was part of an FBI operation, but questions it on the ground that only Maiffret received any money from him. On the other hand, he points out that Maiffret told Wired News \u0026ldquo;he had not provided any government network maps\u0026rdquo; and wonders why, despite his confession to accepting money from an terrorist-connected individual (Mitnick writes \u0026ldquo;foreign terrorist\u0026rdquo;), no charges were ever filed. Then, he writes \u0026ldquo;Perhaps the check wasn\u0026rsquo;t from Khalid after all, but from the FBI.\u0026rdquo; (As an aside, Mitnick\u0026rsquo;s book states that few know the true identity of \u0026ldquo;Chameleon,\u0026rdquo; but Penenberg\u0026rsquo;s book had already published his identity in 2000.) Perhaps Maiffret avoided prosecution by agreeing to work with the FBI, as other hackers have done (such as Justin Tanner Petersen, \u0026ldquo;Agent Steal,\u0026rdquo; whose story is partly told in Jonathan Littman\u0026rsquo;s The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, 1997, Little, Brown).\nThe specific argument of the title and subheading\u0026ndash;that the testimony of these hackers led to a diversion of funding that may have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks\u0026ndash;is stated in a single paragraph in the second column of the first page of the article (p. 32). In that paragraph, Meinel states that cyberspace czar Richard Clarke\u0026rsquo;s formation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) diverted funding increases \u0026ldquo;earmarked against terrorism to hire FBI agents for the hacker beat.\u0026rdquo; This diversion of funds led to only $4.9 million spent by NIPC on counterterrorism, and it therefore lacked the resources to follow up on Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams\u0026rsquo; warning about al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools.\nThis argument assumes that NIPC, rather than the FBI\u0026rsquo;s counterterrorism unit, is the organization which should have followed up on Williams\u0026rsquo; memo. It also overlooks the role of the FBI\u0026rsquo;s incredibly antiquated computer systems, which technophobe FBI Director Louis Freeh had refused to take steps to upgrade (with Congress withholding $60 million in funding for FBI\u0026rsquo;s IT infrastructure between 1998 and 2000 because of its failure to produce a credible upgrade plan). Not until July 2000, when Freeh appointed Bob Dies to begin work on an overhaul, did Freeh address the issue. The result was that the FBI had 42 separate database systems that could not be searched simultaneously and many agents had computers that did not work or could not display images or connect to the Internet. Many agents used home computers in order to receive email photo images of suspects from local police departments. (See the \u0026ldquo;Missing Documents\u0026rdquo; chapter of Ronald Kessler\u0026rsquo;s The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, 2002, St. Martin\u0026rsquo;s Press. Similar observations are made in the \u0026ldquo;9/11\u0026rdquo; chapter of James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s The Bush Betrayal, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan. Bovard cites (p. 27) a Los Angeles Times story that reports the FBI diverting $60 million in funds earmarked for IT upgrades in the year 2000 to be used for staffing and international offices. The fact that the dollar figure is the same in Bovard and Kessler may indicate that Bovard is misdescribing the same $60 million Kessler mentions.) By contrast, NIPC\u0026rsquo;s entire budget (PDF) was under $20 million per year through 2000, and Bush requested a budget of $20.4 million for NIPC in 2001. (This is not to say that NIPC was effectively using what funds it had\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t. But Meinel\u0026rsquo;s complaint that only $4.9 million of NIPC\u0026rsquo;s budget was spent on counterterrorism should be put in context\u0026ndash;that was a quarter or more of its annual budget.)\nThese IT failings and the other failures reported in the 9/11 Commission Report and elsewhere strike me as more plausible reasons for the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s failure to avert the 9/11 attacks than trying to pin it on the hackers who testified before Congress in 1998 about the dangers of cyber attacks. Ironically, in October 2001 an article arguing that the Code Red worm demonstrates that there really are significant risks of Internet-based attacks on U.S. infrastructure (\u0026ldquo;They would be far worse than not being able to make bids on eBay\u0026ndash;potentially affecting product manufacturing and deliveries, bank transactions, telephony and more. Should it occur five years from now, the results could be a lot more severe.\u0026rdquo;) appeared in Scientific American. The author of this article, \u0026ldquo;Code Red for the Web,\u0026rdquo; was Carolyn Meinel.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s more surprising to me that Skeptical Inquirer published an article by Carolyn Meinel at all. Meinel\u0026rsquo;s author description printed in SI states:\nCarolyn Meinel is a consultant and science writer. She has assisted the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with its Intrusion Detection Evaluation Program and its Cyberadversary Workshop, and consults for Systems Advisory Group Enterprises, Inc. (www.sage-inc.com), the Institute for Advanced Technology (www.iat.utexas.edu/), and the Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu/). She may be reached at [email address omitted to prevent spam].Not mentioned are Meinel's books, web pages, and hacker conference appearances to teach hacking skills or her two articles in Scientific American (\"How Hackers Break In... and How They Are Caught\" in October 1998 and \"Code Red for the Web\" in October 2001). The existence of the latter two publications no doubt lends her credibility (and may have helped persuade SI to publish this latest article), but the content of some of her hacker training works and parts of the October 1998 Scientific American article serve to diminish it. The October 2001 article seems pretty accurate to me, and was selected for publication in Matt Ridley's Best American Science Writing 2002 volume. That article, as already observed, does point out the possibility of an \"electronic Pearl Harbor,\" so Meinel avoids self-criticism as being a contributor to 9/11 failures under her own argument only by the month-post-9/11 publication date.\nMeinel has long been a controversial character in hacker circles, as can be seen by Googling her name on the web and Usenet (you can search the latter with Google Groups). She also has a degree of infamy from her former marriage to Scientology critic Keith Henson. Henson, who was successfully prosecuted for \"interfering with a religion\" (Scientology--in part due to an online joke he posted about using a \"Cruise missile\") and fled to Canada, started the L5 Society with Meinel in 1975. In their divorce proceedings, Meinel apparently made charges of child molestation against Henson which were published by Scientology front group \"Religious Freedom Watch\" as a way to \"dead agent\" Henson. Meinel, while supportive of Henson, didn't actually retract the charges, though I took her comments to suggest they were bogus. (UPDATE July 18, 2008: Henson's daughter Val has recently gone public and argues that the charges are true.)\nMeinel had a long-running feud with hacker \"jericho\" (Brian Martin), who runs attrition.org. Martin, as it happens, was once the roommate of phony hacker \"Christian Valor\" (\"Se7en\"), but was also one of the people who exposed his fabrications. In addition to exposing other bogus security experts, his site contains a large collection of criticisms of Meinel, her behavior, and her work. Given the personal nature of many of the criticisms it is difficult to know what, if any, to take seriously, except for those which specifically address her accuracy and knowledge of hacking and network security, such as the critique of her 1998 Scientific American article, \"How Hackers Break In...\", by Fyodor (author of the widely used security port scanning tool, nmap). That article, which may be partly based on a hacker break-in at Meinel's ISP, Rt66 Internet (in which case \"Dogberry\" may be John Mocho of Rt66), contains a number of questionable statements. For example, the scenario describes the firewall of \"refrigerus.com\" responding to a port scan by launching an attack in response, as though this is a good form of security, and the description of the attack itself suggests that either the description is inaccurate or the attack itself is incredibly naive. The author description on \"How Hackers Break In...\" stated that Meinel has an \"upcoming book, War in Cyberspace\" that \"examines Internet warfare.\" As of today, there appears to be no such book.\nIn 1998, a hacking group that called itself \"Hacking for Girliez\" or HFG defaced a number of websites, including that of the New York Times. Brian Martin believes he was on the list of suspects. A number of HFG defacements made reference to Meinel (which I interpret to mean that HFG had a grudge against her rather than that she was involved), and she was herself questioned by the FBI and asked to take a polygraph, which she wisely declined (given the lack of empirical support for the validity of the polygraph).\nIn 2001, Meinel's techbroker.com website was compromised and a piece of software placed on it. A message was sent to the Vuln-Dev mailing list under Meinel's name (apparently a forgery), claiming that the software was an exploit for a vulnerability in the wu-ftpd FTP server; but in actuality it was malware which would attempt to delete files.\nGiven the lack of support for the title claims in this article and the lack of Meinel's expertise in computer security, I don't think Skeptical Inquirer should have published it, at least in the form it appeared.\nMeinel, it should be clear, is not an advocate of illegal hacking--she seems to be fairly emphatic about not breaking into machines unless you own them or have permission to do so. But at the same time, she seems to give a wink and a nod to those who are going to break into the machines of others and has been billed as a \"walking script kiddie factory.\" She also seems to advocate offensive measures as a mode of defense (as described in her 1998 Scientific American article), which is not responsible computer security advocacy.\nUPDATE (March 4, 2006): Today I obtained a copy of Gerald Posner's book Why America Slept (2004, Random House), which is cited by Meinel at the end of her paragraph claiming that NIPC budget diversion to cyber warfare was the cause of 9/11 failures. The concluding sentence of that paragraph reads: \"Therefore, the FBI lacked the resources to follow up on an agent's warning of al Qaeda members at U.S. flight schools (Posner 2003).\"\nThe relevant section of Posner's book is pp. 169-173. It in no way supports what Meinel has written--Posner makes no reference to NIPC in his entire book, and he enumerates several failures on the part of the FBI with respect to Ken Williams' memo--the lack of communication with the CIA, the failure of middle management of the FBI to recognize the significance of the memo, and lack of resources within the FBI: \"The FBI considered the Phoenix idea [to check out the thousands of students at the flight schools] too costly and time consuming, and a few even expressed concerns that such a probe might be criticized in Congress as racial profiling.\"\nThe main thesis of Meinel's article is not supported by the facts, and she has misrepresented at least three of the sources she cites--Gerald Posner's book, Kevin Mitnick's book, and Adam Penenberg and Marc Barry's book. That's sloppy work that doesn't deserve publication.\nUPDATE (February 19, 2007): I thought I had already added a link to the April 2006 discussion of Meinel's article by Jeff Nathan at the Arbor Networks blog, but I hadn't. This remedies that oversight. There's a good exchange between Nathan and Meinel in the comments.\nAlso, Skeptical Inquirer published my letter to the editor regarding Meinel in the July/August 2006 issue (p. 62) along with a response from Meinel.\nUPDATE (August 8, 2010): James Bamford's most recent book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (2008) contains more detail about intelligence screwups that, had they been prevented, might have averted all or part of the attacks of 9/11--but NIPC's budget had nothing to do with it. Lippard (2006-12-09):\nI brought my blog post to CSICOP's attention, and they requested that I submit a letter to the editor, which I've done. So there should be at least one letter to the editor in the next issue or two.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/controversial-hacker-publishes-cover.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest issue of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e (March/April 2006) features an article titled \u0026ldquo;Hoaxers, Hackers, and Policymakers: How Junk Science Persuaded the FBI to Divert Terrorism Funding to Fight Hackers\u0026rdquo; by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nndb.com/people/511/000029424/\"\u003eCarolyn Meinel\u003c/a\u003e.  The descriptive text on the first page (between the article title, subtitle, and author\u0026rsquo;s name) says \u0026ldquo;Hoaxers warned of an imminent and deadly electronic Pearl Harbor.  Consequently, the FBI diverted resources and attention away from terrorism and toward fighting hackers.  This may have contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks.  Use of critical inquiry and the scientific method could have avoided this misdirection.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nWhile most of the article appears to me to be accurate and its conclusion about treating claims from self-proclaimed computer security experts with scrutiny is sound, the article itself contains unsubstantiated arguments (in particular the arguments of the title and subheading) and comes from a self-proclaimed hacking expert of questionable credibility.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMeinel\u0026rsquo;s article is in three sections\u0026ndash;an introductory section about the title, a section about specific claims made by two hackers, and a section on \u0026ldquo;critical analysis of e-terrorism.\u0026rdquo;  I find little to criticize in the latter two sections, except for its implication that Peter Neumann\u0026rsquo;s testimony before Congress was unfounded (Neumann is a highly respected expert on computer risks, the editor of the \u003ca href=\"http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks\"\u003eRISKS Digest\u003c/a\u003e, and author of the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eComputer-Related Risks\u003c/span\u003e, 1995, The ACM Press).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMeinel begins by describing Fred J. Villella bringing hackers \u0026ldquo;Dr. Mudge\u0026rdquo; (\u003ca href=\"http://infosecuritymag.techtarget.com/ss/0,295796,sid6_iss143_art300,00.html\"\u003ePieter Zatko\u003c/a\u003e, though Meinel never mentions his name) and \u0026ldquo;Se7en\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Christian Valor\u0026rdquo;, who was indeed \u003ca href=\"http://www.mattwelch.com/OJRsave/OJRsave/HackerSe7en.htm\"\u003eexposed as a chronic fabricator\u003c/a\u003e as Meinel claims in the second part of her article) to meetings of federal policymakers where they warned of \u0026ldquo;a looming electronic Pearl Harbor.\u0026rdquo;  The most notable such meeting was testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998, where the above-mentioned Neumann testimony took place, and where Mudge testified that he could make the Internet unusable with less than thirty minutes of effort.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nMeinel argues that this testimony \u0026ldquo;may have contributed to an entrapment scheme\u0026rdquo; by the FBI against hacker \u0026ldquo;Chameleon\u0026rdquo; (Marc Maiffret, now \u0026ldquo;Chief Hacking Officer\u0026rdquo; of eEye Digital Security) as a way to show that \u0026ldquo;hackers were actually collaborating with enemies of the U.S.\u0026rdquo;  But she provides no evidence of a connection between the testimony and the action.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nShe falsely states that \u0026ldquo;books (Penenberg 2000; Mitnick 2005) hyped the raid [on Maiffret] to say that hackers were in league with al Qaeda.\u0026rdquo;  Neither of these two books says that.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.mediabistro.com/spotlight/archives/00/12/07/\"\u003eAdam Penenberg, in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSpooked: Espionage in Corporate America\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (with Marc Barry, 2001, Perseus Books), writes that \u0026ldquo;Hackers are always on red alert for the FBI. In fact,    when Maiffret was contacted over the Internet by the alleged terrorist Khalid    Ibrahim, a member of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant Indian separatist group on    the State Department\u0026rsquo;s list of the thirty most dangerous terrorist organizations    in the world, he assumed Ibrahim worked for the feds.\u0026rdquo;  Kevin Mitnick, in his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Art of Intrusion\u003c/span\u003e (2005, Wiley, pp. 32-34), raises the possibility that Khalid Ibrahim was part of an FBI operation, but questions it on the ground that only Maiffret received any money from him.  On the other hand, he points out that Maiffret told Wired News \u0026ldquo;he had not provided any government network maps\u0026rdquo; and wonders why, despite his confession to accepting money from an terrorist-connected individual (Mitnick writes \u0026ldquo;foreign terrorist\u0026rdquo;), no charges were ever filed.   Then, he writes \u0026ldquo;Perhaps the check wasn\u0026rsquo;t from Khalid after all, but from the FBI.\u0026rdquo;  (As an aside, Mitnick\u0026rsquo;s book states that few know the true identity of \u0026ldquo;Chameleon,\u0026rdquo; but Penenberg\u0026rsquo;s book had already published his identity in 2000.)  Perhaps Maiffret avoided prosecution by agreeing to work with the FBI, as other hackers have done (such as Justin Tanner Petersen, \u0026ldquo;Agent Steal,\u0026rdquo; whose story is partly told in Jonathan Littman\u0026rsquo;s\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen\u003c/span\u003e, 1997, Little, Brown).\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe specific argument of the title and subheading\u0026ndash;that the testimony of these hackers led to a diversion of funding that may have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks\u0026ndash;is stated in a single paragraph in the second column of the first page of the article (p. 32).  In that paragraph, Meinel states that cyberspace czar Richard Clarke\u0026rsquo;s formation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) diverted funding increases \u0026ldquo;earmarked against terrorism to hire FBI agents for the hacker beat.\u0026rdquo;  This diversion of funds led to only $4.9 million spent by NIPC on counterterrorism, and it therefore lacked the resources to follow up on Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams\u0026rsquo; warning about al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThis argument assumes that NIPC, rather than the FBI\u0026rsquo;s counterterrorism unit, is the organization which should have followed up on Williams\u0026rsquo; memo.  It also overlooks the role of the FBI\u0026rsquo;s incredibly antiquated computer systems, which technophobe FBI Director Louis Freeh had refused to take steps to upgrade (with Congress withholding $60 million in funding for FBI\u0026rsquo;s IT infrastructure between 1998 and 2000 because of its failure to produce a credible upgrade plan).  Not until July 2000, when Freeh appointed Bob Dies to begin work on an overhaul, did Freeh address the issue.  The result was that the FBI had 42 separate database systems that could not be searched simultaneously and many agents had computers that did not work or could not display images or connect to the Internet.  Many agents used home computers in order to receive email photo images of suspects from local police departments.  (See the \u0026ldquo;Missing Documents\u0026rdquo; chapter of Ronald Kessler\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI\u003c/span\u003e, 2002, St. Martin\u0026rsquo;s Press.  Similar observations are made in the \u0026ldquo;9/11\u0026rdquo; chapter of James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/span\u003e, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan.  Bovard cites (p. 27) a \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c/span\u003e story that reports the FBI diverting $60 million in funds earmarked for IT upgrades in the year 2000 to be used for staffing and international offices.  The fact that the dollar figure is the same in Bovard and Kessler may indicate that Bovard is misdescribing the same $60 million Kessler mentions.)  By contrast, \u003ca href=\"https://www.gao.gov/assets/aimd-00-92r.pdf\"\u003eNIPC\u0026rsquo;s entire budget\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) was under $20 million per year through 2000, and Bush requested a budget of $20.4 million for NIPC in 2001.  (This is not to say that NIPC was effectively using what funds it had\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/6152000_cg.htm\"\u003eit wasn\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/a\u003e.  But Meinel\u0026rsquo;s complaint that only $4.9 million of NIPC\u0026rsquo;s budget was spent on counterterrorism should be put in context\u0026ndash;that was a quarter or more of its annual budget.)\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThese IT failings and the other failures reported in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e9/11 Commission Report\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and elsewhere strike me as more plausible reasons for the U.S. government\u0026rsquo;s failure to avert the 9/11 attacks than trying to pin it on the hackers who testified before Congress in 1998 about the dangers of cyber attacks.  Ironically, in October 2001 an article arguing that the Code Red worm demonstrates that there really are significant risks of Internet-based attacks on U.S. infrastructure (\u0026ldquo;They would be far worse than not being able to make bids on eBay\u0026ndash;potentially affecting product manufacturing and deliveries, bank transactions, telephony and more.  Should it occur five years from now, the results could be a lot more severe.\u0026rdquo;) appeared in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eScientific American\u003c/span\u003e.  The author of this article, \u0026ldquo;Code Red for the Web,\u0026rdquo; was Carolyn Meinel.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s more surprising to me that \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e published an article by Carolyn Meinel at all.  Meinel\u0026rsquo;s author description printed in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSI\u003c/span\u003e states:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Controversial hacker publishes cover story in Skeptical Inquirer"},{"content":"I recommend Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Security Catalyst\u0026rdquo; podcasts, which can be subscribed to at no charge via iTunes or Yahoo Podcasts. He\u0026rsquo;s got additional information and links related to the shows at the Security Catalyst website.\nMichael, who I met a few years back through a consulting engagement that was a \u0026ldquo;death-march project,\u0026rdquo; is a sharp, witty, and well-spoken advocate of and educator for good computer security.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/security-catalyst-podcast.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI recommend Michael Santarcangelo\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Security Catalyst\u0026rdquo; podcasts, which can be subscribed to at no charge via \u003cA HREF = \"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=95568073\"\u003eiTunes\u003c/A\u003e or \u003cA HREF = \"http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=cf82adc909033628dfd68ead760680c2\"\u003eYahoo Podcasts\u003c/A\u003e.  He\u0026rsquo;s got additional information and links related to the shows at the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.securitycatalyst.com/\"\u003eSecurity Catalyst website\u003c/A\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMichael, who I met a few years back through a consulting engagement that was a \u0026ldquo;death-march project,\u0026rdquo; is a sharp, witty, and well-spoken advocate of and educator for good computer security.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Security Catalyst podcast"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve posted a commentary on the exchange between Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick about this particular argument from Carrier. The post is at the Secular Outpost.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/carrier-and-wanchick-debate-argument.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve posted \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/02/carrier-and-wanchick-debate-argument.html\"\u003ea commentary\u003c/a\u003e on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/carrier-wanchick/\"\u003eexchange between Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick\u003c/a\u003e about this particular argument from Carrier.  The post is at the \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/\"\u003eSecular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carrier and Wanchick debate: Argument from Mind-Brain Dysteleology"},{"content":"Some very interesting photos of old subway lines, former stables, and other semi-abandoned tunnels underneath London. (At BLDGBLOG.)\nUPDATE (May 21, 2007): Nick Catford\u0026rsquo;s Subterranea Britannica is the place to go for photos and information about underground sites in Britain.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/underground-london.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/london-topological.html\"\u003every interesting photos of old subway lines\u003c/a\u003e, former stables, and other semi-abandoned tunnels underneath London.  (At BLDGBLOG.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 21, 2007):  Nick Catford\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.subbrit.org.uk/\"\u003eSubterranea Britannica\u003c/a\u003e is the place to go for photos and information about underground sites in Britain.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Underground London"},{"content":"The first Coyote Carnival, a collection of posts from Arizona blogs, may be found here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/coyote-carnival-1.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe first Coyote Carnival, a collection of posts from Arizona blogs, may be found \u003cA HREF = \"http://arizona.typepad.com/coyote_carnival/2006/02/st_edition.html\"\u003ehere.\u003c/A\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coyote Carnival #1"},{"content":"Bruce Schneier reports on how a house in Valparaiso, Indiana was incorrectly valued at $400 million due to a single-keystroke error by an \u0026ldquo;outside user\u0026rdquo; of Porter County\u0026rsquo;s appraisal records. This incorrect valuation led to an expectation of $8 million in property taxes due from that homeowner, which led to a erroneous increase of budgets and even distribution of funds. Now the Porter County Treasurer has had to ask 18 governmental units to return funds\u0026ndash;the city of Valparaiso and Valparaiso Community School Corp. have been asked to return $2.7 million, which will leave the school system with a $200,000 budget shortfall.\nThe number of errors here is huge\u0026ndash;first of all, an external user shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have access to change budget data at all, let alone by a typo which caused the user to invoke \u0026ldquo;an assessment program written in 1995\u0026rdquo; which \u0026ldquo;is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.\u0026rdquo; Second, there should have been checks on the data to identify anomalies like a house suddenly jumping in value to $400 million. Third, there should have been checks on the accuracy of budget numbers before the disbursement of funds. And I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m only scratching the surface\u0026ndash;it sounds like they\u0026rsquo;ve got some serious IT infrastructure issues.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/database-error-causes-unbalanced.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/database_error.html\"\u003ereports on how a house in Valparaiso, Indiana was incorrectly valued at $400 million\u003c/a\u003e due to a single-keystroke error by an \u0026ldquo;outside user\u0026rdquo; of Porter County\u0026rsquo;s appraisal records.  This incorrect valuation led to an expectation of $8 million in property taxes due from that homeowner, which led to a erroneous increase of budgets and even distribution of funds.  Now the Porter County Treasurer has had to ask 18 governmental units to return funds\u0026ndash;the city of Valparaiso and Valparaiso Community School Corp. have been asked to return $2.7 million, which will leave the school system with a $200,000 budget shortfall.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe  number of errors here is huge\u0026ndash;first of all, an external user shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have access to change budget data at all, let alone by a typo which caused the user to invoke \u0026ldquo;an assessment program written in 1995\u0026rdquo; which \u0026ldquo;is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.\u0026rdquo;  Second, there should have been checks on the data to identify anomalies like a house suddenly jumping in value to $400 million.  Third, there should have been checks on the accuracy of budget numbers before the disbursement of funds.  And I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m only scratching the surface\u0026ndash;it sounds like they\u0026rsquo;ve got some serious IT infrastructure issues.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Database error causes unbalanced budget"},{"content":"Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office accepts comments on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for additional rule-making and exemptions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has given up on participating in the process, which they consider too broken to be worthwhile\u0026ndash;consumer interests are simply not taken into consideration.\nThe RIAA\u0026rsquo;s most recent filing (PDF) in this process shows that they\u0026rsquo;ve reversed their position since testifying before the Supreme Court last November in the MGM v. Grokster case, when attorney Don Verrilli stated (PDF, p. 12):\nThe record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it\u0026rsquo;s been on their website for some time now, that it\u0026rsquo;s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you\u0026rsquo;ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.The RIAA\u0026rsquo;s position in the new filing (PDF, p. 22 footnote 46) is:\nNor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even \u0026ldquo;routinely\u0026rdquo; granted, [\u0026hellip;] necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.That is, they are claiming that they\u0026rsquo;ve given permission for such use, and have the right to take it away at any time, because it is not a matter of fair use. The filing points out that this is the 2003 position of the Register of Copyrights, who is quoted (p.22):\nproponents have not established that space-shifting or platform-shifting is a noninfringing use.On the same page (22), the filing states:\nSimilarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use\u0026hellip;.(Somewhat less information may be found at the EFF\u0026rsquo;s blog entry which pointed me to this filing, Deep Links.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/riaa-burning-cds-to-mp3s-is-not-fair.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEvery three years, the U.S. Copyright Office accepts comments on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for additional rule-making and exemptions. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/\"\u003eElectronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e (EFF) \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004212.php\"\u003ehas given up on participating in the process\u003c/a\u003e, which they consider too broken to be worthwhile\u0026ndash;consumer interests are simply not taken into consideration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe RIAA\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/reply/11metalitz_AAP.pdf\"\u003emost recent filing\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) in this process shows that they\u0026rsquo;ve reversed their position since testifying before the Supreme Court last November in the MGM v. Grokster case, when attorney Don Verrilli \u003ca href=\"http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/04-480.pdf\"\u003estated\u003c/a\u003e (PDF, p. 12):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it\u0026rsquo;s been on their website for some time now, that it\u0026rsquo;s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you\u0026rsquo;ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe RIAA\u0026rsquo;s position in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/reply/11metalitz_AAP.pdf\"\u003enew filing\u003c/a\u003e (PDF, p. 22 footnote 46) is:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eNor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even \u0026ldquo;routinely\u0026rdquo; granted, [\u0026hellip;] necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGrokster\u003c/span\u003e case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThat is, they are claiming that they\u0026rsquo;ve given permission for such use, and have the right to take it away at any time, because it is not a matter of fair use. The filing points out that this is the 2003 position of the Register of Copyrights, who is quoted (p.22):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eproponents have not established that space-shifting or platform-shifting is a noninfringing use.\u003c/blockquote\u003eOn the same page (22), the filing states:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSimilarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use\u0026hellip;.\u003c/blockquote\u003e(Somewhat less information may be found at the EFF\u0026rsquo;s blog entry which pointed me to this filing, \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php\"\u003eDeep Links\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIAA: Burning CDs to MP3s is not fair use"},{"content":"Martin Geddes has a nice commentary on the vagueness of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; and its implications (I previously commented on the subject here). He divides net neutrality advocates into bottoms, middles, and tops (based on layers, not giving vs. receiving). \u0026ldquo;Bottomistas\u0026rdquo; want neutrality on offered underlying protocols and aren\u0026rsquo;t happy just getting IPv4 (or just IPv6), and at the extreme would want a choice between ATM, Ethernet, their own Layer 2 protocol. The \u0026ldquo;middlemen\u0026rdquo; distinguish \u0026ldquo;raw IP\u0026rdquo; (which backbones carry, or perhaps which ISPs use internally) from \u0026ldquo;retail IP\u0026rdquo; (what the end user customer gets), and endorse neutrality on the latter. The \u0026ldquo;top\u0026rdquo; are comfortable with the kind of filtering done by many retail ISPs (e.g., port 25 filtering), but oppose filtering directed at particular service providers or applications.\nGeddes argues that the Internet isn\u0026rsquo;t really a thing, but a set of agreements between different entities that are each doing their own thing with their own property\u0026ndash;and that \u0026ldquo;Internet Governance\u0026rdquo; itself doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much sense outside of IP address allocation and routing.\nHe raises a host of interesting questions, like:\nIs neutrality a wholesale or a retail problem? What if the access infrastructure owner offers “neutral” IP connectivity, but no retail provider chooses to pass that on directly to the public without layering on some filtering and price discrimination?and\nOh, and what’s so special about the Internet? Do other IP-based networks need neutrality principles? Do any networks? Should more network industries be forced to forego “winner takes all” rewards? Google looks awfully dominant at adverts, doesn’t it… I wonder if that ad network needs a bit of “neutrality”?These are the sorts of issues that need to be considered in formulating any kind of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that can actually be put into a statute or regulatory framework, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem likely to me that it will be easy to come up with one that has broad appeal and doesn\u0026rsquo;t trample on private contract and property rights. I think Geddes may be right when he says neutrality is \u0026ldquo;an output, not an input.\u0026quot;\nHis post is well worth reading, as is the commentary from Brett Watson.\nUPDATE: Geddes has more at Telepocalypse.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/geddes-on-net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMartin Geddes has \u003ca href=\"http://www.circleid.com/posts/real_network_neutrality_please_stand_up/\"\u003ea nice commentary on the vagueness of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and its implications (I previously commented on the subject \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/net-neutrality.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e).  He divides net neutrality advocates into bottoms, middles, and tops (based on layers, not giving vs. receiving).  \u0026ldquo;Bottomistas\u0026rdquo; want neutrality on offered underlying protocols and aren\u0026rsquo;t happy just getting IPv4 (or just IPv6), and at the extreme would want a choice between ATM, Ethernet, their own Layer 2 protocol.  The \u0026ldquo;middlemen\u0026rdquo; distinguish \u0026ldquo;raw IP\u0026rdquo; (which backbones carry, or perhaps which ISPs use internally) from \u0026ldquo;retail IP\u0026rdquo; (what the end user customer gets), and endorse neutrality on the latter.  The \u0026ldquo;top\u0026rdquo; are comfortable with the kind of filtering done by many retail ISPs (e.g., port 25 filtering), but oppose filtering directed at particular service providers or applications.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGeddes argues that the Internet isn\u0026rsquo;t really a thing, but a set of agreements between different entities that are each doing their own thing with their own property\u0026ndash;and that \u0026ldquo;Internet Governance\u0026rdquo; itself doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much sense outside of IP address allocation and routing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe raises a host of interesting questions, like:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIs neutrality a wholesale or a retail problem? What if the access infrastructure owner offers “neutral” IP connectivity, but no retail provider chooses to pass that on directly to the public without layering on some filtering and price discrimination?\u003c/blockquote\u003eand\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOh, and what’s so special about the Internet? Do other IP-based networks need neutrality principles? Do any networks? Should more network industries be forced to forego “winner takes all” rewards? Google looks awfully dominant at adverts, doesn’t it… I wonder if that ad network needs a bit of “neutrality”?\u003c/blockquote\u003eThese are the sorts of issues that need to be considered in formulating any kind of \u0026ldquo;net neutrality\u0026rdquo; that can actually be put into a statute or regulatory framework, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem likely to me that it will be easy to come up with one that has broad appeal and doesn\u0026rsquo;t trample on private contract and property rights.  I think Geddes may be right when he says neutrality is \u0026ldquo;an output, not an input.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHis post is well worth reading, as is the commentary from Brett Watson.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Geddes has \u003ca href=\"http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000870.html\"\u003emore\u003c/a\u003e at \u003ca href=\"http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000872.html\"\u003eTelepocalypse\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Geddes on net neutrality"},{"content":"\nRichard Cheese has released a \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; album, The Sunny Side of the Moon. I was given a copy yesterday by Cheese\u0026rsquo;s alter-ego, Mark Davis, a former Phoenician who I\u0026rsquo;ve known since grade school but hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen in person for a few years. I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to most of the tracks (and have all of his other albums, Lounge Against the Machine, Tuxicity, I\u0026rsquo;d Like A Virgin, and Aperitif for Destruction), and it\u0026rsquo;s a better deal than most \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; albums. There\u0026rsquo;s the standard bonus track not found elsewhere, but there are also several new \u0026ldquo;big band\u0026rdquo; re-recordings (completely new versions) and a couple of remixes. And it sounds like he may be doing some shows again in the near future.\nMark has another project in the works, Revolution Central, but he hasn\u0026rsquo;t been able to spend much time on it lately, so there\u0026rsquo;s still a lot of those annoying \u0026ldquo;coming soon\u0026rdquo;-type pages.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/new-richard-cheese-album.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000E1157W.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000E1157W.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRichard Cheese has released a \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; album, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E1157W/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Sunny Side of the Moon\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/a\u003e  I was given a copy yesterday by Cheese\u0026rsquo;s alter-ego, Mark Davis, a former Phoenician who I\u0026rsquo;ve known since grade school but hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen in person for a few years. I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to most of the tracks (and have all of his other albums, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLounge Against the Machine\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTuxicity\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d Like A Virgin\u003c/span\u003e, and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAperitif for Destruction\u003c/span\u003e), and it\u0026rsquo;s a better deal than most \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo; albums.  There\u0026rsquo;s the standard bonus track not found elsewhere, but there are also several new \u0026ldquo;big band\u0026rdquo; re-recordings (completely new versions) and a couple of remixes.  And it sounds like he may be doing some shows again in the near future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMark has another project in the works, \u003ca href=\"http://www.revolutioncentral.com/\"\u003eRevolution Central\u003c/a\u003e, but he hasn\u0026rsquo;t been able to spend much time on it lately, so there\u0026rsquo;s still a lot of those annoying \u0026ldquo;coming soon\u0026rdquo;-type pages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Richard Cheese album"},{"content":"Via Steve\u0026rsquo;s No Direction Home Page:\nApparently presidential wiretapping is frowned upon\u0026ndash;when it\u0026rsquo;s done by Clinton.\nSome of the reader comments are hilarious, viz.:\n\u0026ldquo;Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back?\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;As quietly as possible (although it sometimes breaks out into the open, usually with the sound of gunfire and the death of innocents), a \u0026ldquo;shadow government\u0026rdquo; has been set up all around us my friend. It\u0026rsquo;s foundation is not the constitution, but Executive Orders, Presidential Procalamations, Secret Acts, and Emergency Powers.\u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;This is wherein the danger lies in the precedent set by the Clinton criminal administration. God only knows who will be in power next, but there are no checks and balances anymore. This is exactly the SORT of thing I\u0026rsquo;ve been protesting all along. Libs just don\u0026rsquo;t see this!\u0026quot;\nHistorical Comments cowmix (2006-12-09):\nBetter yet... check out what this very influential law professor wrote about the presidency and the law back in 2000.http://tinyurl.com/9hfb3\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/secret-fisa-court.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://radio.weblogs.com/0100191/2006/02/13.html#a5453\"\u003eSteve\u0026rsquo;s No Direction Home Page\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently presidential wiretapping is frowned upon\u0026ndash;when it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a27337612f5.htm\"\u003edone by Clinton\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the reader comments are hilarious, viz.:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;As quietly as possible (although it sometimes breaks out into the open, usually with the sound of gunfire and the death of innocents), a \u0026ldquo;shadow government\u0026rdquo; has been set up all around us my friend. It\u0026rsquo;s foundation is not the constitution, but Executive Orders, Presidential Procalamations, Secret Acts, and Emergency Powers.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is wherein the danger lies in the precedent set by the Clinton criminal administration. God only knows who will be in power next, but there are no checks and balances anymore. This is exactly the SORT of thing I\u0026rsquo;ve been protesting all along. Libs just don\u0026rsquo;t see this!\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Secret FISA Court"},{"content":"A \u0026ldquo;Terrorism\u0026rdquo; bill in UK Parliament, as amended in the House of Lords on January 25, 2006, looks like it could have considerable impact on ISPs. The first section of the bill, titled \u0026ldquo;Encouragement of terrorism,\u0026rdquo; makes it a crime to publish a statement or cause another to publish a statement with the intended effect (or with recklessness to the possibility of such an effect) of directly or indirectly encouraging members of the public \u0026ldquo;to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism or Convention offences.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Indirect encouragement\u0026rdquo; means \u0026ldquo;the making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it.\u0026quot;\nThe second section of the bill, titled \u0026ldquo;Dissemination of terrorist publications,\u0026rdquo; is more problematic. It makes it a crime to disseminate terrorist publications \u0026ldquo;with the intention of directly or indirectly encouraging or inducing the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, or of providing information with a view to its use in the commission or preparation of such acts\u0026rdquo; (or with recklessness to the possibility of such an effect). The definition of \u0026ldquo;dissemination of terrorist publications\u0026rdquo; is extremely broad, and includes those who \u0026ldquo;provide a service to others that enables them to obtain, read, listen to, or look at such a publication, or to acquire it by means of a gift, sale, or loan\u0026rdquo; and anyone who \u0026ldquo;transmits the content of such a publication electronically\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;has such a publication in possession with a view to its becoming the subject of conduct\u0026rdquo; falling within any of the preceding sections (including transmission).\nThis means that mere possession of such material isn\u0026rsquo;t a crime, but possession with intent to transmit (e.g., hosting or having it in a location shared via P2P) is a crime, as is the transmission itself (if done with intent or recklessness).\nThe proposed statute provides that someone accused of this crime has an affirmative defense by showing that the material does not express their views and did not have their endorsement and that it was \u0026ldquo;clear, in all circumstances of the conduct\u0026rdquo; that those two conditions were met\u0026ndash;except in the case of a notification from a constable in section 3 (which applies sections 1 and 2 to \u0026ldquo;Internet activity\u0026rdquo;).\nThis notification provision is similar in many respects to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States\u0026ndash;if a constable provides notification to a \u0026ldquo;relevant person\u0026rdquo; that he is hosting \u0026ldquo;terrorist publications,\u0026rdquo; that person has two working days to take down the material, or else it is then deemed to have endorsed the publication (unless they have a \u0026ldquo;reasonable excuse\u0026rdquo; for their failure to take it down). Unlike the DMCA, there is no counter-notice provision.\nThe section about Internet activity doesn\u0026rsquo;t define how the constable determines who to notify, or who is responsible for material located downstream of an ISP. If providers are responsible for anything downstream, then this could force an upstream provider to blackhole a server IP that provides many websites to many customers because of illicit content provided by one person. It\u0026rsquo;s also not clear whether a provider could be held responsible for material that it transmits but does not host\u0026ndash;in which case this would force ISPs operating in the UK into acting as managed content filtering service providers for the UK government any time a constable designates online material as a \u0026ldquo;terrorist publication.\u0026quot;\nThe offense carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.\nHistorical Comments spyder (2006-12-09):\nI can only guess, but somewhere in the law, there must be a very clearly defined semiotic for the term \"terrorism.\" To leave that term open-ended is extraordinarily dangerous, as it allows governmental entities to decide what is or what is not a perceived threat that creates a coercive force applied to policies, populations, or actions. The fact that one can access the manifestos of various groups and individuals online, from any number of sources, cached or not, suggests that one person's terrorism is another freedom fighting. One could even take this to further illogical extremes and suggest that the blueprint of the Project for the New American Century for the US's future and the Strategic Defense Statement are representative of terrorism in terms of favoring use of nuclear weapons in pre-emptive strikes on populations to change the will of leadership of nations perceived as threats. This sort of law is bad in so very many ways.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/uk-terrorism-bill-appears-to-impact.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldbills/069/2006069.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Terrorism\u0026rdquo; bill\u003c/a\u003e in UK Parliament, as amended in the House of Lords on January 25, 2006, looks like it could have considerable impact on ISPs.  The first section of the bill, titled \u0026ldquo;Encouragement of terrorism,\u0026rdquo; makes it a crime to publish a statement or cause another to publish a statement with the intended effect (or with recklessness to the possibility of such an effect) of directly or indirectly encouraging members of the public \u0026ldquo;to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism or Convention offences.\u0026rdquo;  \u0026ldquo;Indirect encouragement\u0026rdquo; means \u0026ldquo;the making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe second section of the bill, titled \u0026ldquo;Dissemination of terrorist publications,\u0026rdquo; is more problematic.  It makes it a crime to disseminate terrorist publications \u0026ldquo;with the intention of directly or indirectly encouraging or inducing the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, or of providing information with a view to its use in the commission or preparation of such acts\u0026rdquo; (or with recklessness to the possibility of such an effect).  The definition of \u0026ldquo;dissemination of terrorist publications\u0026rdquo; is extremely broad, and includes those who \u0026ldquo;provide a service to others that enables them to obtain, read, listen to, or look at such a publication, or to acquire it by means of a gift, sale, or loan\u0026rdquo; and anyone who \u0026ldquo;transmits the content of such a publication electronically\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;has such a publication in possession with a view to its becoming the subject of conduct\u0026rdquo; falling within any of the preceding sections (including transmission).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis means that mere possession of such material isn\u0026rsquo;t a crime, but possession with intent to transmit (e.g., hosting or having it in a location shared via P2P) is a crime, as is the transmission itself (if done with intent or recklessness).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe proposed statute provides that someone accused of this crime has an affirmative defense by showing that the material does not express their views and did not have their endorsement \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eand \u003c/span\u003ethat it was \u0026ldquo;clear, in all circumstances of the conduct\u0026rdquo; that those two conditions were met\u0026ndash;except in the case of a notification from a constable in section 3 (which applies sections 1 and 2 to \u0026ldquo;Internet activity\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis notification provision is similar in many respects to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States\u0026ndash;if a constable provides notification to a \u0026ldquo;relevant person\u0026rdquo; that he is hosting \u0026ldquo;terrorist publications,\u0026rdquo; that person has two working days to take down the material, or else it is then deemed to have endorsed the publication (unless they have a \u0026ldquo;reasonable excuse\u0026rdquo; for their failure to take it down).  Unlike the DMCA, there is no counter-notice provision.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe section about Internet activity doesn\u0026rsquo;t define how the constable determines who to notify, or who is responsible for material located downstream of an ISP.  If providers are responsible for anything downstream, then this could force an upstream provider to blackhole a server IP that provides many websites to many customers because of illicit content provided by one person.  It\u0026rsquo;s also not clear whether a provider could be held responsible for material that it transmits but does not host\u0026ndash;in which case this would force ISPs operating in the UK into acting as managed content filtering service providers for the UK government any time a constable designates online material as a \u0026ldquo;terrorist publication.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe offense carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ctable width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003ctable cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003ctable cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"UK Terrorism Bill appears to impact ISPs"},{"content":"Now that Howard Stern has gone to Sirius Satellite Radio and been replaced in the Phoenix market by Adam Carolla, the station has changed its name from \u0026ldquo;The Zone\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;Free FM\u0026rdquo; (apparently intended to distinguish itself from pay satellite radio\u0026ndash;the result is that it makes me think of Howard Stern every time I hear the name).\nI don\u0026rsquo;t have satellite radio in my car, so I occasionally listen to \u0026ldquo;Free FM,\u0026rdquo; though I believe I\u0026rsquo;ll discontinue that habit. Today on the way to lunch I heard an incredibly obnoxious and offensive commercial\u0026ndash;the most blatant Christian evangelizing I have ever heard on a non-Christian radio station.\nThe spot began by saying something like \u0026ldquo;Have you ever seen a dead animal in the road and wondered what it was thinking?\u0026rdquo; (No, as a matter of fact, I haven\u0026rsquo;t.) It went on to say that being in the \u0026ldquo;middle of the road\u0026rdquo; is not where God wants you to be, and you need to choose to be on one side or the other, that God has a plan for you, etc. Listeners were directed to Groundwire.net for more information. The spot I heard was apparently a 30-second variant of this spot called \u0026ldquo;The Squirrel.\u0026rdquo; It was offensive on multiple levels\u0026ndash;the evangelizing, the horrible attempt at being cool, and the implication that animals get hit by cars out of their own stupidity (as opposed to ignorance) or inability to make decisions.\nGroundwire.net is an apparently new ministry of Sean Dunn of Champion Ministries, based in Castle Rock, CO. I don\u0026rsquo;t know anything about his theology, but his marketing is apparently supposed to be hip and edgy. His website has a bogus story about Albert Einstein which falsely portrays him as a theist (and suggests with its close, \u0026ldquo;IT IS TIME FOR THE CHRISTIANS TO BE HEARD,\u0026rdquo; that he was an advocate of Christianity). This story is a piece of nonsense that has been circulating the Internet\u0026ndash;so Dunn\u0026rsquo;s not only incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, he\u0026rsquo;s presenting an email legend as though it\u0026rsquo;s his own material.\nEinstein, by the way, was an atheist or agnostic.\nUPDATE (May 12, 2008): A 1954 letter from Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind says:\nThe word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.\n\u0026hellip;\nFor me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything \u0026lsquo;chosen\u0026rsquo; about them.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThe DC \"Free FM\" station (which I stopped listening to immediately after Stern left--and by the way, what a fucking Orwellian name!) used to play 60-second radio spots of some local church dude during Howard's show where he would moralize and go on about Jesus in glowing phrases and always end with, \"not a sermon, just a thought.\" I would always think, \"That was a god-damned sermon, you asshole!\"Oh, and speaking of Stern, I used to wonder whether or not his arguments with Tom, the general manager, were just supposed to be schtick (sp?), but it's clear from his show, now, that it never was. It's amazing how much better it is now that he can actually do what he wants to do without worrying whether or not Tom is going to come in and tell him he can't. Awesome show.\nspyder (2006-12-09):\n\"Have you ever seen a dead animal in the road and wondered what it was thinking?\"Are we to assume that no longer living things continue to think after they die?? Are we also to assume that this god guy is so heartless and lacking in compassion that he chooses to allow his \"creations\" to be killed indiscriminately by non-living entities???\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/offensive-radio.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that Howard Stern has gone to Sirius Satellite Radio and been replaced in the Phoenix market by Adam Carolla, the station has changed its name from \u0026ldquo;The Zone\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;Free FM\u0026rdquo; (apparently intended to distinguish itself from pay satellite radio\u0026ndash;the result is that it makes me think of Howard Stern every time I hear the name).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t have satellite radio in my car, so I occasionally listen to \u0026ldquo;Free FM,\u0026rdquo; though I believe I\u0026rsquo;ll discontinue that habit.  Today on the way to lunch I heard an incredibly obnoxious and offensive commercial\u0026ndash;the most blatant Christian evangelizing I have ever heard on a non-Christian radio station.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe spot began by saying something like \u0026ldquo;Have you ever seen a dead animal in the road and wondered what it was thinking?\u0026rdquo; (No, as a matter of fact, I haven\u0026rsquo;t.)  It went on to say that being in the \u0026ldquo;middle of the road\u0026rdquo; is not where God wants you to be, and you need to choose to be on one side or the other, that God has a plan for you, etc.  Listeners were directed to Groundwire.net for more information.  The spot I heard was apparently a 30-second variant of \u003ca href=\"mms://media.winworld.cc/groundwire/GW_416_The_Squirrel.mp3\"\u003ethis spot\u003c/a\u003e called \u0026ldquo;The Squirrel.\u0026rdquo;  It was offensive on multiple levels\u0026ndash;the evangelizing, the horrible attempt at being cool, and the implication that animals get hit by cars out of their own stupidity (as opposed to ignorance) or inability to make decisions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGroundwire.net is an apparently new ministry of Sean Dunn of Champion Ministries, based in Castle Rock, CO.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know anything about his theology, but his marketing is apparently supposed to be hip and edgy.  His website has a \u003ca href=\"http://groundwire.net/enewsletters/doesevilexist.cfm\"\u003ebogus story about Albert Einstein\u003c/a\u003e which falsely portrays him as a theist (and suggests with its close, \u0026ldquo;IT IS TIME FOR THE CHRISTIANS TO BE HEARD,\u0026rdquo; that he was an advocate of Christianity).  This story is \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp\"\u003ea piece of nonsense\u003c/a\u003e that has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/e/einstein-god.htm\"\u003ecirculating the Internet\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;so Dunn\u0026rsquo;s not only incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, he\u0026rsquo;s presenting an email legend as though it\u0026rsquo;s his own material.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEinstein, by the way, was \u003ca href=\"http://jeromekahn123.tripod.com/thinkersonreligion/id8.html\"\u003ean atheist or agnostic\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (May 12, 2008): A \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/einstein_on_gods_and_judaism.php\"\u003e1954 letter from Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind says\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eFor me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything \u0026lsquo;chosen\u0026rsquo; about them.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Offensive radio"},{"content":"Larry Lessig\u0026rsquo;s blog has linked to an article by Bill Thompson on the BBC\u0026rsquo;s website arguing for \u0026ldquo;net neutrality,\u0026rdquo; a position that favors FCC regulations to prohibit providers from blocking access to competitors\u0026rsquo; services and (in some cases, as in Thompson\u0026rsquo;s) prohibit them from charging content providers for access to different classes of service.\nI agree that providers shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to block access to competitors\u0026rsquo; services (except, e.g., when necessary for security reasons, or as part of a service like content filtering being provided to a customer who wants it\u0026ndash;but see below for my opinion on putting the FCC in charge of enforcement), but I don\u0026rsquo;t think I agree on the latter point. Thompson argues that classes of service beyond the distinctions which providers currently offer based on overall bandwidth are unnecessary. But he\u0026rsquo;s clearly wrong on that point\u0026ndash;as more and more services which are sensitive to latency are added to the network (like real-time voice and video), the argument for putting those services into a higher class of service becomes stronger. Given the fact that there are currently several million compromised machines which are regularly used to engage in denial of service attacks, it is trivial for ordinary Internet bandwidth to be saturated\u0026ndash;taking anything riding over that bandwidth out of service.\nMore and more people are depending on Internet access for voice services, including emergency 911 service. If those services are set up without separating them from ordinary Internet traffic in some way, the risk is created that those services may be unavailable when critically needed. Throwing more bandwidth at the problem doesn\u0026rsquo;t help when you\u0026rsquo;re also throwing more bandwidth to that same set of compromised machines, which can multiply that added bandwidth in an attack. One way or another\u0026ndash;and likely through a combination of methods, including better filtering mechanisms and separation of different kinds of services into separate virtual channels\u0026ndash;action needs to be taken to protect critical services from such attacks.\nOne thing that tends to be glossed over by proponents of \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; is that the most likely way of the policy being enforced is through regulatory action by the FCC. That, I think, is a huge mistake\u0026ndash;these are the same people who can\u0026rsquo;t create regulations to enforce a relatively simple statute like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) without creating loopholes for telemarketers that are not permitted by the statute (e.g., allowing prerecorded or automated voice messages to deliver advertisements when there\u0026rsquo;s an existing business relationship), and the same people who think it\u0026rsquo;s more important to take action in response to carbon-copied indecency complaints from the Parents Television Council than to take action against telemarketers actively engaged in fraud.\nAdam Thierer of the Cato Institute makes some excellent arguments against putting \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; into effect through FCC regulation. Part of the problem is the vagueness of what\u0026rsquo;s being asked for. If it\u0026rsquo;s going to be set in place through the law, I would strongly favor that it be done as simply as possible through a statute that gives a private right of action (through injunctive relief or civil penalties for each day that access to a service is blocked for illegitimate reasons) and leaves the FCC out of it. The worst possible thing that could happen would be for the FCC to be given authority to maintain standards of access and turn it into an authority to maintain standards of content\u0026ndash;and if you look at who\u0026rsquo;s running the Commission and how they deal and are planning to deal with content in other realms, you can see that this is a real concern.\nDisclosure: I work in network security for a global telecommunications company\u0026ndash;one which is not an RBOC or cable provider. Our network (like that, I suspect, of most major Internet backbone providers) uses classes of service internally to differentiate voice, video, IP-VPN, and ordinary IP traffic. If the network didn\u0026rsquo;t use classes of service, the more sensitive classes of traffic would be vulnerable to periodic disruption by Internet denial of service attacks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/net-neutrality.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003317.shtml\"\u003eLarry Lessig\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e has linked to \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700430.stm\"\u003ean article by Bill Thompson on the BBC\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e arguing for \u0026ldquo;net neutrality,\u0026rdquo; a position that favors FCC regulations to prohibit providers from blocking access to competitors\u0026rsquo; services and (in some cases, as in Thompson\u0026rsquo;s) prohibit them from charging content providers for access to different classes of service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI agree that providers shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to block access to competitors\u0026rsquo; services (except, e.g., when necessary for security reasons, or as part of a service like content filtering being provided to a customer who wants it\u0026ndash;but see below for my opinion on putting the FCC in charge of enforcement), but I don\u0026rsquo;t think I agree on the latter point.  Thompson argues that classes of service beyond the distinctions which providers currently offer based on overall bandwidth are unnecessary.  But he\u0026rsquo;s clearly wrong on that point\u0026ndash;as more and more services which are sensitive to latency are added to the network (like real-time voice and video), the argument for putting those services into a higher class of service becomes stronger.  Given the fact that there are currently several million compromised machines which are regularly used to engage in denial of service attacks, it is trivial for ordinary Internet bandwidth to be saturated\u0026ndash;taking anything riding over that bandwidth out of service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore and more people are depending on Internet access for voice services, including emergency 911 service.  If those services are set up without separating them from ordinary Internet traffic in some way, the risk is created that those services may be unavailable when critically needed.  Throwing more bandwidth at the problem doesn\u0026rsquo;t help when you\u0026rsquo;re also throwing more bandwidth to that same set of compromised machines, which can multiply that added bandwidth in an attack.  One way or another\u0026ndash;and likely through a combination of methods, including better filtering mechanisms and separation of different kinds of services into separate virtual channels\u0026ndash;action needs to be taken to protect critical services from such attacks.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne thing that tends to be glossed over by proponents of \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; is that the most likely way of the policy being enforced is through regulatory action by the FCC.  That, I think, is a huge mistake\u0026ndash;these are the same people who can\u0026rsquo;t create regulations to enforce a relatively simple statute like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) without creating loopholes for telemarketers that are not permitted by the statute (e.g., allowing prerecorded or automated voice messages to deliver advertisements when there\u0026rsquo;s an existing business relationship), and the same people who think it\u0026rsquo;s more important to take action in response to carbon-copied indecency complaints from the Parents Television Council than to take action against telemarketers actively engaged in fraud.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdam Thierer of the Cato Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-507es.html\"\u003emakes some excellent arguments\u003c/a\u003e against putting \u0026ldquo;Net Neutrality\u0026rdquo; into effect through FCC regulation.  Part of the problem is the vagueness of what\u0026rsquo;s being asked for.  If it\u0026rsquo;s going to be set in place through the law, I would strongly favor that it be done as simply as possible through a statute that gives a private right of action (through injunctive relief or civil penalties for each day that access to a service is blocked for illegitimate reasons) and leaves the FCC out of it.  The worst possible thing that could happen would be for the FCC to be given authority to maintain standards of access and turn it into an authority to maintain standards of content\u0026ndash;and if you look at who\u0026rsquo;s running the Commission and \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/30/fcc_indecency/index_np.html\"\u003ehow they deal and are planning to deal with content in other realms\u003c/a\u003e, you can see that this is a real concern.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDisclosure:  I work in network security for a global telecommunications company\u0026ndash;one which is not an RBOC or cable provider.  Our network (like that, I suspect, of most major Internet backbone providers) uses classes of service internally to differentiate voice, video, IP-VPN, and ordinary IP traffic.  If the network didn\u0026rsquo;t use classes of service, the more sensitive classes of traffic would be vulnerable to periodic disruption by Internet denial of service attacks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Net Neutrality"},{"content":"Dan Savage has a great op-ed at The New York Times on these two movies, neither of which he\u0026rsquo;s seen. A key paragraph, in which Savage points out the inconsistency of evangelical Christians who have complained about gay actor Chad Allen portraying a missionary in the latter movie:\nSometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don\u0026rsquo;t think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren\u0026rsquo;t actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one? ","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/dan-savage-on-brokeback-mountain-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDan Savage has \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/opinion/10savage.html?incamp=article_popular\"\u003ea great op-ed at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e on these two movies, neither of which he\u0026rsquo;s seen.  A key paragraph, in which Savage points out the inconsistency of evangelical Christians who have complained about gay actor Chad Allen portraying a missionary in the latter movie:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eSometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don\u0026rsquo;t think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren\u0026rsquo;t actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one? \u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dan Savage on Brokeback Mountain and End of the Spear"},{"content":"Security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier gave a talk yesterday to the ACLU Washington\u0026rsquo;s membership conference at which he argued that massive automated wiretapping generates too many false alarms to be useful, as described in the Seattle Times. As a commenter on Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog notes, mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, both of which I highly recommend), writing in a New York Times op-ed titled \u0026ldquo;Panning for Terrorists,\u0026rdquo; makes the same point.\nThe problem is essentially the same one that makes it pointless to engage in programs of blanket drug-testing of grade school children or mandatory HIV testing in order to obtain a marriage license\u0026ndash;the population being tested contains such a small number of people who meet the criteria being tested for, which means that even a highly accurate test returns vastly more false positives than true positives.\nPaulos points out that a 99-percent-accurate sorting mechanism for detecting terrorist conversations, on a population of 300 million Americans that includes one-in-a-million with terrorist ties (300) will identify 297 of them, along with 3 million innocent Americans. That\u0026rsquo;s 297 true positives and 3 million false positives, producing a new sample population that is .009% terrorists and 99.99% innocent Americans who may be wrongly investigated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/schneier-and-poulos-on-automated.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSecurity and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/speaking_at_acl.html\"\u003egave a talk yesterday\u003c/a\u003e to the ACLU Washington\u0026rsquo;s membership conference at which he argued that massive automated wiretapping generates too many false alarms to be useful, as described in the \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002800247_aclu12m.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSeattle Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  As a commenter on Schneier\u0026rsquo;s blog notes, mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInnumeracy\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Mathematician Plays the Stock Market\u003c/span\u003e, both of which I highly recommend), writing in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12read2.html?ex=1297486800\u0026amp;en=57c39e2d24391f08\u0026amp;ei=5088\u0026amp;partner=rssnyt\u0026amp;emc=rss\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e op-ed\u003c/a\u003e titled \u0026ldquo;Panning for Terrorists,\u0026rdquo; makes the same point.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nThe problem is essentially the same one that makes it pointless to engage in programs of blanket drug-testing of grade school children or mandatory HIV testing in order to obtain a marriage license\u0026ndash;the population being tested contains such a small number of people who meet the criteria being tested for, which means that even a highly accurate test returns vastly more false positives than true positives.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nPaulos points out that a 99-percent-accurate sorting mechanism for detecting terrorist conversations, on a population of 300 million Americans that includes one-in-a-million with terrorist ties (300) will identify 297 of them, along with 3 million innocent Americans.  That\u0026rsquo;s 297 true positives and 3 million false positives, producing a new sample population that is .009% terrorists and 99.99% innocent Americans who may be wrongly investigated.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Schneier and Paulos on automated wiretapping"},{"content":"As you already know if you pay attention to the mainstream media, VP Dick Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old man with a shotgun while hunting quail with him in Texas. His hunting partner, Harry Whittington, is in stable condition in a hospital in Corpus Christi, after being sprayed in the face (fortunately not in the eyes) and chest with shotgun pellets.\nWhittington, a lawyer who was appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush to the Texas Funeral Services Commission, now has a great story to tell his grandchildren.\n(BTW, the title is a reference to a song here.)\nUPDATE: Pharyngula points out that the type of \u0026ldquo;hunting\u0026rdquo; Cheney engaged in back in 2003 involved having pen-raised animals released for his shooting pleasure. 500 farm-raised pheasants were released for the Cheney party\u0026rsquo;s entertainment, and they killed at least 417 of them, along with an unknown number of captive mallard ducks. I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen an indication that this quail hunting incident was of pen-raised quail, but that seems to be common.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nYou did notice that the links for the \"ducks-in-a-barrel\" hunting were from 2003, didn't you?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nActually, I didn't. Thanks for pointing that out, I will correct this post.\nAnonymous (2006-12-09):\nYeah, I almost did the same thing; someone else had to point the date of the Pittsburgh story to me. :) Nice blog, by the way.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/dick-is-killer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs you already know if you pay attention to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/12/cheney.ap/index.html\"\u003ethe mainstream media\u003c/a\u003e, VP Dick Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old man with a shotgun while hunting quail with him in Texas.  His hunting partner, Harry Whittington, is in stable condition in a hospital in Corpus Christi, after being sprayed in the face (fortunately not in the eyes) and chest with shotgun pellets.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhittington, a lawyer who was appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush to the Texas Funeral Services Commission, now has a great story to tell his grandchildren.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(BTW, the title is a reference to a song \u003ca href=\"http://www.thepartyparty.com/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/these_guys_at_the_top_are_desp.php\"\u003ePharyngula points out\u003c/a\u003e that the type of \u0026ldquo;hunting\u0026rdquo; Cheney engaged in back in 2003 involved having pen-raised animals released for his shooting pleasure.  500 farm-raised pheasants were released for the Cheney party\u0026rsquo;s entertainment, and they killed at least 417 of them, along with an unknown number of captive mallard ducks.  I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen an indication that this quail hunting incident was of pen-raised quail, but that \u003ca href=\"http://www.dto.com/hunting/article.jsp?articleid=8\"\u003eseems to be common\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Dick is a Killer\""},{"content":"Today would be Darwin\u0026rsquo;s 197th birthday\u0026hellip; as part of the Darwin week events at Arizona State University, tomorrow is a public lecture on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution in America: World Views in Conflict\u0026rdquo; by Regents Professor Geoffrey A. Clark of the ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change. The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Murdock Hall, room 101 (I remember that room well from my undergraduate days in computer science).\nThe event is sponsored by the Secular Freethought Society (the \u0026ldquo;Secular Devils\u0026rdquo;), which has a 2006 event calendar online.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/happy-197th-to-charles-darwin.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday would be Darwin\u0026rsquo;s 197th birthday\u0026hellip; as part of the Darwin week events at Arizona State University, tomorrow is a public lecture on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution in America: World Views in Conflict\u0026rdquo; by Regents Professor \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clas/shesc/faculty/clarkg.htm?Name\"\u003eGeoffrey A. Clark\u003c/a\u003e of the ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change.  The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Murdock Hall, room 101 (I remember that room well from my undergraduate days in computer science).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe event is sponsored by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clubs/secular/index.html\"\u003eSecular Freethought Society\u003c/a\u003e (the \u0026ldquo;Secular Devils\u0026rdquo;), which has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clubs/secular/projects.html\"\u003e2006 event calendar online\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy 197th to Charles Darwin!"},{"content":"It seems that when police themselves are demonstrating (off-duty NYPD officers at rallies and protests regarding a contract dispute with the city), they don\u0026rsquo;t care for the standard ways that police deal with protesters. NY police and the Police Benevolent Association are suing the NYPD for \u0026ldquo;spying\u0026rdquo; and videotaping them, and for intimidation tactics.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/police-protest-police-behavior-at.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt seems that when \u003ca href=\"http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/02/if-youve-done-nothing-wrong-youve-got.html\"\u003epolice themselves are demonstrating\u003c/a\u003e (off-duty NYPD officers at rallies and protests regarding a contract dispute with the city), they don\u0026rsquo;t care for the standard ways that police deal with protesters.  NY police and the Police Benevolent Association are suing the NYPD for \u0026ldquo;spying\u0026rdquo; and videotaping them, and for intimidation tactics.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Police protest police behavior at police demonstration"},{"content":"While we\u0026rsquo;re legislating what abortion facilities must tell patients about fetal pain, how about also requiring them to tell them that fetuses aborted before the \u0026ldquo;age of accountability\u0026rdquo; are guaranteed entry to heaven, while those which are born who grow up to reach such an age may end up spending eternity in hell (not to mention that such unwanted children may be more likely to become criminals)?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/fetal-pain.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile we\u0026rsquo;re legislating what abortion facilities must tell patients about \u003ca href=\"http://www.ampainsoc.org/pub/bulletin/jul03/article1.htm\"\u003efetal pain\u003c/a\u003e, how about also requiring them to tell them that fetuses aborted before the \u0026ldquo;age of accountability\u0026rdquo; are guaranteed entry to heaven, while those which are born who grow up to reach such an age may end up spending eternity in hell (not to mention that such unwanted children may be \u003ca href=\"http://www.nber.org/papers/w8004\"\u003emore likely to become criminals\u003c/a\u003e)?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fetal pain"},{"content":"From your cousin Vito by way of jwz.\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nSome relevant linx:http://forum.newspaperindex.comhttp://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20060204http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10\u0026categ_id=5\u0026article_id=21654http://www.muslimrefusenik.comhttp://www.iranian.com/Azizi/2006/February/Cartoons/index.htmlhttp://tinyurl.com/dl2dmhttp://suralikeit.comhttp://www.apostatesofislam.com/http://www.faithfreedom.org/http://www.secularislam.orghttp://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/islam/http://islamreview.org/http://www.geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/islam.html\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNice set of links--thanks, Solan!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/cartoon-on-muslim-cartoon-controversy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.jwz.org/images/mohammed.gif\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.jwz.org/images/mohammed.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eFrom \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eyour cousin Vito\u003c/span\u003e by way of \u003ca href=\"http://jwz.livejournal.com/598268.html\"\u003ejwz\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSolan\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSome relevant linx:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://forum.newspaperindex.com\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20060204\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10\u0026categ_id=5\u0026article_id=21654\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.muslimrefusenik.com\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.iranian.com/Azizi/2006/February/Cartoons/index.html\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://tinyurl.com/dl2dm\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://suralikeit.com\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.apostatesofislam.com/\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.faithfreedom.org/\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.secularislam.org\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/islam/\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://islamreview.org/\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/islam.html\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eNice set of links--thanks, Solan!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e","title":"Cartoon on the Muslim cartoon controversy"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;you can walk into mirrors!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/advantage-of-not-having-soul.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;you can \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/natural-history-of-mirrors.html\"\u003ewalk into mirrors\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An advantage of not having a soul..."},{"content":"A few recent things I\u0026rsquo;ve read, from an advocate of presuppositionalism, from philosopher Evan Fales, and from a book by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, combined to lead me to propose an experimental test of the claim that atheists don\u0026rsquo;t really exist\u0026ndash;that we all believe in God, but have a second-order self-deceptive belief that we don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God. Unfortunately, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the test is likely to work (I haven\u0026rsquo;t noticed myself believing in God while riding as a passenger in a car watching the landscape go by), but this illustrates the kind of empirical work that could be done by those who claim to advocate \u0026ldquo;theistic science.\u0026quot;\nIt seems to me the real self-deception is on the part of those who claim to advocate theistic science but not even make any attempt to do it.\nHistorical Comments spyder (2006-12-09):\nThese would be the same sort of people who would suggest that a person who swore blasphemously by taking the name of god or jesus in \"vain\" must believe in the divine because they said it. \"God damn it\" becomes validation of the hidden belief of an athiest??? mmmm\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/my-contribution-to-theistic-science.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few recent things I\u0026rsquo;ve read, from an advocate of presuppositionalism, from philosopher Evan Fales, and from a book by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, combined to lead me to \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/02/empirical-test-of-existence-of-sensus.html\"\u003epropose an experimental test of the claim that atheists don\u0026rsquo;t really exist\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;that we all believe in God, but have a second-order self-deceptive belief that we don\u0026rsquo;t believe in God.  Unfortunately, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the test is likely to work (I haven\u0026rsquo;t noticed myself believing in God while riding as a passenger in a car watching the landscape go by), but this illustrates the kind of empirical work that could be done by those who claim to advocate \u0026ldquo;theistic science.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems to me the real self-deception is on the part of those who claim to advocate theistic science but not even make any attempt to do it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My contribution to \"theistic science\""},{"content":"George Deutsch is a 24-year-old Texas A\u0026amp;M University graduate in journalism (class of 2003) who was appointed by the White House to the press office of NASA headquarters after his stint as an intern working in the \u0026ldquo;war room\u0026rdquo; of the Bush 2004 reelection campaign. He has gotten some well-deserved press lately for the fact that, despite having no science background, he apparently has had the authority to tell senior scientists at NASA such as Dr. James Hansen what they can and cannot say to the press.\nIn October 2005, he told a NASA contractor working on an educational website about Einstein for middle-school students that he must add the word \u0026ldquo;theory\u0026rdquo; after every occurrence of the phrase \u0026ldquo;Big Bang,\u0026rdquo; because the Big Bang \u0026ldquo;is not proven fact; it is opinion. [\u0026hellip;] It is not NASA\u0026rsquo;s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator. [\u0026hellip;] This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.\u0026rdquo; As others have noted, Deutsch not only doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand what the word \u0026ldquo;theory\u0026rdquo; means, his knowledge of theology seems pretty weak\u0026ndash;the Big Bang is commonly used as an argument for the existence of God (e.g., William Lane Craig\u0026rsquo;s version of the kalam cosmological argument, which has as a premise that the universe has a finite past).\nWorld O\u0026rsquo;Crap has dug up some of Mr. Deutsch\u0026rsquo;s past work at the Texas A\u0026amp;M Battalion, which includes this comment on the Laci Peterson murder:\nStill, the defense\u0026rsquo;s main theory \u0026ndash; that a Satanic cult killed Laci \u0026ndash; is actually quite credible. Several impartial witnesses have reported seeing a van adorned with satanic symbols and a man with \u0026ldquo;666\u0026rdquo; tattooed on his arm in front of the Peterson home in late December. The American public seems to dismiss this theory as ridiculous, but Satanic killings didn\u0026rsquo;t seem so ridiculous in the 1980s, when Richard Ramirez \u0026ndash; The Night Stalker \u0026ndash; made California his personal hunting ground. Ramirez, who sat in court with a pentagram etched in his palm and often said \u0026ldquo;Hail Satan,\u0026rdquo; adds a very real face to the idea of Satanism. Try convincing the families of his victims that Satanic cults don\u0026rsquo;t exist.\nAnd this one on connections between Iraq and al Qaeda:\nThe ties between al-Qaida and Iraq are clear. So clear, in fact, that there is so much circumstantial evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaida that it would be hard for an informed person not to at least suspect Saddam\u0026rsquo;s regime of having a hand in the attacks.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nCheney went on to mention evidence of a Czech intelligence report, which has yet to be confirmed or denied, that asserts that Sept. 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with senior Iraqi officials in Prague just weeks before the attacks.\nAnd this one on Rumsfeld and torture:\n\u0026quot;Unfounded Accusations\u0026quot; There is simply no proof to support claims that Rumsfeld orchestrated an elaborate plan to interrogate prisoners through torture and humiliation - such an assertion is laughable.\n[\u0026hellip;]\n[I]t is absurd to think that the secretary of defense for the strongest nation in the free world would encourage torturous interrogation tactics in a war his nation was winning and at the possible expense of his political career. Even more absurd is that his well-thought and \u0026ldquo;highly secretive\u0026rdquo; plan would involve unskilled military reservists being ordered to pose for staged photographs with nude Iraqi prisoners.\nNASA should fire this incompetent boob.\nUPDATE (7 February 2006): Turns out Deutsch isn\u0026rsquo;t a college graduate\u0026ndash;although scheduled to graduate in 2003, he left Texas A\u0026amp;M University in 2003 without a degree.\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nThis post from Digby:http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_29_digbysblog_archive.html#113909188993862584.. does a great job on explaining why fighting this junk is important.\nspyder (2006-12-09):\nNASA should fire this incompetent boob.That's the problem; he is a presidential appointee, and thus works at the \"pleasure of the president.\" NASA can't fire him.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAh, of course... and if NASA's head gets out of line with what the president wants, it's he who will get canned, not the incompetent boob. I guess I was assuming more autonomy on the part of agencies (and a stricter separation of political appointees at the top and civil servants below) than I should have, though I did note Deutsch was a presidential appointee...And I suppose that the AUMF gives the president the right to turn any unelected governmental position into an appointed one at his whim, anyway...\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\ncnn.com Well, it looks like Georgie has resigned. Of note are Michael Griffin's (NASA Administrator) comments:\"The job of the Office of Public Affairs, at every level in NASA, is to convey the work done at NASA to our stakeholders in an intelligible way,\" Griffin wrote. \"It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff.\"\nDave Himself (2006-12-09):\nI hope noone minds if I lighten the discussion a bit with a lil cartoon:http://greedoneverfired.blogspot.com/2006/02/big-bang-for-your-buck.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/collected-works-of-george-deutsch.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Deutsch is a 24-year-old Texas A\u0026amp;M University graduate in journalism (class of 2003) who was appointed by the White House to the press office of NASA headquarters after his stint as an intern working in the \u0026ldquo;war room\u0026rdquo; of the Bush 2004 reelection campaign.  He has gotten some well-deserved press lately for the fact that, despite having no science background, he apparently has had the authority to tell senior scientists at NASA such as \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/02/hansen_its_getting_worse.php\"\u003eDr. James Hansen\u003c/a\u003e what they can and cannot say to the press.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn October 2005, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/science/04climate.html?ei=5070\u0026amp;amp;en=e5f7cfdc20f6e584\u0026ex=1139202000\u0026amp;adxnnl=1\u0026adxnnlx=1139169662-ezAIZise3cuX08/XWLCxOg\"\u003ehe told a NASA contractor\u003c/a\u003e working on an educational website about Einstein for middle-school students that he must add the word \u0026ldquo;theory\u0026rdquo; after every occurrence of the phrase \u0026ldquo;Big Bang,\u0026rdquo; because the Big Bang \u0026ldquo;is not proven fact; it is opinion.  [\u0026hellip;]  It is not NASA\u0026rsquo;s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator. [\u0026hellip;] This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue.  And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.  That would mean we had failed to educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.\u0026rdquo;  As others have noted, Deutsch not only doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand what the word \u0026ldquo;theory\u0026rdquo; means, his knowledge of theology seems pretty weak\u0026ndash;the Big Bang is commonly used as an argument for the existence of God (e.g., William Lane Craig\u0026rsquo;s version of the kalam cosmological argument, which has as a premise that the universe has a finite past).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2006/02/04.html\"\u003eWorld O\u0026rsquo;Crap\u003c/a\u003e has dug up some of Mr. Deutsch\u0026rsquo;s past work at the Texas A\u0026amp;M \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBattalion\u003c/span\u003e, which includes this comment on the Laci Peterson murder:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px;\"\u003e \u003cp align=\"left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\";font-family:Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif;font-size:85%;color:darkblue;\"   \u003eStill, the defense\u0026rsquo;s main theory \u0026ndash; that a Satanic cult killed Laci \u0026ndash; is actually quite credible. Several impartial witnesses have reported seeing a van adorned with satanic symbols and a man with \u0026ldquo;666\u0026rdquo; tattooed on his arm in front of the Peterson home in late December. \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Collected Works of George Deutsch"},{"content":"Genie Scott of the NCSE gave a talk on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives\u0026rdquo; to a standing-room-only audience of several hundred at the ASU Physical Sciences building. This crowd came out to see her despite the fact that Jared Diamond was speaking at ASU at the same time, about his book Collapse.\nThe lecture began with a few words about Bob Dietz, who was a strong supporter of evolution and critic of creationism, and showed a few slides of him and his book, Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed.\nGenie gave an overview of creation science, comparing and contrasting it with evolution. She pointed out the logical flaw of the \u0026ldquo;two model approach\u0026rdquo; in assuming that evolution and creation are the only two possibilities and that falsifying evolution is all that\u0026rsquo;s needed to prove creationism.\nThere followed a discussion of the Paluxy river mantracks, and how Glen Kuban\u0026rsquo;s work led even the Institute for Creation Research to stop using them as evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived together. She talked briefly about some problems with the ark story and the misidentification of geological features as fossilized arks (another example which creationists themselves have refuted).\nGenie described the NCSE Grand Canyon raft trips, pointing out how they teach both the evolution and creationist sides of the story, while the ICR raft trip only teaches the creationist version. She put up a photo of Steve Austin and his book Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, along with a photo of \u0026ldquo;Stone Cold\u0026rdquo; Steve Austin, pointing out that they should not be confused, even though the creationist Steve Austin does work on cold stone. (This reference worked well with the young audience\u0026ndash;my expectation was for a comparison photo of Lee Majors as the \u0026ldquo;Six Million Dollar Man\u0026rdquo; as the joke.) She spent some time describing how the Grand Canyon is composed of thousands of layers of sediment which the creationists claim to have been laid down through repeated walls of water and sediment precipitation. This set the stage for Austin\u0026rsquo;s claims about the canyons around Mt. St. Helens, where a 30\u0026rsquo; deep ditch was cut by water in seven days\u0026ndash;thirty feet of unconsolidated ash and loose sediment doesn\u0026rsquo;t compare to four thousand feet of individual layers of shales, limestones, sandstones, etc.\nSince the event was at ASU, home of the Institute of Human Origins, she mentioned Donald Johanson tiring of correcting bogus creationist claims about Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint.\nShe then turned to intelligent design, or \u0026ldquo;creationism light,\u0026rdquo; which she described as consisting of only a single philosophical claim\u0026ndash;that you can detect the evidence of things that are designed and are the products of intelligence, and in particular the product of a divine designer. ID has proposed two concepts for identifying design, Behe\u0026rsquo;s irreducible complexity and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s design inference. She described the Discovery Institute and the Wedge Document, and pointed out that there are many criticisms of Behe\u0026rsquo;s irreducible complexity and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s complex specified information on the web. The structure of the ID arguments, she argued, is the same as that of creation science\u0026ndash;that evolution can\u0026rsquo;t do it, therefore it must be intelligent design. Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s favored example of the bacterial flagellum was shown in an animated slide, and Genie pointed out that they like to use examples of complex systems where we haven\u0026rsquo;t yet developed full explanations, but they ignore other examples of apparently \u0026ldquo;irreducibly complex\u0026rdquo; systems where we do have full explanations, like the evolution of the mammalian ear (which she proceeded to illustrate).\nShe gave a history of the intelligent design movement and its roots in creationism\u0026ndash;covering the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas decision, Jon Buell\u0026rsquo;s formation of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, and the publications of Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen\u0026rsquo;s Mystery of Life\u0026rsquo;s Origin and Of Pandas and People. She described the science of the latter as awful, giving as an example its treatment of genetic distances between organisms based on cytochrome c, a demonstration that the authors don\u0026rsquo;t understand evolution (a topic discussed in the Dover case).\nWesley Elsberry\u0026rsquo;s work on word counts of \u0026ldquo;creationis[t/m]\u0026rdquo; vs. \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; in the sequence of manuscripts that became Of Pandas and People was graphically depicted, showing the former dropping to zero and the latter increasing to the level of the former in 1987, after the creationists lost at the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.\nShe briefly commented on William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s draft of version three of Of Pandas and People, which used \u0026ldquo;sudden emergence\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;intelligent design,\u0026rdquo; and about the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s move to a \u0026ldquo;teach the controversy\u0026rdquo; position which it has held for a few years, and its model policy for school boards to teach the \u0026ldquo;strengths and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; of evolution adopted by the Grantsburg, Wisconsin school board in December 2004.\nShe listed seven states that have introduced anti-evolution legislation this year (Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah), promoting books critical of intelligent design and creationism (including Young and Edis\u0026rsquo; Why Intelligent Design Fails, Pennock\u0026rsquo;s Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, Forrest and Gross\u0026rsquo;s Creationism\u0026rsquo;s Trojan Horse, Miller\u0026rsquo;s Finding Darwin\u0026rsquo;s God, Shanks\u0026rsquo; God, the Devil, and Darwin, Isaak\u0026rsquo;s Counter-Creationism Handbook, and her own Evolution vs. Creationism, which she was pleased to announce had just been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. She showed a screen shot of Amazon.com listing her book with a sales rank of #284, though she noted this is an hour-by-hour rank and she had to wait until late on Sunday night to get the shot.\nIn closing, Genie noted that Bob Dietz was a real scientific iconoclast who advocated views that were outside of the mainstream when he initiated them\u0026ndash;that seafloor spreading occurs and is evidence of continental drift, that moon craters are asteroid impacts not volcanoes, that shatter cones are evidence of meteoritic impacts. He didn\u0026rsquo;t respond to criticism by starting a policy institute, hiring a PR firm, and lobbying to have his theories taught in public schools\u0026ndash;he responded by doing scientific work, by doing research, by writing and presenting papers. That\u0026rsquo;s the work that needs to be done to get things taught in public school science classes.\nAfterward, there was a small reception outside the auditorium, and Genie was swamped with people asking questions for quite some time. I was surprised that there were no obvious creationists or intelligent design advocates\u0026ndash;those who were present (I\u0026rsquo;m sure there were some there) kept their views to themselves.\nSchtacky (2006-12-09):\nGreat review and recap, Jim. It sounds like she hit all the hot spots, and reasonably, too.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks schtacky!Yes, she did a great job, and the audience seemed very receptive. The question and answer session was characterized by questions of the sort \"how the heck do creationists explain X?\" Where X was things like the visibility of galaxies millions of light years away, where the water came from in Noah's Flood, etc., which gave Genie the chance to talk about the speed of light decaying and the vapor canopy theory (though she missed the chance to mention Walter Brown's hydroplate theory and Bob Schadewald's description of it as \"continental zip\").\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI hate it when people set up new Blogger accounts and fake blogs just to post advertisements. \"Defender\" is apparently selling a book which critiques the Bible (there are lots available, many available free online like Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, still a classic) and argues for some kind of relationship directly with God that is independent of any existing religion (though his website doesn't describe that part or even hint at any of the positive arguments the book may give for that position).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDefender: Your account was created this month and your blog contains only a single post, which is identical to your original comment.Unfortunately, the parts of the online book's thesis that I think would be the most interesting (his alternative to the Bible) is not even hinted at in the website content, but is apparently only available by paying to download the book.As for what's there, I haven't examined it thoroughly, but I'd say it seems to be on the right track in evaluating the moral standing of the Bible.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/eugenie-scott-gives-robert-s-dietz.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/P2020008.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/P2020008.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eGenie Scott of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNCSE\u003c/a\u003e gave a \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/eugenie-scott-at-asu.html\"\u003etalk on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to a standing-room-only audience of several hundred at the ASU Physical Sciences building.  This crowd came out to see her despite the fact that Jared Diamond was speaking at ASU at the same time, about his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCollapse\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe lecture began with a few words about Bob Dietz, who was a strong supporter of evolution and critic of creationism, and showed a few slides of him and his book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGenie gave an overview of creation science, comparing and contrasting it with evolution.  She pointed out the logical flaw of the \u0026ldquo;two model approach\u0026rdquo; in assuming that evolution and creation are the only two possibilities and that falsifying evolution is all that\u0026rsquo;s needed to prove creationism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere followed a discussion of the Paluxy river mantracks, and how \u003ca href=\"http://paleo.cc/\"\u003eGlen Kuban\u0026rsquo;s work\u003c/a\u003e led even the Institute for Creation Research to stop using them as evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived together.   She talked briefly about some \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/8619_issue_11_volume_4_number_1__3_12_2003.asp\"\u003eproblems with the ark story\u003c/a\u003e and the misidentification of geological features as fossilized arks (another example which \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i4/report.asp\"\u003ecreationists themselves have refuted\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGenie described the NCSE Grand Canyon raft trips, pointing out how they teach both the evolution and creationist sides of the story, while the ICR raft trip only teaches the creationist version.  She put up a photo of Steve Austin and his book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGrand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe\u003c/span\u003e, along with a photo of \u0026ldquo;Stone Cold\u0026rdquo; Steve Austin, pointing out that they should not be confused, even though the creationist Steve Austin does work on cold stone.  (This reference worked well with the young audience\u0026ndash;my expectation was for a comparison photo of Lee Majors as the \u0026ldquo;Six Million Dollar Man\u0026rdquo; as the joke.)  She spent some time describing how the Grand Canyon is composed of thousands of layers of sediment which the creationists claim to have been laid down through repeated walls of water and sediment precipitation.  This set the stage for Austin\u0026rsquo;s claims about the canyons around Mt. St. Helens, where a 30\u0026rsquo; deep ditch was cut by water in seven days\u0026ndash;thirty feet of unconsolidated ash and loose sediment doesn\u0026rsquo;t compare to four thousand feet of individual layers of shales, limestones, sandstones, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSince the event was at ASU, home of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/\"\u003eInstitute of Human Origins\u003c/a\u003e, she mentioned Donald Johanson tiring of correcting bogus creationist claims about \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003eLucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe then turned to intelligent design, or \u0026ldquo;creationism light,\u0026rdquo; which she described as consisting of only a single philosophical claim\u0026ndash;that you can detect the evidence of things that are designed and are the products of intelligence, and in particular the product of a divine designer.  ID has proposed two concepts for identifying design, Behe\u0026rsquo;s irreducible complexity and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s design inference.  She described the Discovery Institute and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html\"\u003eWedge Document\u003c/a\u003e, and pointed out that there are many criticisms of Behe\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html\"\u003eirreducible complexity\u003c/a\u003e and Dembski\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI110.html\"\u003ecomplex specified information\u003c/a\u003e on the web.  The structure of the ID arguments, she argued, is the same as that of creation science\u0026ndash;that evolution can\u0026rsquo;t do it, therefore it must be intelligent design.  Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s favored example of the bacterial flagellum was shown in an animated slide, and Genie pointed out that they like to use examples of complex systems where we haven\u0026rsquo;t yet developed full explanations, but they ignore other examples of apparently \u0026ldquo;irreducibly complex\u0026rdquo; systems where we do have full explanations, like the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex2\"\u003eevolution of the mammalian ear\u003c/a\u003e (which she proceeded to illustrate).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe gave a history of the intelligent design movement and its roots in creationism\u0026ndash;covering the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas decision, Jon Buell\u0026rsquo;s formation of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, and the publications of Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMystery of Life\u0026rsquo;s Origin\u003c/span\u003e and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e.  She described the science of the latter as awful, giving as an example its treatment of \u003ca href=\"http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry/evobio/evc/argresp/sequence.html\"\u003egenetic distances between organisms based on cytochrome c\u003c/a\u003e, a demonstration that the authors don\u0026rsquo;t understand evolution (a topic \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day1am2.html\"\u003ediscussed in the Dover case\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWesley Elsberry\u0026rsquo;s work on word counts of \u0026ldquo;creationis[t/m]\u0026rdquo; vs. \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; in the sequence of manuscripts that became \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e was graphically depicted, showing the former dropping to zero and the latter increasing to the level of the former in 1987, after the creationists lost at the U.S. Supreme Court in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEdwards v. Aguillard\u003c/span\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe briefly commented on William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s draft of version three of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e, which used \u0026ldquo;sudden emergence\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;intelligent design,\u0026rdquo; and about the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s move to a \u0026ldquo;teach the controversy\u0026rdquo; position which it has held for a few years, and its model policy for school boards to teach the \u0026ldquo;strengths and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; of evolution adopted by the Grantsburg, Wisconsin school board in December 2004.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe listed seven states that have \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/pressroom.asp?year=2006\"\u003eintroduced anti-evolution legislation this year\u003c/a\u003e (Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah), promoting books critical of intelligent design and creationism (including Young and Edis\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy Intelligent Design Fails\u003c/span\u003e, Pennock\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIntelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics\u003c/span\u003e, Forrest and Gross\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreationism\u0026rsquo;s Trojan Horse\u003c/span\u003e, Miller\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFinding Darwin\u0026rsquo;s God\u003c/span\u003e, Shanks\u0026rsquo; \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGod, the Devil, and Darwin\u003c/span\u003e, Isaak\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCounter-Creationism Handbook\u003c/span\u003e, and her own \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvolution vs. Creationism\u003c/span\u003e, which she was pleased to announce had just been reviewed in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e Book Review.  She showed a screen shot of Amazon.com listing her book with a sales rank of #284, though she noted this is an hour-by-hour rank and she had to wait until late on Sunday night to get the shot.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn closing, Genie noted that Bob Dietz was a real scientific iconoclast who advocated views that were outside of the mainstream when he initiated them\u0026ndash;that seafloor spreading occurs and is evidence of continental drift, that moon craters are asteroid impacts not volcanoes, that shatter cones are evidence of meteoritic impacts.  He didn\u0026rsquo;t respond to criticism by starting a policy institute, hiring a PR firm, and lobbying to have his theories taught in public schools\u0026ndash;he responded by doing scientific work, by doing research, by writing and presenting papers.  That\u0026rsquo;s the work that needs to be done to get things taught in public school science classes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfterward, there was a small reception outside the auditorium, and Genie was swamped with people asking questions for quite some time.  I was surprised that there were no obvious creationists or intelligent design advocates\u0026ndash;those who were present (I\u0026rsquo;m sure there were some there) kept their views to themselves.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eugenie Scott gives the Robert S. Dietz memorial lecture"},{"content":"This Tom Toles cartoon in the Washington Post has resulted in a complaint letter from all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThe only reason I can come up with as to why they would complain is that there is actually a grain of truth to the cartoon.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/tom-toles-cartoon-criticized-by-all.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html?name=Toles\u0026date=01292006\"\u003eTom Toles cartoon\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e has resulted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001955937\"\u003ea complaint letter\u003c/a\u003e from all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe only reason I can come up with as to why they would complain is that there is actually a grain of truth to the cartoon.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Tom Toles cartoon criticized by all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff"},{"content":"\nWhat an amazing city. The Ixtapaluca low-income housing projects (one photo at left) look like a suburban nightmare out of a video game, but these purport to be actual photos taken from a helicopter. (Thanks to BLDGBLOG.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nSanta Vaca! That looks literally unreal.\nMartin (2006-12-09):\nThose aren't houses! More like storage units for surplus humans. Brrrr.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/amazing-helicopter-photos-of-mexico.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca style=\"\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/400/CasitasGeo.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7184/598/400/CasitasGeo.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat an \u003ca href=\"http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PhotoAlbum31.html\"\u003eamazing city\u003c/a\u003e.  The Ixtapaluca low-income housing projects (one photo at left) look like a suburban nightmare out of a video game, but these purport to be actual photos taken from a helicopter.  (Thanks to \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/in-suburbs-of-self-similarity.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSanta Vaca! That looks literally unreal.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eMartin\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThose aren't houses! More like storage units for surplus humans. Brrrr.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazing helicopter photos of Mexico City"},{"content":"Apparently, Sasquatch is a bipedal bison.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/sasquatch-dna-sample-tested.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eApparently, Sasquatch is a bipedal \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/the_real_truth_about_the_sasqu.php\"\u003ebison\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sasquatch DNA sample tested"},{"content":"The Danish cartoons of Mohammed have been reprinted in both Norway and France (and may be seen at the link at left). These cartoons have led to hostages being taken, death threats against the cartoonists, and the withdrawal of ambassadors to Denmark by Libya and Saudi Arabia. The reprinting has led to further Muslim outrage, apologies from the publishers, and some firings. Norway has given a state apology and made noises about restricting freedom of speech regarding anti-religious statements. France and Denmark have refused to make state apologies and have defended freedom of speech. The EU and UN have come out against freedom of speech, which are good reasons to oppose UN control of the Internet.\nBy the way, here are some other cartoons about Mohammed and Islam (thanks to Einzige for the reference).\nUPDATE: A magazine in Lebanon, Shihan, has reprinted the cartoons, and in an article with the subheading \u0026ldquo;World\u0026rsquo;s Muslims, be logical,\u0026rdquo; Jihad Momani (a pseudonym?) asks, “Which one do you think damages Islam more? These cartoons or the scene of a suicide bomber who blows himself up outside a wedding ceremony in Amman, or the kidnappers that slaughters their victims before the cameras?” (Hat tip: Catallarchy, which I inexplicably failed to credit for their posting which first led me to this subject.)\nDanny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nWhat can I say, those Near Eastern Muhammedans are just Medieval reactionaries whose society hasn't embraced progress since the Crusades. Those cartoons are rather tame, imo, and hardly raises a chuckle.The cartoons in that other link you posted are more confrontational. For comedy, you may enjoy this.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nGreat cartoon, thanks for the link, Dan!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/danish-mohammed-cartoons-reprinted-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Danish cartoons of Mohammed \u003ca href=\"http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698\"\u003ehave been reprinted in both Norway and France\u003c/a\u003e (and may be seen at the link at left).  These cartoons have led to \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1698164,00.html\"\u003ehostages being taken\u003c/a\u003e, death threats against the cartoonists, and the withdrawal of ambassadors to Denmark by \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1558358.htm\"\u003eLibya\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/194133\"\u003eSaudi Arabia\u003c/a\u003e.  The reprinting has led to further Muslim outrage, apologies from the publishers, and some firings.  Norway has given a state apology and made noises about restricting freedom of speech regarding anti-religious statements.  France and Denmark have refused to make state apologies and have defended freedom of speech.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/606\"\u003eEU and UN have come out against freedom of speech\u003c/a\u003e, which are good reasons to oppose \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Will+the+U.N.+run+the+Internet/2010-1071_3-5780157.html\"\u003eUN control of the Internet\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy the way, here are some \u003ca href=\"http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/\"\u003eother cartoons about Mohammed and Islam\u003c/a\u003e (thanks to Einzige for the reference).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  A \u003ca href=\"http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews\u0026alt=\u0026amp;trh=20060202\u0026hn=29328\"\u003emagazine in Lebanon, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eShihan\u003c/span\u003e, has reprinted the cartoons\u003c/a\u003e, and in an article with the subheading \u0026ldquo;World\u0026rsquo;s Muslims, be logical,\u0026rdquo; Jihad Momani (a pseudonym?) asks, “Which one do you think damages Islam more? These cartoons or the scene of a suicide bomber who blows himself up outside a wedding ceremony in Amman, or the kidnappers that slaughters their victims before the cameras?”  (Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/02/02/a-snowball-in-hell/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e, which I inexplicably failed to credit for \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/12/05/rottenness-brewing/\"\u003etheir posting\u003c/a\u003e which first \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/mohammed-prophet-answers-your-emails.html\"\u003eled me to this subject\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Danish Mohammed cartoons reprinted in France and Norway--and Lebanon"},{"content":"My parents loaned me a set of 13 CDs by a Christian financial counselor named Dave Ramsey, which I listened to in my car over the last several weeks. The CDs are audio recordings of Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s course of lectures that he calls \u0026ldquo;Financial Peace University.\u0026quot;\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised\u0026ndash;there were occasional references to God and Bible verses, but they were relatively few and tended to be ones that gave sensible advice. It was only the last CD, on charitable giving, which emphasized tithing to a church over other forms of charitable giving, that I found more objectionable than sound. (There were also two bonus CDs, one with samples from Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s radio show, in which I agreed with virtually all of the advice he gave to listeners, and another giving his personal testimony and a \u0026ldquo;come to Jesus\u0026rdquo; call that I gave up listening to after about the first 15 minutes.)\nThe first 12 CDs I give pretty high marks to. Each CD covered a single topic:\n1. \u0026ldquo;Super Savers\u0026rdquo;: how to save money, build an emergency fund, the value of cash purchases.\n2. \u0026ldquo;Cash Flow Planning\u0026rdquo;: how to budget.\n3. \u0026ldquo;Relating With Money\u0026rdquo;: how to communicate about money in a relationship and with your children.\n4. \u0026ldquo;Buying Only Big, Big Bargains\u0026rdquo;: how to find good deals and negotiate on price.\n5. \u0026ldquo;Dumping Debt Part 1\u0026rdquo;: facts about credit cards and how to get out of debt.\n6. \u0026ldquo;Dumping Debt Part 2\u0026rdquo;: more on that subject.\n7. \u0026ldquo;Understanding Investments\u0026rdquo;: some basic information about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.\n8. \u0026ldquo;Understanding Insurance\u0026rdquo;: some basic information about insurance offerings and which ones are a ripoff.\n9. \u0026ldquo;Retirement \u0026amp; College Planning\u0026rdquo;: 401Ks, Roth 401Ks, IRAs, SEPs, Coverdell ESAs, etc.\n10. \u0026ldquo;Buyer Beware\u0026rdquo;: understanding some marketing and sales tactics and how to avoid being pressured by them.\n11. \u0026ldquo;Real Estate \u0026amp; Mortgages\u0026rdquo;: some basics about buying and selling a home, types of mortgages (apparently recorded before the recent popularity of some more creative mortgages), and refinancing.\n12. \u0026ldquo;Careers \u0026amp; Extra Jobs\u0026rdquo;: how to find a job you love, when it makes sense to seek extra income to get out of a problem.\n13. \u0026ldquo;Collection Practices \u0026amp; Credit Bureaus\u0026rdquo;: some basics on collections, how to clean up your credit report, how to get out of bad debt messes when you can\u0026rsquo;t afford to pay all your bills.\nSome of the basic messages of Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s plan are to start by building an emergency savings of $1,000, cut up all your credit cards and budget every dollar of income, get all non-mortgage debt paid off, build up savings of 3-6 months of expenses, and start investing 15% of annual gross income in mutual funds (maximizing tax-preferred options). He\u0026rsquo;s very anti-credit card and anti-debt. I agree with the latter (except for a mortgage); the former I don\u0026rsquo;t personally agree with for myself, but I think it\u0026rsquo;s good advice for anyone who doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the discipline to be a credit card \u0026ldquo;freeloader\u0026rdquo; (pay off all credit card balances monthly).\nHe also advises never buying a house with anything but a 15-year fixed rate mortgage, and never with a monthly payment greater than 25% of your monthly take-home pay, never spending more than 20% of your annual income on cars (and always paying cash, never going into debt\u0026ndash;and that means buying used).\nThe average household has about $10,000 in credit card debt, lots of people have been buying their homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages where they can barely afford the interest-only payments (or even just the negative amortization option), and many people have been pulling equity out of their homes to pay for consumer goods, and buying homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages (some with negative amortization options), and these people are heading for disaster. Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s advice is pretty sound.\nUPDATE (January 23, 2007): The Simple Dollar has a good summary of Dave Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s program.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/financial-freedom.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy parents loaned me a set of 13 CDs by a Christian financial counselor named \u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com/\"\u003eDave Ramsey\u003c/a\u003e, which I listened to in my car over the last several weeks.  The CDs are audio recordings of Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s course of lectures that he calls \u0026ldquo;Financial Peace University.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised\u0026ndash;there were occasional references to God and Bible verses, but they were relatively few and tended to be ones that gave sensible advice.  It was only the last CD, on charitable giving, which emphasized tithing to a church over other forms of charitable giving, that I found more objectionable than sound.  (There were also two bonus CDs, one with samples from Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s radio show, in which I agreed with virtually all of the advice he gave to listeners, and another giving his personal testimony and a \u0026ldquo;come to Jesus\u0026rdquo; call that I gave up listening to after about the first 15 minutes.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe first 12 CDs I give pretty high marks to.  Each CD covered a single topic:\u003cbr /\u003e1.  \u0026ldquo;Super Savers\u0026rdquo;:  how to save money, build an emergency fund, the value of cash purchases.\u003cbr /\u003e2.  \u0026ldquo;Cash Flow Planning\u0026rdquo;: how to budget.\u003cbr /\u003e3.  \u0026ldquo;Relating With Money\u0026rdquo;:  how to communicate about money in a relationship and with your children.\u003cbr /\u003e4.  \u0026ldquo;Buying Only Big, Big Bargains\u0026rdquo;:  how to find good deals and negotiate on price.\u003cbr /\u003e5.  \u0026ldquo;Dumping Debt Part 1\u0026rdquo;:  facts about credit cards and how to get out of debt.\u003cbr /\u003e6.  \u0026ldquo;Dumping Debt Part 2\u0026rdquo;: more on that subject.\u003cbr /\u003e7.  \u0026ldquo;Understanding Investments\u0026rdquo;:  some basic information about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.\u003cbr /\u003e8.  \u0026ldquo;Understanding Insurance\u0026rdquo;:  some basic information about insurance offerings and which ones are a ripoff.\u003cbr /\u003e9.  \u0026ldquo;Retirement \u0026amp; College Planning\u0026rdquo;: 401Ks, Roth 401Ks, IRAs, SEPs, Coverdell ESAs, etc.\u003cbr /\u003e10. \u0026ldquo;Buyer Beware\u0026rdquo;: understanding some marketing and sales tactics and how to avoid being pressured by them.\u003cbr /\u003e11.  \u0026ldquo;Real Estate \u0026amp; Mortgages\u0026rdquo;: some basics about buying and selling a home, types of mortgages (apparently recorded before the recent popularity of some more creative mortgages), and refinancing.\u003cbr /\u003e12. \u0026ldquo;Careers \u0026amp; Extra Jobs\u0026rdquo;:  how to find a job you love, when it makes sense to seek extra income to get out of a problem.\u003cbr /\u003e13.  \u0026ldquo;Collection Practices \u0026amp; Credit Bureaus\u0026rdquo;:  some basics on collections, how to clean up your credit report, how to get out of bad debt messes when you can\u0026rsquo;t afford to pay all your bills.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/cms/index.cfm?intContentID=2867\"\u003ebasic messages\u003c/a\u003e of Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s plan are to start by building an emergency savings of $1,000, cut up all your credit cards and budget every dollar of income, get all non-mortgage debt paid off, build up savings of 3-6 months of expenses, and start investing 15% of annual gross income in mutual funds (maximizing tax-preferred options).  He\u0026rsquo;s very anti-credit card and anti-debt.  I agree with the latter (except for a mortgage); the former I don\u0026rsquo;t personally agree with for myself, but I think it\u0026rsquo;s good advice for anyone who doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the discipline to be a credit card \u0026ldquo;freeloader\u0026rdquo; (pay off all credit card balances monthly).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe also advises never buying a house with anything but a 15-year fixed rate mortgage, and never with a monthly payment greater than 25% of your monthly take-home pay, never spending more than 20% of your annual income on cars (and always paying cash, never going into debt\u0026ndash;and that means buying used).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe average household has \u003ca href=\"http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/creditcardsmarts/P117014.asp\"\u003eabout $10,000 in credit card debt\u003c/a\u003e, lots of people have been buying their homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages where they can barely afford the interest-only payments (or even just the negative amortization option), and many people have been pulling equity out of their homes to pay for consumer goods, and buying homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages (some with negative amortization options), and these people are heading for disaster.  Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s advice is pretty sound.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (January 23, 2007):  The Simple Dollar \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/23/deconstructing-dave-ramsey/\"\u003ehas a good summary of Dave Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s program\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Financial freedom"},{"content":"After 145 years in the business, Western Union discontinued sending telegrams on January 27.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\n\"Left unmentioned in their announcement was the fact that no one had requested a telegram be sent since some time in the mid 1970s, and the last person fluent in morse code died in 1988--a full 4 years after the second-to-last, meaning that, had anyone needed to send a telegram, no one could have read the messages he might have sent, anyway.\":-)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/western-union-discontinues-telegrams.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter 145 years in the business, Western Union \u003ca href=\"http://www.livescience.com/technology/060131_western_union.html\"\u003ediscontinued sending telegrams\u003c/a\u003e on January 27.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\"Left unmentioned in their announcement was the fact that no one had requested a telegram be sent since some time in the mid 1970s, and the last person fluent in morse code died in 1988--a full 4 years after the second-to-last, meaning that, had anyone needed to send a telegram, no one could have read the messages he might have sent, anyway.\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Western Union discontinues telegrams"},{"content":"The Seattle Weekly has published a story on the Discovery Institute, including original scans of the \u0026ldquo;Wedge Strategy\u0026rdquo; and the story of how it was leaked to the Internet by Matt Duss and Tim Rhodes. More at Pharyngula, including the Wedge in PDF.\nI found this paragraph interesting, considering how much the Discovery Institute spends on PR:\nSeattle Weekly began making inquiries for this story in mid-2005, but neither Chapman nor any Discovery Institute fellow has been willing to be interviewed. A last attempt to elicit comment, e-mailed to spokesperson Rob Crowther on Jan. 4, elicited the following: \u0026ldquo;With the start of the new year all of the Fellows and staff are quite busy and their schedules are completely full. I think you\u0026rsquo;ll find more than enough information on our website that you are welcome to quote from. If you want to submit questions in writing, I\u0026rsquo;d be happy to pass those along and see if anyone has time to respond, but I can\u0026rsquo;t make any guarantees.\u0026rdquo; A number of questions were submitted; none was answered.\nFrank Walton (2006-12-09):\nThe discovery institute has already dealt with the \"paranoia\" and \"conspiracy.\"\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nWho is using terms like \"paranoia\" and \"conspiracy\" besides the Discovery Institute? What the Wedge Document shows is that they've had a concerted strategy to push their views into the public sphere--but they've skipped ahead of the \"do the science first\" provision of the Wedge Strategy and gone right into the PR aspect. The Discovery Institute is not a scientific organization, it's a religious and political one--and a rather dishonest and scientifically inept one at that (as Casey Luskin continues to demonstrate).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/02/story-behind-wedge-strategy-becoming.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSeattle Weekly\u003c/span\u003e has published a story on the Discovery Institute, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0605/discovery-wedge.php#page1\"\u003eoriginal scans of the \u0026ldquo;Wedge Strategy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and the story of \u003ca href=\"http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0605/discovery-darwin.php\"\u003ehow it was leaked to the Internet\u003c/a\u003e by \u003ca href=\"http://whatisthewar.blogspot.com/\"\u003eMatt Duss\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.churchofvirus.org/virus.1Q99/0510.html\"\u003eTim Rhodes\u003c/a\u003e.  More at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/the_true_history_of_the_wedge.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, including the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/02/Wedge.pdf\"\u003eWedge in PDF\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI found this paragraph interesting, considering how much the Discovery Institute spends on PR:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeattle Weekly\u003c/i\u003e began making inquiries for this story in mid-2005, but neither Chapman nor any Discovery Institute fellow has been willing to be interviewed. A last attempt to elicit comment, e-mailed to spokesperson Rob Crowther on Jan. 4, elicited the following: \u0026ldquo;With the start of the new year all of the Fellows and staff are quite busy and their schedules are completely full. I think you\u0026rsquo;ll find more than enough information on our website that you are welcome to quote from. If you want to submit questions in writing, I\u0026rsquo;d be happy to pass those along and see if anyone has time to respond, but I can\u0026rsquo;t make any guarantees.\u0026rdquo; A number of questions were submitted; none was answered.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The story behind the Wedge Strategy becoming public"},{"content":"To continue from just before where we left off last time\u0026hellip; there were 10,748 homes for sale on July 20, 2005, and it had increased by 79% to 19,254 by October 2. Yesterday, it was up a further 69% to 32,512\u0026ndash;a 202% increase over the July 20 number. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen estimates that about a third are being sold by \u0026ldquo;investors.\u0026quot;\n10/1/2005 19333\n10/2/2005 19316\n10/3/2005 19362\n10/4/2005 19463\n10/5/2005 19562\n10/6/2005 19670\n10/7/2005 20052\n10/8/2005 20219\n10/9/2005 20153\n10/10/2005 20324\n10/11/2005 20470\n10/12/2005 20668\n10/13/2005 20850\n10/14/2005 21238\n10/15/2005 21446\n10/16/2005 21463\n10/17/2005 21527\n10/18/2005 21588\n10/19/2005 21795\n10/20/2005 21806\n10/21/2005 22302\n10/22/2005 22719\n10/23/2005 22769\n10/24/2005 22806\n10/25/2005 22976\n10/26/2005 23132\n10/27/2005 23293\n10/28/2005 23681\n10/29/2005 23805\n10/30/2005 23816\n10/31/2005 23790\n11/1/2005 23601\n11/2/2005 23665\n11/3/2005 24193\n11/4/2005 24579\n11/5/2005 24786\n11/6/2005 24717\n11/7/2005 24937\n11/8/2005 25244\n11/9/2005 25333\n11/10/2005 25387\n11/11/2005 25700\n11/12/2005 25685\n11/13/2005 25773\n11/14/2005 25945\n11/15/2005 25913\n11/16/2005 25884\n11/17/2005 26261\n11/18/2005 26098\n11/19/2005 26662\n11/20/2005 26688\n11/21/2005 26684\n11/22/2005 26488\n11/23/2005 26776\n11/24/2005 26819\n11/25/2005 26855\n11/26/2005 26871\n11/27/2005 26890\n11/28/2005 26979\n11/29/2005 26811\n11/30/2005 26797\n12/1/2005 26792\n12/2/2005 26915\n12/3/2005 27238\n12/4/2005 27295\n12/5/2005 27356\n12/6/2005 27387\n12/7/2005 27403\n12/8/2005 27367\n12/9/2005 27649\n12/10/2005 27706\n12/11/2005 27664\n12/12/2005 27512\n12/13/2005 27411\n12/14/2005 27566\n12/15/2005 27517\n12/16/2005 27603\n12/17/2005 27791\n12/18/2005 27776\n12/19/2005 27722\n12/20/2005 27604\n12/21/2005 27554\n12/22/2005 27516\n12/23/2005 27486\n12/24/2005 27311\n12/25/2005 27014\n12/26/2005 26810\n12/27/2005 26822\n12/28/2005 26687\n12/29/2005 26649\n12/30/2005 26547\n12/31/2005 26497\n1/1/2006 26462\n1/2/2006 26401\n1/3/2006 26751\n1/4/2006 27403\n1/5/2006 27564\n1/6/2006 28224\n1/7/2006 28337\n1/8/2006 28542\n1/9/2006 28595\n1/10/2006 28786\n1/11/2006 29222\n1/12/2006 29507\n1/13/2006 29689\n1/14/2006 29899\n1/15/2006 30415\n1/16/2006 30391\n1/17/2006 30707\n1/18/2006 30817\n1/19/2006 31085\n1/20/2006 31457\n1/21/2006 31463\n1/22/2006 31497\n1/23/2006 31607\n1/24/2006 31766\n1/25/2006 31830\n1/26/2006 32142\n1/27/2006 32002\n1/28/2006 32477\n1/29/2006 32458\n1/30/2006 32512\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nUmm. Holy crap.Jim... do you have the number of total homes there are in the valley?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI'll have to see if I can find that. The number of new homes started between January and June 2005 (based on number of permits issued) was 33,200, and that number and the ones in the posting are just for Phoenix proper. There were 28,731 new home building permits issued between January and June 2004.So the home inventory is a tiny percentage of the total number of homes available, but what's of interest for prices is how strong the demand is, and how many months of inventory are available at the current rate that sales are occurring. I think home sales peaked in Phoenix in August 2005, for which I can't find a number. There were 8,420 sales in October 2005 and 7,195 in November 2005 (vs. 9,525 in November 2004, which was oddly high), down to 6,480 in December 2005. The number of houses sold in 2005 was 110,835 (resales only), compared to 102,115 in 2004.Using December's sales number, there is five months of inventory for sale. I expect we'll see further decline in monthly sales numbers and increase in inventory. I thought I saw the ASU Real Estate Center was predicting a 10% increase in prices in 2006--I think they're high (pun intended). I like this quote from ASU's Jay Butler, from an Arizona Republic page (Jan. 14, 2006) that is now only in Google cache: \"Butler said homeowners shouldn't worry about home prices leveling off because it will help keep the housing market going if more people can afford homes.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/phoenix-housing-inventories-for-sale.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo continue from just before where we \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/housing-bubble-losing-volume-in.html\"\u003eleft off last time\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip; there were 10,748 homes for sale on July 20, 2005, and it had increased by 79% to 19,254 by October 2.  Yesterday, it was up a further 69% to 32,512\u0026ndash;a 202% increase over the July 20 number.  I\u0026rsquo;ve seen estimates that about a third are being sold by \u0026ldquo;investors.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e10/1/2005 19333\u003cbr /\u003e10/2/2005 19316\u003cbr /\u003e10/3/2005 19362\u003cbr /\u003e10/4/2005 19463\u003cbr /\u003e10/5/2005 19562\u003cbr /\u003e10/6/2005 19670\u003cbr /\u003e10/7/2005 20052\u003cbr /\u003e10/8/2005 20219\u003cbr /\u003e10/9/2005 20153\u003cbr /\u003e10/10/2005 20324\u003cbr /\u003e10/11/2005 20470\u003cbr /\u003e10/12/2005 20668\u003cbr /\u003e10/13/2005 20850\u003cbr /\u003e10/14/2005 21238\u003cbr /\u003e10/15/2005 21446\u003cbr /\u003e10/16/2005 21463\u003cbr /\u003e10/17/2005 21527\u003cbr /\u003e10/18/2005 21588\u003cbr /\u003e10/19/2005 21795\u003cbr /\u003e10/20/2005 21806\u003cbr /\u003e10/21/2005 22302\u003cbr /\u003e10/22/2005 22719\u003cbr /\u003e10/23/2005 22769\u003cbr /\u003e10/24/2005 22806\u003cbr /\u003e10/25/2005 22976\u003cbr /\u003e10/26/2005 23132\u003cbr /\u003e10/27/2005 23293\u003cbr /\u003e10/28/2005 23681\u003cbr /\u003e10/29/2005 23805\u003cbr /\u003e10/30/2005 23816\u003cbr /\u003e10/31/2005 23790\u003cbr /\u003e11/1/2005 23601\u003cbr /\u003e11/2/2005 23665\u003cbr /\u003e11/3/2005 24193\u003cbr /\u003e11/4/2005 24579\u003cbr /\u003e11/5/2005 24786\u003cbr /\u003e11/6/2005 24717\u003cbr /\u003e11/7/2005 24937\u003cbr /\u003e11/8/2005 25244\u003cbr /\u003e11/9/2005 25333\u003cbr /\u003e11/10/2005 25387\u003cbr /\u003e11/11/2005 25700\u003cbr /\u003e11/12/2005 25685\u003cbr /\u003e11/13/2005 25773\u003cbr /\u003e11/14/2005 25945\u003cbr /\u003e11/15/2005 25913\u003cbr /\u003e11/16/2005 25884\u003cbr /\u003e11/17/2005 26261\u003cbr /\u003e11/18/2005 26098\u003cbr /\u003e11/19/2005 26662\u003cbr /\u003e11/20/2005 26688\u003cbr /\u003e11/21/2005 26684\u003cbr /\u003e11/22/2005 26488\u003cbr /\u003e11/23/2005 26776\u003cbr /\u003e11/24/2005 26819\u003cbr /\u003e11/25/2005 26855\u003cbr /\u003e11/26/2005 26871\u003cbr /\u003e11/27/2005 26890\u003cbr /\u003e11/28/2005 26979\u003cbr /\u003e11/29/2005 26811\u003cbr /\u003e11/30/2005 26797\u003cbr /\u003e12/1/2005 26792\u003cbr /\u003e12/2/2005 26915\u003cbr /\u003e12/3/2005 27238\u003cbr /\u003e12/4/2005 27295\u003cbr /\u003e12/5/2005 27356\u003cbr /\u003e12/6/2005 27387\u003cbr /\u003e12/7/2005 27403\u003cbr /\u003e12/8/2005 27367\u003cbr /\u003e12/9/2005 27649\u003cbr /\u003e12/10/2005 27706\u003cbr /\u003e12/11/2005 27664\u003cbr /\u003e12/12/2005 27512\u003cbr /\u003e12/13/2005 27411\u003cbr /\u003e12/14/2005 27566\u003cbr /\u003e12/15/2005 27517\u003cbr /\u003e12/16/2005 27603\u003cbr /\u003e12/17/2005 27791\u003cbr /\u003e12/18/2005 27776\u003cbr /\u003e12/19/2005 27722\u003cbr /\u003e12/20/2005 27604\u003cbr /\u003e12/21/2005 27554\u003cbr /\u003e12/22/2005 27516\u003cbr /\u003e12/23/2005 27486\u003cbr /\u003e12/24/2005 27311\u003cbr /\u003e12/25/2005 27014\u003cbr /\u003e12/26/2005 26810\u003cbr /\u003e12/27/2005 26822\u003cbr /\u003e12/28/2005 26687\u003cbr /\u003e12/29/2005 26649\u003cbr /\u003e12/30/2005 26547\u003cbr /\u003e12/31/2005 26497\u003cbr /\u003e1/1/2006 26462\u003cbr /\u003e1/2/2006 26401\u003cbr /\u003e1/3/2006 26751\u003cbr /\u003e1/4/2006 27403\u003cbr /\u003e1/5/2006 27564\u003cbr /\u003e1/6/2006 28224\u003cbr /\u003e1/7/2006 28337\u003cbr /\u003e1/8/2006 28542\u003cbr /\u003e1/9/2006 28595\u003cbr /\u003e1/10/2006 28786\u003cbr /\u003e1/11/2006 29222\u003cbr /\u003e1/12/2006 29507\u003cbr /\u003e1/13/2006 29689\u003cbr /\u003e1/14/2006 29899\u003cbr /\u003e1/15/2006 30415\u003cbr /\u003e1/16/2006 30391\u003cbr /\u003e1/17/2006 30707\u003cbr /\u003e1/18/2006 30817\u003cbr /\u003e1/19/2006 31085\u003cbr /\u003e1/20/2006 31457\u003cbr /\u003e1/21/2006 31463\u003cbr /\u003e1/22/2006 31497\u003cbr /\u003e1/23/2006 31607\u003cbr /\u003e1/24/2006 31766\u003cbr /\u003e1/25/2006 31830\u003cbr /\u003e1/26/2006 32142\u003cbr /\u003e1/27/2006 32002\u003cbr /\u003e1/28/2006 32477\u003cbr /\u003e1/29/2006 32458\u003cbr /\u003e1/30/2006 32512\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix housing inventories for sale continue to climb"},{"content":"The Federal Trade Commission today unsealed and announced its action in the U.S. District Court in Arizona against William Dugger (a/k/a Billy Johnson, d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii (with a business address in Phoenix), Angelina Johnson (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii and/or Phoenix, and John Vitale (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Phoenix for sending CAN-SPAM-violating porn spam using compromised systems of uninvolved third parties. The Temporary Restraining Order announced today freezes their assets and requires their ISPs to disconnect all of their equipment from the Internet and deny them any access to it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/arizona-porn-spamming-proxy-abusers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Federal Trade Commission \u003ca href=\"http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0523161/0523161.htm\"\u003etoday unsealed and announced its action\u003c/a\u003e in the U.S. District Court in Arizona against William Dugger (a/k/a Billy Johnson, d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii (with a business address in Phoenix), Angelina Johnson (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii and/or Phoenix, and John Vitale (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Phoenix for sending CAN-SPAM-violating porn spam using compromised systems of uninvolved third parties.  The Temporary Restraining Order announced today freezes their assets and requires their ISPs to disconnect all of their equipment from the Internet and deny them any access to it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona porn spamming proxy abusers busted"},{"content":"Wikipedia has banned the IP blocks of U.S. Congress from the ability to make changes, due to repeated abuses by Congressional staffers who\nrepeatedly engage in revert wars, blank content, engage in libelous behavior or violate WP:NPOV, WP:CIV [Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s standards for neutral point of view and civility]. The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.A newspaper article has been written on this subject in the Lowell Sun by Evan Lehmann.\nA list of further details is in the Wikipedia entry on Congressional Staffer Edits.\nKudos to Wikipedia for treating Congress the way it deserves to be treated.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/congress-banned-from-wikipedia-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWikipedia \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/United_States_Congress\"\u003ehas banned the IP blocks of U.S. Congress\u003c/a\u003e from the ability to make changes, due to repeated abuses by Congressional staffers who\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003erepeatedly engage in revert wars, blank content, engage in libelous behavior or violate WP:NPOV, WP:CIV [Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;s standards for neutral point of view and civility].  The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy.  The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians.  They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change.  They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.\u003c/blockquote\u003eA newspaper article has been written on this subject \u003ca href=\"http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3444567\"\u003ein the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLowell Sun\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e by Evan Lehmann.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA list of further details is in the Wikipedia entry on \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Staffer_Edits\"\u003eCongressional Staffer Edits\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKudos to Wikipedia for treating Congress the way it deserves to be treated.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congress banned from Wikipedia for abuses"},{"content":"Sam Coppersmith complains that legislators seeking restrictions on eminent domain abuse are wasting their time (and apparently that they are trying to create a diversion from other more important issues). Sure, Arizona has better protections in place than most states (as demonstrated by the decisions in Bailey v. Myers (link is a PDF) and City of Tempe v. Valentine) , but why is it any surprise that there is extensive support for expanding such protections in the aftermath of the Kelo decision? The failure of his column to even mention that decision strikes me as disingenuous.\nThe Castle Coalition and the Institute for Justice have very strong grassroots support on this issue, and it\u0026rsquo;s not a partisan issue.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/apparently-sam-coppersmith-has-never.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://liberaldesert.blogspot.com/2006/01/mass-outrage-over-municipal-government.html\"\u003eSam Coppersmith complains\u003c/a\u003e that legislators seeking restrictions on eminent domain abuse are wasting their time (and apparently that they are trying to create a diversion from other more important issues).  Sure, Arizona has better protections in place than most states (as demonstrated by the decisions in \u003ca href=\"http://www.cofad1.state.az.us/opinionfiles/SA/SA020108.pdf\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBailey v. Myers\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (link is a PDF) and \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/819.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCity of Tempe v. Valentine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) , but why is it any surprise that there is extensive support for expanding such protections in the aftermath of the Kelo decision?  The failure of his column to even mention that decision strikes me as disingenuous.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.castlecoalition.org/\"\u003eCastle Coalition\u003c/a\u003e and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ij.org/\"\u003eInstitute for Justice\u003c/a\u003e have very strong grassroots support on this issue, and it\u0026rsquo;s not a partisan issue.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Apparently Sam Coppersmith has never heard of Kelo v. New London Development Corp."},{"content":"The Discovery Institute has lately taken the position (argued by law student Michael Francisco) that Judge Jones was wrong to even consider ruling on the question of whether Intelligent Design is science. This position has been refuted in detail by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, by John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack, and by Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority.\nI have one critique of Dunford\u0026rsquo;s argument\u0026ndash;I believe he is conflating two positions in order to create a contradiction on the part of the Discovery Institute when he points out that they argued that he should rule on the constitutionality of Intelligent Design, but should not have ruled on whether Intelligent Design is science. These are distinguishable issues and one could hold both simultaneously without contradiction (though not necessarily without error). Where the Discovery Institute contradicted the recent argument from Michael Francisco is that its expert witnesses and its amicus brief did argue for the scientific status of ID, as Brayton and Pieret point out.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/discovery-institute-and-status-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Discovery Institute has lately taken the position (argued by law student Michael Francisco) that Judge Jones was wrong to even consider ruling on the question of whether Intelligent Design is science.  This position has been refuted in detail by Ed Brayton at \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/01/dis_new_contributor_on_judge_j.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, by John Pieret at \u003ca href=\"http://dododreams.blogspot.com/2006/01/trying-to-keep-up-with-joneses.html\"\u003eThoughts in a Haystack\u003c/a\u003e, and by Mike Dunford at \u003ca href=\"http://thequestionableauthority.blogspot.com/2006/01/what-difference-day-makes.html\"\u003eThe Questionable Authority\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have one critique of Dunford\u0026rsquo;s argument\u0026ndash;I believe he is conflating two positions in order to create a contradiction on the part of the Discovery Institute when he points out that they argued that he should rule on the constitutionality of Intelligent Design, but should not have ruled on whether Intelligent Design is science.  These are distinguishable issues and one could hold both simultaneously without contradiction (though not necessarily without error).  Where the Discovery Institute contradicted the recent argument from Michael Francisco is that its expert witnesses and its amicus brief did argue for the scientific status of ID, as Brayton and Pieret point out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute and the status of Intelligent Design as science"},{"content":"Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick have begun a debate over at the Internet Infidels site. Wanchick gives six arguments for Christian theism, one of which is the following \u0026ldquo;moral argument\u0026rdquo;:\nBut what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, \u0026ldquo;a human being is a biological animal,\u0026quot;[16] as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn\u0026rsquo;t exist. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.[17]When somebody says \u0026ldquo;it seems,\u0026rdquo; that may be an indication that there isn\u0026rsquo;t a solid argument. Here, for instance, Wanchick says that unless humans have unique moral worth distinct from all animals, there is no objective moral truth. The conclusion clearly doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow without additional premises. The more obvious conclusion from the premise that humans are not the unique holders of moral worth is that animals also have moral worth, that mistreating and abusing them is wrong, and perhaps that it is immoral to kill animals for food\u0026ndash;this is the conclusion drawn by many vegetarians and vegans. Moral worth is a distinct concept from moral responsibility, so the fact that animals don\u0026rsquo;t respect each others\u0026rsquo; moral worth doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them morally blameworthy. One can have moral worth and rights that deserve to be respected without having the capacity for moral reasoning or responsibility.\nPaul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: \u0026ldquo;every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess.\u0026quot;[18] The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.Mackie\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;queerness\u0026rdquo; argument certainly does carry some weight as an argument against the objectivity of moral properties. This argument about equality, however, I find less convincing. I would argue that the inherent value that is \u0026ldquo;equal\u0026rdquo; is that we recognize a set of individual rights for those who meet certain minimal criteria of personhood (or sentience, consciousness, capacity for pain, or whatever are the minimal features which give rise to such rights), and it is those rights which are equal, and are so for social and economic reasons. In fact, the actual value any one person has (for themselves and others) does vary from person to person based on natural properties.\nUnfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth.[19] Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc.[20] But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.There is no argument here except bare assertion: \u0026ldquo;such positions are obviously false.\u0026rdquo; Those who advocate animal rights would question Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s capacity for moral insight, and since Wanchick supplies no evidence or reasons to support his position on this issue, there is no reason to prefer his position to theirs.\nBut since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren\u0026rsquo;t natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.Again, Wanchick has proceeded by bare assertion\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren\u0026rsquo;t natural\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s two assertions, neither of which he has offered any support for. He then asserts that \u0026ldquo;moral properties exist only in persons,\u0026rdquo; again without argument. I have some ideas about how such an argument could be constructed, though most of them involve non-objective meta-ethics, which would not support Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s view. I don\u0026rsquo;t think that Wanchick actually believes that \u0026ldquo;moral properties exist only in persons\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;surely he would agree that there are particular actions that are objectively wrong, such as an axe murder. But an axe murder is not within a person, it is an action in the natural world, and for it to be objectively wrong is for that action to have moral properties. If Wanchick agrees with this, it undermines this entire argument. If he disagrees with it, then he owes an explanation for how his view is not a form of subjectivism.\nThe moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.[21]Wanchick finishes up with more bare assertion, throwing in his \u0026ldquo;additionally\u0026rdquo; remarks without any justification or argument.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure if this is the worst of Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s six arguments, but it\u0026rsquo;s quite feeble.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/wanchicks-moral-argument.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Carrier and Tom Wanchick have begun a debate over at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/carrier-wanchick/\"\u003eInternet Infidels site\u003c/a\u003e.  Wanchick gives six arguments for Christian theism, one of which is the following \u0026ldquo;moral argument\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, \u0026ldquo;a human being is a biological animal,\u0026quot;[16] as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn\u0026rsquo;t exist. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.[17]\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhen somebody says \u0026ldquo;it seems,\u0026rdquo; that may be an indication that there isn\u0026rsquo;t a solid argument.  Here, for instance, Wanchick says that unless humans have unique moral worth distinct from all animals, there is no objective moral truth.  The conclusion clearly doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow without additional premises.  The more obvious conclusion from the premise that humans are not the unique holders of moral worth is that animals also have moral worth, that mistreating and abusing them is wrong, and perhaps that it is immoral to kill animals for food\u0026ndash;this is the conclusion drawn by many vegetarians and vegans.  Moral worth is a distinct concept from moral responsibility, so the fact that animals don\u0026rsquo;t respect each others\u0026rsquo; moral worth doesn\u0026rsquo;t make them morally blameworthy.  One can have moral worth and rights that deserve to be respected without having the capacity for moral reasoning or responsibility.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePaul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: \u0026ldquo;every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess.\u0026quot;[18] The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMackie\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;queerness\u0026rdquo; argument certainly does carry some weight as an argument against the objectivity of moral properties.  This argument about equality, however, I find less convincing.  I would argue that the inherent value that is \u0026ldquo;equal\u0026rdquo; is that we recognize a set of individual rights for those who meet certain minimal criteria of personhood (or sentience, consciousness, capacity for pain, or whatever are the minimal features which give rise to such rights), and it is those rights which are equal, and are so for social and economic reasons.  In fact, the actual value any one person has (for themselves and others) does vary from person to person based on natural properties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eUnfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth.[19] Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc.[20] But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThere is no argument here except bare assertion:  \u0026ldquo;such positions are obviously false.\u0026rdquo;  Those who advocate animal rights would question Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s capacity for moral insight, and since Wanchick supplies no evidence or reasons to support his position on this issue, there is no reason to prefer his position to theirs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren\u0026rsquo;t natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAgain, Wanchick has proceeded by bare assertion\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren\u0026rsquo;t natural\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s two assertions, neither of which he has offered any support for.  He then asserts that \u0026ldquo;moral properties exist only in persons,\u0026rdquo; again without argument.  I have some ideas about how such an argument could be constructed, though most of them involve non-objective meta-ethics, which would not support Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s view.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think that Wanchick actually believes that \u0026ldquo;moral properties exist only in persons\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;surely he would agree that there are particular actions that are objectively wrong, such as an axe murder.  But an axe murder is not within a person, it is an action in the natural world, and for it to be objectively wrong is for that action to have moral properties.  If Wanchick agrees with this, it undermines this entire argument.  If he disagrees with it, then he owes an explanation for how his view is not a form of subjectivism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.[21]\u003c/blockquote\u003eWanchick finishes up with more bare assertion, throwing in his \u0026ldquo;additionally\u0026rdquo; remarks without any justification or argument.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not sure if this is the worst of Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s six arguments, but it\u0026rsquo;s quite feeble.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wanchick's moral argument"},{"content":"Maureen, of \u0026ldquo;Fucktard\u0026rdquo; fame, was apparently exposed by Justin, at fifteen minutes, as a college student at WVU, and not the poor uneducated woman she claimed to be. By all appearances, she has deleted the Dying in Christ blog and her own Blogger profile.\nJustin just posted this (off-topic) comment about it over at Die Eigenheit:\nI mainly posted those ones you found at the other site, asking her what they were about and why she swore so much. She deleted them, saying I had blasphemed the holy spirit, so I reposted them\u0026hellip; asking if WVU had a policy about using their computers to spread hate speech and the like.She told me she didn\u0026rsquo;t go to WVU, I was clearly wrong and that she \u0026ldquo;was too old\u0026rdquo; to go to \u0026ldquo;university\u0026rdquo; and blamed the profanity-laced comments on the other blog on \u0026ldquo;Zach\u0026rdquo; whom had already apologized for doing such naughty things. I told her they weren\u0026rsquo;t possibly from Zach (or he\u0026rsquo;s the smartest 12 year old in the world), and then within a half-hour\u0026hellip; the whole thing was gone.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know about anyone else, but as I sit here and laugh hysterically, contemplating Maureen\u0026rsquo;s accusation that Justin blasphemed the Holy Spirit, I have to admit that I\u0026rsquo;m going to miss the old broad.\nUPDATE: It appears that we are witness to a resurrection, as Dying In Christ has been reincarnated as a blog \u0026ldquo;intended to start reflecting a more Unitarian/Universalist or a Secular Humanist point of view. More to follow :)\u0026rdquo;.\nSounds like it won\u0026rsquo;t be quite so funny, though.\nHistorical Comments The Retropolitan (2006-12-09):\nYeah. I don't know if anything could ever be as funny as \"you sexy little anime vixen.\" I'll miss her.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/dead-in-christ.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaureen, of \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://goosetheantithesis.blogspot.com/2005/12/raving-atheist-and-randists-both.html\"\u003eFucktard\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; fame, was apparently exposed by Justin, at \u003ca href=\"http://fifteen-minutes.net/b/2006/01/closing_in_on_maureen.php#c9314\"\u003efifteen minutes\u003c/a\u003e, as a college student at WVU, and not the poor uneducated woman she claimed to be. By all appearances, she has deleted the Dying in Christ blog and her own Blogger profile.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJustin just posted this (off-topic) comment about it over at \u003ca href=\"http://einzige.blogspot.com/2006/01/job-woes.html\"\u003eDie Eigenheit\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003eI mainly posted those ones you found at the other site, asking her what they were about and why she swore so much. She deleted them, saying I had blasphemed the holy spirit, so I reposted them\u0026hellip; asking if WVU had a policy about using their computers to spread hate speech and the like.She told me she didn\u0026rsquo;t go to WVU, I was clearly wrong and that she \u0026ldquo;was too old\u0026rdquo; to go to \u0026ldquo;university\u0026rdquo; and blamed the profanity-laced comments on the other blog on \u0026ldquo;Zach\u0026rdquo; whom had already apologized for doing such naughty things. I told her they weren\u0026rsquo;t possibly from Zach (or he\u0026rsquo;s the smartest 12 year old in the world), and then within a half-hour\u0026hellip; the whole thing was gone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know about anyone else, but as I sit here and laugh hysterically, contemplating Maureen\u0026rsquo;s accusation that Justin blasphemed the Holy Spirit, I have to admit that I\u0026rsquo;m going to miss the old broad.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eUPDATE:\u003c/b\u003e It appears that \u003ca href=\"http://dyinginchrist.blogspot.com/2006/01/disclaimer.html\"\u003ewe are witness to a resurrection\u003c/a\u003e, as Dying In Christ has been reincarnated as a blog \u0026ldquo;intended to start reflecting a more Unitarian/Universalist or a Secular Humanist point of view. More to follow :)\u0026rdquo;.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSounds like it won\u0026rsquo;t be quite so funny, though.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dead In Christ"},{"content":"This is just too horrifying for words\u0026ndash;four teenage kids doing Devo covers, with the blessing of the band.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m honored to be the new Mark Mothersbaugh!\u0026rdquo; declared Nicole!says a press release. But I guess it is just the next step in devolution\u0026hellip;\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t do \u0026ldquo;Mongoloid.\u0026rdquo;\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSomething tells me they don't do Soo Bawls or I Need a Chick, either.We are DEVO!\nDr. Pimienta (2006-12-09):\nAnd worst of all they changed \"She's just a girl...\" to \"He's just a boy, he's just a boy.. a boy you like\"So it's not just kids covering Devo, it's teenyboppers covering Devo.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nActually, worse still is that the musicians on the recording are the real Devo... the kids aren't playing the instruments.And worse yet--this was given to me as a gift for my birthday!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThis is the real truth about de-evolution!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/disneyfication-of-devo-dev2o.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is just too horrifying for words\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://disney.go.com/disneyrecords/Song-Albums/devo20/\"\u003efour teenage kids doing Devo covers\u003c/a\u003e, with the blessing of the band.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m honored to be the new Mark Mothersbaugh!\u0026rdquo; declared Nicole!\u003c/blockquote\u003esays a press release.  But I guess it is just the next step in devolution\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey don\u0026rsquo;t do \u0026ldquo;Mongoloid.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSomething tells me they don't do \u003cI\u003eSoo Bawls\u003c/I\u003e or \u003cI\u003eI Need a Chick\u003c/I\u003e, either.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWe \u003cB\u003eare\u003c/B\u003e DEVO!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Disneyfication of Devo:  DEV2.O"},{"content":"Ben Edelman points out how Google is a major player in the distribution of spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it. The data is now easily available, thanks to SiteAdvisor.com, about which sites are distributing this crap, and if Google really wants to not be evil, they should start refusing the money of these sleazy companies.\nThis is a parallel situation to Internet providers who provide connectivity to known spammers. I am pleased to work for a company that has a strict acceptable use policy (which I helped write, and which my organization is responsible for enforcing), which allows us to take appropriate steps to keep spammers off our network and quickly terminate contracts and access of those who manage to make it on. But too many are unwilling to say no to the money, and look the other way when their contracts are violated, which unfortunately includes the big guys (SBC, which is now part of AT\u0026amp;T, and MCI, which is now part of Verizon, are two of the very worst offenders out there).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHey, Mike, thanks for the post.I don't think I agree with you--I think a responsible business, whether it's an ISP or a webhosting company or a search company, should refuse to do business with companies that are involved with such nefarious tactics as the distribution of malware.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/pushing-spyware-through-search.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBen Edelman \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/012606-1.html\"\u003epoints out how Google is a major player\u003c/a\u003e in the distribution of spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it.  The data is now easily available, \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/new-internet-consumer-protection-tool.html\"\u003ethanks to SiteAdvisor.com\u003c/a\u003e, about which sites are distributing this crap, and if Google really wants to not be evil, they should start refusing the money of these sleazy companies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a parallel situation to Internet providers who provide connectivity to known spammers.  I am pleased to work for a company that has a strict acceptable use policy (which I helped write, and which my organization is responsible for enforcing), which allows us to take appropriate steps to keep spammers off our network and quickly terminate contracts and access of those who manage to make it on.  But too many are unwilling to say no to the money, and look the other way when their contracts are violated, which unfortunately includes the big guys (SBC, which is now part of AT\u0026amp;T, and MCI, which is now part of Verizon, are two of \u003ca href=\"http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/networks.lasso\"\u003ethe very worst offenders out there\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pushing spyware through search"},{"content":"In today\u0026rsquo;s release from the Goldwater Institute, \u0026ldquo;The Nanny State Comes to My Mailbox,\u0026quot; Andrea Woodmansee complains about the fact that a birthday card from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano contained the statement \u0026ldquo;One of your most important roles as a parent is to make sure your baby is immunized.\u0026quot;\nI find it more objectionable that the state spends money to send out cards for all births instead of on more useful things (or did Ms. Woodmansee get special treatment as a result of her proximity to power?) than I am that the card contains an accurate statement about the importance of immunization.\nThis state contains numerous anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists who put the rest of us as well as their own children at risk by not having them vaccinated.\nFailing to have children vaccinated is arguably a form of child abuse\u0026ndash;failing to take reasonable steps to give the child proper medical treatment.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t bring myself to be exercised about Janet Napolitano promoting vaccination when we have a President who doesn\u0026rsquo;t respect Constitutional limits on his power.\nDoes anyone doubt that Barry Goldwater would have prioritized George Bush\u0026rsquo;s abuses of power over Janet Napolitano\u0026rsquo;s birthday card promotion of vaccination as a subject of critical attention?\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nI have two comments..I can see a libertarian getting all huffy over the state requiring someone to fasten a seatbelt or wear a motorcycle helmet; in most cases you are only affecting your own family in case of 'something goes wrong'. However, failing to immunize your children not affects your child's health but the health of your community. The eradication of a disease like polio only happened because of an organized, multinational, world wide campaign. Napolitano may have worded the card in an offensive way to a libertarian's ear, but the policy is 100% in line with protecting the health of the entire state. Good for her. (As an aside, Mrs. Woodmansee will have a cow when Bush declares marshal law when an outbreak of avian flu happens.) But... I strongly disagree with your stance that not immunizing your child is a form of child abuse. The jury truly is not out on what the effects are of certain immunizations. When my wife and I had our children, we took no CW for granted and researched everything. For instance, I was born at a time when breast feeding was discourage and circumcision was push by the establishment. When it came making core decisions about my child, nothing was taken for granted. After torturous debate, we did opt to have our children immunized. However, after reading a lot of the literature out there, I would not hold it against a parent for opting out.If you have not read the Robert Kennedy Jr article on mercury in vaccines, please do:http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htmI have read A LOT of commentary as a result of this piece (both for and against), and I still don't know what to think.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nOn that RFK piece, please see Orac:http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/mercury-and-autism-more-huffington.htmlBTW, shortly after making this post, I came across this in The Economist (Jan. 21-27, 2006, p. 12): \"To combat the threat to public health from a lack of these nutrients, governments encourage food makers to add them to some products. ... Some people see this, and the accompanying campaigns to persuade people to eat healthy food, as a nannying intrusion into personal freedom. That is a moot point when the taxpayer so often has to pick up the bill for the medical consequences of careless eating. But there is one area in which the state is generally felt, even by most libertarians, to have a legitimate interest, and that is the protection of children. Children cannot necessarily make informed decisions and neither can their parents on their behalf, be they ever-so-loving. And that concern is particularly relevant when a child is not yet born.\"I have to stand behind my position on vaccination--polio had been all-but-eradicated, but it's now back (five cases of children with polio, after none for 26 years), in the Amish community in Minnesota, because of their anti-vaccination stance. Allowing a child to get easily preventable polio sounds like child abuse to me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/goldwater-institute-confused.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn today\u0026rsquo;s release from the Goldwater Institute, \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/879.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Nanny State Comes to My Mailbox,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e Andrea Woodmansee complains about the fact that a birthday card from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano contained the statement \u0026ldquo;One of your most important roles as a parent is to make sure your baby is immunized.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find it more objectionable that the state spends money to send out cards for all births instead of on more useful things (or did Ms. Woodmansee get special treatment as a result of her proximity to power?) than I am that the card contains an accurate statement about the importance of immunization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis state contains numerous anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists who put the rest of us as well as their own children at risk by not having them vaccinated.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFailing to have children vaccinated is arguably a form of child abuse\u0026ndash;failing to take reasonable steps to give the child proper medical treatment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t bring myself to be exercised about Janet Napolitano promoting vaccination when we have \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2134845/\"\u003ea President who doesn\u0026rsquo;t respect Constitutional limits on his power\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDoes anyone doubt that Barry Goldwater would have prioritized George Bush\u0026rsquo;s abuses of power over Janet Napolitano\u0026rsquo;s birthday card promotion of vaccination as a subject of critical attention?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Goldwater Institute:  Confused priorities"},{"content":"Now that Frey has confessed that The Smoking Gun\u0026rsquo;s expose is quite accurate and his book was filled with fabrications, Oprah has also admitted that she was mistaken to continue supporting him and give \u0026ldquo;the impression that the truth does not matter.\u0026quot;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s more satisfying to everyone when liars confess than when they continue lying, and when those who make mistakes admit them rather than cover them up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/kudos-to-james-frey-for-coming-clean.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060126/en_nm/frey_dc_2\"\u003eFrey has confessed\u003c/a\u003e that \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html\"\u003eThe Smoking Gun\u0026rsquo;s expose\u003c/a\u003e is quite accurate and his book was filled with fabrications, \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060126/en_nm/frey_dc_2\"\u003eOprah has also admitted\u003c/a\u003e that she was mistaken to continue supporting him and give \u0026ldquo;the impression that the truth does not matter.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s more satisfying to everyone when liars confess than when they continue lying, and when those who make mistakes admit them rather than cover them up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kudos to James Frey for coming clean"},{"content":"Mike Dunford compares their PR output to their scientific output at The Questionable Authority. They put out a press release at a rate of 0.44 per day, but scientific papers at a rate of 0.0046/day. Another way of looking at it is that it took them over 20 years to generate the 34 papers on their list, but their last 34 press releases have come in the last 77 days (since November 10, 2005).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/how-you-can-tell-discovery-institute.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Dunford compares their PR output to their scientific output at \u003ca href=\"http://thequestionableauthority.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-can-you-tell-it-isnt-science.html\"\u003eThe Questionable Authority\u003c/a\u003e.  They put out a press release at a rate of 0.44 per day, but scientific papers at a rate of 0.0046/day.  Another way of looking at it is that it took them over 20 years to generate the 34 papers on their list, but their last 34 press releases have come in the last 77 days (since November 10, 2005).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How you can tell the Discovery Institute isn't doing science"},{"content":"In addition to SiteAdvisor.com, Google, Lenovo, and Sun have backed a project by the Berkman Center at the Harvard Law School, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Consumer Reports WebWatch to create a \u0026ldquo;hall of shame\u0026rdquo; for purveyors of spyware and adware, at www.stopbadware.org.\nStopBadWare and SiteAdvisor.com should team up, if they haven\u0026rsquo;t already (Ben Edelman was formerly a student fellow at the Berkman Center and an advisor to SiteAdvisor.com and has already created his own hall of shame list for affiliate programs)\u0026ndash;the latter\u0026rsquo;s data should be quite useful to the former, and is available under Creative Commons license.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/stop-badware.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn addition to \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/new-internet-consumer-protection-tool.html\"\u003eSiteAdvisor.com\u003c/a\u003e, Google, Lenovo, and Sun have backed a project by the \u003ca href=\"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/\"\u003eBerkman Center\u003c/a\u003e at the Harvard Law School, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/\"\u003eOxford Internet Institute\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/\"\u003eConsumer Reports WebWatch\u003c/a\u003e to create a \u0026ldquo;hall of shame\u0026rdquo; for purveyors of spyware and adware, at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stopbadware.org/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.stopbadware.org\"\u003ewww.stopbadware.org\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStopBadWare and SiteAdvisor.com should team up, if they haven\u0026rsquo;t already (Ben Edelman was formerly a student fellow at the Berkman Center and an advisor to SiteAdvisor.com and has already created his own \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/news/011606-1.html\"\u003ehall of shame list for affiliate programs\u003c/a\u003e)\u0026ndash;the latter\u0026rsquo;s data should be quite useful to the former, and is available under Creative Commons license.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stop Badware!"},{"content":"CNNMoney.com\u0026rsquo;s grand-prize winner for dumbest moment of 2005 goes to a plan to convert the creepy Danvers State Hospital into high-end apartments and condos. This mental institution was an example of the architecture known as the \u0026ldquo;Kirkbride Plan,\u0026rdquo; similar to other Gothic Revival masterpieces like the H.H. Richardson-designed Buffalo State Hospital.\nDanvers was the setting of the 2001 film \u0026ldquo;Session 9.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/turning-mental-institutions-into.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNNMoney.com\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/?cnn=yes\"\u003egrand-prize winner\u003c/a\u003e for dumbest moment of 2005 goes to a plan to convert the creepy \u003ca href=\"http://www.danvers-state-ia.com/home.html\"\u003eDanvers State Hospital\u003c/a\u003e into high-end apartments and condos.  This mental institution was an example of the architecture known as the \u0026ldquo;Kirkbride Plan,\u0026rdquo; similar to other Gothic Revival masterpieces like the H.H. Richardson-designed \u003ca href=\"http://preserve.bfn.org/bam/archs/rich/statekowsky/\"\u003eBuffalo State Hospital\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDanvers was the setting of the 2001 film \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261983/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Session 9.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Turning mental institutions into condos"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been using the Firefox plugin from SiteAdvisor.com for a few days, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s a great idea. They\u0026rsquo;ve searched the web, downloaded content, and submitted unique email addresses on signup forms everywhere they find them, to see what happens. They then rate each site for malicious content and the extent to which it generates spam in response to a signup. This database is then used by their browser plugin to display icons next to Google and Yahoo search results indicating whether that site is green, yellow, or red regarding the type of content downloaded, the amount of email you can expect to receive from signing up at the site, and whether it links to other sites that are problematic.\nTheir privacy policy is good\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t keep a record of who goes to what site. One feature I\u0026rsquo;d like to see them add is the ability to not make queries for certain domains (such as Intranet web pages\u0026ndash;their current design allows them to map out internal corporate web structures which they should not be able to get).\nTheir advisory board includes Avi Rubin, a well-known security researcher at Johns Hopkins University (and formerly at AT\u0026amp;T) who has done significant work on e-voting security, and Ben Edelman, formerly of Harvard Law School\u0026rsquo;s Berkman Center for Internet \u0026amp; Society, who is well-known for his research on Internet subjects such as domain name usage and China\u0026rsquo;s web filtering, as well as his lawsuit against web filtering company N2H2 to defend his right to research its blocking list.\nSiteAdvisor has a blog, too (though as of this moment it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a valid RSS feed, according to Thunderbird).\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nThey have a RSS 2.0 and an ATOM feeds. I tried the ATOM one in Thunderbird 1.5 (under Linux and Windows) and it seemed to work fine. http://blog.siteadvisor.com/atom.xmlBTW.. I want to give a shout out to RSSOwl, a Java (SWT) based RSS reader. It runs on all platforms, very responsive, is free and works very well if you track or read a lot of feeds.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThunderbird 1.0.7 says that the Atom feed is not a valid RSS feed... time for me to upgrade, I guess.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBen:Thanks for the corrections and clarifications, and thanks for stopping by. I'll update these posts to be accurate...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/new-internet-consumer-protection-tool.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been using the Firefox plugin from \u003ca href=\"http://www.siteadvisor.com/\"\u003eSiteAdvisor.com\u003c/a\u003e for a few days, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s a great idea.  They\u0026rsquo;ve searched the web, downloaded content, and submitted unique email addresses on signup forms everywhere they find them, to see what happens.  They then rate each site for malicious content and the extent to which it generates spam in response to a signup.  This database is then used by their browser plugin to display icons next to Google and Yahoo search results indicating whether that site is green, yellow, or red regarding the type of content downloaded, the amount of email you can expect to receive from signing up at the site, and whether it links to other sites that are problematic.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheir privacy policy is good\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t keep a record of who goes to what site.  One feature I\u0026rsquo;d like to see them add is the ability to not make queries for certain domains (such as Intranet web pages\u0026ndash;their current design allows them to map out internal corporate web structures which they should not be able to get).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheir advisory board includes \u003ca href=\"http://avirubin.com/\"\u003eAvi Rubin\u003c/a\u003e, a well-known security researcher at Johns Hopkins University (and formerly at AT\u0026amp;T) who has done significant work on \u003ca href=\"http://accurate-voting.org/\"\u003ee-voting security\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.benedelman.org/\"\u003eBen Edelman\u003c/a\u003e, formerly of Harvard Law School\u0026rsquo;s Berkman Center for Internet \u0026amp; Society, who is well-known for his research on Internet subjects such as \u003ca href=\"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman.html\"\u003edomain name usage and China\u0026rsquo;s web filtering\u003c/a\u003e, as well as his \u003ca href=\"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/edelman-v-n2h2/\"\u003elawsuit against web filtering company N2H2\u003c/a\u003e to defend his right to research its blocking list.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSiteAdvisor \u003ca href=\"http://blog.siteadvisor.com/\"\u003ehas a blog\u003c/a\u003e, too (though as of this moment it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a valid RSS feed, according to Thunderbird).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Internet consumer protection tool--SiteAdvisor.com"},{"content":"Cory Doctorow visited the offices of Nature and gave an interesting talk. (Link via Pharyngula.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/cory-doctorow-talk-at-nature-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCory Doctorow visited the offices of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNature\u003c/span\u003e and gave \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2006/01/cory_doctorow_visits_nature_1.html\"\u003ean interesting talk\u003c/a\u003e.  (Link via \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/doctorownature.php\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Doctorow talk at Nature on copyright, SF, online publication, etc."},{"content":"The two major skeptical organizations in the U.S.\u0026ndash;Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s Skeptics Society and Paul Kurtz\u0026rsquo;s Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) (or, actually, its parent organization, the Center for Inquiry)\u0026ndash;have both decided to use combatting the threat of Intelligent Design as a major platform of their most recent fundraising campaigns.\nThe Skeptics Society sent out a card-sized folded mailing with a photo of Darwin on the front with the caption \u0026ldquo;Help us keep religion out of the science classroom!\u0026rdquo; The inside reported on recent events, such as Cardinal Schonborn\u0026rsquo;s New York Times piece that the Discovery Institute and their PR agency, Creative Response Concepts, helped arrange. It continues with facts about the amount of funding the Discovery Institute receives, quotes from Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, Harris and Pew poll results showing the general public\u0026rsquo;s ignorance on evolution. So how will collected funds be used to combat Intelligent Design? Apparently Shermer has a new book coming out this year titled Why Darwin Matters: Evolution, Design, and the Battle for Science and Religion (Henry Holt/Times Books), copies of which will be sent \u0026ldquo;to every Congressman, Senator, and Governor in America, along with the relevant state boards of education, and state legislative bodies contemplating passing pro-creationist legislation.\u0026rdquo; That doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as a particularly productive way to combat ID\u0026ndash;I suspect most of the recipients will not read the book.\nThere are other bullet items listed\u0026ndash;publication of \u0026ldquo;a special volume of essays on evolution and Intelligent Design creationism collected from the pages of Skeptic magazine, to be published by the Skeptics Society and widely distributed to science teachers throughout America to give them the intellectual tools they need to deal with ID and creationism.\u0026rdquo; Another is to \u0026ldquo;distribute free copies to teachers\u0026rdquo; of the existing booklet How to Debate a Creationist. That sounds much more worthwhile, though I think that it would be more productive to give teachers tools like Eugenie Scott\u0026rsquo;s Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s Counter-Creationism Handbook (the online version of which is here\u0026ndash;some of the best teacher and student resources are already free and online).\nThe bonuses for contributors include a free book from a selection of six for $100 \u0026ldquo;Supporters\u0026rdquo; (In Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Shadow by Tim Callahan is the only one that appears directly relevant to the topic). $500 \u0026ldquo;sponsors\u0026rdquo; get a free 3-year subscription to Skeptic; $1000 \u0026ldquo;benefactors\u0026rdquo; get two free tickets to the 2006 Skeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars\u0026rdquo;; and $5000 \u0026ldquo;patrons\u0026rdquo; get dinner with Shermer and \u0026ldquo;a world-renowned scientist (to be announced)\u0026rdquo; and a private tour of Mt. Wilson\u0026rsquo;s 100-inch telescope and use of the 60-inch telescope, along with the gifts the other levels get.\nThe Center for Inquiry sent out a more elaborate package, including a DVD presentation promoting the \u0026ldquo;New Future Fund,\u0026rdquo; a campaign to raise $26.6 million, \u0026ldquo;the largest sum ever raised in the name of humanism, skepticism, and scientific naturalism.\u0026rdquo; The four major goals for the use of the money are \u0026ldquo;Legal Activism,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Transnational Development,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Outreach and Education.\u0026rdquo; The second item, \u0026ldquo;Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; discusses Intelligent Design, and says that \u0026ldquo;CSICOP is fighting back, mobilizing grassroots outreach and expert scientists when ID proposals threaten. We\u0026rsquo;re especially aggressive online, publishing a stable of online columnists and a dynamic new website, Creation \u0026amp; Intelligent Design Watch.\u0026rdquo; The website has a pretty substantial amount of content, with the November/December Skeptical Inquirer (a special issue on \u0026ldquo;Evolution and the ID Wars\u0026rdquo;) as the centerpiece (along with other CSICOP-related articles, including many of Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s Doubt and About articles), links to items appropriate for classroom use on the left side, and links to current news stories on the right side.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m all in favor of a diversity of approaches to promote critical thinking and combat Intelligent Design\u0026rsquo;s political actions, but everyone should keep in mind that the two organizations actually doing the most in this arena are the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which is the only organization devoted entirely to fighting creationism and promoting accurate teaching about evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has provided the legal support for every major creation/evolution courtroom battle. By all means support the Skeptics Society and Center for Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s programs, but if Intelligent Design is a concern, please be sure to support the NCSE and ACLU.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/skeptics-using-intelligent-design-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe two major skeptical organizations in the U.S.\u0026ndash;Michael Shermer\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.skeptic.com/\"\u003eSkeptics Society\u003c/a\u003e and Paul Kurtz\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/\"\u003eCommittee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal\u003c/a\u003e (CSICOP) (or, actually, its parent organization, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforinquiry.net/\"\u003eCenter for Inquiry\u003c/a\u003e)\u0026ndash;have both decided to use combatting the threat of Intelligent Design as a major platform of their most recent fundraising campaigns.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Skeptics Society sent out a card-sized folded mailing with a photo of Darwin on the front with the caption \u0026ldquo;Help us keep religion out of the science classroom!\u0026rdquo;  The inside reported on recent events, such as Cardinal Schonborn\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07schonborn.html?pagewanted=all\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e piece\u003c/a\u003e that the Discovery Institute and their PR agency, Creative Response Concepts, helped arrange.  It continues with facts about the amount of funding the Discovery Institute receives, quotes from Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, Harris and Pew poll results showing the general public\u0026rsquo;s ignorance on evolution.  So how will collected funds be used to combat Intelligent Design?  Apparently Shermer has a new book coming out this year titled \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy Darwin Matters: Evolution, Design, and the Battle for Science and Religion\u003c/span\u003e (Henry Holt/Times Books), copies of which will be sent \u0026ldquo;to every Congressman, Senator, and Governor in America, along with the relevant state boards of education, and state legislative bodies contemplating passing pro-creationist legislation.\u0026rdquo;  That doesn\u0026rsquo;t strike me as a particularly productive way to combat ID\u0026ndash;I suspect most of the recipients will not read the book.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are other bullet items listed\u0026ndash;publication of \u0026ldquo;a special volume of essays on evolution and Intelligent Design creationism collected from the pages of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine, to be published by the Skeptics Society and widely distributed to science teachers throughout America to give them the intellectual tools they need to deal with ID and creationism.\u0026rdquo;  Another is to \u0026ldquo;distribute free copies to teachers\u0026rdquo; of the existing booklet \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHow to Debate a Creationist\u003c/span\u003e.  That sounds much more worthwhile, though I think that it would be more productive to give teachers tools like Eugenie Scott\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520246500/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEvolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and Mark Isaak\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031333305X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCounter-Creationism Handbook\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (the online version of which is \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/index.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;some of the best teacher and student resources are already free and online).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe bonuses for contributors include a free book from a selection of six for $100 \u0026ldquo;Supporters\u0026rdquo; (\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eIn Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Shadow\u003c/span\u003e by Tim Callahan is the only one that appears directly relevant to the topic).  $500 \u0026ldquo;sponsors\u0026rdquo; get a free 3-year subscription to Skeptic; $1000 \u0026ldquo;benefactors\u0026rdquo; get two free tickets to the 2006 Skeptics Society conference on \u0026ldquo;The Environmental Wars\u0026rdquo;; and $5000 \u0026ldquo;patrons\u0026rdquo; get dinner with Shermer and \u0026ldquo;a world-renowned scientist (to be announced)\u0026rdquo; and a private tour of Mt. Wilson\u0026rsquo;s 100-inch telescope and use of the 60-inch telescope, along with the gifts the other levels get.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Center for Inquiry sent out a more elaborate package, including a DVD presentation promoting the \u0026ldquo;New Future Fund,\u0026rdquo; a campaign to raise $26.6 million, \u0026ldquo;the largest sum ever raised in the name of humanism, skepticism, and scientific naturalism.\u0026rdquo;  The four major goals for the use of the money are \u0026ldquo;Legal Activism,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Transnational Development,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Outreach and Education.\u0026rdquo;  The second item, \u0026ldquo;Opposing Creationism/Intelligent Design,\u0026rdquo; discusses Intelligent Design, and says that \u0026ldquo;CSICOP is fighting back, mobilizing grassroots outreach and expert scientists when ID proposals threaten.  We\u0026rsquo;re especially aggressive online, publishing a stable of online columnists and a dynamic new website,\u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/\"\u003e Creation \u0026amp; Intelligent Design Watch\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026rdquo;  The website has a pretty substantial amount of content, with the November/December \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e (a special issue on \u0026ldquo;Evolution and the ID Wars\u0026rdquo;) as the centerpiece (along with other CSICOP-related articles, including many of Chris Mooney\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/\"\u003eDoubt and About\u003c/a\u003e articles), links to items appropriate for classroom use on the left side, and links to current news stories on the right side.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, I\u0026rsquo;m all in favor of a diversity of approaches to promote critical thinking and combat Intelligent Design\u0026rsquo;s political actions, but everyone should keep in mind that the two organizations actually doing the most in this arena are the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e (NCSE), which is the only organization devoted entirely to fighting creationism and promoting accurate teaching about evolution, and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/\"\u003eAmerican Civil Liberties Union\u003c/a\u003e (ACLU), which has provided the legal support for every major creation/evolution courtroom battle.  By all means support the Skeptics Society and Center for Inquiry\u0026rsquo;s programs, but if Intelligent Design is a concern, please be sure to support the NCSE and ACLU.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skeptics using Intelligent Design for fundraising"},{"content":"May 1, 2003:\nMen and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.\nThe advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty.\nOur commitment to liberty is America\u0026rsquo;s tradition - declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt\u0026rsquo;s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan\u0026rsquo;s challenge to an evil empire.\n\u0026ndash; President Bush\nJanuary 4, 2006:\nCoast Guard Repatriates 126 Cuban Migrants\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/what-one-hand-giveth.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMay 1, 2003:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eMen and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOur commitment to liberty is America\u0026rsquo;s tradition - declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt\u0026rsquo;s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan\u0026rsquo;s challenge to an evil empire.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e                          \u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ndash; \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html\"\u003ePresident Bush\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJanuary 4, 2006:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,84488,00.html\"\u003eCoast Guard Repatriates 126 Cuban Migrants\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nocastro.com/archives/coast29b.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 170px;\" src=\"http://www.nocastro.com/archives/coast29b.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What One Hand Giveth..."},{"content":"Mike Hoy\u0026rsquo;s Loompanics Unlimited, seller of unusual and controversial books for over 30 years, is going out of business\u0026ndash;everything is 50% off. It\u0026rsquo;s a sad day, but fortunately most of these books are now easier to obtain than ever. (Hat tip to Patri Friedman at Catallarchy\u0026ndash;I haven\u0026rsquo;t received the catalogs for many years.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nFirst R.W., and now this?Crap. You're right, though. The fact that publishing and distribution of books are cheaper than ever--not to mention the fact that virtually anything you need is online somewhere--means that Loompanics has kinda become irrelevant, anyway.Seen from that perspective, maybe Loompanics' going under should be considered a good thing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/loompanics-going-out-of-business.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Hoy\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.loompanics.com/\"\u003eLoompanics Unlimited\u003c/a\u003e, seller of unusual and controversial books for over 30 years, is going out of business\u0026ndash;everything is 50% off.  It\u0026rsquo;s a sad day, but fortunately most of these books are now easier to obtain than ever.  (Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2006/01/22/i-love-this-country/\"\u003ePatri Friedman at Catallarchy\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;I haven\u0026rsquo;t received the catalogs for many years.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eFirst R.W., and now this?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eCrap. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eYou're right, though.  The fact that publishing and distribution of books are cheaper than ever--not to mention the fact that virtually anything you need is online somewhere--means that Loompanics has kinda become irrelevant, anyway.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eSeen from that perspective, maybe Loompanics' going under should be considered a \u003cI\u003egood\u003c/I\u003e thing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Loompanics Going Out of Business"},{"content":"As readers of this blog know, I\u0026rsquo;m no supporter of George W. Bush. I\u0026rsquo;ve never contributed funds or worked to support the campaign of a Republican. Yet I received this spam email from Jon Kyl, who is apparently concerned about competition from Arizona Democratic Party chairman Jim Pederson in the next election. It\u0026rsquo;s also interesting that Kyl\u0026rsquo;s jonkyl.com website is hosted in Canada, and his campaign webservers are hosted in New Jersey. Way to support your home state, Senator.\nFrom: \u0026ldquo;Senator Jon Kyl\u0026rdquo; info@jonkyl.com Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 23:57:14 -0500\nSubject: I invite you to join my team\u0026hellip; Today I am writing you for two reasons. One is to say thank you for your past support of President Bush and a second is to ask for your help. I am not asking for money. I am simply asking for your time and energy in helping my reelection campaign.\nFirst, thank you for your help in the 2004 election. Because of your hard work, we had a huge victory in Arizona. One of the key elements of victory was the organized force of Bush Volunteers who registered voters, made phone calls, walked neighborhoods, placed signs and bumper stickers, and helped get out the vote. It was a record setting year, and you were part of that team.\nSecond, I want to ask for your help. As you may know, I am running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. My opponent is the former Chairman of the Arizona Democrat Party, Jim Pederson. He has personally bankrolled the Democrats\u0026rsquo; efforts, including against President Bush, to date he has spent over $5 million on Democrats and their causes. He is a supporter of Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy and was a leader in John Kerry\u0026rsquo;s failed presidential campaign. Not surprisingly, John Kerry now is Pederson\u0026rsquo;s biggest contributor.\nThat is why I need your help. Television and radio alone will not win this election. In order to be successful, we will need to replicate the Bush Volunteer program to run our grass roots campaign. We are currently recruiting volunteers from across Arizona to join our campaign as Kyl Captains. As a Kyl Captain you will be integral in our network of individuals who are willing to help on the campaign. Whether you prefer registering voters, working the phones, or just talking with your friends and neighbors, you will be a critical component of my campaign. Because Jim Pederson will spend what it takes on television, it is very important to have a strong and active Arizona Team on the ground, registering and getting voters to the polls. I am convinced it is the key to victory in November 2006.\nPlease take a moment and visit www.jonkyl.com and sign up as a Kyl Captain. Your personal commitment to this campaign will make all the difference. It has been the greatest honor of my life to represent the people of Arizona in the United States Senate. With your help I hope to continue that public service.\nAgain, thank you for your past work on behalf of the President and I look forward to working together in the future.\nSincerely,\nJon Kyl\nU.S. Senator\nP.S. If you have any questions, please feel free to call my office at (602) 840-0306 or visit: www.jonkyl.com\nP.O. Box 10246 :: Phoenix, AZ 85064 :: info@jonkyl.com\nPaid for by Jon Kyl for U.S. Senate/info@jonkyl.com\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nWow.. I wonder how DID Kyle get your email? I think it would be worth a few minutes to investigate which organization sold you out.Normally I wouldn't give it a thought were someone hosted their website (my hosting company derived 98% of its income from out of state customers). However, if I were a politician representing local interests, I would make damn sure I took advantage of local companies for any service I needed. And in regards to hosting, Arizona just isn't the birth place of web hosting, it is the home of the largest registrar in the world (GoDaddy).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAlthough I use unique email addresses for anything I sign up for, this came to my regular standard email address. I have written letters to Kyl in the distant past--I actually debated the war on drugs with him in the late 80's in a series of correspondence that was published by Peter Petrisko and advertised in his zine, _Burning Toddlers_, but I think that was before I had the discord.org domain.I've also somehow ended up on Jeff Flake's (postal) mailing list and I've been sent a couple of signed photos of George W. and Laura Bush with thanks for my support.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/arizona-sen-jon-kyl-is-spammer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs readers of this blog know, I\u0026rsquo;m no supporter of George W. Bush.  I\u0026rsquo;ve never contributed funds or worked to support the campaign of a Republican.  Yet I received this spam email from Jon Kyl, who is apparently concerned about competition from \u003ca href=\"http://www.azdem.org/\"\u003eArizona Democratic Party\u003c/a\u003e chairman Jim Pederson in the next election.  It\u0026rsquo;s also interesting that Kyl\u0026rsquo;s jonkyl.com website is hosted in Canada, and his campaign webservers are hosted in New Jersey.  Way to support your home state, Senator.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFrom: \u0026ldquo;Senator Jon Kyl\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"mailto:info@jonkyl.com\"\u003einfo@jonkyl.com\u003c/a\u003e                                                                                         \u003cbr /\u003eDate: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 23:57:14 -0500\u003cbr /\u003eSubject: I invite you to join my team\u0026hellip;                                                                                          \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eToday I am writing you for two reasons. One is to say thank you for your past support of President Bush and a second is to ask for your help. I am not asking for money. I am simply asking for your time and energy in helping my reelection campaign.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFirst, thank you for your help in the 2004 election. Because of your hard work, we had a huge victory in Arizona. One of the key elements of victory was the organized force of Bush Volunteers who registered voters, made phone calls, walked neighborhoods, placed signs and bumper stickers, and helped get out the vote. It was a record setting year, and you were part of that team.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSecond, I want to ask for your help. As you may know, I am running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. My opponent is the former Chairman of the Arizona Democrat Party, Jim Pederson. He has personally bankrolled the Democrats\u0026rsquo; efforts, including against President Bush, to date he has spent over $5 million on Democrats and their causes. He is a supporter of Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy and was a leader in John Kerry\u0026rsquo;s failed presidential campaign. Not surprisingly, John Kerry now is Pederson\u0026rsquo;s biggest contributor.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat is why I need your help. Television and radio alone will not win this election. In order to be successful, we will need to replicate the Bush Volunteer program to run our grass roots campaign. We are currently recruiting volunteers from across Arizona to join our campaign as Kyl Captains. As a Kyl Captain you will be integral in our network of individuals who are willing to help on the campaign. Whether you prefer registering voters, working the phones, or just talking with your friends and neighbors, you will be a critical component of my campaign. Because Jim Pederson will spend what it takes on television, it is very important to have a strong and active Arizona Team on the ground, registering and getting voters to the polls. I am convinced it is the key to victory in November 2006.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlease take a moment and visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.jonkyl.com\"\u003ewww.jonkyl.com\u003c/a\u003e and sign up as a Kyl Captain. Your personal commitment to this campaign will make all the difference. It has been the greatest honor of my life to represent the people of Arizona in the United States Senate. With your help I hope to continue that public service.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAgain, thank you for your past work on behalf of the President and I look forward to working together in the future.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSincerely,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJon Kyl\u003cbr /\u003eU.S. Senator\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.S. If you have any questions, please feel free to call my office at (602) 840-0306 or visit: \u003ca href=\"https://www.jonkyl.com\"\u003ewww.jonkyl.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eP.O. Box 10246 :: Phoenix, AZ 85064 :: \u003ca href=\"mailto:info@jonkyl.com\"\u003einfo@jonkyl.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePaid for by Jon Kyl for U.S. Senate\u003ca href=\"mailto:/info@jonkyl.com\"\u003e/info@jonkyl.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl is a spammer"},{"content":"The U.S. government has failed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to fix the worst problems. Shane Harris and Greta Wodele of the National Journal have written an article analyzing why this failure has occurred.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the quick list of recommendations which received D or F grades:\nAllocate homeland-security funds based on risk: F\nReform intelligence oversight: D\nDeclassify overall intelligence budget: F\nImprove airline passenger prescreening: F\nChange incentives for information-sharing: D\nImprove government-wide information-sharing: D\nImprove checked bag and cargo screening: D\nMount a maximum effort to secure weapons of mass destruction: D\nStrengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: D\nProvide adequate radio spectrum for first responders: F\nSupport reform in Saudi Arabia: D\nSet coalition standards for terrorist detention: F\nSupport secular education in Muslim countries: D\nSupport scholarship, exchange, and library programs: D\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/report-card-on-us-governments-response.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe U.S. government has failed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to fix the worst problems.  Shane Harris and Greta Wodele of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Journal\u003c/span\u003e have written \u003ca href=\"http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0106/011306nj1.htm\"\u003ean article analyzing why this failure has occurred\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the quick list of recommendations which received D or F grades:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cb\u003eAllocate homeland-security funds based on risk: F\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReform intelligence oversight: D\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDeclassify overall intelligence budget: F\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eImprove airline passenger prescreening: F\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eChange incentives for information-sharing: D\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eImprove government-wide information-sharing: D\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eImprove checked bag and cargo screening: D\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMount a maximum effort to secure weapons of mass destruction: D\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eStrengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: D\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eProvide adequate radio spectrum for first responders: F\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSupport reform in Saudi Arabia: D\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSet coalition standards for terrorist detention: F\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSupport secular education in Muslim countries: D\u003c/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSupport scholarship, exchange, and library programs: D\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Report card on the U.S. government's response to the 9/11 Commission"},{"content":"People are clearly terrified of death.\nJohn 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (New International Version, Red Letter Edition)\nI guess I can sorta see why this verse is so commonly quoted by Christians who are evangelizing—it is, after all, always best to appeal to your mark’s fear and greed—but on close inspection it really proves as empty as any snow job you can name.\n“For God so loved the world…”\nA loving God? The unmitigated level of sheer evil in the world belies this claim, but one doesn’t even have to look past the almost endless Biblical examples of God’s despicable behavior to conclude that, whatever God’s feelings toward the world, “love” doesn’t seem to count among them.\n“…that he gave his one and only Son…”\nOh, look! Here’s a Biblical example right here! God loved the world so much, but really, He couldn’t be bothered, so he sent his son to do his dirty work? Come on! You expect me to believe that the best God could do, given that he loved the world so much was to send his “son,” in human form, to Earth to wander around, give speeches, and arrogantly tell people, over and over again, “Believe that I’m the Son of God or you’re going to burn in Hell!”?\nYeah, so he supposedly cured the sick and made some alcohol, but given the Biblical account, even that wasn’t too terribly convincing, as not even all the witnesses were swayed to believe his claims of divinity. God supposedly really really really loved the world, so couldn’t he have done better than torturing and killing his own kid to “save” the world? I mean, if he wants us to be all worshipful and stuff\u0026hellip; If he loves us so much, why not just “save” us all in the first place, and dispense with all the bother (and just who is it that God is “saving” us from, by the way, if not Him)?\nAnd what about that “sacrificing” thing, anyway? So Jesus “died” for us, to cleanse “us” of “our” original sins, and this was supposed to be God’s big “sacrifice” that makes Him all magnanimous and whatnot? What convolution of mind allows anyone to actually believe such an absurdity? Jesus was one third of the triune God, right? So in what sense did he really die? In what sense was this a “sacrifice” at all? The only answer I can come up with is, “It wasn’t,” so the entire edifice of Christian doctrine evaporates.\nIt’s amazing what straws people will clutch at attempting to avoid facing that final curtain.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/idiocy-that-is-john-316.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePeople are clearly terrified of death.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn 3:16\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color:#ff0000;\"\u003e“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”\u003c/span\u003e (New International Version, Red Letter Edition)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI guess I can sorta see why this verse is so commonly quoted by Christians who are evangelizing—it is, after all, always best to appeal to your mark’s fear and greed—but on close inspection it really proves as empty as any snow job you can name.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#ff0000;\"\u003e“For\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#ff0000;\"\u003e God so loved the world…”\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA loving God? The unmitigated level of sheer evil in the world belies this claim, but one doesn’t even have to look past the almost \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/atrocity.html\"\u003eendless Biblical examples\u003c/a\u003e of God’s despicable behavior to conclude that, whatever God’s feelings toward the world, “love” doesn’t seem to count among them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#ff0000;\"\u003e“…that he gave his one and only Son…”\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOh, look! Here’s a Biblical example right here! God loved the world so much, \u003cem\u003ebut really, He couldn’t be bothered\u003c/em\u003e, so he sent his son to do his dirty work? \u003cem\u003eCome on! \u003c/em\u003eYou expect me to believe that the best God could do, given that he \u003cem\u003eloved the world so much \u003c/em\u003ewas to send his “son,” in human form, to Earth to wander around, give speeches, and arrogantly tell people, over and over again, “\u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2011:25;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eBelieve\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%203:14-15;\u0026version=31;\"\u003ethat\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%205:24;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eI’m\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:29;\u0026version=31;\"\u003ethe\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:47;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eSon\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%208:12;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eof\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2012:47-50;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eGod\u003c/a\u003e or \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%203:18;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eyou’re\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2015:6;\u0026version=31;\"\u003egoing\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2016:8-9;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eto\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2012:9;\u0026version=31;\"\u003eburn\u003c/a\u003e in Hell!”?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYeah, so he supposedly cured the sick and made some alcohol, but given the Biblical account, even that wasn’t too terribly convincing, as not even all the witnesses were swayed to believe his claims of divinity. God supposedly \u003cem\u003ereally really really \u003c/em\u003eloved the world, so couldn’t he have done better than torturing and killing his own kid to “save” the world? I mean, if he wants us to be all worshipful and stuff\u0026hellip; If he loves us so much, why not just “save” us all in the first place, and dispense with all the bother (and just who is it that God is “saving” us from, by the way, if not Him)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd what about that “sacrificing” thing, anyway? So Jesus “died” for us, to cleanse “us” of “our” original sins, and this was supposed to be God’s big “sacrifice” that makes Him all magnanimous and whatnot? What convolution of mind allows anyone to actually believe such an absurdity? Jesus was one third of the triune God, right? So in what sense did he really die? In what sense was this a “sacrifice” at all? The only answer I can come up with is, “It wasn’t,” so the entire edifice of Christian doctrine evaporates.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt’s amazing what straws people will clutch at attempting to avoid facing that final curtain.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Idiocy That is John 3:16"},{"content":"Endorsed by Jesus.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/new-testament-wine-cooler.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEndorsed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.undergroundfilm.org/films/viewer.tcl?oftype=lar\u0026amp;wid=1000968\"\u003eJesus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Testament: The Wine Cooler"},{"content":"The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the NSA asking for an injunction against warrantless interception of communications to international destinations. The plaintiffs include James Bamford (author of The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, and A Pretext for War), Christopher Hitchens, Greenpeace, Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and others.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/aclu-files-lawsuit-against-warrantless.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/\"\u003eACLU has filed a lawsuit against the NSA\u003c/a\u003e asking for an injunction against warrantless interception of communications to international destinations.  The plaintiffs include \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23478res20060116.html\"\u003eJames Bamford\u003c/a\u003e (author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Puzzle Palace\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBody of Secrets\u003c/span\u003e, and \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Pretext for War\u003c/span\u003e), \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23485res20060116.html\"\u003eChristopher Hitchens\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23494res20060116.html\"\u003eGreenpeace\u003c/a\u003e,  \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23495res20060116.html\"\u003eLarry Diamond\u003c/a\u003e of the Hoover Institution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and others.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ACLU files lawsuit against warrantless wiretapping"},{"content":"Tonight is the premiere of Animal Planet Heroes Phoenix, a fifteen-episode series which filmed animal-related emergencies last year which were handled by the Arizona Humane Society\u0026rsquo;s Emergency Animal Medical Technicians (EAMTs), a program launched in September 2002.\nThe show airs at 8 p.m. MST in the Phoenix market on the Animal Planet channel.\nUPDATE: Kat and I attended the Arizona Humane Society\u0026rsquo;s premiere event last night at Harkins Cine Capri. Many of the production crew (from Anglia Television), all of the EAMTs, and many AHS staff and volunteers were present, and available to chat after the show.\nThe show (an episode titled \u0026ldquo;Trapped Underground\u0026rdquo;) was alternately heartwarming and saddening. A 14-year-old Spaniel was trapped 20 feet underground in a sinkhole in the owner\u0026rsquo;s yard, a kitten was trapped in the piping of an apartment sprinkler system, a dog and her puppies were stung repeatedly by bees, and a large number of Brussels griffons were being kept in horrific conditions by a hoarder.\nThe upcoming schedule is a new episode each night this week: \u0026ldquo;Wandering Beagle\u0026rdquo; tonight (Jan. 17), \u0026ldquo;The Dog House\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 18), \u0026ldquo;Promise to Mother\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 19), and \u0026ldquo;Desert Rescue\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 20). Information on air dates and times may be found at Animal Planet\u0026rsquo;s site.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/animal-planet-heroes-phoenix.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTonight is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/artimgr/publish/cat_index_15.shtml\"\u003epremiere of Animal Planet Heroes Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e, a fifteen-episode series which filmed animal-related emergencies last year which were handled by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/\"\u003eArizona Humane Society\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s  \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/services/rescue.shtml\"\u003eEmergency Animal Medical Technicians\u003c/a\u003e (EAMTs), a program launched in September 2002.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe show airs at 8 p.m. MST in the Phoenix market on the Animal Planet channel.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  Kat and I attended the \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhumane.org/Slide%20Show/animalplanet/premiere1.shtml\"\u003eArizona Humane Society\u0026rsquo;s premiere event\u003c/a\u003e last night at Harkins Cine Capri.  Many of the production crew (from Anglia Television), all of the EAMTs, and many AHS staff and volunteers were present, and available to chat after the show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe show (an episode titled \u0026ldquo;Trapped Underground\u0026rdquo;) was alternately heartwarming and saddening.  A 14-year-old Spaniel was trapped 20 feet underground in a sinkhole in the owner\u0026rsquo;s yard, a kitten was trapped in the piping of an apartment sprinkler system, a dog and her puppies were stung repeatedly by bees, and a large number of Brussels griffons were being kept in horrific conditions by a hoarder.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe upcoming schedule is a new episode each night this week:  \u0026ldquo;Wandering Beagle\u0026rdquo; tonight (Jan. 17), \u0026ldquo;The Dog House\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 18), \u0026ldquo;Promise to Mother\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 19), and \u0026ldquo;Desert Rescue\u0026rdquo; (Jan. 20).  Information on air dates and times may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://www.animal.discovery.com/tvlistings/series.jsp?series=112125\u0026gid=0\u0026amp;channel=APL\"\u003eAnimal Planet\u0026rsquo;s site\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Animal Planet Heroes Phoenix"},{"content":"William Dembski stopped blogging at \u0026ldquo;Uncommon Descent,\u0026rdquo; but then turned the keys over to Dave Scot and a few others. A recent post there, quickly deleted, gave a quote from Dr. Raj Baldev criticizing evolution. It was no doubt deleted once the poster became aware that Baldev is an Indian astrologer and swami who endorses palmistry, numerology, and \u0026ldquo;occult reading,\u0026rdquo; and who gave private consultations to Saddam Hussein when he was in power.\nEd Brayton commented on this posting before it disappeared, and now \u0026ldquo;crandaddy\u0026rdquo; at Uncommon Descent has the nerve to criticize Ed for being \u0026ldquo;bigoted\u0026rdquo; in pointing this out.\nAs a commenter on Ed\u0026rsquo;s blog has pointed out, Michael Behe did say in the Dover case that astrology would count as science under the definition of science that admits intelligent design.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/id-advocates-temporarily-back-saddam.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Dembski stopped blogging at \u0026ldquo;Uncommon Descent,\u0026rdquo; but then turned the keys over to Dave Scot and a few others.  A recent post there, quickly deleted, gave a quote from Dr. Raj Baldev criticizing evolution.  It was no doubt deleted once the poster became aware that Baldev is an Indian astrologer and swami who endorses palmistry, numerology, and \u0026ldquo;occult reading,\u0026rdquo; and who gave private consultations to Saddam Hussein when he was in power.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/01/id_and_astrology_again_1.php\"\u003ecommented on this posting\u003c/a\u003e before it disappeared, and now \u0026ldquo;crandaddy\u0026rdquo; at Uncommon Descent has the nerve to criticize Ed for being \u0026ldquo;bigoted\u0026rdquo; in pointing this out.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs a commenter on Ed\u0026rsquo;s blog has pointed out, Michael Behe did say in the Dover case that astrology would count as science under the definition of science that admits intelligent design.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ID advocates temporarily back Saddam Hussein's astrologer"},{"content":"A new group blog, The Secular Outpost, is now open for business with a post from Jeff Lowder on J.P. Moreland\u0026rsquo;s claim that Christians are less biased than naturalists.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nHow are you going to partition what you choose to blog here versus there? (though to a somewhat lesser extent, I face much the same conundrum, and am looking for some pointers, I think)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/secular-outpost-opens-for-business.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA new group blog, \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/\"\u003eThe Secular Outpost\u003c/a\u003e, is now open for business with \u003ca href=\"http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/01/moreland-christians-are-biased-but.html\"\u003ea post from Jeff Lowder\u003c/a\u003e on J.P. Moreland\u0026rsquo;s claim that Christians are less biased than naturalists.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHow are you going to partition what you choose to blog here versus there? (though to a somewhat lesser extent, I face much the same conundrum, and am looking for some pointers, I think)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Secular Outpost opens for business"},{"content":"The Animaris Rhinoceros Transport is a type of animal with a steel skeleton and a polyester skin. It looks as if there is a thick layer of sand coating the animal. It weighes 2. tons, but can be set into motion by one person. It stands 4.70 meters tall. Because of its height it catches enough wind to start moving. MPEG video here. (From Jamie Zawinski\u0026rsquo;s blog.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/wind-powered-walking-machines.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.strandbeest.com/animaris%20rhinoceros%20transport_en.html\"\u003eAnimaris Rhinoceros Transport\u003c/a\u003e is a type of animal with a steel skeleton and a polyester skin. It looks as if there is a thick layer of sand coating the animal. It weighes 2. tons, but can be set into motion by one person. It stands 4.70 meters tall. Because of its height it catches enough wind to start moving.  MPEG video \u003ca href=\"http://strandbeest.ii.nl/movies/rhinoceros%20klaar_kort.mpg\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (From \u003ca href=\"http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/590098.html\"\u003eJamie Zawinski\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wind-powered walking machines"},{"content":"The \u0026ldquo;Secular Freethought Society\u0026rdquo; at Arizona State University (also known as the \u0026ldquo;Secular Devils\u0026rdquo;) has an event calendar for 2006 on the web. Gerda de Klerk, the group\u0026rsquo;s president, sent me an email inviting me to attend any of them, and asking me to pass it on to anyone else interested. The Eugenie Scott talk I\u0026rsquo;ve already mentioned is on the list, along with some Darwin Week events for February 13-17, a film screening of \u0026ldquo;Bob Smith USA\u0026rdquo; followed by \u0026ldquo;Normal Bob Smith and his Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls invade downtown Tempe\u0026rdquo; on March 3, a talk by John Lynch of the stranger fruit blog on the development of creationism into the intelligent design movement on March 28, among others.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/asu-secular-devils-events-for-2006.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Secular Freethought Society\u0026rdquo; at Arizona State University (also known as the \u0026ldquo;Secular Devils\u0026rdquo;) has \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/clubs/secular/projects.html\"\u003ean event calendar for 2006\u003c/a\u003e on the web.  Gerda de Klerk, the group\u0026rsquo;s president, sent me an email inviting me to attend any of them, and asking me to pass it on to anyone else interested.   The \u003ca href=\"/2006/01/eugenie-scott-at-asu.html\"\u003eEugenie Scott talk\u003c/a\u003e I\u0026rsquo;ve already mentioned is on the list, along with some Darwin Week events for February 13-17, a film screening of \u0026ldquo;Bob Smith USA\u0026rdquo; followed by \u0026ldquo;Normal Bob Smith and his Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls invade downtown Tempe\u0026rdquo; on March 3, a talk by \u003ca href=\"http://www.public.asu.edu/%7Ejmlynch/\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e of the \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/\"\u003estranger fruit blog\u003c/a\u003e on the development of creationism into the intelligent design movement on March 28, among others.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU \"Secular Devils\" events for 2006"},{"content":"As many people now know, James Frey\u0026rsquo;s bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection A Million Little Pieces has been exposed by The Smoking Gun as a collection of fabrications\u0026ndash;yet Oprah continues to support the book.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a whole genre (at least one) of phony autobiography, and those who get suckered into believing them often continue to support them even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. Mike Warnke\u0026rsquo;s book, The Satan Seller, tells of how he was inducted into a coven of Satan-worshippers and became a leader in the group, leading a debauched life before finding God and becoming a Christian standup comedian. The Christian magazine Cornerstone did a comprehensive investigation into his past, and found that none of it was true. Similarly, Cornerstone exposed \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s claim of being raised by Satan-worshippers, forced to participate in sex orgies, and to sacrifice her own child to be the fabrications of a mentally disturbed woman who was raised in a Christian home. Michael Esses told a story of being a God-hating rabbi converted to Christianity in his 1973 book, Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me? John Todd claimed to be a member of the Illuminati. \u0026ldquo;Dr. Alberto Rivera\u0026rdquo; claimed to be a Jesuit priest trained to destroy Protestant churches in a story published as a comic book by Jack Chick. Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien claimed in Trance-Formation of America to have been subjected to CIA mind control and made into a sex slave for presidents and celebrities.\nThe male versions emphasize that the individual involved was a tough guy, a bad guy, and a leader involved in these nefarious deeds; the female versions, by contrast, portray themselves as victims under the control of evil conspirators. In both cases there seems to be an element of pride in the vivid descriptions of the actions confessed\u0026ndash;the motivations behind these are no doubt similar to the motivations of false or embellished confessions in rehab and twelve-step programs.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that the same people are behind a number of the Christian fakes\u0026ndash;David Balsiger ghost-authored Warnke\u0026rsquo;s book and was director of marketing for the publisher of Esses\u0026rsquo; book (and has a longstanding reputation for dishonesty), Jack Chick promoted John Todd and \u0026ldquo;Alberto.\u0026quot;\nIn Frey\u0026rsquo;s case, publisher Nan Talese admits having long-standing arguments with her husband, Gay Talese, about whether \u0026ldquo;nonfiction\u0026rdquo; can include fabrications\u0026ndash;her husband defending truth in nonfiction while she defends falsehood presented as fact.\nFrey, for his part, has admitted that he has taken some liberties, but asserts in the face of overwhelming evidence from The Smoking Gun exposure that his account is still basically accurate.\nWhy are so many people willing to support and endorse this kind of dishonesty? Some, like Nan Talese, are doing so explicitly\u0026ndash;a position that forgives minor distortions, even when they accumulate into major ones. It allows for \u0026ldquo;bullshitting\u0026rdquo; and for \u0026ldquo;noble lies\u0026rdquo; of the sort the neo-conservatives defend.\nI find it fascinating that some of the biggest defenders of this kind of falsehood are people who claim to be absolutists about morality\u0026ndash;the only thing that can be said in their defense is that some of them truly believe it and think the exposures can be refuted. Over time, the position can become untenable for most, and the followers of people like Warnke fall away in quiet embarrassment.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/fictional-autobiographies-frey-joins.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs many people now know, James Frey\u0026rsquo;s bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Million Little Pieces\u003c/span\u003e has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html\"\u003eexposed by The Smoking Gun\u003c/a\u003e as a collection of fabrications\u0026ndash;yet \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/01/11/frey.lkl/\"\u003eOprah continues to support the book\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a whole genre (at least one) of phony autobiography, and those who get suckered into believing them often continue to support them even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them.  Mike Warnke\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Satan Seller\u003c/span\u003e, tells of how he was inducted into a coven of Satan-worshippers and became a leader in the group, leading a debauched life before finding God and becoming a Christian standup comedian.  The Christian magazine \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCornerstone\u003c/span\u003e did a comprehensive investigation into his past, and found that none of it was true.  Similarly, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCornerstone\u003c/span\u003e exposed \u0026ldquo;Lauren Stratford\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s claim of being raised by Satan-worshippers, forced to participate in sex orgies, and to sacrifice her own child to be the fabrications of a mentally disturbed woman who was raised in a Christian home.  Michael Esses told a story of being a God-hating rabbi converted to Christianity in his 1973 book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMichael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?\u003c/span\u003e  John Todd claimed to be a member of the Illuminati.  \u0026ldquo;Dr. Alberto Rivera\u0026rdquo; claimed to be a Jesuit priest trained to destroy Protestant churches in a story published as a comic book by Jack Chick.  Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien claimed in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTrance-Formation of America\u003c/span\u003e to have been subjected to CIA mind control and made into a sex slave for presidents and celebrities.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe male versions emphasize that the individual involved was a tough guy, a bad guy, and a leader involved in these nefarious deeds; the female versions, by contrast, portray themselves as victims under the control of evil conspirators.  In both cases there seems to be an element of pride in the vivid descriptions of the actions confessed\u0026ndash;the motivations behind these are no doubt similar to the motivations of false or embellished confessions in rehab and twelve-step programs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that the same people are behind a number of the Christian fakes\u0026ndash;David Balsiger ghost-authored Warnke\u0026rsquo;s book and was director of marketing for the publisher of Esses\u0026rsquo; book (and has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/jammal.html\"\u003elongstanding reputation for dishonesty\u003c/a\u003e), Jack Chick promoted John Todd and \u0026ldquo;Alberto.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Frey\u0026rsquo;s case, publisher Nan Talese \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/books/12frey.html\"\u003eadmits having long-standing arguments with her husband\u003c/a\u003e, Gay Talese, about whether \u0026ldquo;nonfiction\u0026rdquo; can include fabrications\u0026ndash;her husband defending truth in nonfiction while she defends falsehood presented as fact.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFrey, for his part, has admitted that he has taken some liberties, but asserts in the face of overwhelming evidence from The Smoking Gun exposure that his account is still basically accurate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhy are so many people willing to support and endorse this kind of dishonesty?  Some, like Nan Talese, are doing so explicitly\u0026ndash;a position that forgives minor distortions, even when they accumulate into major ones.  It allows for \u003ca href=\"/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;bullshitting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and for \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5010.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;noble lies\u0026rdquo; of the sort the neo-conservatives defend\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find it fascinating that some of the biggest defenders of this kind of falsehood are people who claim to be absolutists about morality\u0026ndash;the only thing that can be said in their defense is that some of them truly believe it and think the exposures can be refuted.  Over time, the position can become untenable for most, and the followers of people like Warnke fall away in quiet embarrassment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fictional autobiographies:  Frey joins Warnke, \"Stratford,\" Esses, etc."},{"content":"I make no claim to have accurate gaydar, but did anybody see the video of Sam Alito walking down the street in D.C. (shown as the \u0026ldquo;moment of zen\u0026rdquo; on the Daily Show, Thursday, January 12) and not think he appeared to be a gay man (of the closeted, married variety)?\nApparently he does have a gay-friendly past. Of course, he defended privacy rights back then, too.\nUnfortunately, closeted gay conservatives of the Roy Cohn and Terry Dolan variety are not generally good for the country\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/sam-alitos-queer-mannerisms.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI make no claim to have accurate gaydar, but did anybody see the video of Sam Alito walking down the street in D.C. (shown as the \u0026ldquo;moment of zen\u0026rdquo; on the Daily Show, Thursday, January 12) and not think he appeared to be a gay man (of the closeted, married variety)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently he does have a \u003ca href=\"http://www.acepryhill.com/archives/001290.html\"\u003egay-friendly past\u003c/a\u003e.  Of course, \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/11/02/alito_writing_backed_privacy_gay_rights/\"\u003ehe defended privacy rights back then\u003c/a\u003e, too.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, \u003ca href=\"http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v10n1/gaycons.html\"\u003ecloseted gay conservatives\u003c/a\u003e of the Roy Cohn and Terry Dolan variety are not generally good for the country\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sam Alito's queer mannerisms"},{"content":"Casey Luskin offered a commentary (on the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Evolution News \u0026amp; Views\u0026rdquo; blog) on Kenneth Miller\u0026rsquo;s testimony in the Dover case in which he expounded on chromosomal fusion and evidence for common ancestry between apes and humans. Mike Dunford and P. Z. Myers responded, pointing out numerous errors and misunderstandings in Luskin\u0026rsquo;s argument. Luskin\u0026rsquo;s commentary has been enshrined as a paper at the IDEA Center website called \u0026ldquo;And the Miller Told His Tale.\u0026quot;\nIf Luskin or the Discovery Institute were serious about \u0026ldquo;teaching the controversy,\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;d at least acknowledge the existence of these responses. But even the trackbacks for the blog entry remains empty\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/casey-luskins-lack-of-integrity.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCasey Luskin offered \u003ca href=\"http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/10/and_the_miller_told_his_tale_ken_miller_.html\"\u003ea commentary\u003c/a\u003e (on the Discovery Institute\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Evolution News \u0026amp; Views\u0026rdquo; blog) on Kenneth Miller\u0026rsquo;s testimony in the Dover case in which he expounded on chromosomal fusion and evidence for common ancestry between apes and humans.  \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index?URL=http://thequestionableauthority.blogspot.com%2F2005%2F10%2Fdog-bites-man.html\"\u003eMike Dunford\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/luskins_ludicrous_genetics/\"\u003eP. Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e responded, pointing out numerous errors and misunderstandings in Luskin\u0026rsquo;s argument.  Luskin\u0026rsquo;s commentary has been enshrined as \u003ca href=\"http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1392\"\u003ea paper at the IDEA Center website\u003c/a\u003e called \u0026ldquo;And the Miller Told His Tale.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf Luskin or the Discovery Institute were serious about \u0026ldquo;teaching the controversy,\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;d at least acknowledge the existence of these responses.  But even the trackbacks for the blog entry remains empty\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Casey Luskin's lack of integrity"},{"content":"Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, will be giving the Robert S. Dietz memorial lecture at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 2, 2006, at ASU\u0026rsquo;s main campus (Physical Sciences building, room F 166).\nGenie will be speaking on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Historical, Scientific, Political, Legal and Educational Perspectives.\u0026rdquo; I plan to be there.\nBob Dietz was an early advocate of plate tectonics and one of the primary developers of the concept of seafloor spreading, a major factor in its scientific acceptance. He was the faculty advisor for the Phoenix Skeptics, which I originally started as an ASU student group with Mike Norton and Jamie Busch. Dietz was also on the board of the Phoenix Skeptics after it became a non-campus group, and gave a few talks to the group. He had a great sense of humor, which showed in his book, co-authored with illustrator John C. Holden, Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed (1987), which included some quotations from a pamphlet I wrote a year earlier, Fundamentalism is Nonsense. He died in 1995.\nUPDATE: I described Genie Scott\u0026rsquo;s ASU talk here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/eugenie-scott-at-asu.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEugenie Scott, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e, will be giving the \u003ca href=\"http://geology.asu.edu/seminars/dietz_lecture06/dietz06.html\"\u003eRobert S. Dietz memorial lecture\u003c/a\u003e at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 2, 2006, at ASU\u0026rsquo;s main campus (Physical Sciences building, room F 166).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGenie will be speaking on \u0026ldquo;Creationism and Evolution: Historical, Scientific, Political, Legal and Educational Perspectives.\u0026rdquo;  I plan to be there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBob Dietz was \u003ca href=\"http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/archives/siohstry/dietz-biog.html\"\u003ean early advocate of plate tectonics and one of the primary developers of the concept of seafloor spreading\u003c/a\u003e, a major factor in its scientific acceptance.  He was the faculty advisor for the Phoenix Skeptics, which I originally started as an ASU student group with Mike Norton and Jamie Busch.  Dietz was also on the board of the Phoenix Skeptics after it became a non-campus group, and gave a few talks to the group.  He had a great sense of humor, which showed in his book, co-authored with illustrator John C. Holden, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCreation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed\u003c/span\u003e (1987), which included some quotations from a pamphlet I wrote a year earlier, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eFundamentalism is Nonsense\u003c/span\u003e.  He died in 1995.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE: I described Genie Scott\u0026rsquo;s ASU talk \u003ca href=\"/2006/02/eugenie-scott-gives-robert-s-dietz.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eugenie Scott at ASU"},{"content":"A Pharyngula reader sent in a photograph asking the above question. I vote for the second answer given\u0026hellip;\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI'd kinda lean to the 4th answer, only because how else are you going to answer the second part of the question?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/which-has-immortal-soul-and-which.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/guess_which_one.php\"\u003ePharyngula reader sent in a photograph\u003c/a\u003e asking the above question.  I vote for the second answer given\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI'd kinda lean to the 4th answer, only because how else are you going to answer the second part of the question?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Which has an immortal soul, and which makes good McNuggets?"},{"content":"Turns out the mouse thrown into the fire was dead, and wind blew the fire into the house.\nCorrection here.\nUPDATE January 12: Now Mares is sticking by the original story!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/mouse-burning-down-house-story-not.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTurns out the mouse thrown into the fire was dead, and wind blew the fire into the house.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCorrection \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc4.tv/news/5956927/detail.html?treets=la\u0026tid=2651905955813\u0026amp;amp;tml=la_4pm\u0026tmi=la_4pm_1_06000201102006\u0026amp;ts=H\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE January 12:  Now Mares is \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Mouse_Fire.html\"\u003esticking by the original story\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mouse burning down house story not true"},{"content":"The DVD screeners for Steven Spielberg\u0026rsquo;s new film, \u0026ldquo;Munich,\u0026rdquo; which were sent to members of the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Bafta) were inadvertently encoded for region one (U.S. and Canada) rather than region two (most of Europe). The DVDs, which had already arrived late due to a mess up at UK Customs, are unplayable in the DVD players of most of the Bafta members who received them.\nThe region encoding scheme is designed to prevent DVDs sold in one part of the world from being resold in other parts of the world. The encoding is actually fairly trivial to bypass, and many inexpensive DVD players made in China (such as those by Apex) have hidden menu options or easily modifiable firmware which allows DVD encoding protection to be disabled.\nPremier PR, the company running the \u0026ldquo;Munich\u0026rdquo; PR campaign for Bafta, set up several preview screenings of the film in London, but many members of the organization live elsewhere in the UK.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/dvd-region-encoding-may-kill.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe DVD screeners for Steven Spielberg\u0026rsquo;s new film, \u0026ldquo;Munich,\u0026rdquo; which were sent to members of the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Bafta) \u003ca href=\"http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1683771,00.html\"\u003ewere inadvertently encoded for region one\u003c/a\u003e (U.S. and Canada) rather than region two (most of Europe).  The DVDs, which had already arrived late due to a mess up at UK Customs, are unplayable in the DVD players of most of the Bafta members who received them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe region encoding scheme is designed to prevent DVDs sold in one part of the world from being resold in other parts of the world.  The encoding is actually fairly trivial to bypass, and many inexpensive DVD players made in China (such as those by Apex) \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,35028,00.html\"\u003ehave hidden menu options\u003c/a\u003e or easily modifiable firmware which allows DVD encoding protection to be disabled.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePremier PR, the company running the \u0026ldquo;Munich\u0026rdquo; PR campaign for Bafta, set up several preview screenings of the film in London, but many members of the organization live elsewhere in the UK.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DVD region encoding may kill Spielberg's chances for Bafta awards"},{"content":"Grass Collective makes \u0026ldquo;moving art\u0026rdquo; which includes a DVD of Los Angeles traffic at nighttime. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty hypnotic. (Hat tip to BLDGBLOG.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nWould that Google Earth looked that cool!:)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/los-angeles-traffic-at-night-time.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://grasscollective.com/\"\u003eGrass Collective\u003c/a\u003e makes \u0026ldquo;moving art\u0026rdquo; which includes a DVD of \u003ca href=\"http://grasscollective.com/videos/a1.htm\"\u003eLos Angeles traffic at nighttime\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s pretty hypnotic.  (Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/greater-los-angeles-traffic-galaxies.html\"\u003eBLDGBLOG\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWould that Google Earth looked that cool!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e:)\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Los Angeles traffic at night-time"},{"content":"Bob Evans, the public defender who has taken on the Cory Maye case, has been fired by the town of Prentiss. All appearances are that the mayor and aldermen took this action solely because of his defense of Maye. More at the Agitator.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/cory-maye-update-public-defender-fired.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBob Evans, the public defender who has taken on the Cory Maye case, has been fired by the town of Prentiss.  All appearances are that the mayor and aldermen took this action solely because of his defense of Maye.  More at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026131.php\"\u003eAgitator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye update: Public defender fired by town"},{"content":"If you\u0026rsquo;re not already familiar with \u0026ldquo;rx,\u0026rdquo; George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s alter-ego, or if you haven\u0026rsquo;t checked www.thepartyparty.com lately, there are now covers of \u0026ldquo;White Lines\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Whole Lotta Love\u0026rdquo; in addition to \u0026ldquo;Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;My Generation,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday.\u0026rdquo; Check it out.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThere's something strangely compelling about Bush saying \"Rang dang diggity dangidang\"...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/rx-party-party.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re not already familiar with \u0026ldquo;rx,\u0026rdquo; George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s alter-ego, or if you haven\u0026rsquo;t checked \u003ca href=\"http://www.thepartyparty.com/\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.thepartyparty.com\"\u003ewww.thepartyparty.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e lately, there are now covers of \u0026ldquo;White Lines\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Whole Lotta Love\u0026rdquo; in addition to \u0026ldquo;Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;My Generation,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Sunday Bloody Sunday.\u0026rdquo;  Check it out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThere's something strangely compelling about Bush saying \"Rang dang diggity dangidang\"...\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"rx / the party party"},{"content":"On January 8, 2006, U.S. troops broke into the home of Iraqi journalist Dr. Ali Fadhil, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children. Fadhil, who is working for UK\u0026rsquo;s Guardian and Channel 4 on a story about misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars of Iraqi funds held by Americans and British, was hooded and taken for questioning, and released a few hours later. Video tapes made for his investigation were seized and have not been returned.\nThe troops told Fadhil they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent.\nMore at The Guardian.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/us-troops-seize-iraqi-journalist-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn January 8, 2006, U.S. troops broke into the home of Iraqi journalist Dr. Ali Fadhil, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.  Fadhil, who is working for UK\u0026rsquo;s Guardian and Channel 4 on a story about misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars of Iraqi funds held by Americans and British, was hooded and taken for questioning, and released a few hours later.  Video tapes made for his investigation were seized and have not been returned.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe troops told Fadhil they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,16518,1682246,00.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"U.S. troops seize Iraqi journalist and tapes"},{"content":"John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody - including by crushing that child's testicles.John Yoo is one of the primary legal advisors to George W. Bush, responsible for legal reasoning to justify torture, warrantless wiretapping, and virtually anything else the president feels is necessary. Here's the exchange with Yoo, from a December 1, 2005 debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel:\nCassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?\nYoo: No treaty.\nCassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.\nYoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.More description and a link to an audio clip here.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/bush-advisor-says-president-has-legal.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003eJohn Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody - including by crushing that child's testicles.\u003c/blockquote\u003eJohn Yoo is one of the primary legal advisors to George W. Bush, responsible for legal reasoning to justify torture, warrantless wiretapping, and virtually anything else the president feels is necessary.  Here's the exchange with Yoo, from a December 1, 2005 debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYoo: No treaty.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.\u003c/blockquote\u003eMore description and a link to an audio clip \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.","title":"Bush advisor says president has legal power to torture children"},{"content":"George W. Bush continues his pattern of appointing unqualified people and bypassing rules and regulations that get in his way by appointing Ellen Sauerbrey to the post of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, a post that is responsible for a $700 million budget to address global refugee crises.\nSauerbrey began confirmation hearings in October 2005, but Sen. Barbara Boxer put off the vote until after the winter break. Bush took the opportunity to appoint her and about a dozen other candidates as \u0026ldquo;recess appointments\u0026rdquo; while Congress was out of session.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s more on Sauerbrey\u0026rsquo;s lack of qualifications and her conservative views at Salon.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/bush-advisor-says-president-has-legal.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge W. Bush continues his pattern of appointing unqualified people and bypassing rules and regulations that get in his way by appointing Ellen Sauerbrey to the post of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, a post that is responsible for a $700 million budget to address global refugee crises.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSauerbrey began confirmation hearings in October 2005, but Sen. Barbara Boxer put off the vote until after the winter break.  Bush took the opportunity to appoint her and about a dozen other candidates as \u0026ldquo;recess appointments\u0026rdquo; while Congress was out of session.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s more on Sauerbrey\u0026rsquo;s lack of qualifications and her conservative views at \u003ca href=\"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/05/sauerbrey/\"\u003eSalon\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush circumvents hearing process to appoint unqualified head of refugee response team"},{"content":"In 2003, the Bush administration said that the $200 billion estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq from Larry Lindsey, Bush\u0026rsquo;s economic advisor, was too high. Paul Wolfowitz suggested that the cost of reconstruction would be financed entirely by Iraq. Congress has so far appropriated $251 billion for military operations, and the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that we should expect another $230 billion in costs over the next ten years.\nNow a paper by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes argues that the CBO\u0026rsquo;s estimate leaves out some significant costs, like healthcare for injured soldiers\u0026ndash;lifetime care for brain injuries alone may cost $35 billion. Their paper argues that $1 trillion is a conservative estimate of the total costs.\n(Story at The Guardian.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nGenerals and Majors ah ahthey're never too farfrom battlefields so gloriousout in a world of their ownThey'll never come downtill once again victoriousGenerals and Majors alwaysseem so unhappy 'less they got a warGenerals and Majors ah ahlike never before are tired of being actionless.Calling Generals and MajorsGenerals and Majors everywhereCalling Generals and Majorsyour World War III is drawing nearGenerals and Majors ah ahThey're never too faraway from men who made the gradeout in a world of their ownThey'll never come downuntil the battle's lost or madeGenerals and Majors ah ahlike never before, are tired of being in the shade.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/iraq-war-costs-underestimated-could.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 2003, the Bush administration said that the $200 billion estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq from Larry Lindsey, Bush\u0026rsquo;s economic advisor, was too high.  Paul Wolfowitz suggested that the cost of reconstruction would be financed entirely by Iraq.  Congress has so far appropriated $251 billion for military operations, and the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that we should expect another $230 billion in costs over the next ten years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow a paper by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes argues that the CBO\u0026rsquo;s estimate leaves out some significant costs, like healthcare for injured soldiers\u0026ndash;lifetime care for brain injuries alone may cost $35 billion.  Their paper argues that $1 trillion is a conservative estimate of the total costs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Story at \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1681078,00.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Iraq war costs underestimated--could reach $1 trillion"},{"content":"In a Washington Post article about conservative Christian support for the confirmation of Samuel Alito, Rev. Herbert H. Lusk II, a recipient of over $1 million in federal grants from the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s Faith Based Initiative, says:\n\u0026ldquo;My friends, don\u0026rsquo;t fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics. And those the church has not buried, the church has made funeral arrangement for.\u0026quot;As Pharyngula points out, this sounds a little threatening\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/rev-lusks-support-for-alito.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/08/AR2006010801069.html?nav=rss_print/asection\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e about conservative Christian support for the confirmation of Samuel Alito, Rev. Herbert H. Lusk II, a recipient of over $1 million in federal grants from the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s Faith Based Initiative, says:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e \u0026ldquo;My friends, don\u0026rsquo;t fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics. And those the church has not buried, the church has made funeral arrangement for.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/youse_could_have_a_little_accident/\"\u003ePharyngula points out\u003c/a\u003e, this sounds a little threatening\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rev. Lusk's support for Alito"},{"content":"From the BBC, how not to dispose of live rodents:\nA US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.\nLuciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.\n\u0026ldquo;I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,\u0026rdquo; he was quoted as saying by AP.\nThough no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.\nUPDATE: This is not true\u0026ndash;the mouse was dead when thrown into the fire, which was blown into the house by wind.\nUPDATE January 12: Now Mares is sticking with the original story.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/urban-legend-becomes-reality-again-as.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4593682.stm\"\u003eBBC\u003c/a\u003e, how not to dispose of live rodents:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLuciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,\u0026rdquo; he was quoted as saying by AP.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThough no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE:  This is \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc4.tv/news/5956927/detail.html?treets=la\u0026tid=2651905955813\u0026amp;amp;tml=la_4pm\u0026tmi=la_4pm_1_06000201102006\u0026amp;ts=H\"\u003enot true\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;the mouse was dead when thrown into the fire, which was blown into the house by wind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE January 12:  Now Mares is \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Mouse_Fire.html\"\u003esticking with the original story\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Urban legend becomes reality, again, as mouse burns down house"},{"content":"KTVU in San Francisco used this background image when discussing the NSA warrantless wiretap issue. (John Hazelton on the SKEPTIC list spotted this and got the screen capture.)\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nLOL, I would never have suspected NASA to be involved in this domestic spying ring! No wonder they have Hubble up there, the men in gray suits are peeping on us with it! Down with NASA!(I wonder if the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, is in on all this cloak and dagger operation too.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/sf-fox-affiliates-emily-litella-moment.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/KTVU_NASA_NSA_1.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/KTVU_NASA_NSA_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eKTVU in San Francisco used this background image when discussing the NSA warrantless wiretap issue.  (John Hazelton on the SKEPTIC list spotted this and got the screen capture.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eLOL, I would never have suspected NASA to be involved in this domestic spying ring! No wonder they have Hubble up there, the men in gray suits are peeping on us with it! Down with NASA!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e(I wonder if the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, is in on all this cloak and dagger operation too.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SF Fox affiliate's Emily Litella moment"},{"content":"America\u0026rsquo;s Blog has brought up a story that was published in the mainstream media last year (in the Washington Post) and a few days ago (in the Chicago Sun-Times) but which for some reason hasn\u0026rsquo;t resulted in an uproar. The story is that there are sites on the Internet from which you can purchase copies of calling records for cell phones and land lines, such as Locatecell.com. John in DC, who runs America\u0026rsquo;s Blog, purchased his own cell phone records, and indeed got a list of all the numbers he had called.\nCingular thinks this is an \u0026ldquo;infinitesimally small problem\u0026rdquo; for them.\nHow are sites such as Locatecell getting their information? They could be purchasing it from insiders, they are no doubt using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; (social engineering) to persuade customer support representatives to give them the information, or gaining access to customer account information via the web (Verizon Wireless had another major security hole in their online billing system last year, similar to one in 2001 which they took two weeks to act upon).\nWhichever mechanisms are used, it is clear that privacy is being violated and likely that laws are being broken, yet there seems to be little visible interest on the part of the telephone companies in going after the criminals\u0026ndash;perhaps because doing so might expose how poorly they are securing the information.\nThe Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has a good collection of material on this issue here. (Updated January 9: They filed a case against Bestpeoplesearch.com, which admits to using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; as their method to obtain the information.)\n(Thanks to cowmix for bringing this to my attention.)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nEPIC's filed \"case\" was just an FTC complaint, not a lawsuit. AT\u0026T has just filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed data brokers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/cell-phone-call-records-available.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/anyone-can-buy-list-of-your-incoming.html\"\u003eAmerica\u0026rsquo;s Blog has brought up a story\u003c/a\u003e that was published in the mainstream media last year (in  the \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701862.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) and a few days ago (in the  \u003ca href=\"http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privacy05.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e) but which for some reason hasn\u0026rsquo;t resulted in an uproar.  The story is that there are sites on the Internet from which you can purchase copies of calling records for cell phones and land lines, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.locatecell.com/\"\u003eLocatecell.com\u003c/a\u003e.  John in DC, who runs America\u0026rsquo;s Blog, purchased his own cell phone records, and indeed got a list of all the numbers he had called.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/cingular-wireless-says-3rd-parties.html\"\u003eCingular thinks\u003c/a\u003e this is an \u0026ldquo;infinitesimally small problem\u0026rdquo; for them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHow are sites such as Locatecell getting their information?  They could be purchasing it from insiders, they are no doubt using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo; (social engineering) to persuade customer support representatives to give them the information, or gaining access to customer account information via the web (\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081102122.html\"\u003eVerizon Wireless had another major security hole\u003c/a\u003e in their online billing system last year, similar to one in 2001 which \u003ca href=\"http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/privacy/story/0,10801,63587,00.html\"\u003ethey took two weeks to act upon\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhichever mechanisms are used, it is clear that privacy is being violated and likely that laws are being broken, yet there seems to be little visible interest on the part of the telephone companies in going after the criminals\u0026ndash;perhaps because doing so might expose how poorly they are securing the information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has a good collection of material on this issue \u003ca href=\"http://www.epic.org/privacy/iei/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (Updated January 9:  They filed a case against Bestpeoplesearch.com, which \u003ca href=\"http://west.epic.org/archives/2006/01/pretexting_isnt.html\"\u003eadmits to using \u0026ldquo;pretexting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e as their method to obtain the information.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Thanks to \u003ca href=\"http://cowmix.blogspot.com/\"\u003ecowmix\u003c/a\u003e for bringing this to my attention.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cell phone call records available online"},{"content":"The latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education includes an article (\u0026ldquo;The Taboo Standard\u0026rdquo;) by Marni Landry of Paradise Valley High School, who reports that she proposed a study to survey life science teachers in the Phoenix Union High School District on the subject of evolution. The survey, intended to support her M.A. thesis work at the University of Phoenix, asked the recipients whether they agreed or disagreed slightly or completely with the following statements:\nI have helped to write the district or state science standards.\nI would like to contribute in the writing of the district or state science standards.\nI know specifically what the district standards are concerning the theory of evolution.\nI have avoided details about the origin of life in order to avoid conflict in my classroom.\nThe theory of evolution goes against my religious beliefs.\nIf I were to get into a confrontation with a student or parent concerning the theory of evolution, I feel that [the] administration would support my actions.\nI feel that creationism (creation science) should be taught parallel to evolution in the classroom.\nI am concerned over the fact that many states have removed evolution from their science standards.\nStudents must understand the theory of evolution in order to understand the study of biology.\nI have experienced conflict with a student, parent, or administrator concerning my teaching of evolution.This survey and edited versions were rejected by school district administrators as \u0026ldquo;too controversial.\u0026rdquo; The irony of being unable to conduct a survey of science teachers about a subject that they are required by state science standards to teach is explicitly noted.\nThe author was able to complete a pilot study, and her article reports the percentages for the above statements (16.5% say that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and that creationism should be taught).\nThe same issue of Reports has stories from Texas and Arkansas about high school teachers being unable to teach about evolution or (in Arkansas) even mention the ages of rocks in millions of years.\nThis, to me, is far more frightening than attempts to force the teaching of intelligent design or creation science\u0026ndash;that teaching about evolution has already been removed from or watered down in many of the classrooms of the United States. It\u0026rsquo;s no wonder that the average American is completely ignorant on the subject.\nDon Daniels (2006-12-09):\nHey. Enjoyed your blog. Stop by my blog at www.commissioned1.blogspot.com to see a project that I'm working on.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI think we just got spammed!\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI thought so too until I looked at his blog. He's apparently a young-earth creationist (or at least has been viewing material from the Institute for Creation Research, such as Steve Austin's work on Mt. St. Helens). Perhaps he is spamming his blog to everybody who has comments on evolution.I posted this comment (awaiting approval) on his blog (on this post: http://commissioned1.blogspot.com/2005/12/evolution-takes-exam-this-is-test-to.html):It looks like your list has been assembled through the study of young-earth creationist material. I hope that your study will be more balanced.For example, the conjunction of items 9 and 10 suggests that you believe 9 is false and 10 is true, but the reverse is the case. See Glenn Morton's paper on the geologic column in North Dakota: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/geo.htmMorton is a Christian and former young-earth creationist (published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly) who almost lost his faith over the creationism/evolution issue because his daily work in petroleum geology showed him that young-earth creationism was false. He found a way to reconcile his faith and the evidence for evolution and an old earth.Items 13 and 15 wrongly suggest that the canyons around Mt. St. Helens are comparable to the Grand Canyon when in fact they are very different types of formations.I could go on and on through your list, but I think you should do so first.I recommend that you examine Mark Isaak's Counter-Creationism Handbook, a version of which may be found online here:http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMaybe it was spam--despite his blog's claim that \"Anything decent and focused will be published,\" he hasn't published my comment (or any others).\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWhat an ass!I have continued to troll over at The Dying In Christ Blog and have, surprisingly, found it to be a rewarding--or at least entertaining--experience.There have been some lively discussions, and, unlike Tom Wanchick, Maureen at least sometimes answers comments made by posters. (She's still certifiable, though)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/phoenix-union-high-school-district.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest issue of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports of the National Center for Science Education\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e includes an article (\u0026ldquo;The Taboo Standard\u0026rdquo;) by Marni Landry of Paradise Valley High School, who reports that she proposed a study to survey life science teachers in the Phoenix Union High School District on the subject of evolution.  The survey, intended to support her M.A. thesis work at the University of Phoenix, asked the recipients whether they agreed or disagreed slightly or completely with the following statements:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI have helped to write the district or state science standards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI would like to contribute in the writing of the district or state science standards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI know specifically what the district standards are concerning the theory of evolution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have avoided details about the origin of life in order to avoid conflict in my classroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe theory of evolution goes against my religious beliefs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf I were to get into a confrontation with a student or parent concerning the theory of evolution, I feel that [the] administration would support my actions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI feel that creationism (creation science) should be taught parallel to evolution in the classroom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI am concerned over the fact that many states have removed evolution from their science standards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eStudents must understand the theory of evolution in order to understand the study of biology.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI have experienced conflict with a student, parent, or administrator concerning my teaching of evolution.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThis survey and edited versions were rejected by school district administrators as \u0026ldquo;too controversial.\u0026rdquo;  The irony of being unable to conduct a survey of science teachers about a subject that they are required by state science standards to teach is explicitly noted.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe author was able to complete a pilot study, and her article reports the percentages for the above statements (16.5% say that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and that creationism should be taught).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe same issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReports\u003c/span\u003e has stories from Texas and Arkansas about high school teachers being unable to teach about evolution or (in Arkansas) even mention the ages of rocks in millions of years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis, to me, is far more frightening than attempts to force the teaching of intelligent design or creation science\u0026ndash;that teaching about evolution has already been removed from or watered down in many of the classrooms of the United States.  It\u0026rsquo;s no wonder that the average American is completely ignorant on the subject.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix Union High School District:  Evolution too controversial to survey science teachers about"},{"content":"Jeff Lowder, one of the founders and former president of the Internet Infidels, now has a blog, Naturalistic Atheism.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nWow, sounds good. I've asked II before if they would be interested in doing a group blog. J. Lowder said he was interested about blogging, somewhat. I'm glad to see that he has indeed taken the plunge into the blogosphere.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/jeff-lowders-blog-naturalistic-atheism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Lowder, one of the founders and former president of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e, now has a blog, \u003ca href=\"http://lowder.blogspot.com/\"\u003eNaturalistic Atheism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDanny Boy, FCD\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWow, sounds good. I've asked II before if they would be interested in doing a group blog. J. Lowder said he was interested about blogging, somewhat. I'm glad to see that he has indeed taken the plunge into the blogosphere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeff Lowder's blog: Naturalistic Atheism"},{"content":"I read (and completed) the following books in 2005. I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed most of them at Amazon.com (where the links point):\nRichard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church\nPascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious ThoughtRachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China\nCory Doctorow, Eastern Standard TribeMark Haddon, the curious incident of the dog in the night-timeMichael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age\nPeter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy\nPenn Jillette, Sock\nDavid Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich\u0026ndash;and Cheat Everybody Else\nSteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything\nJoel Levy, The Scam Handbook: The Secrets of the Con Artist\nRichard Marcus, American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside-Down\u0026ndash;My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World\u0026rsquo;s Casinos\nJohn Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry\nBethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron\nBen Mezrich, Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions\nKevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders \u0026amp; Deceivers\nMatthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket Diary\nJohn Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market\nV.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness\nJon Ronson, The Men Who Stare At Goats\nPaul Scharbach and John H. Akers, Phoenix: Then and Now\nThomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America\u0026rsquo;s Wealthy\nJim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear\nAnthony Storr, Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus\nTeller, \u0026ldquo;When I\u0026rsquo;m Dead, All This Will Be Yours!\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;Joe Teller, a portrait by his kid, Teller\nVicki Lewis Thompson, Nerd Gone WildIra Winkler, Spies Among Us: How to Stop the Spies, Terrorists, Hackers, and Criminals You Don\u0026rsquo;t Even Know You Encounter Every Day\nRichard Yancey, Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man\u0026rsquo;s Tour of Duty Inside the IRS\nI began, but haven\u0026rsquo;t yet finished:\nJames Bovard, The Bush BetrayalAntonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling BrainDiego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection\nJennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History\nOlivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All CreationV.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind\nSpammer-X, Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark SideThomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire MindRobert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, Pump \u0026amp; Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New EconomyJohn Viega and Gary McGraw, Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right WayAndrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, WI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking\nDanny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nWow, I should've made a checklist for books I've read per year, so I can make a list too. I can't very well do that now, it's all a blur. BTW, I've only read one of those books, Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIf you make a list, let us know, I'd like to see it.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nHey! What about Diego Gambetta?\nDanny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nIf I could remember what I read in 2005, I will. :p In the meantime, you can browse through my current book list. BTW, I'm reading your book reviews @ Amazon, I'm checking out if there's any book you might've loved that I could get as well. I'll probably try getting \"Wittgenstein's Poker\" since I saw it in the local bookshop. Cheers! :D\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI think I forgot to list quite a few books that I have started but not completed--including Diego Gambetta's book, which I'll add to the list.I assembled my list by using http://www.discord.org/~lippard/reading.html as a starting point (the back-end database has the date of review associated with each book, so I could pull out all the 2005s).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI read (and completed) the following books in 2005.  I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed most of them at Amazon.com (where the links point):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eRichard Abanes, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568582838/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eOne Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePascal Boyer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465006957/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eReligion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRachel DeWoskin, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393059022/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eForeign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eCory Doctorow, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765310457/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eEastern Standard Tribe\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMark Haddon, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400032717/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ethe curious incident of the dog in the night-time\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMichael A. Hiltzik, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887309895/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePeter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465031161/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePenn Jillette, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312328052/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSock\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDavid Cay Johnston, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591840694/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePerfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich\u0026ndash;and Cheat Everybody Else\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006073132X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFreakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJoel Levy, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0760753458/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Scam Handbook: The Secrets of the Con Artist\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRichard Marcus, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312291396/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmerican Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside-Down\u0026ndash;My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World\u0026rsquo;s Casinos\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Markoff, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670033820/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBethany McLean and Peter Elkind, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591840538/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eBen Mezrich, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006057500X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eUgly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eKevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764569597/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders \u0026amp; Deceivers\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eMatthew Modine, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590710479/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFull Metal Jacket Diary\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Allen Paulos, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465054811/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Mathematician Plays the Stock Market\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eV.S. Ramachandran, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131486861/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Brief Tour of Human Consciousness\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJon Ronson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743241924/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Men Who Stare At Goats\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003ePaul Scharbach and John H. Akers, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592233023/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoenix: Then and Now\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671015206/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America\u0026rsquo;s Wealthy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJim Steinmeyer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786714018/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAnthony Storr, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684834952/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFeet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eTeller, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922233225/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;When I\u0026rsquo;m Dead, All This Will Be Yours!\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;Joe Teller, a portrait by his kid, Teller\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eVicki Lewis Thompson, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031299866X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNerd Gone Wild\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eIra Winkler, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764584685/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpies Among Us: How to Stop the Spies, Terrorists, Hackers, and Criminals You Don\u0026rsquo;t Even Know You Encounter Every Day\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRichard Yancey, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060555602/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eConfessions of a Tax Collector: One Man\u0026rsquo;s Tour of Duty Inside the IRS\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003eI began, but haven\u0026rsquo;t yet finished:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003eJames Bovard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403968519/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAntonio Damasio, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156028719/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eLooking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDiego Gambetta, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674807421/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJennifer Michael Hecht, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060097957/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDoubt: A History\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eOlivia Judson,\u003cem\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805063315/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003eDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eV.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0688172172/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePhantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eSpammer-X, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932266860/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eInside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eThomas J. Stanley, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0740718584/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Millionaire Mind\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eRobert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813536804/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePump \u0026amp; Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eJohn Viega and Gary McGraw, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020172152X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuilding Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eAndrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321202171/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Books Read in 2005"},{"content":"Rev. Rob Schenk of the National Clergy Council in D.C., Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of Faith and Action were barred on Thursday from entering the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito\u0026rsquo;s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday. They were permitted to bless the doors\u0026ndash;reading three Psalms, kneeling to say the Lord\u0026rsquo;s Prayer in front of the doors, and marking a cross in oil on a door.\nThey also said that they had actually entered the hearing room a day earlier to anoint the seats with oil. \u0026ldquo;We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,\u0026rdquo; said Schenk.\nSchenk and Mahoney say they had done the same prior to the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and were pleased with the results.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/alito-senate-confirmation-room.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRev. Rob Schenk of the National Clergy Council in D.C., Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of Faith and Action  \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113649645107138940-Ku05eyOWs5xFbqD33aaAarliwqo_20060112.html?mod=blogs\"\u003ewere barred on Thursday from entering the hearing room\u003c/a\u003e where the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito\u0026rsquo;s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday.  They were permitted to bless the doors\u0026ndash;reading three Psalms, kneeling to say the Lord\u0026rsquo;s Prayer in front of the doors, and marking a cross in oil on a door.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey also said that they had actually entered the hearing room a day earlier to anoint the seats with oil.  \u0026ldquo;We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,\u0026rdquo; said Schenk.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSchenk and Mahoney say they had done the same prior to the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and were pleased with the results.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Alito Senate confirmation room anointed with holy oil"},{"content":"The Boston Globe reports that the \u0026ldquo;signing statement\u0026rdquo; issued by George W. Bush after signing the bill outlawing the torture of detainees contains caveats that indicate that the restrictions in the law can be bypassed in situations where he sees fit.\nBush seems to be under the impression that executive powers granted to him as president allow him to violate any law he deems inconvenient.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s high time for this corrupt, dishonest president to be impeached.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI was chatting on the phone with my Russian friend Anton this morning and I couldn't help but wonder if the conversation was being listened to. We joked that this is the new U.S.S.R., now - United States Soviet Republic.Impeachment is too good a thing for Bush. I vote for hot tar and feathers.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/bush-can-bypass-torture-ban.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/01/04/bush_could_bypass_new_torture_ban/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBoston Globe\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e that the \u0026ldquo;signing statement\u0026rdquo; issued by George W. Bush after signing the bill outlawing the torture of detainees contains caveats that indicate that the restrictions in the law can be bypassed in situations where he sees fit.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBush seems to be under the impression that executive powers granted to him as president allow him to violate any law he deems inconvenient.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s high time for this corrupt, dishonest president to be impeached.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush can bypass torture ban"},{"content":"This story, which came to my attention via the No God Zone, has me incensed. When you first read it, you get the impression that the adamantly anti-gay Pastor offered money for homosexual sex (the word \u0026ldquo;soliciting\u0026rdquo; along with the word \u0026ldquo;prostitute\u0026rdquo;, seen in some versions of the story, conveys exactly that, to me).\nWhile you might agree with me that such an act is entirely harmless, it is clearly illegal, so the arrest of the Pastor comes as no surprise (and in spite of the ultimate injustice of such laws, in the case of this particular Pastor, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but exclaim a rousing rendition of Nelson\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Ha-ha!\u0026rdquo; - especially if he\u0026rsquo;s even half as out of his mind as this wacko). However, as the No God Zone points out, no such offering of money took place.\nSo, while the Pastor may be - nay, is - a hypocritical asshole, he apparently was arrested and had his car stolen (a.k.a., \u0026ldquo;civil forfeiture\u0026rdquo;) for simply asking another guy if he wanted to have sex. The real assholes in this story are the cops, who, it seems, just wanted to harass gays out for a good time in Tulsa, while padding their department budget.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI like this blog comment about this pastor:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/stand_up_for_lonnie_latham/P25/#c56713\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/pastor-arrested-for-trying-to-have-fun.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060105/NEWS06/60105004/1001/NEWS\"\u003eThis story\u003c/a\u003e, which came to my attention via the \u003ca href=\"http://nogodzone.blogspot.com/2006/01/god-wants-you-on-your-knees.html\"\u003eNo God Zone\u003c/a\u003e, has me incensed. When you first read it, you get the impression that the adamantly anti-gay Pastor offered money for homosexual sex (the word \u0026ldquo;soliciting\u0026rdquo; along with the word \u0026ldquo;prostitute\u0026rdquo;, seen in \u003ca href=\"http://www.wlky.com/family/5849395/detail.html\"\u003esome versions of the story\u003c/a\u003e, conveys exactly that, to me).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile you might agree with me that such an act is entirely harmless, it is clearly illegal, so the arrest of the Pastor comes as no surprise (and in spite of the ultimate injustice of such laws, in the case of this particular Pastor, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but exclaim a rousing rendition of \u003ca href=\"http://www.snpp.com/guides/nelson.file.html\"\u003eNelson\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;Ha-ha!\u0026rdquo; - especially if he\u0026rsquo;s even half as out of his mind as \u003ca href=\"http://dyinginchrist.blogspot.com/2006/01/what-homosexuals-do-i-have-recently.html\"\u003ethis wacko\u003c/a\u003e). However, as the \u003ca href=\"http://nogodzone.blogspot.com/2006/01/shame-on-cops.html\"\u003eNo God Zone points out\u003c/a\u003e, no such offering of money took place.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo, while the Pastor may be - nay, \u003ci\u003eis\u003c/i\u003e - a hypocritical asshole, he apparently was arrested and had his car stolen (a.k.a., \u0026ldquo;civil forfeiture\u0026rdquo;) for simply \u003ci\u003easking another guy if he wanted to have sex\u003c/i\u003e. The real assholes in this story are the cops, who, it seems, just wanted to harass gays out for a good time in Tulsa, while padding their department budget.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pastor Arrested for Trying to Have Fun"},{"content":"A four-year-old had trouble getting on a plane in December:\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma,\u0026rdquo; the 4-year-old boy said, according to his mother.\nSijollie Allen and her son had trouble boarding planes last month. \u0026ldquo;Is this a joke?\u0026rdquo; Allen recalled telling Continental Airlines agents Dec. 21 at Houston\u0026rsquo;s Bush Intercontinental Airport. \u0026ldquo;You can tell he\u0026rsquo;s not a terrorist!\u0026quot;\nShe said it took several minutes of pleading and a phone call by the ticket agent to get on the plane to New York.\nAllen, a Jamaican immigrant, said workers at La Guardia Airport were even more hard-nosed before their Dec. 26 flight home. She said a ticket agent told her: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re lucky that we\u0026rsquo;re letting you through instead of putting you through the other process.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/four-year-old-boy-on-no-fly-terrorist.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA four-year-old \u003ca href=\"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Terror_List_Preschooler.html\"\u003ehad trouble getting on a plane\u003c/a\u003e in December:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma,\u0026rdquo; the 4-year-old boy said, according to his mother.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e Sijollie Allen and her son had trouble boarding planes last month. \u0026ldquo;Is this a joke?\u0026rdquo; Allen recalled telling Continental Airlines agents Dec. 21 at Houston\u0026rsquo;s Bush Intercontinental Airport. \u0026ldquo;You can tell he\u0026rsquo;s not a terrorist!\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe said it took several minutes of pleading and a phone call by the ticket agent to get on the plane to New York.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAllen, a Jamaican immigrant, said workers at La Guardia Airport were even more hard-nosed before their Dec. 26 flight home. She said a ticket agent told her: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re lucky that we\u0026rsquo;re letting you through instead of putting you through the other process.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Four-year-old boy on \"no-fly\" terrorist watch list"},{"content":" \"They were looking for things to do,\" Det. Ken Kelly said. \"They told us, `We were going to have a baby Jesus burning party.'\" One suspect told detectives, \"We just wanted to see their heads burning,\" Kelly said.\nThe baby Jesus figures, now at the police station, were probably stolen from homes and churches around the Sayreville area within the past few weeks, officers said. \"It looked like a maternity ward,\" Lt. Glenn Skarzynski said of the figurines. He added, \"Anyone able to identify their particular baby Jesus will be able to be reunited.\"(From Jamie Zawinski's blog.) Historical Comments Steven Carr (2006-12-09):\nA report in the London Times said that many girls in Britain have more than one Barbie doll, and that a great number of them were subject to decapitation, burning and all sorts of cruelties. Burning effigies is quite common, as is defacing of posters of people.What is it about humans and their desire to mistreat and destroy representations of the human form?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/baby-jesus-burning-party.html/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e      \"They were looking for things to do,\" Det. Ken Kelly said. \"They told us, `We were going to have a baby Jesus burning party.'\" One suspect told detectives,  \u003ca href=\"http://www.brandonsun.com/story.php?story_id=14719\"\u003e\"We just wanted to see their heads burning,\"\u003c/a\u003e Kelly said.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e   The baby Jesus figures, now at the police station, were probably stolen from homes and churches around the Sayreville area within the past few weeks, officers said. \"It looked like a maternity ward,\" Lt. Glenn Skarzynski said of the figurines. He added, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0104jesus-stolen04.html\"\u003e\"Anyone able to identify their particular baby Jesus will be able to be reunited.\"\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0104jesus-stolen04.html\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e(From \u003ca href=\"http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/586884.html\"\u003eJamie Zawinski's blog\u003c/a\u003e.)\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eSteven Carr\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eA report in the London Times said that many girls in Britain have more than one Barbie doll, and that a great number of them were subject to decapitation, burning and all sorts of cruelties. \u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eBurning effigies is quite common, as is defacing of posters of people.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhat is it about humans and their desire to mistreat and destroy representations of the human form?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Baby Jesus Burning Party"},{"content":"More on the implications of massive data-mining and computerized interception of voice calls, from FuturePundit and David Friedman.\nFuturePundit asks the question, \u0026ldquo;Would you rather be watched by computers or people?\u0026rdquo; and suggests that the former is better\u0026ndash;but fails to examine the question of whose computers are doing the monitoring and whether they can be trusted not to abuse it.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nAre the Friedmans really statists in disguise?I mean, first Milton gives the government the idea for income tax withholding (for which, IMHO, he should forever remain on every libertarian's shit list), and now David goes and does this!What gives?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/mass-computerized-wiretapping.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore on the implications of massive data-mining and computerized interception of voice calls, from\u003ca href=\"http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003195.html\"\u003e FuturePundit\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/01/every-phone-in-america.html\"\u003eDavid Friedman\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFuturePundit asks the question, \u0026ldquo;Would you rather be watched by computers or people?\u0026rdquo; and suggests that the former is better\u0026ndash;but fails to examine the question of whose computers are doing the monitoring and whether they can be trusted not to abuse it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAre the Friedmans really statists in disguise?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI mean, first Milton gives the government the idea for income tax withholding (for which, IMHO, he should forever remain on every libertarian's shit list), and now David goes and does this!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhat gives?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mass computerized wiretapping"},{"content":"The Boston Herald\u0026rsquo;s front page proclaimed \u0026ldquo;MINER MIRACLE! America\u0026rsquo;s prayers answered, TWELVE FOUND ALIVE.\u0026rdquo; The media regularly proclaims any glimmer of positive in a disaster as a miracle for which credit should be given to God, but never pins anything negative on him. But will the Herald issue a retraction?\nMore at Pharyngula.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI guess it's a (minor) miracle that I made it home from work tonight alive, then.Thanks, God, for not putting crazy drivers in control of large vehicles in my way.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/miner-miracle-religious-asymmetry-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBoston Herald\u003c/span\u003e\u0026rsquo;s front page proclaimed \u0026ldquo;MINER MIRACLE!  America\u0026rsquo;s prayers answered, TWELVE FOUND ALIVE.\u0026rdquo;  The media  regularly proclaims any glimmer of positive in a disaster as a miracle for which credit should be given to God, but never pins anything negative on him.  But will the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHerald\u003c/span\u003e issue a retraction?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/that_curious_religious_asymmetry/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI guess it's a (minor) miracle that I made it home from work tonight alive, then.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThanks, God, for not putting crazy drivers in control of large vehicles in my way.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Miner Miracle:  Religious asymmetry in the media"},{"content":"He was in favor of states deciding the issue for themselves, until he was against it.\nThere are lots more examples of this kind of hypocrisy across a wide range of issues documented in James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s The Bush Betrayal.\nAbove link is to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where readers have offered additional examples in the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/george-bush-hypocrisy-on-medical.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHe \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/bushs_hypocrisy_on_medical_mar.php\"\u003ewas in favor of states deciding the issue for themselves\u003c/a\u003e, until he was against it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere are lots more examples of this kind of hypocrisy across a wide range of issues documented in James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403968519/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAbove link is to \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/bushs_hypocrisy_on_medical_mar.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, where readers have offered additional examples in the comments.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"George Bush hypocrisy on medical marijuana"},{"content":"While it\u0026rsquo;s not quite as spectacular as the story in James Morrow\u0026rsquo;s Blameless in Abaddon, in which God is put on trial before the International Justice Court for crimes against humanity, an Italian court will be having a hearing to see if atheist Luigi Cascioli can proceed with a case against priest Enrico Righi. The charges are violations of \u0026ldquo;Abuso di Credulita Popolare\u0026rdquo; (abuse of popular belief, a law designed to protect against con artists) and \u0026ldquo;Sostituzione di Persona\u0026rdquo; (impersonation). Cascioli, who, like defendant Righi is a man in his seventies from the town of Bagnoregio, accuses the priest of fooling the people by teaching that Jesus was a historical figure and that he\u0026rsquo;s his representative. Cascioli is the author of a book, \u0026ldquo;The Fable of Christ,\u0026rdquo; which argues that Jesus never existed.\nThe view that Jesus didn\u0026rsquo;t exist is a minority position even among atheists\u0026ndash;advocates include G.A. Wells and Earl Doherty (whose book, The Jesus Puzzle, is critically reviewed here by Richard Carrier).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/italian-court-to-decide-if-jesus.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile it\u0026rsquo;s not quite as spectacular as the story in James Morrow\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156005050/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBlameless in Abaddon\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, in which God is put on trial before the International Justice Court for crimes against humanity, an Italian court \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/04/italy.jesus.reut/index.html\"\u003ewill be having a hearing\u003c/a\u003e to see if atheist Luigi Cascioli can proceed with a case against priest Enrico Righi.  The charges are violations of  \u0026ldquo;Abuso di Credulita Popolare\u0026rdquo; (abuse of popular belief, a law designed to protect against con artists) and \u0026ldquo;Sostituzione di Persona\u0026rdquo; (impersonation).  Cascioli, who, like defendant Righi is a man in his seventies from the town of Bagnoregio, accuses the priest of fooling the people by teaching that Jesus was a historical figure and that he\u0026rsquo;s his representative.  Cascioli is the author of a book, \u0026ldquo;The Fable of Christ,\u0026rdquo; which argues that Jesus never existed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe view that Jesus didn\u0026rsquo;t exist is a minority position even among atheists\u0026ndash;advocates include \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/index.shtml\"\u003eG.A. Wells\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/earl_doherty/index.shtml\"\u003eEarl Doherty\u003c/a\u003e (whose book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/096892591X/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Jesus Puzzle\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, is critically reviewed \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.shtml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e by Richard Carrier).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Italian court to decide if Jesus existed"},{"content":"Ed Brayton gives a rebuttal to what is perhaps the most egregiously dishonest critique of the Dover decision so far, by Phyllis Schlafly. John West of the Discovery Institute links to the Schlafly piece with approval.\nTwo examples which support the heading I\u0026rsquo;ve chosen: Schlafly writes of Judge Jones:\nHe smeared \u0026ldquo;fundamentalists,\u0026rdquo; impugned the integrity of those who disagree with him by accusing them of lying and issued an unnecessary permanent injunction.Judge Jones\u0026rsquo; accusations of lying were directed at two individuals who testified in the trial, Dover board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, not at \u0026ldquo;fundamentalists\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;those who disagree with him.\u0026rdquo; And he made the accusations because those two board members were lying, as I\u0026rsquo;ve previously described (about Bonsell here, about Buckingham here, and there\u0026rsquo;s more in the decision here) and may end up facing perjury charges.\nSchlafly further expands upon her misrepresentation of Jones\u0026rsquo; criticism of these two dishonest board members:\nHe lashed out at witnesses who expressed religious views different from his own, displaying a prejudice unworthy of our judiciary. He denigrated several officials because they \u0026ldquo;staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public.\u0026quot;Jones never mentions his religious views, and does not denigrate these board members for expressing religious views different from his own, but for lying. Here is the passage from Jones\u0026rsquo; decision that Schlafly is dishonestly commenting on:\nIt is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. (p. 137 of the decision)Ed addresses more of Schlafly\u0026rsquo;s dishonesty at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/phyllis-schlafly-defends-liars-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton g\u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/fisking_phyllis_schlaffly.php\"\u003eives a rebuttal\u003c/a\u003e to what is perhaps the \u003ca href=\"http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/phyllisschlafly/2006/01/02/180785.html\"\u003emost egregiously dishonest critique of the Dover decision so far\u003c/a\u003e, by Phyllis Schlafly.  John West of the Discovery Institute \u003ca href=\"http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/01/schlafly_criticizes_judge_jone.html\"\u003elinks to the Schlafly piece\u003c/a\u003e with approval.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTwo examples which support the heading I\u0026rsquo;ve chosen:  Schlafly writes of Judge Jones:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe smeared \u0026ldquo;fundamentalists,\u0026rdquo; impugned the integrity of those who disagree with him by accusing them of lying and issued an unnecessary permanent injunction.\u003c/blockquote\u003eJudge Jones\u0026rsquo; accusations of lying were directed at two individuals who testified in the trial, Dover board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, not at \u0026ldquo;fundamentalists\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;those who disagree with him.\u0026rdquo;  And he made the accusations because those two board members were lying, as I\u0026rsquo;ve previously described (about Bonsell \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/deception-by-dover-school-board.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, about Buckingham \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/deception-by-dover-defendant-william.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and there\u0026rsquo;s more in the decision \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/kitzmiller_342.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e) and may end up facing perjury charges.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSchlafly further expands upon her misrepresentation of Jones\u0026rsquo; criticism of these two dishonest board members:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHe lashed out at witnesses who expressed religious views different from his own, displaying a prejudice unworthy of our judiciary. He denigrated several officials because they \u0026ldquo;staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eJones never mentions his religious views, and does not denigrate these board members for expressing religious views different from his own, but for lying.  Here is the passage from Jones\u0026rsquo; decision that Schlafly is dishonestly commenting on:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIt is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. (p. 137 of \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/kitzmiller_342.pdf\"\u003ethe decision\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/blockquote\u003eEd addresses more of Schlafly\u0026rsquo;s dishonesty at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/fisking_phyllis_schlaffly.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phyllis Schlafly defends liars, by lying"},{"content":"Tara Smith comments on Olivia Judson\u0026rsquo;s piece in the New York Times about the wonder of living organisms and the evidence for evolution at Aetiology. Judson is the author of Dr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation, a book that describes some of the wide variety of sexual practices in nature, some of which make the wildest human perversions look tame by comparison.\nAn excerpt from Judson\u0026rsquo;s op-ed:\nOrganisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams. Still more fabulous is the bacterium Brocadia anammoxidans. It blithely makes a substance that to most organisms is a lethal poison - namely, hydrazine. That\u0026rsquo;s rocket fuel. And then there\u0026rsquo;s the wasp Cotesia congregata. She injects her eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. As she does so, she also injects a virus that disables the caterpillar\u0026rsquo;s immune system and prevents it from attacking the eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the caterpillar alive. It\u0026rsquo;s hard not to have an insatiable interest in organisms like these, to be enthralled by the strangeness, the complexity, the breathtaking variety of nature.\nHistorical Comments spyder (2006-12-09):\nA bacterium that makes hydrazine? That got my attention. On my wall over there about five feet away is a copy of the original secret patent application for hydrazine--my dad was its 'creator.' I have all his original lab notes and other materials, and can say with some amazement that the process is neither simple nor safe. For a bacterium to metabolize that sort of chemistry could prove quite useful, possibly as a source for a genetically engineered toxic cleanup moneran. This is cool, thanks.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/remarkable-evidence-of-evolution.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTara Smith \u003ca href=\"http://aetiology.blogspot.com/2006/01/this-view-of-life.html\"\u003ecomments\u003c/a\u003e on \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01judson.html\"\u003eOlivia Judson\u0026rsquo;s piece in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about the wonder of living organisms and the evidence for evolution at \u003ca href=\"http://aetiology.blogspot.com/2006/01/this-view-of-life.html\"\u003eAetiology\u003c/a\u003e.  Judson is the author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099283751/jimlippardswebpaA\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a book that describes some of the wide variety of sexual practices in nature, some of which make the wildest human perversions look tame by comparison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn excerpt from \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01judson.html\"\u003eJudson\u0026rsquo;s op-ed\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eOrganisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Remarkable evidence of evolution"},{"content":"In a New York Times followup about the Bush-approved program to engage in interception of email and voice calls to international destinations without warrants approved by the FISA Court, it is stated that\nThe National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system\u0026rsquo;s main arteries, they said.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nWhat has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nOfficials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages.\nThis has led to some speculation that the reason the Bush administration didn\u0026rsquo;t even try to get FISA Court approvals is because what is going on here is not wiretapping in the ordinary sense, but data mining along the lines of the \u0026ldquo;Total Information Awareness\u0026rdquo; program that was supposedly shut down by Congress after public protest.\nTelecommunications companies, either voluntarily or under government duress, are apparently giving the government direct access to voice switches (and perhaps data switches or routers) to enable them to intercept any or all traffic passing through them, using automated tools to examine traffic patterns or content for \u0026ldquo;interesting\u0026rdquo; traffic.\nGary Farber has blogged on this at Amygdala. Noah Schactman at DefenseTech. Tim Sandefur has blogged on Robert Levy\u0026rsquo;s criticism of the Bush administration\u0026rsquo;s argument for warrantless wiretaps (FISA has a provision for warrantless wiretaps during the first 15 days after Congress declares war; thus if the September 18, 2001 Joint Resolution by Congress which authorized the President to use \u0026ldquo;all necessary and appropriate force\u0026rdquo; against the perpetrators of 9/11 counted as a declaration of war, warrantless wiretaps would only be allowed until October 3, 2001). Ed Brayton has more on that subject at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n(Disclosure: I work in network security at a global telecommunications company which, to the best of my knowledge, is not participating in a program like what is described above.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/bushs-warrantless-interception-program.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400\u0026en=016edb46b79bde83\u0026amp;ei=5090\u0026partner=rssuserland\u0026amp;emc=rss\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e followup\u003c/a\u003e about the Bush-approved program to engage in interception of email and voice calls to international destinations without warrants approved by the FISA Court, it is stated that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.  \u003ca name=\"secondParagraph\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system\u0026rsquo;s main arteries, they said.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's warrantless interception program"},{"content":"Think Progress has a list of politicians who received $10,000 or more in Jack Abramoff-related contributions and how they are associated with Abramoff. A few of these are probably a bit concerned now that Abramoff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion and agreed to cooperate with federal investigations.\nAbramoff is expected to plead guilty next week to fraud in the SunCruz casino boat case in Florida\u0026ndash;the list of politicians associated with that case includes Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), and Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) (and his former chief of staff, Neil Volz).\n(Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, which has further commentary on how this is business as usual for Congress.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/abramoff-connected-politicans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThink Progress has \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkprogress.org/abramoff\"\u003ea list of politicians\u003c/a\u003e who received $10,000 or more in Jack Abramoff-related contributions and how they are associated with Abramoff.  A few of these are probably a bit concerned now that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/politics/03cnd-abramoff.html?incamp=article_popular_5\"\u003eAbramoff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion\u003c/a\u003e and agreed to cooperate with federal investigations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAbramoff is expected to plead guilty next week to fraud in the SunCruz casino boat case in Florida\u0026ndash;the list of politicians associated with that case includes Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), and Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) (and his former chief of staff, Neil Volz).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, which \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2006/01/trouble_brewing_in_congress.php\"\u003ehas further commentary\u003c/a\u003e on how this is business as usual for Congress.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Abramoff-connected politicans"},{"content":"The Windows Meta File vulnerability, a problem that seems to be particularly bad in Windows XP, is without an official patch from Microsoft until next week. There is an unofficial patch which is available from the SANS Internet Storm Center, which I would recommend only for organizations that have the ability to install and uninstall patches on user desktops in an automated manner, as the unofficial patch will have to be uninstalled before installing the official patch. For ordinary users, it is an extremely bad habit to download patches from unofficial sources in response to an announcement of a vulnerability like this. It\u0026rsquo;s a habit that is likely to be exploited in the future to get people to install malicious software, so it should be discouraged.\nAn alternative remedy is to unregister the vulnerable DLL, shimgvw.dll, until the official patch is out next week. This remedy will prevent the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer from being started when you click on an image that is associated with that application.\nThe WMF vulnerability is currently being exploited through the web, email, and instant messaging, but so far it looks like the main use has been to install spyware and adware on vulnerable machines. It could, however, just as easily be used to install bots or other more seriously damaging malware.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/windows-meta-file-wmf-exploit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/912840.mspx\"\u003eWindows Meta File vulnerability\u003c/a\u003e, a problem that seems to be particularly bad in Windows XP, is without an official patch from Microsoft until next week.  There is \u003ca href=\"http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=994\"\u003ean unofficial patch\u003c/a\u003e which is available from the SANS Internet Storm Center, which I would recommend only for organizations that have the ability to install and uninstall patches on user desktops in an automated manner, as the unofficial patch will have to be uninstalled before installing the official patch.  For ordinary users, it is an extremely bad habit to download patches from unofficial sources in response to an announcement of a vulnerability like this.  It\u0026rsquo;s a habit that is likely to be exploited in the future to get people to install malicious software, so it should be discouraged.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAn alternative remedy is to \u003ca href=\"http://www.mckeay.net/secure/2005/12/you_can_try_this.html\"\u003eunregister the vulnerable DLL\u003c/a\u003e, shimgvw.dll, until the official patch is out next week.  This remedy will prevent the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer from being started when you click on an image that is associated with that application.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe WMF vulnerability is currently being exploited through the web, email, and instant messaging, but so far it looks like the main use has been to install spyware and adware on vulnerable machines.  It could, however, just as easily be used to install \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/defending-against-botnets.html\"\u003ebots\u003c/a\u003e or other more seriously damaging malware.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit"},{"content":"Over the next two years, $2.5 trillion in U.S. mortgages that are based on adjustable rate mortgages will reset to higher interest rates. There is little question that many people who have been using creative financing to speculate in the real estate market are going to have some serious financial difficulties as a result. More at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/2006-2007-years-of-mortgage-default.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver the next two years, \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com/2006/01/all-we-had-was-our-shining-credit.html\"\u003e$2.5 trillion in U.S. mortgages that are based on adjustable rate mortgages will reset\u003c/a\u003e to higher interest rates.  There is little question that many people who have been using creative financing to speculate in the real estate market are going to have some serious financial difficulties as a result.  More at Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com/\"\u003eHousing Bubble blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2006-2007:  Years of Mortgage Default?"},{"content":"Jeff Shallit has an interesting comparison of Stephen Wolfram and William Dembski, and their shared apparent unwillingness to admit mistakes. Over at Recursivity.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2006/01/on-never-admitting-you-are-wrong.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJeff Shallit has \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com/2006/01/on-not-admitting-you-are-wrong-or-what.html\"\u003ean interesting comparison of Stephen Wolfram and William Dembski\u003c/a\u003e, and their shared apparent unwillingness to admit mistakes.   Over at \u003ca href=\"http://recursed.blogspot.com\"\u003eRecursivity\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On never admitting you are wrong--Dembski and Wolfram"},{"content":"Charles E. \u0026ldquo;Chuck\u0026rdquo; Carlson (not to be confused with convicted Watergate conspirator turned evangelical prison ministry mogul Chuck Colson) runs something called \u0026ldquo;Strait Gate Ministries\u0026rdquo; and assorted websites (including one called \u0026ldquo;Al-Jazeerah\u0026rdquo;) which seem to focus on arguing that the U.S. should not be supporting Israel. He has a history of advertising these websites by sending unsolicited bulk email, also known as \u0026ldquo;spam.\u0026quot;\nHe has clashed with a number of anti-spammers, which has led to multiple terminations of online services that he\u0026rsquo;s used\u0026ndash;his DSL connection as well as web hosting. He has characterized this as mugging and assault as well as censorship. (Here is a list of some of Carlson\u0026rsquo;s domains blocked by rhyolite.com for sending spam.)\nIn August, he filed a lawsuit (PDF) in Arizona Superior Court (CV2005-052008) against Robert Poortinga, his own providers who had terminated service, and Missouri Freenet Corporation. In his complaint, he argues that Poortinga and others have defamed him by calling him a \u0026ldquo;spammer\u0026rdquo; and accusing him of sending \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; on the grounds that his emails do not meet the criteria in the CAN-SPAM Act.\n\u0026ldquo;Missouri Freenet Corporation,\u0026rdquo; named as a defendant in Carlson\u0026rsquo;s suit, doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually exist\u0026ndash;the person he\u0026rsquo;s intending to sue is Alif Terranson (on whose site the above lawsuit complaint PDF is hosted), who is a well-known anti-spammer and formerly ran the abuse team at Savvis. Terranson has supplied Carlson with information about how to properly name and serve him.\nCarlson\u0026rsquo;s complaint appears to me to be without merit. His argument based on CAN-SPAM fails because that act does not define the term \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; which is a well-known term of art in the Internet world, not a legal term.\n\u0026ldquo;Spam\u0026rdquo; originally meant bulk postings to Usenet newsgroups (an action associated with a couple of immigration attorneys also based in Scottsdale, Arizona), but quickly came to mean unsolicited bulk email (UBE)\u0026ndash;email that is both (a) not explicitly requested by the recipients and (b) sent to multiple recipients. Although the most common form of UBE is unsolicited commercial email (which is what CAN-SPAM regulates), UBE and \u0026ldquo;spam\u0026rdquo; are broader than UCE and can include religious spam, insane spam, etc. Internet RFC 2505 endorses this broader notion of \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; as does this definition from Spamhaus.\nAlthough there are no legal penalties for spam that falls outside of what is regulated by federal and state laws (or laws in other countries), most online providers have stricter guidelines than what the law requires as part of their Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs). Customers of online providers are contractually bound by those AUPs, and can find their service terminated for violations even if they haven\u0026rsquo;t violated the law. This has been the case since long before CAN-SPAM went into effect.\nAnother form of social penalty for spam is having one\u0026rsquo;s email blocked by those who operate mail servers on the Internet\u0026ndash;companies, organizations, and individuals have a variety of tools which can be used to block the vast quantities of unwanted email being spewed out daily by compromised machines as well as by those operating in a more aboveboard manner. Included in those tools are the ability to block by domain name or using IP-address-based blocking lists. What Carlson calls censorship is really just the owners of private mail servers setting rules by which their property may be used by others. (The issue is a bit more complicated in the case of an ISP, but so long as the ISP accurately informs its customers of what they\u0026rsquo;ve signed up for, they can apply filters consistent with their service. In general, ISPs want their customers to receive what the customers want to receive, as blocking wanted email leads to complaints.)\nI\u0026rsquo;ll keep tabs on this suit as it progresses (if it does).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI'm not sure what you're responding to--nothing in my posting or in the lawsuit in question has anything to do with government censorship. The lawsuit is between private parties.The \"Al-Jazeerah\" site I referenced is not the Arabic-language news network but a site apparently owned by Charles Carlson, http://www.aljazeerah.info/\nUnknown (2007-11-09):\nJim, FYI, the case against me personally was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. My employer, Technology Service Corp, settled with him on undisclosed terms.-- Bob PoortingaBloomington, Indiana\nLippard (2007-11-10):\nBob:Thanks for the update. Glad to hear that your case was dismissed, and sorry to hear that your employer settled (unless, of course, it did so without paying to do so).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/religious-spammer-in-scottsdale-files.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCharles E. \u0026ldquo;Chuck\u0026rdquo; Carlson (not to be confused with convicted Watergate conspirator turned evangelical prison ministry mogul Chuck Colson) runs something called \u003ca href=\"http://whtt.org/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Strait Gate Ministries\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and assorted websites (including one called \u0026ldquo;Al-Jazeerah\u0026rdquo;) which seem to focus on arguing that the U.S. should not be supporting Israel.  He has a history of advertising these websites by sending unsolicited bulk email, also known as \u0026ldquo;spam.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe has \u003ca href=\"http://macfaq.org/people/straitgate.html\"\u003eclashed\u003c/a\u003e with a number of anti-spammers, which has led to multiple terminations of online services that he\u0026rsquo;s used\u0026ndash;his \u003ca href=\"http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-30-05/discussion.cgi.97.html\"\u003eDSL connection\u003c/a\u003e as well as web hosting.  He has characterized this as \u003ca href=\"http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/September/6%20o/PHARISEE%20WATCH%20Mugged,%20Robbed,%20but%20Back%20Online%20By%20Charles%20E.%20Carlson.htm\"\u003emugging and assault\u003c/a\u003e as well as \u003ca href=\"http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/5/6/64316/18309\"\u003ecensorship\u003c/a\u003e.  (Here is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/bin/group.cgi?group=292\"\u003elist of some of Carlson\u0026rsquo;s domains\u003c/a\u003e blocked by rhyolite.com for sending spam.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn August, he filed a \u003ca href=\"http://www.mfn.org/%7Emeasl/pdf/Carlson_complaint.pdf\"\u003elawsuit\u003c/a\u003e (PDF) in \u003ca href=\"http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/civil/caseSearch.asp\"\u003eArizona Superior Court\u003c/a\u003e (CV2005-052008) against Robert Poortinga, his own providers who had terminated service, and Missouri Freenet Corporation.  In his complaint, he argues that Poortinga and others have defamed him by calling him a \u0026ldquo;spammer\u0026rdquo; and accusing him of sending \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; on the grounds that his emails do not meet the criteria in the CAN-SPAM Act.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Missouri Freenet Corporation,\u0026rdquo; named as a defendant in Carlson\u0026rsquo;s suit, doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually exist\u0026ndash;the person he\u0026rsquo;s intending to sue is Alif Terranson (on whose site the above lawsuit complaint PDF is hosted), who is a well-known anti-spammer and formerly ran the abuse team at Savvis.  Terranson \u003ca href=\"http://www.politechbot.com/2005/12/24/alleged-spammer-sues/\"\u003ehas supplied Carlson with information\u003c/a\u003e about how to properly name and serve him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarlson\u0026rsquo;s complaint appears to me to be without merit.  His argument based on CAN-SPAM fails because that act does not define the term \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; which is a well-known term of art in the Internet world, not a legal term.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;Spam\u0026rdquo; originally meant bulk postings to Usenet newsgroups (an action associated with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Card_spam\"\u003ea couple of immigration attorneys\u003c/a\u003e also based in Scottsdale, Arizona), but quickly came to mean unsolicited bulk email (UBE)\u0026ndash;email that is both (a) not explicitly requested by the recipients and (b) sent to multiple recipients.  Although the most common form of UBE is unsolicited commercial email (which is what CAN-SPAM regulates), UBE and \u0026ldquo;spam\u0026rdquo; are broader than UCE and can include religious spam, insane spam, etc.  Internet \u003ca href=\"http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2505.html\"\u003eRFC 2505\u003c/a\u003e endorses this broader notion of \u0026ldquo;spam,\u0026rdquo; as does \u003ca href=\"http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html\"\u003ethis definition\u003c/a\u003e from \u003ca href=\"http://www.spamhaus.org/\"\u003eSpamhaus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAlthough there are no legal penalties for spam that falls outside of what is regulated by federal and state laws (or laws in other countries), most online providers have stricter guidelines than what the law requires as part of their \u003ca href=\"http://www.spamhaus.org/aups.html\"\u003eAcceptable Use Policies\u003c/a\u003e (AUPs).  Customers of online providers are contractually bound by those AUPs, and can find their service terminated for violations even if they haven\u0026rsquo;t violated the law.  This has been the case since long before CAN-SPAM went into effect.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnother form of social penalty for spam is having one\u0026rsquo;s email blocked by those who operate mail servers on the Internet\u0026ndash;companies, organizations, and individuals have a variety of tools which can be used to block the vast quantities of unwanted email being spewed out daily by compromised machines as well as by those operating in a more aboveboard manner.  Included in those tools are the ability to block by domain name or using \u003ca href=\"http://rbls.org/\"\u003eIP-address-based blocking lists\u003c/a\u003e.  What Carlson calls censorship is really just the owners of private mail servers setting rules by which their property may be used by others.  (The issue is a bit more complicated in the case of an ISP, but so long as the ISP accurately informs its customers of what they\u0026rsquo;ve signed up for, they can apply filters consistent with their service.  In general, ISPs want their customers to receive what the customers want to receive, as blocking wanted email leads to complaints.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll keep tabs on this suit as it progresses (if it does).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Religious spammer in Scottsdale files lawsuit"},{"content":"With all the attention to the War on Terror/Struggle Against Violent Extremism, looks like we forgot to celebrate the victory and end of the War on Drugs back at the beginning of 2002. Happy fourth birthday to virtually drug-free America!\n(Hat tip: The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nAwesome!Now all the families of the countless DEA agents and other police who've died fighting those evil bad guys in this war can rest assured that they didn't die in vain.Hooray!\nVictor Reppert (2006-12-09):\nGosh. Instead of going on an aircraft carrier, Bush should have celebrated this by standing on a huge mountain of conifscated cocaine. Just make sure none of it is falling out of the Shrub's nose.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/war-on-drugs-ends-in-success-four.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith all the attention to the War on Terror/\u003ca href=\"http://csmonitor.com/2005/0728/dailyUpdate.html\"\u003eStruggle Against Violent Extremism\u003c/a\u003e, looks like we forgot to celebrate the victory and \u003ca href=\"http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n328/a03.html\"\u003eend of the War on Drugs back at the beginning of 2002\u003c/a\u003e.  Happy fourth birthday to virtually drug-free America!\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026084.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAwesome!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eNow all the families of the countless DEA agents and other police who've died fighting those evil bad guys in this war can rest assured that they didn't die in vain.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHooray!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"War on Drugs Ends in Success--Four Years Ago"},{"content":"The current (December 24, 2005) issue of The Economist features a story, \u0026ldquo;Wealth from worship,\u0026quot; summarizing a paper by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, \u0026ldquo;Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?\u0026rdquo; Gruber\nclaims that regular religious participation leads to better education, higher income and a lower chance of divorce. His results (based on data covering non-Hispanic white Americans of several Christian denominations, other faiths and none) imply that doubling church attendance raises someone\u0026rsquo;s income by almost 10%.The summary points out that ethnic density can make a group worse off (\u0026ldquo;ghettoization\u0026rdquo;), which Gruber controls for by looking at \u0026ldquo;the density of \u0026lsquo;co-religionists\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; not of the same race. He says that \u0026ldquo;a 10% increase in the density of co-religionists leads to an 8.5% rise in churchgoing\u0026rdquo; and that\na 10% increase in the density of co-religionists leads to a 0.9% rise in income. In other words, because there are lots of non-Polish Catholics in Boston and a few in Minnesota, Poles in Boston both go to church more often and are materially better off relative to, say, Swedes in Boston than Poles in Minnesota relative to Swedes in Minnesota.If this is accurate, what\u0026rsquo;s actually going on here? Suggestions offered in the Economist summary: Churchgoing increases one\u0026rsquo;s network of connections, making business dealings smoother; churchgoing provides a form of insurance against social or economic setbacks; churchgoing promotes an increase in education; churchgoing reduces the stress of life. The first two of these, and perhaps the last, strike me as plausible; whether or not churchgoing promotes education likely depends a great deal on the particular sect or denomination.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDid you ever get around to reading Darwin's Cathedral? That whole book argues that churches impart a survival advantage to church members.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNo, I'll add it to my wish list. It sounds like it complements Pascal Boyer's _Religion Explained_ nicely.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/economics-of-church-attendance.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe current (December 24, 2005) issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e features a story, \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5327652\u0026tranMode=none\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Wealth from worship,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e summarizing \u003ca href=\"http://www.nber.org/papers/w11377\"\u003ea paper\u003c/a\u003e by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, \u0026ldquo;Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?\u0026rdquo;  Gruber\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eclaims that regular religious participation leads to better education, higher income and a lower chance of divorce.  His results (based on data covering non-Hispanic white Americans of several Christian denominations, other faiths and none) imply that doubling church attendance raises someone\u0026rsquo;s income by almost 10%.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe summary points out that ethnic density can make a group worse off (\u0026ldquo;ghettoization\u0026rdquo;), which Gruber controls for by looking at \u0026ldquo;the density of \u0026lsquo;co-religionists\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; not of the same race.  He says that \u0026ldquo;a 10% increase in the density of co-religionists leads to an 8.5% rise in churchgoing\u0026rdquo; and that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ea 10% increase in the density of co-religionists leads to a 0.9% rise in income.  In other words, because there are lots of non-Polish Catholics in Boston and a few in Minnesota, Poles in Boston both go to church more often and are materially better off relative to, say, Swedes in Boston than Poles in Minnesota relative to Swedes in Minnesota.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIf this is accurate, what\u0026rsquo;s actually going on here?  Suggestions offered in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eEconomist\u003c/span\u003e summary:  Churchgoing increases one\u0026rsquo;s network of connections, making business dealings smoother; churchgoing provides a form of insurance against social or economic setbacks; churchgoing promotes an increase in education; churchgoing reduces the stress of life.  The first two of these, and perhaps the last, strike me as plausible; whether or not churchgoing promotes education likely depends a great deal on the particular sect or denomination.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Economics of Church Attendance"},{"content":"Blairwatch has published the text of memos from Craig Murray, UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which complain about the U.S. giving aid to the country after accepting sham improvements in human rights, as well as collecting intelligence information obtained via torture. Some excerpts:\nI was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).\n[\u0026hellip;]\nWe receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.\n[\u0026hellip;]\nI understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as \u0026ldquo;From detainee debriefing.\u0026rdquo; The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured. [\u0026hellip;] I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.\n[\u0026hellip;] At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family\u0026rsquo;s links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.\nThis is a country the U.S. supplies with hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/us-collection-of-intelligence.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlairwatch has \u003ca href=\"http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/714\"\u003epublished the text of memos from Craig Murray\u003c/a\u003e, UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which complain about the U.S. giving aid to the country after accepting sham improvements in human rights, as well as collecting intelligence information obtained via torture.  Some excerpts:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).\u003cbr /\u003e[\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003eWe receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.\u003cbr /\u003e[\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003eI understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as \u0026ldquo;From detainee debriefing.\u0026rdquo; The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured. \u003cp\u003e[\u0026hellip;] I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"U.S. collection of intelligence information via Uzbekistan torture"},{"content":"Earlier this year I was an almost obsessive reader of Antiwar.com. For a time, I was also a financial contributor. Now, it wasn’t in the hundreds or thousands of dollars or anything, but it was a decent monthly pledge.\nSoon after seeing Justin Raimondo’s pathetic and embarassing showing in this video, though, I started to become annoyed with the frequently shrill tone of his columns—not to mention their excessive linkage (in a seemingly infinite regress through his own prior columns!), and their often bizarre focus—and although I mostly agree with him about Glenn Reynolds, I just can’t see what his problem* is with Tom Palmer. Palmer is no pacifist, certainly, but he\u0026rsquo;s also no war-monger, and his libertarian credentials seem beyond question (although he really does seem to have raised the ire of at least one other paleolib—see also here. All I can say is “bizarre!”).\nOnce I saw Justin’s comments (and possible sock-puppetry as “Clement”) on this post at Tom Palmer’s blog, though, I decided, with a heavy heart, that I had to end my financial support of Antiwar.com.\nI took my Antiwar.com bumper sticker off my car, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t been visiting Antiwar.com much lately. However, I did go back recently, and saw this photo in the blog. It shows Eric Garris standing with the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir (you can also see Justin Raimondo there in the background). The photograph was taken at the recent Perdana Global Peace forum, where, along with Dr. Mahathir, Garris, and Raimondo, such luminaries \u0026laquo;em\u0026gt;cough\u0026gt; as “his excellency” Robert Mugabe spoke.\nWhat I think is interesting about this picture is that if, instead of Eric Garris or Justin Raimondo, it were Glenn Reynolds or Tom Palmer standing there, wouldn’t Antiwar.com be having a field day over it? I suspect the shouts of “Warmonger!” would be endless.\nTake a look at this page, where Tun Mahathir is acting in his capacity as chairman of the Perdana Global Peace Forum. Everything seems fabulous, there. But now, contrast it with this page, which is the text of a speech he gave at the 10th Islamic Summit Conference.\nNow, I think a careful reading of Dr. Mahathir’s words gives him just the right measure of plausible deniability. But, do you not agree that it is difficult not to interpret his speech as “incendiary,” and “a call for global war against the Jewish people by 1.3 billion Muslims,” as the Anti-Defamation League has done?\nEven if we recognize that the ADL has an incentive to sensationalize when it serves them, and in spite of Justin’s borderline anti-Semitism (though he may still have a small sliver of plausible deniability on that score), I still have to wonder. Why is it that Garris and Raimondo believe that it is helpful to their cause or to the cause of peace to associate with Dr. Mahathir?\nLots of discussion of this over at Tom Palmer’s blog.\n* Note that I myself actually agree with the Herbert Spencer quote found in that link.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/antiwar-and-anti-semitic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEarlier this year I was an almost obsessive reader of Antiwar.com. For a time, I was also a financial contributor. Now, it wasn’t in the hundreds or thousands of dollars or anything, but it was a decent monthly pledge.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSoon after seeing Justin Raimondo’s pathetic and embarassing showing in \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2210_0_1_0_C\"\u003ethis video\u003c/a\u003e, though, I started to become annoyed with the frequently shrill tone of \u003ca href=\"http://antiwar.com/justin/\"\u003ehis columns\u003c/a\u003e—not to mention their excessive linkage (in a seemingly infinite regress through his own prior columns!), and their often \u003ca href=\"http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4164\"\u003ebizarre focus\u003c/a\u003e—and although I mostly agree with \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j062802.html\"\u003ehim\u003c/a\u003e about \u003ca href=\"http://www.instapundit.com/\"\u003eGlenn Reynolds\u003c/a\u003e, I just can’t see what his \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P1954_0_1_0\"\u003eproblem\u003c/a\u003e* is with \u003ca href=\"http://www.tomgpalmer.com/\"\u003eTom Palmer\u003c/a\u003e. Palmer is no \u003ca href=\"http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/012551.php\"\u003epacifist\u003c/a\u003e, certainly, but he\u0026rsquo;s also no war-monger, and his libertarian credentials seem beyond question (although he really does seem to have raised the ire of \u003ca href=\"http://anti-state.com/blog/2005/11/10/tom-palmers-outrageous-brazen-and-shocking-lies-exposed/\"\u003eat least one other paleolib\u003c/a\u003e—see also \u003ca href=\"http://ancapistan.typepad.com/the_palmer_periscope/2005/11/tom_palmers_out.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e. All I can say is “bizarre!”).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOnce I saw Justin’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.pjdoland.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=21918\"\u003ecomments\u003c/a\u003e (and possible sock-puppetry as “Clement”) on \u003ca href=\"http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/021918.php\"\u003ethis post\u003c/a\u003e at Tom Palmer’s blog, though, I decided, with a heavy heart, that I had to end my financial support of Antiwar.com.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI took my Antiwar.com bumper sticker off my car, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t been visiting Antiwar.com much lately. However, I did go back recently, and saw \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/malaysia/photos/mahathir-garris.jpg\"\u003ethis photo\u003c/a\u003e in the blog. It shows Eric Garris standing with the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir (you can also see Justin Raimondo there in the background). The photograph was taken at the recent Perdana Global Peace forum, where, along with Dr. Mahathir, Garris, and Raimondo, such luminaries \u0026laquo;em\u0026gt;cough\u003c/em\u003e\u0026gt; as “\u003ca href=\"http://www.perdana4peace.org/speakers.html\"\u003ehis excellency\u003c/a\u003e” Robert Mugabe spoke.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat I think is interesting about this picture is that if, instead of Eric Garris or Justin Raimondo, it were Glenn Reynolds or Tom Palmer standing there, wouldn’t Antiwar.com be having a field day over it? I suspect the shouts of “Warmonger!” would be endless.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTake a look at \u003ca href=\"http://www.perdana4peace.org/tun_msg.html\"\u003ethis page\u003c/a\u003e, where Tun Mahathir is acting in his capacity as chairman of the Perdana Global Peace Forum. Everything seems fabulous, there. But now, contrast it with \u003ca href=\"http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/malaysian.asp\"\u003ethis page\u003c/a\u003e, which is the text of a speech he gave at the 10th Islamic Summit Conference.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow, I think a careful reading of Dr. Mahathir’s words gives him just the right measure of plausible deniability. But, do you not agree that it is difficult \u003cem\u003enot\u003c/em\u003e to interpret his speech as “incendiary,” and “a call for global war against the Jewish people by 1.3 billion Muslims,” as the Anti-Defamation League \u003ca href=\"http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/letter_malasian.asp\"\u003ehas done\u003c/a\u003e?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEven if we recognize that the ADL has an incentive to sensationalize when it serves them, and in spite of Justin’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j030802.html\"\u003eborderline anti-Semitism\u003c/a\u003e (though he may still have a small sliver of plausible deniability on that score), I still have to wonder. Why is it that Garris and Raimondo believe that it is helpful to their cause or to the cause of peace to associate with Dr. Mahathir?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLots of discussion of this over at Tom Palmer’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/027764.php\"\u003eblog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e* Note that I myself \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"/2005/10/two-thousand.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003eactually agree\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e with the Herbert Spencer quote found in \u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P1954_0_1_0\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003ethat link\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Antiwar and Anti-Semitic?"},{"content":"A Bryn Mawr freshman, Janet Lee, was arrested at the Philadelphia airport in 2003 as she was going through screening to fly home to California for Christmas. Her checked luggage contained three condoms filled with white powder, and field tests showed that the white powder contained opium and cocaine. She insisted that the powder was flour, and that the condoms were stress reliever toys, to be squeezed during exams.\nAs it turned out, the field tests were wrong or falsified. Had she not obtained sufficient legal help which led to a retest of the powder, she faced 20 years in prison on drug charges.\nShe now has a lawsuit against city police in Philadelphia which seeks to answer the question of why the field tests came back positive for drugs.\n(More comment at The Agitator.)\nHistorical Comments Cori (2006-12-09):\numm. good thing she got them retested. But, what the fuck was she thinking, taking condoms filled with white power on an airplane?duh!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYeah. You gotta admit that that's about as bone-headed as you can get.\ne (2006-12-09):\nThey sell those stress squeeze balls everywhere.Why would anyone want condoms with flour in them?The screeners probably falsified the results because they are tired of people being idiots.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/three-weeks-in-jail-for-possession-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Bryn Mawr freshman, Janet Lee, \u003ca href=\"http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13504147.htm\"\u003ewas arrested at the Philadelphia airport in 2003\u003c/a\u003e as she was going through screening to fly home to California for Christmas.  Her checked luggage contained three condoms filled with white powder, and field tests showed that the white powder contained opium and cocaine.  She insisted that the powder was flour, and that the condoms were stress reliever toys, to be squeezed during exams.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs it turned out, the field tests were wrong or falsified.  Had she not obtained sufficient legal help which led to a retest of the powder, she faced 20 years in prison on drug charges.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe now has a lawsuit against city police in Philadelphia which seeks to answer the question of why the field tests came back positive for drugs.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(More comment at \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026078.php\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Three weeks in jail for possession of flour"},{"content":"The long-lost \u0026ldquo;Gospel of Judas,\u0026rdquo; believed to have been written in Greek in the second century C.E., will be published next year. It was apparently recovered sometime prior to 1983, when a copy was offered for sale. Rodolphe Kasser of the University of Geneva announced in 2004 that he would be publishing a translation in 2005, but it looks like it will be out in the first half of next year. National Geographic will be doing a story on it for Easter.\nThis gospel was in the possession of a Swiss foundation for decades, and are a Coptic translation that probably dates to the fourth or fifth century. Characters in this gospel include Judas, Jesus, Satan, and Allogenes (\u0026ldquo;the stranger\u0026rdquo;), who appears in a number of gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/gospel-of-judas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe long-lost \u0026ldquo;Gospel of Judas,\u0026rdquo; believed to have been written in Greek in the second century C.E.,\u003ca href=\"http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1594\"\u003e will be published next year\u003c/a\u003e.  It was apparently recovered sometime prior to 1983, when a copy was offered for sale.  Rodolphe Kasser of the University of Geneva announced in 2004 that he would be publishing a translation in 2005, but it looks like it will be out in the first half of next year.  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Geographic\u003c/span\u003e will be doing a story on it for Easter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis gospel was in the possession of a Swiss foundation for decades, and are a Coptic translation that probably dates to the fourth or fifth century.  Characters in this gospel include Judas, Jesus, Satan, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/allogene.html\"\u003eAllogenes\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;the stranger\u0026rdquo;), who appears in a number of gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Gospel of Judas"},{"content":"In a New York Times op-ed defending the president\u0026rsquo;s warrantless wiretapping of international calls and emails, former Justice Department attorneys (under GHWB and Reagan) David Rivkin and Lee Casey write:\nFurthermore, the FISA court is not a rubber stamp and may well decline to issue warrants even when wartime necessity compels surveillance.It\u0026rsquo;s not? Let\u0026rsquo;s take a closer look (stats from EPIC by way of Talking Points Memo). The FISA court, established in 1978, had received 18,761 requests for warrants as of the end of 2004. How many were rejected? Four or five (sources disagree). Of the four which were definitely rejected (all from 2003), all four were partially approved upon reconsideration. And how many have been modified by the court from the original requests?\n1978-1999: 0 (?)\n2000: 1\n2001: 2\n2002: 2 (but the modifications were later reversed)\n2003: 79 (of 1727 requests)\n2004: 94 (of 1758 requests)\nIt looks to me like the FISA court was a rubber stamp at least until 2003, and quite arguably still is.\nRivkin and Casey go on to argue that Congress has no authority to regulate how the President exercises his wartime authority:\nThe Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, and Congress can no more direct his exercise of that authority than he can direct Congress in the execution of its constitutional duties.Say what? Have they not read Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives Congress authority to regulate many aspects of military and wartime activity? I\u0026rsquo;ve italicized a key passage:\nCongress shall have the power \u0026hellip;\nTo declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;\n\u0026hellip; And\nTo make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.Rivkin and Casey argue that the executive branch is given the power to collect intelligence information from foreign sources as it sees fit\u0026ndash;but where in the Constitution is any such power granted to the executive branch? Their only citation is to Article II, Section 2:\nThe President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United Statesbut there\u0026rsquo;s no specific authority there about intelligence collection. They go on to argue that the President has the authority not only in virtue of this piece of the Constitution, but from\nthe specific Congressional authorization \u0026ldquo;to use all necessary and appropriate force\u0026rdquo; against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks \u0026ldquo;in order to prevent any future attacks of international terrorism against the United States.\u0026quot;But Congress is still limited by the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights still applies (or is supposed to, anyway) to every U.S. citizen.\nOne more abominably bad argument from Rivkin and Casey is that the Bush administration was warranted in bypassing the FISA court for reasons of efficiency and expedience:\nAlthough the administration could have sought such warrants, it chose not to for good reasons. The procedures under the surveillance act are streamlined, but nevertheless involve a number of bureaucratic steps.They don\u0026rsquo;t bother to tell us what any of these \u0026ldquo;good reasons\u0026rdquo; are! Since the FISA court allows retroactive approvals (go ahead and tap, then get approval later), there is no issue of urgency as an argument against getting the approvals. The only reason I can see is to avoid any accountability.\nArguments that the FISA Court itself gave approval to being bypassed in 2002 are based on a misreading of a ruling by the FISA appeals court.\nEnjoy Every Sandwich has a nice collection of Bush administration quotes and relevant law regarding wiretapping.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/fisa-court-rubber-stamp.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27casey.html?n=Top%2FOpinion%2FEditorials%20and%20Op-Ed%2FOp-Ed%2FContributors\"\u003ea \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e op-ed\u003c/a\u003e defending the president\u0026rsquo;s warrantless wiretapping of international calls and emails, former Justice Department attorneys (under GHWB and Reagan) David Rivkin and Lee Casey write:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFurthermore, the FISA court is not a rubber stamp and may well decline to issue warrants even when wartime necessity compels surveillance.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not?  Let\u0026rsquo;s take \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007280.php\"\u003ea closer look (stats from EPIC by way of Talking Points Memo)\u003c/a\u003e.  The FISA court, established in 1978, had received 18,761 requests for warrants as of the end of 2004.  How many were rejected?  Four or five (sources disagree).  Of the four which were definitely rejected (all from 2003), all four were partially approved upon reconsideration.  And how many have been modified by the court from the original requests?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1978-1999: 0 (?)\u003cbr /\u003e2000: 1\u003cbr /\u003e2001: 2\u003cbr /\u003e2002: 2 (but the modifications were later reversed)\u003cbr /\u003e2003: 79 (of 1727 requests)\u003cbr /\u003e2004: 94 (of 1758 requests)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt looks to me like the FISA court was a rubber stamp at least until 2003, and quite arguably still is.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRivkin and Casey go on to argue that Congress has no authority to regulate how the President exercises his wartime authority:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, and Congress can no more direct his exercise of that authority than he can direct Congress in the execution of its constitutional duties.\u003c/blockquote\u003eSay what?  Have they not read Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives Congress authority to regulate many aspects of military and wartime activity?  I\u0026rsquo;ve italicized a key passage:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCongress shall have the power \u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e  To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; \u003c/p\u003e","title":"FISA Court: Rubber Stamp?"},{"content":"Another video making the rounds\u0026hellip; (hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list).\n(The previous one that was circulating was a 1992 wedding party video, which is up at Google Video.)\n(Yes, the current one is a joke.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/another-bush-drunk-video.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnother \u003ca href=\"http://www.wimp.com/bushdrunk/\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e making the rounds\u0026hellip; (hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list).\u003cbr /\u003e(The previous one that was circulating was \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4476470869599676262\u0026amp;q=george+bush\"\u003ea 1992 wedding party video\u003c/a\u003e, which is up at Google Video.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Yes, the current one is a joke.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another \"Bush drunk\" video"},{"content":"\nJust saw this cartoon at This Blog Is Full of Crap. Let\u0026rsquo;s see, depicting Mohammed, depicting Mohammed in hell, putting words in Mohammed\u0026rsquo;s mouth. I don\u0026rsquo;t think Muslims will be very happy about this, considering their unreasonable reaction to cartoons of Mohammed in Denmark (previously referred to in my posting on the \u0026ldquo;Sexy Bin Laden\u0026rdquo;).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nAll I can say is, I hope to see more of it.Here's a suggestion to get off to a good start:Extremely graphic (I'd suggest Manga as a style, to start out with) orgy scenes with Mohammed, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, The Father, The Holy Spirit, Santa Claus, Buddha, the Pope, Krshna, and anyone else you'd care to throw in there... Make sure there's plenty of sodomy, and definitely some taking of THE LORD's name in vain, some dishonoring of father and mother. Some spilling of seed. Oh, and some bestiality and necrophilia, too (I guess the Holy Spirit kinda fits that definition already).Any takers?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/mohammed-prophet-answers-your-emails.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.isfullofcrap.com/albums/Cartoonblogging/mohammed_email69.thumb.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;\" src=\"http://www.isfullofcrap.com/albums/Cartoonblogging/mohammed_email69.thumb.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJust saw this cartoon at \u003ca href=\"http://www.isfullofcrap.com/gallery/Cartoonblogging/mohammed_email69\"\u003eThis Blog Is Full of Crap\u003c/a\u003e.  Let\u0026rsquo;s see, depicting Mohammed, depicting Mohammed in hell, putting words in Mohammed\u0026rsquo;s mouth.  I don\u0026rsquo;t think Muslims will be very happy about this, considering their \u003ca href=\"http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/382\"\u003eunreasonable reaction to cartoons of Mohammed\u003c/a\u003e in Denmark (previously referred to in \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/sexy-bin-laden.html\"\u003emy posting on the \u0026ldquo;Sexy Bin Laden\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAll I can say is, I hope to see more of it.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHere's a suggestion to get off to a good start:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eExtremely graphic (I'd suggest Manga as a style, to start out with) orgy scenes with Mohammed, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, The Father, The Holy Spirit, Santa Claus, Buddha, the Pope, Krshna, and anyone else you'd care to throw in there... Make sure there's plenty of sodomy, and definitely some taking of THE LORD's name in vain, some dishonoring of father and mother. Some spilling of seed. Oh, and some bestiality and necrophilia, too (I guess the Holy Spirit kinda fits that definition already).\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAny takers?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mohammed the Prophet Answers Your Emails"},{"content":"This is from a Mel Gibson interview with Playboy magazine in the July 1995 issue. I haven\u0026rsquo;t verified it myself, though I\u0026rsquo;ve found consistent excerpts (though they could all have an identical bogus source). The positions taken are quite plausibly attributed to Gibson, though I\u0026rsquo;m surprised at his foul mouth.\nOn evolution:\nPLAYBOY: Do you believe in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of evolution or that God created man in his image?\nGIBSON: The latter.\nPLAYBOY: So you can\u0026rsquo;t accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?\nGIBSON: No, I think it\u0026rsquo;s bullshit. If it isn\u0026rsquo;t, why are they still around? How come apes aren\u0026rsquo;t people yet? It\u0026rsquo;s a nice theory, but I can\u0026rsquo;t swallow it. There\u0026rsquo;s a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something\u0026rsquo;s been around, how accurate is that, really? I\u0026rsquo;ve got one of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don\u0026rsquo;t think you can swallow the whole piece.\nWhy does anyone think his first point is a good argument against evolution? I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard anyone argue that Italian-Americans couldn\u0026rsquo;t have come from Italy because there are still Italians there.\nAnd I wonder what book by Darwin he has.\nOn assorted moral issues:\nPLAYBOY: We take it that you\u0026rsquo;re not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control.\nGIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren\u0026rsquo;t issues. Those\nare unquestionable. You don\u0026rsquo;t even argue those points.\nPLAYBOY: You don\u0026rsquo;t?\nGIBSON: No.On women:\nPLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests?\nGIBSON: No.\nPLAYBOY: Why not?\nGIBSON: I\u0026rsquo;ll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They\u0026rsquo;re not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.\nPLAYBOY: That\u0026rsquo;s true. You have more money.\nGIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody\u0026rsquo;s equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. And good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.\nPLAYBOY: That\u0026rsquo;s quite a generalization.\nGIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.\nPLAYBOY: Any examples?\nGIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn\u0026rsquo;t work.\nPLAYBOY: Why not?\nGIBSON: She was a cunt.\nPLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down!\nGIBSON: Feminists don\u0026rsquo;t like me, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like them. I don\u0026rsquo;t get their point. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why feminists have it out for me, but that\u0026rsquo;s their problem, not mine.Interesting that he thinks a woman being a priest would be \u0026ldquo;a step down.\u0026rdquo; From many occupations, I\u0026rsquo;d agree.\nGibson on political conspiracy theory:\nPLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton?\nGIBSON: He\u0026rsquo;s a low-level opportunist. Somebody\u0026rsquo;s telling him what to do.\nPLAYBOY: Who?\nGIBSON: The guy who\u0026rsquo;s in charge isn\u0026rsquo;t going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make an appearance. Would you? You\u0026rsquo;d end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. If he\u0026rsquo;s the leader, he\u0026rsquo;s getting shafted. What\u0026rsquo;s keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.\nPLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.\nGIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.\nPLAYBOY: You really believe that?\nGIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it\u0026rsquo;s Marxism, but it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don\u0026rsquo;t admit to it. Do it by stealth. There\u0026rsquo;s a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.\nPLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.\nGIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There\u0026rsquo;s something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I\u0026rsquo;ll end up dead if I keep talking shit.\n(Note added 30 December: I\u0026rsquo;ve heard from several people who have now verified the accuracy of these quotations.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSo, Karl had \"the right idea\" (whatever that is) and Lincoln did something \"with the Federal Reserve\"?Damn! I'm sorry I ever liked any of this guy's movies.\nJonathan Rowe (2006-12-09):\nMel's potty mouth doesn't bother me. Though, you have to wonder what some of those fundies who now love this good \"Christian man\" think of him saying things like \"[Y]ou might have a bigger dick\" or \"She was a cunt.\"\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nBlack Arts Diary makes a good suggestion that, since there is some question as to the veracity of these quotes, someone should purchase the relevant issue from, for example, here. Normally I'd be more than happy to indulge in some porn, especially when there's a \"higher\" purpose involved, but it'll have to wait until next week, when I get paid, as I am strapped at the moment.\nJett Loe (2006-12-09):\nif this is how he talked to a reporter for playboy how do you think he talks when he's at home with the wife and kids...?\nJonathan Rowe (2006-12-09):\nI think I might have to do a post on this. I have the issue in my hands (long story short -- my older brothers Playboy collection happens to be archived at my house) and those quotes are 100% accurate. But just skimming the interview, there's more, much more....\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYeah, I s'pose... I'm just sorry about it, is all...\nAnonymous (2007-07-03):\nGo ahead and remove this post at the end, but I dont agree with the Playboy interview. I'm not choosing sides. I do think Mel has some problems, but I also definitely believe that the editor of this blog added some quotes Gibson apparently said. Reply to me, blogger. Is this true? If you say it is, I'll try to do some email to Mr. Gibson about this to make sure. Nobody likes rumors. Go ahead and contact me. jonathan.rossen@okbu.edu\nLippard (2007-07-03):\n\"I also definitely believe that the editor of this blog added some quotes Gibson apparently said.\"No, Jonathan, I didn't add any quotes to what I found at the source I cited.\nEinzige (2007-07-03):\nOut of curiousity, Jonathan, what are you smoking?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/mel-gibson-on-evolution-women-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is from a Mel Gibson interview with \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePlayboy\u003c/span\u003e magazine in the July 1995 issue.  I haven\u0026rsquo;t verified it myself, though I\u0026rsquo;ve found consistent \u003ca href=\"http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/0007701.html\"\u003eexcerpts\u003c/a\u003e (though they could all have an identical bogus source).  The positions taken are quite plausibly attributed to Gibson, though I\u0026rsquo;m surprised at his foul mouth.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn evolution:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePLAYBOY: Do you believe in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of evolution or that God created man in his image?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: The latter.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: So you can\u0026rsquo;t accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: No, I think it\u0026rsquo;s bullshit. If it isn\u0026rsquo;t, why are they still around? How come apes aren\u0026rsquo;t people yet? It\u0026rsquo;s a nice theory, but I can\u0026rsquo;t swallow it. There\u0026rsquo;s a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something\u0026rsquo;s been around, how accurate is that, really? I\u0026rsquo;ve got one of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don\u0026rsquo;t think you can swallow the whole piece.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eWhy does anyone think his first point is a good argument against evolution?  I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard anyone argue that Italian-Americans couldn\u0026rsquo;t have come from Italy because there are still Italians there.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd I wonder what book by Darwin he has.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn assorted moral issues:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePLAYBOY: We take it that you\u0026rsquo;re not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren\u0026rsquo;t issues. Those\u003cbr /\u003eare unquestionable. You don\u0026rsquo;t even argue those points.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: You don\u0026rsquo;t?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: No.\u003c/blockquote\u003eOn women:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: No.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: Why not?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: I\u0026rsquo;ll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They\u0026rsquo;re not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: That\u0026rsquo;s true. You have more money.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody\u0026rsquo;s equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. And good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: That\u0026rsquo;s quite a generalization.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: Any examples?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn\u0026rsquo;t work.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: Why not?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: She was a cunt.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: Feminists don\u0026rsquo;t like me, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like them. I don\u0026rsquo;t get their point. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why feminists have it out for me, but that\u0026rsquo;s their problem, not mine.\u003c/blockquote\u003eInteresting that he thinks a woman being a priest would be \u0026ldquo;a step down.\u0026rdquo;  From many occupations, I\u0026rsquo;d agree.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGibson on political conspiracy theory:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: He\u0026rsquo;s a low-level opportunist. Somebody\u0026rsquo;s telling him what to do.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: Who?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: The guy who\u0026rsquo;s in charge isn\u0026rsquo;t going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make an appearance. Would you? You\u0026rsquo;d end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. If he\u0026rsquo;s the leader, he\u0026rsquo;s getting shafted. What\u0026rsquo;s keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: You really believe that?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it\u0026rsquo;s Marxism, but it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don\u0026rsquo;t admit to it. Do it by stealth. There\u0026rsquo;s a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There\u0026rsquo;s something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I\u0026rsquo;ll end up dead if I keep talking shit.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Note added 30 December:  I\u0026rsquo;ve heard from several people who have now verified the accuracy of these quotations.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mel Gibson on evolution, women, and political conspiracy theory"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m in the middle of reading H.L. Mencken\u0026rsquo;s biography of Nietzsche, and I found this passage, on pages 56-58, to be rather humorous:\nNietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. \u0026hellip;During all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. But the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. \u0026ldquo;For me to marry,\u0026rdquo; he soliloquized in 1887, \u0026ldquo;would probably be sheer assininity.\u0026quot;\nThere are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche\u0026rsquo;s utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A good woman - alike beautiful and sensible - would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. High thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat - the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! We must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be unthinkable.\n\u0026hellip;Nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. [emphasis added]Now, maybe I keyed in to this passage because it struck a little too close to home - not that I\u0026rsquo;m any kind of great philosopher, mind you - but the question is this: Is this truly an accurate assessment? Have all the greatest philosophers (and perhaps even artists\u0026ndash;Beethoven, for example) been bachelors?\nHistorical Comments john (2006-12-09):\nYou might check out 'Zarathustra's Secret' on the question of Nietzsche and marriage. http://darwiniana.com\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/mencken-on-nietzsche.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in the middle of reading H.L. Mencken\u0026rsquo;s biography of Nietzsche, and I found this passage, on pages 56-58, to be rather humorous:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size:85%;\"\u003eNietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. \u0026hellip;During all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. But the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. \u0026ldquo;For me to marry,\u0026rdquo; he soliloquized in 1887, \u0026ldquo;would probably be sheer assininity.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;\"\u003eThere are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche\u0026rsquo;s utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A good woman - alike beautiful and sensible - would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The defect in this theory lies in the fact that \u003cb\u003ephilosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy\u003c/b\u003e. High thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat - the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! We must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be unthinkable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;Nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. \u003cb\u003eThe ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy\u003c/b\u003e. [emphasis added]\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eNow, maybe I keyed in to this passage because it struck a little too close to home - not that I\u0026rsquo;m any kind of great philosopher, mind you - but the question is this: Is this truly an accurate assessment? Have all the greatest philosophers (and perhaps even artists\u0026ndash;Beethoven, for example) been bachelors?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mencken on Nietzsche"},{"content":"Howard Kurtz writes in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post that Bush has been attempting (without success in a few notable recent instances) to suppress stories about CIA prisons and wiretapping.\nIn the same article, he reports that Doug Bandow accepted payments of as much as $2,000 a story for pieces favorable to lobbyist Jack Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s clients. He has resigned from the Cato Institute in the wake of the story, exposed by Business Week, issuing a statement that \u0026ldquo;I am fully responsible and I won\u0026rsquo;t play victim \u0026hellip; Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize.\u0026quot;\nPeter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation is unapologetic about accepting similar payments; Jonathan Adler of the National Review reports that he was offered similar payments when he worked at a think tank but declined them. It\u0026rsquo;s more evidence that think tank output tends to be generated by starting with paid-for conclusions and generating arguments and selecting evidence to support them\u0026ndash;similar to Feith\u0026rsquo;s selection of intelligence information to support the invasion of Iraq. Think tanks supported by particular interests simply aren\u0026rsquo;t a good way of getting objective information.\nMore examples in Kurtz\u0026rsquo;s piece.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/bush-attempts-to-suppress-stories-doug.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHoward Kurtz \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500665_pf.html\"\u003ewrites in yesterday\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post\u003c/a\u003e that Bush has been attempting (without success in a few notable recent instances) to suppress stories about CIA prisons and wiretapping.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the same article, he reports that Doug Bandow accepted payments of as much as $2,000 a story for pieces favorable to lobbyist Jack Abramoff\u0026rsquo;s clients.  He has resigned from the Cato Institute in the wake of the story, exposed by \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBusiness Week\u003c/span\u003e, issuing a statement that \u0026ldquo;I am fully responsible and I won\u0026rsquo;t play victim \u0026hellip; Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePeter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation is unapologetic about accepting similar payments; Jonathan Adler of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNational Review\u003c/span\u003e reports that he was offered similar payments when he worked at a think tank but declined them.  It\u0026rsquo;s more evidence that think tank output tends to be generated by starting with paid-for conclusions and generating arguments and selecting evidence to support them\u0026ndash;similar to Feith\u0026rsquo;s selection of intelligence information to support the invasion of Iraq.  Think tanks supported by particular interests simply aren\u0026rsquo;t a good way of getting objective information.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore examples in Kurtz\u0026rsquo;s piece.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush attempts to suppress stories; Doug Bandow taking money from Abramoff"},{"content":"As quoted in the Miami Herald:\nThe Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of evolution?\nBush said: ``Yeah, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no word on whether this opinion is backed by the Mystical Warrior Chang.\nIt is surprising that he says he believes in it.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\ndj,Somehow I doubt you're going to actually read this or respond to it, but I'll ask anyway.What is your definition of \"evolution\"? By my definition, we \"witness\" it every year, as new flu strains are evolving all the time.Do you deny the science of genetics? How about the experience of, for example, dog breeders? If evolution is religion, then that puts it on a par with Christianity and Islam, doesn't it? I presume you are a Christian, so aren't you a fan of religion?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\ndj: Which are you saying is the smart move for Jeb Bush? Believing in evolution, saying that he believes in evolution, not wanting evolution to be part of the curriculum, or saying that he doesn't want evolution to be part of the curriculum?Your Webster definition is a very poor one--it is really a definition of the end product of science, not science itself, and it is focused narrowly on one particular aspect of scientific methodology. Science allows other methods of testing besides direct observation with the naked eye.Evolution *has* been observed in the wild and in the laboratory.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nOh, and by the way, dj, BOO-YAH!Put that in your pipe and smoke it, buddy!(Too bad he's probably not going to read this, anyway...)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe Roman Catholic Church doesn't have a problem with evolution.http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\ndj,I assert that my Russian is quite rusty, so I can't be sure how to interpret what you're saying.Are you saying that my reaction was a misinterpretation of your post, or that perhaps your response to the original post should be reconsidered?Or maybe you're saying that you're not sure how to interpret my response to your response, since this medium of communication (via computer) is prone to misinterpretation?Thanks for coming back, reading it, and responding, though!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/jeb-bush-thinks-evolution-shouldnt-be.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs quoted in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13487395.htm\"\u003eMiami Herald\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin\u0026rsquo;s theory of evolution?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBush said: ``Yeah, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no word on whether this opinion is backed by the \u003ca href=\"/2005/09/chang-mystical-warrior.html\"\u003eMystical Warrior Chang\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt is surprising that he says he believes in it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeb Bush thinks evolution shouldn't be taught"},{"content":"Another nice sum-up from Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nIvan Eland has a column along similar lines at antiwar.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/bushs-imperial-presidency.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnother nice sum-up from \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/bushs_imperial_presidency.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIvan Eland has \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=8302\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ea column along similar lines\u003c/A\u003e at antiwar.com.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Bush's Imperial Presidency"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s a nice money-saving idea, but since it\u0026rsquo;s something you have to specifically sign up for, how many takers are they likely to get? Perhaps they anticipate having those who think they are likely to be indicted will sign up in order to get some advance \u0026ldquo;get out of town, now!\u0026rdquo; notice? But then again, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t the subscriber list be a potential list of targets for investigation?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/south-korea-to-allow-indictment-via.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a nice money-saving idea, but since it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051226/tc_nm/korea_phones_dc\"\u003esomething you have to specifically sign up for\u003c/a\u003e, how many takers are they likely to get?  Perhaps they anticipate having those who think they are likely to be indicted will sign up in order to get some advance \u0026ldquo;get out of town, now!\u0026rdquo; notice?  But then again, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t the subscriber list be a potential list of targets for investigation?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"South Korea to allow indictment via text messaging"},{"content":"Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth (in his sixth term, if you can believe it) has come out near the top of legislators who have received campaign contributions from \u0026ldquo;Indian tribes and others connected with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.\u0026quot;\nI actually agree with Hayworth that he should feel under no obligation to return donations from the tribes, and I agree with many of the stances he has taken supporting them, especially with regard to the case of Cobell v. Norton. This is a case that has been going on since 1996 (with underlying issues going back to the 19th century), when Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana filed a federal lawsuit to get a proper accounting of what the Department of Interior (DOI) has been doing with funds collected from leases of land held in trust for American Indians. In the course of the lawsuit, it has been found that the DOI intentionally destroyed records (and allowed others to be destroyed by the elements) and covered it up, did not maintain records with proper security (which led to DOI websites being removed from the Internet as a result of an injunction).\nOn the other hand, Hayworth has held multiple fundraisers in sports stadium skyboxes owned by Abramoff, the value of which he failed to report to the Federal Election Commission, for which he refunded money to two tribes and filed amended FEC reports. If specific evidence of other failings along these lines\u0026ndash;or of actual bribe-taking\u0026ndash;is found, Hayworth should be nailed to the wall. The fact that he has had extensive involvement with Abramoff is itself reason to scrutinize his dealings carefully, as it\u0026rsquo;s a sign that he is either a poor judge of character or doesn\u0026rsquo;t care about who he associates with (it could be either, since he isn\u0026rsquo;t the sharpest blade in the drawer and is one of the biggest blowhards in Congress).\nWhen Hayworth first ran for Congress, he signed up for a dialup account at Primenet, the Arizona ISP where I worked at the time. His campaign manager said that if he won the election, he would be sure to remain a Primenet customer for quite some time. Shortly after his election, the account was cancelled.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/jd-hayworth-to-keep-donations-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth (in his sixth term, if you can believe it) has come out near the top of \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1223hayworth23.html\"\u003elegislators who have received campaign contributions from \u0026ldquo;Indian tribes and others connected with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI actually agree with Hayworth that he should feel under no obligation to return donations from the tribes, and I agree with many of the stances he has taken supporting them, especially with regard to the case of \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiantrust.com/\"\u003eCobell v. Norton\u003c/a\u003e.  This is a case that has been going on since 1996 (with underlying issues going back to the 19th century), when Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana filed a federal lawsuit to get a proper accounting of what the Department of Interior (DOI) has been doing with funds collected from leases of land held in trust for American Indians.  In the course of the lawsuit, it \u003ca href=\"http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1266\u0026amp;issue_id=112\"\u003ehas been found that\u003c/a\u003e the DOI intentionally destroyed records (and allowed others to be destroyed by the elements) and covered it up, did not maintain records with proper security (which led to DOI websites being removed from the Internet as a result of an injunction).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the other hand, Hayworth has held multiple fundraisers in sports stadium skyboxes owned by Abramoff, the value of which he failed to report to the Federal Election Commission, for which he refunded money to two tribes and filed amended FEC reports.  If specific evidence of other failings along these lines\u0026ndash;or of actual bribe-taking\u0026ndash;is found, Hayworth should be nailed to the wall.  The fact that he has had extensive involvement with Abramoff is itself reason to scrutinize his dealings carefully, as it\u0026rsquo;s a sign that he is either a poor judge of character or doesn\u0026rsquo;t care about who he associates with (it could be either, since he isn\u0026rsquo;t the sharpest blade in the drawer and is one of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonian.com/inwashington/bwcongress.html\"\u003ebiggest blowhards in Congress\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhen Hayworth first ran for Congress, he signed up for a dialup account at Primenet, the Arizona ISP where I worked at the time.  His campaign manager said that if he won the election, he would be sure to remain a Primenet customer for quite some time.  Shortly after his election, the account was cancelled.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"J.D. Hayworth to keep donations from Indian tribes"},{"content":"Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention\u0026rsquo;s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in the Washington Post about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:\n“This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics \u0026amp; Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.”\nApparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\nTimothy Sandefur rebuts Land\u0026rsquo;s nutty comment at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb.\nUPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/half-century-secularist-reign-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention\u0026rsquo;s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101959.html\"\u003ethe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e “This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics \u0026amp; Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eApparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/misc/humor/lioaca.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTimothy Sandefur rebuts Land\u0026rsquo;s nutty comment at \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/12/post_1.html\"\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://skepticx.myweb.uga.edu/antixian.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Life in Our Anti-Christian America.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"A half-century secularist reign of terror\""},{"content":"Wafah Dufour, formerly known as Wafah bin Laden, is Osama bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s niece (daughter of Yeslam bin Ladin, half-brother of Osama, and Carmen bin Ladin, author of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia) is featured in the December GQ. She wants to be a pop star in the U.S. She hasn\u0026rsquo;t lived in Saudi Arabia since she was 10. She is a fan of The Cure, Seal, and The Beatles, and plays guitar.\nIt seems to me that in her position, it could be dangerous to become an American pop star, since there seems to be no shortage of Muslim fundamentalists who reject the principle of free speech even while living in countries that endorse it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/sexy-bin-laden.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWafah Dufour, formerly known as Wafah bin Laden, is Osama bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s niece (daughter of Yeslam bin Ladin, half-brother of Osama, and Carmen bin Ladin, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia\u003c/span\u003e) is \u003ca href=\"http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_4071\"\u003efeatured in the December \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGQ\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.  She wants to be a pop star in the U.S.  She hasn\u0026rsquo;t lived in Saudi Arabia since she was 10.  She is \u003ca href=\"http://insider.tv.yahoo.com/celeb/2549/\"\u003ea fan of The Cure, Seal, and The Beatles\u003c/a\u003e, and plays guitar.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems to me that in her position, it could be dangerous to become an American pop star, since there seems to be no shortage of \u003ca href=\"http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/382\"\u003eMuslim fundamentalists who reject the principle of free speech\u003c/a\u003e even while living in countries that endorse it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The \"sexy bin Laden\""},{"content":"The Senate has voted to extend the expiring provisions by a month (five months less than a Senate proposal on Wednesday; the House reduced it to one month). The Bush administration was arguing against a six-month extension as being too short, so this seems to be a good sign.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/usa-patriot-act-extended-to-january-31.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Senate \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/22/patriot.act/index.html\"\u003ehas voted to extend the expiring provisions by a month\u003c/a\u003e (five months less than a Senate proposal on Wednesday; the House reduced it to one month).  The Bush administration was arguing against a six-month extension as being too short, so this seems to be a good sign.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"USA PATRIOT Act extended to January 31, 2006"},{"content":"Hendrik Hertzberg writes of the bogus \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo; being pushed by Fox News in The New Yorker:\nThe War on Christmas is a little like Santa Claus, in that it (a) comes to us from the sky, beamed down by the satellites of cable news, and (b) does not, in the boringly empirical sense, exist.He goes on to note that\nToday’s Christmas Pentagon is the Fox News Channel, which during a recent five-day period carried no fewer than fifty-eight different segments about the ongoing struggle, some of them labelled “Christmas under attack.”and discusses John Gibson\u0026rsquo;s book and Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s role as \u0026ldquo;Patton.\u0026rdquo; Near the end, he notes:\nIn this war, no weapons of Christmas destruction have been found—just a few caches of linguistic oversensitivity and commercial caution. Christmas remains robust: even Gibson says in his book that in America Christmas celebrators (ninety-six per cent) outnumber Christians (eighty-four per cent). But the “Happy Holidays” contagion has probably spread too far to be wiped out.O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s response on December 20:\nO\u0026rsquo;REILLY: Time now for \u0026ldquo;The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.\u0026rdquo; New Yorker magazine joins our hall of shame. We are recommending readers and sponsors avoid the publication. The reason: that magazine allows writer Hendrik Hertzberg to print dishonest propaganda fed to him by left-wing smear sites. As I previously stated, any publication or news operation that does that will be listed on BillOReilly.com as\nnot worthy of your attention or advertising dollars. The spin and the propaganda stop here. The New Yorker magazine should be ashamed and is absolutely ridiculous. And one note to Mr. Hertzberg: You might want to rethink your practice of character assassination, sir. Just looking out for you.And Fox\u0026rsquo;s John Gibson, author of The War on Christmas, got into a shouting match with Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, with Gibson threatening to sue Boston for pointing out O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s falsehood about green and red clothing being prohibited by Plano, Texas schools. As it turns out, there were some prohibitions about party items and gifts in Plano schools which included such things as paper plate color, which led to a lawsuit; that ban was revoked and the guidelines made more sensible\u0026ndash;e.g., students could give each other religious-themed gifts, but teachers (who are acting in an official capacity and represent the state) cannot give religious-themed gifts to students.\nO\u0026rsquo;Reilly has retracted his comment about a ban on red and green clothing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/war-on-christmas-exposed-by-new-yorker.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHendrik Hertzberg writes of the bogus \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo; being pushed by Fox News in \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?051226ta_talk_hertzberg\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe War on Christmas is a little like Santa Claus, in that it (a) comes to us from the sky, beamed down by the satellites of cable news, and (b) does not, in the boringly empirical sense, exist.\u003c/blockquote\u003eHe goes on to note that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eToday’s Christmas Pentagon is the Fox News Channel, which during a recent five-day period carried no fewer than fifty-eight different segments about the ongoing struggle, some of them labelled “\u003cspan class=\"smallcaps\"\u003eChristmas under attack\u003c/span\u003e.”\u003c/blockquote\u003eand discusses John Gibson\u0026rsquo;s book and Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s role as \u0026ldquo;Patton.\u0026rdquo;  Near the end, he notes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn this war, no weapons of Christmas destruction have been found—just a few caches of linguistic oversensitivity and commercial caution. Christmas remains robust: even Gibson says in his book that in America Christmas celebrators (ninety-six per cent) outnumber Christians (eighty-four per cent). But the “Happy Holidays” contagion has probably spread too far to be wiped out.\u003c/blockquote\u003eO\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179356,00.html\"\u003eresponse on December 20\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eO\u0026rsquo;REILLY: Time now for \u0026ldquo;The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.\u0026rdquo; New Yorker magazine joins our hall of shame. We are recommending readers and sponsors avoid the publication. The reason: that magazine allows writer Hendrik Hertzberg to print dishonest propaganda fed to him by left-wing smear sites. As I previously stated, any publication or news operation that does that will be listed on BillOReilly.com as\u003cbr /\u003enot worthy of your attention or advertising dollars. The spin and the propaganda stop here. The New Yorker magazine should be ashamed and is absolutely ridiculous. And one note to Mr. Hertzberg: You might want to rethink your practice of character assassination, sir. Just looking out for you.\u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd Fox\u0026rsquo;s John Gibson, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe War on Christmas\u003c/span\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newshounds.us/2005/12/21/john_gibson_melts_down_threatens_to_sue_aus_rob_boston.php\"\u003egot into a shouting match\u003c/a\u003e with Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, with Gibson threatening to sue Boston for pointing out O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s falsehood about green and red clothing being prohibited by Plano, Texas schools.  As it turns out, there were some prohibitions about party items and gifts in Plano schools which included such things as paper plate color, which led to a lawsuit; that ban was revoked and the guidelines made more sensible\u0026ndash;e.g., students could give each other religious-themed gifts, but teachers (who are acting in an official capacity and represent the state) cannot give religious-themed gifts to students.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eO\u0026rsquo;Reilly has \u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179371,00.html\"\u003eretracted his comment\u003c/a\u003e about a ban on red and green clothing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"War on Christmas\" exposed by New Yorker; O'Reilly annoyed"},{"content":"It is possible to preload a memory card with negative votes that are not recognized by the machine, but which affect the final outcome in an undetectible manner. In the test described in a Wired article, a mock vote was held on the question of whether Diebold machines could be hacked, with eight votes. The eight votes fed into the machines (via optically scanned paper ballots) were six \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes and two \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo; votes. The outcome recorded on the rigged card was one \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; and seven \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the memory card was preloaded with -5 \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes and 5 \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo; votes. By balancing out the preloaded votes (with a sum of zero), the final record showed an accurate number of votes, but not an accurate record of what the votes were.\nFurther flaws indicate that the Diebold machines execute code residing on the memory cards, without doing checks on the content of that code which are required by Federal Elections Commission standards.\nAs a result of the hacking demonstrations by Finnish security expert Harri Hurst in Florida on December 13, Leon and Volusia counties in Florida have cancelled their contracts with Diebold.\nMuch more at blackboxvoting.org.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/major-flaw-in-diebold-voting-machines.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt is possible to preload a memory card with negative votes that are not recognized by the machine, but which affect the final outcome in an undetectible manner.  In the test described in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,69893,00.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWired\u003c/span\u003e article\u003c/a\u003e, a mock vote was held on the question of whether Diebold machines could be hacked, with eight votes.  The eight votes fed into the machines (via optically scanned paper ballots) were six \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes and two \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo; votes.  The outcome recorded on the rigged card was one \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; and seven \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;the  memory card was preloaded with -5 \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; votes and 5 \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo; votes.  By balancing out the preloaded votes (with a sum of zero), the final record showed an accurate number of votes, but not an accurate record of what the votes were.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00381.htm\"\u003eFurther flaws indicate\u003c/a\u003e that the Diebold machines execute code residing on the memory cards, without doing checks on the content of that code which are required by Federal Elections Commission standards.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs a result of the hacking demonstrations by Finnish security expert Harri Hurst in Florida on December 13, \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/15595.html\"\u003eLeon and Volusia counties in Florida have cancelled their contracts\u003c/a\u003e with Diebold.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMuch more at \u003ca href=\"http://www.blackboxvoting.org/\"\u003eblackboxvoting.org\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Major flaw in Diebold voting machines"},{"content":"The December 17th issue of The Economist has an article (\u0026ldquo;The next wave\u0026rdquo;) about projected growth in India\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Business Process Offshoring\u0026rdquo; (BPO) industry. While today two-thirds of the $250 billion of annual spending on legal services goes to the United States, 28% of the available global workforce with the requisite language and technical skills is in India. Since India\u0026rsquo;s law is based on English common law, it is in a good position to take a large portion of that business from lawyers in the United States, with a 75% reduction in cost for the buyer. The Economist notes that this is \u0026ldquo;not just a question of \u0026lsquo;paralegal\u0026rsquo; hack work such as document preparation\u0026rsquo; but includes \u0026lsquo;drafting contracts and patent applications, research and negotiation.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\nLet\u0026rsquo;s all weep a few tears for U.S. lawyers being put out of work.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/outsourced-to-india-lawyers.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe December 17th issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e has \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5300960\"\u003ean article (\u0026ldquo;The next wave\u0026rdquo;) \u003c/a\u003eabout projected growth in India\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Business Process Offshoring\u0026rdquo; (BPO) industry.  While today two-thirds of the $250 billion of annual spending on legal services goes to the United States, 28% of the available global workforce with the requisite language and technical skills is in India.  Since India\u0026rsquo;s law is based on English common law, it is in a good position to take a large portion of that business from lawyers in the United States, with a 75% reduction in cost for the buyer.  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e notes that this is \u0026ldquo;not just a question of \u0026lsquo;paralegal\u0026rsquo; hack work such as document preparation\u0026rsquo; but includes \u0026lsquo;drafting contracts and patent applications, research and negotiation.\u0026rsquo;\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s all weep a few tears for U.S. lawyers being put out of work.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Outsourced to India:  lawyers"},{"content":"Over at the Agitator (PDFs).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/cory-maye-trial-transcripts-online.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOver at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026056.php\"\u003eAgitator\u003c/a\u003e (PDFs).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye Trial Transcripts Online"},{"content":"In the UK, the Law Lords ruled early this month that evidence obtained by torture is inadmissible in court, including evidence obtained by foreign governments (such as the United States) through the use of torture\u0026ndash;and the burden of proof that the evidence was not obtained by torture falls upon the government. Lord Bingham stated, \u0026ldquo;The English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for over 500 years \u0026hellip; I am startled, even a little dismayed, at the suggestion\u0026hellip;that this deeply rooted tradition and an international obligation solemnly and explicitly undertaken can be overridden by a statute.\u0026rdquo; The panel of seven judges was unanimous in its ruling that the evidence of torture was inadmissible, but divided on the standard the government must overcome to demonstrate the evidence was not admitted by torture once a defendant produces a \u0026ldquo;plausible reason\u0026rdquo; to think that it was. Three of the judges (including Lord Bingham) argued for a standard that the government show \u0026ldquo;no real risk\u0026rdquo; of basis on torture, the other four that the government show it \u0026ldquo;on the balance of probabilities.\u0026quot;\nIn the United States, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have argued strongly against any restrictions on the use of torture by the United States, while at the same time claiming that the United States does not use torture. While Bush has recently and reluctantly agreed to support the McCain amendment on torture, that amendment states that \u0026ldquo;No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.\u0026rdquo; Ten classified pages have just been added to that manual, leading some to suggest that this has created a way around the McCain amendment.\nFortunately, however, the McCain amendment goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.\u0026rdquo; It defines \u0026ldquo;cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.\u0026quot;\nBut there seems little question that Bush and Cheney want to push the limits as far as they possibly can.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/standards-on-evidence-obtained-by.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the UK, the \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4509530.stm\"\u003eLaw Lords ruled early this month\u003c/a\u003e that evidence obtained by torture is inadmissible in court, including evidence obtained by foreign governments (such as the United States) through the use of torture\u0026ndash;and the burden of proof that the evidence was not obtained by torture falls upon the government.  Lord Bingham stated, \u0026ldquo;The English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for over 500 years \u0026hellip; I am startled, even a little dismayed, at the suggestion\u0026hellip;that this deeply rooted tradition and an international obligation solemnly and explicitly undertaken can be overridden by a statute.\u0026rdquo;  The panel of seven judges was unanimous in its ruling that the evidence of torture was inadmissible, but divided on the standard the government must overcome to demonstrate the evidence was not admitted by torture once a defendant produces a \u0026ldquo;plausible reason\u0026rdquo; to think that it was.  Three of the judges (including Lord Bingham) argued for a standard that the government show \u0026ldquo;no real risk\u0026rdquo; of basis on torture, the other four that the government show it \u0026ldquo;on the balance of probabilities.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the United States, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have argued strongly against any restrictions on the use of torture by the United States, while at the same time claiming that the United States does not use torture.  While Bush has recently and reluctantly agreed to support the \u003ca href=\"http://www.phrusa.org/research/torture/mccain_text.html\"\u003eMcCain amendment on torture\u003c/a\u003e, that amendment states that \u0026ldquo;No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department                  of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique                  of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States                  Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.\u0026rdquo; \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eT\u003c/span\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121405J.shtml\"\u003een classified pages\u003c/a\u003e have just been added to that manual, leading some to suggest that this has created a way around the McCain amendment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFortunately, however, the McCain amendment goes on to say that \u0026ldquo;No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading                  treatment or punishment.\u0026rdquo;  It defines \u0026ldquo;cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings                  to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut there seems little question that Bush and Cheney \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/IraqCoverage/story?id=1419206\"\u003ewant to push the limits as far as they possibly can\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Standards on evidence obtained by torture"},{"content":"Daniel Morgan has posted a response to Jonathan Witt\u0026rsquo;s criticism of his summary of the Sternberg Saga.\nMorgan has admitted where he\u0026rsquo;s made mistakes\u0026ndash;can Witt and the Discovery Institute give that a try?\nAndrew Staroscik (2006-12-09):\nHi Jim,just stopping by to thank you for blogging. I never find much need to comment here because I generally agree with your views but I enjoy stopping byandrew\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the support, Andrew!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/daniel-morgan-v-jonathan-witt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Morgan has \u003ca href=\"http://danielmorgan.blogspot.com/2005/12/dissecting-frog.html\"\u003eposted a response\u003c/a\u003e to \u003ca href=\"http://www.idthefuture.com/2005/12/get_busy_livin_or_get_busy_sme.html\"\u003eJonathan Witt\u0026rsquo;s criticism\u003c/a\u003e of his summary of the Sternberg Saga.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMorgan has admitted where he\u0026rsquo;s made mistakes\u0026ndash;can Witt and the Discovery Institute give that a try?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eAndrew Staroscik\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHi Jim,\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003ejust stopping by to thank you for blogging.  I never find much need to comment here because I generally agree with your views but I enjoy stopping by\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eandrew\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daniel Morgan v. Jonathan Witt"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s an excellent decision. I did spot nineteen errors, none of significance to the legal arguments (three are typos, one\u0026rsquo;s a mistaken word choice, and fifteen are instances of the same erroneous character substitution, probably facilitated by the ever-helpful Microsoft Word). Will ID advocates find them and make rhetorical use of them? The typos are on pp. 51, 114, and 120, the mistaken word choice is on p. 96, and the three examples of the incorrect character are on pp. 104, 106, 117, 118, 120, 124, 129, and 130. Warning: Reading these pages (which I strongly recommend\u0026ndash;in fact, read the whole thing) will expose you to documentation of dishonesty and sleaziness by Christian school board members, including taking a mural depicting evolution from the classroom and burning it.\nBuckingham and Bonsell come across as sleazy, lying, manipulative bastards, and the rest of the board come across as ignoramuses rubber-stamping their actions. The citizens of Dover certainly did the right thing by voting out the entire school board.\nThe science teachers of Dover, however, come across as very reasonable people who made a few compromises with the board early on in order to get the textbooks they needed to teach, but who were unwilling to teach unscientific materials or read a misleading disclaimer to their students.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/errors-in-kitzmiller-v-dover-decision.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s an excellent decision.  I did spot nineteen errors, none of significance to the legal arguments (three are typos, one\u0026rsquo;s a mistaken word choice, and fifteen are instances of the same erroneous character substitution, probably facilitated by the ever-helpful Microsoft Word).  Will ID advocates find them and make rhetorical use of them?  The typos are on pp. 51, 114, and 120, the mistaken word choice is on p.  96, and the three examples of the incorrect character are on pp. 104, 106,  117,  118, 120, 124, 129, and 130.  Warning:  Reading these pages (which I strongly recommend\u0026ndash;in fact, read the whole thing) will expose you to documentation of dishonesty and sleaziness by Christian school board members, including taking a mural depicting evolution from the classroom and burning it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBuckingham and Bonsell come across as sleazy, lying, manipulative bastards, and the rest of the board come across as ignoramuses rubber-stamping their actions.  The citizens of Dover certainly did the right thing by voting out the entire school board.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe science teachers of Dover, however, come across as very reasonable people who made a few compromises with the board early on in order to get the textbooks they needed to teach, but who were unwilling to teach unscientific materials or read a misleading disclaimer to their students.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Errors in the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision"},{"content":"Judge John E. Jones III has issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case\u0026ndash;Dover\u0026rsquo;s ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of Of Pandas and People in the library. The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way Judge Overton\u0026rsquo;s McLean v. Arkansas creation science decision was in 1982. Ed Brayton has the text of the decision and some key quotes and commentary up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/dover-decision-id-is-religious.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJudge John E. Jones III \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051220/ap_on_re_us/evolution_debate\"\u003ehas issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;Dover\u0026rsquo;s ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e in the library.  The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html\"\u003eJudge Overton\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eMcLean v. Arkansas\u003c/span\u003e creation science decision\u003c/a\u003e was in 1982.  Ed Brayton has the \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision.html\"\u003etext of the decision\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2005/12/best_possible_outcome_in_dover.php\"\u003esome key quotes and commentary\u003c/a\u003e up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dover Decision: ID is religious"},{"content":"I never cease to be amazed at how the White House\u0026rsquo;s own web page is faithfully documenting and publicizing this administration\u0026rsquo;s stupidities. In a way, I guess, it\u0026rsquo;s strangely comforting. I mean, consider the alternative. What if all the embarassing Bushisms were whitewashed away, replaced by erudite prose? The implications, if that were the case, bring disturbing thoughts to mind\u0026ndash;memory holes\u0026hellip; Ministries of Truth\u0026hellip; that sort of thing.\nIt seems we\u0026rsquo;re not quite there, yet, as you can plainly see here, where Alberto Gonzales does a lot of hand-waving, dodging, and dashing in response to the question, \u0026ldquo;If FISA didn\u0026rsquo;t work, why didn\u0026rsquo;t you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?\u0026quot;\nThat question was asked earlier. We\u0026rsquo;ve had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be \u0026ndash; that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that \u0026ndash; and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.\nMy translation: \u0026ldquo;It wasn\u0026rsquo;t bloody likely that we would be able to do what we wanted legally, but we went ahead and did it anyway.\u0026quot;\nBillmon over at The Whiskey Bar has an even better translation.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nhttp://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/12/bill_kristol_sm.shtml#012064The above link is Jeff A. Taylor commenting on a Bill Kristol column attempting to support Bush's actions. Taylor uses the headline \"Bill Kristol Smokes Crack and Writes a Column\" and concludes: \"If America is going to a have a chief executive who may unilaterally, by virtue of his oath of office, investigate, detain, and jail anyone, anywhere that the chief executive deems to be a threat to the state and to society, it would be nice if we could comment on that development without being snorted at and insulted.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/1981-82.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI never cease to be amazed at how the \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov\"\u003eWhite House\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s own web page is faithfully documenting and publicizing this administration\u0026rsquo;s stupidities. In a way, I guess, it\u0026rsquo;s strangely comforting. I mean, consider the alternative. What if all the embarassing Bushisms were whitewashed away, replaced by erudite prose? The implications, if that were the case, bring disturbing thoughts to mind\u0026ndash;memory holes\u0026hellip; \u003ca href=\"http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/4/\"\u003eMinistries of Truth\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip; that sort of thing.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt seems we\u0026rsquo;re not quite there, yet, as you can plainly see \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-1.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, where Alberto Gonzales does a lot of hand-waving, dodging, and dashing in response to the question, \u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;If FISA didn\u0026rsquo;t work, why didn\u0026rsquo;t you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?\u0026quot;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003eThat question was asked earlier. We\u0026rsquo;ve had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be \u0026ndash; that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that \u0026ndash; and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"1981? ...82?"},{"content":"My opinion is similar to those of Ed Brayton and John Lynch. I think some skepticism about the attack is in order, it\u0026rsquo;s unfortunate that the university took action against Mirecki and shut down his proposed course, and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t impressed with the quality of Gary Hurd\u0026rsquo;s defense of Mirecki at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb and its speculations about martial artists inflicting just so much but no more injury on Mirecki.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/paul-mirecki-situation.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy opinion is similar to those of \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/the_mirecki_fiasco.php\"\u003eEd Brayton\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/?p=634\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e.  I think some skepticism about the attack is in order, it\u0026rsquo;s unfortunate that the university took action against Mirecki and shut down his proposed course, and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t impressed with the quality of \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/12/they_have_no_sh.html\"\u003eGary Hurd\u0026rsquo;s defense of Mirecki \u003c/a\u003eat the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb and its speculations about martial artists inflicting just so much but no more injury on Mirecki.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paul Mirecki situation"},{"content":"\nIn our neighborhood, we frequently see stray dogs, usually without collars or identifying information. We catch them when we can, and turn them into the pound. The puppies tend to get quickly adopted. Others, we point out to RESCUE, an animal rescue group we volunteer with, so that if they get put on the euthanasia lists they may have another opportunity for survival. Unfortunately, RESCUE can\u0026rsquo;t save all of them.\nThis puppy had been given to a homeless man we know, who in turn gave him to us to take care of. Kat removed numerous ticks and gave her a bath (the first photo is pre-bath, the second is post-bath). We estimated her age at less than three months, and the breed could be some kind of Chow mix. I think this is the fifth stray we\u0026rsquo;ve turned in this year; last year we turned in about the same number, including at least three puppies.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nToo cute!She certainly looks better post-bath! :-)\nDanny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nAwww, what a charming little puppy. If you can send it to Manila, I don't mind adopting it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/another-stray-puppy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/PC180004.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/PC180004.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn our neighborhood, we frequently see stray dogs, usually without collars or identifying information.  We catch them when we can, and turn them into the pound.  The puppies tend to get quickly adopted.  Others, we point out to \u003ca href=\"http://www.azrescue.org/\"\u003eRESCUE\u003c/a\u003e, an animal rescue group we volunteer with, so that if they get put on the euthanasia lists they may have another opportunity for survival.  Unfortunately, RESCUE can\u0026rsquo;t save all of them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis puppy had been given to a homeless man we know, who in turn gave him to us to take care of.  Kat removed numerous ticks and gave her a bath (the first photo is pre-bath, the second is post-bath).  We estimated her age at less than three months, and the breed could be some kind of Chow mix.  I think this is the fifth stray we\u0026rsquo;ve turned in this year; last year we turned in about the same number, including at least three puppies.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/1600/PC180006.med.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6230/1431/320/PC180006.med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another stray puppy"},{"content":" As an individualist, I harbor no sentimental attachments to my species, any more than I do to my nation, my gender, or my race - in fact I despise the very notion of the collectivist \u0026ldquo;us-versus-them\u0026rdquo; mentality, and believe it to be a primary destructive force in the world today.\nAs a \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo;, I lack belief in a human soul, whether mortal or immortal, so, in principle, I can\u0026rsquo;t see any objection to the idea that someone will one day succeed in creating an \u0026ldquo;artificial intelligence.\u0026quot;\nBecause of my naturalist and individualist bent, I\u0026rsquo;m really not bothered by the possibility that humankind might one day be destroyed, Terminator- or Matrix-style, by our machine offspring - at least not any more than I\u0026rsquo;m bothered by the possibility that I\u0026rsquo;ll be bludgeoned to death in a dark alley, or waste away, uncared-for, in a convalescence home.\nI wonder, though\u0026hellip; Is the Terminator myth really a likely, or even possible, future? We\u0026rsquo;re still not entirely sure what \u0026ldquo;intelligence\u0026rdquo; really is, let alone how to create it (aside from growing and interacting with human babies, that is). Is the ability to be introspective and/or self-aware a requirement for intelligence? What about feeling emotions? What about having an instinct for self-preservation? I\u0026rsquo;m not sure about any of those things - and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone else is, either (in spite of the attractiveness of the thesis found in the hugely entertaining book, Gödel, Escher, Bach).\nHowever, if there is a possibility for some sort of machine revolution, then we are surely doomed. If Congress\u0026rsquo;s reaction to a vegetable that could follow the movements of a balloon is any indication, then, long before our simulated friends (in meatspace or virtual space) have anything approaching a human-level intelligence, we will have been completely beguiled. Our reptile and monkey-brains are too entrenched for our prefrontal and frontal lobes to counteract the instinctive and immediate reaction to an attractive face. Witness the recent craze over the Furby. We even have a hard time not anthropomorphizing skinless heads (see also here). Throw in a little skin, some pretty eyes, and some basic interaction and it\u0026rsquo;s over. Even when it\u0026rsquo;s miserably failing the Turing test, we\u0026rsquo;re convinced in spite of ourselves that we\u0026rsquo;re talking with something that has - for lack of a better word - a soul. Spielberg\u0026rsquo;s prediction, in his film A.I., of the human reaction to our machines is dead on, I think\u0026ndash;with the exception that we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t even be able to kill any of the Mechas that look like walking television sets.\nIf I\u0026rsquo;m conveying the sense that I think any of this is bad, then I apologize, because I don\u0026rsquo;t mean to. I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely sure how I feel about this stuff, yet. Like any technology, there are good and bad aspects.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/hot-for-pedagogical-agent.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.livescience.com/images/051116_virtualA_02.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.livescience.com/images/051116_virtualA_02.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e As an individualist, I harbor no sentimental attachments to my species, any more than I do to my nation, my gender, or my race - in fact I despise the very notion of the collectivist \u0026ldquo;us-versus-them\u0026rdquo; mentality, and believe it to be a primary destructive force in the world today.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs a \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"/2005/11/naturals-and-unnaturals.html\"\u003enatural\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo;, I lack belief in a human soul, whether mortal or immortal, so, in principle, I can\u0026rsquo;t see any objection to the idea that someone will one day succeed in creating an \u0026ldquo;artificial intelligence.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBecause of my naturalist and individualist bent, I\u0026rsquo;m really not bothered by the possibility that humankind might one day be destroyed, Terminator- or Matrix-style, by our machine offspring - at least not any more than I\u0026rsquo;m bothered by the possibility that I\u0026rsquo;ll be bludgeoned to death in a dark alley, or waste away, uncared-for, in a convalescence home.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI wonder, though\u0026hellip; Is the Terminator myth really a likely, or even possible, future? We\u0026rsquo;re still not entirely sure what \u0026ldquo;intelligence\u0026rdquo; really \u003cem\u003eis\u003c/em\u003e, let alone how to create it (aside from growing and interacting with human babies, that is). Is the ability to be introspective and/or self-aware a requirement for intelligence? What about feeling emotions? What about having an instinct for self-preservation? I\u0026rsquo;m not sure about \u003cem\u003eany\u003c/em\u003e of those things - and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure anyone else is, either (in spite of the attractiveness of the thesis found in the hugely entertaining book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465026567\"\u003eGödel, Escher, Bach\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHowever, if there \u003cem\u003eis \u003c/em\u003ea possibility for some sort of machine revolution, then we are surely doomed. If \u003ca href=\"http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/schiavo/bill31905.html\"\u003eCongress\u0026rsquo;s reaction to a vegetable that could follow the movements of a balloon\u003c/a\u003e is any indication, then, \u003cem\u003elong\u003c/em\u003e before our simulated friends (in meatspace or virtual space) have anything approaching a human-level intelligence, we will have been completely beguiled. \u003ca href=\"http://www.androidworld.com/Kismet1_small.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 100px\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.androidworld.com/Kismet1_small.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOur reptile and monkey-brains are too entrenched for our prefrontal and frontal lobes to counteract the instinctive and immediate reaction to an \u003ca href=\"http://www.livescience.com/technology/051116_virtual_teachers.html\"\u003eattractive face\u003c/a\u003e. Witness the recent craze over the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hasbro.com/furby/\"\u003eFurby\u003c/a\u003e. We even have a hard time \u003cem\u003enot\u003c/em\u003e anthropomorphizing \u003ca href=\"http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/groups/ailab/people/hiroshi/face.html\"\u003eskinless heads\u003c/a\u003e (see also \u003ca href=\"http://www.androidworld.com/prod04.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e). Throw in a \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/denver_2003/2769741.stm\"\u003elittle skin\u003c/a\u003e, some pretty eyes, and some basic interaction and it\u0026rsquo;s over. Even when it\u0026rsquo;s miserably failing the \u003ca href=\"http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html\"\u003eTuring test\u003c/a\u003e, we\u0026rsquo;re convinced in spite of ourselves that we\u0026rsquo;re talking with something that has - for lack of a better word - a \u003cem\u003esoul\u003c/em\u003e. Spielberg\u0026rsquo;s prediction, in his film A.I., of the human reaction to our machines is dead on, I think\u0026ndash;with the exception that we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t even be able to kill any of the Mechas that \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051214/ap_on_hi_te/honda_robot\"\u003elook like walking television sets\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf I\u0026rsquo;m conveying the sense that I think any of this is \u003cem\u003ebad\u003c/em\u003e, then I apologize, because I don\u0026rsquo;t mean to. I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely sure \u003cem\u003ehow \u003c/em\u003eI feel about this stuff, yet. Like any technology, there are good and bad aspects.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hot For [Pedagogical Agent]"},{"content":"Since the demise of the Concorde, there has been no private or commercial air travel at supersonic speeds. Now, however, Gulfstream, SAI/Lockheed Martin, and Aerion are working on developing technology that, through specially designed aircraft body shapes, can reduce the \u0026ldquo;sonic boom\u0026rdquo; and allow private jets to take flight paths that the Concorde was unable to use. There\u0026rsquo;s more on this subject at The Economist (free audio interview; the print article is premium content).\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nToo lazy to listen to the audio...Do they mention anything about necessary runway lengths and how many airports meet the minimum requirements?One of the big problems with the Concorde was that it could only land at airports with really long runways, severly limiting the destinations they could serve.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nWhile it's not specifically mentioned in the print article (I haven't listened to the audio, either), I don't think it's an issue as these planned planes are much smaller and are built to operate efficiently at subsonic as well as supersonic speeds (unlike the Concorde, which was inefficient at subsonic speeds and had to have flight paths mostly over water).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat should say \"will be built to operate\"...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/return-of-private-supersonic-flight.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince the demise of the Concorde, there has been no private or commercial air travel at supersonic speeds.  Now, however, Gulfstream, SAI/Lockheed Martin, and Aerion are working on developing technology that, through specially designed aircraft body shapes, can reduce the \u0026ldquo;sonic boom\u0026rdquo; and allow private jets to take flight paths that the Concorde was unable to use.  There\u0026rsquo;s more on this subject at \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5268783\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (free audio interview; the print article is premium content).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The return of private supersonic flight"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Sunday Times (London) has a story about polar bear drownings occurring off the north coast of Alaska. The bears have to swim longer distances now that average summer temperatures off the north coast of Alaska have increased by 2-3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, leading to the polar ice cap receding last summer by 200 miles more than the average distance of two decades ago.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/polar-bears-drown-as-ice-shelf-melts.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSunday Times\u003c/span\u003e (London) has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1938132,00.html\"\u003estory about polar bear drownings\u003c/a\u003e occurring off the north coast of Alaska.  The bears have to swim longer distances now that average summer temperatures off the north coast of Alaska have increased by 2-3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, leading to the polar ice cap receding last summer by 200 miles more than the average distance of two decades ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts"},{"content":"Of late I\u0026rsquo;ve often thought that drugs developed on the basis of evolutionary biology should have warning labels indicating that their effectiveness is predicated upon the fact of evolution, and creationists should not make use of them. Today\u0026rsquo;s Doonesbury is along similar lines. (Of course, creationists will say that this is microevolution, not macroevolution, and they only disbelieve in the latter.)\nThis is as good a place as any to recommend Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams\u0026rsquo; book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1996, Vintage).\nDenial so Fragile it Fractures (2006-12-09):\nI'm not sure if I see the concrete difference between microevolution and macroevolution. I mean, I don't see how minor differences in a living being's characteristics can't lead to slightly bigger differences which ultimately create new species. It seems like kind of a slippery slope to me. I'm sure I'm speaking to the choir, but I've never figured out exactly what creationists (or, IDs, as the newer breed of creationists like to call themselves) believe exactly, other than in the invisible superhero from space who watches over them (and who exists, unlike that dastardly Zeus).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI agree with you--the creationists owe an account of *what* acts as a limit on change, since they accept microevolution and changes within species. But providing positive scientific theory has always been a major gap for creationist... they've not produced much since Henry Morris' flood geology and \"hydrological sorting.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/todays-doonesbury-on.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOf late I\u0026rsquo;ve often thought that drugs developed on the basis of evolutionary biology should have warning labels indicating that their effectiveness is predicated upon the fact of evolution, and creationists should not make use of them.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/db/2005/12/18/index.html\"\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s Doonesbury\u003c/a\u003e is along similar lines.   (Of course, creationists will say that this is microevolution, not macroevolution, and they only disbelieve in the latter.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is as good a place as any to recommend Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams\u0026rsquo; book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679746749/jimlippardswebpaA/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWhy We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (1996, Vintage).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Today's Doonesbury on creationism/intelligent design"},{"content":"The Onion has given proper attention to the \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo;:\nWASHINGTON, DC—In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional Monday.\n\u0026ldquo;In accordance with my activist agenda to secularize the nation, this court finds Christmas to be unlawful,\u0026rdquo; Judge Reinhardt said. \u0026ldquo;The celebration of the birth of the philosopher Jesus—be it in the form of gift-giving, the singing of carols, fanciful decorations, or general good cheer and warm feelings amongst families—is in violation of the First Amendment principles upon which this great nation was founded.\u0026quot;\nIn addition to forbidding the celebration of Christmas in any form, Judge Reinhardt has made it illegal to say \u0026ldquo;Merry Christmas.\u0026rdquo; Instead, he has ruled that Americans must say \u0026ldquo;Happy Holidays\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Vacaciones Felices\u0026rdquo; if they wish to extend good tidings.\nWithin an hour of the judge\u0026rsquo;s verdict, National Guard troops were mobilized to enforce the controversial ruling.\nThe rest of the story is here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/activist-judge-cancels-christmas.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Onion has given \u003ca href=\"http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43438\"\u003eproper attention to the \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWASHINGTON, DC—In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional Monday.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;In accordance with my activist agenda to secularize the nation, this court finds Christmas to be unlawful,\u0026rdquo; Judge Reinhardt said. \u0026ldquo;The celebration of the birth of the philosopher Jesus—be it in the form of gift-giving, the singing of carols, fanciful decorations, or general good cheer and warm feelings amongst families—is in violation of the First Amendment principles upon which this great nation was founded.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn addition to forbidding the celebration of Christmas in any form, Judge Reinhardt has made it illegal to say \u0026ldquo;Merry Christmas.\u0026rdquo; Instead, he has ruled that Americans must say \u0026ldquo;Happy Holidays\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Vacaciones Felices\u0026rdquo; if they wish to extend good tidings.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Activist Judge Cancels Christmas"},{"content":"Daniel Morgan has assembled a very nice list of five \u0026ldquo;lingering questions\u0026rdquo; for Richard Sternberg to answer regarding his publication of Stephen Meyer\u0026rsquo;s paper supporting intelligent design. It would be nice to see them answered, but I won\u0026rsquo;t hold my breath.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/five-lingering-questions-for-sternberg.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Morgan has assembled \u003ca href=\"http://danielmorgan.blogspot.com/2005/12/lingering-questions-re-sternberg.html\"\u003ea very nice list of five \u0026ldquo;lingering questions\u0026rdquo; for Richard Sternberg\u003c/a\u003e to answer regarding \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/summary-of-richard-sternberg-saga.html\"\u003ehis publication of Stephen Meyer\u0026rsquo;s paper supporting intelligent design\u003c/a\u003e.  It would be nice to see them answered, but I won\u0026rsquo;t hold my breath.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Five \"Lingering Questions\" for Sternberg"},{"content":"Galileo\u0026rsquo;s middle finger of his right hand was removed from his body and put into a display case (around 1737) like a holy relic. It\u0026rsquo;s on display at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (IMSS is the Italian abbreviation) in Florence, Italy. (Hat tip to Alan W. Harris of the Space Science Institute, for his letter on pp. 67-68 of the January/February 2006 Skeptical Inquirer pointing this out. He notes that \u0026ldquo;One of my scientific colleagues, upon viewing it, noted dryly that it \u0026lsquo;was not noticeably pointed toward Rome.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/galileos-middle-finger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGalileo\u0026rsquo;s middle finger of his right hand was removed from his body and put into a display case (around 1737) like a holy relic.  It\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/genscheda.asp?appl=SIM\u0026xsl=catalogo\u0026amp;indice=54\u0026lingua=ENG\u0026amp;chiave=404010\"\u003eon display\u003c/a\u003e at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (IMSS is the Italian abbreviation) in Florence, Italy.  (Hat tip to Alan W. Harris of the Space Science Institute, for his letter on pp. 67-68 of the January/February 2006 \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptical Inquirer\u003c/span\u003e pointing this out.  He notes that \u0026ldquo;One of my scientific colleagues, upon viewing it, noted dryly that it \u0026lsquo;was not noticeably pointed toward Rome.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Galileo's Middle Finger"},{"content":"Jim Romenesko at Poynter Forums posts an incisive article on how the Fox News Channel has been pushing this phony \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo; idea as a method of division. The article is apparently by Charlie Reina, a former Fox News Channel producer. A couple key paragraphs:\nFox anchors will tell you that no one in management dictates that they bring up religion. But my experience at FNC is that, once management makes its views known, the anchors have a clear blueprint of what’s expected of them. In this case, the point man is network vice president John Moody. A scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II, John is a devout Catholic who seldom holds back on matters of the church, or in framing his views in “good guy, bad guy” terms. For example, during the 2001 Senate hearings on John Ashcroft’s appointment as Attorney General, Moody’s daily memos to the staff repeatedly touted Ashcroft as “deeply religious” and the victim of Democrats’ intolerance. One memo suggested a question of the day: “Can a man of deep Christian faith be appointed to a federal job, or will his views be equated with racism, intolerance and mean-spiritedness?” He added: “(K)eep pounding at the question: should Ashcroft’s detractors try to be as tolerant as they would have him be?”Then there’s Fox management’s view on the separation of church and state, and on those who support it. One not-so-subtle hint came in March, 2004, after a Baghdad bombing gave reporters at a hotel in the Iraqi capital a scare. Moody’s memo that day advised FNC staffers to “offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don’t shine).”\nNot mentioned is that the book The War on Christmas is by Fox News \u0026ldquo;Big Story\u0026rdquo; host John Gibson, or the multiple fabrications by Fox\u0026rsquo;s Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly. (Update on the latter: Plano schools are getting some press over their response to O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s fabricated claim that they banned students from wearing Christmas colors.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/phony-war-against-christmas-product-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10784\"\u003eJim Romenesko at Poynter Forums\u003c/a\u003e posts an incisive article on how the Fox News Channel has been pushing this phony \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo; idea as a method of division.  The article is apparently by Charlie Reina, a former Fox News Channel producer.  A couple key paragraphs:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eFox anchors will tell you that no one in management dictates that they bring up religion. But my experience at FNC is that, once management makes its views known, the anchors have a clear blueprint of what’s expected of them. In this case, the point man is network vice president John Moody. A scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II, John is a devout Catholic who seldom holds back on matters of the church, or in framing his views in “good guy, bad guy” terms. For example, during the 2001 Senate hearings on John Ashcroft’s appointment as Attorney General, Moody’s daily memos to the staff repeatedly touted Ashcroft as “deeply religious” and the victim of Democrats’ intolerance. One memo suggested a question of the day: “Can a man of deep Christian faith be appointed to a federal job, or will his views be equated with racism, intolerance and mean-spiritedness?” He added: “(K)eep pounding at the question: should Ashcroft’s detractors try to be as tolerant as they would have him be?”\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThen there’s Fox management’s view on the separation of church and state, and on those who support it. One not-so-subtle hint came in March, 2004, after a Baghdad bombing gave reporters at a hotel in the Iraqi capital a scare. Moody’s memo that day advised FNC staffers to “offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don’t shine).”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eNot mentioned is that the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe War on Christmas\u003c/span\u003e is by Fox News \u0026ldquo;Big Story\u0026rdquo; host John Gibson, or the \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/bill-oreilly-war-on-christmas-lies.html\"\u003emultiple fabrications by Fox\u0026rsquo;s Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u003c/a\u003e.  (Update on the latter:  Plano schools \u003ca href=\"http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3526298.html\"\u003eare getting some press over their response\u003c/a\u003e to O\u0026rsquo;Reilly\u0026rsquo;s fabricated claim that they banned students from wearing Christmas colors.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phony War Against Christmas a Product of Fox News"},{"content":"Economics and law professor David Friedman, author of The Machinery of Freedom and Law\u0026rsquo;s Order, has started a blog. Initial entries include an interesting defense of the Chronicles of Narnia (and a call for examples of other works that resemble it in a certain respect), a suggestion that the Democrats try to pull libertarian support from the Republican party by endorsing something like marijuana legalization, and a position on gay marriage (get government out of the marriage business).\nHe\u0026rsquo;s also got a sidebar link to an interesting article that presents a way of justifying (or at least explaining) the notion of rights (and property rights in particular) without appeal to morality or law.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/david-friedmans-blog.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEconomics and law professor \u003ca href=\"http://www.daviddfriedman.com/\"\u003eDavid Friedman\u003c/a\u003e, author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812690699/jimlippardswebpaA/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Machinery of Freedom\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691090092/jimlippardswebpaA/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eLaw\u0026rsquo;s Order\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, has started a \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/\"\u003eblog\u003c/a\u003e.  Initial entries include an \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2005/12/in-defense-of-narnia.html\"\u003einteresting defense of the Chronicles of Narnia\u003c/a\u003e (and a call for examples of other works that resemble it in a certain respect), a \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2005/12/howard-dean-to-white-courtesy-phone.html\"\u003esuggestion that the Democrats try to pull libertarian support\u003c/a\u003e from the Republican party by endorsing something like marijuana legalization, and a \u003ca href=\"http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2005/12/gay-marriage-both-sides-are-wrong.html\"\u003eposition on gay marriage\u003c/a\u003e (get government out of the marriage business).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s also got a sidebar link to \u003ca href=\"http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.html\"\u003ean interesting article that presents a way of justifying (or at least explaining) the notion of rights\u003c/a\u003e (and property rights in particular) without appeal to morality or law.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"David Friedman's blog"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s book, The Bush Betrayal, which makes an overwhelmingly strong case that George W. Bush is not only a terrible president by liberal standards, but by conservative or libertarian ones (Bovard falls into the libertarian camp). The book is 278 pages of text followed by 43 pages of end notes (which, unfortunately, are mostly references to secondary sources) documenting Bush impropriety, dishonesty, and bad decisions regarding civil liberties, free trade, education, farm subsidies, Medicare, the war on drugs, and in war.\nI just finished reading the chapter titled \u0026ldquo;Spending as Caring,\u0026rdquo; which has a section on the expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs in 2003 (pp. 121-126), which the Bush administration estimated would cost $400 billion in its first decade (and the Congressional Budget Office estimated would cost $2 trillion in its second decade). The initial vote took place at 3 a.m. on November 23, 2003, and lost by two votes. The Republicans violated House rules, which limit votes to 30 minutes, with the longest floor vote in House history. The voting finished at 6 a.m., with two Republicans changing their votes to yes and passing the bill.\nRep. Nick Smith (R-Michigan) was a Republican Congressman who opposed the bill and came under intense pressure to change his vote. Smith, who was in his last term and whose son was running for his seat, was told (according to Robert Novak\u0026ndash;not a source I\u0026rsquo;d ordinarily rely upon) \u0026ldquo;business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father\u0026rsquo;s vote.\u0026rdquo; He declined, at which time \u0026ldquo;fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.\u0026rdquo; Fortunately, Cunningham is now out of office after confessing to taking millions of dollars in bribes.\nA month after Bush signed the bill, Josh Bolton, Bush\u0026rsquo;s budget director, raised the estimate of the first decade\u0026rsquo;s cost to $540 billion. As it turned out, the Bush admnistration had known since June 2003 that the cost was higher than $400 billion, from an estimate by Richard S. Foster, the top actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Democratic staffers had contacted Foster asking for an estimate, which he was legally required to provide, but Thomas Scully, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reportedly threatened to fire Foster if he provided the information. Foster later said that \u0026ldquo;there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes.\u0026rdquo; Why was this information suppressed? Because 13 conservative House members had vowed to vote against any bill costing more than $400 billion\u0026ndash;they were deceived by the Bush administration.\nEighteen Democratic Senators requested the General Accounting Office to investigate whether any laws were violated (specifically a law that prohibits paying federal funds for the salary of any official who \u0026ldquo;prohibits or prevents, or threatens to prohibit or prevent\u0026rdquo; another employee from communicating with Congress). House Republicans blocked an effort to have Scully and White House aide Doug Badger testify before a congressional committee on this issue.\nThe Congressional Research Service published a legal analysis which concluded that \u0026ldquo;such \u0026lsquo;gag orders\u0026rsquo; have been expressly prohibited by federal law since 1912.\u0026rdquo; This position was backed by a 1927 Supreme Court ruling on that law which stated that a \u0026ldquo;legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information regarding conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change.\u0026quot;\nBut the worst part about all of this deception is that the program itself is mostly a handout to people who don\u0026rsquo;t need it. The Medicare prescription drug benefit helps wealthy elderly, corporations, and insurance companies more than elderly without insurance coverage. This change in the law brought the date of Medicare insolvency from 2026 to 2019, and is projected to cost up to $7 trillion over the next 75 years.\nAfter the bill passed, the Bush administration then spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising to promote the law, including \u0026ldquo;video news releases\u0026rdquo; by fake reporters which the GAO determined in March 2004 were illegal \u0026ldquo;covert propaganda\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;notable omissions and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; and were \u0026ldquo;not strictly factual news stories.\u0026quot;\nThe above gives a small sampling of the content of Bovard\u0026rsquo;s book (though not his exact words, I\u0026rsquo;ve summarized), which is packed with equally damning criticism of the Bush administration.\nBTW, Capitol Hill Blue (an often criticized source, yet which seems to often be quite accurate) claims reports from three witnesses that George W. Bush said, in response to criticisms of the USA PATRIOT reauthorization act, \u0026ldquo;Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It\u0026rsquo;s just a goddamned piece of paper!\u0026rdquo; (Hat tip to Scott Peterson from the SKEPTIC list.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nYup. And \"freedom\"'s just a word, baby.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/bush-medicare-fraud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading James Bovard\u0026rsquo;s book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Bush Betrayal\u003c/span\u003e, which makes an overwhelmingly strong case that George W. Bush is not only a terrible president by liberal standards, but by conservative or libertarian ones (Bovard falls into the libertarian camp).   The book is 278 pages of text followed by 43 pages of end notes (which, unfortunately, are mostly references to secondary sources) documenting Bush impropriety, dishonesty, and bad decisions regarding civil liberties, free trade, education, farm subsidies, Medicare, the war on drugs, and in war.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI just finished reading the chapter titled \u0026ldquo;Spending as Caring,\u0026rdquo; which has a section on the expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs in 2003 (pp. 121-126), which the Bush administration estimated would cost $400 billion in its first decade (and the Congressional Budget Office estimated would cost $2 trillion in its second decade).  The initial vote took place at 3 a.m. on November 23, 2003, and lost by two votes.  The Republicans violated House rules, which limit votes to 30 minutes, with the longest floor vote in House history.  The voting finished at 6 a.m., with two Republicans changing their votes to yes and passing the bill.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRep. Nick Smith (R-Michigan) was a Republican Congressman who opposed the bill and came under intense pressure to change his vote.  Smith, who was in his last term and whose son was running for his seat, was told (according to Robert Novak\u0026ndash;not a source I\u0026rsquo;d ordinarily rely upon) \u0026ldquo;business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father\u0026rsquo;s vote.\u0026rdquo;  He declined, at which time \u0026ldquo;fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress.  After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.\u0026rdquo;  Fortunately, Cunningham is now out of office after confessing to taking millions of dollars in bribes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA month after Bush signed the bill, Josh Bolton, Bush\u0026rsquo;s budget director, raised the estimate of the first decade\u0026rsquo;s cost to $540 billion.  As it turned out, the Bush admnistration had known since June 2003 that the cost was higher than $400 billion, from an estimate by Richard S. Foster, the top actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Democratic staffers had contacted Foster asking for an estimate, which he was legally required to provide, but Thomas Scully, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reportedly threatened to fire Foster if he provided the information.  Foster later said that \u0026ldquo;there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes.\u0026rdquo;  Why was this information suppressed?  Because 13 conservative House members had vowed to vote against any bill costing more than $400 billion\u0026ndash;they were deceived by the Bush administration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEighteen Democratic Senators requested the General Accounting Office to investigate whether any laws were violated (specifically a law that prohibits paying federal funds for the salary of any official who \u0026ldquo;prohibits or prevents, or threatens to prohibit or prevent\u0026rdquo; another employee from communicating with Congress).  House Republicans blocked an effort to have Scully and White House aide Doug Badger testify before a congressional committee on this issue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Congressional Research Service published a legal analysis which concluded that \u0026ldquo;such \u0026lsquo;gag orders\u0026rsquo; have been expressly prohibited by federal law since 1912.\u0026rdquo;  This position was backed by a 1927 Supreme Court ruling on that law which stated that a \u0026ldquo;legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information regarding conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut the worst part about all of this deception is that the program itself is mostly a handout to people who don\u0026rsquo;t need it.  The Medicare prescription drug benefit helps wealthy elderly, corporations, and insurance companies more than elderly without insurance coverage.  This change in the law brought the date of Medicare insolvency from 2026 to 2019, and is projected to cost up to $7 trillion over the next 75 years.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the bill passed, the Bush administration then spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising to promote the law, including \u0026ldquo;video news releases\u0026rdquo; by fake reporters which the GAO determined in March 2004 were illegal \u0026ldquo;covert propaganda\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;notable omissions and weaknesses\u0026rdquo; and were \u0026ldquo;not strictly factual news stories.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe above gives a small sampling of the content of Bovard\u0026rsquo;s book (though not his exact words, I\u0026rsquo;ve summarized), which is packed with equally damning criticism of the Bush administration.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, Capitol Hill Blue (an often criticized source, yet which \u003ca href=\"http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7787.shtml\"\u003eseems to often be quite accurate\u003c/a\u003e) \u003ca href=\"http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml\"\u003eclaims reports from three witnesses\u003c/a\u003e that George W. Bush said, in response to criticisms of the USA PATRIOT reauthorization act, \u0026ldquo;Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.  It\u0026rsquo;s just a goddamned piece of paper!\u0026rdquo;  (Hat tip to Scott Peterson from the SKEPTIC list.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Bush Medicare Fraud"},{"content":"I found this site in a roundabout way via this page over at Liberated Space.\nI tooled around a little bit, and aside from an essay making a valid criticism of the turgid and pleonastic prose of Joseph Schumpeter, this essay, described by the author as \u0026ldquo;a brief treatise on this commonly referenced and highly sought subject of economics,\u0026rdquo; particularly caught my eye, if only because being against profit has always seemed to me to imply that you then must be for losses. Am I making a bit of a logical fallacy, there? Constructing a bit of a strawman? Granted. The point serves, however, to illuminate the narrow way in which the far left always tries to define profit as synonymous with exploitation. This is, in fact, what Punkerslut attempts to do at the outset:\nProfit serves primarily as an economic idea. If a merchant were to purchase a single loaf of bread for one dollar and to sell it for two dollars, that would be a single dollar of profit, or what many economists would call a 100% profit return. What does money translate to for the merchant? It translates specifically to privilege: the right to possess and consume products and services, which would otherwise be unreachable, had the merchant sold his labor, instead of selling commodities.Now, my first complaint of the above quote is that it is simply a string of non-sequiturs. What does each sentence have to do with the previous - outside the broadest sense, that they are all somewhat concerned with the subject of \u0026ldquo;profit\u0026rdquo;? You can see, though, the foggy outlines of the basic Marxist notion that profit is exploitation of the \u0026ldquo;laboring class\u0026rdquo; (the only \u0026ldquo;class\u0026rdquo; that creates value - the Proletariat) by the \u0026ldquo;merchant class\u0026rdquo; (the parasitic \u0026ldquo;class\u0026rdquo; that produces nothing - Capitalists).\nBut is the laboring class really the only class that creates value? Why is profit restricted to the Capitalist class? Can\u0026rsquo;t a laborer value his wages more than the labor he has exchanged - thereby \u0026ldquo;profiting\u0026rdquo; from the transaction?\nReading Punkerslut\u0026rsquo;s essay just makes me sad.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/profit-its-social-motivation-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI found \u003ca href=\"http://www.punkerslut.com/\"\u003ethis site\u003c/a\u003e in a roundabout way via \u003ca href=\"http://www.liberatedspace.com/links/\"\u003ethis page\u003c/a\u003e over at Liberated Space.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI tooled around a little bit, and aside from an essay making a valid \u003ca href=\"http://www.punkerslut.com/critiques/schumpeter/concept.html\"\u003ecriticism\u003c/a\u003e of the turgid and pleonastic prose of Joseph Schumpeter, \u003ca href=\"http://www.punkerslut.com/articles/profit.html\"\u003ethis essay\u003c/a\u003e, described by the author as \u0026ldquo;a brief treatise on this commonly referenced and highly sought subject of economics,\u0026rdquo; particularly caught my eye, if only because being against \u003cem\u003eprofit\u003c/em\u003e has always seemed to me to imply that you then must be \u003cem\u003efor\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003elosses\u003c/em\u003e. Am I making a bit of a logical fallacy, there? Constructing a bit of a strawman? Granted. The point serves, however, to illuminate the narrow way in which the far left always tries to define \u003cem\u003eprofit\u003c/em\u003e as synonymous with \u003ci\u003eexploitation\u003c/i\u003e. This is, in fact, what Punkerslut attempts to do at the outset:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-family:arial;font-size:85%;\"  \u003eProfit serves primarily as an economic idea. If a merchant were to purchase a single loaf of bread for one dollar and to sell it for two dollars, that would be a single dollar of profit, or what many economists would call a 100% profit return. What does money translate to for the merchant? It translates specifically to privilege: the right to possess and consume products and services, which would otherwise be unreachable, had the merchant sold his labor, instead of selling commodities.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eNow, my first complaint of the above quote is that it is simply a string of non-sequiturs. What does each sentence have to do with the previous - outside the broadest sense, that they are all somewhat concerned with the subject of \u0026ldquo;profit\u0026rdquo;? You \u003cem\u003ecan \u003c/em\u003esee, though, the foggy outlines of the basic Marxist notion that profit is exploitation of the \u0026ldquo;laboring class\u0026rdquo; (the only \u0026ldquo;class\u0026rdquo; that creates value - the \u003cem\u003eProletariat\u003c/em\u003e) by the \u0026ldquo;merchant class\u0026rdquo; (the parasitic \u0026ldquo;class\u0026rdquo; that produces nothing - \u003cem\u003eCapitalists\u003c/em\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut\u003cem\u003e \u003c/em\u003eis the laboring class \u003cem\u003ereally\u003c/em\u003e the \u003cem\u003eonly\u003c/em\u003e class that creates value? Why is profit restricted to the Capitalist class? Can\u0026rsquo;t a laborer value his wages more than the labor he has exchanged - thereby \u0026ldquo;profiting\u0026rdquo; from the transaction?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eReading Punkerslut\u0026rsquo;s essay just makes me sad.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Profit: Its Social Motivation and Function"},{"content":"The Senate roll call vote is here. Unless a reauthorization passes, various provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act set to expire after three years will expire on December 31, 2005. These provisions include roving wiretaps, the ability to obtain certain kinds of business records without a court order, expansion of wiretap capabilities, certain kinds of sharing between agencies of information obtained via wiretap, etc. The specific details of what was in the Senate bill and the corresponding House bill may be found here (PDF).\nSome of the pieces of these bills were beneficial, e.g., placing a sunset provision on the use of National Security Letters, which predated USA PATRIOT and which do not currently have an expiration date. Others extended provisions due to sunset on December 31, 2005 to 2006 or later years. (The ACLU has a lawsuit against the constitutionality of National Security Letters.)\nThe vote was 52-47; 60 votes were needed to end the filibuster. 2 Democrats and 50 Republicans voted yes, 41 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and one independent voted no.\nArizona: McCain and Kyl both voted yes.\nUPDATE (March 25, 2007): The link for the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit on National Security Letters is stale, you can now find that information here.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nUndoubtedly all the red state fascists will call this \"a setback in the War On Islamic Extremism\".(I don't usually like to reference Lew Rockwell, but when he's right, he's right.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWhoa!Welcome to the fray, Maureen! I didn't see you there.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI should mention that we here at The Lippard Blog are critical thinkers, so we'd really appreciate it if - around here anyway - you became as a critical thinker, too.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMaureen, I think you're a troll. If by some chance you're actually not, see 1 Cor. 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12, Ephesians 5:4, Colossians 3:8 and 4:6, 1 Timothy 4:12, Exodus 20:7, and Proverbs 13:3. The first two verses are about the role of women in the church and in the instruction of men (prohibited!), the rest are about proper language and conversation.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRandy:I'd rather live in a society where I have liberty and there are clear limits and restrictions on the power of government than one that promotes \"security\" over liberty and supplies neither.The intelligence failings that led to 9/11 were severe, and were not caused by a lack of legal powers. If Louis Freeh had used the money allocated for updating the FBI's computer systems for that purpose, instead of diverting tens of millions of dollars designated for computer upgrades to hiring additional agents and continuing to have a hodge-podge of early 1980's computer systems and databases that couldn't be correlated with each other, the FBI very well may have been able to prevent 9/11.As Benjamin Franklin put in the front of one of the books he published (it's on the title page of _An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania_, London, 1759), \"Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.\"(http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader$605)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nRandy,I think the assumptions that more security is \"good\" for us and that the attack would have been prevented had the PATRIOT act been in force in 2001 are both highly questionable.Your assertion that we are pansies - aside from being entirely irrelevant - is incorrect. I'm quite certain that Jim or I would beat you in a fight.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/and-some-good-news-patriot-act.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Senate roll call vote is \u003ca href=\"http://news.pajamasmedia.com/politics/2005/12/16/6697443_Senate_Roll_Call.shtml\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  Unless a reauthorization passes, various provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act set to expire after three years will expire on December 31, 2005.  These provisions include roving wiretaps, the ability to obtain certain kinds of business records without a court order, expansion of wiretap capabilities, certain kinds of sharing between agencies of information obtained via wiretap, etc.  The specific details of what was in the Senate bill and the corresponding House bill may be found \u003ca href=\"http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/51133.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e (PDF).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome of the pieces of these bills were beneficial, e.g., placing a sunset provision on the use of National Security Letters, which predated USA PATRIOT and which do not currently have an expiration date.  Others extended provisions due to sunset on December 31, 2005 to 2006 or later years.  (The ACLU has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/nsl/index.html\"\u003elawsuit\u003c/a\u003e against the constitutionality of National Security Letters.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe vote was 52-47; 60 votes were needed to end the filibuster.  2 Democrats and 50 Republicans voted yes, 41 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and one independent voted no.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona:  McCain and Kyl both voted yes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (March 25, 2007):  The link for the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit on National Security Letters is stale, you can now find that information \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/index.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And some good news:  the PATRIOT Act reauthorization has failed"},{"content":"This is possibly the converse of the Cory Maye case: When a cop kills an innocent person by mistake, they usually don\u0026rsquo;t even get charged or go to trial. When they do, they get off. (Hat tip to Radley Balko at the Agitator.)\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve previously covered bad behavior by cops here.\n(Added 2:55 p.m.: Balko has another piece on the frequency of botched drug raids here. He estimates them at 46 a month in New York alone, up until 2003 when the Alberta Spruill case led to public attention to such abuses. That was a case where a 57-year-old woman died of a heart attack after a flash grenade was thrown into her apartment in a raid on the wrong apartment.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nShades of Brazil - though more depressing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/double-standards.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is possibly the converse of the \u003ca href=\"/2005/12/latest-summary-of-cory-maye-case.html\"\u003eCory Maye case\u003c/a\u003e:  When a cop kills an innocent person by mistake, they usually don\u0026rsquo;t even get charged or go to trial.  When they do, \u003ca href=\"http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/13/MNG92G7DD523.DTL\"\u003ethey get off\u003c/a\u003e.  (Hat tip to Radley Balko at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026023.php\"\u003eAgitator\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve previously covered bad behavior by cops \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/cops-on-bad-behavior.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Added 2:55 p.m.:  Balko has another piece on the frequency of botched drug raids \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026021.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  He estimates them at 46 a month in New York alone, up until 2003 when the Alberta Spruill case led to public attention to such abuses.  That was a case where a 57-year-old woman died of a heart attack after a flash grenade was thrown into her apartment in a raid on the wrong apartment.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Double Standards"},{"content":"News is now out that the Bush administration, in 2002, authorized the National Security Agency to conduct eavesdropping (on international email or phone calls) against U.S. citizens without court oversight. The NSA\u0026rsquo;s domestic surveillance is supposed to be limited to foreign embassies and missions, and to require court approval. This is not a power granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution.\nThis abuse of power has apparently been exercised against as many as 500 people in the U.S. at any given time. The NY Times reports that some NSA officials, to their credit, refused to participate due to their concerns about the legality of the program.\nNote that the standards which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court uses to approve wiretaps are already incredibly low (their decision algorithm is pretty close to \u0026ldquo;say yes to everything\u0026rdquo;), but apparently that was considered too great a barrier and it had to be bypassed.\nApproval of torture, secret CIA prisons in Europe, kidnapping citizens of other countries and taking them to Afghanistan\u0026hellip; apparently the Bush administration has no respect for the U.S. Constitution on the principles behind it.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI predict that all right-wing pundits will immediately rise to the defense of the actions of the White House.Keep an eye on Instapundit, The Center for Individual Freedom, The American Enterprise Institute...(too lazy to provide links today. Sorry)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWhat'd I tell ya?It's all I can do to restrain myself from ad hominem attacks...Power LineMichelle Malkin (of course!)Instapundit (like we're surprised)Confederate YankeeOne would think that conservatives would be the first to defend the idea that constitutional protections are more important in times of crisis.All I can say is that I'm happy Technorati doesn't read links in comments. Those blogs don't need any more ego strokes.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nLittle Green Footballs is another non-surprise.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nCondi and Rove deny that any laws were broken with the spy effort.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nA better Instapundit link than the one provided above is here.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nCrooks and Liars has a video of Condi getting grilled about the wiretaps here.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCNN story on Bush's admission that he authorized the program and has re-authorized it at least 30 times and intends to continue to do so.Arlen Specter says he will begin a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into this program immediately.http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/17/bush.nsa/index.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/bush-administration-approved.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/16/bush.nsa.ap/index.html\"\u003eNews is now out\u003c/a\u003e that the Bush administration, in 2002, authorized the National Security Agency to conduct eavesdropping (on international email or phone calls) against U.S. citizens without court oversight.  The NSA\u0026rsquo;s domestic surveillance is supposed to be limited to foreign embassies and missions, and to require court approval.  This is not a power granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis abuse of power has apparently been exercised against as many as 500 people in the U.S. at any given time.  The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?hp\u0026ex=1134795600\u0026amp;amp;amp;en=c7596fe0d4798785\u0026ei=5094\u0026amp;partner=homepage\"\u003eNY Times reports\u003c/a\u003e that some NSA officials, to their credit, refused to participate due to their concerns about the legality of the program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNote that the standards which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court uses to approve wiretaps are already incredibly low (their decision algorithm is pretty close to \u0026ldquo;say yes to everything\u0026rdquo;), but apparently that was considered too great a barrier and it had to be bypassed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApproval of torture, secret CIA prisons in Europe, kidnapping citizens of other countries and taking them to Afghanistan\u0026hellip; apparently the Bush administration has no respect for the U.S. Constitution on the principles behind it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush administration approved warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens"},{"content":"On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was approved. Happy birthday, Bill of Rights! Wishing you were still here in full force\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/happy-214th-to-bill-of-rights.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn December 15, 1791, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.uhuh.com/reports/headsup/fron298x.htm\"\u003eBill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution\u003c/a\u003e was approved.  Happy birthday, Bill of Rights!  Wishing you were still here in full force\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy 214th to the Bill of Rights"},{"content":"Paranormal.about.com had a photo contest for fake paranormal photos. Some of them are pretty good, like the winning photo of a \u0026ldquo;wasp thing.\u0026rdquo; Most are at least as good as the ones in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art\u0026rsquo;s exhibition on \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/more-fake-paranormal-photos.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eParanormal.about.com had a \u003ca href=\"http://paranormal.about.com/library/bl2contest1.htm\"\u003ephoto contest for fake paranormal photos\u003c/a\u003e.  Some of them are pretty good, like the winning photo of a \u0026ldquo;wasp thing.\u0026rdquo;  Most are at least as good as the ones in the \u003ca href=\"/2005/09/photography-and-occult.html\"\u003eNY Metropolitan Museum of Art\u0026rsquo;s exhibition\u003c/a\u003e on \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More fake paranormal photos"},{"content":"The December 2005 issue of Communications of the ACM contains an \u0026ldquo;Inside Risks\u0026rdquo; column raising concerns about some of the risks of Wikipedia:\nrelying on Wikipedia presents numerous risks: * Accuracy: You cannot be sure which information is accurate and which is not. Misinformation has a negative value; even if you get it for free, you\u0026rsquo;ve paid too much.\n* Motives: You cannot know the motives of the contributors to an article. They may be altruists, political or commercial opportunists, practical jokers, or even vandals (WP: Wikipedia:Most_vandalized_pages'').\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt; * Uncertain Expertise: Some contributors exceed their expertise and supply speculations, rumors, hearsay, or incorrect information. It is difficult to determine how qualified an article's contributors are; the revision histories often identify them by pseudonyms, making it hard to check credentials and sources.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt; * Volatility: Contributions and corrections may be negated by future contributors. One of the co-authors of this column found it disconcerting that he had the power to independently alter the Wikipedia article about himself and negate the others' opinions. Volatility creates a conundrum for citations: Should you cite the version of the article that you read (meaning that those who follow your link may miss corrections and other improvements), or the latest version (which may differ significantly from the article you saw)?\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt; * Coverage: Voluntary contributions largely represent the interests and knowledge of a self-selected set of contributors. They are not part of a careful plan to organize human knowledge. Topics that interest the young and Internet-savvy are well-covered, while events that happened before the Web\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; may be covered inadequately or inaccurately, if at all. More is written about current news than about historical knowledge.\n* Sources: Many articles do not cite independent sources. Few articles contain citations to works not digitized and stored in the open Internet.\nBut the authors don\u0026rsquo;t seem to recognize that most of these risks apply to all published sources, not just Wikipedia or online sources. The reliability of sources on the Internet needs to be examined, just as the reliability of conventionally published sources needs to be examined. They also don\u0026rsquo;t mention that volatility can be a benefit, reflecting rapid change as more or better information becomes available.\nA comparison by Nature found that the treatment of scientific subjects by Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica is of comparable accuracy. This CNN article, referencing Tom Panelas of Britannica, says \u0026ldquo;Britannica researchers plan to review the Nature study and correct any errors discovered.\u0026quot;\nI bet Wikipedia will have its errors corrected before the Encyclopedia Britannica will. I encourage writers to continue criticizing Wikipedia for inaccuracies they discover\u0026ndash;their criticisms are beneficial, as they spur corrections. For example, if you read former Britannica editor Robert McHenry\u0026rsquo;s critique of the Wikipedia entry on Alexander Hamilton and then read the entry as it stands today, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that all the specific complaints he had have been corrected.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nA criticism of Wikipedia that I find troubling is the fact that some entries by well-intentioned contributors familiar with the subject gets revised or edited out by those with just a passing familiarity of it, or even by those with axes to grind.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/wikipedia-and-encyclopedia-britannica.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe December 2005 issue of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCommunications of the ACM\u003c/span\u003e contains an \u0026ldquo;Inside Risks\u0026rdquo; column raising concerns about some of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/insiderisks05.html#186\"\u003erisks of Wikipedia\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003erelying on Wikipedia presents numerous risks:\u003cp\u003e  * Accuracy: You cannot be sure which information is accurate and which is not.  Misinformation has a negative value; even if you get it for free, you\u0026rsquo;ve paid too much.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  * Motives: You cannot know the motives of the contributors to an article.  They may be altruists, political or commercial opportunists, practical jokers, or even vandals (WP: \u003ccode\u003eWikipedia:Most_vandalized_pages'').\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;  * Uncertain Expertise:  Some contributors exceed their expertise and supply speculations, rumors, hearsay, or incorrect information.  It is difficult to determine how qualified an article's contributors are; the revision histories often identify them by pseudonyms, making it hard to check credentials and sources.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;  * Volatility: Contributions and corrections may be negated by future contributors.  One of the co-authors of this column found it disconcerting that he had the power to independently alter the Wikipedia article about himself and negate the others' opinions.  Volatility creates a conundrum for citations: Should you cite the version of the article that you read (meaning that those who follow your link may miss corrections and other improvements), or the latest version (which may differ significantly from the article you saw)?\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;  * Coverage: Voluntary contributions largely represent the interests and knowledge of a self-selected set of contributors.  They are not part of a careful plan to organize human knowledge.  Topics that interest the young and Internet-savvy are well-covered, while events that happened \u003c/code\u003ebefore the Web\u0026rsquo;\u0026rsquo; may be covered inadequately or inaccurately, if at all.  More is written about current news than about historical knowledge.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica"},{"content":"There was some recent press about Land Rover and Jaguar not advertising in gay publications due to pressure from Donald Wildmon\u0026rsquo;s American Family Affiliation. While those specific units have decided not to advertise in gay publications, Ford itself will continue to run advertising there for all of its brands including Land Rover and Jaguar. Ford has released a letter describing its commitment to support diversity within its workplace as well as to continue marketing to the gay community (which has about half a trillion dollars in annual consumer spending\u0026ndash;gay couples have, on average, greater discretionary income than straight families). (Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s always nice to see a corporation not giving in to boycott threats from crackpots like Wildmon.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/ford-doesnt-cave-to-donald-wildmon.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere was some recent press about Land Rover and Jaguar not advertising in gay publications due to pressure from Donald Wildmon\u0026rsquo;s American Family Affiliation.  While those specific units have decided not to advertise in gay publications, Ford itself will continue to run advertising there for all of its brands including Land Rover and Jaguar.  Ford \u003ca href=\"http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/12/we-won.html\"\u003ehas released a letter\u003c/a\u003e describing its commitment to support diversity within its workplace as well as to continue marketing to the gay community (which has about half a trillion dollars in annual consumer spending\u0026ndash;gay couples have, on average, greater discretionary income than straight families).  (Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/applause_for_ford.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s always nice to see a corporation not giving in to boycott threats from crackpots like Wildmon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ford doesn't cave to Donald Wildmon"},{"content":"Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on a number of Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly fabrications in part of his campaign about a bogus \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo;:\n1. He claims that Saginaw, Michigan opposes people wearing red and green clothing. This is a complete fabrication.\n2. He says the Plano, Texas school system tells children they can\u0026rsquo;t wear green and red clothing. This is a complete fabrication.\n3. He says the U.S. Postal Service no longer issues Christmas stamps with a religious theme. This is a misinterpretation of their decision not to issue new 37-cent stamps this Christmas because the price is going up to 39 cents on January 8 and they still have a huge inventory of 37-cent Madonna and Child stamps to sell this year.\n4. Jerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Friend or Foe\u0026rdquo; campaign sent a demand letter to a Wisconsin school that was putting on a play called \u0026ldquo;The Little Tree\u0026rsquo;s Christmas Gift\u0026rdquo; insisting that the song in that play (put together and copyrighted back in 1988) which is sung to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Silent Night\u0026rdquo; be changed back to the original words. O\u0026rsquo;Reilly claimed that \u0026ldquo;In Wisconsin, an elementary school changed the name of \u0026lsquo;Silent Night\u0026rsquo; to \u0026lsquo;Cold In the Night.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; The school has buckled under the pressure and removed that song from the program. This case is completely absurd\u0026ndash;the play tells a story about a little Christmas tree, and the song in question was a song that the little tree sings, to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Silent Night.\u0026rdquo; Who\u0026rsquo;s really anti-Christmas here?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/bill-oreilly-war-on-christmas-lies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars reports on \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/oreillys_lies_about_christmas.php\"\u003ea number of Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly fabrications\u003c/a\u003e in part of his campaign about a bogus \u0026ldquo;War on Christmas\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  He claims that Saginaw, Michigan opposes people wearing red and green clothing.  This is a complete fabrication.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  He says the Plano, Texas school system tells children they can\u0026rsquo;t wear green and red clothing.  This is a complete fabrication.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3.  He says the U.S. Postal Service no longer issues Christmas stamps with a religious theme.  This is a misinterpretation of their decision not to issue new 37-cent stamps this Christmas because the price is going up to 39 cents on January 8 and they still have a huge inventory of 37-cent Madonna and Child stamps to sell this year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e4. Jerry Falwell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Friend or Foe\u0026rdquo; campaign \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/more_fake_war_on_christmas_non.php\"\u003esent a demand letter to a Wisconsin school\u003c/a\u003e that was putting on  a play called \u0026ldquo;The Little Tree\u0026rsquo;s Christmas Gift\u0026rdquo; insisting that the song in that play (put together and copyrighted back in 1988) which is sung to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Silent Night\u0026rdquo; be changed back to the original words.  O\u0026rsquo;Reilly claimed that \u0026ldquo;In Wisconsin, an elementary school changed the name of \u0026lsquo;Silent Night\u0026rsquo; to \u0026lsquo;Cold In the Night.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  The school has buckled under the pressure and removed that song from the program.  This case is completely absurd\u0026ndash;the play tells a story about a little Christmas tree, and the song in question was a song that the little tree sings, to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Silent Night.\u0026rdquo;  Who\u0026rsquo;s really anti-Christmas here?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill O'Reilly \"War on Christmas\" lies, Falwell idiocy"},{"content":"Daniel Morgan has put together a good summary of the facts and myths of the Richard Sternberg saga. Sternberg was the editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the journal which published Stephen Meyer\u0026rsquo;s paper on intelligent design (\u0026ldquo;The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories\u0026rdquo;).\nHistorical Comments nsfl (2006-12-09):\nI appreciate the promo. I am going to be trying to find out just who those three reviewers of Meyer's paper were from the PBWS. I think with some smart reporting, I can pull it off. I hope to break the story. I have read some of your Biblical criticism and appreciate your scholarship.\nnsfl (2006-12-09):\nI'm excited, now...I know I've finally moved up in the world [snicker]: Witt responds to my Sternberg pieces via an \"idthefuture\" blog.\nnsfl (2006-12-09):\nMy response to Witt (of the DI) is now up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/summary-of-richard-sternberg-saga.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaniel Morgan has put together \u003ca href=\"http://danielmorgan.blogspot.com/2005/12/sternberg-saga-continues.html\"\u003ea good summary of the facts and myths of the Richard Sternberg saga\u003c/a\u003e.  Sternberg was the editor of  \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington\u003c/span\u003e, the journal which published \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Meyer.cfm\"\u003eStephen Meyer\u0026rsquo;s paper on intelligent design\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories\u0026rdquo;).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003ensfl\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI appreciate the promo. I am going to be trying to find out just who those three reviewers of Meyer's paper were from the PBWS.  I think with some smart reporting, I can pull it off.  I hope to break the story.  I have read some of your Biblical criticism and appreciate your scholarship.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Summary of the Richard Sternberg saga"},{"content":"Radley Balko has put together a post with the most up-to-date summary of known facts and controversies regarding the Cory Maye case.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/latest-summary-of-cory-maye-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko has put together a post with the most up-to-date summary of known facts and controversies \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026002.php\"\u003eregarding the Cory Maye case\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Latest Summary of the Cory Maye case"},{"content":"Greg Hogan, 19, the sophomore class president at Lehigh University (where Michael Behe is a professor), was arrested for robbing a Wachovia Bank branch of $2,871 on December 9. The getaway driver was the student Senate president, Kip Wallen, who was apparently in the dark about Hogan\u0026rsquo;s plans.\nHogan is the son of a Baptist minister, Rev. Gregory J. Hogan of First Baptist Church of Barberton, Ohio. Is this an example of \u0026ldquo;preacher\u0026rsquo;s kid\u0026rdquo; syndrome?\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nWell, I don't know about anyone else, but the only boy who could ever reach me was the son of a preacher man.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/sophomore-class-president-arrested-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreg Hogan, 19, the sophomore class president at Lehigh University (where Michael Behe is a professor),  \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1213StudentBankRobbery13-ON.html\"\u003ewas arrested for robbing a Wachovia Bank branch\u003c/a\u003e of $2,871 on December 9.  The getaway driver was the student Senate president, Kip Wallen, who was apparently in the dark about Hogan\u0026rsquo;s plans.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHogan is the son of a Baptist minister, Rev. Gregory J. Hogan of First Baptist Church of Barberton, Ohio.  Is this an example of \u0026ldquo;preacher\u0026rsquo;s kid\u0026rdquo; syndrome?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sophomore class president arrested for bank robbery"},{"content":"What are \u0026ldquo;indigo children\u0026rdquo;?\nIndigo Children are the current generation being born today and most of those who are 8 years old or younger. They are different. They have very unique characteristics that set them apart from previous generations of children. The name itself indicates the Life Color they carry in their auras and is indicative of the Third Eye Chakra, which represents intuition and psychic ability. These are the children who are often rebellious to authority, nonconformist, extremely emotionally and sometimes physically sensitive or fragile, highly talented or academically gifted and often metaphysically gifted as well, usually intuitive, very often labeled ADD, either very empathic and compassionate OR very cold and callous, and are wise beyond their years. Does this sound like yourself or your child?\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a story originally from the Orange County Register about some \u0026ldquo;indigo children.\u0026rdquo; How hard would it be for an undisciplined, rebellious child to set up the \u0026ldquo;orange incident\u0026rdquo; to impress some gullible parents? (Thanks to several people on the SKEPTIC mailing list for the references.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nHopefully, you've now given inspiration to lots of kids for ways to scam their parents into believing that they, too, are \"indigo kids\".Stop the ride. I want off.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/indigo-children-how-to-raise-spoiled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat are \u003ca href=\"http://www.metagifted.org/topics/metagifted/indigo/introduction.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;indigo children\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIndigo Children are the current generation being born today and most of those who are 8 years old or younger. They are different. They have very unique characteristics that set them apart from previous generations of children. The name itself indicates the Life Color they carry in their auras and is indicative of the Third Eye Chakra, which represents intuition and psychic ability. These are the children who are often rebellious to authority, nonconformist, extremely emotionally and sometimes physically sensitive or fragile, highly talented or academically gifted and often metaphysically gifted as well, usually intuitive, very often labeled ADD, either very empathic and compassionate OR very cold and callous, and are wise beyond their years. Does this sound like yourself or your child?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/13331476.htm\"\u003ea story originally from the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrange County Register\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e about some \u0026ldquo;indigo children.\u0026rdquo;  How hard would it be for an undisciplined, rebellious child to set up the \u0026ldquo;orange incident\u0026rdquo; to impress some gullible parents?  (Thanks to several people on the SKEPTIC mailing list for the references.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Indigo Children:  How to Raise a Spoiled Brat Fake Psychic"},{"content":"Radley Balko continues to update on the Cory Maye case as he obtains copies of original documents. Now it appears there was a warrant for Maye\u0026rsquo;s residence, but he was not named. There\u0026rsquo;s also more from the prosecutor, and evidence that the gun he used was stolen.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/yet-more-on-cory-maye.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko continues to \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025989.php\"\u003eupdate on the Cory Maye case\u003c/a\u003e as he obtains copies of original documents.  Now it appears there was a warrant for Maye\u0026rsquo;s residence, but he was not named.  There\u0026rsquo;s also \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025986.php\"\u003emore from the prosecutor\u003c/a\u003e, and evidence that \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025995.php\"\u003ethe gun he used was stolen\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yet more on Cory Maye"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m giving another talk tomorrow on botnets, this time for the Phoenix chapter of Infragard, the FBI-sponsored 501(c)(3) that is devoted to public sector/private sector partnerships to protect national infrastructures. While Infragard has primarily focused on information technology, they are broadening their focus to include things like agriculture and food distribution, energy production and transmission, chemical plants, etc. This is an update for those who attended my April 2004 Infragard talk, and includes new material that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been in any of my past botnet talks (for ASU, HTCIA, ATIC, FRnOG, and the Phoenix and Rochester, NY chapters of Infragard).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/another-botnet-talk.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m giving another talk tomorrow on botnets, this time for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixinfragard.net/\"\u003ePhoenix chapter of Infragard\u003c/a\u003e, the FBI-sponsored 501(c)(3) that is devoted to public sector/private sector partnerships to protect national infrastructures.  While Infragard has primarily focused on information technology, they are broadening their focus to include things like agriculture and food distribution, energy production and transmission, chemical plants, etc.  This is an update for those who attended my April 2004 Infragard talk, and includes new material that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been in any of my past botnet talks (for \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/defending-against-botnets.html\"\u003eASU\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.azhtcia.org/\"\u003eHTCIA\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.researchedge.com/atic/\"\u003eATIC\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.frnog.org/\"\u003eFRnOG\u003c/a\u003e, and the Phoenix and Rochester, NY chapters of Infragard).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another Botnet Talk"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading back issues of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, and just read the April 1985 issue. They are fascinating historical documents. The last two pages of that issue contain the ARPANet hosts file as of September 27, 1984, listing the hosts by geographic location. This was shortly after the ARPANet/MILNET split and about the time of the introduction of the domain name system. The ARPANet hosts used the 10 network (which is now private IP space\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not publicly routed and can be used by any individual or organization for internal numbering) and MILNET used the 26 network (26.0.0.0/8 is still assigned to DISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency).\nArizona at that time had two hosts: YUMA-SW (26.3.0.75) and YUMA-TAC (26.2.0.75), both on MILNET. The TACs (Terminal Access Controllers) were systems that allowed telephone dialup access to the network; they essentially played the role of a terminal server. The MILNET TACs developed a system for user authentication called the TAC Access Control System, or TACACS, which allowed a user to authenticate to a given TAC without the actual credentials being stored on the TAC. This protocol was enhanced by Cisco into XTACACS and then TACACS+, which is still used today, mainly on Cisco routers and switches. (The original deployment of TACACS meant that ARPANet users could not login using MILNET TACs\u0026ndash;this is something that led to author and computer enthusiast Jerry Pournelle being kicked off the ARPANet in 1985 when his account on MIT-MC was shut down.)\nThere were a number of Multics systems on the net, including MIT-MULTICS in Cambridge, Massachusetts (10.0.0.6, through which I got access to ARPANet mailing lists back then), HI-MULTICS (10.1.0.94, the only host in Minnesota, belonging to Honeywell), USGS2-MULTICS in Colorado (26.0.0.69, belonging to the U.S. Geological Survey), and RADC-MULTICS (26.0.0.18, at the Rome Air Development Center in Rome, NY). The only hosts outside of the United States were MINET-RDM-TAC (24.1.0.6, in the Netherlands), MINET-HLH-TAC (24.1.0.13, in Scotland), FRANKFURT-MIL-TAC (26.0.0.116, in Germany\u0026ndash;along with about 10 other hosts in Germany), three hosts in Italy, two in England, and three in Korea\u0026ndash;all on military bases.\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nHoly crap.. I have a few back issues.. but not from that early. How did you pick those up?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI recently bought their \"all back issues, three T-shirts, a hat, and a lifetime subscription\" deal.They also were offering the same deal to whoever could identify the most Easter Eggs in the \"Freedom Downtime\" DVD, and had no entries!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/internet-history.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading back issues of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003e2600: The Hacker Quarterly\u003c/span\u003e, and just read the April 1985 issue.  They are fascinating historical documents.  The last two pages of that issue contain the ARPANet hosts file as of September 27, 1984, listing the hosts by geographic location.  This was shortly after the ARPANet/MILNET split and about the time of the introduction of the domain name system.  The ARPANet hosts used the 10 network (which is now private IP space\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not publicly routed and can be used by any individual or organization for internal numbering) and MILNET used the 26 network (26.0.0.0/8 is still assigned to DISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona at that time had two hosts:  YUMA-SW (26.3.0.75) and YUMA-TAC (26.2.0.75), both on MILNET.  The TACs (Terminal Access Controllers) were systems that allowed telephone dialup access to the network; they essentially played the role of a terminal server.  The MILNET TACs developed a system for user authentication called the TAC Access Control System, or TACACS, which allowed a user to authenticate to a given TAC without the actual credentials being stored on the TAC.  This protocol was enhanced by Cisco into XTACACS and then TACACS+, which is still used today, mainly on Cisco routers and switches.  (The original deployment of TACACS meant that ARPANet users could not login using MILNET TACs\u0026ndash;this is something that led to author and computer enthusiast \u003ca href=\"http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19980124_How_Jerry_Pournelle_was_kicked_off_the_Arapanet\"\u003eJerry Pournelle being kicked off the ARPANet in 1985\u003c/a\u003e when his account on MIT-MC was shut down.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere were a number of \u003ca href=\"http://www.multicians.org/\"\u003eMultics\u003c/a\u003e systems on the net, including MIT-MULTICS in Cambridge, Massachusetts (10.0.0.6, through which I got access to ARPANet mailing lists back then), HI-MULTICS (10.1.0.94, the only host in Minnesota, belonging to Honeywell), USGS2-MULTICS in Colorado (26.0.0.69, belonging to the U.S. Geological Survey), and RADC-MULTICS (26.0.0.18, at the Rome Air Development Center in Rome, NY).  The only hosts outside of the United States were MINET-RDM-TAC (24.1.0.6, in the Netherlands), MINET-HLH-TAC (24.1.0.13, in Scotland), FRANKFURT-MIL-TAC (26.0.0.116, in Germany\u0026ndash;along with about 10 other hosts in Germany), three hosts in Italy, two in England, and three in Korea\u0026ndash;all on military bases.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internet History"},{"content":"One Good Move has a Nightline presentation from a series called \u0026ldquo;Faith Matters\u0026rdquo; about Lou Engle\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Justice House of Prayer.\u0026rdquo; Engel, who is supported by a wealthy woman whose identity he keeps secret, rents a $7000/mo office space which is \u0026ldquo;shaped like an arrow pointing at the Supreme Court building\u0026rdquo; where 70 interns pray 24 hours a day in shifts. They appear to be Christians of a charismatic variety, though I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually notice any speaking in tongues. They jump, they babble on, they face out the window attempting to move God to move the justices of the Supreme Court to ban abortion. They refer to Engle as \u0026ldquo;Papa Lou.\u0026quot;\nThese are the same people who have been praying outside of the Supreme Court building with red tape with the word \u0026ldquo;LIFE\u0026rdquo; written on it, taped over their mouths.\nThe interns each spend three months in the program, and pay $1500 for the privilege, which includes housing costs. The internship application requires two biographical essays, recommendations from a parent and a pastor, two copies of a recent photograph, and a $20 nonrefundable application fee. If you aren\u0026rsquo;t involved in a local church or ministry, you must offer an explanation. A list of your \u0026ldquo;spiritual gifts mix\u0026rdquo; is requested. You also must describe your sources of income and whether you have any savings accounts and debt. As part of your personal history in the past year, the application asks if you\u0026rsquo;ve struggled with eating disorders, pornography, or homosexuality, whether you\u0026rsquo;ve been sexually active, and whether you\u0026rsquo;ve been pregnant or fathered a child.\nMore at Pharyngula, and you can find the website of these lunatics here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/magical-thinking-in-nations-capital.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002669.html#002669\"\u003eOne Good Move\u003c/a\u003e has a Nightline presentation from a series called \u0026ldquo;Faith Matters\u0026rdquo; about Lou Engle\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Justice House of Prayer.\u0026rdquo;  Engel, who is supported by a wealthy woman whose identity he keeps secret, rents a $7000/mo office space which is \u0026ldquo;shaped like an arrow pointing at the Supreme Court building\u0026rdquo; where 70 interns pray 24 hours a day in shifts.  They appear to be Christians of a charismatic variety, though I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually notice any speaking in tongues.  They jump, they babble on, they face out the window attempting to move God to move the justices of the Supreme Court to ban abortion.  They refer to Engle as \u0026ldquo;Papa Lou.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThese are the same people who have been praying outside of the Supreme Court building with red tape with the word \u0026ldquo;LIFE\u0026rdquo; written on it, taped over their mouths.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe interns each spend three months in the program, and pay $1500 for the privilege, which includes housing costs.  The internship application requires two biographical essays, recommendations from a parent and a pastor, two copies of a recent photograph, and a $20 nonrefundable application fee.  If you aren\u0026rsquo;t involved in a local church or ministry, you must offer an explanation.  A list of your \u0026ldquo;spiritual gifts mix\u0026rdquo; is requested.   You also must describe your sources of income and whether you have any savings accounts and debt.  As part of your personal history in the past year, the application asks if you\u0026rsquo;ve struggled with eating disorders, pornography, or homosexuality, whether you\u0026rsquo;ve been sexually active, and whether you\u0026rsquo;ve been pregnant or fathered a child.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/horror_and_pity/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, and you can find the website of these lunatics \u003ca href=\"http://jhop.org/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Magical Thinking in the Nation's Capital: Justice House of Prayer"},{"content":"Radley Balko has blogged a response from the prosecutor, who says there was a separate warrant for Maye and that this was not a no-knock warrant. He\u0026rsquo;s also put Maye\u0026rsquo;s account here.\nUpdate 12/11/2005: Balko has put further commentary from the prosecutor in response to his questions here, and corrects some misconceptions here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/more-on-cory-maye-case.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko has \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025975.php\"\u003eblogged a response from the prosecutor\u003c/a\u003e, who says there was a separate warrant for Maye and that this was not a no-knock warrant.  He\u0026rsquo;s also put Maye\u0026rsquo;s account \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025976.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUpdate 12/11/2005: Balko has put further commentary from the prosecutor in response to his questions \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025982.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and corrects some misconceptions \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025977.php\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on the Cory Maye case"},{"content":"Ben Jones\u0026rsquo; Housing Bubble blog has an amazing piece about a couple of speculators making a living off their home appreciation, but with no other sources of income. They\u0026rsquo;ve made $1.3 million buying and selling properties, but all of their net worth is in home equity, and they have a negative monthly cash flow of $5,000 to $15,000. They hold $2.3 million in mortgage debt.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s amazing is that the mortgage lenders are letting them continue to buy properties with no income other than what they pull out of their properties in loans. As the market turns from a seller\u0026rsquo;s to a buyer\u0026rsquo;s market, they\u0026rsquo;re likely to get crushed pretty quickly. Though at first I thought the new bankruptcy laws could potentially leave them in debt for the rest of their lives, their lack of actual income may save them, and leave their creditors with the short end of the stick.\nFavorite quote: \u0026ldquo;Some people call it a pyramid, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like to think about it that way.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/speculators-on-e-ticket-ride-of-blind.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBen Jones\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com/2005/12/speculators-on-e-ticket-ride-of-blind.html\"\u003eHousing Bubble blog has an amazing piece\u003c/a\u003e about a couple of speculators making a living off their home appreciation, but with no other sources of income.  They\u0026rsquo;ve made $1.3 million buying and selling properties, but all of their net worth is in home equity, and they have a negative monthly cash flow of $5,000 to $15,000.  They hold $2.3 million in mortgage debt.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s amazing is that the mortgage lenders are letting them continue to buy properties with no income other than what they pull out of their properties in loans.  As the market turns from a seller\u0026rsquo;s to a buyer\u0026rsquo;s market, they\u0026rsquo;re likely to get crushed pretty quickly.  Though at first I thought the new bankruptcy laws could potentially leave them in debt for the rest of their lives, their lack of actual income may save them, and leave their creditors with the short end of the stick.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFavorite quote:  \u0026ldquo;Some people call it a pyramid, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like to think about it that way.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Speculators on an E-Ticket Ride of Blind Faith"},{"content":"We were looking for places to buy arthritis medication online for our eight-year-old Queensland Heeler/Border Collie mix, and I was surprised to find how sleazy many of them are\u0026ndash;hiding the true identity of the companies or individuals behind them with private domain registrations, postal mailboxes, etc. For example, discountpetmedicines.com had a great price, but turned out to actually be a directory service operated by a company called OnTrack Professionals, Inc. (an Oklahoma corporation whose registered agent is John M. Gerkin, an attorney who was just named as a Special Judge for Washington and Nowata counties in September). The directory service points to a Yahoo store called entirelypets.com. Entirelypets.com has a Network Solutions private registration:\nDomain Name: ENTIRELYPETS.COM Administrative Contact: EntirelyPets.com, EntirelyPets.com rm3xt7yr2ra@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com ATTN: ENTIRELYPETS.COM c/o Network Solutions P.O. Box 447 Herndon, VA 20172-0447 570-708-8780 Its website gives a mailing address in Norfolk, Nebraska that\u0026rsquo;s a private mailbox service:\n710 South 13th Street Suite 900\nPMB# 384\nNorfolk, NE 68701I went into the site\u0026rsquo;s online chat:\nPlease wait for a site operator to respond.\nChat Information\nYou are now chatting with \u0026lsquo;Herman\u0026rsquo;\nHerman: Welcome to EntirelyPets.com! How can I assist you?\nJim: Hello, Herman. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to find out if there is a legitimate corporation behind entirelypets.com before I do business with you.\nJim: How can I verify that?\nHerman: That\u0026rsquo;s an excellent question sir. We have been in business for over 6 years now. The name of our corporation is HealthyPets, Inc. We are certainly legitimate. If you would like to speak with one of our reps you can call us at 1-800-889-8967.\nJim: Is that a Nebraska corporation?\nHerman: That is both a Nebraska and California Corporation. All of our shipments are made from CA, but our main branch is here in Nebraska.\nJim: OK, thank you very much!I looked up information on HealthyPets, Inc., and found that there is no Nebraska corporate registration for a company with that name, but there is one in California:\nHEALTHYPETS, INC.\nNumber: C2133197 Date Filed: 2/5/1999 Status: active\nJurisdiction: California\nAddress\n43450 MINTWOOD ST\nFREMONT, CA 94538\nAgent for Service of Process\nM GHUMMAN 43450 MINTWOOD ST\nFREMONT, CA 94538M. Ghumman turns out to be Mandeep Ghumman, DVM, and it turns out that HealthyPets, Inc. has a long history of registering domains in the names of other online pet stores and vets, and then losing them to those other pet stores and vets in WIPO arbitration hearings:\npetsuppliesforless.com and lambiarvet.com (awarded to the owners of petsupplies4less.com and lambriarvet.com in 2003).\nkvvetsupply.com (awarded to KV Vet Supply in 2001)\ndrfostersmith.com (awarded to Dr. Foster \u0026amp; Smith in 2000)\nThe site at the HealthyPets.com domain\u0026ndash;which includes references to HealthyPets, Inc.\u0026ndash;does not sell any prescription medications, so far as I can see, though clearly at least the entirelypets.com site, which contains no references to a real company, does.\nI also found a record of complaints about HealthyPets, Inc. at ripoffreport.com, which points out that they use other domains like naturalpets.com, petmedications.com, and toppetmed.com, as well as reports on a number of consumer complaints about the company.\nI decided to go instead with 1800petmeds.com, which is a publicly traded company whose CEO is named and pictured on the site, figuring that I\u0026rsquo;d rather pay more than do business with a sleazy company. As it turns out, 1800petmeds.com has a price-matching policy, and actually offered us a better price than entirelypets.com was offering.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI tried going there this morning to see if I could buy some Milbemax (de-wormer) for my cats, but the site seems to be down.In their defense, it is December 24th, so some slacking is forgivable, I suppose.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/buying-pet-medicine-online.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe were looking for places to buy arthritis medication online for our eight-year-old Queensland Heeler/Border Collie mix, and I was surprised to find how sleazy many of them are\u0026ndash;hiding the true identity of the companies or individuals behind them with private domain registrations, postal mailboxes, etc.  For example, discountpetmedicines.com had a great price, but turned out to actually be a directory service operated by a company called OnTrack Professionals, Inc. (an Oklahoma corporation whose registered agent is John M. Gerkin, an attorney who was just named as a Special Judge for Washington and Nowata counties in September).  The directory service points to a Yahoo store called entirelypets.com.  Entirelypets.com has a Network Solutions private registration:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDomain Name: ENTIRELYPETS.COM                                                                                                \u003cbr /\u003e                                                                                                                             \u003cbr /\u003eAdministrative Contact:                                                                                                      \u003cbr /\u003e    EntirelyPets.com, EntirelyPets.com   \u003ca href=\"mailto:rm3xt7yr2ra@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com\"\u003erm3xt7yr2ra@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com\u003c/a\u003e                     \u003cbr /\u003e     ATTN: ENTIRELYPETS.COM                                                                                                    \u003cbr /\u003e     c/o Network Solutions                                                                                                     \u003cbr /\u003e     P.O. Box 447                                                                                                              \u003cbr /\u003e      Herndon, VA 20172-0447                                                                                                    \u003cbr /\u003e      570-708-8780      \u003c/blockquote\u003eIts website gives a mailing address in Norfolk, Nebraska that\u0026rsquo;s a private mailbox service:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e710 South 13th Street Suite 900\u003cbr /\u003ePMB# 384\u003cbr /\u003eNorfolk, NE 68701\u003c/blockquote\u003eI went into the site\u0026rsquo;s online chat:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePlease wait for a site operator to respond.\u003cbr /\u003eChat Information\u003cbr /\u003eYou are now chatting with \u0026lsquo;Herman\u0026rsquo;\u003cbr /\u003eHerman: Welcome to EntirelyPets.com! How can I assist you?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim: Hello, Herman. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to find out if there is a legitimate corporation behind entirelypets.com before I do business with you.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim: How can I verify that?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHerman: That\u0026rsquo;s an excellent question sir. We have been in business for over 6 years now. The name of our corporation is HealthyPets, Inc. We are certainly legitimate. If you would like to speak with one of our reps you can call us at 1-800-889-8967.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim: Is that a Nebraska corporation?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHerman: That is both a Nebraska and California Corporation. All of our shipments are made from CA, but our main branch is here in Nebraska.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJim: OK, thank you very much!\u003c/blockquote\u003eI looked up information on HealthyPets, Inc., and found that there is no Nebraska corporate registration for a company with that name, but there is one in California:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHEALTHYPETS, INC.\u003cbr /\u003eNumber: C2133197        Date Filed: 2/5/1999    Status: active\u003cbr /\u003eJurisdiction: California\u003cbr /\u003eAddress\u003cbr /\u003e43450 MINTWOOD ST\u003cbr /\u003eFREMONT, CA 94538\u003cbr /\u003eAgent for Service of Process\u003cbr /\u003eM GHUMMAN                       \u003cbr /\u003e43450 MINTWOOD ST\u003cbr /\u003eFREMONT, CA 94538\u003c/blockquote\u003eM. Ghumman turns out to be Mandeep Ghumman, DVM, and it turns out that HealthyPets, Inc. has a long history of registering domains in the names of other online pet stores and vets, and then losing them to those other pet stores and vets in WIPO arbitration hearings:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2003/d2003-0960.html\"\u003epetsuppliesforless.com and lambiarvet.com\u003c/a\u003e (awarded to the owners of petsupplies4less.com and lambriarvet.com in 2003).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.disputes.org/decisions/0909.htm\"\u003ekvvetsupply.com\u003c/a\u003e (awarded to KV Vet Supply in 2001)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.arbforum.com/domains/decisions/95284.htm\"\u003edrfostersmith.com\u003c/a\u003e (awarded to Dr. Foster \u0026amp; Smith in 2000)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe site at the HealthyPets.com domain\u0026ndash;which includes references to HealthyPets, Inc.\u0026ndash;does not sell any prescription medications, so far as I can see, though clearly at least the entirelypets.com site, which contains no references to a real company, does.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also found a record of complaints about HealthyPets, Inc. at \u003ca href=\"http://ripoffreport.com/view.asp?id=149425\u0026amp;view=printer\"\u003eripoffreport.com\u003c/a\u003e, which points out that they use other domains like naturalpets.com, petmedications.com, and toppetmed.com, as well as reports on a number of consumer complaints about the company.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI decided to go instead with \u003ca href=\"http://www.1800petmeds.com/\"\u003e1800petmeds.com\u003c/a\u003e, which is a publicly traded company whose CEO is named and pictured on the site, figuring that I\u0026rsquo;d rather pay more than do business with a sleazy company.  As it turns out, 1800petmeds.com has a price-matching policy, and actually offered us a better price than entirelypets.com was offering.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buying Pet Medicine Online"},{"content":"The Fordham Foundation has reviewed the science standards for each state.\nArizona gets an overall 72 of 100 points which rates a B\u0026ndash;it must be graded on a curve. Evolution is not covered until high school, and gets only 2 of 3 possible points.\nThe breakdown:\nA. Expectations, Purpose, Audience 7.8 out of 12\nB. Organization 8.0 out of 9\nC. Science Content and Approach 17.8 out of 27\nD. Quality 6.0 out of 9\nE. Seriousness 6.0 out of 6\nInquiry 2 out of 3\nEvolution 2 out of 3\nRaw Score 49.6 out of 69\nFinal Percentage Score 72 out of 100\nGRADE B\nDispatches from the Culture wars comments on Michigan\u0026rsquo;s rating. (3 out of 3 on evolution, but a D overall grade.) Pharyngula reports on Minnesota (2 out of 3 on evolution and a B, just like Arizona), and also gives a nice map showing which states have improved or gotten worse (Arizona has gotten worse).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/arizonas-science-standards-get-b.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Fordham Foundation has \u003ca href=\"http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=352\u0026pubsubid=1143\"\u003ereviewed the science standards for each state\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona gets an overall 72 of 100 points which rates a B\u0026ndash;it must be graded on a curve. Evolution is not covered until high school, and gets only 2 of 3 possible points.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe breakdown:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA. Expectations, Purpose, Audience     7.8 out of 12\u003cbr /\u003eB. Organization                                        8.0 out of 9\u003cbr /\u003eC. Science Content and Approach        17.8 out of 27\u003cbr /\u003eD. Quality                                                  6.0 out of 9\u003cbr /\u003eE. Seriousness                                          6.0 out of 6\u003cbr /\u003eInquiry                                                       2 out of 3\u003cbr /\u003eEvolution                                                    2 out of 3\u003cbr /\u003eRaw Score                                               49.6 out of 69\u003cbr /\u003eFinal Percentage Score                         72 out of 100\u003cbr /\u003eGRADE                                                            B\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDispatches from the Culture wars \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/science_report_cards.php\"\u003ecomments on Michigan\u0026rsquo;s rating\u003c/a\u003e.  (3 out of 3 on evolution, but a D overall grade.)  \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/minnesota_gets_a_b/\"\u003ePharyngula reports on Minnesota\u003c/a\u003e (2 out of 3 on evolution and a B, just like Arizona), and also gives a nice map showing which states have improved or gotten worse (Arizona has gotten worse).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arizona's science standards get a B"},{"content":"Radley Balko describes the case of Cory Maye, who had the misfortune to live in a duplex opposite a drug dealer named Jamie Smith:\nCops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn\u0026rsquo;t named in the warrant, and wasn\u0026rsquo;t a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door\u0026rsquo;s been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town\u0026rsquo;s police chief. He\u0026rsquo;s later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.According to Maye\u0026rsquo;s attorney, though the jury was initially sympathetic, they turned against her because in her closing arguments she suggested that God might not give them mercy in heaven if they showed no mercy to Maye. They further thought that he should be convicted because his mother and grandmother spoiled him and he was disrespectful of his elders and authority figures.\nMaye is on death row in Mississippi.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nWhere are the \"Free Mumia\" assholes when you really need them?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nLooks like a reader over at Instapundit had the same question as me.\nGreg Mills (2006-12-09):\nMy stomach has been in freefall since I read that Balko piece. The cat's name wasn't on the fucking warrent!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nHey, what the hell is wrong with the link I provided to Instapundit in my comment above?Looks like another weird Blogger bug.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/cory-maye-getting-death-penalty-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025962.php\"\u003edescribes the case of Cory Maye\u003c/a\u003e, who had the misfortune to live in a duplex opposite a drug dealer named Jamie Smith:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"date\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"extras\"\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn\u0026rsquo;t named in the warrant, and wasn\u0026rsquo;t a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door\u0026rsquo;s been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town\u0026rsquo;s police chief. He\u0026rsquo;s later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003eAccording to Maye\u0026rsquo;s attorney, though the jury was initially sympathetic, they turned against her because in her closing arguments she suggested that God might not give them mercy in heaven if they showed no mercy to Maye.  They further thought that he should be convicted because his mother and grandmother spoiled him and he was disrespectful of his elders and authority figures.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMaye is on death row in Mississippi.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cory Maye: Getting the Death Penalty for Being Disrespectful of Authority"},{"content":"A University of San Francisco study found that 31 of 13,000 test subjects were able to reliably detect nearly all cases where someone was lying. This select group, called \u0026ldquo;wizards\u0026rdquo; by the experimenters, were \u0026ldquo;highly motivated and tended to be older.\u0026rdquo; Groups that showed no special ability to detect lying included police, lawyers, and FBI agents. More at the BBC. (Hat tip to K. Daskawicz at the SKEPTIX mailing list.)\nLooks like this study is from Maureen O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan, a colleague of Paul Ekman. There\u0026rsquo;s a paper in press by O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan and Ekman called \u0026ldquo;The Wizards of Deception Detection\u0026rdquo; in the book The Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts, edited by P.A. Granhag and L. Stromwall, 2004, Cambridge University Press; I found this reference at The Why Files.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI confess to not having gone to the links you've provided yet, but do they account for the possibility that these 31 people could just be the statistical anomalies on the far edge of the bell curve of pure chance, like the occassional run of 31 heads in a row that you might get when you toss a coin 13,000 times?Were these people able to do this consistently and repeatedly? If so, then the implications are fascinating!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/liar-detection.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA University of San Francisco study found that 31 of 13,000 test subjects were able to reliably detect nearly all cases where someone was lying. This select group, called \u0026ldquo;wizards\u0026rdquo; by the experimenters, were \u0026ldquo;highly motivated and tended to be older.\u0026rdquo; Groups that showed no special ability to detect lying included police, lawyers, and FBI agents. More at the \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3743448.stm\"\u003eBBC\u003c/a\u003e.  (Hat tip to K. Daskawicz at the SKEPTIX mailing list.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like this study is from Maureen O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan, a colleague of Paul Ekman. There\u0026rsquo;s a paper in press by O\u0026rsquo;Sullivan and Ekman called \u0026ldquo;The Wizards of Deception Detection\u0026rdquo; in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts\u003c/span\u003e, edited by P.A. Granhag and L. Stromwall, 2004, Cambridge University Press; I found this reference at \u003ca href=\"http://whyfiles.org/shorties/162lie_detect/\"\u003eThe Why Files\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Liar Detection"},{"content":"The Arizona Republic reports that tenure-track professors at Arizona State University made an average salary of $102,500, up from $98,000 last year. (The median salary in the state of Arizona, according to payscale.com, is $50,000.) ASU President Michael Crow\u0026rsquo;s salary is $580,000, making him the 10th highest-paid public university head.\nYet it\u0026rsquo;s the University of Arizona in Tucson that has had the foresight to raise over $1 billion in endowment funding, as part of a five-year plan that reached its goal 21 months early.\nAdded 12/16/2005: By contrast:\nDepending on the type of work they do, computer software engineers in metro Phoenix earn an average $71,580 to $78,240, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the low end, that\u0026rsquo;s 55 percent more than the median household income of $46,111 in Maricopa County. And those are mostly jobs that do not have summer vacations.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/asu-professor-salaries-above-average.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/1206salary06.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e that tenure-track professors at Arizona State University made an average salary of $102,500, up from $98,000 last year.  (The median salary in the state of Arizona, \u003ca href=\"http://www.payscale.com/salary-survey/vid-3864/fid-6886\"\u003eaccording to payscale.com\u003c/a\u003e, is $50,000.)  ASU President Michael Crow\u0026rsquo;s salary is $580,000, making him the 10th highest-paid public university head.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet it\u0026rsquo;s the University of Arizona in Tucson that has had the foresight to \u003ca href=\"http://president.arizona.edu/initiatives/focused-excellence/bulletins/financials/bulletin32/\"\u003eraise over $1 billion\u003c/a\u003e in endowment funding, as part of a five-year plan that reached its goal 21 months early.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdded 12/16/2005:  By \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1216google16.html\"\u003econtrast\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDepending on the type of work they do, computer software engineers in metro Phoenix earn an average $71,580 to $78,240, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the low end, that\u0026rsquo;s 55 percent more than the median household income of $46,111 in Maricopa County. \u003c/blockquote\u003eAnd those are mostly jobs that do not have summer vacations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ASU Professor Salaries Above Average"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;d like to call attention to two recent articles over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The first is about Casey Luskin, blogger for the Discovery Institute. The second is about William Dembski, the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton of information theory.\u0026quot;\nIn the first piece, Brayton writes about how Luskin has referred to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education as \u0026ldquo;Darth Vader.\u0026rdquo; Brayton quotes Luskin: \u0026ldquo;In the past I\u0026rsquo;ve compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she\u0026rsquo;s lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of \u0026hellip;well, I\u0026rsquo;m not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It\u0026rsquo;s certainly not truth.\u0026quot;\nYet Luskin provides no examples of lies or ulterior motives, and has used false statements to argue against statements she has made. In one example: \u0026ldquo;I asked her why she thinks ID isn\u0026rsquo;t science. She said it isn\u0026rsquo;t science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse\u0026rsquo;s testimony which he later recanted).\u0026rdquo; Brayton, speaking directly to philosopher Michael Ruse, asked him if, in the face of criticisms from other philosophers about his position on the demarcation between science and non-science (e.g., see Larry Laudan\u0026rsquo;s piece in Ruse\u0026rsquo;s book But Is It Science?), he holds that Intelligent Design is non-science. As Brayton writes, \u0026ldquo;He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it.\u0026quot;\nAs Brayton notes in the same piece, when he\u0026rsquo;s made charges of dishonesty against William Dembski, he\u0026rsquo;s backed them up\u0026ndash;and he\u0026rsquo;s done so yet again, showing that Dembski has continued to misrepresent the work of Douglas Axe. In a 2000 paper, Axe did work which focused on a particular gene which confers resistance to certain antibiotics. As Brayton summarizes the paper, \u0026ldquo;it showed that this particular enzyme could retain most of its function even if it was hit with a major mutational event that resulted in changing as many as 10 of its amino acid residues simultaneously, could retain some of its function (and thus still be capable of selection) even if a mutation resulted in as much as 20% of its total amino acid residues being substituted simultaneously, and that if 40 mutations happened simultaneously, it would stop functioning.\u0026quot;\nDembski, however, summarizes it this way: \u0026ldquo;But there is now mounting evidence of biological systems for which any slight modification does not merely destroy the system’s existing function, but also destroys the possibility of any function of the system whatsoever (Axe, 2000).\u0026quot;\nBrayton points out that Matt Inlay criticized Dembski for this misrepresentation on The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb back in February, and that Inlay has shown that Dembski has known this is a misrepresentation for at least two years. Brayton concludes:\nDembski has crossed over a line at this point, I think. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s any longer possible to maintain that he is merely an ideologue undergoing cognitive dissonance, or that he\u0026rsquo;s just engaging in wishful thinking of the type we are all probably prone to when defending ideas we have a personal stake in. He is now simply lying outright, and he has to know that.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/casey-luskin-and-william-dembski.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to call attention to two recent articles over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e. The first is about Casey Luskin, blogger for the Discovery Institute. The second is about William Dembski, the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton of information theory.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the first piece, Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/genie_scott_as_darth_vader_and.php\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e about how Luskin has referred to Eugenie Scott of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncseweb.org/\"\u003eNational Center for Science Education\u003c/a\u003e as \u0026ldquo;Darth Vader.\u0026rdquo; Brayton quotes Luskin: \u0026ldquo;In the past I\u0026rsquo;ve compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she\u0026rsquo;s lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of \u0026hellip;well, I\u0026rsquo;m not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It\u0026rsquo;s certainly not truth.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet Luskin provides no examples of lies or ulterior motives, and has used false statements to argue against statements she has made. In one example: \u0026ldquo;I asked her why she thinks ID isn\u0026rsquo;t science. She said it isn\u0026rsquo;t science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse\u0026rsquo;s testimony which he later recanted).\u0026rdquo; Brayton, speaking directly to philosopher Michael Ruse, asked him if, in the face of criticisms from other philosophers about his position on the demarcation between science and non-science (e.g., see Larry Laudan\u0026rsquo;s piece in Ruse\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBut Is It Science?\u003c/span\u003e), he holds that Intelligent Design is non-science.  As Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/genie_scott_as_darth_vader_and.php\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs Brayton notes in the same piece, when he\u0026rsquo;s made charges of dishonesty against William Dembski, he\u0026rsquo;s backed them up\u0026ndash;and he\u0026rsquo;s done so yet again, showing that Dembski has \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/dembski_on_templeton_and_id_re.php\"\u003econtinued to misrepresent the work of Douglas Axe\u003c/a\u003e. In a 2000 paper, Axe did work which focused on a particular gene which confers resistance to certain antibiotics. As Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/dembski_on_templeton_and_id_re.php\"\u003esummarizes the paper\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;it showed that this particular enzyme could retain most of its function even if it was hit with a major mutational event that resulted in changing as many as 10 of its amino acid residues simultaneously, could retain some of its function (and thus still be capable of selection) even if a mutation resulted in as much as 20% of its total amino acid residues being substituted simultaneously, and that if 40 mutations happened simultaneously, it would stop functioning.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDembski, however, summarizes it this way: \u0026ldquo;But there is now mounting evidence of biological systems for which any slight modification does not merely destroy the system’s existing function, but also destroys the possibility of any function of the system whatsoever (Axe, 2000).\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBrayton points out that Matt Inlay \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000614.html\"\u003ecriticized Dembski for this\u003c/a\u003e misrepresentation on The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb back in February, and that Inlay has shown that Dembski has known this is a misrepresentation for at least two years. Brayton concludes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDembski has crossed over a line at this point, I think. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s any longer possible to maintain that he is merely an ideologue undergoing cognitive dissonance, or that he\u0026rsquo;s just engaging in wishful thinking of the type we are all probably prone to when defending ideas we have a personal stake in. He is now simply lying outright, and he has to know that.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Casey Luskin and William Dembski Dishonesty"},{"content":"This Joe Dante movie on Showtime sounds worth seeing.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/zombies-attack-george-bush.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2131378/\"\u003eJoe Dante movie on Showtime\u003c/a\u003e sounds worth seeing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zombies Attack George Bush"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve attended a few Goldwater Institute events, such as hearing P.J. O\u0026rsquo;Rourke and Ben Stein speak, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never actually donated money to them. In my opinion, they\u0026rsquo;re too supportive of the Republican Party in Arizona. Seeing this Len Munsil piece railing against them, however, is the strongest argument in favor of doing so that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\nMunsil\u0026rsquo;s an anti-porn crusader who used to be editor of Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s State Press back when I was an undergraduate. He refused to print a letter I wrote criticizing factual errors in an editorial he wrote about the Strategic Defense Initiative (\u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo;), specifically his claim that X-ray lasers do not involve nuclear explosions. He invited me to his office to discuss his decision, but still refused to print my letter or a correction to his erroneous statement. That made me believe he was dishonest, and seeing the arguments he\u0026rsquo;s continued to make since that time has only confirmed my opinion. He typically argues by assertion, not with evidence, as you can see repeated in the piece linked above.\nHe was extremely exercised by the fact that Republican Governor Jane Dee Hull signed a bill to repeal Arizona\u0026rsquo;s laws against sodomy, oral sex, and cohabitation on May 8, 2001.\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nI'll grant you that the Goldwater Institute (GI) advances policy that is preferable to what the cultural conservatives who have hijacked today's AZ Republican party push on a daily basis. So if you are going to kick a few coins to the GI, you really need to make clear what policies of theirs you like. I am not sure that a contribution can be made in a such a surgical fashion.I personally don't have a lot of knowledge of the GI but off-hand I know that some of their \"senior fellows\" drive me crazy. I think one of them is a climate change skeptic (that gets $$ from the oil companies). I am also not a fan of Stephen Moore.BTW.. I am not sure if you have been reading the comments that Ben Stein has been making about Bush and the Plame scandal.. it seems that he has lost it.\ncowmix (2006-12-09):\nUpdate: Good lord, Mr Munsil just announced (December 1st, 2005) his intentions to run for governor of Arizona.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIf I still lived in AZ I'd consider going public as his long-time boy-toy.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI agree with you completely about Stephen Moore and Ben Stein, who both seem to have drunk the Bush Kool-aid.I tend to like GI's policy statements on education (I was glad to see that the University of Arizona has raised $1 billion in private endowment funding, whereas ASU seems to prefer eating at the public trough or taking funds from wealthy Mormons like Ira Fulton and W.P. Carey in exchange for becoming BYU South). I agree with their stances on the issues that Munsil clashed with them on. I agree with them on eminent domain abuse (though the Institute for Justice is the real leader there, and I actually give them money).It was actually Munsil running for governor that prompted me to find that GI piece, but I was in such a rush (preparing to leave for Las Vegas for an Internet Infidels board meeting) that I neglected to mention that article.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCowmix:Which senior fellows drive you crazy? Balling is the climate change skeptic, and you've mentioned Moore.I've been a big fan of Randy Barnett since I first heard him speak at an IHS seminar in the late 1980s. I have positive impressions of Vernon Smith's and Gordon Tullock's work (both were at UA and are now at George Mason; Smith is a Nobel laureate and Tullock was a near-miss in 1986 when his colleague James Buchanan got one for public choice theory).I don't know much about Kors but I like what I've seen from his organization FIRE--they seem principled defenders of freedom of speech.I know and like the work of David Schmitz (who's back at UA, where he got his Ph.D. in philosophy); his book The Limits of Government is excellent.I have met Clint Bolick on a number of occasions and like him and most of the litigation work he's done for the Institute for Justice; I strongly disagree with him on a number of issues--he supported John Ashcroft's nomination for AG, saying that he didn't think Ashcroft would act on his views about censorship; he wrote an adulatory reminiscence about Justice William Rehnquist (which was briefly discussed at this blog). I get the impression he may be more of a social conservative than a libertarian (e.g., he's pals with Kenneth Starr, who spoke at an IJ Arizona event).I tend to disagree with some aspects of libertarian thought on education in that I think there should be federal-level minimum standards (real ones, not the fake ones that Bush has put into effect where each state gets to redefine failure as success), and I'm not completely averse to public funding, but I think the actual provision of educational services should be privatized.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/12/best-argument-for-supporting-goldwater.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve attended a few \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/\"\u003eGoldwater Institute\u003c/a\u003e events, such as hearing P.J. O\u0026rsquo;Rourke and Ben Stein speak, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never actually donated money to them.  In my opinion, they\u0026rsquo;re too supportive of the Republican Party in Arizona.  Seeing this \u003ca href=\"http://www.azconservative.org/Munsil2.htm\"\u003eLen Munsil piece\u003c/a\u003e railing against them, however, is the strongest argument in favor of doing so that I\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMunsil\u0026rsquo;s an anti-porn crusader who used to be editor of Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eState Press\u003c/span\u003e back when I was an undergraduate.  He refused to print a letter I wrote criticizing factual errors in an editorial he wrote about the Strategic Defense Initiative (\u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo;), specifically his claim that X-ray lasers do not involve nuclear explosions.  He invited me to his office to discuss his decision, but still refused to print my letter or a correction to his erroneous statement.  That made me believe he was dishonest, and seeing the arguments he\u0026rsquo;s continued to make since that time has only confirmed my opinion.  He typically argues by assertion, not with evidence, as you can see repeated in the piece linked above.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe was extremely exercised by the fact that Republican Governor Jane Dee Hull signed a bill to repeal Arizona\u0026rsquo;s laws against sodomy, oral sex, and cohabitation on May 8, 2001.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Best argument for supporting the Goldwater Institute I've ever seen"},{"content":"Dr. Trent McBride refutes the major points of the criticisms of the coroner\u0026rsquo;s report by Mohammed Al-Bayati regarding pathology, and Dr. Nick Bennett addresses the clinical issues.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/more-on-hivaids-denial-and-eliza-jane.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDr. Trent McBride \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/11/29/hiv-dissidents-continued/\"\u003erefutes the major points\u003c/a\u003e of the criticisms of the coroner\u0026rsquo;s report by Mohammed Al-Bayati regarding pathology, and \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/11/29/hiv-dissident-the-continuing-saga/\"\u003eDr. Nick Bennett addresses\u003c/a\u003e the clinical issues.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on HIV/AIDS Denial and Eliza Jane Scovill"},{"content":"The body of Virginia Metcalf Merida, winner with her husband of a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband in 2000, was found dead in her 5,000 sf geodesic dome in Newport, Kentucky. She had apparently been dead for days before her son found her body Wednesday. She and her husband, Mack Wayne Metcalf, split up when they won the jackpot, and he died in 2003 at age 45 without \u0026ldquo;starting fresh\u0026rdquo; in Australia as he had planned. (Instead, he moved into a replica of George Washington\u0026rsquo;s Mt. Vernon home in Kentucky.)\nJack Whittaker, the West Virginia millionaire who won the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history in 2002 ($314.9 million, Powerball), had his granddaughter die of a drug overdose in his home, was robbed of $545,000 cash while unconscious in a strip club, had his home and office robbed, was arrested twice for drunk driving and once for assault, and was accused of groping women at a racetrack.\nRotten.com has a lengthy list of lottery winner troubles here.\nUPDATE (September 15, 2007): The Arizona Republic has an update on Jack Whittaker\u0026ndash;his wife has left him, he\u0026rsquo;s been involved in 460 legal actions since his win, he has no friends, everyone is always asking him for money (or trying to steal from him, often successfully), and he says he\u0026rsquo;s going to be remembered as \u0026ldquo;the lunatic who won the lottery\u0026rdquo; rather than, as he desires, \u0026ldquo;someone who helped a lot of people.\u0026rdquo;\nmathyoo (2006-12-09):\nI suspect that in each and every one of those cases, you'd find that those people had some pretty serious issues BEFORE winning the lottery. Money would just magnify their problems. The \"average\" person, as long as they kept their head about them, would probably be fine, although money does some pretty strange things to people. I like Rotten's list of tips, although I'm not sure how easy it would be to keep from telling your spouse or immediate family.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI'm inclined to buy your hypothesis--the Rotten.com list shows that to be true of many of the individuals on that list.What would be interesting to see would be an actual study of lottery winners designed to answer the question--does a large influx of money tend to have more positive or negative effects on things like health, lifespan, and tendency to be arrested?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIt's probably safe to say that the average purchaser of lottery tickets is not someone who has a handle on money management. It's also probably not a stretch to say that a person willing to throw money down a rathole is also likely to make, um, less-than-smart choices in other areas of life.On the other hand, it may be going a little far to say that lottery winnings are to a lottery player like a flamethrower and unlimited kerosene are to a pyromaniac.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/lottery-winner-tragedies-continue.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe body of Virginia Metcalf Merida, winner with her husband of a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband in 2000, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/26/powerball.death.ap/index.html\"\u003ewas found dead\u003c/a\u003e in her 5,000 sf geodesic dome in Newport, Kentucky.  She had apparently been dead for days before her son found her body Wednesday.  She and her husband, Mack Wayne Metcalf, split up when they won the jackpot, and he died in 2003 at age 45 without \u0026ldquo;starting fresh\u0026rdquo; in Australia as he had planned.  (Instead, he moved into a replica of George Washington\u0026rsquo;s Mt. Vernon home in Kentucky.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eJack Whittaker, the West Virginia millionaire \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-12-22-lottery-tragedy_x.htm\"\u003ewho won the largest lottery jackpot\u003c/a\u003e in U.S. history in 2002 ($314.9 million, Powerball), had his granddaughter die of a drug overdose in his home, was robbed of $545,000 cash while unconscious in a strip club, had his home and office robbed, was arrested twice for drunk driving and once for assault, and was accused of groping women at a racetrack.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRotten.com has a lengthy list of lottery winner troubles \u003ca href=\"http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/lottery-winners/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (September 15, 2007):  The \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0913powerball_reality.html\"\u003ehas an update on Jack Whittaker\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;his wife has left him, he\u0026rsquo;s been involved in 460 legal actions since his win, he has no friends, everyone is always asking him for money (or trying to steal from him, often successfully), and he says he\u0026rsquo;s going to be remembered as \u0026ldquo;the lunatic who won the lottery\u0026rdquo; rather than, as he desires, \u0026ldquo;someone who helped a lot of people.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lottery winner tragedies continue"},{"content":"The Department of Homeland Security has awarded a $36,300 grant to prevent terrorists from using bingo halls in Kentucky to raise funds for their activities. The money will go to the state\u0026rsquo;s Office of Charitable Gaming to provide five investigators with \u0026ldquo;laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement database.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/america-is-safer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Department of Homeland Security \u003ca href=\"http://www.wkyt.com/Global/story.asp?S=4019597\"\u003ehas awarded a $36,300\u003c/a\u003e grant to prevent terrorists from using bingo halls in Kentucky to raise funds for their activities.  The money will go to the state\u0026rsquo;s Office of Charitable Gaming to provide five investigators with \u0026ldquo;laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement database.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"America is Safer"},{"content":"I just read in The Economist (I\u0026rsquo;m a few weeks behind and trying to catch up) that Ryanair wants to introduce gambling on flights by 2007, which it thinks may generate enough revenue to not have to charge passengers air fare. Ryanair has already offered free flights (you still have to pay about 15 pounds for taxes and fees) from London\u0026rsquo;s Stansted airport to some European destinations, as well as fares under five pounds.\nRyanair took Southwest\u0026rsquo;s playbook and took it to the next level. They fly using smaller regional airports, make the flight crews pay for their own uniforms, etc.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nIf you fly do you have to gamble?Is there a two drink minimum?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/gambling-and-free-airfare.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just read in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e (I\u0026rsquo;m a few weeks behind and trying to catch up) that Ryanair wants to introduce gambling on flights by 2007, which it thinks may generate enough revenue to not have to charge passengers air fare.  Ryanair has already offered free flights (you still have to pay about 15 pounds for taxes and fees) from London\u0026rsquo;s Stansted airport to some European destinations, as well as fares under five pounds.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRyanair took Southwest\u0026rsquo;s playbook and took it to the next level.  They fly using smaller regional airports, make the flight crews pay for their own uniforms, etc.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gambling and Free Airfare"},{"content":"The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages features a nice profile piece on P.Z. Myers as the cover story for November 23, titled \u0026ldquo;The Mad Scientist: Biologist and blogger PZ Myers speaks out on the war on science, intelligent design, and the sexual habits of giant squid.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/pharyngulas-pz-myers-profiled.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Minneapolis/St. Paul \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eCity Pages\u003c/span\u003e features a \u003ca href=\"http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1303/article13908.asp\"\u003enice profile piece on P.Z. Myers\u003c/a\u003e as the cover story for November 23, titled \u0026ldquo;The Mad Scientist: Biologist and blogger PZ Myers speaks out on the war on science, intelligent design, and the sexual habits of giant squid.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pharyngula's P.Z. Myers Profiled"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an interesting exhibition at the Museum of Modern art in New York called \u0026ldquo;SAFE: Design Takes on Risk.\u0026quot; It was originally going to be an exhibition on \u0026ldquo;Emergency,\u0026rdquo; planned in March 2001 by Paola Antonelli, MoMa\u0026rsquo;s curator of architecture and design, but the events of September 11 put that on hold. She then broadened the topic to cover safety, survival, and rescue. The official description on the website is \u0026ldquo;devoted to objects designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to situations of emergency; ensure clarity and information; and provide a sense of comfort and security.\u0026quot;\nThe exhibit includes a wide variety of interesting objects designed to protect against dangers or survive dangerous conditions. There are anti-theft chairs (that you can hook a bag to while you\u0026rsquo;re sitting in a public place to avoid purse snatchers), a NY subway \u0026ldquo;help point intercom,\u0026rdquo; airline passenger briefing cards, a variety of locks, a bicycle that folds to 50% its original size to store or lock more securely, a kidney transporter that resembles an iMac, \u0026ldquo;QuikClot\u0026rdquo; temporary traumatic wound treatment, a bulletproof duvet cover, and many other interesting objects and devices.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/moma-safe-design-takes-on-risk.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting exhibition at the Museum of Modern art in New York called \u003ca href=\"http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/safe/safe.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;SAFE: Design Takes on Risk.\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e  It was originally going to be an exhibition on \u0026ldquo;Emergency,\u0026rdquo; planned in March 2001 by Paola Antonelli, MoMa\u0026rsquo;s curator of architecture and design, but the events of September 11 put that on hold.  She then broadened the topic to cover safety, survival, and rescue.  The official description on the website is \u0026ldquo;devoted to objects designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to situations of emergency; ensure clarity and information; and provide a sense of comfort and security.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe exhibit includes a wide variety of interesting objects designed to protect against dangers or survive dangerous conditions.  There are anti-theft chairs (that you can hook a bag to while you\u0026rsquo;re sitting in a public place to avoid purse snatchers), a NY subway \u0026ldquo;help point intercom,\u0026rdquo; airline passenger briefing cards, a variety of locks, a bicycle that folds to 50% its original size to store or lock more securely, a kidney transporter that resembles an iMac, \u0026ldquo;QuikClot\u0026rdquo; temporary traumatic wound treatment, a bulletproof duvet cover, and many other interesting objects and devices.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MoMA: SAFE: Design Takes on Risk"},{"content":"I promise I had not read this article prior to writing this.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCrichton isn't a reputable source on global warming.If you're going to deny that there is global warming attributable to human activity, you've got quite a lot of peer-reviewed scientific literature to rebut:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26065-2004Dec25.html\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nOh, and you should check out Chris Mooney's review of Crichton's latest book:http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI just found it an interesting essay, is all.I'm an agnostic when it comes to global warming.\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nVery fascinating article. I just hope people don't interpret Crichton's article as permission to act irresponsibly and let the scientists take care of the mess. There is no doubt that we as humans have the capacity to create positive changes environmentally during our time here and much of it is a matter of making minor adjustments to our lives. Responsibility and a general sense of empathy for the lives of others (including other species) doesn't have to be classified as religion. There will always be backlashes,cynnicsm, and even spite towards those who attempt positive change and though Crichton's article makes a lot of sense, at the same time it seems like he's saying the common joe on the street trying to make some positive change (environmentally) should stay out of it(as if he/she wouldn't know any better) and leave such matters to the guys in the labs. It almost reeks of elitism. As for the future of human-kind, I think we're generally hard-wired to want to survive and persist and it's natural for many people to reach a state of awareness and want to take some kind of action to preserve our future. It's really not a matter of preserving the Earth itself. It's no new tale, whether or not the human race survives in the not-so-distant future, the planet will keep on spinning and new life forms and species will come and go. As I've stated before, on the timeline of our planet's natural history, human-kind's mark is a mere speck. Achieving the same lasting status as the dinosaurs has yet to be seen (and that raises a whole other topic concerning our evolution--what will we evolve to/as if we are around long enough?).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/environmentalism-as-religion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI promise I had not read \u003ca href=\"http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote05.html\"\u003ethis article\u003c/a\u003e prior to writing \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eCrichton isn't a reputable source on global warming.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIf you're going to deny that there is global warming attributable to human activity, you've got quite a lot of peer-reviewed scientific literature to rebut:\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26065-2004Dec25.html\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOh, and you should check out Chris Mooney's review of Crichton's latest book:\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Environmentalism as Religion"},{"content":"There are some photos of the Freedom Summit at Flickr. I\u0026rsquo;m the guy in the green T-shirt on the left listening to David Friedman in this photo; Einzige and I are seen in this photo listening to Edward Stringham. (Apparently we avoided having our faces photographed.)\nIn addition to Angela\u0026rsquo;s take at Liberated Space which Einzige already mentioned, Sunni Marravillosa (one of the speakers) has blogged about it here and Enjoy Every Sandwich has blogged about Jim Bovard, George H. Smith, and Freedom Summit days one and two.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nYikes. It seems I am sporting a healthy bald spot I was (mostly) unaware of.Getting old sucks.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAnd, apparently, we need not consider baldness a handicap.\nKirsten (2006-12-09):\nNever mind my last comment that I just deleted, I just figured out what you meant, Chris. Any chance you have a photograph available without the mustache?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nBlogger occasionally manifests an annoying bug: comments on a blog item will not be properly counted on the main page or on the specific page of the relevant post, nor will the saving of the comment generate an email informing the blog owners of the addition of the comment. However, when you click on the link to \"post a comment\" for the given blog item, you will see that the comment does indeed exist in the system. Normally, the problem seems to rectify itself after 24 hours or so.Case in point (at the time of this writing), this item over at Enjoy Every Sandwich (the one related to Kirsten's comment above, though not the one she directly links to) has a response from Dr. Heward, but you currently can't see it unless you click to post a comment yourself.I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, though, huh?\nKirsten (2006-12-09):\nI'm not totally sure what that's about, but it seems to be related to republishing the blog. When I republish, the comments all seem to show up fine. I bet it appears normally for you now.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nIndeed it does!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/freedom-summit-photos-and-blog-entries.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are some photos of the Freedom Summit at \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/places2go/tags/freedomsummit/\"\u003eFlickr\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m the guy in the green T-shirt on the left listening to David Friedman in \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/places2go/62693608/in/photostream/\"\u003ethis photo\u003c/a\u003e; Einzige and I are seen in \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/places2go/62687916/in/photostream/\"\u003ethis photo\u003c/a\u003e listening to Edward Stringham.  (Apparently we avoided having our faces photographed.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn addition to Angela\u0026rsquo;s take at \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20060515080113/http://www.liberatedspace.com/phorum/read.php?f=7\u0026i=166\u0026amp;t=166\"\u003eLiberated Space\u003c/a\u003e which Einzige already mentioned, Sunni Marravillosa (one of the speakers) has blogged about it \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20060514033849/http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/archives/00000529.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and Enjoy Every Sandwich has blogged about \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20061027103638/http://www.crackerscentral.com/enjoyeverysandwich/2005/11/some-jim-bovard-freedom-summit.html\"\u003eJim Bovard\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20111107082325/http://www.crackerscentral.com/enjoyeverysandwich/2005/11/george-h-smith-makes-me-swoon.html\"\u003eGeorge H. Smith\u003c/a\u003e, and Freedom Summit days \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20111107090602/http://www.crackerscentral.com/enjoyeverysandwich/2005/11/freedom-summit-day-one.html\"\u003eone\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20111107090823/http://www.crackerscentral.com/enjoyeverysandwich/2005/11/freedom-summit-day-two.html\"\u003etwo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Freedom Summit: photos and blog entries"},{"content":"Nice to know that my maladjustments are not obvious.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/liberated-space-on-freedom-summit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20060515080113/http://www.liberatedspace.com/phorum/read.php?f=7\u0026i=166\u0026amp;t=166\"\u003eNice to know\u003c/a\u003e that my maladjustments are not obvious.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Liberated Space on The Freedom Summit"},{"content":"Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive former clothing executive who is convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS, refused to take AZT to prevent maternal-fetal transmission of the virus or have her children tested. Maggiore is the author of an HIV skeptical book and has gone on numerous TV shows to argue for her views. Her 3-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, died in September, and the coroner diagnosed the cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia.\nMaggiore has now found another HIV/AIDS denier, a veterinary pathologist and toxicologist, to criticize and question the coroner\u0026rsquo;s report. Orac dissects the vet\u0026rsquo;s criticisms here.\n(For more on HIV/AIDS skepticism, I recommend Steve Harris\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;The AIDS Heresies\u0026rdquo; which was published in Skeptic magazine vol. 3, no. 2, 1995.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/hivaids-denial-and-death.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristine Maggiore, an HIV-positive former clothing executive who is convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS, refused to take AZT to prevent maternal-fetal transmission of the virus or have her children tested. Maggiore is the author of an HIV skeptical book and has gone on numerous TV shows to argue for her views. Her 3-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, \u003ca href=\"http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/09/another-tragically-unnecessary-death.html\"\u003edied\u003c/a\u003e in September, and the coroner diagnosed the cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMaggiore has now found another HIV/AIDS denier, a veterinary pathologist and toxicologist, to criticize and question the coroner\u0026rsquo;s report. Orac dissects the vet\u0026rsquo;s criticisms \u003ca href=\"http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/11/hivaids-skeptic-questions-my-honesty.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(For more on HIV/AIDS skepticism, I recommend Steve Harris\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.skepticfiles.org/skmag/sk950302.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The AIDS Heresies\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e which was published in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSkeptic\u003c/span\u003e magazine vol. 3, no. 2, 1995.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"HIV/AIDS Denial and Death"},{"content":"At Pharyngula:\nI think we\u0026rsquo;ve been dividing the world along the wrong axes. It\u0026rsquo;s normal for us to dichotomize our interactions along simple, one-dimensional lines—liberal-conservative, men-women, atheist-theist—and while that is a useful way to categorize (as long as we don\u0026rsquo;t get so committed to the extremes that we fail to recognize them as continua), I fear that we\u0026rsquo;ve neglected to notice one dimension that is extremely relevant to the current discourse.\n\u0026hellip; I need a label, so I\u0026rsquo;m going to call those people who consider material evidence paramount and regard the real world as a mostly sufficient container of phenomena that define our existence the Naturals. \u0026hellip;\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the contra position? There are those who think inspiration and intuition and all the internal imagery of their minds define their external reality; that what they wish to be so will be so if only they can articulate it and select and distort evidence for the purposes of persuasion. \u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to call them Unnaturals, plainly enough.\nMore at the source. Needless to say, we\u0026rsquo;re Naturals here\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/naturals-and-unnaturals.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/naturals_and_unnaturals/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI think we\u0026rsquo;ve been dividing the world along the wrong axes. It\u0026rsquo;s normal for us to dichotomize our interactions along simple, one-dimensional lines—liberal-conservative, men-women, atheist-theist—and while that is a useful way to categorize (as long as we don\u0026rsquo;t get so committed to the extremes that we fail to recognize them as continua), I fear that we\u0026rsquo;ve neglected to notice one dimension that is extremely relevant to the current discourse.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip; I need a label, so I\u0026rsquo;m going to call those people who consider material evidence paramount and regard the real world as a mostly sufficient container of phenomena that define our existence the \u003cb\u003eNaturals\u003c/b\u003e. \u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s the contra position? There are those who think inspiration and intuition and all the internal imagery of their minds define their external reality; that what they \u003ci\u003ewish\u003c/i\u003e to be so will be so if only they can articulate it and select and distort evidence for the purposes of persuasion. \u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Naturals and Unnaturals"},{"content":"Steven M. Greer, M.D., the creator of CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence), brought the Freedom Summit to a low point. Greer, whose CSETI group used to go wandering in the woods to communicate with aliens by waving their high-powered flashlights (as documented by Alex Heard in Outside magazine), was promoting his Disclosure Project.\nGreer gave a rambling speech filled with claims of his direct connections with senior government officials which prove that the U.S. has been in possession of alien propulsion technology since the 1950s. According to Greer, this technology obsoletes gas, oil, coal, nuclear, and all other forms of energy production in use today\u0026ndash;that we have not needed to burn any such fuels since 1950. He claimed that billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been put into black budget projects involving this alien technology, which is being suppressed by the \u0026ldquo;kleptocracy,\u0026rdquo; an \u0026ldquo;interlocking\u0026rdquo; group of government officials and private families which run the world. He did not explain the economics of why the government would be pouring billions of dollars into suppressing the use of a technology which could generate trillions of dollars in revenue.\nHe made much of an alleged briefing he gave to CIA Director James Woolsey on UFOs in 1993, while failing to note Woolsey\u0026rsquo;s account of that meeting, which characterizes it as a \u0026ldquo;dinner party\u0026rdquo; at which Greer sat at a table with Woolsey and his wife Suzanne and with James Petersen and his wife Diane. The four of them signed the letter to Greer chiding him for publishing a \u0026ldquo;distorted\u0026rdquo; account and for portraying their \u0026ldquo;politeness as acquiescence and questions as affirmations.\u0026quot;\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t clear how many, if any, people in the audience were taking him seriously, though they did let him speak. The first question in the Q\u0026amp;A session was a good one: \u0026ldquo;Why haven\u0026rsquo;t you been killed?\u0026rdquo; Greer answered that he took plenty of precautions by going public very loudly (appearing on Larry King) and that he had the protection of a third of the secretive (and nonexistent!) MJ-12 organization who want the truth about UFOs to come out, but that he has received many threats. The next questioner, noting that Greer kept referring to \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; with respect to his organization, asked how many people are in his organization. Greer misheard the question as being how many of his people have been killed, and said that three of them had been murdered.\nGreer\u0026rsquo;s talk was rambling and disjointed, and was punctuated with lots of specific accurate facts (such as that CIA Director William Colby\u0026rsquo;s dead body was found floating in the Potomac; Greer attributed this to a murder designed to keep him from going public with UFO-related information). The content and manner of his talk reminded me of the works of those who claim to be targets of CIA mind control experiments, like Cathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien and \u0026ldquo;Brice Taylor\u0026rdquo; (Susan Ford)\u0026ndash;they like to drop names of famous people and claim direct contacts with them, but they work everything into a bizarre and only semi-coherent fantasy structure with zero plausibility.\nWhile I enjoy occasionally listening to the rantings of a kook, it was a discredit to the organizers of this conference that they gave a public forum to Dr. Greer. If they seriously thought that Greer had a meaningful and important message, it casts serious doubt on their credibility or ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Even many in the UFO community recognize that Greer is a kook (you can find many examples searching for Greer\u0026rsquo;s name at virtuallystrange.net).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/freedom-summit-complete-kookery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSteven M. Greer, M.D., the \u003ca href=\"http://www.earthportals.com/Portal_Messenger/greer.html\"\u003ecreator of CSETI\u003c/a\u003e (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence), brought the Freedom Summit to a low point. Greer, whose CSETI group used to go wandering in the woods to communicate with aliens by waving their high-powered flashlights (as \u003ca href=\"http://www.mufon-ces.org/docs/outsidemagazine.pdf\"\u003edocumented by Alex Heard in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOutside\u003c/span\u003e magazine\u003c/a\u003e), was promoting his Disclosure Project.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGreer gave a rambling speech filled with claims of his direct connections with senior government officials which prove that the U.S. has been in possession of alien propulsion technology since the 1950s. According to Greer, this technology obsoletes gas, oil, coal, nuclear, and all other forms of energy production in use today\u0026ndash;that we have not needed to burn any such fuels since 1950. He claimed that billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been put into black budget projects involving this alien technology, which is being suppressed by the \u0026ldquo;kleptocracy,\u0026rdquo; an \u0026ldquo;interlocking\u0026rdquo; group of government officials and private families which run the world. He did not explain the economics of why the government would be pouring billions of dollars into suppressing the use of a technology which could generate trillions of dollars in revenue.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe made much of an alleged briefing he gave to CIA Director James Woolsey on UFOs in 1993, while failing to \u003ca href=\"http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/05/greer-vs-woolsey.html\"\u003enote Woolsey\u0026rsquo;s account\u003c/a\u003e of that meeting, which characterizes it as a \u0026ldquo;dinner party\u0026rdquo; at which Greer sat at a table with Woolsey and his wife Suzanne and with James Petersen and his wife Diane. The four of them signed the letter to Greer chiding him for publishing a \u0026ldquo;distorted\u0026rdquo; account and for portraying their \u0026ldquo;politeness as acquiescence and questions as affirmations.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t clear how many, if any, people in the audience were taking him seriously, though they did let him speak. The first question in the Q\u0026amp;A session was a good one: \u0026ldquo;Why haven\u0026rsquo;t you been killed?\u0026rdquo; Greer answered that he took plenty of precautions by going public very loudly (appearing on Larry King) and that he had the protection of a third of the secretive (and nonexistent!) MJ-12 organization who want the truth about UFOs to come out, but that he has received \u003ca href=\"http://home.no.net/disclose/intervjugreer.html\"\u003emany threats\u003c/a\u003e. The next questioner, noting that Greer kept referring to \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; with respect to his organization, asked how many people are in his organization. Greer misheard the question as being how many of his people have been killed, and said that three of them had been murdered.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGreer\u0026rsquo;s talk was rambling and disjointed, and was punctuated with lots of specific accurate facts (such as that CIA Director William Colby\u0026rsquo;s dead body was found floating in the Potomac; Greer attributed this to a murder designed to keep him from going public with UFO-related information). The content and manner of his talk reminded me of the works of those who claim to be targets of CIA mind control experiments, like \u003ca href=\"http://www.trance-formation.com/aboutcathy.htm\"\u003eCathy O\u0026rsquo;Brien\u003c/a\u003e and \u0026ldquo;Brice Taylor\u0026rdquo; (Susan Ford)\u0026ndash;they like to drop names of famous people and claim direct contacts with them, but they work everything into a bizarre and only semi-coherent fantasy structure with zero plausibility.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile I enjoy occasionally listening to the rantings of a kook, it was a discredit to the organizers of this conference that they gave a public forum to Dr. Greer. If they seriously thought that Greer had a meaningful and important message, it casts serious doubt on their credibility or ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Even many in the UFO community \u003ca href=\"http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2003/nov/m21-045.shtml\"\u003erecognize that Greer is a kook\u003c/a\u003e (you can find many examples searching for Greer\u0026rsquo;s name at virtuallystrange.net).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Freedom Summit:  Complete Kookery"},{"content":"Sunday morning\u0026rsquo;s first session was by Stuart Krone, billed as a computer security expert working at Intel. Krone, wearing a National Security Agency t-shirt, of a type sold at the National Cryptologic Museum outside Ft. Meade, spoke on the subject \u0026ldquo;Technology: Why We\u0026rsquo;re Screwed.\u0026rdquo; This was a fear-mongering presentation on technological developments that are infringing on freedom, mostly through invasion of privacy. The talk was a mix of fact, error, and alarmism. While the vast majority of what Krone talked about was real, a significant number of details were distorted or erroneous. In each case of distortion or error, the distortions enhanced the threat to individual privacy or the malice behind it, and attributed unrealistic near-omniscience and near-omnipotence to government agencies. I found his claim that the NSA had gigahertz processors twenty years before they were developed commercially to be unbelievable, for example. He also tended to omit available defenses\u0026ndash;for instance, he bemoaned grocery store loyalty programs which track purchases and recommended against using them, while failing to note that most stores don\u0026rsquo;t check the validity of signup information and there are campaigns to trade such cards to protect privacy.\nKrone began by giving rather imprecise definitions for three terms: convenience, freedom, and technology. For convenience, he said it is something that is \u0026ldquo;easy to do,\u0026rdquo; freedom is either \u0026ldquo;lack of coercion\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;privacy,\u0026rdquo; and technology is \u0026ldquo;not the same as science\u0026rdquo; but is \u0026ldquo;building cool toys using scientific knowledge.\u0026rdquo; While one could quibble about these definitions, I think they\u0026rsquo;re pretty well on track, and that a lack of society intrusion into private affairs is a valuable aspect of freedom.\nKrone then said that the thesis of his talk is to discuss ways in which technology is interfering with freedom, while noting that technology is not inherently good or evil, only its uses are.\nHe began with examples of advancements in audio surveillance, by saying that private corporations have been forced to do government\u0026rsquo;s dirty work to avoid Freedom of Information Act issues, giving as an example CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) wiretaps. He stated that CALEA costs are added as a charge on your phone bill, so you\u0026rsquo;re paying to have yourself wiretapped. He said that CALEA now applies to Voice Over IP (VOIP), including Skype and Vonage, and that the government is now tapping all of those, too. Actually, what he\u0026rsquo;s referring to is that the FCC issued a ruling on August 5, 2005 on how CALEA impacts VOIP which requires providers of broadband and VOIP services which connect to the public telephone network to provide law enforcement wiretap capability within 18 months. There is no requirement for VOIP providers which don\u0026rsquo;t connect to the public telephone network, so the peer-to-peer portion of Skype is not covered (but SkypeIn and SkypeOut are). This capability doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist in most VOIP providers\u0026rsquo; networks, and there is strong argument that the FCC doesn\u0026rsquo;t have statutory authority to make this ruling, which is inconsistent with past court cases\u0026ndash;most telecom providers are strongly opposing this rule. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent site of information about CALEA.\nKrone next talked about the ability to conduct audio surveillance on the inside of the home using 30-100 GHz microwaves to measure vibrations inside the home. This is real technology for which there was a recent patent application.\nHe raised the issue of cell phone tracking, as is being planned to use for monitoring traffic in Kansas City (though he spoke as though this was already in place\u0026ndash;this was a common thread in his talk, to speak of planned or possible uses of technology as though they are already in place).\n(This is actually currently being used in Baltimore, MD, the first place in the U.S. to use it.)\nHe spoke very briefly about Bluetooth, which he said was invented by Intel and other companies (it was invented by Ericsson, but Intel is a promoter member of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group along with Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Toshiba). He stated that it is completely insecure, that others can turn on your phone and listen to your phone\u0026rsquo;s microphone, get your address book, and put information onto your phone. While he\u0026rsquo;s quite right that Bluetooth in general has major security issues, which specific issues you may have depend on your model of phone and whether you use available methods to secure or disable Bluetooth features. Personally, I won\u0026rsquo;t purchase any Bluetooth product unless and until it is securable\u0026ndash;except perhaps a device to scan with.\nNext, Krone turned to video surveillance, stating that in addition to cameras being all over the place, there are now cameras that can see through walls via microwave, that can be used by law enforcement without a search warrant, which hasn\u0026rsquo;t been fully decided by the courts yet. I haven\u0026rsquo;t found anything about microwave cameras that can see through walls, but this sounds very much like thermal imaging, which the Supreme Court has addressed. In Kyllo v. U.S. (533 U.S. 27, 2001) it was ruled that the use of a thermal imaging device to \u0026ldquo;look through walls\u0026rdquo; constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus requires a search warrant. Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer ruled with the majority; Stevens, Rehnquist, O\u0026rsquo;Connor, and Kennedy dissented.\nKrone briefly mentioned the use of \u0026ldquo;see through your clothes\u0026rdquo; X-ray scanners, stating that six airports are using them today. This technology exists and is in TSA trials, and was actually tested at a Florida airport back in 2002. A newer, even more impressive technology is the new Tadar system unveiled in Germany in mid-October 2005.\nHe addressed RFIDs, and specifically RFIDs being added to U.S. passports in 2006, and some of the risks this may create (such as facilitating an electronic \u0026ldquo;American detector\u0026rdquo;). This is a real threat that has been partially addressed by adding a radio shielding to the passport to prevent the RFID from being read except when the passport is open. As Bruce Schneier notes, this is not a complete safeguard. Krone also stated that there is a California bill to put RFIDs in cars, with no commercial justification, just to \u0026ldquo;know where everyone is and what they have with them at all times.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not aware of the bill he is referring to, but the use of transponders in cars for billing purposes for toll roads is a possible commercial justification.\nHe spoke about the laser printer codes that uniquely identify all documents printed by certain laser printers, which have been in place for the last decade and were recently exposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and reported in this blog (Krone mistakenly called it the \u0026ldquo;Electronic Freedom Foundation,\u0026rdquo; a common mistake). He also briefly alluded to steganography, which he wrongly described as \u0026ldquo;the art of hiding information in a picture.\u0026rdquo; While hiding a message in a picture is one form of steganography, what is characteristic of steganography is that it is hiding a message in such a way as to disguise the fact that a message is even present.\nHe then went on to talk about Intel\u0026rsquo;s AMT product\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Advanced Management Technology.\u0026rdquo; This is a technology that allows computers to be remotely rebooted, have the console redirected, obtain various information out of NVRAM about what software is installed, and to load software updates remotely, even if the system is so messed up that the operating system won\u0026rsquo;t boot. This is a technology that will be extremely useful for large corporations with a geographically dispersed work force and a small IT staff; there is similar technology from Sun Microsystems in their Sun Fire v20z and v40z servers which allows remote access via SSH to the server independent of the operating system, which allows console port and keyboard access, power cycling of the server, etc. This is technology with perfectly legitimate uses, allowing the owner of the machine to remotely deal with issues that would previously have required either physically going to the box or the expense of additional hardware such as a console server.\nKrone described AMT in such a way as to omit all of the legitimate uses, portraying it as a technology that would be present on all new computers sold whether you like it or not, which would allow the government to turn your computer on remotely, bypass all operating system security software including a PC firewall, and take an image of your hard drive without your being able to do anything about it. This is essentially nonsensical fear-mongering\u0026ndash;this technology is specifically designed for the owner of the system, not for the government, and there are plenty of mechanisms which could and should be used by anyone deploying such systems to prevent unauthorized parties from accessing their systems via such an out-of-band mechanism, including access control measures built into the mechanisms and hardware firewalls.\nHe then went on to talk about Digital Rights Management (DRM), a subject which has been in the news lately as a result of Sony BMG\u0026rsquo;s DRM foibles. Krone stated that DRM is being applied to videos, files, etc., and stated that if he were to write a subversive document that the government wanted to suppress, it would be able to use DRM to shut off all access to that file. This has DRM backwards\u0026ndash;DRM is used by intellectual property owners to restrict the use of their property in order to maximize the potential paying customer base. The DRM technologies for documents designed to shut off access are intended for functions such as allowing corporations to be able to guarantee electronic document destruction in accordance with their policies. This function is a protection of privacy, not an infringement upon it. Perhaps Krone intended to spell out a possible future like that feared by Autodesk founder John Walker in his paper \u0026ldquo;The Digital Imprimatur,\u0026quot; where he worries that future technology will require documents published online to be certified by some authority that would have the power to revoke it (or revoke one\u0026rsquo;s license to publish). While this is a potential long-term concern, the infrastructure that would allow such restrictions does not exist today. On the contrary, the Internet of today makes it virtually impossible to restrict the publication of undesired content.\nKrone spoke about a large number of other topics, including Havenco, Echelon, Carnivore/DCS1000, web bugs and cookies, breathalyzers, fingerprints, DNA evidence, and so on. With regard to web bugs, cookies, and malware, he stated that his defense is not to use Windows, and to rely on open source software, because he can verify that the content and function of the software is legitimate. While I hate to add to the fear-mongering, this was a rare instance where Krone doesn\u0026rsquo;t go far enough in his worrying. The widespread availability of source code doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually guarantee the lack of backdoors in software for two reasons. First, the mere availability of eyeballs doesn\u0026rsquo;t help secure software unless the eyeballs know what to look for. There have been numerous instances of major security holes persisting in actively maintained open source software for many years (wu-ftpd being a prime example). Second, and more significantly, as Ken Thompson showed in his classic paper \u0026ldquo;Reflections On Trusting Trust\u0026rdquo; (the possibility of which was first mentioned in Paul Karger and Roger Schell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Multics Security Evaluation\u0026rdquo; paper), it is possible to build code into a compiler that will insert a backdoor into code whenever a certain sequence is found in the source. Further, because compilers are typically written in the same language that they compile, one can do this in such a way that it is bootstrapped into the compiler and is not visible in the compiler\u0026rsquo;s source code, yet will always be inserted into any future compilers which are compiled with that compiler or its descendants. Once your compiler has been compromised, you can have backdoors that are inserted into your code without being directly in any source code.\nOf the numerous other topics that Krone discussed or made reference to, there are three more instances I\u0026rsquo;d like to comment on: MRIs used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints, FinCen\u0026rsquo;s monitoring of financial transactions, and a presentation on Cisco security flaws at the DefCon hacker conference. In each case, Krone said things that were inaccurate.\nRegarding MRIs, Krone spoke of the use of MRIs as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints as though they were already in place. The use of fMRI as a lie detection measure is something being studied at Temple University, but is not deployed anywhere\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see how it would be practical as an airport security measure. Infoseek founder and Propel CEO Steve Kirsch proposed in 2001 using a brainscan recognition system to identify potential terrorists, but this doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have been taken seriously. There is a voice-stress analyzer being tested as an airport security \u0026ldquo;lie detector\u0026rdquo; in Israel, but everything I\u0026rsquo;ve read about voice stress analysis is that it is even less reliable than polygraphs (which themselves are so unreliable that they are inadmissible as evidence in U.S. courts). (More interesting is a \u0026ldquo;stomach grumbling\u0026rdquo; lie detector\u0026hellip;) (UPDATE March 27, 2006: Stu Krone says in the comments on this post that he never said that MRIs were being used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints. I\u0026rsquo;ve verified from a recording of his talk that this is my mistake\u0026ndash;he spoke only of fMRI as a tool in interrogation.)\nRegarding FinCen, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Krone made the claim that \u0026ldquo;FinCen monitors all transactions\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;keeps a complete database of all transactions,\u0026rdquo; and that for purchases made with cash, law enforcement can issue a National Security Letter, including purchases of automobiles. This is a little bit confused\u0026ndash;National Security Letters have nothing specifically to do with financial transactions per se, but are a controversial USA PATRIOT Act invention designed to give the FBI the ability to subpoena information without court approval. I support the ACLU\u0026rsquo;s fight against National Security Letters, but they don\u0026rsquo;t have anything to do with FinCen. Krone was probably confused by the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act also expanded the requirement that companies whose customers make large cash purchases (more than $10,000 in one transaction or in two or more related transactions) fill out a Form 8300 and file it with the IRS. Form 8300 data goes into FinCen\u0026rsquo;s databases and is available to law enforcement, as I noted in my description of F/Sgt. Charles Cohen\u0026rsquo;s presentation at the Economic Crime Summit I attended. It\u0026rsquo;s simply not the case that FinCen maintains a database of all financial transactions.\nFinally, Krone spoke of a presentation at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas about Cisco router security. He said that he heard from a friend that another friend was to give a talk on this subject at DefCon, and that she (the speaker) had to be kept in hiding to avoid arrest from law enforcement in order to successfully give the talk. This is a highly distorted account of Michael Lynn\u0026rsquo;s talk at the Black Hat Briefings which precede DefCon. Lynn, who was an employee of Internet Security Systems, found a remotely exploitable heap overflow vulnerability in the IOS software that runs on Cisco routers as part of his work at ISS. ISS had cold feet about the presentation, and told Lynn that he would be fired if he gave the talk, and Cisco also threatened him with legal action. He quit his job and delivered the talk anyway, and ended up being hired by Juniper Networks, a Cisco competitor. As of late July, Lynn was being investigated by the FBI regarding this issue, but he was not arrested nor in hiding prior to his talk, nor is he female.\nI found Krone\u0026rsquo;s talk to be quite a disappointment. Not only was it filled with careless inaccuracies, it presented nothing about how to defend one\u0026rsquo;s privacy. He\u0026rsquo;s right to point out that there are numerous threats to privacy and liberty that are based on technology, but there are also some amazing defensive mechanisms. Strong encryption products can be used to enhance privacy, the EFF\u0026rsquo;s TOR onion routing mechanism is a way of preserving anonymity, the Free Network Project has built mechanisms for preventing censorship (though which are also subject to abuse).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nStu:You've given a long series of assertions, but largely without providing evidence to support your positions. I would be interested in seeing references on NSA gigahertz chips, microwave camera technology, and the alleged DefCon Cisco security flaw presentation DHS tried to suppress (but was somehow not covered by the press like Flynn's talk) story.My description was based on extensive notes I took during your talk, and I stand behind its accuracy in reporting the content of what you said.You say \"your understanding of the security of VOIP is limited\" without explaining why or how, and say \"there are still ways of intercepting VOIP communications\" without describing a specific threat or program that's in place. My point wasn't that it's not *possible*, my point was that you portrayed it as though it's happening right now, as part of a fully implemented program of interception, and that's not the case. (Where there is a fully implemented program of interception is in the TDM world, which we now know is augmented by things such as data mining of AT\u0026T's Daytona call detail record database, which doesn't include call content.)You say that Skype to Skype transmission is \"subject to normal monitoring.\" What do you mean by \"normal monitoring\" in this context? What percentage of Skype peer-to-peer communications--which are encrypted--do you think is actively being intercepted by U.S. government agencies, and how do you think they are recovering or intercepting the unencrypted signal?Your comment about cell phone tracking doesn't address my complaint--you say now that it's a future threat, but you presented it as something already in place.Regarding AMT, it was not until the question-and-answer session that you explained the legitimate reasons for such technology--you portrayed it as though the primary purpose was to give up control of home systems to the government, which is false. You say that it can \"be subverted\"--has this been published anywhere? Isn't this an issue your employer should be very interested in addressing?I stand behind my comments on DRM--I pointed out its negatives and explained why I thought you had it backwards. You are concerned about the currently nonexistent threat of the ability of third parties to use DRM to delete your content (though I als cited the cogent remarks about the future possibility of such a threat by John Walker), when the real issue is its prevention of fair use by consumers who pay for the content.I didn't quote you about MRI, so I couldn't have misquoted you. I'll have to check my notes (or perhaps obtain a copy of the recording of your talk), but I certainly got the impression you were saying that MRI was being deployed for lie detection as an airport security mechanism.You are correct about polygraph evidence--the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to jurisdictions making their own decisions about the admissibility of polygraph evidence in 1998 in United States v. Scheffer; there are 18 states (including Arizona) which will admit it by stipulation, 31 states which have either rejected it, even by stipulation, or have failed to address the issue, and 1 state (New Mexico) which will admit it without stipulation by the parties, with some restrictions. I agree with you that its admissibility should be rejected across the board.You say that the use of strong encryption is \"naive\" and that this or other recommendations of mine can be \"dangerous for those who listen to you.\" What do you mean?Despite the length of your comment, I don't think you've provided much clarity. That's pretty much the same problem I had with your original talk.I welcome you to comment further with more specifics. I'll be happy to admit and retract any errors you demonstrate that I've made, as I did with the polygraph issue.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nStu:Once again, you've not provided any of the requested evidence.A security professional should present evidence about the likelihood, as well as the mere possibility of threats, in order to help people arrive at cost-effective solutions that reduce risk. Merely creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt is not productive. The constraints of time are not a reasonable excuse for misrepresenting the landscape of threats by presenting future threats as current threats or unlikely threats as omnipresent, nor for failing to substantiate claims you've specifically been asked to substantiate.You're right that endpoint compromise is a serious issue, and that it can be a mechanism for defeating strong encryption (along with \"rubber hose cryptography,\" keystroke loggers, and grabbing passphrases from memory or swap). If you're now suggesting that the U.S. government has a widescale program of intercepting Skype calls by making use of compromised systems, that's quite different from your initial suggestion that all VOIP calls are being intercepted through CALEA mechanisms. The latter is not the case, and the former is unlikely. But endpoint compromises occur all the time.The issue of endpoint compromise is largely driven by the economics of online criminal activity (e.g., spamming, phishing, botnets), and it's noteworthy that government enforcement actions against this activity have to date been relatively few--it's a problem that is still being grappled with. I think you greatly overestimate the ability of government to monitor and intercept, and would benefit from reading this Schneier post on \"data mining for terrorists\": http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.htmlBTW, your concluding remark is misplaced--I'm not a beginner to information security or telecommunications, I'm employed in a senior position in information security for a global telecommunications provider which carries most of its voice traffic over IP.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nFrankly, most of what I said could easily be checked on Google with a little digging. Some, although not much of the information I give comes from confidential sources. This I can not and will not discuss. I really don't care if anyone likes that or not, but that's the way it is. Also, I can't comment on what the press chooses to cover, or what you happen to read or not read.You make a speech with a number of bold claims but you don't care whether your audience believes it or not???If you don't care to back up your assertions then when we call them literally incredible you can't really get pissed at us, can you?And, btw, a little google searching can uncover lots of information on how to get rich quick, how to make cold fusion, and how to make a perpetual motion machine. What does that prove?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nStu:Your statement that you did not present future threats as current threats is contrary to what I and others heard you say, what I recorded in my notes, and how people responded in the Q\u0026A. Perhaps you did not intend to convey that impression, but you did. If nothing else, take it as constructive criticism for future presentations.I'll accept your statement that you didn't say fMRI were being used in airports and update the original post to record your position on the matter.You say that you didn't say that all VOIP calls are being intercepted. What you said was that because CALEA now applies to VOIP, VOIP and Skype are now being tapped as well. The impression I got was that you were saying not only had a ruling been passed by the FCC, but it was already in effect and implemented--which is not the case.It is unfair of you to attempt to dismiss my opinions as biased on the grounds of my position--I have no interest in underestimating threats. On the contrary, I think a responsible presentation should accurately describe the threat landscape, which I don't believe your talk did. It's also ironic that you question whether I \"truly have a background in infosec\" and wonder whether I ever speak publicly, while pointing me to Google to provide documentation for your claims. My background and record of public speaking can be easily found with Google, in contrast to your background or sources. Are you employed by Intel in an information security position?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAgain your comment is directed at the scope of my speech. I don’t have time to present cites in a 45 minute speech. If you look up reference material on the web and in various journals the information is available.Actually, my comment was directed at the litany of bald assertions you posted here in response to Jim's critique of your speech. It seems to me that, in this context, providing supporting evidence and persuasive argument is the appropriate thing to do--if you want people to take your positions seriously. That's not, however, what you did. You simply said, in effect, \"You're wrong and you don't know what you're talking about. Go look it up!\" What kind of response do you expect from that?I am sympathetic to your complaint about time-constraints at speaking engagements. However, a simple and low-cost solution to that problem is a hand-out that consists of a bibliography of reference materials. I hope you'll take the suggestion under consideration for future presentations.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIn my original post I wrote: \"Second, and more significantly, as Ken Thompson showed in his classic paper \"Reflections On Trusting Trust\" (the possibility of which was first mentioned in Paul Karger and Roger Schell's \"Multics Security Evaluation\" paper), it is possible to build code into a compiler that will insert a backdoor into code whenever a certain sequence is found in the source. Further, because compilers are typically written in the same language that they compile, one can do this in such a way that it is bootstrapped into the compiler and is not visible in the compiler's source code, yet will always be inserted into any future compilers which are compiled with that compiler or its descendants. Once your compiler has been compromised, you can have backdoors that are inserted into your code without being directly in any source code.\"There is now a countermeasure for this, the details of which have been worked out by David A. Wheeler in a paper titled \"Countering Trusting Trust Through Diverse Double-Compiling.\"The paper and additional comments can be found here: http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/Whew.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/freedom-summit-technological-fud.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSunday morning\u0026rsquo;s first session was by Stuart Krone, billed as a computer security expert working at Intel. Krone, wearing a National Security Agency t-shirt, of a type sold at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nsa.gov/museum/index.cfm\"\u003eNational Cryptologic Museum\u003c/a\u003e outside Ft. Meade, spoke on the subject \u0026ldquo;Technology: Why We\u0026rsquo;re Screwed.\u0026rdquo; This was a fear-mongering presentation on technological developments that are infringing on freedom, mostly through invasion of privacy. The talk was a mix of fact, error, and alarmism. While the vast majority of what Krone talked about was real, a significant number of details were distorted or erroneous. In each case of distortion or error, the distortions enhanced the threat to individual privacy or the malice behind it, and attributed unrealistic near-omniscience and near-omnipotence to government agencies. I found his claim that the NSA had gigahertz processors twenty years before they were developed commercially to be unbelievable, for example. He also tended to omit available defenses\u0026ndash;for instance, he bemoaned grocery store loyalty programs which track purchases and recommended against using them, while failing to note that most stores don\u0026rsquo;t check the validity of signup information and there are \u003ca href=\"http://cardexchange.org/\"\u003ecampaigns\u003c/a\u003e to \u003ca href=\"http://epistolary.org/rob/bonuscard/\"\u003etrade such cards\u003c/a\u003e to protect privacy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone began by giving rather imprecise definitions for three terms: convenience, freedom, and technology. For convenience, he said it is something that is \u0026ldquo;easy to do,\u0026rdquo; freedom is either \u0026ldquo;lack of coercion\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;privacy,\u0026rdquo; and technology is \u0026ldquo;not the same as science\u0026rdquo; but is \u0026ldquo;building cool toys using scientific knowledge.\u0026rdquo; While one could quibble about these definitions, I think they\u0026rsquo;re pretty well on track, and that a lack of society intrusion into private affairs is a valuable aspect of freedom.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone then said that the thesis of his talk is to discuss ways in which technology is interfering with freedom, while noting that technology is not inherently good or evil, only its uses are.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe began with examples of advancements in audio surveillance, by saying that private corporations have been forced to do government\u0026rsquo;s dirty work to avoid Freedom of Information Act issues, giving as an example \u003ca href=\"http://www.askcalea.net/\"\u003eCALEA\u003c/a\u003e (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) wiretaps. He stated that CALEA costs are added as a charge on your phone bill, so you\u0026rsquo;re paying to have yourself wiretapped. He said that CALEA now applies to Voice Over IP (VOIP), including Skype and Vonage, and that the government is now tapping all of those, too. Actually, what he\u0026rsquo;s referring to is that the FCC issued a ruling on August 5, 2005 on how CALEA impacts VOIP which requires providers of broadband and VOIP services which connect to the public telephone network to provide law enforcement wiretap capability within 18 months. There is no requirement for VOIP providers which don\u0026rsquo;t connect to the public telephone network, so the peer-to-peer portion of Skype is not covered (but SkypeIn and SkypeOut are). This capability doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist in most VOIP providers\u0026rsquo; networks, and there is strong argument that the FCC doesn\u0026rsquo;t have statutory authority to make this ruling, which is inconsistent with past court cases\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://www.techlawjournal.com/agencies/calea/rm10865_comments.asp\"\u003emost telecom providers are strongly opposing this rule\u003c/a\u003e.  The\u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/CALEA/\"\u003e Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent site of information about CALEA\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone next talked about the ability to \u003ca href=\"http://cryptome.org/audio-spy.htm\"\u003econduct audio surveillance on the inside of the home using 30-100 GHz microwaves\u003c/a\u003e to measure vibrations inside the home.  This is real technology for which there was a \u003ca href=\"http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1\u0026Sect2=HITOFF\u0026amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;d=PG01\u0026p=1\u0026amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html\u0026r=1\u0026amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=G\u0026l=50\u0026amp;s1=%2220050220310%22.PGNR.\u0026OS=DN/20050220310\u0026amp;RS=DN/20050220310\"\u003erecent patent application\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe raised the issue of cell phone tracking, as\u003ca href=\"http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20051019.html\"\u003e is being planned to use for monitoring traffic in Kansas City\u003c/a\u003e (though he spoke as though this was already in place\u0026ndash;this was a common thread in his talk, to speak of planned or possible uses of technology as though they are already in place).\u003cbr /\u003e(This is actually currently \u003ca href=\"http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.cell18nov18,1,3909242.story?coll=bal-home-headlines\u0026ctrack=1\u0026amp;cset=true\"\u003ebeing used in Baltimore, MD\u003c/a\u003e, the first place in the U.S. to use it.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe spoke very briefly about \u003ca href=\"http://www.bluetooth.com/\"\u003eBluetooth\u003c/a\u003e, which he said was invented by Intel and other companies (it was invented by Ericsson, but Intel is a promoter member of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group along with Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Toshiba). He stated that it is completely insecure, that others can turn on your phone and listen to your phone\u0026rsquo;s microphone, get your address book, and put information onto your phone. While he\u0026rsquo;s quite right that Bluetooth in general has major security issues, which specific issues you may have depend on your model of phone and whether you use available methods to secure or disable Bluetooth features. Personally, I won\u0026rsquo;t purchase any Bluetooth product unless and until it is securable\u0026ndash;except perhaps a device to scan with.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNext, Krone turned to video surveillance, stating that in addition to cameras being all over the place, there are now cameras that can see through walls via microwave, that can be used by law enforcement without a search warrant, which hasn\u0026rsquo;t been fully decided by the courts yet. I haven\u0026rsquo;t found anything about microwave cameras that can see through walls, but this sounds very much like thermal imaging, which the Supreme Court has addressed. In \u003ca href=\"http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZS.html\"\u003eKyllo v. U.S.\u003c/a\u003e (533 U.S. 27, 2001) it was ruled that the use of a thermal imaging device to \u0026ldquo;look through walls\u0026rdquo; constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus requires a search warrant. Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer ruled with the majority; Stevens, Rehnquist, O\u0026rsquo;Connor, and Kennedy dissented.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone briefly mentioned the use of \u0026ldquo;see through your clothes\u0026rdquo; X-ray scanners, stating that six airports are using them today. This technology \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-05-15-airport-xray-bottomstrip_x.htm\"\u003eexists and is in TSA trials\u003c/a\u003e, and was actually \u003ca href=\"http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/03/18/rec.airport.xray/\"\u003etested at a Florida airport back in 2002\u003c/a\u003e.  A newer, even more impressive technology is the new \u003ca href=\"http://www.physorg.com/news7210.html\"\u003eTadar system\u003c/a\u003e unveiled in Germany in mid-October 2005.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe addressed RFIDs, and specifically RFIDs being added to U.S. passports in 2006, and some of the risks this may create (such as facilitating an electronic \u0026ldquo;American detector\u0026rdquo;). This is a real threat that has been partially addressed by adding a radio shielding to the passport to prevent the RFID from being read except when the passport is open. As \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69453,00.html\"\u003eBruce Schneier notes\u003c/a\u003e, this is not a complete safeguard. Krone also stated that there is a California bill to put RFIDs in cars, with no commercial justification, just to \u0026ldquo;know where everyone is and what they have with them at all times.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not aware of the bill he is referring to, but the use of transponders in cars for billing purposes for toll roads is a possible commercial justification.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe spoke about the laser printer codes that uniquely identify all documents printed by certain laser printers, which have been in place for the last decade and \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/eff-decrypts-laser-printer-codes.html\"\u003ewere recently exposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a\u003e and reported in this blog (Krone mistakenly called it the \u0026ldquo;Electronic Freedom Foundation,\u0026rdquo; a common mistake). He also briefly alluded to steganography, which he wrongly described as \u0026ldquo;the art of hiding information in a picture.\u0026rdquo; While hiding a message in a picture is one form of steganography, what is characteristic of steganography is that it is hiding a message in such a way as to disguise the fact that a message is even present.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then went on to talk about Intel\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.intel.com/technology/manage/iamt/\"\u003eAMT\u003c/a\u003e product\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Advanced Management Technology.\u0026rdquo; This is a technology that allows computers to be remotely rebooted, have the console redirected, obtain various information out of NVRAM about what software is installed, and to load software updates remotely, even if the system is so messed up that the operating system won\u0026rsquo;t boot. This is a technology that will be extremely useful for large corporations with a geographically dispersed work force and a small IT staff; there is similar technology from Sun Microsystems in their Sun Fire v20z and v40z servers which allows remote access via SSH to the server independent of the operating system, which allows console port and keyboard access, power cycling of the server, etc. This is technology with perfectly legitimate uses, allowing the owner of the machine to remotely deal with issues that would previously have required either physically going to the box or the expense of additional hardware such as a console server.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone described AMT in such a way as to omit all of the legitimate uses, portraying it as a technology that would be present on all new computers sold whether you like it or not, which would allow the government to turn your computer on remotely, bypass all operating system security software including a PC firewall, and take an image of your hard drive without your being able to do anything about it. This is essentially nonsensical fear-mongering\u0026ndash;this technology is specifically designed for the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eowner\u003c/span\u003e of the system, not for the government, and there are plenty of mechanisms which could and should be used by anyone deploying such systems to prevent unauthorized parties from accessing their systems via such an out-of-band mechanism, including access control measures built into the mechanisms and hardware firewalls.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe then went on to talk about Digital Rights Management (DRM), a subject which has been in the news lately as a result of \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/sonys-drm-not-much-different-from.html\"\u003eSony BMG\u0026rsquo;s DRM foibles\u003c/a\u003e. Krone stated that DRM is being applied to videos, files, etc., and stated that if he were to write a subversive document that the government wanted to suppress, it would be able to use DRM to shut off all access to that file. This has DRM backwards\u0026ndash;DRM is used by intellectual property owners to restrict the use of their property in order to maximize the potential paying customer base. The DRM technologies for documents designed to shut off access are intended for functions such as allowing corporations to be able to guarantee electronic document destruction in accordance with their policies. This function is a protection of privacy, not an infringement upon it. Perhaps Krone intended to spell out a possible future like that feared by Autodesk founder John Walker in his paper \u003ca href=\"http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Digital Imprimatur,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e where he worries that future technology will require documents published online to be certified by some authority that would have the power to revoke it (or revoke one\u0026rsquo;s license to publish). While this is a potential long-term concern, the infrastructure that would allow such restrictions does not exist today. On the contrary, the Internet of today makes it virtually impossible to restrict the publication of undesired content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eKrone spoke about a large number of other topics, including Havenco, Echelon, Carnivore/DCS1000, web bugs and cookies, breathalyzers, fingerprints, DNA evidence, and so on. With regard to web bugs, cookies, and malware, he stated that his defense is not to use Windows, and to rely on open source software, because he can verify that the content and function of the software is legitimate. While I hate to add to the fear-mongering, this was a rare instance where Krone doesn\u0026rsquo;t go far enough in his worrying. The widespread availability of source code doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually guarantee the lack of backdoors in software for two reasons. First, the mere availability of eyeballs doesn\u0026rsquo;t help secure software unless the eyeballs know what to look for. There have been numerous instances of major security holes persisting in actively maintained open source software for many years (wu-ftpd being a prime example). Second, and more significantly, as Ken Thompson showed in his \u003ca href=\"http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html\"\u003eclassic paper \u0026ldquo;Reflections On Trusting Trust\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e (the possibility of which was first mentioned in \u003ca href=\"http://www.multicians.org/security.html\"\u003ePaul Karger and Roger Schell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Multics Security Evaluation\u0026rdquo; paper\u003c/a\u003e), it is possible to build code into a compiler that will insert a backdoor into code whenever a certain sequence is found in the source. Further, because compilers are typically written in the same language that they compile, one can do this in such a way that it is bootstrapped into the compiler and is not visible in the compiler\u0026rsquo;s source code, yet will always be inserted into any future compilers which are compiled with that compiler or its descendants. Once your compiler has been compromised, you can have backdoors that are inserted into your code without being directly in any source code.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOf the numerous other topics that Krone discussed or made reference to, there are three more instances I\u0026rsquo;d like to comment on: MRIs used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints, FinCen\u0026rsquo;s monitoring of financial transactions, and a presentation on Cisco security flaws at the DefCon hacker conference. In each case, Krone said things that were inaccurate.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRegarding MRIs, Krone spoke of the use of MRIs as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints as though they were already in place. The use of fMRI as a lie detection measure is something \u003ca href=\"http://www.temple.edu/temple_times/2-10-05/lies.html\"\u003ebeing studied at Temple University\u003c/a\u003e, but is not deployed anywhere\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see how it would be practical as an airport security measure. Infoseek founder and Propel CEO Steve Kirsch proposed in 2001 \u003ca href=\"http://www.skirsch.com/politics/plane/ultimate.htm\"\u003eusing a brainscan recognition system to identify potential terrorists\u003c/a\u003e, but this \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/10/03/brainscans_can_defeat_terrorism_infoseek/\"\u003edoesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have been taken seriously\u003c/a\u003e.  There is a voice-stress analyzer being \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051117/tc_nm/security_liedetector_dc\"\u003etested as an airport security \u0026ldquo;lie detector\u0026rdquo; in Israel\u003c/a\u003e, but everything I\u0026rsquo;ve read about voice stress analysis is that it is even less reliable than polygraphs (which themselves are so unreliable that they are inadmissible as evidence in U.S. courts). (More interesting is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/31/health/webmd/main997173.shtml\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;stomach grumbling\u0026rdquo; lie detector\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;)  (UPDATE March 27, 2006: Stu Krone says in the comments on this post that he never said that MRIs were being used as lie detectors at airport security checkpoints. I\u0026rsquo;ve verified from a recording of his talk that this is my mistake\u0026ndash;he spoke only of fMRI as a tool in interrogation.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRegarding FinCen, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Krone made the claim that \u0026ldquo;FinCen monitors all transactions\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;keeps a complete database of all transactions,\u0026rdquo; and that for purchases made with cash, law enforcement can issue a National Security Letter, including purchases of automobiles. This is a little bit confused\u0026ndash;National Security Letters have nothing specifically to do with financial transactions per se, but are a controversial USA PATRIOT Act invention designed to give the FBI the ability to subpoena information without court approval. I support the \u003ca href=\"http://www.aclu.org/nsl/\"\u003eACLU\u0026rsquo;s fight against National Security Letters\u003c/a\u003e, but they don\u0026rsquo;t have anything to do with FinCen. Krone was probably confused by the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act also expanded the requirement that companies whose customers make large cash purchases (more than $10,000 in one transaction or in two or more related transactions) fill out a \u003ca href=\"http://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/ch26s12.html\"\u003eForm 8300 and file it with the IRS\u003c/a\u003e.  Form 8300 data goes into FinCen\u0026rsquo;s databases and is available to law enforcement, as \u003ca href=\"/2005/11/conferences-on-economic-crime-and.html\"\u003eI noted in my description of F/Sgt. Charles Cohen\u0026rsquo;s presentation\u003c/a\u003e at the Economic Crime Summit I attended. It\u0026rsquo;s simply not the case that FinCen maintains a database of all financial transactions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFinally, Krone spoke of a presentation at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas about Cisco router security. He said that he heard from a friend that another friend was to give a talk on this subject at DefCon, and that she (the speaker) had to be kept in hiding to avoid arrest from law enforcement in order to successfully give the talk. This is a highly distorted account of \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/29/michael_lynns_contro.html\"\u003eMichael Lynn\u0026rsquo;s talk at the Black Hat Briefings\u003c/a\u003e which precede DefCon.  Lynn, who was an employee of Internet Security Systems, found a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20051102-timers.shtml\"\u003eremotely exploitable heap overflow vulnerability\u003c/a\u003e in the IOS software that runs on Cisco routers as part of his work at ISS. ISS had cold feet about the presentation, and told Lynn that he would be fired if he gave the talk, and Cisco also threatened him with legal action. He quit his job and delivered the talk anyway, and ended up being hired by Juniper Networks, a Cisco competitor. As of late July, Lynn was being investigated by the FBI regarding this issue, but he was not arrested nor in hiding prior to his talk, nor is he female.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI found Krone\u0026rsquo;s talk to be quite a disappointment.  Not only was it filled with \u003ca href=\"/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html\"\u003ecareless inaccuracies\u003c/a\u003e, it presented nothing about how to defend one\u0026rsquo;s privacy. He\u0026rsquo;s right to point out that there are numerous threats to privacy and liberty that are based on technology, but there are also some amazing defensive mechanisms. Strong encryption products can be used to enhance privacy, the \u003ca href=\"http://tor.eff.org/\"\u003eEFF\u0026rsquo;s TOR onion routing\u003c/a\u003e mechanism is a way of preserving anonymity, the \u003ca href=\"http://freenetproject.org/\"\u003eFree Network Project\u003c/a\u003e has built mechanisms for preventing censorship (though which are also subject to abuse).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Freedom Summit: Technological FUD"},{"content":"Now online is most of the existing film footage of thylacines, a dog-like marsupial from Tasmania that went extinct in 1936. (Hat tip to Pharyngula, where there\u0026rsquo;s some discussion of the possibility of cloning them from the DNA samples of three individuals that has been preserved.) More discussion by Tara Smith at Aetiology, whose post at Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb kicked this off.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/thylacine-films.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow online is \u003ca href=\"http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/films/java/thylacine_films_java.htm\"\u003emost of the existing film footage of thylacines\u003c/a\u003e, a dog-like marsupial from Tasmania that went extinct in 1936.  (Hat tip to \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/thylacines/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, where there\u0026rsquo;s some discussion of \u003ca href=\"http://www.austmus.gov.au/archive.cfm?id=788\"\u003ethe possibility of cloning them from the DNA samples\u003c/a\u003e of three individuals that has been preserved.)  More discussion by Tara Smith at \u003ca href=\"http://aetiology.blogspot.com/2005/11/video-time-capsule.html\"\u003eAetiology\u003c/a\u003e, whose post at \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/video_time_caps.html\"\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e kicked this off.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Thylacine Films"},{"content":"The claims of former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower Bunnatine Hayes (\u0026ldquo;Bunny\u0026rdquo;) Greenhouse that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root has been engaged in massive contractor fraud in Iraq may now be investigated by the Department of Justice. These are the claims that Congress refused to investigate, but there were unofficial hearings on before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Bunny Greenhouse was demoted from her position after her whistleblowing, and it was a discussion of her charges about no-bid contracts that led Vice President Dick Cheney say \u0026ldquo;Fuck yourself\u0026rdquo; to Senator Patrick Leahy on June 22, 2004. (This is not a transcript of their conversation.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/bunnatine-h-greenhouses-claims-of-iraq.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe claims of former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower Bunnatine Hayes (\u0026ldquo;Bunny\u0026rdquo;) Greenhouse that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root has been engaged in massive contractor fraud in Iraq \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/18/iraq.whistleblower/index.html\"\u003emay now be investigated by the Department of Justice\u003c/a\u003e. These are the claims that Congress refused to investigate, but there were unofficial hearings on before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Bunny Greenhouse was demoted from her position after her whistleblowing, and it was a discussion of \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101905D.shtml\"\u003eher charges about no-bid contracts\u003c/a\u003e that led Vice President Dick Cheney say \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp%2Ddyn/articles/A3699%2D2004Jun24.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Fuck yourself\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to Senator Patrick Leahy on June 22, 2004.  (\u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2004/062504.asp\"\u003eThis\u003c/a\u003e is not a transcript of their conversation.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bunnatine H. Greenhouse's claims of Iraq contract abuse may be investigated"},{"content":"As reported by Reuters/Yahoo:\nIn the sharpest White House attack yet on critics of the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that accusations the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify the war were a \u0026ldquo;dishonest and reprehensible\u0026rdquo; political ploy.\nCheney repeated Bush\u0026rsquo;s charge that Democratic critics were rewriting history by questioning prewar intelligence on Iraq\u0026rsquo;s weapons of mass destruction even though many Senate Democrats voted in October 2002 to authorize the invasion.\n\u0026ldquo;The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone \u0026ndash; but we\u0026rsquo;re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history,\u0026rdquo; said Cheney, a principal architect of the war and a focus of Democratic allegations the administration misrepresented intelligence on Iraq\u0026rsquo;s weapons program.\nCheney said the suggestion Bush or any member of the administration misled Americans before the war \u0026ldquo;is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.\u0026quot;Yet it was Cheney who was rewriting his own 2001 history in 2004 (quoting here from an az.general newsgroup posting I made on June 24, 2004):\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another recent example of a lie from Dick Cheney (both are on video, and were shown on Comedy Central\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Daily Show\u0026rdquo; night before last)\u0026ndash;this text is quoted from http://www.spinsanity.org/:\nDuring the CNBC interview, Cheney also dissembled in the following exchange about Mohammed Atta, an Al Qaeda member who was allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks (a witness claimed that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in the spring of 2001, a heavily disputed assertion that the FBI and CIA have questioned):\nBORGER: Well, let\u0026rsquo;s get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed.\u0026quot;\nCHENEY: No, I never said that.\nBORGER: OK.\nCHENEY: I never said that.\nBORGER: I think that is\u0026hellip;\nCHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don\u0026rsquo;t know.\nBut as a White House transcript demonstrates, Cheney said in a December 9, 2001 interview on \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo; that, \u0026ldquo;Well, what we now have that\u0026rsquo;s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that\u0026rsquo;s been pretty well confirmed, that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.\u0026rdquo; (our emphasis)\nSo in December 2001 he said the Atta/Iraqi meeting in Prague was \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed,\u0026rdquo; but in 2004 he says he never said that, and that \u0026ldquo;we have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.\u0026quot;\nSo he was lying in December 2001 when he said it was pretty well confirmed, and lying again in 2004 when he said he never said that it was pretty well confirmed.\nOn \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo; on November 14, 2003, Cheney stated that \u0026ldquo;I have not suggested there\u0026rsquo;s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.\u0026rdquo; What else could he have meant when he claimed a \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed\u0026rdquo; Mohammed Atta link to Iraq?\nIn the same Usenet posting, I pointed out that the Bush administration was denying that the techniques used in Abu Ghraib had any approval from their administration:\nBTW, up until very recently the Bush administration was denying the content of Seymour Hersh\u0026rsquo;s story in the New Yorker which was the first report of Rumsfeld\u0026rsquo;s memo approving these techniques. They were lying.\nE.g., look at the quotes attributed to \u0026ldquo;The Pentagon\u0026rdquo; and Condoleezza Rice in this USA Today article from May 15:\nhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-15-rumsfeld-abuse_x.htm\nI think the most blatant evidence of dishonesty by the Bush administration is found by just comparing their own statements over time, and watching them contradict themselves.\nIn that USA Today story, the Bush administration response to Hersh\u0026rsquo;s charges, now confirmed, was:\nThe Pentagon said that story was \u0026ldquo;filled with error and anonymous conjecture\u0026rdquo; and called it \u0026ldquo;outlandish, conspiratorial.\u0026rdquo; National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a German television interview, said of The New Yorker report, \u0026ldquo;As far as we can tell, there\u0026rsquo;s really nothing to the story.\u0026quot;\nIn the Washington Post, May 17, 2004:\nCIA spokesman Bill Harlow called the Hersh story \u0026ldquo;fundamentally wrong\u0026rdquo; in its assertion that there was a \u0026ldquo;DOD/CIA program to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners.\u0026rdquo; Harlow added, \u0026ldquo;Despite what is alleged in the article, I am aware of no CIA official who would have or possibly could have confirmed the details of the New Yorker\u0026rsquo;s inaccurate account.\u0026quot;\nCompare what\u0026rsquo;s in the news these days (Washington Post, November 1, 2005) about CIA prisons to what was said in May 2004:\nOn Friday, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military will not use certain prisoner interrogation procedures in Iraq and Afghanistan, including sleep and sensory deprivation, as a result of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.\n\u0026hellip;\nIt remains unclear whether the ban applies to accused Taliban and al Qaeda detainees held by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.\nNor is it clear whether the ban applies to secret prisons in other countries\u0026hellip;\n- - -\nSome other Cheney rewriting of history\u0026hellip; during the Vice Presidential debate with John Edwards, Cheney claimed \u0026ldquo;Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I\u0026rsquo;m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they\u0026rsquo;re in session.\u0026rdquo; In fact, he was absent all but two times, and has not presided at the Senate since 2002.\nHe told Edwards that \u0026ldquo;The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.\u0026rdquo; In fact, Cheney met Edwards on February 1, 2001 at the National Prayer Breakfast and addressed Edwards by name, personally, in his speech and was photographed standing next to Edwards at the buffet. In his speech, he stated: \u0026ldquo;Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/cheney-stop-rewriting-history.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs reported by \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051117/pl_nm/iraq_usa_dc\"\u003eReuters/Yahoo\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn the sharpest White House attack yet on critics of the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that accusations the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify the war were a \u0026ldquo;dishonest and reprehensible\u0026rdquo; political ploy.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheney repeated Bush\u0026rsquo;s charge that Democratic critics were rewriting history by questioning prewar intelligence on Iraq\u0026rsquo;s weapons of mass destruction even though many Senate Democrats voted in October 2002 to authorize the invasion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone \u0026ndash; but we\u0026rsquo;re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history,\u0026rdquo; said Cheney, a principal architect of the war and a focus of Democratic allegations the administration misrepresented intelligence on Iraq\u0026rsquo;s weapons program.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCheney said the suggestion Bush or any member of the administration misled Americans before the war \u0026ldquo;is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eYet it was Cheney who was rewriting his own 2001 history in 2004 (quoting here from an az.general newsgroup posting I made on June 24, 2004):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s another recent example of a lie from Dick Cheney (both are on video, and were shown on Comedy Central\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Daily Show\u0026rdquo; night before last)\u0026ndash;this text is quoted from \u003ca href=\"http://www.spinsanity.org/\"\u003ehttp://www.spinsanity.org/\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e During the CNBC interview, Cheney also dissembled in the following exchange about Mohammed Atta, an Al Qaeda member who was allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks (a witness claimed that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in the spring of 2001, a heavily disputed assertion that the FBI and CIA have questioned):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e BORGER: Well, let\u0026rsquo;s get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003eCHENEY: No, I never said that.\u003cbr /\u003eBORGER: OK.\u003cbr /\u003eCHENEY: I never said that.\u003cbr /\u003eBORGER: I think that is\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eCHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don\u0026rsquo;t know.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e But as a White House transcript demonstrates, Cheney said in a December 9, 2001 interview on \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo; that, \u0026ldquo;Well, what we now have that\u0026rsquo;s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that\u0026rsquo;s been \u003cem\u003epretty well confirmed\u003c/em\u003e, that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.\u0026rdquo; (our emphasis)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eSo in December 2001 he said the Atta/Iraqi meeting in Prague was \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed,\u0026rdquo; but in 2004 he says he never said that, and that \u0026ldquo;we have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo he was lying in December 2001 when he said it was pretty well confirmed, and lying again in 2004 when he said he never said that it was pretty well confirmed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eOn \u0026ldquo;Meet the Press\u0026rdquo; on November 14, 2003, Cheney stated that \u0026ldquo;I have not suggested there\u0026rsquo;s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.\u0026rdquo; What else could he have meant when he claimed a \u0026ldquo;pretty well confirmed\u0026rdquo; Mohammed Atta link to Iraq?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn the same Usenet posting, I pointed out that the Bush administration was denying that the techniques used in Abu Ghraib had any approval from their administration:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBTW, up until very recently the Bush administration was denying the content of Seymour Hersh\u0026rsquo;s story in the New Yorker which was the first report of Rumsfeld\u0026rsquo;s memo approving these techniques. They were lying.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eE.g., look at the quotes attributed to \u0026ldquo;The Pentagon\u0026rdquo; and Condoleezza Rice in this USA Today article from May 15:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-15-rumsfeld-abuse_x.htm\"\u003ehttp://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-15-rumsfeld-abuse_x.htm\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think the most blatant evidence of dishonesty by the Bush administration is found by just comparing their own statements over time, and watching them contradict themselves.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn that \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-15-rumsfeld-abuse_x.htm\"\u003eUSA Today story\u003c/a\u003e, the Bush administration response to Hersh\u0026rsquo;s charges, now confirmed, was:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Pentagon said that story was \u0026ldquo;filled with error and anonymous conjecture\u0026rdquo; and called it \u0026ldquo;outlandish, conspiratorial.\u0026rdquo; National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a German television interview, said of The New Yorker report, \u0026ldquo;As far as we can tell, there\u0026rsquo;s really nothing to the story.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn the \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34611-2004May17.html\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/a\u003e, May 17, 2004:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCIA spokesman Bill Harlow called the Hersh story \u0026ldquo;fundamentally wrong\u0026rdquo; in its assertion that there was a \u0026ldquo;DOD/CIA program to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners.\u0026rdquo; Harlow added, \u0026ldquo;Despite what is alleged in the article, I am aware of no CIA official who would have or possibly could have confirmed the details of the New Yorker\u0026rsquo;s inaccurate account.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eCompare what\u0026rsquo;s in the news these days (\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644_pf.html\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/a\u003e, November 1, 2005) about CIA prisons to what was said in \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/15/iraq.abuse.main/\"\u003eMay 2004\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eOn Friday, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military will not use certain prisoner interrogation procedures in Iraq and Afghanistan, including sleep and sensory deprivation, as a result of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003eIt remains unclear whether the ban applies to accused Taliban and al Qaeda detainees held by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eNor is it clear whether the ban applies to secret prisons in other countries\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e- - -\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSome other Cheney rewriting of history\u0026hellip; during the Vice Presidential debate with John Edwards, Cheney claimed \u0026ldquo;Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I\u0026rsquo;m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they\u0026rsquo;re in session.\u0026rdquo; In fact, he was absent \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/6/11163/2940\"\u003eall but two times,\u003c/a\u003e and has not presided at the Senate since 2002.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHe told Edwards that \u0026ldquo;The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.\u0026rdquo;  In fact, Cheney met Edwards on February 1, 2001 at the National Prayer Breakfast and addressed Edwards by name, personally, in his speech and was photographed standing next to Edwards at the buffet. In his speech, he stated: \u0026ldquo;Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cheney:  Stop Rewriting History"},{"content":"A couple weeks ago (I sincerely apologize for the untimeliness of this post. Busy, busy, busy. Better late than never, I hope), Patrick Smith read my entry for the Halloween edition of the CotG and took issue with my characterization of SETI as a religion. I might be convinced to back off the \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; label, but you\u0026rsquo;ll be hard pressed to demonstrate that SETI resembles \u0026ldquo;science.\u0026quot;\nGiven my low opinion of SETI, you may find it surprising that Contact is one of my top 5 favorite films. Aside from the clever way it deals with a number of deep philosophical issues, the positive way it portrays atheism, the cool special effects (the zoom-out at the beginning choked me up the first time I saw it, but luckily my girlfriend didn\u0026rsquo;t notice!), and the well-constructed plot, I pretty much fell head-over-heels for Ellie Arroway. How could you not? She\u0026rsquo;s brilliant, sexy as hell (of course, Jodie Foster is primarily responsible for that), and passionate about what\u0026rsquo;s important to her (and it isn\u0026rsquo;t the ho-hum of children!). Sadly, however, she is possessed by a fixed idea\u0026ndash;just as possessed, by the way, as is Palmer Joss, her love interest in the story, by the idea of God. Like I said, I guess we all have our blind spots.\nSETI is the brainchild of astronomer Frank Drake, who also came up with what is known as the Drake Equation, which I\u0026rsquo;ll get to in a moment. Drake has been searching the skies via radio waves for 45 years, now, without uncovering a shred of evidence of alien intelligence. When confronted on this, Drake\u0026rsquo;s response strikes a disturbingly familiar chord: \u0026ldquo;Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.\u0026quot;\nSuch is the response of one who is defending a hypothesis that is not falsifiable, and that is exactly what is wrong with SETI. The excuse is always, \u0026ldquo;We haven\u0026rsquo;t looked long and hard enough.\u0026rdquo; When will that be? When does absence of evidence finally become evidence of absence? Back circa 1994, when Congress - having spent over a billion dollars on SETI - finally cut off the public funding, Drake predicted \u0026ldquo;the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.\u0026rdquo; He went on, \u0026ldquo;This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world.\u0026rdquo; Here it is, 2005, and SETI, much like the doomsday religions that predicted the end of the world back in 2000, is still going.\nSo, what about the Drake Equation? Its purpose is to try to come up with an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in our galaxy. As an aside, I can\u0026rsquo;t figure out why the quantity R, which is the number of stars that form in the galaxy each year, is even in the equation in the first place. What does R have to do with anything? New stars are not very likely to have life-bearing planets in orbit around them, so WTF? Why not just start with the number of stars in the galaxy? If you have an answer for this, I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear it. But the real problem with the equation is that virtually every variable is a complete unknown. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many planets there are around most stars. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many of those might incubate life. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many of those might evolve intelligence\u0026hellip; We simply have no friggin\u0026rsquo; clue, so the equation is useless even without the quantity R. Assigning a value to a variable is pulling a number out of your ass, and bears a vague resemblance to an act of faith.\nWho knows? Maybe tomorrow they\u0026rsquo;ll get lucky and some benevolent super-race of aliens will beam down plans for a wormhole generator, transforming our lives forever. The occurrence of such an event still wouldn\u0026rsquo;t transform SETI into science.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nI myself am skeptical of the whole SETI project (though I would demur over labelling it a religion). As for the Drake equation, some of the assumptions that lead to conclusions with very high numbers of extraterrestrial civilizations (Sagan thinks there are millions in our galaxy alone) are quite dubious. Ernst Mayr in a debate with Sagan blasted his optimism about the likelihood of intelligence to evolve, while Ward and Brownlee's book Rare Earth summarizes the main objections to the probability of \"complex extraterrestrial life.\"\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nDrake's equation with all its unknowns is just a variant of Pascal's wager, which is also a bet made in the absence of any hard facts whatsoever.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nGood point, Solan. I hadn't thought of that. Yet another way SETI resembles religion.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/can-seti-be-called-religion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple weeks ago (I sincerely apologize for the untimeliness of this post. Busy, busy, busy. Better late than never, I hope), \u003ca href=\"http://gracchus.typepad.com/gracchus\"\u003ePatrick Smith\u003c/a\u003e read \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html\"\u003emy entry\u003c/a\u003e for the Halloween edition of the \u003ca href=\"http://nonsequitur2.blogspot.com/2005/10/carnival-of-godless-26-welcome.html\"\u003eCotG\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://gracchus.typepad.com/gracchus/2005/10/carnival_of_the.html\"\u003etook issue\u003c/a\u003e with my characterization of SETI as a religion. I might be convinced to back off the \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; label, but you\u0026rsquo;ll be hard pressed to demonstrate that SETI resembles \u0026ldquo;science.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGiven my low opinion of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI\"\u003eSETI\u003c/a\u003e, you may find it surprising that \u003cem\u003eContact \u003c/em\u003eis one of my top 5 favorite films. Aside from the clever way it deals with a number of deep philosophical issues, the positive way it portrays atheism, the cool special effects (the zoom-out at the beginning choked me up the first time I saw it, but luckily my girlfriend didn\u0026rsquo;t notice!), and the well-constructed plot, I pretty much fell head-over-heels for Ellie Arroway. How could you not? She\u0026rsquo;s brilliant, sexy as hell (of course, Jodie Foster is primarily responsible for that), and passionate about what\u0026rsquo;s important to her (and it isn\u0026rsquo;t the ho-hum of children!). Sadly, however, she is possessed by a fixed idea\u0026ndash;just as possessed, by the way, as is Palmer Joss, her love interest in the story, by the idea of God. Like \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html\"\u003eI said\u003c/a\u003e, I guess we all have our blind spots.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.seti.org/\"\u003eSETI\u003c/a\u003e is the brainchild of astronomer Frank Drake, who also came up with what is known as the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation\"\u003eDrake Equation\u003c/a\u003e, which I\u0026rsquo;ll get to in a moment. Drake has been searching the skies via radio waves for 45 years, now, without uncovering a shred of evidence of alien intelligence. When confronted on this, Drake\u0026rsquo;s response strikes a disturbingly familiar chord: \u0026ldquo;Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSuch is the response of one who is defending a hypothesis that is not falsifiable, and that is exactly what is wrong with SETI. The excuse is always, \u0026ldquo;We haven\u0026rsquo;t looked long and hard enough.\u0026rdquo; When will that be? When does absence of evidence finally become evidence of absence? Back circa 1994, when Congress - having spent over a billion dollars on SETI - finally cut off the public funding, Drake predicted \u0026ldquo;the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.\u0026rdquo; He went on, \u0026ldquo;This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world.\u0026rdquo; Here it is, 2005, and SETI, much like the doomsday religions that predicted the end of the world back in 2000, is still going.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo, what about the \u003ca href=\"http://www.station1.net/DouglasJones/drake.htm\"\u003eDrake Equation\u003c/a\u003e? Its purpose is to try to come up with an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in our galaxy. As an aside, I can\u0026rsquo;t figure out why the quantity R, which is the number of stars that form in the galaxy each year, is even \u003cem\u003ein \u003c/em\u003ethe equation in the first place. What does R have to do with anything? New stars are not very likely to have life-bearing planets in orbit around them, so WTF? Why not just start with the number of stars in the galaxy? If you have an answer for this, I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear it. But the real problem with the equation is that virtually every variable is a complete unknown. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many planets there are around most stars. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many of those might incubate life. We don\u0026rsquo;t know how many of those might evolve intelligence\u0026hellip; We simply have no friggin\u0026rsquo; clue, so the equation is useless even without the quantity R. Assigning a value to a variable is pulling a number out of your ass, and bears a vague resemblance to an act of faith.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWho knows? Maybe tomorrow they\u0026rsquo;ll get lucky and some benevolent super-race of aliens will beam down plans for a wormhole generator, transforming our lives forever. The occurrence of such an event still wouldn\u0026rsquo;t transform SETI into science.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Can SETI be Called a Religion?"},{"content":"In the past week I attended two conferences\u0026ndash;one work-related conference, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C)\u0026rsquo;s Economic Crime Summit in Phoenix on November 8-9, and one personal-interest conference, the Freedom Summit in Phoenix on November 12-13.\nI had thought after attending the first conference to write a blog entry comparing and contrasting them, but after attending the second conference I realized several of the talks there merit full entries of their own. Einzige also attended the Freedom Summit, so we will both have comments on parts of it.\nThe Economic Crime Summit was put on by NW3C, a private organization that is funded by Congress and run mostly by former law enforcement personnel. It\u0026rsquo;s an example of one of many private organizations that exists in partnership with the public sector which seem to have proliferated lately for various reasons. Unfortunately, I believe some of the reasons include to be exempt from public disclosure (such as Freedom of Information Act requests) and to engage in activity which might be difficult for public sector agencies to do on their own.\nThe Economic Crime Summit was mostly attended by law enforcement personnel from Arizona and elsewhere, representing federal, state, and local agencies as well as a small number of private companies, mostly banks. The main subject matter was economic crimes, with an emphasis on identity theft and fraud on the Internet and directed against the elderly. As I\u0026rsquo;m in charge of information security for a global telecommunications company, I have an interest in finding ways to prevent fraud and to help law enforcement catch such criminals.\nThe Summit began in a large banquet audience of perhaps 300. To my surprise, everyone was asked to stand for the presentation of colors, the singing of the national anthem, and an ecumenical prayer by Chaplain Rabbi Robert Kravitz of the Phoenix Police Department. I felt like I had stepped into a military/religious alternative universe, and found Kravitz\u0026rsquo; comment in his prayer about supporting the U.S. Constitution rather ironic. As NW3C is a private organization this was likely not an actual violation of the First Amendment, but since it is Congressionally funded and most of the presenters were from government agencies, it felt very much like a violation to me. I wonder if this kind of disregard for the sensibilities of nonbelievers is as common in law enforcement as it is in the military (with the Air Force Academy\u0026rsquo;s promotion of evangelical Christianity a particularly egregious example).\nArizona Attorney General Terry Goddard showed up and gave a short talk after the invocation, which I thought was well-timed. Other morning breakfast banquet speakers included Arizona Department of Public Safety Director (and former Pinal County Sheriff) Roger Vanderpool, who also included a reference to God at the end of his talk, John Vincent of the Rocky Mountain Information Network, and Assistant Chief of Police for the Phoenix PD, Kevin Robinson.\nFortunately, there was no further endorsement of the supernatural in any of the individual presentations I attended. F/Sgt. Charles Cohen of the Indiana State Police gave an excellent presentation on \u0026ldquo;Successful Investigation of Skilled Offenders\u0026rdquo; which included information on what information is available from FinCen (currency transaction reports, CTRs, for transactions over $10,000 are available to law enforcement without a subpoena; casino reports; foreign bank account information; Form 8300 reports of large purchases made with cash\u0026ndash;these were expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act to include such things as automobile purchases, as I learned firsthand when I bought my last car with cash).\nI also attended talks on identity theft and electronic crime by a U.S. Postal Inspector, a U.S. Secret Service Agent, and a joint presentation by a Special Agent from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Education (I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize such an office existed\u0026ndash;she investigates student loan-related fraud issues) and an Assistant U.S. Attorney. One of the things that struck me is how seemingly uncoordinated many of these federal law enforcement activities are, with the exception of some cooperation between the FBI and U.S. Secret Service (the latter of which has now moved from the Department of Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security). The use of private organizations like NW3C and others that were present with exhibits at the conference is probably in part due to actions by individuals trying to solve problems that arise from such separate silos.\nBy contrast, the Freedom Summit did not begin with a prayer but with a debate on the existence of God between atheist George Smith and Mesa pastor Eric Lounsbery. I did not attend the debate, which took place on Friday night, as I feared it would not go as an Internet Infidels-sponsored debate would go. From what I heard, it was as bad as I feared, with Smith unprepared to address Lounsbery\u0026rsquo;s shotgunned series of arguments. (In a debate format, dropping the opponent\u0026rsquo;s arguments is a way to lose.) The public debate format is not a great format for seriously addressing any intellectual issue (written materials are essential for any real depth), but it can be done well if the participants are properly prepared and skilled and experienced at working in the debate format.\nThe Freedom Summit was an interesting and entertaining mix of speakers from a variety of fields on topics relevant to personal freedom, with a few well beyond the fringe (which I\u0026rsquo;ll discuss individually). Especially good talks were given by David Friedman (on market failure), Chris Heward (on failings of government-sponsored science), Karen Kwiatkowski (on the war on Iraq), and Jim Bovard (on the Bush Administration and the use of the threat of terrorism to trample on civil liberties).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/conferences-on-economic-crime-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the past week I attended two conferences\u0026ndash;one work-related conference, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C)\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://summit.nw3c.org/phoenix/\"\u003eEconomic Crime Summit\u003c/a\u003e in Phoenix on November 8-9, and one personal-interest conference, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.freedomsummit.com/\"\u003eFreedom Summit\u003c/a\u003e in Phoenix on November 12-13.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI had thought after attending the first conference to write a blog entry comparing and contrasting them, but after attending the second conference I realized several of the talks there merit full entries of their own. Einzige also attended the Freedom Summit, so we will both have comments on parts of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Economic Crime Summit was put on by \u003ca href=\"http://www.nw3c.org/\"\u003eNW3C\u003c/a\u003e, a private organization that is funded by Congress and run mostly by former law enforcement personnel. It\u0026rsquo;s an example of one of many private organizations that exists in partnership with the public sector which seem to have proliferated lately for various reasons. Unfortunately, I believe some of the reasons include to be exempt from public disclosure (such as Freedom of Information Act requests) and to engage in activity which might be difficult for public sector agencies to do on their own.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Economic Crime Summit was mostly attended by law enforcement personnel from Arizona and elsewhere, representing federal, state, and local agencies as well as a small number of private companies, mostly banks. The main subject matter was economic crimes, with an emphasis on identity theft and fraud on the Internet and directed against the elderly. As I\u0026rsquo;m in charge of information security for a global telecommunications company, I have an interest in finding ways to prevent fraud and to help law enforcement catch such criminals.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Summit began in a large banquet audience of perhaps 300. To my surprise, everyone was asked to stand for the presentation of colors, the singing of the national anthem, and an ecumenical prayer by Chaplain Rabbi Robert Kravitz of the Phoenix Police Department. I felt like I had stepped into a military/religious alternative universe, and found Kravitz\u0026rsquo; comment in his prayer about supporting the U.S. Constitution rather ironic. As NW3C is a private organization this was likely not an actual violation of the First Amendment, but since it is Congressionally funded and most of the presenters were from government agencies, it felt very much like a violation to me. I wonder if this kind of disregard for the sensibilities of nonbelievers is as common in law enforcement as it is in the military (with the Air Force Academy\u0026rsquo;s promotion of evangelical Christianity a particularly egregious example).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona Attorney General Terry Goddard showed up and gave a short talk after the invocation, which I thought was well-timed. Other morning breakfast banquet speakers included Arizona Department of Public Safety Director (and former Pinal County Sheriff) Roger Vanderpool, who also included a reference to God at the end of his talk, John Vincent of the Rocky Mountain Information Network, and Assistant Chief of Police for the Phoenix PD, Kevin Robinson.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFortunately, there was no further endorsement of the supernatural in any of the individual presentations I attended. F/Sgt. Charles Cohen of the Indiana State Police gave an excellent presentation on \u0026ldquo;Successful Investigation of Skilled Offenders\u0026rdquo; which included information on what information is available from FinCen (currency transaction reports, CTRs, for transactions over $10,000 are available to law enforcement without a subpoena; casino reports; foreign bank account information; \u003ca href=\"http://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/ch26s12.html\"\u003eForm 8300 reports of large purchases made with cash\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;these were expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act to include such things as automobile purchases, as I learned firsthand when I bought my last car with cash).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI also attended talks on identity theft and electronic crime by a U.S. Postal Inspector, a U.S. Secret Service Agent, and a joint presentation by a Special Agent from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Education (I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize such an office existed\u0026ndash;she investigates student loan-related fraud issues) and an Assistant U.S. Attorney. One of the things that struck me is how seemingly uncoordinated many of these federal law enforcement activities are, with the exception of some cooperation between the FBI and U.S. Secret Service (the latter of which has now moved from the Department of Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security). The use of private organizations like NW3C and others that were present with exhibits at the conference is probably in part due to actions by individuals trying to solve problems that arise from such separate silos.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBy contrast, the Freedom Summit did not begin with a prayer but with a debate on the existence of God between atheist George Smith and Mesa pastor Eric Lounsbery. I did not attend the debate, which took place on Friday night, as I feared it would not go as an \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e-sponsored debate would go. From what I heard, it was as bad as I feared, with Smith unprepared to address Lounsbery\u0026rsquo;s shotgunned series of arguments. (In a debate format, dropping the opponent\u0026rsquo;s arguments is a way to lose.) The public debate format is not a great format for seriously addressing any intellectual issue (written materials are essential for any real depth), but it can be done well if the participants are properly prepared and skilled and experienced at working in the debate format.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Freedom Summit was an interesting and entertaining mix of speakers from a variety of fields on topics relevant to personal freedom, with a few well beyond the fringe (which I\u0026rsquo;ll discuss individually). Especially good talks were given by \u003ca href=\"http://www.daviddfriedman.com/index.shtml\"\u003eDavid Friedman\u003c/a\u003e (on market failure), Chris Heward (on failings of government-sponsored science), \u003ca href=\"http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html\"\u003eKaren Kwiatkowski\u003c/a\u003e (on the war on Iraq), and \u003ca href=\"http://www.jimbovard.com/\"\u003eJim Bovard\u003c/a\u003e (on the Bush Administration and the use of the threat of terrorism to trample on civil liberties).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Conferences on Economic Crime and Freedom"},{"content":"Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith is being court-martialed by the RAF for refusing to return for third tour of duty in Iraq. He maintains that his study of the justifications of the invasion show that the war and occupation are \u0026ldquo;manifestly illegal.\u0026rdquo; Kendall-Smith, a New Zealand-British citizen who has degrees in medicine and moral philosophy, previously served tours of duty in Iraq (twice) and in Afghanistan.\nThe leader of the UK invasion force, Admiral Michael Boyce, says he now believes that the British military does not have \u0026ldquo;the legal cover necessary to avoid prosecution for war crimes.\u0026quot;\nMore at the Leiter Reports and at Counterpunch.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/royal-air-force-officer-court.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFlight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith is being court-martialed by the RAF for refusing to return for third tour of duty in Iraq.  He maintains that his study of the justifications of the invasion show that the war and occupation are \u0026ldquo;manifestly illegal.\u0026rdquo;  Kendall-Smith, a New Zealand-British citizen who has degrees in medicine and moral philosophy, previously served tours of duty in Iraq (twice) and in Afghanistan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe leader of the UK invasion force, Admiral Michael Boyce, says he now believes that the British military does not have \u0026ldquo;the legal cover necessary to avoid prosecution for war crimes.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMore at the \u003ca href=\"http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/more_on_the_phi_1.html\"\u003eLeiter Reports\u003c/a\u003e and at \u003ca href=\"http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd11092005.html\"\u003eCounterpunch\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Royal Air Force Officer Court-Martialed for Refusing Third Third Tour of Duty in Iraq"},{"content":"Dembski still doesn\u0026rsquo;t admit error\u0026ndash;he says his copy of the filing (plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s response to defendant\u0026rsquo;s motion for summary judgment) doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the Shallit deposition, implying that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t part of the filing and Ed Brayton must be mistaken.\nThe Shallit deposition (in uncorrected form\u0026ndash;the draft transcript of the deposition without errors corrected and edited) has been online at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s website at least since September 21.\nIt has been pointed out that the link above is to Shallit\u0026rsquo;s expert witness statement, not the uncorrected deposition, which is in Appendix III, Tab O of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s brief opposing the defendant\u0026rsquo;s motion for summary judgment. Tab N is Shallit\u0026rsquo;s disclosure statement.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThanks for the correction, I've added accurate links.I don't understand why people are being secretive about the location of the link--it's a public record.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/dembski-continues-to-put-his-foot-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDembski \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/will_dembski_continue_to_embar.php\"\u003estill doesn\u0026rsquo;t admit error\u003c/a\u003e\u0026ndash;he says his copy of the filing (plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s response to defendant\u0026rsquo;s motion for summary judgment) doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the Shallit deposition, implying that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t part of the filing and Ed Brayton must be mistaken.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Shallit deposition (in uncorrected form\u0026ndash;the draft transcript of the deposition without errors corrected and edited) \u003ca href=\"http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/experts/shallit.pdf\"\u003ehas been online at the NCSE\u0026rsquo;s website\u003c/a\u003e at least since September 21.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt has been pointed out that the link above is to Shallit\u0026rsquo;s expert witness statement, not the uncorrected deposition, which is in \u003ca href=\"http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/index.php?path=main_docs%2F2005_08_08_Brief_Opp_SJ%2FAPPENDIX+III/\"\u003eAppendix III\u003c/a\u003e, Tab \u003ca href=\"http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/main_docs/2005_08_08_Brief_Opp_SJ/APPENDIX%20III/Appendix%20III%20Tab%20O.pdf\"\u003eO\u003c/a\u003e of the plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s brief opposing the defendant\u0026rsquo;s motion for summary judgment.  Tab \u003ca href=\"http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/main_docs/2005_08_08_Brief_Opp_SJ/APPENDIX%20III/Appendix%20III%20Tab%20N.pdf\"\u003eN\u003c/a\u003e is Shallit\u0026rsquo;s disclosure statement.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dembski continues to put his foot in it"},{"content":"Today CNN quotes President Bush:\n\"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,\" the president said during a Veterans Day speech in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.\n\"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war,\" Bush said. \"They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.\"Bush has a terrible habit of going on the offensive even when he's in the wrong, as he is in this case. Here, he is conveniently forgetting that much of what his Administration presented as solid fact was already discredited prior to its presentation to the American public, but it was used anyway. He forgets that this wasn't a matter of objective intelligence assessments, but of reports that were assembled by a new special intelligence analysis unit set up for the White House by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (#3 man in the Pentagon, who resigned on January 26, 2005), David Wurmser's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which cherry-picked intelligence to find anything that suggested a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, as documented in James Bamford's book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (2004, Doubleday).\nIt was the Feith/Wurmser group's bogus intelligence which led to Colin Powell making a speech to the UN Security Council filled with errors based on forged documents and testimony from a discredited source, \"Curveball.\" It was a leaked Feith memo of bogus Iraq/al Qaeda links which was the basis of a Stephen Hayes article in the Weekly Standard (expanded into a book, The Connection), which led to Hayes' embarrassment at the hands of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. (I posted specific refutations of a number of Hayes' alleged connections on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.)\nFeith is the man who Gen. Tommy Franks said had a reputation as the \"dumbest fucking man on the planet.\" This opinion was seconded by Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's right-hand man in the State Department, when he resigned in October 2005, saying \"seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.\"\nIt was a man in Feith's organization, Larry Franklin, who pleaded guilty to passing intelligence information to the Israelis. This is no surprise to readers of Bamford's book--which describes how Feith, Wurmser, and Richard Perle previously worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw up a policy on taking a more aggressive stance with Iraq that Israel wisely rejected--but which was then successfully foisted upon the United States through George W. Bush.\nBush's criticism of the Democrats is mostly unfounded--most of the Democrats who voted for the war were deceived by bogus, cherry-picked intelligence put together by the Feith/Wurmser group with the specific intent to deceive them, and that's what needs to be further investigated and demonstrated to the general public that wasn't able to recognize the deception at the time (though the evidence was, to my mind, already pretty clear, as reflected in my postings to the az.general Usenet group prior to and in the months immediately following the invasion of Iraq). On the other hand, as Snopes points out, there were Democrats who already believed Saddam Hussein had WMD and hadn't destroyed it by the mid-nineties.\nI find it amazing that Bush has had as much success as he had with the deceptive and dishonest tactics described in the book All the President's Spin. I am happy to see that more and more people are realizing the deception.\nI'll be hearing retired lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski speak this weekend--she is a critic of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq who was former deputy to Feith in the Pentagon who resigned in 2003. Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nOh, but Jim, this is simply a ridiculous and tired allegation because Bush never used the word \"imminent.\"This \"meme\" is in trouble.Has the word \"meme\" now become an epithet?Notice that those posts don't really address anything of substance from the items you mentioned, Jim.Why does Glenn Reynolds have to be such a fucking asshole?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/bushs-dishonest-response-about-pre-war.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/11/bush.intel/index.html\"\u003eCNN quotes President Bush\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cblockquote\u003e   \u003cp\u003e\"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,\" the president said during a Veterans Day speech in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.\u003c/p\u003e \"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war,\" Bush said. \"They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.\"\u003c/blockquote\u003eBush has a terrible habit of going on the offensive even when he's in the wrong, as he is in this case. Here, he is conveniently forgetting that much of what his Administration presented as solid fact was already discredited prior to its presentation to the American public, but it was used anyway. He forgets that this wasn't a matter of objective intelligence assessments, but of reports that were assembled by a new special intelligence analysis unit set up for the White House by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (#3 man in the Pentagon, who resigned on January 26, 2005), David Wurmser's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which cherry-picked intelligence to find anything that suggested a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, as documented in James Bamford's book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies\u003c/span\u003e (2004, Doubleday).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was the Feith/Wurmser group's bogus intelligence which led to Colin Powell making a speech to the UN Security Council filled with errors based on \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/\"\u003eforged documents\u003c/a\u003e and testimony from a \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19831-2005Apr1.html\"\u003ediscredited source, \"Curveball.\"\u003c/a\u003e  It was a leaked Feith memo of bogus Iraq/al Qaeda links which was the basis of a Stephen Hayes \u003ca href=\"http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp\"\u003earticle in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWeekly Standard\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (expanded into a book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Connection\u003c/span\u003e), which led to Hayes' embarrassment \u003ca href=\"http://video.lisarein.com/dailyshow/june2004/stephenhayes/\"\u003eat the hands of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show\u003c/a\u003e.  (I posted \u003ca href=\"http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=1678046#post1678046\"\u003especific refutations of a number of Hayes' alleged connections\u003c/a\u003e on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFeith is the man who \u003ca href=\"http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012805Y.shtml\"\u003eGen. Tommy Franks said\u003c/a\u003e had a reputation as the \"dumbest fucking man on the planet.\"  This opinion was \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2128535/\"\u003eseconded by Colonel Larry Wilkerson\u003c/a\u003e, Colin Powell's right-hand man in the State Department, when he resigned in October 2005, saying \"seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.\"\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt was a man in Feith's organization, Larry Franklin, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR2005100501608_pf.html\"\u003epleaded guilty to passing intelligence information to the Israelis\u003c/a\u003e. This is no surprise to readers of Bamford's book--which describes how Feith, Wurmser, and Richard Perle previously worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw up a policy on taking a more aggressive stance with Iraq that Israel wisely rejected--but which was then successfully foisted upon the United States through George W. Bush.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBush's criticism of the Democrats is mostly unfounded--most of the Democrats who voted for the war were deceived by bogus, cherry-picked intelligence put together by the Feith/Wurmser group with the specific intent to deceive them, and that's what needs to be further investigated and demonstrated to the general public that wasn't able to recognize the deception at the time (though the evidence was, to my mind, already pretty clear, as reflected in my postings to the az.general Usenet group prior to and in the months immediately following the invasion of Iraq).  On the other hand, as Snopes points out, there were \u003ca href=\"http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp\"\u003eDemocrats who already believed Saddam Hussein had WMD\u003c/a\u003e and hadn't destroyed it by the mid-nineties.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI find it amazing that Bush has had as much success as he had with the deceptive and dishonest tactics described in the book \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eAll the President's Spin\u003c/span\u003e.  I am happy to see that \u003ca href=\"http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_AP_POLL?SITE=PASCR\u0026SECTION=HOME\u0026amp;amp;amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT\u0026amp;CTIME=2005-11-11-01-14-55\"\u003emore and more people are realizing the deception\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI'll be hearing retired lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski speak this weekend--she is a critic of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq who was former deputy to Feith in the Pentagon who resigned in 2003.\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e\u003cI\u003eOh, but Jim, this is simply a \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005783.php\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eridiculous and tired allegation\u003c/A\u003e because Bush never used the word \"imminent.\"\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eThis \"meme\" is \u003cA HREF=\"http://instapundit.com/archives/026823.php\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ein trouble\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHas the word \"meme\" now become an epithet?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eNotice that those posts don't really address anything of substance from the items you mentioned, Jim.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWhy does Glenn Reynolds have to be such a fucking asshole?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's dishonest response about pre-war intelligence"},{"content":"William Dembski continues to dig himself a deeper hole with respect to his false claim that Jeff Shallit did not testify in the Dover case because his deposition went badly and was an embarassment to the plaintiffs. In fact, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, who withdrew from the case, and because the defense filed a motion to prevent it.\nDembski also continues to claim that the Shallit deposition is somehow being concealed, when in fact it was filed in the case and is a public document. (More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/further-dembski-dishonesty-about.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Dembski \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/dembski_finally_respondskind_o.php\"\u003econtinues to dig himself a deeper hole\u003c/a\u003e with respect to his false claim that Jeff Shallit did not testify in the Dover case because his deposition went badly and was an embarassment to the plaintiffs.  In fact, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, who withdrew from the case, and because the defense filed a motion to prevent it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDembski also continues to claim that the Shallit deposition is somehow being concealed, when in fact it was filed in the case and is a public document.  (More at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/dembski_finally_respondskind_o.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Further Dembski dishonesty about Shallit"},{"content":"Sony has said it will \u0026ldquo;temporarily\u0026rdquo; stop making CDs with the problematic DRM technology. I\u0026rsquo;m sure they\u0026rsquo;ll make more in the future with a modified version or a new DRM technology.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/sony-bmg-to-temporarily-stop-using.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSony has said it will \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051111/tc_nm/sony_copyprotection_dc\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;temporarily\u0026rdquo; stop making CDs\u003c/a\u003e with the problematic DRM technology.  I\u0026rsquo;m sure they\u0026rsquo;ll make more in the future with a modified version or a new DRM technology.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sony BMG to \"temporarily\" stop using rootkit-based DRM"},{"content":"As reported at Brian Krebs\u0026rsquo; Washington Post blog, there has been a class action lawsuit filed against Sony in California and another one about to be filed in New York. The California lawsuit alleges violations of California\u0026rsquo;s anti-spyware law, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, and the California Unfair Competition law.\nIn other news from Krebs, there is now real malware exploiting Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM to hide itself. Krebs seems to be breaking the key news on this story\u0026ndash;there are a number of other related articles on his blog worth reading, such as the one on Sony\u0026rsquo;s past history of cavalier and inconsistent actions on DRM.\nThe EFF has an analysis of the EULA for Sony\u0026rsquo;s software\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s something no reasonable person should agree to.\nBack at Mark Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s blog that exposed this issue and began the controversy, he rebuts a response from First 4 Internet, the implementers of the Sony DRM, and points out more evidence that their software is poorly written and can crash Windows.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/sony-drm-class-action-lawsuits.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs reported at Brian Krebs\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/11/calif_ny_lawsui.html\"\u003eWashington Post blog\u003c/a\u003e, there has been a class action lawsuit filed against Sony in California and another one about to be filed in New York. The California lawsuit alleges violations of California\u0026rsquo;s anti-spyware law, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, and the California Unfair Competition law.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn other news from Krebs, there is \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/11/virus_writers_e.html\"\u003enow real malware exploiting Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM\u003c/a\u003e to hide itself. Krebs seems to be breaking the key news on this story\u0026ndash;there are a number of other related articles on his blog worth reading, such as the one on \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/11/sony_exec_warne.html\"\u003eSony\u0026rsquo;s past history\u003c/a\u003e of cavalier and inconsistent actions on DRM.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe EFF has an \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004145.php\"\u003eanalysis of the EULA\u003c/a\u003e for Sony\u0026rsquo;s software\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s something no reasonable person should agree to.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBack at Mark Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s blog that exposed this issue and began the controversy, he rebuts a response from First 4 Internet, the implementers of the Sony DRM, and points out more evidence that \u003ca href=\"http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/sonys-rootkit-first-4-internet.html\"\u003etheir software is poorly written and can crash Windows\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sony DRM class action lawsuits"},{"content":"The March 1952 document \u0026ldquo;A Brief History of Communications Intelligence in the United States\u0026rdquo; by Captain Laurance F. Stafford, USN (Retired) has been declassified by the National Security Agency and released to the public. It was originally classified TOP SECRET SUEDE. The document is a 24-page PDF. The document tells the history of COMINT prior to Pearl Harbor, beginning with the entry of the U.S. into WWI, when Herbert O. Yardley set up MI-8, the \u0026ldquo;American Black Chamber\u0026rdquo; to do cryptology work. On a quick scan I didn\u0026rsquo;t see anything that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t already be familiar in broad strokes to readers of James Bamford\u0026rsquo;s The Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets, though there may be some details not previously public, such as the number of staff working on cryptography.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/1952-history-of-us-communications.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe March 1952 document \u0026ldquo;A Brief History of Communications Intelligence in the United States\u0026rdquo; by Captain Laurance F. Stafford, USN (Retired) has been declassified by the National Security Agency and released to the public.  It was originally classified TOP SECRET SUEDE.  The document is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/safford.pdf\"\u003e24-page PDF\u003c/a\u003e.  The document tells the history of COMINT prior to Pearl Harbor, beginning with the entry of the U.S. into WWI, when \u003ca href=\"http://www.nsa.gov/museum/museu00004.cfm\"\u003eHerbert O. Yardley set up MI-8\u003c/a\u003e, the \u0026ldquo;American Black Chamber\u0026rdquo; to do cryptology work.  On a quick scan I didn\u0026rsquo;t see anything that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t already be familiar in broad strokes to readers of James Bamford\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Puzzle Palace\u003c/span\u003e or \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBody of Secrets\u003c/span\u003e, though there may be some details not previously public, such as the number of staff working on cryptography.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A 1952 history of U.S. communications intelligence declassified"},{"content":"William Dembski has posted (from Ian Bibby) the following \u0026ldquo;Darwinian Trilemma\u0026rdquo;:\nScience cannot test the proposition that biological features are designed.Darwinism explains the appearance of design in biology not as actual design but as the product of natural selection and random variation.Darwinism is science. Commentators have offered a number of responses, such as rejecting an apparent equivocation on \u0026ldquo;design\u0026rdquo; between premises 1 (an objective feature of nature) and 2 (a psychological appearance).\nWhile I think there\u0026rsquo;s something to this objection, I would also reject premise 1 as stated. Surely there are scientific mechanisms for distinguishing natural features from artifacts of the sorts we are aware of (e.g., forensic science can distinguish at least some murders from deaths by natural causes). What science cannot distinguish is a hypothesis that biological features are the product of evolution from the hypothesis that a divinity created biological features that look just like the product of evolution. Similarly, science cannot distinguish automobiles that are created by people from automobiles that are created by a divine being to look just like automobiles built in a human-built factory, nor can it distinguish human beings who were born of a man and a woman from human beings who are directly created to look exactly as though they were born of a man and a woman (Omphalos included). (In other words, God could choose to work directly, simulating evolution, or indirectly, using evolutionary mechanisms or setting up the initial conditions and letting evolution run its course, and those hypotheses are empirically indistinguishable. Some religious believers advocate a view where events have natural causes, yet are also caused by supernatural beings such as Satan. In such an anti-Ockhamite, unparsimonious view, there is no scientific way to distinguish an event with both natural and supernatural causes from one which didn\u0026rsquo;t have the latter.)\nIf a God-based hypothesis can be formulated in such a way as to have empirically testable consequences which are distinguishable from evolution, I don\u0026rsquo;t see why it couldn\u0026rsquo;t be science. This means there could be an \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; that qualifies as scientific\u0026ndash;but what\u0026rsquo;s been promoted in Dover is simply a renamed creationism, rather than a new field with any scientific content.\nThe real problem for such God-based hypotheses is that there really are no limits or definitions around what God does or would do\u0026ndash;no empirical evidence is ever considered to be evidence against God by the advocates. I think there actually is empirical evidence against many specific gods which have been endorsed through the millenia, including commonly held views of contemporary monotheism. If you say that humans are psychologically similar to God (being created in his image), that God is perfectly rational and desires particular outcomes, then actions (or inaction) inconsistent with those desires, intentions, and facts of the world are evidence against such a God\u0026rsquo;s existence. This gives evidential weight to atheistic arguments such as the argument from evil, the argument from (reasonable) non-belief, arguments based on the dependency of consciousness on physical brains, the facts of evolution, religious disagreement, and on the distribution of religious beliefs (indicative of cultural transmission rather than supernatural intervention).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/darwinian-trilemma.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/466\"\u003eWilliam Dembski has posted\u003c/a\u003e (from Ian Bibby) the following \u0026ldquo;Darwinian Trilemma\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col\u003e \u003cli\u003eScience cannot test the proposition that biological features are designed.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDarwinism explains the appearance of design in biology not as actual design but as the product of natural selection and random variation.\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003eDarwinism is science.\u003c/li\u003e \u003c/ol\u003e Commentators have offered a number of responses, such as rejecting an apparent equivocation on \u0026ldquo;design\u0026rdquo; between premises 1 (an objective feature of nature) and 2 (a psychological appearance).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile I think there\u0026rsquo;s something to this objection, I would also reject premise 1 as stated. Surely there are scientific mechanisms for distinguishing natural features from artifacts of the sorts we are aware of (e.g., forensic science can distinguish at least some murders from deaths by natural causes). What science cannot distinguish is a hypothesis that biological features are the product of evolution from the hypothesis that a divinity created biological features that look just like the product of evolution. Similarly, science cannot distinguish automobiles that are created by people from automobiles that are created by a divine being to look just like automobiles built in a human-built factory, nor can it distinguish human beings who were born of a man and a woman from human beings who are directly created to look exactly as though they were born of a man and a woman (Omphalos included).  (In other words, God could choose to work directly, simulating evolution, or indirectly, using evolutionary mechanisms or setting up the initial conditions and letting evolution run its course, and those hypotheses are empirically indistinguishable.  Some religious believers advocate a view where events have natural causes, yet are \u003ca href=\"http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2005/04/could-it-be-satan.html\"\u003ealso caused by supernatural beings such as Satan\u003c/a\u003e.  In such an anti-Ockhamite, unparsimonious view, there is no scientific way to distinguish an event with both natural and supernatural causes from one which didn\u0026rsquo;t have the latter.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf a God-based hypothesis can be formulated in such a way as to have empirically testable consequences which are distinguishable from evolution, I don\u0026rsquo;t see why it couldn\u0026rsquo;t be science. This means there \u003cem\u003ecould be\u003c/em\u003e an \u0026ldquo;intelligent design\u0026rdquo; that qualifies as scientific\u0026ndash;but what\u0026rsquo;s been promoted in Dover is simply a renamed creationism, rather than a new field with any scientific content.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe real problem for such God-based hypotheses is that there really are no limits or definitions around what God does or would do\u0026ndash;no empirical evidence is ever considered to be evidence against God by the advocates. I think there actually is empirical evidence against many specific gods which have been endorsed through the millenia, including commonly held views of contemporary monotheism. If you say that humans are psychologically similar to God (being created in his image), that God is perfectly rational and desires particular outcomes, then actions (or inaction) inconsistent with those desires, intentions, and facts of the world are evidence against such a God\u0026rsquo;s existence. This gives evidential weight to atheistic arguments such as the argument from evil, the argument from (reasonable) non-belief, arguments based on the dependency of consciousness on physical brains, the facts of evolution, religious disagreement, and on the distribution of religious beliefs (indicative of cultural transmission rather than supernatural intervention).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Darwinian Trilemma"},{"content":"In yesterday\u0026rsquo;s election, the entire Dover School Board was voted out of office. Four of the new board members were Republicans running as Democrats; the incumbents were all Republicans. Four of the new board members are part of an organization called Dover CARES, which supports the teaching of intelligent design in a context such as an elective comparative religions course but not in the science classroom. The new board will take office on December 5 and have indicated that they will not change policy for a month, which presumably will be after the judge makes a decision in the lawsuit. This will likely mean that the decision (which I fully expect to go against the Dover school board) will not be appealed. More at the Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb, Questionable Authority, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars.\nUpdate: Pat Robertson warns the people of Dover that now that they\u0026rsquo;ve forsaken God, God will not be there to help them in time of need:\nI’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.Nothing like argumentum ad baculum\u0026hellip;\nHistorical Comments Victor Reppert (2006-12-09):\nWith Christians like these, who needs atheists. I think Robertson needs to design his comments more intelligently.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/dover-school-board-swept-out-of-office.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn yesterday\u0026rsquo;s election, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.yorkdispatch.com/local/ci_3196053?rss\"\u003eentire Dover School Board was voted out of office\u003c/a\u003e. Four of the new board members were Republicans running as Democrats; the incumbents were all Republicans. Four of the new board members are part of an organization called Dover CARES, which supports the teaching of intelligent design in a context such as an elective comparative religions course but not in the science classroom. The new board will take office on December 5 and have indicated that they will not change policy for a month, which presumably will be after the judge makes a decision in the lawsuit. This will likely mean that the decision (which I fully expect to go against the Dover school board) will not be appealed. More at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/a_clean_sweep_i.html\"\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://thequestionableauthority.blogspot.com/2005/11/clean-sweep-in-dover.html\"\u003eQuestionable Authority\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/at_least_the_news_from_dover_is_good/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/the_dover_case_and_the_school.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUpdate:  Pat Robertson \u003ca href=\"http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=19453\"\u003ewarns the people of Dover\u003c/a\u003e that now that they\u0026rsquo;ve forsaken God, God will not be there to help them in time of need:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.\u003c/blockquote\u003eNothing like argumentum ad baculum\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dover School Board Swept Out of Office"},{"content":"Whale penises! Photos here and here. (Hat tip: Pharyngula.) (Note that this explanation doesn\u0026rsquo;t work for the lake monsters like Nessie and Champy.)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/new-explanation-for-sea-serpents.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/sea_serpents_are_really_whale_penises/\"\u003eWhale penises\u003c/a\u003e!  Photos \u003ca href=\"http://deepseanews.blogspot.com/2005/11/sea-serpents-are-actually-whale.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://milkriver.blogspot.com/2005/10/env-some-jobs-you-dont-really-want.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  (Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/is_that_a_sea_monster_in_your_pocket_or_are_you_just_happy_to_see_me/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.)  (Note that this explanation doesn\u0026rsquo;t work for the lake monsters like Nessie and Champy.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A New Explanation for Sea Serpents"},{"content":"My presentation on \u0026ldquo;Defending Against Botnets\u0026rdquo; for ASU\u0026rsquo;s Computer Security Week is online in streaming video and MP3 audio formats.\nUnfortunately, the audience was quite small. ASU\u0026rsquo;s Polytechnic Campus is way out east of Phoenix, on the former Williams Air Force Base which ASU purchased and turned into its east campus. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that it has a very large student population yet. I was amused that the streets are named after military figures. To get to the Student Union I drove on a street called Twining, named after General Nathan Twining. Twining is a name well-known to UFO enthusiasts, as his name was used on one of the forged \u0026ldquo;MJ-12\u0026rdquo; documents known as the Cutler-Twining memo, and also authored a genuine document that discusses UFOs (and is often misinterpreted by UFO advocates as claiming that crashed saucers have been recovered).\nMy talk was followed by a talk on Wireless Security by Erik Graham of General Dynamics, which covered threats and defenses for 802.11 and Bluetooth.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/defending-against-botnets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/2005/lippard.htm\"\u003epresentation on \u0026ldquo;Defending Against Botnets\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e for ASU\u0026rsquo;s Computer Security Week is online in streaming \u003ca href=\"http://video6.asu.edu/dmit/viewer/?peid=029de8fa-c851-40ba-8064-0c8c1acb2e96\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/2005/mp3/Lippard.mp3\"\u003eMP3 audio\u003c/a\u003e formats.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately, the audience was quite small. ASU\u0026rsquo;s Polytechnic Campus is way out east of Phoenix, on the former Williams Air Force Base which ASU purchased and turned into its east campus. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t appear that it has a very large student population yet. I was amused that the streets are named after military figures. To get to the Student Union I drove on a street called Twining, named after General Nathan Twining. Twining is a name well-known to UFO enthusiasts, as his name was used on one of the forged \u0026ldquo;MJ-12\u0026rdquo; documents known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/majestic-12.html\"\u003eCutler-Twining memo\u003c/a\u003e, and also authored \u003ca href=\"http://www.roswellfiles.com/Articles/twining.htm\"\u003ea genuine document\u003c/a\u003e that discusses UFOs (and is often misinterpreted by UFO advocates as claiming that crashed saucers have been recovered).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy talk was followed by a talk on \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/2005/graham.htm\"\u003eWireless Security by Erik Graham\u003c/a\u003e of General Dynamics, which covered threats and defenses for 802.11 and Bluetooth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Defending Against Botnets"},{"content":"Denver voters approved a measure to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by those 21 and older. Authorities say state laws against possession will still be enforced, and we already know the federal laws will be enforced regardless of what a state wants to do with the drug issue (Raich v. Ashcroft).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/denver-legalizes-possession-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDenver voters \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/02/denvermarijuana.ap/index.html\"\u003eapproved a measure to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana\u003c/a\u003e by those 21 and older.  Authorities say state laws against possession will still be enforced, and we already know the federal laws will be enforced regardless of what a state wants to do with the drug issue (Raich v. Ashcroft).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Denver Legalizes Possession of Marijuana"},{"content":"Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals.com, a security professional who is careful about what software he installs on his computer, found a rootkit on his Windows machine. A rootkit is a set of applications designed to hide malicious activity from the owner or administrator of a machine. He found a hidden directory, several hidden device drivers, and a hidden application.\nAfter further investigation, he found that the software installed on his machine without his consent or authorization included files identified via Sigcheck as part of \u0026ldquo;Essential System Tools\u0026rdquo; from a company called First 4 Internet. Google revealed that First 4 Internet has implemented Digital Rights Management for several record companies, including Sony. It turned out that a recent CD he had purchased, \u0026ldquo;Get Right with The Man\u0026rdquo; by the Van Zant brothers, contained Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM.\nAdditional experimentation shows that the software is poorly written, and creates a load on the system by scanning the executable files associated with every running process every two seconds, and querying file information including size eight times per scan.\nThe End User License Agreement (EULA) gives no indication that this software will be installed to your machine, and provides no mechanism for removing it. (They have apparently since modified the EULA in response to Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s analysis.) Russinovich took the trouble to take the steps necessary to remove the software (and return his computer to a functional condition), but as his analysis points out, this would be very difficult for an inexperienced user. A typical responsible computer user who saw the rootkit files and simply deleted them would cripple their computer.\nThis software appears to me no different from spyware, which was made illegal in the U.S. under the SPY ACT (Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass), and also appears (as a commenters on Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s blog note) to violate California state law, UK law, and Australian law. Arizona\u0026rsquo;s anti-spyware law doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to apply.\nRussinovich\u0026rsquo;s detailed step-by-step analysis may be found here.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t purchase CDs with such irresponsible and sleazy DRM software.\nJesse (2006-12-09):\nI had no idea they had such wonky DRM audio CD's these days. The RIAA and MPAA et al are pushing things too far.I am glad the vast majority of the music I enjoy falls outside of there grasp\nUdge (2006-12-09):\nDon't purchase CDs with such irresponsible and sleazy DRM software.Gladly, just tell me how. I don't think that the CD was labelled \"May contain DRM software\", nor do I believe that only Sony has or will implement DRM. Do we the consumers need a labelling law to defend us?p.s. found you via Accordion Man via Postmodern Sass.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nUdge:This particular CD (Van Zant, \"Get Right with the Man\") is identified at Amazon.com as \"CONTENT/COPY PROTECTED CD\".I'm not sure what indications are given on the packaging.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/sonys-drm-not-much-different-from.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Russinovich at Sysinternals.com, a security professional who is careful about what software he installs on his computer, found a rootkit on his Windows machine. A rootkit is a set of applications designed to hide malicious activity from the owner or administrator of a machine. He found a hidden directory, several hidden device drivers, and a hidden application.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter further investigation, he found that the software installed on his machine without his consent or authorization included files identified via Sigcheck as part of \u0026ldquo;Essential System Tools\u0026rdquo; from a company called First 4 Internet. Google revealed that First 4 Internet has implemented Digital Rights Management for several record companies, including Sony. It turned out that a recent CD he had purchased, \u0026ldquo;Get Right with The Man\u0026rdquo; by the Van Zant brothers, contained Sony\u0026rsquo;s DRM.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdditional experimentation shows that the software is poorly written, and creates a load on the system by scanning the executable files associated with every running process every two seconds, and querying file information including size eight times per scan.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe End User License Agreement (EULA) gives no indication that this software will be installed to your machine, and provides no mechanism for removing it. (They have apparently since modified the EULA in response to Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s analysis.) Russinovich took the trouble to take the steps necessary to remove the software (and return his computer to a functional condition), but as his analysis points out, this would be very difficult for an inexperienced user. A typical responsible computer user who saw the rootkit files and simply deleted them would cripple their computer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis software appears to me no different from spyware, which was made illegal in the U.S. under the SPY ACT (Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass), and also appears (as a commenters on Russinovich\u0026rsquo;s blog note) to violate California state law, UK law, and Australian law.  \u003ca href=\"http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/44/07302.htm\u0026Title=44\u0026amp;DocType=ARS\"\u003eArizona\u0026rsquo;s anti-spyware law\u003c/a\u003e doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to apply.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRussinovich\u0026rsquo;s detailed step-by-step analysis may be found \u003ca href=\"http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t purchase CDs with such irresponsible and sleazy DRM software.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sony's DRM--not much different from criminal hacking"},{"content":"This is old news, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t noted it here before\u0026ndash;the two planned expert witnesses from the Discovery Institute for the Dover trial were Stephen Meyer and William Dembski, who both withdrew from the case. The DI attempted to back-door their testimony into the trial in the form of an amicus brief. The judge ruled that the brief was inadmissible, concluding:\nIn addition, after a careful review of the Discovery Institute’s submission, we find that the amicus brief is not only reliant upon several portions of Mr. Meyer’s attached expert report, but also improperly addresses Mr. Dembski’s assertions in detail, once again without affording Plaintiffs any opportunity to challenge such views by cross-examination. Accordingly, the “Brief of Amicus Curiae, the Discovery Institute” shall be stricken in its entirety.A fuller quote (as well as a Fuller quote) may be found at Stranger Fruit.\nI seem to recall reading a comment from the judge with respect to DI\u0026rsquo;s legal representation that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t running a law school\u0026hellip; if I find it I\u0026rsquo;ll update this entry with a link.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/discovery-institute-attempts-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is old news, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t noted it here before\u0026ndash;the two planned expert witnesses from the Discovery Institute for the Dover trial were Stephen Meyer and William Dembski, who both withdrew from the case.  The DI attempted to back-door their testimony into the trial in the form of an amicus brief.  The judge ruled that the brief was inadmissible, concluding:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn addition, after a careful review of the Discovery Institute’s submission, we find that the amicus brief is not only reliant upon several portions of Mr. Meyer’s attached expert report, but also improperly addresses Mr. Dembski’s assertions in detail, once again without affording Plaintiffs any opportunity to challenge such views by cross-examination. Accordingly, the “Brief of Amicus Curiae, the Discovery Institute” shall be stricken in its entirety.\u003c/blockquote\u003eA fuller quote (as well as a Fuller quote) may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/?p=569\"\u003eStranger Fruit\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI seem to recall reading a comment from the judge with respect to DI\u0026rsquo;s legal representation that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t running a law school\u0026hellip; if I find it I\u0026rsquo;ll update this entry with a link.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Institute attempts to backdoor testimony into the Dover trial"},{"content":"The February 5, 2002 murders of Dan O\u0026rsquo;Connell and James Ellison in a funeral home in Hudson, WI have now been pinned on Roman Catholic priest Fr. Ryan Erickson, who presided over O\u0026rsquo;Connell\u0026rsquo;s funeral.\nErickson, who committed suicide this year after investigators started questioning him about involvement with O\u0026rsquo;Connell and Ellison\u0026rsquo;s deaths, apparently had knowledge of those murders that had not been publicly disclosed.\nThe current theory is that a teenage boy in trouble with the law went to Erickson, a youth pastor, who on at least three occasions served that boy alcohol and molested him. Unnamed sources say that O\u0026rsquo;Connell, whose father is on the church council, learned of the charges and confronted Erickson, who killed him and his intern, University of Minnesota student Ellison.\nWhile Erickson\u0026rsquo;s parents said the evidence is \u0026ldquo;weak\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;our son had nothing to do with this awful crime\u0026rdquo;; a judge and DA considered it fairly conclusive, including a reported confession from Erickson to a deacon at the church.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRyan Erickson was not convicted of anything because he wasn't put on trial for anything, and he wasn't put on trial because he was already dead.The testimony of the deacon, Russell Lundgren, in a court hearing is not what you say, according to this news article:http://www.rivertowns.net/daily/hso/c051003/I don't understand your point about Mary Pagel and Dan O'Connell. Mary Pagel stated that Dan O'Connell told her he was going to confront Erickson, that she told him to go to the police, and he said he could handle it. He was murdered that day. When police interviewed Erickson, he knew details that the police had not disclosed to the public, including that O'Connell had been shot once in the back of the head while seated at his desk and Ellison had also been shot in the head. How did Erickson know these things if he wasn't the killer?The material on his computer was photos of boys sleeping, in a folder named \"my pictures/boys.\" If you think he was framed, who is the suspect, and why did Erickson kill himself?Bishop Fliss has apologized for the actions of Erickson--he's apparently persuaded that Erickson committed these murders.http://209.236.225.83/54848LN/LadysmithNews.taf?function=detail\u0026Layout1_uid2=14406Another summary:http://www.planethuff.com/darkside/archives/001104.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/murders-pinned-on-suicidal-child.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe February 5, 2002 murders of Dan O\u0026rsquo;Connell and James Ellison in a funeral home in Hudson, WI have now been pinned on Roman Catholic priest Fr. Ryan Erickson, who presided over O\u0026rsquo;Connell\u0026rsquo;s funeral.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eErickson, who committed suicide this year after investigators started questioning him about involvement with O\u0026rsquo;Connell and Ellison\u0026rsquo;s deaths, apparently had knowledge of those murders that had not been publicly disclosed.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe current theory is that a teenage boy in trouble with the law went to Erickson, a youth pastor, who on at least three occasions served that boy alcohol and molested him.  Unnamed sources say that O\u0026rsquo;Connell, whose father is on the church council, learned of the charges and confronted Erickson, who killed him and his intern, University of Minnesota student Ellison.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhile \u003ca href=\"http://wcco.com/seenon/local_story_272183721.html\"\u003eErickson\u0026rsquo;s parents said\u003c/a\u003e the evidence is \u0026ldquo;weak\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;our son had nothing to do with this awful crime\u0026rdquo;; a judge and DA considered it fairly conclusive, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/oct05/360549.asp\"\u003ea reported confession from Erickson\u003c/a\u003e to a deacon at the church.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Murders pinned on suicidal, child molesting, gun toting priest"},{"content":"Chris Elliott, the \u0026ldquo;man under the seats\u0026rdquo; on David Letterman\u0026rsquo;s show, star of the movie \u0026ldquo;Cabin Boy\u0026rdquo; and TV series \u0026ldquo;Get a Life,\u0026rdquo; and son of Bob Elliott (of \u0026ldquo;Bob and Ray\u0026rdquo;) recently published his first novel\u0026ndash;The Shroud of the Thwacker, from Miramax books. The book takes place in 1800s New York, where a serial killer is plaguing the city.\nThe book includes a mix of fact and fiction, with features such as wooden gas-powered cell phones and a time-traveling investigator named Chris Elliott. It also includes a Victorian-era mechanical robot named Boilerplate, which served with the Buffalo soldiers and Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American war.\nThis latter feature, which Elliott learned of from a website his brother Bob Elliott Jr. pointed him to, has resulted in a financial settlement between Elliott and graphic novelist Paul Guinan. Boilerplate, an invention of Guinan, also appears in his own book, Heartbreakers Meet Boilerplate (IDW Publishing), published in July.\nApparently Elliott thought it was a spoof, but an old, public domain spoof.\nThe full story is at the New York Times.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/spoofer-captured-by-spoof.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChris Elliott, the \u0026ldquo;man under the seats\u0026rdquo; on David Letterman\u0026rsquo;s show, star of the movie \u0026ldquo;Cabin Boy\u0026rdquo; and TV series \u0026ldquo;Get a Life,\u0026rdquo; and son of Bob Elliott (of \u0026ldquo;Bob and Ray\u0026rdquo;) recently published his first novel\u0026ndash;\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Shroud of the Thwacker\u003c/span\u003e, from Miramax books.  The book takes place in 1800s New York, where a serial killer is plaguing the city.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe book includes a mix of fact and fiction, with features such as wooden gas-powered cell phones and a time-traveling investigator named Chris Elliott.  It also includes a Victorian-era mechanical robot named Boilerplate, which served with the Buffalo soldiers and Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American war.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis latter feature, which Elliott learned of \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/\"\u003efrom a website\u003c/a\u003e his brother Bob Elliott Jr. pointed him to, has resulted in a financial settlement between Elliott and graphic novelist Paul Guinan.  Boilerplate, an invention of Guinan, also appears in his own book, \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eHeartbreakers Meet Boilerplate\u003c/span\u003e (IDW Publishing), published in July.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eApparently Elliott thought it was a spoof, but an old, public domain spoof.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe full story is at the \u003ca href=\"http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt\u0026tntget=2005/11/01/books/01elli.html\u0026amp;tntemail1=y\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew York Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spoofer Captured by Spoof"},{"content":"Ed Brayton comments on the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton of Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s crazy accusations of obsession against his critics. Dembski\u0026rsquo;s latest is to accuse mathematician Jeff Shallit of being removed as a witness in the Dover trial because \u0026ldquo;his obsessiveness against me and ID made him a liability to the ACLU.\u0026rdquo; Actually, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, Dembski withdrew from the trial, and the defense did not use Dembski\u0026rsquo;s ideas in their case.\nDembski then dug the hole deeper, stating that this couldn\u0026rsquo;t be the reason. Why not? Because he withdrew before Shallit\u0026rsquo;s deposition was taken. He went on to challenge the ACLU and Shallit to release a transcript of the deposition. Unfortunately for Dembski, it was the defense that took the deposition, to make sure they would be prepared in case Shallit would be used as a witness\u0026ndash;and the deposition (at least in the preliminary, uncorrected transcript) is already a public record.\nPerhaps Dembski should work on responding to his critics, rather than accusing them of stalking him.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nEd Brayton has an update here, showing that Shallit didn't testify as a result of a motion from the defense:http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/update_on_dembski_and_shallit_1.php\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/william-dembskis-obsessive-complaints.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton comments on the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton of Intelligent Design\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/dembskis_obsessive_complaints.php\"\u003ecrazy accusations of obsession against his critics\u003c/a\u003e.  Dembski\u0026rsquo;s latest is to accuse mathematician Jeff Shallit of being removed as a witness in the Dover trial because \u0026ldquo;his obsessiveness against me and ID made him a liability to the ACLU.\u0026rdquo;  Actually, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, Dembski withdrew from the trial, and the defense did not use Dembski\u0026rsquo;s ideas in their case.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDembski then dug the hole deeper, stating that this couldn\u0026rsquo;t be the reason.  Why not?  Because he withdrew before Shallit\u0026rsquo;s deposition was taken.  He went on to challenge the ACLU and Shallit to release a transcript of the deposition.  Unfortunately for Dembski, it was the defense that took the deposition, to make sure they would be prepared in case Shallit would be used as a witness\u0026ndash;and the deposition (at least in the preliminary, uncorrected transcript) is already a public record.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePerhaps Dembski should work on responding to his critics, rather than accusing them of stalking him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"William Dembski's Obsessive Complaints of Obsession"},{"content":"This trial just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. The board members who said they had no idea who bought the copies of Of Pandas and People have been shown to be liars on this and other issues. William Buckingham went in front of his church and solicited donations for the books, collected them personally, wrote a personal check (with a memo saying \u0026ldquo;for Pandas and People books\u0026rdquo;) and gave it to board president Alan Bonsell, who gave it to his father to purchase the books and make the donation. Bonsell ended up receiving some angry questioning directly from the judge. Mike Argento of the York Daily Record has a funny column on this examination.\nMichael Bains (2006-12-09):\nI wonder how much the YDR's page hits have increased over the last couple of weeks.Good stuff...\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nProbably quite a bit--Argento is, as others have noted, the H.L. Mencken of this Panda trial--his columns have been great.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/deception-by-dover-school-board.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis trial just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. The board members who said they had no idea who bought the copies of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e have been shown to be liars on this and other issues.  William Buckingham went in front of his church and solicited donations for the books, collected them personally, wrote a personal check (with a memo saying \u0026ldquo;for Pandas and People books\u0026rdquo;) and gave it to board president Alan Bonsell, who gave it to his father to purchase the books and make the donation.  Bonsell ended up receiving \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/judge_jones_getting_angry.php\"\u003esome angry questioning directly from the judge\u003c/a\u003e.  Mike Argento of the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eYork Daily Record\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/92406/\"\u003ehas a funny column\u003c/a\u003e on this examination.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deception by Dover School Board President Alan Bonsell"},{"content":"This little parable/thought experiment was inspired by Steve’s comment in the Stirner birthday message, where he advocates for agnosticism over either theism or atheism.\nImagine yourself in the following scenario:\nYou’ve just returned home from a day at work. While you set your keys on the kitchen counter and remove your coat you can hear the familiar voices of your roommate and her/his S.O. in the other room.\nYou start to wonder about what you might make yourself for dinner when suddenly you are startled by a loud gunshot, followed by what sounds like a body falling to the floor. Rather than getting the hell out of there you somewhat foolishly run to the other room to see what happened. Once there, you see your roommate standing there, arm outstretched, holding a still-smoking pistol pointed at what is now, apparently, a corpse.\nYour roommate looks at you and says “Santa Claus did it.”\nDo you:\na) Sincerely believe that your roommate is telling the actual truth?\nb) Decide that, because you didn’t actually see your roommate fire the gun, you just can’t know one way or another whether Santa did it?\nc) Consider your roommate a murderer, and the claim to be the rationalization of a mind that has snapped?\nIf my point isn’t glaringly obvious, I think that the Christian/Muslim/Jew/whatever ought to take position A, since, according to most religious beliefs, faith is a virtue. The agnostic ought to take position B, because certain knowledge about anything is denied us. That leaves C, the only rational, reasonable, explanation, for the skeptics/atheists.\nIf you’re not a skeptical atheist, but you still chose option C above, well, then I applaud you for being reasonable. But I think you need to explain why you choose the analogous A or B when it comes to the equally dubious claim that there is a God.\nEric (2006-12-09):\nIf my roommate was Jesus (were I Christian) or Allah (were I Muslim), etc.; then A would be the appropriate choice. However, since I think most Christians would agree that we share a faith in God, not in men, that C is the best choice since I obviously live with a lying murderer. Or someone working on an insanity defense.There's nothing that says Christians (or other religious folk) are obligated to give up reason (accepting of course that there are some unreasonable things we do, such as believe in God). It's important to remember that just because you're reasonable doesn't mean you don't run your life on a wholly rational basis--why did you wear that shirt this morning?\nRyan Michael (2006-12-09):\nOk, then. Question:Where do you draw the line then? If you believe in one unreasonable thing (gawd), why not believe that invisible gnomes live in your ass? Or that Sylvia Browne can predict the future?If my roommate was Jesus (were I Christian) or Allah (were I Muslim), etc.; then A would be the appropriate choice.wow...that says it right there. Santa be damned!just because you're reasonable doesn't mean you don't run your life on a wholly rational basis--why did you wear that shirt this morning?Meh. There are numerous rational reasons for my shirt wearing:1. It's cold out, and I need clothing to protect myself. 2. I work in a professional arena, and going shirtless is frowned upon.3. I chose a collared shirt and tie due to reason #2.etc.\nJesse (2006-12-09):\nI think I would sit on my roomates lap and tell them what I want for christmas.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDan, just so I'm clear, you're taking option A, then, right?\nruidh (2006-12-09):\nOf course I choose C even though I 'm not a sceptical athiest. The question is absolute nonsense. Why should I choose A or B? What if I came into the room and there wasn't a smoking gun in my roomate's hand but there was an open window? The sentence \"Santa Clause did it.\" might well be accurate even if it's only some bum in a Santa suit.\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nAs an agnostic there is no concrete position in the case of certain matters. The atheist is a staunch nonbeliever, the religious are staunch believers, the agnostic says show me the evidence--prove to me that there is or is not a higher power. I would have to choose C because the evidence is clearly obvious--the fact that the guy has a smoking gun in his hand pointing to the shot body of his s.o. only moments following the shot.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSteve,Your definition of \"agnostic\" is not correct. The agnostic declares that knowledge is impossible (a-gnostic, \"without knowledge\"), regardless of how much evidence is piled up on either side of an issue. Your description is more appropriate for the atheist.My position--and the point of the story--is that the evidence in favor of theism is very weak, and that therefore the atheist is justified in deciding that the evidence clearly points to the non-existence of God. Shown convincing evidence, however, the atheist would certainly become a theist.Ruidh,Your response is changing the circumstances of the hypothetical, so I call \"foul\". The question is designed to examine a fantastical claim that I believe is on a par with theistic belief in general.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nTheists and agnostics should respond that the hypothetical is not analogous to the God question--theists should say that there is stronger evidence of God's existence than nonexistence (and perhaps that you can experience ityourself, if only you try); agnostics can say that the evidence in favor and against is evenly balanced. Paul Draper, an agnostic philosopher, has assembled a list of evidential arguments for and against the existence of God, which he thinks are all good arguments with weight, but that he doesn't know how to balance against each other--therefore, he is an agnostic.Both the theist and agnostic should say that your hypotheticalis therefore question-begging--you've built the atheist-analogous position into the example by choosing a fictional character to play the part of God.The strength I see in your example is that your scenario presents an alternative hypothesis to the roommate's excuse in the physical evidence, analogous to the evidence we have before us for our experiences being the result of natural causes.\nFrancois Tremblay (2006-12-09):\n\"why did you wear that shirt this morning?\"Because I have a mental algorithm to determine what I wear, and it so happened that it fell upon that shirt. No unreason was involved. Your reasoning is a stupid straw man.\nMichael Bains (2006-12-09):\nif you don't have faith THEN YOU DON'T GET IT.I just heard Gene Wilder (in a purple suit) say:\"Wait. Reverse that. Okay...\"You can only have faith IF you don't get it.Duh!\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nAtheism is the belief that there is no god. The atheist believes that when you die, that's it--no afterlife, no salvation, no ghosts, spirits, etc. The theist believes that there is life after death, whatever form that may be. I find the dictionary definitoions for any of these terms trite and insufficient, especially for the word agnostic. I still find it appropriate to place myself under the agnostic label because i simply cannot adhhere to either the finite view of life held by atheists or the eternal view of life held by theists. I feel that at this period in time, we dn't have appropriate evidence for either argument. Perhaps the agnostic position is more one based on the concept of time and progress concerining proof. I do believe in the possibility of events or phenomena that we cannot see or even comprehend currently as human beings. I do believe in the possibility of the existence of something beyond our power of perception or beyond, based on what little knowledge we really do have in our tiny place in the timeline of the Earth, what we consider rational. In my own personal opinion, believers and nonbelievers base their stance on one common thing--the fear of the unknown and unnaceptance of the unknown. Believers claim to know god, nonbelievers claim that god does not exist. Both sides take a position of finality. The agnostic embraces the unknown and accepts it until further evidence or proof arises from either side of the coin. The standard dictionary definition for agnostic is far too black and white and another example of a futile attemp by man to neatlty categorize and readily define something. It is that very gray area that the agnostic swims in. Ultimitely, what if this great debate of the ages isn't so much a matter of whether or not god does or does not exist, more an inherent need for us people to continually define ourselves within the narrow limits and confines of human language and expression.Who knows what will or might happen to change our perception of things. What if our simplistic definition of the word god needs further examination? What if our approach in that very examination of the word--the concept of god needs to change? Unfortunately I think the majority of people would much rather be spoonfed something easily digestible and live in blissful ignorance. Ironically, it is that very blissful ignorance that is making the world a human warzone and a living hell for all species on Earth.\nRenee (2006-12-09):\n\"if you don't have faith THEN YOU DON'T GET IT.\"Speaking as one who had faith, and now doesn't, I do in fact get it. You have an emotional connection to the concept of God. Such a connection is powerful, and difficult to break even in the presence of reason. After all, faith is \"belief without material proof or evidence\" and such belief cannot be toppled by reason. Fortunately, I was miserable enough with my faith to break that connection and I am a much happier person for it.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe question of immortality vs. mortality is distinct from the question of the existence of God. The existence of God doesn't provide any guarantee of immortality, and at least some atheists have argued for the possibility of immortality (via cryonics, \"downloading,\" and Frank Tipler \"Omega Point\"-style computer simulation--a trick necessary to get an infinite amount of simulation in a finite universe).Though I recognize that arguments from incredulity don't necessarily carry much weight, I find it hard to imagine how the evidence for human mortality and the dependence of our mental lives on the physical brain could be any stronger. (Well, actually, I can--since it seems to keep getting stronger every time I read about new results in neuroscience.)If you read A.R. Luria, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, Christoph Koch, etc.--let alone witness the mental deterioration of someone with a brain disease like Alzheimer's--how can you possibly believe that people survive the destruction of their brains?I can conceive of bodily resurrection--a reconstruction of what was there before--but the lack of continuity is potentially a big hurdle to overcome.Keith Augustine has written some good stuff on immortality at the Secular Web (http://www.infidels.org/).\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSteve,Atheism can also simply be a lack of a belief in god.I think we're mostly quibbling over definitions, here.If you're going to define \"God\" as \"unknowable\", \"imperceptible\", or \"incomprehensible\", then you've won the argument by default.However, aside from the fact that your definition flies in the face of the definition accepted by the vast majority of theists, you've also stated a position that, because it is by definition untestable, is based on faith. How do you know God is incomprehensible?Furthermore, why then do you not pick option B in my hypothetical? If there's a shred of a possibility that a magical being exists who created us and will love us through all eternity, then doesn't that also leave open the possibility that Santa did it?You might here object to the attributes I've just given God (magical, loving...). If so, then I think all we're left with in your conception is the ever-shriveling \"God of the Gaps\" that Feynman complained about when he said:God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time -- life and death -- stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand.I guess my point is that there isn't much use for such a god, whether it exists or not. Until there's some evidence, though, I'll stick to a lack of belief.\ns9 (2006-12-09):\nI'm a Pragmatist, who identifies as an agnostic in discussions about religion, and I chose (C). So you want to know why I didn't choose (B)? Okay. I'll oblige you. (Yes, my answer relates back to the question about God.)Technically, I didn't see the murder with my own eyes, so I guess technically I don't know whether my roommate shot the victim. I'm also not sure I know who she means by \"Santa Claus\" or even whether she means to identify someone else, some abstract concept, some mythological personification, or what. Some interrogation is clearly in order.Nevertheless, as a pragmatic matter, the scenario suggests that I walked in on the scene immediately after my roommate shot the gun and killed the victim and there isn't any available information to be cause for a reasonable suspicion that my roommate has been framed. Therefore, option (C) is a better answer than (B), at least until further investigation reveals some practical reason to believe that someone named \"Santa Claus\" could have had anything to do with it.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\ns9,Thanks for jumping into the fray!My question for you is: Why not call yourself an atheist, at least until further investigation reveals some practical reason to believe that a God exists?\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nEinzige, maybe I'm not explaining myself clearly enough. In a sense, yes, this has become a sort of debate of definitions. The \"god of the gaps\" wouldn't even sum it up because Feynman refers to god as a him--something already based in traditional, vain religion. My question is what if there is a god--a higher power if you will, that is \"useful\" but not based on our current gatehering of knowledge as a human race. I keep saying we haven't been around long enough on this planet to truly have a say as far as coming to any definite conclusions to the existence or nonexistence of god. Both science and religion is constantly changing and contradicting itself. What if our view of what is rational in our time gets turned completely upsidedown generations from now? I believe that the rationalists and many scientific types cling far too hard onto what is accepted as common knowledge and are just as guilty as the stanch religious types who cling to their ancient texts. Perhaps we are not meant to know what or who god is in this life. Maybe we've known it all along and have yet to unlock or expand our powers of perception. I do believe that there is a lot holding us back in the name of so-called progress and commerce and our egos, our own biggest enemy on both a personal and astronomical level, are inhibiting our focus.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSo, God is sexless, useful to us (how?), a higher power (what is that?), not currently known (despite all the books about “him” and the claims by many to actually know “him”), and we’re perhaps not meant to know she/he/it (which seems to posit an intention to God, and thus a consciousness, a will, a desire - is that right? What else does God want?)? Did I miss anything? If you do define God in such a nebulous way, then I agree with you. You’d have to be pretty arrogant to say one way or another whether or not such a thing—a thing that by definition defies definition itself!—exists.Of course, I object to your definition of God, which is rather like a bar of soap in a hot shower – every time you try to get a good grip on it it shoots away. Like I said before, the agnostic wins this argument by definition when God is defined as “unknowable.” That’s fine, as far as it goes. But I hope you'll forgive me for calling that effectively identical to atheism.I’m not quite sure what your beef with science is, though. Science keeps “changing and contradicting itself” because scientists (unlike religious folk) are willing to discard bad beliefs in favor of better ones. Was it dogmatic for scientists to discard the flat-Earth theory in favor of the now “common knowledge” heliocentric view of the solar system because maybe in the future our view of what is rational will get turned completely upside down?30 years ago many skeptical astronomers didn’t believe in black holes. Today most astronomers do (though an accurate description of them is probably beyond our abilities — hey, does that mean black holes should be considered God?). Why did these astronomers change their minds? Because of a preponderance of the evidence. That’s not arrogant. Nor is it dogmatic. My position is, though, that God is more like the Loch Ness monster than He (forgive me) is like black holes. We keep looking for him and he keeps not getting found.Furthermore, if you’re going to define God as “outside science, perception, and knowledge”, then isn’t it a little unfair to start disparaging “progress” and “commerce” and “our egos”? I’m really not following you, there.\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nWhich option to choose would depend on the character of the room-mate, and it might also simply require further investigation. I think choosing A, B or C independent of any other assesment \"in a general sort of way\" to be pure laziness.That is also why the murder situation is different from the situation where you are asked to believe in God or Santa Claus, for while in the murder situation you have a chance to make further investigation, the God and Santa questions are per definition closed off from critical scrutiny.\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nI've got no beef with science and progress. I think however that it is egotistical to think we can have the answers based on current information and hypotheses. My argument is that we DON'T have the answers and should step down from both religious and scientific high horses telling eachother that we're wrong. In a sense, it is almost wise to pick a religion, or belief system that matches your personal values and beliefs and simply go with it. The problem is, it no longer becomes personal and instead is politicised, again, leading to grand, monumental disagreements and eventually wars. My beef with much of what we consider progress is that I feel it has distracted us from a connection with our inner selves. Sure, our computers are allowing this very conversation, the exchange of thoughts, ideas and experiences and ultimitely insight. But we all know and are all guilty to a greater or lesser degree of indulging in a lot of things, thanks to progress and technology, that again, distract us from a more introspective, meditative, thoughtful state. But that's a whole other debate (and maybe i'm trying to say too much and straying a bit from the actual core of the issue at hand). Anyhow, that connection with your inner core is a place where a lot of people find god, and for a lot of people god does not fall into the narrow definition imposed upon us by both a great deal of theists and atheists alike. Hopefully the whole inner connection thing doesn't come off as some kind of trendy hippie crap. I just think we need to step back a bit and slow down and shift focus. No unibomber manifesto or anything like that. It's a pretty simple and increasingly common view.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\n\"My argument is that we DON'T have the answers and should step down from both religious and scientific high horses telling each other that we're wrong.\"I can buy a claim that science doesn't have *all* the answers, but a claim that science doesn't have *any* of the answers is ludicrous and completely disrespectful to everyone who has developed knowledge in the history of science.(Recommended rant against relativism by Stephen Dutch: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/SelfApptdExp.htm)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCorrection: It's Steven Dutch, with a \"v\".\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nVery true. Very true indeed!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI enjoyed that Steven Dutch page.\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nSteve said \"My beef with much of what we consider progress is that I feel it has distracted us from a connection with our inner selves.\"I think Steve is forgetting that \"connection with our inner selves\" is a luxury pusuit in a society with enough resources to allow for considerable leisure time. Technoloigcal progress has freed us from the 12-16 hour day in the fields, so that we can fill our heads with other things than radishes. We have the same amount of spare time that princes had in \"the good old days\" before evil progress made princes about as obsolete as the neanderthal club.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nGood point, Solan. If there ever was a golden age of navel-gazing, today's the day.\nLumbergh-in-training (2006-12-09):\nHad the roommate said someone from outside shot her, I would have chosen B; but since it is Santa Claus we are talking about, it must be C (unless you believe Santa Claus exists)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/11/parable-of-roommate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis little parable/thought experiment was inspired by \u003ca href=\"http://goflyingturtle.blogspot.com/\"\u003eSteve\u003c/a\u003e’s comment in the \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html\"\u003eStirner\u003c/a\u003e birthday message, where he advocates for agnosticism over either theism or atheism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eImagine yourself in the following scenario:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou’ve just returned home from a day at work. While you set your keys on the kitchen counter and remove your coat you can hear the familiar voices of your roommate and her/his S.O. in the other room.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou start to wonder about what you might make yourself for dinner when suddenly you are startled by a loud gunshot, followed by what sounds like a body falling to the floor. Rather than getting the hell out of there you somewhat foolishly run to the other room to see what happened. Once there, you see your roommate standing there, arm outstretched, holding a still-smoking pistol pointed at what is now, apparently, a corpse.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYour roommate looks at you and says “Santa Claus did it.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDo you:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003ea) Sincerely believe that your roommate is telling the actual truth?\u003cbr /\u003eb) Decide that, because you didn’t actually see your roommate fire the gun, you just can’t know one way or another whether Santa did it?\u003cbr /\u003ec) Consider your roommate a murderer, and the claim to be the rationalization of a mind that has snapped?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Parable of the Roommate"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said.\u0026quot;\nRev. Kyle Lake of University Baptist Church was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital; the woman being baptised \u0026ldquo;was not seriously injured.\u0026rdquo; More on Yahoo News, via Associated Press.\nThe story says that apparently the woman being baptised had not yet stepped into the water. No word on whether she will proceed with another pastor or church, or take it as a sign not to join this particular sect.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI guess Jesus didn't believe the pastor's claim that he (the pastor) believed he (Jesus) was his Lord and Savior?Or maybe Jesus believed him a little too much?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/texas-pastor-electrocuted-during.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRev. Kyle Lake of University Baptist Church was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital; the woman being baptised \u0026ldquo;was not seriously injured.\u0026rdquo;  More on \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051031/ap_on_re_us/pastor_electrocuted\u0026printer=1\"\u003eYahoo News\u003c/a\u003e, via Associated Press.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe story says that apparently the woman being baptised had not yet stepped into the water.  No word on whether she will proceed with another pastor or church, or take it as a sign not to join this particular sect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Texas Pastor Electrocuted During Baptism"},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;ve got to hand it to the Amish. At least they are consistent, unlike the vast majority of the IDiots out there who poo poo the notions of evolution while at the same time readily partaking in its fruits\u0026ndash;medicine that would be impossible were it not for our understanding of germs and genetics.\nBut not the Amish, who let their kids get polio rather than question \u0026ldquo;The Word.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what you\u0026rsquo;d call them, but you can\u0026rsquo;t call \u0026rsquo;em hypocrites.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/consistent-kookery.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ve got to hand it to the Amish.  At least they are consistent, unlike the vast majority of the IDiots out there who poo poo the notions of evolution while at the same time readily partaking in its fruits\u0026ndash;medicine that would be impossible were it not for our understanding of germs and genetics.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut not the Amish, \u003ca href=\"http://nogodzone.blogspot.com/2005/10/polio-is-back-religion-is-reason.html\"\u003ewho let their kids get polio\u003c/a\u003e rather than question \u0026ldquo;The Word.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what you\u0026rsquo;d call them, but you can\u0026rsquo;t call \u0026rsquo;em hypocrites.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Consistent Kookery"},{"content":"Dover Area School Board member William Buckingham gave testimony in the trial, contradicting his sworn depositions on a number of points. First, he had been quoted numerous times as calling for creationism to be taught in schools to balance out evolution, then denied it in deposition. On the stand, he admitted it, and that his statement in his sworn deposition was false. Second, he had claimed in deposition that he had no idea who purchased the 60 copies of Of Pandas and People which were donated to the school. On the stand, he admitted that he was the one who asked for donations in church and wrote the check to Donald Bonsall have the books purchased.\nThis is the same guy who stood up at a school board meeting and said, \u0026ldquo;Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can\u0026rsquo;t someone take a stand for him?\u0026quot;\nWay to be a model of moral behavior, Bill!\nLooks like Dover Area School Board member Heather Geesey has also contradicted her deposition statements. (More on Geesey at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)\nKaren A. Castevens (2006-12-09):\nFirst of all, I can see how someone can't remember the EXACT same thing one time to another. Whether anyone agrees to it or not, Jesus died for your sins on the cross and YES...God made every living creature and plant in this world! PERIOD!!! I would rather believe and find out I am wrong...than to have to find out one day it is true and go eternity and HELL!!!!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nKaren, do you use modern medicine at all?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nKaren:This isn't a case of someone having slight discrepancies in testimony between two times. It's a case of denying any knowledge of an event that he was directly involved in.That's lying, a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Surely you don't mean to defend that?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/deception-by-dover-defendant-william.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDover Area School Board member William Buckingham gave testimony in the trial, contradicting his sworn depositions on a number of points. First, he had been quoted numerous times as calling for creationism to be taught in schools to balance out evolution, then denied it in deposition. On the stand, \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/buckingham_lies_under_oath_in.php\"\u003ehe admitted it\u003c/a\u003e, and that his statement in his sworn deposition was false. Second, he had claimed in deposition that he had no idea who purchased the 60 copies of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/span\u003e which were donated to the school.  On the stand, he \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/buckinghams_second_lie_under_o.php\"\u003eadmitted that he was the one\u003c/a\u003e who asked for donations in church and wrote the check to Donald Bonsall have the books purchased.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is the same guy who \u003ca href=\"http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/87612/\"\u003estood up at a school board meeting and said\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can\u0026rsquo;t someone take a stand for him?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWay to be a model of moral behavior, Bill!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLooks like Dover Area School Board member Heather Geesey \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/10/dover_school_bo.html\"\u003ehas also contradicted her deposition statements\u003c/a\u003e.   (More on Geesey at \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/those_darned_defense_witnesses.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/A\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Deception by Dover Defendant William Buckingham"},{"content":"Ed Brayton tracked down and got comments from the other two known reviewers of Behe\u0026rsquo;s Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box, Robert Shapiro and K. John Morrow. Shapiro reviewed the origins of life aspect (his area of expertise), and though he disagreed with Behe\u0026rsquo;s conclusions, thought it was the best argument from design he\u0026rsquo;d seen. Morrow, on the other hand, thought the book was poor and disingenuous, and believes that his review led an earlier publisher to reject it.\nEd\u0026rsquo;s commentary at Dispatches from the Culture Wars includes the text of an email from Morrow about the book, along with the text of reviewer comments from biochemist Russell Doolittle. Both are quite damning.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nRobert Shapiro says he was not a reviewer, but an editorial consultant:http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/10/shapiro_on_dbb.html\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nBehe was justified in his lying, because he's being so villified and marginalized by the powers-that-be in the mainstream scientific community. It's a vast conspiracy by the current hegemony, who have a vested interest in maintaining the dominance of the existing paradigm. So they quash all latent threats (as ID obviously is), see?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/yet-more-on-peer-review-of-michael.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEd Brayton \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/more_on_peer_review_of_behes_b.php\"\u003etracked down and got comments from\u003c/a\u003e the other two known reviewers of Behe\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDarwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box\u003c/span\u003e, Robert Shapiro and K. John Morrow.  Shapiro reviewed the origins of life aspect (his area of expertise), and though he disagreed with Behe\u0026rsquo;s conclusions, thought it was the best argument from design he\u0026rsquo;d seen.   Morrow, on the other hand, thought the book was poor and disingenuous, and believes that his review led an earlier publisher to reject it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd\u0026rsquo;s commentary at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/span\u003e includes the text of an email from Morrow about the book, along with the text of reviewer comments from biochemist Russell Doolittle.  Both are quite damning.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yet more on peer review of Michael Behe's book"},{"content":"HBO’s The Wire is an absolutely fantastic show. Written by Ed Burns, a former policeman, the show is, on one level, about a Baltimore homicide detective’s monomaniacal pursuit of the leaders of a heroin cartel. On another level, the show is an exploration of how institutions impact the choices available to the individuals who make them up. Albert Jay Nock, in his essay Anarchist’s Progress, addressed this topic brilliantly. The message of both Burns and Nock is that people are often forced by circumstance (usually one contrived by the institutions they are a part of) to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do (of course, Max Stirner would justifiably declare these people to be \u0026ldquo;possessed by spooks\u0026rdquo;).\nUnfortunately this phenomenon extends beyond the bureaucratic hell that a city government must be. It seems it exists even in what I would imagine would be the least likely of all places for it to be: libertarian think tanks. I personally know several Cato staffers, for example, who are staunch anarchists, and yet, apparently from a need for Cato to appear “inside the beltway,” they often put out some seriously milquetoast policy recommendations.\nArizona’s Goldwater Institute, also staffed by a few anarchistas, provides another example. In private conversations with Vicky Murray, she has told me that she thinks school and state should be entirely separate. Yet, in her capacity as Goldwater’s Director of Educational Opportunity, she writes articles like this and this. It is understandable that Goldwater would want to pander to their financial base, which consists mostly of traditional conservatives, but it’s disappointing, nonetheless. Does taking a half-assed approach really \u0026ldquo;defend liberty\u0026rdquo;? (I\u0026rsquo;m actually not sure what, if anything, defends liberty nowadays. I am more and more convinced that Stirner is right when he says that all freedom is self liberation and must be taken.)\nAll of these issues were really brought into stark relief for me by the article they published today, which complains about Arizona’s salary grid for teachers. The article’s author, John Wenders, points to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they “began tying teacher bonuses to students’ Stanford Achievement Test results. In just one year, overall student achievement increased 17 percent, and teachers received bonuses up to $8,600.”\nI can’t believe that the article’s author, an economics professor, cites this literally incredible statistic so unquestioningly. As someone versed in economic theory, Professor Wenders should know better than most that incentives matter. I submit that the amazing 17 percent increase was probably achieved via some combination of cheating (and I specifically mean teacher cheating, not student), “teaching to the test”, statistical anomaly, and perhaps a small amount of legitimately better teaching.\nI think that, in publishing this article, Goldwater does a disservice to themselves and the cause of liberty. Unfortunately, the article that should have been written, and the article that I can only hope Vicky Murray probably wanted to write – that schools should be entirely private and then the salaries of the teachers would suddenly no longer be a political hot-button – is one that we’re likely never to see. I think that’s a shame.\nHistorical Comments Solan (2006-12-09):\nIn one way, it's understandable: If you stand forth as an anarchist, and then make your recommendation, your recommendation will by most people be labelled \"anarchist\" and be automatically discarded unless they happen to agree 99%+ with you.So I guess it's a choice made in the belief that it will give them more \"real power\" and influence. As for old Max, his project wasn't liberty, but ownness. The \"general cause\" of everyman was of interest to him only to the extent that it was a collaboration to further personal interest.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYou make a good point, of course.The irony is that Cato is often seen by the \"left\" as a shill organization for the Republican party, and by the \"right\" as a bunch of drug-addled hippie faggot atheists.I think the day we break free of the false dichotomy of the left-right spectrum will represent a quantum leap forward in the cause of the individual against the state.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/institutional-inertia.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHBO’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.hbo.com/thewire/\"\u003eThe Wire\u003c/a\u003e is an absolutely fantastic show. Written by Ed Burns, a former policeman, the show is, on one level, about a Baltimore homicide detective’s monomaniacal pursuit of the leaders of a heroin cartel. On another level, the show is an exploration of how institutions impact the choices available to the individuals who make them up. Albert Jay Nock, in his essay \u003ca href=\"http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/nock_anarchists_progress.html\"\u003eAnarchist’s Progress\u003c/a\u003e, addressed this topic brilliantly. The message of both Burns and Nock is that people are often forced by circumstance (usually one contrived by the institutions they are a part of) to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do (of course, Max Stirner would justifiably declare these people to be \u0026ldquo;possessed by spooks\u0026rdquo;).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUnfortunately this phenomenon extends beyond the bureaucratic hell that a city government must be. It seems it exists even in what I would imagine would be the least likely of all places for it to be: libertarian think tanks. I personally know several \u003ca href=\"http://www.cato.org\"\u003eCato\u003c/a\u003e staffers, for example, who are staunch anarchists, and yet, apparently from a need for Cato to appear “inside the beltway,” they often put out some seriously milquetoast policy recommendations.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eArizona’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/\"\u003eGoldwater Institute\u003c/a\u003e, also staffed by a few \u003cem\u003eanarchistas\u003c/em\u003e, provides another example. In private conversations with Vicky Murray, she has told me that she thinks school and state should be entirely separate. Yet, in her capacity as Goldwater’s Director of Educational Opportunity, she writes articles like \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/782.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/776.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e. It is understandable that Goldwater would want to pander to their financial base, which consists mostly of traditional conservatives, but it’s disappointing, nonetheless. Does taking a half-assed approach really \u0026ldquo;defend liberty\u0026rdquo;? (I\u0026rsquo;m actually not sure \u003cem\u003ewhat\u003c/em\u003e, if anything, defends liberty nowadays. I am more and more convinced that Stirner is right when he says that all freedom is \u003cem\u003eself \u003c/em\u003eliberation and must be \u003cem\u003etaken\u003c/em\u003e.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAll of these issues were really brought into stark relief for me by \u003ca href=\"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/786.html\"\u003ethe article they published today\u003c/a\u003e, which complains about Arizona’s salary grid for teachers. The article’s author, John Wenders, points to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they “began tying teacher bonuses to students’ Stanford Achievement Test results. In just one year, overall student achievement increased 17 percent, and teachers received bonuses up to $8,600.”\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI can’t believe that the article’s author, an economics professor, cites this literally incredible statistic so unquestioningly. As someone versed in economic theory, Professor Wenders should know better than most that incentives matter. I submit that the amazing 17 percent increase was probably achieved via some combination of cheating (and I specifically mean \u003cem\u003eteacher \u003c/em\u003echeating, not student), “teaching to the test”, statistical anomaly, and perhaps a small amount of legitimately better teaching.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI think that, in publishing this article, Goldwater does a disservice to themselves \u003cem\u003eand\u003c/em\u003e the cause of liberty. Unfortunately, the article that \u003cem\u003eshould\u003c/em\u003e have been written, and the article that I can only hope Vicky Murray probably wanted to write – that schools should be entirely private and then the salaries of the teachers would suddenly no longer be a political hot-button – is one that we’re likely never to see. I think that’s a shame.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Institutional Inertia"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll be speaking next week at Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Computer Security Awareness Week\u0026rdquo; on the above topic. My talk is on Wednesday, November 2 at 11 a.m. at the Polytechnic Campus in Union Ballroom C, and will be followed by Erik Graham of General Dynamics speaking on Wireless Security. I\u0026rsquo;ve been told to be as technically detailed as I like, though I think this is a problem which is in greater need of having its economic aspects addressed, in order to drive the implementation of the existing technical solutions. Bruce Schneier has suggested that ISPs need to be held liable for malicious traffic they originate; I\u0026rsquo;d amend that to say that they should be held liable to the extent there are commercially reasonable measures to prevent, detect, and respond to such traffic and they don\u0026rsquo;t do it. I agree with Schneier that the ISPs whose end users have compromised machines are in the best position to address the problems those compromised machines create\u0026ndash;along with the manufacturers of the operating systems they run.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI wish I could be there to see it! Sounds like an interesting topic.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nMy presentation has been put online here: http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/2005/ppt/Defending_Against_Botnets_Presentation_Lippard.ppt\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nStreaming audio and video of my presentation should be on the ASU site by tomorrow.Unfortunately, the audience was quite small. ASU's Polytechnic Campus is way out east of Phoenix, on the former Williams Air Force Base which ASU purchased and turned into its east campus. It doesn't appear that it has a very large student population yet. I was amused that the streets are named after military figures. To get to the Student Union I drove on a street called Twining, named after General Nathan Twining. Twining is a name well-known to UFO enthusiasts, as his name was used on one of the forged \"MJ-12\" documents known as the Cutler-Twining memo, and also authored a genuine document that discusses UFOs (and is often misinterpreted by UFO advocates as claiming that crashed saucers have been recovered).My talk was followed by a talk on Wireless Security by Erik Graham of General Dynamics, which covered threats and defenses for 802.11 and Bluetooth.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/defending-against-botnets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/2005/lippard.htm\"\u003espeaking next week\u003c/a\u003e at Arizona State University\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.asu.edu/security/aware/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Computer Security Awareness Week\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e on the above topic.  My talk is on Wednesday, November 2 at 11 a.m. at the Polytechnic Campus in Union Ballroom C, and will be followed by Erik Graham of General Dynamics speaking on Wireless Security.  I\u0026rsquo;ve been told to be as technically detailed as I like, though I think this is a problem which is in greater need of having its economic aspects addressed, in order to drive the implementation of the existing technical solutions.  Bruce Schneier \u003ca href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/19/schneier_talks_law/\"\u003ehas suggested that ISPs need to be held liable\u003c/a\u003e for malicious traffic they originate; I\u0026rsquo;d amend that to say that they should be held liable to the extent there are commercially reasonable measures to prevent, detect, and respond to such traffic and they don\u0026rsquo;t do it.  I agree with Schneier that the ISPs whose end users have compromised machines are in the best position to address the problems those compromised machines create\u0026ndash;along with the manufacturers of the operating systems they run.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Defending Against Botnets"},{"content":"Here it is, less than eight hours into Max\u0026rsquo;s 199th and I\u0026rsquo;m already crowding it out. I\u0026rsquo;m sure Max doesn\u0026rsquo;t mind.\nIf this blog had categories then this item would be filed in \u0026ldquo;WTF?\u0026quot;\nI was pre-pubescent when Star Trek I came out, so I guess I was oblivious to the male camel toe fashion trend that seems to have been in full swing (if you\u0026rsquo;ll pardon the pun) at the time.\nThat shocking image is courtesy the ladies over at Look At His Butt!, who swear that, as you might have hesitatingly concluded, that is a wet spot that Spock is sporting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/i-am-speechless.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere it is, less than eight hours into \u003ca href=\"/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html\"\u003eMax\u0026rsquo;s 199th\u003c/a\u003e and I\u0026rsquo;m already crowding it out. I\u0026rsquo;m sure Max doesn\u0026rsquo;t mind.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf this blog had categories then this item would be filed in \u0026ldquo;WTF?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI was pre-pubescent when Star Trek I came out, so I guess I was oblivious to the \u003ca href=\"http://troubledscience.com/images/groinville.jpg\"\u003emale camel toe\u003c/a\u003e fashion trend that seems to have been in full swing (if you\u0026rsquo;ll pardon the pun) at the time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThat shocking image is courtesy the ladies over at \u003ca href=\"http://lookathisbutt.blogspot.com/\"\u003eLook At His Butt!\u003c/a\u003e, who swear that, as you might have hesitatingly concluded, that \u003cem\u003eis \u003c/em\u003ea wet spot that Spock is sporting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I Am Speechless"},{"content":"What distinguishes a religious belief from, well, a non­-religious belief?\nIs it belief in a god or gods? Belief in the super-natural? It seems to be something more than these things.\nAside from the usual suspects, examples of \u0026ldquo;religions\u0026rdquo; having a more secular flavor are legion. It isn\u0026rsquo;t just the Christians who are screaming \u0026ldquo;The end is Nigh!\u0026rdquo; Witness those who believe in an impending technological singularity. Or those who think future technologies will be able to give us the naturalist\u0026rsquo;s equivalent of an afterlife. Or those who think we\u0026rsquo;re about to run out of oil. Or that our carbon emissions are causing global warming (for why I think that\u0026rsquo;s bullshit, go here). Or that our very existence is causing mass extinctions (okay, maybe that one is supported by the evidence - just maybe).\nAnd those are just the millennialists and chicken littles (and only a sample, at that)! Other \u0026ldquo;secular\u0026rdquo; beliefs that I think fall under the \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; umbrella include SETI, Communism, Objectivism, natural rights theory\u0026hellip;\nThere must be something deep in the human psyche that compels us to believe that we - meaning \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; as a species, or \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; as people living here, now - are somehow special, somehow chosen; that we have meaning; that we have import or intrinsic value, for those would appear to be some of the characteristics of the beliefs I mentioned. Another - perhaps more important - characteristic is that these beliefs are (generally) couched in terms that are not falsifiable, and hence rest ultimately on the basis of faith.\nGiven this apparently fundamental need to believe (i.e., \u0026ldquo;have faith\u0026rdquo;) in something, it\u0026rsquo;s not surprising that Max Stirner, born Johann Caspar Schmidt on October 25th, 1806, in Bayreuth, Germany, is all but forgotten.\nA worthy introduction to Stirner and his thought is well beyond the scope of what I can present here. Wikipedia has a decent introductory essay about him, along with an excellent set of links to further reading (this one in particular I like!), and Svein Olav Nyberg\u0026rsquo;s pages are comprehensive and indispensable.\nFor even more depth, I recommend as a starting point that you read the book Individuality and the Social Organism. Follow that link and you\u0026rsquo;ll no doubt see my review of it, as well as my Listmania List of other Stirner-related books.\nI will save a longer discussion of Stirner\u0026rsquo;s ideas and influence for a later date (After all, I will need something new to say on his bicentennial) and confine myself in this post to touching on just one reason I think he is worth retrieving from the dustbin of history: his attack on \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; thinking of all stripes.\nMan, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons you. You have a fixed idea!With this thought, Stirner begins his attack upon an idea proposed by his friend and contemporary, Feuerbach, in his book The Essence of Christianity. Feuerbach\u0026rsquo;s thesis was that all of the Christian notions of the \u0026ldquo;divine\u0026rdquo; rightfully belonged in the concept of Man. Stirner\u0026rsquo;s counter (and, as it turned out, death-blow) was that this was simply a change of masters, and he would have none of it.\nHistory seeks for man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine, first as God, then as man (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one [einzige].\nStirner cautioned that such an abstraction of \u0026ldquo;essences\u0026rdquo; was identical to religion, in spite of Feuerbach\u0026rsquo;s attempt to eliminate God from the equation.\nWith the strength of despair Feuerbach clutches at the total substance of Christianity, not to throw it away, no, to drag it to himself, to draw it, the long-yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a last effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a clutch of the uttermost dispair, a clutch for life or death, and is it not at the same time the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world?\nSo, Stirner was interested in freeing himself from all instances of dogmatic (i.e., religious) belief, and his book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum can be seen as an exploration and casting off of these \u0026ldquo;fixed ideas,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;spooks,\u0026rdquo; as he called them, one by one.\nWhether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, or whatnot, or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man - both these are one and the same \u0026ldquo;fixed idea\u0026rdquo;.\n\u0026hellip;\nWhen I have degraded [the fixed idea] to a spook and its control over me to a cranky notion, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I use it, as one uses nature at pleasure without scruple.\n\u0026hellip;\nHere would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review\u0026hellip; Sacred above all is the \u0026ldquo;Holy Spirit\u0026rdquo;, sacred the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, and so on.\nStirner\u0026rsquo;s message is ultimately one of profound empowerment and self-liberation, in spite of the charge of some that it is the pinnacle of \u0026ldquo;estrangement,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;desolation,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;nihilism.\u0026rdquo; Admittedly, it is few indeed who are willing to follow Stirner all the way along his path. What Stirner does, though, like all skeptics worth their mettle do, is make you fight hard for the spooks you want to keep. For some, I guess, the belief in the Easter bunny is too precious a thing to give up.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nHubert Kennedy, who recently completed an English translation of John Henry Mackay's biography of Stirner, has also translated Mackay's 1927 introduction to The Ego and Its Own.At 7 pages, it serves as an excellent summary for Mackay's larger work, and perhaps the best available introduction to Stirner himself. It's available in PDF format here:http://home.pacbell.net/hubertk/Einzige-Intro.pdf\nSolan (2006-12-09):\nHappy Birthday, Max!\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nDamn, that's some heady stuff, but good nonetheless. I'll have to check out striner's work sometime. As an agnostic, I don't have too much of a problem with Christians, or any religious type who has thoroughly examined their percepton of \"faith\".It's the millions of blind followers who scare me. As for other staunch beliefs or practices being loosely classified as religious, I believe that as individuals we pick and choose what is most important to us. Sometimes our personal views and practices are shaped by sociologically formed emotional responses. Sometimes they're shaped by more thorough examination an investigation into a matter that captures our interrest.My only beef with atheism is that,in my opinion, it's really just a concept sitting on the opposite end of the coin.What do we really know in our relatively brief stint as human beings on this planet. In the context of natural history, we're really just walking out of our caves and squinting at the sun and trying ever so hard to define ourselves as individuals and as a whole. There are those not willing to give up the easter bunny simply because of the false sense of security it gives them. These are some of the most insecure and frightening people on the planet.These are the people who are so insecure about their faith they partake in wars to force it on others wo don't see things the same. There are the minority of believers though who know better than that and have a much deeper understanding of where their head or \"soul\" is at. I think the Dali Lama is a prime example of this. The recent interview with bono (headlined in the current Rolling Stone) is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a Christian who is very skeptical of the church and of the Evangelicals and taking the scriptures into literal context. Should any of these people be scorned then for their faith just as many a Christian or Muslim might scorn agnostics or atheists for not seeing things their way? Honestly, a lot of these brainiacs couls go on and on and theorize the existence or nonexistence of a \"higher being\",and not to dismiss or discourage intelligent examination into these matters, but in the end we run in circles. The truth is,we really need to step off our high-minded platforms from both ends of the spectrum and and admit to ourselves that we really don't know didley-squat. The big question is, how can we rise above or egos and pride and enable ourselves to coexist?\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI became a U2 fan when I paid closer attention to his lyrics on The Joshua Tree and I saw a man grappling with his faith. Obviously his faith wins out, but I find it interesting nonetheless. Questions and soul searches are always good.People who claim certain knowledge - i.e., who have a \"fixed idea\", a \"spook\", a \"dogma\", an \"ideology\" (Marx's favorite word) - about anything, be it God, morality, political systems, or good music, are creepy, especially when they are willing to kill or die in thrall to those ideas.Steve, to me it sounds like you, I, and Stirner are in substantial agreement about most things. We're just using different words for it. If you want to call me an agnostic because I won't categorically say \"There is no god\", then that's fine with me. I've been called worse!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAnother bono lyric that resonates with me and probably would with Stirner as well:And I have no compassAnd I have no mapAnd I have no reasons- No reasons to get backAnd I have no religionAnd I don't know what's whatAnd I don't know the limit- The limit of what we got\nsteve (2006-12-09):\nexactly! great song and album (zooropa)--one of bono's personal favorites and a nonfave amongst many (clueless) fans.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nA post that dovetails nicely with the theme of this post:http://www.huge-entity.com/2005/12/trans-human-trans-nonsense.html\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAnd David Friedman weighs in (though I wonder if anyone besides you and I, Jim, will read this comment here, lol).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/happy-199th-max.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat distinguishes a religious belief from, well, a \u003cem\u003enon\u003c/em\u003e­-religious belief?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIs it belief in a god or gods? Belief in the super-natural? It seems to be something more than these things.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAside from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.discovery.org/\"\u003eusual\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.catholic.org/\"\u003esuspects\u003c/a\u003e, examples of \u0026ldquo;religions\u0026rdquo; having a more \u003cem\u003esecular\u003c/em\u003e flavor are legion. It isn\u0026rsquo;t just the Christians who are screaming \u0026ldquo;The end is Nigh!\u0026rdquo; Witness those who believe in an \u003ca href=\"http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1\"\u003eimpending\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://accelerating.org/\"\u003etechnological\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.accelerationwatch.com/\"\u003esingularity\u003c/a\u003e. Or \u003ca href=\"http://www.alcor.org/\"\u003ethose\u003c/a\u003e who think future technologies will be able to give us the naturalist\u0026rsquo;s equivalent of an afterlife. Or those who think we\u0026rsquo;re about to \u003ca href=\"http://www.peakoil.net/PeakOilSites.html\"\u003erun out of oil\u003c/a\u003e. Or that our carbon emissions are causing \u003ca href=\"http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=197\"\u003eglobal warming\u003c/a\u003e (for why I think that\u0026rsquo;s bullshit, go \u003ca href=\"http://parliamentofthings.info/climate.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e). Or that our very existence is causing \u003ca href=\"http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html\"\u003emass extinctions\u003c/a\u003e (okay, maybe \u003cem\u003ethat \u003c/em\u003eone is supported by the evidence - \u003ca href=\"http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01zp.html\"\u003ejust maybe\u003c/a\u003e).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd those are just the millennialists and chicken littles (and only a sample, at that)! Other \u0026ldquo;secular\u0026rdquo; beliefs that I think fall under the \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; umbrella include \u003ca href=\"http://www.seti.org\"\u003eSETI\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism\"\u003eCommunism\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.aynrand.org\"\u003eObjectivism\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.zetetics.com/mac/natlaw.htm\"\u003enatural rights theory\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere must be something deep in the human psyche that compels us to believe that we - meaning \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; as a species, or \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rdquo; as people living here, now - are somehow special, somehow \u003cem\u003echosen\u003c/em\u003e; that we have \u003cem\u003emeaning\u003c/em\u003e; that we have \u003cem\u003eimport\u003c/em\u003e or \u003cem\u003eintrinsic value, \u003c/em\u003efor those would appear to be some of the characteristics of the beliefs I mentioned. Another - perhaps more important - characteristic is that these beliefs are (generally) couched in terms that are not falsifiable, and hence rest ultimately on the basis of faith.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGiven this apparently fundamental need to believe (i.e., \u0026ldquo;have faith\u0026rdquo;) in \u003cem\u003esomething\u003c/em\u003e, it\u0026rsquo;s not surprising that \u003cstrong\u003eMax Stirner\u003c/strong\u003e, born Johann Caspar Schmidt on October 25th, 1806, in Bayreuth, Germany, is all but forgotten.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eA worthy introduction to Stirner and his thought is well beyond the scope of what I can present here. \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner\"\u003eWikipedia\u003c/a\u003e has a decent introductory essay about him, along with an excellent set of links to further reading (\u003ca href=\"http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/eninnuce.html\"\u003ethis one\u003c/a\u003e in particular I like!), and \u003ca href=\"http://www.livejournal.com/users/fractaltime/\"\u003eSvein\u003c/a\u003e Olav \u003ca href=\"http://www.nonserviam.com/solan/\"\u003eNyberg\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nonserviam.com/stirner/\"\u003epages\u003c/a\u003e are comprehensive and indispensable.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eFor even more depth, I recommend as a starting point that you read the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0877002398\"\u003eIndividuality and the Social Organism\u003c/a\u003e. Follow that link and you\u0026rsquo;ll no doubt see my review of it, as well as my \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/3SYTRLK4ULV6L/ref=cm_lm_detail_ctr_full_1/104-4216013-2577562\"\u003eListmania List\u003c/a\u003e of other Stirner-related books.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI will save a longer discussion of Stirner\u0026rsquo;s ideas and influence for a later date (After all, I will need something new to say on his bicentennial) and confine myself in this post to touching on just one reason I think he is worth retrieving from the dustbin of history: his attack on \u0026ldquo;religious\u0026rdquo; thinking of all stripes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003eMan, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons you. You have a fixed idea!\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eWith this thought, Stirner begins his attack upon an idea proposed by his friend and contemporary, Feuerbach, in his book \u003cem\u003eThe Essence of Christianity\u003c/em\u003e. Feuerbach\u0026rsquo;s thesis was that all of the Christian notions of the \u0026ldquo;divine\u0026rdquo; rightfully belonged in the concept of \u003cem\u003eMan\u003c/em\u003e. Stirner\u0026rsquo;s counter (and, as it turned out, death-blow) was that this was simply a change of masters, and he would have none of it.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003eHistory seeks for \u003cem\u003eman\u003c/em\u003e: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious \u003cem\u003eessence\u003c/em\u003e, as the divine, first as \u003cem\u003eGod\u003c/em\u003e, then as \u003cem\u003eman\u003c/em\u003e (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one [einzige].\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eStirner cautioned that such an abstraction of \u0026ldquo;essences\u0026rdquo; was identical to religion, in spite of Feuerbach\u0026rsquo;s attempt to eliminate God from the equation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003eWith the strength of \u003cem\u003edespair\u003c/em\u003e Feuerbach clutches at the total substance of Christianity, not to throw it away, no, to drag it to himself, to draw it, the long-yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a last effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a clutch of the uttermost dispair, a clutch for life or death, and is it not at the same time the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy 199th, Max!"},{"content":"I guess you\u0026rsquo;d call them \u0026ldquo;scripture kiddies.\u0026rdquo; Their projects include transliterating the Bible into \u0026ldquo;leet\u0026rdquo; and praying for spammers. Their website is here.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\n7h053 p30p13 r f)(/\u003c1ng VV@(/\u003c0z.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIn related news, there's a Jesux Linux distribution...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/christian-hackers-association.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI guess you\u0026rsquo;d call them \u0026ldquo;scripture kiddies.\u0026rdquo;  Their projects include transliterating the Bible into \u0026ldquo;leet\u0026rdquo; and praying for spammers.  Their website is \u003ca href=\"http://www.christianhacker.org/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003e7h053 p30p13 r f)(/\u003c1ng VV@(/\u003c0z.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIn related news, there's a \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/4081/\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003eJesux\u003c/A\u003e Linux distribution...\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e","title":"Christian Hackers' Association"},{"content":"In another sign that the housing bubble is near an end, Tom Barrack is selling off his U.S. real estate holdings.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/top-real-estate-investor-sells-us.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn another sign that the housing bubble is near an end, \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/21/news/newsmakers/barrack/index.htm?cnn=yes\"\u003eTom Barrack is selling off his U.S. real estate holdings\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Top real-estate investor sells U.S. holdings"},{"content":"Via Wiley Wiggins\u0026rsquo; blog, here\u0026rsquo;s a Belgian anti-war PSA in which the Smurf village gets bombed.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThey had it coming.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/unicef-bombs-smurfs.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eVia \u003ca href=\"http://wileywiggins.blogspot.com/2005/10/unicef-bombs-smurfs.html\"\u003eWiley Wiggins\u0026rsquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/unicef_smurfs_video\"\u003eBelgian anti-war PSA\u003c/a\u003e in which the Smurf village gets bombed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThey had it coming.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Unicef bombs the Smurfs"},{"content":"Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a video available from Google\u0026rsquo;s experimental video search, that features Kirk Cameron of \u0026ldquo;Growing Pains\u0026rdquo; arguing against atheism and evolution. The most entertaining argument in the video is the argument that the banana was clearly intelligently designed. Troy Britain quotes a more extensive list of banana features (several of which are used in this video):\nThe banana—the atheist\u0026rsquo;s nightmare. Note that the banana:\n1. Is shaped for human hand\n2. Has non-slip surface\n3. Has outward indicators of inward content: Green—too early,Yellow—just right, Black—too late.\n4. Has a tab for removal of wrapper\n5. Is perforated on wrapper\n6. Bio-degradable wrapper\n7. Is shaped for human mouth\n8. Has a point at top for ease of entry\n9. Is pleasing to taste buds\n10. Is curved towards the face to make eating process easy\nTo say that the banana happened by accident is even more unintelligent than to say that no one designed the Coca Cola can.\nTroy\u0026rsquo;s rebuttal: OK, now explain the pineapple.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s also some amusing commentary on coconuts.\nFor more on Cavendish bananas (the particular variety Americans are familiar with), see this Popular Science article. They are seedless, sterile plants that are all clones of each other, and the variety familiar to us was, in fact, the product of human intervention (artificial selection).\nThe video is filled with the usual nonsense and misrepresentations\u0026ndash;Darwin is quoted out-of-context about the eye, it\u0026rsquo;s falsely claimed that Einstein wasn\u0026rsquo;t an atheist, fails to recognize the differences between human artifacts and self-reproducing biological organisms, etc.\nUPDATE (May 12, 2008): A 1954 letter from Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind says:\nThe word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.\n\u0026hellip;\nFor me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything \u0026lsquo;chosen\u0026rsquo; about them.\nUPDATE (June 25, 2008): Ray Comfort concedes that the banana argument is not a good one.\nUPDATE (July 11, 2009): Ray Comfort has apologized for the bad argument, but is still completely clueless. Adding the Coke can back to the example doesn\u0026rsquo;t improve the argument at all.\nHistorical Comments Wiley (2006-12-09):\nI wonder if Kirk Cameron was able to pass high-school biology. Somehow I doubt it.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/kirk-cameron-on-evolution-hes-against.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/mike_seaver_on_evolution.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e points out a \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5479410612081345878\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e available from Google\u0026rsquo;s experimental video search, that features Kirk Cameron of \u0026ldquo;Growing Pains\u0026rdquo; arguing against atheism and evolution. The most entertaining argument in the video is the argument that the banana was clearly intelligently designed. Troy Britain quotes a more extensive list of banana features (several of which are used in this video):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe banana—the atheist\u0026rsquo;s nightmare.\u003c/b\u003e  \u003cp\u003eNote that the banana:\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e1. Is shaped for human hand\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kirk Cameron on Evolution (he's against it)"},{"content":"In the Dover trial, Behe was questioned at some length about what was demonstrated in the paper he co-authored with David Snoke, \u0026ldquo;Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues,\u0026rdquo; which the Discovery Institute lists as a peer-reviewed journal article supporting intelligent design.\nAt the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, Ed Brayton quotes a long section from Behe\u0026rsquo;s cross-examination about this paper about what it actually demonstrates. It has been represented as demonstrating that a particular kind of irreducibly complex system cannot evolve. What it actually shows is something rather different. As Ed puts it:\nYet what does he admit under oath that his own study actually says? It says that IF you assume a population of bacteria on the entire earth that is 7 orders of magnitude less than the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil\u0026hellip;and IF you assume that it undergoes only point mutations\u0026hellip;and IF you rule out recombination, transposition, insertion/deletion, frame shift mutations and all of the other documented sources of mutation and genetic variation\u0026hellip;and IF you assume that none of the intermediate steps would serve any function that might help them be preserved\u0026hellip;THEN it would take 20,000 years (or 1/195,000th of the time bacteria have been on the earth) for a new complex trait requiring multiple interacting mutations - the very definition of an irreducibly complex system according to Behe - to develop and be fixed in a population.\nIn other words, even under the most absurd and other-worldly assumptions to make it as hard as possible, even while ruling out the most powerful sources of genetic variation, an irreducibly complex new trait requiring multiple unselected mutations can evolve within 20,000 years. And if you use more realistic population figures, in considerably less time than that. It sounds to me like this is a heck of an argument against irreducible complexity, not for it.The full exchange quoted at Dispatches is worth reading, and more commentary can be found at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb, where John Timmer points out that\nBased on the math presented there [in Behe \u0026amp; Snoke], it appears that this sort of mutation combination could arise about 10^14 times a year, or something like 100 trillion times a year.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/michael-behe-disproves-irreducible.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the Dover trial, Behe was questioned at some length about what was demonstrated in the paper he co-authored with David Snoke, \u0026ldquo;Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues,\u0026rdquo; which the Discovery Institute lists as a peer-reviewed journal article supporting intelligent design.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAt the \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/behe_disproves_irreducible_com.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars blog\u003c/a\u003e, Ed Brayton quotes a long section from Behe\u0026rsquo;s cross-examination about this paper about what it actually demonstrates. It has been represented as demonstrating that a particular kind of irreducibly complex system cannot evolve. What it actually shows is something rather different. As Ed puts it:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eYet what does he admit under oath that his own study actually says? It says that IF you assume a population of bacteria on the entire earth that is 7 orders of magnitude less than the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil\u0026hellip;and IF you assume that it undergoes only point mutations\u0026hellip;and IF you rule out recombination, transposition, insertion/deletion, frame shift mutations and all of the other documented sources of mutation and genetic variation\u0026hellip;and IF you assume that none of the intermediate steps would serve any function that might help them be preserved\u0026hellip;THEN it would take 20,000 years (or 1/195,000th of the time bacteria have been on the earth) for a new complex trait requiring multiple interacting mutations - the very definition of an irreducibly complex system according to Behe - to develop and be fixed in a population.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn other words, even under the most absurd and other-worldly assumptions to make it as hard as possible, even while ruling out the most powerful sources of genetic variation, an irreducibly complex new trait requiring multiple unselected mutations can evolve within 20,000 years. And if you use more realistic population figures, in considerably less time than that. It sounds to me like this is a heck of an argument \u003ci\u003eagainst\u003c/i\u003e irreducible complexity, not for it.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe full exchange quoted at Dispatches is worth reading, and more commentary can be found at\u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/10/behe_disproves.html\"\u003e The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e, where John Timmer points out that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBased on the math presented there [in Behe \u0026amp; Snoke], it appears that this sort of mutation combination could arise about 10^14 times a year, or something like 100 trillion times a year.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Michael Behe Disproves Irreducible Complexity"},{"content":"Speaking of old science fiction movies, there\u0026rsquo;s a cool toy available from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, if you have a spare $50K.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nWhy not save up and get two so that you can wear one as a costume at Halloween?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/cool-toy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpeaking of old science fiction movies, there\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://www.hammacher.com/publish/10921.asp#\"\u003ecool toy available from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog\u003c/a\u003e, if you have a spare $50K.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWhy not save up and get two so that you can wear one as a costume at Halloween?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Cool toy"},{"content":"American Express has filed a lawsuit against Savvis CEO Robert A. McCormick for his failure to pay a $241,000 credit card bill full of charges from the strip club Scores in October 2003, where he was present with \u0026ldquo;at least three other men.\u0026quot;\nI remember hearing stories of similar activity by sales executives at Genuity before the dot-com bust (no pun intended).\nSavvis\u0026rsquo; deputy general counsel says that he disputed the charges with AmEx and that they believe he was the victim of fraud by Scores.\nThis is apparently the third such lawsuit from AmEx involving disputed Scores bills (the other two were for $28,000 and $129,000). Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover says that high rollers who visit the \u0026ldquo;super elite President\u0026rsquo;s Club\u0026rdquo; at Scores often spend thousands of dollars on single bottles of champagne and give strippers tips as large as $10,000. Sounds like a clip joint to me.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/amex-sues-savvis-ceo-for-nonpayment-of.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmerican Express has filed a lawsuit against Savvis CEO Robert A. McCormick for his \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/21/topless.tab.ap/index.html\"\u003efailure to pay a $241,000 credit card bill\u003c/a\u003e full of charges from the strip club Scores in October 2003, where he was present with \u0026ldquo;at least three other men.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI remember hearing stories of similar activity by sales executives at Genuity before the dot-com bust (no pun intended).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSavvis\u0026rsquo; deputy general counsel says that he disputed the charges with AmEx and that they believe he was the victim of fraud by Scores.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is apparently the third such lawsuit from AmEx involving disputed Scores bills (the other two were for $28,000 and $129,000).  Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover says that high rollers who visit the \u0026ldquo;super elite President\u0026rsquo;s Club\u0026rdquo; at Scores often spend thousands of dollars on single bottles of champagne and give strippers tips as large as $10,000.  Sounds like a clip joint to me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AmEx sues Savvis CEO for nonpayment of strip club tab"},{"content":"I just had to weigh in on the Maggie Gallagher post at Volokh. She\u0026rsquo;s a wacko.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIt appears that she needs to read Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/sanctity-of-marriage.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just had to weigh in on the \u003ca href=\"http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129906061\"\u003eMaggie Gallagher\u003c/a\u003e post at Volokh.  She\u0026rsquo;s a wacko.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eIt appears that she needs to read Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e","title":"The Sanctity of Marriage"},{"content":"A Nigerian actor/musician/comedian has made a song and music video about 419 scams. The chorus is \u0026ldquo;Oyinbo man, I go chop your dollar, I take your money and disappear, 419 is just a game, you are the loser, I am the winner.\u0026quot;\nAs this site complains (along with the next link), the video does nothing to raise confidence in Nigeria. The song is popular in Cameroon, and is apparently based on a tract authored by Nkem Owoh.\nUPDATE (December 10, 2009): Nkem Owoh was recently kidnapped while driving down the highway in eastern Nigeria, and the original ransom was 15 million naira ($99,000), but allegedly reduced to 1.4 million naira and his car. (Source: \u0026ldquo;Go for the locals,\u0026quot; The Economist, November 28-December 4, 2009, p. 56.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\n\"I go chop your dollar\" does have a nice ring to it. You have to admit.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe full lyrics can be found here:http://videos.antville.org/stories/1241274/\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAfter reading the lyrics I guess I was expecting something more gangsta-rappish. Instead it's a happy-go-lucky African pop tune. You almost don't mind that he's gonna chop your dollar.\ndavid (2006-12-09):\ni'm nigerian and i never heard this song until today? what a shame. Way to go Nkem Owoh, nice song but pls scammers give us a good name for once!!! We are tired of having our name pop up on international TV as scam artists!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/nkem-owohs-i-go-chop-your-dollar.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Nigerian actor/musician/comedian has made a \u003ca href=\"http://www.tlcafrica.com/I_go_chop_your_dollar1.mov\"\u003esong and music video\u003c/a\u003e about 419 scams. The chorus is \u0026ldquo;Oyinbo man, I go chop your dollar, I take your money and disappear, 419 is just a game, you are the loser, I am the winner.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"http://nm.onlinenigeria.com/templates/?a=3224\u0026amp;z=12\"\u003ethis site\u003c/a\u003e complains (along with the next link), the video does nothing to raise confidence in Nigeria.  The song is \u003ca href=\"http://www.postnewsline.com/2005/07/observations_up.html\"\u003epopular in Cameroon\u003c/a\u003e, and is apparently based on a tract authored by Nkem Owoh.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 10, 2009):  Nkem Owoh was recently kidnapped while driving down the highway in eastern Nigeria, and the original ransom was 15 million naira ($99,000), but allegedly reduced to 1.4 million naira and his car.  (Source: \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14984882\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Go for the locals,\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/span\u003e, November 28-December 4, 2009, p. 56.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nkem Owoh's \"I Go Chop Your Dollar\""},{"content":"This exchange occurred during Behe\u0026rsquo;s cross examination:\nQ But you actually were a critical reviewer of Pandas, correct; that’s what it says in the acknowledgments page of the book?\nA that’s what it lists there, but that does not mean that I critically reviewed the whole book and commented on it in detail, yes.\nQ What did you review and comment on, Professor Behe?\nA I reviewed the literature concerning blood clotting, and worked with the editor on the section that became the blood clotting system. So I was principally responsible for that section.\nQ So you were reviewing your own work?\nA I was helping review or helping edit or helping write the section on blood clotting.\nQ Which was your own contribution?\nA that’s — yes, that’s correct.\nQ that’s not typically how the term “critical review” is used; would you agree with that?\nA Yeah, that’s correct.\nQ So when the publishers of Pandas indicate that you were a critical reviewer of Pandas, that’s somewhat misleading, isn’t it?\nMR. MUISE: Objection. Assumes that he understands what their purpose for listing him as a critical reviewer.\nTHE COURT: He just answered the question that that’s not a critical review, so the objection is overruled. You can ask that question.\nBY MR. ROTHSCHILD:\nQ Advertising you as a critical reviewer of this book is misleading to the students, isn’t it?\nMR. MUISE: Objection, that’s argumentative.\nTHE COURT: it’s cross examination. it’s appropriate cross. Overruled.\nTHE WITNESS: I m sorry, could you repeat the question?\nBY MR. ROTHSCHILD:\nQ Telling the readers of Pandas that you were a critical reviewer of that book is misleading, isn’t it?\nA I disagree. As I said, that’s not the typical way that the term “critical reviewer” is used, but nonetheless, in my opinion I don’t think it is misleading.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThat's some funny stuff.What a maroon!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/more-on-behe-and-review.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis exchange occurred during Behe\u0026rsquo;s cross examination:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote class=\"kw_quote\"\u003e  \u003cp\u003eQ But you actually were a critical  reviewer of Pandas, correct; that’s what it says in the acknowledgments page of the book?\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eA that’s what it lists there, but that does not mean that I critically reviewed the whole book and commented on it in detail, yes.\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eQ What did you review and comment on, Professor Behe?\u003c/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eA I reviewed the literature concerning blood clotting, and worked with the editor on the section that became the blood clotting system. So I was principally responsible for that section.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on Behe and \"review\""},{"content":"Watch as a pink dot moves around a circle of pink dots, then becomes a green dot and the other pink dots disappear\u0026hellip;\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nOh yeah, there's an intelligent designer, all right!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/nice-optical-illusion.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatch as a \u003ca href=\"http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html\"\u003epink dot moves\u003c/a\u003e around a circle of pink dots, then becomes a green dot and the other pink dots disappear\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOh yeah, there's an intelligent designer, all right!\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"Nice optical illusion"},{"content":"In the Dover intelligent design trial, expert witness for the defense Michael Behe, author of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box, testified that his book received rigorous peer review\u0026ndash;more rigorous than a paper in a scientific journal:\nAt the same time, Behe agreed, when asked by plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s counsel Eric Rothschild if the \u0026ldquo;peer review for Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box was analogous to peer review in the [scientific] literature.\u0026rdquo; It was, according to Behe, even more rigorous. There were more than twice standard the number of reviewers and \u0026ldquo;they read [the book] more carefully\u0026hellip; because this was a controversial topic.\u0026quot;\nIt turns out that the deciding factor in the book\u0026rsquo;s being published came from the rigorous peer review of Dr. Michael Atchison of the University of Pennsylvania, who has described his involvement:\n\u0026hellip;I received a phone call from the publisher in New York. We spent approximately 10 minutes on the phone. After hearing a description of the work, I suggested that the editor should seriously consider publishing the manuscript. I told him that the origin of life issue was still up in the air. It sounded like this Behe fellow might have some good ideas, although I could not be certain since I had never seen the manuscript. We hung up and I never thought about it again. At least until two years later. [\u0026hellip;]\nIn November 1998, I finally met Michael Behe when he visited Penn for a Faculty Outreach talk. He told me that yes, indeed, it was his book that the publisher called me about. In fact, he said my comments were the deciding factor in convincing the publisher to go ahead with the book.The key reviewer, whose comments were the determining factor in the publication of the book, spent ten minutes on the telephone with the publisher, whose wife was a student in one of his classes, and he never saw the book itself until after it was published.\nEd Brayton and John Lynch give more detail and comment.\nThere were four other reviewers: Robert Shapiro (prof. of chemistry, NYU, author of Origins: A Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth), K. John Morrow (formerly at Texas Tech University Health Sciences, published critic of Dembski and Behe), a forgotten Washington University biochemist, and another whom Behe has completely forgotten. Perhaps they gave it a more rigorous review than Atchison, who didn\u0026rsquo;t actually review it at all.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDid any of this crap come to light during testimony?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nYes--the plaintiff's attorneys submitted Atchison's published article about his role in \"reviewing\" into evidence to show that Behe's citation of Atchison as a \"reviewer\" was bogus.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/intelligent-design-and-rigorous-peer.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the Dover intelligent design trial, expert witness for the defense Michael Behe, author of Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box, testified that his book received rigorous peer review\u0026ndash;\u003ca href=\"http://aclupa.blogspot.com/2005/10/all-part-of-scientific-process-part-1.html\"\u003emore rigorous than a paper in a scientific journal\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eAt the same time, Behe agreed, when asked by plaintiff\u0026rsquo;s counsel Eric Rothschild if the \u0026ldquo;peer review for Darwin\u0026rsquo;s Black Box was analogous to peer review in the [scientific] literature.\u0026rdquo; It was, according to Behe, even more rigorous. There were more than twice standard the number of reviewers and \u0026ldquo;they read [the book] more carefully\u0026hellip; because this was a controversial topic.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt turns out that the deciding factor in the book\u0026rsquo;s being published came from the rigorous peer review of Dr. Michael Atchison of the University of Pennsylvania, who has \u003ca href=\"http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9902/atchison.html\"\u003edescribed his involvement\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026hellip;I received a phone call from the publisher in New York. We spent approximately 10 minutes on the phone. After hearing a description of the work, I suggested that the editor should seriously consider publishing the manuscript. I told him that the origin of life issue was still up in the air. It sounded like this Behe fellow might have some good ideas, although\u003cem\u003e I could not be certain since I had never seen the manuscript\u003c/em\u003e. We hung up and I never thought about it again. At least until two years later. [\u0026hellip;]\u003cbr /\u003e \u003cbr /\u003eIn November 1998, I finally met Michael Behe when he visited Penn for a Faculty Outreach talk. He told me that yes, indeed, it was his book that the publisher called me about. In fact, he said \u003ci\u003emy comments were the deciding factor in convincing the publisher to go ahead with the book\u003c/i\u003e.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe key reviewer, whose comments were the determining factor in the publication of the book, spent ten minutes on the telephone with the publisher, whose wife was a student in one of his classes, and he never saw the book itself until after it was published.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/id_books_and_peer_review.php\"\u003eEd Brayton\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/?p=564\"\u003eJohn Lynch\u003c/a\u003e give more detail and comment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThere were four other reviewers:  Robert Shapiro (prof. of chemistry, NYU, author of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOrigins: A Skeptic\u0026rsquo;s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth\u003c/span\u003e), K. John Morrow (formerly at Texas Tech University Health Sciences, \u003ca href=\"http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/reading/BuDSP.html\"\u003epublished critic\u003c/a\u003e of Dembski and Behe), a forgotten Washington University biochemist, and another whom Behe has completely forgotten.  Perhaps they gave it a more rigorous review than Atchison, who didn\u0026rsquo;t actually review it at all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Intelligent Design and Rigorous Peer Review"},{"content":"From Pharyngula. Bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\n* The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!\n* Akira\n* Alien\n* Aliens\n* Alphaville\n* Back to the Future\n* Blade Runner\n* Brazil\n* Bride of Frankenstein\n* Brother From Another Planet\n* A Clockwork Orange\n* Close Encounters of the Third Kind\n* Contact\n* The Damned\n* Destination Moon\n* The Day The Earth Stood Still\n* Delicatessen\n* Escape From New York\n* ET: The Extraterrestrial\n* Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)\n* The Fly (1985 version)\n* Forbidden Planet\n* Ghost in the Shell\n* Gojira/Godzilla\n* The Incredibles\n* Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)\n* Jurassic Park\n* Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior\n* The Matrix\n* Metropolis\n* On the Beach\n* Planet of the Apes (1968 version)\n* Robocop\n* Sleeper\n* Solaris (1972 version)\n* Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan\n* Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope\n* Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back\n* The Stepford Wives\n* Superman\n* Terminator 2: Judgement Day\n* The Thing From Another World\n* Things to Come\n* Tron\n* 12 Monkeys\n* 28 Days Later\n* 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea\n* 2001: A Space Odyssey\n* La Voyage Dans la Lune\n* War of the Worlds (1953 version)\nI\u0026rsquo;m assuming the 1954 version of Godzilla is intended (not the 1984 one or \u0026ldquo;Godzilla 2000\u0026rdquo;), the 1902 version of La Voyage Dans la Lune (not the 1986 TV version), and the 1975 version of The Stepford Wives (not the 2004 version). This is a rather weird list. I\u0026rsquo;d remove all the anime and add some more obscure stuff like Phase IV, Silent Running, The Cube, Logan\u0026rsquo;s Run, Village of the Damned, 20 Million Miles to Earth, etc.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/which-classic-science-fiction-films.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/i_must_be_a_sci_fi_pop_culture_freak/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e.  Bold the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * Akira\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAlien\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eAliens\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * Alphaville\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBack to the Future\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBlade Runner\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBrazil\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBride of Frankenstein\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eBrother From Another Planet\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eA Clockwork Orange\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eClose Encounters of the Third Kind\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eContact\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * The Damned\u003cbr /\u003e  * Destination Moon\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Day The Earth Stood Still\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eDelicatessen\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eEscape From New York\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eET: The Extraterrestrial\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Fly (1985 version)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eForbidden Planet\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * Ghost in the Shell\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eGojira/Godzilla\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Incredibles\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eInvasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eJurassic Park\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMad Max 2/The Road Warrior\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Matrix\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eMetropolis\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * On the Beach\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003ePlanet of the Apes (1968 version)\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eRobocop\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSleeper\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * Solaris (1972 version)\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eStar Trek II: The Wrath of Khan\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eStar Wars Episode IV: A New Hope\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eStar Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * The Stepford Wives\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eSuperman\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTerminator 2: Judgement Day\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThe Thing From Another World\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eThings to Come\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eTron\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e12 Monkeys\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * 28 Days Later\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e20,000 Leagues Under the Sea\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e2001: A Space Odyssey\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eLa Voyage Dans la Lune\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e  * \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003eWar of the Worlds (1953 version)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m assuming the 1954 version of Godzilla is intended (not the 1984 one or \u0026ldquo;Godzilla 2000\u0026rdquo;), the 1902 version of La Voyage Dans la Lune (not the 1986 TV version), and the 1975 version of The Stepford Wives (not the 2004 version). This is a rather weird list. I\u0026rsquo;d remove all the anime and add some more obscure stuff like Phase IV, Silent Running, The Cube, Logan\u0026rsquo;s Run, Village of the Damned, 20 Million Miles to Earth, etc.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: bold;\"\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Which classic science fiction films have you seen?"},{"content":"We better hope that one day either carbon nanotubes or plutonium can be purchased in bulk at the corner market, because otherwise, sadly, it looks like we ain\u0026rsquo;t gettin\u0026rsquo; into space until the day when we\u0026rsquo;re all as rich as Bill Gates.\n(ht: Chicago Boyz)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI should point out that the figure that Russell Roberts uses, of \"$2 million a year,\" is wrong. Bill Gates makes (or made at the time of the publishing of Fair Play) $2 million a day.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nDepends on what you mean by space travel. Richard Branson is already building a fleet of five SpaceShipOne-type craft, for which tickets will start at $200,000. I predict that these will be used for very rapid travel and transport between points on the globe, and FedEx will get in on the action for packages that really need to move quickly.http://www.scaled.com/news/2005-07-27_branson_rutan_spaceship_company.htm\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nTrue, but sub-orbital flight is far-and-away easier than orbital flights, and there's no guarantee that Virgin Intergalactic is going to turn a profit (though I certainly wish them well in that regard).Aside from the viability of cryonic suspension as a means of longevity, there is nothing I'd rather be more wrong about.Hmmm... scratch that. I'd much rather be wrong about the non-existence of an omnibenevolent deity who will shower me with love and joy throughout all of eternity after I die.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/impracticality-of-space-travel.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe better hope that one day either \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube\"\u003ecarbon nanotubes\u003c/a\u003e or plutonium can be purchased in bulk at the corner market, because otherwise, sadly, it looks like we \u003ca href=\"http://www.physorg.com/news6341.html\"\u003eain\u0026rsquo;t gettin\u0026rsquo; into space\u003c/a\u003e until the day when we\u0026rsquo;re all as \u003ca href=\"http://www.invisibleheart.com/Iheart/EconomyNothing.html\"\u003erich as Bill Gates\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(ht: \u003ca href=\"http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003632.html\"\u003eChicago Boyz\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI should point out that the figure that Russell Roberts uses, of \"$2 million a year,\" is wrong.  Bill Gates makes (or made at the time of the publishing of \u003cI\u003eFair Play\u003c/I\u003e) $2 million \u003cI\u003ea day\u003c/I\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Impracticality of Space Travel"},{"content":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published information about tracking codes printed in every document by laser printers from Xerox, Canon, Brother, Dell, Epson and other companies. These codes, which have been decrypted for one model of Xerox printer, indicate the date and time the document was printed and the serial number of the printer. The codes have apparently been in effect for at least a decade.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/eff-decrypts-laser-printer-codes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Electronic Frontier Foundation \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php\"\u003ehas published information\u003c/a\u003e about tracking codes printed in every document by laser printers from Xerox, Canon, Brother, Dell, Epson and other companies. These codes, which have been decrypted for one model of Xerox printer, \u003ca href=\"http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/\"\u003eindicate the date and time the document was printed\u003c/a\u003e and the serial number of the printer.  The codes have apparently been in effect \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1018secretcode-ON.html\"\u003efor at least a decade\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"EFF Decrypts Laser Printer Codes"},{"content":"The Media Citizen blog has some background on one of the soldiers in the pre-rehearsed interaction with Bush that occurred last Thursday\u0026ndash;it seems he\u0026rsquo;s been appearing in pro-Bush pieces on Iraq since 2003.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThe answer to the question posed by this item's title: Resoundingly, yes!(I wish we could edit comments--though I suppose that could become a logistical nightmare in long conversations)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/1st-lt-gregg-murphy-bush-shill.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Media Citizen blog has \u003ca href=\"http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/2005/10/soldier-propagandist.html\"\u003esome background on one of the soldiers\u003c/a\u003e in the pre-rehearsed interaction with Bush that occurred last Thursday\u0026ndash;it seems he\u0026rsquo;s been appearing in pro-Bush pieces on Iraq since 2003.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThe answer to the question posed by this item's title: Resoundingly, yes!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e(I wish we could edit comments--though I suppose that could become a logistical nightmare in long conversations)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"1st Lt. Gregg Murphy: Bush shill?"},{"content":"On the 16th of January, the Nautilus seemed becalmed only a few yards beneath the surface of the waves. Her electric apparatus remained inactive and her motionless screw left her to drift at the mercy of the currents. I supposed that the crew was occupied with interior repairs, rendered necessary by the violence of the mechanical movements of the machine.\nMy companions and I then witnessed a curious spectacle. The hatches of the saloon were open, and, as the beacon light of the Nautilus was not in action, a dim obscurity reigned in the midst of the waters. I observed the state of the sea, under these conditions, and the largest fish appeared to me no more than scarcely defined shadows, when the Nautilus found herself suddenly transported into full light. I thought at first that the beacon had been lighted, and was casting its electric radiance into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a rapid survey perceived my error.\nThe Nautilus floated in the midst of a phosphorescent bed which, in this obscurity, became quite dazzling. It was produced by myriads of luminous animalculae, whose brilliancy was increased as they glided over the metallic hull of the vessel. I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets, as though they had been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that, by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all shade seemed banished. No; this was not the calm irradiation of our ordinary lightning. There was unusual life and vigour: this was truly living light!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/science-catches-up-with-jules-verne.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn the 16th of January, the Nautilus seemed becalmed only a few yards beneath the surface of the waves. Her electric apparatus remained inactive and her motionless screw left her to drift at the mercy of the currents. I supposed that the crew was occupied with interior repairs, rendered necessary by the violence of the mechanical movements of the machine.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy companions and I then witnessed a curious spectacle. The hatches of the saloon were open, and, as the beacon light of the Nautilus was not in action, a dim obscurity reigned in the midst of the waters. I observed the state of the sea, under these conditions, and the largest fish appeared to me no more than scarcely defined shadows, when the Nautilus found herself suddenly transported into full light. I thought at first that the beacon had been lighted, and was casting its electric radiance into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a rapid survey perceived my error.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Nautilus floated in the midst of a phosphorescent bed which, in this obscurity, became quite dazzling. It was produced by myriads of luminous animalculae, whose brilliancy was increased as they glided over the metallic hull of the vessel. I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets, as though they had been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that, by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all shade seemed banished. No; this was not the calm irradiation of our ordinary lightning. There was unusual life and vigour: this was \u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/scientists_detect_milky_sea_phenomena_9109\"\u003etruly living light\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Science catches up with Jules Verne..."},{"content":"\nI\u0026rsquo;m rather skeptical about whether this concept will actually accomplish anything, because, aside from the fact that Fox almost certainly makes orders of magnitude more revenue from commercial advertising than they do from DVD sales, advertisers don\u0026rsquo;t care about DVD sales, they care about ratings.\nBut what the hell? I can\u0026rsquo;t resist stumping for such a hilariously funny show.\nWhat other broadcast television show on the Republican-shill Fox network can you think of that makes fun of Bush\u0026rsquo;s absurd \u0026ldquo;Mission Accomplished\u0026rdquo; photo-op, the military\u0026rsquo;s recruiting difficulties, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, \u0026ldquo;free speech zones\u0026rdquo;, and the lack of WMDs in Iraq?\nI suppose an argument could be made that more DVD sales now could translate to higher ratings in the future. But how is it that the DVD can be ranked #4 on Amazon but the TV show is still getting dismal (less than 4 mil/week) viewership? It\u0026rsquo;s a mystery!\nAnyway, I hope the show at least finishes out a fourth season.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/arrested-development.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.saveitforward.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg height=\"250\" src=\"http://www.saveitforward.com/images/banner3.gif\" width=\"250\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m rather skeptical about whether this concept will actually accomplish anything, because, aside from the fact that Fox almost certainly makes orders of magnitude more revenue from commercial advertising than they do from DVD sales, advertisers don\u0026rsquo;t care about DVD sales, they care about ratings.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBut what the hell? I can\u0026rsquo;t resist stumping for such a hilariously funny show.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWhat other broadcast television show \u003cb\u003eon the Republican-shill Fox network\u003c/b\u003e can you think of that makes fun of Bush\u0026rsquo;s absurd \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/images/106207/6_22_bush_mission_banner.jpg\"\u003eMission Accomplished\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; photo-op, the military\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/02/earlyshow/main692361.shtml\"\u003erecruiting difficulties\u003c/a\u003e, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rotten.com/library/crime/prison/abu-ghraib/\"\u003eAbu Ghraib prison scandal\u003c/a\u003e, \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html\"\u003efree speech zones\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo;, and the lack of WMDs in Iraq?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI suppose an argument could be made that more DVD sales now could translate to higher ratings in the future. But how is it that the DVD can be ranked #4 on Amazon but the TV show is still getting dismal (less than 4 mil/week) viewership? It\u0026rsquo;s a mystery!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnyway, I hope the show at least finishes out a fourth season.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arrested Development"},{"content":"This item, found via the Antiwar.com blog, will probably be bouncing around the aether for the next few days. It strikes me, though, as far too antiseptic to be at all moving\u0026ndash;not to mention the fact that it neglects the orders-of-magnitude more tragic, um, Iraqi side of the equation.\nIt also calls to mind this Herbert Spencer quote, from his essay \u0026ldquo;Patriotism,\u0026rdquo; found in this book:\n\u0026ldquo;When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don\u0026rsquo;t care if they are shot themselves.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/two-thousand.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://theunitedamerican.blogs.com/Movies/2000A/2000.html\"\u003eThis\u003c/a\u003e item, found via the \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiwar.com/blog\"\u003eAntiwar.com blog\u003c/a\u003e, will probably be bouncing around the aether for the next few days. It strikes me, though, as far too antiseptic to be at all moving\u0026ndash;not to mention the fact that it neglects the orders-of-magnitude more tragic, um, \u003cem\u003eIraqi \u003c/em\u003eside of the equation.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt also calls to mind this \u003ca href=\"http://praxeology.net/anarcres.htm#spencer\"\u003eHerbert Spencer\u003c/a\u003e quote, from his essay \u0026ldquo;Patriotism,\u0026rdquo; found in \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1410203131/104-5701931-0080724\"\u003ethis book\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don\u0026rsquo;t care if they are shot themselves.\u0026quot;\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Two Thousand?"},{"content":"Former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath confirms that George W. Bush told him that he had been given a mission by God to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and then create a Palestinian state to bring peace to the Middle East.\nMeanwhile, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, in addition to acting as \u0026ldquo;bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s little helper\u0026rdquo; by spreading the message to Arab nations that the U.S. is acting out of Christian impulses, has also added the phrase \u0026ldquo;one nation under God\u0026rdquo; to the U.S. Constitution in her conversations with officials in Egypt.\nHistorical Comments José Roldan (2006-12-09):\nWas there ever any doubt the Commmander in Chief is insane? Forgive him for he knows not what he does.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/bush-talks-to-god-karen-hughes-adds.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormer Palestinian foreign minister \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/07/MNGNVF3SFM1.DTL\"\u003eNabil Shaath confirms\u003c/a\u003e that George W. Bush told him that he had been given a mission by God to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and then create a Palestinian state to bring peace to the Middle East.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMeanwhile, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, in addition to acting as \u003ca href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1581655,00.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;bin Laden\u0026rsquo;s little helper\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e by spreading the message to Arab nations that the U.S. is acting out of Christian impulses, has also \u003ca href=\"http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/10/misperceptions_.html\"\u003eadded the phrase \u0026ldquo;one nation under God\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e to the U.S. Constitution in her conversations with officials in Egypt.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush talks to God / Karen Hughes adds \"under God\" to the Constitution"},{"content":"Harry Shearer has pointed out (via video samples) that Bush seems to have developed an unusual jaw twitch. TMJ? A reaction to medication?\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThat \"twitch\" is disturbing. When I try to emulate it it sorta hurts, you know? It's not a \"healthy\" motion for a human jaw, it would seem.\nDave (2008-11-30):\nA lot of people are pointing out that this behavior looks extremely similar to how cocaine users act when under the influence. Just a thought...we know he is an addict.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/bushs-jaw-twitch.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHarry Shearer \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/whats-he-doin_b_8421.html\"\u003ehas pointed out\u003c/A\u003e (via video samples) that Bush seems to have developed an unusual jaw twitch.  TMJ?  A \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Tardive_Dyskinesia.htm\"\u003ereaction to medication\u003c/A\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat \"twitch\" is disturbing.  When I try to emulate it it sorta hurts, you know?  It's not a \"healthy\" motion for a human jaw, it would seem.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eDave\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2008-11-30)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eA lot of people are pointing out that this behavior looks extremely similar to how cocaine users act when under the influence. Just a thought...we know he is an addict.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush's jaw twitch"},{"content":"This first-hand account of a person in a wheelchair (Preston Craig) being abused by cops (Atlanta PD) shows why some people don\u0026rsquo;t like the police. He saw a police cruiser parked in a handicapped space and blocking the handicapped ramp for a coffee place, confronted the officer about it, and took photos with his camera phone. He ended up getting arrested, and the group of cops present agreed to lie about what happened (which included taking his cell phone and deleting the pictures).\nThe Tucson anarchist magazine The Match! has a regular feature each issue called \u0026ldquo;Who the Police Beat\u0026rdquo; that contains multiple stories that are at least as outrageous as this one. Although I\u0026rsquo;m sure the bad cops who engage in such behavior are a minority, it\u0026rsquo;s a minority that is almost always allowed to get away with it. (Via Catallarchy.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nI'm not so sure that \"bad cops\" are a minority, Jim.During the several years that I practiced Jiu-Jitsu in Phoenix I trained with a kid who was going through the Phoenix Police Academy.I like him on a personal level and he was a great training partner, but some of the stories he would relate--in the mundane way you'd talk about your own daily grind--about his typical day's work on the Pima Indian Reservation were downright disturbing. The most memorable example: he was talking about how he saw a car that he liked by someone who fit the profile of drug dealer and he immediately started wondering how he might be able to get it for himself via civil forfeiture. He asked one of the instructors--a former cop--for advice in this regard. In any other context this would have been criminal conspiracy!Of course this is simply anecdotal, but watching this guy's transformation from amiable kid, at 19, to common unreflective thug, at 24, gives me pause. Does the system turn nice people into thugs, or is it only thugs who are attracted in the first place?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nYou do have a point. I was recently told a story by a former cop about how he knew a cop who had pulled somebody over on the basis of a bumper sticker he didn't like, and asked him for his registration. The cop took the registration, put it in his mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it. He then wrote the guy a ticket for not having a registration, saying that no judge would believe the truth of what had actually just happened, and he would deny it.It's bad enough that it happened. It's worse that the guy bragged about it, and that it is repeated by other cops as an amusing anecdote.I would guess that part of it is from exposure to extreme criminality, and seeing criminals get away with things--by comparison, such abuse of power probably comes to seem trivial to them.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYour last point brings this to mind: Since they are constantly around criminals, might cops start seeing the world from the standpoint of \"everyone is a potential perp who is probably guilty of something anyway--so what I'm doing is akin to justice\"?In my personal experience with the newbie cop above, that seems a likely frame of mind.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nAnd here's another, about cops stealing Cadillacs from a dealership:http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/07/katrina.cadillacs.ap/index.html\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/cops-on-bad-behavior.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://fastermustache.org/node/382\"\u003efirst-hand account of a person in a wheelchair (Preston Craig) being abused by cops\u003c/a\u003e (Atlanta PD) shows why some people don\u0026rsquo;t like the police.  He saw a police cruiser parked in a handicapped space and blocking the handicapped ramp for a coffee place, confronted the officer about it, and took photos with his camera phone.  He ended up getting arrested, and the group of cops present agreed to lie about what happened (which included taking his cell phone and deleting the pictures).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Tucson anarchist magazine \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Match!\u003c/span\u003e has a regular feature each issue called \u0026ldquo;Who the Police Beat\u0026rdquo; that contains multiple stories that are at least as outrageous as this one.  Although I\u0026rsquo;m sure the bad cops who engage in such behavior are a minority, it\u0026rsquo;s a minority that is almost always allowed to get away with it.  (Via \u003ca href=\"http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/10/06/six-cops-vs-a-man-in-a-wheelchair/\"\u003eCatallarchy\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cops on bad behavior"},{"content":"A student of Selina Jarvis in North Carolina took a photograph of George W. Bush from a magazine, tacked it to a wall (through his head), and photographed his hand giving a thumbs-down gesture next to the Bush photo.\nSomeone at the Kitty Hawk, NC Wal-Mart thought this was suspicious, and the student got a visit from the U.S. Secret Service, which confiscated his project. The above story doesn\u0026rsquo;t say whether it was returned, but at least they decided not to indict him.\nHistorical Comments Ryan Mercer (2006-12-09):\nThat is some crazy stuff... the USSS is a bit to paranoid.-Ryan Mercerhttp://www.ryanmercer.comhttp://www.ryansthoughts.com\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAfter thinking about this for a bit, I realized that this kid's Bill of Rights project was a rousing success.I hope he got an 'A'.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/students-bill-of-rights-project-gets.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA student of Selina Jarvis in North Carolina \u003ca href=\"http://progressive.org/node/2495/print?PHPSESSID=a48bbe004c974427af5ef845bba850b2\"\u003etook a photograph\u003c/a\u003e of George W. Bush from a magazine, tacked it to a wall (through his head), and photographed his hand giving a thumbs-down gesture next to the Bush photo.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSomeone at the Kitty Hawk, NC Wal-Mart thought this was suspicious, and the student got a visit from the U.S. Secret Service, which confiscated his project.  The above story doesn\u0026rsquo;t say whether it was returned, but at least they decided not to indict him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Student's Bill of Rights project gets investigated by Secret Service"},{"content":"CNN\u0026rsquo;s story says that Lorrie Heasley\u0026rsquo;s shirt featured pictures of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice along with \u0026ldquo;a phrase similar to the popular film title \u0026lsquo;Meet the Fockers.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that it said \u0026ldquo;Meet the Fuckers,\u0026rdquo; similar to this shirt (which doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the same people on it). She was made to leave the Los Angeles-to-Portland flight during a stop in Reno, Nevada.\nShe says she will sue for reimbursement for her hotel, rental car, and gasoline costs for the last leg of her trip.\nSouthwest claims they are obligated under FAA rules to deny boarding to any passenger \u0026ldquo;whose conduct is offensive, abusive, disorderly or violent or for clothing that is \u0026rsquo;lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; An FAA spokesperson says there are no such federal rules. Historically the FAA has required airlines to operate by rules which the airlines are not allowed to publicly reveal, such as those about requiring identification that were at issue in John Gilmore\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit.\nIf Southwest\u0026rsquo;s claim about an FAA rule is correct, they had already violated it since they allowed her to board and fly half of the journey. Unless she was creating some kind of a new disturbance, putting her off half way through the flight seems pretty outrageous.\nHistorical Comments Danny Boy, FCD (2006-12-09):\nThat's zero tolerance for ya.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/southwest-airlines-kicks-off-passenger.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCNN\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/06/news/fortune500/southwest_shirt/index.htm?cnn=yes\"\u003estory\u003c/a\u003e says that Lorrie Heasley\u0026rsquo;s shirt featured pictures of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice along with \u0026ldquo;a phrase similar to the popular film title \u0026lsquo;Meet the Fockers.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that it said \u0026ldquo;Meet the Fuckers,\u0026rdquo; similar to \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafepress.com/shop/politics/browse/store/rnastore.30735993\"\u003ethis shirt\u003c/a\u003e (which doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the same people on it).  She was made to leave the Los Angeles-to-Portland flight during a stop in Reno, Nevada.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe says she will sue for reimbursement for her hotel, rental car, and gasoline costs for the last leg of her trip.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSouthwest claims they are obligated under FAA rules to deny boarding to any passenger \u0026ldquo;whose conduct is offensive, abusive, disorderly or violent or for clothing that is \u0026rsquo;lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;  An FAA spokesperson says there are no such federal rules.  Historically the FAA has required airlines to operate by rules which the airlines are not allowed to publicly reveal, such as those about requiring identification that were at issue in \u003ca href=\"http://cryptome.org/gilmore-v-usa-god.htm\"\u003eJohn Gilmore\u0026rsquo;s lawsuit\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIf Southwest\u0026rsquo;s claim about an FAA rule is correct, they had already violated it since they allowed her to board and fly half of the journey.  Unless she was creating some kind of a new disturbance, putting her off half way through the flight seems pretty outrageous.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Southwest Airlines kicks off passenger for anti-Bush T-shirt"},{"content":"InfoWorld:\nA financial dispute between two major Internet backbones has led to dropped traffic between their networks, a high-stakes game of chicken that\u0026rsquo;s angering customers affected by the network disruptions.\nEarly Wednesday morning Level 3 Communications Inc. terminated its \u0026ldquo;peering\u0026rdquo; agreement with Cogent Communications Inc., a step Level 3 says it took after months of fruitless negotiations. This has had no effect on customers of any tier-1 providers other than Level 3. It only affects customers (and customers of customers, ad infinitum) who purchase service only from Level 3 or Cogent, without purchasing transit service from someone who has reachability to the other.\nTier-1 providers are those that connect to each other (to all other tier-1\u0026rsquo;s) with settlement-free interconnections (SFI); these include MCI, AT\u0026amp;T, Sprint, Qwest, Verio, and Global Crossing. Part of the agreement is usually that the amount of traffic passed in each direction is on a par\u0026ndash;the reason for entering into such an arrangement without exchanging money is that the connectivity is considered of equal value to both parties. To quote a paper by Geoff Huston,\nThe bottom line is that a true peer relationship is based on the supposition that either party can terminate the interconnection relationship and that the other party does not consider such an action a competitively hostile act. If one party has a high reliance on the interconnection arrangement and the other does not, then the most stable business outcome is that this reliance is expressed in terms of a service contract with the other party, and a provider/client relationship is established. If a balance of mutual requirement exists between both parties, then a stable basis for a peer interconnection relationship also exists. Such a statement has no intrinsic metrics that allow the requirements to be quantified. Peering in such an environment is best expressed as the balance of perceptions, in which each party perceives an acceptable approximation of equal benefit in the interconnection relationship in their own terms.Cogent, unlike Level 3, is not a tier-1 provider; they purchase transit from Verio in order to get to Sprint and AOL, among other places. Cogent has applied filters to announcements of their routes to their transit providers for all of its peers, so that traffic to those peers can only go over the links where they don\u0026rsquo;t pay for traffic (the peering links) rather than the ones where they do have to pay (the transit links).\nLevel 3 has apparently decided that it is not getting as much as it\u0026rsquo;s giving from the peer relationship with Cogent, and so has ended it, with 75 days notice. This is a situation which Cogent could rectify by entering into a customer relationship with Level 3 or by removing their filters on Level 3 to use a transit provider such as Verio to reach Level 3.\nThis is a scenario that either party has the power to resolve\u0026ndash;Level 3 by allowing peering from Cogent (which they have already clearly indicated is not a high priority for them); Cogent by purchasing service from Level 3 or reaching Level 3 by purchasing IP transit from someone else.\nCogent has been caught in this situation at least three times previously\u0026ndash;it was depeered by OpenTransit (France Telecom) on April 14, 2005. Cogent gave in on April 17 by removing its filters that prevented traffic to OpenTransit from going across transit links. Teleglobe apparently attempted a similar move, but after paying Savvis for transit to resolve the issue, decided the peering was worthwhile. Back in 2002, AOL ended its peering with Cogent. So of these three peering battles, Cogent lost two and won one.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s possible that Cogent generates more outbound than inbound traffic on its peering connection with Level 3; that kind of imbalance can be caused by, say, Cogent having more websites than individual customers on its network. Websites receive very small requests for pages, and send back very large amounts of data (web pages, images, streaming audio and video). Individual customers typically send out small requests (for web pages or files to download) and receive back large amounts of data. Peer-to-peer traffic can have high volume in either direction, but tends to cancel out since it\u0026rsquo;s usually between individual customers. (UPDATE: Cogent denies that this is the case, saying that their inbound and outbound traffic with Level 3 was balanced.)\nCogent has been aggressive in price reductions on IP transit costs, allowing them to take customers from providers that they peer with; this is also being attributed as a reason for Level 3 to want to depeer with them.\nIt remains to be seen who will blink first this time. We may see calls for government regulation to address this issue, but those who have lost connectivity should complain to their upstream providers; those complaints will pass up to either Level 3 or Cogent. (And, if you are one of those affected, that means your provider is not purchasing sufficient connectivity to be able to withstand an issue like this.)\nUPDATE (July 25, 2008): It was Level 3 that blinked first (back in 2005; I neglected to update this post), and as of June 2008, Cogent is no longer buying transit from anyone, joining the ranks of tier-1 providers.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe conspiracy theorists are fabricating amusing bogus reasons for why they can't reach particular websites.The DailyKos removed their conspiracy story, but Free Market News thinks that because Time Warner Telecom is affected by this, that it must be Time magazine shutting down alternative news sources:http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1220And these guys have a slogan of \"Driven By Truth\"?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThese guys think some Attorney General should file extortion charges against Level 3:http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/005003.htmlSorry, guys, but there *are* things Roadrunner could do, and I don't see that there is any more blame to be placed on Level 3 than on Cogent. Cogent had 50 days notice that the free peering was going to be cut off, and Cogent has a mechanism by which they could reach Level 3 via IP transit.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nApparently Alex Jones also attributed this to government censorship:http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1240\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nGoogle says they want the government to intervene to prevent things like this:\"One of the issues Google will tackle has become news this week: Level 3 and Cogent Communications are involved in a spat that has made Web sites on each network inaccessible or very slow to users on the opposite network. Google said the government has a responsibility to monitor the Internet so events like this do not occur.\"http://www.betanews.com/article/Google_Goes_to_Washington/1128691070\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nLevel 3 has given in, sort of, and temporarily:http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104\u0026STORY=/www/story/10-07-2005/0004164041\u0026EDATE=\"On October 6, Level 3, as it had repeatedly advised Cogent it would,terminated free traffic exchange with Cogent. Because Internet users, apparently without notice from Cogent and through no fault of their own, have been impacted, Level 3 has, effective immediately, re-established a free connection to Cogent. In order to allow Internet users to make alternative arrangements, we will maintain this connection until 6:00 a.m. ET, November 9, 2005. The effectiveness of this arrangement of course depends on Cogent's willingness to maintain their side of the traffic exchange.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/level-3-depeers-cogent.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/10/06/HNispspat_1.html?source=rss\u0026amp;url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/10/06/HNispspat_1.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eInfoWorld\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan class=\"artText\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"artText\"\u003eA financial dispute between two major Internet backbones has led to dropped traffic between their networks, a high-stakes game of chicken that\u0026rsquo;s angering customers affected by the network disruptions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"artText\"\u003eEarly Wednesday morning Level 3 Communications Inc. terminated its \u0026ldquo;peering\u0026rdquo; agreement with Cogent Communications Inc., a step Level 3 says it took after months of fruitless negotiations. \u003c/span\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cspan class=\"artText\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003eThis has had no effect on customers of any tier-1 providers other than Level 3. It only affects customers (and customers of customers, ad infinitum) who purchase service only from Level 3 or Cogent, without purchasing transit service from someone who has reachability to the other.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTier-1 providers are those that connect to each other (to all other tier-1\u0026rsquo;s) with settlement-free interconnections (SFI); these include MCI, AT\u0026amp;T, Sprint, Qwest, Verio, and Global Crossing. Part of the agreement is usually that the amount of traffic passed in each direction is on a par\u0026ndash;the reason for entering into such an arrangement without exchanging money is that the connectivity is considered of equal value to both parties. To quote \u003ca href=\"http://www.isoc.org/inet99/proceedings/1e/1e_1.htm\"\u003ea paper by Geoff Huston\u003c/a\u003e,\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe bottom line is that a true peer relationship is based on the supposition that either party can terminate the interconnection relationship and that the other party does not consider such an action a competitively hostile act. If one party has a high reliance on the interconnection arrangement and the other does not, then the most stable business outcome is that this reliance is expressed in terms of a service contract with the other party, and a provider/client relationship is established. If a balance of mutual requirement exists between both parties, then a stable basis for a peer interconnection relationship also exists. Such a statement has no intrinsic metrics that allow the requirements to be quantified. Peering in such an environment is best expressed as the balance of perceptions, in which each party perceives an acceptable approximation of equal benefit in the interconnection relationship in their own terms.\u003c/blockquote\u003eCogent, unlike Level 3, is not a tier-1 provider; they purchase transit from Verio in order to get to Sprint and AOL, among other places. Cogent has applied filters to announcements of their routes to their transit providers for all of its peers, so that traffic to those peers can only go over the links where they don\u0026rsquo;t pay for traffic (the peering links) rather than the ones where they do have to pay (the transit links).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eLevel 3 has apparently decided that it is not getting as much as it\u0026rsquo;s giving from the peer relationship with Cogent, and so has ended it, with 75 days notice. This is a situation which Cogent could rectify by entering into a customer relationship with Level 3 or by removing their filters on Level 3 to use a transit provider such as Verio to reach Level 3.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis is a scenario that either party has the power to resolve\u0026ndash;Level 3 by allowing peering from Cogent (which they have already clearly indicated is not a high priority for them); Cogent by purchasing service from Level 3 or reaching Level 3 by purchasing IP transit from someone else.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCogent has been caught in this situation at least three times previously\u0026ndash;it was depeered by OpenTransit (France Telecom) on April 14, 2005. Cogent gave in on April 17 by removing its filters that prevented traffic to OpenTransit from going across transit links. Teleglobe apparently attempted a similar move, but after paying Savvis for transit to resolve the issue, decided the peering was worthwhile. Back in 2002, \u003ca href=\"http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/cyberia-l/msg42080.html\"\u003eAOL ended its peering with Cogent\u003c/a\u003e.  So of these three peering battles, Cogent lost two and won one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s possible that Cogent generates more outbound than inbound traffic on its peering connection with Level 3; that kind of imbalance can be caused by, say, Cogent having more websites than individual customers on its network. Websites receive very small requests for pages, and send back very large amounts of data (web pages, images, streaming audio and video). Individual customers typically send out small requests (for web pages or files to download) and receive back large amounts of data. Peer-to-peer traffic can have high volume in either direction, but tends to cancel out since it\u0026rsquo;s usually between individual customers. (UPDATE: Cogent \u003ca href=\"http://www.techworld.com/networking/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4531\u0026amp;inkc=0\"\u003edenies that this is the case\u003c/a\u003e, saying that their inbound and outbound traffic with Level 3 was balanced.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCogent has been aggressive in price reductions on IP transit costs, allowing them to take customers from providers that they peer with; this is also being attributed as a reason for Level 3 to want to depeer with them.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIt remains to be seen who will blink first this time. We may see calls for government regulation to address this issue, but those who have lost connectivity should complain to their upstream providers; those complaints will pass up to either Level 3 or Cogent. (And, if you are one of those affected, that means your provider is not purchasing sufficient connectivity to be able to withstand an issue like this.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (July 25, 2008):  It was Level 3 that blinked first (back in 2005; I neglected to update this post), and as of June 2008, \u003ca href=\"http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/06/cogent_becomes_transitfree.shtml\"\u003eCogent is no longer buying transit from anyone, joining the ranks of tier-1 providers\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Level 3 depeers Cogent"},{"content":"Harriet Miers attends Valley View Christian Church. Their website\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;links\u0026rdquo; page links to Carl Baugh\u0026rsquo;s Creation Evidence Museum. Baugh, a cranky young-earth creationist with diploma mill credentials, is notorious for making claims so bogus that his fellow young-earth creationists debunk them.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nOoooh! Don't you want to get your hands on a copy of this DVD?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat would be interesting to see. I wonder if it covers Lucy's knee joint.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/harriet-miers-church-supports.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHarriet Miers \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002540461_scotus05.html\"\u003eattends Valley View Christian Church\u003c/a\u003e. Their \u003ca href=\"http://www.vvcc.org/coollinks.asp\"\u003ewebsite\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;links\u0026rdquo; page\u003c/a\u003e links to Carl Baugh\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html\"\u003eCreation Evidence Museum\u003c/a\u003e. Baugh, a cranky young-earth creationist with \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/degrees.html\"\u003ediploma mill credentials\u003c/a\u003e, is notorious for making \u003ca href=\"http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/carl_baugh_page.htm\"\u003eclaims\u003c/a\u003e so \u003ca href=\"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/tooth.html\"\u003ebogus\u003c/a\u003e that his \u003ca href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp\"\u003efellow young-earth creationists debunk them\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eOoooh!  Don't you want to get your hands on a copy of \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/onlinestore/gatewaytrack.asp?PageType=detail\u0026UID=30-9-093\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ethis DVD\u003c/A\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThat would be interesting to see.  I wonder if it covers Lucy's knee joint.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Harriet Miers' church supports the crankiest of young-earth creationists"},{"content":"David Frum of the National Review, who has personal experience with Miers, says: \u0026ldquo;In a White House that hero-worshiped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.\u0026quot;\nShe\u0026rsquo;s clearly unqualified for the Supreme Court, as she\u0026rsquo;s either deluded or dishonest.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nSo maybe the blog link I put up yesterday isn't a spoof!How scary would that be?Actually, not much scarier than the reality, if she really thinks Bush is brilliant.It sends shivers down my spine.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nCheck out what Randy Barnett has to say about the nomination of Miers here.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nShe also thinks Bush was the \"best governor ever\":http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/11/miers.ap/index.html\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThe \"best governor ever\" has requested that Harriet cut out the public scatology.You couldn't make this shit up.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/harriet-miers-thinks-bush-is.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Frum of the \u003cI\u003eNational Review\u003c/I\u003e, who has personal experience with Miers, \u003cA HREF = \"http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051005/EDIT/510050331/1003\"\u003esays\u003c/A\u003e:  \u0026ldquo;In a White House that hero-worshiped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eShe\u0026rsquo;s clearly unqualified for the Supreme Court, as she\u0026rsquo;s either deluded or dishonest.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eSo maybe the blog link I put up yesterday \u003cI\u003eisn't\u003c/I\u003e a spoof!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eHow scary would \u003cI\u003ethat\u003c/I\u003e be?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eActually, not much scarier than the reality, if she \u003cI\u003ereally\u003c/I\u003e thinks Bush is brilliant.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIt sends shivers down my spine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Harriet Miers thinks Bush is an intellectual giant"},{"content":"Patatas Chef is a device (\u0026ldquo;like a clean and small sophisticated factory\u0026rdquo;) that makes and sells french fries. Expect late-night TV ads on how to make millions from the comfort of your home, along with your WiFi hotspot and Internet kiosk.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/french-fry-vending-machine.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.patatachef.com/patatachef.html\"\u003ePatatas Chef\u003c/a\u003e is a device (\u0026ldquo;like a clean and small sophisticated factory\u0026rdquo;) that makes and sells french fries.  Expect late-night TV ads on how to make millions from the comfort of your home, along with your WiFi hotspot and Internet kiosk.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"French fry vending machine"},{"content":"Research by Jon-Kar Zubieta at the University of Michigan published in The Journal of Neuroscience shows that subjects told they were receiving pain medication produced more \u0026ldquo;opioid\u0026rdquo; activity in the brain, as measured by PET scans showing activation of \u0026ldquo;mu-opioid receptors.\u0026rdquo; Subjects given the placebo showed higher such receptor activation and reported greater pain relief, and had to be given higher levels of pain stimulus to maintain the same reported level of pain.\nSo it\u0026rsquo;s not just mind over matter magic.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/neurological-evidence-for-placebo.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1467634.htm\"\u003eResearch by Jon-Kar Zubieta\u003c/a\u003e at the University of Michigan \u003ca href=\"http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/34/7754\"\u003epublished in \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Journal of Neuroscience\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e shows that subjects told they were receiving pain medication produced more \u0026ldquo;opioid\u0026rdquo; activity in the brain, as measured by PET scans showing activation of \u0026ldquo;mu-opioid receptors.\u0026rdquo;  Subjects given the placebo showed higher such receptor activation and reported greater pain relief, and had to be given higher levels of pain stimulus to maintain the same reported level of pain.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo it\u0026rsquo;s not just mind over matter magic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Neurological evidence for the placebo effect"},{"content":"The Seattle Times reports:\nPresident Bush, increasingly concerned about a possible avian flu pandemic, revealed today that any part of the country where the virus breaks out could likely be quarantined and that he is considering using the military to enforce it. \u0026ldquo;The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins,\u0026rdquo; he said during a wide-ranging Rose Garden news conference.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/bush-to-consider-using-military-to.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002539717_webflu04.html\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eSeattle Times\u003c/span\u003e reports\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003ePresident Bush, increasingly concerned about a possible avian flu pandemic, revealed today that any part of the country where the virus breaks out could likely be quarantined and that he is considering using the military to enforce it.   \u003cp\u003e \u0026ldquo;The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins,\u0026rdquo; he said during a wide-ranging Rose Garden news conference.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush to consider using military to enforce quarantines if Avian flu epidemic breaks out"},{"content":"MLS listings for metropolitan Phoenix area, from ziprealty.com. Inventory has increased by 79% in a little over two months.\n7/20/2005 10748\n7/21/2005 10968\n7/22/2005 11122\n7/23/2005 11424\n7/24/2005 11338\n7/25/2005 11112\n7/26/2005 11315\n7/27/2005 11353\n7/28/2005 11390\n7/29/2005 11471\n7/30/2005 11656\n7/31/2005 11609\n8/1/2005 11599\n8/2/2005 11590\n8/3/2005 11635\n8/4/2005 11714\n8/5/2005 11710\n8/6/2005 12196\n8/7/2005 12658\n8/8/2005 12919\n8/9/2005 13244\n8/10/2005 13099\n8/11/2005 13245\n8/12/2005 13389\n8/13/2005 13846\n8/14/2005 13801\n8/15/2005 13607\n8/16/2005 13779\n8/17/2005 13992\n8/18/2005 14087\n8/19/2005 14279\n8/20/2005 14321\n8/21/2005 14457\n8/22/2005 14336\n8/23/2005 14391\n8/24/2005 14529\n8/25/2005 14617\n8/26/2005 14792\n8/27/2005 15011\n8/28/2005 14984\n8/29/2005 14803\n8/30/2005 15042\n8/31/2005 15099\n9/1/2005 15063\n9/2/2005 15159\n9/3/2005 15404\n9/4/2005 15699\n9/5/2005 15621\n9/6/2005 15513\n9/7/2005 15913\n9/8/2005 16106\n9/9/2005 16489\n9/10/2005 16716\n9/11/2005 16609\n9/12/2005 16697\n9/13/2005 16538\n9/14/2005 16900\n9/15/2005 16952\n9/16/2005 17419\n9/17/2005 17583\n9/18/2005 17577\n9/19/2005 17636\n9/20/2005 17516\n9/21/2005 17664\n9/22/2005 17883\n9/23/2005 18226\n9/24/2005 18204\n9/25/2005 18196\n9/26/2005 18435\n9/27/2005 18483\n9/28/2005 18605\n9/29/2005 18604\n9/30/2005 19192\n10/1/2005 19333\n10/2/2005 19254\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nThat's unreal.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nPhoenix inventory is now above 27,000 homes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/housing-bubble-losing-volume-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMLS listings for metropolitan Phoenix area, from ziprealty.com.  Inventory has increased by 79% in a little over two months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e7/20/2005 10748\u003cbr /\u003e7/21/2005 10968\u003cbr /\u003e7/22/2005 11122\u003cbr /\u003e7/23/2005 11424\u003cbr /\u003e7/24/2005 11338\u003cbr /\u003e7/25/2005 11112\u003cbr /\u003e7/26/2005 11315\u003cbr /\u003e7/27/2005 11353\u003cbr /\u003e7/28/2005 11390\u003cbr /\u003e7/29/2005 11471\u003cbr /\u003e7/30/2005 11656\u003cbr /\u003e7/31/2005 11609\u003cbr /\u003e8/1/2005 11599\u003cbr /\u003e8/2/2005 11590\u003cbr /\u003e8/3/2005 11635\u003cbr /\u003e8/4/2005 11714\u003cbr /\u003e8/5/2005 11710\u003cbr /\u003e8/6/2005 12196\u003cbr /\u003e8/7/2005 12658\u003cbr /\u003e8/8/2005 12919\u003cbr /\u003e8/9/2005 13244\u003cbr /\u003e8/10/2005 13099\u003cbr /\u003e8/11/2005 13245\u003cbr /\u003e8/12/2005 13389\u003cbr /\u003e8/13/2005 13846\u003cbr /\u003e8/14/2005 13801\u003cbr /\u003e8/15/2005 13607\u003cbr /\u003e8/16/2005 13779\u003cbr /\u003e8/17/2005 13992\u003cbr /\u003e8/18/2005 14087\u003cbr /\u003e8/19/2005 14279\u003cbr /\u003e8/20/2005 14321\u003cbr /\u003e8/21/2005 14457\u003cbr /\u003e8/22/2005 14336\u003cbr /\u003e8/23/2005 14391\u003cbr /\u003e8/24/2005 14529\u003cbr /\u003e8/25/2005 14617\u003cbr /\u003e8/26/2005 14792\u003cbr /\u003e8/27/2005 15011\u003cbr /\u003e8/28/2005 14984\u003cbr /\u003e8/29/2005 14803\u003cbr /\u003e8/30/2005 15042\u003cbr /\u003e8/31/2005 15099\u003cbr /\u003e9/1/2005 15063\u003cbr /\u003e9/2/2005 15159\u003cbr /\u003e9/3/2005 15404\u003cbr /\u003e9/4/2005 15699\u003cbr /\u003e9/5/2005 15621\u003cbr /\u003e9/6/2005 15513\u003cbr /\u003e9/7/2005 15913\u003cbr /\u003e9/8/2005 16106\u003cbr /\u003e9/9/2005 16489\u003cbr /\u003e9/10/2005 16716\u003cbr /\u003e9/11/2005 16609\u003cbr /\u003e9/12/2005 16697\u003cbr /\u003e9/13/2005 16538\u003cbr /\u003e9/14/2005 16900\u003cbr /\u003e9/15/2005 16952\u003cbr /\u003e9/16/2005 17419\u003cbr /\u003e9/17/2005 17583\u003cbr /\u003e9/18/2005 17577\u003cbr /\u003e9/19/2005 17636\u003cbr /\u003e9/20/2005 17516\u003cbr /\u003e9/21/2005 17664\u003cbr /\u003e9/22/2005 17883\u003cbr /\u003e9/23/2005 18226\u003cbr /\u003e9/24/2005 18204\u003cbr /\u003e9/25/2005 18196\u003cbr /\u003e9/26/2005 18435\u003cbr /\u003e9/27/2005 18483\u003cbr /\u003e9/28/2005 18605\u003cbr /\u003e9/29/2005 18604\u003cbr /\u003e9/30/2005 19192\u003cbr /\u003e10/1/2005 19333\u003cbr /\u003e10/2/2005 19254\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Housing bubble losing volume in Phoenix"},{"content":"Bush is expected to nominate former Texas Lottery Commission head and current White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor. She has no experience as a judge, and was head of the Texas Lottery Commission during Bush\u0026rsquo;s term as governor of Texas, when Ben Barnes, the guy who got Bush into the Texas Air National Guard, received a gigantic severance payment from Gtech, the company with the contract to run the Texas Lottery, followed by Gtech getting it\u0026rsquo;s contract extended without having to bid for it. Miers was in charge of the commission when it chose to extend Gtech\u0026rsquo;s contract despite the fact that the company was involved in a bribery scandal. I\u0026rsquo;m sure there will be some interesting questions at the confirmation hearings if Miers is really the nominee.\nBTW, Gtech has quite a history\u0026hellip; in 1993, Virgin billionaire Richard Branson accused its founder, Guy Snowden, of trying to bribe him in relation to the UK national lottery.\nGtech also runs the state lottery in Jeb \u0026ldquo;Chang\u0026rdquo; Bush\u0026rsquo;s state, Florida, as well.\n(Note added 8:29 a.m.: Bush has announced the nomination.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nSorry, I removed the previous post because it wasn't clear that I was being tongue-in-cheek.Harriet Miers' blog:http://harrietmiers.blogspot.com/(ha ha)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/bush-supreme-court-nominee-harriet.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/03/scotus.preview/index.html\"\u003eBush is expected to nominate\u003c/a\u003e former Texas Lottery Commission head and current White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O\u0026rsquo;Connor. She has no experience as a judge, and was head of the Texas Lottery Commission during Bush\u0026rsquo;s term as governor of Texas, when Ben Barnes, the guy who got Bush into the Texas Air National Guard, received a gigantic severance payment from Gtech, the company with the contract to run the Texas Lottery, followed by Gtech getting it\u0026rsquo;s contract extended without having to bid for it. Miers was in charge of the commission when it chose to extend Gtech\u0026rsquo;s contract despite the fact that \u003ca href=\"http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002383.html\"\u003ethe company was involved in a bribery scandal\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m sure there will be some interesting questions at the confirmation hearings if Miers is really the nominee.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBTW, Gtech has quite a history\u0026hellip; in 1993, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2005-03-31/news/norman.html\"\u003eVirgin billionaire Richard Branson accused its founder\u003c/a\u003e, Guy Snowden, of trying to bribe him in relation to the UK national lottery.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eGtech \u003ca href=\"http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/06/State/Rival_wins_bid_to_run.shtml\"\u003ealso runs the state lottery\u003c/a\u003e in Jeb \u0026ldquo;Chang\u0026rdquo; Bush\u0026rsquo;s state, Florida, as well.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Note added 8:29 a.m.:  Bush has \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/03/scotus.preview/index.html\"\u003eannounced the nomination\u003c/a\u003e.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers"},{"content":"Speaking of Bush speeches, get ready for a \u0026ldquo;significant\u0026rdquo; one, according to this article.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m sure it\u0026rsquo;s going to be erudite, persuasive, and chock full of talking points we\u0026rsquo;ve never heard before. It seems that Condoleeza \u0026ldquo;Guru\u0026rdquo; Rice and \u0026ldquo;a senior Bush administration official\u0026rdquo; have even given us a little preview.\nCondoleeza:\n\u0026ldquo;If we abandon future generations in the Middle East to despair and terror, we also condemn future generations in the United States to insecurity and fear.\u0026quot;I see. So, continuing to shoot at, blow up, torture, and intimidate Iraqis will avoid \u0026ldquo;abandoning [them] to terror\u0026rdquo;? Building permanent military bases over there will ensure future security here?\nCowardly \u0026ldquo;official\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;If you think by going home, you buy peace, it is wrong-headed.\u0026quot;But it\u0026rsquo;s not wrong-headed to think that keeping the military there and continuing to shoot at, blow up, torture, and intimidate Iraqis\u0026ndash;um, dare I say, continuing the \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo;?\u0026ndash;will \u0026ldquo;buy\u0026rdquo; peace?\nPolitical language \u0026hellip; is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.\n- George Orwell\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/while-on-topic.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpeaking of Bush speeches, get ready for a \u0026ldquo;significant\u0026rdquo; one, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16796316^1702,00.html\"\u003ethis article\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m \u003cem\u003esure\u003c/em\u003e it\u0026rsquo;s going to be erudite, persuasive, and chock full of talking points we\u0026rsquo;ve \u003cem\u003enever\u003c/em\u003e heard before. It seems that Condoleeza \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"http://www.nndb.com/group/750/000091477/\"\u003eGuru\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; Rice and \u0026ldquo;a senior Bush administration official\u0026rdquo; have even given us a little preview.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCondoleeza:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;If we abandon future generations in the Middle East to despair and terror, we also condemn future generations in the United States to insecurity and fear.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eI see. So, continuing to shoot at, blow up, torture, and intimidate Iraqis will avoid \u0026ldquo;abandoning [them] to terror\u0026rdquo;? Building permanent military bases over there will ensure future security here?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCowardly \u0026ldquo;official\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u0026ldquo;If you think by going home, you buy peace, it is wrong-headed.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eBut it\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003enot\u003c/em\u003e wrong-headed to think that keeping the military there and continuing to shoot at, blow up, torture, and intimidate Iraqis\u0026ndash;um, dare I say, continuing the \u0026ldquo;war\u0026rdquo;?\u0026ndash;will \u0026ldquo;buy\u0026rdquo; peace?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000099;\"\u003ePolitical language \u0026hellip; is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e     - \u003cstrong\u003eGeorge Orwell\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"While on the Topic..."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been listening to the podcasts of 2600 magazine (\u0026ldquo;The Hacker Quarterly\u0026rdquo;), which are quite good. Emmanuel Goldstein (real name Eric Corley) has been traveling the world by land and sea, and reporting back on the state of freedom and technology via satellite phone, cell phone, or land line, as available. The August 30, 2005 podcast of \u0026ldquo;Off the Wall\u0026rdquo; was recorded in Tiananmen Square. Among observations about Chinese kite flying at busy intersections, their appreciation for ice and the sale of bottles of frozen mineral water, Chinese throat clearing noises, and the surprising modernity of Beijing, they reported on the wide availability of books in English. One bookstore of 6 or 7 floors was reported to have an entire floor on books for learning English. One of the books, which Emmanuel\u0026rsquo;s companion Sasja purchased for its humor value, was a book to learn English through reading the speeches of George W. Bush. Quite amusing, given his poor ability to speak the language. (This topic occurs about 26:30 into the August 30 \u0026ldquo;Off the Wall\u0026rdquo; podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple\u0026rsquo;s iTunes.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThat Bushism page is fantastic!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/learn-english-from-speeches-of-george.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been listening to the podcasts of \u003ca href=\"http://www.2600.com/\"\u003e2600 magazine\u003c/a\u003e (\u0026ldquo;The Hacker Quarterly\u0026rdquo;), which are quite good.  \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Corley\"\u003eEmmanuel Goldstein\u003c/a\u003e (real name Eric Corley) has been traveling the world by land and sea, and reporting back on the state of freedom and technology via satellite phone, cell phone, or land line, as available. The August 30, 2005 podcast of \u0026ldquo;Off the Wall\u0026rdquo; was recorded in Tiananmen Square. Among observations about Chinese kite flying at busy intersections, their appreciation for ice and the sale of bottles of frozen mineral water, Chinese throat clearing noises, and the surprising modernity of Beijing, they reported on the wide availability of books in English. One bookstore of 6 or 7 floors was reported to have an entire floor on books for learning English. One of the books, which Emmanuel\u0026rsquo;s companion Sasja purchased for its humor value, was a book to learn English through reading the speeches of George W. Bush. Quite amusing, given his \u003ca href=\"http://slate.msn.com/id/76886/\"\u003epoor ability to speak the language\u003c/a\u003e.  (This topic occurs about 26:30 into the August 30 \u0026ldquo;Off the Wall\u0026rdquo; podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple\u0026rsquo;s iTunes.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Learn English from the speeches of George W. Bush"},{"content":"Radley Balko at The Agitator points out that as pornography has become more and more widely available in the U.S. with the rise of the Internet, sex crimes against children, abortions, teen pregnancy, divorce, crimes against women, and rape have dropped. Of course, the U.S. is still worse than many countries on several of those attributes, as the earlier study about rates of religiosity showed. This would be interesting to compare across countries with different levels of Internet connectivity. This item via Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where you can find further commentary.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/porn-availability-goes-up-crime-goes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRadley Balko at \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Agitator\u003c/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025614.php#025614\"\u003epoints out\u003c/a\u003e that as pornography has become more and more widely available in the U.S. with the rise of the Internet, sex crimes against children, abortions, teen pregnancy, divorce, crimes against women, and rape have dropped. Of course, the U.S. is still worse than many countries on several of those attributes, as the earlier study about rates of religiosity showed. This would be interesting to compare across countries with different levels of Internet connectivity.  This item via Ed Brayton\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/10/porn_destroys_the_moral_fabric.php\"\u003eDispatches from the Culture Wars\u003c/a\u003e, where you can find further commentary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Porn availability goes up, crime goes down in U.S."},{"content":"The Catholic Diocese of Austin, Texas, is investigating after a priest called about 15 children to come forward during evening Mass so he could prick them with an unsterilised pin to demonstrate the pain Jesus suffered during crucifixion. \"What I was trying to teach them is that suffering is a part of life,\" said the Reverend Arthur Michalka, 78, Associated Press reports. No one reacted strongly during the incident at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Wednesday, a diocese spokeswoman said. But one mother said later: \"Apparently our father has lost his mind.\"\nHaven't enough Catholic priests taught enough children that \"suffering is a part of life\"? From the Sydney Morning Herald via Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list as part of a nice series of absurdities from Texas which also included this piece on a judge ordering a girl not to have sex.","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/pointed-lesson.html/","summary":"\u003cBLOCKQUOTE\u003eThe Catholic Diocese of Austin, Texas, is investigating after a priest called about 15 children to come forward during evening Mass so he could prick them with an unsterilised pin to demonstrate the pain Jesus suffered during crucifixion.                                         \u003cbr /\u003e                                                                                \u003cbr /\u003e\"What I was trying to teach them is that suffering is a part of life,\" said the Reverend Arthur Michalka, 78, Associated Press reports.         \u003cbr /\u003e                                                                                \u003cbr /\u003eNo one reacted strongly during the incident at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Wednesday, a diocese spokeswoman said. But one mother said later: \"Apparently our father has lost his mind.\"\u003c/BLOCKQUOTE\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eHaven't enough Catholic priests taught enough children that \"suffering is a part of life\"? From the \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pointed-lesson/2005/09/20/1126982062530.html\"\u003eSydney Morning Herald\u003c/A\u003e via Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list as part of a nice series of absurdities from Texas which also included \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.nbc4.tv/irresistible/5040625/detail.html?treets=la\u0026tid=2651905955813\u0026tml=la_4pm\u0026tmi=la_4pm_1_06000209302005\u0026ts=H \"\u003ethis piece on a judge ordering a girl not to have sex\u003c/A\u003e.","title":"A pointed lesson"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sure this is a tired argument - but then again, what argument isn\u0026rsquo;t tired when you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with creationists?\nTake a look at these optical illusions. On the one hand, they\u0026rsquo;re fun and kinda neat, but on the other hand, they\u0026rsquo;re profoundly disturbing. Most importantly, however, they are persuasive evidence against any sort of \u0026ldquo;intelligent\u0026rdquo; designer. For me, the second one (the one with the blue and yellow boxes) is particularly compelling. What kind of intelligent, all-powerful, loving God would make motion detection color-blind?\nIn thinking about this, the problem extends well beyond visual perception. Why would an intelligent designer make our memories so imperfect? For example, I can recall absolutely nothing about second grade\u0026ndash;and much of what I recall about first grade is probably wildly inaccurate (hell, much of what I recall about last week is probably wrong). Why is that (assuming a loving God, I mean)?\nI bet I know the answer already: we \u0026ldquo;fell from grace\u0026rdquo; and we\u0026rsquo;re being punished because of it. Right?\n(Hat tip: Steve\u0026rsquo;s No Direction Home)\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/wheres-wanchick.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.meredi.com/waldo/waldo.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 75px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.meredi.com/waldo/waldo.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sure this is a tired argument - but then again, what argument \u003cem\u003eisn\u0026rsquo;t \u003c/em\u003etired when you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with creationists?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTake a look at these \u003ca href=\"http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/\"\u003eoptical illusions\u003c/a\u003e. On the one hand, they\u0026rsquo;re fun and kinda neat, but on the other hand, they\u0026rsquo;re profoundly disturbing. Most importantly, however, they are persuasive evidence \u003cem\u003eagainst \u003c/em\u003eany sort of \u0026ldquo;intelligent\u0026rdquo; designer. For me, the second one (the one with the blue and yellow boxes) is particularly compelling. What kind of intelligent, all-powerful, loving God would make motion detection color-blind?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn thinking about this, the problem extends well beyond visual perception. Why would an intelligent designer make our memories so imperfect? For example, I can recall absolutely nothing about second grade\u0026ndash;and much of what I recall about first grade is probably wildly inaccurate (hell, much of what I recall about last week is probably wrong). Why is that (assuming a loving God, I mean)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eI bet I know the answer already: we \u0026ldquo;fell from grace\u0026rdquo; and we\u0026rsquo;re being punished because of it. Right?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e(Hat tip: \u003ca href=\"http://radio.weblogs.com/0100191/2005/09/30.html\"\u003eSteve\u0026rsquo;s No Direction Home\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where's Wanchick?"},{"content":"Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb has some more evidence showing that the book Of Pandas and People, the subject of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, was originally explicitly creationist. Parts of the book by Nancy Pearcey were originally published in the Bible-Science Newsletter, which was one of the worst young-earth creationist publications in terms of poor quality of arguments and evidence. For example, it published Tom Willis\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Lucy Goes to College,\u0026rdquo; which originated the bogus creationist claim that Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint was found 2 km from the rest of the skeleton. This is a bogus claim I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to get creationists to stop making for the last ten years, with few successes.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/more-evidence-that-intelligent-design.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePanda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/09/why_didnt_they.html\"\u003ehas some more evidence\u003c/A\u003e showing that the book \u003cI\u003eOf Pandas and People\u003c/I\u003e, the subject of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, was originally explicitly creationist.  Parts of the book by Nancy Pearcey were originally published in the \u003cI\u003eBible-Science Newsletter\u003c/I\u003e, which was one of the worst young-earth creationist publications in terms of poor quality of arguments and evidence.  For example, it published Tom Willis\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Lucy Goes to College,\u0026rdquo; which originated the bogus creationist claim that Lucy\u0026rsquo;s knee joint was found 2 km from the rest of the skeleton.  This is a bogus claim \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to get creationists to stop making\u003c/A\u003e for the last ten years, with few successes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More evidence that intelligent design evolved from young-earth creationism"},{"content":"After an offended student, Christopher Stone, walked out of an Intro to Neuroscience lecture when the professor stated that the Bible is not a science textbook, he sent an email to his classmates explaining his actions. Another student, Cody Cobb, sent out a parody email, which led to a visit from the Baylor police. The latter student has blogged the details. Via Pharyngula.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nYou have to be seriously humor-impaired to not know that the guy's email was a joke, and that's even without having received the original. The people who complained must be insufferably dull to be around.I'm also amused by the alleged claim by the cops that \"we have Columbines and 9/11s all over the place.\" Oh really? School shootings and collapsing buildings are \"all over the place\"? I can only hope that this was Mr. Cobb adding color to the dialog. Can there really be cops who believe that large-scale, headline-grabbing terrorist acts in the U.S. are ongoing and commonplace?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/baylor-student-accused-of-terrorism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter an offended student, Christopher Stone, walked out of an Intro to Neuroscience lecture when the professor stated that the Bible is not a science textbook, he sent an email to his classmates explaining his actions.  Another student, Cody Cobb, sent out a parody email, which led to a visit from the Baylor police.  The latter student has \u003cA HREF = \"http://90percenttrue.com/index.php?p=41\"\u003eblogged the details\u003c/A\u003e.  Via \u003cA HREF = \"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/dont_tease_jesus_some_of_his_best_friends_are_thugs/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/A\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eYou have to be \u003cI\u003eseriously\u003c/I\u003e humor-impaired to not know that the guy's email was a joke, and that's even \u003cI\u003ewithout\u003c/I\u003e having received the original.  The people who complained must be insufferably dull to be around.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI'm also amused by the alleged claim by the cops that \"we have Columbines and 9/11s all over the place.\"  Oh \u003cI\u003ereally\u003c/I\u003e? School shootings and collapsing buildings are \"all over the place\"?  I can only hope that this was Mr. Cobb adding color to the dialog.  Can there really be cops who believe that large-scale, headline-grabbing terrorist acts in the U.S. are ongoing and commonplace?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Baylor student accused of terrorism for parody email"},{"content":"A number of companies have recently come under fire for using religious themes in advertising. Sony and Ikea both ran ads in Italy which have been criticized. Sony\u0026rsquo;s ad for the Playstation showed a boy wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan \u0026ldquo;Ten Years of Passion.\u0026rdquo; The crown of thorns was made of the geometric shapes that make up the Playstation logo. Ikea ran an ad saying \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s no religion anymore\u0026rdquo; to advertise that their stores are open on Sundays.\nIn Ireland, bookmaker Paddy Power ran a billboard depicting the Last Supper, with poker chips and cards, featuring the slogan \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s a place for fun and games.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/10/companies-under-fire-for-religiously.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA number of companies have recently come under fire for using religious themes in advertising.  \u003cA HREF = \"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050930/tc_nm/italy_advert_jesus_dc\"\u003eSony and Ikea\u003c/A\u003e both ran ads in Italy which have been criticized.  Sony\u0026rsquo;s ad for the Playstation showed a boy wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan \u0026ldquo;Ten Years of Passion.\u0026rdquo;  The crown of thorns was made of the geometric shapes that make up the Playstation logo.  Ikea ran an ad saying \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s no religion anymore\u0026rdquo; to advertise that their stores are open on Sundays.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn Ireland, bookmaker Paddy Power \u003cA HREF = \"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050930/od_nm/ireland_advert_dc\"\u003eran a billboard\u003c/A\u003e depicting the Last Supper, with poker chips and cards, featuring the slogan \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s a place for fun and games.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Companies under fire for religiously themed ads"},{"content":"Apparently several members of the Bush family (including Florida Gov. Jeb and former President George Sr.) are advocates of a mystical conservative warrior named Chang. Here\u0026rsquo;s Jeb, in a speech naming Marco Rubio as Florida Speaker, after which he gave Marco a golden sword:\nChang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.The Guardian article linked above also quotes Bush Sr. periodically asking during tennis matches, \u0026ldquo;Should I unleash Chang?\u0026rdquo; (Thanks to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list for this item.)\nAdd this to the accumulating evidence for dispensationalist Christians that George W. Bush is the Antichrist, along with his former Health and Human Services director\u0026rsquo;s support for RFID tags in humans. (Tommy Thompson, like Bush, is a born-again Christian who supports \u0026ldquo;faith-based\u0026rdquo; organizations getting government money.)\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThis makes Nancy Reagan's flirtations with astrology seem downright rational by comparison.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/chang-mystical-warrior.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eApparently several members of the Bush family (including Florida Gov. Jeb and former President George Sr.) are advocates of \u003ca href=\"http://politics.guardian.co.uk/backbench/story/0,14158,1579224,00.html\"\u003ea mystical conservative warrior named Chang\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s Jeb, in a speech naming Marco Rubio as Florida Speaker, after which he gave Marco a golden sword:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eChang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.\u003c/blockquote\u003eThe \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eGuardian\u003c/span\u003e article linked above also quotes Bush Sr. periodically asking during tennis matches, \u0026ldquo;Should I unleash Chang?\u0026rdquo; (Thanks to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list for this item.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAdd this to the accumulating evidence for dispensationalist Christians that George W. Bush is the Antichrist, along with his former Health and Human Services director\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.rednova.com/news/health/196561/health_chips_could_help_patients_in_us/\"\u003esupport for RFID tags in humans\u003c/a\u003e.  (Tommy Thompson, like Bush, is a born-again Christian who supports \u0026ldquo;faith-based\u0026rdquo; organizations getting government money.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chang, the Mystical Warrior"},{"content":"As per Majikthise and Pharyngula: How many books on the American Library Association\u0026rsquo;s most-challenged books list have you read? Apparently having children gives you quite an advantage that I lack (I haven\u0026rsquo;t read any of the children\u0026rsquo;s books published after the 1970s). Looks like about 25 of them for me, though some of them I didn\u0026rsquo;t read all of (like William Powell\u0026rsquo;s idiotic and dangerously inaccurate The Anarchist Cookbook). I\u0026rsquo;m also not sure I actually read all of the Judy Blume books listed here. Do I get any bonus points for being a contributor to a challenged book (though not one of the top 100, it was actually removed from a South Carolina public library in response to complaints)?\nScary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling Forever by Judy Blume Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Giver by Lois Lowry It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck The Color Purple by Alice Walker Sex by Madonna Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle Go Ask Alice by Anonymous Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard The Witches by Roald Dahl The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry The Goats by Brock Cole Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane Blubber by Judy Blume Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier Final Exit by Derek Humphry The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents \u0026amp; Daughters by Lynda Madaras To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Beloved by Toni Morrison The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton The Pigman by Paul Zindel Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard Deenie by Judy Blume Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole Cujo by Stephen King James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy Ordinary People by Judith Guest American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents \u0026amp; Sons by Lynda Madaras Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume Crazy Lady by Jane Conly Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher Fade by Robert Cormier Guess What? by Mem Fox The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Lord of the Flies by William Golding Native Son by Richard Wright Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen Jack by A.M. Homes Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle Carrie by Stephen King Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge Family Secrets by Norma Klein Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole The Dead Zone by Stephen King The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Always Running by Luis Rodriguez Private Parts by Howard Stern Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett Running Loose by Chris Crutcher Sex Education by Jenny Davis The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI've got:Of Mice and MenThe Catcher in the RyeThe Color PurpleThe Handmaid's TaleFlowers for Algernon (abridged version)A Light in the AtticThe Anarchist Cookbook (when I was too young to realize that it sucked)Lord of the Flies (hated it)Where did I come from?Private Parts (too funny that that's on this list!)Where's Waldo? (WTF?)Looks like I have some reading to catch up on!\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/how-many-of-most-banned-books-have-you.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs per \u003ca href=\"http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/09/mostchallenged_.html\"\u003eMajikthise\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/how_many_have_you_read/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e:  How many books on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm\"\u003eAmerican Library Association\u0026rsquo;s most-challenged books list\u003c/a\u003e have you read? Apparently having children gives you quite an advantage that I lack (I haven\u0026rsquo;t read any of the children\u0026rsquo;s books published after the 1970s). Looks like about 25 of them for me, though some of them I didn\u0026rsquo;t read all of (like William Powell\u0026rsquo;s idiotic and dangerously inaccurate \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eThe Anarchist Cookbook\u003c/span\u003e). I\u0026rsquo;m also not sure I actually read all of the Judy Blume books listed here. Do I get any bonus points for being a contributor to \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1591022177/\"\u003ea challenged book\u003c/a\u003e (though not one of the top 100, it was actually \u003ca href=\"http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/controversial_book.html\"\u003eremoved from a South Carolina public library in response to complaints\u003c/a\u003e)?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003col type=\"1\"\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eScary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eDaddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Chocolate War by Robert Cormier\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eHarry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eForever by Judy Blume\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAlice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eHeather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eMy Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Giver by Lois Lowry\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eIt’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eGoosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eA Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Color Purple by Alice Walker\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSex by Madonna\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eEarth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eA Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eGo Ask Alice by Anonymous\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eFallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eIn the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Witches by Roald Dahl\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAnastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Goats by Brock Cole\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eKaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBlubber by Judy Blume\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eKilling Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eHalloween ABC by Eve Merriam\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWe All Fall Down by Robert Cormier\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eFinal Exit by Derek Humphry\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eJulie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWhat’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents \u0026amp; Daughters by Lynda Madaras\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eTo Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBeloved by Toni Morrison\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Outsiders by S.E. Hinton\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Pigman by Paul Zindel\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBumps in the Night by Harry Allard\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eDeenie by Judy Blume\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eFlowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAnnie on my Mind by Nancy Garden\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eCross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eA Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBrave New World by Aldous Huxley\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAsking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eCujo by Stephen King\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eJames and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBoys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eOrdinary People by Judith Guest\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAmerican Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWhat’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents \u0026amp; Sons by Lynda Madaras\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAre You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eCrazy Lady by Jane Conly\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAthletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eFade by Robert Cormier\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eGuess What? by Mem Fox\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe House of Spirits by Isabel Allende\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eLord of the Flies by William Golding\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eNative Son by Richard Wright\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWomen on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eCurses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eJack by A.M. Homes\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eBless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWhere Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eCarrie by Stephen King\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eTiger Eyes by Judy Blume\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eOn My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eArizona Kid by Ron Koertge\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eFamily Secrets by Norma Klein\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eMommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Dead Zone by Stephen King\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSong of Solomon by Toni Morrison\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eAlways Running by Luis Rodriguez\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003ePrivate Parts by Howard Stern\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eWhere’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSummer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eLittle Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003ePillars of the Earth by Ken Follett\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eRunning Loose by Chris Crutcher\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eSex Education by Jenny Davis\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eGirls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eHow to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eView from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eThe Terrorist by Caroline Cooney\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e   \u003cli style=\"color: rgb(204, 204, 204);\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Helvetica;\"\u003eJump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003c/ol\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How many of the most-banned books have you read?"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s now come out (via her book) that Ashley Smith, who was taken hostage by Brian Nichols after his shooting at an Atlanta courthouse, shared her crystal meth stash with her captor in addition to sharing with him about Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s Purpose-Driven Life. She says in her new book that she stopped using drugs the night before she was taken hostage, and that it was her hostage experience that persuaded her that she was a drug addict.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nHere's the whackiest part of that story, to me:...[S]he asked Nichols if he wanted to see the danger of drugs and lifted up her tank top several inches to reveal a five-inch scar down the center of her torso — the aftermath of a car wreck caused by drug-induced psychosis. She says she let go of the steering wheel when she heard a voice saying, \"Let go and let God.\"Seems less like \"the danger of drugs\" and more like \"the danger of belief in (a benevolent) deity\", IMHO. If I heard a voice tell me \"let go and let God\", followed shortly thereafter by a serious car wreck, I doubt I'd conclude that God had my best interests at heart.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/ashley-smith-shared-meth-with-captor.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s now come out (via her book) that Ashley Smith, who was taken hostage by Brian Nichols after his shooting at an Atlanta courthouse, \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050927/ap_on_re_us/courthouse_hostage_book\"\u003eshared her crystal meth stash with her captor\u003c/a\u003e in addition to sharing with him about Rick Warren\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003ePurpose-Driven Life\u003c/span\u003e.  She says in her new book that she stopped using drugs the night before she was taken hostage, and that it was her hostage experience that persuaded her that she was a drug addict.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ashley Smith shared meth with captor"},{"content":"Pharyngula cites and quotes from a study in the Journal of Religion and Society which observes that\nIn general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWhere is Wanchick's commentary on this, given that it is a direct contradiction to the claim he made recently that, e.g., teen pregnancy is up?(Please note that - if you couldn't already tell - my tongue is currently placed firmly in my cheek)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThis study doesn't contradict Wanchick on the data, only on the possible causes. The study says \"Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developing democracies (Abma et al.; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest (Figure 9).\"Figure 9 is here: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11fig/fig9.jpgBTW, the Pharyngula comments give some evidence that this is not a very good study--though the fact remains that the U.S. is an outlier (in a bad way) on these scales.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/rates-of-religious-belief-correlate.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/sinners_in_the_hands_of_an_angry_phantasm/\"\u003ePharyngula cites\u003c/a\u003e and quotes from \u003ca href=\"http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html\"\u003ea study\u003c/a\u003e in the \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eJournal of Religion and Society\u003c/span\u003e which observes that\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eIn general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. \u003cp\u003eThe United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/blockquote\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eWhere is Wanchick's commentary on this, given that it is a direct contradiction to \u003cA HREF=\"http://christianfighter.blogspot.com/2005/09/evolutionism-and-vision-of-anointed.html\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ethe claim he made\u003c/A\u003e recently that, e.g., teen pregnancy is up?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e(Please note that - if you couldn't already tell - my tongue is currently placed firmly in my cheek)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rates of religious belief correlate with homicide, abortion, early mortality, and STDs"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know precisely what to call this. A sad irony? A mindless contradiction? Sickening?\nHere we have a guy with a \u0026ldquo;Commies aren\u0026rsquo;t cool\u0026rdquo; T-Shirt on, and yet he is engaging in the most brazen form of state-worship I could imagine - short of blowing the president, perhaps.\nThis is why I can\u0026rsquo;t stand conservatism - \u0026ldquo;neo\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;paleo\u0026rdquo;, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be surprised if this gentleman is in favor of anti-price-gouging legislation \u0026ldquo;for the good of the country\u0026rdquo;, or that he thinks \u0026ldquo;From each according to his ability, to each according to his need\u0026rdquo; is one of the amendments to the Constitution. It\u0026rsquo;s these kinds of mindless drones that give anti-communism a bad name.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI'm not sure I follow the argument--I don't see any hypocrisy in this guy's stance, opposing communism while supporting a particular non-communist (or even anti-communist) state. Isn't that the same position taken by Joe McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities? It seems to me that he fits well in the conservative tradition.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nOf course, we have to be cautious when it comes to saying what exactly this guy’s stance is. After all, his thought process when he got up that morning might not have been more complicated than “Chicks dig dudes with face paint.”With that caveat out of the way, what might we reservedly conclude about the guy, based on what little we know about him?Well, what we know about him is that he is at a counter-protest in the vicinity of the huge anti-war protest that took place on the Mall in DC. He is standing at attention, looking very solemn despite the ridiculous paint job, during the national anthem. Would you not agree that these actions demonstrate an exceptionally fervent patriotism? It’s probably safe to say that he is a strong Bush supporter. While somewhat more doubtful, admittedly, I’d venture to guess that he’s a fan of Limbaugh, Hannity, and O’Reilly.Certainly Bush, Limbaugh, et. al., are self-described avowed “anti-communists”—but are they, really? I think they’re anti-communist in the same way the PATRIOT Act makes us safer, or “staying the course” in Iraq combats terrorism. This is why I pointed out O’Reilly’s absurd advocacy for price controls “for the good of the country.” That’s a perfect example of a so-called conservative anti-communist blurring the distinction!Note that I am not accusing this guy of hypocrisy, only of being blind (apparently) to the fact that his behavior—a zealous reverence for the state—bears a striking resemblance to the very thing he is simultaneously decrying (as did the actions of McCarthy).I should also point out that Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were self-described \"anti-communist\", but in all salient aspects fascism and communism are the same thing.I hope I’ve made my position at least a little clearer with this response!\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nHey, coincidentally, I just discovered this after posting the above.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/why-conservatism-is-meaningless.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know precisely what to call this. A sad irony? A mindless contradiction? Sickening?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/1600/statolatry.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4168/1436/400/statolatry.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere we have \u003ca href=\"http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12733149.htm\"\u003ea guy\u003c/a\u003e with a \u0026ldquo;Commies aren\u0026rsquo;t cool\u0026rdquo; T-Shirt on, and yet he is engaging in the most brazen form of state-worship I could imagine - short of blowing the president, perhaps.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is why I can\u0026rsquo;t stand conservatism - \u0026ldquo;neo\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;paleo\u0026rdquo;, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why \"Conservatism\" is Meaningless"},{"content":"When I read this article today, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help thinking to myself that this tune sounds a little bit familiar. Then I remembered President Bush saying this just slightly more than 3 years ago:\nToday Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.\u0026quot;Dee doo doo doo, dee da da da\u0026quot; is all I want to say to you.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/6-months-to-nukes.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I read \u003ca href=\"http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16668603^2703,00.html\"\u003ethis article\u003c/a\u003e today, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help thinking to myself that this tune sounds a little bit familiar. Then I remembered President Bush \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020914.html\"\u003esaying this\u003c/a\u003e just slightly more than 3 years ago:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eToday Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026quot;\u003ca href=\"http://www.masadsign.nl/llama/Lyrics/policgh.html#08\"\u003eDee doo doo doo\u003c/a\u003e, dee da da da\u0026quot; is all I want to say to you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"6 Months to Nukes\""},{"content":"Don Boudreaux, chairman of the George Mason University Department of Economics, weighs in - tangentially - on the housing bubble with this entry in his blog at www.cafehayek.com.\nR. Chapman (2006-12-09):\nI have a challenge for the Lippard Blog:To help increase the content and quality of our blogs, would you be interested in engaging in a dialogue on various issues in philosophy of religion?I propose to have mini-debates of 200 words or less on topics like \"Is the Universe Designed\" \"Does the Soul Exist\" \"What Caused the Universe\" and other issues.One of us could start with an opening statement, followed by a reply by the other, and a final statement by the opener. Each contribution just being 200 words.We could alternate who starts the various mini-debates, so no one gets the overall advantage in the dialogues as a whole.Are you guys interested?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nTom:I'm rather overcommitted, time-wise, and question how much value there would be with the 200 word limit. My counter-suggestion is that we each respond as appropriate to comments posted on our own blogs, as we see fit. I believe you have a lot of catching up to do...Alternatively, there is a formal debates forum at the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards (http://www.iidb.org).\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nBTW, on the topic at hand, the issues regarding CPI are discussed frequently at thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com (Ben Jones' blog). I don't think the CPI issues support an argument that there's not a housing bubble.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDid you get the impression from Don B's comments that he would argue that there isn't a bubble?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nHe's arguing that CPI overestimates inflation because of how it measures home values, and that real GDP increases have therefore been reflected in the increase in home values. I guess that doesn't need to translate into an argument that there is no housing bubble, but I first took it that he was saying that there are rational reasons for the increase in home values.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/home-values-and-cpi.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDon Boudreaux, chairman of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/\"\u003eGeorge Mason University Department of Economics\u003c/a\u003e, weighs in - tangentially - on the housing bubble with \u003ca href=\"http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2005/09/the_numbers_are.html\"\u003ethis entry\u003c/a\u003e in his blog at \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafehayek.com\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.cafehayek.com\"\u003ewww.cafehayek.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eR. Chapman\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI have a challenge for the Lippard Blog:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eTo help increase the content and quality of our blogs, would you be interested in engaging in a dialogue on various issues in philosophy of religion?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eI propose to have mini-debates of 200 words or less on topics like \"Is the Universe Designed\" \"Does the Soul Exist\" \"What Caused the Universe\" and other issues.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eOne of us could start with an opening statement, followed by a reply by the other, and a final statement by the opener. Each contribution just being 200 words.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWe could alternate who starts the various mini-debates, so no one gets the overall advantage in the dialogues as a whole.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAre you guys interested?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Home values and CPI"},{"content":"After the district attorney, police chief, and mayor vocally defended the Portland Police Department\u0026rsquo;s practice of going through people\u0026rsquo;s garbage (arguing that it becomes public property when placed out on the street for pickup), reporters for Willamette Week went through their garbage. Suddenly, the police chief and mayor changed their positions (though I suspect they were legally right in the first place, and fools for not using shredders). The mayor went so far as to threaten legal action, even though all they got was her recycling (her trash was up against her house on her property, and they chose not to risk trespass). Only the DA responded without being upset.\nThey got the police chief\u0026rsquo;s credit card number, found that his wife is a member of Focus on the Family, a summary of his wife\u0026rsquo;s investments, an email to the mayor about his application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a cigar stub, and \u0026ldquo;a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/willamette-week-goes-through.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter the district attorney, police chief, and mayor vocally defended the Portland Police Department\u0026rsquo;s practice of going through people\u0026rsquo;s garbage (arguing that it becomes public property when placed out on the street for pickup), \u003ca href=\"http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=3485\"\u003ereporters for \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eWillamette Week\u003c/span\u003e went through their garbage\u003c/a\u003e.  Suddenly, the police chief and mayor changed their positions (though I suspect they were legally right in the first place, and fools for not using shredders).  The mayor went so far as to threaten legal action, even though all they got was her recycling (her trash was up against her house on her property, and they chose not to risk trespass).  Only the DA responded without being upset.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThey got the police chief\u0026rsquo;s credit card number, found that his wife is a member of Focus on the Family, a summary of his wife\u0026rsquo;s investments, an email to the mayor about his application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a cigar stub, and \u0026ldquo;a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Willamette Week goes through government leaders' garbage"},{"content":"Michael Medved recently wrote that the documentary film \u0026ldquo;March of the Penguins\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.\u0026rdquo; Andrew Coffin writes that the movie makes \u0026ldquo;a strong case for intelligent design.\u0026rdquo; These claims have been rightly ridiculed all over the blogosphere.\nEd Brayton notes that there are gay penguins, as does the Reason magazine blog.\nPharyngula notes that the penguins stand by while their eggs or children are eaten, that they get new breeding partners each season (so it\u0026rsquo;s serial monogamy without long-term commitment), and their practices could only have been designed by a cruel and heartless designer.\nCarl Zimmer points out that if we are going to take lessons in morality from the animal kingdom, there are even more horrific examples available, which is also pointed out in the book and British TV series Dr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation.\nThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb provides a similar list of links to the above, and there are enjoyable and informative comments at each of these sites, such as one commenter on Zimmer\u0026rsquo;s site who pointed to this article about Boston\u0026rsquo;s lesbian swans.\nThe variation of deviant activity in nature is greater than it is within the human species alone. I look forward to seeing an Intelligent Design theory that attempts to explain it.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI'm sure the IDers' testable hypothesis will look something like this: \"Satan did it.\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/march-of-penguins-argument-for.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMichael Medved \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/science/13peng.html?ei=5090\u0026en=36efde9c1de3fa22\u0026amp;ex=1284264000\u0026partner=rssuserland\u0026amp;emc=rss\u0026pagewanted=all\"\u003erecently wrote\u003c/a\u003e that the documentary film \u0026ldquo;March of the Penguins\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.\u0026rdquo; Andrew Coffin \u003ca href=\"http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=10903\"\u003ewrites\u003c/a\u003e that the movie makes \u0026ldquo;a strong case for intelligent design.\u0026rdquo; These claims have been rightly ridiculed all over the blogosphere.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEd Brayton notes that there are \u003ca href=\"http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/09/gay_penguins.php\"\u003egay penguins\u003c/a\u003e, as does the \u003ca href=\"http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/09/gay_pride_march.shtml\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eReason\u003c/span\u003e magazine blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePharyngula notes that the penguins stand by while their eggs or children are eaten, that they get \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/birds/\"\u003enew breeding partners each season\u003c/a\u003e (so it\u0026rsquo;s serial monogamy without long-term commitment), and their practices could only have been designed by a cruel and heartless designer.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCarl Zimmer points out that if we are going to take lessons in morality from the animal kingdom, \u003ca href=\"http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/09/14/traditional_norms_animalstyle.php\"\u003ethere are even more horrific examples available\u003c/a\u003e, which is also pointed out in the book and British TV series \u003ca href=\"http://www.drtatiana.com/\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eDr. Tatiana\u0026rsquo;s Sex Advice to All Creation.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/09/penguins.html\"\u003eprovides a similar list of links\u003c/a\u003e to the above, and there are enjoyable and informative comments at each of these sites, such as one commenter on Zimmer\u0026rsquo;s site who pointed to this article about \u003ca href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/08/12/thou_art_no_romeo/\"\u003eBoston\u0026rsquo;s lesbian swans\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe variation of deviant activity in nature is greater than it is within the human species alone. I look forward to seeing an Intelligent Design theory that attempts to explain it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"March of the Penguins: Argument for Monogamy and Intelligent Design?"},{"content":"This CNet article talks about the CubeSat program, which allows students to design, build, and launch their own satellites into low earth orbit (240-360 miles). The cost is about $40,000 to build and $40,000 to launch; the article quotes a Stanford professor calling these the Apple IIs of satellites.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/do-it-yourself-satellites.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis \u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/DIY+satellites+reinvent+the+space+race/2100-11397_3-5863564.html?tag=st.pop\"\u003eCNet article talks about the CubeSat program\u003c/a\u003e, which allows students to design, build, and launch their own satellites into low earth orbit (240-360 miles). The cost is about $40,000 to build and $40,000 to launch; the article quotes a Stanford professor calling these the Apple IIs of satellites.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Do-it-yourself satellites"},{"content":"City Councilman Mike Johnson was re-elected in my district (District 8) with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Al Sharpton protege, teenage Reverend Jarrett Maupin. Maupin, who was featured in a recent New Times article which leveled charges of institutional racism against my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, was apparently a Republican when he was at Brophy. Today he heads Sharpton\u0026rsquo;s National Action Network in Arizona and has a show on Air America in Phoenix.\nUPDATE (December 22, 2006): A lot of the links above have gone bad. Confirmation that Maupin was in the Young Republicans at Brophy can be found on this Brophy graduate\u0026rsquo;s blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/phoenix-city-council-election.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCity Councilman Mike Johnson \u003ca href=\"http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0914phoenixelect14.html\"\u003ewas re-elected\u003c/a\u003e in my district (District 8) with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Al Sharpton protege, teenage Reverend Jarrett Maupin.  Maupin, who was featured \u003ca href=\"http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2005-02-03/news/feature.html\"\u003ein a recent \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eNew Times\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e article which leveled charges of institutional racism against my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, \u003ca href=\"http://newsthoughts.net/index.php?p=636\"\u003ewas apparently a Republican\u003c/a\u003e when he was at Brophy.  Today he heads Sharpton\u0026rsquo;s National Action Network in Arizona and \u003ca href=\"http://www.newstalk1010.net/shows.php?sid=26\"\u003ehas a show on Air America in Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eUPDATE (December 22, 2006): A lot of the links above have gone bad.  Confirmation that Maupin was in the Young Republicans at Brophy can be found \u003ca href=\"http://greggyd.blogspot.com/2005/02/new-times-and-brophy.html\"\u003eon this Brophy graduate\u0026rsquo;s blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phoenix City Council election"},{"content":"The Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit\u0026rsquo;s previous ruling in his case, and entered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; language. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there\u0026rsquo;s no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time.\nThis will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of Day 2 of his confirmation hearings) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said in his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief):\nDURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking \u0026ndash; I think you\u0026rsquo;ve alluded to this \u0026ndash; is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers?\nROBERTS: Yes.\nThe court\u0026rsquo;s decisions in that area are quite clear.\nAnd I think the framers\u0026rsquo; intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart \u0026ndash; a conscience from which the government would not intrude.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nTwo things strike me about all this hot air:1) Doesn't the God of Abraham declare at some point that he doesn't like idolatry? Isn't that what pledging allegiance to a flag amounts to?2) I wish people who are supposedly in favor of less government and more freedom wouldn't get so worked up about a thing that, at its core, strikes me as the very antithesis of those things. The damned thing was written by a hardcore socialist, for crying out loud! That real freedom is not on the agenda of the Hannities and the Limbaughs of the world is never clearer than in cases like these.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/under-god-is-unconstitutional-in.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit\u0026rsquo;s previous ruling in his case, and \u003ca href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050914/pl_nm/rights_pledge_dc\"\u003eentered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; language\u003c/a\u003e. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there\u0026rsquo;s no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091301525.html\"\u003eDay 2 of his confirmation hearings\u003c/a\u003e) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said \u003ca href=\"http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1693.ZD.html\"\u003ein his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief\u003c/a\u003e):\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eDURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking \u0026ndash; I think you\u0026rsquo;ve alluded to this \u0026ndash; is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eROBERTS: Yes.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe court\u0026rsquo;s decisions in that area are quite clear.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAnd I think the framers\u0026rsquo; intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart \u0026ndash; a conscience from which the government would not intrude.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Under God\" is unconstitutional in Sacramento, again"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s Washington Post reports that The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.\nThe new doctrine has not yet been approved by Rumsfeld.\nDesigned for Iran and North Korea?\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThis does not bode well.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nMore info on this here.\nMike Darus (2006-12-09):\nI did not read all 69 pages of the Pentagon document. I did not find the discussion of preemptive first strike. What I read was comforting to someone who cringes at the thought of actually using these things. There was much discussion of deterence. In fact, the main purpose of the nuclear arsenal seems to be deterance. Because of this purpose, it is important to make others think we will do anything. Deception is a key ingredient. I hope to think we are using deception when we threaten a first strike against terrorists. There is even admission that deterence only works with rational people who define their self interest in rational terms. We have no assurance that deterence will work with terrorists. But ink is cheap. I think they wrote it right but if next week we nuke a mountain enclave in Pakistan, I would not be happy.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nWhy would the threat of unpredictability be a greater deterrent than the threat of retaliation? Making others think \"we will do anything\" seems like a recipe for increased paranoia, secrecy, and unpredictability on the part of others. Not a good thing, IMHO.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/pentagon-drafts-new-policy-on-first.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001053.html?sub=AR\"\u003eWashington Post\u003c/a\u003e reports that \u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eThe Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe new doctrine has not yet been approved by Rumsfeld.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eDesigned for Iran and North Korea?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pentagon drafts new policy on first-strike use of nuclear weapons"},{"content":"Clint Bolick and Alan Dershowitz have written two very different\u0026ndash;yet only occasionally directly contradictory\u0026ndash;rememberances of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bolick, in a piece distributed by the Goldwater Institute and published in the Arizona Republic, describes Rehnquist as a conservative, moderating influence on a liberal court, advocating state\u0026rsquo;s rights, school choice, and presiding over a court that has been \u0026ldquo;usually (though less frequently lately) siding with individual liberty over state power.\u0026rdquo; Dershowitz, on the other hand, in a piece published on the Huffington Post, describes Rehnquist as a bigot who enjoyed racist and anti-Semitic jokes, who defended the \u0026ldquo;separate but equal\u0026rdquo; doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson as a law clerk for Justice Jackson, and who began his legal career as a Republican thug who obstructed African-American and Hispanic voters at Phoenix polling places.\nBolick gives a more nuanced view that actually addresses more of Rehnquist\u0026rsquo;s work on the court (though less than I would have expected), while Dershowitz emphasizes evidence of Rehnquist\u0026rsquo;s personal character which mostly derives from before he was on the Supreme Court. I was surprised that Bolick didn\u0026rsquo;t mention some of the recent cases (such as Raich v. Ashcroft and Kelo v. New London) where Rehnquist voted for liberty (and was unfortunately in the minority).\nYet I have no doubt that there is accuracy in both descriptions. Bolick has in the past seen people as defenders of liberty who have done much to destroy it, such as former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Dershowitz alternatively takes courageous stands in defense of liberty and crazy stands which oppose it.\nOne area where I was less than impressed with Rehnquist was on religious liberty, specifically for nonbelievers. He (like the majority) went the wrong way on Elk Grove v. Newdow (the Pledge of Allegiance \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; case) and (unlike the majority) the wrong way on the McCreary County v. ACLU case (Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courtroom which included a written statement that the display was \u0026ldquo;in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics\u0026rdquo;).\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/rehnquist-remembered-rashomon-style.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eClint Bolick and Alan Dershowitz have written two very different\u0026ndash;yet only occasionally directly contradictory\u0026ndash;rememberances of Chief Justice William Rehnquist.  Bolick, in \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/734.html\"\u003ea piece distributed by the Goldwater Institute and published in the \u003cEM\u003eArizona Republic\u003c/EM\u003e\u003c/A\u003e, describes Rehnquist as a conservative, moderating influence on a liberal court, advocating state\u0026rsquo;s rights, school choice, and presiding over a court that has been \u0026ldquo;usually (though less frequently lately) siding with individual liberty over state power.\u0026rdquo;  Dershowitz, on the other hand, \u003cA HREF = \"http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20050905/cm_huffpost/006844\"\u003ein a piece published on the Huffington Post\u003c/A\u003e, describes Rehnquist as a bigot who enjoyed racist and anti-Semitic jokes, who defended the \u0026ldquo;separate but equal\u0026rdquo; doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson as a law clerk for Justice Jackson, and who began his legal career as a Republican thug who obstructed African-American and Hispanic voters at Phoenix polling places.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eBolick gives a more nuanced view that actually addresses more of Rehnquist\u0026rsquo;s work on the court (though less than I would have expected), while Dershowitz emphasizes evidence of Rehnquist\u0026rsquo;s personal character which mostly derives from before he was on the Supreme Court.  I was surprised that Bolick didn\u0026rsquo;t mention some of the recent cases (such as Raich v. Ashcroft and Kelo v. New London) where Rehnquist voted for liberty (and was unfortunately in the minority).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYet I have no doubt that there is accuracy in both descriptions.  Bolick has in the past seen people as defenders of liberty who have done much to destroy it, such as \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/01/16/bolick/\"\u003eformer Attorney General John Ashcroft.\u003c/A\u003e  Dershowitz alternatively takes courageous stands in defense of liberty and \u003cA HREF = \"http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/\"\u003ecrazy stands which oppose it\u003c/A\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOne area where I was less than impressed with Rehnquist was on religious liberty, specifically for nonbelievers.  He (like the majority) went the wrong way on Elk Grove v. Newdow (the Pledge of Allegiance \u0026ldquo;under God\u0026rdquo; case) and (unlike the majority) the wrong way on the McCreary County v. ACLU case (Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courtroom which included a written statement that the display was \u0026ldquo;in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics\u0026rdquo;).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rehnquist remembered, Rashomon-style"},{"content":"Tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s featured article on Wikipedia is \u0026ldquo;Space Opera in Scientology Doctrine,\u0026quot; a very well-written entry that tells you pretty much all you need to know about Scientology\u0026rsquo;s cosmology. Oh, the entry on Xenu is also a good one.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/space-opera-in-scientology.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTomorrow\u0026rsquo;s featured article on Wikipedia is \u003cA HREF = \"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera_in_Scientology_doctrine\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Space Opera in Scientology Doctrine,\u0026quot;\u003c/A\u003e a very well-written entry that tells you pretty much all you need to know about Scientology\u0026rsquo;s cosmology.  Oh, the entry on \u003cA HREF = \"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu\"\u003eXenu\u003c/A\u003e is also a good one.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Space Opera in Scientology"},{"content":"The apocalyptic-sounding NOAA bulletin that was released Sunday morning which Brian Williams described on tonight\u0026rsquo;s Daily Show may be found online here.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/noaa-bulletin-about-hurricane-katrina.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe apocalyptic-sounding NOAA bulletin that was released Sunday morning which Brian Williams described on tonight\u0026rsquo;s Daily Show may be found online \u003ca href=\"http://wikisource.org/wiki/August_28_2005_10:11_AM_CDT_NOAA_Bulletin\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NOAA bulletin about Hurricane Katrina"},{"content":"Chris Roller\u0026rsquo;s web site (www.mytrumanshow.com), aside from being a guided tour through a profoundly disturbed\u0026ndash;though mostly harmless\u0026ndash;mind, is immensely entertaining. He updates it often, so it pays to visit it every couple of months.\nEspecially funny is the clip he\u0026rsquo;s provided of a segment (an amazingly long one, considering the ridiculous subject matter) that some Entertainment Tonight clone did on his $50,000,000 suit against David Copperfield for \u0026ldquo;using his Godly powers\u0026rdquo; without his permission. You can tell they were skirting along the edge of blatantly making fun of him.\nRoller must be a real trip to be around.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI'm still more of a fan of Gary Stollman, the guy who held David Horowitz at (toy) gun point, then became an avid Internet user, posting his account of how his mother and other people were replaced by aliens with exact duplicates. He suffered from something called Capgras' syndrome, which causes a disconnect between visual recognition of people you know and the activation of emotional memories about those people, making you infer that you are viewing impostors. http://www.skepticfiles.org/conspire/garybook.htm\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDon't get me wrong, that's definitely an enjoyable page, but it lacks the innocent absurdity that Roller's site has.Stollman's writing oozes with a profound sense of loneliness, and the events he describes suggest an almost constant state of extreme confusion and desperation--both on his part and the part of his unfortunate parents.Having been in what I imagine is a similar state of mind as a result of my experimentation with LSD, I think I can empathize with Stollman. If his experience is anything like mine was--and I would guess that it's probably worse--then it definitely counts as one of the lower rungs of Hell.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/real-truman-show.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.mytrumanshow.com\"\u003eChris Roller\u0026rsquo;s web site\u003c/a\u003e (\u003ca href=\"http://www.mytrumanshow.com\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.mytrumanshow.com\"\u003ewww.mytrumanshow.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/a\u003e), aside from being a guided tour through a profoundly disturbed\u0026ndash;though mostly harmless\u0026ndash;mind, is immensely entertaining. He updates it often, so it pays to visit it every couple of months.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eEspecially funny is the clip he\u0026rsquo;s provided of a segment (an amazingly long one, considering the ridiculous subject matter) that some Entertainment Tonight clone did on his $50,000,000 suit against David Copperfield for \u0026ldquo;using his Godly powers\u0026rdquo; without his permission. You can tell they were skirting along the edge of blatantly making fun of him.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eRoller must be a real trip to be around.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The REAL Truman Show"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s an interesting first-hand account of trying to get out of New Orleans from a couple of socialist paramedics from San Francisco who were attending a conference. This account is critical of both the federal and local responses, but praises spontaneous individual order that kept being stifled by the officials.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nElements of this account have now made the New York Times, the Arizona Republic, and elsewhere:http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0910katrina-flee10.html\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nKey aspects of this account have now been confirmed from law enforcement officers involved:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article311784.ece\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nCNN has now picked up the story.http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/13/katrina.bridge/index.htmlApparently Gretna had evacuated, and Gretna law enforcement viewed themselves as protecting the unoccupied property of its citizens from potential looting.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/paramedics-in-new-orleans.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.livejournal.com/users/sfsocialists/3687.html\"\u003ean interesting first-hand account of trying to get out of New Orleans\u003c/a\u003e from a couple of socialist paramedics from San Francisco who were attending a conference.  This account is critical of both the federal and local responses, but praises spontaneous individual order that kept being stifled by the officials.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eLippard\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eElements of this account have now made the New York Times, the Arizona Republic, and elsewhere:\u003cBR/\u003ehttp://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0910katrina-flee10.html\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paramedics in New Orleans"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a great photo, via James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nFinally! We have some truth in news media!Do you think that might have been intentional? (Having worked in television briefly, I would strongly suspect so)Actually, my question reminds me of the Howard Stern show this morning, where Howard was conjecturing that Rush Limbaugh's slip of the tongue--\"Mayor Nager\"--wasn't so much a slip as an attempt to \"out-conservative\" all the other right-wing talk radio jerks.You just know this picture is going to be making the email rounds for the next few days...\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/bush-disaster.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://flickr.com/photos/adampsyche/41200217/\"\u003ea great photo\u003c/a\u003e, via James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eFinally!  We have some truth in news media!\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eDo you think that might have been intentional? (Having worked in television briefly, I would strongly suspect so)\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eActually, my question reminds me of the Howard Stern show this morning, where Howard was conjecturing that Rush Limbaugh's slip of the tongue--\"Mayor Nager\"--wasn't so much a slip as an attempt to \"out-conservative\" all the other right-wing talk radio jerks.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eYou just know this picture is going to be making the email rounds for the next few days...\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush Disaster"},{"content":"DHS/FEMA hired a Baton Rouge company called IEM to develop a \u0026ldquo;catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans \u0026amp; Southeast Louisiana\u0026rdquo; in June 2004. IEM has now edited this from their website, apparently in embarrassment.\nAfter this was pointed out in the blogosphere, IEM restored the press release.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/new-orleans-catastrophic-hurricane.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDHS/FEMA hired a Baton Rouge company called IEM to develop a \u003ca href=\"http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/09/politics-of-weather-3-shyness-of.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans \u0026amp; Southeast Louisiana\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in June 2004.  IEM has now edited this from their website, apparently in embarrassment.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eAfter this was pointed out in the blogosphere, IEM \u003ca href=\"http://www.ieminc.com/Whats_New/Press_Releases/pressrelease060304_Catastrophic.htm\"\u003erestored the press release\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Orleans catastrophic hurricane disaster plan"},{"content":"Denyse O\u0026rsquo;Leary (an appallingly bad journalist who blogs in favor of Intelligent Design) wrote that she won\u0026rsquo;t become an internal critic of ID because she opposes the \u0026ldquo;academic fascism\u0026rdquo; of ID critics. I find that an appallingly weak justification for being a propagandist. Internal criticism tends to strengthen the quality of arguments and evidence, not weaken them\u0026ndash;unless, of course, what you\u0026rsquo;re advocating is false.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAre there any pro-IDers who are critical of other pro-IDers?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nSome young-earth creationists have been highly critical of some ID'ers, or ID'ers in general. Some within the ID movement have been honest and forthcoming about the fact that ID has no scientific basis (though they hope it will in the future), e.g. Paul Nelson (who is also a YEC), quoted here:http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/?p=376\nVictor Reppert (2006-12-09):\nThis essay, by Robin Collins, is clearly by someone sympathetic to the overall ID project, but wants ID refocused as a metascientific rather than a scientific hypothesis. It seems to be critical of the way in which ID has been presented so far. http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Intell3.htm\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nMaybe I just don't get it, but his suggestion seems incoherent. So we call it a \"meta-scientific hypothesis\"... Ooooh, brilliant! Where does that get us, really? Why not just call a spade a spade and say it's a non-scientific hypothesis?His essay also looks like it might not be all that satisfying to the young-Earth creationists out there who I think are right to be concerned that ID already gives up way too much ground to the real scientists.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/internal-criticism.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDenyse O\u0026rsquo;Leary (an \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000510.html\"\u003eappallingly\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/?p=415\"\u003ebad\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000784.html\"\u003ejournalist\u003c/a\u003e who blogs in favor of Intelligent Design) \u003ca href=\"http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2005/07/www.designorchance.com/press.html\"\u003ewrote that she won\u0026rsquo;t become an internal critic of ID\u003c/a\u003e because she opposes the \u0026ldquo;academic fascism\u0026rdquo; of ID critics.  I find that an appallingly weak justification for being a propagandist.  Internal criticism tends to strengthen the quality of arguments and evidence, not weaken them\u0026ndash;unless, of course, what you\u0026rsquo;re advocating is false.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eAre there \u003cI\u003eany\u003c/I\u003e pro-IDers who are critical of other pro-IDers?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Internal criticism"},{"content":"A couple of items from Pharyngula:\n1. P.Z. wonders, citing John Allen Poulos, why there\u0026rsquo;s not more affinity between economists and evolutionists. What, no mention of Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s Bionomics? There are some interesting comments on this Pharyngula entry, worth the read.\n2. The Daily Show is going to settle the evolution vs. creation battle once and for all with a special called \u0026ldquo;Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report,\u0026rdquo; filling the \u0026ldquo;Daily Show\u0026rdquo; timeslot during the week of September 12. This should be a good one\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/evolution-and-economics-daily-show-and.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple of items from \u003ca href=\"http://www.pharyngula.org/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e1.  \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/economists_and_evolutionists_should_be_natural_allies/\"\u003eP.Z. wonders\u003c/a\u003e, citing \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=1077586\"\u003eJohn Allen Poulos\u003c/a\u003e, why there\u0026rsquo;s not more affinity between economists and evolutionists.  What, no mention of Rothschild\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eBionomics\u003c/span\u003e?  There are some interesting comments on this Pharyngula entry, worth the read.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2.  The Daily Show is going to \u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/evolution_schmevolution/\"\u003esettle the evolution vs. creation battle once and for all\u003c/a\u003e with a special called \u0026ldquo;Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report,\u0026rdquo; filling the \u0026ldquo;Daily Show\u0026rdquo; timeslot during the week of September 12.  This should be a good one\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evolution and economics / Daily Show and Evolution"},{"content":"The Economist reports on research from Steven Most at Yale into a condition called \u0026ldquo;emotion-induced blindness\u0026rdquo; (apparently similar to and named analogously to motion-induced blindness). Most\u0026rsquo;s research shows that gory and erotic images trigger a condition which lasts for two-tenths to eight-tenths of a second during which the viewer fails to process what they see immediately afterwards. This is attributed to \u0026ldquo;an information-processing bottleneck in the brain when it is presented with important stimuli,\u0026rdquo; the categories in question being relevant to avoiding dangers and reproductive success, respectively.\nThis phenomenon provides grounds for an argument that some content-based restrictions on visual material in certain locations (e.g., alongside highways) are justified on the basis of their potential to cause physical harm. (Or that liability should be incurred for resulting accidents by those who put such material in place.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nAre there any studies that show increased incidence of accidents near erotic billboards?Also, since a good portion of the act of driving is managed by the cerebellum (I am told), I wonder how much this emotional blindness really impacts a person's acuity.Aren't there a lot of other potential distractions on the road that are more likely to impact drivers (Their own thoughts, passengers in the vehicle, right-wing talk radio pundits, etc.)?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThat's an excellent point--how much of driving is dependent upon conscious awareness? If it's like most other things, probably a lot less than we think. This might narrow down the scope of the problem to places where a driver needs to make a conscious decision of some sort (e.g., about turning, or stopping and starting).If this is really analogous to motion-induced blindness, it's worth noting that the objects which disappear from the conscious visual field still produce after-image effects even when they aren't consciously visible, so they are still being perceived/processed by parts of the brain.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/empirical-argument-for-billboard.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4292593\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c/a\u003e reports on research from Steven Most at Yale into a condition called \u0026ldquo;emotion-induced blindness\u0026rdquo; (apparently similar to and named analogously to \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t\u0026ct=res\u0026amp;cd=1\u0026url=http%3A//www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_mib/\u0026amp;ei=BlofQ-DsL8GYYaLlgJQM\"\u003emotion-induced blindness\u003c/a\u003e).  Most\u0026rsquo;s research shows that gory and erotic images trigger a condition which lasts for two-tenths to eight-tenths of a second during which the viewer fails to process what they see immediately afterwards.  This is attributed to \u0026ldquo;an information-processing bottleneck in the brain when it is presented with important stimuli,\u0026rdquo; the categories in question being relevant to avoiding dangers and reproductive success, respectively.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThis phenomenon provides grounds for an argument that some content-based restrictions on visual material in certain locations (e.g., alongside highways) are justified on the basis of their potential to cause physical harm.  (Or that liability should be incurred for resulting accidents by those who put such material in place.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Empirical argument for billboard restrictions"},{"content":"The NY Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibition on \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult\u0026rdquo; that appears quite interesting.\nClayton Littlejohn (2006-12-09):\nHey, I've not seen you over at Christian Fighter for a while, but after reading your blog and seeing that Tom has singled us out, I'm proud to be included among the annointed.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nBy \"you\", do you mean Jim, or me (or both)?Wanchick apparently has no interest in debate or discussion of any of the \"ideas\" he puts out there. It almost seems like he doesn't even read his own blog. I thought the whole point of apologetics was argumentation. I guess I was mistaken.In the immortal words of Missing Persons, \"I might as well go up and talk to a wall 'cause all my words are having no effect at all.\"\nClayton Littlejohn (2006-12-09):\nDo you and Jim both use the handle 'einzige', I couldn't tell but both of you seem pretty swell and since its lonely being annointed, the more the merrier. I waver between annoyance with Wanchick's unbelievable passive aggressiveness and pity. In terms of the blog, it's a noisemaker. After a while it seemed he really was bent on creating as much heat, noise, and interference as possible and had not the slightest concern for evidence or reason. I try not to go there anymore but I can't seem to resist. What galls me is how he keeps trying to draw critics back in with his obnoxious remarks about how stupid the criticisms of his arguments were.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nEinzige and I are two different people...I've pretty much given up on Wanchick's blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/photography-and-occult.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe NY Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibition on \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/08/31/arts/20050904_KENN_SLIDESHOW_1.html\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e that appears quite interesting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eClayton Littlejohn\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eHey, I've not seen you over at Christian Fighter for a while, but after reading your blog and seeing that Tom has singled us out, I'm proud to be included among the annointed.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eBy \"you\", do you mean Jim, or me (or both)?\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eWanchick apparently has no interest in debate or discussion of any of the \"ideas\" he puts out there.  It almost seems like he doesn't even read his own blog.  I thought the whole point of apologetics was argumentation.  I guess I was mistaken.\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eIn the immortal words of Missing Persons, \"I might as well go up and talk to a wall 'cause all my words are having no effect at all.\"\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Photography and the Occult"},{"content":"Pharyngula points out this latest example of a Bush statement at odds with reality:\nGeorge W. Bush, September 2005:\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.\u0026quot;Scientific American, October 2001:\n\u0026ldquo;New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh\u0026ndash;an area the size of Manhattan\u0026ndash;will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn\u0026rsquo;t go very far.\u0026quot;It seems to me there\u0026rsquo;s at least as much blame to place on Louisiana state and New Orleans city government as on the feds for this one.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nEveryone's turning it into a political issue--i.e., \"if we weren't in Iraq then the Feds would have been able to spend the money on the levees.\"I'm all for getting out of Iraq--and there are plenty of better uses for the billions of dollars being wasted over there--but why should the New Orleans levees be considered a federal issue at all? (Forgiving the fact that they shouldn't be a government issue at all) And who's to say whether the levees would have even been on pork barrel list in the absence of the Iraq war, anyway?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThe SciAm article makes it clear that the issue is actually a lot bigger than the levees--the levees themselves have contributed to the problem of New Orleans sinking.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested nearly $500M of federal funds to work on the levees; they got less than $200M.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nOh, and I forgot to mention: many years earlier than the Scientific American article, Robert Plant said, \"If it keeps on raining the levee's going to break.\"I wonder how many millions to rebuild, now?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nNow Chertoff, head of the DHS, is similarly denying reality:http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html\"Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.\"\nVictor Reppert (2006-12-09):\nCan we conclude from this that Bush doesn't read Scientific American? As Sandra Bullock would say, \"Shocker!\"\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/bush-vs-reality-new-orleans-disaster.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/drowning_new_orleans/\"\u003ePharyngula\u003c/a\u003e points out this latest example of a Bush statement at odds with reality:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=22935\"\u003eGeorge W. Bush, September 2005\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000\"\u003eScientific American, October 2001\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026ldquo;New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh\u0026ndash;an area the size of Manhattan\u0026ndash;will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn\u0026rsquo;t go very far.\u0026quot;\u003c/blockquote\u003eIt seems to me there\u0026rsquo;s at least as much blame to place on Louisiana state and New Orleans city government as on the feds for this one.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bush vs. Reality:  New Orleans disaster"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve become somewhat of a fetishist regarding President Bush\u0026rsquo;s speeches, starting from around January, 2002, up to the present day. They\u0026rsquo;re all available at the White House web site in transcript form, with many also in video. For some reason I find it fascinating to watch his mind-numbingly repetitive talking points evolve over time. It\u0026rsquo;s also fascinating to read his stammering\u0026ndash;faithfully transcribed, mind you\u0026ndash;when he gets asked that oh-so-rare \u0026ldquo;tough\u0026rdquo; question by one of the press corp. Reading his words like that, you wonder (or I do, anyway) why his lies weren\u0026rsquo;t immediately clear to everyone.\nSo I found this little Daily Show video essay particularly enjoyable. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to imagine a more brilliantly funny parsing of presidental spin. I keep half-seriously wondering when that show is going to get yanked off the air and Jon Stewart sent to Guantanamo Bay.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThis reminds me of rx: http://www.thepartyparty.com/\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/09/words-of-president.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve become somewhat of a fetishist regarding \u003ca href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/news\"\u003ePresident Bush\u0026rsquo;s speeches\u003c/a\u003e, starting from around January, 2002, up to the present day. They\u0026rsquo;re all available at the White House web site in transcript form, with many also in video. For some reason I find it fascinating to watch his mind-numbingly repetitive talking points evolve over time. It\u0026rsquo;s also fascinating to read his stammering\u0026ndash;faithfully transcribed, mind you\u0026ndash;when he gets asked that oh-so-rare \u0026ldquo;tough\u0026rdquo; question by one of the press corp. Reading his words like that, you wonder (or I do, anyway) why his lies weren\u0026rsquo;t immediately clear to everyone.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSo I found \u003ca href=\"http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=17544\"\u003ethis little Daily Show video essay\u003c/a\u003e particularly enjoyable. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to imagine a more brilliantly funny parsing of presidental spin. I keep half-seriously wondering when that show is going to get yanked off the air and Jon Stewart sent to Guantanamo Bay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Words of the President"},{"content":"As President of the Internet Infidels, I occasionally get some interesting email. Yesterday, a guy named Theo sent me a list of three prophecies which he claims will prove the existence of precognition. Here are his three prophecies:\n1. Between September 7-9 (probably on the 8th) police make dramatic news of a crazy person doing something. Lots of drama. Alot of people die.\n2. On September 17 someone of importance is assasinated in the middle east. This may be related to terrorism.\n3. On September 26 thousands of people are forced to relocate due to either tornado or earthquake.I objected that the first happens every day somewhere, and asked him to make it more specific\u0026ndash;by \u0026ldquo;crazy person\u0026rdquo; did he mean someone who is mentally ill? Is the crazy person causally related to the people dying? How many people is \u0026ldquo;a lot\u0026rdquo; (at least give an order of magnitude).\nOn the second, again I said that is nearly a daily event. Could he narrow it down to a country, or the field in which the assassinated person is \u0026ldquo;someone of importance\u0026rdquo;?\nOn the third, I asked whether the date is the date of the event or the relocation, and whether he could be specific about the nature of the disaster and add a geographic location.\nTheo also claims that he predicted Hurricane Katrina \u0026ldquo;right to the day\u0026rdquo; (but didn\u0026rsquo;t say which day of the multi-day event he predicted), and in a later email said that he had made three similar prophecies (presumably one of them was about Katrina) last month, but he hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet given me the specifics. I\u0026rsquo;ll press him, and post here if I get the details. (Update: Theo says I can find the information in AOL\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Christian Living\u0026rdquo; chat room logs, but didn\u0026rsquo;t provide them. In response to my request for specifics about what he said, he says \u0026ldquo;Several weeks ago I predicted that a major catastrophe would occur in this country and that thousands would be forced to relocate between August 29-30.\u0026rdquo; What happened to a \u0026ldquo;right to the day\u0026rdquo; prediction of a hurricane?)\nIn my response, I asked him if he could be more specific, in which case I\u0026rsquo;d be willing to entertain a $500 wager on it with him (with proceeds donated to the charity of his choice if he gets all three right, and donated to the Internet Infidels otherwise). He told me that I don\u0026rsquo;t understand how precognition works and that my demands are unrealistic.\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nDid he bother to explain \"how it works,\" yet?Does the bet cause bad vibes, or something? Or is precognition necessarily so vague that it's open to interpretation? (Of course that second one, if he admits it, is obviously admission that \"precognition\" is worthless)\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nUnfortunately, he hasn't responded to me at all since August 31. I guess we'll see how he does on his first prediction in the next couple of days.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/theos-prophecies.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs President of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.infidels.org/\"\u003eInternet Infidels\u003c/a\u003e, I occasionally get some interesting email. Yesterday, a guy named Theo sent me a list of three prophecies which he claims will prove the existence of precognition. Here are his three prophecies:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e1. Between September 7-9 (probably on the 8th) police make dramatic news of a crazy person doing something. Lots of drama. Alot of people die.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e2. On September 17 someone of importance is assasinated in the middle east. This may be related to terrorism.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e3. On September 26 thousands of people are forced to relocate due to either tornado or earthquake.\u003c/blockquote\u003eI objected that the first happens every day somewhere, and asked him to make it more specific\u0026ndash;by \u0026ldquo;crazy person\u0026rdquo; did he mean someone who is mentally ill? Is the crazy person causally related to the people dying? How many people is \u0026ldquo;a lot\u0026rdquo; (at least give an order of magnitude).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the second, again I said that is nearly a daily event. Could he narrow it down to a country, or the field in which the assassinated person is \u0026ldquo;someone of importance\u0026rdquo;?\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOn the third, I asked whether the date is the date of the event or the relocation, and whether he could be specific about the nature of the disaster and add a geographic location.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eTheo also claims that he predicted Hurricane Katrina \u0026ldquo;right to the day\u0026rdquo; (but didn\u0026rsquo;t say which day of the multi-day event he predicted), and in a later email said that he had made three similar prophecies (presumably one of them was about Katrina) last month, but he hasn\u0026rsquo;t yet given me the specifics. I\u0026rsquo;ll press him, and post here if I get the details. (Update: Theo says I can find the information in AOL\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Christian Living\u0026rdquo; chat room logs, but didn\u0026rsquo;t provide them. In response to my request for specifics about what he said, he says \u0026ldquo;Several weeks ago I predicted that a major catastrophe would occur in this country and that thousands would be forced to relocate between August 29-30.\u0026rdquo; What happened to a \u0026ldquo;right to the day\u0026rdquo; prediction of a hurricane?)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eIn my response, I asked him if he could be more specific, in which case I\u0026rsquo;d be willing to entertain a $500 wager on it with him (with proceeds donated to the charity of his choice if he gets all three right, and donated to the Internet Infidels otherwise). He told me that I don\u0026rsquo;t understand how precognition works and that my demands are unrealistic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Theo's Prophecies"},{"content":"Ever been walking along somewhere, when suddenly you wonder, \u0026ldquo;If the bomb went off now, would I be vaporized instantly, or would I be one of the unlucky ones? Could I \u0026lsquo;duck and cover\u0026rsquo; and be okay?\u0026quot;\nWell, wonder no more! This site has come to your rescue!\nNow you can know your minimum safe distance from, e.g., a 50 Megaton thermonuclear detonation. In my case, if we assume the Capitol building as Ground Zero, then out here in Reston, VA, I\u0026rsquo;m just outside the \u0026ldquo;widespread destruction\u0026rdquo; radius, but well within the \u0026ldquo;3rd degree burns\u0026rdquo; radius. Uh oh.\nOr, just for fun, plug in the historical values for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fission blasts (a quaint 0.15 and 0.22 Mtons, respectively).\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll gain a new appreciation of Seizo Yamada\u0026rsquo;s picture of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, taken at about 7 km.\nOr, perhaps even better, this shot of the \u0026ldquo;Buster Dog\u0026rdquo; troop test in Nevada, 1951. These guys are roughly 13 km away. \u0026ldquo;What seems to be the trouble, soldier? You look a little bit worried.\u0026quot;\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nThis reminds me of the Department of Homeland Security's disaster preparedness explanations, with universal logos easily interpreted without the need to understand any particular language:http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=\u0026threadid=46223\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nYikes, I just realized that my Mtonnages for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts were off by an order of magnitude--which is actually quite hard for me to believe.Were those horrifically destructive blasts really only 0.017 and 0.022 Mtons??? It boggles the mind.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/how-to-stop-worrying.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEver been walking along somewhere, when suddenly you wonder, \u0026ldquo;If \u003cem\u003ethe bomb \u003c/em\u003ewent off now, would I be vaporized instantly, or would I be one of the unlucky ones?  Could I \u0026lsquo;duck and cover\u0026rsquo; and be okay?\u0026quot;\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWell, wonder no more! \u003ca href=\"http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html\"\u003eThis site\u003c/a\u003e has come to your rescue!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eNow you can know your minimum safe distance from, e.g., a 50 Megaton thermonuclear detonation. In my case, if we assume the Capitol building as Ground Zero, then out here in Reston, VA, I\u0026rsquo;m just outside the \u0026ldquo;widespread destruction\u0026rdquo; radius, but well within the \u0026ldquo;3rd degree burns\u0026rdquo; radius. Uh oh.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOr, just for fun, plug in the historical values for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fission blasts (a quaint 0.15 and 0.22 Mtons, respectively).\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ll gain a new appreciation of Seizo Yamada\u0026rsquo;s picture of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, taken at about 7 km.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Japan/Hirgrnd.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Japan/Hirgrnd.jpg\" src=\"http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Japan/Hirgrnd.jpg\" border=\"0\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eOr, perhaps even better, this shot of the \u0026ldquo;Buster Dog\u0026rdquo; troop test in Nevada, 1951. These guys are roughly 13 km away. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to Stop Worrying..."},{"content":"That they are primarily involved in a PR effort is made clear by the way they declare victories where they\u0026rsquo;ve lost, as they did with regard to science standards in New Mexico. This time, they suckered the NYT into repeating the falsehood.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/discovery-institute-misleads-new-york.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThat they are primarily involved in a PR effort is made clear by the way they declare victories where they\u0026rsquo;ve lost, \u003cA HREF = \"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/new_mexico_scie.html\"\u003eas they did with regard to science standards in New Mexico\u003c/A\u003e.  This time, they suckered the NYT into repeating the falsehood.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Discovery Institute misleads the New York Times"},{"content":"An excellent article at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb about the evolution of the blood clotting system and the flagellum (Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s examples of \u0026ldquo;irreducibly complex\u0026rdquo; systems) that ID theorists don\u0026rsquo;t seem to want to discuss, as evidence that ID advocates aren\u0026rsquo;t practicing science.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/things-intelligent-design-camp-doesnt.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn excellent \u003ca href=\"http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/what_is_this_th.html\"\u003earticle at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb\u003c/a\u003e about the evolution of the blood clotting system and the flagellum (Michael Behe\u0026rsquo;s examples of \u0026ldquo;irreducibly complex\u0026rdquo; systems) that ID theorists don\u0026rsquo;t seem to want to discuss, as evidence that ID advocates aren\u0026rsquo;t practicing science.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Things the Intelligent Design camp doesn't talk about"},{"content":"In spite of the evidence that Lew Rockwell seems intent on sullying the name of Ludwig von Mises with his antics, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but admit that the Rothbard/Hoppe Institute\u0026rsquo;s daily articles are almost always interesting and informative.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s article, on oil\u0026rsquo;s price fluctuations over the past 35 years, I found especially good.\nMy favorite quote is this reminder of the beneficial role that speculators\u0026ndash;selfish money-grubbers, all\u0026ndash;play in the health of a complex economy:\nOf course, all speculators render a useful service by conveying the market’s evaluation of scarcity. Their activity also evens out price movements over time: in the case of oil, they buy now, when prices are lower (in their expectations), in order to sell later, which will bring future prices down. As usual, greed is useful.\nAnother thing that caught my eye was the graphical representation of the fall of oil\u0026rsquo;s price in 1986, when the OPEC cartel collapsed. It would also seem\u0026ndash;at first glance anyway\u0026ndash;that they\u0026rsquo;ve never really been able to get their act together again.\nOne of the Notes for the article links to this fascinating page that goes into the details surrounding Julian Simon\u0026rsquo;s bet with Paul Ehrlich. Definitely a fun read. We need more Julian Simons.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/price-of-oil.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn spite of the evidence that Lew Rockwell seems intent on sullying the name of Ludwig von Mises with his \u003ca href=\"http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=rightwatch\u0026static=1969743031\"\u003eantics\u003c/a\u003e, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but admit that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mises.org/\"\u003eRothbard/Hoppe Institute\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s daily articles are almost always interesting and informative.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.mises.org/story/1892\"\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s article\u003c/a\u003e, on oil\u0026rsquo;s price fluctuations over the past 35 years, I found especially good.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eMy favorite quote is this reminder of the beneficial role that speculators\u0026ndash;selfish money-grubbers, all\u0026ndash;play in the health of a complex economy:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003eOf course, all speculators render a useful service by conveying the market’s evaluation of scarcity. Their activity also evens out price movements over time: in the case of oil, they buy now, when prices are lower (in their expectations), in order to sell later, which will bring future prices down. As usual, greed is useful.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Price of Oil"},{"content":"Blogger Tacitus makes a weak argument that Intelligent Design may be good for science. What caught my attention is a comment under the heading \u0026ldquo;Andromeda Strain\u0026rdquo; by user Irving, who writes:\nCertainly normal statistical models \u0026ldquo;do not work for such things.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s the point of the research\u0026hellip;to find new models and frameworks. \u0026hellip;and we may not need to rely on merely statistical models either.\nLet me put this another way in a story perhaps more attuned to the Tacitus readership\u0026hellip;\nIn a period of 24 hours 3,000 people contract an illness in Omaha and die mysteriously. The country is alarmed. Medical teams have recovered bodies and isolated the causing organism. In the White House Situation Room the President ask the CDC\u0026hellip;Is this the result of a chance mutation, or is this organism evidence of a specifically, genetically-engineered biological warfare attack? What does this organism tell us?\nPerhaps an important question\u0026hellip;one with critical, far reaching impacts to National Security.\nNow some are saying that it will forever be impossible for science to know\u0026hellip;perhaps to prove. That development of such an analytical framework is impossible (and a waste of even any effort). That such an analytical process must forever remain a mystery of the universe and that if you can\u0026rsquo;t prove it, there is zero value in any effort to even try to develop a framework that might establish design as\u0026ndash;likely. And others are saying that any effort to do so is not even science at all. I suggest that that is dogmatic fundamentalism from the Evolution camp which is willing to trash the foundational elements of science in a \u0026ldquo;means justifies the end\u0026rdquo; battle in the Culture Wars. I contend, that while it may turn out to be impossible, or at least beyond our current technology\u0026hellip;that the efforts to distinguish design from nature can have positive impacts in society, and at the least, is legitamite scientific research.Irving has created a straw man\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t think any opponent of ID would argue against the possibility of methods (forensic or otherwise) for determining whether human beings\u0026ndash;entities whose behavior we can study\u0026ndash;are responsible for observed effects. What is questioned is whether it is possible to have methods which determine whether a deity\u0026ndash;an entity whose behavior we cannot study, and who is capable of bringing about any possible state of affairs\u0026ndash;is responsible for observed effects. (Now, certainly if such an entity existed it could bring forth evidence conclusive of its own existence, or at least fully persuasive of its own existence, but in the absence of its desire and action to make itself known, such evidence is not forthcoming.)\nIrving also fails to notice that ID theorists are arguing for a position which amounts to the elimination of the distinction he argues science should be able to discover. According to ID theorists, biological organisms are produced by the interventions of an intelligent designer, not chance. (Presumably most ID theorists also maintain that even nonbiological things are the product of the interventions of an intelligent designer, so the distinction between natural and artifact disappears, leaving only the distinction between divinely created artifact and non-divinely created artifact.)\nOpponents of ID oppose teaching ID in science classes (as do the major advocates of ID, now that the Dover, PA case looks like it\u0026rsquo;s going to go against them) because ID has yet to put forth any theories or methods which have been shown to work. If ID can put forth methods that can distinguish between design and non-design\u0026ndash;or between human interventions and natural occurrences\u0026ndash;then they will have something that\u0026rsquo;s scientifically useful. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like the advocates of ID are even working on such methods.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/intelligent-design-and-genetically.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlogger Tacitus \u003ca href=\"http://www.tacitus.org/story/2005/8/18/15139/0430\"\u003emakes a weak argument that Intelligent Design may be good for science\u003c/a\u003e.  What caught my attention is a comment under the heading \u0026ldquo;Andromeda Strain\u0026rdquo; by user Irving, who writes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eCertainly normal statistical models \u0026ldquo;do not work for such things.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s the point of the research\u0026hellip;to find new models and frameworks. \u003cp\u003e \u0026hellip;and we may not need to rely on merely statistical models either.\u003c/p\u003e   \u003cp\u003e Let me put this another way in a story perhaps more attuned to the Tacitus readership\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Intelligent Design and Genetically Engineered Bioterror"},{"content":"I can see that the combination of work, calculus, and an attempt at having some sort of a life is going to make it difficult for me to contribute to this blog all that often, but after Jeff Downs put up the link to a Greg Bahnsen article on Tom Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s The Good Fight, I just had to say something.\nCalculus can wait a few minutes while I riff on some of the stupider things in the article.\n[The Apostle] Paul asserts that all men know God so inescapably and clearly from natural revelation that they are left with no defense for their unfaithful response to the truth about Him.\nWell, then, if Paul said it, it must surely be true! After all, it\u0026rsquo;s in the Bible! This argument is so bald-faced in its arrogance (what the hell does Paul\u0026ndash;or anyone else, for that matter\u0026ndash;know about my beliefs and mental states?) and stupidity (it assumes, after all, what it is trying to prove) that it makes me want to\u0026hellip; well\u0026hellip; beat up a Christian fighter!\nChristianity can be shown to be, not \u0026lsquo;just as good as\u0026rsquo; or even \u0026lsquo;better than\u0026rsquo; the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience\u0026hellip;. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself. [my emphasis]\nThe first question that comes to mind, here, is: Which \u0026ldquo;Christianity\u0026rdquo;? The second one is this: If the whole of logic and epistemology is dependent on the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave 3 days later, then wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be possible\u0026ndash;in fact inevitable\u0026ndash;that people engaged in philosophical or scientific inquiry would be able to derive Jesus\u0026rsquo;s sacrifice entirely independent of exposure to the Bible? Has such a thing ever happened in the history of science or philosophy? And how, then, does one account for the inconsistencies between the 4 gospels?\nThe article goes on for a considerable stretch after that. It would be tiresome to attack the rest of it, since its foundation is entirely baseless, anyway. Calculus awaits.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nIf the whole of logic and epistemology is based on a historical figure, what did those who preceded him do? How did Aristotle develop logic when Jesus hadn't even been born yet?\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/atheists-self-deception.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI can see that the combination of work, calculus, and an attempt at having some sort of a life is going to make it difficult for me to contribute to this blog all that often, but after \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/profile/6804126\"\u003eJeff Downs\u003c/a\u003e put up the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pa207.htm\"\u003elink to a Greg Bahnsen article\u003c/a\u003e on Tom Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://christianfighter.blogspot.com/2005/08/scales-of-evidence.html\"\u003eThe Good Fight\u003c/a\u003e, I just had to say something.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eCalculus can wait a few minutes while I riff on some of the stupider things in the article.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;\"\u003e[The Apostle] Paul asserts that all men know God so inescapably and clearly from natural revelation that they are left with no defense for their unfaithful response to the truth about Him.\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#000000;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eWell, then, if Paul said it, it must surely be true! After all, \u003cem\u003eit\u0026rsquo;s in the Bible! \u003c/em\u003eThis argument is so bald-faced in its arrogance (what the hell does Paul\u0026ndash;or anyone else, for that matter\u0026ndash;know about my beliefs and mental states?) and stupidity (it assumes, after all, what it is trying to prove) that it makes me want to\u0026hellip; well\u0026hellip; beat up a Christian fighter!\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eChristianity\u003c/em\u003e can be shown to be, not \u0026lsquo;just as good as\u0026rsquo; or even \u0026lsquo;better than\u0026rsquo; the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience\u0026hellip;. \u003cem\u003eChristianity\u003c/em\u003e is proved as being the very foundation of the \u003cem\u003eidea of proof itself\u003c/em\u003e. [my emphasis]\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:#3333ff;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:georgia;color:#000000;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:#3333ff;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:georgia;color:#000000;\"\u003eThe first question that comes to mind, here, is: \u003cem\u003eWhich \u003c/em\u003e\u0026ldquo;Christianity\u0026rdquo;? The second one is this: If the whole of logic and epistemology is dependent on the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave 3 days later, then wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be possible\u0026ndash;in fact \u003cem\u003einevitable\u0026ndash;\u003c/em\u003ethat people engaged in philosophical or scientific inquiry would be able to derive Jesus\u0026rsquo;s sacrifice entirely independent of exposure to the Bible? Has such a thing ever happened in the history of science or philosophy? And how, then, does one account for the inconsistencies between the 4 gospels?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eThe article goes on for a considerable stretch after that. It would be tiresome to attack the rest of it, since its foundation is entirely baseless, anyway. Calculus awaits.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Atheist's Self-Deception"},{"content":"The twenty-first Carnival of the Godless may be found here. The P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula) contribution is particularly noteworthy.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/carnival-of-godless.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe twenty-first Carnival of the Godless may be found \u003ca href=\"http://goddamliberal.port5.com/art.php?id=43082744\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.  The P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula) contribution is particularly noteworthy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carnival of the Godless"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s an interesting essay/review from The New Yorker about Harry Frankfurt\u0026rsquo;s On Bullshit, Simon Blackburn\u0026rsquo;s Truth: A Guide, and the difference between liars and bullshitters (the former care about the truth but want to lead away from it, the latter have complete disregard for truth).\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nThis section resonated with me:\"How would one defend philosophers like Hegel or Heidegger from the charge that their writings are bullshit? Not, Cohen says, by showing that they cared about the truth (which would be enough to get them off the hook if they were charged with being bullshitters under Frankfurt's definition). Rather, one would try to show that their writings actually made some sense.\"As a part of trying to better understand and appreciate Max Stirner I picked up a copy of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. My copy has a line-by-line analysis of the text by some philosopher--at least I presume he's a philosopher. I was struck by the fact that this guy's \"analysis\" was just as incomprehensible as Hegel's discourse. I gave up on it after about 20 pages. Go ahead and call me a moron, I guess.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/truth-and-bullshit.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/050822crat_atlarge\"\u003ean interesting essay/review from The New Yorker\u003c/a\u003e about Harry Frankfurt\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eOn Bullshit\u003c/span\u003e, Simon Blackburn\u0026rsquo;s \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eTruth: A Guide\u003c/span\u003e, and the difference between liars and bullshitters (the former care about the truth but want to lead away from it, the latter have complete disregard for truth).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eThis section resonated with me:\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cI\u003e\"How would one defend philosophers like Hegel or Heidegger from the charge that their writings are bullshit? Not, Cohen says, by showing that they cared about the truth (which would be enough to get them off the hook if they were charged with being bullshitters under Frankfurt's definition). Rather, one would try to show that their writings actually made some sense.\"\u003c/I\u003e\u003cBR/\u003e\u003cBR/\u003eAs a part of trying to better understand and appreciate Max Stirner I picked up a copy of Hegel's \u003cA HREF=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198245971/qid=1124484156/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6627528-1711915?v=glance\u0026s=books\u0026n=507846\" REL=\"nofollow\"\u003ePhenomenology of Spirit\u003c/A\u003e.  My copy has a line-by-line analysis of the text by some philosopher--at least I presume he's a philosopher.  I was struck by the fact that this guy's \"analysis\" was just as incomprehensible as Hegel's discourse.  I gave up on it after about 20 pages.  Go ahead and call me a moron, I guess.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Truth and Bullshit"},{"content":"An, uh, interesting excerpt from Hans-Hermann Hoppe\u0026rsquo;s Democracy: The God that Failed:\n\u0026ldquo;In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one\u0026rsquo;s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal.\u0026quot;\nFor inquiring about some of the implications in that paragraph, John T. Kennedy, of the No Treason blog, became the first non-spammer to be kicked off the Mises.org (sic) blog. You can read that exchange here.\nNow, what is one to make of the Hoppe quote above? Should we, like the more rabidly dogmatic Rothbardian \u0026ldquo;paleo-libertarians,\u0026rdquo; put it down to simply unclear writing that has been taken out of context anyway? Or should we, like John T. Kennedy and some of the other \u0026ldquo;atheist individualist left-libertarians,\u0026rdquo; count it as incontrovertible proof that Hoppe is a Nazi in disguise? (The \u0026ldquo;Nazi\u0026rdquo; accusation is more an insinuation than an actual bald assertion, to be sure. In fact it\u0026rsquo;s often hard to figure out just what it is, exactly, that those no-treason and left-libertarian guys are saying.)\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m no fan of Hoppe. I think he\u0026rsquo;s an embarassment to the Austrian school of economics (his \u0026ldquo;Argumentation Ethics\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;which would undoubtedly get him laughed out of any college sophmore\u0026rsquo;s philosophy class\u0026ndash;are a perfect example of the depth\u0026ndash;or lack thereof\u0026ndash;of his thinking). But I\u0026rsquo;m not entirely sure yet whether we should really throw Hoppe out with the bathwater.\nI want to take a little time and really dissect what Hoppe said, in as unemotional a way as possible, since that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen on the \u0026ldquo;Mises Institute\u0026rdquo; blog. So, let\u0026rsquo;s begin\u0026hellip;\nIn a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one\u0026rsquo;s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving private property, such as democracy and communism.\nWhat Hoppe seems, at root, to be saying here is that it would make no sense to join in a covenant with a person or persons who question the legitimacy or the very idea of covenants. I\u0026rsquo;m with him so far, but he loses me here: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;no one is permitted to advocate\u0026hellip;democracy and communism.\u0026rdquo; Can someone please explain how that follows logically? And what exactly is meant by \u0026ldquo;[not] permitted\u0026rdquo;? Hoppe, at least in this quote, doesn\u0026rsquo;t provide much of a clue, though what he implies doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem too pleasant:\nThere can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal.\nWhat I find most damning to the Rothbardian position that Hoppe is simply describing the optimal arrangement for the functioning of stable and thriving voluntary private communities is the phrase \u0026ldquo;libertarian social order.\u0026rdquo; I could understand a community getting together and mutually agreeing to kick out anyone who didn\u0026rsquo;t tow the Rothbardian line, but isn\u0026rsquo;t that a far cry from \u0026ldquo;[t]hey will have to be physically\u0026hellip;expelled from society\u0026rdquo;?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nI don't see the problem at all with a libertarian society allowing subsets of the population to live communally, in groups that vote democratically, etc., so long as they do so by informed voluntary consent.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/hoppe-on-libertarian-society.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAn, uh, \u003cem\u003einteresting \u003c/em\u003eexcerpt from Hans-Hermann Hoppe\u0026rsquo;s \u003cu\u003eDemocracy: The God that Failed\u003c/u\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one\u0026rsquo;s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hoppe on \"Libertarian Society\""},{"content":"German Catholics who can\u0026rsquo;t attend a talk from the Pope can get it text messaged to themselves.\nHistorical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09):\nI can imagine that they'll have a hard time using all 160 characters for what the Pope is going to say.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/youve-got-mail-from-pope.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGerman Catholics who can\u0026rsquo;t attend a talk from the Pope can \u003ca href=\"http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1676616,00.html\"\u003eget it text messaged to themselves\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr class='comment-separator'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='legacy-comments-block'\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h3\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class='legacy-comment' style='margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 10px; border-left: 3px solid #ccc;'\u003e\n    \u003cstrong\u003eEinzige\u003c/strong\u003e \u003csmall\u003e(2006-12-09)\u003c/small\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n    \u003cp\u003eI can imagine that they'll have a hard time using all 160 characters for what the Pope is going to say.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"You've Got Mail--From the Pope"},{"content":"MIT remains on the forefront of robotics and AI with the CatsupCrapper.\nThanks to Jerry Goodenough via the SKEPTIC mailing list for the link.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/catsupcrapper.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMIT remains on the forefront of robotics and AI with the \u003cA HREF = \"http://web.mit.edu/polo/Public/CatsupCrapper/catsupcrappervideo.htm\"\u003eCatsupCrapper\u003c/A\u003e.\u003cbr /\u003eThanks to Jerry Goodenough via the SKEPTIC mailing list for the link.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The CatsupCrapper"},{"content":"Richard Bejtlich of Tao Security (a prolific Amazon.com reviewer) has posted a four-star review of Extreme Exploits, a book I did the technical editing on.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/richard-bejtlich-reviews-extreme.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Bejtlich of Tao Security (a prolific Amazon.com reviewer) has posted \u003ca href=\"http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005/08/review-of-extreme-exploits-posted.html\"\u003ea four-star review of \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eExtreme Exploits\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a book I did the technical editing on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Bejtlich reviews Extreme Exploits"},{"content":"The Intelligent Design movement recently hired a PR firm to promote its views. A critic using the name \u0026ldquo;vax\u0026rdquo; commented on this at William Dembski\u0026rsquo;s (the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton\u0026rdquo; of ID) blog:\nWhy would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves. If it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however…\nThis led to a response from \u0026ldquo;Dan\u0026rdquo;:\nIt is obvious why it needs to be promoted…because it is being shut out by radical left wing atheists that control the science ciriculum at the University level who control the peer reviewed journals. Also, ID is young and it has the right to have time to germinate or die-with a fair hearing.\nTo which \u0026ldquo;vax\u0026rdquo; replied:\nSounds a bit paranoid to me - not all scientists are “radical left wing atheists”! In fact there are scientists across the globe of every political hue and holding every creed who understand that all living beings on this planet share common ancestry. How do they know? Because the hypothesis has stood up to intense scrutiny over the past 150 years. ID is not science because there is no hypothesis; nothing that could be falsified. “ID is young and it has the right to have time to germinate or die-with a fair hearing.”\nYes, that’s true, but ID proponents don’t want a fair hearing. They want to bypass the hypothesis, the data collection, the analysis, the peer reviewing etc, and have their ideas placed straight into school science classes! To be taken seriously by the scientific community (radically left wing or otherwise) perhaps the discovery institute would be better off using their money to fund actual research rather than for hiring a top public relations firm (Creative Response Concepts).\nThe result of this exchange? William Dembski bans \u0026ldquo;vax\u0026rdquo;:\nVax, you are repeating the party line. I have no patience for it here. You are out of here. –WmAD\nMore commentary may be found at The Panda\u0026rsquo;s Thumb blog.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/teach-controversy.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Intelligent Design movement recently hired a PR firm to promote its views. A critic using the name \u0026ldquo;vax\u0026rdquo; commented on this at \u003ca href=\"http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/235#comments\"\u003eWilliam Dembski\u0026rsquo;s (the \u0026ldquo;Isaac Newton\u0026rdquo; of ID) blog\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eWhy would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves. \u003cp\u003eIf it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however…\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/blockquote\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis led to a response from \u0026ldquo;Dan\u0026rdquo;:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Teach the Controversy\""},{"content":"Christian apologetics is the process of defending the faith by constructing rational arguments to particular predefined doctrinal conclusions, and presenting those arguments as a defense of the faith. The presentation of the arguments may either be in the form of monologue (such as through printed publication in a forum where no responses are possible) or in a dialogue, where the only acceptable outcomes are a revision of the steps of the arguments, but not the ultimate conclusions.\nSometimes, those involved in the process do not even bother to make sure their apologetic arguments are consistent with each other\u0026ndash;they engage in a shotgun approach of throwing out whatever arguments they can come up with to reach the desired conclusion.\nExamples of this may be found at Tom Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Christian Fighter\u0026rdquo; blog. In a discussion of an essay by agnostic Paul Draper, Wanchick notes that \u0026ldquo;Draper goes through the arguments for theism and naturalism and finds the cases for both worldviews equally compelling. Neither has a clear advantage.\u0026rdquo; But then, Wanchick notes:\nBut Draper makes an interesting statement at the end of his contribution. He notes that this situation with the ambiguous evidence appears almost intentional, as if humans have been given enough evidence to find God, but not enough to give them utter certainty regarding His reality.In other words, the fact of the ambiguity is itself evidence for theism. But Wanchick goes on to say:\nI disagree with Draper in that I think the evidence for theism is far greater than any purported evidence for naturalism. Thus, theism is the clearcut winner. But even granting his point, the Christian position comes out on the winning end.Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s has thus argued that (a) there is an ambiguity, which is evidence for theism, and (b) there is no ambiguity, theism is the clearcut winner. He clearly favors (b), which is inconsistent with (a), but he seemingly still wants to advocate (a), since it leads to a conclusion he favors, as he writes that \u0026ldquo;the apparent ambiguity seems intentional,\u0026rdquo; implying that he thinks the ambiguity exists. (Thanks to Einzige for pointing out this last point\u0026ndash;Wanchick really does seem to advocate both contradictory positions.)\nEinzige (2006-12-09):\nBut, hey, it's \"The Good Fight.\" So, what's wrong with a little inconsistency when you're defending the faith, right?\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nWanchick has offered a clarification in the comments on his blog--he asserts that to the non-Christian mind, there is an ambiguity, but to the Christian, the evidence clearly favors theism.\nLippard (2006-12-09):\nWanchick's position allows that it is possible to see the evidence as favoring theism or as equally balanced between theism and naturalism, but seems to reject that it is possible to see the evidence as favoring naturalism, as that would cause his argument (a) to fail.Is there really anything more to this than the following: if you see the evidence as favoring theism, you will therefore be a theist; if you see the evidence as ambiguous and near-equally balanced, you will therefore be agnostic; if you see the evidence as favoring naturalism, you will therefore be a naturalist.Well, actually, there is, since there are theists who take the fideist position, holding a theist view even if they see the evidence favoring nontheism over theism. Christian apologist William Lane Craig is one among many who have explicitly endorsed faith over reason.\n","permalink":"https://blog.lippard.org/2005/08/christian-apologetics.html/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChristian apologetics is the process of defending the faith by constructing rational arguments to particular predefined doctrinal conclusions, and presenting those arguments as a defense of the faith. The presentation of the arguments may either be in the form of monologue (such as through printed publication in a forum where no responses are possible) or in a dialogue, where the only acceptable outcomes are a revision of the steps of the arguments, but not the ultimate conclusions.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eSometimes, those involved in the process do not even bother to make sure their apologetic arguments are consistent with each other\u0026ndash;they engage in a shotgun approach of throwing out whatever arguments they can come up with to reach the desired conclusion.\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cbr /\u003eExamples of this may be found at \u003ca href=\"http://christianfighter.blogspot.com/2005/08/scales-of-evidence.html\"\u003eTom Wanchick\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Christian Fighter\u0026rdquo; blog\u003c/a\u003e. In a discussion of an essay by agnostic Paul Draper, Wanchick notes that \u0026ldquo;Draper goes through the arguments for theism and naturalism and finds the cases for both worldviews equally compelling. Neither has a clear advantage.\u0026rdquo; But then, Wanchick notes:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eBut Draper makes an interesting statement at the end of his contribution. He notes that this situation with the ambiguous evidence appears almost intentional, as if humans have been given enough evidence to find God, but not enough to give them utter certainty regarding His reality.\u003c/blockquote\u003eIn other words, the fact of the ambiguity is itself evidence for theism.  But Wanchick goes on to say:\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003eI disagree with Draper in that I think the evidence for theism is far greater than any purported evidence for naturalism. Thus, theism is the clearcut winner. But even granting his point, the Christian position comes out on the winning end.\u003c/blockquote\u003eWanchick\u0026rsquo;s has thus argued that (a) there is an ambiguity, which is evidence for theism, and (b) there is no ambiguity, theism is the clearcut winner. He clearly favors (b), which is inconsistent with (a), but he seemingly still wants to advocate (a), since it leads to a conclusion he favors, as he writes that \u0026ldquo;the apparent ambiguity seems intentional,\u0026rdquo; implying that he thinks the ambiguity exists.  (Thanks to Einzige for pointing out this last point\u0026ndash;Wanchick really does seem to advocate both contradictory positions.)\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian apologetics"}]